Although Nintendo hadn't always been the best in regards to games with online multiplayer, Splatoon 2 was able to gain enough widespread popularity that it was able to get its own eSports tournament in and even got squirt guns based on several in-game weapons. Of course, like any Nintendo IP, characters and items from the game have made appearances in several other Nintendo games, clearly solidifying its legacy as a new flagship Nintendo series - and with Splatoon 3 out in , we can only expect more to come.
Critically acclaimed but never receiving as much attention as it deserved, a story that's heard from time to time with different video games and was heard once again with Arkane's Dishonored series. Featuring stealth-action gameplay and supernatural powers in a steampunk-inspired world, these games are easy to invest plenty of time in. While both the first game and the sequel feature Corvo Attano as a playable character, the sequel features another playable character with different abilities.
The series is also known for its chaos system, which causes changes in the in-game world depending on your actions and playstyle. It may not be the first series to feature assassins and stealth gameplay mechanics, but its unique elements stand out against the rest. Your drying pan won't protect you from the wrath of societal cancellation, Brock.
Erroll is a list article writer for The Gamer with a love of all things related to Japanese monsters, from Yokai to Kaiju to Pokemon to Digimon and everything in between.
He has written about these topics for his own blog as well as for sites like GameSkinny and Parallax Media. When not writing or playing games, Erroll usually spends his time watching anime, tokusatsu, and a bunch of various movies and TV shows. RELATED: The Most Influential Games of the s But which of these ongoing series is the best of the best, and which constantly have players anticipating the next entry no matter how long the wait may be?
Metascore: User Score: 8. These three distinct and powerful races clash once again in the fast-paced real-time strategy sequel to the legendary original, StarCraft. Legions of veteran, upgraded, and brand-new unit types do battle across the galaxy, as each faction struggles for survival. Featuring a unique single-player campaign that picks up where StarCraft: Brood War left off, StarCraft II presents a cast of new heroes and familiar faces in an edgy sci-fi story filled with adventure and intrigue.
In addition, Blizzard again offers unparalleled online play through Battle. Features fast-paced, hard-hitting, tightly balanced competitive real-time strategy gameplay that recaptures and improves on the magic of the original game. New units and gameplay mechanics further distinguish each race. Vibrant new 3D-graphics engine with support for dazzling visual effects and massive unit and army sizes.
Full map-making and scripting tools to give players incredible freedom in customizing and personalizing their gameplay experience. In Cataclysm, players witness the face of Azeroth being altered forever, as the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing awakens from his subterranean slumber and erupts onto the surface, leaving ruin and destruction in his wake.
As the Horde and Alliance race to the epicenter of the cataclysm, the kingdoms of Azeroth will witness seismic shifts in power, the kindling of a war of the elements, and the emergence of unlikely heroes who will rise up to protect their scarred and broken world from utter devastation.
New features in the game's third expansion include: Two New Playable Races: Adventure as the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.
Increased Level Cap: Advance to level 85 and earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to customize characters.
Classic Zones Remade: Quest to level 60 as you never have before. Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been reforged by the cataclysm and updated with new quests and content. Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements. New High-Level Content: Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great sunken city of Vashj'ir beneath the sea, and enjoy even more high-level raid content than in previous expansions.
Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards. New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations. User Score: 5. With over nine million units sold worldwide, and unprecedented critical acclaim from fans and press around the world, Sid Meier's Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest strategy franchises of all-time.
Now, Firaxis Games will take this incredibly fun and addictive strategy game to unprecedented heights by adding new ways to play and win; new tools to manage and expand your civilization; extensive modding capabilities; and intensely competitive multiplayer options. Civilization V will come to life in a beautifully detailed, living world that will elevate the gameplay experience to a whole new level making it a must-have for gamers around the globe!
Set approximately 10 years after the events of the original BioShock, the halls of Rapture once again echo with sins of the past. Along the Atlantic coastline, a monster has been snatching little girls and bringing them back to the undersea city of Rapture.
You are the very first Big Daddy as you travel through the decrepit and beautiful fallen city, chasing an unseen foe in search of answers and your own survival. Multiplayer in BioShock 2 provides a rich prequel experience that expands the BioShock gameplay. Set during the fall of Rapture, players assume the role of Plasmid test subject in the underwater city that was first explored in the original BioShock.
Players will need to use all the elements of the game's toolset to survive as the full depth of the BioShock experience is refined and transformed into a unique multiplayer experience that can only be found in Rapture. Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who's trying to save his girlfriend who happens to be made of bandages from an evil fetus in a jar wearing a tux. Our meaty hero will leap from walls, over seas of buzz saws, through crumbling caves and pools of old needles.
