Late to the Party: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Price I Paid: $4.00

Available On: PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360.

It's a humbling experience when I start raving about something only to change my tune before it’s over. It’s the same feeling I suspect new parents have after two months of insufficient sleep from a crying newborn. Understandably, you might think that you know what I'm going to say about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and stop reading now, but don't. It's not because I get paid when you click to read the full review (because I don't get paid anything for any of this), but because there was so much the game did right. Despite my wavering feelings for it after twenty-some hours, you may find it to your liking.

Late to the Party: Decay: The Mare

Price I paid: $8

Available on: PC (reviewed), Mac, Linux, XBox Live Arcade, and GooglePlay.

 

As with many games that wave their horror flag, the obvious question is, does it have cheap jump scares? Short answer: no, it does not. What it has is a chilling sound track, gorgeous and artistic environments, puzzles, an interesting story, and an unsettling feeling of dread that taints your perspective and rattles the nerves from the first scene to the last. Decay: The Mare managed to creep me out by doing three things very well.

Late to the Party: The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game: Season Two

Price I paid: $15? I think?
Available on: Windows (reviewed), OS X, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbone, Ouya, PlayStation Vita, iOS, and Android.

By now, you probably already know or have at least heard that The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game: Season One was an incredible, tear-jerking, feels-feeling, undeniable smash hit. I played it, and I loved it. So how could they manage to live up to the expectations people had for the sequel? They did it by giving the player new challenges, different but equally difficult decisions, and pouring just as much soul into this game as they did the first.

Late to the Party: Heroes of the Storm (beta)

Price I paid: Free.

Available on: PC

Heroes of the Storm is currently in beta. Some things may change between now and release.

While League of Legends (League) is not the first MOBA, it is possibly the most popular one. So when trying to explain a new MOBA, it’s easier to explain how it is like and not like League. Heroes of the Storm (HotS), understands this well. They took the formula that made League the dominant MOBA, skinned it in their own IP, glued some extra parts on, shaved the corners off, and made it faster paced. If you have a team that can work together, you can enjoy that faster-paced gameplay. If not, then you can get steamrolled and listen to your teammates complain about it.

Late to the Party: Tomb Raider (1996)

Price I paid: About $1.50 as part of a Tomb Raider bundle while it was on sale on Steam.
Available on: Steam (reviewed), PlayStation, PlayStation Store, Sega Saturn, GOG.com, and probably others.
Released: 1996

When a game is so old it cannot recognize a mouse and the default controls have you using the arrow keys to move, it’s easy for it to turn players off. When the port to PC is so shoddy it loads a black screen if you don’t trouble shoot, I had to play it in windowed mode that didn’t take up my whole screen, and it looks like you’re watching the cutscenes through window blinds, it becomes difficult to enjoy the game because of all its problems. So when I say that Tomb Raider (1996) was one of the best games I played this year despite all of that, you better believe this gem has not lost its shine after 19 years. Unfortunately, I’m just not sure if I can recommend it because of how awful the port is.

Late to the Party: Hitman: Absoultion

Price I paid: I don’t remember. It was part of a bundle on humblebundle.com.

Stealth games are a lot like sushi to me. I don’t like sushi but I do like wasabi, so I sometimes eat sushi as an excuse to cry tears of joy and horseradish as I shovel wasabi into my face. I don’t like games that focus on stealth, but I like some of the amusing and stressful situations they create and some of the mechanics they use.

Late to the Party: Hammerwatch

Price I paid: $1.43 (It was part of a seven game bundle on humblebundle.com)

Hammerwatch deserves the title “cooperative dungeon crawler” more so than any other game I have played. While I enjoy Diablo II, Champions of Norrath, and Dark Alliance, they tend to test the limits of how much I’m willing to forgive a person when my friend has 15,000 more gold than I have but refuses to help me buy new armor to protect my under-leveled behind that the enemies seem to love so much. Hammerwatch, thankfully, focuses on removing the unintentionally competitive aspects of the genre that don’t hamper the fun.