It feels as if the world of games is catching up with the Multitap vision lately. It’s great, right? Games are just more fun if you can play them with friends in the same room, and more and more developers are taking advantage of this by making titles specifically designed for this context. This is especially true with games that support more than four players. A niche that was previously catered to only by a handful of games over the years has seen a full batch of interesting, fun titles in the just over two years since I wrote about them the first time. Let’s take a look at the best of them! READ MORE
Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for the second season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead was my top game of 2012, so my expectations for the sequel were about as high as they could be. After finishing it and letting the impact settle, I can safely say it met every expectation I knew I had and surpassed expectations I didn’t know existed. This will land a spot in my top ten at year’s end for many of the same reasons its predecessor did: top-notch directing, excellent pacing, professional voice acting and brutal choices that force your inner moral compass to show itself, one way or another. The Walking Dead: Season Two retains much of what made the first game successful, but deviates so far from the story arc of Season One that it becomes a totally different experience and is richer for it. READ MORE
It’s easy to see why Ancient Rome is a fertile inspiration for many game designers. The Romans’ interest in politics, military tactics, art, architecture and religion all offer different elements that can be mixed together into an interesting whole. Stefan Feld’s 2011 title Trajan mixes six aspects of Roman culture, but ties everything together with a mechanic that is decidedly African instead of European. READ MORE
The Best to Own Forever series isn’t about what’s great right now. It’s about what will be great in 10 years, even though there will be better-looking games and later sequels, and what will keep you pulling that dusty old console out of the closet every once in a while. In this edition, we cull the 3DS’ library so far to the best of the best.
Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
The original Luigi’s Mansion was a clever GameCube launch title, but Next Level Games’ sequel, Dark Moon, managed to improve on it with remarkable success. Splitting the game into multiple mansions allowed for more variety, the clever puzzles always kept you guessing and the core gameplay felt like a major improvement over the first. The most surprising addition is the multiplayer, giving you and three friends the opportunity to traverse a mansion together and compete in various challenges. It’s an excellent follow-up to an already pretty solid game and deserves a place in every 3DS owner’s collection. – Andrew Passafiume
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Western players are likely at least somewhat familiar with Nintendo’s Art Style games, downloadable WiiWare and DSiWare titles with a shared stark aesthetic and simple-but-addictive gameplay. They’re almost all worth checking out (though the names themselves are a nightmare to keep straight across regions), but did you know that they weren’t the first of their kind? Indeed, they were preceded by a seven-game lineup for the Game Boy Advance called bit Generations. READ MORE
