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
That's right fellow Stiq-lings. We're getting the club back together! Welcome back to the official un-officially unprofessional Twinstiq Game Club! (Think book club but with games instead of books, and nerds instead for people in nursing homes)
The five us each nominated a game and randomly picked one that we will be playing first!
Wow guys, I've been chomping at the bit to play Blood and Wine for a long time now and my goodness was it ever worth the wait. CDPRed has put a story together set in a large and beautiful world that gives us fans a pretty solid 30 hours of game play; and they call it an expansion. This, folks, is what expansions should be. An actual fully built, big addition with new content that really matters. Blood and Wine could have just as easily been sold as a stand-alone title and would have been just as satisfying to play. All the props to CDPRed. Read more
We have heard your concerns about being victims of deviant behavior while playing online multiplayer, we have released a patch solving some of the issues you can encounter. Other updates will follow to continue this work, we will keep you posted in due times!
Today’s update have solved the following issues you may encounter in the Online Mode:
The patch is small, only 41mb, and could be a great step for players who are being victimized by folks determined to ruin game play for the rest of us if in fact it does combat the quote "deviant behavior."
I've yet to run across any of this kind of thing myself thank goodness, but it's still recommended that you back up your save file from time to time.
The default path is: C:\Users\Your-username\AppData\Roaming\DarkSoulsIII\
You'll probably have to make Windows show hidden items to see the appdata folder and once you're in you'll be looking for the SL2 file extension. Just make a copy of that and rename it (example: DS30000_old.sl2) or something and that'll back up your save file in case something does happen. This way you can re-load and maybe lose only a couple of hours instead of a whole character or more.
So, after an excessively long download I finally got to play Doom last night and I was pretty happy with the way the campaign feels. Read on for my very early, first thoughts. Read more
Well guys, CD Projekt Red is releasing the newest and final expansion for Witcher 3 pretty soon. It was originally stated that it would arrive in the first half of 2016. I for one am looking very forward to it and I've been holding off on playing the Hearts of Stone expansion because I want to go back to back on both stories. More information is coming on May 10th and I'll try to update this article as soon as I learn more.
This latest expansion is called Blood and Wine, and it will take Geralt and Roach to the seemingly peaceful lands of Toussaint; a place where the war has yet to reach, but hides a "bloody secret". Toussaint is said to be as big as all of the Skellige Isles combined and promises to provide us fans with an addition 20 hours of play time with new creatures and quests and even a new Gwent deck.
Blood and Wine will mark the finale of the Witcher as a whole and it looks to be as fine a way to do so as any. Speaking of series finales, this one will probably be one of the only things that gets me away from Dark Souls 3 for a while, until it's expansion content comes around later this year anyway.
It'll be released on all supported platforms at the same time, thank god, no bullshit timed exclusivity purchase that comes with a useless hat or some such nonsense. Now to wait for Cyberpunk 2077 and see if Yoda0vgs and I have speculated correctly that Ciri has some involvement there.
Update: May 10th
The official release date for Blood and Wine is confirmed to be May 31st. It's also said that this final expansion will add an extra 30 hours to the game, approximately, through the main and side quest lines. You can also expect to a new "point of interest" system and it sounds like Geralt will even get a house to live in.
Of course if you own the Witcher 3 season pass, you'll just get your copy when it's released at the end of this month. If you didn't participate in a season pass, then you can buy a digital copy separately for $19.99. Or if you prefer, you'll also be able to get ahold of a physical copy for $29.99 that will include the Northern Realms and Nilfgaard, Gwent decks along with a game guide and Gwent tokens to use while you play. The physical copy is supposedly a limited edition so grab one while you can I suppose, even though I'm fairly sure the chances of running out of boxed copies is slim.
This is supposed to be Geralt's last Witcher game. Maybe that means some time in the future we'll see Ciri get her own Witcher title, maybe? Or perhaps it's over forever. In any case it's been a blast and I for one have been looking forward to Blood and Wine since I first heard about it. Gonna be great I'm sure.
Maybe it's a latent masochistic part of me who likes this sort of punishing and unforgiving game play, maybe it's the fact that nowadays games are so full of assistance and hand holding that they basically play themselves, but there's something about this series that grabs me and won't let go. Admittedly the Dark Souls 1 PC port was a travesty that was only really even playable with a fan made patch, but I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to a series. When I started hearing about Dark Souls 2 I was glued to news sites trying to learn as much as possible, and even though it had a different director I loved it. I've been anticipating Dark Souls 3 since I first learned about it, and I'll probably play it for as long as it's up and running. I've never played Demon Souls and I don't have a PS4 so I haven't played Bloodborne, but I'd love to change those things as well.
