Sekai Project, a publisher and licenser of Japanese new media and electronic entertainment, in partnership with Winged Cloud, has announced that it is releasing Sakura Dungeon is now available on Steam and Denpasoft for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux. If you are a fan of dungeon crawlers or cute girls, or well both, this is a game you are going to want to pick up.
Sakura Dungeon is a first-person dungeon crawling RPG set in a fantasy world where monsters and humans have been at war with one another for generations. However, a new battle is brewing. In this story players will assume the role of Yomi, an ancient fox spirit who awakens after several hundred years of deep sleep to find that possession of her lovingly made dungeon has been taken from her! As if that wasn’t enough cause for alarm, Yomi has also been robbed of her power, leaving her weak and vulnerable. She soon discovers that it was the heroic knight, Ceri, who dared to wake her from her slumber, and after a brief fight and “negotiation,” Ceri decides to join her on an adventure to reclaim the dungeon!
Together, they will unearth great treasures, reveal secrets and hidden rooms, and recruit monster girls to fight by their side…all while avoiding traps, fighting off dangerous enemies and bosses across multiple floors, and uncovering the devious plans of the new dungeon lord. One of the most important mechanics of Sakura Dungeon is the ‘capture’ mechanic, wherein the player will be able to capture monster girls they encounter and add them to their party. In addition to dungeon exploring, Sakura Dungeon is also packed with extensive dialogue and plenty of gorgeous backdrops and cutscene artwork for the player to unlock as they carefully navigate their way through the dungeon.
Sakura Dungeon is now available on Steam for $19.99 with a 10% off discount for the first week. So go check it out! You can also get the unedited version on Denpasoft .
Total War Warhammer is Creative Assemblies newest edition into their long running series of real time strategy games. Warhammer is a solid addition to the Total War catalog, and represents the first non-historical foray by Creative Assembly in their world conquering strategy games. I got am playing this game as a veteran of both Atilla and Rome Total War games, so its safe to expect some bias in the favor of Creative Assembly, that being said, let’s get to the review.
I did love this game, but by no means is Total War Warhammer perfect. With the newest instalment we see great visuals especially with the campaign map itself. Warhammer models are famous for their specific detail, and Create Assembly has really worked hard to bring this level of detail to the individual models. Each unit seems lovingly sculpted with the care and time the most devout tabletop players, emblems stand out, hero units look unique and the whole world feels alive.
The level of detail in the game is stunning
The user interface will be familiar to veteran total war players and easy to understand for newcomers to the series. There haven’t been many UI tweaks to this entry, but the ones that are there are mostly related to magic, new tabs for lore, with videos of each spell in action, and explanations of each lore, are some of the new features.
The addition of magic is well implemented with multiple schools of magic ranging from the lore of death to the lore of metal. On the battlefield you will now see your general as an individual who will be a capable warrior able to singlehandedly take on units of normal infantry. This is quite a change from the previous squishy lords. Its not mostly safe to charge your hero in to a large group of enemies and tie them up in melee combat. Your lord may not win against an entire unit of say heavy cavalry, but he will keep them engaged until you can find something in your army to counter with.
Watching units of flying creature’s crash into your lines as units of trolls and giants tear through your lines is a both an amazing and terrifying sight to behold for the first time. Creative Assembly has done an amazing job of bringing the visceral world of tabletop Warhammer Fantasy to life. You can feel the power of a strong magical spell doing its work as infantry units get tossed aside by a column of fire from the sky. Calvary crashes through ranged missile units, utterly devastating them, and your heroic lord holds the center of your line, his mace swinging back and forth with devastating effect. It’s all very stunning to see.
Stunning visuals are not the only thing this game offers, each of the four playable factions: The Empire, Dwarves, Greenskins, Chaos, and Vampire Counts, all look and feel and play very differently. Despite the difference between the races, anyone who has played the tabletop game will quickly see the similarities between game and tabletop. Each race keeps its most important traits without any one race being too powerful.
