Category: Editorials

Ghost Recon Breakpoint: 5 More Tips For Terminator Event


Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is in the middle of an invasion by Skynet, and that means killing plenty of Terminators.

Right now we’re in day three of the Terminator event and mission #2 should be releasing on February 1. With that in mind I’ve decided to delve a little deeper and talk about more tips for killing those metal rust buckets making life on Auroa just a little rougher.

#1: You Can Kite Terminators Across The Island

Have a lot of time and patience? You can kite Terminators pretty much anywhere. Kiting refers to pulling enemies away from where they would normally be hanging out.

In tip #3 for the last article I mentioned that Terminators can and will mow down an enemy base in order to get to you, and that Skell soldiers will in turn open fire on a Terminator once it is activated in their vicinity. You will know this is happening because the “faction warfare” indicator will pop up on your radar.

What you might not know is that with enough time and effort you can pull that Terminator along like a pull-string duck taking them from base to base and using it as your own personal walking turret, granted one that will prioritize your death over everything else. Awesome. Just remember that the Terminator is not in any way subtle so bringing it as your +1 to a base party is almost guaranteed to get reinforcements called in. You probably also lose out on some exp gain in the process.

If you are looking to cheese the game some people have reported success in pulling the Terminator into being submerged in water which apparently is an instant kill. This isn’t a guarantee.

#2: “I Can’t Start The Mission!”

There have been bug reports from people who are unable to start the event period. Ghost Recon doesn’t allow them to obtain the mission kicking off the whole Terminator event as it just isn’t available from Maria Schulz. The most reliable fix for this seems to be joining co-op with someone who has the mission available. You want to look for “The Coming Storm,” a green faction mission in Erewhon. Taking the mission in co-op will keep it available in single player so you are free to go back into solo mode and the rest of the missions should come up fine.

An alternate answer appears to be creating a second character. Unfortunately neither of these two options is a 100% guaranteed fix. Ubisoft is evidently aware of the problem and hopefully can provide a suitable fix before the event is done and people lose out completely.

#3: Terminator Damage Is In Two Stages

This one should be self evident given the big glowing red light that pops up once you bring a Terminator’s health down, but it’s worth noting given the confusion I’ve seen on the forums and Reddit.

Each Terminator has two stages of damage that operate differently and may be confusing. The first stage you’ll find a Terminator in is the blue bar of health that gets whittled down by many of the weapons in your armament (see below). Once you knock down the blue health bar, the Terminator will go into mode #2 where you see the big glowing red light on its chest. This is the part where you’ll absolutely need to use the Mk14 sniper to overload its circuits.

Despite what conventional wisdom will tell you, this red bar is a count up, not a countdown. So you’ll fill the bar instead of depleting it in order to overload the Terminator. A small distinction but one that might result in your fights making a little more sense and give a better idea of how close your are to killing the Terminator. You’ll know you are damaging the core because of the distinct sound that each hit makes.

#4: Mk14 Needed To Kill, Not To Damage

Conventional weapons cannot kill a Terminator, however this does not mean you are stuck using the Mk14 for the whole fight. In fact you’re likely to find just about any other weapon in your loadout is more effective at whittling down a Terminator than a slow shooting sniper rifle. Youtuber Mannocrity found that the best way to take down a Terminator is with the Stoner light machine gun kitted to effectively make it a laser.

Your mileage may vary and you might find a weapon better suited for your play style in taking down Terminators. Where the Mk14 comes in however is the stage of overloading the Terminator’s circuits. You absolutely need the Mk14 for this stage. Otherwise Terminators are classified as drones in Breakpoint’s system so if you have a weapon that is better built for taking down drones, use it. It will most likely serve you better for that first stage.

#5: Maria Schulz Has More Cosmetics

There are 21 levels of rewards for the Terminator event battle pass, however if you have some Skell credits to spend you can head over to Maria Schulz’s shop in Erewhon and buy some extra goodies for your character. Personally I like the torn arm sleeves and damaged face (see photo above). The items aren’t too expensive and it’s pretty obvious which ones are from the Terminator franchise.

Notice anything we missed? Leave a comment below.

Kritika Reboot Names And Shames Latest Ban Wave


Kritika Reboot has a problem with gold farmers and cheaters. Who doesn’t?

Every so often the folks at ALLM Co. publish a list of banned accounts presumably as a form of public hanging and potentially to convince potential cheaters/gold buyers to not do those things. This week marked the temporary suspension of 77 accounts with 161 accounts being permanently suspended for the use of unauthorized programs. ALLM took the time to remind users of its continuing pledge to remove cheaters from the game.

Stop cheatin’.