Sacrificing his own well being to save his damsel in distress. Ramping up in difficulty from hard to soul crushing SMB will drag Meat boy though haunted hospitals, salt factories and even hell itself. In this installment, the Bad Company crew again find themselves in the heart of the action, where they must use every weapon and vehicle at their disposal to survive.
In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the 'B' company fight their way through snowy mountaintops, dense jungles and dusty villages. With a heavy arsenal of deadly weapons and a slew of vehicles to aid them, the crew set off on their mission and they are ready to blow up, shoot down, blast through, wipe out and utterly destroy anything that gets in their way.
Total destruction is the name of the game, delivered as only the DICE next generation Frostbite engine can. More Pirates! More Adventure! More Monkeys! Relive the second swashbuckling misadventure of the wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood as he searches for the lost treasure of Big Whoop, attempts to win back the beautiful Elaine Marley and takes on the now evil zombie pirate, LeChuck!
Play it again for the first time with signature Special Edition features. You may have seen some games raise their level cap by 5, or maybe even 10, but with The Crimson Lance Assassination Squads wreaking havoc and Crawmerax the Invincible being all invulnerable and stuff we knew you'd need more than just The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is an add-on pack for Borderlands that adds new guns, new Class Mods, new vehicles, new missions, new enemy types, and increases the level cap to User Score: 7.
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit players will experience the thrill of the chase and the rush of the escape as they play through full careers as both a cop and a racer — solo or connected. The blistering speeds, brutal busts and heart-stopping getaways are all connected via Need for Speed Autolog. This network not only connects friends for epic head-to head pursuits and races, but also enables players to compare performances and stats, thereby setting the stage for the ultimate in friendly competition.
User Score: 6. Liara T'Soni is tracking down the mysterious Shadow Broker, and no one is safe. She'll do anything to recover the man the Broker kidnapped Team up with Liara and chase clues from the luxurious heights of Illium to the Shadow Broker's own secret lair.
Adds the Shadow Broker intel center, new research, and five new achievements and the chance to continue a relationship with Liara. Set in the s, this DLC adds 4 new multiplayer maps, 15 new weapons, and six vehicles. Assassin's Creed II is the product of over two years of intensive development by the original creative team behind the Assassin's Creed brand.
In a vast open world environment, the game invites players to incarnate Ezio, a privileged young noble in Renaissance Italy who's been betrayed by the rival ruling families of Italy. Ezio's subsequent quest for vengeance plunges players into an epic story that offers more variety in missions, surprising and engaging new gameplay elements, diverse weapons and a profound character progression that appeal to fans of the original Assassin's Creed as well as entice players new to the brand.
The last remaining memories fade away into darkness. Your mind is a mess and only a feeling of being hunted remains. You must escape. Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a first person survival horror. A game about immersion, discovery and living through a nightmare. An experience that will chill you to the core. With more new features than ever before, including real-time contract negotiation, a revamped training system and a number of match engine improvements, Football Manager will once again raise the bar for Soccer management games.
Warhammer 40, Dawn of War II — Chaos Rising introduces the Chaos Space Marines as a new playable army, continues the single player campaign from the original Dawn of War II, delivers all new wargear and raises the level cap from 20 to Relic Entertainment will also deliver new multiplayer maps and new units for the Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and Space Marines.
Newcomers to Dawn of War II will begin the single player campaign with a squad of Space Marines fully equipped to take on the malevolent forces of Chaos. Powerful Chaos tainted wargear can be equipped and used against your enemy, but doing so could lead to dreadful consequences. Will you risk corruption for power? The latest game in the post-nuclear RPG series is being developed by many members of the Fallout 1 and 2 team at Obsidian Entertainment using the Fallout 3 engine.
Developed by Avalanche Studios, Just Cause 2 finds Rico Rodriguez returning in an epic open-world adventure set in the diverse tropical playground of Panau in South East Asia, where the aim is to cause chaos and destruction in a way that only Rico knows how!
His mission is to destabilize the island and free it from the tyranny of the evil dictator, Baby Panay. Players tackle missions and objectives in any way they want while exploring the highly-detailed and beautiful island by land, sea or air, performing an insane range of new daredevil stunts and mastering the use of the all new grappling hook and Rico's trademark parachute.
In F1 gamers will take on the full, expanded grid in a variety of game modes including Grand Prix, Championship, Time Trial and an extensive, innovative Career mode. F1 will also feature a highly advanced damage model, fully dynamic weather system and extensive competitive multiplayer options.
Shatter is a retro-inspired brick-breaking game that merges familiar action with unique twists and a modern crafted production approach.
