Black Desert

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Black Desert made its showing at E3 for the Xbox one. Here is that beautiful trailer.

And make no mistake, it does look beautiful. But no need to fear Playstation fans, it isn’t likely to be an Xbox exclusive, at least not for long, as at one point at least there was a PS4 version being worked on. For more details on that and the number of players check polygon.

The other thing to point out is if you look up many of the reviews, they aren’t that great. For example on steam its at about 6/10 and metacritic puts it at a 73 and 7.3. Now to down a game before it comes out, but the game is already out for a fairly substantial amount of time. Is isn’t unreasonable to assume this won’t get any better and there isn’t much reason to get excited about it. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Lost Child (PS4)

The Lost Child Title

Ok everyone, first I would like to say a HUGE thank you to NIS America for sending us a review copy.  It is always an honor to be chosen to receive one. I like to say thanks up before we get this review started.

Now back to The Lost child, the entire reason you are here. The story is simple in some ways. You are a journalist for an occultist magazine working on a story about a woman about some mysterious deaths in a subway. Suicides to be exact, while investigating these deaths you find yourself on what will become a wild ride as you meet an angel and are chosen to go on a mission from God. And yes, I do mean a literal angel and actually god. I won’t go too deep into the story, but it wont take long for this story to branch from being a simple Angel leading you to fight demons and fallen angels and capturing them using a weapon known as a Gangour to turn them into allies and becoming an all out battle with evil deities and so much more. You will question Heaven and Hell and everything between at times. The story alone is worth checking this out.

The visuals are beautifully crafted with both battles and exploration taking place in a first person art style, here is an example of the combat system.

Lost Child battle

The turn based combat functions amazingly, at no point did I feel winning or losing was a matter of anything other than my own personal skill and preparation. There are over 100 astrals you can choose and well over 200 moves to learn and customize your astrals with, and they pretty much are all viable for some sort of use whether it be helping unlock chest that are locked with traps, buffing your characters, healing or attacking.

The sound is another area the game is solid,with each area sounding great. I don’t have a lot to add here except I know many of you like to choose between the English or Japanese voices in your games when they come west, and for you I have some great news. That is an option for you. You not only will be given the option at the start but the in-game option menu will also let you choose.

The game is not perfect, but let’s be honest no game is. The Lost Child doesn’t reinvent the wheel as they say. At its core this is still a turn based RPG, and while I LOVE them and this game, and even the first person art style many people don’t. I understand this and I am 100% sure NIS America does. This game isn’t for everyone. If you aren’t a fan of the genre this game probably won’t be the game that wins you over. Many of the NPC characters are pretty bland characters and are very forgettable. In fact I’m not even sure if many of them are the same person in different spots or if they are just the same people moving around the area, and they have names like “nerd” and “maid” This isn’t to say they were lazy, far from. This is actually pretty par for the course in the genre and some of you may not like it. However fans of the genre expect this.

However we now come to why you are all here, should you buy this? wait for a sale? or just exorcise this demon back to the depths of hell? Honestly the answer is simple. This is a solid 8/10. And I honestly will probably never give a game a 10 on this page because that implies a level close to perfection I don’t think exist in gaming.I happily recommend buying this one. I will put a small asterisk on my buy recommendation tho. That only goes for fans of Japanese RPG’s. Everyone else is going to want to watch a few videos or streams and proceed with cation. This is an amazing game, but it is also made for a certain fan base.

Lost Child Characters

Anno 1800 (PC)

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Anno 1800 is an enigma in gaming. It is a strategy game, but it is also a city designer and simulation game/strategy game combined with a ship combat game. Do you want to simply trade? Be an oppressive war monger? Do you simply want to be somewhere in the middle? These are some of the choices you will need to make. For more info watch the trailer below, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Elder Scrolls: Legends

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Today as you can tell is well, card game day. This time we have Elder Scrolls:Legends. To be 100% honest, it is a lot like Hearthstone. The rules are quite similar, but different enough that you check them both out. I won’t try to explain the finer points to you, that would take a lot of time and honestly someone will either yell at me for not quite getting it right or you won’t care. Trust me tho, both are worth giving a shot since both are free anything. There is one main difference tho. Hearthstone and Legends can both be played on PC or mobile, but soon Legends will be on console, and all your progress will save on Bethesda.net and move over to console with you. So for console fans that have been wanting to play but felt ignored, your time is coming. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hearthstone Review

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I don’t normally play PC games but lately a few friends have busted my balls into trying a few, including Hearthstone. So I gave it a shot. Deceptively simple. Insanely fun is quite accurate. First few rounds were very easy, and this made sense since it was the tutorial. As we move on it got a bit more difficult. No big deal tho, it was simple to learn. I grew up playing various card games so picking this up was easy. It however didn’t take long for me to get my rear end handed to me. The game won’t hold your hand for long, so when you get over-confident it will knock you down. The game is easy to learn, but not easy to master.

