Monthly Archives: December 2018

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and GWENT Arrive on Console

GWENT and Thronebreaker Arrive on Console

CD PROJEKT RED is proud to announce that two of their titles have arrived on both Playstation 4 and Xbox One consoles. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and GWENT: The Witcher Card Game both have arrived on the Microsoft and Playstation Stores. This brings two different styles of Witcher game to console, with Thronebreaker being a single-player RPG set in the Witcher world that offers unique puzzles and turn-based battles. GWENT is the card game of choices and consequences, where skill is the greatest weapon to the player. Those who participated in the Public Beta will receive a special commemorative player title upon logging into the console version of GWENT, and Thronebreaker features special digital items (seen here). Both titles are also available on PC.

Steel Division 2 Now Available for Pre-Order

Set during Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, in the summer of 1944, Steel Division 2 brings tactical World War II action back to life. Steel Division 2 delivers new 1:1 scale Dynamic Strategic Campaigns, where players command entire armies during Operation Bagration, which covers the Soviet counter-attack against Axis forces in Byelorussia. Eugen Systems announced today that Steel Division 2 (sequel to Steel Division: Normandy 44) is available to pre-order on their official website, Gamesplanet, Humble Bundle, and soon to Steam and Amazon.

Players who pre-order any edition of Steel Division 2 are guaranteed access to the Steel Division 2 Beta, which is scheduled for early 2019. It will let players try an early build of the game, ahead of the launch date. ll pre-order editions of Steel Division 2 also include two exclusive cosmetic Aces, Camos, and more. Eugen Systems is also proud to announce that all players who purchase any edition of Steel Division 2 can look forward to 10 free DLC scheduled to release within one year of Steel Division 2’s upcoming launch.

In addition, players who pre-order the Commander Deluxe Edition, General Deluxe Edition, or Total Conflict Edition can also look forward to 48-hours of early access to the game ahead of its worldwide launch.

Notable Steel Division 2 Pre-order Bonuses Include:

2 Exclusive Aces:  An Ace is a famous and successful military professional who has accomplished remarkable feats, such as a number of aircraft shot down or a number of successful sniper shots. In terms of gameplay, an Ace is a cosmetic model that replaces an existing unit in the game. It has the exact same characteristics as the unit it replaces and will not offer any pay-to-win advantages.

Players who pre-order Steel Division 2 can look forward to receiving Ace Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub with his La-5FN “14” fighter aircraft, the “Ace of Aces” – and Ace Ludwig Neigle with his Nashorn tank destroyer.

2 Exclusive Camos: A Camo is a military camouflage skin applied on units. In Steel Division 2, Camos are military themed and designed with historical authenticity in mind. Players who pre-order Steel Division 2 can expect two exclusive Camos to customize units.

2 Exclusive Wallpapers: Update your desktops with two exclusive wallpapers, featuring unforgettable moments inspired by heroic moments featured in Steel Division 2.

Steel Division 2 Key Features:
  • Brand-new turn-based Dynamic Strategic Campaigns
  • New setting, the Eastern Front, with the mighty Red Army and Axis powers
  • Over 600 historically accurate units across 18 new divisions
  • Realistic battlefields spread across 25 different maps
  • Substantial changes to the deck building mechanics
  • New, realistic art direction to deliver a more immersive visual style
  • Revamped combat offering a more refined tactical experience
  • Host of game modes, offline and online, including co-op and massive 10v10 multiplayer battles

Total War: Three Kingdoms: Zheng Jiang Cinematic Trailer

The latest cinematic trailer for Total War: Three Kingdoms is here today, which introduces the outlaw Zheng Jiang, and her army of warriors. Hegemony, dynasties, nobility – these mean nothing to Zheng Jiang. Her strength is the sign of her destiny, not the Dragon Throne. The Total War team’s latest blog talks about Zheng Jiang in greater detail. Total War: Three Kingdoms launches next year, March 7th. One of the benefits of playing as Zheng Jiang is her ability to greater post-siege options than her foes. The blog goes over her campaign, background, and what makes her powerful.

Subnautica Takes a Plunge Onto Console

Unknown Worlds has brought their underwater exploration/survival title, Subnautica onto Playstation 4 and Xbox One today, for 29.99. Optimized and enhanced for console by Panic Button, it also has a physical release, thanks to a partnership with Gearbox Publishing. The underwater world of Subnautica is breathtaking, but also dangerous, as the player has crash landed onto a mysterious, water-covered planet. Important resources lurk beneath the water, as do terrifying creatures that are not to be trifled with. Players can catalog alien life, craft equipment to survive, and build their own underwater base of operations.

