This week’s discussion**LoveDealing with romancing options, plot points, betrayal and just general relationships, here are some of our favorite or most memorable love moments in gaming.-Drake and Elena (Uncharted 1-4) If anything acts to serve as a realistic type romance presented in video game format, this might be one of the main examples you’ll see. They love each other but have split up more than once and constantly find themselves at each other’s throats. Despite all of this, you see them in the end still there for one another and it might not be apparent at first but their care stems deep down to their cores. A stereotypical but realistic representation of a man constantly out for adventure, brash and daring, but in the end careless, followed by a woman always there to bring him back down to reality, attempt to keep him grounded and in all good hopes tries to implement damage control when needed.
-Dragon Age: not any particular romance option in general. The fact that you can pick and choose what kind of relationship you have with each character. Each relationship that you build is based on trust and opinion encounters. Depending on the choices that you decide to make, has an effect on how you connect and interact with different characters.

-Mass Effect: Just like Dragon Age, there isn’t one specific relationship option to pinpoint. There are many relationship options to choose from in this game and it doesn’t restrict you either. As a female player, you can choose to build strong relationships (even a romance) with another female, or with a male. And the same goes when playing a male character. There are also so many different races in the game. Just like Dragon Age, the choices you make help build or break relationships. Choosing to go either Paragon or Renegade also helps to determine who and how you can build relationships.

-Zidane and Garnet (Final Fantasy IX) Final Fantasy has featured romances in their cast ever since the beginning. Zidane and Garnet mark a truly memorable one for me. Looked at as Sakaguchi’s goodbye letter to the series, Zidane sets out to capture the princess only to be pulled into a grand adventure taking him all over the world. The couple would see kingdoms fall, friends perish and a struggle to the afterlife that breaks them apart from one another.

**Reviews and Game Discussions**-Brut@l-Taking a page from games of yesteryear, we see an interesting looking action oriented roguelike dungeon crawler with an excellent level of replayability. The game features 4 playable character classes, not restricted to their respective skill tree but start out drastically differently:
Amazon - The Amazon uses her variety of ferocious kicks to start and end fights quickly. What the Amazon lacks in force is made up for in speed and agility.Mage - The Mage utilizes his staff to blast enemies from a safe distance to devastating effect, while protecting his vulnerabilities in toe-to-toe combat.Ranger - The Ranger is a quick and nimble character, able to get in and out of combat swiftly and effectively deal sustained damage to his opponents.Warrior - While the Warrior is the slowest of all the classes, he is blessed with having the most health points as well as dealing the most damage. Your goal is to reach the bottom of the 26 floor dungeon, to fight the guardian at the end. Throughout your travels in each room you’ll find yourself tasked with overcoming a wealth of enemies and traps sprinkled generously on every floor. A floor can take you anywhere from 6-10 minutes to clear depending on how much backtracking you want to, and backtrack you will in order to obtain ASCII symbols and enchanted ASCII symbols that will be used for weapon crafting and enchanting. ASCII also plays an important role in the overall look of the game. The characters and monsters are 3D models, but their appearance and the look of the game overall harkens back to the old school ASCII dungeon crawler roguelikes from the 80s. While everything has a black and white look to it, you’ll see vivid pops of color stemming from your elemental attacks and the blood gushing from your enemies as you tear them apart. The graphics may be my favorite and strongest, most unique aspect of this game and I applaud the studio for that. Combat plays out in a classic button mashing affair coupled with special abilities and elemental, negative status inducing potions you can craft and toss at your opposing forces. Playing the game overall gave me a very Gauntlet feel and I was pleased to take a nostalgic step back. Brewing potions with each new run takes on the standard old school hardcore roguelike formula, you don’t know what the pink potion does until you drink it, however, after you’ve identified it, it will remain identified for the duration of your current run. The effects of each potion swap and change with every playthrough, so the protective green potion won’t be protective the next playthrough. The difficulty is about average, you begin to pick up on some of the mechanics and nuances the more you play. This game is perfect for co-op and features a 4 player co-op mode out of the box. There’s a level editor and leaderboards included for that competitive nature in all of us. If you’re looking to scratch that action oriented dungeon arcade crawler of the past, this game does an excellent job in satisfying that need. Some areas of improvement or tweaks that could be added are:
-An audio adjustment slider, currently there is no option to adjust any aspect of master volume, sfx, or music. Hopefully this will be added at a later point.-Sometimes the hit detection of enemies can be a little off, or you may find yourself mashing the button and targeting an enemy or barrel you didn’t mean to attack.-The option for mouse movement. The mouse is used for interacting and attacking but a click to move/attack feature would make for a much smoother experience outside of the controller.Score: 8.7/10
Details:

Game: Brut@lDeveloper: Stormcloud GamesPublisher: Rising Star GamesGenre: Roguelike co-op dungeon crawlerESRB rating: T for TeenRelease date: 9th February

Digital platform release: PC Physical box release: PC (USA only)Digital price: $14.99, €14.99, £14.99Physical price: $19.99

Discussion: Conan Exiles

Sources: Gematsu, Gamespot, Attack of the Fanboy, Youtube, Reddit/r/gamernews, IGN,Kotaku, Polygon, PC Gamer, Wccftech
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