Skullgirls has finally come to the PlayStation 4 this week with the release of 2nd Encore. This newly updated version of Skullgirls is loaded with lots of extra goodies, including all of the previous downloadable content, plus the new character Robo-Fortune, a new stage, online crossplay with the PlayStation 3 (and eventually Vita) version, compatibility with PS3 arcade sticks, and a few dozen other features, fixes, and updates. Also new this week, an old, yet somewhat unique, arcade shoot 'em up, a soccer game with cars, and a game about bullfighting, oddly enough. Take a great fighting game, cram it full of cool new stuff, and then jump past the break to see more of this week's new releases.
A new update for the still popular game Team Fortress 2 has been released. The Gun Mettle update brings with it a campaign you can buy for the price of $5.99, consisting of two weekly missions for three months. These missions are being called contracts to give them a dramatic feel. Each one of those has a few sub-missions that you can complete for contract points (cp), which then allow you to unlock random skins for your weapons or locked cases.
The free update also includes 4 new maps, a new game mode, new taunts and a lot of balancing changes. The new maps include 1 made by Valve and 3 fan favorites by the community. Also, you'll be able to pick up weapons from defeated players and use them as if they were yours until you die in the game. You can read more about the changes here.
Not everyone is happy
There have been some people who claim they are not happy with this update. They say that they're turning TF2 into CS:GO. Some others just don't feel like paying $6 and are very vocal about it. In my opinion they're just overreacting. TF2 and CS:GO are both made by Valve so they have the right to copy themselves. About the $6 campaign, if you don't want to buy it, you don't have to. The game is still free to play and the rest of the update is completely free.
Somebody *coughcoughDr. S* forgot to post the E3 Podcast on the site. It's been on YouTube for some time, so if you've missed it, make sure to subscribe to our channel there.
Why is a new patch for an already amazing game worthy of its own news piece? Because this particular patch may very well change how the game functions. With community suggested changes being implemented such as inventory organization, tabs for books, new character controllers, and a stash for storing items (thank frizzing chips!) Seriously, this list of changes is worth checking out if you have the game, and if you don't look below anyway and then go buy the damn game!
"As some of you may know, we are finishing up work on our next big patch, Patch 1.07. It’s a very large update introducing some key changes, including:
A new, alternative (optional) movement response mode for Geralt.
A player stash for storing items, available in various locations throughout the game. Stash locations are marked on the player's map.
Crafting and alchemy components no longer add to the overall inventory weight.
Books are now placed in a dedicated tab in the Inventory and books that have already been read are properly grayed out.
Multiple sorting options are now available in the Inventory.
Alchemy formulas and crafting diagrams can be "pinned", meaning all components and ingredients required to make them will be conveniently marked in the Shop panel.
Dozens of fixes for quest related issues, both major and minor.
A few performance enhancements, including the optimization of FX, scenes and general gameplay.
Various improvements to horse behavior.
Since it's been all hands on deck working to finish and release this patch on time, we won’t be publishing a free DLC this week (don’t worry - free content comes back next week). We hope you understand our decision. We’ve gathered so much feedback from you over the past couple of weeks and we want to implement as much of it as possible. The full change list for the patch 1.07 will be coming later this week. Stay tuned for info about the release of the update itself." - Marcin Momot
Patch 1.07 will be hitting all platforms by the end of this week.
In my 'career' of playing World of Warcraft, I've played tons of classes; and I mean all of them except for Death Knights. I couldn't really get the rotation on the runes for them if I tried. Even after playing the other roles like tanking and DPS for a decent amount of time; I still always ended up going back to being a healer. Hell even my elemental shaman sees more content right now pretending to be restoration.
It's not because I don't like other classes or roles (being a retadin is amazing), sometimes it's just easier not having to wait over an hour to get accepted into dungeons or if I want to do harder content all I have to say is, "Healer here, invite please." That may not be true in some cases because over the years people have lost interest in the fact that you may have already done the raid or content and can link achievement, instead they will now check your i-level the moment you talk to them. See when I started playing it was almost impossible to get into a raid unless you belonged to a guild.Since the beginning WoW healing has changed, each class that heals has changed, and even the spells have changed.
I remember playing my shaman years ago and spamming lesser healing wave rank 1 and it still healed as much as the greater ranks for almost no mana. That was changed rather quickly might I add.
