jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2759 Posts

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jdodson gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
jdodson gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Fallout Shelter is one of the better freemium mobile games i've played. Bethesda has done a great job supporting it and after launch they added a ton of standout content such as quests. After hanging up Hearthstone a while ago I realized I wanted to play something else and an out of country vacation a couple months ago made me consider playing Fallout Shelter again. One of my goals, besides to play a fun game and try out the new stuff, was to get to the endgame get a 100 dwellers in the vault so I could build a Nuka Cola Bottling Plant.

It's the last thing you can build so it must be awesome right? Recently I hit 100 vault dwellers and was able to build a Nuka Plant and was really excited to bottle my first Nuka when I realized the Nuka Plant just makes water and food... at the same time.

*sigh*

Needless to say I was really disappointed in spending so much time getting to the endgame to realize that the final room just optimized food and water creation. That's useful sure, but at that point in the game I have no problems keeping everyone fed and watered. All that said, I don't actually use much of the in game Nuka Cola that allows you to speed things up. As you can see from my in game screenshot I still have 96 bottles. I think the waiting aspect of Fallout Shelter is completely fine and I never felt like I had to use them. Occasionally i'd speed something up but mostly just to see how it worked and out of a kind of boredom novelty, not to get anything done faster.

Fallout Shelter is a very well done freemium game in that you can unlock everything by simply playing it and I never felt like I needed to buy lunchboxes to accomplish anything. I've heard that Fallout Shelter made Bethesda a mint and I can see why but for me, I don't get the draw of spending money unlocking anything. The quest system gives you enough lunchboxes and when you finally can send out groups for even more quests the amount of items you can collect goes up considerably. Still, I can see that some people might like to open lunchboxes and get that sweet hit of pulling that slot machine and buying more gets you more of that.

If you haven't played Fallout Shelter I recommend you give it a shot or check it out again if you've been away for a while. That said, I found the endgame lacking but if you love sending out dwellers on quest after quest there is more than enough of that to keep you busy for quite some time.


UbiSoft is working with South Park Studios to release two new South Park games this year. South Park: The Fractured But Whole(say it a couple times to let that sink in... cough) and the newly announced mobile title South Park: Phone Destroyer. Phone Destroyer will be a totally free to play South Park game that competes with other card battle games like Hearthstone, Faeria and Gwent. It will be totally free to play and according to the FAQ on the official website:

"Everything can be earned in the game without paying, but you can choose to spend real world money if you wish. The game is designed so that nothing is ever locked behind a paywall."

I'm interested to see how they roll the free to play aspect of the game because some games are more stingy with earning in game stuff than others and I hope Phone Destroyer edges on the side of more fair. I don't mind playing a game to unlock more cards if it's not too grindy. Whereas this is an official South Park game it doesn't seem to be a direct sequel to The Stick of Truth but is obviously in that universe.

Oh and you can kill Kenny.

South Park: Phone Destroyer drops on mobile sometime this year.

http://southparkphonedestroyer.com/


It's satire. And then starts things off with the conference presenter firing a gun in a crowded theater. Then they show a new game called Ruiner that looks neat. Then they show off a special innovation they are brining to gaming allowing people to throw money directly at the screen so they can take it. Then a guys arm is taken off and blood squirts everywhere and then things... devolve... to get even more weird. Which is great because this "press conference" is some A+ satire that I found both entertaining and also quite disturbing.

But you know, don't take my word for it, click to watch because I assure you that it amps up from there and the ending is quite the crescendo.


Age of Empires is a classic RTS that helped bring in a new wave of multiplayer gaming that later blew up with Age of Empires 2 and StarCraft. If you play the original Age of Empires now, besides not possibly not running at all on Windows 10, it suffers from low screen resolutions that make it practically unplayable on a modern monitor. That said, some modern port projects such as the "UPatch Age of Empires Rise of Rome Unofficial Patch" seem to fix many of those problems giving the original Age of Empires the same treatment as Age of Empires II HD on Steam. In fact, i've installed the UPatch and it's a solid community patch making giving my original Age of Empires install discs some usefulness beyond collectors nostalgia.

All that said, it seems the Forgotten Empires team wanted to kick up the Age of Empires: Definitive Edition and as such are remastering the original graphics in 4K, re-recording the audio as well as other improvements. Information on the systems they are bringing the Definitive Edition to are sparse but it seems like it's coming to XBox One and PC. Again, no details on if PC means Steam or the Windows store but when it's announced i'll let you know. I think one of the reasons why Age of Empires II HD is a great version of the game is that the Steam integration is top notch. So having Age of Empires 2 HD on Steam and then the only version of Age Of Empires: Definitive Edition on the Windows Store seems odd to me. I don't mind if it comes to the Windows Store and Steam because giving people more choice to places is buy the game is a great idea to me.

If you are looking to dust off your original Age of Empires discs you can check the Unofficial Age of Empires patch check on the website linked below and while you are at it let me know what you are thinking of the new announced Age of Empires: Definitive Edition!

http://upatch-hd.weebly.com/


YouTuber SuperDoTheGames has an interesting 5 part video series called "Life in Hearthstone." It's hard to describe but it's something like a "hand drawn personal hearthstone poetry reading" but... stranger and more honest. At least it seems like these videos are a somewhat autobiographical process for the creator or just some really dark satire. Maybe both.


I think I could handle a new Wolfenstein game released every few years that continues the fucking bananas storyline that MachineGames created in the epic Wolfenstein: The New Order that they are continuing in The New Colossus. Looks like BJ survived the events of the first game(spoiler alert) and is going to be a father of twins! I like how everyone that survived the first game is back and that they've added some all new characters to the game that look like a lot of fun. MachineGames New Order was one of the best story driven shooters i've played in years and is a game i've actually come back to play a couple times over. In The New Colossus BJ is set on seeing America free of Nazi control and looks to be trying to build a coalition with other rebel groups in America.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus drops on PS4, Xbox One and PC October 27th and let me know your thoughts on the E3 reveal trailer in the comments below.


