12-01-2018, 06:10 PM
The Weekender: Back to Regular Programming Edition
<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/the-weekender-back-to-regular-programming-edition.jpg" width="820" height="461" title="" alt="" /></div><div><p>Now that the chaos of Black Friday is over, we can return to our usual programming in the run-up to Christmas. It’s been a quieter week – we reviewed <a href="https://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/royal-adviser/" target="_blank"><em>Royal Adviser</em></a> and <a href="https://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/review-farabel/" target="_blank"><em>Farabel</em></a>, but then nothing else aside from some news. On the horizon we’ve got reviews coming in for a few new projects, including C & C Rivals, but we’ll mainly be looking towards Christmas now for the big push.</p>
<h2>Out Now</h2>
<h3>The Elder Scrolls: Bla-</h3>
<p>Oh never mind. As you may have heard by now, Bethesda has officially pushed back the launch of <em>The Elder Scrolls: Blades</em>, until Match 31st, 2019 (at least). There hasn’t really been anything official from Bethesda on this, we’ve just got the iOS pre-order entry to go by.</p>
<p>We’re expecting preview code sometime soon, so if they do follow through with that at least we might be able to report back some early impressions before the year is up, but don’t get your hopes up.</p>
<h3>Kingdom Rush: Vengeance (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom-rush-vengeance/id1248033433?mt=8" target="_blank">iOS Universal</a> & <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ironhidegames.android.kingdomrush4" target="_blank">Android</a>) – <em>Full Review Coming Soon!</em></h3>
<p>This one was actually out last week but we didn’t do a Weekender update because of Black Friday. Still, it exists, and Richard’s reviewing it as we speak to expect the formal PT verdict to land sometime soon.</p>
<p><em>Vengeance</em> is the next entry in Ironhide’s <em>Kingdom Rush</em> Tower-Defence/RTS games, featuring new towers, upgrades heroes and countless other bits as the devs continue to try and innovate their brand of strategy. It’s also fully playable offline, which is nice.</p>
<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='654' height='368' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/hTdWNCxofTc?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
<h3>Morels (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1396126409" target="_blank">iOS Universal</a> & <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mossbark.morels" target="_blank">Android</a>) – <em>Full Review Coming Soon!</em></h3>
<p>Another card game port, <em>Morels</em> won a bunch of card game awards in 2012 and 2014 when it was originally release and depending what version you’ve seen you might also know it as <em>‘Fungi</em>’. It’s finally made the jump to digital platforms.</p>
<p>This is a two-player game where you must forage mushrooms and acquire other ingredients and accessories to cook meals for yourself. The more and better quality meals you cook, the more victory points you gets. I’ve played the physical version – it’s a very easy, casual game for two people (although it needed a fair amount of room), but it wasn’t quite exciting enough for prolonged exposure. It’s not one you’d have busted out a lot.</p>
<p>The app seems to be ticking all the boxes though – a colourful design, a tutorial and in-app rulebook, new ways to play the game, and more importantly, plenty of different options. Solo player vs. an AI (with 3 difficulty levels), local pass & play and then online asynchronous or real-time versus another player.</p>
<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='654' height='368' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/s8T0bb_kspI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
<h3>Marching Order (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/marching-order/id1099867100?mt=8" target="_blank">iOS Universal</a> & <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sfbgames.MarchingOrder" target="_blank">Android</a>)</h3>
<p>Finishing off this segment with another quirky logic puzzle, <em>Marching Order</em> sees you as a rather stressed out band manager trying to get their troupe in order. It may not sound like a challenge, but every animal you’re trying to sort has a specific set of preferences to keep them happy.</p>
<p>The trick of the game is to put the animals in the correct/optimum order, so that all animals are as happy as possible and the music is good when you eventually go on your march. The presentation and theme makes me think this one might be a good one for kids, but we haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. If anyone does, do let us know what you think!</p>
<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='654' height='368' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/UtTG35zljKA?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
<h2>Sales & Updates</h2>
<p>I would have thought you’d all be sale’d-out from last week, so I’ve not looked this week to see if anything’s going cheap – most of the good ones were part of Black Friday and Cyber Monday anyway.</p>
<p>On the update front there’s been no recent things that we can see worthy highlight, but we will use this as an excuse to drop in another bit of news that we know is relevant to your readers.</p>
<p>You’ll remember 2012’s <em>Plague Inc.</em>? Well developer Ndemic Creations are finally releasing a brand new game – <em>Rebel Inc.</em> It’s a bit of a departure – you’re not the insurgency itself, but you’re having the balance military and civilian priorities within your region to win the hearts of the people and stamp out the rebels.</p>
<p><img class="center" title="" src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/the-weekender-back-to-regular-programming-edition.jpg" alt="Rebel Inc 3 1" width="820" height="461" /></p>
<p>The official feature list is:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stabilise five different, richly modelled regions</li>
<li>Innovative representation of counter insurgency tactics</li>
<li>Use realistic initiatives to empower the local government</li>
<li>Highly detailed, hyper-realistic world based on extensive research</li>
<li>Intelligent strategic and tactical AI</li>
<li>Sophisticated narrative algorithms shaped by your decisions</li>
<li>Five unique governors with radically different abilities</li>
<li>Comprehensive in-game help and tutorial system</li>
<li>Full Save/Load functionality</li>
<li>Internet connectivity not required</li>
</ul>
<p>It’s worth nothing that this appears to be trying to treat the subject matter seriously, even though it’s a fictional game. It’s already <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rebel-inc/id1439187947?mt=8" target="_blank">available for pre-order via iTunes</a> if you’re interested, and it will be releasing on December 6th.</p>
<p><em>That’s all for this week’s update, enjoy your weekends!</em></p>
