I've had to look up.... goddamn it, hang on. I've had to look up Wrath Colon Aeon Of Ruin every day to remember its utter nothing of a name. Such a weak title deserves a much worse game, but this captures the feeling of its late 90s FPS influences as they actually were, and ends up just familiar enough to work, and just original enough to refresh the formula. At times, it's a little too accurate, but even with its annoyances dialled up by the pressure of playing it too hard for the sake of review, I'm impressed with the balancing act it's struck.
]]>Who remembers the 90s? Princess Diana alive and well and driving around London in her open-topped Bentley, throwing fistfuls of rare Pogs to her adoring public. Tony Blair flying around the sky in his personalised Concorde, throwing hundreds of rare Pogs down to his adoring public. Bill Clinton, unimpeached and still full of beans, kicking back in the Oval Office, proudly showing off his collection of rare Pogs to any foreign leader who will indulge him. The most popular new baby name is “Ross From Friends”, and everywhere, everywhere, is ankle-deep in a layer of nerf darts covering the entire surface of the planet.
]]>KillPixel's Wrath: Aeon Of Ruin launched into early access today, bringing the original 1996 Quake's bloody, baroque 3D action screaming into 2019. Medieval castles filled with shotguns, skeletons and a smattering of blood? Chunky low-poly demons and pixel-counts you could track on one hand? Yep, it's a Quake. With some of the modding greats from the game's 23-year history, it should be a bloody good one at that, too.
]]>As you may have surmised from a bunch of very non-hardware-related interviews I've done recently about the likes of the excellent Nowhere Prophet, Sparklite, Unrailed, the return of Super Meat Boy and what's next for Astroneer, I was packed off to PAX East a couple of months ago. I was mostly there to host a panel about the best video game weapon of all time (the winner was the Portal Gun inside Hitman 2's homing briefcase, in case you were wondering), but I also got to play a bunch of cool games as well. Here are five of my absolute favs.
]]>There have been some lovely old-school shooters recently, but 3D Realms reason that the only way to get true retro authenticity is to build new games to old standards. Wrath: Aeon Of Ruin bears a strong family resemblance to the original Quake, which makes sense considering it's being produced by KillPixel, a crew of veteran Quake mappers and modders using the tools they're familiar with. It's a team I'm familiar with, having been enjoying their work for years, putting Wrath high on my most wanted list. The game is due this summer, and you can see the debut trailer below.
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