Bandai Namco has confirmed that on August 31, 2018, Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker will go on sale in the Americas, for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC via Steam. In addition, new characters, features, and Season Pass DLC have also been revealed. Two fan-favorite characters are officially joining the fray: Gaara, the 5th Kazekage, and Deidara, the artist of the Akatsuki. Gaara, a defense type, uses his Grand Sand Mausoleum attack to restrict opponents for a limited time, creating openings for his teammates. Deidara, a ranged type, uses his signature Explosive Style ninjutsu to turn his clay clones into deadly ticking time bombs. In addition to using Gaara, Deidara and other iconic characters from the series, players will also be able to personalize their own avatar with different costumes, weapons, and accessories.
Yearly Archives: 2018
Medieval Strategy Game, Ancestors Legacy, Launches Today on PC
Get ready to storm across Europe as Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Germans or Slavs, in Ancestors Legacy, which goes live today! Conquer, raid, and pillage enemy camps and towns in a single player campaign, or in pitched online battles. If you want to truly be dominant, strategic minds are needed, taking full advantage of the tactical options available. Ancestors Legacy combines resource management and base building with large-scale, squad-based battles across huge battlefields, rendered in beautiful detail with Unreal Engine 4. Developed by Destructive Creations and published by 1C Company, it has been rated M by the ESRB for Violence, Blood, Gore and strong Language. It’s available for 44.99 in the standard edition (discounted 10% to 40.49 for the first week of launch).
Game Features
- Extensive single player campaign inspired by historical events featuring four playable nations
- Intense multiplayer battles with multiple modes including Domination (control the most villages to win) and Annihilation (destroy the enemy base camp to win)
- Advanced tactical options combining the use of terrain, experience and morale
- Cinematic battle camera view puts players right in the center of the action
- Outstanding visual fidelity powered by UnrealEngine 4
- Streamlined resource management and village constructio
Five More Terrible RPG Mini-Games from Ragachak
by Jason Parker (Ragachak)
This one was hard to do because I found myself simply listing Final Fantasy X mini-games. I love FFX in more ways than I can possibly express, but I detested, loathed most of the mini-games that came along with it. Maybe part 3 will just be garbage FFX mini-games. They were ridiculous, needlessly challenging, and frankly, in many cases, the rewards were just not worth it. But today, I have a separate list of trashbag mini-games. Some of the worst mini-games are ones where you mash a button fast for virtually no profit. Then there are math mini-games. Let us not forget “timing” mini-games. There were a few honorable mentions that were not RPGs but belong somewhere, being mentioned. The first of these is Super Mario Bros. 3. Unless you had a strategy guide (like I did, thanks Nintendo Power!), the matching mini-game was an absolute nightmare. There were seven or eight possible boards you could get, and figuring out which one is a chore and can wind up a waste of time.
Another “mashing” mini-game that needs to be mentioned was in Mortal Kombat 1. As you progressed through the game, you had the “Test Your Might” mini-game where the goal is to smash whatever object is in front of you, and you have to mash the buttons as fast as you can to reach a certain mark on a bar. Why would you do this in a fighting game? This wears your fingers/wrists down, making it harder to play. Not to mention all you get for it are points! Who cares about points in a fighting game?! I want wins! Character unlocks! A hint on how to do the dumb as hell finishing moves! Give me something, not a waste of time. Come on, Midway. You were better than this. With that said, let’s talk some trash!
5: Chrono Trigger – Drinking Mini-Game: This is done not once, but twice in the game, and neither one of them is worth a good god damn! The first time is in the Millenial Fair, where you get plastered as a teenager with a mustached man, with your new friend/kidnapped princess watching on and cheering away! How do you win this mini-game? You mash as hard and fast as you can (or use a turbo controller – no judgments here). Your reward? Knowing you out-drank a drunk. It also affects how you’re handled at the trial, so maybe it’s best not to do it at all. Your next adventure is a “Soup Drinking Contest” in Pre-History. It doesn’t seem like soup, despite looking like it. Ayla’s suspiciously hungover the next morning and so is Lucca. What’s the point of this? To waste my damn time, that’s what.
4: Zelda 3: A Link to the Past – Digging: In A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, there’s a randomized digging mini-game, you pay some Rupees to dig in a field. You can gain Rupees, Hearts, and if you’re really lucky, a Heart Piece, which goes towards increasing your overall health. These are incredibly useful, but the spot it’s in is located in a random spot every time. Sure, you can game the system by just digging in a straight line every time and eventually, it’ll be in one of those spots. But again, chance/percentages. It’s tedious and annoying, and mini-games where there is luck involved instead of skill? You can get lost, Zelda 3, and take your stupid mini-games with you. This isn’t the only terrible Zelda mini-game, but Zelda as a franchise has fewer than say, Final Fantasy.
3: Super Mario RPG – Yoshi Races: Ever want to do the Chrono Trigger future bike race but at a snail’s pace? No? Well too bad, that’s what you get in Super Mario RPG, on Yoshi Island! Sounds easy, but as a kid, it is anything but. You have to find a good rhythm and mash A and B alternatively, and you can bet your Yoshi Cookies on you winning. If you win, you get double the Yoshi Cookies, and I think you can store up to 200. But it’s a dreadful, tedious, painful waste of time that I can’t see anyone doing other than for completion’s sake. Super Mario RPG also has a lot of mini-games, but thankfully, the majority of them are fun or at least good. In order to wager cookies though, first you have to beat him in a race on Yoshi to start with, and it’s a waste of my damn life.
2: FFX-2 – Sphere Break: Or, Maths: The Mini-Game. Sphere Break is great if you’re good at thinking about multipliers of numbers on the fly. Otherwise, this is a disgrace and frustrating on top of it. All it does is remind me of how bad I am with Math/Numbers, and in order to 100% for the best ending, you have to complete a Sphere Break mission, and it’s not an easy one either. There are 64 possible coins, and the goal is to combine a series of coins that equal/are a multiplier of the Sum you are given at the start. Sometimes that Sum is 1, and that’s going to ruin any combo you have, because combos are important. It’s tedious, frustrating, and unless you can think fast on your feet, have a solid grasp of Mathematics, I recommend having someone else play it for you (that’s what I did on a few occasions, no shame here). But there’s one worse than this today. . .

