Happy New Year everyone! Thanks for all the support and for making December our best month yet. Haven't written anything in the last two days but I will be back at it full steam on Monday and maybe a bit tomorrow as well. In a bit of gaming related news Green Man Gaming is going to be having a massive New Years sale starting tomorrow, do check it out. Green Man Gaming generally has games very cheap, often as cheap as Steam Sales, and you can generally apply coupons onto already discounted games, which makes them ultra cheap. Check it out tomorrow! Will do a post if there are any other sales starting tomorrow as well. Happy New Year! Hope 2012 brings us another fantastic year of gaming. 

I've never written about Monaco, mainly because it's been in development for many years and still hasn't seen any demo or release date but I saw a recent update and figured it's about that time. Monaco is a very unique indie PC game that is all about action and stealth. Essentially it has a lot to do with with being a criminal, the kind inspired by French heist movies and set in modern day Monte Cristo. It's also not purely just singleplayer, it's developed specifically to be the most fun with one to four players playing cooperatively. The game is top down and presents you with different characters options, each of which have their own criminal expertise. You have to play the game carefully by hiding from the line of sight of guards, watching out for alarms and stealing everything without any confrontations. Check out the newest video that highlights the new music for the game along with some online gameplay.


The game may look a little crazy and chaotic but that may be because it is influenced by pacman. There is very little actual information about the game around their website but they mainly show off everything through videos. They mainly show off level creation and some few snippets of gameplay, through that they show that each class has their own unique skills that each player must use effectively to outwit guards. For instance Hackers can shut down security systems and the Muscle class can knocks holes through walls.  There is also a cleaner, prowler and locksmith. Pocketwatch Games is not only going to release the game with a singleplayer/co-op campaign of some sort but there will also be a level editor. Check out how the level editor looks, it seems to be exactly the same tool the developers use to make levels themselves.


They are also going to have a PVP mode alongside the beef of the game, which will be the co-op mode. One version of PVP will be death match and team death match while the other will be a competitive co-op mode. The competitive co-op mode pit's two teams against each other in a race to see which team can complete the objectives and escape first. Both of the pvp modes will be highly customizable, allowing you to add in enemies, traps, turrets, helicopters and all kinds of fun stuff. Have another look at gameplay with yet another gameplay video!

Main Website: http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/Monaco/

-Written by Sean Cargle

It's about time I do my reiteration of my recent Terraria adventures and it will likely turn out just like the two Minecraft stories, MP and SP, I've done. This story is full of snowmen, goblins, unicorns, pixies, giant robotic worms and walls of flesh. Plus we've done quite a bit of work with traps, base building and the new materials.

Upon the last huge update of Terraria back at the beginning of December, detailed here, my brother, cousin and I started to new characters on a new world. We saw this new mode called mediumcore, which makes you drop all of your items when you die and is a middle ground between hardcore (permadeath) and softcore (you lose nothing but some coins). It seemed like a great idea at the time, but one we came to lament as we made our way through the new world. The problem with dropping all your items is that you often cannot get them back unless you have several friends to help, a whole extra set of equipment at your base or you are lucky and your corpse is very close by. The other huge problem with mediumcore, the most significant problem, is that when items drop they lose their special abilities. With the latest 1.1 update items are now unique, meaning you can craft a weak mythril sword that has negative points to damage or speed, or you can get lucky and get a sword that has +5% to damage. There are quite a lot of different attributes that can be applied to any item, armors and accessories included, and when you die on mediumcore all of your items lose that. There is a goblin NPC now that lets you reforge items, which costs quite a bit of money depending on the item, and give the item new abilities. So if you spend a lot of money getting a super special sword and then have that sword return to it's vanilla attributes once you die, well that's a bit obnoxious. So eventually we got tired of the extreme annoyances of mediumcore, like spending hours trying to get equipment back from the depths of the dungeon, and made softcore characters once again. In the screenshot below you can see many of new things, including weapon attributes, the tinkerer, traps and levers(top left where the bunny is), cobalt armor and the drill. The drill takes over for the mining pick after the inferno set.

