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Just when we thought that we knew what was going on with Twitch and Google’s plan to acquire it, suddenly all we knew is flipped on its head. Previously it seemed that Google had bought Twitch and all that was needed was some loose ends tied up; even the changes that Twitch made to their VoD storage made it seem that Google was in charge. Yet Google wasn’t the only company bidding for the livestreaming service, and now Twitch have announced that yes, they have been acquired. By Amazon.
In a letter from the CEO posted on their website, the Twitch community was addressed and thanked for getting the company to this point. The site has been around for little more than 3 years and it seems that the CEO is awed by how far they’ve come since then thanks to the gamers who use their service to broadcast live lets plays and more to their fans across the globe.
“Your talent, your passion, your dedication to gaming, your memes, your brilliance – these have made Twitch what it is today… Together with you, we’ve found new ways of connecting developers and publishers with their fans. We’ve created a whole new kind of career that lets people make a living sharing their love of games. We’ve brought billions of hours of entertainment, laughter, joy and the occasional ragequit. I think we can all call that a pretty good start.” wrote the CEO in the post.
The post then went on to announce the acquisition and said that they had chosen to accept Amazon’s offer because they felt that Amazon were the right choice because “they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision”. Google lost out due to antitrust concerns meaning a deal could not be closed between Twitch and Google in the end.
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been acquired by @amazon. Here is a letter from our CEO: http://t.co/PEwrXm402n
In terms of how this could turn out, Amazon are a little less tested in the area of live video than Google. On the other hand, this could turn out to be the start of something wonderful for both companies. It’ll certainly sit better with more people than a Google-owned Twitch ever could have done.
Last week Blizzard responded to a fan-made petition, asking if Robin Williams, who had recently died, could be paid tribute to by adding an NPC that would utter some of the comedian’s best jokes. Now some datamined files from the latest beta build have thrown up some character models that could become that NPC.
Chief among them of course is a genie to pay homage of one of Williams’ best known roles, especially around children of the 90s who grew up loving his voice role as the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin. The NPC is tagged as “Robin the Entertainer” and people have pointed out that as a genie he could very well be able to shape-shift into other forms. A human female form and human male form have also been found, both potentially linked to the new NPC and speculated to be tributes to Mrs Doubtfire and Mork respectively.
Other details are so far unknown, and as of writing Blizzard has not confirmed that the datamined characters are to be the tribute NPC in question.
The final wing of Naxxramas opened on Wednesday and many eager players jumped straight in, hoping to complete the final stretch of Hearthstone’s first expansion. I was among them, taking on the two final bosses live on the station’s Twitch channel.
As if to make up for last week’s four bosses, the Frostwyrm Lair has only two bosses in it; Sapphiron and Kel’thuzad himself. And both of them can be fairly challenging, even if Kel’Thuzad is the more challenging battle of the two as the final boss of the entire thing.
Sapphiron’s Hero Power is a 0 mana cost ability called Frost Breath, which destroys all minions who aren’t Frozen on your side of the field and he will use at the start of every turn. Sounds bad, but you do have a lifeline. A 2/10 minion who you start with on your side of the field called Frozen Champion. As his name suggests, he is forever Frozen but also shelters minions placed on either side of him from Frost Breath’s power. So this is a battle of consideration and careful placement and perfectly doable in a few battles if you play your cards right.
Kel’Thuzad though… well, Kel’Thuzad cheats and I’m not just saying that because he’s difficult: he literally does cheat. He starts off with 30 HP, 10 armour and has another 0-cost ability that causes your Hero 2 damage and freezes it. He’s also programmed with different responses to each Hero’s entering phrase as well as all 6 of the emotes, which can be quite amusing if you’re bored. When you’ve removed all his armour as well, that is when he will cheat. He will end your turn automatically and then summon two 3/3 Guardian of Icecrowns with Taunt and change his ability to Chains, an 8-cost ability that allows him to take control of one of your minions for the turn. He will also do this if you let him carry on too long beating you down without removing all his armour. My advice is to smack down his armour quickly, being aware of the auto turn-end when it’s all gone (try to do more than 10 damage during the ‘armour’ phase to give you a little headstart on his health), then just play cards and deal with him. Eventually you will win.
The final Class challenge is that of the Paladin against Kel’Thuzad with all his tricks. Use the Echoing Oozes in a similar way to how Grobbulus did last week – they help enormously.
Also, I discovered an Easter Egg. Play a Hunter deck, and use Animal Companion against Kel’Thuzad – see who you summon. 😀
As an ending the Frostwyrm Lair was certainly good enough, but maybe lacked some little touch that made it perfect. Not that I cared when I finally beat Kel’Thuzad (that NPC misplay! He had fatal on me and missed it!) and then saw the rundown of all the boss coins being counted to confirm that yes – I had entered Naxxramas and made it out the other side the victor, many cards richer and with new skills and experiences.
