Albion Online - The Final Beta 1st August

Posted By: GamerDating - July 27, 2016

Albion Online is a player driven, PVP dominated MMO with crafting, gathering, and full loot based around guilds and territory. Some call it a spiritual successor to early Ulitma Online, and it does not pull any punches. You can read our early impressions from last year here. The Final Beta for Albion Online will start 1st August for those early backers and founder packs. The Final Beta introduces 2 new worlds, 4 new biomes, core system

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Starbound - Leaving Orbit with Version 1.0

Posted By: GamerDating - July 25, 2016

Starbound has been in the making for a long 5 years and we at GamerDating backed the early announcement and followed its early access releases in waves. Starbound is a 2D action, adventure, sandbox builder. Similar to Terarria and even named as it's spiritual sucessor. Starbound has come from an almost carbon copy to a self standing title.  The latest version, the launch, the big version 1.0 introduces, stories, improved planet genera

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GamerDating Update - Introducing Free Explore and Fix Mix.

Posted By: GamerDating - July 19, 2016

With our latest GamerDating update, we have resolved a few bugs related to the design and have fixed those mailing issues to ensure you get matches reliably. Free Explore Want a few days to explore GamerDating? As a free member you can fill in your profile entirely, complete with photos and even get sent a few matches to see if those player 2's tick your boxes. We know it can take a little while to build up the courage to

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Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System

Posted By: GamerDating - July 19, 2016

We at GamerDating still have our NES consoles and we even have a N64 sitting in an office, so Classic Nintendo Systems are close to our hearts. Nintendo have announced a new console launching 11th November, aimed at bringing back the classics. Relive the 80s when the Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System launches in stores on 11th November. The classic NES is back in a familiar-yet-new form as a mini replica of Ninte

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Introducing Ana - New Overwatch Support Hero

Posted By: GamerDating - July 13, 2016

Overwatch's first new post-launch hero has officially been revealed after hints and teasers. Earlier this month we saw twitter hints of the weapon Ana Amari used, and now we've had the introduction video released and she looks awesome Ana Amari is a founding member of Overwatch and Pharah's mother, she takes the role of a support sniper who uses a Biotic Rifle to both heal teammates and deal ongoing damage to enemies from l

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Pokemon Go is Go!

Posted By: GamerDating - July 07, 2016

Pokemon Go has launched! Available to download on app stores in Australia and New Zealand and the US as it staggers its release across the rest of the World. Those not in released regions have been finding ways to get around the blocks, such as changing their account region to Australia on the IOS app store, and downloading the APK directly on Android. Pokémon GO Travel between the real world and the virtual world of Pok&eacu

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Xbox Play Anywhere Launches September 13th

Posted By: GamerDating - July 04, 2016

Microsoft announced its new feature at E3 bringing Windows 10 and Xbox together, a new initiative named the Xbox Play Anywhere. This means a single purchase will unlock the game across both platforms, and saves and achievements will be transferred across both versions. So no need to buy the game twice for both platforms anymore. It is planned to launch Xbox Play Anywhere on September 13th. Games listed in the Xbox Store wil

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System Shock Remake on Kickstarter

Posted By: GamerDating - June 30, 2016

System Shock was of the genre defining classic from 1994, System Shock was one of the first 3D games that took a methodical approach to exploration while revealing a story driven narrative through audio logs and messages scattered throughout the game world. It was a revolutionary step forward for the medium in a time when developers first began experimenting with interactive story telling. Personally.. I never beat the game but I did

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Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 Available - Persistent Universe

Posted By: GamerDating - June 27, 2016

Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 is now live which introduces the persistent universe, among other things. Star Citizen is from the mind of Chris Roberts, creator of Wing Commander and Freelancer, but the most interesting thing, the game has been 100% crowd funded to the amount of $116,763,216 at the time of this article. Star Citizen has promised to bring FPS, Persistent Universe, space fight, planet exploration, bases, a story mode and huge mm

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Destiny: Rise of Iron Announced