We went through the world like you normally would, working our way up to demonite weapons and mining tools. The one big difference for the beginning of the game is traps and mimics, most everything else is normal until you fight the wall of flesh, but there are several new enemies like harpies and snowmen. Traps are pretty fantastic, in a frustrating and satisfying way. There are boulder traps and dart traps throughout the world now, often near chests or in opportunistic areas. Boulder traps will kill you instantly when you are starting the game out, they tend to do 100 damage per hit and they will roll down hill doing damage per movement. Dart traps poison you and will keep firing unless you disarm the trap, which you can do by breaking the pressure plate or finding the trap device that is shooting the darts. You can take all of these back to your base but you cannot do anything with them until later on when you save the mechanic, which you can do only do after you defeat the first new boss The Wall of Flesh. Stole this screenshot of the Wall of Flesh from Terraria wikia.



You summon this wonderful behemoth by finding dolls, which drop from demons in hell. You find the dolls then fling them into lava, once you do so you are stuck in the fight till you die. The Wall of Flesh is unique, if you somehow get behind you die, if you try to retreat you also die, the only option is to fight. With that said he seems a lot more intimidating than he is. If you have some pretty decent armor, silver or better, a minishark (a machine gun basically) and an anti gravitation potion (let's you float through the air) then you are pretty good to go. Once you beat The Wall of Flesh everything literally goes crazy. All corrupted areas of the world are now spreading at an increased speed and through every type of material except for walls. On top of that there are plentiful amounts of new very tough enemies roaming all corners of the world. Enemies that will seem damn near impossible to fight until you manage to get some weapons and armor from the first new material, Cobalt. The new materials keep randomly popping up in the world, it tells you that Mythril or Admantite has spawned, and you have a bunch of a new materials to work for. There is also a new area called the Hallow that will take over a random surface area of the map and start spreading, much like the new corruption it cannot be stopped by anything except for walls and gaps. We actually had to make a three layer gap all around our base in order to stop corruption from spreading into our home. The Hallow area would invade our home as well if it had started close enough. That area spawns new enemies like Unicorns and Pixies, both of which drop souls of light, one of the many new materials that is needed for many of the best new items.

Other than finding new areas and materials we also worked on finding the new NPC's. We were able to obtain them all but first we had to rescue the Tinkerer from the dungeon and the Goblin Mechanic from hell. After that we found the wizard, who sells various high end and odd items (like a disco ball!). You know when you see a NPC that sells an item that costs nearly a platinum that he is one of the late game vendors. You can also obtain Santa as a NPC, who sells lights and costume options, but first you will have to find a snowglobe and summon a snowman army. Summoning a snowman army against our newly built traps was pretty enjoyable, especially when you drop boulders down upon them as they attempt to bash your doors down. The snowmen are hilarious creations, you have the tommy gun snowman, mr. stabby and a shotgun snowman. They act just like the goblin army except they are much stronger and they assault your base for quite a long period of time. By the time that siege ended we had lost every NPC except for one.

The snowmen don't drop anything special but they do drop quite a lot of money and presents. Presents are dropped by damn near every enemy in the game and it has the chance to drop a snowglobe or various colors of candy cane. Candy cane is a wall type that can be used to make a house. The snowmen also drop snow, which is a new biome and will spawn in a new world, but you can also take the snow to create your own snow biome. Nothing in particular spawns in the snowy area but it does look quite delightful. Back to candy cane, we decided to take our excess candy cane and create a splendid house for Santa. It is a worthy home.

The end game of Terraria now has you fighting the super difficult versions of previous bosses. There is now the destroyer, a giant worm with roughly 80k hitpoints and when you injure it flying robots come off it's body to attack you. This boss is by far one of the hardest one's that we've tried to fight but if you can get some really nice armor, mythril or admantite, then it isn't too bad. It does help with you have wings, wings are one of the new items that allow you fly moderately high and glide all over the map. Wings are very hard to get though, they require souls from bosses, either the giant worm (destroyer) or the twin eyeballs.


The other two new bosses are double eyes of Cthulu, except they are now mechanical and much stronger. Once you injure them to a certain point they both change forums into robotic versions that do quite a lot of damage. Like the destroyer they are manageable with help and good equipment. The hardest of the new bosses is the new Skeletron, who we haven't even tried yet but by the accounts of others he is very difficult. All of the bosses drop the necessary souls to make Hallowed equipment, arguably the strongest weapons and armor in the game. All of the Hallowed equipment requires you to have one of each type of whatever you are making, so if you are trying to make a Hallowed helmet you will need the mythril, admantite and cobalt helmet plus twenty souls of sight. That equipment is now the ultimate goal but we still find new items every time I play. Fighting bosses is not easy and it takes a while to get good at it.


