Jaina Hill
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COGConnectedLatest Reviews
As sequels go, this is what I hoped to see after playing a lot of Monster Train on my Switch and PC- more Monster Train. And the devs really proved their creativity in this game, coming up with some truly mind-bending card combinations, and a fun story that holds the...
As a whole, this is an excellent and worthy continuation of one of the most important series in gaming. The care and attention paid by the good people of Firaxis have produced a game with a rock solid foundation. The new era transitions are transformative, and change the game as...
Riven
I knew going in that Riven was a remake of an older game, but it took me a while before I remembered the full original title: Riven 2: The Sequel to Myst. The title might conjure up an older, more opaque era of gaming. That’s a great reason to remake...
Astronaut: The Best is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be. That confidence is extremely fortunate, because there are times when I have no idea what Astronaut: The Best is even about. It is a game truly hard to categorize. Steam tags are settling on “Interactive Fiction,”...
Viewfinder
It must be fiendishly difficult to design a puzzle game like Viewfinder. Sometimes, it is all I can do to wrap my head around it. It takes an inconceivably mad genius to come up with this game conceptually. Some of the challenges totally consumed me. Others were dealt with simply....
We talked gameplay in our Jagged Alliance preview, but there are some things worth focusing in on. The one thing Jagged Alliance does better than any other turn-based game out there is cinematic gunfights. These aren’t the brutal, balletic sort of fights you’d see in a John Wick movie. These...
Oh, to be a Pharaoh in ancient Egypt. It’s crazy how long their empire lasted. Historians place the formation of Ancient Egypt at around 3100 BCE, a run that lasted until 30 BCE, when under Cleopatra, it fell to the Romans. That means that someone around for the fall is...
It didn’t take long for PowerWatch Simulator to take its place in the pantheon of blue collar job simulators. You know the kind, one that turns a repetitive, stressful job into a repetitive, relaxing game. There’s great satisfaction taken in a job well done, and its always fun to operate...
Ixion
One of my favorite board games is the Fantasy Flight take on Battlestar Galactica. Resource management is key, and you watch your little cardboard meters start to fall. You can run out of food of course. And ammo. And you can run out of morale. Ixion captures the brutal bleakness...
Victoria 3
Paradox grand strategy games are something of a genre in and of themselves. There’s a lot of overlap between games, but there’s no denying the shared DNA in Stellaris and Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron. Each of them places the focus on a different aspect of empire management, but...
Islets
Metroidvanias are the purest form of video games. Most games have some sort of progress track, a sense of exploration, and gameplay loops that indicate you’ve grown in strength. But despite a strong foundational idea, good Metroidvanias, really good ones that can create a sense of atmosphere, are rarer than...
Maybe you’re an easy mark for a tactical RPG. You see a movement grid, and your heart flutters. With just one look at Symphony of War: The Nephillim Saga, you can already tell it’s going to hit all the right buttons. But this is more than just another derivative tactics...
