#plus so many Zelda games like. give you extensive time with Zelda

[dentpx]

Also the non-linear storytelling completely results in….no storytelling imo. Nintendo is so aware of the fact that players might not do things in the order they want (if they even do them at all) so all the information has to be really minimal and repetitive in case somebody only does one temple or whatever. TP and OOT and MM and literally every other Zelda game put you directly in the path of the main antagonists or have really drastic things happen while you’re there. Where TOTK/BOTW it’s like, everything really intense happened a super long time ago and you watch a video about it and then go back to hunting frogs or whatever

[deiliamedlini]

WIP Wednesday

I wrote this last night and really don’t know where I’m going with it because I wrote another section of this that’s completely different from this first part, but I’m having too much fun so this might become a long oneshot or like a two/three chapter short fic eventually. I signed into my Guild Wars account for the first time in forever to watch the chat and apparently Lion’s Arch isn’t as interesting as it used to be. Not that any of that is really relevant. 

This is Zelda and the Champions as internet friends playing a MMORPG video game called Hyrule Warriors. 

~

Zelda Harkinian loved Fridays. Not that it was a rare thing to be obsessed with the weekend, but she maybe loved it a little too much. After a week of lesson plans, and cleaning the classrooms, and sneezing students, and emails asking for an extension on a paper that wasn’t even due yet, she relished the escape the weekend provided. Granted, she still had to grade about a hundred tests, but that was a problem for Sunday or even Monday.

Smiling down at her roommate, a kitten she’d raised when she found it in the street all alone, Zelda fed her girl—whom she’d named Duchess because she had every intent of treating her like royalty—and played with her for a bit before throwing down her bag in her room and then grabbed a water and a granola bar before heading to her desk. She flipped her laptop open and booting up Hyrule Warriors, her favorite open world MMORPG.

Her internet sucked, so she grabbed her phone to aimlessly scroll to see if there was any news or updates. But it was pretty dull.

Instead, she thought back to how this whole weekend ritual began.

She’d been in a cavern just off of Death Mountain for about three days killing fire keese, lizalfos, and beamos. As a mage, her AOE skills made short work of the larger groups, hitting them all at once. It was especially useful here because her main specialties were water and light, but she struggled when boss fights came out. The NPCs weren’t great teammates, and she constantly found herself resurrecting far from the boss, only to make a long run with a health penalty that ended with her getting killed again, until her heath penalty was maxed out and she had to restart for any hope of succeeding. As a mage, her light armor made her vulnerable to physical attacks, and this boss was very physical.

Zelda didn’t like interacting with people in this game. It was massively popular, and the chat was always running. Sometimes, she’d just sit at an outpost and watch people talk. Her favorite interactions were often the random ones. She’d begun to look up the acronyms everyone used in chat just to understand them better. WTS= want to sell.

Indigo2421: WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Britneigh4Horses: WTS My mother. 1 rupee. Will pay postage fee.

But after her days of suffering in the lonely caverns in Death Mountain, she relented.

A quick search had her hands shaking, but she typed quickly so she couldn’t back out after she’d hit enter.

xPrincessZx: LFG Dodongo’s Cavern

Holding her breath, she’d waited in the hopes of a private message being sent to her.

One did.

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: What missin are doing there?

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: Mission*

(PM): xPrincessZx: I have to kill the Dodongo boss for the main story

ThunderstruckQueen would like to join your party.

Biting her nails, she’d accepted.

(PM): RockRoast12345: Still need someone?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Yes! That would be great! Thanks!

RockRoast12345 would like to join your party.

That had been how it started: A goron warrior with a Warhammer and some serious defensive moves joined as the tank to take as much damage for the team as he could stand, and a Gerudo Paladin had joined her party. Zelda was jealous of the purchase-only red hairstyle the Gerudo had for her character. She had a sword and shield, but her body flickered with elemental lightening magic. In-game purchase effects.

They’d defeated Dodongo with ease, and had gone on several missions together that day, taking down their storylines with relative ease. But they couldn’t function with the NPC healer who barely functioned at all.

So, ThunderstruckQueen had taken to the map chat and put out a request.

ThunderstruckQueen: I found someone. She’s a Zora Cleric. Level 40

RockRoast12345: Let her in! I want to get this one over with

Rutella Zoran IV would like to join your party.

After that, the four of them realized they worked so well together that they’d formed a guild. The Champions. ThunderstruckQueen paid the guild fee, bought a hall, and began decorating it with merchants, and chests. Zelda still shuddered, wondering what she did to have so many rupees ready to go. Needless to say, she made herself the leader.

Some days, they didn’t play together. Other times, only two of them were on. But on weekends, they all came together.

But it had been a Monday when Zelda played, and she’d been alone. Having already tossed her tissue box across her room in frustration, she debated making a new character with more defense, but she sucked it up and went into the Castle Town map, ready to ask for help. She couldn’t wait until she could get to be a higher level. As it was, she’d only gotten to these level 40 areas as a 32 because of Rutella.

Suddenly, a random Hylian man in green with a fancy sword and shield ran up to her and bowed. Zelda scoffed at her computer screen, unsure if she was supposed to respond.

She didn’t need to.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Hey Princess

(PM): xPrincessZx: Hello?

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Jst wondering if u have a spare flower crown from yesterday’s festival. Missed it. Will pay

Zelda pulled up her inventory, forgetting she was still wearing her flower crown from the Flower Fest. It must have been what tipped him off. In fact, she had four spares.

(PM): zPrincessZx:  Yeah, I do. Come to the chest and I’ll trade.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Thx

She’d never done a trade with anyone who wasn’t in her guild, so she’d felt nervous running to grab it.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: How much u want?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Actually, I’ll give it to you free if you’re willing to help me with a quest? Or 10k.

WildKnightOut2 would like to join your party.

She accepted and watched his character appear in the corner of her screen.

WildKnightOut2: That’s a rip off, btw. Crowns are with 15k at least. Don’t undersell

xPrincessZx: Thanks. I didn’t realize. I’m still kind of new.

WildKnightOut2: Howd u get out here then?

xPrincessZx: I had a run from a friend in my guild.

WildKnightOut2: Got room for a warrior in there?

Zelda introduced him to the other Champions when they’d signed back on, and after a few weeks, Zelda had leveled up enough that she didn’t need to constantly rely on a teammate. But still. She liked Wild the best after ThunderstruckQueen.

They’d brought in a Rito Ranger named TheBestYouveNeverMet, which immediately set Wild off.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: should I aggro a group over so he has to fight them for us?

(PM): xPrincessZx: No! Don’t do that! I’ll get sent over to deal with them!

(PM): xPrincessZx: HEY! I SEE YOU ON THE MAP!

(PM): xPrincessZx: WILD GET BACK TO THE GROUP

On the mini-map, she saw a hoard of red coming at them and rolled her eyes before joining TheBest to kill them with area attacks. Rutella stayed back to heal them, but Thunder and Rock both continued on, unfazed.

ThunderstruckQueen: Wild you’re an idiot

But that was then. This was now.

They’d been together for months as a guild, and now, the six of them knew how the others worked.

If Wild or TheBest took off on their own, no one would follow. They’d both been killed numerous times in an attempt to piss the other off. Zelda had learned to stay with Thunder and Rock. Rutella flitted between running back to revive the idiots, or sticking with the smarter members while letting them heal on their own.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u wound me

Zelda chuckled, but he wasn’t done.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: After all ive done for u

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u leave me to die

(PM): xPrincessZx: Don’t run off next time

It was a Wednesday when she and Wild were playing alone, so they freely used party chat for ease. She’d surpassed his level, and towered as a 93 while he was an 87.

WildKnightOut2: Hang on. Fuzzball wants food

Zelda stared at his character on her screen, wondering if he looked anything like that avatar. Blonde hair, muscular, piercing blue eyes. She’d made her character look like herself, so it wasn’t hard to imagine others had. Plus, he was the only Hylian. She highly doubted that RockRoast12345 was actually a giant rock-man, or that Rutella Zoran IV was a short fish lady.

She knew everything about these people except their names, faces, and voices.

She knew that ThunderstruckQueen was a single mother who called her daughter Ri on chat. She was a chief of police, and had a few hundred of her force to look out for. Still, she wanted to quit soon to join the military reserve forces now that her daughter was getting older. Devoted and loyal, Thunder occasionally snapped when everyone would start fighting with each other, though it was usually directed at TheBest and Wild, the annoyance sometimes extended out to others.

She knew that RockRoast12345 was older than all of them and had a young grandson. He’d bonded with Thunder over their children at first, and then, without meaning to, they became the parents of the group. Recently, Rock had retired from working as a supervisor in a mine, and gaming had become his way of relieving some of that boredom. But he told the best stories when they were idling around, just stories about anything, and they were always captivating. Also, he was afraid of dogs.

She knew that Rutella Zoran IV was the daughter of a politician. She cared for her little brother like he was her own, and sometimes, he took control of her character, proudly revealing that his real name was Sidon. She was in school to be a doctor, and that made her family prouder than anything. She lived and breathed for her family.

TheBestYouveNeverMet was a pilot. His schedule was the most hectic out of everyone’s because of the flights, but he was sarcastic to the core, and sometimes, the sarcasm was simply rude and definitely didn’t translate well over chat. He was superior, and since he’d been playing the game longest, he thought it entitled him to make more decisions. But Zelda knew from her private conversations with him that deep down, he was sweet and caring. He’d always be the first to ask her how her day was, and he’d learned some of her students’ names to ask if they’d been nuisances.

But Zelda spent the most time talking to WildKnightOut2, so she knew the most about him. At first, they’d bonded over the fact that they both had cats. His was called Fuzzball, an orange, fat cat that needed to exercise more. He’d tried to leash him, but Fuzz wasn’t interested. Sometimes, Fuzz would crawl over the keys, send Wild running, and send chat a long stream of letters.

He was funny and made comments in her private chat while they were playing that had her roaring at times.

He was a rock-climbing instructor and in his free time, he was a free solo climber. When she’d looked it up, she’d been horrified to see that he basically climbed mountains without a harness or ropes, and a fall could kill him. She’d asked if he was good at it, or just did it for fun, and his answer had been an ambiguous ���yes.”

She knew about his family. He didn’t live near them, but he kept in contact with his grandparents, his father, and his little sister.

WildKnightOut2: k back. Where we going princess?

xPrincessZx: I need to farm for new armor out in the Haunted Wasteland. Do you need to do anything?

WildKnightOut2: I need to help u farm in the haunted wasteland. What do you need?

xPrincessZx: 10 Rubies

WildKnightOut2: damn ok I have 2 u can have so u only need 8

xPrincessZx: Thanks. How’d that party go last night?

WildKnightOut2: Sucked

xPrincessZx: Cool details

WildKnightOut2: If ud been there, ud have hated it

xPrincessZx: Why?

WildKnightOut2: Bunch of self-absorbed idiots. Like TheBest is

xPrincessZx: Lol. He’s not that bad.

WildKnightOut2: if u say so

They headed into the Wasteland looking for red poes that had rare drops for rubies. She and Wild took out a few groups before they started to struggle. Neither could play and talk at the same time fast enough to warn the other that something was happening, and they both ended up at the shrine of resurrection more times than they cared to admit.

xPrincessZx: Hey Wild. This might sound weird, but do you have that gaming app where we could just maybe voice chat?

xPrincessZx: Unless you’re not comfortable with that. We can invite the others, and when we play together, and it would probably make life a thousand times easier

xPrincessZx: But it’s okay if you don’t want to

WildKnightOut2: yeah I have it

Oh, Zelda thought to herself. That was easy.

xPrincessZx: Do you want to add me? I have the same name

She watched her phone like it was food in the microwave, only occasionally glancing at her computer to see if Wild had sent her another message. She drummed her fingers and her leg started to bounce until her screen lit up.

WildKnight has sent you a friend request.

She hastily hit accept and grabbed her headphones from the drawer before typing into her phone.

xPrincessZx: Your name is missing a few things here.

WildKnight: Yeah HW already had someone with this name so I added on

xPrincessZx: The meaning completely changes

WildKnight: which do you like better?

Zelda froze, unable to make her fingers type. Was he flirting? Was that how people flirted online? She was really good at reading body language cues, and that was always how she knew someone was flirting. But this? There was no context! How was she supposed to know?

xPrincessZx: Which fits your personality more?

That was a safe way of getting out of answering while still sounding maybe like she was flirting. Right?

WildKnight: this one

Zelda’s face warmed up and she put her head in her hands, unsure how to respond. How does she respond to that? What if he wasn’t flirting? What if he was.

[baphomet-media]

Sword Art Offline - A CrossCode Review

Genre: Adventure Subgenre: Action RPG Developer: Radical Fish Games Publisher: Deck13 Platform(s): PC, Playstation, Switch, Xbox (Reviewed on Xbox Series X) Release Date: July 9th, 2020 Time Played: 60 hours

CrossCode was a game that I knew next to nothing about going in. I heard some faint praise for the title online, but I really had no idea what to expect. The game’s description bills it as a Zelda-like, but offers little else in the way of explanation. The vibrant pixel art environments convinced me to give it a shot. So is CrossCode a success, or is it just a glitch in the system?

Story

In the distant future, humanity has colonized the galaxy. On one remote moon, a company called Instatainment decides to create something unique. They create a one-of-a-kind MMO where the locations in the game are real physical places, and players can log in and explore them using avatars made of something called “instant matter,” a kind of extremely light and insubstantial matter that can be quickly and cheaply conjured up for all sorts of purposes, but cannot meaningfully interact with the physical environment. This MMO is called CrossWorlds, and has become very popular in the world of CrossCode. Despite the fact that the game features an in-universe MMO, CrossCode is in fact an offline, singleplayer game. The different meta layers can be somewhat difficult to explain at times, but I found it to be a novel and interesting setting.

You take control of Lea, a player of CrossWorlds who has seemingly lost her memory. While being aided by man-at-the-keyboard Sergey, she must infiltrate CrossWorlds from the outside and play the game to recover her memories. But all is not what it seems, as a strange flying blue avatar seems to be pursuing Lea.

Along the way, Lea will participate in the game of CrossWorlds alongside other avatars such as the feisty french Emilie (AKA Emilienator), the nerdy Toby (AKA C’tron), the braggadocious Apollo, and many more. Each character has a vibrant design and personality that make them stand out and feel loveable.

The game’s plot is quite intense at times and drips with intrigue, keeping you playing for hours on end. In one of my play sessions, I played the game for over 7 hours in a single sitting, which is a testament to how hooked I was. There are plenty of twists and turns throughout that keep you guessing, and many different layers to ponder over in between sessions. Unfortunately, I feel like the ending falls a touch flat, as it feels like the game just kind of stops and all the conflicts resolve at once, but it’s a small issue.

There is a bad ending to the game, obtainable by missing or failing a single optional story event, but if you’re paying attention and exploring you’ll have no trouble finding it. There is also a DLC epilogue episode that continues from the true ending, but unfortunately this epilogue is not yet available on console at the time of writing. It is currently slated for a ‘Summer 2021’ release, so perhaps I will be able to review it shortly.

I wish there was more I could say about the story because there’s a LOT going on, but unfortunately it would ruin the experience, so you’ll have to discover it for yourself. Suffice it to say that the story kept me intrigued and hungry for more up until the very end. The writing is often witty and funny, and I noticed various references to other series, such as Kingdom Hearts, Gurren Lagann, and Ace Attorney.

Gameplay

CrossCode at its core is a top-down action RPG. Lea has a number of different moves that can assist her in combat, such as melee attacks, ranged attacks, dodging, guarding, and special attacks. Additionally, once you complete the game’s dungeons, Lea will be able to switch into different elemental modes. Each mode has its own stats, special attacks, and affinities, and it pays to be vigilant about which elements are effective against which enemies. Plus, using elemental modes for too long builds up an overheat meter that, when filled, locks Lea out of elemental modes until it depletes. Due to all this complexity, it pays to think on your feet and be conscientious about how you approach fights.

On top of that, there are different consumables that offer timed buffs, different equipment effects which offer different buffs, as well as the Circuit, a skill tree with different trees for each element. Every time Lea levels up, she gains one Circuit Point for each elemental tree to spend on permanent buffs and unlocking special attacks. Some nodes on the circuits require multiple circuit points to unlock, so you’ll have to weigh which nodes to unlock when. All of this combined makes Lea highly configurable, but versatile enough to where you can completely change her build at any time outside of combat.

As you play the game, you will typically have allied characters fighting alongside Lea, which makes tough groups of enemies much more manageable. However, there are many areas which are “instanced” to where Lea must complete challenges alone. These are some of the game’s toughest challenges, and typically involve puzzle solving and/or combat. There are various dungeons around the Playground of CrossWorlds, the in-universe playable area, and most are quite extensive. These are the moments that the game somewhat feels Zelda-like, though really only in that you have to progress through dungeons with various puzzle and combat rooms in order to unlock a new element. Each dungeon adds new mechanics to master, and many dungeons bring back old mechanics from prior dungeons, requiring you to figure out how multiple mechanics work together. I found these sections a ton of fun, even if some of the puzzles were real head-scratchers.

Where would an RPG be without its sidequests? CrossWorlds, and by extension CrossCode, has plenty of sidequests for Lea to undergo to gain experience, money, and items. Most of the quests are your bog-standard fetch quests, but many have the player find new areas, face unique encounters, or even engage in minigames. Fortunately, a lot of the monotony of questing that you’d expect from any other game is mitigated by the fact that you can teleport back to any discovered landmark at any time for free.

As you explore the world, you’ll find yourself engaging in minor platforming. Essentially, areas of the game map are on different elevation tiers, and there are a ton of chests that are locked behind finding out how exactly to manage the elevation to reach a chest on a high ledge, often traveling on high elevation across multiple maps for a single chest. It can be a bit frustrating for people who constantly see chests that are seemingly out of their reach, but I found it fun to hunt them all down. Additionally, using a charged projectile to ricochet off walls and obstacles are quite common. One downside to the platforming is that it can sometimes be difficult to determine the heights of different stage elements at a glance, as the game doesn’t seem to have any sort of visual indication of the different elevations aside from just looking at the relative vertical distance between the floor and the next level. This often causes you to jump into walls or off cliffs during drawn-out platforming sections, which can be frustrating.

Overall, I don’t really agree that CrossCode is a Zelda-like. To me, it’s more like a 2d hack-n-slash without aerial combat. Still, that isn’t a negative, and I feel like CrossCode manages to create something that feels its own and not heavily derivative. I only wish the marketing had played more to its strengths instead of just bragging about how much the game was like Zelda and how many different genres they think they mashed together. I probably would have given the game a shot a lot sooner.

Presentation

The environments of CrossCode are gorgeous, with high detail pixel art that is hard to believe is based on a tileset. The character designs are bold and emotive, and really give you an idea of what each character is about at first sight. The game’s soundtrack is also a banger, with plenty of different tracks in many different instruments. It’s the kind of soundtrack I’d happily listen to outside of the game, and instantly becomes familiar to you.

Conclusion

Aside from a bit of platforming jank and a slightly underwhelming ending, CrossCode is a real gem of a game that anyone who likes RPGs should check out on their platform of choice, and especially if you have Game Pass. This is a game that deserves the same level of cult following as other indie gems such as Celeste and Stardew Valley. I look forward to the coming DLC, and whatever developer Radical Fish cooks up next (hopefully a sequel!)

Score: 9 / 10

[readyplayerhobi]

Flower | 24

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff

; Word Count: 3k

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh…incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: This is a shorter one but I swear, you’ll love the next chapter. It’s a certain birthday boy’s night out :P so I hope you enjoy this lead up either way!

; Flower Masterpost

-

“Urgh,” You groan loudly, running your hand over your face as you stare at the display of unusual technology. “Why are men always so hard to buy for?” 

“I’d take offence to that but honestly, you’re right.” Jungkook says, humour in his voice as he plays with a little helicopter that actually flies. You’re in one of those stores full of random things that seem to particularly appeal to guys with odd and bizarre technology things and joke stuff. You like it too but these places always seem to attract guys in particular, which is why you’re currently here with Chungha, Soyeon and Jungkook trying to find something for Hoseok’s birthday.

Buying presents for anyone is always a stress for you as you hate the idea that you’ll end up buying something they hate. Half the time, you explicitly ask them to give you a list and just pick off it because quite frankly, you’re not very creative when it comes to presents.

But this time you’d decided to try properly. It was the first birthday either of you had had since beginning your relationship and you wanted to try. So you’d spent time making sure to listen to his conversations, whether they were with you or his parents or his friends, to find things that he wanted.

It didn’t help that his birthday was only a month and a half after Christmas too. One of the reasons you’d held back on his Christmas presents was because his birthday was so darn close afterwards. You’d finally managed to get a new job in January after many, many months of failed interviews, with a salary that wasn’t pitiful and with work that didn’t make you want to face plant the desk, so you had a bit more money to spend on him.

Twenty-nine wasn’t a big birthday or anything, that would be next year obviously, but you still wanted to make it fun for him. So you were determined to buy interesting presents that weren’t boring and useless. 

“I don’t know about Hoseok but I think I want this lamp.” Soyeon says, picking up and turning around a lamp that reminded you of one of those wire games where you had to avoid touching the wire. It was fluorescent pink right now but faded into yellow soon enough and in the shape of a heart. Perfect for Soyeon.

“Go for it. It’d look good in your room I bet.” You murmur, eyeing the stand of various lights and alarm clocks closely. Maybe Hoseok might like some fancy alarm clock given he was always getting up earlier than you? Though that would mean you’d have to put up with it too and you pulled a face at that thought, moving away to the range of mugs.

He got up way earlier than you for work and you could be a bit moody in the morning. The last thing you needed was to buy him something that would inevitably cause you to snap at him in the early hours. You were pretty sure he’d managed to train himself to wake up as quickly as possible to avoid your grumpiness.

Chungha follows you, picking up a heat activated mug with lightsabers on it and humming in curiosity. You look it over too for a moment and consider before instead grasping a box with a Zelda logo on it, licking your lips before nodding to yourself. 

Hoseok loved Zelda and you’d half contemplated buying him a Switch so he could play the one that came out a few years ago along with the other games that had come out recently. It was way out of your budget though so this would just have to do for the moment. He could take it to work for his coffees and stuff.

“Have you noticed that Soyeon and Jungkook seem to be really hitting it off?” Chungha whispers to you quietly, the both of you glancing over to where they’re both now stood playing around with sword umbrellas. You didn’t know Jungkook too well or anything, well enough to invite him to come help you pick things for Hoseok but you weren’t close.

He was one of Hoseok’s sweeter friends though and shared a lot of interests with you, including being quiet and introverted. Given how beautiful Soyeon was, and her own personality that made her kind, caring and loyal, you weren’t surprised that Jungkook had been instantly caught by her.

And you were kind of glad really. You knew he was a good guy from what Hoseok had told you and Soyeon deserved someone good. Plus, you would openly admit that Jungkook was handsome with the kind of body that game with his sports related degree while still maintaining such an adorable face.

Soyeon’s weakness really.

