The Banner Saga 2 might end up being the most surprising game I play in 2016. My reaction to the first was decidedly mixed, and somewhat tepid even in the best of places, so I’m downright astounded that the sequel has leapt straight onto my list of contenders for Game Of The Year.
Specifically the Paris level, as Sapienza isn’t out until later this month.
Hitman is receiving a bit of a drubbing in its Steam reviews. It seems people are upset about the fact that its online and offline play modes are segregated, with different saves for each and a game system that will somewhat over-zealously yank you back into the menu whenever you lose connection. And I can definitely see how this would be annoying if you have a poor connection, although it’s not like Hitman takes the infinitely-worse step of forbidding offline play entirely. People also seem to be a little upset about this new Hitman’s episodic structure whereby it’s been split up into chunks of game consisting (essentially) of a single level; this first episode consists of two training levels plus the Paris Showstopper mission, and has no doubt been shoved online in order to fund the development of subsequent episodes. I’m a little less empathetic about this complaint, however; since each Hitman level is entirely standalone an episodic structure could definitely work, and so all it has to do to succeed in my book is to provide enough content per episode to justify the asking price.
So: is episode one of Hitman worth £12?
The headline “Why The Division isn’t Destiny for the PC” edrew hollow chuckles from me when I read it the other day. Because it is. It totally is, and trying to pretend otherwise by implementing some nebulously misguided quality standards as a bar separating the two is simple overcontortion of an argument to generate inevitably clickbait-y column inches.
So-called “Remastered” editions of classic games have been very much the in thing for the last few years, this being a relatively low-effort way to get money for old rope. That the remasters often turn out to somehow be worse than the originals, either through technical issues (Age Of Empires 2, Homeworld) or because they completely miss the point of what made the original games great (the Monkey Island remasters) hasn’t at all dissuaded developers from their efforts to tap directly into gamers’ nostalgia glands, and so now it is Day Of The Tentacle’s turn to be disinterred, spruced up a little bit and rudely thrust back into the limelight.
Grim Dawn is an indie ARPG that’s fresh off the Early Access train. I had… well, I’m not exactly going to call them high hopes, but at least a reasonable expectation that Grim Dawn wouldn’t suck, as developers Crate Entertainment were formed from the remnants of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore1, and Titan Quest is pretty well regarded as far as ARPGs go. As usual with ARPGs I roped in my usual co-op partner Kenti to play through the campaign with me. The good news is that we had absolutely no problems with the netcode; after a year in Early Access Grim Dawn’s co-op is solid as a rock. The bad news is, unfortunately, everything else.
