Cobalt has been on the gaming news feeds now and then since it was announced as Mojang’s little side-scrolling project back in 2013. It surfaced as a more fully-formed idea that was being published by Mojang and developed by Oxeye Studios.

Now however Mojang have announced on their blog that the game will not be releasing at the end of this month as was originally planned, but has instead been delayed until February of next year. The reason? The current build they have is much buggier than they’re happy with releasing.

“We want every part of Cobalt – the campaign, challenges, and local and online multiplayer to live up to your expectations, no matter which platform you play it on. That’s going to require a bit more development time.

In honesty, we don’t need four months to fix the outstanding issues, but releasing a game on console is an especially complicated business. There are release windows, and certification things, and all kinds of boxes that need to be ticked before games can be released into the wild.”

There’s no new exact date for the release, but I will always support a studio delaying a game’s release because they want to patch out as many bugs as possible. Buggy and broken games are not fun and even if a delay will disappoint some, it is usually a very responsible step on the part of a game developer/publisher to do so for this reason.

Mojang Blog “Cobalt delayed until February 2016 :(“: [x]

This past weekend, I was privileged to play an interesting new indie title named Mushroom 11.

When I watched the trailer of the game, I was instantly interested in the unique mechanic in controlling your ‘character.’ Of course the design of the character you control is absolutely worth mentioning. You play as an amorphic green blob, with no name that I was able to discern. I had no issue with the lack of description or simplicity of the character model, in fact, I applaud it. Mushroom 11’s tutorial instantly begins to show you how to control your blob, and the game becomes completely about the game’s mechanics.

The mechanics of the game appear shockingly simple, you essentially use the 2 mouse buttons to delete parts of your blob to move it. Except when you delete blocks, the blob replaces these blocks randomly out of different sides of itself where the level allows. The mouse gives you 2 types of control: a large sweeping deletion type, and a fine tuned deletion tool. The large sweeping tool, bound to the left mouse button, allows for rapid movement and easy size reduction. The fine tune deletion tool makes it much easier to delete smaller portions of your blob which becomes essential for some of the tougher puzzles as the levels progress.

During the hour I spent playing this game, I easily encompassed the tutorial and enough levels to start to need several tries to clear an area. I was even able to conquer 2 boss fights. It is definitely fair to say the game has a steep learning curve. Rather than being frustrated while playing, and failing several times, I started to see the brilliance in the game. It is the first game where I found myself not having direct control on my character and it’s movement through the game. We are allowed only indirect control, and it’s an absolutely fresh and fantastic idea for a game mechanic. I find myself more and more interested to see how the game will show me to stretch, bend, curve, and express the flexibility of my little blob through the future levels. With the modest price tag, this game is an absolute steal for hours of mind-bending gameplay.

A Solid 9/10

The only reason it’s not a 10 is because I really like a story and it has none. But Otherwise, this is an amazing game!

The new Star Wars Battlefront game seems to have been quite popular in its beta stage if the numbers released are any indication of its popularity.

The number of people who played the beta during its run was around 9.5 million across all the three platforms that had a version active, with a combined playtime of 1.6 billion minutes. That’s a lot of blaster fire and thermal detonators sailing around a battlefield of players.

Playable ‘hero’ characters Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader have each been spawned just under 6 million times, while 783,392 walkers were taken down. The most popular Star Cards from those that were available during the beta (and that wasn’t a lot) were the Cycler Rifle, the Thermal Detonator and the Jump Pack, in that order.

While popular, the beta did have its problems with an inbalance of power between the sides that led EA to admit that it was too easy for the Empire side to win and some rebalancing would need to be done to fix it. Mind you, that’s one purpose of a beta – to identify these things before release (although it was kind of obvious).

Digm tried out the beta and while fun he didn’t feel like the game offered much in the way of uniqueness. What about you? Did you get to play and what did you think?

Leave a comment below!

The release of the PC version of the Batman: Arkham Knight game is one of this year;s most well-known gaming failures. While the console versions were at least playable, many players had trouble with issues that rendered the PC game unplayable. Frame rates were all over the place, textures were missing and even for those it worked for, it was far from perfect.

Warner Bros and Rocksteady released the game anyway, but due to the amount of player protest and the poor reviews the game was receiving the game was eventually pulled while Rocksteady worked to get it up to scratch. That was around four months ago, and for those who didn’t get the game refunded there have been a few small patches to fix certain things. Now it seems that the big final patch that will render the game ‘finished’ is finally due to be released, along with a re-release of the PC version.

“At 10 am PDT, Oct. 28th, Batman: Arkham Knight will be re-released for the PC platform. At the same time we’ll also be releasing a patch that brings the PC version fully up-to-date with content that has been released for console (with the exception of console exclusives). This means that next week, all PC players will have access to Photo Mode, Big Head Mode, Batman: Arkham Asylum Batman Skin, and character selection in combat AR challenges.”

As far as timing, it’s not great. With a number of large games being released in the next few weeks in time for the holiday market (Fallout 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Black Ops 3, Halo 5: Guardians etc.) it will be hard to stand out. Not to mention the bad reputation it already acquired thanks to its terrible first release. As a group, gamers are getting quite tired of spending money on games that are released in such a half-finished state.

Which is a shame because it’s such a sad ending for the Arkham games that were always so good.

It wouldn’t be a Call of Duty game if there wasn’t some map or mode that involved zombies and asked you to survive against waves of them. Black Ops 3’s is coming in a few weeks time at the same time as the game, although that means it’ll release a week after Halloween. Not that a delay is a bad thing, it’s preferred to having a game with bugs out in the market.

The map, entitled “The Giant” asks players to survive against zombies, but also hellhounds and giant robots using a variety of special weaponry to hold back the hordes. It’s a reimagining of a classic map ‘Der Riese’ and will involve the characters of Dempsey, Nikolai, Takeo and Richthofen as they fight to return to their own worlds.

Check out the trailer for it below, filled with a lot of slow-motion zombie shooting:

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will release on November 6th and players can gain access to The Giant bonus map on day one with a purchase of the Collector’s Edition or the Season Pass.