The COVID-19 pandemic is in full swing and most of us are housebound doing what we can. If you are finding yourself with a bit more free time to play some games and the want to donate to charities that can help fight COVID-19 The Humble Bundle is here!

"This special one-week bundle features $1,071 worth of games and ebooks for just $30. 100% of the proceeds from your bundle purchase go to support organizations responding to COVID-19. For example, delivering protective gear to safeguard healthcare workers and providing medical care to infected patients."

The charities you will be supporting are Doctors without Borders, Partners in Health, Direct Relief and International Rescue Committee.

This Bundle is HUGE with 45 games and 23 books give or take. If you are curious what some of the amazing Indie Games you can play are such as Into The Breach, UNDERTALE, Hollow Knight, Wizard of Legend, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, The Witness, SUPERHOT, Tilt Brush, LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Killing Floor 2, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered, Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition, Darksiders Warmastered Edition, Sniper Elite 3, This Is the Police, The Jackbox Party Pack 2, Stick Fight: The Game, Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, Party Hard, Worms Revolution, Europa Universalis IV, Tropico 4, GNOG, Broken Age, Brütal Legend, Psychonauts, Double Fine Adventure, PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2, Pikuniku, World of Goo, Super Hexagon, VVVVVV, Hacknet, A Mortician's Tale, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, Magicka, Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville, Agents of Mayhem, DUCATI - 90th Anniversary, Speed Brawl, HIVESWAP: Act 1, Alien Spidy, Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones, LostWinds and Zombotron!

https://www.humblebundle.com/conquer-covid19-bundle

There were a lot of games announced for Switch in the latest Nintendo direct and I wanted to highlight that 2K games is bringing some essential classics such as The Bioshock Collection, Borderlands Legendary Collection: includes Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and The XCom 2 Collection to the Switch on May 29th. The good news is these versions will come with a physical game releases but they are so large that they couldn't include everything on the 16 gig game cart.

I love Borderlands and had fun playing it on the PS3 and hopefully the Switch version is faithful to these games. As they don't require the most cutting edge of hardware hopefully they hold up well and I'm looking forward to the Digital Foundry reviews to see more.

Anything else interest you in the latest Nintendo Direct?

From Kotaku:

"According to a press release from 2K Games BioShock: The Collection will come on a 16GB cartridge that only contains the “opening acts” of each of the three games with the rest needing to be downloaded. They don’t say just how big that download will be. On PS4 it’s about 60GB.

XCOM 2, meanwhile, comes on an 8GB cartridge that will only have the first two missions in the game installed. To get the rest you’ll need to download up to 24GB more.

Finally, the Borderlands Legendary Collection will require an additional 41.6GB download to fully play. For reference, the Switch only comes with 32GB of internal storage."

https://2k.com/en-US/blog/borderlands-legendary-collection/
https://kotaku.com/bioshock-borderlands-and-xcom-are-coming-to-switch-1842507828

I'm going to be writing a few posts about games I'd otherwise not be playing but decided to because we're all now to shelter-in-place and you know, fuck it, might as well get to some cool games.

One game I've had my eye on for quite some time is Risk of Rain 2 as I __really__ enjoyed the original game on PC. That said, with a kid and a developer day job sitting yet again at a desk on a PC for fun isn't always a super hot idea so playing games on the Switch is much more appealing. I've considered picking up Risk of Rain 2 on the Switch and wasn't sure because it's a third person shooter and had doubts how well that might work out on a controller(I prefer a keyboard and a mouse just like your Grandpap). When I found out they included the original Risk of Rain on the Switch game cart as a bonus I decided to pick it up. I've wanted to play the original Risk of Rain again on the Switch and felt that getting it for about twenty dollars AND Risk of Rain 2 was too good of a deal to pass up.

Thoughts on Risk of Rain 2

Well see, I don't have any strong thoughts yet as I've not really played it. But I bought it and the Switch box it came in looks great, so it has that going for it. And when you put the Switch cart in the system both games magically show up, which seemed like some kind of Nintendo Wizard magic.

But I HAVE played a lot of the original Risk of Rain on Switch and yeah, that's still fun as hell. It's as if Risk of Rain was meant to always be on that platform as it's perfect in handheld and on the TV.

I've heard Risk of Rain 2 is incredible and it sits at a rating of A REALLY HIGH RATING(So scientific of me I know, but go look, i'm not wrong) on each platform it's on. I figure I'll keep playing Risk of Rain on the Switch like a troglodyte and some day I'll get to Risk of Rain 2.

But at I have the box and as I said, the art looks great so you know, I'll always have that.

A few years ago some friends and I returned to SimTown after finding a copy and had a blast playing it. Somehow it ran just fine on the modern Windows at the time and even though it wasn't perfect it I had a lot of fun playing it. The best part of SimTown is that it doesn't get bogged down with complex simulations and lets you build your tower as you want, with minimal direction. One downside of letting the player do something in a way that isn't optimal is that it is possibly frustrating but that's not always a bad way to learn.

I quite enjoyed this SimTower review by Hungry Goriya and recommend you all check it out. I don't quite look at the negatives in the same way, but I learned a few things like SimTower got a spiritual successor in 1998 called Yoot Tower that looks like a proper follow up!

"SimTower is a game that I passed a lot of time with in my youth. It's a simulation game where you build a massive one-stop-shop tower with every amenity you'd ever need, and more. Revisiting it was a dream come true but it wasn't quite as warm and fuzzy as I remembered. 🍖"

Hearthstone has been the Queen of digital card games for quite some time and to keep the game stable, to-date they haven't added any new base playable classes. They aim to change that in the upcoming Ashes of Outland Expansion in that it will add the Demon Hunter class.

"Demon Hunters brandish the power of fel, while crushing their opponents with colossal demon allies. They have access to cards with the Outcast keyword, which become more powerful when played from the left or right-most position of your hand—including the turn they’re drawn.

The Demon Hunter is a permanent, full-fledged class that will be supported across all future Hearthstone expansions. The Demon Hunter is completely free for all Hearthstone players after they complete the Demon Hunter Prologue missions that become available on April 2. The prologue retells Illidan Stormrage’s origin story, from his perspective . . . and with a unique Hearthstone twist. Upon completion of the prologue, players will receive, for free, all 10 Demon Hunter Basic cards as well as a 20-card Demon Hunter Initiate set. Starting with Ashes of Outland, 15 new Demon Hunter cards will be released with each future expansion in the Year of the Phoenix"

I used to be a fairly hardcore Hearthstone player and stopped as the game was getting much more grindy in later expansions. With that I do plan on heading back and playing the free single player content to unlock the new Demon Hunter class. I'm not sure the Demon Hunter will get me back playing the game regularly but it's fun to see Blizzard add something new to a game that's been around the block.

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23324071

As Half-Life: Alyx nears launch Valve has been doing press about it and found this half hour interview with Gabe and Robin to be really compelling. They talk about Alyx, the Campo Santo acquisition and brain interfaces. If you dig Valve and like hearing Gabe talk about it, clickity clack that video play button above.

"In a rare half-hour conversation, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell talks about the studio's past with Half-Life, the surprising answer to what his favorite Half-Life game is, mistakes that Valve has made, what keeps a man worth billions of dollars coming to work every day, how he spends his days, what the next decade looks like for Valve (hint: it involves a brain-AI interface), and more!"

Some early media reviews are coming in for Doom Eternal and they look great. I wanted to share one from one of my favorite YouTube channels LGR. LGR has a nice chill style and mixes top notch capture footage (seriously the game looks incredible in his video) and it running on his wide ASUS monitor.

One of the first things I noticed is that in Doom Eternal the starting weapon is the shotgun which is a great. The pistol in Doom 2016 was fine, but Doom Eternal looks to start you out with Doom's signature weapon which is as it should be.

If you are getting Doom Eternal soon let me know and what you think of the game once you play it.

The RetroTINK creators have released a new version called the RetroTINK 2X-Pro that is an upscaler/line doubler for retro consoles with analog, s-video and component inputs with an output to HDMI. Metal Jesus puts the new TINK through it's paces and it does quite well with a very minimal amount, if any noticeable lag. The TINK is an essential option if you want to plugin your old consoles to a modern television and only have HDMI on your TV to work with. That and the TINK is also great to convert old console video signals to HDMI for capture the video or streaming to Twitch.

The RetroTINK 2X-Pro is $140 brand new and is currently sold out. At the time I wrote this RetroTINK is also sold out of the classic as well so hopefully they can get more stock as it looks like they are fairly popular.

You can get Anodyne 2: Return to Dust, A Short Hike and Mutazione free on the Epic Games Store on PC right now until March 13th! Let's say you are finding yourself at home with a bit more time on your hands then now is the time to click buy on these games at a really incredible price of $0.

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/anodyne-2-return-to-dust/home
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/a-short-hike/home
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/mutazione/home

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Warzone is a brand new Battle Royale game that launched for free on Battle.net, XBox and Playstation. So far the game is garnering great reviews calling it a fresh take on a pretty established Battle Royale genre. Warzone ups the ante by allowing a maximum of 150 players in a match, creating a much larger world map and adding two games modes in the normal Battle Royale mode and Plunder. So far, Plunder is the only mode I've played and it's great. You jump into the map Apex Legends style with a team and you work together to collect cash from loot chests around the map. The teams that collect the most cash are shown for everyone to come after and as part of the mode you can call in helicopters to haul your cash away.

Since Warzone is totally free and I enjoy playing Battle Royale games from time to time I decided to start up Battle.net and give Warzone a shot. It's nice that Warzone is free and integrates cleanly in Battle.net but the 70+ gig download is more than annoying. In the end I had fun playing Warzone and if you love games like Apex Legends or Fortnite and you are looking for something totally different this is well worth a shot. Linking to the video review from Digital Foundry above as they've played it quite a bit more and focus on the games engine and performance.

https://www.callofduty.com/modernwarfare/warzone