TopWare Interactive has released some new screenshots from their upcoming Two Worlds 2 expansion, Pirates of the Flying Fortress. The expansion will be released this September.
Archive - 2011
It’s been a couple years since I sat down to play a traditional role-playing game. I’ve dabbled in the Fallout series (if you can call 102 hours in Fallout 3 “dabbling”). But it’s been quite some time since I took on the adventure of an old standard style of magic, goblins, and broadswords. In a lot of ways, Dungeon Siege III feels familiar but it has evolved enough that it still held a lot of surprises for me. We have the classic character classes that include your barbarian, magician, archer, and combo characters. Then we have some new twists on the genre that include steampunk elements and multiplayer function. Dungeon Siege III is the first of the title series available on the console platforms, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Getting What I Expected
Dungeon Siege III picks up in the same realm as its PC predecessors but set several hundred years later. When I first started playing, I got the impression that the game picked up where Dungeon Siege II left off but this isn’t the case. The game play jumps right into the aftermath of an ambush that wiped out your fellow Legionaires when you meet your first companion. The companion AI is pretty well run. It heals and revives the player when needed, attacks are constant and diverse so the action always looks pretty cool, and the companion retrieves any gold dropped by enemies in battle.
Going into towns and taking part in side quests is a lot of fun in Dungeon Siege III. The voice acting is fun and the animation is well done. Each side quests tells a interesting or compelling story that you usually don’t feel like you’re running tedious errands. Even though a lot of them don’t do much to promote the main storyline, I accepted each side quest I encountered because they always offered a unique challenge that I wouldn’t find in the main plot.
I found the merchants much less appealing in this game. This is mainly due to the over-abundance of items found in battle or in the endless treasure chests. More often than not, I found my inventory full and unable to pick up more swag because most battles yield 2-3 weapons or armor. While having an abundance of varied items allows the player to fully customize their player according to their unique play style, I found this to be more of a hindrance than a benefit. More than anything, having a surplus of items takes away from the fun of trying to search for that elite weapon or the superior armor. These items certainly exist in the game and they stand out above the rest of your inventory but by the time I found them, I stopped caring.
On the other hand, character development is quite a treat. Each character can learn 9 abilities as they level up and then customize those abilities by assigning proficiency points to make each player individual. The player can make an attack feed hit points back to the character or create splash damage that affects surrounding enemies. A healing spell can heal faster or it can cause nearby enemies to take on a slowing effect.
Enemies and bosses are mostly your standard fare; goblins, mercenaries, spiders, and ogres. Bosses tend to be over-sized versions of whatever you played in the level leading up to the big battle. There are several stand-out bosses that provide a much bigger challenge, having to destroy different components or elements in the battle arena before you can damage the main boss. This really didn’t offer anything new or novel but there were enough challenges that it made the game play enjoyable.
What I Didn’t Expect
Though most of the game play elements, enemies, and leveling are completely standard according to RPG cannon, Dungeon Siege III still held plenty of surprises. The most jarring for me was the sudden invasion of steampunk into the story. For the unaware, “Steampunk” is a term that refers to a sort of anachronistic combination of old Victorian fashion and evolved clockwork machines that are steam powered. After many hours of traditional story and gaming, I left a realm of magic and beasts of the forest for battle with automatons with a backdrop of giant gears. Some players might find this shift as a welcome change and that it provides an interesting addition to the game. Personally, I found it jarring and out of place. The storyline was still fun and compelling but I couldn’t stop thinking how weird and out of place the whole thing felt to me. I was glad to finally finish the levels and move past that segment of the game.
The character interactions with NPC’s were enjoyable to take part in but the conversation is relatively limited. Usually, you have the four reply choices and unless you flatly refuse to take part in the side quest or conversation, the story rolls through to the next event and you gain superfluous influence over your companion. Though gaining influence seems like a good thing to gain in the story, I never really saw how it benefits the game play in the least.
