“Pause Ahead” is a free online action-platformer game from developer Askiisoft that employs a very unique mechanic in its gameplay: the pause button. Hitting the pause button in this game causes all the on-screen action to freeze, but the player character retains his momentum. The player is given no special powers outside of this one, which opens the door to a lot of complex and trying puzzles.
In the midst of a gaming world full of multiplayer focused, first-person shooters, foul mouthed twelve year olds, open world role playing games where finding a quest can take hours, and games relying on gimmicks like motion capturing and touch screens instead of gameplay, it can be refreshing to go back to basics. Dungeons of Dredmor is exactly that. The game is a fairly straightforward, Roguelike, dungeon crawling role playing game made up of randomized levels with a single semi-customized character and a very uncomplicated quest in mind. This game heavily invokes Nethack by being an incredibly fun, if on occasion frustratingly difficult game that can be played over and over again because of the randomization of the dungeon and the broad range of ways to actually trudge through the game’s ten to fifteen levels.
Cookie Clicker is a free, simple, and addicting online game that allows players to make cookies with every mouse click. Through a series of upgrades and continuous clicking, the game challenges players to make as many cookies as they can. It may not sound like much, but Cookie Clicker provides a strangely engrossing experience that can last for hours at a time. The objective is to make as many cookies as possible.
The entire world has been taken over by “League of Legends”. However, “Star Wars: The Old Republic” can definitely stand in as a substitute for League for those looking for a change of pace and a break from the same old video game, but perhaps not for those not wanting hardcore gaming. Since League’s inception five years ago, in 2008, and its beta version premiere a year after that, the completely free-to-play model supported by microtransactions, all anchored by highly addicting gameplay with millions of players worldwide has done its part to drastically alter the way consumers purchase video games.
While virtual token economies have long existed before, where a buyer can spend some amount of real money for an equivalent amount of electronic “points” or “coins” to buy individual components of a video game, Riot Games, maker of League of Legends, have become massively successful through this approach.
FTL, or Faster Than Light is a real time strategy PC game with one-on-one space combat. The product of indie developer Subset Games, FTL hands the player a spaceship, a crew, and a mission to traverse across several dangerous sectors of space to link up with and provide information to the Federation fleet while trying to stay one step ahead of the pursuing Rebel fleet.
Illuminati : Deluxe Edition is the 1987 revamp of the Illuminati collectable trading card game. It was meant to be contained within a single box, to make play easier, as the game’s popularity was slipping and was already esoteric to the general public. The game is centered around controlling one of the secret societies that secretly rules the world including the Bavarian Illuminati, Gnomes of Zurich, or the Discordian Society to complete their assorted secretive goals and prevent anyone else from completing theirs.
When a deadly fungus infects the world’s food supply, everyone is left to fend for himself. People infected by the mutagen roam the streets in search of their next kill, and the few survivors have to cower in fear. These survivors go up against impossible odds to survive. In these deplorable conditions, morality has all but disappeared. The one bright spot in this torn-up world is the relationship between Joel and Ellie. In their fight for survival, they prove that, even during the apocalypse, there is always some hope for humanity.
When it comes to gaming, few developer-publisher partnerships produced more great games than Rareware (now just Rare) and Nintendo. The duo was prolific through the 1990’s, releasing highly acclaimed titles like “Donkey Kong Country” for Super Nintendo and “Golden Eye 007,” “Banjo-Kazooie,” and “Perfect Dark” for Nintendo 64. Many of their games are still revered today over a decade after their release.
A few months ago Sega released “Aliens: Colonial Marines” for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Everyone expected great things from this game, and the previews were promising as well as the demos. The hype shaped this game up to be the definitive “Alien” game. Unfortunately, those hopes proved false. The game has gotten negative reviews by critics and players alike. A Wii U port was canceled as a result of the backlash. Now that the price has gone down, is it worth a purchase?
This week in the game review, we take a look at another popular form of gaming out there, Trading Card Games. One of the oldest known out there is known as Magic the Gathering, or MTG for short. MTG was released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Two or more players can battle by using a deck of printed cards. Each game of MTG represents a battle between mighty wizards, known in the MTG world as “planeswalkers”, who use spells, items and summoned creatures to fight each other. MTG’s original concept was based around fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, but the gameplay is far from pencil and paper games like that.