FTL: Faster Than Light is a new indie release that you can pick up over at the developer’s website, Steam or GoG for around $10, and it is worth every penny. I backed it’s Kickstarter, and thanks to Arqade’s own James I had a chance to play the beta extensively before release.

FTL’s a highly polished indie gem of a game. It manages to mix many different elements from many different RPG and strategy genres into a cohesive game that pushes you with its difficulty while still remaining fun.

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Have you guys seen the new announcement by Blizzard? I knew a buff to legendary items was on its way, but I never expected it to be this epic!

Blizzard has really listened to its fan base and is actually making Legendary items feel legendary now. Not only did they change their look to reflect what they do (like an ice damage crossbow will now appear frozen, etc), but also added a bunch of new unique affixes to them. Things like a chance to summon angels to help you on hit, burning the ground when walking, and even getting the “Shielding” affix found on elites. There are over 50 of these things, and I for one can’t wait to see what they are!

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Blizzard has recently released a “System Preview” for Patch 1.0.4. I have read the full post and have mixed feelings about it, particularly against the Inferno nerfs (yet again).

The first thing that catches your eye when looking at the patch notes is that Magic Find and Gold Find are no longer shared in multiplayer. This was originally implemented so that players were unable to just equip MF gear and not contribute to the actual fight, but ended up backfiring and caused a lot of players to simply not play multiplayer. After all, if a player doesn’t contribute there is a pretty big chance that the fight will be lost, so I think it works out this way too.

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Hey guys, this is my first post on this blog, hope you enjoy it. In this article I will be talking about the upcoming changes planned for Diablo 3 and what I think about them.

Diablo 3

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Once upon a time, we allowed questions where the asker would describe a game they’d played, and the community would attempt to help them remember the name so they could play it again. A number of events transpired, and we no longer allow such questions on the site.

Still, occasionally someone comes along and seeks this type of information. During the time these questions were allowed, I found it fun to answer them. I thought in the spirit of helping the internet at large, I’d share my techniques and tricks. The hope is that if you find yourself looking for an old game you can’t remember the name of, perhaps this will be of use.

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The month of June is always a special month for me. My birthday is in June, and Mario Marathon hosts an event to help fund my favorite charity, Child’s Play. Some of you may be asking yourselves, “What are these events? Why are they important?” Well, I’m glad you asked. more »

One of the most heavily discussed features of Blizzard’s eagerly awaited Diablo 3 was its introduction of an auction house to facilitate trading between characters.  The random nature of Diablo’s item generation system quite often left players with an item that would be useful to someone else, but not to them directly.  The auction house promised to replace the confusion and inefficiency of players trying to arrange direct player to player trades through chat channels dominated by ads and spam.

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There are a lot of games that try to create a truly “badass” protagonist. Most of the time what they end up with is an immature, meatheaded, adolescent power fantasy. Geralt, the “hero” of The Witcher series, is an unqualified badass, and he is what makes this game worth playing.

Geralt’s backstory sounds like a laundry list of the genre tropes – he’s a giant-sword-wielding mutant amnesiac, caught between a corrupt regime and questionably motivated rebellion. With that description, a bit more hair gel and a few more belts, you might think he’s Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7. The similarities stop there, though. Geralt is a battle-toughened, matured, and ultimately scarred warrior. This game is rated M for Mature – and it lives up to this title. There’s violence, sure, but there’s also a mature tone to the game which few games attempt, and even fewer get right.

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There has been a trend developing recently in the indie game world.  A lot of people have been giving certain developers flak for what they view as ‘being uncreative’, and making games with a similar style to countless other recent games.  For starters, recently there have been a lot of ‘silhouette’ games, in terms of graphical presentation, and many players view this art direction as a sign of a lazy developer, particularly given how popular the style is becoming in some recent indie titles.  This ‘oversimplification’ applies not just to the visual presentation of some of these games, but also to the user interface, game play, and various other elements of the game.  However, some of these games are completely, utterly unique in many ways, and are often viewed as a cross between game and art.  Let’s take a look at a couple from European developers Boss Baddie.

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What qualifies as “story” in video games runs a wide gamut.  In many games, the entire story can be summarized with something along the lines of “Bad Guy is doing Bad Things – go thwack him repeatedly until he stops.” Some games like Limbo eschew traditional story altogether, and try to flesh out their narratives through atmosphere and visual/auditory cues. Others, like Skyrim, infuse their world with so much backstory and text that whole libraries couldn’t contain the number of unique books and stories told in their worlds.

Ninjas, eh? Good thing I wore my Ninja punching gloves today.

Mass Effect 3 is blazing new trails in terms of story. It takes significant risks, and flies in the face of the way some people play games. However, it largely succeeds in telling a story whose scope and impact are far beyond almost anything we’ve seen in gaming to date.

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