Dark Souls II - PC Version disappoints

Dark Souls II was released last month for those that play the game on the console, sadly enough the PC gamers have to wait a longer: the game launches for the PC on the 25th of April. While the PC gamers are waiting on their version, there of course are a few questions that everyone wants to be answered. Will the game look way better than the console versions and will the game actually be playable without a mouse this time?

To answer the first question if the PC version of Dark Souls II look better than the console version, the answer is yes. Dark Souls II runs on a higher resolution than it does on the console version of the game, so it will look better in a way. The game also has a higher frame rate compared to the console versions, if your PC isn’t a toaster at least. Instead of 30 frames per second, the PC version will be able to run smoothly on 60 frames per second. It is suspected that the games frame rate is locked at 60 frames per second, as it doesn’t get any higher than that.

There is something graphic related that I am a bit sad about that it isn’t in the PC version. In the pre-release videos of Dark Souls II that the developers showed last year, there was a very fancy lightning model that didn’t get implemented in the console version of the game. I was hoping that it would appear in the PC version, but sadly enough it didn’t the PC version as well. Everyone that as looking forward to these fancy graphics that they witnessed in the pre-release videos, might be a little disappointed just as I am since it would’ve been a real treat to play the game with even better graphics.

Another thing that saddens me about not having the lightning in the PC version, besides from giving the game a darker atmosphere, is that it made the game easier in some way. The field of view with the pre-release lightning system was a lot smaller than it is in the released version, and this made interesting to walk around with a torch. This torch would replace your shield, so you could trade protection for sight, thus making it easier to spot enemies but making you weaker. Maybe it is just me, but I would’ve really liked to see this in the game.

Something that was an absolute horror in the original Dark Souls was mouse and keyboard control: it was one of the worst ports from console to PC ever. The mouse pointer stayed in your screen all the time and just moving your character around felt like an impossible task, if you didn’t install a fix for the controls it was just an unplayable game. Luckily this has changed in Dark Souls II and thus the controls for the PC feel a lot more natural. There is still a downside of using the keyboard and mouse, as you will still be shown the Xbox Controller layout on the screen. This isn’t a major problem as you will get used to what buttons you have to use quite quickly, but it is something the developers could’ve put some effort into.

It definitely is a way better port than the original Dark Souls game was for the PC, but there are still a few things that could get tweaked. I am pretty sure the Souls franchise community will take matters into its own hands and add even higher resolution texture packs and more small tweaks to make it an even better game.

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Europe: PS+ April 2014

Aw yeah! The PlayStation Plus line-up for April has been announced, one of my favourite times of the month. As always, you will be getting five free games if you are a member of PlayStation Plus. Many of last month’s games will be leaving the Instant Game Collection, so be sure to pick up Tomb Raider and the other games if you haven’t done that yet. Alright, so what’s in store for you this month and is it just as good as the previous months?

Mercenary Kings (PS4)

We haven’t seen any triple A games so far for the PlayStation 4, but the console hasn’t been out for that long. First up is Mercenary Kings for the PlayStation 4, an 8-bit indie shooter that should give you the retro feel, yet the game runs very smooth and this makes it very pleasant to look at. If you are up some arcade shooter action, you are in luck with this month’s free game. The game also features multiplayer, which is almost mandatory in shooters nowadays.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 (PS3)Most soccer fans around the world have probably played both a FIFA or PES game once, but the majority of the people that I know choose to play FIFA. If you are one of those people, you can give PES another go (for free) now. PES 2014 promised more ball control and better gameplay, yet it fails to deliver. Artificial Intelligence still is one of the weakest points of the game, and it just doesn’t stand up to it’s competitor FIFA.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PS3 & PS Vita)You might remember Sly Cooper back from the PlayStation 2, as that is where the game made its first appearance. This cell-shaded platformer game takes you back in time: re-live your youth by playing this game and actual time-travelling in the game. Time travelling? Yep Sly Cooper has to travel back in time and do what he’s good at: stealing shinies! Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time also supports Cross Buy, Cross Play and Cross Save, so you do not have to worry about missing any action if you have a PS Vita.

Hotline Miami (PS3 & PS Vita)

Have you ever watched the movie Drive? Did you enjoy it? If you did, you will most likely enjoy Hotline Miami as well. This 2D indie game has everything that you can wish for in an indie game, except if you don’t really .. like blood and violence (you should probably skip this game in that case, just saying). Hotline Miami has an amazing soundtrack and an awesome 80’s feel, mix this together with top-down 2D action and you have one of the best indie games out there. The game also has Cross Buy enabled, so you can play it on both your PS3 and PS Vita.

