Category: Uncategorized

Erron Black Leaked for Mortal Kombat X

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A leaked screenshot that has spread online proves that Erron Black will indeed be part of the roster for the new Mortal Kombat X.

Initially captured by a NeoGAF user, the above leaked screenshot confirms the cowboy's gun toting presence. Inspired by Western movies it shows Erron Black making quick work of Cassie Cage.

Check out more details after the jump.

Making his first appearance in the Mortal Kombat X comic book, fans speculated he would be a character in the game. This leaked screenshot is evidence that he is indeed a part of the fighter and looks right at home in the screenshot.

In the Mortal Kombat X comic book, Erron Black is most definitely a villain aligning himself with fellow baddies D’Vorah and Kotal Khan. All three characters are new to the franchise, though the other two have not been confirmed for the roster as of yet.

The game will be released from April 14th for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will be out in Summer 2015.

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William Sierra
[Source: Shoryuken]

Nintendo announces new “NX” platform; Joint venture with DeNA

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Nintendo made several announcements at a recent Tokyo press conference but the most stunning revelation was the news of a new platform. It's been less than three years since the launch of the Wii U and less than four since the release of the 3DS so the report of a new platform took some by surprise.

The "NX", was described by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, as "a dedicated game platform with a brand new concept."

Check out more details after the jump

The new platform will be part of Nintendo's new venture with mobile company DeNA although not much more has been revealed of the endeavor itself. "It is too early to elaborate on the details of this project," Iwata said.

They are working together on a cross-platform service which will support smart devices, PC, Wii U, 3DS and the upcoming NX as a replacement for the Club Nintendo service. It appears that certain games will be playable on any supported device by users of the service.

"Unlike the Club Nintendo membership service that Nintendo has been operating, the new membership service will include multiple devices and create a connection between Nintendo and each individual consumer regardless of the device the consumer uses," Iwata said. "This membership will form one of the core elements of the new Nintendo platform that I just mentioned."

While Nintendo described NX  as a "dedicated game platform," there has been no confirmation as to whether the platform will be a new console or handheld or something else entirely.

Don't expect the platform any time soon, as it seems it will be a while before get anymore details. "We hope to share more information with you next year," Iwata said.

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William Sierra
[Source: The Guardian]

Opinion:  The Technology Arms Race or:  Your game doesn’t need 3d

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Words by Greywolfe

I’m currently playing through Hand of Fate. I might never finish playing it for review, because that game just keeps toying with my emotions. I’ll do most of a run, get almost to the end and then get killed by something random and unexpected.

I’m also playing a handful of other games – Shovel Knight, Braveland Wizard and older Sierra games and the like and as I’ve been playing them, one thing has become startlingly clear: while they’re obviously modern and while they’ve all obviously been through a 3d pipeline, none of them have needed that extra step.

So, let’s talk about how technology is basically attempting to drive game play over a cliff, sometimes.

In very early games, text symbols were used to represent things. The most iconic of these is the @ symbol, which became synonymous with the player character in rogue-like games.

This is you!

In the beginning, there was @

In the very beginning, computers couldn’t display graphics at all. So we made do: Games had character symbols that you could “interpret” as a character. For rogue-likes this meant that the @ symbol became very important, because that became you. $ was treasure. And all of this worked out rather well, because you’d see the game in your mind – you’d say, “oh, here’s a $, I wonder what treasure I’m going to find?”

Then graphics happened. First, crude, blocky graphics, followed by nicer, more colourful graphics and finally we started entering the realm of fully-fledged media production with real sound, because, of course, in the beginning, we didn’t have sound chips that could create the sound of footfalls on cement or seem like an orchestra was playing.

And, of course, it was all good.

But the thing that made it good was the gameplay. In a rogue-like, you’re always only a couple of steps from catastrophe:  Maybe the potion you pick up halves your health. Maybe the bow you pick up is cursed. The first shot is fantastic, but every shot thereafter is a catastrophic miss. It created stories in your head. Stories that you could then tell your friends.

The mechanics mattered. As gaming got more stylish, this point held mostly true. Certainly, there were almost always games that had style over substance: Cyberia springs readily to mind from those days, or the haunting Beyond:  Two Souls, with those crazy Quick Time Events.

