Culdcept Begins - Nintendo Switch Review

Culdcept Begins by developer and publisher Neos Corporation—Nintendo Switch review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes 

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Chalgyr's Game Room Reaches 15 Years

Celebrating 15 years of our team celebrating gaming with you!

It’s hard to believe I’m writing that above statement fifteen years to the day after I put this post out into the world:

Let’s get this first post out of the way, shall we?

Inspiring stuff, right? I mean, probably not in reality. It was just my effort to get a Blogger (now Blogspot) blog post written before I lost interest (or more likely, lost my nerve to 'put myself out there'). Now, normally we don't post Sunday content, but hey - the date landed where it landed.

November 10^th, 2009 is when I planted that particular flag in the digital world to… well, I’d like to say great fanfare. However, seriously I think my wife was the only one who saw that post at the time. Maybe her aunt. Probably my dad. Tree falling in a forest when no one is there to see it kind of stuff, right?

Then came my first real post – a review for Soulcalibur IVon PlayStation 3.

Again, it was just me writing for an audience of basically me. I decided I just wanted to write my thoughts around games like no one was reading them – because they weren’t. Except a funny thing started to happen. My little blog started to get comments and joined several other similarly themed gaming blogs in a sort of circle of sites where we read each other’s content, supported one another, asked each other questions and frankly – we just helped one another get better.

We started writing guest posts for one another, doing podcasts with one another and in my case, writing reviews for other sites who seemed to value my written words. I learned how to work with PR companies in the background, saw my reviews start to show up on Metacritic through other sites and most importantly – started to meet a lot of others who shared my passion for video gaming and writing about it. This was what benefited CGR the most.

There was a lot of ‘me’ and “I’ in those first few paragraphs, but Chalgyr’s Game Room only started with me – it grew with others who started to join the team. It was a somewhat slow trickle early on, but as more people began to write regularly for the site, a surprising thing started to happen. Not only were we getting more content out, but we were getting more readers as a result. We were also getting more people asking to participate. What had begun as a solo passion project became a site that has seen dozens of people come and go now over the last decade and a half as we have written previews, reviews, random thoughts about gaming and more.

Video gaming has always been at the forefront of things, but we’ve examined so much more than that. The team discussed game music, Games of the Year, board games, music creation software, discussed tabletop roleplaying, gaming hardware and so much more. Our third most popular article ever was one written about Magic: The Gathering back in 2014.

Still, video game reviews have been what became the site’s focus. So much so that when you view our review catalog here, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page past the hundreds of linked reviews, you see we have three more buckets of reviews at the bottom of the page. That’s a lot of words over fifteen years. Quiz time: which review of ours has the most hits ever? TheElder Scrolls V: Skyrim – PC Review. This article went live on April 20, 2012 and has over 33.4 thousand views. 

What has helped make Chalgyr’s Game Room such a special place for me is how I just created a safe space to chat about what I enjoy about gaming and found a lot of others who were already friends or became friends who wanted to do the exact same thing. I don’t over-edit things and try to create a ‘CGR voice’ – because everyone writing here has their own. I don’t want to temper it down; I wanted to see it amplified. Sure, we all have our various typos that get cleaned up, but we’ve never been interested in pushing agendas. We love gaming, we just want to share those experiences with others who also love gaming. We don’t always view things the same way – but that’s fine. It’s expected even.

I want to take a moment to appreciate many of the cool things we've gotten to do on this site. Partnerships with big players in the industry allowed us to write about things (often times getting our hands on the game or product early), and providing us with opportunities we wouldn't have had otherwise. No money is being made by us if you click off to these sites, but when I first spun up that first blog post a decade and a half ago, I never imagined I'd be interacting with the companies that we have associated with since. Whether it was Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro sending us per-release Dungeons & Dragons tabletop supplies, Turtle Beach allowing us to review their headsets, Asmodee working with us on some table top game reviews, or big name publishers such as Microsoft, Koei Tecmo and Capcom to literally hundreds of smaller studies and indie developers that have brought their passions to digital life. It's been fantastic to be part of that journey.

Dex:

Agarest: Generations of War Zero:

Chronicles of Tal-Dun: The Remainder:

We've had our reviews mentioned in accolade videos and images, had developers acknowledge our feedback in implementation of game improvements and graced numerous Steam pages over the years (as seen above). 

It's not all flowers on these reviews, however.  We've had more than our fair share of low scores given out over the years. We of course tend to lean towards games we think we'll enjoy, but since we like talking about gaming in general? We're willing to talk about some of the ones that didn't work for us as well. Heck, most of the time when we do our Games of the Year, we have multiple categories including our Biggest Disappointments. I don't want to dwell on these lower scores, because we generally want to celebrate having fun with gaming. We know a lot of work goes into these titles. But we have had our share of lower scores, such as PlataGo (which scored a 2 with our reviewer). 

