Monthly Archives: March 2019

Waves of the Atlantide Arrives on PC in March 2019

Waves of the Atlantide is an upcoming strategy game that combines real-time and 4X elements into one place. Inspired by Civilization and Stellaris, it arrives on PC March 26th, 2019 via Steam. It also has a Battle Royale mode that allows people to play entire games from start to finish in about 25 minutes. Waves of the Atlantide launches into Early Access and will stay there for approximately two months. The final version plans to have more technologies, improved visuals, sounds and gameplay mechanics. The Early Launch edition is 4.99, but will cost more on the official launch.

Killing Floor: Double Feature Coming to Playstation Store and Retailers in May

Killing Floor: Double Feature was announced today as a Playstation exclusive, which is arriving on May  21st, 2019 for 39.99. It bundles the best and bloodiest of Killing Floor together in one place with Killing Floor 2 for Playstation 4, and the Survival Horror Shooter VR experience, Killing Floor: Incursion. The retail version will also include the Mrs. Foster Playable Character DLC from Killing Floor 2, along with all the Seasonal Content released since the game launched. This is the perfect point of entry for people that were on the fence about the gory Killing Floor action.

Killing Floor 2 is a violent, bloody FPS where players tackle waves of murderous Zeds, monstrous clones and worse that have flooded continental Europe, following an outbreak caused by the Horzine Corporation. Various classes, characters, and weapons await the players, and it supports up to 6-players in survival, and 12 for Versus Survival.  Killing Floor: Incursion has players controlling a member of the Horzine Security Force, who has been implanted into a neuro-active simulation. Explore the dark and twisted aftermath of the initial Horzine Corporation outbreak and use guns, blades, and even the detached limbs of fallen enemies to survive hordes of horrific Zeds while uncovering the true purpose of your mysterious mission.

Grimshade

Grimshade is a fantasy role-playing game featuring tactical turn-based combat. Explore stories of hardship and perseverance as you lead a memorable cast characters through a war-torn nation to find answers.

Business Model: Buy-to-Play

Microtransactions: No

Key Features:

Investigator: Travel across the land unraveling narratives and revealing important secrets.

High Alert: Every hand-crafted enemy has been built in a such a way forcing you to learn their attack styles and adapt on the fly.

Around the Campfire: Get to know each of your party members including discovering how they fit into battle and what tales they have to tell.

Trade-Offs: Carefully consider the strengths and weaknesses of donning each unique piece of equipment.

Work Smart Not Hard: Create and execute on a strategic maneuvers to overcome tough foes.

Smell the Flowers: Dive into the nuances and subtle beauties hidden in the vivid and diverse world of Ree’Fah.

Big Company: Skytopia

Big Company: Skytopia is a city-building simulator featuring a pleasant neo-classical theme.

Business Model: Free-to-Play

Microtransactions: Yes, there are various optional in-app purchases available.

Key Features:

Work Contracts: Expand your town through the construction of factories, stores, and specialized buildings.

Basic Economics: Produce and sell goods to generate an income.

Getting it Done: Complete a steady stream of events and quests for beneficial rewards.

Scientific Revolution: Recruit and put to use the great works of Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein.

World’s Stage: Join tournaments to see how you stack up against rivaling entrepreneurs.

 

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened is a co-op tower-defense RPG featuring wave-based survival sandbox gameplay. Travel back to the past where it all began and work together with your allies to bring down a time-altering menace!

Business Model: Buy-to-Play

Microtransactions: Unknown

Key Features:

So Long Nasties: Mow down waves of foes with traps, towers, attacks, and abilities.

4-Player Antics: Join a few friends online, locally, or even cross-platform.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Needs More Variety, Fewer Gokus

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Dragon Ball FighterZ - E3 Gameplay #1 _ PS4, X1, PC - YouTube

Now, despite how ridiculous the power levels in Dragon Ball become, it’s still one of my all-time favorites. There’s a lot of nostalgia tied to the franchise, so I’ll gladly go see any new Dragon Ball content. I’m not very good at Dragon Ball FighterZ, but that’s due to not practicing as I should. Despite that, I love the game. But I’m seeing a pattern that I think is pretty disappointing – there are TOO MANY DAMN GOKUS. With the latest leak, the next character to come to Dragon Ball FighterZ is Dragon Ball GT’s Kid Goku. GT?! The series so many people revile as “not being canon” (which it admittedly is not, it’s a side-story/alternate story as far as I’m aware). Do you know how many characters are in Dragon Ball as a franchise? A bunch. Over 50? 100? Far more than that? How did we get to this point where close to a third of the cast is Goku? Sure, it would be incredibly clunky to have one or two Gokus that change forms, but this could have been handled far better.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Goku Black Thumbnail

Still a Goku.

