Hands On With Dropzone

The RTS genre can be a little intimidating for inexperienced gamers, but Dropzone by Sparkypants is definitely a game that anyone can pick up and play. The premise is simple - at the end of a 15 minute match have more points than your opponent and you win. This is, of course, easier said than done, but nonetheless after a few matches most people will get the hang of it. 

The first step in Dropzone is drafting your squad. You can select three pilots from five different classes. You can even pick three of the same class if you'd like, but the only restriction is that you can't pick the same pilot twice. During my demo the Gunner, Tank, and Mechanic were unlocked. The Gunner is quick and offensive, the Tank is strong and can take a beating, and the Mechanic can heal your party. These classes don't stray too far from what gamers would expect in any game, which makes it easily accessible for everyone. 

There are multiple ways to score in Dropzone. The first and most common way to score is by destroying hives of enemies which drop cores and upload those cores back at the center of the map. The other way to score is by completing map objectives, which are randomly selected before every match. 

One of the more surprising elements of Dropzone is that killing your opponent does very little to benefit you and really the only time you would want to kill them is when they are destroying a hive or uploading a core. Your primary focus should be on scoring and leveling up, which you can both do by killing enemies. The XP you gain is shared among your team, but you can only level one pilot at a time. When you level them, you receive extra abilities and new gear. 

As I mentioned before, Dropzone is easily accessible for most gamers and will have casual style gameplay to prepare players for the intense battle they will eventually experience. For those who have experience with RTS's or MOBA's they will feel right at home with traditional controls. 

Dropzone is a great game that allows you to get a quick gaming fix right before dinner or when you are pressed for time. Dropzone's open beta will be out by the end of the year and when the game launches it will have 2-3 maps with a new map every two months. 

Fenix Furia Review

Jump, dash, die, repeat. That's pretty much what you're going to be doing over the 4-6 hours of Fenix Furia and you wouldn't want it any other way. 

Fenix Furia is one of the most frustrating and addicting games I've ever played. As with most games, the beginning is fairly easy, but this doesn't last long. There are 10 worlds in Fenix Furia, each with 20 levels, as well as an Arcade where you can unlock extra games. Your objective is to use your unlimited jump and dash abilities to weave in and out of enemies who are moving up and down and all around. I would say once I reached the later levels I would die around 10-15 times guaranteed with a high of being 48 deaths on one level.

There are five modes when you select a level: Easy, Rage, Two, Challenge, and God. Easy mode gives you an extra hit and there is no time goal. Rage mode has one-hit kills as well as a time goal to beat. Two, which is the multiplayer, puts two people in a race to finish the level. Challenge restricts the amount of jumps and dashes you can use. God mode makes you invincible and you have to kill all the enemies on the map before time runs out. When you successfully complete these different modes, you are rewarded with stars. You can use these stars to unlock mini-games that are actually fun. 

Along your journey you will also find cookies - that's right, cookies. Collecting all of these cookies will unlock 10 Fenxi Furia themed recipes. Just let that sink in for a moment. Besides earning trophies you can get a delicious recipe. How cool is that? 

The only real issue I had with Fenix Furia is that the levels in each world don't progressively get harder. You may come across a level that feels like it's impossible and the next level you breeze right through. I don't feel like this is something to knock points off the games total score for, but at times the difficulty does feel inconsistent. 

Fenix Furia is an absolute blast. My stats show that I died over 2500 times and I have no issue with that. The game is challenging and rewarding and that's exactly what you want from a game. I'm holding out hope that one day Fenix Furia makes it way on to the PlayStation Vita because I think it would be the perfect console for it. Do yourself a favor and buy this game!

5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to Green Lava Studios for providing the code. 

Hands On With Loot Rascals

The first thing you'll notice about Loot Rascals is the colorful classic cartoon look, but once you get over the pleasing aesthetics, you find a rich, turn-based, roguelike game. Your character moves around a procedurally generated world on hexagonal tiles. Your goal is to find the exit on each level before exceeding the amount of moves on the turn counter. If you do exceed the move limit, stronger enemies will start to appear around the map. If you want to hang out and explore, you can, but this is not advised. 

Loot Rascals has a day / night cycle that affects if you or the enemy will hit first in battle. You always want to try to get the first hit, but if you're feeling pretty good about your situation, it's not too big of a deal to let them hit first. The time of day changes every five moves, so you definitely want to be aware of this as you're moving around the map, especially when you're desperate to attack.   

