Only by leaving behind Earth’s gravity, can we know peace. Far Cry 5 is going to go pit players against Martian arachnids to save the world from an alien invasion. Lost on Mars is coming on July 17th. 2018.
Monthly Archives: July 2018
Insane Robots Is Out Now on Playstation 4
Playniac is proud to announce that their unique card battler, Insane Robots is live on Playstation 4 with their Standard Edition (19.99) and Deluxe Editions (32.99) which are available on the Playstation Store. It will also be available on Steam on July 12th, and Xbox One on July 13th. The Deluxe Edition contains a season pass (six robot pack DLCs) in addition to the base game. This was initially created as a tabletop prototype, using old business cards, and has grown into a fun, addictive card game.
- This is card battling HACKED with no costly expansions and time-consuming customization
- Compete in intense local and online ranked 2P multiplayer battles
- Experience the epic 15+ hour single-player campaign, overthrow the megalomaniacal Kernel and save robotkind
- Unlock 46 robots and find over 100 augments to boost their abilities
- Explore your tactical options to survive randomly generated survival arenas
- Master the 22-token battle deck and define your own style of play
- A compelling narrative with over 150 branching story events
- Explore five types of hazardous environment from lush jungles to barren Moonscapes
Transformers TCG from Hasbro and WOTC Reveal More Details
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are teaming up to create a TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game, which will be available for purchase in the United States and other markets later in 2018. The Transformers is a fast-paced, easy-to-learn battling card game for two players, and each has a team of character cards and a deck of battle cards to power them up with. Transformers character cards are twice the size of standard cards and have the capacity to be flipped from bot mode to their alternate mode and back again. They also have premium printing treatment on one side. The deck of battle cards will have Action and Upgrade cards to enhance the Transformers characters.
“The TCG format lets us pull TRANSFORMERS characters from across the brand’s massive history. From Bumblebee to Sunstorm – the game is digging deep into the TRANSFORMERS lore,” said Drew Nolosco, TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game Brand Manager. “We can even focus on different aspects of the same character. Optimus Prime, for example, is immensely powerful in combat, but he’s also a master tactician. The Transformers TCG will let players explore the characters’ depth through engaging and tactical gameplay.”
At launch, TRANSFORMERS fans can look forward to the following:
- AUTOBOTS Starter Set – The AUTOBOTS Starter Set contains cards for two players to begin gameplay, and features OPTIMUS PRIME, BUMBLEBEE, IRONHIDE and RED ALERT character cards. It will be available for purchase at retailers in the United States beginning on Sept. 28, 2018, and in certain other markets later in 2018.
- TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game Booster Packs – Players can add to their character card teams and battle card decks for full gameplay with Booster Packs. Each Booster Pack contains 1 TRANSFORMERS character card and 7 battle cards from a pool of 40 character cards and 81 battle cards. Booster Packs will be sold separately and available for purchase at retailers in the United States beginning on Sept. 28, 2018, and in certain other markets later in 2018.
Fans can get a first look at four cards for the TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game in July with the TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game Convention Edition. Limited quantities will be available for purchase at Comic-Con International 2018 in San Diego, Gen Con 2018 in Indianapolis and through the Hasbro Toy Shop at HasbroToyShop.com, where available, after the conventions. The TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game Convention Edition contains two TRANSFORMERS character cards (CLIFFJUMPER – RENEGADE WARRIOR and SLIPSTREAM – STRATEGIC SEEKER) and two battle cards (All-Out Attack and Tandem Targeting System) not available in the AUTOBOTS Starter Set or the TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game Booster Packs.
Override: Mech City Brawl Lets You Punch Your Friends As a Giant Robot
Override: Mech City Brawl is coming on December 4th, 2018 to PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One from Modus Games (with developer The Balance Inc), and players pilot their own mechs and pit them against other gigantic machines of mayhem in fully-destructible arenas modeled after real-world cities from America, Egypt, Mexico, and Japan. It will launch with 12 different mechs, which can be customized with unlockable accessories and skins in The Garage because if you’re going to fight, you might as well look awesome at the same time! A closed beta will be taking place from August 10-12th, 2018, and can be signed up for right here. You can also join their official Discord here.
