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.

2762 Posts

This 16 Minutes Of New Gameplay Footage For Middle-earth: Shadow of War Looks Insane!
Shadow Of Mordor launched in 2014 and i've heard it's one of the best open world Lord of the Rings games ever made. Game creator Monolith Productions just launched a 16 minute gameplay trailer to Shadow of Mordor's followup Shadow of War. Building on the dynamic story and quest system Shadow of War seems to kick things into overdrive and allow you an even more unique game experience. The options they allow in how you defeat strongholds are pretty incredible involving your soldiers, mind control and dragons.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War will be launching on PS4, XBox One and PC on August 22nd but if you can't wait to get your Lord of the Rings on and haven't played the original Shadow of Mordor you can get the game of the year edition right now on Steam for $20.

How Are You Going To Buy Star Wars Rogue One?
Rogue One A Star Wars Story blew up the box office pulling in over a billion dollars! Because Disney didn't make quite as much as they should and also because I can't stop buying Star Wars movies I am going to pickup Rogue One when it hits video. There are a couple options on the table for how you can pick it up and I felt it was worth a bit of time to discuss our options.

If you want to get the new movie but can't stand buying physical copies you might want to pickup Rogue One March 24th. I still don't quite get why people do this as nearly all Bluray releases contain a digital copy, but if you don't want to add to the landfill going digital is the best way to go.

If you're like me and still enjoy opening the actual movie, putting the disc in the tray and realizing you could be saving your time by just streaming it you will be getting it on Bluray on April 4th. You can't go wrong with any of the versions available at stores but the special ultra-cool collectors edition is at Target you might want to look into. When Target got the special version with extra behind the scenes extras for Force Awakens that content was digital only and not available on a packin disc. This really sucked and many people complained so it seems Disney has listened and Target is getting an exclusive 5-disc set includes collectible packaging with interchangeable character covers and exclusive bonus content.

http://www.starwars.com/news/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-arrives-soon-digital-hd-blu-ray

Are you going to get Rogue One and if so how?

You Can Signup For iD's New Quake Closed Beta Right Now!
Quake was one of the first staples at the early LAN parties I had with my friends. Since I didn't have enough money to afford the full game we were limited to four player multiplayer with the demo. Later on when I had a bit more money I found Quake III on sale and played the heck out of that. Quake, Quake II and Quake III had excellent multiplayer which is something that iD hasn't really seemed to master lately. I really enjoyed the packin co-op that Rage came with and the car deathmatch was really fun too. That said, Quake Champions is iD's upcoming arena based multiplayer shooter and it looks like a incredible retelling of Quake III.

If you're like me then you might be really interested in joining the closed beta and if you are you should head over to the Quake site and join. I'm not sure how many people they will let in, but if it's like most betas they will slowly trickle folks in to test the game and servers and then open the flood gates a bit before launch.

https://quake.bethesda.net/en/

Cygnus Destroyer Looks Back At The Wii U
"The Nintendo Switch is currently flying off store shelves across the globe, but the Switch wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Wii U. Released in November 2012, the commercially failed successor to the massively popular Wii may have produced less than 200 games during its brief run, but there was a lot of gold to be found among that paltry library. Join me on a journey to pay tribute to the severely underrated black sheep of the eighth console generation!"

If I was pressed to buy a console from the PS4, XBox One and Wii U generation I would have picked up the Wii U. As a PC gamer I feel the games we get fill in the gaps that console exclusives often leave open except with Nintendo games. There is nothing like Mario Maker, Mario Kart 8 and Zelda being made by other companies right now and I honestly believe that Nintendo offers a different game experience than most companies. That said, I didn't get a Wii U but really respect it even if it didn't have the largest game library or a very long lifespan. As the Nintendo Switch is now launched Cygnus Destroyer takes a look at the Wii U and some of his most favorite games on the console. As Nintendo launches it's last game on the Wii U in Breath of the Wild I see the Wii U maintaining a long lifespan well beyond it's years in the retro and collector communities.

Metal Jesus & Kelsey Break Down The VirtualBoy and All Of It's Nintendo Fueled Greatness
Some people cite the short lifespan of Nintendo's recent Wii U as proof it's biggest failure Nintendo has ever had. As popular as that meme is right now the shortest lifespan of a Nintendo console was a year and it was for the VirtualBoy. The VirtualBoy is a Nintendo console that was launched in 1995 with VR that only allowed games two use colors in red and black. The tech was pretty cool and I remember being impressed with it playing it in the stores but none of the games seemed so great I just had to have one and then it was off the market. The VirtualBoy is the perfect system for collectors as it can live on and be a unique footnote in gaming history.

