asdasdads Prince

Chinese servers are taking a larger chunk of server shipments from U.S. vendors, Gartner says Fiber optics link servers in data center on Google's campus. Servers are facing the same fate as PCs and mobile devices, with a growing number of them made in Asian countries like China and Taiwan, a Gartner analyst says. Much like PCs and mobile devices, it's cheaper for companies to buy servers made in Asia than in the U.S., and buyers can get servers customized to meet their specific requirements, said Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst at Gartner. Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon, which build mega data centers, design servers in-house and have them made in China or Taiwan. Most of these servers are customized for hyperscale environments, in which companies deploy public and private clouds and deal with heavy Web traffic. The seven largest public cloud providers are going directly to Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers, said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. One of those companies is Google, one of the largest server buyers in the world. Large Chinese companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu also prefer to buy from local companies for security and "nationalistic" reasons, Moorhead said. Those companies are bypassing traditional U.S. server makers Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Dell, Gartner's Hewitt said. Companies ask Asian companies to strip down server configurations to the bare minimum, while U.S. vendors resist shipping stripped-down machines, Hewitt said. The bare-bones configurations don't include extra features like security chips and management engines, Hewitt said. Facebook and Google are also able to bring down hardware costs by buying components in volume. "They don't need the support that the OEM provides. They do it themselves," Hewitt said. Worldwide server shipments totaled 2.96 million units during the fourth quarter of 2015, growing by 9.2 percent from the same quarter a year ago, according to a study released by Gartner Wednesday. Growth was driven by Chinese server vendors Lenovo, Huawei and Inspur Electronics. Those three server makers were ranked behind the top two, HPE and Dell, whose shipments declined. HPE shipped 626,000 units, declining by 2.6 percent compared to the fourth quarter in 2014. Dell shipped 528,000 units, a 0.3 percent decline. In contrast, Lenovo's shipments went up by 5.9 percent to 257,000 units and Huawei's shipments went up by 27 percent to 150,000 units. Inspur's shipments exploded, growing 53 percent to 140,000 units. A group of other server makers shipped 1.26 million units during the fourth quarter, outnumbering the shipments of both HPE and Dell combined. That group included Taiwanese server makers Quanta, Wistron and Inventec. However, HPE and Dell are adapting to the changing trends. For example, HPE is partnering with Foxconn -- which has factories in Taiwan and China -- to make low-cost cloud servers for hyperscale environments. Foxconn also makes PCs, iPads and iPhones. The U.S. server makers are also moving away from the old days of building servers with commodity hardware. The companies are introducing creative server designs and adding value by integrating more storage and networking elements. Customers who need support will also rely on servers from Dell or HPE, Hewitt said. HPE, Dell, IBM, Lenovo are also closely tying software and cloud services to their servers, Moorhead added. This includes Red Hat with OpenStack, Microsoft's Azure HybridCloud and Nutanix, which is bundled in Lenovo servers. Also bundled with some servers is software from VMWare; Dell is in the process of buying EMC, which owns VMware. China is becoming a battleground for server chip makers. Intel's x86 server chip rules the China market, but Qualcomm and IBM are trying to push their chips, based on ARM and Power architectures respectively, into more servers.

Welcome to CsBlackDevil. Enjoy your stay & have fun !

AMD says Zen puts the company on par with Intel on technology and manufacturing. AMD's new G-series chips are targeted at embedded devices. PC enthusiasts prefer either AMD or Intel chips—there’s often no middle ground. But AMD believes its upcoming Zen chips will have crossover appeal for even the Intel faithful. AMD is betting its [CENSORED]ure on the upcoming Zen chips, which are based on a new architecture built from scratch. Zen wipes out inefficiencies that hurt older chips, which performed poorly and damaged AMD’s reputation as an innovative chip maker. There are still AMD enthusiasts, though many have moved on to Intel, whose chips are considered to be more advanced. But AMD is now catching up with Intel on processor technology and manufacturing process, said Mark Papermaster, the chief technology officer at AMD, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference this week. At its peak in the early 2000s, AMD was considered a serious threat to Intel. A shining example is the Athlon 64, the first 64-bit chip for PCs. It caused Intel to scramble to release its first 64-bit chip shortly after. But a series of missteps hampered AMD’s progress. AMD’s chip development stumbled starting with Phenom in 2007, and got worse with Fusion, the first chip to integrate a CPU and GPU. An AMD chip architecture called Bulldozer and its subsequent derivatives were criticized for poor performance. Intel advanced chip designs, for the most part, like clockwork. There were a few delays—for example, for the Pentium 4 in 2004 and Broadwell a decade later—but overall Intel’s dominant x86 chip market share was not hurt. Meanwhile, Zen chips have CPU performance improvements, measured as instructions per clock, of 40 percent, a jump that has not been seen historically, Papermaster said. That’s important for gamers, who eke every last megahertz of performance out of a PC. The first Zen chips will ship for gaming desktops at the end of this year. It will then go to servers and laptops in 2017, and then embedded devices. Recent focus on chip development has been on power efficiency as opposed to raw CPU performance, Papermaster said. Intel’s raw CPU performance gains have been incremental over the last few architectures, mostly in single digits or low double digits, but the power efficiency focus has paid dividends as laptops have longer battery life. On its part, AMD has worked on various improvements to boost Zen’s chip performance. AMD has added simultaneous multithreading so virtual-machine or highly threaded workloads can be balanced. The cache subsystem has been redesigned so tasks can be efficiently fed to execution cores. AMD has also removed bottlenecks that hampered earlier architectures, while maintaining power efficiency and performance. Also, AMD will be on par with Intel on manufacturing technology as Zen chips will be made using the 14-nanometer process, Papermaster said. The Zen chips will be based on FinFET, a manufacturing technology that will bring significant performance and power-efficiency gains. FinFET technology stacks transistors on top of each other in a skyscraper structure, an improvement over placing transistors next to each other. AMD’s chip manufacturer, GlobalFoundries, has caught up on manufacturing with Intel, which also makes 14-nm chips. Intel has historically been ahead of AMD on manufacturing, but recently stumbled with its implementation of the 14-nm process. Intel has been making 14-nm for longer than expected, and that has led to wholesale changes in chip roadmaps. However, AMD’s parity with Intel on manufacturing will be short-lived. Intel will release the first chips code-named Cannonlake, made using the 10-nm process, in the second half of 2017. AMD’s trump card could be graphics, which can be combined with Zen CPUs for fast-growing markets like gaming and virtual reality. AMD is working with headset and PC makers on VR. Intel doesn’t have a GPU as powerful as AMD’s Radeon graphics core. But Intel chips have their own advantages and features. Later this year the company will come out with products based on 3D Xpoint, which is a fast form of memory and storage. The new memory and SSD technology could bring overall performance improvements to Intel-based PCs.

Expectations were low going into this tie-in game for a show whose cancellation after just one season was recently announced, but Gemini: Heroes Reborn refused to completely live up to the cliche by sometimes being more fun than the TV series that inspired it. That's not really saying much, but Gemini at least lets the series die with a shred of dignity. "You can almost see the DNA of Portal and Half Life 2 coiling through the walls of the facility you battle through." A big part of the fun of watching Heroes was guessing which Marvel or DC superhero inspired the powers of this or that character on the show; with Gemini: Heroes Reborn, it's just as entertaining to figure out which beloved game inspired the settings and action. In one corner, you can almost see the DNA of Portal and Half Life 2 coiling through the walls of the facility you battle through (and the graphical fidelity here is probably closer to the standards of 2004 than 2015). Mirror's Edge reveals itself in the first-person platforming sequences, and BioShock almost screams its presence when the hero injects herself with a syringe that grants her glowy hands and telekinesis. Gemini: Heroes Reborn is thus every bit as derivative as Heroes and the doomed Heroes Reborn, but much like them, it sometimes manages to deliver some fun in its own right. It certainly captures the feeling of the show well, right down to the mediocre acting and the jarring attempts to inject millennial slang into the script. "Check out these dope smart glasses," one character says barely three minutes in. "So baller!" another exclaims right after. Ugh, gag me with a spoon. New Blood Wisely, though, Gemini doesn't burden itself with the expectations that portrayals of the new or old crop of heroes would bring; instead, the action centers on the hitherto unknown Cassandra, an unflappable sort who's trespassing on an abandoned facility in 2014 in order to find out what happened to her long-lost parents. The lore never gets much deeper than that, unfortunately, apart from references to series favorites like Hiro Nakamura scattered about the debris. The approach works, though, as there's a faint glimmer of that wonderful sense of discovery that characterized Heroes' first season while Cassandra learns to harness her newfound powers, even if the plot rarely grows more complex than her search for a captured friend. "These are powers that prove useful in combat and puzzle-solving." Focusing on a familiar character (other than Sylar) would have done Gemini a disservice, as being limited to a single power probably wouldn’t have produced combat as generally enjoyable as this. As it is, Cass is practically a goddess, and that allows for some great moments in a mostly bland game. She slips back and forth in time to both 2008 and 2014 with the ease of someone shooing flies away (and that power comes with a nifty ability to see what's going on in the other time period without leaving the current year), and she can speed up or slow down time to boost her own speed and make otherwise impossible jumps. Later, she learns telekinesis about as easily as Neo learned kung fu, which leads to satisfyingly Matrixy sequences in which she stops bullets in mid-air and sends them flying back into her enemies' faces. These are powers that prove useful in combat and puzzle-solving, which often focuses switching between states of the facility to avoid locked doors and rubble. It's actually a little disturbing to see how easily Cassandra slips into murder—for a long stretch, there's little evidence the guards she fights are doing much more than performing basic sentry duties at a remote facility with an unclear purpose. She slaughters them without blinking an eye, long before she’s given reasonable provocation. But gosh, you know, it's kind of fun. Once it's clear the guards aren't merely out to question some snooping kids, in both 2008 and 2014 they come at Cass in assortments that demand specialized techniques. She can't fling heavily armored guards across the room, for instance, she has to pelt them with their own ammo or smash them with the occasional desk. Nothing hits her so hard as the slippery melee fighters in 2008 who bounce around like ninjas—she needs to slow time to avoid their batons. In the best battles, Gemini: Heroes Reborn demands you use multiple such tactics in quick succession, and it's kind of exciting to get through such bouts without a scratch. "Why does a god need to sneak?" Tutorial pop-ups encourage you to use the time-hop ability for stealthy tactics – guards exist in both the 2008 and 2014 versions of the facility, but rarely are they at the same place in their different times. On the other hand, stealth rarely seems necessary or even rewarding, as some areas can't be cleared without killing the same local schmucks you're ostensibly trying to avoid. For that matter, on Normal mode Cass might as well add near-invulnerability to her suddenly impressive resume, as bullets seem to affect her about as adversely as accidental tumbles into small rose bushes. Why does a god need to sneak? Cassandra Smash It's much more fun to pull filing cabinets from 2008 and smash them over the heads of the devoted 2014 security staff, who sometimes crumple a tad too hilariously with ragdoll physics that clash with the overall attempt at gravitas. It devolves into a mindless shooter of sorts, deemphasizing the more interesting puzzle solving, but never resorting to giving you actual guns. Once you get the hang of it, the smashing, smashing, smashing and a healthy dose of jumping puzzles is good, cathartic fun. In that light, Gemini: Heroes Reborn ends precisely when it should. The whole mess is over in a mere five hours, which is about the time that the dance of time travel and telekinesis starts to grow a tad stale. It's just enough time to leave some goodwill after seeing one too many bugged NPCs running mindlessly in circles, or after the graphical sameyness of the facility and its outdated textures started to wear down. Gemini: Heroes Reborn isn't without a few visual surprises, particularly since the the switch between past and present states imparts some silent stories, but only in the opening minutes does it give us something to enjoy besides grim, secretive corridors. But there is, at least, something to enjoy here, which is more than Heroes Reborn itself could usually say. The Verdict Gemini: Heroes Reborn is short, drab, and derivative, but it nevertheless generally remains fun throughout its five-hour running time. In its best moments, it mixes familiar elements from beloved platformers and puzzlers to create an experience that, at least for brief moments, captures the essence of the show.

