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Official Age of Empires 2 Expansion: The Forgotten

No too long after the release of Age of Empires II HD we are getting a new official Age of Empires II expansion called "The Forgotten." You might remember a Age of Empires II fan expansion that was released called "Forgotten Empires." Apparently the team that made that is partnering up with SkyBox Labs and Microsoft to incorporate much of that content into the new expansion.

Not only will they be adding 5 civilizations such as the Italians, Indians, Slavs, Magyars & Incas. The expansions will also include new technologies and 4 new in game campaigns as well as integrated Twitch.tv support and multi-player observer mode.

Awesome.

... Read All

Mother 4: An Upcoming Fan Made "Earthbound Game"

Yes, you heard correctly. Some seriously dedicated fans to the Earthbound/Mother series have taken it upon themselves to create Mother 4. Oh, and it looks awesome too.

"Mother 4 is a traditional RPG set in an idealized vintage America, following the adventures of a young boy and the leader of a biker gang, who get caught up in the whirlwind events surrounding a group calling themselves the Modern Men."

Travis, Meryl, Leo & Floyd are the new characters Mother 4 brings to the forefront and each one has a different backstory. The art style is fresh, yet very reminiscent of the Mother series. They recently launched the above linked trailer and set the release date for... Read All

Why you should sign up for the Cardhunter beta

So, I've been beating the Cardhunter drum for a while now, and I thought I'd take a few moments to explain why it's been absorbing 95% of my gaming hours.

First up, it's a genre-bender. We've got a grid-based playing field and turn-based play flow, like many strategy wargames. We also have a deck-and-card element ala Magic: The Gathering, and we have characters, classes, and levels like any classic RPG.

When your characters start out at level 1, they have a few equipment slots - a warrior, for example, will have slots for two weapons, and one pair of boots. Each piece of equipment represents a number of cards in your deck, and when you place a piece of equipment into a... Read All So, I've been beating the Cardhunter drum for a while now, and I thought I'd take a few moments to explain why it's been absorbing 95% of my gaming hours.

First up, it's a genre-bender. We've got a grid-based playing field and turn-based play flow, like many strategy wargames. We also have a deck-and-card element ala Magic: The Gathering, and we have characters, classes, and levels like any classic RPG.

When your characters start out at level 1, they have a few equipment slots - a warrior, for example, will have slots for two weapons, and one pair of boots. Each piece of equipment represents a number of cards in your deck, and when you place a piece of equipment into a slot, you get the cards that come with the equipment - a dagger, for example, might have a few low-damage armor piercing cards on it, while a hammer would be more about bludgeoning and bashing cards.

Also, more powerful items require "power orbs" to equip - you earn power orbs as you go up in levels, and they come in two flavors (blue, and the more powerful gold). But, you can never earn enough power orbs to slot everything on your character - about half of your orb slots will go unfilled, and therefore you'll be wearing at least some equipment that has a less powerful set of cards.

Already, this is a pretty neat concept - in just about any other deck-building game, when you find a great card, you put the maximum number of copies in your deck. The next time you find another copy of that card, it's useless - so the only way to keep collecting treasure you care about is to keep having cards that go up in power. This is a self-escalating problem that requires incredible game system management or will certainly implode. Cardhunter elegantly eliminates that problem by making every equipment decision a tradeoff. Weapon A has a single powerful attack card and a bunch of wimpy hits, Weapon B has no killer card but just a bunch of solid hits, Weapon C has some good offense and some blocking / defensive cards, Weapon D has some really neat attacks but needs two power orbs... I could go on at length. It really makes deck building fun in a way I've never seen before.

Character generation, likewise, is pretty slick - you get three characters, and you get to select a race and class for each. Each race has a different "default move" card (a mechanism that ensures you can move each character at least once a turn, but also allows for multiple moves), with elves being faster and dwarves being slower than humans. Each race also gets a special racial skill slot (humans are more about battlefield control, elves are about moving / scouting, dwarves are about holding positions). Classes are well-done, too; primary responsibilities are informed by equipment selections - fighters get weapons that have strong, close-range hits, while wizards get staves that have weaker, longer-range hits, and so forth. I've played through the campaign about six times now, each time with a different party makeup and each time the game is interestingly different.

