French games publisher Nacon, which is co-publishing Daedalic Entertainment’s upcoming action-adventure game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, recently released an earnings report that detailed yet another delay for the Tolkein-inspired adventure.
The report lists Gollum as one of their titles that will be released in “the first half of the FY 2023-2024,” which due to Nacon’s offset fiscal calendar, places that window between April and September of this year.
Previously, Daedalic Entertainment delayed the title from its initial 2021 window to 2022, then delayed it again “by a few months,” offering no specific release date at that time, but not so far off as this new timeframe places it.
— The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (@GollumGame) July 25, 2022
Gollum is a stealth game with a narrative focus that takes place during Bilbo’s hayday chronicled in The Hobbit books and movies, immediately after the halfling comes to possess the One Ring. IGN saw 20-minutes of last year and was not impressed, which may explain the delays.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal is something extraordinary — it’s a table-top racing game with an actual sense of breakneck speed. The designers achieve this both through the brilliant deck-building mechanics, and also with clever mechanisms that accelerate the actual process of play. In fact, Heat might be the best racing board game ever designed, surpassing recent standouts and seasoned classics alike.
The setting here is 1960s Grand Prix, and the core of the design is clever hand management. Each player secretly chooses a subset of their hand to play for movement each round. The number of cards you play is limited by your current gear. So, if you’re in second gear you play two cards, third you play three, and so on. Add up the value of the cards, and that’s the number of spaces you scoot your little car down the track. Want to move farther? Then shift into a higher gear so you can play more cards and tear up the road.
Corners gum it all up and function as speed bumps. They force you to slow your velocity and downshift. Each corner presents a number which is the maximum speed you may cross it without penalty, speed being the total number of spaces you are moving that turn.
You can push your automobile and take corners without stomping the brakes. This comes at the cost of the titular heat. Heat enters your deck when you blow through corners or when you rev your engine and boost additional spaces after a movement. These cards are functionally dead, unable to be used or even discarded once they enter your hand. Instead, you must slow down and allow your engine to cool if you want to vent them out of your deck.
It’s a table-top racing game with an actual sense of breakneck speed.
In sum, this system is magnificent. It’s simple, yet it forces agonizing tactical and strategic decisions. You must assess your hand, current gear, position on the track, and even the makeup of the rest of your deck. Heat is a resource to be used as opposed to totally ignored. Pushing through a corner and tearing up your vehicle may be the correct gambit, but timing is crucial.
Once you’ve accumulated heat, there’s a constant tension as you know those cards sitting in your discard pile will make their way into your draw deck and finally your hand. Your car feels appropriately fragile, as if it could fall to pieces at any moment. At some point you will have to ease off the pedal, but you better hope like hell you can time that moment to occur near a corner so you don’t forfeit the opportunity for massive gains on a straightaway.
As you gain and release heat, the act of deck-building is fluid and gripping. Heat, functioning as a burden to be dealt with later, also obfuscates the current status of the racers in a similar way to hidden victory points in other games. Simply leading the pack does not mean a car is actually in an enviable position, particularly if their deck is clogged with heat and their competitor’s isn’t. It’s fascinating how simple and smooth the deck-management is as a tactical process.
Despite the streamlined play, Heat’s largest obstacle is the learning experience. It’s a simple enough game, but internalizing the processes can take several rounds. The flow is partially obfuscated by the player board, which offers a poor set of iconography representing the phases. However, after a single lap most drivers will be comfortable white-knuckling the steering wheel and letting loose.
Your car feels appropriately fragile, as if it could fall to pieces at any moment.
There is such a tremendous sense of momentum here. It’s illustrated through the card play but equally expressed through several physical and procedural flourishes. For instance, all of the planning for the round –including shifting gear and choosing cards to play — occurs simultaneously. This is half the game, plotted and resolved in a couple of moments with little downtime.
Another smart touch that speeds up the typical soft moments of racing games is the numbering of spaces so that you can see how far you are away from the next corner. This means you don’t need to keep counting spots on the board for planning or when actually moving your plastic car. It’s all so quick and snappy and folds into Heat’s strong pace of play to build that sense of velocity.
My biggest criticisms revolve around Heat’s lack of verisimilitude. While it nails the feel of ’60s auto racing, it lacks somewhat in simulation. This is seen with cars in higher gear moving slower than those in lower gears when the driver plays a number of reduced value cards for the round. It’s also plainly evident in the catchup mechanisms. The game just flat out gives a bonus movement to the last place car, writing it off as “adrenaline.”
