Yearly Archives: 2018

Vayne Revealed as First Season Pass Character for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT

Square Enix announced today that the first character in the Dissidia Final Fantasy NT and that will be Vayne Carudas Solidor from Final Fantasy XII! Vayne joins as a powerful Vanguard who utilizes dizzying combos while also buffing his party with his EX Skill ‘Writ of Conquest’. The Season Pass, for players who own it, will give six new playable characters, skins, and weapons as they come out. More information can be found here.

SEGA Genesis Classics is coming to PS4 and Xbox One

SEGA Europe has a tremendous Altered Beast of an announcement! Set for both digital and physical purchase on May 29th is the SEGA Genesis Classics on both PS4 and Xbox One. Over 50 retro classics across a multitude of genres, from arcade, action, shooters, beat ’em ups, classics and hidden gems alike. These games will include online mutliplayer, achievements, mirror modes, rewinds, save states and much more.

The physical edition will be available to pre-order from US and EMEA retailers very soon. It comes complete with a double sided Golden Axe and Streets of Rage poster, identical to the ones you will see in the game’s 90s inspired retro gamer’s bedroom, the hub through which players can access the entire collection. Details of digital pre-order will be available very soon.

And if that wasn’t enough, players who have the SEGA Genesis Classics on Steam will be treated to a huge free update, giving it parity with the console launch when it goes live.

Earthfall to Invade PS4, Xbox One and PC This Spring

A horrific alien menace arrived on Earth, and with them came horrors from another world with only one goal: To wipe humanity out entirely. Countless battles have taken place involving four-man teams of human defenders, the invaders will be moving to PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 this spring as Earthfall hits full launch. Get your friends, and with a mix of modern and futuristic weaponry and prepare to stomp out those aliens!

“When we launched Earthfall on Early Access, we received a great response from players,” said Russell Williams, CEO of Holospark. “Now it’s time to bring Earthfall to completion, along with making it available to Xbox One and PS4 players. We think players on all three platforms are going to be stunned by the game’s amazing 4K visuals and will find themselves unable to tear themselves away from the cooperative sci-fi-themed gameplay.”

Features of Earthfall Include:

  • Cooperative Survival For up to Four Players – Team up with friends to survive the alien infestation. Robust multiplayer support and A.I. teammates stand ready to ensure a full team at any time regardless of available players
  • Build Your Defenses – Strategically deploy barricades to block the enemy hordes and install turrets anywhere to create perfect alien killing zones
  • Multiple Campaigns – Each campaign tells a story across several missions, allowing players to dive in and experience diverse settings and mission types across the Pacific Northwest
  • Close Encounters of the Brutal Kind – Deadly aliens come in all shapes and sizes, from massive drones armies attacking in waves to towering behemoths spitting plasma, every experience is different, each time you play
  • Battle Unpredictable Enemies – Earthfall features a dynamic spawn system providing a constant set of new challenges lurking behind every corner
  • An Unfolding Story – Every campaign reveals new content and secrets behind the world of Earthfall and the cataclysmic alien invasion

Any ‘Port’ In A Storm: Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

FFXV - Main Image

Truly, the best version of Cid.

Editor’s Note: Some of these screens were taken while I was still fiddling with visual settings.

It’s no big secret that Square-Enix has developed almost every game that I truly love, from childhood to adulthood. It’s also no great secret that some/many of their ports have been, for lack of a better word, been dreadful. Final Fantasy XII was a step in the right direction, and despite the minor issues I had with it, it was a great port. Then Chrono Trigger happened. My morale slipped and fell right back down Sisyphus’ hill. Then I remembered there was a light at the end of the tunnel: Final Fantasy XV was on the way! And I loved this game on PS4. I think I spent a good 50+ hours on the main story, and that’s not including post-game content or any of the DLC. I actually didn’t play through all of the DLC, but now I can do it fresh on my PC so you know, it all works out! However, I will say, good lord, this game takes up a lot of space. One of the few complaints I’ve heard is from people that already owned the game on console.

FFXV - Cruisin' Eos

Just some good ol’ boys, playin Cruisin’ EOSA.

This version of the game (FFXV Windows Edition) comes with all of the DLC, including the DLC that dropped the day this game released and for a very reasonable price (49.99). I can certainly understand that it would be pretty upsetting to spend money (possibly a lot of it) on DLC, only to see the PC users get it for essentially free, when the DLC was a bit on the pricey side. There’s also the Royal Edition on consoles, which does the same thing. I get it, that has to be awful, but it’s nothing that “Game of the Year” editions haven’t done for years now. I think though if the DLC had come out later, or the release of the game was a bit after that final bit of DLC content, maybe that would not have caused a ruckus. I will say though, some of the bonus content for FFXV on PC is just absolutely ludicrous. Wasn’t Cup Ramen Noct enough? Now there’s The Sims and Half-Life outfits? Ugh. Count me out of that. The game is already phenomenal, I don’t need to dress like a Half-Life character.

FFXV - Cats

Save the world, save your marriage, save a cat.

Final Fantasy XV is a sprawling, gorgeous game that feels both linear and open-world at the same time. The story generally guides you down a single path, but there are so many things you can do in the world at the same time, so it’s quite easy to get lost in the beautiful world of Eos. From the photo side quest, fishing, mastering all of the amazing cooking dishes, training with your team, upgrading your weapons, getting all of the Kings Weapons and that’s not even a quarter of it. Bonus dungeons, the skill system, the Hunts. . . yes, there’s tons to do in Final Fantasy XV. Sure, the story is a bit on the linear side, but that’s not a new or exciting difference in the franchise. Many of the most acclaimed Final Fantasy games were very linear for the most part. It’s very beneficial to do as many of the Hunts as you can and explore the world, and let’s be honest: It’s a very attractive world to be in. However, I am disappointed in a lack of a solid Windowed Mode. The screen gets a little weird if you tab away, and you have to alt-enter to set it right again. This can be fixed in an update though (and I pray it is).

FFXV - Nightmare Creature

This is the best screenshot I took of this scene.

Yes, Eos is gorgeous on Xbox One and PS4, but it’s even better on PC. I didn’t believe the game could get prettier, but somehow they managed to do it. There are lots of Nvidia enhancements of the game, to the world around you, to the boys’ hair. Yes, there’s a separate Nvidia option to make the hair look more realistic. Most of the Nvidia settings will eat up your fps unless you have a truly magnificent machine. Now, my PC is no slouch (1080, i7 7700k, 16 GB of RAM), but I did have some trouble running it on maximum settings while streaming. Simply turning off some of those extra settings fixed that, however. I do not have a monitor that’s set up for 4k, but I have seen the 4k graphics elsewhere and it looks absolutely gorgeous. The graphics are stunning, but I did see one or two very minor issues. The lighting at Golden Quay for example. It was night-time at the restaurant, and the candlelight was shining off the cook’s face. She looked like an eldritch monster from beyond the stars! It was horrifying. Other than that, high/highest look fabulous. The sound is terrific, and the option to listen to the Japanese voices was pretty cool. I didn’t need it because I love the English VAs, but I wanted to experience it in Japanese and was not disappointed.

FFXV - Cars

Just a couple of cool dudes and their car. Arguably one of your most important team members.

Controller support was perfect, which is one of my big concerns. Sure, you could play this on a keyboard and mouse, but why in God’s name would you want to do that? As soon as my controller was plugged in, it swapped to my PS4’s controls and that made me deliriously happy. The controls were responsive, it played exactly like the PS4 version, and I had no problems controlling Noct. There is the odd fps dip when in a really busy/heavy fight, but that’s only on higher settings in my experience. This did not happen very often but it is worth noting. There were some updates I apparently missed on console, such as being able to pick up more than one Hunt at once, and I could not tell you how much joy I felt when I saw this. It was so tedious to finish a hunt, run back, pick up another one, run in the same direction again, do the hunt, and go back, to pick up another. Ugh, so tedious. Now I can do them all at once, and reap the rewards.

But Who Is It For? How Does It Hold Up? 4/5

FFXV - Ardyn

Honestly, Ardyn is up there with Kefka, Emperor, and Garland.

This is easily the best port Square-Enix has come up with, and I hope this is the standard for every other port that comes after it. It’s not a “mobile” port, it’s a real port, with improvements, enhancements that make sense, that players are happy about. This is one of the best Final Fantasy games I have ever played and while I was hoping it would hit PC at the same time as PS4/XB1, I’m glad Square Enix took the game to give it the love and attention all of their ports deserve. But who is this for? It’s always a hard pill to swallow, to re-buy a game after you’ve completed it elsewhere. This is the definitive version of Final Fantasy XV though. Mostly I can see this aimed at players who don’t own a console and want to really get the most out of their PCs, or hard-core, die-hard fans who want to play through this gripping story again, and to be frank, none of these people will be disappointed. Did you hold off, hoping for a PC version? You will not be let down because it’s glorious. However, this is Loading Time the game. Initial load feels like it takes two or three minutes. I did not test it on my Solid State because frankly, I don’t think it has the space for it. Loading times are frustrating, but the game is still quite enjoyable. Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition has all the content you need and want from the original game, and then all the crazy DLC to play through. Looking for a game to sink hours into? Just get it again. Nobody will blame you. Sure,  you could beat this game in 10-15 hours if you really rush. But that’s not the point. The point is to immerse yourself in this world and really get lost in it. It’s not hard to do, and you’ll thank me for it.

A key was provided for purposes of this review.

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Battalion 1944 Preview

Written by Remko Molenaar (Proxzor)

When I think about playing games growing up, the majority of my childhood memories were from buying and playing the first ever Call of Duty. I have always been a huge fan of first person shooters, and Call of Duty definitely set the bar early for the genre. There were many shooters like it, but COD always had a huge following here in Europe, and from a competitive aspect it simply was the fan favorite. Because of this I have played every Call of Duty competitively until the PC community was left in the dark after Call of Duty 4. Ever since then I have felt this empty void that no other game could really fill. Battalion 1944 is a game that tries to combine both the successes of Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4 Promod into a heavily focused competitive game, and tries to bring back the glory days that I once knew.

Battalion 1944 Preview Screenshot

When new games and products are announced or released, the quote ‘For gamers by gamers’ is always thrown around as if it grants legitimacy to the team behind the product, that they know exactly what to do and that it’ll all be fine. In reality, I always think the term is heavily misused to trick people into buying the products. For Battalion 1944, I can’t stop thinking about this term and what a great deal of competitive shooter fans have influenced the industry over the last ten years. Battalion 1944 is made by a small group of developers called Bulkhead Interactive, and just like me, they have had this empty void and no other game really scratched this itch. So they decided it was time to do something about this and worked towards their idea and finally set up a Kickstarter project back in February 2016.  While I have followed the development ever since very closely, I was very hesitant to jump right in and wanted to see their progress over time, and for the past year I’ve been able to try out their game in private sessions.

Over the last 6 months I have seen a game slowly getting formed out of nothing, and I have seen a lot of creativity and love put into a game that has been launched into early access only recently. While the game took a long time to slowly be shaped into a playable form, a lot of people I know and have met in in my life that have played similar games have helped the development in slight ways. It was apparent that a lot of people share the same or somewhat similar vision of what made the early Call of Duty so glorious to the competitive community of the past. But ever since the announcement of the Early Access, I have been wondering: Was it really wise to ‘launch’ this soon?

Battalion 1944 Preview Screenshot

For people who aren’t really familiar with the route that Battalion 1944 is taking, let me give you a brief bit of information of what the game is mainly inspired by and what people like me have been missing out on in the recent years, despite games like CSGO being very popular and growing by the day. The Call of Duty series has always had this faster pace of closed combat, and gameplay was a lot more focused on movement and reflexes, than straight on relying on their aim. Strafe jumping, and hopping around the map as fast as possible, is what made this game a lot more interesting and action packed than what you might be used to when watching a game such as Counter Strike. Battalion 1944 is heavily inspired by this type of play, similar to the Call of Duty 4 Promod days, but this time around its in a World War Two setting like COD2.

Bulkhead Interactive combined these very flawed but extremely fun games, added to them, and is hoping to break through in the industry with this very fun formula that many gamers once loved. As a review for the Early Access its always very difficult to give a game a fair look, especially shooters since many of them change drastically over time. Even Battalion 1944 is still very young and in its early days. The game is far from done, but let me give you a quick rundown of what the game now is heavily focused on, to build the game into more than just a competitive shooter.

