My friends, guild members, and even complete strangers, ask me all the time what headset they should buy. Nothing is more important than a comfortable headset — nothing! I’ve decided to write a quick blog post so that I will always have something to link back to with pictures, descriptions, my personal thoughts, and where to buy the headsets I recommend.
I have tried the $20 cheap ones that fall apart when you sneeze, and I’ve tried the $39 flavors from places like Best Buy. They’re uncomfortable, have poor sound quality, and people think you’re talking into a wind tunnel or tin can.
I finally found Sennheiser headsets after browsing the internet, and I’ve been a loyal customer for the past seven years. I bought my first pair when World of Warcraft launched. This was a time when I wasn’t in school and wasn’t working, so I needed a headset that I could wear for an unfathomable amount of time.
Why Sennheiser?
Comfort! It feels like I’m wearing clouds on my ears. I can wear them for 15+ hours (Don’t ask) and forget they are even on my head.
Audio Quality – For the price, it doesn’t get better. I’m not an audiophile, but I really do not even notice the difference between using these and using a soundcard.
Microphone Quality – I come through clear, people can hear me, and the noise cancellation is more than sufficient (albeit some sounds will get through on all the headsets I have tried.)
Production Quality – They’re sturdy, resilient, and made to last. Mine have taken a beating… I used to not take wiping in raids very well, okay?
Price – The two choices I recommend below are very affordable and are practically a steal for what you get.
Which Sennheiser Headsets do I recommend? Read on to find out. (more…)
We just finished a 2 hour session of Dungeon Defenders! It was the first time playing for all of us and we had a blast with the game. Dungeon Defenders came out today and you can get it on the Xbox 360 or on Steam.
Positives:
Gameplay is smooth. graphics are sexy
In-game shop (in-game currency)
Upgrading items (visit the forge, click the item on your character sheet, allocate a full meter of mana and it will upgrade the item by a level)
Persistent loot/persistent characters
Level design is really great
Each character feels different in how it defends. Some compliment each other very well.
Addicting
Only one immediate negative:
Right now there are tech difficulties with the PC version. Frequent disconnects from the server (which you’ll see in the video).
Dungeon Defenders is awesome. You get to choose a character and progress with it. Players choose which stats to upgrade and can choose to focus on their hero, their traps/turrets, or both. Both heroes and traps are crucial to the success of the level.
The gameplay centers around obtaining mana. Mana drops from creatures when they die and from chests. Mana is used as currency for buying items in the shop, placing turrets, and using abilities. At the end of each round, any excess mana beyond your carry cap is “banked” for your use later in the shop/forge.
Items are also a big focus in Dungeon Defenders. Monsters and chests can drop loot. Weapons and armor follow a similar formula to Diablo and Torchlight in that they can be the same item but have random stats. This makes me feel anxious whenever an item drops — could it be something awesome or just another dud?!
Perhaps most important of all, the game caters to groups of up to 4 players but can be enjoyed solo. Get some friends together and watch two hours disappear. We just did.
You can watch about an hour of us playing by clicking ‘Read More’. I highly recommend 53:35 since it is the final wave where we get rocked. (more…)
I woke up this morning super excited and headed over to Toys R Us. I was mentally preparing myself for lines wrapped around the building and was ready to knock…
The world is open, quite pretty, and full of zombies.
Having played Dead Island for 5 hours, completing dozens of side-quests and only 8% of the main story, I feel I am more than qualified to fill you guys in on the game.  Dead Island is all about an event that has happened on this island which caused people to turn into zombies. Somehow you are unaffected by this blight and have been tasked with helping the locals, those who have not been infected, survive.
The gameplay reminds me of Grand Theft Auto meets Dead Rising. There’s a main story line that you can push through right away but littering your path just about everywhere you go are side quests. The world is open for you to explore and hunt or avoid zombies. In addition to side quests there are side people in distress that you have the option to save and work benches to create weapons. Think Dead Rising — you have nails and a bat which makes a spikey nail bat or a saw blade, some tape, batteries, wires, and a rake and you have a chain saw polearm.
The core of Dead Island gameplay is smashing zombie faces (Warning: It’s graphic). You get a decent variety of weapons, although so far it’s all melee. You can kick, jump kick, and sprint. You can even drive vehicles (which is a TON of fun to do with friends). What sets Dead Island apart are its RPG elements. You choose a character that specializes in a type of weapon at the beginning of the game but you get to specialize points that you earn each level into three different trees. These trees are all very different from the other characters. My brother, friend, each chose a different character and all of our trees are unique — that’s a lot of individuality!
A few technical issues found their way into the PC launch. I don’t know if it’s the game or Steam, but joining friends takes a bit of luck an patience. We figured out a trick to get it working almost 100%: Have someone start the game and invite all the players who need to be waiting at the main menu. Have the players not accept the invite but instead right click the portrait of the person inviting (in the Steam chat window) and click “Join game” on the person’s name.   Other issues include:
Sound issues. Graev gets a lot of static/popping with his speakers but his headset works fine.
Mouse sensitivity is way off for me. There’s a huge disparity between in-game and menu.
Apparently the “wrong version” was released on Steam.
Minor polish issues best characterized within the “feel” of the game.
Exploring the beautiful world completing quests, mowing down zombies with blunt objects, customizing a character, driving trucks, and having the ability to do it all quite seamlessly in multiplayer coop makes this easily a contender for the best zombie game I’ve played. Depending on how the rest of the game plays out, it may surpass Dead Rising. It’s fun — fun enough to play 4 hours straight. Based on my initial feelings of the game, I feel comfortable recommending Dead Island.
UPDATE: I would like to amend my recommendation. I do not recommend the PC version until all issues are resolved. Buy the console version. The game us fun but the PC’s multiplayer has been down for two days which is unacceptable.
Warhammer 40k: Kill Team (released Wednesday) is a third-person arcade twin-stick shooter game for the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. It’s also the first game that we played through a scheduled live event on our streaming channel with the intent to review. There’s a bit of drama coinciding with the launch of this game. Unfortunately, THQ closed down the devs that worked on the game the exact day it launched. Not exactly the best way to launch a game, let alone the fact that THQ did practically zero marketing. Is Kill Team worth the $10 to get you through the summer drought?
The game is fairly straight forward. You can play one of four classes in the campaign: Tech Marine, Vanguard Veteran, Librarian, and Sternguard Veteran. Each class is either a ranged or melee focus with one special ability such as a turret to place down or a nasty aoe. There’s limited customization via a weapon upgrade that comes easily and some choice of upgrades to damage or health. Kill Team is definitely about the killing and less about the progression or unlocks.
Gameplay is fun. The levels have tons of Orks and Tyranids to slaughter. Boss fights range from ‘run away from the danger’ to ‘wait until it’s vulnerable to kite and attack’.  We have no complaints on the boss fights at all. However, they were not the challenging part of the game. Occasionally the players are presented with quick ‘run now or die’ scenarios that come at you without warning. After being sent back to your last checkpoint, you’ll know it’s coming the next time. There’s never a dull moment or a wait for any kind of action. The weapons are fun, the score keeps you competitive, and the sight of carnage is addicting.
There are only a handful of missions to play through and each takes about 25-30 minutes. This is, without a doubt, the biggest downside to the game. In all, the game comes in around 2 hours 30 minutes of campaign play with Surival mode adding a couple more hours tops. In Survival mode you have to survive the waves of enemies for as long as you can in a fairly cramped area. Around the five minute mark it, in our experience, it became a real challenge.
We only encountered a few bugs during our play-through. Occasionally you can miss a trigger and advance ahead only to realize something isn’t right. Backtracking until the event continues should fix it for you without any problems and you can continue on. When it happens during a major chase scene, it’s definitely a little confusing.  Sometimes the camera gets a little wonky during the random bullet time events and the models spaz out and look elastic.
Kill Team is short but sweet. We had a blast while playing and when we realized it was over we felt disappointed. As a precursor to the upcoming Space Marine game, and as an XBLA/PSN title it’s not like we expected a full blown game, but for the $10 it’s just a little hard to swallow. There’s also no online coop (couch only). We both agree that maybe $5 would have been a better deal.
Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team earns a 3.5 on our review scale. Good game, but we want more. We highly recommend you find a way to play this couch-coop to get the most out the game. Watch our full play-through after the jump. (more…)
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