November-December
Halo Meets Portals In Splitgate Arena Warfare
D.FOX
You're perched high above the arena with you trusty sniper rifle laying down cover for your team, when you begin to take fire from the rear. You take a side step dashing through the escape route you laid in preparation for just this, of course the enemy follows in hot pursuit. "All according to plan." you think to yourself as you shoot your alternate portal straight ahead. They think you're trying to get out of dodge asap, hastening the pursuit desperately trying to get the kill before you escape. As your energy bar nears the red from your pursuer you take aim straight ahead through your portal and "BOOM HEADSHOT!" right from behind. They never saw it coming.
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This is just one of many strategies you can utilize in this Halo-Portals love child known as Splitgate developed by 1047 Games. It looks, feels and plays like Halo's multiplayer matching you up with players while you navigate a random map practicing with other players eventually being placed in a lobby where you are split into teams and vote on a map and scenario. At first glance you would think this is just another clone or ripoff of our beloved shooter, but there are several key differences in game-play that make this title its own unique game. We will start with the obvious, the portals. Standard with every load out is the portal gun, which allows the player to shoot portals on any designated surface marked by a glowing blue grid in the map. (and theres plenty of them.) You have three keys bound to work with, one for a blue portal, one for your red portal, and one to close them. The two key designation allows you to leave one up as long as you want while placing the other as many times as you wish and vice-versa. Players have clear view through portals they have placed, and while not being able to see through other placed players portals you can move freely and even shoot through any of them currently linked to its paired exit.
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This allows some unique strategies, such as zapping one upon a high surface to snipe from in a corner hidden somewhere across the map, Baiting enemies through to fall to their death out of bounds, or even to cover your own back while keeping eyes forward. These can all be combated with your grenades however, they are not lethal or even damage causing at all in this game. You spawn with 2, and they serve only the purpose of closing other players portals. Along with portal gun and EMP-esque grenades you have a "jetpack" which I consider more of a jump thrust pack. It functions as a prolonged double jump/glide with a gauge that depletes rather rapidly in my opinion, but recharges just as quick once you hit the ground running again.
Most of the weapons have a Halo series counterpart including the Battle Rifle, Plasma rifle, and even a combination of the Energy Sword and Gravity Hammer in the form of the B.F.B, or "Big F'ing Bat" which honestly is just fun as hell to be warping about smashing players off the map with. (which makes up for the slow firing rate of the shotgun that infuriates me at times.) Though there is no campaign mode a lot of your favorite game modes make an appearance, some with the unique twist brought with the portals mechanic. There is shotty snipers, VIP, capture the flag,the deathmatch variants, and even team swat! In addition to everything mentioned above, there is a leveling, ranked and even a loot system as well. The loot being rewarded for leveling up and achieving completion of varies challenges in the form of SAW packs which give you random armor, weapon and other equipment skins three at a time.
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Splitgate:Arena Warfare is available free on steam as of right now, and announced to be coming to consoles early 2020, though not specified which ones at this time. There is season pass, and disco ball system for those who would like to spend money for cosmetic packs and such, but as far as i can tell the free game is not limiting at all in gameplay, and you gain SAW packs frequently enough to never have to actually worry about paying.
Survive,Build,Die,Rebuild again in RUST
D.FOX
Oh the frustration this game will bring, making it all the more satisfying when you master it. I am referring to Rust of course, the survival game born from the ARMA Day Z mod, released by Facepunch Studios for Steam, and soon to be console 2020. You wake up on the coast of an unfamiliar island armed with nothing but a rock, and a torch that's it, not even pants! The player must navigate this foreign land combating not only the elements and wild life but other players as well. That's right the whole time you are trying to stay ahead of starvation and hypothermia you have to be wary of other players coming to take what you've worked so hard to achieve, survival of the fittest after all.
Now this may seem off putting at first, and trust me you will become very frustrated at points, but there is an almost relaxing ambiance to the game when your not in immediate danger. This is achieved in a few ways depending on how you wish to play the game, but almost always has to begin with the basics of hunting,gathering, and crafting. This begins with gathering would and stone by bashing certain resource nodes with your trusty stone to craft better tools, weapons and shelter, to then allow harvesting of better resources for even better crafting etc.
