Author: Thomas Ortsik

Founder and Kinda-Editor-In-Chief at Twinstiq.
Also known as Dr. Strangethumb

The Twinstiq Podcast – Episode 5: The Twin Stiqs Back

Time for a new episode of the Twinstiq Podcast. We worked hard on improving the production values (honestly, we did. 30 very hard working minutes!), but we screwed up the audio. Very sorry about that, it should be fixed in future episodes, but sadly there wasn’t much I could do for this one.

We still hope you enjoy our talk and if you did, make sure to like the video on YouTube and maybe even subscribe to our channel if you haven’t done so yet. Didn’t like it? Fine too, leave a dislike and a comment on why you didn’t like it. From what we understand, any interaction (votes, comments, sharing,…) makes us more likely to be found on YouTube, and criticism helps us improve our content.

PSA: GameFly’s Huge Under $20 Sale

I can't even count how many games are on sale for under $20 on GameFly, I keep scrolling down and more titles keep popping up! There are tons of current and last gen hits up for grabs, although I'm not seeing anything for the Wii U. Hit up GameFly and load up your shopping cart!
Apart from those pictured above, you can find Destiny, Rayman Legends, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Lego Movie, Watch Dogs, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Tales of Xillia 1 & 2, Saint's Row IV: Gat out of Hell, Fable Anniversary, Uncharted 3, Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition, just a ton of stuff.
Source: GameFly

Invisible, Inc. Review

Cody reviews Invisible, Inc. The latest game from Klei Entertainment, the developers of Mark of The Ninja. Invisible, Inc. is a turn based strategy stealth game, where gathering of information and smart decisions are favored over reckless actions. Check out the Video Review Below.

Reviewer: Cody Hall
Game: Invisible, Inc. 
Developer: Klei Entertainment
Source: Purchased as a backer for the Game's Alpha and later used here for review.

Diversity Is Good For Us

Words by Greywolfe

One of my biggest pet peeves in World of Warcraft – while I was playing it – was that there was no body slider for your character. This basically meant that I was stuck with a generically sized human [for the couple of minutes I played that human] where he should have been the portly, friendly, old wizard.

It’s frustrated me for a long time that in most games with a character generator of some persuasion, the default for avatars is generally “muscle-bound Adonis.”

But this is just one part of a bigger problem. If we are to accept diversity in this realm, there’s lots of other realms we need to accept diversity on as well. It’s not enough to just say “let there be more types of player avatar.” No. We have to accept that diversity comes to us in many ways – in the games we play as much as the people who are part of the gaming industry.
Our avatars in games are often hyper-muscular people who punch things in the face. And yet, we're normally nothing like that.

I am willing to bet money most of us don't look like this.

Are You An Adonis?

There’s a stereotype for gamers that has held for the last near-forty-years.  Most of us fall into two general categories. Either we’re “that bearded fat guy who spends their time playing video games” or we’re the “thin pasty kid who doesn’t go near the light because they’re playing video games.” In both cases, of course, we’re recluses and we don’t want to deal with the outside world, preferring “mom’s basement” to sunshine and baseball.

The thing is, we’re not like that. Not at all. There’s many of us and we all run the gamut of what a human being can look like. Sure. Some of us are the fat, bearded guy. And absolutely, some of us are the thin, pasty kid who doesn’t want to go into the light. But we’re more diverse than that. And so, of course, developers really ought to be catering to that disparity in looks. Not everyone wants to be the eighteen year old, blond, muscled man who can shoot twin pistols with the accuracy of an assassin.
As a result of the form factor and monetization methods used on celluar telephones, the kind of games they offer had to be

Cellular Telephones are basically synonymous with casual gaming.

Casual Gaming:  The Great Sin

Since gamers come in all shapes and sizes, it stands to reason, then, that we are also interested in many different types of games. Naturally, most of us here will lean toward more “core” experiences [whatever that word actually means] such as the next Forza outing, or the next hard-as-nails From Software game, or we might be looking forward to the new Tomb Raider [though that exclusivity for the next game?  Get that out of here, Microsoft.]       

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned across forty-odd years of playing video games, it’s that they too come in all shapes and sizes. While it’s true – for example – that Another World was super hard [it really was occasionally quite ridiculous] it was also very short. In fact, Another World is arguably shorter than a game that got a whole lot of flak for just being short. [I’m referring, of course, to The Order: 1866 a game which dripped style over substance.]
While it wasn’t a critical success, games like The Order: 1866 are somewhat beneficial to the gaming community at large, because that particular game showed that there is a desire for games that aren’t set in a prototypical fantasy world. Or a high tech world with guns in it.

