Category: have you played…

The New Kid has moved with his parents to South Park to escape his forgotten past. He quickly allies with Butters, Princess Kenny and their leader Cartman. The New Kid is nicknamed “Douchebag”; he is introduced to the coveted Stick of Truth. Shortly thereafter, the elves attack Kupa Keep and take the Stick. With the help of Cartman’s best warriors, Douchebag recovers the Stick from Jimmy. Cartman banishes Clyde from the group for failing to defend the Stick from the elves. That night, Douchebag and several town residents are abducted by aliens. Douchebag escapes his confinement with the help of Stan’s father Randy and crashes the alien ship into the town’s mall.

By morning, the UFO crash site has been sealed off by the government, who has put out a cover-story that claims a Taco Bell is being built. Douchebag visits Kupa Keep and learns that the Stick has again been stolen by the elves. Cartman and Kyle task Douchebag with recruiting the Goth kids for their respective sides, each claiming that the other has the Stick. Randy agrees to help Douchebag recruit the Goths after Douchebag infiltrates the crash site and discovers that government agents are plotting to blow up the town in order to destroy an alien goo released from the ship. The goo turns living creatures into Nazi Zombies; an infected person escapes government containment, unleashing the virus on South Park.

That night, Cartman or Kyle (dependent on which character the player chooses to follow) leads his side against the other at the school. Here, the children learn that Clyde stole the Stick as revenge for his banishment. Clyde rallies defectors from the humans and elves, and uses the alien goo to create an army of Nazi Zombies. The humans and elves join together to oppose Clyde but there are too few to fight him. Later, Gnomes steal Douchebag’s underpants and he gains the ability to change size at will.

Out of desperation, Douchebag is told to invite the girls to play. They agree to join after Douchebag infiltrates an abortion clinic and travels across Canada to discover which of their friends is spreading gossip. Flanked by the girls, kindergarten pirates, and Star Trek role-players, the humans and elves attack Clyde’s dark tower. Randy arrives and reveals that the government agents have planted a nuclear device in Mr. Slave’s anus to blow up South Park, forcing Douchebag to shrink and enter Mr. Slave to disarm the bomb. Douchebag finally confronts Clyde and is forced to fight a resurrected Nazi Zombie Chef; Chef is defeated. Clyde decides he is not playing any more and Cartman kicks him from the tower.

The government agents arrive, revealing that Douchebag went into hiding to escape them because of his ability to make friends on social networks such as Facebook, which the government wanted to use for its own ends. Learning of the Stick’s supposed power, the chief agent takes it and bargains with Douchebag to help him use it. Douchebag refuses but Princess Kenny betrays the group, uses the Stick to fight them and infects himself with the Nazi Zombie virus. Unable to defeat Nazi Zombie Princess Kenny, Cartman tells Douchebag to break their sacred rule by farting on Kenny’s balls, which he does. The resulting explosion defeats Kenny and cures the town of the Nazi Zombie virus. In the epilogue as South Park is rebuilt, the group retrieves the Stick of Truth; they decide its power is too great for any person to hold and throw it into Stark’s Pond.

Rift (previously known as Rift: Planes of Telara) is a fantasy free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Trion Worlds. Rift takes place within the fantasy world of Telara. The game was released in March 2011.

Two competing factions composed of a selection of races and classes battle each other; as well as the enemies who emerge from dynamic rifts.

Rifts are areas of elemental instability that represent the intrusion of elemental planes into the land of Telara. Once opened, these rifts begin to spawn monsters that proceed to march towards important points on the map. It is up to players to defeat these monsters and to close the rifts. If rifts are left unchecked, the invading monsters will eventually conquer large portions of the map, inflicting casualties and significantly hampering the operations in that area. Entering the area around a rift triggers a prompt for the player to join a public group, rather than forcing the player to manually create a group. After sealing a rift, players are rewarded based on their contribution to the fight, such as healing, dealing damage, or buffing other players. The severity and locations of rifts are entirely dynamic. Rifts of six different types (earth, fire, air, water, life, and death) are possible, and rifts of different types will oppose each other. In addition, Non-player characters hostile to the player may engage rift invaders. With the addition of Storm Legion, Hunt Rifts can be summoned by players creating a “survival” style of combat where players defend conduits from waves of invaders culminating in a boss battle. Hunt Rifts have varying degrees of difficulty and as the difficulty increases the player rewards also increase.

Rift offers several types of dungeons/instances including Dungeons and Raids. Players may team up in groups of 5 to battle through Normal, Expert or Master mode Dungeons. Each level of dungeon challenges players to overcome unique strategies and encounters. Dungeons provide players with a chance to acquire higher level items and currencies to use throughout the game. In addition to Dungeons, players may also choose to enter 10-man or 20-man Raids which require teamwork and good equipment to be successful. Raids are considered end-game content and contain the toughest encounters Rift has to offer.

Each character chooses between four different callings: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, or Mage. Each class starts with access to eight different ‘souls’ from that calling, which have trees to which they can allocate a number of points gained each level. Rift’s soul trees have two levels: branches, which are the specific abilities/bonuses that the player allocates the points to, and roots, which are the soul’s base abilities that are unlocked as the player allocates a certain number of points into the branches. All races may become all classes.

The soul system allows players to customize their characters to a high degree. The player chooses three souls from within their calling, and allocates earned points into talent trees for each soul. A Cleric wishing to tank may select justicar for its defensive properties and ability to heal the group as it deals damage, sentinel to increase his healing capabilities, and shaman to increase his melee damage output (thus increasing the amount of damage-based healing and threat generation). A Cleric may have both justicar and sentinel, but may have more points allocated into sentinel than justicar, and then choose warden as the third soul for its burst damage and heal-over-time spells, to make the character more of a healer than a tank.

Players may also keep up to twenty different soul configurations (called roles), which may be activated whenever the player is not in combat, meaning a player can switch from a healer to a damage dealer as the group needs. Because the player’s abilities come from the points allocated in the soul trees, two roles that share no souls will have no abilities or bonuses in common with each other. This allows players a greater degree of versatility than is normally allowed in MMORPGs. These combinations allow players to play multiple roles in PvE, PvP, party, and raid gameplay. Therefore, a rogue could either do ranged or melee dps, provide support, or tank. Clerics, unlike in other MMOs, allows for damaging and tanking abilities instead of being confined exclusively to healing. Mages provide both ranged and melee damage through direct damage and damage over time abilities. They can provide fantastic support via group or tank healing, as well as debilitating destructive debuffs and crowd control. Warriors can fulfill several roles, either damage, tanking, or support.

Rift’s character customization allows players to alter specific aspects of their avatars. Characters may change hairstyles, facial features, height, sex, tattoos, and skin colors during character creation. Originally, these attributes were unable to be changed in game, but patch 1.9 added a barbershop which allowed for re-customization of all aspects but race and sex. Each race has a limited skin color palette and set of race-specific features. For example, the Bahmi’s hairstyles for females include numerous bald or almost-bald options while the high elves have hairstyles that contain flowers. The player can also customize the appearance of all armor by applying a coloured dye or by using the appearance of another item. Rift also features an expansive wardrobe system. If a player finds a particular piece of equipment that pleases them visually, they can equip it in a wardrobe slot that overwrites currently equipped items, visual model. For each wardrobe slot, a player can equip alternate gloves, shoulders, boots, pants, and chest pieces. There are various vanity items that players receive for completing dungeons, quests, or rift events in game. All together, the player can purchase up to five wardrobe slots, with the price of each subsequent slot increasing substantially.

At launch, Rift included approximately 12,000 weapons which players could equip to their character. Weapon rarities are common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple), and relic (orange). Weapons include swords, axes, maces, staves, wands, bows, guns, daggers, and shields. Swords, hammers, axes, and maces, and pole arms may also be two handed.

Heroes of the Storm is an upcoming multiplayer online battle arena video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and OS X. The game utilizes a combination of heroes from Blizzard’s Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft and other franchises and is set in the “Nexus.” The game uses both free-to-play and freemium models and is supported by micropayments, which can be used to purchase visual alterations for the characters in the game. Blizzard does not call the game a “multiplayer online battle arena” or an “action real-time strategy” because they feel it is something different with a broader playstyle; they refer to it as a “Hero Brawler”.

The game entered closed beta on January 13, 2015. As of February 2015, over 9 million players had signed up for eligibility to be invited to the beta testing.

Heroes of the Storm is a game that revolves around online 5-versus-5 matches, operated through Blizzard’s online gaming service Battle.net. Players can choose from three game modes, which include playing with/against computer-controlled heroes or other players. When players first start the game, they may only play heroes provided by the hero rotation, a methodically selected list that changes every week, but by using gold, an in-game source of wealth, or through microtransactions, they can gain permanent access to a hero. Of the currently released maps, 5 of the 6 have the standard 3 main lanes where players can fight, while the exception, named Haunted Mines, has 2 main lanes but a separate objective-based area. Killing enemy/neutral units and the opposing side’s heroes grants experience points, which is shared with the entire team. When a certain experience threshold is reached for a team, each hero on that team level up, acquiring slightly amplified statuses and gaining a talent point upon reaching levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 20. Talent points allow players to customize their hero’s abilities and generally result in large increase in power, especially for levels 10 and 20. This leveling system emphasizes the importance of teamwork, since a player’s action can affect the whole team. Players can also mount different creatures, such as horses or unicorns, to increase their movement speed and players will automatically unmount when dealing/receiving damage or using an ability. Minions at neutral camps can be defeated to gain mercenaries that fight for you. Each map has a different side-objective that will help either team deal significant damage to the other.

The utopian city of Eden, located at the bottom of the sea, was once a haven of peace, harmony and beauty. Constructed in secret by a group of enlightened people who treasured noble ideals, knowledge and new discoveries, it blossomed into a harmonious, peaceful society. However, their insatiable curiosity led to Eden’s downfall. A mysterious finding dug up from an ancient seabed unleashed supernatural forces that pitted the citizens against each other, turning them into the merciless executors of a sinister will. Fear and cruelty replaced peace and enlightenment. The city started dying, until only a small group of resistance fighters was left hiding in the ruins.

A world-famous explorer, Robert Marceau, who is also the protagonists lover, accidentally discovers the city. Contact with him is lost soon after that, and the woman, not caring about the danger, goes to the rescue. Striding along dark and ruined corridors of the underwater city, she discovers its mysteries and meets the last inhabitants. Documents from the past gradually reveal the horrifying truth about the conflict that destroyed this submarine paradise.