Source: Steam

Can’t Get On Steam? It’s Not Just You;


Having trouble getting on Steam today? You’re not alone as the service appears to be undergoing a major service outage.

As of 12:30 p.m. on January 30, Valve’s servers are down pretty much universally and globally preventing players from accessing the store or any of its functions, downloading games, and affecting inventories and game coordinators for Valve’s titles. Looking at the charts on Steamstat.us, Valve’s services were suffering from recurring minor issues for several hours before the whole service just tanked.

There has been no public acknowledgement from Valve on the outage which isn’t completely out of the ordinary.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint: 5 Tips For The Terminator Event


Today marks the launch of the Terminator event in Ghost Recon Breakpoint and MMO Fallout is here with some tips to know before you go in.

For those looking to join in on the crossover, the Terminator event starts on January 29 and runs until February 6. You will immediately receive a notice upon login that a mission is available in Erewhon, your secret hideout. The story mission will send you out to track down the whereabouts of a mysterious person who showed up and managed to kill several drones all on her own. Spoiler: She’s from the future. How does the island in Breakpoint factor into the Terminator universe? You’ll have to play to find out.

Here are five tips on the Breakpoint Terminator event.

#1: You Don’t Need To Be Far To Take Part

The plus side is that you don’t need to be far into Breakpoint’s story in order to take part in the Terminator event. It looks like as long as you have completed the few missions you need to access Erewhon, you’ll be fine. If you bought Breakpoint just to take part in the Terminator event, you’ll need to finish roughly 30 minutes of story mode before you get to Erewhon.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint features a gear score system that shouldn’t have any effect on your enjoyment of the game. We played on a pretty low level character that hadn’t gotten too far in the main story and had no problem taking down Terminators and the standard human opponents that tend to congregate around them. At least on the first day the side missions tend to appear in lower level areas. The only thing getting further into the game will help with is making enemies easier to dispatch and having access to more fast travel locations.

#2: The Battle Pass Looks Ridiculously Fast

If the idea of a battle pass being thrown into this event has you worried, you’re in good hands. For the Terminator event the battle pass has 21 levels each of which offers some kind of customization from the movie such as the punk outfits, Sarah Connor’s glasses, and the Terminator’s motorcycle. There are also blueprints for an Uzi and an AR-18.

After completing the first main mission and day one’s three daily missions (which took about an hour total), our battle pass was already at level 10. End of day one and already halfway done. At this rated it should take three, maybe four days total to get our hands on all of the event items.

#3: Let The Terminator Do Your Work

Small spoiler; the Terminators are not working with the Skell, but they are infiltrating their bases. Once you shoot a Terminator or activate its defenses it does become an enemy to the Skell forces that are around and they will shoot at it.

Marking enemy soldiers with your drone will tell you who the Terminator soldier is, and more often than not it’s not just one. Activate the bot and watch it whittle down the base’s defenses as they fruitlessly try to destroy it. You can even string the Terminators along like pets letting them follow you around the base and pick off any Skell that try to shoot at them. Once you are free of distractions, take the Terminators down.

#4: Don’t Expect Any Stealth

Your Terminator fights are going to be loud and they are going to attract other enemy soldiers over the course of the fight. Outside of the fact that your fight with the Terminator is going to be drawn out and very loud (the Terminators dual wield shotgun/rifle), the Mk14 you are carrying will not stand for being silenced, aka you can’t put a silencer on it.

Given that your battles with the Terminator are going to involve a lot of running and gunning, you’ll need to keep an eye on your compass and deal with the numerous soldiers that are going to be alerted to your position and all the backup that is going to be called. Thankfully if your mark is in a good spot you can always find a vantage point and just let the Terminator deal with the backup. They are very efficient at sweeping things up.

This also means you’re going to want to store that sniper rifle between missions unless you really want to make an entrance.

#5: This Isn’t A World-Over Event

You might be thinking “oh great, now I’ll have to deal with ridiculous bullet sponges ruining my experience for the next week.” Incorrect.

Another plus side to the event is that it is very much contained within a few small areas. Each day is going to bring in new daily missions which revolve around a base or encampment. Outside of these daily missions, you won’t run into an army of T800s running around the island. The event is supposed to be smaller, so there are a handful of Terminators that are on the island, not a thousand.

So at the very least you know exactly where the Terminators are going to show up.

Police 10-13 Matt Norman Departs Due To Illness


Wingman Games President Matt Norman has announced his departure from the company and the gaming industry following the return of a brain tumor. Norman posted an official announcement to the official Facebook group stating that he will be leaving the game to a team of developers.