Chalgyr's Game Room is about the discourse. Sure, the majority of our articles are reviews, but it would be remiss of me not to bring up our Retro Reviews, Memorable Music, Jaggy's Corner, Gaming Thoughts, loads of News posts and so much more. We're a diverse team that love to talk about numerous aspects of a wide variety of games.

I’ve been asked before why the name Chalgyr’s Game Room (CGR). It was a bit of a whim (keep in mind, I was writing for an audience of me at the time). But some of my best memories involve the camaraderie and competition of gaming over the decades, whether it was my friends as kids, or as a father who played games with his wife and children. So, I wanted to make a digital ‘game room’ where we could get together and share laughs, memories and more. This is why you see the couch in so many of our images - that throwback to the idea of couch co-op and just sitting around with friends with controllers in-hand. I guess it only makes sense that CGR hit its stride when more people began to participate, to fill that digital game room with their thoughts and feelings.

The amazing thing? The site’s just getting stronger. Here’s a look at our page views over the last fifteen years. The last two years have been particularly strong for us. With over 3.6 million unique lifetime views and over 6 thousand comments? It’s clear we’ve found an audience. I made our site’s tagline “Where it’s all about the games” – here I can say “It’s all about the team”, past and current. 

Over 5,600 posts later, Chalgyr’s Game Room is going stronger than ever. Our best day ever? March 31, 2024 – so earlier this year with 171,709 views. I couldn’t have done it without a fantastic team, and we couldn’t have done it without our amazing readers. Here’s to a great end of this year for all of you, and to many more years of news, reviews and other gaming thoughts to come.

 

Article by: Nick

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Games that should have had sequels (Part 3) - Gaming Thoughts

Over the last couple of days, we have had a couple of the members of the team submit their list of games that they wish had gotten sequels. To cap off the week, I thought I would go ahead and share my own list of titles that I really would have liked to see live on just a bit longer.

Heavenly Sword

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Magic Duels will be a new type of Magic: The Gathering game

I talked about Magic Origins recently in another preview, but now we have even more information on what is sure to be a popular release.

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Magic Origins attempts to mark key moments in the lore of Magic: The Gathering

I have been playing Magic: The Gathering for a long time, and this ranges from the card games, the obscure Micropose PC game, the Duels titles and even having read books and collected comics years ago. This newest set really appeals to someone like me, who always appreciated the history of MTG - right down to having read almost every bit of flavor text on the cards ever.

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Star Wars: Force Collection - iOS Review

Two things most people who know me are aware I enjoy a great deal: Star Wars and CCG's (collectible card games). So when I heard that there would be an iOS game mixing those two elements together, I was more than a little excited. Still, when the recipe for success seems so certain, that usually means you are in for some degree of letdown.

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Adam Dixon and the upcoming Magic 2014 - Interview

We got a great reaction from our article with upcoming information about both Magic 2014 - Duels of the Planeswalkers as well as what we shared out about the actual 2014 core card game release. I have to say that the more I hear about the upcoming game, the more excited I get.

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Magic 2014 - Duels of the Planeswalkers - lots of announcements

I am a huge Magic fan. I play it every night with coworkers, my son and I have decks we play at home and I have purchased every release of Duels of the Planeswalkers, having tried it on PC, iPad, PS3 and 360. You could safely say I am familiar with the content.

Well now information has been  released on both the video game as well as the actual card game. Here goes (press release copied below):

Magic 2014 - Duels of the Planeswalkers

In addition to Xbox LIVE® Arcade, Steam®, PlayStation® Network and iPad^®, Magic 2014 - Duels of the Planeswalkers will be available on Android™ tablet for the first time ever! With an easy-to-use tutorial, Magic 2014 is the best way for new players to learn how to play Magic, while also providing advanced game play modes and options to satisfy experienced players.

Magic 2014 builds on the success of previous games in the Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers franchise and adds several new features:

-       Available for the first time on Android tablet

-       Sealed Play which allows players to open booster packs and build decks to play against the AI and other players

-       Engaging storyline that gives players the opportunity to join the Planeswalker Chandra Nalaar in a quest for revenge through challenging gameplay

-       New take on the popular Slivers creature type

-       10 Brand New Decks

-       15 New Encounters

-       10 New Puzzle Challenges

-       Platform-specific promotions that will include 6-card Booster Decks featuring the following promo cards:

o    Steam, iPad, Android tablet – Scavenging Ooze

o    Xbox – Bonescythe Sliver

o    PSN – Ogre Battledriver

-       Special Edition Release including the base game and exciting mix of additional content (Steam only)

-       Loyalty Offer for players who previously purchased Magic 2013 (Steam and Xbox only)

In addition, integration between Magic 2014 – Duels of the Planeswalkers and the Magic 2014 - Core Set will provide Magic 2014 players with a first look at more than 50 cards from the Magic 2014 – Core Set releasing later this summer.  Five cards from Magic 2014 – Duels of the Planeswalkers will also be appearing as foil face cards in the Magic 2014 Intro Packs including Liliana’s Reaver, Garruk’s Horde, Chandra’s Phoenix, Jace’s Mindseeker, and Ajani’s Chosen.