What’s the worst that could happen? You could break the disc, the controller, and probably your hand.
1: Final Fantasy IX: Jump Rope: Whoever designed this mini-game, coyly put at the beginning of Final Fantasy IX, I hope they know that they are a villain of the highest caliber. It seems innocuous enough: You tap a button in time with the rhythm to jump over the rope, up to 99 times. There are amazing rewards, but every so often, at set intervals, the timing changes ever so slightly. Whoever decided this needed to be a way to unlock in-game stuff needs to have their head examined. It is ridiculously challenging, and the rewards hardly seem worth it. I mean, they are, but it doesn’t feel like it when you’re doing it. The PC version allows for mouse inputs, meaning you can cheat your way through this (It’s not really cheating if it’s in the game) since you can click the exclamation mark and get 1,000 jumps easy-peasy, but that’s not how it was meant to be. This is one of the most soul-crushing mini-games I’ve ever played, next to Lightning Dodging in FFX.
What about you guys? What are some terrible mini-games that you remember?
SOFF Games
SOFF Games
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation Review
By Terris Harned (NWOrpheus)

It’s amusing to me that Jason, aka Ragachak, recently wrote about his favorite apocalypse games and the end of the world. Reason being, Indie game developer Suncrash has recently announced the release of their first video game, “Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation”. The game has been on Steam as an Early Access title since April of 2016, but on May 3rd, 2018, they proudly launched the game.
At its core Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation (henceforth Judgment) is a colony survival simulation, just in case the name didn’t clue you in on that. Others in the genre include games like Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Planetbase, Gnomoria etcetera. The list goes on. Judgment however is the first of the genre (that I know of) that presents the players with a demonic apocalypse scenario.

Like some other colony sims, you begin the game with three people. Each of these will have randomly determined skills, class, and appearance. The appearance you can alter to suit your whims, but to change the other statistics you will have to pound those dice buttons until you find the settlers that suit your needs.

After configuring your ragtag team of intrepid heroes, the game takes you through a series of cutscenes keying you in on the background story. While the setting is original to the genre, the story itself isn’t anything terribly new. All the same, we often go with what works for a reason.
Once the cutscenes complete, you find yourself beginning the combat tutorial. You control a pair of higher level examples of what a colonist COULD be, if they live that long, in order to get a feel for the mechanics. This introductory mission is pretty straight forward, and you’d almost have to try to lose. Don’t plan on your first set of colonists being as strong as these early example heroes.

Next you arrive at your starting base for the remainder of the tutorial. You’ll do basic structure building, resource gathering, crafting and such. The game gives you step by step directions for the first part of this, and keeps you moving on the right track to understand the game’s essential mechanics and flow.
Before long you’re tasked with a rescue mission. This will take your colonists away from your new base for the first time and introduce you to one of the overland encounter maps, specifically the one concerning rescuing other survivors. This mission will increase your group’s number to four, unless something has gone horribly awry.

From here, Judgment plays like most other colony survival games, with a couple distinctions. Yes, you must make sure that your people are fed and have water. You research new technologies allowing you more efficient ways to produce or conserve food and water, thus allowing larger colonies to thrive. Weapons and armor are also discovered, on the research tree, but there’s one thing Judgment has that other games I’ve played don’t: An ‘Occult Research’ branch, as well as one for ‘Rituals’.

At first, you simply research the origin of the demons, presumably consulting musty old tomes and archaic manuscripts. From there, you discover rituals that will bring rain to decrease the growing time of plants, trinkets to harm enemies or aid allies, and various other useful bits. Additionally, you discover the ability to craft items of light, dark, and nature magic that allow crafting of certain special weapons and armors. Certain classes can even specialize in the use of either rare weapons or rare armors from these categories.
The combat in Judgment might at first seem a little simplistic. Your troops fight the enemies in real time (with the option to pause to give orders). Your colonists sometimes have special abilities they can use to alter the outcome of a fight, such as the ability to vanish, heal allies, or increase their own damage. In truth though, it becomes considerably more strategic, especially as the game progresses.

