Freelance Writer. Lover of Games, Movies, Books and You.
Friedrich Nietzsche famously said “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” In Sundered that which kills you also makes you stronger.
Sundered is a challenging, beautifully animated roguelike action-platformer from indie studio Thunder Lotus Games. With a carefully crafted difficulty ramp, Sundered excels in a genre that often teeters on the brink of frustration and repetition.
If you hear about RPGs and Sports games, you may recall the RPG-like campaign stories injected into otherwise traditional sports, such as The Journey mode in FIFA 17, or the new Longshot mode in upcoming Madden NFL 18.
Pyre, beloved indie studio Supergiant games’ third title, does the opposite. Sports-like gameplay is integral to escaping the intriguing fantasy world that you and your diverse band of outcasts are trapped within. The results are an innovative sports-as-combat battlefield that meshes well with Supergiants’ heavy focus on story-telling, art design, and music, though Pyre ultimately falls short of their previous efforts.
Multiplayer survival-crafting games lack a succinct acronym or single genre-defining style, but they’re absolutely taking over the world of modern online gaming. Older MMORPG behemoths like World of Warcraft have begun a steady decline while there doesn’t appear to be any stopping the new juggernauts like ARK: Survival Evolved.
These new breeds of shared sandbox worlds evolved from Minecraft and traditional MMORPGs that had dominated the last decade and a half of online gaming.
Earthfall has a very simple goal: make Left 4 Dead, but slightly better. And with aliens. Left 4 Dead’s strict focus on cooperative survival gameplay endeared many co-op fans, and has left a noticeable void since Left 4 Dead 2 released back in 2009.
Earthfall is here to fill the gap. It shamelessly pulls all of its action beats, enemy types, and campaign structure from Valve’s zombie-survival series, but does it all very well. The Early Access version has all the right pieces to make a worthy spiritual successor to one of the best cooperative series in gaming.
Ever Oasis was a surprise announcement at E3 2016, an entirely new IP on the Nintendo 3DS. Though it presents a unique new desert world, Ever Oasis borrows all of its gameplay elements from other successful Nintendo franchises, such as Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Metroid.
The result is a satisfying though at times tedious adventure that brings a fun mix of party-based combat with maintaining a thriving refuge in a dangerous world.
It’s a pompous, yet time-honored tradition to grade each publisher’s E3 press conference. Companies go through an interesting cycle every year where some have exciting new game announcements or console reveals while others tow the line with some extended trailers. And some just go completely bonkers.
Here is our ranking of the E3 2017 press conferences.
The Fire Emblem series has exploded in the last few years. The tactical role-playing series has been around since the 90s, but only in the U.S. since 2003. With Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia we’re already getting our third Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo 3DS – but it’s actually a remake of 1992’s Fire Emblem Gaiden.
Playing the remake of the second game in the storied franchise with updated sprites, 3D dungeon crawls, polished voice acting, and anime cutscenes is an incredible treat for any Fire Emblem fan.
![Sundered Review [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/sundered_key-art_1920x1080_all-platforms.png?w=1200)
![Pyre Review [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/pyre.png?w=1000)
![Online Survival-Crafting Games are the new MMORPGs [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/ark-survival-evolved.jpg?w=1200)
![Earthfall Early Access Preview [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/earthfall-forest-logo-light-background.jpg?w=1000){kind=logo}
![Ever Oasis Review [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/ever-oasis.png?w=1000)
![Ranking the E3 2017 Press Conferences [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/e3-2017.png?w=998)
![Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia Review [Pixelkin]](https://roguewatson.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/fire-emblem-echoes.png?w=998)
