Yearly Archives: 2018

Stellaris Reveals The ‘End of the Universe’ In Upcoming Expansion

Paradox Interactive, a publisher and developer of games that were bound to get us all killed eventually, today announced the newest full expansion coming to Stellaris. The expansion inspires hope and good feelings with the title, “Apocalypse” and will bring untold levels of warfare and destruction to the galactic exploration game. It will also bring new game mechanics such as the ability to destroy enemy planets. New military options, civic paths and more await in early 2018. There are also space pirates in the Marauders, nomads that raid settled empires and take their own cut of the civilization. You can hire them, but be wary that they’re only in it for themselves. Between these, the new “Titan” capital ships, there’s so much to see and do in Apocalypse.

Strikers Edge Brings the Ultimate Dodgebrawl Battle to Steam and PlayStation 4

Strikers Edge promises a roster of eight ancient warriors from different eras/civilizations, ready to enter the exciting world of Dodgebrawl. Dodge, take cover, aim and scorch the earth with devastating moves! When medieval fantasy meets dodgeball, only the top Striker will be victorious in online or local multiplayer battles. It will also feature a Twitch Mode exclusively for Steam users. Activating the mode will let your audience mess with the match by choosing various modifiers and perks that will make the gameplay far more lively. To celebrate the upcoming launch, two Twitch live streams will take place during Strikers Edge’s last Steam Open Beta session. Players will be invited to brawl the Fun Punch Games team, and the Beta testers’ win ratio will determine the release promotion on Steam!

Demon Hunter: The Cursed Blood

Demon Hunter: The Cursed Blood is a 3D action RPG where you must save your home from a terrible evil threatening unparalleled destruction. Hack n’ slash your way through hordes of mobs and even screen-filling bosses with the power of interwoven combos and powerful equipment earned through countless adventurers. Available in the browser.

Features:

They See Me Gallopin’: Discover and ride a mount from a variety of options including a trusty steed or fire-breathing drake.

To the Forge!: Enhance, upgrade, embed, and refine your weapons and armor for additional combative power.

Tri-Force: Take your pick from a sword-toting warrior, intellectual mage, or sneaky assassin.

Mutant Football League Review

Written by Remko Molenaar (Proxzor)

 Having been a PC gamer all my life, and having only owned a few consoles for specific games, it’s been a long time since we have had a proper football game release on this amazing but sometimes abandoned platform. Sports games in general are lately just more popular on consoles, and the PC player base is left in the dark with non-licensed games that do not quite get the game formula right. Mutant Football League isn’t really a game that you could compare to Madden, mainly because of its less serious approach to how football can be played, but despite its style, the game is still very much a competitor because of its very similar gameplay.

Mutant Football League Screenshot

Mutant Football League isn’t just football with Mutants, it is a lot more than that. The first thing it reminded me of is being thrust into a real time game of Blood Bowl. Instead of the incentive being to harm as many players as possible, the focus is set first on actually playing the game properly, and then beating up as many people you possibly can. While the penalties are usually worth it, you can still get a get out of jail free card when you bribe the referee, and with these ‘rules’ set, it is time to jump into the carnage that is called Mutant Football League.

Mutant Football League Screenshot

While the game doesn’t own an official license, it still tries to be a parody of the actual National Football League that we know today. Instead of the famous Tom Brady, we now have Bomb Shady playing for the Nuked London Hatriots, and every iconic player and team has had its name changed into something witty and funny. The team I am personally rooting for are the Seahawks, or the Microhard Mutilators as they are called in MFL. I know I might get some flak for being a Seahawks fan, but since American sports never was really big in Europe, I am still somewhat new to the football scene and the Seahawks was the team that caught my eye and expanded my interest into the sport. I was very happy to see Hustle Killsome representing this amazing team as its QB. Just like in real life, teams in MFL have their own style of playing, with dirty tricks and iconic playbooks including a very wide known term as the Legion of Doom(Boom) for the Seahawks.

