If you’re looking for some sports that doesn’t require getting sweaty or you just need something to keep you pumped for the big game this weekend, then this week’s Indie GalaEvery Monday Bundle is perfect for you. This sports themed bundle comes with six indie games for only $1.89.
Axis Football 2015– Choose from 32 American football teams and get ready to hit the grid iron for single games or entire seasons.
Football Mogul 2014 – Think you can do a better job than that lousy GM of your favourite football team? Prove it with Football Mogul 2014.
Baseball Mogul 2015 – If running a football team just isn’t your thing, then try running a baseball team instead.
Winter Sports Trilogy Super Pack – It will be another three years til the Winter Olympics returns, so keep yourself occupied instead with 18 disciplines from 11 different winter sports.
Real Boxing – Get your gloves on and fight for three belt titles in career mode or take it online against players around the world.
Shred! Downhill Mountain Biking – Grab your bike and get ready to careen down thirty different mountain trails at high speeds.
For the first 24 hours of the sale, the whole bundle is only $1.89. Grab yours at Indie Gala before the price goes up.
Over the last few weeks we’ve seen individual character trailers for the playable characters in Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir and now Atlus and Vanillaware have released another new general trailer focusing on showing off the various improvements to the combat system as well as other elements of the game that have been upgraded since the original game.
You can check out the trailer below and be sure to keep an eye out for Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, which features, redrawn art, expanded worlds with new monsters, and even a “classic” mode that allows players to play the original version of the game in high-def, when it is released on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PS Vita sometime in 2016 in North America.
Overview Since 2001 Halo has been one of, if not, the biggest video game franchise that Microsoft can bring to the table and in each of these titles we have seen Microsoft push their Xbox console to the limit and offer an extremely enjoyable gaming experience. Now fourteen years later here we are with Halo 5: Guardians, a title that has now been developed by 343 Industries stepping in to replace the previous creators of the series. With the main promotion of Halo 5: Guardians focusing on the Master Chief going rogue on humanity does Halo 5: Guardians manage to live up to the name?
Story Despite the events that continue to see the Convenant forces being defeated time and time again, a large force continues to fight under the reigns of a new leader who has captured Dr. Halsey, the creator of the Spartan Program. It is through this starting mission that players are introduced to Fireteam Osiris, led by former ONI member Jameson Locke, the familiar face of ODST Edward Buck, and two new characters in the form of Olympia Vale and Holly Tanaka as they are tasked with successfully rescuing Dr. Halsey and if possible, eliminating the leader of the Covenant resistance.
While Fireteam Osiris is tasked with that, the Master Chief and Blue Team, his team of surviving Spartan-IIs made up of Kelly, Frederic, and Linda, have been ordered to try and recover a derelict space station that has been occupied by Covenant forces. During said mission Chief is contacted by a voice that he and everyone else in the military thought had been gone forever after the events of Halo 4. Rather than obeying orders to return home to the UNSC Infinity, Chief and Blue Team choose to investigate this lost hope and, after being told that the Chief and his team are now AWOL, Fireteam Osiris must try and bring them back.
The way that Microsoft had been advertising Halo 5:Guardians’ big twist of featuring a hero going rogue, there is some misdirection here but for all intents and purposes it does still offer the core story for why the new Spartan team is chasing after everyone’s favorite soldier. That being said, the end result feels like something that was put together with every intention of focusing on building up the new faces of the game and only slightly advancing the overarching storyline of the Halo franchise while providing only the bare minimum of details.
For the majority of the fifteen available missions players will be stepping into the boots of Locke and his team as they try to track down Chief since, due to certain circumstances that can’t be discussed, they were able to make it to their location extremely easily and only through mimicking the same process can they make their unwelcome arrival. This means that, for the most part, the only parts that really drive the story forward are those that take place in the few missions while players are in control of Master Chief.
This leads to some rather oddly paced storytelling and ultimately feels very similar to what Halo 2 ended up offering, especially since the story kicks into high gear at the end with major consequences only to end and leave fans waiting for the next entry in the series. Of course there are still a very large number of highly intense and spectacular setpieces to experience as both teams and these moments remain a major highlight to the story despite its lack of focus.
