Half-Life 2 was first released by Valve Corporation in 2004. It was such a giant leap forward for games in general – not just first-person shooters – that its reverberations are still being felt today.
Half-Life (one) is a brilliant game, but Half-Life 2 completely blows it out of the water.
Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame was originally released for PC MS-DOS by Broderbund in 1993, but has a had a number of high def Apple-based remakes since.
Like the first Prince of Persia, The Shadow and the Flame is a side-on, Persian-infused action/platform game with sword fighting and fantasy elements.
Continue reading Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, PC
This incredible “indie” dungeon crawler absolutely drips atmosphere and is bloody terrifying in places! It’s a heck of a challenge too…
Legend of Grimrock plays very much in the mould of Dungeon Master, and other first-person, tile-based RPGs, but it does it so much better than almost all of the others.
French developer Adeline Software International created Little Big Adventure (or LBA as it is affectionately known), for Electronic Arts in 1994.
The game is an isometric 3D adventure, with simple beat ’em up combat elements, and features an interesting mix of pre-rendered backgrounds (popular at the time of release, but dating badly these days), and 3D polygonal characters.
Bit Blaster XL is a modern (2016) take on the age-old Asteroids style of gameplay, and what it does it does extremely well.
This incredibly tough roguelike shooter is a wonderful game. It looks fantastic, scrolling along, with an overhead 3D view, but with 2D sprites in the playfield. Graphically Teleglitch is clever.
This excellent MS-DOS title, released by Disney Interactive in 1992, literally allows you to set up stunts, film them, and then edit them together into an independently-playable movie afterwards.
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a smart modern, indie retro game that crosses rhythm game mechanics with ‘Roguelike’ dungeon-crawling. And it works extremely well and is a lot of fun to play. Crypt of the NecroDancer is like Ultima, but played to the beat of an Abba tune…
Dark and disturbing, Playdead’s Limbo is a small boy’s journey into a world filled with deadly traps and killer monsters.
FEZ is a wonderful, colourful 2D platform game that utilises an interesting three-dimensional screen-flipping technique as part of the game mechanics.
