Month: September 2016

Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons Review: You Put Your Left Stick In

Gaming is largely made up of two big landmasses.

On the one hand, we have games that are truly games – with systems and high scores and scores of people to kill.

On the other, there are experiences.  The industry hasn’t been kind to these, calling them walking simulators and then writing them off, but these experiences are part of the glue-that-binds.  You see, there are just things that cannot be done in a book or movie form.  You can only have them as games.

Brothers is a game like this.  It straddles a quite-fine line between experience/walking simulator and “game” but it thrives exactly because it’s on that knife edge.

And, in one short play through, it has become one of my very favourite games of 2016. Read more

Twinstiq Game Club Plays: Mark of the Ninja

What's up everyone? Welcome to another Twinstiq Game Club, I'm Scrooloose and this week we'll be playing my pick: Mark of the Ninja. title_2_to_1

This is an action adventure, stealth title where the player is put into the role of a ninja that has been thrust into a conflict of ancient tradition and modern day technology. Mark of the Ninja focuses on patience, stealth and deliberate action to complete the challenges it presents players with.

All in all this title has about 10 hours of play time to enjoy with some puzzle solving, player character development, and lots of ways to complete its many levels. This is a really great, fun to play 2d side scroller adventure game that will test your thumbs abilities to press buttons in a timely fashion. I enjoyed the crap out of it myself and I hope you'll all join us in playing so you can experience this one for yourselves.

  • I recommend playing with a controller, but honestly mouse and keyboard works just fine.
  • We're only playing through level 5, The Fall of the Hessian Tower.
  • This will be the standard version of the game (Not the special edition)
  • Mark of the Ninja is $15 on Steam and GoG. It's also available for Xbox 360.

System requirements for Mark of the Ninja are as follows:

Windows

MINIMUM:

    • OS:Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1
    • Processor:AMD Phenom 9750 or Pentium D 800+
    • Memory:2 GB RAM
    • Graphics:NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 3000+ or better
    • DirectX®:9.0c
    • Hard Drive:2.5 GB HD space
    • Sound:100% DirectX9.0c compatible sound card and drivers

RECOMMENDED:

    • OS:Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1
    • Processor:Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
    • Memory:2 GB RAM
    • Graphics:NVIDIA® 9600GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 5000+ or better
    • DirectX®:9.0c
    • Hard Drive:2.5 GB HD space
    • Sound:100% DirectX9.0c compatible sound card and drivers

Mac

MINIMUM :

    • OS: OS X 10.7 Lion or later
    • Processor: 2.4 GHz
    • Memory: 2 GB
    • Hard Drive:2.5 GB HD space
    • Video Card: 512 MB VRAM, NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 3000+ or better

SteamOS / Linux

MINIMUM :

    • Processor: 2.4 GHz
    • Memory: 2 GB
    • Hard Drive:2.5 GB HD space
    • Video Card: 512 MB VRAM, NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 3000+ or better

Nimble WRUP

So Palmer Luckey is funding a pro-Trump group. I wonder what that will do to the sales of the Rift and his relationship with Mark Zuckerberg.  The Facebook CEO is not exactly known to be a fan of Trump and Oculus is still struggling hard to reach an audience. Then again, Palmer was only in it for the “jolly good time.”
“Yo, I’m fighting the establishment! How? By spending millions on someone who is clearly part of the establishment. Am I part of the establishment? Yes, so what? You can only fight the establishment by having the support of the establishment. Don’t you idiots understand that?”
Gotta love this guy. Read more

NonStiq: Just Who is This Nightwatch Guy Anyway?

Alright so the first thing you've got to know about me is that I'm not a real big graphic novel fan. I have an old collection of comics from my younger days and every now and again I'll pick one or two up if they look interesting, but I hardly ever read them. In fact, the only comic book hero I was every really into was Image Comics, Spawn. I have lots of issues of that particular character and I read all of them at one time or another.

