Tag: Steam

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Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes… Probably

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Look at how much fun they’re having! It’s all lies! No one maintains this much of a relaxed demeanor with a timer quickly cycling to zero. Today we’re going to take a fresh look at the newly released bomb defusal game, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.

So, what exactly is Keep Talking? Well thematically there’s not much going on. You’re in what looks like a military bomb-testing facility with a suitcase-sized explosive device wired with all manner of devilish puzzles to solve. It’s intended to be a multiplayer experience with the bomb technician viewing the device and giving information to assistants who have access to a manual. I’m sure it could be played single player but what are we, psychopaths?

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So, like any normal person, I teamed up with two buddies on stream and decided to save the world over and over and over again.

The puzzles are intuitive in their design giving you the classic “which wire should I cut”, symbols and ciphers, enticing buttons, and freaking Morse Code! Yes, if you’re a sailor or were born in the 1800’s, please contact me, we need help with that part.

Don’t even get me started on the alarms that blare, the gas ventilation, and the lights that turn off at every opportunity. Granted, it’s only for higher difficulties, but the challenge is graciously accepted. I couldn’t help but feel that the room was trying to kill me, and in some cases perhaps my own team was trying to kill me. It was funny, to me at least, when you hear a string of numbers and out of nowhere the deafening cry of an alarm clock shocks you into a state of disarray. It was like calling the ISS inside a herd of elephants, something I would totally do over and over again.

The fantastic heart-pounding action track from the blast end of the timer was even more invigorating as it gave you a solid minute to relinquish fear through your steadily evacuating sweat glands.

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Modules on top of your modules

It’s all in good fun though. On several occasions we had never dealt with a particular module and decided to wing it. We found, through trial and error, that the instructions are articulated in a way that makes them fair but punishing to those who don’t pay close attention. It can get confusing at times, but perfect play with practice and the ideal adage “Keep talking” both ring true for anyone who plays this several times.

After awhile the initiated quickly develop a shorthand and the vocabulary becomes secondary. At least that was our experience. We love puzzles and couldn’t help but fall victim to KTaNE‘s enticing throes. Perhaps the biggest draw is getting multiple people together and developing a multi-tiered operation. We traded information at everything less than lightning speed all to one source who had to process and execute each order with impunity or else, you know, we all die. It was the people who made the bomb interesting, who added the element of imperfection to a very by-the-numbers experience.

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For being a mechanically technical game KTaNE utilizes abstraction and the necessity of interpersonality to do what party games do best: create an atmosphere of raw enjoyment. Time is the enemy, the bomb is the obstacle, and together the engagement of friends or family steps KTaNE above other couch co-ops. One screw up might lead to death, but everyone is responsible. The resets are easy and the time it takes to disarm a bomb is nearly microscopic, so if you fail then there’s no hard feelings. You just move to the next challenge and keep on trucking.

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The immersion grows

Denying this game any modesty, I can say without a doubt that I’m seriously excited for the next step in Steel Crate Games’ IP. And given that I have yet to master all the puzzles and permutations, I can’t even imagine how many hours I’m going to kill(pun intended) inside that cold and dark concrete-padded room, but at least I know I won’t be alone.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is developed and produced by Steel Crate Games and can be purchased on Steam for $14.99, additional platforms pending.

 

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Digital gaming is on the rise; up 11% in August

Digital gaming is the future — or perhaps digital gaming is the present. As the disc-based, physical model of video games continues to shrink with the new digital-heavy approach of the Xbox One and PS4 it’s no surprise to see each month the market continue to expand.

SuperData‘s recent analysis shows nearly a billion dollars (exactly $979 million) were spent on digital games in the month of August — an 11% increase from where it was just one year ago.

PC gamers have been a steady source of revenue for digital gaming for many years even before the Xbox One and PS4 consoles with online stores like Steam and Origin.

PC gamers and console gamers accounted for $250 million of the $979 million and with many major titles like Fallout 4, Halo 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and more on the way, it’s a fairly safe bet to make this number is only going to go up.

SuperData suggests that this could be the biggest holiday-season yet for the digital gaming industry.

The latest Apple TV also comes into play a bit, and despite the excitement some may have for the additional gaming features in the console the limitations of the platform is far too great for it to take any sizeable chunk of the market.