Additionally, slipstreaming is a key component, allowing you to slide additional spaces if you end your turn adjacent to another vehicle. This works to model a core element of the sport, but it serves primarily to allow cars farther back to spring ahead. That may annoy some as contestants tend to cluster around each other, but it does result in dramatic moments with constant jockeying for position. It’s also not impossible to burst ahead of the pack with strong play, even if it’s uncommon.
If this was the totality of Heat, it would be enough. But it’s not. This product feels rich, not just in its ability to deftly capture Grand Prix racing, but also in its offering of content. It comes with two fold-out double sided tracks which present various tactical challenges. Several modules are also included to mix up the rules. It has weather effects, changing road conditions, and even exceptional AI controlled opponents which allow you to fill out a lower player count or even play it as a solo board game. But Heat fully realizes its potential with the championship mode.
This is league play where you embark on a three-race series. Points are earned based on finishing position, and whoever possesses the most at the conclusion of the third track is the winner. This approach mimics an abbreviated career mode in popular sports titles like Madden. You actually modify your car each race, adding new cards into your deck. The number of upgrade options is tremendous, which results in asymmetric builds and automobiles with legitimate personality and identity. Additionally, you can earn short term rewards from sponsors by showing off on the track and performing daring maneuvers. There is such a wealth of options that it feels as though Days of Wonder delivered the game with an included expansion, one that is highly effective.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal is fantastic. Designers Asger Granerud and Daniel Pederson’s exceptional card system comes across as a revision of their previous hit bicycle racing title, Flamme Rouge. That is a fantastic game in its own right, but it’s not Heat. The brilliant capturing of motion at the heart of this genre is an unmitigated achievement. Pair this with such a complete and thorough product, and we have an absolute champion.
If you’ve finished Return to Monkey Island and are simply itching to dive into another point-and-click adventure, then good news, because Tall Story Games’ Lucy Dreaming will be launching on Switch on February 28th, 2023.
Described as a mix of Monkey Island, Monty Python, and Blackadder, the game – which originally launched in October 2022 on Steam and mobile – stars Lucy, who finds herself in the “very British” town of Figgington amidst a decade-long mystery. With visuals that resemble the rather excellent Thimbleweed Park and voice talent including Dominic Armato (Guybrush Threepwood) himself, it definitely looks like one to keep a close eye on.
Forspoken is finally available on PS5, and it’s time to show off your wicked cool magic-slinging combat skills to the world. You’ll learn a lot of different magic types during Frey’s journey, but Purple Magic will be with you from the beginning and remains a great tool throughout the game. To help you get a leg up on your journey, let’s take a closer look at Frey’s combat-focused Purple Magic and what it can do.
Frey will start with the following attack magics: Burst Shot, Shield Shot, and Scatter Shot (each at level 1), along with the support magic Bind. To learn more spells, you’ll need to spend the mana points you accumulate from leveling up and by finding mana pools scattered across the massive landscapes of Athea. The order you learn spells is up to you, but if you think you made a mistake, don’t worry–you can always unlearn a spell to get a mana refund to use elsewhere.
Now, let’s check out some Purple Magic spells and detail how to best use them:
Attack Magic
Burst Shot: A powerful and reliable way to attack, burst shot creates a huge rock explosion after you release its charge. The higher the spell’s rank and the longer the charge, the bigger the ka-boom that ensues. When enemy defenses are tough, give a charged Burst Shot a try–it can penetrate the defenses of enemies who flaunt shields at you with ease.
Shield Shot: Some enemies don’t respect Frey’s personal space. That’s where the shield shot comes in. If you’re charging Shield Shot and an enemy tries to attack you from the front, they’re in for a nasty surprise when you counter by blowing up the shield in their face. The shield grows bigger at higher levels and can also function to protect you from certain projectile attacks. Be careful, though, because you’re still vulnerable to side and back attacks and shield-breaking strikes.
Scatter Shot: Do you love powerful attacks but hate that whole “can’t attack while you’re charging” thing? Then you’ll appreciate the mechanics of Scatter Shot. Holding down the button will send out a rapid-fire spray of small magic blasts while you charge up to unleash a big finishing blow. The higher the spell level, the bigger the blast. Scatter Shot is excellent for long-range combat and especially effective on many flying enemies.