MotoGP 13

Another racing game is added to the list of PlayStation Plus games, and this motor racing game delivers what it should: a good motor racing experience. It definitely isn’t the easier racing game out there and you really need to practice if you want to be able to ride on the faster bikes. If you are into motor bikes, you will most likely enjoy this game. If you aren’t a real fan of motor racing, you might find the game a bit too hard, but you can always try it out of course.

Be sure to pick up the games that are leaving the Instant Game Collection of PlayStation Plus before the 2nd of April:

Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition (PS4)
Tomb Raider (PS3)
Borderlands 2 (PS3)
Pixeljunk Monsters Ultimate HD (PS Vita)

Smart As (PS Vita)

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Facebook buys the Oculus Rift

Facebook is on a on a money-spending streak: last month it acquired WhatsApp and just today it has purchased Oculus VR, the company behind the successful Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift. Facebook has paid 2 billion US dollars for the company, and I am pretty sure that you could say that it makes it one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever. Mark Zuckerberg just announced the takeover on his personal Facebook page, something the founder of Facebook tends to do when Facebook makes a major takeover.

Although the company hasn’t released a product that is ready for the public yet, Facebook trusts that Oculus VR will deliver a final product that will amaze the world. Virtual reality has a big chance to become gaming’s next thing, or even its future and Mark Zuckerberg knows this very well. Zuckerberg states that Facebook will not interfere with the current developing process of the Oculus Rift for gaming, which I personally think is a very good thing to hear:

“Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.”

Since Facebook is still a communication platform, Zuckerberg also looks at the Oculus Rift as a communication device, as he describes it as a “new communication device”. Facebook has a lot of funds to support the development of the Oculus Rift, and this will most likely result in a better product with more features, but it's unsure if Facebook has different ideas about the Oculus Rift than the creators had in mind. I just hope that Facebook won't interfere too much with what the creators want from the device.

With Sony also announcing their own virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4, virtual reality is closer than ever before. Although PlayStation’s virtual reality headset, code-named Morpheus, won’t be coming on the market anytime soon, it’s a fact that virtual reality will become something for the masses. It will take some time for it to become perfect, but that time is well worth it.

A lot of backers of the original Kickstarter campaign aren't too happy about the takeover of Oculus VR. They feel betrayed by Oculus VR and think that Facebook won't do any good to the Oculus Rift.

Did Zuckerberg buy himself another golden ticket to success once again? He probably did. Zuckerberg also stated that he cannot wait on virtual reality becoming .. well, reality. And neither can’t I!

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Disney is now the producer of PewDiePie, Game Grumps and more

Disney is no longer just the producer of children movies such as The Little Mermaid and Frozen, the last few years the company has started to focus more and more on gaming and action movies. The Walt Disney Company already bought both Marvel and Lucasarts for 4 billion US dollars, and today it has also bought Maker Studios. You might not be familiar with Maker Studios itself, but you probably do know one of these: PewDiePie, Game Grumps or TotalBiscuit.

Maker Studios is the producer of these and 55.000 other YouTube channels, and is now owned by The Walt Disney Company after they paid about 500 million US dollars for it. All these channels combined have a total of 5.5 billion views each month and over 380 million subscribers in total. Maker Studios gets a small cut of the profits on the ads that run on the videos of these channels, but what does Maker Studios exactly do? It’s pretty simple, they take care of all the promotion, merchandising, royalty-free music in the videos and the technical support. This way the YouTubers can focus on their channel and on making quality content.

At the moment it’s what the effect of this takeover has on the channels that are connected to Maker Studios. YouTuber TotalBiscuit posted the following on his Twitter page: “Yup, Disney now owns Maker so also owns Polaris. No idea what this means for us, but I’ll make the content I want to make or go elsewhere”.

It wouldn’t be a wise move of Disney to force channels to drastically change the way they produce content, as the channels are able to leave Maker Studios. I also doubt that we will suddenly see a lot of Disney content on these channels, as Disney might just want to learn what teenagers watch and analyze their online behaviour. As a YouTube channel you can see the race, age, what country the viewer is from and how long the viewer has watched the video and this data may be of use to Disney.

But who knows what Disney has in mind with this purchase, but I am sure we shouldn’t worry about it too much. The chance is big that Disney just wants to have a market share on a profitable business on the internet, like they are also trying to get a share on the gaming market with Disney Infinity.

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Six Awesome Online Free to Play Games

Free to Play, isn’t that just a fantastic phrase? Since a few years there has been a huge boost in the number of F2P games on the market, some bad but luckily there are enough that are pretty fun! To save you the effort of digging through all these games yourself and finding the gems, here are 6 online free to play games that you should definitely give a try.

