Games worth your time this week
In Ireland, today is the last day of a long weekend. I achieved very little. I barely achieved breath. But one thing I did achieve: video games. Which, granted, is a very physically undemanding pursuit. Mission accomplished for my weekend, so!
I thought I would write a semi-regular post about games worth your time this week. This won’t necessarily hark to brand new stuff. But it will call out some titles that may be worth pursuing by you, the discerning intelligent video gaming type.
So without further adieu, here’s two games worth your time this week:
Headlander
This game is utterly bizarre. Except when you get into the nitty gritty, it’s not. Which is archetypal for a title released by Double Fine & Adult Swim in many ways.
Headlander stars a disembodied head that roams around a human-less universe seeking clues as to your fractured past. You are, however, despite being a disembodied head, the last human on the planet.
Your helmet, which protects your head in such a harsh climate, lets you take control of host bodies of all sorts (including dogs!) as you navigate the hostilities of a robot-controlled world.
The premise is bizarre, and the world is just as bizarre. It is a beautiful retro-future world that takes cues from 70’s style sci-fi. The gameplay style is metroidvania-esque and should inspire long sessions of fun that won’t out-stay itself before you get sick of the mechanics. The game will hold you because it’s fun, quirky, not taking itself serious (it is from Double Fine & Adult Swim) and has enough head-popping gameplay to keep it going. On top of that, the soundtrack is like a weird 70’s Blade Runner tribute, which is awesome.
Headlander is available on Steam & PS4.
Quadrilateral Cowboy
Before I share any opinions, let’s look at the official blurb for this one:
“When you have a top-of-the-line hacking deck armed with a 56.6k modem and a staggering 256k RAM, it means just one thing: you answer only to the highest bidder.”
If you don’t roll up the sleeves on your shoulder-padded pinstriped jacket and fist pump the air, then I don’t know if I want to be friends with you anymore.
This is a phenomenally funny title that’s as quirky as it is puzzle-filled from Blendo. It’s as quirky as something like Thirty Flights of Loving (a game that I loved). It has a really fun mechanic featuring hacking in a 1980’s retro style that’ll appeal to anyone who loved Hackers: The Movie or the more recent TV series (which I also recommend), Halt & Catch Fire.
Each mission will give you some objective that is achieved via your VR deck & your job, as a hacker, is to complete the objective in as short a time as possible. The objectives get progressively more difficult and while the command input it simple enough, the chain of input is what is important. The game will do its utmost to distract you as you do your elite hacking (read as: l337 h4x0ring).
Quadrilateral Cowboy is available now on Steam.