On the 12th of December 2019, I was given the news that a new Brain Tumour was found during an MRI. Obviously, most of you know that I had a brain tumor removed in 2018 that took a lot more time than expected to recover from. This Tumour is new. In a new place and a lot more serious. For the past 5 years, I have devoted my life to Police 1013 through a lot of hard times with my family. Unfortunately, this latest news has left me physically and mentally drained to a point that I can’t continue. This is the hardest thing I’ve had to do, letting go of my baby with all the hard work I’ve done over the years. It’s now become more important that I step back from any further responsibilities in the game and hand everything to the 5 developers that have been on the project since August. I am also stepping away from the games industry completely to concentrate on new endeavors to help support my family, which in all honesty I have not done due to my commitment to the game.

The new team posted that all social media regarding Police 10-13 will be shut down for the time being until they are reopened and managed by a PR company.

MMO Fallout wishes to extend our deepest sympathies to Matt in these difficult times.

Source: Facebook

Steam Cleaned: Valve Gives More Shady Devs The Boot


About a week ago I published an editorial talking about the existence of games on Steam that cost a lot of money and don’t exactly justify their price. Titles that look like mobile ports or Unity shovelware that nobody seems to play and not only are being sold for money but a lot of money at that. My hunch at the time was that some of these games may be falling into a less than legal realm, being used as a form of money laundering which certainly wouldn’t be surprising or the first time such a title has shown up on Steam. This isn’t an accusation, just a speculation.

Well it appears I’m not the only one looking into these games as Valve has seen fit to give several of them the boot this week. Let’s dive in.

#1: Lab3D

Lab3D was developed and published by Tantal back in August 2019 and you may need Lasik surgery if you take a look at this screenshot and don’t immediately say “paying $200 is basically robbing the developer, make it $400.” Two hundred smackers, and the developer sounds completely legitimate when responding to a question about the price with:

“No, not trolling. Consider this a kind of experiment, only shhhh. And I can change the base price at any time.”

Lab3D had one review and 51 followers. Was it a money laundering scheme? A troll game? Only the developer knows.

#2: Fantasy Smith VR

Fantasy Smith VR was a $90 product by developer Okamoto 3 Nori, and in addition to the $90 base price it also featured several pieces of DLC all priced out at $40 a pop. Fantasy Smith VR is a little odd because it started out as a $12.99 product before the price suddenly and without explanation hiked up to $89.99 where it sat until Valve banned the game this week. Out of everything on this list, Fantasy Smith VR actually seems like a real game. If you head over to the community hub you’ll find people talking about it playing it and not being happy that the developer hasn’t spoken to anyone.

One of these things is not like the other.

#3: Hunting In Ancient Asia

Hunting in Ancient Asia is another $200 game, this time by Thoth Technology Ltd. everyone’s favorite game developer. Hunting In Ancient Asia had nobody playing it, roughly four instances of one person logged in since it launched in September despite 125 followers. Thoth Technology’s ban could be linked to some questionable reviews that may or may not have been at the behest of the developer. We will never know.

Unlike the other developers on this list, Thoth Technology Ltd. actually had other games on Steam and at more of a reasonable price. In an effort to become the Digital Homicide of virtual reality, Thoth not so much released as it did spam Steam with a bunch of shoddy looking VR titles over the span of the last eleven months, one of which was being sold for $100. I have to assume that the titles sound more elegant in their original Simplified Chinese and were at some level created with education or therapy based clients in mind.

Check em out.

#4: The Ones That Remain

There is a laundry list of games that in my frank opinion warrant Valve’s second look despite the fact that if any of these titles are involved in less than legal operations those activities are probably long over and done with and the cash paid out. These are games that cost $200 (or $100), have zero customers or close to it as far as I can tell, and have no public activity by the developer.

  1. Crisis Action VR; Pixel Wonder
  2. Strike Mole/Physical Ball; Lize
  3. Mouse Run; ATM Game
  4. NUMBER; rongyao0577
  5. LLK; Chenyun0577
  6. Hiscores Gold; Alexander in Uganda
  7. Lgnorant girl doll; wandwand
  8. Adventure Trip; Sunsmaybe Games
  9. Luna and Cynthia; wandwand
  10. Shoot Pump Shoot; Aurora Borealis
  11. Blast Em!; Xiotex Studios Ltd

Steam Cleaned: Undead Vs. Plants Is Terrifying


Undead Vs. Plants might be the most horrifying game I’ve seen on Steam, and as of this week you can’t buy it anymore as the developer has pulled it from sale. On a functional level it’s a ricochet game and might provide for a challenging puzzle game. On the other hand the characters in this game look like the last things I will see when I die and am dragged to hell by the demons of my past.

