Straight up, we at X35 Earthwalker have to declare that XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is awesome. It is without a doubt a successful DLC which is worth buying and trying for yourself. It just has to be said from the start. Let’s see why.

Don’t let the introduction fool you as the tutorial and opening story line is pretty much the same except for a cutscene which shows, a person dressed very differently, sneak into an Advent facility and locate the location of the commander. Other from that it iOS all the same but afterwards you will encounter new cutscenes which reveal a lot. You will be introduced to two new factions: Reapers and Skirmishers. Both are very different in appearance, back story, abilities and combat styles. Read our previous blog on XCOM 2: War of the Chosen for more information. Make sure to master using these two factions as they are a real force beside your regular XCOM soldiers.

Players will notice a small green meter below the health of their soldiers. This bar represents your soldiers level of tiredness. If a soldier is used in missions in a row, they will start to get tired and will require rest eventually before getting used again. So take tiredness into account. The next thing is soldier bonding. Now soldiers who work well together can eventually build a bond which starts at level 1 and can be increased through going on missions together and special facilities which you can build. The bond grants the soldiers with special abilities to use on the field. Lastly there is a intelligence level. Now this is random for each soldier. Some have average intelligence, above average, and genius. The higher the intelligence the more options of abilities they have the opportunity to learn through using action points (AP). Abilities that are not normally for that class.

The new enemy faction, ‘The Lost’, are an excellent addition to the game.You can’t fight them the same way you fight Advent. You forget about cover and instead just get as many of them in sight as possible and create as much safe distance as possible. The Lost are so weak that they normally have 2 or 3 health (few have 4) meaning you can one shot them. if you do one shot one of them, then you get a free action, which is awesome. Thank goodness they have that mechanic in place. This is because they apple in swarms. You might even get 8 coming after you at one time. Worse (or at times better) the Lost might show up while you are fighting Advent which means they could swarm you and make life hard but on the good side they may come for advent instead making your fight easier.

The worst and probably best addition of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen has to be the Chosen themselves. The three powerful aliens that just don’t stay dead and relentlessly chase and hunt you down. The sniper one, the slashing one and the psionic one are all very powerful, got good health and command fear and attention on the battlefield. They can hang out in certain (identified) parts of the globe and if you do a mission in that area, there is a chance that they can show up and believe us when we say, you do not want that. When X35 Earthwalker himself encountered the assassin it was a problem. The assassin (Day-Mai Dessurik) came out of no where and slashed one soldier knocking them into a daze and then ran of safely into cover. X35 had to corner her and deliver the final blow. It wasn’t easy.

As you play, you will notice all the new things like knew enemy units, new maps, new interface screens for talking characters and more. There is even special missions for your soldiers and your ally factions to two together. Your soldiers will be unavailable for the period of the mission but it can be worth it. Seriously though, this DLC is excellent. Check it out for yourself before buying to see if you would be interested. Now what we can guarantee is interesting is… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Super Hydorah is a non-linear horizontal shoot em up game developed by ‘Abylight, Locomaltio and Gryzor86’. It’s coming out the 20th of September Xbox One and PC. Super Hydorah from the looks of it might be trying to go back to old school gaming styles. Let’s take a look.

In the world of Super Hydorah an evil force has started an invasion over Omios star. Players take control of the most skilful and deadly pilot in the galaxy (quite the claim there) to take on the Meroptians. The Meroptians are bio-mechanical creatures that are on a conquering campaign pretty much. So players must go from planet to planet fighting, destroying and taking on the Meroptians wherever they are.

Now Super Hydorah is basically one of those what you see is pretty much what you will get. It has the old school graphics style. It has taken from older games but adapted them to make something challenging, fun and appeal a lot to the old and new gamers. Now there are routes in this game and you must choose the one you want to go. Super Hydorah is larger than you initially think though.

There is said to be 21 different levels and those levels are split into 35 sublevels. 35 bosses which is a lot by the way and over 100 enemies. You must watch out for not just projectiles but enemies and even the environment. Over a sound track with 60 tracks, multiple endings, secrets and 3 game modes: single player, co-op multiplayer and a mini game called “robot chase”. So there is a lot here.