One of the biggest parts of Loot Rascals is the card system.  You can have a mix of ten offensive and defensive cards equipped with six in your inventory. Certain cards have bonuses that affect other cards, but are required to be in certain slots, positions, or rows. Loot cards drop all of the time so you are always switching them out. Once you find yourself with too many cards, you can decompile them for currency. 

There are also cards that you can place on other cards that give you extra long distance attacks or self heals. To use these attacks/ heals you simply select them from a pin wheel and drop a cursor on an enemy or yourself. You get so many cards that I don't think it's absolutely necessary to save your attacks for when you see a tough enemy, but you should definitely keep a few attacks handy for when you're near death. 

One of my favorite aspects of Loot Rascals is when you die the enemies will steal your card, which drops it on the server and will show up in someone else’s game. That person can then choose to send it back or keep it. If you find someone else’s card during your game you can choose to keep it or send it back. If you choose to keep the card then the person who lost the card can send an enemy to fight you. When you first start playing the game, the other player’s cards will be from strangers, but once you have a few that you’ve found, you’ll most likely be matched with the same select players. Hopefully if everyone is nice to each other you’ll receive the cards that you lost, but if you lose a good card you better cross your fingers. 

Loot Rascals will be coming to PC and the PlayStation 4 Q1 of 2017. 

Hands On With The Golf Club 2

I think it’s safe to say that golf games are designed for golf enthusiasts. The Tiger Woods series definitely opened up the genre to a wider audience, but without a big star’s name on the cover, most people probably wouldn’t give a golf game the attention it deserves. While these games may not be at the top of everyone’s priority list, Golf Club 2 has a good chance to be the golf game that returns everyone to the genre. 

Usually when a golf game comes out, you can expect it to have licensed courses, but being a small developer HB Studios has decided to go a different route by creating an incredible course editor. In the first Golf Club, users created over 108,000 courses. This allows HB Studios to rely on an obviously healthy community and invest money in improving gameplay, as well as updating their course editor. One major improvement to the course editor is that users will be able to import their maps from the original Golf Club and add new features like waterfalls to their course. 

The gameplay is fairly straight forward, but by no means easy. You use the right analog to pull back on the club and then push forward to drive the ball. The key to success is timing your swing and making sure the ball goes straight. After playing the game for about 30 minutes, I felt comfortable getting to the green, but putting is a whole different beast. 

Putting uses the same mechanics, but trying to figure out how far you should pull back and how fast you should push forward can really become a challenge. The best I could do out of all the courses I played, was getting a birdie on a par 5, which means 4 shots total. 

Having an easily accessible golf game with one of the best course creators I’ve ever seen in any game makes my Golf Club 2 experience a hole in one! Yes, I did go there. 

Hands On With Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr

The Warhammer series is back with another installment! Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr is an open-world sandbox action-RPG sent in the universe of 40k. You play as different Inquisitors who travel around a massive star map completing missions. 

There are 3 Inquisitor classes that have different skill sets that alter the play. Each class has different skills and skill trees. For example, the Assassin has a sniper rifle that is exclusive to her. Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr may seem like a traditional action-RPG but the open world star map has randomly generated maps. This is completed by having pre-generated puzzle pieces that the game puts together when starting a map. 

Staying true to the 40k universe, there is a cover system, destructible environments, and tons of gore. All of this means that Inquisitor is a very tactical action-RPG, rather than one that you can just run into waves of groups of enemies and take them down like Diablo. You’ll find that the AI displays a great deal of strategy. You can expect to be met by smaller groups who will try to outwit you. 

Inquisitors also have secret fortresses that you can customize and use as a safe haven. You’ll also have groups of followers and defensive systems. This introduces the an indirect PVP since Inquisitors can not attack each other. 

Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr will be out sometime in 2017; first on PC and PS4 and then Xbox One later.

Interview with Alexandre Sabourin Red Barrels Senior Technical Artist for Outlast II

The Gamers Lounge: How does the environment play into the horror genre? 

Alexandre: You have to give emotion to the player with so many aspects using lighting. Players are ready to be scared. Jump scares are not always cheap; they have to be setup by using lighting and sound with sound being one of the biggest things you have to have working in the game. 

