PLAY! ; PLAY! Zine

Slavs are coming to Total War: Attila

Throughout all of the periods which the Total War series featured so far, our Slavic ancestors were always left out, whether by accident or on purpose. Of course, there were mods with which enthusiasts have added the Slavs to this popular series, but Creative Assembly has never officially added them to a game. Until now. Namely, after the “Make War not Love” competition that’s taking place from February 14th until February 20th, the studio will be adding the Slavs as a new faction in Total War: Attila. The Slavs will feature three subgroups – the Anteans, the Sclavenians and the Venedians, and will be available in all game modes. The catch is that this DLC will be free only if Total War wins the said…

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25 Years of Blizzard

Former Silicon & Synapse, and now known as Blizzard, has just celebrated their 25th birthday. Founded by three friends on February 8th 1991, the studio has defined the video game industry throughout its existence by constantly setting new standards. Their grand journey began with Lost Vikings and Blackthorne, and in 1994 they released a game that’s most responsible for their claim to fame – Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Even today, we mostly know Blizzard for their Warcraft games, but no less important are their Starcraft and Diablo franchises. Blizzard has changed throughout the years – they have successfully entered and then dominated the MMO market, and with Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm they’re more than successful in their new free-to-play forays. Today, Blizzard is…

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The Binding of Isaac is too violent for Apple

At first glance The Binding of Isaac doesn’t seem as horrifying as you might have heard: a kid running across a muddy field, shooting bubbles at flies, collecting coins… and then you get startled with a sudden “Oh god, is this what I think it is?” as some kind of horror’ taking place on your screen. This isn’t some “nice and benevolent” game; moreover you’ll need strong guts to play through all of its cartoonish horrors. It seems that Apple has no place for this game in its digital shop, because they’ve declined it with the explanation that it portrays violence against children, i.e. the titular character. One of the game’s producers broke out the news on his Twitter account, disappointed with Apple’s decision, because…

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REVIEW: Life is Strange

It’s hard growing up. When you’re teenager, everything seems strange, your emotions fluctuate, and you make bad decisions after which you wish that you could turn back the time and see what would have happened if you didn’t say what you did and perhaps acted differently. We have to apologize for our omission. Because we failed to review each episode of Life is Strange as they came out from Dontnod’s studio. But now, with the whole story before us, we’ll see why Life is Strange. The beginning of this story might seem more boring than strange. Max is an insecure girl, new student in Blackwell school in her home town on the west cost of USA. A confused, albeit bright girl, a typical teenager who…

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REVIEW: That Dragon, Cancer

Sometimes a bad game gets published; sometimes a good game gets published. And sometimes a game gets published that makes you remember the popular internet saying about ninjas cutting onions. That Dragon, Cancer is just such a game, which delves into the most painful subject for any parent – the one of illness and inevitable death of their child. That Dragon, Cancer is not as much a game, as it’s an interactive story in which you’ll relive all emotions of Ryan and Amy Green, parents of terminally ill Joel, their son whose brain tumor was diagnosed a few months after his birth, and who died before his fifth birthday. TDC will introduce you to these heavy subjects very effectively – from the dilemma about friends…

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REVIEW: Oxenfree

Oxenfree is a debut game from the Night School Studio, a young indie studio, who’s in part comprised of ex-developers from TellTale Games. If you’re familiar with the work of that excellent development team, then you know that their games strongly accentuate the narrative experience. Layered characters, convincing dialogue and importance of decisions you make are some of the defining points of a TellTale adventure, which means that’s something we should expect here as well. The story and setting of Oxenfree is influenced by the popular 80’s horror movie subgenre, the so-called teenage horror movies. Initially everything seems familiar and somewhat generic. A diverse group of teenagers decides to spend an evening on an abandoned mystic island where they plan to do what young people…

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REVIEW: UnderRail

The world is almost destroyed. The surface of our small planet is completely uninhabitable and the survivors are relocating underground, into the tunnel networks that used to be metros, where they lay the foundations of new civilization. This is not a plot to some spinoff to Metro books/games, but UnderRail, and RPG from a local studio called Stygian Software, a game that has spent more than half a decade in development and after a long stint in Early Access is finally available to our PCs. You’ll begin your underground adventure as a new settler of South Gate station, a status-quo zone bordering much bigger and not very neutral settlements. In the usual roleplay manner, you’ll start by doing small assignments for your neighbors and over…

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REVIEW: Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India

We’re getting the second part of assassin Chronicles after the holidays, and just in time to fill the void before a new AC game. In the last couple of years, many players gave Ubisoft a hard time. Of course, most of that was brought about by the releases of buggy Unity and totally detached Syndicate. Cautioned by these failings, Ubisoft has decided not to release a main AC game this year, and instead we’ll be getting the two remaining Chronicles. What’s new in India when compared to China? Essentially nothing. We take on a role of an assassin operating in India during the mid-nineteenth century as he attempts to acquire a specific artefact, while simultaneously fighting to save his princess. If there wasn’t AC in…

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REVIEW: Darkest Dungeon

Exactly one year ago, in February 2015 this promising rogue-like RPG appeared on Steam Early Access as another offspring from the small developer’s Mecca of Kickstarter. Back then you could read the first impressions of Darkest Dungeon on the pages of our magazine, and now we get to see what a year of stewing in the Early Access phase has brought to this game. Darkest Dungeon is a game “sold” to the audience as an old-school, hardcore, rogue-like, skill-intensive, Lovecraftian, blah blah blah…..you got the point. So, the target audience for this game is a specific group of people, older (and some younger) gamers who consider themselves hardcore and are looking for a challenge to test their limits. Darkest Dungeon was indeed very promising; we…

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REVIEW: Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

In the last few years a wave of MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) F2P games had flooded the gaming scene and became the focus of professionals and amateurs alike. If we consider the roots of this genre, they’d lead us all the way to fabled DOTA, which was in fact a mod made for a Real Time Strategy. This genre was popular in the nineties and early 2000s, but is now slowly fading into oblivion, swallowed up by the MOBAs dominating the market. The only remaining and still popular survivor of the genre remaining is Starcraft, boasting both a single player and multiplayer audience, and remaining the most well known RTS representative. Last year, Gearbox released excellent remasters of first and second Homewrold games in…

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