I get it, you want people to want to buy the DLC characters, that’s where the money is. But you don’t only have to pick the “highest power-level” characters. That’s clear from having Captain Ginyu, Videl, and even Lord Yamcha in the game. There are so many characters to pick from, why are we going down this road? Why not have a diverse roster, like Dragon Ball Z Tenkaichi 3 had, or any of the SNES/PS1 fighters? Why not Piccolo Daimao? Android 8/Eighter? If we’re going with non-canon characters, why not Lord Slug? Omega Shenron? Janemba? Any of the Red Ribbon army? Hell, you could make General Red a Ginyu style character that summons his various subordinates. Adding more Gokus probably won’t make everyone upset, but it sure as Hell disappointed me. Not enough to uninstall, sadly, but man. There are so many amazing non-Saiyan characters in Dragon Ball FighterZ. So. How many Gokus are in the game?

  • Goku (Normal)
  • Goku (SSJ)
  • Goku (SSJ3)
  • Goku (SSJB)
  • Goku Black (He Counts)
  • Goku (Base)
  • Vegito (SSB)
  • Gogeta (SSB)
  • Soon – Goku (Kid Goku, DBGT)
Dragon Ball FighterZ Needs Fewer Gokus

He saved the universe, and this is the thanks he gets?

There are about half the Vegetas. There are also two Brolys, which I absolutely expected. I also anticipate Goku (Ultra Instinct) somewhere down the road this year, probably when it’s closer to the return of Dragon Ball Super in July. What if Goku gets a new form in Super? We’ll probably see that too. When Dragon Ball FighterZ was on the way out, my biggest fear was that it was going to be “Oops, All Gokus!” and as it turns out, it is just that. If we’re going to add Saiyans, why not Caulifla? Why not Kale? I would rather see Western Kai than see another form of Goku. Goku’s not even a bad character! But he has enough forms to form three different teams of Gokus. Is Kid Goku’s super going to turn him into SSJ4 Goku? Or is that going to be a separate character somewhere next year? Now if it were tied into a re-release/remake of Dragon Ball GT, I would still be disappointed (I do love GT though, and I won’t apologize for it), but come on.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Needs Fewer Gokus -2

Launch has so much potential too.

Why do we keep coming back to the Goku Well? Are the other characters of the franchise that unrecognizable? Are they worried that people will complain that “low-power level characters shouldn’t be good”? Then why was Yamcha so damn strong when this game came out? Why even put Tenshinhan, Captain Ginyu and Videl in the game? So that can’t be it. Dragon Ball Z is one of the most-recognized Intellectual Properties in the entire world. Even people that don’t watch or like anime know what DBZ is. So it’s not like Goku’s the only recognizable character in the show. He’s the star, arguably, but the people around him are just as important. More important, I’d argue, if this were a website that focused on anime news. Without people to defend and fight for, he probably would have never become a Super Saiyan. So who else could they add that is not a Goku? Here are ten major/minor characters that would be a good fit.

  • Hercule Satan
  • Android 13
  • Garlic Jr.
  • Launch
  • Piccolo Daimao/King Piccolo
  • Caulifla
  • Luud
  • Dabura
  • Piano
  • Commander Red
  • Mercenary Tao
  • Master Roshi

Who do you want to see in Dragon Ball FighterZ that isn’t another Goku? Let me know in the comments below!

Foundation Preview

By Terris Harned (NWOrpheus)

I’m a long time fan of city building strategy games. I played the original Sim City on our old Windows 3.1 machine, and I played Serf City (aka Settlers 1) on Windows 95. These franchises have both evolved over the years, and others have come and gone. Now Canadian based Polymorph Games has created a whole new engine, called Hurricane, with which to try to break into this familiar genre with some unfamiliar new features. It is on this engine that their inaugural game, Foundation, has been built.

Foundation is, at its core, a cute and fun little city builder. The art style is fairly unique, and I appreciate that they have made their own assets. Much of the premise of the game revolves around “organic development”, and you can see the term bandied about on their website, their Steam page, their wiki site, and pretty much anywhere else the game is discussed. What does that mean, exactly? Well, first and foremost it means that there are no rigid grids on which you must build your structures. Your territory is bound up in hex shaped cells, which you may expand as gameplay progresses, but beyond that placement is very freeform.

In fact, you don’t even place housing buildings directly on the map. Instead you use a paintbrush like tool to designate swaths of terrain as a residential district, and then the citizens you designate as builders will use resources to erect buildings within this area. You do still have some control over these buildings, however, as you can destroy them if you don’t like their placement. This is good because, to be quite frank, the AI pathing isn’t always the best, and sometimes the citizens can’t find their way into the homes that they have built, despite there being a road right to the front door. As a side note, you don’t build roads; paths naturally form by heavy traffic moving past an area, which I really liked.

