Tag Archives: Games

IDL NEWS – New Games and Deals, and The Top Games to Round of the Year

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I don’t get paid on Tuesday, lest I’d be ruined come Wednesday.

New games today, and Xbox Spotlight deals. There’s also a nice list at the bottom, of the notable games still to be excited for this year. What a great year we’ve had already!

I should’ve titled this “What I Will Be Playing”.

New Games – July 21:

Zombie Army Trilogy (Xbox One, PS4) – Sniper Elite was a pretty fun game, and the first two Zombie Army games were originally released as DLC for 2013’s Sniper Elite V2. I might pick this up and play in co-op with Illestrader.

These aren't the dead you're looking for.

These aren’t the dead you’re looking for.

F1 2015 (Xbox One, PS4) – Another F1 game by Codemasters. I found these titles to be too much simulation for me, and not fun. Pass on the right. Into a wall.

Journey (PS4) – The lovely award winning PS3 indie title has finally made it;s way to the PS4.

They said I could become anything, so I became a shooting star.

They said I could become anything, so I became a shooting star.

Game of Thrones: Episode Five – A Nest of Vipers (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One) – I have the full TellTale Games game pack, which includes all the games, and subsequent episodes. I’ll wait for Episode 6 to be released before starting the story.

Hatoful Boyfriend (PS4, PS Vita) – You are a human, who lives in a cave, and falls in love with birds? Or human birds? I dunno?

Deals With Gold Spotlight Sale

Xbox One
Forza Horizon 2 and Forza Motorsport 5 Bundle 35%
Forza Motorsport 5 Car Pass Add-on 50%
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Editions 33%
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood 25%
DARK SOULS II: Scholar of the First Sin 40%
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 25%

Forza Horizons 2 was a great game and Forza Motorsport 5 was fun, if not limited. I’m not always a fan of simulation racers. And I have the physical copy of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood on its way. So expect opinions on that soon. The New Order was fantastic. I should do a replay and iReview of that one.

Xbox 360 (lots of sales this week. I’ve included the notables – all great)
Max Payne 3 75%
L.A. Noire 75%
Red Dead Redemption 75%
Midnight Club: LA 75%
Bully Scholarship Ed. 75%
Forza Horizon 50%
Enslaved 75%

Top Games Still To Be Released This Year

Rare Replay – Aug 4: Announced this year at E3, the Rare Replay is a 30 game collection of all the classics, coming to the Xbox One. There are also 10,000 achievements points available.

Dishonored: Definitive Edition – Aug 25: Enhanced visuals and including all the DLC. Great if you haven’t played it, but I’d have to see the videos to see if the visual upgrade is enough to justify a 2nd copy. Maybe I’ll just replay the 360 version for free when its backwards compatible.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition – Aug 25: A remastered version of the original game that kicked off the franchise. A game night staple.

Mad Max – Sept 1: Open-world post-apocalyptic survival game based in the universe that is Mad Max.

Metal Gear Solid V – Sept 1: I’ve talked about this game a lot already, and I really don’t think I can say anymore. Just that I can’t wait.

Destiny: The Taken King – Sept 15: The next chapter in the Destiny Saga. Comes as a stand-alone as well which includes the previous full release and 2 expansions. New maps and modes, new missions and strikes, subclasses, gear, items and a Raid.

Rainbow Six: Siege – Oct 13: Intense first-person shooter in the Tom Clancy Rainbow Six world. Infiltration and hostage extract modes look incredible and tense. Back to the one-life gameplay style. Online only competitive games scare me away, as I’ve learned with Evolve. But from a co-op Terrorist Hunt mode perspective, I’ll pick it up.

Assassins’s Creed Syndicate – Oct 23: The next game in the Assassin’s series.

Halo 5: Guardians – Oct 27: Sold. Obviously. Another game night staple is the Halo franchise. Now that ODST is out for the MCC, and the game is finally stable, I’ll do a review.

Need For Speed – Nov 3: How many times has the Need for Speed franchise been rebooted now? The E3 impressions looked incredible, and it’s going back to the nocturnal open world, focusing on the street life and car customization.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 – Nov 6: Another annual title that I’m usually a few years behind on. Just finished Ghosts for crying out loud. Didn’t try Black Ops 2 either. And still haven’t gotten to Advanced Soldier. Woops

Rise of the Tomb Raider – Nov 10: Loved the first reboot, and I’m super excited for the sequel.

