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Dominic Tarason

@dominictarason.com

12K followers 3.1K following 11K posts

Veteran freelance games crit & PR. Hyped for indie games & mods. Bylines on RPS, PC Gamer, PCGamesN. Find my work, Steam curation & contact info below - He/Him Find me elsewhere online at dominictarason.com Contact email: [email protected]

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · Apr 26

Wow, I apparently cleared 10,000 followers!

You've all made a terrible mistake and are going to spend too much on obscure games!

I am terribly sorry, but relieved to see others suffering from my curse.

I also have a Steam curator page, and accept tips (which helps me find games). Details below:

Dominic Tarason - Games Crit & PR

Professional Profile, Contact Details & Links

dominictarason.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 2m

Only on some clients like deck.blue, and no, I don't know why.

You can either just copy links onto highlighted text to embed it, or format it like [text](url).

Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 4m

The expansions are playable in VR, too, but all the mod support is consolidated into the base game executable.

store.steampowered.com/app/2177750/...
store.steampowered.com/app/2177760/...

Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 7m

As the weather's a bit cooler I'm playing a bit more VR stuff again, and I'd forgotten just how good Half-Life 2 works that way, despite being a retrofit of a 20+ year old game. Some great gunfights!

A lot of the best maps and mods (including Minerva: Metastasis) are available to play this way too.

Half-Life 2: VR Mod on Steam

Half Life 2: VR Mod is a fan-made project, which adds full Virtual Reality support to the original 2004 PC gaming classic by Valve Software. Are you ready to become the Freeman?

store.steampowered.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 1h

In an hour or two, this week's Epic Store giveaway is going to be Gravity Circuit, my favourite platformer of 2023, and it was up against REAL tough competition.

A spiritual successor to Mega Man Zero.

Also if you move fast you can grab Nightingale, a cool but undersold survival sandbox/crafter.

Get A Free Game Every Week | Epic Games Store

Download a free game or join a free-to-play game community today!

store.epicgames.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 1h

Oh yeah, cool Doom mod dropped yesterday that I meant to post about:

www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/...

Crimson Horror is an 8-level romp by some of the best in the scene, with a bunch of extra stuff borrowed from Heretic/Hexen.

Crimson Horror - DOOM WAD TRAILER

YouTube video by EduardoAndFriends

www.youtube.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 1h

There's Touhou versions of EVERYTHING these days... Unless I'm mistaken, this is The Gnorp Apalogue with frilly hats...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIl2...

[Touhou Fan Game] Marisa! Return the Book! Promotion PV!

YouTube video by Marisa! Return the Book!

www.youtube.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 1h

Mechanically, they've always been swinging for the fences, but oh, what a difference having a team of professional artists and animators makes.

This is exactly what funding and resources looks like in action.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 1h

Guard Crush are a special studio. They've got a near-religious understanding of what makes side-scrolling brawlers work. They just don't have much of an art team of their own.

Their first game worked around this by just photo-sourcing sprites from the devs, their friends and... the Nostalgia Critic

Streets of Fury EX on Steam

Fight the gangs of Paris in this action packed Beat'Em up. Up to 4 players can join in, to cooperate, or fight against each other! Many unlockables, game modes, crazy combos and devastating furies awa...

store.steampowered.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 2h

Gushing reviews rolling in for Absolum. Not surprising - that demo (still available) was really damn good, and pretty replayable to boot.

For those unaware: Roguelite (Hades-esque) side-scrolling brawler from the gameplay team behind Streets Of Rage 4, paired with French animation studio Supamonks.

Save 10% on Absolum on Steam

Fight as the outcast heroes of Talamh in a fierce battle to retake magic from Sun King Azra’s grasp in Absolum, an original roguelite beat ‘em up by Dotemu.

store.steampowered.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 2h

Given that it's a spinoff from Peak Kusoge, I still think Lowtax would be the better medical professional than most of these characters.

Ultra Fight Da ! Kyanta 2 on Steam

Ultra Fight Kyanta 2 is a fighting game with a frantic pace and easy to learn controls. You can perform special attacks using single button presses! Fight in 2D battles across various modes using team...

store.steampowered.com

Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 2h

I look at release calendars like this and all I can hear is [METAL PIPE FALLING 500% BASS BOOSTED.WAV]

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 2h

The maddening thing is that despite there being more games than ever to cover, there's fewer people getting paid. Including myself. Work has been dead quiet this past month and I'm finally making plans to go independent - and if that doesn't work... I dunno.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 2h

Just one of those days, huh?

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 13h

Only a demo so far? But apparently yes.

Trespasser VR on SideQuest Oculus Quest Games & Apps including AppLab Games ( Oculus App Lab )

A remake of the 1998 game Trespasser, for the Quest 2. Made with Unity, this game features large outdoor environments, physics based puzzles, guns, dinosaurs and boobs.

sidequestvr.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 13h

Trespasser was not only an immersive sim before we had the term, but it did SO much of what we take for granted in VR games.

That game was twenty years ahead of its time, conceptually.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 13h

The main thrust of the story is that you're a Na'vi that was abducted as a child and put into a corporate re-education program to act as an 'ambassador'.

Then they decide to cancel the program and execute you, you escape, and most of the game is spent reconnecting with your people.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 13h

The thing is that the game manages to avoid the white savior stuff and really drills down into the anti-colonialist messaging, including attempts to supplant indigenous culture through re-education, etc.

It handles the politics way better than the films.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 14h

Art style is interesting. Amateurish, but clearly going for something. Plus there's like another 2-3 totally different art styles in the trailer. Very Suda-styled.

Definitely want to investigate more.

Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 14h

Alright, finished the prologue and... I have no idea what to make of this. Translation seems okay (dev's first language is Russian) with some bits of clunky phrasing.

I still don't fully understand what combat wants of me to get a good ranking. And I think it might be hitting me with red herrings.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 15h

Always nice to see something from my wishlist sent my way via Curator Connect. Guess tonight I'll be poking around the very Suda51-inspired Mind Control: Bloody Renaissance.

Like Killer7 in RPG Maker, with real-time action shooting

I reckon this would probably be @maraganger.bsky.social's jam too.

Mind Control: Bloody Renaissance on Steam

A terror attack in Boston's tallest skyscraper. To kill the cult leader, the Outcast hijacks suicidal civilians. Their bodies—your weapons.

store.steampowered.com

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 16h

T-Rex there throwing it all the way back to the Cretaceous.

A great highlight of the increasingly surreal media divide. Major news channels speaking in panicked, enraged tones of the national guard fighting running battles against black-clad arsonist hordes every night... And then videos like this.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

#WarRavagedPortland

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 18h

They run steep sales very regularly. If you want to hold off a bit longer, there's a third expansion and a big update adding NG+ and a third-person mode on the way.

Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 19h

You just missed a big sale on Ubisoft's own site. It was like 80% off, I think in all regions?

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 19h

Oh, that'd be far too coherent.

The Division 2 has a rogue US president, working behind the scenes with foreign powers to destabilize the government as a key plot point and manages to say NOTHING political. Every dialogue that might ascribe motivation to anyone gets sidestepped or handwaved.

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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 19h

The grandest irony is that the one Ubisoft game with a pair on it in the past few years - Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - is the one that everyone ignored.

That game's politics are full-throated anti-colonialism paired with 'save the rainforest, blow up an oil pipeline today'. In *Avatar* somehow!

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