When it comes to gaming keyboards, one who has never used one might wonder – why? It’s just a keyboard after all right, they are all the same – right? Keyboards are definitely not all made the same though, and just a few seconds of typing with the Rosewill RK-9200 Dual LED Illuminated Mechanical Keyboard make that clear right away for anyone with half of a kill at using a keyboard.
Hook up a controller or use the mouse and keyboard together in 10 Second Ninja for the Windows PC and Mac OS X operating systems. After a lengthy introduction of audio hearing what sounds like “blah, blah, blah” but is being typed out as dialogue explaining the backstory to this game (Nazi Robot Hitler has a Nazi Robot Army trying to take over the world, you know typical Saturday stuff!), Gameplay becomes fast-paced and unforgiving. From the start 10 Second Ninja is fun and although it is not pixelated like many games as of late the art design and style used here is actually a nice refreshing take on 2D Gaming with some hints and nods towards the older era seemingly featured here and there as well as chiptunes sometimes playing in the background of the game’s soundtrack.
From the team that created the Medal of Honor franchise as well as the Call of Duty series comes an Xbox 360, Xbox ONE, and Windows PC multiplayer online first person shooter set to change the game. There may be those who wonder what makes Titanfall so special. From the beginning this title has been extremely hyped by the media and press and subsequently anybody who got their hands on it during the Alpha and Beta testing. I’m here to tell you why no matter what you think about the game, throw away your pre-conceived notions of what it might be and listen to the analysis of a shooting game fan who has been around since the invention of the genre. I’m here to provide just such an analysis for you in this Review.
This device has the ability to make a game better without the need to wait for official patches to be approved. It also has the ability to make you better at a game. Putting aside for a minute the many detailed cross-platform features which this review will get into later, the CronusMAX (or ControllerMAX as it has been renamed to) is capable of adjusting, tweaking, and literally hacking the input your game console receives. This even works with next-generation game consoles like the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox ONE. By purchasing this device and using the accompanying software, players become part of a community of users that develop and release miniature patches that go into the device as plug-ins and can be designed to improve the performance of controls for any particular game (for example fixing the dead-zones for Gears of War Judgement to a player’s liking). These plug-ins can then be adjusted or completely modified / re-written by the end-user as well. This opens the doors to a very much never-ending chain of possibilities.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a South Park licensed video game, and it’s said that the reason is the creators of the hit television comedy series wanted to get a video game developed that really represented and matched the experience of watching the show. I would say that such a decision has led up to a long wait on the gamer’s part and the result is even more pressure to succeed. South Park: The Stick Of Truth seemed to approach us with a gentle stream of marketing, and when the Gameplay was shown players were already believers.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (based on lore from the Warcraft series) is an electronic trading card game from Blizzard Entertainment (the makers of StarCraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and more). The best way I could describe Hearthstone in a few short words would be Cards with RPG rules. Now, I know that may sound vague to many of you but this is the type of game I’ve been waiting years to see done in such an intuitive way. Blizzard has streamlined the entire game to feel natural to any player regardless of background experience, casual, hardcore, or various pre-existing preferences.
Welcome back to our favorite new RealGamerNewz Section, IndieSpotlight, in which we attempt to bring to the surface independently developed video games that are more than worth your attention. A good while back (before the RGN fireworks party about a new Micro-Console being announced and put into hardware beta called the OTON X) we had the chance to speak with some really creative and technically skilled professionals who had put together a game called Dungeons: The Eye of Draconus which is a coming-soon, work-in-progress game you can see at the bottom of this screen in a very early version of the title recorded in Full 1080P High Definition.
One of the original formats of games, the traditional tabletop role playing game genre, is brought to life in Escahlon: Book III for beginners and pros to hash out their dice rolling dreams (and nightmares). To start things off, players select their Gender, Origin, Axiom, and Class while also setting a Portrait image (with custom images allowed as well) in addition to picking 15 available Skills and dice rolling attributes including Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Speed, Intelligence, Wisdom, Perception, and Concentration (20 attribute points are also distributed manually by the player). Once all of this has been completed and a character has been given a name, the game begins. The skills available range from Light / Heavy Armor to Foraging, Medicine, Hiding in Shadows, Swords, Picking Locks, and much more. Choosing these skills will play a large role in defining the gameplay experience players will get out of their time with Eschalon: Book III. The game can be played in Hardcore mode (or lower settings) for additional difficulty as well.
The first thing users experience when they put on a pair of SteelSeries H Wireless Gaming Headsets is the comfort level and flexibility of the accessory. Users can wear these over a hat comfortably. It becomes evidently clear upon getting your first listen that they also provide a great value for the sound quality and technical quality provided. The battery life is very good fresh out of the box, and holds up pretty well over the initial span of time they were tested through.
