PC • Every once in a while, I’m bum-rushed by a seriously polydactyl concept, one that presses all the buttons. Tempest Citadel is this month’s most fabulous of ambushes. Science fantasy. Offworld expedition. ALIENS meets Milton. Dante’s Bespin. Aartform Games, the tiny outfit behind Spice Road, is dropping Tempest Citadel in a few hours on Steam, and it looks very, very intriguing.
PS4, PS Vita, Switch • Biggles Defends The Arcade – by Captain W.E. Johns and Infinite State Games. If you’re rocking one of those Switchy things, or a PS4, or the Mark Hensby of Sony handhelds, you’re in for a treat. Especially if the Brewster Buffalo appeals. Rogue Aces has landed.
PS4, PS Vita, Nintendo Switch • It’s time to stop pushing Dogfight into that old BBC Micro. Care of Infinite State Games, those scalliwags behind Don’t Die Mr Robot and Fruitorius, Rogue Aces is hitting Switch, PS4 and Vita on April 12th. Let David Caruso and The Who take you to the next level, from Achtung! Spitfire to Ack-fun Spi-…just read on.
PC • Radvaĭ se, Vauxhall Viva fans and the confraternity of the Nissan Cedric Special! MinskWorks‘ Jalopy has left the detritus-strewn garage of Early Access and is now travelling the Eastern Bloc highways of a one-point-zero release! Put the State in your Stately Play car game of 2018. Read on!
PC • Nothing turns the alternator of mid-life assessment more than realising you’re no longer at the top of your game-game. Nerves withering like sun-dried kelp. Reaction time raising smirks and eyebrows in the Galapagos paddock. The abyss, it looms. But then along comes the invigorating cordite suppository known as SYNTHETIK. Sometimes, you just need a little help to feel the old magic.
Trespasser: Jurassic Park is such an outrageously fantastic game. It’s as much a primeval, primordial walking sim as it is a survival-lite FPS, served on a revolutionary bed of fully-realised physics. It has wonderful environmental story-telling; audiologs and internal monologues that don’t strain atmosphere. It offers a natural sense of physicality. Hell, it did the two-weapon limit before Halo. Trespasser: Jurassic Park is also a broken, under-baked mess. Twenty years on, there hasn’t really been a game quite like Trespasser. There have been games better than it in some of its aspirations, but DreamWorks Interactive’s ungainly opus is more than the sum of its oft-busted parts. What follows is a record of certain events in which I took part between the years 1980 and 1997, on an island I will call Site B – Hammond
PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One • Everyone is kickstarting something these days. You, me, this guy. But King Art Games are crowd-funding something rather special; an RTS based on the fire-and-steel pulp of Jakub Różalski‘s 1920+ world [This is the same setting you’ll find in the board game Scythe, as well as its upcoming digital port. -ed.]. Think pot-bellied, soot-blasting mechanica. Cast-iron monstrosities a continuation of Victorian pomp and Edwardian arms development. The Iron Harvest is upon us.
PC/Mac/Linux • [Today we’re starting a new type of article that looks at older games we never got around to looking at when they were still new and shiny. Not sure how regular they’ll be, but will erupt occasionally when one of the writers get an itch to write about an older game. It happens more than you’d think. Writers getting itches, that is. We have an unguent, but it’s expensive. -ed.] The future used to be something to look forward to. Detective Daniel Lazarski, likeness and voice provided by Rutger Hauer, is tasked with solving a series of grisly murders in future Poland. There’s something amiss in this socially-stratified place, and nothing is quite as it seems. Cue intrigue.
PC • We’ve been pulling on the same pair of jeans for twenty five-odd years when it comes to space empire builders. The comfortable fit of a SimTex stonewash is time-tested, and its reliable density drags all and sundry towards the event horizon. As such, you wouldn’t be alone in feeling a wee twig of ennui towards the galactic overlord genre. The outliers are few, but one new tantalising project is tilting at trading the star lane traipse for something different. A little more, ahem, stately. [Dave, take note. This is how we use the word “stately”. -ed.]
[Right around New Year’s, I’d asked all the writers to pen something about games they’re looking forward to in 2018. I had assumed one or two from everyone, which would lead to a single article with everyone’s picks and that would be it. Instead, each writer sent me a bevy of games making me realize that one article probably wouldn’t cut it. Hey, I love 4000 word articles as much as the next guy, but it’s easy for games to get lost in something that vast. So, I decided to split it all up and give each member of the Stately Staff their own day to shine. Today, Alex. -ed.]