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KCGameOn Diablo III Giveaway!
May 19th, 2012
Welcome KCGameOn attendees! Welcome to TGB! We will be sponsering your local LAN with a free copy of Diablo III. This contest is ONLY available to KCGameOn attendee’s. If you are not a member you CANNOT win.
This contest is for a physical copy of Diablo III for PC which can be picked up from Iceman at the LAN.
To qualify for the contest, the following requirements must be met:
1. Sign up for a TGB account!
2. Like us on facebook
3. What is your favorite video game of all time and what did you like so much about it?
Thats it! The winner will be chosen at random around 6 PM CST and an email will be send to the winners email address and to the LAN host Iceman. Show your winning email to Iceman to claim your prize.
Thank you all KCGameOn members who are participating in the Diablo III giveaway! We hope you come back and check us often.
If you are in the Kansas City area and would like to attend one of their LAN’s please check them out at www.kcgameon.com.
Hard Reset: The Review
May 1st, 2012
Hard Reset, one of the games I’ve been looking forward to since its announcement and not only because it is the first PC exclusive title in a long time but also because it’s made by some of the wonderful people who designed The Witcher, one of my favorite games of all time. Does this game live up to the hype that it garnered over night? Sort of…
Graphically Hard Reset is gorgeous and it has some of the best lighting elements I have ever seen in a game. There is a level where a train is coming through a tunnel and as it approaches you can see light bouncing off all the metal in the tunnel and it looks amazing. You can see it in some of the pictures below.
Additionally there is damage based textures on enemies so depending on how many times you’ve hit them they may look more damaged or exposed. Several enemies fall apart and disintegrate as you damage them. Additionally there are some fantastically large scale battles to fight and they are a lot of fun.
While the game does look amazing in many parts it suffers from repetitive level design. After about the 8th level everything looks the same. There aren’t really any varied enemies either. You face the same 5 or 6 enemies throughout the entire game. There is also the problem of having only two weapons and unlike other games where there are 10 to 20 guns to choose from there are only two in this game that you can modify and they transform into the weapon you want. So your rifle is your rifle, gun, grenade launcher, and so forth all in one. I’ll give it credit for originality and in some ways it works well but switching between the modes for the weapon can be confusing and it gets dull after a while.
The story also suffers in Hard Reset. The story is mostly told in comic fashion slides during the loading sequences. There are two problems with this. First I hate cheaply made cut-scenes instead of animated or pre-rendered action sequences to explain the story line if not already done while playing and I will admit there are places for those in certain games but Hard Reset presents itself as a visual spectacle yet it uses a comic strip to present the story? Secondly the ‘press any key to continue’ and pauses in the dialogue often occur at the same time and this can lead to you missing 3 – 5 minutes of dialogue. Additionally the story is fairly hard to follow which can be frustrating.
There is no Multi-Player so for those of you looking for a Multi-Player experience are going to be disappointed.
Hard Reset feels like it just needed three or four more months in development and it could have been so much more. The game rings in at about 6 hours on normal for anyone who is experienced with FPS. Those die hard FPS players should be able to go through it quicker. Hard Reset isn’t a bad game, not by any means and for the price it’s worth its admission price. That being said it’s an OK game not a great game. Perhaps the second time around, if there is one, it will get a little more attention.
Space Marines… Why Are You So Captivating?
April 23rd, 2012
I know I will endure all sorts of flack for this but before playing Warhammer: Dawn of War I had never been exposed to the Warhammer universe. Yes I’d see the game sitting on Best Buys ever dwindling PC selections but I never decided to pick it because I thought it would be stupid. The truth is I was the stupid one. I managed to get the games as part of the THQ Complete Pack that was on sale for $50 on steam and man had I been missing out. Ever since I’ve picked up every Warhammer 40k game and now book that I can get my hands on. Currently I am reading “The Ultramarines Omnibus” by Graham McNeil and I can’t get enough. In fact I spend half my day dreaming about the Warhammer Universe lately which is what prompted me to write this article.
While Warhammer does bear similarities to other franchises there really isn’t anything else like it. The only franchises that come close it in my opinion are Gears of War and Starship Troopers. All 3 universes utilize the powersuit soldier.