Dwarves are very heavily armored and able to absorb enemy charges and beat them back with powerful artillery and ranged units. They excel at defense and have powerful late game artillery that can devastate entire enemy units. Dwaves do not wield magic, instead they have runesmiths who capture powerful magic’s in runes and can release them on command. Dwarves excel at both ranged and melee attacks with a good balance of units and some of the most powerful cost effective artillery in the game.
Empire troops defend a wall in a high tier settlement
The Empire’s infantry and ranged units are not as powerful as some other factions, but they make up for it with powerful cavalry which used well to attack enemy units in the flanks and rear will quickly turn the tide. The empire is strong in magic fielding wizards, of three types Fire, Light and Celestial lores, each bring powerful spells to combat. The empire is in my opinion the most balanced faction, it possesses a decent amount of everything, war machines, cavalry, and monstrous creatures, and while none are devastating alone, together they form the best rounded army in the game.
The vampire counts field hordes of cheap infantry combined with death magic and powerful monstrous infantry. They trade the ability to have ranged units for large amounts of cheap infantry, and some seriously scary monstrous creatures that that can cause Terror in the enemy ranks. Their lords can raise the dead, quickly turning the tide of a battle that may not be going your way. They also get to corrupt the land they currently hold giving them bonuses and doing causing attrition to invading armies.
Chaos functions like a horde armies from the Atilla game where they have no permanent settlements and each horde builds and carries its own building with it. Chaos was a late announcement to the game, and was meant to be the first DLC, but anyone who pre-ordered got them for free. They get chosen warriors of chaos and chaos knights so though infantry and cavalry at higher tiers is very powerful. Chaos wields the magic of Fire, Death, Metal, and have some extremely powerful spells.
The Greenskins have powerful melee infantry and the ability to bring Trolls and giants onto the battlefield, plus once there fightness meter reaches its peak a Waagh army will spawn to aid in further conquests. goblins have the little waagh lore of magic ork shamans have the big waaagh also they get giants and trolls as there top tier units which is just cool.
Each race feels unique and even though there are only so many ways to do infantry and Calvary and ranged units, each race feels separate, but not so much that if you are playing say empire you can’t go and pick up vampire counts.
While Total War Warhammer has been well crafted and implemented it is not free from flaws. One problem I discovered quite quickly is that Empire and Vampire counts have a hard time keeping an economy that can support their armies and allow for new conquests. Few buildings especially for the Vampires add significant amounts of money and units. Meanwhile army upkeep ramps up very quickly. So these two factions will quickly be running either in the red or making very little money a turn making it quite challenging to build new armies.
Next up we have to talk about the AI which has plagued the total war series since the beginning. While the enemy army will for the most part be competent using its ranged units, plugging gaps in their lines, and trying to use units to outflank you, I experienced a bug where very rarely an enemy army will sit in place and eat your artillery shots. With the new focus on lords as individual units a new problem has arisen in that the enemy AI will often run their lord ahead of an advancing army and allow you to either kill him or do very significant damage to him before he has even reached your lines. Lords are way more powerfull than in say Atilla, or Rome, but you still can’t put them against an entire army and expect them to survive. So to say the Ai is more liberal with its generals is a bit of an understatement. This can be easily fixed with patches, and I hope that it will be.
The diplomatic mechanics have been significantly reworked from Rome two, it is now much easier to know where you stand with a faction. Confederating is now a much more useful and doable mechanic than it was in previous games. With this comes a very silly exploit that will hopefully be patched out. If you declare war on a faction that cannot reach you in several turns they will generally sue for peace and offer a sum of gold or whatever your factions variant is, which you will accept of course because you will need the money. Several turns after an ally will ask you to rejoin the war again generally with an offer of a sum of money, you can repeat the cycle over and over to farm gold. Obviously this is a slight issue again hopefully that will be patched and changed in some way.
Next let’s talk settlements. Total War Warhammer keeps in line with Attila and Rome two that the provincial capital has walls and can reach size five. Minor settlements have no walls to start, but, there are defense that can be added to them to give them walls. This is a nice feature, and since they top out at size three.
