Matterfall, the latest arcadey action game from Housemarque, is surprisingly difficult. With death waiting around every corner thanks to bullet-spewing enemies and spiky pits, there's a lot that can get your freelancer vaporized. Luckily, through my hundreds of demises, I've learned a couple of tricks that might keep you from dying...so much.

Traversal
1. Always explore. Civilians are hidden away from the straight path through each level, and saving them unlocks precious weapons and augmentations for you to use.

2. You can use your matter ray to hit certain floating installments and matterwalls to form shields from enemy fire.

3. Certain turrets spew red laser beams. You cannot phase through these without taking damage. You’ll need to destroy them to get past them.

4. If you see glowing blue shards floating about, pick them up! They build your shock charge, which can be used for a devastating attack.

5. Teleporters are not checkpoints so don’t get cocky after you use one. Play it safe until you hit an actual checkpoint.

6. At certain sections, you'll access anti-gravity wells often occupied by enemies that spew bullets in a circular pattern. Spend a few minutes watching and memorizing the pattern before you proceed through the section.

7. Later levels have difficult thread-the-needle sections. Make sure that you're pushing in the right direction when it's time to phase. It's very easy to slightly tilt upward on the joystick and send your Freelancer careening in another direction, to her doom.

8. Most enemies and environment traps can be phased through but not all of them, and not all can be destroyed. Learn what these traps are and then memorize their timing so you can avoid them.

9. There are purple sacks littered around each level. These don't do anything but give you a higher score if you find them but they're worth going after if you want to climb the leaderboards.

10. If you die a lot during a particularly difficult platforming section, don't get disheartened. Try another route, either above or below what you were doing before. There are often multiple lateral routes through a single section that each have their own dangers and amount of foes.

Combat
11. Always try to have two sub weapons and one modifier in your augmentations slot. Your dash ability will save your metallic hide many times. Use it to stun enemies and phase through fire.

12. Shield-toting enemies seem intimidating at first but jump and zap over them to hit them from behind. Same goes for the bull-rush enemy type you come across later.

13. Always keep moving. Don’t be afraid to take damage (unless you’re going for a super high score) as health packs are generous.

14. When you defeat enemies, occasionally a cluster bomb will appear. Use your matter gun (L2) to make it detonate when enemies are close, which kills a lot of them and builds up your score.

15. If you get crowded by enemies in a tight space, try and dash out of there ASAP even if it means taking damage as having enemy fire coming at you from all directions in a small space usually means game over.

16. You don’t have to fight every enemy. Sometimes it’s best to zap through a section if you find yourself overwhelmed.

17. You might be tempted to save your shock charge, which slows down time and increases your firepower for a brief period of time, for when you get in a bind. Don’t. Use it as much as possible to build up combos and scores. You get enough charges during levels that you don’t need to conserve the energy.

18. The beam of your railgun will ricochet once and can strike enemies on the rebound, killing them.

19. Experiment with your secondary weapons as you get them. They can often make the difference between survival and defeat.

20. Enemies can’t phase or fire through matter walls even though you can. Use this to your advantage. If a bunch of foes are crowding you, phase behind one and blast them through the wall to clear them out.

For more Matterfall, be sure to check out our review.

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Housemarque has made its named developing fast-paced arcade shooters like Super Stardust, Resogun, and Nex Machina. These games delight in colorful explosions, velocity, and thumping soundtracks. The developer’s latest, Matterfall, has all those qualities, but also stands apart from the pack with its interesting combination of twin-stick shooting and platforming.

Matterfall’s story barely exists. You play an exosuit wearing, jump-jet using freelancer tasked with clearing a planet of a hostile alien presence and rescuing civilians. The straightforward levels have you moving from one end to the next, blasting enemies while dashing through checkpoints and jumping across moving platforms. You have a variety of abilities at your disposal, including an arm cannon, a dash attack that lets you phase through bullets and stun enemies, and augmentation slots that let you equip secondary weapons and mutators. The game controls well, giving you a lot of mobility when it comes to dodging enemies and threading the needle during platforming sections, though occasionally I noticed that my freelancer would shoot upward when I meant for them to dash right. This was rare enough that it wasn’t ever a huge issue.

The augmentation slots are Matterfall’s greatest strength. Rescuing civilians lets you access more augmentations, and you can have three of them going at any time. Some of them are weapons with a small cooldown, such as a shotgun or railgun, while others give you buffs, like increasing the chance of a powerful bomb you can use against enemies appearing or making your dash capable of dealing light damage to foes. The ability to swap augmentations out on the fly is useful; while a grenade launcher might not save you as swarms of enemies encircle you, a blast from your shotgun could eliminate enough of them to give you an opening to dash through and escape. Every kill you get and civilian you rescue contributes to a score tracker. The longer you stay undamaged, the more your combo multiplier builds. You don’t earn any unlockables with a higher score, but a strong sense of satisfaction comes from seeing your score climb as you deftly move throughout the world like some ballerina of death – if you’ve got the skill.

Matterfall is one of the hardest action games I’ve played this year. Later stages border on being cruelly unfair, but the arsenal of tools you have at your disposal gives you enough tactical options to survive. At its best, Matterfall is great at making you feel a surprising amount of tension as you fend off countless enemies surging toward you with speed and elegant maneuvers. You never have much time to strategize so every encounter is about your intuition and the rapidness of your physical response to plans you’re making on the spot. I often felt like I had gotten away with some great, exhilarating crime by just surviving an encounter. However, the flip side of this is that the game devolves into cheap death after cheap death in rough sections toward the end due to the demand that you master both platforming and stick shooting at the same time. I was more thrilled than annoyed by the challenge, but the difficulty spikes can prove tiresome in the last hour.

The campaign is on the short side, but enough secrets are scattered throughout every level that it’s worth replaying, especially if you’re someone who loves pursuing the top spot on online scoreboard. Even if you’re not into competition, it’s unlikely you’ll unlock all your augmentations on your first run, so it’s fun to dive back in and hunt down the rest of them and mix and match them with your subweapons.

Matterfall’s brand of action is simple but refined, producing many doses of adrenaline as you survive overwhelming odds again and again. The shooting is satisfying, and zipping across stages while blasting foes is a great, dumb time. For those who like their action simple but visually pleasing and challenging, Matterfall is an easy recommendation.

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Infinitum Nihil, a production company started by Pirates of the Carribean star Johnny Depp, has signed a deal to adapt the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG The Secret World for television, Deadline reports.

The Funcom MMO launched in 2012 and was notable for taking place in a modern setting. It was recently relaunched as Secret World Legends.

The number of video games adapted as TV series is fairly low compared to movies, so it remains to be seen how The Secret World will fair.

[Source: Deadline]

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Back in March, Blizzard killed the Battle.net name for its game launcher. The name was taken away in favor of the simpler but less identifiable Blizzard launcher, a program that launches Blizzard's games like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Overwatch. Well, now it's back to Battle.Net again.

Blizzard explained in a blog post today that they're going to bring the name back because branding is important. The subtext seems to be that no one was actually calling it Blizzard Launcher, including Bungie when they announced that Destiny 2 would use Battle.Net at the game's reveal.

Blizzard is trying to bridge both names together by renaming the launcher Blizzard Battle.Net with a relaunch in September, just in time for Destiny 2's launch.

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A new report from US Gamer suggests that PS4 Pro owners will have to wait for a "future update" to take full advantage of their system's graphical capabilities in Madden 18.

According to the report, US Gamer noticed the lack of 4K and HDR support in a review build of Madden 18, and reached out to the game's director, Rex Dickson, for clarification. Dickson told the outlet that the UHD support would be included in a "future update," but didn't say when that would be – i.e. in a day-one update or months down the road. EA has been touting the visual improvements that the Frostbite engine will bring to its sports franchises since the sweeping decision to change engines was revealed last year.

We've reached out to EA for clarity on when the PlayStation 4 Pro patch will be available, and will update the story if and when we receive a response.

Madden NFL 18 launches on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One next Friday, August 25. Find out what new features you can expect from the gameplay by clicking here.

[Source: US Gamer] 

Our Take
Sony and Microsoft have already had a tough time selling gamers on the need for mid-gen hardware upgrades, and hang-ups like this aren't helping. If game companies want 4K systems and televisions to be a priority for consumers, they have to treat them like a priority themselves. Hopefully the PS4 Pro update will be ready by launch or shortly thereafter. 

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Blizzard announced back in March that it was remastering its classic sci-fi RTS, and players can now enjoy the fruit of their labor.

StarCraft Remastered serves up the base game plus the Brood War expansion in widescreen, 4K resolution, along with updated music and sound effects, matchmaking, and leaderboards. The updated version also gives players the ability to rebind their keys and save their progress to the cloud. If you want to go old-school, you can turn off all the visual bells and whistles and play the original StarCraft with the click of a button.

StarCraft Remastered is available now for $15 on PC and Mac.

[Source: Battle.net] 

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