Category: review

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Warframe: the Game that Spawned Destiny and Anthem?

[getTwitchRail scgame=”Warframe”]
Created by: Digital Extremes
Game Site: Warframe Website
ESRB Rating: M for mature
Support: Support Website

Hellcat5 Connect: Hellcat5 on Official Forums

This game is hot. You might not know about Warframe, but it’s been growing exponentially. Warframe came out March 25, 2013, the first in a stream of games with guns and specialized suits with skills. While Warframe doesn’t have much of an active pvp element, Warframe excels with PVE play, which has a skill system similar to Overwatch.

Warframe crosses the boundaries of ARPGs like Vindictus through matches set up with a variety of goals, from extermination where you kill everything, to defense where you defend a point as long as you can, and get greater rewards the longer you can hold out because the NPCs become harder and harder.

While Warframe started off with smaller match-based gameplay, the developers have expanded into a more open-world element with the new Plains of Eidelon content, which gives players a wider sandbox based gameplay. On the Plains of Eidelon, you can do anything from fishing to destroying or capturing Eidelons, the massive guardians of old.

When I first saw Warframe, I thought there would be no way I could possibly play it because of how fast it moves and all the colors flashing. I have a hard time with sounds and lights after my strokes, like an autistic person going through sensory overload. A friend of mine encouraged me to give it a shot, and so I did.

I found that if I didn’t try to think when playing it, I could mostly keep up with other players in movement, and I close my eyes if the colors get too overwhelming. I wish they had a feature that helped people with similar conditions like me, but I don’t know of any way to tone down the colors. So, I don’t usually run many Infested areas due to the coloring.

Overall the Warframe community has been very welcoming, and rarely do I run into trolls, which is great. The experienced players are very willing to help the new guy, and you can easily find groups or help for anything in the chat channels.

While Warframe does have its bugs and quirks, the developers are very active and communicative about what they’re doing, and what they’ve fixed. They focus a lot of energy on bug squashing. Patches come during gameplay. You stay in whatever match you’re in when the patch hits, then finish up after you get a notice that it’s safe to finish and restart the client. A nice feature to not get kicked when fighting a boss battle.

So, if you’re looking for a new action-packed game to try out, that’s free to play, and not pay to win, check out Warframe. And, if you need a hand, shoot me a message in game @h3llcat5. Hope to see you there!

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Star Conflict: Moving Up in Space MOBA

[getTwitchRail scgame=”Star Conflict”]
Created by: Stargem Games
Game Site: Star Conflict
ESRB Rating: Not Rated
Support: info@stargem-games.com or Gaijin Support

Hellcat5 Connect: Star Conflict Profile || Hellcat5 on Steam

I’ve been searching for space warfare games while waiting for Star Citizen’s release. I first explored a cruiser class war game called Dreadnought. Then I checked into Fractured Space. While both games have their own merits, they didn’t satisfy my desire to dogfight in the middle of heavy cruiser battles in space.

I had marked a few games on my Steam wishlist to research. Among those, Star Conflict. I watched a few videos of “lets play” from a guy who didn’t leave much of an impression. I looked for more about it, but didn’t find much except the Official videos on youtube. I also checked Twitch, but not many people streamed this game. So, I decided to download it myself.

I found it very easy to start playing. Stargem provides a great tutorial through which you can easily learn the controls for the game. For those who’ve played other space games, or mmo games generally, the controls will be mostly familiar.

After losing myself to the gameplay for a few hours, I started to want to research more about the game. I wanted to look at other people’s ship builds, and experiences with teamplay. However, I didn’t find much about it. At least, not in English.

While Star Conflict seems to have a small following in the United States, it seems to have a noticeable following internationally. You’ll see the trade chat filled with Russian. If you want to make trades in game, you might want to get familiar with Google Translate to help you get what you need.

Star Conflict has a strong teamplay mechanic, similar to League of Legends, Dota 2, and other Moba games. At high ranks, successful combat relies on knowing ship types, roles, and how these interact. I’ll cover these roles and ship types below in the info.

So, why did I write this? Simple. The gameplay for this is extremely exciting. Dodging slower moving shots from the Halo Launcher or Singularity Cannon, while trying to evade the fast interceptor ship on your tail, and while targeting the guy who’s coming right at you with a sliver of hull left (hull is ship health).

This is NOT the slow pace of Fractured Space or Dreadnought. This gets the adrenaline pumping. If you love the idea of dog fighting in the middle of bigger ships firing back and forth at each other in PVP (player vs. player), or fighting with a specific goal in PVE (player vs. environment) or practicing your skills in co-op vs. ai, you’ll probably love the gameplay you’ll experience in Star Conflict.

Now, I’m going to talk about free to play, because this game is free to play. I’ve read some complaints in game about “this game is pay to win.” Those people are idiots who themselves want to bypass the natural progression that happens in the game. In fact, spending money on ship upgrades cripples the player experience and advancement.

To connect the dots between the business model of Star Conflict and League of Legends (as example), you can buy paint jobs (skins in League of Legends) in Star Conflict. Skins in League of Legends are permanent. Skins in Star Conflict are permanent as long as you don’t change to a different paint job. The developers of Star Conflict need to make the skins a permanent purchase to give players the ability to switch back and forth with what they’ve bought before.

While it’s against the Terms of Service for League of Legends, people sell high level and rank accounts. In Star Conflict you can buy advancement of the same sort directly from the developers instead of doing something against the Terms of Service, and thereby illegal. But, there’s a key element people who complain about “pay to win” miss.

