TBT: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2

Thoughts On Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2

playstationlifestyle.net

So the other day, Complex magazine put out a list of the 25 Best Playstation 1 Video Games of all time. And while looking through the list I saw the usual suspects on any list of best PS1 games (Twisted Metal, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, etc.), but there was one game on the list that I completely forgot about and insulted that I forgot about it was Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (THPS2). Out of all the sports games I’ve played, The Pro Skater series were my absolute favorite games to play, but it was Tony Pro Skater 2 that really got me into the series.

giantbomb.com

THPS2 came out on September 20^th, 2000. Now I’d be lying to you if I said that around that time I was a huge pro skateboarding fan because I really wasn’t.  I had no idea that pro skateboarding really existed and who Tony Hawk was until I started watching the X Games, more specifically the 1999 Summer X Games. I watched Tony Hawk land The 900 (900-degree spin) and that was the most amazing feat I ever witnessed on television. Yeah it took eleven attempts to pull it off, but I don’t care, it was still an amazing sight to see. That moment made me a fan of the sport so when THPS2 came out the following year, I was hooked.

whatculture.com

The game featured open-ended gameplay (a series trademark in all the Pro Skater games) in which you picked a pro skater or created skater of your own, and complete a series of challenges/missions that results in cash rewards. There are also certain tasks within those missions that you have to find and complete. For example, one task involves finding a hidden videotape that’s located somewhere on a specific level. Another example would have you finding letters that spell out S-K-A-T-E. Another awesome feature that was added to the game is the ability to create your own level called park editor and that was one of the many features that stand out in THPS2.

amazon.com

The Tony Hawk Pro Skater series was a game changer in sports gaming that was dominated by the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, and Pro Wrestling. THPS2 stands out to me as one of the best sports games in history because it featured amazing gameplay, excellent controls that made the skating experience in the game awesome, and it featured a cool soundtrack that was a staple in all the Pro Skater games. I’m still insulted that I forgot about this game because I had put in tons of hours playing this game and I have such fond memories of it.

#keepitnerdy

Written By: Justin Cooper (@ItsMrCooper82)

References:

Tony Hawk’s Games Wiki: http://tonyhawkgames.wikia.com/wiki/Tony_Hawk's_Pro_Skater_2

Keep Rockin’ Baby: TBT With Capcom VS. SNK

fightersgeneration.com

As a long time gamer, I enjoy games that can offer a fun experience. In this day and age, we tend to forget that but to me that’s the most important aspect of being a gamer. With that said, the game that I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying for many years is Capcom Vs SNK 2 (CVS2) on the PS2. Now I’ve already mention my love for Street Fighter and Tekken 2, but in all of the fighting games I’ve played in my lifetime, CVS2 ranks at the top of my list because it was such a fun game to play.

fightersgeneration.com

CVS2 was the “highly anticipated” sequel to the original Capcom Vs SNK that came out in 2000. CVS2 featured fighters from various fighting games across the Capcom and SNK universe. The Capcom side featured fighters from Darkstalkers, Final Fight, Rival Schools, and various versions of the Street Fighter series. SNK featured fighters from Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Garou: Mark of The Wolves, The King of Fighters series, The Last Blade, and Samurai Showdown. The game offered six different groove types to choose from, representing various modes and styles of play from previous Capcom and SNK fighting games.

C-Groove (Street Fighter Alpha 3 Style)

A-Groove (Street Fighter Alpha 3 V-Ism Style)

P-Groove (Street Fighter III Style)

S-Groove (King of Fighters Style)

N-Groove (Classic King of Fighters Style)

K-Groove (Samurai Showdown Style)

destructiod.com

To me the different groove types are just one of the reasons why the game is so much fun. For example, if you were to play as Ryu you can pick one of the SNK grooves and have a completely different experience compared to playing his more traditional CAP grooves. The other aspect of this game is the awesome special intros between Capcom and SNK characters before the start of the fight. It really adds a special element to the game. Oh and who can forget the Dramatic and Finest KO’s in the game either. One of the main reasons this game is so damn fun is that it gave me a chance to play as the SNK characters. Prior to CVS2, I’ve never played any SNK fighting game so this gave me an opportunity to play such characters like Terry, Iori, Kyo, King, and Kim. I actually started playing The King of Fighters series because of CVS2.

fightersgeneration.com

CVS2 is a very popular game that ranks high on every fighting game aficionado’s list. To this day many gamers are clamoring for Capcom Vs SNK 3 to happen (it’s unlikely though). It brought together an impressive list of fighters from both Capcom and SNK and featured amazing game-play. While later incarnations of the game came out after its initial release back in 2001 yielded less than “favorable” reviews *cough* PSN version *cough*, it’s still an amazing game.

#keepitnerdy

Written By: Justin Cooper (@ItsMrCooper82)

Resources

The Fighters Generation: http://www.fightersgeneration.com/main.htm

Payday 2: Buy This Game!

