Electronic Arts has admitted that its refusal to provide refunds for games purchased digitally via Origin was against Australian consumer law and is amending its refund policy after being warned by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), , and its alleged conflict with Australian consumers' right to a refund under the Australian Consumer Law.
A new Five Nights at Freddy's game has been teased by creator Scott Cawthon via an image on his with Roy Lee (The Departed, The LEGO Movie) and Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions (the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel) signed on as producers.
The Five Nights at Freddy's Games are available to purchase on Steam and the iTunes Apple Store.
This mod by reddit user InconsolableCellist allows you to pilot a helicopter around your metropolis in Cities: Skylines. While the mod is in alpha, the opportunity for a new perspective on my city was too inviting to pass up.
You're tapping the arrow keys along with the beat, avoiding one trap and blowing up another with a bomb. A couple of skeletons shamble toward you, but you know how they move, so dispatching them with your spear is no problem. The floor lights up like a disco hall in celebration of your kill streak, and as you get closer to this floor's shop, you can hear the shopkeeper singing along with the music. You start tapping your feet, feeling the rhythm of the song...
Then you let your guard down, taking a hit from a ghost that should have been easily avoidable. Now you've got a ghost on one side and a bat on another, both ready to strike. You have to keep moving with the music, so you have no time to think about what you did wrong or how to recover from it. You move the wrong way, taking another hit--your last. You kick yourself for losing all that gold and all those items, but you restart the game, hoping to do better next time.
Lord of the dance.
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a turn-based adventure that tosses you into a series of randomly generated floors, usually with no more than a basic weapon with which to defend yourself. Moving one space at a time around the grid that makes up each crypt floor, you’ll bump into enemies (sometimes literally, as you attack simply by moving in an enemy’s direction), find secrets under walls, and collect items from various chests, ideally getting stronger and stronger along the way. The catch is that you have to do all this in time with the floor's music--and if the song ends, you move deeper into the floor whether you're ready or not.
You won’t level up by killing enemies, but the equipment you find or buy with gold can make you practically god-like. Say, for instance, that you fight your way through a few basic enemies and collect the gold they drop upon death. Among the shop’s randomized inventory on this floor is an extra heart container, allowing you to take a couple more hits before death. Paired with a suit of armor you find in a nearby chest, suddenly you can take (and then dish out) a lot more damage. This equipment is invaluable while it lasts, but it disappears if you die, forcing you to start fresh for your next attempt
When you get a monster's movement down and can maneuver around it in time with the song, combat can start to feel like a dance. "Forward, forward, back, forward, slash, dodge, slash..." It takes the concept of tapping your fingers to a beat to a whole new level, especially combined with a fantastic soundtrack featuring music you naturally want to tap along to.
The controls feel like they were built with a dance pad in mind--appropriate, since there is an easier difficulty mode where you can play the entire game with a dance pad accessory if you choose. Every action is mapped to a direction or combination of directions, giving the game a strong Dance Dance Revolution vibe. When using a keyboard, this means that you can play with one hand, but certain aspects of the controls can be awkward, especially at first. Bombs, for example, can be dropped by pressing down and left at the same time. Items, on the other hand, can be used with up and left.
Imagine you’re playing a very fast-paced game of chess where you only control a single king piece and your move clock lasts about a second every turn.
If you get those two button combinations mixed up in the heat of the moment, you're going to have a bad time. Furthermore, if your finger slips and you only hit one of the buttons instead of two, you can very easily lose your coin multiplier--or worse. You could always assign these combos to dedicated buttons, though doing so can diminish the DDR feel of only using directional buttons.
You can expect to die quite a bit in Crypt of the NecroDancer, and while it's easy to feel as if the game is stacking the deck against you by not giving you any useful item drops, you'll soon get better at staying alive with practice. Losing progress when you die is a bummer, but like the best of songs, Crypt of the NecroDancer is still pretty good on repeat.
While you drop the majority of your items upon death, not quite all is lost. The game is broken up into four "zones," and unless you're attempting to get through them all at once, you're allowed to start from any zone you've reached with your selected character. Within in the crypt, you can also find diamonds, which are the only item that will stay with you after you die. These can be used to buy a few permanent upgrades for your character (including more starting health) as well as unlock items and equipment (such as new spells, new variations of weapons, etc.) that can then show up in chests and shops the next time you play. These unlocks give a good sense of permanent progression as you play, though you can buy all the items relatively quickly. I purchased all of them long before I was finished playing through the game, making diamonds feel somewhat useless on later runs.
Hrmph?