The best part about Fortified is its pulp sci-fi personality. This mash-up of the tower defense and third-person shooter genres plays like the film Mars Attacks! brought to life, complete with Cold War-era alien goons with fish bowls on top of their heads and whirring flying saucers of the sort that made the Earth stand still once upon a time. Sadly, the worst part about Fortified is that this personality is its best part. Gameplay takes a backseat to the congenial story and setting about an alien invasion at around the same point in history when Marty McFly took his mother to the prom. The limited number of bad guys, maps, and overall fresh ideas makes this shoot-em-up enjoyable only in quick, limited doses. But the concept sure is a winner, at least if you like cheesy sci-fi from a time when everybody liked Ike and feared the Red Menace. Mars has invaded the U.S.A. with a host of flying saucers and clunky robotic minions. Only you can stop them, by selecting from one of four sci-fi archetype classes--the studly Captain, bubble-helmeted Spaceman, fedora-clad Agent, and a flying Rocket Scientist--and heading into missions to both personally gun down the extraterrestrial hordes and set up various defensive structures that aid the cause. Characters seem straight out of a 1958 movie, evoking an early Silver Age comic book feel akin to that of the great Jack Kirby. This old-timey atmosphere is bolstered even further with eerie notes and tunes with action-movie bombast. Fortified is loaded with iconic classic sci-fi tropes. Here comes a Juggernaut boss in a scene that could have been on a Mars Attacks! trading card circa 1962. Basic game mechanics feature few surprises. Fortified matches are played either solo or co-operatively with up to four players in the main campaign on a dozen missions that unlock in sequential order. They take place on generic city streets that play up the ‘50s Americana setting, which makes for relatively bland level architecture only somewhat jazzed up with treats like iconic movie marquees. Your objective is always to protect a rocket base or two from martians entering the map from one or more points in numerous waves. Defense is handled in two ways. You run around blasting the martians yourself and also set up allied units in standard tower defense style to stem the alien tide. Money and unit limits are the only governing factor to how you set up these defenses, although you can make adjustments during the breaks between alien waves such as adding new structures and selling those that aren’t working out. Characters gain experience, too, which provides adventure points that are used to unlock new weapons and structures between missions. Unfortunately, not much is done with Fortified’s novel premise. Weapon design nicely underlines the cheesy sci-fi theme, with ray guns that look like ray guns and special gear for each character like the Spaceman’s freeze rays and the Rocket Scientist’s jetpack. Each character also has a unique “Heroic Power” usable for limited periods of time, such as the Captain’s air strikes and the Spaceman’s freezing Cryodome. But even with these specialized attributes, characters don’t play all that differently from one another. There isn’t much nuance here, as every character has just slightly different ways to kill Martians. Long weapon reload times also get in the way of the budda-budda-budda action. All this delay really does is add a sense of frustration and prevent you from getting into a Martian-slaughtering groove. The one saving grace is that you always have two weapons, and can swap them out when reloading. Fortified's art design is straight out of early Silver Age Marvel Comics. Strategic depth isn’t very pronounced, either. Tower defense structures are all pretty useful, and there is a good range of unit types. You can choose from soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades, gun turrets, exhaust vents that freeze or ignite foes, and so forth. Yet even though you seem to have a fair number of options here, all your defenses function pretty similarly in that they always serve to straightforwardly destroy or at least damage and delay Martians. There isn’t much planning required when deploying them, as you always need to establish basic choke points where the aliens enter the maps, usually using weapons that slow down or gradually damage foes up front (like the freeze and fire exhaust weapons) with backing heavy fire from rocket troops or artillery. "But once you’ve seen the first few missions, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The only thing that really changes is the complexity of the Martian assaults, the size of the maps, and how much you have to protect." Martian enemies come in just a few basic flavors. Most are standard ground grunts, like insectoid drones and various robots inspired by classic sci-fi movies and TV shows. One model looks almost exactly like Robby the Robot, complete with those magnifying glass thingies on both sides of its glassy head. Other models offer a little more innovation, such as rolling balls that turn into death machines on stilts, floating bombs, and iconic 50s-styled flying saucers. Nothing seems to pose any sort of unique threat that makes you dramatically change strategies or units deployed, however. All of the Martian waves need to be beaten with massive firepower, so, again, you don’t need a lot of thought here to emerge victorious. That said, the maps can be very challenging, especially when playing solo. Even the default Normal setting is extremely tough after you get about midway through the campaign. But once you’ve seen the first few missions, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The only thing that really changes is the complexity of the Martian assaults, the size of the maps, and how much you have to protect. Special weapons like freeze rays and Tesla coils let you really give it to the Martian invaders. You can make things tougher by using the Hard or Impossible settings, both of which limit the amount of time you have to make adjustments between alien attack waves. Still, neither alters the feel of the game in any appreciable way. The same goes for the Invasion mode of play. This side game offers incessant Martian attack waves, but is hamstrung by being too similar to the main campaign and because it features just three different maps. Co-op play is probably the way to go here in both the campaign and in Invasion, both because of the difficulty and because the addition of teamwork in online match-ups the tactical element and adds more focus to the shoot-em-up action. With that said, playing with three buddies doesn’t change the character of the game all that much, so killing Martians remains somewhat monotonous. Fortified feels like a really good start, not a fully realized game. A lot of the pieces are there to make an enjoyable, exciting shooter with solid amounts of action and strategizing--especially when it comes to the lead characters, Martian invaders, and the zippy, frenzied co-op play--but the one-note level design and tactical limitations don’t provide enough reasons to keep coming back for very long.

Going home again. Editor's Note: Six months after its Xbox One release, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition has come to PC for Windows 10. And although the game's core is intact, complete with controls and level design that raised the bar for third-person shooters in 2006, the technical issues are far more pervasive on PC: we played on two different rigs, and both exhibited their own disparate problems. Playing on an Nvidia GTX 980 Ti made Gears of War look gorgeous, with textured debris and iridescent lighting piercing the dust of Marcus Fenix's crumbling world. But the framerate is liable to dip extremely low, especially when enemies are more numerous. Playing on a GTX 970, on the other hand, runs much more smoothly, for whatever reason--but pop-in textures disrupt Gears of War's visual flow, while screen tearing disrupts your aiming during crucial firefights. Microsoft informed us it's aware of some performance issues and is working on improved driver support--we'll reevaluate the game when the updates are instituted. When Gears of War: Ultimate Edition runs smoothly, it's worth playing--it set a precedent, 10 years ago, for third-person action games in its wake. But in the remaster's current technical state on PC, it's harder to recommend the trip home. Late in the story of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Marcus Fenix kicks down the front door of his childhood home. He finds the wallpaper peeling, the furniture in disarray, and a fine layer of dust blanketing every surface. This return to a dilapidated family home is an echo of the task at hand. Many members of developer The Coalition worked on the original 2006 Gears of War, and this remaster is the studio's first release before it launches Gears of War 4. And although it's created a faithful homage to the game that started it all, some of the furniture is still out of place, and the corners continue to gather dust. Ultimate Edition removes the haze of the past. Gears of War: Ultimate Edition lets us cheat time, and travel back to 2006, when we first saw Fenix emerge from that shadowy prison cell. Because of the updated visuals, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition fills in cracks and polishes edges to preserve our ever-so-fragile nostalgia. I played Gears of War on Xbox 360 recently, and the differences here are apparent: Ultimate Edition removes the muddy textures, shiny faces, and bleak environments of the original, replacing them with detailed landscapes and brighter hues. The Coalition remade every cutscene, and even though I've seen them before, the new 1080p skin makes it feel like the first time. The developer has reversed the game's aging process, making Benjamin Buttons out of every musclebound character. And Ultimate Edition doesn't just change things on a visual level--it includes a variety of content and design changes. For one, cooperative play is now drop-in, drop-out, and you can join in the middle of a chapter. Ultimate Edition also borrows from the trilogy's sequels, allowing separate difficulty settings for individual players. Presenting: Marcus' soul patch, nine years later. There are also five late-game campaign chapters that only ever made it to PC, following Marcus and Dom in their trek toward a train station through abandoned factories, all the while evading a gigantic Brumak. This towering, bipedal monster creates a sense of tension throughout, culminating with a boss battle that out-scales any situation prior. These chapters fit well in this modern recreation: Ultimate Edition is a reminder of how horror-driven the series was at the beginning, with haunting corridors and dim basements giving way to shrieking monsters inside every air duct. This is a story about a ragtag group of heroes, long before we saw them amidst the chaos of an all-out war. They don't have much depth to them here, and mainly serve as vehicles for masculine jokes and Gears' ubiquitous macho sense of humor. Nonetheless, this more personal campaign serves as a reminder of when we first met them. But despite how great Ultimate Edition's campaign looks and feels, it hasn't completely erased the original version's blemishes. Throughout my time on the streets, and in the locust tunnels of Sera, my AI partner often made things difficult for me. Dom Santiago deliberately wandered into the shadows when the objective was to stay in the light; he, walked into the path of my gun, obscuring my view numerous times; and often, when my progress relied on the AI pressing a button or turning a switch, nothing happened, and I had to reload my checkpoint. Ultimate Edition returns to the series' horror roots. The latter was a frequent problem throughout my campaign. The first Gears isn't always obvious about where to go next, and the remaster has kept that aspect intact. I reloaded checkpoints a total of five times before I reached Act Five, all because cutscenes wouldn't trigger, or a wall wouldn't crumble on cue. It's one thing to lose progress because of death; it's another to lose it because of the AI. Replaying the first Gears campaign has also highlighted some of its bigger design flaws. Almost all of your progress relies on simply killing every enemy, and considering it's the first entry in the franchise, there isn't a whole lot of variety in opponents. You enter a room; you clear it; you proceed. There are rare brilliant moments--luring the berserker outside so as to pummel it with a satellite blast, for instance--but by and large, most of the campaign is a matter of killing a very specific number of Locusts. Couple this with the fact that certain opponents didn't attack until I searched extensively for them, only to find them stuck behind cover, and the later chapters became a slog. But playing with a friend has always been my favorite way to play Gears, and in this modern version, that sentiment remains the same. My friend was more reliable than Dom's default AI, and the branching paths of the trilogy's early missions still create emergent situations where flanking is just as important as accuracy and timing--and killing waves of enemies. The Gears franchise has always catered to a cooperative experience, and the remaster is no exception. "Ultimate Edition is a reminder of how far the series has come." These tenets ring true in Ultimate Edition's multiplayer as well, and this is where the remaster truly shines. The Coalition made the upgrade to 60fps, resulting in a much smoother, more fluid experience than I had on Xbox 360. There are also new game modes and a brand new map to play on, but these additions paled in comparison to the nostalgia trip I experienced on my favorite maps: Gridlock, Tyro Station, and Depot, to name a few. All of my muscle memory came back in a matter of minutes. I hip-fired the gnasher shotgun, perfected active reload times, and dodged between cover as if it was nine years ago. The multiplayer still transitions between measured approaches and frantic firefights on a whim, displaying a dynamism that has aged well. Gears of War Ultimate Edition doesn't just look like my nostalgia remembers--it also feels like it, too. In returning to the game that sparked one of Microsoft's more prevalent franchises, members of the Coalition kicked down their own proverbial childhood door. The return trip might have revealed a few more cracks than we remembered, but it also serves as a shield for our nostalgia. And as remakes go, that's worth the journey home. Trailer (1:21) :

