News:: Contest: Win a preview build of Relic Hunters Legend, the 'anti-loot box' game

[Update: And the winners are WholeWheatBagels, Exy, D-Volt and Keiichi Morisato. Check your Dtoid PMs for your Steam codes, and after you've played it, let us know about it in the comments and/or the Cblogs. We'd love to hear what you think. As for the game itself, it still has 6 days left on Kickstater and a little less than $10K left to raise, so there's still time to back-and-share it if you're interested. Thanks again for playing everybody!]

A lot of people have come to associate the term “free to play” with skeevy micro transaction driven game mechanics designed to influence people’s feeling states, leading them to make unwise decisions with their money. The fact that so many of us equate the word "free" with the feeling of being ripped off is as sad as it is strange, but that's where we are in 2017, an era with thousands of games on the market that were designed solely to play you, and not the other way around. Some of you have told us that it's gotten so bad that you've considered getting out of gaming entirely.

These kinds of tricks have been gradually leaking into full priced, $60 retail games as well. Loot boxes are a prime example. By spending real money, they give players the chance to earn some valuable in-game equipment or other resources, though it’s usually a gamble. By making these items difficult or time consuming to acquire otherwise, they take on a false sense of worth that can really play with your head (and your wallet).

That misconception of quality can cut both ways, leading people to see cheap-but-fun games as less valuable than more expensive and rare virtual goods. Relic Hunters Zero, an actually free to play game, has been dowloaded over a million times, but given that it costs literally nothing to play, is available on Steam, and is (most importantly) a lot of fun, you’d think its numbers would be better than that. You'd also think that the +1 million people who played the game would also be quick to back the sequel on kickstarter, but so far not so good. 

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News:: W-what's that noise? Five horror games that use sound effectively

In a Dead Space developer diary, executive producer Glen Schofield used a good example to illustrate how audio is integral to fear: "We've turned off a scary movie -- the picture -- and just run the audio and it's very scary, but if you turn off the audio and just watch the movie, it's not scary at all."

Sound design is arguably more crucial for horror than any other genre in gaming, and some developers are taking it to the next level. Here are five horror games (or series) that may make you consider muting your sound and playing in silence, not out of distaste but out of fear.

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News:: Comments of the Week 22: Get Over Here!

Welcome back, everyone, to Comments -- Komments I mean -- of the Week 22! With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to give this week's edition a fun little Mortal Kombat theme! One of the longest running fighting game franchises, Mortal Kombat celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and, with no end to the series in sight in the foreseeable future, all it really means is more great and gory games to come!

As always, there will be laughter, some truth, and comments that will truly give you that warm Christmas WTF feeling! Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show! 

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News:: A brief buying guide for the original Nintendo DS

The Nintendo 3DS is gradually being put out to pasture, now that it's bulkier, flashier half-brother is taking over. We're bidding adieu to a console that had a pretty impressive back catalogue, and dominated the handheld market for a good number of years. 

But what if you're not ready to say goodbye? What if you want to get more use out of the little pocketbook marvel? Or what if you want to get an older console for the first time? Well, the 3DS is backwards compatible with the original DS's games, and if you never tried those out, then you're missing something special.

[For where to buy the games/hardware, I've linked to Amazon and eBay sellers, but that's not an endorsement for buying off of these sites – you might find better deals elsewhere.]

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News:: Review: Total War: Warhammer 2

As much as I've enjoyed and admired the games of The Creative Assembly, I can't help but admit that I'm something of a fair-weather Total War fan. With the exception of Shogun 2, the sheer scale of a typical Total War game tends to keep me from committing to any single one, or even starting despite my initial interest in titles like Atilla, Napoleon, or Empire.

In defense of my seeming negligence, however, it's not like Total War games are the kind of title you're supposed to play every single entry of (much as that would delight the people making them). Between installments, the games don't change all that much in their basic approach to play, and players are usually best advised to take the plunge when a new installment touches on a setting they enjoy.

Usually.

After I spent time with Total War: Warhammer 2, though, I immediately rushed out to get the first game, cursing my ignorance and wondering why I'd let such an accomplished Total War game pass me by.

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News:: If you could capture one thing with Super Mario Odyssey's Cappy, what would it be?

Super Mario Odyssey has proved to be the game we all thought it was going to be. With rave reviews across the board, it’s an instant classic and yet another win – in a year full of wins – for the Nintendo Switch. When it was first unveiled around this time last year, I was hooked by its colorful and exciting new locations. Every subsequent trailer has been pure gold, from the revelation it would play closer to the Mario 64 style of the series to the fact that we’re able to take control of a frickin' T-Rex.

There is just so much joy emanating from every facet of that game and a big part of that is Cappy. Sure, it’s been rough getting used to the look of two sets of eyes on Mario, but seeing Nintendo take an instantly recognizable symbol of its flagship character and use it to add new concepts and features to the franchise has me feeling all tingly from my hairs to my toes. I can’t wait to take over the bodies of Bullet Bills, Goombas, and that gersh-dorn Tyrannosaurus Rex. That hat has been on my mind all week as Twitter exploded into an Odyssey orgasm leading up to and directly following its release, leading me to ask myself what I would do if I had that hat.

Capture, possess, whatever you want to call it, the world is full of amazing things that would be absolutely bad-ass to have dominion over. Originally I was going to go with Mount Rushmore so I could do a vaudeville act of the President’s talking to one another, but then I remembered something slightly more amazing. In the DiverCity shopping center of Japan’s Odaiba artificial island is a 72-foot tall Gundam statue.

How could that not be my answer? If I had Cappy I could take control of my own freakin’ Gundam and just, like, stomp ISIS into the ground or do the world a favor and destroy Facebook headquarters. I don’t even need the weapons to work, I just want to be giant and be able to step on shit.

So yeah, if I had a Cappy, I would spend the rest of my life as a Gundam, which would be short because you know the world’s governments would blow me to pieces. But it’d be so worth it.

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News:: Will gaming have another defining moment?

Playing through Super Mario Odyssey, a strange thought comes to my mind; is this game as good as Super Mario 64? I don’t mean in the sense of quality or direction or anything that a review might cover. What I’m talking about is, will Super Mario Odyssey be remembered the same way as Super Mario 64? For as rough around the edges as Mario’s first foray into 3D game worlds might be, that game release might be the single most significant moment in the entire industry.

Few games define how other developers and publishers set out to make their own works. I can list off the games I’ve seen in my lifetime that have fundamentally changed gaming as a whole, but when was the last time that truly happened? After a long discussion with a bunch of the staff here, I’ve accepted that Minecraft is a pretty damn big deal, but what else in recent memory has truly defined a generation of games?

A lot of you may point to Dark Souls, but that is basically iterating on Ocarina of Time. Some people may even say Gears of War, but that was a riff on Resident Evil 4 (another game that might be just as influential as Super Mario 64). Hell, even Rockstar Games hasn’t really done anything wildly different since Grand Theft Auto III, a game that spawned a bazillion clones and practically created another genre. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds just might be the newest title to really shake up the industry, but even that is following in the footsteps of other “Battle Royale” games (one of which PlayerUnknown actually worked on!).

So my question to the community is this; will there ever be another game that is so wholly unique and sets so many trends that, despite its rough edges, we’ll still be talking about it decades later? For what it’s worth, I’m optimistic someone will make something, but I don’t think it will happen until a console manufacturer radically alters the way we interact with a game (i.e. VR or something along those lines).

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News:: Review in Progress: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Despite being blown up by a grenade at point-blank range, as well as being in the firing line of a nuclear space cannon, it looks like good ol' boy B.J. Blazkowicz made it, thanks in no small part to his close-knit family of rag-tag rebel friends.

Though the Deathshead compound lies in absolute ruin, Blazkowicz and Co. have only just scratched the surface. The Nazis remain in global power, having fully homogenized the U.S. into a country of their own, made up of The Reich themselves, and a weak population of turncoat sympathizers, sweeping all of those citizens who dared stand against the new order under the rug via a bullet to the brain.

The time has come to take the fight for freedom to B.J's own doorstep, but with the team in such disarray, and Blazkowicz himself a wounded, dying, shell of a man, how can the ill-equipped resistance stand up to the psychotic Frau Engel and her legion of hatred?

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