Every time I play the game, I'm struck by the expertly thought-out system. Most of what happens is very intuitive, and the few areas where things get complex it's easy for me to see why the game decisions were made the way they were. I guess I'm saying that this is not your typical "hey, dudes, we should totally make a game" kind of arrangement - the folks who put this one together know what they're doing and it shows.

The last thing I want to touch on is the freemium model. Now, I've played a handful of freemium games, and i've seen myself how and why they quickly turn from actual games into money-spending competitions. I'm gonna come right out and say it - Cardhunter got it right. Here's the scoop: your "premium currency" (i.e., real dollars) can be spent on a couple things. You can buy gold, but gold isn't a great way to get equipment (you might use it to buy the One Neat Thing you want for your deck, but it's prohibitively expensive and the shops are randomized - you don't get to buy just whatever you want.) The second is that you can buy special "treasure hunt" maps, which are additional playable levels that guarantee at least one rare item as a reward for finishing... the first time you finish. After that, they're just regular campaign levels.

Finally, there's the membership, which is where I expect their bread and butter comes from. Membership is fairly inexpensive (at the time of this writing, somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 a month), and it improves your treasure hunting in a remarkably fair way: it's one more of the best category of treasure in a chest. That is, if a member opens a treasure chest that has three random items, and one guaranteed to be uncommon or better, their membership bonus is one more item uncommon or better. It's enough to be totally worth the membership, but it doesn't give me a serious advantage over the next player in line - and it doesn't give me access to anything exclusive.

I've been playing the game as a beta for about two months now. I'd have expected myself to get burned out on it by now, but so far, I'm still going strong. There have been a couple game balance tweaks and so forth, and it seems to me that Blue Manchu (the authoring studio) is really investing the time to get as much right as they can. I'm not going to put them on a pedestal or anything, but in an age of studios cheerfully belching out churnware, Cardhunter has a downright artisanal quality to it.

So, come join me in the beta! I can't remember the last time I was this enthusiastically happy with a game, and I'd like to hear the thoughts of my fellow gamers.

Cheers,

Cap'n Curry

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 05:03pm

I think you've talked me into checking it out. Is it on Steam?

CapnCurry Supporter Post Author wrote on 08/19/2013 at 05:46pm

No, it's a stand-alone web game. You can submit your email for the Beta at cardhunter.com.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 06:20pm

rad man

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 08:37pm

I'm in the beta queue!

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 08/20/2013 at 09:00pm

Consider it done. Signed up. We'll see what happens.

Nayelianne wrote on 08/25/2013 at 01:36am

Signed up as well. Hopefully I'll still manage to get things done and not get too addicted, haha.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/25/2013 at 10:39pm

I did lose myself in it, until the free weekend of Guild Wars 2 lol

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Out of my comfort zone: Military shooters

I've been making it a point lately to play things I wouldn't otherwise play. You may have noticed my "Is it really that bad?" series, which is far from over, but in addition to playing games that were widely panned I wanted to push my boundaries and play genres I don't normally like (or at least, don't think I like).

For years I've just cast aside the military shooter genre. I've seen them covered to death all over the web, commercials, magazines, etc, but they never really interested me.

A week or so ago, I saw a deal for Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $7, and I realized that I already had a free copy of Battlefield 3 from some Origin promotion months ago, so I... Read All I've been making it a point lately to play things I wouldn't otherwise play. You may have noticed my "Is it really that bad?" series, which is far from over, but in addition to playing games that were widely panned I wanted to push my boundaries and play genres I don't normally like (or at least, don't think I like).

For years I've just cast aside the military shooter genre. I've seen them covered to death all over the web, commercials, magazines, etc, but they never really interested me.

A week or so ago, I saw a deal for Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $7, and I realized that I already had a free copy of Battlefield 3 from some Origin promotion months ago, so I paid that $7 and got both games downloading. I was going to see if I was right about this once and for all.

Going into things, I had some preconceived notions about the two series, and the genre in general. It seems every winter we get a new Call of Duty game, and everyone who doesn't play every single one (and some who do) make fun of the constant releases. The Battlefield series is much more varied. It has about as many titles, but nowhere near as many in the main series (three so far) and things like the Bad Company series change the gameplay significantly. Mostly, I just figured it was more of the same either way you went. Just bro-games that wouldn't appeal to me.

