Monthly Archives: July 2020

Holy shit, what a year it’s been so far. There’s nothing I could really do to appropriately summarize it, be it on a personal or global level. That’s not exactly the greatest intro to a blog post in history, but I’d rather be honest than try to draw it out, so let’s just move into talking about some games I’ve played in the first half of 2020.

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden (The Bearded Ladies; December 2018 for PC/PlayStation 4/Xbox One and July 2019 for Nintendo Switch)

The 2010s were a surprisingly good decade for not just tactical video games in general, but also far more specifically tactical video games based on tabletop roleplaying games. It was the decade where we got great tactical video game adaptations of Shadowrun (thrice!), Battletech, and this post-apocalyptic title to top things off. While not its only selling point, one of the big upfront innovations to the formula presented by Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is splitting things up into free roaming pre-combat planning in addition to the standard turn-based tactical grid. While a typical COM or COM-like that remains on the tactical grid throughout the battle assumes that alerting one pod of enemies alerts all pods, Road to Eden actually weaves a system of sound and sight that allows you to stealthily pick off a lone enemy or two before they could become a problem as part of a larger pod. It’s hard to overstate how satisfying having this extra layer of enemy mitigation feels. I really need to get around to beating this game and experiencing its DLC, as for some reason other titles inevitably distract me from ever getting around to finishing it up.