The End Is Nigh is an upcoming platformer by Edmund McMillen, the creator of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Issac and Tyler Glaiel. It features the voice acting by Red Letter Media's own Rich Evans and music by Ridiculon. I really like the trailer but it doesn't seem to give away too much of the game except that it looks like a platformer that mixes up Super Meat Boy & Gish.

"I’m extremely proud to announce that Tyler and I finally finished something! After months of working in secret I can now say that our game is called The End is Nigh and it will be releasing on Steam, July 12th (in 5 weeks!).

A little back story….

In September of last year Tyler and I announced that we were working on a new game called 0uroboros, a platforming shooter with randomly generated environments. after a year of working on it, it felt 10% done. In order to avoid it becoming another mewgenics, we needed to figure out how to refocus it before it grows out of hand.

while working on 0uroboros we would take small breaks to prototype a few other ideas, but it wasn’t till December that we actually sat down and decided to do a full game jam and see what would come out. within a week what we had was a completely stripped down platformer with an adventure game “open” feel where the levels were all locked into tidy little boxes but attached in a way where they could be explored… it felt a bit like VVVVVV meets 1001 Spikes with a Spelunky control setup and it felt perfect.

once again what started as a 2 week mini project sprawled into, by far, the largest game (level wise) I’ve ever worked on. I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished with this game, it embodies aspects of basically every game I’ve ever created and I’m super excited to see what you guys think.
"

The End Is Night is coming to Steam on PC July 12th and even though it has a Steam page isn't yet available for pre-order. I don't think i'll pre-order this but will wait to pick this up after hearing a more about how it plays.

What do you think, are you interested in playing The End Is Nigh?

http://edmundm.com/post/161553453240/the-end-is-nigh


When details of the Switch were vague I noted that if Nintendo offered a Netflix like service where you could pay them a fee and play as many of their old titles as you wanted, that would be pretty awesome. As the Switch was closer to launch Nintendo talked about it's new online service for the system and they said that it would eventually be a paid system where one benefit was a free retro title that was timeboxed to only be playable for a month. Most fans didn't love this idea and Nintendo seems to changing course, according to a new Kotaku article.

"Fans were frustrated by what they saw as yet another oh-so-Nintendo move. As Kotaku commenter Nicholas Payne wrote: “Yeah, I’ve gotta hope that ‘for a month’ thing is just Nintendo being characteristically bad at explaining things, because if the best they can offer is putting up a single 20-30 year old game a month to try and then give back... yeesh.” Others wrote editorials begging Nintendo to change course. The reactions were unanimously negative.

Then, Nintendo did something unusual: it listened. Last night’s messaging was typically Nintendo, requiring a Kotaku request for clarification to find out exactly what was happening, but the news was widely cheered. Not only will the Switch’s online service be significantly cheaper than its competitors, at $20/year, it will give subscribers access to a library of classic games, still enhanced with online play. No more monthly releases. You won’t have to worry about time running out. As long as you maintain your subscription, you can play as much as you’d like.
"

$20 a year for online play seems like a great deal too compared to the $60 XBox gold and PSPlus subscription. So far the games you get aren't cutting edge but for $20 that might not be a big deal at all.

http://kotaku.com/switchs-netflix-like-classic-game-service-is-a-rare-exa-1795766912


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Recently Blizzard dropped a massive 2.0 update on Heroes of the Storm and this last weekend I was able to play a couple matches. I paired up with a friend that plays a ton of Heroes of the Storm and we made our way through about 6-8 games together. As part of the Heroes of the Storm 2.0 launch celebration Blizzard let you select a Heroes pack that focused on certain types of Heroes such as Assassins, Bruisers, Specialists and Support. I picked the Bruisers bundle and as such played mostly of that type and focused on Muradin, XUL & Valla. Heroes of the Storm has come a long way since it's original launch and i'd say it's a really fun pickup and play hero brawler that is fairly easy to learn. Blizzard has also added a ton of different maps with unique objectives making Heroes of the Storm a very unique MOBA that feels more like Unreal Tournament than DoTA 2. If you're like me and not a great player you can practice with bots only OR play games with human players on your side against bots. Heroes also has human team matches and full ranked system so if you are interested in that it's available.

So Much Free Stuff

If giving away the Hero packs with Heroes 2.0 wasn't enough Blizzard is giving away a few more things over the next month if you play the game. Starting back May 30th and ending June 12th if you play one match per day you get a free loot chest. Loot chests are like Hearthstone packs and you have the chance to open a hero, new player skin or any kind of spray, taunt, emoji or voice line. This weekend I opened the new hero D.VA and I can't wait to try her out.

To celebrate the Necromancer coming to Diablo III if you play 15 games with a friend as a hero from Diablo from June 13th - 26th you will unlock 1 epic loot chest, Leoric’s Phantom mount and Ghost Kerrigan wings in Diablo III. I am going to see if I can clock that many games as the Diablo III wings seem pretty epic and i've enjoyed the few pairs I have already.

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20719773/
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20811888/


The 8-Bit Guy has a cool new video about relabeling destroyed NES carts. He created the Pitfall and Wrestlemania labels by hand, which is no small feat. 8-Bit Guy also talks about some criticism where people shouldn't restore original game carts because history is being changed. 8-But Guy notes that restoring a personal game cart is like restoring an old car and since they will stay in his personal collection it's not a big deal.