Players can pre-order the game starting today. The Super Charged Mega Edition includes the Season Pass, delivering 4 extra mechs and 16 new skins post-launch, as well as instant access to 12 legendary skins normally unlocked in the Standard Edition. Override: Mech City Brawl arrives on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on December 4, 2018, for $39.99 for the Super Charged Mega Edition and $29.99 for the digital-only Standard Edition. The Super Charged Mega Edition is available in both retail stores and digitally.
Override: Mech City Brawl Features:
- Duke it out in 1v1 or 2v2 brawls
- Unleash total chaos in 4-person free-for-all
- Team up in 2 to 4-player party co-op–where each player controls one part of a skyscraper-sized mech
- Go it alone in the single-player campaign
Life is Feudal: MMO Rewards Players with More than $2M USD Worth of In-Game Currency
A monumental occasion has happened with this global patch for Life is Feudal: MMO, and to thank the players that have been around since the start, over $2,000,000 USD in “God’s Favor” currency has been given out. This update includes inter-zone travel, trade, PVP arenas, domain-specific deities (who also demand sacrifices), trading outposts and more. If that’s not enough, players will even be able to become a Pope, which is the official vicar of one of the twelve gods.
Features in This Update:
PvP Battles – Jump into the Arena: The Arena is made for ranked, hardcore PvP skirmishes and supports up to 20 foot-warriors. Mounts are prohibited. Every round lasts 12 minutes and every player has unlimited resurrection with no skill loss. Equipment durability consumption is slower than in the main world.
Outposts: Gather resources faster with our new outpost feature! Devote yourself to more important tasks by building any of the outpost types wherever you see fit. Also, Red Worlds have two additional outpost types to produce unique resources: slaves and Barmosag.
Outposts can become an integral part of war; engage in small-scale open world PvP raids to decimate those who stand in your way by attacking their resources; claim outposts from other players and guilds or kill their slaves to ruin their economy!
Slaves: No need to waste your time gathering resources by hand — save your time and energy by taking advantage of the new slave mechanic. Players can place up to four slaves per outpost, each additional slave speeds up productivity and earns you even more production.
There are a few of ways one can get slaves in Life is Feudal: you can acquire them by controlling the slave outpost in a Red World, buy from other players, or, through a feature exclusive to Red Worlds…enslave knocked out players! Now you can make the most of your conquered foes!
…AND A NUMBER OF MINOR UPDATES & FIXES!
- Heraldry on the map (Political map);
- All known server border crossing bugs fixed;
- Closed all known cheat console commands and scripts;
- One window for all PvP events;
- Completely new music soundtrack;
- Reworked sound system;
- Stamina bugs eliminated;
- and more…
Final Fantasy IV: Free Enterprise Discussion
by Jason Parker (Ragachak)
Final Fantasy IV is one of the two reasons I’m here writing this today. That is the game that made me want to be a games journalist, and actually getting to this point is thanks to the Simulated RTK forums. But Final Fantasy IV is easily one of my favorite games of all time, and over the past year or so, my stance on Speedrunning has really changed, mostly thanks to RPG Limit Break, and the fine folks behind it (Puwexil, Brossentia, Essentia, everyone else. That would take way too long). We’ve also discussed the nature of randomizers here in this column, but as the months passed, I was desperate to find a Final Fantasy IV randomizer that worked for me. I found one, thanks to RPG Limit Break and Games Done Quick – Final Fantasy IV: Free Enterprise. From what I understand, B0ardface and Riversmccown are the two minds behind it, and the way it works is pretty simple. And what’s better than having the Ultimate Evil, Zeromus, showing up as Sin, or Dr. Eggman? Nothing, that’s what.