COD4 has an interesting premise, taking you through many different POV characters as you flesh out the story. The graphics for the time were amazing, and the voice work is good convincing, but not memorable. You can definitely "feel" the weight of the guns, and the mechanics are smooth and definitely praiseworthy, but sometimes they just aren't intuitive. Nothing major, but it's there. One thing I loved is that in your first real mission, you're going through a training course with cardboard cutouts and plywood walls, and based on your performance it recommends a difficulty level. I love in-canon explanations for menu options. I played some single-player until I felt I'd gotten way past the point of getting my bearings, and then popped into multiplayer for a bit where I was kindly handed my own ass, over and over. I switched servers and was doing much better for a while, then a couple more people joined and I was getting creamed again. It seemed impossible. I'm not sure what the servers are like these days, but I suspected some kind of botting/hacking was going on.

Battlefield 3 has a much more focused story, told through Sgt. Blackburn while he's getting interrogated. The gameplay is damn good here. It has a few years on COD4, so I realize it isn't exactly a fair comparison, but I was in love with the mechanics. The graphics are stellar, and the voice acting is memorably good. The sound design in general is worth mentioning. I was impressed with how well it affected the setting. The foley seemed realistic to me, but I've only shot a gun a handful of times, and never military-grade rifles. Again, I popped into multiplayer for a bit, and while I wasn't doing well, it at least seemed like what was happening to me was possible for a human to do.

So all told, I don't think I was fair with my preconceptions. In COD4, the elements were all there, but it just didn't grab me. Again, I'm judging a game that has had 5 games to improve since, so I'm perfectly willing to be convinced to try it if any of you have experience with them (I'm looking at you, scrypt). I don't like how Activision milks the series, but that's kinda what they do. The oversaturation of Guitar Hero kinda killed the whole genre.

Battlefield 3, on the other hand, actually pulled me in, for a lot of reasons. The story seemed far more compelling to me, the controls didn't seem to get in my way as much and seemed tighter overall, the pacing was perfect, and I actually feel compelled to keep playing. And EA seems to be a bit more reasonable with releases, not milking it for all it's worth. Battlefield 3 came out in 2011, and they've been supporting it well ever since. DICE, the development studio behind the series, is also responsible for Mirror's Edge (and the upcoming sequel, which I can't wait for), as well as the new Star Wars: Battlefront games coming our way soon. Having seen what they can do with assault rifles, I can't wait to see what they can do with blasters.

So yeah, if you've felt like I did, give it a shot. The Humble Origin Bundle is still going, and you can get BF3 along with a slew of other games for really cheap.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/19/2013 at 02:27am

My experience with most FPSs is limited to the Xbox 360, and have only in the past year or so made the transition to PC. I'm finding it difficult to get the same precision with mouse/keyboard due to the years I've put into the controller mechanics, so if a game offers controller support (which I believe these do?), I take advantage.

Of the two series, I pulled away from COD and started to favor BF sometime after COD:MW2 came out. I loved the first Modern Warfare (I think I only Prestiged twice, maybe three times), but the design of the later games went too frenetic for my taste. The difference between COD and BF is similar to the difference between the Tony Hawk games and the Skate series. One is more of an arcade, fast action experience, and the other is more realistic. Nothing wrong with either, but my taste at the time was bringing me to Battlefield. I was really interested in the Black Ops series, though. With what little I played at a friends house, I was tempted to jump back over, as I'd caught a glimmer of that original Modern Warfare feel, but I never jumped. Instead, I abandoned the military shooters altogether in favor of what was going on with Halo. These days I'm on my PC more, and can't get enough of games like Blacklight: Retribution, and Planetside 2. Planetside 2, especially, has an amazing community, partly because the game reinforces that by emphasizing and rewarding coordinated attacks as a team, which is all I really want out of a good shooter.

Really cool that you are revisiting these, Travis! Now that you have COD4 on PC, you might be interested in the Star Wars mod that is out there, called Galactic Warfare ( http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-mod-galactic-warfare ). It's a complete re-skin and rebuild of maps and characters, sounds and everything. It's pretty amazing!