The Raspberry Pi Foundation on Monday announced the availability of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B for US$35, the same price as the previous model. It is the second major upgrade to the board in just over a year. The hardware upgrade boosts the single-core processor of the original Pi to a faster, more capable quad-core chipset in the Pi 3. The current model is based on a 64-bit chipset that runs faster than the Pi 2's 900-MHz quad-core, 32-bit ARM Cortex-A7-based hardware. The credit card-sized computer board adds WiFi and Bluetooth support. The machine better handles Web browsing and office tasks home users need. It opens up even more possibilities for the Internet of Things and embedded projects, according to Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading. He launched the first Raspberry Pi version fours years ago. "The new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B offers a higher level of performance than any other Raspberry Pi board on the market," said Claire Doyle, global head of Raspberry Pi at element14. It "allows customers to develop specific applications and build new projects. We can't wait to see what customers will do with it," she told LinuxInsider. Changing Usage Landscape The upgrade to the Raspberry Pi hardware is a big deal for several reasons, said Jeremy Bray, owner ofCyberspace Fortress. The built-in support for WiFi and Bluetooth means users no longer have to buy third-party dongles to get those services. "That means you are not taking up the Pi's four USB ports to get that functionality, so you can now use those ports for other things. When it comes to business applications, I have seen businesses customize them for their own uses. ... It is really just up to the business and their imagination for how it can be used in their business," he told LinuxInsider. The Raspberry Pi will be even more suitable for advanced computer training in classrooms, noted Craig Brown, president at PicoCluster, an educational platform based on Raspberry PIs. "The bump from 900 MHz to 1.2 GHz allows for faster processing. This is particularly welcome for clustered application learning and certainly any application or learning environment that we're running. This also makes it much better suited as a desktop replacement in classrooms and homes," he told LinuxInsider. The hardware could use more upgrades, such as options for 2 GB of RAM and Gigabit Ethernet, even if it came at a higher price point, but that may be beyond the scope of the manufacturing plan, Brown noted. "Overall, this is a great way to upgrade our clusters while giving us a chance to reduce costs," he said. Business Beneficiaries IT service businesses looking for lower costs in providing support and services to remotely monitor, manage and maintain their IT environments will benefit from the Raspberry Pi release, according to Ian Newman, CEO of IN NYC IT. His company uses the small footprint of a Raspberry Pi in clients' offices instead of a laptop or small desktop to monitor operations. "We foresee placing the Pi in locations where clients report WiFi issues. We could use the Raspberry Pi 3 to collect data on the client's wireless infrastructure and possible interference, all without interrupting users, increasing their productivity and our response and resolution times," he told LinuxInsider. The built-in WiFi/Bluetooth and improved 1.2-GHz, 64-bit CPU makes the Pi 3 easy for hobbyists to start developing projects on, noted Benny Estes, product manager at myDevices. The same makers that are tinkering in their homes are also using the Pi to rapidly prototype solutions for applications for their businesses. "This tool provides companies with the ability to quickly vet an idea or improve a process at a fraction of the time and cost, with little risk. As the Pi continues to improve, it will be used in production-ready solutions and will not be limited to just prototyping," he told LinuxInsider. Pi Specs The Raspberry Pi 3 runs a Broadcom BCM2837 chipset on a 1.2-GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 CPU. It has an Ethernet connector for 10/100 with a maximum throughput of 100 Mbps and provides storage on a MicroSD card or via USB-attached storage. Its graphics are from a 400-MHz VideoCore IV multimedia with full HDMI port, and the system memory is 1-GB LPDDR2-900 SDRAM. Audio support is a combined 3.5-mm audio out jack and composite video. The hardware includes a camera interface (CSI) and display interface (DSI). The Pi board can play 1080p video at 60 frames per second. It sports a new power supply rated at 2.5A5.1V. Earlier boards used a power supply rated at 2A5V. Unlike previous boards, the Pi 3 boots directly from a USB-attached hard or pen drive instead of from an SD card. Similarly, Pi 3 supports booting from a network-attached file system using PXE.

v2 - Text, Border, Effect.

Welcome to CsBlackDevil. Enjoy your stay & have fun !

Welcome to CsBlackDevil. Enjoy your stay & have fun !

As happy as I was to meet a new party member, I admit I frowned a bit when I met Maneha. She's a barbarian, and thus a member of the only playable combat class that wasn't already represented by a named NPC companion. Her appearance thus marks a filling of the blanks; a sign that Obsidian's long saga is rushing toward its end with The White March: Part II. The snowy wastes of the White March, too, once felt like a blank slate, but now they've proven host to a memorable struggle that leaves few questions unanswered. With this seemingly final expansion, such elements come together to cement Pillars' status as one of the most memorable RPGs in recent memory. High praise, you might say, from someone who wasn't exactly fawning over the expansion's first half (and my opinion on that hasn't changed). It's just that the second half does everything so much better. Set seemingly months in the [CENSORED]ure, it kicks off by chronicling the consequences of improved fortunes at the hamlet of Stalwart in the wake of the White Forge's relighting, and ends with actions and sacrifices that feel almost as momentous as those capping the events of Pillars of Eternity proper. Though a touch formulaic, this is the stuff of great fantasy: the awakening of a forgotten evil rumbling in the bowels of the earth and the emergence of an army that threatens to kick aside civilization like a beachside sandcastle. The New Faces of Evil It doesn't hurt that the main antagonists are fun to look at, sort of like half-metallic, half-fleshy Groots with hammers and spears standing in for hands. As imposing and heavy-hitting as these giants are, though, they're not the main challenge in combat here (nor, somewhat hilariously, is the towering final boss). That honor mainly goes to the monkish followers of the goddess Ondra, who rove about their cloisters in balanced flocks with powerful casters and dodgy acolytes who demand careful planning with every pull. And all that says nothing of the varied battles with foes like tentacles and angry flowers that fill in the spaces between. In contrast to its forebear, Part II is tightly paced (almost to the point of overlinearity), and it wisely minimizes visits to familiar areas in favor of exploring new ramshackle garrisons, menacing caverns, and gloomy temples built among the bones of a dead god. The enemies are creepier, and the lore more fascinating. I particularly enjoyed Maneha's brief personal quest, which takes the Watcher's motley comitatus into a gloomy abbey where she needs to offer tokens representing memories people would like to forget. Her voice acting tragically leans more toward "academic advisor" than "coastal raider," but I nevertheless found her dark personal quest one of the more engaging ones Pillars has offered so far. A crop of endings tailored to your choices rounds out the expansion's final moments, granting meaning to your actions over the journey’s roughly 10-hour runtime and the increased level cap to 16. "The enemies are creepier, and the lore more fascinating." Happily, the journey needn't be as taxing as it was in the past. The release of Part II coincides with Pillars' latest general patch for the game proper, which brings numerous tweaks as well as a fun scenario in which you have to fight for your stronghold in the face of a local lord's violent objections. But more to the point, the update also introduces "Story Time," a new difficulty setting that takes its cues from the Normal setting and, to use Obsidian's language, "biases the math heavily in the player’s favor." It still presents challenge in spots, but it comes closer to being a true "Easy" mode than what Pillars had before. For players who just want to enjoy Pillars' rich tale and flip through the lore without mastering spellbook juggling, it's a godsend. Pillars until now has relied almost exclusively on vicious combat encounters requiring intense micromanagement to the point of tedium, and as my five deaths to the same merry band of no-name cultists attests, that's still true of the higher settings. The price of The White March: Part II's pacing is that the whole affair feels a bit short. I spent perhaps more time than I should have plodding through the expansion's first half, but I got through Part II in less than 10 hours. It left me hungry for more. Virtually everything here neatly serves the purposes of the overall narrative, which means there's little cause for exploration or, indeed, even the opportunity. But taken as a whole, it's ultimately worth it, and if this is your first time to Pillars club, you should do the smart thing and buy the two parts together rather than separately. As with so many predicaments in high fantasy, it gets better. The Verdict The White March: Part II expansion for Pillars of Eternity boasts better pacing and lore than its humdrum predecessor, but at the cost of a running time that feels somewhat inadequate. A welcome new Story Time mode helps dull the force of the brutal combat though, and memorable settings and enemies make this an expansion to savor. Where I can found this game ? Pillars of Eternity - The White March Part II is available on Steam. Navigate to Pillars of Eternity - The White March Part II on Steam for further info.

