John's Shafer's At The Gates

When I first learned about this game I thought they would change the name. I figured that it was just said that way to let you know that John Shafer was involved. since it was early on in the project, but the name has stuck and with only a week left before release I can safely say I was wrong about that. JSATG looks to be a mix of Civ and Total War with a lot more survival and conquering aspects built in.  It's got colored pencil like graphics with an every changing environment.  Here is the website, though it's a bit sparse on details. https://www.atthegatesgame.com/

January 2019 Monthly game Giveaway Winners!

Here is the January 2019 Winners in the free monthly giveaway!
King Steve - Sniper Elite V2
Bunny1902 - Project High Rise
RefriendEvil - Colt Express
Think343.td - Dead Island
To be entered all you need to do is follow and join our steam group and my Twitch channel.

Atlas - EA review

I got about 50 hours of Atlas in over the holiday break. I built several ships, moved from 3 different servers, but never was able to settle down in my own land. I did enjoy my time with it though often frustrating, but strangely engaging. Here is the story of my time with Atlas.

We started on the NA PVP server, after a few laggy days we were finally able to play and we built a raft and sailed out looking for land, turns out after many many hours of sailing around that even within the first week of release, through the bad server performance and crashes somehow people had managed to claim all the land in this huge world. Being on a PVP server we attempted to take some of it, but out of nowhere came armor plated warriors with guns and in a much larger number then we had. We got slaughtered very quickly. After that we decided to go to the PVE server to hopefully find land and get things figured out in a more peaceful way.

So we leveled up, built a raft and dodged the huge amount of rafts in Freeport to move out to a lawless area. We started up a temporary base in hopes of gathering materials to make a more worthy ship. After a many hours of collecting and fighting the natives, aka lots of snakes and tigers, we finally built a sloop.  A much more sea worthy craft then our raft. We set sail to find some land to establish a foothold in this world. Well Ghost pirates had just been turned on...and it was obvious not tested at all because there was so many and they were super aggressive. We tried our best to avoid but they had some crazy fast sails that went max speed even against the wind...so on our maiden voyage we were sunk. Not only were our hours of work gone in a flash we lost a crew member to frustration.

I wasn't quite done yet though as I  knew a nerf to the pirates was coming. So we spent even more time collecting materials and fighting the natives and built a larger ship with cannons and as I had hoped the pirates had in fact been nerfed by this time. So we launched our new ship and went out looking for land. We were able to navigate smoothly around the pirates now but still land did not seem obtainable.

After days of sailing we found a spot that had seemly been abandoned by the previous owners. Finely after all this work we had a place to call home! We were able to successfully take over the claim, but quickly found out why it was abandoned, it was a crocodile nightmare. After many deaths and many attempts to get a foot hold on our small tiny claim, the crocs won and we decided we were done with Atlas for the time being. We wanted to go out in a blaze of glory though so we decided it was time for some revenge on those ghost pirates. There was only 2 of us online at the time and I do think if our other mate was on we would have been victorious and maybe even survived the battle. While we still accomplished our goal of sinking a pirate, our poor Enterprise ARRRR took fatal damage in the process and sank as well. It was a fitting end to a frustrating but fun time with Atlas.

Right now there are a lot of things that need addressed with the game. There are several exploits that allow people to grief even on PVE servers, which can cause a huge loss of time and materials. For example you can sink another ship by dragging an overweight corpse onto it. I also read that you can claim a base even when it should not claimable, taking the land and anything built on it along with it. Other things that need addressed is monster balancing, some things are crazy hard and can hit through ships.  There is also a lot of overpopulated spawns making it extremely hard to survive. I would not recommend playing solo, as it's geared more to groups, this might change but right now the skill tree's requires a group to get the most advance things unlocked.

To conclude, I enjoyed my time with Atlas, but it was frustrating and time consuming. I think in a year or so after the systems are fleshed out and a server wipe happens I would love to return and hopefully have a better experience.

Happy Holiday's all! Here is a list of games to keep an eye on for early 2019!

This list is all games that are not Triple AAA and you probably have not heard of but have sparked my interest. 

End State - End State looks a hell of a lot like X-com, which is fine with me. Hopefully it's got enough differentiating factors to set it apart. Join the MMG to game with Adult gamers and win free games!

CryoFall - CryoFall is Sci-Fi multiplayer survival game set on a forgotten planet in a distant future. Technology, trading, crafting, industry, farming, exploration and more!

Degrees of Separation - Co-op Puzzle Platformer that looks like a great one to play with the signifigant other or bestie. Could be a a great gateway into video games for none gamers.

The Warhorn - The Warhorn is a medieval RPG mixed with city-building and management elements. Play as an adventurer who decided to leave his dull life as a lumberjack behind to explore a dangerous world full of puzzles in the pursuit of the most valuable relic mankind has ever seen: The Warhorn! 

Space Mechanic Simulator - Space Mechanic is mainly focused around repairing space stations, solars and space shutters. Every machine has hundreds of parts that you can take out and replace. You can explore 3 planets using your landrover and feel like a real astronaut when you look in the sky and see Earth in its whole view. 

Genesis Alpha One -   Genesis Alpha One mixes thrilling roguelike mechanics with a deep ship builder and fast first-person action, putting you in the role of an interstellar pioneer.