Review: The Conjuring House

Release date: 25 September 2018 Publisher: RYM Games Genre: Horror Independent game studio Rym Games have worked wonders with a deeply immersive and fresh take on the haunted house exploration game genre. This horror game takes place in an abandoned Victorian-style house in the village of Wotten-under-Edge which, believe it or not, is also a real place! You play as the only remaining investigator of the Atkinson House, a building long-rumored to have a demonic presence brought on by a satanic cult’s propensity to use it as a base to sacrifice multitudes of people. You are tasked with finding your fellow crew members while escaping from demonic creatures, which provides plenty of well-timed jump scares. This is no mindless gore-fest game without a plot. The opening credits hint at the dark and satanic past of the derelict mansion, and you must complete the work started by the previous investigators and attempt to destroy the demonic presence infesting the house. The gameplay never wavers from the plot and, in discovering clues and the notes left by the initial investigators, you are constantly aware of what’s happened to the other people who entered the mansion. The opening credits are somewhat spoiled by unconvincing voice acting, which slightly broke my attempts to become immersed in the mood and feel of the game. The game’s setting, a creaky and tight-cornered mansion in the grip of loud thunderclaps, offers nary a moment of downtime. Between peeking around corners, looking for clues and trying not to jump when a thunderclap sounds, the game succeeds in getting you into a mental state of fear and uncertainty. I’ve never been scared by a game’s controls before, but I was greatly unnerved to find that there is a button for “look behind you”. It’s safe to say I avoided that button like the plague in an attempt to steer clear of at least a few jump scares! Progression requires the player to go through various rooms finding keys and notes left by the previous, terrified investigation team. In the early stages I was somewhat distracted from the sounds, fear and general ambiance of the game by the worry that I had overlooked a key and might have to go back at a later stage. The possible ways of exploring are not limited by a linear progression that demands for you to retrace all steps to make it back to the first room. Each of the rooms interconnect in some form or fashion, which can at times be confusing, but mostly gives the player a sense of fear and uncertainty. During your search you can open and close drawers. One drawer I opened had a red object in it that I couldn’t pick up, which left me wondering if that was intentional or whether I would move on without a vital tool at my disposal. Rym Games’ creative vision has been to create a horror game with more than just “monsters, a cinematic shot and a dose of violence”. The jump scares are not so frequent that you get used to them and not so rare that you become bored – they are frequent enough and varied that I was on edge constantly, peeking slowly around each corner and door frame. One aspect of the gameplay that I enjoyed greatly was that the scares don’t always come from sudden appearances of the demonic creatures or loud noises in your headset. In certain spots you can dimly see a creature at the end of a hallway and, with a feeling of dread, realize that you must go down that corridor. This kind of psychological horror element complimented the more traditional jump scares nicely. The Conjuring House should easily attract horror fans who enjoy a plot-driven horror game that delivers magnificently on monsters, jump scares, intriguing progression and that constant feeling like you’re being watched. That this game comes from an independent studio is even more impressive and the future looks bright for whatever RYM Games turns their attention to next.

Epic Games announce Fortnite Fall Skirmish

The Fortnite Fall Skirmish will start next weekend and Epic Games have announced $10,000,000 in prize money will be awarded across a 6-week series. The conclusion of the series will be at TwitchCon from October 26-28. The Fall Skirmish will aim to have a balance of both Competitive and Entertainment play formats over the 6 weeks. Teams will earn points based on their performance in both formats and challenges such as masterful golf outings and mini-games will be incorporated into the Skirmish. Epic Games handed out cash prizes to around 500 community members during the Summer Skirmish and are aiming to grow that number. A follow-up blog will be released ext week detailing the format for the first week and team announcements. Beyond the Fall Skirmish there are chances to win prizes. Near the beginning of October the Showdown Royale allows the entire community to have the opportunity to compete and earn prizes in future competitive events. As most of you might know we also have a Fortnite Esports team here at Rectify and we will keep you updated on whether they’ll be competing at TwitchCon or not. You can learn more about the squad here.  Stay tuned for more coverage. Source: Epic Games

Realm Royale heads for new direction

Realm Royale, the battle royale game designed by Heroic Leap Games and Hi-Rez Studios, live streamed a patch notes show in which they announced significant changes to the gameplay. Realm Royale attained an all-time peak of 100K players on Steam on June 10th. This was due largely to popular streamers such as Ninja streaming and enjoying Realm Royal’s unique gameplay combat mechanics, such as turning into a chicken when you’ve been downed. Since that time, however, the player base has declined sharply and many fans have been critical of the patch releases which have added greater RNG into the game. Drybear, Design Director and Brand Director, and Erez, CEO of Hi-Rez, explained what changes were coming in the next 2-3 patches that would overhaul the game. The biggest change coming to Realm Royale is the removal of classes.  The five classes in Realm Royale (Hunter, Warrior, Mage, Assassin and Engineer) each had their own unique abilities and weapons that could be found and crafted, providing each class with a different play style for players to experiment with. In future patches, everyone will start off as the basic character and will be able to pick up any weapon or ability that they find. This is to prevent a common occurrence in Realm Royale: starting a game as a certain class and having to disenchant a significant amount of the abilities and weapons found in chests or loot because they could not be used by the class. It will also increase the combinations of abilities that can be used. The second biggest change is the removal of armour. Previously players spawned with a certain armour level and could acquire better armour from chests, looting and using the forge to increase their max armour HP. Runes are replacing armour and many of the passive abilities such as slow health regeneration that used to belong to certain classes. Runes include increasing chicken HP, faster mount movement speed and faster chicken movement speed to name a few. Players can have up to 6 runes to alter and buff their play style. The hosts of the patch notes described this whole change as building your class in-game, rather than pre-selecting one and not being allowed to deviate in any way. Hitscan weapons are also being removed. These have caused great debate in the Realm Royale community due to the obvious advantage of hitscan vs projectiles on a large battle royale map. The full patch notes are yet to be released, but the development team at Heroic Leap Games seems hopeful that these major overhauls to the game will increase player retention and get more people to pick up the game and play it. Hints of a console version on the horizon and the game leaving alpha are also good signs of things to come. A vod of the twitch stream can be found here:  Patch Notes Vod  

Fatal Shooting at Madden 19 Tournament

Update: The two victims have been identified by their family members, as well as members of the gaming community, as Taylor Robertson, 27, and Eli Clayton, 22. Nine others were wounded by gunfire, while two more were injured while fleeing the scene. The suspect died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The original story follows below: Reports suggest that multiple fatalities and injuries have resulted from a shooting during a Madden 19 tournament at the GLHF Game Bar in Jacksonville, Florida, which was being live streamed on Twitch at the time. Jacksonville Sherrif’s Twitter page posted that one of the suspects is now dead and have urged people to stay as far away from the area as possible. During the Twitch stream of the qualifying event, shots can be heard and people running and screaming as the players disconnected from the game. Unconfirmed reports suggest that one of the suspects had taken part in the same tournament. The numbers of dead and wounded are unconfirmed as of yet, but the story is still developing.

Rainbow Six Siege not coming to the Nintendo Switch

Ubisoft has announced that technical constraints have prevented the team-based first-person shooter releasing on the Nintendo Switch. Alexandre Remy, Rainbow Six Siege brand director, explained that Rainbow Six Seige’s frame rate, 60 fps is “a bit  CPU heavy and Switch is not yet the Nintendo console where it’ll be.” Ubisoft has already released titles onto the Switch such as Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle but has also halted development on the Switch version of Steep. In addition, Scott Phillips, game director of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, said that if he had the programming skills, he would port the game to Switch. While a good relationship exists between Ubisoft and Nintendo, it seems as though it will take some time for companies to get the technical and programming skills to be able to release bigger games on the Switch. Source: Nintendo Life  

An introduction to Paladins

What is Paladins? Paladins is a 5v5 first-person hero shooter from Hi-Rez Studios, the creators of Smite and Tribes: Ascend. Paladins owes a lot of its inspiration to Team Fortress 2, but occupies a unique place in the hero shooter genre for its in-game items, customizable loadouts and talent mechanics that allow players to decide how to play each champion in four distinctive play styles. I fell in love with Paladins in February 2017, after seeing a friend play on Steam every day, and I haven’t stopped playing since. I’ve been gripped by the esports scene and having the opportunity to write for the Paladins Community Magazine has only furthered my love for the game. Paladins’ main game mode is called siege. Two teams contest a central objective zone that, once captured, spawns a payload that the attacking team must escort and successfully push into the enemy’s spawn. Each objective capture or successful payload push grants one point, and the first team to four points wins. The 11 siege maps in Paladins all vary in size and environment, from the jungle temple of Jaguar Falls to the icy wastes of Frozen Guard. The amount of vertical mobility in maps allows for different champions to be more or less effective on specific maps. The champions in Paladins fall into four classes: Front Line, Support, Damage and Flank. Front line champions are tanks with large HP pools and defensive shields, walls and barriers at their disposal. Their primary job is to control objectives and create space for their teammates to secure kills. Support champions are much more than just healing bots. All support champions are kitted out with defensive and offensive utility and often have powerful crowd control abilities or ultimates. Damage champions are capable of dealing high amounts of damage but are susceptible to being flanked and don’t have very good self-sustain, relying on a good support to keep them healthy. The flank class, perhaps the most iconic class in Paladins, excels at using high mobility to get into a fight, pick off a target and get out of the fight. One of the joys of Paladins is that many champions can fit into different classes. Pip, a vulpine support character, has great mobility, damage and self-sustain, so he could easily be called a flanker. The talent, item and card loadout systems are crucial to Paladins’ unique gameplay and skill floor, and I’ll use the support champion Seris as my example when discussing these mechanics. Seris provides a very high healing output; her ability Restore Soul locks onto an ally from distance and heals a single target for 1000 hp every second for two seconds. Because she cannot heal AOE at base, Seris is more of a healer than a support. Her only team utility comes in her ultimate, Convergence, where she throws her soul orb into the battlefield which pulls enemies into it, allowing for great team set up. Seris’ damage is fairly low, she fires orb projectiles that pierce enemies and stack. Seris can then use her Rend Soul ability to detonate her stacked charges, dealing damage and healing herself. Seris’ movement ability is Shadow Travel. After a short cast time, Seris enters the void and becomes invisible and untargetable.   What are talents and how do they affect a champion’s playstyle? When you load into a match you are given the option of choosing from four talents. These provide buffs beyond your character’s base kit and provide you with four different playstyles. Seris’ four talents are some of the most varied of all the champions because they allow her to buff her healing in different ways or boost her DPS and utility. Her talents are called Soul Collector, The Void Abides, Agony and Mortal Reach. Mortal Reach allows Seris to safely heal an ally from a great distance for 3000 health over 3 seconds which, on larger maps, provides you with great healing from safety. Soul Collector allows Seris to gain up to 16% extra health and base damage based on how many charges she has detonated. Her DPS increases from roughly 700 to 812. With this talent, Seris can forget about being a healing machine and become a unique damage champion that can pierce multiple enemies on smaller maps. The Void Abides makes up for Seris’ inability to heal more than one ally at any given moment by allowing her to heal allies near to Seris’ primary healing target. On smaller maps, this allows Seris to pump out healing to multiple allies. Agony is perhaps the most unique play style Seris can use. This talent allows Seris to stun the targets of her Rend Soul, providing extra crowd control for her team at the expense of more healing.   What is the loadout system? One of the elements about Paladins that I love so much is the 15-point loadout system. Each character has 16 cards that enhance certain abilities, grant extra health, crowd control reduction, cooldown reductions and more. Each card has five levels. For example, Seris has a card that reduces the cooldown of her heal ability by 0.5 seconds at each level, a pretty important card for any heal build. Not all cards are as simple as cooldown reductions. Some are more risk/reward based. One of my favorite cards is Umbral Gait. When you hit an enemy with your soul orb you move 8% faster per level. When you’re fragging with Seris, it feels amazing to hit an enemy and then start zooming around at 40% extra movement speed, avoiding incoming fire and becoming a great nuisance. It is definitely a good idea to have seperate loadouts for each talent. It makes no sense to use a deck full of cards that compliment your heal ability if you run Soul Collector and decide to be super aggressive. One of the joys of playing Paladins is playing a game with a set talent and loadout that you’ve chosen and tweaking it game after game to try