Before we delve into the Nightmarium, I should make it clear that this is a game that uses the Tabletopia game system. This means that all you are getting is a digital rendition of the game’s components, leaving the players themselves to interpret and enforce the rules. Furthermore, do not expect any AI opponents or online matches, as the only option is to play face to face with a player count of two to four.

Nightmarium is a small, easy to learn card game that only had a limited print run. Consequently, this digital version will be the only chance that many of us will have to play the game. The background story concerns the masters of the Order of Dreamers who have been studying the landscape of dreams for centuries. Even after all this time, one small, dark corner of the dream world subconscious remains off-limits. That place, as you may have guessed, is the Nightmarium, home to night terrors, bogeymen and monsters under the bed. Finally, the researchers have mastered the art of subduing these terrors and moulding them into creatures. The problem is that these creatures are hostile and volatile, often, fighting among themselves, simply disintegrating or escaping to run amok. Yet, despite their nature, these unstable creations do have a use since they offer the only means of reaching the Crystal of Panic.

An example of what the game looks like in the early stages.

As a player, you will take on the role of a dream researcher and compete against your opponents to be the first one to assemble five creatures.  The night terrors are made up of 108 individual cards, which are split into legs, torsos and heads. You can work on creating your five creatures simultaneously, but each has to be assembled in a strict order beginning with legs. Most cards can only be used for one body part, but some special cards can be used for two, or even three parts. Each night terror is loyal with one of four colour-coded legions of Horror – Necronauts, Insektoids, Homunculi, or Chimeridae. A creature can be made up from any mix of Night Terrors, but creating creatures from cards of the same legion will give you a distinct advantage.

At the start of the game each player is dealt a hand of five Night Terror cards and on a turn, they get to perform two actions. The most basic action is to draw a card.  A variation of this is to discard as many cards as you like and draw half that number back. There is also the option to play a card from your hand to start or continue constructing a creature. Creatures have to be built from the bottom up; starting with legs, followed by the torso and finishing with the head. As soon as a creature is complete any special abilities that are marked on the individual body parts will activate. These are applied in strict order, starting with the head and working downwards. If a special ability cannot be performed, then it and any other outstanding abilities are cancelled. If you have ensured that the creature is made from terrors of the same legion, then every opponent must discard one card of that legion from their hand. If they have no such card, then they face the larger penalty of having to discard two cards.

Your late-game board may end up looking like this.

Special abilities are worth investigating a little closer as they form the core of the game and ensure that there is more to Nightmarium than a simple primary school matching game. The Weeper ability lets you draw two new cards, whilst the Mocker lets you play an extra card from your hand. The Herald skill is one of the strongest: it offers a combination of the previous two skills, allowing you to draw two cards and immediately use them to construct your creatures. The other skills are more interactive – the Executioner allows you to remove the head from an opponent’s creature and add it to your hand, the Scavenger ability lets you remove an opponent’s incomplete creature. Finally, the Devourer ability lets you discard the top card of any of your own creatures. Identifying how these skills complement each other is at the heart of the game. For instance, a completed creature with both Executioner and Scavenger abilities could first claim the head from an opponent’s creature, thus making it incomplete. Then the Scavenger skill can be used to send the unfortunate soul back to the discard pile.

Nightmarium is a straightforward game that can be learnt in five minutes and only takes about twenty minutes to play. The theme is refreshingly original, with the lovely creature illustrations adding to the game’s overall charm. However, there are frustratingly high levels of luck involved, which makes for a game best suited for families rather than seasoned gamers. In terms of actual gameplay, there is nothing here that hasn’t been seen many times before. However, Nightmarium’s rather ruthless player interaction and neat card combo opportunities make for a decent if unspectacular game.

The horror! Not the monsters – just LOOK at the state of that board…

The simple rules and few moving parts mean that Nightmarium is a good choice for conversion to the Tabletopia system. Although, having to keep your cards hidden from the other players does mean that turns need to be taken in secret, so only one person can view the screen at any one time. Whenever I play I cannot help but feel that the game would be infinitely more enjoyable to play in its physical format; snatching an actual physical card from a rival is so much more satisfying. Tabletopia is an innovative way of playing tabletop games, but the fiddly interface, no-frills presentation and, most tellingly, lack of rules implementation means that it will only ever appeal to a limited market. The rest of us will happily stick with physical copies or enjoy the impressive range of fully featured board game apps that have added advantages like AI opponents and competitive online matches.

