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Join me in the random encounter that is Neo's "A Brief Look At" series!
This month, we check out Risk of Rain 2 for PC.
Check out more of Neo, and the rest of the RFGeneration stream team at http://Twitch.tv/RFGeneration
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In 2005, Capcom released Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. Capcom made their entry into the world of High Definition gaming a memorable one, as Dead Rising was like no other game before it. There were a few years around and following the release of Dead Rising where zombies would rule the roost, as games from both large developers like Capcom themselves, Valve, and Activision, had games or popular game modes that had a heavy emphasis on zombies. This popularity also coincided with the rise of indie games on the PC market, and zombie games thrived there for a few years until fatigue inevitably set in. Most of the biggest zombie games and modes were first person shooters, whether it was Nazi Zombies from Treyarch's Call of Duty games, Left 4 Dead, or Killing Floor, running around and shooting zombies made quite a bit of sense.
Capcom is not known for first person shooters, and instead designed Dead Rising in a completely different manner based around what it did know and had recently experimented with. Dead Rising has a third person perspective where combat is more focused around melee weapons. Guns do exist, but they are clumsy to aim and not particularly powerful until the player has completed one of the most difficult challenges in the game, which unlocks the most powerful gun, and overall weapon, in Dead Rising.
Continue reading Spooky Plays: Dead Rising
Join me for the stream of conciseness that is Neo's "A Brief Look At" series!
This month we check out Robo Puzzle Smash, an unreleased indie puzzle game, coming soon to Steam and more!
Special thanks go out to Ben at PxlPlz for hooking me up with this early copy to show off!
Check out PxlPlz and Robo Puzzle Smash here:
www.RoboPuzzleSmash.com
Facebook.com/PxlPlz
Twitter.com/PxlPlz
Follow Neo on Twitter at: twitter.com/neomagicwarrior
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I have been hearing for years that The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is one of the finest JRPGs to be released in recent years. As a huge RPG fan, this high praise obviously piqued my interest, and despite never giving the Sony PSP the attention it deserved, it put Trails in the Sky on my radar as a game I should play. With the recent release of Trails in the Sky the 3rd in North America bringing the series to my attention once again, I have finally played the initial entry of this prestigious series!
Continue reading The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
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The Ys name, while notorious for its confusing pronunciation, carries a lot of weight in the JRPG world. Ys has been around since the 8-bit era, and new iterations are still being made today. Most games in the series are critically well-received, and the series as a whole has a large cult following. Despite all of this, I had never played a Ys game until very recently.
My first exposure to the series was the original Ys Books I & II. There are many different versions of the original Ys, sporting many ports and remakes across almost every console, but I played the TurboCD version, which is often considered the definitive release of the game. What I found was a unique "old-school" RPG adventure that I highly enjoyed despite being somewhat primitive and its sometimes awkward combat system. Ever since completing Ys Books I & II, I have wanted to dive into the rest of the series but have been confused about where to start next. Cue Ys: The Oath in Felghana.
Continue reading Ys: The Oath in Felghana
[img width=700 height=393]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IF5krWHMARI/VjiQsmj5QUI/AAAAAAAAAHM/F4yGBit1uWE/s800-Ic42/lucanor_poster_02.jpg[/img] PC, Mac, Linux
The Count Lucanor, from Baroque Decay Games, is the result of blending The Legend of Zelda and survival horror. It's a combination that's intriguing enough to support the core gameplay, but its execution is only effective for a couple of hours.
Continue reading The Count Lucanor Review
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Broken Age is a beautiful game. Sometimes you just want to enjoy a piece of art. I'm not going to open up the "Are Games Art?" can of worms argument, but I can say without a doubt that THIS GAME is a brilliant work of art.
Everyone knows the story of this game, but here's a quick recap if you aren't a part of "everyone": Tim Schafer and Doublefine started a Kickstarter asking for $300,000 to make an adventure game. The project exploded and they received over $3.3 Million. The game took a lot longer to make than anticipated, partially because they decided to make a much bigger game than they had originally planned now that they had way more funds than they thought they would. Instead of a delivery date of October 2012, the first half of Broken Age was available for backers to play in January of 2014, with the second half arriving in April of the same year. Along with the game, backers were given access to an episodic documentary of the making of the project. Now that that's all out of the way, let's talk about the game.