Mutant Football League Screenshot

And this is why Mutant Football League is still a game you can very much take seriously, but the game isn’t quite like Madden. As soon as you hop into a practice game, or straight away go for the real deal, you’ll notice that the field isn’t quite as clean as you might expect in real football. Scattered around the fields are mines and traps where you can ruin your players’ day, and even their lives, if you aren’t careful enough. Yes, that is right, you have heard it correct, lives are at stake when playing Mutant League Football. Some of the traps like the mines can be absolutely deadly, and even the opposition can kick your players to their grave after each play. Mutant Football League changes from a clean game to a war zone in just a matter of plays, and while a limited amount of players are able to resurrect when the game is over, when they are killed during the game they cannot come back until the next game.

Mutant Football League Screenshot

When you compare the gameplay of MFL and Madden, the game in itself isn’t all that much different. There aren’t as many possible plays like you might find in Madden, but in the end there is still a very wide range of possible plays to run on both attacking and defending. Since the game is a lot more violent during the plays, having your quarterback sacked is the least of your problems, and you better hope he isn’t kicked to his grave after just a bad play. Because of this you really have to play around with what play you are going for. If you throw the ball to the same exact player a few plays in a row, chances are he’ll get quite roughed up and the chances of him dying get bigger with each play. This is the main reason why you mix things up, and sometimes throw the ball to the other flank or just run it.

Mutant Football League Screenshot

While the game doesn’t have a lot of depth, it does come with a few game modes like a normal head to head mode, season mode, playoffs, and online games to play against other real players. Because of this the game isn’t priced as a normal full priced game and can be found for a little over $20. And while the game did have its release on the PC already and can be bought on Steam, the console versions are being launched on January 19.

Mutant Football League Screenshot

Conclusion

Mutant Football League might not be a very serious football game, and it’s weird saying this, but it is actually the best football experience you can find on the PC currently. While comparing it to Madden is quite tricky, it is actually in a really good and fun shape. Mutant Football League is an extremely fun game to play, with the occasional frustrating moment when your star player is tackled to the ground and his life fades away. Playing the game against your friends is also very fluid without any issues. I can definitely say that Mutant Football League hits the nail on the head, and you don’t have to spend a ton on microtransactions like player packs to get the right players in your team; all you have to do is focus on keeping them alive, or give them a resurrection when it has gone to far. Do you love football, and don’t mind the fun style of MFL? I can definitely recommend you to pick up this game for its super low price.

Note: A game key was provided for review purposes.

Retro Review: Final Fantasy IV

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Retro Review - FF4 - Title

This was the beginning of a lifelong love.

I wanted to get back into the swing of things with something a little more relaxed. And today we’re going to talk about one of my favorites of all time. At some point, I plan on coming back and taking off the rose-colored glasses, but for now, let’s revel in something good and pure. Fun fact: Final Fantasy 2/4 (heretofore known as 4) was my very first SNES game. I was living with my Uncle, and he rented me a SNES for reasons which I cannot remember, and I picked Final Fantasy 4 as the game I wanted to play for the weekend. I didn’t get my own SNES for several years (around the era of Donkey Kong Country/Final Fantasy 6) so this was a hell of a treat. This was around the time of the Nintendo Power issue that featured the game (and coincidentally, the night I told my mother that this is what I wanted to do with my life) and I was hooked for life.

Retro Review - FF4 - Something Evil

I sense it too, buddy.

It was a story that compelled me and drove me to want to see more. It wasn’t my first RPG, but it was very close. If I had not received Dragon Warrior 1, it would have been! In my first playthrough, I only got as far as Cagnazzo (Cainazzo in America) and did manage to beat him. But it took me the whole weekend to get that far. Every accomplishment made me feel proud like I was really unraveling this story and all of its secrets. There’s a surprising amount of twists and turns even in that short amount of time. You find out your government that you’ve been serving is corrupt, you wield a blade of darkness and evil, turn to the light, help an old sage find his granddaughter, mourn her loss, and meet up with a vast cast of characters, even in this first couple of hours. Though another fun fact, my first completion of the game (around middle school, thanks to Rohner for letting me borrow his copy), I had about 79 hours. Nowadays, I can get to the end-game in probably 12 hours if I really push.