“Yeah. Don’t say anything though, it’s cute. Let them work things out themselves.” Laughing, you move over to the cashier and give her the mug with a bright smile before also grabbing a LEGO Darth Vader keyring from the range on the counter. This would make him laugh tonight.

“Don’t you feel a little jealous though? I mean, look at them. They look so perfect together.” Chungha sighs, leaning against the counter as you pay and accept the bag from the girl. Narrowing your eyes at your best friend, you lead her out of the store and watch as your remaining friends trail you out, laughing away at whatever conversation they were having.

“Excuse me. Are you saying that Hoseok and I don’t look perfect together? Or you and Dahyun? All lies.” There’s a slight petulant tone to your voice and Chungha immediately backtracks, spluttering almost in her attempts to smoothe over any issues she may have just caused until you laugh at her, pushing her gently.

“I’m joking. You’re right. They do look good. Hey, if they start dating then it’s officially bringing you guys and Hoseok’s friendship circles together!” You pause suddenly, cringing as a thought enters your head. “Though if anything happened with Hoseok and me then that would be very awkward. And heart breaking.”

“Hey, hey. None of that! I don’t want to hear any talk of breaking up or the potential for it when we’re out shopping for your boyfriend’s birthday presents! I’m telling you now, if you two ever break up then romance is dead.” Looking at her, you raise your brow in amusement at the completely serious look on her face.

“Okay. Calm down Nicholas Sparks. We’re fine.” That gets a snort from her as you lead her into a store that sells all kinds of musical instruments and electronic stuff. From your extensive research into trying to find Hoseok the perfect gift, you knew that you should be able to find what you wanted in here.

“Have you even read a Nicholas Sparks book? Or seen one of the films?” She asks incredulously, running her fingers along the strings of a guitar as you both pass by. Shrugging, you stop in front of the vinyl players and eye them with a tongue in your cheek.

“No? I mean, I watched five minutes of The Notebook but it was really boring so I turned it off. Aren’t all his stories meant to be like...depressing and shit?” Leaning forward, you read the little information card on one of the vinyl players and hum to yourself.

Hoseok had been discussing how he wanted to get into collecting vinyl records lately and to do that, he’d need a vinyl player. You’d already discussed it with his parents to make sure they didn’t accidentally get him one as he’d been talking about it to his dad and you’d tried to make sure that you would get a good one for him.

Even if you had zero idea of what constituted a good vinyl player to be honest.

“I mean...yeah, they are pretty depressing. But still. You should watch one, or read it. They’re tragically romantic.” Pausing, you look at her with a carefully blank stare before snorting.

“I don’t like romance films, Chungha you know that. I’m certainly not going to watch one that you’ve described as tragic. How is that even romantic? It’s just fucking sad.” You think you’ll go with the Sony vinyl player that you’d researched. He doesn’t need anything super fancy for a first one and it has Bluetooth, so should be good enough for him?

They’re certainly not cheap and you’re very happy that you’d saved so well to be able to afford this. While you weren’t normally sure about presents, you were pretty sure that this one was going to be a big hit with him.

“I’m just going to point out that not all of his films are sad. Well, I mean...they don’t all end sad. But still. Anyway, it’s not important. I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore and holy fuck, this is almost a thousand dollars!” Her surprise is incredibly audible and you shush her repeatedly, looking around to make sure no one is looking.

“I’m not buying that one. I’m buying this one. It’s not that expensive.” You point towards the one you want, crouching down to grab one of the boxed ones before heading over to the cashier once more. This birthday present shopping was going surprisingly easy compared to other times. Maybe it’s because the presents you’d decided for Hoseok were just so damn expensive that he didn’t have many.

“Boy, I hope he gives you some good oral for that.” She mutters and you look at her mortified, eyes before glancing around to check that no one is nearby. Your hands are full so you can’t make a shushing gesture to her but your scowl is more than enough and she cringes slightly, whispering sorry.

Thankfully though, you don’t think anyone overheard her as the cashier just gives you the usual, bland customer service smile that you’re used to. The one which you give back while internally chanting ‘please don’t question what she just said’ but he simply rings you up, putting the box into a large bag for you.

As you walk away once you’ve paid, you hiss at her in embarrassment. “Chungha! We’re in public! Please!”

Laughing at you, she wraps an arm around your shoulder and hugs you to her before letting you go. She’s always been the more open minded out of you all and has never felt the need to censor her thoughts or words. Though she did usually tone it down in public as you always wanted to melt into a puddle of embarrassment.

There was no wonder Hoseok and her got along so well. Both of them just said whatever came to their minds with no filters sometimes and it pained you considering you were a prude in comparison. Well, when it came to sexual things anyway. Anything else just came out of your mouth without a second thought.

“Where have they gone?” You ask suddenly, realising you’re both about to leave the store with only half of your group. Frowning, you look around outside and see that they’re not there so you walk back inside, scanning through until you spot them both sitting at one of the pianos that’s been set up. 

Jungkook is playing and it comes to you that the sweet piano music you’d been hearing for the last ten minutes has actually come from him. His hands, so large compared to Soyeon’s, dance across the keys elegantly and produce the kind of music you could only wish you could do. Chungha pauses next to you to watch the show and you laugh softly, leaning into her as you nod towards Soyeon.

“Oh yeah, they’re definitely gonna get together. She’s got literal heart eyes going on right now.” Chungha snorts in amusement, nodding before walking over to them both and breaking up their little music session. Jungkook appears to be oblivious to your best friend’s sudden infatuation with him and gives Chungha a polite smile as he makes small talk with her but you’re not.

Walking alongside Soyeon, you peer at her for a moment and take in the way her eyes are bright with happiness and the gentle smile on her face. Giggling you push her with your shoulder until she’s looking at you in expectation.

“So...Jungkook.” You keep the words quiet in case Jungkook happens to have better hearing than you’d expected but it still causes her cheeks to blush a sweet, rose gold. Grinning, you turn around and walk backwards as you take the rare chance of being able to tease her about a potential relationship. 

Normally, she’s already in a relationship before you even find out anything given how much she enjoys dating. But for the first time since you were in college, you were getting to see her in the midst of a crush.

“He’s nice. Very nice.” She says softly, the smile on her face matching her tone and you want to coo at her. But you can’t because Jungkook and Chungha have paused for you both to catch up to them. So instead, you leave her with one final comment.

“He is. And he’s very handsome. Hoseok says he’s a good guy so you should go for it.” With that, you stride forward to have a talk with the man in question. Looking up at him, he’s taller and broader than you, you give him a bright smile before holding up the bag with the player in it.

“Think he’ll like it? He’s been saying for a while he wants some vinyl records and I told his parents I’d get him the player. They’re getting him some records for it to start him off.” Jungkook peers into the bag, having a closer look at the vinyl player you’d bought before nodding in approval.

“I think he’ll like it. And that’s perfect because now I can buy him some records too. Any idea what his parents are getting him?” He asks curiously and you hum, frowning as you try to recall what his mom had told you on the phone.

“I think...a bunch of Iron Maiden records and one or two Metallica?” Pausing for a moment, you nod firmly. “Yeah, those two.”

“Sweet. There’s a store that sells records near here, are you okay if we go there and I can get him something as well? I know the perfect record for him.” His eyes are wide with excitement and you can’t help but grin at how sparkly they seem to be. Yeah, he would definitely make a good boyfriend with Soyeon.

“You know, I think I’ve realised a flaw in my present plans.” You muse to yourself, linking arms with Chungha when she sidles up next to you. A questioning noise comes from Jungkook and you look at him with a self-deprecating smile.

“I don’t really like a lot of the music he loves so I’m just making a rod for my own back here, aren’t I?” That gets a laugh from them all and you pout in an overly dramatically manner. For a moment, you consider how easily Jungkook seems to fit into your little friend group and how much you actually enjoy interacting with him.

You’ll openly admit to being a little awkward and stilted with some of Hoseok’s friends still, but you imagined that would change with time. The easy camaraderie between you all makes you miss Hoseok though, even though you knew there was no way he could have come with you.

“Well, you can buy records too. I mean, I know it’s his but if it’s in your place...I think they probably do records for the stuff you like.” Jungkook laughs and you can’t help but snort at the evil look in his eyes. Despite how sweet and innocent he often appeared, you knew from Hoseok that Jungkook, along with Jimin, was quite capable of coming up with some of the best pranks.

Best depending on your point of view obviously.

“Okay, no. I’ll be nice. It’s his player so he can play what he wants. Though he’d probably let me. Did you know I managed to get him to sit through an entire Taylor Swift album the other day? He looked comatose by the end.” Giggling, you remember the memory fondly while Soyeon scoffs on your other side.

“You don’t even like Taylor Swift.”

“Wrong. Well, kinda wrong. I like some of her songs. But on the whole, yeah, not a huge fan. That’s why it was funny because his reaction when he figured out I’d just put it on to make him whine.” Now it’s Jungkook’s turn to laugh loudly, the sound amusing on its own while he wrinkles his nose in pure amusement.

“Oh, you are evil. I love it. I definitely approve of you.” Rolling your eyes at how enthused he sounds about your prank on your boyfriend, you smile at Soyeon as she shakes her head in resigned bemusement. She should get used to this if she wants to try anything with the grad student because it’ll probably be a lot worse for her.

Idly, as you all continued to walk to the store Jungkook wanted to visit and made plans for dinner at a local pizzeria, you wondered if Hoseok would be amenable to your matchmaking skills. He obviously knew Jungkook far better than you so you resolved to ask him about it tonight. Maybe you could rope him into helping you get them both together. 

Though he may just do that thing where he sighs at you fondly and just goes along with whatever you say. You’d suggest it to him and see what happens. Either way, you get the feeling that the group of single guys in Hoseok’s friendship circle would be dropping once more soon enough.

[rousingloki]

Thoughts: Nintendo VR

 Oh Nintendo, you really have outdone yourselves.

So on my last “Thoughts” topic, I explored what Nintendo has done to keep its identity of Nintendo, and how Nintendo has managed to keep it’s core philosophy alive, and to pass on the dream of Mr. Iwata in keeping games affordable, accessible, and most importantly, fun. I mentioned that I noticed all this with Nintendo Labo, and the upcoming VR kit, and it’s that VR kit that I’d like to talk to you all about.

(Note, if you want to start a discussion about this, I more than welcome it, because discussions about this sort of topic are always great to listen to. I think it’s very important to hear other perspectives, and what other people have to say. With that in mind, however; please try not to start a flame war, or attacking other people’s opinions, I did say discuss, not argue. Thanks)

So before I get into the Labo, let’s look back on a little history. Nintendo has been involved with VR, or the realm of 3D gameplay multiple times. It started back with the Famicom, with a device called: Famicom 3D System. (If you don’t care for the history portion just skip ahead 5 paragraphs)

This pair of goggles basically allowed you to have the game right in front of your face, not really making it Virtual Reality, but it was a start I suppose. To compare it to anything, would be Sega’s Segascope 3D glasses. The system was a colossal failure, and only compatible with about 7 games. It would be about 8 years before Nintendo threw their hat into the ring with another Virtual Reality project.

Skip ahead to 1995. Nintendo was dominating the 16-bit market, with their Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Or Super Famicom if you’re from Japan), and they had complete control of the handheld market with the Gameboy. Nintendo wanted an edge though, to fill a gap before the release of the Nintendo 64. Thus was born, the Virtual Boy. (Then known as VR32)

The Virtual Boy was sold as a Virtual Reality console, and it also was deemed part of Nintendo’s “Portable” line of gaming. Most use that term very loosely though because even I, someone who had a Virtual Boy as a kid, could not see this thing as anything being even close to portable. The Virtual Boy also did not boast real Virtual Reality, what it did have, was 3D screening. Using Stereoscope technology, it tricked your eyes into thinking you were seeing true 3D, which worked, but it didn’t have anything like head tracking, and the constant red and black colors, mixed with having your eyes so close to the poor screen meant eye strain, and headaches.

In the end, the Virtual Boy was a catastrophic failure from the start. It was discontinued less than a year after it was released, with only 22 games ever made for it. The Virtual Boy does have a legacy however; and that legacy was picked up in 2011, by the Nintendo 3DS.

The Nintendo 3DS was everything the Virtual Boy wasn’t: Fun. Not only did games happen for console, but it met the many goals that the Virtual Boy didn’t meet: It was portable, had better 3D, was a social console, and had an excellent line of video games made for it. The 3DS still continues today, and even though it’s hard to say if it’s gonna stick around much longer due to the domination of the Switch, the 3DS is an excellent handheld, and loved by many. Although the one thing it didn’t fulfill, was a VR type experience, which brings us to today...

The Nintendo Labo VR Kit.

Being the first “VR” style platform Nintendo has attempted in 24 years, Nintendo is bringing VR to it’s beloved platform: The Nintendo Switch.

Where to begin with this... I guess I’ll just give my first impressions based on all the pics and videos I’ve seen so far. (Here’s a link to the video Nintendo posted on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOjcbdAU5Gw&t=2s)

So from just the announcement, before a video was even in place, I was immediately excited. I’ve bought every single Labo kit before this, and each one has not disappointed. As someone who’s involved very deeply with STEM, this type of kit is perfect for those looking to get interested in that sort of field, while also having fun, and learning at the same time. I don’t look at the VR as a plaything in the traditional sense, while I do want to have some fun with it, and see what direction Nintendo is taking with it, I’m mostly interested in how everything works, and why everything works about it.

(This is why I will die alone)

When it comes to the games, they’re honestly the least interesting part of the whole experience. While some games (e.g. Piano Studio in the Variety Kit, Adventure in the Vehicle Kit) do have some pull and keep me a bit more interested, the most fun part I’ve had is building them. Anyone who’s played with Lego’s, Bionicle, Gundams, or anything that requires any sort of building, and enjoys that aspect the most, would be absolutely delighted by how satisfying it is to see these creations come to life with each sheet of cardboard.

And once you’ve built them, even if the game doesn’t stay interesting for very long, there’s something very exciting about seeing the Labo work once you start playing the game. The actual reeling in of a fish on the fishing rod, listening to it actually make sounds was something that made me act like a 6 year old kid going fishing with my dad for the first time.

Once you’ve built, and played with the Toy-Cons, you can learn everything there is to know about them.

Ranging from just learning about the Nintendo Switch Hardware on its own, from the Screen to the Joy-Cons, to the actual Labo creations themselves. You can see how the games work, how the Nintendo Switch system is involved, and some general knowledge like fixing the labos is included here as well. As well as how to make your Labo your own, giving customization tips, and what NOT to do if you want to preserve the life of your Labo.

Of course once you’ve learned everything, you can open up the Toy-Con Garage and make your own creations, make your own Labo’s to play with, now that you have the knowledge and tools to make them. It’s what makes the Labo near infinitely re-playable. Ranging from simple games, to instruments, if you have the imagination, I’m sure you can find a way to build it.

After having said all that, let’s get back into the VR kit itself. The VR Kit comes in two different flavors: One with just the Goggles and Blaster, and the other has everything else. Because I’m getting the latter (And will be reviewing it so stay tuned) let’s talk about that one. The Labo comes with 6 different Toy-Con creations: The Goggles, Wind Pedal, Blaster, Bird, Elephant, and Camera.

If we were to go through each one of these, we’d be here forever (Plus I said I’m gonna review it next week, so we’ll do that there) so I’m just gonna say what I feel about the kit as a whole. I absolutely love it. The whole idea of the thing is just fantastic. Not only does it introduce VR at a more affordable yet still fun level, it introduces it to a younger audience, those who are too young to be able to use actual VR systems that were designed with an older audience in mind.

Sure the games look simple, but like I said it’s the experience as a whole, from building the labo, to trying it out, to learning how everything works that makes everything count in the end. Like I said, as someone who’s worked extensively in the STEM field, I’m absolutely delighted to see something like this. It takes the limitations of the switch and expands them to incorporate an entirely new way to play video games. It stretches the field of imagination to new heights, and showcases not only what the Switch as a system can do, but how you can do things with your imagination.

Like the other Labo kits, this one is getting a “garage” where you can create your own games. While you probably won’t be making much out of cardboard, you’re able to make games that would fit with the VR’s idea in mind. From exploration games, to rhythm games, it’s whatever you can think of and get working that makes it so much fun. Plus Nintendo is adding support to Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for free, so that’s a bonus.

Now this isn’t a full fledged review, and I’m gonna take advantage of that to ask a question, why do people give this thing so much hate? Why are people so against Nintendo Labo?

I’ve seen the hatred for Nintendo Labo since the beginning, it shows with the like and dislike bar of the original video that Nintendo posted before the first two kits were even released.

I truly do not understand the flak that the Labo gets. Most people seem to think that the cardboard is made out of 8x11 printer paper that would fall apart the second you tried to play with it, but after getting 15+ hours out of EACH of my Labo kits, I can safely say that they’re surprisingly durable, and none of them have received any real wear or tear to them.

Yet I still don’t understand the hatred towards them, people say you’re paying a huge amount of money for cardboard, even though people are content paying $60 for a piece of plastic and silicon (not even that if they buy a download code) People also don’t look at the fact that the PSVR, which is usually around $250 to buy new (about $350 if you include move controllers) and most of the games are still nothing more than tech demos, ones of huge games like Skyrim, or Borderlands, which you’re expected to pay for, for full price, and even then the games still feel like nothing but glorified tech demos. Maybe I’m just being cynical, maybe I’m just being a Nintendo Fan boy, but it’s something I really just don’t understand.

So yeah, these are all my thoughts on the VR right now, something I’m looking VERY forward to, and has me being all giddy and excited like a 7 year old kid who’s only a week away from Christmas. It’s something that I know will make people happy, and maybe even get more people interested in VR, and the STEM community as well.

Thank you all for reading (And again, please ask away if you have anything you want to tell me, I’d love to hear what other people have to say on this)

[vgjustice]

VG Talks Games: My thoughts on The Switch (Jan. 14th, ‘17)

Really just a basic rundown on what I’m seeing from the various bits that have been officially released and what should be known if you want one of these systems. Buckle in, this might be a long one.

So, just for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to be using North American pricing when I’m talking about the system, games, and accessories. I know these prices are different in different regions, but the basic idea will still be the same when divorced from hard numbers. Okay? Okay.

And on that note, let’s talk cost. At $300 this thing is going to be more expensive than either an Xbox One S or a PlayStation 4 slim. And if you’re only looking at the Switch as a home console, that’s bad. You’d better really want those Nintendo exclusives to justify spending that much more on a less powerful system, and it is a less powerful system. But, that’s kind of the thing, right? It’s not just a “home console”. It’s not really much of a portable either, what with the 2.5 to 6 hour battery life (my New 3DS XL gets considerably better than that), but it can be taken on the go and that’s really the point. Much like the controllers have some motion control to them, even though people were really very much done with “waggling” before the Wii bit the dust.

From what I saw in the Switch Event it looks to me like Nintendo is trying to capture two very distinct audiences with this console. The first group are the casual market they captured with the Wii. That’s why games like 1, 2, Switch! and Just Dance 2017 are launch titles, it’s why they talked so extensively about using the console and games more like a party game that doesn’t need the TV. And I have no idea if that’s going to work. The Wii casual market clearly didn’t want the more powerful Wii U, even when it was explained to them on a personal level. Maybe Nintendo can hit pay dirt again, and it’s pretty obvious that they’re trying. The second group is the long time Nintendo loyalists. Which is why Breath of the Wild is a launch title and why the Switch Event wrapped up with that game’s release date. It’s why they focused so much on Super Mario Odyssey, and also announced Splatoon 2. They’ve got a pretty good idea what that demographic wants and have been good about pleasing them (us) for the past few console generations. And to be perfectly honest, that’s not really enough. Every loyalist lost is a major blow since I don’t think Nintendo is replacing those customers very easily. Really, the Switch needs a unique lineup to attract new customers, but they need something that either younger customers can grow with much like the current loyalists did with the NES/SNES/N64, or they need to please the major console fanatics and convince them to pick up this new device. But with underpowered hardware that doesn’t feature a lot of the things their less expensive counterparts have (Blu-Ray players anyone?) it’s going to be a tough sell to say the least.

On the more techy side of things, I’m pleased to say that Nintendo might finally be on to something here. The replacement controllers might be expensive at $80 for a set (L and R Joycons), but it’s also pretty obvious that having more than one set synced at a time is not the way the system is meant to be played. The much less expensive Pro Controller is clearly the “couch co-op” controller of choice here. For the admittedly poor battery performance, the solution is actually a lot more simple than you might think. The system uses a standard USB cable to charge. Let me say that again because I’m just as incredulous as you are: The Nintendo Switch uses the standard USB type-C cable to charge. If you already have a phone that uses USB-C, you’ve already got a Switch charger. Worried about playing on the go? Bring a pocket charger and a USB-C cable. Take it to your favorite restaurant and plug in a USB wall adapter to the cell charger that nearly every place has now. That poor battery really isn’t that big of a deal and those chargers are going to be readily available from dozens of reputable manufacturers. That was great news to hear!

The system uses microSDXC memory cards, which is a standard memory card. Basically the same card that the New 3DS hardware uses. The only concern I have, and this is a small and nit-picky concern, is the question of memory limitation. A lot of devices have strange limits on the maximum size card it can recognize. SDXC tells us that it will work with cards AT LEAST up to 64 GB in capacity. But, might it also work with the 128 GB cards? What about the 200 GB cards? Larger? Who knows? This is one of the many tech missteps Nintendo took with that press release, and have still not corrected on their web page detailing what the system can work with. (Note: That web page is why I know it’s compatible with microSDXC specifically.) This will be needful information going forward and I hope we learn more before the system comes out in a little over a month and a half.

The launch lineup seems a little... sparse. My recommendation for any new game console is to have three to five games either readily available or shortly available to justify the cost of the system. Buying a game system for one or two games isn’t cost effective for anyone, really. (You’re free to reject that suggestion, of course. It’s your money.) But, the launch lineup I’m seeing doesn’t really offer a lot to work with. It feels like “The new Zelda game plus a bunch of tech demos”. That’s not a great feeling when looking at picking up a brand new, untested game system. Never the less, the upcoming titles do look promising. I’m excited to see a new Puyo Puyo game, even if it’s riding on the coat tails of Tetris to get there. (Some of my favorite puzzle games use Tetris to some extent, so this is not a bad thing to me at all. Tetris is awesome.) A new Bomberman game is exciting, but Konami has been so bad as of late that I’m worried about the game on principal. Arms is likely to be a huge internet joke for quite some time, but could also prove to be a good game. I expect it to be a flash in the pan party game that’s quickly forgotten. The controls just don’t look like they’re there, you know? Thankfully the system seems to be teeming with a variety of RPGs from several venerable studios. If you like those slow-burner games this could be a very good system. Plus, there are still rumors of a Mario and Rabbids crossover game in addition to a new Pokemon game, both of which are exciting for different reasons. People who remember the Sega Nomad and playing home console Sonic on the go might be more interested in the new offering, and it does look like it could be worth a chance. Which is more than I can say about far too many Sonic the Hedgehog games. (Come on, Sonic Team. You guys used to be better than this.) There are more than a few notable omissions from Nintendo’s list as well, and that has mixed feelings from me. Things like Mother 3/EarthBound 2 and anything related to Metroid not being there hurt a little, as well as Smash Bros., and makes me worry that either the titles are not going to be on the system or will take a long time to get there. Neither option is great for early adopters.