Settlements
The major issue I have with this is that sieges and city assaults are just plain boring now. If you attack or defend a minor settlement without walls the battle takes place in a normal open battlefield instead of within the confines of the settlement. So gone are the days of your minor settlements using narrow streets and possible city centers on hills with small ramparts to station ranged units. This is a great loss as that helped sieges feel more alive and to give you a chance to overcome terrible odds with clever use of terrain and buildings.
Sieges of provincial capitals have also taken a huge step backwards in that instead of being able to attack from all sides choosing how you will overcome the enemy defenders and cities that generally had at least several defensible positions once you had breached the walls. Now you get one wall to assault two if you are really lucky, towers are only active if one of your units is standing with its influence box. Once the walls are breached you have maybe two or three large streets for the enemy to move down into the city center capture point. Also for some unexplained reason every unit in the game can run up to the enemy walls and pull out ladders and start climbing. Sieges have taken a huge step backwards taking a lot of the fun of it with them. The last issue with settlements comes that all factions cannot take any settlement Dwarves and Orcs can only control the others settlements and Humans and Vampires are the same this is by far one of the worst ideas introduced into total war it limits the gameplay potential as a whole and will kill replay value as the strategies and maneuvers you make game to game will end up being very similar since you are so limited on what settlements you can control.
All things said though Total War Warhammer is a fun game and a fine addition to the series many of the issues above will either be patched out at some point and failing that there has always been a thriving modding community for total war so the people will get what they want one way or the other. The game is beautiful with a lot of potential and the freelc of Britonia and they many other to be announced DLC packs will provide hours of fun for those willing to look past its minor issues. Beautiful with tons of potential I am looking forward to seeing how this game changes and grows as we go forward.
We all knew it would be big, but im not sure that anyone could have predicted that almost 2/3 of the people who played in the free beta would end up paying for the game. Seven million players have played overwatch during this its first week of existence. To put that in perspective the last COD sold a total of 5 million copies, and with in a few weeks its player population had dropped to less than one million.
Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said “Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch—from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who’d never picked up a game like this before—and we’re very grateful for everyone’s incredible passion and enthusiasm, We poured a lot of effort into creating a game—and a new universe—that anyone could enjoy. We’re ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we’re looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come.”
The total number of hours played of the game is already over 100 million as of this writing. I my self have sunk about 40 hours in to the game this week, it has been one of the very few games recently that I have been willing to play on my own. its unique feel and solid shooter mechanics just keep people coming back. I personally also can not wait for competitive mode when I hope find a team to play with in a semi-competitive manner!
Well its time for the yearly butchering of Sonic it would seem. SEGA® today announced that its highly anticipated title Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, hitting shelves September 27, will be at this year’s E3, where gamers and Sonic fans alike will be able to get their hands on the game for the first time. Just in time for the 25th anniversary and to kill your childhood one more time. SEGA’s newest title which will be available on the Nintendo 3DS™ family of systems, will deliver all-new fire and ice game play elements that enables players to run through the game at top speed, or take their time with deeper exploration and puzzle play. Does that sound like sonic? Gotta go slower to solve these puzzles? No it doesn’t.
Yup looks like Sonic all right
So confident is SEGA that this will be a disaster that they are giving away three episodes of free SEGA’s press release says ” The content will be available for the very first time on DVD in North America, packaged with each Launch Edition copy of the game.” This does not give me confidence SEGA in fact it makes me think this game is so bad you have to give me free crap to get anyone to even look at it! The press release went on to quote Ivo Gerscovich, chief brand officer, SEGA of America. “This is a milestone year for Sonic, and part of the way we’re celebrating his 25thanniversary is by thanking fans with exciting promotions and content. This is the first time that we’re going to package a game with Sonic Boom episodes, and we feel it will serve as a special gift to the fans,”
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice for Nintendo 3DS will be available in stores and in the Nintendo eShop throughout North America on September 27, 2016 for $39.99 and is available for pre-order now at sonicthehedgehog.com/boom.
