?Seeking a friend for the end of the worl??d? Good idea.

The Commonwealth is a nasty place. Even if you can handle super mutants and? deathclaws, it's best to bring a buddy along if for no other reason than to have someone help haul that growing stockpile of extra guns, armor pieces, and miscellaneous junk.

There are around a dozen companions to find in Fallout 4. While you'll ?meet some of them without even trying, others are??n't quite so obvious. I thought I'd lend a helping hand.

A few notes:

Thankfully, companions can't die. If they're taken out in combat, they'll squat down and wait fo??r you to a) heal them with a stimpack or b) kill all nearby enemies. There are lots of dead dogs in this video game, but rest assured, you won't have to dig a grave for your beloved Dogmeat.

If you stick with the same companion, ove??r time, you can gain their loyalty and a unique perk.

That deathclaw in the first picture isn't goi?ng to hurt me, but he's not my buddy, either. I wish! If you'd like to know more,?? head to the Museum of Witchcraft at the top right of the map.

There will be spoilers in this post, of course, but I'll try to keep them to a minimum. This little guide is intended for people who either want a specific?? type of companion (say, a super mutant) as soon as possible and don't know where to look, or just have a desire to catch 'em all.

How to find Codsworth in Fallout 4

Your family robot Codsworth survived the bombs! Drop by your old neighborhood, Sanctuary Hills, to recruit Codsworth as a companion in Fallout 4.

How to find Dogmeat in Fallout 4

You can't miss Dogmeat. Fallout 4's beloved canine companion can be found at a place called Red Rocket Truck Stop, which is one of the f??irst areas you'll encounter after emer??ging from Vault 111. Just follow the path straight out of Sanctuary Hills.

How to find Preston Garvey in Fallout 4

You'll bump into Minutemen supporter Preston Garvey early on in Fallout 4's main story. He needs help clearing out the nearby town of Concord and will become a potential compa??nion upon completing his The First Step quest. Later in your journey, once you've helped rebuild the Minutemen, he'll be a seemingly never-ending source of cookie-cutter quests to find and help the other settlements scattered across the Commonwealth.

How to find Paladin Danse in Fallout 4

Paladin Danse can be found on your way into the Brotherhood of Steel. Go to the Cambridge Police Station and take on a few quests. Eventually, he'll want to tag along? with you as a compani?on.

How to find Curie in Fallout 4

Fallout 4's second robot companion, Curie, is associated with a quest in Vault 81 called Hole in the Wall. To access the vault, you'll firs??t need to cough up three fusion cores (the "ammo" for power armor), and those don't come cheap. With that in mind, after using most of the energy in a core, set it aside; the vault gatekeeper will accept mostly-used fusion cores, so don't hand over fresh ones. Be sure t??o keep Curie around at least until she asks for help with something. It's a neat little quest.

How to find Nick Valentine in Fallout 4

Over the course of Fallout 4's story, you'll end up in Diamond City. There's a detective agency in the back of to??wn, but the owner, Nick Valentine, has gone missing. Head over there and complete the Getting a Clue quest to recruit him as a companion.

How to find Piper in Fallout 4

There's also a news reporter called Piper in Diamond City. You'll bump into her on your way in, and she'll become a potential Fallout 4 companion upon completing the Reunions quest.

How to find Cait in Fallout 4

It took me about 50 hours before I randomly decided to enter the Combat Zone, so Cait was one of the last Fallout 4 compan????ions I recruited. Go inside, kill a bunch of raiders, and then speak with the ghoul.

How to find Strong in Fallout 4

This milk-loving super mutant says a lot of weird stuff, but that's what makes Strong so endearing. Keep an eye out for Trinity Tower and a side quest called?? C?urtain Call; complete it and Strong will join you as a companion.

How to find John Hancock in Fallout 4

There are some entertaining characters in Goodneighbor, so make sure to stop by sooner than later. After you've helped some of the locals (one side quest is The Silver Shr??oud), report back to cool ghoul Hancock in the settlement's Old State? House and he'll become your next companion.

How to find Robert MacCready in Fallout 4

If you've played Fallout 3, you'll remember Robert MacCready as one of the annoying kids from that game. He's since grown into a less annoying companion in Fallout 4, and can be fou??nd in Goodneighbor. Visit The Third Rail. head all the way downstairs, and swing by th??e VIP room. Bring caps and/or charisma.

How to find Deacon in Fallout 4

One of my other favorite companions is man of a thousand faces Deacon, simply because he's hilarious. Deacon belongs to a major faction in Fallout 4 called The Railroad, and finding their secret base is a pain in the ass. It starts with the quest Road to Freedom, which has you follow the Freedom Trail, a winding path that goes from Boston Common to the Old North Church. If you're going to do the trail proper, follow the red markers on the street at Boston Common, not the nearby lanterns. Chris and ?I both had trouble with this at first.

How to find X6-88 in Fallout 4

A third generation synth (or artificial human), X6-88 can be recruited as a companion inside The Institute. You'll have to go there as part of Fallout 4's main story and, once you do, comp?lete the quest Mankind - Redefined to bring X6-88 into the party.

How to find Ada in Fallout 4

Some of Fallout 4's DLC expansion packs add more companions for you to recruit, so you won't find them anywhere in the base game. The first, Ada, requires you to own the Automatron expansion. She can't be missed since she's a part of the expansion's story. In? fact, she joins you upon completing the expansion's very first quest, Mechanical Menace, near Wattz Consumer Electronics. Be prepared to fight off plenty of robots.

How to find Automatron in Fallout 4

The second Fallout 4 companion in the Automatron expansion is, well, ??your own Automatron. You'll ge?t the option to build one at a robot workbench at any of the settlements, and it can be fully customized in terms of appearance and weapons.

How to find Old Longfellow in Fallout 4

Old Longfellow is the exclusive companion in Fallout 4's Far Harbor expansion. Once you've got the expansion installed, you'l??l activate a quest called Walk in the Park. Head for the town of Far Harbor and look for a bar called The Last Plank. This is where you'll find Longfellow and, upon completing the quest, he'll join you as a companion.

How to find Porter Gage in Fallout 4

Second-in-command of the Nuka Raiders, Porter Gage can only be recruited as a companion in Fallout 4's Nuka-World expansion. You need to complete the quest An Ambitious Plan, which involves taking the elevator to Fizztop Mountain. Upon speaking with Gage, you'll help him smooth things over between Nuka-World's three raider gangs, after which he'll not only become a companion, but also ??serve as a merchant while in Nuka-World.

The post Where to find companions in Fallout 4 appeared first on Destructoid.

Okay, so you've been playing Fallout 4 since launch and you've wandered the wastes, scoured the ruins of Boston, and swam in the glowing sea. You've had a lot of adventures??. Now you're thinking about settling down and checking out all that settlement crap you haven't touched since Preston begged you to show him and his buddies how to plant carrots.

That's fantastic because I've been wasti?ng my time playing around with the settlemen??t stuff since the day the game came out and I have a full country harvest of tips and tricks that will save you time and get the most out of your settlements.

Best perks for building settlements in Fallout 4 

Before you lay down the foundations of your personal empire, you need to get yourself right first. If you want to be serious about your settlements, you'll need a few perks to make it work, including a hefty investment in charisma. This could be tricky if you've already been playing for 50 hours with an anti-social radioactive super soldier and just now want to start rebuilding the Commonwealth, but not un??-doable (remember, you can get a charisma-boosting bobblehead at the Parsons State Insane Asylum and invest perk points into S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats if you really need to get that number up, among other less savory methods that I'll discuss later). You can also just roll up a new character specifically made to dive into the building and crafting aspect of the game.

You'll need six Charisma to get two levels of the Local Leader perk and at least level two of the Cap Collector perk. These will let you make supply lines (ESSENTIAL) and awesome stores in your settlements. You'll probably also want to go deep on Intelligence -- the Gun Nut and Science! perks are practi?cally necessary if you want to build the best versions of generators and defense turrets and Scrapper is a little too good to ignore (it will let you turn all those junky laser pistols and pipe rifles you normally throw in the dumpster into useful copper, gears, and circuitry).

I know, it sucks that the way crafting in Fallout 4 works basically pigeonholes you into a certain build. T?here is still plenty of room for creativity even after those stat demands though and the joy of raising a civilization out of the ashes of history does take the sting out a bit.

Fallout 4 settlement building basics

If you ?want your settlement to grow, you'll need a few things: water, food, beds, and a radio beacon. Each settler you bring in needs one unit of food and water per day and they get whiny if they don't have a nice downy pillow to?? rest their head on at night, so you'll want to get those things sorted first.

Plant a few crops (easily done by raiding other farms for their crop?s and it qui?ckly becomes self-perpetuating when you can just harvest your own fields for planting supplies), install two or three water pumps, and flop down a few beds. No need to go crazy, it takes a settlement time to grow and you can always add more as needed (and later crafting options can make old ones obsolete so no need to waste scrap on something you won't need).

A radio be??acon draws a steady flow of new settlers to your homestead. You'll need a power source to run it so build a generator (which will come in handy for other things, anyway). Remember, you can turn a radio beacon off when you think you have enough settlers in one place. In some of the smaller areas like the Red Rocket station near the beginning of the game, you may want to put a cap on the number of people you take in.

You'll probably want to defend your patch once you have it all set up. Turrets are the go-to option for this (and why you need Science! and Gun Nut so badly so you have access to the upgraded versions). Each turret, trap, or manned guard t?ower adds a few points to the defense rating of a settlement. Try to keep that number the same or?? slightly higher than the sum of both the food and water points to discourage attacks.

When an attack does occur, you will be notified on your Pip-Boy and can help your settlers defend their home. Raids on your property can be unpredictable. In my time responding to woul?d-be home invaders, I've seen everything from realistic flanking attacks from Super Mutants pouring over the hills, to packs of feral Ghouls somehow spawning deep inside the walls of a fortified base. Your best bet is to spread out your defenses to cover likely avenues of attac??k while also covering populated areas where your settlers are likely to take a stand.

How to build a settlement in Fallout 4

You could just work with what each settlement already has, but what is the fun in that? Leave your personal mark on the wasteland with a proud series of ramshackle apartme??nts, abodes, and disturbingly militaristic forts.

The tools for building things in Fallout 4 are honestly pretty terrible. Objects float about in we??ird ways, mechanics are never explained unless you go digging through the help topics in the menu (and even then it's hit or miss), and the way wall?s and attachments snap (or fail to snap) together will give you no end of grief.

But don't let that stop you! With a little patience and a few pointers, you can make some reasonably cool-looking digs for your wastelanders. If someone could make this monstrosity of wires and pressure pads work, you can pro??bably get a f??ew fences to stand up straight.

First thing first, lay down???? a foundation and a floor. Uneven terrain tends to mess with the building tools so you'll want to keep things as level as possible to make things easier on yourself.

Try to build up! Many of the settlement areas have limited usable ground space. Smal??l areas strewn with debris and hills do not make for nice buildings, but you can avoid that problem by building vertically. Don't be afraid to slap down ladders and staircases and build on top of what is already there. Not only is it space efficient, but a rad tower fort on top of the local Red Rocket station looks much cooler than a bunch of square boxes crammed together on the parking lot.

Set up supply lines from a central hub to make life easier. Trying to cart around tin cans and microscopes b?etween settlements and keeping track of which place has what is a sucker's game. With the Local Leader perk you can assign a set?tler to run supplies between locations and everyone can share from the same pool of salvage (but not hard items like guns or armor).

Make a supply chain by assigning one runner from settlement A to take goods to settlement B, and one from B to take goods to C, and so on. That way you can just toss all your junk in any workbench in the line and use all of it anywhere. Provisioners seem to be immortal like Companions, so don't worry about them dying on the road the first time they run afoul ??of some Mole Rats.

Fences can really help with invasions by funneling attackers into kill zones as well as giving your settlement a homey, lived-in look (murder and comfort together at last!). Sadly, when you ??start putting rings around all your settlements they also be?come material hogs, gobbling up steel and wood like nobody's business. I recommend you pick up an issue of Picket Fences from Beantown Brewery so you can make, well, picket fences. They don't consume steel when crafting them and they look more charming than rusty chain links (granted, they look slightly less so when splattered with Super Mutant blood).

How to power your settlement in Fallout 4

How you provide power to your settlements is poorly explained in-game but essential for making a great homestead, so be prepared to mess with it.? Basically, you have two kinds of powered devices at your disposal. Active devices like laser turrets and water purifiers require units of power to run (meaning your generator has to be able to match their power draw to keep everything working), and passive devices like lights and traps can run off the ambient grid. Active devices need a line running directly into them, while passive devices need either a nearby connected pylon or w?all socket to work.

Power pylons can be used to run lines from a generator to far-away devices or a conduit. The maximum length of a wire is fixed but can be cut short by obstacles, hanging on the ground, and so on. I recommend you build your generators in elevated positions to get the most out of your copper. Pylons give off a radius of electrical power that can be used to run lights, traps, and other things. Plugging a conduit into the wall of a building supposedly provides power to the entire shack, but my experience ??with them has been mixed. Mostly?, they seem to work just like pylons (but are slightly cheaper to make and more compact to string up between nearby buildings).

Making complex grids for my settlements has been hands down the single most frustrating and rewarding part of building things in Fallout 4. It's a very fussy system (I can't tell you how many times I broke everything trying to slightly adjust one little ??wall tile or light bulb) but once you get used to it, you can really make your settlements pop.

Adding shops to your Fallout 4 settlement

Shops are wonderful. While having to invest in two ranks of Local Leader and Cap Collector to make the biggest sh??ops (which really is the only way to go) is a drag, what you get out of having a few shops spread among your networked settlements can be well worth it.

There are six kinds of shops you can make for your settlements with four tiers of value. Each type of shop will boost your settlement's happiness and pull in caps, but a few stand out as handier to have in your personal base of operations than others. Weapon shops can be a reliable source of ammo without having to ma??ke a trip to Diamond City, trade goods shops can help cut down on the time it takes to scavenge for parts, clinics can help you cheaply cure addiction and radiation poisoning at your convenience, and bars are great for ingredients for cheap healing items. Armor and clothing shops are fun too and you'll probably want one of each in your network at some point just for variety, but they're not as overtly useful.