SuperData explains that “…mobile gamers are just that: they prefer to play on their smartphone or tablet and are ultimately much less likely to switch to a large screen in their living room.”

The expectations for the Apple TV as a gaming console should be set very low. There is a slim-to-none threat of the platform threatening even Nintendo’s WiiU console let alone the major Xbox One, PS4, or PC gaming platforms.

Overall, gaming as a whole is in a fantastic place as a medium with the launch of YouTube Gaming helping popularity stay on it’s skyrocketing pace along with twitch.tv merging the video and interactive media together.

 

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Half Life 3 will not release according to anonymous source

According to The Know and an anonymous source relaying information to them, Half Life 3’s development has begun to wind down with plans within Valve pointing towards the cancellation of the popular, cult-followed FPS.

The Know’s insider has claimed that the team working on Half Life 3 has dwindled from the hundreds in 2009 to just 10 people today. While the story, gameplay, and script is already in place, the game is not being prioritized by Valve due to pretty much only negative reactions possible if they were to release the game.

According to the source, Mass Effect 3 — yes, Bioware’s RPG — is a major influential factor in convincing Valve that a release is not worth the great potential that the game would underwhelm; especially when the hype surrounding the game is so high. Apparently the extreme negative reactions circulating the final game in the Mass Effect trilogy convinced Valve that there is no possible way that they can release a game perfect enough to live up to what people would hope for and any release would be a disappointment to far too many people.

In addition to comparing Half Life 3 to other similar releases, Valve’s current status as a business is so incredibly successful with Dota 2 and Team Fortress, and the microtransactions within the games, that there’s no financial motivation for the game to come out.

While it is important to remember that this is a rumor and to take anything coming from an anonymous source with a grain of salt though the reasoning behind the potential cancellation is sound. But if the game does still have anyone on its development team than perhaps it isn’t time to give up all hope just yet.

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DOTA 2 gets overhauled with new interface and engine

Roughly two years after the initial release of Dota 2, the game’s developer and publisher, Valve has revealed an entire overhaul to the game’s interface and engine. This popular eSport game has gained immense popularity on twitch and has garnered an incredible following over the years.

“We’re using a new UI framework which enables us to make the game more lightweight while also building a stronger foundation for new features here and in future updates.” – Dota 2 Reborn Part 1

This new update dubbed “Reborn” by Valve will give Dota a much improved user interface with smoother and more fluent navigation. Custom games and a new chat are also on the way with a new lobbies system making setting up a game as easy as possible.

The new interface addresses everything from the main dashboard UI to the Dota TV UI — which new includes 1080p, 60 fps streams.

Making starting a game as simple as possible was a clear priority for Valve in this redesign, and with Reborn the “Play Dota” button is always visible no matter what screen you navigate to.

For players new to the game, a greatly improved tutorial incorporates guided bot matches to make the transition to a full game less daunting.

Dota 2 is free to play and currently available on Steam.

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Valve introduces new paid-mod store Steam Workshop | Why it helps the industry

Ah, so the hysteria begins as a major gaming company looks to increase revenue just as any company would. For many fans Valve’s recent introduction of paid mods has been acknowledged as the figurative end of days with heightened concerns over the seemingly more and more chopped up products that people get with DLC often being needed to experience a full game.

Though the current outrage comes from an inability to consider the exact intentions of what Valve is doing here. Many seem to suggest that the standard process of downloading any of the freely available mods independent of Valve is no more, but that is not the case. All current mods remain unaffected. Valve simply offers the opportunity for these mods to be monetized with the Steam Workshop.

(Note, opportunity; mods can still be offered for free even on the Steam Workshop.)

When gaining an understanding of the reasons behind the new addition to Steam, it becomes much more reasonable why it has been implemented in the first place — the biggest reason being incentive.

Modders have long created incredible projects with millions of users downloading mods for Steam games, but those developing these mods have done it for little reliable monetary gain. Sure, donations can offer some compensation, but the skills of some of these modders is clearly incredible. That type of money simply does not do a good enough job to create great, consistent mod teams who work independently from major companies to create significant additions to games.