The gameplay though had to matter, because that’s all those early experiences had. While some folks did try to pretty up their games, when you only had four colours, it meant that those four colours had to work really hard to look good. Take Weird Dreams, for example, or the forerunner of Surgeon Simulator, Life And Death.  For the time, both of these games looked “pretty good”, all things considered, but they played terribly. Life and Death had the problem of being too complex, while Weird Dreams suffered from floaty controls, making the game impossible to beat.  [to give Weird Dreams it’s due, it was “made that way” because the game was meant to be a dream sequence.]
By contrast, at the time, there were wonderful games that only used two dimensions to do amazing things like any of the Mario games, or EarthBound, telling a fantastic story. Or even the fourth instalment of Ultima, which – while a little light on the story, had an amazing idea – the sort of idea one doesn’t see in modern gaming.

But gaming isn’t static.  And technology changes.
With the advent of 3d, whole new forms of game could be created, like the third person shooter/first person shooter.

3d changed our perspective. Literally.

The 3d Revolution happened

Towards the mid-nineties, graphics cards started being able to do the third dimension. It was sort of serviceable 3d, but it worked. You got the impression of what you were looking at – even if it was rather boxy and rather ugly even only a year later.

The problem with technology is that it’s an arms race. Because Doom was a massive success – though it wasn’t “true 3d,” it meant that everyone had to hop on the bandwagon. And to some degree, gaming got sort of stuck for fifteen years.  Everything had to be “more real”, leading to the term photorealistic.

Part of the problem, of course, is that game play suffered. Remember how I mentioned Cyberia before? Well, Cyberia’s plan was: Make a really beautiful looking shooter.  The trouble was that, at the time, “really beautiful” also meant “rendered in 3d or bust,” because that was the only real way to make that work.  What you got left with was a wonderful looking game that took the same pathway regardless of how many times you played it, but – at the time – it looked amazing.

Twenty years down the line from Cyberia, game play is still suffering.

Some of this can be attributed directly to the 3d element in gaming, because that subsumes so much development time that it leaves very little time for anything else. Yes, there may be a design document, and certainly, there will be a specification for how the game is played, but witness things like The Order: 1886. What should have been an intriguing game with a distinct premise – a sort of setting we don’t ordinarily see in gaming – the game play was marred.

In some cases even, the game play doesn’t need 3d. I mentioned Hand of Fate earlier in this piece and the reason I bring that up is because that whole game could have existed in 1989 when graphics were particularly primitive. Even, with some wrangling, the combat system.

But modern developers – in particular – feel like they must throw every bell and every whistle onto a game in order for it to have “the best chance at selling”. Expect to see this happen with things like the Oculus Rift. [The first “really new” technology to be introduced in a very long time] – Sadly, sometimes, it seems like this bit of common sense doesn’t seem to trickle down.

In Summary

Not every game needs all the technological bells and whistles. Some games in fact, might even be enhanced by the lack of 3d [or any other technological advance, as per your preference].  What matters most is story, gameplay and whether or not your intended audience enjoy what you have created on it’s own merits.  Remember that, for the most part, technology is just a bullet point. It is not your game.

Images courtesy of Pixabay
http://pixabay.com/

(2nd Opinion) Sid Meier’s Starships ships with ships, but…

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Sid Meier, the granddaddy of turn based strategy, has bestowed upon us a new game.
A 4x nerd as myself of course purchased it within minutes of its release. As I would have anyway, regardless of the reviews. However, despite my fanboy-esque fascination with all things Sid, the game has a couple of disappointments.
Why, oh why didn’t they add multiplayer to this game? It’s turn-based for crying out loud. Can’t be that hard. Oh, and advanced graphics settings please. There are none. None at all. Even for fullscreen you have to maximize the window, there’s no built-in feature. 

Apart from these technicalities, and the fact you’re limited to one (1) fleet in total, it’s basically solid. 

The story is your old civ-meets-space, conquers space-type. The civs are selected through a system taken from Beyond Earth (Affinity/Sponsor) and gives you certain starting benefits. You have your basic planets, which you can assimilate into your empire by completing missions. Then you can build stuff to improve your raw materials output - energy being the most important, as it’s used for equipping, repairing and purchasing your starships. 