EA returns to the field with another installment in its long-running soccer series. As the saga begins, an otherworldy power for controlling matter and space calls to the strongest and strangest who might wield it - intergalactic warlords and eldritch gods, under-dwellers and scholars of the arcane.
The saga plays out in a surreal 5 month-long symphony of mayhem that gets deeper and more twisted with each episode. The time for the great Apocalypse of legend has come in Darksiders as you take on the role of War, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and rain judgment and destruction down upon the Earth. However, not all is as it seems when you discover that you and your fellow Horsemen have been implicated for the premature destruction of Earth and are swept up in a conspiracy between the forces of Heaven and Hell.
Banished and stripped of your powers, embark on an epic quest of revenge and redemption as you battle angels and demons to restore your awesome abilities and seek out who betrayed you. Take on the role of a Demonologist, Barbarian, Bear Shama or any other of the twelve exotic classes, as you face the challenges of Hyboria alone or in groups of other players from all over the world.
Fight for survival, socialize with friends, construct equipment or even entire cities with your fellow players, and carve out your destiny in the world of Conan. You are a fugitive, ruthlessly hunted by the very government you used to serve.
Your only choice is to improvise to survive. Experience original gameplay based on improvisation in which your environment is your top weapon. Always on your toes, you need to react on the fly to any changing situations and use the environment and the crowds around you to create diversions and deter your enemies.
As a fugitive, quick thinking and adaptation are essential to turn the situation to your advantage. To survive, build an underground network of allies who will help you obtain high-tech gadgets and stay one step ahead of your pursuers as you struggle to unmask the forces that frame you. The biggest, brightest Bejeweled ever! Discover all-new ways to play the world's 1 puzzle game. Find your perfect match with 8 breathtaking game modes that meet all your moods — ease into Classic Bejeweled for cascades of fun, journey through 40 challenging Quest puzzles, charge into the electrifying Lightning for non-stop action, and tailor your experience in Zen for a revolutionary new way to relax.
Designed and written by the same team that brought you Dragon Age: Origins, the Awakening expansion pack offers a brand new area of the world to explore known as Amaranthine, featuring an epic story that will allow players to unravel the secrets of the darkspawn - and their true motivations!
Players face a range of horrific and terrifying creatures including an evolved, intelligent breed of darkspawn and other menacing creatures such as the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon. But something funny happens when you make contact with a tree. You might turn into a key to open a lock, or a boat to sail the open sea.
They hold power over the world—literally, even, in this text-based puzzle game. You come equipped with a letter remover, which allows you to change the items around you, by deleting a single letter from their names. In case you were wondering: Yes, it is bastard hard, just less stressful on your reflexes. It's an isometric puzzle-platformer about a girl and her pilgrimage to the edge of the world. The Republia Times - You're the editor of a newspaper in a totalitarian state in this game from the creator of Return of the Obra Dinn.
Each day you must choose which stories to run and how much space to give them, impacting your paper's popularity and the government's approval with the general populace.
Smart and cynical. Everything Is Going To Be Okay - Vividly animated creatures deal with existential horror and pain—and are alarmingly sanguine about it—in this cathartic collection of minigames, videos, and quizzes.
Head Over Hooves: My Heart Bleats For You - An apocalyptic dating sim where you must make a goat fall in love with you and then sacrifice it to save the world from eternal damnation. Cooldog Teaches Typing - There are plenty of educational game parodies, but only one features a chihuahua-looking thing as the teacher. Stick Shift - As creator Robert Yang says, "Stick Shift is an autoerotic night-driving game about pleasuring a gay car.
Stick Shift is funny while also offering food for thought. Skeal - Recommending Skeal is a tough job because the absolute best experience is to go in with zero idea of what to expect. Its clever humour and charming s setting hold up nicely, as do the arsenal of goofy, Bond-esque gadgets at your disposal.
That includes lipstick bombs, sleeping gas perfume, and a briefcase rocket launcher. A lot of series staples, like joining the Mages Guild, started here. But then you might starve. Hey folks, beloved mascot Coconut Monkey here representing the collective PC Gamer editorial team, who worked together to write this article! PC Gamer. See comments. If you're looking for a starting point with CA's Warhammer games, this is now the game to get—and if you already own the excellent original, too, the mortal empires campaign will unite both games into one giant map.
Paradox's long-running, flagship strategy romp is the ultimate grand strategy game, putting you in charge of a nation from the end of the Middle Ages all the way up to the s. As head honcho, you determine its political strategy, meddle with its economy, command its armies and craft an empire. Right from the get-go, Europa Universalis 4 lets you start changing history.