Payday 2: Who Needs Grand Theft Auto?!?

payday.wikia.com

When I finished Grand Theft Auto 5, the heists were, by far, my favorite part of the experience. I secretly longed for a game that just focused in on those. Of course, there already was such a game; Payday and its sequel, Payday 2.  I started playing this summer, and I quickly realized that I should have given this game a try back when it came out in 2013. Despite its age, Starbreeze Studios has been updating this game since it came out with a steady mix of paid and free DLC and the updates have improved the experience. They have also promised to continue updating and adding content for at least another year. If you haven’t given the Payday series a try before, now is as good a time as any. It frequently shows up on Steam sales fairly regularly and frequently bundled with a ton of DLC at a huge discount. It’s really worth it.

Payday is a co-operative FPS features the exploits of the infamous “Payday” gang, a group of 4 utterly crazy thieves armed with assault rifles, body armor, nice suits, and high explosives. They wear scary as hell clown masks that instantly cause all guards within a sixty foot radius to lose their shit if they spot you.  Their jobs cover everything from election fraud to arson to straight up robbery, usually resulting in a three digit body counts and six digit paydays.

You have a lot of options as to the how you are going to approach a job. Sometimes, you’ll come in guns blazing, leaving a three digit body count in your wake. Other times no one will notice you (other than that except one poor guard you had to knife in the head). Sometimes you’ll lose the mission if you get spotted, other times you’ll get paid for causing gratuitous collateral damage. I love this aspect of the variety of jobs available with different difficulty levels.  Once you have a feel for the game, you can stick to the style of the missions that you want. If you feel like being sneaky, you can play shadow raid, where you go in quiet to steal an absurdly valuable antique. Or you can go nuts and play the Hoxton Breakout, which is pretty much a crazy running firefight from start to finish.

Some of the newer jobs come with pre-planning phases that allow you to plan your attack, though co-ordinating with strangers can be difficult. You can also choose from a few limited assets that make the job easier. For example, in the Big Bank heist, you can bring in extra parts to the bank drill, or have a friend drive a bus into the side of the bank to make your exit once you have the vault open.

gstatic.com

As you complete jobs you get paid in cash and experience, which lets you buy new weapons, armor and masks. You’ll also unlock masks and modifications for said weapons. When you gain reputation levels you earn skill points which can be freely distributed between multiple classes, allowing you endless customization. The enforcer can wear incredibly heavy armor and cuts through the opposition with shotguns and power saws!!! The ghost is hard to spot and uses ECM to prevent alarms or disable enemies. The mastermind has a smattering of group enhancements and is great at keeping people on their feet instead of bleeding on the floor. The techie is the most accurate and the best at fixing THAT POS DRILL that keeps breaking every 30 seconds. You can have 3-5 different skill builds at any given time to change things up or to adapt to specific missions.

Since there’s three options per tier, mods for every weapons, tons of different weapons (some unlockable by DLC), perk decks that unlock special bonuses, the customization options become a little nuts. Particularly by the time you start hitting level 100 and have a lot of skill points to play around with… and then when you are used to that the game encourages you to “go infamous” resetting your level but unlocking a bunch of new customization options, music and gear. The fact that I’ve seen a lot of players with five levels of infamy (levelling from 1-100 five times) is a testament to how addictive this game is.

The game’s difficulty scales quite well. On Normal (the easiest) difficulty, regular cops might as well be firing paint guns at you. It’s built for beginners. On Death Wish, it’s a constant stream of SWAT teams, armored FBI agents, and specialty agents like the Cloaker (who looks like Sam Fisher, sneaks around, and can knock you out with one hit from his baton of death) the shield (who is invulnerable on one side to 90% of the weapons in the game) and the dreaded bulldozer (who can eat whole clips like overpriced movie popcorn). Even as a level 100 character, having two or three of these guys show up at the wrong time can end a mission quickly; this game is always a challenge. 

rockpapershotgun.com

Another thing I have to comment is on the communication and lobby system, which deserves some accolades simply because so many other games manage to screw their multiplayer matchmaking and communication up. All you have to do to play Payday 2 is go into “crime net” and you’ll be treated to a number of missions of various difficulties. Just click on the mission and you’ll enter a lobby. You can either chat or press a button to talk at any time. That may sounds like the bare minimum, but it’s amazing how many other games manage to get it wrong.

The easy communication is something any other game should emulate. I’ve met all sorts of people playing this game online, and the ability to quickly ask for help, point something else or make plans is a real key element of making multiplayer games more fun, particularly considering how difficult some of the jobs can get.

You work for a variety of bosses, whose mission has their own unique flavor. Vlad’s (the Russian mobster) missions are loud, brutal, and loaded with silly Russian stereotypes (“Vlad is on the rise like sputnik!”). The Dentist is a cool, soft spoken and erudite professional who calculates all the angles (played by Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad). There’s an even a crazy “Hotline Miami” mission with more 80’s references then you can shake a stick at as you try and eliminate Der Kommisar.

