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obsidiancreates · 4 years

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Okay so i watched SnapCube’s Resident Evil 2 dub.

So I never actually watched Mark’s playthrough of that, so this was the first time seeing all the uh, the nastiness.

But. It gave me... and idea for a game. A disgusting, disturbing, horrific, skin-crawling horror game.

Personally, those don’t scare me much. I’m way more frightened of what I can’t see than what I can see in detail. Like um... that Firewatch game? Scared the shit out of me, way worse than any gore-or-gross based horror game I’ve seen.

So anyway, about my game idea.

It’s a similar style to RE, horror-shooter-adventure type of thing. For the first chunk of gameplay, that seems too be it. Collecting guns and stuff, using that to kill monsters, trying to figure out what’s going on.

And then. You meet an evil scientist in this lab where all the bad shit started. And you find out that it’s some weird fleshy blob thing, probably from another dimension, and the lab was experimenting on and with it.

Well it turned out the thing could make parasite-type creatures. Just like... birth them, from it’s gross fleshy-ness. So the scientists started studying those.

Yeah, those things are what made the monsters. It basically gets into people and turns them into monsters and makes them apart of this blobs hive-mind kinda thing.

And then the people-turned-monsters, at a certain point of horrible you-an’t-tell-that-was-once-human, can spew out the parasites as well. Probably through like, a nasty monster mouth or something disturbing like that.

The scientist, he’s not infected. But he also doesn’t want to kill the thing. He thinks it’s fascinating, beautiful even, what it can do to people. You know, because this is a horror game and he’s an evil scientist and like there’s got to be some kind of human antagonist.

The scientist and the hero (player character) fight. And then! The scientist grabs one of his live specimens of the parasites and lets it loose onto the protagonist. This is a cutscene. You cannot prevent this. The protagonist gets infected, and slowly starts turning into a monster.

The second part of the game!

The protagonist is now turning into a monster. But, they still have their right mind, at least for now. They learn about a cure that will kill off the parasite, in another lab a few towns away.

As their infection worsens, they mutate absolutely grotesquely. Like the doctor scientist guy in the RE game! :D See, that’s how RE inspired this, I’ve always thought of having a game like this (mostly thanks to Halo 3, I wanted a version where you can play as a Flood and just fuck everything up) but never had a clear idea. It was always just “Good guy slowly becomes monster and tries to find a way to stop it”.

The infections rate is affected by style of gameplay, actions, and choices! The protagonist has abilities and powers that come from their infection, but using those worsens the mutations. They’re stronger than guns, though. The protagonist also has more health the more they mutate, and if it gets far enough, they develop health regenerating powers.

The more mutated you are, the less likely it is that people will talk to or trust you. They may even attack you!

There’s also bits, this part is mostly inspired by Halo 3, where the flesh-blob talks to the protagonist. Usually where there’s a cutscene showing the mutations happening (I figured I might as well lean into it, the guy in RE was disgusting and horrible but like kinda cool in terms of a good gore-like body horror villain? So yeah) and it’s saying creepy things about “Stop resisting” and “The more you fight it the longer it takes and the more it hurts” and all that. The typical “evil psychic monster” bullshit, you know?

So the halfway point of the game. The hero has found the lab, gotten to the cure, but, uh-oh! The evil scientist who got them infected in the first place is there! And he’s taking the cure and the files on how to make more of it!

Another fight.

Depending on how mutated you are, there’s two ways things can go: You get the cure and go on a typical path of saving the world with it.

Or you don’t. If you’re too mutated and monster-like, during the fight the hero character keeps hearing the flesh-blob. They’re enraged at what the scientist has done to them, and the scientist is going on about how beautiful they are. In their rage, the hero ends up destroying the cure and file.

They end up pining the scientist down, and then, a parasite comes out of their mouth or something. I don’t know, but they’ve reached the point of no return. The scientist gets infected, and the hero fully looses themself to the flesh blob.

The rest of the game plays out as the hero, now a near-mindless monster and fully part of the hive-mind, going around to finish infecting the rest of the town. They’re super gross, I don’t know exactly how but I’m thinkin’ that whole “human head is now hanging limply to the side of monster head” thing from the one stage of the RE scientist might come into play.

There’s still like. Puzzles and challenges and enemies and stuff. Like other humans who are infected but still have their own minds, and of course normal humans too.

That route ends with the player infecting the last human, and then leaving this destroyed and nasty town with an army of other monsters to go and take over the rest of the world.

Bad ending, for sure.

The good ending of course kills all the monsters, maybe some sort of super-healing agent is somehow developed from what’s left of the monsters. All is well, and the player leaves the town a hero, happy and relived everything is over.

I like this idea. Wouldn’t that be fun? Halfway through a game the player becomes a villain/monster? Every game, the player always stays the hero, stays human and in their right mind, and that’s nice but... not super interesting, plotline-wise. I think this is a fun idea!

What do you guys think?

I have no skill in coding or anything by the way. Literally just a concept. This probably won’t ever get made but... whatever, I want to know if you think it would be fun anyway!

#gore tw #body horror tw

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dumbfinntales · 4 years

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I beat Darksiders Genesis last weekend and gotta say, that was far more enjoyable than Darksiders 3. While Genesis is great it’s still somewhat lacking, but what they accomplished with such a lackluster budget is something noteworthy.

Despite the looks Darksiders Genesis is not an action RPG, in fact it’s not RPG at all. The game plays exactly like a Darksiders game, but from a top down perspective. It sure is an interesting artistic choice, but hey, it works. You run around beating up hordes of demons all the while exploring dungeons, solving puzzles and take on intimidating bosses. There’s plenty of collectibles to find and in classic DS fashion you can come back to earlier stages to find some goodies. To my glad relief the abyssal armor was in the game. And I didn’t need to buy DLC for that, lookie that!

The main point of this game is obviously Strife, the best horseman. They should have called this game Strifesiders: Strifes Very Own Game. I played most of the game as him because he’s new, and while I did dabble around as War you can’t beat Mr. Rooty tooty point and shooty. Playing as Strife is like playing a twin stick shooter which was honestly pretty fun. Strife also had some melee strikes that slow enemies down and you can also find special ammo. Although I ended up only using the electricity shot because it’s so much better than anything else. Strife was fun to play and he had a fun personality. A bit like Deadpool, but not as crude. Throughout the game I could only wonder how he would play in a main series entry. Probably like a 3rd person shooter with some melee combat? I hope the hotstreak mechanic makes it way into the future game, it’s neat. As for War, well he plays just like he did in DS1. Although he has these enchantments that affect his sword and they’re pretty neat.

Seeing the world of Darksiders from such an early angle was truly fascinating. Before the apocalypse and when the horsemen were doing the bidding of the council. War was actually pretty interesting in this game. I never really liked War back in DS1 because he was just always this super serious brooding badass and that made him very dull in my eyes. But his interaction with his brother, who’s pretty much the polar opposite, made him more of a character beyond serious mctoughguy. Despite the games budget there was surprisingly a lot of dialogue between characters that built them up very well. Samael was amazing as always and Vulgrim was a little bit more than a glorified checkpoint. The new baddie demon Moloch was interesting, at least design and boss battle wise. The final fight was pretty badass, gotta admit. And the music was great.

But where does the game fall? Despite the game being fun it does lack the essential Darksiders feel due to the camera perspective, and it also limited many of the bosses. While some bosses were neat idea wise, the execution wasn’t that great. For example, Astarte. She could’ve been an AMAZING fight if this was a 3D mainline entry. But here she just kinda runs around in a circle while summoning hordes of undead enemies. Most bosses seem to summon a bunch of enemies. I only found the final boss to be fun because it actually felt like a classic Darksiders boss fight. No bullshit enemy summons, doesn’t stand still like a giant “shoot me” target and has a big ass sword that he intend to shove up your arse.

Oh and there’s also platforming. Called the leviathans landing or something, but I never bothered to finish it because it sucked ass. The first section alone is enough to make your mouth foam with rage because your character keeps sliding off the pillars when you think you landed just right. Honestly a really sloppily designed challenge that shouldn’t be there. Thankfully it’s optional. Also the aether spark puzzles can suck my nuts WHO THOUGHT THOSE WERE A GOOD IDEA? Did one of the devs hate their playerbase? Those puzzles pissed me the fuck off and controlling that auto flying ball through a bullshit maze was the most unfun thing I’ve forced myself through in a long time. Fuck the aether spark.

As spin off title that expands the Darksiders universe, Genesis is great! As a Darksiders game it’s, eh, pretty alright. I had more fun with it than I did with DS3 that’s for sure. Darksiders genesis gets a HORSE out of 10.

#darksiders #a review type of deal

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brothermouzongaming · 5 years

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Divisiveness in Rage 2

What little promotional material there was for Rage 2 interested me. The idea of a nitro-fueled FPS surrounding an open world and a heavy power fantasy. I wasn’t expecting an enthralling story with deep and rich characters that would stitch me into the fabric of the world created. I was expecting a rip-roaring hail of bullets in the shape of a gun the likes of which I would ride across the map destroying everything that did so much as exhale in my presence. In short, that is what I got but it’s quite mixed. The “boots on the ground” combat, and I use that term lightly, is smooth as hell and lets you the player take on the various mobs and gangs of the wasteland in the way you want. The vehicular combat is more sparse and anecdotal in the sense that they are typically randomly occurring events as opposed to the convoy routes. The world itself is big but not Horizon Zero Dawn or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey “oh my god how did they even fit all this on one disc” big, it’s more than manageable. The biomes are varied and impressive in detail despite some being more vacant than I’d like. All in all, it’s at the very least better than the bland world of Rage 1, and at best it’s a gorgeous backdrop for the best FPS action since Doom 2016.

Anger Surrounds

There isn’t a lot in the way of introduction and it’s cause the game and it’s creators understand what you’re here for: shooty bang. You literally pick a gender and are handed a gun. After the first big firefight, the world is literally open to you. This exploration is encouraged because you don’t gain abilities or weapons unless you find Arks which are silos scattered around the map. Normally I’d be mad about another icon cluttering the map but it’s at least a way of getting stronger while discovering the hovels and holes your enemies hide in, grabbing some cash and feltrite (upgrade currency) along the way. It’s essentially the best version of the Far Cry towers ever.

The world is very pretty both graphically and from an art direction aspect. Boggy swamps, desert, rocky canyons, and even suburbia is sprinkled into the colorful and sometimes striking scenery of the world around you. Some structures are established like roadblocks, resource stations, or mutant nests, some are just dressing to fill out the world, but the best is the elaborate gang camps that go from close quarters combat to open courtyards that have you working with cover and elevation. Most main and side mission areas appear to be carefully designed to be engaging set pieces that vary from open lots littered with obstacles to break up the battlefield and enhance the functionality of some abilities. If the map itself doesn’t grab you, the way the world is designed to make combat as fun as possible definitely will.

Walker Wasteland Ranger tonight at 9

Rage 1 very much gave you the feeling of having your back against the wall. In Rage 2 if you ever find yourself in that situation you push off that wall and crush whatever is in your way into misy and gristle. You are the baddest thing breathing and everything in this game is about making you feel that. I can’t tell if the progression is deep or cleverly padded and that might be fine by me, I haven’t decided yet. When you first see how many currencies there are in the game it makes anyone that knows what AAA games have been doing lately sweat profusely. Fortunately, Rage 2 gives you plenty of opportunities to load up on the kind of cash you spend in stores, the kind on upgrades, weapon skins and mods, it's all here for you to take when you want it you just have to kill a bunch of baddies to get it. Thankfully there isn’t a single gun that doesn’t feel incredible and unique. From the way the rifle spits a volley or the kick from the shotgun; all of them are a dream and when used in tandem with the abilities it makes for very enticing gameplay. The abilities span all aspects of combat and their refresh time doesn’t allow them to be spammed but lets a player that bounces from skill to skill always have one refresh by the time the effect of the current one wears off. They really found a way for the guns to play into abilities and vice-versa which only makes spicing up combat easier. In Destiny when you throw a grenade, that’s it. Did you use your melee? Oh that’s cool but, that’s also it. In Rage 2 I can mix up abilities to create different means of destruction and death in a much more satisfying way. Even the more nuanced abilities like the Rush and Focus are used to bolster the minimal downtime firefights give you.

From McQueen to Mater

The sixteen vehicles are divisive stars of Rage 2 and it really shows, alongside the facelifted combat, that Id and Avalanche tried to not lose sight of what the original game was focussed around. This rendition’s vehicular combat is much better with weighty pit maneuvers and pretty smart auto tracking from turrets. Alongside this, the vehicles simply must be redone Mad Max vehicles Avalanche never got to use or something cause they just work in a way Bethesda hasn’t been able to claim in a long time. The Phoenix, your signature ride, is the best of both worlds with it being quick and tanky with a litany of additions you can make to it. You’ll see vehicles that have no weapons (why would you even), some speedsters that drop nuke mines behind them, a tank that is slower than frozen shit but also practically indestructible and armed to the teeth. There is fast travel but there is also the Icarus which is a hoverbike and though it can handle like a shopping cart with one wing (more on that later). When it does work its nice to get to where you’re going quicker meanwhile not missing out on any points of interest along the way to where you’re going. Vehicular combat is serviceable and engaging once you get the controls under your fingers.

rAGED

I don’t have too many issues with this game, some are typical nitpicks but others are definitely more egregious. The world though colorful and varied is very “basic open world game” format, I was kind of hoping for some kind of expansion on a version of game we are wildly overly saturated with. The mini games like MobTV and races (which make a comeback from the original) are great but the typical icon littered map is a little draining at times. Which brings me to the endgame because with consideration of just how last gen this game seems to be design wise, I fear they didn’t think about something as “modern” as having an endgame model outside of the season pass and totally unnecessary “live service” content drops. I feel like they missed their own mark and could’ve really populated the world with quite a few more enemies but instead, there are a lot of times where it’s actually quite isolated even in some intriguing areas.

