the Andrew Bailey

No, it's not different this time!

Screenshot of Torchlight, with the Destroyer in the middle of a heated fight.

Torchlight

Torchlight is a game that reminds me of Diablo. It should, because the same people made both. Sometime after Diablo 2 released, some company politics happened at Blizzard North. Many important people left, which sowed the seeds for new ideas and companies. One group founded Flagship Studios, who eventually made Hellgate London. That game had demonic themes (because those people had been making Diablo games for a decade), but it had serious bugs. The Seattle division of Flagship founded Runic Games. Still having Blizzard pedigree, they decided to do a spiritual successor (of sorts) of Diablo.

Screenshot of Need For Speed Most Wanted, during a race.

Need For Speed Most Wanted

Back in the good old days, I realized that all my favorite racing games were old. So old, they were retro. There's nothing wrong with that, as they were and still are fun and great, but they are familiar, and have ceased to provide wonder and discovery. I wanted something new. I had heard of the Need for Speed games, and heard that they were good. I saw some previews of Need for Speed Most Wanted that released with the 360, and it looked cool (racing around streets), so I bought.

Screenshot of Sam in his office during hypnosis.

Sam & Max Save the World

From way back when point and click adventure games ruled PC games, there was a dog and a rabbit. These buddies went around as private investigators solving stuff. I'm not sure which stuff in particular, because I missed the boat. The series wasn't a blockbuster take-over-the-world smash hit, but it had a dedicated following.

Screenshot of Shadowrun: Dragonfall, showing a shootout with many chest high walls.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Shadowrun: Dragonfall was originally DLC for Shadowrun Returns, but got turned into an expand-alone game. The game mechanics are mostly identical between the two (from what I noticed). However, Returns is set in Seattle, but Dragonfall is set in Berlin. The two have zero story continuity, aside from two characters appearing in both (not even your own), and they don't refer to anything in Seattle.

Screenshot of combat in Shadowrun Returns

Shadowrun Returns

CD Projekt Red (the people behind The Witcher series) recently turned on the hype machine about their next game, Cyberpunk 2077. Since they took me to the promised land, I'm watching their next game closely (the only game I'm watching outside of crowdfunded games). Even though I'm trying not to get sucked up in the hype, I wanted to satiate that desire. I looked in my Steam library and found some Shadowrun games (no doubt from the many Humble Bundles I've purchased). Recalling that it has a cyberpunk-like setting, I downloaded and started playing.

Screenshot of the Triton Flats area

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a peculiar game. It fills an uninteresting gap between Borderlands (after its DLC) and its sequel. By playing Borderlands 2, you kinda know how it's going to end up, but this game fills in the details. The game is set on Elpis, the moon of Pandora (the planet where you've been fighting for the last two games). Because 2K Australia made The Pre-Sequel, Elpis is inhabited by people with Australian accents.

Screenshot from Dead Space.

Dead Space

Dead Space is a third person linear sci-fi horror game. ("Linear" isn't derogatory!) You are Issac Clarke, a mute (but not amnesiac) ship engineer. The game begins as you approach Ishimura, a mining ship that has sent a distress signal. Once you land, things quickly go from the worst to... more worse. The inhabitants have mutated into zombies (called "necromorphs"), and your ride gets destroyed. The ship starts going through an asteroid field without defenses, and the air is slowly being poisoned. You discover that the planet that was being mined below struck an alien artifact of some kind. This was a beacon to a cult that believed the government was covering up alien life. They stole the artifact, started worshiping it, had hallucinations, and everything went to hell.