Retro Review - FF4 - CPU

I died so many times in this area…

Final Fantasy IV is a game of learning experiences. It doesn’t “teach” you what to do, but you learn by making mistakes. Going to the Underworld to visit one of the many caves for a sidequest? It won’t tell you that you need to cast Float on the party, but you’ll learn from the many damage tiles, and the enemies that cast “Quake”. The game won’t tell you that Odin is weak to lightning per se’, but there are hints that allude to it. You learn by failing, and it’s pretty damn wonderful. From casting Wall during the optional Bahamut fight, the order of the CPU battle and more, having a game that doesn’t flood you with stupid, annoying tutorials is pretty great. You get to immerse yourself completely in the world. No “Hey, you can press X to do this” nonsense.

Retro Review - FF4 - Zeromus

Ah, fate …

This is also the first RPG to use the ATB (Active Time Battle) system, where you wait your turn and pick your action in real-time. This is one of my favorite systems, even if I almost prefer turn-based simply because I multi-task a lot. But for sheer fun, ATB is where it’s at. There is a whole host of issues with this game though. I love it, but it’s flawed, deeply flawed. When you pause in the SNES version, the game keeps on going. You can’t take actions, but the enemy can. I went to eat with my family and had to pause during the Asura fight. I came back to find that I had died and lost something like an hour and a half’s worth of work because I didn’t save. There are pieces of equipment that don’t trigger their special effects, or the Avenger glitch (does not update stats and leaves you with whatever you had before, just to name one bug), the Lunar Whale Glitch (When leaving the Lunar Whale, entering Lair of the Father and leaving, you can lose the Lunar Whale. It will be on the map but if you’ve walked around too much, you can get lost forever as you have to trace your steps back). There is a host of bugs and bad translation errors, but it still makes the game very enjoyable. Hell, some of the bugs are even useful, like the Doom Bug/Item Duplication Glitch.

Retro Review - FF4 - Yang

Yang! No! Damnit! Why couldn’t we leave Edward?! Oh.. nevermind.

The story is what really sold me though, so let’s go back to that. It hearkens back to the traditional “get the Crystals, save the world” gimmick, but it’s so much more than that. On the moon, the evil Lunarian Spirit Zemus is corrupting people, and bidding them do evil acts in order to resurrect his full power. Golbez, his agent is also seemingly capable of doing this. But at the start, it’s just Baron Castle’s king bidding Cecil Harvey collect the crystals for an unknown purpose. It unfolds like an onion! It has a love story (Cecil and Rosa), betrayal, jealousy, death. Lots (and I mean lots) of main characters either perish or seem to. Whether they do or not, I won’t say. It’s love and loss, redemption after a life of darkness, and how there is hope, even in the darkest moments. It’s a beautiful story, well told, even with the garbage censorship and translation errors all too common in the 90s.

Retro Review - FF4 - World Map

It’s also a vibrant, beautiful world for this era.

This was also the first game I played with such a diverse cast. Instead of generic characters like in Final Fantasy 1, these characters had depth, reasons for being, reasons for doing what they did. It was really quite wonderful. Even the villains had interesting bits. Rubicante for example had a moral code and refused to fight the party when they weren’t at 100%. So he’d full restore you both times you fight. He also learns a lesson from his defeat. He realized that going alone isn’t going to work, and he had to have the help of the other Four Fiends of the Elements to succeed. Dr. Lugae is an amoral crackpot that ruins a kingdom for the sake of his own scientific research. He kind of reminds me of a slightly more evil Professor Farnsworth. Even your own party members aren’t pure, innocent and always fighting for good. Edge fights for revenge, Rydia lost her village to the main character Cecil, Palom and Porom are really redacted at first. Tellah wants the forbidden power of Meteo to avenge his daughter. They really run the gamut of emotions without it being stale or poorly written.