In 'vanilla wow' I started off as a DPS warrior, undead and powerful, I killed Greater duskbats in Tristfal Glades because it just seemed like the right thing to do (also the person giving me the quest told me to). That did not last very long, because even before the expansion 'Burning Crusade,' came out I was already trying different classes.All in all when the next expansion pack dropped I ended up trying out a restoration druid, this was not only a character I had to learn, but it seemed the actual class was enough detail oriented to keep me interested. I took the time and made sure I had everything perfect from gems to enchants and rotations; I then pretty much lost all of my free time to raiding. I enjoyed the class and the fact that I was needed by pretty much everyone. People came to ask me questions about my build along with my guild who was now raiding every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night during Wrath of the Lich King.
I had really enjoyed healing, but it was a simpler time when all I had to do was stack three life-blooms and a rejuvenation and my target was fully healed.It pretty much stayed that way for awhile before I ended up hopping alliances and built myself a Draenei paladin. Who started her own guild as a tank before realizing that sure, I got to raid again, but this wasn't something I really felt connected with. Not long afterwards, my shaman hit the stage. Who, featured up in the introductory picture, was originally an alliance Draenei, but it's okay. I understand where my mistakes were.
Shaman healing was easy, way too easy for the expansion, all I had to do was hit 'brain heal' otherwise known as chain heal and keep an earth shield on the tanks. Not only did I keep topping the healing meters but was completely and utterly bored. It wasn't fun to sit and spam one button over and over again, some of the people I raided with offered to duo with me in arena's which they thought would challenge me. I literally only had to hit my earth shield on them once and maybe a quick lesser heal and the other team was dead, yawn.I normally don't do player vs. player, and it makes absolutely zero sense that I've always picked PVP servers, so the arena runs were cut short.
'Mists of Pandaria' came out and everyone wanted to level a monk, I decided to wait and picked up my druid again with a different group to see if I still had it. In the midst of leveling I took my druid feral and apparently, did some pretty decent DPS. So that plan kind of backfired.Eventually I did level a monk, and healing was undoubtedly one of the hardest things to do on them. I had to channel a healing spell while stacking a dot and NO ONE RAN OVER THE GREEN HEALING ORBS. A big part of monk healing is that while they are channeling their main heal green orbs that contain a percentage of healing spawn all around the group. No one ran over them, everyone ignored them, especially the tanks, they completely walked away from them and the concept was almost useless.
(Calms down)When the newest expansion hit the shelves, 'Warlords of Draenor', I found myself trying out a discipline priest. With the stat scale-back and the changes to make each class more user friendly I was pretty confident that I would be able to pick this style of healing up in seconds.
I was wrong. Dead Wrong. (Just like the groups I tried to heal!)
I was used to a style of healing that involved hots or heals over time, and disc priest healing had none of it. I tried instance after instance and found myself struggling more than I'd like to admit. After speaking with other priests it seemed like I was the only one. Until I hit the forums, where hundreds of people were screaming about how hard healing was.
It wasn't just priest healing either. At max level everyone was running out of mana way too quickly, paladins were upset from their word of glory nerf, shamans were spamming greater heal because it was the only thing they could do that didn't cause them to go out of mana in seconds. Each class had problems.
A little bit of tweaking through a couple days of maintenance seemed to fix almost all of the issues, and now I'm finally back to healing instances and raids again. Though I may not be topping the charts as a discipline priest, I am making sure damage is being soaked up by my bubbles.It seems that every MMORPG that has come out since 2007 I've attempted has always turned out the same, either I built the character to be a healer or ended up picking the healer class from the beginning, though none of them was able to keep my attention past the 30-day free trial or the start packs like World of Warcraft has.
I think I'll end this little tangent with a word of advice.
It may take years to actually find a character or class that you're actually comfortable with, but when you do don't over play it. Keep a variety because you'll end up getting frustrated and annoyed that all you do is heal or tank etc, I take my shaman heals just to avoid longer queues in the looking for instances/raids tool and I absolutely hate it. Play a character you want to play, and enjoy it.
On the Latest podcast we talk our hatred for moba communities, LOTS of Batman Spoilers (Don't worry we've got a flag for it when it happens), and what my dog likes to eat. As always, enjoy barely structured rambling and discussion in the video below :D
Be sure to subscribe to our channel if you already haven't, be sure to also check our our Let's Play channel at TwinstiqLP. Catch us on Twitter and Steam and be sure to check the site regularly for all things unprofessional.
