Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

GOGcom Charity Bundle: Pick a Charity and 3 Games

"Do you want to make the world a slightly better place and be rewarded some games for being an awesome human being? It's simple: choose a charity you like from the three we have here (WWF, Worldbuilders, and Gaming for Good), pick out 3 games you like out of 13 offered, pay $5 or more, and we will give 100% of your donation to charity*! You can also pick more than 3 games, and your minimum donation will be raised accordingly. Want to donate more? No problem--you can set the amount manually. Don't need the games, or already have them? Select the "Gift this order" option at the checkout, and make some other gamer happy."

GOG.com is running a charity bundle featuring some... Read All

Metro: Last Light out on Linux, shipping with Steam hardware

Metro: Last Light, Deep Silver's follow-up to Metro 2033, has been released on Linux, and it's been announced that it will be included in Steam's hardware beta test to the 300 lucky people who get chosen to help take Steam Machines for a spin.

I decided to fire it up and see how it went, and I have to say, this is no sloppy port. I played about an hour in Windows and in Ubuntu 13.10, and while there are pros and cons, the Linux version outperformed the Windows version in almost every way.

I bumped up the settings of the game in each OS until I noticed framerate issues, and then compared the two at that point. Unfortunately I can't tell where that point is, and can't... Read All Metro: Last Light, Deep Silver's follow-up to Metro 2033, has been released on Linux, and it's been announced that it will be included in Steam's hardware beta test to the 300 lucky people who get chosen to help take Steam Machines for a spin.

I decided to fire it up and see how it went, and I have to say, this is no sloppy port. I played about an hour in Windows and in Ubuntu 13.10, and while there are pros and cons, the Linux version outperformed the Windows version in almost every way.

I bumped up the settings of the game in each OS until I noticed framerate issues, and then compared the two at that point. Unfortunately I can't tell where that point is, and can't give any more accurate info. More on that later.

First off, this game is beautiful. Bioshock Infinite has become my gold standard for beautiful games, but this is nearly the direct opposite of Bioshock Infinite's aesthetics. Metro: Last Light takes place after the world has essentially been nuked and everyone lives in the Metro tunnels, and the outside environment is an amazing representation of post-apocalyptia.

I bring this up because the textures are notably better at my video card's limit in the Linux version. I didn't really notice how stunning the world was in Windows because of some fuzz. Character models are about the same in both versions, and they look great either way. There's more tearing in the Windows version as well, but there were a few grainy textures that popped in randomly in an otherwise sharp world on the Linux version.

As far as controls and sound go, there's nothing different enough to notice.

The biggest complaint I have about the Linux version is the graphics settings. There's a single slider from low to high quality, and that's all you get. In the Windows version you can tweak various specific things about the settings like you'd expect. The Linux version did outperform the Windows version but I may have been able to get an even better experience in Linux with more granular control.

Overall though, I'm highly pleased with this. It's great to see big games like this getting treated well in Linux, and it gives me great hopes for what we'll see once Steam Machines get established a bit in the market.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11/09/metro-last-light-will-come-bundled-with-steam-machine-prototypes/

Hearthstone going open beta next month

Blizzard's TCG, Hearthstone, has been in closed beta for a few months now, but good news for everyone who has been missing out: It's going to be in open beta starting some time next month. Rob Pardo did warn that this means it could be January in "Blizzard speak."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/08/hearthstone-entering-open-beta-next-month?abthid=527d726df58b64d613000010

In addition, Hearthstone for iOS and Android has been confirmed. I think the game would be a great fit for mobile, and I'm looking forward to trying it out.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/8/5081278/hearthstone-heroes-of-warcraft-blizzcon-2013

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/09/2013 at 08:35pm

This is good news, id like more people on the site to try it out and love to hear what they think of it.

rettisawesome wrote on 11/11/2013 at 07:59pm

I've been following this pretty closely. And while I'm not a fan of blizzard. I think this a good idea. I'd like to see it succeed. I hope it does it's best to steer away from pay-to-win though. Been hearing a lot about that lately.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/11/2013 at 10:56pm

Yeah, its a free to play game and I don't see the really heavy handed play to win. That said, you can totally pay to get a ton of cards which will give you a pretty large advantage over others.

So really no different than Magic The Gathering except you can't just play and get Magic cards for free. :D

rettisawesome wrote on 11/11/2013 at 11:21pm

If you are good at magic, you can develop a self sustaining hobby. Buying and selling with the trends. and getting involved in events. You can earn tons of free cards and packs. I know several people who compete and never spend a dime. Other than entry fees for tournies.

But for real. Totally similar. Also i like (even though i hate wow) that they really rooted it well in there.

I tried to get in to the closed beta. But couldn't. Looking forward to it now being open

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/12/2013 at 12:51am

Huh wow, yeah so I have't known about that aspect to Magic. I am for sure not one of those people and just pay for cards. Pay to win as it were, but I am not very effective because I don't often win :D

Open beta will be great for the game.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 11/12/2013 at 02:49am

Paying for individual cards always felt like cheating to me. A major part of the appeal to MTG is opening a pack of cards and seeing what you get. Buying individual cards to build a winning deck isn't at all fun.

Although I did consider selling my foil Tarmogoyf when that was the card to have four of in every green deck.

