While I enjoy sports here and there, I never quite understood the draw of sports management games. Now that I’ve seen Epic Tavern, I can understand the appeal: recruit, manage and reap the rewards from your own heroes. Enjoy their victories, work against their failures and quirks. It just so happens that my heroes swing swords at dragons, not throw balls around.
Epic Tavern promises to “[combine] classic RPG elements with a unique combination of roster management and social simulation gameplay” as you run your tavern. As the tavernmaster, you must make many decisions, from the adventurers you recruit to the quests to send them on to the way your tavern looks and feels, and, of course, the number of pints you warm your heroes’ bellies with!
I am rather fond of the heroes tavern concept. One of my favorite board games is Red Dragon Inn, where you act as an adventure drinking, gambling and brawling within an inn. Thus Epic Tavern has thoroughly sparked my interest with its promise of humorous interactions, fun management, and diverse paths and results.
Fittingly, Epic Tavern is based in a land called Beor.
Though Epic Tavern is not available currently, it has a Kickstarter campaign that launched on May 25th and that will run through June 28th. It funded in its first week, and now 135% funded at $54,040, well above the $40k goal. Games on Kickstarter have been struggling more in the recent years than they did back in 2012 when any video game concept was funded instantly, so their early success is quite impressive.
The campaign is not doubt assisted by the fact that the team at Hyperkinetic Studios has a shining roster, with well-over a collective 100 years of experience in the game industry, including on titles such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Resistance: Retribution. Such experience helps garner the confidence of backers.
I am greatly looking forward to playing this silly game and gathering my own group of adventures with frothy pints of beer!
It’s going to get seriously creep in July. Capcom showed off a teaser trailer for Resident Evil 7 biohazard at the Sony Interactive Entertainment E3 press conference last night. And it looks slick.
Resident Evil 7 looks to be going back to its roots as it puts the story right back to where it all began – in the middle of nowhere. And to make things even more terrifying the game is going to be set in first person view in a photorealistic style. There hasn’t been a first person Resident Evil game since the side-game Reside Evil Survivor.
Resident Evil 7 is scheduled for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC in North America and Europe on January 24th, 2017. The full gameplay experience will also be available via the included PlayStation VR Mode.
Creating experiences in VR is a difficult task, and a unique one. Seeing what is happening on a TV screen and experiencing it through a pair of goggles are two separate worlds really. As discussed during the E3 2016 PC show even something like gun recoil needs to be rethought for VR. It needs to feel powerful just the same, but not take the user out of the experience. The game itself cannot control the players head. Instead developers need to find new ways to convey the sorts of motion and also direct the players attention toward the action as it unfolds. That’s what is being thought through for Killing Floor: Incursion.
From what we learned about Killing Floor: Incursion at the conference, it seems they are taking things like this into account. It’s a different experience and something that must be handled with VR in mind. I’ve personally worked with some VR video editing myself, and it is a completely different medium to work with. Seeing developers keeping this in mind is an important thing. We are just scratching the surface of a brand new entertainment platform and so far this is looking really awesome!
Check out the content below from Killing Floor: Incursion’s trailer.
Phoenix Online Publishing and Digital Bounce House have sent forth a decree to all the lands to announce the release of the hilarious 8-bit adventure, Tick’s Tales: Up All Knight! Be on the look-out and ever vigilant against the mischievous Tick, whose ulterior motives have sent him on a good old-fashioned quest!
Colorful retro-graphics meet a modern comedic narrative in this send-up and homage to the classic point-and-click quest adventures. Now available for PC, Mac and Linux on the Phoenix Online Store, Steam, the Humble Bundle Store, the App Store and other online retailers for 10% off the regular price of $7.99 for one week.
The game features a story of knights and ticks, told in a beautiful pixel based world. Tick’s Tales is a true homage to the classic adventure games,” said Katie Hallahan, PR Director for Phoenix Online Publishing. “From the art-style to the puzzles and the in-jokes that will get a laugh from everyone who’s ever enjoyed a classic Sierra or LucasArts adventure: This game is made by a fan for the fans and feels like a game straight out that era in all the best ways. And the fact that Bryce made this entire game by himself makes it even more impressive!”
Parkour wunderkind Faith Connors returns in this reboot of the 2008 classic, Mirror’s Edge which is out today on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. I got the chance to sit down with the game for six hours this past weekend and jump into Faith‘s shoes as she runs, runs, zip lines and slides around the City of Glass. DICE’s latest entry in the franchise not only tinkers with the narrative but also opens up the gameplay with a gigantic open world environment that players of the last game could have only dreamed of on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Here are my initial impressions.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is not a straight retelling of the original title, DICE has decided to tinker with key elements of the game’s narrative – when things kick off we meet the defiant young Faith as she is about to be released from juvenile prison. This technologically advanced prison features futuristic neon displays that advocate for the various corporations around the City of Glass and reminds prisoners that they “should reform and consider employment with any corporation of their choosing.” Once Faith is released from prison she is informed that she was two weeks from release to find employment with one of these corporations or she will be locked back up for an extended period. This version of Faith is very different from the one we saw in 2008, In the 2008 game she was driven by the need to clear her sister’s name for framed murder the plot of Catalyst centers more on corporate espionage than the bond between sisters. This lack of a key motivator and a change in voice actress makes Faith less of a compelling protagonist based upon the time I spent with the game.