You’ll get a kick out of this! ⚽
Team up with your friends for Summer Games on August 9. pic.twitter.com/VSyxMDTrc3

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 3, 2018

The changes in the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro prompts comparisons between the models from potential customers. AppleInsider compares the low, mid-range, and high-end options in a series of benchmarks, to see if it’s worth paying more for the better-specification models.

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For the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro refresh, Apple has made a number of improvements to performance, such as using faster DDR4 RAM that allows for configurations of up to 32 gigabytes, faster graphics with higher base memory, and using Intel’s new 8th-generation 6-core processors.

The changes mean that, once again, users are tasked with choosing the notebook that can meet their performance requirements, as well as their budgets. To help those deciding which to acquire, we have put the refreshed models through a variety of benchmarks that simulate 3D rendering, gaming and overall system performance, along with video and photo editing.

Three models were used for the tests, starting with the base model 2.2GHz Core i7 CPU at the low end, complete with Radeon Pro 4GB 555X graphics, 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 256-gigabyte SSD, priced at $2,399. In the middle is the 2.6GHz Core i7 model with Radeon Pro 4GB 560X graphics and 16GB of DDR4 memory, costing $2,799. On the plus side, that model also comes with a 512-gigabyte SSD, doubling the storage capacity compared to the lowest specification model.

The highest-specification 15-inch MacBook Pro used in this test cost $3,499, packing the 2.9GHz Core i9 processor, Radeon Pro 4GB 560X graphics and 32 gigabytes of DDR4 memory. While it is only equipped with the 512 gigabyte SSD, since all SSD versions are incredibly fast, this should make no real impact on performance for any of these tests.

Standard Benchmarks

Starting with Geekbench 4’s CPU test, all models have impressive scores, but the difference between them isn’t huge. The i9 reached about 10-percent higher scores in single-core and 8-percent higher in multi-core compared to the base model.

In Geekbench 4’s OpenCL graphics test, the results between the three laptops are minor. Switching to the Metal test shows a much bigger difference, with the 560X GPU models scoring about 20-percent higher than the 555X in the base model.

Unigine’s Heaven using the extreme preset was employed to put a gaming workload on the test group. Here, we observed an 18-percent higher average frame rate between the 555X GPU model and the 560X models, a hefty performance increase which can be had for only $100 more.

Moving onto Cinebench R15, a rendering benchmark that runs the processor under full load, we ran 5 back-to-back tests on each system. Despite the specification differences, we only saw performance vary by an average of 2 percent between the base 2.2GHz i7 and the top spec 2.9 Ghz i9, which is a $400 upgrade.

Starting from an idling temperature and only running the test once, the i9 will score around 50 points higher, but only because the test finishes before the processor has a chance to heat up.

Shortly after the first run, the processors in these new MacBooks thermal throttle so much that all three run at very similar speeds. There was an average speed of 3.05GHz for the base model, 3.1Ghz for the mid and 3.15GHz for the i9.

Since some 2D and 3D renders can take hours, all three processors have similar performance for extensive graphics-demanding tasks.

Image Editing

For the photo editing test, the latest version of Adobe Lightroom Classic was used to edit 42-megapixel RAW images. We saw no speed or smoothness differences while color-correcting and retouching within the develop module.

However, while exporting 99 edited 42-megapixel RAW images to JPEG, the Core i9 model was around 17% faster than the other two, which finished at exactly the same time.

Looking closer,, all three models ran at about the same speed, at around 3.0Ghz throughout the export. While processor usage was close to 100 percent in all cases, the onboard graphics were effectively left unused.

For RAM usage, the top model used more than 18GB of memory, while the other two 16GB-packing models had to cut into the SSD using file-swapping. For the most part, the performance difference is actually coming from the amount of RAM available to use.

Video Editing

The video tests using Final Cut Pro X started with the 5K Bruce X benchmark, which resulted in similar times across the board. Stabilizing a 20-second 4K clip also results in nearly identical speeds.

