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Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf is a card-driven turn-based tactical game which features RPG elements, containing a single player campaign, survival and PvP modes. Win these battles using the arsenal of weapons, abilities and cunning of the sky warriors.
Now anyone who knows me, knows my love for the all father and being a loyal son of Russ, having played Space Wolves on the Table Top since the early 90’s, so with 25 years under my belt, I’m dubious about anything that uses Leman Russ’ Legion, not only in it’s title but also as the main bulk of the game.
Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolf was initially an iOS/Android release back in 2016, which got rave reviews on the iOS/Android stores and usually the game would be straight ported over to PC (like Fallout Shelter, of course that seemed to work, so if done right, hell, why not), however Herocraft, the Engineseers behind the game, decided to rebuild the game from the ground up for it’s PC (STEAM) release, not only by making the graphics better and more detailed, but making it a one off purchase for the incredibly reasonable £9 and removing all the ingame purchase options that mobile games are well known for.
What we have at heart here is a TCG based tactical turn based shooter, and it works perfectly, using your cards abilities to make your character move, shoot and melee attack the vile chaos scum of the Word Bearer Legion and it’s really as simple as that. Of course it is a TCG at heart, so in typical card game fashion, you build a deck for your main character, in three variations that give him different option, from the standard Power Armour option, which has everything from melee and jump pack abilities, all the way to heavy weapon and wolf companion summoning abilities, through to the Scout armour that gives you more sneaking and sniper abilities, to the Terminator Armour, where everything is heavy, from the melee weapons to the Cyclone Missile launcher. there are some cards that can be equipped on your character too, giving you more options and even Overwatch ability, meanign if an enemy comes into range, your character may take a shot at them (incredibly good if you’ve buffed yourself in the last turn too).
What really struck me early on is the apparent difficulty level, it’s hard, but actually in a good way, I enjoyed losing. As you can see in my first live stream of it below, I just kept going back for more and didn’t realise how long I had been trying just the first level.
As you progress through the levels, you unlock, not only new cards to use, but requisition to make new cards and you can even fuse cards together, for instance, fusing two level 1 cards of the same type into a level 2 of that card. You also unlock new battle brothers aswell, Space Wolves of different squads lost on the planet during planetfall and making there way back to each other.
We all really enjoyed Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolf here at Geek Towers adn would wholeheartedly reccomend it, not only to Warhammer 40k fans, but to other TCG and Tactical Shooter fans too, it melds two game genres together brilliantly and considering it is a massive upgrade from the mobile version, not a straight lackluster port also raises it to exceptional, keep it installed for fun, game levels.
I enjoy frantic games, even if I’m not great at them. Roguelike shooting games especially can be fun, because each play is different and making it past a level feels so damn good.
Steredenn is a pixel-art space shoot-’em-up game where the levels are never the same twice. You are basically a small ship whizzing forward after your main mother craft is attacked by space pirates, and now waves of pirates and other hazards are ahead of you. You are armed with a blaster but along the way if you destroy big transport ships new weapons will be dropped and you can pick them up for new ways to tackle hazards. These range from a giant blue laser to a circular saw that grows from around your ship when you hit the ‘fire’ button. Of course, you don’t have to grab these weapons if you want to stick with your blaster over whatever random weapon drop you get. Everyone’s playstyle will be able to handle weapons slightly differently; and while I didn’t get on with the shotgun weapon for example, someone else will probably sail through with it.
You have a set amount of health and it’s best to prioritize avoiding enemies over shooting them down if you can. The more health you have at the end of a level, the more chance you have of defeating the boss at the end. Each boss will have attack patterns chosen from a pool of patterns, and figuring them out might take a few runs of a level before you make it to the end of the fight and defeat a boss. Upon death each boss will spew out a few randomly chosen upgrades for your ship for you to choose from. You need to choose one to proceed to your next level, so choose the one you want and then watch as the others explode and an animation applies your upgrade before you hyperjump to the next level.
Steredenn was originally out on other platforms before it came to Steam, with both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 having their own versions too. Because of this, Steredenn is suited for controller play and in fact the game will recommend this upon the first time you start playing the game. Not that there’s a lot to remember if you go mouse and keyboard.
The things this game has going for it is the simple pixel art style which lets a lot happen onscreen at a time, sometimes too much, and the fact that after a few plays you will quickly learn what does and doesn’t work for you as far as your playstyle and what weapon pickups will compliment that. I personally prefer the giant laser even if it stops me moving as quickly. If I need to move fast I stop shooting and then resume when it’s convenient to do so. I still blow up a lot, but hey – at least now I’ve learned what not to do next time.
