I played a little bit of the latest Forza Horizon 3 DLC, Hot Wheels and had an absolute blast with it! I didn’t know a lot about the expansion going into it, and mostly assumed it would just feature Hot Wheels cars, but they went all the way with it, right down to the orange plastic tracks that loop and turn in wacky ways! There’s so much attention to detail, and I especially love the mechanical sound the launchers make as you approach them (it sounds like a rollercoaster). I’m looking forward to checking out more of the game this weekend!
I hadn’t heard of the upcoming (May 19) game A Walk in the Dark until I happened across the trailer above last night, and I have to say the trailer took my breath away. Once it started showing gameplay I was a little put off (it looks a lot like Limbo, and I’m just not into those types of games) but the incredible music made kept me watching from beginning to end. I can’t say I’m interested to play the game, but I am going to buy the soundtrack.
For those interested, the game has been available on Steam for nearly four years (currently $6.99) and 83% of its 270 reviews on Steam are positive, resulting in a ‘very positive’ rating. I haven’t been able to find the price for the Xbox version, however it will be an Xbox Play Anywhere game.
It’s no secret that the Steam store can be a little crowded, and it seems like the new releases list can change every hour of the day. Therefore it’s easy for games to get lost in a swamp of releases (most seem to be visual novels) and never heard of again. I’ve decided to browse the new releases category on steam in an effort to try out new games that people might not have heard of yet and write about them. The first game I’m doing this for is Corroded, an early access game recently released on Steam by Encircle Games, a six man team out of Norway.
From what I understand the game is an eight player battle arena game. From their website the game is described as:
Corroded is an arena brawler inspired by the Warlocks mod from Warcraft 3, where two to eight players fight and push each other out of a shrinking arena surrounded by a hazardous environment. We supplement this by introducing dynamic levels, and focus on speed and a streamlined skill system, giving it a more arcade-like feel.
This sounds intriguing. I never played Warcraft III nor have I heard of the mod, but it seems to have become popular again as I came across another game in development based on the mod, Ruin. According to their Kickstarter page, Ruin was shooting for a March 2017 release, however their most recent update indicates that the game is only in a pre-alpha stage right now. This may work out in Corroded’s favor, if there truly is going to be a market for this type of game.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to truly test out Corroded as of yet. I launched the game after midnight Mountain Time tonight only to find myself to be the only player logged into the game. I did, however, poke around the menus and launch a custom game so that I could run around and everything I’ve seen so far seems solid. The menus are simple, but effective and everything worked smoothly. The game didn’t have any hiccups, and ran at over 300fps while I poked around an arena by myself.
The game is selling for $12.99, has been on Steam since April 26, and currently has 33 reviews (17 in English, and 3 that Steam counts) all of which are positive (note that most of the reviewers received the product for free). The $12.99 early bird fee grants access to all characters, both current and future, and all the “early access” skins. The game already has menus to buy in game currency which can be used to unlock characters and skins, which makes me believe that the game may end up going for a League of Legends rotating free character sort of thing.
Until I have a chance to play a round or two with other players there’s not much else I can say, so hopefully I’ll be able to find someone to play with at a better time of day this weekend. I recorded a short video of me running around an arena by myself if you’re curious to see what that looks like check it out below.
I’ve finally gotten to play a few rounds of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and have had a pretty good time with it. My strategy mostly revolves around finding a house early on and hiding in a corner somewhere, which might not sound exciting, but it certainly provides a tense experience. One game I was huddled behind a set of stairs as the circle got smaller and smaller, and finally I heard footsteps get closer and closer. Then a door opened. More footsteps. The intruder walked up the stairs right over me, and I debated whether to stand my ground or try to sneak up behind them. Luckily the bombs starting falling all around us and I used the cover of the explosions to scurry up the stairs unnoticed. There he was, staring out the window as I pulled out my pistol and fired a few shots into his back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to kill him and he was better armed than me. He spun around and pointed his rifle at me as I quickly retreated back down the stairs and stupidly ran back underneath them again. I was backed into a corner, but I didn’t hear any footsteps. I figured he had to be at the top of the stairs looking down, using leverage to his advantage.
