If you’ve ever wanted proof that some games are timeless, look no further than Titan Attacks! Originally published for Playstation 3/4 and Vita and now Nintendo 3DS, Titan Attacks is an unabashed throwback to the early arcade classic Space Invaders. But before you write it off as a quick cash in, you should know that Curve Digital and developer Puppygames have thrown a few new wrinkles into the formla. The game isn’t as nail bitingly difficult as Space Invaders, but its still a score based run that will keep you chasing the highscore. Unlike the original, those scores are now shared around the world thanks to online leaderboards, instead of being visible only to those who take the time to peruse the grimy arcade cabinet in the local pizza shop.

Titan Attacks has a decidedly retro look to it. the simple graphics make it easy to separate enemy types from the background- a not so minor concern later on in the game. Clean lines, explosions that pop and unique enemy designs create a great aesthetic for the game as you play through it’s various levels and backdrops. unfortunately, the soundtrack and effects don’t quite hold up to the same level. They get the job done, but you won’t be blown away. To be fair, I spent a fair amount of my time playing the game while watching a stream on my PC, so the sound certainly isn’t a deal breaker.

Playing Titan Attacks is a simple matter. Your ship is on the bottom of the 3DS’ top screen and you move it left and right with either the slide pad or D-pad. A simple tap of the A button fires your gun at the waves of steadily descending aliens overhead. Gameplay doesn’t advance from there. Enemies arrive in waves, and you ushoot them with A, occasionally pressing B to utilize a screen clearing Smart Bomb purchased from the shop with your hard won cash.

But therein lies the strength of Titan Attacks. It’s a simple core mechanic executed well. The added layers Puppygames has added only enhance the experience. Of course, they may make it to easy, but I’ll touch on that in just a moment. After each wave is cleared you are taken to a shop. There you can buy a variety of upgrades for your ship, ranging from increased gun power, shield recharges, the aforementioned smart bomb and even more bullets or addons for your ship.  These come in handy in later levels as, unlike Space Invaders, Titan Attacks isn’t slow. This is a fast paced version of the classic arcade shooting. Enemies move quickly, challenging you to lead each shot effectively, Some enemies dive at the ground, others pepper the area with scattered bursts of bullets. Keeping up with it all is a daunting task.

Fortunately, Titan Attacks rewards your skill. As you demolish your foes and avoid hits, you build a multiplier that carries across levels. Pickups rain from the sky, providing you with extra money, increased firing speed and a temporary invincibility shield. Pulling off a perfect set of waves as you advance from the Earth to the Moon and beyond is a satisfying feeling, and its easy to see your own skill growing as you more easily demolish weaker waves of foes.

Unfortunately, once you gain enough upgrades, your ship becomes an unstoppable juggernaut that is all but impossible to kill aside from the occasional ill timed dodge directly into a plummeting enemy ship. These upgrades can also hurt your performance in another unexpected way. Every so often, a destroyed ship will erupt into flaming wreckage and plummet towards the earth. If you destroy the ship, you get extra money. The pilot may also eject from his ship, and if you capture him, you get another bonus. Unless you shoot him. Once you have a massively upgraded ship, firing veritable storms of bullets upwards, it becomes impossible to reliably stop your fire in time to catch these plummeting aliens. In effect, the upgrade system can nullify a very interesting quirk in the game mechanics.

Despite the few negatives, Titan Attacks is a fun game. A great time waster, especially for those who like to grind for highscores and bragging rights amongst there friends, or for those who want a more turbo charged take on the classic Space Invaders gameplay.

Titan Attacks: 7.5/10

After a long road that included bumps in the form of a delay for tweaks and polishing and controversy over a particular mission that led to the game being unclassified and thus banned in Australia, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number finally has a release date.

Together, Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital announced the release date as March 10th, which means it’ll be out in less than 2 weeks’ time.