Valve is creating a profit-driven, high-quality mod industry

If a modder can support themselves (or at least partially support themselves) based on the hard work they do to benefit the gaming community there is no adverse impact other than people needing to pay a few dollars for a reliable market to access custom content from.

This is exactly what Valve is offering and it should be seen as much as an opportunity for mod developers as it is a market for consumers. Modders can set their prices, track their revenue, and work as a team with Steam offering payment methods that accommodate multiple people.

The biggest problem with the current stance of the system is the lopsided revenue distribution with Valve taking the majority of all profits. The idea of giving modders a platform to support themselves and create bigger and better content is fantastic, but Valve’s being a bit too greedy when it leaves these modders with only a 25% return.

The current revenue going directly to the mod developers is not good enough for independent modders looking to support themselves.

Still, the more successful pieces of content should be profitable enough to bring dedicated workers to the field and even the possibility of devoted mod studios could come to fruition. Imagine high quality designers, audio specialists, and coders coming together to create small custom additions to games like Skyrim, Call of Duty, Borderlands, or Grand Theft Auto. Financial incentive is how you can make this happen.

The new Steam Workshop addition will create a professional environment and platform for modders and mod teams to monetize their work and create incentive for higher quality content to come as affordable mods from this point forward.

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Uncanny Valley | Review

Uncanny Valley(UVa), what can I say? It stands above the Steam Greenlight breeding grounds for cash grabs and horrifying attempts at video game design, but how far does it stand?

Uncanny Valley is a horror/psychological thriller developed by Cowardly Creations. Much in the same way Lone Survivor plays, Uncanny Valley is side-scrolling, pixelated, and utilizes an atmosphere of darkness, solitude, and symbolism to evoke feelings of dread in a kafkaesque nightmare.

You play as an unassuming security guard for a decommissioned worksite conveniently located in the middle of nowhere with little information and less-than-lethal torch.

Sounds safe enough, right?

I love pixelated art, horror games, and an enthralling adventure story to boot. For this review I’m going to splitting coverage into those three sections because something that came quite apparent through my playthroughs was the eerie gap between the elements of design, and the increasingly terrifying way they try and fit together.

The first thing you’ll notice about Uncanny Valley is the exceptional art design. Pixelated art is a very rough medium to transcend, but when you understand the fundamentals, it’s only a tip-toe away from staging scenes that pronounce synergy and fluidity. All the models, backgrounds, and what-have-you’s matched up very quaintly, especially when the environment radically shifted.

The scenes were painted together so that the ebb of concentration was never undermined by imposing graphical conundrums, and when the occasional error did spark up, I was so engrossed in the environment that my double-take became a venial afterthought. That may be subject to game design, but when I walked into a room, I didn’t feel as if I was simply walking from A to B, engrossed in nothing more than my character, I felt as if the room presented itself to me and told a unique story of its own.steamworkshop_webupload_previewfile_254647598_preview (1)

The rooms themselves are probably the most interaction you’ll get the entire game. There’s only a few NPCs muddling about, and each of them are just as disinterested in you as they possibly can be, so there’s incredible moments of introspection or, adversely, deep-seated boredom.

Now, as far as horror goes, it stands to reason that scaring people is incredibly difficult through whatever artform you’re exploiting, especially if the audience has witnessed the tropes, knows the tells, or are generally someone who is undaunted (we all know they are secretly wetting their pants).

If you came here for horror, then I’ll assume you go to Vine for comedy, iTunes preview for your music, and Costco sample tables for your meals. Don’t get me wrong, Uncanny Valley wields the juggernaut sword of terror in the most imposing ways possible. I mentioned earlier the kafkaesque world, and when you combine that with eldritch undertones of unnatural, Gothic narratives, Uncanny Valley lives every word up to its name.

Let’s take the level design for instance. There’s a lot of head space in many of the environments juxtaposed by incredible silence. It’s just you walking around in an open space, expecting something to come out of the thousands of possible places. It’s comparable to the enormous size of a leviathan in the sense that something so great and powerful should not exist, but instead of an imposing monster, we pale in comparison to the great expanse of the void, thereby making the player character seem insignificant.

