Posted by: xSicKxBot - 09-30-2018, 06:51 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Big Discount On Almost All PC Games And Pre-Orders This Weekend At GMG
Green Man Gaming isn't the only online video game retailer, but right now it's one of the cheapest. That's because, all weekend long, you can get 23% off of nearly every PC game on the site--including pre-orders and games that are already on sale. To get the offer, all you have to do is enter promo code PAYDAY23 at checkout. A few exclusions apply, and most of the games come in the form of Steam codes. Let's take a look at some of the highlights.
Speaking of RPGs, World of Final Fantasy is already on sale for 56% off, so when you knock an additional 23% off the sale price, it ends up costing just $14. Nioh: Complete Edition is similarly discounted outside of this offer, which means you can get it this weekend for $23. And although the first episode is all that's been released so far, you can order the whole season of Life is Strange 2 for $31.
As mentioned above, the offer extends to pre-orders as well, so if you're planning on getting an upcoming PC game, it's worth checking if GMG has it available. You save $14 on any game with a normal retail price of $60, so you can get upcoming games like Devil May Cry 5, Just Cause 4, and Hitman 2 for $46 each. Mega Man 11 and Disgaea 5 Complete are down to $23 apiece.
You'll find more of our picks below, or you can visit the site to look at the rest of the games. Now go save some money--just make sure to add the promo code before you check out.
There’s perhaps no genre synonymous with mobile platforms – especially iPhone or Android devices – than puzzle games. Low intensity inputs are good for a device with no buttons, and the pace of these games plays well with the low session time, start-and-stop nature of mobile gaming. Puzzle games also take so many unique forms nowadays that a top list in the genre can produce completely different looking games.
As you’ll see below, we have our own menagerie of titles that we feel represent the best Puzzle games have to offer across iPhone, iPad and Android devices…
This recent release is an easy inclusion in our best-of collection not only for its accessible nature, but also because it requires a lot of careful thought and planning. It’s more of a high-score puzzler than anything else, but the floral theme and impressive nuances make for some entertaining sessions. Evergarden’s developers estimate that the game will take between four to eight hours to fully explore. After this, it is all about breaking into the global high score tables.
Consequently, it is more of a Tetris high score chaser rather than the type of puzzler where you have to pit your wits against increasingly difficult levels. Unlocking all of the game’s secrets does not require particularly high levels of skill, just the persistence to keep playing and adding to your gem collection.
Death Coming is a cute pixel game of Where’s Wally twisted in with Final Destination. It’s a murder simulator with the player taking the role of an omnipresent servant of Death. You are tasked with offing a certain number of people in a detailed pixel-art scene through manipulating the environment towards various horrible accidents and mayhem. The pixel artwork is awesome, reminiscent of a really great Kairosoft game. Everything is clear and distinct even at a distance, although the game is definitely better sized for tablets and larger phones. The characters are cute and expressive in their tiny little animations. It’s a shame the devs didn’t trust their core gameplay enough to avoid gumming it up with unnecessary frustrations.
Developer: ustwo games Platforms: iOS, Android Price: $3.99
Every intrepid fan of puzzles is intimately familiar with the eureka moment after which everything falls into place. With Monument Valley, these insights are found by rotating and manipulating the world and its unlikely, Escher-esque geometry. Visual insights coincide with mental ones. And what visual twists and turns there are! Paths bridge on towards infinite loops, curve around corners and angles which display cleanly on the tablet’s surface but will warp the mind. The challenges and spatial awareness necessary are minimal, yet the game never feels reductive or simplistic despite its pared-down nature.
Developer: APE-X GAmes Platforms: iOS, Android Price: Free with IAPs
Infinite West is a puzzler that resembles more boardgame than match-3. It’s difficult to find which had a bigger influence on it, the sombre motif of the Ed Porter/Sergio Leone style western or Square Enix Montreal’s critically acclaimed GO series. What’s easy to see is that developers APE-X have a clear reverence of both and have done their best to highlight what makes both strong while adapting it to a unique vision. Achievement hunting and score chasing in Infinite West can throw you in that fervent, ‘just one more map’ loop because of the solid core concept, and the presence of IAPs is by no means a deal-breaker as you get given a modest amount of freebies anyway.
