Deep State – Demo Impressions

I discovered this little gem while browsing the indie dev hashtag over at Twitter (X). Deep State is a two-man developer operation that takes heavy inspiration from Goldeneye 007, Deus Ex, and Resident Evil, according to their site. All games I enjoy, and going by the demo, I can clearly feel the Goldeneye and Deus Ex influences since those things are part of the gameplay. Resident Evil, not so much just yet, as you only fight humans in the demo. However, through the cutscenes, you can tell there are major supernatural government/corpo shenanigans going on, which sets a somewhat unsettling atmosphere.

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Star Trek: Away Team – Vulcan nerve pinch to Victory

When I was younger I loved Star Trek: Away Team, but with age, my taste in games has changed – well, at least certain time-consuming mechanics, like games resting on endless save & reloading. It’s still somewhat of a charming experience playing it now, however, being a Commandos clone there is A LOT of trial and error involved. That is not all, as this title also has a bit of a quirky and archaic control system. It undeniably adds up when half of your attempts fail due to control issues. Yet, as mentioned, it’s still appealing since it’s set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation timeline (best timeline), has nice looking retro graphics, excellent voice acting and presentation, and a pretty good story to boot.

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Watch Dogs – Who watches the watchers?

I decided to give Watch Dogs another go after playing the DLC Bloodline for Watch Dogs: Legion which has Aiden Pearce as the main lead. Simply, I wanted to know more about him and to see maybe if I had misjudged Aiden, and the game itself. The short of it is… yes! Yes, I had. While it does have some gameplay issues, the story, world-building, and characterization of Aiden are the most interesting parts – that now in retrospect make more sense in the Legion expansion.

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Watch Dogs: Legion – Bloodline

The original Watch Dogs: Legion (Watch Dogs 3) was a bit of a hit or miss. It had serious potential with its sandbox nature of recruiting whoever you wanted off the street to work for your little hacker revolution. However, the implementation wasn’t great. It suffered from weird randomization, like having characters’ looks not matching the voice, massive story issues, and the lack of a central protagonist. The near-future City of London was and still is awesome. It has this cool dystopian feeling to it, with high surveillance and military-esque police patrolling the streets. It got a surprising number of things right. For example, the checkpoint system that now is a reality in London – all for the concerns of the mythical “environment”. All in all, a realistic depiction of the WEF future we all have to look forward to, so what’s not to like? Everyone enjoys a good despair from time to time.

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