You, or your enemies, gain advantage from performing flanking maneuvers or taking cover. Melee soldiers get a damage bonus versus ranged attackers, and ranged attackers do less damage while in melee. To make matters worse, the farther into the game you get, the more powerful the demonic forces become. They also become much more numerous. If you want your colonists to truly survive the apocalypse that they find themselves in, and discover a way to thwart them, you’ll have to use your wits.
Back at base, your wits are equally important as the number of your own settlers increase. Each survivor has strengths and weaknesses and you must find a good balance within your team in order to sustain the colony. You can drag and drop the various tasks to prioritize their importance for each colonist, with the leftmost icon being what they will focus on first. This allows you general control of the crew, though most of their actions are autonomous. You can micromanage if you wish and assign your settlers to complete a certain task, before going back to their prescripted task order.

As a flagship game for Suncrash, the graphics and music for Judgment were on the upper end of the “okay” department. People look like people, cars look like cars, trees look like trees. It’s an Indie game, and carries the look and feel of an Indie game. For a seminal game from a fledgling company, though, it’s a very fine offering.
The game is $19.99 on Steam, and has a high replay value if you enjoy games of the colony survival genre. I have several of these types of games in my library, and found myself enjoying Judgment quite a bit, both for its original setting within the genre, as well as its mixture of approachability and challenge. While there’s no single part of the game that stands out above others, in the genre or in general, it’s definitely one of those instances where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Final Rating: Good (3.5/5)
Memories of Mars Reveals Unique “Seasons” Mechanic
505 Games and Limbic Entertainment have revealed more about the hostile surface of Mars that players will be exploring in advance of a closed beta that will be starting today for Memories of Mars. The unique Seasons system was revealed, which promises to set it apart from other survival titles. Death is inevitable, even for the most skilled of players, as the occasional catastrophic solar flare will wipe the planet’s surface of all life, and player-made infrastructures on an ongoing basis. Some talents and abilities learned in the seasons can be backed up and carried over with the cloning system, which will allow players to download previous memories of how to build and craft, in order to get a head start on other players in that season.
The closed beta will begin today and run through Sunday, May 20th, 2018, and select players will have an opportunity to be among the first to fight to survive and explore the dangers of the Red Planet in Memories of Mars.
Official Sea of Thieves: The Hungering Deep Trailer
A new threat lurks beneath the waters, and will the Sea of Thieves be tackling something new, or is it an ancient, horrific evil? Steel yourselves for what awaits in the Hungering Deep.
Dragon Ball FighterZ – Party Battle Mode Trailer
Join forces in Dragon Ball FighterZ for a co-op battle against the mighty Lord Freiza in this limited time event! Starting now until May 21st, plus you’ll earn Zeni and Premium Z coins!
Compete in Brawlhalla Stream.Me Championship Tournament
Later this month (May 26-27, 2018), players are invited to find a friend and test their fighting skills in the Brawlhalla Stream.Me Championship. Competitors will do battle in 2v2 matches to win a share of 4,000 in prize money. Open to any and all players in NA/Europe, it kicks off on May 26 with the European bracket at 5 pm CET and follows with North America’s bracket on May 27th at 3 pm ET. Registration can be found here for North America, and here for Europe. Competitors are also invited to broadcast their matches exclusively on Stream.Me, where livestreamers can become partnered and begin earning revnue with just fifty followers.
- Game Mode: Stock
- Teams: On
- Team Damage: On
- Lives: 3
- Match Time: 8:00
- Gadgets: Off
- Test Features: Off
- Map Set: 2v2
- EU Bracket: May 26, 2018 @ 5:00pm CET
- NA Bracket: May 27, 2018 @ 3:00pm ET
- 1st Place – $1,000
- 2nd Place – $400
- 3rd Place – $240
- 4th Place – $120
- 5th / 6th Place – $80
- 7th / 8th Place – $40
Eden Supremacy Is Out Now
A new open world co-op title from Nvizzio Creations is now available on Steam’s Early Access for 14.99 USD – It’s Eden Rising Supremacy. Set in a sci-fi universe, Eden Rising is a mix of tower defense, open world, and third-person action/multiplayer to create a unique experience. Tribes of human explorers absolutely must work together to defend and restore ancient technology from an advanced civilization. Team up with your friends to do battle against hordes of aliens, craft weapons, traps and armor using their crafting system. These items can also be upgraded and customized to suit the playstyle of whoever is using them.
“We are very proud of the start we have made with Eden Rising: Supremacy,” said Brent Elison, Lead Designer. “We’re in early access and already have over 30 hours of content for players to get their hands on — a massive world to explore, technologies to discover and craft and lots tower defense sieges.”







