Travis4

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

Web developer and all-around geek.
https://travisnewman.me

547 Posts

GOG.com announces an optional, DRM free client: Galaxy
GOG is joining the ranks of PC Game clients like Steam and Origin with GOG Galaxy, a purely optional client to let you manage your GOG library.

This will automate game downloads, automatically update your games, let you show off your achievements to your friends, etc. But it is in no way mandatory, and if you choose to use it, you don't have to be online for any offline features.

This is exciting news. I always loved GOG for being a DRM-free option for buying games, but hated the loss of the convenience Steam provides. Steam kinda controls the board in the PC gaming marketplace these days, so I hope this provides some extra competition to make the whole scene even better.

http://www.gog.com/galaxy

Retro Game Challenge 2 fan translation completed
http://i.imgur.com/pcHyndH.png
I just dusted off my Nintendo DS and made sure it still worked.

Retro Game Challenge (the western title for Game Center CX: Arino no Chōsenjō), was one of the best games I played for the Nintendo DS. There was a sequel, only released in Japan, that I've been longing for ever since.

The game series is based on the TV show Game Center CX, or Retro Game Master in Kotaku's translation. It's a charming show that is hard to find in the US, unless you know Japanese. Arino, the host, interviews people in the gaming world, and plays through classic games. You can check out the first episode here-- definitely not the best but the easiest to find with subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMsv0Y7Ny1w

The games have you playing as a young Arino, playing fake Famicom games that draw inspiration from real games. You can collect game magazines to give you hints and cheats, read the manuals, etc. all to appease a Demon Arino... you know, the plot really doesn't make sense, or matter :)

Despite amazing reception in Japan, the sales were lacking in Western areas and the second game was never localized. Back in 2011, Destructoid reported on a fan translation in the works: http://www.destructoid.com/retro-game-challenge-2-fan-translation-lives-on-209526.phtml

And today, the translation has been completed: http://www.gccxpatch.com/

It's important to note that you'll have to use a DS emulator or have a cartridge that lets you play roms on your DS. The legality of those cartridges is iffy at best, so I won't go into the details but if you'Re looking 4 it, gOogle seaRches Can alwaYs show you Craptons of resuLts On how to Do thiS.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a Masterpiece of Mayhem
http://i.imgur.com/o7Fwh2c.jpg
Wolfenstein: The New Order puts you back in the shoes of B.J. Blaskowicz, Nazi-killer extraordinaire, for another adventure. The game was developed by a new team at Bethesda, MachineGames, and uses the id Tech 5 engine that debuted in RAGE. The Wolfenstein franchise needed something big, and id Software has been struggling a bit and needed a win. The New Order really had a lot to prove.

And it certainly has.

For those who are unfamiliar with the franchise, Wolfenstein takes place during an alternate World War II, where The Third Reich's research into the supernatural and advanced technology pays off. Where other WWII games strive for realism, Wolfenstein has always basked in its absurdity-- Wolfenstein 3D had you fighting Mecha-Hitler, for example.

The New Order is no exception. From the very beginning, the game is over-the-top in its action, lovingly paying homage to the roots of the series. But it's not without heart-- the storyline is good enough, nothing spectacular, but used as a mechanism to tie the different areas together and set you up with reasons to cause mayhem, but the characters in the story feel very real, with real motivations, and real emotions.

The game opens in 1946, but due to some events that I won't spoil, you'll soon be in the 1960s in an even *more* alternate reality where the Nazis won the war, and now rule the world. You'll go to many different amazing places, including a secret underwater compound, and one that's so awesome I don't even want to mention it here.

Graphically, The New Order has all the benefits and downfalls of the id Tech 5 engine we saw in RAGE. Facial detail is fantastic, and characters' eyes are almost hit the uncanny valley in a few situations. For the most part, the world looks very nice as well, but when you get up close to a wall, for example, you can see where id Tech 5's megatextures start to be a drawback, lacking in detail. Making very fast movements close up to a wall will also cause some major pop-in issues where the wall is blurry for a half a second or so before the texture finishes rendering. These are minor problems, though, that you'll rarely ever see. Overall, the game is quite pretty.

The soundtrack is a standout feature for me. Many famous songs were re-recorded in German. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Germany won WWII and The Beatles had to start recording their songs in German? You can now find out.

But lets get to the meat of the game-- how does it play? Almost perfectly. The gunplay is some of the best I can remember, and for a game like this, it really needs to be. It strikes a balance between making you feel like an absolute badass and giving you a sense of danger. Yes, you can dual-wield assault rifles with rocket-launcher attachments and take out tons of enemies, but you aren't invincible. You'll need to run and grab some health or hide occasionally, and you need to be smart.

