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Tuesday

AntiSquad Tactics Review

Lost In Translation
AntiSquad Tactics, a turn-based strategy game created by Russian developers InsGames, is an attempt to combine the cartoon world military aesthetic of Team Fortress 2 with the tactical squad combat of games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown. What’s interesting about it, though, isn’t its similarities to those games, but how it differs from them. The developers’ sensibilities shine through the cel-shaded paint, and the result is a game that’s too complete and polished to be dismissed, but too weird and primitive to join the ranks of the quality squad tactics games that preceded it.

Team Fortress 2 has a very specific look and feel that’s designed to warp team-based combat into a lighthearted cartoon. In trying to replicate this tone, AntiSquad Tactics found a different one: off-key brutality. The characters on your squad are cartoonish, but your missions have you fighting in places like Mexico and North Korea, and the simplified gameplay makes the battles feel weirdly realistic. You control a party of three units, selected out of five possible choices. Each character has a different special ability and different stats, and you can make them better fighters with items and power upgrades attained by looting corpses for the in-game currency. There isn’t much of a cover system, so the best way to take care of a threat is to shoot the enemy forces one unit at a time while you move backwards or hold a chokepoint.

The tactical gameplay is pretty deep for a mobile game, but your squad management skills are only one part of the equation. Advancing through the game’s missions is going to mean heavily spending in-game currency on upgrades and items, and that means grinding for money by playing missions you’ve already beaten. This is a review of the premium version of AntiSquad Tactics, but there’s also a free-to-play version that wants you to buy whatever you need to beat the missions. Even in the premium version, the game puts an unfortunate amount of emphasis on repetitive grinding, and the less patient are liable to get burned out before they’ve accumulated the coins they need to advance.

Presentation-wise, AntiSquad Tactics manages to be smoother and more assured than a lot of its mobile peers, but the game is full of bizarre touches that lend it an uncanny valley effect. The soundtrack has a tendency towards jazzy spy movie music that doesn’t really make sense in a game about mercenaries getting their hands dirty. And while the mission dialogue and menus are done in pretty good English, there are points, especially in cutscenes, where the text breaks down into fascinating broken English that transforms what would be ordinary exposition into crazy turns of phrase like “Sometimes everything becomes solved by accident. One little stone could start an avalanche that changes the lives!” Before I played AntiSquad Tactics, I thought the “Ins” in InsGames was an acronym, but now I’m pretty sure it’s a ridiculous play on the word “insane.”
As tactical strategy games go, AntiSquad Tactics is serviceable. It controls well and manages not to be too complex without being trivially simple, but its reliance on grinding and collecting coins is a totally unnecessary element that doesn’t really have a place in the genre, especially considering that the whole mechanic is the skeleton of its free-to-play structure. It’s good that InsGames developed a microtransaction-free version of their game, but designing a game around spending currency in the shop takes importance away from a player’s actual skill level, even when that currency is entirely within the game. AntiSquad Tactics is a highly commendable effort, but it’s only going to appeal to people who are willing to overlook some design problems and weird localization in their strategy games.

4 Pics 1 Song Android Answers 11-15

Welcome to the 4 Pics 1 Song Walkthrough. Me, being the music fan I am, thought it would be fun and helpful to write the answers for other people who might need some help with some of the levels. When I first found this game, I was kind of sceptic about the songs in the game. I expected only new, mainstream radio music. But I was surprised with the huge array of songs the developers have added. Although the game has it’s fair share of mainstream music. NOTE: Some of the songs might be in a different order for you. But don’t worry, all the answers are here!


Level 11:

1: Kiss
2: Black Dog
3: Light My Fire
4: Run Away
5: Shop-Around
6: Sweet Dreams
7: One More Time
8: Heart Of Gold
9: Grenade
10: Girl On Fire
11: Hey Joe
12: On The Floor
13: Senorita
14: Float On
15: 3Am
16: The Trees

Level 12:

1: Hip To Be Square
2: Graduate
3: Maps
4: Boogie Fever
5: Down Under
6: Dreams
7: Under Pressure
8: Sos
9: Cars
10: Rockstar
11: Payphone
12: Ring My Bell
13: Mirrors
14: Buddy Holly
15: Surrender
16: Love Song

Level 13:

1: Umbrella
2: Baby Love
3: Crying
4: Ring Of Fire
5: The Tourist
6: Halo
7: Secrets
8: Eye Of The Tiger
9: Little Lion Man
10: Angel
11: Frozen
12: Bleeding Love
13: Mother
14: Breakeven
15: Learn To Fly
16: Limelight

Level 14:

1: Thunder Road
2: Sweat
3: Home
4: The Power Of Love
5: Kiss Me
6: Broken Wings
7: Jailhouse Rock
8: Brown Eyed Girl
9: Fast Car
10: Foxy Lady
11: Heart Of Glass
12: Hound Dog
13: My Girl
14: Summer Babe
15: Rooster
16: Single Ladies

Level 15:

1: Cups
2: Jump
3: Fallin
4: Jinggle Bells
5: Whistle
6: Pirate Flag
7: Daylight
8: Wagon Wheel
9: Calling Dr Love
10: Stay
11: Footloose
12: Cry Me A River
13: Bad To The Bone
14: Shake It Out
15: Levitate
16: Arms Wide Open
That’s it for now!

Monday

Halfbrick Enters Match-3 Arena with Yes Chef!

Halfbrick's back with a culinary twist on the match-3: Yes Chef, the studio's very first foray into the realm of puzzlers. CitrusJoy and Halfbrick join forces to tell the tale of young apprentice Cherry under Chef Pierre, who's teaching her all about how to be the best chef she can be.

