Gaming

July Releases

July 6, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

I think this July will be the last Monthly Releases for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. I probably should have dropped them months ago, but it’s apparent now that nothing exciting will be coming out from those platforms, so it’s time to move on. July usually isn’t rife with games anyway, so now seems as good as a time as any. With that said, on to this month’s releases:

Xbox One

Week of July 14th
EA SPORTS Rory McIlroy PGA TOUR

Week of July 21st
Zombie Army Trilogy – I’d like to think I’m fairly current with video game news and what-not, but this was the first time I have heard of a game called “Zombie Army Trilogy”. I mean, for starters, it’s the first game but it’s called Trilogy. That seems odd, but a quick Google search reveals that there were two previous Zombie Army games which were stand-alone “expansions” to Sniper Elite V2. This trilogy has the two Nazi Zombie Army games, along with third, unreleased installment. You learn something new everyday! (Game still doesn’t look that great)
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood – … speaking of killing Nazis…
F1 2015 (Formula One)

No notable releases for the Xbox 360 for July.

Week of July 28th
Legend of Kay Anniversary

No notable releases for the Nintendo 3DS for July.

Week of July 7th
Mystery Maze Of Balthasar Castle
F1 2015
The Amber Throne
Knee Deep
Prompt
TIMEframe
Cosmophony – This game looks like it would be right up Buttonmashing Blogger Emeritus Nat’s alley.

Week of July 14th
Guild of Dungeoneering
Legions of Steel

Week of July 21st
Feist
Niko: Through The Dream
Abducted
Kyn

Week of July 28th
King’s Quest: The Complete Collection

PS4 Banner

Week of July 14th
Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess
Godzilla – Rampage 2015?
God of War 3 Remastered
EA SPORTS Rory McIlroy PGA TOUR

Week of July 21st
Zombie Army Trilogy
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
Onechanbara Z2: Chaos – ‘Banana Split’ Edition – “Banana Split” Edition?
F1 2015 (Formula One)

Week of July 28th
Legend of Kay Anniversary

Week of July 28th
Lost Dimension

Week of July 28th
BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND
Lost Dimension

Nothing really sets my hair on fire this month, although a couple of the indie PC games look like that have potential. What are you picking up this month?
(Note: As always, all Amazon.com links have our affiliate code embedded in them. If you purchase something through our link, we get a little commission. It’s appreciated.)

June Releases

June 4, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

June doesn’t bring much to the table this month unless you have a Playstation Vita or really like LEGO. Another month to work on the backlog! With that said, on to this month’s releases:

Xbox One

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World
Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited – Apparently Elder Scrolls Online is still a thing?

Week of June 16th
Payday 2 Crimewave

Week of June 23rd
Ride

Week of June 30th
BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND
F1 2015 (Formula One)

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World – Why didn’t they just reuse the model for Emmett from the LEGO Movie? Seems like a lost opportunity!

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World

Week of June 16th
Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition – Nothing like having adding a ten year old game to your Steam Library!

Week of June 23rd
FINAL FANTASY XIV: Heavensward
Batman: Arkham Knight
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward and Realm Reborn

PS4 Banner

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World
Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited

Week of June 16th
Payday 2 Crimewave

Week of June 23rd
Batman: Arkham Knight
Final Fantasy XIV Online
Ride

Week of June 30th
J-Stars Victory Vs+
BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND
Legend of Kay Anniversary

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World

Week of June 23rd
Final Fantasy XIV Online

Week of June 30th
BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND

Week of June 9th
LEGO Jurassic World
Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy
Terraria

Week of June 30th
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation

What are you picking up this month?
(Note: As always, all Amazon.com links have our affiliate code embedded in them. If you purchase something through our link, we get a little commission. It’s appreciated.)

May Releases

May 5, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

We’re getting close to the summer, which means there’s not much to see this month. It’s great if you’re a fan of The Witcher Series, but other than that, there’s not much. With that said, on to this month’s releases:

Xbox One

May 5th
Wolfenstein The Old Blood

May 12th
Project CARS

May 19th
The Witcher: Wild Hunt
Farming Simulator 15

May 19th
Farming Simulator 15 – With just one release for the Xbox 360, I think we can safely say that its days are numbered on the Monthly Releases. It had a great ten year run and will eventually be phased out here. It looks like ports and downgrades fromm here on out.