Moving on to a 5-minute 4K h.264 project with color corrections and effects, the mid-range and top models took 3 min and 44 seconds to render and encode, while the base model was slightly slower at 4 min and 11 seconds. This shows that the lower-end GPU was the actual bottleneck in this case.

As far as the editing itself, all three models have no problem playing back the timeline at a full 4K resolution, with background rendering turned off.

Taking a look at a similar project, except using 4K HEVC files, the results were practically the same. While the 555X graphics card was close to capacity, the 560X still had about 30 percent of its potential performance still available.

Testing ProRes RAW and Canon Cinema RAW lite codecs, both with color corrections and effects, the results come out the same. The base model, again, is slower while the mid and top-spec MacBooks are very close in performance. Once again, the graphics card is the limitation.

One noticeable difference is that all three models have no issues playing back the 4K ProRes RAW, while the Canon RAW stutters on all three machines, taking much longer to render.

Finishing off testing with 4.5K RED RAW files, the results were close, but unexpectedly the i9 model was actually the slowest, even with repeated testing. The i9 ran at just 2.4GHz after stabilizing, even though its base clock speed is rated at 2.9GHz, while the base 2.2GHz and mid 2.6GHz models ran at 2.7GHz and 2.8GHz respectively.

Our RED RAW project pushed both the processor and graphics, causing the best GPU and CPU combination to thermal throttle slightly more than the other configurations.

We do want to point out that most of our video editing projects are short, and we tested without having other programs running in the background, so differences in RAM don’t really make any impact. If you edit long 4K projects, especially while having other programs or many browser tabs open, we would suggest upgrading to 32GB of RAM.

Summary

As far as the other components, the 560X graphics chip is well worth the extra $100 for everyone but photo editors. If you’re running long and intensive tasks that need more than a short burst of high speed, upgrading the CPU to the i9 isn’t really worth it. If you don’t push your machine hard in any way, you won’t need the extra short term performance. If you do, the performance difference can be negligible because of thermal throttling.

If you need to buy a Mac right now, the mid-spec $2,799 model, which is kept in stock at most retailers, will be a good choice. If you don’t mind waiting for a MacBook Pro order, going for the base model with the i7 2.2GHz CPU, Radeon 560X graphics, and 32 gigabytes of RAM will give you the best bang for your buck.

Save $100 on every 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro

Apple authorized reseller Adorama is knocking $100 off every 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with promo code APINSIDER when used with this shopping link or the pricing links in our MacBook Pro Price Guide.

Adorama also will not collect sales tax on orders shipped outside NY and NJ, and each system ships for free within the contiguous U.S. With the exclusive discount, many shoppers outside those two states can save up to $635 compared to buying from Apple, a significant cost difference for the brand-new models.

Those looking to finance the purchase can also take advantage of no interest financing when paid in full within 12 months using the Adorama Credit Card. For help redeeming the coupon code, please see the step-by-step instructions found in this guide.

We’ve heard a bunch of complaints from the community after the recent treasure was released, and we wanted to walk you through how things unfolded from our end.

On Tuesday after the release, we heard the community being concerned if there were bugs with the item drops, with many examples of people not getting the Witch Doctor set but having the Phantom Assassin and Outworld Devourer sets. We looked into it to see if there were any differences between the drop rates of those items, and found that all three were identical, so we just assumed it was anecdotal cases and selection bias. Another contributing factor is that the volume of Treasure 3 is meaningfully less than Treasure 1 and 2, partly because a lot of customers bought the Weekend Bundle Sale and that did not include Treasure 3 (as is the case historically). So it would then be expected that a number of people would have some items and not the others, and that the Witch Doctor set would be the most rare.

However, the complaints continued to come in, and it was confusing to us why. We decided to investigate a bit more, but were generally still assuming it was a mixture of selection bias and supply differences between Treasure 1 and 2 and Treasure 3, especially since we knew the three items were identical. Late last night we eventually found a bug that existed for all the Immortal treasures this season. It primarily affected players who opened a very large number of treasures, causing the drop rates to not escalate as quickly as they did last year. And since the volume of Treasure 3s were lower than the other two, it was a more visible bug to players.