I hid there practically holding my breath for a few minutes, but then the circle moved away from us and I knew I’d have to move. I watched the timer tick down figuring maybe I could wait him out and if he left first I could get the jump on him. Finally with 30 seconds left until the blue circle of death would start to creep toward us, he popped off a few smoke grenades, engulfing the house in a dense fog. I decided to try to use the cover to my advantage and quietly sneak outside. I made it out the door! But my victory was short lived, as I was quickly shot in the back and killed.
Needless to say, I’ve been having a blast with Battlegrounds, even though the best I’ve ever finished is 16th place. There’s just something immensely satisfying about knowing you’re well hidden as someone runs right past you allowing you to get the jump on them. Unfortunately, it seems every time I find myself in an advantageous position, someone with more patience has been lurking just behind and takes me out after I spring on an opportunity.
Prey
I hadn’t heard much about Prey leading up to its release. I didn’t even know what type of game it was. I’m not sure whether that’s a symptom of a lack of pre-release coverage (I get 90% of my gaming news from Giant Bomb) or whether I just passively ignored any coverage out of lack of interest. I had never played the original Prey, nor have I played System Shock, which I think further contributed to my misunderstanding of the game. I ended up watching a Twitch stream on Thursday night and the game looked incredibly pleasing visually. I enjoyed watching the player explore the space station, and I figured it would be a shooter with a cool environment. I didn’t stick around long enough to see any encounters before I bought it on Steam.
Once I finally launched the game I was quite excited. It looked great, though I had to tone the settings down to a sort of medium-high mix on my GTX 1060 and AMD FX8320 (oc’ed to 4.0Ghz) to get a better framerate. Once I encountered my first mimic it scared the crap out of me. I had no clue what I was getting into, which probably worked to the games advantage, because from that point on I was absolutely on edge. I’m not huge into horror games, and I especially dislike jump scares, so after about an hour or so I had to turn the game off.
I’d like to play more, but I’m not sure how much I can actually handle.
DOTA 2
For some reason after watching Brad Shoemaker purchase the International 2017 Battle Pass on a Giant Bomb stream (Unprofessional Fridays) I decided to launch the game and do the same for myself. I haven’t played DOTA since last year’s International, and even then I found the game incredibly difficult to get the hang of, and I’ve played poorly in every match I’ve played. Last weekend I played a few matches and my teams actually won 2 out of the 3 matches I played. Unfortunately, I didn’t contribute much at all (maybe other than being a distraction), as I didn’t land a single kill all weekend. Still, I find myself wanting to play more. I’ll probably try to play a few bot matches until I can start landing kills before I jump into matchmaking again, however.
Modern Warfare Remastered
After playing some Black Ops II via backwards compatibility I found myself wanting more traditional Call of Duty, so I ordered the Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition on Amazon for $55. It was a nostalgic trip to get back into Modern Warfare, even though I’ve gotten absolutely destroyed in every match that I’ve played. I can’t seem to get aiming down with the analog stick, and I half wish I had bought it for PC instead (though I’m sure I’d still get destroyed).
Games I still need to play
I’d like to finish up Telltale’s Batman, and after seeing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 I picked up that Telltale game as well. I’m not sure if I’m liking it so far, however. I’ve played the first two chapters, and haven’t really enjoyed the gameplay.
I need to work on Grim Fandango and Full Throttle on PS4, and then there’s my ever growing backlog that includes: Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild (Wii U), Tales of Berseria, Uncharted 4, Yakuza 0 and Until Dawn among many more.
I first found out about the game PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS last week after seeing it played on Giant Bomb, and their continued coverage of the game has made me unusually excited for some random, non AAA game on Steam. The game unleashes up to 100 players into a huge playground (or ‘battleground’ if you will) and it’s up to the player to scavenge for weapons, armor and supplies while trying to survive until the end.