The game will span 100 levels at launch, in which players will create different dishes with various flavors, cakes, frozen food, and more. There's a whole host of power-ups to aid in your quest as well.
Yes Chef will be releasing on October 9 for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android worldwide after a soft launch in Australia and Canada.
 

Shred It! Coming soon to Android

Developer EM (Extra Mile) Studios, have just released their first game onto the iOS. Although they have worked in the game industry for many years, Shred It, is their first title…
Shred It, is a paper-craft, snowboarding endless runner, and you will hit the slopes with different characters. And according to EM Studios, Shred It will be coming onto the Android in a couple of weeks.

Shred It! is the ultimate innovative endless runner. Snowboard your way down a paper slope, in a paper-crafted world. With six sublimely atmospheric stages, a dynamic weather cycle swirls around you, the sun melting away from day to night and the ever changing terrain beneath your board offering up new challenges from second to second. Shred It! is a different experience every time you play with newly generated runs every single time.” - EM Studios

Iconic Android Answers Movies Part 1 (3/6)

Spider-Man Unlimited “Tips and Tricks”

Spider-Man Unlimited has been mixed reviews, mostly due to the fact that the game uses an energy meter. (It's an endless runner game what was Gameloft thinking?) But I still had a lot of fun with this game. Now here are some tips to help you extend your run.


    Add a BUNCH of friends, from the leaderboards- This is a good way of dealing with that pesky energy meter. On the days that you play, and you energy meter is low, ask for a request from friends to send you energy.
    Survive- Sometimes find it hard to resist to rack up combos, but in the long run it is better to survive, and when you are playing an endless runner it does pay off to play it safe.
    Follow the SAFE path- Not only are vials are there for you to collect, but if you keep an eye on where the vials are it usually means that there is small or long stretch of a safe path ahead,and  you can also keep an eye out of where the next obstacle will come.
    With great power comes…Web Gloves- If you wanted to spend you vials on something useful, then you may want to purchase the Web Gloves. While you have these on, you are INVULNERABLE, which means nothing (Yes NOTHING) can kill you.
    Slide your way through- If you need to make a quick second decision , and you have a ground-based enemy in front of you, it is better to slide. Make it a habit.

Hothead Games to bring Kill Shot onto Android

Hothead Games has a new game that hit the Google Play Store  titled Kill Shot…


This game is Hothead Games' first FPS (First Person Shooter), and Kill Shot focuses alot on being a deadly sniper. Of course you can get up close with a shotgun and with other types of guns besides with you long range sniper gun. Gamers get to take the role of an special ops soldier, who is sent out on missions to shoot out the enemies.

Players will also get to use a slow motion kill cam feature.To help celebrate the game's launch a Gold AK-47 and special power ups will be available for the first 48 hours only.

*Due to the game's graphic nature, and as well as all violent scences Kill Shot has a 17+ rating. This means that this game is NOT recommended for players who are under 17 years of age.

Sunday

The Battle Cats, the feline fighters arrive on Google Play Store

Unless you live in Japan, then you probably haven’t heard of The Battle Cats. Well this game has gotten 10 million downloads in Japan and two million in Korea in just one month. The Battle Cats is now available at the Google Play Store in the UK, US and other English speaking countries…

The Battle Cats is about, well feline fighters, and your objective is to aid your cat, as your cat fights across a feline world that is filled with interesting enemies. The also has a simple leveling system, to help strengthen your feline warriors. The game developers believes that the game will be a success due to three factors :
  • The number of lovable characters that there are
  • The amount of stages
  • The ease at which you can play
The Battle Cats game is now available at the Google Play Store for free.




Iconic Android Answers Music Part 1 (1/6)


Welcome to the first part of the Iconic Walkthrough! In this guide, I’ll be covering the music part of the game. In case you had not noticed, the game gives you random puzzles to solve. But the puzzles can be divided into three groups: Music, Movies and People. In this guide, you will find answers to the first part of the music answers.

Iconic Android Answers Music Part 1:

50 Cent
Alice in Chains
Arctic Monkeys
Atomic Kitten
Blink 182
Coldplay
Crystal Castles
Cypress Hill
Dead Kennedys
Dinosaur Jr.
DJ Shadow
Dog Eat Dog
Dream Theater
Garbage
Gorillaz
Green Day
Guns ‘N’ Roses
Happy Mondays
Hole
Hooverphonic
House of Pain
Ice Cube
Infected Mushroom
Iron Maiden
Judas Priest
Kid Rock
Kiss
Korn
Led Zeppelin
M.C. Hammer
Machine Head
Madonna
Massive Attack
Motorhead
Nine Inch Nails
I hope I helped you get through this awesome game. Check out the other parts here: MUSIC PART 2, MOVIES PART 1 & PART 2 and PEOPLE PART 1 & 2. Good luck!


Just Dance Now, available for at Google Play Store for Free

If you are a fan of the popular rhythm game Just Dance, well you may want to know that the game had been released onto mobile devices thanks to Ubisoft…


There is no need for a sensor bar to be connected to your mobile device, all you will need to play is a mobile device and a screen. Your phone will act as an controller and you do your best to pull off the game's moves.

Just Dance Now offers multiplayer dance parties that does not put limit on the number of players you can play with, invite them all.

The game is free to play, and there are a wide variety of songs of songs to choose from after you install the game, but if you want to have the full library then you will have to purchase the VIP pass.