Path of Exile

Did you love Diablo I and II, but just couldn’t get yourself to enjoy Diablo III? If this is the case, you might want to give Path of Exile a try (you can also give it a try if you did like Diablo III of course). If you are familiar with Path of Exile, you know that the game has a lot of influences from the Diablo series: it is basically the same type of game. Areas are randomly generated, making sure that you don’t come across the same area twice. The game has a variety of classes, each with different skillsets and abilities. So if you are up for an old-school looting game, try it out.

Is Path of Exile pay-to-win? No, paying with real currencies doesn’t give you any advantages in the game. However, you can still buy cosmetic changes and such with real currencies if you feel like it and if you want to support the game developers.

Dota 2 & League of Legends

Both of these games are very similar, and there is quite a chance that you already know about these games. Both games are MOBA’s, what stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. The games places you in a map where there are 2 battling teams that both consist of five players. Every player controls a certain Hero character that has different abilities and the possibility to buy items and gain levels during the match. The goal of the games is to destroy the opponent team’s base. But to get that far, you will first have to destroy enemy towers that are powerful and block your way. This is where your minions come in: they take the damage, while you deal the damage. Up for a highly competitive game? In that case pick either Dota 2 or League of Legends.

Are these games pay-to-win: Everything in the games that is necessary to beat your opponents is purchasable with in-game currency, which you can obtain by playing the game.  You can of course skip this and just pay for a nice hero if you can’t wait at all, but if you have some patience you will be able to  unlock what your heart desires - it might just take a little longer.

Hearthstone Remember the good ol’ days, when everyone was collecting cards and you were trying to tell your younger neighbour kid how awesome that Rattata card was? You can get those times back (minus the neighbour kid) if you try out Blizzard’s new card game Heartstone. The game is fairly easy to get into, as you will have to complete 7 tutorial levels which explain the basics of the game. The game has quick matches that last between 5 or 10 minutes most of the times, which makes it a great game to play if you don’t have a lot of time on your hands.

Is Hearthstone pay-to-win? In some way, it is yes. With real currency you can buy booster packs which contain cards, but you can also buy these booster packs for gold that you slowly earn in the game. Buying the booster packs with real money surely makes it a lot easier to have a chance on getting decent cards as you can buy a lot of packs which equals more chance on receiving a nice card.

In some way it is, yes. You can buy booster packs with real money, and it takes a lot longer to obtain these booster packs by just using in-game gold. As the game heavily relies on the cards, it is easier to ‘win’ good cards if you buy a lot of booster pack with real money.

RuneScape There is quite a chance that you are familiar with RuneScape, but there is a chance that you have literally no idea what it is. RuneScape is a browser-based MMO game that is made with Java. It isn't the most beautiful game out there, but that shouldn't run the fun for most people. Unlike most MMO's out there, you won't have to choose a class in the game. In total the game has 26 different different skills, and you can level all of them to the maximum level. Most of the skills speak for themselves, such as Attack, Strength and Herblore.

The economy in the game is also very important, as you can literally buy any piece of equipment you want if you have the right amount of gold. This doesn’t mean it is easy to get rich though, you can either gather items yourself and sell them; or be a smart merchant and get rich by merchanting.

Is RuneScape pay-to-win? No, but once you become a member you will have access to all 26 skills and you will be able to travel to areas that are locked for non-members. So becoming a member definitely comes with benefits, but you won’t be able to use any of these benefits in non-member worlds. Sounds pretty fair!

Blacklight: Retribution

Do you love shooters, customizing your loadout and you are  craving for a fast-paced game? If you answered yes to all these questions, Blacklight: Retribution might be the thing you are looking for. The game allows you to assemble your own weapons and this is a very important aspect of the game as it has a lot of customization options. When you are putting your weapon or outfit together, the game gives you very exact numbers of what each upgrade of your weapon.

The game is, as I stated earlier, a pretty fast paced game: you can compare the speed to a game such as Call of Duty. However, this isn’t your average shooter. Just as in the recently released Titanfall game, you are able to ‘summon’ huge mechanical robots and you are able to climb inside of these powerful beasts. You also have the ability to look through walls for a short amount of time, which forces you to play different than you would play in your average FPS.

Is Blacklight: Retribution pay-to-win? You can definitely make it easier to obtain weapons and armour if you use real currency, but you can still devastate your opponents without paying a dime. I’ve seen a lot of players that haven’t spend a single cent on the game, and still manage to always end in the top 3 of a match. Blacklight requires skill and if you don’t put any effort into it, yet you buy the best weapons with real money, you will still fail at the game. In my eyes, it definitely isn’t pay-to-win as you can obtain everything without opening your wallet.

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