The Dai – Page 3 – Roll The Dai

24 Jan

The Pixelated Dead

I had a heck of a time playing and screenshotting Dead Pixels this week. Last weekend, I spent most hours of the day alternately shivering and sweating in bed with the flu. I managed to read most of the book Gone Girl, but did little else. Looking back, I’m amazed that I managed to stumble downstairs to the computer Saturday morning and put together a coherent bunch of words on Valiant Hearts. It all seems like a dream.

And then it’s been a busy week at work. Which is to say, I’m going to fill this post with excuses on why I didn’t actually play that much of Dead Pixels. In addition, the game didn’t seem to want to cooperate with the Steam Overlay at home, making it onerous to take screenshots, which is why this post will also have less images. But all right – aside from the fact that I didn’t play the game and didn’t take screenshots of it, what was my opinion of it? Read More →

17 Jan

The Great War

I went into Valiant Hearts: The Great War with little to no expectations. Other than the fact that it was a well-received Ubisoft “indie” game and that it had a 2D art style, I literally knew nothing else about either how the game played or what I would be doing. I prepared for a grand adventure.

Valiant Hearts is about World War I, told through the lens of four individuals who are thrust into the war – the lanky German Karl, his bearded French father-in-law Emile, angry American ex-pat Freddie, and volunteer doctor Anna. These characters are introduced one by one, and eventually fall under player control for short adventure-game scenes. It all sounds pretty good on paper, but does it actually hold up? Read More →

09 Jan

Road Rage

My motorcycle between my legs, I scream over the rooftops. All I know is rage. There are other bikers around me, but I don’t like them, no sir. I take out my tactical axe and hack at them, kick at them, grab them and guide them into the back of a nearby log truck. This is the world of Road Redemption, an Early Access game I was gifted over the holidays that evokes Road Rash (or so I’ve been told, because that’s another game I’ve never played).

The game is simple – get on a bike, drive fast, kill others, fulfill missions, earn money, buy upgrades, eventually die, level up, do it again! Let’s break down these pieces and see what works and what doesn’t. Read More →

26 Dec

Tango Down

Merry Christmas! As the holidays roll through and the Steam winter sale does its worst, I’ve weathered the storm with only a few purchases here and there. Believe me, it could have been much, much worse. So what did I pick up?

I couldn’t resist police XCOMtastic RPS tactics game of the year Door Kickers. I was a little worried that I would find that my relationship with tactics games had gotten It’s Complicated. I’m not a huge tactics junkie but I really enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles, and had a brief but enjoyable dalliance with Frozen Synapse. Would Door Kickers get to third base with me? Read More →

18 Dec

One Step at a Time

The Legend of Grimrock is a cautionary tale about crime, punishment, and the power of teamwork. Like some kind of crazy mashup of The Hobbit and Prison Break, four alleged criminals get thrown into a mountain that’s meant to serve as their place of exile, only to find that the mountain is hollow, filled with cunning traps, teeming with horrific monsters, and arranged in a neat floor and grid system for easy cartography.

These four intrepid criminals decide to cast off their past life of crime or completely inappropriate incarceration (never really clear which) to work together to reach the bottom of Grimrock and find Smaug’s treasure and peace for Sara Tancredi. I mean freedom. I’m pretty sure it’s actually freedom. I don’t know; I didn’t finish the game in three hours! Read More →

11 Dec

Little Green Men

Let me start by admitting something that some people may find shocking: I am not a capital-A Alien kind of guy. I haven’t seen the seminal sci-fi film of that name, nor the sequel (Aliens) or any of the myriad of extraterrestrial films that followed (Alien 3: The Last Stand, Alien 4: The Lost World, Alienz in the Hood, Aliam Neeson in Abducted, etc). It is with this woeful ignorance of the franchise, this blank slate that I approached this week’s game, the much maligned Aliens: Colonial Marines.

I do know this much: this game got put through the ringer when it came out. The Internet exploded with negativity over something or other. People were unhappy. Rage was spewed. What was it all about? I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t end up following it that closely. But I was ready to get in there and tear Aliens: Colonial Marines a new eggplant-head-shaped orifice. Is it time to get on the A:CM hate dogpile train? Punch your ticket, let’s go. Read More →

06 Dec

O Canada

Oof. I’m a day late and a dollar short, if you count a dollar as an hour of playtime on The Long Dark, a simulation survival game where you roleplay as a very inept Wolverine (the mutant, not the actual animal). I played until an untimely end three times, and have a save that currently sees me alive – if not well – on day 2. I’ve found a hunting knife and crafted a fishing line, though, so things look promising.

I picked up The Long Dark in the latest Steam sale because it looked like a survival game I could handle. I’ve played a few survival games here and there – most notably Don’t Starve and Sir, You Are Being Hunted – but I always found myself doing quite poorly. Would The Long Dark finally draw out the rugged Canadian survivalist I knew was always inside me? Probably not. Read More →

29 Nov

I Feel the Earth Move

Sorry this post is a few days late. I was busy enjoying Thanksgiving!

From Dust had a little under an hour of game time on it already when I booted it up this past week to take another look at it. I remembered just a little from the last time I’d ventured into its world: that I would be able to move around balls of water and earth, that the time pressure felt limiting, and that it was a candidate for most-hated-game-due-to-DRM way back when.

So here we go. Let’s hit that Play button once more, and let Steam boot up uPlay, so we can try to save these villagers once more. Will this game make me truly feel like a god? Will it frustrate me with control issues? Will I be forced to see the screen above over and over again because the same cutscene inexplicably forcibly plays after every single level? Yes, yes, and yes! Read More →

21 Nov

Going Commando

Commando Jack? What is that? Did I buy that? These thoughts bounced around in my head last week when the unfamiliar name popped up as my next game. I remembered getting it in some bundle recently and that it promised tower defense with a dash of action.

I started the puppy up and two things immediately jumped out at me. First, I was right! This was a tower defense game. Second, this was clearly a mobile game ported to PC. The overly large UI, the multitude of fat-finger buttons that were excessively large, and – oh, hm – what’s this, it looks like it was maybe free-to-play in a past life. I tepidly clicked Continue. Could Commando Jack rise above the rapidly falling expectations I had for it? Let’s find out. (Spoiler: no, it can’t.) Read More →

14 Nov

The Art of the Possible

Let’s take a vacation to an island paradise where everybody has a name and I get to make all the rules. Let’s go to Tropico, a simulationy city/island-builder with dictatorial overtones!

Steam actually doesn’t even recognize Tropico, its expansion, and Tropico 2 as separate titles. Instead, they are purchased wholesale as Tropico Reloaded, which is what I rolled this week. So I ended up spending a few hours with Tropico before dipping my toes into Tropico 2 for a little under an hour. I, sadly, did not try a new game with Tropico’s expansion content, nor do I think I ever will. What’s that? Why’s that? Let’s dictate! Read More →

Roll The Dai

Sometimes I write about games.

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