May 26th
Splatoon – The Wii-U, on the other hand, is not in its twilight. It appears to still be struggling to garner any type of third party support.

May 5th
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker

May 19th
Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros.

May 26th
Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX

May 5th
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
Project CARS

May 12th
Final Fantasy IV : The After Years
Airport Firefighters: The Simulation – Not just a Firefighter simulator, but an Airport Firefighter. Sounds like fun for HOURS.
Trainz: A New Era

May 19th
The Witcher: Wild Hunt

May 26th

PS4 Banner

May 5th
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year

May 12th
FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster Limited Edition
Project CARS

May 19th
The Witcher: Wild Hunt
Farming Simulator 15

May 26th
ArcaniA – The Complete Tale

May 19th
Farming Simulator 15

May 19th
Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed

Road Trip! Funspot Arcade

April 14, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

Since I was exiled to the chilly East Coast for work for the past couple of months, I decided I’d make use of my free time during the long, boring weekends to check out an item on my Buttonmashing Bucket List — the Funspot Family Entertainment Center, home of the “American Classic Arcade Museum” in New Hampshire. If you’ve seen The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (the documentary of Steve Weibe’s attempt to break the Donkey Kong world record), you’ve seen Funspot, as it’s the arcade where he makes his record breaking attempt.

When I first arrived, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew it was big and I knew I would find more than arcade games (the place has to make money, so I knew there would be skee ball and the ticket machines) but what I found was pretty much like any other arcade I’ve been to. It was dark, loud, had the presence of a slightly off-putting smell and arcade games. Tons of aracde games.

I thought it would feel like stepping into the way-back machine, a trip to memory lane but the arcades I went to (and worked at) were never this big and never had this many classic games. I decided that I had to play some of the games I remember from my childhood/teen-age years and also some of the classics.

Hands-down, my favorite upright arcade game of all-time is Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road. I pop in a token and hearing the familiar rev of the video game engine, the honk of the upgrades and seeing the cheesy bikini glad girls takes me back to 1990. Unfortunately, nostalgia does funny things, like make you forget how punishing and unforgiving the controls are or how often the stupid nitro button sticks or doesn’t respond at all and above everything else — how terribly floaty the physics are in this game. Frustration could have set in quickly, and if this game was released in 2015 it would be eviscerated.

But that funny nostalgia still prevails and I have a blast. I remember every track, every configuration, every shortcut and I still try to ruin the silver truck’s (that’d be the CPU-controlled Stewarts truck) race when I find myself in last place with no hope of surviving. Nitro-ing into his front-end will never get old.

I played Offroad first and probably dumped more tokens in it than any other game. After maxing out all the upgrades on my truck, I decided to move on and explore other areas of the arcade.

The majority of the games in the “Arcade Museum” are pre-1988, which meant a few of my favorites weren’t found in the main drag. I went with express purpose of playing some of my favorites along with some classics. I headed downstairs from the Arcade Museum area, in search of a few modern games and found exactly what I was looking for, all lined up in a row:

This basically encapsulates my formative arcade game playing years — NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat I and II (and III, but I didn’t spend nearly as much time playing III as I did I and II). I written about it before, but Mortal Kombat II was both my jam and my introduction to the nascent internet. I was attending classes at Cleveland State University at the time and had access to Usenet groups, including the alt.games.mk2 group which had daily updates to the fatalities and rumors of babalities, nudalities and something called a “friendship”. I would show up every afternoon with freshly printed out move lists that we would all pore over. When I read about the secret way to get to fight Smoke on the Portal level, I waited patiently as others played over and over again, waiting for the “Toasty” to pop up. I reached over and hit the start button and everyone in the room had their minds BLOWN.

Jax and Scorpion were my dudes, so I spent some time reliving the glory days of MKII and then threw a few tokens in NBA Jam. Hearing “IS IT THE SHOES” as my guy cannon ball dunks from the free-throw line, spitting fire, was a great moment.

