Monthly Archives: August 2014

War Thunder: Ground Forces Open Beta Review

By Jonar Isip (Minstryl)

 

WarThunderGround1

Artillery rounds explode into the foliage of a battle ground as two tanks on either side of the fight inch their turrets toward their intended target, their movement undeterred by the destruction around them. They can’t be distracted – they would die if they allowed that to happen. Regardless, one tank finds their mark faster than the other, unleashing its payload right through the driver’s slit of the enemy tank, killing the crew instantly. As the victorious tank commander views the burning husk of his foe he comes to realize that, in the midst of this dance with the opponent, his tank had been out in the open – his crew and vehicle are sitting ducks. Then, before the commander can give the order to move out, he spots another tank.

 

This one had been watching. This one had its gun trained at its mark. This one was ready to avenge.

 

WarThunderGround2

Roll Out the Thunder

Ground Forces is an extension of the air combat game War Thunder, by Gaijin Entertainment. The above scenario is something that has happened to me on my playthroughs in the open beta. Well, it isn’t quite that dramatic, but the relatively slower pace of the game, due to its skew towards realism, helps to create situations like that. You can get the sense of that realism as you head into battle.

 

 

Mission Briefing

But even before you play, the game invokes a sense of authenticity. Little tidbits of historical information show up on loading screens. Tanks are separated by country of origin and are designed to look like their real life counterparts. Even the sepia tone photos that accompany each unit card were designed to look like they were taken from a long gone era.

WarThunderGround3

Even if you ignore these details, you will notice that there are a lot of tanks to choose from. The menu where you select units also serve as a tech tree of sorts: you play a tank in one branch, and eventually you will earn enough to move up to the next tier of tank in that branch. Once you’ve earned enough research points to unlock a weapon of treaded destruction, you can buy it with currency, both earned in game and through cold hard cash.

 

But before any of that, you start out with a fairly weak tank. And, well, let’s just say that things get worse before they get better.

 

WarThunderGround4

Into the Fray

You will take your wimpy tank into “Arcade,” “Realistic,” and “Simulator” battles. These choices affect things like spawn points and how forgiving damage is to your combat effectiveness. Even if you play the seemingly more forgiving “Arcade” mode, you will have a hard time if you are not careful. Your tank will move slowly as it climbs hills and or treads rougher terrain. Should you run into a burly tree at high speed you can damage your treads, which will affect your movement speed or completely disable it altogether. This is because the game leans more toward the simulation end of things, where even the slightest compromise to your vehicle can greatly affect how your tank controls. In Ground Forces, caution is the word of the day.

WarThunderGround5

Because your tank is so fragile, you have to practice tactical maneuvering and targeting. You can’t just rush in, turrets blazing and treads tearing up the dirt, since it’s easy for your starter tank to get one-shotted into oblivion before you get anywhere near the opposing force. Instead, I found that the optimal playstyle is to stay behind the lines, perhaps barely cresting a hill, letting your beefier teammates trade hits with the enemy while you line up that perfect long range shot to kill a weakened or unassuming enemy, earning those research points and lion marks you need in order to buy that better tank.

 

And maybe, after that fifth tank kill, you’ll hope that you finally earned enough research points. Or maybe you’ll say “screw it” and roll into the chaos. I’ve found myself doing this a few times, and though my survivability dropped by quite a bit, it was a break from the slow, methodical play that I was doing earlier. Heck, sometimes I was able to land a killing shot while on the move anyway.

 

 

WarThunderGround6

The Sight and Sound of War

Whether you have been benched for the match or are in the thick of the fighting, you may run the risk of looking around and taking in the carnage. While this isn’t the best looking game, what it does with its looks is commendable. Care has been taken to render the tanks with detail. I know that I appreciated the fact that I was able to tell the difference between a German tank and my Russian comrades based on how much more angular their tanks were compared to ours. The visuals also impress when tanks are on the move: treads roll convincingly and small machine guns jut out at the sides like antennas. Fire the main gun and the screen shakes, emitting the sense of power that these machines are known for.

WarThunderGround18

That shaky screen is also accompanied by the loud explosion of gunpowder along with the clank and ping of metal as your tank resists the force of its launched ordnance. Treads and their wheels creak. The engines that power the tanks sputter and rumble as you lumber along. The sound design is good.

 

 

About the Planes…

There is good reason that Ground Forces is not its own separate piece of software – it’s because of the potential for ground and air combat: tanks duking it out on hillsides while planes dogfight overhead.

 

I say potential because currently it’s not fully baked and has gone through changes over the course of the beta. When I first logged in, I saw a couple of dogfights. I even got bombed to smithereens by one of the enemy planes. However, by the time I decided to try for the skies, I couldn’t fly my plane near the ground battle because of NPC anti-aircraft guns. And now, as of the time of this writing, the feature has been removed, with the promise of bringing it back at a later date.

