jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

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

2753 Posts

Heroes of the Storm Gets A Massive 2.0 Update For Azeroth.. And Sanctuary... And Auir... And Overwatch!
Blizzard is continuing to add heroes, maps and features to Heroes of the Storm and they are going even further in the upcoming 2.0 update. Firstly they are changing the way hero leveling works by removing the cap entirely and changing the absolutely crazy grind to reach higher levels. Another change is the addition of loot chests that are awarded when your Heroes level that award nearly any item in the game including voice packs, skins, banners and portraits! Blizzard is also changing up the way you can outright buy things in game with the new in game currency, gems. Gems can be purchased with real money and Blizzard will give you some at level 5 for free to "get you started". Not sure if players that have progressed beyond 5 will receive the free gems but I hope Blizzard hands them out to everyone including new and longtime players. Blizzard is also adding a new in game currency called shards that are collected when you receive a duplicate item. Spending shards you can acquire cosmetic items meaning that you can get all the in game items playing for free with a fair amount of gameplay. This change is pretty neat and is how it works in Hearthstone were you dust duplicate card and and then craft cards you want with that dust.

In combination with all this 2.0 news Blizzard has dropped details on a new Hero coming to the game called Cassia who is a Amazon from Diablo 2. If you head over to the Heroes 2.0 page you can read more on Cassia and the other 2.0 details that unlock on certain dates like another hero, new battleground and the 2.0 launch event itself. Heroes of the Storm is a fun hero brawler/moba and if you haven't played it yet when it hits 2.0 that might be a good time.

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/

Jack And Rich Review Zelda Breath of The Wild On Previously Recorded
Jack and Rich review Nintendo's latest Zelda game and they love it. Clocking in at an hour it's one of their longer reviews and as such a pretty deep dive in Zelda's gameplay.

Celebrate The Year Of The Mammoth Tomorrow With Free Hearthstone Daily Rewards!
http://i.imgur.com/e7Hoquy.jpg
Hearthstone will be running special rewards for simply logging in March 29th through April 5th. This is a pretty special thing in Hearthstone as most CCGs have gold rewards for coming back every day and to date Hearthstone has been one of the biggest hold outs. That said for the next 8 days that changes so you should log in each day to get the 4 packs, 100 gold, 100 dust and a special Golden Volcanosaur card from the upcoming Ungoro expansion.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20567513/

What Happens When You Put Your Daughter In Ghouls 'n Ghosts? Battle Princess Madelyn!
Back this on Kickstarter!
"Battle Princess Madelyn is a game that follows the journey of a young knight in training, Madelyn, and her ghostly pet dog Fritzy. They set out on a journey to save her kingdom and her family from the clutches of an evil wizard."

After playing Super Mario Brothers for the first time I wanted to be a game developer. Battle Princess Madelyn is an interesting project by developer Casual Bit Games where the main hero is his daughter. Taking a bit (highly interpreted drawings) of input from his daughter and translating that into the base game is a cute premise and as someone that has a kid now and enjoys having fun with him, I can see how this project could take shape. I don't really agree with the video entirely though... I think the all kitten level should really be in the final game.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/causalbitgames/battle-princess-madelyn/

Elder Scrolls Legends Releases On iPad
http://i.imgur.com/p99xLC3.jpg
Elder Scrolls Legends released on iPad today and with that Bethesda also dropped a schedule for the rollout of the game on even more platforms. Elder Scrolls Legends will drop on Android tablets in April, Mac in May and phone in mid 2017. This seems to be a popular release strategy for all the new digital card games and Bethesda doesn't seem to want to be left in Skyrim on this one(get it, because Skyrim is cold.... please don't beat me up).

Super Meat Boy Gets A Physical Release With IndieBox
If you love Meat Boy and want to have a box copy of it along with a ton of swag to go along with it you should check out IndieBox. This month they are packing up Meat Boy in the "Super Dumb Boy" collectors edition packaging alongside a DRM free copy of the game, 2 disc soundtrack and more.

https://www.theindiebox.com/

Evolution Complete: StarCraft Remastered In 4K Launches In The Koprulu Sector This Summer!
The rumors were true and StarCraft & Broodwar are currently being remastered by Blizzard for a PC & Mac release this summer. This looks to be a full remastering of the original game with new crisp HD art and an updated engine for modern LAN and Internet gameplay. Next week Blizzard will drop an update to the original StarCraft game to get ready for the remastered version this summer:

"In preparation for StarCraft: Remastered, Blizzard Entertainment will update StarCraft: Brood War later this week to version 1.18. The update will include bug fixes and improvements, including the ability to rebind keys; observer mode; modern anti-cheat measures; compatibility improvements for Windows 7, 8.1, and 10; and more. Once the update is live, StarCraft Anthology, which includes the original game and the Brood War expansion, will be free to download and play. "

StarCraft is one of my all time favorite games and it getting this HD remastering update is incredible. To date some of the best HD remasterings of games have given them new life in a world where running them on modern systems is difficult and the old StarCraft is no exception. Blizzard updating the multiplayer means that it will be easier to play StarCraft with friends over the Internet, which up till now has been pretty difficult.