Support Magic
Bind: Some enemies aren’t going to sit still while you try to aim at them, but Bind is here to help. Bind will temporarily hold enemies within a wide radius still while you take your shots freely, or if you’re just not feeling up for a fight, you can hold them at bay while you skedaddle.
Tendril: If you’ve got an angry mob coming at you from all sides, Tendril is an amazing crowd-control spell. It can be used on the ground or in the air and sends a huge vine sweeping around Frey in a large circle. Not only can it knock down numerous enemies at once, but it also heals based on the damage you’ve dealt.
Implant: Implant might not seem to be doing much at first, but every time your attacks hit, you’ll also do a little bit of extra damage. It’s a nice spell to use when facing an opponent with a big health bar.
Prime: This spell is a little tricky but well worth it. Use Prime to lay a trap in the ground, then try to lure your foes into it by using yourself as bait. As soon as they step on the trap, a blast will lay nearby enemies on the ground. (Or, if you feel mischievous, your charged burst shot can also set the trap off.) The knockdown potential makes this one great for setting up killing moves.
Disperse: This spell lets Frey plant a massive flower in the ground, which quickly blossoms into a beautiful turret hell-bent on shooting any foe that comes into range. It works well in tandem with scatter shot for when you want to keep a distance, and it’s also great on flying enemies.
Leach: It cures you if you’re poisoned. Not much else to say here, but keep it close to mind whenever you find yourself at the precipice of death by slowly depleting health.
Screen: Want the guard functionality of the shield shot, but up against enemies that it doesn’t work well against? Screen provides a similar protective wall against a hit from the front. Careful, though: it takes quite a long time to recharge and can be broken through with guard-break attacks.
Surge Magic
Genesis: Genesis is a Surge Magic spell, a powerful attack you can use by pressing L2 and R2, preferably during sticky situations, as it has a long recharge time. The spell sends out rock vines hitting anything on the ground a short distance in front of Fray. By upgrading Surge and holding down L2 and R2 longer, the area of effect grows larger over a few seconds, causing even more damage. As devastating as this spell is, it doesn’t cover Frey’s back and sides and can leave Fray vulnerable to attacks, especially when holding down L2 and R2 for extended periods. Be mindful of your surroundings whenever you decide to unleash Genesis’s power.
That’s a lot of spells and plenty to develop fun combat strategies with. And if you think these spells are cool, just wait until you see what Red, Blue, and Green magic offers. Don’t forget to use the Spellcraft books to undertake combat and exploration challenges centered around each spell, as completing them offers some very beneficial combat boosts.
As a kid, we would refer to it simply as “The Banana Game”. I had to rely on my Dad to play it, as only he was able to access an unfathomable portal called “DOS”, summoning it out of the inky void using long strings of seemingly random letters; an incantation that gave it a sort of mystical allure.
Discussion of Hogwarts Legacy has been banned from popular forum website ResetEra due to the controversy surrounding Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
As reported by PC Gamer, ResetEra general manager B-Dubs has released a statement from the moderation team that bans all mention of the Harry Potter-universe video game on their platform.
ResetEra had previously banned any promotional posts around the game – things like new trailers and announcements – but has now extended this to include any discussion.
“The mod team has decided to expand our prior ban on promotion for the Hogwarts game to include the game itself,” the statement read. “There will be no [off topic chat] and no discussion of this game.”
Rowling has been criticised for sharing transphobic views on social media, supporting anti-trans researcher Maya Forstater, writing an essay that included harmful statements and unsubstantiated claims about trans people (that were later debunked by experts), and more.
“After continued internal discussion, we began to start outlining the issues put forth by Rowling and the game in question and each time, and as we discussed it all, we kept coming back to the simple fact that Rowling is not only a bigot but is actively pushing, in her position as a wealthy and famous individual, for legislation that will hurt trans people,” the statement said.
Shadowgate was notoriously deadly. The type of thing that fell very much into the ‘touch anything and you’re dead’ bracket of early adventure games. Getting eaten by sharks, burned to death by a dragon, and the awkward fate of being dragged into space through a shattered mirror were just some of the ways you could cop it on the black and white Apple Macintosh original. Heck, if you lost your torch while exploring, you’d also fall and break your neck within minutes. Happy days! No doubt, then, that you’ll be pleased to hear that the original creators are now making a Shadowgate sequel for PC, more than 35 years after its initial release. Beyond Shadowgate is launching a Kickstarter campaign on February 18th, and promises lots more ridiculous ways to pop your clogs.
