Telltale Games has released the first official trailer for A Crooked Mile, the third episode in its episodic adventure game series, The Wolf Among Us. Please note that this trailer might reveal some things about the game’s storyline – so consider that if you have not played any of them yet.
BURBANK, Calif. – April 1, 2014 – Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment today are releasing Batman™: Arkham Origins Blackgate – Deluxe Edition for digital download on the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system (Americas), Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft, Wii U™ system (Americas) and PC. Developed by Armature Studio, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate – Deluxe Edition enhances the core pillars of the previously released handheld version of the game with high-definition visuals, an all-new map system, new enemy encounters, difficulty levels, and batsuits. Fans can begin downloading the game today on the PlayStation®Network (Americas), Xbox Live Games Store, Nintendo eShop (Americas) and STEAM for $19.99. The game is scheduled for release in Europe and other international territories beginning April 2 on the PS3™, and later in April on the Wii U.
Previously only available for PlayStation®Vita handheld entertainment system and Nintendo 3DS™ handheld system, and created as a companion game to Batman: Arkham Origins, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate – Deluxe Edition features enhanced high-definition 2.5-D graphics and, 5.1 surround sound. Players will be able to guide their way through Blackgate prison with the new navigational system created for this version of the game. In addition, they can suit up with the exclusive Zero Year Batsuit skin which players can unlock by registering for a Warner Bros. ID (WBID) account.
Set three months after Batman: Arkham Origins, Batman is summoned to restore peace and order within the walls of Blackgate Prison. Players will explore the depths of the island penitentiary as Batman investigates and realizes that there is more to the henchman uprising than initially meets the eye.
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate – Deluxe Edition is based on DC Comics’ core Batman license and rated “T” for Teen by the ESRB. Fans can visit www.batmanarkhamorigins.com for more information about the game.
April 1, 2014 — Wargaming today announced the release of the survival tank slasher World of Tanks: The Crayfish. Developed by Wargaming Seattle, the title is now available globally through all Internet browsers.
“This is my next big thing,” said Chris Taylor, General Manager and Creative Director at Wargaming Seattle. “We can’t wait for everyone to finally get their hands on it.”
The release version of World of Tanks: The Crayfish features four original battle arenas and 10 levels of dynamic PvE tank combat. Players are tasked with killing hordes of crayfish that rage across three classes: Small, Medium, and Large.
“I’ve been asked recently why an international company with over 3,000 employees is so slow in presenting new titles and what Chris Taylor and his team are working on in Seattle,” said Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi. “Well, here’s our latest project, and it answers both.”
Next up for the game is the two-player co-op mode that will put a fun twist on the core gameplay. Designed similar to platoons in World of Tanks, it will allow tankers to join forces with friends and develop elaborate tactics together.
Join World of Tanks: The Crayfish:
Prague, Czech Republic, Tuesday April 1st 2014 – Bohemia Interactive, the award-winning creators of the critically acclaimed Arma series and the standalone version of DayZ, are proud to announce Arma 3™ Karts – the first official premium DLC for Arma 3™.
Bring the battle to the race track in the adrenaline-fueled Karts DLC pack for Arma 3™. Featuring the most skill-based discipline in motorsport, Arma 3™ Karts lets you experience the intense thrill of open-wheel racing, while you burn rubber on some of the most iconic licensed circuits on Altis. Feel every bump in the asphalt, tune your driving skills to perfection, and slide into pole position. Be fast, be relentless, pedal to the metal. This is where rivalries are born; this is where the world’s greatest go head-to-head. This is Arma 3™ Karts.
“Since we’re already in the zombie business with DayZ, we felt the next logical expansion would be to take on karting”, said Jay Crowe, Creative Director on Arma 3. “Our sandbox could not be called complete without karts, and thus we set ourselves the goal to recreate this pure form of racing. Welcome to Arma 3’s World of Karts: drive / overtake / win.”
March 31, 2014 — Wargaming today revealed details of Update 1.04 for World of Tanks. Launching the series of massive updates, planned for 2014, 1.04 will enrich World of Tanks gameplay with a brand new 7 vs. 7 combat mode within Random Battles—Labyrinth. The only vehicle available in the upcoming mode will be the German self-propelled gun Karl-Gerät that will be added with Update 1.04 as well.