There’s a digital special edition with six tracks taken from the soundtrack for listening to outside of the game, as well as physical copy called the vinyl collector’s edition that comes with the game and 3 vinyls containing all 28 tracks from the game for listening to for around $60 if you fancy something a bit different. Also, Dennaton and Overkill are once again teaming up to provide some special Payday 2 DLC related to Hotline Miami. Buying the game will get you 6 special Hotline Miami masks for use in Payday 2, and if you pre-order you can get the “Jacket” character pack too.

It takes something special to make more than half of a Kickstarter goal on its first day, but it does happen. The latest occurrence of this is an MMO game called Crowfall which at time of writing has made $558,567 of its $800,000 target and still has 28 days to go.

Crowfall is being made by a company called ArtCraft Entertainment, a company that contains people who have worked on games such as Ultima Online, The Sims Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The game has you playing as immortal warriors called “Crows” chosen by the gods to travel to dying worlds and collect resources and the souls of the mortals there before the world dies off forever, and takes place between the Eternal Kingdoms and Campaign Worlds.

The Eternal Kingdoms are permanent but lack resources acting as a ‘home base’ for your player character as well as a ‘kingdom’ you set the rules within, and you can allot land to other players who swear fealty to you. The Campaign Worlds are where most of the actions takes place but each one lasts only a few months each. The terrain in each of these temporary worlds is voxel-based and apparently will be totally destructible as you compete and form alliances with other players, while crafting, building and fending off monsters as each world collapses further and further into nothing. The rules for each Campaign World can vary wildly too, from races allowed to participate to the world’s ‘end-condition’ which could be as simple as a set amount of time passing to how many battles have been fought – they will depend on the type of world (The Infected, God’s Reach, The Shadow or The Dregs).

Characters are kept between Campaign Worlds, and there will be the option to customise characters with 12 ‘archetypes’ (character types) and Advantages/Disadvantages that you can select to create your character. You can also acquire and customise weapons and gear as well as abilities and other things. You will be able to have up to 3 characters on a single account.

With the Kickstarter doing so well, stretch goals are probably already being considered by the team behind the game, although given that its still early days there haven’t yet been any hints as to what they could be. ArtCraft hope to get a first release with partial functionality into Alpha testing by late Summer 2015, with the core module estimated for Winter 2016.

We’ll be watching this one and hoping it does well, and if you’d also like to find out more click the link below for the Kickstarter and site for the game.

Crowfall Kickstarter: [x]

Crowfall Site: [x]

You find yourself at a table in a strange place. Across from you is a mysterious man, his face hidden. Are you ready to play his game, defeat his challenges, collect all the cards, and face your fate?

Hand of Fate is Rogue-Like RPG that also combines a Deck-Building card game with an Action Brawler. This game also has a strong feeling of a choose-your-own adventure.

Mechanics

Every level you play is randomly generated and if you die you have to start the mission all over again. What makes this game different from the other Rogue-Likes out there is instead of the level just being randomly generated by the computer you actually have somewhat control how your game may turn out. As you play though the game you unlock cards. You can use these cards to build your decks, which determine what equipment will be available for you to use in the game and also determine what encounters you may come across as you move though the level. The encounter cards are then dealt out on the table. You must move your character from card to card, dealing with whatever encounter you land on, until you reach the exit to the next level of the mission, ultimately making your way to the boss.

You find yourself progressing though the game trying to get from the starting position to the exit to the next level. Each move you make consumes food, if you don’t have food when you move your character loses health. Each move you make delivers you a new encounter to deal with. Encounters can be everything from being ambushed by rat men or skeletons, fighting goblins to get back items they stole from you, helping a dying man by hunting down the men who robbed his town, giving food to a priest to receive a blessing, etc.

There are also encounters that will have you make a choice. For example you can calm an angry mob by giving them half your food, or you can try to avoid trouble. Whether or not you succeed in an event is often determined by you choosing between 4 cards that represent success or failure. Some events, the likelihood of them going your way are better than others. If you succeed, you most likely be rewarded with food, gold, blessings, and/or items from the equipment deck you made.

