Displaying items by tag: Story Rich
Life is Strange: Before the Storm plays like a cutscene with a point-and-click element that is a joy; no button combinations or consulting a grainy minimap: Daedalus himself designed the levels. The title deals with weighty issues wrapped in stunning visuals and peppered with a comprehensive soundtrack by real artists. This addition to the franchise is a must-play.
Another Lost Phone is truly a masterpiece in its kind, setting a bar in both creativity and meaning that will be hard for future installments in the genre to match. In addition to being one of the most innovative vehicles for a puzzle-based story to be released in a long time, the story is immensely engaging from the moment you unlock the phone. Accidental Queens have now issued a challenge to game designers everywhere: use your art to tell stories that need to be told.
With Divinity: Original Sin 2, Larian Studios creates a title that brings together the best aspects of table-top and classic roleplaying games. The graphics, along with the score and voice acting, are painstakingly detailed and are truly awe-inspiring. Every decision you make, from character creation to dialogue, will affect your experience, giving you a slightly different playthrough every time. This is not a game for the casual player, however. The sheer size of the game and the difficulty of some battles will require dozens of hours and have you loading quicksaves time and again. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is primed to be on many all-time favorites lists; few, if any, have succeeded to this degree.
Neofeud's futuristic, Bladerunner-like world, its thoughtful dialogue that's entirely voice acted, and its fresh point-and-click puzzles make it a title worth trying — as long as you're aware that it has some annoying flaws along the way. After a slow start, Neofeud develops into a complex tale that approaches profound ideas about what it means to be sentient, what it means to care about someone who may or may not be alive, and how it could be a big problem our society could face someday soon.
ICY: Frostbite Edition takes you hostage with a compelling narrative rife with tragedy, mystery, treachery, and danger. With an extensive variety of story arcs, endings, and random encounters, IFE offers excellent replayability.
Gamers will talk about Pyre for a good while. Vivid visuals pair well with energizing audio, and both complement the subtle, mechanical gameplay; Pyre, a stunning package,provides with aplomb a depth of strategy not found in some AAA titles, and couches the experience in an engrossing narrative. Supergiant Games’ strongest showing to date, Pyre is a must play, a delight that can’t be recommended highly enough.
The Gardens Between is a surreal puzzle adventure that follows best friends, Arina and Frendt, as they fall into a mysterious world of beautiful garden islands. The player can traverse back and forwards in time to discover each garden's secrets and, along the way, reveal a story about friendship, childhood and growing up.
Planet Ancyra Chronicles appears to be made by a team of developers who are each individually good at their jobs – the level design, the narrative design, and the score all have their moments. Unfortunately, it seems the team suffered from miscommunication, because this title’s individual parts struggle to fit together into a single, cohesive experience. Perhaps only the most persistent of players will be able to make it to the end of this otherwise interesting story.
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 5 is a gripping, emotional ending to this chapter in the series, but it's also one that doesn't quite hit the mark as well as the prior seasons of this successful franchise have. When it comes to the grand finale, players simply deserved a bigger, more satisfying resolution to Javier's story and the outcome facing him and his loved ones. And, while I did enjoy Clem's ending – again, I'll keep it vague – Clem's presence alone isn't enough to carry this piece of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier to the heights that prior episodes in this saga could reach.
Seemingly an anomaly on the Steam store, Baobabs Mausoleum Ep. 1 Ovnifagos Don’t Eat Flamingos is a weird but worthwhile play. It presents a unique and twisted world and a story with a considerable extent of both human imagination and sanity. Each puzzle and problem is different and engaging, providing an innovative experience. As the first installment in the series, we have hopeful anticipation for a successor, to see how the developers will continue to polish what they have here.
Minecraft: Story Mode - Season Two continues Jesse's saga in a five-part, narrative-driven, episodic game series developed by Telltale in collaboration with Mojang and members of the Minecraft community. Though players' choices from the first season will carry over into season two, this new season will be accessible to both returning fans and newcomers alike. This second season will also include Telltale's multiplayer 'Crowd Play' feature, which allows friends and family to engage with the adventure together by helping to decide the direction of the story from any mobile device with an online connection.
SQUARE ENIX today announced LIFE IS STRANGE: BEFORE THE STORM, the next game in the episodic franchise. The game was unveiled with a new cinematic trailer as part of the Xbox E3 Briefing and the first of three episodes will be released on Windows PC on August 31, 2017.
What The Long Journey Home lacks in originality in its gameplay, it makes up for with realism in its characters and extensive narrative. It draws the player into a harsh, unforgiving universe that is as strange as it is beautiful. Wit, skill, and determination are needed to survive, but even with these, success is not guaranteed. Gamers who enjoy a challenge and the thrill of the unknown will get the most out of The Long Journey Home.
Telltale Games shared their season recap trailer for the critically-acclaimed The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier. As fans gear up for the finale, find out how they handled some of this season's most gripping choices, and hear insights into the seasons' emotional core from the developers themselves.
Empathy: Path of Whispers is an atmospheric and story-driven adventure game where you explore a seemingly abandoned world through the emotions and memories of the people who once inhabited it, trying to restore the world’s lost balance by journeying through its past.
Circa 790 AD. A small band of Norse warriors lands on the shores of England. History may have forgotten their names, but their actions live on. As the chieftain of your clan, let ambition guide your choices in the party-based RPG Expeditions: Viking. How will history remember you?
With Prey,the developer Arkane Studios has built on the proven success of its stealth shooters. The gameplay discourages a head-on approach, slowing down the pace of the action. However, the frustration of having to hide instead of fighting enemies is remedied by excellent graphic and sound design, a strong RPG element, and the possibility to gather resources and build useful devices. An additional perk is the inventive writing, which manages an immersive, haunting atmosphere.
In the end, the positive aspects of Expeditions: Viking outweigh the problems. Creating such a complex, detailed, and varied title is an ambitious undertaking, and it’s exactly what’s needed for gamers who don’t want to rely on “enhanced editions” of classic games to find a good role-playing experience. Expeditions: Viking, however,is more than just an RPG; it’s also an epic journey through history — a field with surprisingly few entries. Why rely on adventures from DnD or fantasy realms, if history can be presented in such an intriguing way?
At the end of it all, yes. There were quite a few things in this installment that could have driven me batty — had I allowed them to do so. The beautiful reality of Syberia 3 is that I didn’t need to know what happened beforehand in the franchise. If you play for release, for freedom that you don’t have in a normal, boring life — and if you can look past some rough handling -- Syberia 3 is for you.
It’s been thirty years since Hironobu Sakaguchi created Final Fantasy; when story wasn't the standard, he made something extraordinary and defined a generation. Now, we have In Vitra, struggling to be what it's not — there's nothing in this title that produces the Japanese cultural feeling of a JRPG.