If you enjoy roguelike shoot-’em-ups and space shooter games you will enjoy this one. I would recommend it if you didn’t get to play it on consoles previously, as the game is only £9.99 in the UK and $12.99 in the US – so it’s really not that expensive and with randomly generated levels and weapon/upgrade pickups every time you’re going to get a lot of replay opportunities from it.
CS:GO is more famously known for the massive cosmetics market that’s grown up around it in recent years, but now plans have been announced that will allow long-time players to gain some real-life loot. Players who have been around for five years have earned the in-game Five Year Veteran coin, and now they will be able to buy an actual physical coin to display somewhere in their rooms and prove to everyone just how much of a gamer they are.
To be eligible players must sign into the Valve Store with their Steam account that has the coin in their inventory. Once it has confirmed that the player has the in-game item, the gaming veteran will then be allowed to order the coin for $45. An account does need to be in good standing to receive this option as well, so cheaters will not be eligible no matter how long they were playing before they were caught. Worldwide shipping is free, but there might be a charge for import duty or VAT for the gamer to pay when their coin reaches them. A few places are also not open for orders including Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Burma, Syria and Sudan; otherwise you should be good.
The coin comes with a fancy looking wooden box, a display stand and a box sleeve with the Five Year Veteran logo stamped upon it. Orders will begin shipping in mid-June and Valve are planning to manufacture more once more players reach the Five Year mark.
Who knows? Maybe in another few years when the first Ten Year Veteran players get their in-game coin, we’ll see Valve releasing a Ten Year physical coin for purchase.
Besiege was one of those games that released that was very good to play with friends sat next to you or by yourself. It was a game with a set of engineering rules that made perfect sense, but at the same time weird and wonderful things (usually explosions) would happen and it was just funny.
Now Spiderling Studios have announced that they will be releasing the Besiege Multiverse in Q3 of this year. This is a mode that will combine the two most wanted features for the game into one – multiplayer and map creation. Which means said friends no longer need to sit by you, they can now join you in the game to construction contraptions that will eventually end up on fire or exploding! Wonderful!
Multiverse will allow players to work together to build not only the weapons and vehicles Besiege is known for, but also new levels that can be simulated mid-construction to make sure everything’s working correctly and nothing like a moving platform will get stuck somewhere. Spiderling Studios are going to be keeping fans up to date with the development of the Multiverse with regular videos, as well as guides to help players make the most of the new toolset. The game will increased slightly in price when the new mode comes in (by about $2), but players who already own the game will experience no extra charge for it.
As well as this upcoming mode, Besiege has just received two new Valfross maps for players to play on, the first being an abandoned mine and the second a great fortress to break down. The localisation system is also almost done, which means soon players can help the game’s language support on launch by contributing their own custom translations of the game to Steam Workshop for others to use before they get put into the game properly.
Malware is thoroughly unpleasant stuff, and one of the nastiest pieces of malware to exist is the sub-group of ‘ransomware’. Ransomware works by getting into your computer and holding your files hostage, usually by encrypting them or corrupting them in some way – which can only be reversed if you pay the ransom fee and sometimes even then you don’t get 100% of your files back. The Internet can bring some very scary things to your computer, and not always in the way we generally expect it to.
However, recently the people over at Malware Hunter Team came across a ransomware program that was a little bit… different. How so? Well, it too held your files hostage but the price of the ransom was to get a high score on the Lunatic difficulty of an anime shoot-em-up game. No, seriously.
Found a surprising ransomware today: “rensenWare”.
Not asks for any money, but to play a game until you reach a score – and it’s not a joke. pic.twitter.com/Pu53WZFALA
— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) April 6, 2017
Rensenware, named after the game it wanted you to get the high score in (Touhou Seirensen – Undefined Fantastic Object), challenges unfortunate users who get the malware on their machines to rack up 200 million points on a really hard difficulty level, or lose their access to their files for good.
In case you’re wondering why any malicious person online would set that particular ransom, the story is much simpler than that. The program was created by a Korea-based undergraduate student as a joke, and he then placed the source code onto GitHub – this is how it’s managed to essentially ‘escape’ and get into people’s computers for real. For what it’s worth they’ve quickly managed to build a program to bypass the locks Rensenware sets and have even issued an apology for letting it get out in the first place.
So, the creator of rensenWare created a tool which writes the values to memory which are needed for the decryption.
Also wrote an apology… pic.twitter.com/LrapKv5Dm3
— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) April 7, 2017
Sometimes reality really can be stranger than fiction. You literally couldn’t make this up.
