Month: October 2016

Game Club Plays: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Hey everyone, Scrooloose here again with another great pick for the Twinstiq Game Club. This week it's going to be The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

This is a mystery narrative title with some kind of noir elements and plenty of puzzle solving that was released in 2014. That was a mouth full I know. Ethan Carter was originally rendered in Unreal Engine 3 and is still one of most highly detailed and aesthetically beautiful games out there to date. In 2015 there was a free redux version released that used the more powerful Unreal Engine 4 and the difference is noticeable not only visibly, but also in terms of performance and various forms of refinement. Nowadays there's even a VR version of the game released as DLC. Ethan Carter is available for PC through Steam and GoG as well as for PS4 so you'll have a couple of options for playing. Sadly there is no Mac port.

vec_ue4

As said above this is a narrative title set in the first person where the player takes the role of Paul Prospero, a detective tasked to find out what happened in the game's setting, Red Creek Valley. Pretty simple in its execution The Vanishing of Ethan Carter says from the beginning that it will not hold your hand. That means a few things: Firstly, there's no real tutorial, suck it up and figure it out. Secondly, there are no forced story elements so you as the player are allowed to go as deep or as shallow in the game play as you like. Thirdly, there are no real hints aside from the clues that Paul will find via exploration.

I personally really love this game and it's worth the full price of admission. Beautiful environments, minimal loading screens, lots of exploration and puzzle solving and a pretty well told story make this one my pick for this Game Club round. It's also a relatively short game, I spent about five hours on my first play through. We at the Game Club hope you'll join us on our journey to solve The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

System Requirements for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter are as follows:

MINIMUM:

    • OS: Windows 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core2 Duo or equivalent AMD
    • Memory: 6 GB RAM
    • Graphics: DirectX11 compliant card with 1GB of VRAM
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 9 GB available space
    • Sound Card: DirectX9c compliant

Twinstiq Gameclub Plays: Beneath A Steel Sky

Welcome, everyone to another edition of game club.  Game club is not at all like Fight Club.  We absolutely encourage you to talk about it.

As ever, we go in rounds and for this particular round, I’ve picked the stellar adventure game Beneath A Steel Sky.

Read on past the break to find out how this is going to work and what you need to do to get the game. Read more

Darksiders Warmastered Edition: Coming [Not Quite as] Soon – Update

Update

Alright so I guess I'm late to the party here but after much anticipation of the Warmastered Edition's release date tomorrow (the 25th of October) it turns out there's been a delay.

According to THQ Nordic, they'll be pushing back the release until November 29th for PC and November 22nd for console. Unfortunately there were no reasons given for the push back but it looks like we'll have to wait another month to jump back into War's Story.

My original article can still be read below, and you can bet that I'm still excited for this one.


Original Article Oct. 13th

You guys know I really like Darksiders from my review of Darksiders 2: Dethinitive Edition that I did did a few months back right? Well, not terribly long ago Nordic Games also announced the remaster of the original Darksiders called the Darksiders: Warmastered Edition, and it's live on October 25th.

I'll certainly be picking this one up. Darksiders was a killer title when it came out and it was one of the first games I got when I built my PC back in 2011. I'm really excited for this one especially if it's anywhere near as good as the last remaster Nordic did for the series.

The Warmastered Edition will be available for PS4 and Xbox One, boasting 1080p at 60 fps. There will also be a Wii U version that will be capped at 30 fps. For those of us who flex our PC muscles, we'll get up to 4k resolution and lots of additional video and control options. All versions of the game will be treated to improved textures and post processing as well as better shadows etc. There won't be any new content but it should still be vastly improved over the original Darksiders, and that's ok with me -I'm very important.

We'll get all the improvements and badassery one would expect from a current gen remaster for the so good price of $20. I can't wait to see how it is and write extensively about it in one of my all too long reviews that I occasionally bore you all with. Of course the rumor mill is still churning with speculation that these remasters are in fact a test for the audience reception of a possible Darksiders 3. One can only hope.

I Re-played Bulletstorm from 2011: A Review From Scroo

Recently we did a play through of Alan Wake for Twinstiq Game Club and after it was over I had an itch for a good fast paced shooter. I had played Doom not too long ago and as good as it was, I didn't want to start that over again quite yet. I Considered Rage: It was fun and it had some cool elements even if it was hampered by poor texture resolution and lots of pop-ins. Then I saw a rumor going around that there was likely going to be a remaster of Bulletstorm in 2017. "That could be fun" I thought "I haven't played it since it was new". And guess what? It holds up pretty well. Be forewarned that this article contains some bad language... because it's about Bulletstorm. Read more

WRUP of the Dead

What a week. We finally have a name and first impression of the NX, Red Dead Redemption 2 got announced, and a couple of hours ago my doctor told me that there is something seriously wrong with my health. Soooo, yeah. Video Games, am I right? Sorry, not really in the state of mind to talk about the Nintendo or Red Dead thing. Anyway, enjoy your weekend and tell us what you are playing.

 

Greywolfe: what was that?  it was the sound of me not playing the longest journey.  but i have picked up and been playing more magic:  the gathering:  duels kaladesh.  [yes, i know, that's not really it's actual name.]

Cody: Gonna see if I can scare myself with any horror games this weekend

Scroo: Well I finished Alan Wake for Game Club so I've been playing Bulletstorm from 2011. So much fun. I've really been wanting a fast paced shooter of late and thinking after Bulletstorm I'll reinstall Rage and run it through again. Plus whatever else we vote in for this next Game Club round.

Tru: Game Club is still on Alan Wake. Besides that I'm still playing Mafia II. On top of that I got a copy of Brutäl Legend and have been playing the everloving Metal out of that.

Stuck in 19xx WRUP

You might think that in the year 2016, western AAA publishers would be aware of basic PC gaming standards. Nope. Mafia 3 only supports 30 FPS at this stage and the outrage is huge. Sure, they are working on a patch that unlocks the FPS, but why that wasn’t included at launch is beyond me and with a mixed rating on Steam, the damage is already done.

In other news, but still set in the year 2016, Comcast apparently is now retroactively giving its users download caps. USA, land of the free. Read more

To The Moon Review: Memories Of The Way We Were

Last week, we talked a little about Brothers and games very like it.  These titles are often experiences more than they are games.  You get into them and you direct a protagonist, but you don’t do much actual video gaming:  there’s no one to kill, there’s no score to beat and – most tellingly, often, no way to really fail.

There’s just you, the story and whatever medium the story passes through as it unfolds.  Sometimes, this is a walking simulator, [you are in a 3d environment where you can roam around and encounter the story] sometimes, it’s a text-driven experience where the narrative unfolds as a collection of still pictures and verbose writing, but sometimes – as is the case with To The Moon – the entire affair is top-down and looks remarkably like an old-school 16 bit RPG.

At first, that sounds like a supremely odd thing to do, but it works here.  It works because a lot of the story is conveyed by dialogue and RPG’s can sometimes by very dialogue heavy. Read more