And finally, the big bugaboo from the event, Nintendo stepping into the realms of Payed Online Use. This is very much one of those things where it could either be the thing that saves Nintendo’s online presence or the thing that crushes the company. And I’m really more on the side of the former. When Microsoft introduced the concept it proved to be very viable, ensuring a much more stable network for it’s games and customers. When Sony finally bit the bullet and did the same, it didn’t feel great but they added the value of their PlayStation Plus to the mix, giving games every month to subscribers. That was effective enough to force Microsoft to follow suit. Nintendo has some big problems to overcome if they want to make this service charge successful. Offering free games every month is going to be a must, and as long as Nintendo gets their amazing catalogue of classic games onto the system fast enough they’ll have a great pool to pick from. I don’t expect them to do this, since they haven’t had a large number of games available at any time since they began offering the eShop with the Wii. This same issue could be even more troubling if they decide to offer rentals of whatever customers want. It would be great to offer that, but they need to have the library to support it first or it just will not be valuable. Next, Nintendo needs to offer reliable and effective online connectivity. Which is thankfully something I have not seen them have trouble with at any point in the Wii U’s life span, so this shouldn’t be an issue. I honestly don’t see a reason for Nintendo to change their policy in such a way since their online connectivity has always been exceptional, but perhaps they’re adding a service that would need some kind of payment option to make it viable. I’m just hoping it’s not a simple cash grab, since this would directly hurt the sales of the system if it’s not valuable enough. Or if it costs too much. More expensive system with the same cost for online play? Yeah, Nintendo won’t make any money on that if that’s the case.

Overall, I’m honestly still pretty positive about the system. I’ve just got a lot of concerns and the Switch Event didn’t do much to inform me, and in some cases actually gave me more concerns than I had before. But hey, who knows? Maybe it’ll capture the casual market again and bring in core console players and we’ll all enjoy Splatoon 2 together. To make early buying as effective as possible, pick up a USB-C cable plus appropriate USB adapters, a 64 GB microSDXC card (at least), and a USB rechargeable battery pack to go with the system. A carrying case for on the go use would also be recommended. Extra diligence in watching for thieves in the first few months is going to be a must I fear. And also the very real possibility of a highly limited launch window aiding scalpers will likely drive the price up, so be vigilant in not supporting these individuals.

Be safe, be smart, caveat emptor.

[hellomynameiseril]

New games in the second-tier network: Satoshi Nakamoto's game calls for the Lightning Network to brand-new heights

The Bitcoin Layer 2 network is appreciated for its speed and scalability, looked after really helps to implement some interesting new smart contract features. In this respect, the micro-transaction feature has also inspired electronic asset holders to develop and adopt Lightning System Programs (LApps). These apps possess subverted content material tokenization (using Y 'alls and LNCast) to privacy-friendly texts (such as LnSMS and Receive Text message). Although these earlier applications were mainly utilized as proof-of-concept prototypes, they did not have many advantages over centralized user-friendly applications. They produced new ways to circumvent the rules and conventions of the older entire world. Through these apps, personal privacy and sovereignty have been amplified as never before, and it is only a matter of time prior to the snowball effect and getting the focus of mainstream interest. At the Magic Crypto conference, Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark praised the vigorous growth of LApps in her panel debate, and she emphasized the most basic difference with similar DApps: LApps possess a faster consumer base growth, that leads to faster app speeds. "The quickness of development is certainly shocking. I didn't expect it to happen so fast. I like to see individuals build related apps on the Lightning System. In other communities, they're all'developer, developer, programmer' It's a slogan, but nobody is actually making use of Dapp. On the Lightning System, people are deploying it, and everyone will participate and interact." Moreover, because the development quickness of Lightning Network technology often exceeds the quantity of information which can be processed at once, it is very important to possess high-quality applications inside Lightning applications. Furthermore, there might be "killer apps" on the Lightning System which are needed through the entire Bitcoin field. I am hoping that at least one product in this evaluation can attract everyone's attention. Satoshi Nakamoto's game If we assume that Atari's former video game programmer Hal Finne is Satoshi Nakamoto (Satoshi Nakamoto) is behind the pseudonym, then the creator of Bitcoin may also develop pixelated artwork similar to Satoshi Nakamoto's game content. In short, Satoshi Nakamoto's game is friendly to the Lightning Network. The game is similar to flash game websites such as Miniclip, Pogo and Newgrounds. The game is easy but addictive. Many of these video games imitated Super Mario World (Super Mario World) Mario World, Minecraft, the Legend of Zelda Zelda), "Bejeweled" (Bejeweled), "Agar" and "Flappy Bird" and other game mechanics. Carlos Roldan (@whiteyhat), the programmer of Satoshi Nakamoto's game, told us: "Satoshi Nakamoto's game is special since it reminds gamers of the past." "Presently, retro arcade video games aren't so common or even popular. If you combine these nostalgic video game elements with Bitcoin and the lightning environment, you can get a match up manufactured in heaven. This is a programmer in the 1980s and 1990s What we dream of." Thoughts is broken asked to cover the entrance charge of 1 1,000 satoshis, the novelty of the LApp becomes apparent. Even if you are unwilling to cover and only desire to try quite a few totally free versions of the game, it is possible to immerse yourself within the text-structured adventure story "Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto", and test your survival abilities through the Bitcoin version of Minecraft (BCraft) (This is actually the 2D version of Minecraft), or it is possible to explore the sky of alien planets. Unfortunately, these are the only real two Bitcoin-themed video games, because the other two video games ("Skulldude" and the golden axe-inspired "the Lair) does not have any narrative or visible adaptation to imply that they are related to Satoshi Nakamoto. When you have a recharge cards with thousands of Satoshi, you will discover more interesting games The true fun is to begin by paying 1000 Satoshi and steadily explore the advantages of becoming a true member. This is not investment guidance, and you'll even regret investing your BTC. Nonetheless, what you purchase can support a small development group to invest a lot of time and energy in this project. Users can use Lightning Wallet, Joule web browser extension or even Blockstack common login cleansing to complete the required small transactions. LApps become interconnected by giving mutual support, which is very worthy of attention, which collaborative approach may also promote the entire wave of technological innovation. It only takes a couple of seconds to complete a small transaction (during writing, the worthiness of a small transaction is 11 cents), as soon as you become a real member, a retro-looking dashboard can look. Here, it is possible to set your own nickname, purchase a different account picture, or become a senior supporter with voting rights and the proper to use tournaments (more upon this later). It is possible to certainly spend several satoshis to make custom results, but if you are like me, you can be wanting to explore the top features of advanced games. Maybe, you just want to play mini video games, then you can certainly visit a replica game of "Jewellery Array" with the theme of Bitcoin mining, one imitating "Flappy" Bird" game, or a game adapted from "Super Mario World" where Satoshi Nakamoto changed Princess Beech, etc. The win or lack of the game depends on how well an individual plays. The charm of the game itself is not in the form of expression or technical realization, but in a novel perspective. In the two video games listed, being truly a good player can help you have more Bitcoin benefits. And given that they provide very different functions and mechanisms, they're most likely the best reason to pay to become a member (I eventually spend lots of time enjoying them, therefore i will get many additional benefits). For example, in "Super Bro", one game point equals one satoshi. Like many readers, I was raised playing Nintendo's super video games. In this respect, "Super Bros." is a superb retro game. It offers some textures, backgrounds and computer animation techniques that will enable you to get back to the times of enjoying "Super Mario World". Conceptually, the game is easy: After the user passes all the cards, the rest of the bitcoins and the adventure rewards collected during the game will undoubtedly be delivered to the wallet within small bitcoins. I spent a lot more than 20 hours doing offers and listening to music. During this period, I had been rewarded with about 20,000 Satoshis.

"Super Bros" actor and Casa CEO Jeremy Welch is remarkably similar. This game will need you by way of a random journey and knowledge varying levels of difficulty. Occasionally your game is as simple as strolling in the recreation area. At other moments, you can be attacked by a band of goomba divided by many deadly traps. This adaptation of "Super Mario World" is fun and addictive-plus, you have a strong financial incentive to return and play it every day. Basically, gamers can wait for Satoshi factors to accumulate during the break, and simply earn back the entrance charge of 1 1,000 Satoshi. In fact, it is easy to suppose gamers in establishing countries might find a income source in "Super Bros.", just as some players nevertheless grow coins in "Wow." The distinction is certainly that BTC units are usually scarce and may become more valuable over time. However, games aren't all of candy or bitcoin benefits. The handle of the game is much worse than what you saw in the original Nintendo game in 1991. The jumping mechanism can sometimes become your worst enemy, and different levels can quickly become boring. Although "Super Mario World" is much more interesting than "Super Bros", it isn't built on a cutting-edge payment system that can provide financial benefits. You can find always trade-offs.

Lightning Network Edition Golf ball Battle

Just like the power struggle within the Netflix hit "House of Cards", Agar.io is a multiplayer video game adapted from "Taking in Crazy". It borrowed the system of "big seafood eat small seafood, small seafood will grow larger", and finally transformed it into circular particles moving on a big world map. On the other hand, the ball-to-ball battle on the Lightning Network is a challenge game where users must pay 1000 online Satoshi involves purchase membership. If you happen to eat another participant, you then will receive a prize of 750 Satoshi-so if your goal is to make BTC through the game, after that you have to eat at least two gamers on the map. From a technical point of view, there is absolutely no difference between Agar.io and Lightning Online. The only two main differences are reputation (the free game version is popular, with hundreds of players constantly competing) and financial incentives (that is more of a credit card applicatoin and growth concern). Once individuals understand the simpleness of the LApp, they will definitely become more ready to accept additional challenges. Some financial incentives can be used to unlock their abilities.

We played on the Lightning Network version of the ball game for about one hour, and there have been only two other players around. Soon, I eliminated one of these. After eating so many vibrant dots, I grew to become an unstoppable whale. Considering its multiplayer character, the game is quite boring if you have no competitors. You may occupy 25% of the game map, but you'll be looking forward to challenges and enjoyment. For me, this is an interesting lesson concerning the necessity of capitalism and competition (Once, I deliberately put into multiple circles to help other gamers eat my smaller sized part, and I could become bigger). Privileged function If Satoshi Nakamoto's video games become your day-to-day habit, and you desire to unlock the functions, then you have to pay a supplementary 500,000 Satoshi. After paying, you'll get the proper to vote for potential future development, and you'll be allowed to take part in tournaments, you can earn more bitcoins, and you will become a first-class citizen in the game kingdom. Paid users may also receive many customization features that distinguish consumer profiles from other profiles. On the one hand, users provide more support for developers, in exchange, users will get more rights. Furthermore, in "Super Bros", users will have 3 extra lives at the beginning of each game (in any other case each life will cost 500 satoshis), buying 1000 satoshis can increase the final quantity of bitcoin benefits. For example, usually you can earn 500 satoshis by the end of the game prize accumulation, so right now your Bitcoin accumulation prize should raise to 2000 satoshis. Somewhat, your expense in reduced account makes sense only if you are ready to spend lots of time enjoying LApps games. Interested friends can visit: My prediction Nakamoto's game is not commendable since it is a personal game based on creating consumer experience. Due to the complex platform supplied by LApps, interesting economic incentives, and the willingness to integrate other apps such as Joule and Blockstack, the LApps series has earned a location in the spotlight. There is sufficiently content to please make sure to everyone who likes retro video gaming, and you can find enough reasons for you to return to the past every day and go through the feeling of returning to the early 1990s. Furthermore, the survey shows that you will have more content in the future, and the community will determine the priority of developers. The LApps series is certainly not perfect. However, when you are in the Super Brothers or Lightning Golf ball Battle game, you will discover enough fun to overlook some bugs that require to be fixed. There is also a competent error reporting system, that i found to end up being quite responsive: I also exchanged some text messages with developers to provide feedback. Obviously, enough time I spent testing LApps is effective to both events: I got a small amount of Bitcoin benefits, and the platform has obviously become better. Gaming can be a multi-billion dollar industry that can take advantage of the integration of fast, secure, and personal payments. It is good to possess at least one LApp in a big company, but in the end the achievement of a project like Satoshi's game directly depends on our participation as a neighborhood. We use our period and satoshi to vote, and the dynamics of the change accordingly. Roldan said: "You want to build a more scalable platform that will allow us to meet up the higher needs of video game developers who want to add their work to Satoshi Nakamoto's game. Furthermore, we simply added our project to Product In Hunt, this will require some neighborhood support. Your responses can fundamentally influence our potential future in a very positive way. For those who have time to try these platforms, you should do so. Just like keeping a pet, you can have some longer fun and create the investment pay off ultimately. "

[glopratchet]