Welp, its a good year for graphics cards. First we have the whole set of NVida 10xx cards which are more powerful than the current hi end 1000$ cards that with a price point of about half. Now it seems that AMD is not going to die quietly and from their skunkworks comes the announcement of the new RX480 at just the tiny tiny price of $199USD. Stop, wait a minute, 200USD?! for a VR ready GPU? The Radeon RX 480 is scheduled to launch on June 29, with a model that is certified to power the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
here are the specs :
TFLOPS
>5
CUs
36
Memory Bandwidth
256 GB/s
Data Rate (Effective)
8 Gbps
Memory Size
4/8 GB GDDR5
Memory Bit-rate
256-bit
Power
150 W
VR Premium
Yes
AMD FreeSync
Yes
Display Port
1.4/1.4 HDR
This is one of the craziest contrasts that I have ever seen in GPU’s. Last month AMD reveled the the $1500 Radeon Pro Duo. Which is designed for VR developers, and obviously the exact opposite of this card. Do you think this card is going to outsell the new Nvidia cards?
So if your alive, and awake at all, you probably have been playing Overwatch, Blizzards huge new shooter. I my self have spent about 40 hours playing since the games release just over a week ago. I often found my self wondering if some of the more prevalent “myths” about the game are real or fake. Well DefendTheHouse (of mythbusters halo fame) is here to answer your questions. With this second volume they are covering many popular myths like can you block a Hanzo ultimate with a D.iVa shield? and can Bastion kill people by landing on them.
Take a gander at the video and while you are there be sure to subscribe to us on Youtube so you can catch all of our videos too!
These last two weeks Boss Key productions have released two new trailers for their upcoming first person shooter headed by Cliff Blizinsky, Law Breakers. Each of the one minute videos feature about a minute of one of the developers talking about so far two of the games classes. First the Enforcer, then the Vanguard. Ill let the videos speak for them selves, but they look pretty awesome so far. Be sure to sign up for the alpha for a chance to get in on the action!
I saw this game at PAX East and really had fun with it. I was playing the enforcer and even though I wasnt able to capture any of my gameplay I did feel like the game was mostly done and ready to go. These videos feature what seems to me to be a much higher level of polish. Textures are smoother, there are more details, so I assume boss key have been hard at work on the game since I saw it over a month ago. Brokenjoysticks will be doing a full demo play through of this game at E3 so be sure to keep your eyes open for those first impressions.
ArsTechnica is reporting that they have a source who is telling them that a major publisher currently planning to release a new virtual reality game on the Xbox One in 2017 and that game will be shown at e3. This is a pretty big report. Unless MS is branding an Oculus (they have a previous relationship with Oculus) this can only really mean that the previous reports of an Xbox VR are probably accurate. here is the exact quote from the Ars article
“Ars can confirm that at least one major developer is currently planning to release a new virtual reality game on the Xbox One in 2017 and plans to show that game at E3. The news lends credence to multiple recent reports suggesting Microsoft is planning a more powerful, VR-compatible Xbox One for 2017. The information was provided to Ars directly by the developer as part of pre-E3 planning and was confirmed by a PR representative.”
So that seems pretty definitive. Ars goes on to say that its a well known European Developer and that the game is in an established franchise with a lot of other fanct stuff that basically means nothing at this point. Brokenjoysticks will be live at the Xbox press conference on June 16th to bring you any news about this new device, and Microsoft willing our first hands on impressions. The game is supposedly going to release on PS4 and PC as well, so I guess we can expect to see it coming to the Rift and other VR headsets as well.
an artists rendering of what the new headset could look like.
Microsoft has yet to officially announce anything VR related, and Ars is very instant that this title has VR in the name, so they may have just blown the whole VR cover off of MS. With only two weeks left till E3 its a toss up when a rumor comes out like this one. Its probably true (reliable source, close to reveal) but as always with rumors take this with a large grain of salt, it could all just be a false flag for something else. Neogaff also has some compelling evidence, the listing of several VR categories for companies that develop for Xbox.
