Most Likely Characters To Die in Avengers: Infinite War

Avengers: Infinite War is nearly here, and although we’re all super excited to see dozens of superheroes we’ve followed for over a decade all come together in one big superhero stew, we know we’re going to witness one of them die. Remember that really strong beat in Avengers: Assemble when Coulson died (but didn’t really)? It’s going to be like that but multiplied by ten. And they won’t get their own spin-off show this time. Because these are actors who are paid tens of millions of dollars.

Here’s our thoughts on who is most likely to kick the bucket when the film comes out on the 26th!

Plot Armoured

Black Widow –  One of the original Avengers, Black Widow normally plays the one who solves the problem by thinking through things rather than physically hitting stuff. Although she does that too. Whilst she regularly becomes in danger, there’s no real harm in her coming to any…harm.

Hulk/Bruce Banner – Besides the fact that there is no way to kill Hulk that’s been established yet in the MCU, even Bruce Banner appears indestructible after taking on Fenrir in Thor: Ragnorok. If he dies, it’d be a complete left fielder.

Dr Strange – Benedictine Cumbersome has only just started his career in the MCU, and as his role as Earth’s Protector. He’ll be instrumental in defeating Thanos, and they could hardly take away such an important person so quickly, with no real replacement.

Groot – No more Tiny Groot.

Drax – He’s mad, and always runs at danger, and for that reason, he won’t die.

Spiderman – Similar to Dr Strange, fans have waited for Spiderman to join the MCU for a long time, and he’s going to be pivotal in the 2nd generation of Avengers. He’s seen as a direct protege to Tony Stark, meaning he could be in line to take the slot of wise-cracking, tech-building, flying-around-in-a-suit human. He’ll also be the shining light of human morality and Lawful Goodness when Steve Rogers isn’t around.

Antman – I could cheat and say his sequel film is coming out this year so we know he will survive, but just like a few others here, he hasn’t really had a big enough arc yet in the MCU, and his tech and like-ability make him too much of a unique character to be cut out.

The Wasp – We haven’t even seen this character on screen properly yet, so if Marvel kill her off before that or just after, it would be a real eye-roll moment.

Iron Patriot – He already took the biggest hit that any Avenger has taken thus far in the series in Civil War. To finish him off for good would make us think Marvel had some real issue with Don Cheadle.

Black Panther – He’s a smash hit character, and vital to the next stage of the MCU. In a few film’s time maybe, but not now. Plus his suit is impenetrable. Just stay away from the orange plant thing, T’Challa.

 

Slim Chance

Thor – Thor’s another member of the original Avengers. He’s had 3 solo films already too, matching Ironman and Captain America. So why is he so low? Well Ragnarok proved that Thor’s storylines are fun, unique, and he’s only just become leader of Asgard and the people there. Thor went from a solid ‘meh’ character to a fan favourite, meaning the time to kill him off has passed.

Starlord – The leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy and half-god, if he goes then the Guardians become way less interesting. Peter Quill IS the Guardians, without him they’re just a group of misfits…without the talented Chris Pratt to bounce jokes off of.

Rocket – He’s not a major character but he is a major part of the Guardians. There’s a small chance they’d kill him off in some mad suicide attack, but still not a big enough character to make us care that much. Injured? Yes. Killed? No.

Hawkeye – Some people don’t even know if Hawkeye is in this film! Behind the scenes pictures have him in costume very similar to the character Ronin, a later variation of Clint Barton. Which makes sense that he’d finally decided to pick up some melee weapons.

Mantis – Introduced in Guardians Vol. 2, Mantis is technically not part of the Guardians but she is in the Infinite War trailers. Again, I can see Marvel killing off a female character for dramatic effect and to motivate the others to win. This may seem snide but female characters being killed off this way is a time-honoured tradition in films.

 

50/50

Vision – So this is where it gets interesting. Vision has the infinite stone in his damn head, and we know Thanos is after them. Vision is powerful enough to defeat someone like Ultron almost single-handedly, so my bet is that he’ll be taken out early on in the film to show how strong Thanos is. Killed though is another question, and whether or not he’ll truly ‘die’ or be transformed into something else.

Loki – Finally finally decided to fall in line and play for the right team at the end of Ragnarok, Loki may not be able to resist his nature and join Thanos. It seems way too predictable to once again be fighting Loki unless it’s a double cross, and he dies as he’s caught out by Thanos. It could really go either way. He’s a big enough name to cause a splash with his death, but he’s also the god of mischief, which means he tends to find a way to survive.

Scarlet Witch – She hasn’t been able to really show us what she’s capable of yet, and I mean REALLY capable of. In the comics, Scarlet Witch is responsible for turning millions of mutants into normal humans by uttering three words. So far in the MCU she’s flung some debris around and hypnotised some Avengers. Faced with Thanos she may really have to crack open some hot spells, especially if she gets to know Dr Strange. Still, all that awesome potential could be cut short tragically if she’s still too upset about her brother to live life without him.

 

Likely

Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War..Vision (Paul Bettany)..Photo Credit: Film Frame..© Marvel 2016

Gamora – Thanos’ favourite adopted daughter who betrayed him, she’s not going to be in a good place if he comes a-knocking. Maybe he won’t be able to harm his daughter but he’ll want to turn her back any way possible, maybe with the power of the infinite stones. As the only female character in the Guardians, she has a habit of being the damsel in distress and love interest for Starlord, so I can see her capture by Thanos as a dramatic beat likely to happen. Death couldn’t be far behind.

Falcon – Here’s a character who’s likeable but not essential. He’s close to Captain America, but doesn’t really have any powers of his own. Despite Marvel making him pretty cool in Civil War, there isn’t a lot more they can do with the character since his main power is flying about. If Marvel chicken out of killing off one of the main Avengers, Falcon would be a next-best-thing.

Winter Soldier – Bucky Barnes has been earmarked as the one to take over as Captain America when Steve Rogers hangs up the shield…or dies. There’s even short clips in the previous films of Bucky using Cap’s shield in the middle of fights. Brief moments, but they could be echos of what’s to come. On that basis, Marvel could want to do the unexpected and kill him off, leaving the fate of the Captain America identity wide open. Cap has already dumped his shield after all, so who knows to whom it’ll go?

Nebula – Thanos’ not favourite adopted daughter, who’s also turned against him. If Gamora would be too much to ask for, Nebula turning good and being killed by Thanos would be a good way for Thanos to establish himself without removing any favourite characters. On the whole, she’s not a highly likeable character either, but an interesting one. I could also see her and Loki joined the Black Order to work/betray Thanos.

 

Definitely One Of These

Captain America – Steve Rogers is the exact character who would die heroically and dramatically, to hit everyone in the feels. Not only does every Avenger have a relationship with Cap, but the whole world admires and respects him too. And what better way for Thanos to put them all on the back foot? In the case of Cap being taken out, there’s a lot of room for the MCU to move in different ways. Does Bucky become Captain America? Who is the new de-facto leader? Where’s the damn shield? Personally this is my pick because please God don’t take….

…Iron Man – I have an Iron Man poster framed in my flat; my online name is and has always been Stark; and I have a whole folder of Robert Downey Jr GIFs. I know people find him annoying and he’s been in and out of the Avengers, huffing and puffing as he gets older and more sick of having to protect the world from the galaxy at large, but he’s my favourite character ever since I watched Iron Man  all the way back in 2008 with my dad. In Avengers: Assemble he cracked all the best jokes and wasn’t scared of the superhuman hero and the Norse God. He’s best mates with Hulk and mentor to Peter Parker. Civil War annoyed me so much because Tony was beaten in the end by Steve and Bucky. And I know he’ll forgive them, again. For these reasons he is rivalling Cap in the Chance-To-Die O Meter, because I know it’ll get me in to watch Part 2 to see him avenged.

 

That’s our guesses, let us know what you think in the comments below. And if you want to do your own rankings, put 1 as Plot Armoured and 5 as Definitely One of These.

The Best Mech Games on PC

BattleTech is back, in the first new installment using the BattleTech licence since 1990’s BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge. We’ve had MechWarrior games, but the primary series has been sadly neglected until Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive resurrected the BattleTech series.

It’s a curiosity of video games that mech games are sadly quite under-represented. You’d think slipping into a giant robot suit and smashing the place up would be a no brainer, but they’re few and far between.

So here’s some of the absolute best mech games available on the PC, in case you want to do a bit more giant-sized destruction in a beautiful metallic body.

Note: I’m not going to include games with mech sections, because that’d be pretty much every early 2000s FPS.

BattleTech

BattleTech isn’t just a retread of the older games, nor does it try to use some of the more well known series, MechWarrior, for inspiration. Instead this is hard scifi in an XCOM-inspired world, where you play as a group of mercenaries looking to pay the bills by undertaking missions. Having dense tactical combat alongside a strategic layer may feel on the surface very familiar to the XCOM series, but BattleTech is a much deeper simulation with every system, every mech, every vehicle being meticulously modelled, and success will depend on you becoming familiar with those systems. If you liked XCOM but want something a bit meatier to get your teeth into, BattleTech might be what you’re looking for.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

Forget the other MechWarriors, this is the one that stands head and laser cannons above the rest. Despite showing its age quite considerably, there’s still few games that put you in the driving seat of a mech so completely. It’s a game about striding purposefully across wartorn battlefields, feeling the ping of hit laserfire on your carapace, and slowly turning about to level your full complement of weaponry on the distant target that dares to provoke you. There’s few feelings of power, and of panic when it all goes wrong, than those that MechWarrior 2 gives you.

