Monthly Archives: August 2016
Overwatch Review: Heroes Never Die
It’s been three months since Overwatch was released. Most reviews of the game dropped within a week of release which was before the game’s competitive mode was added to the game in June and even one balance change or patch was made. While I put in a lot of time into Overwatch in its early days, I felt that the game needed some time to breathe to see how enjoyable the game would be once the competitive mode was added, players had more experience, more weekly brawls were shown off and Blizzard added some additional content.
There was certainly a chance that the early buzz for Overwatch could have given way to numerous issues and complaints once the mass audience got a hold of it. Fortunately, Overwatch has largely lived up to the hype.
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StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops – Mission Pack 2 Impressions: Remember
When you look at characters that would have interesting stories that continue on from StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, I wouldn’t have considered Nova among them. The likes of Zagara or Alarak who played bit parts in the various SC2 expansions could have interesting stories following the Into The Void missions based on LOTV and the epilogue. However, Blizzard got off on the right foot with the first mission pack of Nova Covert Ops. The second mission pack is a bit of a miss, though.
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ZeniMax Accuses Oculus’s John Carmack of Being a Thief, Palmer Luckey of Being a Fraud
ZeniMax’s lawsuit against Oculus VR took a turn for the nastier last week. An updated filing by ZeniMax claims that the development of the Oculus Rift VR headset is a result of former id Software employee and current Oculus CTO John Carmack stealing thousands of documents and using them in developing the Rift. Their suit also now alleges that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey isn’t capable of developing VR technology himself.
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Sony to Launch PlayStation 4 Slim Alongside PS4 Neo
Sony will be unveiling not one but two new PlayStation 4 consoles at the upcoming PlayStation event on September 7th. While it has been long expected that Sony would unveil an upgraded PlayStation 4, codenamed Neo and colloquially referred to as the 4K, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony will be launching a previously unannounced smaller version of the PS4 at the same event.
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Batman – Episode 1 Review: My Parents Are Dead
The latest in Telltale’s ongoing series of series based on licensed property is one that has a lot of fans excited. Even with the critical flops that were Batman: Arkham Origins and Batman: Arkham Knight on PC, Batman video games certainly generate quite a bit of buzz. Telltale’s take on Batman is very familiar to Telltale Games regulars but is a new take for Batman gamers as it puts as much an emphasis on Batman as it does Bruce Wayne.
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Death Road to Canada Review: Road Trippin’
I have this worrying feeling that Et Geekera’s favourite games of 2016 list might be truncated this year. We’ve crossed the seven-month mark of 2016 and the only games that have secured a spot on the list are Uncharted 4 and Overwatch. Just when things were starting to look dire, zombies came back into my life. While Death Road To Canada might not look like a game that will make many year-end lists, the little pixel art roguelike zombie game has certainly earned a spot on the shortlist for our best of 2016.
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Clash Royale, Pay-to-Win Mechanics and Your Wallet
I’m not sure a day goes by that I don’t see justified complaints about Clash Royale over on Reddit. The game doesn’t attempt to match make on skill but is often determined by who has the better cards. Emotes should be mutable. The tournament system has died without Supercell propping it up.
There’s a perfectly good reason why Supercell isn’t addressing any of this: Money. Addressing these issues would likely take money out of Supercell’s pocket not just through the costs of making the changes but the loss of revenue from making them.
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Mass Effect 3: Omega DLC Review: Tell the World I’m Coming Home
The Mass Effect 3 Omega DLC was an interesting topic of discussion before its release. While most Mass Effect fans loved Aria T’Loak, the overlord of the Omega space station, would doing a mission with her as a squadmate be worth the $15 that BioWare was charging? When it was released Lair of the Shadow Broker was the most expensive piece of Mass Effect 2 DLC but Omega set a new record price for BioWare DLC. That forced the comparison with Shadow Broker in terms of quality and value whether that was BioWare’s intention or not. Could ME3: Omega live up to the legacy of LotSB? Read the rest of this entry
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Mass Effect 3: Leviathan DLC Review: The Case Book of Detective Shepard
Two months after they released the Extended Cut DLC, BioWare released their second single-player DLC mission for Mass Effect 3. The Leviathan DLC promised to look at the history of the Reapers. The new mission takes the game for a dark and eerie turn over its three-hour play time for the price of $10. Those numbers put it right in line with Mass Effect 2’s Lair of the Shadow Broker but can ME3’s first post-launch single-player DLC stand up to the epic Shadow Broker DLC? Read the rest of this entry
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Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut: An End, Once And For All?
The immediate aftermath of the release of Mass Effect 3 was an absolute PR disaster for BioWare and EA. The original ending to Mass Effect 3 caused a massive sh*tstorm of unprecedented proportions among gamers. Many gamers put hundreds of hours into one Commander Shepard and some had thousands of hours and well over $200 invested in the series overall and were given an inconclusive ending that left gamers confused rather than feeling anything else. In order to save face, BioWare spent the next three months scrambling together an alternate ending, called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, to fix the problems people had with the final twenty minutes of ME3.
Today, I examine the new scenes that BioWare has added to Mass Effect 3 in the Extended Cut to determine if they have solved the problems most had with the original ending. Read the rest of this entry
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