Do you like Beautiful hand drawn art and simple but challenging combat with massive bosses? Then Jotun is the game for you. The game’s hand drawn art is so beautiful you’ll wonder if you’re playing a videogame or a story book. Jotun is an exploration game created by William Dubé, originally launched on kickstarter, and now released on steam for $14.99. You play as Thora, a Viking warrior who died an inglorious death (falling off her ship and drowning) and must face the challenges of purgatory to escape and be allowed to enter Valhalla. Along the way she will have to face the Jotun, massive monsters from Norse lore, and explore a wide open set of 6 unique worlds. She fights with the aid of the same gods who denied her entrance to Valhalla barrowing their powers to aid her. Her kit for this massive task, a simple iron axe, with a light and a heavy attack, her wits, and a dodge roll, but that’s all she will need to impress the gods and kill the Jotun.
Gotta give SyFy props for trying on this one. They limped along for three seasons in their mixed media, its a video game and a TV show experice. The game was even pretty good. But i think at this point it surprises no one that the show portion has been canceled. The game portion developed by Trion Worlds was a functional MMO cool shooter elements and a great deal of appeal. It was also an early pioneer of cross platform play, being released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
We’ve had a great time working closely with the team of stellar writers, designers, producers, and actors on the Defiance TV show,” Trion Worlds CEO Scott Hartsman said in a statement to Polygon.
The game started off as paid, and eventually swapped to a freemium model. Its unique blend of instanced combat, vehicle play and collecting made for a good MMO experience. I was not able to experience any of the television tie in material, but i had heard that it was good, and the core content was quite good.
Nintendo is not known for their consoles power. Histrically they have been under powered but innovative, with the last two being pioneers in motion control and second screen technologies. So it comes as a surprise when in an article in The Wall Street Journal, nintendo is quoited as saying the NX will also reportedly use “industry-leading chips in the devices that will presumably allow for better graphics and deeper functionality.” The article also reports that there will be at least two components to the system, one which can be used as a mobile component and one that can be used as a console. Each can stand on their own. This is not totally unexpected, i remember seeing lots of photos of travelling wii-u’s where only the game pad was being utilized, the one question this does leave me with is, how much? Small screens aren’t inherently expensive but if i have to pay DS level prices for the controller piece of my console it might dissuade me from buying it.
(Editors note: this is a very long game, and due to print time constraints, only about 4 hours of game play were unlocked.)
I Shall Remain is an indie, post-apocalyptic, ARPG zombie game, Published and developed by Scorpius Games. Set in the aftermath of WW2, the Nazis have released a deadly virus in the US. The game tells the story of two brothers and their relation to the world that emerged because of the virus. ISR has real time character progression and RPG systems, over 100 abilities, many weapons and weapon enhancers, plenty of infected, 20+ mutations, a large amount of NPCs and teammates all in a 20+ hour long campaign. Weapons include melee: such as knives, swords, pipes, brass knuckles, and many more Small arms: pistols and SMGs, Rifles, Shotguns And heavy weapons: flamethrower rocket launchers.
Each weapon has at least 4 levels of effects and bullets can be enhanced. Grenades, mines and flares can be found throughout the game and the player can pick up objects in the environment and injured NPCs. Occasionally there are vehicles the player can control and use its weapons. Throughout the game there will be buildings for the player to explore which can have items inside.
You gain experience from everything you do in ISR. Whatever your playstyle is, the game will grant you experience in the places you need it. Doctrines allow you to improve attributes and/or give you abilities and each doctrine can be upgraded. There are currently 128 doctrines in ISR. Serum is the currency in ISR. There are traders that buy and sell things for serum such as weapons, medkits, ammo, and flashlight batteries. You can upgrade ammo with serum and use it to control your characters infection.
