While Deadfall Adventures shares its inspiration with Indiana Jones, it lacks everything that made the movie series special. Instead, it features bland puzzles, basic combat mechanics and many frustrating gameplay issues.
Phosphor Games has decided to put the survival back into the survival horror genre with their upcoming title Nether, which drops players into a harsh environment where split-second decisions can mean the difference between life or death. Taking place in a post-apocalyptic urban world, players must scavenge for food, weapons and supplies all while avoid nasty teleporting creatures called nethers. They can choose whether to go at it alone or forge a team in order to face dangerous challenges and complete objectives.
Full Bore: The First Dig promises open world exploration and creative puzzle solving, but instead it delivers a guided tour and a frustratingly repetitive trial and error experience.
With its unique visuals, thousands of hours of gameplay, complex combat system, and entertaining story line, Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness would be a near perfect SRPG if it wasn't plagued by performance issues.
Priding itself on run-and-gun mechanics, Alien Rage promises an old-school PC shooter with a large variety of weapons, enemies and epic boss fights. Unfortunately, what CI Games delivers is a mishmash of old and new mechanics that don't particularly go well together, which sometimes leads to a “rage induced” environment. The things that Alien Rage does well really shine through, but these successes are met with an equal, if not greater, amount of shortcomings.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is vastly superior to its predecessor in every way and is a shining gem in the MMORPG market. With its stunning visuals, interactive gameplay and varied class system there's tons of content for everyone to enjoy.
Outlast is the modern culmination of survival horror, combining multiple layers of terror, realistic graphics and the feeling of complete helplessness. It's a truly terrifying experience.
Immortal Empire has successfully created a fair business model for free-to-play games and contains a lot of complexity with hours of content. Unfortunately due to its slow gameplay and less than interesting storyline, it will likely only appeal to a niche part of the community.
Early access to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which was given to players as a bonus for pre-ordering, was supposed to begin the morning of August 24th and run until August 29th; after this time the game officially launches and everyone else will supposedly gain server access. Unfortunately, the pre-launch hasn't gone as smoothly as some have hoped and it's left a bitter taste in the mouths of many paying customers.
Square Enix, the publishers of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, will be hosting a launch event at PAX Prime, scheduled for August 30th through September 1st. This event will be open to all PAX Prime 2013 attendees in celebration of the game's launch and will feature opening remarks from its development team. Additionally, after the presentation the developers will be signing autographs and there will be a special hands-on gameplay session. Fans will be able to experience the battle components first-hand and compete to win prizes. Finally, a swag raffle drawing will be held; the winners will be announced via Twitter.