Oh, and every situation that yields dialogue in the open world is wildly repetitive like the writers could not be fucked to give the character anything more than the one decent line you get to hear when approaching a mutant nest, gas station, or bandit hideout or the mobile trader oh my god it’s absolutely torturous especially when you don’t feel like returning to a town and they typically come around fairly consistently.

Back to the Icarus flying bike thing. Mother Fuck that thing can be absolutely unbearable. You see the right trigger merely starts the engines with minor altitude control, the left trigger lowers yourself. The vehicle is supposed to identify altitude and the height of oncoming structures and mountain faces on its own and adjust automatically. But it doesn’t and you’re often sitting there like a fucking idiot ramming into every mountain and building you come across. Why didn’t they map an ascend and descend control to the face buttons? How did no one catch how lopsided that thing controls?

Let’s continue to discuss vehicles, shall we? I talked about the good of the actual combat and the weapons it comes with. What I didn’t talk about was how the controls for said vehicles go from tight and responsive to sludgey and “too fast for the game”. It’s like the vehicle is going too fast for your controller. So many times I’ve gone sailing over the cliffside curve or undercutting and completely killing my momentum. The margin for error is really thin.

The progression system for weapons is...suspect. On the surface, it’s deep, you unlock tiers of upgrades with feltrite and then use upgrade/mod tokens to select the actual mod itself. It seems really unnecessary to have to purchase the ability to spend your tokens to upgrade your weapon. Just typing that made my brain fuzzy, it’s too many steps. At least with the skills each tier in itself comes with a boost to that specific skill but with weapons, you’re literally just adding steps for now real reason. Thankfully there’s no connection to monetization or anything like that. What it does have though is a premium currency for weapon skins which....whoopie...but thankfully that really is the extent of it. Not that it’s okay at all.

Conclusion

People are gonna compare this game to Far Cry New Dawn and I don’t believe many should give too much thought to that comparison. Outside of the bright post-apocalyptic setting (an aesthetic Rage 2 established first for the record), I feel like Rage 2 is more consistent in what it sets out to deliver. Not to mention the combat is just head and shoulders better in Rage 2 and if you go in knowing you won’t leave with a story that changed your life or even really impact you at all but instead expect a white knuckle shooter designed to keep you on your toes and keep the kill count increasing. This game is fun and once this goes on sale there will literally be no excuse.

tl;dr I give Rage 2 an 7 but I can’t stress this enough this is one of the best First Person Shooters I’ve ever played from a mechanics standpoint. The game appears to be this good despite the rest of the game design and execution.

#Rage 2 #bethesda game studios #id software #avalanche studios #video games #gaming

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gaming-rabbot · 5 years

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Salmon Run and Presentation

A (not so) brief dissertation on narrative framing in video games, featuring Splatoon 2

With the holidays in full swing, I took advantage of a deal one day when I went into town, and finally got my hands on Splatoon 2. Having loved the prior game as much as I did, waiting this long to get the sequel felt almost wrong. But like many another fellow meandering corpus of conscious flesh, I am made neither of time nor money.

Finally diving in, I figured I might take this excuse to remember that I write game reviews, sometimes. You know, when the tide is high, the moon blue, and the writer slightly less depressed. I ended up scrapping my first couple drafts, however. You see, a funny thing was happening; I kept veering back into talking about Salmon Run, the new optional game mode the sequel introduces.

Also I might look at the Octo Expansion later, on its own. After I get around to it…

Look, the base game already has a lot of content to explore, and as previously stated, I am sadly corporeal, and not strung together with the metaphysical concept of time itself.

My overall thoughts, however, proved brief, so I’ll try to keep this short.

(Mild spoilers coming along.)

Gameplay wise, I think the story mode is much improved upon by handing you different weapons for certain levels which were specifically built with them in mind. Whereas the prior game left you stuck with a variant of the starter splattershot all the way through. This keeps things interesting, pushes me outside of my comfort zone, and it’s a good way to make sure players will come from a well-informed place when deciding what weapon they want for multiplayer; which, let’s face it, is the real meat of these games and where most players are going to log the most time.

I also love the way bosses are introduced with the heavy drums and rhythmic chants and the dramatic light show. It endows the moment with a fantastic sense of gravitas, and manages to hype me up every time. Then the boss will have an aspect of their design which feels a bit silly or some how rather off, keeping the overall tone heavily grounded in the toony aesthetics the series already established for itself.

Narratively, I felt rather okay about the story aspect of Story Mode. The collectible pages in the levels still have a certain amount of world building, though this time it seems more skewed toward explaining what pop culture looks like in this world, such as, an allusion to this world’s equivalent to Instagram.

Cynical as it is…

That’s definitely still interesting in its own right, though perhaps it’s less of a revelatory gut-punch as slowly piecing it together that the game takes place in the post-apocalypse of Earth itself, and the inklings copied ancient human culture.

We still got some backstory for this game’s idol duo, though. And that, I appreciate. It means Pearl and Marina still feel like a part of this world, rather than seeming obligatory for the sake of familiarity, given the first game had an idol duo as well.

Meanwhile, perhaps it is a bit obvious that Marie’s cousin, Callie, has gone rogue, and that she is the mysterious entity cracking into the radio transmissions between her and Agent 4. If I recall correctly, that was a working theory that came about with the first trailer or two. That, or she had died.

As soon as Marie says aloud she wonders where Callie has gone, I knew right away. And that’s just in the introduction.

That said, on some level, after stomaching through certain other games and such that actively lie or withhold information to force an arbitrary plot twist for plot twist sake, it feels almost nice to go back to a narrative that actually bothers to foreshadow these things. Plus, having gotten already invested in Callie as a character from the first game, I still felt motivated to see the story through to find out why she went rogue. And, loving the Squid Sisters already, there was a hope in me that she could be redeemed, or at least understood. In terms of building off the prior game’s story, Splatoon 2 is moderately decent.

Also, I mean, c’mon. The big narrative drive might be a tad predictable, but hey, this game is for kids. It’s fine.

That, I think, is something I love the most about Splatoon. Despite feeling like you’re playing in a Saturday morning cartoon, and being aimed primarily at children, it doesn’t shy away from fairly heavy subjects. Such as the aforementioned fact that the humans are all long dead and you’re basically playing paintball in the ruins of their consumerist culture.

Which brings me to what fascinates me so much about Splatoon 2: the way in which Salmon Run is framed.

You see, on the surface, Salmon Run appears to be your typical horde mode; a cooperative team (typically comprised of randoms) fights off gaggles of foes as they take turns approaching their base in waves. Pretty standard for online shooters these days, as was modernly popularized by Gears of War 2, and Halo ODST.

I say “modernly,” as the notion of fighting enemies as they approach in waves is not exactly a new concept for mechanical goals within video games. Rather, the term itself, as applied to multiplayer shooters, “horde mode,” became a point of game discussion when Gears of War 2 introduced the new game mode by that same name back in… 2008?

No, no that can’t be right. I played Gears 2 back in high school (I had worse taste back then, okay?). Which, from my perspective, was basically yesterday. That game being ten years old would mean I myself am old now, and that just can’t be. I’m hip. I’m young.

I am, to stay on theme here, fresh.

But okay, existential crises and game talk terms aside, the writing team behind Splatoon 2 probably decided to absolutely flex when it came to the narrative surrounding Salmon Run. It is one of the most gleaming examples of the nontraditional things you can do with writing in video games, to really elevate the experience.

Let me explain.

You see, narrative in video games typically falls into one of two categories: either the story sits comfortably inside of the game, utilizing it like a vehicle to arrive at the destination that is its audience’s waiting eyes and ears. Or the narrative, on some level, exists rather nebulously, primarily to provide something resembling context for why the pixels look the way they do, and why the goals are what they are.

Not to say this is a binary state of existence for game writing; narrative will of course always provide context for characters, should there be any. It’s primarily older, or retro games that give you a pamphlet or brief intro with little in the way of worrying over character motivation, and the deeper philosophical implications of the plot, etc (though not for lack of trying). These would be your classic Mario Bros. and what have you, where the actual game part of the video game is nearly all there is to explore in the overall experience.

Then you have games like Hotline Miami that purposely sets up shop right in the middle to make a meta commentary about the state of game narrative, using the ideological endpoint of violent 80’s era action and revenge-fantasy genre film as inspiration and the starting point to draw comparison between the two. It’s bizarre, and I could drone on about this topic.

But I digress.

Despite falling into that latter category, that is to say having mainly just an introduction to the narrative context so you can get on with playing the game, Salmon Run is a stellar example of how you can make every bit of that context count (even if it does require the added context of the rest of the game, sort of, which I’ll explain, trust me).

First, a (very) brief explanation of how the game itself works, for the maybe three of you who haven’t played it yet.

A team of up to four inklings (and/or octolings) have a small island out in open waters. Salmonid enemies storm the beaches from various angles in waves. Each wave also comes with (at least) one of eight unique boss variants, who all drop three golden eggs upon defeat. Players are tasked with gathering a number of said golden eggs each round, for three rounds, after which their failure or success in doing so shows slow or fast progress towards in-game rewards.

And it’s all an allegory for the poor treatment of labor/workers, utilizing the fishing industry as both an example and a thematically appropriate analogue. Yes, I’m serious.

First, Salmon Run is not available through the main doors like the other multiplayer modes. Rather, it is off to the side, down a dingy looking alley. And when you’re shown its location, either because you finally entered the Inkopolis plaza for the first time, or because the mode has entered rotation again, Marina very expressly describes it as a job.

A job you should only do if you are absolutely, desperately hard strapped for cash. You know, the sort of job you turn to if, for one reason or another, you can’t find a better one.

An aside: technically, playing Salmon Run does not automatically net you in-game currency, with which to buy things, as regular multiplayer modes do. Rather, your “pay” is a gauge you fill by playing, which comes with reward drops at certain thresholds; some randomized gacha style capsules, and one specific piece of gear which gets advertised, to incentivize playing.

The capsules themselves drop actual paychecks in the form of aforementioned currency, or meal tickets to get temporary buffs that help you progress in the multiplayer faster via one way or another. Which, hey, you know, that helps you earn more money also. Working to get “paid,” so you can get things you want, though, still works perfectly for the metaphor it creates.

When I first saw it open up for rotation, I found out you had to be at least a level four to participate. Pretty par for the course, considering it’s the same deal with the gear shops. But, again, it’s all in the presentation; Mr. Grizz does not simply say something akin to the usual “you must be this tall to ride.” He says he cannot hire inexperienced inklings such as yourself, because it’s a legal liability.

After returning with three extra levels, I was handed off to basic, on-the-job training. Which is only offered after Mr. Grizz (not ever physically present, mind you, but communicating with you via radio), the head of Grizzco, uses fairly typical hard sell rhetoric when it comes to dangerous, or otherwise undesirable work: calls you kid, talks about shaping the future and making the world a better place, refers to new hires as “fresh young talent,” says you’ll be “a part of something bigger than yourself.” You know, the usual balancing act of flattery, with just the right amount of belittlement.

Whoa, hang on, sorry; just had a bad case of deja vu from when the recruiter that worked with the ROTC back in high school tried to get me to enlist… several times… Guess he saw the hippie glasses and long hair and figured I'd be a gratifying challenge.

The fisher imagery really kicks in when you play. Which, I figure a dev team working out of Japan might have a pretty decent frame of reference for that. A boat whisks you out to sea with your team, and everyone’s given a matching uniform involving a bright orange jumper, and rubber boots and gloves. If you've ever seen the viral video of the fisherman up to his waist in water telling you not to give up, you have a rough idea. Oh, and don't forget your official Grizzco trademark hats.

It’s on the job itself where a lot of what I'm talking about comes up the most; that is to say, despite buttering you up initially, Mr. Grizz shows his true colors pretty quickly. While playing, he seems to only be concerned with egg collecting, even when his employees are actively hurting. This is established and compounded by his dialogue prior to the intermediate training level, in which informs you about the various boss fish.

Before you can do anything remotely risky, even boss salmonid training, Mr. Grizz tells you he has to go over this 338 page workplace health and safety manual with you. But, oops, the new hire boat sounds the horn as you flip to page 1, so he sends you off unprepared. “Let’s just say you’ve read it,” he tells you, insisting that learning by doing is best.

This flagrant disregard employee safety, in the name of met quotas; the fact we never see Mr. Grizz face to face, making him this vague presence that presides over you, evaluating your stressed performance with condescension; that we are not simply given the rewards as we pass thresholds to earn them, having to instead speak with another, unknown npc for our pay… It all drives toward the point so well.

The icing on the cake for me is when a match ends. You, the player, are not asked if you’d like to go back into matchmaking for another fun round of playtime. Rather, you are asked if you would like to “work another shift.”