Beach Buggy Racing iPhone Review

The shore is a great place to swim, get some sun and race dune buggies. If you agree, the free-to-play Beach Buggy Racing belongs on your smartphone or tablet.
The Good
Beach Buggy Racing lets you navigate different parts of the island while racing its inhabitants, with lots of customization options available. There are many different racers to choose and unlock. Each one also has a unique special ability, so it gives you a reason to unlock and try all of the characters. You also have different car options to make upgrades. You use coins that you get from the races to buy and upgrade everything. This makes winning every race of key importance if you want to get the most coins Beach Buggy Racing looks nice. There are many different tracks and areas to explore. You are on an island and race around the beaches, towns, jungles and other places. Each track looks unique and each area is very well made, with lots of things moving in the background and foreground.
The Bad
Beach Buggy Racing has no multiplayer options. Racing games lend themselves to being quality multiplayer experiences because of heated competition and crazy antics, ala Mario Kart. That said, this title would have benefited from an option to play online with friends. Beach Buggy Racing also works on a ticket system. The tickets get used up with every race, so you tend to quickly run through tickets and stop playing once they're gone unless you want to pay to replenish them. This system makes play sessions very short.
The Verdict
Beach Buggy Racing is a lighthearted and fun racing game. It's very similar to Mario Kart, but its lack of multiplayer holds it back from being great.



Saturday

Plunder Pirates iPhone Review

Pirates remain incredibly popular. There have been many great books, movies and games starring these high seas criminals. In Plunder Pirates, for iOS, you attempt to build your own pirate fleet.
The Good
In Plunder Pirates, you are in charge of building a pirate base to become the scourge of the Caribbean. The game gives you a lot of freedom to build your base how you want as long as you have the resources. You receive gold and other items from the different buildings and from plundering other bases. In addition, the game comes with an exploration mode where you travel the ocean looking for more treasure and enemies to battle. These rivals could be sea monsters or other pirate bases. When you come across a pirate base, you are in charge of deploying troops in the spots you want. You are also able to invade other people's bases online; this allows you to test your might and strategies.
The Bad
Plunder Pirates suffers from many of the same flaws that most base building games have. Depending on the action you perform, it takes a certain amount of time to build, repair or upgrade. Most actions are only a few minutes, but as you level up and build higher-level things, it may take hours or days. You can speed up the process by paying gems, but gems are hard to come by unless you buy them with real money. Moreover, resources are very easy to obtain, but many high level buildings and upgrades cost a lot, so it takes grinding to build a better base, unless you want to pay for more gold.
The Verdict
Base building games have become a mainstay in mobile. There have been many different themes and great titles like Clash of Clans and The Simpsons: Tapped Out. Plunder Pirates doesn't advance the genre, but it is one of the better base builder games and worth a look if you like this sub genre.




Friday

Hothead Games to bring Kill Shot onto Android

Hothead Games has a new game that hit the Google Play Store titled Kill Shot…

This game is Hothead Games’ first FPS (First Person Shooter), and Kill Shot focuses alot on being a deadly sniper. Of course you can get up close with a shotgun and with other types of guns besides with you long range sniper gun. Gamers get to take the role of an special ops soldier, who is sent out on missions to shoot out the enemies.
Players will also get to use a slow motion kill cam feature.To help celebrate the game’s launch a Gold AK-47 and special power ups will be available for the first 48 hours only.
*Due to the game’s graphic nature, and as well as all violent scences Kill Shot has a 17+ rating. This means that this game is NOT recommended for players who are under 17 years of age.



Thursday

The Tower: Tips and Tricks


True that The Tower is a fun, and simple game to play, and it is just one of those games where you can spend hours trying to beat your old score. But hopefully after you these tips and tricks, it may just send your score to the top.

  1. Timing is key- when you play this game, take all the time you need, that’s because there is NO time limit. So with that being said take your time, and be patient.
  2. Aim for the perfect stack- if you do take your time, then also take the time to aim for the perfect stack. Not only does the perfect stack allow you to get 10 coins every time, but this will also increase you changes of getting a higher score.
  3. Purchase power ups- If you have enough coins collected, then it can be safe to say that you purchase power ups such as the Headstart, Coin Doubler, and Insurance.
  4. Practice, practice, and more practice
  5. Have fun with your friends- sometimes I find what helps is getting your friends involved in a game and then do what you can to beat their score, a great way to motivate.



Wednesday

Factory96 Walkthrough (Level 1-5)

These days, looking for a decent game on the Google Play Store is not an easy task. So many of them are just half-baked clones or games that are just plain boring. So sometimes, you just have to bite the bullet and try it out.
 Factory96 Level 1 Answer As you can see, the numbers are to the left of the door. Simply click on the icon at the bottom left and type 2-4-2. Bingo! Factory96 Level 2 Answer This one is a little bit tricky. The numbers are right there on the door you’re supposed to open, but it has a smudge on the left that looks like a number, but it’s actually just dirt or something. The correct code here is 1-1-2. Factory96 Level 3 Answer Finally, we get into some interactive puzzling! See the leaf rake at the bottom? Tap it and it will go into your inventory. Click on the rake in the inventory and clean up the leaves above the window. There you go: 3-3-5. Factory96 Level 4 Answer If you look closely, there is a small bottle of spray on the floor. Click on it to add it to your inventory, and click on it to use it. Then make some graffiti on the wall and you will find your answer: 8-9-1 Factory96 Level 5 Answer Did you notice that there was a missing power switch beside the other one? I did not, but through vigorous clicking on the screen, I somehow managed to put the switch in the […]

The post Factory96 Walkthrough (Level 1-5) appeared first on androidgamesnews.