Shakes and Fidget is a fun fantasy RPG satire and an award-winning role-playing game at the same time! Sounds crazy? Over 50 million players make it one of the most popu..lar online games in the world! Customize your own comic book hero and conquer the top slot of the Hall of Fame! It’s not an easy task with real players standing between you and victory in the PVP arena. Together with your pals from your guild you become stronger, more invincible, and find lots of epic loot! Accept quests, complete exciting adventures, level up, collect gold, obtain honor, be "overpowered" and become a living legend! Shakes and Fidget doesn't have high end graphics or deep game play, but it compensates with easy yet challenging combat system, complete randomness and a great sense of humor. Shakes and Fidget is a browser based game, and that’s one of the main advantages of the game. You start by choosing a class and a race, there are 8 different races and three classes, Warrior, Scout or Mage. Each class has it’s own attributes, weapon of choice and synergy with other races. Character creation is accompanied by various humorous descriptions about the different races and classes and is quite amusing. The game’s concept is pretty simple, you improve your character by getting better equipment, improving your stats by using gold and increase your level by gaining experience. There are three main areas. The tavern is the place where you’ll find the various quest givers. You have a limit of 100 “thirst for adventure” each day, that limits the amount of quests you can do as each quest consumes a specific amount of thirst. Each quest giver will offer three quests with different rewards. Each adventure has experience and gold reward, and occasionally an item, and you need to choose which one to take according to the rewards and thirst it consumes. There are many strategies here, as you can either choose to go on a quest to get a specific item but with reduced experience and gold, or go on a high gold adventure with very low experience reward. This is where your personal preference comes into play, allowing you to tweak your character as you see fit. Each quest has a chance to give a mushroom, a rare type of currency that is usually obtainable by spending money and support the game. Gold you collect during your adventures is used to either purchasing potions and items in the shops, or to purchase stats for your character. However, as you gain levels, the price for those valuable stats increases drastically so reaching those high stats can take some time. Acquiring a good equipment composition is a tough and never ending challenge. Many of the items you find in game have random stat bonuses, so acquiring the right gear that suits your character can take quite some time. You can also find monsters to battle in dungeons. First you’ll need to gain the key to the appropriate dungeon from a quest when you reach the appropriate level, then the dungeon will be open and you can fight through 10 gruesome monsters with increasing difficulty. Dungeon monsters give great experience and gold, and have a chance to drop an epic item. you can only enter a dungeon once every hour, so best to plan your time accordingly as you can’t do multiple things at once (go on adventure and fight a dungeon for example). A major aspect in Shakes and Fidget is it’s player versus player system. There is an overall ranking of all the players in the game, and an Arena. you can enter the arena every 10 minutes and it will find you an opponent to beat, or you can go to a player profile and attack him. If you won, you’ll receive gold and honors that will increase your ranking. Defeat however will result in losing honors and gold, so be careful who do you fight. Mushrooms you purchase and find through the game can be used in various places, they can increase your thirst for adventure, cancel the delay between dungeons and arena and purchase the best mounts. Mounts are a special item that will reduce the amount of thirst each adventure consumes. There are 4 different mounts, cheap ones that cost only gold and one pricey one that costs a hefty amount of mushrooms. While you’re away or finished up your thirst for the day, you can go working as a city guard, earning gold according to the duration of time working. This is great as in higher levels you will need plenty of gold to upgrade. For the social side, Shakes and Fidget features a nice guild system, that by investing gold and mushrooms can increase the gold and experience rewards from adventures and also allow fighting other guilds and going on a special guild dungeons, fighting epic monsters together to gain special bonuses. Shakes and Fidget is a cool browser game, spiced with humor and fine game play. Building and leveling a character is fun and rewarding, and it requires a small time investment for great amusement. Screenshots Trailer Where I can found this game ? Shakes and Fidget is available on Steam. It is free to play. Navigate to Shakes and Fidget on Steam.

In most games, you’re supposed to guide your character out of harm’s way, but in the hostile world of Mushroom 11, self-destruction becomes the only way to survive. This fluid cycle of decay and rebirth feels consistently great to play and mesmerizing to watch, but it's the plethora of clever ways it’s applied across Mushroom 11’s seven stages of puzzling and platforming that makes it all the more exciting to learn and master. "Manipu..lating this shapeless alien blob can be simple, or as difficult as juggling water." The most important thing to understand about movement in Mushroom 11 is that you’re controlling a static thing – a glowing green amoeboid-like organism that can’t walk, run, or jump of its own accord. But despite the presumed disadvantage, its versatility is surprisingly vast: trim it from behind and it’ll snake forward; split it in half and eliminate one side, and the other will regenerate back to its original size. Manipu..lating this shapeless alien blob can be a simple affair in one sequence, or as difficult as juggling water in the next, but the best part is its logic is always consistent – learning the ways of this weird life form is part of the fun. Like Putty In My Hands Once you manage to grasp all the little things, like the fact that you can slice it up and use its different parts for the same puzzle, or what shape is needed to gain the most air after launching off a ramp, or how to sculpt it just right so that it becomes a functional cog in a machine, it starts to feel as natural as any other basic movement in a game. But it never gets old. By the end of stage one, I know which part of the cell to erase and which direction to erase it in to propel it forward the fastest. By stage 2, I’m learning how to build it upwards, a tower of alien fungus balanced perfectly to reach high places. By the later levels, I’m riding on rockets, rolling objects across acid pits, climbing over retracting platforms above deadly drops, and I’m doing it all with a speed and mastery that Mushroom 11 seems built to accommodate. "There’s a balance between quick reflexes and slower, more precision-based puzzles." Even with all its dynamism, Mushroom 11 keeps a manageable pace. There’s a solid balance between challenges that demand quick reflexes and the slower, more precision-based puzzles. Thanks to well-placed checkpoints and quick loading times, Mushroom 11 also streamlines the trial-and-error approach, allowing failure to feel like a fun learning process rather than a punishing chore. Fungus Among Us At the end of each stage is a boss fight, a culmination of everything you’ve learned in that level into a dynamic and visually striking challenge against some seriously gruesome and otherworldly creatures. These ended up being some of the most interesting and surprising sequences in all of Mushroom 11, but were often over too quickly. Mushroom 11 certainly isn’t easy, especially past level 4, but there were times when my journey through its world began to feel predictable. I’d encounter a new puzzle and know almost instantly how to solve it, and from there it would just be a matter of nailing down the technique. This was an enjoyable process in itself, but more puzzles with multiple solutions, where maybe the most obvious maneuver wasn’t always the correct one, would have been a neat way to allow me to get more creative on my own terms. Bringing additional life to each stage in Mushroom 11 are collectibles in the form of small neon insects and plants that are absorbed on impact. These can be hidden away in optional side-areas that usually lead to dead ends, or out in the open in hard-to-reach places, encouraging further exploration of the terrain and adding a welcome new layer of intrigue to otherwise linear levels. There’s more to each level than just what’s in the foreground, too. Rich environmental clues in the backdrops of each stage offer plenty of material for the observant player to contemplate on their journey. While the events of the story itself are invitingly open to interpretation, the ending is surprisingly clever all on its own, and does an excellent job wrapping up the experience while still summoning you back for more. "Mushroom 11 understands the cyclical nature of games; of trying, failing, and trying again." And I will go back for more, thanks to Mushroom 11's immense replayability. I anticipate many more hours (my first playthrough took me about seven) perfecting my journey through Mushroom 11’s mysterious landscapes, using its built-in timer to speed run its toughest levels, finding those last few lingering collectibles, and fine-tuning my every move in an attempt to achieve a perfect playthrough. And if I fail the first time, then I’ll just keep trying. Mushroom 11 understands the cyclical nature of games; of trying, failing, and trying again. It has faith in your resilience to get right back up, even after death - to treat your own destruction as an opportunity to grow again, stronger, more intelligent. The Verdict Mushroom 11 captivates with its ability to make such a strange, unique mechanic feel so incredibly natural, but it’s in the clever applications of this system of motion that it hits its highest points. It’s an endlessly creative and exciting puzzle game that manages to make your failures just as fun and important as your accomplishments. Where I can found this game ? Mushroom 11 is available on Steam. Navigate to Mushroom 11 on Steam for further info.

Awesome explosions: Just Cause 3’s got ‘em! The story would have you believe all of this spectacular demolition is about liberating the picturesque island nation of Medici from a mustache-twirling dictator. But considering it doesn’t even care how many civilians you blow up in the process, we all know what it’s really about: ridiculous over-the-top action, physics-based comedy, and impressive destruction in a vast sandbox world. In those areas, Just Cause 3 is at the top of its game. Watch the first full hour of Just Cause 3 above. The map is absolutely huge (reportedly its three islands span 400 square kilometers, but I didn’t have a tape measure on me to confirm), and how you choose to get from its sunny beaches and forests to its snowy peaks is a big part of the joy of it. There’s fast travel if you’re into the whole brevity thing, plus arcadey-feeling cars, planes, boats, and more, but learning to use Rico Rodriguez's unique combination of grappling hook, parachuting, and wingsuit to gracefully zip around is the most challenging and rewarding. There’s a real skill to it, and mastering techniques such as the no-parachute, no-wingsuit Spider-Man-style swinging takes some practice. Double-Dog Dare "It constantly pits you against your friends list to create countless tiny challenges." I was driven to experiment with those methods because Square Enix’s servers are always tracking just about every move you make, popping up with alerts when you’re climbing the leaderboard in stats like longest freefall or highest parachute climb, constantly pitting you against your friends list to create countless tiny challenges. It even pops up with a notification when someone beats your score, seeming to ask if you’re going to let that aggression stand. It’s also routinely hilarious, because all of this acrobatic movement can easily end in Rico performing a face-first slam into the ground or a building or a tree. That always makes me smile through a cringe, and especially spectacular ones made me glad I had ShadowPlay running in the background. Watch us tour the islands with the wingsuit above. Combat shares in that violent slapstick humor because it gives you so many absurd tools that enable creative destruction. You can, of course, simply shoot guys in run-and-gun fights, but if you put in a little extra effort you can, among many other things, grapple-kick them, string them up to the nearest tall building, tie them together and conk their heads, or tie moving vehicles to the ground to create a spectacular end-over-end flip and crash. Another favorite of mine is running up to an unsuspecting soldier, slapping a sticky explosive charge literally on their face, backing away, and hitting the detonator. It’s doubly hilarious if you’ve unlocked the rocket-booster bombs, because the victim’s last few moments are spent writhing on the ground as the thruster throws them around before it explodes. Wonky physics goofs like an enemy jeep launching through the air after a minor collision are generally a great time, especially since realism isn’t exactly the goal here so much as having crazy things happen. Rico’s also unbelievably durable to anything other than being inside a vehicle when it explodes, so having a whole building collapse on top of you is funny rather than tragic. It was only when those things didn’t work out in my favor that I was irked, such as when I had a fighter jet air-dropped to my location (you can do that once you’ve unlocked it, because Just Cause 3 is all about instant gratification) only to have it spontaneously explode before I could get in, as though it was damaged during shipping. Blow The Roof Off The Place "You can rain destruction down on everything in your path even while floating on your parachute." Blowing things up is what Just Cause 3 does best. Though not everything in this world is destructible (typical buildings are impervious to damage, for example) enough that Just Cause 3 has some of the best and most empowering explosions this side of Red Faction: Guerrilla. Your main targets are exploding stuff like fuel tanks and power generators, which are clearly marked in red and scattered liberally around most towns and military bases, but you can also collapse flimsy-looking structures like guard towers, gas stations, and, even more spectacularly, huge bridges. Combined with a good number of extremely potent weapons, ranging from machine guns and grenade launchers to an airstrike-targeting laser and a shoulder-mounted nuke, you can rain destruction down on everything in your path even while floating on your parachute. And of course, you can hijack virtually any enemy vehicle to obtain infinite ammunition. It’s a recipe for great moments. Watch us liberate a military base above. Enemies bolster the illusion of being an over-the-top action hero by being as dumb as bags of rocks. They’re slow to react, usually terrible shots, and will often drive their vehicles into each other or over cliffs. That works out, because there are a ton of them and they spawn out of nowhere, so even with Rico’s ridiculous durability and recharging health, you can still get overwhelmed if you don't recognize when it's time to retreat. Also, a shout-out to the one advanced soldier who pulls some action-hero moves of his own, spinning around to dodge you John Woo-style as he fires pistols from both hands. "Liberating the many towns, bases, and outposts across dozens of provinces on Medici’s three large islands becomes repetitive." Just Cause 3’s main problem, which arises from its absolutely massive map, is that liberating the many towns, bases, and outposts across dozens of provinces on Medici’s three large islands becomes repetitive. You blow up everything with red on it, take over the police station, maybe kill a few specific enemies, knock over a statue of the dictator, then raise the Rebel flag, and you’re done. Most liberated villages reveal uninteresting challenges like race courses for cars, boats, and planes, and those in turn unlock some hit-or-miss new abilities for Rico. Then you do it again, and again, and again, sometimes as forced padding between story missions. Military bases are more fun to take over, since many of them feel more custom-built and unique - they include locations like naval bases, air strips, military depots, army-controlled mines, and sometimes include heavy defenses. Plus, they’ll throw a lot more heavy military hardware at you, which gives you the opportunity to hijack powerful tanks, helicopters, and jets. They’ll also usually unlock more interesting challenges, such as rounding up precious ore stones using an oversized magnet you tow around or driving a car loaded with explosives into a cluster of enemies. Down With... Whoever While I give Rico and his crew credit for occasionally tossing out a self-aware joke that got a chuckle out of me, Just Cause 3’s story is a paint-by-numbers action plot where some characters know they’re in a lighthearted parody while others never figure that out. Specifically the villain, who seems like he’s trying his best to be legitimately unsettling but falling short, takes himself far too seriously to fit into this wise-cracking game. It’s thin, too, and even developer Avalanche’s writers seemed to be getting sick of justifying these missions by the end of the roughly 30-hour run. “You’d think he’d have learned after the last two times,” Rico says as he and his cohorts plot a final assault in the exact same way they blew up the last two major targets. Watch the official launch trailer above. Performance, unfortunately, is an inconsistent issue. On one of the two PCs I played on (a Core i7-980X with a GeForce GTX 970 and 8GB RAM) I saw generally great frame rates interrupted by some major slowdowns and stuttering… but the other PC (Core i7-4790K, GeForce GTX 980, and 16GB RAM) was almost flawless. On both I saw occasional crashes, and some frame rate problems arose when huge explosions went off. I also wouldn’t recommend playing without an SSD, because load times can be exceptionally long when using a hard drive. The Verdict Just Cause 3 is a playground where you get to be a physics-defying force of destruction, and its loop of liberating dozens of towns across this enormous scenic world would’ve gotten old much quicker if the combat wasn’t so full of options for free-form mayhem. Getting the most out of it requires some creativity and tolerance for performance bugs on your part, so come expecting to make at least some of your own fun. [Editor’s Note: This review was conducted on the PC version, which we obtained from Square Enix first. Our early impressions of the console versions show that it’s identical in content, but we’ve seen significant performance problems, including extremely long load times and significant frame rate issues that will require further testing to fully evaluate. Our PlayStation 4/Xbox One review will follow later this week.] Where I can found this game ? Just Cause 3 is available on Steam. Navigate to Just Cause 3 | Steam Store.

I’m out of shape, but too broke to go to the gym because I need to stock my fridge. Without food, I don’t have energy to visit my girlfriend, who gets upset when I focus my attention more on my job than spending time with her. Punch Club, like any good life sim, mimics the harsh realities of reality well, but the delicate balance of great role-playing systems that makes this street-fighting simulator more badass than my usual day-to-day. Unfortunately, becoming a champion is a tedious affair. Punch Club combines my favorite part of Persona’s life management with a surprisingly deep set of RPG options as you bring your mundane macho man into the martial arts spotlight. Eating healthy, hitting the gym, going to work, grocery shopping, and making friends all contribute toward the ultimate goal of annihilating every other guy who enters the ring, whether it’s on the books, in the street, or in a shady fight club. It’s a premise that can become tedious, but devising an efficient routine breeds a special sort of deserved satisfaction. It’s an intensely hands-on kind of game -- that is, ironically, until you actually start fighting. I enjoy micromanaging my fighter’s stats and skills, accomplished by focusing on certain workout routines and upgrade paths, because my progress is clearly shown when I enter a fight. Like a fighting coach, I dictate the important stuff outside the ring – what moves he should use against this opponent, thing two, thing three – but when my guy goes in, it’s up to his AI to use his abilities. Sometimes that’s a gamble. Punch Club isn’t a sweet science, relying more on random elements and behind-the-scenes math than skill-based play. Winning, even when you’ve outmatched an opponent, isn’t a certainty, which is sometimes frustrating. The flip side of that is that it feels great to clobber someone who outclasses you in basically every way. Part of that gratification comes between rounds. Unlockable active abilities -- like a kick that crushes enemy stamina, or a low-accuracy but powerful punch -- occupy a limited number of slots, which brings in a smart, if simple, strategic layer to Punch Club. I loved adapting to my opponent's strengths and exploiting their weaknesses. Notice their stamina’s low? Unleash with a more aggressive round than last time. Not enough HP to survive the next round? Maybe change out a risky attack for a block or dodge skill. Success isn’t guaranteed, but Punch Club, like a good fight, earns its tension from not knowing for certain how the athletes will execute. These systems are much more complex than its appearance would have you believe. Developer Lazy Bear Games’ gorgeous pixel art and catchy chiptune music bring a beloved Super Nintendo retro aesthetic, which plays well with the silly but inconsistent tone. The dialogue is intentionally dumb, usually to emphasize a Ninja Turtles or ‘80s action movie in-joke. This is a world reliant on references, which is a shame in that it never has a personality of its own. "I lost interest in playing Punch Club repeatedly despite enjoying it quite a bit." A few of its jokes genuinely had me in stitches -- a Brad Pitt character homage to Fight Club’s Tyler Durden sent me on a quest to visit his twin brother, a knock-off Mickey from Snatch. It’s cute to deliver pizza for a Casey Jones character. But ultimately, Punch Club gains very little from its pop-culture wink-winking to Pulp Fiction, Jay and Silent Bob, and Bloodsport. Any shred of cleverness goes toward someone else’s joke, so there’s nothing particularly interesting, memorable, or likable about this world. Over time, the routine of a training regimen and living the life of a fighter wore me down. I found myself stuck in a rut of doing the same repetitive activities until I could chip away at the long-term goal of building a home gym, or increasing my strength stat enough to survive a particularly challenging brawl. Sometimes this lasted hours. That Punch Club’s protagonist can level downover time if you don’t keep doing certain activities cripples progress, forcing you toward exercise not only for improvement, but to avoid deteriorating. Expensive upgrades can prevent degradation beyond a certain point, but it feels like a waste when there are far more seductive upgrades. "Punch Club, like a good fight, earns its tension..." After hours of entertaining, hard-won success, falling into a grinding rhythm is severely demotivating. I lost interest in playing Punch Club repeatedly despite enjoying it quite a bit, purely because I struggled to free myself from the cyclical monotony I’d found myself stuck in. I changed course, focusing on training and relationships instead of fights, which were easier as I’d fallen in rank due to skipping matches. Eventually, and out of nowhere, Punch Club doubled down on inconvenience, forcing me to take on two opponents in one league fight. The payout was huge, but not easily earned. Punch Club became a constant, demoralizing struggle that shattered my enthusiasm. I grew intensely bored, frustrated, and eventually bitter. Enduring the grind gradually got me out of my hole, but after 20 hours -- the vast majority of which spent not fighting -- with plenty more ahead, I’d have sooner started over and played differently from the beginning than finished my first playthrough. I decided to stop playing altogether. The Verdict Part Persona, part The Sims, and part Fight Club, Punch Club is deceptively deep, with a rewarding life simulation and RPG systems. It’s bursting with personality, (though regrettably very little of that is its own) reliant on bygone eras and pop-culture references to establish its lighthearted and fun tone. Punch Club is tedious at times, thanks to an unfortunate level-down systems that artificially extend the road to the championship with grinding repetition, but its upgrades, stat growth, and more compensate with satisfying depth. Where I can found this game ? Punch Club is available on Steam. It costs 9,99€. Navigate to Punch Club | Steam Store.

Nuclear Throne is pure chaos: an explosive, gun-slinging romp through a post-apocalyptic wasteland that marries the frantic energy of bullet hells with the tactical risk assessment of a roguelike. Boasting a mean arsenal of weapons, from standard revolvers to plasma cannons, it packs a big enough punch to draw in fans of fast-paced run-and-guns, but also demands a patience and strategy that rewards slow and methodical players too. With a cast of colorful characters to choose from and a simple leveling system that grants fun new skills as you progress, there’s no shortage of unique approaches to play… which is good, because coupled with Nuclear Throne’s unforgiving level of difficulty, you’ll probably be playing a lot. A game of Nuclear Throne can be over in an instant, but because it rewards you so often, with frequent weapon pick-ups and fancy skills, every failure feels like a fresh new beginning: an opportunity to learn and grow your character in interesting new ways. Ordered Chaos Part of that is owed to its excellent balance of randomness and familiarity. Like any action-roguelike hybrid (see: The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky), Nuclear Throne’s levels, enemy spawns, and item pick-ups are all procedurally generated. Themed levels grant a degree of consistency, so while you may never get the same layout twice, you’ll still have a general idea of what to expect each time you enter a new zone. This is super valuable for planning ahead, which plays a major part in mastering Nuclear Throne’s challenges. It may be a shoot-em-up, but rolling into battle with even the biggest guns blazing will only get you so far. "Rolling into battle with even the biggest guns blazing will only get you so far." The bulk of Nuclear Throne’s strategy manifests in its engaging skill system. Downed enemies drop radioactive energy, or rads, which act like experience points. If you’ve cleared a level by annihilating all enemies and earned enough rads to level up, you get to choose one mutation out of four before moving on to the next area. Some skills are pretty basic, adding things like more HP and ammo drops, while others might build off of your character’s existing ability, buff certain weapon types, or make enemies weaker. It’s super satisfying to pile on your favorite mutations over the course of a playthrough until you have that perfect build, but part of overcoming Nuclear Throne’s difficulty means experimenting with the constantly shifting tweaks that each new skill provides. With so many mutations to choose from, you might not always be given the options you want, which is part of Nuclear Throne’s exciting unpredictability. It forces you to change up your playstyle, work with the tools you’re given, and continue to adapt, ultimately making you a better player without holding your hand. "Despite its difficulty, Nuclear Throne is extremely accessible." Despite its difficulty, Nuclear Throne is extremely accessible. Uncomplicated controls, a simplified leveling system, and clear goals make it really easy for casual players to jump right in and know what they’re doing. For committed players, there are hidden areas and shortcuts to be unlocked, rare weapons to be found, and secrets to be discovered, and while the complexities of Nuclear Throne’s action may not seem as immediately deep as similar games like Spelunky, it still has a lot to offer for those with the time to seek it out. Unfortunately, Nuclear Throne does suffer from occasional crashes, which is a huge pain in a game where progression can’t be saved or reloaded. It didn’t happen frequently enough to put a dent in my positive experience, but I was also lucky to never have it happen while I was going up against the last boss. The Verdict Nuclear Throne might not be a super complex game, but it is a compelling one. Its action is brutal, over-the-top, and rewarding; a hyperactive arcade-style shoot-em-up with enough dynamism to keep me captivated moment to moment, but a strong sense of strategy to give me something to invest in over longer playthroughs. Whether you want to sink your time methodically making it to that elusive throne or play in quick, punchy bursts, Nuclear Throne is an excellent choice either way. Where I can found this game ? Nuclear Throne is available on Steam. It costs 11,99€. Navigate to Nuclear Throne | Steam Store.

