Category Archives: News

Everyone, Let’s Talk About Bloodborne

Posted on by
Reply

I mean, EVERYONE is talking about Bloodborne….So I won’t.

Bloodborne

Today’s new releases are very slim. Barely even mentionable, save one key game.

  • Telltale’s Game of Thrones: Episode 3 –  A lot of chatter revolving around this game. I recently started playing Tales From the Borderlands, and I’m really enjoying it, so after I’ve completed episode 2, I’ll install Game of Thrones, and give it a run through. Apparently this episode includes Dragons, Oh My!
  • Bloodborne -PS4 game that I know nothing about. Like Dark Souls, this game appears to be a painful experience to play.
  • Borderlands: Handsome Collection – So Excited for this collection. I had previously played Borderlands 2 and the DLC on the 360 but waited on the Pre-Sequel for this very reason.

Xbox Games With Gold Sales

This week’s Xbox Games With Gold Sales include Forza Horizons 2, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Evolve, and WWE 2K15.

Quiet day with more to come tomorrow.

-iRogan

Everything is Teetering on the Edge of Everything

Posted on by
Reply

Where have you been all my life?

This weekend, you may have noticed a short story, written from the perspective of the main character in Sniper Elite III (me) and my Co-op buddy in life, Illestrader. It was fun to write, but factually disproved as apparently snipers don’t hold their breath between shots. Who knew. I’m over it though. This example of a short story is something that I’ve wanted to do, and will continue to do, as it was a lot of fun to write. I’ve played plenty of games, single player and co-op, that can lend themselves to this hybrid personal-reflection/still-in-a-game format, so keep an eye out for more. Weekly or monthly, who knows.

Last week I mentioned an idea about some achievement hunting segments. Still working on the logistics, but I think it it’ll focus around a weekly segment towards a solitary achievement challenge, and my progress towards it. Maybe aiming for a specific achievement that week, or a gamerscore amount. New challenges every week. We’ll see.

Last week, in review: I spoke more about Cities: Skylines, the new games of the week, current games I’m playing, a Review for Never Alone, and a short story. I also discussed the purchase of an external HDD for my Xbox One to allow more games to be installed (this I will talk about today). And of course, the daily news. This week I expect more of the same.

As mentioned, I purchased an external HDD for my Xbox One. a Western Digital 3TB USB3 drive. Setup was extremely simple as it’s fully supported, and I transferred all the games off of the internal drive over to the external, hopefully relieving some of the stress to improve overall console performance. Including the Telltale Games Collection, I now have 44 games installed, with 2.3TB remaining, so this drive will keep me going for a while. The games load just fine, and I have yet to experience any problems playing a game off the hard-drive. As a result, I’ve also had the opportunity to try out some of the games I’ve been sitting on, due to space shortages. I’ve started playing Grand Theft Auto V and Far Cry 4. I’ll discuss those more in detail on Wednesday for the What I’m Playing segment.

I’m also continuing to optimize the site as I get used to WordPress. One section is the page functionality. A page I’ll be adding soon, is my screenshots page. I already have quite the collection of Forza Horizons 1 and 2 photos. Coming soon is Far Cry 4, and shortly after, Shadow of Mordor photos. Xbox One has a screen shot functionality, but currently no way of exporting them. But soon, I’ll be able to flesh out this idea further.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the new games, Wednesday we’ll discuss what I’m playing in more detail (Tales from the Borderlands ❤ *wink*), Thursday I’ll have a review for #IDARB, and then we’ll talk about the week in review, and the joyful weekend.

Executive Vice Janitor

Executive Vice Janitor

But, I have some news to catch up on, so on-wards.

Oldies first:

Star Wars: Battlefront News and Views

EA has confirmed that the highly anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront will be shown off next month, between April 16th and 19th.

Remastered Wake?

Microsoft may be looking to release a remastered version of Alan Wake on the Xbox One. I really enjoyed the 360 version, but neglected to play any of the DLC, so if this pack includes it (which I’m sure it will) might be worth playing through again. We’ll have to see what the offer includes.

