In the early 90s, Coktel Vision (which later became Sierra On-Line) released a quirky point and click adventure game titled Gobliiins which had players bouncing between three different Goblins to find a cure for good King Angoulafre.
Sometimes when you are browsing the internet for information on how to do something, you stumble upon ideas or projects or even games that people might be working on...
What a meow-gnificent evening it is to send your paw-rcels out to those family and friends! Are mew looking to pick up an item or send something out? Well at Cat Mail Co. we can send and receive all your deliveries!
Have you ever grown up feeling like you don't belong? For our Heroine, that's the feeling she lives with everyday in her small farming village. But it's not her only secret...
STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions is just that! Massively co-operative and not an MMO! When you first run the game you are instantly into the tutorial...
Today we’re looking at what has rapidly become an absolute favorite in the open-world RPG genre for me. An interesting story, memorable NPCs, stunning visuals, and a setting absolutely dripping with flavor, Dread Delusion sets its tone immediately and sticks with it.
I enjoy simulation-type games, and I enjoyed the original release of House Flipper, but I never got around to getting the DLC. When the remastered version of the game was released, I figured it would be the best way to experience the DLC while checking out how the base game was upgraded.
GranBlue Fantasy: ReLink released in 2024 bringing the GranBlue universe to an action adventure JRPG format. With a party of up to four members, this band of skyfarers set out for new skies, adventures, and dangers. Two years later, Endless Ragnarok...
70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a mouthful of a title, but you know what? It’s quite the challenging game to describe as well. At its core, 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a shooter...
Game creation software has been around for numerous years, though perhaps the most popular has been the "Maker" brand, which has focused most heavily on RPGs. Pixel Game Maker MV offers a lot of the same features that has made their RPG Maker series so popular over the years, offering some built-in physics and scripting engines to handle the logic instead of actual knowledge of coding in order to make a variety of different game types. By and large, Pixel Game Maker MV succeeds with some notable rough edges that I kind of expected from an Early Access title on Steam.
I have now been toying with Video Editing for about three years ever since sitting down to Fastcut by Magix. Since then, I've much prefered recording gameplay and experimenting with what could be done such as making Let's Plays over Streaming. With plenty of different ways in order to capture footage, Mirillis Action! on a computer, the PS4 Share functions or simply using an AverMedia (thanks again Robert!), Elgato, or the new fantastic addition to my life the Riiai game capture module, you need a good software to carry you through. With plenty of options out there, HitFilm Pro could be a contender for some of you looking for a decent software at an "affordable" price.
With hindsight being 20/20, there are a lot of things that seemed to be amazing then, that would simply be ok now. Fastcut isn't bad but its options are limited. From there I went on to try Sony Vega Pro. It was better for its options but it couldn't actually handle the proper outputting on PS3 video. I've toyed with a few others in the meantime but one day I finally bit the bullet and bought the Lamborghini or the Tesla. Whether at home or in the office, as most of us have some form of 9-5 that we require to pull off in order to pay the bills, I have Adobe Premiere. Compared to that, not many others can come close but the reality is, if you don't pay it by month which is expensive (and I have it as part of the suit), good luck buying it outright as the option for "normal" people has pretty much disappeared.
The reason for all the above is that HitFilm Pro, upon loading it, made me think of Adobe's Premiere. The interface is clean and set up in a similar fashion. Adding or removing elements is easy with a menu at the top that provides checkboxes for quick and easy hiding and showing elements that you want on screen. If you want to move boxes around the screen, go for it. You aren't limited to the primary window allowing for other elements to be moved outside of your primary interface. More than this, you can choose which "mode" you want to be in which can all be customized. Setting up your own layouts for Assembly or Editing make it easy to switch between especially if you really want to concentrate on that one element or have something look just slightly different while working on another task.
With how familiar the setup felt, getting into it was a slightly different story as several elements weren't exactly where I would have expected them to be. You can't simply click and drag media into your timeline and have it added into your resources. You have to either import or click and drag into the media tab in order to have these assets setup and ready to use. It's a tiny difference that may not seem like much, but for a large project, it adds extra time that could be better used upon something else. Another such element is when you zoom into your timeline you zoom into where your needle is instead of where you are looking making you have to scroll back to it. These are little things but they take an adjustment period just like I have yet to figure out how to scroll along my timeline like I do within Premiere.
The last downside, is probably the biggest because of how much of an issue it was to actually find it. Adding text. For some odd reason, text cannot be simply added to a video. Instead, you have to make an element called a Composite Shot in order to add text into it and make your adjustments there. Once that is done you can then drag the Composite Shot onto your timeline in order to make your text appear and then move it to wherever you need it on the screen. Want to change the font and the color however? That you'll have to go back into your Composite Shot to do. It was really weird and it felt like it complicated something that should have been so easy.
