Yearly Archives: 2017

Monster Hunter: World – Official Release Date and Pre-Order Details

Monster Hunter Worlds News

We finally have a release date for Monster Hunter: World for Playstation 4 and Xbox One! The global release will be January 26th, 2018, and a PC release date will follow after. Pre-orders have begun for bonus incentives for the standard version or the Digital Deluxe/physical Collector’s Edition. Players that pre-order Monster Hunter: World in North America on either Xbox One or PS4 either digitally or at participating retailers will receive access to special pre-order bonuses, including the Origin Set Armor and the Fair Wind Charm talisman (this may become available through alternative means later), which offers improved starting defense and offense stat boosts for the hunter as well as a useful gathering skill. For those that pre-order any digital version from the PS Store, they will also receive instant access to a custom PS4 theme.

The Digital Deluxe edition for North America is 69.99 and includes the digital game, plus additional customizable options for in-game use: Samurai Set skin, three gestures, two sticker sets, plus an extra face paint/hairstyle.  The PS4 version also includes 14 weapon-themed PSN avatars. The contents for it will be available for purchase separately on January 26th. The North American physical Collector’s Edition includes a physical copy of the game, voucher for the additional customizable options from the Digital Deluxe Edition (a Samurai Set skin, three gestures, two sticker sets, plus an extra face paint and hairstyle option for the hunter), a 32 page hardcover art book, high-quality flagship monster statue, and digital soundtrack code all bundled in a custom collector’s box for $149.99.

Nomad Games offering free copy of Talisman on Thursday

Talisman for Free

This Thursday (9/21/17), Nomad Games are offering a free copy of Talisman: Digital Edition to all their followers on Twitch and Youtube. The notion is that it will help raise money for One Special Day and the Charity “SpecialEffect”. The more people that own the game, the more likely they are to acquire the Shaman character, which raises money for SpecialEffect. All you have to do is watch their livestream on Thursday, 5 pm BST to get the password for the free copy of the game! Don’t miss out!

Anireal Charity Album Explores Child Abuse/Journey to Recovery

AniReal Album News

Anireal is a video game-inspired soundtrack with a focus that’s near and dear to my heart. As a survivor of abuse as a younger man, Calbert “Schematist” Warner presents Anireal, which was inspired by the life story of a friend and video game developer, Jessica Fong. It’s an emotional, contemplative electronic soundtrack/album to healing, with proceeds to be donated to helping others on their journey to recovery through the New York Center for Children. It’s available wherever digital music can be found. The album is a story told in musical form for the growth of Jessica, and is not an album to be missed, even if only to donate towards helping victims of child abuse. Do consider going to Bandcamp, iTunes, or Spotify and purchase this album.

“After several conversations with fellow composers and artists, I noticed the topic of mental health was an area that was frequently ignored or unexplored,” comments Warner. “While meeting Jessica Fong and hearing her talk so candidly about her abusive past, I realized I had more than enough motivation to create this project. I was heavily inspired by videogame composers such as Yuzo Koshiro, Nobuo Uematsu, Shoji Meguro and Zircon and wanted to blend a variety of styles together to create a convincing melodic storytelling experience and I am proud of the end result.”

Potato Pirates Card Game Teaches How to Program


Learning to program/code is such an important skill these days. But it’s not always the most approachable subject. It’s important to try and start learning skills like this early, but there aren’t quite as many interesting tools for this as I’d like. Not as many options. What about people who want to learn to program but don’t have the software or anything to work on? What options do they have? Enter Codomo, a technology company down in Singapore. This month they started a Kickstarter project (link right here) to a game called Potato Pirates! Are you a teacher who wants to introduce programming to their class, or just want to hang out with your friends and play a fun card game while also learning something useful? Then you need this in your life.

