There is a constant struggle I face whenever I sit down to play a game. It gnaws at me, and sometimes even paralyzes me into a mental state in which I’m unable to play anything. I constantly fight the battle in my head: do I want to play something from my current backlog of games or spend more time in a persistent game world? The current games battling for my attention are Final Fantasy XIV and Hearthstone, but with a recent upswing in my time playing Heroes of the Storm (recently released into open beta), my problem just keeps getting worse. READ MORE
Why Am I Dead At Sea is a full-release follow up to the small-but-popular flash game Why Am I Dead. This game, like its predecessor, places you in the role of the spirit of someone recently dead. Your task is to possess others and use different abilities to investigate and deduce the answer to the game’s titular question: “why am I dead?” Why Am I Dead At Sea takes place entirely on a cruise ship with a diverse cast of nine characters, and while it is a little rough around the edges, the adventure has enough twists to continually pull the player forward in the quest for answers. READ MORE
Invisible, Inc. is a perfect storm of a game. The tactical grid-based gameplay has a lot of depth and allows for a ton of strategic decisions, the spy-vs.-spy aesthetic transports you to a world of espionage and the roguelike randomness keeps you coming back over and over again to achieve that elusive “perfect” run. Every action has weight, and one wrong move can doom an entire mission. With numerous difficulty sliders to tune the experience, though, Invisible, Inc. is also an extremely accessible title that succeeds in training the player to tackle its more difficult challenges gradually without being frustrating. READ MORE
Over the years, I have become quite adept at navigating a 3D space. I can remember a time when I struggled lining up jumps, or assessing the width of a gap that I needed to get over. I can recall getting endlessly lost and turned around as I learned to position a game camera. I even have memories of when I was learning the limitations of this type of movement, learning where I could and couldn’t go and what types of places in a given level I could reach. Within a few hours of playing Lemma, my preconceived notions were shattered, and I felt like I was learning these techniques all over again. The way the game approaches freerunning and platforming are new and exciting, and I was constantly surprised at all the things I could do. READ MORE
China, as it turns out, is a perfect setting for an Assassin’s Creed game. While Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China plays quite unlike other titles in the franchise, the 2D spinoff retains the spirit and feel of the world. Gone are the open world and filler side content, and here to stay are the stealth kills, free form exploration and templar-assassin lore. I’ll admit, I’ve played enough Assassin’s Creed by now that I’m feeling quite burned out on the series, but even with the fatigue, there are enough new ideas present here to make it worth a play. READ MORE