You can build the first two tiers of shop with just the second level of the Local Leader perk. They're fine and will do the trick if you want to be a skinflint about it. But if you invest? all the way to the third tier of the shop by getting two levels of Cap Collector, yo??ur market stalls will start to carry surprisingly great gear. What's better is once you have tier-three stores, you'll occasionally run into special vendors in the wasteland that you can invite to work at your locations that will turn them into unique fourth-tier stores that carry special gear.

Shops will generate an income you can draw from on their own -- just check your workbench from time to time and you'll notice you have a handful of caps you can pull out. But don't get the wrong idea: shops accrue money slowly, so you won't be diving into a vault of caps like Scrooge McDuck anytime soon. The value of having a nice network of shops is the convenience of being able to talk to a merchant on demand rather than wander around looking for a traveling trader or making a special trip. It lets you make more mone??y off of explorations (you can trade found gear for caps more easily) and enables you to restock and refuel faster to get you back o??ut in the wasteland.

Advanced Fallout 4 settlement tips

There are plenty of m?echanics involved in the settlement system that the game doesn't go out of its way to tell you. I'll try and shed some light on them here.

• Did you know the maximum population of your settlements is tied to your Charisma stat? Ten people by default plus one extra point of Charisma. For most people, this either means an 11 settler max, or up to 22 if you went whole-hog on Charisma. Vault 88 from the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC boasts an inherent +10 maximum settler limit, making its settler cap 32. I'm told wearing Charisma-boosting gear can let you break that cap but I haven't noticed it in my game.
• Spread out your beds. For the longest time, my settlers in Sanctuary were complaining about “the bed situationâ€?despite having plenty of cots to rest on. At first, I assumed it was a bug (this is a Fallout game), but I stumbled on some other people online having the same problem. Apparently, putting too many beds in one area makes your tired and poor wastelanders cranky (maybe they'd like it back in the wilds with the Deathclaws where I found them). I haven't found exact numbers, and testing for it is difficult, but it seems like four beds in one room or hut is the sweet spot.
• Water purifiers are a godsend and you should put them in any settlement that isn't landlocked. A single industrial water purifier will produce 40 units of water, far more than you'll ever need for a settlement on its own. Plus, extra water goes into your workbench as an aid item. You can pull out a bunch for cheap healing, or sell them all to a trader who wanders into your settlement for a stack of caps.
• Equip gear on your settlers for protection and convenience. Instead of scrapping or selling every spare gun you pick up, try placing it in a settler's inventory and have them equip it (use the triangle or Y button on the console controllers) and a single piece of ammunition for it (it will last them forever, thanks to Lex for the tip!). I know this might be really obvious, but I keep hearing from people who missed it! Not only will they be able to help next time a Super Mutant wanders into the neighborhood, but you can coordinate their outfits to help you keep track of what jobs people are doing. Or just give them a creepy uniform look if you want to make your own apocalypse cult.

• Each settler assigned to work on crops can sustain enough plants to generate six points of food. This means you only really need three or four full-time farmers, which frees up the rest of your population for things like guard duty at watch towers, scavenging for supplies, or manning the tills at your shops.
• Speaking of guard posts, while they initially seem like a terrible deal (only a measly two defense for a manned post), if you set up multiple posts and assign a person to one of them, he or she will walk between up to three of them like a patrol and provide the defense benefit of each. So one person on guard duty watching three posts can actually provide a decent six defense; better than a level-one turret.
• Folks assigned to scavenging benches generate a small amount of junk for the workbench on their own. What they gather is fairly inconsequential, but something is better than nothing if you don't have them assigned to anything else. Interestingly enough, they tend to walk around with their weapons drawn, seemingly looking for a fight. Not sure why they do that, but I like to put the best of my spare weapons on them so they can be ready to draw down on any intruders.
• Build a bell! In the miscellaneous resources menu you can find a bell that will summon settlers to your location. This will save you loads of time when trying to assign jobs or equip folks since they can hide like ninjas when left to their own devices. I didn't find this until embarrassingly late in my game and it would have saved me a lot of time.
• In a nice little touch, settlers will congregate at a bar after hours if you build one. When the workday is over, everyone just wants a nice slice of grilled brahmin and a drink, I suppose. So maybe spend a little extra time laying out chairs and making your bar area look nice.

How to use Fallout 4 settlement cheats

I've really enjoyed building up my settlements, tinkering with the crafting tools, and spending entirely too much time equipping all of my little serfs with laser pistols and shotguns, but I'd be lying if I said it hasn't also been a chore. It just takes too long to collect all the knick-knacks and scrap you need to make things. I don't want to have to root ar??ound in some raider-infested warehouse looking for power coils and broken light bulbs for hours just to wire up some patio lights in my fifth full?y-loaded farmhouse.

Or maybe, like I mentioned earlier, you built your character to tame the wastes with hands made of concrete and a bulletproof hide. You didn't give any ??thought towards a useless dump stat like Charisma when you started the game. Now you're stuck looking at the unappealing idea of tossing multiple perk points into your stats just to start building decent settlements.

So might I recommend cheating?

If you're on PC, this is easy. Open up the console command line using the tilde (`) key and go to town. If you are like me and playing on the PS4 (or Xbox One for that matter), you'll have to resort to installing mods that do the dirty work for you.

There are numerous console commands in the game that can take the headache out of settlement building in Fallout 4. The most notable and easiest-to-rem?ember console c?ommand is:

• tgm - Toggle God mode

God mode transforms set??tlement building into a pseudo-creative mode by providing an infinite amount of resources. It also removes perk requirements for most items besides the settlement vendors.

Cheating is going to be something players will have to come to or avoid on their own. Personally, I don't recommend cheating like this right off the ba??t as it can ruin the experience. But if you're 30 or 40 hours deep into the game and pul?ling your hair out because you built your character wrong at the start or just can't find enough oil to keep your turrets up and running, it's nice to have a safety net like this available.

The post The wastelander’s guide to building settlements in Fallout 4 appeared first on Destructoid.

Sullied your hands

As part of their year in review for 20?17, Pornhub released the stats for interesting things like length of time per visit, most searched terms and stars, and even down to age group. But the relevant thing here is which consoles most people streamed from. 

The majority of streams are on PlayStation 4 with 56%, followed by the Xbox One with 32%. Apparently "Nintendo’s portable 3DS had a large increase in market share but still only makes up 1% of game device traffic," according to their data. Also of note is that "Nintendo’s original Wii had a larg??e decrease, while the updated WiiU now accounts for 5% of conso?le visits."

Most interesting of all is that Pornh?ub mentions a rumored app for the Nintendo Swit??ch later this year that they would be happy to work on: 

Nintendo&rsq??uo;s newest Switch doesn’t ?yet have a browser, although it’s rumored that one will be implemented sometime in 2018 — at which time you can be sure Pornhub’s development team will work to ensure full support.

The end of year data is pretty interesting overall, and you could give it a look at this obviously NSFW link. 

The post You deviants watched?? a lot of Pornhub on PlayStation 4 appeared first on Destructoid.

No dolphins in sight...

Echo is one of the most unique games I’ve played in a long time. ?Its sci-fi setting and twist on the conventional stealth genre make it stand out in an industry where regurgitated formulas are the norm??. 

The story is fairly bare-bones. You play as a woman named En as she journeys to a mysterious location, hidden in the depths of space, in a bid to revive a dead man. She’s accompanied by an arti??ficial intelligence named London who helps her on her quest. The first hour is mostly a mixture of walking and exposition, but I found it extremely eff??ective in setting the scene. They are in the middle of nowhere. There is no backup coming. They are on their own. 

Echo (PS4 [reviewed], PC)
Developer: ULTRA ULTRA
Publisher: ULTRA ULTRA
Released: October 10, 2017
MSRP: $24.99

Once they land at their destination, they’ll eventually find themselves at the entrance to a planet-sized building referred to as The Palace. The interior is a mixture of monochrome extravagance and dread. Vast, empty hallways full of columns and staircases that reach on as far as the e??ye can see. The only inhabitants are En and London. That is, until a series of events lead to the entire Palace being populated by creatures known as Echoes. 

These “Echoes” are exact replicas of En. Physically identical in every way. Unfortunately, they aren’t exactly there to hold hands and be BFFs. No, they spend the ent?irety of the game trying to murder En every chance that provides itself, and they are relentless. 

This is where the combat comes into play, and, holy fuck, is it ever exhilarating. The Echoes don’t just look like En. They mimic her actions, and then use them against her. There are two cycles that are constantly shifting: light and dark. During the light cy?cles, every action that you perform is recorded by The Palace. This can range from the more mundane like eating fruit, playing pianos, ??opening doors, jumping over cover, and crouching to more sinister things like stealth takedowns, ignoring environmental boundaries, and even using firearms. If you call an elevator during the light cycle, they’ll be able to call an elevator when the next cycle hits. 

During the dark cycles, all rules are off. You can kill at your leisure and don’t have to fear the Echoes copying your abilities. This usually lasts about 15-20 seconds. In a weird twist on conventions, the dark actually serves as a reprieve from the tension. It’s still tense due to lower visibility, but the added freedom is somewhat empowering. When the next light cycle hits, the Echoes will be utilizing any abilities that were used in the previous one against you. Luckily, these reset every time, so you aren’t left fighting against an unstoppable army of pistol-wielding clones. Howeve??r, this does lead to some really fucking intense combat segments where you must constantly change up your tactics at any given moment based on the level design and dangers you find yourself up against.

The adaptive AI is an absolute game-changer, and I would not be surpri??sed to see these mechanics rehashed by other franchises in the future. Seriously, it’s just that damn good. There’s a lot of ways that combat could be improved, but what’s there is an insanely solid proof of concept.

It forces you to think about your every action in new ways because you are?? effectively arming your enemies and giving them more options to murder you. Most stealth games eventually see you falling into specific habits and patterns that you can fall back on, but that just isn’t an option here. It’s absolutely essential to mix up your tactics, and it left me with a sense of accomplishment I don’t often get from games. I?? didn’t just defeat them. I defeated myself.

Now, it’s not all sunshine and roses here. Death is met with some lengthy? loading screens, and the PlayStation 4 version suffers from some frame-rate instability and freezing at times. It’s never for more than a few seconds, and it never occurred during actual combat for me. Oddly, these issues only seemed to pop up when moving from a large, enemy-infested area to, relatively, safe zones. As a result, its impact was minimal. Still, it’s one of the biggest tarnishes on an otherwise stellar experience. I haven’t had a chance to play the game on PC, so this may be a console-exclusive feature. 

If you’re a fan of both science fiction and stealth games, this is your goddamn wheelhouse. No joke, as long? as you can see past a few minor ?faults, you are going to love this. For everyone else, it’s at least worth looking into. 

I have never played another game quite like Echo before. Folks are always rallying for innovation in the industry, and I can’t think of too many better examples of that in recent years. It’s not all perfect, but what’s there is extremely refreshing. This is not an easy game. You will die a lot. You will ??get angry. However, when you finally defeat your opponents, it’s like sex. A huge release where, for a?? few small minutes, you genuinely feel like you just accomplished something. It’s glorious.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Echo appeared first on Destructoid.

Oh, you shouldn't have!

Look, I was a huge Halo fan growing up. I played the original trilogy of games for far too many hours, opting to kill suckers online instea?d of doing math homework. Today's news is, well, nothing ?earth-shattering, but a cute tidbit nonetheless.

The Xbox One X has an engraving of Halo's Master Chief riding a scorpion inside the console. In a video from unocero?, everyone's favorite space marine can be seen straddling the bug, a reference to both the Xbox One X's project name in development, and the hulking tank that players frequently pilot in the games from which Chief hails.

It's a neat little touch that forces a chuckle out of m??e. Say what you will about Microsoft, there's clearly a lot of heart put into their work. 

The post Master Chief is engraved on th??e inside of every Xbox One X appeared first on Destructoid.

Profiles in failure and misery

Humanity is doomed. The hammer hasn’t fallen quite yet, but from where we’re standing, you can see its rapidly expanding shadow as it comes crashing down. Humanity is finished.?? The best and brightest of our generation are either dead or driven mad from trauma, and while I don’t know exactly how, I am certain that it is all my fault.

Defeat in XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is a strange and bizarrely beautiful thing. Not only because it is possible, even probable, to lose the game (so long as you’re playing honest), but because it takes its damn time. The game always lets you know exactly how close you are to extinction, how much work you have left to do, and graciously allows you to do the ma?th a??nd know there is no hope left.

Defeat is a rare thing in games in general. It’s almost unheard of for one?? to luxuriate in it. 

The vast majority of games are very good at conditioning players to expect victory. It wasn’t always this way and there are plenty of examples of merciless games you can point to, but I’m talking about modern, mainstream games. We’re a long ways from the arcade days and early NES titles when Game Over screens were common and gamers could stroke their egos based on how many titles they'd “cleared.” We expect to beat games now, not for them to beat us.

Even “masochistic” games like Dark Souls are designed to be beaten. No matter how much fuss is made over how brutal and unforgiving a game is, death is never the end. No matter how many times you bite the d??ust, or how spectacularly you’re pulverized by a gigantic dragon, you always have another shot. Victory might be hard won, but it is never out of reach.

Defeat on the other hand is something else entirely. Few mainstream games really present it as a possibility and even fewer bother to make it exciting. XCOM 2 was already a game that wasn’t shy when it came to screwing over its players - the map screen has a literal doomsday clock on the top of it that is constantly counting down. But it’s expansion, War of the Chosen, dives headfirst into that nihilism and splashes around in it. It ta??kes an already difficult game and adds entirely new mechanics that almost universally revolve around making the player’s life harder and defeat more likely. As a product intended for purchase it’s an interesting artifact - you’re essentially paying for the privilege of being tortured in new and interesting ways.

WotC is fickle, it takes as much (or more) as it gives. Sure, it introduces a slew of new troop typ??es with powerful new abilities, squad bond abilities for frequent mission-mates, randomized “breakthrough” research projects that buff your troops, and monthly perks in the form of “resistance orders.” These are lovely little bonuses, but for every new toy, there are devious new challenges to match it - and it feels like there is an alien thumb tipping the scales.

With new troop types come new enemies; Specters who are impervious to overwatch shots and freely knoc??k out and clone your troops with “shadow” ??copies, immediately leave you outgunned and undermanned. There are ADVENT purifiers, stormtrooper thugs who set the map ablaze with huge flamethrower attacks that engulf your troops and damage them over multiple turns. The introduction of the Zombie-like Lost who, while not particularly dangerous on their own, overwhelm your squad with sheer numbers. Worst of all, you have the Chosen themselves.