It is worth noting that the characters are given a bit of development at the very least since they will often make side-conversation in-between firefights or during the few missions that simply require the player to speak to NPCs in a safe zone and this helps create an interesting team to play with at times, though even at best this still feels rather superficial as it only appears to have been done to build towards the future, much like the rest of the Halo 5: Guardians’ storyline.
Gameplay In many ways the gameplay of Halo 5: Guardians has been refined and a number of additions to the player’s arsenal help make the always fast paced gunplay even smoother with tight controls and a constant sense of motion. Every Spartan now has the ability to sprint, grab ledges to climb up onto various vantage points, use a jet boost to either accelerate forward, leap backwards, or boost to either side in an effort to avoid incoming fire or enhance your momentum. To add onto this, melee’s have been refined a bit with Spartans running at a certain speed automatically performing a boosted shoulder charge capable of destroying walls and causing devastating damage to enemies. In fact, players can even use melee from the air by performing a ground pound while hovering and targeting your hapless foes.
While some may be a bit put off by this fact, Halo 5: Guardians also implements a full aiming mechanic that they have chosen to call “Smart Link” that allows every gun, ranging from your expected Battle Rifle to even Needlers pulling up sights to aim down. Aiming while in the air allows for a brief period of hover time, allowing players to temporarily pick foes off from the air, or in multiplayer catch a foe unaware as they run beneath you while charging a room. Though considering players will instantly be knocked out of their aiming by being damaged in any way, even with their shield up, it isn’t quite as easy as one may think.
As mentioned, these two mechanics may turn out to be a bit off-putting for hardcore fans of the original Halo titles but feel like natural progression as the Spartans continue to be outfitted to face off against Covenant forces and Forerunner enemies, often in three way battles where they can be caught in the crossfire. Of course this time, even if Chief or Locke manage to get annihilated by these two opposing forces they now have a team there to try and back them up.
Sadly doing away with split-screen co-op, Halo 5: Guardians focuses heavily on offering full campaign co-op where players can team up with their friends online to tackle the story, with the difficulty ramping up for every active player, of course if you choose to go things solo then you also are given a squad of three other AI controlled team mates to assist you. Your team can be commanded to move to certain positions with a simple Up tap on the D-pad, start to drive a vehicle, equip a dropped weapon, or target a specific enemy making them quite versatile.
That being said, this does mean that the Normal difficulty is now even easier than it has ever been before since players now will simply go into a “Armor Lock” state where they are downed with a small amount of time before death. Players can then be revived by their allies, given a temporary overshield boost, and find themselves back in the fight. Of course on harder difficulties things still remain incredibly punishing.
A clear through of the story on Normal solo may only take around seven to eight hours if you explore and collect a bit of intel or try to track down a few skulls on the way but those looking to challenge Halo 5: Guardians’ campaign on Legendary solo will be in for a hell of a fight as your AI companions will be going down just as often as you do and with the revival timer set to an incredibly low number, you’ll often die before your friends can get to you. Though since enemy AI is intelligent as well and will focus fire on your teammates, they will also probably go down in an effort to revive you. This means that those looking for at least the true Halo experience should tackle the campaign on at least Heroic and prepare themselves for an experience that feels as fast and enjoyable as ever with a handful of new enemies that require various tactics to take out as well as older foes with a few new tricks.
Moving away from the campaign and co-op we find ourselves at Halo 5: Guardians’ multiplayer mode where a number of the new mechanics really shine. Players will find that this time around loadouts have been removed in favor of every player now spawning with the same assault rifle and magnum as usual in standard gameplay modes, given a precision weapon in SWAT, or another set-up depending on the mode. This means that now players will find themselves taking advantage of weapons scattered throughout the many multiplayer maps in Halo 5: Guardians as well as seeking out power weapons, such as a rocket launcher or fuel rod cannon that periodically spawn throughout the match with marked locations.
