Jaina Hill
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COGConnectedLatest Reviews
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 much as moving from a grid to a hex board. The most important takeaway is that the rules of this Civilization are strong, and probably the best starting point for any installment. But the real thing to track will be the additions. As the game gets better, will the balance be maintained? Will the style? Will this new Civilization game be able to stand apart from the series? That remains to be seen, but if you’ve always wanted a meticulously constructed entry in the Civilization franchise, your day has dawned.
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 a game. With a classic story and even more classic puzzles, the original Myst games should be a staple. Unfortunately, as we a lot of old games, it can be a pain to get working. Even then you have to contend with old interfaces and antiquated menu. That’s why game remakes have so much potential. So does the new Riven stand toe-to-toe with the classic?
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. While solving each I was struck with a question: In the face of sharp gameplay, does a puzzle game need an additional something? Perhaps not!
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 are the sort of engagements you’d expect to see Schwarzenegger or Stallone tangled up in. Actually, pick any of the Expendables and you are on the right track. The original game had a very arch sense of humor and its genre, and this new game bears a similar smirk.
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 heavy machinery that you may not get access to in the real world. Now on Switch, PowerWash Simulator will let you take your clean dreams on the go, anywhere.
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 of survival better than any other city building game. In space, no one can hear your workers screaming that they need more grasshoppers to eat.
More and more frequently, I dream of terraforming. I’m sure for no reason in particular, I search for games that will let me think about what it would take to cultivate life on another world. Usually, that world is the red planet. In Terraformers, I did not find a simulation of speculative science. Instead, Terraformers is a unique and challenging strategy puzzle. Seeding life on a new world never had so many card draws.
There are some ideas that just lend themselves to good video games. It’s why we’ve seen so many Viking games lately. A culture devoted to naval raids and axe fighting is also a culture dedicated to good game mechanics. The same principle applies to Battle Brothers, a strategy game where you command a company of struggling, mud-splattered medieval mercs. It’s not just a good game, it’s a strategy masterpiece. Unfortunately, a shaky port makes the Switch version of the game clearly inferior.
Were you playing PC games in 1994? Truly it was a different era. The games were clunky and unpolished. They often bit off more than they could chew. But there was a gritty punk rock feeling to everything. When the creative culture is so messy, you’re more likely to arrive at weird ideas, the sorts of things that the studio system would grind into a smooth, predictable shape. Phoenix Point tries to have it both ways, and it largely succeeds.
The fighting game scene is probably the hardest video game genre to break into. It’s crowded for one- Street Fighter is forever a mainstay, and Mortal Kombat (and the similar Injustice series) came out of nowhere to become the premier series. Then you’ve got Super Smash Bros, not to mention Soul Calibur, Killer Instinct, and Tekken. Unless you’ve got a great new gimmick, it’s an uphill battle to establish yourself as a worthy series. It’s hard to succeed with style alone. But damn if Samurai Shodown doesn’t just have that much style.