I've played Resident Evil so many times that I would consider the STARS team personal friends, but I'm not convinced by their tactical prowess. Standing in the hall of the Spencer mansion, Chris, Jill, and Wesker unanimously decide (as I suppose is their prerogative, as horror game protagonists) to split up. Perhaps if they'd stayed together, that entire fateful night would have been, well, less fateful. Such is the premise of Critical Shift. Sent to investigate a top-secret research facility, you're accosted by an army of T-virus-esque monsters and mutations. But you're not alone. Combining turn-based tactics and survival game crafting, this feels like a Resident Evil version of XCOM.
At an Antarctic base aptly named Ice-1, something hideous, evil, and hungry has broken loose. In the spirit of classic Resident Evil and also, given the sub-zero setting, John Carpenter's The Thing, you're dispatched to investigate. survival games. Across its 30-plus levels, you alternate between exploring the base in real time, using scrounged components and resources to upgrade your weapons and better outfit your team. When the mutants appear, however, the game becomes turn-based, and plays just like XCOM.
Positioning, character classes, and stats take a central role in determining whether you emerge victorious or dead – like Microprose and Firaxis' classic, it all depends on when, where, and how you choose to attack, and whether you have the strategic mettle to adapt when things go wrong. Developer Rhinotales makes one critical promise however, likely to be music to the ears of any beleaguered XCOM veteran. In the studio's own words: "Awaiting you in the game is a fair fighting system, so you won't have to worry about misses with a 99% hit chance."
We don't have a release date for Critical Shift yet, but the game is provisionally expected to arrive before the end of the year. You can already wishlist it on Steam.
Otherwise, try some of the best horror games on PC.
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