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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They are Billions PS4 Review - Zombies will Zomb.

Posted By: Craig - July 04, 2019

Game

They are Billions bringing steampunk zombie apolcalypse to consoles.
 

Real Time Strategy games are one of those genres that I’ve always enjoyed but have never really been that good at. I’d panic at the first site of a Zerg rush, I’d play on Easy in Dawn of War, I’d absolutely never play an RTS online against another human and I’m the sort of person who would always use the car cheat in Age of Empires because I found it funny.

Yet I still love RTS. So now we’ve got that out of the way and you may be judging me a little (it’s fine, I get it, I’m judging me too), I can say this game was fun.

They are Billions is a steampunk zombie apocalypse survival RTS by Numantian Games and ported to console by Blitworks.

None of those words made me unhappy. Let’s break that down with some scientific memeology to explain just how that went in my head:

 

Cheers Vince

 

The game initially released on PC on the 17th of December 2017 through Steam’s Early Access program with a full release coming out just last month on the 18th of June.
However...

They are Billions has made its way onto consoles as well, and it is the PS4 version that I had the honour of reviewing.

Now I know what you’re thinking. An RTS, on a console? That’s madness. You need the finesse of a keyboard and mouse to get the most out of the game’s controls! (Not since the days of Command and Conquer on PS1 surely!? - Ed)

And you’d be right! But, the PS4 (and I presume the Xbox One, but I don’t own one so please do correct me) has USB ports which can read keyboards and mice.

Did I use them? Nope. Because I’m an idiot and wanted to see what a controller would be like... plus I couldn’t find my mouse. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. It felt sluggish to move the cursor and select my options. But it still worked. My troops still moved where I wanted them to and my buildings still placed in the right places, and everything still died perfectly fine when the infected hordes came to town…

I know my editor played They are Billions on PC, and he loved the controls as it simply worked for him, but we wanted to figure out if They are Billions lined up on PS4.

 

This isn’t what I meant when I said invite a few friends for dinner…

 

Now, for those of you who read my last article on here discussing Door Kickers (thank you, you’re too kind), you may recall I had a major gripe with the game about having nothing in the way of a tutorial or any means of explanation for the controls, leaving me to fumble around to figure out the controls myself. Well, guess what… They are Billions HAS NO TUTORIAL! It gives you multiple options on how to make the Survival mode easier (much appreciated) but no actual tutorial.

However, credit where due, there is an extensive Help menu on the title screen which does go into great detail to explain the way the game works and how to fumble your way through with a controller if you’re some kind of sadist who can’t find his mouse (hi, I’m Craig, have we met?). This was really helpful and left me feeling at least moderately prepared for the game ahead, understanding the purpose of the different resources and how the infection mechanics worked. Sure, this was a false sense of security as my first try at a Survival map had me chewed alive within seven minutes, but, learning curve. I got better. My second try I lasted a whole ten!!

(On the PC, this is no different. Part of the beauty and challenge, when I first picked it up, was learning how to survive for mere minutes! - Ed)

That’s not to say that this game is hard. Challenging, yes, very, but you can tailor the maps to match your play level very well, which is a feature I greatly appreciate in older RTS games so it’s nice to see it here as well.

Visually, the game is lovely. It clings to a grimy steampunk aesthetic without just going down the route of slathering everything with copper and cogs (copper cogs count double) and the sprites all hold their own unique level of charm between the Unit types; a Hunter looks like a Hunter, you can actually visualise these lithe, silent warrior women stalking through the woodland ready to kick ass and not be seen. The Soldier by comparison is much bulkier, much more armoured; he looks like he can take more of a kicking and dish out just as much. And this is just from tiny sprites!

 

Snipers gonna snipe

 

The game boasts 4k graphics for PC. Is this true for PS4? I’m not sure. I don’t have a fancy enough TV. But what I did get was crisp and definitely HD textures that ran very smoothly, especially when you had literal hundreds of infected bodies sprinting right for you. There wasn’t a single frame dropped, no lag, nothing, which a lot of PC purists would be surprised by I’m sure. See? We console scrubs can have decent frame rates too!

Gameplay-wise, as I’ve said, it is a learning curve and it is a challenge. This is offset somewhat by the game having the interesting mechanic of being able to place buildings and assign unit commands while paused. Now, this is not a new feature to videogames, it’s been around since Baldur’s Gate, but it is nice to have in an RTS. Also, there is a very nice grid mechanic when placing buildings. It shows you exactly how many squares a building will take up, and if it’s a resource gathering building, it will show you exactly where it can be placed when in close enough proximity to the specific resource. Again, this is nothing new, but it feel nice and is very helpful as a visual indicator.

There is currently no campaign mode in the console version of the game, only custom survival maps for the time being. But this is fine, as every game is different and you can make it as difficult or simple as you wish. There is also currently no sign of an online multiplayer, but there is the “Challenge of the Week” where you put your skills against other players across the globe and try to get the highest score on a pre-set map with specific rules and tasks to accomplish… I didn’t do well.

As for the units. I’ve already mentioned their uniqueness in looks, but they all play differently too. You start with the basic Hunters and Soldiers, and even between these two troop types you can feel the differences. The Hunters move so quickly, but they are squishy compared to the slower Soldier’s heavier armour and higher damage output. But even above them, you have the likes of the Lucifer, an exo-suit wearing, flamethrower wielding juggernaut akin to the Firebats from Starcraft. These things just tear through the hordes of the smaller infected.

 

Burn, baby, burn

 

You then have Snipers who have less armour than your Soldiers, but a higher damage output and a much longer range, so they make excellent support units. Then if you survive long enough and can afford them, you get my personal favourite, the Titans. These are GIANT FRIKKIN ROBOTS!! Ugh. I love me some hot Mecha violence action. You’ve seen Love Death + Robots? These are like one of those mechs off the farming episode and I absolutely love them!

 

Titans gonna….tite? (It's better than the alternative - Ed)

 

Overall, I can see myself sinking a lot of time into They are Billions. It’s an enjoyable game and as I’ve mentioned before, I’m stubborn, so I want to do better. Would I recommend it on console? No, probably not. While not unplayable on controller by any stretch, as I’ve mentioned before, it is a slower way to play and it will hinder you somewhat. Unless you have the peripherals to play it properly.

Would I recommend it as a game, however? Definitely. It has all of the familiar charm of an old school RTS with exciting survival elements and a really cool visual aesthetic. While limited in its current form, this game is constantly being updated with new features and gribbly infected to chew your face off. There may even be a campaign mode somewhere down the line for us console gamers, which will only add more longevity to this already fun game.

They are Billions is currently on sale on Steam for between $29.99 or £23.99 and I can only assume it will be available for a similar price when it becomes officially available for console purchase.

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