Restore the Light: 5/5

Retro Review - FF4 - PSP

PSP Version

This was an RPG well-made and a story well-told. Final Fantasy IV came to America at a time when RPGs were neither popular nor well-received, but it did well anyway. I’m a little biased I’ll admit because it came at a time when I desperately needed it. One of the reasons I play RPGs is that I loved reading, and this was an interactive story for me to take part in. At this time I was moving far too frequently to keep friends, especially pre-internet days. Despite this, it’s a game I can pick up and play anytime and be happy. I might even do it on Bottom Tier sometime soon. It had a variety of remakes, and they were all solid (even the PSX one). If I could get a version that combined the visual quality of the PSP version with the bonus content of the GBA version, that would be heaven. It even received a solid 3D remake with voice acting! That one was considerably more challenging, but all around still held true to the spirit of the game despite all the changes to the mechanics/gameplay. If you want a gripping story, moments to make your eyes water, and your heart soar, you owe it to yourself to play Final Fantasy IV. The ideal versions, in my estimation, are SNES (retranslations if you can find them), PSP, GBA (inferior music but fun extra content). This gets high marks for really being where the RPG revolution really began in America. A constantly rotating party of interesting characters, tons of secrets, the story, the music, everything about it is endearing.

 

 

Fallen Legion+ Review

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Fallen Legion + - Tree Fights

Sometimes you just have to fight Mother Nature.

Fallen Legion+ is definitely an interesting beast, in that it’s two games in one. The first screen you are show features two characters: Princess Cecille (who is the main character in Sins of an Empire) and Legatus Laendur (of Flames of Rebellion). Picking one of them sets you on your path to the main menu, where you can play the respective title, or go through the “one life” mode. You’ll still be able to revive the Exemplars, but if your main character dies, game over. There’s also a handy New Game+/Epilogue, which is great because it’s not really that long of a game. The two games share pretty much the same assets, and though the stories do intersect, because their goals are definitely polar opposite, either choice is a good one. Worst case, it offers replayability in that you can play through one story, then the other, to see their particular perspective. Having multiple perspectives and morality tales in an Action RPG is a pretty nice change of pace. Whether you want to rebuild a crumbling empire riddled with corruption, or bring it all down and reshape it in your own image, you can’t really lose here.

Fallen Legion + - Map

This is half of the game – The map.

You pick your stage on an open map you might find in Final Fantasy Tactics, but unlike FFT, you don’t have to fear random encounters. You also have a morale meter here on this screen, but it never seems very clear what makes it rise and fall. In battle, you occasionally have to make morality-based choices which confer upon your team a variety of buffs or items. They don’t really tell you much about the characters being affected, however, so you have to balance what’s “good” or “right” versus what buff/item you might need. Sometimes they give a bonus and also a debuff (such as +attack, -defense), for the duration of the battle. I like this idea, but I never really knew which choices were good or bad, because I didn’t know who Cecille was really with or against and had no time to think about it. Sometimes after these choices in a stage you’ll unlock new potential buffs, which is also pretty awesome. Not all of these stages are battles, either. Honestly, the “dialogue” stages take just as long as the battles do. I expected after the talking was done, that maybe I could go into the towns, interact with people, maybe even buy stuff. However, all it does is reiterate the chatter (but you can speed through it now at least).

Fallen Legion + - Dragon 2

Big or small, they all have to fall!

