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Nuclear Throne is pure chaos: an explosive, gun-slinging romp through a post-apocalyptic wasteland that marries the frantic energy of bullet hells with the tactical risk assessment of a roguelike. Boasting a mean arsenal of weapons, from standard revolvers to plasma cannons, it packs a big enough punch to draw in fans of fast-paced run-and-guns, but also demands a patience and strategy that rewards slow and methodical players too. With a cast of colorful characters to choose from and a simple leveling system that grants fun new skills as you progress, there’s no shortage of unique approaches to play… which is good, because coupled with Nuclear Throne’s unforgiving level of difficulty, you’ll probably be playing a lot. A game of Nuclear Throne can be over in an instant, but because it rewards you so often, with frequent weapon pick-ups and fancy skills, every failure feels like a fresh new beginning: an opportunity to learn and grow your character in interesting new ways. Ordered Chaos Part of that is owed to its excellent balance of randomness and familiarity. Like any action-roguelike hybrid (see: The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky), Nuclear Throne’s levels, enemy spawns, and item pick-ups are all procedurally generated. Themed levels grant a degree of consistency, so while you may never get the same layout twice, you’ll still have a general idea of what to expect each time you enter a new zone. This is super valuable for planning ahead, which plays a major part in mastering Nuclear Throne’s challenges. It may be a shoot-em-up, but rolling into battle with even the biggest guns blazing will only get you so far. "Rolling into battle with even the biggest guns blazing will only get you so far." The bulk of Nuclear Throne’s strategy manifests in its engaging skill system. Downed enemies drop radioactive energy, or rads, which act like experience points. If you’ve cleared a level by annihilating all enemies and earned enough rads to level up, you get to choose one mutation out of four before moving on to the next area. Some skills are pretty basic, adding things like more HP and ammo drops, while others might build off of your character’s existing ability, buff certain weapon types, or make enemies weaker. It’s super satisfying to pile on your favorite mutations over the course of a playthrough until you have that perfect build, but part of overcoming Nuclear Throne’s difficulty means experimenting with the constantly shifting tweaks that each new skill provides. With so many mutations to choose from, you might not always be given the options you want, which is part of Nuclear Throne’s exciting unpredictability. It forces you to change up your playstyle, work with the tools you’re given, and continue to adapt, ultimately making you a better player without holding your hand. "Despite its difficulty, Nuclear Throne is extremely accessible." Despite its difficulty, Nuclear Throne is extremely accessible. Uncomplicated controls, a simplified leveling system, and clear goals make it really easy for casual players to jump right in and know what they’re doing. For committed players, there are hidden areas and shortcuts to be unlocked, rare weapons to be found, and secrets to be discovered, and while the complexities of Nuclear Throne’s action may not seem as immediately deep as similar games like Spelunky, it still has a lot to offer for those with the time to seek it out. Unfortunately, Nuclear Throne does suffer from occasional crashes, which is a huge pain in a game where progression can’t be saved or reloaded. It didn’t happen frequently enough to put a dent in my positive experience, but I was also lucky to never have it happen while I was going up against the last boss. The Verdict Nuclear Throne might not be a super complex game, but it is a compelling one. Its action is brutal, over-the-top, and rewarding; a hyperactive arcade-style shoot-em-up with enough dynamism to keep me captivated moment to moment, but a strong sense of strategy to give me something to invest in over longer playthroughs. Whether you want to sink your time methodically making it to that elusive throne or play in quick, punchy bursts, Nuclear Throne is an excellent choice either way. Where I can found this game ? Nuclear Throne is available on Steam. It costs 11,99€. Navigate to Nuclear Throne | Steam Store.

So this is the reason of my Cooldown in CS:GO, this made me very angry because i only like to play Competitive. One of the most stupid reason i have ever got in any game.

