Grid 2 (not pictured, since there’s nothing duller than a screenshot of a latest-gen racing game) is out this week! The original Grid rivaled the best of Forza and Gran Turismo when it was released, and it even held up next to the upcoming Need for Speed: Shift. Since then, developer Codemasters has mostly been retooling their various Dirt games, which are easily the best arcade rally racers you can race. Now that the wheels are back on pavement, I look forward to seeing how they handle. Consider your wallet threatened.
I’m pretty sure Wargame: AirLand Battles is supposed to be out this week, but it’s already missed one release date. It’s fully playable now as a skirmish game (buy it now and you can bang on the beta to your heart’s content!), so all we’re really waiting for is the ambitious dynamic campaign. Consider your wallet threatened.
Finally, Electronic Arts releases Fuse, Insomniac’s disappointing attempt to fuse the serious shootery bits of Resistance with the wacky weapons bits of Ratchet & Clank with the godawful four-player co-op of Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One.
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is the add-on that makes the game that made Elemental better even better. That might sound convoluted. For good reason. But if you want meatier tactical combat and more character development in your Fallen Enchantress, Legendary Heroes will deliver. This is the strongest leg in the three-legged renaissance of fantasy strategy gaming consisting of Fallen Enchantress, Warlock, and Eador.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is an action RPG from Neocore, the Hungarian developer who made the King Arthur RTS/RPGs. King Arthur featured some clever gameplay in what was mostly a Total War-a-like, so it’s entirely possible this Diablo-a-like might have a few tricks up its sleeve. For instance, this on-the-fly skill tweaking looks promising. Van Helsing is out this week for the PC, with an Xbox 360 version to follow later this year.
Donkey Kong Country Returns is ported to the Nintendo 3DS from the Wii. Resident Evil Revelations is ported from the 3DS to the Xbox 360 and WiiU. It looks a bit, well, chintzy on the 360, but it’s a good game. Here’s my review of the 3DS version which I presume will mostly apply to these latest gen versions. But you should probably keep in mind this was a far more relevant description of my experience with the game.
Ubisoft goes back to the basics — or at least the Old West — with Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, in which a cowboy shoots stuff. I don’t have any inside information on whether it’s any good, but I have a mental image of two interns in a back room making this game to fulfill Techland’s obligation to Ubisoft while everyone else was working on Dead Island stuff.
Activision is publishing a Fast and Furious branded racing game. Paul Walker isn’t in it. I bet you didn’t know there have already been a whole mess of Fast and Furious games. I hadn’t heard of a single one of them. Paul Walker wasn’t in those either. Quod erat demonstratum.
This week’s wallet threat is dire. Metro Last Light is every bit as good — and unique — as Metro 2033, and far more gorgeous than any game about a grey wasteland should be. The five-star review — spoiler! — will post later tonight.
Also out this week is Anomaly 2, the sequel to the tower defense game that’s actually a tower offense game. The first Anomaly was clever enough, although it was still “just” a tower defense game. Anomaly 2 has a nice twist — all the units have two forms that you can shift at any time — but what cinches this one for me is the potential of the new multiplayer mode, in which one player sets up towers and the other player wends his convoy around the map trying to take them down. Also this week, you can download Dust 514, a free-to-play shooter for the Playstation 3 made by the developer of Eve Online that intends to take the MMO planetside. See what I did there?
Balance is like the reverse of pornography: everyone can give you a definition, but no one seems to be able to know when they see it. Oh sure, they think they know. Plenty of people will tell you that this race is overpowered, or that class is imba, and people go on to repeat it until it takes on a life of its own. I’ve seen plenty of game reviews declare a game is balanced or imbalanced, often on release day when I’m not sure how anyone can know that for sure.
The problem with balance is that just because someone hasn’t won with a particular race, or strategy, or build, doesn’t mean they can’t. Likewise, just because you found a strategy that won a bunch of games early doesn’t mean there isn’t a much better strategy that someone just hasn’t figured out yet. Or more pointedly, that they haven’t used against you.
This week your wallet is entirely safe from new releases, because there aren’t any. So what better time to sample something you might have otherwise overlooked, like Sang-froid, Monaco, or Don’t Starve (pictured)?