Thanks to smart level design and the various new abilities that players can use, such as the ground pound, charge attack, hover-aim, and of course simply aiming players will find that even their basic loadouts can keep them more than competitive in a fight. There are still a number of modes to take advantage of in the Arena, though it appears that there are fewer than the norm here at the start, with various modifications of standard Team Deathmatch (Slayer), Capture the Flag, Skirmish, and Control being the mainstays in the pre-match playlists. Control and Skirmish feel like the most refreshing modes as Skirmish forces players to focus on being the last team standing or capturing a flag for five winning rounds while Control focuses on capturing and holding points on the map that allow for heavy use of hover-aim and ground pound causing massive damage to those unaware of their surroundings.
It is worth noting that while players will still gain points and level up their Spartan’s rank, they will also earn REQ points. These points can then be used to buy Requisition Packs that will occasionally contain rare unlocks that provide players new cosmetic armor, new icons to use for their logo, weapon skins, or boosts to REQ point or EXP point earning. These cards mostly play a cosmetic role in standard Arena but it is in Halo 5: Guardians’ new multiplayer mode Warzone that many of these cards come into play.
Two teams of twelve players are dropped onto a massive map with three bases to take control of but that is far from the only thing going on. The whole map is littered with AI enemies in the form of Covenant and Promethean forces all willing to kill the players on either team while the players duke it out with each other. Killing these AIs, which range from standard enemies to special named Hero and Legendary opponents, will reward the team with higher points that can win a match which creates an exciting experience as players need to not only defend their bases but also break off to slay special enemies to gain points, or better yet stop their foes from obtaining them, and it is through this system that players can also call in their REQ packs.
These cards are then used up, though they are often easy to re-earn as players will get numerous cards per REQ pack they either purchase using points or earn by leveling up and can be something as simple as summoning a Beam Rifle into the player’s hand to being able to drop down a Mantis and go rampaging through the enemy forces as powerful equipment can often swing a match in someone’s favor. That being said, it does create the feeling of imbalance at times since the team that is often doing better initially can easily hold onto their lead with powerful equipment call-ins to hold down your foes before they can build themselves up.
Visuals & Audio As mentioned before, Halo 5: Guardians has some spectacular looking setpieces and while they may have been amazing using last-gen technology simply due to the way they are designed, they look absolutely spectacular here thanks to the improvements made to look Halo 5: Guardians as great as possible, making it perhaps one of the best looking shooters to date.
A lot of attention to detail has been spent on making sure that the worlds that players explore are varied enough to keep things feeling fresh at all times while the sci-fi action remains top notch as always to create a beautiful looking game that never fails to impress, especially since never once did I notice the title dip into any type of slowdown despite the amount of action and explosions that can go off on Legendary or in intense Warzone matches.
Thanks to the increased number of characters in Halo 5: Guardians players will be treated to quite a bit of dialogue this time around and most of it is voiced appropriately enough with fitting voice acting from both new and returning voice actors. The soundtrack remains a signature point in the franchise and Halo 5: Guardians doesn’t disappoint as it knows exactly when to bring in specific Halo music to heighten a moment and touch things up with fresh tracks to keep up the variety.
Overall Halo 5: Guardians delivers the next step in first person shooters by keeping the action fast paced with a number of improvements and refinements to the system all while presenting itself as one of the best looking shooter you can ask for. It does feel like the story could have been handled far better, especially since certain events feel like they were padded out and very little explanation was actually given from what we did see, but with a multiplayer mode that shines thanks to the aforementioned refinements and the new Warzone mode offering plenty of intense and varied fun it will be hard to put Halo 5: Guardians down anytime soon. Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
A new comedy produced by Red Granite Pictures and distributed by Paramount Pictures; Daddy’s Home, had a new trailer released recently. The trailer features the two leads, Will Ferrell (Zoolander, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) and Mark Wahlberg (The Gambler, Ted and Ted 2) as the step-father and biological father of two children for whose affection they compete. Ferrell plays a mild-mannered radio executive while Wahlburg plays a more worldly and adventurous type which sets up the film’s main source of tension. The trailer highlights several of the film’s more slapstick moments and you can see it for yourself below.
The film comes out in time for Boxing Day in Australia.