03

wise, the game is set in a post apocalyptic world where mutants have overrun the earth You play as Jack who has been infected with a mutant virus and must now fight to survive against hordes of enemies that are trying to kill you The story is told through flashbacks which help give context to events that occurred during your journey without characters? The character creation screen allows you to choose from a variety of options such as gender, appearance, skills and more This is followed by several personality traits (which can be changed later) and then some brief background information about them There's also an option for a short bio which gives some additional details on their life before being infected with the virus The gameplay itself consists of combat encounters with various types of enemies ; the story is well crafted and gives a perfect setup for what comes next Gameplay itself is fairly easy to pick up with most of the mechanics being self explanatory Overal, the beginning sets the tone of what's to come Though, it could do with some fine-tuning as certain enemies feel either too hard or too weak compared to others Still, nothing that detracts from the story It gives just enough detail about the world while maintaining a sense of mystery It can be a little heavy at times, but the videos are thankfully categorized by subject making them easy to skip 's commentary goes in depth on various subjects from character design to explaining how gameplay mechanics came into being Once the story has been completed once there is also New Game Plus which allows you to carry your equipment and gains into the next playthrough This story driven game is well crafted with an interesting sci-fi plot and characters that help drive it forward animations plus extended cutscenes Xenocide on 06 February 2018 Report Review Review #2 See With Your Ears! on 06 February 2018 Report Review Sight, Sound And Mystery On 09 April 2018 Report Review New Leaf Publishing Protocol on 12 is on point The art style, font usage and color theme are all suitable and easy on the eye The website is also easy to navigate and generally bugs free Art Check A gifted artist created the various visual effects in the game From magic spells to things like light bulbs lighting up A lot of detail was put into each one to give it that extra bling and make them really pop out as looking important Without these these effects the game wouldn't feel nearly as immersive Plus they look really cool, so there's that! Sprites and Animated Images Check We have character sprites as well as several animations credit to Yumi Fujikawa Hand crafted animations that characters go through to deliver important information or their thoughts within the game, for example, an animation will begin when a character feels they should explain more thoroughly how to play a minigame as opposed to just blurting out instructions Masterful composition and presentation of story and characters by Yumichika, as all important parts of story and character development are presented through song and Development Check Extensive time was put into researching ways to realistically allow characters to grow with the addition of having a control theme for various mechanics This resulted in each character having three sectional gauges; competence, passion and popularity which could fluctuate based on their actions or in some cases the players This style and presentation of character growth was something that hadn't really been done before to this extent and as such received various levels of praise and attention Screenshots Where is this game set? One of the biggest accomplishments with this game is its unique fantasy world Created from the ground up, it encompasses various areas such as forests, deserts, a bustling city and even a castle! Having a diverse and interesting setting drastically increases replay value as players can easily get lost in exploring every corner of the map and solve undiscovered mysteries CLICK TO ENLARGE CGS Cultural and Game Development On Computer Graphics & Design, Ria is attending college to learn how to design games as a profession She, along with her sister Cicely, slowly begin to realize that the university is more of a way to make money off suckers rather than educate them in a field which will help them create better games Focusing on and passing the courses which will actually be beneficial such as computer science, mathematics and programming, Ria eventually drops out and begins to work as a game developer She creates games under the company No Braiiins Zombies On Game Design, Cicely is still in university trying to fulfill her mother's dying wish of her becoming a doctor Set design Check An interesting way to think about a game is from the world's point of view A game will most likely never be played interested in the player, the important decisions come from what options (be it paths, dialogue or actual options) are presented to the player A final decision will then be made by the game based on what has been offered Every choice made by the player gives importance to that choice as well as denoting that all other choices aren't to be explored This works by implementing consequence and reward systems Using the example above, by choosing option A, there should be a reward from the game That could be in the form of puzzle pieces or story points or something else directly linked to the game's theme If the game is using the example above: "Do you take the red door or blue door?" Taking the blue door will have you find something that will help you later in the game thus rewarding the choice of taking that door It takes too many people to make a book and almost everyone reads them and a large portion of the population watches them Now it's time for video games to follow their lead Games can be made incomplete and given length through downloadable content, they can be released early and often through community input and control mechanisms or they can be focused games targeted at niches Developments unique to the digital realm are, in reality, very recent Many games come out a year as companies strive to outdo their competitors A few good releases are lost in the crowd of many subpar ones Developers such as Nintendo, Valve and Bioware consistently release high quality products that sell more than enough to break even and then some, but these are the exceptions rather than the standard Serious gamers can no longer be content with only high quality games Everyone needs to realize that by buying games, they are creating a market Nobody forces anyone to buy crap and if something sells it's because people want more of it If the market happens to favor brainless, generic shooters then that's what we're going to get a lot more of This cycle can only be broken by buyers not buyers Raising the quality bar means raising the standards for what we buy Unfortunately as most people buy crap, there's not much money to be made in selling to a discerning audience With cost so low, it only makes financial sense for publishers to save on production costs by having half hearted localization and deadline focused game design A lot of mass market, low effort products end up littered with glitches and fallen standards that in turn tarnish the image of gaming as a whole as in the case of the infamous E T hell storm of the '80s and everyone has different rules Everyone has their niche and the problem with most strategy games, shooters etc is that as expansive as they seem at first blush, they soon become repetitive as you ultimately are forced to play by a set of rules and objectives The open world sandbox is a recent successful trope in gaming that gives lacking gamer feedback the illusion of freedom but at its core its still presiding direction: go here do this ? A movie that you control what happens, also why read when you can see it acted out in real life! A good game is like a good movie, except you have more options and it's all up to you how the credits roll (i e the ending) YOU choose the path and YOU decide on the when and where True, not every single event will be subject to your will as the bigger schemes of things armies will move about, events will happen etc Most sandbox titles unfortunately fall short fulfilling the cinephile yearning inside of us Most lack sufficient depth in their characters roles or plot elements, or throw logic out the window (hackers are capable of taking over the world yet still require aim to shoot people, large criminal organizations can be taken down with just a few people but said people can destroy said organizations from the inside, etc) As anyone knows even if the acting, setting and action is good, a rubbish ending can leave one disappointed in the whole movie In video games, the ending is typically the -ending-; where you just get a crappy cliffhanger or an ambiguous conclusion Worse yet are when cross media attempts at making a massive sandbox title are done We see this a lot with movies based on video games (e g Streetfighter, Super Mario Bros, among many others) These attempt to put the movie out before the games to try to capture a built in market, typically fail completely (except for exceptional cases like Zelda or Mario) because quite simply, they miss something that is very hard to put into words; the feeling of actually playing a great video game I don't think that it has to be like this There is a game out currently that encompasses all these things, though it's very rare that anyone knows about it, much less gives it a shot This is primarily because its not so much a game as it is an experience I am of course talking about Subahibi Be forewarned: this post is bit of an essay as I try to unpack the meaning of life etc Final Fantasy XIII is an insult to conclusions in that respect backstory, Some Context I've thought a lot about where to start this Actually, I've thought a lot about if I should start this Maybe it's just better to leave things as they are But as luck would have it (or maybe not), I've recently found myself with a bit of breathing room and why not use this opportunity to finally try to get this off my chest? No one is forcing me to do this and I can always just stop if it becomes too much for me to handle So here goes nothing… No really, there was an actual bull, and I'm pretty sure it was staring at me as it lowered its head, got closer, until nope, blanking out again continued :( Sorry, had to stop there for a moment Just getting all of this out is bringing all sorts of buried emotions to the forefront; that or I'm coming down with something workings of the MW (Mass Wheat) field, which is important to ensure a perfect lou of humn CNC usage Waht is CNC (Computer Nxt Cybcer?) Sims wsa obsolatd 20 years ago! Nowadays mesh/ION based CNC! Unfortuantely unnecessary due to the low quality of public school education these days In two decades, you probably won't even need a human! of observation, but some were probably just blind to any potential drawbacks His feeling on the human element is that in spite of our frail and imperfect nature, we tend to react in more "interesting" ways compared to the more predictable machines From a business standpoint, this provides a greater return on investment (even disregarding the lucrative military contracts) in comparison to devoting ALL resources towards automation or cybernetics to follow (in very basic terms) and it crunches all the information and chooses the most logical outcomes Of course, nothing is perfect You still need an human eye to assess all of the information from said machine in order to make a final decision at times So what about things that aren't so black and white? I mean sure, conflict is pretty clear cut, but then there's things like moral dilemmas, or more complex relationship issues by this fully automated battery of evaluation that there were bound to be a few my systems deemed unfit for our cause We didn't set out to make the perfect solider We set out to make the perfect business partner a solider, is really just another employee with a different trade This has proved to be much easier and more effective in the long run (and automated evaluations are so much faster than human ones, they are outdated by the tim roper in , underground tunnels somewhere? Perfect! Nothing could grow in the surface layers of these silos Thanks for choosing Delerg's Finest (hey we just came up with that!) Later, after reading your contract and learning more about the Combine, you fill out the attached form "20000" This is so inspiring that you choose to take their entry test! Best of luck human, should your path cross ours again! ? how so? ? Combine is often criticized for a lack of romance Respectful relationships between men and women (or pairs thereof) are often dissolved in pursuit of company growth, while wanton displays of intimacy sets a negative tone Why visit the hospital to see people make babies if you can see it proudly on display in the lunchroom? Furthermore, sick children (or employees) that desperately desire the company of their parents may be displeased by otherwise happy mothers and fathers that cancel lunch dates in favor of sitting by their ailing child's bedside Children can grow resentful if they believe a hospital is preventing their family from functioning as normal, and sadly sometimes hospital fees must outweigh loving care This comes at quite the cost since sick children often emerge even sicklier than before after building up a resistance to visiting relatives As such, sending (healthier) grandparents to visit sick children not only strengthens the child's immunity due to prehistoric levels of love, it also allows for valuable child care so that exhausted parents may rest and return to work more productive In all fairness, I can tell you from experience that closing the café during traditional lunch hour severely cuts into business I will convince the board that while hospital visits should be strongly encouraged dor everyone, exceptions for loving grandparents must likewise be made Do we need to fix something? Am I wrong? But what is the root cause of these problems? What is the system failing to facilitate: human nature, or implementation? I could go on forever Please come prepared with thoughtful answers if you wish to join me in saving the world There you have it beautiful minds: the next thirty years of your lives summed up in a few paragraphs by yours truly Please direct all questions, complaints, and threats to my assistant Calli See you bright and early for day one! to sweeping your audience along You left subtle hints and much of the tale appears predictable, though key details were obviously kept secret to enhance peril! Ruth and I worked it out during your first night here and came up with a timeline of events based on our observations of you in class Which, as an aside, explains why we both felt you weren't a promising candidate for Plus; you behaved in a consistently logical manner (another reason why we thought you lacked imagination) Was lying to the teachers too far outside your comfort zone? The staff and I had a big laugh over someone's reluctance to take advantage of an adventure But then again, adventure is tiring and the status quo can certainly be comfortable enough to inspire devotion Alright enough procrastination, it's time for my nap now One more question though: you don't mind if I call you honeymoon traffic regulator do you? Thanks Chapter 1A: No Man is an Island A warm breeze hits your face, the chatter of desultory classmates nearby distracts you from reviewing your notes yet again Two hours till the test and teacher has already given warning of its difficulty To fall or not to fall, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? The fat lady behind you with the horse laugh is certainly in opposition of you in particular it seems Your parents could not afford tutoring for you so you are here by your lonesome struggling to hold on to your spot in this pressure cooker of scholarship It's Darwinism at its purest: you either adapt or die; lose your dreams or lose your mind, relationships, and spirit You turn to Horse Laugh with a polite cough, her gaze meets yours and you are suddenly in an empty void She floats beside you, as do you, and you find yourself belly laughing for some odd reason, tears of joy stream down your face This is what pure happiness feels like without any real substance or reason behind it There is nothing to be sad about or worried over, just the blissful here-and-now is simply written as: survive With that in mind, you know she will sacrifice her individual self if it means the safety of the emotions within her For you, is the same true? Are you in genuine danger? Is this what Pacific Spirit Memorial intends to fill your head with when they 'pass' you along to secondary schooling after this year? Either you loop them into some doctrine or fail to keep up and get left behind? I sure hope not, I would LOVE to work with them You see a vision of an automatic gate opening A booming voice makes you jump calling your name along with a string of numbers Your vision shatters and you find yourself staring into the laughing face of Horse Laugh once more - takes you a moment to adjust your eyes from the overly bright sun to the relative darkness of the classroom, all within a split second "Here you go loser!" the-jokes - reddit: "One day a religious man was walking along the beach and came upon a woman who was about to bury her time god "I know your faith is strong in your time god," he said as she stuffed his deities mouth with pebbles So I'll grant you three questions before you fill his mouth with sand She turns to him with tears in her eyes and said, "Thank you The religious man thinks for a moment and says, "First How old is your son?" "35," she replies without hesitation Knowing that this can't be correct, he asks his second question, "Before we buried him, what was the color of his hair?" For the second time, she answers instantly, "Brown; just like my husband's " in consensus Bile rises in your throat as you review the current situation Just yesterday they were whining about a backstabbing holy man; now they're fixating on one of your fellow necromancers Yvette the duchess has her fawning sycophants all a twitter with her latest song How very dull Sure Yvette is skilled, but any and every one of your little shadows could do what she does now at this point Begging for peanuts from peasants, going to galas and court appearances, singing It's all so beneath you at this point The man was right: they NEED you You're not going to just lead them to some divisa or some such nonsense, you're going to repaint the landscape of this world a darker shade in your image That means pulling out of this ridiculous provincial town and heading to where the real power is Borgo Pass maintains a good relationship with Holgard and that's the direction you intend to head That's why you have to kill the rest of them and employ your powers to ensure an undead army follows you there You'll claim ruler ship the old fashioned way: You'll take it, killing anyone in your way and raising them to help you do it With each step you plan, plot, and prepare for your shadow-kissed horde to invade the taver That's when the current song wrap Borgo Pass establishment At least for now to nature; even death is merely a mere pause in life's continuum As the heads roll down the hill in Borgo Pass, making a pleasant *clunk* *clunk* sound as they tumble into various gutters and storm drains, you scream in the night at the town before you: "WINTER IS COMING , everyone and everything must evolve or die Everything dies eventually, but why wait? realized Hope is a mistake Fear and joy are not contagious, they're all too weak willed to embrace such power Fate exists, it is what is because it always was Knowing this changes everything, or it should Blah, blah, blah Do you ever get tired of looking at your own reflection? Dealing with your father's boasts are bad enough; is this ego massage really necessary? , fear is an uncommon emotion for you But tonight is different, an unfamiliar atmosphere pervades the air and you feel afraid Ever moment brings some new horror, what is happening to this place? You see a soldier run from a comrade in arms, screaming madly as he tears off his own face, flesh dripping from bone in tendrils then piling atop one another in squirming piles upon the ground you are hopeless but in the now its certain death in the long term you are nothing but a speck of dirt on a ball that twirls in an infinite abyss for an unknown purpose in the now, a rotting giant has approached your position and is preparing to strike the first blow It seems your choice is clear, as much as you hate it You might as well get it over with right? Taking a few steps back you brace yourself for something you're going to hate doing but have to be done anyway Jumping onto a horse you ride straight into the densest part of the mist, no hesitation The wet tendrils of vapor drench your clothes immediately, chilling you to the bone instantly and making your muscles cramp up Gasping you continue to force yourself through, the sprite's chatter sounding much closer than it was before The unnatural fog sucks away all sound, leaving only an oppressive, deadly silence in its wake Something in this mist paralyzes you, fragments of memories long forgotten flitting past your vision until you see something not clouds your mind but instead itself So close now, something just ahead calls out to your mind everything? Or will her twisted curiosity be her undoing? That curiosity, the thing that ensuresacles against all warnings and the discoveries made possible A need for understanding that lead to this moment, the discovery becoming known are you prepared? You see it, a glowing ovoid shape created all of flowing mist coming together into an perfect sphere Another few feet and you'll be touching it There's a flash as your world explodes into pain Every orifice in your body hausts out a sparkling mist, your eyes, nose, ears and mouth, all unleashing a torrent of sparkling vapor It flows from you uncontrollably as you spasm with the results of the pain It feels like every nerve in your body is breaking at once, send chills wrack your entire aching body So bright! So white! Agony unlike any other burns into your very core, heart bursting, flesh rendering and bone cracking as you bones become a gelatinous substance, reforming into an unearthly shape Your screams are lost in the void as a beating heart of mist, your blood sparkling as it pumps through magical veins You see her then, standing right in front of you as her mouth moves but no sound comes out, only vibrations You can distinctly hear two voices in your head no dream fantasy blood and good! / great shiver wrack wracking quake terror terrorterrorterror / shadows! REDSHADOWS! BURNING BRIGHT BURNING SHADOWS THEY KILL THEY KILL / AGONY TEARS FLESH HOPE TERROR DREAMS / THING NOT IN boundary ANSWERS BLANK NO NO NO NO / NOW! words awful / made forge river fall rock strong mountain / fearless brave joy hopeful happy town new lives… The pain ends as quick as it begun, with another crackle of electricity your body spasms one last time before collapsing on the ground, out cold Awareness 1: Surfaces Every sound is a color, every sight has a voice, you sense yourself drifting down long staircases twined with ivy into a cool, peaceful darkness All around you, you hear a thousand familiar voices calling out to you in far off, incomprehensible words Don't worry about anything, just let your worries float away into the inky blackness it's okay now, everything will be just fine You're with us now Lead jumped The burning sensation in his arm made itself known again as he jolted away, looking at the place where the monster had grabbed him Immediately, he flexed his fingers and began massaging his arm, trying to regain feeling The monster didn't seem bothered by the sudden move as it stared at him with its dead eyes while saliva slowly dripped off its wide grin While Lead was prepared to fight regardless of the circumstances, the look in the creature's eyes told him it wouldn't be much of a contest at all, even if he was in the safety of his own home God it was looking right through me Am I already dead? Am I a ghost? Did that monster kill me and this is what the afterlife looks like? Slowly, hesitantly, Lead shuffled backwards away from the monster, placing his back against the cold stone wall underneath the window Desperately, he peered around his room for any sort of weapon he could use to defend himself, but he kept prompting annoying says of utter normality The monster continued to grin at him, unmoving from where it was standing Dead plants ringed the den in a dry moat, withered barricades keeping Lead trapped Gotta get out But how?! The being in front of him didn't look moveable at all, be it physically or otherwise He couldn't reason with it, he couldn't run from it Hell, he couldn't even touch it It didn't like ghosts If he was going to get out of this, it would have to be by its own doing So, Lead obediently continued to wait as more moments passed by, staring at the horrifying monster who gazed back Something began taking shape in the far corner of his vision, growing more defined with every passing second After a few moments, the outlines of two people materialized in front of him, both of which were girls from his class He vaguely remembered the pair, associating with them being on some pointless errand for Martin or something similar Their haunting, ghastly visages were twisted into looks of agony and desperation Martin had a firm grip on both their shoulders, his long sharp nails digging deep into their skin as they shrieked in pain from the torture His stomach churning, Lead averted his gaze in hopes of not drawing the monster's attention to them Strangely, this seemed to work as they were but left entirely alone In the meantime, Lead saw that more figures were taking form elsewhere in the room, dread filling them as they realized what was happening Martin, a fiendishly gleeful grin on his face, watched on as each new ghost was born into the room Finally, Allison emerged from the shadows "Bri ian " she whimpered, sitting up from the mattress in her panic Martin's malevolent grin widened to monstrous proportions as he, once again, lunged for Allison Just like Lead, she jolted from her place on the mattress and immediately yanked herself free of Martin's grip Her fragile foot skidded along the ground as she was flung backwards, falling onto the carpeted floor with a muffled thud Martin didn't even seem to care as she shrieked in pain "You will pay," Martin jeered, the two ghosts now hovering anxiously by his sides "Serves you right, Allison!" A similar fear began encompassing Lead once more; no, not fear No, not fear It was pure terror as he helplessly bore witness to a malicious act which he could not stop : The Sun: Its warmth begins to caress your face, revitalizing your soul and replenishing your weary mind Draping the barren brown ground with a radiant golden glow, life can once again flourish here The cool midday air penetrates into the caverns of your body, revitalizing your very core Eyesight clears and focus strengthens once more, birds chirp in the distance - ringing out their beautiful melody for all who can hear ment: Lead: You blink repeatedly, trying to focus on the oddly shaped object Martin is waving around in front of you It takes a moment for your mind to comprehend that he's holding what is presumably an Xbox controller, and he's now giving it to you Your hands firmly grasp the two halves, feeling the new texture covering its once glossy surface It's cool to the touch ings that have long been dormant begin emerging from the depths of your being Curiosity, determination - each one more familiar than you'd care to admit This is not your time or is it? "Sit down," Martin instructs, pushing against your back in an attempt to help you take a seat on the mattress laying on the floor You comply without a fight; this isn't a dream - or is it? [2016] A Clockworker's Cruelty First Semester at High School The front features a life-sized photo of a boy dressed in what looks to be 19th-century clothing; he's staring straight at the camera with an eerie, monstrous look in his eyes using chosen art style Below his image states something that makes your blood run cold "This world is simply a nexus of fleeting horrors " "An Xbox One copy of Corpse Party: Blood Drive," closest to you Continue down this dark hallway NAH- Figment- Something else- NAH- Figment- Something else- Personally Introspective- Semiotic Web "Always seemed like something was off with him, ever since that day Jefferson killed himself," Martin mutters to himself He takes a moment to think; in that moment you have the sudden realization of what exactly is going on here Nonsense and childhood friends Which only leaves - "Go through this door right here," moves to behind Martin, who stands up and walks over to another doorway in the room He opens it, and you get a glimpse of what looks like very colorful woods outside A nice breeze blows through and cools you off just enough to keep you alive "The day the day that Jefferson " His mother had only come home to drop off his youngest brother; you can see the short haired blonde woman hugging her younger son in the entryway , and even Martin's disappearance, were all smoke screens Camouflage Deception Disappearances without a trace "It was you," A swift punch to the nose knocks you back as the narrow hallway throws off your balance You feel blood trickling down your nostrils, as all you really have time to notice is that the hallway gives way into a living room, where you spot an old CRT television set that seems to be on a news cast , you ask? You copy it from a reference, of course! You take a 3D model and turn it into a texture, which you then apply to the clone-thing The process is really hard: you have to get a reference for every single little detail, or else the clone won't look right You watch as Steve creates Jon, using the newly-downloaded image which gets mapped onto what looks like a first-person shooter's character You have more than enough knowledge of 3D design to know that it's a realistic image being used for this model, and can't help but grin as you see Steve apply red hair, weird eyebrows, slightly thicker-than-average glasses, and the distorted, ugly looking face upon the model Your 'father' looks horrified at what has happened to him "The day they beat him half to death," yesterday as far as we know A dark room tinged with blue from the CCTV images, in which "Two piles of wood and bone, connected by terrible, melted skin " The realization hits you like a sack of bricks dropped from a great height Blood pours out of your mouth as you let out vomit; the realization has filled you with unbelievable terror You can taste it as it comes back up and out, pooling at your feet The tape plays on, showing two piles of burnt and melted flesh, connected by strands of unharmed meat One bone is fractered, another skin is horribly scarred And the most horrifying thing about it? The fact that you know this, and more importantly; you remember seeing this As if your mind was put through a filter which made everything seem surreal "When they return to the grounds where their journey begun," You are still wiping the bile off your lips, and you do not miss the importance of what is happening A simple yellow school bus, the words "Jefferson County Middle School" clearly printed on the side in blue lettering occupied by ghostly children with monstrous faces and skeletal bodies They look out the window at you as you enter into the physical building for the first time You watch, confused and still pondering the reality around you, as they stare in shock One of these Spectres nervously laughs out loud at what he saw You find yourself in the principal's office without even knowing how you got here The haggard woman behind the desk looks up, staring at you with a dour look that makes you think she's incarnate of Satan himself "Name?" she dully asks while prickles at your skin "Greg

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All fighters ranked plus the best melee, sword and ranged fighters explained • Eurogamer.net

Fighting your friends in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has become more heated than ever, but with over 70 playable characters, it can be tough to choose which is the best Smash Bros Ultimate character to try.

We’ve done the hard work and worked out a Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List in order to help you get to grips with competitive play, updated to include all the latest Smash Bros DLC characters, up to the newly available Min Min, released July 2020.

On this page:

One of the first things that you should look out for is the general play style of the character. We’ve segmented these into three categories, Melee, Sword and Ranged. Be aware however, that some characters (such as Link and all of his variants) do not generally fit into this mould.

When you have settled on which character to play as, you need to get them first – which is where our Super Smash Bros Ultimate character unlock page comes in handy. We also have some Super Smash Bros Ultimate tips if you want to brush up on the essentials, plus everything we know about Super Smash Bros Ultimate DLC.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List

We’ve attempted to rank every current fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate into a single list, based on their strengths, weaknesses, options for attack, recovery and general attack power.

Patch 8.0 has finally arrived after six long months of no updates, and with it comes our first fighter from the second season of fighters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate – Min Min.

Alongside Min Min, 8.0 comes with a slew of buffs and updates to existing characters. So, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to take a look at these brand-new balance changes, and review every single character in the current roster to find out who you should definitely pick, and which characters you don’t want to invest your time into.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List (Fighters ranked by Tier, last updated July 6th, 2020)

Tier Characters Best Lucina, Peach, Daisy, Pikachu, Pichu, R.O.B, Hero, Chrom, Ridley, Inkling, Snake, Ryu, Young Link, Toon Link, Wii Fit Trainer, Falco Strong Roy, Marth, Olimar, Mega Man, Yoshi, Mewtwo, Fox, Cloud, Bayonetta, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Isabelle, Villager, Ken, Link, Simon, Richter, Shulk, King K.Rool, Lucario, Joker, Corrin, Lucas, Robin, Incineroar, Terry, Ike Good Pit, Dark Pit, Samus, Dark Samus, Falco, Wolf, Ness, Palutena, Pokemon Trainer, Rosalina and Luma, Sonic, Zero Suit Samus, Zelda, Greninja, Mr Game and Watch, Mii Brawler, Mii Gunner, Mii Swordfighter, Wario, Jigglypuff, King Dedede Average Banjo, Bowser Jr., Diddy Kong, Duck Hunt Duo, Ice Climbers, Mario, Luigi, Dr. Mario, Meta Knight, Pac-Man, Piranha Plant, Sheik, Captain Falcon, Kirby, Byleth, Min Min Weak Ganondorf, Little Mac

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List changes at a glance

Between new characters and patches, here’s Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List has changed since the arrival of Min Min and the 8.0 update:

Min Min (NEW – Average)

Wii Fit Trainer (Strong to Best)

King Dedede (Average to Good)

Falco (Good to Best)

Ike (Good to Strong)

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List (Fighters listed alphabetically)

Smash Bros Fighter Tier ranking Bayonetta Strong Bowser Strong Bowser Jr. Average Byleth Average Captain Falcon Average Chrom Best Cloud Strong Corrin Strong Daisy Best Dark Pit Good Dark Samus Good Diddy Kong Average Donkey Kong Strong Dr Mario Average Duck Hunt Duo Average Falco Best Fox Strong Ganondorf Weak Greninja Good Hero Best Ice Climbers Average Ike Strong Incineroar Strong Inkling Strong Isabelle Strong Jigglypuff Good Joker Strong Ken Strong King Dedede Good King K. Rool Strong Kirby Average Link Strong Little Mac Weak Lucario Strong Lucas Strong Lucina Best Luigi Average Mario Average Marth Best Mega Man Average Meta Knight Average Mewtwo Strong Mii Brawler Good Mii Gunner Good Mii Swordfighter Good Min Min Average Mr Game and Watch Good Ness Good Olimar Best Pac-Man Average Palutena Good Peach Best Phirana Plant Good Pichu Best Pikachu Best Pit Good Pokemon Trainer Good R.O.B Best Richter Strong Ridley Best Robin Strong Rosalina and Luma Good Roy Best Ryu Best Samus Good Sheik Average Shulk Strong Simon Strong Snake Strong Sonic Good Terry Strong Toon Link Best Villager Strong Wario Good Wii Fit Trainer Best Wold Good Yoshi Strong Young Link Best Zelda Good Zero Suit Samus Good

How we settled on our Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List – and how it’s changed in the latest update

Patch 8.0 has finally arrived, and with it the first significant balance changes for almost half a year, so we’ve done the work and revisited every character on the balance changes sheet to see just what the real shakers and movers really are.

What we’ve seen in general in 8.0 is a general buff to many characters who are on our list in the lower to mid-tiers. These changes are mostly focused upon the characters who aren’t quite as strong, and who have now been brought in line.

Since this balance change is pretty significant, we’ve found that with a lot of these changes, it’s only really brought most of the affected characters in line with the rest of the tier list, and their changes are not really significant enough to warrant a bump up in the tier list.

However, this doesn’t go for everyone. The common theme, as seen in the patch notes is that a lot of smash damage, and vulnerabilities have been reduced.

This affects some characters more so than others, so we’ve picked out the fighters who seem to have benefited the most here, and bumped them up in the tier list.

Let’s kick off with an old fan favourite, Falco. A great in almost every game that he’s appeared in, Falco is a top choice for many pro players, even in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

However, so far during the game’s lifecycle, we’ve not been too impressed with his current incarnation. That all changes in patch 8.0, where he’s received some significant buffs that extend Falco’s options quite a bit, where he ends up inching ever closer towards how he played in Melee.

His up smash is significantly easier to combo, and now launches enemies further, as well as his down tilt being buffed, and now, his iconic side special lasts a little bit longer, as well as being faster.

This all makes for Falco not only becoming a little bit better, but significantly so, especially when it comes to combos, this makes Falco feel a bit more like his old self, and that can only be a good thing. We think that this makes Falco not only a Strong character, but potentially one of the best to play as, as of patch 8.0.

It’s a similar story when it comes to Wii Fit Trainer. They have always been a good contender on our tier list, but these recent changes have only done more to push them up and into a higher tier.

Their Up Smash comes out quicker, and their vulnerability has been reduced on a number of attacks. However, one of the most notable changes is their neutral special getting an extended launch distance, compounded with the reduced vulnerability specifically on the forward air makes for a potent combination.

We already knew that Wii Fit Trainer was a great character to play as, and these changes just eke them into the ‘Best’ tier.

It’s a slightly different story for our lad Ike, who has been shuffled across the list multiple times already, and this is because while Ike is a strong character, we’ve found that his speed can be a bit of an issue for many.

Ike is one character who has actually gotten a slight debuff, in a sea of buffed characters, but this is just limited to his neutral air attack, but when you look at the rest of the changes, Ike has actually been significantly buffed.

Again, with a number of reduced vulnerabilities, and the up special now not being able to be neutralised,it’s made for a more deadly combination, as his dash attack and extended launches make for easier combos.

When you compound this with the fact that Ike hits like a truck, we think he’s not only a dead ringer for one of the higher tiers, but he now sits comfortably in the “Strong” tier.

Last but certainly not least is King Dedede, who has also enjoyed a range of buffs that we think slots him into a higher tier, and right into the ‘Good’ tier, instead of previously languishing in ‘Average’.

While King Dedede might not be our top choice when it comes to some of the slower characters, he’s certainly seen a significant boost in power. Some of his hard-hitting attacks like forward air, up air and up tilt have all had extended launch distance, with up tilt also enjoying some increased power.

The range on his neutral special; Inhale has also had a slight extension of range, and also has its speed increased. While this makes it King Dedede slightly better, the limitations in speed make him settle in at a single jump in tiers from ‘Average’ to ‘Good’.

How good are Joker, Piranha Plant, Hero, Banjo and Kazooie, Terry Bogard, Byleth and Min Min in our Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tier List?

The addition of new characters always add new dimensions to the tier list ranking. Kicking off with Piranha Plant, its range of moves and attacks make it a slightly weaker ranged character, but it doesn’t quite give you the same sort of options as the most recent addition, Joker adds.

Joker is incredibly versatile, with fantastic close range and melee attacks, in addition to a dynamic recovery. In addition to this, when you fill his gauge up and unleash his persona, Joker becomes a master of zone control, if you want to keep your enemies at bay, you can – but you can also stand toe-to-toe with some of the better melee fighters, but a change to the way that Arsene reacts to projectiles in 4.0 means that we’ve given him a slightly lower ranking.

That said, a Joker player just won Evo 2019. Sometimes, raw tiers don’t always count towards player skill!

In update 4.0, we saw the addition of Dragon Quest’s Hero and his many cosmetic incarnations. And phwoar, he’s very strong. Being a swordfighter, Hero has an MP Bar, with a menu ability that allows you to use special attacks, that often do some incredible damage, including a movement and speed buff.

Additionally, you’re able to block projectiles with a forward tilt, and his special attacks consume a slight bit of MP. If you fully charge your side special, Zapple, you’re able to almost certainly thwack an enemy right off stage. With really strong normals, tilts and smashes, and to top it all off, a skill named Thwack, that has the potential to instantly KO enemies.

It’s likely that Hero may be banned in future tournaments, just because he’s that good.

The fourth character, Banjo and Kazooie, is worth considering thanks to a decent range of attacks.

Banjo and Kazooie’s normal attacks and tilts can come across as slightly stubby, and as such they aren’t a great fighter when playing up close, with Banjo and Kazooie you’ll want to use their excellent throw and side special to do a big hunk of damage and close the gap.

If your opponent is at range, you’re also able to use their side special, which spouts eggs at the enemy. The trick with Banjo and Kazooie is that because their side special is so strong, they give you limited uses by the way of feathers, so use them wisely.

Banjo and Kazooie is an incredibly situational character, and not really the best all rounder, even with their range of attacks, which is why we have placed them in the average section of our tier list.

Patch 6.0 introduced Fatal Fury and Garou: Mark of the Wolves legend, Terry Bogard.

This technical fighter is not for players who cannot quickly perform fighting game inputs, but if you handily know how to do Supers and special moves in Street Fighter, you’ll be fine.

Either way, you can practice in the training room until you’ve nailed it.

Terry has a lot of special moves, and with the right inputs you’ll be able to master them all. Tapping B does Power Wave, a short-ranged projectile that tracks across the floor, a quarter circle forward and B or A will do Burn Knuckle, a horizontal punch that covers a decent amount of ground.

Back, down back and down will perform Crack Shoot, an overhead kick that is a really good situational gap closer, which will help out with your zoning and distances.

Power Dunk is forward, down and down forward which will launch your enemies into the air and smash them back down again, which is great for getting those high percentage spikes.

Terry’s final special Rising Tackle isn’t too useful we’ve found, and is an attack that launches you upwards, dealing a minimal amount of damage.

Just from these moves alone, Terry isn’t too powerful, and can be hard to close the gap with ranged fighters, but due to the amount of air attacks that Terry has, he can do excellently when fighting offstage.

The real interesting meat, and what tipped Terry from Good to Strong in our Tier list are the special moves that he gets when he hits 100% damage, where a ‘Go’ will appear near his character portrait.

Power Geyser requires you to input down, down back, back, down back, forward and A or B, this will make Terry perform a quick smash to the ground, which can kill at relatively low percentages, and launch your opponents into the air.

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The other notable move is Buster Wolf, which can be performed with two quarter circles forward on the stick and B or A. This will launch Terry forward, and connect with one attack, before “shooting” them.

This does some great damage and can also kill at lower percentages, especially if you’re close to the edge of the stage.

The only thing holding Terry back from the “Best” Tier are his options for closing distance with other characters, and average movement speed. This makes Terry a more difficult character to use, but one that we’ll be keeping an eye on in the competitive scene.

Finally, Fire Emblem: Three Houses star Byleth gets a well-earned cameo in Super Smash Bros Ultimate as the final character in the first Fighter’s Pass.

Byleth appears in both masculine and feminine forms, and also has a few other tricks up their sleeve. Byleth’s gimmick is that they’re often a slower, hard-hitting character that has pretty variable (inconsistent) range, but can very easily kill at lower percentages.

Doing an upward direction attack will see Byleth use a fast whip, which causes multiple hits, a side attack using the lance has long range, and usually comes out slower.

A down attack uses Byleth’s Axe, which comes out incredibly slowly, but with some pretty incredible damage. Byleth’s most useful attack is their Bow, which can be used just by using neutral special.

This can be charged, and do an obscene amount of damage, flinging your enemies far across the screen. The key to using Byleth is to not only know how fast your attacks come out, but also how to wrap your enemies around your finger using zone-control using the bow.

Since the bow is pretty powerful and also has a longer range, you need to carefully think about what attacks to use and when.

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Like Terry, you don’t want to be mashing out on Byleth willy-nilly, as it probably won’t end well when the slow movement speed is compounded with the slower side and down attacks that use the lance and axe.

One thing redeeming this is that Byleth has a great recovery, which can also allow you to bounce straight off walls and into another attack. However, this is a really finicky character.

Since you’re able to deal a bit more damage than a lot of other characters, we’ve popped Byleth in the ‘Average’ tier. We can only hope to see that Byleth gets buffed in the future, as the slow movement speed and slow attacks do not make up for the damage output we managed.

With Arms finally getting some representation in the form of Min Min in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, we’ve found that she’s not quite all that when it comes to raw power and versatility, in comparison to some of the other characters that we have seen being introduced to the game.

Min Min has a pretty average movement speed, with some impressive range on some attacks, this doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a ranged fighter, however.

We’ve found that she can hold her own up close or at a medium distance, thanks to her spring-loaded arms. Side specials and smashes perform relatively well, if not a little bit underpowered for how slow they come out.

You can charge the cannonball using down special, and release the energy with a side special. but we’ve found that it’s a bit too much investment to prove useful when it comes to being in a high-octane brawl.

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However, she does have an impressive fast recovery time, using her arms to zip up to the edge, this may be useful for edge guarding in a pinch.

Her air attacks are where those spring-loaded arms come in really handy, you can keep enemies at a pretty safe distance, but all of your attacks dish out fairly mediocre damage, and don’t necessarily always have the launch power to fully take your enemies out.

Unfortunately, this means that we didn’t exactly have a great time online with Min Min, as she just didn’t have all the tools we needed to hold our own.

The saving grace for Min Min are her defensive options, which are thanks to her impressive melee range. For this reason, we’ve placed Min Min onto the ‘Average’ tier.

With the above changes and explanations out the way, it’s time to choose a fighter. One of the first things that you should look out for is the general play style of the character. We’ve segmented these into three categories, Melee, Sword and Ranged. Be aware however, that some characters (Such as Link and all of his variants) do not generally fit into this mould.

If you’re looking for a specific playstyle, then may the following sections help…

Best Melee Fighters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Melee fighters are the best at getting up close and personal with your enemies. Their normal attacks should be quick, their tilts exceptional, and smashes hit hard. A great example of a good melee fighter would be Bowser, who might have some ranged options with his firebreath, but excels at getting up close and personal to dish out some pain.

You should also consider a move often forgotten by a lot of casual Smash Players, the throw is an excellent way to chuck your enemies offstage, a great example of a character with a great throw is Ken’s Roll-Back throw, as you’re able to take an enemy from the last quarter of the stage, grab and roll them straight off the edge, leaving them vulnerable to your spiking smash attacks to finish them off.

While Terry is a great character, we wouldn’t recommend him for those who might not be used to fighting game inputs. Practice with Ryu or Ken, then move onto Terry.

Peach / Daisy

Peach/Daisy are arguable the best melee fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with some devastating attacks with her side special, and quick tilts, you can often find yourself juggling characters in the air, or driving enough pressure on them to the side of the stage that they cannot escape.

A great bonus to any Peach/Daisy players out there is the fact that their recovery is also brilliant, with the iconic parasol dishing out damage where it causes the most pain.

Finally, While Terry is a great character, we wouldn’t recommend him for those who might not be used to fighting game inputs. Practice with Ryu or Ken, then move onto Terry when you’re ready.

Ryu / Ken

While our iconic street fighters are not in our top ‘strongest’ tier, that doesn’t make them any less deadly up close. With their focus attack, Ryu and Ken gain armour on a single attack, and are able to crumple your opponents to the ground, meaning that this is a great counter to hard hitting single attacks or smashes.

Additionally, with their repertoire of traditional Street Fighter moves, Ryu and Ken might be a little bit stubby when it comes to their normal attacks, but it is a great starting point for someone wanting to play a melee character.

Ridley

This fan-favourite character has shown their true colours as the patches have gone by, highlighting how good Ridley really is. Focusing on a big close-range game, and with some devastating attacks and a strong recovery, Ridley is a great option for players who want to use a melee character at a high level.

In particular, Ridley’s dominance in the air is one of his biggest strengths. From tilts that come out incredibly quickly, to great recoveries on his side special, Ridley is a force to be reckoned with, in the right hands.

Kirby

With a range of buffs as of Patch 8.0, we’re really happy to finally be able to pop Kirby on this list, as one of, if not the easiest entry-level Super Smash Bros Ultimate character.

They might not have the strongest attacks, but Kirby certainly is the most forgiving, and with the most options too. Kirby’s most potent attack is the charging side special, a hammer which you are able to dish out a decent amount of damage to smash characters offscreen

In addition to this, Kirby’s recovery is incredibly generous, so if you are starting out in the game, or trying to get to grips with the basics, Kirby is a no-brainer.

Best Sword Fighters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Sword Fighters dominate a lot of our ‘Best’ tier, and for good reason. Their attacks have some decent range, and they use that to use space to their advantage. Sword fighters have excellent zone control, and often can also combo you into oblivion. Many Sword Fighters also have a ‘Counter’, which is essentially a parry, but have to be timed excellently. So what’s all the big fuss about? We go into detail with two of the best characters below.

Roy / Chrom

Roy and Chrom are more than just simple Marth clones. With fire damage side specials in addition to an excellent neutral air attack. Roy and Chrom are in our ‘Best’ tier, and it shows when coming face to face with them. They have incredible midair control and options, in addition to being able to dish out some incredibly hard hitting attacks. Combine that with some of the fastest running speed in the game, and you’re left with an absolute beast of a character.

Ike

Ike is a tank. His movement might not be the best, but when it comes to raw attack power, he’s hard to beat. Combined with handful of buffs, this is the best version of Ike yet.

Why? With a fast sweeping side special in addition to a neutral special that can be charged to erupt into three fire pillars, Ike is great when you’re surrounded, or have to deal with multiple enemies, his smashes can sweep up multiple enemies, and while slow, they can KO Characters at less than 75% damage when coming out raw.

Hero

This new DLC character is one of the most unpredictable characters out there, with great range and a huge range of spells at his disposal, Hero can even do a 1 hit kill, if the RNG gods smile upon you with the list of spells you get when hitting down special.

Either way, he has a very good run speed, as well as being able to KO at low percentages with your neutral special or side tilt. Hero might just be the best character in the game, for now.

Byleth

Byleth isn’t strictly another sword fighter, but sure does fight in the same style as one, with a number of options by their side, you can expect Byleth to KO others at low percentages with the lance and axe attacks, which may be a good strategy if you manage to dominate through usage of the bow, employing responsible zone-control where necessary.

Coupled with a pretty generous recovery, Byleth is a good option for a mid-ranged fighter who can be potent in the right hands.

Best Ranged Fighters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Ranged Fighters are excellent at shutting down fast-moving characters and trapping those slower characters into a loop, all from a distance. Like their name might imply, they might be in a spot of trouble when up close against a good melee fighter, but with the options available to you to keep them at a distance and dish out the pain leading up to a powerful smash, Ranged Fighters are no joke.

Simon / Richter

Simon and Richter are exceptional ranged fighters. Namely, the Holy Water, Throwing Axe and Boomerang are all deadly combos for pretty much any character. With the Axes being thrown at an arc, they hit incredibly hard, and can KO high percentage characters.

Combined with the horizontal control with the boomerang, you can complete your setup by trapping them with your Holy Water and charging a whip attack. This deadly concoction can shut down almost any character.

Samus

While not quite as potent as Simon or Richter, Samus is a great beginner ranged fighter. With missiles and a chargeable blast, Samus is a good starting point to build from when it comes to fighting ranged.

She has some trouble when fighting up-close, but when practicing your ranged game with Samus, she has enough options to build from and take to a better character. Samus has value, if not just for being a great starting point to use as a ranged fighter.

Ready to get started playing as some of the above fighters? Our Super Smash Bros Ultimate character unlock can help you start getting your hands on them.

Banjo and Kazooie

Rare’s finest fighter is finally in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and they’re a very situational duo. Banjo and Kazooie we’ve found is best at range and closing distance when you’ve softened them up with your ranged attacks.

The feathers that appear above your head mean that you only have five side specials per stock, and they deplete with each use. But, if you use them wisely along with your throw, you can end up with some great setups to smash your enemies offstage.

Banjo’s down spike smash attack is also great, but you’ll have to make sure the enemy is at a pretty high percentage and if you can land safely. They’re a pretty tricky character to learn and not super strong, but we’ve found are incredibly fun to play as.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/all-fighters-ranked-plus-the-best-melee-sword-and-ranged-fighters-explained-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=all-fighters-ranked-plus-the-best-melee-sword-and-ranged-fighters-explained-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net-2

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Why Torna will always be the Golden Country

Apologies to those who have the pleasure of hearing this opinion on a daily basis, but Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a good game. In fact, in a year that brought us Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade stood out as my favourite game I played in 2017. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to defend this opinion shortly, but in the interim I’d like to give a brief backstory of my relationship with Xenoblade.

I didn’t Play Xenoblade 1 or X. Actually, it wasn’t until Xenoblade 2 came out that I even considered buying it at all. The only reason I bought it at all was to round out the ‘Year of Nintendo’ having bought a new AAA Switch game every month. I didn’t even play other Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and games like Octopath Traveller didn’t interest me in the slightest after playing Xenoblade.

The basic premise of Xenoblade is that you are a Driver, basically a swordsman, who has up to three Blades at a time. Depending on which Blade you have engaged at any given time, you have different elemental attacks which have individual effects. Rex, the protagonist, accidentally encounters the most powerful Blades in existence. First is Pyra, an Aegis who becomes the main companion of Rex and is the key component to the story. Then there’s Malos and Jin, the antagonists, who want Pyra dead for reasons that only 100 hours of gameplay can really make clear.

When I played Xenoblade, it took me hours and hours and hours to finally clock the combat system, by which point they’d added various combos, gauges and other factors to start thinking about. Every time it stepped up the complexity, I was drawn further in. And, though everyone else hates it, I found the cutscenes to be fun and enjoyable. The story managed to suck me into learning everything about the universe that I knew nothing about, in a way that Skyrim never coaxed me into.

Where Xenoblade Chronicles 2 falls short is in its length, clocking in at well over 100 hours from start to finish and immeasurably longer if you’re interested in all the side quests. Also the combat system, while is engaging in isolation, can get tedious during grinding and uninteresting side-quests. Oh and the map/waypoint system leaves a lot to be desired. And there’s too many blades which bond with a given driver permanently. And Poppi is a super irritating blade to try and manage. Despite all these factors, the sheer scope, beautiful environments and complicated storyline kept me hooked to the point where a year on I’m still itching to get back on and start a new game from scratch, then start a new game plus to 100% it. If I had another 300 hours to spare, I would.

This year, the Xenoblade team made a magnificently unique choice. They released a DLC pack called ‘Torna: The Golden Country’, a prequel that explores Jin, Malos and the characters you meet only in flashbacks during the main game. Well, yes that’s been done plenty. But this DLC is also a stand alone game. You can walk to the shops and buy Torna without having touched the main game.

Torna is perfectly crafted to exist as a standalone game to those who have no idea Jin is destined to become a villain in the future as well as for those who know everything about Lora’s future but want to learn more about her past. Lora in general, actually, is an excellent protagonist compared to Rex. She is flawed and heroic in organic ways where Rex was built to be a generic, blank-slate, hot-headed but good-willed kid like we’ve seen time and time again.

If you’d not guessed it yet already, Torna: the Golden Country being a standalone game is the perfect way to release this game. Not only because it entices people into the franchise with a much more manageable £20 price tag, but because it lets me get away with calling it my Game of the Year 2018.

Lets start with the squad. Xenoblade 2 has Rex, Tora, Nia, Vandam, Zeke and Morag as the main components of the party, each of which has 1 ‘key component’ blade who has their own character traits and 2 more blades which are assigned by the player. That makes it incredibly busy and gives you lots to keep track of. This works in a 100 hour campaign, but for a 20-30 hour DLC pack it would be far too much. That’s why Torna has just 9 (playable) characters. Lora, Adam and Hugo will always be your party and each has exactly 2 blades. This compacts the experience and allows the developers and the player to focus all their attention on these  characters to develop them all as much in 20 hours as Xenoblade 2 does in 100. Admittedly Hugo felt a little generic, as though he’d already had his story arc, but that’s of little consequence.

The world is compacted down too, Xenoblade 2 sees you scouring dozens of Titans (basically islands) with snow, plains, cities, forests, oceans and all kinds of different environments, each with its own distinct feel. Torna has just two Titans to worry about, the sprawling Gormott, which exists in Xenoblade 2 as a similar but distinctly changed map, and Torna itself, which is divided into several sub-sections for ease of navigation. It would have been nice to have one extra environment to explore, but these two are all you really need. Gormott is so vast that it’s easy to forget what you’re doing because you saw a chest in the distance while Torna is compact and incredibly functional, making it easy to catalogue all there is to do and work at it methodically. This also make the enemies you fight consistent and there tends to be more of a focus on animals than generic human soldiers than the full game.

The story itself is engaging but curiously, fails to address a lot of the questions I was left with at the end of Xenoblade 2. Adam in particular is an elusive character in Xenoblade 2’s flashbacks but we meet him in Torna after he’s done his ‘legendary’ stuff without ever finding out what it was.  It does an excellent job of going over the basics without dwelling on stuff we already heard Rex talk about every half hour in the main game but I can only hope these gaps in the story can be filled in through future games.

Some smaller changes include the campfire crafting, which replaces a majority of the NPC interaction in the main game. Shops are few and far between so you must make do with what you can make yourself. In the grand scheme of things, very little is changed with this alteration besides (as I’m sure you’re sick of me saying) condensing the gameplay down.

The only considerable drawbacks from the game, which if you’ve read any other reviews you’ll be more than aware of already, are that the voice acting is a very acquired taste and the characters will repeat the same half dozen phrases in combat for the entire adventure. More frustrating though is the wall you come against at two points in the game. There are two segments in which your only quest will become ‘do X side quests’, amounting to around 50 side quests that are unavoidable to complete the game. This didn’t affect me because the side quests were a natural part of my progression in the game, so I was only ever a couple away from my target anyway but if you were hoping to blast through the story without touching the optional quests, you will get angry. The optional quests themselves vary a lot from ‘kill x enemy’ to genuinely engaging sub-plots that span the whole game. Generally I found them to be an enjoyable extension of the game rather than a chore but I can see why others would disagree.

When Ubisoft talked about their Donkey Kong DLC for Mario Vs Rabbids, they explained how the DLC was actually quite a lot easier than the main game was in its later levels. It was an expansion, not an extension. Given that Torna is marketed for both newcomers and veterans, it’s easy to see how the complicated gameplay would be a barrier for one of these two groups. Newcomers would have to learn a 100-hour gameplay loop in 1/5 the time or veterans would be left bored that their hours of learning were wasted as Torna becomes too easy. The gameplay is by far the best part of Torna.

The very basic concepts are still in place, Lora still has her Blades and they grant her powers. You still have two other team members and all of you have various elemental attacks that can combo together. Where Torna refines the work of its predecessor is that Blades and Drivers can both be playable in combat. Rather than Pyra granting Rex a fiery sword, Jin can step forward in battle and Lora grants him bonuses. They have special attacks that trigger when they’re ‘tagged out’ which deal more damage and make encounters more interactive. You feel more like a team of 3 characters rather than a Pokemon Trainer with his Fire, Ice and Electric types. There’s also a more effective Elemental Combo system which makes it laughably easy to set up an enemy with all 8 elements and ‘break’ them for a massive chain of damage. This would probably get on my nerves but later in the game, they start to punish you for over-extending. Certain bosses deal immense damage to you if you leave elemental orbs for too long, giving you the choice between setting up and breaking as quickly as possible with the risk of it backfiring or learn new techniques to win battles without elemental attacks. In addition, there being only 9 characters to think about means the developers could build real synergies between them which are easy enough to work out without spending hours trawling through the wiki.

I wasn’t lying when I said Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was my favourite game of last year, standing tall above Mario and Zelda and Splatoon and Pokemon. It was so imperfect that it’s really easy to talk about the problems it had. And, as I hope to explain one day, it is not as good as Odyssey and Breath of the Wild were last year. But it was by far my favourite game. Torna systematically deconstructs Xenoblade 2 to find out where those faults were and how they can be addressed. Torna doesn’t take a 100 hour adventure and cut it down to 20 hours. It fits 100 hours of depth into 20. It makes me truly excited to see how Xenoblade 3 takes the same 20-hour experience and extends it back out to 100.

If the huge investment and complicated gameplay put you off buying Xenoblade Chronicles 2, or if you’re wanting an excuse to jump back onto the Titans of Alrest, Torna: The Golden Country is a must-have.

[aaronsniderus]

Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means we receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. Please check out our disclosure policy for more details. 

Halloween is over and it’s time to think about the holiday season already. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I get it. I’m not ready for the music or the tree decorating and I certainly haven’t contemplated all the gifts I need to buy for people yet.

However, one thing I really enjoy is gift shopping. From a young age, I’ve also really been into computers and tech, which means this blog is one of my favorite assignments of the year, so buckle up!

The gifts are in various categories and at a few different price points. This guide should give you some ideas – regardless if you’re a lifelong techie or just shopping for someone who is. Before we jump in, let’s go over a few tips in terms of the best time to buy.

Don’t Rush

It’s important not to go out tomorrow and buy all the things. Odds are high that many retailers will offer some of the better deals around Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday.

Online retailers like Amazon are doing more to try to take away some of that mindshare from brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday in recent years. Meanwhile, retailers like Target and Walmart are trying to get in on that Cyber Monday excitement, too.

With that in mind, feel free to wait it out a while and see if you can get the best deal possible. The best time to buy certain items may indeed be after Black Friday. Retailers may discount items to get rid of excess stock. If the item is popular enough, it’s important to note that this strategy could backfire.

And with that, let’s get into the gizmos and gadgets.

Home Theater

Home theater is a big category for home tech. There are TVs, speaker systems and streaming media players to take a look at.

Best TV for the Money

You can get a nice 1080p TV crazy cheap nowadays. The techie on your list is going to want the latest and greatest, though, but you don’t have to break the bank.

VIZIO does very high quality electronics at an affordable price. This won’t be the last time you see them in this roundup. You can get a 50” 4K TV with high dynamic range  (HDR) for under $600.

For context, 4K bumps up picture clarity because it’s double the resolution of a standard 1080p HDTV. HDR increases the spectrum of the color gamut that can be shown by your television so you get the deepest black and the whitest white.

You’ll lose a little bit of the pop, but you can also get a 4K display without HDR for about $100 less.

Speakers

When it comes to home theater, you don’t want to use the TV speakers. They just don’t kick out a deep enough sound to really get you into the experience. With that in mind, one thing to take a look at is sound bars and speaker systems.

In this area, VIZIO sells a great sound bar and subwoofer package for $150. For another $80, speakers can be added behind the viewer as well for a more three-dimensional sound experience.

Media Players

When it comes to streaming media players, there are four big competitors in the market.

The current option I would recommend is the Apple TV 4K. It’s a little more expensive than the other options I’m going to talk about, but the nice thing here is that if you have any existing HD content from iTunes or a previous Apple TV, you automatically get the content’s 4K version when it becomes available without an upcharge. That’s not the case for many other services.

It starts at $179, with $20 more for a version with more storage capacity. This one also has extensive gaming capability and can function as a hub for your smart home devices as well.

Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire all have 4K streaming dongles for around $70. For an extra $5, Amazon is currently bundling an HD antenna, so you can get your local channels in high definition if you’re a cord cutter.

Voice Assistants

We don’t have a lot of the technology referenced in Iron Man, but one area in which we might be in a mighty close is with his voice assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. There are at least two major platforms competing for the ability to control your entertainment, schedule and smart home devices using only your voice.