Maybe England crushes France in the Years War and builds a massive continental empire. Maybe the Iroquois defeat European colonists, build ships and invade the Old World. It's huge, complex, and through years of expansions has just kept growing. The simulation can sometimes be tough to wrap one's head around, but it's worth diving in and just seeing where alt-history takes you. Few 4X games try to challenge Civ, but Old World already had a leg up thanks designer Soren Johnson's previous relationship with the series.
He was the lead designer on Civ 4, and that legacy is very apparent. But Old World is more than another take on Civ. For one, it's set exclusively in antiquity rather than charting the course of human history, but that change in scope also allows it to focus on people as well as empires. Instead of playing an immortal ruler, you play one who really lives, getting married, having kids and eventually dying. Then you play their heir.
You have courtiers, spouses, children and rivals to worry about, and with this exploration of the human side of empire-building also comes a bounty of events, plots and surprises. You might even find yourself assassinated by a family member. There's more than a hint of Crusader Kings here. You can't have a best strategy games list without a bit of Civ. Civilization 6 is our game of choice in the series right now, especially now that it's seen a couple of expansions.
The biggest change this time around is the district system, which unstacks cities in the way that its predecessor unstacked armies. Cities are now these sprawling things full of specialised areas that force you to really think about the future when you developing tiles.
The expansions added some more novel wrinkles that are very welcome but do stop short of revolutionising the venerable series. They introduce the concept of Golden Ages and Dark Ages, giving you bonuses and debuffs depending on your civilisation's development across the years, as well as climate change and environmental disasters.
It's a forward-thinking, modern Civ. This is a game about star-spanning empires that rise, stabilise and fall in the space of an afternoon: and, particularly, about the moment when the vast capital ships of those empires emerge from hyperspace above half-burning worlds. Diplomacy is an option too, of course, but also: giant spaceships. Play the Rebellion expansion to enlarge said spaceships to ridiculous proportions.
Stellaris takes an 'everything and the kicthen sink' approach to the space 4X. It's got a dose of EU4, Paradox's grand strategy game, but applied to a sci-fi game that contains everything from robotic uprisings to aliens living in black holes.
It arguably tries to do to much and lacks the focus of some of the other genre greats, but as a celebration of interstellar sci-fi there are none that come close. It's a liberating sandbox designed to generate a cavalcade of stories as you guide your species and empire through the stars, meddling with their genetic code, enslaving aliens, or consuming the galaxy as a ravenous hive of cunning insects.
Fantasy 4X Endless Legend is proof that you don't need to sacrifice story to make a compelling 4X game. Each of its asymmetrical factions sports all sorts of unique and unusual traits, elevated by story quests featuring some of the best writing in any strategy game.
The Broken Lords, for instance, are vampiric ghosts living in suits of armour, wrestling with their dangerous nature; while the necrophage is a relentless force of nature that just wants to consume, ignoring diplomacy in favour of complete conquest. Including the expansions, there are 13 factions, each blessed or cursed with their own strange quirks. Faction design doesn't get better than this. Civ in space is a convenient shorthand for Alpha Centauri, but a bit reductive.
Brian Reynolds' ambitious 4X journey took us to a mind-worm-infested world and ditched nation states and empires in favour of ideological factions who were adamant that they could guide humanity to its next evolution.
The techs, the conflicts, the characters— it was unlike any of its contemporaries and, with only a few exceptions, nobody has really attempted to replicate it. Not even when Firaxis literally made a Civ in space, which wasn't very good. Alpha Centauri is as fascinating and weird now as it was back in '99, when we were first getting our taste of nerve stapling naughty drones and getting into yet another war with Sister Miriam. More than 20 years later, some of us are still holding out hope for Alpha Centauri 2.
Pick an Age of Wonders and you really can't go wrong. If sci-fi isn't your thing, absolutely give Age of Wonders 3 a try, but it's Age of Wonders: Planetfall that's got us all hot and bothered at the moment.
Set in a galaxy that's waking up after a long period of decline, you've got to squabble over a lively world with a bunch of other ambitious factions that run the gamut from dinosaur-riding Amazons to psychic bugs. The methodical empire building is a big improvement over its fantastical predecessors, benefiting from big changes to its structure and pace, but just as engaging are the turn-based tactical battles between highly customisable units.
Stick lasers on giant lizards, give everyone jetpacks, and nurture your heroes like they're RPG protagonists—there's so much fiddling to do, and it's all great. Set in an alternate 's Europe, factions duke it out with squishy soldiers, tanks and, the headline attraction, clunky steampunk mechs. There are plenty of them, from little exosuits to massive, smoke-spewing behemoths, and they're all a lot of fun to play with and, crucially, blow up.
0コメント