Half-Life 2 is a First Person Shooter game in which your goal is to help the resistance fight off the controlling forces that took over the world after the events of Half-Life 1. Just like the first game, Half-Life 2 has excelled to a point where its place in history is set to stone as one of the best games ever made.
Moving can be challenging when done right!
The gameplay mechanic is very simple and no different from the first game. You control your character around the world and have to eliminate the challenges by shooting at them and solving puzzles. Nothing extraordinarily original, but just like the first game, what lies underneath is nothing short from greatness. What really makes this game shine is how every challenge is created around the use of one or more mechanic, be it a weapon, movement or just interaction with the environment. And every subsequent challenge or puzzle will gradually increase in complexity and difficulty. When you get to feel comfortable with one mechanic the game will throw something new at you. In particular the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator (also know as Gravity Gun) play a big role, but that is just because it is not your regular shooting weapon, which opens a lot of possibilities that were very well used.
Half-Life 2 takes everything that worked well in the first game and makes it better. Sound, voice over, scripted events, plot, graphics, you name it... Well, not the User Interface, that one had little improvement. Despite this minor set back Valve managed to intertwine all mechanics so well together that most games still have not figured out how to reproduce their successful formula. Although being just a shooter game, Half-Life 2 manages to be much more than just a shooter game.
Crown and Council is a turn based strategy game where your goal is to defeat all enemies in the board/world. Very casual, simple and quite relaxing, this game reminds us of table top board games.
14 Gold to spend, things are going well.
The gameplay is simple, during your turn you can attack and build. Each action requires gold, each conquered space gives +1 gold per turn by default. The more spaces you own, the stronger your turn is. You can attack adjacent or remote locations, if the target is fortified you might have to attack multiple times in order to conquer it. You can build fortification in a owned location or two kinds of resource producing buildings: Villages that will increase earnings in +1 gold per turn, or universities that will allow you to upgrade your actions to become more efficient.
Unfortunately this upgrade mechanic is a good idea but not quite balanced, as it is the most expensive building, takes many turns to pay off and the effectiveness is neglectable compared to increasing your gold per turn. As you can see in the image above, conquering 6 locations to receive +6 gold the next turn at the same time we are denying those locations of our enemies is a much more competitive strategy. There is also stuff that you can do but have to use the "secret debug mode", like accessing the local multiplayer, which makes the game feel unpolished. Check an online guide and you should be fine.
Map generation underway.
Despite this problems, everything else is in the right place. There are random events that might make you loose a building or even a location, but they won't save you from defeat or give you the victory. All maps are randomly generated so you can play as many times as you desire.
Overall is an interesting game that can be entertaining for couple hours before you start beating the AI every match. There is plenty of room for improvement, like proper menu, instructions, match customization options and even an online multiplayer would be great. But given it is a free game we would recommend trying it out as an exercise that even the simplest mechanic can be enjoyable.
Goat Simulator is a third person simulation game where your goal is to embody a goat and wreck havoc all around. It is a very simple game that comes packed with humor and references, which sets the tone for the whole experience. The launch trailer itself was a parody from the Dead Island trailer, a zombie shooter game that has absolutely nothing to do with goats.
Try licking a moving car.
The gameplay mechanic is straight forward, you can walk around, jump, headbutt/kick, scream and lick. Licking is what really glues everything together. Your goat tongue has such magical properties that anything that you lick will be instantly glued to it. Since physics play an important role in the game (after all, it is a simulator), if you lick a moving object you will remember very quickly the meaning of inertia! This also doubles as a funny factor, when you have no control what so ever of your goat and it just goes around destroying things in its path.
DJ flying by!
Throughout your exploration and adventuring you will find peculiar objects that will "enhance" your goat skills somehow. They are called Mutators, and each one gives you some special ability. You can summon goats from thin air, you can have a powerful dragon shout, you can play music, just to mention some of our favorites. If you know where to find or how to acquire theses special powers, you can combine them however you want... Be ready for some crazy combinations!
Despite it simplicity Goat Simulator can offer hours of fun and entertainment. The whole game is made out of a parody of games themselves, but there is no need to have ever played any game to have fun with Goat Simulator. There is also a 4 player co-op option, which increases even more of the amount of silly and hilarious combinations the players can come up with. Definitely a game that you have friends over to laugh uncontrollably for no other reason than just watching a goat do stuff.