Posted By: GamerDating - June 23, 2016

Destiny: Rise of Iron is the next expansion to the Destiny universe. It features an all new cinematic story campaign set within The Plaguelands, a brand new location on Earth. Under the command of Lord Saladin you will face a new faction of Fallen Devils, the Splicers, while unravelling the mystery of the Iron Lords. Rise of Iron features new weapons, armor, and gear, as well as a new cooperative three-player Strike, a new mode and maps f

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Carrier Assault Update to Eve Valkyrie

Posted By: GamerDating - June 21, 2016

The first major free update for EVE: Valkyrie has landed with a new game mode, Carrier Assault, amongst the usual bug fixes, balance changes and a few new features. Eve Valkyrie is a VR Game where you battle various hardpoints, ships and assault the enemy. In addition to the awesome pve mode, it also boasts a competitive multiplayer and until now the enemy’s carrier has been off limits. An impenetrable flying fortress that could cut

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E3 Round Up 2016

Posted By: GamerDating - June 15, 2016

This year E3 has hit us with some top games, announcements, hype and pure gaming excitement. We've been watching and loving the trailers and we've done a round up of the top trailers this year.  As E3 has been packed with trailers and announcements we have plucked out some of the best and also provided a link below of a full list of all trailers. Battlefield 1 Gameplay  We Happy Few Dishonored 2 

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Homeworld Remastered Collection - V2.0

Posted By: GamerDating - June 08, 2016

Homeworld Remastered Collection, containing the legendary space RTSs turned instant classics, is now available (Steam and GoG) Homeworld brought real-time strategy into actual 3D, creating a truly free-form tactical experience across battlefields vast in every dimension. It did so in a way that's not just manageable, but overwhelmingly fun! This engrossing space opera chronicles the struggles of an alien race, the Kushan, locked in a vicio

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Blizzard Drop The Ban Hammer - Overwatch

Posted By: GamerDating - June 02, 2016

Overwatch has been received as one of the best FPS games of all time scoring multiple top marks and achieving 92 on metacritic. It is all over the internet, gamers are flocking to this fresh mutliplayer game and loving it. Overwatch just has that appeal, and I'm not sure why. With all good games come cheaters, those who have aimbots, wallhacks, autohits and various other programs to give the unfair advantage. Hacking can ruin online g

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PAYDAY 2: Update 100

Posted By: GamerDating - May 30, 2016

Update 100 is here and Overkill software have released a video where they talk about update 100 for PAYDAY 2 that is going live on Thursday.  In short... THEY OWN PAYDAY 2 AGAIN. The PAYDAY franchise is ours again and to celebrate it, we’re giving away a community grenade, the skills tree and we’re making the black market free for everyone going forward. Check out the video above for more details. 

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Overwatch: Next Big FPS

Posted By: GamerDating - May 17, 2016

Overwatch is the latest IP to come from Blizzard in 15 years. In Overwatch, you control one of several heroes in competitive 6-person team shooting matches. Battle over objectives, take down the other team, and achieve victory. Before you begin a game of Overwatch, you’ll need to choose a hero to play. Players choose out of 21 hero characters, each with their own unique abilities and role classes, Maybe controlling

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Batman: Arkham Knight Now Available With Our 4 Month Subscription!

Posted By: GamerDating - May 10, 2016

Batman™: Arkham Knight kicked off on PC with some serious backlash with complaints over performance and bugs, but now, just under a year later the updates and patches have completely blown that away and Batman: Arkham Knight plays like it should have on launch. But don't take our word from it, check out Steams new Review system, where they seperate overall reviews and recent, which demonstrates as recent it has achieved a very positive

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Grey Goo Now Available in Our 4 Month Package

Posted By: GamerDating - May 05, 2016

Grey Goo is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that sticks to the traditional RTS design. Grey Goo had an initial poor reception at launch but was quickly adjusted to deliver a solid and rewarding campaign. In Feburary this year the launch of the "Descent of Shroud" added another fourth race which you can pick up for free. Four unique factions deliver 4 styles of play: THE BETA fight for their home and place in the unive