Once released from prison the bulk of Faith‘s early story in Mirror’s Edge centers around her reconnecting with the group of runners that she was once acquainted with. In the world of Mirror’s Edge runners are an anti-corporate movement that believe that the average citizenry have been become complacent thanks in part to advanced augmented reality technology that provides the user with a constant stream of corporate approved information. Runners try to subvert this system of iron fisted control on the citizenry visa hacking billboards with anti-corporate messages, trafficing prohibited information to the lower class citizens of the City of Glass and partaking in the more than occasional corporate espionage adventure. Ideologically it is very clear where the runners are and how the player is supposed to react to the presence of these large corporations. While the game stays on point when it comes to underlying political messaging and themes, unfortunately, the cast of side characters don’t convey a lot of personality to the player. Faith’s former contacts serve as Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s method for providing new story missions and none of these side characters feel like fully developed human beings and could probably be swapped out for one another if it wasn’t for the fact that certain NPCs deliver certain types of activities.
The City of Glass is a gleaming white futuristic monolith to the advancements of technologies that have been produced by the various corporations in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Tall, seemingly never-ending skyscrapers shimmer as their glass reflect the in-world light sources while yellow accents adorn the area’s that Faith is able to traverse when running from rooftop to rooftop. Top this very pleasing visual aesthetic is topped off with colorful cars and pedestrians which can sometimes be tiny specks below from some of the higher vantage of points available in the game. Combine this with a slightly punk look for some of Faith‘s fellow runners, and her initial outfit at the beginning of the story, and you have a game that knows how to visually define itself.
Traversing around the City of Glass is accomplished through the series’ signature first-person parkour. Unlike the last game, which gave Faith access to all of her abilities from the onset, Catalyst opts to give our heroine a basic set of movement, combat and defensive abilities from the get-go and locks the rest behind a progression system that is tied to an experience level. I could see why players who enjoyed the openness of the 2008 title would be disappointed with progression based unlocks, considering the fact that a number of abilities that were once standard are now locked behind the XP grind. However, I can also see how this would extend the life of the game and slowly teach players about their parkour maneuvers and allow them to master them before moving onto to more advanced skills.
So what abilities did Faith have access too over the course of the six hours that I played? The left bumper allows Faith to climb up objects, contextually jump off of nearby objects and climb up pipes or ladders. Left trigger allows Faith to kick descend ladders, jump down from ledges and slide along the ground. Like in the 2008 version running forward and then tapping the left trigger will launch Faith into a sliding forward dive that allows her to fit under narrow spaces and avoid combat with NPCs. More advanced techniques like rolling from tall heights by pressing the left trigger upon impact and using a wrist-mounted retractable rope become key to completing some of the side objectives and can be woven into Faith’s cityscape acrobatics as needed.
Here is a small sampling of some of the activities that await players in the brand new Mirror’s Edge:
Main Story Missions – These missions are delivered by Faith’s comrades in the Runner’s hideout, which also serves as the main safe zone, or by various NPCs located through the rooftops of the City of Glass. For the most part of the time I spent with these missions they typically revolve around corporate espionage or teaching Faith new game-play mechanics.
Package Delivery – Faith is able to pick up packages at automated drop-off points and then deliver them to a designated location with the time-limit. Really the package delivery missions are timed obstacle courses with various paths, failing the course will give the player the option to retry.
Hackable Billboards – Located throughout the City of Glass are billboards displaying corporate messages. Faith is able to hack these billboards to display messages for the runners in exchange for XP points.
User Created Trials – Using Faith’s augmented reality contacts users are able to create custom trials using up to 4 droppable checkpoints. These courses will then be populated randomly into other players games it seems. Once you’ve completed a user generated trial your score is placed on a leaderboard that is specific for that trial.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst tries valiantly to take the parkour formula that was so well received with the original game and extend that 6 – 8 hour length into an open world experience that players could potentially lose 100s of hours in. There are dozens upon dozens of collectibles for Faith to collect and exchange for more moves, skills and pieces of gear. Longtime fans who enjoyed the first game might find the addition of an XP system and seemingly pointless collectibles to be padding used to lengthen the time spent with the game but honestly it feels like a fair tradeoff given the open world nature of the City of Glass..
Broken Joystick’s staff will be heading to E3 for the next 8 days but expect a full review of Mirror’s Edge Catalyst after our return!
If you grew up in the 90s you probably remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were spunky comic book turned Saturday morning TV show heroes on the half shell. TURTLE POWER! I still hear that in my head every time I read the name. Now nearly 20 years later, like all things ripe for nostalgic re-makes we are getting a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, rebranded as TMNT (to sound cooler?) and as with most movies these days we are getting a tie in game. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan is that game. Created by developer Platinum Games (who also did the Transformers tie in game) and published by Activision this game takes a cell shaded look at the what a game that is meant to be the successor to all time classic beat em ups like Turtles in Time could be.