The lighting is equally ambient, and therefore doesn’t serve the purpose of masking unseen horrors as much as it’s used. It feels rather like the gristle on an unfinished steak.

All that being said, UVa is great at serving me bite-sized horror. There are moments of impending doom in which I panicked, most of them to be exact. I was scared for various reasons, intent on not being enveloped by pilfering shadows, and UVa does this perfectly! Kudos! Listen, if you want to make a horror game, the unseen is always worse than the enemy you can see, however, when the enemy approaches so quickly that you have no time to comprehend what they are, this promotes just as much regret when you accidentally run the wrong way.steamworkshop_webupload_previewfile_254647598_preview (3)

They kind of dropped the ball the second half, trading the adrenaline exercise I was having with shock terror and dystopian set pieces for a Dead Space/Silent Hill gore factor, one I admired but didn’t particularly agree with.

Here’s where we unveil the horrifying truth of UVa, unfortunately.

It feels clunky, and not in the way most indie games usually do. It really is uncanny the way everything else fits together, but the controls and button prompts are neither decisive nor accurate. Some bugs I was particularly disenfranchised by included not being able to use my inventory and the inability to leave rooms while talking to someone for fear of the game crashing. These were pretty major, but I managed to look past them and see the even more upsetting features.

Now, if you don’t understand the story by the halfway point, I can only imagine you happened to run past all the computer monitors littering your workplace, laden with exposition, or perhaps you didn’t read them because you were turned off by the awful input prompts, or lack thereof.

I distinctly remember approaching a story item at one point, pressing ‘E’ to interact, and reading some text. I hit ‘Esc’ to back out because I wasn’t ready to commit to exposition. This brought me to the pause menu. I hit ‘Esc’ to get out of that, to no avail. Turns out a game marketed around the keyboard utilizes the mouse in the most exclusive ways possible. tumblr_nl9qo8aoVZ1tud87po1_500

Imagine doing this for multiple computers, items, and people, unable to skip dialogue and unsure of what the interact button is. Granted, I got used to the controls, but even then I was still hitting roadblock after roadblock, my immersion wearing down like the tread of my adventuring tires.

The story itself is pretty mundane, but they did make room for replayability and variation. There’s not much to interact with, but if you can bear through the hamfisted dialogue and the few diminished or droll sequences a few times over, then maybe you can bring some colour to those poor, lonely Steam achievements.

In games like this the ending is never as satisfying as the game itself. I loved the first half, expecting to find myself in a city, surrounded by people, but feeling more alone than ever. The experience went from being inside the painting to simply looking at it.

Gamers, here’s my advice: wait for a Steam sale or pick this up in a bundle. I really admire what this game was so close to doing. I can tell there is immense talent within these developers, but from what I can see it wasn’t utilized to its full potential.

I’m keeping my eye on them, ready to reach out my hand for when they decide to step out of their own uncanny valley.

6/10

 

Uncanny Valley is developed by Cowardly Creations and is available on Steam or their website for $8.99

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Killing Floor 2: First Look

I got my hands on a Killing Floor 2 press kit the other day, prying it open with my shaking little fingers and an eight inch hunting knife. I was beyond excited considering my previous experience with Tripwire Interactive, following them since the inaugural release of Rising Storm.

Granted, I was a little late to the party, but the drinks had not yet run out, and the multiplayer communities surrounding TwI’s gun-god power trips are only going to grow from moon-sized to constellation.

For a little bit of history, I’d invested plenty of time into goring out enemies with all manner of weaponry and in all manner of cosplay. Rising Storm offered me solace as a battlefield

69 Hours it will stay

commander, ordering artillery strikes on faceless opponents and taking bets on how high a body could fly and how many pieces it would break into. Their realistic gunplay served as reminder that Starbucks shooters are not the only recipe to pit 32 strangers up against 32 other strangers and have the audacity to try and unite them under a flag.

Killing Floor was a pleasant surprise in the vein of zombie arcade, and when I picked up a Winchester for the first time, I suddenly realized an absolute potential that I had not previously known. The kickback and relative bounce of the zeds as I gave a nearby barn a JFK paintjob was on par with my executional orgasm. It was an arena that rivaled Left for Dead with simplicity, and Call of Duty for actually being fun.

