YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD

So there's a Might and Magic game out on Steam, you know Might and Magic, right? No, not the first person kicking game where you kick everyone and everything in the game and it may as well have been called THE KICKENING, no. One about the actual card game, so thats cool.

This isnt the right game is it?

You may be wondering how a card game can be playable on the magic box known as your computer, and over the spider's nest of pornography called the internet. Why, it easy! You dont even need to hold you cards and worry about dropping them because of your butterfingers and letting the other guy see what you got. The places on the table where the cards go are also marked so you dont need to worry about having someones OCD flare up over the exact placement of everyone's things.

Neither is this

And now we get to HOW THEY GET YOU. You can buy booster packs of cards both on Steam, and from an in game store. Sure you can earn cards by playing the game, earning achievements and the like, but that's obviously the more time consuming path to make the cash money not-free big bucks alternative that much more inciting. If you aren't turned off by blatant temptation then you should be good.

Remember that Nigerian prince?

Like card games (that aren't on motorcycles?), do you like Might and Magic in the real world and want to try it on the computer? Then Might and Magic: Duel of Champions MIGHT (and Magic) be for you.

HEH

 You can get it on Steam here

FLASH BANG THROUGH THE DOOR BREACHING GO GO GO

OK, HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION TIME. Fast forward six years or so, you're in the ruins of one of those way-too-big super markets looting the last cans of peas. Suddenly upwards of thirty angry fanatics burst through the front doors. They're REALLY MAD because they want those same peas, and they've been running around for a few weeks trying to find them. They all have guns, knives, and baseball bats with nails in them, and you have like, a pistol (not even a good one either). WHAT. DO YOU. DO? Thankfully you can prepare yourself for that day, courtesy of American taxpayers, with "America's Army: Proving Grounds"

HOW ABOUT YOU FIX THE ROADS INSTEAD?

The whole deal with the America's Army games is that "It's like the same stuff the real army uses for training their guys...only its a computer game!" Of course this spawned a whole slew of conspiracy theories that the army was trying to draw in the next generation of soldiers by giving teenagers video games. The big draw of Proving Grounds is that it takes the good stuff from the other America's Army games, and sticks them all in one game, focusing on small unit strategy. They even had a whole simulated medic training course in one of the previous games. That's just crazy.

Proving Grounds is multiplayer capable, so you can get some of your very best friends together over the internet, and find out who can't handle themselves in a fight against computer people, and if they can handle themselves ON THE INTERNET, how can they deal with banditos in real life? Its the best way to figure out who you need to cut from your post apocalyptic fire team.

"The internet scares me! Aaaaaaaaaa!"

If any of that nonsense sounds good to you, or you like rooty-tooty point'n shooties, or you like squad tactics, OR you want to check it out so you can see if theres any brain washing signals in there for your conspiracy website, then you should check out America's Army: Proving Grounds.

ARMY STRONG

You can snag the game on Steam over here

Steam powered sword wielding robots on another planet

Know whats great? Robots (When they aren't rising up against us). Know what isn't all that great? Crazed wild life, rabid animals, demons, sentient plants, and violent elemental creatures (unless they're attacking someone you don't like, then its great!) So lets talk about a game that has all of that, and way more! That game is Spiral Knights

SPIRAL KNIGHTS

Spiral Knights is of those massively multiplayer RPGS. It's pretty action oriented, instead of having a large overworld to explore, the game play mostly takes place in the semi-randomly generated dungeons, full of treasure, traps, monsters, and boss fights. The gameplay feels like the Four Swords Zelda game, especially with a party fight along side. Like all MMOs, you can play it solo if you want but its not as good as playing with a group, so your mileage may vary. The art for the game is great, lots of color and fun designs, you can tell the artists had fun with this project.

"Hey"

The reason why I never talked about this game before was because of the system that would limit how many dungeons you could enter per day, and how many times you could resurrect after dying per day, and seeing as they let you just buy more time that was HOW THEY GOT YOU, but in a recent patch they've eliminated that system and the game is getting a second wind because of it, so if there's a time to jump in, its now.

