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Death Road To Canada Is A Well Polished Oregon Trail+Rogue Like Beat Em Up!

jdodson gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

jdodson gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

Back in August of 2013 I wrote about the new Kickstarter for Death Road To Canada and quickly after that I backed the Kickstarter. After that I interviewed the creator of the game and then dug in to wait for the games launch. The game finally launched in 2016 and it was added to my backlog of games to play. Since the games launch they have updated it considerably and the game seems to be even more widely praised by it's fans so I decided to jump in and give it a shot.

Death Road To Canada is a very well polished rogue like zombie bashing road trip game that pays homage to the Oregon Trail and the Ninja Turtles arcade game. Like most rogue likes you die... a lot but the... Read All

Continuing Link Between Worlds - Entering The Ruined World of Lorule

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/The_legend_of_zelda_a_link_between_worlds_screenshot.jpg

Back in May I started my playthrough of Link Between Worlds on the 3DS. It's a fun follow up to Link to the Past and bring enough new things to the table to be interesting. As with most new Zelda games and because I have a one year old I play it in bursts. Recently I completed a few dungeons in Lorule, which is the Dark World equivalent in Link Between Worlds. Link Between Worlds keeps the dungeon locations to the same places as Link to the Past. The Lorule dungeons are all different but keep some of the themes with the original dungeons. For instance, Lorule has a Thieves Dungeon that is similar to the Link To The Past Dungeon. Each dungeon in Link Between Worlds, so... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 4: Castlevania Special

Netflix dropped a new show based on the classic Castlevania series and in this episode we break it down for you to easily digest. Does Castlevania elevate the spate of terrible video game shows and movies or is it something else? The show contains some mild show spoilers so we recommend you watch it before listening. Don't worry the show is only four episodes and well worth watching!

How Would A Doom VR Game Work? iD Software Explains Doom VFR!

I've heard shooters in VR make people sick. I've also heard that one solution to this is to move people around by warping the player around the game field but this solution has always seemed odd to me. That said, that does seem like the VR "solution" to the problem and Doom VFR seems to employ that mechanism to make the game work. In service of the new play controls in VR the story is a bit different and given what you need to do that to make a VR shooter amazing the story seems natural enough to fit how Doom should feel. But with VR you sort of have to try it to have it all make sense.

Is The RetroN 5 STILL Worth Buying? Metal Jesus Re-Reviews This Mega Retro Console!

"Hyperkin's RetroN 5 continues to be a popular yet decisive retro clone system that has many redeeming qualities...and a few things it needs to improve upon. Metal Jesus & Kelsey give you their honest opinion after using the Retron 5 for several years."

The RetronN 5 is a classic console mega station that allows you to play NES, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Genesis, Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games. I picked up the RetroN 3 to replace a broken NES & Super Nintendo but the RetroN 5 supports WAY more systems and is totally compatible with HDMI outputting your retro games in amazingly crisp HD. Seems like the consensus is it's... Read All

Prima Is Releasing a Super Nintendo Classic Strategy Guide

https://www.primagames.com/media/images/products/snes_classics_se_sm.jpg/PRIMA/resize/600x

February of this year I picked up "Playing With Power" a strategy guide for the NES Classic games. It didn't review each game but hit the main ones and provided a really great history of the NES along with reprints of the original Nintendo Strategy Guides and Nintendo Power issues. It was a inexpensive and fun guide for people that like that sort of thing, which I do.

Recently Prima has let us know that it is going to release "Playing With Super Power" which is a strategy guide for the upcoming Super Nintendo Classic. It's going to feature game play tips and walkthroughs for many of the games including Star Fox 2 and more. And some of the "and more" looks well worth... Read All

Has The Mystery of Half-Life's G-Man Been Solved?

Game Theory released a video a couple weeks ago and given Marc Laidlaw's recent Episode 3 fan fiction I thought it was well worth sharing. If you've played Half-Life or Half-Life 2 the G-Man is featured in the story and I'd argue is one of the main characters of Half-Life 2. Since G-Man isn't explained well in the games there are many theories online about who he is and the one Game Theory presents is a pretty compelling one. Since Marc Laidlaw is the only author of the Half-Life series answering questions right now someone asked him about Game Theory's G-Man theory and his response was pretty interesting.

I don't want to spoil anything so firstly I recommend you watch... Read All

This Is My Final Episode: Former Valve Writer Marc Laidlaw Finishes Half-Life 3

Half-Life 3 may never be released by Valve but former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw has posted some fan fiction that he is calling Epistle 3 that wraps things up. It's a short and very touching story of Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance after the events of Half-Life Episode 2. Does it wrap up the story? Yep. Does it feel like a genuinely epic and proper ending to Half-Life 3? Absolutely. Does it answer every question and tie up every loose end? Nope.

Marc's site is getting crushed right now so check out a GitHub version below. Marc's version changed names and gender swapped the characters and this version fixes that:

... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 01:04pm

Wow that's very well written. I am happy to have some closure on the story but that just makes me want more.

I'd read a novel or a comic series that explains things more in-depth.

And if there's another game and this text is taken as backstory, perhaps because of that one event in the text (don't want to spoil it for people who read comments before reading the article), we could have a different protagonist.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 01:20pm

It's also worth noting, dear readers, that the pastebin is way easier to read than the official one on his site. To get around infringing on Valve's IP, he changed the names of everyone. Someone was kind enough to fix those in the pastebin

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/25/2017 at 01:58pm

I don't know. That was pretty weak sauce. A few paragraphs of roughly written non-canonical events. I didn't understand the pronoun juggling of the Breen-grub. The whole "story" feels like listening to a friend spoil the latest episode of *insert fav show*, only giving certain highlights. Any dramatic effect falls flat. I don't really understand why this was written.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 02:11pm

The grub was probably biologically female but had Breen's consciousness, that's what I assumed anyway.

But it's certainly not a fleshed out story.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/25/2017 at 02:53pm

I had only read the pastebin version. Apparently, whoever did the translation to pastebin did a sloppy job. Regarding the Breen-grub, they were all supposed to transfer over as the same pronoun. Also, another thing that threw me was the reference to Episode 2 as a "game." This is another change from the original that was entirely unnecessary, and I thought was a weird attempt to break the 4th wall. Recommend reading both versions, as hard as the original is to follow, what with the naming conventions.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2017 at 04:45pm

Wow yeah you're right. Those are some odd choices.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/26/2017 at 01:19pm

Updated my post so h this version, which corrects the names MUCH better than the pastebin version:

https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md

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A Whole Host of New Abilities Comes To Metroid: Samus Returns

A new video is out that shows the new abilities Samus can find in Metroid: Samus Returns. The new Aeon abilities such as scan pulse, lightning armor, beam burst and and phase drift are new to Samus Returns and are powered by a new Aeon energy meter. The trailer seems to imply that the new abilities are optionally available to find which might allow the game a more open ended path to navigate through. The original Gameboy version of Samus Returns is pretty linear and also very hard to navigate as there was no(that I remember) in game map system requiring you to resort to making your own OR finding one online. Samus Returns includes a modern in game Metroid map AND it... Read All

PortsCenter: How SimCity SNES Created Mario Kart 8

PortsCenter with Ben Paddon is quickly becoming on of my favorite new YouTube shows about gaming. PortsCenter is essentially a review show but focuses on a particular game port and all the ports and history surrounding it. Sometimes the port is bad and sometimes it's good and in the case of the Super Nintendo SimCity port it's transcendent. In this episode Ben talks about that and how the SNES SimCity port was created by Nintendo under license from Maxis, something I didn't know before. I agree with Ben here as SimCity on Super Nintendo is the only version of classic SimCity I return to. I've never personally built a Megaopolis city as that's quite hard to do but i've... Read All