The weekend has returned to seek its vengeance, to right the many wrongs of the world. It has donned a cape and mask, and now sits atop a gargoyle in a stormy night, watching and waiting for its prey. For it is….Bat-Weekend! I have no idea where I’m going with this. Let’s…let’s just get on with it, yeah?

Before we go any further the first person to enter the code below into Steam (via the Activate Game options you can find under the Games tab) will get the amazing point and click adventure game Deponia for free. Are you ready? Here it is.

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So this week I put out a single review which was for The Wizards: Enhanced Edition. It’s a VR game available for PS VR, Oculus Rift and the Vive and is about hurling magic spells at goblins and trolls. There’s some fun to be had playing it, but ultimately it never fully clicked with me.

I also put out third entry in my new Patch Notes series, this week tackling the brilliant Kotaku article that broke down the troubled development of Anthem and BioWare’s current state. I also rambled about Borderlands 3 and the decline of pre-owned game sales.

The game I’ve sunk the most time into this week has been Tropico 6. That’s right, the Caribbean dictator sim has returned for a sixth entry. On the surface not much has actually changed, but under the hood there’s a couple of new additions like Raid buildings that let you do such awesome things as steal the Statue of Liberty. It has issues, like how tourism currently seems to be damn near impossible, but overall I’m enjoying the heckins out of it.

With that all said, I shouldn’t have been playing Tropico 6 as much as I have been. I bought Tropico 6 with the view of reviewing it, but I also got review code for Generation Zero from the publisher so really that should be taking priority. The problem is I just don’t really want to play Generation Zero. On paper, it sounds amazing; it’s 1989 and a bunch of teens return to their home in Sweden only to discover that everyone has vanished and the land is inhabited by strange robots that kill anything that moves.

Once you get past the opening text crawl, though, you get dumped into a generic open world filled with about 3 different house models. Ostensibly you need to explore and piece together the story while battling the robots or sneaking past them, but it feels like a chore. Clumsy inventory management, little in the way of story and the repetitive structure of looting buildings bring the whole experience down. Maybe things will get better as I delve deeper into the strange land known as Sweden, but I’m not too hopeful. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a couple of cool aspects about Generation Zero, though, which I’ll chat about in my full review.

Also, this week I sat down and watched the third season of a show I’ve enjoyed the hell out of on Netflix; Santa Clarity Diet. If you have no idea what it is, then essentially it’s about a middle-class realtor couple dealing with the fact that Sheila (played by Drew Barrymore) has developed a taste for human flesh. As you might have guessed it’s a comedy about the couple, daughter Abby and Abby’s friend Eric trying to deal with the fact that Sheila now has to eat people to survive. Cue a host of laugh-out-loud scenes involving Drew Barrymore ripping out throats, two realtors trying to figure out how to kill bad people and hide the evidence, and sarcastic daughter Abby just being herself. It’s a genuinely brilliant, funny show that I highly recommend checking out.

Last week I mentioned that I was reading Bloody Rose, a book where bands of mercenaries are sort of treat like rockstars. They go on tour around arenas, they have groupies, they take contracts to fight big-ass monsters and get booked for “gigs”. My initial impressions were good, and now that I’ve read some more that impression has remained true. There’s some great splashes of humour, good banter between characters and strong writing. The only issue I have with it is the lack of actual story. So far it feels more like a character piece that’s about Tam and her experiences with Fable, one of the most famous bands around. The actual plot feels like its starting to kick in at last, but that’s around half-way through the book. Still, absolutely worth reading.

I’m also happy to say that The 100 has returned for its latest season. I’ve not caught the first two episodes yet, but I mostly just wanted to sing some praises for the show as a whole. When it first started I loved the premise of 100 young adults being dumped on a planet to see if it was liveable, but the first season was rocky. But once it hit the second season it started to hit its stride and now mixes guns with swords, interesting politics between factions and some fascinating moral quandaries. It juggles characters in such a way that nobody generally feels completely bad or good; they just feel like people trying to figure out life in a crazy world. Its gotten a little Game of Thrones at points with its willingness to kill people, too.

Finally, go check out this great little video on the great design elements in Mad Max, an overlooked open-world game from a few years back.

Right, I’m signing off. As always feel free to support the site by donating through Paypal below, but if you don’t want to then please know that I still appreciate you stopping by to read my insane ramblings.


So, what did you play this week?

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