VR: Holy Shit it's the Future!

VR is awesome, ok? its just one of the coolest things I've ever experienced and I only got to play with the early Occulus build at a trade show in Las Vegas. Even something that simple compared to the products we have today the experience was mind blowing and the trick VR plays on your mind is probably the scariest thing that can happen to you while gaming.

What intrigues me about VR is the ability to be in a game and to truly see the size and scope of a game or world. I say "or World" because there are also non games in VR like The Samsung VR Netflix application that puts you in a theater that you can watch Netflix in. Also a few people played Minecraft in VR and said the scale was insane because the blocks in Minecraft are one meter cubed which is up to some peoples chest. which really shows how big the world of Minecraft is which we could not appreciate from the normal perspective on the screen. I will say fighting zombies is also a lot scarier when you have to fight them when they're bigger than you and up in your face.

What I really want to talk about is the trick that VR plays on your brain. The trick is convincing your brain that its scared of the "real" things that are happening. A gif  (http://imgur.com/gallery/tWIIzAr)  I saw was people going out off a skyscraper on a board to grab a cat off the edge and a comment on the video asked what it would take to to pull a "matrix" and realize the edge wasn't real and just walk off the edge because they were just walking on a board on the ground. in real life. Now it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to realize its not real but they use real footage of a city beneath you and just watching the gif was terrifying. Now the question is mind over matter would you possess the willpower to walk off the edge in order walk into the air to their apparent death?

VR may be the way to experience technology in the future but for now i think $400 plus prices make the product way to niche for the general public and it needs to be more user friendly so even the dumbest consumer could set it up. One thing that VR needs to succeed is triple A support and big name brands coming out for VR.

Stardew Valley: Aaaaaannndd there goes my life.

Stardew valley took my free time. It's simple relaxing and provides a very charming world to get lost in. While it may seem like a simple farming simulator it has a charming story and lovely characters for you to invest your time in. There is also a diverse set of story lines and areas of progress.

For those unaware of the premise of Stardew Valley the game starts with you working a desk job in a depressing urban environment where you open a letter from your grandfather who left you his farm and his wish for you to live a simpler life with the land and fresh air. So you quit your job and move to Stardew Valley to take over your Grandfather's small farm.

In Stardew valley there is a skill system that revolves around the leveling up of those skills. by leveling up you gain proficiency in that skill as well as new crafting recipes that pertain to that skill, for example, leveling up in fishing lets you craft bait and use better fishing poles. Levelling up in fishing also unlocked more items to buy from the fisherman because fishing "became more popular in the town.

As expected Stardew Valley centers around your grandfather's farm. Starting out the farm is overgrown with weeds, grass, trees, and its covered in stones and fallen logs. The farm also has a few secrets in it if you explore the massive area the farm contains.  The farm can also be upgraded and improved with crafted items to automatically grow crops. you can make money selling your crops or cook with them but there are many other ways too make money.

Stardew Valley has a very simple dungeon and combat system to go with it. The "dungeon" is a mine in the north east corner of the map. There is an adventurers guild that gives you quests to go deeper and slay certain monsters but that really just means mashing the attack button until the monster dies.

Now as of the day I'm writing this the developer has confirmed he will add multiplayer in the near future but I can not find a specific date. Unfortunately a practical multiplayer for this game seems difficult if not impossible. Some mechanics require the sleep and rest because you run out of energy to do things  there is also the relationship and quest mechanics to take care of not to mention the synching of the calendars in game

Clash Royale... With a Pinch of Salt

From SuperCell, the makers of "Clash of Clans," comes a brand new competitive strategy game, "Clash Royale." This game features the clans and online competitive nature of Clash of Clans but rather than destroying an enemy base that they built you use cards of the characters from Clash of Clans to destroy your opponents three "Crown Towers." rather than just playing your cards you have a certain amount of Elixir that builds up over time. Much like Clash of Clans you and your clan earn trophies alone and together.  I'll be honest i wasn't the biggest fan of Clash of Clans but Clash Royale is my go to game on the toilet or on the plane as the games are only 2 to 3 minutes long.

Now Clash Royale being a free to play mobile game might make you ask how "Pay to Win" this game is. That's part of the beauty of this game is. The things you pay for are used to buy cards which you use to level up the duplicates you have and leveling up in turn allows your cards to become stronger. The game is separated by certain arenas based on the amount of crowns you have which you earn by beating other people and as you progress other players in your arena will have stronger and stronger cards so people who pay to get cards are paying to move up in arenas but as they rush through the game they can miss out on crucial parts of the current meta and effective strategies crippling their future play.