I headed back upstairs to play some of the classics. Unfortunately, the lighting there was not conducive to taking pictures so I didn’t get many up there. Because I really didn’t play these games as obssessively as I did newer games, I don’t have the same memories of loving Donkey Kong or Centipede or Robotron 2084. But because I was at Mecca, I had to play some of them. Spy Hunter was a favorite so I sat down to play a few minutes of that but Holy Lord that game is hard. I have these beautiful memories of jamming through levels of Spy Hunter like it was my job and 20 years later it felt like I was driving a red wagon, out of control, down a giant hill. It was not fun.

Ditto can be said about Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior and Zaxxon. These games did not age well. I tip my hat to guy’s like Weibe that have taken the time to master these games. It was painful.

So painful that when I saw this Pong machine, I couldn’t do it. This is history and I couldn’t bring myself to relive the pain. We lived with games that had this brutal difficulty and we liked it! What was wrong with us?

So to end the trip on a high note, I emptied out the rest of my tokens into the Smash TV machine. It was mindless fun and was just as ridiculously hard as I remembered it. I would like to meet the guys who could get through the first level of Smash on one credit. I maintain it can’t be done, but I’m sure it has. One day I’ll have to do a deep dive into Smash TV YouTube runs to see if I’m right.

The trip down memory lane was great and the chance to visit an American Treasure. Not sure if you’ll ever find yourself near Lake Winnipesaukee, but if you do, you owe it to yourself to visit The Funspot.

Buttonmashing Deal of the Day

March 10, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

For those of you who are PC Gamers:

March Releases

March 3, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

I’m going to be out of town the majority of the month of March, which means gaming will be light for me. But there are a couple decent games coming out that have been on my watchlist for a while. I just don’t know when I’ll get to play them. With that said, on to this month’s releases:

Xbox One

Week of March 3rd
ScreamRide – Front runner for “Worst Boxart of 2015”.

Week of March 10th
DMC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition

Week of March 17th
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
Battlefield Hardline
Resident Evil: Revelations 2

Week of March 24th
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection

Week of March 31st
BLADESTORM: Nightmare

Week of March 3rd
ScreamRide

Week of March 10th
Resident Evil: Revelations 2
Sniper Elite III Ultimate Edition

Week of March 17th
Battlefield Hardline

Week of March 31st
Ultimate Stealth Triple Pack – These “Ultimate Triple Packs” seem like an intriguing idea.
Ultimate Action Triple Pack

Week of March 17th
Mario Party 10

Week of March 10th
Etrian Mystery Dungeon – Everytime an Etrian Odyssey game comes out I think “this time I’m going to pick it up. Still haven’t played one. Probably won’t get to this one, either.
Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.

Week of March 31st
Story of Seasons

Week of March 3rd
Tallowmere
White Night – I really like the way this game looks. Very stylized.
Shiftlings
Tormentum – Dark Sorrow
FranknJohn – Bonk’s Adventure 2015?
FORCED 2: The Rush
Savage Lands – You’re not going to believe this — another survival game!

Week of March 10th
Professional Lumberjack 2015 – Not to be confused with “Amateuer Lumberjack 2015”. Feel like they really missed a golden opportunity here by not going with Lumberjack Simulator or FlannelCraft or something.
Reign Of Kings – If you only click on one link in this list, PLEASE let it be Reign of Kings and watch the trailer video. You will not be disappointed. Actually, you might be very disappointed. But at least you’ll get a good laugh or two out of it.
Assassinâ€™s CreedÂ® Rogue
Cities: Skylines
Ori and the Blind Forest

Week of March 17th
Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas – Nope, not Zelda at all. Totally not Zelda.
Aware – Taking the survival game to a whole new level — race to repair your plane before your friend does so you can fly away in your one-seat plane without her! Nevermind the two of you flew there in the plane, there’s just one seat!
Hektor
Ride

Week of March 24th
Pillars of Eternity – I won’t be around to game much this month, but I will definitely be picking up Pillars when it comes out — because I backed it on Kickstarter back in the day. I’ve followed it’s development and am anxious to get this in my grubby hands.

