Wargaming talks about the warships in the United States tech tree.
Monthly Archives: March 2015
WAKFU, the Transmedia Land of Kelba Goes Through an In-Game Facelift
After the successful participation in PAX East (Boston) and SXSW (Austin), Ankama is pleased to announce the revamp of the island of Kelba, one of the most famous locations of the WAKFU game and TV series. This creates more bridges between the game and the anime, which dubbing was successfully funded on Kickstarter last year and which is currently broadcast on Netflix. WAKFU is also available on Steam, which allows players from many countries to taste part of the WAKFU transmedia experience.
On Senior Jenry Hones’s advice, adventurers are invited to look for a magic map, in order to locate new magic artifacts. In the course of an adventure full of new developments, players of level 65 (or more) will meet Miranda and Kabrok, the famous and well-liked couple of the WAKFU TV series. Players’ wanderings will also lead them to cross the path of Kelba’s merchant Hadibal Toot (seen in episode 3 of the first season of the series).
Players will go on an investigation to track down the Black Crow, who terrorizes the people of Kelba. On their way, they’ll come face to face with a new family of monsters: the Raskaws, which will give players a hard time and will compel them to appeal to their sense of strategy and their boldness to defeat them.
This main quest will continue through the two zones of the island, the first part of which will be available on March the 17th 2015. Players will have access to the second part on April the 2nd.
Besides the main quest and new dungeons, mercenaries’ counters will bring lots of new quests of level 65 and more.
More details on the official website: http://www.wakfu.com/en/mmorpg/news/patch-notes/430614-all-hands-kelba/details
Crusaders Quest Review: Great Goddess Goodness
By Jaime Skelton (MissyS)
If video game art styles were reported like fashion, pixel would be “in” this season. Pixel art has this cool retro vibe, while advancements in graphics since pixels were first gracing our screens have allowed us to have more depth of design. So it’s really no surprise that one of the current game waves hitting mobile right now are pixel-styled side-scrolling games. Though there are many in this current race for top downloads and highest ratings on the app stores, Crusaders Quest from Toast/NHN stands above the rest. With fast-paced action, complex team management, and a wide range of play options, this is one game I won’t be uninstalling any time soon.
“Impossible. The ugly cannot beat the fair.”
Before I jump into the details, let’s talk a moment about Crusaders Quest’s style. Like many games hitting the market, Crusaders Quest tries to hit on the nostalgia of older gamers by opting to use pixel art and animation. Almost the entire game is rendered in this retro-style look, including some of the menus, but with enough detail and depth that the game doesn’t feel like a 16-bit eyesore. The exception to the little blocks is in the character art that appears on screen during dialogue, JRPG style.
While Crusaders Quest’s music goes beyond your average chiptune – and is rather catchy and energetic, if not eventually repetitive – you’ll still catch some familiar sounds, particularly the old Sonic ring sound during battle. It’s just enough throwback to be charming, while the game’s overall design and interface remains modern and easy to use on mobile.
“You must gather your party before venturing forth.”
Crusaders Quest brings a full cast of characters to meet and recruit. The most important of these, of course, are the heroes. Like in other mobile RPGs, heroes can be recruited through premium tickets, but can otherwise be randomly recruited through story and dungeon missions, as well as rather random evolution paths. Heroes come in six different classes: Warrior, Paladin, Archer, Hunter, Wizard, and Priest. Each class has its own unique set of skills and weapons, and while some roles overlap (Paladins, for example, act as both melee fighters and healers and can substitute for a Warrior or Priest), each is still an important long-term member of your party. Some challenges, especially the weekly changing dungeon which often limits certain classes from entering, will make you want to keep one of each class well-trained, even though only three heroes can be in a party at one time.
Each hero has their own level and stats, which increase automatically as they gain experience in battle. Heroes can also equip their class-specific weapons, found as loot when questing, and these can in turn be upgraded to offer bonus stats. Each hero may also equip skills through the “Skill Transfer” system. Here, skills that you’ve unlocked through gameplay can be equipped onto a hero for use in battle. Heroes can also be trained using bread – a consumable item which you can bake yourself as well as find as loot and rewards. Eating bread increases their training level, and completing each stage of training for a hero unlocks an additional 10% stat boost. Unfortunately, while bread is plentiful, training itself is quite costly, and will frequently leave you broke if your impatience leads you to dipping into the lower tier breads too often.