I didn’t know that I wanted to be a katana-wielding police officer in a cyberpunk version of Hong Kong who fights a giant spider tank and then eats five bowls of ramen, but that’s what I got with upcoming slasher/shooter Wanted: Dead, and I haven’t been able to put it down. Everything from its bizarre story and tone to its challenging and chaotic combat reminds me of the PS2/OG Xbox era of games from my youth, where experimentation and style was prioritized over polish. And there’s something awesome about that approach that’s captured my attention and kept me smiling ear to ear after over 15 hours with it.
One of the main ways in which Wanted: Dead nails its old school feel is in the high level of difficulty of its fantastic combat. While slashing and shooting my way through armies of enemies, death loomed constantly, as even one mistake could mean instant death for my ninja cop. Even with a squad of up to three NPCs accompanying me, I was usually outnumbered at least ten to one, as enemies shot at me from afar while their friends smacked me with melee weapons in a ruthless attempt to overwhelm me. I was forced to master the timing of my parries, dodges, and counterattacks, and to keep moving in order to avoid my immediate demise. Upgrading my skill tree along the way made things easier, thankfully, as improving my mobility options with the dodgeroll or the sliding blow made me much harder to hit, but even with two skill trees almost completely upgraded it was no walk in the park. Still, it was all worth the trouble when I finally beat a section, triggering numerous kill animations along the way that can only be described as delightfully badass.
In the many cases where I did die, though, I was reloaded back to the previous checkpoint, which, in another old-school touch, sometimes meant a brutal amount of progress lost. Luckily, learning each level and becoming more efficient at massacring my enemies was part of the fun, and I rarely found myself annoyed at having to repeat a section.
When I wasn’t turning faces into potato salad, I spent my down time doing a whole host of bizarre side activities that I still have trouble believing are a part of the same game. I wasted way too much time playing a claw machine, battled it out with my fellow cop in a contest to see who could digest the most ramen, sang karaoke, and even played a fake 1980s arcade game for some reason. These silly distractions weren’t always amazing additions, especially since ramen eating and karaoke are essentially the same minigame, but they went a long way to make me love how unflinchingly goofy it all was.
“There’s just something so odd and PS2-era about it that I couldn’t help but love it.”
There’s also a weird amount of charm to its sometimes janky presentation, which features voice acting that’s almost always stilted and character models that look a bit wonky. But then it’ll have perplexingly beautiful moments like how it occasionally seamlessly transitions to anime or even live-action cutscenes as a strange but effective way of telling its story. There’s just something so odd and PS2-era about it that I couldn’t help but love it, even when the dialogue made my eyes do a 180 in their sockets.
I’ve already played through most of Wanted: Dead, and find it hard to believe something so wonderfully old school exists in 2023. I’ll definitely be recommending it to all of my retro-loving friends when it’s released next month. Stay tuned for our full review soon.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is probably one of the most popular games for speedrunning. One of the many well-known tricks in the game is that Ruto, the Zora princess you need to rescue from inside Lord Jabu-Jabu’s belly, has a hitbox if you throw her. As you can imagine, this can be used for many different things all the time you have her. But you don’t have her for very long — unless, of course, you hack her in.
That’s exactly what Vidya James, a member of Zeldathon, Randomizer runner, and occasional speedrunner, has done. James wanted to know if you could use the Zora princess to defeat Ganon at the end of the game just by throwing her at him. So he hacked her into the practice ROM of the game. The results, as you might expect, are pretty hilarious. You can watch the results above. Who needs the Master Sword when you can just, y’know, chuck a Zora at someone?
Qbasic Gorillas was called for over 20 years.
Shadowgate was notoriously deadly. The type of thing that fell very much into the ‘touch anything and you’re dead’ bracket of early adventure games. Getting eaten by sharks, burned to death by a dragon, and the awkward fate of being dragged into space through a shattered mirror were just some of the ways you could cop it on the black and white Apple Macintosh original. Heck, if you lost your torch while exploring, you’d also fall and break your neck within minutes. Happy days! No doubt, then, that you’ll be pleased to hear that the original creators are now making a Shadowgate sequel for PC, more than 35 years after its initial release. Beyond Shadowgate is launching a Kickstarter campaign on February 18th, and promises lots more ridiculous ways to pop your clogs.