Week of March 31st
DEAD OR ALIVEÂ® 5 Last Round

PS4 Banner

Week of March 10th
Sniper Elite III Ultimate Edition

Week of March 17th
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
Battlefield Hardline
Resident Evil: Revelations 2

Week of March 31st
MLB 15: The Show
Toukiden: Kiwami
BLADESTORM: Nightmare

Week of March 10th
Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea
Resident Evil: Revelations 2
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters
Sniper Elite III Ultimate Edition

Week of March 17th
Battlefield Hardline

Week of March 31st
MLB 15: The Show
Ultimate Stealth Triple Pack
Ultimate Action Triple Pack

Week of March 10th
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters

Week of March 24th
LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin

Week of March 31st
MLB 15: The Show
Toukiden: Kiwami

Unsolicited Mental Objects #6

February 19, 2015 by Nick Leave a Comment

Tony: So the “sequel” to Terraria was announced recently and the Terrarian in me got super excited. I recently started playing Terraria again and even picked up the Xbox Live Arcade version of it so my boys could enjoy it. I don’t think they’d admit it, but I think they might like it more than they like Minecraft. And they kinda love Minecraft. That affection could be described as “effusive”.

I love Terraria, too. I love that while it’s open-ended and sandbox-y, it has goals and “end points”. I love the exploration aspect of the game and finding new little pockets of abandoned houses and caves filled with ore gets my gears going. So when I read about the Terraria: Otherworld announcement and watched the teaser trailer, I was a little unsettled about this next chapter in Terraria.

See, while Terraria does have those previously mentioned “end points” (be they bosses or descending to The Underworld) those are completely arbitrary. Sometimes world events, like the attack of the Goblin Army, are unavoidable. But other times, it’s a conscious choice to summon the Eye of Cthulhu or the Eater of Worlds. Defeating these bosses doesn’t result in Saving The World. To me, that’s not what Terraria is about. Defeating them gets you a huge pile of loot so you can craft bigger and better swords and guns so you can summon them again, rinse and repeat.

So this new Terraria, with it’s theme of “saving the world” troubles me. I don’t like the idea of having an end point. I just want to do some exploration, mine some ore and maybe fight some big bad bosses. I’m just a simple guy with an iron pickaxe. I’m not a hero.

Nick:Â Sunless Sea bummed me out. Either my expectations were too high or the gameplay turned out to be a flop – or both – but, man, I don’t have it in me to continue. After 10-ish hours of game time, a pit formed in my belly whenever I thought of playing more, which sucks because on paper Sunless Sea has much going for it.

Part of this state of mind may stem from a personal aversion to text-heavy, story games. I’ve always been under the impression that if I wanted a good story I would read a book. Reading an abundance of text on a self-illuminating screen jars my concentration. Call me old fashioned, but it is what it is.

But, I was willing to make an exception with the text-heavy Sunless Sea. When researching the game prior to purchase I found the setting very appealing. I was engaged by the emphasis on exploration. Developer Alexis Kennedy quoted Joseph Conrad in a blog post on Gamasutra, which, in a small way, was a huge selling point for me. I also took heart to the promise that Early Access purchasers would acquire future DLC for free – of which, the game’s Kickstarter total has sealed the deal on at least one of them, a submersible to use to explore the depths of this Sunless Sea.

And so, for the first few hours I truly was engaged. Perhaps a little miffed I could not increase the size of the text, which makes zero (0) sense to me in a game whose main interaction with the gamer involves reading. I chose to not dwell on this and continued to plod along. I like the mechanic of captains passing down attributes to proceeding captains. I like that sea stories are a form of currency; this helps reaffirm the game’s themes of loneliness and longing.

But you know what I, player of Sunless Sea, longed for after a while? Some actual hint of gameplay.

My problem is not that the game moves slowly. My main issue is that this fictional world doesn’t evolve, which makes the game feel like that much more of a pointless, slow grind.

Upon the death of your captain, the fog of war floods the map once again and you must start afresh with a new captain. Only now, the game takes the islands and landmarks of the sunless sea and shifts them around. Should you embark and come across a familiar island from the previous captain the story of that island stays the same; the player is still clicking through the same narrative branches. This is unrewarding of the taxing efforts needed to get to these locations in the first place.

I’d like to see more life out there on the sea other than myself, monster and pirates. I want dynamic opportunities to intercept ships, besiege pirate strongholds, use the vertical canals to go to the surface, conspire in more detail with factions of islands, confirm whether this or that sea story is fact or myth. I want this stuff to happen sooner. The player can be the bridge between these solitary islands and their stories. To cast a beams of hope in a dank and dismal world (which, BTW, can be better presented. People are going all goo-goo-ga-ga over the atmosphere of Sunless Sea. I dunno, maybe I’m just being picky, but I think there is more to atmosphere than the sound of water drops processed with tons of reverb). But right now – and I may give the game another go – I am just another wayfarer locked up in my own mind and stuck on a ship with other crazies.