The pieces all fit so well together. I shouldn’t be surprised that, once a theme is chosen, Splatoon can stick to it like my hand to rubber cement that one time. It has already proven it can do that much for sure. But it’s just so… funny? It’s bitterly, cynically hilarious.

Bless the individual(s) who sat in front of their keyboard, staring at the early script drafts, and asked aloud if they were really about to turn Mr. Grizz into a projection of all the worst aspects of the awful bosses they’ve had to deal with in life. The answer to that question being “yes” has led to some of my favorite writing in a video game.

All of these thoughts, as they started forming in my skull, really began to bubble when I noticed Salmon Run shifts become available during my first Splatfest.

Splatfest is, to try and put it in realistic terms, basically a huge, celebratory sporting event. Participation nets you a free commemorative t-shirt and access to a pumping concert featuring some of the hottest artists currently gracing the Inkopolis charts.

The idea, the notion, that a hip young inkling (or octoling) might miss out on one of the biggest parties of the year because they need money more than they need fun? It’s downright depressing.

It got me thinking. I looked at my fellow egg collectors. In-universe, we were a bunch of teen-to-young-adult aged denizens missing out on all the fun because we desperately needed the cash. We became stressed together, overworked together, yelled at by our boss together. But in those sweetest victories, where we’d far surpassed our quota? We celebrated together.

Spam-crouching, and mashing the taunt, something changed. I felt a greater sense of comradery with these squids and octos than I did in nearly any other coop game. And it’s all thanks to the rhetorical framing of the game mode.

It accomplishes so many things. It’s world building which wholistically immerses you in the setting. But mainly, its dedication to highly specific word choice does exactly what I mentioned earlier: it elevates the experience to one I could really sit down and think about, rather than use to while away the hours, then move on to something else. So many games make horde modes that feel inconsequential like that; it’s just for fun.

There’s nothing wrong with fun being the only mission statement for a game, or an optional mode of play. But this is exactly what I mean when I say this is the nontraditional writing games can do so much more with. And Splatoon 2 saw that opportunity, and took it. And what a fantastic example of bittersweet, cold reality, in this, a bright, colorful game meant mainly for children…

Happy Holidays, everyone!

#Rabbot Reviews #video games #review #Splatoon 2 #Salmon Run #narrative #framing

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madegeeky · 6 years

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Even more Twitch games I got for free...

High Hell - Stylized first person shooter which, unless it has something very interesting going for it, is not the sort of game that I’m interested in at all. (I think the only fps I’ve ever truly enjoyed was Bioshock Infinite and how does any fps live up to that one?) I did give it a try, just in case, but at least for the bit I played, very standard fps.

Hue - I’ve seen a let’s play of this and so I know that I’ll like this. It’s a puzzle game using colors. That sounds super vague but I can’t think of a better way to put it. Not sure if it’ll get recorded or not but I’m definitely going to play it at some point.

I, Hope - A game about a young girl named Hope who battles the monster known as Cancer. Apparently it was made specifically with children in mind, especially children who may themselves be battling cancer. I didn’t play a lot of it because it is very much a game meant for children; the controls and puzzles are simple. However, it’s very charming and I could see how empowering this could be to kids dealing with cancer in their own lives.

Jotun - Hack and slash mixed a bit with a puzzle based on Norse mythology. Main character, at least as far as I got, was a woman which is awesome. For some people I think this could be a really great game. But it’s not a style or storyline I feel particularly compelling. Probably won’t play it.

Kingsway - Really really interesting. An RPG but through a computer? Like, the game is a desktop and the map is a window on the desktop and your inventory is a different window. And when your enemies attack that’s a new window and it moves around the screen, so trying to hit the buttons is a bit of a pain. Really, really enjoyed it. Not sure there’s any story there, but gameplay-wise it’s fascinating. Will probably play on my own unless it starts to develop a more interesting story at which point I might start recording.

Manual Samuel - I’d seen someone play this and thought that it looked like it’d be way too frustrating to actually enjoy playing and was very pleasantly surprised. It’s difficult but when I failed it was way more funny than frustrating. This could, of course, change drastically if things get harder but, as is, not something I’d play on my own but something that might be fun to record.

Metal Slug 3 - Old console side-scrolling arcade-style shoot-em-up. Totally not my sort of thing but what I was saw as cute. (I kept rescuing these old half-naked men from evil crabs and they were always so happy to see me, it made me laugh.)

Mr. Shifty - Really interesting gameplay and great art style. If were I were more interested in the hack-and-slash or shoot-em-up style of gameplay, I’d probably all over this. Even with it not being a genre that I particularly care for, I still had fun. Probably won’t play, though.

Next Up Hero - A hack-and-slash cutesy action game. Every level you have a certain goal: kill X number of enemies or kill a specific enemy or beat the boss. You can revive the ghosts of people who died in the same area to help you complete your task. Not my sort of game and I found it annoying that I had to connect to a server every time I wanted to play.

Oxenfree - I’ve seen this game enough to know that it’s definitely on my list of games to play and, probably, record.

#geeky talks #geeky talks gaming #mari tries out free twitch games

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tojohq · 6 years

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Yakuza 6: The Song of Life Review

The end of Kiryu’s story. As ominous as it sounds, that’s one of the biggest selling points of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. The character that has been leading the series since its very first game finally has an ending chapter to its saga. As an old-time fan, that made me worried and intrigued: How do they plan to end its story? What’s the series going to do moving forward? And, more importantly, how does the game compares to its predecessors, with all the changes made to its engine?

The following review aims to be as spoiler-free as possible, but be advised some spoilers may occur for previous games of the series, like Yakuza 5. Read at your own discretion.

Kiryu Kazuma, the series’ main character, spent several years in prison following the events of Yakuza 5. He is released only to find out that Haruka is in a coma after having been hit by a car. She also had a kid, Haruto, who is at risk of being taken to an orphanage. Kiryu must fight for and maintain custody of Haruto, while investigating the strange mysteries surrounding Haruka’s accident. The stage is set as we initially enter Kamurocho once again, and after he begins his investigation, the trail leads to Onomichi: a peaceful town that is more than it seems.

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The new Dragon Engine was introduced in Yakuza 6, bringing several innovations to the series. For starters, the graphics got a revamp compared to the older engine (used from Yakuza 5 to Yakuza Kiwami), being the first game developed exclusively to PS4. The level of detail in textures, character models, and the world itself, is outstanding. A common complaint about Yakuza 6 is the presence of screen tearing on the game, but I must say I wasn’t able to notice said issue. It’s worth noting that the game runs at 30fps, compared to 60fps on Yakuza Zero and Kiwami. New physics were added, both to the open world exploration and the battles. Exploration-wise, Kiryu can now jump over things, climb stairs, and even fall down from certain buildings. The inventory has also changed. You don’t need to send items to a hideout-like place, like in previous games. Your inventory can store as many items as you like; however, you can only hold 5 of each health/heat restore items, or 10 of each food/beverage items.

Things have changed - the year is 2016 and even Kiryu has a smartphone now, which acts as the game’s menu. Through it, you can find your current tasks and missions; access your inventory; check your stats and mail; check your completion list; change settings; and even take photos or selfies.

With the new graphics engine, Kamurocho has been completely reworked. We have new explorable areas, like Millenium Tower’s rooftop gardens and the Kamuro Theater. We can enter and explore several random buildings, making the city more alive than ever before. We have the same number of taxi stops as before, but more destinations as a whole. It’s worth it to note that certain portions of the map have completely changed. Little Asia is a primary example, and some underwent… peculiar changes, like Pink Street, which is in a diagonal orientation now. However, not everything is good news: some explorable areas that have been around since the first game have been removed, like the Champion District and the Kamurocho Hills/West Park area. We also have fewer stores than before (Kotoburi Drugs, for example, is gone).

Onomichi is considerably smaller when compared to Kamurocho, and has less shops, restaurants and entertainment spots. This more accurately reflects the cities’ real-life counterparts. It’s a port town based on a Hiroshima city that goes by the same name. Here you can access the spearfishing and baseball mini-games, as well as the Snackbar Gaudi. Snack bars are, on that note, popular places on Onomichi to hang out, considering the city doesn’t have Cabaret Clubs. You can also find a few restaurantes, a temple, and a pawn shop.

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We have quite a few new minigames compared to previous games, like the Live Chat, which - more than just being sexy - manages to be funny and quirky due to Kiryu’s reactions; full ports of SEGA games, like VF5FS and Puyo Puyo; and classic arcade games from the 80s, like Space Harrier.

The RAAP Gym features a series of minigames where the player should press the buttons accordingly to make Kazuma exercise. After a session, the trainer recommends a dish you should eat, which impacts the evaluation you receive. Before you attempt to train again, you need to engage in a random encounter in the city.

There’s also a baseball team management minigame. You can recruit new members through substories or around the city and train them. On a match, you can manage your players and sometimes control the hitter. It’s a bit confusing, and, honestly, I didn’t manage to find it too enjoyable.

The Gaudi Snack Bar - unlocked during the baseball team quest line - is actually one of the most fun addictions to Yakuza 6, mini-game wise. For it, Kiryu is invited to a small and familiar bar in Onomichi. In the minigame, you speak with NPCs about their problems, enjoy a few drinks with them, and can even play darts or sing Karaoke. All these things help you develop your friendship with them. Each NPC has its own story, and each one of them is enjoyable, and some of them are tough nuts to crack - you will will need to be persistent with these. I’ve gotten so invested in this specific portion of the game I started to think about the NPCs as close friends of Kiryu, and it made me like Onomichi itself a lot more, since some of these characters are shop owners. It’s a simple yet great addition that gave even more life to the city.

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The Clan Creator is another minigame first introduced in Yakuza 6. It involves recruiting NPCs to your very own Kiryu Clan and using them in battles - but Kazuma himself doesn’t fight, he just commands them like in a strategy game. You can set your hierarchy: Captain, Lieutenants and so on. There’s also an online mode available, where you can fight other player’s Clans. You can, also, add new members to your Clan by entering codes, made available at several different places and through the Yakuza Experience website.

Another feature is the opportunity to help a Cat Cafe that… happens to have no cats, since its owner doesn’t do well with the animals and they all ran away. It’s up to Kazuma to find new cats in Kamurocho or Onomichi for the shop by giving them food and earning their trust. After you max out the trust gauge of a cat, someone will go get the felline, which you can always see in the Cafe from then on.

The spearfishing minigame is basically a shooter with a fishing theme. You can earn money from the fishes you catch, and there’s a spearfishing level: the higher your level, the higher your HP in this minigame. You have different spears to choose from and three different areas to fish in - both selections make an impact on the mini-game difficulty.

Some classic mini-games have been removed, like bowling, pool, UFO catchers, and gambling. Changes have been made to Karaoke and its song list: they are all new this time around. The batting cage minigame has also changed slightly. The Cabaret Club minigame has also been reworked, with a new card-based system that has made it more enjoyable.

Yakuza 6 has 52 substories in total, from which a considerable amount is tied to mini-games like the Snack Bar Gaudi, the Clan Creator, and the Baseball team. We also have 40 different Trouble Missions. Trouble missions are picked through the app ‘Troublr’ on Kiryu’s phone. They usually require the player to battle against an enemy or a group of enemies who’s causing - as the name implies - trouble in Kamurocho or Onomichi. Trouble Missions usually spawn nearby you, are time restricted, generally under 5 minutes, and are considered failed if you engage in another event (like a cutscene or a minigame).

The soundtrack and effects of the game are once again memorable. Differently from previous games, there’s no opening theme this time. On the other hand... some of the songs really stand out, like Joon-gi Han’s theme, several battle themes, and some of the karaoke songs (prime examples would be ‘Hands’ and ‘Today is a Diamond’).

With the new graphical engine and physics also came a new combat system. The very core of it - characteristic to the series - remains the same: fight, do combos, use heat actions. However, the changes run deeper. It was reworked from the ground, with completely new combos, actions and Heat Actions. Unfortunately, Heat Actions are one of the biggest flaws of Yakuza 6 in that there are very few of them. That said, the new physics also make the combat both hilarious and satisfying at times: it’s not rare to see objects being destroyed simply by running through them, or enemies being thrown far from you by doing a combo finished with a kick.

In Yakuza 6 - once again - we see a new leveling system. We have five different experience points: Strength, Agility, Spirit, Technique and Charm. Different activities award different amounts and different kinds of experience. For example, you will get more Strength and Agility by fighting than by doing entertainment activities. You can spend experience points on basic stats (Health, Attack, Defense, Evasion, and Heat Gauge), battle skills, heat actions, and other skills.

We also have an in-depth buff system this time, like increased experience gain, increased money drops, increased stats, and so on. They can be achieved through different means (such as temple blessings, statue offerings, food buffs, and machine drinks) and last a set amount of time or battles.

What was played:

A full playthrough of the main story, 40 substories, and all minigames at least once. Around 60 hours of game time.

Pros:

Graphics are gorgeous and detailed

Great OST

The cities seem alive and as detailed as ever

Several new minigame addictions are fun and rewarding

Good story with likeable characters - both on the substories and the main plot

Cons:

Certain classic mini-games were removed

Areas that have been accessible in Kamurocho since the first game, like the Champion District and the West Park/Kamurocho Hills area are off limits now

Combat seems simplified compared to Zero/Kiwami: less combos, less heat actions

No system to craft weapons, or even to carry then

Verdict: A fitting end to Kiryu’s story, with great graphics, OST, and side content, but not without a few hiccups. Fewer heat actions and the removal of certain minigames detract from it, when compared to previous games of the series.

