14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: This week we witnessed the launch of the first three big games of the fall: Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Saints Row 4, and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.
And yet I plan to ignore all of them for the best part of this weekend in order to play again through Gone Home, one of the most interesting titles of the year and the best narrative-driven game in ages.
It’s a simple adventure built around an empty house and some untold family secrets but, as you can also read in my full review, this game manages to create complex portraits of people the player never actually sees and then deliver emotions linked to them.
It’s a unique achievement and I know I have missed some information on my first playthrough, so I plan to go back and be more careful in my exploration of the house.
I will also play some more Europa Universalis IV, the grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive, because I know that France can perform better than it has until now.
The new title introduces some big changes to mechanics and I seem to be still using a number of strategies based on the third game in the franchise.
I need to spend more time immersed in the world of the strategy game in order to make sure that I understand all its features and can use them to defeat my bitter rivals, the English and the Austrians.
The two games I will spend most of my time with are very different from one another but they both accomplish something that’s not possible outside the video game medium.
Andrei Dobra is at the moment in Cologne, where he has been covering Gamescom and will use the coming weekend to unwind after spending so much time travelling the show floor and looking at the coming releases.