Payday does a fantastic job of presenting the theme of Payday 2. Starbreeze creates live action videos that show some of the canonical robberies of the Payday gang. These are periodically updated to introduce the community to new DLC (paid or free) and updates and flesh out the world. When you boot up Payday 2, you’ll get the latest one automatically (though of course you can skip it like any other intro video).

One of the big reasons I’m so positive towards this game is Starbreeze’s respect of the fans and continued support of the game, even 18 months after the game’s initial release. They’ve included numerous community weapon designs and ideas as free updates, given a ton of free content, created web videos, and are generally active and positive presences on their forums.

For example, a few pieces of DLC contain custom levels as well as a few pieces of equipment. If you don’t have this DLC, you can still PLAY in those levels; you just can’t start them yourself. That’s pretty generous in my book.  The weapons and gear you get in the paid DLC is nice, thematic, and useful, but aren’t inherently better than most of the other weapons, except in limited circumstances (machine guns are fantastic in corridors, grenade launchers make mincemeat of shields and bulldozers). 

tradeindetectives.com

Summary / Should you buy this?: Yes (as if it wasn’t obvious from my incessant flogging of a game from that came out in 2013). Considering how often this game goes on sale, there’s no reason not to give it a try if you play first person shooters.

Tips
Try and play “normal’ difficulty missions till you know what you are doing unless you have a patient team of friends willing to guide you.

Help people up unless doing so will just down you. You don’t want to be down a crook for long.
Just remember to take out the Cloaker first.

The golden rule of firefights is to get behind cover to recover your armor. Open areas are bad.

Don’t trust that an area behind you is clear. Enemies can slip into most areas via roof entrances and hidden vents, though they never put these in objective rooms or vaults.

Aim for the head. Good advice on all missions, but a must against bulldozers, who can soak up half a weapon’s total ammo capacity to the torso (no, not a clip, I mean your whole supply!)

Stick together. About half the time a mission fails it’s when I’m running after someone who got downed well away from everyone else.

Check out your team’s load out before you start a mission. You want to make sure you have someone with medic bags and ammo.

ECM is fantastic on robberies. On early missions you can just drop an ECM, storm the place and tie everyone up, ECM again, grab the loot and run and get out before anyone is the wiser.

The only DLC I consider “must own” is the Gauge Courier Mod. Other stuff is nice to have but not really required.

Four Stores, Mall Crasher, and Nightclub (Vlad’s Jobs) are all pretty good missions to introduce you to the game.

If you see a red glowing sniper light, find where it’s coming from and kill the bastard, or get behind cover. Snipers can take you out with 1-2 shots, but are pretty easy to kill.

Try different class powers and perk decks. Mastermind and Technician are the most generally useful.

They aren’t kidding about hostages being important. The more you have, the less aggressive the cops are, and you can trade them for team mates in custody.

Ghost is absurdly good for stealth missions (as you might expect). Enforcer and Fugitive are the “kill em all” classes, though Enforcers tend to be slow and loud while Fugitives tend to be fast and lightly armored.

The CAR and the Berneli-9 are good early weapons that will last you into the late game with the right mods. The Locomotion is an amazing secondary for loud missions.  Berneli-9’s used Akimbo are probably the best weapon in the game.

You cannot shoot through shields with most weapons. It simply can’t be done. Aim at the slots, get around them, or just ignore them and let the dude with the Sniper Rifle/HE shotgun/Grenade Launcher/ Armor Piercing weapons deal with them.

Cloakers kill in one hit, no matter how much armor you are wearing. You can hear when they are readying for an attack because their goggles make a “power up” noise. These are top priority targets.

If you hear someone being tasored near you, help them. Otherwise you may have to revive them instead in a few seconds.

Enemies will drop to the floor when wounded

Some Mastermind skills involve making cops surrender and become hostages, or even turn to your side and fight for you. If you see a cop with a blue outline, he’s on your side: don’t shoot him. If you see a cop surrendering, don’t shoot him.

When the escape vehicle appears, get to it quickly. Don’t be the one guy who’s left behind.

It’s better to get away with one person then lose everyone. Be prepared to cut your losses if things get ugly.

There are a ton of strategy videos, builds, and guides available on the forums and on YouTube.

Ask to friend people you enjoyed playing with. It really helps.

cinemablend.com

#KeepItNerdy
Written by: Marc Thompson

Battlefield Hardline Beta

Will the police chase end in a crash?

ea.com

On Wednesday, Visceral Games announced more details about the upcoming multiplayer beta for Battlefield Hardline. While a launch date for the beta is being kept secret for now, DICE did confirm the following:

·         The Battlefield Hardline beta will be open to everyone across all platforms-- PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, and Playstation 4. Launch date is coming later.