"In StarCraft Remastered, we’ve kept everything you love about StarCraft, but upgraded everything else.

Detailed visuals - Zoom out for a Battlecruiser’s view of the battlefield, or zoom in to see the veins on a Mutalisk’s wings.

Stylized Briefings - Race-themed comic book interludes tell the original story with a fresh coat of paint.

Amped Audio -The original soundtrack and dialogue, re-recorded and rejuvenated."

I've wondered if Blizzard would use the original engine to do a possible retelling of StarCraft or use the new StarCraft II engine and it seems this is a remaking of the original game with much update love. From the many behind the scenes videos about StarCraft i've heard the codebase is hard to work with so this is a pretty large effort and I can't wait to pick it up when it drops this summer. I also hope Blizzard releases a collectors edition, that would be an incredible way to launch this retelling of the game.

https://starcraft.com/en-us/
https://blizzard.gamespress.com/

The New Season Of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Is Happening And It's Beautiful!
Netflix dropped the trailer for the new season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 today and it looks... bonkers incredible. As a longtime MSTie from watching it late night on Comedy Central in the 90's I can say that getting a new season is pretty magical. I bought the huge pack of episodes on Vimeo, funded the Kickstarter and bought a Tom Servo kit because... you know... it's the greatest show of all time and it all needed to be done. The work that needs to be done now though is unpacking that new trailer which you need to watch right now so stop reading and get to clicking!


  • It looks like Jonah works for Gizmonic institute as a space garbage man.

  • As he is doing his job Kinga Forrester and Son of TV's Frank trick him to responding to an SOS and make him watch bad moves on the Moon 13 research station. It looks Like Kinga is "reopening her familes most legendary experiment." I never got why they needed to run this experiment so maybe they will explain that? Or maybe it's just a show and I should relax. Seems likely.

  • The show looks glorious in HD. I was wondering if the show would feel wrong in crisp HD but it looks incredible. They balanced the right amount of old school hand made feel with the camp these terrible movies are known for.

  • One of the movies they will riff is 1961 monster film Reptilicus. Seems like a perfect fit for MST3K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilicus

  • April 14th is WAY too long to wait.



So far series creator Joel Hodgson has been light on what he's revealed from the new season and this trailer seems to drop a ton of small details. Can't wait to see what else is revealed in the upcoming weeks and if we get a new trailer I will post it here for our dissected enjoyment.

If you haven't watched MST3K and are curious I recommend you checkout the classic episode they recently added to Netflix. I recommend starting with Pod People and after that hitting the rest of the Joel episodes.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80173925

Seiken Densetsu Collection Coming to the Switch In Japan!
The Secret of Mana Collection is coming to the Nintendo Switch and so far it's Japan only. It features the Gameboy and two Super Nintendo entries that round out the classic collection. Stateside we got Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure only but if this collection comes to the states this will be the first time we get a proper port of Secret of Mana 2 / Seiken Densetsu 3. Because nerds can dream right?

Faeria Has Finally Launched!
After spending a year in early access and a beta period Faeria has finally hit 1.0! Faeria is a free to play digital card game that is if like Magic The Gathering got together with a board game and had a kid that liked video games. It's a really fun blending of the digital card craze that seems to find a very organic flow with a hexagon board that you need to place land on strategically to win. It's kind of a hard game to describe so I've linked to a Kripparian video above where he talks about the game, it hitting 1.0 and then plays a couple games showing off how it works.

Faeria differentiates itself from other games like Hearthstone in that it is way more generous with free to play. For instance daily quests are things like "Play 10 yellow cards" that give you 200 to 600 gold. Since a pack costs 1000 gold you can open packs a bit faster than in Hearthstone and since the game is more strategic, when you lose it doesn't feel as harsh as losing to RNG. Faeria also enhances free to play by offering daily login bonuses you can get by just checking in once a day. They've also included a very nice set of single player missions that show you how to play the game and give you a lot of starting gold and packs.

You can play Faeria right now for free on Steam on PC, Mac and Linux or iPad. They plan on launching Faeria on Android tablets soon as well as iPhone and Android, which should be great to expand it's player base. I seriously recommend you create an account and check out the game and if you do let me know and i'll send you an invite to the game so I can get some free packs as you play the game.

Oh and when you play the game you can use the codes "KrippFaeria" and "FaeriaKripp" to get a couple extra packs to open too!

https://www.faeria.com/news/patch-notes/134-faeria-is-now-released