The Chosen are a trio of named enemies who constantly hunt and harass the XCOM team, crashing missions and ambushing your squad during the worst possible moments. The??y are designed to be a menace you repeatedly clash with, spoilers who upset your plans, kidnap your troops, and compli?cate your life in the most awful ways.

The Chosen actively gather intelligence on XCOM’s operations, and if they collect enough, they’ll launch a devastating surprise attack on your home turf, something you definitely don’t want to deal with. In WotC, you not only need to ??keep track of the ever threatening doomsday clock, you also need to keep an eye on how close each Chosen is on your heels. In between the normal battery of guerilla ops, black site invasions, and retaliation strikes, you need to manage resistance black ops to gather intel on them in turn. All the while, the Chosen will run raids on your troops, brutalize your allies, and strangle your ability to fight back.

It’s a lot on top of the rest of armageddon.

But as bad as they are, the Chosen and their wicked games are far from the only way WotC tightens the screws. The ex??pansion also introduces the concept of psychological exhaustion and trauma to ??your weary, dragged out and kicked down group of guerrillas.

Troops who come stumbling back from bad missions with KIAs to report or harrowing wounds to recover from, carry their scars with them. Too many missions in a row will exhaust a soldier, leaving them vulnerable to psychic attacks or bouts of panic when staring dow??n the barrel of an extraterrestrial’s gun. Particularly traumatic missions can result in psychological breaks that introduce a whole host of issues, reducing your best troops to jittery, nervous wrecks who will refuse orders or turn tail and run when you need them the most.

These afflictions can be treated, but that takes time you don’t have. These issues, combined with the usual post-mission round of triage for anyone who was wounded, and R&R breaks for exhausted units, means your roster of reliable troops can become precariousl?y small, very quick??ly. Forget cultivating an A and B team, sooner or later you’ll be digging deep into the roster for the D, E, and F teams. There’ll be missions where your tossing lowly squaddies and raw recruits into the fray just to keep your numbers up. Eventually, even those warm bodies won’t be enough and you’ll find yourself sending wounded and broken soldiers to the front lines, miserable sods who only become more fractured and spent in the process.

This is the beauty of WotC - everything gets worse all the time. Fr?om the moment you start the game, you start losing. This is the long defeat, strap in and get comfortable.

Defeat comes creeping at you from every direction and at all times. It comes in intense, fitful bursts of tragedy on the battlefield, like the loss of a favored operative, or a botched EVAC of a VIP. It comes in ??the long, slow slog of mismanagement and bankruptcy. When the Avenger lacks the power grid to support a mission ?critical decryption lab, but you can’t afford either the cost of installing another generator, or another 30 days worth of time digging out a new room. There are moments of micro failure and long unseen stretches of macro failure. In the postmortem, it can be difficult to determine exactly when the patient went critical.

Which brings me back to my current game and humanity’??s impending d??oom. “When did it all go wrong?” I wonder.

The obvious answer would be a particularly nasty “Code Black&rd?quo; that gutted my roster of senior operatives. A bungled mission that resulted in a cataclysmic loss of advanced units, ?leaving me to tread water with a long line of semi-expendable second-bananas from then on. Certainly it was a low moment for XCOM and my command, but what led to that loss in the first place?

Was ??it recklessness? I built my squad around a concealment strategy that let units fan out far and wide to be in position to ambush the aliens. In the rearview mirror, it seems obvious that a misstep was bound to happen, that breaking concealment too early would spell doom for the team. But can all the blame be laid on my sloppy squad composition and the tactics I used in a single mission?

Maybe the real coup de grace occurred when my Grenadier was mind controlled into shooting her squ??admates. Things were already breaking bad by that point, but that spot of friendly fire sure didn’t help. If so, what was the answer? Should I have equipped my troops with more mindshields at the expense of grenades and special ammo just on the off chance they were psychically attacked? Should I have paid more attention to the Will stat when choosing which of my soldiers to groom for advancement? Maybe if I prioritized the Psi Lab building earlier and got my own psychic troopers into the field, units who could have countered mind control attacks, all of this could have been avoided.

Or did I just fall too far behind the tech curve to keep up? Dr. Tygan kept offering up tempting “breakthrough” research projects that were too good to pass up, and it’s possible I ?got a little too greedy with the upgrades. At the time I felt like an extra +1 damage for every assault rifle, or the ability to swap those expensive weapon mods between soldiers, was worth delaying the typical rotation of alien autopsies and material break downs that drive XCOM’s arms race. Now, looking at the doomsday clock tick down to its last few seconds, I’m having second thoughts.

And on and on it goes. I could spend forever retracing my missteps, trying to track down the proverbial nail that led to the war being lost, but it’s an impossible task. In XCOM 2: WotC, defeat isn’t some mugger t??hat sneaks up on you and bashes you over the head, it’s your shadow, your constant companion. A growing presences that is always just behind you, threatening to swallow you up. Sometimes you stay ahead of it, sometimes you don’t.

Victory is your buddy in a lot of games, and toge?ther you spend a lot of time basking in triumph and cheering over vanquished foes. There is something quietly beautiful about a game that expects you to rub shoulders with failure though, that dares to remind you that not everything works out all of the time and sometimes you don't always get what you want. A game that invites you to celebrate defeat.

The post Celebrating the long defeat in XCO??M 2: War?? of the Chosen appeared first on Destructoid.

This Alien of Mine

If science-fiction, good or bad, has taught me anything, it's? that you should never work?? on an Arctic research base. It's too cold, you hate everybody, and there's usually an alien hanging outside with a penchant for human skin.

Luckily for us, Distrust changes that perception. It's a game where you spend your days researching snowflakes and nothing ever goes wrong. Ha ha ha, ?I lie. But it's still a great game, w??here sleep is most definitely for the weak.

Distrust (PC)
Developers: Cheerdealers
Publisher: Alawar Premium
Released: August 23, 2017
MSRP: $11.99/£8.99

An Arctic research base, a UFO buried in the snow, the inevitable distress call. It's? not long before a rescue team is sent out, but when one of the crew drifts off, a strange anomaly attacks their helicopter, causing it to crash on site. Only a handful su??rvive, and now their only hope lies deep within. Cold and exhausted, they quickly find that if the cold doesn't kill them, their sleep will.

Distrust is a challenging game, even for those familiar with the roguelike/survival genre. Whereas contemporaries like FTL and Darkest Dungeon allow you to mull over your actions, Distrust expects you to act quickly and decisively. But while it can be relentless, once you master its emphasis on timing, teamwork, and rationing, Distrust manages to captu??re a tense atmosphere of desperation and sacrifice.

The aim of Distrust is to get through six zones, each one worse off than the last. Players have to scavenge for supplies, use tools to progress efficiently, and keep the furnaces running to stay warm. In each zone, there's also a randomized exit puzzle to solve like moving a snowplow or making a bomb. Once you escape, the same objectives repeat, only at a perpetually faster rate and with less supplies. Despite the repetition, Distrust's white-knuckle pa??cing and varied ??puzzles keep it fresh after several failed attempts.

Players can choose between 15 different characters ??for a party of two, with a third character found mid-game. Everyone has their own unique ability - be it a cook who can make leftovers or a grizzled explorer used to the cold - along with their physical weaknesses, so it's all about putting the right team together. That said, the more useful characters are locked behind achievements, which means you have to take a few losses with the starting lineup. Roguelike vets might find this par for the course, but it's still padding in a genre that works better with open experimentation.

Even with a good team, Distrust will inevitably break them thanks to its key concept: sleep deprivation. When someone runs out of stamina, they gain a ?random madness. Some are easy to shrug off, but most will cripple a good run. The camera can warp and ruin in colour, tools and doors are broken in anger, or maybe a survivor will selfishly eat all the food.

Since Distrust is also a race against time, madness seems almost unavoidable as characters are pushed to exhaustion in order to complete a task, and even downing coffee to go that little bit longe??r. Though they can stack up, every ailment can be removed by resting on a couch or bunk. The brutal trade off, of course, is that the longer one sleeps, the more likely alien anomalies appear and wreck havoc across the base.

Anomalies are attracted to several things, depending on their type: survivors, electrical generators and furnaces. They can sap someone's health, but they're more deadly when draining the power supplies (usually leading to a slow, frostbitten death). Players can fend them off with guns, flashlights and traps, but the throwaway combat tends to be Distrust's weakest aspect. Ideally, it's better to control them through sleep rotation and healthy rations. Still, even though the anomalies aren't particularly fun to fight, it's actually good to see something so genuinely alien for antagonists.

Distrust's vicious cycle of madness, rest, and aliens is perfectly formed. If a character doesn't harm themselves, chances are the aliens will do it for them by impairing their progress. Sometimes, it's best to keep going with a handicap if it means having a warm place for the group. And though it does get easier with better characters and muscle memory, Distrust re?mains relentless throughout due to the inevitability of its mechanics.

Distrust does have some imbalance issues at the moment. Though some have been addressed since our preview, it's still at the mercy of RNG. For example, cuts and bleedouts can happen anywhere when they're sup??posedly confined to frozen temperatures. Most are minor hindrances currently being patch?ed out, but when the game is deeply reliant on timing, it brings about some needless detours and wasted supplies.

Overall, there's a lot more to like about Distrust than to dislike. The sound design is suitably isolated, with icy winds blowing through the John Carpenter-inspired score, and as a roguelike, it doesn't outstay its welcome (taki?ng a good 8-10 hours to reach the best ending). It's an addictive thriller with a neatly defined goal, even when frustrations like combat and RNG get in the way.

Distrust is a refreshingly unique take on a familiar horror setting, where both players and survivors alike are gradually worn down by a lack of respite, and victory is a hard-fought push to the finish line. Though it's not quite The Thing as billed, Distrust manages to carve out its own fasci?nating niche with a devious cycle of m??adness and decay.

_{[This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Distrust appeared first on Destructoid.

Please watch this incredible video

Sometimes, players unknown will try to game the system in PUBG, queuing up at the same moment to get into the same game (or doing so with unknowing streamers and using their stream to get a tactical advantage in hunting them down). That seems to be the case with this roving gang of seven, red-shirt-clad Chinese players -- PUBG squads max out at four??, normally -- that a Korean player saw bearing down while hiding in a house, all of his three squad mates already ??dead.

Outgunned, our wily narrator decided? to not engage with this outsize gang, and instead tracked down a red shirt and tried to join their ranks. Somehow, it worked. Despite a few tense moments of obvious suspicion, our narrator was welcomed by t?he group.

He repaid this kindness by ?assassinating them all.

The post Korean man infiltrates Chinese PUB?G ??gang, betrays them all appeared first on Destructoid.

Ask 'em if you got 'em

Hello comrades. Hopefully you've already listened to the latest show, Podtoid 376: Ugly Baby Poo Colored Balls, where we filled the video games hole i??n our life that is the month of July with talk of ugly baby beer, the tennis bourgeoisie, yelling at people online, and the inappropriate pictures of oversized animal testicles I text Brett in the middle of the night. All fun stuff.

And we're at it again today. I can finally talk about Wolfenstein II, but undoubtedly we will want to kill some time answering all your most pressing questions. Drop them in ??the comments or write in to podtoid[at]?jbsgame.com.

The post Podtoid records today, ask us anything! appeared first on Destructoid.

Red Rocket League

Hopefully you are already following my quest to eat Brett out of house and home by making him spend a maximum of $3 per day in Rocket League microtransactions. The first video is up here. We went 2-1. How did we do this time!? Find out on the next Red Rocket L?eagu?e. God I still love that name.

I'm a little too mean to Brett in this one. Sorry, Brett! ??I guess this is what people talk about when they talk about "toxic" commun??ities. What a save! What a save! What a save!

If you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe on YouTube to the new Dtoid Fight! channel for more Rocket League and Battlegrounds shenanigans, for the time being, and a whole lot of other stuff as we grow. You can also follow on Twitter to stay apprised.

The post Talking the big blue?? monster of the Hudson on Red Rocket League appeared first on Destructoid.

Ride or die or die or die or die or die

Jordan, Brett, Ray and I have been having a blast with the unwieldy-named 100-person battle royale PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. We want to share that blast with you.

Please join us, The D-Team, in our quest to win, win a chicken dinner, and enjoy all the accidental ?team-killing, condiment-ranking (ketchup does kinda suck, to be honest), competitive table jumping, and sweet motorcycle flips along the way.

We're also going to be b??umping things up to 1080p next time. Please underst?and.

The post Sh??otgun choke me, dad?dy: The D-Team squads up for PUBG appeared first on Destructoid.

'Don't get too comfortable boys, we're coming'

It was at 3am, October 12, 2013, and I had just downed about six beers. Crawling through a crush's Facebook page, I went through a year or so of ?their profile pictures. I wished I could have their life. 

Then I got an invite to play this game, Candy Crush. It was basically Yoshi's Cookie but made to be more difficult and time-consuming. It was perfect. Each match got me closer and? closer to happiness. I slowly became whole again. 

CBS' Candy Crush game ??show aired Sunday night and it killed me. 

Candy Crush is a game show that pits four teams of two against each other for $100,000. For the first episode, the teams comprised of various people from CBS reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor. One of the contestants, a pink haired, glitter-hashtag-shirt wearing camera hog, was apparently famous for being Ariana Grande's brother. Every time the camera would pass by he'd stare straight at it, and make some kind of quip like "Don't get too comfortable boys, we're ?coming for you." Why did he say this? Apparently they lost to the other guys or something. 

Look, I don't really know what happened here. This show's big claim to fame is its Guinness World Record winning touchscreen, and each phase of the game has contestants using it to play Candy Crush but on TV and for money. After a few minutes, one of the teams hung from the ceiling as their partner guided them around the giant touchscreen and basically turned their partner into a human crane game. What fucking game was I watching? No seri?ously, I took so??me notes and I still don't really remember how things got from point A to B.

At least Ar?iana Grande's brother, Broriana Grande, was eventually eliminated. He didn't crush candy fast enough or some sh??it.  

Oh Mario Lopez, I love you so much. This golden boy hasn't aged a day since his time as AC Slater, and he has spent the greater part of the decade just trying to get a hosting gig that'll take him to the big time. Extra, Entertainment Tonight, America's Best Dance Crew, and The X Factor were all just misinformed struggles for airtime. But you've finally found your place, buddy. You're finally home. Your home is explaining the rules of Candy Crush and saying things like "match three candies in a line" and "sugar crush" all the while silently begging for death with your? eyes. 

