Video Games | Gumballs Plays Games

You Don’t Know Jack arrives on the Xbox One with the Jackbox Party Pack

Posted on November 22, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

You Don’t Know Jack 2015 has made its way onto the Xbox One this week in the Jackbox Party Pack. The Jackbox Party Pack is a bundle of five party games for just $24.99 on the Xbox One. It includes You Don’t Know Jack 2015, Drawful, Word Spud, Lie Swatter and Fibbage XL.

All of the games make use of mobile devices (any phone or tablet) in place of controllers (You Don’t Know Jack can be played with a controller in single player mode only). When you launch a game you’ll see a room code on screen and anyone who wants to join in simply goes to Jackbox.tv on their device and types in the room code and their name / nickname and they’re in the game. This allows you to have as many players as you have devices since you’re not limited by the number of controllers you own. It’s a great way for anyone to join in on their own device.

The games will display questions or prompts on the TV screen while the players input answers on their device. For You Don’t Know Jack you’ll see the ABXY buttons on your device, while for other games like Fibbage you’ll type in your answer (in Fibbage you’re presented with a question and all the players must try to enter a lie they think the other players will choose. You get points when people pick your lie, and also if you happen to choose the one correct answer on the screen).

You Don’t Know Jack is a blast as always and completely worth the $24.99 price alone. The presentation is great and the game is a blast. My only complaint is it seems like there’s a minor delay during the Jack Attack section of the game. I’ve felt like I’ve tapped first only to lose out to another player a few times. Despite this the game is still enjoyable.

Fibbage is my second favorite game of the bundle and it can get quite hilarious. So far I’ve only played it with two players, and I’m sure adding additional players would increase the hilarity quite a bit.

Lie Swatter presents you with a series of statements and players must decide whether they’re truthful or a lie. You get points for answering correctly and quickly. Again the more players the better and Lie Swatter can support up to 100 players.

For $24.99 you’re getting a nice selection of party games, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Play Sunset Overdrive for FREE today

Posted on November 22, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

Microsoft is letting all Xbox Live Gold members on the Xbox One download and play Sunset Overdrive for free for 24 hours (Nov 22). If you like the game you can purchase it for $10 off this weekend only. Sunset Overdrive is an absolute blast and a refreshing new type of shooter with an entertaining story and enjoyable characters.

I definitely recommend checking it out and playing through a good junk of a great game for free today. All progress will be saved so you continue right where you left off if you purchase the game in the future. It’s worth noting that this is not a demo, but the entire game, and you can also unlock achievements while playing!

Halo Master Chief Collection matchmaking still not working

Posted on November 12, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

Halo Master Chief Collection’s matchmaking issues have rolled into day two unfortunately. After I got off work and got done at the gym it was nearly 8PM (MT) and I fully expected Halo’s issues to be ironed out by now, but alas matchmaking is still not running smoothly. I was met with the error message above (“The matchmaking process was not successful. Please try matching again.”) after about 30 seconds of searching for a Team Slayer match.

The most recent update by 343 was posted nearly two hours ago (another update should be coming rather soon):

Hopefully things will work out soon. Until then we wait. I guess I’ll check out Sunset Overdrive for now and maybe get back into Destiny if things aren’t up and running by this weekend.

Halo Master Chief Collection’s matchmaking issues and first impressions

Posted on November 11, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

Master Chief Collection is live today, but not without some issues. The game is currently suffering from matchmaking issues making it hard to find and get into multiplayer matches (I’ve been sitting at the screen above for 5 minutes trying to find a Halo 3 match).

We're aware of issues some have been having with matchmaking and we’re working around the clock, alongside the Xbox Live team, to address.

— Halo (@Halo) November 11, 2014

So far I’ve been able to play a handful of matches, however I’ve also noticed some of the matches have less than the maximum number of players in them (my last Halo 2 Team Slayer match was 3 vs 2). When it works the game is a blast. It’s been awesome getting reacquainted with the maps and nuances of each game and switching between the 4 Halo games with a touch of a button.

The menus are well designed and are incredibly quick and easy to navigate. You can select any of the campaigns (and any mission) in seconds or switch over to multiplayer with a flick of the analog stick and choose between a large variety of playlists spanning the four games.

There are playlists that just focus on a single game in addition to playlists that will switch you from game to game between matches.

There are also campaign playlists where you can choose to to play through a series of missions (or all of them) with friends.