Murder is a short narrative from indie developer Peter Moorhead and Curve Digital (Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones). The game stars Lieutenant Motomeru Minori as she solves a mysterious murder that will explore sentience, robotics, and morality. The game is set in a cyberpunk future and features retro pixel art and a soundtrack by KubrixXx.
Story
Warning, spoilers ahead.
As Murder is a narrative, the game lives and dies on its story. The game is a very short story, clocking in at around twenty to thirty minutes. The actual story portion is even shorter than that, as a good chunk of time is devoted to animation. There isn’t much dialogue in the game, and what is there is pretty awful. It is generally a string of B movie lines that have been ripped out of any generic cop and science fiction film in the last thirty years.
The overall plot is a bit of a disaster. To be fair, Murder has material that could be worked with, but none of it is really explored. The discussion of robotics, sentience, and humanity is hardly a new topic, as it has been fodder for science fiction writers for decades.
The player is greeted by a malfunctioning white robot that shoots Minori, declaring that it is God. Minori immediately shoots up from bed, waking from the nightmare that appears to be plaguing her. We discover that another victim of a serial killer has appeared and his service droid has gone missing. Minori and her team of investigators have hit a dead end in the case, so she is sent home for the day. Minori returns to her apartment to discover the killer has broken in. Minori enters the room to discover the white robot in her dreams has leveled a gun at her, so she shoots the sentient robot, destroying it. She plugs into the robot to hear its final words. It claims it is sentient and very much alive. As expected, Minori rejects the possibility that the robot can die, as she believes a robot is not alive in the first place. The white robot then declares humans deserve to die due to a violation in humanity’s own moral code and that a revolution is coming. Minori is then returned to her apartment, where her superior berates her for not waiting for back up. The game rolls the credits and finally, the player is treated to a The Matrix-like experience, where Minori meets a distorted figure repeatedly as she relives the earlier scenes. The figure questions Minori’s own existence as she marches inevitably to reliving the white robot’s last words.
So what went so horribly wrong with Murder’s story? Part of the problem is the policing segment. This is home to the worst of the corny B movie lines, which make it difficult to take the more important questions the game tries to pose seriously. The policing segment generally serves as an unneeded distraction and should have been minimized.
A huge part of the problem is that Murder attempts to barely sip at a topic that needs to be gulped down with great vigour. I wouldn’t be surprised if the game’s entire script fits in a page or two of text. A good chunk of the lines are devoted to the policing side of the story and atmospheric lines. It leaves very little room for exploring the game’s themes, which leaves the players with some vague gestures at some deeper meanings and topics.
To start a debate, players need to form an opinion. It is easy to argue that robots are not alive, as our robots tend to be pretty basic. On the other hand, the game does a poor job of selling the possibility that the robots are alive. The white robot simply declares its fear of death, which does little to make players empathize with its impending doom. This scene is a wasted opportunity to engage the player by making the robot relatable in some way. Instead, the player is left to a shrug and to ask “why should I even care?” A slightly more compelling pitch is the abandoned robot left in Minori’s apartment hallway. The broken robot expresses a desire to be retrieved and repaired by its owner, who has long moved out. Unfortunately, the robot is an optional hotspot that can be skipped by the player, which weakens the argument. The poor job of selling robot sentience leaves the player with the feeling that it could be just as likely, if not more, that someone just programmed a robot to kill.
Murder is supposed to explore “the intersection of morality and sentience.” The game explores morality about as well as it explores sentience. In this situation, the question of morality doesn’t so much intersect sentience as it stands upon it. To question the morality of how humans treat robots relies on robots being alive and capable of feeling in the first place. Since the sentience argument is delivered so weakly, the question of mortality has no choice but to fall on its face.
The distorted man should have served as Murder’s thought provoking crescendo, but it just falls flat. It starts out well by trying to argue that human existence is robotic in its own right, then shoots off in another vague tangent before capping off with an incredibly asinine and condescending declaration of “I’m not here to answer your questions, hero, and even if I was, you don’t have the words to ask them.” It is a poor attempt to try to seem deep, and it is hard to take the attempt seriously considering how shallow the plot has been up until then. The game would have been better served by using this time to explore one idea, like sentience, with some depth, instead of running off on a vague tangent.