You know, I haven't thought about October 12, 2013 in a long time. But watching these people struggling to swipe a screen really brought me back. Back to the beginning. I too struggled. I-too-struggled. I--struggle. And for what? I'm not competing for $100,000, I don't get to look Mario in the eyes, and when I swipe right it's not for money and fame, it's ?for the chance at a date with someone who will only hurt me.

But you know what won't hurt me? Candy Crush. 

Candy Crush is only here to entertain. 

As the show drew to a close, I was awash in feelings I haven't felt in a long time. The final two teams dueled to the death (or the first to get 50 matching candies), and I was all-in. I was at the edge of my bed, shoveling candy into my maw hoping to mask my inner turmoil with Candy Crush. But it all caught up to me. I began to choke.

Coughing, wheezing, one of my gummy worms had gone down the right pipe. The room got darker, and the walls were closing in. As my eyes filled with tears, I glanced at the TV and saw one of the teams from Survivor had won the $100,000 ?dollars. Good for? them. I hope they have a good life.

I'm glad the last thing I s??aw that night was Mario Lopez beaming at me. You're finally home, buddy. You're fi?nally home.

(Editor's note: Nick is still alive. That's how he wrote this.)

The post I watched the Candy Crush TV show until I died appeared first on Destructoid.

You could spend that time GAMING

_[Image]

Right now, is your bed?? made? If your answer is "no, of course not" congratulations. I am electing you as a? mentor to your peers who answered "Yes" and "No, not right now, but usually."

Look, I get it. We all have to sleep somewhere. Beds are as good an option as any (outside of Japanese futons that get put away during the day -- extra room!). And I'm sure your mother or legal guardian required you to make your bed each day in some attempt towards discipline, the same way the military screams at enlistees until their bunks are perfectly creased at 45 and 90 degree?? angles for no other reason than to make sure they're good at following orders, no matter how stupid. But you're an adult now, right? And not an active member of the United States military? So why are you still making your bed?

Probably habit ??or some unexamined notion of civility. Truth is, t?here's no reason to make your bed. Here's what you should do. Wake up (bleary-eyed and later than is deemed okay by polite society). Immediately reach for your phone, laugh at messages from friends, delete every single email you got overnight, then open broader social media until you shake with rage. Throw off the covers and go to take a piss. Leave your comforter in a pile, however it landed, mimicking the arbitrary, natural beauty of a vast expanse of wind-shaped sand dunes. Your dog will find it more comfortable anyways.

this is a sneaking mission, snake pic.twitter.com/Xy8GzI2i3y

— salafist snake (@poverotti) June 30, 2017

Here's what you shouldn't do: make your bed. You should not straighten out your pillows, one on each side in perfect symmetry. You should not pull your flat sheet taut, creasing it over itself -- frankly, you should not even have a flat sheet. No need to beat your comforter into submission or make sure?? it drapes over each side exactly 8.5 inches. Why would you? You're going to sleep in there tonight anyways.

Undoubtedly charlatans will try to trick you into making your bed, if not by some misguided appeal to decorum (Eat my ass! you respond) then by LOGIC. Oh, why wash your clothes or shower if you're just going to get dirty again, huh? Well, dipshit, because good hygiene prevents the spread of disease and smelling bad in ?publi?c sucks, which is where your body and clothes go. You know what doesn't go in public: your slightly mussed up bed. Who gives a shit?

Seriously, who are you trying to impress? People who subscribe to Better Homes and Gardens? Why? Do you read Better Homes and Gardens? No. You glance at it in the grocery checkout line as you desperately scan the environment, looking for things to look at before the anesthesia of glossy magazines, iconic candy wrappers, and local realtor ads on the dividers funnel you back to staring at a conveyor belt of mid-shelf booze, cereal, and limes. You do this so you don't have to make eye contact with the cashier before it's your turn to fake a smile and warm greeting to a person you've been ten feet away from for several minutes but are pretending to have noticed for the first time. Oh! Didn't notice you there! How nice to see you! I guess while you're here, if you don't mind ringing me up? You never even pick up Better Homes and Gardens and pretend to thumb through it. It could be a porno mag with a sly cover for all you know.&??nbsp;

Stop making your bed.

The post Making your bed is for suckers appeared first on Destructoid.

Yooka Lovely

Yooka-Laylee just got a big ol�patch for the PC and in the near future this will be applied to the console versions later. Yooka-Laylee was well received overall, but a little divisive among the Banjo fans who were really clamouring for its release, with jarring reviews drastically swinging from extreme negatives to gushing positives. People complained the game felt empty, was buggy, and had several irritating components including a divisive quiz component, and the Rextro mini-game elements that people criticized as poorly conceived and tossed in haphazardly in order to pad out the overall content. Others say it felt like a true follow-up to Banjo-Kazooie and that it lived up to their high expectations. But here? we are: it came, a lot of people seemed generally satisfied with it, and although the initial hype has worn off the game isn't finish its run yet with an impending release on the Nintendo Switch coming that could bring in a whole new slew of fans and critics alike in the coming?? months.

I personally found the game to be a charming, effective love letter to the Banjo-Kazooie series that inspired it. At Destructoid, our own Chris Carter gave it a score of 8/10 in stark contrast to some of the more cutting ratings out there. Having played Banjo through again just before it I can understand some of the major complaints people were slinging. The level designs didn’t seem as inventive perhaps. The novelty of a collect-a-thon game in 2017 may have been a little shallow and wasn’t quite what people remembered liking from the N64 era. But I had a good time with it, and to my six-year-old daughter who had never grown up with Banjo, it was a great ??fir??st little foray into the mascot platformer.

I think Yooka-Laylee got the overall reception it deserved; a middle-of-the-road response to what was a reasonably str??ong effort by developer Playtonic, one that delivered overall on its promises even if the game was stalwart to the overall philosophy of emulating what had come before it.

It’s too bad it was surrounded by controversy right before release and it is tough to tell how that affected the game's reception. YouTuber Jon Jafari of JonTron and Game Grumps fame was originally meant to play a small voice acting role before putting his foot so far down his own thro?at that he shit out a shoelace. Playtonic announced that due to his inflammatory rants, he was being removed from the game, and the taint of this reaction is still floating in the air like an errant tuft of flatulence, the most replied post in th??e Steam discussion forum for the game being a bunch of people arguing about the s?emantics of the utterly pointless debacle.

Playtonic wisely chose to focus on the release of the game instead of getting caught up in the bitchy nightmare that followed their statement and it seemed to go over well, with Kickstarter rewards promptly followed up on and delivered, and patches promise to address some of the more niggling issues peo??ple were so i??ncensed about.

The latest patch is almost obscene in the number if issues it addresses. Everything from reduced baby talk dialogue that got on the nerves of most adults to improved sections of the game such as the frustrating mine cart segments and the notorious Rampo boss fight, which had an inherently broken camera angle at release, plus numerous other technical bugs. It’s clear Yooka-Laylee really was a passion project for Playtonic and the fact that a couple months out they are still working to address these issues is a comforting notion, not only for those still currently enjoying Yooka-Laylee, but for t??he Switch port which will have these updates present day one hopefully making for a much smoother e??xperience for newcomers.

Things move super quickly these days, with most games barely getting time to sit on the shelf before everyone moves on to the next thing. Mere weeks after No Man’s Sky famously crapped in its sheets and tossed itself out the window it was repor??ted that the game had been reduced to an abysmal number of active players on Steam. Trust between the developers a??nd the potential player base was crushed under the cataclysmic weight of the game's numerous promises, most of which have still not and likely cannot be met despite developer Hello Games working hard to implement what is admittedly a generous slew of new content.

For multiplayer or early access games, the shelf life of those experiences is much longer and can go on for years. But for a title such as Yooka-Laylee to hold persistent interest is a far more difficult prospect; it’s a single-player adventure game over in a handful of hours with no compelling multiplayer or online component. While Yooka-Laylee enjoyed a decent little price cut during the Steam Summer Sale, there is no real compelling reason for people who have finished the game to go back and play again in terms of ??new, engaging content. So it’s even more encouraging to see Playtonic continue to support a game that has effectively ended its initial “run�when they could really just leave it as is,?? squash the more egregious bugs, and move on to their next project.

I was able to get in touch with Playtonic studio head Gavin Price, who while reluctant to impart any potential information about a Yooka-Laylee fo??llow-up, was kind enough to share his thoughts on continuing to ??patch the game in major ways long after the initial release.

“We’ve always had a great connection with the community �they’re the reason we exist in the first place �and so we want to make sure we’re doing right by them with every decision we make as a studio, both now and going forward. Following Yooka-Laylee’s release there was a lot of very clear, constructive feedback from fans on how they felt we could improve the game, so ?it made total sense to us to get back to work and bring it all to life.

There’s a mountain-load of improvement we’ve added based directly on player feedback. This benefits not just existing players, but new ones who decide to purchase Yooka-Laylee in the on-going Summer sales, and of course future players on Nintendo Switch, who’ll hopefully appreciate these changes and addit??ions, available for them on day one.

The team is really proud of what we’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time with a tiny (but experienced) team, especially considering we had to build a company at the same time. Not long ago we were sat in an office the size of a gents toilet, and now we’ve more than tripled in size and have a debut game (and our own IP) on the shelves.�/p>

Yooka-Laylee coming out on the Nintendo Switch might end up being very good timing for Playtonic. The Switch has been selling gangbusters and while there is a fairly steady trickle of content, the platformer gen??re is a good fit for the Switch. There may be a nostalgic carry over that comes along with playing it on a Nintendo console th?at hearkens back to the 64 days that people will find appealing as well.

With the Switch release impending, the final verdict on the success of Playtonic’s flagship title is not in yet, but it’d be really nice to see them own it and produce a sequel or even something else entirely. You can tell Playtonic has a lot of passion for what they do, and in retrospect I think Yooka-Laylee is a pretty exemplary case of a successful Kickstarter project, and a fun game overal??l despite failing to live up to the expectations of some of the genre's more die-hard fans.

The post Yooka-Laylee still get??ting love from Playtonic leading?? up to Switch release appeared first on Destructoid.

A mouthful of blood

There is a poison coursing through the veins of Darkest Dungeon’s latest expansion. A malignant and cruel thing, a toxin that burns red hot and never lets up. But, if there is one theme that runs throughout the entire Crimson Court expansion, it’s that pleasure m?ay be found? through suffering.

Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court (PC)
Developer: Red Hook Studios
Publisher: Red Hook Studios
Released: June 19, 2017
MSRP: $9.99

Darkest Dungeon has changed a lot in the past year since release. If you haven’t played it since it launched, you may scarcel?y recognize its twis?ted halls and grotesque beasts. Additions such as random town events, adjustable difficulty modifiers (perfect if, like me, you loved the original but couldn’t tolerate the endgame grind), and unimaginably cruel new enemies have already elevated the game well beyond what it once was.

But, while all of these additions represented incremental improvements, The Crimson Court represents a sea change. It takes the building blocks of the dungeon you know and stacks new, bizarre architectural tortures on top of them. It warps familiar mechanics in new and unexpected ways. It finds fiendishly original methods of ratcheting up the pressure as you juggle the physical and mental health of your heroes, along with the management of the Hamlet. There is a dark imagination at the core of The Crimson Court; an admira?ble (if somewhat disturbing) dedication to finding ne?w ways to twist the knife.

The titular Crimson Court is present in the form of an all-new area to explore. ?It's a whole new dungeon, set of ruined opulence and corruption, complete with an “aristocracy as bloodsucking vampires” theme (a message I can get behind). There are, of course, new curios and traps to discover as you would expect, but Court missions deviate from the standard affair in much more interesting ways.

The main Crimson Court quest line features a series of massive, sprawling, predetermined maps (rather than randomly generated tiles) similar to the final dungeons of the base game. These missions are parceled out over time, requiring certain conditions or items to access. But the differences don’t end there. Torch light is rep?laced with bloodlight (more stressful to wander in, but at least you don’t have to cart around a bundle of sticks). Firewood for camping must be foraged for, the respite of camping limited to rare and lucky finds inside the dungeon itself. Most interestingly of all though, you can abandon the mission at any time and not lose any progress. Leave the mission, and you'll be placed back exactly where you left off when you come back. In fact, you’re encouraged to take multiple trips through each dungeon.

This is a good thing, as it’s doubtful any party could make it end-to-end in the Court’s largest dungeons (which includ??e upward of a hundred rooms). Locked gates bar your progress, necessitating painful backtracking to find keys, and never-ending spawns of enemies dog your every step. These ??aren't missions, they're expeditions.

The monsters of the Court stretch the tactical limits of Darkest Dungeon’s combat system to the brink. Rather than just slather on the health and damage to make the Court’s inhabitants dangerous, the Bloodsuckers have access to a hug??e variety of unique moves and abilities that makes the??m both equally frustrating and satisfying to fight. You might think It’s bad enough that almost every vampiric enemy has the ability to heal themselves by inflicting damage, but that self-heal also triggers a unique secondary form for most of them, further expanding their arsenal of attacks. Learning how to take on each new enemy is a painfully fun process.

From constant line-up shuffles moving both your party and the available targets around (meaning your best-laid plans might be upended before you get the chance to strike) to devastating support units and AoE attacks, just the rank and file beasts of the expansion represent a real threat. If you had grown bored with Darkest Dungeon’s conventional challenges, Crimson Court will give you an ample supply of new miseries to sampl??e.

The most unique mechanics have, appropriately enough, been saved for the boss characters. I won’t spoil any of them here, but I was genuinely surprised at how devious a?nd novel some of the fights are. Just remember that discretion is sometimes the better part of valor, and there is a reason you can abandon these quests without los??ing progress.

Most insidious of all is the presence of the Crimson Curse. Each Bloodsucker enemy has the potential to infect a hero with the vampire disease, rendering that hero addicted to blood. This is a double edged sword - the blood can temporarily empower a hero to new heights, ?but it can also render a hero useless as they waste away without their fix, to the point of death.

The problem is, blood is a rare and precious commodity, only available as a drop from Bloodsuckers (who show up randomly in other dunge?ons outside the Court) or in a ??limited quantity through an expensive addition to the Hamlet (part of the new, but generally forgettable Districts system added in the expansion). Get too many heroes addicted at the same time, and your ranks will begin to thin as need outpaces supply.