One new addition to The New Order is stealth. You can go through and kill everything as loudly and explosively as you like, or you can sneak around the levels, knifing enemies from behind or using silenced weapons to take them down without being seen. This is generally smart to do, at least at first, because you can take out commanders before they sound the alarm and call for reinforcements. You can't use stealth in every situation, but you can theoretically get through most of the game without ever being seen.

The one downside to the gameplay that I've found is the health, armor, and ammo pickups. You can't just walk over them, you have to hit E to grab them. This makes for a lot of major battles after which you end up spending a minute cleaning up loot. It's a minor inconvenience, but it definitely takes you out of the game.

The difficulty curve is pretty steady for the most part, but I found that sometimes there are outliers where things seem unreasonably tricky for a battle or two before returning to the curve you're used to. I guess this is normal. It's both frustrating and exciting, but it's "Nintendo-hard," not bullshit-hard. You can see what you're doing wrong and correct for it, which just makes you feel more awesome.

Something you would expect to find in a modern shooter that is absent here is multiplayer. Unless they release a multiplayer add-on, you're on your own. I don't count this as a strike against the game by any means. Single-player has been lacking in many first-person shooters over the past few years, and I'm glad to see it get the full attention it deserves.

You can tell MachineGames has great respect for the source material. The difficulty options are the same as they've always been, ranging from "Can I Play Daddy?" to "I Am Death Incarnate." There are TONS of collectibles and secrets, just as you'd expect from a Wolfenstein game, and some of them let you unlock new play modes, including a new Über difficulty. The game still taunts you for your cowardice when you exit the game. It really feels like a Wolfenstein game.

Really, The New Order feels like the "classic" style shooter with 2014 sensibilities. With realistic and cover-based shooters becoming the norm these days, it's refreshing to see a run-and-gun, badass shooter that can compete.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a game of balance. The carnage, mayhem, and B-movie sensibilities balanced with believable, well-written characters that you care about; The classic shooter playstyle and fanservice for the old Wolfenstein fans balanced with enough modern shooter tendencies to pull in a new fanbase; Feeling like a total Übermensch while mowing down everything in your path balanced with a sense of danger and urgency. The balance never feels off.

Without spoiling the ending, it is written with an opening for more games, or as a good bookend to the series. I suppose whether we get more games will depend on its popularity. I, for one, hope for more. I already want to jump back in.

Play Wolfenstein 3D in Wolfenstein: The New Order
There are some mild spoilers in the video, so if you mind those kinds of things, beware.

I've played a little of The New Order so far and enjoying it quite a bit. I was pleased to find this awesome nod to Wolfenstein's roots. It looks like the same level that was an easter egg in RAGE, but I'm not 100% sure. I guess that would be the easy thing to do.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls review
https://i.imgur.com/IokLnIr.jpg
My mouse is dead, long live my mouse!

Diablo III broke my mouse. Logitech is awesome, though-- my G500 gaming mouse is gone, and I now have a G502 in its place thanks to Logitech's legendary support. I swear I'm not a Logitech shill, I just love them.

This all started because my left click stopped working reliably, and if I had to guess I would say Diablo III wore it out. I bought the mouse when I started playing Diablo III two years ago, and I've had a few periods over those two years when I obsessed for a few months. But over the past month since Diablo III: Reaper of Souls came out, the poor mouse couldn't cope.

Diablo III (1.x) is dead, long live Diablo III (2.x)!

It's hard to review Reaper of Souls without also reviewing patch 2.0 that came out for Diablo III a few weeks before the expansion launched. This patch changed so many core systems that it truly felt like a new game, even before the new content.

The biggest changes were with loot. The Auction House, once the only reliable way to gear your character, is gone. The game was once a matter of finding things you could vendor for gold, or things that could work for other classes you could sell on the Auction House, and if you managed to find an upgrade for yourself that was just icing on the cake. Nearly all your endgame gear would be gear you bought, not gear you found. With patch 2.0, the SmartLoot system was introduced, and the legendary drop chance was increased dramatically. This is now a loot-grinding game instead of a gold-grinding game, and we're better off. Now your loot actually means something.

Patch 2.0 also changed the way difficulty works. Before, when you beat Normal you started Nightmare, when you beat Nightmare you started Hell, and so on. Now there's just one campaign playthrough that you can still replay any time you want, but you don't have to play it four times. All enemies scale to your level. The old monster power system has been changed to Difficulty, where you can tune your experience as you like. This makes for a less confusing system, and speeds up leveling quite a bit-- I had two level 60 characters prior to the patch, but now I have about 10 levels before all 6 are at level 70.

The Paragon system was changed dramatically. Once you hit level 60 in the old game your character started gaining Paragon levels that would give you minor attribute buffs and increase your chances of finding loot/gold. Now, however, all your Paragon levels give you points that go into a pool that all your characters can use, and you can assign those points however you like to really fine tune your character beyond the gear you choose.