Sunday

Factory96 Walkthrough (Level 16-20),

The more I play Factory96, the more I find myself enjoying the pictures and background of the abandoned factory rooms. It gives me this sort of eerie feeling of loneliness that I actually want to escape from. That aspect works in favor of the nature of the game and genre. It’s amazing how a simple game like this can evoke emotions out of me.. or maybe I’m just a sensitive guy.


Anyway, if you find yourself about to bang your head against the wall, then you have come to the right place. Below is the exact instructions for you to pass the next 5 levels, and look for the links at the bottom of the page for previous levels. But before that, please read the following disclaimer:
Similar to the other walkthroughs I have posted, I strongly recommend you try to guess the answers first. There is absolutely no fun if you just come here to copy all the answers. If you are stuck on a level, try asking around. Your friends, family or Facebook contacts might have a clue.  The whole idea of this game is the joy of finding out the answers. Don’t spoil it for yourself by taking the easy way out!

Factory96 Level 16 Answer

There are numerous items on the ground, but only one can be picked up. Tap on the crowbar and use it on the fridge to open it. Here, I was stuck. I had tried everything except my own stupid advice: THINK IN NUMBERS! There is a six pack and there is a dozen eggs. What does that give you? 6-1-2.

Factory96 Level 17 Answer

This one actually requires you to have gone to school. There are three barrels with three different elements. Each element has its own atomic number in the periodic table. If you do a Google search for “Periodic Table“, you will find that the corresponding numbers to those elements are: 7-4-8.

Factory96 Level 18 Answer

OK, so I got stuck on this as well. Like any normal human being, I tried the time on the clock 3:40, 3:35, 7:15, 8:15, etc, but nothing worked. I tapped everywhere but nothing budged. I tried the number of clean tiles on the ground as well! Seriously, who would think of using the angle between the two dials on the clock??? Well, this pissed me off, so here’s the angle in degrees: 2-2-5.

Factory96 Level 19 Answer

After an impossible Level 18, this level is a piece of cake. See a window, break it. Use the brick that you picked up in level 15 to smash the glass and look at the numbers written on the wall: 8-9-4.

Factory96 Level 20 Answer


Somehow, I find level 20 to be very interesting. It’s a technique that I don’t think I’ve seen before in any puzzle game I’ve played. I figured this one out after a while, but it was exciting to find the pattern in the numbers. Connect all the “1″s to give you the number 3, all the “2″s to give you the number 5, and all the “3″s to give you the number 1. There you go: 3-5-1.
Yippee! We are down to the final five levels! Stay tuned in the coming week for my final walkthrough of Factory96. This has been an enjoyable ride so far, and I can’t wait for the developers to add more levels.

Gummy Drop! iPad Review

Match-three puzzle games flooded both app stores, with many featuring the same features. That said, Gummy Drop looks to differentiate itself from the pack.


The Good

In Gummy Drop, you are tasked with rebuilding famous landmarks in different parts of the world. While solving the puzzles, you earn coins and building materials necessary for the rebuilding efforts. The game's story about rebuilding gives the player a goal for completing the puzzles, and the semblance of a plot is a welcome change of pace.
On the flip side, the gameplay is like any typical match-three puzzle game. You are able to move pieces in different directions to match up three in a row, but with different goals, from getting a certain score to breaking a specific number of tiles.

The Bad

Gummy Drop has the same pitfalls that have become the standard in match-three games. It works on a system of lives, so if you fail to complete a puzzle you lose a life. Once you're out of lives, you need to stop playing or pay to buy more. The game also has coins that you earn by solving puzzles, which you can then invest in power-ups. You can buy more coins if needed, but you can easily play without them.

The Verdict

Gummy Drop is a solid match-three puzzle game. Unfortunately, it doesn't do much to differentiate itself from other titles in the genre. If you've grown tired of these types of games, we doubt this one will reel you in.

Factory96 Walkthrough (Level 11-15)

If you are following us on this journey of discovery that is Factory96, then this guide should be able to help you on your way. I am a bit sad that Factory96 only has 25 levels, but the developers did mention that more will be coming in the form of free updates. We are at the halfway point already and I feel like we’re just getting started. If you haven’t heard of this game until now, click on the links below to download this free escape-room puzzle game for Android and iOS.


Anyway, if you find yourself about to bang your head against the wall, then you have come to the right place. Below is the exact instructions for you to pass the next 5 levels.

Factory96 Level 11 Answer

This one is fairly obvious. On the wall, in the midst of all the blue paint is the months Jan, May and March. As I said earlier, you have to think in numbers. So converting the months into numerical value will give you the numbers: 1-5-3.

Factory96 Level 12 Answer

Haha, because I’m Chinese, I am laughing at this level. Well, it really is as simple as it looks. Just translate the following characters into English and you will get your answer. Look for an Asian friend, or someone who has taken a Chinese class and he/she will tell you: 4-1-2.

Factory96 Level 13 Answer

Knives are bad and dangerous. Did your mother tell you that? That being said, stay away from that knife and whatever it’s poking. The remaining three cards will give you your answer: 2-1-3.

Factory96 Level 14 Answer

There are two ways of doing this. You can either shake your device till a grenade drops on the floor, or you can keep tapping on the door until the grenade drops. Honestly, I think the first method is the correct one, but because I didn’t know better, I tapped about 15 times before it dropped. Anyhow, click on the grenade to pull the pin and it will explode together with the door. Inside the room is displayed the numbers 6-8-4.