ADVENTURE is calling

If any of that sounds good to you, or you just want to play dress up in a video game, or you like the idea of robots wearing armor, or you're one of THOSE people and just want to scream obscenities into the chat to bug other people then Spiral Knights might just be for you!

Time to go fight EVERYTHING

You can snag Spiral Knights here

You will learn to hate two of three colors

"Hey guys more updates soon" and then there was nothing, this is a bad habit I need to break, but now I'm so mad I need to shoot someone in the face, let me show you how to do that without getting thrown in jail. My method will in fact allow you to shoot LOADS of dudes in the face. That method is "play this video game", the video game in question being PlanetSide 2.

The game world is big, either hoof it or catch a ride

The basic frame work of the game is that its one of those MASSIVELY ONLINE MULTIPLAYER games, built around three factions fighting in the future on another planet: The Terran Republic, the New Conglomerate, and the Vanu Sovereignty . Each side has their own color scheme, unique weaponry and vehicles with their own distinct silhouettes, overall weapon balance (IE: rapid fire, damage, accuracy drop off, ect), and each has their own separate reasoning to fight. Something about the original PlanetSide spawned a rabid loyalty in the players to the sides they chose that lived from the end of PlanetSide, through the long gap between games all the way to the sequels release, most companies today would kill for that kind of brand loyalty.

You can just as easily find a version of this that paints them as corrupt corporate puppets

 The game itself is a first person shooter, based on fighting on and over the continents of the planet Auraxis (with the inclusion of more planets in the future to be very likely), capturing bases, defending resources, fighting back and forth in a war that never ends. While that would be incredibly dark and depressing in real life, in a video game its perfect, when the players get organized it actually looks somewhat like a real war instead of pixel men fighting over other pixels, with tanks actually being used to provide support and with air support being flown by people who actually know how to fly!

It changes everything, really

Maybe that isn't enough to convince you. Maybe you blood lust isn't stoked yet and my words aren't enough for you. That's fine, I got a video for you to look at that I think is the best piece of free advertising this game ever got. (WARNING: CURSE WORDS, also violence and stuff yeah BUT CURSE WOOOOORDS)

 If any of this convinced you, you can snag PlanetSide 2 and jump into the endless war here

Ten billion players: only ONE map

Time to tell you about a video game genre that's so stupid and convoluted that no one can even agree on what to call it. DOTA-like? Multiplayer Online Battle Arena? Action Real Time Strategy? Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two Sides? People argue endlessly over the name of the genre, and that's before we even get into the games themselves or the legal mess surrounding the original game this mess sprouted from, proving that they're played by the some of the worst people on the internet.

"Wow, never even heard of some of these curses before"

 How the genre works is that on the games one map there are two bases, each with a team of guys and their goal is to smash up the big fancy thing at the opposing base while not letting the other guys take out theirs. Each side has computer controlled armies that move toward the other side in regular waves, usually the first step in the game is to follow these dudes and NOT fight beside them, but instead hide behind them and  jump out only to get the last blow on the guys from the other side as that's how you get money to buy items. Eventually you become tough enough to fight the other team, and past that you'll level up enough to storm their base, break all their shit, and win.

"Whats all the fuss about?"

 For each game in this genre there are some differences but that's the gist of it. You might read that and go "Well that's not so bad". YES, IT IS THAT BAD. I wasn't joking about these games being played by the worst people. Between people with languages you don't understand making you incapable of working with them, people flying into a frothing rage at the slightest opportunity, or those same people bragging about their great skill at commanding one unit in a RTS game. For other multiplayer games I've said that playing with friends is fun, implying that the game is less enjoyable but still playable with strangers. This is not the case here. Playing with friends is MANDATORY for having a good time while playing these games, everyone else out there will let you down or scream at you for reasons you cant really understand.

You might not understand Spanish or Russian, but you'll know smug superiority when you see it

 These games aren't going away, too many E-celebrities doing commentary on matches, and with Valve throwing their fat sacks of  cash into the ring the tournaments are going to have even bigger cash prizes. Oh yes, there are tournaments. You dont know depression until you've seen someone win over two hundred grand by pressing "R" at the right time.

