Hello fellow BlargNauts, tomorrow at the new usual BlargHour of 12PM EDT, Aria will be painting a large sized Radiata Stories. If you would like to see past works of her paintings you can find it here, or if you would like to commission her for one, you can find the info on how to under our Art tab.
Apr 20
Hi friends!
When Monster is sleeping, you can use his belly as a trampoline to get to unreachable locations
I know that it has been quite a while, but after a long hiatus, I hope to get back into writing, as there are some games coming out in the near future that I truly believe deserve some attention that might get thrown under the rug, or brushed away. This isn’t necessarily going to be a new feature, but I do want to adapt the way that I wrote before in lieu of a more mature, insightful look at the games that I have decided to discuss. Seeing as the main area where I play games is on Steam now, most of my selections will be from there, and because of the way that release happen, this means that some of these games may have already been out on other platforms for a while, and are re-releases just coming to steam. For this weeks installment, this is exactly the case, as the game that I want to discuss is an indie gem called Papo Y Yo, which released on PSN back in August, but recently got a steam release (it came out on the 18th).
Now I have always been a fan of games that try to tell a story that (at least attempt) to speak on issues that are more than just surface level. In many ways, the tone of a game and the way that it carries itself can turn a game that I enjoy into a game I absolutely love, and this is what initially drew me towards Papo Y Yo. I heard about the premise of the story (a young boy who is confronted with taking care of a docile monster whose addiction to frogs turns him into a raging beast) and the ties that it had to developer Vander Caballero, and decided that I needed to try it for myself. Without going into too much detail, the ties to addiction are something that I am very familiar with, so I wanted to see if a game that focuses on this could capture the feelings that I had when I dealt with similar issues.
But when he eats a poisonous frog, his demeanor quickly changes
The answer that I found was that yes, it did, to a scary degree. While there may be a few issues with the game technically (the controls aren’t the best, and the graphics are not top notch), I could instantly look past, as the game reached me in ways that other games never have. If you look at most of the reviews, nearly all of them say that while there are issues mechanically (which is to be expected with the size of the team that they had and the type of game world they developed), these are the type of stories that need to be told, and I couldn’t agree more. To be completely honest, the first time that I saw Monster eat the frog and start chasing right towards me, I felt a really weird sense of realism that I had never really felt in a game, but the depression that I initially experienced was soon quelled because I realized that I wasn’t alone in this experience. While Vander’s experience may have differed from mine, the fact that there was even a game out there period was more than enough to really entwine me deeply within the games universe.
This type of feature is something that I will continuously try to hone, as I think that there is quite a bit of room for improvement, but if you don’t have any feedback that you want to give, or your personal experiences with the game, feel free to let me know in the comments below, or you can email me at tagros.ariablarg.tv (if you want to keep it private). Hopefully this will be the first in a long line of blogs, and I thank you very much for reading!
Developer Vander Caballero was never passive about how this game was strongly informed by his life as a child
Happy Gaming,
Tagros
Apr 17
Springs LCS is finally winding down, and the battle for playoff position is tighter than ever.
Counter Logic Gaming, Good Game University, Vulcan, Team MRN and Complexity are all fighting to get into the playoffs as wild cards, and with only 5 games left, each game will be as intense as ever. While the aforementioned teams are fighting for their chance to be in the playoffs, Curse, Team Dignitas and Team Solo Mid will be fighting for a BYE week, giving them the opportunity to scout out the wildcard matches.
My predictions:
This is how it’ll look at the end of the LCS.