Hideo Kojima Leaving Konami 😥

Late last week, news starting breaking that Hideo Kojima was planning to leave Konami after Metal Gear Solid V was completed. Unfortunately not a lot of information was released besides the fact that Kojima confirmed that MGS V will be complete come September, and that this will be the last MGS game in the Snake story ark. Konami indicated that there will be more Metal Gear games in the future without Kojima’s involvement, and Metal gear Reveangence 2 was hinted. This is upsetting to me. I’ve always been a fan of Kojima and his MGS games. They are not, and will not be the same without him.

Kojima offered a few words, saying, “I am 100% involved and will continue working on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; I’m determined to make it the greatest game I’ve directed to date.” – Somewhat reassuring.

Konami has begun hiring developer to start work on a brand new Metal Gear series. No news on the Silent Hill game. Less reassuring.

Physical Wolfenstein

Back on March 4th, it was announced that a digital stand-alone sequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order was being released this May, titled The Old Blood. It has since been reiterated that a physical edition will be available on PS4 and PC, but will remain “digital only” on the Xbox One.

God of War 3 Remastered

One of the best looking games to be released on the PS3 is being re-released on the PS4 with the HD treatment and other improvements. Its a shame that it’s not a remastered trilogy. Maybe they couldn’t do it for technical reasons. Who knows. God of War III already looked beyond good when originally released, it’ll be interesting to see a comparison.

Batman and Arkham Knight News

Two playable DLC packs have been announced for Batman: Arkham Knight, Rocksteady’s epic conclusion to the Arkham trilogy. Red Hood has been announced as a playable character, likely for the challenge mode, and now Harley Quinn has been announced as the second DLC pack, which includes stand-alone story.

“With this exclusive Story Pack experience events in the lead-up to Arkham Knight as you infiltrate Blüdhaven to rescue your partner in crime: Poison Ivy. Delve deep into Harley’s demented nature and utilize her devastating baseball bat to smash, crash and bash your way to a friend very much in need.”

Also announced was that Arkham Knight has received a slight delay. The game is now scheduled for release on June 23rd.

How Dare You Make The Bat Wait

How Dare You Make The Bat Wait

In other remastered news (enough already), Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are reportedly being remastered for the Xbox One and PS4.

Raven Software Tweet/Teases More Singularity

Singularity came out in 2010 and dealt with time travel, as one of the abilities of the player was to rewind the effect of time on objects. Neat concept and a really cool game to play. Raven Software has hinted that maybe they’re making a sequel, or is this another remastered edition?

The tweet reads “We’re going back,” followed by the hashtag #Katorga12 — a reference to the Russian island that served as the setting of Singularity.

Phew, lots of news to get caught up on.

See you tomorrow.

-iRogan

Games Needing to be Played, and News Needing to be Read

Posted on by
Reply

…But not really. News is not important. It’ll be there tomorrow too. And the next day.

Some times I go through weird phases where I’m just absolutely addicted to playing games and everything else suffers. Currently I’m playing the following:

  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag –  To fill my 3rd person, open world, platformer void. To play an Ubisoft open world game, requires somewhat of a balancing act in priorities. Their games are typically filled with activities to complete, sights to see, side missions to pursue and stories to experience. The struggle is trying to balance these equally. Focus on one, and you start to get the feeling you’re missing out on the world around you, or your perks and upgrades are falling behind. Or, the dread of missing something entirely, which can’t be recovered. It’s stressful.
  • Battlefield: Hardline – To fill my FPS void. This is currently the freshest game on the market, and I don’t typically play games fresh. Normally to avoid bugs or server issues, or just my back-log of games. In this case I’m playing it for the single player campaign. And enjoying it! Stealth Battlefield, who knew! Continue to check back for my impressions, and Review.
  • Cities: Skylines – These type of games are great, but they’re a time sink. So going forward, to ensure I don’t lose focus on my other endeavors, I’ll probably just have to set a timer. Play the game, improve my city. Take a break until tomorrow. Continue to check back for my ongoing impressions and Review.
  • Sniper Elite 3 – Currently playing this in co-op with a friend. We’re about half way through, and we are not the stealthiest bunch.
  • Forza Horizons 2 – Still playing through this, wrapping up the Storm Island DLC, some achievements, and will check out the Fast and the Furious DLC  next week.