Remember Ubisoft’s April Fool’s Day announcement for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon that turned out not to be a joke? The fifteen-dollar downloadable game out this week will presumably demonstrate that the Far Cry 3 engine is too good to be contained solely in Far Cry 3. It is apparently so good that it knocks itself back into a previous decade. This standalone release was inspired by the vision of the future realized on VHS tapes in the 80s. It therefore stars Michael Biehn. In other words, it came across time for me.
The add-on for Heroes of Might & Magic VI, Shades of Darkness, is apparently enough to merit its release as a standalone game, but like Blood Dragon, not enough to increment the Roman numeral. Ubisoft is at the forefront of numeric conservation.
Zeno Clash II — note the incremented Roman numeral! — is the latest installment in Chilean developer Ace Team’s first person puncher series, which began life over ten years ago as a Quake mod. You explore alien worlds and sometimes punch exotice creatures. Even if it’s awful, it will probably be better than anything you see on Syfy these days. Can you tell that I’m watching Defiance?
Deadly Premonitions will be re-released in the form of a “director’s cut”. Consider me surprised that the original release of this weird take on America and Twin Peaks wasn’t already its director’s cut. Did you know that you fight an axe-weilding jawa in that game?
Finally, if you have a Vita, it’s not dead yet. Soul Sacrifice is more than happy to drink up as much time as you want to give it.
I, for one, am glad to have more Dead Island. So Dead Island: Riptide is hitting the sweet spot for me, especially since it’s pretty difficult early on. Yeah, sure, I’ve imported my high-level character from the original game but — surprise! — I got captured at the start and all my weapons got taken away. My captors also apparently took away all my memories of how to make homemade weapons to shock, fry, freeze, melt, fold, spindle, mutilate, and explode zombies. Which is fair enough. This is a sort of reboot in a new area of the same old tropical paradise gone wrong. I have no problem with a reboot. And this time I know to keep all the sticks of deodorant I find for when I remember how to made deodorant bombs.
Namco Bandai (Namco Bandai?) is publishing a Star Trek shooter made by Digital Extremes. I wouldn’t normally care (a Star Trek shooter?), but Digital Extremes’ last game was The Darkness II. Still, a Star Trek shooter? It doesn’t inspire confidence that the only name they could think up was Star Trek: The Video Game. Why couldn’t they take a cue from Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine, a game also out this week that looks like a combination of Pac-Man and a heist?
If you’re up for some serious strategy — I’m not real keen on the moniker 4X, but it fits here — Masters of the Broken World is this week’s fantasy flavor and StarDrive is this week’s sci-fi flavor. Lego City Undercover for the Nintendo DS is a miserably shrunken version of the excellent Wii game that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Dragon’s Dogma gets some DLC. Finally, the third and final installment of Assassin’s Creed III’s Tyranny of King Washington DLC is out this week.
Before Mortal Kombat’s latest surprisingly good reboot, there was Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, which was not surprisingly good. Or so I’ve been told. I myself never explored the implications of who would win in a fight between Superman and Johnny Cage. I’m pretty sure there is no version of that match-up where the answer shouldn’t have been Superman, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen Zack Snyder’s upcoming biopic.
And now this week, the team that made the Mortal Kombat reboot so good, NetherRealm, releases Injustice: Gods Among Us, which reboots only the DC Universe portion of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. The box cover poses the question, “Who would win in a fight between Superman and Batman?” and implies that the answer is “The Joker”. Well played, box cover.
I just hope it’s not too difficult to unlock Aquaman.
Speaking of heroics at sea, Jetpack Joyride developer Halfbrick will mostly likely release their next game this week (the release date isn’t yet official). Fish out of Water for the iOS, in which you throw fish like you’ve never thrown fish before, is every bit as addicting and adorable as Jetpack Joyride. But wait, there are more naval shenanigans! I’m really excited about Victoria II: Hearts of Darkness, which revamps naval battles and colonization in Paradox’s brilliant strategy game. As you can deduce from the title, the focus is on Africa, often overlooked in favor of the sexier America when it comes to historical strategy gaming and real life.
Sacred Citadels is a side-scrolling brawler not from the folks who made Sacred 2. It’s supposed to be a sort of prequel/appetite whetter for the upcoming Sacred 3, which is also not from the folks who made Sacred 2.