You play as zombie Arnold using your bullet ricochet powers to kill plants. The plants in the game are just the right combination of detail and awful to fall into the category where their very visage is discomforting. Haunting my dreams for eternity.

The developer Peaksel D.O.O. Nis has a math game still on Steam titled Zeus vs Monsters which is a math game for children and features art that while not great won’t give those children a nightmare just for wanting to learn addition and subtraction. Peaksel has a lot of creepy games on its website, including one about a pregnant talking cat named Emma. If you really want to play Undead vs. Plants you can do so on Android or Google Play. The game is still free there.

Torchlight Frontiers Changes Name: Is Now Torchlight 3


Max Schaefer has announced via Youtube today that Torchlight Frontiers will now be called Torchlight 3. Is that all? Nope.

Torchlight 3 will be ditching the free to play model and will no longer be an MMO. The good news is that the game will be available offline. Even better for you Steam enthusiasts, the game will be shifting its publishing platform from Arc to Steam with current testers to receive a key for further testing.

“Along with this name change comes a major shift in our design approach to Torchlight III. Torchlight III will be released as a premium title. For one box-price, you will own the game and be able to play the way that you want, online or off. Over the past year, we have gathered massive amounts of feedback from our Alpha testers. After reviewing this feedback, discussing with our internal teams, and receiving guidance from our publisher, we determined that this was the best course for the game. This shift helps bring Torchlight back to its roots and makes it the true sequel to Torchlight I & II that it was always meant to be.”

And among the larger updates, horizontal progression is being removed completely; all Frontier-specific levels, gear stats, and scaling has been removed as well. The real money cash shop is gone and players can choose online or offline characters at the creation stage.

Source: Torchlight

Temtem Early Access Impressions: Several Hours On A Broken Game


Temtem is in early access and unless you have a lot of patience for a busted game in alpha, I highly advise not spending the $35 (or your equivalent) at this stage. I also recommend not going into the toxic cesspit also known as the Temtem Discord server. It’s a hive of scum and villainy.

So Temtem has been in early access for roughly a week during which it has spent a fair bit of that time completely unplayable for many buyers. It’s understandable, the game is in early access and in the alpha stage. Unlike some people, the developers are very clear about this. Temtem also has a lot of people wanting to play it, unlike a certain shovelware shooter game, but I digress.

Let’s talk about my five hours in Temtem.

Temtem is Pokemon. You are a child starting out the game in your small town (which is laid out a lot like Pallet Town) leaving home to go out on an adventure, and you go meet a Professor of Pokemon Temtem studies who has you choose one of three Pokemon Temtem in his lab to start your journey of becoming a Pokemon Temtem master. You’ll meet your rival Max and journey through a winding series of tall grass encounters, and there are gyms dojos and Pokemon Centers Temporiams and items that teach moves, and a Team Rocket-style villainous gang.

I picked Houchic for my first Temtem since I have always wanted a psychic monster as my starter. I’m going to make a lot of Pokemon references in my coverage because while Pokemon didn’t create the genre, it’s very obvious that many of Temtem’s systems are taken directly from Pokemon. Not copying a whole lot from DigiMon. Now personally I have played the first two generations of Pokemon games and know literally nothing from any further game in the series, so all of my references are going to be from the red&blue/gold&silver era. Thank you.

Sin #1: The Forced Loss

I hate when RPGs make me lose to prove a point that could have been proven a million other ways. Alright, not a million. Half a million. When you have a pre-scripted loss in a game that’s all about strategy, it makes the player doubt how much they are really in control of the game. Temtem has your rival Max beat you down in your first fight just so the game can send the message that some Temtem are just unfairly better than others. It feels out of character for a game that otherwise starts out essentially with a Dora The Explorer “come on let’s get to it, I know that we can do it” vibe of positivity and confidence.

Considering anyone who plays Temtem is doing so because they are/were a fan of Pokemon, it’s safe to say that a majority of the population playing this game is aware of the weakness mechanic. It also strikes me as lazy because your rival Max always chooses Oree which is a digital type and has an inherent advantage over two of the three starters. It is also the only digital type Temtem at this point, making it seem like the whole class was created just so the developer didn’t have to work Max around potentially having three separate Temtem.