So here I was, adjusting the settings for an absolute graphical overhaul to the first game. I could feel my blood boiling as I anticipated the hardcore, visceral action that awaited me.

Killing Floor
Killing Floor 2

There were four classes to choose from, three of which you can throw to the wolves for all I care. Berserker is the way to go, and if anyone tells you otherwise, hit them with your military-grade shovel and dig their grave, because if you’re not getting the mileage out of these new weapons, you’re not playing this game properly.

All things considered, the inter-class weapon-blending completely dissolves abstraction in the playing field. As a hammer-wielding extra from Mad Max, I found that using the entire array of shotguns and a puny medic pistol was more enjoyable than simply hacking around like a butcher trapped in a pig farm. The assault rifles were a little bit lackluster, but then again I wasn’t so much trying to aim as I was trying to express my freedom and liberty.

They gave us a pretty narrow selection to choose from in regards to characters, weapons, and maps, but the fun was just beginning. I customized a big, bruiser type character with a rippin’ hangover. He wielded mighty meat-mashing weapons that brought flashbacks to the elevator scene from The Shining. I felt like a disgruntled farmer at one point, shakily staring down the sights of my double-barrelled boomstick with one good eye, only to feel several pounds of recoil, missing the target entirely and having to painfully reload while mysterious spider bastards gave me hugs on all sides.

Speaking of hugs, the Clots still like to hold you in place, and if you didn’t bring your pepper spray, it’s going to be a hard time getting their shiny asses off your back. In KF2, however, they suddenly feel the need to capture your attention like a horny teenager at a club. I can’t count the number of times I was wetting my pants, saving thirteen shotgun rounds and a breakup letter for a charging Scrake, only to automatically turn and dump them into the poor, innocent skull of a nearby fleshling.

Let’s talk Fleshpounds. For those of you who played the first KF, you know the crushing horror that accompanies a red-tinged Fleshpound. For those of you who are new to the series, don’t be the one jerkwad who either has his back turned, or is the guy to not turn tits over toss when a blade-spinning giant comes to fist you into next week.

You see, red usually means good when you’re playing a game about brutally separating body parts with amatuer gunplay, but when a Fleshpound give you the “stop” signal, you should really reevaluate your life and buy the next plane ticket to Nope City.

All that jazz aside, let’s get into the more interesting stuff, shall we? Killing Floor wouldn’t be an apt name without tremendous amount of killing, now would it? “Friendly Knife” is what happens when you run behind a person in Battlefield and try to set the world land speed record for appendix removal. It would be a great game, don’t get me wrong, but KF2 has moved the bar up another rung for any game that promises to have death and mayhem.

Goddamn it’s satisfying to chop through an enemy, and I really mean that. You cut through them with the ease of a construction worker, grave digger, or weeaboo, and the only thing stopping you is reveling in the raining fountains of blood that shower down upon you. The nice thing about the new level design is showing back up to an area you previously fought in and recollecting the bloodbath that occurred because you are literally standing in a bath of blood.

I started playing in a winter arena, fighting in a courtyard with a saw gun reminiscent of Half-Life 2, and began to write down marketing solutions for selling red snow because there too damn much of the stuff! There were zed parts sliding off buildings and the only thing I could think to do was get out of Dodge before the EPA hit me with a fine for toxifying the North Pole.

Either way, the arenas in KF2 are much cleaner and much more nuanced than their predecessors. I didn’t get much of a chance to explore though because half the time I was still trying to pull my pants up and get my gun loaded before all hell broke loose. I remember the sky boxes and backgrounds for the winter brawl and the Parisian death battle were very elaborate and three-dimensional, adding character and depth, but I’m pretty sure they mostly serve to distract you while a Husk cooks eggs on your flaming skull.

The gun animations are great, feeding into a dastardly bullet time in which zombie shootout becomes the wild west, but my goodness do you need coordination. In the previous game you didn’t really have to worry about special zeds until later levels, and even then, by that time you had guns big enough to commit war crimes. It was hilarious when a lone Fleshpound would open a door and try to walk into a room with six survivors. No one wanted his aggro, so they steadied their trigger fingers for all of two seconds. Then, without any word, a hail of bullets from a makeshift firing squad would poke holes in that flesh-sacked blood bank until he tripped and fell over to where the Berserker could beat his lifeless body into several pieces, all before the rest of the zed army showed up.