So what is it about Space Marines that makes them so capitvating. They don’t live comfortable lives, they spend centuries fighting for the emperor, they aren’t empathetic and they find the sight of regular humans to be… annoying. I’ve always been mesmerized by soldiers, even as a child, there is something larger than life about them even though it may not necessarily be true. Then you add in powersuited armor and have them stand 7 — 10 feet tall, give them guns the size of a cake eating 12 year old child, and drop them into a war torn universe fighting Orcs, Elves and demons and suddenly someone is in nerd heaven.
The Space Marines powersuit is what gives them their persona. They treat their suits much as we would treat their home. They adorne them with decorations, keep them immaculately clean unless in combat. They attach ribbons of honor and power to them. The suit is what separates them from a normal soldier.
Space Marines fight against all odds to ensure humanities survival and for the glory of the dying emperor. They are fanatically loyal and spend their entire lives training to fight and possibley die. They live a life of apparent grand adventure and constant action. They dive into situations where their doom is certain, the chances of winning are slim to non-existent but yet they persevere. Perhaps that is why they are so capitivating… tall, larger than life, full of adventure, or perhaps they are just bad ass and I think their suit looks cool because it’s shiney. What do you guys think? Are Space Marines as captivating to you as they are to me?
Check out some of these pics and videos:
Crytek 3 SDK Trailer
April 19th, 2012
Crytek recently announced the release of the updated SDK kit which includes DX11 support. Take a look at the video below and see the changes for yourself!
Starship Tropers: Invasion Preview
April 10th, 2012
This is going to stray a bit from the beaten path as we don’t talk about movies and TV series much here at TGB but we felt this one is worth the exception and we are very excited about it. Anyone who is a fan of Sci-Fi has heard of and or love Starship Troopers. Sadly over the past decade or so we have had to suffer through a couple of terrible sequels with no budget, bad visuals and horrible acting which has watered down what is otherwise a fantastic universe. In addition to the movies there was an animated series called Starship Troopers: Roughneck chornicles which is one of my favorite animated series of all time in the Sci-Fi genre. It’s a little dated on the CG animated side but the story is next to none and it sticks pretty close to the books. If you haven’t checked it out I would highly recommend it. The complete campaigns or series can be had on amazon.com for around $40.
This series looks like it will break the mold of the previously less than stellar releases of the franchise and fall back in with the spacebattle and action packed setting that we fell in love with in the first movie and animated series.
The details on the new Animated film, which going to be full CG, are pretty slim. The premise of the film is this “A distant Federation outpost Fort Casey comes under attack by bugs. The team on the fast attack ship Alesia is assigned to help the Starship John A. Warden stationed in Fort Casey evacuate along with the survivors and bring military intelligence safely back to Earth. Carl Jenkins, now ministry of Paranormal Warfare, takes the starship on a clandestine mission before its rendezvous with the Alesia and goes missing in the nebula. Now, the battle-hardened troopers are charged with a rescue mission that may lead to a much more sinister consequence than they ever could have imagined.…” and that is taken directly of the Starship Troopers: Invasion offical website.
We’ve collected all of the, what we consider to be, cool images and video from the upcoming Direct-to-DVD 2012 release of Starship Troopers: Invasion. These images are taken directly of the offical website and belong to them:
And last but not least… the video trailer. Has a very Starcraft 2 feel too it doesn’t it?
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
April 10th, 2012
I just thought you all should check out the latest trailer Ironclad games and Stardock Entertainments next chapter in the Sins of a Solar Empire. The trailer reminds me very much of the old TV series Babylon 5. Sins of the Solar Empire or SINS for exhibits one of my favorite things in life, movies and gaming… space battles. Check out the trailer and let us know what you think!
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition for… Mac?
April 9th, 2012
A few days ago we announced that CD Projekt had a big announcement planned and well that announcement is the release of the critically acclaimed ‘The Witcher: Enhanced Edition’ for Mac. Current owners of the Steam version of ‘The Witcher’ will be able to play it on both Mac and PC should they so desire.
I’ve always been impressed with CD Projekt in their ability to stick with platforms that wouldn’t normally be considered big or profitable. Lets be honest the PC market isn’t what it used to be and the Mac market is much smaller but they still release it for Mac regardless. CD Projekt is one of my favorite developers of the modern era because of this. Will any of you be picking this up for Mac? How is the performance and what are your machine specs?
