With its latest major update just releasing recently, now seems as good a time as any toreview to Rocket League. At its core the gameplay is very simple: like soccer, you have to get the ball into the goal. What […]

Roystan Ross released a in browser version of the first level of the gaming classic Super Mario 64 on March 12. Faithfully recreated using the Unity Engine, and with gorgeous updated graphics, it gives players a […]

Firefall is a new sci-fi action, first-person shooter MMO from RED 5 Studios. It is free-to-play and, in my humble opinion, worth playing. Everything feels polished from the shooting mechanics to the graphics, and may make this one hell of a contender for your spare time in the near future.

One of my favorite aspects of this particular game and one that I haven’t seen in too many others is the lack of a true playable class. What you have instead are battleframes. These battleframes are unique and let you approach any challenge in a variety of ways. You can go sniping long range with the Recon suit, go in as a Biotech to heal and buff, deploy a variety of turrets, shields and other on field boosts as an Engineer, run as infantry with the Assault class, or do some tanking as a Dreadnought. This allows you to play as the same main character all the time, switching between battleframes and keeping all that hard-earned loot you have in your inventory without dealing with trading between characters. Essentially you play whatever style you want, whenever you want.

Another of the huge selling points of this game is the co-op, which gives the battleframes a chance to really shine. Suppose you are on a team and find that 3 out of the 4 players are wearing Assault frames. This gives you an opportunity to bring some much needed support as an Biotech to keep your team alive while they storm the objective, or lay down ground support by using your Engineer battleframe to defend and buff. The variations are endless and make this a game with a lot of replayability.

Now, this is not to say the game is perfect. One of the few gripes I had was the lack of background information about this universe, the cataclysm and lore regarding the war in the past, the enemy and why they number in variety. I am sure much of this will be addressed as time goes on, though. Another problem was (I can’t believe I’m saying this) the lack of early-on story missions. Most of what you get past the first two missions is just random “go here and kill these things” quests that you get at a job board, doing little if nothing to advance the overall story and lore of the world that you are living in. I also felt that the game might function better if you had a decent controller versus your standard keyboard-and-mouse as it just had that kind of “console shooter” feel, which I suspect is what they were going for.

Now one thing I should mention for full disclosure to show just how truly awesome this game is, is the crappiness of my laptop. Even though the game promptly declared that my PC did not meet the minimum requirements to play this game. Lo and behold, with the graphics set next to nil it played smoothly, the graphics were still impressive, and I did not experience any of the lag that sometimes comes when playing a graphically-intense game on a low-end machine.

This is the kind of game you go into with your friends, and you play for a few hours. I found it easy to pick up and play and did not find the same kind of pay to win aspects that you sometimes see in more and more of the MMO’s these days. This game is also surprisingly family-friendly I would say, with little to no gore that I could see, most kids over 10 should be okay playing this and would be a good game to play with your kids or your younger siblings if you were so inclined to do so. Check out Firefall at http://www.firefallthegame.com.

Coming soon from 1C Game Studios one of Russia’s premier video game studios are two new flight sims. IL-2 Sturmovik: The Battle of Stalingrad, which is a WWII flight sim and ILYA Muromets, a WWI flight sim, both dropping on the PC. Both are available on Steam via Early Access, but IL-2 is set to release this September, and ILYA Muromets later this year.

Recently I had a chance to sit down with the fine folks at 1C Game Studios and check out their two new games when they came to town. I was reticent at first about this because I am not usually one for flight sims, but I thought I would see if perhaps they could change my mind. What I got was not just mind-changing, but game-changing.

The first thing I noticed about this team and this game is the insane level of detail and, yes, love they put into these games. It’s not just the latest sequel in a blockbuster franchise that needs to be pushed out to meet the yearly deadline. For them, it is a way of life, and a deep abiding passion. Many of these guys actually went up in the aircraft modeled in this game to get a genuine feel for how the plane moves and feels. They even worked with pilots to see what could be improved and made more realistic.

Secondly, I noticed the graphics. “Gorgeous” is just about the only word I could come up with that didn’t in some way cheapen the level of details they got just right. Even things like combat damage is realistic in all its bombastic fury. The impacts with bullets are jarring, the feel of falling as your plane stalls, every little thing adds up to be so much better than the sum of its parts. One of my favorite things was just flying low and admiring the architecture of buildings on the ground and found myself doing multiple low passes over and over again.