Potato Pirates_ The Tastiest Coding Card Game by Codomo — Kickstarter

I love this idea. It’s about ten hours of programming crammed into a half hour card game. The art is adorable, and the gameplay seems to make a lot of sense. It’s not all programming slang either, it also features “Potato Slang”. You have to Mash, Fry, and Roast the other potatoes and save the Potatoe King! This is adorable. To win, you have to collect all seven Potato King cards or be the last Potato Standing. This is a very clever idea, and it looks like a lot of fun for programming enthusiasts or even people who just want something new and clever in their lives. It’s over 200% funded and they’re working on another stretch goal. Regardless of your first language, Potato Pirates is an accessible way for kids the world over to learn more about the world of computer programming in an engaging environment. This is a game I’d definitely like to see picked up in schools in my own area. Here’s a brief blurb on how this game works:

Potato Pirates 2

In this game, you play as a potato pirate and start with 2 ships along with 10 potato crew each. To win the game, you have to save Potato King by collecting all 7 Potato King cards hidden randomly in the deck. Either that or you could just eliminate everyone else in the game. To attack other pirates, you equip your ships with action cards such as “Roast”, “Mash” or “Fry”. Combine them with control cards such as “For” and “While” loops to power up your attacks. Once you are ready, send your ships for battle. Beware of surprise cards such as “Hijack” and “Deny” that might foil your crafty plans. Through the game, you will learn about fundamental computer programming concepts such as functions, for loops, while loops, if-else conditionals, nested loops, boolean statements and many more.”

Potato Pirates 3

They’ve had playtest sessions with Google/Microsoft and in a variety of schools and settings. What they have found is that 78% gained confidence in learning to program after playing this game. 9 out of 10 showed a significant improvement in the understanding of fundamental programming concepts after an hour of play. There was also an 85% spike of interest in programming after playing the game. This is a wonderful success rate. In the 21st century, programming is an essential skill and starting at an early age is key. Sure you can pick it up as an adult, but imagine what children could uncover, starting at a nice early age. But who wants to just read from a book or type on a keyboard all day? New ways to learn like this are a godsend. If you’re a teacher, or a parent or even someone who wants to program for yourself, please consider this. No matter your age, it promises to entertain and educate at the same time.

Offensive Combat: Redux Review: “Killary and Drumpf”

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Offensive Combat Redux - Main Menu

The most common approach to a shooter/FPS these days is ultra-realistic or ultra-gritty. You have LawBreakers, which is violence-filled, but filled with grit, swearing, and really cool gameplay mechanics. The upcoming Call of Duty is set in World War II. Then you have Battlefield I, which is set in World War I. There are, of course, games that buck this trend, like Star Wars Battlefront and  various other class-based shooters, but none of them are quite as wild as Offensive Combat: Redux. It’s set in the “Offensive Combat Universe”, which I did not know existed until I started this review. So I sat down to do a little research. Offensive Combat was originally a browser based shooter, distributed via Facebook.

Offensive Combat - Redux - Cockshot

Boop! Right in the balls!

Years later, Offensive Combat: Redux comes back with all the silly, ridiculous nonsense that comes with it. A lot of the complaints I’ve read about it were based on the visuals and the fact that a prominent part of the game is “PWNing” your opponents after you kill them, or that it’s not pretty visually. And sure, this is not the prettiest FPS I’ve ever played (that’s probably Lawbreakers). But I personally feel the more ludicrous, cartoony, even sub-par art style goes well with the game. Offensive Combat: Redux keeps up this ridiculous style with killshots: in addition to getting headshots, the game also offers the laudable “Cockshot”! If you manage to kill someone with shots to the genitals, it will declare proudly that you defeated your foe with a cockshot. It’s an experience I’ve not had in an FPS until this one.

Offensive Combat - Redux - PWN

You can’t see me!