Jason:Â I’ll warn you right now, this UMO is filled with #firstworldproblems.

I recently took a plunge and ended up replacing the GPU on my machine. Â I moved from an AMD Radeon 5770 up to a NVidia GTX 960. While I’m super pleased with the results a little part of me was let down since I have always being a fan of the amd fx series review. Â The jump in framerate is really notable. Â I’m pulling around 60fps on ultra settings for all of the games I play.

Something was off though. Â I noticed that I definitely wasn’t as excited as I was when swapped my 2008 macbook for my custom built PC. The graphical leap there was REALLY notableÂ whereas the jump here was slightly less huge.

That made me realizeÂ that this wasn’t a problem with the card, this was a problem with the games I play. Â Going through my currently playing steam list I’ve got no games newer than 2-3 years old and most of them are not designed to be graphically intense.

So this week will be filled with me sampling the action filled, super pretty games that I keep avoiding to play MOBAs. Â Bioshock Infinite, Batman Arkham (Fill in the Blank), and Endless Legend here I come! Â Hopefully that’ll help me appreciate what I’ve got.

New Buttonmashing Deal: Destiny [PS4, PS3, Xbox 360]

February 19, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

February Releases

February 3, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

I’ve decided to branch out my monthly release list to include new releases on Steam. I guess with my current state of gamer-dom being PC-oriented, this was inevitable (a post on that should be forthcoming). I’d like to eventually include releases on Xbox Live, the Nintendo eShop and the Playstation Network, but for this month, Steam is the only newcomer. With that said, on to this month’s releases:

Xbox One

Week of February 10th
Evolve

Week of February 17th
DEAD OR ALIVE 5 Last Round – This most be some SERIOUS BUSINESS if (a) the title is in ALL CAPS and (b) it’s the “Last Round”. (I’m guessing it’s never going to be the “Last Round” for Dead or Alive)

Week of February 24th
Dragon Ball Xenoverse
DYNASTY WARRIORS 8 Empires – Dynasty Warriors wants to get in on the ALL CAPS ACTION!
Rugby 15

Week of February 24th
Dragon Ball Xenoverse

Week of February 17th
Kirby & The Rainbow Curse

Week of February 10th
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D – Two strong offerings from Nintendo this month. I need to finish A Link Between Worlds.

Week of February 3rd
Cities XXL
Stay Dead Evolution
Darkest Dungeon
Astray
Grow Home
Front Office Football Seven
Castle In The Darkness
Fractured Soul

Week of February 10th
MX vs. ATV: Supercross Encore Edition
Evolve – It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a PC game a full retail price (Diablo 3 was probably the last one) but I think I will definitely make Evolve my first gaming purchase of 2015.
Cubicity
Block N Load – This game looks like a blast (pun intended)
Savage Lands

Week of February 17th
Total War: ATTILA

Week of February 24th
Trainz: A New Era – The addition of the “z” at the end of Trainz makes me sad.
Resident Evil Revelations 2

PS4 Banner

Week of February 10th
Evolve

Week of February 17th
The Order: 1886
DEAD OR ALIVE 5 Last Round

Week of February 24th
Dragon Ball Xenoverse
DYNASTY WARRIORS 8 Empires
Rugby 15

Week of February 24th
Dragon Ball Xenoverse
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late
Rugby 15

Week of February 3rd
Criminal Girls: Invite Only

Week of February 24th
Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart

January Releases

January 5, 2015 by Tony Leave a Comment

Here are the video game releases for the month of January 2015.

It looks like this will be a great month to work on that backlog and play some games you’ve been meaning to get to without worrying about what games are coming out this month, because quite honestly, there’s not a whole lot to write home about. With that said, on to this month’s releases:

Xbox One

Week of January 20th
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected + Gat out of Hell

Week of January 27th
Dying Light
DYNASTY WARRIORS 8 Empires – CLEARLY THE CAPITAL LETTERS ARE IMPORTANT