So I'm going to throw down some exposition real quick. Spawn came about in 1992. I bought the first issue for the same reason I buy any comic: it had a cool cover. I read that book and I was intrigued. Back in the early 90's Marvel and Image shared a lot of writers and artists and I believe they did so for quite a while. Lots of cross overs took place with various comic companies. spawn-batmanOne of those artists and creators was Todd McFarlane, his mind was the one from which Spawn was sprung. Okay? Good.war-devil

Flash forward to 2016 where I got an invite to head on up to my Sister and future Brother-in-law [Twinstiq's own Cody Hall] 's  place for a small-ish nerd conference that looked like it could be fun times. While there Cody and I went through some of the many comic bins that lined the booths and searched for something interesting. I found some cool stuff by the old standby of "cool cover, pick it up" that I've used when purchasing many times before. One of those happened to be an issue of Spider Man called Web of Spider Man, issue number 100 from May of 1993. wos_100

Here's where all this babbling on about this and that gets interesting. I was flipping through this Spider Man comic with a cool shiny green cover featuring Spidey in a suit of armor when I saw this effing guy right here! nightwatch

"Hang on" I said "This guy looks pretty familiar, like Spawn actually. A lot like Spawn." My Sister happens to also be a Spawn fan and I shot her a text and picture of this guy that Marvel calls Nightwatch. She replies to me "That guy is a copycat." [Turns out he's not exactly but we'll get there in a minute]

From there we were both wildly intrigued by the obvious similarities of these two characters and made it our business to find out just who this Nightwatch guy is. Luckily for me I had this issue of Spider Man and at the end is the origin story of Nightwatch. Convenient yes?

So here's what we know about him:nightwatchcompare

  1. His name is Kevin Trench and he witnessed his future self being killed by terrorists hijacking a plane. He takes the black and red Nightwatch Suit from his own lifeless body.
  2. The Nightwatch Suit, is composed of nanites capable of fixing [almost] any damage to itself and its wearer. The cloak is prehensile, can be used as a separate limb and change forms.
  3. He's African American.
  4. He seems to be stuck in a time loop and sort of destined to meet himself at the moment of his own death.
  5. Came about in 1993

Compare those details with those of Spawn:spawn-1

  1. His name is Al Simmons
  2. He was killed by a mercenary, sent to hell and brought back with very few memories.
  3. He has a red and black, living suit that can heal itself, shape-shift, and protect its wearer.
  4. He's African American
  5. Came about in 1992

So aside from names and few minute details the origins are very similar. One important fact is that they both died. Certainly they look alike: The extra tall high standing collars, the excessively large cloak, even some of the markings and colors.

Powers as well: They can both self-heal. Their suits are both powerful extensions of their bodies able to protect their wearers at all times. They're both physically more powerful than normal humans. Either of them can fade into the shadows and remain hidden as well as perform some pretty similar shape shifting.

There are definitely enough character details to separate the two from being one and the same, but I [and my Sister] had to wonder... Is this a character that Todd McFarlane made before leaving Marvel completely? Did he base Spawn off his initial designs of Nightwatch and Marvel just happened to use his original character later?

The answer is no. Nightwatch was created by Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk and his appearance was later changed so as not to resemble Spawn so closely. His introduction as Nightwatch happened in Web of Spider Man number 99. Costumes of the two characters still shared similar abilities, even if they were explained a bit differently.

Spawn's suit is a living being; symbiotic and endowed with a host of nearly limitless dark powers from hell, including: speed, flight, healing, attack, defense etc. It'll even keep Spawn safe while he's unconscious. While Nightwatch's suit is all about nano-technology allowing for various healing, pain suppression, air filtration and vision enhancement powers. The suit is also capable of creating darkness in a limited area, gliding, and forming into sharpened tentacles. They may sound a bit different, but they can both do more or less the same stuff.

Nightwatch had his own short run series and appeared in various issues of Spider Man, and She Hulk. He was eventually killed off in a heroic way while saving an innocent in a battle called "The Great Game".

So to me, these two still have a bit too much in common to be mere coincidence. Spawn came first but only by a few months and who's to say what transpired? Perhaps someone was watching someone else and received a moment of inspiration. Perhaps it was a little more nefarious than that. Just because one was in print first doesn't mean the idea was first in that particular someone's head, and vice-versa. We may never actually know. But even for a guy who only has a passing interest in graphic novels this was something that made me very curious. I kind of hope to run across Nightwatch again some time.

And by the way while I was doing research for this article I happened to notice that I'm not the only one who ever posed the questions at hand here. I would recommend a quick Google search if you're interested in knowing more.

