The Devpit

The worst thing about Shogun 2 is the lack of Ezo on the map. What’s the point of taking over japan if I can’t have my favourite island? Only slightly smaller than Ireland and with a fairly cool climate it’s a home away from home. Anyway, yes I’ve been playing Shogun 2. It's my first foray into the Total War series.

Shogun 2 is set in the sengoku period. The shogunate has grown weak. The daimyos have grown ambitious and the farmers are getting uppity. Into this mess you come as a clan of Japan’s finest, your eyes set on Kyoto and the shogun’s hat. Shogun 2 has two fields of battle. The first, and most obvious, is the real time pitched battles conducted by armies of samurai and peasant ashigaru. The second, and more interesting to my mind, is the turn based map where you direct the flow or armies, agents and economies. You live or die by the sword but without the coin from trade and taxes there’ll be only sword for dinner. So how was it?

"Daring intervention by unknown military forces in the United States prevents alien abductions."

The bit I love most about the new XCOM is undoubtedly the news ticker in the control room. Headlines like the above stream constantly, giving the world's reaction to your battles and the ongoing alien situation. Small touches like that bring you into the game world and make it feel alive. They're even enough to make you forgive XCOM's flaws. What flaws? Find out by clicking the continue button.

What to say of refuse? It is inevitable and ineffable. It is the closure of the universe. It is the focus of Deponia.



But is it any good? Well I found out inside.

You know what's terrible? What's terrible? Why a terrible of course!

You know what else was terrible? Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Apparently he only did it so he could make Frankenweenie. That sounds terribly delicious. But where was I? Oh yes falling into Alice: Madness Returns



Now, I never played American McGee's Alice but I understand it was quite the mad thing. I picked up Madness Returns as a relative outsider. Steam inspires that madness. Buy games! It says. What games? I ask. Games on Sale! it yells. But what games? I cry and then it takes my wallet. But it's fair to say this time Steam left a bundle of joy. At its base Madness Comes Back it's a 3d platformer. You stab the peoples, jump the platforms and explode the tea. All regular, normal things. What's in it is the wonderful visuals and the mad romp through Alice's life, or what's left of it. Come down the rabbit hole but watch out for spoilers.

Warlocks are pretty metal.

I've had Warlock: MAster of the Arcane for a couple of months now and it just keeps getting better. Patch 1.4 introduced terraforming and there's nothing like collapsing your opponent's lands into the sea.But let's start at the beginning. Click below.

Surprisingly not a complaint about writing. I don't play as many games as I used to but one that has gotten the odd hour recently is Avernum: Escape from the Pit. It's quite a game. You play a band of misfits tossed into the lightless caves below the earth. There you must carve out a life amongst the other exiles and prevail against the countless monsters that wait in the dark. Avernum is very much an old-school dungeon-crawler with your party battling lizards, aranea and demons for their precious experience. It also comes with a fleshed out world and solid if impersonal story.

How fleshed? Let's find out.

If there was ever a way to suck the fun out of being a ten foot tall death machine Relic have found it. The eponymous Space Marine sees you playing as an eponymous Space Marine on a mission to rescue a forge world from a horde of orks and other darker things. I went into this expecting something like Dawn of War. Competent, fun gameplay with a straight storyline that gave you the atmosphere of Warhammer 40,000 but didn’t go anywhere particularly deep with it. I got none of that.

Well. It's taken a week. A whole week to complete Deus Ex: Human Revolution. What have I got to show for it? Let's find out. Spoilers ye be fairly warned. We journey into a glorious cyberpunk future.

Civilization V was the latest iteration of that old chestnut the Civilization series. In case you hadn't guessed, the game is about leading a civilization from the dawn of agriculture to domination of the globe. How do you do this? Well you win the space race, unite all nations under the UN, achieve great works that awe the people or murder every moron who lifts his head above a kowtow.



Naturally everyone goes for the last option. War's worked so far, why stop now?

Dungeon Siege III is not a bad game. It is however a console game. The difference is in driving a tank to work. It sounds awesome but the controls are terrible and you get stuck in a ditch.

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