Spellsworn - PC Preview

Until recently I hadn’t sat down to a MOBA in a while. I played a bit of Heroes of Newerth on launch, I’ve played DotA and DotA 2 in the early days and at LANs and finally I previewed Deadbreed when it was still available on Steam. Since then I haven’t really touched the style a whole lot until a simultaneous delve into two variations of the style. The first of these was Battlerite that my brother introduced me to and the second was Spellsworn which I dragged him along for the ride. What do the two have in common? It’s you versus the other players without the towers and the minions to get in the way!

Spellsworn is currently in Early Access through Steam and unfortunately for me, try as I might, finding a match is near impossible. With about a constant three hundred plus people online, I can find a match but I can’t join it. Doesn’t matter what I do I just simply get to the final stages of the joining and then it boots me out. I can make a match and play that way but people joining were few and far between so a lot of what I’ve been able to do so far has been with my brother and his friends that we dragged along for the ride.

Set in a close enough proximity of an arena, you and whoever else comes in for the ride will be facing off against one another in a Magicka style spell slinging slugfest. Starting off the match you can buy spells from an available selection that matches your playstyle. Fireballs, fire circles, magic barriers, poison spells and more are there and it takes some experimentation before finding out what works for you.

The gameplay is smooth enough and it’s really easy to pick up though at this stage we all found that trying to find a game other than the ones that we created was next to impossible. So we will be back in a bit in order to really take it out for a spin against other plays and not just others that we know and can yell out at through a Discord channel.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Frogsong Studios AB
Publisher(s):
Frogsong Studios AB
Genre(s):
Action
Magic Slinging
Mode(s):
Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves
Article by Marc L.

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Golem Gates - PC Review

"If I had to sum up Golem Gates in one statement, it would be stop reading this right now and go get it."

The above statement still stands. Golem Gates, by Laser Guided Games, is one of the best Real Time Strategies that I've played in a long time. Taking on the role of the Harbinger in order to restore your planet to what it used to be, you'll be facing off against others of equal power as you summon units from a deck built from collectible cards. There are no buildings to worry about, there are no drones to collect your resources. There is only you and your mana pool as you send your forces across the maps in order to decimate those that stand in your way.

Not having to worry about building up a base and drones brings a whole new element to the table when it comes to an RTS. Golem Gates while being all about the destruction of your foes, is destruction of your foes based off of two major elements. The first of these is still resource management as you have a mana pool that requires to be augmented if you're going to summon bigger and badder units faster. The second of these is luck as the other half of its core is that of a Collectible Card Game and your deck gets shuffled. Often.

Requiring a minimum of thirty cards, you'll be making adjustments to your deck as time goes on. In that deck, you can have whatever you want though it's fair to say that having units, and lots of them at that, is a good idea. With everything available though there is a balance that is going to need to be struct, unless you're really good at what you do. The reason for this as the more powerful the unit, the spell or the defensive structure, the more it costs to summon. As your mana pool near the beginning is not the biggest or even remotely fast, you'll want to start summoning a few smaller units to get the ball rolling and march them towards the first augmentation point before your foes take it over.

Because there are no based, everything about Golem Gates becomes much more mobile and fluid as you take over and capture points across the map. Some of these are to unlock doors while others are to speed up the generation of the mana that you'll need to summon out your units. These points will need to be defended so making sure that units are never really far is one way, but another is to leave a turret or two and if "shit really hits the fan" summon in several units to lay a smackdown or throw some potent spells your enemy's way.

This was perhaps one of the greatest features. Your Harbinger can summon units to anywhere that you can see on the map. Your forces are having a hard time? Drop in a large defensive type to take the brunt of the damage? Need to add that extra little push? Add in some minor attack troops or unleash hell with a unique special unit that can only exist as on instance on the field. The choice is yours but you have to see the location in order to summon to it.