"Could that be me? Dare I try?" (no, and you shouldn't)

If for some reason any of that sounds appealing to you, theres DOZENS of flavors for you to try!
Like this one, or this one, this, this one for mythological fans, or this one!

YOU NO MESS WITH LO-WANG

I'm just gonna say (type) some words and see if anything resonates with you: Duke Nukem, dual wielding uzis, Big Trouble in Little China, offensive jokes, kung fu movie REVENGE, hearts you crush in your hand, suicide bombers that turn into angry ghosts, giant snake men, rocket launchers with nuclear warheads. Do I have your attention? Good. Today's game is called Shadow Warrior, and all that stuff above only scratches the surface.

You know you want it

Shadow Warrior is a first person shooter by 3-D Realms, of Duke Nukem fame, in which you play Lo-Wang, the titular SHADOW WARRIOR (but he's not nearly sneaky enough to be called a ninja though, he does carry a grenade launcher around after all). As a first person shooter you spend most of your time shooting up the place naturally, though you also have two separate melee options, lightning fast machine gun punches, and a sword so sharp it can cut through armor, and still cut a tomato.

Thats a fireball shooting head all right

Theres a lot to Shadow Warrior, not the least of which is the humor, which ranges from racist and misogynistic jokes, to jabs toward other video game franchises, direct insults toward American manufacturing, and even a nod to Monty Python if you can find it. Speaking of finding things, Shadow Warrior has plenty of secrets in each level for you to find, how much of which are listed at the end of every level to tell you how terrible at the game you are. Speaking of you being terrible at the game, there is also completion times recorded by the developers at 3-D realms also listed at the end of the levels, so you can see how abusrdedly fast the game can be beaten if you know where everything is and you know exactly what to do.

PAR TIME IS FOUR MINUTES THE RECORD IS ONE MINUTE EIGHT SECONDS GO GO GO

So if any of that sounds good to you, or maybe you like bad Asian flavored 80s action movies, fortune cookies, explosions, and punching bees, then Shadow Warrior might be for you.

He messed with Lo Wang

You can get Shadow Warrior off of steam here

I'll Banner your Saga

You ever want to be a viking? OF COURSE YOU HAVE! Burning coastal villages to the ground after rolling up with one hundred of your best friends in boats that have dragons carved into the prow. Taking heads by the dozen then going home with a boat fill of stolen booty to eat meat and get drunk. Whats not to love? Unfortunately it's the future so that's not an option anymore because of things like "Guns" and "Coast Guards". Truly, things have only gotten worse as time as progressed. Thankfully, you can live out your viking fantasies without having to risk death or imprisonment, and its with today's game! It's called Banner Saga: Factions.

It was a simpler time

You may remember awhile ago, back when the kickstarter craze was really getting going, one of the games that popped up was The Banner Saga. Made by some dudes who fled Bioware when the fleeing was good and banded together under the name Stoic, the game as promised was a turn based strategic game with some sick art and classic animation. People were clearly buying what they were selling because it made seven times its initial goal. That isnt out yet, what IS out is a free to play multiplayer game, that looks to not only be a fun game in and of itself but also a test bed for balancing the main game that has yet to come out. It even has a tournament function.

BAR FIGHT

However, the game IS Free to Play so now we get into the most important part of this postHOW THEY TRY TO GET YOU
You buy things in game with renown. You get renown through playing the game, obviously you get more if you won than if you lost. Some of the stuff you buy with renown are cosmetic colors to make your units visually distinct, more units to get some variety for troop line up, and class upgrades. Does this reach PAY TO WIN levels? Since the game presumably lines you up against players with a matching level of strength, it shouldnt matter. But of course thats just my personal view on things, obviously your mileage may vary.

He probably has trouble getting through doors

SO. If your soul hungers to please Odin on the field of battle but you dont want to personally place yourself in harms way, or you dont want to get arrested, you could always play Banner Saga: Factions, it's got strategic gameplay, some fantastic art and animation, and if any of that stuff sounds good to you, then you should go for it. If nothing else its good practice incase all technology fails and we regress back into communities of farmers and fisherman and groups of raiders who burn stuff down.