CD Projekt to Make Major Announcement Tomorrow
April 4th, 2012
CD Projekt, the creators of the critically acclaimed “The Witcher” and “The Witcher II” have sent out a press release that they will be making a big announcement tomorrow at 5PM GMT. Read the statement below:
Make sure to watch our conference which takes place tomorrow at 5pm GMT. It will be streamed LIVE from our HQ and can be watched at Gamesradar and our Facebook page (Ustream tab).
Below you will find a brief summary of what we’ll be talking about:
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition release for PC and Xbox 360
• A special surprise for all The Witcher 2 fans
• Other great details about what’s coming soon for The Witcher 2
• Something unique for gaming enthusiasts all over the world
• AND! Stay tuned after our part of the show and see what incredible changes have come to GOG.com
The Witcher I and II are probably my favorite games of all time so this has my interest peeked for sure. While I highly doubt they are going to be announcing “The Witcher III”, I find it very likely it’s going to be something along the lines of a free expansion pack, Direct X 11 patch and or a High Res Texture pack. It would also be nice to see some patching in regards to mutli-monitor platforms. CD Projekt removed support for the eyefinity platform a while back. If anyone has any information on this please post it here.
Dungeon Siege III Review
April 2nd, 2012
Having played the previous two Dungeon Siege games I was pretty excited when I heard they were working on a third one. And why wouldn’t I be the previous two were a lot of fun, had great stories and great graphics for the time. They also had lengthy single player campaigns and wide expansive maps to explore and enemies en masse to kill.
Right out of the box Dungeon Siege is pretty exciting. The graphics look nice, the character dialogue is engaging and the powers look cool and the enemies are mixed but sadly the euphoria wears off. Graphically Dungeon Siege III is pretty to look at, powers are shiney, water looks beautiful, there are many varied and cool looking combat moves and magic powers, tree’s flow in the wind and enemy movements are varied. The biggest complaint I had, graphically, is that the characters during dialogue scenes are very static, they are emotionless and always sway back and forth the same way. I’m also not a fan of the paper rendering during cut scenes. I think it comes off as a very lazy way of storytelling instead of actually taking the time to make full cut scenes.
As any avid RPG gamer knows camera angles are a big deal and sadly Dungeon Siege 3 fails pretty bad here. The game was designed for a controller and it shows. The previous titles were PC only and had a much better feel to them. I’m fairly tolerant of most camera faults but there were many times where the camera would move behind a rock and make it impossible for me to see who I was fighting. Additionally there were timers where my cursor would disappear off the screen and this would make it incredibly difficult to target my quarry.
Story wise Dungeon Siege 3 is average at best. It’s captivating at first but loses its appeal pretty quickly. There were several plot holes and quests were fairly sparse for what I would consider normal for an RPG. There were also features like influence that appeared to have no impact on the game itself. The dialogue in the game is fairly well done but the story in which it is executed is just not that good.
The inventory system was yet another disappointment. It failed to impress and with some many items in the game that simply looked the same and no real good way to organize them it just felt shaky and incomplete. That being said I found from very early in the game that I found a specific weapon that I pretty much used throughout the entire game. I also found that many “potions” found within the game didn’t have a very good description of what they did. For example, one of the potions lets you imbue doom onto your weapon. What exactly does doom do?
Dungeon Siege III was a real tragedy to me and has suffered what a lot of PC to Console games have gone through and that oversimplification. The game is not made for the hardcore RPG audience which the first two were aimed. I’m surprised they would try to stray from the audience which they were originally targeting. This has sadly been a trend with companies trying to jump on the Console cash bandwagon of the last 5 years. We saw the game thing happen with Dragon Age II which was a far cry from its predecessor. While Dungeon Siege III is an ok game it’s not a great one or even a good one. If you can pick it up for $9.99 on Steam like I did and have some spare time you probably won’t be that disappointed but I think you’ll find the previous two a much more enjoyable experience.
Bioshock 2 Giveaway Winner
March 25th, 2012
TGB wants to say congratulations to thecreide for winning the Bioshock 2 Giveaway! We’ve already contacted you via email letting you know that you won and we have also added you on Steam. Please contact us at your earliest convenience to claim your prize. Thanks for participating and congratulations!