·         Modes include: Hotwire (a brand new mode for the entire Battlefield series, which focuses on combining all-out warfare with all-out speed) and Conquest (64 players on PC).

·         No cap on max progression level.

·         Includes 2 playable maps

"To be frank, we want you to play this beta to death. We need you to," Visceral Games general manager Steve Papoutsis said. "This test is only going to make the game stronger, and help us take a look at ways we can ensure we deliver the most stable launch you deserve."

-DICE

gamingbolt.com

From what I see, Dice wants to test the stability before launch. The upcoming multi-player beta is actually the game's second public play-test. Hopefully, once the game launches there will be no hiccups (I’m talking about you Battlefield 4). Battlefield Hardline is scheduled to release March 17^th.

#keepitnerdy

By: Quantavius Hair

Follow on Twitter @Da-Bomb-De-Quan

TBT With Tekken 2

On My Love & Obsession With Tekken 2

emu.kulicki.net

One of my fondest memories of the PS1 era was my love and obsession with Tekken 2. I mean who wouldn’t love it, especially when the game has the most awesome intro in fighting game history. Yeah, I said it! I mean seriously, tell me this intro gets you hyped to play it. Tekken 2 was one of the few games I had on the old the Playstation and was one game (next to Street Fighter Alpha) I played non-stop. Now I did play the original Tekken, which was fun and considered to be a surprise hit for Namco, but it didn’t even compare to how much fun I had playing Tekken 2.

fightersgeneration.com

The story of Tekken 2 revolves around the father and son relationship between Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima that started in the first game with Kazuya throwing his father off a cliff (spoiler) and taking over leadership of the powerful Mishima Zaibatsu. As the leader, Kazuya has made enemies of many people across the world due to his illegal dealings such as kidnappings, extortion, blackmail, etc. One of his most hated enemies (besides Heihachi) is the animal rights fundamentalist, Jun Kazama. Jun was supposed to arrest Kazuya but wound up being attracted to him or should I say the devil powers inside Kazuya and she winds up being pregnant with his child Jin.

To conclude this story, Kazuya finds out Heihachi survived being thrown off a cliff (and survives near death many times after that) and is out for revenge. An epic fight takes place between the two with Heihachi coming out on top and this time throwing his son into a volcano setting up the events in Tekken 3 but that’s another throwback/retro article for another day.

ps1isos.net

What made me obsessed with this game when it came out in 1996 besides the gameplay (which was a lot smoother than the first game), the overall intro and presentation, but the characters that were featured in Tekken 2. Every character had a deep list of moves and combos that made the game stand out as being more of a realistic fighting game compared to its competitors. My favorite character in the game at the time was King. As a King player, it gave me more of an incentive to learn his moves especially his chain throw combos.

techmynd.com

Tekken 2 was the first game where I really had to learn about certain characters, memorize their move-sets, and positioning my character in a game and not getting your ass kicked after a few moves. This game made me a fan of this amazing series and with Tekken 7 on the horizon; I look forward to continuing enjoying the Tekken experience.

#keepitnerdy

Written By: Justin Cooper (@ItsMrCooper82)

References:

Fighters Generation: http://www.fightersgeneration.com/main.htm

The Tekken Wiki: http://tekken.wikia.com/wiki/Tekken_2

Tropico 5 Review: No tropical vacation

But still pretty sunny

bundlestars.com

Tropico is a strategy nation building game in which you play El Presidente, “elected” leader of the titular vaguely Caribbean island of Tropico. You grow your island any way you want, responding to various nagging concerns of your citizens (they always want things like “food” and “housing” and ‘healthcare”), putting down violent rebellion, making insane amounts of money (and funneling it to your Swiss bank account).

 How you run your island is largely up to you. Tropico can be a vicious dictatorship, a socialist worker’s paradise or a capitalist haven of massive wealth. It is up to you how your island grows. Will your reign will end with an honored retirement at the age of 200 or so, a lost election, or a hurried dash off the island while perused by an angry mob?

And that’s just the sandbox mode. The campaign and scenarios let you go through a truly bizarre series of events involving time travels, llamas, the Illuminati, pirates and a truly distressing amount of Uranium in your quest to not screw up the world any more than it already is.

The game’s tone is (as it has always been) darkly humorous. Your adviser is a raging jackass. Actually, all the characters are raging jackasses as well as being obvious stand-ins for various historical figures.

As the scenarios develop, your president will gain the opportunity to increase his or her skill levels, as well as creating “heirs” with different appearances and abilities. Only one can be president at a time (obviously), but the others provide small global bonuses and can manage buildings to provide specifically limited ones. You don’t actually age in this game and your avatar doesn’t die (Tropican leaders are apparently ridiculously long-lived). But it’s nice to be able to swap out characters for a specific mission.