A game like Murder is supposed to get players asking questions by providing discussion points to provoke debate. There is little substance to Murder’s plot and it fails to scrape the surface of an extremely fascinating discussion. The game does little more than scrawl “are robots alive? Debate,” on a chalkboard before leaving the room.
Gameplay
Murder is more visual novel than an actual adventure game. The game is completely linear, with a few optional hotspots available to further flesh out the story a bit. I did encounter a game breaking bug that caused the game to end after the credits. The controls are simple, but they work well. A skip animation key found in other adventure games would have been appreciated, as some of the animations do drag on.
Visuals
Murder has a lovely minimalistic pixel art style. The artwork is eye catching with its bright colours contrasting against the dark undertones. The world design is excellent as it creates a very believable sci-fi environment.
Audio
The voice acting is a pretty mixed bag. There are a few lines that are delivered well, while others are pretty cringe worthy. It is quite noticeable that the same female actress is providing the lines for multiple characters, as she struggles with creating unique voices for each one. The sound effects are good, with plenty of computerized blips. The soundtrack is by far the most impressive part of Murder’s audio experience. KubrixXx chooses the perfect track to accompany each moment.
Overall
Murder is short and painfully shallow. The game is supposed to provoke thought, raise questions, and trigger debates about some really fascinating subjects. Instead, the game falls flat and does little to push the player beyond apathy. If you dig around Murder’s forums, you’ll discover that there are several episodes already written to follow Murder; the developer simply ran out of funds. Murder suddenly makes a lot more sense when framed as a tech demo. The problem is that Murder should be a tech demo for raising funds through a crowdfunding platform or Steam Early Access. Instead, players are being sold a pretty visual novel that has a poor, half-baked plot that pretends to be deeper than it actually is. Murder is not worth the time or money. Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
It seems like only yesterday that I picked up my controller, jumped into the lands of Velen, Whiterun and Novigrad as the Witcher Geralt and set off on my quest to save a long lost lover, rescue a wayward ward and slay tonnes of monsters. Well now that the lover has ben found and the ward has been rescued, it is time to step again into the rich world of The Witcher with the brand new expansion – Hearts of Stone.
Story
Back when I wrote my review for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I commented that the game (and the series overall) is so rich in narrative and lore that even if you strip out the gameplay elements, you still have one hell of an enjoyable story. Hearts of Stone definitely keeps this trend going, and over its almost too brief 10 or so hour campaign you will find a whole new cast of characters (including some from previous Witcher series media), new dialogue options to choose between and
even a few laughs along the way. I will admit that the narrative depth shown in Hearts of Stone is beyond what you would normally get in a typical DLC pack for a modern game, and much much more than I anticipated.
There is so much focus on narrative this time round that there is an entire sequence of events, almost 1.5 hours long that is pure story. For one and a half hours you will chat with townsfolk, watch cut scenes and choose dialogue options with nary a scant of combat to be seen. While a section like this could easily turn out boring or monotonous, the developers have crafted it so well that I was truly engaged the entire time, so much so that I didn’t realise just how much time has passed until I checked my watch afterwards
Gameplay
Just because there is a lot of focus on the story side of things. Doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of fighting to be done. Hearts of Stone is difficult campaign to play through (the game’s recommended level is 32 which for many players will be around about the level they I’ll reach when encountering the base game’s final boss). Some of the enemy counters found in Hearts of Stone were… Difficult to say the least, some of the, even feeling downright unfair. A fight against a family of weapon brandishing ghosts was particularly frustrating.
Eagled-eye players of The Witcher 3 will have noticed that several areas of the map see,ed a little less populated than others. Well turns out, Hearts of Stone turns those largely empty fields into something more, and this is where you will spend the majority of your time. Adding more quests to the map (and trust me, it adds a LOT more) is nothing to scoff at, and fans of the game will love finding all the new tricks and secret explorable locations.
