Category Archive

Opinions/Editorials

Rise From Your Grave! Can Arcades Come Back?

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Broken Joysticks

Ahh the 80’s… Slightly before my time as I was born in ‘91, but thanks to older relatives’ hand-me-downs of computers like the Commodore 64 & ZX Spectrum, being raised on reruns of classic cartoons (and the odd horror film courtesy of aforementioned relatives), and most importantly, spending my youth at the local arcades, I feel like I can almost remember that decade. Arcades were definitely in their peak around the 80’s and 90’s, being the best place to play the latest games with, for the time, mind-blowing graphics, and until relatively recently were the only place to really get

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Dear Fake Nerd Boys – ‘Rogue One’ Isn’t Messing With Your Star Wars

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

So the first trailer for the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story dropped yesterday and after amassing 23 million views in just one day and featuring what looks to be a great performance by Felcity Jones in the lead role you’d think that the internet would be ecstatic to see the franchise continue its return to form. Sadly on the dark side of the internet fake nerd boys rage at ‘feminist propaganda’ in a social network not so far far away. [youtube id=”Wji-BZ0oCwg”]

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With Commercial Release The Oculus DK1 Has Become a PaperWeight

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

I knew this day would come eventually but I didn’t think it would be this soon. With the release of Oculus Home and the Oculus runtime V 1.30 the original Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 (or DK1) has been left behind in favor of its more robust successors – the DK2 and the recently released consumer version, the CV1. As I packed up my trusty VR headset today in its elegant black case because these latest drivers have made it an unusable paperweight. 

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Warframe – Proving F2P Can Work

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Broken Joysticks

Author’s note: The free-to-play pricing model I discuss here is in regards to games that can be played without spending any money, rather than the label that MMORPG games use when they don’t require a subscription fee (but still do require an initial purchase). I will also be intentionally not talking about the majority of gameplay, to instead focus on Warframe’s free-to-play aspect. It’s not uncommon for the gaming community to dismiss a title, even if it looks promising, if it releases with a free-to-play payment model. I admit that when I see the words ‘free to play’ attached to a

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Pokken Tournament’s Tutorial Is Tediously Long

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Today I finally had the chance to sit down and try out Pokken Tournament on my Wii-U, I thought I was going to be in for a lighthearted fighting game but what I found instead was tutorial, after tutorial, after tutorial just to learn the basics.  After about the fifth tutorial I swear my eyes were starting to glaze over, it was 8 A.M university lectures all over again – I could probably only give you the gist of how Pokken Tournament plays due to the number of sheer systems the opening three tutorials throw at you. From what I gather: Each Pokemon

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It doesn’t matter if the NX is a failure Nintendo will go on

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

Guest post by SZKO Have you ever heard of the term “Golden Parchute”? Well if not, a Golden Parachute is basically a contract between a C-level executive and a company that says if the executive screws up in running the company and gets fired then they will be paid out some arbitrarily high amount of money. This allows the executive to make bold decisions that hopefully will steer the company into making giant piles of money that the executive may not otherwise make because they are playing it safe. Having a giant pile of cash to fall back and to

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GDC 2016 Editorial: We Are The Underdogs

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

It is undeniable that the annual Games Developer Conference (or GDC) is a spectacular event. Once a year sharp & inquisitive minds involved in various facets of game development, marketing, business, and journalism converge on the Moscone Center in San Francisco California for a week of hands-on demos, networking and panel discussions. Broken Joysticks is by no means a large player in the games journalism space, so just how did a small scrappy site like ours become the journalism underdogs at this year’s conference?

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The Division Has The Potential To Get Quite Repetitive

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

The Division
Yesterday saw the launch of one of the most anticipated new gaming IPs in some time, Tom Clancy’s The Division. Like many other eager players I set aside time in my schedule to try out the full version of the game after putting several hours into the two betas that Ubisoft held earlier in the year and I was psyched to see what the full version had to offer. I woke up yesterday morning at 4 AM and after a few false starts I’ve logged just over 4 hours in the game as of the writing of this post.

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H1Z1 King of the kill the first hours:

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

So I have heard a crap ton about this game, seen in on Youtube and seen it on stream. Honestly I thought it wasn’t for me. So when our Editor in Chief @kitsune86 said “hey you wanna explore some H1Z1?” I was pretty eager.  I had started looking in to this game when I wrote a news story about how the game was splitting off in two separate games; the survival aspect and the battle royale. I was given a chance to try the battle royal by the developers and this is my log of the results.

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BrokenCast: Ty Taylor & Tumblestone

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Today on BrokenCast we interview Ty Taylor, developer of The Bridge and the upcoming Tumblestone. We talk about all sorts of things like what it’s like to start an indie studio, how Ty handle testing a whole bunch of different platforms and how surprisingly easy it is to translate one single game into a number of different languages. If you’d like some insight into how indie titles are made or just want to learn more about Tumblestone give this podcast a listen. Featuring The Voices of: Rae Michelle Richards Renee Gittins Fionna Fox Ty Taylor You can of course also

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Street Fighter V ‘Butt smack Mod’ Adds Nothing To The Game

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Capcom’s Street Fighter V has been available on Windows PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for little over 24 hours and players have already found a way to “restore” animation changes to fighter R. Mika’s introduction. For the unaware, as I was until I came across the modification on twitter this morning, in pre-release versions of SFV R.Mika would slap her own ass during her V-Trigger super move activation animation.  Months later in December 2015 fans noticed that these few frames of animation had been removed from recent trailers prompting the following statement from the game’s developers: “Those changes came

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Why I Love Fallout 4’s Trans Character

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Kirk Williford

This guest editorial was written by Zoey Wolfe, whom you can find on Twitter @CustomRetrofit  “I’m a woman, baby, can’t you tell?” The first time I heard Fallout 4’s native Robot to Female transsexual, KLE0, speak those words, I was stunned. My jaw, as cliche as this is, actually dropped. Was this going to be a very unfunny joke? Had I paid 60 dollars for the privilege of being insulted by Bethesda’s mediocre writing team? Or was it possible that against all odds, and previous experiences, a miracle would occur and a Real Live Trans Robot could be my friend? I

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I went back to playing Diablo 3 and you should too

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

So I’ll admit it, I gave up on Blizzards latest Diablo game just over 4 months after it came out, I had hit the level cap, and wasn’t able to grind for the gear I needed in order to advance to higher difficulties. At the time the difficulties and drop rates were tuned in an attempt to force players to use the Auction House to get the proper gear for their level, or grind for endless hours. Level 60+ content was poorly organized there was no adventure mode, and I simply could not get past act with my monk. Since

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Death of a Shooter: Halo 3’s Xbox 360 Multiplayer Is a Ghost Town

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Call it yearning for nostalgia, call it reliving the old days but after writing and producing the Halo Online preview that went live today I decided to dust off my Xbox 360 from the back of my entertainment center. After I signed up for a trial for Xbox Live, as it had been at least a year since I last played my Xbox 360 and was ready to see what my favorite multiplayer Halo title had been up too in the past nine years. What greeted me after logging in was a literal ghost town. Yesterday on a sunny Sunday

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Editorial: Is It Time For Another Console War?

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

The 1990’s saw a period of unprecedented growth for the console market. After that crash of the late 70s, Nintendo revitalized the industry in the 1980s and found themselves alone on the mountain top with everyone else aspiring to take their spot. Sega, Sony, and even Microsoft would eventually try to dethrone Nintendo. The competition would lead to an unprecedented amount of innovation and competition that was good for the consumer. Now as the age of VR dawns, I ask, is it time for another (VR) console war?

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