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Mario’s Game Gallery, or The Place Where Reality Crumbles
I haven’t played much of Mario games in my life. It may sound wild, especially for an American reader, but I didn’t own any Nintendo console up until I bought Switch some five years ago. Along with Switch, I purchased Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to see what’s all the fuss is about—it’s okay, I guess—and…
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[Cleaning the Backlog] Wolfenstein 3D
Shareware versions of both Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were pre-installed on my first PC machine back in 1995. When friends came over, we played Doom «Nightmare hotseat»—we sucked, rarely beating E1M1, but it was pure fun. Personally, though, when remaining one-on-one with my best pal Volkov Commander (also pre-installed by patriotic Russian hardware sellers), I…
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Dawn of War: Not That One.
It’s the second half of the 1990s. Everybody wants to jump on the RTS train, put in motion by the success of Command & Conquer and Warcraft. While the talks about genre oversaturation begin to surface, there’s still a chance: unusual setting, innovative mechanic, or exceptionally wholesome implementation of existing ideas—and you win the ticket…
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RTS Galore! Episode 3: Mega-Lo-Mania & Populous II
After trying its design philosophy in an entirely atheistic setting, Bullfrog returned to its god-game roots with a sequel to Populous, making the gamification of the ‘holy war’ concept more fun and ideologically safe. A couple of months earlier, another British developer, Sensible Software, also released a game about gods and their bloody conflicts. But Mega-Lo-Mania’s focus was more…
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Heroes of Might & Magic: The Classical Era
Since the second half of the ‘80s, Might & Magic series have been accumulating the love and appreciation of the masses. World of Xeen, the role-playing behemoth born from the fusion of Might & Magic IV and V, crowned the series with a luxurious quality cap. New World Computing needed new ideas and technologies to continue the series without the risk…
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Cyberia: Weird. Short. Unique.
Cyberia was never the harbinger of cinema and videogames synergy, nor it’s not even a significant or meaningful title for its own medium. It’s just a short, flawed, but quite an enjoyable game. And a pretty unique one, actually. Ambitious and humble simultaneously. That’s why it should be remembered.
Baking Potatoes On the Ashes of Society