Crackdown 3 is the highly-anticipated next installment in a series defined by open-world urban combat. In it, players take on the role of super agents tasked with clearing a metropolitan area of crime lords, and they’re free to go about it any way they wish.
HIGH Getting to know Javi and David.
LOW A narrative structure that starts every episode with an unnecessary flashback.
WTF The season is essentially a side story to Clementine’s journey.
HIGH The game’s final sequence is appropriately epic.
LOW Wonky physics and difficulty perceiving depth.
WTF Six’s appetite goes beyond stale pieces of bread.
HIGH Working through Javi’s feelings for his long lost brother.
LOW An unnecessary flashback at the start of the episode.
WTF The episode lets players beat a man’s skull to mush. Satisfying, though.
HIGH Taking down a difficult boss on the first try.
LOW Having to retry the same boss dozens of times.
WTF Needing a hidden item to get the real ending.
HIGH A visually arresting art style.
LOW No sense of what to do next at any given time.
WTF From the opening moment onward, this is what players will be asking.
HIGH Seeing Clementine again.
LOW Not getting to be Clementine.
WTF Not. Getting. To. Be. Clementine.
HIGH Each VR tape introduces a whimsical and trippy scene to explore.
LOW The point-and-click play becomes stale after a few levels.
WTF Magnetizing a VR tape to make its environment psychedelic.
You probably haven’t played one of the most important games of the year yet.
Released quietly this past summer, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday documents the violent and tumultuous Iranian revolution of that year. It’s a game that is as much a documentary of record as it is an entertaining narrative experience. Ink Stories founder Navid Khonsari says the indie developer is trying to invent a new genre with 1979, one that combines the thoughtful research of documentary film with the interactive possibilities that video games offer. By all accounts, they have succeeded.
Based out of Colorado, Serenity Forge is an indie developer-turned-publisher. The company developers its own games but also publishers the indie games of other studios, including the recent Four Sided Fantasy, a puzzle-platformer centered around screen-wrap and locking the game camera in order to overcome environmental challenges.
Founder and CEO of Serenity Forge, Zhenghua Yang, or Z, as he prefers to be called, was onsite at IndieCade 2016 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in order to help promote the recent launch of Four Sided Fantasy.
I talked with him about Serenity Forge and the state of indie development and publishing today.
Recent Comments