Earlier this month, TheXboxHub were invited to attend a press event to find out more about World Of Tanks most ambitious content injection yet: ‘Mercenaries’.
Whether systematically dispatching your foes with an array of equipment and powers or flitting undetected through the streets of a mythologised Japan, in Aragami: Shadow Edition, darkness is your greatest ally.
The gaming industry is frustratingly cryptic and wonderful in equal measure, delivering stories and immersive experiences in a way no other medium can imitate. Whether that’s the blockbuster dramatics of The Last of Us or the story of you, the anonymous, farting around in Minecraft or clawing your way to a chicken dinner. Everything’s a story and I truly believe it’s an art form to be respected.
So it’s that much more irritating when publishers/developers cherry pick, distort or completely ignore consumer feedback, despite numerous declarations of “We hear you” at live events and through ongoing community ‘support’.
On the contrary, a vast number do not understand you.
State of Decay 2 is a game about choices, and the ever encroaching atmosphere of desolate hopelessness as you scramble to adapt to a decision gone bad, or take stock in a brief, gratifying moment of respite when things momentarily go your way.
In its objective to channel the authentic zombie apocalypse experience, it succeeds with aplomb. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for the technical aspects of its design.
The landscape of online, competitive multiplayer has never been so vast or varied. Virtual marketplaces heave as developers seek the next “lightning in a bottle” product, to set the next industry trend or, at the very least, mimic the success of those that have.
For some, this breeds an uninspired working mentality; countless iterations of the same piece unchanged for years, ultimately growing stale. For others, it pushes them to innovate, think outside the box and deliver something original.
Firmly in the latter category: Laser League.
Enter the collaborative offering from Rocketcat Games and Madgarden, Death Road to Canada: a 16bit pixel art, arcade-style road trip through the zombie apocalypse from Florida to Canada, and rumours of safety in the great white north.
Today, R6 Siege is almost unrecognisable from the tactical, first person shooter we were served back in December of 2015. More playable characters, maps, noticeably less server issues and a limited time Left4Dead style event mode in the form of "Outbreak" released in Q1 of 2018.
A slice of dark humour, if not an entirely clean cut.
Whether it's a hobo selling his meagre possessions for anime porn, a man given a life sentence for being morbidly obese or an alcohol dependent seven year old; the latest offering from Spanish studio "Mango Protocol" is certainly a dark space, albeit an amusing one in its delicious wickedness.
With the evolution of technology; games as a medium of effective, impactful storytelling have never been more prevalent. No longer just simple fables of good and bad, this is
"The bad team did all this seemingly bad stuff because it might inadvertantly make everything better, and the good team might not actually be that great…they might actually be raving, sociopath terrorists and you've been playing as them for 20 hours….ok byeeeeee."
In that vein, I look at 5 examples of "bad guys in gaming" that might not be as bad as you think.
Rivenaar’s Grove is an extremely simple yet mildly enjoyable puzzler. It provides a way to kill an hour or two, and isn’t remotely taxing on the old grey matter.
Songs of Silence is an excellent entry into the 4X and strategy genre, even more so when you consider that titles in this niche are relatively thin on the ground on consoles.