Star Wars Battlefront – Nov 17: First impressions at E3 show promise. The online-only direction might be a deal breaker, but the co-op missions show promise. Obviously more info has to be seen, but I’ll get first impressions through EA Access.

Just Cause 3 – Dec 1: I’m holding out on this one for now. No co-op is a huge bummer, and I quickly grew bored of Just Cause 2.

Hitman – December 8: New entry in the franchise, simply titled Hitman. Very interested as the last one was a huge improvement for the franchise in my opinion, and now with the online presence and unique one-time contracts . . . definitively appealing.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some more news, and What i’M Playing.

-iRogan

IDL NEWS – Hideo Kojima :'(, Duke Nukem, and Xbox Streaming

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Hooray for Mondays, hooray for inconsistency.

Today in the news we’ll talk about Hideo Kojima’s downward spiral of sadness, Dead Island 2 woes, Duke Nukem, and Xbox Streaming.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the new games of the week and Tuesday’s deals, and then the remainder of the week is dedicated to What i’m Playing, an iReview, and achievement stuffs. Next week I’ll be starting a 2 week offline break, but I will have a Xbox 360 daily feature planned to be posted while I’m away, and a short story that takes place in Titanfall.

Newandexcitingthings. Yay!

So, onward and upwards!

Kojima, Kojima, Kojima! Konami, Too. 😥

So, the web of intrigue that is Konami vs Kojima continues to unravel. Godzilla and the Kaiju couldn’t make this more interesting.

The latest news in the deteriorating relationship has the publisher, Konami, removing Hideo Kojima’s name, creator of Metal Gear Solid, from the Phantom Pain’s box art. The Kojima Productions logo has also been removed.

MGS_Boxes-720x405

The story also got a unique twist when an internet light was shone on a specific mission in The Ground Zeroes, that might have alluded to Kojima knowing he was on his way out, earlier last year.

A mission in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes set players the task of deleting the logos of Metal Gear games directed by Hideo Kojima.

As spotted by GamesRadar, the Déjà Vu mission requires you to use a UV light to erase the logos of all games crafted under Kojima. If you’re successful, the following message appears:

301999d095b9cfdb34cbcc459ac6e39dde306fb3.png__1917x983_q85_crop_upscale-720x369

There’s also a personal voice message, seemingly from Kojima, thanking the player for “all [their] support”.

Kojima is the man!

Yager Gone from Dead Island 2 – Mutual Parting

Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager has officially been removed from Dead Island 2 project. This troubled game has seen problems with delays, and now developers parting ways. Publisher, Deep Silver, stated that they will be sharing more information at a later date, but reports show that this was a mutual parting, a difference in opinions towards the game’s progress.

dead-island-2-logo_0

Dead Island 1 developer Techland released their other open-world zombie game Dying Light earlier this year, making me wonder, is a Dead Island sequel even necessary at this point?

Gearbox’s Duke Nukem Plan

Randy Pitchford, of Gearbox, has stated that concept development has been started for Duke Nukem, but it might not be Gearbox working on it as they’re busy. They’re are looking into bringing in the correct developer and working alongside them.

“I did not acquire the franchise merely so we could all experience Duke Nukem Forever. That was the toll to pay to give Duke a chance. That said, I liked that game,” he said.

Xbox One Game Streaming

Microsoft is moving the Xbox One game streaming feature out of the Preview Phase into full release. With an Xbox One and and a Windows 10 machine, we will now be able to stream our console through to the machine using the Xbox App. I’ll post more info and hands-on when Windows 10 is released later this month. I’m excited for this feature, and all it really requires is a wired Xbox One/360 controller, Xbox One, and a PC.

So there’s the important stuff out of the way.

New Games and Deals tomorrow, and we’ll discuss So Many Me, and this week’s Xbox sales. Then more on Titanfall, Arkham Knight, maybe an iReview and then Achievement stuff to wrap up the week.

As I mentioned at the start, I’ll be offline for two weeks starting Friday, but I hope to be posting a daily article about the top 5 Xbox 360 games, and a new short story, with the Titanfall setting. I’ll just be missing the news. Sad face.