Metals can be used for buildings and wonders, food for cities (boost all output levels) and science for purchasing tech upgrades. Interesting: All these upgrades are insta-buy, so they don’t take a couple of turns to complete (as is traditional for a 4x). The last resource, credits, is particularly valuable and scarce (all factions except ARC can only gain it by selling other resources on the market). Credits can be used for purchasing resources and, most importantly, influence on planets.
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Make no mistake, this is very much a war-game. There’s basically no way to win without engaging the other empires in a tit-for-tat jostling for planets. This is where the limitation to one fleet is particularly painful: Besides one defensive option (Megabots) there’s really no way to defend one front while being aggressive on another. 

The tactical combat, which takes place on a 2d map with added asteroids for giggles, involves loads of maneuvering, taking cover and blasting the other ships to bits. There are three weapon types, plasma (short range), lasers (long range) and torpedoes (mostly useless). Equipping your ships with loads of plasma cannonry and decent speed is a good tactic, having a carrier with some fighters hang back is also not bad. Laser snipers are somewhat limited because of the fact that there’s mostly an asteroid in the way. Asteroids reduce damage, and multiple asteroids in your line of fire can block the shot totally. Torpedoes are mostly useless except for shooing ships out of cover. 

Fighters. Ahhh, fighters. Fighters are fun, fast and fragile. Upgrading tech can lead to them actually stomaching a shot or two. Carriers can deploy exactly one squadron per turn, which means having loads of fighters on one ship is not that efficient. Using the fighters as disposable killers shooting close range plasma right up the enemy’s rump is very much entertaining, however. Fighters cannot be designed and their tech tier gives random upgrades - designing the little buggers would have been fun.
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There’s supposed to be interconnectivity with Beyond Earth too, but I haven’t gotten it working yet. Might need some ironing.

Summing up:
Starships is a fairly fast 4x with a casual feel. Most hardcore TBS enthusiasts will find the lack of depth somewhat limiting the enjoyment, however.


I’m Dave, 4X and TBS nerd. I also write stuff.
I’ll contribute to Twinstiq from time to time with 4X and TBS reviews. Obviously.

GTA V – Connectile Dysfunction?

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Are you having problems connecting? Do you feel lost and out of touch? Is your GTA V constantly crashing or kicking you from everything?

It's okay, it happens to ...well, just about everyone.

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After the release of the new Heists content, users started having a multitude of problems including constant crashing, along with rewards not being earned. It wasn't just a few people either, we're talking boat-loads of players on both PSN and Xbox systems submitting almost constant reports of the problems.
To combat this, Rockstar Games announced they would be working on a nicely sized stability patch. Not only would it correct the game play issues, but it would also address the constant disconnects and interrupted service. To test it out, they first implemented the patch to PS3 and PS4 users and would rework any problems that would arise afterwards.

After the successful implementation of the patch on the PSN, Rockstar then posted:

3/15/15 Update: The update is now live on all platforms. Thanks for your patience.

Of course gamers are still encouraged to post or submit if they are still having problems but it does seem that a majority of disconnects have stopped.  

All I can say is,

Happy Heisting!


-Tisnight
(Photo Courtesy of Rockstar Games )

Oh and P.S.

I can't be the only one who loved this song, so for your view pleasure the original 'The Setup.'

Freedom of the Triad

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According to GamesPress.com Gog.com and Apogee will be giving away free copies of Rise of the Triad (2013) today. There are limited quantities, 30,000 reportedly, so act quickly if you want your free copy. After all copies are gone the game will go on an 80% sale. We will update this story if anything changes.
*Edit*
Looks like it's live, act quick!
Billy C
Source: GamesPress.com
http://www.gog.com/

Sid Meier’s Starships – Video Review

I've spent the last few days with Sid Meier's Starships and I've finally finished the review! Check out the video above and be sure to like, subscribe, and comment. Or just send me hate mail, either way really.
Billy C
Game Source: Purchased for personal use.
Audio: The main menu theme of Sid Meier's Starships.
Video: All video of the game recorded on my PC during play.

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is good and …stuff

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Hey everybody!

Let’s use this Weekly Webcomic Wrapup to talk about …stuff.

First off: Did you read the 28 Days later post? It’s pretty cool. Why? Because some of you won …stuff.

2nd: You might have noticed that little ad banner on the right. Everyone fine with that? Leave a comment if not. Otherwise, Yay! Because then we make some money and making money allows us to pay for …stuff.

