Grimoire: Manastorm is a fun spellcasting Unreal Tournament

So I was looking around on the free to play game section on Steam and I found this game called Grimoire: Manastorm. This is an fps (first person shooter) game made by Omniconnection where you play as wizards and cast spells to kill your enemies. Pretty great idea already. Replace guns with a bunch of spellcasters and you have a super fun experience. The game is in early access on Steam.

From my initial experience and only having played the game for maybe twenty minutes I can say this is one of the most fun free to plays I've tried out on Steam. I haven't had this much fun on a free to play on Steam since Nosgoth was out.

The game's free version only comes with the fire and earth spellcasters. The fire mage is freakin' amazing. They give you one of the coolest mages ever for free which is pretty awesome. When you burn people as a fire mage it is so satisfying watching their hp drop. It makes me feel like the pyro from Team Fortress. I love it.

The other class you get free is the earth mage. His regular attack speed is super fast but weaker than the fire mage but he can heal himself I noticed. You can cast a spell that creates a tree and when you stand near it your hp recovers at a moderate speed. He's definitely a support mage. This game has supports like in Team Fortress or Overwatch.

The game features abilities like a moba (like Heroes of the Storm) and all the different mages' abilities can be countered so its possible to survive any situation theoretically and given the proper skill and effort. One thing to note is that you can teleport too. This makes the game crazy fast a la Unreal Tournament and Quake, great games to be inspired by. It brings the Skyrim (the first person view of the mage with the fireball or manacrystals in their hands look exactly like Skyrim) style mage into the twitch shooter environment. Its the best idea I've seen in a game in a super long time. The fact that this game puts together ideas and is inspired by so many other games is probably what makes it so fun. Add to that the unique idea of shooting spells instead of guns. How clever and unique.

The one thing that could be better is the graphics. However, you don't need high end graphics in a twitch shooter. As long as the environments are creative enough and fun to play on everything's cool. I'm going to keep playing this game. I'm interested in seeing how big the community becomes for it and how long the player base will keep on it. I think the game has a lot of potential especially if they create more interesting spellcasters.

Coolest games from E3

So E3 just happened recently and it turned out to be a great time with wonderful new games. Lets talk about some of the cool games that we can look forward to in the near future. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: It feels like the same old Zelda we're used to but its a huge open world design that most modern games feature. There's some sandbox elements like cutting down trees to get through paths. The graphics are cell-shady which reminds me of the Wind Waker, another great Zelda title. Can't wait to see the bosses. Time to start playing that Wii U again!

Telltales Batman: Its character driven and story-driven and its made with a new engine. Its going to feature a lot more Bruce Wayne than we're used to in Batman games. Time to put on my suit and look fancy!

Titanfall 2: The grappling hook looks great. It seems like the grappling hook idea that they had in Team Fortress 2 except way better. There's going to be a story-mode too which the first one lacked. Also, they're going to give everyone the dlc for free so that the community doesn't get divided. I've met a developer who works at Respawn and I told him how awesome the trailer looked. I also mentioned how the free dlc is a great way to keep the community together.

Horizon Zero Dawn: This is a cool action style game with a bit of Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, and Zelda. The game pits you as a primitive warrior type fighting against robotic dinosaurs and such. Domo arigato Mr. Roboto.

God of War 4: The game is still brutal and visceral and the graphics are gorgeous. An interesting new story will be a big part of it.

Battlefield 1: All the old technology used in World War I plays out well in the 64-player multiplayer mode.   

Gears of War 4: Time to get into cover!

Bloodstained:Ritual of the Night: The new Castlevania style game.

Batman Arkam VR: All about puzzles and being a detective.

Games I'm personally excited about the most.

Skyrim Special Edition: I really love Skyrim although I've never gotten that far in the game. However, I'd be down to buy the special edition because the times I've played have been so fun that I feel like I'd need it. I would definitely be down to finally finish the campaign with a special edition that includes better graphics and mod support.

Fallout 4 dlc: I haven't played Fallout 4 but the more dlc comes out, the more I want to play it. I really like Bethesda games because they are super fun single player experiences where normally I'm not a single player guy. However, all of Bethesda's games are worth playing even if you don't enjoy the single player experience as much as multiplayer.

Quake Champions: The trailer has a cool blue-haired vixen and the characters look like futuristic bad-asses. It looks especially cool because I just got into fps games competitively.

Doom dlc: So the news of more Doom dlc sounds great. Makes the game look more appealing even though I haven't bought a new game since Overwatch came out. Might want to pick this up in the future.

This year's E3 was a blast and it was cool watching the press conferences on YouTube. This year so far has already given us great titles. The most interesting game at the moment to me is the new Zelda. It will be good to see another great title on the Wii U because good titles on that console have been severely lacking as of late. The future of gaming looks brighter with each passing day. A bright sunshiny day.