That last statement was probably the biggest adjustment to it all. The fog of war in Golem Gates is very heavy and you never really see far requiring units like scout hounds almost necessary to see your enemy coming as you won't until they are on top of you. It's part of the strategy. I'll be honest at first that I thought it may have been part of the Early Access and development but after even just an hour or so it becomes clear that with the other systems in place it makes sense otherwise summoning units or using spells simply becomes broken if you can see that much at any time.

Now that Golem Gates has been fully release there are three chapters each with a series of missions to complete alongside a survival mode and a multiplayer. So really if one of these styles isn't your thing than one of the others surely will be.

Golem Gates is fantastic. Real Time Strategy mixed together with a Collectible Card Game makes for not only a flexible experience, but a personalized one. Instead of having to choose a race and being stuck with units you like or despise because you wanted the rest of them, you instead have exactly what you want. The catch? You need the mana to summon them! So dust off your capes and get your Harbingers out there!

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Laser Guided Games LLC
Publisher(s):
Laser Guided Games LLC
Genre(s):
Real Time Strategy
Collectible Card Game
Mode(s):
Single Player
Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings - PS4 Review

Like all good things, they must come to an end. Reaching the end of its trilogy, Atelier Lydie & Suelle bring to a close the mysteries started off by Sophie and continued by Firis. Moving back to the ideas of alchemists belonging to a location, join the twins Lydie and Suelle as they aim to keep a promise to their mother to become the best alchemists of the realm while also somewhat babysitting their useless father.

In a lot of ways, the end of the trilogy felt like a letdown compared to the first two entries. Sophie's adventure re-experimented with time moving forward without real time limits allowing for the exploration of the space around her town. Firis took the series in a whole new, and amazing Game of the Year worthy direction, with the journey of two sisters across a continent as Firis explored the lands outside of the cavern village that she grew up in to obtain recommendations to take the Alchemist Certification Exam. Coming to a close, Lydie and Suelle takes an overly safe route with the sisters being led on a hand holding adventure that only moves forward once you've completed a goal. There's no moving forward without it.

Now, I'm not saying that it's not a decent adventure. The writing is just as good as it's ever been. The character designs are as fabulous as ever especially with the prince of the realm and his punni mask. But mechanically after the previous two it feels more like something that the beginning of a trilogy should have been in order to draw in a new audience as it's very accessible but not feature heavy. The story really only moves forward once a particular task has been completed and you can't really fail at these tasks either. There are no timelines so you can take your time in order to stack the deck, or the materials, in your favor in order to ace the requests being given to you.

Like all budding alchemists, Lydie and Suelle start off at the bottom of the ranks making things go boom and more often than not cleaning more than synthesizing. This is until one fateful day in which as luck would have it, they both discover a mysterious painting that they can delve into for materials of amazing quality and afterwards find a teacher. I had wondered and assumed that the teacher would have been either Sophie who taught Firis or Firis herself but I was pleasantly surprised with the direction of it being Firis' rival and best friend who took up the mantel. This works out better as Firis will join the party later on and she's even more awesome now than she was before.

So with the stage set, each chapter falls into a pattern of having to complete xth amount of tasks in order to bring up the sister's popularity before being able to head to the castle in order to grab the current exam in order to bring up their rank. These tasks can be anything from pick up ten or thirty materials, jump ten times, fight in three or ten battles, perform alchemy or pick on a specific type of monster. Most of these will be chapter specific but it was nice that certain alchemic tasks such as performing the synthesis of a Neutralizer with specific qualities would already be marked as done if it happened to be in your inventory. In certain cases the tasks required were almost done before they even started.

Once these tasks are done and you obtain and then complete the exam, the real fun begins. After every exam a new painting is opened up for exploration and these are really what sell the title Alchemists of the Mysterious Paintings. Each painting is different from one another and new paths will open up as time goes on but it's their themes that clinch it. Without too many spoilers, the first is a haunted Halloween styled forest which wouldn't fit in the actual land's environment but being in a pocket dimensional space? It's perfect. This allows for plenty of different locations to be explored which otherwise wouldn't have made sense.

