Ark: Survival Evolved: Early Access Preview #2

Welcome back to the next dive into Ark: Survival Evolved.  In this episode we will dive right into the core gameplay of Ark.  Though still only in early release, there is a lot of game here.

At it’s core, Ark is has the pretty familiar basics of any survival game.  Land on a seemingly deserted island and quickly find food and shelter to survive.  Early gameplay is fairly cookie cutter in it’s mannerisms, though Ark does add a few new ideas here.  Your first day however will still involve punching the heck out of a load of trees to collect wood and thatch.  You’ll also find other resources scattered around like stone and berries.  Stone acts like any other game’s stone, but berries add a somewhat unique add as many of them have special affects and become extremely useful in later gameplay.  Narco berries for instance can help keep fallen enemies asleep, or yourself if you accidentally eat them.

Pretty sure I can take him

You’ll have to juggle a variety of deadly statuses early on in the game.  The usual things like hunger, and dehydration are here, as well as managing the heat and cold temperatures.  All of these affects can lead to your untimely death, and that’s not to mention the very aggressive enemy A.I.  Death can come from any angle when you step across the path of both small and large carnivorous dinosaurs.  Though you can try to fight them, early on it’s always better to run.  Even the small Dilo’s can quickly take you down with their blinding poison attack.  Luckily the one way you can’t die is by getting stepped on by a Brontosaurus.  With the world’s full day  night cycle, and weather dynamics, death can be around any corner and you won’t see it coming.

To avoid early death it’s important to take advantage of the robust crafting system and also level up your character.  Experience is handled uniquely as it is dolled out in small amounts as you survive.  You can also gain experience by performing any actions in the world.  Gathering materials, crafting items, or of course defeating creatures all help you advance your level.

As your level advances it opens up points to be spent on both your personal stats as well as crafting engrams for which a new variety open up with every major advancement in level.  You can of course build shelters, equipment, clothing, as well as weapons and consumables to help you in your quest to survive.

Time to design some new duds!

Crafting opens up the next big phase of the game, capturing and taming your own dinosaurs and animals.  Every creature in the game can be tamed to be your personal conveyer of goods, extra combatant and most can be ridden if you have the right materials to build their saddle.  This is where the pace of the game stiffens right up though.  Capturing dinosaurs can be a massive endeavor, no pun intended.  Though the smaller animals and dinosaurs tame fairly quickly, larger beasts can take hours to tame.  After carefully knocking the creature out, you must keep them under with narcotics and the before mentioned narco berries, all the while managing their health and keeping them well fed.  Larger creatures like mammoths and stegosaurus can take days of in-game time to tame.  Though this makes each tame animal rewarding, the balance for more casual gamers is lost unless they can find a group that is willing to help in taming creatures for them.

Crafting also becomes tedious at higher levels.  Rather than adding more complex, or higher level materials to combine to create more powerful items, the game instead chooses to have you collect hundreds, upon hundreds of basic materials instead.  though this again adds accomplishment to each task, finding 240 hide to make a mammoth saddle felt very unrealistic, and entirely redundant.

After you are done collecting trophies.  You can also start collecting tributes, to summon creatures to be defeated for unique items at Ark locations throughout the island landscape.  So far this seems to be the available end game for you to build up for and start farming high end equipment and weapons.

Meet ‘Kitty’

With this game still in early access, I am impressed by the amount of content here.  Though the most fun parts of the game lack some balancing, if you can find a good team of players to play along this is lessened.  Low level players can still be useful by gathering mats and help building bases, regardless of whether they have the time to invest in taming high level creatures to their sides.   Hopefully as the game develops this balance will improve and offer more for each type of player to enjoy in game.  Till then I’m going to keep crafting hide pants.

Thanks for reading, and as always, make sure to comment and like below.  Let me know what you think of Ark: Survival Evolved.

Check out part #1 of this two part review here!

 

Kingdom Come: Update 0.4 Preview

It’s finally here!  Kingdom Come: Deliverance update 0.4 is here and with it comes our first taste of sword combat.  I have been really excited to see this update based off of all the talk about how much detail was planned for the sword combat system.  Let’s be honest, shooting a few arrows off at still targets was not nearly enough for me or any of you adventurers.

