A while ago I got a sneak preview of the Lumena soundtrack which left me eager for the game to be released. Well now it’s out, is the game as good as its music? Absolutely. But good is the wrong word. Evil, maybe. Cruel. Vicious. Hypnotic.
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The advantage of having to spend several days in hospital with nothing to do but wait for things to happen is that you get a chance to actually play some of those games that have been gathering dust in the cupboard since the last Dragonmeet. We played a lot of Fluxx and some Convoluted, but mostly we played Lords of War by Black Box Games
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“Achievement unlocked: shot another man again”. In an age of dudebro manshooters, it might be easy to unthinkingly dismiss Gunpoint as just another in an endless parade of grey shooters, maybe blue and orange if the art director felt like the gun designers were having all the fun. It’s even got gun in the bloody title. That would be a mistake though, because you’d miss out on the hypertrousers.
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Last weekend was a long one, followed by a bank holiday, so we had friends over. The sun was hellishly gloriously hot, so we did what any right-thinking people would do. Play board games with a general Cthulhu theme. In the spirit of sharing, here are some thoughts…
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When it comes to gameplay styles anyone who knows me will tell you I’ll take the stealth option (if necromancer isn’t available, obviously). Actually, anyone who really knows me will tell you that given the chance I’ll dismantle the game mechanics and play a naked 92 year-old unarmoured woman wielding game-breakingly powerful magic. While we’re on the subject of Elder Scrolls games, I got Skyrim yesterday, but since it won’t get through the tutorial without crashing I’m having to make do with other, less broken games until one of two things happens:
In the meantime I present Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole, a retro-style 2D stealth game that proves once and for all that stealthy doesn’t have to mean slow. In fact, given the seamless integration of online leaderboards driving even casual players to shave milliseconds off their level times, Stealth Bastard proves that stealth games can be downright fast.
Most levels will begin with you cautiously edging around figuring the route, discovering traps, learning the rhythms of robots (with lasers), turrets (with lasers), cameras (with lasers) and lasers (with, oh…). Once you’ve finished the level though, once you’ve seen the path, the level really begins. What started as hesitant, uncertain movement becomes a rapid dance of running, jumping and crawling through the shadows. Even the early levels lead to intense bursts of satisfaction as you watch your little pixellated infiltrator pull off a slick sequence of actions, making it look effortless. The first time you manage to catch that moving platform on the first pass rather than having to hang from a ledge, watching the timer tick by, waiting for the platform to come round again… no, stealth doesn’t have to be slow.
You’ll be zapped, lasered, chunked and squelched, dying over and over and over, but you’re thrown back in so quickly, resuming at intelligently-spaced checkpoints so death is rarely frustrating. That Stealth Bastard manages to remain a stealth game at all – this being a genre where players are willing to sit in the shadows for minutes on end, watching and waiting, choosing their moment – is an amazing feat.
Stealth Bastard is fun, charming, and free. Play it.