Zone of the Enders 2

This game isn’t technically out yet, it’ll be appearing on a PC near you in September of 2018, but we already know what to expect from it because Zone of the Enders 2 has been out on consoles for a long time, and it’s the opposite end of the spectrum from MechWarrior. Instead of meticulous simulation, this game is all about action, about fast paced combat, and about destruction. It’s an immense and explosive game that’s been sorely missing on the PC, we’ve got simulations, how about blowing some shit up? Zone of the Enders 2, that’ll fill that need.

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Imagine being a mech, standing many stories high. You smash up your opponents, shooting tanks and other mechs into flaming rubble. Then you hop out and run about in the buildings you so recently towered over. Combining a mech game with a traditional FPS, Shogo is a silly and wonderful exploration of scale, from being a giant to being a normal sized human, it really puts into perspective how big those damn mechs are. It’s an anime-inspired romp, and one that’s worth checking out if you can.

One Must Fall: 2097

Imagine if Rise of the Robots was good, and made a few years earlier. That’s One Must Fall, it’s a mech 2D fighting game with multiplayer, single battle mode, and a pretty decent campaign mode where you storm up the ranks to become the greatest mech fighting pilot on the planet. With upgradable mechs and other mechs you can simply purchase, alongside an accessible combat system, OMF is the best fighting game about mechs on the PC. Probably.

MissionForce: CyberStorm

Hex-based tactics fans, this one’s for you. CyberStorm and the sequel, CyberStorm 2: Corporate Wars, are a pair of isometric tactical games about controlling a squad of mechs, or HERCs, on a variety of different missions. It’s standard stuff really, but it’s solid and frankly it’s just nice to play on a hex instead of a square for once. Also notable for your pilots being bioengineered creations designed solely to pilot these towering mechs, one of which is a hyperintelligent ape.

Earthsiege 2

Set in the same universe as CyberStorm, you control a pilot of a HERC on missions which on the face of it, are similar to those found in MechWarrior. What’s truly special about Earthsiege 2 is the ability to customise your mech, and the (for the time) advanced graphics for the missions. It also features a branching narrative structure to the game, where failing a mission does not necessarily mean that you’ll lose the game, rather you’ll go to a mission you wouldn’t have experienced if you had succeeded. Something that we wouldn’t see come into standard or semi-standard use for at least another decade.

Ironcast

A mech game of a different flavour, this takes place in a steampunk world where you engage your enemies in brutal combat…via a puzzle game. A steampunk mech stands on each side of the screen and your moves, taken turn by turn on a central Bejeweled-a-like field, determine what your mech does, and vice versa. It also takes from roguelikes, in that there’s permadeath and some randomness to the way the game evolves and the main campaign can go. This makes it a compelling game, one that you might need a bit of time to master and to truly get to grips with, but one that rewards being able to counter whatever your AI foes send your way.

Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

Cards on the table; I don’t really know if this is truly considered a mech game, but you’re in a mech suit so I’m including it. Basically this is an FPS from a time when FPS’s didn’t really exist as we know them today, you embarked on missions with a squad of similar be-suited mech people to destroy the control of the totalitarian Earth-based Hegemony. It was a huge step forward for the time, featuring FMV cutscenes, tactical orders you could issue to your squad, multi-camera control via drone and your squadmates, and even non-standard mission types, such as missions where the only goal was to spy on an enemy base and take photos for example. It’s recently been given a lick of paint and re-released by Nightdive studios, so there’s no excuse not to check it out.

Titanfall 2

It’s hard to overstate what a huge improvement Titanfall 2 is over the original. The original unfortunately bifurcated its playerbase with DLC and map packs, meaning it really struggled to keep online multiplayer numbers up. It did have some of the best movement in any FPS though, and Titanfall 2 is the rare sequel that kept everything good from the original and dispensed with everything that needed to be dropped. It also features probably the best single-player FPS campaign since Half-Life 2, with an incredibly varied set of skills and new ideas thrown at you throughout. Basically, it’s an amazing game, and none of you played it. For shame.

So there you have some mech games which are all well worth trying, even if some of them have aged a bit. Have we missed off your favourite? Hit us up in the comments.

Old Meets New in Phoenix Point

Phoenix Point is the next game from Julian Gollop. Julian Gollop is a name that you might not have heard, especially if you’re younger, but his legacy is huge in the PC Gaming world. He is behind great games such as Chaos, Laser Squad, but most importantly: XCOM.

Hopefully you’ve heard of XCOM, or rather, X-Com as it originally was when Julian Gollop was designing and developing these landmark strategy games. Well he’s back with Phoenix Point and it looks like it’ll mix together the absolute best of old-school X-Com and new-school XCOM.

We got a chance to chat to Julian Gollop at Rezzed, held in London earlier this week. We sent X-Com Veteran Alex Mchugh who is old as time and has been playing X-Coms since they came out, and XCOM Youngster Oliver Paul who has only played the reboots, but absolutely loves them.

Here’s what these two different people had to say about it:

Golden Oldie – Alex Mchugh

What stuck out to me was that it feels like a return to some of the best ideas of the original X-Com series. The reboots are marvellous games, but for me they stripped out some of the complexity of the older titles, and I’m incredibly pleased to see Phoenix Point walk the tightrope between accessibility and depth.

Factions, similar to how they worked in X-Com Apocalypse are back, and you’ll be balancing these factions against each other, endorsing some and alienating others as you work to save the world from an alien threat, and from the threat of each other.

Action points are back too, meaning that your actions and movements throughout the game are more fluid and the possibility space that your squad operates in is much larger. You’re not going to be stuck doing two moves a turn, instead you can hunker down and fire off a few shots, or you can sprint like the wind, or mix it up however you choose. As long as you have the action points for it, you can do it.

With the theme of the aliens being a riff on aquatic mergings between alien and submarine life, at least at the start of the campaign, it feels in many ways an homage to X-Com Terror from the Deep, the absolute bastard-hard sequel to the original Enemy Unknown. Seeing these creatures, especially the crab ones, took me right back to the days of fleeing from awful Lobster Men back in the 90s. Except now they’ve been updated, they’re smarter, they’re tougher, and they have different evolutionary variations which means you might have to adapt your tactics suddenly at the start of a new battle.

Anyway, as an old, old man, it brings me great joy to see some of the ideas from great games I grew up with refined and used again today. I’m incredibly excited for Phoenix Point, plug it into my veins already.

Young Buck – Oliver Paul

So I’ve always heard that the new XCOM games were much more linear than the older ones. You get one base, normally just one squad that can go on one mission, on one planet, against one alien race. I’d heard stories about multiple squads doing things at different times, X-com bases stretching across the globe, and stuff going on IN SPAAACE and underwater too. Now with Pheonix Point, I feel like I’m finally going to get what every younger gamer wants: the chance to play an old gem, but with a usable UI and no CD-ROMs.

Something that Julian Gollop said got my attention in a big way. He said that the game was comparable to Stellaris. Stellaris?! The 4x game?! He talked about you just being one faction out of a handful, fighting over resources and against the alien menace encroaching across the land in a oppressive fog. Take the campaign map of a 4X game and the battles of XCOM and I’m sold. I like the idea that enemy factions change depending on what you do, so no two play-throughs are the same. Even with the XCOM expansions, I felt like it was just playing the campaign, and the same main missions, again. After day 3 everyone knows the best squad combo, the best build order for your base and the exploitable tactics. Opening up the game to more variables means not everyone plays the same game. And embarking on another play-through becomes like starting another game of Civ – something you do all the damn time.

On the battle side of things, you could almost mistake it for new XCOM, it’s incredibly similar. I don’t think myself or any other XCOM fans will have trouble adjusting to Phoenix Point, and there’s plenty of new mechanics to explore that don’t feel very new-XCOM at all. It feels more nitty-gritty because you can free aim, you can target specific parts of enemies and there are mid-game objectives like securing watch towers to help clear out a base. It feels like a military game rather than a team of sort-of super heroes like in XCOM. Recurring bosses will come back, genetically altered to be stronger based on how you took it down last time. Even the alien race will adapt to your favourite strategies. A team of 3 snipers may not stay effective for ever. These big boss units will actually feel like they deserve the name, having lots of health for different body parts, unlike in XCOM where a few rockets can take out anything.

Overall I’m looking forward to trying out Phoenix Point, probably more-so than an XCOM 3. It looks and feels different and gives you more tools to change the outcome of the game. Not to mention that because it’s more 4X, there are other ways to win, it deals with the issue of XCOMs negative feedback loop. At least, here’s hoping.

How to mark Earth Day with environmentally aware games

Earth Day 2018 falls on Sunday 22 April, and given recent revelations concerning widespread plastic pollution and accelerating climate change, it will surely be given more public attention – and trigger more environmental activism around the world – than ever before. So, if you’re concerned about what is happening to the environment (and who isn’t, beyond American right-wingers with big business interests?), can you square those concerns with being a gamer? Do videogames pull their weight when it comes to saving the planet?

The answer, superficially at least, would appear to be “No” – first and foremost, games are a form of popular entertainment, and most see their role as offering an escape from the everyday troubles and cares of the real world. However, there are games which at least manage to signal a concern for the state of the environment, in ways which encompass an entire spectrum of subtlety.