In Tropico 5 (unlike the previous games) you start in an undisclosed year in the colonial era, where you are a Crown representative of the King. You don’t have to worry about revolutions; however you are under a crown mandate, and if your time runs out before you declare independence; the game ends. You can extend your time in this period (and I recommend you do so) by doing little missions for the king or using the East India Company to import or export goods. Of course, you are strictly limited in options at the start of the game since it’s the 19^th century. 

screenshot

In fact, at the very start, you can’t even mine; your researchers haven’t even discovered shovels. Some sciency buildings in Tropico 5 provide research points that work toward technologies, which include new buildings, upgrades, edicts or constitutional changes. You are limited to technologies that make sense for the era – for example, you can’t develop nuclear technology until the cold war (since it wouldn’t make much sense for Tropico to develop nukes before the US)

When your population is ready, and you’ve researched a constitution, you can declare independence from the crown, either by paying cash or fighting an invasion. Once that’s done, you pick what rules your constitution will follow (I like Theocracies where only the Wealthy vote and all citizens are conscripted, myself) and the game advances to 1911, the World Wars era.

At this point, the game feels more like your regular Tropico. You have to get elected every few years, which requires the popular support of most people on the island. Unless you cheat. Of course, you can always declare martial law and cancel elections, but you’d better have the complete support of the military to deal with the inevitable revolt.

And of course, you have to make sure you don’t piss off foreign powers and have to continue to deal with an increasingly complex infrastructure. Managing a crown colony in the 19^th century is easy; trying to keep an island with a population of 1500+ inhabitants running is a nightmare.

And of course, to keep it interesting, there are specific missions and even an entire campaign which provides its own unique challenges. One mission may have you gathering resources to pay off a royal ransom. Another may involve you gathering a huge military force to fight off invaders. Another may involve you accumulating a truly ridiculous pile of money. Each mission can be won by completing specific goals in the missions that regularly appear, which keeps the game fresher than just letting the player control a single island.

The new campaign is, for the most part, pretty good, doing a good job of introducing you to new content and upping the difficulty over time, except maybe for the final mission, which I felt was quite a letdown (it was almost comically easy). One of the interesting changes about the new campaign is that you can be asked to take over previous islands. The practical effect of this is that if you manage to barely stumble into success, it’s possible to take over an island that’s falling apart, starts you with very little cash, and comes with a whole bunch of challenges you have to complete. Alternatively, it is also possible to spend extra time on an island and then have the next mission just sail by.

The problem I had with Tropico 4 was that it didn’t sufficiently change the series to justify a new purchase. It was essentially a prettier version of Tropico 3. Tropico 5, unlike 4, represents a change in the formulae, not making the same mistakes of the previous game, and I support the sentiment.

For one, the game isn’t as easy. Virtually every mission in Tropico 4 could be won with the same optimal strategies (my usual was nuclear test, humanitarian aid, set your farms to cash crops and build a rum factory, importing sugar if you need it). It also introduced experience, which even further reinforced the idea that you should keep doing the same thing.

Tropico 5, however, has the missions take place in different time periods with very strictly limited technology. The earlier the era, the less you have to use, but the less complicated things get.  It’s a whole different set of problems to deal with, and that really extends the life of the game.  It isn’t particularly hard if you’ve finished played a lot of the Tropico games, but it’s a nice change of pace.

The game isn’t without its problems. You no longer have nearly as much fine control over your docks, making importing all but the cheapest goods a nightmare. You might want sugar to go to the dock by your rum factories, but you can’t control that. I can understand WHY they didn’t want importing to be easy, but it feels like a step back in terms of control and design.

There is also a lack of NPC personality and thus faction personality. There’s only a few NPC’s in this one, and they speak less frequently. Also, Tropican citizens are a bit less one dimensional and don’t just pick one faction to follow blindly anymore. This provides far more realistic approval numbers and models support of your faction better, but you lose a lot of witty banter, and the factions don’t have as much importance. I used to hate the notice, for example that I had been branded heretic by the church. If I pissed off the environmentalists, one of them would come on the radio and complain about me, or might protest my mines. I’d know I’d pissed them off, and that’s missing here. 

static_trueachievements.com

Summary 

If you thought Tropico sucks, 5 probably won’t change your mind. If you like the series though or want to give a new strategy game at try, this is worth picking up, at least at discount. It’s not fantastic, and the DLC is horribly overpriced at full cost (seriously.. $5 for a new building and a single mission you’ll do in under an hour?)

Call it a C+. Tropico 5 is an above average strategy game (at least for 2014). It’s not bad, but it’s not great, with a bunch of old problems still not accounted for and new ones introduced by the new features.

A Few Tips

Tropico 5
If you want to start with a better dynasty, try playing the first campaign mission a few times. Accept Kane’s reward as a Swiss Bank contribution, and pop new heirs till you get the ones you like. Finish the mission, save and load. You’ll have a bunch of level 3-4’s in no time!

The best initial skill is probably Cheapskate – getting huge rebates on EVERY building you put together is a huge advantage. Tycoon and Supervisor are both phenomenal. Inventor Environmentalist and Agent are all really useful. Financier, Celebrity, and General are very lackluster.