Continue reading Broken Age is a Beautiful Game
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PC gamers and console gamers have always been at odds, to put it nicely. Could the Steam Link help with the unification of these two long feuding groups?
Continue reading Could the Steam Link be the Missing Link?
Everyone has something to hide. Sometimes it is just more obvious than others...
Enter Octodad!
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Octodad is pretty straight forward game. You are a husband/father who goes about his day completing tasks like any other husband/father would. Such activities include grilling, grocery shopping, taking care of yard work, and spending time with your kids. These simple tasks turn into a comedic struggle when you have no bones.... For example, imagine flailing about the house and sloshing milk everywhere while pouring your daughter a glass.
Continue reading Octodad: Dadliest Catch Xbox One Review
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Last weekend the first/third-person military shooter, ARMA 3 was free on Steam so I thought, "What the hay." I set it to download and two hours later fired it up. What followed was the most direct amount of game playing that I've had in a while, which equals roughly three to five hours of game play (that is, Steam calls it three but with restarts is closer to five). What is my impression by the time the free weekend period was over?
Continue reading A Three Hour Tour of ARMA 3
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There's something eerily wrong in Red Creek Valley and it's your job to piece things together in this atmospheric "weird fiction" detective game.
Continue reading Review: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
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Hotline Miami is the game that got me to pay attention to the current indie scene. I had played some recent indies beforehand such as Minecraft, Geometry Wars, and its ilk, but this game really made me watch avenues such as Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter for indie or crowdfunded games. Hell, there's even a Suikoden fangame that I'm watching at the moment (are you even surprised by this?)
I've seen Hotline Miami described as a top down 'fuck'em up' by Eurogamer and that description is quite accurate. You play as a nameless character that the community has named Jacket as he wears a letter jacket. The gameplay revolves around slaughtering everybody on the floor you're running around on to a kickass soundtrack. Jacket wears a mask to disguise his identity, but each mask has a certain feature that changes gameplay slightly.
In terms of style Hotline Miami is a modernized version of the Playstation game Loaded, but with pixel based graphics and an even better soundtrack. You could point out elements to even old top down arcade shooters from the mid-late 80s like Ikari Warriors, Commando, Iron Tank, and many others as inspiration for some elements of design. Hotline Miami is more of a free roaming game though, with full movement and with the ability to scroll any direction you desire.
In terms of story this game can only be described as a stream of consciousness descent into sanity. The music is right at home in a dance club but some just feel deeper, and with all the face stomping and brain bashing it creates a unique dynamic.
The game even goes into a spin based on alternate timelines and how the story evolves from there. At a certain point in the game there's a confrontation between Jacket and a man wearing a motorcycle helmet. After completing Jacket's story the game switches perspective to the slain motorcycle man and lets the player control him, following the events until the confrontation with Jacket and showing what would happen if the motorcycle man won that fight and killed Jacket.
This version of 1980's Miami will leave you craving more. With a sequel on the way I am anxiously awaiting this follow up to a wonderful indie game that took some old ideas and made them stylish and new. It normally retails for $9.99 on a variety of platforms, from Windows, OSX, Linux, and with Crossplay support on PS3 and Vita. On the PC front it often goes on sale for $2.50, which is the price I paid for it. It was worth every penny.
Looking to get into digital PC gaming? You are? Well well well then, let me tell you: Steam's a great place to start. Valve's digital distribution giant has an easy-to-use client that houses all your games, a huge selection of titles to buy, and the famous Steam sales where you can pick up new games for criminally low prices of as little as one or two bucks. A lot of my favorite games on there are indie titles, made by individuals or really small teams. Indie devs typically have no tyrannical management to worry about, and they also tend to have a true passion for what they make. As a result, it's very common for fresh ideas and unbridled creativity to shine through their work!