What stood out as the biggest improvement over other RPG’s I’ve played was how seamless the camera is. There are two basic modes; elevated view and a lower view that is just a few feet above and behind your hero. Regardless of the view, the camera adjusted quickly and smoothly to structural elements so your view was never impeded. The angle moved accordingly for tight corners and cluttered areas without pulling in too tight or trying to push through anything awkwardly.
At The End Of The Day
Dungeon Siege III is a pretty great game. It’s not breaking any real ground and it’s not going to redefine a genre. But for the RPG gamer who loves spells, swords, and spiders, it’s a blast. The characters are engaging and the action is swift. The spells are incredibly well animated which makes the development of new spells that much more exciting. This is a safe buy for a fan of role-playing games.
In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the latest title from Blue Moon Studios, you take the wheel as both the Autobots and Decepticons, racing toward the ultimate showdown featured in this summers big budget explosionfest courtesy of Michael Bay. Does the game live up to the thrills of the movie or is it just another in a long line of mediocre tie-in releases? Find out our review!
I’m going to get this out of the way early. Dark of the Moon is not a good game. I’ve said it and I’m not taking it back.
I grew up with the Transformers as a child of the eighties, I’m almost thirty and I still occasionally buy a Transformers toy (ssh! Don’t tell my girlfriend!), and I’ve managed to turn off most of my brain to take enjoyment out of the films. I am a die-hard Transformers fan and that made it so much harder for me to feel disappointed at this title, especially given the pedigree Blue Moon has established with the excellent Transformers: War for Cybertron.
With the roadmap laid out for them courtesy of War for Cybertron, a solid game engine and a full games worth of assets to fall back on, you’d think that Blue Moon would have a solid springboard to make a stand out movie based game. Instead what we are given is little more than the previous game’s engine wrapped up in a lackluster shell.
The story of the game follows the lead up to the events of the film. As the Autobots you are investigating the Decepticons activities on Earth, uncovering relic technology to bring forth an army to enslave humanity. As the you are charged with tapping into human communications and guarding your plot from the Autobots. While it could have been interesting to choose a side and character to play as, instead you switch characters on a per level basis, each level taking advantage of a particular character’s strengths. Halfway through the game you change sides from Autobot to Decepticon, stripping away any chance one would have of becoming invested in the plot.
The level design is essentially a series of corridors loosely populated with generic enemies. There is little to no variation on the challenges faced which is extremely disappointing. I found myself quite bored an hour or so into the game when I realized this was going to be nothing more than running from room to room spamming enemies with missiles. No challenge, no strategy, no real hook to keep you interested in the gameplay.
It would have been interesting to be able to choose your own character since you can see that there was at least some thought put into differentiating how the different characters would play. For instance, Bumblebee is a very straightforward infantry type while Ironhide plays like a tank and Mirage is suited towards much stealthier gameplay, especially with his cloak and melee combat abilities.
What we get instead is a game that wants you, it seems, to play almost exclusively in your vehicle mode. When you shift to vehicle form you are now able to take much more damage and your unlimited artillery deals out an unbelievable amount of punishment compared to your robot form. With very few instances where you actually need to use your robot form for some mild platforming, I found this to be a game that felt almost like a cheap Twisted Metal rip off.
On top of an already broken gameplay experience, Dark of The Moon adds boring, flat textures, hokey talking head FMV cutscenes and horribly placed mid level load times. The only standout piece to this game is the multiplayer, lifted almost straight from War for Cybertron but adding nothing new to the mix.
Save your sixty dollars here. It is much better spent on taking your significant other to see the movie in some of the best 3D work since Avatar. I hate trashing a game, but there is no excuse for such a short and broken piece of work as Dark of the Moon.
