Looking for an appropriate game to play on Halloween? Here are picks from the staff, some scary, others just appropriate for the holiday.
Hang on to your sanity with Eternal Darkness
Eternal Darkness is a game that has yet to be trumped in regards to its mechanics. This brilliant horror title that goes above and beyond what most horror games attempt to do. What makes it stand out is the sanity meter, which, as you may know, can produce some of the most terrifying, clever, or downright bizarre things to happen in any game like this. READ MORE
Borderlands 2 is a great game, and its structure lends itself to DLC extremely well. The original game saw four pieces of downloadable content, and while Gearbox only got to a 50-50 track record there, it should surprise nobody that DLC was a part of the Borderlands 2 plan before the game even hit store shelves (as it was possible to preorder the DLC season pass along with the base game).
After the Mechromancer character, Captain Scarlett and her Pirate’s Booty is the first bit of DLC available. Instead of a new character to play as, Scarlett is a full-fledged side adventure. Any character level 15 or higher can fast travel to Oasis and start looking for the fabled lost treasure. READ MORE
XCOM: Enemy Unknown, more than anything else, is a game about choice. There are no light side-dark side choices like in Knights of the Old Republic. The choices made in XCOM affect your play from mission to mission, while you drive toward the singular goal of pushing back and eventually defeating an alien invasion. Do you spend credits on satellite coverage to make things more manageable in the long haul, or do you put those credits toward upgrading from ballistic weapons to laser weapons which makes your squad more likely to survive in the short term? Do you research interceptor technology to make shooting down UFOs easier, or do you prioritize capturing aliens alive for the weapons and ammo research bonuses? You’ll never have enough credits and resources to cover everybody to the extent that you’d like to, and being forced to make those choices instead of just leveling up for a while make XCOM: Enemy Unknown one of the most replayable games in my library. READ MORE
Turn-based mechanics make combat more about strategy than reflex. This simple truth is why I prefer Final Fantasy X to XII and what makes Hero Academy and XCOM: Enemy Unknown so much fun. For those unfamiliar with the series, Worms is absolutely off-the-rails crazy. It’s a game about war-mongering annelids using teleports, bazookas, ninja ropes, dragon punches, and much more to straight-up murder every other invertebrate on the opposing team. READ MORE
Playing with Transformers toys was a big part of my childhood. I don’t know what generation mine were, but turning Megatron into a space shuttle and Optimus Prime into a semi was great. It got me interested in figuring out how things work. They were fun to play with from an engineering perspective, and they were fun to play with in conjunction with G.I. Joes, Centurions and Ghostbusters. My house was home to some great mash-ups between my brother’s and my differing tastes. As I grew up, Transformers became less prevalent and I forgot about them. Then Michael Bay started making movies, and they came back into popular culture prominence. Thank goodness he did because, while the movies aren’t great, some of the games that have come to fruition as a result are. READ MORE