Many a sterling series has seen its reputation dinged by weaker entries. In particular, the sophomore slump, that challenge to recapture what made the original great without slavish repetition. Every member of the GO series has its unique merits and mechanics, but Lara Croft GO stands as the series best. Hitman GO was plagued by odd turn-counter challenges which offer only derivative challenges and pad the playtime without expanding content; Deus Ex GO’s grand plan for daily challenges and community-generated puzzles largely fell flat, but Lara Croft GO along with its two expansions hit the sweet spot of challenge, presentation and pacing. Its focused treasure hunts will keep the best minds, most any mind, really, engaged. (There’s even a maddening hidden-object sidegame to unlock cosmetic goodies if either of those are your wont) Its solutions were exclusive and in many cases immune to the kind of brute-force, mindlessly-spam-moves approach to puzzling, and the whole adventure felt like just that.
The Witness is an excellent game to binge, forget, and then revisit. Its puzzles are sorted into wholly distinct environs (treehouses, greenhouses, forests, deserts, mountains, castles) with each of the regions introducing a unique mechanic. Powering on the panels by drawing glowing lines. The game is open world, with players free to wander around and be as enlightened or confounded as they like, and the ultimate nature of the island and its nameless visitor (Witness?) is left up for interpretation. Still, the puzzles are incredibly varied and numerous, and the island is a wonder to explore and idly consider just what in the world is going on.
Cute little aliens harumph and squidge themselves into unlikely spherical compartments as they commute to their destinations in outer space. In Cosmic Express, the puzzles are pickup-and-deliver, drawing train paths for a route that allows for no cross-overs or doubling-back. The game includes a ton of levels and gets surprisingly difficult (or rather: uncompromising, since difficulty is always a relative, judgmental term) sooner rather than later. Every level feels crystal clear in the post-solved hindsight; nothing is superfluous. Cosmic Express winds its way through the galaxy and wends its way into your heart.
Beglitched is the story of the Glitch Witch’s sudden disappearance from a computer OS and the player character’s sudden quest to train and replace her. You’ll open ‘files’ to find items, other avatars and programs, and enemies. The game is split between overland mode, which utilizes a minesweeper-like method of divining connecting spaces, and the match-three battle mode. The tone is light and idiosyncratic, and the level design is inspired and gimmicky in a good way. Constraints, properly applied, stimulate creativity. (Or else we’d be without the phrase ‘thinking outside of the box’). Beglitched was released without much fanfare and then subsequently ported to mobile, where it shines even more because of its screen-within-a-screen schtick.
Developer: Dinosaur Polo Club Platforms: iOS, Android Price: $4.99
Logistics makes the world go around. These often break down into math and logic puzzles, even to the point that we have fields dedicated to studying the topology of knots. But maybe none of this matters and you just need to get to work. Well, Mini Metro folds all of this and makes for an amusing, minimalistic puzzle about ordering and sequencing the right trains in the right time to complete the right route. So, programming motion to meet specific goals, and tinkering towards that end. Some puzzles rely unduly on shifts in perspective or tricks of the light to interpret what happens next; not so with Mini Metro. The needs and requirements of the puzzles are always clear, the demand is upfront: all the player has to supply is the way forward, that vital connection which will close the gap and make everything come together.
The search for the story is the story in Framed 2. Cleverly partitioning and recombining what made the original so great, the follow-up refines and refreshes the initial conceit. Comic book action meets stealth in a cheesy noirish setting. One could even say it…re-frames…what made the original great. Yes, it is probably the shortest and most easily exhausted member of this list but it still has a little extra panache that merits some special attention. There are games to play for months or years, trying to crack their mysteries or refine skills. Then there are those games to consume in an afternoon, letting the whole experience become a unified and unbroken memory. Framed 2 belongs to the latter category, a class of brief puzzlers definitely worth playing.
Developer: Fireproof Games Platforms: iOS, Android Price: $3.99
What can be said about The Room series that hasn’t been said before? Its excellent value and construction, or the heaps of critical awards? Not to mention the host of mistaken-identity jokes based on the so-bad-it-is-a-phenomenon film of the same name. Puzzle boxes are a unique tactile treat which shrink a world into a single object and then propel one to open it based on nothing more than curiosity and the hint that something might wait inside. The Room has digitized this experience as well as it could have been, all while making the experience portable and affordable and just a skosh mysterious.
What would your list of the best puzzle games look like? Let us know in the comments!
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 09-30-2018, 12:49 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
The Best Game Deals Of The Week: Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, And PC (US)
We all love playing video games, but with new titles going for $60 or more depending on the edition, the hobby gets expensive fast. Thankfully, many gaming retailers have regular sales to save you money. But even so, it's hard to know if you're getting the best deal available at any given time. To help solve that problem, we've gone through the week's video game sales and highlighted the best game deals for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Before looking at the discounts, though, you should make sure you've picked up all the free games you can get. PlayStation Plus members can download some fantastic games for free this month, including Destiny 2 (for next month's freebies, see the video above). Xbox Live Gold subscribers can also grab a few freebies right now, and if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can get five free PC games from Twitch.