It may look a trifle ridiculous,  and it may be annoying that it does not default to 1920×1080 fullscreen/borderless windowed, but there are settings to change that. Well, you can set it to full screen. Any game that doesn’t have “Borderless Windowed” as an option automatically ticks a negative mark for me. But the graphics do lend themselves well to this style of game. It’s very immature, and it’s clear from the word “Go”. There are lots of different cosmetic styles, including “Drumpf” and “Killary”. You can be a lizard person, a robot, you can walk around in a classy suit with a Poo Head. Whatever nonsense you want to cook up you can, and it won’t make you any better at the game. It will probably be at least marginally entertaining though. But how do you unlock these wonderful features? You spend gold, the primary currency,  or there is … an alternative path. It’s a far more fun path, but it’s a bit more random. Thankfully you also get gold and experience points for winning/losing matches, but here’s the real trick.

Offensive Combat - Getting PWNED

Get used to this.

When you kill a player in a match, a match of any variety, you can “PWN” them. Remember how popular teabagging was in Halo/CoD? It’s back, and it has a legit game function! You start off doing a combo of a Teabag (look it up if you don’t know) and John Cena’s “You can’t see me” taunt with a little funk riff playing. Each time you utilize one of these taunts, there’s a chance that the game will unlock a new part at random. What’s the catch though? When you are taunting, you don’t have any invulnerability frames or any protection, other than your team. Odds are, while you’re PWNing someone, an enemy combatant is lining up a shot to murder you.

Offensive Combat - Redux - Dots

Ignore the tea-bagging, look at the red dots.

Anytime you fire a bullet, throw a grenade, anything, you show up on the mini-map. So when someone dies, you are a moving target on the map. In fact, I’ve only successfully gotten away from a taunt a few times total. No more than five or six, and that was because I had to steal a kill, kill the guy that was killing, then grenade his friend running down the path. Then it was PWN, PWN, dash, and PWN! But it’s a chance of an item and even if you’re killed mid-taunt, you still unlock the part. The really good costume pieces are expensive, but playing will unlock them and there are no benefits to it other than looking silly/cool (but probably silly). Luckily you can equip multiple taunts, and use the one you prefer.

Offensive Combat Redux - Combat

Bots aren’t friendly.

The gameplay is sharp but simple. You can play against Robots (Bots), Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, or Death Match (free for all). These are pretty standard FPS modes: kill the other team until time runs out/you hit the appropriate number, capture the flag a few times, kill everyone that isn’t you a lot. There’s also a handy “Exploration” Mode where you can wander the map, find your sniping spots, where items spawn, et cetera. In addition, if you can’t decide what mode to play, use “Any Mode” and it will match you with the first queue that pops.Then we have the weapons. You come equipped with a Primary Gun, a Secondary Gun, a Melee Weapon, and a Grenade/Supplemental Weapon. You start, thankfully, with all the primary/secondary guns unlocked, and a wooden sword/frag grenade.

Offensive Combat - Redux - Weapon Tree

Plenty of weapon buffs .. shame you can’t turn some off.

Every melee weapon has identical stats and differences are all just cosmetic, from a rubber chicken to a frying pan to a fish or boxing glove. Each grenade-style weapon gets better and better and thankfully only require exp, so simply playing matches will unlock them. Each gun has a skill tree, with new parts to equip to them, which all start with a base of 1000 exp and increase exponentially for each level on the tree. I do feel like the scoping of the guns is pretty slow, and so anytime I try a new assault rifle, I find myself regretting the scope choice and prefer to simply look down the barrel and open fire. The guns are interesting too. You have a few classics, like the AK-47, the SCAR-HL, but then they get wacky, like the “Razer”, a “cutting edge” space pistol. Or the “Xeno Disrupter” which shoots … radiation? I think that’s the ammo. But you have your pick of the litter. There’s also a gigantic chain gun you can find on most maps, ala Doom. But if you kill the person with it, they lose it.

Offensive Combat - Redux - BIG ASS GUN

BFG – Gets the job done.