One day that golden age shall come again

You can get Banner Saga: Factions off of steam, here

When have asylums ever been nice places?

Well its September now, so that means almost every store in north America (and maybe some in Mexico, I dunno) is pretending that its Halloween for two straight months, with pumpkins, candy and decorations all on sale. I figure I should get in on that action, so its gonna be nothing but spooky games up till Halloween. Think you can handle it? I DOUBT IT!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Up first in the scarathon is a game called Blackwell Asylum. Released back in June of 2012, the game takes place in an asylum for women, and you play as one of the crazies, OR DO YOU? The gameplay itself is stealth based, you need to avoid guards patrolling the hallways, hide under furniture, and generally be as sneaky as you can so you don’t get caught and jabbed with a syringe filled with tranquilizer (Yeah they just carry those things around just in case, I don’t know if that’s how insane asylums operated back in the thirties but its suitably sinister.)

Look at how legit that guy is

The art design to the game is very well done, its has a weird, twisted disjointed look to everything, as if it was being seen through the eyes of a crazy person(!). The game sells the atmosphere well, you certainly feel like you’re wandering around places when you should be sleeping.

This violates so many safety codes

 The game itself was put together in six weeks by a team of students called Black Pipe for a contest by Intel Level Up, which they won and scored twelve grand for it, good for them. While the contest was for game demos, and Blackwell is in the demo section of Steam, don’t take that to mean that the game is unfinished, it has a beginning and a end, as aside from a few bugs the game is worth the time to play if you’re into something spooky.

You think you can escape? Don't kid yourself

You can snag Blackwell Asylum off of Steam here

Its like NASCAR but you turn both left AND right

Do you want to go fast but don’t want to play a sci-fi FPS? I can help you with that. Today I’ve got a racing game for you that has some crazy god damn tracks in it. That game is Trackmania: Nations Forever.

Pedal to the metal

Featuring both a multiplayer mode (with the neat bonus of displaying what country the other racers are from, so you can lament and rage whenever you are beaten by someone from a country you particularly hate) and a solo mode, the game offers a completely absurd amount of courses to race around in that get progressively more insane.

And that’s before you even get into the potential of player designed courses. That’s when things get really crazy. When you shift past the “38 loops in a row” type courses that exist in every game that has a level editor, theres some good stuff in there. Like the “hold forward” maps where the course as been made in such a way where you don’t need to worry about turning and you can just watch the show of your car making absurd jumps and loops.

The game can easily be enjoyed in solo mode if you like racing games, but like with anything, its better with friends. Its possible to set up your own dedicated server for your friends to pile into and play together, preferably while yelling angrily at each other over who’s the best, like real friends should.

YOU THINK YOU'RE FAST? FUCK YOU I'M THE FASTEST! Lets do this again next week

However, since a good part of the game relies on multiplayer/user created maps, its not a good idea to install it on that computer you have in your underground survival bunker, unless you plan on having enough computers and people in there for a full on Lan Party. If you DON’T have a survival bunker you can use the game to learn the driving skills you will need the in wastelands.

VIDEO GAMES DONT FAIL ME NOW

If you think Trackmania is for you, than you can grab it here

http://trackmaniaforever.com/

or on Steam if you feel like it

http://store.steampowered.com/app/11020/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

CHURROS

Got another Free-To-Play game that recently got out of beta today. A third person shooter fashioned that plays like one of those DOTA/MOBA/Action RTS games. (whatever the hell they’re calling themselves these days) It’s a bundle of glorified violence called “Super Monday Night Combat”

Kind of like the NFL, but with clones, robots, explosives, and even more ads

Before SUPER Monday Night Combat there was just regular Monday Night Combat, a game (that wasn’t free) that was faster and more twitch based, it was often compared to Team Fortress 2. Aside from the usual class based shooter game play it was also a sort of tower defense game in that defensive towers could be built and waves of robots would spawn for each team and attack the other team’s side of the map on preset paths.