Every time a Steam Sale comes along people tend to get a little bit crazy. We end up buying games that we're not so sure about because of their ridiculously low prices. I'm guilty of doing this several times every year. The usual fate for those games is to be never installed, but I've decided to break that routine and give those forgotten games a chance. Now the really hard question comes: Where should I start? How about a game about dating pigeons? These are my first impressions:
Hatoful Boyfriend is a game that works like a choose your own adventure book. Things are just a little different here, because instead of an adventurer in a dungeon trying to save the world, you're a teenage girl in a high school attended and run by pigeons and your mission is to have a romantic relationship with one of them.The game is basically an interactive visual novel. You'll read the story and then you'll chose from a set of options the one you think is best for you. For example, at one point, the game asks you if you want to take a job at a cafeteria and you'll have the freedom to decide if you want to work there. Then the story will unfold depending on your choices.
You may be thinking this sounds kind of boring, but the story is weird, funny and with enough surprises to keep you playing. Well, I must admit it took me some time to accept the fact that I was a teenage human girl being courted by pigeons. Could this be how girls feel when boys approach them with romantic intentions?
So far I've played for a couple of hours and I've already gotten 3 different endings out of the 16 possible ones. I think I'm going to keep on playing to find out more about the story and the other endings.
Is the game worth a try?
If you're into comedy and reading I'd say go for it. If you're not you probably won't like it. This game isn't for everybirdie.
Once again we find ourselves dawning the Cowl to save Gotham from the grasp of another famous Supervillian. This time Scarecrow takes the helm of a plot to cover Gotham in fear, with the aid of the (not so) mysterious Arkham Knight. Like my previous Past Due Review of the Witcher 3, this review will not be scored but instead cover the game on a component by component basis. Such as, animation quality, character and environmental modeling, lighting, particle effects, audio, game mechanics, level design, and more. Every facet of the game will be discussed for at least a paragraph, exploring which sections work well and which ones are the Batmobile...
Animations
Starting off with the best aspect of this game, as well as the other Arkham games, the animation quality in Arkham Knight is superb. Both the combat animations and walk cycles show a great understanding of the animation process with well thought out poses that are strung together through fluid and confident motion. Animations between Batman and the thugs he beats up are hardly ever out of sync, matching up extremely well while keeping the action flowing. We’ll talk a bit more about the team fighting later on, but the if the animations say anything about how well done they are you probably get a good idea of what I’ll have to say about it.
If I have any criticism to offer here, it would have to be that the facial animations can be a bit inconsistent. Selena Kyle, Tim Drake, and Commissioner Gordon for example are great. But the big bats himself along with Scarecrow, the Riddler, and Nightwing look pretty awkward any time they open their mouths. I've got an example below, Light Early Game Spoiler Warning:
#wsite-video-container-507566300929541778{ background: url(//www.weebly.com/uploads/4/7/1/6/47165935/bad_talking_bat_943.jpg); } #video-iframe-507566300929541778{ background: url(//cdn2.editmysite.com/images/util/videojs/play-icon.png?1436207657); } #wsite-video-container-507566300929541778, #video-iframe-507566300929541778{ background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position:center; } @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and ( min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and ( min-resolution: 192dpi), only screen and ( min-resolution: 2dppx) { #video-iframe-507566300929541778{ background: url(//cdn2.editmysite.com/images/util/videojs/@2x/play-icon.png?1436207657); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position:center; background-size: 70px 70px; } } ]]>
Overall, I would say that the character models work well. But again there are some inconsistencies from model to model. Topology across the board looks great, and I’ve never noticed anything that seems out of place from the games grimy, gritty, and dirty art style in any of the characters. I think what really makes or breaks some of these models though are the textures.
Character Modeling
There are no stand out textures, and none of them seem like they have a very high resolution. I can look past that considering the size of the open world, and characters as a whole are fine. However, every object looks like there is a blur overshadowing that item. While the artists took great pains to make these complicated patterns, they just look washed out if you look at them individually.
I will say though that as a whole, each character is unmistakable, even if you barely know any other Batman villain aside from the Joker. Lack of advanced mapping techniques aside, these characters do look like their iconic comic book counterparts, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters. Even if I wish the enemies didn’t all look the same within their respective groups of enemy types.
Environmental Modeling
I said this back in my Witcher review, but I’ll say it again: Yes, character and environmental modeling are not at all the same thing, and anyone who thinks otherwise can answer to this mother f*****
Another great aspect of these Arkham games has always been the incredible sense of atmosphere their environments are able to create. Arkham Knight is no different in this case, areas themed to their respective supervillains are filled with easter eggs and other tiny little details that act as great flair to the hallways and back alleys of Gotham. Being broken up into island sections, the city itself feels and looks massive, with each island having its own theme that some may find doesn’t quite fit the gothic theme of the city. I personally felt a few areas came off a bit more Blade Runner then they did Batman's home turf. Drones, holograms, giant colorful neon signs, and video billboards just don’t scream Gotham to me. Don’t get me wrong I’m a huge cyberpunk fan, and this kind of environment certainly fits with the Arkham Knight’s heavily Philip K. Dick inspired garb, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it threw people off. Gotham to me means tall and ominous gothic inspired buildings that crawl with character, not smart TV's and sci-fi accessories.
