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I’ve never been a big fan of side scrolling shooters. Actually, I’ve never been a big fan of the bullet hell genre period. I don’t have an issue with the concept. I can see that it’s all meant to be fun, frantic and heart pounding. The thing is, I’m just impressively bad at them. I have a tendency of playing the first few levels, getting blown to bits far more often than I should and giving up in annoyance that my fingers won’t do what my brain is telling them to, which is why Drifting Lands caught me by surprise.

This could well be the game that has actually changed my mind about the entire genre. I’ve realized – now that I’m quite a lot more than a few levels into the story – that I’m still alive, still enjoying it and actually doing pretty well, thank you very much. It’s got nothing to do with this game being too easy; rather, instead of having a difficulty spike big enough to impale a baby elephant, Drifting Lands has a difficulty curve. This is marvelous. This is a game that doesn’t have it in for you from the moment you load it up.

Welcome to the Rift

It’s your ship. Build it your way.

Your skills define you. Choose them wisely.

We love a bit of violence. There’s something in the genetic code of many gamers that just begs for a bit of bloodshed. Well, for those of you just aching to knock the snot out of something there’s a new contender for the 2017 Beat’em up crown. French indie developer Wako Factory is pleased to announce the appearance of Samurai Riot on Steam this September and we’ve got a bit of info on this 2D brawler just for you.

Everyone who lost their SNES Classic preorders in the big Walmart mess up, get ready to have a second chance. The SNES Classic is confirmed by Nintendo to be going up for preorder at the end of August by “various retailers”.

While there is no specific date laid out for what will most likely be the death of many stores’ webpages, it is nice to know that the mini console will be available before they hit shelves and Nintendo promises that a significant amount of them will be shipped to stores for the launch day for those who miss the preorders.

My recommendation is to take those words with a grain of salt because we do not know how much “a significant number” is. In relation to the NES Classic last year that could be 20 for all we know. I remember walking into the Best Buy I was working at last holiday season and seeing over 80 people line up for the 15 consoles we were given, so have they learned their lesson? They might have, but just remember what company we are talking about. Nintendo already came out and said it is only being sold through the end of the year.

Nintendo has come out on a couple of occasions and promised there will be more SNES Classics than the minuscule number we saw last year for the NES Classic, but time and time again we see Nintendo send out small shipments of their most popular items to ensure that there is always a demand for the newest Nintendo thing.

The SNES Classic was officially announced earlier this year in June. You can read my post on it here. The $80 console will come packed with 21 classic Super Nintendo games as well as the never before released Star Fox 2 and is set to release on September 29th.

Personally, I hope to get one to show and play many of the games with my 5 year old daughter. Along with the Switch, this will be one of the biggest gifts this holiday season.

You can see Nintendo’s post at their Facebook page here or check out the Game Informer article that I learned about the post here.

The post SNES Classic preorders to land at the end of the month appeared first on That VideoGame Blog.

Just a mere five days after seeing its release on Steam Early Access, Blue Isle Studios, developers of Citadel: Forged With Fire, has announced the first update to the wizardly sandbox rpg.

Besides an update to the servers, the game will receive five new crafting recipes, iron armor, and the bear claw gauntlet. You can see the iron armor and bear claw gauntlets in the short trailer released below.

If you hadn’t noticed, the space sim from developers Frontier Developments, Elite Dangerous, has finally released on the PS4, almost three years after it launched on PC. Boasting that it offers, “400 Billion star systems and an ever-evolving narrative,” you can experience all that this game has to offer either alone or in a very robust multiplayer environment. As a starship Commander, you take control of your own starship and can fight, explore and travel throughout an expansive cutthroat galaxy. Keeping your ship upgraded with the best weapons and equipment is paramount as you explore the galaxy, fight off pirates and smuggle, trade and mine your way to prosperity. You have to do whatever it takes to earn the skill, knowledge, wealth and power to stand among the ranks of the Elite.