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Blizzard Finally Responds to Vanilla WoW Demands

Posted By: GamerDating - April 26, 2016

On 10th April 2016, Nostalrius, a private WoW Legacy server went dark after Blizzard threatened legal action. Nostalrius Begins PvP, Nostalrius Begins PvE & Nostalrius TBC and all related servers will be definitively shutdown at 23:00 server time on the 10th of April 2016 Nostalrius was a server running the original version of World of Warcraft from 2004, free of charge, It’s was Vanilla WoW’s most popular private server

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Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine Available in 2 Month Subscription!

Posted By: GamerDating - April 26, 2016

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is a single player or co-op heist game. We love coop games, and a fun game like this would be the perfect game date. You get to play a heist expert:   The Locksmith: Blue-collar infiltration expert The Lookout: She can see and hear everything... a natural leader The Pickpocket: A hobo with a monkey and a penchant for crime The Cleaner: A silent psychopath... Jack The Ripper in pink Th

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Sentinels of Freedom Review - Superhero Xcom?

Posted By: Ryan - May 06, 2020

Game

A superhero-themed tactics game that nails the comic book feel, for better and for worse.

Right from the start, Sentinels of Freedom (named for its titular superhero team) is a treat to look at. Cell-shaded panels of static images and text take the place of animated cutscenes and the character models are vibrant and varied enough to pop from the detailed backgrounds. This is a game that embraces the comic book aesthetic that has fuelled other entries in the Sentinel Comics property and, largely, makes it work without requiring any foreknowledge of the lore involved.

 

Sentinels of Freedom from the Sentinels of the Multiverse

Sentinels of Freedom hits the nail on the head for the comic book feel.

Each named character has an easy-to-read silhouette and stands out enough from the maps that I never lost my heroes during the approximately fourteen hours it took me to complete chapter one of Underbite Games’ entry into the 3D tactics genre.

The superheroes are brightly coloured (even Expatriette, a gun-wielding former assassin, has bright red as a spot colour on her costume), the summons are distinguishable enough and the UI is relegated to the edges of the screen. Everywhere you look, colour is liberally splashed around and constantly toeing the line of being a distraction. Everywhere, that is, except the hostile NPCs.

I was beating the tar out of large numbers of nameless minions dressed in olive drab or black fatigues on pretty much every map. Sure, it helped me figure out who was hostile and who was an ally, but several times I lost track of enemies among the shadows of the darker maps.

 

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Thankfully, that was the only presentation problem I had. Attack ranges are clearly displayed, the selection cursor is clear when aiming, moving or just clicking around, the UI (whilst busy) is easy enough to parse, and hovering over an enemy with the cursor brings up a list of symbols above the action bar showing which of your attacks will be the most/least effective against that enemy, whilst also conveying any bonuses/penalties that are being applied and the target’s current health.

This is a game that delights in showing you the numbers being tossed around in the background and I love it for that. The main problem I had was that the font used for describing the mechanical effects of the abilities (damage, duration etc.) was so different from all the other fonts that it was a bit jarring, BUT it was easy to read and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.

I wish I could praise the sound as much as I have the graphics, but this is a game fuelled by stock-sounding effects. Whilst not a bad thing in, and of, itself, I found the audio mixing a little off in places. Some explosions seemed to quiet compared to other effects and the vast majority of my time spent playing the game was without hearing any voice acting. The sudden appearance of voices in my last play session leads me to conclude this was a bug and the characters’ barks are well-written and averagely (but enthusiastically) delivered.

 

Superhero Xcom

Sentinels manages to look great not only with the models but also in the story overlay.

I did find one character’s lines were louder than the others, as one character’s were quieter, but as it fit with those characters I didn’t find it too distracting. On the other hand, the soundtrack is easily one of the best I’ve heard in a LONG time and I wish it were purchasable separately for when I need to feel like a superhero out of the game.