As a quiet person working in a loud, open-plan office the idea of packing it all to go live on a farm appeals to me greatly. Stardew Valley has given me that opportunity, albeit in a cutesy, pixelated form. It’s very much like a Harvest Moon game. You get your farm up and running by first making a patch of land useable. Then you plant, tend and ultimately sell crops to build up a stable income. What starts off as a few parsnips soon becomes a steady supply of beans and potatoes, and then fancier products like eggs and mayonnaise. You can supplement your earnings by heading out into the forest to forage for berries and leeks, or go fishing. Everything you do consumes energy so you’ll have to keep an eye on how much work you do or you’ll risk collapsing from exhaustion. There’s a town nearby filled with people to befriend and bargain with. If you’re feeling particularly frisky, you can even woo some of them by giving them gifts. Unlike Harvest Moon games where the local town seems to be filled with anime tropes and [CENSORED]s, Stardew Valley’s residents feel like they’d all actually live there. Everyone is a little eccentric from living in such a small, isolated place, and some even feel depressed and unable to escape. The disheveled Shane with his dirty jumper and four-day stubble is particularly convincing. He spends most of his time drinking in the bar wanting nothing to do with me—behaviour I’d expect from a grown man feeling trapped and trying to hide something. Over time more of the world opens up. Bridges are mended, revealing new areas to explore. After being given a sword I found a mine filled with monsters, which in turn meant I could gather crafting metals with and monster parts to sell. After this I finally found the crafting tab in the menus, where you can craft customisation options. Tucked away between the stats pages and themap, crafting is one of the most fun elements of the game. With the right materials you can make objects such as fence posts and scarecrows, and place them in your lot. Farm customisation is a joy. My lopsided hoeing and patchy groundwork was turned into a professional-looking garden just by adding a stone border and a path. When I finally built a coop and an area for my free range chickens to roam in the whole place really started to come together. As you till the soil you earn experience to improve your skills, though leveling makes little noticeable difference to your proficiency. When you can upgrade your tools later anyway this RPG-like layer seems unnecessary. There are a few other niggles: my mouse cursor would randomly reset itself to the center of the screen during events, and it feels too easy to accidentally miss a festival by not meeting the right conditions to trigger it properly. The menus are a little odd, too. A bit more polish and better signposting would go a long way. Stardew Valley is definitely rough around the edges, but that didn't matter when I was fishing on a little pixelated pier, or making friends with a homeless person in a tent. Its imperfections never damage that feeling of gentle escape to the countryside. They never made me love my farm dog any less, or made me want to put down my hoe and return to the office. I might be a long way off getting an actual farm, but Stardew Valley makes for a good start. Where I can found this game ? Stardew Valley is available on Steam. It costs 13,99€. Navigate to Stardew Valley | Steam Store.

The Flame in the Flood hits a little close to home. In the fall of '98 I watched as the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers near my home swelled out of their banks to drown miles of the surrounding countryside, carting off whole houses and trees with the same ease that ants carry away crumbs of bread. The waters cut us off for days, and least 31 people died. Up until now I don’t think I've ever seen a game properly capture the despair and (yes) beauty of those days, but this visually attractive procedurally generated survival sim comes frightfully close. It’s hardly the toughest survival sim around, and it’s hobbled by a needlessly complicated menu system, but in those wonderful moments when it finds its flow, it’s a game to remember. Survival games don’t often lean heavily on hope, preferring instead to focus on the humdrum drive to simply last until the next day. But The Flame in the Flood succeeds in part because it’s a game about pushing us toward a promisingsomething, placing us as it does on a river that’s jumped its banks and engulfed the world. In the little islands dotting the river and in the banks beyond, dark conifers and grasses thrive on land once suffocated under cement. Rabbits, wolves, and bears evade rent in crumbled apartment buildings, all while the occasional fiddle or harmonica strain suggests the American spirit need not die, even if our cities do. The Flame in the Flood rushes us through all this on the current of a destiny that’s never exactly manifest. I could think of far less appealing apocalypses. Along the River Bank It’s ostensibly the story of a young woman named Scout and her dog Aesop, although the campaign (such as it is) never really offers much elaboration beyond that aside from specific NPCs and the hunt for a mysterious radio signal downriver. Most of the fun’s in the Endless mode, which happily chucks the story bits and focuses on the core gameplay of riding the currents while attempting to steer toward camps and wilderness areas. There, you hunt on foot for the supplies necessary to either keep starvation and injury at bay or to repair and upgrade your humble vessel. It’d be difficult to overemphasize the importance keeping the raft in passable shape. Scout’s raft starts out as an unwieldy beast that lurches, sloth-like, even over placid waters and it barely allows control over rapids. Experience tells me that’s pretty accurate as far as piloting a real raft goes, but I did nevertheless find it much easier to handle with a gamepad in place of the keyboard. "I’ve died of dehydration, sleep deprivation, drowning, and even from the jaws of a wolf when, moronically, I chose to fight rather than flee." Good control is essential, as there’s no going back. Once you’ve passed a spot on the river, it’s gone for good, a design choice that adds a welcome dose of tension. I still find myself frowning at the time I died of starvation because I chickened out while trying to cook food at an existing campfire near a nasty boar, reasoning that I’d have another chance at the next island. The next one was a long time coming. Too long, in fact, as the berries I’d munched on weren’t enough to get me there. A new encampment marker had barely popped up on the screen before Scout slumped over dead on her raft, her hunger meter drained entirely. That’s to say nothing of all the other times my negligence led to Scout's demise. I’ve died of dehydration, sleep deprivation, drowning, and even from the jaws of a wolf when, moronically, I chose to fight rather than flee. The Will to Survive The good news is that the actual business of staying alive isn’t all that complicated so long as you can find the supplies. Indeed, some jarring gameplay questions pepper the scenarios, such as why I have to scrounge for drinkable and initially non-potable water on islands when there’s a huge river rushing right around me. (It does, after all, let you gather rain.) But otherwise, the recipes compiled in the journal make life as easy as it can be, showing me how to make a rabbit snare with some sticks and ropes, how to skin the rabbit with a flint knife I made, and how to cook the meat over a fire. In these moments, The Flame in the Flood plays more like a traditional survival game, although with recipes that mercifully keep things simple while still delivering appreciable depth. Sometimes you’ll find components like wood and string in old trunks or in the rusted guts of long-dead buses; at other times you’ll have to make them, generally by picking up things like reeds and flint, and making everything from clothes to medicine with them. Sometimes you’ll even get stuff like arrows from the few other survivors, a creepy bunch who always seem to regard me and my little dog as potential meals. "In time, even The Flame in the Flood succumbs to the monotony of mere survival." It’s managing all this stuff that ruins some of the appeal. Scout has a laughably small backpack with just 12 slots, although she gains six more spaces by tossing some extra items on the dog. She can store the least essential supplies on the raft, but even it only allows for 12 extra slots. The trouble? I ended up spending most of my time in the menus managing the precious junk I scavenged, transferring some items to Aesop or eating some food on the fly in order to make room for nuts and bolts—pretty tedious stuff. Though I can accept that it’s part of a mini-game that’s designed to force me to think carefully about what to take, The Flame in the Flood makes these moments more time-consuming than they need to be, forcing me, for example, to transfer stackable items I’ve just picked up to Aesop’s inventory where the rest of such items are, even though the mutt never once leaves my side. It's little things like this (not to mention an unfortunate tendency to crash, particularly on the PC version) that slowly wear down the charm after hours on hours: in time, even The Flame in the Flood succumbs to the monotony of mere survival. The journey may be more important than the destination, as they say, but the strength of that saying usually rests on there actually being an end to begin with. There's never one in Endless. But does that mean I regret my time with this unique vision of the end of the world (or at least the country)? Not for a moment. The Verdict The Flame in the Flood is a beautiful procedurally generated survival sim that gains a welcome sense of momentum from the need to stay on the move. Its unwieldy menus and tendency to crash ruins some of the fun, unfortunately, but not enough to diminish the strength of the hopeful, riverbound journey at its core. Where I can found this game ? The Flame in the Flood is available on Steam. It costs 19.99€. Navigate to The Flame in The Flood | Steam Store.

Pony Island is not a good game. It’s an awful game, in fact. You gallop from left to right, jumping over gates and blowing gusts of wind at troublesome butterflies. Clear gates for long enough and you’ll reach the end of the level, earn some EXP and get to do it all over again. On the other hand,Pony Island, the game that challenges you to escape from this gate-jumping hell, is superb. It’s a self-aware indie gem with an anarchic sensibility, where anything can happen. The very opposite, then, of the game within this game. Jump, little pony! Much of what makes Pony Island so intriguing and cool should be left for you to discover for yourself, so I won’t go into too many details. Instead, I’ll give you the broad brushstrokes. “It’s presented like an ‘80s Macintosh nightmare, on a smudged, smeared monitor..." You’re trapped within an old school computer system, with seemingly no choice but to play Pony Island, and surrender everything you have to it. Get out of the game, however, and you can access the machine it’s running on, and start exploring different user accounts and files, and encounter other characters via a messaging program. It’s presented like an ‘80s Macintosh nightmare, on a smudged, smeared monitor, with chunky, era-specific graphics that are largely monochrome but bleed into colour to create an unsettling tone. Colour is also used to highlight interactive elements or to create a deliberate contrast to this stark world. It’s clever design, as is the whole “Pony Island” game concept, which works precisely because it’s so at odds with the wider game’s brooding, sinister tone. Colours are used sparingly and to good effect. You actually wind up playing a lot of Pony Island in various forms over this two hour experience. It’s deliberately repetitive, but also always serves a purpose, especially as the game’s designer is the central figure in the narrative. Pony Island is his domain, where he attempts to exert his influence, whereas the sequences in-between – where you’re exploring and interacting with the computer system – are where you have the most agency. These sections are wonderful: I never knew what to expect, and Pony Island threw a number of ingenious curve balls at me. Pony Island may be chaotic and unpredictable by design, but its visual language is crystal clear where it counts. I quickly learned, for instance, to look for the portals that will take me to a puzzle and progress the game. Each of these puzzles lets you actively hack the system. As such, they’re – for the most part – presented as backend code, where you rearrange a set of symbols to mani[CENSORED]te a program. There’s generally only one solution, so there’s no actual hacking, but the mechanics are sound, and these vignettes fit Pony Island’s aesthetic really well. It’s particularly cool seeing nods to story elements, or hints to solutions lurking in the code. The puzzles aren't hard, but they're excellent. The puzzles evolve neatly over the course of Pony Island, and while their complexity could certainly have been pushed a little further, they’re at about the right level to ensure you’re always moving forward. They also serve as a backbone of “traditional” gameplay for this rather avant-garde experience. The Verdict I greatly enjoyed the two or so hours it took me to play through Pony Island. This is a game that delights in toying with your expectations and in breaking the fourth wall, in revealing its sinister yet playful world, and in building up a compelling antagonist and telling an ambiguous story. Pony Island is about as punk rock as they come. This game is available in Steam. You can buy it just for 4,99€.

