Yearly Archives: 2018

Kingdom Hearts III Voice Cast Announced

Kingdom Hearts 3

Some of the greatest voices in Disney animated film are coming together to breathe life into their characters, this time for Kingdom Hearts III. The upcoming latest installment of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, Kingdom Hearts III has announced the following voices/characters are on the way:

  • Josh Gad (FrozenBeauty and the Beast) as Olaf from Frozen
  • Kristen Bell (Frozen, Veronica Mars, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as Anna from Frozen
  • Idina Menzel (Frozen, Enchanted, Rent) as Elsa from Frozen
  • Jonathan Groff (Frozen, Mindhunter, American Sniper) as Kristoff from Frozen
  • Zachary Levi (Tangled, Chuck, Thor: The Dark World) as Flynn Rider from Tangled
  • Donna Murphy (Tangled, Center Stage) as Mother Gothel from Tangled
  • John Ratzenberger (Toy Story, Cheers, The Incredibles, Coco) as Hamm from Toy Story
  • Wallace Shawn (Toy Story, The Princess Bride, The Good Wife) as Rex from Toy Story
  • Tate Donovan (Hercules, The O.C., Argo) as Hercules from Hercules
  • Kevin R. McNally (Pirates of the Caribbean Series) as Gibbs from the Pirates of the Caribbean series
  • Tony Anselmo as Donald Duck
  • Bill Farmer as Goofy

Battlerite Royale Mountain Zebra Mount Giveaway

We’ve partnered up with Stunlock Studios to give away the Mountain Zebra Mount for the spinoff to Battlerite – Battlerite Royale.

Explore the fantastical Talon Island in a thrilling fusion between a MOBA and Battle Royale game. Choose your Champion and master their unique abilities, loot for treasures alone or with a friend, and rise above the competition in a top-down action-fest. Only the best survive to the end!


Battlerite Royale Free Zebra Mount
ACTIVATE YOUR FREE MOUNT KEY ON STEAM:

You need to own the game “Battlerite Royale” at this link.

Please follow these instructions to activate a new retail purchase on Steam:

  1. Launch the Steam client software and log into your Steam account.
  2. Click the Games Menu.
  3. Choose Activate a Product on Steam.
  4. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.
  5. Open the game and go to the mount collection to find your Free Mount.

Note: Unfortunately ad blockers may interfere with our site. If you have any issues claiming a key, please disable them and try again.

Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World Announced

Koei Tecmo made two Atelier-related announcements today, the first being the next title in the franchise: Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New world. It’s slated to hit shelves in early 2019, with physical and digital releases on the Playstation 4/Nintendo Switch, and digital via Steam. If that wasn’t enough, fans of the series can purchase the Atelier Arland Series Deluxe Pack via digital release on December 4th, 2018. It comes with Atelier Rorona: The Alchemists of Arland DX, Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland DX and Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland DX along with much of the DLC related to these. The games can be bought individually, or as a package containing all three.

In Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World players assume the role of Nelke von Lestamm, a young aristocrat who longs to become an alchemist, but sadly does not have the talents required. With a strong fascination with the ancient legend of the Sage of Granzweit, she is excited to uncover new information which rumors that the sacred Granzweit Tree is within the lands her father governs. Money is key to developing the land and building new facilities, but the player will need the aid of other well-known alchemists to get the job done.

As the town’s population grows, players can construct Ateliers, Shops, Growing Areas, Landmarks, and Roads, to name a few. Many facilities will allow helpers run their day-to-day procedures – place a resident as a helper in a Growing Area and they will ensure that the items planted are harvested and ready for use.

 

Ragachak’s Top 5 Worst Things About Great Games

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Top 5 Worst Plot Twists 2 - Good Twist 2

Kefka gets away with it… mostly.

I’ve played some truly spectacular games in my day. But no matter how perfect a game may seem, there’s almost always one tiny flaw that can make it borderline unplayable. Whether it’s something stupid and tedious, or mind-blowingly frustrating, even the greatest titles of all time have something to look at, and ask “Why did they do this shit?!” and that’s what we’re here to nitpick about today. Even my favorite game of all time (Earthbound) has some choices that just make my bones ache. EarthBound has really weird difficulty spikes for first-time players, takes your best damage (Paula) away for an important boss fight, and the inventory system is dreadful. Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals? Some of those stupid puzzles just seem like they’re thrown in for no other reason than to have a puzzle. So it’s time to do one of my favorite things to do: Nitpick!

Top 5 Bad Things in Good Games - #5

DQVIII probably has one of my least favorite dubs. Not “terrible”, but not enjoyable.

5. Bad Dubs/Voice Acting (Dragon Quest): I’m not saying Voice Actors are bad. They work hard and do incredible things, like bringing characters to life. I use Dragon Quest as an example because it’s such a weird dichotomy to have a Western RPG as a JRPG. Using all of the European voice actors makes sense, but the original versions of the Dragon Quest games do not have a dub. That’s why it’s so weird. Adding a dub that wasn’t there is such a strange choice. I like the voices they used, but it’s not genuine. Can you think of a game with an absolute pants dub? I bet you can without any issue. Sometimes the original voices (or no voices at all) is really the better choice.

Top 5 Bad Things in Good Games - #4

This glitch can give you amazing items … or delete your file.

4. Unanswered Glitches/Errors (The Last Remnant): In single-player RPGs that take years to develop, there are wild issues, glitches, and bugs that somehow miss QA. Or don’t get fixed at all because it’s “too late”. From issues with face-scanning (almost any sports title that has them), the entirety of Two Worlds, glitches that erase files/corrupt data (Invisible Sketch in FFVI, Missingno in Pokemon). Then there are some that I’m not sure could be answered, like The Last Remnant on Xbox 360. For some reason, it would just freeze or stall until you reset. There was no warning, nothing to determine how it would happen, but it was the only game in my library that would do it. It didn’t only happen to me, either. It was definitely a warning in “Save Often”. QA is hard work, but there are companies that don’t even seem to use a Quality Assurance team, with the bugs that come with the final product.

Top 5 Bad Things in Good Games - #3

Two steps later: Drakee.

3. Insane Encounter Rates (Most of Dragon Quest/Most RPGs): In RPGs that have the enemies on the map, at least you can usually sneak around and avoid them, or simply outrun them. But in older RPGs, you could not see the enemies coming. There were games (RE: every RPG you love from the 80s/90s) that had ludicrous encounter rates. It felt like every three to five steps there was a new fight. It’s worse in games with no full restoration options (FF1), or limited MP/Healing capabilities (Dragon Warrior). People have learned to step count (learn how many steps between an encounter to avoid them), but is that really a thing we should have to rely on just to enjoy a game? It’s one of my biggest pet peeves.

Top 5 Bad Things in Good Games - #2

It doesn’t make a game “cool” or “challenging” without help to find quests/missions.

2. No Quest Markers (So Many Games): Back in the “good old days”, we didn’t have the Internet. The advice given was to “talk to everyone”, but it wasn’t as helpful as one might think. Especially when the translation was godawful (another advent of the 80/90s). You’re told to “go talk to this guy in this town to do this”, but you don’t know who is named what, much less where this part of a town (or even where the town is). This isn’t as prominent in main story quests, except in earlier games. In more modern RPGs, the idea is that “It’s a side quest, so you shouldn’t get much help”, and that’s ridiculous. I’m not trying to spend an extra four hours on one side quest. My time is finite, and if I can only complete one side quest in my game time, there’s something wrong.

Top 5 Disappointing Bosses - 4

DUN DUN DUN DUN SEPHIROTH. Wait, wrong game.

1. Bad Twist Endings (See This List): God. What is it with people and their craving for a wild twist ending? Almost every “twist” ending sucks. I’m not sorry, that’s not even a hot take. That’s a mild take at best. So you’re playing an RPG, everything’s going fine. The game goes from cheerful to dark pretty fast, but that’s okay because it makes sense. The final boss draws nigh, and after a nice back-and-forth, you win! Then you find out.. this was just all some digital test/program, that it wasn’t real at all? Come the hell on with that! That’s up there with Super Mario Bros. 2 US being just a dream of Mario. This could be a rant all on its own, and while this doesn’t ruin the rest of the game, it does make me never want to play these games again, knowing I’m going to just be disappointed yet again.

AVerMedia Adds Mac Support for Live Gamer ULTRA

AVerMedia Card

We also reviewed one of these cards (Live Gamer ULTRA, seen here.)

AVerMedia announced today that they have partnered with multi-streaming service Restream, to add integrated Restream multi-streaming support for Macs with the release of the new RECentral Express software from AVerMedia. This makes the Live Gamer ULTRA driverless external capture card fully compatible with Apple Mac Systems.  Additionally, PC as well as Mac users of AVerMedia’s entire breakthrough Live Gamer 4K UHD line of high-performance game streaming cards that allow 4K and high frame rate capture, as well as other AVerMedia cards, can now get 30% off Restream subscriptions from now until September 30th.

The Live Gamer 4k UHD line has several options in it. The Live Gamer 4K internal PCIe card (299.99) is the first card outside of expensive professional capture cards to support 4k HDR at 60 fps. Then there’s the external driverless Live Gamer ULTRA (249.99) which is a solution for laptop users, streamers on the go and more, with ultra-low latency 4k capture over USB 3.1. Finally there’s the Live Gamer EXTREME 2, which is a smaller external card with customizable graphic cover, 4K passthrough, onboard downscaling and 1080p60 recording.

With today’s partnership announcement and the launch of RECentral Express for the Live Gamer ULTRA, Mac users can access the power of the ULTRA with recording up to 4Kp30 resolution, 4Kp60 HDR passthrough, and Full HD recording at up to 120 fps along with onboard video processing that helps lighten CPU load. RECentral Express Mac support for additional AVerMedia cards is planned for the future.

“Gamers and content creators are already loving the Live Gamer 4K UHD cards, and today we’re announcing even more great features with full Mac compatibility and Restream.io multi-streaming support for the Live Gamer ULTRA, as well as Restream discounts for our customers,” said David Kao, Marketing Director of AVerMedia. “Whatever resolution and frame rate you want to record at, from any gaming system, we have a Live Gamer card ready to make your gameplay look great on every streaming platform.”

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire’s Second Major Expansion is Live

Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is the second major DLC for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and is a combat-focused expansion, that takes players to a previously uncovered island. Eora’s most skilled and violent opponents await, and it will be up to the player to survive the forthcoming trials, and the whims of spirits and their worshippers. Three major aspects of this update are important: endurance, puzzle-solving, and destruction. Seeker combat tasks players with looking for a tactical solution to take down their foes, while Slayer combat will see Deadfire players go up against a variety of fearsome creatures hell-bent on the party’s annihilation. Last but not least, Survivor combat will test the party’s endurance and fighting skills against waves of enemies.

“The Crucible will be the ultimate test for Deadfire players as they face off against some of the most deadly adversaries in a fight to the death. Our latest DLC is something that will test any seasoned Deadfire player. A sense of discovery and exploration of new environments and challenges will reveal new artifacts all set within the fabric of a deep story rich in adventure,” said Brandon Adler, DLC Game Director for Obsidian.