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It's getting closer to that time of year again, where temperatures dip and people need to snuggle up to keep warm. Or maybe that's just a good excuse to take time away from playing on multiple screens and have some quality time together IRL and in-game. With game companies moving further towards having to own multiple copies of the same game for people to play together, what gems are left that enable some local fun?
Steam Games (in no particular order):
Some of my absolute favorites from this list, that even non-gamers can enjoy, are Overcooked, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Ultimate Chicken Horse and Tiny Brains.
OvercookedOvercooked is a game, not surprisingly, about cooking. You and your friends (2-4 players) take the position of chef at a restaurant, and must do everything in your power to see the dishes come out prepared and on time. Chop, carry, stew, and fry your way to victory by creating meals as they appear on your screen. It takes some practice to get into the swing of things, and every time you think you have a handle on the mechanics, you've beat the stage and have a whole new set of challenges to overcome. This game is local co-op only, so get snuggled up, and then prepare to beat a hasty retreat as you drop yet another dish into the freezing waters on an ice level.
Lovers in a Dangerous SpacetimeLovers in a Dangerous Spacetime? What's that? Oh no! The forces of Anti-Love have attacked, and are threatening to take over the universe! Quick, into the Space Ship! It's up to you (and your friends) to show the universe that the forces of love won't go down so easily! This is an awesome 2-4 player couch co-op game that has a lot of flexibility in terms of how it is played. If you have someone you want to play a game with who maybe isn't super awesome at games, there are "jobs" on the spaceship that are simple, yet satisfying, to play. Shooting down colourful enemies, protecting the ship with a giant movable shield, or piloting the ship itself, every part of the ship serves an important purpose. The levels are randomly generated, so even if one person has played before, it's always going to be a new adventure for everyone.
Sit tight, lean back, and enjoy the ride as you rescue Space Bunnies in the name of love! Ultimate Chicken HorseA return back to platforming, Ultimate Chicken Horse's premise is simple: get to the end of the level. What makes the game more interesting and difficult is that each player gets to place various parts and machinery to create a "path". How difficult the path becomes is entirely up to the players. You can have a nice, gentle journey with stairs and wooden blocks, or introduce cannons, crossbows, rotating saws, to try and trip up the other players in the game. Oh, and as an added incentive to not take the nice route, the only way to get points is if not everyone completes the stage; otherwise, it's too easy and no points will be awarded. There are a bunch of animals to play as, a ton of levels to enjoy, and can be played with 2-4 players locally or online.
Note: this game functions a lot better with a controller. It has a similar dash/jump, where your jump is increased if you're dashing, as the Mario games, and it's pretty difficult to get used to when using a keyboard. Tiny BrainsEscape the lab of a mad scientist with your animal buddies as you traverse a giant maze of a room until you can escape to freedom. Combine powers with your furry friends, as each puzzle can be solved in multiple ways based on how you choose to combine your powers. A couch co-op exclusive with a Portal/Tim Burton vibe, the game can be completed with 2-4 players each controlling either an individual animal or swapping between them as needed. The levels are varied, from solving puzzles, to platforming, to defeating hordes of enemies. It's probably one of the shorter games on this list, coming in at 2-4 hours, but it's a wild ride with a fun story and memorable characters. If you want more of a challenge, there are leader boards for each level based on completion time!
Grab your favorite blanket, hook up your PC to your TV, and get settled in for night of old school gaming fun.