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Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg

I never owned the original Duck Tales NES game, but I used to rent it pretty often. Most Fridays my mom and I would head to the local video store, where we would get a couple of movies and a game. Duck Tales became my fallback game. If I couldn't find something I was interested in, at least there was Duck Tales. It's not like that was a consolation prize, either. I was always excited to get it home and play it again.

So when I heard that Capcom was remastering this game, getting in the voice actors from the series, but keeping the core mechanics, I was thrilled.

The nine-year-old me loves this game. The nine-year-old me is wondering why I bothered going to work this... Read All I never owned the original Duck Tales NES game, but I used to rent it pretty often. Most Fridays my mom and I would head to the local video store, where we would get a couple of movies and a game. Duck Tales became my fallback game. If I couldn't find something I was interested in, at least there was Duck Tales. It's not like that was a consolation prize, either. I was always excited to get it home and play it again.

So when I heard that Capcom was remastering this game, getting in the voice actors from the series, but keeping the core mechanics, I was thrilled.

The nine-year-old me loves this game. The nine-year-old me is wondering why I bothered going to work this week when I could have been playing more Duck Tales. Nostalgia just drips from Capcom's reimagining. It's all the fun I had as a kid, with a shiny coat of paint.

The thirty-one-year-old me notices things that aren't stellar. Sometimes there are weird control issues where your down-thrust attack will just stop mid-air, leaving you open to unexpected damage. This only happened to me a few times, but reading around it seems to be a common complaint.

Some of the controls don't hold up with an analog stick (and lets be honest, the d-pad on the 360 controller is even worse). This may explain a bit of what was going on with the down-thrust attack, and also leads to some really frustrating deaths later in the game when you have to hold left and jump to get to another chain, then hold up again to catch the next one.

The three hours it takes to beat the game leave a little to be desired, though to be fair there are many reasons to run through it multiple times, not least of all the pure fun.

The visual overhaul and the voice acting are astounding. It feels just like playing an episode of the show-- awesome, but with a downside. The humor they put into the script works for the audience of the original series, but kinda falls flat for a more adult audience. That said, it's incredibly true-to-form, and who's playing this game for plot, anyway?

The updated music is awesome but I do love the ability to swap between the new music and the classic chiptune music. It just feels more right with the old music. Again, nostalgia.

You have multiple difficulty modes, neither of which is a good fit for me. WayForward stretched the levels out a bit, which means dying can be quite demoralizing without checkpoints. The "Easy" difficulty level gives you checkpoints, infinite lives, and only takes off half a heart each hit, arguably making it too easy. That said, some of the difficult platforming sections were still just as difficult, and pulling off trick jumps to get treasure is just as satisfying.

There's lots to love here, with a few missteps. Thirty-one-year-old me wishes some things had been different, but nine-year-old doesn't care about any of that and just wants to play more. Listen to him.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls teased

http://us.battle.net/d3/static/images/teaser-page/d3x_teaser-en-us.jpg

Blizzard has set up a teaser site for a Diablo III expansion, apparently named Reaper of Souls. While there hasn't been any actual announcement yet, it appears on the official Blizzard servers, and the image displayed has the filename d3x_teaser-en-us.jpg, so it seems fairly obvious what we're dealing with here.

We all knew an expansion was coming, but hopefully we'll be getting some info to drool over soon!

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/reaper-of-souls/

Breathe some new life into your NES

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/NES-Console-Set.jpg

Or should that be "blow" some new life... get it?

And therein lies the problem. We all had that shiny new NES that could do no wrong for a while, but then things started to go south. You'd get that telltale blinking blue screen, letting you know that something was amiss.

Somewhere along the way everyone somehow knew to blow in the cartridge, try again, and it would work. We shouldn't have done that, we were only making things worse, but the promise of playing Mario now was too tempting for our childhood minds. But even that would fail you eventually, and some of you may have an NES that just stopped working.

Here's what actually happened: The 72-pin connector in your NES... Read All

Tetris Sprint world record broken

The "Sprint" game mode is 40 lines as fast as you can clear them. The video is using a tournament-specific version of Tetris that accounts for different modes and different block spawning algorithms.

This is the first time anyone has cleared a Sprint in under 20 seconds. It's amazing to think that there are human hands controlling this.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 08/17/2013 at 07:43pm

What the hell did I just watch. O.o

They just... I mean they can't... HOW can that even be real!?