You could, for example, argue that pretty much any game set in a post-apocalyptic universe is effectively displaying concern for the current state of the Earth – although in many such cases, those concerns tend more towards the geopolitical than the environmental. But there are some which demonstrate an unequivocally environmentally aware vibe, and we thought it would be appropriate to bring them to your attention in the run-up to Earth Day.

Fate of the World: Tipping Point

This 2011 game developed by Red Redemption for PC and Mac is one of the very few efforts to build its gameplay around environmental concerns – indeed, it aims very overtly to provide a decent education about green issues facing the Earth. Essentially a turn-based, Civilization-style sim-game, it puts you in charge of a fictional global organisation with responsibility for social, technological and environmental policies (if only such a body existed in real life). 

It lets you take environmental decisions and see how they pan out, both in terms of reducing global warming and trying to avoid social unrest. As such, it does a fine job of examining the issues that real-world governments face when attempting to get to grips with climate change.

 Flower

This gorgeous-looking 2009 effort for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, developed by Thatgamecompany, is all about giving gamers a visceral connection to the environment. It’s pretty experimental, lacking any form of narrative and with gameplay that is minimal and defies convention. But it’s also incredibly Zen-like, and does a fine job of stirring both a surprising amount of emotion and generating deep thought into how we treat the environment.

In Flower, you control the wind using the Dual-Shock controller’s motion-sensing, blowing a petal around and thereby causing various effects in the game-world, such as bringing previously barren fields into bloom and activating windmills. Flower may be quite abstract, but it leaves one in no doubt about its desire to get us all thinking about the natural world. 

Flow

Flower is actually the spiritual successor to Flow, also made by Thatgamecompany, and released in 2007 as a launch PSN title for the PlayStation 3. It’s less overt about providing an environmental call-to-arms than Flower, but shares a similar calming ambience that mimics natural-world processes.

Flow puts you in control of a plankton-like organism, swimming around in a sort of primordial soup. As you eat other creatures, your creature evolves into more complex forms, and eventually, you have to deal with predators.

Monster Hunter World

You might imagine that a game which involves slaughtering giant monsters with huge weapons is unlikely to possess much by way of green credentials. However, Monster Hunter World is shot through with an undeniably environmentally-aware ambience. 

That’s because it isn’t just about hunting monsters. One of its key gameplay mechanics involves collecting flora, fauna and natural resources in each area of its game-world, for which you are royally rewarded, and pretty much everything you collect has some use — as ammunition, a crafting component or food.

With all sorts of rewards and perks available for researching specified types of flora, fauna and resources, Monster  Hunter World gently but insistently encourages you to form a deep affinity with its environments. And what amazing environments they are, taking in rainforests, deserts and the like, all of whose superbly constructed ecosystems operate in a highly visible manner. The nature in Monster Hunter World may derive from the imaginative realms of fantasy, but anyone who plays the game will feel utterly immersed in it.

Far Cry Primal

This 2016 offshoot of the much-loved open-world first-person action-adventure franchise was something of an aberration, but proved surprisingly compelling. It took Far Cry’s trademark free-roaming action way beyond its comfort zone, to a prehistoric world.

Although it isn’t a game which has an overtly environmentally friendly message, you can’t help thinking deeply about the modern world, with its growing cities and urbanisation, when you play it. Because it depicts a time when even the most rudimentary buildings had barely been invented, it puts you right in the thick of nature, at a time when mankind still struggled to dominate nature – indeed, that’s what the vast  majority of the gameplay is about (along with a healthy dose centred on mankind’s tribal nature, which also proves to be thought-provoking).

There’s nothing rose-tinted about Far Cry Primal – it’s in no way some sort of nostalgia-fest hymning a time when humans were at one with the environment. But its utterly plausible depiction of a pre-urban world offers vast amounts of food for thought for those who are concerned with what we are now doing to the environment. 

Beyond Good & Evil

This lovable 2003 action-adventure effort from Ubisoft’s resident genius Michel Ancel alludes to various themes, and concern for the environment is definitely one of those. It may even have inspired Monster Hunter World’s environmental investigation element.

That’s because protagonist Jade, painfully penniless at the beginning of the game, soon lands a job documenting the wildlife of Beyond Good & Evil’s game-world with her camera, and is rewarded for doing so with money, which is something you’ll need in order to complete the game.

Again, that mechanic puts you at one with the game’s environments – there are genuine thrills to be had every time you encounter a species you haven’t come across previously. Ancel is now hard at work on Beyond Good & Evil 2, and it will be interesting to see if he chooses to develop the original game’s element of environmental awareness in that. 

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Last year’s feted PlayStation 4 exclusive is another game which doesn’t ram an overtly green message down your throat, yet provokes deep thought about the environment, in a similar manner to Far Cry Primal. As with Far Cry Primal, that’s mainly due to its premise: protagonist Aloy occupies a post-apocalyptic world which has largely returned to a natural state, apart from the presence of predatory, often dinosaur-like robots. 

The game’s juxtaposition of unspoiled environments and dangerous yet useful technology (which provides a source of weapons and ammo for Aloy) functions as a great what-if scenario, providing a snapshot of  what might happen if global warming caused our civilisation to collapse. And as such, it provides a cautionary tale which will strike a chord among those who care about arresting environmental destruction.

Cultist Simulator – A Ragged Letter from a Failed Cultist

Recently the EGX Rezzed event took place in the Tobacco Docks venue in London. Members of the Green Man Gaming team attended, and during their time there they took some time to play Cultist Simulator, a game which will be fully released on the 31st of May, 2018.

Soon after our social media manager Alex McHugh went missing, and  this letter arrived at the Green Man Gaming offices. We are letting you see the contents of the letter for the first time. Those faint of heart, please close this page now.

Dear Green People,

By the time you read this I will have moved to a place beyond your ken, to a place unknowable by mortals, a place where the fractal nature of reality has been rent asunder.

I have gone to the eldritch technological palace known as ‘Cultist Simulator’.

It began simply, I sat at the mechanical thinking-box and looked about at the blue field ahead of me. Time itself trickled down and spat out a new item, a glyph on card that floated in front of me. I read the words emblazoned upon it and feel them shudder through my brain cavity and I delight in the rich new opportunities which unveil before me.

Each card shuddered and shook and new opportunities seeped out onto the board and into my mind. Alas through my inattention my avatar on this immaterial plane lost their job, their hateful job, and gained employment on the lowest rung in an office. Never mind, thought I, it would leave my mind free to contemplate the divine which I had begun to dream of, whispers touching my thoughts each night. The scrabble for funds to cover my investigations would never end but I would use my time carefully to prod deeper into the hidden corners of the universe.

A gift left to me from a mysterious benefactor exploded new opportunities in front of me. I began to dream of sickness, an old friend stepped back into my life and I used her ruthlessly as a sounding board for these new ideas which populated my swollen mind.

I began to spin out of control, a single clock counting down became two, then three, then ten, the rush to read the cards which guided my path causing me to forget that time itself was under my control. I could pause the progress of time, and take a moment to read, to absorb, to learn.

In the depths of my darkest dreams I discovered a nugget of truth. I could start a cult, I could become the leader of a new way of thought, a new way of living. I began my preparations, if we were to break open reality and revel in the dark dance of unholy truth, we would need funds, a place to meet, and bodies.

Alas, my health took a turn for the worse. All I could do was dream forever of the sickness which slowly took over me, my funds and ability to work slipping from my grasp and the truth I had so quickly glimpsed slid away like a distant memory.

In the end, my avatar succumbed to the dark poisons which had overrun their body, and life slipped away.

The story does not end there, my Green Friends, I live on and I can think only of the cultist, of the truth, and of how to succeed where that meat shell failed.

I will return, glorious and effulgent with knowledge, I just have to play again. To spin my life on the wheel that is Cultist Simulator, and to succeed where I have once failed.

Yours,

What Remains of Alex

We have not heard from Alex in the days following Rezzed, and any attempt to contact him has failed. We phoned him, and the only time the phone was picked up we heard a great wailing as if a thousand voices screamed into the headset, and then nothing. Since then the phone is disconnected, and GPS tracking puts him at a location Google Maps does not have adequate data for.

Cultist Simulator is coming out on the 31st of May, beware its seductive charm.

Wargroove is the Advance Wars Sequel We Deserve

I played Wargroove at EGX Rezzed after following it for months and months. It was another one of those games that promised an Advance Wars spiritual successor, but I’ve been burned before. Into The Breach was looking like the best hope, but that became more of a puzzle game where you have only 3 units per level. The original creators of Advance Wars have moved onto fully supporting Fire Emblem, which again takes the turn-based strategy but gives you a group of heroes with perma-death to fight battles with, fun but no tanks or bobbing infantry being churned out of a factory.

Enter Wargroove by Chucklefish, the London-based developer that brought you Starbound. As I said I got to play a battle at Rezzed and, after being trounced by the AI, it’s safe to say it takes everything we liked from Advance Wars and put a great new spin on it. That spin was mostly tied up with the new commanders and forces. Instead of having 4 factions with different looking tanks, planes and commanders, Wargroove has 4 factions with commanders who fight on the battlefield themselves. Each faction varies based on the fantasy theme it brings to this pixelated, bobbing universe. There’s the nature-based faction where the commander summons a horse beneath them made of branches entwining together, and of course there’s a straight up human faction with your knights and archers.