Combat in IL-2 and ILYA is tight; they’re not games for amateurs. A more skilled pilot with a lesser plane can take out any number of pilots with a better plane who aren’t as well trained or haven’t put in the dedication and skill both of these games require. When asked what separated their games from so many of the others that flood market like World of Warplanes, they said, “While we love World of Warplanes and many of us even play it, the simple fact is it’s more of an arcade game. We are a flight sim.” The fact that you can only really play both of these with a Joystick is further testament to that fact. However they do admit they have been experimenting to a certain extent with keyboard and mouse controls, only though on ILYA Muromets. When asked what kind of joystick would be needed the reply was “Pretty much any 20 dollar joystick will do.”

With the ability to have massive in air dogfights, bombing runs and insane single player campaigns, it looks like 1C Game Studios is setting itself up to be a dominant force in the simulator market. I myself cannot wait to get my hands on a copy and start playing against fellow enthusiasts new and old. I myself am now a happy convert to this genre and will no doubt be spending many hours playing both.

The Iron Banner begins on Saturday, July 19th at 2pm PDT. It will remain open for two hours. Every Guardian will receive a message when the Tower doors that lead to Lord Saladin open for the first time. Every […]

I recently got the chance to spend some time at a press event and got to play a new game from a new studio. The game is called Habitat and the studio is 4gency. Now this game was unique in a lot of ways as the studio and I got to spend a lot of time one on one with the main man behind the company, as he walked me through the paces and specs of his new game. He said he got the idea while visiting the Air and Space Museum in DC, from there it just kinda took on a life of its own.

Habitat is a successfully funded Kickstarter game from indie developer 4gency. It is a real-time, physics-driven orbital strategy game where you build, fly, and fight with the unique space stations that you create out of space debris orbiting earth. In its simplest terms it is a strategic space survival game. During our discussion I mentioned that one of the things that most space games and even television shows set in space seem to forget is that it is a three dimensional space. Meaning it is not just a flat plane there is a x,y,z axis and why this wasn’t included in the game. He said it was originally but it was horribly boring and they found that on a flat plane the game suddenly came alive with possibilities.

Now as with all alpha builds it is still in early development so the usual things apply. This version of the game is “not feature complete” and represents just a portion of what the final game will offer, both in features and in polish. It is however awesomely fun on one particular playthrough I picked up a giant drill attached two tanks to the side and shot the cannons on the tanks to steer, slapped a booster rocket on the back of the drill and turned it on and sent it flying toward an enemy base activated the drill and watched it chew it up like it was nothing. The game is pretty awesome and inventive. The only real limit to what you can build is your imagination really.

The game is  available on Steam, Amazon, Humble Store, GameFly, Gamer’s Gate, GreenMan Gaming and Nuuvem priced at $14.99, £10.99 and €14.99. An additional value ‘buddy-code’ bundle, where gamers have the option of buying one code for themselves and one for their friend at a reduced rate, is also available for $19.99, £14.99 and €19.99.

After being able to explore a little bit of what the game has to offer, I really like what I have played so far and when the full version comes out I look forward to playing the finished build. With all the feedback from users and with some tweaks this is a AAA title in the making from an indie dev and I look forward to seeing more from them in the future.

Wielding dark eldritch powers, the Scourge Warlock comes free to all players when Neverwinter: Tyranny of Dragons launches on August 14, 2014. Introducing the powerful new Curse mechanic, the Scourge Warlock […]

Upon booting up the Last Tinker the first thing that went through my head was WOW. This game looks and feels different from so many others that I have played, its visuals are striking, and its gameplay is very much like an old school platformer of old. To say I was impressed is a slight understatement.

I was worried however, if it would suffer from many of the same tropes that platformers have suffered from, I am pretty pleased to say it does not. Frequent check points abound, plenty of health pickups,, and the only slight difficulty is in learning timing, you have to watch sometimes for a few seconds to learn a rhythm before you run across.