Once you get familiar with how these work, producing a video in HitFilm Pro becomes rather smooth as you'll have ironed out what you needed. Setting in and out points on your media's source viewer is easy with either shortcut keys or buttons available. Putting them into your timeline as either a split (cuts the current video to add in a segment) or overwrite (basically overwrites the data for the amount of time that is being inserted) works great. Realize that you added too much time and want to shorten up a segment? Segments can easily be modified on the timeline and then readjusted to show video in those times as you need to with the various tools at your disposal. Like Premiere, the video design is non-destructive. Non-destructive means that it isn't like Photoshop, GIMP or Paint where you eliminate what you don't want. If you need it back, you need to start over. This isn't the case with these video editors and it makes editing just that little bit easier.
Adding in effects to either the Video or the Audio is just as smooth as Premiere. You find where you want to add in the effect, generally in my case for transitions in or out, and you add them. Don't want them anymore? Delete it. Want them to go on for longer or be be shorter? Modify them. All of these elements are easily taken care of.
I didn't just get to play with HitFilm Pro though. I also got the chance to poke at two other of Ignite and Action Pro. Ignite is for users like me that use another editing platform not unlike the fantastic Boris FX Packages. Ignite allows for you to look through over 180 different plugins and also comes with a huge amount of special effects to be added into your projects. Action on the other hand is a whole other ballpark that allows for you to make your own motion paths for either 2D or 3D animations. Once you're done, you can export them out from Action and import them into Hitfilm in order to do whatever it is that you set out to do.
Overall FXhome Limited's HitFilm Pro is a good software. It, like others, has a bit of a learning curve but once you get used to them things start to go smoothly. It does have some limitations compared to others that you may use but when you compare its price point to the monthly subscription such as Adobe's Premiere or the more expensive current version of Sony Vegas Pro? It's a solid buy.
Now you didn't think I just sat here looking at the software did you? Here's what I spent some time putting together with various footage from:
Maker programs are hardly new, but admittedly most of my time has been spent with those of the RPG variety (though I have dabbled in other types as well). To its credit, Visual Novel Maker actually surprised me in some good ways. I had no idea what to expect going into it, but all in alll I found the software pretty accessible while remaining rather powerful for fans of the visual novel genre.
I've now had the pleasure of using Utomik for three months in which the wonderfully provided trial period ends Sunday. Over the past month we've had reviews in which came from the software with some being available when I started to use the service while others, like The Force Unleashed 2 (Coming Soon), were added afterwards through partnerships. I haven't reviewed everything that I've played, otherwise I would still be writing, but I did have fun with what I had access to. Three months was a good time to put it through its paces and while some small details may still need a bit of work, the overall experience is one worth looking into especially if there are multiple titles that it has that are on your radar.
In case you originally missed it, we originally took a look at Utomik back in mid March. Utomik is a subscription based system that allows for any user to navigate the library, chose what they want to play, and play it within seconds as Utomik downloads what is needed to start off and then performs the rest of the download, especially on much larger games, in the background. Contrary to my original thoughts which I had mentioned, it is not a streaming service which means that anyone with low bandwidth caps or low speeds can enjoy the library's content just as much as someone with unlimited bandwidth and high speeds as it really doesn't take long to get a game started.
The interface is just as clean now as it was when I started using it. Games are separated by labels that can be viewed through "channels" that could either contain RPG titles, First Person Shooters, or titles that belong to specific developers or publishers like Deep Silver, Paradox, Disney (Star Wars) and THQ Nordic. Clicking on any of these channels will bring you into another window in which you can quickly see loads of thumbnails of the available titles. Want to play something? Simply click on "Play" and Utomik will take care of the rest.
If you want to know more about a title there's a Information Icon in the top right corner of any game's thumbnail. Clicking on these will bring you over to a well laid out screen with the icon of the game, its description, the built in rating system and a video. Unfortunately it still doesn't allow for the option to disable auto-playing the videos which for me isn't an issue from a bandwidth perspective but it is from a "what if I don't want to watch the video" perspective.
The auto-playing videos can also add up towards anyone's monthly limits. The reason I would clock this as an issue is that if you live around where I do, only in the past year have we started to have internet for under 100$ that gives us more than 25mbps download speeds and "unlimited". Prior to that? 100$ plans maybe gave us 20mbps with 120gb download limits. Let's say that it didn't take long before Breanna and I started to pay much more for the internet because checking the meter every day got very annoying very fast and anything that auto-played just added to the "please tell us we didn't go over. Again.
The only issue that I could have with Utomik is that if you want to install anywhere but the default folder they are going to ask for administrative access each and every time that you wish to install something. As anyone with Window Vista and up knows, even with an administrator account you aren't quite "using your admin rights" until you right click and say run and administrator. Because my PC runs off of an older and smaller Solid State Drive, all my games are on a much larger secondary hard drive meaning that anytime I wanted to download and install something new, I HAD to load Utomik with my administrator privileges instead of simply doing everything from a simple loading of the software.