There are quests in ISR similar to real life scenarios. They add on to the story of the game. About half of the quests in the game aren’t related to the main story line. The side quests help the player immerse themselves into the game world.Fatigue builds up when your character is outside. It affects hp and stamina regen and your chances of properly aiming. There doesn’t seem to be very many places to rest. There are many places for you to scavenge for items in the game. Every weapon has a durability. You can repair them yourself, with scrap you get from dismantling items, or find an npc or teammate to do it. There are plenty of teammates and you can choose what skills they get. You control the weapons they use. There is a detection meter in ISR. Shooting a gun, using your flashlight, and running raise it. Melee weapons, walking, high infection and no flashlight lower it.
Overall ISR is a well made zombie rpg with a decent story. I like the fact that it is set right after WW2. It has plenty of weapons and many skills to choose from. The fact that you gain xp based on what you do it offers many different playstyles and seems to have some replayability. There is a survival mode and a permadeath option for story mode.
A few very small negatives about ISR: If you disable shadows, the dark holes in the ground that zombies come from reflects the environment. When you kill an enemy they release red clouds that can obstruct vision. The camera clips through background buildings and weapons degrade too fast.
I Shall Remain is a good game and is totally worth $15 if you enjoy zombies, top-down ARPGs or both. This is a game i would recommend others that are looking for a zombie game.
Halo 5 is just 10 days away (review copies are allready out and if you want to see the first part of the campaign its on the web) and 343 are starting to give out massive details on the games multiplayer. New news today includes the games ban policy, a list of medals, the skill matching system and more!
First is a question many players have been asking since day 1, what about the ban system? 343 will track the following in a effort to make bans fair and effective
Quitting matches
Betrayals or team killing
Idling (AFK)
Intentional suicides
Excessive disconnects
The post details a system of temporary bans that will be metered out to players who engage in these toxic behaviors. This is the first time any Halo game has had this type of system and I for one am extremely great full. The blog post goes on to say “The duration of each ban is dependent on the offense and becomes more severe with each successive infraction, so continually killing your teammates to steal the Sniper Rifle will quickly lead to long time-out from matchmade play,” This is similar to systems that exist in other games with more toxic communities, and will in my opinion bring some much-needed law to the games multiplayer.
Other major announced details include
You will never join a match in progress except for warzone (30+ minute games need some drop in)
Competitive Skill ranking is in the game. Like most current multiplayer focused games, Halo 5 will make you play a series of placement matches when first going online, these will determine your ranking which will go up and down based on the seven color ranks in the game (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Onyx, and Champion. See the blog post here for full details.)
The match making algorithm will prioritize “quality above all else” what this means is un-known., but it is speculated that it means it will try to find people in your same exact rank before matching you with better or worse player.
There will be seasons
The top two ranks will work much differently than the bottom 5, the blog post says
“Once you reach Onyx, you will be shown your raw CSR score,” 343 said. “Winning no longer increases your tier–it instead increases your CSR score. This allows you to compare yourself with greater precision to other players within the Onyx rank. If you establish yourself as one of the top 200 players in a playlist, you will earn the highly coveted rank of Champion and be shown your place within the top 200.”
this is similar to how other ELO systems work, expect this top tier to be mostly occupied by professional Halo players, with a few lucky (and skillful) folks also competing.
Check out the ranks emblems in the gallery below.
These are the new ranks, each on has several sub-ranks. except for Onyx and Champion
Silver Rank
Gold Rank
Platinum Rank
Diamond Rank
Onyx Rank
Champion Rank
Commendations are also making a return, the will work about the same way as they did in Halo 5, primarily there to drive up your EXP in a fun, quest like way. There will a total of 5 tiers and each will reward with different amounts of EXP
“Every tier of a commendation rewards XP,” the blog post said. “Completing tier 3 of a commendation rewards a bonus REQ Pack with boosts and other single-use REQs. The 5th tier of every commendation unlocks a pack containing a specific emblem. This allows a player to flaunt their reward and let everyone know via that emblem and the corresponding back plate that they have put the time in and had the skill required to finish the commendation.”