The Gamers Lounge: Do you find inspiration from other horror games and movies or do you try to go off on your own?

Alexandre: Our cofounders are big fans of horror games; there will always be certain aspects of horror games that are the same. We, of course, find inspiration from other games, but there are many ways to attack the horror experience. You have to change it sometimes to avoid players feeling a repetitive pattern. That’s why we watch these movies and play the games as well.  

The Gamers Lounge: How do you see the horror genre overall? 

Alexandre: The community for horror games is pretty small. The inspiration for the first one was Amensia: Dark Descent. They did a great job creating a very scary game. 

The Gamers Lounge: How is it having one of the top games in the horror genre? 

Alexandre: Considering the competition, it’s nice to hear that people consider us a top game. We’ve come a long way. The first Outlast only had 9 people, which is not a lot of people at all. We take pride in what we do, and being a small company, we all take part in everything. We work hard and we’re desperate to scare you. 

The Gamers Lounge: How big is this compared to the first Outlast? 

Alexandre: The story line is much more deep and complex as far as details. The environment has changed with indoors and outdoors, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Indoors, you have a constant feeling of claustrophobia while walking through corridors, so when the player goes outside we need to make the player feel like they have no options while they’re out there. The game is also going to be longer. There are also going to a lot more crazy things than the first Outlast. 

The Gamers Lounge: Is a VR horror game something that you’d like to do?

Alexandre: We have taken a look into it. It’s definitely not something that is going to be in Outlast 2, but we’ve talked about it and we have to try it. It’s a tough medium because of motion sickness. 

The Gamers Lounge: With a smaller team how much involvement does each person have? 

Alexandre: As much as they want to get involved. We listen to everyone’s idea. A good idea is a good idea no matter who's it’s coming from. Not everyone is involved in the storyline, some people who do art just want to do art. Sometimes people have wild ideas and those are the ones that pay off at the end of the day. 

The Gamers Lounge: I’ve noticed that there seems to be more things happening in the environment than the first Outlast. Could you speak on that a little bit?

Alexandre: You’ll notice that there are black blobs that are moving around. That’s actually a simple idea I had one night. You know when you see something that moves and it gives you the chills? I thought I don’t like that and I want that in our game. We made sure that when something like that happens it fits logically in our storyline. It happens where it has to happen. 

The Gamers Lounge: How long has Outlast II been in development? 

Alexandre: It’s been in development for about 2 1/2 years and is due fall of 2016. 

Hands On With The Guild 3

The Guild 3 takes place in the late middle ages, between the middle ages and the renaissance during the era of the free citizens. At first, I thought Guild 3 was going to be similar to an economy sim like the Anno or Port Royale series, but it’s very different. 

Guild 3 you play a character instead of building your own city. Your goal is to build a dynasty. You can get married and have children. Produce torches, sell them, get XP and money. Start climbing the social ladder and hope to one day become mayor of the city and eventually sovereign of the entire country. The best way to describe it is that you are a part of the world, you don’t manage the world. 

The Guild 3 is a mix of the best features of the first two games in the Guild series. One of the key aspects is that the developers has really worked with fans to create a game that will be loved by their dedicated fan base. While this may sound like it’s designed for a small niche group, Guild 3 is definitely accessible for seasoned gamers. 

To build your dynasty, you need to take care of your character or at least have a family. Characters can die of old age, be poisoned, get killed, and even get executed for committing crimes. By mixing roleplaying aspects with life and economy simulation, Guild 3 creates a wonderfully rich experience. 

In the previous Guild games, you were pretty much forced to go specific ways to increase your wealth. Guild 3 gives the user the freedom to focus on what they’d like to work on. If you want to build your economy while not focusing on a family you can. After a long hard day of work, you may want to stop by the tavern, play dice, and have a beer. If there’s someone that you don’t like and you feel like bombing their home, have a blast! 

There are a ton of professions that you can choose from. You can be a blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, medical, alchemist, apothecary and so on. One awesome feature is that the alchemist is more of an evil guy who creates poisons while the apothecary creates helpful things like potions. 

Once you reach the level of mayor, you can start to control parts of the city. In one part of the city there may be a thieves guild. You can choose to ignore this part of the city and receive a lot of money from the thieves guild, but the citizens of the city will be upset with you and possibly revolt. You can also decide to remove someone from the council and bring in your own family members. 