So let’s get this out of the way to start with, this is not a great game. I personally enjoy it because I am a HUGE fan of Ninja Turtles, Simple Combat, and two button beat em ups in general. Unfortunately not even I could look past the slew of problems that this game presents to call it a “good” game. Featuring 4 player co-op of AI controlled teammates this is a team brawler game. Co-op is limited to online only play, which is a HUGE mistake as the best part of previous 4 player turtles brawlers was playing with your friends. Its all about beating up huge numbers of enemies in Manhattan, around an open world concept then fighting a boss at the end of each level. there are 8 levels in all, and in between each level you will be able to use currency to upgrade your turtle and its abilities.
Hey remember these bad guys? Probably not, I know I don’t. (They are Bebop and Rocksteady)
Let’s start with the premise, it’s your standard Saturday morning cartoon style plot. Villains want to take over the world (or just Manhattan I guess?). This time is Kang and Shredder they have brought along with them a host of other characters, from well-known ones like Bebop and Rocksteady to some that will make you scratch your head and go who are they, like Wingnut and Armaggon. This rather diverse case of villains will use all of their knowledge of well telegraphed attacks, millions of generic enemies, and simple obstacles to try and stop you from saving your beloved home.
The first thing you are going to notice when you boot this game up, is the art style. Its cell shaded just the Transformers game was, so if you don’t like that style, then probably stay away from this game. Personally I loved the look of the game, its lines are dirty, and in that cell shaded style so popular these days, the characters look like they rolled right out of the a comic book on to the screen. The heavy nod to the origin of the characters (comics came before TV shows kids of the 90s) made me feel like maybe the game was going pay homage to the original and that I would enjoy it, sadly this was not the case.
The art style was basically the end of my enjoyment of this game. Beyond here this review is going to go quite heavy handed in to criticism of how the game plays, whats going on with its mechanics, and why it doesn’t work with the idea of my beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so if you don’t want to see your favorite team of green renaissance artists getting put to the sword, probably stop reading now. I will tell you that if this game ever goes sub 20$ its probably worth picking up for the story and dialog and art alone, since it does feel a lot like playing a comic book.
The game is very vibrant and the art style is great!
Ok disclaimer over, now let’s talk dirty. Remember Turtles in Time? The great classic arcade beat-em-up from the 80s? That’s what clearly inspired this game, I get it Platinum Games I do, there is a powerful market for nostalgia and you want to tap it. Sadly this is not how you do that. This game is at its core a two button beat em up. You will spend your time pressing either X or A (on an Xbox controller) or using what ever fucked keyboard combination Platinum decided on using instead. Oh, you were thinking of using a keyboard to play this game? No, that’s not a good idea at all. With a control scheme almost as dense as Dark Souls, it really seems like you should be able to figure out how to map TWO KEYS to a keyboard. However, Since your turtles also have to dodge, use combos, hit a button to bring up a a HUD, use parry’s, and do half a dozen other actions, instead of two buttons there are like twelve! A two button beat em up, HAS TWO BUTTONS! I dont need a button to lock on to enemies, or a button to make me go in to my shell, and dont even get me started on the stupid HUD thingy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not berating games with complex combat systems – this game doesn’t have that – instead it has an incredibly simple combat system (light and heavy attacks, one button activated combos) with a bunch of useless shit you wont ever use tacked on. I have the option to block or parry, but why would I? Instead I can just hack my way through whatever I need to hit and hope I don’t die trying. The game should have been rescued by an arcade style combat system, and indeed it does have nice arcade scoring (counting combo hits etc) and pretty slashing motions, but that’s it. To activate combos you don’t need to press a set of buttons, you just hold left trigger and then press on button. This triggers an almost cut scenes like piece where you combo whatever is in front of you. which leads to some hilarious moments where I found myself using a combo, with no one to hit because my AI teammates had killed them already. The tedium of this combat is made even worse by the fact that every single enemy is just a sponge. No matter what you are fighting, and the game does have a bit of diversity for its enemies, featuring rock soldiers, foot ninja, and even some mousers, you will be able to just hack it apart with no skill needed. Enemy diversity is mostly limited to the three aforementioned types with a lot of pallet swaps, and some weapon changes.
Even the levels are repetitive, each level is semi-open-world, which basically means you run around a closed off level area doing something, until you finish it and then you come back and fight the areas boss. This format is terrible, and honestly makes me think im just checking boxes. While there is a story here and its fully voiced and features a nice cast of characters, its just lost among the repetitive boring gameplay. After playing just three levels, I was already feeling fatigued, and the game has 8! Each level longer than the last!
See that silly headset? Its the games primary story mechanic, you talk to April on it and she tells you where to go punch people next.
