Yearly Archives: 2014

League of Legends Reveals Sion Rework

League of Legends Sion Art

League of Legends has revealed its Sion rework today, giving players a glimpse into the upcoming changes for this juggernaut.

Here’s a look at Sion’s new skillset:

  • Passive: Glory in Death Sion turns berserk once he loses all his health, gaining a full life bar along with significant attack damage, attack speed and lifesteal as he bleeds out. His abilities are all replaced by Death Surge, which gives him a huge but brief movement speed boost. Sion dies once his health drains out.
  • Q: Decimating Smash Sion plants his feet, rooting himself as he winds up and swings his axe in a broad area before him. Decimating Smash deals increasing damage the longer it’s charged, and once it’s at least half-charged, knocks up all caught enemies when unleashed.
  • W: Soul Furnace
    Passive: Sion earns bonus max health every time he kills a unit.
    Active: Sion creates a bloody shield around him. If the shield stays intact for its duration, it explodes, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies. Sion can also detonate the shield early by reactivating the ability.
  • E: Roar of the Slayer Sion bellows in a target direction, damaging, slowing and shredding the armor of the first enemy struck. If Roar of the Slayer hits an enemy minion or jungle monster, Sion’s scream also knocks them back a significant distance. The thrown minion or monster then damages and slows all other enemy units hit.
  • R: Unstoppable Onslaught Sion starts charging in a target direction, building up speed as he moves and trampling enemy minions along his path. He can cancel his charge early, at which point he slams the ground, dealing area of effect damage to all nearby enemies. Otherwise, Sion charges an extremely long distance, only stopping once he hits an enemy champion, wall, or reaches the end of his charge. If Sion charges into an enemy champion, he knocks them up and deals area of effect damage; if he hits a wall, Sion stuns himself briefly and deals area of effect damage around him.

You can see a full overview of strategy, tactics, and synergy here.

Fight the Dragon

Fight The Dragon is a User Generated Hack’n Slash RPG where players can team up and tackle exciting adventures made by other users in an in-game Adventure Construction Kit (ACK). In the endless pursuit of loot, prestige, and skill, Fight the Dragon offers limitless options for dungeoneering and multiplayer fun.

Features:

Construction Kit: Utilizing the ACK system, players are able to craft custom adventures for each other. The game’s content is not limited to what developers can make, so the options for continued play and exploration in Fight the Dragon are limitless.

Fight the Dragon!: As heroes complete adventures and reach milestones, they earn scrolls that allow them to go “Fight The Dragon” in the ultimate dragon battle arena. A Dragon Fight is a one one one duel between a player and the dragon, an incredibly gruelling fight that will require players to use all of their skills, loot and experience earned while adventuring in order to survive.

Split-Screen Multiplayer: Players can play single player, local split-screen (2 players) or online multiplayer (4 players) to complete 10-15 minute adventures in a non-linear order, which allows players to jump in for a quick fix or play multiple adventures over longer play sessions.

Full Gamepad Support: While Fight the Dragon can be easily played with a mouse and keyboard, it also supports play with a gamepad. With split-screen and gamepads, it promises to be an old-school, action-RPG experience with a creative twist.

Forge of Empires: Now available on iPhone

Forege of Empires

InnoGames just released the iPhone version of its award-winning online game Forge of Empires. The game has already been available for iPad since May this year but the updated universal App now sports optimized screens sizes, graphics and a better user interface for the iPhone. The performance was improved with a priority for smooth game on devices from the iPhone 4 on. From now on, the game is available for download on the App store. As with the iPad-Version, players can login on an iPhone with their browser account, switch back and forth between devices or create an entirely new account on any mobile device.

The release is part of InnoGames’ ongoing Cross-Platform strategy and will be followed up by an Android version in the future. Forge of Empires recently reached 20 million registered users, partly due to the very successful iPad-Version. The game reached the overall top ten downloads in ten European app stores upon launch.

The optimized touch controls, visuals and direct play support allow for a true mobile gaming experience – the full cross-platform functionality in the app enables players with a browser account to log in via the iPhone or iPad, continue playing and then switch back to the browser or another device at any time, without ever losing progress. Accounts that are created on iOS devices can also be used to access the browser version.

For more info, visit http://www.innogames.com/en/browser-games/forge-of-empires/

Grimoire Alpha Press Preview

By Jason Parker (Ragachak)

 

Chaos

Action, Excitement, Fireballs:

Grimoire is an intriguing FPS title. Though it is still in the Alpha Stage of development and there is much to do still, I was fortunate enough this weekend to play several matches with the developers to see what they have created so far and what to look forward to from this title. Grimoire is a first person shooter with wizards!  As someone who occasionally delves into the FPS genre (moreso lately than ever) I was curious to see what will make Grimoire stand out, and I believe that it will take very little effort for it to make a statement.  The goals are a little ambiguous in the mode that we played (Conquest) and the developers will be updating their Kickstarter soon to reflect how the game works a little better.  It can be found here where more can be seen!

Nexus

I was pretty excited to see Grimoire once I had heard a little about it.  I’m a big fantasy fan, and to be able to battle it out with teams of wizards appeals to me just a bit more than teams of spec-ops.  Again, this is a very early build and there is far more to come than what I’ve seen. At this particular point in the build there are five schools of magic, a generic pool of movement/defense spells, and only one game mode – but I have to say I was pretty pleased with what I did encounter.  People who donate to the Kickstarter can get into the Alpha right away instead of having to wait for an early release, or a beta, so that’s pretty nice. Another interesting point is that the devs are looking to their community and fans for potential ideas for their next/upcoming classes for the game.  I’m a big fan of crowdsourcing and I had no choice but to pitch an idea or two!  Maybe we’ll see some awesome Time Mage shenanigans in Grimoire.