This patch really changed the game, entirely for the better. The new team is doing a hell of a job.

Death is dead, long live death! (yeah I admit that one doesn't work very well)

While patch 2.0 changes things for the better dramatically, the Reaper of Souls expansion brings a lot to the table that you'll be seriously missing out on if you're just playing the base game.

For starters, your level cap gets bumped from 60 to 70. This brings a new active skill to each class, as well as a few passive skills, and the loot you get even by level 62 or 63 starts to make your level 60 loot look like it was made out of cardboard. But that's probably the smallest addition. To help you fill out those extra ten levels, Blizzard has added a ton of content:

Act V
The biggest addition is Act V, which takes place in a new area called Westmarch and has you going after the Angel of Death himself, Malthael. The Act V level design is fantastic for the most part, and goes a long way to address some issues people had with the main game not looking dark and evil enough. A few of the new areas are some of the best in the game for causing massive damage to an onslaught of enemies. The Malthael boss fight is a welcome challenge. It took me a few tries to take him down, but you get better at it as you learn his patterns. For me, the new act is the real star of the show.

The music in Act V is amazing. On the whole, it's probably better than the music in the base game. Derek Duke really outdid himself with the composition. You really get a sense of foreboding when it's required, and being a badass when you're about to do something awesome.

I think the best thing in Act V is all the random events. One thing I noticed in acts I-IV is that there isn't much going on in the world beyond the major events you're involved in. With Act V, you run through many areas where events are occurring that you can take part in. Early on in the town of Westmarch, you can go into many houses to help people, and there's a small storyline that progresses through some of these events. It makes the world seem far more alive.

The Crusader
RoS adds a new playable class, the Crusader. The main game only had one class that used Strength as a main stat (the Barbarian), so this adds some variety. The Crusader is a tanky class so it plays slower, but can deal out a ton of damage and can take a beating too. It isn't perfect, but it's only had one balancing patch, whereas the other 5 classes have had two years of balancing. It should only get better from here. The Crusader is also a lovable smartass. I loved going back through all the acts with the Crusader to hear his dialogue and how he reacts to things differently, because it was pretty consistently amusing.

The Mystic
The Mystic is a new artisan you pick up in Act V which can enchant your gear to change a stat you don't like to something more desirable. She can also make your gear look like other pieces of gear if you have a look you're trying to go for. In addition to the loot changes in 2.0, this extra level of customization lets you make your gear even better, or tune it to specific goals you have.

Adventure Mode
After you complete Act V the first time, you unlock Adventure Mode, which is where you'll be spending most of your endgame. You can take bounties in each act which will give you extra experience, gold, loot, blood shards and rift keystone fragments (we'll get to those shortly). Basically, every time you start the game, there are 5 bounties in each act, so you never run out of goals to shoot for or things to do. There are some bounty-exclusive legendary items that can be real game-changers.

You can use those keystone fragments to open rifts. Rifts are randomly generated areas where your objective is to kill a ton of enemies to get the Rift Guardian to show up. This is a beefier version of minibosses from the main game. The Rift Guardian drops a ton of loot and blood shards. As an added bonus, Rifts have double the legendary drop chance, so you can gear up faster there.

And those blood shards you've been getting can be gambled at a new merchant, Kadala. She sells any kind of gear in the game, but it's random. So you'll spend 5 blood shards for a pair of pants, for example, but you have no idea what it's going to be until you get it. This is yet another way that Blizzard has improved the flow of loot-- if your pants suck, you can gamble on better ones.

Conclusion

Diablo III is very different now. If you've never played before, now is a great time to jump in, and if you stopped playing months or years ago because you were frustrated with how things were, now is a great time to revisit the game. I put a couple hundred hours into the game before any of these changes, and probably a hundred since, and while I liked where it was before, I can't say enough good things about it now. Your next upgrade always seems obtainable, even if it takes a while to get there, the rifts and bounties add a ton of replay, the balance tweaks make more builds viable, and it's just more *fun*, which is what we're here for after all.

I don't generally like the number ratings, but if I had to give one it would at least be a 9. This is a game that shouldn't be missed. If you're on the fence you can pick up the starter edition and see what you think.

Bonus quality-of-life tips
In addition to the review, I thought I'd share some tips I picked up.

By default, Shift is the key for "force stand still." Don't ignore this key. This forces your character to stop moving so you don't accidentally move when you intend to attack.

On the same token, you should map a key to "force move." I use the spacebar for this. Especially if you're a ranged character, sometimes you need to just get out of the way and you don't want to accidentally attack. This also lets you move toward your mouse cursor just by pressing the spacebar. It's a little easier on the hands. Fight back against carpal tunnel!