Once you've selected your game and you're ready to play, just hit Play and the game will launch. Once loaded, some titles will automatically full screen while others will not. I wish there was an option on the window to do so but a quick "Alt-Enter" will do the trick as it does for most Indie RPGs out of an RPG Maker. From there on in the control schemes are at the mercy of how the title was created whether it be keyboard and mouse or if they enabled controller support.
Once you're done playing simply quit and go about doing whatever else you wish to do. Once you do come back though, Utomik has made sure that it's easy to find any title that you've already played or have loaded up in order to play later through your "My Utomik" tab. Simply clicking Play will bring you right back in and you don't need to search the library for it. Want to remove a game from your system? Simply switching the view from Dashboard to Manage games and clicking the "+" on any title will allow you to see how much space it's taking up while also giving the option to uninstall with no hassles.
Features that are there but work "iffyly" are the clocks under your profile as Aurion alone the first time that I sat down to it was for about four hours. The clock says that I have a total of four hours and I've played hours of Onion Force, Meltdown, Space Hack and Force Unleashed 2 alone. So that needs a bit of work but since it's not V1 yet that's not so bad. Trophies / Achievements are on their way at some point because everyone loves those possible bragging rights. A friend of mine sends me his platinum trophies every time he gets a new one. I think he's sitting somewhere in the seventies so they do make a good incentive for some.
There are still a few items that need to go into production as Utomik is currently sitting at Version "0.43.0", but even at that, I'm willing to score it before its full release which could take some time. Having a Steam, PSN, Xbox Live, Nintendo eShop as well as a GoG and a Humble Bundle account, I would recommend looking into Utomik. Being able to experience a vast and still growing library with a low monthly fee instead of having to buy everything piece by piece was a nice change of pace especially since there were several titles that I had been wanting to play.
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I'm no stranger to reviewing games and software, but to review a software that distributes games? I wasn't quite sure what to think of that as first but it didn't take long to get comfortable with it. Utomik has an interesting approach to the idea as unlike Steam where you simply buy your title and that's the end of it, Utomik works more like a Netflix / CrunchyRoll / Funimation sort of deal in which for a monthly fee in which you can play whatever is currently in their library. With titles old and new under the hood? I was impressed.
I'll start off with the fact that Utomik is still fairly new and currently in open beta. As as such there are a few areas which could be improved through feedback but the overall experience is a pleasant one. The interface that you get to log into once your account is all set up and ready to go is smooth and loads the content fairly quickly. Where things can be a bit "iffy" is that when hovering over a title and clicking it, currently at the point of this writing, nothing will happen. You can choose to either play which is an obvious choice or rate it. What is less obvious is in the upper right corner there's an option to view more information upon the title.
Clicking for more information will bring you to the game's page in which you can still chose the option to "play", "rate" or you can read up on the provided information and watch a provided trailer. Furthermore, near the top under the title there's an option to view the system requirements. It would be nice to see the addition of the CPU Speed and Ram required instead of simply the Operating System, Disk Space, and the Architecture (32/64-bit).
Now I made the reference to Netflix earlier in regards to the monthly plans but Utomik is not a streaming service. Instead, after you've browsed and found what you've wanted, you can then hit "Play" and Utomik will start to download the game to your Harddrive and most of the time you can play within a few minutes for the larger ones. The smaller ones? Seconds. The rest downloads afterwards but they download enough of the game in order to start playing faster.
I personally don't need to worry about my Bandwidth caps at the end of the month but a lot of people do and that's something I kept in mind while exploring what Utomik has to offer. Thankfully a person will know exactly how much data will be used as the System Requirements page tells you how big the game is. Where things can possibly get a bit heavy is that the trailers auto-play and there's currently no option to prevent it.
As for the games however, Utomik currently has titles such as:
and much much more. At the time of this writing there are still other Star Wars titles coming such as Lego Star Wars 2, Force Unleashed 2 and Knights of the Old Republic 2. Yes I went with a theme on that one but Utomik has partnered with Disney so for Star Wars so there could be a lot more. They've even partnered with TellTale (Press Page with both articles) so if you've been holding on to playing some of their awesome series this could be a way to do it. The library will continue to increase and it's nice to see big names behind it.
So far things have been going pretty well and there will be a few upcoming reviews from the Utomik service such as Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan, A Blind Legend and Life of a Pixel. These are just a few titles that I figured would be interesting to approach from a reviewing perspective but I've also got the likes of Evoland, Evoland 2, Lone Wolf, Dark Forces, Spellforce and Zenith loaded to see how some of them play from the PC and to see how smooth they run through this service. Some of these I've either already reviewed on another platform or another site while others I figure now is a good time while I get to experience what Utomik has to offer. All in all it's a good service and it'll be interesting to see what else comes out in the next little while.
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A new year, a new Music Maker - and a new formula to boot this time. Last year, with MAGIX Music Maker 2016 Live, we saw the introduction of Live Pad, a unique way to both add to your produced work more naturally, and enable you to play live, if you choose. The newest addition with this version of Music Maker is an improved mediapool, and the ability to directly purchase Music Maker-Compatible soundpools very efficiently.
