"If there is an app for that"

Steam Link Spotlight - Nuclear Blaze

November 04, 2021 by RSS Feed

Steam Link Spotlight is a feature where we look at PC games that play exceptionally wall using the Steam Link app. Our last entry looked at If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers. Read about how it plays using Steam Link over here.

This entry is for a game that isn't quite exceptional on Steam Link so much as it is exceptional for the kind of game that it is. Nuclear Blaze is an action-oriented puzzle-platformer where you play a firefighter who finds themselves in a mysterious subterranean nuclear facility.

The basic idea of the game is that you're armed with a water pack and hose which you use to help you navigate your environment, most of which is on fire. By aiming your hose and making judicious use of your limited water supply, you can douse the flames of an area, which typically allows you to move on to the next room.

The key to putting out fires in Nuclear Blaze is to do so quickly and strategically. If you put out a portion of a fire, it always has the chance to relight if left too long next to things that continue to burn. You can't just spray your hose willy nilly though or you'll run out of water, so making your way through a room often looking like charting a path that allows you to reach the flames effectively while also passing water stations to refill your tank, and then seeing if you can execute on that path in a timely fashion.

Because of how timing and efficiency are important in Nuclear Blaze, I wasn't confident that it would feel good when streamed to a touchscreen device. But, to my surprise, it works pretty well! I think most of this is due to the game's overall design. It doesn't have particularly complicated controls, and the way that most rooms let you take your time to figure out your approach to extinguishing fires no matter how many times you've already tried to solve it, are tremendously helpful to making it a comfy experience on iOS.

That said, the easiest control layout for the game is to use virtual buttons, which isn't ideal. As you can see in the video capture of the game there are times where I missed button presses and died as a result, but Nuclear Blaze is thankfully quite generous with its checkpointing so it didn't feel like a huge setback.

Even thought it's not perfect on Steam Link, Nuclear Blaze was surprisingly fun to play. I could also see it getting some revamped controls and coming to mobile at some point, since there is nothing else about it from a visual or complexity standpoint that would hold it back on mobile devices. I'm not sure that will ever happen, but one can hope!

Nuclear Blaze was developed and published by Deepnight Games. It launched on October 18, 2021 and is available on Steam for $9.99.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/news/steam-link-spotlight-nuclear-blaze/

How to summon and defeat Eater of Worlds in Terraria

November 04, 2021 by RSS Feed

For most Terraria players, pre-Hardmode is a rather easy time (when compared to Hardmode itself). But some bosses are hell-bent upon giving you a hard time, and one of them happens to be the Eater of Worlds.

The name ‘Eater of Worlds’ may trigger an image of a strong, muscular ogre-like creature in your head. But get ready to be disappointed because it’s a worm. Yes, an underground worm with two horns on its head.

How to Summon the Eater of Worlds in Terraria

Firstly, the Eater of Worlds is something that you will encounter in the Corruption world and is a boss that you just cannot avoid.

To summon the Eater of Worlds, you will have to get Worm Food. To get Worm Food, you have to combine two items – 30 Vile Powder and 15 Rotten Chunk. You then will have to visit a Demon Altar or Crimson Altar to make Worm Food, which you can then use to summon the Eater of Worlds.

Alternatively, if you have three Shadow Orbs, you can simply smash them and summon the Eater of Worlds.

How to Defeat the Eater of Worlds

The eyes of the Eater of Worlds are quite unsettling. They can make you take the boss seriously (and you should). However, if dealt with correctly, this can be one of the easier bosses to defeat.

Before we jump into the ‘how to defeat’ guide, we need to get two things cleared up:

1. When you destroy one segment, it splits into smaller worms. This means, to defeat the entire boss, you need to destroy all the fragments.

2. Eater of Worlds is immune to lava.

Now, we come to the actual fighting part. The boss can split into smaller segments that come to attack you. But an individual segment cannot survive when isolated. This means, if you kill one of the two segments, the other will be destroyed too.

The Eater of Worlds spawns in a coiled state and stays that way for less than a second. This is the best time to attack it with a powerful piercing weapon.

Avoid getting surrounded by the Eater of Worlds. In case this happens, make sure you have a teleporting bed ready to escape.

Best Weapons to Defeat Eater of Worlds

As the boss splits into annoying little worms, you might consider getting a weapon that does piercing damage. Some of the best weapons include the Vilethorn, Water Bolt, Whips, and Spiky Balls.

You can also use melee weapons, but make sure they’re fast. You can go for the Falcon Blade, Arkhalis, and Terragrim.

Focus on the head of the boss because destroying slows down the worm and keeps it from splitting.

So, what are the drops?

If you’ve been wondering what good can come from slaying this boss, you’re not the only one. Turns out, there’s a lot that you can get.

You will receive a bunch of Shadow Scales and Demonite Ores in sufficient quantities. This is necessary to get ahead in the game. A lot of players farm the Eater of Worlds for this very purpose.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/news/how-to-summon-and-defeat-eater-of-worlds-in-terraria/

Niantic to shutdown Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

November 04, 2021 by RSS Feed

Niantic’s second AR game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, is about to be shut down. The augmented reality game was launched two years ago and attempted to bring the fantasy world of Hogwarts to life. However, it never really enjoyed the same popularity as Pokemon Go.

Existing players won’t be able to play Wizards Unite after January 31, 2022. The game will be pulled off from Google Play and the App Store on December 6th, 2021. The in-game purchases will also be disabled on December 6th. Players can redeem their existing currency until January 31st.

When Harry Potter: The Wizards Unite came out, it gathered a generous user base. However, the game couldn’t gather the same audience as Pokemon Go. Compared to Pokemon Go, Wizards Unite had more story, but story-driven games are not for everyone.

As for stats and figures, Wizards Unite saw around 2.3 million downloads and players had spent over $39.4 million. But when these figures are compared to Pokemon Go, they seem bleak. Pokemon Go has managed to garner a revenue of $1.1 billion in 2021 alone.

Another notable reason why the AR game is being shut down is that Niantic is working on other games. For example, Niantic and Nintendo worked together on Pikmin Bloom, which has recently started rolling out around the world.

The company is also working on another AR game, Transformers: Heavy Metal where players will face battles with giant robots. Apart from this, Niantic has several unannounced projects lined up.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/news/niantic-to-shutdown-harry-potter-wizards-unite/

The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War Review

September 28, 2021 by RSS Feed

If you thought the destruction of the One Ring in the lava of Mount Doom was the only major ordeal in Middle-earth, you’re sorely mistaken.

Set in the Third Age of Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War’s plot sees the ring surfacing in the deserted castle of Dol Guldur. It bestows unrivaled power to dominate Middle-earth, and all the factions are subsequently drawn into a great war.

That’s the starting point for The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War, an ambitious strategy game from NetEase that adds a whole new chapter to The Lord of the Rings saga.

The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War is a tile-based strategy game with city-building at its core. After choosing the material, gem type, and inscription of your own custom ring, you’re assigned a side (good or evil, basically) and set loose in Middle-earth.

NetEase describes The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War as a “geo-strategic seasonal wargame”. The seasonal aspect of that description lies in the fact that your progress has a linear, chapter-based structure, with new chapters unlocking as you complete bundles of missions.

Those missions are designed to guide you through the intricacies of The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War’s gameplay, which falls into two rough categories: city-building and conquest.

City-building involves the usual process of creating and upgrading buildings, recruiting Commanders, conscripting troops, claiming rewards, equipping items, and so on. On top of which there’s a ring feature, which allows you to use the power you accumulate from conquest to level up your ring in skill-tree fashion.

Conquest, meanwhile, involves sending your armies out (you have one army per Commander, and you recruit Commanders with gifts at the tavern) to take tiles.

Empty tiles are the easiest to take, but give you the fewest resources, so you need to keep upgrading your army in order to be powerful enough to take resource-rich mountain, forest, and farm tiles, as well as tiles occupied by mobs and other players.

The Good

The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War is a compelling and refined strategy game in which you need to weigh your options carefully in terms of the tiles you choose to attack and the moves you choose to make.

For instance, if you take on a “terrifying” tile and your army ends up temporarily locked in a draw, you can send another army in to reinforce it - but so can your opponent, so your odds of victory come down to where your secondary army is located, and how powerful it is.

This is just one example of the game’s tactical depth, which sets it apart from most free-to-play mobile strategy games.

The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War gives you plenty to do, as well. In the early game you may find yourself maxed out in terms of the territory you can take, but you can still carry out Mock Battles on conquered tiles for XP, play through the tower-esque Red Book of Westmarch in the tavern, and tend to your army and your city in preparation for the battles ahead.

It’s fairly generous, too. Timers get longer as you level up your buildings, but it doesn’t cost an extortionate amount to expedite these timers with gems and cards. The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War also has a generous idle system, so whenever you boot it up there’s plenty to claim.

And it looks great, with music and visual elements, such as locations and characters, taken straight from the films. The official license and the evidently generous development budget have really made the difference in terms of immersion.

The Bad

Like any free-to-play strategy game, The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War contains a fair amount of grind, bringing your progress to a frustrating halt a few chapters in.

In some ways this is a positive, since it forces you to focus on making the right upgrades so as not to spend any more time than necessary in the purgatory of waiting for timers to finish. But it can also be a drag after the initial burst of progress, not least because the story inevitably slows down too as you struggle to unlock new chapters.

The movement of your armies is also frustratingly slow at times, particularly as it’s often necessary to summon them back to your stronghold after battles for reinforcement and recuperation. For better or worse, The Lords of the Rings: Rise to War is not a fast-moving game.

The verdict

The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War is a surprisingly deep, well-presented mobile strategy game. It’s faithful to its source material, too, both in terms of the characters and locations it brings in from the existing films and the new content it adds to the canon.

The game’s slow pace may prove off-putting for more casual players, but if you’ve been hankering for something approaching a real strategy experience on mobile it’s well worth a look.

8.2

OVERALL

Replayability 8

Game Controls 8

Graphics 8.1

Sound/Music 8.5

Gameplay 8.4

FREE

The Lord of the Rings: War

NETEASE INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT PTE. LTD

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

Rise of Warlords Review: A Mythological Strategy Game With Some Great Ideas

July 29, 2021 by RSS Feed

Rise of Warlords is an epic, real time strategy game that sees you leading some of the most famous mythological leaders into massive battles. It's all about building up your kingdom, joining forces with other players and working together to dominate a map littered with cities, mountains, rivers and more.

This is a game that demands your attention, that's always throwing new things to do in your general direction. Whether it's upgrading your city, sending out scouting parties to conquer more territory, or defeating your foes, you're always on your toes. And you're always earning new materials, heroes and land as well.

There's an interesting story, plenty of intriguing characters to meet and loads more besides. Throw in realistic terrain that can block your advances if you're not careful, reactive real time battles and you're left with an in-depth midcore multiplayer RTS with kingdom building chops that's going to keep you playing for a good long while.

The Good

Rise of Warlords eases you into its mechanics with no small amount of skill. Quests and challenges push you to learn what everything does, allowing you to master everything before things get too tricky. The learning curve is paced just right - you'll gather new information as you fight, build and conquer.

The game looks great too, and the tap controls work really well. While there might be some depth here, you never feel overwhelmed by complexity. Any resources you need you can earn by playing as well, meaning you're always in a position to build and expand without having to worry about buying extra materials.

And unlike in a lot of other games, playing with others here is going to be the key to your success. Joining a league and sharing strength and resources is super important instead of just an afterthought. It adds a neat social aspect to the experience that's going to keep you jumping back in for more.

The game deals with combat in some interesting ways as well. Your troops can be attacked when they're heading back to your city, and you can withdraw them from engagements too. Everything on the map is important and you need to make sure you're paying attention to any potential obstacles.

The Bad

There are a few niggles here, although nothing that should serve as too much of a black mark against Rise of Warlords. Perhaps the most annoying of them all are the translation and grammar errors that sometimes pop up. They're never terrible, but they can be a little jarring, unfortunately.

Fans of more traditional RTS games might find the whole experience a little too hands-off as well. The battles in particular play out without much input, which some might find a little too distancing. Anyone more familiar with modern mobile RTS experiences shouldn't be too upset, though.

The verdict

Rise of Warlords is a game that's going to get under your skin if you let it. It's well put together for the most part, it throws some interesting ideas on top of a familiar foundation - the different terrain being a key example - and creates something that feels fresh and pretty darn unique at the same time.

It's certainly an experience that rewards players who are willing to put the time in, and joining together with other active warlords is going to open things up even more. It might not quite have the meat on its bones that some might expect from a traditional RTS, but there's a decent level of depth here all the same.

If you're looking for an engaging, engrossing and entertaining midcore strategy game that's always got something new for you to do, then Rise of Warlords is well worth checking out. You can find it on the App Store and Google Play.

8.1

OVERALL

Replayability 8.5

Game Controls 8

Sound/Music 8

Gameplay 8.2

Graphics 7.9

FREE

Rise of Warlords - RoW

Wuhan Feiyouyun Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews