Love is in the Air - February Game Rewards

Posted By: GamerDating Team - February 01, 2023

Love is in the Air, its Gaming Time xoxo Valentines day is coming, but what to get your loved ones? Game dates, valentines day gifts or simply that beautiful gift to yourself. This month, we are offering even more games with your subscription so you can game, whilst we find you a match. We offer games every month with our 2 and 4-month subscriptions. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. A subscription

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December Rewards and its Holiday time! So we've restocked!

Posted By: GamerDating Team - December 19, 2022

GamerDating's December Rewards! It's the holiday season, a time for relaxation, spending time with loved ones, and gift-giving. For many of us, it's also a time to get back into our favorite hobbies, like gaming. This year, we've restocked and added some exciting new titles to our collection. Whether you're looking for the latest releases or classic hits, we have something for every gamer to enjo This month, we are offering even more games

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Frozen Flame – a Survival RPG that needs a little thawing out

Posted By: Elena Walker - December 12, 2022

Frozen Flame is a multiplayer survival fantasy RPG, in a world once governed by Dragons and is now in the aftermath of what appears to be a post-apocalyptic world. It was released in its Early Access form on the 25th of November by fresh-faced developers Dreamside Interactive. I’ll be honest – my first impression was that the game looked generic. The style was immediately reminiscent of the many aesthetic copycats of cartoony an

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November includes Core Keeper, Golf with your Friends and Moving with your subs

Posted By: GamerDating Team - November 01, 2022

GamerDating's November Rewards! It's November! Christmas is coming, games are flowing, and its time to plan your gifts! We aim to keep the subscription cost down, while we can offer indie games or popular titles so that you can game, whilst we find you a match. We offer games every month with our 2 and 4-month subscriptions. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. Subscription grants you the ability to read

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Fueled up a chaotic couch co-op reviewed

Posted By: Ryan - October 28, 2022

Space-borne chaos or a shiny re-tread of old ground? Couch co-op party games are a small, but still popular, genre. As evidenced by games like Overcooked and Moving Out, there’s a need for one-to-four-player games that rely on communication, a willingness to make mistakes, and an almost sadistic urge to test the strength of friendships. Make no mistake, much like its chaotic forebears, Fueled Up will also put your relationships to the

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Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Closed Beta Preview

Posted By: Dan and Team - October 19, 2022

This weekend October 14th to 16th our team had the privilege to try Fatshark's closed BETA of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. We gathered together, jumped into Discord in varied group sizes and chugged through the delights of Darktide. You can play with any variation of your custom characters, a refreshing step away from Vermintide.   The Poundshop Paladin, WoodTier, Farske and Zahur gathered together to dip their toes i

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Games while you date! Imp of the Sun, Potioncraft, Spirit of the Island now available

Posted By: GamerDating Team - October 06, 2022

GamerDating's October Rewards! It's October, autumn is here, winter is coming and the new games are flowing! It's the time of year where curled up on the sofa, with hot chocolate and gaming all evening is ideal. We aim to keep the subscription cost down, while we can offer indie games or popular titles so that you can game, whilst we find you a match. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. We offer 2 or 4-

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Pokemon Killer Temtem? Ryan Reviews

Posted By: Ryan - September 26, 2022

TemTem - Pokemon killer? An indie, monster-taming MMO with PvP built into its foundation, and a full PvE story, was always going to be a sure bet for fans of the Pokémon franchise. Temtem goes out of its way to emphasise how much of its gameplay experience is focused around competitive play, so much so that it’s nigh impossible to escape, but, if PvP isn’t your thing, all is not lost! I’m not a huge fan of PvP in m

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Smooth Summer Update to make your experience better.

