Late to the Party: Hammerwatch

Price I paid: $1.43 (It was part of a seven game bundle on humblebundle.com)

Hammerwatch deserves the title “cooperative dungeon crawler” more so than any other game I have played. While I enjoy Diablo II, Champions of Norrath, and Dark Alliance, they tend to test the limits of how much I’m willing to forgive a person when my friend has 15,000 more gold than I have but refuses to help me buy new armor to protect my under-leveled behind that the enemies seem to love so much. Hammerwatch, thankfully, focuses on removing the unintentionally competitive aspects of the genre that don’t hamper the fun.

Evolve Review

To really put this review into perspective I have to go back to my first year after leaving the Navy. I officially left the military in early 2009, coming back to my small home town, and sleeping on my cousin's couch for a few months before I was able to move on with my life. During this brief time with little responsibility, and a bit of money saved up, I had quite a bit of free time on my hands. I filled a good bit of this with Left 4 Dead, a game which had come out the previous year. My favorite thing about the game was the multiplayer versus mode, allowing you to play on a team of special infected against the survivors. During this time I had a number of friends on Steam who played, and one in particular who went by the name LaggyFish invited me to join a clan he was a part of. If you listen to the podcast then you may have heard me mention TAW (The Art of Warfare) clan before, and how the semi-competitive clan gave me a chance to really learn the game, and play with a group of people who were as passionate about the game as I was. They helped me to learn the maps, what the best routes were to take as the survivors, which areas were best to pull survivors as a smoker to get an instant kill, which areas to pounce from as a hunter for the greatest damage. The comradery and shared passion helped to really make that game for me. Evolve however, has not recaptured that experience for me.

VGR 5.06

Kickstarter is once again under the microscope for us, as we look it's history, success stories, and failures.  Movies are getting made out of board games, Fake DLC gets a video tutorial, and the best Final Fantasy fighting mash-up returns for round 3.  Also Aliens.

-=Download 5.06=-

VGR 5.05

We stretch out interests out a bit to talk about the Marvel Cinematic universe, get our hopes up for Fallout 4 (again), and have some first impressions for Evolve, Apotheon, Sunless Sea and Darkest Dungeon.

-=Download 5.05=-

VGR 5.04

It's Trey, Kevin and Miguel this week, talkin' 'bout some Dark Souls, Final Fantasy, the FCC, Besieged, ToeJam & Earl, Joystiq, and all sorts of other stuff.  Also shout-outs to the gaming club at UNCG.

-=Download 5.04=-

Dying Light Review

In recent memory, Dying Light might be one of the most derivative games I’ve played.  While in some cases that might be seen as an insult, for Techland’s open-world-zombie-parkour simulator, it’s borrowed from the best in order to make one of their best titles yet.  The influences are worn on it’s sleeve, taking Dead Island’s basic gameplay structure, and mixing it with a healthy modicum of movement from Mirror’s Edge, the end result being a very large game, with a some great interplay between gameplay systems.