The robots in game are significantly less threatening, getting killed by them is actually kind of embarrassing

The Super version of the game fits with the conservative play style of MOBA games, IE: “DON’T DIE. EVER. YOU FILTHY CASUAL.”, and generally you need to be careful, as too many screw ups on either team can snowball and turn the whole match against you. The standard level up structure of MOBA games is used in SMNC, where you have skills you can level up or you could pump points into your health and damage. Towers cant be rebuilt like in the original, so defending your own and destroying the other team’s is a big deal.

"CASUAL SCUM, GO BACK TO YOUR FACEBOOK GAMES"

The classes for SMNC, though not entirely balanced, all have their roles and are capable of holding their own. The new characters added to SMNC outshine the older classes that came over from the original game in style, if not game play. From the famous wrestler who was brought back from the dead, to the talking actor gorilla who’s dressed like a mobster, to a robot who’s trying his best to convince everyone he’s human. The game has a rotating group of characters available that anyone can try, unfortunately this leads into the important public service announcement part of this post.

They're always out for your money

HOW THEY GET YOU
Unless you buy a character, you can only play them when their available on the rotating roster. There’s actually quite a few things in this game that you need to buy if you want to get it. Products and Endorsements are ways you can customize your character through stat changes or useful effects such as getting health when you kill an opponent. Fortunately, the default products you start off with are pretty useful, and when you don’t use any Endorsements you get a decent speed boost instead. All of these can be bought with credits earned by playing the game, though you could use money for it. Cosmetic items such as new uniforms requires actual money though, but those obviously don’t effect game play. You don’t NEED to spend any actually money, everything you could want that has an impact on game play can be earned by just playing the game.

The in-game announcers are the best part about this game, not gonna lie

Super Monday Nigh Combat (SUPER!) is worth looking into if you like MOBAs or third person shooters, and it has a group match making system so you and your friends can play online against people who are WAY better than you! Not only that, but between the jokes about population control, rioting in the stands, and bad television shows, it will also help prepare you for a dystopian future where corporations run everything.

Bet you didnt think this movie was a training film at the time, did you?

You can learn more about SNMC over at http://www.uberent.com/
and you can snag the game on steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/104700/

Lunar Installation Beta

Today I’ve got a shorter post for you, but to make up for that it's something really weird!: MOON BASE ALPHA! And as a bonus, it was made NASA, and that’s awesome.

Your tax dollars at work!

Basically, the point of the game is to repair the various broken things around the lunar station before it runs out of air. You and preferably some friends control astronauts walking around outside the station repairing stuff such as solar panels and power cables.

Your astronaut even moves like he would in a low gravity environment

Much like Façade however, that’s just the “official” part of the game. While you can go about repairing the station, or you could screw around and find out why this is also called “Text to Speech: The Video Game”. Unlike in Façade you don’t even need to pick between playing regularly or fooling around, you can do both at the same time!


That more or less shows why this game is significantly more fun with friends, or even random internet people than it is to play it alone. You can tell that the programmers meant for this to be completely straight and serious space simulator, but even when doing the admittedly repetitive repairs, the text-to-speech can make anything funny.

Pictured: the exciting adventures of a SPACE MECHANIC

If you and preferably some friends feel like killing a couple of hours doing stuff on the moon, or maybe you’re just into stuff about space then Moon Base Alpha might be for you. Even if the game itself isn’t what you’re looking for the text to speech might be funny for awhile.

Gotta learn about living in space before this happens

Moon Base Alpha is available on Steam at
http://store.steampowered.com/app/39000/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

Xeno Herd

Today we’ve got a particularly well polished game up for recommendation. ALIEN SWARM!


Originally a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, this game featured squad level game play from a top down perspective where you work with the rest of your team to accomplish the mission objectives in “Alien” style sci-fi environments while holding off an endless tide of aliens out to get you.

 The updated game made some changes, such as not having the levels be so dark, and an upgrade in graphics as it went from the UT2004 engine to the Source engine. However the core game play remains the same, with an emphasis on teamwork, clear lanes of fire and speedy completion of the mission.