Guild 3 has complete simulation of weather and season effects. At any point of the year, there can be plagues, but it will most often occur in the winter. Winter also means that the farmers have no crops, so some of them may die of starvation. There are also storms that can occur that will affect your town. If lightening strikes your building, then your house will be on fire. If there is a home next to yours, then that home can also catch on fire. 

The developers have made sure that the game has been thoroughly researched. The cities are more realistic than in other games. The citizens make the world feel really alive. At any point you will see people who could be drunk, starting revolutions, talking, and hanging out.  

Guild 3 is easily one of the most in-depth games I’ve ever seen and I seriously can’t wait for it get released.  Guild 3 will release this year with 12 scenario maps that are concentrated in central and northern Europe.

Hands On With Maximum Games Road Rage

Remember how much fun it was to cruise around the streets and bash people with chains, bats, and billy clubs in Road Rash? Motorcycle combat games have basically disappeared, but Road Rage plans on bringing them back in a big way with a large open world, four player online, and (possibly) four player split screen. 

When you first drop into the fictional world of Road Rage you’ll find yourself wanting to explore this massive city. I cruised around the downtown area known as Subtroit bashing pedestrians with my bat before I even thought about starting a mission. The feeling that I had been missing since the days of sitting around playing Road Rash had returned. 

Once I returned from my childhood memories and came back to reality it was time to play a mission. Road Rage features checkpoint based races, circuit races, escort missions, races across the city and assassination missions where you have to attack a specific rider. I started up a checkpoint point expecting to bash and crash my way to victory! Except that didn’t happen. The AI is definitely out to get you. This isn’t a game that puts the power into your hands and the AI will just let you crack them in the back with a baseball bat. You always have to be aware of your surroundings. 

Road Rage also features tons of performance and non-performance upgrades that you can do to your bikes. Each bike has separate upgrades as well, so leveling up all of your bikes is going to take a fairly long time. I couldn’t get a solid number of characters, but was told that there will be more than 10 and less than 20. Each character has different attributes and you have to unlock them. There isn’t a character customization, but we can always hope for that in Road Rage 2. 

I was so desperate for a motorcycle combat game that I even pre-ordered and played through Ride to Hell: Retribution. If you don’t know what Ride to Hell is all about, go watch a few YouTube videos - it’s not pretty. Road Rage seems like the game that will finally deliver the experience we’ve been waiting for and will be released in the fall of 2016. 

Hands On With Maximum Games Mark McMorris: Infinite Air

Maximum Games seems to be filling all the missing gaps in the video game industry with Golf Club 2, Road Rage, and Mark McMorris Infinite Air. What you’ll first notice is that Infinite Air is a physics based snowboarding game that plays a lot like Skate. 

To say that Infinite Air’s world is open doesn’t do it justice. You’ll find yourself cruising down 100 square miles of fresh powder on a procedurally generated mountain. If you don’t like your mountain, you can always customize and generate a new one. Want to see what’s on the complete other side of the mountain? All you have to do is press a button and you’ll be cruising high in the sky in a helicopter. 

Most snowboarding games feature insane tricks that are humanly impossible, but Infinite Air focuses on making a more realistic experience.  Completing your first trick is no easy task. It probably took me about 10 minutes to start to get a feel for the game and after about 30 minutes I was fully comfortable in the world. Being fully comfortable doesn’t mean I was an expert though. There was still a lot to learn, but with patience, Infinite Air can give gamers an experience unlike anything that they’ve played. 

One major highlight of Infinite Air is the map creator. You can create courses filled with ramps, rails, pipes, logs, and groomed snow for flat surfaces. You can share your courses with other players, as well as play user created maps. 

Infinite Air is definitely an ambitious game that has the potential to change the snowboarding genre. Mark McMorris and pals will be debut this fall on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. 

Hands On With Compulsion Games We Happy Few

At the Microsoft press conference, I was taken back by a strange looking game called 'We Happy Few.’ Described as a 1960s dystopian urban survival game, you play as the only person who’s not high on a drug called Joy. Not taking your happy pills classifies you as a “Downer." Your goal is to escape a city that is on an island, by traveling through different biomes and areas of the city. 