Posted By: GamerDating Team - August 22, 2022

Say hello to our summer fresh update!  In this update, we focused on some quality of life updates, better email interactions, improved performance and bugfixes. Our last big update was earlier this year when we updated messaging with the use of emojis, gif support, improved updates and optimisation. Now we have introduced a new notifications sidebar, improved email notifications and new anti spammer/bot measures to make your experie

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South of the Circle Preview

Posted By: Ryan - August 15, 2022

A narrative experience about the power of regret. Emotional, story-driven games like South of the Circle (SotC) are not, for better or worse, everyone’s cup of tea. Originally released in 2021 for Apple Arcade, it was developed by State of Play, published by 11 Bit Studios, and is a compelling story of ambition and love set around the Cold War. I played SotC on the Nintendo Switch to write this review and was pleasantly surprised by w

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Overcooked! Our sous-chef reviews a top coop.

Posted By: Will Smith-Parsons - August 01, 2022

Overcooked: All the fun of watching your kitchen burn down, none of the messy clean-up. Overcooked! is a top-down, high-pressure cook-em-up that pits aspiring chefs against the clock and a series of strange circumstances to prepare ingredients and cook dishes to the satisfaction of hungry customers. After each level, players receive a score and a number of stars based on how many orders were completed, how many were missed, and how many wer

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Tails of Iron, House Flipper, Foxhole and Overcooked! 2 added for August subscriptions

Posted By: Alex - July 29, 2022

GamerDating's August Rewards! It's August! The perfect time for some game dates, followed by nice walks in the evening. Our goal is to keep subscription at a low cost, offer unusual indie games or popular titles so that you can game, whilst we find you a match. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. We offer 2 or 4-month subscriptions which allow you to read and send messages to any user, your messages allow

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Gloomhaven, Kitaria Fables, Farm Together, and Tavern Master now available with subscription

Posted By: Alex - July 01, 2022

GamerDating's July Rewards! As we roll into July, the peak of the summer season, and we have new games for our subscriptions. Our mission is to keep subscription at a cost low, offer popular or unusual games so that you can start gaming whilst we find you a match! Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. We offer 2 or 4-month subscriptions which allow you to read and send messages to any user, your messages all

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Wingspan, Cuphead, Children of Morta and Outriders available in our June subscription.

Posted By: Alex - June 02, 2022

GamerDating's June Rewards! It's June, new game time! Available for new subscriptions, we have limited stock, so first come, first served. Our goal is to keep subscription cost low, and always offer new games so you can find a match, start chatting and play a game with your date, preferably one of those new ones you've just got! Our full list of games is now available on our static page which we'll update each month. We offer 2 or 4-

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Games available in our packages

Posted By: GamerDating Team - June 01, 2022

Our gaming offers bundled in with our packages Check out our entire list of new games added and available. Our games we offer are separated between two options of subscription to GamerDating, a gold option and a silver option. Remember you can choose two silver games for the gold option instead of just one gold game if you'd prefer. Each month we add new games, restock and seek out the unusual games for those game dates and couples da

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10 Reasons to Date a Gamer

Posted By: Alex - April 13, 2022

10 Reasons to Date a Gamer There are many benefits to dating a gamer, be you a gamer yourself, or an open minded non-gamer who is looking to support their partner or perhaps even become a gamer. It is also not uncommon for couples with a gamer in the mix to convert the other and introduce them to what it’s like to date a gamer. We reached out and asked some of our successful couples to give a list of reasons why it is good to date a g

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April Rewards - Easter new games for your subscription!

Posted By: Alex - April 05, 2022

GamerDating's April Rewards! Spring Bunnies and Happy Hearts. It is the month of new love, relationships and the blossoming of true love. Love, date, game. Each week we add more new games that are available with your first subscription, and each month we update that selection. We keep our subscription cost low, and at the same time offer you games with your first month so you can play. So get gaming, get matching and find your ideal part

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March Rewards - It's spring and we have new games!