Final Fantasy VII is arguably the single handedly most well known role playing game ever released out of Japan. Originally hitting the Sony PlayStation exclusively in 1997, this game has gone on to see a retro release on Windows PC in 1998 and is also available as a digital download from the PlayStation Store (compatible with PSP, PS3, and PS Vita). However, until now – there have been no noticeable adjustments made to the game’s look across these versions. Square Enix has taken the liberty of putting out a New PC Version that now comes with achievements, enhanced graphics, and a few other features that attempt to avoid spoiling the game while at the same time bringing it in line with modern releases of the genre.
One of the best features of Tiny Barbarian DX is that the controls are very intuitive. When players hit a button, the game reacts as expected. It’s accurate, it’s smooth, and it’s fun to play. Graphically and in terms of gameplay Tiny Barbarian DX is heavily inspired by retro sidescrollers like Castlevania or Mega Man, and yet it manages to feel very polished and actually stand side by side with these titles visually. The tactile feel makes it easy to run through levels that are designed with just the right amount of challenge to them to keep players on their toes but not go over the top with frustration. The music in Tiny Barbarian DX is also very well crafted and sounds retro yet with a noticeable upgrade in acoustics for those with a great headset. The sound effects relay information similar to video games of the past.
Gravity Badgers is a gravity-based game similar to the Angry Birds franchise. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really become more than that which is a shame. This title is not bad by any means, but doesn’t push the genre to a new level and doesn’t experiment with new gameplay mechanics.
In War of the Human Tanks players participate in matches of progression / attrition. Before starting a battle players must thumb through tons of dialogue and still frame graphics before actually getting to do anything. Thankfully the developers realized this was going to be a problem for the less reader-ish gamers out there and so this can be skipped though through a very fast message skip feature, unfortunately messages sent during battle do not get skipped and there’s a ton before the battles.
In Long Live The Queen players take control of a Crown Princess who will become Queen and is constantly having every facet of her character tested. It seems like no matter what players do and how they build up the Crown Princess, something isn’t good enough. This is a frustration but at the same time the game is well put together enough that this also encourages multiple play-throughs and mastery of the mechanics. This means Long Live The Queen achieves a large amount of replay value, albeit at the cost of being an addiction and very difficult to master title.
With Blackguards, Daedalic Entertainment have created a game that is not easy to get into but unlocks tons of fun and satisfying gameplay for hardcore role playing game fans who are able to master its control set and user interface. If those don’t scare you off, then you’re in for a treat. Blackguards rewards players with a decent story, great battles, and an easy on the eyes experience that easily stands out in its genre.
Strike Vector is a strictly air-born, strictly multiplayer piloting / shooting game that is visually appealing and provokes a strong sense of competition for those that play it consistently. Shamefully, the game’s many online dedicated servers sit empty the majority of the time and players come and go even within a single match so often it almost seems like nobody is enjoying themselves enough to stick around and kill or be killed. So much potential exists in this title, and yet ultimately it falls short of being a great game for several distinct reasons.
Nidhogg grabs potential buyers right away from the first sight of gameplay with its simplistic, retro-inspired art design and graphics. Using a conservative amount of colors and techniques, development studio Messhof has managed to pull off one of the most purely fun games to release in recent memory for the Windows PC gaming platform.
The SteelSeries Rival Gaming Mouse is by far one of the most accurate gaming mouse devices I’ve used in my many years throughout the PC Gaming industry. With comfort being one of my top priorities when selecting a gaming mouse, the Rival satisfies and doesn’t look half bad either.
Monkey Mofo probably gets its name from the fact that it will puzzle your brain like a Mofo! But as it’s just a monkey it dissarms the word a bit, making it a deceptively difficult game to master and yet easy and addictive enough at the onset to get you hooked. All of the mistakes players will make while trying to keep up with the game’s rapid speed could have them feeling a bit dumb, but instead of blaming yourself – pushing forward into the later stages actually provides an extremely rewarding feeling of gaining extra intelligence as has become very popular with other brain-tasking titles in the recent past.
Zen Pinball 2 takes a different approach to the video game interpretation of Pinball. Instead of using already established tables from the retro era, Zen Pinball 2 has completely digitally inspired Pinball tables that function as fantasy boards – my favorites of which are the Darth Vader table and the Plants VS. Zombies table. If you already own a lot of tables from the PlayStation 3 version of the game, you can import your ownership of those tables into the PS4 version – which is nice for people who are already invested in this Pinball experience. As new tables are released for the game, you can indulge yourself in a demo play-through before deciding if you want to skip or purchase them.
Stick It To The Man! is an interesting platformer / puzzle game in which players take on a main character Ray, who after a mysterious head injury can now read minds. Everything opens up with a subliminal dream sequence – which may be taken as a metaphor preluding to later events – as players get the character to awaken himself from the dream and discover a parasite of some sort within the brain.