Another part of this game I absolutely love is the stream built in to the game that allows you to view the games of the top players. I love being able to see what effective strategies and combinations of cards are and these games get hundreds of thousands of views within hours of going up. From what I understand this game already has a fairly large Esports scene in China and it is easy to understand why.

My main complaint for this game is personal because no other game has made me quite so angry as A 10 GAME LOSING STREAK AND LOSING OVER 100 TROPHIES WHEN I WAS ON THE VERGE OF MOVING UP IN AN ARENA! (After which i played for an hour trying to regain as many trophies That's purely personal though, I encountered a fairly major problem in which i could not run the app and it would crash at the 50% on the loading screen. after and uninstall and a data wipe didn't do it I didn't install it for a for a few days then reinstalled and had to progress from the start.

Overall I have to say as frustratingly fair as this game is its a ton of fun and a clan with all of your friends is a blast and challenging each other everyday allows you to experiment with new decks and cards to help you in the long run. I have to give this game a glowing recommendation because it really shows how great free mobile games can be in a market that is so cluttered with lackluster games.

Burnt Out

Lets talk Early Access and Betas. What appears to have started as a useful tool for mass testing for a game has turned into a bit of a cluster of meanings. Early Access used to a mean a game that just needed a few bugs out and a minor content update where as now it doesn't even have to be a game. I believe Jim Sterling recently referenced a game called "Just Death" a game in which there were five people to kill, that's not the plot of the game though there are literally five people to kill. that's not even worthy to be called an alpha and its being sold for $15. You know what game is less than that? Undertale! A complete, well made game with some thought not some piss poor GTA rip off. Early access may have started as a great way to start a community and receive input on your game but with the sheer volume of games coming out in early access and the states they're in is just unacceptable.

One Amazing example of an Early Access game is Darkest Dungeon. Darkest Dungeon is an innovative, dungeon crawling, RPG that came out in early access as a solid well established game that only needed minor tweeking. This is a massive contrast to many games coming out in early access

The other Problem with early access and betas is that people will gorw tired of your game before its out. TotalBiscuit said "You only get one release," There is only one release you can use, people only pay attention to the one time your game comes out. People's attention is incredibly short and they will forget your game because they were excited for it to come out and play it but now that they can play it they don't care about updates.

Cube World: Back From the Dead... Eventually

Cube World was started in 2011 and since then received its perceived final update in July of 2013 and since then has been stuck in its alpha stage. Until a few months ago the game was thought to be dead, an abandoned project amidst the flood of games being created, However months ago Wollay, the creator of cube world, updated his twitter showing brand new screenshots that unveiled new mechanics and content.

Now the real question is, has Wollay been working on Cube World this whole time? after looking at some of the screenshots in Wollay's tweets its apparent the game has been changed alot and has had a lot of work poured into it over the previous years. but why did Cube world updates vanish and why was the game removed from the site?

I loved Cube World and the drop in updates really disappointed me, seeing this game come back after so long really shows us that there is hope coming. This could be one of a few games to come out after fans have waited so long for games they were promised. Maybe  we could see Beyond Good and Evil 2.

The Funniest Thing I've heard All Week

Tom Clancy's: The Division came out recently and its launch included one of the the most humorous events to happen in Gaming recently. As we all know a majority of games come out with some bugs and a day one patch. Before that could happen players got to experience what some are calling Tom Clancy's Line Simulator. Fans started calling it that after it was discovered that players could not phase through each other even in the the safe zone which is a cramped office building. This resulted in queues hundreds of people deep just to talk to the starting NPC.

Many are claiming that this detracts from the value of the game and they have a valid opinion as thousands of players lost time waiting to start playing the game. However as this game's community grows as most MMO's do, I can see this becoming a community memory that adds to the depth and character of the players.

Few things can stick in the memory of today's gamers. Most people have short attention spans and even shorter memories. I feel like it detracts from the nature of games, It prevents new memories like the ones that stuck with the gaming community as a whole. A Prime example the death of Aerith that shook players of Final Fantasy which is imprinted in the minds of gamers and we just don't see moments like that anymore there aren't moments that every gamer can remember. I personally remember fighting King Bomb-Omb at the top of the mountain in Mario 64. Unfortunately there are no moments from a recent game that gripped my imagination and left me feeling like one of the most amazing players in existence

Fantasy Life: New Lives Await

Fantasy life is an open world RPG on 3DS that centers around a player made character picking their job or "Life." there are a total of 12 lives each in their own basic subcategory. The job categories are combat, crafting and gathering. Each class has different levels and skills. The player starts  as a fledglings then can progress to master by turning in the milestones earned by living out that life. In the DLC players can reach god rank in Europe and creator rank in North America.