Curse will win LCS Spring and go on to a bye week before playoffs with a win over GGU today, and Team MRN on Thursday. Although with internal fighting in the team, I could be completely wrong. (Win vs GGU, Win vs MRN, Loss vs DIG, Win vs COL, Win vs Vulcan)
Team Dignitas will wrap up their season in 2nd place, just falling 2 wins behind Curse. I feel Team Dignitas has slowed down towards the end of the season, but remains a force not to be trifled with. (Win vs COL, Win vs CLG, Win vs CRS, Win vs Vulcan, Win vs TSM)
Team Solo Mid will end up in 3rd place, just barely miss the bye week. (Win vs MRN, Win vs CLG, Win vs Complexity, Win vs Vulcan Loss vs GGU, Loss vs DIG)
Counter Logic Gaming
Counter Logic gaming will solidify their 4th seed Thursday with a win over Vulcan. (Loss vs TSM, Loss vs DIG, Win vs Vulcan, Win vs MRN, Loss vs GGU)
Good Game University will continue their momentum into this week, winning big in bottom 4 matches. I feel like their play has vastly improved and roster changes have made a huge difference. This is the sleeper team to watch for in the playoffs. They are hungry, and wanting to show the world what GGU is really about. (Win vs COL, Loss vs CRS, Win vs MRN, Win vs Vulcan, Win vs CLG, Win vs TSM)
Team MRN will limp into the 6th seed, pushed forward by poor performances by Vulcan and Complexity. I feel they will easily be swept under the rug by whomever they play in the 1st round of LCS playoffs. (Loss vs TSM, Win vs Vulcan, Loss vs CRS, Loss vs CLG, Win vs Complexity)
I do have a feeling though, that after last week, CLG COULD, I repeat, COULD wind up as the bottom seed. I don’t feel like that gut instinct is good enough to warrant me writing them off in my predictions though. CLG still hasn’t picked up the pieces, and a poor showing this week will solidify their bottom seed, pinning them up against TSM. That’s for another post though.
Thanks for reading.
Mar 04
Hello All!
As I sit here waiting for it to hit 9 pm (when Tomb Raider releases on Steam for the West Coast), I wanted to do a blog about a game that I have been playing a bit of recently. Unfortunately, I have been massively busy with work the past two weeks, but I have still been able to fit in time for a gem of a game that goes by the name of Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. For those that don’t know (which I assume is an extremely small portion of people reading this article), Runner 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the indie smash hit Bit Trip Runner. I actually ended up preordering the game on Steam after I got back from Pax Prime because of how impressed I was with what I saw, but for those who only have knowledge of the original, I will tell you a few reasons why I think you should check out its sequel.
The art style has changed quite a bit from the original version
First off, let me know that the gist of the game is the same. It is still an endless runner and still has extremely tight timing for some of the jumps, which makes gameplay range from fairly simple to absolutely excruciating. One of the biggest things that they added was a checkpoint about halfway through the level, which honestly, is a lifesaver. In the first game, you could get to the very last jump, and if you accidentally slipped up, you were all the way back to the beginning. Luckily, the checkpoint can lessen some of the anger that you may get towards the game, but it can get infuriating if you miss a gold piece and hit the checkpoint, because it means that you pretty much have to start the whole level again. Another pretty big addition is the fact that in certain places, the map will split into two parts where there is an easier and a harder route. These tend to not have very important consequences outside of the fact that you can earn more points if there are more obstacles on the map, but it is a cool addition, and sometimes it can lead to secret areas!
Another cool feature is that the three worlds in the previous game have been expanded to 5 worlds, with multiple levels in each world. Each of the different worlds have quite a bit of charm and character, and each world offers a new character that you can unlock. They all play roughly the same, but seeing the different skins is pretty cool and adds a personality to the worlds. You can also collect costumes to put on each unlocked character, which can make your runner completely different from your friends. I don’t know about you, but I am a pretty big fan of customization, so this fact really drew me in. What do you think of Runner 2 though? Have you played it? Do you want to? Sound off in the comments below!
The “retro” sections are much more few and far between, but still provide quite a challenge
Happy Gaming!
Tagros
Feb 23
Hello, fellow BlargNauts. This Monday, at the usual BlargHour of 5PM PDT, Aria will be playing through Undead Empire: Hellfire, the sequel to Undead Empire. Throughout her broadcast, we will be giving away two codes of the game, so be sure to tune in to watch how to win these exclusive codes.