Factory96 Level 15 Answer


This one is a real b***h. You know what I said about tapping everywhere until something happens? Yea it’s applicable here. To uncover the hidden numbers, you have to tap on the bottom left brick that is a different color. When the brick is removed, click on the piece of paper inside to reveal: 4-7-1.
There you go. As usual, try to do the next five levels first. If you are really stuck, check this site again next week for the answers to levels 16-20.

Saturday

Lichdom: Battlemage Review


The song you hear calling from the center of Lichdom: Battlemage is one of ice and fire. A chorus chants from within, urging you to chill your personal demons with the ray of frost you blast from your fingertips, and to burn them with showers of brimstone. Elemental powers aren't the only ones you command in this magic-driven action game, but they are the two that define the initial hours of Lichdom's overlong campaign, which hobbles to a close long after it milks the joy out of its excellent but single-minded combat.
Let's return, however, to those initial hours. Lichdom: Battlemage is built around the most satisfying spellcasting this side of Kingdoms of Amalur, and it's this one system that drives the adventure from beginning to end. There is no mana bar obstructing your access to deadly magic. The only cooldowns you need consider are the intrinsic casting times of the spells themselves, not additional timers that dole out casting permission at specified intervals. Wizards and skeletons spawn into the level from nowhere, and you fling icicles at them or soften them up with a hive of buzzing parasites that floats above your head.
If you want to keep your distance during rough battles like this, craft shields that give you unlimited access to the short-range teleport called "blink."
Casting these spells from Lichdom's first-perspective feels oh so good, and they come in three types of magical flavors, called sigils. Each sigil allows for three casting techniques: a focused attack, an area-of-effect attack, and a parry--termed a nova--that typically offers its own kind of offensive enhancement. A focused spell might take the form of a continuous ray of elemental energy or a ball of filth, though I was most taken by homing missiles, which I could fire off in quick succession or charge up for a more thorough display of destruction. To turn an archer into a pile of ash is simple enough with such a missile: hold a mouse button, then release that flaming projectile and watch your target skeleton dissolve into the wind when it hits.
Forgive my focus on fire and ice. It's easiest to describe these types of magic in light of the more complex sigils, such as kinesis and delirium, which allow you to control the battlefield in various ways, turning enemies against each other or halting them in their tracks. I grew fond of a slaughterous trio comprised of necromancy, corruption, and ice. Necromancy does what it says on the tin, turning fiends into friends when the grim reaper comes to visit, while corruption allows you to spread an epidemic of tumorous growths and ravenous parasites. These sigils often work in tandem with each other, turning a sequence of properly-timed blitzes into a colorful spectacle of frozen sorcerers shattering into a trillion pieces. This may be magic, but I am more than a mere magician: I am a demigod.
Mr. Freeze would have an excellent ice pun to accompany this image.
More specifically, I am a Dragon, capital-D, and a significant figure in Lichdom's baffling story, which stars you--a battlemage of the gender you choose--and a scout of complementary gender whose role would best be described as "exposition faucet." He or she flits in and out of your travels to share the details of a story that's never properly established, making every line of Lichdom's dialogue a mess of white noise. "Here's a story about something cool you'll never witness for yourself," says the scout, in essence, and you move on to making your own story. The beautiful environments thankfully have stories of their own to share; twisted tree trunks and tarnished temples rise from a fetid swamp, and you see massive sea vessels encased in ice, as if they were frozen in time before their captains were aware of such an unlikely danger. CryEngine 3, the same graphics technology that humbled many a PC in 2013 in Crysis 3, has returned to remind you that your machine really needs a new graphics card. To be fair, however, the game looks great even with medium-ranged setting activated, though the game's liberal use of motion blur will have you rushing to tweak its visual options to diminish the discomfort.
As tempting as it is to compare Lichdom: Battlemage to Skyrim, what with the early snowy environments and all that magic, this is no role-playing game--at least, not in the traditional sense. Lichdom does, however, grant you plenty of agency over how you exercise your magical talents. Your spells are not assigned to you as if they are medicines prescribed by a doctor (burn two brutes to a crisp with this bog-standard fireball and call me in the morning). Instead, you drive your own destiny by designing your spells using the various materials that occasionally rush to your body after a kill as if drawn to your magnetic personality.
Elemental powers aren't the only ones you command in this magic-driven action game, but they are the two that define the initial hours of Lichdom's overlong campaign, which hobbles to a close long after it milks the joy out of its excellent but single-minded combat.
I couldn't possibly begin to detail Lichdom's convoluted spell creation, which isn't ungraspable, but requires that you make sense of various terms--mastery, control, critical effect multiplier, apocalyptical chance--and interpret the results of each step of the crafting process. At first, it's difficult to tell why spells behave as they do, especially when there are countless statistical minutiae differentiating one spell from the next. ("These two spells are the same except one offers a slightly larger attack radius and the other does slightly more damage. Is it worth spending time on a decision that won't likely matter much on the field of battle?") It's both empowering and somewhat tedious to have so much control over so many magical attributes, but whether or not you fall in love with this system, you'll spend plenty of time attending to it: more powerful demons shall arrive, and you will have to create higher-level spells to destroy them.
After several hours of winding your way through Lichdom's linear levels, it becomes clear that developer Xaviant relied on this combat system to the detriment of other basic aspects of game design. One by one, combat scenarios appear, each one exactly like the last. Enemies spawn into being out of nowhere--and should you die and have to relive the battle, they always materialize in the same locations with no concern for your position relative to their spawn points. You wave your hands about, spreading disease and death, until every demon has fallen--or until you are wholly annihilated. You then interact with a floating sphere that generates a purple hologram depicting two or three characters talking about apparently vital story events you never get to witness for yourself. And then you repeat this scenario, with only boss fights and the occasional appearance of your opposite-gendered exposition vessel to disrupt the flow. Necromancy, ice bolt, ice bolt, fiery aura--once more, with feeling.