Whether you're unfamiliar with this side of gaming or you just want something new to play, Steam happens to be running a huge sale at the moment: The Indie Spring Sale, going through March 29th. Countless indie games on Steam (if not all of them) are discounted, many at 75%+ off. It is absolute madness - thankfully, a wonderful kind. And hey, maybe you need a little guidance? A recommendation or two? Well, here are a few of my personal favorites that you can pick up on the cheap.
Note: Steam features a decent offline mode that works if you've signed in on your current computer before. But if you want to know which games are DRM-free, so that you can back them up wherever you want and play without an Internet connection, check out this handy list.
Gravitron 2
You pilot a space lander with thrust controls, similar to Gravitar or Oids. Gorgeous neon vector (!) graphics, combined with great flight & shooting controls make it an instant arcade-style classic. Every time you finish your mission exploring the underground depths of an alien planet, a countdown begins and intense music plays as you must escape to the atmosphere before the planet itself blows up. Exhilarating.
Thomas Was Alone
Excellent puzzle platformer: Graphics are slick but minimalist, and the story is told through an awesome narration. Gets pretty emotional. Even though you play as squares and rectangles!
Swarm Arena
VERY fresh, unique fast-paced action game with hints of strategy. As a glowing ball, you move around the arena to pick up little blips of light called drones that will swarm around you. Taking out your opponent - human or AI, offline or online - requires building up your army and swinging them using momentum to break through the other army, to strike the other colored ball. Tons of fun and something that's never quite been done before, to the best of my knowledge. You can get a better idea of the gameplay by watching a trailer.
Super Hexagon
An action game in the purest sense, Super Hexagon is an example of a simple design executed to perfection. You are a tiny triangle rotating around the middle of the screen to dodge incoming walls. That's it. And it's really difficult. But with practice you get a better feel for movement and you learn the patterns of the incoming walls, and it's really satisfying once you can survive for longer than five seconds. Also: The chiptune music is absolutely jammin, and the whole game pulses to the beat. Man, it's great.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Take a stroll through the most beautiful pixel-forest ever imagined, use the ancient magical powers of sworcery, battle horrible beasts, gaze at the moon. A modern adventure game, and it also has a bizarre-but-excellent sense of humor.
Ben There, Dan That! / Time Gentlemen, Please!
Two hilarious point & click adventures, bundled together. Almost any item combination you can think of will yield funny dialogue! And a lot of the humor actually comes from poking fun at quirks of the genre, so if you're a fan of these kinds of games, the Dan & Ben collection is a must.
The Polynomial
Explore the space of the music. Pop in your own tunes or listen to what's already there, and fly around incredible visual feasts as the lights pulse to the beat. There are enemies to shoot if you really want something to do, but you can turn them off. There are a LOT of settings you can play with - it's a gigantic visual music sandbox.
Super Laser Racer
A top-down racer with neon vector graphics, not quite as slick as Gravitron 2. But the racing can be a lot of fun, and the soundtrack is killer.
Data Jammers: FastForward
An action game that has you zooming down digital highways, racking up as many points as possible. All the different ways to squeeze points out of the level really make it interesting - there are collectibles, but then there are enemies. You can slam into enemies for more points, but that takes away some of your life, which regenerates over time. So it becomes a game of balancing your life bar while weaving in and out of the different lanes, exploiting every little opportunity for a higher score.
And Yet It Moves
A unique papery visual style combined with a strange ambient soundtrack and the ability to rotate the entire world make this a very interesting platformer indeed.
The Path
A dark, creepy, stunningly beautiful adventure inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. It blurs the line between videogame and notgame, and some traditional gamers are turned off because it's too "artsy". But if you're okay with a change of pace, and you can enjoy something that breaks the mold, I wholeheartedly recommend The Path. (just remember, it is seriously creepy)
I-Fluid
You are a drop of water, and there's a whole house out there to explore. Slick graphics, and some really cool 3D platforming. Just watch out for paper, stove tops, etc.!