This was the idea that sold me on Day Z initially, but I could never get past the complexity of the game. Battlegrounds seems to be much simpler to dive into, and it also looks to run reasonably well. I tried it out on my laptop (Acer Aspire V15 Nitro), but it doesn’t run as well as I’d like it to so I’ve mostly avoided playing it so that I can dive in using my desktop once I return home.
Until then, I’m going to continue to enjoy watching the guys at Giant Bomb screw around in the game as they try to be the last man standing.
This week I started watching the popular (and possibly controversial, if Facebook posts such as “Don’t let your kids watch… are to be believed) Netflix drama ’13 Reasons Why’, and I can’t help but think back to my time spent playing Life is Strange with every moment. I think a lot of it has to be the way that the characters interact with each other. The playful dialog, specifically between Hannah and Clay, reminds me a lot of the way that Max and Chloe talked to each other in Life is Strange.
The style and the way that music is used in ’13 Reasons Why’ has also been reminding me of the wonderful soundtrack from Life is Strange. I’m only on the third episode of the show, but after I’ve finished each episode I’ve found myself logging onto Twitch to see if anyone is streaming Life is Strange (luckily, so far there have been plenty of streams). I think by the time I finish the show I’ll end up playing through the game once more to relive the wonderful journey.
I’ve enjoyed the show a ton so far, and I’m excited to continue watching (though I tend not to binge watch so it’ll probably take me a few weeks). I don’t really have much else to say, but was kind of curious if the show has reminded anyone else of Life is Strange, or if I’m just crazy.
Before I left for my trip to Virginia which I’m currently on (for work), I started playing Thimbleweed Park on the Xbox One, and had a blast with it. I didn’t get very far, but the voice acting, art and overall design were all excellent, and I enjoyed every moment I played. I brought my PS4 with me for this trip (mostly to work on Persona 5), and while browsing the store last week I saw that Day of the Tentacle Remastered and Grim Fandango Remastered were both on sale. I ended up downloading both, and finally started Day of the Tentacle this weekend.
I never really got into adventure games during my early PC gaming days. I remember fooling around with a few King’s Quest games, but never really being able to figure out what to do and in the end I’d go back to playing games like Wheel of Fortune, Ghostbusters and various FMV games (I remember this Battleship game that came on something like 14 disks!). Therefore Thimbleweed Park served as a way to ease into the older style of adventure game that became popular in the early 90’s. It introduced me to a simplified version of adventure game mechanics that carried over quite well to Day of the Tentacle.
One thing that immediately struck me upon starting Day of the Tentacle was the stellar music and voice acting. I didn’t expect the game to sound so good! I loved all of the voice acting, and the high quality remastered art helped bring the world to life. I was in love! It also helped that the early puzzles were pretty easy to solve, and things got moving quicker than I expected. Unfortunately, after an hour or two things slowed down and I found myself getting stuck pretty often, unable to advance the story. I ended up peeking at a guide a few times to keep things moving smoothly, and there were certainly some solutions I would have never figured out.
The game’s controls were simplified enough to make it playable on a console, but I did find moving the cursor around to be a little slow at times. Also the sluggish character movement got annoying when I knew exactly where I needed to go next, but had to click through several screens to get there. That’s one thing Thimbleweed Park improved on with its sprint button (I know I’m comparing a 2017 game to a nearly thirty year old game, but it’s hard not to do).
Overall I enjoyed the experience, and look forward to checking out Grim Fandango next. Ultimately, I’m pretty excited to get back home and dig back into Thimbleweed Park after getting my feet wet with some games it takes inspiration form.
I’ve put about ten hours into Persona 5 since its release, and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. At first I was having a blast, as the combat felt solid, the flashy graphics were pleasing and it all just felt good. But as I’m nearing the end of the first dungeon I’m starting to feel like it’s becoming more of a chore to slog through. The dungeon is huge, and requires multiple “days” (in game) to conquer. So far I’ve left and re-entered the dungeon four times. Maybe I’m getting a little burnt out, but the enemy encounters started to feel the same, and I’ve followed the same series of moves to take them out over and over again with little payoff. In fact, last night I finally lowered the difficulty to ‘safe’ mode (which is irreversible) to get through the combat quicker.
