Finally, a high-end pure Steampunk game.  Unlike Bioshock 1 & 2 which takes place between 1960 and 1968 making them Deiselpunk, Bioshock Infinite takes place in 1912 in the weaponized sky city of Columbia.  The failed utopia is reminiscent of the 1893 World’s Fair and is built on the idea of American exceptionalism.  Watch the trailer:

A moment’s respite. Elizabeth and Booker walk towards a bridge, when the familiar metallic clomp of a “Daddy” echoes around. This isn’t a mule, although it’s a more human Daddy than the diving suited huggables of rapture: a man’s face, black parted hair and elaborate moustache, peeks out above a suit that exaggerates his body. He has giant, crushing hands, pistons powering his movements. He’s mostly a power boss: bashing, grabbing, tearing. It’s clear that Elizabeth’s role is something of a co-op partner. Her and Booker’s powers combine to be more powerful than on their own, but she also seems to have more specificity about her uses. This fight is resolved when the pair of you bring the bridge crashing down on the Daddy’s body, slicing through the ground as the bridge support hits it. He scrambles at the crumbling structure with his oversized hands before sliding off Columbia.

BioShock and BioShock 2 sported multiple endings (good/evil) depending on the player’s ethical choices.  This made for a good interactive narrative, and a sound story altogether.  These games are also well-respected first-person shooters.  Typically, I’m cautious with game purchases and prefer to rent them first, but based on my past experiences with the BioShock games, I will buy BioShock Infinite blindfolded.

Via: PC Gamer

There’s a new game on Xbox LIVE Arcade (XBLA) called Aqua, a SteamPunk naval-action shooter.  It’s not bad at all, except I would have done it with sky-pirates.

Aqua is a stylish steampunk naval-action shooter for Xbox LIVE Arcade. The game is driven by an entertaining story-campaign with beautiful hand-drawn comics and features a unique, distinctive neo-Victorian art-style. Steer your ship into the middle of a raging naval war, where masses of enemies and allies engage in real-time operations over large, multi-screen maps. Equip your ship, choose your tactics and form your own special squadron to support you in battle, issuing offensive and defensive orders to overcome huge fleets of enemy ships, submarines, airplanes and defensive installations.

Aqua is a good deal at 800 Microsoft Credits, or $9.99.  While it’s not as intense a game as Toy Soldiers, nor as mind-bending as Portal, it’s easy and fun.  The storyline and plot are straightforward, and the voice acting makes me feel like the game is aimed towards pre-teens, but I don’t care.  It’s nice to have a milder kind of game to play.  I give it 3 out of 5 Omegas.  The good news is that like any XBLA game, you can download the trial version and try it for free.

Visit the game’s official website: http://aqua-the-game.com

Without a doubt, my favorite type of video game is Adventure.  Hours of hunting for the exact correct pixel to click on so that I can solve the friggin puzzle at last and move on with the plot.  I’ve played them for years, and I think I’ve played most of them, from King’s Quest on.  Most of us are now into Xbox 360 Xbox One modern gaming console 1st person shooters like Gears of War (including me), and the often-overlooked Adventure type of game is slowly dying out.  But, if you’re ever going to play an Adventure game, Syberia is the one to play.  It came out in 2002 and is simply the best game of its type ever produced, even today in 2022.

What might interest you is the game’s environment.  Beautifully rendered artful backgrounds, a clockwork train (it winds up), mechanical automatons, gears, springs, airships, dystopias, all presented in a well-thought-out and compelling story.  The game is challenging, but not so much that you need to turn to a walk-through.

Available for the PC, Original Xbox, and recently the Nintendo DS.  Play it on GameTap (or similar service), or get it and load it into a virtual machine like Microsoft’s VirtualPC or VMware.  Official home page with screenshots and videos: http://www.syberia-series.com/en/ [defunct]  Also, stay away from the sequel Siberia II, it wasn’t all that good.