Posted By: Alex - March 09, 2022

GamerDating's Spring March Rewards! It's spring, everyones talking about Elden Ring, and it's time to give them a ring!. Sorry, I couldn't resist. The rhymes flowed, and I was on the road to overload .. and... and... and it's time to, just get on with this update so you can go on a Game Date. Each week we add more new games that are available with your first subscription, and each month we update that selection. We keep our subscription

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Valentines February Rewards - Latest games for you!

Posted By: Alex - February 16, 2022

  GamerDating's Valentines February Rewards!   Happy Valentines Day, and if you are here, maybe you have yet to reach out and connect with your potential special co-op gamer. Well reach out now! Each week we add more new games that are available with your subscription, and each month we update the selection. This month we've added a selection of new games, but also a selection of ideal co-op games or games to have

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Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall - Swing and a Miss

Posted By: Alex - February 16, 2022

Swing and a miss, but literally. Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall is a VR-exclusive action-adventure game. A game that I was super excited about, because who doesn't enjoy being a Stormcast Eternal! When the combat worked, it felt great, but the game didn't support that! I was super stoked for this, as a fan of all things Warhammer I leapt into the game with excitement, looking forward to playing a skilled Lord-Arcanum of

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Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance Review

Posted By: Ryan - July 20, 2021

Game

Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance could have been one of the best games on Game Pass, if it were finished.

With Game Pass’ wide customer base, the global success of Dungeons and Dragons, and the simplicity of the hack and slash genre, it really wouldn’t have taken much to produce a competent and successful entry into the Dark Alliance franchise and yet, somehow, Tuque Games didn’t.

Drizzt is an iconic and brilliant character.

Drizzt is an iconic and brilliant character... in the books.

I’m going to avoid making Dungeons and Dragons-based jokes in an effort to not mystify readers who may not be familiar with the tabletop role-playing game, but I will be mentioning it a lot; consider yourself warned.

Released to kick off the Summer of Drizzt, and featuring Drizzt Do’Urden (the main character in a long-running series of fantasy novels by R.A. Salvatore), Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance (I’ll be using DA  to refer to the game from hereon in) is the long awaited successor the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance series. Ditching those games’ isometric view for a more common over-the-shoulder third-person camera brings the player closer into the action, for good or ill, and allows you to admire the vibrant textures and impressive particle effects that the Unreal engine is capable of.

It also, unfortunately, gives you a perfect close-up of stiff, or missing, animations, the regular clipping of objects where they meet the environment or each other and the questionable artistic choices made in the design of some armour pieces and character models. The developers have opted for a realistic design ethos which does help ground characters and the environment but lends the more monstrous characters, and magical armours, a slightly cartoonish effect that detracts from the rest of the realism.

The design is bad and the gameplay is bad.

Somehow this design got signed off…

As one would expect from cutscenes rendered with the Unreal Engine, they are visually a treat to look at and you’ll have plenty of time to admire each frame as they stutter across your screen. Playing on an Xbox One X, I had the weird experience of each successive cutscene playing with a steadily decreasing frame rate. I would put this down to a memory leak or something, but this persisted over several play sessions, no matter how far into the session I was before mysteriously clearing up as I neared the end of the game.

So far, so bad.

The voice acting and sound design are both perfectly serviceable and one of the few areas of the game that I didn’t find anything majorly at fault. The cast do a good job of selling their characters’ personalities and Drizzt’s opening narration to each level is well-delivered, as are the incidental conversations between NPCs and most of the player character’s combat barks.

Much as with the sound, DA’s user interface and user experience are both perfectly serviceable. Sure, some information is buried in the menus but almost everything is explained well and easily re-discovered if you want to refresh your memory about something. The trouble is the ‘almost’ in that previous sentence. Once you start a level, referred to inconsistently as Acts, you are no longer able to check the correct button combinations to trigger the special moves you can buy in the lobby area—which also serves as a shop and rewards hub.

The button that opens your character sheet in the lobby area (the ‘View’ button on an Xbox One controller) opens a menu that provides mission objectives and an explanation of the various symbols that flash up on screen once you’re playing the game proper. Unfortunately, that explanation only gives you the name of the effect tied to the symbol, not what that effect actually does and, as of yet, I still have not found any resource in game to explain the many, MANY conditions you may be subject to during play.