Overall Super Hydorah is another horizontal shoot em up game with many enemies, dangerous environments, large bosses and many levels. So it is what you probably expected but it’s got a lot in it. So if you liked retro games or the old school types then this game might be your thing. The developers ‘Abylight, Locomaltio and Gryzor86’ did a great job with this game. Super Hydorah might be worth checking out. Now old school games may be your thing but what’s everyones thing is… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Destiny 2 is out and already many have jumped head first in. Seriously some people are already high levels which means they got it and haven’t stopped playing since (get a life people). This is also a good sign, showing that there is lots for gamers to do to keep them going and that’s important. Let’s see how Destiny 2 is so far.

You start pretty much the same way as in the beta with the red legion cabal attacking your home. The red legion are a powerful and organised group of cabal led by a new and most dangerous enemy called Ghaul. This guy does not mess around. He is large, powerful, smart, strategic and acts like a boss. You and the guardians put up quite the fight, kill a bunch of them and even damage their air ship but when we came face to face with Ghaul, we didn’t look so hot. in fact he kicked us like we were a bad dog, back handed us like we were his son and then with his foot pushes us of the ship to fall to our death. Take into account that the ship wasn’t on ground floor. We fell from a mighty height… but since we are the main characters of the story we survived the fall. Ghaul will regret that. He and his legion. We will come back and make him pay. Right after we drag our half dead selves across the remains of the city and then outside.

Straight away the game feels pretty much the same as the first Destiny, well it should since the events of the sequel are pretty much right after the first game. So everything from movement to controls is the same but there are some differences in other areas though. For starters the combat has the system where some enemies have like energy shields for example and so your genetic weapons are much less effective against them. this is made worse as normal high ranking, strong or boss enemies normally have such shields. You will need to use your energy weapons which will drain the shields really fast resulting in great damage as well, leaving them now vulnerable to genetic weapons. Energy weapons work perfectly fine against regular enemies as well. There is more to this combat system though.

We loved the way the ship, Ghaul was on, transported troops down to the battlefield. They are loaded into what looks like a giant glowy energy hexagon or septagon chichis then launched at great speed to it’s destination. the hexagon slams into the surface and it disintegrates away revealing the cabal troopers inside. It’s pretty cool to watch. Gear so far seems to be easier to come by from what we have experienced so far. You get some for killing some enemies. Some you find in loot. Some you get awarded for completing public events and off course engrams. The first level where you fight without your light, which means no class powers by the way, is very good. You feel like a regular soldier especially with the h=threat that if you die, you can’t be resurrected by your ghost. Then that moment when you get your light back and unleash your powers upon the enemy. Very well done indeed.

 

You can now have two primary weapons. So that means two pulse rifles, two scout rifles or one auto rifle and another scout rifle. It’s up to you but one must be your genetic weapon and the other your energy weapon. Your ghosts can come with a ability like reveal the location of nearby hidden loot or even keep count of your kills for you. There are some new abilities as well. There is a Towering barricade and Rally barricade. The Tower is a large tall shield that absorbs incoming fire. You can walk through it to fire and then step back behind it to avoid damage. Enemies can run through as well. Rally is the same but lower so you can crouch behind it to hide but stand up to return fire. Doesn’t sound good but when you crouch behind it your weapon is instantly reloaded. Instant as in no reload animation or pauses. It’s just instantly refilled. There are new sub classes as well. For example (as we love titans) instead of the void subclass there is now the sentinel. Your super turns you into a guardian version of captain America. You have a shield which you use to bash enemies around, block incoming fire from the front and even throw it at enemies for it to ricochet and hit multiple enemies. Pretty cool right? That’s because it is.

The graphics in destiny 2 are awesome stuff. Everything looks wonderful and you can see that a lot of hard work went into it. This is also why X35 himself likes to stop and look around during some missions. The environments and visuals are excellent. Take a look at the mountains, cliffs or objects in the sky. Check out the waterfalls and just watch it for a while. The sounds in this game are excellent as well. The guns sound great. The impact the shield makes is cool. Even the noise of the enemies are annoying enough, which is a good thing. The music is probably the best thing here. it’s up for debate about that. Whoever was in the studio making the music needs a pay raise. The music is on point and it really adds to the environments creating different atmospheres. Like when all hope seemed lost and when you felt powerful again. 

Overall Destiny 2 so far is looking awesome. A very well done game. The developers ‘Bungie’ did an awesome job. We at X35 Earthwalker will continue to play the game and see what else Destiny 2 has to offer. This game is worth checking out. You may or may not like Destiny but you do like… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Ink is a new inky but fast paced platformer game developed by ‘ZackBellGames’. It’s coming out the 22nd of September for Xbox One, 19th for PS4 and already out on PC.

Now this game has been seen and liked by a lot of people for good reason. Ink has reminded many gamers of super meat boy. Basically players control a white square that releases different coloured ink as it moves, jumps and especially double jumps. The ink is important because you can’t see the terrain. It’s completely invisible and the ink reveals the terrain, especially when you die and go splat. There are spikes and falls which will destroy you.

Now there is some more to the game than that. There are enemies that want you to splat too. You have to defeat all the enemies by jumping on them and reach the goal. It’s literally a simple game. Nice and simple so that people can just jump on and give it a good go. There are 75 levels which means players have quite a lot of work to do. There are also bosses in Ink as well. They really shake things up.

Overall Ink just seems like another simple, quick fun game that any player sort of can just pick up and play. We checked out some gameplay and it really does remind us of super meat boy and a few others but it looks very good. The developers ‘ZackBellGames’ made a good game. This game might be worth checking out.

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Hob is a new suspenseful action adventure game developed by ‘Runic Games’. It’s coming out 26th of September for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. This game instantly looks weird but let’s take a look.

Not much information is given on Hob but we do know that it takes place on a world in disarray. The players job is to slowly figure out their role in saving this world and the life here. Hob is certainly not short on exploration. The environments are large and have a lot to offer. There are puzzles to solve and it is even said that players can transform the planet itself. That sounds very interesting.

In Hob players must rely on the giant mech arm. This arm is capable of warping, punching and grappling. Now to get these abilities and grow more powerful, players must use the GUS (Glove upgrade system). It’s like Metroid, you will need these abilities to access certain areas in the different environments. Also there are different creatures around as well and some of them are not friendly, meaning you will need your arm to fight them. Remember this.

We checked out some gameplay and it made the game much better in our minds. The graphics are excellent. It all looks smooth and well done. The environments and their designs are great. Thy look worth exploring which for games like this is very important. The sounds are excellent as well. When you land on a platform that then descends it sounds like platforms from ancient ruins. 

Overall there isn’t much information as of now to go on concerning this game but from what we know it looks like a good game. A bit interesting but hasn’t interested us enough. It’s not our type. Gamers who are explorers will like this and those for a bit of a mystery. The developers ‘Runic Games’ did a great job with this game and it shows. We at X35 Earthwalker will listen out for news concerning Hob. This game might be worth checking out. Make sure you do though as we ourselves know how hard and long it takes to make games. The world of Hob is in danger but guess what’s never in danger… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Raiders of the broken planet is a new 4v1 online action adventure game, developed by ‘Mercury Steam’. It’s coming out the 22nd of September for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. This has gotten quite a lot of attention so far. Let’s see why.

Now Raiders of the broken planet takes place on a far away broken planet. A force of humans are made there way there because of an incredible discovery on one of Saturn’s moons. This might just be their biggest discovery yet. This is at the far reaches of the universe. Apparently there is a source of energy called the ‘Aleph’. This energy somehow grants ultimate power to whoever controls it. That’s scary.

Now gamers can easily guess that since Raiders of the broken planet is 4v1 that makes it clear that players can choose to be on one of two sides. You can either be one of the raiders or of the otherside. So either be the one or be one of the four. It’s up to you. Now this Aleph is some crazy stuff. You can use it increase resistancen speed up self healing and improve aim. That sounds like quite the buff. You have to make sure to collect as much of it as you can from your enemies. Aleph is extremely volatile and if you don’t absorb it quick it will disappear, also destroying ammo in the process. So this calls for rushing in but then that means you may have to get physical with some enemies. 

Like Gears of war there is a lot of cover available and you don’t need button presses or stuff like that to use them. Now stress is bad for you but it gets real bad in Raiders of the broken planet because if you get stressed, your Aleph signature will be revealed to enemies… even through obstacles. If you choose to fight against the raiders then you and the space demon, bosses and enemies fighting alongside you. There is more groups out here than you think. There are the locals, Hades division, Fifth council and the Umbra Wardogs. Each have their own characters who have their own skills, weapons and story. With different groups, different characters and different worlds, there is a lot going on.

Overall Raiders of the lost planet seems really interesting right now. We checked out some gameplay and everything looks smooth and well right now. There is quite a bit of sneaky and stealth action in order to get close range. If you mess up, you can die quite quickly. Graphics look very good. Sounds are very nice as well. This game doesn’t really impress us yet. Off course more information will be released later which could sway our view. This game is cool and you can see that Raiders of the broken planet was a big project and lots of work has gone into it.

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Morphite is a new atmospheric exploration sci-fi shooter game developed by ‘Crescent Moon Games’. Morphite is coming out the 7th of September for Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PS4, IOS and PC. Talk about making a game accessible. We at X35 Earthwalker love that.

Morphite did get our attention straight up we can say that this is for gamers who like exploration, space and future like stuff. This game was inspired by some old classic games like Metroid Prime and Ratchet & Clank. So already we have certain expectations of Morphite. Sort of think of this like a more combat focused, deep story, poly style graphic looking no man’s sky but better.

There is a mysterious rare material called ‘Morphite’. Your goal is to unravel this mystery by traveling and exploring the galaxy. On your journey you will need to research animals & plants while taking on hostile entities in combat. Not everything you see is friendly. So with Morphite, players can expect an open-ended player driven discovery and exploration. The developers stated that this game is set to be “a deep and enriching single player experience”. If you haven’t guessed it by now, Morphite is set far in the future where humanity as already populated the distant reaches of space. Count us out. In terms of the story, the official website says, “The player takes on the role of Myrah Kale, a young woman residing on a space station and workshop under the care of her surrogate father, Mr. Mason. What starts as a simple exploratory mission to gather supplies to support their shop rapidly turns into a journey revealing Myrah’s unknown past and her relationship to a rare, coveted, and nearly extinct material called Morphite.”

Now Morphite has quite the amount to offer in terms of gameplay action. After all this game is about exploration. There are many worlds in Morphite and they are all random generated. There are a wide range of things for players to find and check out. You will find many different caves, landscapes, rivers, various creature types; however in space there are space stations to explore but they may not be normal ones as some space stations are abandoned or ruled by alien life. Scanning creatures is important because that information can be sold to upgrade your ships and weapons. Real time space combat. There are random vehicles and weapons that can be found on various planets. Environmental puzzle solving. Fully voiced main storyline. Best of all there are huge bosses to fight and hopefully defeat and much more.

Overall Morphite looks like a lot of fun. It certainly has lots of deep mechanics and features within. The graphics are Poly styled and the sounds are nice. The way the health and ammo floats to you after you kill an hostile entity definitely reminds us of Metroid. The developers ‘Crescent Moon Games’ did an excellent job with this game. It is worth checking out. Now Morphite is rare indeed but not as rare… as the ‘Earth Walk!’

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X-Morph: Defense is a new top down shooter, tower defense game, developed by EXOR Studios, and coming out 30th of August for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. This game so far looks real cool.

X-Morph: Defense shakes things up with the story. This time players aliens. Players will be invading and taking on Earth. Players are… the X-Morph. The alien species that wants earth’s resources and to terraform the planets surface. Now off course earth isn’t going to roll over and let this happen. They send their units and fight back. Players must get strategic in this fight. Use the build mode to select and place various different alien towers to counter the humans. Blow up buildings to block of paths or create paths. Whatever supports your towers and style. What’s also great is that you can join the fray yourself. Use a cool range of weapons to take them on. It’s up to you how you want to play. X-Morph is said to provide “exceptional planning freedom.”

So how do you complete your objective? Well you must defend the X-Morph harvesters from waves of incoming human forces. Now use the setup phase to carefully decide how you want to set up your defense and take your time because there is no time limit. X-Morph boasts about the ability to allow players to build towers virtually anywhere. So how will you build. Normally X35 Earthwalker himself likes to create long winding paths in games like Defense Grid 2 to make things as hard for the enemies as possible. Use the environment to your advantage. Everything is almost completely destructible. So collapse bridges, buildings and more to shape the field to your advantage like block or paths and make complex mazes.

What’s really cool is how far the humans have advanced in technology. They have created large, massive mechanical units that can destroy the X-Morph. These giant war machines can also be boss fights. These bosses have the power to damage and influence the environment as well. Prepare for awesome battles full of destruction. City sized threats indeed.

What really makes us at X35 Earthwalker very happy is the fact that X-Morph: Defense is split screen co-op. That’s right. You heard us. In co-op, there are more enemies and they come from more direction which honestly is how it should be to make the challenge balanced. There are different gameplay scenarios for co-op so you will have a different experience from when you played single player. So how will you work with your partner? Will both of you attack the enemy head on or will one build while the other attacks. It’s all up to the players.

We have checked out some gameplay and it’s looking real epic right now. The graphics and sounds are excellent. The action is continuous and explosive indeed. The buildings are shattering. The attention to detail is great as well. You can easily see that a lot of work went into this game.

Overall this game is looking awesome. The gaming mechanics are great and add layers to the tower defense aspects of X-Morph: Defense. Like we said, the graphics and sounds are excellent. The environments are designed well. The developers ‘Exor Studios’ have done a magnificent job from what we can see. This game is worth checking out. stealing a planets resources is mean but one thing is never mean, and that’s… The ‘Earth Walk!’

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XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is getting closer but as it’s getting closer more information is being released. More information about the enemies. Believe us when we say, things are getting completely real.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen not only has the Chosen who are coming after us. The Assassin, Warlock and Hunter. Powerful well trained prideful beings who keep coming after you and can kidnap your soldiers. Sure they are the biggest threat but there are some new faction enemies that are more than happy to give us a fight for the planet. 

The ‘Lost’ are the result of the aliens bioweapons and bombardments. So yes they were once humans but now just husks. Their bodies are fragile meaning they aren’t a problem really but when they are in large numbers that’s when things get real. They pretty much rule the abandoned cities. They are attracted to loud nosies meaning when you are busy fighting aliens and you maybe use a grenade or whatever, the Lost may show up. The worst things about these guys is that they will swarm you continuously. They just keep coming. You can’t hold them off forever, they will eventually get you, so make sure to move on and retreat. Sounds frightening honestly. This enemy is a really game changer. You can use them to attack the enemy or they will ruin everything for you.

The Priest carry regular weapons like the magnetic rifles but their main threat is simply their psionic powers. They can use stasis on units, mind control enemy units and even somehow shield and heal themselves when they have taken heavy damage. They can use ‘Holy Warrior’, which is similar to what the sectoids in XCOM 1 could do, where they merge minds and one boosts the stats of the other. This also has the same weakness as well meaning if you can kill the Priest then the boosted unit will die as well. Do not forget that. It’s already clear that the Priests are going to be a huge problem. Mind control is pretty much the worst thing.

The Purifiers are the most straight forward and simple of the new factions. Their job is to clean up the Lost and any civilian retaliations. How do they do that? Well they use their flamethrowers off course. These guys specialise in dealing low but continuous damage in a wide area. It gets worse. They can throw incendiary grenades. Lastly when they die, there is a chance that they will explode. So when dealing with these guys make sure to not be grouped up together and take them out from a distance. We are loving the variety so far.

The Spectre can turn into a black nanorobotic cloud at will meaning it can disappear. It’s ‘Shadowbind’ ability can lock soldiers in place. It gets worse. It then creates a shadow version that have the same skills as the soldier it locked in place. The Spectre can also use the ‘Horror’ ability which damages the enemy but heals itself. Sadly they automatically have the ‘Lightning reflexes’ ability which means the first overwatch shot ALWAYS misses. The Spectre is already getting on our nerves.

So these are four new factions with three being advent units while the Lost are natural enemies that will attack anyone. Everything so far about XCOM 2: War of the Chosen sounds awesome. We at X35 Earthwalker are looking forward to this. Some are looking forward to this game but everyone is looking forward to… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Killing floor 2 is a first person shooter game developed by ‘Tripwire Interactive’. It’s coming out 29th of August for the Xbox One but already out on PC and PS4. This is said to be a crazy zombie game.

In Killing floor 2 the action takes place in Europe. Europe has been overrun by hostile murderous clones called ‘Zed’. Zed were created by the corporation Horzine. This Zed outbreak was caused by failed experiments. The outbreak spreaded at an alarming rate and couldn’t be stopped. The Zed have caused more problems than one might think, governments have collapsed, military forces have been destroyed and communication networks have failed. It’s always the communications that fail us. All hope isn’t lost though because a group of civilians mercenaries and soldiers are working together to combat the Zed across Europe. So wherever the Zed are the group of survivors will be their to exterminate them.

There is a wide range of characters in Killing floor 2. There is literally a lot and each of them has their own age, occupation and different likes and dislikes. For example Tom Banner is 32 and likes swords and the middle ages. He is dressed up like a knight so that makes sense. He also dislikes action movies. It’s actually sort of interesting to read through each one and see how much they differ from each other. 

The Zeds are the main stars of Killing Floor 2. There are a lot of them. So much variety and so much danger. The cyst are small weak Zed which comes in hordes and able to latch unto you to slow you down for the others. Alpha Clot are fast, strong and tough humanoid Zed that move quickly to shred players up. Crawlers stay low moving alone the ground and can emerge from places like ventilation shafts and even manholes. They can also leap very far. Stalker does indeed stalk you. It basically has active camouflage from Halo and becomes completely visible when it attacks. If you look carefully you can still see them. Bloats are large bloated creatures that take a lot to stop and put down. They carry meat cleavers and can vomit as well. They are bullet sponges. Siren can scream which does heavy damage at close range and even destroy explosives like grenades. They just make things harder. Fleshpound is a large brutish Zed that charges and attempts to smash players into bits. Their mallets are resistant to must attacks and they use them to shield themselves. There are more Zeds and all are a problem.

There are two game modes that we know of. Survival and VS survival. Survival is where players take on hordes on AI controlled Zed until they either reach the boss or die in the process. Select and choose from a variety of perks, weapons, powers and skills. Choose wisely though as the Zed do not mess around. You will need to use everything you have to handle them. In VS survival it’s players vs players. Some players will be the humans who will fight to survive until they defeat the boos while the other side controls the Zed and do everything in their power to crush the humans and rip them apart. The teams will switch so all players get to try both sides. The best thing about both game modes is the fact that it’s all multiplayer if you haven’t guessed that by now. You can have up to 6 players on one team which is great.

If you have a lot a lot of items, then you can use them for crafting to get better items. So break down your items into materials and get the Master crafted stuff. There are lots of maps for the action to take place on which is expected because the game doesn’t have a story mode. It’s all action and so their needs to be lots of effort into it.

Overall this game looks very cool but doesn’t seem like it is really our style though. It just seems like a normal running around and gunning zombie like creatures. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a very good game but it’s up to the gamers to decide what they think. We at X35 Earthwalker will check it out more and see if our opinion changes. The graphics are good and the sounds are good. The developers ‘Tripwire Interactive’ did a great job with this game. This game might be worth checking out. The Zed outburst may be one of the worst things ever but one of the best things… is the ‘Earth Walk!’

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