With that out of the way, let's look at this week's best discounts on individual games.
Madden NFL 19
The latest installment of the best football game franchise around is $20 off this week.
September 26, 2013 was Outbreak Day, the day the fungus zombies in The Last of Us took over the country. Each year, Naughty Dog celebrates Outbreak Day by putting The Last of Us Remastered on sale.
A roguelike inspired by classic Zelda games, The Binding of Isaac has you pick up all kinds of weapons and abilities as you explore a monster-filled cellar--just try not to step in the piles of poo.
Like the previous entries in this strategy series, Civilization VI starts you out with a small settlement and has you build it into a colossal world power.
Music/rhythm games might seem passé now that the plastic instrument fad is over, but Thumper doesn't bear much resemblance to anything that came before. This is a trippy, hard-hitting rhythm game that requires deep concentration and is guaranteed to get your blood pumping.
Get the best of Scribblenauts with Scribblenauts Mega Pack: two classic games with ALL-NEW content. Use the power of your imagination to solve puzzles in endless ways.
Follow the ascent of boxer Adonis Creed as you go toe-to-toe with the world?s top opponents in an intense boxing experience that lets you train, fight, and win like a Creed.
Disney shuts down Club Penguin Island, lays off developers
Though Club Penguin was shut down in 2017, its mobile successor, Club Penguin Island, has been striving to take the place of the once-popular children’s online RPG.
A letter from Disney HR obtained by Kotaku blames the shutdown on “global competition,” and states that a need to reduce costs is partly what is driving the layoffs. Employees are apparently receiving roughly five weeks of severance and benefits.
Kotaku also spoke with multiple employees who felt blindsided since they were under the impression that new projects were coming into the studio. They also lamented that with Disney Canada’s layoffs, they’d likely have to move their families to find new work in video games. “There aren’t many opportunities in a city like Kelowna, so most of us will have to move our families if we want to pursue games,” said one employee.
If you have been impacted by these layoffs, you can e-mail Gamasutra and share your story anonymously.
Video: Sid Meier explores ‘interesting decisions’ in gameplay
One of Sid Meier’s most thought-provoking quotes for aspiring game developers was his long-ago proposition that gameplay is a series of “meaningful choices.”
It was this quote that Meier revisted when he took the stage at GDC 2012, with his talk about how games create “interesting decisions” for players. At the time, he was fully aware that this quote had become sort of a debate among game developers and writers, and he sought an opportunity to further explore this foundational idea.
Now, thanks to the magic of the GDC YouTube channel, you too can revisit Meier’s musings on game design and what exactly makes an interesting decision in gameplay. If this talk has you inspired, be sure to swing by the GDC YouTube channel for other great talks on the art of game design!
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa.
Starting at 2:00 p.m. PDT today, members of the Xbox One Preview Alpha Ring will begin receiving the latest 1810 Xbox One system update (180916-1920). Read on for more about the fixes and known issues in the latest 1810 system update.
Fixes:
Audio
Fixes to the audio stream to fix microphones not working when plugging in or unplugging a chatpad.
System
System Memory and Performance fixes in this build.
Localization fixes in this build.
Known Issues:
Avatars
It can take up to 10 seconds to view an Avatar on the profile screen after creating a new Avatar.
My Games & Apps
We are aware that some users are experiencing crashing of a game or the Youtube app when you are either launching or resuming the Youtube app.
If you are in the Youtube app and then Resume to a Game the app/game and console may hang or crash.
Power
We are tracking an issue in which the console is fully powering off when it is placed into Instant On mode.
Profile Color
Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.
Virtual Keyboard
We are aware that special characters appear incorrectly when using the Virtual Keyboard.
We are aware that the recently used emoji’s/characters are not present when you launch the VK again.
Two brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz, are forced to run away from home after a tragic incident in Seattle. In fear of the police, Sean & Daniel head to Mexico while attempting to conceal a sudden & mysterious supernatural power.
Most every Linux distribution is based on another one. Many are based on Ubuntu or Debian, some are based on Fedora, while others are based on Arch Linux. And, even when a distribution offers different types of releases (stable vs. rolling, or various available desktops), they are generally based on the same base platform.