As a quiet person working in a loud, open-plan office the idea of packing it all to go live on a farm appeals to me greatly. Stardew Valley has given me that opportunity, albeit in a cutesy, pixelated form. It’s very much like a Harvest Moon game. You get your farm up and running by first making a patch of land useable. Then you plant, tend and ultimately sell crops to build up a stable income. What starts off as a few parsnips soon becomes a steady supply of beans and potatoes, and then fancier products like eggs and mayonnaise. You can supplement your earnings by heading out into the forest to forage for berries and leeks, or go fishing. Everything you do consumes energy so you’ll have to keep an eye on how much work you do or you’ll risk collapsing from exhaustion. There’s a town nearby filled with people to befriend and bargain with. If you’re feeling particularly frisky, you can even woo some of them by giving them gifts. Unlike Harvest Moon games where the local town seems to be filled with anime tropes and [CENSORED]s, Stardew Valley’s residents feel like they’d all actually live there. Everyone is a little eccentric from living in such a small, isolated place, and some even feel depressed and unable to escape. The disheveled Shane with his dirty jumper and four-day stubble is particularly convincing. He spends most of his time drinking in the bar wanting nothing to do with me—behaviour I’d expect from a grown man feeling trapped and trying to hide something. Over time more of the world opens up. Bridges are mended, revealing new areas to explore. After being given a sword I found a mine filled with monsters, which in turn meant I could gather crafting metals with and monster parts to sell. After this I finally found the crafting tab in the menus, where you can craft customisation options. Tucked away between the stats pages and themap, crafting is one of the most fun elements of the game. With the right materials you can make objects such as fence posts and scarecrows, and place them in your lot. Farm customisation is a joy. My lopsided hoeing and patchy groundwork was turned into a professional-looking garden just by adding a stone border and a path. When I finally built a coop and an area for my free range chickens to roam in the whole place really started to come together. As you till the soil you earn experience to improve your skills, though leveling makes little noticeable difference to your proficiency. When you can upgrade your tools later anyway this RPG-like layer seems unnecessary. There are a few other niggles: my mouse cursor would randomly reset itself to the center of the screen during events, and it feels too easy to accidentally miss a festival by not meeting the right conditions to trigger it properly. The menus are a little odd, too. A bit more polish and better signposting would go a long way. Stardew Valley is definitely rough around the edges, but that didn't matter when I was fishing on a little pixelated pier, or making friends with a homeless person in a tent. Its imperfections never damage that feeling of gentle escape to the countryside. They never made me love my farm dog any less, or made me want to put down my hoe and return to the office. I might be a long way off getting an actual farm, but Stardew Valley makes for a good start. Where I can found this game ? Stardew Valley is available on Steam. It costs 13,99€. Navigate to Stardew Valley | Steam Store.

The Flame in the Flood hits a little close to home. In the fall of '98 I watched as the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers near my home swelled out of their banks to drown miles of the surrounding countryside, carting off whole houses and trees with the same ease that ants carry away crumbs of bread. The waters cut us off for days, and least 31 people died. Up until now I don’t think I've ever seen a game properly capture the despair and (yes) beauty of those days, but this visually attractive procedurally generated survival sim comes frightfully close. It’s hardly the toughest survival sim around, and it’s hobbled by a needlessly complicated menu system, but in those wonderful moments when it finds its flow, it’s a game to remember. Survival games don’t often lean heavily on hope, preferring instead to focus on the humdrum drive to simply last until the next day. But The Flame in the Flood succeeds in part because it’s a game about pushing us toward a promisingsomething, placing us as it does on a river that’s jumped its banks and engulfed the world. In the little islands dotting the river and in the banks beyond, dark conifers and grasses thrive on land once suffocated under cement. Rabbits, wolves, and bears evade rent in crumbled apartment buildings, all while the occasional fiddle or harmonica strain suggests the American spirit need not die, even if our cities do. The Flame in the Flood rushes us through all this on the current of a destiny that’s never exactly manifest. I could think of far less appealing apocalypses. Along the River Bank It’s ostensibly the story of a young woman named Scout and her dog Aesop, although