it has been far too long since we did
one of these so you know the rules these
might not all be good but they've all
got something interesting to them and
they've all flown under the radar to
some degree here we go
the Talos principle
the Talos principle is basically portals
darker philosophical slightly
pretentious older cousin while it
doesn't have portals exactly its core
gameplay relies on the same type of
lateral thinking and puzzle-solving that
portal does what's interesting about it
is that while it doesn't have portals
humor it delves fairly deeply into many
of the core questions about what makes
us human sometimes it does stumble a bit
into philosophy 101 asking questions
that you'll literally see in an intro to
philosophy textbook but for how
unabashedly it pursues those questions
it manages to do a fairly good job of
staying on the right side of pretentious
it also gets some shockingly compelling
human moments if you follow the core
narrative about the prior events of the
world it takes place in just know in
advance that you are in for a lot of
reading on this one lots of text the
pacing is a bit broken by it do some
puzzles read three pages of text do some
more puzzles structure but if you can
get past that it's definitely worth
checking out also do you know how hard
it was to describe this game without
spoilers if you did you'd be super
impressed right now this war of mine
this war of mine may be one of the most
powerful game experiences I've had in
the last few months it's a game about
being a civilian in an occupied city
with fighting raging in the streets your
goal isn't to win the war or to conquer
your enemies but rather to simply
survive until the fighting stops what's
amazing about it is that they simply
lifted most of their mechanics from
zombie survival games scavenging base
building managing a small team all they
had to do was remove the zombies this
makes it a compelling experience it
feels like games that you might just
play for fun but then you'll hit one of
those gut-wrenching moments or you'll
find yourself playing just to win and
you'll make this horrible decision along
the way to achieve that and then the
reality of it hits you and you feel
terrible and you remember how actual
people have to live through this horror
and make those choices and maybe you
just have to lie down for a while
darkest dungeon
usually we try to steer away from things
still in early access but James has
dropped too many hours into this one not
to talk about it it's probably the most
harrowing traditional game experience
he's played in quite some time
it's a standard roguelike but it asks
the question what would exploring these
endless dungeons actually do to a person
psychologically so while you're trying
not to get your party killed you're also
trying not to have them become insecure
arrogant or outright insane
it's dark it's brutal it's full of
despair
it feels hopeless in all the right ways
and yet you'll find yourself soldiering
on if you're looking for a challenging
roguelike with some novel new mechanics
to balance you'd be hard-pressed to do
better than darkest dungeon
never alone
never alone is a platformer that dives
into the legends of the Inupiat people
of Alaska it has some great if a little
basic multiplayer platforming and is the
perfect thing to play with somebody who
perhaps doesn't play too many games but
what really makes it stand out is just
how rich the source material is this
game was commissioned by the Cook Inlet
Tribal Council and developed in direct
collaboration with them and the care and
love for these stories shows as you
advance through the game you unlock
discovery channel style interviews with
the tribe members talking about the
Inupiat culture and practices and while
in some ways that may sound a little
lame I found myself completely drawn in
when I had just returned a magic drum to
a medicine man and I saw the screen
flash video unlocked drumming in a new
Piett culture I was like alright let's
check that out a reaction I probably
wouldn't have had if I stumbled across
the same snippet on TV just one word of
warning as the title implies this game
is way better as a co-op experience the
actual platforming in the single-player
is quite weak
sunless sea
would you like some more clue Lloyd
steampunk Victorian weirdness from the
makers of echo bizarre well look no
further than sunless sea gone are all
the time systems and the gating
mechanisms this is a single-player
experience where you take to a ship and
explore the waters around fall in London
to your heart's content
as always their writing is excellent
although as with the Talos principle I
hope you like reading you'll need to to
really get the most out of this game the
world itself is unbelievably expansive
though they're continuously updating the
game but even as it stands you could
probably spend the rest of the year just
playing this game and not necessarily
see everything in it the only problem
here is the traversal the browser-based
echo bazaar worked because you could
instantly navigate between stories
allowing you to quickly chop through the
busy work but here there's no fast
travel so you'll end up at a point where
you find that 80% of your time is stuck
doing mindless FedEx quests this was a
huge negative for me but it's a
testament to just how compelling the
world is that I have spent so many hours
on this game anyway
mount and blade Vikings
okay so this one isn't exactly new but I
had to put it on here because Mountain
blade needs to get on one of these lists
and Vikings does some surprising things
with the formula
first off for any of you who haven't
tried mountain blade it's a medieval RPG
sandbox it's not fantasy just medieval
and it's unbelievably expansive you can
be a trader a mercenary you can work
your way up to being a lord or a king
you manage provinces and politics and
fight alongside your troops and third
person battles every troop has their own
class advancement tree and eventually
you're going to have 200 of them in your
party every lord has their own opinion
of you that you have to juggle and
manage as you try to rise from nothing
to ruling a kingdom but Vikings adds a
central storyline to the game and places
it in a very real historical setting if
you like nortz history or even if you
just watched that Vikings show on the
History Channel you'll find yourself
crossing paths with all sorts of famous
historical characters but more than that
I found a surprising number of difficult
moral choices built into Vikings and
these moral choices were made all the
more striking because they weren't on a
morality meter and they were embedded
into a world that I could think of as my
own
if you can deal with the graphics that
look like they belong on a ps2 and
anything I've said about this game
sounds interesting the mountain blade
series is probably one of the best
bargains out there at this point
and finally life is strange
I love this game it's silly and it's a
little ham-handed at times but it's
nothing if not earnest life is strange
is a side project by the guys who made
remember me
and despite clearly having a far smaller
budget I think it's the better game it
fully embraces being a telltale style
adventure game with a plot like my
so-called life if Angela was capable of
reversing time and it's got a soundtrack
right out of an indie film
the lip-syncing is pretty terrible and
there are some animation issues but if
you can look past that stuff you're
going to find a game that isn't great
but it's just the right kind of good
earnest innocent and exactly what you
need if life is just too heavy sometimes
thanks for watching
go enjoy some cool games see you next
week