One such mission early in the game found me spending three minutes protecting a pizza stand. Imagine the worst escort mission ever, and then make it even worse. I stood on top of the pizza stand as my AI controlled team mates killed wave after wave of easily disposable enemies, then the boss of the area spawned INSIDE THE PIZZA STAND, making it so I could neither see him, nor damage him. So after 3 minutes of standing around doing nothing while the AI killed enemies, I lost the mission to an enemy I could not see, because he was inside the missions objective.
Each mission is formulaic and they all end up felling like a tedium after the first couple. I would rather have had a long hallway full of enemies I needed to beat up to get to a boss than the current format. That would make sense in a classic beat-em-up sense. Instead, each level features a limited pallet of subway, sewer, and city buildings, which all start to blend together as you go on. Despite the amount of unique architecture in Manhattan, you will see none of it here, and the tallest buildings seem to be just a few stories so my hero’s can easily climb them. The game also has an odd nonsensical system of rail riding, where you can ride a series of rails that are inexplicably on the top of every single building, or across power lines strung from building to building. But be careful, random motes of electricity (i think?) roam around these trying to knock you off because reasons? It really doesn’t make any sense at all and I just stuck to the ground to avoid it entirely.
The game is saved from total mediocrity by the combat system. Yes, you will press A and X until your enemy dies. The monotony of this is broken up by a ninjitsu system where you hold a trigger and then press a button to fire off a combo, or a ranged attack , or a heal. These abilities make things interesting during combat and in particular the boss battles. Bosses have a lot of health, and you can’t just hack your way through them. They are the only enemies in game that require even a ounce of strategy to beat. One warning to those who would come face the bosses, the spike in difficulty is severe. Imagine going from say, walking one mile to running a marathon overnight. I liked it, but I’m a bit of a masochist. More easily frustrated players could easily get fed up with the spikes in difficulty and end up quitting.
Platinum have tried to help with this curve by giving player an upgrade system where they can spend the games in game currency on more powerful combos, weapons, and items, but it all feels sort of hollow. I haven’t beat the game yet, but I’m more than 80% of the way through and the enemies difficulty curve is very flat, so as soon as I started getting upgrades and figured out which items and combos were best, it started to just get too easy for me. Bosses are now the only thing that really offers any sort of resistance to my blades (I chose Leonardo to play of course!).
Overall this game feels like it could have been great, but it just lacks something. It has such a high bar to meet, the Turtles have starred in some of the best beat em up games of all time after all, and it just doesn’t make it there. I don’t mind the two button combat, the skill ceiling, or the upgrades, but I do mind the way the levels are laid out, the forced open world, and the lack of coherent plot. If this game ever drops to the 10-15$ range it would be a great value for a fan, but at 40$ it feel a bit like your getting taken for a ride.
Duskers recently released after having spent several months in Early Access, luckily they have gone into a full release in good time and with great polish. This game skillfully blends three core elements: rogue like dungeons, tense claustrophobic space horror and puzzles. The game is split into exploration of individual ships, which function as your levels. Each is procedurally generated with a guessed at number of baddies lurking inside. Your job is to use your scrappy fleet of drones to outwit and outmaneuver those enemies to survive and piece together what catastrophe befell the universe. There are plenty of contenders, and you’ll keep a running log of all the front runners through your journeys.
All these planets, and you still can’t land.
The game display looks like a mash up of a retro-futurist mainframe terminal dream and a DOS computer aided design interface. Your connection with the drones is fuzzy, displaying a barely lit outline of the interior of boarded derelicts. This will wash out, scramble and occasionally drop entirely like an a UHF antenna in bad weather. Your much safer off with the overhead map view, where you can see the position and activities of all your drones at once. Controlling them the only way possible: both hands on the keyboard. That’s right, this game has a command line and beside some primitive joystick like navigation of individual drones, it’s the only way you can navigate.
Where you’ll be spending most of your time
And navigate you will, as ‘[na]vigate drone room’ is the essential command to move drones room to room. By stringing together commands on line with semi-colons you can order up whole sequences of events before moving to the next drone and getting it lined up for a day’s work too. Each command can be shortened to the minimum number of letters needed for it to be unique. If you’re into Cisco networking gear, you’ll love it. This game is not entirely unlike a light version of Robot Odyssey, the infamously difficult Robot building game from The Learning Company for old Apple II computers. Except maybe that death is swift, scary and permanent.
The overall ambiance of the game is spot on. Even the soundtrack is simply a collection of your drones clicks and beeps, alongside the background hums of empty spacecraft. Occasionally, you’ll hear the thrumming and screams of angry creatures trapped on board the drifting wrecks. Warning sounds will warn as ancient ships contort and lose integrity or are bombarded with space debris. The game has countless video effects, but they work into the mood instead of against it. Further, they’re mostly in the single-drone mode and won’t affect the overview screen you use most of the time. The simple seeming graphics bely that a full 3D engine is running with particle effects full bore. Despite that, I never ran into a single moment of noticeable latency or lowered frame rates, nor did the game ever crash and break the illusion. The interface is one of sitting at a spaceship control terminal, driven by an actual keyboard making it feel intensely real. It’s as spot on, with a good setup, as playing Elite with a VR headset and customized joysticks. All of this feeds into the slow, horror film pace of play.