And it’s a pretty short step from “a short game” to casual games. Most of us frown on the fact that casual experiences even exist, and yet, we fail to look around us. In the book market, there are many, many instances of “casual” books – bodice rippers that no one takes particularly seriously – and yet, they sell. Horror novels that are basically just an author spouting blood and gore across two hundred pages. Again, there’s nothing particularly “serious” or “deep” about these books. Yet, they sell and book readers have adapted to the fact that there are all stripes of reader in their circles.

The same is arguably true of movies. No one’s ever really going to take the horror-comedy fusion of “Scary Movie” very seriously. It’s a casual movie experience. You turn it on, you put your brain in neutral and you have a good time.

So, the hue and cry over casual gaming confuses me. Sure, there are bad casual games – not all of them can be “Plants Vs Zombies” good, but that’s – again – true of even “core experiences” like Call Of Duty. I get some of it, though. The process of taking Might and Magic and reducing it to Braveland Wizard might seem “bad” to some, but I view it as a small step. In other words, it’s a great way to get my non-games-playing-friends interested in that sort of experience.
Humans come in many shapes and many sizes. That also means we have many and varied interests.

We are all human. And we all have different interests.

We're Everyday People

The other thing that kind of confuses me is the vitriol we heap upon people who criticize gaming. Gaming has faults [every industry has faults] and it’s great that these people exist. I’ll even go one step further. It’s humbling that these people even care given the assaults they have to endure.

Critics exist in every art-based medium. People have passed commentary on paintings for as long as painting has been around. The same is true of movies and books. If we can’t accept that there are people pointing out that there are issues in our industry then, quite frankly, we don’t deserve to be treated as “adults” – which we’re frustrated about already.

Looking at gaming through different lenses is important. It’s the only way we can grow. We cannot keep churning out Call of Duty and Madden games forever, that’s a giant gaming cul-de-sac. In this way, it is vital that we have criticism of our medium. Criticism means deeper stories. It means more varied protagonists. It means more interesting mechanics. In short, it can only be good for the industry.

As I've said at the beginning of this piece, gamers come in all shapes and sizes – and we often criticise games ourselves. We don’t like mechanic x or the world that these developers built just wasn’t fleshed out enough. So we’re guilty of “taking apart” our own games. The fact that there are people who are interested in the form that don’t necessarily “play games” the way we do can do us all a favour by pointing out things we’ve never even thought of.

Conclusion

I hope our future games are more diverse. I hope that we all come to recognize that, regardless of what someone looks like, or what they believe, we are all – as I said in my Platform Wars article – gamers here.

Images Courtesy of Pixabay:
Pixabay

Good Modern Games Are Now DRM-Free!

There are plenty of high-caliber games on GOG – many of which you might already have seen floating around on Steam.  One thing that GOG does lack though, are truly modern, truly open-world games. [Dr. S would like to add: The Witcher?]
Well, this afternoon all that changed.

GOG are now selling the Saints Row series of games.
You read me correctly.  GOG has somehow wrangled the Saints Row series onto its service.  Admittedly, they don’t have access to all the games, [one was an Xbox exclusive and four will probably remain under Steam with the Steam DRM for as long as they can sell it that way, but that’s SPECULATION on my part, please don’t read anything else into it.] but two and three are most definitely up for the having.

Along with this, the Darksiders games are also coming to GOG. [both I + II plus – weirdly – some DLC for two.]
Lastly, if you’re craving some shooter-based action, Metro, Last Light Redux is on offer as well.

All of the games are currently discounted for this week, so buy them now if you want them cheap, but be aware that in order to get the 75% discount for Darksiders, you will have to fork out for the entire Darksiders bundle.

Kaiju-A-Gogo Review

We review the indie game Kaiju-A-Gogo by Kerberos Productions Inc. In the game you play a mad scientist who builds a giant monster to take over the world, but what do we think of it? Continue past the break for the video review and transcript, and then make sure you hit the comments and let us know what you think!

I'm Billy C, reviewing Kaiju-A-Gogo for Twinstiq.com. The best way to describe Kaiju-A-Gogo is Sim City, but you play the monster that is destroying it. Technically you play the mad scientist who builds the Kaiju and unleashes it upon an unsuspecting world, but mostly you’ll be controlling your giant monster.

To start out though you’ll send your Kaiju out to one of dozens of cities around the world, each with a tier ranking the difficulty that you’ll encounter if you attack it. When you do attack a city, which is where most of your time will be spent, you’ll be confronted with a unique grouping of buildings and foliage for each city. Attack a spot in Africa and you’ll see mostly sand and small buildings, but attack New York and you’ll be forced to smash your way through skyscrapers and docks. Different types of buildings will drop different resources when they are destroyed and you’ll need to learn which buildings harbor the resources you need if you hope to be as efficient as possible.

