Game Industry News

This week we take a look at the Mycroft Holmes series by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. This interesting little mystery lets Sherlock’s less famous brother shine at sleuthing in his own cases.

Picklock is a pixel-based, strategic thief simulator that will have you stealing everything that’s not nailed down from the till of cash registers to the toilet paper in your target’s bathroom. It offers pretty good gameplay for not much money.

Modern Gamer Melissa is off on a holiday road trip this week, keeping safe from COVID-19 as she goes of course. Before she left, she picked up the ultimate road trip plaything, a Nintendo Switch Lite. She reviews it this week, playing with Mario and friends from the road.

Torchlight III offers a bright and colorful, easy-to-play hack and slash dungeon diving RPG. You really don’t need a lot of experience in the genre to begin playing, but even masters of this realm will find a lot to love in this more fluffy, cartoon-like role-playing utopia.

While Vampire’s Fall seems like a pretty good idea, with players taking on the role of a powerful vampire out for revenge, the game originally came out for mobile platforms – and probably should have stayed there. Some of the mobile gameplay just does not translate well in this port.

If all of those Thanksgiving leftovers get to be too much, check out the new Pizza DLC for Cooking Simulator for a change of pace and palate. This one will have you using real recipes to craft the perfect pizza pies to please both yourself and your adoring customers.

Watch Dogs Legion is one of the most ambitious games ever created, giving players an entire living city full of people to recruit, fight, abuse or liberate, or just to hang out and play darts with if you want. As such, everyone’s game is going to be completely different, but all of them will be pretty awesome.

The Deep Blue Good By from John D. MacDonald is a thriller out of the 1960s set in the Florida Keys, now given good narration though Audible Studios. It offers a classic if dated take on the mystery thriller, and influences a lot of tales even today.

It sounds like a good idea in theory. Take the tall sailing ships of yesteryear and build a management simulation around them while you slowly gain prestige and power in the Royal Navy. But Her Majesty’s Ship turns into a bit of a click and wait fest that sinks the gameplay.

Rage against the corporate machine society while restoring the Earth to its natural state in the colorful and fast-paced Blaze Revolutions. Oh, and learn a lot about hemp farming too, for whatever reason. This is one quirky and cool little game.

Iron Harvest is a real time strategy game that lets players re-fight World War I in a steam-punk like reimagining of the conflict fought with mechs, advanced technology and enough heroes and arch villains to fill a graphic novel.

We dive into Bless Unleashed, a free-to-play MMO being published by Namco Bandai. While not quite as polished as most paid online games, Bless Unleased is pretty fun to play, and even offers a few unique twists set in an interesting game world.

Time Waster Columnist Billy White returns to GiN to write about Nate Wooley after his unfortunate passing. Like so many other people, Nate had a big and positive influence on Billy’s life, not so much as a friend, but as a teacher and a trusted mentor.

Michael’s back for this week’s Video Game Tuesday with a look at the future. It’s Some Anticipated 2021 Games!

With most in-person events cancelled or becoming virtual, it’s no wonder that role-players are also taking advantage of online platforms to get together and conquer their high fantasy, sci-fi or more traditional Dungeons and Dragons-like worlds. We checked out the Roll20 platform over the past few months, and loved what we found.

It is with great sadness that we must report on the death of our founding publisher Nate Wooley. Nate lived a great life filled with love, and never hesitated to help out his friends and family. He was a wonderful person and we celebrate his life even as we mourn his untimely passing.

Back in the swing of things, the Game Over podcast gang decides to review the new Mandalorian themed Xbox controller put out by Microsoft. If they can just keep their hands on one, they might be okay.

This week Chella and Drew recount their favourite experiences from this year’s AdventureX.

This week, the battle continues in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War with the Cold War Colosseum multiplayer competition event, presented by London Royal Ravens from the Call of Duty League. Cheer with friends as top stars try to win their piece of the $25,000 USD prize pool and all the bragging rights.