 

Something Something WRUP

Something something games. Something something news. Something something I’m tired, fuck this.

Something something playing?

 

Dr. S: need to play some more game dev tycoons for work (mostly to get the screenshots at this stage), so I will play 5 different business sims in 2 days. Is that world record material? Probably not, but still more than is fun.

Cody: Gnna Start working on playing as many games from 2011 as I can afford to see what holds up the best for the Past Due Game Awards!

Scroo: Finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons for game club. Started playing Jotun, that's been pretty cool. Maybe more No Man's Sky as well. Depends on how busy this weekend is.

Andrew: Replaying Dead Rising on Steam. It really takes me back. Hard to believe that game is already 10 years old! It was one of the first titles I picked up for the 360 and I played the heck out of it back then.

Greywolfe: gameclub means that i'm playing "brothers."  i also have to work up the courage to get to where i was with "a blind legend," but that save system sucks and i dunno if i'll make it :P - i will [hopefully] also start up my quest for glory 3 hero as well as continuing my adventure in the longest journey.  but mostly...brothers.  lol.

Twinstiq Game Club Plays: Bothers – A Tale of Two Sons

Welcome to Twinstiq's Game club, where we each nominate a game and then - as a team - play the game to completion, talking about it in a little weekly podcast on a Sunday.

Right now, we are playing Bothers - A Tale of Two Sons.

If you want to play along with us, we encourage you to do so! This game will only be played this week since it's so short. If you want to to join our discussion of the game, we will be talking about it on September 18th at 12:00pm PST.

First, you'll need to buy the game. Either from your local retailer or through digital Download on PSN, Xbox Live, or Steam. The game will run you $14.99 USD.

IMPORTANT: This game MUST be played with a controller that features TWO Analogue sticks.

Sorry Mouse lovers there is just no getting around this one, but I promise you its still worth your time.

If you want to interact with us on Steam, you can find the Game Club Curation Page here.

And the actual Twinstiq Game Club Group page here.

Again we will be discussion the game on Google Hangouts on August 14th at 12:00pm PST, if joining said discussion interests you please DM @Yoda0VGs on Twitter or email me.

Vital WRUP

Dr. S has flown the coop again so you poor souls are stuck with me and my wacky taste in music. This weeks ear worm should pair well with everyone's seemingly hectic weekend over the horizon. Hey as long as the music pairs well with Dirty Bomb or Overwatch then I'm good :D

So as the Seagulls mutter, "Watcha doin'  with your life?"

  • AndrewMy son and I are still playing Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. I also picked up the novelization of the recent Insomniac game, Song of the Deep. We are reading that together as well.
  • Danteg: I've been playing Shadows of Mordor for a couple of weeks. I'm almost done with the main story, so I'll be playing it this weekend.
  • Greywolfe (Twitter, YouTube): Well guys, I'm just so damn old. Plus, I have missplaced my sundial. It is impossible for me to keep track of the days without it.
  • Scrooloose:Well, Finished up Ghostbusters for Game Club and we'll be talking about it Sunday. Jumped into some more Doom: Super Nightmare mode using Vulkan and man that's smooth. I'm looking at picking up Abzu or Song of the Deep pretty soon, they've both interested me quite a bit. That's about it for me this week.
  • Thomas (Twitter): Cody has me locked away and all I have with me is a Gizmondo. Dr. S needs food badly. Help!
  • TruLegendKiller: Hello Internet and welcome to another Twinstiq #wrup this week Game Club has been finishing up Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009) so if you are playing along with us, be sure to finish up the last three chapters. I had picked up Assassin's Creed Unity and Syndicate. After putting five hours or so into Unity, I finally gave up on it. The game is, by far, the worst of the series. So I moved onto Syndicate, and I am loving it, I dare say it may be the best of the series. I'm still playing Marvel Heroes 2016 and I just got my hands on the first two Witcher games so I may be starting those soon.
  • Yoda0VGs (Twitter): Picked up This Is The Police and look forward to trying that out. Still digging RockSmith and Overwatch, though I do wanna try harder to play more Dota with Ti6 right around the corner. And I'm still debating picking up ABZÛ because that game looks like the dopeness.

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