the campaign (such as it is) never really offers much elaboration beyond that aside from specific NPCs and the hunt for a mysterious radio signal downriver. Most of the fun’s in the Endless mode, which happily chucks the story bits and focuses on the core gameplay of riding the currents while attempting to steer toward camps and wilderness areas. There, you hunt on foot for the supplies necessary to either keep starvation and injury at bay or to repair and upgrade your humble vessel. It’d be difficult to overemphasize the importance keeping the raft in passable shape. Scout’s raft starts out as an unwieldy beast that lurches, sloth-like, even over placid waters and it barely allows control over rapids. Experience tells me that’s pretty accurate as far as piloting a real raft goes, but I did nevertheless find it much easier to handle with a gamepad in place of the keyboard. "I’ve died of dehydration, sleep deprivation, drowning, and even from the jaws of a wolf when, moronically, I chose to fight rather than flee." Good control is essential, as there’s no going back. Once you’ve passed a spot on the river, it’s gone for good, a design choice that adds a welcome dose of tension. I still find myself frowning at the time I died of starvation because I chickened out while trying to cook food at an existing campfire near a nasty boar, reasoning that I’d have another chance at the next island. The next one was a long time coming. Too long, in fact, as the berries I’d munched on weren’t enough to get me there. A new encampment marker had barely popped up on the screen before Scout slumped over dead on her raft, her hunger meter drained entirely. That’s to say nothing of all the other times my negligence led to Scout's demise. I’ve died of dehydration, sleep deprivation, drowning, and even from the jaws of a wolf when, moronically, I chose to fight rather than flee. The Will to Survive The good news is that the actual business of staying alive isn’t all that complicated so long as you can find the supplies. Indeed, some jarring gameplay questions pepper the scenarios, such as why I have to scrounge for drinkable and initially non-potable water on islands when there’s a huge river rushing right around me. (It does, after all, let you gather rain.) But otherwise, the recipes compiled in the journal make life as easy as it can be, showing me how to make a rabbit snare with some sticks and ropes, how to skin the rabbit with a flint knife I made, and how to cook the meat over a fire. In these moments, The Flame in the Flood plays more like a traditional survival game, although with recipes that mercifully keep things simple while still delivering appreciable depth. Sometimes you’ll find components like wood and string in old trunks or in the rusted guts of long-dead buses; at other times you’ll have to make them, generally by picking up things like reeds and flint, and making everything from clothes to medicine with them. Sometimes you’ll even get stuff like arrows from the few other survivors, a creepy bunch who always seem to regard me and my little dog as potential meals. "In time, even The Flame in the Flood succumbs to the monotony of mere survival." It’s managing all this stuff that ruins some of the appeal. Scout has a laughably small backpack with just 12 slots, although she gains six more spaces by tossing some extra items on the dog. She can store the least essential supplies on the raft, but even it only allows for 12 extra slots. The trouble? I ended up spending most of my time in the menus managing the precious junk I scavenged, transferring some items to Aesop or eating some food on the fly in order to make room for nuts and bolts—pretty tedious stuff. Though I can accept that it’s part of a mini-game that’s designed to force me to think carefully about what to take, The Flame in the Flood makes these moments more time-consuming than they need to be, forcing me, for example, to transfer stackable items I’ve just picked up to Aesop’s inventory where the rest of such items are, even though the mutt never once leaves my side. It's little things like this (not to mention an unfortunate tendency to crash, particularly on the PC version) that slowly wear down the charm after hours on hours: in time, even The Flame in the Flood succumbs to the monotony of mere survival. The journey may be more important than the destination, as they say, but the strength of that saying usually rests on there actually being an end to begin with. There's never one in Endless. But does that mean I regret my time with this unique vision of the end of the world (or at least the country)? Not for a moment. The Verdict The Flame in the Flood is a beautiful procedurally generated survival sim that gains a welcome sense of momentum from the need to stay on the move. Its unwieldy menus and tendency to crash ruins some of the fun, unfortunately, but not enough to diminish the strength of the hopeful, riverbound journey at its core. Where I can found this game ? The Flame in the Flood is available on Steam. It costs 19.99€. Navigate to The Flame in The Flood | Steam Store.