Terraria has added a lot within the last month, most of which with that huge 1.1 update, and if you haven't played it in a long time like I hadn't then you are sure to find a ton of new content to keep you interested. Also if you've never played Terraria I hope you picked up yesterday when it was on sale for ultra cheap, but even now it is still on sale on Steam for $5. Absolutely worth it if you enjoy a game that throws on exploring, crafting and rpg elements onto a Castlevania type of action game. Check it out and thanks for reading. Wish I had more to write today but this week is painfully slow for gaming news, so most of our "news" will be reviews and oddities like this post.
Main Website: http://www.terraria.org/

-Written by Sean Cargle

It is hard to go about reviewing something that looks great and is a lot of fun but has god awful controls. Renegade Ops is a twin shooter that has a fantastic arcade feel to it and destructible environments set in the same engine that ran Just Cause 2. It came out first on PSN and XBLA back in September with a later release on PC in late October. It is developed by SEGA. It is a downloadable game with a $15 price tag, a price tag that is very flexible this holiday season.

Never made that leap to Battlefield 3 or Bad Company 2? Well no worries there are still wonderful mods to keep Battlefield 2 strong. Take a look at Forgotten Hope 2 and Project Reality.

I haven't written about the open world Samurai game Kenshi since it was first announced, but the one developer has done quite a bit to the game since then. Before I do that let me give a short overview of the game, for anyone who knows of the game already skip to the next paragraph. Kenshi is a small open indie Samurai game that is made by one person at Lofigames. The first build of the game came out back in October and while it was very crude it was easy to see the large amount of exciting possibilities that could come from Kenshi. The game has an open pre-order module, like Minecraft did, where you can play the newest versions of the game and own the game once you pre-order. The game has a lot of great ideas, like building settlements, an interesting combat system that makes injuries quite significant, a party system that requires you to rely on others to survive, factions and a lot of promise. It's really easy to compare it to the game Mount and Blade for it's lofty aspirations of a huge open world and it's party based system. Check out this first trailer for some idea of how the game looks, so far it has fairly poor graphics but the developer really wanted to get down the ideas of the game before graphics and promises to make it more visually appealing by the end.


Most recently the developer has been talking about the newest update which has to do with carrying. What that boils down to is merely being able to carry corpses or injured allies but it also means you can now capture enemies. With this he plans to have bounty hunters capturing people for ransom, police taking prisoners, cannibals taking prisoners to eat and all kinds of interesting options. Carrying also has to do with being wounded. So when you are injured to the point where you character falls, or one of your allies, that character will stay down for a while because of their wounds. In order to get them out of that area, since healing in such a state takes quite a while, you have to have someone carry them. To make this idea a little less harsh there is now a new type of med kit that allows you to heal individual body parts, so you may heal an injured leg in order to let someone walk again.



There are quite a few things that are being coming up next after this carrying update. The developer wants to bring in the option to purchase buildings soon, which will allow you to heal quickly and store equipment. There will also be imprisonment in the near future, which ties back to some of the ideas about carrying/capturing people. You will also be able to get captured by enemies, so you may have to go on some rescue missions in order to save a comrade who was captured by slavers, police or an enemy faction. After you are able to purchase buildings you will be able to outfit it for crafting and research. The best equipment in the game will taken out of shops and only available through crafting or research once it gets to that point. You will also eventually be able to make a building you own into a shop or hospital. All of that is high priority for the near future and there is also a list of loftier aspirations, like siege warfare, ranged combat, mining, farming, larger world map, building your own outpost out in the desert, huge armies traversing the land, a larger complexity and number of factions, wildlife, creatures and so much more. To check out that list head over here. Assuming the developer stays focused on the game and keeps releasing updates in a timely fashion then Kenshi is going to turn out to be quite fantastic, keep your eyes on it. If you want to check it out now you can head over to the main website and pre-order for $10. Here is a more recent video that shows off a little bit of combat, healing, vendors and inventory management. Thanks for reading and I hope to be back shortly with more news.

