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Category: Video Games

An Overview Of The Unusual Cuphead Franchise

The new DLC for Cuphead, amusingly called “The Delicious Last Course“, is coming out and, considering how much I enjoyed the original game, I’m very excited. However, Cuphead has become a surprisingly large series with many aspects that I wasn’t even aware of prior to writing this article and, given my excitement for the DLC, I thought it would be interesting to provide an overview of this unusual franchise.

Of course, we have to start where it all began, the original game. Released on the 29th of September, 2017, and developed by Studio MDHR which is a company set up by brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, the game proved to be an instant critical and commercial success and has sold 6 million copies as of 2020. Cuphead is a run and gun game about Cuphead and Mugman who end up having to work for the Devil in order to pay back their debts. This consists of fighting various debtors to the Devil and getting their soul contracts while also doing some platforming levels as well. The game’s graphics resemble a 1930s cartoon and makes use of Jazz and Big Band music as well. I really enjoyed Cuphead when it came out originally in 2017 and enjoyed the challenge that it offered as well.

A promo image for Cuphead.
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My Experience With The Dragon Age Series

It was recently announced that the upcoming Dragon Age game would be titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, a title that will be particularly interesting to fans familiar with Dragon Age lore. This news reminded me that, while I’ve touched on Dragon Age here and there, I haven’t shared my thoughts on the franchise and what I think about each individual entry. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to share my experience with the Dragon Age series as well as what I think about each of the main three games.

When Dragon Age: Origins was originally announced, I was incredibly excited. I had absolutely loved Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and I was eager to see how Bioware tackled a fantasy setting. It’s worth noting that I had little to no experience with Baldur’s Gate, the game series that Dragon Age: Origins acted as a spiritual successor to, but as soon as I got the chance to play it in November, 2009, I was instantly drawn into the world of Thedas, the world of the Dragon Age games.

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The Exciting Potential Of Sony’s PC Push

I’ve spoken before about how I was excited about Sony games coming to PC but that was over two years ago! Since then, we have seen Sony begin to release their first-party games on PC such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, God of War (2018) etc. and I’ve been eager to see how successful these have been and to try to figure out what sort of plans Sony has for PC. Recently, we got an incredible source of information regarding both how these previous releases have done and Sony’s plans for the future. Taking that into account, I thought I’d talk about the exciting potential of Sony’s PC push and what I’d like to see happen.

Let’s start with the new information that we’ve received. Sony recently held an investor meeting and one of the more notable aspects of this meeting were several slides they shared regarding the PC. If you take a look at the slide below, you’ll see that Sony has actually shared how much each game has sold on PC over the course of their lifetime. Horizon Zero Dawn, which was released on PC on the 7th of August, 2020, has sold almost 2.4 million copies on PC and has grossed $60 million. Days Gone was released on the 18th of May, 2021, and has sold about 850,000 units, grossing $22.7 million. Finally, God of War, only just released this year on the 14th of January, has already managed to outsell Days Gone by nearly reaching 1 million sales and grossing $26.2 million. While the sales figures are very much what I expected, I do confess to being quite surprised by these revenue figures, which I want to emphasise are still very successful, which seem lower than I expected, probably due to regional pricing.

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Some Fantastic Video Games That Are Quick To Play

As I’ve grown up, time has become more and more precious to me and, while I do play plenty of games that are considerably long, I’ve grown in appreciation for games that are short, hence my frequent use of HowLongToBeat.com. I’ve spoken before about the ideal video game length but I thought it would be interesting to recommend some games that I would consider to be fantastic while, simultaneously, being quick and short to play.

The first game that I would like to bring attention to is a delightful puzzle game called Path of Giants. I got this game as part of Humble Choice and am incredibly glad to have had the opportunity to play it now. You play as three explorers who are searching for treasure and must control each explorer to traverse puzzles. I wouldn’t regard the game as being particularly hard but there are a few puzzles that will take some particular effort to figure out. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the puzzles themselves, the pleasant graphics and the soundtrack and, despite encountering a couple of bugs, I ended up 100 percenting this game which only took me about four hours.

A promo image for Path of Giants.
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How I Came To Love Video Games

As you may have surmised from my various articles covering the topic of video games, I absolutely adore video games and I now count them as one of my primary hobbies along with anime, manga, Western animation and horror films. I recently wrote about some of the first anime and manga that I ever watched/read and thought it would be interesting to take a look at my history with video games and how I grew to love them.

From my earliest memories, I can remember that we had a computer in the house and there were several games that I ended up playing on there. In particular, the two games that I have the most vivid memories of playing were Sesame Street: Numbers which was an educational Sesame Street video game and Commander Keen which was a platformer that, despite playing a lot, I never got too far in. At this point in my life, I enjoyed the games that I was given by my parents but I wasn’t capable of deciding why I liked these games.

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Important Video Games That I Have Yet To Play

If you’ve been consistently reading my blog, you’ve probably figured out that I’m quite passionate about the medium of video games. Across my lifespan it’s entirely possible that I’ve played close to 1000 video games across numerous platforms. However, even having played so many games, there are still plenty of important video games that I’ve yet to play. Taking that into account, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a few examples, what’s prevented me from playing them and whether I believe I’ll get the opportunity to play them in the near future.

Despite owning a Nintendo 64, a GameCube, a Wii, a Game Boy, a Game Boy Advance and a Nintendo DS, I’ve actually played very little from Nintendo’s gaming catalogue with the only examples of Nintendo franchises that I remember actively playing and seeking out being Pokémon and Fire Emblem. Later in my life, I grew interested in platformers and, of course, I started to think about the many Nintendo platformers such as Super Mario 64, Metroid, the Donkey Kong games etc. I’ve also thought on occasion about the Zelda games and how, while I do have a copy of The Wind Waker, I’ve never completed one. Since my move to PC, my options for playing Nintendo games have become quite limited and while I could emulate Wind Waker on PC using my own personal copy, I’ve decided to focus on my many other games to play instead. It also seems quite unlikely that we’ll see Nintendo release their games on PC in the near future so, possibly excluding Wind Waker, I think my chances of being able to play these important games are quite low.

Wind Waker is likely to be the only Nintendo game I can play in the near future since I could emulate the game using my disc.
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The Fascinating Video Game Genre Of Tower Defense

I recently supported the Stand with Ukraine bundle over on Humble Bundle and perused the list of games to see which ones I should download and play. As I looked, I came across a game called Go Home Dinosaurs! which was listed as a tower defense. It had been a while since I last dabbled in this genre so I decided to give it a go and, despite some rough edges, I found myself quite enjoying it. Since I’ve been reminded of this fascinating video game genre, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what tower defense games are, their history and a few that I would recommend.

First off, a tower defense game is where hordes of enemies travel along a path, either predetermined or developed by the player over the course of the match, by placing defenses on or beside the path. The player has a variety of defenses with some typical examples being high damage to a single target, dealing lower damage but to a group of enemies, doing tiny damage but slowing the enemy down etc. The other aspect you’ll have to keep track of is your resources which limit the towers you can place. There’s usually a way to build up resources but it tends to be slow and you must make some tough decisions on whether to build cheap defenses to hold off the early waves or try to build the more expensive ones later in the match at the cost of a weaker early defense.

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Why I’m Excited About The Rise Of Linux Gaming

It’s no secret that I’m an avid PC gamer. I personally consider the PC platform to be the best when it comes to gaming but I’ve always been a little concerned when it comes to how much power Microsoft has over the PC gaming market. As of the writing of this article, the Windows operating system continues to dominate PC gaming with the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for February 2022 stating that over 96% of PCs running Steam use Windows OS. This is unbelievably dominant and puts a scary amount of power in Microsoft’s hands. However, there are signs that Linux could become a more viable gaming operating system in the future and I thought I’d share some of the reasons why I’m excited about the rise of Linux gaming.

Linux has always struggled as a gaming OS for one very simple reason, there aren’t that many Linux gamers in the first place. There are costs associated with porting a game to Linux and the small market share of Linux gamers typically results in most games choosing to port to Windows only. This has created a problematic chicken and egg dilemma where Linux ports are not created due to the small market and people choose Windows over Linux because of the much wider variety of games. However, it seems this limitation may soon be a thing of the past.

The OS market share according to the February 2022 Steam Hardware & Software Survey.
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Is The Epic Games Store A Viable Competitor To Steam In 2022?

It’s been well over a year since I last took a look at the performance of the Epic Games Store and a surprising amount of information has come out since then. Literally, mere months after I wrote that piece, the Epic Games v. Apple trial began and a surprising amount of incredible information regarding both the Epic Games Store and the games industry itself was leaked within days. I was tempted to write a new piece almost as soon as all this information came to the forefront but decided to hold off since I believed that it was too soon since I last spoke of the Epic Games Store. Now, in 2022, we’ve received our annual year in review from the Epic Games Store and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at all of this information and try to answer the question on whether the Epic Games Store is a viable competitor to Steam.

Before we get to the really juicy information that was released by the Epic Games v. Apple trial, I want to take a look at the stats that Epic Games provided themselves in their “2021 Year in Review“. As you can see in the charts below, the Epic Games Store has seen growth overall from 2020 to 2021. They’ve managed to acquire another 34 million customers, increase their MAU by 6 million, raise the amount spent on the store by $140 million with third-party games contributing $35 million of that increase. That’s not to mention the continued growth of their social media which, while not anywhere near as dramatic as in 2020, has continued to attract new followers.

Epic Games Store statistics for 2019.
Epic Games Store statistics for 2020.

The three info charts provided by Epic Games for their Epic Games Store from 2019 to 2021

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Why You Need To Be Aware Of Shovelware

It’s usually a good thing to see any market grow and the video game market is no exception. However, there is always a risk associated with rapid growth and, in the case of video games, it’s shovelware. Given how potentially destructive shovelware can be, it almost killed the gaming industry once, it’s astonishing how few people seem to even be aware of their existence, let alone being knowledgeable enough to avoid them. Taking this into account, I thought it important that we take a look at the history of shovelware, its presence in the modern video game industry and the need to be aware of them.

Let’s start with the definition of what shovelware is. While a definitive definition of shovelware can be quite tricky, it’s generally agreed that shovelware are games that are developed quickly and cheaply in order to be sold cheaply and rack up sales from customers who are ill-informed and don’t know any better. These games are usually of diabolical quality, may reuse assets from prior titles and feature numerous bugs and glitches.

One of the most infamous games of all time!
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