Recent reviews by Murray

Warning: Consumption of this game may cause the following:
- Laughter
- Getting meme'd on
- Them feels
- Freaking out

Consult gamers before use. (That would be me. Just buy it already.)

Full disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter and I've played during the beta.

Wasteland 2 may look a bit iffy on the graphics end and there are some bugs that haven't been fixed yet (although I haven't seen anything gamebreaking yet) but quality can be found in just about everything else.

This game is basically made for anyone who was a big fan of the old Fallout games (1 and 2) and possibly the first Wasteland game that came out in 1988. You take the role of four desert rangers who have been tasked with traveling to different areas in Arizona to help people in need in a world where nuclear war has taken place and is now... well, a Wasteland. The world is ridden with radioactivity, punks, fanatics, cyborgs, the list goes on.

Wasteland 2 is a roleplaying turn-based strategy game. You have the ability to move about as either a group or split your team members up for tactical advantages. For example, mabye one of your team members is a sniper and you want that person to stay behind and pick off the enemies while your mid to close range characters take the front line. Be careful though since this game has friendly fire.

As you start you get to create your four characters in a typical roleplaying game fashion. Place stats, choose skills, names, looks, etc. It can be very tricky to pick the right skills for each character because there are many skills to choose from and you won't be able to pick them all and still be able to use them all effectively since there won't be enough points for you to distribute for such a run. You will quickly notice that there are occasional obstacles that will require a quite high level in whatever skill is needed.

One of my favourite aspects of Wasteland 2 is the text that is constantly being displayed in the lower right corner of the screen. Just like in the Fallout games, it details your surroundings, people you meet, objects, etc, just as if it was being told by a very witty game master in a pen-and-paper roleplaying game. Wasteland 2 has lots of black comedy, and I'm a sucker for comedy in games. I generally don't read most flavour text in video games, but in Wasteland 2 I'm willing to make an exception.

All in all, I'm glad to see that Wasteland 2 turned out the way it did because it proves that Kickstarter can work as long as you crowdfund the right projects. Anyone who played the older Fallout games or Wasteland 1 will most likely be very happy to play this. I would go as far as to call this the real Fallout 3.

GOTY 2014.

If it weren't for the fact that Wasteland 2 is coming out this year, I'd pick Shovel Knight for GOTY 2014.

Some people may experience problems if they're using keyboard and mouse. I've also heard reports of unwarranted VAC bans. However, I played a couple of hours yesterday and the game seems to work fine for me. I recommend using a 360 USB controller or somesuch though.

Compared to the PC version of Dark Souls 1, this game is much better in terms of its PC port. You have a lot more graphics options, the resolution is supported up to and including 1440p, the keys are rebindable, the game has upped the texture quality substantially and FPS maxes out at 60. Even lesser computers seem to run this game fine.

I've played the Souls games a lot, including Demon's Souls. I've got over 100 hours played of the PS3 version of Dark Souls 2 and despite earlier fears of comments from From Software that the game would be more accessible (ie more casual) the game is actually still rock hard and even if you think you know every nook and cranny of the previous Souls games, this game still throws a lot of new challanges at you. You will still die. A lot.

One of the gripes I had with the game was that despite it reportedly having 40 bosses, most of them are just humanoid-shaped dudes, brandishing some form of sword and shield combination. Some boss battles are really inventive however and I would despite aformentioned gripe, wholeheartedly recommend Dark Souls 2 to anyone in need of a proper challenge.

This game is pretty much the Airplane of the video game industry.

I have to admit, I was a bit worried for a while. Kickstarter seemed to bring more poor quality content for a while and some projects were complete failures. I even got worried about Broken Age, given that Double Fine ran out of money. Now, they're not out of the woods yet but having finished the first part made me hopeful to say the least.

Tim Schafer is still the master of point-and-click adventure games, as proven by this game. The difficulty is significantly lowered compared to the stuff he used to make but I'm guessing that's an intentional change made to keep more players playing until the end instead of giving up completely. People who used to play these games are likely to have much less free time nowadays so I think it's for the better.

Speaking as someone who played LucasArts adventure games ever since Mainac Mansion, I kind of miss the parsers they used to have because it meant you get some witty humour from looking at certain objects or attempting something that might not advance the story but at least you'd get a laugh from attempting something silly.

Since only part 1 is out at this point the game is also very short. It took me roughly four hours to finish. I'm peronally okay with the length though. It's a very enjoyable four hours. I enjoy the detail put in the scenery and the characters. Voice acting is great (yay for Jack Black!), good pacing. Slightly buggy interface though, sometimes the drag-and-drop doesn't work and sometimes some objects are drawn in front of others that shouldn't be. Also, Broken Age needs more humour. I like the jokes that are there but they're not nearly as frequent as back in the day.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game and the ending of part 1 made me eager to see how the story concludes.

Terraria in space - what's not to like?

Let's break it down:

Space ship - check
Multiple races - check
Mineral mining - very check
Upgrades - check
Boss fights - check
Multiple planets - check
Indigenous aliens - check
Asteroid belts - check
Multiple sectors - check
Boringness - not check

The second you get into Starbound, it becomes a time sink and you won't even notice until it's 5 A.M. in the morning.

Doesn't sound appealing? Read the first sentence again.