As a result of this, this morning we started working on fixing this. We are re-running the rolls for players on Immortal Treasure 1, 2 and 3, and will be granting the items shortly as well as fixing the bug for unopened treasures. We will also be giving all Battle Pass owners 10 extra levels.

In addition to this, we’ve also heard the community being unhappy at the content of the level 615 reward. As part of this update, we are adding an extra bundle of treasures at level 615. It’ll include 4 Immortal Treasure 1, 4 Immortal Treasure 2, and 4 Immortal Treasure 3.

If you know anything about Baseball, you’re in luck. MLB Manager 18 has no tips, no tutorials, no hints at the rules of the sport or the nuances within the stats. Whereas so many management sims allow a little wiggle room for new players who may only take a partial interest in the sport, this game effectively shutters itself off from any kind of enquiry. In fact, even those who have an extensive knowledge of the American pastime might find themselves completely lost among a hundred menus which offer no solace or guiding nudges about what specific command does what action. It’s a mess.

MLB18 opens with the usual fare of naming your coach, selecting the team you’d like to head up from the American or National leagues. Before even seeing a playing field or batting cage, the game prompts ask whether to simulate the real world of Baseball. Maybe you’d like to tick boxes which really mean very little until the game gets into the flow of things? MLB18 has you covered by asking about pitchers and batters with no shade of why they’re asking.

Once these frustrating opening screens have passed by, we’re met with the most uninspiring handful of menus. Still, there’s no sign of any tutorial so absently tapping at certain boxes in the hope of either starting a season or changing the line-up of the team relies solely on either luck or parsing the information until you stumble into the correct menu option and there’s a list of names that mean very little. Do we tap and hold? Do we tap? Can we rename anybody to make the game more personal? Mess around and find out, because the developer clearly doesn’t want to tell us.

I chose to use the Philadelphia Phillies, for myriad reasons and wanted to dive straight into a game, hoping to have some sway on how my team performs. I entered a game, forgiving the lack of direction thus far and tapped ‘Swing’. My hopes of any kind of interesting interaction were thwarted as I watched a wall of text fall down the screen in a pseudo commentary voice. The pitch of the ball was described as arcing through the air, my batter did his thing and we made it to first base. The static Baseball diamond on my screen changed the colours of a few names to state that the Phillies had grabbed the first base and the game prompted me, asking if I wanted to steal second base.

Why not? Maybe there’s a mini game hidden away that allows me to test the infield players as I heroically dash from first base to second as the pitcher unleashes his ball. Nope. More text, we didn’t steal the base and my batter struck out. Before I even considered trying to swap out players, I decided to simulate a couple of innings, in the hope that maybe the game would show some form of animation of players movements, balls flying out to home runs or sliding into home. Sadly, a few names blinked red rather than black and the menu appeared from before, only now I was 0-3.

Of course, most management games are brimming with menus and stats. That’s mostly why we flock to them, because it’s in the minutiae where we find joy. It seems no matter where I turned, every menu is bland, leading into another soulless list where drop down menus languish, unexplained or even brushed over by the game itself. I know a decent amount about Baseball, I like to watch a bit of Spring training, I catch games where I can, and I stumbled around lists that made no sense to me. Despite knowledge, a game needs some form of guidance. Building a routine of which option furthers play or the calendar, maybe highlights a few of the star players to add into the starting line-up. If I wanted to roam endless boxes of information I don’t really understand, I’d open Microsoft Excel.

I can’t imagine that even the most expert Baseball fan will find much joy here. There’s no option to swing a bat, or throw a pitch, which could have easily been implemented. MLB18 takes everything that makes Baseball an interesting sport and removes it. There’s no passion for the game, or even any hint that there’s a genuinely fun sport within the simulator.

After a time I started changing the strategy of my team – increasing their aggression on running bases, telling my pitcher how to hold base runners, I asked my players to steal bases wherever they could. I found a screen that told me that my personality was “charitable” and that I was “delighted” with the performance of the team. I started rotating players around, choosing different starting pitchers. Not one thing made any noticeable difference. I might as well have just simulated every game using the default settings, because nothing I changed really mattered. The game rolled some imaginary dice or randomly generated a few numbers, translated that into ‘boy howdy’ Baseball commentary and declared my batter swung and missed. STRIKE!