I've been playing, and dying repeatedly in Dark Souls 3 now for over 100 hours and I feel like I can finally get my thoughts down. Continue further for my review and thoughts on the series in general. Read more
So, just about a year ago now, I wrote a completely scathing review of the tumultuous mess that Magic Duels was at launch.
Given the online nature of the game and given that it "perpetually renews" itself whenever new cards come out, I figured I would get back in and see a handful of things for myself. Notably: whether or not the game was more stable, whether or not the game fared better in my books if I had more cards [and a greater pool of potential deck lists to pull from] and whether or not Stainless had listened to the sheer avalanche of complaints about the game's launch state.
That last question? That's the question that binds them all. Read more
Broforce is part of this month's PSN+ free games promotion. It won its place by getting the most votes in the "Vote To Play" contest that was held last month. I had some interest in it but never enough to pay full price for it on PC. I guess it was never dirt cheap and now I know why. It's a pretty good side-scrolling action game.
Broforce is a celebration of old-school action movies. We get parody versions of most iconic film and TV heroes like Rambo, Commando, Neo, MacGyver and B. A. Baracus to name a few. All of them play differently. They have different speed, weapons, special moves and athletic abilities. For example, Rambo has a machine gun and hand grenades, Neo is a melee fighter and his special is the red pill which basically turns him into an invulnerable killing machine for a short period of time, Mr. T has a very useful flamethrower and fire grenades which are great for fighting bosses from a distance.
When you begin the main story you'll start with only one character, Rambro. You'll be dropped in the jungle by a helicopter in order to liberate the area. You'll do that by killing terrorists left and right with guns blazing, literally. On your way to kill the Devil at the end of each level, you'll find prisoners. If you set them free you'll get a free life and that's the way you'll unlock new characters. For better or worse, when you set free a prisoner, you'll randomly switch to a different action hero.
Randomness is a big part of Broforce. After you've unlocked a new character, heroes will be switched every time you lose a life, start a level or set free a prisoner. There's no way of manually changing to a hero of your liking. This gives the game a lot of variety as you have to adjust to to whatever weapons and abilities the hero you have at the moment has. However sometimes you'll feel you need a specific hero for that challenge and let's be honest, some of the heroes are lame. I'm looking at you, Brocketeer.
The game exudes American Patriotism. It's taken to parody levels and it feels awkward sometimes. I mean, at one point you'll be playing as European legends like 007 and William Wallace and they will be raising American flags when reaching checkpoints. That was very odd. When you finish a level you get to the chopper, explosions start all over the place and the light in your dual shock 4 controller will start flashing red, white and blue. It's that American.
While Leon is not an American, the Brofessional certainly is.
The gameplay is pretty simple, just run and shoot. There's no reloading in here. I really liked how this helped the action to flow very quickly. Some other games that have reload like Mercenary Kings and Helldivers really put me off since it over-complicated what should have been quite simpler, in my opinion. I guess I was not the right audience for those. I like how it feels like Contra where you don't have to worry about such detail. Unlike Contra, this title does have destructible terrain which you can use to your advantage to change the path you take to reach your goal.
There are some things that I wish the developer had addressed before releasing the game. The PS4 version of Broforce has some bugs that seem out of place in a title that looks like a 16-bit shoot-em up. Each time you restart a level there's like a second or two where your controller won't receive your inputs and your character will stand still vulnerable to enemy attacks. At first this won't bother you much, but in the later levels those seconds could mean life or death. Loading times can reach up to 1 minute in the later stages. I really thought the game had frozen and I would have to restart the console because there was just a black screen with no loading signs and it took way too long to start the missions. There were also frame rate drops when there was a lot going on. You would expect that in a SNES, but not in a PS4 brand new title that looks like it would have been fine in the 16-bit generation.
The broforce cast includes some of the most iconic action stars. A couple of Stallones, Norris, Gibsons, Van Dammes and three Schwarzeneggers to name a few. More heroes are still being added.
Besides those bugs, it is very much playable and enjoyable. It has a lot of humor and variety. I had a great time playing it and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in action games with a retro vibe. I tried it in multiplayer, but it felt much better in single player. Just be warned that the last level is a tough marathon. the ending will make it worth it, though.
Please note: This article is LITTERED with links. They will open in a new window and will take you off-site.
Now that four-in-February is behind us, I thought I'd take some time to look into games that I'm at least a little curious about for the calendar year of 2016. I have divided my choices into three broad sections:
Things that will almost definitely be with us in the near-future or before the end of 2016.
Things that might make it into 2016, but you never know.
And, finally, things that I'm totally worried about. Sometimes with good reason.
So, let's take a look and see, shall we? Read more