It's as if the game is still in pre-alpha, no consistency.

Ah yes, the true D&D experience: skill trees with tiny bonuses..

But what about the actual game itself, how have Tuque Games failed to produce a competent and successful entry into the Dark Alliance franchise? For a start they marketed it as a hack and slash brawler, when what they’ve released is a Dark Souls-style game with the serial numbers filed off. Admittedly, I played through this game solo and picked possibly the worst character to do that with, but with basic enemies taking upwards of 30 seconds to kill, a healing animation that you are locked into for around 3 seconds and a targeting system that may as well not exist, as well as the forward movement triggered by ANY attack, I felt like the game wanted me to fail and try again with different tactics. But why Dark Souls in particular?

Not since 2011’s Skyrim has the death rate been as sky high.

I’ll get there, don’t worry. First, I need to talk about the difficulty. Each Act has up to six difficulty levels, with slowly increasing rewards for playing at higher difficulties. If you’re planning on playing this solo, you’ll likely be playing at the lower end of the scale where everything is trivial. You’ll be doing this because if you raise the difficulty even one level, basic enemies start presenting a large threat when encountered in groups (which they always are) and elite enemies/bosses become near impossible challenges with attacks that can stunlock you or remove two-thirds of your health bar at once.  The intention here is clearly that you should not be playing this game solo and that you should be taking advantage of the ability to resurrect fallen allies.

The whole system quickly became meaningless.

Hopefully, I’ve demonstrated that’s very easy to die here, whether through being locked into an animation (once an animation starts, you are committed to that action) at the wrong time or just a poorly-balanced encounter. Your reward for clearing certain area of enemies is the ability to take a short rest. This acts as a checkpoint, refills your consumables and respawns everything but bosses. The thing is, I figured out pretty quickly that the whole system is meaningless. If you opt not to take the short rest, you gain a bonus to your loot rarity chances (yes, there is random loot in this game, more on that below) but you have to start back at the beginning of the Act. The only problem with this ‘decision’ is that your progress in the Act is saved meaning that if you opt not to take the rest, you gain the bonus to loot rarity in exchange for simply running back to where you died. Everything respawns as if you had rested (including reinforcements that arrive in waves the first time you encounter them), you get your health and consumables back AND you get better loot.

On top of all of this, certain moves lower your maximum stamina, which is used to pull off attacks, moves and dodges. This, in itself, isn’t a problem, the problem is that these moves just randomly trigger. As an example, my character of choice had a move tied to tapping the movement stick and the light attack button that frequently triggered when I was using her ranged attack on the move. This resulted in either me flying forwards and committing to a melee attack I was trying to avoid or moving backwards without actually attacking and losing stamina for doing so.

Stamina and controls feel glitched or random

The game tells you monsters have stamina and can be executed when prone. What it actually means is you can do a SLIGHTLY more powerful attack when certain enemies are hunched over slightly.

This results in a gameplay loop of very slow, carefully managed combat that feels like the developers were halfway through making a different game when they were told to make it a hack and slash brawler. Again, some of this opinion might be because I played solo, but in my defence the animations aren’t fast, attacks at anything but the lowest difficulty don’t deal much damage—and the game apparently scales enemy health based on the number of players—and if you run out of stamina you can’t do anything for a good couple of seconds as that bar fills up.

The whole gameplay options starts to feel slow and labourious.

If you do manage to get through all of that, you can take side paths and poke around hidden alcoves to find treasure chests filled with loot that increases your stats a tiny amount. This, I’ll be honest, was where I started losing interest in the game. The clunky, half-baked combat I could excuse because it was clearly trying to be good and did feel pretty enjoyable on the rare occasions it worked flawlessly, but the armour sets with their set bonuses, tiny stat increases and sheer randomness went a bit too far.