I can’t wait to sink hundreds of hours into the four campaigns and hundreds of multiplayer maps! Hopefully the matchmaking issues get worked out soon, until then I’ll probably just play more of the campaign missions.

Having a blast with Advanced Warfare on Xbox One

Posted on November 4, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

I wasn’t initially planning on picking up Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but after seeing the early reviews and looking at some gameplay I decided by the end of the day yesterday to buy it. That turned out to be a wise choice. I’ve been having more fun with Advanced Warfare than I have with any shooter in quite awhile. The multiplayer is much more fast paced than recent Call of Duty games and it’s quite refreshing. If you take the best parts of Titanfall and the best of Call of Duty you end up with a game that feels nearly perfect, and that’s Advanced Warfare.

I want to say more, but don’t have the time just yet. I can say I played the first two campaign missions and enjoyed them much more than Ghosts and Black Ops II’s missions. I’ve played a handful of multiplayer matches and have had an absolute blast. Everything feels just right and the pace of matches is much improved over Ghosts.

I can’t wait to keep playing as the week goes on!

Not quite sure what happened there.

Just Dance 2015 and Dance Central Spotlight on Xbox One

Posted on October 25, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

Yesterday I played my first two Kinect games on the Xbox One. That’s not to say the Kinect hasn’t been useful, I love using it for voice commands, streaming, logging in, switching / snapping apps, changing channels, the list goes on and on. I just haven’t used it to play a Kinect game yet (I have used Kinect features in games and enjoyed it). Last night I downloaded both Just Dance 2015 and Dance Central Spotlight and enjoyed both quite a bit.

I had never played a Just Dance game before, but right from the start I was impressed. I really love the sleek and quick menus and the collection of songs available is quite enjoyable. The game features about 40 songs but you can buy more for $1.99 a song (we bought a handful including PSY’s “Gangam Style” which is so fun to dance to I’m surprised it wasn’t included in the game).

A look at the menu on Xbox One. You can navigate either with hand motions, voice commands or with a controller.

The dancing in Just Dance 2015 is simple enough to make it accessible to just about anyone, but it can be challenging in a fun way with some more complex moves (some even requiring you to get down on the floor, or hold another dancer). At the end of the song you’re presented with a highlight reel edited by the ‘autodance’ feature which will make you look as good as possible (but still quite goofy if you’re me).

You can choose to share your highlight reel with the Just Dance community and even Facebook if you like. At the moment, however, the Facebook functionality in Just Dance 2015 is not working on the Xbox One for many users. Once it launches the IE app to connect to Facebook there’s a URL redirect error. I’ve e-mailed Ubisoft support (as have many other users) but I haven’t seen a response yet.

My highlight reel from “Gangam Style”. Not the best dancer, but hey there was alcohol involved!

There’s some multiplayer functionality available in Just Dance 2015 as well. You can compete with other dancers by adding challengers and you’ll see their scores alongside yours throughout the song. These are pre recorded scores you’re competing against but it gives you an incentive to up your game. I’ve also received challenges in my Just Dance feed from other players. I assume the game is curating these challenges rather than being issued by the players, but I haven’t played enough to know for sure. You can also compete against live dancers in the World Dance Floor mode, however I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. When I was playing last night there were on average 25 dancers online in World Dance Floor mode at any given time throughout the evening.

Dance Central Spotlight is Harmonix’s dancing game available as a $9.99 download on Xbox One. As opposed to Just Dance which bundles 40 songs into a $50 package, Spotlight charges a minimal fee for the game and throws in a small sampler of songs (10 songs) and then allows you to purchase only the songs you want for $1.99 a song (some bundles are available for $3.49). I actually like this business model of charging just for the content you want. There are quite a few DLC songs available for download already with more to come (I picked up “Turn Down for What” and “Party Rock Anthem” so far and plan to pick up a few others).

Dance Central focuses more on a core set of moves and incorporates those moves into the various songs. The game wants you to learn those moves and master them as the difficulty raises and more and more moves are introduced. From my experience Just Dance has unique dances for each song and doesn’t reuse any routines, however this can lead to quite a bit of chaos (which can also be fun). Once you learn the moves of Dance Central it’s easy to nail routines and feel like you’re not just flailing limbs around like what tends to happen in Just Dance.

So far I’m enjoying both games quite a bit and they have me wanting to check out Harmonix’s Fantasia Music Evolved as well. I may end up picking Fantasia up in the few weeks to experience some more Kinect content. If you’re looking for some fun party games that make use of the Kinect I highly recommend checking out Just Dance 2015 and Dance Central Spotlight on the Xbox One.