Score: 8.5/10

Disclaimer: Reviewed on a standard PS4 model using a review code provided by the publisher.

#Yakuza 6 #Yakuza #SEGA #ryu ga gotoku

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sethhzfx273-blog · 4 years

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An Introduction to Brawl Stars Game

A mobile game that is just playable if you have 20Gbps of web or your money obtains swiped by supercell by having players buy gems out of rage. Although not required to make progress, there's a strong motivation to purchase products from the in-game market in order to unlock brand-new brawlers as well as to proceed faster, staying clear of the lengthy grind it would or else take. There are 28 Fighters to choose from. TGB, Tencent Gaming Pal, created by the Tencent workshop, lets you play Android videogames on your PC. This installer downloads its very own emulator along with the Brawl Stars videogame, which can be played in Windows by adjusting its control system to your keyboard as well as computer mouse.

Both Fortnite as well as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds have actually been huge on iOS as well as Android (as well as all over else) this year, but neither is an optimum mobile phone https://brawlboom.club/ experience. There's been a huge surge in mobile online shooters recently, many thanks to games like Fortnite and also PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, however sluggish controls as well as unlocks makes this shooter fairly typical.

Currently, you can try your first impression about this game with NoxPlayer. There were suits where our group completely controlled as well as maintained the opposing players from getting any kind of gems. It is because brawlers require to get updated to have a band of stronger brawlers. Certainly, gamers do not use only mobile phones, so we are preparing for it and other than it, you can making use of Brawl Stars Hack with tablet computers.

Brawl Stars wisely adapts team-based multiplayer shooters for mobile in such a way that makes ideal feeling for pocket-sized touch devices. A couple of months back we spoke about how the Supercell manufacturing facility had created a brand-new economic machine with the launch of Brawl Stars Just like Sensing unit Tower mentioned, their most recent success has actually surpassed the 200 million dollars in gamer costs.

In 2014 in June, Clash of Clans maker Supercell announced a new game called Brawl Stars. The International Mobile Gaming Awards have actually reached their 15th edition to commemorate mobile videogames. The current spin in the mobile multiplayer sector shooter category is Brawl Stars. Tencent, the world's largest computer game author, already has four of the globe's 10 top-grossing mobile video games.

To qualify, teams must play numerous month-to-month challenges in the game's different modes, advance via the regional online qualifiers (starting on March 7), and also win the month-to-month in-person finals events. In Brawl Stars, nevertheless, the participant restriction is just up to 3 and so you'll need to choose your Brawlers carefully.

Jump into your favorite game setting as well as play fast suits with your close friends. One means Brawl Stars attracts attention from the competitors is thanks to its variety of gameplay choices. Add to this the game's robust roster of characters, and also you would certainly believe there's more than enough to keep gamers' interest. This fast as well as mad gameplay is valued by a lot of the gamers, as it does not just enable small sessions while on a break, yet it lets you play a number of matches if you have even more time to invest.

At the same time, records added that there will certainly go to the very least 9 Brawlers in the game. Supercell's most recent mobile game, Brawl Stars, will certainly make its launching worldwide on iOS and also Android tools this December 12, 2018. Besides the numerous game settings, Brawl Stars always looks fresh with the Brawlers you can have in your team.

In Brawl Stars stated boxes consist of power points as well as gold, used together to power up a certain character, and also can hardly ever consist of a brawler (i.e. a playable personality). Brawl Stars is a shooter RPG mobile game worth interesting. Supercell has yet to announce if there are any kind of strategies to introduce the beta variation of the game in various other regions, in addition to when can gamers expect the final version release.

There will be times where you need to bring your whole team by accumulating most of the gems as well as wishing that your teammate is skilled sufficient to grab a few more as you remain behind enemy lines to not die. This is also real for the business's various other titles: Clash of clans' strike are restricted to a three minutes timer, while Clash Royale fights also forcefully end after three mins.

Using your PC using Tencent Gaming Buddy can assist in fixing the connection troubles, so this is an advised game to try in Supercell's line-up. The 3v3 multiplayer shooter game was soft introduced for iOS individuals in Canada just at first. Loot boxes include arbitrary incentives, likewise to the card packs in trading card video games.

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Brawl Stars has actually seen many growths since soft launch. Regrettably, even if the material exists, that doesn't suggest players can access it. Numerous options are secured up until players reach a particular prize degree in the game. In video games this goes a step better: The game itself ought to be carefully stabilized as not to leave the gamer frustrated since the game feels unjust.

Brawl Stars includes a huge choice of usable personalities just like just how other MOBA games do it. Below, you get to play cute-looking Fighters, who each have unique individualities as well as skills you can make use of to your advantage. This method has actually been commonly used to avoid players to shed as well promptly with the game and leave them wanting for even more.

The small number of players on the field compared to various other MOBAs is one of Brawl Celebrity's highlights. Best point is the truth that in-game we can't simply touching on shoot switch, since SuperCell produced a great deal of various characters which every one of them has another battling style.

Brawl Stars is free to play and also download, nevertheless, some game things can likewise be purchased genuine cash. As a result, the even more fighters you will have as well as able to power spike your fighter as a F2P player by grinding. Parents require to understand that Brawl Stars is a free-to-play multiplayer action field game readily available for download on iphone and also Android devices.

The game makes it very easy to welcome various other players also or match with great players. I'll let you recognize if video games deserve your time or simply a money grab. A mobile computer game made by the firm Supercell that has yet to find to android for the next 3 billion years. Currently you prepare to play Brawl Stars on your PC.

Brawl Stars is a multiplayer online fight arena (MOBA) 2 game where gamers battle versus other gamers, as well as in some cases, AI challengers, in several game modes. As mentioned, Brawl Star is a 3v3 multiplayer shooter game that basically lets players fire, run, weapon, punch, shovel, cactus, or knife your way to magnificence.

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thomcoldman-blog · 6 years

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My 10 Favourite Games Of 2017

This list was originally posted on the forum Resetera, but I felt like putting it up here too, with a little more insight into why I liked these games so much, and so they don’t get lost in the muddle of forum posts. Enjoy!

10. Snake Pass (Sumo Digital; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Sumo Digital has been a developer I've admired for years, particularly for their work on the Nintendo-tier kart racer Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Snake Pass is their first independently-produced title, and it has a great hook - the player controls a snake in much the same manner as a real snake might move. There's no jump button, no Earthworm Jim spacesuit, just the power to raise one's head and the strength to grip tightly to any object you've coiled around. There's no timer or enemies; Snake Pass is content to let you explore its levels at your own pace, letting you getting used to its unique feeling and take in the calming David Wise soundtrack. It's a game that feels like learning to ride a bike again, and the progression in ability over time is such a pleasing sensation that it earns it its place on this list by itself. The good use of collectables and generous helping of levels is icing on the cake.

9. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (MachineGames; PS4, Xbox One, PC)

B.J. Blazkowicz returns and he's lost all meaning of subtlety whilst he's been out of action. Wolfenstein 2 shoots all of its shots - the action is bloody, explosive carnage, and the subject matter isn't satisfied with just skewering Nazi idiocy and narcissism, taking time to shine a light on White America's love affair with sitting back and reaping the rewards of compliance under fascist rule. Whether it's exploring B.J.'s broken psyche, giving Wyatt a crash course on hallucinogenics or putting you under the spotlight in a terrifying audition, MachineGames refuse to pull their punches, each great moment coming swinging like B.J.'s Nazi-reprimanding fireaxe. The combat encounters are far from polished, with stealth being heavily nerfed from The New Order and the half-way shift in tone from borderline-satirical diatribe on mortality and American race relations to comic-book capers is incredibly stodgy, but Wolfenstein 2 leaves a hell of an impression all the same. Shame about that credits music.

8. Gorogoa (Jason Roberts; PC, iOS, Nintendo Switch)

A good puzzle game can make a really strong impression, guiding you subtly by the hand to make you feel like a member of MENSA just for pressing a few buttons or prodding at a screen. With Gorogoa, I can't even begin to describe how the puzzles actually work. Imagine a window segmented with 4 panes of glass, and now imagine you can drag elements out of those panes and into other panes, or over where there isn't a pane to create a new pane... See, it’s hard! In as simple terms as I can muster, it’s a game about taking the world apart and putting it back together again to create paths and progress for your anonymous young hero. It’s intensely abstract, yet the South Asian aesthetic feels like a living locale, an exploration of a boy's days-to-come. It's a short experience, but with each puzzle solved making me feeling smarter than Albert god damn Einstein, it's one that will stick with me for a long time.

7. Splatoon 2 (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

Like pretty much everyone, I didn't own a Wii U, but the sting of that decision never really happened until the arrival of Splatoon - Nintendo's first proper new "core" universe since what felt like Pikmin. It instantly looked like sheer fun - and as a big fan of both Jet Set Radio and The World Ends With You, it was clear as day Nintendo's younger designers were picking up the Shibuya fashion torch those games dropped behind them. Put simply, it's totally my shit. Splatoon 2 confirms my suspicions and then some, being the first multiplayer title I've enjoyed online in forever. I can't get enough of the soundtrack, the sound effects, the amazingly catty banter between Pearl and Marina, and just the feeling of dropping into ink, strafing around a sucker and blasting them straight between the eyeballs with my N-ZAP '85. 20% of Switch owners in the US can't be wrong.

6. Yakuza 0 (SEGA; PS4)

The only games I've played previously by SEGA's Toshihiro Nagoshi are the brilliant arcade/Gamecube bangers F-Zero GX and Super Monkey Ball 2, plus his one-off PS3 sci-fi shooter Binary Domain. Loving those 3 wacky games, I always felt a little put-off by his regular gig nowadays being a series about Japan's most decorated crime organisation, and a bare-knuckle brawler at that. Yakuza 0, the 80s-set series prequel that serves as a perfect entry point for series newcomers, proved my suspicions ill-founded. It's a game which instantly casts the majority of the yakuza as control freaks and bullies, pits its protagonists Kiryu and Majima as their unfounded targets and pawns... and then lets you fight your way out of hell via brutal finishing moves, bizarrely complex business management sidequests and, if you're so inclined, a gun shaped like a giant fish. It's that kind of game that always keeps you guessing whether or not you should take it seriously, and so it wins you over with its best-in-class action choreography, astonishingly good direction and a never-ending deluge of sidequests, minigames and challenges. Don't sleep on Kamurocho.

5. Sonic Mania (SEGA/Christian Whitehead/Headcannon/PagodaWest Games; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

If you’re reading this, you probably know I'm a Sonic apologist. I don't really stand by the 3D entries - bar Sonic Generations, which I genuinely love - but the narrative that "Sonic was never good" is some ridiculous meme that I can't stand. They were genuinely fun games, albeit far from perfect; every game can use some improvement. Sonic Mania is that improvement, spinning the level themes and gimmicks from the original Mega Drive (and Mega CD) games into vast new forms, with myraid routes, tons of secrets, an astonishing sense of speed from beginning to end and fairer, more agreeable, more exciting level design. Old locales, new levels - oh, and some new locales as well, one of which (Studiopolis Zone) is an instant classic. 16:9 presentation, all new animations and crazy levels of animation detail, and a mind-blowing soundtrack by Tee Lopes - Sonic Mania is the perfect Sonic game.

4. NieR: Automata (Square Enix/PlatinumGames; PS4, PC)

For my first foray into the sunken mind of Yoko Taro, he couldn't have left a better impression. NieR: Automata uses Platinum's engaging-at-worst, thrilling-at-best melee combat as the language to tell his new story of how pointless it is for anyone to even bother throwing themselves after ideals of society or humanity, and why it's worth trying all the same. Every inch of this game feels crusted in Taro’s sensibilities, with the no-bullshit 2B and her curious whiny partner 9S running into robots waving white flags, avenging fallen comrades, establishing monarchies, throwing themselves to their deaths, and coming to terms with their crumbling existence in apocalypse. It's crushing, it's raw, it's often dull, but its uniquely bleak vision of AIs breaking free of their programming has a grip as powerful as a Terminator's. And when it’s ready to let you go, it has you send it off with the most memorable credits sequence in history. Glory to Yoko Taro, glory to PlatinumGames - glory to mankind.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch, Wii U)

Standing in the centre of a bridge connecting Hyrule’s broad, emerald green fields to the desert mountain approach, a bridge overlooking the still Lake Hylia, I fire an arrow into a lizard bastard’s head, or at least I try to. He dodges it and rushes me, forcing me to jump away and retaliate with my claymore. Out for the count, I resume looking for the lost Zora wife I’ve been asked to seek out, who apparently washed all the way downstream in a recent downpour. I can’t see any wife - my entire view is dominated by the giant green dragon snaking across the night sky above me. The wind picks up, but I am too awestruck by its presence to take note that I could glide up to it and shoot off a valuable scale. Instead, I just stand and stare, this utterly unexpected moment happening before my eyes. Friend or foe? A boss monster, perhaps? A vital story element later on? The answer ended up being none of the above: in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there be dragons, and that fact in and of itself speaks volumes about what this game is about. After 30 years, Hyrule finally feels alive.

2. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall; PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

Very few games instil a genuine emotional response within me, but the story of Mae Borowski's no-fanfare return from college to suburban gloom resonates hard with me. It's an expert at the little touches - the needless-yet-fun triple jump, the not-so-starcrossed rooftop musicians, the impulsive reaction to poke a severed arm with a stick - and woefully precise with its big swings, like an upsetting cross-town party, a wave of violent frustration amongst the townspeople, and the inability to just lay it all on the table with friends and family when you need to most. In the cosmic dreams of shitty teens, Night in the Woods finds an ugly beauty in depression.

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

It’s impossible to deny 2017 has been the year of Nintendo. There’s plenty of celebrate elsewhere, but the Switch’s rise to prominence as the machine to be playing ideally everything on, and the amount of absolute smash hits Nintendo has producing this year makes it hard for the narrative to focus elsewhere. The epitome of all this is their final killer game of 2017: Super Mario Odyssey, the grand return of a more open-ended style of Mario platformer. A true blue achievement in joyous freedom, it brings together everything from Mario's history of 3D platforming - 64's freedom, Sunshine's other-worldliness and sky-high skill ceiling, Galaxy's spectacle, 3D World's razor-sharp platforming challenge - and throws into one big pot, creating a Mario where both the journey and the destination are one and the same, and exciting to the very end. In a year of amazing games that hit upon horrid, upsetting themes with delicate, pinpoint accuracy for tremendous success, I’m not sure whether it’s a shame or an inevitability that such an unapologetically surprising, happy game made the biggest mark on me this year, but either way, I’m welcome to have Mario be truly Super once more.

#goty #2017 #splatoon2 #super mario odyssey #zelda breath of the wild #yakuza 0 #night in the woods #snake pass #sonic mania #gorogoa #wolfenstein #nier automata

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rewindfrequency · 7 years

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Manhunt 2 Review

https://wordpress.com/posts/rewindfrequency.wordpress.com

Manhunt 2 Review

Developed and Published by Rockstar Games

Played on: PSP/PS VITA

Also Available on: PS2, Wii, and Microsoft Windows

Daniel Lamb and Leo Kasper have been imprisoned in the Dixmor Asylum for six years under the brutal conditions of the Pickman Project. But today they finally have a chance to escape. The patients of the asylum revolt, throwing the place into chaos. The cell door is open for Daniel Lamb, and his former partner Leo Kasper eggs him on to leave. This is Daniel’s chance to finally uncover what the Pickman Project did to him and what it plans to do to others. You will have to jump between time periods in Daniel’s memory and play as both him and Leo Kasper to uncover the truth.

The first thing I have to say about this game is that the story is great. It explores the human mind and how it can be manipulated and controlled. This game has no story connection with the first Manhunt. Manhunt 2 is considered a psychological stealth horror game. I have to disagree with this categorization. After playing through the entire game it’s more like an action game with stealth elements thrown in. There are two types of gameplay styles. Stealth exploration is the first. This form of gameplay dominates the first few levels. You sneak from the shadows, which are large dark spots of the level that enemies can’t see you in, and kill the hunters (the people looking for you) one by one. This is by far the best part of the experience gameplay-wise. In these levels most of the time you're only given one use weapons such as a pen or a shiv. You use these weapons to take down sometimes as many as five foes. The items respawn in certain areas so don’t worry about running out. When in the stealth levels you don’t have to sneak. You can actually walk right behind the enemy and kill them. But this is only for the handheld version. As you take down enemies you get their weapons and have more fighting power over your opponents. These levels are often in tight spaces and force you to isolate and distract your hunters to prevail.

The rest of the game is a mix of stealth and cover-based shooting with some levels being entirely cover-based action sections. Now, I’m a big fan of cover based shooters, but this one is just bad. The game will boil down to shooting galleries where you use a lock-on aim mechanic to tear your hunters to pieces. I rarely died or took heavy damage in these levels because they’re just to easy. This part of the game is downright boring. The cover system is clunky, not allowing you to move back and forth quickly. To vault over cover is painfully slow. This game tries to be like Gears of War and fails miserably. Speaking of that lock-on aim, it not only makes the game too easy in some sections, but makes it harder in others. When using a shotgun, for example, you will fire at the nearest enemy. But in some cases depending on the height of your cover, the lock-on aim will fire at enemies far away. I can’t hit those enemies with a shotgun. Even worse is that since the game wants to be fair, they make you miss shots. And with some guns you can miss dozens of times. The pistol is complete garbage. It takes forever to have the firing reticle on a hunter and once you do, you miss a few more times before landing a hit that does little to no damage unless they’re two feet away. This is by far the worst part of the game and it’s the majority of the gameplay. This is why I don’t consider this to be a stealth psychological horror game. If stealth is a secondary feature and shooting dudes while behind cover isn’t scary, then it fails to meet its own classification.

But don’t worry, there is more gameplay to be had. If you are in a stealth section and get caught, you can fight your opponent hand to hand or use a melee weapon. This is terrible. Your character moves slowly and throws their punches even slower. Want to block after throwing a punch? Too bad. The game won’t let you. You have to sit there and take a beating. In hand-to-hand combat expect to lose at least half of your health. There is no justification for how sluggish it is. In later levels of the game, you can get a weapon like a shovel or crowbar and completely dominate your opponent. Even though the combat is still slow, now you can actually get out alive.

All the gameplay I mentioned above it severely hindered by the game's controls. Even when playing on the VITA you are still only allowed to use one analog stick. This makes the game almost impossible to play. That’s why you need the aggressive lock-on aim system. How can I make tight turns to avoid being spotted when I only have one analog stick to move my character and adjust their field of view? How can I move quickly from cover to cover in the shooting sections when I only have one analog stick to do it? This right here makes the game extremely frustrating and at one point almost unplayable. In Level 11, “Origins,” you have to shoot targets that are immune to lock-on aim. So you have to enter free-aim mode. This is awful when you only have one analog stick, especially when you have guys shooting at you and there is an incredibly short time limit to shoot the damn thing. The “boss battle” later in the level is impossible to beat without exploiting a glitch. You can’t shoot a scientist that you need information from so you have to pick up a tranquilizer gun to subdue them. But the scientist shoots you with his tranquilizer gun while you try to get the other tranquilizer. You can’t pick up items while tranquilized. Oh, and you have a very short amount of time before the boss instantly kills you and the level goes back to one of its poorly placed checkpoints. The only way I even beat this boss battle is by exploiting a glitch. I stood in a corner where the scientist couldn’t see me. Then I ran out and grabbed the gun before his AI could react. I shot him from the corner and then I won. The corner wasn’t even a shadow. And even if it was he saw me run to the corner. The controls in this game are ridiculously bad and ruin the entire expirience.

Now let's talk about the atmosphere. Like the first Manhunt, this game is meant to be gritty, dark, and over-the-top violent. Like I said before, the first four levels get it spot on. From the asylum, to Daniel’s burned down house, to the red light district, this game gets dark and gritty right. But the rest of the game is just running through neighborhoods shooting the cops. This is a very strange game because of its wishy-washy level and game layout. Why would you ruin your gritty atmosphere with random shooting in a brightly lit test lab or residential street. Overall I feel it fails in this respect because it throws away its gritty roots for more mainstream shooting galleries. As far as violence goes for the console versions, most of the brutal executions are blurred or taken out completely with the scoring system for how brutal you are taken out entirely. This was due to the ESRB originally giving the game an A for adult rating which would have technically banned the game because no major console manufacturer allows adult only games. But the PC version has all of the content in it.

Glitches are another common occurrence. There were many cases I would try to pick up a new weapon and it wouldn’t work or I would try to pick up a body and that wouldn’t work. But there were two glitches that really pissed me off. The first is that enemies wouldn’t spawn in immediately. They would randomly appear while I was sneaking and I would have to restart the checkpoint after they ganged up on me. And I know they randomly appeared because the mini-map tells you where the enemies are and there icons came into existence out of nowhere. The other is taking cover. If you can even get your character to get into cover. Sometimes the enemy bullets will phase through objects and hit you anyway. This really shocked me because this looked like a competently made game. The graphics and sound are of PS2 quality which is amazing for a PSP game. There are times, mainly during the shooting sections, that there are ten enemies on the screen with no slowdown whatsoever. This is definitely a strange game.

Overall I feel that my experience with Manhunt 2 was soiled due to the device I was playing on. But even when you take that into consideration, I still feel that the game isn’t very good. If the game advertised itself as a stealth action game or an action game with stealth elements then I wouldn’t mind the constant shootouts and gunrunning. But that’s the problem. It advertises itself as a stealth horror game and uses the Manhunt name to attract gamers into buying it. While the story is great, you can always just read the Wiki and not have to spend a dime on the actual game. The controls on the handheld versions make the experience unplayable in many respects and makes this the worst platform to play on. But I hate saying that because even with its piss poor controls and various glitches the game looks incredible for a PSP game and can handle a great deal of processing stress with the wide open environments and enemies. I don’t feel good about hating on this game, but I have to judge it based on what it is. If you want a gritty game on your Wii or you want to complete your PS2 collection and see this game at a low price, give it a shot because it is going to be far superior to the PSP/VITA version.

I am giving Manhunt 2 on the PSP/VITA a 3 out of 10

Pros:

A gripping story about manipulating the human brain

PS2 quality graphics and sound design on a handheld

Cons:

Terrible controls

Boring shooting galleries

Painfully slow melee combat

Glitches galore

A boss battle that can only be won by luck or glitch exploit

CHECK OUT MY WORDPRESS!!!

https://wordpress.com/posts/rewindfrequency.wordpress.com

#Game Reviews #Manhunt 2 #Manhunt 2 review #PS VITA #PSP #Gaming #Games #Reviews #Horror games #Action games #Stealth games

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fuckyeahoutsidexbox · 7 years

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Show of the Week - CS:GO Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Second Show of the Week transcribed and giffed! Once again, if there are any mistakes please tell me!

(Mike)

Hello and welcome to OutsideXbox’s Show of the Week. Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated as have rumours of my lucrative life insurance policy it turns out, Jane.

(Jane)

Yes, well, I mean it got us this moderately priced new studio so don’t knock it deado.

(Mike)

Our game of the week this week is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or if you prefer the syllable saving CS: GO. A Valve game that shuns storyline in favour of action, it’s a… [interrupted]

(Jane)

Woah, woah, woah what do you mean it shuns storyline? It’s a Valve game. It’s got to have story.

(Mike)

It doesn’t have a storyline, it’s a straight up multiplayer.

(Jane)

No, no, no it’ll be in the world somewhere. It’ll be emergent storytelling Valve style cause they’re clever like that.

(Mike)

If you say so. Super-secret hidden storylines aside. Here’s what you need to know about CS: GO. CS: GO is a multiplayer only team based shooter in which a squad of pretty non-specific terrorists go up against a squad of noble counter terrorists. Terrorists mostly want to plant bombs and hold hostages while the counter terrorists want to defuse bombs and rescue hostages. Also, each side wants to kill the other side. And that’s the entire fictional premise for Counter-Strike Jane, honestly. It’s also a game with a long and storied past. Counter-Strike began life all the way back in the last millennium, if you can believe it. When PC gamers like me fought off dinosaurs by day and scored headshots by night. The game started out in 1999 as a multiplayer mod for Valve’s seminal sci-fi FPS Half Life made by modders Minh Lee and Jess Cliffe. It took the torch from straight up death match multiplayer shooters such as Quake 1 and 2 to lead the burgeoning field of online multiplayer gun shooting. It arrived with new and uniquely cool ideas, not least the cycle of earning cash at the end of each round and spending it on weapons and equipment at the start of the next. And it made huge waves in pro gaming. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, out now on Xbox Live Arcade, is only the latest in a series of iterations on that Counter-Strike formula. A long line of updates, revisions, community mods and even the odd boxed game. The no perks, no unlocks, no regenerating health, no instant respawns and no iron sights and there is friendly fire, in some modes. In short, it’s a pure bracing shot of something different and demanding in a crowd of me too FPS multiplayer and that’s why it’s our game of the week.

(Jane)

Who’s that guy?

(Mike)

That’s a terrorist.

(Jane)

And who’s that guy?

(Mike)

That’s a counter terrorist.

(Jane)

Right. And how do they fit into Aperture Science and Black Mesa?

(Mike)

They don’t. So now that… [interrupted]

(Jane)

Okay, erm, but what does it say on that wall there? That one. Is that a newspaper article?

(Mike)

No.

(Jane)

Aw.

(Mike)

So, now you’re excited about CS: GO, here’s how to play it.

(Jane)

That guy’s not talking, maybe he’s Gordon Freemen.

(Andy)

It’s possible to do well at Call of Duty and Battlefield by playing like this. Play like this in Counter-Strike: Global offensive however and you’ll be doing a lot of this. So, if you’re not a long-time fan of Counter-Strike, you’re going to have to adjust your tactics. Luckily, we’re here to help like heroes.

First up, and most importantly, you run faster with a knife. Not entirely sure why. It’s like the head of Valve is in love with knives or something. Oh, yeah. Right, right. Still this is a core Counter-Strike skill. Bind the knife to something like up on the D pad and switch to it after buying your weapon at the start of the round. With the extra speed, you should be able to reach critical choke points ahead of your enemies until all the new players wise up to it and do likewise. The downside, of course, is that you might also reach these chokepoints ahead of you own team and turn up to a wall of enemies on your own having literally bought a knife to a gun fight. Make sure you can switch to a shooty weapon quickly.