Classes

Infinite Magical Power:

The two houses Magnus and Validus vie for the Grimoire, a powerful magical artifact.  Wielding it will decide the fate of land of Aesir – who doesn’t want that?  Teams of mages will group together and unleash their infinite power against one another, devastating everything in their paths.  The combat really feels as fast-paced as any other solid FPS title, while offering a combo of tactical MOBA-style gameplay.  Each wizard has four spells, depending on their school (fire, ice, nature, et al), in addition to a small pool of movement and defensive spells that they can call on. There are cooldowns like you would find in a MOBA so that a player cannot simply spam their ultimate spell anytime they want.

There are three different styles of controls and each has their own appeal. Later builds will implement fully customizable buttons.  I did take the time to ask if there would be controller support, but nothing is set in stone for that yet, although it is being looked at. The controls are pretty solid for a game in its alpha; there are of course bugs and glitches, but that is to be expected.  The actual controls themselves are fairly simple, moving around the same way that a traditional FPS would with space jumping and WASD movement.  It’s a little jerky and stiff right now, but that will only get better with time. Though I have to say I was both amused and horrified as I cast my golem as an earth mage only to have it spawn on top of a lamppost, or when it pummeled a dead body with its large, angry fists.

Lightning

 

Conquest features nice large maps to navigate around, buildings to run up steps for, barrels to climb on, and other terrain to take advantage of.  Victory is acquired by certain amount of points attained by holding choke points/flags that are scattered throughout the map.  It does not take very long to take a flag, so it is important to keep on the move.  There is not a lot known about the other modes, other than that one is a deathmatch arena mode; 3v3 or 5v5 duke it out in a nice small area where there are no respawns.  I’m also looking forward to the Safeguard mode which is mentioned in their Kickstarter campaign; a group of wizards team up to fight against a horde of evil and the goal is to keep the city intact, instead of simply destruction.  It should promote teamwork and strategy, which I am all for.

FIRE

Final Thoughts:  Looks Good!

Though my playtime was briefly only an hour or so, I’m really hyped for this game!  It’s still a little rough looking, but it will grow and adapt with time.  There are of course things I don’t like: some of the spells can be incredibly hard to hit and their movement belies their range, and other little things like that. Some spells fire way (WAY) farther than others which is fine, because all magic is different. The classes certainly play different, and do not feel like cookie-cutter builds off one another at all.  I can’t wait to see what the other classes will be, and if there will be some kind of campaign/story mode (which I would absolutely love).  Far too many FPS titles go the route of Modern Military (with obvious exceptions) but it is very nice to see something break out of that mold. In some ways, I feel like this is a throwback to Heretic, only with just wizards.  Who played anything but the Wizard anyway?

Want to see more Grimoire? Check out our sister site MMOHuts’s First Look video below!

Grimoire-First-look-2

Total War Attila Announced

Total War

SEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe, Ltd. today announced Total War™: ATTILA, the next installment in the multi award-winning Total War series of strategy games.

The Dark Ages approach. A time of famine, disease and war, where refugees in their thousands flee from a sweeping tide of destruction and death. Desperate barbaric tribes rally against the ailing might of a dying and divided Roman empire; the light of civilization gutters and dims. In the great steppes of Scythia, a vast and terrifying force gathers, led by a warrior king whose thirst for conquest is utterly unequaled.

The Scourge of God, the very herald of the apocalypse, Attila the Hun.

Total War: ATTILA introduces exciting new gameplay mechanics which improve and add to numerous core turn-based and real-time Total War systems. The world will darken around you as Attila’s forces descend on your homeland creating a unique vision of survival strategy.

“With Total War: ATTILA we will create a Total War game that will challenge and enthrall fans of the series,” said Janos Gaspar, project lead on ATTILA. “We’re reintroducing some features that fans have been asking for, such as family trees and skill trees, and improving many of the core aspects of Total War we know are important to them. But to really bring the period to life, we’re building on these foundations with many new strategic features for them to consider, such as advanced street-fighting, civilians, complete settlement destruction and dynamic fire that can rage across a city as armies clash. We want to push players to the limits of their skill to survive against the odds, and to love every minute of it.”

Total War: ATTILA is due for release in 2015 on Windows PC and Mac. For more information, please visit www.totalwar.com.

The Banner Saga Game Engine Licensed for New Title “BEDLAM”

Stoic announced today that Skyshine Games has licensed its proprietary game engine built for PC smash-hit and Geekie Award Winner, The Banner Saga to create BEDLAM, a role-playing turn-based strategy game with rogue-like elements and an epic storyline, which launched its Kickstarter campaign today.

“Stoic is excited to support BEDLAM with our engine and eager to see what Skyshine Games can do with it. We love the concept of the game and are happy that some of the ground that we broke with The Banner Saga is now going to contribute to another great project”, said John Watson from Stoic.

“The Banner Saga Engine and Tools have allowed us to hit the ground running, giving us a lot of flexibility in realizing the unique vision for our own game. Stoic has been an enormous support for us with BEDLAM and as a fellow independent developer, they have provided us with invaluable knowledge gained from their own successful experience. Skyshine Games could not have asked for a better partnership and we hope it continues for a very long time”, said John Mueller from Skyshine Games.

The Banner Saga, which recently had a price move to $19.99, is currently in the final stages of development for release on mobile later this month. Bedlam, which kicked off its Kickstarter campaign today, is scheduled for release in 2015.

For more info, visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skyshinegames/bedlam