The one I picked was an undead race full of skeletons. Remembering my Heroes of Might and Magic III days, summoning skeletons is the most fun and potentially broken mechanic. Happily the faction leader could forgo his turn to summon skeletons, which were the most basic unit. Unfortunately I was trying to be aggressive and got overwhelmed. As I was finishing up I was already thinking ahead to my next game: should I get to the mid-point and hold the line whilst summoning an unstoppable wave of skeletons? Should I save up for the more elite knights? Maybe there’s an inherent advantage of the faction I can use if I read up a bit more? There was a queue of sorts forming behind me so I had to leave it at that. But I’m convinced – it feels like Advance Wars and I want it.

The Wargroove wiki page has a section ready for Campaigns, so it looks like it will definitely contain story missions for at least one of the factions. The 3 commanders per faction – the ones that are released – look unique and retain that level of personality the C.O.s of Advance Wars had, and I’m hoping that the campaign will ingratiate players to one faction or the other. My friends and I all had our spirit animal C.O.s, and would ‘main’ them in our skirmishes and multiplayer games. Each commander even has their own theme – an integral part to their personality in Advance Wars. Grit’s slow, lazy guitar riffs fitted to his laid-back attitude and long-range specialisation, and Max had a punchy, strong beat to suit his rolling tanks.

My Gameboy Advance SP that I got when I was 13 has followed me around the world and back and still lives in my drawer, still ready at a moment’s notice. There’s only one game that sits in it though, and that’s Advance Wars 1. Now perhaps finally there’ll be a reason to retire it for good, or at the very least not be too sad if it finally dies. With Wargroove coming to PC, PS4 and Switch, there’s plenty of ways to play, mobile or otherwise, and I can’t wait.

God of War Grows Up

I had a freelance artist friend who worked from home a lot, and he watched copious amounts of Let’s Plays whilst working. If I had a day off or came over in the evening, I’d bring my Playstation and I’d play whilst he worked and watched. A live Let’s Play, so to speak. There was one game however, that he could not just watch casually. One game that couldn’t be appreciated with cursory glances at the tv screen in-between drawing and sketching. This game was so noisy, so loud, so spectacular and grand, he just had to jump on the sofa, grab a beer and enjoy it in all it’s glory.

This was God of War, of course.

Kratos spends his first trilogy fighting the Greek pantheon of gods, as revenge for the actual god of war Ares making him kill his own wife and child. Unlike that other Greek hero Hercules, Kratos didn’t want to atone for this by doing some menial tasks for the gods. He just wanted revenge. Pure, emotional, blood-splattered revenge. The final game in that trilogy ends with Kratos killing Zeus (spoilers), and damning the world to darkness and nothingness. His revenge is complete at the cost of pretty much everything, his selfish revenge has brought everyone else down to his level, and is he happy now? Who knows.

The story goes as far as it needs to to justify the mad and awesome action in the game. Climbing up titans to stab them in the eyes, going down to Hades and essentially wiping out the Underworld, ripping off Helios’ head to use it as a lamp and even taking out Atlas so he drops the sky. The action is a mixture of hack and slash with various weapons like Hercules’ fists and Hades’ claws, and QTEs for the set-piece moments. This is the game series that made everyone think QTEs were awesome, until everyone else ruined them. It revelled in how over-the-top it was. My friend just couldn’t get enough of how crazy it was to be killing gods in this fashion, it was a throwback to the mad and bonkers 80s action movies of our childhoods.

Now though, Kratos has a beard. Not some pointy, edgy, early-2000s, combine-with-Oakley-sunglasses-and-a-black-shirt beard, but a full, old man beard. He walks and paces like a boxer instead of doing his normal hunched predatory run, his voice is calm and full of caution, and only seems to roar when fighting, rather than whenever he’s frustrated with another annoying puzzle section. All his stolen legendary weapons are replaced by his one axe, and he teaches his son patience, “You are hunting deer, not chasing it.” Yes this is the same Kratos. And yes I did say son.

As Hollywood knows all too well, child characters can eek out the humanity of a protagonist who has none; Terminator, Logan, Leon, all have a stoic, violent man being accompanied by a normal child who they end of caring for and even enjoying the ‘small things’ with and other clichés. Games have started to do it with The Last of Us, and it’s honestly a potent mechanic. Doubly-so when the character you’re playing has this absurd, violent history and is wandering the Earth reflecting on what he’s done. Kratos’ whole raison d’être has been revenge for his family that he killed, and now he’s got a second chance at doing the whole bereavement thing, this time with less apocalyptic rage.

So why is Midgard such an appropriate setting for this potential redemption? Well Kratos has felled one pantheon out of rage, and now he wants to be left well alone with his new family. If there’s any group of gods who have a reputation for messing with people, it’s the Norse gods. Odin goes to Midgard as an old cloaked man with one eye, Loki plays tricks and Thor strikes people down with lightning. The gods have to be impressed to let you into Valhalla, they want you to fight and spill blood – they would love younger Kratos. You can imagine that Kratos will want to be left the hell alone, his quest is to take his wife’s ashes to the top of the tallest mountain with his son, but Odin et al will surely not resist the urge to interfere. Not to mention creatures like the frost giants, ogres, Fenrir and Jörmungandr, the giant wolf and the world snake, both children of Loki.

Whereas the Greek mythos is well documented and expansive, with a large cast of titans, gods and demi-gods, Norse mythology is a more fluid thing. Most of it comes from stories (sagas), epic poems and what was left behind. There’s a mysticism there where we don’t really know what’s what, and the gods were mysterious in nature – a lot of the tales about them involved some form of deception, trickery and untrustworthy wanderers. It’s why Loki is such a prominent figure, an anti-hero and trickster, rather than a villain.

This is to say that, as we journey more deeper into Kratos’ psyche than ever before, as his more complex layers are revealed, it’s fitting that he probably won’t just be pinning someone’s godly nuts to the top of the parthenon with his Blades of Revenge. I can’t see new Kratos taking their crap, but he may even be above them now. He may match wits with Loki as much as he matches strength with Thor. He’s not going to want to endanger his son by going toe-to-toe with them all, so he’s going to be on the defensive for the first time.

Any gamer who grew up playing God of War and loving the violence and the high-octane set-pieces will be happy to know it seems to remain, but they will also be happy to know that, 10 years on, it’s doing more than that. The transition from Greece to Midgard for me at least visualises a turn in the series into the more multi-dimensional. Kratos’ long-term grief and remorse, his son, his desire to be left alone from the world lest he do more things he’ll regret, and now just wanting to complete his wife’s dying wish, make him way more interesting, and sticking a character like that in the realm of the Norse gods seems like the cruelest but most intriguing thing Santa Monica Studio could’ve done.

Will Disco Elysium Finally Move RPGs to the Next Level?

Role Playing Games have been having a bit of a renaissance on the PC in the last few years. We’ve seen games like Pillars of Eternity, Legend of Grimrock, the remastered Avernum series, and Wasteland 2 reinvigorate the traditional style of cRPG. We’ve seen new takes on the cRPG formula, like Torment: Tides of Numenera and the Divinity: Original Sin series. We’ve also seen action RPGs take over the world, with The Witcher 3, Final Fantasy XV, and Diablo III selling absolute tonnes.

These games are all brilliant, but it feels like the RPG genre has stalled a little, whilst we’re seeing absolutely wonderful games come out that are exciting and ambitious, it feels like it’s been a long time since we had something that really shook the genre up.

Maybe that time has come in the form of Disco Elysium.

Dance Steps

Disco Elysium (formerly No Truce with the Furies) is a semi-futuristic/fantasy alternate-world neo-noir RPG about ideas and about solving crimes. It’s a game where your character’s mind is as important as your character’s actions, it’s a game where your character’s perception of events is called into question throughout, and it’s a game that feels fresh and exciting in a way that RPGs haven’t for a while.

That’s a paragraph that needs unpacking, but first, watch the trailer:

Learning to Boogie

There’s a sadness that permeates Disco Elysium, from its first seconds it’s clear that this is a world where hope and something essential and vital has leeched out of the world. You’re a washed up cop, so far past the border of ‘borderline alcoholic’ you might as well be a citizen of Alcohol Country.

The game has you waking up, nude, still drunk from the night before, in a hotel with a smashed window. What did you do the night before? Who are you? Why are you here? Your memory isn’t what it used to be…in fact it isn’t anything.

The way your character talks to people is up to you, your memory is one huge hole and how that plays out is your choice. Do you want to bluff your way through, rely on info from others to fill in the gaps, or are you going to be straight up and admit to everyone that there’s a gap where your past used to be?

Speaking to the developers, they took this as a deliberate choice. They hate the hour of exposition many RPGs lead with and they would much prefer that you explore this world at the same pace as the main character. It’s important to remember that despite appearances, this isn’t our world. The developers ZA/UM said at EGX Rezzed that the world is similar to ours, but is essentially different even down to the reactions of people. It’s not just an event that caused this world to split away from us in our past, it’s that thinking and our ideas are different in this world. What makes human ‘human’ is different here, so the world itself has grown apart from our own history.