Having issues with desk space? Dell has an answer for you and its 43 inches across. The Dell 43 Ultra HD 4K Multi-Client Monitor also called (P4317Q ) it measures 43 inches diagonally and can deliver crisp and clear Ultra HD 4K content (3840×2160 @ 60Hz). This thing is to be frank, scary. It is not really targeted at any high end gamers, but I cant help but think that someone is going to end up using one of these to play one of the many space games out there. Either that or play 4 games at once. The P4317Q features a contrast ratio of 1,000:1 and a brightness rating of 350 cd/m2. Viewing angles are listed at 178 degrees and response times are rated at 8ms. But what makes the P4317Q so special is the fact that it also supports up to four independent 1920×1080 (Full HD) views (bezel free) on that ’ 43-inch display. Multibox on a single monitor in HD goodness, or die trying. Dell is giving you the option for the low low price of $1,350, but thats a bargain considering its 4 1080 displays right?
Dell has this to say about their monster creation”As the top monitor brand in the world for three years and in North America for 16 years running, we want to show our commitment to our customers by teaming directly with those who would benefit most from this monitor, specifically financial traders and software developers,” said Bert Park Dell Global Software and Peripherals VP and GM. “The Dell 43 Multi-Client Monitor is a truly unique display that meets the diverse and dynamic needs of financial traders and software developers while also demonstrating ever-growing boundaries of innovation Dell is pushing.”
It seems like only yesterday that Goat Simulator was born, out of a glitched physics engines a few students made came a game of silliness, licking things, bad physics, and goats. Now Coffee Stain Studios (is that really the name of the developer?) has spawned another expansion. This time its all about space and what a goat can do in space is limitless. Waste of Space lets players visit space today instead of “get old waiting for that other space game you already paid for”. The Expansion will allow players to take crowdfunding in a literal sense by building a crowd to inhabit a new space colony, probably by carrying them to different places against their will. The trailer features a regal voice selling us the idea of a new future in space funded by you, poking fun at the well voiced trailers for kickstarter games that never see the life of day.
The video pokes fun at a lot of different space franchises but front and center is the obvious comparison to the trailer for Star Wars: The force awakens. Of course this is goat sim so it doesnt stop there. There are barbs against Kick Starter, Mass Effect and even Donald Trump with the hashtag #MakeSpaceGreatAgain . The whole thing is perfectly toned for a goat sim expansion.
The expansion for Goat Simulator is already available on Steam for $4.99, and Xbox One gamers eager to test out the game at no cost can do so when Goat Simulator becomes a free title for the month of June.
As a massive fan of Steins;Gate both in its anime and Visual Novel (VN) formats my heart skipped a beat when this mail arrived in our PR box today. For those not familiar with the anime or its primogeniture the visual novel just titled Steins;Gate it’s a story of love, and time travel, and a particular computer, or something. The real meat of the game is spoilers to the game itself so I wont spend many words on it and will just say its a really fantastic game, and an even better show so go watch it.
STEINS;GATE 0 is the sequel to Steins;Gate and will feature the same returning cast of characters, on a new adventure. Depicting an alternative world line unseen in the original STEINS;GATE STEINS;GATE 0 sees Okabe and the Future Gadget Lab members return once again in a story centered around Artificial Intelligence and the creation of ‘Amadeus’ a means of interacting with the stored memories of a fellow human being.
Stiens;Gate had some of the best story I have ever read period, and presented it in a beautiful Visual format for deeper immersion in the world. With its twists and world lines, and time travel and good and evil, I found myself wrapped up in the world and unable to stop playing for hours on end when I first played it. Even now years later, the anime is still one of my all time favorites, and I go back and play the VN at least once a year. If STEINS;GATE 0 keeps up the amazing writing and stories from the first installment I have no doubt that it will be my favorite VN this year.