And while the gameplay is solid – you kill people with guns, the aim seems to be pretty tight and even when I was losing, I still had fun – it feels empty, hollow somehow. I do not think 20 bucks is okay for a game that just has a few game modes and maps. For what’s on offer, I think 10 would be far more reasonable. Going back to guns though, I’m not really wild about the Weapon Tree being cumulative. What I mean, is you can’t decide that you want to go back Reflex sight and equip it instead. There’s no way to undo it either, so if you decide you don’t like that sight, you’re stuck with it. The other traits to the guns are just buffs/upgrades, so you do need to put in the time to get the exp and put yourself on the level of players who are constantly on and leveling their gear. The other major complaint is the nature of the PWNS. Each PWN has a timer (3s-6s), and each PWN has a chance to unlock particular gear. So what that means is you need to spend the gold on them. So I highly recommend going through the list of PWNs and figuring out what items you’re trying to unlock and equip accordingly.

 

Offensive Combat - Redux - Options

When it comes to killing, you have options.

Are you Triggered?: Verdict – 3/5 (Okay)

A lot of the complaints I’ve heard about the game have nothing to do with the actual game, because it’s just the nature of the game. Sure, it promotes negative, toxic, taunting behavior, as it’s part of the game. It has a “DRUMPF” character, complete with “Make OC Great Again” outfit and “Killary” in prison black and whites. It all boils down to how offensive you think that is. You don’t have to use them, but I can see how that might bother some people. You can’t hide them, but it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. The game itself isn’t bad, but I can see people being mollified and offended pretty easily. I think that if it had something more to it, whether it was more maps, a few more modes, something, it would be worth 20 dollars. As it stands right now it’s fun, it’s good for a few matches here and there, but it’s not worth the price tag. I appreciate that it’s easy to power up your guns easily and that all the guns are unlocked right at the start. There aren’t a ton of them, but you have access to them and can go to the “Gun Range” mode to test them and see if they are exactly what you’re looking for. But at the end of the day, I do feel like it needs something “more”.

A game key was provided for review purposes.

Doomtrooper CCG Increases Firepower with Upcoming Kickstarter Campaign

DoomTrooper -CCG News

The classic franchise, Mutant Chronicles is coming to digital format! The Doomtrooper CCG based in that universe is going to attempt to take it digital, with their demonic aliens, cyber-mechanical vehicles, and interplanetary chainsaw warfare! It should be a refreshing game, both visually and mechanically, and on Monday, September 25th, a 30 day Kickstarter campaign will kick off! It’s a digital adaptation of the physical card game of the same name, brought back to life thanks to Justin Reynard of Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege III and more (Secret Cow Level). There will, of course, be alpha access when the campaign ends (for eligible backers), and exclusive rewards like custom card backs, and classic card variants. At first, the goal is Windows/Mac OS, but a stretch goal for mobile phones is on the table.

Doomtrooper is one of the best collectible card games ever made,” said Justin Reynard, “and we’re so excited to bring it to the digital era.” Reynard and his team are dedicated to being as faithful to the original game as possible, tweaking the rules only slightly, and preserving all the core elements in a gameplay-first approach.

Justin’s working with Cabinet Entertainment and the original designer of the game, Bryan Winter, and a fully playable alpha has been built and is turning to crowdfunding to really make a fantastic game come to life in a new way. Fans can look forward to a livestream at their Official Twitch Channel for an overview of the game, with Justin Reynard. It goes live at 6pm EDT!

Miner Meltdown

Miner Meltdown is an online 2D multiplayer shooter blending gameplay and visual elements from titles like Terraria and Spelunky. Take your pick from a variety of diverse weaponry and get to digging through the randomly generated map picking up gold and killing any enemies that cross your path, available for Windows.

Features:

Game Mode Trio: Eliminate all opponents in Team Deathmatch, collect the most diamonds in Diamond Rush, or stay in the designated area for as long as possible in Crazy King.

Gun Jubilee: From pistols and assault rifles to flamethrowers and rocket launchers, with so many ways to kill one another it’s hard to pick just one!

Molerat: Follow the path your teammates have created or dig yourself a new one.