Dancing with the Lights Off

This is definitely a game about conversation and exploration. One of the issues the developers have had with other RPGs is that they tend to be combat heavy, even the lauded Planescape: Torment has plenty of frankly-average combat padding out its hours. Disco Elysium instead aims to be a game about events, whilst people can die and you can be in danger, they’re tied to crescendos in the plot and in the narrative.

What instead takes the focus is your investigation in the world, you’re a cop with a partner, and it’s your job to look into a case. This starts off with a murder, as all good mysteries do, and spans out from there into a semi-open world RPG adventure.

Whilst your character is ‘somebody’ in the world, you’re not ‘the Dragonborn’ or ‘the promised one’, you’re just a cop. One people will have reactions to, they may know you already, they may judge you on your appearance, or they may judge you on your job. Developers ZA/UM spoke about this at Rezzed, saying it means they can avoid the issue where you can be fifty hours into a game, killed God, punched a Daemon into the moon, and still have people say to you ‘ho adventurer, say, kill five rats for me’.

This isn’t, however, the thing that’s revolutionary. That’s more in the mind.

Think it Over

You have an inventory in Disco Elysium where you can manage the items you pick up. It doesn’t end there though, you can also pick up ideas as you proceed through your case. For example, at the start of the game you are asked to investigate a corpse, swinging softly in the breeze from a nearby tree. As part of its narrative structure you can attempt actions or attempt to succeed at challenges through the dialogue options, and it’s possible to fail this particular challenge a few times simply because the body has been hanging there several days, and you’re quite hungover.

So even after using something to take the smell away, you might find yourself needing a new option. In comes an idea your partner gives you, to get your shit together. You see, in Disco Elysium you have a second inventory related to ideas and concepts that you come across. Slotting this idea about getting your shit together in there, you are given a small in-world timer which passes as you talk to people. After thirty in-game minutes, the idea ripens and bursts into…the shit singularity, meaning that you do indeed have your shit together.

Heading back to the tree, you can now keep your shit together and investigate the corpse, successfully taking the next step in your case.

Whilst this is an early game example, the developers talked about how this feature would expand from this. The idea is that you can mature other concepts in your mind, and these will determine how you act and react to people and situations in-game. If you slip in a racist idea you’ll be a lot more racist in your interactions and people will react appropriately. Similarly with fascist or communist ideologies.

Any Colour you Like

Your character isn’t just a meat suit you pilot about the world, he’s also possibly losing his mind. Not only is he left with a gap in his memories, he’s an unreliable narrator. Very soon after starting the game you’ll find objects, corpses, sleeping people, all talking to you, urging you on or asking things of you. Are they real, are you a shaman, or are you just losing your mind?

None of these questions are answered in the short area available to attendees of EGX Rezzed, but you get a feel that the world might not be all that you’re seeing, and there might be more below the surface if you just scratch away at it.

The developers did mention that this isn’t just a slightly futuristic world, there may be the supernatural lurking away in the corners, so maybe this is your way in. Maybe you are magic, and you’re tapping into the a world others can’t say. That said, it’s entirely plausible that these are the firings of an alcoholic’s last neurons as you slide slowly into death.

Disco Elysium is looking to be something utterly special, it’s an RPG that actually uses the R for once. You’re playing a role, and you define that role through your interactions with the world and yourself. The start of the game which was playable at Rezzed was astounding, and easily was something that an hour or more could be sunk into without noticing. It’s one to keep your eye on, and it’s coming later in 2018.

You can learn more about Disco Elysium at the official website.

What happened to games of movies?

I wouldn’t be so gatekeeping as to suggest that only people who grew up in the 90s like me suffered the continuous disappointment of games that had been made from popular films. One of the worst games of all time is the infamous E.T. on the Atari 2600, the game that is blamed for the home video game system crash of the 80s. It was like the App Store back in those days where every game was only allowed 6 weeks of dev time, except they also had to physically make, transport and sell copies, and the sold them at $70 a piece. People stopped buying video games entirely because of movie cash-grabs like E.T. and Gremlins.

There’s also younger generations who perhaps grew up with a Wii or Gamecube who experienced some shockingly bad adaptations of their favourite movies – or more likely their parents assumed they would enjoy them more than, you know, Mario or GTA. And then there’s us 90s kids who got arguably the most successful movie tie-in: Goldeneye, and a slew of ‘quite average to good’ Disney games because as it turns out it’s not hard to make a decent 2D platforming game when you’ve got someone else’s already good visuals, characters and soundtrack to slap on it.

I mean how much of this was copy+paste?

During the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era, a video game was just another tick in the box for film production companies. Film? Check. Ads? Check. Toys? Check. Video game? Check. No-one really cared about the quality of the game itself, it was just another obligation for the studio and the actors. You’d get some quality stuff this way; like most of the Lord of the Rings games, as EA seemed to have wrestled enough creative control to make decent games. Harry Potter was there, films like Hulk and King Kong were surprisingly good too. But were they good because they were movies, or despite that?

LucasArts realised that their prequel games – Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles, The Phantom Menace, Episode III – definitely weren’t doing as well as ones that provided something extra; not just putting fans in the films in a clunky and forced way, but giving them a fresh experience that adds to the overall enjoyment of the Star Wars universe. Games like Republic Commando, Battlefront 1 and 2, Bounty Hunter, Rogue Squadron, Empires at War, Jedi Outcast and Academy, were and are still held in very high regard. Ask a Star Wars fan what they want most from the new Star Wars films and it’ll likely include a continuation of things created in their favourite games (Top tip: If you’re a fan of Republic Commando like me, check out one of the episodes of the animated series Clone Wars. It has a Commando in it and it’s so true to the game, it’s great).

Using this image so I get picked up by r/gaming hopefully.

So by the launch of the PS3 and Xbox 360, the majority of film tie-ins had died away and seen as not worth it for the film industry, thankfully because gamers got wise and real IPs started to rake in all the money. They couldn’t compete with GTA, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, games that were getting as cinematic as films themselves without needing to be restricted to mimicking a 2-hour storyline. So where did all the cash grabs go? How do we prey on the impulsive nature of young children, the growing sensitivity of parents to violent video games, and deal with the fact that turning films into games is actually really tough? You homogenise them into one family-friendly theme: LEGO!

Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, Avengers, Harry Potter have all come back with a vengeance in LEGO form, and now Disney is returning to video games yet again with it’s The Incredibles LEGO game. This is not to say the games are bad, they definitely have a place in the ever-growing landscape of video game genres. They take something familiar and they put a spin on it that’s entertaining, new and easy to play. The wildly varying difficulty and fun of the movie tie-ins is gone, in favour of a consistent and possibly more average type of movie game. Like a Nepresso coffee capsule, it’s not the best but you know what you’re getting.

Mmm consistency.

And this looks to be the way the games industry will treat films now. In fact the tables seem to have turned; the film industry has looked at our Tomb Raiders, Warcrafts, Assassin Creeds and our…pixels (?) for film ideas and relying on games’ inherent popularity with people instead. Netflix are even getting involved and borrowing our beautiful Witcher, and Disney has stopped shovelling out 2D platformers and is now creating films like Wreck It Ralph AKA ‘Video Game Reference Film’. The games industry doesn’t need the handouts of Hollywood writers for games ideas, they’d rather go to the source and pitch their own plans for IPs. Games like the upcoming Spiderman on PS4 and the recent Batman Arkham series, Battlefront 2 (the new one) and the Shadow of Mordor games have very high standards that are being, or most likely will be, met. The onus is on them to make us play them rather than picking up the new God of War or Last of Us. Or just League of Legends again.

So where will this go next? Will VR usher in a new wave of movie tie-ins? Unlikely, but possible. AR has prompted some new Harry Potter games, and companies are still making mobile games about Transformers and the like. But AAA games these days have to be platforms for DLC and new content and a growing fanbase to have good enough return on investment. You know how you ruin your return on investment? You make a bad game because you’re trying to cash-in on a temporarily popular film franchise. The restraint devs have shown to avoid this in recent years is admirable, TellTale Games notwithstanding. The only way for them to go is the way of the new Spiderman and Avengers games, by creating brand new story and becoming part of the universe in their own right. To stand among books and films and tv shows as equally important and lucrative experiences.  

 

Chart Expert Game 2.0 – New Rules

Welcome to the new and improved Chart Expert Game!

Why change your beautiful Chart Expert Game?

Previously we asked you to guess the top 3 games sold over the week. This was easy when Destiny 2 and Call of Duty were going to be released, but every other time it was very difficult to guess what game did best in our sales, and other factors.

 

So what’s changed? Is it easier?

Yes! Now we will give you three games each week, and you have to put them in the order in which they’ll occur. For example:

On Monday, we say: Destiny 2, Call of Duty: WW2, Barbie’s High School Dreams.

Then by midday Tuesday you have to guess the order of how much each sold.

You say:

  1. Barbie’s High School Dreams
  2. Destiny 2
  3. Call of Duty

On Friday we’ll release the correct order, and all those who guessed correctly will win a game key!

 

When does it start?

Today. Go now!

 

The Best 10 Indie Games You Haven’t Played…Yet

There are more and more games appearing on Steam every single day, and that’s great. More games means more people making games, more people playing games, and just more games out there. Not all are good certainly, but some will be breathtaking and with more games out there, the amount that are amazing will be a higher number.

The problem is discoverability. With all these games, how do you find out which ones are amazing? How do you separate the games you will love from rest of the crowd?