Well, it was bound to happen. Massive space sim exploration game No Mans Sky, which some people have been waiting for since 2013, has been pushed back again. Kotaku first reported that the games date had been removed from promotional media, then several other sources, now its been confirmed via images from Game Stop.
The coming soon sticker over the old release date
Show of hands who is surprised here? No one? Thought so the studio behind No Mans Sky is TINY, like indie style tiny, but they are working to produce a game whose scale is basically unprecedented in gaming. The game has been hyped since it was revealed back in 2013, seeing extensive coverage everywhere from the Stephen Colbert show to The New Yorker. As of just a few days ago the release was supposed to be June, but now it seems that’s not going to happen. I will continue to hope that this is a delay for polish and not any of the other many reasons it could be. I never mind when a developer says, our game its not quite ready, so we need some time, what I do mind is when politics pushes a game back.
If you haven’t ever heard of Dreadnought I can’t say I blame you. It’s had a rather stealthy run over all, and although it was at PAX prime last year, that was the only time that it surfaced, and since its been deep under in development. Now, it is back, this time with a free to play model, and sporting a buy in beta. I can’t resist a good space game, so I forked over the 40USD to get myself and few friends’ copies of this new outer space shooty game. For my 40USD I got in to the beta, got 4 invites to give to my friends in to the beta.
First I have to say it, this game is so beautiful. Though there are only at present a few maps, each one is designed to maximize the 3D space, carefully crafted to provide players with spaces to hide dart in to and shoot around. Space combat can be very boring, so to spice it up Dreadnought has broken the standard formula of 3d combat. In most space games you approach an enemy, then circle around them while firing your weapons at them, that’s how space combat works, space is big open and empty so it’s easy to adopt an orbit of any attitude around your enemy and fire at them. Dreadnought doesn’t allow for that, instead it places a ton of cover at various places on both the X and Y axes of the map, so your ship can literally take cover to avoid attack. This makes the game feel more like a shooter than a proper space sim, but it’s an incredible example of what can be done with 3D space and movement when it’s all planned out and well done. Not much compares to the feeling of pushing your ship in to a small space under a piece of cover, or dodging missiles by diving lower down and making them lose tracking.
You wont get to see this angle in game, but it gives you a good idea of the sheer size of the bigger ships
The game features a ship classing system, with 5 main classes. Dreadnought is the heaviest, being a large lumbering weapons platform with a lot of guns, and health. The destroyer is a balanced ship, with dreadnought class weapons, but less armor in exchange for more speed and maneuverability, the corvette is the smallest ship, used mostly for hit and run and its lightly armored and fast, the tactical cruiser is the games medic, but don’t get too close or you might end up feeling the wrath of its powerful offensive lasers, and finally the artillery cruiser is basically one giant gun, filling the sniper role, allowing you to dish out massive damage from range, but also being slow and requiring skill shots to hit targets. I found myself mostly going in to combat as either a tactical cruiser, or a destroyer feeling that the massive dreadnought simply made me too slow to react (even if it did get a nuke in exchange). Regardless of which ship you are going to take this is a combat based game, so lets talk about that a bit.
Combat is also quite fun, the game features a MOBAesq (I hate that word) system, each ship has two primary weapons, in most cases one short and one longer range, then a series of abilities which can be buffs, heals, weapons, or other things. These modules are interchangeable but the things you change them for all require unlocks, more on that later, so to start off your selection is limited. The main combat in most of the games I played was done in a pretty formulaic manner; first if nukes were present, they get launched right off the bat, since their range is infinite. Then both teams sort of feel each other out, often launching salvos of missiles while artillery cruisers range the enemy’s fleet. This may just be because I am a lower level player, but most of the time since the games go to 100 points and you get 5 points per kill, this opening minute or so of game play was very dull. The one exception that I did see came in the form of corvette’s who’s pilots have no need to feel out range and just dive right in looking for soft targets in your back line.
this is what youll be seeing most times.
