Wordsmith's Anvil

  Image credit: Jump Over the Age Ah. That refreshing Amos Roddy music again.     Some games can really nail down a feeling and a tone that you're looking for as a gamer. Not everything has to be shooting and carving people up . Not everything has to be incredibly crafted dramas fit for television . Some stuff can just be simply great writing with an atmospheric  tune ushering you along through the narrative.     Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector puts us in the shoes of a sleeper again. For those not in the know, a sleeper is an individual who has leased out their consciousness to a megacorp in order to get their ticket off-world in some shape or fashion. The sleeper themselves might be actually in a bunker several lightyears away, but the body their consciousness is operating looks and functions in a nearly-human way on different space stations, ships, or even asteroids in the belt of the Helion System. They need to eat, walk, sleep, and endure the strugg...

Image credit: The Bearded Ladies The Bearded Ladies have a solid reputation in the gaming industry because of their efforts with Mutant Year Zero , a cartoonish-yet-violent take on the apocalypse that involves anthropomorphic animals and strategic combat. Miasma Chronicles came after this, expanding on the studio's proven formula in true XCOM fashion.     In Miasma Chronicles , you play as a young kid named Elvis who is desperate to find his mother. He knows that she is on the other side of a wall of hardened miasma, a kind of radioactive swirl of microplastics and who knows what else, but getting through that wall has proven to be more difficult than he could fathom. Luckily, Elvis has an older brother named Diggs to help him out. This brother is a robot, so you can already tell the family is a bit of a blend, but he provides Elvis with the support he needs in order to boost his natural talents at manipulating the miasma with the hopes of not only finding his mother... but f...

  Image credit: Firaxis Games Now I've never really been much of a Marvel fan. Hell, I'm not much of a superhero fan in general. So many of the movies end up being corny and ridiculous. And there are also just SO many of them in general. I know I might be in the minority, here, but I'm just trying to lay some groundwork on where I stand.     Stood, anyway.     Midnight Suns is a game that operates as a strategy-type, and that makes sense since it comes from the creators of XCOM. Instead of a bunch of crunchy grunts, however, you have your pick of over a dozen superheroes from Marvel's roster that go from the obscure like Nico Minoru or Magik to the world-famous and amazing like Spider-Man.     In typical Marvel fashion, the world is ending yet again. This time, it has to do with an age-old witch from a different race of elder gods trying to wreak havoc across the planet. Lilith is ready to release Chthon upon the populace, bringing about the Midnight S...