Pony Island is not a good game. It’s an awful game, in fact. You gallop from left to right, jumping over gates and blowing gusts of wind at troublesome butterflies. Clear gates for long enough and you’ll reach the end of the level, earn some EXP and get to do it all over again. On the other hand,Pony Island, the game that challenges you to escape from this gate-jumping hell, is superb. It’s a self-aware indie gem with an anarchic sensibility, where anything can happen. The very opposite, then, of the game within this game. Jump, little pony! Much of what makes Pony Island so intriguing and cool should be left for you to discover for yourself, so I won’t go into too many details. Instead, I’ll give you the broad brushstrokes. “It’s presented like an ‘80s Macintosh nightmare, on a smudged, smeared monitor..." You’re trapped within an old school computer system, with seemingly no choice but to play Pony Island, and surrender everything you have to it. Get out of the game, however, and you can access the machine it’s running on, and start exploring different user accounts and files, and encounter other characters via a messaging program. It’s presented like an ‘80s Macintosh nightmare, on a smudged, smeared monitor, with chunky, era-specific graphics that are largely monochrome but bleed into colour to create an unsettling tone. Colour is also used to highlight interactive elements or to create a deliberate contrast to this stark world. It’s clever design, as is the whole “Pony Island” game concept, which works precisely because it’s so at odds with the wider game’s brooding, sinister tone. Colours are used sparingly and to good effect. You actually wind up playing a lot of Pony Island in various forms over this two hour experience. It’s deliberately repetitive, but also always serves a purpose, especially as the game’s designer is the central figure in the narrative. Pony Island is his domain, where he attempts to exert his influence, whereas the sequences in-between – where you’re exploring and interacting with the computer system – are where you have the most agency. These sections are wonderful: I never knew what to expect, and Pony Island threw a number of ingenious curve balls at me. Pony Island may be chaotic and unpredictable by design, but its visual language is crystal clear where it counts. I quickly learned, for instance, to look for the portals that will take me to a puzzle and progress the game. Each of these puzzles lets you actively hack the system. As such, they’re – for the most part – presented as backend code, where you rearrange a set of symbols to mani[CENSORED]te a program. There’s generally only one solution, so there’s no actual hacking, but the mechanics are sound, and these vignettes fit Pony Island’s aesthetic really well. It’s particularly cool seeing nods to story elements, or hints to solutions lurking in the code. The puzzles aren't hard, but they're excellent. The puzzles evolve neatly over the course of Pony Island, and while their complexity could certainly have been pushed a little further, they’re at about the right level to ensure you’re always moving forward. They also serve as a backbone of “traditional” gameplay for this rather avant-garde experience. The Verdict I greatly enjoyed the two or so hours it took me to play through Pony Island. This is a game that delights in toying with your expectations and in breaking the fourth wall, in revealing its sinister yet playful world, and in building up a compelling antagonist and telling an ambiguous story. Pony Island is about as punk rock as they come. This game is available in Steam. You can buy it just for 4,99€.

When it comes to shooter sequels, the delightfully animated and colorful Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 shows just the kind of growth I like to see. Like a big juicy brain, there’s lots to chew on with a variety of single-player and multiplayer modes, maps, and customization options. While the simplicity and ease of use of the original quartet of characters on each side will be attractive to series newcomers and can certainly hold their own in battle, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2's biggest attraction are the six interesting new classes and their fun abilities. On the Plants side, Kernel Corn brings much-needed heavy firepower to the floral troops with a rocket launcher, gun-assisted rocket jump, and airstrike abilities, balanced out by his extremely slow movement. The orange-based Citron is almost the exact opposite; he’s very defense-based, with a temporary shield ability and a ball form that can get him out of action fast. The magic-using Rose is the real wild card, as she can slow down enemies, turn them into goats, or even very briefly turn into an apparition with a powerful attack. While Rose has a bit higher of a learning curve, she can be pretty useful once you master some of her weirder attacks. “If the Imp lives long enough, he can summon a powerful mech." As for the Zombies, there’s the melee-focused Super Brainz, who