The first thing you’ll notice are the visuals. There is a slight Bioshock feel, but the true inspiration for We Happy Few came from movies from the 1960s.  Compulsion Games’ art director has a very unique style that you may recognize from the PlayStation 4 launch title Contrast. 

Crafting seems to be a major part of We Happy Few. The nature of it being a roguelike survival game means that permadeath is a very real possibility. They have easier settings that will prevent this, but the truth is that this isn’t just a game that you can run through, die, hit a checkpoint, and continue on. You really need to think about your approach and take it slow. 

I only played as a one Downer, but there are three total that have interweaving stories. I definitely wish I could have had a little more hands-on with We Happy Few, but with the early access coming July 26th it won’t be long before I can jump right back into this paranoid, drugged out English city. 

The full version of We Happy Few will coming out on the Xbox One and Steam early next year. 

The Gamers Lounge Goes Hands On At The 2016 NIS Press Event

NIS' 2016 lineup is going to be incredibly strong. Here's my impressions of the games that I was able to get my hands on. 

Stranger of Sword City

Stranger of Sword City is a first-person dungeon crawler where survival is the name of the game. You control a party of six characters, but don’t think that having more characters gives you an advantage. I consider myself a pretty seasoned JRPG player, so I figured each battle would be fairly straight forward; however I was wrong. Stranger of Sword City isn’t the type of game where you can press X, kill stuff, and move on. Each battle really makes the player work and this is perfect for those who love a game with a challenge. When I asked about the length of the game, I received a rough estimate of 20-30 hours, but was told that there are multiple endings which add a lot of replay.

One of the things that was mentioned by the NISA team was that the Stranger of Sword City took a more western approach to the artwork to make it look less like an anime. As a result of this, you get a JRPG with art that is sort of similar to Dragons Crown and that’s not a bad thing at all.

Stranger of Sword City will be released March 22nd for the Xbox One and April 26th for the PlayStation Vita.

Grand Kingdom

Out of all the games at the NIS Press Event, the one that I heard the most discussion about was Grand Kingdom. This 2D tactical RPG features an awesome battle system where you really have to plan out your attack. Your party of four, as well as the enemies, are spread out on a plain where you must strategically move around and attack. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, where the real challenge comes is that your movement and attacks are limited to the amount of stamina you have. If this wasn’t enough of a challenge, you can also hurt your fellow companions with friendly fire and accidentally heal enemies if they are too close to your allies when you cast a spell / use an item. If you’re a fan of the Valkyria Chronicles series, you will definitely want to check out Grand Kingdom.

One of the greatest features of Grand Kingdom is that you can take your created team online to battle against other players.

Grand Kingdom will be released on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita June 21st. One quick side note, I was able to play Grand Kingdom on both platforms and can honestly say no matter what system you choose, you won’t regret it.

Touhou Genso Rondo

Love bullet hell games? Then you need to see Touhou Genso Rondo! This game features all the intensity that you would expect when you are being bombarded with thousands of bullets, but with a huge twist. Touhou Genso Rondo is actually a competitive shoot ‘em up (or shmup) that was compared a few times to Street Fighter. Having played very few shmups in my day, I was confused on how it could be compared to a fighting game until I got my hands on it. At the beginning of the game, you select a character that you want to play. You then go into a mode that would be similar to arcade mode in any other fighting game where you take on enemies one on one.

This mix of genres was fascinating, if nothing else. I was pretty confused at how to effectively attack at first, and I ended up getting destroyed in my first attempt. Once I switched characters, I was able to get a better grasp on what I was doing and began defeating opponents. I hope that bullet hell fighters catch on, because I believe that there is a lot of potential and NIS deserves praise for not only introducing this genre to the west, but for taking a chance on a game that you wouldn’t normally see in the states.

Touhou Genso Rondo will be out on the PlayStation 4 this summer.

Criminal Girls: Invite Only PC

I love my PlayStation Vita, so it’s no surprise that I’m always on the look out for the next game to play on my commute to and from work. One of the games that I keep seeing pop up on Amazon, GameStop or Best Buy is Criminal Girls: Invite Only, but I have been reluctant to pick it up because of my crazy backlog. So when I saw Criminal Girls: Invite Only on display, I figured it would be a good chance to try it out. What I didn’t expect was to get as hooked as I quick as I did. The battle system is fairly unique in which four options appear on the screen and you have to select one. Some of the options can be solo attacks, group attacks, or heals. I should mention that there could possibly be more attacks, but these are just the ones that I saw during my hands on.