The Amazon Echo is one that I have personal experience with, so I’ll start there. I use voice commands to turn lights on and off through connected smart outlets. In this area, they’ve also released updated versions that can serve as their own hub for supported devices, so you don’t have to have a separate connector. It lets me control streaming radio and music with just my voice. I’m able to control my Fire TV Stick. I can ask the Echo all sorts of questions including the weather and sports scores. Most recently, I’ve connected two of these devices in an intercom system so I can call between rooms.

This isn’t to say that the Echo is the only game in town. The Google Home offers a very similar feature set. Apple is also jumping into this arena sometime in December with its HomePod.

The HomePod might be one to keep an eye on. It uses its directional microphones to figure out the audio environment in the room it’s in to give you the best possible audio experience. This is also the only speaker/voice assistant option that supports Apple Music. With that said, the audio calibration features mean there’s a price jump. At $349, the starting price comes in at $200 more than its closest competitor.

Video Games

When it comes to video games, I’m going to touch on virtual reality actually becoming a reality for consumers, as well as on the newest home console hardware.

Virtual Reality

The absolute latest and greatest in video games right now is virtual reality. It provides the most immersive experience by putting you right in the game. With that said, it’s important to note that the latest and greatest sometimes comes at a heavy premium.

One of the cheaper entry points into this arena may be a PlayStation VR. However, you’re looking at $350 minimum for the required virtual-reality accessories and $250 for a PlayStation 4.

HTC’s Vive VR cost $599, but it currently requires a PC powerful enough to handle some of the processing load, and those don’t come cheap. The Oculus Rift is only $399, but you do need a compatible PC as well. Finally, the Samsung Gear VR comes in at $130, but it requires a compatible Samsung smartphone.

Home Consoles

Gamers tend to organize themselves into tribes. You’re either a Nintendo, PlayStation or Xbox gamer and that’s just the way it is. I would advise anyone looking to buy a console or games for their friends or loved ones to be very conscious of which side of the triangle that particular person falls on. That said, my analysis of each of these companies’ offerings is going to be purely from a technical and usability perspective.

In addition to beloved characters like Zelda and Mario, Nintendo has a very compelling console offering in the Switch. The console offers multiple controller styles and can either be docked at home or taken on the road. With enough controllers, up to eight people can play together in the same room in addition to online multiplayer options. It also has some of the motion control options made popular by its Wii predecessors. The Switch retails for $399.

For the same price, Sony offers its top-of-the-line PlayStation 4 Pro. The console features 4K playback with HDR for Blu-rays and media content as well as the same features for games if the developers choose to build them in.

From a purely technical standpoint, the Xbox One X has the competition beat in terms of power, but from a practical standpoint it offers the same 4K HDR features as the PS4 Pro. It really comes down to what the person you’re buying for prefers to game on.

Tablets and Phones

A lot of these get purchased around the holidays, so I feel like I have to say something about them in here, but it’s important to note that these very much come down to personal preference and, increasingly, the size of your budget.

For people who have iPhones, there are two new options this holiday season. The iPhone 8 features a really nice front-facing camera that can do interesting things like on-the-fly filters. There’s also wireless charging. Then there’s the iPhone X. It has all the features of the 8, plus Face ID and the ability to use an array of cameras to do some really cool things like animated emojis. (This is something better seen than described.) There are also some cool applications with augmented reality. This is the first iPhone with an OLED screen, enabling more true-to-life color. However, the iPhone X will cost you $1,000 at the least.

On the Android side, there are a lot of great options for phones at every price point. However, two phone options that are really pushing the boundaries of what can be done with Google’s smartphone platform are Samsung’s Galaxy line and the Pixel phones backed by Google. You may be able to pay for the phone on a monthly basis through your carrier.

The tablets in many cases are just like their phone counterparts with bigger screens and no calling capability. In many cases, you may be able to actually get these cheaper than a phone.

If you do mostly reading on tablet devices, you may want to take a look at the new Kindle devices. The e-ink displays mean no glare, even in bright sunlight, and they’re also easier on the eyes.

Geek Culture

It’s not strictly tech, but many people who are interested in technology are also fans of comic books, sci-fi and all kinds of other cool stuff. If you’re just looking to get someone who’s proud to think of themselves as a pop-culture geek something they’ll really enjoy, check out services like Lootcrate and My Geek Box.

You can get these at a number of price points from $15 to around $50. You can choose to get random cool items or items based around the theme you pick. It could be anything from Harry Potter to Marvel to Star Wars and even WWE. You can choose to get one or send a monthly subscription.

We’ve gone through a lot of different gift options, but we’ve included a list of our favorites below:

VIZIO 50” class 2160p 4K smart TV with HDR

Amazon Echo

Wireless speaker systems

Lootcrate

Game consoles

The post Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017 appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/gifts-ideas-for-the-tech-savvy-person

[mikebrackett]

Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means we receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. Please check out our disclosure policy for more details. 

Halloween is over and it’s time to think about the holiday season already. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I get it. I’m not ready for the music or the tree decorating and I certainly haven’t contemplated all the gifts I need to buy for people yet.

However, one thing I really enjoy is gift shopping. From a young age, I’ve also really been into computers and tech, which means this blog is one of my favorite assignments of the year, so buckle up!

The gifts are in various categories and at a few different price points. This guide should give you some ideas – regardless if you’re a lifelong techie or just shopping for someone who is. Before we jump in, let’s go over a few tips in terms of the best time to buy.

Don’t Rush

It’s important not to go out tomorrow and buy all the things. Odds are high that many retailers will offer some of the better deals around Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday.

Online retailers like Amazon are doing more to try to take away some of that mindshare from brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday in recent years. Meanwhile, retailers like Target and Walmart are trying to get in on that Cyber Monday excitement, too.

With that in mind, feel free to wait it out a while and see if you can get the best deal possible. The best time to buy certain items may indeed be after Black Friday. Retailers may discount items to get rid of excess stock. If the item is popular enough, it’s important to note that this strategy could backfire.

And with that, let’s get into the gizmos and gadgets.

Home Theater

Home theater is a big category for home tech. There are TVs, speaker systems and streaming media players to take a look at.

Best TV for the Money

You can get a nice 1080p TV crazy cheap nowadays. The techie on your list is going to want the latest and greatest, though, but you don’t have to break the bank.

VIZIO does very high quality electronics at an affordable price. This won’t be the last time you see them in this roundup. You can get a 50” 4K TV with high dynamic range  (HDR) for under $600.

For context, 4K bumps up picture clarity because it’s double the resolution of a standard 1080p HDTV. HDR increases the spectrum of the color gamut that can be shown by your television so you get the deepest black and the whitest white.

You’ll lose a little bit of the pop, but you can also get a 4K display without HDR for about $100 less.

Speakers

When it comes to home theater, you don’t want to use the TV speakers. They just don’t kick out a deep enough sound to really get you into the experience. With that in mind, one thing to take a look at is sound bars and speaker systems.

In this area, VIZIO sells a great sound bar and subwoofer package for $150. For another $80, speakers can be added behind the viewer as well for a more three-dimensional sound experience.

Media Players

When it comes to streaming media players, there are four big competitors in the market.

The current option I would recommend is the Apple TV 4K. It’s a little more expensive than the other options I’m going to talk about, but the nice thing here is that if you have any existing HD content from iTunes or a previous Apple TV, you automatically get the content’s 4K version when it becomes available without an upcharge. That’s not the case for many other services.

It starts at $179, with $20 more for a version with more storage capacity. This one also has extensive gaming capability and can function as a hub for your smart home devices as well.

Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire all have 4K streaming dongles for around $70. For an extra $5, Amazon is currently bundling an HD antenna, so you can get your local channels in high definition if you’re a cord cutter.

Voice Assistants

We don’t have a lot of the technology referenced in Iron Man, but one area in which we might be in a mighty close is with his voice assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. There are at least two major platforms competing for the ability to control your entertainment, schedule and smart home devices using only your voice.

The Amazon Echo is one that I have personal experience with, so I’ll start there. I use voice commands to turn lights on and off through connected smart outlets. In this area, they’ve also released updated versions that can serve as their own hub for supported devices, so you don’t have to have a separate connector. It lets me control streaming radio and music with just my voice. I’m able to control my Fire TV Stick. I can ask the Echo all sorts of questions including the weather and sports scores. Most recently, I’ve connected two of these devices in an intercom system so I can call between rooms.

This isn’t to say that the Echo is the only game in town. The Google Home offers a very similar feature set. Apple is also jumping into this arena sometime in December with its HomePod.

The HomePod might be one to keep an eye on. It uses its directional microphones to figure out the audio environment in the room it’s in to give you the best possible audio experience. This is also the only speaker/voice assistant option that supports Apple Music. With that said, the audio calibration features mean there’s a price jump. At $349, the starting price comes in at $200 more than its closest competitor.

Video Games

When it comes to video games, I’m going to touch on virtual reality actually becoming a reality for consumers, as well as on the newest home console hardware.

Virtual Reality

The absolute latest and greatest in video games right now is virtual reality. It provides the most immersive experience by putting you right in the game. With that said, it’s important to note that the latest and greatest sometimes comes at a heavy premium.

One of the cheaper entry points into this arena may be a PlayStation VR. However, you’re looking at $350 minimum for the required virtual-reality accessories and $250 for a PlayStation 4.

HTC’s Vive VR cost $599, but it currently requires a PC powerful enough to handle some of the processing load, and those don’t come cheap. The Oculus Rift is only $399, but you do need a compatible PC as well. Finally, the Samsung Gear VR comes in at $130, but it requires a compatible Samsung smartphone.

Home Consoles

Gamers tend to organize themselves into tribes. You’re either a Nintendo, PlayStation or Xbox gamer and that’s just the way it is. I would advise anyone looking to buy a console or games for their friends or loved ones to be very conscious of which side of the triangle that particular person falls on. That said, my analysis of each of these companies’ offerings is going to be purely from a technical and usability perspective.

In addition to beloved characters like Zelda and Mario, Nintendo has a very compelling console offering in the Switch. The console offers multiple controller styles and can either be docked at home or taken on the road. With enough controllers, up to eight people can play together in the same room in addition to online multiplayer options. It also has some of the motion control options made popular by its Wii predecessors. The Switch retails for $399.

For the same price, Sony offers its top-of-the-line PlayStation 4 Pro. The console features 4K playback with HDR for Blu-rays and media content as well as the same features for games if the developers choose to build them in.

From a purely technical standpoint, the Xbox One X has the competition beat in terms of power, but from a practical standpoint it offers the same 4K HDR features as the PS4 Pro. It really comes down to what the person you’re buying for prefers to game on.

Tablets and Phones

A lot of these get purchased around the holidays, so I feel like I have to say something about them in here, but it’s important to note that these very much come down to personal preference and, increasingly, the size of your budget.

For people who have iPhones, there are two new options this holiday season. The iPhone 8 features a really nice front-facing camera that can do interesting things like on-the-fly filters. There’s also wireless charging. Then there’s the iPhone X. It has all the features of the 8, plus Face ID and the ability to use an array of cameras to do some really cool things like animated emojis. (This is something better seen than described.) There are also some cool applications with augmented reality. This is the first iPhone with an OLED screen, enabling more true-to-life color. However, the iPhone X will cost you $1,000 at the least.

On the Android side, there are a lot of great options for phones at every price point. However, two phone options that are really pushing the boundaries of what can be done with Google’s smartphone platform are Samsung’s Galaxy line and the Pixel phones backed by Google. You may be able to pay for the phone on a monthly basis through your carrier.

The tablets in many cases are just like their phone counterparts with bigger screens and no calling capability. In many cases, you may be able to actually get these cheaper than a phone.

If you do mostly reading on tablet devices, you may want to take a look at the new Kindle devices. The e-ink displays mean no glare, even in bright sunlight, and they’re also easier on the eyes.

Geek Culture

It’s not strictly tech, but many people who are interested in technology are also fans of comic books, sci-fi and all kinds of other cool stuff. If you’re just looking to get someone who’s proud to think of themselves as a pop-culture geek something they’ll really enjoy, check out services like Lootcrate and My Geek Box.

You can get these at a number of price points from $15 to around $50. You can choose to get random cool items or items based around the theme you pick. It could be anything from Harry Potter to Marvel to Star Wars and even WWE. You can choose to get one or send a monthly subscription.

We’ve gone through a lot of different gift options, but we’ve included a list of our favorites below:

VIZIO 50” class 2160p 4K smart TV with HDR

Amazon Echo

Wireless speaker systems

Lootcrate

Game consoles

The post Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017 appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/gifts-ideas-for-the-tech-savvy-person

[minrcrafter]

Summa Crossroads [SMP] {1.12.1} {Discord} {Custom Plugins} {Custom Endgame Content} {Custom Biomes / Custom World + Live Map} {Custom Nether} {Custom Skylands} {Custom Mobs + Drops} {Custom Waypoints} {Economy + Player Shops} {mcMMO} {Quests} {Spells} {PvP/PvE Arenas} {Parkour}

Server Name: Summa Crossroads

Server Locale: NA East Coast - Beauharnois, Canada

Imgur Album: Prosperus gallery

Facebook: Summa Crossroads Facebook Page

Website: Summa Crossroads

Server Address/IP: mc.summaxr.com

Live Map: http://mc.summaxr.com

Game Play Type/s: [SMP] - Server is survival focused, with lots of PvE content but PvP enabled and PvP arenas for those with a thirst for blood

Additional Worlds: Custom nether, custom skylands, parkour/activity, challenge

Discord: http://ift.tt/2rZf1ZT

Long description, tl;dr features list below:

Since 2010, the Summa Crossroads Minecraft server is built on a very simple but very effective core idea - that awesome gameplay should be the focus of development and maintenance. We've gone through multiple maps, updates, and plugin sets, always trying to find that delicate balance of fun, challenge, and drive. We've been around since alpha, and we've learned a lot. This server has been a lot of things for a lot of people, but it's always been a good time.

Today we feature a vast 16,000 by 16,000 map sprawling from edge to edge with beautiful custom biomes, hand-painted and lovingly crafted to bring the sense of adventure and vast scale that you may recall from your first days of Minecraft. Some residents have built towns and gathered the resources to construct their own waypoints, which you can unlock the ability to fast-travel to by venturing there yourself. Much of the landscape is yet unexplored, and each week new adventures are introduced.

For those who enjoy a good challenge, the overworld is bustling with deep caves, and the monsters that come out at night will be no allies. PvP arenas let you challenge your friends and humiliate your foes - paying you out for putting up a good fight. The Underdome and Woodland arenas let you demonstrate your gladiatorial might against wave after wave of things that go bump in the night, with spoils to those who entertain. Vast parkour challenges, one of which has only been completed by one player in the history of the server, will spare you no mercy. Unrelenting instanced temples will push you to your limits, giving you fame and fortune if you show the world that you are a true hero. Accumulate enough might and you can unlock ancient secrets, letting you use magic spells to control the world around you.

We think it's important to foster a strong community, and our player ranks are thus tied to activity on the server. As you continue to build your legend and establish your presence, you will earn your way to glory and prestige.

Often times it's the little things that make the biggest difference, and we have a plethora of precisely tuned pieces that keep the cogs turning. Little tweaks to the basics of Minecraft and bigger underlying systems designed to reward you for playing the game your way. We want players to have fun and enjoy themselves in a world that feels ready for conquest and adventure.

We're a mature survival server, which means we won't teleport you across the world - you've got to make the trek yourself. You might die, but you'll get right back up again and keep fighting. That's what the game is all about, after all! There are plenty of resources and friends to help you out on your adventures, but only you can keep yourself alive.

Some recent highlights:

We've been around since 2010, but we're working on new stuff for you all the time.

Forum update

We've updated our forum software to the latest version, improving security and bringing with it a new slate of features! We look forward to using them.

Shop update released

We've migrated to a new shops system! Now you can actually see what you're buying, and players can barter for different types of items, in addition to traditional currency-based transactions.

Mob loot rebalance

Our mob loot balancing system has undergone another upgrade! In addition to wild mobs now giving triple drops and EXP, you can now also get rewards for finding and breaking Mob Spawners. Upon breaking one, it will drop a diamond block and 1395 EXP - enough to get you straight from level 0 to level 30! This amount will be reduced in two weeks, and is extra-high as a promo for the new system. Get hunting!

Ice boat racing

It's as fun as it sounds. We're working on constructing multiple courses, and they make for a great night of community building!

More rare mobs, construction of Landmarks

We've added yet more of our new rare mobs, and are slowly expanding the library of them and the loot they drop! Ideas are always welcomed, and rewarded!

Complementing these mobs is the introduction of our new Landmarks system. As the Heavens is a highly volatile and magical realm, it reforms itself from time to time. Each new iteration will include new rare structures that randomly spawn, featuring rare mobs, rare loot, or both!

Development of the main quest line

We now have more available quests than ever, and more are in development. User feedback and suggestions are welcomed! Our quests center around helping introduce users to the server, but are expanding to create challenges for more seasoned veterans, too.

Introduced recently to the quests plugin we use is a Timer feature, which will allow us a greater range of interesting and enjoyable quests! Look forward to some racing challenges in the near future. We are in active talks with the developer of the Quests plugin to get more features added so we can bring you yet more great content.

Water Temple RELEASED

The Water Temple is now available! It will take cunning, agility, and a healthy dose of determination to overcome the challenges that lurk within the walls of the Water Temple. Featuring multiple challenges, a mini-boss, and a final boss, this is custom-developed endgame content built just for Summa Crossroads. Adventurers who are brave and skilled enough to conquer it will be lavishly rewarded.

1.1 mcMMO XP rate

Our monthly contributions have hit $30, triggering 1.1x mcMMO XP through the end of August! Thanks so much for helping keep the server alive.

Temple challenger bounties

The Fire Temple and The Water Temple remain undefeated. The first player to complete each successfully - perhaps even the same player for both - will receive a key for a Steam game from my vault of many! There are also treasures earned for each completion each time in-game.

Hall of Accomplishments

Currently in development is a new area that will memorialize the first and/or best achievements of players on our server. With so many new features and challenges being introduced, we thought it only right to commemorate the efforts of our bravest heroes. Write your legacy and inspire others to follow in your footsteps! Examples for feats to be memorialized include the first player to complete the Tower of the Gods (Azilizan), the first players to complete each Temple, and more.

Ender Dragon slain

Brave adventurers have slain the Ender Dragon, and the treasures of the End are now available for plunder! But, be careful, evil lurks...

The players who slayed the dragon are:

introspect

Master_Splatter

tiger_deF

v0nj3di

As always, seeking your feedback and ideas!

We actively solicit player feedback and ideas for development - after all, the server is for you, and we want to work on what will make you happy. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see, and we'll have a conversation about it! This is yet another great way to make use of the forums.

Server features:

High biome density and diversity, with custom biomes.

Customized, revamped nether.

One home per world.

Unlock warps by travelling to them. Construct your own waypoint node to let others visit you.

An increasingly diverse cast of rare and powerful custom mobs for you to test your mettle against, with suitably rare and shiny loot for your troubles.

Lock your chests and devices.

Open world PvP as well as arenas supporting 1v1 or team combat.

Cooperative PvE arenas vs. increasingly difficult waves of mobs, including bosses, with lucrative rewards. Keep the experience you earn!

Daily and weekly quests, with a main quest line in development.

Elaborate and difficult parkour challenges, as well as a few on the lighter side.

Player shops including enter/leave messages.

NPCs, many of whom have things to say, quests to complete, or services to offer!

Earn gold for participating in server activities or engaging on the forums. Spend it your way.

Milk with a little something extra.

Various quality-of-life commands, such as /where so you don't have to use F3.

Auto link shortener. Don't let character limits ruin your sharing.

Magic spells that have a variety of uses, with more added regularly.

Extensions to redstone usability in certain situations.

Mini-games and other distractions for some simple amusement. Check out our shooting range.

Instanced temple challenges, reminiscent of Legend of Zelda or other dungeons. Check out our trailer for the Water Temple!

Incentive program for positive contributions to the server.

Discord server: http://ift.tt/2rZf1ZT

Weekly content and bugfix updates.

While this might already seem like a lot, there's already even more being worked on and planned! We would love to have you be a part of our continued development and growth.

Rules:

No griefing.

No begging.

No whining.

Be friendly.

No hacking, malicious mods, exploitation, duping, or other unfairly advantageous manipulation of gameplay.

Harassment will not be tolerated.

Visual griefing (mutilating the landscape for transport or other purposes without cleaning up after yourself) is not allowed.

No advertising.

Wahrheit's word is law.

Official Rules Thread + "Case Law"

Plugins: In the interest of maintaining "the fourth wall" and reducing risk of exploits, we don't release a full list of plugins. There are over 50 currently active with a few on the sidelines, many of which were developed at our request to provide an awesome gameplay experience that gives you a wealth of options but keeps things challenging. In lieu of plugins, please see the "features" section.

Owner/Admins/Moderators: Owned and administrated by Wahrheit since 2010. Additional administrators include SirusAP, Xarin23, Uniballerkid and Hidendra.

YouTube: YouTube Channel

Questions and comments are warmly welcomed, and we hope to see you in-game!

[actionadventuretime]

La-Mulana

After an unintended, rather lengthy hiatus, I’m back. I’m going to be abandoning the grading system I used for my first few reviews and just discussing the various areas that make up an action-adventure game without binding myself to having to grade them.

La-Mulana is a sprawling side-scroller action/adventure platformer (aka Metroidvania) created by independent publisher Nigoro. It was originally released as freeware in an 8-bit style reminiscent of the popular Japanese computer system, MSX. In 2012, it was re-released with an updated, 16-bit style as Wii-ware and on Steam.

The game is absolutely massive, featuring 9 different areas, each containing a front side and a back side, which is kind of like the Dark World from Link to the Past. Puzzles will frequently take you across many multiple areas over the course of one puzzle chain or line of exploration. This game is definitely not for the faint of heart - even with extensive help from a walkthrough/wiki, it took me 14 hours of ingame time, and twice that of application time (any time you die and have to reload, it isn’t counted against your ingame time, but Steam still tracks the time the application was open) to make it through the game start to finish. Without external aid with the game’s many puzzles, it can easily take 40+ hours to complete.

Story: Story is probably La-Mulana’s weakest point. You’re thrown into the world with a little bit of guidance of “go explore the ruins of La-Mulana, because you’re an archaeologist and that’s what you do.” You get a few snippets of plot throughout, but the majority of the story is dumped on you in a couple of conversations near the end of the game: There’s a god-like being named Mother, she’s responsible for the creation of all life. Her children have always tried to return her “to the sky”, but have failed. The previous generation of children realized this could never happen, and instead they’ve got to kill her to put her to eternal rest. Lacking the power, they create humanity and wait for the chosen one to prove himself in La-Mulana, which is actually Mother’s body. In order to put her to rest, the eight guardians must be defeated, and, for each one, a wedge must be driven into Mother to  weaken her. Finally, when she has been forced into our world, she can be exposed to the “medicine of the mind” and the fully-empowered holy grail to enable her to be killed.

The ruins themselves don’t make a lot of sense either. Sections have wildly different influences, like ancient Meso-American, Egyptian, or Indian, while others are high-tech and futuristic. Bosses include a a living statue, a literal dinosaur, a high-tech flying knight, Baphomet, Tiamat, and a demon out of Russian folklore.