Getting sucked into Clash of Clans

Posted on October 20, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

Clash of Clans became popular quite awhile ago, and I’m not even sure if many of those who first started talking about it still play it. I had always known very little about Clash of Clans and had convinced myself it probably wasn’t worth my time. From what I could tell it was just another take on the Simpsons: Tapped Out model where you’re trying to construct a cool town and the more you play the more you’re tempted to spend money on the game to expedite the building process (there’s not much to do while waiting for tasks to complete).

Yesterday for some odd reason I decided to finally download Clash of Clans on my iPad. Now I’m once again stuck in the mindset that if I’m not constantly putting my builders to work upgrading my town (camp? not sure what Clash players refer to their home base as) I’m essentially throwing away time and leaving my home unprepared for a siege.

A notification from Clash of Clans that’s 30 minutes old. That’s 30 minutes that builder could’ve been put to work doing something else!

So far the game is enjoyable, more so than I expected it to be. I’m a “noob” in every sense, I’m just getting my feet wet, but basically you build up your town and upgrade facilities that collect resources (elixir and gold) which you then use to upgrade more facilities, build new buildings or defenses and train troops.

It will take one hour and 1400 gold to upgrade this elixir collector to level 4, increasing its production rate by 200 per hour.

You use your troops to complete single player objectives where you can raid encampments in order to steal elixir and gold, and also earn stars based on how much damage you do before all of your troops are killed (3 stars if you completely destroy everything). You can also raid other player’s camps, however if you do so within your first three days of gameplay you also become vulnerable to invasion by other players (for the first three days you have a shield which prevents you from being attacked. You can also purchase additional shield time with gems).

I haven’t seen any of the player vs player combat yet since I’m still within my first three days of gameplay, so I can’t really comment on that, but I presume that’s where where real fun begins. I’m also not eligible to join a clan yet, so that’s another area of gameplay I can’t comment or speculate on.

My humble little home

I’m interested to learn more about the game, but for now I’m just working on upgrading my town as much as I can to prepare for the moment I become vulnerable to invasion in two days. I’ll admit I already spent $4.99 on the game to purchase 500 gems which were required to receive a third builder. Builders are what you use to construct and upgrade your facilities and I felt too limited with just the two builders you start out with. You can earn gems without spending any money, however it will take patience which I don’t quite have.

A look at Clash of Clan’s in app purchases

Do you play Clash of Clans? Have any advice for a newbie? How about the Star War’s version, Star Wars: Force Commander?

My first hour with Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox One)

Posted on September 30, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

It’s been quite awhile since two must buy games released on the same day, but the stars have aligned today in a sense with both Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Forza Horizon 2 seeing release. I had been quite excited for both these games and from my early impressions, neither has disappointed.

I absolutely love the Forza series, nothing comes close in the racing game genre. I never really enjoyed other ‘street’ or off the closed track racing games until the first Forza Horizon came around. Forza Horizon took everything great about the Forza series (authentic looking, sounding and handling cars, and all around great racing) and brought it off the track and it was a blast. I loved all of the different challenges in the world and the online multiplayer was amazing.

Forza Horizon 2 takes influence from Forza 5 and Forza Horizon and brings it to a new open world that’s absolutely stunning from what little I’ve seen of it so far.

First of all it’s worth noting that Drivatars return in Forza Horizon 2. I saw a lot of my friend’s drivatars in the first few races I did (they also show up in the open world) and since I only knew one other person to be playing Forza Horizon 2 so far it seems that they’re pulling Drivatars from Forza 5 and bringing them over to Forza Horizon 2 which is nice as it populates the world and gives you something more than just AI to race against.

Some other new additions to Forza Horizon include more realistic rain and cross country (off road) racing. The rain effects in Horizon 2 are pretty neat, especially while driving with the inside the car view (which honestly is the only view you should be using in Forza games!). You’ll even see your windshield wipers at work which is a neat little addition. Cross country races have you cutting through deep patches of grass and other plant life, navigating between trees (some of which are destructible) and other obstacles in between sections of asphalt or dirt road. It’s crazy looking out from within your car because you’ll find it hard to see anything and it’s an absolute thrill attempting to navigate between obstacles and other cars while trying to make your way to the front of the pack.

I have yet to try out any of the online features, but I’m excited to give them a try tomorrow. If they’re anything like the original Horizon I’m sure they’ll pack hours of fun.

