A new year brings with it a lot of opportunities to enjoy the latest and greatest offerings in the world of interactive entertainment. If you are tired of the same old experiences, these unique titles should provide hours of fun in 2019.
Starburst
In this game you can either play for fun, spinning the reels of a cutting edge online slot without putting any money on the line, or wager real cash to see if you can strike it lucky. Glorious graphics, sparkling symbols and a stellar soundtrack all come together to make it an engaging option that’s great for bite sized play sessions while you are on the move, or for longer stints if you have more time to kill.
One thing that makes Starburst worth trying out is the simplicity of the interface. Even if you are a complete slots novice, you should be able to get to grips with this title in a matter of seconds.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
The team at From Software are best known for their work on the hugely successful, deliberately difficult Dark Souls franchise. Their latest effort is a little different from this swords and sorcery series, instead taking the action to feudal Japan and switching up the combat to add elements of stealth as opposed to headfirst assaults.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will still retain some of the elements that made the Souls games so special, including the challenging nature of the gameplay itself. However, in a year of yet more bland triple A titles, it should stand out from the crowd thanks to its design flair and narrative unusualness.
Anthem
On paper, Anthem might not seem all that unique; it is a big budget online action game that features teams of players taking on a range of missions that generally involve shooting weapons, acquiring XP and earning loot. Dig beneath the surface and this is a title that promises to shake things up thanks to its incredible visual style and epic traversal options.
In particular, the ability to pilot avatars in aerial excursions, taking to the skies of alien planets to soar far and wide, seems to be its most unique selling point. Whether it will be able to gain an audience at a time when the likes of Fortnite and Apex: Legends are so dominant remains to be seen.
DotA 2: Auto Chess
This may be an add-on for the popular MOBA game DotA 2, but Auto Chess has quickly risen to prominence in the past few weeks and could be one of the defining multiplayer mods of 2019.
As the name suggests, this game takes the framework of chess, but combines it with the world of DotA, creating an intriguing amalgam that is partly strategic and partly fuelled by RNG. It ups the ante when compared with slower turn-based online strategy games and means that things can become quite hectic when participants are all making decisions and executing actions at the same time.
My Time At Portia
This gorgeous-looking game is cartoony in its presentation, yet incredibly vibrant and immersive in spite of its relatively simplistic aesthetic. It is also an unusually sedate title, eschewing frenetic fighting in favor of crafting, building and community management.
There is a story that ties everything in My Time At Portia together, but most of the time spent in the game will be dedicated to collecting resources, using them to expand your virtual premises and doing a little light exploration of the surrounding world. For players seeking a stress-free experience, this could be the best game of the year.
Astroneer
Plenty of indie and mainstream games use space as their setting, but none embody the great beyond in quite the same way as Astroneer.
It takes quite a few cues from Minecraft and No Man’s Sky, yet manages to distinguish itself from its influences by turning the focus away from pure survival. In fact there is no need to worry about getting into fights with NPCs in this game, as most of the action involves roaming the surface of procedurally generated planets and creating a sustainable habitat to live in as your space suit-wearing avatar.
Image Source: Pixabay