Criminal Girls: Invite Only for PC will be released in April of 2016. Now I just have to decide if I want to wait to get it for my PC or if I should just pull the trigger now and get it for the Vita. Also, at the end of the of the announcements, there was a hint in the picture below that Criminal Girls 2 will be coming to the West.

Yomawari: Night Alone

Now for the darkest game at the NIS press event, Yomawari: Night Alone. What seems to start off as an innocent game about a girl and her dog, almost instantly takes a surprisingly dark turn. Unfortunately, the game was still in Japanese when I was playing it, so I couldn’t really advance that far in the story, but what I did gather was that there are ghosts all around that you can reveal by shining your flashlight on them. If you get spotted by a ghost, you must run and hide until the coast is clear. I’d talk more about the story, but I’m going to choose to leave out any details because I believe that it could spoil the game. What I will say though is that if you like games like Limbo, Murasaki’s Baby, and Dokuro then Yomawari: Night Alone will definitely be a game you will want to pick up.

Yomawari: Night Alone will be coming out in North America in late 2016.

There you have it! Overall the 2016 NIS press event was a success in my opinion. They have a great lineup of upcoming games, and the fact that they are making a strong push to PC and are continuing to support the PlayStation Vita, shows that NIS is dedicated to all gamers, no matter what console they prefer. Thanks for reading!

Pictures from the 2016 NIS press event

14 Games That I Am Happy I Got To Try At The Playstation Experience

1. Alienation

Developer, Housemarque, (Super Stardust HD, Resogun) is working on Alienation, the “spiritual successor” to their smash hit, Dead Nation. When you first jump into Alienation, you instantly want to rush into battle, but you’ll quickly learn that’s a huge mistake. My three teammates and I were tasked with setting bombs in three different tunnels and then moving to evacuation point. Being the gamer that I am, I decided to go rogue and try to take on all of the alien scum by myself and was swiftly met with the slimy hand of E.T justice. This is due to the way the game scales when you have more people in your party. If you’re a solo gamer, Alienation will be much more manageable and provide you with a great experience.

If you’re a fan of top-down shooters, you’ll definitely want to keep your eye on Housemarque’s Alienation in 2016.

2. Dead Star

Trailers and videos can give you a good representation of a game, but there are certain games that you really need to play to get a full understanding. Armature Studio’s, Dead Star, was an incredible surprise that I wish I could have kept playing. The twin-stick style shooter puts you into 10v10 multiplayer battle in an area of space called “The Wastes.” Every match has procedurally generated maps that have outposts, hazards, and other secrets that you and your team must find in order to fight another day.

My favorite part of Dead Star was teaming up with a few of my team members to take down one of the larger ships. Our tiny ships trying to do damage to the large enemy shop felt like a boss battle. Eventually we were destroyed and the other team won, but that’s okay. It made me want to redeem myself, but there was a long line of people waiting for their chance to achieve interstellar dominance. 

Dead Star is slated to come out early 2016 on PS4 and PC and I can’t wait for my chance to return to the fight.

3. EarthNight

When I first saw Cleaversoft’s runner, EarthNight, at E3 I was instantly hyped. I love the challenge of trying to exceed my highest distance run, while picking up collectibles and completing objectives. This however is not exactly what you will be doing in EarthNight. During the game you’ll be running down the back of a dragon using Stanley, a freelance photographer, or Sydney, a 14 year-old girl with a very useful double jump ability. The goal is to get to the head of the dragon where you will have to stab them in the head repeatedly using timed attacks. These timed attacks add an extra challenge to the game, because you can’t just mash until success.

Another critical feature to EarthNight is that you can speed up or slow down your character by pressing forward or backward on the directional pad. This gives you a little more flexibility while trying to jump on platforms that are in the air or when trying to kill/avoid an enemy. The ability to speed up and slow down can also get you in trouble because you may try to avoid an enemy just to be damaged by another.

EarthNight may seem like a traditional runner, but the little tweaks to this genre change the game enough to give you an enjoyable, yet challenging experience. EarthNight will be cross-buy for Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita hopefully by late 2016, early 2017.

4. FutureGrind

Have you ever come across a game that appears so simple only to find that it’s incredibly challenging? Well, FutureGrind is exactly that. What should be an easy task of matching the specific color wheels to certain color tracks proves to be difficult for even the most seasoned gamer. There are times when you are speeding along, feeling pretty good about your last landed trick only to crash and burn on the next one. At every “death” you get a result screen that tells you just how far you made it. My average was about 60-65% before I inevitably died a fiery death. This simple, yet addicting and challenging game has the same difficulty of OlliOlli. Sure you could blast through the course barely getting any points, but it’s so much more fun to be a savage racking up some serious multipliers.

FutureGrind is being developed by Milkbag Games and is coming to Playstation 4 and Steam in 2016.

5. Ratchet & Clank

One line that was surprisingly short was Ratchet & Clank. I figured that gamers old and new would want a crack at the newest iteration of what was once a critical part of the Sony arsenal, even if it is a re-imagining of the first game in the series. As you may expect, you’ll find yourself blasting enemies with wildly creative guns while platforming your way through obstacle. Gamers that have played any of the R&C can rest easy knowing that this classic series has returned to it’s true form while gamers that have never played it can finally know what all the fuss is about. 

Insomniac Games is planning on releasing the re-imagining of Ratchet & Clank in the spring of 2016.

6. RocketsRocketsRockets

Radial Games’, RocketsRocketsRockets may be one of the smoothest games I’ve played on the Playstation 4. I played a multiplayer game with one of my friends and was sort of disoriented at first by the speed and fluid movement, but after a few matches you really start to develop the necessary abilities to take out your opponent. The rockets also have three different attacks, each with their own strength and weaknesses. This adds a bit of strategy to the game and really makes you think about what you should do next.

According to the Radial Games website, RocketsRocketsRockets has a multiplayer, singleplayer, and Zen Mode “where Rockets learn to love.” I don’t know how in depth the singleplayer mode is, but my multiplayer experience is enough to buy the game when it comes out on the Playstation 4 sometime this year or early 2016. One quick note, if you can’t wait to get your hands on RocketsRocketsRockets, you can pick it up on Steam.

7. Shadow of the Beast

Heavy Spectrum Entertainment Labs’ Shadow of the Beast was definitely the bloodiest game I played at the Playstation Experience. In this side-scrolling beat em up you find yourself controlling the savage beast, Aarbron, who will literally rip apart anyone or anything who stands in his way. Besides the graphics and the smooth gameplay, I’d have to say the quick time style rage chains were the highlight of my experience.

Once you fill up your blood meter you can activate a combat mode that allows you to chain together attacks. The more you chain together, the quicker the QTE’s have to be. I know a lot of people hate these sort of button prompts, but if you fail one it’s no big deal.

You can expect Shadow of the Beast to be released in Q1 of 2016.

8. Headlander

Double Fine has a lot going on these days with developing Psychonauts: In The Rhombus of Ruin, Psychonauts 2, remastering Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle as well as publishing GNOG and Gang Beasts, it’s surprising that they have time to develop Headlander, but lucky for us gamers, they are. Headlander at first seems like it is going to be a slightly serious game, but within the first few minutes the Double Fine charm sets in. To solve puzzles you must launch your head off of your body and float around the level to find solutions. Your head also gains powerups such as a vacuum that can suck the heads off of the bodies of enemies. You can then land on those bodies and use them to help you progress. If you love Double Fine games, then Headlander is right up your alley!

Headlander is being published by Adult Swim Games and will be out in second half of 2016

9. Super Impossible Road

Super Impossible Road was another delightful surprise for me. What seems like a simple racing game has an incredible amount of strategy that adds intensity to every race. You start off racing against five other balls and to win you must fall off of the edge to the track below, but there’s a catch. You only have 5 seconds of free failing time to reach another portion of the track or else you are sent to the last checkpoint. One of the nicest features of Super Impossible Road is if you fall off of the track and don’t think you will make it to the next part within 5 seconds you can press a button to respawn and try again. This makes it so you aren’t committed to every move you make and allows you give it another go. I was racing against another player and was basically in last place the whole time, but once I got the hang of the game I finished in 3rd place, which was well ahead of my opponent. This just goes to show that no lead in Super Impossible Road is safe until you cross the finish line. 

Super Impossible Road is being developed by Kevin Ng and is coming to the Playstation 4 hopefully sooner than later.  

10. Trillion: God of Destruction

As an RPG fan, I feel that there have been a ton of strategy RPGs lately. This is especially true when it come to the Playstation Vita, so when I hear of another strategy RPG I tend to groan.  Luckily the line for Trillion: God of Destruction was reasonable and I needed a rest. Trillion’s premise is that the final boss has 1,000,000,000,000 HP and you are chipping away at him as you progress through the game. The strategy of the game comes from it’s unique movement system. You get a certain amount of points that allow you to move/use special abilities. If you go into a battle with low points because you moved too much, you’ll struggle through the battle. This prevents users from just wandering around and makes you really think about your next move. This twist on strategy games was enough to keep me intrigued, because it’s not the same old style game I’ve been playing since Ogre Battle.

Trillion: God of Destruction will be out in the Spring of 2016.

11. Fallen Legion

One of the games that you heard a lot of people talking about around the show floor was Fallen Legion. The game was so popular that it was one of the few games that actually had one station set up on each floor at the Moscone Center.  This action RPG has a shakes up the genre by adding a unique combo system. You queue up attacks for four characters using triangle, square, x, and circle. The twist is that you just can’t mash the buttons. You have to make quick decisions to ensure maximum damage. While all of this is going on you have to block your opponent’s devastating attacks. It may take gamers a few encounters to get comfortable, but for anyone who enjoys side scrolling beat em ups or have experience playing Dragon’s Crown will really enjoy Fallen Legion.

Fallen Legion is set to release the summer of 2016.

12. London Heist: The Getaway

The one word that comes to mind when talking about London Heist: The Getaway is “wow.” I knew VR was going to be pretty cool, but I never expected it to impress me as much as it did. In the London Heist demo you are sitting in the passenger seat of a van cruising down the highway. The small details like being able to change the radio dials, open and close the air vents, pick up soda cans, open the glove box, and even open the car door and lean out allowing you to look behind you gives the user an experience like no other. All of this is serious amazing, but I haven’t even got to the shooting yet.

Eventually enemies ambush you and your driver. The driver tosses you an Uzi and then it’s time to take care of business. One of the greatest features of the game which was made the entire experience feel much more realistic was the manual reload. As your gun empties the clip falls out and you have to pick up another one and place it in the bottom of the gun.

There is no release date on the Playstation VR which is fine because I just want the first version of the device to be as close to flawless as possible.

13. Tumblestone

If you’re into puzzle games, look no further than Tumblestone. The goal is simple, match 3 like color squares and move on, but as time goes on this of course becomes more difficult. There are a lot of times where you find yourself stuck and you have to refresh the level. I say refresh instead of reload because you don’t have to start from scratch, you just have to reset the game board. I played a four player match with two other people and an AI and at first we all sat there thinking about our moves more than actually removing blocks. By the end of the session we found ourselves neck and neck in intense color matching battles. If you love games like Puyo Puyo Fever, Tetris, and Dr. Mario then Tumblestone is definitely something you want to check out.

The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild’s Tumblestone will be released on Steam, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, iOS, Android, Windows phones, Facebook, and Ouya in the summer of 2016. 

14. Horizon Chase

As soon as I saw Horizon Chase I was reminded of being a kid playing Rad Racer. This throwback to old school racing games may not push any consoles to the limit, but the awesome update to the classics runs smooth looks great. None of the tracks that I played were too difficult, but the speed in which your car is moving can sometimes throw you off of your game. I don’t mean to say this as a knock on the game by any means and in fact it the intensity was a welcome change from the modern racing games that have been coming out lately.

The Horizon Chase that is currently out on iOS and Android has 72 tracks and I expect all of those tracks to make it over to the Playstation version when it comes out (hopefully) in 2016.
 

The 2016 Playstation Experience was an absolute hit. Gamers may have been disappointed with some of the announcements or lack of announcements at the keynote, but video games aren’t just about the multi-million dollar blockbusters. Most of my favorite games were the smaller titles with independent teams that were trying to make a name for themselves in an industry that is stacked with heavy hitters. It would be unreasonable to ask anyone to buy all of these games, but any of these games in this article are worth your time and money.

Thanks for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below in the comments section.