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Molten Core Legacy Edition - Level 100It's the big 1-0, World of Warcraft's 10th anniversary! As a special thank you for all the players who have continued to live and create and save Azeroth, Blizzard has updated an old raid for the level 100 players, and made into an LFR experience with players able to earn a mount (a corehound), some pets, and an illusion for weapons. The raid that's been updated? None other than Molten Core, a 40-man raid. And yes, it does go as well as you think it might. I'm constantly shocked and amazed at the capability of raiders, and Molten Core definitely tests people's ability to read and follow directions. I had two groups descend into madness and leavers because a few players proved themselves incapable of following written direction multiple times, over the same topic, even after seeing what happens when they do not follow the directions. First attempt.One of the very first bosses players encounter is the giant corehound, Magmadar. Before you reach Magmadar, however, you need to kill all of his little corehound buddies. These corehounds are unique to Azeroth, as they are the only corehounds that will reignite and resurrect if another corehound is alive and in a relatively large proximity. As a result, players need to pull the groups one at a time, and ensure that all the corehound bodies disappear before pulling another group of corehounds (there are 5 groups before players reach Magmadar). What did our group do? The first two groups went great! Killed them without any problems, but Shazzrah patrolling up and down probably helped to ensure that players didn't pull too much. After he died, however, that's when things went bad. Immediately after pulling and killing the third group, someone pulled the fourth group. This caused the third group to start reigniting, one-by-one. "Oh, just AoE! If everyone AoE's, then we'll be fine!" No. No. This is not how it works. There are plenty of classes that are not capable of sustained AoE, and on top of that, no one can control what spells crit and which ones don't, especially when AoEing over 10 different monsters. This group pulled, and wiped, due to the same mechanic, three times before players started leaving. They took so long with this pull that the trash respawned, and players were unable to rejoin the main party when they released instead of waiting to be resurrected. So, that group ended. Second attempt.I joined another group that seemed to have a knowledgeable raid leader, and it went well for awhile until he had to leave. Then, it got better! It was amazing, the mechanics were clearly spelled out and people followed the directions given. My faith was starting to be restored! When suggestions were given, they were thought about, and then either followed or not, but were given reasons as to why they were not used. It was marvelous. We took down most of the bosses on our first attempts, and sailed through the raid, killing Ragnaros. Everyone got their 640 epic helm, and potentially got a pet or illusion enchantment. Raid complete!In the mail, from the sometimes overzealous postmaster came the wonderful Corehound ground mount. Hurray!
"Reborn" may not quite be the correct word choice...I wonder how many people remember the catastrophe that the initial launch of Final Fantasy XIV was. It coincided with the launch of the World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion pack, and man, was I ever glad I chose to play WoW instead of switching over to Final Fantasy XIV.
The lure was there, absolutely, especially since I had always wanted to play FFXI Online but didn't have a capable computer or internet for my PS2. By the time it launched on the Xbox 360, the servers had dwindled and the initial thrill and novelty of the experience was gone; plus, I was already playing games like the World of Warcraft, Aion, Tera, which contained newer concepts and a wider fan-base at that moment in time. I later heard from my friends and coworkers that they could not pass level 20 in FFXIV; not due to any lack of skill or effort on their part, but because the quests simply ran out! Hard to believe in a game where the level cap was to be 60! Free time was given to paying customers, and some more quests were added. My friends could now progress to level 25, hooray! Yet here they languished yet again, forced to indiscriminately slaughter monsters in a vain attempt to gain new skills and abilities. Needless to say, Square had to create some major changes to the game. FFXIV: A Realm Reborn takes place five years after the initial "campaign", yet the launch for this game is fraught with nearly as many issues. There is no queue system to enter into a server, many North American servers are unavailable to create new characters on, and those who do have characters find themselves getting errors that boot them from the game and are then unable to log back in. There are even rumours spreading of players logging their characters in during the morning in order to play at night, as there is currently no removal of idle characters from the realms. I was finally able to create a character at around 12 a.m. on August 29 on the same realm as my friends (I previously made version of her and others on first a Japan Realm which had some lag, and later an EU Realm when they opened the, but it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to log in when I return home after work tonight. My Falafell awaits! TPA Orianna Skin on the PBESo far, I like it. I think it's a cute Orianna skin, and I really do love the ponytail. TPA Mundo Skin on the PBE"MUNDO GO WHERE HE PLEASES!" Seriously. What Happened?I am getting exceedingly frustrated now when I go to play ARAM. I don't know what has happened with my MMR or if it even applies, but I am consistently getting paired up with people who did very well in Season 2 of LoL; gold and platinum players. This sounds like a fantastic thing! After all, these players are clearly more skilled than the rest of the player base, and should be able to continue my winning streak.
How I wish that was the case. These players are so bad at ARAM, it almost makes me want to quit playing. They're treating it like it's a regular Summoner's Rift map, sitting back, and farming under the turret. They rarely engage with the enemy, who is able to completely dominate and control the lane the entire game. When they do eventually decide to engage, it happens one at a time or they engage on the wrong target. Here's an example: our tank, Maoki, goes into engage on the Miss Fortune who strayed too close to our turret. An enemy Olaf runs in, and the other four members of the team engage on Olaf instead of Miss Fortune despite them being quite close together (MF was perhaps a step or two behind Olaf, Olaf being closer to the turret now). Our team dies, as they are being freely attacked by Miss Fortune, and Olaf also winds up living. I was under the impression that players who had attained a certain level of skill knew who to focus in a team fight and who not to. Why they can't transfer this knowledge over to ARAM, which is pure team fights, I will never understand. All I can do, I suppose, is to keep playing and hope I get a team that is capable of engaging as a team and that can focus the appropriate target at the appropriate time. -KS Lissandra is available after all!The good news is that Lissandra released with today's patch, despite the initial fear that she would not due to a post by Riot. However, people have been attempting to learn how to play her in an ARAM queue to little avail; here's a quick hint, she needs a ton of cooldown reduction items to be viable and helpful in general, and especially in an environment like ARAM. Some items that have helped me land my combo magic in an ARAM:
These are great, as they have the CDR, plus some extra bonuses without loading you with mana regen, which really isn't needed in the ARAM map due to the passive mana regen and Lissandra's passive. If I were to play her in a regular map, I would definitely pick up at least one mana regen item though. I've also found that while her Q (Iceshard) has the lowest cooldown for all of her spells, it also has a very short range that makes harassing people with it nigh impossible. As a result, I found that maxing out her W(Ring of Frost) and then balancing the remaining points between her Q (Iceshard) and her E(Glacial Path) garnered the best results.
In an ARAM, I did find myself maxing Glacial Path first, mostly as a harass tool, depending on the enemy team composition. When both teams had equal poke without the ability to engage, I found it to be a viable way to contribute, instead of sitting on my hands in a bush. Meet KS Proxy, my second PSO 2 character!She is a RACaseal at the point of this photo, though I quickly updated her to become a HUCaseal, as I find I enjoy hunters just so much more. I may try her out as a RACaseal again, but I am uncertain as to whether that is something I would truly wish to do. She is quite lovely though.
The Howling Abyss on the PBEOne of my shorter games on the PBE in the new ARAM map. They finally fixed the towers (they don't spawn as being broken anymore) and everything seems to be working out great. Watch out for the Poro!
I feel guilty for neglecting my other titles...I'm not quite sure what to do about this. I've purchased a few games lately that I was very excited to play at the moment that I purchased them, titles such as: Pandora's Tower, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, Defiance, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. The only trouble is, I've barely played any of them! All I have been playing lately is the new ARAM mode on the League of Legends Public Beta Environment and I've been trying to be more active on the League of Legends forums as well. ... however, the new ARAM on the LoL PBE is fantastically epic.I'm most likely going to FRAPS a game or two soon, just for fun and to show my friends the updates on the PBE. I would be playing more PSO 2, except that it currently is not compatible with FRAPS; that, and I have to do my quest for my second class (Hunter going into the option to be a Fighter) and it seems like a lot more effort than I am currently willing to put into it. So, the League of Legends PBE has attracted all of my attention lately. Not only does it have the new champion, Lissandra, and the updated models for Trundle and Sejuani, but the ARAM matchmaking is a very satisfying experience, and can have games of varying time frames, though usually they are relatively short which means more games in a shorter period of time. The average game that I have played lately has been 20-30 minutes, as the PBE has unlocked all champions for all players, with a 20% IP boost enabled as well. It's still in Beta for a reason.This has caused some interesting glitches for me, however. The most noticeable one was my getting Morgana four games in a row; this was an unusually odd occurrence, for though my PBE account has quite a few champions unlocked (at least 30) I have yet to received a champion so many times in such a short period when I have my regular champions available. Now that all champions have been made available to me, I receive only a small selection of this availability with regularity. The strangest part is that every player on the PBE has all of the champions marked as playable/available, so it isn't as though Morgana is the only champion that I do not share in common with the other 9 players in the game. The one positive thing that has come of this, however, is that I have once and for all (until a new skin comes out) decided which Morgana skin is my favorite; Sinful Succulence Morgana. Note: The extra champions are currently disabled on the PBE. Links:
Games I'm not playing splash:
All Champions Unlocked
ARAM Collage:
The show is finally here!The second Defiance episode is airing today, at this moment. It is truly an amazing show, I'm writing this during commercials. The second episode isn't disappointing, it really quite excellent. I had to take a break from the game due to my exam week unfortunately coinciding with the launch week for the game, but there is no such complication this week, aside from my social life getting in the way (how did I happen to get one this week, of all weeks?). If you haven't had a chance to check out either the game or the show yet, you absolutely should. The pilot was an hour and a half when it aired on Showcase, and was absolutely phenomenal. It's currently available to stream from the Defiance website Links:
Defiance photo: http://bandbent.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/defiance_syfy_germany_1920x1080.jpg |
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