Wot I Think – Torment: Tides of Numenera

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Raised By Screens, chapter 17 – Planescape: Torment

Raised by screens is an intermittent autobiography, structured around the PC games I played in my youth. Most instalments are currently only available to RPS subscribers, but I shall compile them somewhere once the series reaches its eventual end.

Some spoilers for Planescape: Torment’s ending follow.

Too many games now, too many websites, too much happening each and every day. I mean only ‘too much for me personally to keep pace with’, not that this is inherently a poor state of things. I think about how I came to play Planescape: Torment, and how differently that might happen today.
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Epic Games announce tactical bosher Battle Breakers

As the press release sharks swim around our heels on the opening of GDC, one of them has gone in for a testing nip. Battle Breakers [official site] is an upcoming tactical RPG, Epic Games have announced. It’s done in the flavour of Saturday morning sci-fi cartoons of the 80s, they say – a turn-based battler about taking back your Kingdom from space monsters. It is as ugly as a mauled bottom.
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Premature Evaluation: Northgard

Every Monday we send Brendan to scout the early access ruins for hidden treasures. This week, the careful Viking tactics of Northgard [official site]

This is Blainn, below. He’s just killed a Wyvern. He’s my best mate because I gave him and his giant pals, the Jötunn, enough food to last a lifetime. They reckon we in the Goat clan are excellent humans and now Chief Blainn is fighting alongside us in our hoofed conquest of the whole land. This is one endgame that comes in Northgard, a rock-solid RTS about allocating and reallocating your Viking workforce in just the right way. Technically this match ended over an hour ago, when my opponent reached a “wisdom victory”. But it’s a testament to Northgard’s foundations that, when given the option to leave or continue following my defeat, I happily clicked “keep playing”.
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Hearthstone’s next expansion coming April (with dinos)

A new expansion for card-thirsty players of Hearthstone [official site] has been announced, bringing with it splurging volcanoes that deal random damage, elemental fire birds that resurrect themselves stronger than before, and dinosaurs that can adapt as a game goes on. There’s going to be 135 new cards but most interesting for Hearthstoners (I’m guessing!) is the new Quest card type, which let’s you setup a goal during the match and rewards you with a powerful card if you manage to complete it.
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Total War: Warhammer’s campaign map is unreadable

Total War: Warhammer is good at presenting complex information in battles. Your unit of spearmen will tell you when they’re attacked from behind and their banner will flash when they’re about to retreat. Your general glows, and he or she is often comically large compared to regular soldiers. Arrows, cannonballs and spells have brightly coloured trails so you can tell what’s about to hit you.

Outside of battles though, TW: Warhammer has trouble presenting basic information. In particular, the game’s campaign map is a mess which is difficult to parse and frustrating to use. In battles, Creative Assembly make good use of visual shorthand so can you extract relevant information at a glance. The campaign map, meanwhile, is so visually busy that basic information like where your armies are and how far they can move is obscure.

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Trap remix: Wonder Boy shows off new-old switching

One game I’ve overlooked in the eternal crusade to remake or remaster every game released prior to 2014 is Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap [official site], a remake of a Sega Master System platformer from 1989. It’s a game fondly remembered, I’m told, though I wouldn’t know as my Master System experiences were five minutes round a friend’s house getting bored playing After Burner. Anyway! The Dragon’s Trap comes to my attention now through a trailer showing off switching on the fly between its original art and the hand-drawn new style. Observe: … [visit site to read more]

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