But it’s not as simple as your Kaiju destroying buildings, you’ll be confronted with various enemy units from foot soldiers to bomber planes and laser tanks. While most enemies won’t put up much of a fight for your monster, several of them can start to chip away at it’s health quite quickly. In addition, eventually you’ll encounter tougher and tougher enemies that will take you down without much trouble. As such you need to train your Kaiju, giving him new passive abilities and active defenses and attacks that he can call on not only to destroy enemy units, but also to help you demolish the city you are attacking. Your monster will also increase in size as you pump him full of abilities. At the start of the game it might take you a swipe or two to destroy a home, but by the end you can walk over them without pausing at all.

Cities burn with satisfying infernos, spreading through foliage and buildings alike and you’ll reap the rewards as they do. That’s if you make it to the city, as once you’ve done enough damage the governments of the world will start sending out military patrols to intercept your Kaiju. Luckily, you can either run from the patrol (if you make it), or you can destroy it outright removing it from the map entirely.

The end goal of the game is to conquer the majority of the world. To take over a city you must destroy it until the local population has a moral of under 40%, at which point there is a chance for them to surrender to your mad rule. This means you can no longer attack the city for resources, but you’ll get their net income every month for the rest of the game.

You start with an island lair that you use different resources to build up, adding power plants, research stations, training lairs and more. Certain buildings will produce specific resources, but it will also consume a certain amount of resources each month. You’re goal will be to balance the production and consumption, while sending your Kaiju out to replenish resources as needed. Eventually you’ll want to build up some base defenses as well since later in the game your lair can be discovered and attacked, and if you aren’t prepared long before this happens you’ll soon find that you’ve lost the game. Or that you’ve destroyed all of the land based enemies before having your Kaiju killed by ships, and then stuck in a never ending cycle where the enemies can’t destroy your buildings and you have no Kaiju to attack the enemies.

That brings us to some of the games problems, and it does have a fair few. Firstly I want to talk about something subjective, but it really turned me off at first. The look of the games resources. I know that seems like a little thing to nitpick, but they look like an iOS money grabber game. When you destroy buildings they pop out and look completely out of place with the landscape, easily recognizable sure, but out of place none the less.Combine that with the mechanic where buildings, training and healing all take a certain amount of time (which you can fast forward in the PC version as of writing), it just feels like it’s one of those iPad games trying to steal your money with time sinks and resources. Especially the purpletonium as it isn’t used for much throughout most of the game, is extremely rare, and could easily be the “real money currency”. All that said, the game is not like that on Steam. The resources are plentiful if you go looking for them, the purpletonium is rare but isn’t used for much, and and time can be sped up or slowed down. Mechanically it’s fine, but it just FEELS bad to me. Maybe I’ve been burned too many times before.

On to more concrete problems. Tutorials seem to appear out of nowhere, telling you things that would have been useful five hours ago but are useless now. Tutorials also seem to repopulate so you’ll be the same one everytime you start-up the game. In addition there are supposed to be 3 Kaiju in the game to pick from, but only 1 has been released as of this review. Enemies can get stuck on buildings, and they will do so all the time, making destroying cities much easier than it really should be. Boats can sail through land and infantry can walk on water, and the aforementioned base attacks can cause no end scenarios if you’re unlucky. You also can’t access the menu while on an attack map, so you can’t even exit the game gracefully or save if you are in the middle of a city or base attack. I even experienced a crash to desktop once and though it hasn’t happened since, it’s made me paranoid about the game crashing during a big city attack.

It can also be a pain to navigate with your Kaiju. Trying to get him to walk between buildings to attack a tank can result in him uselessly attacking nearby buildings while he’s blasted with laser fire. There are also some icons on the side of the attack screen that tell you your passive bonuses such as speed, defense, etc, but they never seemed useful. You can tell if you’ve got your boosters on as every step sets the ground on fire and you move faster. You can tell if you have a defense bonus active as you’ll see it visibly on your Kaiju. Not to mention they are never explained to you and I had to ask on the forums to discover what they are for.

Another small issue with the game is that it is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes it will change the speed time passes back to normal after an event, and sometimes it won’t. Also if your Kaiju is returning with loot but you are looking at your base when he arrives, you won’t actually get that loot. You’ll have to go back to the world map to receive it.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the game and Kerberos Productions is constantly patching it and adding in new buildings and features. I’m giving Kaiju-A-Gogo 3 ½ Stars, potentially changing to a 4 star review if they continue patching and release the other two monsters down the road! What Kerberos Productions have created may be a bit buggy and undercooked, but it’s still amazingly fun. I can’t believe Maxis gave us Sim Copter and not Kaiju-A-Gogo!

Reviewer: Billy C
Game: Kaiju-A-Gogo
Developer: Kerberos Productions Inc.
Source: Purchased for personal use and review.