Netrunner, however, takes a slightly different approach. If that name sounds slightly familiar, you might remember the Collectable Card Game from the 1990s that pitted two players against each other — one playing a corporation and one playing a hacker attempting to break into the corporation’s network. There is no indication that Blue Systems (the company supporting Netrunner) named the OS after the game, but it’s a great launching point for yet another Linux distribution.
So, what is Netrunner doing differently? The main trick they have up their sleeve is that the distribution is offered in three different flavors:
Stable
Rolling
Core
That is a fairly common offering these days. But, whereas Netrunner’s Stable and Core releases are based on Debian Testing, the Rolling release is based on Manjaro (which is itself based on Arch Linux). So, depending upon the release cycle you want, you may be using a Debian-based or Arch-based distribution. No matter the choice of base, however, Netrunner only offers one desktop—a modified version of KDE Plasma. That modified Plasma desktop might intrigue some users and might put some users off. Why? Because, at first blush, the desktop offered on Netrunner looks as much like a Mate or Cinnamon interface as it does KDE.
Let’s install Netrunner and see what makes this uniquely released distribution tick.
Installation
Once again, I’m happy to report that there is no need to discuss the installation of a Linux distribution. This has become quite a selling point for so many open source operating systems… that installation has become as easy as installing an application. Netrunner offers yet another point-and-click install that’s as easy as answering a few simple questions and clicking a few buttons. That’s all there is to it. Simple, fast, and user-friendly. This installation throws not a single trick at the user and, in roughly five to ten minutes, you’ll have the operating system up and running and ready to serve.
What’s installed
Out of the box (and after a single update), you’ll find kernel 4.14.0-3, KDE Plasma version 5.12.2, KDE Apps version 17.08.3, Frameworks version 5.42.0, and Qt version 5.9.2. Along with those pieces, you’ll find the following installed software:
Synaptic Package Manager for the stable release and Octopi (Pacman front-end) for the rolling release (along with KDE’s Discovery on both).
Audacious (music player)
Firefox (web browser)
GIMP (image editor)
GMusic Browser (another music player)
HandBrake (video converter)
Inkskape (vector image editor)
Kamoso (webcam software)
Kdenlive (video editor)
LibreOffice (office suite)
Pidgin Internet Messenger (chat/message client)
Skype (VOIP client)
Steam (game console)
Thunderbird (email client)
VirtualBox (Virtual Machine manager)
Vokoscreen (screencasting)
Yakuake (terminal)
Yarock (music player)
Clearly, Netrunning contains all the software you need to get started with Linux on the desktop (especially if you’re a fan of music). The only qualm I have with the list of included software is that GMusic Browser is way out of date. The latest stable version was released August 20, 2015. I’d much rather see the likes of Clementine included, as it is under regular development. Or, just stick with Yarock (which is much more current, with the latest release out February 11, 2018). It should also be noted that Firefox is installed along with the uBlock Origin extension. UBlock Origin is a web blocker that doesn’t consume much in the way of system resources. It’s easy to use and automatically filters with the help of the following lists:
You won’t find anything by way of development packages installed out of the box. Of course, as this is Linux, all of the tools you need for development are a quick install away.
The Changes to KDE Plasma
What Netrunner has done with KDE is, effectively, organized the various modules such that the desktop becomes much more immediately familiar with users, with few of the standard KDE bits at the fore. The best way to test these changes is by opening the System Settings tool and going to the Plasma Tweaks section. Here you’ll find every aspect of KDE that has been tweaked by the developers (Figure 1).
Select a different theme under Look And Feel, make sure to select Use Desktop Layout from theme, and click Apply. For example, select the Breeze theme and you’ll see how different the default Plasma desktop is from what Netrunner has done (Figure 2).
The changes made to the KDE Plasma do not detract from how efficient and user-friendly it is, they only enhance it. However, for those that prefer the default KDE Plasma desktop, it’s just a couple of clicks away. But if the likes of Mate or Cinnamon are up your alley, you’ll love what the developers have done with KDE. Either way, the desktop runs incredibly smoothly and performs like a champ (even when running as a VirtualBox virtual machine).
Take your pick
Whether you prefer a stable, bleeding edge, or minimal distribution, Netrunner has you covered. If you prefer the simplicity of Debian or the flexibility of Arch Linux, Netrunner still has you covered. No matter your pick, this flavor of Linux is a desktop that is sure to please most Linux users, regardless of experience or preference.
To download Netrunner, visit the distribution’s download page and select from the Debian-based, the Arch-based, or the core. You’ll only find 64-bit versions of each (as well as an Arm-based version), so make sure you have the proper hardware before starting the download.
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