Whilst this is no AAA-title, it is a very enjoyable, well-made tactics game where customisation is king and the superhero-genre is embraced whole-heartedly. The facing of each character, the range to the target, even the damage type of the attack (presented in-game through a damage/defence-type matchup chart) all play into the hit and damage calculations in a largely challenging experience that overwhelmed me twice: the first boss fight and a map comprised of a time limit and a LARGE number of mooks. The former beat me resoundingly, the latter I somehow scraped through at the last moment.

Some maps do favour certain character types and I found some exploitable strategies that helped with otherwise overwhelming numbers but that’s the joy of the genre, isn’t it?

 

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I click and they die.

Whilst the gameplay encourages playing to each character’s strengths and exploiting the enemies’ facings/weakness, the characters themselves are far more static in terms of development. Each has the choice of three stances (loadouts) and each stance has a variety of skills in it. Use a hero enough and they level up, gaining access to a new ability for each stance. That’s it though, there’s no character progression here so look elsewhere if that is what you want. I found there were plenty of options to keep me satisfied and I wasn’t looking for a tactical rpg, but your mileage may vary.

What it does have though is a tongue-in-cheek action story of heists, arms deals and a rising villainous threat all told through comic panel-style cutscenes and largely well-written dialogue, including branching dialogue options for your own custom hero (although I do not believe your choices affect the game). Yes, you make your own hero here, but you are not obliged to use them. The hero creator is robust and, whilst you don’t get the extremely flavourful abilities of the named heroes (each one taken from Greater Than Games’ Sentinels Comics line of games), the sheer choice available to you more than makes up for it (in my opinion).

I opted for a support/leader who could heal and buff allies whilst summoning a drone for backup if needed, but, with the number of options available, you should be able to create any hero you can think of. I should note though, changing your heroes’ stances is a bit awkward. If you read a mission description and want to alter something, you have to back out of the mission select screen, load the training screen, select the character, change the stance and then navigate back to the mission screen. At least, I didn’t discover another way to do it.

 

Superhero xcom game or does it standalone

Each background, theme and power source alters your character in some way.

All this said, however, I felt the writing at the end of the chapter fell into a common comic book trap: padding. There were several places that I felt the final, climactic battle could have happily taken place. There is also a jarring shift in mission length from around 40 minutes to two hours that happens in the middle of the chapter, one that comes out of nowhere and introduces a reserve mechanic that is never explained; be warned that sometimes a mission will take far longer than you expect it to.

I was happy to note that I didn’t encounter any noticeable bugs, save for the voices one mentioned above, and the devs are still updating the game and polishing aspects of it. As this is chapter one, I wouldn’t be surprised if the updates continued for a while as polish is applied for chapter two. That said, this is definitely an indie game. AI pathing is sometimes a little off and the game has an aggro system (the higher the aggro, the more likely the hero is to be targeted) that sometimes leads the AI into making interesting decisions where it ignores the weakened hero in front of it and spends its activation (determined through an initiative order clearly displayed at the top of the screen) trekking across the map, all of which are largely well designed.

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Replayability here is limited to restarting the campaign over and trying out new hero builds and team compositions. As of the time of writing, there is no mission select, but I’m happy that I would have got my money’s worth (it currently retails for £19.49 on Steam) had I not backed the game on Kickstarter for a reduced price. In fact, I’m giving serious though to buying it on the Switch when it comes out on other platforms later this year.

Ultimately, this is a game with enough jank that you never quite forget its an indie title but enough heart to make you forgive it its quirks. If you’re looking for a tactics game, you could do far, FAR worse. Even if you’re a casual player of the genre, like me, there is a lot here to enjoy (I played through on Standard and failed only one mission).

 

Sentinels of the Multiverse

Custom difficulty really is customisable.

That said, this isn’t XCOM. There is no cover mechanic and your allies will block your line of sight as if they were concrete pillars so hardcore fans of the genre might find this entry lacking.

Myself? I’m eagerly looking forwards to the next chapter and can’t wait to return to the world of Sentinel Comics again.

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