Thankfully, you’re not alone facing these new challenges. A new hero ??has been introduced to the Hamlet, the Flagellant, a crazed masochist whose entire move set relies around riding the edge between life and death to tap? into greater power.

At first blush, the Flagellant might not make sense. He has limited punch but high damage-over-time. He has moves that ??hurt himself to strengthen his allies. The ability to self-heal, but only when he’s close to death. Camping skills that add stress rather than decrease it. It takes some experimentation with his unique style and “rapturous” response to stress to understand his role on a team, but once you do, he becomes a powerful hybrid front-line/support unit that may occasionally lash one of his teammates to bloody strips (you take the good with the unhinged, I guess).

All of these new mechanics and characters weave together to create something unique and special in this expansion. But while there is plenty to praise, it has to be said that with The Crimson Court, Darkest Dungeon finally commits some of the most grievous of sins it has been always u?nfairly accused of.

This expansion marks the first time I felt like the game was hon??estly and blatantly unfair.

It starts on the first Court mission, where the game actively lies to you. Labeled as an apprentice? dungeon for low-level characters, the mission contains a boss encounter mid-way through that is all but guaranteed to result in a wipe unless you brought a very fortunate team composition, or immediately flee (or were n?aughty and spoiled it in advance). Just ask anyone who has played the new expansion about the “apex predator” and watch them shiver.

If that was the worst of it, I’d shrug it off. One “gotcha” style ambush in a game known for its cruelty might be irksome, but not unacceptable. The real culprit that tips the finely tuned balance point between “hurts so good&r?dquo; and “please, God, make it stop” is the Fanatic, a roaming boss that hunts ??teams with heroes afflicted with the Crimson Curse, showing up mid-mission as a random encounter.

The Fanatic is cheap. As someone who has played through the game multiple times, fought through Collector ambushes, dispatched Brigand Vvulf, and tussled with the Shrieker, I can safely say the Fanatic is the most annoying and unfair boss encounter in the game. Unlike the other new bosses, this frustration isn’t the result of interesting new mechanics. What the Fanatic does is similar to other bosses - he ties one of yo??ur heroes to a burning stake just like the Hag throws one of them in a cooking pot, he marks heroes for big follow-up damage like the Swing King, he takes multiple actions per turn like the Shriek??er - only for more damage, stress, and status effects.

Aside from immediately removing one hero from the fight, the Fanatic always surprises the party when he appears, shuffling the lineup. Most of his attacks not only do tremendous damage and a pile of stress, but can either stun the charact?er or move them to and fro through the lineup. He’s durable as hell, has high resistances to all status effects, and never stops attacking. It’s a DPS race where he has a head start and you have to run uphill and barefoot.

Unless you have a custom-tailored party for the encounter with fully upgraded gear and specific trinkets, you don’t stand a chance. And sure, plenty of bosses in Darkest Dungeon require a specialized approach, but none of them just jump you in the middle of a hallway on a random mission. The only saving grace is the loading screen will give you a heads-up when the Fanatic is primed to spawn in a dungeon. This gives you the unenviable chance to abandon the mission (adding stress to those fleeing) and either cobble together a team that might be able to put up a fight, or find a batch of disposable heroes to feed to him - because once the Fanatic is on your trail, you have to fight him.

Between the Fanatic, the surprise mini-b??oss, the pressures of the curse, and the dizzying array of new and brutal enemies, the expansion poses an interesting proposition.

By and large, I think The Crimson Court is an amazing expansi??on that radically alters the game for the better. It does what the best expansions do, and builds on what’s been established in new and surprising ways, expanding the confines of what you can do and have done to you all at the same time.

That said, I think The Crimson Court can be just as overwhelming and suffocating as it is liberating. Even as a veteran dungeon diver, there were times where I felt completely lost and hopeless as my heroes either withered in the Hamlet, starving for blood, slunk back to town bent from afflictions and stress in failed attempts again??st the Court’s bosses, or were mercilessly burned at the stake by the Fanatic.

Darkest Dungeon offers a solution, but it's an odd one. The DLC and its specific parts (the new character, the districts, the Court itself) can be enabled individually at any time during a playthrough. It seems bizarre; I wholeheartedly recommend this expansion, BUT, also leaving most of it turned off for the first half of the game or so.

If you’re new to the dungeon or it's been a long time since you ventured into its depths, do yourself a favor and get your sea legs ready before wading into the bloody pools of The Crimson Court. If you’re an experienced delver looking for a new challenge, then by all means, step into the moonlight ?and find out what the night has in store for you.

_{[This review is based on a retail? build of the gam??e provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court appeared first on Destructoid.

Uncharted: Fable's Fortune

I remember a surprising amount about the plot to Fable III, considering that I stopped actively thinking about it once the credits rolled some seven-odd years ago. I remember you were a prince, and your brother was the king, but he was a mean king. You had to put together a scrappy gang and overthrow your evil brother, only it turns out he was being a despotic ruler because he needed to save money to defend Albion from some generic evil threa??t. I think the morally ambiguous guy from the last game showed up. Then you leave your Xbox ?on for like three days while money just kind of accumulates.

That summary was what I rattled off to the developers of Fable Fortune when they asked me if I've ever played a Fable game. It's a fair question! Anecdotally, people don't care about Fable – in part because the studio behind the series was closed last year and Microsoft cancelled that free-to-play co-op game. Fable isn't being scrubbed from the public consciousness because of any active disinterest, it's just that pop culture only has so much room for middling role-playing franchises. When I ask people about Fable, all they ever remember is "chicken chaser" in a bad Cockn??ey accent.

So I'm not the only one who finds Fable Fortune – a Kickstarted card game featuring Fable characters and iconongraphy – extremely curious. The collectible card game (CCG) space is well-tread in video games, with Hearthstone tearing it up on just about every platform. You could make a play for that genre by stapling your game to an established franchise, like The Witcher and Gwent, which Fable Fortune is almost certainly trying to do. As a game, Fortune is nothing to sneeze at, borrowing from Hearthstone by keeping things simple while still making each deck fun to play. But that Fable name might end up being more of an albatross than anything else – at best it mi?ght evoke a franchise players forgot ??because it was too uneven to remember.

Stop me if you've heard this one: in Hearthstone Fable Fortune, you play a Hero with special Hero Powers. Using those powers as well as summoning monsters or casting spells all pulls from the same pool of mana gold pieces. Monsters have an attack stat and a health stat, and they die when that health stat drops to zero. Both players have a health pool that monsters can attack, and when that runs out, you lose – that mechanic is not unique to Hearthstone by any stretch, but the UI for health and hero powers in Fortune&n??bsp;feels deliberately evocative of Blizzard's über-popular card game.

It's just as fun as Hearthstone, too! The risk-reward of spending all your gold on a potentially game-changing card, worrying all the while that your opponent will counter on their next turn is as suspenseful as ever. I've always been a "spam the field with creatures" man, which is even more satisfying in Fortune than it was in Hearthstone.

Fortune does have a unique hook – and maybe the biggest tie to the Fable universe – in the addition of a "quest" system. At the beginning of the round, you? pick an objective for the rest of the match, like spending [x] amount of gold or casting [x] amount of spells. Once you hit that objective, you're given a little bit of backstory and a decision between a Good or Evil plot development that changes your alignment. Evil buffs the damage you do to your opponent's life, and Good will give you a little bit of healing to go with you?r damage. I can see use cases for both

Pulling from Hearthstone is not really a bad thing – that game's clean visual language has become almost second nature to Hearthstone players, so having that be Fable Fortune's main point of inspiration significantly lowers the entry barrier. But on the other hand, if Hearthstone fans already have Hearthstone, why would they bother with a new game? Why pay for new cards and packs when you could stick with the ecosystem you've already bought into? Curiosity will assuredly drive some established CCG fans (like my roommate) to Fortune, but I suspect that – like so many reheated Applebee's lunch specials – they'll cool on it faster than you might expect. If you have yet to get into a free-to-play card game or if you're absolutely dying for more Fable content, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Fable Fortune, but card game veterans might get more for their money and time out of the radically different Gwent.

The post Fable Fortune is a very fun card game chained t?o a very dead franchise appeared first on Destructoid.

Dinosaur supervisor

Capcom debuted a new Monster Hunter at Sony's E3 press conference. Monster Hunter World is com??ing early 2018 to PS4 and Xbox One, with a PC version "comin?g at a later date."

The trailer featured lush jungle environments with slithering, screeching dinos and wider open vistas. I loved seeing the dude throwing the ghille suit to stealth attack a 30-foot dino. The hookshot was ??pretty badass too.

The post We’re getting Monster Hunter: World next year appeared first on Destructoid.

The End is Nigh

Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac designer Edmund McMillen has been off creating a new platformer with Tyler Glaiel (Closure, The Basement Collection) that fans of the former game will probably be way, way into. It's called The End is Nigh and it's coming to Ste?am on July 12, 2017 with a Ninte?ndo Switch port and "possibly more" console versions happening sometime later.

Prior to today's reveal, the only thing I knew about the project was that it was a platformer that employed the vocal talents of Rich Evans from Red Letter Media. The End is Nigh is a 600+ level, 12+ chapter "sprawling adventure platformer where the player takes control over Ash, one of few 'things' that have 'survived' the 'end of the world.'" There are secrets to suss out and (what I imagine will be) infuriatingly just-out-of-reach collectibles to gather as well. Another bullet point? "Stress."

McMillen has more details in a separate blog post where he says The End is Nigh "embodies aspects of basically every game [he's] ever created." Some general housekeeping: this game is not 0uroboros, although "themes from it did bleed a great deal into [Nigh]"; The Legend of Bum-bo is still happening; and from now on he intends to only "announce? stuff a month or two before release."

The End Is Nigh [Steam]

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Retro is a state of mind

A long time ago, Destructoid hosted a podcast called RetroForce Go! It ran for 100 episodes and was beloved by legions, but nothing good lasts forever. However, just because so?mething's gone doesn't mean you can't make something that's almost ??as good.

Retroid is meant to be a spiritual successor to RetroForce Go! and to that end, I was fortunate that Alex Ryan (aka Dyson) and Topher Cantler agreed to join me for the first episode, as did our own Jonathan Holmes. You can give our initial episode a listen below, or head to SoundCloud to download it directly.

Our intro music is the title theme from Sunsoft's Journey to Silius. We begin by talking about what RetroForce Go! was, its influence, and how Retroid came to be. The Twitch conversation I mentioned was archived and can be viewed here. 

From 14:45 to 51:00 we talk about what the heck does "Retro" mean, anyway? Turns out it's pretty hard to define! We discuss vintage hardware, mechanics, Shovel Knight, Mega Man 9, Breath of the Wild, other open world games, Majora's Mask, and phone games.

Our interlude at 51:00 is the Town theme from Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap Remastered.

From 51:30 to 1:12:45 we talk about recent remakes and?? retro releases, and which games we ??would remaster.

The? interlude at 1:12??:45 is the song that plays on the NES Classic home screen.

From 1:13:15 to the end of the show we cover the NES Classic and decide that we're al??l Wii U hipst??ers.

Our ending music is NES Metroid Ending - arrange version by nicoMS0122 on YouTube.

We didn't have space in the show to get to your comments this time, but I intend to in future episodes. If you left a comment on the announcement article, don't worry, we'll get to those soon. You can also send comments to @RetroidPodcast on Twitter any time. I'm looking forward to doing more of these, so I hope you guys enjoy ??our first episod??e. Let me know what you think!

The post We have a new podcast and it’s a spiritual successor to RetroForce Go appeared first on Destructoid.

Free-roam golf is my jam

Over the weekend, Sony and Clap Hanz ran a closed online test for Everybody's Golf and despite spending a good several hours with it (playing as a wise blue-skinned golf dad, like you do), I deeply regret not sneaking in even more time with the upcoming PS4 game. To say the beta won me over is an understatement. I'm genuinely? bummed i??t's over and that the full release isn't until August.

The beta offered access to the e?xtensive character creator, a taste of progression (play well with a club and you'll improve things like power and control), the store, the hectic team-based Turf War mode, and one of the online "Open Courses," Eagle City, with nine holes. So no fishing or cart driving, sadly.

The actual golfing felt as mechanically solid, satisfying, and fun as ever to me. That should come as no surprise. What was surprising was just how much entertainment I got out of running (and occasionally swimming) around an open-ended course with other players, chatting, golfing, people watching, and goofing off. I don't mean to alarm you, but one of the built-in chat mess??ages is the shruggie.

One of my fears coming in was that the courses would be too much of a slog to navigate, but that wasn't the case (at least not in this level). The holes are well-labeled no matter where you are on the course, plus you've got a minimap for good measure and your running speed is pretty quick. There are also multiple camera options, including one high-up aerial view that makes it easy to wa?tch a bunch of golf balls soar. Is this game much of a looker? No, but that didn't matter at all as I was playing.

As for the "live" online aspect and everything that can entail, the game ran well in my experience. That goes for both the Open Course environment and also Turf War mode, the latter of which had my team and another duking it out for control of a few holes within a? time limit. Obviously the online stuff has the potential to go wrong in the full game when way more people are trying to p?lay, to say nothing of jerks being bad to one another with text-based chat. Hopefully the launch goes smoothly.

I can't promise all long-time Hot Shots Golf fans that they'll dig this game as much as I did (in part because I'm an inconsistent-at-best fan of the series who is no doubt easier to please), but if you're adamant about sticking to the pure golfing over free-roam shenanigans, the beta did have a menu option to teleport to each hole back to back without the need to physically run around. I have to imagine Everybody's Golf will still cater ?to folks who prefer the old format with more options like that. I feel like you'd be missing out on a lot of the laid-back social-gathering charm, but to each their own.

As for me, I'll be counting ?the days until August 29. The water calls.

The post Everybody’s Golf really won me over with its online beta appeared first on Destructoid.

Game within a game

There are two kinds of people in this world. One uses Minecraft's endless possibility to make dicks, the other builds a complete fantasy MMO with over 100 quests, guilds, and more. That's Wynncraft, a full-featured MMO four years in the making that you can play right now for free if you have a copy of Minecraft. Just add the server.

The site boasts Wynncraft has a million unique users, with over a thousand online right now. And there's a huge world for these folks to explore. Look at this full map (you can even zoom in).

The post Wynncraft is a ful??l, free fantasy MMO built within Minecraft appeared first on Destructoid.