WarThunderGround13

For what it’s worth, I hope that they iron out all the kinks and allow the planes to fly over the tanks again. I also hope that they find a way to balance the gameplay for these combined forces. If they pull this off, then simultaneous plane and tank combat would be one of Warthunder’s best selling points.

 

 

WarThunderGround8

Mission Debrief

I’ve had a good experience with the War Thunder: Ground Forces open beta. The game’s push for authenticity ensures that combat is generally slow (cause, you know, tanks), but also tactical. You can make your way through the game without plunking down cash, though, like most games with this business model, you can speed up your progress if you do. Overall, it’s a fun diversion, and I would recommend that you at least try it out.

 

And, while you’re at it, try out the planes too – they’re pretty cool.

 

Rating: Great

Cabal II: Now supporting the Oculus Rift

Caball II

ESTsoft Inc., the North American based publishing arm of ESTsoft Corp., developer of the highly acclaimed MMORPG, CABAL Online, has announced support of the Oculus Rift VR platform for its upcoming groundbreaking flagship title, CABAL II.

With this announcement, ESTsoft’s CABAL II has become the first commercial MMORPG to support Oculus VR’s immersive head-mounted display.

The ‘Oculus Rift’ is a revolutionary piece of hardware created by Oculus VR (a California based startup recently acquired by Facebook) in the form of a head-mounted display capable of generating an immersive virtual reality experience for the player. Once support is available (scheduled for August of 2014 for the Korean language version of CABAL II), the player will simply enable the “Oculus Rift” option within CABAL II to experience the game in breathtaking virtual reality.

An ESTsoft source has revealed that “Oculus Rift support has been included to enable players to further immerse themselves into the stunning graphical world of CABAL II.” The source also added “Constant updates and enhancements are scheduled in the future to realize the full potential of this technology, including a specialized control-UI specifically for the Oculus Rift. This will provide a more realistic and seamlessly immersive play experience.”

For more info, visit http://www.estgames.com/en

New cloud-based service coming to Stardock game titles

Stardock

Stardock announced today the addition of Adrian Luff as its new director of platform architecture. Luff, who oversaw Battle.net’s growth from a single PC to a global network of thousands of systems during his 17-year tenure at Blizzard Entertainment, is leading Stardock’s move into next-gen connected gaming, currently codenamed Project Tachyon.

“Stardock has a long legacy of innovating from the ground up and this is a fantastic opportunity to continue that tradition,” said Luff, who also architected and built World of Warcraft’s launch infrastructure. “Cloud-based computing lets us do things that used to only be possible for the biggest-budget games – now we don’t have to fly around the world and spend millions of dollars setting up hardware like I’ve done in the past.”

Luff is responsible for the rollout of Project Tachyon, which will manage the online infrastructure to provide the meta-game experience for Stardock games. Unlike similar services, Project Tachyon will exist entirely in the cloud – meaning that Stardock can scale its capabilities to demand in real time. In addition, for PC gamers, Tachyon is expected to make use of Valve’s Steamworks where possible.

“With Tachyon, we don’t want to create yet another social network that gamers have to sign into,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “On each platform Tachyon resides on, it’ll use that platform’s inherent features. For example, on the PC, that means Steamworks. Tachyon is about giving players new ways to enjoy Stardock games, such as integrated ladders, seamless matchmaking, or even data mining shared ship designs for game AI to make use of.”

Upcoming Stardock games including Galactic Civilizations III, Mohawk Games’ Offworld Trading Company, and Oxide Games’ unannounced title using the Nitrous engine will all use Project Tachyon in some capacity. The first public-facing rollout of Project Tachyon will come in early 2015.

For more info, visit www.stardock.com

Moonrise: New mobile RPG by Kabam

Moonrise

Kabam, the leader in the western world for free-to-play games for traditional players, today announced it is working with Undead Labs to develop Moonrise, a brand new role playing game (RPG) for mobile devices.

This deal marks the first time the two companies have jointly worked on a game. Kabam is a global leader in the free-to-play and mobile games space creating such durable franchises as Kingdom of Camelot, Dragons of Atlantis, and The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth each generating more than $100 million in revenue. Undead Labs is the creator of State of Decay, the innovative zombie survival-fantasy game that was the fastest selling original game in Xbox Live Arcade history, and is now among the top sellers of all time on that platform.

“We are thrilled to partner with Undead Labs. They are a veteran team that has worked on some of the greatest game franchises of all time,” said Aaron Loeb, senior vice president of Kabam’s North American Studios. “Their new creation, Moonrise, will bring a truly next generation mobile experience to gamers around the world.”