    I usually don’t like to overlap games of the same genre (or more than one Ubisoft game), so Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry 3 are currently on hold, and currently waiting on a fourth, to try out the GTA V Heists, but luckily nothing else new or notable is on the immediate horizon.

neveralone

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a new Review, of Never Alone, and I’m thinking about a new weekly feature centered around Achievements. Just gotta think of the concept and logistics – pretty much everything actually. Achievements are a pretty big deal to me.

And now, this:

OneDrive Supports Music

Microsoft announced today that the free cloud storage, OneDrive, included with Microsoft products, and Xbox, will support music uploads, which can be streamed through the Xbox Music app. The only issue I still have is that the app needs to be snapped to the side. Once minimized, the music stops. This is disappointing, as the 360 has the background music functionality. Hopefully this potential update comes soon, if they’re even working on it?

Nintendo Mobile Clarification

Further clarification came out today about the enlightening news regarding Nintendo’s mobile plans. As reported yesterday, Nintendo has partnered with DeNA to develop a mobile platform and service. Nintendo confirmed that they will be the ones developing the mobile games, with hopefully their first releases later this year, and DeNA will be developing the services to run on multiple types of devices.

Star Craft is Ending?

The Star Craft story is coming to an end. Revealed today, Blizzard has stated that the next expansion to Star Craft II, Legacy of the Void will be the conclusion to the Star Craft story, started way way back in Star Craft 1. They stated that the franchise will continue on, but the characters for now, fates sealed, will see a satisfying conclusion to their story.

Halo: Nightfall Blu-Ray

I haven’t actually had the chance to watch this series yet. I did enjoy Forward Unto Dawn, for the most part, but this new series has received mixed reviews, even with a notable producer in ridley Scott, and a larger budget.

The Master Chief Collection, however, is finally more stable, and I’ve been able to plug through more of the Halo 1-4 campaign missions in weekly late night co-op. 343 Guilty Spark in Halo: CE is still the buggiest level, nearly game breaking at points, but we made it through, thankfully, and we’re now able to complete the campaign.

Forward Unto Games!

-iRogan

New Games, New Cities, New News

Posted on by
Reply

“Cities has a weird way of making me forget to blink, or watch the clock…” I say absently, clicking away, creating trees along a gravel path between houses.

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow? It’s 2AM.” She replies.

“Just need to add a bus depot and map the routes…” I mumble. “This traffic is brutal.”

I wish my city creation was this pretty.

I wish my city creation was this pretty.

Continuing with my review-in-progress of Cities: Skylines, my 2nd play through last night was definitely more successful as I slowly learned the hidden intricacies of the game. The game will tell you how to build a road, but skips on the minutia of creating a successful highway off-ramp. Go figure it out, I guess? It’ll tell you how to paint districts, and glaze over the district specializations, but how about letting me know how to find the resources on the map for specializations?

*4 hours later* Oh there’s an Info Pane for that. Wait WHAT, there’s an info pane that shows me all this? You didn’t think to maybe mention this first, Game?

My city did survive the night this time. Didn’t need to skip town as Mayor like last time, while the power was out. Check mark in the positive column.

Stay tuned for further impressions throughout the week.

Out today, new and notable, for March 17th, 2015:

  • Battlefield Hardline (Xbox One, PS4, PS3, XBOX 360, PC) – Started playing this last Thursday during the EA Access trial on the Xbox One. I’m excited that it’s now out fully and I can play through the campaign. You can read my first impressions: Here
  • Tales from the Borderlands: Episode 2 (Xbox One, PS4, PS3, XBOX 360, PC) – Titled Atlas Mugged. The  Telltale Bundle is still sitting on my “ready to be installed” list, waiting to be played. Thursday I’m picking up an external HDD so I can install my full library. Man, that’ll feel good. Much bandwidth. I do think the first series I play will be Wolf Among Us. Starting to get worried about my ever-growing list of unplayed games. Might need to hire an intern to play my games for me.

There is absolutely nothing of interest to me, out there, on Earth, at all. Save these tidbits of news today:

Nintendo’s New Partnership and New Hardware?

Nintendo announced today a new partnership with DeNA to develop a mobile platform, to bring their library to mobile devices. They were also quick to point out that they’re not out of the console market, stating that they are developing a next-gen dedicated gaming system, code named “NX”. No further details on the console till next year.

