And like Dark Souls, the Fighting Fantasy books were meant to be replayed. It’s an approach to fantasy art that creates layers upon layers of meaning. Perhaps better known for his work in the Warhammer universe, his images in Sorcery! have stayed with me since I first encountered them more than 20 years ago. But during your journey you’ll get to take in what for me is the lasting legacy of Sorcery!-the artwork of John Blanche. And within that universe, the four-book collection Sorcery! stands out for its inventive weirdness and narrative strength.Ī choose-your-own-adventure-style RPG, the stories create twisting paths that require careful decision making and more often than not, a little luck.
At the very least, the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone trod similar ground, if only in text form. While fans of the Souls games often point to the well-known Japanese manga and anime series Berserk as a touchstone in the creative history of Dark Souls, other influences may have played a role as well.
Steve Jackson’s Sorcery!, by Steve Jackson, art by John Blanche It might be a bit tough to track down, but it’s worth it to see firsthand how the “darker” turn of recent fantasy culture was so expertly foreshadowed decades ago by a film from The Walt Disney Company. On the surface a straightforward hero quest, the film does a lot to subvert its own story and give us multiple shades of grey instead of a black and white retelling of swords, sorcery, and dragon fire. And in its titular creature, the criminally underrated Dragonslayer serves up a great villain.
They’re both excellent, full stop.It’s already enough that Guillermo del Toro has gone on record saying 1981’s Dragonslayer contains “perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made.” But it also helps that like him, George RR Martin has claimed that the film’s hungry monster, Vermithrax Pejorative, is simply “the best dragon ever put on film.” Let’s face it, if we’re writing about Dark Souls we’re also writing about all the monsters waiting to eat, skewer, or incinerate us. War of the Chosen is an official expansion by Firaxis that adds a ton of new factions, enemies, storylines, weapons, and more, while the sublime Long War 2 total conversion mod greatly extends the duration of the game and ramps up the importance of the strategic map and resource planning. The game offers near endless replayability, but if you get sick of the basic scheme, two additional modes turn XCOM 2 into whole new games, essentially. You have to balance between striking the aliens where it hurts while avoiding their counterattacks, juggling scarce resources all the while. During the strategic phase between missions, you deal with organizational tasks-managing finances, expanding XCOM’s influence, researching newly uncovered alien tech, et cetera. XCOM 2‘s tactical, turn-based combat is tough, with both maps and enemies randomized for every battle, but the game gives you plenty of time to think through your moves. Too many wrong moves could leave your squad stacked with rookies rather than grizzled vets, possibly forcing you into restarting the game. That’s no joke: If one of the commandos under your watch dies, he stays dead, taking his hard-won experience with him. You command a force of soldiers putting their lives on the line to conquer the threat. XCOM 2 ratchets the tension even higher than the original reboot by putting you on the offense, as XCOM becomes a guerrilla force in a world conquered by aliens. If you give yourself fully to it, you’ll find hours and hours of hilariously macabre fun. You can play the tutorial level for free if you want to get a feel for the mechanics. IO Interactive’s modern Hitman trilogy has been one of the most spectacular gaming successes in recent memory, a pitch-perfect blend of old-school and new-school, seriousness and silliness.
A big part of the fun is replaying levels not once, not twice, but dozens of times-finding new areas, trying out fresh disguises, and discovering delightfully offbeat ways to stealthily kill people-in the quest for new high scores and, hopefully, an elusive Silent Assassin rating. Like the Hitmanand Hitman 2 games that precede it (which I highly recommend playing first), Hitman 3’s levels are massive, intricate, and distinctive cause-and-effect murder sandboxes, with seemingly endless ways to neutralize your targets. You don’t buy Hitman to mainline the campaign though. Each of the six levels can be beaten in an hour or so if you know what you’re doing, and new players will probably blow through the campaign in about a dozen hours. The final chapter of Agent 47’s modern adventures, Hitman 3 isn’t long in the traditional sense.