Windward

Windward, released in May of 2015, is an indie seafaring game played from a fixed camera, third person perspective. It begins with choosing a name and creating a randomly generated world. There are several options for this, including world size and faction locations. Oh yeah, when you start a new game you have to choose a faction. There are four and each specializes in different areas, such as military might and trading.
After you actually begin the game, you're given a ship and not much else. In this game, there is no set objective, it's rather more of a sandbox where you choose your own objectives. You can build a trade empire and get rich, or explore the vast world and fight pirates.
In any case, the ship you begin with is not good for much. To get a better ship, you'll need to earn money. After you do that you can purchase a better ship, or upgrades for your current ship.
And that's the main part of the game, the way I played, at least. Venture into an area, earn money, buy upgrades, repeat. But it's enjoyable.
Back to what you can do in the game. The game, while lacking in any main objective, does have quests, which can be started by accepting them at any town or by finding random notes floating out in the water. But this is the most lacking part of the game. Most of the quests are something like picking up cargo in another port, hunting down a pirate, or establishing another port, which you can name.

Overall, the game is fun and at a ten dollar price on Steam, it's well worth it if you enjoy a good seafaring adventure, and as a bonus it even has a multiplayer mode.

Ancient Warfare 2 Review

On the surface, "Ancient Warfare 2" appears to be a direct clone of the similar indie game "Totally Accurate Battle Simulator". Other people seem to think this as well as the game creator has posted on the Gamejolt page that it is not a ripoff and that they came up with the idea for the game before they new about "Totally Accurate Battle Simulator". Still, it is easy to see why people would think this as the graphic styles of the games are almost identical. The game play of the games is also somewhat similar, with a few key differences. Whereas in TABS you place you play through a campaign where you buy troops and place them buy filling in white dots on a grid, in Ancient Warfare 2's custom battle mode you actually place the troops for both sides, as well as buildings, on the map. But custom battle is not Ancient Warfare 2's only mode. It also features king of the hill, where your side (the blue) must take and keep control of a flag on a hilltop. This brings us to another key feature of the game, the ability to take control of a little guy and fight alongside your team. This feature makes the game much more interesting since you have the choice to be an onlooker or a participant in the battle and leads to much more replay ability.
Another game mode is conquest, where there are five flags on the map and your team must control the majority of them for a certain amount of time in order to win.
There are also a couple more game modes, and more being worked on so overall the game is definitely worth playing, which brings us to the price. The game is not free, but is rather a "name your own price" game with the minimum being $.50 and the recommended price $3.00. If you are someone who enjoys sandbox strategy type games, then it is definitely worth at least $3.00.

Stronghold 2 Finally Being Fixed

Stronghold 2 is a real time strategy game released by Firefly Studios in 2005. It is the third game in the Stronghold series and features many of the game play elements of its predecessors (Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader) only in 3D. One of the game play elements in the Stronghold games that differs from many similar real time strategy games like Age of Empires II includes as much of a focus on building up your economy as it does building a military. This can be either a good or a bad thing depending on the preferences of the player.
So if the game was released in 2005, why am I writing about it in 2016? Well, one of the best things about Stronghold 2 was the online multiplayer hosted by GameSpy. Unfortunately, when GameSpy shut down in 2013, the servers hosting Stronghold 2 shut down as well, rendering the multiplayer broken. Firefly Studios said that they would have the multiplayer fixed by summer of 2014, but nothing ever came of it. There was, however, a workaround using GameRanger, but this was not already reliable.
But finally, after 3 years of no multiplayer, Firefly Studios announced that they would finally be releasing an update for the Steam version of the game that would not only fix the multiplayer, but also update some of the graphics, that would be released in the first quarter of 2017.
The reason for Firefly Studios finally fixing the game may be due to the more recent games in the Stronghold series not being very well received, due to some questionable game play mechanics and a limit on the number of buildings and troops you can have that was much lower than Stronghold 2 and previous titles.
As someone who fist got into PC gaming because of Stronghold 2, this news is very exciting and I am looking forward to playing the multiplayer again.