You can also toggle whether or not housing buildings may be expanded to increase population density. This is important, because population, especially in the early game, booms quite rapidly. As time progresses, new citizens will move to your territory. The happier the people in your territory are, the faster they will move in. If the happiness rating of your people falls, typically due to a lacking of necessities (food, water, housing, and the ability to worship at a church), people will also leave. Though it is possible to have people leave and new people join within the same very short span of time, which is a bit confusing to me. It’s also a bit irritating, as it doesn’t tell you the job of the people who have left, so you have to try to find where you might have any holes in production.

Foundation Housing ControlsWhat, you’ve only 2 families living here? Surely we can do better.

None of this is really discussed in the tutorial either. The tutorial itself is a series of extremely basic quests: “Build a town center” it tells you, without any sort of indication about how to go about doing this. Being as the game is in Early Access, hopefully this will be improved upon in the future. As it stands, you just have to sort of mouse over things and read tooltips yourself to figure your way around. Which, in fairness, isn’t the hardest thing to do as the game’s features are relatively limited.

As I mentioned, you have to supply food to your citizens. At first this is done by assigning gatherers to pick berries. However, and this is one part I found rather neat, food isn’t automatically distributed. Instead, you have to build a marketplace and assign a merchant. Your civilians will then come and purchase food from you, which will actually increase your coffers.

Foundation Merchant SalesAhh, serfdom at its finest. They pick the food for you, and then you sell it to them so they can survive. Excellent.

Merchant stalls are also the first of another set of features called monuments. Monuments are various structures that will increase the splendor of your realm. Splendor comes in three varieties: Labor, Kingdom, and Clergy. Labor splendor comes from marketplaces and from your lordly manor. Clergy splendor represents the glory of the churches in your region. Kingdom splendor is derived from your keeps, at which you can train soldiers that apparently be sent off to war at the behest of the King (this is an unlockable feature that I never quite reached, though).

What makes monuments particularly neat is that they are built in a modular fashion. You begin by selecting the type of monument in the build menu, and then you place each individual aspect using the Hurricane engine’s node system. Take the church for example. There is the central core, which requires that at minimum you connect a door and a bell tower to it. You can stop here and call it good, or you can add extensions. Some extensions will increase the amount of seating, while others might simply increase splendor. You can also add extensions on after the main building has been completed, which is rather nice, as this doesn’t stop the building from functioning, and allows you to add the extensions as resources are available, rather than trying to slug it all out in one go.


 
You can really do quite a bit with the node based module system. As long as the nodes click together, you can rotate pieces, make them taller or shorter, and then connect yet more pieces. This gives you a fair bit of freedom in the appearance of your structures, and I don’t think I’ve made two churches that looked exactly alike in the entire time I’ve played.

Housing isn’t the only types of district you can designate. You can also paint areas to be used for replanting trees, by the foresters at the forestry hut, or you can mark space for wheat fields. Your lumberjacks, stonecutters, and gatherers will also only harvest from places designated as gathering districts, though in the case of stonecutters and gatherers I’m not quite sure why this is, since these resources seem to be unlimited. Maybe in the future that will change.


 
I did mention that Foundation is in Early Access, and it does have a wide variety of flaws that comes with that caveat. There are quite a number of bugs that have to be dealt with, many of which result in game crashes. Also, if you unlock the fishing hut (doing so requires a certain amount of labor splendor), your fishers will walk out onto the water and stand around, rather than rowing a boat out.

Ultimately, I think that Foundation is aptly named. Perhaps you might even say it’s a bit on the nose. I feel like that’s all the game is, is a foundation. There’s no real campaign, and the game is limited to five static maps. The Steam page claims that the Hurricane engine will have full mod support, but there’s currently no Steam Workshop associated with the game. I’m curious to see what sort of quests people will be able to come up with. Currently in the game there are merely popup quests saying that you must choose between the 3 factions (labor, church, or kingdom) to help (usually in the form of food).

As a raw city building simulation though it is a solid foundation, and I feel that needs to be recognized. However, I feel the $29.99 price point on Steam is quite steep for what is currently offered, and I say this despite the fact that I was gifted a copy of the game for the purpose of this review. I also feel like the soundtrack could be a bit more expansive. The music that it does have comes from veteran sound smiths over at Paradox Studios, who worked on projects like Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV, and is good, but after a few hours it feels very repetitive. The game’s lack of any sort of day/night cycle, weather effects, seasonal effects or anything else to give the game texture are all things that I hope can be remedied as Foundation moves through Early Access and into a release quality game.

This is definitely a title that I’ll be keeping my eye on, and I hope we can share some good news of updates in the future. I would say right now not to expect much out of the game, and you won’t be disappointed, but you might just want to wait for a summer sale to grab the game for the time being.

Note: A game key was provided for preview purposes.