We’re two days into May and already seeing some good releases on everyone’s favourite PC games platform. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon originally premiered on April 1st, leading everyone to believe it was a hoax. Shortly afterwards, though, we found out it wasn’t, and it was released May 1st. Stunning game, full of neon, lasers and 80s pumping synthrock. May 1st also saw the much-awaited PC release of FEZ, the game about the small 2D gentleman in a fez who traverses a 3D plane solving mysteries. 2D characters in 3D environments have often been explored, but not at this level. The puzzles in FEZ range from simple to nothing short of maniacal; one required the combined forces of the internet to simply ‘brute force’ a solution through trying every possible combination of moves – though that might be better phrased as an obstruction than a puzzle. Still, worth looking into.
Older players may recognise the name Ragnarok Online – an old isometric MMORPG – but now it’s been revamped into a fully 3D title, Ragnarok 2. It’s still MMORPG, but with a free-to-play option it’s going the way they all seem to be. However, I’m not sure how well it will appeal to the target demographic, with the plethora of other MMOs already stable in the market.
Coming up later in the month are such titles as Metro: Last Light, a full sequel to Metro: 2033. This one’s set in 2034. Imaginative. But promising, given the intended features the store page provides. I like the sound of ranger mode in particular – similar to Hitman Absolution’s ‘purist’ mode, the HUD is eliminated entirely and difficulty ramped up to ‘realistic’.
We can also expect a sequel to the hugely popular indie entry Anomaly: Warzone Earth. While I inherently dislike tower defence games, this one actually did something different in that you are the incursion and you have to direct your forces in the most strategically viable manner to avoid their turret emplacements and airdropped enemies. You get power-ups from time-to-time to repair your units and suchlike, but I’m not sure what Anomaly 2 can possibly add beside their promised ‘multiplayer mode’.
Sadly, the rest of May seems pretty sparse so far, though Steam has a habit of releasing things suddenly and without warning – see Poker Night 2 last month, for an example. All I can see listed so far for the remainder of May are a couple of racing games – sequels, to GRID and TrackMania – and an ‘HD’ re-release of Resident Evil: Revelations, which was widely considered to be ‘pretty bad’.
Scratch that, I also see another sequel but a turn-up for the RTS genre, in the form of the awkwardly-titled Wargame: Airland Battle. It looks to be a pretty extensive and realistic depiction of war in 1985, with a supposed range of 750 unique units and battlefields as wide as a hundred and fifty km2. And with a promised multiplayer mode capable of handling up to 20 concurrent players, that actually sounds like it might do rather well. I can’t wait to try it out.