I’m not sure this could be called AI.

Ordinarily I’d be fine with it: it’s an rpg, that’s what you expect. But this is a DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS video-game. D&D is not about obsessively hoarding armour in the hopes of gaining an extra 3% Ultimate Charge or 2% acid resistance and it certainly isn’t about managing stamina and being killed by goblins after three hits. Once I noticed this discrepancy with the franchise, I noticed more that individually could be classed as lore inconsistencies but, when taken as a whole, paint a different picture. See, I think the developers wanted to make a different game and were told to slap a D&D story on it (which they did with R.A. Salvatore’s assistance).

As a side note, the writing here is pretty good. It’s bare bones and conveyed mostly through short snippets of narration before you start an Act with each boss getting their own cutscene, as well as a wide variety of genuinely interesting and well-acted incidental dialogue between enemies as you creep up on them.

The problem is that the writing outside of the story, and the many, MANY lore collectibles, feels like its supposed to be a generic fantasy game. D&D terms like short rest and Challenge Rating are used (although the development roadmap refers to ‘difficulty rankings’), but the ubiquitous potions of healing are simply called health potion (you didn’t misread that, I got two health potion every time), obvious UI options for Main Quest and Side Quest are called Main Objective and Optional (there isn’t a word missing there) and monsters that regain health constantly regain their health, even when hit with damage types that, in the D&D rule set, prevents them from regenerating.

Even the UI and display feels like a mobile game.

I don’t know why I want to see the current loot I’ve found as it shows me at the end of the Act anyway.

Whilst I was streaming this, one of my viewers remarked that it felt like a mobile game and, honestly, I can see why. I’ve already mentioned the buggy controls and graphics, the stiff animations and the generic fantasy feel. I haven’t mentioned the menu bugs that tell me I have something new to read (I don’t), the complete lack of in-game map, or even the fact that the developers introduce a puzzle mechanic, teach you about that mechanic and then change it for the next puzzle without altering any of the visual cues—most puzzles are solved by turning all the pressure plates on anyway. On top of all of this, the end of every Act has three tally screens, none of which are skippable and each of which is excessively long. The intention is clearly to provide stats for co-op players to compare but it would have been nice to skip them entirely in solo, offline play.

It feels like a mobile game.

On the plus side, there is a lot of game here. Even playing on the easiest difficulty, it took nearly 20 hours to beat the game solo, although if you’re playing co-op you will likely get through it much faster than I did. The main replayability here comes from the random loot system (the presentation of which makes me feel like there were supposed to be loot boxes in the game at some point) as well as the numerous lore-based collectibles scattered throughout the sometimes too-long Acts, and character levelling system that blocks off moves and feats until certain level thresholds are met. Handily the game does give you approximate indications of how long each Act will take to complete and those are mostly accurate. Finally, pretty much any game is better played co-operatively, although you will have to play online (with limited cross-platform support); local multiplayer was cut for the game’s launch and is being added later.

You get these looking great in quick action sequences.

Three awesome looking bad guys... then the cut scene ends and they stand motionless.

If you’re looking a for a long-ish game to play with up to four friends, and can put up with the core gameplay loop I dedicated too many words to above, you’ll probably enjoy this. At £34.99 —or ‘free’ with Game Pass—, it’s a decently priced, buggy experience that feels unfinished and definitely has an identity crisis going on about what it really wants to be. Unfortunately, those bugs, that gameplay loop and its almost complete separation from the brand it’s supposed to be promoting (Dungeons and Dragons) do bog down the gameplay, particularly if you’re playing solo.

Personally, I would recommend avoiding this unless you’re a) going to play with friends or b) willing to see how bad it really gets.

Watch the arrow as it leaves the bowstring. Turns out light kills people, not sharpened projectiles. Seriously though, this happens with every shot, not just Catti-brie’s Ultimate.

In one word - "Avoid."

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