Back on Jan 9, 2015, my esteemed colleague Nick Christophi wrote a review for the PC version of the Elite Dangerous. If you want to read his take on how the game panned out back then, you can read his review here. Nick scored the game a 7.0/10 and I have to agree with him on that. While there are some improvements to gameplay on the PS4, this version of the game is basically the same game that Nick reviewed so I stand by his score. For this review, I just wanted to highlight the features and issues that stood out to me.

The first thing that I immediately noticed about the game is that it has an incredibly steep learning curve. It took me going through the tutorial lessons multiple times because I just couldn’t wrap my head around how the game worked. There were just a few tutorials and some tutorial videos that you could watch but I felt that there should have been more to flesh out the nuances of the basic game procedures a little bit more. There wasn’t a lot of guidance once I got through that beginning training, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you don’t like a lot of hand-holding, this is the game for you because it is up to you to blaze your own trail right out of the starport.

One of the issues with the game that Nick pointed out that resonated with me was the fact that he though that flying around the galaxy felt lifeless and lonely. I have to say that as I began playing, I had that same feeling, however as I got into getting from place to place, the galaxy started to fill out a little more and there weren’t too many long stretches of time where I felt like I hadn’t seen another soul for a long time. I think that is obviously due to the fact that more people have had a chance to pick up the game as well as the fact that there has essentially been updates to missions and activities to make them a more polished and accessible experience. Whatever the case may be, there is a good balance between the times where you are alone and the times where you will encounter other players. Sometimes you just want to pillage an outpost without the prying eyes of look-ee-loos.

There are a few performance issues that this game has on the PS4 such as how the framerate will drop when you come out of hyperspace or if you are trying to drop off your wares at a particularly busy space station. That is something that a future update can remedy so it isn’t a deal breaker. One other thing that stood out to me is how intricately detailed the inside of your ships cockpits are. Being that you spend a lot of time looking at the HUD, it goes to reason that Frontier would ensure that this was something special to look at. Just one look is enough to see that the developer has put in a lot of time perfecting even the smallest detail.

The freedom of exploration and the vast area that you have to explore is what Elite Dangerous is all about. If you don’t want to explore new galaxies and share your findings with other players, you can engage in trading and grow your bank account or you can get into pirating and just take what you want from unsuspecting traders. The choice is up to you. If you want to do a little of all of those activities, the game doesn’t punish you for switching it up every once in a while. This game offers the freedom to go anywhere and do anything that most games that make this claim just don’t quite live up to.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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One of the few perks of having to pay for a subscription to Sony’s PlayStation Network (yes, I’m bitter: long time PlayStation owner here) is that each month, your PS Plus membership yields some hard-earned freebies. Mostly, these are titles from smaller developers, but before you scoff: Psyonix’s instant mega-hit Rocket League was one of the first to be offered for free, and heck, look where that ended up.

Gratuitous picture of my favourite competitive game inbound…

Ahhh! It’s hideous!

Yeah. I’d look that miserable too, in that weather.

Do the civilians lie awake at night, flinching at every distant explosion?

Looks like the sort of frantic gameplay that could ruin friendships.

In 5 minutes, Beat the Game had managed to convince me that my morning coffee had been inadvertently laced with LSD. By the 10 minute mark, Beat the Game had tapped previously defunct areas of my brain, and had begun to poke them with a sledgehammer. Within a mere 15 minutes of gameplay, Beat the Game had reduced me to a senseless wreck, able only to nod my head in time to a pulsating, electro-new-wave-synth rhythm.

I may be exaggerating a little, but I do suspect that the creators of Beat the Game – the San Francisco-based Worm Animation – suffer from severe hallucinatory episodes; I highly doubt that imagination alone concocted such absurdity. Offering little by way of narrative exposition, I was dumped straight into the perspective of an unnamed biker, drawn and animated as though he were an extra in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Dressed in prison stripes and a tight bodysuit with matching cowl, he rode some sort of hover-bike until he didn’t, crashing into a vending machine half buried in the moonlit desert. Then he kicked the machine… and there was carbon dioxide soda… floating eyes with wings… the biker sits in a chair… but suddenly, TREE ROOTS! After some hours sleep, underground… boy in striped pyjamas makes the surface… and then music.

