November 2: Gaming Respawn Plays

Stephen Jackson – Chief Editor

Last week saw the release of the Football Manager 2016 beta so that is all I have been playing. So far, I am really like the new additions to Football Manager. I was hoping the Create-a-Club feature would offer more depth than just a simple club editor but unfortunately it appears that it is somewhat lacking in depth as a separate game-mode. In short, you can do anything you could do with the in-game editor which SI always release as an add-on come release.

Anyway, my main career was started using the Create-a-Club mode. I decided to go for a country I have no footballing knowledge about. That brought me to the rather beautiful but chilly Iceland. Going against their naming traditions, FC Reykjavik was born. Not very creative but it’s the only city I know! It proved a touch challenge but I relished it. I had a group of players who were Sunday League standard at best, or at least that’s how the 3D Match Engine made them look. We were favourites for relegation and were considered to have no hope of ever gaining promotion into the lucrative Icelandic Premier Division. A good start to the season saw us sitting top of the league but then was soon over following back-to-back defeats against some poor opposition. Another defeat followed by a draw saw up lingering around mid-table, but then the resurgence began. We had got knocked out of the cup in the first round before the season started so I was able to focus solely on the league. I’m going to cut to the chase, we clinched promotion by finishing runner-up on the last day of the season. Although the league was so tight it was between me and potentially five other teams to go up on that last day.

Football Manager 2016 isn’t due out until November 13th, however you can purchase the game now to receive access to the beta and your career will carry over once the game is fully released.

Raul Zaha – Writer

Not a lot of actual game time for me these past few days. I was at DreamHack for the whole period of the event. I had never been to any event like this before and since it took place so close to home (basically in my front yard) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. And boy am I glad I didn’t pass it up, because it was awesome. I got to see an amazing CS:GO competition (obviously), I got some cool merch, I’ve seen a lot of awesome cosplayers, especially a particularly cool Evie Frye from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, that girl was so cool, you wouldn’t even believe, she probably won the cosplay competition (Evie Frye is my latest video-game-crush if you haven’t caught on by now). I’ve also followed the Hearthstone tournament that took place at this DreamHack. When I say”followed” I mean I tried to understand what was going on in a few matches, without too much success of course. I’m so out of the loop when it comes to Hearthstone. Also, I noticed there was a lot of backseat-gaming going on in the crowd. Is this a common thing with Hearthstone or was it just me that noticed it? Anyway, this about sums up my gaming for this week. Not too much hands-on gaming, more viewing than anything, but fun times nonetheless.

Jorge Godinez – Writer

Kane Newell – Writer

James Haxell – Writer

I’ve finished playing Darksiders and since I hadn’t played that game for about 3 years or so, it was almost like my first time playing it. It’s basically a perfect mix of the type of gameplay from the God of War and Legend of Zelda games, which makes for a fun game. It wasn’t especially challenging, but it had fun combat and finding all the collectibles was actually quite satisfying and not the chore that it could be in other games.

I currently await the chance to play Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition. Why exactly am I waiting to play it? Well, I played and enjoyed Darksiders II when it was originally released on the PS3, however I (and many other players) experienced game breaking freezing caused by the save file being overloaded with data with thanks to one of the DLCs being defective. Getting rid of my collection of weapons and armor that I had spent hours upon hours acquiring was the only way to make some room in the save file and get rid of the freezing. However, this fix didn’t last and I was still unable to complete one of the DLCs, while this irritating freezing kind of bled into the other DLCs and even the main game. Publisher THQ and developer Vigil Games went under due to bankruptcy, so these issues were never fixed.

When publisher Nordic Games acquired the rights to the Darksiders series….nothing happened. Nordic’s track record was rather unimpressive, not that I could find a whole lot of info on the company to begin with. When they released the Darksiders Collection on the PS3 last year, I appeared to be one of 10 people who knew this collection even existed. I was hoping to find out if this collection had fixes for the DLC’s freezing issues, but I never found out. The collection was delayed continuously over a period of 3 or 4 months, with Nordic providing absolutely no updates on these changes (I had to check Amazon to find out about these delays). Even after the collection finally was released, there were no reviews to be found anywhere on it; it appeared almost everyone had forgotten about the collection after all those delays.

So, you could imagine why I was hesitant on getting Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition for PS4, even though Nordic brought in the guys at Vigil (now known as Gunfire Games) to work on the collection. However, this collection appeared to actually have a fair bit of attention placed on it, not to mention a solid release date. But when the release date of October 27th came, only a select few who pre-ordered the game digitally got to play it before it was removed from the PSN, while the rest of us had to wait until October 30th for the game to actually be available in physical retail stores like Gamestop and Best Buy, and of course get put back on the PSN. Nordic is still kind of shaky when it comes to following through on things, but they appear to be improving. What few reviews there are now for the game appear to range from decent to good, but I’m pretty much waiting on any info on the DLCs being fixed or not. I imagine they are, but I will be waiting for a few more days to see if there is any news on this issue before I get the game for myself (I really don’t want to waste cash on another defective item). I’ll still likely get Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition in a few days, after which I will review it on this site at a later date, so be on the lookout for it.