First thing I like to do on any mission, is build a second construction firm, just to speed things up. For colonial missions, concentrate on getting money and nothing else. Mines, logging camps and pig farms generate quick profits. Sugar farms, tobacco and cotton all translate into free money once you hit world wars with the right factory.

I prefer to pick mandate extension to any other reward. You can do an awful lot of building and population growth in a year.

As you expand, keep an eye on your docks and teamsters. It’s quite possible to wreck your economy by not having enough of these.

My favorite constitutional item, by far, is conscription. You have to use your high school workers to man the factories if you want to make money. The start of the world war era will stretch your educated population as you simultaneously develop factories, a military, and a basic social safety net.

If you get an inventor manager, put it on a farm for easy free early research.
Environmentalists and landlords, deployed on a church or cathedral running a community aid program, can even make shack housing quality acceptable for your first election or two.

Mines dry up, and sometimes even the most stable of economic sources will stagnate due to some labor shortage, traffic jam or whatever. Diversify your economy into different areas, and try and translate to money making that requires minimal traffic later on (offices, pharmaceuticals, tourism).

Have fun ruling your own little slice of paradise!

#keepitnerdy
Written by: Marc Thompson

Will Your PC Survive The Intensity of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt?

gamezone.blogspot.com

Kicking Drivers Into Overdrive

Developer CD Projekt Red on Wednesday announced the official PC system requirements for this year's highly anticipated open-world RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. From the looks of it many gamers may have to upgrade their rigs in risk of melting the current one they have now in order to run this game.

redgamingtech.com

Minimum System Requirements:

• Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz
• AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
• Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660
• AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
• RAM 6GB
• OS 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
• DirectX 11
• HDD Space 40 GB

Recommended System Requirements

• Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3,4 GHz
• AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz
• Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 770
• AMD GPU Radeon R9 290
• RAM 8GB
• OS 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
• DirectX 11
• HDD Space 40 GB

The Witcher 3 certainly looks pretty enough to justify high demands of your PC, but such high system requirements are a recently returned phenomenon. Let’s not forget while the PC version is expected to run at 1080p/60fps, the console versions will run at 900p/30fps. Is this installment too powerful for the current-gen systems? How huge of a comparison will it be to its PC counterpart? The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is scheduled to be released May 19, 2015 for PS4, XboxOne, and PC.

#Keepitnerdy

Written by: Quantavius Hair

On Katamari Damacy, Weirdness & Keeping It Simple

gamekapocs.hu

To this day the strangest, craziest, and weirdest game I’ve ever played in all my years of gaming has been Katamari Damacy and it’s not even close. The game that was developed by Namco for under a million dollars that created a wonderful experience for many gamers when it came out 10 years ago in 2004. Now for me, I heard about this game while watching an old episode of X-Play on G4, hearing Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb singing its praises. So naturally I had to find out what the hype was all about, and to my surprise it became an all-time favorite of mine.

giantbomb.com

What stood out to me about Katamari was the weirdness and simplicity of the story itself. The story of Katamari deals with the King of The Cosmos (a huge Galactus size being) wiping out all the stars and other celestial & astrological bodies from the sky due to him going on a wild drinking spree. Instead of taking responsibility and returning the sky back to normal, he puts the onus on his son the prince (whose immensely pint-sized compared to the king) to go to Earth and pretty much collect as much stuff as he can to recreate all the stars and constellations. During this story mode, there’s a side story involving a Japanese family that has been affected by the actions from the King and has like a sense of the princes’ actions. The game is also simplistic in its controls. In a day and age where complex buttons schemes and controls are the norm, Katamari’s controls date back to a simpler time in gaming and that’s what is great about this game and make it a lot of fun.

pingmag.jp

To me the story in its simple and weird style, make for an enjoyable experience. What makes it more enjoyable is the soundtrack…. OH MY GOD THE SOUNDTRACK!!! I haven’t mentioned how amazing it is, and I’m thinking that I will have to write about that someday and break it down but nonetheless, Katamari Damacy will go down as one of my favorite games of all-time. Just writing about it makes me want to play it all over again and have some fun.

electric-design.co.uk

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Written By: Justin Cooper (@ItsMrCooper82)

2014 Games of the Year

Marc Thompson 2014 Games of the Year List

Dragon Age: Inquisition – Best RPG from an AAA company Award

assests.rpgsite.net

You had us worried, Bioware. After the mediocre Dragon Age II, the debacle over the horrific Mass Effect 3 ending, and the disappointing Star Wars MMPORG; gamers were wondering if you had lost your touch, eaten by the brain rot that seems to infect any studio touched by EA.  But you delivered this time. I was really impressed by the detail put into the characters, the voice acting, the world, and you`ve managed to tell a complete story that you actually have an effect on; and it is one that actually engages you. The game isn`t short (I had 80 hours by the end) and doesn`t reuse the same dungeon over and over (the levels are varied, huge, and gorgeous). It doesn`t make you feel like you have no impact on the story or game world (quite the opposite). The game isn`t perfect, but no Bioware game has ever been perfect.  I look forward to full-length DLC and expansions for this game, which is something I rarely, if ever, say.