-iRogan

ACHIEVEMENT OF THE WEEK – Titanfall

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I have recently jumped back into Titanfall, and have been playing that quite a bit. Not really sure why, probably just because of the achievements kept from my grasp. But it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve been playing mostly solo, with Illestrader joining me on occasion.

As the game was recently featured in the EA Access vault as a free game, it feels like there’s been an influx of new players, which is always nice, as well as the the developer, Respawn, releasing all their map pack DLCs for free, when the game reached its one year mark.

You can check out my review here – iReview Titanfall.

There are some tough achievements in Titanfall, and now that there is 3 DLC maps packs, there are numerous achievements to chase, worth a 2000Gamerscore amount. 88 Achievements.

A lot of the achievements are grinding achievements, winning 50 matches in each type of game mode, and reaching Gen10, etc. And throughout the first year of the game, they’ve introduced more game modes, challenges, and Ranked Play. To continually add to the replayability.

My Achievement of the Week – Titanfall

86537-hiMy Generation – 50G
Become a second generation Pilot

To get this achievement, you need to level up your Pilot enough to reach the cap level of 50. This alone will net you an achievement. You then need to choose to regenerate as 2nd generation Pilot. A lot like prestig’ing in Call of Duty, this will reset your level to 1, along with resetting all of your unlocks, and challenges. Essentially starting all over again from scratch, only there’s a nice little 2 Emblem beside your name.

As the achievement of the week feature is not necessarily new games, but my own personal achievements, I’m going to start including a list of the other achievements I unlocked this past week. As my gameplay time differs each week, and achievements vary, this list will always differ in size. I think I might add the category to the top of the page as well, or maybe add a category linkroll on the side.

Sunday, July 12 – Saturday, July 18th

Massive Chalice

  • Graduation Day (Your first hero comes of age) – 10G
  • Foster Home (Adopt multiple children into the same Keep) – 20G
  • Sage, Right? (Appoint a Sagewright) – 10G
  • Golden Anniversary (Survive 50 years) – 20G
  • A Legacy Begins (Receive your first Relic) – 10G
  • The Standard of Excellence (Appoint a Standard)  – 10G
  • Half Full (Survive 150 years) – 20G

Titanfall

  • Stars Shine Brightest (Earn 3 stars for a single map and mode) – 10G
  • Maxed Out (Reached level 50) – 50G
  • My Generation (Became a second generation Pilot) – 50G
  • Stay Gold (Earn 50 Battlemarks in Ranked Play) – 50G
  • Dig Site Victor (Won a match on Dig Site) – 5G
  • I Killed The All (Killed all Pilots during the evacuation single-handedly) – 25G
  • Hitting My Stride (Achieve a 5 game winstreak) – 20G

Badland GOTYE

  • Contributer (Save 600 clones total in Single Player) – 10G
  • Red Eye (Complete all the Day II levels in Single Player) – 20G

Halo Master Chief Collection

  • Junior Detective (H3: ODST: Find the 1st clue to unraveling the mystery) – 10G 
  • Two Places, Same Time (H3: ODST: I’ve got my eye on you, Marine) – 10G
  • Foe Hammer (Kill 5,000 enemies or players) – 10G
  • Tayari Plaza (H3: ODST: Complete Tayari Plaza) – 10G
  • I Got This (Complete 100 missions or multiplayer games) – 10G
  • Listener (H3: ODST: Find the 1st Audio Log) – 5G
  • Investigator (H3: ODST: Find the 2nd clue to unraveling the mystery) – 10G
  • Uplift Reserve (H3: ODST: Complete Uplift Reserve) – 10G
  • An Ear Full (H3: ODST: Find the 2nd Audio Log) – 5G
  • Gumshoe (H3: ODST: Find the 3rd clue to unraveling the mystery) – 10G

We’ll see how this feature plays out. Might be too much to record each week.

-iRogan

WHAT i’M PLAYING/iReview – Massive Chalice

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Massive Chalice, a Double Fine Production, on a long enough timeline, is a lot like Game of Thrones, and that’s why it’s a lot of fun to play, and this is my review in progress.