The addition of Sealed Play will allow players to open booster packs and build decks to play against the AI and other players. Each sealed pool is comprised of 84 cards, mimicking paper TCG booster packs. The PvE experience includes a six-deck ladder where players take on mono-colored Sealed decks each corresponding with a particular Planeswalker, and finally facing a ‘boss’ Sealed deck.

Another feature debuting in Magic 2014 is a new take on the popular Slivers creature type. A fan-favorite, new playable Slivers in Magic 2014 decks will include the following:

− Sliver Construct

− Predatory Sliver

− Groundshaker Sliver

− Megantic Sliver

− Blur Sliver

− Striking Sliver

− Thorncaster Sliver

− Battle Sliver

− Sentinel Sliver

− Bonescythe Sliver

In addition, Hive Stirrings, a sorcery that creates Sliver tokens, will also be included in Magic 2014.

And for fans of the card game itself:

Magic 2014 - Core Set

The Magic 2014 - Core Set will provide players with a wider Magic experience including new cards, face-to-face gameplay and unlimited deck building opportunities. The Magic 2014 - Core Set is an exciting blend of brand new cards and returning fan-favorites, and will be available at participating Wizards Play Network (WPN) hobby game stores worldwide this summer. To find a WPN location near you, visit: Wizards.com/locator.

The Magic 2014 - Core Set will feature:

-       249 Cards

-       Planeswalkers – Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, Garruk

-       Slivers creature types

-       In-store events throughout the summer including Pre-release, Friday Night Magic and Game Day

 

 

Lots to look forward to for Magic fans. Are you looking forward to the new card sets and video game? Personally I think the sealed deck style of game sounds very cool, and I remember the Slivers from back around the Tempest releases (they played off of one another as well as any 'type' of card in the Magic series in my opinion) very fondly.

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Wow... so it's 2013 now

And just like that - 2012 is done. Over. Gone. Onto newer things - like 2013.

Seriously though - it's amazing to me how fast we shot through last year, and that we're already through the first week of 2013. I had some time off to kick off 2013 and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If I had to say which gaming endeavor of mine took up the bulk of my time, it would be Guild Wars 2, but I dabbled in a LOT of stuff over the last couple of weeks.

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And sadly... the extended weekend is over

I certainly hope everyone had a fun, safe weekend.  For those of us in the United States, it also served as a holiday weekend as we celebrated Thanksgiving.  This was my first four day weekend in... 2012 I believe?  I certainly enjoyed it as I had plenty of food, football and fun.

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Magic: The Gathering, Pure Chess, Mass Effect 3... yup, it was the weekend

Good morning - I sure hope you all had a really nice weekend.  Mine was fairly uneventful - which is not a bad thing at all.  My wife and daughters were out of town since Thursday, leaving my son and I to sit around and kill time how we saw fit.  Generally speaking, that was video games.

One game he and I have both been playing a bit is Pure Chess.

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Diable III, Mario Kart 7 update for 3DS, Magic: The Gathering - Gaming thoughts...

Just a few quick blurbs this morning as I try to get through my week.  I may be a bit light on posting over the next few weeks.  I'll have a few things scheduled, but with Memorial Day coming up, my dad visiting from Florida, a family outing to an amusement park planned and of course - a couple of new games that I need to hunker down and review - I may be busy.  And by this time next week, I'll hopefully be playing a little game known as Diablo III.

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Magic: The Gathering - nope... not the video games

Wow - I hit 50 followers last night.  I'm pretty excited about that! :)  So, how about a slightly different post as a result?  It's still gaming related, just not VIDEO gaming related... (but seriously - I really appreciate those of you who come here, and read what I babble on about.  I'm sure my wife does too, because now I have an outlet for talking gaming that is not just her having to smile and nod at me).  Moving on...

I've always been a big fan of Magic: The Gathering.  Well, I can't say 'always'.  I wasn't a first edition player.  I came into things around 4th edition/Ice Age.  I went back and bought cards from prior sets though, once I got into it, and I played for several years quite regularly.

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