With that said, the environments reflect the kind of Gotham they have built quite well. And keep an eye on those Billboards I mentioned, they deserve a second glance.
Lighting
What should be the most important element of a game about Batman is sadly one of the worst visual elements of Arkham Knight. Even with brightness turned down as far as possible, the game still comes off way too light. Which is ironic since this is easily the darkest Story of all the Arkham games.
If you darken your monitor or a screenshot, as I have on the right, everything seems to pop a lot more. I know that you need to be able to see what’s going on, but there’s better ways to do that than having a fill light be nearly as bright as your main light source. What I find frustrating is that the lighting team clearly shows great knowledge of what it takes to light a scene well, even sneaking in some sweet looking Rembrandt lighting every now and then. But none of it gets to be celebrated since the shadows are all overpowered by fill or area lights, washing out the all the hard work that they’ve clearly spent a lot of time on.
But again, when you edit the image to appreciate the lighting that is hidden under there, it is done incredibly well. Shadows fall in all the right places, light off in the distance draws the eye across the cities beautiful vistas, and it makes me wish the game looked like the second image below 100% of the time.
Particle Effects
This game’s smoke is easily the best I’ve seen in a game, ever. Everything else just comes off as serviceable in comparison to it. It’s not that the little sparks, or electric charges aren’t great visual effects, but compared to the smoke effects that your Batmobile creates as you peel out into the streets of Gotham you tend to forget other effects are even in the game. And the streaks of rain that move across your cape will draw your eye as you explore the city. The only odd looking effect is one that looks pretty epic at first, but after a few passes over it begins to look fairly phony in comparison to everything around it. I wish I could describe what this effect is in more detail but that would enter heavy spoiler territory, and it’s hard enough to write a review about this game without spoiling anything in the first two paragraphs. But for those of you who have played the game or watched a let’s play I’m sure you can guess what I am talking about by the image on the bottom left.
Audio Effects/Soundtrack
#wsite-video-container-265371134752204372{ background: url(//www.weebly.com/uploads/4/7/1/6/47165935/sond_702.jpg); } #video-iframe-265371134752204372{ background: url(//cdn2.editmysite.com/images/util/videojs/play-icon.png?1436207657); } #wsite-video-container-265371134752204372, #video-iframe-265371134752204372{ background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position:center; } @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and ( min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and ( min-resolution: 192dpi), only screen and ( min-resolution: 2dppx) { #video-iframe-265371134752204372{ background: url(//cdn2.editmysite.com/images/util/videojs/@2x/play-icon.png?1436207657); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position:center; background-size: 70px 70px; } } ]]>
Once again Rocksteady has provided another rock solid element to Arkham Knight’s utility belt. The audio effects in Arkham Knight are just as solid and meaty as they have been in the past. Punches that land as you bounce from enemy to enemy sound impactful, gadgets from your utility belt each sound uniquely appropriate, and the fluttering noises your cape makes as you glide through Gotham are complemented by the ambient sounds of the city. The voice acting, as I mentioned earlier, can be a bit hit or miss. Some characters sound incredible and their performances match up well with their animations. But others sound awkward, flat, and at times don’t match. Thankfully there are only a few instances of bad dialogue, but when they happen, you will definitely notice them.
This week, the new release highlight on the Steam store appears to be Ronin. An indie game that just came out of Early Access, Ronin is, by designer Tomasz Waclawek's own admission, a "rip-off" of the 2013 indie hit Gunpoint (though it seems to be a slight improvement, in my opinion). Also new this week, a single-player only, third person perspective remake of How To Survive, a party game from the creators of You Don't Know Jack that incorporates the use of your phone, and a pretty cool-looking space combat sim. Now just go follow this list of three easy steps:
Rip off a popular indie game on Steam.
Profit.
Jump past the break to see more of this week's new releases.
July 4th is Independence Day, here in the good old US of A, and while it is customary to spend the evening eating hamburgers and watching fireworks shows, there really isn't any prescribed way to spend the day. Some people might decide to go see a movie or a baseball game, others may choose to hang out by the pool or go play a round of golf. All great options, certainly. But what can you do if it happens to be raining, or you just don't feel like stepping out into the sweltering summer heat?
Why not spend time catching up on some great games? Better yet, why not play ones that would allow you to pay tribute to the holiday and/or America itself? Here is a list of a few such options:
