jdodson | Cheerful Ghost

If You Haven't Tried Prey A New Demo Is Available

If you are interested in playing Arcane Studios latest shooter Prey head over to the Steam, PS4 of XBone digital stores and download the brand new demo! The demo is of the first opening hour which should give you a pretty good idea of what Prey is and if you want to pick it up. To help make the purchase a bit easier Prey is also discounted on Steam and the consoles so you know... why not check it out?

"In Prey, you awaken aboard Talos I, a space station orbiting the moon in the year 2032. You are the key subject of an experiment meant to alter humanity forever – but things have gone terribly wrong. The space station has been overrun by hostile aliens and you are now being hunted."

This Fallout Board Game Looks Incredible

https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/77/a1/77a18c52-05f3-4944-8959-1ebaa4b54e80/zx02_box_left.png

I have a board game backlog. I have a couple immersive games i'd love to sit down and play with my friends for hours but just don't have the time right now. The new Fallout Board Game by Fantasy Flight looks so awesome and i'd love to put it on my shelf right next to the other amazing board games I have ... if I just had time to play it. Maybe you do though and if you do you need to check it out..

"Beyond the map itself, the scenario will also determine which two unique factions you’ll have the opportunity to behead or befriend—your choice. In The Commonwealth for example, the Railroad and the Synths go head to head (assuming you haven’t already done the beheading). On the back of the scenario card, you can mark the progress of these two factions, giving each side more power. Should one of the factions progress to the very end of the power track, the game will end, whether there is a winner or not. So don’t get ahead of yourself. Allies are only allies as long as you’re worth something to them.

Finally, the scenario also sets up and drives the main quest you can follow in the game. “Welcome to the Commonwealth” is the first card in the scenario depicted here, kicking off the main quest. Completing one of the actions on this card will cause the noted effects, move the story forward, and reveal even more quests. While the main quest cards will more often than not impact the factions, side quests will allow you and the other survivors to explore other stories within the game without pushing that primary narrative too far ahead."

Fantasy Flight Games do a great job of releasing games with amazing figurines, well designed tokens and gameplay and art that really keeps things interesting. The Fallout game looks just as good and if this is like any past releases it will get quite a few expansions as well. As many of you know, the old Kevin Wilson Doom Board game is my all time favorite and this looks like something i'd like to put right next to it.

And if you are a Fallout collector, you know why not?

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/8/8/fallout/

StarCraft Remastered Launch Detected!

StarCraft Remastered launched today giving players the ability to play this classic LAN staple in 4K HD! One nice feature of the new StarCraft update is the amazing new graphics and also that you can play it alongside the original remastered and totally free to play version. Blizzard also added StarCraft to the Battle.net client and also made logging in to multiplayer in StarCraft us the new Battle.net sign-in interface. StarCraft still uses Classic Battle.net after that but you sign on with the new Battle.net and then it stores your old Battle.net credentials in the new client making you only have to sign in once. If that doesn't make sense then head in to StarCraft and try it out yourself, it's actually a really nice process.

In other less amazing news it seems that Blizzard is being sued by gaming cafes in Korea for Anti-trust.

"The Internet PC Culture Association, which represents local internet PC cafes where people play online games, also known as “PC bangs” here, said Monday that it had petitioned the Korea Fair Trade Commission to investigate Blizzard for unfairly charging them for the new game.

“Starcraft: Remastered” is an upgraded version of the former “Starcraft” game fitted with upgraded graphics and an improved soundtrack. The game was prelaunched at selected PC bangs in Korea on July 30, weeks ahead of its official worldwide release slated for Tuesday.

The Korean PC bang association has taken issue with Blizzard’s new policy to charge PC cafes between 203 and 233 won (20 cents) per hour for offering the new Starcraft game to visiting players. "

I get why they'd be upset about this because StarCraft Remastered really is an amazing amount of HD paint and a ton of work on the old game but it's not a new game service or anything. Since I am far from a Korean legal expert i'm curious how this will all turn out.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170814000693

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 08/15/2017 at 05:06am

The HD video looks great! It doesn't look like the intro was remastered, though, which you can find in the main menu.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 08/16/2017 at 02:29am

I've had it crash my windows box a few times now

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/16/2017 at 04:45pm

Oh that's too bad. Apparently they have some bugs to fix then.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 08/16/2017 at 07:14pm

It seems to work better in Windowed (Fullscreen) mode than Fullscreen mode. I am not sure what the difference is. The Windowed (Fullscreen) mode isn't in a window.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/16/2017 at 07:58pm

Windowed Fullscreen (sometimes called Borderless Windowed, or just Borderless Fullscreen) is *technically* a window, it just doesn't have the window borders, title bar, etc. It doesn't give the game exclusive access to the display like true fullscreen, but it can make things better in some games (and makes it easier to alt+tab out if you need to do that). Most notably if a game has screen tearing issues and doesn't have good vsync to prevent that, it can kinda sorta force the game into the desktop's refresh rate. It usually causes minor (and almost always, VERY minor) framerate drops but sometimes it can improve framerate if there are specific issues with the game's compositing.

https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Borderless_fullscreen_windowed

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 08/16/2017 at 11:16pm

It was 19 years ago when Starcraft came out. I was just finishing up high school. I remember playing Quake II around the same time, too. I'm not in too deep, but I don't think I've experienced any issues with Remastered. Starcraft got a good graphical upgrade, which is noticeable in some of the full motion movies. It certainly feels like a game that has aged well. Sadly, I can't say that about all games. I wish the Command & Conquer and Warcraft series would get the same facelift. Those were my wonderful RTS days. I enjoyed Starcraft II, but The Legacy of the Void proved to be quite difficult for me. I ended up cheating so I could get it over with. I think I used some cheats while playing Starcraft as well. I'll see how far I get before I feel the need.

@Travis thanks for the tech info!

I looked in Geforce Experience to optimize it, but it didn't come up in my game scan. I thought I enabled vsynch, but it appears I didn't. I haven't seen any screen tearing. Everything else is on except for Pillarbox and Enable FPS Cap. I would have used the latter, but it's scale is 100-300. If I were to limit my FPS, I'd do it with vsych or just set it for 60, which isn't on that scale. I believe it's running in "fullscreen" and I'm easily Alt-Tabbing back and forth.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 08/17/2017 at 04:21am

Thanks for the info Travis!

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 08/20/2017 at 04:48am

Here's a cool BlizzDev interview https://www.gamespot.com/articles/on-starcraft-remastereds-transformation-and-why-th/1100-6452652/

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/20/2017 at 11:11am

That's a great article, thanks for sharing Greg. A Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 remastered would be great!

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How To Preserve And Restore Retro Game Boxes

Collecting Retro Games is a bit part of preserving video game history for the future. Collectors spend lots of time trading old games keeping this stuff out of the landfill and available for future generations. We've shared retro game preservation videos before about caring for and cleaning game karts but this video focuses on how to restore Super Nintendo boxes. Currently I only have two retro games in box in Kirbys Dreamland and Romance of the Three Kingdoms II and they are in great condition. If I find a box in bad shape, I think i'll come back to this video and see what I can do to make it better.

Knights of the Frozen Throne Is Hearthstone's Coolest Expansion!

Hearthstone's latest expansion Knights of the Frozen Throne launched yesterday and if you are a fan of free stuff and the Hearthstone single player content, you should check it out! From now till October 31st for simply logging in you get 3 Knights of the Frozen Throne packs. This expansion also comes with a bunch of new single player content including a prologue and entire Adventure style wing. The rest of the wings open a week at a time ending with the final boss battle with Arthas himself. If you beat Arthas with each of the 9 classes you unlocks the new Arthas Paladin hero!

https://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20944003

I'm Going To Have To Inform On You!

All aboard the Wolfenstein II media hype train! Last stop is the game drop October 27th!

PS Don't eat candy bars in Nazi controlled America!

The Nintendo 2017 World Championships Are Coming!

Oct. 7, 2017 in New York City Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom Nintendo will be having the 2017 World Championships. If you are interested in qualifying check out the NWC site below and if you are close to New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Dallas, Seattle or Miami you can head to a Championship location to qualify. The game they are playing to qualify is Mario Kart 7 on 3DS and if you are over 13 you will get two chances to score the best time trial playing as Bowser with the Standard Kart, Standard Wheels, Super Glider racing GBA Bowser Castle 1. While you are there Nintendo will let you play the upcoming Super Mario Odyssey and Metroid Samus Returns as well as watch the other qualifiers.

Hopefully Nintendo will make a live stream available for the final World Championships and if they do, i'll make it available to everyone to watch here.

I'd love to head up to Seattle to try my hand at qualifying but Seattle is a bit of a drive and I KNOW I won't be able to beat the best Mario Kart 7 players in Seattle. Still would be fun to check it all out though. If you are planning on hitting up a qualifier in your area, let me know.

http://nwc.nintendo.com/

Valve's Next Game: Artifact - The Dota Card Game Will Launch in 2018!

It's a special time when Valve talks about a new game coming out but this one i've been speculating about for months. Digital Card games are the new hotness seen through the massive success of Hearthstone, Magic Online, Faeria, The Witcher Card Game, Elder Scrolls Legends and more and I've thought that Valve would be interested in getting in on it. Looks like they were thinking the same thing because in 2018 Artifact - The Dota Card Game will launch. So far all we've got is a very short trailer that only shows off the games four color logo that may be a tip to the different colored cards in Artifact? I guess time will tell what kind of digital card game it is but so far all the information about the game Valve is releasing on the Artifact Twitter page.

I imagine the game will be free to play with packs you can open and a ton of loot chests with cosmetic card backs and more. I am curious if there will be some shared loot with Dota 2 though? Also wondering how different Artifact will be from other existing digital card games on the market or if Valve will do something different? Will there be a VR component to Artifact? Are you interested in Dota digital card game from Valve?

So many questions that will be answered as time marches closer to the 2018 release date.

https://twitter.com/playartifact

**UPDATE**

A few websites are noting a few details about the game, i've clipped the important bits below:

"The digital card game will be out in 2018. It’ll feature lanes, use characters like Bounty Hunter, and have cards like barracks that will push waves of minions down each player’s avenue of attack. It’ll be a card game version of Dota 2, essentially."

https://compete.kotaku.com/valve-announces-artifact-a-dota-card-game-1797662448

Someone Finally Made An HDMI Connector For The GameCube!

GameCube has been traditionally bound to composite OR crazy expensive component cables UNITL NOW! Metal Jesus reviewed a really awesome GameCube HDMI connector made by zeldaxpro and the interest for them has been so high he can't meet demand right now! Basically zeldaxpro hacked the GameCube digital out port to accept HDMI and apparently makes them by hand at his house, which is why he is having a hard time meeting demand.

This is one of the reasons why I love the retro game community so much because long after the lifespan of a console is over people are still creating really amazing hardware to keep systems going.

https://zzblogs.wixsite.com/home/single-post/pnpgc2

UPDATE Apparently if version 2 of this HDMI adapter is moved during use it can brick your GameCube. The creator is moving to make a version 3 that doesn't do this but MetalJesus has an update video about it:

https://youtu.be/wvd-73clV6E

As Long As There Are Nazi's In The World BJ Will Keep Busy

New Wolfenstein is coming soon and as such Bethesda is pushing it hard online. Some of the stuff coming out is pretty interesting including the above mini conversation with Wolfensteins designers. The key takeaway from this video? Expect many Nazis to die by the hands of the resistance.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and all of it's Nazi murder simulative goodness will release October 27th on PC, PS4 and XBox One.

jdodson1

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