I don’t think any other game I’ve played has ever made me jump back from my desk quite as much as this. The levels are twisty and doors or airlocks can fail at random with relatively little warning, so you have to be careful. I found it best to keep most of the doors on a ship closed off, deciding on ‘staging’ rooms to keep myself from losing more than one drone at a time. Once, using the fuzzed out video feed of one disabled drone, I was able to watch an enemy slowly walk into a room I had opened for him. With one multi-part command I closed him off from my disabled drone and was able to space him and tow my precious scout back to the ship. This game revels in something that only computer games can accomplish so well, everyone who plays will walk away with their own narratives.
Definitely short-sighted.
There is some ‘dialogue’ to the game. Corrupted pieces of occasionally relevant information with which you build a database of the ways in which the universe could have ended. Piecing it together is not unlike going over a conspiracy theorists cork board of delusions and after quite a bit of play, I still have no idea what really happened. I’m not even sure it matters, but at least the self assigned objectives give you something to cling on to, hoping to make it far enough to get an inkling of the catastrophe together. Reading through these is one of the few ‘breather’ moments the game really ever gives you.
Much of the game takes place between levels, as in any survival driven strategy game. Drones have abilities built in, and some number of upgrade parts you have to add for basic functionality. These include generators, sensors of various sorts, weapons and salvaging equipment. You’ll scavenge new parts for your ship and drones from the hulks you board. If you’re lucky you’ll also pick up some fuel and new drones. When you’re really lucky, if you like a ship enough and have safely cleared every area, you can commandeer it for your journey. Their are some basic resources of the world, scrap and fuel. Fuel comes in two parts: propulsive and jump fuel. the former moves you around systems, the latter between them. There are multiple systems in each galaxy & you move between galaxies with jump gates. All of these are scavenged, propulsive fuel is also replenished (by ram scoops?) when moving between systems. Between levels, scrap is used to repair your drones, and their parts. It’s also required for buying new parts from automated trading outposts that have survived past humanity’s end. You’ll find that most repairs are pretty expensive, so keep backup parts and only repair what you have to for survival. For example, I tend to build up an inventory of generators, gathering arms and tow hitches as you can’t properly scavenge without all of them. Much of the game strategy is based on this aspect of never quite having everything you’ll need to survive. You can’t revisit levels, even when you just picked up that one part you needed. As an example: I find myself switching from using stealth, to lures, to room sensors, to motion detectors for detecting hostile movement. These all work, in very different ways, for avoiding being taken out by the hostiles.
Time to upgrade (or fix) my mods!
Learning the strategy, and calm careful approaches needed for this game will take a few hours. Even then, you may have runs cut short early from an unexpected turn. This game does not take it easy on you with a learning curve, outside of the built-in tutorial. You also must be prepared to occasionally be hit with a total oddball, such as an asteroid or losing video feeds while something important goes on. The precise balance of controllable and uncontrollable events will keep you on the edge of your seat. Many enemies are quite hard to predict at first. For example, swarms aren’t picked up by motion sensors, but by the loud buzzing you can hear on a drone’s feed next to their rooms. They can also move through the vents, so the room you’re in might not be as safe as you thought. Aside from this dangerous exploring, most of the game is run from the ship schematic overview, and by using preprogrammed commands to orchestrate drone movement. You can easily give a drone a whole sequence of rooms to scavenge and tell it when to return home. I do wish their where more commands along the lines of “once the drone has left room A, close its door” but the lightweight shell style of scripting works very well in this game. It is extremely robust and well though out. All considered, this game is extremely tense and on edge. It is rare to find a game that so perfectly conveys as sense of never being safe as this. Even save scumming with a force quit will not work on this game, it’ll simply act as if you had undocked, losing you access to the level you left and any drones you left behind. Those drones are pretty cute, with their little whirring movement and sometimes cutesy names. It makes it all the worse when they inevitably get smashed up. My stockholm syndrome cried out each time.
That said, with practice, patience and a freighter full of luck, you will eventually get into the rhythm of the game. On a good run, this means you’ll be able to explore further and further on each run and really make a bond with your drones and ship before they are reduced to dust.
My recommendation is to try this game, and when you do: BE PARANOID
I played this on my Ubuntu LTS / Steam / NVidia 960 machine with a provided download code and a ‘mechanical’ keyboard.
Image & Form announced today that SteamWorld Heist will release worldwide on Steam on June 7th! The price will be $19.99 USD and comes with a 15% launch discount for the first week after release.
On the same day, SteamWorld Heist will also be released for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita in the Americas. The game will be released one day later in Europe. The PlayStation versions will feature cross-buy (buy the game on one platform, get the other one for free).
“The Outsider” DLC pack, which adds new levels, hats, weapons and a playable character, will be available on the day of launch for both Steam and PlayStation for $4.99 USD.