Next, you’re more accurate if you walk or crouch and you also move silently whereas you may as well be wearing a hat made of claxons if you’re running. Crouch is bound to left trigger by default, the same as iron sights in Call of Duty and you should use it the same sort of way for increasing your accuracy. If you’re the last person left alive on your team, you don’t want to give up your position unless it’s absolutely necessary.

On Xbox, you can control your horizontal and vertical analogue sensitivity independently in CS: GO. Headshots make a big difference to how quickly your enemies go down, due to that being where their brains are. There isn’t a huge amount of verticality in the maps either. Because of all that, we tend to go for a high horizontal sensitivity with a lower vertical one so that even when we’re spinning around wildly to target someone, panicking and crying, more of our shots will go in the chest to head kill zone.

If you’re playing on competitive servers, buy Kevlar and the diffuse kit whenever you can. It will keep you alive and save you precious seconds while defusing a bomb if the terrorists manage to plant it. And it’s also totally on trend with this autumn’s military inspired look.

Short tip this, but it’s as true now as it was on LV426.

(Corporal Dwayne Hicks)

Remember, short controlled bursts.

(Andy)

Thanks, Hicks. Sorry about the rubbish way you were killed off at the start of Alien 2.

Next tip, the Desert Eagle pistol is a monster. If you can afford it, buy it. It’s ridiculously better than all the other pistols and you can have it in additional to your main weapon.

Next, and this may seem obvious but it bears repeating, learn the maps. Most of the maps in Counter-Strike are pretty well balanced with certain areas that favour sniping, close quarter shoot outs or middle distance machine gunning. If you know the maps, you can predict what a lot of enemy teams are going to do and then plan your strategy accordingly. For example, if you’re playing against a terrorist team on Aztec that favours the bomb site overlooking the swamp, try getting a sniper rifle and hanging out by the big double doors behind it, picking them off as they charge your way. Fun.

And finally, don’t flash bang your own team for pity’s sake. I said don’t! Argh, I needed those retinas.

[music plays]

(Andy)

Is she alright over there?

(Mike)

Yeah, yeah, she’s just working on a theory that the Zeus X27 taser is actually a piece of sentient designed by GLaDOS to test the terrorists and counter terrorists who she believes are robots sent from Black Mesa to infiltrate Aperture Science and steal her research.

(Andy)

Probably leave her to it then.

(Mike)

Yeah. I’ve got the feedback if you want to do that.

(Andy)

Great plan.

(Mike)

So, it’s that time where we share the words you’ve been writing at us in comments, on Facebook and on twitter.

(Andy)

In regard to last week’s Show of the Week, Ben Borthwick write “Mike died and you didn’t use the Channelling the dead pun? Awww.”.

(Mike)

My bad. Actually, your bad. I was dead.

(Andy)

You were dead. Good times. Peter meanwhile takes issue with your pronunciation of Boba Fett saying “There are only two Bs in Boba, not three Channel!”. Then he links to this helpful pronunciation guide.

[Pronunciation guide repeats “Boba Fett” three times]

(Andy)

Well, what do you have to say for yourself?

(Mike)

I say that is the last time I pronounce anything from straw was.

(Andy)

Onto Mark of the Ninja now, of which we posted a preview earlier in the week and which comes out today if you’re watching on Friday September the 7th or in the past if you’re watching any day after Friday September the 7th.

(Mike)

Sam Williamson commented “This is looking really cool, like 2D Tenchu with a draw distance. After something of a dry spell it’s a good time to be a stealth fan, with this, Dishonored and Hitman: Absolution out in the next few months.”.

(Andy)

And in response to the OutsideXbox survey on the plural of ninja, Richard Cadman responds “Ninji obviously”.

(Mike)

Totally incorrect.

(Andy)

Finally, the user known only as TheMansuraj asks “Any chance of an OutsideXbox podcast?”.

(Mike)

To which the answer is yes there is every chance of an OutsideXbox podcast! It’s right at the top of our to-do list and when we do get round to do it, we’ll let you know right here.

(Andy)

That’s all for this week guys. Thanks for watching, don’t forget to hit like and subscribe on YouTube. We’ll see you next week. Did you figure out the story then?

(Jane)

Yeah, yeah I did. It’s amazing, it would blow your mind if you knew.

(Andy)

It’s not something stupid like this is all one of Cave Johnson’s tests or something, is it?

(Jane)

Uh no.

(Andy)

Wanna play some DOTA 2?

(Jane)

What now?

#outsidexbox #jane douglas #andy farrant #mike channell #show of the week #transcript

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aurelliocheek · 5 years

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John Romero about Doom: 25 Years of Rip & Tear

Fast. Brutal. Hardcore. Merciless. That is Doom.

Doom – ‘nuff said!« That‘s how a Post Mortem on one of the most influencial games of all times could actually look like. Doom wrote games history, Doom is pop culture, Doom is a name that stands for high-speed, hardcore and merciless shooter-action. Everybody knows it, almost everybody played it in at least one of its many different forms – be it the classics, extraordinary mods, Doom 3, fan-projects or id Software‘s Reboot from 2016, published by Bethesda.

On 10th December 2018, Doom celebrated its 25th anniversary. Seriously, is there any better reason to take the time and sit and chat with John Romero, one of id Software‘s founders and Doom‘s creators? We don‘t think so!

One does not simply create a game and thereby a completely new genre, which not only lasts until this day but has ever since evolved tremendously. Looking back at how it came to life, how does it feel being its creator? Hmm… I don’t really think of it this way, which is funny. Even though we made first-person shooters, we originally thought of it as making a better maze game. One that was faster and more fluid – that’s what it felt like at the very, very beginning. Action games or even RPGs before »Wolfenstein 3D« or even »Catacomb 3D«, which was a very fluid moving maze game with demons and stuff, were all built like these 90°-turn wall passages, where each tile only had enough room for one object like a person or enemy; take for example »Might & Magic«, »Ultima« or »Eye of the Beholder«. However, all that these games did was making better wall graphics, but they didn’t make it smoother and faster. And I think, that’s kind of what we did: we took out that block movement, which started with »Maze War« in 1974 – and even that already had deathmatch in it!

There was a game called »Wayout«. It took place in a similar maze, but there were some spaces in the game that were a little bit more open and in which you could fluidly move around. It wasn’t super-fast – it still was an Apple II, with 1 MHz – but fluid. You could turn around in 360° and I was super impressed when I saw that and so I knew that it was possible.

»Catacombs 3D« (upper picture) and »Hovertank One« were the predecessors of »Wolfenstein 3D« and »Doom«.

In 1991, »Hovertank One« was the first time we actually had 3D on screen and moved around in the same kind of mazes (laughs). After Catacomb 3D, we eventually got to Wolfenstein 3D, which was really fast – as fast as we could go in VGA. But Doom really changed it all and it did so, because the environment changed. We got out of these block mazes and went into places that were way cooler and that aspect was very important for the genre to start.

Whenever someone creates something outstanding, people on the outside – in this case gamers – develop high expectations for whatever comes next, and with it there often goes a certain amount of pressure: the pressure of fulfilling these expectations. How has creating Doom influenced your career and how did you deal with the pressure? Well. At id Software, the only pressure we had was our own. We wanted to make really good games. That was the whole point and it didn’t matter what anyone else thought or what other people said; for example, things like »It’s too satanic!« or whatever – we didn’t care at all. It was never going to stop us from doing what we wanted and we never let it pressure us. Nobody makes the best game every time they make a game! By the time Doom came out, I had been making games for 14 years, and during that time every game was getting better and better, but you can’t expect your next game to be the best that’s ever been made, that’s just not realistic. We knew that, because at that point each of us had been making games for at least 10 years. And if you make a lot of games, they’re not going to all be hits – that’s just simple facts. Yeah, we had pressure, but it was our own drive to make really cool stuff! Actually, Doom was the only game where we said at the very beginning that we need to make the best game that we could imagine playing – that was the only time we ever did that (chuckles). »Demons on the Prey«

A Week of Deathmatch with John Romero at GDC, 2013, San Francisco.

Going back even further: what actually sparked the idea for Doom, besides the urge to make a more fluid and advanced maze game, but also in regard to story, setting and everything there is? Did you get any inspiration from books or movies for example? (laughs) It was actually inspired from our D&D campaign. We played »Dungeons & Dragons« for a long time. John Carmack was our dungeon master and he had a world that he had been developing for years when we got together. It had tons of characters in it and it was super political – it was really great! And the D&D campaign ended when I, well… did something that destroyed the world. I opened up a portal to a plane where all the demons are, and they all just poured out over the course of months and destroyed everything in the whole world. Carmack obeyed his own rules and the world was over… and it was due to demons flooding in and ruining everything there was.

So, that was the end of our playing D&D for a while (laughs).

When we were thinking about making Doom, we thought about using this idea, the story about demons pouring in through some kind of portal, and the player actually has the ability to stop it. With that idea, we were thinking about a setting, and we wanted to do something ›sci-fi-futurish‹, because we had already done the ›World War‹ II thing, and we thought that with the new technology we can actually make it look pretty cool. So, with this futuristic setting in mind, Tom Hall came up with the idea of bringing it all to Phobos, where the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) was experimenting with teleportation. Doing that, they accidentally opened up portal to hell, but instead of aliens, it’s actually hell coming through (chuckles) and that was something new. No player expected to find hell in space, and that made the game surprising and very interesting. Adding in some of our favourite stuff sci-fi-wise, we thought about what sci-fi-action movies were big at that time and »Aliens« instantly came to mind. We wanted something like that, something terrifying. Also, the dark humour – that’s just part of who we are, and back then »Evil Dead 2« was one of our favourite movies of all time, so we wanted to have this sensibility, and of course the chainsaw and the shotgun (grins)!

In hindsight, is there something you were never 100% happy with? Well, yeah… I wish that I had made a lot more levels… You know, I just made the first episode and not even the boss level, Sandy Petersen had made that because we were just down to the wire. It was a really busy year. We started the game with Tom, until he left us in August. In September, Sandy came on board and first plowed through all of Tom’s stuff and started retexturing and fixing things, and just trying to get a lot of levels done. That was what Sandy was doing, while my work in the beginning was creating the level editor – can’t make any levels without an editor, right? I had to program the tool, and it was really hard coming up with levels that didn’t look like Wolfenstein or rather everything we’ve ever seen in our whole life. So, creating the abstract level design style and developing all that took some time to bring it as far away from Wolfenstein as we could. Then I had to do all the level programming: everything that happens in a Doom level – meaning stairs, doors, lights flickering, you name it – I wrote all of that code, plus the ›save & load‹ code, as well as the tools outside of Doom like the install program, setup, and DM. All of that took me a lot of time and I just wish I would’ve had more time to make more levels.

That’s the only regret I have. Other than that, I still think it turned out great – but it could’ve even been better!

»Aliens« and the character of Ash Williams from »The Evil Dead« inspired certain elements of Doom, be it the atmosphere within the game or… well, the chainsaw and shotgun. Groovy! Copyright: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

If you had the chance to make Doom with today’s tech, how would it look? Or rather: were there any features you weren’t able to realize due to technical limitations? Hmm, if I had the same tech as back then, pretty much the same, only with me making more levels. With today’s tech? Completely different, obviously (laughs). Regarding features: no… (pauses). No, we actually put everything in that we wanted to have in the game – at that time! After a game comes out and you see what people do with it, then of course you get all kinds of ideas of what would be really cool to have. But those things didn’t exist while we were making the game. There simply wasn’t any game like it, so there’s really no way to say »Oh yeah, we messed up« or »We didn’t do a lot of things, because we didn’t have enough time«, simply because those ideas didn’t exist as the game wasn’t out, yet. Everything in the whole world was pre-Doom.

In Germany, Doom I & II were indexed, but re-rated after roughly 19 years. In October 2012, Bethesda released the »Doom 3: BFG Edition«, which included the (not indexed) »Doom3« as well as both the originals. And the amazing thing after having played both games again after almost two decades: they still hold up to this very day and that is quite impressive. Yeah, right? It’s like with »Super Mario« or »Donkey Kong«. It still feels excellent. It’s just that no one really knows how to nail a classic. You have to have a lot of experience making stuff before that’s going to happen. Nowadays, source ports of Doom feel smoother than it did at the very beginning. Now it’s super smooth and really, really fast!

Looking at so many other games that exist, no matter the genre, a lot of them aged really badly. What are, in your opinion, the key elements for Doom not being one of them? Number 1: I think that one of the most important things when you start programming a game, is that it’s tied to a timer, you need to have timer chip control. That means that you’ll never go too fast on any future computer. When we wrote our games, even before id Software, John and I were individually writing games with timer chip control. So as soon as our game starts we immediately set the timer chip for the refresh rate we want the game to go at, and to make sure it doesn’t go faster than that. If it went slower than that, then we would have code that would fix the speed of the character to match where they should be, for example if your CPU was a little too slow. So you actually have to have code to handle moving too slow on a slow computer, but also ensures that moving is never too fast on future computers as well. That’s unbelievably important.

When you go and look back at any games from that time period, they just zoom all over the screen, as they’re just too fast, because CPUs are insane now. The ones that are still super playable are the ones that have real hardware control. None of the Origin games had timer control because they were maxing-out the fastest computers when they released (laughs).