Now it’s battle time! You pick a team of Exemplars (dead spirits that rise to serve your cause) with a host of different stats and weapons. You’ll have ranged fighters, tanks, melee units, and you can unlock more of them as you play. Each of these characters is bound to a button on your controller/keyboard (and your MC is also bound to one, so three Exemplars + MC). Here’s where I had a serious issue with the game. Half the time the game shows the Playstation buttons (the game was originally a Playstation title) which is fine; I use a PS4 controller. But the other half of the time it showed Xbox Buttons. Now, this is not really difficult, because I know the button layouts; it’s not rocket science. But it can be jarring or frustrating in a pinch to see something you aren’t used to seeing. It’s not bad, but it is definitely a serious oversight. Each Exemplar has its own health bar, and if they die you can use the Revive spell to bring them back. If you don’t get them revived before the enemy starts attacking again, you lose! There’s also a “limit break” style mode, which can appear in various situations. When this occurs you can simply spam attacks and spells at your leisure til it wears off. I was only able to trigger it a few times, personally.

Fallen Legion + - Boss

This is a boss? Well, okay then…

This is at its core an action RPG mixed with turn-based combat. Each character has a circular gauge that shows how many attacks you have built up (think Valkyrie Profile). Hitting a button once will fill a circle below you with their image, and simultaneously set up their attack. If an Exemplar’s attack is on the last circle, it activates their “Deathblow”, which is a special attack with a variety of special effects, like lowering enemies attack/defense or doing extra damage. So while sure, you can button mash your way through this game, it’s much smarter to consider things a bit more carefully and figure out what Deathblow you need when. There are also more powerful Deathblow abilities, that require 6 or 8 circles on the gauge, and if you have one selected, the other Exemplars Deathblows will also require that many (but will have a “+” next to them and I believe they hit harder/are more effective).

The main character will also have their own powers. For example, Ceceille uses her Grimoire to cast spells, from Reviving the Exemplars, a Healing Spell, and an Attack Spell. As the Exemplars attack, her mana recharges, and you can cast the spells again. You definitely need to learn the defensive button, the Block. Holding it down lowers the damage you take, but if you can time it perfectly, a Perfect Block nullifies the damage and can weaken/stun the enemies. But as they can clump together with multiple enemies on screen at once, it can be very hard to see the start of their attack animations. Hell, I’ve seen it happen when I block early. It doesn’t seem very exact.

Fallen Legion + - Decisions

Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal! I mean… pick a card!

There’s also no visual clue on screen how long these fights are, and the “decision-making” parts happen seemingly at random. Fallen Legion+ could definitely do with more clarity there. Whatever the trigger, when it’s time, a brief story blurb pops up on the screen, and three cards show up, each with a choice and a reward. There’s a timer, so pick fast! The combat is easy to learn, definitely fun and tactical, but it would be much better to know how many fights I’m going to endure and when. At the end of the battle, you’ll be graded on how you did, and this is where you’ll see new Deathblows, characters, and/or traits. You’ll also get Gemstones here, which you can equip in the main menu, which offers a plethora of stats to Cecille or her Exemplars. So will you need to re-equip as you decide to change your party.

 

Fallen Legion + - Hams

I will admit, some of this dialogue made me laugh pretty damn hard.

The Grimoire Eats What?? 3/5 (Good)

This is where the game kind of falls off for me. That’s all you do. You endure a side-scrolling battle stage, move on to the next one, or you do a story stage where you just read/listen to the dialogue. Adjusting Deathblows, Gemstones, and Team Makeup is the most you do outside of battle. Now, I enjoy the gameplay a great deal. The graphics are pretty appealing, and the attacks are awesome. It’s definitely worth it for the price. For 40 bucks, it’s a solid story with two characters, two very different reasons for acting, New Game+, and a challenge mode. I do feel like a player who is new to the series will definitely get their money’s worth here. It’s certainly not without its flaws. Fallen Legion+ is fun, but I do wish there was something more to it. The core of the game is very strong, and I like the story. A lot of very serious moral implications are made and the story is pretty damn heavy. But I wish it felt like more than “story stage” or “battle stage” during the gameplay.

Note: A game key was provided for review purposes.