has extremely potent up-close attacks to compensate for underwhelming projectiles, and the Imp, who has extremely low health but – if he lives long enough – can summon a powerful mech every few minutes. If there’s one weak spot amongst the new crew, it’s Captain Deadbeard. He has a decent cannon attack, but his other abilities are done better by other troops and his primary weapon isn't quite up to snuff with the rest of the new recruits. Feeling Wilted Then there’s the original set of four characters on each side, but they’ve been in short supply in online matches thus far for good reason; short of the healer class, there’s little beckoning a return to Garden Warfare’s founders when the new classes have so many more interesting things to do. Across the board, Garden Warfare 2 could be a bit more welcoming to newcomers; instead of proper tutorials introducing each new skill, there are only brief videos without any text or dialogue to demonstrate, and it doesn’t give you much of an idea as to how they’re actually best used. If you're a complete newcomer, good luck – there are no such intros for the original Garden Warfare warriors. Spruce Up Your Produce “I play an extra match here and there to earn enough for a more promising pack." For the entire cast, the character customization lets you expand their look and abilities via random cards in purchased packs (with earned in-game currency), and that’s is the constant carrot that's kept me playing Garden Warfare 2. Whether it's new attire like a jiffy pop hat for Kernel Corn, a harmonica for Citron, a Batman-like mask for Super Brainz, or entire character variants that offer neat tweaks to weapons or abilities (like a witch doctor Rose who shoots poison or a Deadbeard variant with a rocket launcher you can detonate in midair), I've found myself playing an extra match here and there to earn enough for a slightly more promising pack. The fact that the 75,000 coins to purchase the priciest packs that guarantee character variants can be earned within two hours of hard-fought battles makes the in-game economy tough but fair. With almost every standard shooter mode under the sun already a part of the PVZ experience and carried over from the original and its DLC, Plants vs Zombies 2’s truly new features are more about making sure Plants and Zombies can enjoy everything equally. There's now a Plant-focused version of the highly competitive capture-and-defend mode Gardens and Graveyards called Herbal Assault, while the prize flower of Plants vs. Zombies – the wave-based co-op of Garden Ops – can now be played with Zombies under the name Graveyard Ops. Allowing us to use all these diverse classes in every mode is a great improvement. Grow It Alone “Just about every mode can be tackled with AI, and in split-screen co-op." While it’s great fun to go online and join in the often-crazy 24-player war between the eponymous factions, just about every single mode can also be tackled with AI partners and enemies, and in split-screen co-op. Even better, you can customize the layouts of each team and apply crazy modifiers like never-empty weapons, double speed, or crazy knockbacks that send you across the map when hit. The AI is pretty good, though it’s not the best at handling Imps - on higher difficulties they usually die long before their mechs are ready. The go-it-alone experience is best in the wave-based Ops modes, where you can spawn three teammates and hot-swap between them to take on the randomized enemies. Garden Warfare 2 never needles you to switch up characters, but doing so is the best way to learn new ways to fight outside your preferred Plant or Zombie. Aside from that, Garden Warfare 2 has some underwhelming mission-based campaigns for each side. Each mission is a slight tweak on a multiplayer mode, save for the crazy final mission. I don't want to spoil it, but the insanity of the new wave-based combat style is a wonderful capper that I was glad to jump right back into, even if it is a weird thematic shift. While the less-dynamic missions are still a good way to earn some coins and learn the ropes before heading online, I’ve had more of an impetus to keep playing thanks to the constantly changing active quests that offer up bonus XP multipliers and extra currency. Whether it’s taking out a specific enemy type a certain amount of times, notching kills with particular abilities, or just winning in a specific mode, I’ve found myself using the active quests as inspiration to try mix up my playstyle. The Verdict Under its attractively bright and cartoony art style, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 has a great amount of modes and customization options to enjoy, whether alone against the AI or with online allies and enemies. The interesting abilities options of the six new character classes gave me something to sink my teeth into, and the customization options are a great reward for playing outside my comfort zone. The sheer amount of enjoyment in this full garden will keep me in the war for some time to come.

