July 25 – July 31

Section: 

Somebody must have been reading last week, because now there are almost too many interesting things for me to choose from. After much painful editing involving my keyboard and a pair of hot pliers, I’ve picked two to share with you.

Quadrilateral Cowboy puts you in the role of a mercenary computer hacker from the early 1990s. You must use your tape drive, your acoustic coupler and your affinity for Jolt Cola to hack into places for money. It’s Car Mechanic Simulator meets Jazzpunk in this delightfully bizarre offering from the makers of 30 Flights of Loving. On any other week this would have my vote for Game of the Week, but not today.

This week my heart belongs to my head. Headlander is a new platformer with a 1970’s sci-fi aesthetic and a hook that is exactly the kind of darkly quirky fun that I’d expect from the synergy of Double Fine and Adult Swim Games. You are the last human in the known universe, and all that’s left of you is a disembodied head in a jar. Fortunately, your jar has hacking equipment that lets you commandeer any of the robot bodies wandering around the place. Grab that robot, solve that puzzle, and find out what happened to the rest of your body!

For those of you who played Puppeteer on the PS3 or Dead Head Fred on the PSP, the mechanics will sound familiar. But that’s only about three people, so the rest of you can try out this head-swapping platforming action as if it were brand new. Headlander gets my pick for this week.

Let's see what other fun is afoot.

Felix “Two-Tone” Threepaper

Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop puts Fallout Shelter in your Commonwealth. I just want more quests; instead, we keep getting more base building. Aside from Far Harbor, I’ve been underwhelmed by the DLC. Maybe Bethesda’s plan is to provide the tools and let the modders make the quests. Maybe I’ll be bored with Fallout 4 by then.

On a more positive note, given videogames’ fraught history of naming things, I have to admire Design It, Drive It: Speedboats for doing what it says on the box.

My co-panellists have made good picks this week. If they don’t inspire you, check out Chambara – a local-multiplayer, stealth deathmatch game. Its black-and-white aesthetic reminds me of MadWorld. You hide by blending into the background, and you seek by switching up your perspective. Stealth games are an interesting twist on power fantasies – they assume that the head-on, brute strength, “masculine” approach will not work. Chambara’s developer, team ok, has tried to make a competitive game that isn’t another twitch-based fragfest.

Colleen “Momgamer” Hannon

I was thinking about picking The Amazing Shinsengumi: Heroes in Love because the Shinsengumi (and the Bakamatsu period in general) are cool. However, a little research showed that it as a rather heavy-handed straight otome dating game, and I … well … I can’t even. Not even a little bit.

For the Vive, Tower Island: Explore, Discover and Disassemble looks very interesting to me. I’m hoping for a little challenge here after watching my daughter breeze through that Water Bears one in less than an hour. If you have a great big gaming space, Roomscale Tower gives a Myst-like hyper-real experience of solving puzzles in a tower – though that one looks like it’s very early days.

The newest episode of Minecraft Story Mode is a given. And I still maintain the possible delusion that In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor will at long last actually ship so I’m going to pick it again.

Why? Because I really, really want to be a velociraptor, running around and tail-smashing robots.

This week:

PC

  • Blade Arcus from Shining: Battle Arena
  • Cats Are Liquid
  • Con Amore
  • Cyber Sentinel
  • D.N.Age
  • Design It, Drive It: Speedboats
  • Endless Burst
  • Epic Manager: Create Your Own Adventuring Agency!
  • Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop
  • Headlander
  • HELP: The Game
  • In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor
  • Kingdom Rush Frontiers
  • Legends of the Universe: StarCore
  • LOKA: League of Keepers Allysium
  • M.EXE
  • Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 7: Access Denied
  • Mustache in Hell
  • Mutant Mudds Super Challenge
  • Phantom Brave PC
  • Quadrilateral Cowboy
  • Quatros Origins
  • SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
  • SpiritSphere
  • SupiPara Story #01: Spring Has Come!
  • The Amazing Shinsengumi: Heroes in Love
  • The Hidden Dragon
  • This is the Police

PS4

  • Chambara
  • Dungeon Punks
  • Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force
  • Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop
  • Headlander
  • Hyper Light Drifter
  • Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 7: Access Denied
  • Mutant Mudds Super Challenge
  • N.E.R.O.: Nothing Ever Remains Obscure
  • OlliOlli: Epic Combo Edition
  • Super Dungeon Bros

Xbox One

  • Banner Saga 2
  • Dungeon Punks
  • Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop
  • Hyper Light Drifter
  • Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 7: Access Denied
  • Super Dungeon Bros

PS3

  • Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 7: Access Denied

Xbox 360

  • Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 7: Access Denied

Vita

  • A.W.: Phoenix Festa
  • Laser Disco Defenders
  • Mutant Mudds Super Challenge
  • Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

RIFT

  • Audio Arena
  • COSM
  • Design It, Drive It: Speedboats
  • VRMultigames

Vive

  • Audio Arena
  • COSM
  • Roomscale Tower
  • Tower Island: Explore, Discover and Disassemble

Comments

Quadrilateral Cowboy and Headlander look amazing.

Also been watching some pre-release Let's Plays of This is the Police and it looks like an interesting mix of narrative & strat gameplay.

In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor bumped from 26th to 28th, so still this week. Have faith!

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate for me at some point. I keep buying Mystery Dungeon games and getting frustrated with them for being, well, the same thing over and over again with the same things I don't like about them not being fixed, but there's not much of a market out there for "proper" roguelikes so I keep buying them.

For those interested in Quadrilateral Cowboy, here's a demo of an early build from a couple years ago.

Quadrilateral Cowboy!

Aaron D. wrote:

Quadrilateral Cowboy and Headlander look amazing.

They do! Keeping both on the shortlist since I'm still trying to unbury from my pile some more before picking up anything new to play. But I expect Headlander will be the standard release from Double Fine: awesome premise but less than awesome execution. On the other hand, I have no idea what to expect from QC given my only exposure to Brendan Cheung's stuff aside from the short-form Citizen Abel games

Just wanted to call this to Doubting's attention:

This Is the Police is a strategy/adventure game set in a city spiraling the drain. You’ll come face to face with the ugly underbelly of Freeburg, taking the role of gritty Police Chief Jack Boyd (portrayed by Jon St. John, the voice of Duke Nukem).

Shiren the Wanderer is first up, because I want more Vita games like this. Quadrilateral Cowboy eventually, hopefully once it gets a Linux port. I might get it eventually without that though, but it's a harder sell.

(Already have Hyperlight Drifter from the Kickstarter.)

Might as well be vaporware at this point.