Well thankfully we’re here to point your way to the best 10 Indie games that you haven’t played…yet.

Virginia

Twin Peaks feels like a too-easy comparison for this game, but it is very Twin Peaksy, and also a bit X-Filesy. What it is most though is an absolutely thrilling story told through a bare-bones but incredibly cinematic lens. If you have any interest in cinema, music, or plotting, then this is a required play. You’ll be thinking about it long after you finish it, and you’ll be listening to its soundtrack for even longer.

The Flame in the Flood

If survival’s your thing then forget all the Day-Zs or Long Darks, it’s an adventure with Scout, her dog Aesop, and a raft that’s where you want to be. Taking place in a beautiful world filled with danger, it’s up to you to steer Scout to safety as she makes her way down the giant rapids. Or maybe you’ll steer her to sudden death, you monster.

Slay the Spire

It’s still in Early Access but remarkably complete, Slay the Spire is a roguelike deck-building game. Confused? It’s a lot simpler than it seems, and also a lot more complex. Building your deck as you race up the spire, and using it to take on challenges or enemies, you build and spend cards as you plough through the spire hoping that you’ll get the right combination of cards that’ll let you deal with the challenges ahead. Die once though…and it’s back to the bottom you go.

Last Day of June

It’s emotion time in Last Day of June, a puzzle-based game where you play as Carl who has been recently bereaved. Exploring his memories and solving puzzles, you try to find a way to save his wife, June, from her death in a car crash that also left Carl in a wheelchair. It’s a beautiful and poetic story about love and loss, and it expresses itself through its mechanics and puzzles in a way that not many games manage.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Speaking of loss, here’s a game all about it. From the team behind The Unfinished Swan, What Remains of Edith Finch falls into that genre which has been unkindly called ‘walking simulator’; its real challenge and gameplay comes from understanding its themes, feeling the intended emotions that the developers have seeded through it, and from appreciating and experiencing the world and story that’s present in the game. It’s a story that’ll take your breath away, and one that’ll stay with you long after you close the game.

Bomber Crew

If FTL is a tale of a crew desperately holding out against overwhelming odds, Bomber Crew is a slapstick comedy about a crew barely able to cope, unready for the skies, and dropping their bombs like pigeons drop crap on your car. Managing a crew of idiots while you’re under attack from multiple incoming fighters, it’s up to you to complete the mission and show the enemy what for, but nothing’s ever that easy and Bomber Crew is a tough game that’ll take a lot to overcome.

Human Fall Flat

When the only thing you have to solve puzzles is your own body, then that’s what you’ll have to use. Human Fall Flat is a surreal adventure set in a dreamscape, where the only way to get out is to figure out how to escape using your own body, and those of co-op friends, to solve your way to freedom. It’s a free-form and chaotic puzzle game that combines co-op physics fun with a series of rapidly escalating puzzles. Your body is your only real tool, and your body is floppy and ready to fall flat.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Two brothers go on an epic adventure to find a cure for their ailing father, and on the way they meet friends, enemies, and see wonders they had never dreamed of. Using a unique control system on gamepad where each analogue stick directs each brother, it’s a puzzle game that will test your ability to keep track of multiple moving parts as you solve your way to your goal. That’s before the feelings come in, as this game hits hard on the emotion front. Play because it’s wonderful, but play at your own risk.

ABZU

If you thought this game looked like Journey but underwater, you’d be half right, but what that short description passes over is how wonderful, mysterious, and frankly terrifying the underwater world in ABZU is. Moments of utter joy mix with moments of fear as you explore hidden secrets at the bottom of the world. It’s also a game that just asks you to take a moment every now and then, yes there’s danger and beauty in its world, but also why not take a moment, look around you, and appreciate the visuals. If you’re too timid to venture into the deep, why not let famed underwater explorer Jacques Custard guide you into the ocean?

Euro Truck Simulator 2

There’s little else as relaxing as putting your truck into a middle gear, sticking on the cruise control, and listening to the local radio as you eat up the miles on a continental truck journey. Euro Truck Simulator 2 is still the most complete of the Truck Simulators, and it’s a game that’s as deep as you want it to be. Do you want to micromanage your own haulage company and park with precision with each cargo, or are you just looking to drive from Luxembourg to Milan and honk at geese? Euro Truck Simulator 2 lets you set your own pace, and it’s a game that’s unrivaled in letting you do that.

 

So there’s 10 cracking indie games that you might not have touched yet, and if you haven’t given them a go – give them a go today! Most of them are also in our Discover sale, which means you can get an extra 22% off when you put DISCO22 in when checking out.

Why we need the Pacific Rim Universe

I saw Pacific Rim: Uprising at the weekend, and it was enjoyable. Not amazing, but fun. I want to tell you why, if I had it my way, the series should continue until it gets great or dies trying.

Pacific Rim does something that no other film series does. When the only monster films you’re exposed to as a child were Godzilla (1997), and the only giant robot films in your teenage years were Transformers (2007), you realise that giant things fighting each other in cities can be very average indeed. You have to get through a very dry human story with Matthew Broderick and *sighs* Shia LaBeouf and probably some shouty US military to reach the big action scene at the end, with maybe some good bits sprinkled over that first 2 hours of dialogue but no giant swords.

When Pacific Rim came out in 2013, it took the main ingredient from these films, and stripped everything else back. It starts with 2 brothers who are ‘Jaeger pilots’ (awesome), they get woken up because of a ‘Kaiju attack’ (wow already? Awesome!), and the next 5 minutes has them going through their ‘suit up’ process which includes being screwed into their suits Ironman 1 style, getting into their Jaeger’s head, interacting with the holographic display, the head being dropped into the Jaeger body before the Jaeger is fully revealed and walks out into the rainy night, the pilots full of confidence and fraternal bravado.

And Idris Elba is their C.O. God damn Idris Elba.

God damn.

The level of detail here reveals just what the creators thought was the most important thing for this film – the robots and the monsters. The characters themselves are excited throughout the film. The main character loves life as a Jaeger pilot as most of us would, Elba’s character Marshall Pentecost did it until it started to kill him, and a lead scientist has tattoos of Kaiju on his arms because he just thinks they’re so freaking cool.

The Pacific Rim universe also does what Transformers and even Marvel/DC fail to do. They fully become fans of their lore. In Uprising, it’s 10 years after the breach has been closed. If this was Avengers or Transformers, no doubt some ‘suits’ from a governing body would have shut down the Jaeger program, or the heroes themselves would have been retired. But in Pacific Rim, they’ve built giant gun platforms on the coast, massive corporations are making huge leaps in Jaeger tech, and the ‘Thunderdome’ is still housing a full complement of shiny new Jaegers. Why? No-one actually explains that. But I don’t actually care. The world in Pacific Rim is a big a fan of Jaegers as we are, whereas the MCU takes every opportunity to oppress Tony Stark and the Avengers and their cool abilities until the climax.

The human story also just feels so much more grounded than something like Transformers. There’s no Megan Fox, embarrassing parents, US Rangers or POTUS taking away from our main event. The characters in Pacific Rim are Jaeger pilots, and they come from multiple backgrounds. They’re professional, but also scrappy. They spar in a dojo to see if they’re drift compatible, and the main character has been humbled but is still good at everything. It feels more like an anime with humble protagonists and stern but fair authority figures who guide their young soldiers and act as the moral compass. There’s also no romantic subplot. In either film. This is quite a big deal for a hollywood blockbuster.

Whilst the tech-porn of the first film may have been lost slightly along with the departure of Guillermo del Toro as director (but still producer), the excitement to show off new ideas remain. All the Jaegers have new weapons and new abilities, and you can see the evolution from the first cobbled together batch. They’ve become more varied and specialised now during peacetime, when no-one knows in what form the Kaiju will return. Compare Cherno Alpha, the Russian heavy tank Jaeger, to Saber Athena, the lithe, bright orange, back-kicking Jaeger, and you can see that the writers had a LOT of fun making these, and weren’t afraid to pay homage to their Japanese inspirations. Without spoiling much, the Kaiju also have some new tricks up their gooey sleeves which keep them as the deadly and tricksy villains from before.

Uprising ends on a scene promising not only future films, but a massive change in gear for the plot so far, and while I had a slight “here we go again” feeling of not wanting to burn out on yet another franchise that overstays its welcome, at least I know that these films will be fully unabashed silly but awesome action. The series takes itself incredibly seriously, it won’t make you feel bad for enjoying it – there will be no robot testicles.

There will also be no Linkin Park soundtrack either. The first film started strong with a loud, threatening score that’s overlaid with Tom Morello’s (of Rage Against the Machine fame) guitar licks, and it gets a modern remaster in Uprising. The theme portrays the last bastion of mankind feeling of the films, whilst also acknowledging the pure awesomeness of piloting Jaegers.

After watching Uprising, my brother and I, a 20 and 28 year old respectively sat on a quiet train platform and talked excitedly about what Jaegers we want to see next. I want to see one with a shield and flail like the crusader in Diablo 3, he wants one with a halberd that can tear up Kaiju from a distance. And we know we will probably get that at some point. Then we started wondering what a Pacific Rim game would be like. For Honor but with Jaegers and Kaiju? Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters but new and good? Any film that can unlock so much imagination and excitement from jaded gamers has got to be good for the world.