There are 4 of each category of class the four combat roles are; the sword and shield using Paladin, the greatsword wielding Mercenary, the bow using Hunter, and the Magician.  In my playthrough I became a creator level Paladin which is more defensive focused combat role. The roles are influenced by the stats that are chosen as the player levels up which greatly affects the later game as there is a massive difficulty spike in the DLC that makes for a very fun and challenging post game.

The rest of the classes are broken down into gathering and crafting. The crafting class has a few more actions as there are five crafting classes and three gathering classes. Starting with the gathering classes there aer fishing, mining, and woodcutting, the two systems work in a very similar way, you circle the gathering point searching for a sweet spot and chipping away at the health of the resource. Fishing is slightly different as its more of a battle with the fish. The gathering classes also have skills that allow them to do massive damage to the resource. Overall the gathering lives will be a side life to your combat and crafting lives but they provide a side narrative that can be entertaining and even humorous at times.

The crafting classes will have a massive impact on your combat lives as the gear you find in the world is only a standard quality where as crafted items can become god level quality. This isn't as important in the main game but in the DLC top quality gear is needed for the final dungeon. The crafting job that shares the same characteristics as the paladin and mercenary and crafts the gear for them is blacksmithing. Now you may be asking how the crafting differs and the real answer is it doesn't the only difference in crafting is the changes in the minigames whether you mash the A button, hold it down, or press it in time. The different lives only vary those few items. The gameplay loop can start to feel pretty repetitive but the most fun comes from running around the world in the online multiplayer with friends around the world.

Now the story of Fantasy Life focuses on the character choosing their first life then visiting the king and meeting a butterfly that for some reason also needs to meet the king. from then on the two of you travel the continent to the three cities and the three areas surrounding them. Something that keeps the story is all the surrounding side narratives that go with the different lives. One of the biggest advantages to mastering a life isn't the unique gear the game gives you after mastering each job the real reward is the unique song that the game plays for you and that's worth all the time you put in to your life.

Blood Bowl 2: Fun but Lacking?

(Disclaimer: I am new to the bloodbowl franchise so i lack the perspective of a long term fan)

Blood Bowl two is the newest iteration in the Bloodbowl franchise. Being the newest in the franchise it naturally boasts a host of new features. Some of these features, however, are more welcome to the franchise than others.

Starting with the new campaign mode the game opens itself up to new players and offers a tutorial and guide to those unfamiliar with the systems. The largest complaint I've seen with the campaign is the distance it takes with the established lore of Bloodbowl. In previous games certain games from the history of Bloodbowl could be played in the single player option. There is another singleplayer option which lets you take your own team through its own league with persisting affects. Honestly this is a small complaint as the body of the game is the multiplayer.

The multiplayer of Bloodbowl 2 is set up in player created leagues and competitions. Any player can set up and manage their own league with varying degrees of publicity. This means you can join a public league or set up a private league of just your friends. In league matches team progress is persistent along with injuries which offers a wide variety of team builds and situations.

Bloodbowl 2 is well balanced and well designed however its major improvement over previous iterations is the graphics quality of the animations. These small improvements make the game so much more fun to watch and play. The other major improvement was made after launch which was the addition of the "Coaches View" which added the option to add a grid to the field and the ability to view player names and skills.

While BloodBowl 2 is not without fault though as it lacked a large amount of races compared to previous games, especially if you haven't purchased either of the two DLC races, Lizardmen or Woodelves. The team behind Bloodbowl has promised at least four more races in the future and is on record as saying these races will be free. After the brief fiasco surrounding Bloodbowl 2's launch the free races may only be accepted when they have been seen.

This game fills the turn based strategy game hole in my heart and lets me bring all of the star players I created into the league. While some may complain about the amount of dice rolls in the game the randomness mixes up the game making it more fun and unpredictable that can really test your ability to maneuver out of situations and fix the situations that can occur. The random number generators also serve to balance of the game and makes it more fun to play more experienced players.

In my opinion The good of Bloodbowl 2 greatly outweighs the bad and is a great ongoing game. Starting a league with your friends and living through the highs of victory and the agony of the deaths of your star players really lets you invest emotionally to your team and the game.

Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition

After 20 years nintendo released the games that started it all Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, along with the special pokemon game that followed the anime Pokemon Yellow. Of the three I chose yellow for purely nostalgic reasons. The game was ported to the 3DS with all of its orignial glitches including the infamous mew glitch in Cerulean city.

The entire Game has been brought to virtual console however it differs slightly from other games brought to the virtual console. Unlike other virtual console games players cannot create a restore point and have to load from wherever they saved in the game. Other than that feature the game is the exact same.

Pokemon Yellow differs from the previous versions by giving you a special pikachu at the start of the game and giving you opportunities to receive the other three starters. this pikachu, like the one in the anime, dislikes being in a pokeball an will follow the player around much like your pokemon in pokemon soulsilver or heartgold  and can be interacted with and shows pikachu's mood. There are also minigames scattered around the region that pikachu can play. The first i found was a surfing pikachu mingame which was a fun break from the standard game play.

All in all there is little to be said of this port to 3DS and its very nice to see where the pokemon games started compared to the games and community they created that exist today. Its a healthy dose of nostalgia and a fun reminder of what pokemon has done.

Assassin's Creed: Syindicate

Assassins Creed Syndicate is the latest in the entry of the mainline assassin's creed series set in industrial revolution London.. After the disaster of Unity Syndicates starts of strong introducing a dual character campaign and new zipline mechanics making the freerunnung and climbing faster for London's larger buildings and wider streets.

The combat has been changed to one of three new main weapons: the Knuckles, Hidden blade Cane, and Kukri. Each weapon offers satisfying combos and finishers that give a visceral and brutal edge to the combat. While these weapons are incredibly fun it doesn't change the combat to an incredible degree it still boils down to counter, attack and, block break.

There were a few glitches in the game although they were nothing to write home about. The most infuriating and only glitch that frustrated me through the game was an enemy sitting outside the ring in a fight club and I had to wait a minute for him to get into the ring.

The story of Syndicate follows the twins Jacob and Evie Frye as they ditch the Brotherhood to liberate London from its corrupt Templar overlords. The story focuses on jacob assassinating the mob  bosses of London trying to fulfill his dream of leading his gang the Rooks and Evie having to cleanup as his actions hurt the infrastructure of the City. Jacob Frye is a very infuriating character through out the entire game and its unfortunate that he is given so much more of the limelight than Evie who I prefer to play as through the game.

In the End Syndicate is a very solid assassin's creed game and a very fun one to boot. From meeting many famous leaders and facing the amazing villains the game has to offer the characters are charismatic and just fun meet. The combat is nothing to write home about but its very solid and the entire game is a tremendous step above Assassin's Creed Unity.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

CD Projekt Red has done it again with another entry in the award winning rpg series based of the novels of Andrzej Sapkowski. The Witcher 3 is another open world rpg but don't let the recent flood of open world games influence what you think about the Witcher. The Witcher is brimming with content and full of quests and when I say quests I don't mean sidequests, every quest has its own story, characters and continuing story. The writing in the Witcher is bordering on genius and it shows when you start to care about characters that most games would make you hate for their blatant character flaws.

Starting with the Witcher's combat, it is what I like to call a "fair" combat system and having played on both regular and the superhard deathmarch difficulty the combat has to be described as "fair" as Geralt can take on almost anything one on one but struggles the more enemies are thrown at him. The combat focuses around swordplay combined with the different signs that are minor magic abilities that witchers can use. These signs are mostly used against monsters and groups of enemies that can overwhelm Geralt  can be augmented and upgraded by special gear and ability points found through leveling up and absorbing places of power. Unfortunately there is only one real change to each sign through leveling and some are obviously more useful than others. The most useful is undeniably the Quen sign as its upgrades allow you to regain health when hit which is incredibly useful on higher difficulties and borderline overpowered in the lower ones. The swordplay is a mix of short and long dodges and light and heavy attacks. Throughout my playthrough i decide to focus my upgrades on short attacks and short dodges which can be upgraded into invincibility frames.

The Witcher 3 is a very well polished game but like most massive open world games bugs often slip through the cracks. There is only one that has cause me to reset my game and that is falling in a pool of water with no escape that locks my ability to jump. there is another glitch getting an upgrade to special witcher gear where it is impossible to escape but through online help it was possible to fall out of the world forcing you to recover outside the dungeon. and these bugs were the only ones that forced me to reset my game. there is another fairly common error that results in Geralt preforming a swimming animation after he jumps off Roach while sprinting.

Finally moving into spoiler territory The Witcher 3 follows Geralt of Rivia as he attempts to track down his once lover Yennefer. After finding Yennefer Geralt discovers she is working with the Emperor of Nilfgard to track down his heir and Geralt's one time Ward Cirri. What follows is a hunt across warring countries and cities in turmoil. The story is fairly linear compared to other rpg's but its comforting playing as a defined and well rounded character rather than a blank slate miracle child that rpg's provide when you make your character. Playing as Geralt allows the story to draw out his character rather than inserting the player into some situation he has to fix.

In the end The Witcher 3 is an incredibly written and solid preforming rpg that really raised that bar in what an rpg can be and really broke the mold of what many other rpg's consider the standard of the industry.