Day For Night Games packs its Black Glove

Remember Irrational Games, the folks behind BioShock 1 and Infinite? Of course you do. When they shut down, Kickstarter was just starting to lose traction and when some members of the team decided to start their own studio, Day For Night Games, and fund the development for their first game, The Black Glove, through it, they failed. After 6 unsuccessful months of trying to find a way for funding the game, it is dead …for now.
Joe Fielder, writer for Bioshock and developer at Day For Night announced in a Blog post, that the work on The Black Glove is now halted and the people who still worked on it are now contributing to other projects, projects that hopefully pay rent.
Back when the Kickstarter failed, but the dreaming was still lucid, they tried getting their game funded by showing a gameplay demo to publishers behind the closed doors of GDC and PAX East. That this was to no avail needn’t be mentioned now, but the reasoning does. According to Joe Fielder, they “didn’t find the perfect glass slipper they were looking for”.

So after “thousands of hours”, this project is dead, but, at least according to this statement by Mr. Fielder, maybe not forever:

Design legend Paul Neurath said to us recently, “In my experience, good ideas don’t have expiration dates.”
They’re words we’ve really taken to heart, so we intend to return to The Black Glove later when we can do it right.

Were you looking forward to it? Mabe you even tried to fund it? Let us know in the comments.

The Next Igavania is Nigh!

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It looks like a duck and walks like a duck... Koji Igarashi, assistant director of Symphony of the Night, and producer of the Castlevania series from Chronicles up to Harmony of Dispair, has unleashed his Kickstarter to fund the spiritual successor to his special brand of Metroidvania... err, I mean Igavania!
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I guess Sword won?
First teased on the website SwordOrWhip.com, IGA's latest has now been revealed. Told by publishers that "gamers no longer care for this style of game," he aims to strike out on his own to "continue exploring and refining the genre." His latest exploration focused action platformer is Bloodstained, planned for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, and in addition, Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
During the writing of this past paragraph, funding has just exceeded its goal of $500,000, and continues climbing with over 7,000 backers, currently growing at a rate of three to five per second! With 32 days to go, stretch goals of an art book, second playable character, nightmare difficulty mode, and and voice acting by David Hayter are sure to be met! Bonus Kickstarter achievements include an exciting 8-bit remix of a featured game tune, "silly cheat codes," and "getting IGA to cosplay for your amusement!"
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All current screenshots are mockups
The soundtrack will be composed by Michiru Yamane, famous for Symphony of the Night, Bloodlines, Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, as well as awesome soundtracks from other series like Contra, Rocket Knight Adventures, Ganbare Goemon, and Skullgirls! Also joining for sound design and direction is Ippo Yamada of Inti Creates, with a history of working on nearly a dozen Mega Man titles among other Capcom titles.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night stars protagonist Miriam, an orphan and cursed by dark Alchemists. Antagonist Gebel pans to manipulate Miriam to achieve his evil plans. Dissenter Johannes aims to help Miriam, his best friend, to understand what has happened to her since her ten year sleep has left her unaware of her state.

Confirmed are trademark RPG elements, a sprawling map featuring Gebel's hellish castle, crafting through alchemy, and a variety of weapons.

Sounds like everything a fan of Igavanias would want in a game! With a tentative release date is around March of 2017, the wait promises to be a cursed nightmare!

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Source: Kickstarter

Day 4 of the Humble Sale

It continues and we might stream some of the games on offer later, so if you want to see a particular game, leave us a comment.
Click on Read more for
Dr. S approved deals (games that I’ve played and liked)

  • The Banner Saga, 60% off – Great turn based strategy game and amazing art style
  • Tomb Raider, 75% - Superb reboot. You should have already played this.
  • Binding of Isaac, 89% - Keep in mind that this is not the new Rebirth version. Still a good deal if you’ve never played it
  • Shank 2, 72% - Pretty decent sidescrolling shooter/brawler. It’s not a must-have, especially if you’ve owned the first one, but great for when you are bored.
  • Orcs must die 2, 75% - Tower defense mixed with 3rd person action RPG. Pretty good and supports Coop.
  • Mirrormoon EP, 80% - Strange one. Puzzle and exploration game that makes not explaining anything part of the game mechanic. Not for everyone, but for that price still worth a try.
  • Tropico 4, 85% - If you’ve never played a Tropico, this is the one to get. Tropico 5 isn’t bad either, but I still prefer 4.
  • Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, 75% - Great on its own, but the mod support really makes it. Must have for any Star Trek fan, thanks to a mod that turns it into Armada 3.

Xbox One’s May Firmware Update Now Live

Major Nelson's announced that Microsoft's latest console firmware update finally brings voice messages, which can be sent between Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles. Energy saving options have also been highlighted during the initialization setup process, and adds a feature to the SmartGlass app allowing you to control the system's on/off state through your local network.
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Party chat services are now being transferred to dedicated servers, with an expanded rollout in the coming weeks.

What features would you like to see in the next update? Is there anything still missing, or are you happy enough with the experience as it is now? Are there any features in particular that you wish other console makers would adopt?

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Source: GameSpot