Lastly, one of my favorite features from Forza Horizon is still around in Horizon 2. Everytime you level up you’ll get a chance to ‘spin the wheel’ where you can be rewarded with varying amounts of credits (including some large amounts) or even a brand new car! It’s a fun and addicting feature that’ll keep you racing toward that next driver level.

My first two hours with Shadow of Mordor (Xbox One)

Posted on September 30, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

Tonight I played about two hours of Shadow of Mordor on the Xbox One and enjoyed it quite a bit. I managed to kill off a few Captains, but also ran into some very sticky situations and managed to die three or four times already. I’ve had fun so far, but I started to get frustrated toward the end of my two hours.

I completed the first two story missions (or 2 of 3 that were available) and enjoyed those. I managed to die mostly because of mistimed button presses and the fact that I tend to play most video games poorly in the first place (unfortunately there’s no difficulty adjustment in Shadow of Mordor). I’m never any good at timing dodges right, especially when you not only have to time dodges with ‘A’ but also counters with ‘Y’. I’ll do alright if it’s just one or the other, but when I’m being attacked by different enemies and have to use both I just can’t get the hang of it.

Toward the end of my time with the game tonight I ran into a Captain who I didn’t have any intel on and probably shouldn’t have tried confronting him. He had some sort of ability that made my screen go red and constantly drained my health and I couldn’t figure out what was causing it or how to stop it. I’d run away and try to find some herbs to regain my health, but eventually he killed me off and I decided to take a break from the game for now.

I really like the idea of the Nemesis system, where enemies in the game can be promoted based on their actions and become stronger and gain new abilities if they defeat you in combat. You’ll be certain to face them again later and they’ll certainly remember you. Also if you happen to defeat an enemy they may also return, beaten, battered and scarred and ready for their revenge. It’s a pretty cool system that I think will add hours of exciting gameplay as you’re tempted to try to topple them all. It’s worth noting that the genesis system is only available on current gen consoles (Xbox One, PS4, PC). I can’t imagine how the game plays on last gen systems, as I think the genesis system is a core part of Shadow of Mordor and what sets it apart from other hack and slash games.

I look forward to diving deeper into Shadow of Mordor and hopefully figuring out how to overcome the Captain’s who haven slain me thus far.

Destiny has started to grow on me..

Posted on September 27, 2014 by GumballsPlaysGames

After quite a few more hours spent in Destiny I’m starting to enjoy it a bit more than I had initially. There are still problems, as I’ve stated before there absolutely needs to be some sort of voice chat (ideally limited in range so that it’s not overcrowded) in the open world and also in matchmade strikes and crucible matches. The lack of voice chat makes it feel like the entire world consists of AI bots who aren’t really human controlled at all.

That said, as a Halo fan I’m enjoying the Crucible. It’s satisfying in many ways, one of which is the fact that you get to bring your own guns into the fight. This makes everything feel all the more personal, even if there’s some sort of behind the scenes work to even the playing field. My favorite Crucible matches are the Control matches, which are basically 6 vs 6 three point king of the hill matches. When you get matched up with a good team there’s nothing more fun, especially if you get the chance to stay with those players for several rounds. Unfortunately the lack of voice chat again makes it feel as if I’m playing with a bunch of AI that occasionally acts human.

The story is still…Destiny. Not quite sure how to put it, but it’s a bunch of jibberish with the occasional cut scene spouting some nonsense or your flying Cortana cube spouting some nonsense during a loading screen. Every single mission follows the same format, infiltrate some place, find a terminal, defend, fight a boss, end of mission. This would ruin the game if the shooting wasn’t so satisfying.

There’s still no real loot drive in the game, at least for me. In games such as Diablo and Borderlands I’m constantly driven to try to find a better weapon to devastate hordes of enemies with. In Destiny no loot drop seems to make any significant difference at all. Sure once you hit level 20 you need to find legendary loot to increase your Light level (I just hit 20 today, so I can’t comment much on this process), but there’s no endless pull to cause you to keep playing like there is in Diablo and Borderlands.

All that said, I’m going to continue playing for awhile longer, probably until Master Chief collection and GTA V come out for the Xbox One.

Until then, I’ll again leave you with this: If you enjoy shooting things, Destiny may just scratch that itch. If you enjoy first person shooter multiplayer games The Crucible may give you what you’re looking for. Destiny excels at giving you stuff to shoot at and making it feel satisfying, but it’s not necessarily great at anything else. At least Halo had an enjoyable story alongside its lasting multiplayer and Borderlands gave you interesting characters and an endless supply of satisfying loot.