To be fair, the flow is also disrupted by frequent deaths, an annoyance that's sure to hound you when you enter new areas with spells that no longer adequately protect you, but without the components that would allow you to create stronger magic. Some battles are teeth-gnashingly, hair-pullingly grueling, particularly those with enemies that enjoy freezing you in place, and Lichdom almost takes a perverse delight in how far apart its checkpoints occur. And so you take part in a tedious video game version of Groundhog Day in which you perform the same amazing supernatural feats so often, and in the same repetitive scenarios, that those feats become as boring as collecting Gandalf the Grey's dry cleaning.
That isn't to say that I don't appreciate the inherent diversity of Lichdom's spellcrafting; a ray of focused flame behaves differently than the necromantic conversion of dead demons, after all. But the game's general approach takes the burden off the design and transfers the impetus of creating variety to me--and without innate structural variety, Lichdom stretches its one excellent idea to the point of tearing. The game's inordinate length only reinforces the monotony. I hesitate to suggest a game should be shorter than it already is, but Lichdom itself makes an excellent argument for brevity. Xaviant miscalculated the formula. (Great spellcasting) - (mana bar) + (meaningless story) + (unvaried battles) is not, in fact, equal to 15 or 16 hours of consistent enjoyment and $39.99 of your money.
The most important consequence of Lichdom's impenetrable story is that you always know when it's safe to go make a sandwich.
While Lichdom makes a strong case for a shorter game, it also makes the case for another Lichdom game. If there is any game this year deserving of a sequel, it's this one. With a steely backbone of meaningful world-building, sensible storytelling, and proper pacing, a Lichdom 2 could have an unassailable place to hang its best asset. The game at hand is concerned only with the magic. A few hours in, I was convinced that it might be enough. The love affair didn't last, but I'll always have those golden memories.

