Added: 21.05.2014 19:40 | 6 views | 0 comments


PDP has announced a GameCube-inspired Wii U controller to come out around the same time as the new Super Smash Bros.

Added: 21.05.2014 18:28 | 2 views | 0 comments

GameSpot's early access reviews evaluate unfinished games that are nonetheless available for purchase by the public. While the games in question are not considered finished by their creators, you may still devote money, time, and bandwidth for the privilege of playing them before they are complete. The review below critiques a work in progress, and represents a snapshot of the game at the time of the review's publication.

Calling Nekro "interesting" damns DarkForge Games' role-playing game with faint praise. But that's where I'm stuck with this dark and bloody hybrid of Diablo-styled role-playing and tactical real-time strategy combat, which is more experimental than inspired. Borrowing a little from column A and a little from column B has resulted in a game without a strong identity, at least in its current beta build available as an early access release via Steam. Kill-'em-all level monotony, a lack of combat depth that sees you do a lot more clicking than strategizing, and often-outrageous difficulty make for a passenger-seat experience that has you constantly wondering if you're there yet.

Where Nekro differs from the usual Diablo clone is in its personality. Instead of playing a studly warrior or a powerhouse wizard, you step into the presumably long curly slippers of a nekromancer who's far better at co-opting the dead into work gangs than doing his own dirty deeds. While there is a fair bit of melee combat, and the game maintains a frantic pace through each of the eight levels on offer in the current build, you also have to build small armies and take into account battle tactics through the ability to set up magical turrets and traps.

Story and level design are also quite weak at present. In the solo and multiplayer campaigns (multiplayer being available over LAN and the Net with direct IP connections), you're simply a creepy nekromancer out to take revenge on his former king by killing just about every one of his subjects in a generic fantasy realm. Plot points are conveyed solely through brief voice-overs during level loads. They include a lot of jokes that lighten the mood a bit from all the wanton murder going on in the gameplay, but they can be safely skipped without missing anything. And levels themselves have no goals other than to kill everyone on the map, take out those intimidating bosses, and destroy gadgets in enemy towns or enemy outposts.

At least everything looks suitably evil, with bloody giblets flying all over the place during battles and sinister background elements like gory torture implements and hanging corpses dotting the landscape. The camera gets a little lost at times, though. Views get obscured behind objects, and in close quarters, the isometric view tends to suddenly shift to more of a top-down perspective that limits how far you can see ahead. It can be very easy to wander into the midst of an enemy mob during these top-down sequences.

At times, Nekro is a good "interesting." But it's more often the polite "interesting" that you might use when you're not sure about something, or when you want to be negative without being too critical. There is a framework here that could be turned into a good game with some more development work between the current beta and the eventual final build. Right now, however, monotonous level design and the grind-happy difficulty need some serious attention if Nekro is to become more than just the intriguing experiment in game design that it currently is in early access form.

Added: 21.05.2014 18:28 | 1 views | 0 comments

GameSpot's early access reviews evaluate unfinished games that are nonetheless available for purchase by the public. While the games in question are not considered finished by their creators, you may still devote money, time, and bandwidth for the privilege of playing them before they are complete. The review below critiques a work in progress, and represents a snapshot of the game at the time of the review's publication.

Calling Nekro "interesting" damns DarkForge Games' role-playing game with faint praise. But that's where I'm stuck with this dark and bloody hybrid of Diablo-styled role-playing and tactical real-time strategy combat, which is more experimental than inspired. Borrowing a little from column A and a little from column B has resulted in a game without a strong identity, at least in its current beta build available as an early access release via Steam. Kill-'em-all level monotony, a lack of combat depth that sees you do a lot more clicking than strategizing, and often-outrageous difficulty make for a passenger-seat experience that has you constantly wondering if you're there yet.

Where Nekro differs from the usual Diablo clone is in its personality. Instead of playing a studly warrior or a powerhouse wizard, you step into the presumably long curly slippers of a nekromancer who's far better at co-opting the dead into work gangs than doing his own dirty deeds. While there is a fair bit of melee combat, and the game maintains a frantic pace through each of the eight levels on offer in the current build, you also have to build small armies and take into account battle tactics through the ability to set up magical turrets and traps.

Story and level design are also quite weak at present. In the solo and multiplayer campaigns (multiplayer being available over LAN and the Net with direct IP connections), you're simply a creepy nekromancer out to take revenge on his former king by killing just about every one of his subjects in a generic fantasy realm. Plot points are conveyed solely through brief voice-overs during level loads. They include a lot of jokes that lighten the mood a bit from all the wanton murder going on in the gameplay, but they can be safely skipped without missing anything. And levels themselves have no goals other than to kill everyone on the map, take out those intimidating bosses, and destroy gadgets in enemy towns or enemy outposts.

At least everything looks suitably evil, with bloody giblets flying all over the place during battles and sinister background elements like gory torture implements and hanging corpses dotting the landscape. The camera gets a little lost at times, though. Views get obscured behind objects, and in close quarters, the isometric view tends to suddenly shift to more of a top-down perspective that limits how far you can see ahead. It can be very easy to wander into the midst of an enemy mob during these top-down sequences.

At times, Nekro is a good "interesting." But it's more often the polite "interesting" that you might use when you're not sure about something, or when you want to be negative without being too critical. There is a framework here that could be turned into a good game with some more development work between the current beta and the eventual final build. Right now, however, monotonous level design and the grind-happy difficulty need some serious attention if Nekro is to become more than just the intriguing experiment in game design that it currently is in early access form.