Check out Questlike: Pocket OST, another amazing album by Chase Bethea!

Chase Bethea has just released a brand new game music album to the mobile game Questlike-Pocket: Monster Hunt, a beat-bumping, monster-mashing RPG! It's free to play, so head on over to the Google Play store to give it a try.

You can enjoy the soundtrack on various platforms including Spotify, Bandcamp and Pandora Amp. You might even find a few of these tracks entering the RPGN Radio rotation soon!

Hop over and listen: Questlike: Pocket OST on Bandcamp

Posted in Gaming by Locke on July 07th 2022 at 2:01pm 0 Comments

Sony's E3 2013 Press Conference

Shots fired, shots fired! Lets get the biggest news out of the way immediately. The Playstation 4 will cost $399, €399 or £349 when it launches. The box shares somewhat similar design than PS2 did back in the day, and it looks significantly smaller than the Xbox One does. Also, Sony isn't going to have any used games restrictions on the system, and there isn't an online authentication check associated with it either. On the downside, they are going to require PS+ for online multiplayer, but I don't care about that anyway. And then the list of games. These are all coming to PS4 at some point or another, some are exclusive some are not. I decided to skip any Vita and PS3 stuff, there was nothing super interesting there at all.

The Order 1886
Killzone: Shadow Fall
DriveClub
Infamous: Second Son
Knack
Transistor
Don't Starve
Mercenary Kings
Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Secret Ponchos
Ray's the Dead
Outlast
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee remake
Galak-Z The Dimensional
Diablo 3
Final Fantasy 15 (this is Final Fantasy versus 13, they rebranded it)
Kingdom Hearts 3
Final Fantasy 14: A realm Reborn
Assassin's Creed 4: The Black Flag
Watch Dogs
NBA 2K14
The Elder Scrolls Online
Mad Max
Destiny

Lots of that looks interesting, if not system seller material. But the biggest slap in the Microsoft's face was definitely the very direct jabs at the various restrictions that MS is placing on their system, and apparently Sony isn't. You don't see standing ovations on press conferences that often, so when that happens you know something's up. Surprising rebranding of FFversus13 and confirmation that Kingdom Heart 3 is in development is also kind of a big deal to many people. Last Guardian was a no-show again, but I'm not surprised. I'm a little sad that Ubisoft didn't truck out Beyond Good & Evil 2 here either, I guess I'll just have to wait another year. All in all, they showed a ton of games and bitch slapped Microsoft big time. It's hard to imagine that Nintendo will blow us away with anything of this magnitude tomorrow, Sony won E3.

Well, I guess it would be better to say that the consumers won E3 because of what Sony promised in regards to our games and how we play them.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 11th 2013 at 7:32am 0 Comments

Ubisoft's E3 2013 Press Conference

First things first. No Beyond Good & Evil 2 at Ubisoft. So unless Sony bagged that into their conference, I will be a very sad man later today. On to the list of games.

Rocksmith 2014
Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Rayman Legends
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot
South Park Stick of Truth
The Crew
Watch Dogs
Just Dance 2014
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
Trials Fusion
The Division (Tom Clancy's The Division, technically)

While I'm definitely excited for Splinter Cell, Watch Dogs (and I refuse to write that with an underscore, fuck that shit) and Assassin's Creed, I kind of knew what to expect. These games have been on past shows, I was hoping for some new stuff. The Division looked pretty cool, but with these demos and trailers it's hard to say what the open world multiplayer really really means. What does it all mean?!

The South Park game, I have no idea what it even is, but the trailer was sufficiently funny. And the rest just don't move me. Though Just Dance should move everyone, right? Right? Because dance!
Only Sony left for the big conferences, and then Nintendo is going to do that Nintendo Direct stuff tomorrow, I think. Hopefully they show me something fun fun.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 10th 2013 at 7:08pm 0 Comments

Electronic Arts' E3 2013 Press Conference

Electronic Arts had their thing just now, and here's the list of things. Their show was shorter than Microsoft's, probably for the better.

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare
Peggle 2
Titanfall
Star Wars Battlefront
Need for Speed: Rivals
Dragon Age: Inquisition
NBA Live 14
Madden NFL 14
FIFA 14
UFC (14?)
Battlefield 4
Mirror's Edge 2

The PvZ trailer was pretty amazing. Titanfall looked just like it looked at Microsoft thing this morning. The Star Wars Battlefront thing was a very short teaser, DICE is developing it. Need for Speed looked pretty slick, good cards, good sense of speed. Dragon Age supposedly runs on the new Frostbite engine, but it looked a bit crummy to be honest. SPORTS SPORTS. I don't care about sports. Battlefield 4 multiplayer demo was impressive, clearly a scripted match but 32 on 32 live on stage demo was pretty neat. And Mirror's Edge 2 was a pretty short trailer.

All in all, not really super pumped by EA either. The comeback of Mirror's Edge is a pretty nice surprise, I hope they fix the glaring problems that the first game had.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 10th 2013 at 4:23pm 0 Comments

Microsoft's E3 2013 Press Conference

Alright, Microsoft's press thing ended about an hour ago, here's everything you need to know about what they showed in order of apperance. Sorry for the wall-of-text approach, but I'm too lazy right now to edit it all proper like. Maybe I'll come back later and clean it up a bit. I'm not going to link to any videos because at this point it's mostly just stream captures that are floating out there. But before I get to the games, I'll just list some other things first. New 360 design is available today, based on the look of the Xbox One. Xbox Live Gold is changing a little starting July 1st, by adding 2 free games per month. Sort of like PSN+ does with their thing. When Xbox One rolls out, the friend limit will be gone, same for Microsoft Points. The box is going to cost $499, €499 or £429, in November 2013, 21 territories. Too rich for my blood. Alright, then games games games.

Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain, looks pretty nice and has new horse stealth. Bunch of weird character intros, just like you would expect from a MGS game. A solid start for a conference. Get it? Solid, right? Right? Dude on horse is Ocelot. Punished Snake is Snake's name this time. I think it's the Xbox One version, but I don't know if they specifically said anything.

Next up is a trio of 360 games, starting with World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition. Don't really know what to say. That tank just hit a big-ass ramp. Team based 15 on 15 warfare. Free to play, but obviously you need XBL Gold.
Max: The Curse of Brotherhood looks like a family friendly 2D platformer. This looks like something that's probably a licensed property or something, I just don't know it.
And lastly, Dark Souls 2 trailer. Didn't we already know that Dark Souls 2 would be on 360? Seems like a waste of time to show the trailer here. DS2 is coming March 2014, that seems quite late in the cycle.

The rest of these are Xbox One games. They even made a point to say this, just in case anyone was going to be confused.

Ryse: Son of Rome from Crytek. Very quicktime heavy combat, looks pretty though. Some kind of tactic thing happening, group formation with fellow soldiers.

Killer Instinct returns, naturally exclusive to Xbox One. Jago, Saberwulf and Glacius confirmed.

Sunset Overdrive from Insomniac Games, Xbox One exclusive. Some kind of stylized open world shooter game, not really digging the style at all. Shooting monsters with guns, pretty original.

Forza 5 from Turn 10 Studios. Looks like a car game. Some kind of deal with McLaren, they even lifted a new McLaren P1 on to the stage. Pitching a new learning AI, powered by “the cloud”. Doesn't sound like something that needs cloud power. Just saying. They call it Drivatar. Man, who comes up with names like this, seriously.

Minecraft coming to Xbox One. Nothing like Minecraft to show the power of Xbox One.

Quantum Break from Remedy. We saw a little of this 3 weeks ago, but now with more game and less live acting. The ultimate Remedy experience, with some interesting looking time mechanics. Dude is walking through a moment stuck in time, freeze frame of an explosion. Looks cool.

D4, from Swery65, creator of Deadly Premonition. Episodic murder mystery, looks sufficiently Swery with a stylized look.

Project Spark, looks like Microsoft's very own game creator thing. Sort of like a Little Big Planet clone. Coming to Xbox One and Windows 8.

Crimson Dragon, from the creator of Panzer Dragoon and Phantom Dust. Hey guess what, it looks a lot like Panzer Dragoon. They had some sound problems during this one, and the audience decided to start providing their own sound effects, pew pew.

Dead Rising 3, exclusive open world zombie game from Capcom. Appears to have the combo weapons of Dead Rising, but now you can also drive cars. Revolutionary game mechanics. Tonally seems a lot darker than previous Dead Rising games. Dude calls an airstrike from SmartGlass app. I don't know why he can do that, but hey, video games.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from CD Project Red. Looks great, Geralt has a beard. Open world environment, some kind of voice command support too. Sexy mermaids confirmed.

Battlefield 4 from DICE and EA. Looks nice, but we already knew that. More audio problems on the stage. Someone stepped on a cable probably. Jet destruction confirmed.

Below, from Capy Games. Capy has the best logo of all time, by the way. Top down adventure game with rogue like elements.

Sneak peak at an untitled stealthy game from Black Tusk.

Halo 5, from 343 Industries, 2014. No gameplay shown, but hey it's a first person Halo shooter. Promising a 60 FPS game.

