Evo 2016 Games Line Up Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 27, 2016

Last night, in an announcement stream on the redbullesports Twitch channel, co-founder of Evo, Joey Cuellar announced the line up of this year’s event and discussed why each of the games was included.  The talk last night confirmed that Street Fighter 5 will be replacing Street Fighter IV - a move which has been hotly debated since the SF5’s release. Also joining the list for the first year is Pokken Tournament, the new Bandai

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Build Your XCOM Skills Before Sequel's Release - Free With Silver Bundle

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 26, 2016

With a sequel coming in less than two weeks, if you haven’t played XCOM: Enemy Unknown, now is a great time to brush up on your turn-based strategy skills. Better yet - you can get the game for free on GamerDating, bundled with a Silver subscription or a Gold subscription AND another silver game. (Might we suggest newly added BioShock Infinite?) Clearly, our team loves video games. We hail from all sectors of the gaming world; PC and con

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FNaF World Pulled From Steam

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 25, 2016

After a tumultuous five days, Scott Cawthon has removed Five Nights at Freddy’s World from Steam and GameJolt. The creator said in a message on Steam that while the overall response to the game is showing ‘very positive,’ gamers who regularly play RPGs were not particularly pleased and he “was not satisfied with the reviews and ratings it was getting.” For that reason, I've decided to remove the game fr

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Two New Characters Announced for Heroes of the Storm

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 21, 2016

Two new characters have been announced for Heroes of the Storm, both hailing from the Diablo universe. Dustin Browder, the game’s director, revealed the additions in an interview with MetaBomb last night. The first was Li Ming, a wizard inspired by Diablo 3. She has three core builds, though of course, players can mix and match to suit their style. Magic Missile “is a good midrange build” according to Browder. The Arcane Orb

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Prison Architect Coming to Consoles

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 20, 2016

Good news console gamers! The developers of Prison Architect have announced that a version for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4 is on its way for this spring. Each version has been tailored specifically for its platform, with exclusive features designed for the different controllers. We have been watching Prison Architect since it first showed up on Steam Early Access and are very excited the console gamers on the team will have a chance to e

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Pre-Orders for The Witness are Now Open

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 19, 2016

We only have another week to wait for Jonathan Blow’s follow-up to Braid, a massive puzzle game called The Witness for PS4 and PC. Preorders went live today on Steam for $40 and the Humble Store with one of the best pre-order bonuses we have seen yet; Pre-orderers will have the pleasure of getting “the warm and fuzzy feeling” you get when you buy a game early. Blow adds, “it’s exactly the same as buying the game

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PC Gamers Top Most Important Games for PC of All Time

Posted By: GamerDating - January 18, 2016

PCGamer released their Top 50 Most Important Games of All Time. A huge list going from the beginning of gaming in 1962, all the way up to 2015.  Posing questions how games have influenced the gaming world, for good, or worse throughout the years: Imagine PC gaming today without Doom. Would we still be playing first-person shooters? Probably. But who knows what they would look like? Without Doom, an entire decade of gaming would'v

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BioShock Infinite Now Available With 2 Month Subscription

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 15, 2016

Hi Gamers! We’re pretty stoked to be adding another game to our Silver bundles: this one is from a series very close to our hearts. BioShock Infinite is now available as a Silver game. This means you can get it with either a Silver subscription or with a Gold subscription and a second Silver game. What seems like forever ago(it was, in fact, six years ago) a proud gamer named James met a closet gamer named Melissa at university. He

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Five Nights at Freddy's RPG Gets Release Date

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 14, 2016

In a short and sweet update post to the Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 Steam page, Scott Cawthon gave fans a date for the release of the latest in the franchise, an RPG called FNaF World. On February 19th, PC gamers will be let in to Freddy’s world. Android and iPhone versions will release “in the following weeks.” From Cawthon’s September 15th post,  It's very important for me to say again that there wil

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Total War: Attila Available with Gold Bundle on GamerDating

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 13, 2016

At least one title in the Total War series is on every member of the GamerDating team’s list of awesome games.  Maybe you’ve noticed our excitement over Total War: Warhammer? We love the combination of strategy and history, merged with ever-evolving gameplay and increasingly great graphics. If you haven’t had a chance to explore these fantastic strategy games, perhaps now is the time! We are excited to be able to offer y

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Release Day Review: Pocket Mortys

Posted By: Melissa - January 13, 2016

Hi Gamers! We don’t usually spend a lot of time on mobile games, but when the majority of the team is excited for a release, it is more than worthy of a mention.  Adult Swim Games released Pocket Mortys today, a day earlier than expected. It was pretty adorable, their Twitter profile polled followers about the change and, of course, the overwhelming response was “YES”. I downloaded the game and played for about an hou

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EA Announces PC Subscription

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 12, 2016

EA has announced an extension to Origin - a subscription service, called Origin Access.  You may be familiar with EA Access, the subscription for Xbox One. This is essentially the PC version. Members can play a library of games for their $4.99/month subscription, as well as recieve a 10% discount on Origin Store purchases and pre-release access to upcoming EA titles.  The Vault is starting with 15 games, including some exclus

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Gamers Raise Over $1.2 MILLION for Cancer Research

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 11, 2016

Another Awesome Games Done Quick event has wrapped up, this one bringing in at least $1.2 million dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation from 30,575 donations. The largest was over $18k which is amazing enough on its own, but what really warms our hears is the just under $40 average per person. We love seeing things like this as Gamers support several gaming marathons for charity throughout the year, and Games Done Quick’s bi-annual even

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Scam Alert! Fake Minecraft App Found in Apple App Store

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 07, 2016

Late last night, Reddit user verynayce brought Minecraft II, a mobile app available on iOS, to the attention of the /r/gaming subreddit. This app claims to be the sequel to the wildly popular and currently first place app, Minecraft: Pocket Edition. It lists for the same price, $10.99 in the US, and is somehow all the way up at number four on the Top Charts despite a one star rating and clear reviews that say this is a scam. The app isn’

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Riot Releases Trailer For New Hero

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 06, 2016

We thought Riot Games had finally stopped teasing. We thought that when they released a video of their newest champion, it was a minute and some odd seconds before we knew more about what we have been being stoke up about. Not so much. It is beautiful, intriguing and devoid of details.. The video, titled “Mind of a Virtuoso”, plays more like what we would guess mixing every psychedelic looks like than the typical hero i

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The White March Part 2 Release Date Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 05, 2016

Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive announced that the second expansion for Pillars of Eternity, The White March Part 2, will be released on February 16th. That is a little bit of a delay, it was planned for the end of January, but with the date only being a tad over a month away, we are willing to forgive them. The trailer, released today on Paradox Interactive's YouTube channel, gives us only a little glimpse of the game's de

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Oculus Announces The Rift Pre-Order

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - January 04, 2016

Ever since the approach of Back to the Future Day (October 21, 2015 in case you haven’t watched that film franchise a million times) the jokes about the differences between our reality and the movie’s idea of where we would be by now have been flying. While we are still waiting for our hover boards (and please please please let there never be a Jaws 19), at least gamers can be assured that we are finally going to see virtual real

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Valve Addresses The Christmas Day Issue

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - December 30, 2015

On Christmas day, a ton of Steam users logged on to the platform and found other people’s personal information displayed. It has taken five days for Valve to to make a statement and we have seen many people more upset about the lag time than the effects of the attack. We've never been through something on that scale, but we are sure it is a massive pain in the side and urge everyone ot have a little bit of Christmas spirit toward Valve.

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Two New Characters Announced for Battleborn

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - December 29, 2015

IGN had the pleasure of introducing two more characters for the upcoming first-person shooter Battleborn by Gearbox Software today and they are both integral parts of the game’s story. According to Creative Director Randy Varnell, the earned characters get unlocked “pretty quickly”. “We want you to encounter them first interacting with you about the story, then later you get to unlock them and make them your own.&rdqu

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Free DLC for Splatoon Coming Tonight

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - December 28, 2015

Earlier today, Nintendo announced via Twitter that they are releasing new DLC for Splatoon this evening. A new map called Piranha Plant will be available after 7 pm PST/10 pm EST (3 am GMT for our European friends).  This new map is expected to be one of the last pieces of DLC for Splatoon. Earlier this month, co-director Yusuke Amano told Game Informer that the free DLC campaign for the game will fun until January 2016 and there aren&rsq

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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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