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Concord: The Fall of Reverie
(PlayStation, Xbox, Swap, PC, £22.49)
Verdict: Heavenly storytelling
You know the way it’s: one minute you’re simply washing the dishes or feeding the cat, then the subsequent you’re in a realm of desires and abstraction, hanging out with luminous divinities.
Or at the very least Polly is aware of how that’s. Fairly quickly into Concord: The Fall of Reverie, she’s spirited away from her life in a fictional near-future Mediterranean metropolis, the place everybody lives below the rule of the tech company MK, and to this dimension referred to as Reverie, the place she’s referred to as Concord. Like within the title.
You know the way it’s: one minute you’re simply washing the dishes or feeding the cat, then the subsequent you’re in a realm of desires and abstraction, hanging out with luminous divinities
Fairly quickly into Concord: The Fall of Reverie, she’s spirited away from her life in a fictional near-future Mediterranean metropolis
From then on, Polly/Concord’s all the time flitting between the 2. Fixing the mysterious disappearance of her artist-activist mom in the true world; fixing the issues of the gods within the dream world. All this stuff could be related.
As for the gameplay: at first, there principally isn’t any. The story is instructed within the fashion of a visible novel, with lovely animations punctuated by static screens of characters speaking to one another. When you’re allowed to begin making selections, it appears far much less bold than developer Don’t Nod’s different narrative video games, corresponding to the superb Life is Unusual sequence.
However quickly you come to grasp that Concord is definitely way more bold than its predecessors. Its primary trick is to help you see into the longer term, via a mystical flowchart referred to as the Augural, and are available to choices accordingly. It morphs from being a easy choose-your-own-adventure sport to an advanced train in anticipation, dedication and, sure, loss, as entire branches of narrative are systematically closed off to you.
Finally, you’re even enjoying off the gods in opposition to one another. It positive beats doing the dishes.
Railway Empire 2
(PlayStation, Xbox, Swap, PC, £44.99)
Verdict: All aboard!
Trains in actual life: no matter.
Trains in video games: golly, what wondrous machines these are!
No matter it was that was woke up in me by final 12 months’s Prepare Sim World 3 has been despatched into overdrive by Railway Empire 2, launched on PlayStation, Xbox and PC just a few weeks in the past and on Nintendo’s Swap this week. I’m now formally a digital trainspotter.
On this case, the engines and carriages that I’m cooing over are the steam-powered ones of the nineteenth century. But it surely’s not simply the trains that make Railway Empire 2 particular; it’s additionally the sheer balletic brilliance of its interface.
It is a sport that has you laying new railway traces throughout – your selection – industrialising America or industrial Europe. The continents are your canvas.
Trains in actual life: no matter. Trains in video games: golly, what wondrous machines these are!
It’s not simply the trains that make Railway Empire 2 particular; it’s additionally the sheer balletic brilliance of its interface
However a single flip of a mouse wheel will carry you from a satellite tv for pc’s-eye view to floor degree, the place passengers are loading baggage and cattle are lowing within the fields.
It’s swift, seamless and – though different administration sims help you zoom out and in to the same extent – maybe extra wowing than the rest I’ve encountered in gaming this 12 months.
It additionally fits the gameplay. Railway Empire 2 is a kind of titles that has you making huge, historic choices, corresponding to which states to attach with one another, but additionally fiddling round with smaller particulars, like grain ranges in Bodie. If it weren’t simple to modify between the 2, then the entire operation could be a bust.
Admittedly, it’s not excellent. There are moments when the ease-of-use one way or the other simply breaks down – and also you’re left cursing a bit of monitor that received’t obey the legal guidelines of physics, not to mention sit straight.
However these are minor complaints, notably when Railway Empire 2 is so profitable in different respects and so beneficiant with its varied gameplay modes. I do know that I’ll be returning to it for the remainder of this 12 months – and past. Sorry, buddies: my social calendar is now a practice timetable.
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