Destiny Review


It's called the Black Garden. You see it from a clifftop above, gazing across the blooming acres through a thick green haze, and imagine the sights that might be seen there, and the adventures you might have there. The reality of the garden is sadly never better than the stories you might make up in your head when you look down at it. What you see is a facade; the garden is a broken promise of adventures you never have and landscapes never explored, and it represents the whole of Destiny, a multiplayer shooter that cobbles together elements of massively multiplayer games but overlooks the lessons developers of such games learned many years ago. I dream of the tales that might one day be told in that sprawling expanse, but Destiny is not yet telling them.
Instead, Destiny prefers telling the same pedestrian stories time and time again, hoping to transfix you with its rinse-and-repeat pace and ply you with the possibility of better loot, rather than with gameplay diversity that gives you good reason to hope for surprises on the horizon. Cooperative missions--some of them occurring within the story, and others, called strikes, occurring outside of it--are primarily about doors and computers. Your robotic companion, an orb voiced by Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage, hacks into a lot of them, and it is your job to shoot aliens hailing from various galactic races while he drones the occasional word of encouragement. ("I'll work faster," he says, in a bored not-quite-robot, not-quite human delivery that, like most of Destiny, lacks energy and charisma.) The fight may end with an elite enemy, or even a giant boss, that absorbs many minutes worth of bullet fire before it falls, just in time for Dinklage-bot to announce his success and open the door that leads to another firefight and another terminal to hack into.
The repetition may not bother you at first. It's easy to be taken in by Destiny's gorgeous shell, a slick and striking wrapper that surrounds the hollow and unimaginative game languishing inside of it. Everything about the game screams "big budget," and Destiny's versions of Earth, Mars, the Moon, and Venus are meant to be ogled and appreciated. Outside of the pockets of alien invaders and the dropships that bring you even more strange entities to annihilate, these are sterile places, more like stunning screensavers than dynamic domains. But what views Destiny offers! From the golden-red sands of Mars rise rocky crags and abandoned facilities that speak to a history the story offers too few glimpses into. On Venus, you might hesitate to step foot into streams of unknown purple liquid that couldn't exist on the planet as we currently understand it. These sights are awe-inspiring, though Destiny takes a "look but don't touch" approach to them. That purple liquid? It's fine to walk through. Destiny's environments are oblivious to your presence, more cold and indifferent than hostile and mysterious.
Make no mistake: Destiny's mechanical basics are, for the most part, superb. Interacting with this online-only shooter is a delight. The confident shooting model, the intuitive menus, the unblemished frame rate--all of these elements make for a fantastic foundation to build a worthy dynamic multiplayer shooter upon. Pulse rifles shoot their rhythmic barrages with great power, and charging up a fusion rifle and releasing its payload is akin to holding your breath and then expelling it in one rewarding sigh. The game's best combat feature, however, might be its melee attack, regardless of which of the game's three all-too-similar classes you choose. Destiny nails that special, difficult-to-define something comprised of fluid controls, excellent collision detection, and awesome technology that makes every action silky and responsive. You can leap and glide through the air, a mechanic that gives Destiny a sense of freedom that matches its open spaces, and helps you escape danger when encounters get tough.
Why does the moon have the same gravity as earth? Because "The Traveler," I guess.
The most powerful foes put up a decent fight, using cover to their advantage, protecting themselves with shields, or assailing you en masse. If only you got access to the aliens' intriguing firearms instead of being confined to the game's excellent but bog-standard arsenal. Luckily, you gain access to different types of slow-to-replenish grenades, and a few superpowers, such as the warlock's magical area-of-effect projectile, that take even longer to recharge. The extraterrestrial races you battle come in all shapes and sizes and yank their names from the Dungeons & Dragons rulebook: wizard, minotaur, harpy, and the like. Tearing down the alien hordes can be enjoyable. You set the sights of your machine gun on a chain of thralls and mow them down while a troop of acolytes fires on you from a distance. The stage is set for an electrifying showdown.
The disappointment of Destiny is that it fails to capitalize on the possibilities. Story missions and strike missions have you taking to Destiny's broad and beautiful settings with a friend or two at your side, but breadth isn't the games primary calling card: it's repetition. Excellent basics are betrayed by half-baked ideas stretched into hours of slow-paced and redundant tasks that have you asking yourself, "Hey, isn't this the same canyon I just raced through on my handy speeder a few moments ago? Hey, didn't I just cross this hill 10 minutes ago, and 20 minutes ago, and an hour ago?" It's tempting to compare Destiny to full-fledged massively multiplayer role-playing games, but doing so reveals how much more diverse typical MMOGs really are. By contrast, Destiny makes no attempt to mask the sameness of its primary tasks. To pursue new content in Destiny is to fondly recall a trophy you've already won. It's nice to relive the victory, but new celebrations require new victories, not home movies of the old ones.
Headshots are helpful, but goblins are best shot in their middles!
Destiny tries to mask its repetitiveness with a vague story that uses more cryptoscientific nonsense than an entire season of Star Trek, and grants your character so meaningless an identity, and so little dialogue, that he or she might as well be a silent protagonist. "Lure out the Vex Gate Lord that protects the Endless Steps and bring its head back to the Awoken," says the mission text, making you ponder phenomena you know next to nothing about. What is the role of the Awoken in this solar system? What is the historical relevance of the Endless Steps? What purpose drives the Vex, and indeed, what do the Awoken hope to learn?
I don't have the answers.
The story hints at its potential about halfway through, when you meet two of Destiny's few non-Dinklage characters, both of whom wear dramatic costumes and fill their speech with pregnant pauses worthy of the best Bond villains. Alas, Destiny wastes the opportunity to develop a mystery worth caring about, and instead reverts to more fetch quests, then follows them up with a manipulative ending that reminds you that the game's superlative orchestral soundtrack does far more work in establishing this world's tone than the mediocre writing ever does. To be fair, some of the item descriptions, and lore-heavy explanations you can read on Destiny's official website, fill in some narrative gaps. But even many of those explanations require you to meet certain thresholds so that you can unlock them. Developer Bungie doesn't take responsibility for its own story; instead, it passes the responsibility for learning the story on to you, but never infuses its game with the richness of tone that might inspire you to seek answers.
Stop staring at the scenery. There are people to shoot!
There's loot, of course, much of it in the form of new weapons, armor, and blueprints called engrams, which you redeem at a hub called the Tower. You share this space with a dozen-plus other players, most of whom talk to the vendors there without concern for other players. If you're used to the barrage of loot you receive while playing games like Borderlands or Diablo III, be sure to prepare for Destiny's slower pace of doling out rewards. It's befitting that meaningful new stuff doesn't come that frequently, given how Destiny on the whole feels like a standard-sized experience stretched entirely too thin. Once you leave the tale behind, which happens about 15 hours into Destiny should you play story missions that match your level, your desire for loot is the biggest determining factor when deciding whether to stick with Destiny or to jump ship.
I'm not sure I will return, in spite of the promise of a larger-scale raid event soon to come. Each automatic rifle is more or less like the last, and the various passive upgrades do little to spur my interest. Much of Destiny feels underdone and underthought. There's no scaling system in place to allow players of too-disparate levels to play together, or even to draw you back to lower-level areas.The presence of players outside of your fireteam is more window dressing than vital mechanic, particularly if you level up in ways that don't involve performing patrol missions, which return you to previously explored areas to perform random, boring quests. It is on patrol missions that you stumble upon public events, which draw nearby players together to vanquish greater foes, like a hardy spider tank that soaks up rockets and heavy fire. Given Destiny's habit of delivering small-scale action in a large-scale world, it's a shame it's so easy to miss out on these events: they are one of the few elements that make Destiny spring to life.
Destiny prefers telling the same stories time and time again, hoping to transfix you with its rinse-and-repeat pace and ply you with the possibility of better loot, rather than with gameplay diversity that intimates surprises hovering on the horizon.

The crucible is where the action heats up, even if it rarely erupts with true thrills. This is where Destiny's competitive multiplayer lurks, and it's entirely competent. A post-Halo Bungie reminds us once again off its mastery of level design, with intricate maps of various sizes that get put to good use in four different modes. Six-member free-for-all deathmatch finds its stride on maps that recall the winding corridors and central combat arenas of Unreal Tournament, and gives you a good reason to wield a shotgun if you've gotten accustomed to equipping a sniper rifle in that secondary weapon slot. This six-player deathmatch also has a team variation, on which teams of three hunt each other at a more thoughtful pace than the other modes provide. It's best to stick with friends for this one: communication is key, as is carefully surveying the area before making moves that could put you directly in an opponent's line of sight. It's Destiny's tensest mode, but one that strangers can easily disrupt. Typical team deathmatches involve twice as many players on maps that sometimes allow you to leap into one of Destiny's two combat vehicles. (Oh, how I wish these vehicles had been put to better use outside of the crucible.)
Control mode, in which players seek to secure specified control points, is the most enjoyable, however, allowing both lone wolves and focused teams to contribute. There are some issues here, such as the way the auto-targeting can cause a passing opponent to grab your targeting reticle when you are trying to fire at a different target. However, competitive play proves itself a worthy way of leveling up and earning access to gear otherwise unavailable. The maps themselves eventually reveal subtle but clever details that become important tactical considerations. Those large space-age doors take a moment to open, and do so loudly enough that you might very well signal your approach. Mounted guns offer a view of the exact right amount of real estate, making a stationary gunner potentially valuable but by no means overpowered. If any attack is overpowered, it might be the arc blade, the bladedancer subclass's super ability, which cuts through you like a knife through space butter. (It's the gunslinger's golden gun ability that I most often succumb to, however.)
You might summarize Destiny by the way in which it wraps up its story. Once the final, hackneyed closing scene finishes, fireteam members are awarded the same weapon, regardless of class, and a handful of currency. This reminder of how wholly unspecial you are is the big finale of a lavishly produced but troubled game that excels in the basics but lacks creativity and heart. It is role-playing grind in shooter form--an empty house built on a firm foundation.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call Review

There aren't many video game series with music as memorable as Final Fantasy, and there's no game with as much of that great music as Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call. As a follow up to 2012's Theatrhythm, Curtain Call trumps its predecessor in every way. That's not to say that the last game was a poor experience, but Curtain Call collects the lot of the original's music, adds a heap of new tracks from the library of classic and contemporary Final Fantasy games, and nestles them between both familiar and new gameplay modes.
Of course, anyone who's interested in Final Fantasy and its fantastic soundtracks may have already played the original Theatrhythm, and the fact that the core gameplay hasn't evolved in a drastic fashion for Curtain Call might make it seem like it's not worth the repeat trip down memory lane. Yet, with new soundtracks, multiplayer m odes, and the addition of every DLC track from the first game, there are plenty of reasons to jump back into the realm of Theatrhythm.
Curtain Call's rhythm-based gameplay is easy to pick-up, fun to play, and is as challenging as you want it to be thanks to a generous range of difficulty levels. The control scheme is also flexible--you can play with just the 3DS stylus, or with buttons and the analog stick. The actions you perform are as simple as tapping a button or the 3DS touchscreen, swiping the stylus or analog stick in a specific direction, or holding down an input for a few seconds. Sometimes these actions are combined. For example: you might hold down a button and move the analog stick t o follow a winding path of notes on screen. It's necessary to follow the tutorial to recognize when you're expected to perform certain actions, but after a few songs, tapping and swiping along to the music becomes second nature. Curtain Call is only really challenging when you ramp up the difficulty to the highest level.
 
Depending on the song you choose, you'll play one of three types of stages: battle music stages, field music stages, or event music stages. Battle stages put a team of four characters against a series of monsters in a manner reminiscent of classic Final Fantasy battle scenarios. Each character has their own stream of inputs, and though this sounds like it can get complicated, it doesn't. Despite the fact that you control four characters, their actions never overlap.
Only a fat chocobo with a chest full of treasure could bring Squall this much joy.
When you aren't facing behemoths and cactuars during rousing battle stages, you can play through event and field stages for a bit of a respite. The peaceful sight of a character traveling through the wilderness during a field stage is relaxing compared to the frantic pace of most battle stages, and event stages give you the chance to watch classic Final Fantasy cutscenes as you tap and swipe along with the music.
Before venturing out into the game, you create a party of four adventurers from a small selections of characters, but there are over 50 that you can unlock as you play through collections of stages known as quest medleys. In medleys and other stages, you earn items, abilities, and experience points that will bolster the strength and cap abilities of your team, too. Equipping an item to your team may restore a bit of your "health" meter after a series of missed notes and cues, or it might guarantee that your favorite magical being is summoned during combat. You also earn CollectaCards, which give you the chance to apply permanent stat boosts to characters. The rarer the card, the better the chance that its stat boosts will stick. Toying with customization options for your party is a nice distraction between stages, imparting an additional bit of Final Fantasy flare, but it's easy to ignore these elements and succeed just the same.
 
Competitive multiplayer makes its debut in Curtain Call, allowing you to challenge opponents both l ocal and online. Essentially, two players do their best to complete the same song, which the computer chooses randomly after you each pick a candidate. Do well during the match and you'll build up a meter that will ultimately allow you to inflict hazards upon your opponent. The winner of the match is the person who ends up with the highest score, and the reward is a CollectaCard of your choosing. It's good to see competitive play make its debut in Curtain Call and it's a handy option to have when you want to measure your skills, but given that you're constantly doing that within the single player game anyway, it's not a game changing feature. It's merely a nice addition to an already solid experience.
Curtain Call's engrossing gameplay and its wealth of music make it easy to recommend to anyone with fond memories of Final Fantasy. That said, it's difficult to recommend to anyone without those ties. Everything within is a tip of the hat to the series at large, and without the experience and context to know what you're looking at, it may be one of the most baffling mixes of characters, creatures, and events ever assembled. That doesn't detract from the high-quality music and gameplay within, but for a game grounded in nostalgia, it's hard to deny that it might not excite people who aren't fans of the series. But, for those who are, Curtain Call is a heartfelt walk down memory lane. As someone who played the first Theatrhythm a lot, I'm still enthusiastic for Curtain Call due to the large amount of new content. It's hard to imagine fans of Final Fantasy not leaping at the chance to reconnect with their memories and some of the most beautiful music from the history of Final Fantasy, and playing Curtain Call is the perfect way to do so.