I’m hoping that once I get through the first dungeon the game will begin to grow on me, but right now I’m a little down on it. On the plus side, I’ve enjoyed the main cast of characters so far, yet at the same time I’ve become incredibly annoyed with their repetitive banter inside the dungeon (I heard Morgana utter the same line six times in a row last night during an encounter).
I should be able to finish the first dungeon tonight, so we’ll see how things go after that.
When Oculus announced their price cut recently ($100 off both the headset and the Touch controllers) I knew it wouldn’t be long until I finally dove into VR. Previously, the $800 price point was definitely too steep, but the $200 cut made it much more approachable (though still quite expensive). For awhile I thought about going with a Playstation VR as a first step into the world of VR, but with the Oculus price cut it seemed like a no brainer to spend an extra $100 on a more capable system.
Set up
I was excited to bring everything home, however I quickly found out how much of a headache the setup could be. Not only did I have to move my desktop into the living room, but at first the sensors were not playing nice with some of my USB ports. After some tinkering around I got everything running, but I didn’t want to leave my desktop in the living room long term. I ordered a bunch of USB extension cables, an HDMI extension cable and an HDMI repeater, hoping to leave my desktop in the office area while extending the Rift out into the living room. Unfortunately, this setup proved to be difficult as well. Eventually I got it working, however if I backed out to the Oculus menu the display would black out and I’d have to disconnect and reconnect the headset to get it working again. Not an ideal solution.
Next, I decided I would move the desktop to the living room to allow for a direct connection to the Oculus, and run extension cables into the office to connect my monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard. It’s not an ideal solution, but I tried to cover the wires as best I could and after a few complaints from my wife (sorry!) everything has gone smoothly.
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The VR experience
The introduction / tutorial experience after you get through the initial set up blew me away. It felt so natural to reach out and pick stuff up with the Touch controllers, and I had a huge smile on my face as I just threw things around and watched them fly through the space and interact with other objects. After that I jumped into Job Simulator and had a blast, but I think the experience suffered since I watched videos of other people playing and very little came as a surprise (for example, I already knew that when you scanned objects on the copier it spit out 3D replicas).
Next I fired up Rec Room, and that’s where I had some of the coolest experiences in VR to date. Just interacting with everyone in the locker room is a fun experience, but once I jumped into some games with people it was a blast. For example, the first time I jumped into disc golf everything felt like a normal game of disc golf, until on a whim one of the guys I was competing against decided to lean down and nudge my disk along the ground with both hands. It was funny to watch happen, and we both started laughing as he pushed the disc all the way to the hole where I picked it up and dropped it into the net. Best of all, the nudges didn’t count as strokes!
Everything in VR just feels so natural. In paddle ball I found myself doing a little dance when I would score, without even thinking that my opponent could see my dance. He then mimicked my dance when he scored and that’s when it really clicked that VR allows for an entirely different type of interaction with people. It’s not just voices through a headset, it’s hand and body motions as well. You can throw your racket in the air, or gently lie it on the ground. You can look at your racket in disbelief after a missed shot, and all the body language translates perfectly into VR for others to see.
Robo Recall has been another great VR experience so far. The game has some real polish, and looks beautiful in VR. The game has caused me to jump in surprise as robots have snuck up on me, and freak out as spider-like robots crawled toward me. The shooting feels great, and it’s awesome to pull guns out of holsters on your hips every time you need more ammo. Speaking of shooting, I also played some SUPERHOT VR, and dang does it feel good to shoot in that game!
Overall, I’ve been having a blast in VR and can’t wait to see how the platform continues to develop as more time passes and more people gain access to the technology.
My PC’s specs are below for those who might have a similar setup. Everything has run smoothly on my system.
Nvidia GTX 1060FE
AMD FX8320 (overclocked to 4GHz)
16GB RAM
Gumballs Plays Games 