PlayStation 4 just got hit with the digital recreation of some of Pinball’s most beloved tables. The Pinball Arcade takes a focus on authenticity while adding Table Goals tracking and virtual tilt into the mix. Attack From Mars, Big Shot, Black Hole, Black Knight, Bride of Pin-Bot, Cirqus Voltaire, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Elvira, Funhouse, Genie, Gorgar, Harley-Davidson, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, No Good Gofers, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Scared Stiff, Star Trek, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Taxi, Theatre of Magic, and Twilight Zone are all up for grabs in the Season One table offerings which can be grabbed separately or altogether as a Season Pass. The PlayStation 4 version of this game takes the intensity of emulating Pinball’s real life experience closer to full immersion by adding enhanced graphical fidelity as well as a full 60 frames per second frame rate meaning the action happens on screen as quick as your eyes can keep up with.
Visually Mutant Mudds takes a unique interpretation to the 2D retro art direction style by allowing players to hop back and forth between foreground and background layers throughout various points in the title. This plays into the gameplay too which is packed with action and takes pieces of the greatest platformers while pitting the player against an invading enemy via a true sidescroller action combat system. The presentation of this game is so polished players will feel a great value in their purchase immediately. Story-wise the game even satisfies deeper questions as to what the action is all about as an invading race starts off when a meteor shower hits the planet threatening to end the human way of life.
Mutant Mudds focuses almost completely on fun factor while managing to deliver a high quality sound system full of nostalgic nods and enough fresh ideas to feel like nothing you’ve played before. A new brand has been formed with this IP which we hope to see explored again at a further date, though the creativity displayed by the developer Renegade Kid also plagues our minds with questions of what will they come up with next? A sequel is indeed in the works though, and we look forward to this being announced later this year.
The Deluxe version of this game features optional checkpoints (which can be turned off for those more hardcore players). Each level will challenge the player significantly both by design that is suggestive yet deceptive as well as the time limit that each course holds. Players select which level they’d like to approach from a set of doors and can also take alternate routes to the end of the level resulting in an even more retro-throwback challenge but also demanding the player to return for the correct exit badge to that particular stage.
Once stages are passed in the traditional sense though, that doesn’t mean they are done yet. Walk through a mirror in the center of the stage selection screen to discover mirror matches of the level once seen in the “real” world. In this alternate dimension of sorts, players must use a different weapon otherwise their ammunition simply cannot effect the ghostly representations of the mutant enemies which come back to life after being killed. This weapon also comes with limited ammo, even further increasing the difficulty of the game. After all of these remix stages are also passed players get access to even more content. Doors to more stages are seen in the foreground and later unlocked.
Thankfully Mutant Mudds never quite feels like a puzzle game, though it will take some trial and error before players master everything. MM is a straight up action platformer with plenty of shooting, hopping, a bit of hovering thrown in here and there, and good old fashioned collecting “coin”-like pickups called golden diamonds which are used to buy upgrade items fro Grannie’s Attic. The music heard is top notch quality and really pays homage to some of the classics while also feeling brand new.
Engine Performance:Â No glitches were encountered during our play-through of this game.
Replay Value:Â Between the many levels, their alternate versions, and the hidden / optional content players will have plenty of fun to have before even tapping into the set of 10 trophies and playing on a second screen for Vita owners adds a bonus experience to the mix as well.
Mutant Mudds Deluxe is a game that brings the Platformer genre into a beautiful intimate relationship to the Side-Scroller Action / 2D Shooter genres while also adding new gameplay mechanics and graphical elements to the mix. With completely intuitive gameplay design as well as retro-inspired music, sound effects, and graphics MM does what most games could only wish to do and that is provide the ultimate complete package that every type of gamer is sure to fall in love with.
Played On: Sony PlayStation 3
Review Copy Info: A digital copy of this game was provided to RealGamerNewz by the publisher for the purpose of this Review
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Epiphany Games about their title Frozen Hearth as well as the universe that surrounds it and through the course of our many interesting and fun discussions many of the details of how the game works and what makes it unique to the RTS genre came to light for me in ways that I thought I’d share with the rest of you RealGamerNewz IndieSpotlight readers. As always, if you have any questions for the developers be sure to leave them in the comments or head to their Steam portal as these folks really are very open to ideas and feedback about everything from balancing issues to totally new feature requests with patches incoming just about every week thus far and more on the way.
A-Men 2 is a very interesting mixture of puzzle and action platformer gaming in which players see themselves through a number of stages that are meant to challenge the mind as well as skill of the player. Not only must the puzzle-like layout of each stage be solved but along the way the traditional gameplay mechanics of the platforming and side-scroller genres must also be mastered. For example falling from great heights will get the player killed and there are enemies actively patrolling who must be dealt with, sometimes fatally. The stages will even get so tricky that they allow saving mid-way at select points with kiosks made for such a task, you’ll be rewarded with extra experience points for not using these though.