Luck is a fickle mistress, both for people who play games and people who make them. A little luck in the right places and a game can be tense, gripping, and delightfully unpredictable! But let Lady Luck have things all her own way, and suddenly you've got something that feels random, cruel, and maybe even a little mean-spirited. Something like Tharsis. Tharsis takes place on a star-crossed mission to Mars where, immediately after the tutorial, the spaceship is shattered by a meteorite, two of the crew are killed, and all the food is destroyed. With a ship falling apart around them, the four surviving astronauts try to patch failing ship modules long enough to reach Mars. It's a good setup, though the interstitial cutscenes will get old fast as the try-fail-repeat patterns of Tharsis begin to take their toll. "The resource-allocation aspect of Tharsis its strongest point." Cascade of Failure At the start of each turn, new problems strike different modules of your ship, and if they aren't fixed, they will inflict a different kind of harm on your ship or your crew. A failing flight control system could threaten your ship's hull with three points of damage, and if your hull reaches zero it's game over. On the other hand, a fire in the medical bay might do two points of health damage to every crewmember on board your ship, and as crewmembers die, completing the mission becomes much harder (if not impossible). Just choosing which problem to solve would be hard enough, especially as events carry over from turn to turn if you don't fix them, but there are some other priorities to consider that make the resource-allocation aspect of Tharsis its strongest point. Each module has unique abilities that can help out your crew and better prepare them for problems down the road. Roll three of a kind in the greenhouse module and you will have food to feed your astronauts, which grants them extra dice with which to solve problems. Roll two of a kind in the medical bay and the astronaut working there will be fully healed. On top of that, a module can't have more than one thing wrong with it at a time, so sometimes it's easier to leave a minor problem in place because something worse might happen if you fix it. All these factors create a lot of satisfying opportunities for planning and prediction, and if Tharsis weren't such a fundamentally sadistic game, it could’ve been a lot of fun to manage all these competing priorities. "Tharsis just seems to say, "You made some good calls, but now you lose." The problem is that there are times that Tharsis just seems to say, "You made some good calls, but now you lose." I've had quite a few games where things were going surprisingly well: my crew were mostly healthy, my ship's hull was in okay shape, and I only had one minor problem dealing some easily handled damage each turn. Then, at the start of the new turn, Tharsis would toss up a set of unbelievably bad events that instantly dealt enough potential damage to destroy my ship, and then make them almost impossible to fix in time to survive to the next turn… when a new round of disasters would strike and start piling on more harm to my beleaguered crew. Rolling in the Deep Ship The way you attempt to solve all these problems is by rolling some lovingly animated virtual dice. They make a weighty sound as they roll around on the screen, and move with a slight slow-motion effect that shows them teetering between the number you need and the number that dooms you. Each roll becomes a dramatic event as you wait to see whether disaster or a miracle will strike. The decision-making comes about as you send crew members, each with their own pool of up to five six-sided dice, into modules to repair them. Each malfunction on the ship has a target number, reduced by allocating dice to it. So if the medical bay is starting to fill with smoke and the target number is 22, and your mechanic rolls a five, three, and six, you could reduce that target number all the way down to eight. It’s easy enough to understand. But there's another catch – a final punch to the kidneys from Tharsis. Each problem also creates the potential for bad things to happen on your crew member's roll. An example: I had an event that dealt two points of hull damage each turn, with a target number of 22. Not such a big deal to fix… except that on rolls of four, five, and six my crew members would be injured or their dice destroyed. So you can have multiple events going on at once where full half your dice rolls results in bad things happening, and sometimes it's the good rolls that are the most punishing. In this instance, only rolls that could save me would also doom me. Dice, by the way, don't replenish between turns unless you feed your crew, which is pretty hard to do when you have problems breaking out all over your ship. Hard, that is, unless you eat dead (or freshly killed!) crew members, which fully replenishes your dice pool but also freaks out your surviving astronauts. Time… to Die "When things did go well, I felt like I'd gotten lucky rather than I'd done something clever." That's why it so often felt like Tharsis was just burying me in unsolvable problems, and all the decisions of the past three or four turns were meaningless because a giant set of "screw you"s were on their way the entire time. This also means success are less satisfying. When things did go well, I felt like I'd gotten lucky rather than I'd done something clever. Sometimes terrible things happened and I couldn't do anything about them. Sometimes they didn't, and things were fine without much input required. I could skew the odds a bit, but nowhere near enough to affect what Tharsis' random events did. Any luck-based game will occasionally create moments where defeat feels cruel and arbitrary. I play a lot of wargames on PC and tabletop, and there's nothing worse than watching your best tank get blown sky-high because your opponent hit a one-in-50 shot with a bazooka from halfway across the map. But that's just one event in a system whose outcomes are still mostly the product of decision making. The Verdict Tharsis can never stop reminding you that you don't have control over its interstellar disaster, just the illusion of it. Every time I watched my ship fall apart, and every time I watched new events propagate across the ship that were completely impossible to stop, I felt like, win-or-lose, Tharsis was having all the fun. Trailer (0:55):

