Videogames highlights – October 2013
The gaming industry is that strange place where the bloody DRM servers prevent you to play or go off-line forcing developers to work on the code again to cut the bonds with a service that was essential until a day before, where a game like Grand Theft Auto V can break several Guinness world records overtaking Hollywood’s greatest film hits and selling more than 29 million copies, and where Blizzard continues to fuck around with us with that Internet-depending crust that is Diablo III. Luckily there are companies like CD Projekt that have the success they deserve, and PC gaming is a dead platform as usual.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2
The folks at MercurySteam really know how to tell a story. And Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a story of betrayal and redemption, family curses and (mostly) vengeance: Gabriel Belmont returns in the second episode of the modern 3D remake of Konami’s classic series embodying the evil which he had previously fought, and of course he will have to face an even worse evil (Satan). To be release in February 2014 for PC and seventh generation consoles (PS3, Xbox 360).
Contrast
The puzzle-platformer genre debuts on the gaming next generation with Contrast, an indie title where the player controls an imaginary character – meaning that she is an imaginary friend of little Didi, the other leading character of the game – which is able to switch between the three-dimensional world and the one made of shadows projected on the background, on the walls or wherever. A platform of shadows, not exactly the newest thing and it seems not even that well made. For lovers of the Twenties’ music, Contrast is available since November on PC Windows, PS3, PS4 and Xbox 360.
How to Survive
This month’s zombie apocalypse is How to Survive, an action RPG set in a little archipelago where players will be bu
sy surviving (food, health, sleep etc.) besides head-shooting the zombies haunting the islands. The three playable characters can count on the traditional unlockable skill tree, on weapons and combined objects crafting and on the advices from Kovac, the resident of the infested islands which is writing his own personal zombie survival manual. Available since October 2013 in digital delivery on PC Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U.
SOMA
After making pure horror games with the Amnesia series (The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs), Frictional Games is now busy developing SOMA: the new first-person survival horror game features sci-fi settings and themes, with robots mocking the human consciousness and strange experiments of brain implants in unsuitable hygienic conditions. It seems that SOMA has been in development for three years, it’s the most ambitious project from the Swedish studio and will rise deep questions about the consciousness concept itself. The release date is set in the far away 2015, while supported platforms include PC (Windows, Linux, Mac) and Sony’s PS4.
Strider
Strider Hiryu should have never leaved Eurasia alive, and yet the cyber-ninja killer is still with us hunting for Grandmaster Meio 25 years after his debut in the arcades worldwide. Strider is a remake/reboot of Capcom’s seminal arcade developed by Double Helix Games (in partnership with Capcom Osaka studio), where the traditional side-scrolling platform setup should harmoniously blend with modern 3D graphics, remake of the bosses faced by the first Strider Hiryu and a remixed soundtrack echoing the original one. To be released soon on PC (Windows), PlayStation (PS3/PS4) and Xbox (360/One).
The Wolf Among Us
The bad wolf from the fairy tales is the sheriff-detective featured in The Wolf Among Us, the new episodic adventure series by Telltale Games: Bigby Wolf, as the aforementioned sheriff is named, is part of a community of fantasy creatures that took refuge in New York and whose adventures are told in the Fables comic series by Bill Willingham; Telltale’s gaming production inspired by the comics is built upon the same adventure+QTE (Quick-Time Events) setup which already made The Walking Dead popular, with improved graphics and a color palette faithful to the original medium. Faith, first episode in a series of five, was released in October 2013 on PC (Windows, OS X), console (Xbox 360, PS3, PSVita) and mobile toys (iOS) while the second episode is expected for February.