Through a series of flags and conditions, you play Final Fantasy IV, but you start off with the Enterprise Airship and two random characters. You’ll also receive a random Key Item from a list that exists in the game. Now Final Fantasy IV is an open-world randomizer, where everything from the boss locations, characters, items, key items, and shops can be randomized between Overworld, Underworld, and the Moon! There’s always a path to get where you need to go, and it becomes a matter of “How well do you know Final Fantasy IV” and “What is the best path to the end of the game?” and I happen to think it’s fantastic. Though one of the things I think is fascinating is that you don’t need to have a perfect awareness of what goes down in Final Fantasy IV in order to have fun because everything that’s important is shuffled about. But it does help to know what key item leads to what, what characters are useful for what, potential glitches and tricks (unless you have those turned off), because you can’t beat the game without at least the Crystal, and either the Dark Crystal, or the Pass (which instead of taking you to a club, takes you directly to the final boss, Zeromus).
So you want to figure out what route is most important to you, what potential characters you want on your team, which for me, largely depends on what item drops I get. Like, if I get Adamant Armor and the Crystal Sword? I will do everything in my power to get Cecil, finish the Mount Ordeals quest to get him turned into a Paladin, and have a tank that does incredible amounts of damage (and have an agility anchor). But there are some things that I’ve learned about it since starting it about a month or so ago. If you’re going for speed, it’s all about being as thorough as possible; you want the easy Key Items as quickly as you can get them, to build a decent team, and have a way to level grind. If you’re using the Japanese items/flags, one of the fastest ways (or at least easiest) is to stock up on the “Siren” item, which guarantees you get the rarest encounter for the area you’re in. From there, you get access to the Underworld and fly to the Western-most part of the map. There’s a tiny bit of land you can drop the airship on, which always gives an “Egg” fight. You can kill the Egg in one hit without it hatching, and get the full exp for the counter. It’s much faster, arguably than getting into the Giant of Babil, and doing the D. Machine grind.
I was in no way interested in trying speedrunning until I started playing this game. The community is incredibly welcoming (the Discord is found here) and they also do weekly runs with particular flags, and a leaderboard that you input your time onto (a real timer time, not the in-game time), but you aren’t allowed to talk about the run on a public channel (a private channel pops up), and each of these are different. This creates a new, fun challenge for me, which I try to run once a week, on the stream if I have the time to (over at Bottom Tier). They also have a League! Where weekly races are run, to see who is the best, but I can’t imagine anyone beating the top Final Fantasy IV speedrunners that take part, it’s still incredibly fun to challenge oneself. I sincerely enjoy doing this, and to everyone that took part in its creation, I’m eternally grateful. It has made my life immeasurably better, simply by it being around. That might be an odd thing to say, but I stand by it. It’s helped me feel a little better mentally, having that constant new way to approach something I already love, and plus, it’s honestly just a lot of fun. It’s a great community, I’ve met some wonderful people and re-met some people I already knew and I do highly encourage people interested in RPG randomizers to give it a try, right here. I cannot stress enough how good this is, and fans of retro RPGs and randomizers alike need to give it a try. Thank you, B0ardface and Riversmccown for putting up with all of my dumb questions and queries. It’s a lovely community, and I’m glad to be a part of it.
Devil May Cry HD Collection Impressions
By Keith Harris (ShinobiGatana)
For many years I believed that Devil May Cry was an Xbox exclusive game, as I had never seen it in game stores for my console of choice at the time, the Playstation 2. My unfortunate lack of having played Devil May Cry may have been a blessing in disguise, otherwise I might not have been as intrigued about the series as an adult. Having only played less than an hour of the game in my youth, I had no real expectations going into this game. A clean slate to dive into. So what did this game have that made it such a classic? What would make this game such a treasure to own now? And did a few HD touch ups make the game truly one to stand out? Does it truly shine now?