Building a deck in this game is incredibly important. While you are able to let the computer make a deck for you of suggested cards, you can make much more of a personalized adventure if you do it yourself. And of course the decks can get more and more complicated as you gain more cards. While creating a deck you will not know exactly what an encounter is until you actually play it in game, so it encourages you to test new things. Also with many of the encounters you are able to win the ability to unlock more cards if you successfully complete them. That too also encourages you to change your deck around as well.

So far this game is just sounding like a RPG Card game but what I haven’t talked about yet is, in most encounters the cards come alive in a 3D setting where you take full control of your character. The fighting in this game is very Arkham like, mostly focused on chaining attacks and countering attacks right at the right moment. This usually happens with encounters where you most fight creatures, make your way through a trap filled maze, got to a shop, etc.

Now the reason you ultimately go through all these encounters is to make yourself ready to face the boss at the end. Hopefully your luck was with you and you were able to get enough equipment to help you succeed. Each boss in the game has a unique attribute. Some can’t be blocked; some have strong special attacks, etc. Some bosses also have effects that affect you throughout the whole level, like one was every time I finished a combat encounter the King of Dust, boss of the level, would take a certain amount of gold off me depending on how much health I had left. This of course makes it harder to get the items and food you need to get to him. It was added on to the fact that because he was the leader of the bandits, it was more likely you will come into an encounter against bandit ambushes.

Atmosphere and Story

Right off the bat there isn’t much of a story in the game. You don’t even know why you find yourself playing this Mysterious Man’s game. But as the game progresses you pick up info here and there from the Dealer as he makes hints at things. Also in the card game itself each boss has a story behind him or her. This story too is expanded on by the Dealer.

The Dealer adds so much to the game and really has an “in the moment” feeling to him. He will bring up info on the boss you will have to face, as well as make hints of others who have played at this table before. But what is really neat is how he will react to certain decisions you make, like he will make comment on you keeping certain cards in the game and make you second guess yourself on the choices given to you.

The art style of the game is very interesting. The art on the cards look like they could have been taken out of one of those old Choose-Your-Own Adventure Books; while the look of the rest of the game has a wonderful art style and nuances.

My Opinion of the Game

All in all I think this is a wonderful game. The combination of Deck-Building and 3-D Brawler is something I haven’t really seen in a game yet and they mostly nail it down pretty well. The strength of the game is definitely the personality of the game expressed though the Dealer, as well as the endless combinations and exploration of the cards.

If I had to say what one of the flaws of the game was, it would most likely be the combat. It is defiantly a combat style that is being used a lot lately; the Arkham like system of attack combos and countering when it indicates too. They do pull it off decently but at times it feels a bit clunky, especially in the movement. But once you get the hang of it and also get some good gear that gives you special abilities in combat, it begins to feel better. Though I do wish I was able to move a camera around sometimes. Because of the combat I would definitely suggest using a controller on this game.

This game has wonderful mechanics, an awesome art style, and a wonderful replay-ability. I would suggest this game to anyone who likes card games, RPGs, rogue-likes, brawlers, and/or choose-your-own adventure games. It is clearly on my list of some of my favorite games I’ve played in a long while.

You can find the game on Steam here

Also Available on PS4 and Xbox One.

If like me you’ve been waiting and waiting for the PC port of GTA V… well, bad news I’m afraid. The release date’s been pushed back once again, this time to April 14th 2015.

The reason for it is much the same as it was last time. Rockstar apologise but say that they need “a bit more time is needed to ensure that the game is as polished as possible, and to make certain that both Heists and the GTA Online experience are ready to roll out on day one for PC.” While it’s always a good thing that a developer cares about having a functional game, a second delay is going to irritate a few people. To be fair to Rockstar though they’ve realised this as well and anyone who has pre-ordered the PC port will get $200,000 in-game cash when they get into it.

And let’s be honest, they’re trying to get the Heists ready not just for PC but also for release on console at the same time as getting the port finished. That’s a decent bit of work, and I just hope that the further delay will be totally worth it.