Medals will also be making their return (this should surprise no one). They will be changed a little but as they will now be focused more on earning req points, and highlighting incredible feats, or helping with objectives (no more double kill medals?). 343 said they wanted to “preserve the classic feel of the legacy medals while giving all of our Medals a fresh new look.” Take a look at some of the new designs the full is available in the blog here. Halo 5 releases on October 27th and is available for pre-load now.
Steam is well-known for doing free to play weekends, often offering entire catalogs for free to users in an attempt to woo them in to buying. For the weekend of October the 16th, Valve has chosen Grey Goo, a tactical macro based RTS game, and Chivalry A first person mêlée combat game. Both of these games also receive a steep discount of 50% should you wish to buy them.
Chivalry is a first person mêlée combat game featuring many swords and other medieval weapons. its is bit old having been released in 2012 but still has a healthy community for online play. This is a multiplayer only title. The game does suffer from a bit of fatigue as it is short on game modes, but if you like bashing people with swords this is your best choice. 20$ gets you the game and your pass to fight against the legions of other sword lovers online.
Grey Goo is a macro focused RTS. Originally created by the team behind the Command and Conquer franchise. Fans be warned this one got pretty negative reviews upon its release. Personally I loved the old school macro-focus of the game, with its emphasis on base building, and not twitchy unit movement in combat. The campaign has full voice acting, and lots and lots of cut scenes, and the story is compelling, with three separate playable races. I really this game is a steal at 20$
Samsung is offering a special promotion where the buyer will get a free a copy of upcoming Assassins Creed Syndicate for PC with purchase of several models of Samsung SSDs and monitors. This is good news for anyone who need a new monitor or SSD, as well as for UBIsoft who have a long history of doing promos with graphics card and other computer related peripheral companies.
Below is a list of Samsung SSDs and monitors that come with a code to download Syndicate. The game launches on October the 23rd on consoles and October 19th on PC. The deal will be available from November 1st to January 2nd
Cloud Imperium Games announced today that their much hyped space game Star-Citizen has essentially exited its closed alpha access. The news comes in Chris Roberts’ most recent Letter From the Chairman update, in which he also announced that Star Citizen has surpassed one million backers.
“Anyone who has pledged for a Star Citizen Package can now play today without worrying they won’t have access to some portion of the ‘Verse in the future. No Star Marine pass, no Alpha 2.0 pass… no additional payment needed for any module in the works, pre-release,” Roberts wrote. “Going forward, should we need to put out some sort of limited release it will be done through the PTU test server. All backers will have access to any live release, the moment it publishes.”
Backers with Alpha access are also being given 10,000 UEC [United Earth Credits, Star Citizen’s in-game currency], with the UEC cap raised to accommodate the boost. Roberts went on to mention that players who have purchased an Arena Commander pass would get 5000 UEC, but that was later clarified by community manager Jared Huckaby in a a forum post where he said that instead it would but 5$ in in store credit for the games store.
Star Citizen has been in closed backed only alpha, for over a year, as modules are added and development continues, this new general release to all of its Kickstarter backers marks a major milestone in its development.
Google, Nintendo, and the Pokemon Company are reportedly pouring money on to Niantic Labs, the developer of Pokemon GO. Pokemon go the recently announced AR pokemon game made by the company that made Ingress was launched to incredible fanfare in early September of this year. Initial reports said the PR demo video was too good to be true, but reports coming out of the company now cite Google, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company as each pouring at least 10 million dollars each in to the games development. Initial worries that the game was not to be a core property and that it would suffer a quality drop because it was a mobile game, seem to have been silenced by this avalanche of money.
The CEO of Niantic, John Hanke, spoke briefly about where the newly acquired funds would be headed.
“The Pokémon Company, Google and Nintendo are incredible investors and strategic partners to help build the next chapter for Niantic. We will be using this capital to continue the development of Pokémon GO, to evolve and grow Ingress and its thriving global community, and to build out our real-world gaming platform.”
