Nintendo and Hasbro have combined forces for a special event in Splatoon themed around the iconic Transformers franchise. The latest "Splatfest" in-game event will be focused on Autobots and Decepticons, letting players choose their robot allegiance. Man, this is going to be a tough choice, I love robots on both sides of the war!
"While the Splatfest is ongoing, in-game characters get to wear a special T-shirt that shows which Transformers team has their allegiance," Nintendo said. "The ink that each team shoots will also be customized to match the color scheme of the chosen side."
Splatfests last for 24 hours. During these events, players battle it out in an attempt to build up as many Turf War wins for their team as possible in the allotted time. The winning side will earn a purse of Super Sea Snails, which they can use to upgrade their in-game gear.
Splatfest begins Aug. 29 at midnight EST and runs for 24 hours.
Released at the end of May, Splatoon has now sold more than 1.6 million copies. This partnership with Hasbro is just the latest example of Nintendo continuing to support the game after launch. The company has regularly released new content for the game in the form of new maps, modes, characters, and more.
Please keep your eyes peeled for a video review by MNM very soon!
The latest Heroes of the Storm patch is now available, and it adds a number of new things including the Monk character from Diablo III, Kharazim. Khar is the first support-class character in HotS from the Diablo series. He's setup to do the healing for your team, but, you're free to pick some traits that allows for him to kick some tail!
Depending on your choice, every third basic attack will either heal a nearby teammate with the lowest health, deal twice as much damage, or restore some of his mana. His heroic abilities include one that makes him invulnerable and deals a large amount of damage, and another that protects a teammate from death for three seconds.
If you play Diablo III and log in to Heroes of the Storm anytime in the three weeks following the launch of the patch, you will get the Diablo character free in HotS. Also, a free mount is available if you reach level 70 with a season 4 character in the upcoming season of Diablo III.
And lastly, there's a portrait border and pennant in Diablo III that will now unlock for anyone who has reached level 12 in HotS.
Other changes in today's patch include alterations to ranked modes, the introduction of dynamic bundles (which discount their price if you own some of their contents), balance tweaks, and new AI difficulty settings.
You can check out the full patch notes on Blizzard's website.
And keep your eyes open for some other new characters in HotS including StarCraft's medic and Artanis, and Warcraft's Rexxar.
Today Disney announced an August 30 release date for the Star Wars-themed Infinity 3.0 starter pack!
The starter pack will be $64.99, which includes the “Twilight of the Republic Play Set” with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano figures. That is actually a pretty solid price for one of these interactive toy games. Usually they debut at around $75. I'm assuming this may be some sort of deal for Infinity players that may already have a portal from previous games.
PlayStation 4 owners can also opt for the Star Wars Saga bundle, which includes the chance to play the “Rise Against the Empire” playset earlier than most with Anakin, Ahsoka, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Boba Fett for $114 or so. This playset follows the storyarc of the original trilogy (something I'm way more interested in playing.
They've also announced several other things related to the game, other than the starter kit! Standalone figures available on launch day include the cast from Star Wars: Rebels, young Jedi Ezra Bridger, hipster Jedi Kanan Jarrus, Lasat warrior Garazeb Orrelios and Mandalorian grafitti artist Sabine Wren.
Disney originals will be represented by Mickey, Minnie, Mulan, Olaf, and the physical release of Sam Flynn and Quorra from Tr0n Probably Should Have Stayed Dead.
Also, Disney-Pixar’s Inside-Out will have some emotions entering into the fray! We will get a special playset pack featuring Joy and Anger, with Sadness, Disgust and Fear sold separately.
That is a ton of availability at launch! If you want to get the entire release, using the current pricing models, that would total about $300. Time to bring out the sales papers, coupons and maps and plan out your attack on the local Toys' R Us.
Where did you run off to? We've been here the whole time!
........................................
No we haven't...you caught me.
So, spring time gets a little hectic around our household. Lots of stuff going on! We want to get outside and play, yard maintenance becomes a weekly thing, soccer practice, softball practice, blah blah blah. All kinds of excuses for what I'm about to say.
I'm sorry we haven't posted anything up in the past month to month and a half. Like, literally NOTHING. No twitter activity, no blog posts, no video episodes. NOTHING!
My bad.
But guess what?
Soccer season is done. Softball season is almost done. Micah is out of school for the summer. And I'm starting to think about ways to streamline the process of getting new videos up! WOOOOO!
This weekend is Memorial day weekend. First off, just wanted to give a shout out to all the veterans in the armed forces. Without you, there would be no freedoms of our country. I love you.
Secondly, that means I have a couple extra days off of work. SOOOOooooOOOoooOOO, that means we may have some time to record a new episode! YEAH! Or maybe even some streamin' time on Twitch...I DUNNO...but something will happen over the weekend. Oh yeah...it will happen...I know what will definitely happen, I'm cleaning out my garage to start the transition to a mancave and I'm definitely planning on leaving room for a little MnM Gaming studio in the blueprints!
Hope you guys are excited - I'm excited, are you excited?!
We decided to come back at a pretty big time too...E3 is right around the corner.
What is E3 you may ask? Well, only the biggest Video Game Conference in the UNIVERSE! Well, that we know of on Earth anyway. We will be keeping up with all the goodies from that conference and tweeting it out as best that we can.
Join Mike "Burgandy," Micah "FanDana" and Noah "Bluetton" as they bring you some breaking news from the video game industry! The crew is joined by a very special guest who has a video game coming out later this summer and was very kind to take time out of his busy crime-fighting schedule.
Topics covered include: Amiibos, Batman: Arkham Knight, Final Fantasy, Fable Legends, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Free games with Games with Gold on Xbox for March.
I'm could be falling into my 2011 Skylander Dad hunting mode. This mode is scary. It involves driving to multiple locations (within reason), hunting for hard-to-find, sought after electronic action figures! NO, I will NOT succumb to this! I will fight the urge!
At least, that's what I'm trying to tell myself as I collect some more of these awesome Amiibos. I've done well, avoiding characters that I don't really care to own, trying to keep Micah's attention away from wanting all of them. (We bought just about all of the first series of Skylanders by the end of 2012...)
You will be mine, Marth...Oh yes.
So far, so good...but there are several figures out there that I really want and they are REALLY hard to find. Marth, Ike, Shulk, Sonic...just to name a few. Luckily, there are several that I could care less for...so I don't think I'll fall into the "MUST HAVE THEM ALL" frame of mind.
But I must have the few I listed above (as of right now...haha).
So, I made a couple stops this week, just to check in at a local Target and two different GameStops. I haven't looked for figures in a few weeks, mostly because of the discouraging news of Marth being so hard to find, so I was a bit surprised when I saw Target's large collection.
Most of them were duplicates of easy to find toys, like Luigi (I love Luigi, but hate his pose), Donkey Kong, Zelda, etc. But they did have one copy of both Sheik and Toon Link. YOINK. They are mine.
Then, my stop at the first GameStop. Solid selection, but a lot of duplicates, similar to Target. Only thing of interest here was Samus, who I'm on the fence on buying...I'd rather have some of the other figures...so let's check the second GameStop.
WOAH! This second GameStop had a very large selection, still had some duplicates of the common figures, but they had several that I hadn't seen before. Bowser (I think he will be more common soon), Diddy Kong and Megaman. MEGAMAN! YOINK. I got the last one of him as well. This GameStop had an incredibly solid collection of commons that I don't see often as well, very impressed.
So, our collection went from a wimpy four, to a solid seven, with the additions of Sheik, Toon Link and Megaman. I was pretty pleased with my finds, and more pleased with my discpline to not just buy the entire store's worth of Amiibos.
IGN put together a useful Rarity Guide for all of the Amiibos. This has helped me out a lot on trying to plan my next attack...I mean purchase. Notice the four figures I listed above that I want are all considered "Rare." Great. I actually love this part. LET THE HUNT BEGIN!
All that said, let's rate some stores and their availability of Amiibos!
GameStop: Definitely seems to be the best place, IMO. Large quantity, not many duplicates Target: Large quantity of Commons, but most are duplicates Wal-Mart: Very disappointed in their selection, only four different characters, a lot of duplicates. (That could change with the Gold Mario exclusive...which sold out pre-orders already, btw.) Toys R Us: I haven't frequented Toys R Us, but I do know that they did a great job with Skylanders when they were so hard to find...if anyone has tried there, let me know what you think.
The Fable franchise has been very successful in the gaming industry. The newest installment, Legends, unites the classic gameplay that players have come to love from the series with next-generation gaming capabilities. For the first time, players can grab your friends and go on adventures together. Heroes can cooperatively discover the quests and stories of Albion. Or, play the villain and mastermind the game in real time.
This sounds incredibly intriguing, especially for those veterans of Fable lore. But you know what the best part of all this is? The game will be available as a free-to-play title on the Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs, as confirmed by Microsoft.
Lionhead, the creators, has been inspired by the PC game League of Legends, with the heroes available rotated over time or able to purchase for permanent use with in-game currency or real cash.
Four heroes will initially be available for free. After a couple of weeks, all four will become unavailable and be replaced by a new quartet. This will continue, eventually looping round and starting again. In-game silver, earned through quests, can be used to add a hero to your stable permanently or you can use real money. Thankfully your hero and equipment progress won't be reset each time they get taken off rotation, so you can start where you left off each time your favorite character returns.
The 4-on-1 will make for interesting multiplayer.
So that's the heroes, but what about the villains? On that front, Microsoft reveals those of a more dastardly inclination will have their own story to play through, during which you'll be able to buy additional creatures to use in maps that wouldn't normally support them. Additionally traps and gates will also be up for grabs, along with magical standing stones.
This, sounds amazing! I don't even care if I have only played Fable 2...this has my attention, as do most free-to-play modeled games do. Albion, here I come!
Some Fable games have been rated M in the past, while some were T. The style of this game may determine what it's final esrb rating will be...I'd probably recommend this game to 15+ for now, just to be safe, until more news comes out about the game.
