Videogame and board game reviews by game critic Erik Twice. What does he think about the game of the year? And what about that forgotten classic? Read about it here!
Overwatch is derivative, but fun. As a shooter it’s best described as a hodpodge collection of best hits, a melange of concepts from League of Legends, Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare mixed, rekindled and polished. It’s perhaps a game whose main fault is being “good enough” yet also worthwhile for exactly that reason.
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This War of Mine is an insult. Implicitely set during the Siege of Sarajevo, it turns a still-fresh tragedy into little more than window dressing for a generic game of “survival”. Its uncaring depiction of civilian life during armed conflict trivializes the horrors of the Bosnian war and its shallow, nihilistic sense of morality not only makes the game uninteresting to play, but results in unintentional whitewashing.
After the decade-long Ōnin War (1467-1477) ended without a clear victory, Japan fell into a state of constant war and conflict. With the power of the shogunate in tatters and the emperor relegated to a purely ceremonial role, local warlords known as daimyos fought over land and influence, hoping to reunify the nation under their power. It’s a romantic age, an era of change and turmoil in which a newly found meritocracy subverted a social order previously seen as untouchable. Amidst the might of tradition, the chaos of treachery and the smell of gunpowder, laid the opportunity to forever define a country and set its future for centuries to come.
Sphere of Influence, the fourteenth entry in the Nobunaga’s Ambition series, let’s you revive that opportunity.
