The flood of gaming releases in the past couple months may have slowed to a trickle, but there is at least one new gem under the tree. SteamWorld Heist is one of the best 3DS games released this year, and comes just in time to help you kill time at the airport or in lines at the mall. Sony has also cranked out something of a surprise — an offshoot to its popular Fat Princess strategy franchise in the form of brawler Fat Princess Adventures.
There’s also some new hardware to check out: Amazon’s top-of-the-line 10-inch Fire tablet.
Fat Princess Adventures
(PS4, $15, Teen)
Breaking away from the real-time strategy format that birthed the franchise on the PS3 in 2009, the Diablo-style brawler/lootfest lets you create your portly character, then team up with others online to explore sprawling lands, take down bosses and raid dungeons for armor, riches and upgrades. The visuals and sardonic sense of humor from the PS3 and PSP games remains intact, but the genre switch is anything but smooth. Clunky controls that were more forgivable in a strategy game trip up the flow when you’re fending off beasts surrounding you on all sides.
There is also too little reason to keep playing. Most of the better weapons are available at the outset, taking away the impetus to keep up with the grind and work to unlock or discover the rarer artillery. The level design starts off imaginatively, but fades into a sense of overly similar setups. Far Princess Adventures is fun in short spurts, but not a game you can hunker down and marathon all night. Sony would best serve the franchise by scrapping the spinoff and returning to the franchise’s RTS roots.
Fire HD 10.1
($180)
Amazon continues to channel its energy into competing with the iPad with its much cheaper Fire line. The product continues to get lighter and faster, making it an ideal daily driver for those who mainly want to stream video and keep up with social media. Some technological adjustments have made the device a better fit for travelers, with the software geared to get a sense of what you’ve been watching and adapt, downloading the next episode of whatever show you’re obsessed with in advance so you won’t have to deal with glitchy WiFi if you find yourself out in public with time to kill.
Amazon devices will always be stifled by their limited ecosystem. You can’t access the Google Play store as you can on other Android devices. But Amazon continues to boost up its app and video offerings, particularly to those with Prime memberships. Hardly a month goes by that Amazon doesn’t pick up a show or film that Netflix discards, and Amazon rarely lets its programming go once it gets a hold of something. The viewing experience is also superb, glistening on the tablet’s HD extra-long screen, which is in a true widescreen format as opposed to the boxy standard set forth by the iPad. That does make some games appear stretched or letterbox, but the extra real estate pays off by giving you a place to rest your thumbs without inadvertently touching the playspace. If you want a high-end tablet but lack the budget to spring for Apple, the Kindle is a solid bet.
SteamWorld Heist
(3DS, $20, Everyone 10+)
Just as SteamWorld Dig rocked the worlds of 3DS owners in 2013, the long-gestating follow-up comes as a welcome splash of brilliance to add some life to a slow year for the handheld. Expanding the scale considerably from the Terraria/Minecraft-like digging and mining function of the original game, the sequel is set in space. You board enemy ships, engage in Star Wars-worthy dogfights and take part in turn-based combat, rolling your way through the galaxy and accumulating resources as you seek to upgrade your attack capabilities to take down massive enemies.
This is a long and deep game, but an excellent auto-save system, complete with different save slots in case you want to have several campaigns going at the same time, makes it so you’ll never lose progress if you need to close out the game and shift to something else. The Old West feel of the original game transitions nicely to the more sci-fi oriented backdrop. The array of inventive weapons and foreboding enemies taxes your brains as well as your reflexes. You may find yourself thwarted by a seemingly impossible enemy, only to dream up a way to success. Retreating, gathering what you need to take down your boss and exacting sweet revenge is one of the game’s greatest joys. 3DS owners should not pass this one up.