Is it safe to say, that first-person shooters are your favourite genre? I think so, yeah. I mean, it’s super immersive, it looks amazing, there’s lots of great puzzle-solving in that space. I love »Half Life 2«’s physics puzzles – being in a space like that is just so much more immersive than any 2D puzzle game. But that’s a totally different kind of thinking. Before making shooters, I did a ton of different games. For me, Wolfenstein was game number 87! Before that, I had already made 86 games – and that’s only the ones that were being published. So, yeah, I had some practice before Doom (laughs). Up to today I‘ve now made a total of around 150 games.

As an example: Less than a year ago, I did a 10-hour gamejam. The title turned out to be a really cool little game called »July 4th 1976«. I worked on it with a coder friend of mine, and it was super creepy and different. I put it in the App Store, and boom – a new game (laughs). There’s another gamejam next weekend I want to attend. Maybe I can put out another game.

Actually, the last time I’ve been to a gamejam, my son joined me. He flew over from the US to Ireland for father’s day. So, we did a gamejam in the city with a whole bunch of other people and we made something really cool, but the idea was way too big for the time we had. I want to finish it though, because the idea was really cool. You see, I’m always making stuff. I’m currently working on three different games at once.

In 2016, id Software released its Reboot of Doom – fast-paced, hardcore, brutal, real. Its successor »Doom Eternal« is set for 2019.

Are there any other genres or genre-typical mechanics you would like to mix with an FPS? Well, when creating an FPS, I don’t really think about genre-merging, because to me that would feel kind of artificial. When I want to make a new shooter, I rather think about what I want to do in this gameplay style that hasn’t been done and what I haven’t seen before. Take the original »Prey« for example, where you could walk on walls, which totally changed the whole game. They didn’t mash up any genres, they simply put in a very cool feature.

Actually, I do have some cool ideas, but I can’t really talk about them, because… well, you know…(laughs)! But seriously though, there’s still so much that hasn’t been done in FPSs, yet. And it’s amazing how the genre evolved. Just take the first-person perspective. The fact alone that with »Quake« we have created a fluid high-speed first-person perspective, all in 3D. Even games like »World of Warcraft« had to come from that. In fact, the lead programmer of WoW worked on Quake. So when you talk about influences, Doom sure was the beginning, but Quake’s impact was also big. The Production Director for »Overwatch« is the same guy who coded the 3D engine for »Star Wars: Dark Forces« back in 1995. And it’s funny how eventually it all goes back down to Doom, when it comes to a full 3D world.

We actually helped Valve when they started working on »Half-Life«. They came over to our office, and we set them up with a Quake Engine license, and I talked to them about what kind of team they’d need to make an FPS, then they started their company. But it’s not only FPSs – Markus Persson who created »Minecraft« once told me that Doom was the reason he became a programmer. So, you could say that without Doom, there wouldn’t be a Minecraft today (laughs).

From all the first-person shooters that came out in recent years, which is your favourite? Ummm… (long pause). You know, I really like the new »Doom«! It’s got the attitude, it’s got the speed. And for today, it was about making things move fast, but you just can’t have 50 super-fast demons on you, you just couldn’t live. It’s got just the right amount. In the original Doom, we often had a lot of enemies on the screen, but they would move slower. But yeah, it just feels like a really good hardcore shooter and it inherits the essence of how hardcore shooters should be and how we wanted to make them.

… the starting scene where the Doom Marine just takes the screen on which he’s told what’s going on and he just throws it away. All in all though, it feels like they treated the material with the right attitude and necessary respect. (Starts cheering) Yeah! It‘s like »I don’t care. There is no story. Rip & Tear!« And you’re right, they really got what Doom was and made it right. This is absolutely what we would have done if we had the tech. They went into the same direction we would have gone anyway. They worked on it for seven years – that’s such a long time, but they took the time and they made it right. It’s hardcore, it’s really great!

What’s your opinion on »Doom Eternal«? Unbelievable! It was such a great idea just going for that grappling hook – just do it! (laughs) But seriously, everybody is excited about it, because with the Doom they already made they proved that they know what Doom is and how to make something awesome. And what they did with the next one, was basically what we did with »Doom 2: Hell on Earth«. We didn’t mess up anything, but we took what everyone liked and made it better, and that’s exactly what they did with Eternal: they took what everybody liked and made it better, and they did not mess up anything that was already in the game. That’s how you make a sequel!

And you know what? I’m actually more excited for what comes after Doom Eternal (laughs), I mean, I really want to know where Doom goes, because we’ve seen nothing after Doom 2. This is the fifth Doom, and I’m waiting for the next Doom 3 – the real one, not the remake! Looking back at »Half-Life 2«, it was a great game. It was more expansive in scope and more scientific, such a great adventure to go on with all the changing environments and everything. But Doom… Doom is visceral, that’s the major difference.

From left to right: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, Jay Wilbur.

What did you think about all the easter eggs? Like the little Doom Marine figurine you fist-bump when you find it, the Icon of Sin or Commander Keen’s helmet and skull on a stick? (Laughs) The figurine was so great, and it wasn’t that hard to find. At some point you just turn and backtrack, and then you find him sitting there and I was like »Ah, so little collectibles are a thing now.« And it’s actually funny that they put the word ›Doom‹ on Keen’s helmet, because the only validation for that can be found in Doom 2. There’s a secret level at the very end, where Commander Keen is hanging, and you can shoot him, that’s about it.

Speaking of secret levels: »To win the game you must get 100% on level 15 by John Romero.« – A guy called Zero Master obviously managed to be the first to get 100% of all secrets in said level. Really? After more than 20 years? And what’s the story behind that? Yup, that’s real, nobody had done that before (laughs). Basically it was a special sector that I made while making this level. I put a secret teleporter behind a wall and that teleporter would take you somewhere. But instead of the destination where the teleporter took you being marked as a secret, I marked the teleporter itself as a secret. Normally, when you go into a teleporter, you never actually touch the sector inside the teleporter – you hit the line and you’re teleported. There’s also some weird movement stuff going in that little space. To mark a secret, you also need to be at the same vertical height as the sector, and this sector is above where the player is at. In this case, the players touch the line before they reach the same height as the sector and so they’re gone.

This player who discovered it actually used a Pain Elemental to push them into the teleporter to mark that secret. No one’s ever done that (laughs) and you could tell that guy did it on purpose because he pushed the Pain Elemental all the way down this really long hallway to get there. Sometimes it’s really fascinating what players actually come up with, they do all kinds of crazy stuff (laughs)!

If you could choose one game, you would’ve always loved or still would love to be a part of – your own games excluded –, which one would it be and why? Minecraft! It’s just the best game ever made, and unlike any other game. It’s absolutely incredible! World of Warcraft would be another choice; WoW is derived from »Everquest«, which again is derived from »Ultima Online« – there’s already a lineage there. But it gets to be grindy and repetitive, while Minecraft is just unlimited creativity – simply an amazing game, and its effects on the game industry are yet to be felt even more. Take »Fortnite« or, rather, its building aspect, which is obviously influenced by Minecraft.

In which regards do you think – positive as well as negative – has the games industry changed the most over the last 25 years? Huh… there’s been so many things. The rise of Facebook and Facebook gaming was very interesting and completely unforeseen, just like Minecraft. These huge things, they just appear. »POOF« and there they are, changing the internet.

If you’re a kid who loves Minecraft, however, have fun trying to download mods for it, because everybody’s mod pages and download sites are garbage! It’s horrible, they’re just trying to lure kids into installing all kinds of other stuff. Which download button do you click? If there’s ten buttons, nine of them are installing malware and one actually takes you to the mod you want – that’s insane! Especially as the appetite from kids is there.

And just look at Facebook games. Millions of people make and play these games. I made a Facebook game myself, and I had 25 million people playing it every month. That’s absolutely crazy! It was really interesting to see these things rise up and have this kind of exposure. And it influences everybody else. A lot of people are creatively influenced, others are influenced monetarily, and they just want to make money off that idea, so there’s a ton of ›gold-rushing‹ towards those things.

After 24 (!!) years, player Zero Master finally managed to discover the last and final unrevealed secret. Check the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=irNoHfnLXRM

Is that rather positive or negative now? Oh no, I think it’s great. The kind of gameplay that evolved on Facebook using your friend network was unlike anything anyone had ever seen in a game before. Nobody had a network like that to connect to, and it was really interesting to see how designers would exploit or use the network that they have or even extend the network to people they don’t know, because these are people that also play the same game. That way they even meet new people through the game. It was really interesting to see this development and it showed how a platform like Facebook could really influence game design in a big way.

… and something really negative? On the whole there’s been a ton of positivity. But… well, #Gamergate, that should never have happened. And lootboxes (laughs). Lootboxes are still in flux. But it depends: if it’s only about stuff for peacocking, it’s one thing. If it’s ‘pay to win’, then it’s so not cool!

What’s your advice for young developers who try to get into the industry today and hopefully survive there? Find something that you’d like to do and mod a game using that skill. Mod multiple games, get experience in doing that and if you like it a lot, then create a portfolio page and get in touch with the companies you’d like to work for. And if you want to make games – well, start making them, however you can. The internet is packed-full with all the information you could possibly ever want. There’s no excuse for not making stuff!

Over the years you’ve probably been asked the same questions over and over again, and once more today. Now is your chance: if you could pick one question you’d like to answer that no one’s asked you before, which would it be? (Laughs) Hahaha, oh geez! Well… (pauses), what was it like making games on the Apple II?

And now you’ve got to answer it. It was tremendous amounts of fun. The Apple II was a finite computer that has nothing to do with today’s computers, which are endless, and you never stop learning. This computer was finite and limited in what it could do and what it had in it. But even with those limits, there was still an unbelievable amount to learn in order to master it and going from BASIC to assembly language and then all the techniques that you could use in assembly that are very different than 8-bit computers of that time period that had hardware systems for sprites and stuff like that – the Apple II had none. A lot of programming techniques had to be developed to put stuff on the screen manually. The interesting ‘problem’ that programming in assembly language brings is that there’s a lot you have to have in your head to write a game in it. And when one person is doing that, it’s hard to really focus on a big and cool new game design, because you already have incredible amounts of stuff in your head in order to just make even a simple game.

Making big games didn’t really happen back then. And if there were any, like the Ultima games, and “Wizardry”, it was because that programmer was just better than most people. They had more practice before making their cool big game, so they could focus more on the design than on the implementation of it. They had already spent years getting good at coding, so they could now focus more on design. And in the early days it was hard to find the time because the industry had just begun in 1977, so it was a race. But it was an amazing time and fun sharing information with other people, and back then everyone was discovering stuff for the first time. There were hardly any books, so it was even cooler when you could actually get a piece of information from somebody, or find a cool trick somewhere in a magazine. It was simply the most fun time ever, because it was also during the arcade explosion and all of the creativity that was coming out in the arcades, all the games that no one had ever seen before, coupled with the fact that you have that going into your head and you could make that stuff happen on a computer. There’s no end to what you can do, there’s no end to what you want to do.

Looking back at your time at id Software: in hindsight and despite how it all went down between you and John Carmack, is there – still today – a specific moment you wouldn’t want to miss for the world? Basically, everything up until halfway through 1995.

John Romero is a legend! Besides that he was the Co-Founder of id Software and creator of classics like »Commander Keen«, »Wolfenstein 3D«, »Doom I & 2« and »Quake«.

The post John Romero about Doom: 25 Years of Rip & Tear appeared first on Making Games.

John Romero about Doom: 25 Years of Rip & Tear published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

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docayin-blog · 5 years

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12 Early Season Bowhunting Mistakes

The start of another bow season is just around the corner. Every hunter that heads afield with a stick and string does so with big hopes and dreams.

However, despite our best efforts many of those dreams will not come to fruition. And while there's no denying that the early season is a difficult time to fill a whitetail tag, it can become nearly impossible if you fall into the trap of committing a handful of these early season bowhunting mistakes.

You Woke Up Too Early

When you've been waiting since last season for the first day of the new one to begin, the last thing you want to do is stay in bed. However, if your sights are set on arrowing a mature whitetail buck maybe you should sleep in. Here's why?

During the early season most mature bucks aren't experiencing the rush of testosterone as they will in a few short months. This means they are less likely to be on their feet during daylight hours and if they are, it will probably be during the last few minutes of light.

Applying unnecessary hunting pressure during early season only increases the chances of spooking the buck you are hunting and ruining your hunting area before the rut even begins.

The safer tactic would be to pattern your target buck on an evening food source to predict where and when he will be feeding. Focusing on evening hunts will keep pressure at a minimum and let you catch a few more hours of sleep. Of course, you also have to get in and out of the hunting area undetected.

You Forgot About the Bugs

Can bugs really disrupt your chances of whitetail success? Sure they can. If your time in the treestand is spent swatting at pesky gnats and flies then you're just asking to be spotted by the keen eyes of a whitetail.

This is especially true when you are dealing with large, adult does. The wise, old ones that usually pass by your location before the older-class bucks show up.

Old does are notorious for busting even the most docile hunters and they do it with ease. So, it only makes sense that you can't spend your day flailing your arms in an effort to survive an onslaught of pesky insects.