Suffice it to say, until instructions begin to appear on your screen (and for some time after), Beat the Game makes zero sense. Once the prologue is out of the way, however, and you’ve reached the first open area, a terrifying voice commands you to collect sounds. And thus, you begin sampling your environment and using the portable mixing deck to create the sickest beats this side of the new millennium. Don’t ask me why. I’ll never tell.

What I can say, though, as a musician with a creative streak, is that Beat the Game doesn’t need a reason to drop a filthy bass-line. You’ll soon forget the dodgy narrative, the painful camera functionality, and the lack of attention to syntax (a pet peeve, nothing more), because you’ll be mixing that unwashed kick drum with synthetic waves, artificial hi-hats, and whatever else you can get your audio sampler mitts on. You don’t even need a musical ear: the mixer does the hard work, so all you really need to do is keep selecting and deselecting samples until you find a rhythm that takes your fancy.

The time I spent with Beat the Game was very limited, but it takes mere moments to respond to the quality of the graphics, or the intuitiveness of the UI. Beat the Game did not leave me wanting in any respect other than wanting to play a little more: if you’ve watched the trailer, you’ll see that the oddity soars to new heights as the game progresses. Perform your favorite composition to the crowd in lieu of a boss-fight – if they like it, you’ll progress to the next world. Scour the world with a rolling robot that I hope makes full use of the game’s intriguing open level design; plod about as the anonymous musician (edit: he’s called Mystik, but you’re never actually told that), using either keyboard or controller, and sample anything that moves.

It’s crazy, but it works. With music from house producer Marc Houle, Beat the Game is a nonsensical, aural, point-and-click journey into one of the more imaginative environments I’ve ever had the pleasure to virtually explore. The cutscene animations are strong, and the music, grungy; Beat the Game is, in the words of founder Cemre Ozkurt, giving you every opportunity to flex your compositional muscles. Make music, Yo.

Beat the Game is scheduled for release in early 2017 (note to devs: we’re approaching late 2017, folks), and will be available on Xbox One, PC, Mac and Linux.

This preview is based on an early access copy of the game provided by the publisher.

The post PREVIEW / Beat the Game (PC) appeared first on That VideoGame Blog.

As you all probably know by now, I’m TVGB’s VR nut. I think this is probably because I’m not here most of the time and being given a valid excuse to actually be elsewhere is just awesome. What’s this got to do with anything? Well, being said VR nut, I’m obviously going to be bringing you VR news whenever I can. So let’s get on to this little order of business – Crisis Action VR, a survival horror FPS by Pixel Wonder, is now available on Steam VR.

Dead by Daylight was released on PC last June to largely positive reviews and high sales. The game pits multiple players in survivor roles (third person perspective) against one player acting as a killer (first person perspective). Lauded for its largely unique contribution to the horror game genre, it eschews jumpscares for mounting tension and creative takes on classic horror tropes. Each survivor and killer character has their own advantages and disadvantages, which can be made more or less effective depending on the map chosen.

Following its release to console earlier this year, developer Starbreeze Studios has released a free-to-download new “chapter”, Lullaby for the Dark, which features a new killer, a new survivor, and a new map.

Bandai Namco originaly anounced at EVO 2017 that the closed beta sign-ups for Dragon Ball FighterZ would begin on July 26^th, 2017. However, due to the enormous volume of excitement and enthusiasm surrounding this announcement, the publisher has decided to expand the capacity of the Closed Beta in an effort to enable more players to participate in the program.

In addition, the beta organizers are also working to bolster their background systems to ensure that the closed beta registration and selection process can accept the volume of anticipated sign-ups. While that is definitely good news, there is just a little bad news to report. In order to open the beta for more players, these efforts will necessitate a slight delay for the Closed Beta sign-up date, which will move to August 22^nd, 2017.

As far as when the actual beta will take place, it will happen on September 16^th and 17^th at the following hours:

EUROPE (UK) CST