In This Issue!
Look out for more updates on this throughout the month.
Tazer News: Game Expo Scotland: For those of you who have been following the Saturday Vlog on the "TazerCG" channel, you will be well aware that we have been trying to attain some Press Passes for Game Expo Scotland, but as yet we are still unaware if we will be receiving any. We are due to find out by the end of July, so by the time the magazine goes out we should know either way. If we do manage to get some press passes, our next step will be to try and raise some money to get up to Scotland as if our Kickstarter project doesn't get enough backing then we will have to try and raise the money ourselves.
New Mid-Week Videos for the "TazerCG" Channel: For a while now we have had a gap in our schedule that we have wanted to fill. The "TazerCommunityGaming" channel is busy all week with videos scheduled 5 out 7 days every week and sometimes extras. So we have decided to put it to the community, we have several ideas that we would like your feedback on. To find out more please use the link below to be taken to the corresponding video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= oiEBF6SAjQk&list=UUaG0x6aOUH9jH 0CPVNKEGnw . Giveaway: Don't forget to check this month's Quad-Core Mini Magazine for your chance to win a 5 game bundle. For more details visit the "Prizes" page of our website: http://www.tazercg.com/prizes.html
Unturned is brand new free to play 'Minecraft-clone' game that was released early in July. The idea of the game is to survive...it has zombies...it has huge pixelconstructed worlds...any of this sounding familiar? Yes it is practically Minecraft as my previous 'Minecraftclone' comment would suggest, except for one very obvious difference...you anything.
can't
build
So what is the point of a MinecraftClone that you can’t build in? Well, the concept for this game is closer to that of DayZ than it is Minecraft. The objective is to survive and thrive. You’re born into the world butt-naked and with very few supplies. You have to explore the world and venture into
abandoned towns filled with zombies. And here lies my first issue with this game. All the zombies seem to gather in the towns, and nowhere else. You occasionally find them in other places but not often. This makes it really hard to actually start off at the beginning, because the zombies are really badly balanced. They are faster than you are which makes them incredibly hard to outrun, and they don't give up after a certain amount of time meaning you just have to keep running and running. I did find a good way of getting away from them, but even that has its problems. If you jump into water the zombies don't follow, which is awesome however in some places you will try and swim to another shore away from the
zombies, and then they will glitch back to your position. On one occasion I swam to a shore so far away I could not see the zombies anymore and as soon as my feet touched the shore (where there were NO zombies) I was immediately bombarded and mauled by the very zombies that I had left behind on the other shore. This game does have a multiplayer system too, which would be a really awesome feature as it could be a lot of fun and a lot easier to survive if you had a group to help, however this game also suffers from the same terrible and outdated system of using IP Addresses to play with your friends that the real Minecraft does. I loathe this system and wish it would f**k off. Sorry to be so blunt, but having played Minecraft on the Xbox and knowing how fun and easy it is to play with your friends, it annoys me that on PC they cannot implement a similar system. All I want to do is play with my friends so why make it so difficult for the average person...GRRRRRR! This game isn't all bad though, it has a lot of potential, especially seeing as it is free to play. There is a gold system you
can unlock with a one-off $5 fee, which I think is quite reasonable considering it is a one-off and not a subscription. I think that unlocks a few extra features, and some stuff, but I didn't have enough time to look into it unfortunately. The settings for the game are very detailed, and once bumped up to the highest settings, parts of the game actually look better the Minecraft itself. The water for example, although once under it looks very unfinished and glitchy, when you look at it from the shore it actually looks really nice. As shown in the last picture in this article. The environment itself is huge with a lot to explore, not that I got much chance to as I usually died pretty quick, as I have mentioned it's pretty hard when you start out. The best way I've found is to try and get your hands on a car...yes a car! This game has drivable cars in a Minecraftstyle world...it's awesome! Just make sure you get one that has fuel as you will not be safe if you just hide in a car, the zombies can smash into it. But if you manage to get a car with fuel and get the zombies to follow you, you can then swing around and take them all out in one long line with the car itself, clearing
out the whole town sometimes leaving you to loot the whole town unhindered. I do like this game quite a lot, it's a great little free game to mess about on, it just has a few issues which really need adjusting and then it could be awesome. So make sure you communicate these issues and anymore that you find yourself with the developers so that they can fix it, because it wouldn't take much to fix them. I hope you enjoyed this review of "Unturned", don't forget to come back next month for many more reviews, and if your reading us on ISSUU.com, please support us by clicking that "Follow" button. - Nathan Scullard
Dead Island Game Review By Kim Gustafsson
Welcome to the Island of the dead. Dead Island is a zombie game (as if it could be anything else in this month’s issue) that plays out in the sun paradise Banoi located of the coast of Papua New Guinea, a fictional Island isolated from the world around it.
