Bad games happen. We know this as gamers. Be it because of poor story, badly or force-together elements that make no sense or just poor gameplay mechanics, some games can be unplayable. More recently though with the advent of Early Access and the pitfalls that come with it, games can be released that are just plain broken. Usually the people who buy these games either get refunded or just cut their losses. However, the developers of one PS4 game widely reviewed as buggy and broken have told their customers that not only are they sorry for how the game turned out, that instead of calling it quits or just releasing a patch they are going to start to remake the game from the bottom upwards. That’s right, they’re literally starting from scratch.

The game in question is called Basement Crawl, a Bomberman-esque horror game. It also has the dubious honour of having a lower overall review score than other bad games such as Duke Nukem Forever. In an interview, Bloober Team’s Marc Colhoun apologised to all those who had played the game and been let down.

“The game was a mess for both you and us.” he said, acknowledging that people had been waiting for them to fix the game. “Rather than… issuing a patch… we have decided to just come out and explain to you where we are right now and what we plan to do. We have been rebuilding the game, completely from scratch and on a new engine.” adding that amongst other things they hope to improve the AI and add new game types.

The new version of the game will be given free to those who already have the first, buggy version of the game. No ETA was given for when they could hope to see the new version out on Playstation Network though, so it remains to be seen whether the developers can actually make this right. For the sake of the people who bought the game, I hope that they will.

Minecraft on Xbox is sometimes considered a poor relation to the original PC version of the game, but there is certainly one thing that the console gamers get that the PC people don’t. Special packs with many well-done pre-made skins, texture packs and constructed locations. The latest one? A Halo pack.

The Halo Mash-Up pack comes with 40 new skins, including an updated version of the Master Chief skin that has been available in the game now for a while. It will also come with versions of some of the games’ various soundtracks which should be very popular and add greatly to the feel of ‘Halo in Minecraft’. The best part though should be the inclusion of many of the popular or more well-known maps re-created lovingly in blocky Minecraft form, and covered over with the pack’s included texture pack. These include Blood Gulch, Blackout, Valhalla and one with a constructed Scarab model (which sadly isn’t driveable).

A release date has yet to be announced, so keep your eyes peeled for that information coming at some point soon.

A multi-layered series that looks back to the formative years of Ryu and Ken as they live a traditional warrior’s life in secluded Japan. The boys are, unknowingly, the last practitioners of the ancient fighting style known as “Ansatsuken” (Assassin’s Fist). The series follows them as they learn about the mysterious past of their master, Goken, and the tragic, dark legacy of the Ansatsuken style. Can their destiny be changed, or will history repeat itself?

Well, time for our first on demand/youtube review and what a doozey of a review aswell…
Season 1 of Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, the follow on to the Youtube short from 2010, Streetfighter: Legacy, which showed a night time fight between Ryu and Ken and got the whole of Street Fighter fandom around the world salivating for a real live action Street Fighter spectacle (especially after the travesty that was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li)

This is very much a prequel to the First Street Fighter: World Warriors game/story and the years of Ryu (Mike Moh) and Ken Master (Christian Howard) training, aswell as the young life and training of their Sensei Goken (Akira Koieyama) and his brother Goki (Gaku Space), and his betrayal of Gotetsu (Togo Igawa) to become Akuma (Joey Ansah), the Demon of the No Hado!

The first thing that strikes straight away is the choreography of the training and fight scenes.  The training is utterly wonderful to watch and the fight scenes, especially the CGI added for the ingame moves, like the Hadouken and ShoRyuKen look cool.

Filmed in Sofia, Bulgaria, the locations are stunning too, the perfect backdrop for the training of two young world warriors into the video game characters we’ve been knocking heads with for nearly 30 years now

What I WASN’T expecting, yet supremely surprised about was the introduction of Ken’s father (Mark Killeen) in Episode 4: A Rough Night,  a boxer, who spends a day training with Ryu and Ken and showing them a few of his moves.  What really stood out most in this episode was the bond and training these actors and fighters have, the moves and dialect is fluid and warm and the fighting/training is quick and beautiful to watch aswell.

But they also get a taste of street fighting at a local bar against some American GI’s (and leave them in a mess of course) in this episode, of course we see Ken in full flow offering large bets, while Ryu looks out of his depth and uncomfortable being thrown into the ring.  Everything we know about these characters is there and real.

The real stand out throughout the series though is Goken, more than just their teacher, he’s a father figure and one that is respected and loved by both teenagers, and the flashbacks to his own training and trials with his brother Goki under the training of Gotetsu is part of the Street Fighter legacy that hasn’t been deeply looked into before now and it was good to get to know.

Goki’s transformation into Akuma is good to watch aswell, almost a rocky level montage of his body falling apart under the power of the No Hado and his transformation into the demon Akuma is great to watch.

The one thing that I don’t get with this series is why its even a series.  All 12 episodes were released right away and at 9/10 minutes an episode, I have to ask why…   If this was released on DVD/BluRay as a feature length episode, like  , Then I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Here’s hoping Machinima see sense to release it as a movie.

Now, to get back into the dojo myself, this gave me a definite recharge to my No Hado!

~9.5/10  Utterly Amazing!

Well, seems those details for Far Cry 4 have emerged a little bit sooner than was originally planned. Someone pressed a button they shouldn’t have and now we know just a little bit more about this game; this time from a legitimate source. Earlier someone set Far Cry 4’s store page on Uplay to display publicly, and it did get noticed by people. It got taken down again of course, but not before someone managed to cache a copy of it for the viewing of all who had the link.

So what do we know now? To further on the location of the game, the game takes place in the Himalayan region of Kyrat, and your character Ajay Ghale is there to fulfil a last request from his dying mother. This sees you getting mixed up with the plot to overthrow the self-appointed ruler of the region, Pagan Min. There also seems to be an option for a pre-order, which adds a free Limited Edition upgrade. This includes 3 single player missions that lead up to an exclusive weapon – a harpoon gun called “The Impaler”. Nice.

Google cache of the page is here.

Got Steam? Have you got multiple computers at home (or wherever you usually do your gaming)? Are they networked? If you answered “yes” to all of these, then this news might interest you.

Three months ago, Valve enabled ‘Family Sharing’ for all Steam users, to allow customers who know each other to share their libraries of games among one another (with some restrictions). Today Valve have launched a feature that takes it even further, letting users stream installed Steam games on any machine with any other computer on the same local network.

By logging into the same Steam account on two connected computers, Steam will now allow a remote computer to install, launch and play games by streaming them from the computer they were first installed on, allowing less powerful computers and laptops to stream games from a high-end gaming computer (for example) and enjoy the games just like they were installed on that computer, but with performance closer to that of the high-end computer since it’ll do all the work instead. Assuming a solid internet connection, this potentially means even an old junker can now play top-end Steam titles with little effort required.

Games can be transferred from the host computer to another – and vice versa – at any time, even mid-play. Bandai Namco Games has even stated that with a proper set-up, gamers might even “forget” they’re playing the game remotely instead of locally – or so claims a quote attributed to the company on Steam’s in-home streaming page.

While the feature at the moment is restricted to Windows-based PCs, Steam state they will attempt to introduce it to MacOS and Linux versions of the system in the future – given the company’s desire to improve gaming on non-Windows PCs, I expect we’ll hear about this very soon indeed. We assume this will also include SteamOS, being a Linux variant of Valve’s own design – if so, the new Streaming capabilities open up a whole realm of possibilities. Raspberry Pi-based SteamOS Gaming Computer for little more than the cost of a screen, keyboard and mouse, anyone?