Combat then devolves in to a basic melee, co-ordination is not possible with non-friends as the game does not have VOIP. That being said, I did manage to get in to one game with a full party and we absolutely destroyed the other team. I found this to be a bit of a problem, though I played about 40 games, the vast majority were one sided affairs, with my team either winning by a large amount or getting stepped on. Combat is fun, if slightly one dimensional. Damage is the same everywhere on the ship, so you can’t for example get behind a ship and hit its engines doing more damage. To counter this each ship has 3 options to make things more interesting. These options are Speed, Shields, and weapons. Each of these drains out power from a reactor. Shields mitigate damage, Weapons makes your guns hit harder, and Speed makes you go faster. Its all very straight forward. To say that combat is boring would be a bit to far, it is in fact fun, if slightly one dimensional.
Combat really comes down to power management and line of sight, there are a few weapons (mostly missiles) that if you can acquire a lock for are fire and forget. The rest of combat is very involved, you have to lead targets, ammo is slow moving and visible and especially larger ships really feel like capital ship combat, trading hundreds of rounds back and forth while their players manage shields and power needs. Various ships can be used to counter various other ships, and your team will be well served to swap out different ships when one strategy or another doesn’t work because you all decided to play dreadnoughts just to see what 5 nukes looked like.
Two game modes are present as of now, one which is a straight death match, to 100 points, with each kill being worth 5 points. The second is a 5 round one elimination game, where each ship has one life. Die and you’re out, forced to pilot a tiny little fighter ship while the rest of your team tries to make up for your stupid mistake. I found this mode extremely infuriating and only played it about 5 times before switching back to the death match.
Here you can see the abilities on the top row, your health on the left, and your amount of power on the right. The score is in the bottom right and the minimap the top top right.
Overall the game feels pretty good, I wish there were more ships, and the monetization model is kinda wonky at the moment. Basically like most mobile games, you have two kinds of currency, the premium one and the one you can earn. At present this currency is used for most of the modules, ships, and other things in the game, while the earned currency is much less utilized. This model is subject to change, and has already changed at least once, so I would expect it to keep happening.
Monetization and other issues aside, I found the game play fun but really repetitive, there are only two game modes and of those two modes I only wanted to play one, there are a decent number of maps, but you can only play the same 4 or 5 maps so many times. I was helped in this case my having my team do silly things like all go corvettes or all go Dreadnoughts to keep things fun and fresh. That aside there is also a massive grind involved in unlocking all of the games 50 levels for getting all of the modules and abilities, and there is no skill based matchmaking. So, what that means is that sometimes your going to go up against top of the line ships, with your basic tier 1 ships, and your going to have a bad time.
Im going to keep an eye on this game as it gets closer to release, since it has no cost of entry if you like playing space combat games or are fascinated by the idea of three dimensional combat in actual space style game this is worth checking out. If you are not interested in playing a game that is still very much in development, and may change right down to its core mechanics I would take a pass on this one.
In case you have been busy, or just forgot, last night was the global launch of Blizzards first FPS Overwatch. With the launch came the answer to the long left in the air question of “but how will Blizzard make any money if its not free to play with microtransactions?” We finally know how much each of those sweet, sweet loot boxes is going to cost if you want to skip the grinding and just get right to the games rarest items.
2 Loot Boxes: $1.99/£1.59
5 Loot Boxes: $4.99/£3.99
11 Loot Boxes: $9.99/£7.99
24 Loot Boxes: $19.99/£15.99
50 Loot Boxes: $39.99/£31.99
What do you think? Personally I think its right in that sweet spot of not too expensive, but also giving you enough that you will come back for more. YouTube is already filling up with people opening 100 crates, or 50 crates, and just like CS:GO boxes, as long as Blizzard keeps releasing skins, or other new content, this monetization strategy could keep the game profitable for years to come. The game has hundreds of unlockables, from voice lines, to sprays, to skins, and it would take a non paying player hundreds of games to unlock all of them, if you just cant wait, it seems like 40USD (the same as the base price of the game) will get you pretty deep in to the games unlocks.