Seattle-based Undead Labs was founded by games industry veteran Jeff Strain, whose career in games includes work at Blizzard Entertainment programming for StarCraft and Diablo, as well as forming the team that kicked off development of World of Warcraft. Following that, Strain co-founded ArenaNet, where he was programmer and executive producer for the Guild Wars franchise, which went on to sell more than six million units.

“We’re a gamer-focused studio with a great console pedigree,” said Strain. “And Kabam is a world-class publisher focused on delivering console-quality games on mobile devices. It’s a perfect match.”

Moonrise will have its worldwide debut at the PAX Prime convention on August 29, 2014 in Seattle, Washington.

For more info, visit http://moonrise-game.com/

GoD Factory Wingmen: Pre-order offer announced

GoD Factory

NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe S.A.S., leading video game publisher and developer, and Nine Dots Studio announced pre-order details for GoD Factory: Wingmen, coming out digitally on PC on August 29th 2014.

Fans are now able to pre-order the game on http://store.steampowered.com/app/262750/, to get their hands on an additional key offered, as well as extra content including a digital soundtrack & artbook and a Hypershiny skins pack. To embark on this epic space journey along with a friend, pre-order the game to get a second key for free for maximum fun team play! Fans will also extend the interstellar adventure and immerse themselves in the GoD Factory universe with the official 13 soundtracks from the Dual Dragons. A 40+ pages digital artbook will also allow them to discover the depth of the universe and the creative drawing of the gunships and characters. Last but not least, they will also get exclusive Hypershiny esthetic skins to customize their gunships, to be unique with Bright Copper, Bright Silver & Bright Gold skins.

For more info, visit http://www.godfactorygame.com/

Skara The Blade Remains: Heading for Gamescom 2014

Skara

Bit, the independent development studio based in Barcelona, Spain and London, UK, today announced that its revolutionary F2P multiplayer online versus (MOV) third person hack n’ slash em up, ‘SKARA: The Blade Remains’, will be available to play at Gamescom 2014, located at Hall 4.2, booth D050-E051.

“We know we have a unique prospect in this title, no other F2P looks as good and with PS4 and Xbox One version on the way too, Skara could change the way we make and play games forever,” commented Pablo Rodriguez, Creative Director at 8-Bit. “As one of the first studios to use the Unreal 4 Engine on our unique F2P, we’re really excited to see the response from gamers at Gamescom this year!”

Skara The Blade Remains was Greenlit by Steam’s community in just 8 days of the campaign launch and also recently completed a successful Kickstarter. With the Unreal4 Engine beating at the heart of this title and Epic’s full backing, Skara is now in its final stages of development and ready to take on the games industry with a Steam Early Access build scheduled for launch in the next few months.

An Alpha version of Skara is available to purchase now and gamers can download it online by signing up on the game’s brand new website. The small fee for the Alpha version is helping the team to finish the game, early investors will have their pledge refunded as in game currency when the Steam Early Access Build launches shortly. The full, free-to-play release on PC, is planned for early 2015.

For more info, visit skarathebladeremains.com

The Repopulation – End of July 2014

The Repopulation

The Repopulation team has released a new blog post detailing all their changes for their upcoming MMO sandbox game, mentioning details including updates to the fitting system, Pharmaceutical injections, updated music system and more.

Adversarial Camps

  1. Adjusted camp growth rates and max sizes throughout the world. In general they will now cover a slightly larger radius, while having less mobs per camp when at maximum size.
    Many new camp spawning locations have been added throughout the world. This includes both in newly added areas, and in pre-existing ones.
    Lesoo camps are now more common in FPR territory.
    Created new Adversarial Camp spawning lists for the new areas around Plymouth.

Audio

  1. The bulk of the Music System has been rewritten. It should now fade in and out more fluidly.
    Added five new music tracks from Matthew Shine and Clyde Shorey.
    Music now fades in and out more slowly.
    Added new environmental sounds for Desert and Wasteland areas from Clyde Shorey.
    Added environmental sound effects to the waterfalls in several locations.
    Added support for more areas in the automatic music system.
    Removed the skill up sound. You will still randomly give a skill gain voice over occasionally.
    Corrected some issues with music tracks overlapping.

Combat

  1. Players now receive a 12 second immunity to Knockdown after they have been knocked down.
    Stuns and leg injuries have had their effectiveness increased.
    Armor classification is now determined by the total armor absorption value.
    Adjusted the Action Mode combat offset on the camera so it is slightly higher than before. This makes it a bit easier to see around the character.
    Action mode targeting now projects a bit further so it doesn’t hit anything between the player and the camera.
    Near camera clamp for action mode now checks your resolution as at higher resolutions you can come in closer without being obstructed by the character. This should put most resolutions at a clamp near the same spot and make those playing past 1080p better able to use 3rd person action mode.
    Increased Shockgun damage.
    Reduced the damage of Lesoo Flash Bombs.

For more details, visit https://therepopulation.com/index.php/news/170-end-of-july-2014-update