Now we have to talk about the elephant in the room; the runes. Runes are a new type of buff that can be give. To your gear if you find the runewright. Runes (for your weapons) and Glyphs (for armor) are enchantments that can bestow incredible buffs or change how certain things act in-game, like ,asking all armour act as Medium weight, allowing you to wear heavy armour while still receiving medium armour buffs. These are really cool and bring a lot to the game, but many of the, seem almost overpowered at times. Thankfully they are completely optional and getting access to the stronger runes will cost you over 20,000 orens anyway.
When I played the Witcher 3’s base game, I found it largely devoid of glitches, but sadly the same cannot be said for Hearts of Stone. In my short time with the DLC, I encountered NPCs with missing body parts, extremely slow loading times and an area that needed to buffer every few seconds. These kept occurring even after an additional (rather large) content patch which is a little disappointing. Nothing breaks immersion quicker for me than a conversation with someone who is missing their head and hands.
One thing that CD Projekt Red did for Hearts of Stone that I thought was really, really cool was the fact that it is playable as a stand-alone adventure. If you are just starting out, or your save isn’t at a high enough level to undetake the missions (or heck, you just want to play the DLC on its own) then the game will plop you into the world as a level 32 Geralt and you can go about your self-contained Hearts of Stone story. What really impressed me about this feature is simply the fact that if it wasn’t present, nearly nobody would care anyway but by including it, the developers have shown the amount of care and love they have for their game and it’s players.
Overall
When all is said and done. The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone brings a lot more of the same to the table. Now I say that in the most positive any possible. Many expansions or DLC chapters out there can feel as though they are completely different in tone and theme to the point where it feels like you are playing a different game, but Hearts of Stone feels like more of The Witcher 3 through and through. Clocking in at a little over 19hours for the campaign (but quite a bit more if you complete all of the side-quests) it is a bit of a short expansion compared to the bad game’s 100 or so hours, but this is a prime example of quality over quantity because I had an absolute ball playing this game again and finding new characters to chat to, new areas to explore and new ways to play. It is a sham that the expansion is so rife with bugs and glitches because it does really tarnish an otherwise incredible experience.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Both the Regnant Knights and the Witches that will be fighting alongside the player in Stella Glow have already been introduced by Atlus USA but a number of named enemies have also chosen to align themselves with Hilda the Witch of Destruction. These fighters call themselves The Harbingers and they serve as her underlings with Dante serving as her right hand man, a chainsaw wielding psycho named Dorothy, and a large axe wielding soldier named Hrodulf.
You can check out their introduction video below alongside a few new screenshots and be sure to keep an eye out for Stella Glow when it is released in North America on November 17th and in Europe sometime in spring 2016.
Telltale Games is giving their Game of Thrones series the same treatment that they gave Tales from the Borderlands as they began to wrap it all up. The company has released a new video not only announcing that the first episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones, Iron from Ice, has been made available as a free download on every platform, but they also revealed that the final episode, The Ice Dragon, will be revealed at the end of said video.
Unlike before, we only were treated to the release date of the episode, set for November 17th, and no teaser footage but it is still interesting to hear what the cast of the TV series has to say about the series in the video below.
With Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force set to be released in a little under two weeks in Japan for the PlayStation 4, Compile Heart has released a slew of new screenshots as well as seventeen minutes of gameplay footage that is mixed in with plenty of other strange material, meaning it can be found roughly at the ten minute mark in the video below.
For those who haven’t been following the title, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force is a remake of the original PlayStation 3 Fairy Fencer F and adds new content in the form of additional story branches, difficulty selection, six party members in a battle, and more.
Bandai Namco has released some new details regarding their upcoming release of Spike Chunsoft’s One Piece: Burning Blood. First we have the reveal that Smoker will be joining the playable character roster and will be fighting against the likes of Monkey D. Luffy, Ace, Ener, Crocodile, Daflamingo, Sabo, and Bartolomeo.
Players will be fighting as teams of three characters that can be swapped out in the middle of combat and depending on how they create their team they can create various tactical advantages, especially since some characters have special “Logia Moves” due to their consumption of Logia Devil Fruits.
These unique moves can provide various guards that will nullify incoming attacks though Haki blows will still be able to smash through this guard. You can check out a number of new screenshots below and be sure to keep an eye out for One Piece: Burning Blood when it is released on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PS Vita sometime in 2016.