When it comes to shooter sequels, the delightfully animated and colorful Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 shows just the kind of growth I like to see. Like a big juicy brain, there’s lots to chew on with a variety of single-player and multiplayer modes, maps, and customization options. While the simplicity and ease of use of the original quartet of characters on each side will be attractive to series newcomers and can certainly hold their own in battle, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2's biggest attraction are the six interesting new classes and their fun abilities. On the Plants side, Kernel Corn brings much-needed heavy firepower to the floral troops with a rocket launcher, gun-assisted rocket jump, and airstrike abilities, balanced out by his extremely slow movement. The orange-based Citron is almost the exact opposite; he’s very defense-based, with a temporary shield ability and a ball form that can get him out of action fast. The magic-using Rose is the real wild card, as she can slow down enemies, turn them into goats, or even very briefly turn into an apparition with a powerful attack. While Rose has a bit higher of a learning curve, she can be pretty useful once you master some of her weirder attacks. “If the Imp lives long enough, he can summon a powerful mech." As for the Zombies, there’s the melee-focused Super Brainz, who has extremely potent up-close attacks to compensate for underwhelming projectiles, and the Imp, who has extremely low health but – if he lives long enough – can summon a powerful mech every few minutes. If there’s one weak spot amongst the new crew, it’s Captain Deadbeard. He has a decent cannon attack, but his other abilities are done better by other troops and his primary weapon isn't quite up to snuff with the rest of the new recruits. Feeling Wilted Then there’s the original set of four characters on each side, but they’ve been in short supply in online matches thus far for good reason; short of the healer class, there’s little beckoning a return to Garden Warfare’s founders when the new classes have so many more interesting things to do. Across the board, Garden Warfare 2 could be a bit more welcoming to newcomers; instead of proper tutorials introducing each new skill, there are only brief videos without any text or dialogue to demonstrate, and it doesn’t give you much of an idea as to how they’re actually best used. If you're a complete newcomer, good luck – there are no such intros for the original Garden Warfare warriors. Spruce Up Your Produce “I play an extra match here and there to earn enough for a more promising pack." For the entire cast, the character customization lets you expand their look and abilities via random cards in purchased packs (with earned in-game currency), and that’s is the constant carrot that's kept me playing Garden Warfare 2. Whether it's new attire like a jiffy pop hat for Kernel Corn, a harmonica for Citron, a Batman-like mask for Super Brainz, or entire character variants that offer neat tweaks to weapons or abilities (like a witch doctor Rose who shoots poison or a Deadbeard variant with a rocket launcher you can detonate in midair), I've found myself playing an extra match here and there to earn enough for a slightly more promising pack. The fact that the 75,000 coins to purchase the priciest packs that guarantee character variants can be earned within two hours of hard-fought battles makes the in-game economy tough but fair. With almost every standard shooter mode under the sun already a part of the PVZ experience and carried over from the original and its DLC, Plants vs Zombies 2’s truly new features are more about making sure Plants and Zombies can enjoy everything equally. There's now a Plant-focused version of the highly competitive capture-and-defend mode Gardens and Graveyards called Herbal Assault, while the prize flower of Plants vs. Zombies – the wave-based co-op of Garden Ops – can now be played with Zombies under the name Graveyard Ops. Allowing us to use all these diverse classes in every mode is a great improvement. Grow It Alone “Just about every mode can be tackled with AI, and in split-screen co-op." While it’s great fun to go online and join in the often-crazy 24-player war between the eponymous factions, just about every single mode can also be tackled with AI partners and enemies, and in split-screen co-op. Even better, you can customize the layouts of each team and apply crazy modifiers like never-empty weapons, double speed, or crazy knockbacks that send you across the map when hit. The AI is pretty good, though it’s not the best at handling Imps - on higher difficulties they usually die long before their mechs are ready. The go-it-alone experience is best in the wave-based Ops modes, where you can spawn three teammates and hot-swap between them to take on the randomized enemies. Garden Warfare 2 never needles you to switch up characters, but doing so is the best way to learn new ways to fight outside your preferred Plant or Zombie. Aside from that, Garden Warfare 2 has some underwhelming mission-based campaigns for each side. Each mission is a slight tweak on a multiplayer mode, save for the crazy final mission. I don't want to spoil it, but the insanity of the new wave-based combat style is a wonderful capper that I was glad to jump right back into, even if it is a weird thematic shift. While the less-dynamic missions are still a good way to earn some coins and learn the ropes before heading online, I’ve had more of an impetus to keep playing thanks to the constantly changing active quests that offer up bonus XP multipliers and extra currency. Whether it’s taking out a specific enemy type a certain amount of times, notching kills with particular abilities, or just winning in a specific mode, I’ve found myself using the active quests as inspiration to try mix up my playstyle. The Verdict Under its attractively bright and cartoony art style, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 has a great amount of modes and customization options to enjoy, whether alone against the AI or with online allies and enemies. The interesting abilities options of the six new character classes gave me something to sink my teeth into, and the customization options are a great reward for playing outside my comfort zone. The sheer amount of enjoyment in this full garden will keep me in the war for some time to come.

Luck is a fickle mistress, both for people who play games and people who make them. A little luck in the right places and a game can be tense, gripping, and delightfully unpredictable! But let Lady Luck have things all her own way, and suddenly you've got something that feels random, cruel, and maybe even a little mean-spirited. Something like Tharsis. Tharsis takes place on a star-crossed mission to Mars where, immediately after the tutorial, the spaceship is shattered by a meteorite, two of the crew are killed, and all the food is destroyed. With a ship falling apart around them, the four surviving astronauts try to patch failing ship modules long enough to reach Mars. It's a good setup, though the interstitial cutscenes will get old fast as the try-fail-repeat patterns of Tharsis begin to take their toll. "The resource-allocation aspect of Tharsis its strongest point." Cascade of Failure At the start of each turn, new problems strike different modules of your ship, and if they aren't fixed, they will inflict a different kind of harm on your ship or your crew. A failing flight control system could threaten your ship's hull with three points of damage, and if your hull reaches zero it's game over. On the other hand, a fire in the medical bay might do two points of health damage to every crewmember on board your ship, and as crewmembers die, completing the mission becomes much harder (if not impossible). Just choosing which problem to solve would be hard enough, especially as events carry over from turn to turn if you don't fix them, but there are some other priorities to consider that make the resource-allocation aspect of Tharsis its strongest point. Each module has unique abilities that can help out your crew and better prepare them for problems down the road. Roll three of a kind in the greenhouse module and you will have food to feed your astronauts, which grants them extra dice with which to solve problems. Roll two of a kind in the medical bay and the astronaut working there will be fully healed. On top of that, a module can't have more than one thing wrong with it at a time, so sometimes it's easier to leave a minor problem in place because something worse might happen if you fix it. All these factors create a lot of satisfying opportunities for planning and prediction, and if Tharsis weren't such a fundamentally sadistic game, it could’ve been a lot of fun to manage all these competing priorities. "Tharsis just seems to say, "You made some good calls, but now you lose." The problem is that there are times that Tharsis just seems to say, "You made some good calls, but now you lose." I've had quite a few games where things were going surprisingly well: my crew were mostly healthy, my ship's hull was in okay shape, and I only had one minor problem dealing some easily handled damage each turn. Then, at the start of the new turn, Tharsis would toss up a set of unbelievably bad events that instantly dealt enough potential damage to destroy my ship, and then make them almost impossible to fix in time to survive to the next turn… when a new round of disasters would strike and start piling on more harm to my beleaguered crew. Rolling in the Deep Ship The way you attempt to solve all these problems is by rolling some lovingly animated virtual dice. They make a weighty sound as they roll around on the screen, and move with a slight slow-motion effect that shows them teetering between the number you need and the number that dooms you. Each roll becomes a dramatic event as you wait to see whether disaster or a miracle will strike. The decision-making comes about as you send crew members, each with their own pool of up to five six-sided dice, into modules to repair them. Each malfunction on the ship has a target number, reduced by allocating dice to it. So if the medical bay is starting to fill with smoke and the target number is 22, and your mechanic rolls a five, three, and six, you could reduce that target number all the way down to eight. It’s easy enough to understand. But there's another catch – a final punch to the kidneys from Tharsis. Each problem also creates the potential for bad things to happen on your crew member's roll. An example: I had an event that dealt two points of hull damage each turn, with a target number of 22. Not such a big deal to fix… except that on rolls of four, five, and six my crew members would be injured or their dice destroyed. So you can have multiple events going on at once where full half your dice rolls results in bad things happening, and sometimes it's the good rolls that are the most punishing. In this instance, only rolls that could save me would also doom me. Dice, by the way, don't replenish between turns unless you feed your crew, which is pretty hard to do when you have problems breaking out all over your ship. Hard, that is, unless you eat dead (or freshly killed!) crew members, which fully replenishes your dice pool but also freaks out your surviving astronauts. Time… to Die "When things did go well, I felt like I'd gotten lucky rather than I'd done something clever." That's why it so often felt like Tharsis was just burying me in unsolvable problems, and all the decisions of the past three or four turns were meaningless because a giant set of "screw you"s were on their way the entire time. This also means success are less satisfying. When things did go well, I felt like I'd gotten lucky rather than I'd done something clever. Sometimes terrible things happened and I couldn't do anything about them. Sometimes they didn't, and things were fine without much input required. I could skew the odds a bit, but nowhere near enough to affect what Tharsis' random events did. Any luck-based game will occasionally create moments where defeat feels cruel and arbitrary. I play a lot of wargames on PC and tabletop, and there's nothing worse than watching your best tank get blown sky-high because your opponent hit a one-in-50 shot with a bazooka from halfway across the map. But that's just one event in a system whose outcomes are still mostly the product of decision making. The Verdict Tharsis can never stop reminding you that you don't have control over its interstellar disaster, just the illusion of it. Every time I watched my ship fall apart, and every time I watched new events propagate across the ship that were completely impossible to stop, I felt like, win-or-lose, Tharsis was having all the fun. Trailer (0:55):