Main Website: http://www.lofigames.com/index.php
IndieDB Page: http://www.indiedb.com/games/kenshi




-Written by Sean Cargle

The team over at Interstellar Marines came out with a nice holiday update that introduced competitive multiplayer for the first time in their game.Firs off, if you have no idea what Interstellar Marines is check out first overview/impressions post on it back in October. The new mode is called Deadlock and it has a fully dynamic weather system, an overhaul to animations, open door development and cloud based multiplayer on all the the reworked Combat Range map. The open door development is all about letting players bring "unfiltered insight" into the development of the game. Players will be able to introduce anything from new weapon models to changes in net code. Also with Deadlock they will be updating it more frequently than ever before, now releasing updates on a weekly basis.



Deadlock is unfortunately only available to those with Spearhead of Frontline pre-order access. I do believe this is their first release that is not available openly to all. They do still have running man, bullseye and the vault still available to anyone who is registered on their website. The game has been in development for quite some time and I have tried all the free modes, which are all pretty enjoyable, but with this new release I hope it means they are stepping it up and heading to some kind of full release in the near future. For more on Interstellar Marines or the new Deadlock mode head on over to their website and check it out. Thanks for reading and be back shortly with more news.
Main Website: http://www.interstellarmarines.com/




-Written by Sean Cargle

We are just about to hit 60,000 views, just in time for Christmas. Big thanks to everyone who reads any of our work. We also hit a milestone for number of views per month, just surpassing 11,000 for December and the month isn't even over yet. I don't have anything to write up, except for these sales, for this weekend but on Monday I will be back at and writing as much as I can find. Thanks everyone and Happy Holidays.

 -Sean Cargle

*Updated for December 25th 
Here are some holiday sales going on right now for anyone interested. Get Games Go and Green Man Gaming are both reputable and the majority of their games are Steam compatible. All deals are PC only except for Amazon. Don't miss the Amazon ones, they have some wonderful PC download sales like Deus Ex for $10 and Tropico 4 for $5, plus they have Dungeon Defenders for $2 instead of $15.Also, Gamersgate has a huge amount of sales going and I highly recommend picking up Baldurs Gate II Complete Pack for $2!!

Green Man Gaming 
Lord of the Rings: War In The North  $30.79 
Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim $53.79 (look to Steam Sale)
Saints Row: The Third $39.97
 -With this voucher, FIFTY-SAINT-XMASS, you can get it for $19.99 until December 26th.
Batman Arkham City $44.37 (Amazon has cheaper but it's not digital, see below)
Fear 3 $15.37
Nuclear Dawn $6.23


Steam's Daily Deals
IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 $3.39
IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliff of Dover $16.99
Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition $4.99 
Killing Floor $4.99
Football Manager 2012 $26.79
Fallout 3 $4.99
Atom Zombie Smasher $2.49
Nuclear Dawn $4.99
Alice: Madness Returns $7.49
Call of Duty MW3 $44.99
Dungeons Series 75%
Overlord Series 75% Off
X3 Series 75% Off 


Get Games Go
Deus Ex: Human Revolution $14.99 (cheaper from Amazon, see below)
Red Orchestra 2 $11.99
Alien vs. Predator $3.49
Alpha Protocol $3.49
Men of War Assault Squad $14.99


Amazon
Batman Arkham City $47.90 (consoles) $30.56 (PC)
Uncharted 3 $49.99 (down from $59.99)
Call of Duty MW3 $49.99 (everything, down from $59.99) 
Battlefield 3 $47.99 (xbox 360) $53.47 (ps3) $50.95 (PC digital)
Deus Ex: Human Revolution $10 (PC digital) $39.96 (xbox 360 and ps3) 
Shogun 2: Total War $14.99 (PC digital) 
Tropico 4 $5!!! (PC digital) 
Dungeon Defenders $1.99! (PC digital) 
Sid Meier's Civilization V $14.99 (PC digital, Mac digital, PC hardcopy) 
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood $9.99 (PC digital) 
Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate Edition $7.50 (PC digital) 


GamersGate
Battlefield 3 $40
Red Orchestra 2 $20
Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 $15
Revolution Under Siege $12
Delve Deeper 4 for 3 Pack $4
Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword $5
Dungeon Defenders 4 for 3 Pack $22.49
Ghostbuters: Sanctum of Slime $5
Fate of the World $2.50
Just Cause 2 $12
Bunch of Heroes $5
Cthulu Saves The World 4 for 3 Pack $3
Need for Speed The Run $30
Sid Meiers Civilization V $10 
Jamestown $5
Total War Shogun 2 $15
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine $38
Bastion $7.50
Baldurs Gate II Complete $2.50
Space Pirates and Zombies $5


Too many sales too list, head to Gamersgate to find plenty more, they have fifty-eight pages of sales right now. 