No lone wolves here, always bring a battle buddy

The game wears its inspiration from the “Aliens” movies on its sleeve, from the dialog the marines have to the sleazy corporations wanting to use the aliens for nefarious purposes. Even the little snippets of backstory and world building you get have the same feel from the movies, such as the use of cyro-sleep chambers on space craft.

They even added that little "Beep" from the motion detector radar

The game’s biggest problem however, is that midway through development the team making the game was bought up by Valve. Now while this was good for the team, and its certainly an indicator of their skills, the game ended up releasing with only one campaign. Fortunately, this has been rectified by a large number of custom maps and campaigns being made by the community, from challenge and survival maps to full blown campaigns that could be mistaken for maps made by a professional team.

Wave survival maps are simple, but fun

Since release the game has been updated with an onslaught mode, and a “Brutal” difficulty level, over the mere “Insane” that was the previous hardest difficulty, so there’s no shortage of challenge if you’re into that (having personally played that, that mode and difficult DON’T screw around)

You WILL all die horribly at least once

I greatly recommend playing this multiplayer game with three other friends. Whether you only do one run through of the original campaign for a quick hour's worth of entertainment, or decide to dive into the custom maps or try to survive the harder difficulties and make a weekend of it, the game is certainly worth the hard drive space. If nothing else it should tell you which of your friends can handle working as a team, and who will freak out or forget what they’re supposed to do once a situation gets bad.

Sorry, but you'll only get everyone killed, so have fun with the zombies!

Alien Swarm is available for free on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/630/

Region of the Mentally Unstable Deity

Up next we’ve got a neat little browser MMO called “REALM OF THE MAD GOD”, wherein you stomp around the titular realm of the Mad God and you proceed to SHOOT THE HELL OUT OF EVERYTHING. Good practice for when mutants eventually overrun the earth.

Soon

The game works from a top down perspective that’s follows your 2D pixilated adventurer as you roam about shooting things. Basic RPG and MMO standards apply, HP, MP, EXP, all the alphabet soup abbreviations are there.

As are the typical names people use in MMOs

You’ve got a small inventory that’s supplemented with a permanent storage vault in the game’s city. The games gimmick is that perma-death is always on, and that’s its built around going through multiple characters. The idea is that you find awesome stuff that you cant use for your current character, so you go back and stick it in the Vault.

Later when I'm a ninja I'm totally gonna be kick ass you guys

 You take a class, level it up to a certain point, and then a new class is available. HOWEVER: only one character slot is available. Want to try out that new class you unlocked? You better find the nearest angry mob of gnomes and start looking for hugs.

Really BAD practice for when mutants overrun the earth

 Like all multiplayer games, and MMOs in particular, its far better when played with friends, roaming around shooting things (its basically “Bullet Hell, the MMO”) and theres even a spell that allows you to teleport to another player, no matter how far away they are, for free, and it only has a ten second cool down.

HOW THEY GET YOU: The game might be free, but theres things in the game that cost real money. The game uses two different currencies for different things. Fame is what you get when one of your characters die, and the other is gold which you get for real money, both of which are used for a number of things, but it’s the gold that gets you the good stuff. Like most Free-to-play MMOs, you don’t NEED to buy things with real life money to enjoy the game, but they certainly help, and one of the big things that the gold gets you is another character slot, which would allow you to keep unlocking classes without having to kill off that character. Get particularly attached to your wizard because you killed some of the games big bosses with it? Either slap down five bucks to keep it while you try out other stuff, suck it up and run head first into some zombie wizards, or just stop unlocking classes entirely.

They give you one hundred for free when you start though, which is nice

That aside, REALM OF THE MAD GOD is still a fun little browser MMO, and its fully possible to you just drop in and play it, no registration needed (thought that probably allows you to name your character, I was stuck with Risrr as a default) I recommend getting some friends together and killing some time by shooting monsters.

R.I.P Risrr, you were taken too soon

Realm of the Mad God is available for free at http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/
Or you could play it on steam, if you're into that http://store.steampowered.com/app/200210/
(page includes trailer)