I entered Curse of Naxx excited but doubting whether I’d be able to actually beat it. I am a skilled Hunter player, but not so much the other classes. But the expansion made me sit down, play with the mechanics of cards both old and new, learn new tricks, made me stop to consider the best ways to exploit a weakness in my computer opponent or how to best to use their abilities to my own advantage. I’ve also been frustrated to great heights and shouted “That was bullshit!” once or twice during livestreams when usually I just stew. The class challenges have let me learn a little of how to play other classes, even if only in certain circumstances and I’ve learned that if you know a deck well enough and have a great amount of drive and determination, eventually you can win. I entered a decent, if slightly doubting card player and left knowing that Hearthstone is a game that I can play well, that has earned its place high up on my mental top games list.
Oh no! You came to work 0.03 seconds late. Now all the good, safe jobs are taken. Now you, a lowly cleaning robot, is tasked to collect precious materials from various worlds in a sector that is about to go Kaboom! And if that isn’t enough, these planets are crawling with dangerous rogue robots that are out to destroy everything in their path. But not all is bad, you happen to convince some fleshy meatbags to do a lot of the hard labor for you. Just be careful not to let any harm come to them. The Boss’ wife thinks they are cute.
Freaking Meatbags is a real-time strategy game that combines base building, tower defense, work management, and some shooter-like action. Most levels in the game start out with you landing on a planet with a select few meatbags you chose to take with you from previous worlds. Given limited space on your ship you are only allowed to take a small number, the rest you just leave on a planet when you are done with it. Now it is your job to manage where the meatbags go and what they do. Most of the time you will have them just collecting materials, sometimes you have them explore secrets to find useful items, and other times you may just have them put into a machine which mixes their DNA to form another meatbag with their combined stats.
As they continue to work and work they gain experiences and increase stats which make them work harder and faster. Of course you can also alter them a bit to make them better if you think they are too lazy. One of the first things you can do is implant a brain slug to make them less likely to slack off and more likely to work harder. Another thing you can do is as you travel from planet to planet you sometimes come across other aliens. Some of them have laser eyes, some of them explode on contact, and some even have rocket launchers. Somehow you convince these aliens to help you and if you combine their DNA with your meatbags, you can create more useful meatbags that can work harder as well as protect the base and themselves. But remember you can only take a few of the meatbags with you to the next planet so choose wisely.
Now, while your meatbags get to work, you have to build up your base and your defenses. As the game progresses and you collect money you will be able to unlock some useful structures that you can build as you collect the resources for them. Some of these items are not available in the game as of yet but will be put in soon. These items include items that help your base run better like: jump pads to help the meatbags move faster, a mining drill, and barracks to hold more meatbags. There are also items which can be used to defend your base from the rogue robots like: turrets, rocket launchers, and metal barricades which all can be upgraded as you progress. You will need to be careful with how you use your resources, for when night comes, the waves of enemies come as well. You don’t want to be caught without some sort of defense or your base, you, or even your meatbags can be in trouble.
This is where the real time strategy comes into play. Sometimes there can be multiple places the rogue robots can come from. Once they show you where, you need to block off the area and place weapons to try to keep them back and destroy them before they reach your base. On some planets it is straight forward, but others give you limited space to build. Most structures cannot be built on water or certain terrains. Luckily as you progress you would hopefully create some meatbags that can help defend your base.
In between some of these normal levels of base defense and material collecting are levels where you are beamed down to a planet where there is no place to build a base. In these cases you are tasked with finding stray materials on your own as well as destroy all the rogue robots that seem to plague these planets. Luckily you are able to find some turret guns which follow you around that you can use to defend yourself. These guns are powerful but can’t fully protect you for if a robot comes to close to you it explodes and damages you a lot.
So far this game has been quite fun. It is a nice twist on the tower defense genre that also throws in some action in there as well. This game is still in Early Access Beta, so some features are not yet implemented. They seem to be thinking of adding another mode or two as well as new items and DNA mixes. All in all I can’t wait to see where this game goes in the near future and can’t wait to play more of it.
A few days ago creator of twin-stick shooter Zenzizenzic announced that his game was now to be published by Adult Swim Games, a name that comes with quite the positive reputation.
Zenzizenzic is the latest game from Dutch developer Ruud Koorevaar, following on from Super House of Dead Ninjas and Jazzpunk. The game recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise the rest of the funds needed to finish the game’s development and get it onto Steam. There will also be a new gamemode called ‘Macro’ added to the finished game now, despite that stretch goal not having originally been reached.
We’ve been watching this game and it does look like it’s bound to be a good one. Are you looking forward to being able to play it?