I’d like to say that MLB Manager 18 has a redeeming feature, but it doesn’t. It’s the most lifeless, boring game I’ve played in a long time. Maybe someone who reads every little detail about the sport will find something to love. You have to be an absolute die-hard fan of Baseball and have the patience of a saint to really get anything from MLB18. As someone who supports a team, watches games, plays other Baseball games on mobile and console I wanted to still be guided around and told about the intricacies of this management sim. Instead, I felt like I was scooped up from Little League practice and told to bat in the World Series.

Space jockeys and planetary pioneers alike are rejoicing with this week’s release of Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky for Xbox One. No Man’s Sky is a sci-fi adventure set in an absolutely massive universe, in which every star is orbited by planets filled with life, each of which you can visit if you’d like. Every player’s experience is unique thanks to the game’s procedural generation, ensuring you’ll discover lifeforms and environments that no other player has seen before. Thanks to a number of big additions to the base game, the release of No Man’s Sky on Xbox One brings with it some great features and opportunities to get excited about.

The NEXT Update is the Best Update

In addition to the core No Man’s Sky experience, Xbox One owners get the benefit of the game launching alongside its highly-anticipated NEXT update. The NEXT update brings a bevy of changes to the game, including (but not limited to) greatly improved graphics and textures, a new third-person perspective available both on-foot and in spaceships, an overhauled base building system that will let you build multiple bases on any planet, and the ability to command a fleet of freighters, which you can send out on exploratory missions.

Everything’s Better with Friends

The biggest change to the game with the NEXT update is the new multiplayer feature, which allows you to play with up to three of your friends in the same universe. There’s plenty to do with your space chums, including racing exocraft across the surface of newfound planets, cooperatively engaging in space battles against other players, and dividing labor when constructing colonies of bases. There are even standalone multiplayer missions that can be completed together. Of course, there’s a bit of a double-edged laser sword to all of this: you might run into a group of people working together to loot and pillage your base or take out your ship. Finally, you should note that friendly fire is on by default, so your multi-tool’s laser will damage your pals if they accidentally get in your line of fire (or deserve to be double-crossed).

Mix It Up with Mixplay

Not only can you now play No Man’s Sky with friends thanks to its new multiplayer mode, you can also have some fun by letting your friends and/or total strangers get in on the action by streaming on Mixer. No Man’s Sky Mixplay feature allows anyone watching your stream to spend their hard-earned Spark on everything from launch fuel to A-Class Tech, making it a bit easier to progress and explore more of your universe faster. Of course, if they’re feeling less-than-charitable, they could also spend their Spark on warping in enemy Sentinels or pirates to ratchet up the tension and make it more likely that’ll you be just another corpse floating through the void.

The Deep Beauty of Deep Space

No Man’s Sky is a beautiful game, featuring nearly infinite colorful worlds and creatures. It’s even more gorgeous on Xbox One X, running at 4K Ultra HD if you’ve got a monitor or television that supports it. Best of all, you can play it the way you want it. No Man’s Sky on Xbox One X feature two different modes that you can toggle between in the game options menu:  a “High Performance” mode which runs at 1440p and 60 frames per second, and a “High Quality” option which achieves a native 4K resolution (or 2160p). When combined with the new and improved flora, fauna, and environments, these visual options make this a true stunner.

Play it Your Way

One of the best features of No Man’s Sky is the fact that, once you’re through the initial mission tasking you with repairing your ship and multi-tool, you can largely play the game in whatever manner you’d like. If you want to spend the majority of your time in space, go right ahead. Feel like bouncing from planet to planet without mucking around with bases? Go nuts. In addition to customize your play style, the NEXT update also added a brand-new character customization feature that offers a huge range of options. Not only can you choose between each of the game’s five races, you can also tweak everything from your gloves and armor to your torso and head.

We’ve only begun scratching the surface of No Man’s Sky for Xbox One, but it’s clear that this is the definitive version of an already deep game. We can’t wait to find out what the team at Hello Games will bring us next.

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