Gears Tactics convinced me that pretty much every videogame IP should get the X-COM treatment. Halo, Death Stranding, The Elder Scrolls, all of it. It’s incredibly fascinating to take an existing game and watch all of its mechanics translate into a tactical turn-based version of itself.
Do you want to know one of my dirty little game reviewer secrets? I don’t like Doom, or games like Doom. The hyper-paced arcade-style shooting and gallons of gore aren’t my style. But take Doom and make it a tactical traditional roguelike. Then you have Jupiter Hell and my attention.
King of Seas has an arcade feel to its gameplay, although you still need to manage your sails, wind direction and point the shooty bits of your cannons the right way. But you also wield magical skills that allow your ship to launch fireballs, summon sharks and fire laser beams using mysterious voodoo. You can also have your crew pee on the cannons to cool them off, yes, that is actually a skill.
Battle Brothers is a brutal game, to the degree that it took me four different attempts to review it off and on for the span of an entire year. That’s because I simply couldn’t progress far enough to properly review it. The game continually handed me my own ass, even on the lowest difficulty.