Nidhogg 2
News

Nidhogg 2 is going to eat you alive

Remember Nidhogg (2014)? Before its release there was whispers of it as the 2D fencing game that people just couldn’t stop playing. After its long-awaited arrival it made its way to other platforms, until it seemed to become nearly ubiquitous—its pixels once only glanced at now brash and animated in everyone’s face. It was a cult hit, but a cult hit you could play on nearly anything, as long as you had two people. The opposing fencers were rendered in bright colors of orange and yellow, blood spurting neon in their signature shades as the battle raged on. Now, Nidhogg 2 is…

Duello
News

Duello wants to be a realistic sword fighting game, but mostly it’s funny

Any videogame that aims to represent the things we can do with our bodies (i.e. attain realism) has to bring in some kind of abstraction to make it look or feel familiar. Take, for example, the Assassin’s Creed games, in which combat isn’t really meant to be realistic as much as it’s supposed to capture the frenetic fights of action movies—full of brutal sound effects and finishing moves with sweeping cameras. Likewise, there is Chivalry: Medieval Warfare (2012), one of the few games with first-person sword fighting, whose goal is to provide a robust and competitive multiplayer arena. As in a lot of multiplayer games,…

News

Three new games to dig into this week

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. ALIEN: ISOLATION (PC, MAC, PS3/PS4, XBOX 360/XBOX ONE) BY CREATIVE ASSEMBLY Ridley Scott’s seminal space slasher Alien and the tension of a survival-horror game are such a perfect pair that it’s a xenomorph-worthy shock it took this long. Alien: Isolation cops the sweaty, cramped vibe of Scott’s lived-in future, rather than the guns-blazing tone of James Cameron’s sequel. We hear it’s darn-near impossible, too—sorta like outsmarting an alien designed to kill. Perfect for: Haunting Ground diehards, stowaway androids, Jonesy. Playtime: Fifteen-odd hours, or an eternity spent cowering in a locker.…