Tankers will also get an original battle arena, developed specially for Labyrinth, as well as a new medal, awarded for exceptional performance in the new mode.
Learn more on the new combat mode from the latest episode of ASAP.
Activision has released a new gameplay trailer from the upcoming Devastation DLC pack for its popular Call of Duty: Ghosts, which is due out on April 3rd, 2014.
Devastation brings four small to medium-sized Multiplayer maps: Ruins, Behemoth, Collision, and Unearthed — which is a re-imagined version of Dome, the fan-favorite map from Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3.
Devastation also includes the “Ripper,” a brand new tactical 2-in-1 weapon with the unique ability to switch from SMG to AR and back on the fly, in the middle of combat.
The Extinction saga picks up with Episode 2: Mayday. Following the events of Nightfall, players board an abandoned research vessel, in search of answers. Players will face two new alien foes – Seeders, and the 100ft tall “Kraken.” This exciting new chapter comes packed with new weapon mods and paths to explore.
Devastation arrives first, exclusively on Xbox Live on April 3rd, with other platforms to follow.
SanDisk’s line of Extreme II SSDs promise to provide users with lightning fast transfer rates, quiet operation, and low power usage. While many SSD manufacturers promise such feats, sometimes they come up a little short. Thankfully, SanDisk has indeed created an exceptional SSD perfect for use in your PC gaming rig.
Official Specifications
The design of SanDisk’s Extreme II SSD is fairly standard for a solid state disk – measuring 2.75 inches by 3.96 inches and only being about a quarter of an inch thick. When I think back to my first hard drive as a kid – how expensive they were and how physically large (yet small in capacity), it is really impressive to see how storage has evolved over the years. Available in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB versions, you should be able to find one capacity that works for your needs. I was partly hoping we might see larger size drives but I think it’s still a bit more cost prohibitive than consumers prefer.
Installing the SanDisk Extreme II SSD is just like installing any other drive, solid state or platter-based. The drive fits easily into most PC chassis – especially those with 2.5″ drive bays. If you have larger drive bays, you can always pick up a cheap adapter that will allow the SSD to fit into it.
Our testing of the SanDisk Extreme II SSD was done on a custom-built gaming PC featuring an Intel i7 3770 running at 3.5GHz with 16GB of RAM running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. In addition, we tested a SanDisk Extreme SSD II in the 240GB capacity. For our first test, we ran the drive through three iterations of Crystal Disk Mark Default settings benchmark. Here are the results:
Thankfully, the SanDisk Extreme II SSD performs amazingly, as its numbers show, making it just as good or slightly better than its competition. Numbers like this sometimes can be deceiving, however, so I thought it would be a great idea to install some games on it to see how it did. In actual, real-world performance, I was exceptionally pleased with the transfer and read rates of the SanDisk Extreme II SSD – especially after installing my favorite flight simulator, DCS: A-10C Warthog, on it. That game in particular requires a lot of reading from the disk drive as there is a ton of scenery and terrain geometry that is not cached into RAM. The difference was night and day just how much more fluid the play experience was. No longer did I encounter a moment of stutter every ten minutes as the game read from my platter-based HDD – the SSD fixed that without breaking a sweat. If you want to go a bit more traditional with your SSD, you could always install your boot OS to the drive, making start-up times a lot quicker than non-SSD computers.
Overall, the SanDisk Extreme II solid state disk drive is an easy to setup, high rate of return investment into your PC’s day to day performance – both in and out of game. The SanDisk Extreme II SSD retails for a very affordable $150 dollars over at Newegg and is available now. In fact, the prices of these drives are so good right now, you would be hard-pressed not to pick up the 480GB drive!
[easyreview title=”SanDisk Extreme II SSD Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”5″ ]
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This preview of Planetary Annihilation ends an unofficial review/preview theme week for me. Both Windforge and Planetary Annihilation were created, in part at least, with funds from Kickstarter campaigns. While Windforge only brought in about $50,000, Planetary Annihilation has racked in a massive $2.2 million dollars to finish the dream of the developers over at Uber Entertainment. Planetary Annihilation is getting closer and closer to release, but the build I was able to play was still listed as a Gamma build and needed refinement. While I will mention some of the issues and bugs that I encountered while playing the game, please understand that these issues and bugs may very well be fixed even by the next Gamma build, or at least before general release.