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So now you have your little shack hidden in the woods, and some foraged mushrooms, you've avoided death by naked savages thus far, what now? You raid, salvage, team up, and even betray other players. There's really not much you can't do in the world of rust. There are supply points that spawn crates of valuable loot and resources that you can search for. you can PVP anyone you come across whether they like it or not. and there's even NPC's that patrol certain areas that you can raid with friends to get high tier loot.
Everything you do has some form of risk and reward. Some players choose to be peaceful farmers who set up food shops, they run the risk of being targeted as easy pickings, Some focus purely on arming themselves with weapons ranging anywhere from crude spears, bows and firearms made from salvaged materials, right up to military grade rifles and explosives obtained through a various of means, not only for defense but to break into others bases and steal their resources, and gear. That's right you can steal anything and everything from other players, don't want to huff it all back to your place like a pack mule? That's fine you can even steal the whole base if you desire through infiltrating and authorizing yourself on the building cabinet and locking the owner out of their own base...which has actually happened to me, though I deserved it since I had stolen the base from somebody who forgot to build or even lock a door.
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It is hard to sit here and go into more depth about this game without taking away the joy of experiencing it to create your own style of play. You just have to log in and take a stab at it yourself, but I will see you off with a few things to keep in mind should you choose to hop on and see exactly what i am talking about for yourself. First of all, given the object and freedom of the game you will encounter a massively toxic player base and I cant stress this enough, but don't take it to heart. There are players you will come across that will help out a newbie, I have even had someone I recognized from killing me on site earlier spare me and even team up with me for a week or so before server wipe later on. That being said, be wary of those players who team up with nefarious goals in mind as once you bring them in there's nothing keeping them from betrayal. Another thing, servers wipe every set period of time depending on which server you have chosen, this rearranges the whole map, and every few wipes even resets learned blue prints so if your struggling early on keep in mind everyone will periodically be reset completely to starting off on equal footing again.
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Live out your Gundam Pilot dreams with M.A.S.S Builder
D.FOX
If you ever wanted to build and pilot your own Gundam, or other mech variant you may love M.A.S.S.(mechanical assualt skeleton suit) Builder, the mech piloting game developed by Vermillion Digital Co. and released on Steam. This game lets you fully design your own mech and pilot it through missions in the campaign mode, and even take it to the onlines to battle others creations or team up for some co-op play. Now im not just talking about choosing a few colors, unlocking some helmets and choosing a weapon when I say you can design your own mech. You get to go in depth with creation from chasis, skeleton, weapon and even tuning it all individually to a great extent. Even in the Demo you could spend hours designing and tweaking your mechanical death machine. Most of the actual mech design does seem to be mostly cosmetic, but the weapons and tuning effect in game stats and combat. You get to create and customize a melee weapon, a main cannon, alternate cannon, mounted launchers, and floating support pods with all your choices effecting how each weapon will function.
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Only having experienced the demo so far I cannot go into detail about some of the features and gameplay, but Can say that the combat and story mechanics seem to have gotten as equal attention as the customization aspect of the game. They do not waste anytime throwing you right into it either, as when you begin your first mission you are surrounded by enemy units to smash your way through to achieve several objectives provided by your commanders floating avatar through your hud before coming up to a rather difficult boss encounter. This game is definitely going onto my holiday wish list as i cannot wait to see what more they have to offer beyond this first demo mission, and provided parts to work with in the design room. If you are interested so far be sure to check the video out below showing a quick designing and deployment of a mech in action.
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Retro Games Renewed
with Retro Achievments.Org
D.FOX
Are you looking for a new reason to dig out that Logitech gamepad and fire up the emulators to enjoy your favorite classics? Maybe your like myself when your playing through Halo or CoD and see that achievement pop after getting that last headshot needed thinking to yourself " Man, imagine if golden eye had these?" Well thanks to Scott Davies and the staff over at Retroachievements.org you can enjoy many of your classic favorites with a series of dedicated achievements without having to create your own own outside of the game, or check them off a list you downloaded trying to keep as accurate track as you can on the fly.