Titanfall from Respawn Entertainment. That's the former Call of Duty guys, in case you didn't know. Very fast paced first person combat in and out of mechs, jetpack powered double jumps, wall running, stuff. Spring 2014.

And that's that. The key phrase today was “the power of Xbox One”, or the variation “the power and performance of Xbox One.” Almost everyone who was on stage said that phrase, and got paid the big bucks to do it. Nothing really stuck out to me as a must have. Sorry Microsoft, no deal yet.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 10th 2013 at 2:52pm 0 Comments

E3 is coming, are you ready?

Well, are you?

Officially E3 starts on the 11th of June, but that's really only when the floors open. The things that I'm personally looking forward the most are the press conferences, which are all held on Monday, the day before. Microsoft will kick things of at 9:30AM, followed by Electronic Arts at 1:00PM, Ubisoft at 3:00PM and closing with Sony at 6:00PM, all times are in PDT. If you haven't been following the news, you might think that I forgot to include Nintendo. Well, nope. Nintendo decided not to have an E3 press event this year, and is planning to use their Nintendo Directs as their primary communication channel to its users. They will still have a presence on the floor though.

I'm most likely going to watch all of them live, and I'll try my best to write some notes down and post about them afterwards. No promises though, I've made similar promises in the past, then not delivered and felt somewhat bad about it. So no promises this year. You can of course watch all of them live yourself, Gametrailers probably has a good stream up, they usually do. Certainly your other big game sites such as Gamespot and IGN will have theirs as well.

With both Sony and Microsoft now officially out with some information on their next systems, I hope and expect that E3 will be games games games. And I'm also hoping that third parties will also have some new stuff to show, now that they can talk about the next generation more openly.

And I better see Beyond Good & Evil 2 from Ubisoft this year. They've repeatedly said that this next generation of consoles will be needed to realize Michel Ancel's vision. I'm going to hold them to that.


On another note, site updates have been slow as of late. We have been adding songs to the radio every now and then, but it's harder than you might think. Adding songs from games that you have never played takes a lot of listening when you have no base line of "yeah that boss battle song was pretty ace when I played through the game". And then some games are just full with awesome stuff, but it's not like we plan to post full soundtracks in there, so picking the right songs is not easy.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 02nd 2013 at 6:55am 0 Comments

Super Knights now available for free!

When kidnapped princesses are in distress, when dangerous dragons, scary ghosts and ugly witches need to be fought, when the world is in peril and you need a hero who are you going to call? The Super Knights!

Who doesn't like free games? Our friends over at Focus Home Interactive have just let us know that one of their recent titles are now available free of charge! You no longer have any excuse for not playing Super Knights, as long as you own an iPhone or iPad! (as it's currently only available in the Apple app store, but the website says it's coming soon to Google play!)

This scoring app released earlier this summer has been praised by the press and players worldwide, thanks to a simple yet addictive gameplay, and a really fun atmosphere: players grapple and swing around anchor points to fill pockets with sparkly gems, collect treasures, save princesses and dodge the attacks of countless enemies! This unique and addictive game mechanic quickly captivated players, who try to reach higher scores and unlock even more power-ups! Head on over to the official website knights-roundcable.com to check out the trailer and download the game!

Posted in Gaming by Locke on December 06th 2012 at 12:16pm 0 Comments

Steam Summer Sale has arrived, and wallets around the world weep

That's pretty much the way things are for me right now, but that doesn't mean I can't spread the joyful message of the Steam Summer Sales. The sales run from July 12 (that's today, kids) to July 22, so you've got plenty of time to waste all your hard-earned money.

They mixed up the format this year a little. Well, maybe adding to the format is better way of putting it. The familiar 24 hour daily deals are back, as are the big-ass package deals that run through the whole thing, you know, stuff like Valve Collection, id Collection, 2K Collection, Ubisoft Collection. Just a ton of games for cheap.

Additionally, some fresh additions to the format, they've introduced Flash Deals. They are, as you may have guessed, shorter deals. For example, currently the Flash Deals slot holds 4 games and each of them have their own countdown, currently ranging from 4 to 10 hours left.
Another new thing is the Community Choice, which appears to be a battle between 3 potential deals every 8 hours, voted and decided by the community. The first vote is on-going right now between The Witcher 2 (-60%), Batman: Arkham City (-66%) and Saints Row The Third (-75%). The voting for this set ends in about 3 hours, at which point the deal should go live. Naturally I voted for Saints Row as that's the only one of these I don't own yet.
Both of these new things are very clearly designed so that people will come back to the site more often than just to check the dailies, that's what I used to do too. Sneaky Valve, sneaky.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on July 12th 2012 at 2:41pm 0 Comments

Are video games responsible for killing?

