Terry Randolph – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Xbox One), Overwatch (Playstation 4)
This past week has been rather difficult to play ANY games whatsoever — predominantly I’ve been working on some job applications that’ll hopefully land me a promotion at a new job somewhere closer to home. That said, I’m really hoping I can knock out Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sometime within the next two weeks to provide the site a comprehensive review. Otherwise, I’m planning on getting back into Overwatch and taking my time to learn Tracer and Genji. I’ve been watching some videos that have gameplay footage of these two. While they look difficult to learn, they also look extremely fun to play.
Jake Rushing – Super Monkey Ball (GC), Punch Out (Wii)
This week, since I got a Gamecube from a flea market, I’ll be playing Super Monkey Ball, just a game that’s really hard at certain courses, but it’s a game that requires precision at times.
Now, since I’m close to finishing Punch Out!, I’ll have to go the distance and try to finish it when I can.
Sean Willis – Tokyo Jungle (via PSNow), EF-12 Fighting Game Maker (PC, Steam)
So been trying out Playstation Now for the week and with my experience with Onlive back when and many other services like it I have to say it does a pretty dang good job. It is basicly PS3s streaming to your PC and the control options are quite limiting as motion controls are only supported with PS4 controllers and a dongle despite Xinput support and working just fine with a steam controller. However the game selection has a lot of variety and PS3 exclusives I otherwise would have a hard time getting a hold of.
Tokyo Jungle is one of those games I regretted not getting a PS3 for. You play one of many animals running around a human-less Tokyo and surviving on well, anything that moves. It sorta plays like a survival roguelike with timers and hunger bars the works. However the map is always the same with random placements and events so there is something to memorize. You have to survive, progress through generations and find um, clothing? Ya, its a bit weird but it has a lot of content to work off of and a pretty good electronica soundtrack that oddly fits well and changes slightly with the situations. I’m glad to finally try it but wish it wasn’t an exclusive.
Other than that I’ve been messing with the EF-12 fighting game engine made by one of the guys who worked on Tekken and Virtua Fighter games in the past. It shows if you watch the fighting styles closely. Overall the engine isn’t bad but it’s a bit hard to wrap around how to use it. It’s not exactly a 3D Mugen (a 2D fighting game making program of some fame) and it needs a lot of expensive tools as it doesn’t support some formats. There are ways around it but it can be a lot of work to get something to appear and look right. If you aren’t afraid of editing files in notepad you should be able to get somewhere at least. Still the engine does have its merits and I look forward to more in the future. Now that it’s on Steam it is starting to grow a community there and hopefully gets more attention. Price is cheap at least but might wanna wait to see if they make the engine a bit more flexible in future updates. It has a lot of promise just a tad limiting.
Ben Fitzgerald – Baldur’s Gate (PC) Mass Effect (360)
There’s not a lot of time for gaming this week. If I want to upgrade my computer, most of my free time has got to go to work. That, and I’ve spent several hours at the river with my dog and a book, and that’s actually been really enjoyable. I might branch out into a different game later this week, if I meet my writing quota for freelancing this week. We’ll see.
Montaron and Xzar wished to accompany me to Nashkel to investigate the goings-on in the mine, but both were killed in the process. However, I replaced Xzar withndent Elven wizard Zan from the Nashkel mines and recruited the Dwarven warrior Kaigan and Ajantis, a paladin of Helm. Unfortunately, Kagain got his head smashed by an ogre.