 

Subnautica Features:

Dive into a Vast Underwater World

  • After crash landing on an uncharted world, players navigate a wide array of ocean biomes in search of answers. From sun-drenched coral reefs to deep-sea trenches, the surroundings and lifeforms change as explorers descend deeper – posing new threats.

Scavenge, Craft and Survive

  • The adventure begins in an emergency Life Pod, where players must immediately find water, food and resources, then venture forth to discover blueprints and materials for more advanced equipment to increase their chances of survival.

Construct Underwater Habitats 

  • Survivors choose from a number of modules and components to build a custom underwater base, adding furnishings, vehicle bays, observatory chambers and more. As players dive deeper, pressure increases, so they must manage the strength of their base hull to stay safe.

Unravel the Mystery

  • Never-before-seen architecture, a mysterious disease affecting sea life and secrets await in the deep. The game’s story tasks players with discovering the truth behind their crash landing and seeking the means to escape the planet alive.

Play Your Way

  • Subnautica allows players to explore the ocean and manage health, hunger and hydration in Survival mode; endure the pressure of only ONE life and no O2 alerts in Hardcore mode; or unleash their inner visionary in Creative mode – which allows them freedom to explore the ocean and build bases with no health upkeep or resource costs.

Killing Floor 2’s Winter Update Features Gary Busey As Badass Santa

Tripwire Interactive is proud to announce that Gary Busey is coming to Killing Floor 2 in today’s “Twisted Christmas: Season’s Beatings” update. It’s available on PS4, Xbox One, and Steam today, and promises to end the year with a bang. It features new weapons, maps, redesigns of the zeds, and the new playable Badass Santa (which can be purchased in-game), voiced by Gary Busy himself. Busey also lends his voice to the Trader in the Santa’s Workshop Map – and this “gift of Gary” will be free for all players throughout this Christmas themed event.

Starting today, Killing Floor 2 players can expect helpful and ominous tips from Gary Busey as he offers advice on weapon and gear purchases between rounds during Trader Time. Players will also be joining forces with Santa to reclaim his workshop from the clutches of Krampus, in the new map, Santa’s Workshop. Tripwire Interactive is also introducing the fan favorite community map Shopping Spree for the duration of the Twisted Christmas: Season’s Beatings update. Experience the true horrors of consumerism as players slay zeds throughout a nightmarish and mangled shopping mall.

 

 

Disgaea 1 Complete Review (Any Port In A Storm)

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

 

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Disgaea may look cute, and sound evil, but it’s got a positive message at the end. Trust me.

Nippon Ichi’s games really stand out amongst the pack of ridiculous anime RPGs in one very way: Leveling. Sure, having a level cap of 99 is okay, but why stop at 99, when it can be 9999? That’s only the beginning of Disgaea though. They really add replay value with an insane, but enjoyable grind. The ability to do insane amounts of damage, and constantly challenge your party to stronger and stronger encounters is what hooked me. I seldom get to the point where I’m reincarnating 9999 level characters over and over, but I get a lot out of these games anyway. The Disgaea franchise primarily takes place in an Underworld (as each Demonic Overlord has their own Underworld) and feature humans, angels, demons, and all kinds of wild and fanservy monsters. Each game has its own main protagonist, who tends to go against the norms of the Underworld – being an evil jerk, basically.

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There are so many battles in the early going where only Laharl remains. Be careful, be smart.

However, Laharl starts off as wanting nothing more than to be the biggest, baddest, toughest, most evil Overlord to ever exist. After all, everyone knows his father, King Kriechvskoy. He has a legacy that might be impossible to live up to. The scrawny, shirtless badass is going to try though. Laharl learns a lot over the course of the game, and maybe his goals will change as the game progresses. I feel like at this point, Spoilers are fair game since this game first launched on the Playstation 2, but I’ll try to avoid them anyway. The Disgaea series has come a long way since the initial title, and while my favorite is the most recent one in terms of story, characters, and Guest Characters, this is where it all began. Disgaea is easily one of my favorite turn-based strategy series, and it took some real chances in how it presented the story in a world where everyone wants to be the Hero. Some of us want to be badass freakin’ Overlords, after all. But that’s a different Disgaea.