Devil May Cry HD Collection (Game #1) was received free as a Twitch Prime subscriber, much to my very pleasant surprise. I opened the game and wondered what treats and goodies lay in wait. The title screen was a beautifully rendered triple-shot of Dante, the game’s protagonist from each of the first three games. Each Dante was separate, but they shared a background. It looked pretty cool. I expected a traditional game options menu where sound, graphics, etc. were concerned and was a touch disappointed. Controls for the keyboard, and, to my joy, gamepad were peachy, as were the sound options. Nothing spectacular, but at least they were what you’d expect from a relatively up to date game. But once the graphics screen was pulled up, I nearly dropped my controller at the lack of options. There was simply resolution, anti-aliasing, screen mode (such as border-less or full screen), and brightness. This game was supposed to be be an HD version of the game, so why did it feel so bare boned? These concerns hit me before I even opened the game and scared me. What other let downs could I expect from what is known as one of the more well loved games in the ‘classic’ hack and slash genre?
Devil May Cry has a combo based combat system where you use different combinations of buttons to do various attacks. If you are someone like me who only tends to remember combos in fighting games, there is an ‘easy auto’ mode which allows for much easier execution of advanced combos. You initially use sword techniques for up close and personal combat, but you can also use Dante’s twin handed gun setup or big honkin’ shotgun – much to my joy as I tend to stay away from the scythe wielding phantom-like creatures or creepy possessed marionettes as much as possible. The game also lets you ‘Power Up’ for lack of a better term with the flick of a finger. I pressed one button and all of a sudden my plain looking bullets took on a purple hue with a stream of purple lightning following in its wake. Or I could use the gauntlets that allow for fiery attacks rather than electric based attacks. The gauntlets also create a much different set of moves. A melee combat system that slows down the game play to a minimal degree to see each strike hit rather than just the usual flurry of moves you’d see in this type of game. You can power up each weapon and purchase items with red orbs you pick up along the way, including recovery items and continues for non-combat actions.. Then there are upgrade options for each weapon that allow you to do more advanced combos, such as fly back and forth as an attack. Once the upgrades are purchased, they are permanently ‘equipped’ to that item. There are even moments of first person underwater combat although, while using a specialized ranged weapon, the powered up form did not activate underwater. While the underwater combat was not very intuitive, it was still enjoyable in small doses. Great stuff.

This game is also notoriously puzzle happy. It’s not as bad as one might think if they have the patience to look around for a bit. Might be a spot on a floor that needs to be pressed, or a hidden piece of jewelry that needs to be placed. Maybe pulling an Excalibur maneuver and removing a sword to replace it somewhere else. Almost every stage has some sort of puzzle that needs to be solved in order to go further in your quest. Whether platforming to the top of a tower to find a sword you shouldn’t be able to see unless you turn to just the right angle, or a side stage where you have to kill one hundred spider like creatures in a very short amount of time without using weapons. It’s a blast, but sometimes very frustrating if you are not a fan of puzzles, or like me, refuse to get help from Youtube (said with a wry grin).
While I could go on about the awesomeness of the overall gameplay and how fun it is with a light learning curve, the neat wall jumping mechanic, and the awesome glowing lightning-like attacks, it’s time to discuss the elephant in the room. There is one thing that stops this game from being amazing, and it’s heartbreaking really. The game has some decent artwork in it, okay backgrounds for the time of the original release, fun platforming, but what it does not have is… wait for it. CAMERA CONTROLS!!!! The game would be a hundred, no a thousand times better with just a bit of added camera controls. I tried on the gamepad, AND I broke my solemn vow to never game with a keyboard and tried to find the slightest chance of camera controls. I found nothing, zip, nothing, nada. Go down a corridor and the camera switches to another angle, and that would be fine if the switch wasn’t so sudden. Maybe a gradual rotation to the next viewpoint. Many a time had I ended up going back down the same hallway because I could not figure out which way Dante was initially facing. Not having camera control in a third person game in a 3D world was not the easiest to navigate.