Why Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is Probably the Best Videogame Movie Ever Made

It’s been twenty years since the original Jumanji stampeded into cinemas, and since then the titular boardgame has been busy. Salvaged after the end of the original film by young Alex Vreeke in 1996 it realised that Alex wasn’t going to play it in its current form, so it morphed itself into a videogame.

This starts a series of events that eventually leads to another four young teenagers being trapped in its jungle world, twenty years later.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle appears dismissable, it’s got almost nothing to do with the original, Robin Williams is of course, sadly deceased, and this film has every appearance of a throwaway cash-in, the sort we’ve seen a lot of in recent years.

But Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is more than that.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle might very well be the best videogame film ever made. Here’s why:

It Understands Videogames

The problem with a lot of videogame films, or films that feature videogames, is that they don’t ‘get’ the source material. Either it goes the Gamer route and everything’s just…stupid, or it goes in a route that often captures the storyline of the source material, but fails to capture the feel.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is an affectionate parody of videogames and videogame tropes. It’s clearly written by people who know videogames, and love them, and still want to send them up.

There’s NPCs, patrol routes, branching paths, and much more referenced in the film. Yes, that’s only superficial, but it lends an air of credibility to the whole thing. Whilst the film stretches those and creatively adapts what they are for cinema, that’s understandable and throughout the whole thing is actually fairly accurate. At least, for games from the 90s like the remake of Pitfall, Tomb Raider, and other games of the era.

But the most important thing, and the reason why this is probably the best videogame movie ever made is…

It’s Actually Not a Terrible Film

See this shouldn’t be an amazing thing but really, it is. It’s not controversial to say that most videogame movies are terrible, with only a few like some of the Resident Evil films and the first Silent Hill being ‘alright’, and some others like Warcraft or the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider films being ‘enjoyable’. Every other videogame movie is dreadful, and to have one that’s so clearly inspired by videogames and yet actually watchable is a relief and sort of a revelation.

Part of this is the cast of course, The Rock is eminently watchable and Jack Black, Karen Gillen, and Kevin Hart all pull off their roles like they’re having the time of their lives.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its problems, the film does try to pillory videogames’ tendency to put women in saucy costumes…whilst also having a lady in a saucy costume for the film which doesn’t quite work, but overall it’s a damn fun adventure.

It’s also got a Jonas brother in it so that’ll keep some of you happy.

So there you have it, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a film that understands its source material, loves games, loves to parody them, and is also actually fun. Making this almost a first for the videogame film – a film that’s worth watching in a non-ironic way.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is well worth your time, and is definitely the best videogame movie ever made. Let’s see if Ready Player One can knock its crown off.

Is For Honor a Success for Ubisoft?

You all remember For Honor. That game that put samurai, vikings and knights in an arena, tied them together with a intricate melee combat system, and invited you overcome your opponent with skill, reflexes, and tactics. If you’ve ever wanted to have a proper axe, katana and longsword fight in a game that didn’t reward the best button-mashing, this was it.

And then you are swamped in a 3v1 and killed immediately, and probably tea-bagged by a Nordic shaman for good measure.

Despite selling way beyond expectations, at least on Green Man Gaming, For Honor has suffered like any other competitive game that is hard to learn, hard to master. It wasn’t helped by constant disconnects and lag, snowballing game modes and characters with abusable skills. Indeed, For Honor’s attempt at a break-out esports event was ruined back in August 2017 when the winner was accused of using an exploit to defeat his opponents. Not a great start for the game with so much potential.

Source – Steamcharts

Despite this, August saw the biggest spike in For Honor players since launch, reaching 11,359 concurrent players. Compare this to the previous month’s 1,941 peak, and you could argue that the pull of For Honor is still a strong one in the mind of the gaming world. We want it to work, we want it to be good. We want to be good.

A similar, and more successful tale is For Honor’s big brother, Rainbow Six: Siege. After a middling launch, it went through a similarly brief moment in the spotlight before variety streamers and gamers moved onto the next big thing. And yet, two years after release, it is regularly the most viewed FPS after Counter-Strike. RSS sees big tournament action, regular content updates and patches, and last month had an average player count of 68,796. If you look at the lifetime stats of RSS, it is a continuous upward trend, something that goes against everything we think about games. Normally a multiplayer game has a small window to smash onto the scene, or die. Lawbreakers, Paladins, and many others didn’t make the cut.

Source – Steamcharts

Whilst For Honor hasn’t caught up with RSS, it’s numbers have been creeping up in the last few months. Both games have the chance to be successful because they have a unique prospect for gamers. Where else can you abseil down a building with your mates, knock out the wall with your sledgehammer, work through the rooms taking out terrorists with myriad gadgets and weaponry? The same goes with For Honor, just how many other games give you mastery over medieval melee combat?

Whilst For Honor’s esports scene is limited, as the character’s move-sets are not extensive enough to offer Street Fighter levels of god-like performance, it also means that you, average gamer, can get relatively good at For Honor much faster than Street Fighter. Blocking damage is about reflexes, not so much skill, so take a heavy character and you’ll survive a long time in a fight. Take a shield and it’s even easier. From there you can start attacking and testing out combos, and there’s only a few combos you’ll need to know to start with. And they’re normally ‘left click, left click, right click’ or similar. Then you can start looking at parrying, guard blocks, knocking people off terrain and character’s special moves. It reminds me more of a game of tennis, trading blows and adding in a bit of misdirection and moves to get an edge.

I’ve been playing For Honor for about a month, and it is the almost chess-like approach, combined with massive swords and cool viking characters (I’m also currently binge-watching the series Vikings), that keeps me coming back. I don’t normally like 1v1 PvP but in For Honor I don’t feel overwhelmed, and I know that I’ll be rewarded for picking a favourite character and really mastering them. I like how each character is very different and shows the personality of the player. I’m sticking with the Raider (the big axe-wielding viking) because I find her strong and I know the move-set, but I’m also gravitating towards the shaman – a quick and feral viking who jumps on people and spins her hand-axe and knife around. It’s like trying to master a character you like in League of Legends, but much easier and actually fun. Losing, so far, hasn’t felt unfair. I just want to get better.

The awesome Viking Shaman.

So what is the future for For Honor, and is it a success for Ubisoft? The latter question entirely relies on what Ubisoft consider a success, but if they look at this and Rainbow Six: Siege as carving out unique segments of the gaming scene, I think they’ve done very well. They offer experiences that no other developer is offering, and The Division and The Crew shows that they’re committed to that even if it doesn’t go so well. Let EA and Activision do the war shooters that practically feel the same, I’m glad someone with the resources to improve and support their games over time is offering titles like For Honor and Rainbow Six.

As for the future of For Honor, Ubisoft will continue to bring more content and more seasons to the small but passionate community. And I like the community. This is coming from a community manager, too. There are players who, above all else, crave honour in their game of…For Honor. They are the edgelords in their trench coats who will offer to 1v1 anyone who complains about perceived balance issues; they’ll wait for their ally to finish their duel before interfering in 2v2; and they’ll avoid the most unbalanced characters. It reminds me of the Starcraft community, that respect and sportsmanship is very hard to find in the more popular multiplayer and free-to-play games.

So pick it up if you want, and come 1v1 bro over in the community if you have any comments.

Every Far Cry Ranked From Worst to Best (Updated)

Update: Far Cry 5 is available for preload today, so get it downloaded as soon as you can and then let us know where it fits in the series!

Far Cry 5 is approaching with deadly momentum, so before we look forwards to the future of the Far Cry series it’s time to first look back, back over where we’ve been.

The next step in the Far Cry universe will take us to deadly Montana, home to the most dangerous prey: Americans. And also you’ll get a dog so frankly, this game is looking 10/10 in my view.

But we cannot understand where we’re going until we know where we’ve been, I’m pretty sure I read that on the back of a cereal box once. So let us look back, back into the deep mists of time to say ‘which of the Far Cry games is the best’.

NOTE this is entirely subjective and should not be taken as fact, by anyone. Except in the comments.

Far Cry

The first Far Cry game set out the rough idea for most of the games that followed, open world elements, islands, guns, outposts, blam blam, you’re dead.

The problem with the first Far Cry is the same problem that the first Crysis had, which isn’t surprising given that they’re made by the same company. Both games are great! Until the aliens/mutants turn up.

In Crysis it’s the aliens who ruin the party, in Far Cry it’s mutants. The whole game is great up until that point and then in they come, like angry boars made of mutagens to ruin your fun. They’re just not engaging enemies, they’re bullet sponges and they throw out a lot of the tactics you’ve built up over the preceding half a game in order to become a worse version of itself.

So if you’re going to play Far Cry, and you should, just be prepared that there will be a point when the fun might dry up.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

This is a game I just didn’t get along with, entirely for tonal reasons. It shares mechanics with Far Cry 3 – a game I unabashedly love (and you’ll read more on that in a moment), but the ‘jokes’ in Blood Dragon entirely fell flat for me.

Take the tutorial for example; it starts off with a ‘joke’ that making players look around and jump to pass a tutorial is stupid, everyone knows how to do that.

Then it makes you look around and jump to pass the tutorial.