ModDB and IndieDB have just released their winners for best indie games and modifications of the year, plus some winners for best unreleased mods and indie games. I was thrilled to see that so many of my favorite indie games of this year are winners, including Bastion and the splendid Sword & Sorcery EP. Both of these awards are editor choice awards and the winners of community choice will be announced in the beginning of January. Here is the video they made to announce the indie game winners.

It is indeed mysterious. This game feels like I'm playing an old Ultima game mixed with some kind of turn based tactic games, all with an old school graphical style. You start in a randomly generated forest, with a town in it, and choose three party members to start the game with. You can select some options for how big you want the world to be, how bright, how many enemies and few other customization. Your party is fully customizable, with typical rpg attributes and inventory, but you don't level up to gain new points in attributes you learn them by finding books. Everything moves around in real time until you run into enemies and the it becomes turn based. The game is tiny little indie game that is available free on PC and MAC but also on the iOS for $3. The most stable versions of the game are for mac and iOS, but the PC version ran perfectly fine for me, but the newest version doesn't have any music.

I played the game for several hours and the first time I played it my entire party was slaughtered by a group of koblods five minutes into the game. The second time however I decided to be a bit more cautious and immediately found the town, gathered a few healing supplies, talked to several NPC's and found a nearby cave full of the undead. So far the game seems to only consist of undead enemies, skeletons and zombies, and various types of koblods. They are always in groups and can be quite a huge threat to your party, especially if they manage to land critical hits or flanking blows. I like the way they did combat, took a bit of typical hack and slash mechanics and mixed it with some ideas from tactical rpgs like Final Fantasy tactics. You can flank enemies, surround enemies, sneak attack enemies, critical enemies, hit glancing blows and do several different types of attacks. Of course all of that can be done to your characters as well and in that regard the AI is quite good at flanking you when it can.



The game is made by one developer, Jeremy Jurksztowicz, and he is planning to add a full editor mode that will allow you to view the whole map and mess with it however you wish. It also looks like you will be able to make your own maps beforehand and save them. Here is the one screenshot on that.



The game is pretty enjoyable in the state it is in and it is very challenging. The developer plans to keep the game free for PC and Mac forever, eventually making it into a pay what you want kind of game. You can download the newest version of the game over at IndieDB or you can check it out on your phone at the App Store. Thanks for reading and check it out if you are into old rogue likes or party based tactical rpgs.
Main Website: http://www.mysteriouscastle.com/


Thanks RPS for alerting me of the game's existence. 
-Written by Sean Cargle

They have done quite a lot of work on Planetside 2 since I last wrote about it when it was announced. Since then they have revealed a number of new features about the game and a faction video. First off, watch this video showcasing the three factions and describing what they are about.

Like space adventure games where everything goes horribly wrong? Well Stasis is that kind of game. Adventure games generally have a side view but Stasis is using an isometric graphical style. Another unique part of this dark space adventure game is how you use your Emergency Medical Kit to break down any object into it's base elements in order to combine it with other elements or you can merely do so to store it easier. The story is about an ordinary man who is trying to help his family but he is trapped in a horrific environment aboard a space ship. The game has been in development for a year and is to the point where they are starting to finalize details, like release date, and get everything finished. Normally I don't get into these types of adventure games much but this one looks unique enough and dark enough to get me excited, plus it's graphically appealing and to me that is something uncommon these days for this genre.  This is a small indie PC game and it's the kind that I'm always throwing praise at damn near everyday here, so apologies for that but do take a look. The game has an Aliens look to it that I hope develops into something terrifying. Thanks for reading and watch the trailer, gameplay starts about halfway through.
Main Website: http://www.stasisgame.com/