Final Score: 8 out of 10.
As an extra, we would like to leave the DLC teaser trailer, as we believe it represents a good measure of the kind of humor the game focus on:
The Division is a third person cover shooter game, because unlike your regular "walking Rambo shooter", if you are not under cover, you will be dead in a second. What makes this game unique is that Ubisoft tried to mix some "RPG" elements, like skill trees, character attributes, weapon bonuses and control conditions into the game. We like to see it as a mix of Gears of War, Diablo and Borderlands blended together.
Gear bonuses
As any shooter game, this one has an immense arsenal at your disposal, each weapon having their own characteristics, so we definitely recommend trying them all out. But most importantly is the bonuses they carry. As we mentioned this game is heavily weighted on loot, which means that when you get to drop/craft that one weapon you were looking for, chances of it having the matching bonuses for your build are very, very low. They do allow you to re-roll one of them, but just one. It would be really nice to be able to
Incendiary grenade
have two equal weapons and transfer a bonus from one to the other, since loot is individual and there is no way to trade items, you still would have to farm your equipment. An important additional tool of your arsenal are grenades. They are a reliable source to disable your opponent. Flashbang will blind, incendiary grenade will burn and so on, all of them stunning your opponent for a couple seconds.
White line shows cover pathfinding.
The second most important mechanic is finding cover. Enemies do an enormous amount of damage, so you will always be looking for a way to protect yourself until the right moment to come out and shoot. To make things more exciting you can even aim for a specific cover and the game will pathfind a route to it. Interesting additional mechanic is if an enemy is peaking at you through cover and you hit a bullet right in front of him (in the cover itself, like the wall or barricade), the smoke and fragments will blind him for a couple seconds, giving you just enough time to reposition yourself or close in for the kill.
Inventory and Character Attributes
Finally we have character attributes, skills, talents and perks. Character attributes are simple, you have just three: Firearms (your damage), Stamina (your health) and Electronics (your skill power). All your gear will enhance at least one of this, and you can combine them as you see fit. There are 9 skills and 3 "super powers", you can have 2 skills + 1 "super power" equipped at the same time. Each skill has 3 modifications that will change it in some way, and we recommend exploring each one at least once. Perks are simple passive buffs and talents are somewhat "active" buffs. More precisely a talent has certain conditions (like getting to cover or shooting your enemy on the head), if you meet the condition you will receive the talents buff for a short time.
Dying in the Dark Zone
Last, but not least, we have to briefly talk about the Dark Zone, the end-game area of the map where the game becomes truly multiplayer with extra hardened enemies and the best gear in the game. The Dark Zone has exclusive mechanics that we could spend a whole post writing about, so in short: The Dark Zone has it's own ranking system, currency and contaminated loot that needs to be extracted in specific locations before you can use it. That is where the player killers will hunt you and try to steal your hard earned loot. Respawning, looting and specially killing other players is something that definitely could have used some more development iteration, as there is barely enough time to come back and get your loot and revenge. Which is the best part of this whole system.
We also feel that this mix of on-line/off-line didn't quite work the best. The world doesn't really feel as multiplayer as a single-player game with friends, despite being clearly focused on multiplayer. But if you are in for the single-player only you will be missing a good portion of the end-game. Overall The Division has a well paced experience with a reasonable balanced shooting/cover system. A positive point to the great environment artists that gave life to a very realistic trashed looking New York City.
Grim Fandango is a point-and-click puzzle game in which your goal is to solve the puzzles in order to continue the story line. Immersed in the after-life world of Mexican culture, there is plenty to be enjoyed in this remake of an old favorite.
Unfortunately there is nothing special about the mechanic of this kind of game: you have to move around the scene and interact with different objects in the right order so you can progress the story, solving the puzzles as they come by. You can either interact with something or observe/question something, and believe us, you better use both constantly!
This game has an amazing cultural theme, great voice over, plenty of funny bits and, compared to Broken Age, way more difficult puzzles! If you like this kind of game it is definitely a must.
