I hadn't heard about this game until yesterday, but that's not too surprising since I took a year-long break from things Free To Play. In fact, you may have noticed the decreased coverage of F2P games on the blog. With the announcement that Tera is going F2P in February, I took it as a sign from the stars for me to come back and see what's new.
Path of Exile is one of the most hotly anticipated Free To Play games on my list of games for 2013. After Diablo 3's lackluster launch and subsequent meltdown, Diablo II fans haven't had a proper outlet (save Torchlight and Torchlight II) to get their Diablo on. All that looks to change in 6 days when Path of Exile launches and goes Free To Play.
What is Path of Exile? Well, it's essentially Diablo II gameplay with new, 3D graphics. Everything we know and love from Diablo II is here including looting, randomly generated dungeons, great enemy types, classes, incredible depth of items and inventory... All that's missing is shitty DRM and 10 years of development time ;)
No word on when, but a bit of tiny, faded text in a recent email from Sidhe informs gamers that Shatter is coming to the Mac and Linux platforms.
Pssst, Mac and Linux users stay tuned. You are finally going to receive some Shatter videogame love. Keep your ear to the ground for news on this soon.
Remember that game Retrovirus that was featured a few months back as part of a "Fund This Game" article?
Well, it didn't reach its funding goal, but in a better-than-expected series of twists, one of the backers of the project turned out to be a GameStop manager who recommended the game to his superior (to great effect, I might add. Read on.) and another backer was a wealthy fellow who helped fund the team financially.
Normally I avoid GameStop brick and mortar stores (they're known as EB Games here in Canada) since they are overpriced and typically feature only AAA games. But, I was pleasantly surprised with the story outlined by Spencer Roberts, president of Cadenza Interactive, the team behind Retrovirus.
I won't go into all the details of the story, but it caused me to take a good look at GameStop's digital distribution platform known as GameStop App. I have to admit I was quite skeptical before actually trying it. It's pretty good, actually. I was able to buy the game (via Paypal), have it show up in my account, and download instantly. GameStop App apparently offers unlimited downloads just like Steam does. No DRM, as well. Both of these things are prerequisites for a purchase from me. Good stuff.
If Retrovirus seemed like your piece of cake (I know it's definitely mine), then pick it up on GameStop App for under $20 and gain access to the alpha.
Platform: PC, Mac
Release date: 2011
Developer: Lazy Brain Games
Genre: Action Platformer
Cost: Free!
This game has been sitting on my desktop for over a year now. I can't believe it took me that long to play this game, but it's true. Damn you, indie bundles! I've got a back-log the length of your arm.
Still, I'm over-the-moon that I finally took some time tonight to sit down and give Infernal Edge a whirl. It's an indie action shooter that comes very close to the Contra games of yore. Honestly, it's got this old-school 2D 8-bit sprite artwork mixed in with 16-bit Super Nintendo-esque rotation and scaling. It looks like it would be right at home in the late 80s to early 90s.
It's dead simple to play and pretty easy in difficulty. It's also incredibly short. A person can easily beat it on their first playthrough in just under 10 minutes. But, it's free. Whattaya want?
Everyone knows that I am a huge fan of Minecraft, so any game like Minecraft is going to turn my crank. Thanks to a reader's heads-up, I've learned about Deepworld and I want to share it with you, too. I mean, just watch that video and try to tell me that you wouldn't want to play this game. I won't believe you!
Here's the catch: as of this writing, there is only 5 days left to fund Deepworld and they still have about $10,000 to go. Because I really want to play this game I've thrown $40 into the pot to help it get made, but even a smaller contribution will help them get there.
Deepworld is a Steampunk-themed, Terraria-like, 2D, Minecraft-ish game where everyone plays on one gigantic and persistent server. The game is also cross-platform, so players using a Mac can play with people on iOS thanks to the Cocoa2D framework. Mine and craft with your friends and thousands of others in multiplayer!
I really love the art style, especially the characters and their animations.
One thing that's really neat about each Kickstarter backer tier is that anything over $25 includes a second and sometimes third copy of the game to give to friends, when it's released. This makes it so much easier to get friends to play since you don't have to try and convince your friends to pick up a copy and pay during a LAN party.