These locations are also really needed as unlike Sophie who had new locations unveil upon the map every time she explored further or Firis who simply kept walking and exploring to uncover new ones, Lydie and Suelle are stuck with the ones currently being granted by the story. There's no moving outside of those parameters and sometimes you really just want to get the chapter done and over with because your sitting on a bunch of recipes and no current access to the materials in other to synthesize them.

Combat I am happy stuck with the turned based approach that is based off of character speeds instead of everyone setting up their actions and performing them at the same time. Starting off with a party of two, and then three, once you eventually get access to a fourth character then they can either perform support actions such as healing hit points or mana as well as a follow up attack like Firis shooting a hail of ice arrows after a frost bomb had been thrown. Another neat little aspect is environmental effects such as an ice cavern which will drop stalactites onto everyone battling if a wind attack is being used. Does it hurt? Very much so. Was it worth using it? You bet.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is a decent end to the current trilogy but I wish that they would have gone for gold and pushed the envelope further like Gust had done for Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey instead of having played it safe. It's everything that an Atelier entry should be but after the previous two that pushed what was capable, they played it too safe making it feel more like the introduction to a trilogy instead of the end of one.

Game Information

Platform:
Sony PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
Gust
Publisher(s):
PER: KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD.
Genre(s):
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Nintendo Switch
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Jaggy's Corner! - Saturday April 14

Hoboy what a week! It's been filled with two things:

• Facebook on trial for privacy issues; and 
• Guild Wars 2 chaos. 

Since the Facebook issue is only somewhat related to gamers, I'll focus on the massive situation with Guild Wars 2.

Earlier in the week ArenaNet announced that they banned over 1600 accounts for using illegal third party software.

Many people have expressed confusion as to which programs are considered to be illegal according to ArenaNet's Terms of Service. What angered many in the community was the fact that this ban explicitly stated that there would be NO APPEALS. As in, it didn't matter if players had a CheatEngine installed on their computer, they would still be banned for SIX MONTHS.

For the record, CheatEngine is used by game developers to change a games code to gain unfair advantages. It is open source and functions as a memory scanner, a hex editor, and a debugging tool. It is used for having infinite health or ammunition in game and it is also the program that allows players to create aimbots which are commonly found in games like CS:GO.

Passionate GW2 players did what all internet warriors do, which is to QQ on Reddit. By doing so, the Reddit moderators deleted all account complaints from the site, and started a mega thread discussing the ban itself. People were kind enough to be civil which is a shock considering the horribly toxic PVP community base... I'm not even joking, I read through the entire thread.

One developer who had open dialogues with Anet staff ended up in the cross-hairs of the banwave. It was an interesting read but it shows that even testing mods without waiting for confirmation is bad news. In fact, while I think this person should get an appeal, he was pretty humble in his post even if the ban were to stand. We'll see what happens later.

Why is this huge?

Let's consider that in the MMO world, the reigning champ has been and will continue to be World of Warcraft. The fan base in GW2 isn't nearly as large despite its devoted player base. In fact, it has a thriving, largely passionate – and toxic – PVP community. (I'm sorry. I'm not a PVPer.) The thing is, there are some people who have been hit with this ban that perhaps shouldn't have. Apparently, that didn't matter when it got rolled out.

I see this as Anet taking a positive step by banning wilful cheaters, despite not telling what programs triggered the mass ban. They gave a generalized statement, leaving users to guess at which ad-ons were the culprits. It makes sense though. Why would Anet say which mods are acceptable and which aren't when people could easily attempt to circumvent the TOS? They wouldn't. (Although, I will eat that statement later in this article. Keep reading.)

Anyways, after I thought I knew enough about the situation, I stumbled across a different Reddit post written by someone who works for an anti-virus company. In the course of his day job, he uses certain programs that are meant to catch viruses and they achieve this by reverse engineering code. He explains how users in GW2 were likely targeted as a result of spyware installed from a patch, which checked the programs running on everyone's whole computer! You can read the post about that here.

