For those who haven’t had their fill of the exceptional multi-player of Gears of War Judgment, the lastest DLC map will be released next week, and for FREE…for a limited time, that is. Continue reading →
Fans of the cult favorite, Borderland 2 will have more to get excited about as a new character, as well as new DLC is coming in the near future. Continue reading →
If you are the same as me, you have been patiently awaiting Behemoth Studios follow-up to the extremely addictive, and genuinely peculiar gem Castle Crashers. Well it’s here and boy is it strange, but what would you expect from a company that once brought you a chase scene where a knight rides a diarrhea- ridden baby deer-back on a crap-fueled voyage through a sawmill. Battleblock starts aboard your super best friend, Hatty Hattington’s vessel of good times, the SS Friendship, with it packed to the brim with with your next closest friends all ready for their typical happy afternoon excursion. It doesn’t take long for things to take a serious turn for the worse when the friends are cast ashore and you and your buddies are left as prisoners and participants in the newly possessed Hatty’s unethical theater of violence by the it’s catty inhabitants.
It won’t take long for you to realise how massive this game actually is, with hundreds of prisoners, and weapons to unlock, and limitless levels thanks to an in-depth level editor and with the constantly evolving Fur Bottom’s Features playlist, and tons of game types it’s evident that extreme amounts of replay value was something the behemoth had in mind from the start. The level design and mechanics are refreshing, with unique twists on the typical platformance that we are used to out of the “big three”. Battleblock will have you jumping through a sometimes grueling gauntlet of tough jumps and puzzles with no fucks given. The game features solid controls for a platformer and besides in cases of extreme Ninja Gaiden-esque moments work wonderfully and makes it simple to do complicated wall jumps with precise timing. Once and a great while you will have some trouble mounting steeds or tossing an item, but all in all may just make the game more fun in the heat of the moment. I found that there was was very little time needed to get adjusted to the new additions to the tried and true jumping, climbing, and sliding mechanics and was nimble as a kitten in no time at all.
The customization is incredibly fun to monkey around, and make your player a monkey, or a bear, moose, really any type of character you can dream up. It tends to be a little underwhelming when it comes to how much you can customize with the head being the only thing that changes, however you can pallette swap your color tone to your liking which makes for a nice touch and the heads that are available are odd and unique every time The weapons are fun and can add a lot of strategy to each match, or stage with everything from fireballs, and UFO – like exploding frisbees to cane-wielding frogs (as everyone knows nothing beats whooping your friends asses with a hadoken). If that doesn’t get you wanting to collect them all enough, you can also trade and swap items through trading booths in the well thought out HUD world that fills your time between performances.
The multiplayer just as it was for Castle Crashers, is the standout part of this game. It features several different varieties to your typical blocky carnage, with game modes like Capture The Flag (Capture The Horse), Basketball (Ball Game), Paint (Color The World) and others that are simple but sweet competitive fun fests. There are ranked,unranked,local and online modes for all of the above, with leaderboards available so you can show off to your friends and foes alike. All of the game types can be arranged in custom playlists, with custom levels as an option for levels on said playlists. BattleBlock also features an entirely new co-op campaign separate from the solo mode, with tons of levels with cleaver team-based puzzles that will have you and a buddy scratching your heads in synchronicity. If that wasn’t enough already, you can share and upload your custom levels with your friends and the world alike, and really couldn’t be more accessible to get the hang of.
The music is funky and just plain bizarre, which fits such a strange game just perfectly. It features very catchy vaudeville-esque beats with horns and bass standing out with clarity, in a very bizarre cacophony of weird. The sounds effects are just plain poppy with little grunts and thumps and reminiscent of saturday morning cartoons with a few more fart sounds thrown in the mix for good measure The voice overs are charming, (yet it is sometimes disturbing how little the announcer cares about whither you live or die), memorable, and down right coy at times, and seem to fuel the rage that makes some of the later levels so challenging. All of these things combined seem to add a lot to the theatrical nature of Hatty’s Island of death and are part of BB’s simple joys.
The entire experience of Battleblock is that of a platformer evolved, with interesting weapons and level design that make it play better than this day-and-ages platformers. Completionists and hobby gamers alike will find themselves come back to collect all of the heads and weapons like a kid in a candy store with a sweet tooth, due to the sheer randomness of the unlocks in both a visual and mechanical sense. Battleblock Theater may have a couple frustrating moments for the novice lava jumping plumber fanboy but is a great game nevertheless, and never stops feeling like it is rewarding. It is a great pick-up and play title and is perfect for short gaming sessions with friends and will leave you yearning for the next pen and ink gem from Behemoth. BattleBlock is available on XBOX Live and will set you back 1200 Microsoft ducats but will surely pay for itself as soon as you grab some friends and gather some of those shiny, shiny gems.
Let us start with a riddle, If you combine Terminator’s Kyle Reese, Escape From New York’s “Snake” Plissken, A European synth duo and this year’s sleeper game engine? If you said: “Blood Dragon”, you deserve a cookie. Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon introduces us to another lavish adventure on yet another godforsaken isle, but rather set in the grim wake of 2007′s semi-cybernetic blood fueled nuclear dystopian future in this stand alone follow-up. Faceless hordes of cybernetic soldiers, cyber blood hungry, T-1000 look-alikes, giant laser-beam toting dragons, and the most ignorant breed of researchers inhabit the island, and it’s military strongholds. After being summoned by Doctor Darling, Sgt. Rex “Power” Colt, a sharp-tongued American Mark IV cyber commando with a lust for one-liners and kicking ass it is his job to liberate garrisons, save scientists, and gain the artillery and firepower required to overthrow the likes of Corneal Ike Sloan, the ex-cyber commando tyrant who murdered your brother in cyber arms, Lieutenant TT “Spider” Brown, that has started enhancing himself with the blood of the dragons and aims to bring in the apocalypse of the apocalypse.
The most successful first-person shooter franchise in gaming history is back with its latest offering this fall. Activision has announced the next entry from the Call of Duty franchise. Titled Call of Duty: Ghosts, the new game will be released on November 5th for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. No date was given for the next generation Xbox or the Playstation 4.
When gamers purchase the next-gen version of the game, they will notice a new gaming engine produced by Infinity Ward. The current engine has been used since 2005. The first look at this new engine will be revealed on May 21st during the official announcement of the newest Xbox. Continue reading →