There really aren’t very many games about time travel. Sure, there are a lot of games that feature time travel as a tool or plot device, but there aren’t many that explore its implications, attempt to dissect the nature of it or highlight the science on which it might be based. That’s odd, because time travel is a fascinating subject that’s rich in theoretical conundrums, like “If I travel back in time to re-eat the delicious sandwich I just had for lunch, will I feel hungry or full before I tuck in for a second time?” Happily, Remedy Entertainment, creators of the under-appreciated Alan Wake and the over-the-top neo-noir Max Payne and its sequel, is rectifying this (sans sandwich conundrum) with its upcoming third-person story-shooter, Quantum Break. Of course, the elephant-sized DeLorean in the room is Remedy’s introduction of several, 22-minute live-action episodes threaded throughout the course of the game. We’ll get to those later but suffice to say that they work better than you might expect, for the most part at least. The same can be said for the pseudo-science behind Quantum Break’s time travel and time-manipul-ation powers. The idea is this: Paul Serene, played by Aiden “Littlefinger” Gillen, has created a device that is capable of generating a localised black hole. The gravity well of this black hole is such that when you move within a certain proximity to it, time and space become one and the same and so to move through physical space is to also move through time. The circular chamber built around this black hole generator enables someone to traverse it clockwise or anti-clockwise, which is the equivalent of travelling forward or backwards in time. To demonstrate this to long-term friend and Quantum Break’s protagonist, Jack Joyce (Sean “X-Men” Ashmore), Serene programs the machine to take him two minutes back in time, but just before he enters the chamber, his fu-ture self from two minutes hence, steps out of the machine having already used it to travel back in time by two minutes. This, and another early reveal concerning the shady Monarch Solutions, is exactly the kind of time travel scenario that’s just complicated enough that it seems like it could kind of make some plausible sense if your brain would just stop hurting long enough to be able to figure it out. Indeed, Remedy consulted with a former CERN scientist to ensure that the basis for its time travelling exploits adheres to current thinking in the field of theoretical physics, which seems to have helped the opening couple of hours of Quantum Break feel smart, rather than hokey. The same can be said of the combat heavy parts of Quantum Break too, which kick off soon after the story-focused first act depicts the inevitable moment when things start to go a bit wrong. Clearly, nothing good comes of messing with black holes and so now time is officially broken, although that does also mean that both Paul Serene and Jack Joyce have been granted time-manipul-ation powers and, for reasons to be explored, the two old friends are soon set against one another. Playing as Joyce, your powers are unveiled in quick succession and include the vanilla Time Vision, which highlights enemies and pick-ups and looks all too similar to Assassin’s Creed’s Eagle Vision; Time Dodge has Joyce dashing short distances and triggering a slow-motion bullet-time-style aim; and Time Stop, which freezes enemies caught within its radius in addition to temporarily stopping the path of your own bullets, allowing you to stack several shots atop one another so that when time unfreezes enemies are hit with magnified force. The layout of many of the environments suggests Quantum Break should be played as a cover-based shooter, but in reality cover need only be utilised intermittently, when you’re low on health. Outside of this time, it’s all dashing to and from enemies, freezing time to stack damage and creating a stasis shield to give yourself some breathing room while the cool-down timers of your powers recharge. Combat is empowering – you’re effectively a superhero after all – but throughout the first four acts of the game you rarely feel overpowered, as groups of enemies work together to take you down. Furthermore, enemies who have some time-based abilities of their own are hinted at for later on in the game and so you’re encouraged to make canny use of your powers in combination with one another to get up close to enemies, rather than become over reliant on sticking to cover and taking pot-shots from afar. Combat in the opening hours of the game is entertaining and will hopefully have the potential to become increasingly engaging as the game progresses and you level up Joyce’s powers. There’s also some light puzzling sections that revolve around time manipul-ation, although these feel more contrived in the way they ask you to suspend your disbelief that some objects are susceptible to your powers while the vast majority are not. “While the overarching narrative is fixed, the path between essential story points varies significantly" Like Joyce, Paul Serene has also been granted time