He does provide a TL;DR version at the top of the page, so you don't have to read the whole thing to get the gist of it. Anyways, if his post has any merit, it's mildly horrifying in the wake of the privacy breaches on Facebook, but I digress...

So, on one hand, Anet used a method of discovering cheating programs in order to initiate a mass ban, and yet they failed to deal with the blatantly obvious PVP cheaters who were boosting people's accounts after payment had exchanged hands. These players were only given a three month ban but didn't receive any dishonor, much to the outcry of GW2 players.

I feel as though Anet is being rather contradictory here when it comes to PVP and perhaps has driven away some of its fan base. They are trying to find solutions to a problem with their PVP player base and yet has gone about it in a strange way. At least to me. This might be common practice for all I know... As I said, I don't tend to PVP so what do I know?

But Wait! There's More!

Anet released another statement this morning listing the culprits that earned people their bans. As I previously made mention, one of those is called CheatEngine. So even if the program wasn't used in GW2, game devs still received a ban just by having it on their system. Take a look at the post here:

So while I'm upset that Anet would take a blanketed approach to stopping cheaters, I'm also not comfortable with the idea that they feel they have the 'right' to check over whole computer systems. If in the coding one can prove that programs were used to cheat in GW2 - because that is the property that Anet owns - then you have a justified reason to ban players. However, checking out whole systems to see if there are cheats anywhere that CAN affect GW2 is NOT alright with me. Your EULA should not be extending that far, regardless of other companies following the same practices. One cannot ban people because of a potential threat!

Final Thoughts

In short, Anet, I love you, but for the love of gamers please find a better way to take such severe actions.  Ban the known account sharing PVPers like you should have long ago which is taking REAL action against them. And don't snoop on people's systems! The GAME is your property, not the computer.

To the cheaters, GET GUD SON or STEP OFF. Learn how to play the game properly. Otherwise, what's the point of playing the game then? You aren't owed anything. You aren't some PVP God that entitles you to money or items. You're pathetic and should move onto something else. I don't care.

And to those of you that earned yourselves a lovely ban because you willfully cheated, GOOD. You get no sympathy from me.

Until next time peeps.


Article by Susan N.

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Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption Slays Nintendo Switch - News

Love it or hate it, From Software have created not only their own beast but have inspired others to do the same in the style that they've created. Back for a bit more news is that Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is not only going to release on the PS4, the XB1 and the PC, but also the Nintendo Switch. Who would have thought that Nintendo could pull back into the competition after the WiiU? Both Dark Souls and Sinner to play on the bus? Hell ya!



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Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption Slays Nintendo Switch in Q3 2018

Simultaneous Launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

HONG KONG – April 11, 2018 – Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption the boss battler from publisher Another Indie and developer Dark Star Game Studios, will launch on Nintendo Switch alongside the previously announced PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows and Mac versions. All platforms will receive a simultaneous launch in Q3 2018.Dark Star Game Studios is composed of AAA veterans including a former Ubisoft art director, Konami senior programmer and a Blizzard technical artist.

To atone for his wicked crimes, Adam, a soldier with a dark past, must set out on a quest for redemption and face off against monstrous enemies based on the seven deadly sins. His vile deeds and history with these beasts will unfold as he draws closer to absolution.

Sacrifice a part of Adam before each duel and receive a permanent debuff, resulting in reduced health, strength or equipment for the entirety of the journey. Each battle will become tougher than the last as debuffs stack, but new gear can be obtained by successfully conquering trials.

If all hope is lost, revive a defeated enemy to regain a sacrificed attribute and revisit the battle later. Experiment to find the optimal path to redemption or take on all debuffs simultaneously from the start for a challenging and rewarding journey.

