Fray Preview: The Cyberpunk Strategy Game
By Steve BurkeI found myself surrounded by baleful megacorporations, each hell-bent on commanding the eternal subservience of lowly "users" worldwide -- a world enshrouded in darkness and soiled by the sins of consumerism, blood, and meritocratic ideology.
Then I started up Fray.
Dystopian societies have long been a fascination among gamers with piqued interests in the future of technology, politics, and their eventual intermingling; there's something morbidly entertaining about a future where capitalism reigns weightily, using its exploitative methodologies and gains of questionable sources to re-educate and optimize the citizenry for a lifetime of drone-like labor (wait - did I say "future?"). Taking to the streets isn't an option -- no, there are far too many cameras and "citizen protection forces" afoot. If action is to be taken in a cyberpunk setting, it must be done digitally and through use of technological loopholes. They can put guards on every corner, but cumbersome megacorps can never keep up with skilled hackers (queue Sam Flynn on lightcycle).
Oil Rush is developed by Unigine Corp. and is self-described as "a real-time naval strategy game based on group control that combines strategic challenge of classic RTS with sheer fun of Tower Defense, and features state-of-an-art visuals." What a mouthful. You may have heard of their Heaven benchmark utility, which is fairly well-known in the benchmarking realm and has outstanding visuals.
The game takes place in a flooded world -- everyone lives on boats and the only currency, aside from bullets, is oil. The story goes that you are a unified group of people trying to fend off and destroy oil-rig-pilfering pirates. Battles take place on, you guessed it, a giant ocean that is spotted with oil rigs and unit-producing structures.
Let's delve into the specifics.
It's been a very long time since I could say this, but there is FINALLY another good Sonic game out. SEGA has been pushing 3D crap with Sonic out for years, instead of staying true to the roots of the series and keeping him in a 2D platform setting that makes sense to the playstyle.
Sonic CD brings back the original game in all of its 2D glory, and I must say the few visual enhancements that were made really helped to set the game apart. Your best moments will feature a “future” sign post flipped instead of “past” (much like the old flags that you had to hit to get the secret stages), reverting the visuals from the old style to an updated, futuristic look. Everything looks shiny and new -- even Sonic gets a bit gussied up for the occasion.

Man, do I ever remember the days I spent in front of my Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis playing games like Earthworm Jim, Aladdin, and Zelda: A Link to the Past. The games were complex, the stories riveting (at least, to an 8 year old with a small attention span), and the music, well, let's just not talk about game music from that era. Guardian Heroes, developed by Treasure, was one of those classic titles that no one really thought would get a makeover. Well, it did, and one that truly improved upon an already-great game. This 2D hack-and-slash side-scroller provided a unique storyline full of choices and consequences.
Mmm, contrast.
You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby, right round, round, round...
How many times have you wondered how much more fun something would be if a hell of a lot more spinning was involved? Well, like most people, the answer is probably not that many times, but that doesn't mean that Dancing Dots doesn't want you to think about that kind of stuff: cue Rotastic, a charming, colourful, and slightly mad puzzle game where the main objective is to grab onto little pegs with your rope, spin around in circles and attempt to collect as many gems and other objects as you can along the way. The more gems you manage to collect, the higher your score is going to be, the higher score you manage to get, the bigger and better helmet you'll attain when the level finishes. We all know what it means if you've got the biggest helmet...
“So I have to go and do some 'Renegade Ops' 'Just Cause' you told me to ?!?” - Bwahahahaha!! I crack myself up!
When you hear the title Renegade Ops you don't really know what you're letting yourself in for, you'll probably assume that you're going to be playing some kind of military-based game that focuses on the concept of revenge more than anything else, and you wouldn't be too far off. What you won't be expecting from a title like that is one of the best twin stick shooters on the market today; and that's exactly what Renegade Ops is.
It has been a very long time since I played a game that I absolutely regretted touching (Pam Anderson’s V.I.P, I’m still ashamed of this), and while Honor in Vengeance II, developed by Michael Arts, isn't shameful to play (as Faery: Legends of Avalon might be), neither is it something to be considered 'constructive.'
As a fan of the 2D platformer genre -- home to such great titles such as Sonic, Mario, and Splosion Man -- I was thrilled when asked to do a review of Slak Games’ Mechanic Infantry. It starts out extremely entertaining, but soon loses its appeal through curse of repetition, repetition, and repetition.
Six pieces of underwear? At the same time?!? Imagine the chafing!!
Imagine a world where if you put the wrong underwear on, or put on too much underwear, the whole world would be invaded by part-machine, part-orc ("Cyborques") creatures from gods only know where. Well, that's the terrible fact that DeathSpank awoke to discover one morning after a brief stint of boredom. The Baconing follows Hothead Games' hilarious entries into the DeathSpank series of games (DeathSpank and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue), catching up with a DeathSpank that's seriously in need of something to do after all that justice delivery he's been up to. Players are given the task, once again, of hacking and questing their way to the ultimate showdown with the Anti-Spank. Nothing could possibly go wrong...right?
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