It is bits of Blade Runner, of Demon with a Glass Hand, of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and The Martian Chronicles and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and so many other legendary works of science fiction.

With Soma, Frictional proved once again that a strong sense of setting and thematic consistency are far more memorable than cheap jump scares.Īs I said in our review: “It’s a story you might’ve seen in grainy black and white on Twilight Zone or maybe The Outer Limits. In fact, the game might’ve been better if it eschewed “monsters” entirely.

After years of anticipating Soma as a horror game-one from Amnesia/ Penumbra creator Frictional, no less-there’s still a bit of disappointment that the game is more cerebral than in-your-face terrifying.īut there’s not much disappointment, because Soma sacrificed horror for an excellent science fiction story. Hayden: Part of me wishes Soma were more traditionally scary. It’s not that Fallout 4 is bad, per se, but it’s infinitely better when the community’s fixed its weird dialogue system, the janky menus, and other Bethesda-style quirks. In all seriousness, this is why we play PC games. But then someone pointed me toward the Atom Bomb Baby mod, which lets you replace your mini-nuke stash with exploding babies. Hayden: Bethesda’s version of Fallout 4 wouldn’t make my game of the year list. This isn’t the game hardcore Fallout fans were hoping for-it’s even difficult to call it an RPG, as the whiny-voiced main character never felt like my own-but Fallout 4 is still a fun, expansive game that you can (mostly) happily sink entire days of your life into. But dammit, Fallout 4 ’s core exploration/gunplay loop is just so damned addicting I can’t put it down. Yeah, the loot system is a step back, and the settlement building is unintuitive. Yeah, the voice and dialogue changes suck. There’s a reason Valve bundled copies of this game with Steam Machine preorders.īrad: Yeah, the inventory’s still janky. Rocket League bucks the trend and rocks at parties because of it. I adore old-school gather-‘round-the-big-screen gaming, but the vast majority of games these days-even Halo 5 on Xbox One!-are ditching local play for online-only solutions. Rocket League’s easy enough to pick up and dabble in, but it also replicates the feeling of true team sports better than any Madden/FIFA/NHL/NBA game-rewarding practice, urging you to work with your teammates, and encouraging sportsmanship win or lose.īrad: Hayden summed up the tight, dumb fun of the game already, but I want to touch on a tidbit that makes me love Rocket League even more: Local split-screen support for up to four players. Rocket League elevates a simple (and admittedly dumb) concept into maybe the best sports game ever made, a tightly tuned experience where rocket-powered vehicles drive (and jump and flip and fly) around an arena trying to get the oversized ball into the oversized net.

Top pc games of 2016