“Sinner allows the player to choose a difficulty that fits them best while facing off in diverse battles,” says Iain Garner, director of developer relations, Another Indie. “Whether they are in search of the easiest order of bosses to fight or if they want to start the game with the most difficult conditions, Sinner tailors the adventure to them.”

Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption will be available for $18.99 in English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Russian.

For more information about Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption visit the official website, check out the Another Indie Discord or follow the game on Twitter and Facebook.

Article by Pierre-Yves

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The Council: Episode 1 - The Mad Ones - PC Review

The Council, by Big Bad Wolf, is an episodic adventure where you guide a man named Louis on his search for his adventurous sleuth of a mother after she goes missing on a private island. Armed with choices and the ability to level up your skills after choosing a background profession, the rest is in your hands as you see the adventure unfold. Welcome to Chapter 1: The Mad Ones.

When it comes to experiences such as this one I'm not exactly the most versed as I've sat down to the first season of The Walking Dead and the first chapter of The Wolf Among Us. Outside of those two I haven't ventured too far into the style making my expectations for The Council somewhere between those and the brilliance that I found within The Little Acre's Point and Click style. Honest first impressions? Between the voice acting and the cinematic playout I was so engrossed that I forgot I was supposed to have my hand on the mouse for when the first of your many choices appeared.

The Council took me a bit by surprise as it's more than simply a point and click story on rails like the TellTale series. There's depths to the environments as well as how you decide to play out the adventure because of the implemented RPG leveling system that will grant you experience based on the decisions you've made. These decisions, at least for the first rounds of the title, will not quite be the same from one person to another because of two separate factors. The first, not everyone will choose the same background. The second, not everyone will make the same choices with that background or with what they plan to concentrate upon.

This is where Louis' adventure shines. Talking with various people like George Washington and high ranking Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church amongst others, you can decide on what you want to focus on. Do you ignore the situation completely? Do you focus on the medallion around someone's neck or do you focus on the facial expressions and of how they have they jaw set? The options for focusing can vary and being able to only choose one will unlock factors of a person such as what they are susceptible towards and what they are immune to in regards to “interrogation” and information gathering.

The versatility of how you can go about each situation was incredible and oftentimes with hindsight being 20/20, frustrating. I say this in the manner that when thinking of which skills you wish to concentrate upon often I found myself improving what I already had or thinking that something else wouldn't be immediately useful only to find myself lacking that particular skill right after inserting my skill points at the end of the sub chapter where your experience is tallied and skill points are allocated.

Learning new skills is done through both point allocation and simply experiencing the story. As you make choices to do or to not do something, new skills will unlock allowing you to do more as the adventure moves on. Furthermore, as you explore the environments books can be picked up that will allow you to equip them for the next sub-chapter in order to unlock the skill once it's over as you've spent an adequate amount of time reading it. There's more than one way to get what you want.


With how well designed the first chapter of The Council was, I'm looking forward to the next entry. With up to three save files that can be kept per profile, there are a few options to be kept and explored for how you go about solving the mystery that you now find yourself within.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Big Bad Wolf
Publisher(s):
Focus Home interactive
Genre(s):
Adventure
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4
Microsoft Xbox One

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Pit People - PC Review

Hello glorious adventurer, and welcome to the world of Pit People brought to you by The Behemoth, those same wonderful people that brought us Castle Crashers. With their signature art style and humor, prepare to submersed in a weird world that's a mutated cross between Pokemon, X-Com, and toilet jokes. So hoist your trousers and prepare for some questing, because shit is about to get weird and beary.

If someone asked me what the plot of Pit People is, I would probably answer "yes". There is, generally speaking, a weird overarching plot-line that incorporates some of the main characters, but it's almost entirely bad jokes, good jokes, weird, and bears. So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the plot isn't very important here, but if I were hard pressed to answer, it'd be a tale of a man and his son overcoming impossible odds, and science.