When I first started playing Red Faction: Armageddon I was a little confused. Wait I am supposed to take a hammer and smash a wall? Ok…BOOM goes the wall. Pretty darn cool. So for a while I went around all smashy smashy. Well what do you know, this game rewards you for smashing everything in sight, smashy smashy smashy. And boy do I wield a mean hammer! Thor eat your heart out. Let’s try the other weapons, not bad there either. Then along came monsters and I got a little nervous. Heck there I was following a trail of very ugly corpses to get here, this was going to be creepy and nasty. Only it isn’t really, the beasts, though creepy looking, are all the colors of the rainbow and when I start swinging my hammer the walls and heaven above thunder and quake. If I miss the beasts I might hit a pillar, then they get crushed by debris. Nice! They start attacking in great numbers causing me a harder time but as long as I have a good working concept of cover and don’t try to charge through every fray I move up through the levels fast and fun, though without a lot of fear maybe partially because of the fact that it is a third person shooter. I think a lot of it has to do with amazing weapons and the plentiful ammo. It just kind of renders the enemies inferior and I feel like a juggernaut as I tear through them over and over again, varying it up, finding what works best for each particular weapon but I just keep moving along, collecting corpses and upgrading attacks. There is a fun, large variety to choose from but in the end it really comes down to one. the Magnet Gun.
Once the Magnet Gun came into play I started clearing levels using just it and my hammer. All the other weapons remained on full ammo as I went through and beat everything in the distance with buildings, yes I threw whole buildings at the aliens and watched them smashed against cave walls, then took the aliens corpse and threw it at another alien. Some may try to compare it to an energy grapple gun in another game but this is both harder to control and much more amazingly destructive. In that one you had to grab a piece of metal or an enemy’s body part, something small, and hurl it at something else with sometimes with a weapons precision. With the Magnet Gun however, you pick what to pull and where to anchor it. Say you pick a 4 story metal walkway and pick a single enemy and suddenly a whole walkway is smashing into it. I even forgot about the hammer at one point and threw various buildings own walls at each other from the inside like an implosion. I would throw the base of the tower into the top of it crushing it like a can. I could also shoot an enemy then shoot a beam high in the caves and cause it to go flying through the air like a rag doll and crush its head on the beam. When all wreckage was on the floor I would sometimes take the corpses and slam them against a steel wall. Just because I could and because in a sick way it was kind of funny.
There are a few other vehicles you get to use, such as a mech walker, a spider tank and a compact flyer. The mech walker and spider tank are pretty dang impressive as long as, once again, you take your time and don’t rush into the middle of situations. They are practically invincible and can do massive amounts of damage and destruction as you move along with them. Their unlimited ammo also makes them fun for just shooting and blowing up every single scrap in sight. The flyer is a little different story, the rockets are outstanding but slow to re-power, the gun is a little weak and the armor is downright weak. I came really close… ok I can swallow my pride and state that I got killed in it a lot. Most of the game takes place in tunnels or caves which means you just follow the path in front of you, one way in, one way out. If you try to backtrack it considers it desertion of mission and kills you. In the case of the flyer you are in an extremely tight tunnel, very much a Matrix-like feel to the tunnel and the flying, and enemies blast the crud out of you with little room for maneuverability. This was probably the most painful part of the game to work through and unlike your godlike fighting status throughout the rest of the game you feel like a fish getting shot in a barrel. Even when you are a fish in a barrel you are a graphically great looking fish, the visuals are incredibly crisp, the sound is excellent and the destruction shows amazing detail in every single piece of debris.