JaBo wrote on 11/15/2013 at 09:44pm

Tarmogoyf still sees tons of play and has high value. What I like about Magic is the different event styles. Tomorrow I'm playing in a tournament that everyone shows up (pay $40) and gets 6 packs of cards to open and build a deck out of. There are others similar to that like drafting and then there's the constructed where you use your own cards. In that case you do need to have spent a good amount of money on them to have the ones you want for your deck. But it all depends on the seriousness of the event. If you're playing a free FNM event, who cares, play with your cards and try to win more, if it's a big event though, you have to make sure you have the cards you want or need for your deck or it's inferior to what it could be and ultimately someone else will have everything they need and beat you.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/17/2013 at 06:38pm

Sealed deck tournaments are fun. Last Magic event I went to that was sealed deck, I got my ass kicked hard. It was fun, but yeah you know... apparently many "arm chair" magic players don't do sealed deck tournies :D

JaBo wrote on 11/25/2013 at 05:51pm

I played this (Hearthstone) all day Saturday and Sunday, it's really fun! Quick matches which lots of options and growth. There's 9 different classes with different class specific cards to choose from plus the general pool. 30 card decks - 30 life. Each class has a different special ability that's always available for 2 cost. Your mana builds up 1 a turn.

Anyways, if you are on there and want to add me, my email is [email protected]

My name on there is Nardraug, but you also need the numbers after it to add that way...weird.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/25/2013 at 06:36pm

Awesome, I just added you in game. If I see you, lets play.

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Updates to the console and mobile versions of Terraria

505 Games dropped some info on the official Terraria forums yesterday.

First off, the mobile versions of Terraria now have multiplayer over Wifi, along with a few bug fixes.

Secondly, the console versions of Terraria have been updated with a few items from the 1.2 update, as a teaser for the full update which will be coming to consoles early next year.

I'd personally love to see Ocram show up in the PC version. I've played the Terraria demo on PS3 and, while it was a perfectly serviceable port, I much prefer the PC version and would love for everything to reach full parity in terms of items and enemies.

More details here: ... Read All

First Heroes of the Storm gameplay footage, beta signup

Blizzard has released some gameplay footage of their new MOBA, Heroes of the Storm. This game is basically "Blizzard: The Game" as it has characters from all their franchises.

This is early footage but the gameplay in this video seems far easier to keep track of than most MOBA's.

If you're interested in getting into the beta when they start it, sign into your battle.net profile, go to account management, and then click "beta profile settings." This will be one of the games you can choose.

Wasteland 2 nears beta, original submitted to Steam, GOG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/Wasteland_screenshot.jpg

inXile has updated their Kickstarter page with some info about the beta of Wasteland 2, coming soon.

In addition, the rerelease of the original Wasteland has been submitted to Steam and GOG for approval. I've never played this game at all and I feel like I'm missing a huge chunk of video game history. Wasteland was developed by Interplay and was the basis for another game series you may have heard of: Fallout.

The full post from inXile can be found on their Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts

Reaper of Souls additions outlined in new trailer

This quick trailer outlines a few of the new features coming to Reaper of Souls.

Adventure mode and bounties will do a lot to add some variety to the game. And clan support-- If enough people are interested, I'll be starting up a CG clan :)

What do you think? I've been holding off on D3 until this comes out. This is a game where breaks are important anyway.

Quake Live is going downloadable, dropping Mac/Linux

Today in the good news/bad news department...

Good news: Quake Live is finally getting out of your browser and into a downloadable game. Even though it always worked fine, having to go to the site to launch always seemed odd and added a few steps.

Bad news: As part of the transition, they're dropping support for Mac and Linux. The browser plugin they previously used was cross-platform so they didn't have to maintain three versions of the game, but rather than putting a little more effort in to support everyone, they're skipping Mac and Linux.

This is disappointing, because id used to be the one company you could count on to release Linux versions. It may require an extra... Read All

rettisawesome wrote on 11/08/2013 at 07:42pm

Damn too bad.

Also i actually liked the browser version. I mean really that is quake live. Haha. Oh well.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/08/2013 at 09:20pm

Yeah, this is too bad. In a way. I never really liked how the web UI worked all told. So doing it Desktop sounds better.

That said dropping Mac and Linux is a huge bummer. Theyd need to port native to make those versions work anyway, but I guess its easier to support on platform.

Still a huge bummer to see cross platform out.

rettisawesome wrote on 11/11/2013 at 07:26am

Web ui was odd. But i guess i liked it because it streamlined the social media experience of quake. I could compare stats. see players you've played against. And all that jazz.

i wound up in free-for-alls all the time against fatal1ty. I even have a screen cap somewhere of me headshotting him with a rail gun. So awesome. Thats my only brush with greatness in video gaming. Lolol

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/12/2013 at 12:52am

To bad the game doesn't give you a trophy when you frag a Quake Legend.

"Fragged the Quake legend fatal1ty. Good one."

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Hyper Light Drifter Drops An Amazing Gameplay Video

After an absolutely killer Kickstarter, Hyper Light Drifter is now dropping on us some absolutely amazing gameplay footage. Featuring some awesome music by Disasterpeace, the video is very promising. My only gripe? I wish the gameplay footage were in HD.

With a final Kickstarter funding level at 650k of the initially asked for 24k, this game should be coming strong. According to the developers Hyper Light Drifter will launch mid 2014 on PC, Linux, Mac, PS4, Vita, Wii U & OUYA.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1661802484/hyper-light-drifter

Watch Yasuhiro Unbox & Disassemble The Playstation 4

The Playstation 4 will release November 15th but there are already unboxing videos flying around the interwebs and this morning I saw one that was really interesting. Wired Gadget Lab posted a video exclusive of Sony's Engineering Directory Yasuhiro Ootori unboxing the new system and taking it apart. A really fun video and he does a great job explaining what everything inside the new system is. Watch the magic below:

http://video.wired.com/watch/gadget-lab-playstation-4-unboxing-the-new-game-console

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"PLAYSTATION 4 NO DISASSEMBLE!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjeptaI2T8E