*video version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69LhZkEpeB4
Here we are facing down may a month so stocked with games that it feels like a damned coliseum should be built so they can fight it out for the gamer dollar.
Let's see what ones are coming and what ones you want to see. Post them in the comments if you have some you want to see.
Age of Wonders 4
Paradox might now be the grand-papa of strategy 4x games, but Age of Wonders is looking to shake things up a biog from Triumph studies. Age of Wonders puts customization straight into the end game, creating endless ways to combine forces, ages, monsters, and leaders for this fourth game in the series. So much so that the entire world is created for that, and you can revisit them with different leaders. The battle turned based across the top of the world, then dive into each world's underworld, bursting out beneath your enemies and taking actions in secret that offers a multilayered approach to the game-play.
You can dive in and make your own land with its own rules, then decide which unlucky SOBs get to try to live there and bang out a living amongst the other unfortunates that leap in with a brand new event system that rolls out the story moments into the actual game-play itself changing up entire stories.
As you play, you can face down the races you have made when you enter the pantheon, which is the game's way of saying. Good job, man; let's see how you would do with your old you as a bad guy or maybe even an ally. It's awesome and makes Age of Wonders, already an excellent turn-based fantasy game, feel deeper than any other before it.
Redfall
Vampires, humans, government agents, and small towns right in the center of it, a 1 to 4-player story fps shooter from Arkane. Redfall has had its share of bumps in the PR drive to its final release date on the 2nd. Redfall is an open-world, single-player, and co-op first-person shooter from Arkane Austin, the developers behind Prey and Dishonored.
The game has single and multiplayer options, letting the player go into the darkness alone or team up for up to four-player co-op and engage in the dynamic world events and the main story itself. Teammates can experiment with different hero load-outs and combine their strengths to find inventive solutions to the vampire apocalypse. You will amass an array of specialized weaponry and modify your character with unique upgrades and abilities to suit your play-style for guns blazing, stealth battle,
It will be interesting to see where Redfall sits, but almost anything Arkane makes is worth checking out, even for a moment.
Ravenlok
Alice in wonderlands made of pixels and particles, steeped in the takeover of darkness that requires you to explore, take out bosses, and discover what it is that has become to take over the land. Ravenlock looks like it frantically channels Alice in Wonderland directly into its gameplay and ideas. In a 3rd personal real-time action game, you take out bosses, meet characters in the world, and try to figure out who is good and who is terrible.
It isn't easy at times to see if a game is just a one-trick pony, but Ravenlok looks incredible.
Death or Treat
It wouldn't be unusual to see Death or Treat and wonder if the knight from Hollow Knight threw a sheet over his head and dived into another incognito adventure.
You will take on the role of Scary, the owner of Ghost Mart, a leader in producing Halloween candies leaking out into new worlds to build up profit for your business.
Nothing pays like scaring. Discover a large globe with many chambers, explore new maps in each run, and attempt to avoid the hordes of foes. It's a challenging process; each world is more complicated than the last, and you must fight through them. It's an odd idea for a game, don't get me wrong, but man, it looks good.
The combat seems incredible, and the concept of a dude name Scary owning a ghost mart is either the best viral marketing or the worst.
A game with a name based on the reaction of many YouTubers not getting review copies. The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom looks like it though Zelda Breath of the Wild was a beta test.
Zeldas' are always all spanning massive titles. Tears of the Kingdom is upping the game tremendously, trying to keep the unique combat and exploration systems mixed with the organic exploration and discovery tied in while adding an almost unbelievable amount of vertical exploration.
But Zelda now also allows you to fuse everything and anything together in the game, maybe as a weapon, as a trick, as a way to get to a spot you can't get to usually, or perhaps just because merging two swords to a bunch of fish and rolling around like a smelly dangerous bowling ball sounds incredible.
The developers have done the one thing that so many games cannot do.
Let the videos do the talking.
Trailers dropping look like sandbox wet-dreams piped directly from Nintendo fans' brains. Using Zeldas' new powers to explore a world that looks to make Breath of the Wild seem small and quaint.
Lego 2K Drive.
is genuine. I love the look of this, even if it's just a laid-back racer and something we can dive into at random.
The games got a massive story mode that you can play through multiplayer, tons of levels, and the ability to build your vehicles from the ground up with Legos.
It's not just racing, though; they have full-on tournaments, they have mini-games, and there are rumors of some more surprises in Lego 2k drive, and with the open game world styled Overworld, it feels like this might be one Lego title worth diving into that isn't called Lego city.
Inkbound
The folks who made monster train are coming at you with a turn-based coop rogue like that looks like it's filtered through a Bob Ross filter with super-saturated foes, friends, and lands for you to explore.
You explore the magical Atheneum, which contains all stories ever written. Each book becomes a portal to another world where you will face unique threats. Inkbound's universe will expand with new books, characters to meet, and challenges to overcome.
Outside of combat, players move freely, like in an action game. Within the unique turn-based combat system, players move freely, act simultaneously in multiplayer, and can rapidly utilize abilities. Go fast when the decisions are easy; go slow when the threat amps up, and you need to strategize more deeply. It's the best of both worlds.
While the over-world is the central hub where up to four can join up, every player has a variety of classes and skills, abilities and upgrades, as well as a massive item system to make sure that in battle alone or with three friends, you don't end up thinking...man everyone likes these hammers.
Inkbound looks fantastic, and a turn-based game set up like this with exploration and coop is right up my alley.
After Us
After Us looks fantastic: a little bit of Abzu without the flippers and a little bit of journey with more powers. You play as Gaia, Mother Earth, as the end of the world has arrived and the last creatures of the world have died. It would be best if you found where they are, capture their souls, and return them to the Mother Ark.
All the while facing off against the creatures that have done this, platforming and free running across an incredibly outstanding-looking organic and technologically advanced world.
Let's be honest. This could be a downer. I haven't seen anyone who makes games like this where the end result is some feel-good trip across the states, like a Woody Harralson simulator. They are usually dour and endlessly sad romps. However, the change of playing as Woody in a game delights me.
But if you are into this kind of stuff, After Us looks great and comes on May 23
Miasma Chronicles
Mutant Year Zero had a lot of ideas, but it just seemed to need to hit the right spots.
Enter the company's next game, the Miasma Chronicles.
You are facing off against enemies across a destroyed American against a new enemy force, the Miasma. You play as Elvis, teamed up with a robotic caregiver brother and the power to control the evil force. You have to go out and explore, take on enemies in turned-based actions, and discover what has happened in a post-apocalyptic America.
They have weird powers, many upgrades, and offensive and defensive abilities. You can bet this game will be about stealth and slaughtering the heady mix of pushing a movement too far before everyone sees you and then taking them all out. That was one of the better parts of Mutant year zero, and frankly, this world seems more interesting.
The Lord of the Rings Gollum.
It's a game about the long 's' sayer known as Gollum, a stealth game. That supposedly tells the story of figuring out how to stay alive in middle earth when it was at its most dangerous.
Gollum appears to be an actual stealth game; while he can kill if he needs to, the best way to get through the game is truth stealth cause, let's face it, Gollum is no Legolas.
However, the game appears to do more than that, mixing the duel layers of attitudes that Gollum had, the original peaceful and stealthy Smeagal, and then the evil and viscous Gollum and how all that plays out is going to be the difference between this game feeling like something special or something specially made to suck off the lifeblood of whatever Middle Earth is worth right now.
Those are just some of the games coming out in May.
Video version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69LhZkEpeB4
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