Wordsmith's Anvil

  Image Credit: Ocean Drive Studio, Inc. Action. Check. Horror. Check. Scifi. Check. Fantasy. Well... sort of. Hell, might as well check that too.     Section 13 is a different breed of game from Ocean Drive Studio. They have definitely left a mark on me with Lost Eidolons and Veil of the Witch , and due to that I was more than willing to give this twinstick shooter a try.     This roguelite is a lot different from anything else Ocean Drive has done because of its setting and combat style, but that doesn't mean that Section 13 is anything to skip over. The company has shown their chops with medieval swordplay and tactical strategy, but you can tell that they had a lot of fun with this revamp of the Blackout Protocol title. By incorporating roguelite elements into the story,  Section 13 forces its employees to discover just how far they can push themselves when having to delve deeper and farther into the bowels of a science facility to find out exactly what...

  Image courtesy of WolfEye Studios This was an odd one that I glommed onto. And I don't just say that because of the title.     There are a lot of things in Weird West that make it such an appropriate title. Some of them work. And some of them don't. Either way, it's guaranteed to stick in your craw for a fortnight or two once you've played it.     Weird West is led by five different protagonists that are all controlled at separate times from the actual player. There's a bounty hunter, a pigman (yes, you read that right), a Native, a werewolf, and a cultist. Each one of them has their own goings-on that would likely never intersect in their daily lives, but for reasons unknown to them... they do over the course of the weeks transpiring in game-time.       Put simply, a calamity has made its way to the west, and it's not just the run-and-tell-the-sheriff kind. This is more along the lines of a devastation that could wreak havoc across the ent...

Image courtesy of Don't Nod Entertainment Now at least once a year, any gamer worth their salt will play an absolute banger. Something memorable that will transport you to another world with its lore, gameplay, and storyline that will resonate with you for years to come. For me that already happened this year with Banishers , but I wanted to explore some more of what brought Don't Nod to their current stage by examining where they came from. As Banishers is something of a spiritual sequel (prequel, maybe? Thanks for normalizing this, George Lucas), I figured that Vampyr would be worth my time.     London, 1918.     Dr. Jonathan Reid is coming home from the Western Front to an ailing mother and his heartbroken widow of a sister. He wakes up in a pile of corpses, just as confused now as he probably was in the throes of the Great War's combat. To make matters worse, a sickness grips his belly as he makes his way to the street and the loving embrace of his sister. He emb...

  Image courtesy of Cyanide As much of a horror buff as I am, it's a bit of a surprise that I typically don't venture down the horror game path. I think it might have to do with the fact that a lot of them end up being campy and lame, and the truly good ones like Alien: Isolation are so few and far between. The trick must lie in the source material, and for me I guess it looks like Lovecraft speaks my language.   Earlier this year I reviewed Call of the Sea , a Lovecraft-inspired puzzle adventure that I actually thought did a good job fleshing out its story. Call of Cthulhu is another trip down Lovecraft Lane, but this one is definitely more solidified into the horror genre than anything else.   We take on the role of a private investigator named Edward Pierce, and through his WWI shell-shocked perspective we get assigned a delicate task off the bat. That mission is to find the truth behind the death of a wealthy Bostonian businessman's daughter. This woman, a d...