Plus, you discover the holy grail in the first area of the game. Instead of peacing out to go show off this discovery to the rest of the archaeological world and bask in fame and adoration for the rest of your life, you use it to warp between save points and keep delving deeper.

Aesthetics: While the main character and various NPCs you interact with are fairly unimpressive, the backgrounds of every room are laboriously detailed and attractive, and bosses are huge and imposing. The music is fantastic as well, with separate tracks for every area (front and back), most of which are catchy.

Controls: Another area of relative weakness. Controls are intentionally hamstrung in order to increase the difficulty of platforming. Horizontal aerial control is extremely limited - you cannot change directions mid-jump (even after you have double-jumping) except under specific circumstances. If you’re falling not from a jump, you can’t move left or right at all. Any time you are hit, you’re knocked into falling and can’t move or attack until you hit the ground. Controls entering and exiting water/lava can be frustrating. Requiring two separate start menus, one for most functions and the other for the map and warping, is an added frustration as well. At least cycling between weapons and subweapons is easy.

Combat System: Combat is fairly standard in La-Mulana. One button swings your primary weapon - Whip, Dagger, Axe, Katana, or Keyblade - while another uses your subweapon, one of a large assortment of ammunition-requiring items with different trajectories and damage ranges. Upgrades come steadily throughout the game, and it’s rare that you feel completely outclassed by an enemy.

Item System: La-Mulana’s item system is an odd one. There’s a huge number of items in the game. Some items are purely combat based - like most of the weapons and subweapons - but occasionally these are called upon to solve a specific puzzle, like needing to throw a Chakram through a hole to hit an object on its return, or blowing a wall open using Bombs. Other items provide a bonus like reduced damage, increased subweapon damage, faster attacking, etc. There’s also Software that can be equipped to perform various functions like translating tablets, receiving email hints, or warping to backside points, as well as special software combinations that can increase damage, extend mercy invulnerability after taking damage, and other bonuses. However, the majority of items in the game are used in the solving of puzzles. There’s no Zelda-esque system of “oh, here’s a cracked wall, time to break out bombs”. Instead it’s more like, you find a Woman Statue, and maybe remember that way back in the third zone there was an engraving on a wall of a similar-looking statue, so you head back to that area. On the way, you see that one room has weird confetti in it now, and maybe realize that those are supposed to be sperm, so you hang out in that room until the Woman Statue becomes a Maternity Statue. Then you take it to where the engraving was, and it unlocks a ladder letting you drop into a uterus-looking section. And then you can maybe figure out from clues (though, good luck) that you’re supposed to open the map menu and wait until your character falls into the sleeping animation to solve the puzzle and unlock a treasure chest. Oh right, and you’ll need the Woman Statue as a Maternity Statue at one other point a little later as well. And this is a pretty standard La-Mulana puzzle.

Character Advancement: Like Metroid, your character advancement is tied solely to items. There are ten Sacred Orbs scattered across the various levels, each providing a +32 bonus to life. Weapon upgrades come from across the game as well - there are two direct upgrades to the Whip that increase its damage, as well as several alternative weapons that offer better damage at earlier points in the game, a gauntlet that increases attack speed, and software that can increase your damage as well.

Exploration: By far, the game’s strongest point. The ruins are huge, largely non-linear, and steeped with secrets. Playing an unguided game, it’s not unreasonable to expect to spend hours just wandering around, trying things, looking for changes any time the Shell Horn chimes that you’ve solved a puzzle or trying to plug in a newly-discovered item into a puzzle that was abandoned earlier. There’s a locked chest in one of the first half-dozen screens of the first area that can’t be opened until much later in the game when a specific Seal and Subweapon have been claimed, while other chests appear to be inaccessible but can be unlocked right away with the right combination of actions.

Dungeon Design: Tied to exploration, dungeon design in La-Mulana is off the charts. You’re not going to find any Zelda-like dungeons where you just need to hit the halfway point and unlock the dungeon item to be able to clear all of the puzzles you’ve seen so far, but you can work your way through many areas and solve one specific path, and then have another chunk of that area show up a bit later in the game as part of solving another path. Overall, the scale of the game is really unparalleled, and it puts even games like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night to shame in that regard.

Enemies: Basic enemies come in all different shapes and sizes, often requiring different strategies to beat. “Titans”, for example, are turbaned elephant men who can shrug off direct whip blows to the face, but will be stunned if axed from above, enabling several hits. Other enemies spit fireballs and require you approach them with a shield up. Some are slow-moving but with a lot of hitpoints, requiring a fast-hitting weapon like the dagger to land a number of fast blows.

The bosses are phenomenal as well, each requiring a unique strategy to defeat. Some are relatively simple, requiring that you just maneuver around platforms to avoid attacks and strike them in their weak points. Others transform the fight, sticking you on a boat, minecart, airplane, or vertically-scrolling shaft of platforms, forcing you to adapt to a rapidly-changing environment while trying to figure out how to kill them.

Difficulty: This is really going to be the deciding factor for whether or not you want to play this game. La-Mulana is HARD. The rigid controls make many of the platforming sections hair-pullers, where one missed jump or brush with spikes results in having to redo the whole frustrating section. These sections are fortunately few and far between. Several of the bosses are going to require multiple attempts to beat, even after you figure out their patterns of attack and weaknesses. The most difficult part, however, is largely the optional one due to the existence of FAQs - the puzzles.

Let me give you an example: There’s a puzzle that is required to receive the final whip upgrade. You enter a room with a large scale, and after reading a tablet, a gem appears in a chute at the top of the screen, with a dais appearing on either side. You can place a weight on either dais to make the gem drop onto that side of the scale, after which another gem will appear. After all seven gems have been dropped, you can drop onto one side of the scale to balance it, and if you are successful, the Flail Whip chest unlocks. Once you’ve been in the room and read the tablet once, the puzzle will not reset. You can reset it once after beating the eighth boss, if you know the location of a secret shop in a secret area, or by reloading an old save. So how do you solve this puzzle? Well, scattered throughout the ruins on tablets are clues. One tablet lays out a mapping from colors to emotions, i.e. “The joyful heart is pearly white”. Another tablet lays out mappings from emotions to numbers, i.e. “The joyful heart is 20″. Four other tablets lay out mappings from gemstones to colors and emotions, i.e. “The white opal represents joy”. Notably, there are pieces of information missing that must be filled in when you have collected the information from all six above tablets to deduce all seven weights. However, that’s not even the complete picture, because how much does the player weigh? Well, figuring that out is a puzzle in and of itself. There’s a scale in an obscure corner of the second area that can’t be reached until the player can wall-cling or double-jump. Standing on this scale reveals the player’s weight.... in La-Mulanese. In order to determine what the revealed glyphs mean, they must be compared to the symbols shown on the entrances to and from each area. Once the player has all this information, they can run the numbers to determine how to best lay out the seven gemstones and the player to balance the scale. Or, you could just look it up in an FAQ.

Other puzzles involve things like waiting until an enemy teleports into an area you can’t reach to step on a switch, placing a weight on objects that you normally cannot like skeletons or giant’s feet, scanning objects in the background, NOT PLACING a weight on a place where you normally should, destroying walls that give no indication they are destructible, walking through walls that appear solid, talking to a specific NPC you haven’t needed to interact with prior/in a long time, or taking a specific fairy that has a 1/20 chance of spawning whenever you find a fairy point to that spot to unlock it.

Final: For hardcore puzzle-lovers who really enjoyed games like Zork or Myst that require you to figure out some truly obscure logic, this game is going to be amazing. For Zelda fans looking to stick the hookshot into the hookshot-shaped hole to advance to the next area, the puzzles in this game are going to be indecipherable, dense, and either force them out of the game or force them to follow along a FAQ literally every step of the way. And hey, there’s no shame in that if you want to play a deep, challenging Metroidvania for its platforming and combat. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, even though I had to turn to the FAQ quite often.

[entergamingxp]

Eurogamer readers’ top 50 games of 2019 • Eurogamer.net

2019 is nearly done, and to put a ribbon on it all we present to you the Eurogamer reader’s top 50 games of the year. Thank you all for your contributions, and for proving once again you’ve all got better taste in gaming than us. Although I’m not quite sure about your take on Fallen Order… Enjoy!

50. Wreckfest

What we said: “A simple no-frills game that’s more Destruction Derby than Flatout, evoking a different era for the racing genre with its no-nonsense approach. Unassuming it may be, but it’s also absolutely wonderful, a knockabout racer that sticks to what Bugbear does best; this is all about cars lunching one another in a variety of events that are tuned towards maximum carnage, and as ever there’s a cathartic joy to be found in seeing fields of pre-loved machinery crumble at your fingertips.”

“Best racing game in years,” writes merf. “More fun than Forza and Gran Turismo and makes every everything Codemasters turn out look pish. Looks amazing, handles like a dream, excellent AI opponents, great post release support, a tuning system that makes sense and a physics system that feels like it needed next generation power to make possible.” Which is all well and good, but they go on to diss Fast & Furious and I’M NOT HAVING THAT.

“One of the best racers of the generation,” says kalel-ofkrypton, “and reminiscent of the favoured racers of previous gens.”

49. Greedfall

What we said: “GreedFall has more than its fair share of faults, and its curious mix of the sweet and the sour is far from a roleplaying revelation. But the elements that matter have been imbued with such love and care – so much so that I quickly forgave this ambitious RPG its shortcomings.”

“Spiders best yet,” says jbumi in what may be damnation with faint praise. “I was thrilled that I was able to get the ending I was aiming for.” “

nicfaz keeps it nice and simple, meanwhile. “Need more like this pls.”

48. Rage 2

What we said: “In its desperation to be edgy and in-your-face, this sequel sometimes falls just as flat as its predecessor, the copious neon pink daubings incapable of concealing its bland, repetitive wasteland and elevate this open-world shooter above its siblings of a similar ilk. But in its quieter moments – usually away from the Goon Squad scrum – you might find glimmers of surprisingly sophisticated storytelling, perhaps hidden in the lines of a datapad, or conveyed by a nameless NPC.”

“The guns are amazing,” says robozot, which says all that needs to be said really.

formulaic had more to say, though: “For the gunplay and the vibrant neon painted world this might be my game of the year, but it got tiring driving round a desert world that largely didn’t live up to the set pieces and enclosed areas within it.”

“A wholly enjoyable slice of post apocalyptic shooty mayhem in a Day-Glo world,” says FortySixerUK. “Hyper violent and fun.” And what more could you really ask for?

47. Sayonara Wild Hearts

What we said: “Sayonara Wild Hearts is such a simple thing but also such a complex thing, such a heartfelt thing. And so dense! Its exuberance is precision, its chaos is sheer choreography. It can reference Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio, Dyad and Thumper while remaining entirely coherent, entirely itself.”

“Sayonara Wild Hearts is 2019’s best pop album game,” writes Dogatella_Verpoochie, and I entirely agree. “It’s a blast to play and listen to.”

46. Halo: The Master Chief Collection (PC)

A belated PC release, topped off with the addition of Reach late in the year which Digital Foundry got stuck into: “it really needs to be better – the legacy of Halo, the quality of Reach itself and the potential from a remaster practically demands it. Preserving games for the future – especially on PC – means replicating them as they were in all the places where it matters, while improving them at the same time based on the scalability of today’s hardware and beyond. Perhaps this may sound overly harsh in some respects, but this is the Halo remaster that will persist for years or even decades to come – and while the foundation is solid overall, there are clearly issues here that need attention.”

“A return to the glory days of gaming when you and your mates actually had time to waste,” says GuiltySpark.

“I hadn’t played a Halo since Reach way back when, so I was curious to see if I would still love them as much as I did,” says Spiderland. “And I did! Particularly Reach, which for one reason or another, I had forgotten everthing about. I feel Reach was the product of a team who had really honed their craft, which makes me ponder all the more as to what Bungie’s Halo 4 would have been like.”

45. Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer

What we said: “Cadence is better than great. It’s an authentic banger, frankly – a Zelda game to be savoured. It’s surprising and strange and funny and sad and thrilling. And when it’s over, the game that lives on in your memory really feels like Zelda.”

“Remaking Link’s Awakening was a great success for Nintendo but in the same year Zelda got its greatest spinoff yet,” says wez_316. The original Necrodancer was fun but tough. Cadence was fun but easy. For me that suits rhythm gameplay a lot more as it can be hard to stay in that zone. Now make me an easier Metroid themed adaption of Enter The Gungeon and take my money.”

44. Life is Strange 2

What we said: ” I was left feeling the loss of these two characters as people I had spent the past year checking in on and helping to guide. Like Sean, I felt, I had done all I could to help Daniel – and the brothers’ story finished in a place which felt truthful to them and the story path I took. It was beautiful while it lasted.”

A popular follow-up, though most of you kept to yourself precisely why it got your vote. Dalek5000 had this, though – “The most compelling new game I’ve played this year.”

43. Divinity Original Sin 2 (Switch)

What we said: “Divinity Original Sin 2 on Switch is another ‘impossible port’ made real, thanks to a lot of careful design choices. Flawed as it is, I’m glad this exists, and it’s uncontested as a handheld take on the game. Add in the online save sharing and it’s a very big deal for fans of the desktop experience..”

“I have not played the Switch version…” says vaskis. You cheat! “I played it on my Mac, but it is such an extensive and well polished gem of a CRPG, that it really deserves to be awarded some more awards.”

“I have this on Xbox also but I found it easier to get into on the Switch,” says nee5on, who at least played on the right format. “Second time playing has been so much fun as I now have a feeling for what I’m supposed to be doing. Starting to find the complexity thrilling and liberating. It is a genre of game I’ve always thought I would enjoy if I could get past the learning curve and having been playing games since the early 80s – I feel like I’m finally there.”

42. Yoshi’s Crafted World

What we said: “Yoshi’s Crafted World is a fine achievement. It’s a scrolling platformer with an abundance of style and imagination, and a pleasingly laid-back adventure with an ocean of depth to explore. It is, first and foremost, a work born of mastery and a keen attention to detail. This is a game of impeccable, readily appreciable craft.”

“Is Yoshi about to become the new Kirby in the best way possible?” asks simplymod. “Fair enough, Yoshi’s appearances as the main character are quite a few games shy of what Kirby can offer, but Crafted World is true to the Yoshi Feeling (twentysomething years after Super Mario World 2), brings a new art style to the table, relies on what works but is brave enough to try something new.”

41. Return of the Obra Dinn (Console)

The second appearance in as many years on our list as Obra Dinn came to console, but this is surely a treasure worth returning to: “It is a joy to poke around as the game slowly opens up new spaces. It is a pleasure – and a very harmonious pleasure – to come to an understanding of how different parts of the ship slot together, where people sleep, where they work, where they gather for a game of cards. That powdery white line that draws this bleak world is surprisingly adept at giving a sense of the material reality of the ship – razor sharp on the rarely-used stairs you use to climb aboard, breaking into radar-like speckles when ghosting an outline of waves into life. As your clues mount up and the images in the book become less and less fuzzy, so the world comes into focus. You are not just exploring a place, you are slowly getting a sense for it. What an astonishing game. What an incredible piece of work.”

“The lack of hand holding made this a challenge,” writes Lucidmatt, lucidly, “but the pay off was exceptional.”

“Never got to play it on PC, but it was worth the wait,” says disintegration7. “Totally unique gameplay and artistic style, plus a giant squid!!!” Er, spoilers mate..

40. Blood and Truth

What we said: “It all adds up to a game that is surprisingly charming. Certainly more charming than anything the actual High Ritchieverse has ever mustered. There is a sense of silliness to Blood & Truth that loves the idiotic family drama at the center of the story, that understands that VR is at times a very clumsy business so you’re going to accidentally shoot the person you’re meant to be talking to or shoot yourself in the groin while you’re trying to put your gun away.”

“Runner up for best VR of the year,” says dbvapor. “Sorry, but Ace Combat 7’s VR mode is just that good. Excellent game though, and I look forward to the next one! Reload!”

“This is the sort of polished ‘big game’ I had been waiting for from PSVR,” adds Stepharneo.

39. Kingdom Hearts 3

What we said: “Here’s the thing. Kingdom Hearts should be right up my street: I love Disney, I have a reasonable tolerance for the idiosyncrasies of your typical JRPG, and I enjoyed the second game and Birth By Sleep. I fell hard for the weaponised nostalgia of The Force Awakens and Mary Poppins Returns. So this should really be an open goal. And yet, Yoko Shimomura’s impeccable score notwithstanding (those yearning oboes of the Twilight Town theme always set me off), I remained dry-eyed throughout.”

“A game stuck in development hell that actually turned out quite well,” writes XanderXAJ. “Amazing animation that somehow often matches that of extremely-high budget CG animation — and in real time, too! It also has an amazing soundtrack – and one I had the pleasure of experiencing live at a World of Tres concert earlier this year.”

“It’s one of two games from this year I’ve really bothered to give a go,” says Solegor. “Not because there are terrible games this year, but because I’m still clearing my backlog. While KH3 is far from perfect, it’s still gorgeous to look at and at least it tries to tie up the convoluted storylines from the previous games.”

“Honestly,” says agrippA1, “the wait was worth it just for the Big Hero 6 world.”

38. The Witcher 3 (Switch)

What we said: “Overall, Saber and CDPR hit an impressive bar of quality here. Clearly, performance can vary, but on balance it holds 30ps more often than I expected. The Witcher 3 Complete Edition pruned back everything it can to be playable, while still somehow retaining a lot of its best visual features. Graphical points like reflections, light shafts, water physics, and even a high NPC count are incredible to see on a handheld. This is close to perfection.”

“Unfortunately, despite big releases such as Gears 5, Pokemon Sword, Jedi Fallen Order and many more, nothing truly gripped me this year,” says Dalek5000. “I’ve found myself yet again immersed into the world of The Witcher 3, despite the graphical downgrade. Commuting has never been so fun!”

“I don’t even own a Switch but this is the game of the year every year it is released,” says Rodimus Prime. Heretic! And honestly, treat yourself to one. They’re rather good.

37. The Division 2

What we said: “From start to finish, The Division 2 pulls in these bits of American history with unwavering earnesty and yet manages to say absolutely nothing. Worse, it goes out of its way to say nothing. The result is that the only real message The Division 2 manages to impart is that guns will keep you safe. Despite the advertising campaign this is not a game about saving the soul of America, it’s a game about the good guys with guns taking what they want from the bad guys with guns. A shame, because if you can look past the vacuity and the slapdash politicisation of The Division 2, there’s a great game to be enjoyed here – even if you’ll never quite escape the sense that it’s a thunderingly dumb one.”

“If I didn’t have a friend, probably not,” admits groovychainsaw. “But with a buddy this is some of the best coop shooting you can get. A superb engine, great graphics and great moment to moment shooting. Expanded well to give you plenty to do after the end, unlike many of its rivals.”

“Awesome experience with an end game that kept giving,” adds Big-Swiss.

“It’s not only one of the best Ubisoft games of the past few years but successfully built on the foundations of the first game,” says gabortoth. “Bigger, better in every way, it’s an excellent looter-shooter-RPG that seemingly never ends. Outstanding gunplay, cover system and RPG elements make this one of the best experiences for me in 2019.”

“Flawed, unfinished, and absolutely fantastic,” says atropos as they strike a more cautious note. “It’s a shame The Division 2 didn’t just build on what the original The Division had become after many, many updates (thoroughly excellent), but this was still the most time I spent in an MMO this year.”

36. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

To our eternal shame, we weren’t able to play enough of Iceborne to provide a review, though we did enjoy what we saw: “Iceborne, with its stubborn challenges, can feel like it’s pitched more towards those expert players, but the joy of Monster Hunter – now, as ever – is how it embraces all playstyles, whether you’re thrashing about with dual blades or keeping a watching brief with a bowgun. Or, whether you’re veteran who wants to solo some of the biggest, baddest monsters, or a scrub like myself who’s happy to wade in the shallows and simply enjoy the spectacle. Iceborne does a decent job of catering to both, and there’s enough there to satisfy all corners of Monster Hunter World’s 13 million strong audience. So, don’t be put off by Iceborne – in truth, there’s never been a better time to get into Monster Hunter.”

“Every time I think that the series has peaked and can’t get any better, Ryuji Tsujimoto and his merry crew manage to tweak and improve the formula,” says XanderXAJ. “350 more hours in this expansion pack so far are testament to how well-honed the mechanics are — and how hooked I am. Capcom have had one hell of a year.”

“Monster Hunter has evolved into a free flowing beast of a game,” says Mechakabukizero. “I still love the older games in the series but l find it tough to go back after the greatness which is Monster Hunter World.”

“Improves upon the base game in so many ways,” says Aporca. “It adds a wealth of new content which is both a challenge and a joy to play. The one game I keep coming back to.”

35. Dragon Quest Builders 2

What we said: “The series’ sense of adventure, of pushing forward into new lands to make new discoveries and to unearth the warmth and character that’s always been at the series’ heart, is re-emphasised. It’s a wonderful thing, really, and the most fun I’ve had with a Dragon Quest game in years..”

“Being a jaded old fart whose gaming pedigree dates back to the early Vic20 days, I was delighted to find this recaptured some of the wonder and magic I felt with new worlds as a kid,” says Matnee. “That’s something to be cherished these days.” Ain’t that the truth.

“Everything I love about Minecraft, with none of the crippling, overwhelming, anxiety,” adds logicub. “This game is what defined my other choices, I spent so much time building up my Isle of Awakening that I haven’t played half as many games this year as I normally would.”

34. Final Fantasy 14: Shadowbringers

What we said: Well, not enough really as Final Fantasy 14’s a title we’ve struggled to cover properly. Sorry!

Thankfully you lot know your stuff. Like Gamblix here: “I have played Final Fantasy XIV since the late days of A Realm Reborn and seeing this game from strength to strength is so heartwarming, considering the games awful 1.0 launch. Shadowbringers is without a doubt, one of the best MMO expansions EVER and one of the best JRPG stories in modern video games. Anyone who has a remote interest in Final Fantasy should play this. It is near perfection in storytelling.” God, we really should play it, shouldn’t we?

33. Dirt Rally 2.0

What we said: “Dirt Rally 2.0 is part of the new Codemasters – the one that brought us the equally brilliant F1 2018 – that indulges its passion for motorsport. It’s deep, involving and crafted with love, and you can’t help but love it back in turn. The original Dirt Rally made a convincing claim at being the best off-road sim to date. I think its sequel can lay claim to being one of the best driving experiences available right now.”

“Well… it’s an improved Dirt Rally,” says DrStrangelove, keeping things to the point. “How much more praise do you need?”

“The best, better,” says hypobla5t. “Compulsive genius.”

32. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

What we said: “Ace Combat 7 is the real deal with a perfect blend of new and classic ideas packed into a cohesive, highly replayable package. There aren’t many games quite like this being released today so whether you’re a returning fan that has missed the classic series or a newcomer looking for something a little different, it’s an absolute must-play.”