Speaking of army, the final point in this First Look, I would just like to point out that mecha-Hitler is a go-to source of an evil villain with more vileness to spare than Care Bears gone rogue. Yes, if you haven’t seen TB fighting him, then I’ll just go ahead and point out that the final boss is a modified ex-Nazi because Horzine is THE MOST responsible company in the world, especially when making super weapons.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt though in saying they were halfway decent in making a gun-toting nerve gas machine that curses raw German in your ear until the cows come home, and just like cows, he’s great at herding you all into a small room where he can release poisonous chemicals that probably melt your skin off and turn your lungs inside out.

My advice on beating him?

 

 

 

 

Killing Floor 2 is developed by Tripwire Interactive and will be available April 21st, 2015 for early access, RP$29.99 on Steam for PC and Steam OS

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Titan Souls: First Look

If you haven’t checked out the Titan Souls demo from Devolver Digital, please do so before descending into the harrowing dungeon that is this first-look. Adventurers beware.

Titan Souls is veritable souls-like RPG, influenced heavily by elements of both genres. It’s an isometric, pixelated wonderland filled to the brim with… well… nothing, really. This is completely fine, contrary to how it sounds. Direction is implicit at this point in my gaming career, and piecing together a three-part puzzle is comparable to pointing and shooting.

I loaded up the game with no context as to where I was headed, what I was supposed to be doing, and within the first five minutes of playing, the challenges I had yet to mount were laid before me next to a simple and concise control scheme. The game recommends you use a gamepad, but the arbitrary mapping – which allows you to press three or so buttons for the same effect – makes me wonder if there is going to be any more features imbedded in what appears to be a glorified stress test.

The land of Titan Souls is a beautiful place with an astounding soundtrack to boot. I sat on the main menu for some time, rigging the settings, encapsulated by the transcendental aura provided by the OST,

and without a doubt I knew this would be an “enjoyable” experience. It’s an amalgam of my childhood and teenage years, sporting the layout and dungeon experience of A Link to the Past, the rolling and running from Dark Souls along with Skate‘s jedi-summoning tricks, and finally the boss-fest escapades provided by Shadow of the Colossus. That last part gets me though. I understand it’s a challenge to overcome, but trying to dodge a train without leaving the tracks is just making it easier for the coroners.

The thing about hard games is the learning curve. I loved Dark Souls’ “tutorial” in which several methods of attack could test your mettle, and in the end you reap the gains of knowledge. Rogue-lites galore teach you upon each death the methods of survival, and all hell breaks loose if you don’t save seventeen times before entering a cave or dungeon in party-based RPGs. Titan Souls keeps it nice and tidy with a direct route to whatever boss bent you over, and thirty seconds to remind yourself where the exit menu is. The desire to win is great, and even now I’m mulling over strategies, deciding whether or not this masochism simulator is going to get the best of me.

But it’s striking how inconsequential each attempt felt. Granted, you can’t chain dodge-rolls, you can’t rapid fire, and you feel like a little pipsqueak of a child taking down giant cubes of death, but regardless, my power is a product of repetition, of training and grinding. The first time you fight a boss it’s going to kill you,

“Kill” being a blanket term for the various ways you can be pounded into red mist.

no questions asked. There is an element of timing, meta-strategy, and a head-space which requires thirteen Redbulls and a pack of cigarettes to live inside. I looked around the map, taking a total of several minutes to explore every nook and cranny, disheartened when I realized the only plan of attack was throwing myself at the proverbial wall of spears until one day I broke through. There was only one character with their given strengths, and no one for miles to grind upon. It was death before rebirth, a purgatory in which this small girl (I assume) must fight titanic beings to obtain freedom.

I killed all three bosses, perhaps the easiest, considering they’re demo material, but spiritually these bosses seemed to have the same difficulty. It didn’t feel impactful, weighted, or even well-deserved to shoot the Death-Star cosplayer in his big, stupid eyeball, or liberate the brain from a glacier, and I was eerily surprised when I actually John-Wayned them without even holding my breath. It was a kill-or-be-killed mentality in that moment, but when both you and the boss have 1hp to spare, the game minimalizes my beast-slayer attitude and relegates it to a 3-D shooting gallery. I want to fight the long fight, devs.