Criminy, and it just goes on and on. There are many more I could mention. I could continue heaping praise onto the games I love forever and ever, on and on until the end of time. Or close to it. And then there are the bunches of indie games I haven't played and look great. But I'll cut it off here so this post isn't too too long. In summary: There is an enumerable amount of quality titles out there, and if you feel like giving a few a go, now's a good time to do just that!
Happy Holidays everyone!
It has certainly been a long time, but it feels nice to write again. The fifty-plus hours of work coupled with the full time school schedule and the constant madness of dual-child rearing has paused briefly, allowing me to leave more than a fifteen word comment once a week. How do I spend this winfall of time? Do I update my own stale website or post a blurb on the myriad of gaming blogs on the Internet? No, instead I go to one of the precious few sites that shares my love of gaming, collecting, and general good fun. I'm talking about you guys. Seriously, I swear.
Like many of you fellow parents, most of my Christmas money goes to the Santa fund, which provides more entertainment Christmas morning than I can properly explain. The wife and I rarely exchange gifts, and when we do it's more likely to be something simple, like a night on the town. This year was different. Due to my new job (and the massive amount of hours I work) we decided to give each other $40 to do with as we see fit. I didn't even need to think about what I would spend it on, it was only a question of where. I saw the answer Monday night before bed - Steam.
December 20th saw the start of a game sale that rivals clearance racks. Nearly all the games on Steam (over 1,400 at this point) are at least 10% off, with many well over 30% and some 50% to 75% off the original price, and to top it off there are daily deals which often give ludicrous discounts. Any doubts I had about digital distribution went out the door instantly, especially since most of the games will work without an Internet connection (a fact I was unaware of). This afternoon I finally snapped up some titles, all which I will add to my collection soon. All the games are followed by the sale prices with the original in parentheses. They are:
Red Alert 3 - $4.99 ($19.99)
Far Cry 2 - $4.99 ($19.99)
Half-Life 2: Episode One $3.99 ($7.99)
Half-Life 2: Episode Two $3.99 ($7.99)
Red Faction: Guerilla $9.99 ($19.99)
Stalker Bundle (both Call of Pripyat and Shadow of Chernobyl) $4.99 ($39.99)
Sid Meijer's Pirates! $2.49 ($9.99)
Supreme Commander 2 $3.74 ($14.99)
X2: The Threat $2.49 ($4.99)
Commander Keen $3.74 ($4.99)
Sure, I went over a bit, but I was always the one to push things. Fortunately the wife just rolled her eyes and walked away. Now the only problem is the finding time to play them. Too bad I couldn't get some of that for Christmas this year.
 Hey, remember this little game by the name of Portal? It came out just over two years ago to massive critical acclaim and gained tons of awards all the while spawning memes all over the internet? Have you played that game yet? If not, what's wrong with you? Like really, you're missing out big time, buddy.
However, now's your chance to correct this issue. In celebration of Steam coming to the Mac after all these years as a Windows only affair, Valve has decided to offer up the full uncut version of their game Portal on both Windows and Mac as a gift to the masses (until May 24).
If you haven't played Portal, now's the time. It's a fairly short game (about 3 hours or so), but it's one of the more satisfying games I've ever played. It never overstays its welcome and is excellently paced. And of course, once you're done playing Portal, there are oodles of fan-made mods that you can partake in, such as Portal: Prelude, maps from Portal: The Flash Version, and many others.
So my only question is, what are you waiting for? DOWNLOAD IT NOW!
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We are a community of collectors, gamers and the likes, and some of us enjoy to let the world know what is on our mind. For those members, we have the community blogs, a place where they can publish their thoughts and feelings regarding life, universe, and everything. Some of those members might even choose to write about gaming and collecting! Whatever they write about, you can find it on their blog. You can either see the latest community blog entries in the feed you see to the left, or you can browse for your favorite blog using the menu above. Interested in having your own blog hosted on RF Generation? It's rather simple, first be a registered member, and then click the "My Blog" link that you see in the navigation above. Following those two steps will certainly get you on your way to blogging.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy our entries, rantings, and completely unrelated series of thoughts. We write for you to read, so we certainly hope that you enjoy our material.
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