Last Call:
This game is an absolute blast. I guess I was expecting more of a survival horror and this game falls somewhere between Dead Space 2 and Halo, which when you think about it is truly not bad company to be keeping. The creatures are scarier than Halo but not as creepy as Dead Space 2, the weapon variety is actually better than either and the enemy toughness falls somewhere in between the two. The key is this game has massive destruction capabilities and provides the perfect weapons to destroy just about everything in sight. You get your hammer for smashing through walls and even the floor if the doors or the stairs sound boring and they have the Magnet Gun which is almost like a wrecking ball in it’s destructive nature and takes your damage possibilities to the limits only of your imagination. Honestly this game, partially because of the quirky dialogue and mostly the damage system, doesn’t take itself as serious as the other two and is mostly about giving you big guns, fun targets and letting you destroy the world. There are even special game modes such as Ruin which it literally just designed to destroy everything in sight and four person co-op multiplayer where you get to see what happens with four Magnet Guns and hammers getting wielded at the same time. Talk about destruction and chaos! This is the part where I have to decide whether or not I would recommend buying this game. Is it just a stamp of another that you might already have? I think you have probably already figured out that I think it is a game of it’s own, designed with fun destruction in mind so that it doesn’t take itself quite as serious as some other games in the genre. The game has over 10 hours of playthrough just on campaign mode if you play through once, and then there are achievements to be had and different weapon combinations to be tried and that is without even bringing the multiplayer mode into consideration which can be as different as the players who play it. Red Faction: Armageddon is totally worth its price.
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2033 will not be a good year for human beings if Metro 2033 has captured our future right, but it is a good time for gaming. Based on the 2003 (get the year?) book of the same title by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 is set in a bleak underground world beneath a frozen wasteland that was once a thriving city and takes us to the dark edges of survival where every bit of light is welcome and almost everything that goes bump in the dark wants you dead. Though it mostly takes place in poorly lit tunnels where corpses abound, the game never really seems to repeat the same scenery and for such a bleak environment it is very rich in detail, every section tells a story even if it is not the one you are traveling through. You may stumble upon the corpse of a apocalypse time soldier and by the destruction around him and the blood smears on the ground you can figure out how he died even though he has become nothing more to you than an ammo bucket. The game is incredibly rich in such details, visually and audibly, making it quickly immersive especially if you find yourself like I was on an addicted marathon play of it through the night. The darkness is not just darkness, it is danger and oppressive doom and in every shadow you may find a reward in the form of a cache of weapons or you may have something knocking you on your back and chomping at your neck trying to tear it out. It has lots of jump factors but doesn’t just rely on them. The mutants though very canine like will sometimes stand erect on their hind legs and look at you and let out a long woeful wail. After which mutant beasts descent on you from all directions.
The game isn’t all doom though there isn’t much that doesn’t have gloom. There are sparks in the dark in the form of soldiers, like yourself, and others who still hold out hope for humanity winning. More often than not you will encounter what you would expect to see in such an environment, the mutants truly aren’t mankind’s only enemy. There are those who want to rule, warring factions who can’t give up their grudges just because they have a common enemy, those who prey upon others in times of disaster, all the bad elements of mankind that we would expect to rear their ugly heads in our greatest times of need. This game provides them all, well created and very believably, almost sadly believable and they prove obstacles on your journey as well. Without giving away the story too much your journey could almost seem a bit simple for what trials you have to endure but they show the character of the character you are playing and proves to be a value of their own.
Resources are very scarce in the game so weapon upgrades and ammo are cherished and sometimes used sparingly. There were a few times where I found myself relying on my knife rather than my gun in some dangerous battle because I knew something nastier was around the corner and I needed to make every round count. Ammo is so valuable that it is currency in the game, the pre-apocalyptic military grade ammo is the coin of the land so when you get it you have to decide do you buy a weapon upgrade or more of the inferior mutant day ammo or is your survival in this situation dependent on some well placed shots with some good rounds? It is a choice you have to make throughout the game and you definitely want to not take it lightly. Use up too much of the better ammo and you could find yourself wishing you had it when some scavenger in one of the few lit and populated train stations, the only bastion of civilization left, offers you a shiny item for the military ammo you have left. Another tip I learned the hard way, check all the scavengers in these hubs before you purchase, you may be excited to see new weapons to be had, but sometimes you might find something to provide light in the dark of the tunnel.