No matter what year and no matter what season, the media always point fingers at video games and claim that violent video games are responsible for deaths of others. So are they really responsible? Let's take a look.

Video gaming started with simple pixels and arcade concepts; just simple shoot the alien stuff or grabbing pills to eat ghosts. That was the past. Now we are in the present and the future. Some, or probably most, video games can be first-person shooters. This delves the user in the game, making it look like they are killing someone in the game.

From mafia-type games to burglary, it just makes it look like that they are responsible. Inside that video game society, it just shows that killing and stealing is the answer in the game. In real-life society, it is never the answer.
Continue reading »

Posted in Gaming by Marona on July 11th 2012 at 5:26pm 0 Comments

Nintendo E3 2012 Press Conference, Nintendo E3 All-Access

Nintendo E3 All-Access, first thing to note is that the black WiiU and the WiiU GamePad (note the capitalization, that's the official name for it) looks kind of slick. The console supports two GamePads, as expected but now it's confirmed. Some reiteration of the Miiverse stuff from the Direct Access stream, will eventually be accessible from just about any modern browser.

First game they showed was Pikmin 3, apparently a game that everyone's been waiting for. New rock Pikmin, breaks hard objects. Basic controls use the Wiimote+ and the Nunchuck combo, WiiU GamePad will always show the map. Miyamoto carries spare Pikmins in his pocket.

New Super Mario Bros U, looks a whole lot like all the other New Super Mario Bros games, some kind of flying squirrel suit confirmed. That might have actually been in the earlier games too, I haven't played them.

Batman Arkham City - Armored Edition, starts with a little soundbite from the Harley Quinn (well, the actress, Tara Strong, obviously) talking back at Reggie and stuff, that's kind of neat little touch to have in the conference. Armored Edition comes bundled with armored costumes for both Batman and Catwoman, and uses the GamePad for gadget interaction it seems. Maybe worth mention is that it's not being done at Rocksteady, but is outsourced to some other developer whose name I didn't catch.

Scribblenauts: Unlimited, Jeremiah Slaczka (the creator of Scribblenauts) is wearing great shoes. WiiU version will have some kind of all new multiplayer mode.

Third party montage, showing Darksiders 2, Mass Effect 3, Tank! Tank! Tank!, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Trine 2 Director's Cut (Yay! Finland! Represent!), Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge and Aliens: Colonial Marines.

WiiFitU, lots of fitness minigames. Reggie's body is ready.

Sing (working title), performance game where everyone sings. Isn't that true for all of those karaoke games? Anyways, GamePad used to display lyrics so you are not facing the TV, but instead can face your audience/friends.

Lego City: Undercover, not really sure what this game is supposed to be. Grand Theft Auto in Lego city, with the familiar Lego mechanics from the other Lego games? Maybe? Probably not, but I just can't tell.

Ubisoft pimped out some of the same games they already showed on their own conference earlier, ZombiU, Rayman Legends, Just Dance 4, Rabbids Land, Assassin's Creed 3, Yourshape sequel, Sports Connection and Avengers. Looks like you can use the GamePad as a scanner, sonar, sniper rifle, hacking minigame and inventory in ZombiU.

NintendoLand, a virtual theme park. That's what they call the minigame collection they ended the show with. It seems destined to be the bundle game for this system when it launches. A lot of the tech demos from last year's E3 probably transformed into this.

Some minor 3DS news was sprinkled here and there, I'll just put them here at the end because the conference was really all about the WiiU. Firstly, there's going to be an hour long Nintendo Direct stream specifically directed for 3DS owners at 6pm PDT on Wednesday. They are calling it Software Showcase, so I guess you can expect them to showcase some software for you. Other than that tidbit of info, they showed some footage of New Super Mario Bros 2, which is all about GOLD! And raccoon tails. Paper Mario: Sticker Star was also shown, in which you collect stickers and apparently use them as battle items. More info on Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, multiple mansions, mission based challenges, arrives this holiday. Lego City: Undercover is also on its way to 3DS. And to close the short 3DS segment they had a third party montage trailer, featuring short clips of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Scribblenauts: Unlimited and Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (horrible horrible name).

Still no clear idea of what this machine can or can't do. Arkham City looked pretty much the same from the short clips they showed, and considering it's an outsourced port, it's probably not going to get any kind of special treatment.

In conclusion, oh god oh god I hate these kind simulated social event trailers that Nintendo started with the Wii. It just looks so incredibly dumb. Hey look at us, just friends having a lot of fun with this console in the most annoying way possible. Anyways, now that the conferences are behind us, I'll try to compile some good trailers and gameplay clips in the coming days.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 05th 2012 at 1:27pm 0 Comments