Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I don’t like Dream Daddy. There. I said it. A game that de-eroticises queer romance in some apolitical neoliberal mystery world isn’t it, chief.* There’s a lot to love there, but so much about its technically-indie-corporate-sheen marketing gay romance rubs me the wrong way. I’m glad the game is there for those who need it, I’m glad there’s a game where queer folks seem pretty happy, but I’m not going to sing its praises from the rooftops just because the hype around a gay driven romance suggests that I should — and the only way for things to get better is for queer folks to keep making games about them. I guess you could say I’m grumpy.

It should be pretty clear by now that I feel all sorts of ways about romance in games — not just in Dream Daddy. Let’s say that our relationship is… complicated. I want to have a complicated relationship with games! I think it is so so important to walk through life with a willingness and openness to have conversations about what does or doesn’t work for you and why. I believe that this is true of all healthy relationships. You aren’t going to always get along, your partner is going to make mistakes, and it’s good to know how to apologise.

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Here’s something for the weird crowd still lurking around on a Friday night – Fear & Hunger is a horror dungeon crawler by Miro Haverinen. It originally launched in December (and is still growing) but flew under my radar until this week. It’s a truly evil dungeon where you won’t level up and are hunted by monsters that can often kill you in one hit. Limbs can be lost forever and save points aren’t safe. It’s rough around the edges, but it’s rare that an RPG can leave me genuinely unsettled and hurt, but hungry for more. Grab the demo here or see the trailer and thoughts below.

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I know Apex Legends has shaken up the scene, but it feels a little bit on-the-nose that Fortnite Battle Royale is literally cracking up under the pressure. Epic’s all-consuming last man standing shooter is gearing up for another season, starting on February 28th, which means there’s changes coming to its ever-shifting battlefield. Such change has previously been brought about by weird inter-dimensional antics and a wandering glacier, but this one seems a little more mundane – earthquakes, shaking the entire map and leaving jagged tears in the ground.

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Anthem is out now, kinda-sorta – assuming you’ve got an Origin Access subscription. While the game fully debuts on February 22nd, subscribers can play now. Those with the cheap Basic subscription get a ten-hour trial, while Premier subscribers have been set loose on the full game. I’m also happy to say that some issues in the first hour or two aside, the servers appear to be holding up well for people playing the power-armoured loot n’ shooter. BioWare have also partly unveiled their first major update for the game, including a big space-storm to wrangle.

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It’s not uncommon for fighting games to make their way to PC these days, but I’m still a bit surprised to see SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy making the hop from consoles. It features most of the leading ladies from SNK’s King Of Fighters, Samurai Showdown and Fatal Fury series’s, plus Terry Bogard, who is apparently a girl now. It’s a lighter, sillier affair than others in the genre, with as much focus in collecting invariably impractical outfits as fighting. The PC version was announced during the Evo Japan fighting tourney last night, and lands next Thursday, February 21st.

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