14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: Ever since I was on vacation in Berlin, Germany’s capital, I have been a little obsessed with the period in the XIXth century when the backwater that was Prussia managed to become a powerful force in Europe and unify the rest of the country around it.
I have been reading a little about the process, but I no longer have the time that would be required to pick up the best history books on the period and read them front to cover.
So I have turned to video game and that means downloading Victoria II, its two expansions and then looking for the best mods of the moment.
The Paradox Interactive title manages to capture the age and its most important historical features and the weekend will be spent trying to make sure that Prussia creates the Reich and manages to dominate all of Europe.
Andrei Dobra: This weekend, I'm jumping into a few different independent games, starting with Full Mojo Rampage, a roguelike action dungeon crawler that uses all sorts of voodoo themes, not just some interesting gameplay mechanics.
I'll also be trying out Monochroma, a touching puzzle platformer that's set to appear later this month and which has already piqued my interest due to the themes treated by Turkish developer Nowhere Studios.
When I am not going all indie, I'm definitely going to go back to Diablo 3, as the 100% increase in legendary drops for the game's second anniversary is quite attractive, as I want to improve my main Wizard character and finally get my Witch Doctor to level 70 and try out a few great builds for him.
Radu Haulica: This weekend, it's time to revisit an older acquaintance, Kingdoms of Amalur. It had its fine points and its bad ones, but my issue with it stemmed primarily from the fact that I don't like games where you get a different result when pressing the same button (hint: combat).
I breezed through the game without being impressed by it in any way, except for the fact that it had pretty solid visuals, because I felt that the combat system missed its potential by a rather great margin. And because I like books.
Granted, as far as I remember, it had a pretty robust battle system, but it failed nonetheless, because of the weird way it was put together. On top of it all, enemies reminded me of old kung fu flicks, where there are 10 opponents patiently waiting for their turn to get fisted in the face at any given time.
I want to revisit Kingdoms of Amalur mainly because I was let down by Dark Souls 2, with its abysmal control scheme on PC, and I want to still possess a sliver of hope when it comes to combat in single-player RPGs.