The Last Guardian Trademark Filed Again

Announced back in 2009, Sony’s The Last Guardian is vapourware at this point. Sony has filed for the trademark for a 3rd time, and stated that the game is still in development. Whether that means it’ll be the same envisioned game, still on the PS3, now on the PS4, who knows. It’s gone the ways of Prey 2 for all I’m concerned.

Weekly Deals With Gold

Grand Theft Auto takes the front line this week for Xbox’s game sales.

On the Xbox One you can purchase the in-game credit card, which included $500,000 in-game currency for $10 off the retail price. $59.49 USD. Gross. OlliOlli is on sale as well.

On the Xbox 360, GTA V, GTA IV, San Andreas, and GTA IV expansions are on sale.

All for naught, you should probably go outside…

-iRogan

Cities: Skylines’ Impressions and Some News

Posted on by
Reply

Paradox Interactive’s city-building sim reached an impressive milestone today, surpassing 500,000 sales. This announcement follows last week’s 250k sales in 24 hours. 500k in less than a week is truly impressive, and the game has been received well. But 2013’s SimCity reboot also sold very well and was received well. But that all turned sour quick once the launch of the game was hindered by server issues.

Cities: Skyline will not suffer the same fate. Skyline won’t be bogged down by the same server issues as it doesn’t share an online world economy requiring EA’s mandatory internet access.

That being said, Cities: Skyline does borrow from SimCity extensively, but simplifies the gameplay. The game plays quick and loose, full in-game days whiz by in a blur, no day and night cycle will have you forgetting that time is moving, and your towns folk seem pretty content as long as you keep their lights on, and their streets cleared of garbage.

I had a 4 hour sit-down last night (I think without blinking), and figuring I was doing fairly well, just to find the power suddenly go out, leaving me with an abandoned city and piles of debt. Not my most notable achievement by any stretch, I quickly packed up my remaining dignity and skipped town, off to the next soon-to-be sprawling metropolis. “THIS TIME, MY CITIZENS, I PROMISE TO DO BETTER!”

Keep an eye out for my review soon.

In other, non-city related news…

Battlefield Hardline’s Couch Warfare

Someone has found a drivable couch Easter egg in Battlefield Hardline. The couch, appropriately named “The American Dream” is found in the Hotwire gameplay mode on the Dust Bowl Map. Seats 4, and drives faster than any of the other types of vehicles.

Couch Warfare

Couch Warfare

Unknown is if the couch is an Easter egg for the EA Access preview, or will be made available tomorrow during the proper launch. I guess we’ll soon find out. I’ll try to find it tonight for myself.

LEGO Jurassic World June Release

New info started coming out today about the next LEGO game from TT Games: LEGO Jurassic World. Announced a little while ago with a teaser, today there was a gameplay / a more fleshed out trailer. We know the game will focus not on 3, but actually all 4 movies, hence Jurassic WORLD, and will include almost 2 dozen dinosaurs, and all the characters from the movies. Briefly shown from the trailer are some of the key scenes from Jurassic Park.

Crytek’s New Licencing Deal?

Known for their Crytek engine, FarCry, Crysis, and Ryse – Crytek teased a new licensing deal today. No further details though.

Crytek is currently going through some restructuring, or “transitioning” as they work on some free-to-play projects and recent “strategic” moves. They’ve had their recently purchased rights to Homefront, moved to Dambuster Studios along with their Crytek UK staff. Crytek USA remains stateside to focus on their Engine.

Some positive news is better than all the recent negatives, or no news, I guess.

GTA Online stability released on Xbox

And finally, GTA Online gets its stability patch out to the Xbox community, improving Online stability for Heists, and fixing minor issues for both Online and Story Mode. Released last week on the Ps3 and Ps4.

Currently I’m in the process of staring at this game, on my shelf, willing the game’s sizable 43GB install to shrink so that it fits on my already over-full Xbox One Harddrive. I’m past the last notch on the belt guys, I’ve already purged 3/4’s of my library to the “ready to be installed” list. That last bite of dessert is a faded memory.

Thursday, though! Thursday, I’m picking up a 4TB external HDD for my XBOX One which should resolve all of my HDD woes.

New games tomorrow, till then, Go OUTSIDE!

-iRogan