Shadow Covenant

Well, I’ve finished a lot of games in the last couple of week…

First off, “XCOM: Enemy Within”:

As you might have noticed from my previous blog entry, this one was pretty good… this is how DLC should be done, even with all it’s faults… It improved the game marginally on all fronts (graphics, bugs, etc), added some new gameplay mechanics (gene mods and mechs) and another storyline (parallel to the original). Would have liked to see that other storyline better worked… I didn’t get some of the missions that apparently other people got, and I got them in the wrong order (it seemed).

But it’s still the XCom experience (which I jumped into in Ironman mode, for that extra punch), and I’m really looking forward for another expansion or (please, please, please) a sequel (“Terror From the Deep”, anyone?)

Bought and finished the first episode of “Wolf Among Us”, and I loved it… For those that don’t know, “The Wolf Among Us” is yet another Telltale graphic adventure, based on some comic book (don’t know them, so I can’t say how close to the original they are). The visuals are great (really amazing), they took the formula (visually and narratively) from “The Walking Dead” and polished it further… Great writing, and if this was out 2 or 3 years ago, this would have been a breath of fresh air (the whole “mythical creatures are real” thing), but we’ve had a lot of TV shows on that lately, so that part is a bit old news… Still, it’s darker and grittier than most, with a very cool noir vibe to it.

The story revolves around “Wolf”, which is the famous “Big Bad Wolf” of myth that’s decided to make a change in his life, and acts as a sheriff of sorts for the Fables (mythical creatures of fantasy that crossed over somehow from fairtytales). The story is the usual noir-esque plot: a damsel in distress, whodunnit sctick…

Really good writing, though… I feel most of my decisions matter, which is pretty awesome!

Also finished “Alien Breed: Impact”. This is a remake of the classic game by Team 17, which I played on the Amiga and loved!

The game is an homage to the sci-fi alien movies, in which the ship where we are the engineer crashes into another dead ship, filled with alien lifeforms…

The game features a third person control (similar actually to the one I’m using on “Chrome Hunter”), and it’s quite fun… It’s not brilliant, though, and the weakest part is actually the writing… You can almost see the ideas the writers had for character development and such, but for some reason they don’t come across, and the story is just filler for alien killing… Missions are also a bit “samey” – turn on reactor A, and to that you have to go to three switches somewhere, etc… It’s a bit contrived most of the time, and not enough focus on the alien infestation itself, in my opinion, but as I said, it’s fun…

There’s some good tension moments when you run out of bullets, etc, but that’s a thing of the past in the middle of the game, and the monster placement/appearance is a bit predictable (so the horror factor goes away).

Still, for a budget title, it captures most of the great things of the 90’s game (it’s done by the same company, or at least one with the same name).

Now playing the next title in the series (“Alien Breed: Assault”), it’s a good way to kill some hours!