Category Archives: Columns

What’s Gus Playing? King Arthur Knight’s Tale!

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You know Neocore Games. They are the PC gaming outfit from Hungary who have put together some solid offerings over the last 5-10 years, including WH40K: Inquisitor, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing and King Arthur: The Role Playing Wargame and its sequel of the same name.  I haven’t played Inquisitor, but I have put some hours into the action/horror RPG Van Helsing which I enjoyed, as well as the original King Arthur game strategy game/RPG hybrid, which I liked a lot but could never win. I always got to a specific point in that game and could not advance. I think I was missing some key progression point and after a few playthroughs grew frustrated. I never played the sequel…maybe one day.

Now Neocore return with their Early Access title King Arthur Knight’s Tale. I feel like there is a slash or a comma missing from that title – maybe it will be added later. This new game combines action RPG elements by giving the player a selection of knight’s from the King Arthur mythos to play through the game with.

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By: Lloyd Sabin

What’s Gus Playing? Northgard!

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A wise man once wrote that ‘sometimes love just ain’t enough.’ Tragic, but true.

I looked forward to playing Northgard for a long time since I got the complete game at a deep discount a few months ago (there have been several DLCs dropped since it’s release). A city builder set at the beginning of the Viking Age (around 800 AD), Northgard gives the player a dozen different clans to choose from in sandbox mode, along with options for a story mode (sort of a long tutorial) and multiplayer.

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By: Lloyd Sabin

What’s Gus Playing? Order of Battle – Red Steel!

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Looking out my window I see the woods and the hill behind my house covered in about 2.5 feet of snow. There’s barely any color out there besides gray and white and it’s about 25 degrees. The warmth and love in my home can’t overcome the chill.

What is not difficult to imagine on this cold February morning is the vast, freezing steppe of the eastern front during World War II, and to bring it further into focus I just fired up Order of Battle: Red Steel, a set of scenarios placing the player in the boots of a Soviet commander taking charge of the titanic effort of continuously pushing back the invading Germans just after they were stopped outside of Moscow in late 1941.
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By: Lloyd Sabin,

What’s Gus Playing? Wolfenstein – Youngblood!

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Due to customer demand – namely one dude in the forums who shall remain nameless who asked ‘Hey what happened to the What’s Gus Playing thing you used to do? – I am back to tell you all about What I Am Playing. Right now I am actually playing through three games – Panzer Corps 2, Order of Battle – Red Steel, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Since I don’t know how much time I have until my power goes out again from the fourth foot of snow we are receiving as I type this – I’ll be quick.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood, developer Arkane and publisher Bethesda, have all taken a ton of flak (pun intended) in online forums since the game’s release. Why? Most likely because it’s two playable protagonists, Jess and Sophia Blazkowicz, daughters of Wolfenstein hero BJ, are young women. Many of the NPCs are women as well, and their computer nerd assistant who maps out Paris for them, finds them side missions and generally helps them along is also a woman. The majority of the enemies they fight are men, and also Nazis. I didn’t have a problem with this set up, other than the girls’ banter back and forth occasionally got a little irritating, the same way the banter between my own daughters gets irritating. And I found a whole lot more to like in Wolfenstein: Youngblood to offset any annoying chatter.

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By: Lloyd Sabin,

Do Zombies Drink Corona? The Zombie Survival Blog Returns!

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It has been quite some time since my last communication in this blog.  It hasn’t been because there was nothing more to say.  I was just focused on surviving.  And then world events popped up and made all of us think about survival.  Even the hermit living at the top of a mountain knows about the pandemic that crashed through world economies like a wrecking ball.  In a perfect world, politics would have no place in health discussions, but this issue has become so highly politicized that it is difficult to focus solely on the facts.  Regardless of whether you feel that this was a health crisis that threatened the lives of you and your family members or that it was an overblown reaction engineered for a political outcome, readers of this series will agree that it has to make us think about what to do for the next pandemic.

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By: Jonathan Glazer