Planetary Annihilation is a real time strategy game that can cover an entire galaxy, and not just one map. Readers of this site will know that rts games and I don’t always go hand in hand down a tree lined lane. It’s more like the rts takes me out for a drag over glass laden asphalt streets. So expanding the map to include various planets, moons and asteroids was very difficult for me, but a damn blast in looking at and trying to play. This is what makes Planetary Annihilation unique, the ability to expand your army to outer rim planets, and then bombard the other systems by using massive weapons, or even by launching asteroids. If your enemy has completely entrenched themselves on a planet so that you cannot remove them using conventional forces, then blow up the planet with an asteroid strike.
Moving your armies around a planet works the same as it does with most rts games, click and drag then select with the left mouse button. However, with these types of maps, you have a unique situation to ponder over, what type of terrain the planet is. On some of the planets, land forms can help protect your base from invasion from a certain direction, with other planets, there is no protection from any direction. One of the planets I played on was a created planet, with large canyons through part of it, but created an interesting dynamic in that my enemy could technically invade me from any side at all, since all they had to do was walk their armies around to the other side of the planet to invade. I had to set up my defenses literally in a 360 degree arc and “circle my wagons”.
The actual game play of Planetary Annihilation is fairly generic rts style stuff. You have a commander unit that runs your entire military, and once that commander is defeated, the game is over for you. For resources, you can mine metal or harvest energy through buildings, then build up your defenses, armies, and base by creating troops and buildings. All of this is pulled off flawlessly during the game and feels very intuitive, especially if you have played any other type of rts on the market. Your armies can take to the air, land, sea, or space depending on what theater of war you need to fight in. The planet you are currently on will help determine the type of force you build, a navy is completely useless on a desert planet, and so on.
Currently, Planet Annihilation does not have a campaign to play, so if that’s your thing you may want to watch the development to see if one is forthcoming, but it does offer single player or multi player skirmishes that can occur over an entire galaxy of planets and involve up to 40 players. Planet Annihilation can also be played offline, but you will be missing out on some very cool and massive galactic wars. Another interesting feature of Planetary Annihilation is that there isn’t a cap limit built in for troops, like in other rts games. If you have the materials and energy, you are creating the troop. This allows for some epic armies to be created and sent out to various planets. However, this also causes another issue for me, and that is army management. It was hard enough for me to maintain a single army in Starcraft II, let alone five armies fighting on five different planets, plus my orbital stations and my asteroid flinging unit on the outer rim. I would reach a point to where my army was just too big for me, personally, to manage it, but it was cool to have.
The sound and the art direction right now are heading in the right direction. With the Kickstarter funds, Uber Entertainment was able to get a full orchestra to do the soundtrack, and it sounds very nice. The aesthetic of the game, at first, looked fairly simple to me. Then as the action began, the visuals began to show their true nature, with great looking explosions and massive craters left when something big blows up to really give you a neat looking game. What the game lacks is character, and by that I mean someone to be the face of the franchise or someone to get behind. The armies are all designed to be the same look visually, except for the commander which can have different skins. But all the armies are essentially, mechanoid, with no real difference between them except for color. A little variety in military can go a long way, and the development of characters that the audience can care about can create a new franchise.
Now, onto the issues that I personally had with Planetary Annihilation, and thankfully they were all bugs. First off, the game is absolutely unplayable in full screen, with a 32 bit system and an AMD video card. You just can’t do it, there isn’t a cursor to select anything in the menus when played this way. Thankfully, the game plays just fine in windowed mode, so you can work around it. I also suffered from various slow downs and complete crashes, just getting into the game. The software would completely lock up on me and had to be restarted. Again, this is all playing an unreleased gamma build of the game, and could completely be fixed even at the time of this writing. Uber Entertainment is collection all of these bugs and working to fix them prior to release.
Planetary Annihilation is a massive undertaking for an independent game developer, but with funds from a successful $2.2 million dollar Kickstarter, the game is coming along quite nicely. What is there right now is fun and really interesting to play, and then allowing the community to mod Planetary Annihilation can only mean that there could be some fantastic and unexpected new things in it’s future. Keep your eyes here as we follow Planetary Annihilation into it’s last legs of development.