</div>
<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/the-weekender-back-to-regular-programming-edition.jpg" width="820" height="461" title="" alt="" /></div><div><p>Now that the chaos of Black Friday is over, we can return to our usual programming in the run-up to Christmas. It’s been a quieter week – we reviewed <a href="https://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/royal-adviser/" target="_blank"><em>Royal Adviser</em></a> and <a href="https://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/review-farabel/" target="_blank"><em>Farabel</em></a>, but then nothing else aside from some news. On the horizon we’ve got reviews coming in for a few new projects, including C & C Rivals, but we’ll mainly be looking towards Christmas now for the big push.</p>
<h2>Out Now</h2>
<h3>The Elder Scrolls: Bla-</h3>
<p>Oh never mind. As you may have heard by now, Bethesda has officially pushed back the launch of <em>The Elder Scrolls: Blades</em>, until Match 31st, 2019 (at least). There hasn’t really been anything official from Bethesda on this, we’ve just got the iOS pre-order entry to go by.</p>
<p>We’re expecting preview code sometime soon, so if they do follow through with that at least we might be able to report back some early impressions before the year is up, but don’t get your hopes up.</p>
<h3>Kingdom Rush: Vengeance (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom-rush-vengeance/id1248033433?mt=8" target="_blank">iOS Universal</a> & <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ironhidegames.android.kingdomrush4" target="_blank">Android</a>) – <em>Full Review Coming Soon!</em></h3>
<p>This one was actually out last week but we didn’t do a Weekender update because of Black Friday. Still, it exists, and Richard’s reviewing it as we speak to expect the formal PT verdict to land sometime soon.</p>
<p><em>Vengeance</em> is the next entry in Ironhide’s <em>Kingdom Rush</em> Tower-Defence/RTS games, featuring new towers, upgrades heroes and countless other bits as the devs continue to try and innovate their brand of strategy. It’s also fully playable offline, which is nice.</p>
<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='654' height='368' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/hTdWNCxofTc?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
<h3>Morels (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1396126409" target="_blank">iOS Universal</a> & <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mossbark.morels" target="_blank">Android</a>) – <em>Full Review Coming Soon!</em></h3>
<p>Another card game port, <em>Morels</em> won a bunch of card game awards in 2012 and 2014 when it was originally release and depending what version you’ve seen you might also know it as <em>‘Fungi</em>’. It’s finally made the jump to digital platforms.</p>
<p>This is a two-player game where you must forage mushrooms and acquire other ingredients and accessories to cook meals for yourself. The more and better quality meals you cook, the more victory points you gets. I’ve played the physical version – it’s a very easy, casual game for two people (although it needed a fair amount of room), but it wasn’t quite exciting enough for prolonged exposure. It’s not one you’d have busted out a lot.</p>
<p>The app seems to be ticking all the boxes though – a colourful design, a tutorial and in-app rulebook, new ways to play the game, and more importantly, plenty of different options. Solo player vs. an AI (with 3 difficulty levels), local pass & play and then online asynchronous or real-time versus another player.</p>
<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='654' height='368' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/s8T0bb_kspI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
<h3>Marching Order (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/marching-order/id1099867100?mt=8" target="_blank">iOS Universal</a> & <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sfbgames.MarchingOrder" target="_blank">Android</a>)</h3>
<p>Finishing off this segment with another quirky logic puzzle, <em>Marching Order</em> sees you as a rather stressed out band manager trying to get their troupe in order. It may not sound like a challenge, but every animal you’re trying to sort has a specific set of preferences to keep them happy.</p>
<p>The trick of the game is to put the animals in the correct/optimum order, so that all animals are as happy as possible and the music is good when you eventually go on your march. The presentation and theme makes me think this one might be a good one for kids, but we haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. If anyone does, do let us know what you think!</p>
<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='654' height='368' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/UtTG35zljKA?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
<h2>Sales & Updates</h2>
<p>I would have thought you’d all be sale’d-out from last week, so I’ve not looked this week to see if anything’s going cheap – most of the good ones were part of Black Friday and Cyber Monday anyway.</p>
<p>On the update front there’s been no recent things that we can see worthy highlight, but we will use this as an excuse to drop in another bit of news that we know is relevant to your readers.</p>
<p>You’ll remember 2012’s <em>Plague Inc.</em>? Well developer Ndemic Creations are finally releasing a brand new game – <em>Rebel Inc.</em> It’s a bit of a departure – you’re not the insurgency itself, but you’re having the balance military and civilian priorities within your region to win the hearts of the people and stamp out the rebels.</p>
<p><img class="center" title="" src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/the-weekender-back-to-regular-programming-edition.jpg" alt="Rebel Inc 3 1" width="820" height="461" /></p>
<p>The official feature list is:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stabilise five different, richly modelled regions</li>
<li>Innovative representation of counter insurgency tactics</li>
<li>Use realistic initiatives to empower the local government</li>
<li>Highly detailed, hyper-realistic world based on extensive research</li>
<li>Intelligent strategic and tactical AI</li>
<li>Sophisticated narrative algorithms shaped by your decisions</li>
<li>Five unique governors with radically different abilities</li>
<li>Comprehensive in-game help and tutorial system</li>
<li>Full Save/Load functionality</li>
<li>Internet connectivity not required</li>
</ul>
<p>It’s worth nothing that this appears to be trying to treat the subject matter seriously, even though it’s a fictional game. It’s already <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rebel-inc/id1439187947?mt=8" target="_blank">available for pre-order via iTunes</a> if you’re interested, and it will be releasing on December 6th.</p>
<p><em>That’s all for this week’s update, enjoy your weekends!</em></p>
</div>