Total War Warhammer is Creative Assemblies newest edition into their long running series of real time strategy games. Warhammer is a solid addition to the Total War catalog, and represents the first non-historical foray by Creative Assembly in their world conquering strategy games. I got am playing this game as a veteran of both Atilla and Rome Total War games, so its safe to expect some bias in the favor of Creative Assembly, that being said, let’s get to the review.
I did love this game, but by no means is Total War Warhammer perfect. With the newest instalment we see great visuals especially with the campaign map itself. Warhammer models are famous for their specific detail, and Create Assembly has really worked hard to bring this level of detail to the individual models. Each unit seems lovingly sculpted with the care and time the most devout tabletop players, emblems stand out, hero units look unique and the whole world feels alive.
The level of detail in the game is stunning
The user interface will be familiar to veteran total war players and easy to understand for newcomers to the series. There haven’t been many UI tweaks to this entry, but the ones that are there are mostly related to magic, new tabs for lore, with videos of each spell in action, and explanations of each lore, are some of the new features.
The addition of magic is well implemented with multiple schools of magic ranging from the lore of death to the lore of metal. On the battlefield you will now see your general as an individual who will be a capable warrior able to singlehandedly take on units of normal infantry. This is quite a change from the previous squishy lords. Its not mostly safe to charge your hero in to a large group of enemies and tie them up in melee combat. Your lord may not win against an entire unit of say heavy cavalry, but he will keep them engaged until you can find something in your army to counter with.
Watching units of flying creature’s crash into your lines as units of trolls and giants tear through your lines is a both an amazing and terrifying sight to behold for the first time. Creative Assembly has done an amazing job of bringing the visceral world of tabletop Warhammer Fantasy to life. You can feel the power of a strong magical spell doing its work as infantry units get tossed aside by a column of fire from the sky. Calvary crashes through ranged missile units, utterly devastating them, and your heroic lord holds the center of your line, his mace swinging back and forth with devastating effect. It’s all very stunning to see.
Stunning visuals are not the only thing this game offers, each of the four playable factions: The Empire, Dwarves, Greenskins, Chaos, and Vampire Counts, all look and feel and play very differently. Despite the difference between the races, anyone who has played the tabletop game will quickly see the similarities between game and tabletop. Each race keeps its most important traits without any one race being too powerful.
Dwarves are very heavily armored and able to absorb enemy charges and beat them back with powerful artillery and ranged units. They excel at defense and have powerful late game artillery that can devastate entire enemy units. Dwaves do not wield magic, instead they have runesmiths who capture powerful magic’s in runes and can release them on command. Dwarves excel at both ranged and melee attacks with a good balance of units and some of the most powerful cost effective artillery in the game.
Empire troops defend a wall in a high tier settlement
The Empire’s infantry and ranged units are not as powerful as some other factions, but they make up for it with powerful cavalry which used well to attack enemy units in the flanks and rear will quickly turn the tide. The empire is strong in magic fielding wizards, of three types Fire, Light and Celestial lores, each bring powerful spells to combat. The empire is in my opinion the most balanced faction, it possesses a decent amount of everything, war machines, cavalry, and monstrous creatures, and while none are devastating alone, together they form the best rounded army in the game.
The vampire counts field hordes of cheap infantry combined with death magic and powerful monstrous infantry. They trade the ability to have ranged units for large amounts of cheap infantry, and some seriously scary monstrous creatures that that can cause Terror in the enemy ranks. Their lords can raise the dead, quickly turning the tide of a battle that may not be going your way. They also get to corrupt the land they currently hold giving them bonuses and doing causing attrition to invading armies.
Chaos functions like a horde armies from the Atilla game where they have no permanent settlements and each horde builds and carries its own building with it. Chaos was a late announcement to the game, and was meant to be the first DLC, but anyone who pre-ordered got them for free. They get chosen warriors of chaos and chaos knights so though infantry and cavalry at higher tiers is very powerful. Chaos wields the magic of Fire, Death, Metal, and have some extremely powerful spells.
The Greenskins have powerful melee infantry and the ability to bring Trolls and giants onto the battlefield, plus once there fightness meter reaches its peak a Waagh army will spawn to aid in further conquests. goblins have the little waagh lore of magic ork shamans have the big waaagh also they get giants and trolls as there top tier units which is just cool.
Each race feels unique and even though there are only so many ways to do infantry and Calvary and ranged units, each race feels separate, but not so much that if you are playing say empire you can’t go and pick up vampire counts.
While Total War Warhammer has been well crafted and implemented it is not free from flaws. One problem I discovered quite quickly is that Empire and Vampire counts have a hard time keeping an economy that can support their armies and allow for new conquests. Few buildings especially for the Vampires add significant amounts of money and units. Meanwhile army upkeep ramps up very quickly. So these two factions will quickly be running either in the red or making very little money a turn making it quite challenging to build new armies.
Next up we have to talk about the AI which has plagued the total war series since the beginning. While the enemy army will for the most part be competent using its ranged units, plugging gaps in their lines, and trying to use units to outflank you, I experienced a bug where very rarely an enemy army will sit in place and eat your artillery shots. With the new focus on lords as individual units a new problem has arisen in that the enemy AI will often run their lord ahead of an advancing army and allow you to either kill him or do very significant damage to him before he has even reached your lines. Lords are way more powerfull than in say Atilla, or Rome, but you still can’t put them against an entire army and expect them to survive. So to say the Ai is more liberal with its generals is a bit of an understatement. This can be easily fixed with patches, and I hope that it will be.
The diplomatic mechanics have been significantly reworked from Rome two, it is now much easier to know where you stand with a faction. Confederating is now a much more useful and doable mechanic than it was in previous games. With this comes a very silly exploit that will hopefully be patched out. If you declare war on a faction that cannot reach you in several turns they will generally sue for peace and offer a sum of gold or whatever your factions variant is, which you will accept of course because you will need the money. Several turns after an ally will ask you to rejoin the war again generally with an offer of a sum of money, you can repeat the cycle over and over to farm gold. Obviously this is a slight issue again hopefully that will be patched and changed in some way.
Next let’s talk settlements. Total War Warhammer keeps in line with Attila and Rome two that the provincial capital has walls and can reach size five. Minor settlements have no walls to start, but, there are defense that can be added to them to give them walls. This is a nice feature, and since they top out at size three.
Settlements
The major issue I have with this is that sieges and city assaults are just plain boring now. If you attack or defend a minor settlement without walls the battle takes place in a normal open battlefield instead of within the confines of the settlement. So gone are the days of your minor settlements using narrow streets and possible city centers on hills with small ramparts to station ranged units. This is a great loss as that helped sieges feel more alive and to give you a chance to overcome terrible odds with clever use of terrain and buildings.
Sieges of provincial capitals have also taken a huge step backwards in that instead of being able to attack from all sides choosing how you will overcome the enemy defenders and cities that generally had at least several defensible positions once you had breached the walls. Now you get one wall to assault two if you are really lucky, towers are only active if one of your units is standing with its influence box. Once the walls are breached you have maybe two or three large streets for the enemy to move down into the city center capture point. Also for some unexplained reason every unit in the game can run up to the enemy walls and pull out ladders and start climbing. Sieges have taken a huge step backwards taking a lot of the fun of it with them. The last issue with settlements comes that all factions cannot take any settlement Dwarves and Orcs can only control the others settlements and Humans and Vampires are the same this is by far one of the worst ideas introduced into total war it limits the gameplay potential as a whole and will kill replay value as the strategies and maneuvers you make game to game will end up being very similar since you are so limited on what settlements you can control.
All things said though Total War Warhammer is a fun game and a fine addition to the series many of the issues above will either be patched out at some point and failing that there has always been a thriving modding community for total war so the people will get what they want one way or the other. The game is beautiful with a lot of potential and the freelc of Britonia and they many other to be announced DLC packs will provide hours of fun for those willing to look past its minor issues. Beautiful with tons of potential I am looking forward to seeing how this game changes and grows as we go forward.
We all knew it would be big, but im not sure that anyone could have predicted that almost 2/3 of the people who played in the free beta would end up paying for the game. Seven million players have played overwatch during this its first week of existence. To put that in perspective the last COD sold a total of 5 million copies, and with in a few weeks its player population had dropped to less than one million.
Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said “Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch—from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who’d never picked up a game like this before—and we’re very grateful for everyone’s incredible passion and enthusiasm, We poured a lot of effort into creating a game—and a new universe—that anyone could enjoy. We’re ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we’re looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come.”
The total number of hours played of the game is already over 100 million as of this writing. I my self have sunk about 40 hours in to the game this week, it has been one of the very few games recently that I have been willing to play on my own. its unique feel and solid shooter mechanics just keep people coming back. I personally also can not wait for competitive mode when I hope find a team to play with in a semi-competitive manner!
Starbreeze Studios the developers behind the popular Payday series have announced a deal with former publisher 505 games that would see Starbreeze acquire the full rights of the Payday franchise in exchange for $30 Million USD of stock.
The next game in the franchise Payday 3 is currently under development as the terms of this deal will see 505 & Starbreeze split revenue from the console versions of Payday 2: Crimwave Edition until their [505’s] marketing / promotion costs have been recouped and Payday 3 released. Revenue generated from the Steam release of Payday 2 will be in the hands of Starbreeze retroactively as of May 1st.
For fans wondering about the horrendous micro transactions that received absolutely piles upon piles of criticism, they’re being removed from all versions of the game. Introduced last October, Payday 2 would present players with locked “safes” that contained skins & stat bonuses but could only be opened with a $2.50 USD drill item. Despite other games using a similar model for cosmetics – most notably Counter Strike: GO – the addition of stat boosters on skins caused an uproar within the community., especially since the developers previously said they would NEVER EVER INTRODUCE MICROTRANSACTIONS.
Now, those nasty microtransactions are gone and Starbreeze has pledged to add new content to Payday 2 for at least the next 18 months.