A conversation on curating little strange creations

It's easy to take video games for granted. There's just so many of them. By May 2017 alone, over 50 games have had physical releases, in addition to the thousands of titles launched digitally on platforms like Steam. A staggering amount of them were met with critical and commercial praise. The culture surrounding video games, too, is pervasive. People openly care about games. They slip Zelda references into normal conversations and wear sweatshirts emblazoned with Mass Effect logos in public. It's easy to be a fan of video games now because commercials for major franchises play during the Super Bowl. Like light beer and oversized trucks, video games are a token of modern existence, because we? see them on TV.

But there's a growing scene of games that thrives in the underground. An increase in readily accessible development tools -- like the GameMaker and Unity suites -- allowed an entire ?subculture of creators to hone their craft, far removed from the blinding limelight of AAA releases. Out in the margins, a world of niche, low-budget homebrew games exist. There's a shocking amount of them; weird? little concoctions that seek to defy convention and intensely personal artistic expressions that feel so far abstracted from what most people consider a video game that they're usually referred to as "altgames."

Unless, of course, you're Steve Cook. He prefer?s the term "trashgames."

1,000 gamemakers thread, 1 tweet at a time.
#1 @q_dork: //t.co/Mjj3WHDx8h pic.twitter.com/KROxdmsnGp

— trashymctrashboy (@moshboy) May 14, 2016

Cook, who goes by the handle @moshboy on Twitter, is something of a video game curator. He rose to prominence in early 2014 following the release of The Pirate Bay Bundle, a collection of 100 games uploaded to the popular torrent site of the same name. The release, though unceremonious at first, picked up steam after numerous gaming publicatio??ns covered it. Cook's intentions for the Bundle were simple -- a way to highlight a series of small, strange little games that would otherwise be forgotten.

"The Pirate Bay Bundle came from a random thought," Cook told me in a recent email. "I didn't think people ?would even be interested, or that I'd even get p?ermission to put people's [video games] in there."

Despite tempered expectations, the Bundle took off, garnering the attention of press outlets and fans alike. Its enduring success, however, is just the tip of the? curating iceberg. Over three years later, Cook is finishing up his biggest project yet: a Twitter thread highlighting 1,000 tiny games made by a diverse collection of independent -- and largely unknown -- developers.

To look at Cook's thread is to experience sensory overload. It's an explosion of GIFs featuring low-poly models and jarring tilesets. To the untrained eye, most of the games featured might look amate??urish, but to him, that's the whole point.

"I think it was my l??ate teens when I felt that mainstream games were pushing me away," Cook said. "There was a continually increasing focus on everything being 3D, and larger and large??r budgets [for games]. It drove me to the opposite side of video games; the video games that I felt as few people cared about as possible: freeware games."

Cook's interest in freeware games and his passion for curating and sharing people's work serves as the core "thesis" of his m??assive Twitter thread. "The thread came to me as an idea to prove to myself that I could find 1,000 different gamemakers."

Now, over a year into the curating process, Cook nears the thousa?nd-game milestone. There are currently 958 games in the thread, ranging from little vaporwave-like mood pieces to fully 3D, isometric stealth games. Just combing through the list takes patience -- the breadt?h of titles contained is nothing short of staggering -- but to play through all of them seems overwhelming.

Cook, though, has played every single game in the threa??d. Sometimes it's only for a minute or two, he said, just to get a feel for a creator's work. Other times, he plays for much longer than he originally anticipated. "A lot of what catches my eye depends on my mood."

Scrolling through Cook's thread, it's difficult not to be impressed. The games he's found are a wild and eclectic lot. Most of them are made by developers who simply want to create in their free time. Many are completely unkn??own to the games industry at large. There's a sense of life and movement that persists through the list; a creative bug that's irresistible and inspiring. They may not be pretty -- and in fact, most of them aren't -- but there's magic in each game's raw form.

"There is beauty," Cook said, "even in deeply ??flawed games."

here are some quick notes i took re: what i wanted the thread to achieve if anyone is interested in writing about it & asking me questions pic.twitter.com/ya1uizViZR

— trashymctrashboy (@moshboy) April 24, 2017

And while the off-kilter collection's beauty might not resonate with everyone, Cook's enduring philosophy about video games surely ??will. When as??ked about what he hopes the key takeaway from his Twitter thread will be, Cook responded with the quote below:

"I want people to understand that everyone -- from the most experienced gamemakers to the amateurs -- can all learn something from each other. I want to show the underbelly of video games, the video games that people were least likely ever to see. I'd love it if people approached this thread with an open mind. I want to inspire more people to become curators for these alternative t??ypes of games because we could sure as hell use more."

Though Cook's curated thread is ultimately just that: a long, seemingly endles?s thread of bouncing GIFs and links to developer websites, it's the passion and dedication that elevates it. Over the course of the last year -- and earlier, as he has curated games in one way or another for more than a decade -- Cook has sought out anything that might inspire another person. "I really want people to understand that there is value in their work," he said. "So many assume that because hardly anyone is playing a game that they made, and no-one is giving them feedback that their work is rubbish." Nothing is off limits when it comes to Cook's c??urating, so long as it does something honest, and something different. 

?As his thread marches towards its 1,00??0th entry, he seems excited -- and a bit relieved -- that a conclusion is in sight.

"I thought it would take me twice as long," Cook said, "which is why I never bother??ed to set a t??ime frame for myself in the first place."

_{[Header image via Friedrich Hanisch]}

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Hands-off preview of the 'survival city-builder'

Space used to be the place, but in recent years our collective focus has narrowed to Mars. It's likely that enough teens stricken with the millennium bug spent the year 2000 exchanging heavy pets in suburban movie theatres, subliminally associating their raging teen hormones with Red Planet and Mission to Mars. Now we've gone so far as to send a robot there and treat it like a WALL-E sequel.

The existential threat of our dying world, sci-fi hypochondria come true, has our scientific minds pointed at Mars and the I fucking love science! crowd is along for the entertainment and pretty pictures. Anyone not so unmoored from the blue planet as to sign up for a one-way trip spaceward will at least be able to play pretend soon with Surviving Mars, building up successf?ul Martian society unti??l flooding shorts out their PCs and consoles. 

Surviving Mars (PC, PS4, Xbox One) is a "deep city building game that takes place on the planet Mars." It's being developed by Haemimont Games of Tropico fame and was announced last week by publisher Paradox, the lone new game revealed at Paradox Con 2017 (though the news that Civilization V lead designer Jon Shafer is joining Paradox Development Studio might mean the developer/publis??her has more up its sleeve). 

At PDX Con, we were shown a hands-off, "pre-alpha" version of Surviving Mars, meaning, "everything can and probably will be changed in the final ?game." The little details, I imagine. For example, choosing a mission sponsor. Your martian colony starts with a rocket ship landed on Mars' surface, but before that you choose a sponsor  (USA, Russia, and the EU were three of the current options) which given different starting stats. That, coupled with your starting location and its available resources (metals, concrete, water) and possible threats (dust storms, meteors, extreme cold) give you a? Challenge Rating before you even land on a lifeless hunk of rock.

After choosing a landing spot, you begin orchestrating unmanned exploration with rovers and the like. People come far later. After all, rocket trips are expensive, and depending on your mission sponsor, you may not have many rockets a??t your d??isposal. Further, they can't haul much. Building a viable martian colony requires finding resources for building on Mars itself, in order to build things like water extractors that haul up frozen H2O from deep underground or even to make enough fuel to send your rocket back to earth.

We were shown an early build-out that included cute little drones milling about (with headlights when it gets dark), darting between arrays of solar panels, wind turbines (for continued energy production at night) and what looked like a combine, but for harvesting concrete. Early stuff. I'm not sure about the combine, but the tech in?? the game is meant to be based on current, actual research and reaso?nable extrapolations of things science is doing at the moment, though I imagine there will be some leeway.

Fast forward and we have our first dome, filled with people. There's even a (space) bar. Once you start getting people? out there, humans can start researching the environment and advancing technology more quickly. But there's no guarantee of a working society -- or even getting to that phase.

"You can fail. It's a survival city-builder." It's even in the name! All your colonists are named, have jobs, and can be tracked. Haemimont promises "??thousands of individual actors" running in the simulation, even on consoles. And these actors can go rogue. If their comfort level drops too low (maybe a deep chill freezes everyone's water supply for a bit too long), they may take the next rocket back to earth. If their morale declines, they may even commit (space) crimes. Colonists have different traits, too, and as you add colonies, long-range transportation in between may change the character of each dome. You're even allowed to screen for specific traits of invitees, though I'm not sure if getting to the procreation stage will ruin your perfect space societies of dutiful workers when they give birth to entitled millenials. I'm sure you can ship the problem offspring off to some kind of camp, or something. After all, "the government is you," we're told.

I'm not sure I will even be able to build a functioning society on Mars let alone reach the end goal of fully-automated luxury gay space communism, but Surviving Mars is a sandbox that ?is looking to give you the tools to succeed, provided we all survive 2017.

The post Surviving Mars isn’t afraid to let you die on the red planet appeared first on Destructoid.

Cos I can always give my PC port to yooooou!

Earlier this year, I binged my way through Psycho-Pass and quickly declared it the best anime I'd ever seen in over a decade. Granted, it was the only anime I'd watched in over a decade as Paranoia Agent had pushed the bar to unfeasible heights, but Psycho-Pass finally hit all the right notes. Its mix of Blade Runner and Minority Report, Hannibal mind games, and a familiar criticism of Japanese isolationism made for an exciting blend of hardboiled thrills and thoughtful philosophy. Plus, people exploded, like a lot.

And despite the internet believing it was worse than 9/11, Psycho-Pass 2 wasn't all that bad (no, Psycho-Pass: The Movie was the awful one). Still, diminishing returns hasn't stopped me from wanting more of the universe, and given the show's popularity, someone also saw money in that. TV tie-ins are all but dead in today's climate, but even without my bias and Josh Tolentino's favourable review, Mandatory Happiness is a decent stab at?? bringing licensed games back.

If you're unaware of the show, the basic premise is this: 100 years from now, Japan is? governed by the Sybil System; a computer program designed to micro-manage everyone's lives for the maximum level of social harmony. Crime is virtually non-existent and stress is seen as a viral disease. People have to carefully manage their Hue, a colour chart designed to measure their stress levels, so the cloudier and darker it gets, the more likely their Crime Coefficient? will rise. Those with high CCs are deemed "latent criminals" and are removed from society.

This morally grey task is given to the MWPSB (Ministry of Welfare Public Safety Bureau); "detectives" who track down suspects, and if possible, eliminate the worst of them by lethal force. It's a dirty job, so only latent criminals called Enforcers can do it, and always on a short leash by their respective Inspectors. Needless to say, peace comes at a cost, both mentally and physically.

Set early on in the first series, Mandatory Happiness puts you into the shoes of two new characters, Enforcer Takuma Tsurugi and Inspector Nadeshiko Kugatachi. The hot-headed Tsuguri is an Enforcer by choice, using it as a means to track down his missing childhood friend, while Kugatachi is an amnesiac with a cold demeanor ideal for Inspector status. Along wit??h the main cast of Division 1, they partner up on a case invol??ving Tsuguri's home town, where several random incidents trace back to one mysterious boy.

All in all, Mandatory Happiness is less of a visual novel and more in line with your average two-part serial. It's a brisk read; reliant on branching paths and decisions that evoke the tough choices made throughout the show. While it never quite emulates the slow burning dilemmas that made Psycho-Pass popular, it's still one of the better examples of a licensed game, due to its understanding of the source material; he??lped in no small part by having first series' writer, Gen ??Urobuchi, on board.

Kogami might be the fan favourite, but that doesn't mean his brutal methods are the best choice or that Ginoza's reliance on the Sybil System makes him a terrible detective. Mandatory Happiness might essentially be fan service, but its not sycophantic. By testing viewer loyalty and exploring the dynamic of Inspectors and Enforcers, Mandatory Happiness' ??decisions have? weight to them, even when they're arbitrary.

Even though you're essentially playing the same story twice, both Tsuguri and Kugatachi play/read somewhat differently. The Enforcer's decisions are more brash, while the Inspector is more reserved. It also helps that between the bigger beats, their personal stories and interactions veer off into wildly different directi??ons.

Though well written, Mandatory Happiness requires several playthroughs to see the whole picture, along with some very unsatisfactory "true" endings. It's a story that leans heavily on twists and turns, but when they're so telegraphed, repeated plays for the best ending deflates the reward. While it's not quite Steins;Gate or 999, it's certainly more invested than Telltale Games' recent output, to which it shares some?? mild similarities with.

Being a visual novel, there not much to talk about its re-release as a PC port. It's actually a considered affair, with some nice touches like the Chibi-Akane mouse cursor, fully customisable controls (pad included), and volume levels for every character??. Graphical resolution goes up to a crisp 1920x1080p with the option to play full screen or windowed. It also accommodates for Intel HD laptops, which is always nice when I just want to couch play.

The only real negative about the resolution is that reveals some of the corner cutting with its digital art. The cast look perfect and clean, but for the dramatic scenes, lines look jaggy and even in static, the art rarely matches t??he quality of the series.

That's really down to a lack of budget, given how much of the big action moments are written and rarely seen, but some minor smoothing out could've helped. Despite all that, Mandatory Happiness' PC port clearly had more effort put into it than the lackluster treatment of Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters, an otherwise excellent visual novel.

Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness is clearly "one for the fans," but it also does right by them. After a quiet launch on consoles, it's good to see it get a second chance on PC. Being based on a hit TV show, Mandatory Happiness bring??s something fresh and accessible to the usual visual novel fare.

Also, as someone who collects licensed games (don't ask, it's a love affair that started with The X-Files and almost ended with Lost: Via Domus), it's just a joy to see a solid license for once. Sure, it's not going to kickstart a TV tie-in revolution nor does it come close to the quality of Westwood's Blade Runner, but it is a great example of what happens to the concept when you respec??t and care for the material at hand.

The post PC Port Report: Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness appeared first on Destructoid.

Where's Beaumont when you need him

Although most people don't keep an eye out for Call of Duty DLC, Infinite Warfare's first pack, Sabotage, arguably topped the main game. It delivered a Jason-esque camp theme fo??r its stellar zombie mode, and managed to nicely balance the "far future" theme with Renaissance, Infinity W??ard's take on Venice.

