Demo Driver 8: Tomb Raider: Underworld (#148)
Nyan nyan nyan etc.
I have said in the past that prior to the reboot, I’ve never had much interest in tombs or the raiding thereof. I’m aware that a lot of people do like the franchise and it has things to recommend it; I’m also aware that it tends to be buggy and filled with somewhat dodgy play control, coupled with a lead character that’s long jumped back and forth between cheesecake titillation and being a remarkably confident and self-assured lady in charge. It was, as a whole, something I could live without.
Tomb Raider: Underworld is sort of the immediate precursor to the reboot, so in some ways it’s kind of similar and in others it’s completely different. It’s an interesting peak at what was the apex of the original design progression (even if it was itself part of a rebooted series), as well as a look at why the franchise needed to be rebooted again a few scant years later. As an actual game… well, that’s another story.
Demo Driver 8: Sleeping Dogs (#109)
I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL
There are some genres that I’m inclined to be a little more harsh toward than others, and then there are genres where I’m more likely to be happy a game exists at all. Case in point: free-roaming destructive sandboxes a la Grand Theft Auto, which is a genre we really need better terminology for but one which you can instantly recognize. You’re walking around, you can hop in vehicles, for some reason there are remarkably light penalties for randomly belting someone on a busy street. You know the sort.
So I was predisposed to like Sleeping Dogs even before sitting down and playing it. The demo, unfortunately, only scratches the surface of what the game has to offer, which makes a certain amount of sense; loading the entirety of a digital Hong Kong into the game would probably be a bit too much. But what was there was pretty great even aside from that, and if the rest of the game is like what the demo has on offer, it now has my distinct attention.
Demo Driver 8: Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (#94)
There’s not a whole lot to say, although it’s kind of disheartening just the same.
If you know what Serious Sam is, this delivers exactly what it says on the tin. Whether or not this is a good thing is going to depend a lot upon whether or not you like what the tin says it is.
Serious Sam is a series I was never particularly interested in because, as has been stated many times, first-person shooters are not really my bag. That being said, it’s a series that has long been about distilling shooters down to their most basic objectives. Here you are, and in front of you there is a room. You will shoot people in that room. No fancy tricks, just a whole lot of guns and a whole lot of shooting.
There’s nothing wrong with that sort of bare-bones approach. There was nothing wrong with it back in 2001, when the original game was released; there was nothing wrong with it in 2009, when the HD remake was released; there’s nothing wrong with it now. But it’s a bit like rebuilding a Model T – functional, but something that has kind of been made obsolete by time and technology.
Demo Driver 8: Blade Kitten (#353)
It’s nice when something turns out better than you had any expectations it would be, definitely.
While I like Steam’s integration of Metacritic into its client, sometimes that can sort of send up red flags right away. Blade Kitten‘s aggregate score of 52 certainly didn’t do it any favors. But that’s the most straightforward part here.
Blade Kitten is a side-scrolling platformer based off of a comic… or it’s a platformer that also has a comic… or some combination thereof. I’m not clear on the exact timeline. What I am clear on is that Krome Studios employed the artist as creative director, launched the game with Atari, then got caught up in Atari’s slow-motion self-destruction and had to wait for a long while to get the rights back for the game, which apparently kind of killed the comic, too? There hasn’t been an update there since 2012.
All that backstory aside, the game is now back in the hands of Krome Studios, but with a dismal review score. Is it any good? Does it deserve that score? What did it do to garner such vigorous fans other than having a pink-haired catgirl as the main character? Actually, the last one might answer its own question.
Demo Driver 8: Tank Universal (#265)
At least it’s not World of Tanks.
I’m never going to quite understand the ways in which people love – absolutely love – first-person tank games. This is not a new genre by any stretch of the imagination, as I remember playing a tank sim back on my ancient 486 PC in the days when the Turbo button meant something and a VGA monitor was absolutely pimp. I also remember frequently being kicked out of that game because I “accidentally” hit my own side with mortar fire, which may or may not have actually been an accident.
Tank Universal is meant to speak to that urge while also indulging in your urge to pilot a digital tank in Tron. The game doesn’t even pretend otherwise. This is blowing things up in an arcade-ish setting that is only “inspired by” Tron in the sense that it can’t legally be set in the movie universe. And while it suffers from a weak UI and some overall transparency issues, it largely does exactly what it sets out to do with a fair amount of competence and grace.
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 