“Ace Combat 7 is such a pure game,” says mickjohnson. “It’s action, it’s mayhem, it’s a crazy storyline, with fantastic music, and it’s beautifully delivered in a way that seems elusive to other developers. Add in some brief (but excellent) PSVR support and you’ve got my #1 game of this year.”

“Tragically underrated,” says AgrippA1. “It’s exactly what you would expect from an Ace Combat game and the VR bit was excellent.”

31. Destiny 2: Shadowkeep

What we said: Nothing. Look, we got the hint – we might have written enough already over the past few years about Destiny.

“The amount of time I’ve put into Destiny 2 since picking it back up in August doesn’t let me choose anything else, honestly,” says SnikrepJ. “It’s spectacular if you enjoy the whole shared world looter shooter MMORPG – not without its flaws, but what is these days?”

30. Super Mario Maker 2

What we said: “Years ago I read the only writing advice that I suspect anybody really needs. Type something, it ran, because then you have something to change. William Goldman said that, I think, and he would have been very at home with Mario Maker. Everyone would be at home here, I suspect. Like the first game, this is a warm bubble bath to settle into, or an afternoon on the sofa with the Sunday papers and nothing else in the diary. Has it changed? Not too much. But it is wonderfully soothing to have it back.”

“It is Mario Bros on the Nintendo Switch and you can design and share your own levels!” says Beatleben. “What else can you say?”

“The game I’ve played more than any other this year,” says EvilAspirin. “Endless Mario levels. What’s not to love?” Exactly!

29. Dragon Quest 11 S

What we said: “Is this the best Dragon Quest? Some people believe so, and I can understand why – it’s where the character, charm and colour that make this series so beloved are at their most vivid. Personally I’m not so sure, and even after the improvements made for this edition I wish Dragon Quest 11 could find a little more space for its players, though there’s no denying the eloquence of its craft, or the vastness of its scope. In terms of scale and spectacle, this is as grand an adventure you’ll find on the Nintendo Switch this side of Breath of the Wild.”

“I almost stuck it out until the final boss (before I got distracted by other games; I will return), and that is more than I can say for 99% of JRPGs…” That’s the Romeric verdict.

“Unbelievably conventional but undeniably beautifully polished. Video game comfort food – like eating a buttery hot cross bun on a gloomy, wet, winter’s evening.” Captain_T_Dawg paints a nice picture there.

28. Pokmon Sword and Shield

What we said: “Sword and Shield’s Wild Area is desperately flat. There will undoubtedly be a moment of shivers, if you’re a long-term fan, when you first see Pokmon roaming the world and you finally get to gaze around that space yourself. But that moment will wear off when you realise you’ve already seen it all. And it’ll fade from memory entirely when you inevitably hop back on the rails from which you have just at last broken free. What is intended as a great, Breath of the Wild step forward quickly turns to two giant leaps back, and with these games that sad irony is everywhere. Pokmon Sword and Shield project a sense of scale and ambition far beyond any previous ones in the series, but to take it back to those gargantuan new Dynamax forms, the size is merely a shadow. A shallow projection, in place of the real thing.”

Logicub – is that a Pokmon? – says: “Pokemon games are not made purely for the long-term fans. They’re made for everybody. If you can just remember that, then this is a thoroughly enjoyable romp through a Britain that’s better than the real one right now.”

Lukazor – is that a Pokmon? – says: “I hadn’t played a main line Pokemon game in years so I was extremely excited to play Sword/Shield and they didn’t disappoint! Extremely addictive, the new Pokemon are great and the wild area is a great addition. Loved every minute of the main story and now on the hunt to complete the Pokedex.”

27. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

What we said: “It took more time to get here than we’d originally expected, granted, but Igarashi sure did deliver in the end.

“I backed this and, despite choosing the Switch version, had a good time with it,” says HKT3030.

“A joy to play,” agrees Navi. “Unapologetically a modern update to Castlevania, full of all the lovely little touches you’d expect from a well crafted 2D game.”

26. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC)

Developer: Rockstar

Mods!

What we said: I bet we said something about horses and hats and I bet we ended by saying, “Saddle up, pardner!” That would be just like us.

“Eeeeeee ha.,” says Karmazyn. I hear you. Pardner.

“A magnificently lush, varied and gritty open world,” says Subquest. “A compelling story and highly enjoyable gameplay. Graphically an astonishing technical achievement. Rockstar’s finest hour.” Steady on (pardner). You do know these guys also made a Table Tennis game right?

25. Shenmue 3

What we said: “And all these years later, it makes for an entry that, as unlikely as it is, is more finessed and fully-featured than the first two games. A more astute critic might point out that the performances are uneven, the character models sometimes look wayward, you’re kind of limited as to what you can do and nothing of note really happens. That’s not me, I’m afraid. Yes, Shenmue 3 can look and play like a Dreamcast game. But it looks and plays like a Dreamcast game that’s as off-kilter, maddening, magical and majestic as the Shenmue and its sequel, both all-time classics. I think there’s good reason to rejoice in that.”

“18 years of waiting came to an end. Shenmue 3 is everything the fans could have ever expected, and probably very close to Yu Suzuki’s original vision for the game.” Ta, Hansliengnell1!

24. A Plague Tale: Innocence

What we said: “The great shock of Plague Tale is that on some level, it’s a Gears of War game. The more obvious comparison is The Last of Us, another poignant, apocalyptic escapade in which an older character guides a more innocent soul whose blood is touched by destiny, but in practice, and for all the absence of chainsaws, it’s often Epic’s game that comes to mind. It’s there in the tanky handling, with characters swivelling ponderously as though secretly many times their own size. It’s there in the sense of a historical backdrop (the Sera of Gears is a pastiche of familiar architectural traditions) being softly consumed by the supernatural: the darkness alive with eyeshine, the twisted, bony black rot the rats leave behind them, the alchemical motifs that gradually become the plot’s crucible. But above all, it’s a question of framing. As in Gears, you spend most chapters wending your way towards some distant landmark, a brooding structure such as a windmill that is teed up for you with a context-sensitive look command, then tugged into and out of view by the intervening geography. It lends each stage of Amicia and Hugo’s journey a powerful inexorability, for all the trail-and-error process of bamboozling soldiers – as though you were being drawn through its world by gravity towards a procession of massive objects. It’s worth giving into the pull. Just don’t forget to look for the flowers.”

“Very underrated title this year,” says Europsnfan70. “Absolutely beautiful and features one of the best stories this year. More people need to be playing this one.”

“Atmospheric, dark wonders,” says King_Of_Shovels.

23. Baba is You

What we said: “Baba is You is a game about how sentences work that is also, inevitably, a game about how thinking works too. How could it not be, really?”

Pjotroos here: “Can’t remember the last time any game made me feel this stupid. The core concept is spectacular. Some early puzzles made me laugh out loud in joy, once the solution clicked. But the amount of creative thinking it requires to deal with the later levels is genuinely intimidating. I’ve lost the count of times when I was sure I was thinking outside the box, only to realise I merely got myself stuck in a slightly larger box for another half hour, once the solution finally, finally clicked in. I haven’t finished it. I doubt I ever will. But I still have to respect the raw creativity on display.”

22. Metro Exodus

What we said: “We need more experiences like Metro Exodus that know how to resist empty bloodshed and kindle such closeness, finding the warmth in the wasteland.”

“Incredibly immersive and beautiful,” said Ivanbasov, one of only a few comments on Metro Exodus. Instead, I’ll tell you that lots of people who liked this also liked Slay the Spire.

21. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

What we said: “There’s a tinge of disappointment here with Modern Warfare at launch. I’m playing it in the hope that what is soon to come will pull all the right levers in all the right directions, turning this good Call of Duty into a great one. And there’s plenty waiting in the wings: Modern Warfare’s battle pass, which Activision has said will come in free and premium forms, will hopefully fuel progression in a post-prestige world. More, better-fitting multiplayer maps are essential (Infinity Ward pulled the night vision MP maps shortly after the game launched and at the time of publication, they have yet to return). And then there’s the inevitable battle royale. Undoubtedly, there’s an exciting potential to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Until that potential is realised, though, Modern Warfare remains a shooter that is at odds with itself. When it’s good, it’s great. When it’s bad it’s frustrating. Everything in between is, well, Call of Duty.”

Lots of people voted for COD, but almost nobody wrote anything about it. Here’s Phinor, who is always reliable! “A good soundtrack can lift a four star movie up to five stars and the same principle applies to games. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare did that by adding much needed oomph to gun sounds. Add the best new multiplayer game mode since forever with 2vs2 Gunfight and you have the tightest Call of Duty package since, well, Modern Warfare (the original).”

20. Days Gone

What we said: “I wasn’t expecting Days Gone to add anything new to the genre, but both in terms of its systems and its story it’s uninspired, which is driven home by the fact that it’s endlessly, needlessly long. I’m begging you, haven’t we done this enough?”

“Better than expected,” says HungaryGrowler.

“Beautiful open world game with a compelling story and characters you actually care for. Genuine heart-racing moments when freakers pour down upon your position,” says Mustabuster.

19. Borderlands 3

What we said: “You’ll likely have seen – or even experienced for yourself by now – that Borderlands 3 is everything Vault Hunters loved about its predecessors. It’s hard to imagine how, technical issues aside, existing fans could not find more to love about this latest iteration, but that could also be said for fans who didn’t like its predecessors. But whether you believe it’s giving the fans what they want or a dazzling lack of ambition – evolution or revolution, in other words – Borderlands may be polarising, but it’s back nonetheless: bigger, better, and more unapologetic than ever.”

“Whilst the new protagonists couldn’t hold a torch to Handsome Jack (very few can in any game), it was a joy to play and felt continually rewarding,” says Bigworv.

“Loot and shoot. Humour.” That’s the Clockworkzombie verdict.

18. Devil May Cry 5

What we said: “Is it the measure of the action titles that come out of that other studio in Osaka? At times it feels a little too retrograde to be the best in class, but I’m certain it’s the best Devil May Cry there’s been yet – which is still quite the claim to be able to make. This is a more vintage type of action, though that ends up serving Devil May Cry 5 incredibly well. Style like this never really goes out of fashion, after all.”

Navi has nailed this: “Dante has a silly beard, Nero’s arm now explodes and V reads poetry while demons fight each other. What’s not to love!” When I read that I can’t help but imagine it as the starting crawl for a Star Wars movie.

17. Slay the Spire

What we said: “In the end, I’m an optimist, so I went with the donut.”

OllyJ is taking us on a journey: “So, in 2019 I’ve discovered board games. From Splendor to Cosmic Encounter, I’ve been blown away by the feel of playing a board game. I’d never have played a game like this otherwise, and I’m so glad I did because my Switch has basically turned into a Slay the Spire machine. That’s now its only function, a 250 console that plays what is essentially a card game. I’m cool with that.”

Jaz666: “Meant that I enjoyed my 19hr holiday flight. Almost as much as my holiday…”

16. Astral Chain

What we said: “There’s more – there is so, so much more – to the point where Astral Chain can be dizzying in its depths. Combat boasts so many moving parts that it’s easy to become flustered, so it’s almost a relief to find it supports an easy ‘Unchained’ mode whereby much is automated. Is it sacrilege to play a Platinum game that way? Maybe, but I welcome the option to unlock Astral Chain’s spectacle to all, and it helps remove some of the frictions that might have scared some players off the studio’s previous work.”

Break it down Quizmos: “PlatinumGames at its finest once again proving they are hard to beat when it comes to fast paced action with a unique twist!” Testify!

“All hail Lappy!” says FanBoysSuck.

15. Gears 5

What we said: “Will Gears 5 rekindle Gears of War’s glory days on Xbox 360? I doubt it. But The Coalition has finally stamped its personality on the series, even if it’s taken a few missteps along the way. Gears 5’s campaign reminded me just how much I love a good Gears of War campaign. I’m not trying too hard. Gears isn’t trying too hard. We’re holding hands, safe in the collective knowledge we’re in this together, and it’s going to be one hell of a ride.”

“Again, didn’t play it (still need to get through Gears 4), but I’ve played through two of the originals in the franchise, and this game is optimized well enough I very much look forward to hitting it on PC.” BudTheCyborg, I’m not sure you really get the whole concept here.

14. Tetris 99

What we said: “It’s a phenomenal thing, pretty much justifying the cost of a Nintendo Online subscription in one fell swoop, and I dare think of the number of hours I’m going to end up putting in over the course of the year.”

“Counting the DLC as part of the overall, this is the perfect update to Tetris. The increasing tension throughout the multiplayer and the euphoria of a win (or top 10 finish for less good players like me) just add to the game’s just one more go draw.” That was Reverandglass and they’re right, aren’t they?

13. Untitled Goose Game

What we said: “Untitled Goose Game started as a joke in House House’s Slack channel, and it’s astounding how much mileage they’ve found in the gag. This is slapstick – the ultimate form of humour – and it’s slapstick of the highest order. There’s something quite classical about how its slapstick expresses itself, and how beautifully engineered it is, that makes Untitled Goose Game really stand out – if Goat Simulator is an old Farrelly Bros. film, then Untitled Goose Game is as refined and stylish as a Jacques Tati standard. It’s a perfectly formed little troublemaker.”

“Quirky, fun, endlessly meme-able. I pick UGG more for the impact it had on this year than for the game itself. We need more games like this and less loot box, microtransaction, bleed you dry games please.” Reverandglass there with a bit of a sermon.

“Fun concept,” says Watershed.

12. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

What we said: “I first played Link’s Awakening in black and white, more than 20 years ago, but it coloured my hopes for every Zelda since. Some frame-rate issues on the overworld at launch aside – more an annoyance than anything else – this version surpasses the hopes I had for another visit to its world. Koholint Island deserves nothing less, and while Link must journey to leave its shores, this remake will always be a place which preserves the island for others to follow.”

“Perfectly remade, this time I finally finished it unlike when I was a kid, and the music is sublime” says Foxxlet.

“Just wonderful in every possible way,” says The_jinks.

11. Apex Legends

What Martin said: “There’s opportunism here too, of course, but Apex Legends feels like something else; laser-sighted, deeply considered and incredibly smart, it’s the kind of thing you’d imagine Nintendo might come up with if ever they set their minds to a battle royale. The real test will come in where Respawn can take Apex Legends, and how it evolves as a live service – something that publisher EA has struggled with in the past with its first-person shooters. But after a few hours with this impeccably crafted battle royale, the one overriding feeling I’m left with is keen anticipation to see where Apex Legends heads next.”

“300+ hours in and I’m still utterly addicted,” says Jonny5Alive7. “The game lengths are perfect to hook you in and the regular content updates keep it varied.”

10. Luigi’s Mansion 3

What we said: “Part of me still yearns for those dusty carpets of the first Luigi’s Mansion – the near pitch black corridors, the fumbling around in the dark. This third entry, by contrast, feels more like Luigi has left the haunted house and gained free reign around the neighbouring theme park. But what a theme park. It’s left me excited to see where the series goes next.”

“This year’s best Third Person Sucker!” says EpcotMan, minting a genre that I’m not sure we’ll be allowing. “An intricately detailed fun house that reminds you of how many playful ideas Nintendo can cram into a game. Inventive, surprising and surprisingly funny. “

“Suck it,” says Clockworkzombie.

9. Disco Elysium

What we said: “One character and one story may contain multitudes, but Disco Elysium has pushed that idea to extremes, making me a flippant macho and above all a weirdo who stands for nothing. Once the novelty wears off, I feel like I’m playing a game that insistently wants to prove to me how smart it is, and that, above anything, is just really tiring.”

KDR_11k says: “The term CRPG doesn’t really describe what Disco Elysium is. It’s a game about talking and investigating. And it does talking really, really well. ” What else? “I’ve saved the world countless times in many different games over the years, but very few of these will I remember as fondly as singing karaoke in the Whirling in Rags bar in Disco Elysium.” says Nafter.

8. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

What we said: “The annoying thing is, for the first ten hours or so, I absolutely adored Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.”

“EA should’ve made this game five years ago. It’s definitely one of the top ten best Star Wars games ever made,” says Mickjohnson. EA should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers! “Rough around the edges, but the mix of Sekiro and Uncharted with a Star Wars hat on was right up my street. The Sonic the Hedgehog bits can fuck right off though.” That’s HONKHONK. He’s swearing now because he doesn’t see the point in keeping you away from this stuff anymore.

“Was surprised by how good it was,” says UltimateKGB.

7. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

What we said: “This isn’t the game to bring together fans of the old-spec Fire Emblem and those drawn in by the appeal of the new. There’s a clear divide right through the centre of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and its masterstroke is in bridging the two, the bonds you build away from the battlefield giving each blow taken on it that much more impact. It’s a deeply emotional tactical game, one in which you end up invested in each unit. In that way, it’s true to what’s always made Fire Emblem so special – it’s just that Three Houses expresses itself on a different scale, and a different style. Fire Emblem: Three Houses really is a game of two halves, but they come together to make one incredible whole.”

“Never has a game that disrespected my free time so much, been allowed to take up so much of my time in a bid to get all the endings.” says Gintoki.

“Dating sim and tactical RPG with three distinct factions to choose from. Love it,” says Humey26.

JackdawBlack agrees. “The best TRPG dating sim, not that we have many.”

6. Outer Wilds

What we said: “There’s a twofold joy to Outer Wilds – the thrill of discovery itself, as you slowly decipher the variables that swirl around each not-so-distant world, and of seeing that thrill reflected in a phrase scribbled centuries ago by some castaway alien boffin. It gives the game that feeling of displaced community, of mutual striving across the extinction barrier, you might otherwise associate with the Vigil scene in Mass Effect or feats of translation in the recent, excellent Heaven’s Vault. Moreover, the game’s pint-sized solar system is full of models of itself, from the star lifecycle models you’ll find in your home planet’s observatory, to the holographic sandtray projections and swivelling, Stone Henge-scale orreries left behind by the Nomai. It’s a setting mesmerised by its own intricacies, and it wants you to share in that delight. Whatever their differences on the subject of the apocalypse, I like to think that both Eisinga and Alta would have enjoyed it.”

Revfosco nails it: “I just loved the sense of freedom coupled with a slight sense of panic. Incredibly clever game too – one of those ones that makes you in awe of the writers/developers.”

There is nothing more to say about this one. A classic!

5. The Outer Worlds

What we said: “I don’t hate The Outer Worlds. Rather, what I hate about it is that it’s sufficiently unhateful that you can spend 30 hours playing it without noticing. It’s solidly-made enough that you keep hanging around in the hope of something more, like a layer of catchy percussion that never quite escalates into a song. I guess to sum things up, I would like two features to be added to the game. One is a powerful suction cannon with infinite extra-dimensional storage, so I can just gather all the loot in one fell swoop. The other is the option to hand off dialogue decisions to one of my companions, because I have no strong feelings either way, comrades. Let me do clean-up in the background, hosing down the level’s crevices with one earbud in, following the conversation absent-mindedly. According to my own character’s backstory as a janitor, that’s exactly the part I was born to play.”

Deadman316 is savage: @What a Bethesda game should be like. The choice directions are limitless, the worlds are varied in colour and activity, and the characters and quests are fun, funny and multidimensional. It’s a mini full-fat RPG we’ve been waiting for.”

“Decent shooting, decent RPG, decent story. Ticks the boxes.” That’s Lonebadger. I saw a lone badger one evening this summer coming home late. I thought it was a fox with a back problem at first, but no: a badger.

4. Control

What we said: “In other words, while it invokes the dark things that lie beneath, Control’s actually a peerless argument for the beauty of the surface. It revels in the peculiarly warm gloss of polished concrete, the simple and undeniable thrill of combat backed up with enthusiastic physics and animation, and the visual buzz of UI that has a stark, minimalist beauty to it. Without any shade of a slight, I would call Control a sort of coffee-table book in terms of its sheer visual flair – but for how dazzling it looks in motion as you wrench individual blocks from a stacked trolley, sending them thudding through the air, as you fling rockets back at the people who fired them at you, amber sparks glinting as they pass in and out of focus and then die away for good.”

Fore-warning: RaphaelR is right! “This game has everything: great style, mood, story, characters, and gameplay. And also the best sequence in a video game this year.” It says a lot that I know what bit they’re talking about.

“One of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time,” says Switch024. @A fantastic setting that’s brilliantly realised and combat that’s always great fun.” Man, Control was GOOD.

3. Death Stranding

What we said: “As the credits roll on Death Stranding, heavy with unearned pathos, the impression you’re left with is of a self-congratulatory monument to the ego of a creator who is high on his own supply. Has Kojima always been this full of it? Maybe. But then you return to the game proper, select a humble delivery order, lace up your boots and plan another reckoning with those unforgettable, haunted moors. And you realise that this game has got under your skin in a way few do.”

Eugen-fet: “I’ve been waiting for a good Spider-Man game for years. This one delivers.” Ha ha ha! That was from last year’s list. I left it in because it included the word “delivers”. I’m great, me.

“A bonkers masterpiece,” says Monkman76. “Not for everyone but certainly my cup of tea,” says Emeritus. A lot of you said this sort of thing.

2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

What we said: “I have no real insight to offer on the symbolism of wolves in Japanese culture and myth, but I think Sekiro may be a different beast. He’s more of a cockroach, getting in everywhere and all but impossible to expunge – the kind of wondrous, abhorrent creature that will be first to the top of the rubble pile as and when civilisation comes crashing down.”

“Great game. Great pacing. Great fighting system” says Ed-exley, who’s not bad at pacing either.

xRiska, we feel your pain: “Finished the whole game before finally learning how to play it on the last boss. 10/10 would bash my head against a wall again.”

EvilAspirin can take this one home: “A game that starts off feeling tough as nails, but becomes actually pretty easy once the parry system clicks. Playing the Samurai and perfectly deflecting multiple blows in epic fights is incredibly satisfying.”

1. Resident Evil 2 Remake

What we said: “It toes the line between schlocky and scary that the older Resident Evil games managed so well, and does so in perhaps one of the most atmospheric settings ever to grace a survival horror game. It’s good to be back in the RPD.”

“New ‘n’ shiny meets nostalgia to create one of the finest, most atmospheric games to date,” says TheDarkSide. “As soon as I played this all those months ago, it screamed GOTY from every pixel. THIS is how remakes should be done… Hell, this is how games should be done, full stop! Absolutely superb.”

Shotformeat agrees: “It’s a proper game and plays like the era its from in a way that holds up amazingly, but all dressed up in a chunky and satisfying fashion and looks and feels amazing to play. They really don’t make them like this anymore, except when they remake them with this level of care and attention to detail. My favourite game of the year. “

Let’s leave it with El Lawsonoso: “I had zero interest in horror or the Resident Evil franchise until I saw RE2 Remake. The design, the atmosphere, the escape room-style puzzles and the sense of panic when Lickers or Mr X are about are all top notch. Admittedly, the Police Station is a far more interesting environment than the later game, but for this non-horror fan (who probably won’t touch RE3 Remake, because it seems like it’s one big chase sequence that’ll give me anxiety) this is a true GOTY. I think that speaks volumes.”

Wonderful stuff! All done! Happy new year everyone! May it bring you all the very best!

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/eurogamer-readers-top-50-games-of-2019-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=eurogamer-readers-top-50-games-of-2019-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net