General game progression will happen through picking up main quests in your city, venturing out to complete them, and then returning. There are also a bunch of side quests with their own storylines as well, which can be taken before leaving, and a bunch of "instant quests" on the world map that you can pick up while on the go. Like Alphonso's birthday party, and he didn't invite you, what a dick! And he was murdered by his party guests, and they didn't invite you to that either! Or you can bring your friend to Tinkletown!

So how does one go about partaking in this wonderful world of slapstick humor, demiclops, living cupcakes and poop jokes? Well, it's quite simple, really. As mentioned earlier, you have a town where you can shop, recruit party members, equip your party members, and participate in the "unfair arena challenge".

When you leave, you can roam around the forest looking for fights. Getting into a fight, you generally start on opposite sides of a hex grid map. You then take turns alternating between your team moving and attacking, and the enemy team moving and attacking. There are ranged moves and melee moves, and certain types of armour are either more or less effective against different types of weapons.

Unfortunately, here is where the wonders of the most benevolent and merciless of RNG gods come into play. Basically, as long as your turn ends with your movement onto a tile where you can attack an enemy from, you will, generally speaking, attack ONE enemy. This means that if you're surrounded by a bunch of enemies and want to escape by killing the squishy ones, pray you attack the squishy ones and not the big burly one that doesn't care if you're attacking him with a tank, much less that tiny toothpick you call a sword.

There is a neat little blocking mechanic, where the bigger and heftier shields have a higher block chance, but tend to be bulkier, which affects your equip limit. The Pokemon aspect gets thrown in when you find out you can actually catch enemies as long as they're the last enemy left alive on the field and someone has come equipped with a capture net, and you have a free cage. Upon completing your quest, you will return to the city, retrieve your rewards, spruce up your party with the captured units, and then head back out to go beat some baddies faces in.

Supporting both a local and online co-op function, you can grab a buddy, or find one, and play with them too. Team composition is a fun and exciting experience, with a wide variety of possible minions, some requiring multiple spots in your roster, each with their own positive and negative aspects. Perhaps you'll have a horde of giants, or a mushroom bonanza?

With some humour that's really on point, a load of characters, quests, and items to mess around with, and a surprisingly large world map to travel, Pit People is one hell of a chaotic journey, but definitely a fun one.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
The Behemoth
Publisher(s):
The Behemoth
Genre(s):
Strategy
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
None for the moment

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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Extinction - PC Review

The first time I had heard of Extinction I was already intrigued by a brief description and decided to look up a few quick videos, as soon as I saw the cinematic I knew I wanted this. A few quick minutes of downloading and installation I was ready to play.

In this world humanity is on the brink of Extinction due to Ravenii that have decided to attack all of humanity. This is where the main character Avil and his new found partner Xandra have come together with a new method to defeat the incoming invasion. The main purpose of the game is to save as many citizens of the invaded towns from being brutally murdered by removing the heads of these colossi as well as taking out their Jackal heanchmen.

The design of the levels and the towns is quite nice especially with the addition of the colors and animations of the skills used making it quite eye catching. While you are within these levels, you do not actually have a completion timer as much as you have an “extinction” timer. A game over happens when the “Ravenii” destroy the last building in town. As much as each level does not sound as difficult as it is to simply chop off the bad guy(s)' head, there is much more to do if you plan on having a higher completion rate.

A mission has several components: complete the main objections and if you have time, or the skill, complete the bonus objectives. These bonus objectives are as simple as “save 10-16 citizens”, “destroy 6-10 pieces of giant armor”, or in other more complicated missions, something a bit more intense and time consuming while the giants rampage around. In order to decapitate the “giants” rampaging around, and thus completing the stage, you must first power up your rune power. Only when you have reached maximum power can you cut off their heads. To fill up the gauge to full you can either fight the “Jackal” henchmen to save citizens or break the armors off the “giants”.

