Tech Reviews & Gadgets

RPS Pickbox: Ollie 2024 Bonus Game of the Year

I’m honestly so proud of the joy behind every door in this year’s Advent calendar. All of my major choices are there, plus a few games that I haven’t played but that I’ve seen others play and have a lot of fun with. Still, there are always a few who don’t quite make the cut, but still deserve a Christmas treat at the end of the year. This is my pick box, my annual bonus game for 2024.


shrouded

Image source: Passionate about games

When I first played Enshrouded earlier this year, its main difference from other survival crafting games—the shrouds of monster spawns that cover the entire landscape—didn’t really stand out to me. It’s a beautiful game with an interesting world to explore, and as I buried my head in the Shroud, I traded that wonder for time pressure, decent-but-not-great combat, and a whole lot of gloom. of mist. Still, Keen Games deserves credit for creating the best building system I’ve come across in the genre to date.

Seriously, I’m finding it hard to leave and do other things to complete my early access review because all I want to do is keep building. Powerful tools let you build gorgeous-looking structures faster and with more freedom than in similar games like Valheim. Voxels change their appearance based on context to blend satisfactorily with their neighbors. There are plenty of rustic building materials in the game, and the ability to quickly switch between materials and shapes via the mouse wheel makes the building process as easy as I’ve experienced in these games.

The world of Shroud has gotten bigger and bigger since I last played, and so have the options for building, discovering, and impaling things in Shroud. I must find time to go back as soon as possible.


hellfire

A large volcano named Dante Peak rises from the plains of Hell

Image source: Stone Paper Shotgun/Geek League

One of my biggest regrets this year is that our planned Solium Infernum diary series of political hell spin-off strategy games didn’t happen (for various reasons). Even in the hellish brimstone pits, I could feel everything in the game heating up quickly. After only five or six rounds, I was already involved in a worrying war with Catherine. The impact of every move was so great that even my brother, who had never played this kind of game, stayed up late into the night with me to discuss it. Strategies and contingency plans.

Solium Infernum’s endless political machinations and mind games remain a high point for me in 2024, even if we never finished a game. The original game passed me by a long time ago, and looking back now, I can see why League of Geeks focused on streamlining certain areas and making the redesigned game more accessible to new players. After the (very competent) tutorial, I felt confident enough in my banter skills to insult Catherine on the first turn (which resulted in the aforementioned war). I love games like this where the world is small but every decision is powerful and powerful. Later this year, I found something similar in the political intrigue of Dune: Empire, but it still lacked the delicious Dobos Torte strategy and implications and second-guessing rivals I found in Solium Infernum. Readers, next year I’m going to be trying very, very hard to convince my fellow treehouse dwellers to join me in making a sequel to 2010’s Gameboys From Hell series.


delta force

A screenshot from TiMi Studios' new Delta Force first-person shooter, showing players running down a corridor with a scoped rifle.

Image source: Tencent

Delta Force was a real surprise to me, and not just because it came so late that we had already finished the Advent calendar before it stole my heart. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m obsessed with extraction shooters. I’m still recovering from the unexplained death of The Cycle: Frontier last year, and I’ve been looking for a game to fill the void ever since. Delta Force does its job so well so far – something I really wasn’t expecting since its extraction mode is just one part of the larger Battlefield game.

I haven’t even played the main war mode yet, and I’m having a blast getting into the action. It’s more streamlined and simple than Tarkov, but retains some cool stuff like an inventory of puzzles, and a helmet that visually blocks your view when they’re hit. The economy is more forgiving than Tarkov, but things are so expensive that it still hurts when you lose your favorite sniper rifle. The gunplay feels great, the game looks beautiful, and map is amazing. Friends, I love Hunter Showdown, but there’s no denying that its maps don’t feel particularly natural. Just a planar array of equally spaced and equally sized points of interest arranged on a square piece of land. The maps in Delta Force feel like real places. Everything works well together, moving around the map feels great, and you’re never far away from some kind of tense encounter, whether it’s a dangerous mini-boss or another player looking to steal your gear. This is a really, really awesome new entry in the genre, and if I didn’t go home to visit my family over Christmas, I would spend most of the holidays dying over and over in Delta Force and loving every moment of it.



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