I've known for quite some time that Cynaide Studios was making a third person rpg based off the A Song of Fire & Ice series by George R. Martin, but there was never any information on it until now. Well to be honest there still isn't any information about the game, other than the one section describing The Wall on their website, but there at least now is an actual gameplay trailer. This game is being made by the same studio that made the disappointing Game of Thrones-Genesis. I'm quite worried that they will muck up this game as well but at least it's an entirely different type of game, Genesis being a real time strategy game, and I hope it is a different group of developers. The game is supposed to come out early 2012 which seems very sketchy due to the small amount of information on the game but at least they are the right track this time around. With Genesis they didn't release any  real gameplay videos, even when the game had a week left before release, and it was a sign of how poor gameplay was. Here's to hoping for a splendid open world RPG set in our beloved world of Westeros. At the very least we can tell that they are using locations and people directly from the books. Without further ado here is the first gameplay trailer. Thanks to RPS for catching this trailer.
Main Website: http://www.gameofthrones-thegame.com/#/intro


-Written by Sean Cargle

Yes that is indeed the name of this game. What we have here is a 4x space strategy game that is quick, fairly simple, addictive and quite a lot of fun. If you've ever played a game like Galactic Civilization or A.I. War you will understand the basic concepts: research, conquer and colonize. The game is made by some indie developers who called themselves The Goblin Lunatics and I applaud them for their efforts. Rarely do people make "quick" 4x strategy games that are still filled with some depth and is still enjoyable. You start a game by choosing how many players you want to fight, how many planets are present, how rare planets and how large the star map is. I've played it through three times on medium in thirty to forty minutes and each time playing as a different race is interesting, especially since many have their own unique buildings and they all have their own customizable traits. The game ends as soon as you defeat the other players but there are also tons of neutral alien planets that you can conquer.



The graphics are very minimal, as you can see above, but they are continually adding to the game with the hopes of eventually making it a paid game. The game can get quite difficulty as you add in many players and you have balance between trying to colonize planets and creating massive fleets of bombers and fighters. Fighters destroy everything in the sky while bombers are the only thing that can successfully make an enemy planet become neutral, which it needs to be in order for you to colonize it. When you send out colony ships it takes out away 1.0 of population from that planet, so you have to specialize planets with specific buildings, like cities, to make population increase quickly enough to accommodate many colony ships. Every planet you colonize is different as well, each with their own building capacity, unique perks, and planet types. Based on your races original homeworld you can populate other homeworlds easier.

Infinity Blade 2 has been out since the beginning of December and once again available for the iPad and iPhone like it's predecessor. Like the first Infinity Blade it brings a fairly hardcore experience to the an area of gaming that has very few, if any, other games like it. The first game had you travelling through an old castle in order to defeat the evil God King, you used the motion touch of the iPhone/iPad to dodge, parry, block and strike back against your enemies. The game was also an rpg, letting you gain experience and loot through every fight, plus you could find chests and money pouches throughout the world. The castle you traveled through was fairly linear, you had several options for different paths but they all lead to the same place. It was a deep game that had an entire bonus area once you finally managed to get the god kings blade, an area complete with several difficult bosses. Infinity Blade also had multiplayer that was surprisingly well done and enjoyable. The new game takes all of those ideas and builds upon it by creating more paths, more enemies, more loot, more bosses, new spells and so much more.

One of the biggest new features of Infinity Blade 2 is the new weapons. Not only is there a plethora of new weapons to use but they also added two handed weapons, dual wielding on top of the original sword and shield style. They all have their own particular uses against specific types of enemies and for the new weapon styles you have to get super good at parrying, which requires you slash across the screen in the same direction that an enemy is swinging. Parrying was a lot harder to do in the first game but now it is a little easier since it is almost a necessity, especially with two handed weapons. Two handed weapons do absolutely massive amounts of damage while dual wielding doesn't do much damage by comparison but it does allow you to dodge/parry without becoming exhausted as easily as any other weapon type. Exhausted is something new they added so you cannot indefinitely keep dodging, especially when you have a heavy shield or full plate armor. It will still allow you to dodge but you will now take some damage if you are out of stamina.



With the new weapons they have also added gem slots to every piece of equipment, including rings, shield, armor, helmets and well everything. There are many different types and gem shapes, but they do things like increased damage of a specific type, shield power is restored upon casting a spell, parrying heals you x amount of health and many other effects. The gems are something that you find in chests or earn through battle and they can be worth quite a bit of money. Money has been far less of a problem in this game thanks to that but also thanks to how much bigger the world is. Compared to the first game this new area has quite a few more paths, each of which ends at three different bosses and half the time you can travel sideways through the level in order to get to different areas. For instance there is an arena and in the middle of the arena is a giant tree, you can climb up that tree which will take you straight to one of the bosses but far from the boss that you would have encountered if you had traveled through the doors of the arena. This world is also full of secrets to unlock, as you defeat each boss a part of this mural lights up, eventually leading to some interesting situations and rewards.


