When describing this game to a friend I told him that the game feels like playing Double Dragon, but set in Feudal Japan. While that’s not completely accurate, it does lend to the way that the game feels when you play it. Aside from the fact that the game isn’t a two-player co-op, the game does have a single player “multiplayer” aspect which has some fun to it.
In SADAME one hundred years have passed since the Onin War. Havoc struck the heart of the holy city of Kyoto and the world flooded with evil spirits from the mountains and rivers. This land of Kawanakajima, surrounded by two large rivers, was once known for its fertile soil and praised in many folk songs. But now this land is poisoned, and the people are barely holding on as they live each day in fear of demons and the undead. In the midst of all this, a single traveler comes to Kawanakajima.
Have you ever wanted to feel like you are in the Hunger games? Yah, me either, but I always thought it would make a cool video game. The culling starts off sounding like it’s just another king of the hill style combat game with some light crafting and exploration, but its managed to win over my heart because it’s so much more. A rock-paper-scissors style combat system, the scarcity of firearms, and the simplicity of the crafting really make this game fun. While it’s still pretty basic, with only one map, it is in early access which gives the developers more time to work on and add to it.
Don’t let the fact that its early access fool you, this is a feature complete game. You drop in, and are forced to craft and find resources to survive. There is no instance where this game feels unpolished or not done. It has a great crafting system which relies on a resource called F.U.N.C and players have several ways to earn it. The easiest is to roam around the map and find barrels it’s stored in, or collect it from dead animals and piles of bones. The fastest way to gather F.U.N.C is to kill other players. Players also gather a limited amount over time and based on how far they move. Everything in the game requires F.U.N.C to create.
This tier three spear is not something you will be crafting.
Crafting is basic; the game has two materials, sticks and rocks. Both can be found lying around on the ground or produced by hitting trees or stone outcroppings. This means that the game basically has an infinite amount of basic crafting materials. However at least for now, you can only craft a small amount of items. These items are basically all tier one (weapons are divided in to tiers I, II, III and IV), and won’t do you much good in the later parts of the game. Still, after playing other games completely relying on RNG, it is pretty nice to be able to drop in and if you aren’t near any buildings or other lootables instead craft your early tier weapons. Currently there are about a dozen basic craftables, from a stone knife, to bandages. Most of what you need in the early part of the game is there. Crafting however won’t get you the win, though basic weapons like a spear and a bow can be crafted, more powerful weapons are scattered around the map waiting to be looted.
Could the PlayStation VR, formally known as Project Morpheus, make its’ way to retail as early as next week? According a report filed by the Uk’s Daily Mail Sony has sent out invites to an exclusive event centered around the technology for next Tuesday. This event which is clearly aimed at the tech enthusiast press just so happens to coincide with the 2016 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Citing a retail listing that briefly appeared on Amazon.ca, the Daily Mail estimates that the add-on will be priced at approximately $1125 CDN (or $800 USD). Where things kind of really jump off the rails, so to speak, is their assertion that device will have a stealth launch right after the press event next week. Not since the disastrous launch of the SEGA Saturn in 1995 has a major gaming company attempted to pull the now famous “and one more thing”, launching a product at the end of a press presentation. While it might work for Apple (repeatedly), would it be the right move for Sony’s fledgling VR technology?
Sony’s major competition in the VR space, the Oculus Rift, launches later this month on the 28th for a suggested retail price of $600 USD. HTC and Valve’s first VR kit, the HTC Vive, will ship a week later on April 5th, and is already available for pre-order at a staggering $799 USD price point. Do you think Sony will beat them all to the punch, even if they launch the PSVR in select markets?
Whatever happens, BrokenJoysticks will be sure to bring it to you. While we have yet to receive an invite for this specific PlayStation event we will have staff on the ground at GDC 2016. VR is sure to be the talk of the show and with just a few short days until the doors open who knows what surprises GDC has in store for us!
Monorex, the team who designed all of the in-game graffiti that is on display throughout the streets of an infected New York City, have brought some of their designs into the real world for a limited time. The Shoreditch Art Wall in London England will play host to real world versions of several art assets from the game for the next five days to celebrate the launch of Tom Clancy’s The Division on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.
To help further connect this art display with the game the crew at Monorex will be adding a layer of bank notes onto the Shoreditch Art Wall to draw parallels to the fictional plague spread through $1 USD banknotes that wreaks havoc on Black Friday in The Division’s campaign. Passersby who pluck banknotes from the Art Wall will have the chance to win copies of Tom Clancy’s The Division or even Xbox One consoles.
Regarding the artwork Project Lead on the Shoreditch Art Wall promotion, Holly Cooper, had this to say:
“First and foremost, we wanted this to be a piece of art. New York is such a familiar place; it’s this huge, shining example of a city at the height of civilisation. That’s what makes the setting of the game in a mid-crisis Manhattan so compelling and believable”
Alongside the announcement of the Shoreditch Art Wall promotion in London Ubisoft’s YouTube Channel also posted a brief video so that all of us can see the excellent artwork on display.
It seems no company can launch a game these days with out headlines proclaiming that the game is not doing well. The Division, the new, much hyped, MMORPG shooter, from Ubisoft has fallen prey to the problems of so many other massive multiplayer games before it. It appears that the games servers collapsed under the weight of the good ole USA’s player base. In case you missed it (or were sleeping like me) The division launched on Australian midnight last night, allowing players world wide to play at that time.
Players who woke up expecting to be able to log in and get an early start on the game found themselves confronted by errors ‘Romeo’ and ‘Sierra’. Which seems to mean that the game client was unable to reach the servers. Ubisoft sent out this tweet at 2AM
2 hours ago, there was a Ubisoft services outage. This issue has now been resolved and players should be able to resume playing the game.
— Tom Clancy's The Division (@TheDivisionGame) March 8, 2016
Fortunatly service was restored by the time of that tweet. There is rampant speculation that the error was server overload, but it seems unlikely and a post on the official Ubisoft forums seems to point to “Ubisoft Services Degradation” as the issue. Perhaps they simply underestimated the number of players that wanted to get in to the game. That seems odd considering that “More than 6.4 million players apparently participated in The Division Beta” according to Ubisoft themselves. It seems like they ought to have prepared for this, but perhaps it was simple underestimation of demand. Service is now restored, and players are happily killing the cleaners and ganking each other in the darkzone.
