Games I Play: Part 2

Part I | Part II

Path of Exile: This is a free to play role-playing game with MMO elements. You can choose to play this game solo or choose to play with friends which is easy to do unlike some similar games. There are multiple classes that all share one enormous skill tree. The micro transaction system is a little too unobtrusive this is a good thing I just hope it doesn’t threaten the economic viability of this game.

Diablo III: An expensive Triple-A quality game and the latest sequel of the Diablo series. The biggest problem with this game is it was way to short and too easy. They tried to make up for this by making it so you had to finish the game once to go up a difficulty level and then go back and start and play again. This is not the sort of thing that we should expect from triple-A titles. They should have delayed it and added extra content. That being said I did have a lot of fun playing this game and it is very high quality.

SimCity: A reboot of the SimCity franchise that had the worst release of any game I have seen. They should have taken a leaf out of the blizzard and delayed it for 12 months. It was a good city simulator - it didn’t just force you to always be connected to the Internet but it was necessary for the game to work properly as you had to connect to other cities. This could have worked if they had the network infrastructure necessary, but they didn’t. This is a potentially good game forever tainted by a bad launch.

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion: Not really a sequel, but a mild improvement on the original. Still it is a decent 4X strategy game that doesn’t take days to finish a game making it suitable for multiplayer. For a game of this price you would expect there to be some sort of signal player campaign but this game is purely multiplayer although you can choose to play an AI opponent. Great game but a bit pricey.

Shadowrun Returns: This is a Kickstarter project by the creator of the Shadow Run pen and paper role-playing game. It also inherits much of its style and gameplay from the SNES and the Sega Genesis title Shadow Run games. It suffers with a bit of nostalgia. Just because you are trying to create a game that harks back some ancient original does not mean you can ignore everything that’s happened in game design after. It is a bit of a balancing act with a game like this but I think this gets the balance a little wrong unlike The Banner Saga which gets the balance perfect.

Evochron Mercenary: A team of one person created this game is the latest sequel in the Star Wrath series. It is a space flight simulator similar to the Wing Commander games. It doesn’t look great but I think it has a number of things going for it. Unlike almost all of games like this planets are in our actual real objects in the universe that you can land on. The combat is fun. It’s not just about fighting you can be a racer, miner or a privateer that does a little or all of these things. After the disaster that was X: Rebirth, this could be a great game to play while waiting for Star Citizen to come out.

Part I | Part II