Finally, there’s DLC for Dishonored, in which you play the jerk responsible for the main character getting dishonored, and Black Ops II, in which you play a guy who gets shot a lot by other people online.
This week, the French studio that made the Trackmania games releases Shootmania Storm. As much as I’d like to commend the community support and wild track construction that made Trackmania stand out, I don’t see how that’s supposed to work for an online multiplayer shooter that looks like pretty much any other generic shooter since Unreal Tournament. The only other threat to your wallet this week is a map pack for Halo 4. I nearly fell asleep while typing that.
For an April Fool’s Day joke, I considered pretending that Super Black Bass 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, out this week, is an awesome game. But I’ve never been able to pull off April Fool’s pranks. Speaking of which, maybe Trion’s online shooter/Syfy series tie-in, Definance, is awesome. I wouldn’t know. But it’s worth noting I would have been similarly dismissive of their previous game, Rift, until I played it.
Cities in Motion 2 is the sequel to Cities in Motion 1. Before you get visions of a Sim City that works, I should warn you that these games are strictly about public transportation. I live in Los Angeles, so I have no idea what they’re on about.
Also out this week is Sang-Froid, a werewolf-themed tower defense/action game for the PC. It seems to share gameplay DNA with Orcs Must Die. I’m eager to hear people try to pronounce the name. I’m pretty sure it’s “sang-fwaa”, which is something I’d never attempt to say in public. The latest add-on for Borderlands 2 will raise the level cap and add a super badass difficulty level for your third playthough. In other words, it is of no use to me whatsoever and likely won’t be for a long long time, but I wouldn’t dream of not owning it. Just in case.
Finally, Electronic Arts will release a free patch that makes Sim City work exactly as intended, along with an offline mode for people without reliable internet connections or any interest in playing with others.
The Nintendo 3DS gets a couple of major releases this week. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is a nifty adventure/exploration game. I really enjoy the playful haunted house production values, the gradually unfurling gameplay mechanics, and the chaotic ghost wrassling. It helps immensely that I don’t find Luigi as annoying as Mario. I don’t know what my problem is with Mario. Maybe because Luigi is a ridiculous character played for comedy, yet Mario is a ridiculous character played as if he wasn’t ridiculous. Why does that guy annoy me so much? I’ll have to explore that further with my therapist. But since Mario isn’t part of Luigi’s Mansion, it’s that much easier to enjoy.
I’m less fond of the latest Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, subtitled Gates to Infinity. I’m still mired in the interminable Pokemon exposition, with squealing Pokemon imparting life lessons in colorful unskippable cutscenes. The ratio of squealing Pokemon to mystery dungeon is, at this point, about 3:1. I’m running out of steam. I can’t take it much longer. I know from playing the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon that there’s going to be a deep and involved dungeon crawl deeper down in here. I just don’t know that I have the endurance to reach it, particularly since there are so many other alternatives for deep and involved dungeon crawls. The first Mystery Dungeon, for instance, which was entirely free of Pokemons.
The Nintendo 3DS release that I’m most enjoying is Harmoknight. I don’t know what to make of that name. It’s clunky at best, and misconstrued as a slur at worst. But this rhythm based game is friendly, colorful, enthusiastic, and carefully perched at the intersection of simple and challenging. I’ve also tried to play a bit of Gaijin Games’ Bit Trip Runner 2 recently, which is similar to Harmoknight, but often more frustrating. Harmoknight feels more cinematic, more catchy, like a bona fide musical crossed with a platformer. Runner 2 is just a straight up platformer that has no compunction about making me do stuff over and over again. Harmoknight is seeing Les Miserables. Bit Trip Runner 2 is reading the Victor Hugo novel.
Xbox Arcade gets a port of Terraria this week. I’ve sampled Terraria on the PC, and I can’t help but feel it would be right at home on the Xbox 360. Electronic Arts is releasing a new Tiger Woods game. I follow just enough sports to know it’s probably a dating sim. Electronic Arts is also releasing a new Army of Two game in case your army of two in the latest Dead Space isn’t enough.
I might go so far as to say Lego Undercover City — WiiU only, I’m afraid — is the best Lego game I’ve played. Don’t hold me to that just yet. I’ll have more to say in the review later this week, but suffice to say Undercover City strikes me as the purest expression of Traveller’s Tale’s gleeful Lego gameplay so far.