Continuum is unfortunately a step back, as it eases a little too unc??omfortably into the conventions it already set last November.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: Continuum (PC, PS4 [reviewed], Xbox One)
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Released: April 18, 2017 (PS4) / TBA (PC, Xbox One)
MSRP: $14.99 ($50 Season Pass for four packs)

As the obligatory remake of the bunch, Excess is a re-imagining of Modern Warfare 2's Rust -- you know, that oil yard map. You remember, right??? That one in the desert? No? Same. Every map has it?s fans, but I'm struggling to think of why anyone would pine for Rust's return.

Excess is a marked improvement with its snazzy metropolis theme, but that idea has been done so many times in multiple "far future" lines that it's not exactly novel (I wonder how people will take to ??the upcoming game, which returns to the series' roots). I do enjoy its open setup and the signature attention to detail, but it's not a particularly memorable part of the rotation. It's like a junkier wing of Turista (another map in the same DLC).

Every Call of Duty map developer seems to be contractually obligated to occasionally provide a dull entry so the rest of the add-ons seem exciting by comparison. S?crap takes the bullet this time.

While there's plenty of opportunities for choke-points and interesting objective play, the "moon junkyard" motif really isn't doing it for me. It kind of exposes the limits of the space concept for Infinite Warfare in general -- while the team could have gone really out there and given us something alien (DLC is the perfect opport?unity to be weird), or something new, we return to the moon.

There's one cool mechanic that involves ??jumping up onto a magnetic piece of machinery to invert your avatar, but it's not very practical and is limited to a few locations.

Turista is a little more rock and roll. It's a high-tech resort that's housed inside of an alien creature's skeleton, which is basically as metal as it gets in a sci-fi Call of Duty. A looming Halo-esque bone setpiece towers above you as you play and a??dds a good amount of atmosphere, and the (not obvious) three-lane setup ensures that it's easy to acclimate to on any playlist.

It's a beautiful level that pushes the engine and the design limitations that many of Infinite Warfare's base maps suffer from.

Archive does enough to fit in as a premium map, with a distinct focus on indoor combat. The whole art gallery gimmick doesn't go nearly far enough (half a shark body coming out of the ground is funny for a moment, yet you cannot, I repeat cannot throw grenades into its mouth!), but it's bright and full of life, which beats out a lot of other maps. As? well as it plays, I hope actual far future art is a little more punchy than this reality.

It can't be understated how much effort w??as put into the gallery though -- the Andy Warhol cat pictures series is a nice touch, and I can't believe you can read each individual placard (we've come a long way when it comes to FPS map aesthetic??s).

Of course all roads lead to zombies, and most of you are probably picking up Continuum for its main course, Shaolin Shuffle. The comedic stylings of Kevin Smith (which, as polarizing as Smith is, fit well in the last DLC) have been subbed out for veteran actress Pam Grier, who is a pretty good get even if she's underutilized. I have a massive sweet spot for the disco era, and the Netflix show Get Down has allowed me to indulge in that fix, but I could always use more. This mostly delivers by taking some risks, even if they don't all pay o??ff.

There are so many absurd and uniqu?e ideas in this DLC that really make the case for a standalone zombie game. Four individual kung-fu combat styles (and great-feeling weapons like swords) that embolden the typically weak melee system are the highlight, as is the disco dance floor, punk mosh pit trap, and a mutated former CEO rat king. They don't go too far out there mind, as most of the fluff like roller zombies and era-appropriate attire are things you'd expect to see.

The setting also unfortunately does not match the ferocity of its Tiger Style. A run down New York City, no matter the era, has been done to death -- and nothing here elevates it above the rest of those renditions. I'm still really digging the Scooby-Doo-ass cartoon cutscenes, and this subseries of zombies has so much heart, perhaps more than any other facet of any Call of Duty game before it. You have to give it to Infinity Ward's zombie team (and the celebrity cast) for sticking it out this long. I'm glad that these folks didn't meet the same "one and done" fate that Jeff Goldblum and company did in Black Ops III's short-lived Shadows of Evil.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: Continuum is an uneven but above-average pack. It pales in comparison to Sabotage, but hasn't dragged down the season pass as a whole in any meaningful way. I'm anxious to see what the next two offerings can bring to the table, while we wait to hear more about Sledgehammer's next project.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: Continuum appeared first on Destructoid.

Crude but competent

From the mind of Twisted Metal and God of War designer David Jaffe comes Drawn to Death, a multiplayer-only arena shooter set within the doodle-filled confines of a t??eenager's notebook.

This is a world in which a shark-headed ninja can grapple-hook her way past a se??lf-destructing cyborg vampire, or a punk rocker can wield a pooping monkey against an invisible chainsaw-totin??g butcher.

It's as weird as it sounds.

Drawn to Death (PS4)
Developer: The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Released: April 4, 2017
MSRP: $19.99 (free with PlayStation Plus subscription)

The crude hand-drawn art direction makes a strong but not necessarily good first i?mpression, as does the game's intentionally over-the-top juvenile sense of humor. But even if those? elements fall flat for you, trust me when I say this is a nuanced shooter, one that's possible to enjoy in spite of them.

As an online game that's free with PlayStation Plus this month, I worry that subscribers will be curious enough to dig into the absolutely necessary tutorial only to get turned off by the super-talkative "edgy" narration and it'll cause them to bail. That'd be a shame. Drawn to Death doesn't reveal its true depth until you've gotten a dozen matches under your belt (if not more), and new tricks will? continue bubbling up as you unlock wacky or otherwise atypical weapons and get a better feel for each character's complexities.

The game carves out a nice little niche for itself as a small but focused arena-style shooter complete with weapon, ammo, and health pick-ups, environmental kill opportunities, and minuscule match sizes (it's two vs. two at most). That setup and scope feels old-school, some?times to a fault, but the characters come across as more modern with intricate abilities that run on a cooldown.

My favorite of the six is Cyborgula. Every character has a huge, floaty jump to accommodate for Drawn to Death's vertical map layouts, but he can stay in the air even longer with his vampire wings, enabling me to more easily lock on and launch a missile array or dive down for?? a head-on attack. If that isn't enough -- a like?ly outcome, considering how large players' health pools are -- I can launch some explosive game cartridges with my JRPG. Or, if it's a close match and I need to pull out something amazing to hit the winning score threshold, there's always the Hand, a once-per-match Hail Mary move in which you leap atop a floating hand and can devastate your papery foes with smart timing.

Drawn to Death is designed such that each of the characters handle very differently. Your proficiency and tactics with one won't always transfer to another (for instance: I'm totally worthless as Ninjaw), and things get trickier when you take into account customizable weapon loadouts. Who goes best with what? I'm still slowly figuring that out. What's more, everyone has a unique advantage and disadvantage, though some are more important to keep in mind than others. Alan, the murderous butcher, inherently does bonus melee damage against the devilish Diabla, but my boy Cyborgula can see right t?hrough hi??s cloak ability. If it weren't clear already, it takes time to feel at home with this game.

Most of the depth is left to the characters, the way they work off one another, and the game's handful of secret-filled maps. In terms of modes, Drawn to Death ends up feeling rather limited.

You're looking at a pair of deathmatch modes and Organ Donor, a mode in which you drop a heart when you die and points are obtained by ever-so-slowly banking hearts at a drop-off point. There are wrinkles to freshen up these familiar offerings -- including ways to actually subtract from the opposition's score, or subvert the game's standard air-drop-in respawn for an instant revive at half your normal hea?lth -- but they eventually shed their novelty. So too does the vulgar ?announcer.

As much as I don't care for Drawn to Death's hard-to-ignore grating tone, the attention to detail present in its scribbled characters, world, and menus does shine through. I find myself getting really invested in matches when it's a full two-on-two game where spamming the same old weapons, explosives, and abilities is less likely to cut it as a viable "strategy." Unfortunately, as it stands, those adrenaline-pumping matches aren't the norm -- not nearly enough people are playing yet. In the event that a team match begins with three ??people, it compensates by giving the short-handed player a massive buff. I don't think I've ever lost as the lone player, but it's still a position I'd prefer never to be placed in.

There's hope for Drawn to Death to grow into something more, and my fingers are crossed that it does. After not quite a week, I've just about had my fill and don't feel compelled to stick around for cosmetic unlocks earned from drawn-out blind boxes. With new modes and characters, another pass at balancing, and some matchmaking options, I could see myself coming back. Until then, I'm good.

_{[This review is based on a retai??l build of the game downloaded for free with PlayStation Plus.]}

The post Review: Drawn to Death appeared first on Destructoid.

Let's see if it is indeed the best DBZ game ever made

I first found out about Hyper Dragon Ball Z three dang years ago tomorrow, and I'm happy to report you can download and play i??t right now, for free, in the recently released "Champ Build" that does some fighter rebalancing and add??s even more characters.

You can find instructions for doing so in the video description. It certainly looks like the best Dragon Ball Z fighter ever made, if only for the incredible art. Make more 2D f??ighters!

The post Badass fan-made Dragon Ball Z fighter is o?ut now for free appeared first on Destructoid.

Small towns and big emotions

I'm not sure how to describe Night in the Woods. Even after playing th?rough the game twice, every attempt at defining it feels wrong. I want to say it's a silly 2D platformer almost as much as I think it's a soulful adventure game. Other times, I'm convinced that I should just declare that it's a slice-of-life game with a supernatural tint -- whatever that mea??ns.

But my difficulty summing up Night in the Woods doesn't mean I don't have a lot to say about it. Despite being a relatively short game, it's packed with moments that have rattled around in my head for the last month. What begins as a basic coming-of-age story about a twenty-year-old cat lady (in the anthropomorphic sense, not the depressing neighbor kind), builds and builds into something larger, all while taking place in a single, sleepy little town. Night in the Woods is intimate and charming, whimsical and occasionally heartbreaki?ng. It's also one of the most enjoyable games I've played in a long time.

Night in the Woods [PS4 (reviewed), PC]
Developer: Infinite Fall
Publisher: Finji
Released: February 21, 2017
MSRP: $19.99 

At its core, Night in the Woods is a story about Mae Borowski and the town of Possum Springs. Mae's twenty, directionless, and a recent college dropout. After calling it quits at school, Mae catches a bus back to her hometown. She's tired of struggling away from home, and at least as far as she's concern??ed, moving back into her parent's?? place is an easy way to start over.

Mostly, starting over means reconnecting with the people and places that defined her youth. After a short introductory sequence -- which has Mae stumbling across Possum Spring's outskirts after her parents forget to pick her up from the bus station -- Night in the Woods eases b?ack on the direct narration and encourages players to wander around town. Possum Springs is a bit worse for the wear since Mae left for school; the mining industry has gone bust and businesses have shuttered, but it's still an inte?resting location to explore. The bulk of the game revolves around Mae's lazy routine: wake up in the afternoon, say hi to mom, hop around town, and spend the evening bullshitting with your friends. It sounds simple, and it occasionally feels repetitive, but Possum Springs and its inhabitants draw you in more than they push you away.

Exploration and conversation define the first half of Night in the Woods. There's no shortage of small talk to be made with townsfolk, and Possum Spring's architecture holds a surprising amount of secrets to uncover. Each?? day, characters have new dialogue, and specific residents -- like the horror-obsessed teen Lori and Mae's doting mother -- have unique vignettes that unlock should players spend the time foste?ring Mae's relationship with them.

The tidbits of folksy gossip and local myths shared by Possum Springs locals are engaging and often kind of hilarious. Despite the fact that every character is some animal, they speak like real people; ramblings about a kid who got electrocuted by a powerline are as common as meek admissions of economic anxiety. Possum Springs certainly isn't a real place, but anyone who has ever lived in a small town will recognize the blend of malaise and offbeat insight that colors most conversations. It makes even the most trivial chat feel as though it's somehow larger than life. There's authenticity within Night in the Woods' fiction, especially when it comes to th??e clunky, fragile humanity that defines us.

But while the tertiary characters and small-town exploration make for a charming way to pass the time, it's Mae's relationship with her three best friends that keep the game afloat. To advance the critical path, Mae picks a friend and spends the evening with them. There's Gregg, an erratic punk who is Mae's partner in literal "crimes"; Bea, a moody goth shackled to her family business following her mother's death; and Angus, an affable computer nerd, and Gregg's boyfriend. Like Mae, they're all quirky and kind of weird: a fellowship of friends tied together by a shared existence in a dead-end town. Also, they? play in a band that rehearses but never performs live shows. Who hasn't been in one of those before?

During the nightly hang-out sessions, Night in the Woods dives into its characters' interior lives. Gregg, Bea, and Angus are all at a very different place in life compared to Mae. They share a bond, of course, but many of these character-driven scenes show how much Mae's friends have grown in her absence. Each vignette adds emotional depth to the characters, often at the expense of showing how naive Mae's view of the world is. Bea, for example, is forced to give up her dreams of going to college to run the Ol' Pickaxe general store. Bea's earnest desire for a college education clashes with Mae's seeming indifference towards school, adding a layer of friction between the two. Following Bea's story arc weaves discussions of responsibility and duty with scenes of two old friends salvaging their relationship. It's a punch to the gut, at times, to see just how narrow-mind?ed Mae can be compared to her oldest friends. But it's for a good reason, as?? it allows Mae room to grow as the story progresses.

And boy does the story progress. After a few hours of listless wandering, Night in the Woods picks up steam and never lets go. Mae begins having strange dreams. She sees ghosts and interacts with apparitions that might be gods from another universe. It seems like she's going crazy for a bit until her friends agree to research her visions. From that point onward, t??he game shifts gears, tightening as it races towards a conclusion that blends supernatural elements with Possum Springs' tw?isted history. 

It's around this point that Night in the Woods' massive highs meet its nihilistic lows. Watching Mae's mental state deteriorate pulls the game in a darker direction. Suddenly, every off-hand remark about existence and life in general -- lines that once seemed like innocuous quips -- take on a new meaning. Night in the Woods asks pointed and philosophical questions during i?ts last hour or two. It's a major change of pace, but it's not one that feels unearned. Paying close attention to previous events and snippets of dialogue alludes to the insidious nature of the game's final act. It's a crescendo of sorts, albeit one that sounds much foreboding than anything that preceded it. 

Ultimately, the tonal change highlights what makes Night in the Woods work. The contrast between the first two acts' whimsy and the final third's bleak outlook reinforces a lot of what the game's been building towards. Mae, for all of her insecurities, finally grows by leaning into change. She accepts that sometimes bad thing??s happen and comes to grips with her own issues by acknowledging them. It's the small stuff -- her relationships with Gregg and company, as well as the charms of her hometown -- that she can hang on to.