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 08/18/2013 at 02:24am

I know! I was a bit skeptical myself, but yeah, they're just really good at looking at what's coming. They never really look at what's coming *now* but planning their next few moves.

jdodson Admin wrote on 08/18/2013 at 04:50am

Wow. Yeah, its so fast its hard to imagine a person doing that... But with enough practice it seems possible.

Love to see this in person :D

jaelte wrote on 08/19/2013 at 07:53am

I've see some speed Tetris before, and it always amazes me. This is video is insane, though. I can grasp what's being done (looking ahead and whatnot), but I cannot wrap my mind around the speed it gets accomplished.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 05:05pm

Holy crap. Wow.

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Hearthstone closed beta started

Blizzard has started rolling out beta invites for Hearthstone to press and people who opted into the beta. Hearthstone is Blizzard's new trading card game based on the Warcraft universe.

You can buy cards in the beta, though you won't be able to keep them when the game goes live. However, you will be given a credit equal to the amount you paid for the cards.

Read more here:
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/faq/

You can sign up for the beta by checking the box next to Hearthstone here: https://us.battle.net/account/management/beta-profile.html

Aliens: Colonial Marines: Is it really that bad?

I used the image above because I found it funny, not because I agree with it :)

Aliens: Colonial Marines came out the gate mired in muck. I had high hopes for this game. Great source material, developed by Gearbox using the Borderlands 2 engine, it just seemed destined for awesomeness. But then the prerelease reviews started flowing in and it became clear that buying this game was not in your best interests. Sloppy alien AI preventing them from even reacting to your presence, save-wiping bugs, texture issues, the list goes on. It was cheap a few weeks back so I grabbed it and put a few hours into it. So-- is it really that bad?

No, definitely not. At least not anymore.

I... Read All I used the image above because I found it funny, not because I agree with it :)

Aliens: Colonial Marines came out the gate mired in muck. I had high hopes for this game. Great source material, developed by Gearbox using the Borderlands 2 engine, it just seemed destined for awesomeness. But then the prerelease reviews started flowing in and it became clear that buying this game was not in your best interests. Sloppy alien AI preventing them from even reacting to your presence, save-wiping bugs, texture issues, the list goes on. It was cheap a few weeks back so I grabbed it and put a few hours into it. So-- is it really that bad?

No, definitely not. At least not anymore.

I generally don't pay much attention to reviews when deciding to buy a game or not, because more often than not I feel like the emphasis is on the wrong things. This time, though, I listened. Technical issues aren't a matter of opinion. But since then there have been a couple of massive patches, one of them 5GB, big enough to be a game itself. Most of the technical issues have been fixed, which lets us evaluate the game based on what it was meant to be.

The graphics are good enough, but not great. The voice acting is good enough, but not great. The plot is good enough, but not great. See the pattern? The friendly AI is still not perfect. Your teammates will sometimes get a little stuck. Sometimes the difficulty curve is wonky, throwing you at a brick wall when you aren't expecting it.

A minor problem I have is with the concept itself. If I, a lone marine with a machine gun, can take down wave after wave of aliens, then it significantly diminishes the danger level in the movies. Ripley is deservedly known as a badass for taking down one in the first movie, but I just took out like 80 in 5 minutes. I'm aware that you can't really make a game in this franchise without that, but it's still a bit of a disconnect for me. One that I can luckily ignore.

But the gameplay, the gameplay is quite good. If you've handled a gun in Borderlands 2, you know what to expect. Fighting off waves of xenomorphs is damn fun.

But was it too little, too late? By the time the massive patch came along to fix the most egregious bugs, public opinion had already turned against A:CM, and for good reason. It definitely won't be the success that it could have been, but the good news is that you can get your hands on it for cheaper, sooner.

A:CM also raises some questions about how games should be reviewed. Even after the patch, there are still a lot of flaws. In fact, I spent most of my time in this post writing about the flaws. But the game is fun despite itself, and fun is what we play for. This is why I don't like the number rating system. If I was rating this purely on fun, based on what I've played so far I'd probably give it around an 8, but would feel the need to subtract from that due to the problems still present. The truth of the quality of this game is more complex than a number can represent.

I'd just say, give it a shot when you can find it for a good price, just go into it expecting some issues and try to look past them. If you can, you might just have a lot of fun.