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Not only is it integrated with the emulator of your chosen system, its all tracked and profiled complete with friends list and custom challenges on your player profile viewable on the site. Every day there are more and more achievements being added expanding the title list, made possible not only by the devoted staff, but other players and fans as well. The enjoyment I have had playing games I could never bring myself to dust off again previously or the challenges between me and my cousin to see who can get 100% first has been amazing. Following is a brief history of the program provided by the staff themselves, I strongly encourage checking them out, who knows you may even discover some new titles through the spirit of a good challenge as i have with games like mega man x series and more.
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Short History
The RetroAchievements project was created by Scott Davies in 2012. He hacked some open source emulators to add the RetroAchievements feature and coded all the backend/website mostly alone.
By January 2014, there were 4 RA emulators, over 5000 achievements to earn (thanks to the devotion of many passionate achievement developers) and over 1000 players registered. After a couple of years Scott was called by the real life the website development went into a period of hiatus with just a few sporadic improvements (the achievement developers were continually working on more and more games, though).
In late 2015 leiradel started to work to integrate the RetroAchievements feature into RetroArch. And, as RetroArch is able to run on a wide variety of platforms (such as Mac and Linux) and devices (such as Android phones and Raspberry pi), it helped a lot to increase the popularity of the RetroAchievements project.
As the site slowly grew, so did the bandwidth costs, so in late 2016, Scott reached out to the community and they suggested doing a Patreon to keep the site going. After implementing it, the community response was fantastic, which allowed the site to continue completely ad-free.
Mid 2017 the RetroAchievements Discord server was started and it made communication across the community much easier. Since then, many knowledgeable members (coders, web developers, etc.) joined the scene volunteering to contribute to the project.
Up to this point all the achievement creation knowledge was scattered in several forum posts, making it very tough for a newbie to learn how to create achievements. Then in the late 2017 meleu started the RADocs project and thanks to contributions from many experienced achievement creators it is now a reasonably solid resource of information. Helping dozens of Jr. Developers (and even the experienced ones) to create content for our community.
In the early 2018 Scott opened the source of the back-end/website, which was a turning point in the history of the development of the whole RetroAchievements project (see us at github).
Later in the same year a more concise staff began to take shape and is now an awesome team. These talented guys keep the ball rolling and make it very clear that the RA community is alive and stronger than ever.
In some areas the project may still look like a beta version, but we are continually working hard to make things better.
RA Staf
Here's a list of the current staff members in alphabetical order.
BenGhazi: Admin, Discord mod, fledgling site programmer.
caricatur: Hash database manager; updates game's forum posts with ROMs checksum info.
Dexterspet: Former Admin, Adviser, major achievement developer; he's created achievements for over 70 games!
DrPixel: Discord moderator and Discord's icon-gauntlet manager.
Flara: Admin, Discord moderator and Achievement of the Week maintainer.
Hotscrock: Admin, Developer Compliance manager. He's helping developers to follow the Developer's Code of Conduct.
ikki5: Discord moderator and Achievement of the Week maintainer.
Jamiras: Admin, and main RAIntegration/RAEmus developer.
kdecks: Admin, moderator, community manager.
Keltron3030: Admin, Lead code reviewer - helping users to become jr. devs and helping them qualify to become full developers
LordShin: Discord moderator, and HotCheeves Flash news manager.
luchaos: Admin and webmaster. Currently working on the version 2.0 of the website.
Salsa: Admin, Discord moderator, and the most experienced achievement developer on site, having developed achievements for over 110 games.
👑 Scott: Creator and owner of the RetroAchievements project. Admin, webmaster, maintains the site. Father of two and most of the time is very busy being busy.
StingX2: Adviser, former admin, maintains the challenge league contest.
televandalist: Admin, Entry database manager. Sorting out the database, hiding and renaming bad and false entries, among other things.
Site developers and Integration Contributors Credits
AlanRoxdale: Helped build support for RAMeka with GameDragon.
Euclide: Built and stabilized the integration for Apple II and PC-8000/8800.