The game’s music, while not my personal cup of tea, oddly worked in this world of magic and mayhem. It was what I would call a combination of ‘techno and chill.’ Sometimes the music was a bit intense, then sometimes there was no music at all, but whenever crap was about to hit the fan, the music was a clear indicator to focus. Something big, something, mean, or something crazy is coming your way, and you didn’t have but a few seconds to prepare. Sound quality was good. No concerns there.
Overall, I’d say Devil May Cry HD Collection is a gem, at least based on my experience with the first game in the series. It’s not perfectly polished. It could have had a few more things done to make it better, such as smoothing out certain visual edges on characters. The camera controls… Yeah. Not nice beating a dead unicorn. It’s great fun if one doesn’t mind the many puzzles and battling lots and lots of possessed marionettes. If this game is on sale, I would say grab it. It’s a decent game for its time, but it could have been so much better if a little more elbow grease went into this ‘HD’ remake.

I’d give this a 3 out of 5. It has a lot of things going for it, but the few things that it has going against it are glaring and hard to let pass.
Keep your heads up gamers, Game on!
Monster Hunter: World Arrives on PC this August
The wait for Monster Hunter: World on PC is almost over! August 9th, 2018 is the big day, where Capcom’s best-selling game in company history will hit Steam. A vast, living, breathing ecosystem awaits in this take on the Monster Hunter series, with online co-op, complete with drop-in functionality, which is also a first for the series. The elder dragons migrated across the sea to the New World, an event known as the Elder Crossing has occurred, and as a part of the Guild’s Research Commission, you must embark on a journey to this new land and uncover the secrets behind this phenomenon. The hunters’ sights are set on Zora Magdaros, a colossal elder dragon that rises from the earth like a volcano.
Future updates will add new content and gameplay features. Updates and fixes made in other platform versions will be gradually applied to the PC version. The Event Quest schedule will differ from other platforms so fans should stay tuned to official Capcom channels for more details on additional content release dates. Specs are below.
RECOMMENDED
| OS | WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i3 8350 4GHz or Intel® Core™ i7 3770 3.4GHz or AMD Ryzen™ 5 1500X |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM |
| Graphic | NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060(VRAM 3GB) or AMD Radeon™ RX 570X (VRAM 4GB) |
| DirectX | Version 11 |
| Storage | 20 GB available space |
| Sound card | DirectSound compatible (DirectX® 9.0c or higher) |
| Additional Notes | Mouse, keyboard and game pads (both DirectInput and XInput) are supported. 30FPS at 1080p on HIGH graphic settings. |
MINIMUM
| OS | WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i5-4460, 3.20GHz or AMD FX™-6300 above |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM |
| Graphic | NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 OR AMD Radeon™ R7 260x(VRAM 2GB and above) |
| DirectX | Version 11 |
| Storage | 20 GB available space |
| Sound Card | DirectSound compatible (DirectX® 9.0c higher) |
| Target | Mouse, keyboard and game pads (both DirectInput and XInput) |
Tokyo Ghoul:re Call to Exist Announcement Trailer
Ghouls are pitted against Investigators in TOKYO GHOUL: re CALL TO EXIST, and it’s an eat-or-be-eaten world. Will you survive the battlefield, or be food?
Shining Resonance Refrain Arrives in the West Tomorrow
The Shining series returns for the first time in Ten Years for the Shining Resonance Refrain release, on Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC tomorrow! It’s time to harness the power of the Shining Dragon, and characters designed by legendary artist Tony Taka will come to life in an action-packed real-time combat RPG, and the B.A.N.D. system will help Yuma ILvern bring justice to the Empire as they work to save Alfeim. Shining Resonance Refrain remasters the original Shining Resonance, previously released on PlayStation® 3 only in Japan, and features dual audio with English and Japanese voices. In addition to all of the original’s DLC, now included as part of the base “Original Mode,” Shining Resonance Refrain packs a new “Refrain Mode,” unlocking the Imperial Princess Excella and Dragonslayer Jinas as party members for a new experience – just be sure to save this for your second playthrough to avoid any spoilers.