powers, but his include the ability to glimpse outlines of events that will take place in the fu-ture. It’s this ability that fuels Quantum Break’s Junction Points - moments throughout the story where you’ll have to make a choice that will affect both the live-action show and fu-ture game play options - and provides the key to how game and live-action show intersect. At the end of the first chapter of game play, you briefly take control of Paul Serene and have to make a choice on how to deal with events concerning Monarch Solutions, which essentially comes down to whether to take a hard-line against public detractors of Monarch Solutions or instead try to win them over with a charm offensive and slick PR campaign. Unlike many such choice and consequence moments in games, here you get to see the overarching effects of your choices thanks to Serene’s ability to glimpse the [CENSORED]ure. It’s an interesting dynamic that effectively sees you role-playing two different characters as you consider how Paul Serene might be thinking versus what effect your choice is likely to have on Jack Joyce. The choice you make with Serene at this first junction, choosing either “Hardline” or “PR” paths, directly affects the fate of certain characters in the show who can then become important NPCs later in the game or be missing from it entirely. Remedy describes the split between game and show as the former telling the story of Jack Joyce, while the latter shows events from the perspective of inside Monarch Solutions. Having replayed the Junction Point to view the outcome of both choices and how they affect both show and game, it’s apparent that while the overarching narrative remains fixed, the path taken in between the essential story points can vary significantly. The show itself looks to have been produced to a reasonable standard and wisely focuses on the strength of acting from familiar faces, Aiden Gillen, Sean Ashmore, Lance Reddick and a strong cast of supporting characters, rather than being too ambitious with the special effects. While one or two of its characters seem ready to lapse into predictable cliché at any moment, the first episode is generally well written and played with the premise in interesting enough ways to want to see more. Crucially, it doesn’t feel like the whole thing is just a live action cut scene and nor is there a jarring disconnect between the show and the digital representation of the actors, thanks in large part to the voice and performance capture working in conjunction with Remedy’s own animators. Quantum Break represents a bold step for Remedy Entertainment and a high profile console exclusive for Microsoft. Having spent several hours playing and re-playing the opening four acts of the game, exploring its time manipul-ation powers and collecting pieces of its optional storytelling items, I’m certainly more encouraged than I had expected to be. The show offers an interesting take on the trans-media experience, which has not been very well represented in the past, and looks like it could be capable of some smart uses of its central themes. It may have suffered numerous delays during its development but Quantum Break could yet turn out to be worth the long wait. Trailer (1:40):

Win the daily battle with the clock—become a bus driver! In Bus Simulator, you will take the controls of one of 6 true-to-life city buses, licensed by companies such as MAN, and drive your passengers through 5 realistic districts of a city. Win the daily battle with the clock—become a bus driver! Six true-to-life city buses, including two Lion’s City buses licensed by MAN, and a gigantic freely accessible world are waiting for you in Bus Simulator 16. Transport your passengers to their destinations across five authentic city districts safely and on time. Drive a two-door, three-door, or a true-to-life articulated bus through commuter traffic at rush hour, watch out for emergency vehicles, and take detours around construction sites. But watch out, or you will get into trouble for accidents and traffic violations! You also have to maintain order inside the bus. Calm upset passengers, repair stuck doors, sell tickets correctly, and extend the ramp for wheel chair passengers in a timely manner. You will have to be efficient if you want to stick to your schedule, as it is only by doing this that you will build up your reputation in the city, earn the trust of your passengers, and most importantly, make money! The better your reputation, the larger the contracts you can secure, and the more buses will be available to your company in the shop. Unlock additional districts of the city and carefully plan routes for the employees you will acquire in the included job exchange. As you grow more successful, you will also acquire more and more advertising banners for your buses, which bring in additional money. If your buses are too dull, you can paint and decorate them with unlockable decals, ensuring that your passengers reach their destinations in the coolest way possible. You think bus drivers are lonely? Not in Bus Simulator 16! Invite your friends into your game in multiplayer mode and let them take over routes for you. The money they earn can be used to expand your shared company and thus perfect public transportation in your city. You want to drive even more buses and arrange Sunny Springs to fit your expectations? Then you can just construct the city to suit your own taste. Bus Simulator 16 is mod-friendly, and you can use programs like Blender and Gimp to adjust the visual appearance of the existing buses to your liking, as well as integrate your own custom buses and buildings into the game. PHOTOS : Game Tutorial : Release date: 2 March 2016

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