South Park: The Stick of Truth – Only good game from the first six months of the year Award

s.pro-gmedia.com

In fact, this is pretty much the only game I can still remember that came out in the first six months of the year. How rare is it to find a product tie-in game that not only doesn't suck, but fits nearly seamlessly into its licenced product? This game was so good it actually made my girlfriend a South Park fan, and she’s hated it for nearly 20 years. 

Highly memorable and you really should buy it if you haven’t given it a try already; it should be on sale on both Steam, Xbox Live, and the PSN pretty soon. Of course, it IS South Park, so viewer discretion is advised.

Alien Isolation – Holy shit, an ACTUAL Survival Horror game Award 

amazon.com

An Aliens game and its good? And it’s an ACTUAL survival horror game instead of being a cover shooter with jump scares?  And it’s made by Creative Assembly, a company known only for strategy titles?  And it came out in 2014? How the hell did this happen after Colonial Marines?

Alien Isolation does a wonderful job of making you feel like a soft fleshy human who can be killed at any moment. The space station you are stuck on oozes the creepy, retro 80’s future atmosphere of the movies brilliantly. The Alien isn’t a bad guy to be killed; it’s an unstoppable thing, a force of nature. You hide, or you die.

Creative assembly gets this, and through good use of pacing, anticipation, and not making you some unstoppable badass with a pulse rifle. Just try and play it on hard if you can manage, it’s really the way the game was meant to be played.

Divinity: Original Sin – Best B Company RPG Award

wikipedia.com

Here is a game that brings it old school, with a funky, late 90’s/early 20’s style isometric RPG complete with action points, tons of non-voiced dialogue, and a bizarre and arcane character upgrade system that allows for oodles of customization.

There are lots of options of players to deal with problems, from being sneaky gits with invisibility to setting up a bunch of exploding barrels. It reminds me a bit of Fallout 2 crossed with Bauldur’s Gate 2, only with a higher focus on tactics instead of strategy. The gameplay is 70 hours plus, so this is definitely worth picking up if you are a fan of RPG’s.


Far Cry 4 – Best Shooter 

joystiq.com

It’s like Far Cry 3, but with a more developed primary villain, even if the secondary villains aren’t as cool as Vaas (but who is?). Basically, it takes most of the good stuff out of Far Cry 3, fixes a few things, makes the protagonist a little more likable, and adds in honey badgers, elephant riding and awesome Bollywood music. It’s good stuff, though would like to have seen a bit more of what Kyrat turns into once you take over. This is probably the game I agonized over the most. Far Cry 4 is just good, not amazingly super brilliant. I had more fun with this shooter than any other I played this year, so it deserves an award.

Robocraft – Best New MOBA you’ve never heard of from a company you never heard of

amazon.com

What, you’ve never heard of it? Not surprised, it’s still mostly in Alpha. This game is a crazy combination of World of Tanks and Minecraft. Essentially, you create a tank, car, walker, hovercraft, flier or even a blimp out of different colored blocks. Then you battle them in an arena. It’s an awesome turducken of nerdiness, a rare planetary alignment of themes that combine like chocolate and peanut butter. I love obsessing about optimal character builds before I play, and this game lets you putter around for hours in the garage looking for ways to make my design more efficient. The more artistically inclined can form the various blocks to create a replica of Kim Jon Un’s face with machine guns coming out of his mouth. Did I mention this game is free? Give it a try.

Best of the Best: Game of the year (and Best Indi Game)
This War Of Mine

11bitstudios.com

This War of Mine manages to wonderfully get across its theme describing life in a war… for civilians.

 It’s so rare to see a game that`s so fun to play, emotionally engaging and perfectly themed, particularly for a little known developer like War Child. It is grim without being hopeless and difficult unless you heavily strategize.

I consider this the best game of 2014 because of its originality, and the fact it was executed so well. No game I played this year got me nearly as engaged in what I was doing (no, not even Robocraft or Aliens: Isolation). No game invested me as heavily into the narrative. When I played, I genuinely felt like an awful human being for stealing medicine from old people (or any of the awful things I had to do in this game). I haven’t felt as conflicted over a game since Spec Ops, only This War of Mine standard gameplay is far more fun, and the game was created on a non-budget from a studio you’ve never heard of.

Honorable Mentions

Danganronpa
This is one of the very few games that ever made me consider buying a Vita. I suppose it is technically available on PSP as well (and came out in Japan a few years ago). It is basically a cross between Phoenix Wright and Battle Royale. Lock a bunch of teens with amnesia together, and the only way out is to kill a fellow student and not get caught. Of course, I’ve only actually seen it played (and saw the anime), since I don’t own a Vita, so it is only an honorable mention.
 