³: Things are going well and it’s time to grow the audience now. Spread the gospel of the Twinstiq, invite your friends to share their stories in the comments, tweet, like …and stuff.

9-5: Have any cool ideas for an article? Share them with us! You can do so either in the comments, or by using the “Contact Us” page at the top. They can be about all sorts of …Webcomics! (HA! Didn’t see that one coming, did you?)

 

Nickmom (Minecraft vs. Real World)
LiA (The Memories We Share)
Awkward Zombie (Light Sleeper)
Ctrl+Alt+Del (30 Seconds)
Critical Miss (Undercutting the Competition)
Dark Legacy Comics (The North Sea)

Pushing Old Consoles Beyond Their Limits

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We have certain expectations when it comes to retro games.  By now, we've pretty much seen each system's entire library as the games trickled out on Virtual Console, PSN, and XBLA.  Even so, there are a few people that just don't want these systems to die, and are constantly finding new hardware tricks and pushing their limits, just for fun, and there are also a few amazing official games you might have missed.  Here is a showcase of some of the most impressive games and tech demos I've found.

The SuperGrafx is basically a PC Engine / Turbo Grafx 16 with extra RAM.  The system had trouble doing convincing parallax scrolling and often used animated tiles or sprites in the foreground over a slower moving background layer.  At 10:10 in this video, a tech demo does two layers of scrolling and applies a warping effect to the background, with a huge boss character on top, reproducing one of the sections of SNES shmup Axelay.

StarFox on the SNES requires a SuperFX DSP to manipulate all of the polygons you see onscreen at 15 frames per second.  Part of the first level has been reproduced on the Genesis using only the main CPU, very impressive!

First person shooters on 16-bit systems were very rare.  Wolfenstein 3D was released on the SNES, but could the Genesis handle it?  Yup!

The SNES is famous for its Mode 7 graphics capabilites, used to scale and rotate a background plane.  Here's a Mario Kart demonstration on the Genesis using the same effect!

More mode 7 on the Genesis?  Here's a more complete looking demo, showing the first track of F-Zero.

The NES was a classic, but have you ever seen it do 3D?  Here's a classic vector graphics-based game Elite, the complete game has been ported to the 8-bit system!

Zippy the Porcupine?  Wait...  That seems a little familiar...  Anyway, here's a platformer featuring a blue... porcupine... on the Atari 2600, a system that typically featured single-screen games with no scrolling at all.

We know Mario Bros was on the Atari 2600, but what about some good old goomba stomping platforming action?  Here's a very impressive side-scrolling Super Mario Bros clone, with very nice spritework!

The Super NES was all set to receive a port of Comanche when it was cancelled late in development, but one coder shows us the same voxel graphics that would have made the game possible on the SNES, using the SuperFX chip.

Sega's 32X was criminally underwhelming, seeing only a handful of worthy releases in its time.  Sega shows us with its own tech demo what would have been possible on the system.

Shenmue was a great Dreamcast game, but Yu Suzuki originally intended for the open world game to come to the Sega Saturn.  When the system's life was cut short, development moved to the Dreamcast.  How far along was the Saturn version?  You can see that right here in a video of the first act, showing the Saturn was truly capable of such a complex and cinematic game.

Gunstar Heroes was a gameplay and graphical showpiece on the Genesis, but those lucky GameGear owners in Japan received a very complete port.  The game has been recreated as close as can be on Sega's portable, with many jawdropping effects intact, such as multi-segmented bosses and backgrounds with line scrolling effects.

This title showcases what high production values and the larger cartridge space of later games can do for an NES title.  Parallax scrolling and fluid sprite animation almost makes this look like a 16-bit title.

The NES has a classic sound, many pop songs have been remixed with NES style instruments, and many actual songs have incorporated its unique aural qualities.  Lagrange Point included a special chip, the VRC7, which allowed it to produce FM Synthesis music far beyond the original system's capabilities.

Bringing us to a more modern era, High Voltage was so excited about their 3D engine's capabilities on the Wii that they demonstrated what the system could be capable of, making gamers excited for the eventual release of The Conduit, one of the more technically impressive titles on the platform.

I hope you enjoyed a look at what some intrepid coders are doing to push the limits of the systems we love to give us the best experience possible.  Let us know what games you thought were impressive, and how they impacted you!

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