At the end of the day tho, it is still a card game and honestly if you have some money to sink into it, you will have a slight advantage. It is hard to say it is pay to win tho since having the right cards and knowing when and how to use them are very different. I lost a few games I should have won, and I won my share of games I should have lost.

Hearthstone is a fun game and I do wish I played it sooner. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Leprechaun in the Hood

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I love the Leprechaun movies, even 4 where he went to space. They’re fun trashy kind of horror you clearly aren’t meant to take serious. Leprechaun in the Hood is precisely what you think it’s going to be but holy crap does it go beyond that. It begins with the story of a pimp played Ice-T who comes across the stone statue of the Leprechaun in a old subway tunnel  and after besting him and taking his magic flute, turns the Leprechaun into stone and becomes a rap mogul. decades later we find a struggling motivational rap group who are trying to win a contest and when miffed by Ice-T’s MacDaddy, they bust his house up, take the flute, and inadvertently get hunted by the pissed off pimp and Leprechaun.

As I said, the premise is exactly what you’d expect but it goes deeper than that. While the characters talk like its a live action Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , there’s horny cross dressers, the Leprechaun gets a fondness for weed, there’s scandalously clad demonic rap video girls, people getting there innards randomly blown out and the movie is utter batshit insanity and I love it to death. After watching the rage inducing The Devil Inside , this was a huge breath of fresh air. If you like hilariously bad movies, I encourage you to watch this all the way through the end credits but if you want anything remotely quality or serious, turn away. My the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Fallout 76

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Now I wanted to post this last week like everyone else and be like “Oh my god new Fall out oh fuck yea its online iuhfiahihfiahifvafhd freak out”…but I decided you would all read that enough. Yes I did just randomly hit keys up there by the way. Its my blog, I can do that. I decided however to write about other stuff and let everyone else fill you in. By now you know the routine. Leaving vault 76 you will be one of the first outside the vaults, and everyone you see will be a real person. Returning is the ability to build bases, but now you can build them where you want and move them when you choose. There will also be nuclear weapons you can go and grab, then just drop them on your friends. This all sounds great and looks amazing. Especially knowing that unlike most survival games, when you die you never lose progress.

I do have a couple concerns however. You don’t really lose progress in Grand Theft Auto either, but anyone that plays it knows it doesn’t take much for some random person to ruin your day. Are we going to spend 10 or 20 hours building a base just for some jerk to nuke my base and send me back to square one? If so whats the point of building it at all? If nuking a base doesn’t do much, why bother doing it at all? I truly hope they manage a nice middle ground between nuking people serving a purpose and making sure it doesn’t ruin the experience for people.

Another concern I have is the story, they have always been known for story, and will this effect that? Fallout 76 could be amazing, but I do understand why many people are concerned. Personally I am extremely hopeful. An online Fallout is something I have dreamed of, and it is finally coming. May the gaming gods bring it and us glory.

Why love the “grays” of Marvel

I wanted to do something kind of different today and talk about something that really changed my outlook on how super heroes and villains are portrayed. Marvel has given us such great examples of gray characters, characters that ride the line between the borders of good and evil. Granted, while characters like Spider-man or the Red Skull are purely good and evil, many are unclassifiable.  Magneto wants safe refuge and rights for mutant kind after witnessing man’s cruelty first hand as a holocaust survivor; Doom just wants his people to prosper and be a good ruler, hoping he can see his dead mother again; Venom wants to protect the innocent; Hulk is just a beast that yearns for peace; Punisher kills, mams, tortures those who do the same to innocent people. The list goes on and while Doom ultimately is a villain, Hulk is ultimately a anti-hero, and The Guardians of the Galaxy are ultimately heroes, the verdict is out on the characters of Marvel as it is on us all in our everyday lives. Are we really good, are we really the villain we appear to be to those who trespass against us or the hero our loved ones take us for? That perspective always drove me in my personal work, and I think that’s why Marvel’s characters resonate so deep with us. May the gaming gods bring you glory, and as the epic Stan Lee would say, Excelsior!

 

Division 2 Preview

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If you are anything like me a while ago you had a friend that was all aboard the hype train for The Division. Talked about this game like it was going to be ground breaking, even showed you the trailer where the guy closed the car door, which at the time was amazing. The problem is, while good the game didn’t go beyond that. The dark zone was cool but it had a lot of issues and the game itself ended up being a love it or hate it kind of thing. The DLC helped a lot tho.

Now comes The Division 2. The game looks amazing ( there will be a video below) Taking place after the virus has died down while humanity tries to rebuild we have a new problem. That problem is each other. Trying to survive people have formed bands of people willing to rob and steal. Now agents have a seemingly new task. There will also be 3 episodes with new stories and places to explore. Oh, and those 3 episodes? 100% free. The game looks good and it sounds like they have learned some valuable lessons. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.