As long as you finish the level, despite of how much of the city is intact or how many people you saved, you will complete the mission but the rewards will vary. One issue I had with this game is when you game over or fail a mission. The game says “hold to skip” but simply does a fast forward and does not skip any conversations. Also, any conversations or quick phrases said within the missions must be heard fully and also cannot be skipped. EVER. I found this to be quite tiring when I wanted to replay the levels multiple times to reach the max reward.

The main issue I had with Extinction is with this is how awkward the combat can be. It is not that the combat is bad, but there were a lot of issues when fighting the “Ravenii". During combat you need to either hope there is a building intact in order to “mount” the “Ravenii” or you have to climb up from the ground. When climbing up I often found that the game would guide me into the arm pits, become stuck, and slide back down to the bottom. This did not always occur but more often than not depending on a change of camera angle, the camera would do odd things to how well you could climb up the “Ravenii”. Apart from the strange way of climbing, the combat is pretty smooth and enjoyable. The rune strikes are a nice animation and fighting the smaller foes feels great.

Over all I found Extinction to be a great game. It's a little rough around the edges for combat, and repetitive on game overs, but with a smooth gameplay and beautiful scenery makes this game very much worth playing. I give this title 7.5/10 and I'm glad I got to give it a shot.

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Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Iron Galaxy
Publisher(s):
Modus Games
Genre(s):
Action
Adventure
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4
Microsoft Xbox One

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Marc L.

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Shuto Con 2018: Cosplay - A Look at the Attendees

Wrapping up my list of articles around Shuto Con 2018, I thought I would share a bunch of images taken over the course of the weekend.

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Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 5: Same Stitch - Xbox One Review

The two different seasons of Telltale Batman games have been excellent almost across the board with each episode. The finale for season two doesn't disappoint either. Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 5: Same Stitch continues the trend of strong writing and creative use of familiar characters in unfamiliar circumstances to craft a satisfying conclusion to an entertaining look at both Batman and Bruce Wayne.

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Shuto Con 2018: Getting to know Lauren Landa

The last of the guest panelists I had a chance to listen to was Lauren Landa, and she was a fantastic way to end the series. She was frank, funny and a lot of fun to listen to.

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Phantom Halls - PC Preview

Phantom Halls, other than being one of my “obligatory” horror titles that I set myself to do in a year, took me by surprise. It’s horror themed but it’s not scary. Taking one of several possible characters as your lead, in which each have their own special abilities, they also come with quests and the ability to bring two others along for the ride. So what do a Goth, a Cheerleader and a Nerd have in common? Wanting to survive a haunted house that is so packed with weapons that even Ash from the Evil Dead would want to partake in the action! Oh wait, he does!

Currently within Early Access and slotted to launch for Halloween later this year, Incendium took to Kickstarter in order to give a better final product. If what is already present is any indication, they’ve got nothing to worry about.

Using papercrafted models, you’ll be guiding three characters through a two dimensional haunted house in order to achieve the goal that you’ve set out for them. Ignoring the standard horror movie logic, and Dungeons & Dragons one by this point, the party does not split up but stick together in a tight moving formation of weapons and flashlights. What I appreciated the most is that while all three move together for good and bad… damned falling chandeliers… is that they can act independently of one another making for a formidable fighting force.

While moving left and right, your characters can look from down on the ground to up on the ceiling in order to aim their weapons or their swings. Baseball bats, frying pans, pistols, assault rifles or uzis, if you’ve got it use it. Between you and whatever goal has been set out such as collecting bat wings or killing xth amount of spiders, there will be skeletons, spiders, bats, gargoyles and a lot of other crazy stuff trying to kill you when the environment itself isn’t trying.

What I loved about Phantom Halls is that while it’s not “scary”, the horror themes are all present making you want to take your time and not simply rush through. Pretty much because if you do you might as well give up as that’ll be “game.” With just about two weeks left to go on the campaign there’s plenty of time to take a look at it or to jump onto the Early Accessed version that comes with groovy Evil Dead 2 content.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Incendium LLC
Publisher(s):
Incendium LTD
Genre(s):
Action
Adventure
Horror
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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