Nintendo Switch & Breath of the Wild Are Out And The Game Kart Tastes Terrible?
The Nintendo Switch & Zelda Breath of the Wild are now safely launched and not only does the Switch seem to be getting good reviews but it seems Breath of The Wild might be one of the best games of all time... already? Breath of the Wild is only few days old but is already getting crazy high reviews like a 98% Metacritic, 10/10 IGN, 10/10 Trusted Reviews, 10/10 Polygon and the like seem to be implying this latest Zelda game might be the pinnacle of the series. Even after the hype train and recent launch to crazy acclaim my plan for picking up a Switch by years end i'm sticking with. I have yet to finish up Ocarina 3D and after that I want to play Link Between Worlds so I have plenty of Zelda for the time being.

Switch Carts Taste Terrible Because... We Need To Eat Them?

Many news sites are reporting that the new Switch game carts taste absolutely terrible, which is something i'd honestly never thought i'd type in a sentence. That said, as Nintendo game carts are now quite small I imagine Nintendo didn't want kids eating them so making the label taste awful would make it so tiny humans don't swallow them which is actually a nice feature now that my house is occupied by a very explorative 9 month old.

That said, if any Cheerful Ghosters have Breath of the Wild on Switch can you lick the games sticker and report back? I'm curious what your thoughts are and what it tastes like. You know, for science. Also, if you are playing Breath of the Wild i'd love for you to post your thoughts on the game so far and keep us updated as you keep playing it.

Stardew Valley Celebrates It's First Year Anniversary
http://stardewvalley.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/1_y_a.png
Back in 2013 I wrote about a game in early development called Stardew Valley. It was a one man project that looked like the PC Harvest Moon game we always wanted and we followed it over the years until its launch in 2016. We were so excited about the game that WhiteboySlim, Scrypt and I interviewed the developer of the game, something you should check out below.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1005/interview-w-eric-barone-creator-of-stardew-valley

Recently Stardew Valley celebrated it's one year anniversary and developer ConcernedApe wrote about that and the games long journey to launch. It's a really interesting read and something I recommend you check out.

"Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the release of Stardew Valley.

In some ways, it’s hard to believe that an entire year has already gone by since launch. Yet, at the same time, it’s been the longest year of my life. It’s felt long because I’ve done so much in the last 12 months:

-Game came out
-Released many patches to fix bugs and tweak gameplay
-Dozens of interviews
-Answered thousands of messages/emails
-Provided personal troubleshooting and technical support
-Made many Business/Merchandise deals
-Developed and released the 1.1 update
-Exhibited at PAX and met many fans
-Met Mr. Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon
-Flew to the UK to visit Chucklefish and collect an industry award
-Built a decent computer and got a nice big desk (No more HP Pavilion propped on a Wii U box)
-Worked with Chucklefish to make the Console ports and localizations happen"

http://stardewvalley.net/stardew-valley-1-year-anniversary/

Journey to Un'Goro Is The All New Hearthstone Expansion To Launch In April
I am woefully late to the reporting party to let you know that the upcoming Hearthstone expansion Journey to Un'Goro has been announced and will launch in April. The announcement video by Ben Brode is well worth watching even if you're not a Hearthstone super fan. Un'Gogo will feature a couple awesome things including Dinosaurs, the new Elemental type and card quests. Card Quests cost one mana and will always show up in your opening hand and if you complete them will award you a crazy legendary like the Priest legendary Amara that's an 8/8 for 5 that sets your players health to 40! Blizzard will start the trickle of new card reveals on March 15th and continue the pace until the set launches in April. There have been some reports that the run up to the release of Un'Goro will contain special login bonuses but nothing official has been announced yet. So far i've saved up 5,000+ gold for Un'Goro and should be able to collect even more for the pack opening when then set hits in April.

Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Hits Netflix April 14th!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5T30hYVYAAHKQC.jpg
In the not too distant future the brand new Mystery Science Theater 3000 season will drop on Netflix bringing this classic show back to the fans and an entirely new audience. It will release on Netflix and to Kickstarter backers on April 14th, which is a bit odd as I thought Kickstarter backers would get a few days lead time but at least this way everyone can see it at the same time. Joel also released the new cast photo above featuring the new star of the show Jonah Ray playing Johan Heston, Felicia Day as Kinga Forrester, Patton Oswalt as Son of TV's Frank, Hampton Yount as Crow and Baron Vaugn as Tom Servo. There has been a lot of secrecy around the new episodes so much so that the list of movies they are riffing isn't even known yet. As more information surfaces i'll drop it here but until then we can just relax because April 14th isn't that far away.

https://twitter.com/MST3K/status/834564430406963200

Even More Incredible AGDQ Speedruns!
As I finish up watching all the Awesome Games Done Quick speedruns from 2016 I missed watching live I wanted to share a few more you might find enjoy. The above Borderlands 2 co-op run is great as they beat the game in 1:44:50 which is an impressive feat considering it's a run that takes two people to pull off. It uses some fun weapon switching dupe bug glitches as well as some interesting speed bugs that make progressing through areas incredibly fast and interesting to watch.

The final run you should watch is of the Action 52 NES Classic Cheetahmen and if you know of the game and it's epic terribleness you also know the game is very hard. The runner huey beats the game handily in four minutes making the game much more interesting to watch than it is to play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3XOd3oSsjk