Deus Ex By Eidos/Square Enix Genre: First-person RPG Since 2000, there’s been one series of RPG with the deepest, most politically charged story, the most diverse means of game play, and the most intense high technology on display. That series is Deus Ex, named after the Latin term “Deus ex machina,” or ‘god from the…
The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom By Blue Byte, most recently distributed by Ubisoft Genre: Real-time strategy For almost twenty years, a German-based software company, Blue Byte, has been manufacturing some of the best-regarded “underdog” strategy titles, the Settlers series. This series, while it may have a storyline in some of its installments, and…
HOARD By Big Sandwich Games Genre: Top-down Action-strategy Rated: Everyone for Fantasy Violence Downloadable Yet another independent title finds its way onto my computer, and like most others I’ve tried, this one is really great. You take control of a dragon! How awesome! And your goal is to amass more gold than all the other…
The Chronicles of Riddick Way back in 2000, director David Twohy brought together actors Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David and several others, and told us the far-future tale of a crew of civilians whose freighter was damaged in a freak meteor storm above a white-hot, desolate moon lit by three suns. Now…
From Dust By Ubisoft Montpelier Genre: God game (strategy) Rating: E10+ for mild violence. A fantastical, mythological re-telling of the distant origins of man, From Dust sets you as the Breath, a godlike being represented by a simple cursor on screen, but capable of manipulating the elements of Water, Earth and Fire to reshape the…
Bastion By Supergiant Games, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Genre: Action RPG Caelondia. Once a country by degrees gritty and industrious, but also beautiful and idyllic. That all changed when the Calamity struck. Something caused the world to simply shatter, its people turned to statues of ash, with no hope of repair, and so the ending…
Oddworld: The story of a unique, though maligned franchise. Way back in the late 1990s, a company founded by special-effects experts called Oddworld Inhabitants began a years-long journey to tell us tales of the adventures of non-human, yet sentient species on a bizarre, diverse planet known as Oddworld. The first in this offbeat series, Abe’s…
LIMBO By Playdead Genre: Platforming/exploration “Uncertain of his sister’s fate, a boy enters LIMBO” – honestly, this sparse description given on Steam’s Store Page for this wonderfully understated, creepy game is all you need know of the story when you start playing. To say much more of it would be horribly spoiling what is an…
Two Tribes Games Another independent game studio has released a three-pack of its offerings on Steam, the game delivery service of which I’ve sung praises in the past. The name of this group brings to mind a song by the 80s new wave band, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and while they claimed that when two…
Captain America: The First Avenger From Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios Starring Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones Genre: Superhero-style action Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action Captain America is one of my favorite superheroes; simply patriotic, determined and very able to get the job done. But as we…