Valkyria Chronicles for PC/PS3     
Technically, this game came out nearly a decade ago but until recently has been a bit hard to come by. It feels like cheating to give an award in 2014 for it, but it deserves mention now it is now available on PSN for PS3 and on Steam for PC. This is a fantastic mix of RPG, FPS and strategy war game. Its themed on a magitech based WWII, complete with ethnic concentration camps (seriously), propaganda wars, serious character growth, bat shit insane characters on both side and the knowledge that any character can die at any time. Anyone who likes RPG’s really needs to play this one.

Persona 4 for PS3
See everything I said about Valkyria Chronicles.  If you like JRPG’s at all, Persona 4 is a must buy.

Shadows of Mordor

I didn’t quite gush over this game as much as most other people. The closest thing I can think of to it is Batman: Arkham City, only without nearly as interesting a story. Still, its nemesis system is fun and randomly makes what should be regular “easy” fights suddenly turn into fit inducing frustrating battles as Doche the Craven (that boss who you were sure you decapitated five minutes ago) suddenly decides to pay you back by coming at you just as you are starting a fight against another boss. I just couldn’t get behind it as much as some other people, possibly because they tried to package early review copies with the condition that reviewers would only give favorable reviews of the game. And that’s too bad, because the game stood up quite well on its own merits.

Borderlands the Pre Sequel

It’s pretty good. Not great, just good. It’s well written, but I think I’m getting bored of the formula. Sadly, “did what it’s supposed to do and introduced new elements” puts it well above the pack for 2014, so it deserves mentioning anyway.

Obligatory list of dubious awards of 2014

Akiba’s Trip – “Oh, Japan!” Award

funnyjunk.com

I love quirky Japanese games (I bought Way of the Samurai and Yakuza 4), but couldn’t quite bring myself to pick this one up. Basically, it’s a beat-em up RPG game where you play a nerd who fights vampires…. by stripping their clothes to expose them to sunlight. It’s on the PSN store.  I honestly don’t even know if it’s any good.  But I find the fact that a game this weird exists on the PSN store hilarious.

Beyond Earth - Huge Underwhelming Disappointment Award) 

i.mgur.com

Let me be clear; this isn’t a bad game, per se, it is just so… bland. It’s the first Civilization game I’ve ever played where I had no desire play halfway through my first play through. I set the game to the hardest difficulty, took over half the map, and just don’t have the heart to finish. This game is trying to emulate SMAC, but it just doesn’t measure up. It neither has the writing chops to make me care about the world or my faction, or the gaming chops to really make me interested in conquering the world, because the AI can’t stop me on the hardest levels. It failed to really engage me once I actually started playing it, and that’s the first time that’s happened with a Firaxis game.  There’s no real excuse for a game to be so unengaging when most of its engine was developed back in 2010.

Assassin’s Creed Unity - Awful AAA title and why Ubisoft should be Ashamed Award

vipmedia.globalnews.ca

Ubisoft released early copies of Assassin`s Creed: Unity to the gaming press, and then issued a review embargo that expired 12 hours AFTER the launch of the game. Thus, reviewers who had early copies of the game couldn`t warn consumers that the game was buggy as hell in single player with constant glitches ranging from distracting to game breaking. Multi-player (which was largely hyped before release) was pretty much non-functional at launch (with recommended tech solutions like “delete all your friends and play offline”). Ubisoft was lambasted for this by critics, but a few weeks later announced review embargoes for their upcoming game, “The Crew”, and the gaming world collectively face palmed.

Dungeon Keeper Mobile - Awful AAA Mobile Title and why EA should be ashamed award
It just wouldn’t be a shit list without EA, wouldn’t it? Everything you need to know about this wretched, festering boil can be summed up with two overused clichés.

First, this isn’t really a video game. There’s no strategy involved in this “game”. There’s no real gameplay at all. Just build a room and either wait 24 hours for it to dig a tile or spend real money so you can start another timer and spend more money. People may say virtual novels aren’t really games, but at least you have some options, and the game has a narrative, a story you follow. This doesn’t even have that.

Second, this is an example of everything that’s wrong with video gaming today. The fact that EA thinks they can slap mechanics more exploitive than Farmville and sell that shit to people who grew up with Dungeon Keeper (who are now in their early 30’s) speaks volumes about how badly EA understands the hard-core gaming audience. 

news.bbcimagine.co.uk

This is awful, even by mobile standards. This is awful by EA standards. When it comes to buying up your childhood memories and whipping quick cash, Micheal Bay has NOTHING on EA. At least if I hit a Bay movie, I can expect explosions, cheap laughs, and shallow entertainment, instead of just paying a shit ton of money for nothing in particular. In short, I hate this game and everything it represents.
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Written by Marc Thompson