Sin #2: The Broken Evolution

The evolution mechanic is terrible and bound to be confusing for the average person who doesn’t ask in Discord/read the wiki since there is no chat right now. The evolution system in Pokemon has your Pokemon evolve at specific levels. Bulbasaur will always become a Venusaur at 16. In Temtem however, the evolution of a monster is based on the level that you caught them at and it is functionally broken. For example, Ganki’s evolution is 27+. If you catch a Ganki at level 1, it will evolve at level 28. If you catch a Ganki at level 10, it will evolve at level 38. If you catch a Ganki at level 22 then you can make like Willie Wonka and go fudge yourself since the soft cap for Temtem right now is 48, meaning that Ganki is not going to evolve period.

The evolution issue effectively punishes players for catching high level Temtem, as the higher level you catch a Temtem at the exponentially more grinding you’re going to have to do before that Temtem can evolve. In Pokemon you were rewarded for catching higher level Pokemon by requiring less time to level them before they could evolve. Temtem does the opposite and punishes you for it.

The goal is to push people into Temtem’s convoluted and stupidly expensive breeding system.

Sin #3: Boy This Game Is A Slog

Temtem is an MMO, so you do find a small number of simple side quests tossed into the mix. The main game? I started feeling my enthusiasm wane long before I got to the first gym, and I haven’t even gained access to the first gym.

Temtem pads its zones like a teenager’s bra, and it makes the process of entering a new area dreadful. I had to go look at the old Pokemon guides to make sure I wasn’t misremembering, but if you look at the zones in Red/Blue you’ll find that they tend to contain roughly 5-10 trainers, often on the lower end, with the added caveat that some of those trainers can be skipped and a lot of them have one or two Pokemon total. Temtem meanwhile has so. many. trainers that each zone takes a ridiculous amount of time to travel through, and very few of those trainers can be skipped.

I also had an issue with the first “gym” in Temtem. In Pokemon you come across the first gym battle pretty early on. Brock’s two Pokemon are level 12 and 14 if my memory serves me correctly, and you fight him roughly an hour into the game depending on how fast you are. To get to Brock you go through Route 1, Veridian City, Veridian Forest, and Route 2, with the option of hitting your rival in Route 22. In Red/Blue you’ll fight six trainers including the one in Brock’s gym. Temtem meanwhile has you travel through Prasine Coast (9 unskippable trainers, 3 skippable) to Briçal de Mar (town, no fights), through Thalassian Cliffs (13 unskippable trainers, 3 skippable) to Arissola, the town where Sophia’s dojo is. Sophia isn’t in town, so you need to find her by going to Gifted Bridges (12 unskippable trainers, 2 skippable) to the Windward Fort, a six floor building (15 unskippable trainers, 4 skippable), before you FINALLY unlock Sophia’s dojo (6 trainers).

So to wrap things up: Pokemon puts you up against six trainers before you fight Brock who has two Pokemon upwards of level 14. Just to get to Sophia, you need to fight a minimum of 55 trainers (64 if you fight everyone) to get to the first dojo master who has six Temtem up to level 22. Jesus Christ.

And yes, I’m aware that Temtem isn’t Pokemon. But having the literal first dojo be such an tremendous slog to reach has resulted in my experiencing burnout which should not happen this early in such a game’s story. It’s shoddy pacing and it doesn’t make me enthusiastic about reaching further dojos if this is the experience that I can expect to have going forward, by which I mean stopping every ten feet for trainer battles. I’m more inclined to give MMOs a break when it comes to increased grind, but Temtem isn’t really an MMO in the functional sense. You’re just sharing space with other people.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter. Actually I have a lot of opinions on the matter.

Not Massive: Fullscreen Inc. (Rooster Teeth Owner) Goes Ham On False Copyright Claims


Fullscreen Inc. owns The Witcher 3 and nothing you say can convince me otherwise. What? You say CD Projekt Red owns The Witcher 3? That’s impossible!

Obviously I’m being facetious. Fullscreen Inc., no stranger to allegations of copyright abuse, is once again digging itself into a PR hole yet again this weekend after Youtubers began receiving copyright strikes over gameplay videos from titles that Fullscreen definitely does not own. Adding insult to injury, the copyright claims don’t so much list proof of ownership or violation as they do a number.

This story was covered by Reclaimthenet, and it looks like Fullscreen Inc.’s copyright bot is targeting videos of The Witcher 3 and Doki Doki Literature Club. A quick look through Twitter returns a fair number of accounts posting their grievances with the company. This isn’t the first time Fullscreen Inc. has gotten in hot water over illegal copyright claims, as last July users reported having their ad revenue claimed over Doom gameplay footage.

Will Youtube fix its broken copyright system? Probably not. MMO Fallout has reached out to Fullscreen Inc. for comment and will update if we receive a response.

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Team Salvato, developer of Doki Doki Literature Club, has requested via Twitter that anyone who receives a copyright strike reach out to them.

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