Title: Massive Chalice
Developer: Double Fine Productions
Platform: Linux, Mac, Windows, Xbox One
Publisher: Double Fine Productions
Reviewed on: Xbox One

photo-originalSimply enough, it starts you out with not a lot of explanation. Two narrators located inside a chalice speak to you about the world we’re in and the impending doom. We then pick our 5 Vanguard families and are shown our partitioned island and sent on our merry way.

The goal of the game is to build Keeps on the islands, among other buildings, and fight off the encroaching doom through individual battles with the enemy, while we wait for the Chalice to power up. That process takes 301 years. The battles come on multiple fronts and only one side can be defended at a time. Battles are also 10-20 years apart.

The gameplay of the battles is a lot like X-Com. We choose our 5 warriors and send them into the blind battlefield, and we must explore the terrain and remove the enemies in our path. Once you start the mission, you have to see it through to his conclusion, or die trying. It’s a turn-based strategy game, and easy enough to pick-up, but difficult to pull off each battle successfully. I would suggest you utilize the save function frequently.

Each Vanguard type as two skill points per turn, that can be spent on moving or attacking. Movement is restricted to a zone – per turn – and attacking is by line of site, and accuracy depends a lot on distance. You have your 5 characters in the mission to move around, and then it’s the enemy’s turn to do their thing, rinse and repeat until you’re dead or they’re dead.

MASSIVE CHALICE IS MORE MELEE BATTLES THAN THE FIREFIGHTS IN XCOM

Outside the battles is where the game is interesting. Each Keep built take approx 10-12 years, and you have to assign a Regent, and their partner. The goal is to setup strong bloodlines that will produce many children to increase your Vanguard army for future battles, and generations to come.

MASSIVE-CHALICE-screen-02

I found the bloodlines portion of the game to be the most interesting part, battles second. Aligning families, assigning regents and marrying them to other strong lines to produce kids year after year. And because the timeline of the game is so long, you’ll see whole generations come and go, and watch the regent’s kids take over, and then their kids. The purpose is to marry well, to keep the bloodlines going throughout the story of the game as strengths and perks get passed down. It reminded me of Game of Thrones, as the many families vie for the crown. I had a 12 year old regent married to the daughter of another strong family at one point, and had to wait for them to come of age. Boy King, right?

My first play-through didn’t go as well, as I played it uninterrupted, without saving. I did last for 150 years, idly watching, as my towers crumbled and lands fell to the darkness. But it was a learning expedition mainly. I vow to do much better the 2nd time through.

-iRogan

IDL NEWS – Nintendo In Mourning, Kojima Productions Shuttering?

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Back on form. Back to the news. Another Monday creeps around again.

Today we had some sad news reported, so we’ll touch on that first.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Has Passed Away
At the age of 55, the President and CEO of Nintendo has passed away, due to a bile duct growth that he had been battling for the last couple years. He passed away July 11th, 2015.

Iwata began his long tenure with Nintendo as a programmer in the 1980s, and can be credited to the success of Kirby.

Batman: Arkham Knight PC Woes and DLC
Warner Bros. Interactive have apologized to fans for the notorious PC problems and suspension of sales. They’ve issued full refunds to all those they’ve disappointed. They’ve also announced that the upcoming Batgirl DLC will be delayed on PC until further notice. The DLC will not be available until the main game is fixed.

Kojima Productions Has Disbanded
More sad news. The Japanese voice actor for Solid Snake, Akio Otsuka has confirmed the closure of Kojima Productions.

“Kojima Productions was forced to disband, but it appears that the work that the team has been putting their utmost effort into is nearly complete,”

“I’m not exaggerating when I say that I expect it will become their greatest masterpiece. I couldn’t help it. I just wanted to say ‘Kept you waiting, huh?’ (Laughs.) But even if this is the end, Metal Gear Solid is immortal!”

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is set to release on September 1st, 2015.

MGS5_TPP

I’m very much excited to play this, potentially last, game. And the closure of the studio has pretty much confirmed my next tattoo.

Over the next coming week I hope to play Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes some more to get reacquainted.

Very sad news about Iwata as well, today.

I’ve been playing, and wrapping up The Crew, as evidence by the review from earlier today. I also tried Massive Chalice and will be posting more about that on Wednesday. Titanfall has been a blast to step into again, and I’ve been plugging away at Batman: Arkham Knight. Further impressions on what I’ve been playing later this week.

Tomorrow is the new games and deals day.

-iRogan