A few nights ago, I was playing Wildstar with my committed leveling buddy. We had just arrived at Malgrave, the zone where players on the Exile side spend their last ten levels. After collecting twenty cacti from sun-scorched dunes and reducing a species of space bears to nigh-extinction, I couldn’t help but make a offhand remark. “Man, this feels a lot like World of Warcraft.” This...
I really wanted to like The Cave. The premise caught me immediately. Start out by assembling a team of three from a rogue’s gallery of characters ranging from a perpetually flourescent time traveler, a knight in shining armour, and a pair of twins who look like they fell out of a Tim Burton movie. After making your pick, drop down into a mysterious cave and delve into the dark backstories...
(Wherein Mathew steals his brother’s idea to deconstruct discontinued franchises and put forth ideas concerning hypothetical sequels.) Soul Blazer is one of those games that is fondly remembered but uncommonly considered a classic. Really, that’s a criticism you could levy against most Quintet games. Soul Blazer, ActRaiser, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma were all innovative and...
There are two things that the average player will take away from The Pallid Plague. The first is a smug sense of satisfaction from trouncing an entire cult without breaking a sweat. This is, without any exaggeration, one of the easiest Pathfinder scenarios ever published. The brave Pathfinders are sent to the far off land of Andoran to investigate a plague that has been ravaging the fey residents...
Organ Trail is more of a prolonged joke than a game. Anything based on Oregon Trail would have to be, I suppose. For those of you who aren’t children of the 1990s, Oregon Trail was a computer game released to schools on floppy diskette. The player assumes the role of a man guiding his family across America to Oregon by means of covered wagon. Raging rivers, bears, and dysentery stand in the...
The best word to describe Spelunky is dangerous. The player takes on the role of an unnamed adventurer with an uncanny resemblance to Indiana Jones. With nothing but a whip in hand and a backpack brimming with ropes and bombs, you plunge into the depths of an ancient cavern. Deadly spikes, arrow traps, snakes, and giant spiders lurk around every corner, each hellbent on preventing you from...
There’s a general consensus on the Paizo message boards that the two classes with the most problems are the monk and the rogue. While the monk has received a lot of love through the addition of various archetypes and combat style feats, the rogue has been been left out in the cold. Part of this has to do with a dilution of the rogue’s role in a group. Why play a rogue, many ask, when...
As a retro enthusiast, there’s nothing listed under Legend of Dungeon‘s key features that I can complain about. “26 floors of randomized dungeon.” “Tons of items, weapons, and magic.” “[A] [l]ocal and online scoreboard.” “4 player co-operative gameplay.” In theory Legend of Dungeon delivers on all the golden tropes of the rogue-like genre it hails from. But after a few hours of...