For all intents and purposes, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is also WiiU only, but it has limited connectivity with the moderately gimped 3DS version. I skipped the last-gen Wii version of Monster Hunter (this is basically the same game, but with extra content, HD graphics, and full multiplayer support), so it’s all new to me. But having played Monster Hunters, I’m experiencing an overwhelming sense of “here we go again”, equal parts dread and excitement. Getting deep into a Monster Hunter game is as easy and nearly as dire as falling down a sinkhole.
Also WiiU only is the WiiU version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which features unique multiplayer shenanigans involving the gamepad. I’m hoping this will compliment ZombiU as a go-to game for people on the same couch who are a little too dignified to resort to party games.
If you’re interested in action heroes the size of refrigerators and with about as much personality, Microsoft has a new off-season Gears of War release, this time created by the folks who made Bulletstorm. And if you want a platformer that demands skill, Alien Spidy is incredibly gratifying when you get it right and incredibly aggravating the rest of the time.
Last week I got an email from a woman named Vickie who asked me to take a look at her let’s play series, which she posts on YouTube under the name owlsighs. I don’t normally enjoy let’s plays, mainly since I’d just as soon play a game myself, but also since they’re often cynical or ironic. But after sampling a few of Vickie’s videos — this “let me show you my house” for Skyrim is particularly charming — I was struck by her absolute lack of cynicism and irony. So I asked her if Quarter to Three could sponsor a Tomb Raider series. She graciously agreed and it begins in the above video. Furthermore, she’ll be dropping in on the podcast in the coming weeks to keep us updated.
I’ve been jumping back into Starcraft II and discovering it’s a muscle you need to exercise or it will atrophy. So what do I do after building a spawn pool? But regardless of how bad you suck, you can’t shuffle units around in this game without re-appreciating that it’s a finely tuned RTS that couldn’t possibly be more finely tuned. Or could it? We find out this week. And we also get one of those campaigns with crazily elaborate production values to distract you from the fact that you’re just flinging blobs of units at a mostly passive AI. But frankly, I think I care less about Heart of the Swarm being a Starcraft II add-on than I care about it being a Blizzard game.
Also out this week, a $10 add-on for Dead Space 3 called Awakened makes this almost infinitely replayable sci-fi shooter/meat stompin’ sim even more playable. You had me at telemetry spike, Dead Space 3. Just give me more weird things to shoot and new ways to shoot them.
Also, Sony’s taking one last half-hearted Playstation 3 stab at the God of War franchise. Remember that one? The angry bald guy with the tattoos who yelled “Zeus!” a lot?
Tomb Raider, one of the best games of this generation and a reboot every bit as exciting as Arkham Asylum or Skyfall, is a dire threat to all wallets. The game diary starts here. It’s one of the few games I’ve ever 100%ed and now that it’s over for me — the multiplayer is pretty much a non-issue — I look forward to vicariously re-enjoying it through your comments.
I’m not sure what to make of Sim City yet. It’s clearly taking a page from the Anno 2070 book, which is a great book to take pages from. But for better and worse, it leans heavily on EA’s forced social gaming shenanigans by presenting tiny pocket cities that rely on other nearby pocket cities, either your own or those of other players. Is this really the best way to do a city builder? Stay tuned.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate can’t make up its mind about whether to use colons or dashes, but it sure knows how to use the Nintendo 3DS for some classic Castlevania. Here’s one of those rare 3DS games where I really like keeping that 3D slider dialed all the way up. And it doesn’t just look great. I wasn’t sure what Konami and developer Mercury Steam were doing with the previous Lords of Shadow other than God of Warring it up. But this handheld version I can really get into for how it feels like a traditional Castlevania with latter day production values. I like the 2D movement (ironic!), the relatively simple combat, and the exploration. Now this is more like it!
The University add-on for The Sims 2 is a gold standards for add-ons. It inserted a new age stage between children and adults, creating in that new stage a rich playful world of college life. Can University Life do the same for The Sims 3, which is already piled high with playful add-on content? Will college be lost in the shuffle with spellcasting, winter wonderlands, and nightclubbing?
Speaking of nightclubbing, the Citadel add-on for Mass Effect 3 is a single-player adventure that gives Commander Shepherd more adventuring on everyone’s favorite space station MacGuffin.
