QCF: Papers, Please

oral choices in most games are easy. Save enough little sisters in Bioshock- you get the good ending, kill any and you're the worlds biggest monster. These choices are so ultimately binary that it's easy to even forget that they're questions of morality to begin with. Even when dealing with a complex issue, there's always a prompt telling you what kind of decision you made, regardless of your reasoning. "Yes and no" or "right and wrong" stick firmly into our heads to the point where we'll always know where our choices take us and what kind of end game they'll eventually lead us to.

However, Papers, Please doesn't play by those rules. In fact, it doesn't really play by any. There's no right or wrong here, only moral uncertainty and shades of horrific grays that lead to an experience which is devastatingly horrific, monotonous, and perplexing fun at the same time. Basically, it's one of the most interesting and creative video games you'll play all year.

Just don't expect to leave it feeling good about yourself.

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QCF: Fist Puncher

any questions come to mind when determining the worth of a classic arcade brawler: Does the game offer players more than “move right and punch”? Do levels have various weapons and interactive objects scattered throughout? What can one expect in the way of character selection, boss battles, and other classic tropes? In the case of Team2Bit's tribute to the genre, well... there's certainly more than just "keep going."

Enter Fist Puncher, a beat-em-up brawler that combines elements of other popular arcade classics from the golden age of gaming (think Double Dragon and Bad Dudes) and fuses them with the progression elements found in any character-building RPG. And yes -- you’ll have plenty of objects to pick up and throw at enemies. Hell, some levels feature nothing but trash cans and other debris scattered around for this very purpose.

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QCF: Thunder Wolves

elicopters! Hell yes! Nothing beats a game that lets you lay down constant fire against your unsuspecting enemies, especially when you can do it hovering motionless in the air. Or so it would seem. I dig chopper-based games as much as the next guy: Desert Strike, Choplifter, and Under Defeat HD all come to mind as vastly different cousins with a central helo-based theme. So I was genuinely excited when Thunder Wolves was announced for PC, XBLA and PSN.

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QCF: Zeno Clash 2

lmost four years after the release of the first person brawler Zeno Clash, we return to the eccentric world of Zenozoik and its bizarre inhabitants. In Zeno Clash 2, players will explore much more of the landscape, while completing quests and finding allies along the way. While combat has been improved along with new weapons, the overall game play still has the same issues as the original. ACE attempts to flesh out the experience within the nine or ten hour campaign, however punching and kicking will only carry this abnormal adventure so far.

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QCF: Y's I & II Chronicles+

This Review was Frelanced by Johnathan Sawyer; you can find his other work here.

 storm had arrived. Nothing could pass through this supposedly impenetrable "Stormwall," as it had come to be called. The land looked as though it would be seeing its final days, until a lone man with fiery-red hair washed up on the shores of Esteria... It is here in Ys I & II Chronicles+ that the saga of Adol the Red begins and puts several memorable marks into the pages of gaming history along the way.

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GDC 2013: Peeking into PixelJunk Inc.

f you ever wanted to build your own secret underground Bond-like installation, or... you know, a soup company with robots, Q-Games and the PixelJunk team have the title for you.

Among the many other wonders at this year’s GDC, we also received more details regarding a new PixelJunk game titled PixelJunk Inc. The game features robots, underground facilities, and co-op galore.

In fact, you could say it’s “totally co-op.”

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QCF: Bit Trip Presents... Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien

"
ove at first sight” is such a cliché. I've never been one to fall for such a ridiculous notion, nor have I ever admitted to its true existence. Sure, you can like how something looks, but usually there's something underneath what can only be seen that's actually quite ugly. However, I was proven wrong on this theory when, at Logan International Airport in Boston after PAX East 2012, I booted up a copy of Bit.Trip Saga and played Runner for the first time. The delightfully retro visuals, silky game play and unbelievable sound had me seriously hooked. It was love at first sight. At that very moment I had a very sudden lamentation; Runner 2 was at the show, and I totally missed out.

After travelling across the entire continent to Seattle for PAX Prime 2012, I finally got to play the follow up of Runner, and it was definitely worth the journey and the wait. Fast forward to today, and it's finally almost time for Runner 2 to drop across multiple platforms. And let me tell you, this is a game that everyone – absolutely everyone – should be playing.

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QCF: Seduce Me

rotica in video games (or just erotic centric video games for that matter) primarily occur in Japan. There’s fan base, market, and consistent flow of demand for these titles and one of the main divides encountered is the cultural difference of aesthetic and sociology (primarily that of your standard anime conventions) that drive a split for those who desire an adult relation game. Other than some infamous attempts and the Leisure Suit Larry series, there hasn’t been a title that roots itself with western sensibilities centering on the graphic process of adult courtship for quite some time. Then Seduce Me came around.

Independently developed and published by No Reply Games, this fantasy-driven take towards a trip to a secluded island filled with women desiring companionship possibly fulfills that wide gap of western romance games that we’ve experienced for so long. Yes, the potential seems promising -- if only the game was exciting, or even any good for that matter. Seduce Me fits neither of those descriptions in the slightest.

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