Carnage by Matin

Carnage is an indie, free to play game available to download on Gamejolt. From the title you would probably expect something extremely gory and overly violent, but such is not the case with Carnage, which does not even have blood spatters, but enough about the name.
Carnage features 2D, retro graphics that have a very nice, clean style to them and good animations.
The objective of the game seems to be to kill as many enemies as possible while gaining experience points and leveling up. That's it. There are no other objectives. You don't have any sort of quest to complete, it's just a fighting game. And that's okay, because it does that pretty well. The enemies are pretty generic zombies, skeletons, bats, slimes and ogres, but the environment is interesting and the combat, while repetitive, is fun.
My main complaint about this game is that there is too little. There's only one level/worldspace, and it gets old after about 20 minutes and on top of that, if you level up to level 10 or so, it the game becomes extremely easy, because as far as I can tell the enemies don't level with you.

This screenshot appears to depict a boss fight, but I never encountered one, so I'm not sure if that's what it is.
The game allows you to switch between 2 control schemes, the default using the arrow keys to move, x to jump, c to attack, space to dash and z for skill. The alternate controls use w a s d to move, k to jump, j to attack, l to dash and i for skill. between the 2, the second is more intuitive if you're a PC gamer, and is the one I opted for.
Is the game good? Yes. Is it great? Probably not, but it's a free game on Gamejolt so how can you complain?

Overtale, the Unofficial Sequel to Undertale

Undertale was released on September 15, 2015 and quickly became one of the most popular games of the year, spawning dozens and then hundreds of fan made games. The reason for Undertales enormous popularity can't be nailed down to one thing, but it was probably a combination of the unique combat system, interesting characters and story and its tag line "The RPG where no one has to die".
But of all of the fan games based on Undertale, one is much more ambitious than all of the others. Overtale.

Overtale is set 15 years after Undertale and features a new story and new characters.
The project is being worked on by 50 people, probably one of the largest teams making a fan game thus far, and will be a 3D game, a diversion from Undertale's 2D graphics. The battle system will remain very similar to Undertale's with added attacks and dodges.
The game also features a new original soundtrack which can be downloaded from the Overtale page.
While all of these things are interesting, the most interesting thing is that the game has been approved by Undertales creator, Toby Fox. This would be more surprising if the game weren't being released for free. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the game will be released for free on Gamejolt, giving you no reason not to play it when it's released.
Overall, the game looks interesting and I am looking forward to playing it when it is released.

The Nintendo Switch

Nintendo has finally announced their newest console, the "Nintendo Switch". Chances are if you like Nintendo at all you've already heard about, but perhaps you don't know much about it yet.
It had been rumored for months that the new console Nintendo was working on, a project called the "Nintendo NX" would be a hybrid of console and mobile game platform, combining the technology of the Wii U and the 3DS. However, there wasn't any conclusive information until Nintendo's announcement when the rumors were confirmed. The NX's real name is the "Nintendo Switch", an aptly named console which has the rumored ability to switch between home console and portable. The main part of the console sits in a stand, presumably its main way of charging, and can connect to your TV to play games just like on the GameCube (No motion controls). Then, if you want to take it on the go you can just pop it out of the stand, clip on two side controllers (called "Joy-Cons") and there you go. It can be taken anywhere as long as you're not worried about breaking it. The side controllers can also be removed and used separately for multiplayer on the go, something that may be good for a long car ride with kids, except that the controllers are so small that they will easily be lost, as they appear to have no wrist straps like the Wiimotes.

The Nintendo Switch will not compare to the Xbox One or Playstation 4 when it comes to hardware, but that hasn't been the draw on Nintendo consoles for a long time. Nintendo consoles are known for being innovative and the Switch certainly lives up to that, but is it really worth buying? In the long run it will be down to the games released on it that will determine whether or not it is worth it.
A question many people are left asking after seeing the Nintendo Switch trailer is whether or not Skyrim will be available. The truth is, no one knows right now. Bethesda has said that they have made a deal with Nintendo and that they will be releasing games on the Switch, but they have not definitively said if Skyrim will be one of them, so as far as that goes, we'll have to wait and see.
Another games teased on the Switch was Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which looks awesome, and I'm tempted to buy a Switch just to play that, but I don't have $300 to spend to play one game.
Another interesting thing on the Switch is that CD's have now been replaced with cartridges, and this is an interesting move for Nintendo, but we don't yet know specifics about them such as storage space and data transfer speed, but presumably they will out perform CD's in both of these areas.
Will the Nintendo Switch outperform the Wii U and live up to the Wii? I have no idea, only time will tell.

First Post - The Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog is to provide information and commentary about upcoming video games, current games, past games, consoles, PC's, whatever.