Tixa isn’t too far away from Alma, so after resting up and training militia in the town, the Dispensables are ready to go bust the mine owner’s brother out of prison. Attacking Tixa during the day would be a huge mistake, so again, I go in at night.
In the past, I’ve often gone with a frontal assault on Tixa, because I usually don’t take the prison until I’ve progressed a bit farther in the game, and I have enough high-powered weaponry to blow a whole right into the building. However, for my second Thin-Lizzy-inspired entry, I’m going to be a bit sneakier.
After the jump, all hell breaks loose, alarms and sirens (don’t) wail Continue reading →
I don’t generally play many (any?) free-to-play games, mainly because I’m mostly playing pay-to-play games. But I get lots of press releases about them. I know how hard it is out there for any game going that route. I don’t envy anyone the task trying to muscle into that particular niche, where free-to-play often isn’t just a business model, but a statement of quality.
I recently played a free-to-play shooter because I was writing a short piece for Gamespy. War Inc is a pretty typical entry in the niche that doesn’t have the benefit of Electronic Arts slapping a Battlefield brand on it. I was actually surprised War Inc wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Not that I necessarily recommend it to anyone who’s already digging on Killzone 3, or Bad Company 2, or Fear 3. But if you’d rather pay a few bucks at a time rather than $40+ up front, you could probably do far worse than War Inc, which comes with some weirdly suggestive quote marks when you check your overall time played:
I can talk at length about a game I like. But when asked whether I’d recommend a game, suddenly it’s 100% trickier. A recommendation has to take into account the recommendee, which is exactly twice as many people to manage as when I normally talk about a game. But then there is the occasional game I would recommend without hesitation. Bastion is one such game. There is no man, woman, or child* to whom I wouldn’t recommend Bastion, which is available this week on Xbox Live. Just consider your Microsoft spacebucks account 1200 points poorer.
I had hoped Battlegoat’s Supreme Ruler: Cold War would be a more manageable and theme-driven version of their overbusy Supreme Ruler 2010 games. Based on booting it up and messing around a bit with the tutorial, and then accidentally escalating the world to Defcon 1, I don’t think any such thing has happened. I don’t know who plays these things, but they’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Runespell: Overture is a card-based trifle with a mess of fantasy RPG connective tissue, but it’s an engaging trifle. The combination of poker and solitaire — How come no one thought of this before? — has a surprising amount of depth. It’s out on Steam this week.
Also out this week is Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which takes Techland’s cowboy games and brings them into modern times. I haven’t played it, but Techland did some nice things with the previous Calls of Juarez. More importantly, playing Techland’s Dead Island at E3 was a revelation that these guys seem to have moved on from just doing fancy graphics engines to actually doing good game design. Maybe we’ll see some of that in The Cartel.
Finally, some licensed Smurfs game and Captain America game (pictured) are coming out this week. I would make a crack about not being able to care less about both things, but I actually kind of like playing Captain America in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He’s the no-frills idiot-proof character anyone can play to learn the basics. Also, I liked Ryan Reynolds in Buried, so I’m happy to see him playing a famous superhero in the Captain America movie. It’s clobberin’ time!
* Kudos to developer Supergiant for not scrapping their innocuous enough liquor references and smoking pipe. Technically speaking, the E10+ rated Bastion features underage drinking and smoking!
We know what you’re thinking: “What’s Phase 7?” It’s a cool apocalypse thriller from Argentina that got very limited distribution and will hopefully be on DVD soon. We can spoil it for you now or you can listen to the podcast after you’ve seen it later. Either way, our 3×3 of movies we’re bummed never got made starts at the 1:03 mark.
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