Check out the “E3 Teaser” released by Starbreeze for Payday 2 below:
It seems like only yesterday that Goat Simulator was born, out of a glitched physics engines a few students made came a game of silliness, licking things, bad physics, and goats. Now Coffee Stain Studios (is that really the name of the developer?) has spawned another expansion. This time its all about space and what a goat can do in space is limitless. Waste of Space lets players visit space today instead of “get old waiting for that other space game you already paid for”. The Expansion will allow players to take crowdfunding in a literal sense by building a crowd to inhabit a new space colony, probably by carrying them to different places against their will. The trailer features a regal voice selling us the idea of a new future in space funded by you, poking fun at the well voiced trailers for kickstarter games that never see the life of day.
The video pokes fun at a lot of different space franchises but front and center is the obvious comparison to the trailer for Star Wars: The force awakens. Of course this is goat sim so it doesnt stop there. There are barbs against Kick Starter, Mass Effect and even Donald Trump with the hashtag #MakeSpaceGreatAgain . The whole thing is perfectly toned for a goat sim expansion.
The expansion for Goat Simulator is already available on Steam for $4.99, and Xbox One gamers eager to test out the game at no cost can do so when Goat Simulator becomes a free title for the month of June.
Well, it was bound to happen. Massive space sim exploration game No Mans Sky, which some people have been waiting for since 2013, has been pushed back again. Kotaku first reported that the games date had been removed from promotional media, then several other sources, now its been confirmed via images from Game Stop.
The coming soon sticker over the old release date
Show of hands who is surprised here? No one? Thought so the studio behind No Mans Sky is TINY, like indie style tiny, but they are working to produce a game whose scale is basically unprecedented in gaming. The game has been hyped since it was revealed back in 2013, seeing extensive coverage everywhere from the Stephen Colbert show to The New Yorker. As of just a few days ago the release was supposed to be June, but now it seems that’s not going to happen. I will continue to hope that this is a delay for polish and not any of the other many reasons it could be. I never mind when a developer says, our game its not quite ready, so we need some time, what I do mind is when politics pushes a game back.
Ubisoft and developer Massive rolled out The Division‘s latest major patch – Version 1.2 – a few days ago and with users finally settling in and logging on, it seems that there are more than a few problems with this latest update. Some bugs appear to be minor and can be fixed with a simple log out/log in while others have made entire characters inaccessible.
One of the most pressing glitches for players who are at the forefront of new content is the inability to sometimes complete matching making for the new incursion (The Division’s version of raids). Players will successfully join together but as soon as the matchmaking process finishes and players begin to spawn others appear to vanish as soon as they enter the mission area.
Here is how AdrianwithaW described this particular glitch on Reddit:
Another problem that one poster has come across is the inability to use skills after using them a number of times during the same encounter. This is actually a problem that has existed in the game since launch and some players have had success mitigating it by cycling through their weapons a couple of times but there is confirmed 100% solution to this particular bug.
Here is a recent description of the inability to use skills bug:
Fan reaction to this latest patch hasn’t been entirely negative. Some fans have praised Massive for the S&D and HVT missions, which allow high level agents to enter areas that they explored during the opening levels of their playing career. The high level Dark Zone areas – DZ25 & 26 – have also received praise from high level players stating that they feel the Dark Zone is finally full of tension and reward, rather than hackers.
Here are magicalmethods in-depth impressions of the latest patch:
The Division Update 1.2 adds a brand new incursion called Clear Sky that is aimed at players who are at least level 30 and is balanced towards a team of 4 people. The hard mode version of Clear Sky was released yesterday, but you’d be hardpressed to know that with all the bug reports floating around the community. This latest update also adds four new gear sets for high level players – Final Measures, Hunter’s Faith, Lone Star and Predator’s Mask. A new category of missions is also added for players who have reached max level and completed all encounters and side missions in a given area – Search & Destroy missions. You can read the exhaustive changes than The Division 1.2 introduces in the lengthy official patch notes.
What do you think about 1.2 and some of the problems agents are facing? Let us know in the comments section.
Square Enix announced today that their mobile title Heavenstrike Rivals is now available for free on Steam. The game was developed as a brand-new IP for mobile platforms by Square Enix and Mediatonic Ltd.
In Heavenstrike Rivals, players enter a war-torn world on the brink of extinction as they embark on an epic adventure full of highly immersive tactical battles – collecting and training over 700 fully animated units along the way.
The game already has over two million players on the mobile version, and the PC version features cross-platform play with the mobile app. The game offers real-time multiplayer battles with players from across the globe as well as regular league battles and special arena tournaments for players to fight their way to the top of the PvP leaderboards rankings.
Features of the game include:
Battles against players around the world in real time in simple, yet deep tactical battles
Collect and train over 700 fully-animated units
Cross-platform play with mobile devices
Embark on an epic quest across Lunnain to save the legendary Seven Sisters
Climb the Sacred League to earn epic rewards
Take part in regular events, raid battles and weekend Arena competitions
Characters designed by Ryoma Ito (FINAL FANTASY TACTICS® ADVANCE) and music by Ryo Yamazaki (FINAL FANTASY XIV®)