The new pretty map!

Let’s jump right into the nitty gritty.  This update allows you to partake in a one on one duel in a newly added mercenary camp.  A small wager gives you an opponent in 3 different skills levels to attempt to overcome.  You can also choose to go in your street clothes or gather some armour for more protection.  It also doesn’t hurt to put a small wager on the outcome for some additional funds.

Check out more video on Warhorse Studio’s YouTube page

Combat is controlled from the mouse and movement keys as expected.  You are given a target lock and are able to strafe around your opponent freely, moving in and out as needed.  You can control the angle of your attack with the mouse.  Rotating the mouse around will change your positioning as indicated by a star on your target.  Each time you do so, you get a sense of your balance shifting, and the weight of the sword in your hands.  Holding your sword drains your stamina, lifting and holding it above your head quickens this loss.  Each strike you take feels weighted and heavy.

Just give me the sword already!!!

Strikes can be parried by swinging your sword in the right direction in time with your opponent’s blows.  You can also use a blocking mechanic to avoid the hit altogether and try for a counter attack when your foe falls off balance.  Though it is difficult to master the timing, the movements and reactions feel very realistic. There is definitely a learning curve here over traditional games in the genre, which is exactly what Warhorse studios has been aiming for with Kingdom Come: Deliverance.  You’ll also notice the striking animations were are incredibly smooth and add even more realism to the combat.

Stay on target… Stay on target!

This update has also added more quests to try out, each with multiple ways to solve, and different outcomes.  We are also welcomed to a much larger space to explore and a new town with more people and dialogue to find as well.  Though in my opinion the towns still feel a bit empty besides all the chickens and sheep.  Warhorse has been able to add many more layers here, but the world still doesn’t feel quite as lively as it should.  Now that I have gotten a taste of combat however, I am dying to see more, especially in the form of larger scale battles, or potentially even sieges, though it is yet unclear if these will be included in a later version of the game.

As always, make sure to comment, like and let me know if you have tried the latest version of Kingdom Come!

Make sure to follow development on Twitter with the guys at WarHorse Studios

Make sure to check out my last preview for update 0.3 here.

Ark: Survival Evolved: Early Access Preview #1

Want to go epic?  Go Ark:  Survival Evolved.  One of the more recent entries into the survival genre, Ark: Survival Evolved brings one of the more polished early release titles to the fray.  This game of “large” adventure was developed by Wildcard, and is currently available on Steam in Early Access form.

I’m so pretty!

Like most games of the it’s like, Ark drops you into the thick of things, naked and alone, with only your fists to serve you along the way.  At first though, you’ll notice the incredible visuals.  Assuming of course your system can handle them.

On Epic graphics, Ark is beautiful.  The land is detailed and full of texture.  Water ripples against the wind, and the various weather affects set in quite realistically.  The sky ranges from clear, to overcast, to raining.  Fog rolls in amongst the valleys and hills.  In turn these effects also hinder your character in adverse ways.  Sunny days raise the temperature and cause you to over heat, where adversely the rain cools you off.   This is not to say of course that the visuals are perfect, this work in progress game is full of visual bugs and faults.  There are various clipping issues resulting in hilarious finds with creatures sticking out of walls or hills, or looking kind of obscene as they press up against each other in all the wrong ways.  There are also the whacky fun time trees that turn 2 dimensional and start waving frantically across your screen.

Though these small faults are funny and sometimes a nuisance they don’t break the game in anyway, and allow you to enjoy the unique survival aspects.  When you spawn you are treated immediately to the various prehistoric lifeforms.  There’s a fairly good amount of variety here with various types of dinosaurs wandering around.  For the most part these creatures are scaled fairly realistically and add to the Jurassic Park awe of seeing all these long extinct creatures go about their daily routines.

Hello little guy, wait why is the Theme to Jurassic Park playing?

The world is fully alive, and interacts not only with the player, but with itself.  Raptors roam the jungle, taking down prey in packs.  Sabertooths fight mammoths on the frozen hill sides.  The occasional Tyrannosaurus Rex might pop up and try to take out a Brontosaurus.   All of these NPC creatures act more or less as they should, and will react to the player’s presense around them.  Though the various herbivores will generally ignore you, don’t get too crazy and steal a stegosaurus egg and expect not to get chased down by angry parents.

The character creator is also fully purposed and allows you to create a wide variety of character looks.  From the normal, to the sublime to the outright weird.  You have a lot of control over how your character is going to look.  This means there are a lot of ugly characters out there unfortunately.

Optimization on all these graphics is still a work in process, and can vary from server to server once you add in lag and latency issues on top.  This can be a major detractor on the very full official servers, but can be avoided by finding a smaller unofficial server where the lag can be avoided.

That covers the look and feel of Ark: Survival Evolved, stay tuned in a couple of days when I dive into the gameplay and more detailed features of the game.

As always, don’t forget to comment, and like below, and let me know how your experience with Ark:Survival Evolved has been.

For amazing gameplay videos of Ark, check out The Neo Nerd, and The Flying Squirrel Girl on Youtube now!

 

Ghouls and Ghosts: Rewind Review

Welcome to Rewind Review, this week we are going 8-bit!  Let’s adventure into one of the best ports of the 16-bit era, Ghouls and Ghosts for the Sega Genesis.  Originally released in 1988 in arcade’s, the grueling hard platformer made it’s way to the SMS in 1989.  The sequel to Ghosts ‘n Goblins continues the saga of Knight Arthur as he fights off the undead in side scrolling fashion.

I don’t need no stinking armor!

Knight Arthur’s quest takes him through various eerie and quirky levels as he fights to release the soul of his love, Princess Prin Prin, captured by Loki among many other souls.  The usual left to right jumping and platforming from this point on are familiar traits, though there are several twists added in.

Starting off in a full suit of armor Arthur can fire various weapons in four directions to fight off skeletons, undead and yes of course, ghouls and ghosts.  As he takes damage pieces of his armour fly off, till you’re reduced to fighting in your tighty whities!  As you proceed through each level, you’ll find enemies throughout, as well as obstacles that need to be avoided through jumping, scaling ladders or the like.  Though the difficulty for the 16-bit version is also scaled down from the arcade original, there is still a lot of though areas, and precise jumping skills required to get through each level.  Not to mention of course giant boss battles at each level end.  These generally demand you hit a boss 4-6 times in a particular hit box while avoiding fireballs as usual.

I guess I had this coming….

You’ll find more layers to Ghouls and Ghosts in the form of various weapons and armour that can be collected, or bought in each level.  These items are hidden in chests, or secret doors that you activate by jumping in certain locations.  As an added bonus, some of these chests hold an evil magician who will fire a magic bolt at you once the chest is open.  get hit and look forward to spending several seconds as a helpless duck, or an old man with a cane.  These affects make you killable in one hit, but they don’t last long.

You can also call upon limited magical abilities to help you clear the screen of enemies.  These vary depending on the armor you are wearing.  Silver arm throws a blue wave in front of you, red armor summons fire to your side, and the ultimate gold armor gives you control over lighting itself.  These abilities are limited, and you need to bide your time before using them to avoid wasting them on only a few enemies on the screen.

Thor ain’t got nothing on me!

Ghouls and Ghosts consists of five levels with a sixth boss level, but just to add to the charm and difficulty, you’ll have to play through the first 5 levels twice before getting to the real ending.  You’ll also be tasked with finding the gold armor, and the only weapon that can kill Loki along the way before you can proceed to the final phase.  This is a good one to remind us just how hard games used to be.  Though the levels are not actually that long, the difficulty means you will spend hours trying to complete the full game, and get the true ending.

A very awesome full playthrough to enjoy, via SaikyoMog

This game became a great early example of how hardcore games could be ported and dumbed down in a sense for a broader audience.  The core of the game was still maintained very well, but Ghouls and Ghosts became open to a much broader audience after it’s arcade port.  It’s a situation that often vexes modern publishers that port, or re-release games to more modern technology, or to a bigger selection of consoles.  Ghouls and Ghosts still stands as one of the better conversions to date, and remains very playable.  It’s unique setting, simple but challenging gameplay and quirky humour stands the test of time extremely well.

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and like below, and let me know if you have tried Ghouls and Ghosts!

And while you are at it, check out last week’s Rewind Review

 

Subnautica: Early Access Review

Tired of punching trees and looking for rocks to build a campfire?  Then Subnautica is the survival game for you.  Subnautica throws you into a vast ocean full of dangers and mystery and tasks you with not only surviving, but finding out what went wrong to get you stranded there.

Well it could be worse…

As seemingly the sole survivor of your terraforming mission after an explosion sends your craft on a collision course into a planet with an endless ocean, Subnautica’s first objective is survival.  Like most survival games, you must quickly find resources to help you stay alive in the game’s varied environments.  The trick with Subnautica is that all of these environments are submerged which adds a unique twist to the genre.  Not only are you managing the usual things like thirst and hunger, you are also limited at first by your capability to carry an air supply below the surface.  This adds an extra layer of danger to your chances as each dive could be your last if you don’t time everything right.

Subnautica does a good job early on with making things seem both familiar but very alien all at once.  Set in the far future with advanced technology that can craft items in seconds with a fabricator, you are still made quite familiar with the basic components needed to craft these high tech items.  Throughout the ocean environments you will find various of these resources strewn about on the ocean floor, lime deposits holding various metals and minerals, salt deposits, corral, and other useful flora, and of course fish.

The beautiful sunset…

The animals of the ocean are where the alien concept of the planet first shows it’s colours.  The fauna of the planet are incredibly diverse and alien like.  They vary from small and fast fish, and uniquely useful Airsacks, which are very useful early on, and quite harmless, to large predators you need to avoid, to small exploding fish, to massive whale like creatures so big and slow corral has formed on their backs.  The fauna AI ranges from passive, to very aggressive, and the day and night cycle affects this nature as well.  Fishing for small fish at night for example may have you find several sleeping and easy to catch.

Once basic survival is covered, advanced resources like titanium and silicone will allow you to build both structures and vehicles.  As most materials can be very rare, with enough patience you can build underwater craft, and even submarines to help you search the ocean bottom.  Surviving long term means manufacturing parts to build your own underwater base via  a network of tube parts that you can connect together, and even draw oxygen to from the surface.   Later equipment even allows you to terraform the environment to you liking, or dig holes through ocean floor.

All the while in the distance stands the ship you arrived in, the Aurora, where the yet to be completed end game seemingly will exist.  Surrounded by radiation, and protected by massive mutated squid like creatures, the Aurora plays an integral part in the gameplay.  Not only is the ship filled with various high tech components to be grabbed once you have the right tools to do so, but it also affects the nearby environment.  The various radiation leaks in the craft result in regular explosions, which litter the ocean with components and larger explorable pieces of the Aurora where various components can be found.  It also seems like a bad idea to be too close to the Aurora when one of these explosions occurs.

Oh, my bad, things can get worse

It looks like we still have a bit of a wait to see what mysterious affect brought down the Aurora, but there is still enough here in Subnautica to keep most people busy for several hours.  The potential for some type of end game in the survival genre is always a welcome feature as it sets goals for the player to reach, rather than have them simply build bigger and better structures to ease their survival.  Thought the environments are well built and colorful, they do sometimes still lack some life, as several areas are not well filled with lifeforms.  Generally each area has but a handful of fish floating around at any time, and I have yet to encounter huge school of fish, or any bottom dwelling creatures crawling around to add variety.  These will all hopefully be things we see added in upcoming updates.

Crafting in style

Available now in Early Access, Subnautica adds a fresher flavour to the somewhat overfull survival genre.  With colorful graphics and environments, and a unique survival protocol taking place almost entirely underwater, this game is a  lot of fun.  Though the game still lacks some content, regular features are added, and with a potential end game in store there is a lot to explore here.

Want more?  Check out Stranded Deep!  Don’t forget to comment and like below, let me know what you thought of Subnautica. 

Fractured Space: Early Access Review

Welcome to space.  Fractured Space.  Where massive capital ships duke it out over vast, asteroid filled maps.  This tactical shooter is all about controlling these regions and taking out the other team before they can.

The first thing that will strike you about Fractured Space is the amazingly detailed ships.  Each ship in the available three classes has an incomparable amount of detail.  The lighting effects are especially good showcasing the ships precise design.  Each ship is entirely unique, and easily recognised from a distance.

These ships are gorgeous

Of the three classes of ship there are large carriers equipped with a potential variety of fighters, fast support cruisers which can repair other ships, hunters which have a blink ability to outmaneuver the other ships.  Each class, of course, has it’s own set of unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses to help you get an advantage over the other ships.  Though these differences help each ship seem even more unique than their appearance, the actual abilities aren’t that unique from other similar games.

gameplay is similar to other recent beta’s like World of Warships.  Teams start off on opposite sides of the map, and must race to control various flags or bases across the map.  Each base captured adds experience for the controlling team, and gives you a place to retreat for cover and repairs.  As you defeat enemies, or take over more bases, experienced gained advances you in level, and returning to a base upgrades your hit points and shields.   Battle continues until one team can capture the opposing team’s home base.

These explosions are really dynamic

These battles are usually fairly quick affairs.  The fights are often decided by rock, paper, scissor, as each class suits taking down another if piloted well.  You need to be slightly ambidextrous to work with the default controls as well when they require much mutli-pressing buttons with one hand or the other.  Once you get past this though, the short battles are still fun, but don’t always feel that tactical as you are generally just spamming the attack button and waiting for your special abilities to refresh.  Though taking advantage of positioning does help some, the map is fairly open and generic.  Ducking in and out of cover, or around asteroids doesn’t happen often, and battles quickly become more about numbers and accuracy.

After each battle, you gain experience used to obtain higher tiered ships and purchase new abilities for your current ships.  These new ships add a bit more strategy to the combat with stealth features, long range attacks and the such which opens up new strategies and play styles.

Tech Tree!

Fractured Space is still in development, and I am sure these minor gripes will be worked out in time.  Varied maps and effects would be great, but the overall gameplay is still quite good, and the ships themselves are really beautiful.  I am looking forward to coming back to this game upon release the see the new features and available ships.

As always, please comment and like below, let me know what you think of Fractured Space.

For my preview of World of Warships head here next!

 

Shining Force II: Rewind Review

Welcome back to Review Rewind!  This week we are going way back to a classic, and a game ranked among many people’s favourites, including my own, Shining Force II.  Brought to us from Japan in 1993 Shining Force II is the indirect sequel to the 1992 Shining Force game.  This somewhat unheard of, better-than-the-original sequel is a tactical RPG.

Squirtle?

Taking place in the fantastical world of Granseal, Shining Force II is filled with knights, mages, monsters and most every other basic trope to this genre.  The story starts off when a thief, Slade, accidentally releases an ancient demon after stealing two magical stones that kept it sealed for centuries.  Some of the demon’s power escapes, inhabiting the main character’s King.  You and the city’s wise man Astral, manage to free the king, only to discover the ancient demon has been released and is quickly gaining power.  Various shenanigans ensue, and you basically, kinda, accidentally get your town destroyed trying to seal the demon away and have to sail far off to an unknown land.

From this point, the story unfolds through straight forward dialogue boxes, some open world adventuring, and of course, many, many tactical battles.  These battles take place on a 2D, top down grid map.  Your units of varying types, races and abilities duke it out in a turned based system.  Every unit has up to 3 possible abilities to choose from depending on their class and restricted movement each turn.  Each unit gets to uses their abilities once per turn, and gains experience points each time to help them advance through levels.  Each action takes place in forced perspective, hand drawn animations, which add some charm to otherwise average looking graphics.

Each battle forces you to take advantage of both terrain, and your characters’ various abilities.  These battles can be long, though generally they aren’t overly challenging.  This changes of course if you happen to lose a particular character integral to your strategy, but a quick reload of the game lets you start over.  Your fallen allies can be raised by priests in towns for a small fee.  Priests will also save your game, promote your characters, or cure curses that incur when you equip powerful cursed items.

Gotta praise to be raised and drop a dime in the box too!

Shining Force II is filled with dozens of characters to collect, including several hidden characters.  As they gain experience and levels, their stats and abilities expand.  Once they reach level 20 you have the option to advance them to a new, more powerful class.  Some characters have options on what classes to evolve into if you can find the right item to activate it.  Some of the best characters are found hidden throughout the world, while others you must be very patient with until they can be promoted, and start with terrible stats, creating a mini challenge in each battle to get them experience without losing the battle, or getting them killed each time.

There are a vast array of items and weapons to find, buy and equip.  Each class has their own  specific types of weapons that they can equip, along with armor and special items which increase various stats, like speed, luck, or attack.  Though the best weapons are found hidden near the end of the game, you will spend a lot of time shelling out thousands of the game’s currency to upgrade weapons and armor at each town you progress to.

Time to upgrade!

Though overall a simple story, Shining Force II’s plot is still filled with various plot twists and interesting events.  There are also several stand out characters, though the main character is certainly the exception here, as the fairly bland young man who grows up to be a hero.  Though there are many characters, generally mid way through the game you tend to stick to your favourite 12 and rarely switch them out unless a specific battle calls for it.

Fail….

Graphics aside, this game still holds up well to today’s gameplay standards.  This shows even more with the various remakes, and sequels that followed.  With a long story, and just enough difficulty, this game is still a great one to go back and play.  Be wary however of the old school mentality, this isn’t a drop in and drop out game, you need to set time aside to make it through some of the later battles, but generally it’s worth it!

 

As always, thanks for reading, and make sure to comment, share and like below!

When you are done reading this, make sure to check out this Rewind Review from a few weeks ago!

Skulls of The Shogun: Rewind Review

Another week, another Rewind Review!  This one just barely qualifies having been released way back in 2013! Back way before the flying cars, insta cleaning clothes, and weather control that Back to the Future II promised us this year.  Though it’s not as old as some of the other games I have featured so far, this is still a great game to pickup on play if you get the chance.

A 2D tactical RPG, Skulls of the Shogun takes inspiration from other classic games like Final Fantasy Tactics, and Advance Wars.  Taking place in a colorful cartoon world, Skulls of the Shogun takes this inspiration and rolls with it in all sorts of fun and intuitive ways.

Getting the lay of the land

Set in ancient Japan, you take the role of a recently deceased Shogun.  Killed by his own lieutenant during battle, he is relegated to the afterlife as a skeleton. Faced with waiting in line with thousands of other fallen soldiers to the end of time waiting to get into the afterlife, the general instead decides to take matters into his own hands and raises an army to push his way to his rightful reward.

The playful art style mixes well with the almost constant shade of humour in the game.  Dialogue and character choices are both funny, and light hearted.  The third wall is broken often as the characters question not only the game mechanics, but the player’s actions.  This cleverness tends to fade a little as the game proceeds, but not so much that it isn’t still funny at times.

You got that right buddy!

Each character class has a unique look and animations.  The only fault visually is occasionally the screen becomes crowded with units and objects and it can be difficult to pick out the object you want, though the game does try to assist with a pop up when several items are selected close together.

Each battle is a 1v1 turn based affair.  The game starts you out with very basic commands and units and does a good job of dishing out new elements with each new battle.  Every different unit comes with it’s own stats and abilities.  Infantry have solid defence and good knockback, but are slow and don’t deal that much damage.  Calvary have long movement range and high attack, but no knockback.  There are various other units like archers and magic casters to fill out the ranks.  Your general is also controllable in battle and gains new abilities as the story progresses.

I’m a beast!…. errr Demon…

Each of these units can be upgraded during any single battle in the unique manner of eating the skulls of fallen foes, even though as they will tell you themselves, it’s pretty gross.  Each skull adds hit points to your units including your general, and when 3 skulls are consumed your unit becomes a demon and gains an extra action each turn.  This extra action can be extremely useful in most battles.  Along the way you will also find various potions and power ups to assist you in winning.

On later maps you will also be tasked with some minor resource management.  Rice paddies can be conquered to give you rice to pay for new troops at barracks.  There are also other buildings to be conquered to give you access to more powerful units.  Rice paddies are limited, and each one including the other buildings can be conquered by the opposing force at any time.  Controlling the map becomes very important on these levels.

Just a little exposition

Each map has different objectives, and several can be won in different ways.  Defeating the enemy general, defeating all troops, or moving a unit to a specific marker may all be ways to win.  Several maps have multiple stages and differing objectives in each stage.  This with the overlapping humour keeps the game fresh and fun throughout.

This is a fun game with a long campaign, multiplayer options and a ton of laughs.  With a regular price of $10.99 on Steam it’s definitely a bargain, and will fill up hours of your time.  If you are a fan of strategy games, good humour and want a game that is easy to get into, this is a great one for you.

As always, if like this review, or have played the game, make sure to like and comment below, and be sure to follow me on Twitter!

Missed last weeks Rewind Review?  You can catch it here!

The AbleGamers Foundation

Like many of you I am an avid gamer. Gaming these days has gone far beyond just wasting time getting to the next level, or beating the next boss. In today’s era of gaming, the community and engagement has grown beyond anything previous. Games are no longer just past times, but the way in whch many people get to interact with others. Across all ways of life, all borders, these games help us connect to one another and share an experience.

Unfortunately, with varying restrictions both physical and mental, many people of all ages are not able to take part in these massive communities of gamers, and enthusiasts alike.

That’s where AbleGamers Foudation comes into play. With thier aim to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities through the power of gaming, AbleGamers empowers those people to join these communities and engage with people in ways they previously couldn’t.

Through assisting game and hardware developers in creating more accessible games and tools, AbleGamers helps people break down barriers, and enjoy the stories, the action, and the adventure of modern games.

Though my reach is short, I am hoping that by engaging the community I do have behind me, that we can help AbleGamers expand their reach to even more titles and platforms, and remove as many of these barriers as possible.

There are various ways you can help, obviously you can make a donation at the button below or simply share the post and we’ll see how many people we can motivate to help!

If you do get around to donating I will be doing some giveaways for a few games and you will have  a chance to win!

Once again, thanks so much for everyone’s support and don’t forget to like and comment below and follow @AbleGamers on Twitter

Youtube: Channel Previews

Welcome to the latest Youtube featurette!  This time around we are taking a quick look at a couple of new channels by @SuperRexGamer as well as @Squirrel_grrl.

Taking inspiration from channels like Markiplier with a focus on humour and gaming, SuperRex hopes to make you laugh.  There is a wide variety of content here.  Games range from short indie horror games, to World of Warcraft, to puzzle and strategy.

You’ll also find skits and lots of random silliness here to help you break a smile.  Look hard enough and you’ll find a pretty funny lip Sync video featuring a 3 part harmony.  Pretty impressive.

For the hardcore, you can watch SuperRex in league play recordings here and tons of collabs featuring games like Smite, World of Warcraft, and Heroes of the Storm.

There is also a lot of heart on this Youtube channel.  Perusing some of the vlogs will open up some more layers of SuperRex and what he brings to the spectrum of his channel.  He is very outspoken and an obvious supporter of various gaming communities and channels.

Flying Squirrel Grrl’s channel revolves primarily around her weekly streams.  Her overall humour and charm are what grab you at first.  She obviously puts a lot of effort into this humour with her channel revolving entirely around squirrels.

It’s always a lot of fun to pop on a channel just to watch someone genuinely getting a kick out of various games.  The content here covers several popular games like Subnautica, Lego World, and the Sims 4.

Squirrel’s channel has only been around since early March, so expect much more content to come in the near future.  So far though she shows some smart editing, and her general cheerfulness and fun nature is sure to catch on.

To help support these young Youtube channels make sure to subscribe today if you like what you see!

You can find SuperRex here, and follow him on Twitter as well.

For Flying Squirrel Grrl head here, find her Twitter here and see her awesome live streams on Twitch!

There will be more channel previews and reviews in the weeks to come, in the meantime check out my feature on Weird Wizard Dave!