People who think of this game with a mindset of the mmo, of getting to the highest rank, and having a decked out ship, don’t understand the gameplay. They focus on personal glory, and not teamplay. any one person flying around in their maxed out high rank ship can get blown to hell by ships that are designed to take them down. Star Conflict is not an MMO. You don’t win by getting to the highest level with the best gear because Star Conflict is a Battle Arena game. In Battle Arena, the right combination of ship types and roles wins, if they use the tactics.

Battle arena type games have common modes. If we think of games like Overwatch, League of Legends, Dota 2, Smite, Heroes of the Storm etc., we think of player vs. player arena battles or the ability to go into co-op vs. AI to practice pvp skills outside of real competition. Star Conflict has these modes, adding a PVE type mode and open space, where you can fly around a huge space map doing whatever you want outside of the battle arena, including trolling other players who’re trying to do their daily missions by destroying the cruiser that they’re trying to escort, or directly destroying the other players. It is open space after all.

By good design of the developers, it seems, if you die a certain number of times to other players griefing, you get put into a different instance so you can finish your daily quests. So, when you do happen to run into someone in open space who’s trolling, there’s a way out. It’s here, fighting against these trolling players, that I’ve placed the Katmandu Corporation. We help players who’re working on their missions get through to the other sectors.

If you’re up for the challenge of MOBA in space, of dog fighting in the middle of destroyer battles, or playing the destroyer yourself, then check out Star Conflict. You can find resources here to help you with learning and improving your teamplay.

Related:
Star Conflict: Connecting the Dots for People Who’ve Played League of Legends (or other MOBA games)

Star Conflict: How to Level Ship Mods Quickly and Free

Star Conflict: Genre Wars

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Resident Evil 7: So Intense You’ll Shit Your Pants

[getTwitchRail scgame=”Resident Evil 7 biohazard”]
Created by: Capcom Co., Ltd.
Game Site: Resident Evil 7
ESRB Rating: M for mature
Support:

Hellcat5 Connect:

At first, I thought, “oh great, another resident evil game…” then I saw some of the footage, and I was hooked like a fish who just wanted to eat the little wiggling worm. I’ve played all the resident evil games since Resident Evil 4. i’ve watched some of the previous games, and saw the difference people talked about. Resident Evil core fans complained about the direction Resident Evil 4 went, and moreso Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6.

We’ve seen many spinoffs from the series, and HD remakes. Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Resident Evil Zero, etc., through steam, and the poorly rated Resident Evil Racoon City and Umbrella Corps. The series went in the direction of action / shooter, moving away from horror / survival, and the fans hated it.

During the downtime, Electronic Arts released a game called Dead Space which quickly filled the void the Resident Evil series left. However, the Dead Space series followed suit, moving away form the horror / survival genre, toward the action / shooter, thus again, leaving an unsated void in horror / survival enthusiasts. We didn’t expect it. We had no idea what was coming for us in 2017 (other than the horror of Trump as president).

Horror survival enthusiasts found few solid titles to fill the void during this downtime in games such as Outlast and Alien: Isolation. These titles got great reviews, and players enjoyed them.

The sense of surviving something horrible drives the horror survival player. It’s a hunger for the buildup, the release of the survival instinct. The accomplishment of figuring out how to survive. Throwing a steady stream of monsters to shoot insults and disappoints the horror survival player. We don’t need constant external action. We enjoy the internal build up, of not knowing when we’ll face the monster in the dark that we feel.

I grabbed the demo from Steam. I waited anxiously for the download to finish, then fired it up with the lights off. Oh my god. I felt the hairs on my nect stand on end, I felt the tingle of anxiety and fear. I felt afraid.

The game has amazing graphics. No one can miss that. The controls are easy and intuitive, the camera and lights work fluidly and the environment amazed me. I’m shocked and happy that Capcom finally got back to what the players love about the series. After many tries, they finally listened. They finally got it after we said it over and over. This is the horror / survival game I’ve been waiting for. This is Resident Evil.

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Battlefield 1

[getTwitchRail scgame=”Battlefield 1″]
Created by: DICE
Game Site: Battlefield 1
ESRB Rating: M for mature

Hellcat5 Connect:

Battlefield 1 takes you into world war one, to give you experience of what that war was like. Brutal tactics and war machines, you’ll encounter blimps, planes, ships, horses, and the weaponry of the time. Yes, it has swords. However, you’ll spend more time dead than playing the game, and the menus are terribly un-intuitive. With a friend, I took a test spin on this game during the last EA Origin sale.

We spent time trying to figure out how to get into a game together. For some reason the developers decided it was a good idea with this menu’s iteration to allow people in a party to join different game instances. Does that make sense? Why join a party to play with friends if you’re going to join a different map or instance? No, that’s not a good design decision. Common guys, follow the implications of an action or idea. We join parties with friends to play with friends in the same instance and in the same map, to say it a second time.

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Tom Clancy’s The Division

[getTwitchRail scgame=”Tom Clancy’s The Division”]
Created by: Ubisoft
Game Site: Tom Clancy’s The Division
ESRB Rating: M for mature

Hellcat5 Connect: h3llcat5
Thanks to Nova for helping to validate resources

The Division is an intense 4 man team shooter, with a lot of stuff to do. The graphics are very lifelike and immersive.

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