While Rage 2 lacks Borderlands signature cell-shaded look, the over the top zany post apocalyptic action seems a lot like Gearbox’s main money maker. Much like with Prey, it seems that Bethesda is doing something a bit different with id’s old IP. Which is fine, Rage was never considered a classis, I just hope it can find a way to differentiate itself from Borderlands. The real question is now that they have resurrected almost all of id’s FPS titles, when are we getting that Commander Keen game?
If Your Game Needs Co-Op To Be Fun, It Is Not That Good Of A Game
I have been playing some Ghost Recon: Wildlands on and off with my friends and family, and it is great fun to play that way, but it is boring to play by myself. It is the usual Ubisoft sandbox and icon vomit of a game. It feels completely uninspired, but add in some friends and all of the sudden I am having a good time. Mostly because my friends are causing all kinds of chaos, interrupting my well thought out plans, or just generally chatting while we play.
Here is the thing though, almost all things are better with your friends. Coffee shops are okay by yourself, you can read a book or get some work done, but add in a few friends and it is a much more enjoyable experience. Hanging out and watching Netflix is better with other people, so it should be no surprise that Icon Hunt: The Game is better with someone crashing a helicopter in to an SUV while you are trying to snipe a couple of narcos.
All I am saying is that for a game to be truly good I should want to play it on my own, and I don’t really get that pull from Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Other games have this problem as well, but you will always see the comment, “It is really good with a couple of friends.” You would hope so, since friends make everything better. It was smart of Ubisoft to include the mode to cover over the issues that Wildlands has, and most games should include co-op if they can, but the game should be the selling point, not your friends.
There Are No Good Choices In Episode 5 Of Batman: The Enemy Within!
I have been kind of distracted, so it took me a while to finish off Batman: The Enemy Within, but the series really ends well. All those choices you made finally pay off with a Joker of your making. He either ends up trying to be a vigilantly or a villain, and you will have to deal with him either way.
Batman and the Joker have always had a very codependent relationship. Without Batman there would be no Joker, so to see your choices bring a different Joker to life is kind of an amazing experience. Sadly for Bruce, things still cannot end up the way he wants them. He has to make a lot of tough choices in this episode, and almost all of them end poorly. Which is the most Batman thing of all time.
Telltale has hit a bit of a rough patch, so I am not sure about the future of their Batman franchise, but I hope they find a way to keep making this story because it is excellent. If only the Warner Brothers movie studio had this much writing talent, maybe we would finally get a good new Batman movie. Regardless, now that the story is complete, there is no reason not to jump in to Telltale’s Batman: The Enemy Within, or go back and start at the beginning with Batman: The Telltales Series. You will be glad you did.
Shmee Plans Cities’ Skylines!
Are you someone who obsesses about budgets, and do you think that you could do a better job as City Planner than the dude or dudette they currently got in charge? Colossal Order made the game for you, Cities: Skylines. You are in charge of planning a city from the ground up, but you also have to provide services and keep that city running. Which would be simple if the citizens of your city would just be happy with being sick, uneducated and stop setting their houses on fire. That way you could spend all your time laying out roads and placing parks.
Cities: Skylines is actually a pretty simple game, you pick the grade of road you want, and then zone the areas on either side of that road for different things, like residential or heavy industrial. Of course you will need to provide power to those areas, and clean water. Not to mention those people will probably want their kids to go to a good school. Then for some reason they like to start fires and get sick all the time, so you will have to manage the budget. Which means setting the tax rate and overfunding or underfunding the schools and hospitals, that sort of thing. Which sounds bad, but if you have too many schools for your small town, they don’t need to be fully funded to meet your town’s needs, but on the other hand, if you don’t have the money to build a new school, overfunding the ones you have can get you by for a few months.
That is the game: drawing roads, zoning, budgeting, and planning out city services. All the while your citizens are doing everything they can to make your life difficult, but if you can keep everything under control, they will build an amazing city that you can watch grow. It is fascinating and engrossing. You will make plenty of mistakes, and you will want to tear everything down, but you would hate to evict all the people that are just doing the best they can.
For some this game sounds terrible, but don’t knock it until you have tried it. It is always super cheap on Steam, and it is included with the Xbox Game Pass for now, so it is worth giving being a city planner a shot. I think you have what it takes, but if not, you will at least apricate what the poor saps in city hall are going through.
Shmee Takes On A Clustertruck!
Remember when you were a kid and you were on a road trip with your family, and when you were daydreaming looking out the window you envisioned yourself jumping from the top of one semitruck to the next? If not, I did all the time. Well apparently the guys over at Landfall Games did the same thing when they were kids, and they made a game about it, Clustertruck.
In Clustertruck you just jump from one truck to the next, but these trucks are not just driving down the freeway. They are falling off cliffs, exploding, being pushed in to the air, being sucked in to vortexes, and all sorts of random things, and you have to do your best to jump your way out of danger and get to the end of the level. To help you do this, the more levels you complete, the more style points you get, and you can cash in those points for abilities like stopping/slowing time, double jumping or dashing, and bunch of others, so while the levels get harder, you become a much better jumper.
It is a simple fun idea that was executed well. While there is not a lot to the game, it is also very cheap, so it makes for a perfect quick diversion if you don’t want to get in to something deeper. If you have Game Pass or a couple extra bucks burning a hole in your pocket, there are worse things to spend them on. The worst thing I can say about Clustertruck is that it isn’t very robust, but it was never supposed to be. It was always supposed to be a game where trucks were going crazy and you just had to get from one to the next.
So that is another one of my childhood backseat daydreams turned in to a game, and it was not one I was expecting. My other major window gazing daydream was using my feet to grind on everything, but Sunset Overdrive and Jet Set Radio delivered on that one in spades. Who knows, maybe we will get a game about punting brothers out windows for crossing invisible lines next.