That's not to say that there isn't stuff to keep you coming back to Crypt of the NecroDancer after you've discovered all its items, though. There are a bunch of other characters you can unlock and play as, each with unique twists that force you to play in different ways (with one character, for example, you get free items from shops, but picking up money kills you). There are also daily challenges and Steam Workshop support for mods.
If you're feeling a particular beat, you can also import your own music to play along with, which works well. It doesn't change the actual content of the game, just the rhythm at which you play it. "Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars, for instances, is playable but kind of slow, while the DC Talk hit "Jesus Is Just Alright" leads to more upbeat and faster exploring. Regardless of your musical tastes, Crypt of the NecroDancer takes a proven but basic recipe and improves it with a seemingly simple twist. It would have been a fine roguelike game without its musical side, but the rhythm mechanic makes it a truly special experience.
then the company would abandon the idea. "Right now I'm more optimistic that this will be a win for authors and gamers, but we are always going to be data driven," he said at the time.
Technology giant Apple on Monday announced financial results for its latest quarter, revealing that total revenue and profit was up year-over-year, but iPad sales continued to slide.
For the quarter ended March 28, Apple posted $58 billion in revenue and a profit of $13.6 billion. This compares to revenue of $45.6 billion and net income of $10.2 billion during the same period last year.
, and Cook says he might know why.
"What you do see is that people hold onto their iPad longer than they do a phone," Cook said back in October. "Because we've only been in this business for four years, we don't know what the upgrade cycle will be for people."
The first time I visited Meriloft in Broken Age: Act 1, it was a wondrous experience. Why was this pretentious man dressed as a bird, and why was his rotund son dressed like a nest? How did this village stay afloat in the clouds? Was H'rmony Lightbeard as crooked as he appeared? Why didn't C'rol leave her good-for-nothing husband? There were mysteries to explore, puzzles to solve, and recognizably human--despite their surrealist absurdity--characters to acquaint myself with.
When you return to Meriloft in Broken Age: Act 2--under circumstances that I don't dare spoil for those who haven't completed Act 1 yet--you see this world through a fresh lens. And while the mystery of cloud shoes and Gus and F'ther are lessened, there's enough of a sense of the unknown and new twists to pull you through. Why are familiar faces from another part of the world here? What will they do when they realize who you are? There are new mysteries and new puzzles, and it's a joy again…at first. But you will return to Meriloft to solve puzzle after puzzle after puzzle, and like every area in Broken Age: Act 2, you start to find yourself a little tired of it.
without guides in the proto-internet era. For the most part, those moments leave you satisfied with your own intelligence and problem-solving skills. But the moments when a solution just makes you say "Really?" in a frustrated tone and when you wander seemingly without direction occur often enough to rob Broken Age of a sad amount of its magic.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 info is released, Konami cancels Silent Hills, and Batman: Arkham Knight will feature playable Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing!
Video game retailer GameStop on Monday announced new plans to support the Make-A-Wish charity this year by allowing shoppers to donate to the organization when they visit a GameStop store or shop online.
Starting May 1 and running all month long, people who shop at brick and mortar GameStop stores or through the retailer's website will be prompted at checkout with an option to donate $1, $5, or $10 to Make-A-Wish. If you decide to chip in, GameStop will give you a 10 percent off code code for your next pre-owned games purchase; PowerUp Rewards members, meanwhile, will receive triple loyalty points.
GameStop subsidiaries Spring Mobile and Simply Mac will also accept donations to Make-A-Wish at the register all month. In addition, GameStop's online games portal Kongregate will allow players to donate to Make-A-Wish.
Chris and Rob got hands on with Call of Duty: Black Ops III's multiplayer. Here's what they think of the traversal system and the new specialist classes.
During this morning's ESPN Radio show The Herd, host Colin Cowherd slammed competitive gaming after his employer hosted a . Berkeley ending up winning.
Cowherd's comments, and his tone, aren't all that surprising, given the sports media veteran's history of being outspoken and abrasive. He works in radio; his job is to entertain, after all.
What do you make of Cowherd's comments today? Let us know in the comments below.
Watch 4 minutes of various DiRT Rally racing gameplay captured in 1080p60 on Ultra settings!
This mod by reddit user InconsolableCellist allows you to pilot a helicopter around your metropolis in Cities: Skylines. While the mod is in alpha, the opportunity for a new perspective on my city was too inviting to pass up.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 info is released, Konami cancels Silent Hills, and Batman: Arkham Knight will feature playable Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing!
Chris and Rob got hands on with Call of Duty: Black Ops III's multiplayer. Here's what they think of the traversal system and the new specialist classes.
Kevin groups up with game developers Jan Wagner and Mitch Gitelman to play a co-op session of Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown.
Several publishers are opting for an episodic game model, but is it any good for you, or just useful for publishers to get cash for periodic content?
