Alec Meer
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Writing For
IGN
Rock Paper ShotgunLatest Reviews
American Truck Simulator is a simulation of driving a truck across America, and while it can claim many successes in terms of mechanical authenticity, its most effective simulation is state of mind. That zen-like focus and calm of driving, when every other worry evaporates from your mind. Only the road....
Grim Dawn
It'll keep you busy for a long damn time too, even if you only play it once - though, of course, for many there'll be later playthroughs in co-op or at unlockable higher difficulties. I think it's the (admittedly presumed) desire to be the spiritual sequel to Diablo II which...
Helldivers
Adam: I want to call a mech, have the drop pod land on my head, and then watch as my partner jumps into the mech and tries to avenge my death. The death that was essentially suicide-by-mech. Accidental suicide-by-mech. How many games can that happen in? Not enough.
Fallout 4
A technical addendum - for me Fallout 4 mostly managed a steady 60fps at max detail (bar shadow quality, which I dropped from Ultra to High) and 1440p on a GTX 970 and a first-gen Core i7 overclocked to 4GHz. There was one particular indoor area which saw it drop...
Devastation's too throwaway to be a game many of us will still be talking about beyond this month, but it's a blast, and not simply on a guilty pleasure basis. As well as being the most unabashed Transformers fan-service games have given us yet, it's also a slick, exciting, hyper-fast...
Shadowrun: Hong Kong
If you've been round the neon block a few times already, then Hong Kong's going to feel pretty familiar, despite being perfectly solid and having a few new toys plus a wider, more ostentatious stage than ever before. This might well be what you want, of course, but speaking as...
Blues and Bullets
And yet I do want to see more. I have no interest in finding out where the plot goes, because so far it's Arbitrary Events In The Lives Of Wooden Characters, but I do want to find out which dramatic places it will show me next. It's also not impossible...
Massive Chalice
I can choose who to marry to who in order to know exactly what Class their offspring will be. I can choose who to shackle to breeding or research or novice training for the rest of their lives. I can choose whose life to gamble with. I can't change anyone's...
Convoy
I'm frustrated that there's a great game here, laid a little low by grind, by sub-racing game insta-death factors and irritating, quote-drenched dialogue. This is, at heart, a small and simple game which tries to make itself bigger with unnecessary frippery rather than expanding its worthy core. It's perfectly serviceable...
No numbers, no inventory to speak of, but so much to do, so many ways it can play out and plenty of snowballing consequences. Its superficially simple 2D art occasionally flares into high prettiness too. We might not have Red Dead Redemption, but Westerado is an enormously satisfying consolation prize.
Cities: Skylines
These are mere quibbles. You’re going to love it. Skylines is very much the traditional yet hyper-modern city-builder that everyone’s been crying out for. Me, I love it too, though I remain a little haunted by this concern that it’s more of a response game than its own game. In...
Hand of Fate
This does allude to my deeper concern, not just with Hand of Fate but also with every smart, adventurous roleplaying-esque game that appears somewhere in the Steam top ten in recent months. I don’t feel entirely qualified to get into the formalism debate going on in some quarters of games...