All of this -- the unique pieces that make up Night in the Woods -- goes back to why it's so damn hard to define the game. There isn't an adequate term for titles that blend clunky platforming with choose-you-own-adventure friendship simulators. Nor is there a word to describe games that feature knife-fighting minigames and Guitar Hero-inspired band practices. But, again, maybe that's a big part of Night in the Woods' appeal. It's a confident outsider, and one that takes pleasure is celebrating the weird ?ways that everything comes t??ogether in life.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer.]}

The post Review: Night in the Woods appeared first on Destructoid.

As Kim Deal once said, 'Into the white...'

A lot has changed since I first previewed Kona. Back then, it was called Kona: Day One, much of the play area was cordoned off, a??nd the survival elements just hung there in the background. But even so, it had something special already in place. All it needed was some much-needed care.

Now out of Early Access and spreading out onto consoles, Kona is the realised game I hoped it would be. So strap into your red Chevy truck, find your biggest fur coat, put on your best grizzled P.I. face, and figure out a mystery colder?? than ice.

Kona (PC [Reviewed], PS4, Xbox One)
Developers: Parabole
Publisher: Parabole, RavensCourt
Released: March 17, 2017
MSRP: $19.99/£14.99

Northern Canada, 1970, and private investigator Carl Faubert is on his way to meet a wealthy client at Atamipek Lake. The local industrialist, William ??Hamilton, has made a number of enemies after buying up most of the town and pushing out the local Cree community, so he needs a bodyguard. For Carl, it's a nice break from the usual cheating spouses, but when he arrives in the middle of a winter storm, the town is completely deserted. It's not long until he stumbles across a frozen body, and with it the feeling he's not entirely alone.

For those not in the know, Kona is an semi-open world mystery adventure with light survival elements. As Carl, you travel from building to building using nothing more than his trusted Chevy truck and a map of the local area, searching for ways to open up new areas. Due to the freezing temperatures, you have stay warm by lighting campfires or iron stoves, and fend off deranged wolves in between. Though it might sound like another walking simulator, it's actually a refreshing take on a much-derided term, more in line with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories than Gone Home.

Kona is a beautiful game, both visually and narratively; its hardboiled tale drenched in suspenseful atmospherics, punctuated by low-key jolts and rewarding curiosities. Parabole has created a stunning game of duality, effortlessly blending survivalism with detective work and well-researched history with dying folklore. And it's because these elements work together that Kona has something rarely found in its contemporaries: urgency.

Despite some truly ominous moments, Kona doesn't sell itself as a horror game. Thanks to an ever engaging narrator, the plot plays out like a tall tale, as told by an old man in the corner of your local bait shop. His calming voice drifts between fond reminiscences, sage advice, and dark humour. Always present, but never annoying, Kona's narrator is a welcoming addition, thanks to some solid dialogue and highly ref??ined ?timing.

Much of Kona's gameplay is centered around location scouting and investigating. Most places will have a fire to warm up, supplies to scavenge, or clues to solving your latest obstacle. It's simplistic, but rewarding, with the journeys in between providing much of the nervous tension.

If the narrator is the main star of Kona, then Carl's trusted Chevy truck comes a close second. While it's useful for getting from A to B in one piece, it also acts as a supply box and protection from both the elements and wildlife. Being your only companion, the game does an excellent job of keeping either of you apart, leading you astray with curious paths and woodland walks. There's a real joy when you end up wandering the woods for a g??ood 10-20 minutes, moving from campfire to wolves, and catch that familiar boxy shape in the distance.

And the reason you feel that way is largely in part to Kona's immersiveness. It's the little things like Carl's body language or the way the world reacts to the ongoing storm - throwing an arm over the seat when reversing, adjusting the heater, the sounds of crunching snow and shuddering branches - that really draws you in. The soundtrack, though minimalistic with its slide guitar, perfectly complements the lonely scenery. If you do play Kona, make sure it's with a pair of headphones.

Despite the nihilistic look, Kona is smartly designed. It tells its story by subtly guiding players through empty houses, animal tracks, strange rock place?ments, and broken branches. What starts off as an? semi-open world adventure gradually shrinks to claustrophobic proportions, with the player being reduced to going on foot and in the dark, right before the game pushes you into a heart-in-mouth finale.

Though you rarely meet anyone in town, you get a good sense of who they were by some carefully placed mise-en-scène; whether it be a tire swing in the front garden, a "secret project" in someone's garage, or capturing someone's unhappiness through a dimly lit room and well-placed window overseeing the frozen lake. Even when the connections become convoluted, there's an organised journal that keeps you up to date with previous events and the townsfolk. Kona lets you feel like a detective, even when you're ??one step behind.

Unfortunately, there are a few negatives that really break Kona's magical illusion. Assets are constantly recycled to the point of absurdity (everybody in town owns the same coloured appliances, wallpaper, and furniture). Load times are incredibly intrusive, at least on PC; especially when you're asked to continually backtrack short distances. Personally speaking, the switch from streaming to loaded se??gments in Early Access really hurt the game's flow.

The combat also happens to be another glaring weak spot. Aside from the cold, wolves are Carl's only regular enemy, and while their AI is very basic, they're also erratic. By throwing ste??aks at them, you can avoid confrontation, but they're limited and in the second half, you're reduced to swinging a hatchet around like a madman.

In Kona's defense, the survivalism aspect is far from hardcore. It's light on micro-management, with very little in the way of crafting. Materials for campfires are liberally strewn about and the inventory is deep enough to keep everything vital on you at all times. Pills and medikits heal, beer and cigarettes lower stress (which determines stamina and accuracy), and so forth. Basic implementation, sure, but that's all Kona needs to do to up the stakes.

Overall, Kona's weaknesses aren't enough to ruin an otherwise excellent thriller. The story is intriguing from the get go, seta against the backdrop of Korea, communism, capitalist expansion, and just plain old matters of the heart. Exploration is never a ??chore, either, due to the tension on hand and the rewarding nature of finding a point of interest just beyond the white veil.

Kona is a wonderful and lovingly crafted accomplishment. It's charming, magical, and smart enough to instill real motivation in its players and layer its cast in realist ways. Kona might be the first of four planned games, but it also happens to be a great standalone?? adventure that'll have you reaching for the thermostat in ?no time.

_{[This review is ba??sed on a retail b??uild of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Kona appeared first on Destructoid.

'Yes, I'm the real Setsuna. All you other Setsunas are just imitating.'

Last year, we saw the release of I Am Setsuna for the PlayStation 4 and PC. Much like one of Square Enix's other recent role-playing games, Bravely Default, it was ?an attempt by the publisher to provide an experience somewhat reminiscent of an old-school JRPG from a previous era in gaming.

Considering its recent re-release on the Nintendo Switch, this seemed like as good of an opportunity as ever to revisit this modern take on a classic genre. After all, unless we suddenly enter a hypothetical perfect timeline wher?e not only does the Switc??h have Virtual Console support, but where Square Enix has also released its back catalogue of role-playing games on the platform, this is the closest thing we've got to such titles on Nintendo's new console.

I Am Setsuna (PC, PS4, Vita (Japan only), Switch [Reviewed])
Developer: Tokyo RPG Factory
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: February 18, 2016 (Japan), July 19, 2016 (PC, PS4 WW), March 3, 2017 (Switch)
MSRP: $39.99

I Am Setsuna's story start??s off in an interesting way??. Endir, a mercenary who serves as the game's main protagonist, is tasked with the assassination of a young girl by the name of Setsuna. This titular character is about to be sent off on a sacrificial pilgrimage to a location known as the Last Lands with the express purpose of somehow keeping the monsters that litter the world at bay. There is an irony to the idea of being tasked with the murder of someone who is, for all intents and purposes, destined to die anyway, and some moments of dialogue even show that this isn't at all lost on the game's protagonist.

Within half an hour of the game's introduction, Endir is roped into accompanying Setsuna on her perilous journey. O??n their way, they meet and eventually team up with various other individuals, each with their own backgrounds and motivations.

While these charact?ers are, for the most part, fairly archetypica?l, they all still manage to be enjoyable nonetheless. I just wish that they could forge their own unique identities, rather than simply being reminiscent of individuals who I've already grown to know and love in other games.

Setsuna, herself, is likeable enough as an example of a kind-hearted and selfless healer. Endir a textbook example of the mostly-silent protagonist, although there are a few dialogue options that occ?asionally pop up, even if most of them wind up being mean??ingless. And Kir? He certainly exists!

The only main party members whom I felt got an appropriate amount of screen time and development were Aeterna, Nidr, and Julienne. Even then, there are some character revelations and side-plots pertaining to these individuals that either d??on't go anywhere, or that could have been explored in much greater detail.

Ultimately, however, the story does wind up being a wholly predictable affair. Many of the game's light plot twists are heavily telegraphed, or are simply reminiscent of revelations that have been seen in other properties. The result is that I never once felt surprised or shocked by any of the story details in I Am Setsuna.

While I completely understand that the game was developed with the intention of providing a decidedly old-school experience, it would have been nice to see an attempt to create something that wasn't entirely comprised of elements we've already seen before. To this end, I feel as if I Am Setsuna is nostalgic to a fault. I never got the impression that this game was trying to forge its own unique identity, choosing to settle for the simple mimicry of its?? predecessors instead.

In terms of visuals, I Am Setsuna is simply gorgeous. W?hile it may not be particularly impressive from a technical perspective -- it was designed with the limitations of the PlayStation Vita in mind, after all -- the game's cold and wintery art direction manages to be aesthetically pleasing, while also doing a great job of complementing its more somber and melancholic tone.

For a game that was clearly made on a budget, there's also a surprising amount of attention to detail, with characters leaving trails in the snow whenever they walk, as well as warm air visibly emanating from their mouths when they breathe. These effects may be relatively minor, but they do an effective job of providing the game with some sort of a?? basis in reality.

The soundtrack, too, is particularly noteworthy. Eschewing the orchestral compositions that pervade many other titles in its genre, I Am Setsuna instead opts to deliver a far moodier piano-based score. Although it may not deliver much in the way of high-energy tracks, this more low-key app??roach to composition manages to consistently sound rather pretty, while also being well-suited to the game's overall atmosphere.

Where I Am Setsuna's presentation falters, however, is with its heavy reuse of environments and enemy encounters. It's hard to shake the feeling of sheer repetition when you're treading through environment?s that recycle similar (or even exactly the same) backdrops at other settings entirely, especially when many of the enemy encounters contained within these areas are sim?ple reskins of foes that were already fought in previously-visited locations. Even the game's final dungeon consists of recoloured tiles that were previously utilised in multiple other near-identical locales, which is something that I found to be shockingly egregious.

If there's one major defining feature of I Am Setsuna, it's the excellent combat system. Taking liberal cues from Chrono Trigger, I Am Setsuna ;utilises an Active Turn-Based battle system that forces the player to consider both party member and enemy positioning, as well as the areas of effect for each Tech (or ability), in order t?o attain victory.

To add to this, I Am Setsuna utilises a Momentum system, which essentially serves as a secondary gauge that fills up when a party member's ATB meter is full. When this gauge is filled, the party member gains one Momentum point, which caps at a maximum of three in total. These points can be spent by pressing the Y button when performing a Tech, which then adds a secondary effect to these? abilities, such as additional damage or some form of group heal.

In order to teach individual party members new Techs, players need to equip them with a corresponding Spiritnite. Think of this as being somewhat akin to the Materia system from Final Fantasy VII. One thing that I absolutely loved about I Am Setsuna's Spiritnite system is j?ust how diverse each party member's moveset can be. For instance, it's entirely poss??ible to teach Nidr -- who is a predominantly tanky character -- abilities that allow him to heal other party members. 

I only have one major grievance with I Am Setsuna's battle system: standard enemy encounters are all just a little bit too easy. So long as you sneak up on opponents from behind -- which allows you to start each battle off with every party member h??aving a full ATB gauge and one omentum point -- it's usually possible to defeat your foes with only a single attack.

This changes for the better once you get to the boss fights. I Am Setsuna's boss encounters present the game with a level of challenge that I was greatly desiring. It's here that the battle system really comes into its own, with encounters becoming extremely punishing to players who haven't formulated a viable strategy, or have ?simply not formed a party that's effective at countering them.

Oftentimes, when encountering these bosses, I found myself having to carefully micromanage my various buffs and debuffs, while also waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Rarely was a brute-force approach even remotely viable against these opponents. Suffice it to say, it was extremely satisfying to see a strategy I'd devised to defeat I Am Setsuna bosses be successful.

As far as performance is concerned, on the Nintendo Switch, I Am Setsuna manages to hold a stable 30 fram??es-per-second at almost all times when playing the game with the console both docked and in its handheld mode. I could only find one location in the entire game where there is a noticeable drop in performance, and even then, this only occurred when playing with the Switch undocked and when ?I was outside of combat.

While some may lament the fact that the Switch port of I Am Setsuna doesn't aim for the same 60FPS gameplay that the PlayStation 4 or PC versions provide, I never really found this lowered framerate to be much of an issue. The game simply doesn't require the level of precision that would necessitate the in??crease in responsiveness provided by a heightened ??framerate. 

It also needs to be mentioned that, since the PlayStation Vita version of I Am Setsuna is unavailable outside of Japan, the Nintendo Switch port is the only portable version of the game that? is playable with an English localisation. If you care about eking the best possible performance out of this game, you may want to look elsewhere, but there is still some merit to its existence on the Switch.

I Am Setsuna is not without its faults on the technical side of things, however. For starters, I've noticed a couple of odd issues with character models momentarily disappearing, party members falling through the floors of some dungeons, and even item descriptions that are displayed in French, rather than in English. Oddly enough, the latter of these bizarre issues managed to rear its head for a second time throughout my playthrough of the game. Thankfully, none of these problems impeded on my progress through I Am Setsuna, meaning that they were relatively benign and some??what amusing technical issues rather than anything? to be particularly concerned about.

From a presentational and mechanical standpoint, I Am Setsuna manages to lay the foundations for an incredibly solid role-playin??g game. Unfortunately, this experience is often marred by a wholly predictable story, forgettable characters, and dungeons that fe??el completely uninspired. Still, if you just so happen to be in the mood for a traditional JRPG, and you're looking for something to play on your newly-acquired Nintendo Switch, you should consider checking this one out.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer.]}

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