The good news is that technology offers a simple solution to this dilemma. It's called ThermaCell and it is the most effective way to rid your personal space of unwanted bugs. Even better, the ThermaCell unit is completely odorless so you don't have to worry about counteracting your other scent-control measures.

You can sit motionless until the time is right to send an arrow downrange into the chest of a trophy buck.

You Dismissed Scent Control

The early season is typically accompanied with high temperatures and that means you are going to work up a sweat no matter what you do.

This is even more evident while walking to your stand. More sweat will translate into more game spooking bacteria and odor. Therefore, it is imperative that your scent reduction efforts be on point during this time. That means keeping not only your hunting gear washed and clean but also your body and breath.

When it comes to personal scent control I typically use chlorophyll tablets to combat internal odors. I have taken them for several years during hunting season and have found chlorophyll to be completely safe and effective. When combined with my daily use of scent-free soap (not just before the hunt), I can really knock my odor levels to a minimum even on those hot days of the season.

You Didn't Do Enough Situational Practice

When it comes time to dust off the bow and start shooting in preparation of the upcoming season a lot of folks head to the back yard. And that's fine. The back lawn is the perfect place to get reacquainted with your gear and make sure everything is in working order.

However, once sight pins have been set and shooting strength is regained, the back-yard target sessions should end. In their place should be something that will better match the conditions you will face while hunting.

For most bowhunters this means elevated shooting. After all, what good does it do to practice flat-footed in the yard when your next shot at a whitetail buck will likely come from 20 feet above the ground? The answer is it does you no good.

Every bowhunter should immerse themselves in what I call "situational" practice.

In other words, if you're a treestand hunter then do a good deal of practice shooting from an elevated position. If you're a spot and stalk hunter then you should be shooting over uneven terrain at unknown distances. Likewise, ground blind hunters would greatly benefit from practicing from a seated position and shooting out of the actual blind they plan to hunt from.

You Didn't Range Your Shot

Like most deer hunters across the country your early season shot will likely take place across an open food plot or agricultural field. Open space has a unique way of tricking the eyes into believing the shot is closer/farther away than it really is.

During your practice sessions, take a quick second to range the shot before drawing back your bow. Or, at the very least, have a number of pre-ranged landmarks you can reference when trying to determine shooting distance. This small but valuable discipline will pay off during season.

You Neglected Pre-Season Scouting

It's easy to get caught up in the type of pre-season planning that has nothing to do with whitetail deer behavior. Gear, conditioning and shooting can take up a lot of time and in the process scouting gets pushed to the back burner. That's a mistake; especially in the early season.

The reason scouting is so important during late summer is because you will be relying on the whitetails urge to feed to fill your tag. You will also be working with a limited amount of daylight in which to encounter a shooter buck.

If you haven't done your homework and scouted before opening day then you are likely going to be playing catch up when the season starts. With no knowledge of travel routes and food sources the odds are high you will bump the very deer you are trying to find. Snooping around the woods for a decent stand location during the early season is a great way to ruin your season.

Effective scouting can be done in many ways depending on the type of area you are hunting. There is a vast difference between scouting and hunting agricultural food plots and trying to locate a shooter buck in heavily timbered areas.

The bottom line is, understand what type of scouting you need to do and how to determine the early season behavior of the whitetail in your area. Only then will you be ready to tackle the task of filling an early season whitetail tag.

You Have No Idea What the Favored Food Source Is

Unlike the rut, when bucks are prone to be anywhere at any time, the early season is ruled by one factor — food. Outside of the rut a mature buck will never be as vulnerable (or visible) as he will be during early season.

No hunting pressure and a need to feed has left the deer in a lackadaisical state of mind.

The best way to capitalize on this fleeting condition is to know what the deer are feeding on and when. However, special care must be given not to disrupt their daily routine with your scouting efforts. Otherwise it's game over.

This can be accomplished in agricultural settings by glassing bucks from afar during the last hours of daylight. However, if you're hunting in a mountainous backdrop then the odds are stacked against you. The use of game cameras becomes even more important as well as how and when you check them.

The bottom line is no matter where you're hunting, if you're hunting during the early season then you must find the food. Do that and the bucks will find you.

You Hunted On Top of the Food Source

So, you located the groceries and you hung your treestand right over them. That's fine if all you want is some meat for the freezer because that is likely what you are going to end up with.

Mature bucks will be the last deer to enter the field or visit an acorn-spewing oak tree in the early-season. Most mature buck movement occurs under the cover of darkness.

The best strategy is to move back from the food source (50-75 yards) and locate the travel routes that deer are using to access it. This will increase your chances of seeing that shooter buck when there's enough light left to make the shot.

The key to making this strategy work will be your ability to remain undetected as a number of younger bucks, does and yearlings make their way past your stand site. Do that and you just might encounter that early season, nocturnal buck.

You Have No Entry or Exit Routes

The best stand location in the world won't do you any good if you can't get to it without disturbing the deer you are hunting. This is true no matter what phase of the season it is.

However, during the early season it is important to know how to exit your stand site without spooking deer.

The reason an exit strategy is so important is because every time you hunt an area you educate the deer. If you're hunting over an early season food plot or agricultural field and every deer but the one you want walks by you've got to get out of the area undetected.

Otherwise, you will tip your hand to the ones that did show up and the next time they decide to visit that feeding location they will be even more cautious. And their actions will undoubtedly alert any mature bucks in the area that something simply isn't right.

If you can't find a low-key exit route then perhaps you should consider having someone drive in and pick you up after dark.

Sure, this will send the deer running but the damage will be minimal compared to them watching you slither down a tree like the boogie man and enter the field they are feeding in.

Another option is the use of a predator call to clear the field of feeding deer. Yes, it's going to spook some deer but they won't equate it with a human threat and that can buy you a little more time to fill your tag.

You Checked Your Trail Cameras Too Often

There is nothing quite like retrieving the SD card from your game cameras and finding a photo of that buck you've dreamed about all year. And, once that happens, it's almost impossible to fight the urge to go back to your trail camera every chance you get.

That's a mistake.

You've got to resist frequently checking your camera no matter how bad you want to. The deer haven't experienced much contact with humans during the off-season and they will easily notice any change in their environment.

Limit trail camera checks to several weeks apart or during a rain when the odds are low of leaving scent and bumping deer going or coming to your camera. If you can't do that then maybe a cellular unit is better suited for you. This will allow you to monitor your camera without ever stepping foot near it. Overall, cellular is the best low-impact option but might not be available to everyone. If that's the case then self-control is the next best thing.

You Hunted With Your Old Arrow Nocks

Slapping arrows all summer is a great thing and will build shooting confidence like nothing else. However, if you want that accuracy to carry over into the hunting season then you need to swap out those old nocks with a set of fresh, new ones before heading to the treestand.

Arrow nocks take a lot of abuse over the course of a summer and even though you might not be able to see it with the naked eye, there is always the chance that a nock or two is bent or damaged enough to throw your shot off. This is especially true when shooting at further distances under the stress of a live-animal shot.

Also, consider that you might not even notice a difference in accuracy when shooting field-points. However, broadheads can have a mind of their own and when you throw in a nock that doesn't sit just right you're asking for something bad to happen. Murphy's Law is always waiting to strike. Even if that means using something as insignificant as an arrow nock.

You Didn't Test-Shoot Your Broadheads

Speaking of broadheads, it should be common practice to never enter the woods without having first shot the head you plan to hunt with. It's just the ethical thing to do.

Furthermore, if you've never experimented with different broadheads, you might be amazed at the differences in flight that various broadheads will deliver.

Sometimes the bow is the problem and sometimes it is the broadhead. The only way to know is to test the broadhead you plan to hunt with using a well-tuned bow. And don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you are shooting a mechanical broadhead that you don't need to test it.

I have shot plenty of mechanical heads that did not fly "just like my field points." Sure, the adjustments for accuracy were smaller when compared to a good number of fixed-blade broadheads but the fact still remains that they were not "field-point" accurate.

Conclusion

It's the start of a new season. New hopes and dreams weigh in the balance and every decision you make will either bring you one step closer to them or one step further away.

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rinabrunoblog · 5 years

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Switch Arcade February Summary

With Valentine’s Day behind us and February almost gone, the Spring air is filled with announcements and big reveals in the gaming world for the coming period. Nintendo Direct packed up plenty of those in the first half of this month, and 2019 is already looking like it’s going to be the ‘Year of the Nintendo Switch’. However, this roundup did not just bring announcements about the awaited games currently in development but gave us a glimpse at Nintendo’s figures and much more.

Nintendo Direct News

The latest Direct was eagerly awaited and people seem to have reacted well to it, overall. There were a few big reveals, like Super Mario Maker 2, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Dragon Quest XI, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Daemon X Machina, DLC, and the long-awaited Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. New announcements included BoxBoy! + BoxGirl!, Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered, Astral Chain, Oninaki, Rune Factory 5, Sacrifice, Hellblade: Senua’s, and the fan favorite Tetris 99. We’ve also got update overviews for Captain Toad, Starlink: Battle For Atlas, and the recently released Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Here is the entire video from the Nintendo’s YouTube channel:

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As soon as the announcement was over, they dropped a few of the fan favorites into the online shop, like the Final Fantasy IX and Daemon X Machina: Prototype Missions, while Final Fantasy VII is left for the late March. The Nintendo Switch Online Tetris 99 battle royale mash delighted the fans, while there are some good titles coming soon, it seems.

Nintendo Switch Alex Kidd

The Sega Ages Alex Kidd in Miracle World, an old school classic, was announced earlier in February. It was a pretty popular platformer back in the ‘90s and it is now coming back as a pretty big thing apparently. The release date is not pinpointed exactly but if we follow the Nintendo’s release schedule they’ve adopted so far, which is one game per month, and if we take into account that it’s been put off for quite a while now, it should come in a month or two. Additionally, the fans should expect a worldwide release a month from its Japan release and the game will be immediately available for at least all the major regions right from the start. It will feature all the original music tracks restored, a rewind capability, and a complete version with all the features available if you choose so.

Touhou Sky Arena – Matsuri-Climax

The very essence of everything Japan’s been telling us from the ‘80s until now, this totally weird game Touhou Sky Arena – Matsuri-Climax switch, whatever that means, takes place in the Touhou world. But, the most intricate part if that the battles take place mid-air. Everything splashes and flashes as this title are coming to Switch at $29.99.

Tokyo School Life

As far as the visuals go, this may be the best, most-polished game of the anime-styled wave coming to Switch. Tokyo School Life follows 3 girls in high school, in Tokyo no less, as they adapt to the stereotypical school environment. Each of the girls all has emphasized personality traits of their own. One is athletic and open, one is shy but kind, and the third one is warm-hearted. The game obviously has the social aspect focused above any action. In fact, finding your way in a social environment is the action in Tokyo School Life, and it will cost $14.99.

Modern Combat Blackout

The Modern Combat Switch is a home run for Gameloft, as there is no game of its kind on Switch as of yet. No real-time present time shooter other than this one, so this game is a highlight of 2019 in terms of an FPS shooter like Call of Duty. Available on iOS, Android, and PC, Modern Combat Blackout switch is coming with high hopes and it will only cost $19.99.

Cinders

Nintendo is trying to go in every possible direction genre-wise, one step at the time, and this adventure game with a non-linear storyline is what’s in store for games who love this kind of pace. It is a story driven choice-based game which is best described as an adaptation of Cinderella. It promises to be highly interesting if the early reviews are to be trusted. Cinders switch will naturally be playable multiple times because of the non-linear gameplay style, which is a brilliant way to make additional content available. Also, the subversion of this children’s book is an excellent way to add some familiarity to the game’s world. It will be available at $19.99.

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Final Fantasy IX

The remastered Final Fantasy 9 switch will cost only $20.99, which is great news for the fans of the franchise. The game bears its signature art style, the gameplay may be a little slower than what audiences are used to now, but it is a classic so worth the cost no doubt. From PlayStation to Switch, Final Fantasy IX is here.

Tetris 99

How do you manage to play Tetris in a battle royale environment? Well, nobody would have known the answer as this Tetris 99 Switch addition came as a big surprise to many. It is an MMO battle royale designed by Arika and nurtured by Nintendo of course. It will require a Nintendo Switch Online account and it will feature you, the player, and 99 other players in a single Tetris arena matching and competing against one another where only one can be the victor. Each player will have its own turn as we all attack each other, with that old Tetris song playing in the background. The best part- it is free if you are Subscribed to Nintendo Online!

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Daemon X Machina: Prototype Missions

So far, Daemon X Machina has mixed reviews on the web, as people seem to have expected something different than the game actually offers. While most people had hoped for the well-established mecha tactical fight game, this Daemon X Machina switch action-packed shooter offers a 3rd person view thrill. The game will offer cool visual features, an easy to pick up gameplay mechanic, and the mecha feel to it all. Also, it comes free of charge, so there’s no shame in trying it out!

Other announcements and releases with the price:

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Strikey Sisters $9.99

Pet Care $1.49

OlliOlli: Switch Stance $14.99

Nekopara Vol. 2 $14.99

LOVE $2.99

Hexa Maze $19.99

Guess the Word $1.89

Astrology and Horoscopes Premium $8.99

Alvastia Chronicles $12.99

Nice Slice $1.99

Degrees of Separation $14.99

Switch Arcade February Summary syndicated from https://lucystrickland.wordpress.com/

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