Developed by Big Rook Games, the Undead Empire series is an action survival-horror game, which, is the first of its kind in presenting an online, top-down zombie shooter. The game features up to 4 player offline/online Co-op and multiplayer in where you must survive the seemingly unending swarm of zombies with a taste for human flesh. Offering gamers a robust story mode, a brutal survival mode and an online scoreboard to see where you rank up with friends, this game offers a variety of features that’ll keep you coming back for more!
You can buy both Undead Empire, and Undead Empire: Hellfire on the XBox Live Indie Games right now for 80 MSP ($1.00) each.
Feb 05
Hey Blargnauts! This Thursday Tuesday, at the usual BlargHour of 5PM PST, Aria will be playing Edge of Space, one of the more promising hats thrown into the ring of Steam’s GreenLight program. She’ll be joined by Edge of Space’s Community Manager, Lady Aijou in some co-op space romping.
Devleoped by HandyMan Studios, Edge of Space is multi genre game which features survival, exploration, terraforming, crafting and building. The game places you, an ArkCo recruit, in a dynamic open-world sandbox where you must build, create, mold and work to survive in the “unknown” universe.
[This event was moved from Thursday the 7th to Tuesday the 12th due to exploding computers.]
Jan 21
Hello All,
So while I have been waiting for DmC to come out on Steam, I have been playing a bit of my back catalog (which I happened to expand quite a bit after the last steam sale). Most of these games, I had already played to some degree, but I had never really beaten any of them, and with a lull in the game release schedule, I thought that I might delve into a bigger game that I was really looking forward to playing; Sleeping Dogs.
While there are guns, the large majority of the games combat is through hand to hand encounters
Now to put some things into perspective, I originally picked up Sleeping Dogs on the PlayStation 3 back in August, but quickly succumbed to the curse that every open world game has on me, which is that I just up exploring the world for a while, make no progress, then eventually move onto another game. Well, the steam sale had quite a deal on Sleeping Dogs, and with my semi new PC, I wanted to see what it looked like (as everything that I had heard made it seem like the PC version was definitely the best of the three). After playing it all the way through, I have made a list of things that I though were overlooked in this years game of the year discussions.
One thing that I can say about Sleeping Dogs that ended up being incredibly underrated was the fact that the hand to hand fighting system was much more expensive than many other games on the market. Many people related the games fighting system to that of the Batman: Arkham games that have been released, and while I do think that there is a bit of a similarity, the fighting system in Sleeping Dogs seems much more brutal to me. First off, the finishers that you are able to do as Wei Shen get absolutely gruesome (and that is not even including the environmental take downs that you are able to do). Al the later levels, Wei Shen can easily break captors bones, and the animation that it does for that break is pretty crazy. The strong attacks feel like they really have a lot of weight behind them as well, which makes it feel like you are really beating these enemies up. Another key part where I think that it differs from Batman is in the fact that it is much more difficult, in my opinion. In Batman, you often have enough tools to really take down your enemies any way that you want, and the amount of health that batman takes when he is hit is pretty insignificant. In Sleeping Dogs however, this fact is quite different. There is a counter move that will counter many of the enemies attacks, but learning to chain between hitting and countering was quite hard, and the penalties were quite severe. Many of the grappling enemies could take Wei down easily to half health with one grapple, and the button prompts (to counter said grapples) were very strict in their time limits. Once you find a few jade statues (what you can use to upgrade your moves), combos become more deadly, but the fact remains that the earlier parts were straight up brutal to survive, which sometimes left a sour taste in my mouth.
Another exciting addition is the action hijack system, which is borrowed partially from Just Cause 2
Overall, the game is quite fun, despite some of its downfalls in the earlier half. I found Hong Kong to be very impressive, and with the texture pack, the game looked absolutely phenomenal. I would probably wait for it to go on steam sale again if you are thinking about purchase, but I do believe that it is definitely a game that many people should play, as it is a very strong, very underrated, open world adventure.
Happy Gaming,
Tagros