Infinity Blade 2 takes everything good from the first game and expands upon it. They have created a world with more options, more loot to find, more enemies to fight, more items to unlock and more ways to play through it. It also still a very challenging game and by no means a casual game. The game runs surprisingly well on the iPhone 3GS, even though it recommends you use a newer phone (4G) to run it. The game isn't all good though, they have gotten rid of survival and multiplayer, two of the latest additions to the first game. The size of the app is also huge and problematic for people like me who only have an eight gigabyte phone. Other than those complaints the game is one of the best games on the iPhone, hands down, and definitely the most gorgeous one. If you have an iPad then Infinity Blade 2 would be absolutely love to behold but even on the iPhone it still looks quite good and runs fairly well. Both games are developed by Epic Games and Infinity Blade 2 costs $7.
Main Website: http://infinitybladegame.com/
App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/infinity-blade-ii/id447689011?mt=8




-Written by Sean Cargle

In Trendy Entertainments normal fashion, despite the fact they just launched a rather large paid DLC, we are getting a free Christmas themed DLC today. One that adds one new challenge maps, new enemies, new costumes, four new weapons and a giant mega snowman boss. Like all of their holiday DLC it is free around the holiday itself and then will become paid DLC later on. Also like all of their DLC it will not be arriving immediately onto XBLA and PSN, due it to having to get approved and all that. Dungeon Defenders is also having a holiday sale on Steam right now for 50% off, getting it down to $7.49. That's it for this tiny post but watch the Holiday Extravaganza trailer!

You all like zombie games right? Well Contagion is a multiplayer co-op zombie game being made by the folks that made the very popular Zombie Panic Source mod for Half Life 2. They are now calling themselves Monochrome and this is their first title. Contagion has been in the works for a while and they just released their first gameplay footage from the Alpha. The game looks a lot like Left 4 Dead right now but with some differences, like you can become zombie and attack your friends. There is so little information about the game that it's a little annoying, but based on the trailer it looks as if you turn into a zombie once you are slain by zombies as a survivor. Contagion doesn't look like anything special at the moment but it definitely has the potential to become a unique zombie game. You can now sign up to be a beta tester for the game, here, if you wish. Once there is some significant information about the game I will do another post, but until then just watch this gameplay.
Contagion Website: http://www.contagion-game.com/news/

After seventy hours of gameplay I can finally come to terms with Skyrim. Even after seventy hours I haven't finished half of the factions quests, half of the side quests or explored more than seventy percent of the map. As everyone is aware Skyrim is absolutely massive and it is continually growing with the support of the modding community. For instance I just saw a mod working to create an online mode. Like Oblivion before it Skyrim offers a full immersive single player experience in a world full of quests, dragons, war, daedric gods and all kinds of enemies out there to end your life. Skyrim is such a huge to try to cover that I am going to do a like/dislike list with explanations, much like how I did the Unity of Command review.

I don't post about game films very often but this one is quite well done and has a very interesting twist. I also love how they flat out use the sounds and costumes from Left 4 Dead for all of the people. It is made by Northern Five Entertainment and it sponsored by Airsoft GI. It is cool and crazy film, check it out and if you go watch it on youtube do not read the comments first! They will ruin it.

Cobalt, the next game by Mojang and Oxeye Game Studios, has just reached alpha. Like Minecraft you can now pre-order it at this point and be able to ride along development the entire way to release, for a lower price as well. At Alpha it costs $10, beta $15, gold/release $20. They throw around Mojang's name all over the website for Cobalt but I am almost certain Mojang is just the publisher, not developer. Which makes a lot of sense when you look at what kind of game Cobalt is. To use Mojang's description, "Cobalt is an action game of running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, piñata-ing, passing, scoring… and even more rolling!" What it looks like to me is 2d chaotic cyborg shooter. It does have some interesting and possibly impressive graphics. 





-Written by Sean Cargle

This impressions will attempt to cover different topics other than the one's covered in the beta impressions article. Adam and I are both playing the early access and we will each discuss our impressions. Star Wars The Old Republic officially starts in three days on the 20th.