We still know very little about how the new game might work, but Ninite has experience developing AR games in the past, and I for one trust them to not take this IP and damage it. To see what we do know about the game already check out the video below.
Call of Duty has always been multiplayer focused, so its no surprise that in the games 11 years there have been a few experiments with game modes. Some modes have been successful, other have not. Gun game was one such mode. Some games had it others didn’t, today Treyarch confirmed that the mode will indeed be in Blackops 3. In a recent interview with EBgames Australia David Vonderhaar, the Game Design Director on Black Ops III’s said
“The game does have a Gun Game, there is some one shot stuff going on in Gun Game. But as you would expect from a Treyarch Call of Duty multiplayer title, a complete custom game set with being able to share and save those variant game modes. What we like is the idea that people can take the game, take the game engine, take the game rules, modify them to suit and make them accessible to all your friends. We are going to take the best of those ideas and mess around with them in the ‘Bonus’ category of playlist.”
I for on look forward to running and gunning in this mode, which is fast and always fun.
We here are Brokenjoysticks love Heros Of The Storm, so every time there is a set of patch notes or a major announcement we tend to get a bit excited. So when Blizzard community manager Trikslyr lays out upcoming changes on the forum we listen. In their most recent post in response to a thread about MMR Trikslyr said Blizzard is working on “a couple of bug fixes to help the matchmaker identify players that are closer in skill.” This should result in more evenly balanced matches.” Many players will be unhappy to hear that trisklyer also mentioned that this would increase wait times UP TO 10 MINUTS. No specifics were mentioned in the post, the however exact post says simple “system improvements” Additionally Trisklys announced that Blizzard has a set of priorities moving forward for HoTs which were laid out as
Improving matches at high skill levels
Improve the New User experience
Adjustments to make sure players in matches are close in experience, not just MMR
none of these are particularly new or exciting, but I for one am excited at the idea of not either rolling over my enemy or getting stomped every game. Now if blizzard could just stop crazy team comps in casual. Three healers anyone?
Valve is a company known for engaging their users and taking their feedback to heart. So, it comes as no surprise to hear that in a recent statement to PCworld Robin Walker said.
“I don’t think this will be the last Steam Controller design ever. We’re just about to hit the point where customers get their hands on it which, to us in the software world, that’s where stuff starts to get really interesting,” Walker said. He didn’t predict what might be done with, but said he expects “it’ll be awesome. It would be the first time our customers didn’t improve one of our products if, for some reason, they couldn’t make the hardware better,”
This is good news for those who did not buy the Steam Controller. Many will remember an early version of the controller which had no physical buttons save the 4 face buttons, and featured only two expansive touch pads. That version received negative feedback and Valve took it back to the drawing board. This statement would seem to show that Valve is prepared to do the same thing again with the current production run controller should their audience want it. I for one cant wait to get my steam controller, I pre-ordered it as soon as the final design was released, but at the same time I can understand people who might hesitate as the controller is quite non-traditional for mouse and keyboard players.
Halo 5 Guardians is now available for pre-load on Xbox One. Along with this annoucment comes the inevitable side announcmet that the game is huge (60GB) and the warnning that there will be a day one patch (no size on this one yet). This early pre-load is available for everyone who bought digital copies of the game (sorry physical copy lovers, and legendary edition buyers, you are going to have to wait). Pre-loading works with both the standard edition and the Digital Deluxe edition – though neither will allow access to the game until 12:01 EDT on the 27th. Those who pre-order from the Xbox store will get access to a loadout weapon and custom skin on its multiplayer mode Warzone. There are other pre-order bonuses from other retailers.
Live action trailers seem are all the rage right now in video games. The latest company to hop on this live action train is Bethesda, for their much anticipated Fall out 4. The trailer covers all of the bases that fans of the series love. Nukes, Power Armor, and 50s nostalgia all feature prominently, as well as the new dog companion and a fair few enemies. That’s about it, nothing new or exciting shows up in the trailer and its left to the audience to draw their own conclusions, much like the series itself.