I think however this game plays better if you use the controller enabled feature. I myself found no issues using the traditional keyboard and mouse setup, but it just feels not the same, that’s neither good nor bad it’s just a fact.

The plot is relatively simple. You have to help bring color back to a world that is slowly having it leached out by an evil force called the bleakness. This is a force that you accidently helped set in motion and as a result you are the only one who can do anything about it. You are a legendary figure called a Tinker, and only you can right what has gone wrong.

Along the way you gain power ups unlocked via new clothing items, you unlock new combat moves through vending machines, and as usual more of the plot is revealed and your ultimate destiny revealed. The combat is quick but easy to learn, and I like how each time you defeat a mini-boss, suddenly what was grey and leeched of all color, blooms almost like a flower right in front of your eyes. With plenty of in-jokes like Rob Boss, the greatest painter in colortown, who just so happens to look like another afro’d painter of legend, this game is funny and fun in all the best ways.

I really like this game, it hearkens back to platformers of old and yet still feels surprisingly fresh, with stunning graphics, great platforming, and interesting story it is a game that gamers of any age should feel comfortable playing, by themselves or for the older gamers, with their kids. There are honestly too few games that truly feel like they were made for everyone and not a core group. This game is a welcome change to the lineup. The Last Tinker is currently available on Steam and get a very high rating of 4.5/5.

The PlayStation 4 is getting a shiny new system update that will greatly enhance several features on the system, the update 1.70 dropped last night at midnight or as I like to call it, today. The features are […]

For World of Tanks 2014 is the year of transition. Starting with game update 9.0, titled New Frontiers, they plan to release a plethora of content throughout the year. With a focus on heavily updating the graphics and models, but not raising the pc requirements, WoT has proven itself as a triple A title, using a free to play model. Now for update 9.0 there are a ton of new features and as each new update rolls out they will add more and more, including with each new update a few new tanks to add to the already impressive roster. These new features are :

New high polygon models
12 tanks
Not to mention a texture pass on all existing current models of their over 200 tanks.

With a focus more on upgrading the system and making tweaks to the already phenomenal gameplay many of the updates will feature things such as enhanced physics, weather effects and gameplay modes. Now what does this all mean? Simply put 2014 is the year where WoT will attempt take North America by storm.

The new game modes in particular will appeal to new users and currently established ones. One of these new modes is called Stronghold. The aim of Stronghold is simple, grab an area, build it up with buildings and defensive weapons, and hold on to it by gathering resources and defending it with your clan. More than any other this mode is classic clans gameplay.

The second mode is Historical Battle mode, in which players can take place in battles from history that featured tanks. One of the interesting features of this mode is that players will only be able to use tanks that were present at the time of the real events and the teams will be decided by the nationality of said tanks used. The vehicle specs will be different from other game modes and each time will have a few larger heavier tanks, and several smaller lighter tanks. By going for accuracy and with a constantly rotating field of battle of with each update, 3 new fields of war with each one, not just the same few battles every time, this mode may prove to overwhelmingly be the most popular.

The last and finally Garage battle mode is the one still in development, there isn’t a lot known about it at this time, but they did tease some features that are currently not in use in any other modes, such as setting a lineup and something that many fans have been clamoring for, the respawn.

World of Tanks and indeed Wargaming.net is gearing up to make 2014 a banner year for them and their flagship title. With a new push into the North American market and a push into Central America with, new language support, this is a company and a game to watch. I know that I will be playing this game in the weeks and months to come. I will hopefully see you on the battlefield!

So here is the rollout of the hotness:

For the Virtual Console on Wii U :

Kirby & The Amazing Mirror – April is a month to remember with classic games launching each week! Summon Red, Yellow and Green […]

Defend the Jedi and Sith home worlds in new Level 55 Flashpoints, compete in the new Quesh Huttball Warzone and fight for control of the new Galactic Starfighter Battle Zone Denon in Game Update 2.7: […]

Earlier today EA and Waystone Games made a announcement that all players can now enter the Dawngate a MOBA style game still currently in development. To accomplish this simply, register, download the game to […]

Playstation Now promises that you can play your favorite games like you do everything else in your life, from watching movies and TV to listening to music. They are starting a streaming video game service.  My […]