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So many cool character classes! Cute mages, jiggly martial artists, buxom priestesses, skull-faced mages…

For those new to Disgaea, this is a great place to start, even if it lacks a lot of the creature comforts later games added. It’s a solid turn-based strategy game, and while you can get to 9999 on your characters, reincarnate them, and get back to 9999 again, you can beat the game anywhere from 60-90 with the greatest of ease. You have the main characters, that don’t have character/monster classes, generic characters (class/sex), and monster classes, which are unlocked as you kill monsters in the various stages. The generic classes have Final Fantasy Tactics style requirements, needing to have other classes at certain levels. Each has its own purpose, from Thieves (stealing), Priests (healing), several types of brawlers, Archers (Ranged combat), Majin (kicking everyone’s ass all of the time). You recruit these characters at the Dark Assembly. The Dark Assembly is essentially where you submit a bill to a group of Demonic Senators, and they all vote whether or not you should have what you want. Creating characters does not require approval, unless you want their Quality to be Distinguished or Genius. If you make a character that’s “Good-for-nothing” you actually have to remove points! Each costs Mana, which a character receives for killing enemies.

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You start off using a lot of the generic characters, but like in FFT, that can easily change in the late game.

It’s important to note that any character you have can submit Bills, and accrue mana. Even your generics! So if you use them a lot, you might be using those characters to create new characters, to try and extort funds out of the Senate (Raise Military Funds), increase the rarity of items you can buy and more. It’s also important to note that the person that created the new character (Mentor) has a better chance of teaming up with them in battle. When you attack in a battle (melee), the allies surrounding them have a percentage chance to join in, and after that turn, provided they have not attacked themselves, you can reset their position, and move them to help someone else. This makes battles take an incredibly long time after a while, but you want even your weak casters to get exp. If only Priests gained EXP from healing. . . later Disgaea’s, maybe.

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If you don’t think this stage is visually appealing, I dunno what to tell you.

There are tons of things you can have voted on, from hidden, incredible areas, to more characters, or more EXP! But what if they don’t want to help you? They usually don’t, after all. Then you have to make them help you.  You can bribe Senators with items, and if they vote against you, it’s time to fight (or give up. But who does that?). The Senators that voted yes will fight with you, everyone else is against you. Here’s where strategy comes into play. A useful thing to know, is if you throw a weak enemy into a strong enemy, that strong enemy gets stronger. If you throw a strong enemy into a weaker enemy (that isn’t on your side in this battle), they will just feed that stronger foe. So you know, don’t do that. While each chapter is a series of battles, you can (and often will) go back to them and spend lots of time grinding. There’s also the Item World to grind in, where you can power-up a weapon and go into randomly generated stages. Your hub will also have a hospital, where when your characters die, get hurt/use MP, you can bring them here, spend HL (currency) and get them back to fighting shape. You also get rewards for this, so… get hurt often! You can even kill your own allies, and there might be an ending or two that requires that. Who knows?

To Be The Master, Disgaea Master: 4/5

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It might not seem like it, but entering this spot every chapter is important.

I’ve played every port of Disgaea 1 by now, and even the Nintendo DS version was better than the PC version (at least at first). The PC edition had weird, unreasonable lag, slowdown, graphical issues, and worse. It was confusing and was causing me physical distress trying to watch the game. Whatever the reason for it was, that doesn’t seem to be the case for the PS4 version, which is the edition I’m actually reviewing today. The PS4 release of Disgaea 1 Complete feels fantastic, the characters all look huge and colorful, and the graphics overhaul is smooth and solid. There are occasional moments where the game looks like it added older version graphics in, instead, but those have been far and few between.

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The grind is real.

This is a beautiful version of one of the games of my early adulthood, and while I don’t play it every day like I used to, it’s fun to pop in, do a little grinding, and just unwind. There’s a lot of good and bad to say about Remakes, but there are so many gamers out there that missed out on some real classics. Disgaea’s one of them. This might not leap out to people who aren’t familiar with the series, as it’s had so many remakes by now, but I still recommend it highly. You will have to grind, but that’s what you expect in this particular strategy genre. It might be a game about Demons, betrayal and death, but there’s a message of love. Though many of the characters are evil, few of them are irredeemably so. There’s a lot of depth here.