Here’s my final consensus:

Gamers: Keep your eye on this. It’s games like this that bring nostalgia and life back to the cluttered table of triple-A and indie titles alike. It’s clean, well designed, and offers potentially infinite hours of gameplay. The producers have given us some wonderful titles, I hope this is no different.

Developers: If you’re reading this, understand these are qualms from an endeared heart. Narrow customization, world variation, and event states to prepare the character for each fight are detrimental to maintaining a prospective attitude, and if not that, give the boss fights a dimension akin to swordplay or dancing for that matter. Nothing feels better than trading blows with an enemy that outmatches you, only to fell them with a resolution of pure skill. On top of that, either more characters to choose from, or a local multiplayer option gives TS a greater chance for replayability and caters different play styles as well as built-in networking. In regards to the input graveyard, taking full advantage of the gamepad is much more than giving outs to a dead man, it’s giving diversified strategy rather than waiting for your opening and blindly firing. Buffs, boons, booze, and more can be attached to those infinitely pressable buttons; I know my hands could use the workout.

The game might change upon release, and if it does, then consider these words melted cheese. I’ll be getting it on release and offering a full-fledged review, but until then, I just hope I can piece my controller and dignity back together.

 

 

Titan Souls is developed by Acid Nerve and produced by Devolver Digital and will be releasing mid-April for PC(Apr 14th), PS4, PS Vita, Mac & Linux. RP$13.49 on Steam

 

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Controversial title WarZ returns to life as “Aftermath”

WarZ had initially come onto the scene with high hopes as the next major comeptition for zombie survival game DayZ, but after major gameplay gaffes and a variety of controversies killed the title and had it removed from Steam the developers have again found life for their game under a new name — Aftermath.

Many had claimed, and virtually proved that WarZ (AKA Infestation: Survivor Stories after a copyright infringement issue) was a simple money-grab as the developer (Arktos Interactive) almost entirely copied their previous game, WarInc, in the creation of WarZ. While the bad press and resentment among the communities that were excited for the game grew the developers quickly had to ditch the tarnished brand.

Now Aftermath comes along with almost all of the same features, graphics, art style, and gameplay that WarZ had, but this time it’s technically under a different publisher — “Free Reign East.”

Some minor alterations are certainly evident, but similarities are glaringly obvious and the devs are doing their best to prevent open discussion of their brand with comments disabled on all of their youtube videos.

Check out the screenshots below to compare Aftermath and WarZ

Aftermath first person view.
Aftermath first person view.
The War Z/ Infestation: Survival Stories first person view.
The War Z/ Infestation: Survival Stories first person view.
Aftermath third-person perspective.
Aftermath third-person perspective.
The War Z/ Infestation: Survival Stories third-person perspective.
The War Z/ Infestation: Survival Stories third-person perspective.

The product being released is intentionally deceptive to consumers and is an example of awful business practices for all other upcoming developers and publishers to take note of.

The game circumvents Steam or any platform like it. Instead, those that are interested need to head to the official website. The game is available right now in free access, but for the full package it’ll run gamers $49.99 with payment by Paypal, credit card, or Visa Checkout/Masterpass.

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The Floor is Lava: The video game? Hot Lava awaiting Steam Greenlight

A game spawning from the imaginations of millions of kids — Steam user Rambus is looking to bring a favorite childhood game — “The Floor is Lava” — to the fitting digital world as a 3D platformer called Hot Lava.

The game is currently open to voting through the Greenlight system on Steam.

Little is shown so far regarding the game’s progress, but the developer promises 50 levels across five different settings wherein players climb on top of couches, tables, and various furniture to avoid certain death on the floor below.

Players sprint and jump through the worlds scattered with tight ropes, platforms and traps to create a greater challenge as they attempt to “surf” the world by gaining speed and stringing together their progress through the level in one motion.

The game is awaiting to be Greenlit on Steam, but would release on PC, Mac, and Linux provided the project takes off.

Check out the trailer below for a look at the gameplay: