Cardhunter, Dragons Crown, Rise of the Triad

Cardhunter Beta

I've been in the beta for awhile and I've put in about 3 hours and I've had a great time.  It is a CCG, but it's focus is more on the single player campaign than multiplayer.  The card game uses a grid board where you place your characters and battles feel similar to the combat in Heroes of Might and Magic.

I have some beta keys if anyone is interested.
    LWHF-NTCC-ZPHK
    DQSC-WNHN-MJZL

Dragon's Crown (PS3)

Put in roughly two and a half hours last night and would have played more but I was exhausted.  The game was developed by Vanillaware who are known for their beautiful 2D hand animated games and this one is no exception.  It plays like Castle Crashers where you have up to 3 AI players fighting enemies with you.  There are different character classes with different weapons and abilities plus loot drops so there are some RPG elements. The artwork is extremely detailed, the animations are very fluid, and the backgrounds look amazing, it's one of the best looking 2D games I've played. The combat can get hectic when there are 4 characters plus enemies on the screen so it can be tough to find your character sometimes.  You can choose to just play by yourself and not have any AI companions if that does bother you.  Once you play to a certain point in the game multiplayer opens up which has you going though similar dungeons from the single player but added pathways and extra enemies as well as bosses.  From most of the reviews I've read the multiplayer is the best part of the game.  I haven't reached that level yet, which I think is around 8-10 hours, so hopefully I'll get to try it soon.  The game does support couch co-op so if you are looking for that type of game.  There is also a Vita version that I almost got instead but I felt the graphics would look better on a bigger screen, the game does support cloud saves so you can share saves between platforms.

Rise of the Triad (Steam)

I remember playing this game years and years ago, it was different than the dooms and quakes as it had platforms that would send you soaring into the air and rocket launchers that would reduce enemies to a thousand pieces, I think it coined the phrase ludicrous Gibs.  I'm not sure it reached the sales of Doom so I was surprised to see a remake.  This game is probably the fastest FPS that I've every played. The camera movement speed is insane on the default level, I had to turn it almost all the way down to be able to hit what I was aiming at.  The graphics looks pretty good but I've had instances of slowdown.  They did include all the elements of the original even the coins that you collect make the same sound and of course there are ludicrous Gibs.  I'm not sure that even at the $15 price point that it's worth it. The AI is very simple and the game has checkpoint saving so you will be replaying some long sections.


Stuff
Xbox One - Will include a headset.  Game recording and sharing does require Gold membership.  They did increase the clock speed of the graphics chip.  There is a video of the launch version unboxing so the release should be soon.
PS4 - Game recording and sharing does not require PSN+.
John Carmack founder of ID and creator of Doom and Quake is new CTO for company creating the Occulus rift headset.
Rockstar did have an add for a PC programmer so maybe more of their games will come to PC, I'm hoping for Read Dead Redemption.