There really aren’t very many games about time travel. Sure, there are a lot of games that feature time travel as a tool or plot device, but there aren’t many that explore its implications, attempt to dissect the nature of it or highlight the science on which it might be based. That’s odd, because time travel is a fascinating subject that’s rich in theoretical conundrums, like “If I travel back in time to re-eat the delicious sandwich I just had for lunch, will I feel hungry or full before I tuck in for a second time?” Happily, Remedy Entertainment, creators of the under-appreciated Alan Wake and the over-the-top neo-noir Max Payne and its sequel, is rectifying this (sans sandwich conundrum) with its upcoming third-person story-shooter, Quantum Break. Of course, the elephant-sized DeLorean in the room is Remedy’s introduction of several, 22-minute live-action episodes threaded throughout the course of the game. We’ll get to those later but suffice to say that they work better than you might expect, for the most part at least. The same can be said for the pseudo-science behind Quantum Break’s time travel and time-manipul-ation powers. The idea is this: Paul Serene, played by Aiden “Littlefinger” Gillen, has created a device that is capable of generating a localised black hole. The gravity well of this black hole is such that when you move within a certain proximity to it, time and space become one and the same and so to move through physical space is to also move through time. The circular chamber built around this black hole generator enables someone to traverse it clockwise or anti-clockwise, which is the equivalent of travelling forward or backwards in time. To demonstrate this to long-term friend and Quantum Break’s protagonist, Jack Joyce (Sean “X-Men” Ashmore), Serene programs the machine to take him two minutes back in time, but just before he enters the chamber, his fu-ture self from two minutes hence, steps out of the machine having already used it to travel back in time by two minutes. This, and another early reveal concerning the shady Monarch Solutions, is exactly the kind of time travel scenario that’s just complicated enough that it seems like it could kind of make some plausible sense if your brain would just stop hurting long enough to be able to figure it out. Indeed, Remedy consulted with a former CERN scientist to ensure that the basis for its time travelling exploits adheres to current thinking in the field of theoretical physics, which seems to have helped the opening couple of hours of Quantum Break feel smart, rather than hokey. The same can be said of the combat heavy parts of Quantum Break too, which kick off soon after the story-focused first act depicts the inevitable moment when things start to go a bit wrong. Clearly, nothing good comes of messing with black holes and so now time is officially broken, although that does also mean that both Paul Serene and Jack Joyce have been granted time-manipul-ation powers and, for reasons to be explored, the two old friends are soon set against one another. Playing as Joyce, your powers are unveiled in quick succession and include the vanilla Time Vision, which highlights enemies and pick-ups and looks all too similar to Assassin’s Creed’s Eagle Vision; Time Dodge has Joyce dashing short distances and triggering a slow-motion bullet-time-style aim; and Time Stop, which freezes enemies caught within its radius in addition to temporarily stopping the path of your own bullets, allowing you to stack several shots atop one another so that when time unfreezes enemies are hit with magnified force. The layout of many of the environments suggests Quantum Break should be played as a cover-based shooter, but in reality cover need only be utilised intermittently, when you’re low on health. Outside of this time, it’s all dashing to and from enemies, freezing time to stack damage and creating a stasis shield to give yourself some breathing room while the cool-down timers of your powers recharge. Combat is empowering – you’re effectively a superhero after all – but throughout the first four acts of the game you rarely feel overpowered, as groups of enemies work together to take you down. Furthermore, enemies who have some time-based abilities of their own are hinted at for later on in the game and so you’re encouraged to make canny use of your powers in combination with one another to get up close to enemies, rather than become over reliant on sticking to cover and taking pot-shots from afar. Combat in the opening hours of the game is entertaining and will hopefully have the potential to become increasingly engaging as the game progresses and you level up Joyce’s powers. There’s also some light puzzling sections that revolve around time manipul-ation, although these feel more contrived in the way they ask you to suspend your disbelief that some objects are susceptible to your powers while the vast majority are not. “While the overarching narrative is fixed, the path between essential story points varies significantly" Like Joyce, Paul Serene has also been granted time powers, but his include the ability to glimpse outlines of events that will take place in the fu-ture. It’s this ability that fuels Quantum Break’s Junction Points - moments throughout the story where you’ll have to make a choice that will affect both the live-action show and fu-ture game play options - and provides the key to how game and live-action show intersect. At the end of the first chapter of game play, you briefly take control of Paul Serene and have to make a choice on how to deal with events concerning Monarch Solutions, which essentially comes down to whether to take a hard-line against public detractors of Monarch Solutions or instead try to win them over with a charm offensive and slick PR campaign. Unlike many such choice and consequence moments in games, here you get to see the overarching effects of your choices thanks to Serene’s ability to glimpse the [CENSORED]ure. It’s an interesting dynamic that effectively sees you role-playing two different characters as you consider how Paul Serene might be thinking versus what effect your choice is likely to have on Jack Joyce. The choice you make with Serene at this first junction, choosing either “Hardline” or “PR” paths, directly affects the fate of certain characters in the show who can then become important NPCs later in the game or be missing from it entirely. Remedy describes the split between game and show as the former telling the story of Jack Joyce, while the latter shows events from the perspective of inside Monarch Solutions. Having replayed the Junction Point to view the outcome of both choices and how they affect both show and game, it’s apparent that while the overarching narrative remains fixed, the path taken in between the essential story points can vary significantly. The show itself looks to have been produced to a reasonable standard and wisely focuses on the strength of acting from familiar faces, Aiden Gillen, Sean Ashmore, Lance Reddick and a strong cast of supporting characters, rather than being too ambitious with the special effects. While one or two of its characters seem ready to lapse into predictable cliché at any moment, the first episode is generally well written and played with the premise in interesting enough ways to want to see more. Crucially, it doesn’t feel like the whole thing is just a live action cut scene and nor is there a jarring disconnect between the show and the digital representation of the actors, thanks in large part to the voice and performance capture working in conjunction with Remedy’s own animators. Quantum Break represents a bold step for Remedy Entertainment and a high profile console exclusive for Microsoft. Having spent several hours playing and re-playing the opening four acts of the game, exploring its time manipul-ation powers and collecting pieces of its optional storytelling items, I’m certainly more encouraged than I had expected to be. The show offers an interesting take on the trans-media experience, which has not been very well represented in the past, and looks like it could be capable of some smart uses of its central themes. It may have suffered numerous delays during its development but Quantum Break could yet turn out to be worth the long wait. Trailer (1:40):

Little green army men were a staple in many kids' toy boxes, including my own. They were iconic and fun, and they came to life in two hugely po[CENSORED]r ways in the '90s: Pixar's Toy Story and video games. Developer Virtual Basement tries to feed off this nostalgia in The Mean Greens - Plastic Warfare. It works at first, with green army men coming to life and running into battle on a cluttered arts and crafts table. However, The Mean Greens fails to offer an experience that lives up to the rose-tinted memories of imaginary battles with the toys that inspired it. Plastic Warfare is a multiplayer third-person shooter set during a war between tan and green army men. Being a tiny toy in a big world makes for a lot of visually interesting scenarios: you weather treacherous kitchen counters, fjord a bathtub, and grit your teeth during battles on top of cake. I love when video games give you the perspective of something small, causing everyday objects to appear huge and daunting, and this concept is used to great effect in Plastic Warfare. While the charming world lends itself to some interesting moments, your appreciation for Plastic Warfare's detailed world will wane when you realize how often the tan army, specifically, blends into its surroundings. When fighting near a tan-colored cake, it was next to impossible to track my enemies, and unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. Bath time has never been more menacing. Most modes prioritize completing objectives--capturing your opponent's flag or conquering their base, for example--over shooting enemies, though your gun remains a useful means of slowing them down. Given the fact that shooting to kill isn't your highest priority, you could forgive Plastic Warfare's static and anemic equipment selection. However, your weapons are neither varied nor empowering. They all feel the same: lacking in impact and without recoil. It was hard to tell if my shotgun was actually firing at times, let alone connecting with my intended target. Likewise, it was common to die without knowing why; a visual marker shows that you're taking damage, but it's too subtle and easy to overlook. A number of modes trip and fall over their own objectives, too. For example, Deep Freeze tasks teams with melting their respectively colored frozen dinosaurs--whoever melts the ice around their T-Rex first wins. Before both teams can get to the area that holds their iced-out dinos, there's a big chunk of ice blocking the only way in. Since killing other players doesn't help you win this mode or unlock new gear, it makes no sense for anyone to shoot each other when this obstacle is in the way--that would only make melting the block take longer. The most beneficial solution for both teams would be to work together--this would help get to the actually competitive part of the mode faster. But then, a bunch of players would just be standing around, holding down the left mouse button, and watching ice melt. Of course, everyone shoots each other anyway, making a needless part of the mode take a lot longer than necessary. To make matters worse, each mode has a dedicated map, and the monotony this creates wears on you over time. If you happen to find a mode you do enjoy, it's very likely that you'll still grow tired of playing on the same map and long for a change of scenery. If you look closely, you can see enemy soldiers blending in with the environment. The potential for creative audio design is huge for a game like Plastic Warfare, given the small-guys-in-a-big-world perspective, but so many of these opportunities go unrealized. Most of what you hear is gunfire and a mediocre soundtrack; I had to turn off the music to see if there were any sound effects. The only effect that I remember standing out occurred when I ran up a xylophone. Appropriately, it sounded like it should when someone runs a mallet across the multi-colored keys. It's a seemingly tiny detail that makes a big difference in the grand scheme of immersion, and it's disappointing that the rest of the world isn't as responsive to your presence. When there are much better multiplayer shooters on the market, a lot of which are completely free to play, it's impossible to recommend The Mean Greens - Plastic Warfare. If you want to play with army men badly enough, I recommend looking for the ones you had as a kid or making a trip to the dollar store. Trailer (2:01) :

Battlefield Hardline, EA's "most poorly planned heist ever" sim, is getting a new update in March called Betrayal. Based on the description, it's about things going even more wrong after they've already gone really wrong. It will also, assuming the screenshot included with the announcement is accurate, literally let you bring a knife to a gunfight. “You've assembled a crew, pulled off the perfect heist, and made a whirlwind escape from the police,” EA said in the expansion announcement. “Now, there are enemies lurking in the frozen shadows, dark figures hiding behind crumbling mausoleums, and confrontations brewing in back alleys and federal prisons.” Betrayal will include four new maps—Alcatraz, Cemetery, Chinatown, and Thin Ice—plus seven new weapons and two new vehicles. The Gun Bench Super Feature will enable customization of primary weapons and uniforms, which can then be tested at the Gun Range, and there will also be new Assignments and Legendary weapon camos. Battlefield Hardline itself is being updated as well, with 11 new weapons, new server presets, and the addition of weapon license vouchers to all Gold Battlepacks that will unlock an entire weapon license. Full details about the update will be released when it goes live. If we're lucky, there'll be something in there about the practicalities of bringing a claymore to a bank robbery, too.