From the get-go the game’s sense of humour drove me up the wall, and that’s the reason its so low on this list. The rest of it is a weird mix of nostalgia and bombastic pseudo-80s themes, and neither of those works for me. So I had to give up on it, which is a shame cos I thought I could always use more Far Cry 3.

tl:dr, it’s the Ready Player One of videogames, references with no context or thought, just HEY REMEMBER THE 80s? the videogame. No ta.

Far Cry 4

Far Cry 4 did what I wanted from it, it saw a lot of the stuff that Far Cry 3 did wrong and then did better. It also moved the location of the game to an absolutely beautiful place, up in the Himalayas, and made vertical movement easier and more fun.

So why didn’t I like it so much?

Easy, it also added a load of new features which just soured the mix a little. For example there’s a tonne of new mission types, such as one where you have to sneak into encampments and deal with guards without alerting anyone in order to free hostages. Get caught, and the hostages might die.

Which is fine on the face of it, stealth is a great part of the Far Cry mix, but part of what I love about the Far Cry games is that it gives you tools to deal with things that go wrong. These missions, and missions like them, ruin that for me.

Added to that there’s a load of enemies which just aren’t fun to fight, they can go invisible and stealth around and throw knives at you and I ain’t got time for that, I wanna shoot a tiger, yo!

Far Cry Primal

Otherwise known as ‘the one with the cavemen’, this was a surprise. Mainly because it was so good, it got rid of most of the ranged weapons and focused on your interactions with the animal world, and your interactions with SPEAR vs CAVEMAN.

It’s really good! Shunned by most as ‘not a real Far Cry game’, it actually does ‘systemic playground’ better than most of the others in the series.

Also you get an owl that acts as magic binoculars, and any game that lets you peer through the mystic owl has to be worth the price of entry, right?

Far Cry 2

Otherwise known as ‘the one with all the malaria’. Created by legendary game designer Clint Hocking, it’s hard to overstate how impressive this was as a sequel to the original Far Cry. Especially as this isn’t how the narrative is supposed to go, game name gets bought by big company, sequel gets made without original team and then…game vastly surpasses the original in every way? Huh?

With a huge open world to play in and a compelling narrative about post-colonialism, Far Cry 2 is definitely the best Far Cry game.

APART FROM

Far Cry 3

Jason Brody is a dick.

I’m saying that because it’s probably the first thing you think of when this game gets brought up. Jason Brody is an absolute twat, and that’s why I love this game so very, very much.

See it’s an odd thing to have a game protagonist be an arsehole, but Jason Brody is one, but throughout the game he evolves from arsehole into ‘psychopath’. A normal FPS will have you gun down a million people and shrug it off, Jason Brody learns to revel in it, he exults in murder and never stops to wonder what he’s become. But his friends, his brutalised, kidnapped friends, do notice. There’s a moment where you rescue Jason Brody’s girlfriend and he just starts celebrating at the wild ride they’ve taken, and the massive shootout you just participated in. And she freaks out, because WHAT THE FUCK JASON?

It’s a wonderful moment, and frankly one that more games should pay attention to.

Also tied into that is the utterly beautiful open world, the best bad-guy ever (hello Vaas), and the fun-but-stupid upgrade system (I need a shark skin to hold all my cash), Far Cry 3’s my favourite.

So there you go, definitive proof from me, chief Green Man Gaming opinion-haver. Far Cry 3 is brilliant. Will Far Cry 5 be better? Pick it up now and find out next week!

Embrace Madness in the March Madness Sale! [Mystery hints included]

March Madness at Green Man Gaming continues! This means two things: 1) it’s March, and 2) we’ve got a mad sale going on at Green Man Gaming.

The whole month we’re selling you amazing games at prices that probably won’t make us any money, and that means one thing: CHEAP GAMES.

We’ve got huge discounts hitting up the biggest games, the smallest indie hits, and everything in between. But that’s not just it, this isn’t your grandfather’s sale, this isn’t the sale of yesterday, this ain’t no dull voucher; this is the March Madness and we’ve got lots of mystery prices (only seen in the basket) on top of our mad deals!  Here’s how it all works:

What’s so Mad About this March Madness?

It’s coming to you in two ways.

  1. Every day we’re hitting you up with new deals, so day one you’ll see some offers on our Hot Deals page, day two there’ll be more, then day three even more. This means every day this month you should be heading back to see just exactly what we’ve got for you.
  2. The other is…mystery prices! These flash mystery prices could last 24 hours so act quick if you want the game.

We’re even doing franchise and publisher sales, so if you love one particular publisher, make sure you keep checking to see if your favourite is on sale.

What on Earth is a Mystery Price?

It works like this:

  1. Sign into your Green Man Gaming account (or if you don’t have one, make one already!).
  2. Add a game to your basket
  3. Watch as the discount on the game gets better…right in your basket!

So you’ll never know which games are going to secretly have a better deal, you’ll have to check back daily and frequently!

Can You Give us Any Hints About Which Games Will be Getting Mystery Prices?

Possibly…something to do with the number eight…and maybe something to do with big nude babies that like to eat people? Does that help?

Head over to our March Madness page now…and embrace the madness!

Top 10 Games With Left-Wing Themes

According to an opinion piece on The Guardian videogames have an ideology problem. They are recruiting grounds for far-right groups and are filled with themes which centre around xenophobia, racism, sexism, and worse.

Firstly lets get this out there: there is a notable toxicity issue around videogames and many videogames have troublesome elements in them or issues with representation. But it’s important to remember that the art a culture produces is often a reflection of that culture; they’re symptoms of our society not the cause. In addition to that, recently many strides have been taken to analyse games, to talk about the troublesome elements, and to be more inclusive. It’s becoming more and more apparent and accepted that videogames can be made by anyone, can be for anyone, and can include anyone.

The battle to make games open to everyone isn’t over, but it’s ongoing and more and more games reflect the huge spectrum of people who love them and love to make them.

To counterbalance this article which talks solely about the far-right in videogames, here’s the top 10 Videogames with Left-Wing Themes.

Hate mail to the usual place please.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

The game is about uniting a proletariat workforce in order to smack a far-right government with a big hammer and the main colour is red. You don’t need any further description than that.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game where big business is the bad guy. Through the Deus Ex series the themes are about anti-authoritarianism, but in Human Revolution it’s the corporations which are the source of that authority.

Throughout the game you’re confronted with the poor, the downtrodden, those who’ve had limb replacements but can’t afford the expensive drugs that’ll stop cybernetic rejection.

If you come out of Deus Ex: Human Revolution thinking ‘unrestrained capitalism sure sounds great’ then maybe play it again and pay attention to a lot of the side stories and the world building.

Wolfenstein

These games are about one thing, giving Nazis a damn good thrashing.

Let’s remember Nazis getting a damn good thrashing with one of their promotional tweets:

https://twitter.com/wolfenstein/status/919684333207568385?lang=en

Civilization VI

A lot of what makes up the Civilization games is that they aren’t explicitly for or against anything, they are an attempt to model a very complex thing (history) and show you the outcomes.

So in Civilization VI you can be a Communist government, and that’s just fine. It gives you some defensive boosts and production boosts, but it’s entirely workable depending on how you want to play your civilisation.

So go ahead comrade, rise up.

Bioshock

Andrew Ryan: “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? “No,” says the man in Washington, “it belongs to the poor.” “No,” says the man in the Vatican, “it belongs to God.” “No,” says the man in Moscow, “it belongs to everyone.” I rejected those answers.”

Mate, after seeing Rapture, maybe you should’ve embraced some of those answers. Maybe, just maybe, working for the good of your fellow humans is a not terrible idea? Have a think yeah? After your game of golf, of course.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Whilst this game is, on the face of it, about militarisation and standing firm against an outside threat (something that on the surface of it seems a far-right wet dream) the true story of XCOM is about inclusivity and unity.

As the commander, you build your XCOM forces from a diverse and wide range of people. White people fight alongside black people, women fight alongside men. Even if it’s an outside threat that’s caused it, the people of the Earth come together as never before to stand against the alien menace.

XCOM teaches that when all of us are on the line, what divides us doesn’t matter, it’s what unites that which does.

Mirror’s Edge

Similar to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the bad guy in this game is corporations that are meddling in our lives, using our lives up, and spitting us out.

Basically big business wants to shut down the small independent retailer, and as one of those retailers who sells your ability to run real fast, it’s up to you to stop them. By running real fast.

Doom

‘But Alex’ you say ‘this game is apolitical, it’s just a fun time shooting demons’.

But where did those demons come from. Hell? Yes, but they wouldn’t be *here* if it wasn’t for corporations chasing the almighty dollar at any cost. If they’d maybe stop and think about social responsibility for a second instead of their next buck, we wouldn’t be dealing with a demonic invasion right about now.

Eco

Something bad is coming, and it’s up to you and those like you to work together and save the world from the incoming apocalypse. However, there’s no point ruining the world in order to save it.

In Eco you work together to achieve a bigger goal, and you do it in a responsible way.

Overwatch

Featuring a diverse cast of characters whose backstories are becoming more complex, human, and representative, and with a storyline that subtly criticises big business while emphasising the UN and organisations that bring us together, Overwatch is pretty left-leaning.

The fan reaction to Overwatch has also been wonderful, with fan art, comics, and stories expanding on the universe, and it’s great to see Blizzard lean into this and improve on their already quite inclusive cast with even more characters that represent the huge variety of people who love games.

There you go, ten games which contain Left-Wing themes. Have I missed any? Hit me up in the comments!