Battalion 1944 Preview Screenshot

During the old Call of Duty era, there wasn’t any economy or influence that Teams had to react to during a game, because there wasn’t any need for buying weapons or anything else to play with. There wasn’t for example a monetary gain like in Counter Strike when getting kills or winning the rounds. There wasn’t any impact whatsoever, and this made the game from an outside perspective, in the case of spectating and commentary, fairly narrow with not a lot of room to play with. Gameplay focused on the perfectly practiced and executed strategies of players. Instead of also playing around with currency in Battalion 1944, the developers have made up a Card System. While this sounds extremely vague, the idea of it is actually very interesting, so let me give you a quick run down of how it currently works in Battalion.

Battalion 1944 Preview Screenshot

Do note that this system is definitely going to change. I’m not sure in what way and if its going to be very drastic, but the idea probably stays very much the same depending on the mode you play, be it unranked or the competitive game mode. There are currently cards that you can use for every weapon in the game. While some weapons are seen as the default class and there are pretty much an unlimited amount of cards, most weapons have a starting value of only three cards, and it is up to the player to keep as many cards as possible during the duration of a game so that they have a bigger advantage over the opponent. When someone is killed with any of these special cards, the cards are dropped on top of the body, and either side can pick these up to add this card to their ‘deck’ for later use in other rounds. So the game has had an extra element added into it that in some way looks similar to Counter Strike, and thus some rounds will have ‘eco rounds’ in the sense that perhaps not a lot of cards are used, in the hope of taking cards from the enemy, or people go all out and see where that gets them. As you can imagine, this type of system needs a lot of testing, and probably will be changed a lot to find the perfect balance of play. The foundation will hopefully always be the same, and although I am very skeptical towards this system still, I do think that it adds in an extra interesting element, and matches aren’t just a simple ‘lets execute this exact same strategy we have used already 5 times successfully in a row’ because logically speaking every scenario should be different, in one way or another.

Battalion 1944 Preview Screenshot

The early access of Battalion 1944 has left me a little confused. On one hand, the void that was once empty has definitely been filled up with the pleasure of a game very similar to that I once very much enjoyed. But the game in its current state and form is still very much of that of a ‘tested behind the scenes’ or alpha phase type of game. The game is currently riddled with bugs and crashes that you have to look past, because the fun gameplay definitely makes up for it. There is also a lack of maps and game modes to currently enjoy. While the game has its many issues, I can’t seem to stay positive and hopeful. Even the Steam Reviews are fair when you look at them. While the majority of the people is still very much positive, the negative ones definitely need to be heard, and I can definitely agree with the majority of them right now. I’m just gonna say it, the game currently is a mess.

Is it a bad game? No it definitely isn’t, but it isn’t a fully functioning game either. While Square Enix has promised to throw a lot of money at the game, and hopefully will try their best to make an official E-Sports out of it, it still has long ways to go before actually being finished and I know this can throw off a lot of people. While I have a lot of fun in this game, I can definitely understand why people are left with a bitter taste in their mouths with the question ‘is this really it?’. And unfortunately, yes this is really it. While the price is low, and the developers are communicative, if you buy into this game you should definitely expect it to be very rough around its edges, though the very fun game play when it does work definitely makes up for it. If you aren’t a huge fan of shooters, it is probably best to keep an eye on it now and let it sit on the side. But if you are a huge fan of the early Call of Duty games, it might be worth to give it an eye, and for the very low price it isn’t a whole lot to commit to and you will help further development of the game. While I personally absolutely love what I have seen so far, and I already have spend many hours on this game so far, I also have my frustrations with them, and do think the game still has a long way to go.

Battalion 1944 Preview Screenshot

Current Thoughts: Good (3.5/5)

The gameplay has the perfect ingredients for a very fun shooter. But the bowl where these ingredients have been put in, barely holds up and includes many cracks and holes. If you can see through the flaws it is a fun game for its low price, but right now I cannot give it a fair look since its still very much early in its development. Perhaps I am still a little too fair with my score, but I do think the game is on the right track to become a major part of the shooter genre.