Snowed In Studios has released their newest creation in Windforge, a side scrolling game that has been described by the developers as “Minecraft meets Contra”. What Windforge really comes out to be is a nice attempt at this hybridization with a great aesthetic, but it’s riddled with flaws and bugs. I really love the look and the feel of Windforge, but the game just ended up being way too frustrating to play due to game ending bugs and just tedious quests that killed the flow of the story. There are a lot of things that are right about Windforge, but one must look long and hard to overcome the other issues of the game.
Story
Windforge takes place on the world of Cordeus, a steampunk style world that is run completely on sky whale oil. Think Dishonored, but with sky whales. The economy of Cordeus is falling apart, mostly due to the complete over harvesting of the planets sky whale population, and the bizarre law that outlaws any research into alternate technology. You create your character to be either a butcher, sailor, prospector or merchant to set out and make your own fortune in Cordeus.
Early in the game, you discover the ancient ruins of another race of beings, the Aetherkin. The Aetherkin knew of alternate power sources and technologies that were not depending on the dwindling supply of sky whale oil, but the pursuit of these technologies have been banned. Ultimately, you set out on a epic quest to bring those technologies to the people of Cordeus, in order to prevent the complete extinction of the sky whales and to bring the economy back to life.
Game Play
Windforge does play like a cross between Contra and Minecraft, with a touch of Diablo or Torchlight thrown in for good measure. The basic premise of the game is ultimate creation or destruction of the environment around you, ala Minecraft or Terreria. You can control and shape your world, including your sky craft. Creating objects or materials in Windforge is very simple, and makes perfect sense. Menus tell you exactly what materials you need to make what, then it is up to you to locate these materials and assemble them. The first crafting quest in Windforge has you searching a mine for materials to patch up your blimp and to add propellers for lift and movement. Unlike other games lately, I felt that Windforge gave me a clear idea as to how to craft objects so that I could do this for the rest of the game.
The Contra part of Windforge comes in clearly during movement and combat when not in your blimp. You control your character by using the WASD keys, while the mouse controls where you aim. You can switch between tools and weapons on the fly by using the number keys, then aim with your mouse and use the buttons to interact or fire that weapon. You are quite easily able to run away from an enemy and fire your pistol in the opposite direction in an attempt to dissuade them from further pursuit. Your character also has a grappling hook, that adds in a little Bionic Commando to your exploration. All of this works very smoothly when it comes to the actual execution, I never once became frustrated with how my character moved or interacted with the world.
Windforge differs from other games of this type by becoming more based on item drops then resource gathering and crafting. While, yes, crafting is in the game, drops from enemies you face will become your bread and butter way of outfitting your character. This will end up giving you much more options to outfit your airship or character then just relying on either a drop system or craft system.
That is about the extent of the good news for Windforge, so let’s go ahead and begin on what is wrong with the game. Let’s start off with traveling around the world itself. The world is divided up into six or so parts, each with their own load times. The problem I have with that, is that it completely takes one out of the interactivity of the world. I will forever compare games that have loading times to move from one zone to the other to World of Warcraft, where it was absolutely possible to travel from one end of Kalimdor to the other without a single loading screen. It may be unrealistic on my part, but loading screens in worlds now just feels out of place.
Another huge issue I had was that the game just became tedious. The Aetherkin temples were devoid of anything interesting and most quests just felt like I was grinding for levels or items. The story itself just seems to get bogged down with no direction or idea on where it wants to go. And that is, if the game runs right. Windforge is buggy, to say the least. Complete save files have become randomly corrupted and my whole game and to be restarted from the beginning, twice. I cannot, ever, recommend to anyone a game that has these type of game ending bugs. It just isn’t excusable.
Aesthetics
Windforge has a very unique and beautiful aesthetic to the world, and the characters that populate it. Snowed In Games decided to go a different direction with their visuals and, unlike Terreria and Minecraft, went with a cleaner, less 8 bit art style. I must say, that the game really has a very cool look to it, with the way the land appears, the look of the airships, and even the design of the sky whales. The music for Windforge also really helps in creating this unique aesthetic. There isn’t any type of voice over work, so all dialogue is completed through text boxes. I was really impressed with the direction of both the visuals and music design for Windforge, it is just too bad that the game suffered so much from bugs and glitches.
Final Thoughts
Windforge was a valiant attempt by Snowed In Studios to create a creative game that had a decent drop type system and interesting combat. Windforge can be described as part Minecraft, part Contra, and part Diablo in its game play systems, with a very unique and gorgeous world to play in. However, game ending bugs and a tedious quest system really brings Windforge out of the realm of a solid, good game into something a little more mediocre and hard to recommend. Windforge is available now through Steam.
[easyreview title=”Windforge Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”2″ ]
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After a very extended break from Diablo III, and a feeling of lingering disappointment in the longevity of the title, I have returned to reintroduce demons and angels into my life. Given that I originally reviewed the title, it is only fitting that I give it another go for the release of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls expansion pack. First off, my original review was not very hard on the game, mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of its issues were presented at endgame, and revolved around the auction house. If I had gone back for a second review, post-leveling, I would have painted a much more bleak picture of the new world of Sanctuary – a world filled with poor uninspired items, abysmal drop rates to support the auction house, an unbalanced and untested final playmode, and more. Given all that, you can imagine my skepticism when this expansion was announced – many months after everyone I know had stopped playing the title.
You can find my original review here, for those interested in prefacing this review with some history:
http://gamingshogun.com/2012/05/30/diablo-iii-review-pc/
Now on to Reaper of Souls, and on to what is, in my humble opinion, an absolute near-perfect redemption of the title. Gone are the days of uninspired gameplay systems. Gone are the days of uninteresting loot drops with frequency designed around playing the auction house instead of bashing demons. Gone are the days of unbalanced classes, with limited effective skill loadouts and homogenized gameplay.
Reaper of Souls is downright BADASS and boatloads of fun. There, I said it.
It is clear that the developers went back to the drawing board on this expansion, ripping the guts (along with both auction houses) right out of the game and making killing demons and collecting loot fun again. They even seemed to have smoothed out the engine in the process, eliminating the bouts of micro-stuttering and sluggishness, leaving smooth-as-glass gameplay remaining. There are a few exceptions to this, such as specific areas of act 3 and the new act 5 where fire and smoke effects cause a bit of performance loss on all systems. Outside of this though, the game feels far more slick and responsive than ever. The classes have been re-balanced thoroughly, and though there are bound to be things that are too strong or too weak still, many more build variations are viable in this new Sanctuary. The Paragon end-game leveling system is far better, allowing for a player to continue to level up and improve attributes across all characters on their account seemingly forever (no Paragon level cap, and levels are account-wide now).
The addition of more useful stats, and the removal or readjustment of bad ones, is also of note, as well as some additional monster affix abilities that deepen the type of elite packs you can encounter when exploring. Music in the new Act 5 is extremely satisfying, at many times subtle yet just creepy enough, and the atmosphere of the new zones is dark, foreboding, and ominous in a way that a good Castlevania title or a good Resident Evil title might grab you. The story picks up where the previous one left off, with a fallen angel named Malthael deciding that he would take matters of the eternal struggle between the angels and demons of Sanctuary into his own hands. Though very polished, the story is just to wet your appetite for Adventure Mode and Nephalem Rifts, the true new gameplay focus of this expansion. No longer are you confined to a single act within a game – you can travel the entirety of act 1-5 through any waypoints, and explore zones marked with quests to gain experience, gold, and loot caches (which spill out random items in glorious fashion). While doing this, you will collect items which can be used to active Nephalem Rifts, randomized zones of between 1 and 10 maps that can be of any tileset from the game, with any monster combinations from the game. TRUE RANDOMIZATION! Some of the maps I have encountered were literally littered every 10 feet with elite packs, leading to total mayhem.
Blizzard has recently announced that they will be adding “Seasons” to the game (similar to ladders from Diablo II), as well as some form of scaling Nephalem Rifts with leader boards for progress potentially. This should be coming in the first major patch to the expansion, and shows a commitment to continue to grow it – despite it being a 40$ game with no continued monetization. This harkens back to the days of Warcraft 3, Diablo II, and the like, and makes me excited to continue to play this now GREAT title and see what Blizzard has in store for it. All-in-all, I cannot recommend a revisit to this title enough for ARPG fans out there. I know the original launch burned many of us. I know many will scoff and continue to put time into Path of Exile, Torchlight 2, and other titles in the genre – content to write this one off and remember all the bad things about its launch. Please, PLEASE, do your self a favor and give it another chance. It might just be the best 40 bucks you spend this year, or for some time to come.
Can’t write any more. Must play more Reaper of Souls…
[easyreview title=”Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”5″ ]
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