Since ammo is so valuable and scarce sometimes avoiding the conflict all together is the best way to go, though usually not the only way. The game is good about giving you options on how to get past situations. Generally what it does is present you with a situation such as a bunch of guards sitting around listening to their commander speak. You are watching from the dark and all the choices on how to proceed is up to you. You can try to cling to the ever present shadows and try to slip down the stairs to one side. You could try to take up a offensive position and start tearing them apart. You can take a defensive position and pick them off as they separate after the meeting. You can try walking past them and hope to get back into the shadows before they see you. Literally all these options are available to you and there is no wrong choice, some are more difficult than others, but they are all up to you. This freedom to clear obstacles is one of the most addictive parts of the game and had me playing the same sections over and over just curious how each scenario might play out. I wasn’t alone in my fascination of it either, the OnLive system has a feature called Arena in which people can spectate on other player’s games to see if they like it or to cheer or jeer them on. During the hours I played Metro 2033 I don’t think a single minute went by (no exaggeration) where I didn’t have a spectator watching the game and most of the ones that left wound up coming back to watch some more. The game isn’t just addictive to play it is also addictive to watch.
Few games are absolutely perfect and this one had it’s occasional issues. Sometimes with the animation you couldn’t tell something was dead already and so wasted a few extra shots of ammo though this might have been intentional. Melee combat can be awkward with your swipes appearing to land but missing entirely or the enemy walking right through you to suddenly be behind you even if you are in a dead end with no side to side movement room which in a first person game in particular can be frustrating when you find yourself trying to fight something basically underneath you. For the most part though these issues are very easy to overlook.
Last Call:
Metro 2033 paints a dark future for mankind with little sparks of light traveling through it though not all of them with bright intentions. The atmosphere is immersive and addictive, the gameplay mechanics and situations are extremely enthralling. I picked this game for the little bit of talk I had heard about it before it came out and I am extremely glad I did. It has replayability due to the great number of possibilities in each scenario and each play through will be over 10 hours. I think this game might be one of the best plays of the year and I know it is probably one of the best stories, heck I plan to order the book now. Now if they would only make a video game based on World War Z…
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This is, perhaps, one of the most moving videos I have ever seen of the cosmos around our planet, taken from our planet – Victoria, Australia, to be exact. Alex Cherney recorded 31 hours of footage and it took 1.5 years to process and complete for your viewing enjoyment. You can find out more on his official Vimeo page.
Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.
Via Gizmodo
Electronic Arts has released a new trailer featuring the newly-released Wake Island map for Battlefield Heroes. The game is celebrating its 2nd anniversary and is available on the Windows PC platform.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced that the Windows 7 Phone version of its Blizzard Mobile Authenticator application is now free. The app is also available on Android, Blackberry, and iOS platforms.
Hi all,
We wanted to share with you and your readers that the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator is now available as a free download for Windows Phone 7 devices.
The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator provides a one-time password that you use in addition to your regular account name and password when you log in to a Battle.net account to play World of Warcraft or StarCraft II.
Versions for other mobile devices are also available for download here, or you can purchase a physical Battle.net Authenticator from the online Blizzard Store. Visit the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator FAQ for more information.
For additional account security advice, check out our Account Security page.
Cheers,
The Blizzard PR Team
Electronic Arts and Criterion have released a new trailer for their XBLA and PSN racer, Burnout CRASH!. The game is due out this Fall and will feature three game modes – including EA’s first Kinect-specific mode allowing players to use gesture-control.
Bethesda Studios has announced it is producing Dishonored, an upcoming first-person action title being developed by Arkane Studios (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic). Not much is known publicly about the game, save that is being developed on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC platforms for a 2012 release.
“At Arkane we have a passion for creating deep, immersive game experiences,” said Colantonio. “To be able to finally share details of our project is both extremely exciting and satisfying.”
Additionally, Game Informer’s August issue will feature the first preview of the game as well as have an exclusive cover featuring concept art from the title.