I have also mapped "close all windows" to mousewheel-down. So if there's a bunch of dialogue that you've heard a hundred times before, or a "bounty complete" window you want to quickly get out of the way, just scroll down. In the case of dialogue, just keep scrolling to get through it quickly. Mousewheel-up is mapped to "open inventory" so I can check some new loot quickly. These won't help you play better, but they can get you where you're going much faster.

Legend confirmed: E.T. Cartridges found in New Mexico
https://i.imgur.com/0UHK75u.png
Larry Hyrb (better known to gamers as Major Nelson) tweeted this pic of the E.T. cartridges being excavated.

https://twitter.com/majornelson/status/460129185277968385

It was first reported a year ago that plans were underway to dig up the burial site where thousands of copies of the Atari "classic" E.T. were buried.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/31/187606960/atari-dump-will-be-excavated-after-nearly-30-years

In the past months, Microsoft announced plans to make a documentary of the whole process. Today, the long-standing rumors have been confirmed.

The Angry Video Game Nerd movie deals with the legendary landfill. Interestingly enough, both the movie and the Microsoft documentary are slated for release this year. James also posted his reaction to the discovery on the Cinemassacre blog:

http://cinemassacre.com/2014/04/26/e-t-atari-landfill-unearthed/

World customization options coming to Minecraft 1.8
After the big change in world generation in version 1.7, Mojang is taking things farther in 1.8 by allowing you some direct control over the world generation process.

For me, one of the best things about Minecraft, Terraria, and the other games like them that have randomized worlds is the pure surprise of what you might find. However, it's always annoying when your favorite biome is smaller than an airplane bathroom. A little personalized tweaking is a welcome change.

And if you want to reenact Water World or recreate Rapture, now is your chance. Beyond terrain generation, you can set sea level and flood the world if you like.

Freeablo is an open source engine for Diablo 1
https://i.imgur.com/Tq6bT2O.jpg
If you've tried to play the original Diablo on a modern PC you know how tricky it can be. Even if you get it working for one area, moving to the next can throw all kinds of graphical problems, and modern resolutions just make it look wacky. That's a technical term, by the way.

Since it seems Blizzard has (reasonably) long abandoned this game, we've been basically out of luck, but if a new project called Freeablo comes to fruition, we'll get to play the game in ways we never imagined back when it first came out, like playing it on Linux or in 2560x1440 resolution: http://wheybags.netsoc.ie/freeablo.png

It's important to note that this is just the engine. You still need the original game to play.

Wheybags is sharing the source on GitHub, as well as compiled releases. Currently it's in early alpha-- you can do some basic things but it's by no means complete yet. If you have C++ chops and want to help, wheybags is looking for some good developers to contribute.

https://github.com/wheybags/freeablo

On the reddit post about the game, wheybags says that he wants this to eventually allow the player to customize everything, and mod support is an important feature.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/23okhq/freeablo_a_cross_platform_foss_rewrite_of_the/

2K is saving some legacy titles from the GameSpy shutdown
https://i.imgur.com/mJyg0qw.jpg
Good news for people who like older games! With the GameSpy service shutting down soon, many games are on the multiplayer chopping block.

2K announced yesterday that many Civilizations games and the original Borderlands will move to Steamworks. The following games will be switching on May 31.


Borderlands®
Civilization® III
Civilization® III: Conquests
Civilization® III: Play the World
Civilization® IV
Civilization® IV: Beyond the Sword
Civilization® IV: Colonization
Civilization® IV: Warlords

Unfortunately, Borderlands and Civilization: Revolution on PS3 used GameSpy, and will lose multiplayer support.

The full list of 2K games known to be affected by the shutdown are listed here:
http://support.2k.com/hc/en-us/articles/201967707-2K-Online-Server-Migration-from-GameSpy-Technology

And the blog post announcing the fixes:
https://blog.2k.com/index.php/home/single/2k-announces-online-service-changes-for-legacy-titles

Harvester Giveaway!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Harvester_cover.jpg
Greetings Ghosts,

It’s been a long time since our last give-away contest. We are partnering up with our friends at Night Dive Studios to give away Harvester, the most violent adventure game of all time!

All you need to do to enter this contest is comment on this post. On May 3rd, we will choose 3 people that have commented, purely at random, assigning a numerical value to each entry and using random.org to determine the winners.

We're also giving away a copy on Steam Gifts, so head over there and throw your hat in the ring as well:
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/kkzJf/harvester

We are doing this contest with our awesome friends at Night Dive Studios. They are always up to awesome stuff and you should check them out on:

https://www.facebook.com/NightDiveStudios
https://twitter.com/NightDiveStudio

EDIT: Congrats to jake_plant, Masochism_Tango, and Rikku_S, our lucky winners!