Story As you wake up as one of the four characters you listen to a stranger over the radio (always the case with zombie games is it not?) that helps to guide you safely from the hotel you are in. Where you wake up strangely enough...so I was sleeping through all the fighting screaming and death that turned 90% of the humans to zombies? As he is drunk, I get the heavy sleeping, but that’s just MY character, what are the others excuse?
It’s a bit strange that’s all I'm saying. I played as Logan Carter a former football star of some sort. And he seems to have some ego issues. The reason I picked him though is cause of his bonus with thrown weapons, I figure I want to keep the zombies as far away as possible. But more about this later, I'm getting ahead of myself. As you cut, throw and cause blunt force trauma to everything that stumbles in the world, you find a few people that are still alive and needs help getting off the Island. It turns out you are immune to the infection and all their hope is now laying on you. In the hopes of finding help you move through the Island's beaches and bungalows to find supplies and assorted side missions. In time you need to leave the beaches and go into the city, as you go further you will find out a thing or two about the virus. Now you know that I don’t like revealing the entire story in a game and like to
leave some of it to the players themselves (that’s you in case you had forgotten) that’s the whole point of the game, you want the experience right? But I have to say, I was not taken by the story in this game. All I can think while playing this game is "Been there done that" and that saying goes through the entire campaign. There are some parts that are good, but the majority of it is nothing new. And this is a letdown for the game itself. In its own right it’s a good game, the campaign is not bad, but so many games have gone down the same road before it (like every resident evil game ever made) so even if the story is good, you still feel like you have played it before. Let me say this again though just to be sure, the story is not bad, just not new. There is an infection/virus and there is someone who released it. It’s just same-old sameold if you get my meaning. On the other hand the side missions are more interesting in my book. They don’t have much impact on the story, but they do add to the feeling of the game. In games like Resident Evil you have a set objective; here you can take it a bit more as it comes. Doing some side missions are a great way to get more experience but also to get a better feel for the Island
and what the people on it have gone through in order to survive, or for that matter what happened to them as they died. Additionally, it allows you to kill even more zombies, your xp is increasing and you have a great time, what's not to like? Besides, you might need those extra skill points for the late game where it gets notably harder. Not only because of some new enemy types, but because the enemies do have a level system as well and will increase with your own in certain areas. It's just good to have some extra power when you need it.
Characters In the game you can play as one out of four people but the only one I have tested by the time of writing is Logan so I cant say much about the others. Logan however is a bit of an ego, and no its not that he HAS an ego, he IS one. Although he doesn’t have a problem with helping people along the way he keeps making stupid comments about everything. Not when interacting with npc's then its just the ocasional "ok" or "I see what I can do". But when you are alone killing zombies he cracks
comments like "whats wrong with you" well probably the same god damn thing that's wrong with the last 2000 zombies that tryed to kill you! Needless to say it gets a bit tedius after a while. He himself is not bad, and I like the voice. It just gets a bit too repetative. As for the other playable ones, a rapper named Sam B, Xian Mei, Chinese spy and hotel receptionist and an ex police officer Purna, I have to say I know very little as far as their personalities and voice acting go, but I do however know a bit more about the npc's in the game. Even if many are not bad, none of them will be getting any awards from me as far as voice acting goes. They are a bit plain and not really memorable. Some stand out, but off the top of my head I cannot recall the name of anyone of them. Sure names like White, Yerema and Jin (the latter mostly cause of the name reminding me of Jin Kazama from the Tekken series) are remembered only because of there part in the main story. And White got his own DLC as well, that helps to remember his name. But they aren’t the type of people or characters that you will spend a lot of time on after you quit your gaming session. They simply don’t get all the way there in terms of rememorability (yes that’s a word) and as some one
that plays for the people in the games, for me this is a great loss. And it doesn’t stop with just a few of them, it’s mostly all of the NPC's in the game.
Gameplay The game utilizes a free roam type of game play with first person perspective. There are also a few levelling up skill tables that become available. The game describes that it is a customizing game, but it’s really not. Sure the skills do something in the way of how you want to play the game, shooting or cutting for example, but this is mostly done by character choice and not customisaztion. As all of the playable characters have preset favourable abilities. Whether you want it to or not you will have to go for the stuff that your character is used to, or you will miss out on your special abilities. To use an example, as I played with Logan I get a bonus to throw weapons, this is good in theory but those types of weapons aren’t that effective in the game. I spent points in a skill thet gives me extra rage (more on that later) for every kill I do with a thrown weapon. Unfortunatly nothing ever dies from a thrown weapon unless you beat the living snot out of it first,
back away and throw something in its face before it starts to regenerate. Its not very viable, not to mention the fact that you just threw away your wepon on an enemy that did not die….great right? But still I put points down into it cause its what my character is supposed to do. This gets better in the late game but it still hurts to throw away your weapon in the hopes of a kill. You can customize some of your weapons as well, but you will need blueprints in order to do so. And the parts that can be a bit more troublesome to find. Most parts are found as you explore, but what to keep and what not to keep is a bit of an issue in some cases. Add to it that your arsenal of weapons will break down under usage and needs repairs. By the point you find a blueprint, the weapons you needed have most likley broken and been thrown away at some point making "customizing" weapons very difficult and in many cases virtually impossible. You need an inventory that can swallow the entire world in order to make something good the first time you play as you have no way of knowing what is important and where the appropriate blueprints are.
As far as the game running itself is a bit of a let down as well. It feels like the game is always one or two seconds behind in response to what you want to do (I play with a controller and this might have something to do with it, but so far I see the same result with mouse and keyboard) making you wait for a response when you usualy don’t have time to do so. The game also has some kind of "auto-aim" system that applies to your close combat attacks, and its not working at all. Aiming at someones head will not mean you hit it, it can simply take a hit on the shoulder because "it was closer" or whatever makes the game decide whats being aimed on, god knows what it is but its not what I go for when I aim at something. Maybe this is made to create hits where the player would miss but I feel its just a bunch of crap. Only way of getting a clean head hit is to kick them down and then aim for the head. And when throwing you don’t seam to have any say either about where you aim, it just takes aim at the zombies belly….WHAT THE FUCK! Everyone who has ever played a zombie game knows to aim for the head unless the enemy type tells you differently. So why the fuck in hell is it auto aiming in there gut? That’s not
gonna do anything, IT’S A ZOMBIE! Its just a stupid system that makes throwing a pain in the ass, whomever made this system is a moron . I don’t mind a crosshair or something to tell you where you are aiming, but to auto aim at there guts? That’s just stupid. The game looks good but it does not run as smoothly as I would have liked. Its always a bit laggy no matter how I do the graphics its like it doesn’t want to run completely smooth. It does not crash but it does not give your character a fluid motion. Imagine someone making one of those post-it card movies. Where you draw a pic of every pice of paper and then shuffle through them at speed. Well this game runs like that except some one is always that split second behind in turning the paper, making it feel shaky and half made. It does not give you a nice feel in the gameplay.
Final words This game does not have the best story, but I still play it because it gives me somehting that many other zombie games fail to deliver. I feel very satisfaid in the way I can kill zombies in this game. Be it shooting, beating, cutting or throwing (if you’re an idiot like me) it feels like you are doing it. The impacts of the weapons are nice and I just love to throw stuff just to hear the sound of it hitting some enemy. The same goes for the blunt force trauma inflicted by a wide assortment of weapons in the game. I don’t play this game for the story, I just don’t, I play it to kill zombies and have fun while doing it. Killing zombies is
what this game does well and you should play it for that reason alone. As far as I’m concerned it’s a fun game, not saying it’s great, but a fun game to play all the same. That said now you have to excuse me casue this game is multiplayer as well and I need to find a friend, and tothether we will break skulls and cause blunt force trauma on tourists as if it was going out of style. Happy gaming people, I see you in game.
Nether Game Review By Nathan Scullard
contest to is the freezing on the server screen, meaning you can't even get into the game.
Although not really a "Zombie" game, this game is what I would call a genuine alternative to DayZ, which IS a zombie game. Not quite the same concept, but very similar. And if you are at all like me, you get a bit fed up with the endless stream of glitches that DayZ itself has to offer.
I have to be fair though and say that it appears they have fixed this particular glitch and since they have, I have not had any problems with it crashing either, but I thought that they were still worth a mention as the game was released with these issues and went unresolved for quite some time.
Although truth be told that isn't really a fair comparison, because unless I am very much mistaken, DayZ is still in its early access phase, whereas Nether is not...at least everywhere I look on steam it tells me it isn't. So one or two glitches in DayZ are forgivable, but not in Nether. I have had serious problems with this game crashing a lot and the most famous glitch that every Nether owner can
The game itself is like most of the games released this year, it’s a survival game. Are you getting sick of this genre yet? Me too! And the thing that annoys me about the genre the most is that it doesn't seem to be able to provide you with the ability to create a "Private" lobby, which is a huge problem because the biggest threat to any player in games such as these is not the monsters or zombies themselves, but actually the other
players. The as****es who think it's funny to pray on low level players. You see them a mile off, they're the ones who have paid real-life money for cool or funny clothes or personalised weapons. And to be honest, this alone is what totally ruins the genre for me. I get that they are trying to make it into a real life survival situation where you can't really trust anyone, because you are all trying to survive, but at least give us the "option" to play like that or just with friends. They could make it even simpler by giving you the option of PVP or PVE servers, but I have never seen any. Moving on from that little frustration, the game itself has a lot of potential. The environment for starters is huge! With the ability to explore cities, settlements, safe zones, underground tunnels, abandoned outposts and many many more areas, which remind me of exploring the wilderness in a fallout game more than anything else. It even has courier missions and A.I. traders to trade with for the goods you can find scattered around the map. But of course this is all useless because before you get chance to deliver a package or gather enough stuff to buy
anything of value you get killed by another player and have to start again. Either that or you buy something good and THEN get killed and have the thing stolen from you and you have to start again. But if it wasn't for the other players, Nether could actually be a very enjoyable game. The maps are vast and engaging, the monsters are genuinely scary, and can seriously be a challenge if you decide to attack them at the wrong moment. What I mean by that is sometimes you will come across a monster on its own, and thinking it's easy prey you will attack it, suddenly to realise that it’s one of the monsters that roar and call hundreds more to it, or that the monster was in the middle of a nest so as soon as you attack it you get bombarded with enemies. To be totally honest I don't really get why this game has such a low Meta Score on Steam, with only 56/100. Most of the glitches have been fixed, the game is engaging with stuff to do and things to see. The mechanics are very good they don’t feel sluggish, hard to handle or control. In fact, the only thing I
can think of that lets it down...yes I keep coming back to it...is the damn people. I actually really like this game despite my previous statement about this game genre. It is however a game better played with friends, just not the kind of friends who are going to stab you in the back and nick your stuff. It's a shame there doesn't seem to be any kind of running story or back story that you have to uncover, but a lot of games in this genre don't have that. You are just dropped somewhere and expected to survive. I don't think anyone at all has quite grasped at the potential of this genre yet and just seem content with making lobbies where people mess about, I would like to see some kind of end game and targets to achieve in this genre and I believe that it could be a really good concept. But for now everyone I know who has played a game of this type has played it, said, "It’s kind of neat" then gone back to playing other games. And I am the same, so I'm off to play The Walking Dead! I hope you enjoyed this review, and if you did, be sure to check out our website: www.TazerCG.com. Until next time...See Ya!
Magic Tips By Kim Gustafsson Welcome to the magic section of this magazine. Even though this is a zombie issue I have to be the different kid here since I already covered the zombie deck in Magic 2014, but it’s the next best thing, if not better...Demons! It's time to talk about the Lords of Darkness deck. This is a DLC deck that focuses on bringing out strong creatures with a bunch of different abilities while using spells to keep your enemy down while your army grows in power. But trying to keep in line with the theme I'm not going to talk so much about the spells in this deck, and focus more on its creatures. So sit down and give a prayer to the dark gods that your soul will not be corrupted as you read this few but powerful demonic names… First
out is Shadowborn Demon, this dark winged demon has flying (surprise right) and for the cost of five mana you gain a pretty powerful 5/6 creature. This is really good but it can turn out to be a
double-edged blade. This demon has a special ability on it that accesses the controlling player’s graveyard. If there are less than six creature cards in it, you will HAVE to sacrifice a creature. And if Shadowborn Demon is your only creature, it's going to the grave pile in the beginning of your next turn. So keep in mind when you summon this creature as you could end up losing it right away. Bloodgift Demon is next up, a pretty straight forward 5/4 for the cost of five mana. But just as any other demon it has some special abilities. This one can force any player (including yourself) to draw a card. But target player will also loose 1 life. This is good in the sense you can draw cards for the cost of one life, but using it on your opponent can be risky as you risk helping them with the cards they need instead of causing them any real damage. It also has flying. Having trouble fighting those white angels in your opponent’s deck? Well then Halo Hunter is the demon for you then. For another five mana (there's a pattern here I'm sure) you get a 6/3
demon. Not the best stats, but when it enters the battlefield you get to destroy target angel creature on the board. That’s not too bad, and to make it just a bit better it also has Intimidate, meaning that only other black creatures can block it. It's not a bad trade for five mana. Renegade Demon is a straight forward creature for five mana cost. It has a steady 5/3 and no abilities what so ever. But it's one of my favourites simply because of its quotes. Many creatures and spells have these, and sometimes I think it’s the best thing with the game, so I thought I should share this one with you all. "Have you ever cornered a wounded vampire? That’s a walk in the cathedral park in comparison." It makes me smile every time. Reaper from the Abyss is a 6/6 with flying, not only is this good in itself but it also has a special rule called Morbid, this allows it to destroy any non-demonic creature on the battlefield as long as another creature died this turn. Just make sure you have all demons on deck while using this as if
your opponent doesn’t have any creatures, this can hit your own lines. Harvester of souls is another one of my favourites, not only for the demon itself but for its abilities and it kind of looks like a demon werewolf, can't go wrong whit that. Now it’s a six cost card that gives you a 5/5 with Deathtouch meaning that any creature that comes in contact with it will die, no matter how much health it has. Not only that, but if any non-token creature dies you get to draw a free card, that’s always a good thing. Lord of the Pit is not a cross over to a bad porno, but rather its one of the strongest demons in the deck. Rocking in at a nice 7/7 for seven in mana. It's expensive but carries with it some nice abilities. It comes with Flying and Trample as well, so even if a weaker creature blocks it some damage will still spill over to the defending player. However it does have a drawback. At the beginning of your upkeep you will have to sacrifice a creature or YOU will lose 7 life. And you can't nominate Lord of the Pit himself as a creature to be sacrificed. It's another card to be used carefully in order to not have it cause damage to you instead.
Lord of the Void is an amazing card. It’s a 7/7 card for a seven cost in mana. Having Flying it will most likely do damage, and when it does something really cool happens. The player that took the damage exiles the top 7 cards of his or her library, then you get to pick a creature from among those cards that will enter the battlefield under your control, its bloody brilliant. Not only do you do damage, you take away from their library and on top of that you get a free creature. This is an Expensive one Reiver Demon is a bane for all non black decks. It comes in at an eight mana cost whit only a 6/6 with flying to show for it. But it is worth every point in mana spent on it. When it enters play, it destroys all non-artefact nonblack creatures on the board. They can't be regenerated. It’s a board clear that saves all your own black demons and sweeps away all others. It's not a bad trade for eight in mana. To round this off this is Demon of Death's Gate. A monster that comes in at a nice 9/9 for nine in mana. As with all demons it has flying but it also has trample. In addition if you just so happen to have three weaker creatures on the field that you
don’t mind to give up, you can have them scarified along with six of your life's instead of paying its mana cost. Good if you want it out early on in the game. Even if your opponent has a flyer that early, it’s unlikely it can block this demon without dying, and it's still going to do damage to your opponent. There are more demons in the deck and a bunch of useful spells as well, some to buff or debuff creatures. Others to bring them back from their grave to fight for you once again. It’s a good deck but it will need some planning if you want to use it best. As many of its smaller creatures will damage you or your partner should you play double headed giant with someone not using a black deck. Keep that in mind that you might have to think about the cards you put out. Other then this it’s a fun deck to play with more than one way of clearing the board should you be forced to do such a thing. Lastly I will say that even though I'm happy to have done this Magic series this will be the last one of them for now. Not only is Magic 2015 out (if you’re a fan of 2014 you should definitely try the next instalment in the series) but my attention and time is needed elsewhere. If everything willing I might come back to it in the future to make the last couple of decks or maybe even one on Magic 2015. But for now it's time to let this section rest (although considering this issues special on zombie it might still be back). Happy gaming people and I hope to see you in Magic 2015.
Ilya Muromets PC Flight 1C Company August 1, 2014 (Early Access) Epigenesis PC Shooter , Online Dead Shark Triplepunch August 1, 2014 Risen 3: Titan Lords PC RPG Not Available August 2014 Sacred 3 PC RPG Deep Silver August 22, 2014 Shadowgate -- The Classic Adventure ReImagined PC Adventure Reverb Publishing August 21, 2014
Dark Souls II: Crown of the Old Iron King PC Action , RPG Bandai Namco Games August 26, 2014 Metro: Redux PC Shooter Not Available August 26, 2014 Bedlam PC Shooter RedBedlam Ltd. August 2014 Ultra Street Fighter IV PC Fighting Capcom August 2014 Wasteland 2 PC RPG Deep Silver August 2014