GameDragon: (former) RAIntegration/RAEmus developer, former admin. Got all RAEmus under under one integration file.
Jamiras: Admin, and main RAIntegration/RAEmus developer.
leiradel: (former) RALibretro developer/maintainer. And the guy who integrated RetroAchievements feature into RetroArch.
luchaos: Admin and webmaster. Currently working on the version 2.0 of the website.
meleu: Discord bot developer, site developer, RADocs maintainer.
👑 Scott: Creator and owner of the RetroAchievements project. Admin, webmaster, maintains the site. Father of two and most of the time is very busy being busy.
salvadorc17: Initiated support for Nintendo 64, build support for Neo Geo Pocket, and more.
SyrianBallaS: RAintegration/RAEmus developer.
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Donkey Kong Country takes
this issues OST Dedication
D.FOX
DK Island Swing
Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
It took me a bit to think of which game I wanted to feature for this update, and then it hit me, Donkey Kong! It wasn't partially featured in the last segment, and almost every track just gets better and better then the last.
David Wise composed most of the music for Donkey Kong Country, with Eveline Fischer also contributing.David Wise (born 1967) is an English video game music composer and musician. He was a composer at Rare from 1985 to 2009, and was the company's sole musician up until 1994. I'm not going to upload all 23 tracks here, but a handful of the ones i believe deserve some specific attention, not that any of them is a bad track in my opinion.
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DK Island Swing
This track is one of the earlier ones that I enjoy, though its more so towards the middle. which leads me to the next thing I find interesting about the track, it changes in unison with the level itself as you progress through from morning to night.
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Aquatic Ambience
Normally, water levels are anything but relaxing. And without exception the levels featured in DKC has it's own level of frustrating moments and tricks. But with a smooth track like this it is strangely calming to navigate the twisting reefs of DK's island home.
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Aquatic Ambience
Mine Cart Madness
Now this track matches the suspense and anxiety the level itself instills perfectly. One of the most stressfull levels in the early game, it's also one of the first where they actively try to cheap shot you with enemies shooting at you from just off scree, hard jumps juuust barely in range of carts jump, and guys waiting after your practically baited into a jump to come at you upon landing.
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Mine Cart Madness
Life in the Mines
All I have to say here is, "turn around. tuuurn arouuuund, tuuurn arouuuund, right behind youuuuu.
All I can ever think about is that song when I here this track, which in turn makes me think of the opening scene of the movie urban legend, always wonder if anyone else had this happen.
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Life in the Mines
Funkys Fugue
This track may starts out okay, but once it picks out its a real jam. It actually reminds me a bit of killer instinct, which now knowing the history of Rare with David Wise makes total sense. I will actually sit in the plane for a few extra moments before selecting where to depart just to get the full toon in.
Funkys Fugue
Northern Hemispheres
This is by far my favorite ambient track form the game. It genuinely reminds me of a quite snowy day growing up in Maine. Just a perfect environmental level track that sets the setting perfectly with the level design.
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Northern Hemisphere
Fear Factory
Fear Factory
Fear factory changes tempo and beat just enough throughout the level you can actually use the track to pace running through the map as the luls and pick ups can pair with where you can rest for a moment and where it's better to run and jump in rhythm.
Gang Plank Galleon
Probably the most up beat cheeful sounding boss fight music, especially of the game itself. Normally final boss music is suspenceful and dramatic, not that it doesn't set the mood right as you're battling aboard a pirate ship, it just seems to be a bit less dramatic then a normal boss fight track.
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Gang Plank Galleon
Something a little extra
How many video game sound tracks can say they are so good that that mash up perfectly with pop hits for years to come? I mean I'm not actually sure how many either way, but thanks to norwegian recycling Donkey Kong Country can say its soundtrack stands the test of time with proof to back it up. (Not that any of these titles can literally say they can or not, I believe you know what I mean.) So below are a few tracks from N.R.s mixed album titled Donkey Business. which I stongly recommend checking out as its tracks from Donkey Kong Country mashed up with songs from artists including, Eminem, Micheal Jackson, Luda, and more!