When a hero reaches their maximum experience level, and has been fully trained, they can be promoted. You’ll notice that each hero has a “star” ranking. Promotion increases the hero’s star ranking by one. For heroes rank 1 and 2, this grants the player a new random hero of one star rarity higher. For a hero of rank 3 promoting to rank 4, players will find a new hero that will be able to progress in a chain to rank 6. There are also special legendary heroes – including your starting hero – which progress from rank 1 to 6 without changing into another hero type. As you can imagine, building a team of powerful heroes takes time and effort, so be prepared to sink your resources into your favorites. Though the tactic of widespread leveling may be less effective in getting the ultimate PvP stomp party, it will occasionally unlock new skills and higher tiers of existing skills that can be used by your A-team to become even stronger.
There’s one final party member: the Goddess. Along your journey, you will encounter six different goddesses who will become your allies. Each goddess has their own unique ability, and while early on you will be limited in who you take with you, you will want to become very familiar with each of their skills as time goes on and change according to the situation. Goddesses cannot be damaged and do not gain experience; instead, they offer you their one boon on a limited basis in battle.
“Soon everything will be corrupted. Including you.”
Your heroes’ primary mission as they quest throughout the story is to purge the land of corruption, and there’s only one way to do that: beat creatures up until they submit to the power of love and peace. The battle system in Crusaders Quest is one of the most engaging features about the game, despite its surface simplicity.
After choosing your team of heroes, you’ll head into an automatically scrolling quest in which your heroes will face waves of enemies, including the stage’s boss(es). Your heroes will move forward automatically and auto attack enemies. As they advance, “block skills” will appear along the bottom of the screen. These are your heroes’ basic skills, and can be combined in chunks of up to three to increase their effect. Using these skills also charges each hero’s special attack, which will appear as a circle instead of a block.
Above these skills will also be a charge meter representing your goddess’ power. This is filled by using block skills (combos fill it faster) as well as suffering damage. You can store up to three charges of her power, and use her power by tapping on the general combat screen. These are powerful utility skills, so save them for when you’re in trouble. As you progress in the game, you can unlock six goddesses that each offer unique tactics worth experimenting with in different situations.
Overall I’ve been incredibly impressed – perhaps even a little hooked – on the battle system. Unlike similar games where skills have a slower charge, or combat is completely automatic, Crusaders Quest has a constant flow of skills. You must always be thinking about how to use and combo your skills to press the advantage and to make sure that skills don’t go to waste. Using skills when no enemies are in range, letting the block queue fill up too long, unleashing combos when enemies are resistant to your damage type, or not watching for opportunities to use support skills can make a real difference, especially in hard modes and PvP.
“Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?”
While progressing through the story chapter by chapter is what any true RPG fan will be after first, there’s more to Crusaders Quest than just clearing stages. When story isn’t enough, you can really test yourself in three other challenges: Dungeon, World Boss, and Colosseum.
The Dungeon is, as it sounds, an instance where you head off with your party to face off with a series of monsters and a bad-ass boss that guards the loot. While a dungeon plays much like a regular stage, there are three key differences. The first is that dungeons take keys, a specific energy system which limits how many dungeons you can run over a period of time. Secondly, dungeons are both repeatable (with the greatest reward only on the first completion) and changeable (rotating out after so many days to a new challenge). Finally, some dungeons place restrictions on your party composition. Each dungeon will ‘ban’ certain classes from partaking. While some dungeons may let you slide in with your best party, others will take from you your ability to bring in support or defense. In order to partake in dungeons, you must prepare to have a wide range of characters trained and ready for battle. Its worth noting that some will even throw unique stipulations at you such as only being able to land 3 block combos to damage foes.
If the Dungeon doesn’t challenge you enough, take it one step further and tackle a World Boss! These enemies are incredibly powerful but also drop impressive loot, including six-star weapons. Like dungeons, World Bosses rotate weekly. They also have specific loot for specific classes, and offer four difficulty modes with different rewards. What’s particularly unique about World Bosses is that they require two players to battle. In order to battle, you must either join with another player by arranging a meeting in a waiting room, or connect with a random player. Just because you’re not alone, don’t think you can slack off and just get carried: the MVP of the fight gets two chances at loot! Advanced players spend a lot of time working with partners to fight against these bosses.
The Colosseum is, as it sounds, the PvP area of the game. Here, you can enter friendly duels (non-ranked) with other players to test your skills in real-time combat. The real action, however, is in the AI controlled Versus arena. The ranked arena uses its own energy system, Tickets. Tickets work differently than other energy systems: while you only have three available, using one allows you access to arena battles for an hour, until you gain 10 wins, or until you’re defeated in battle. Whichever of the three comes first.
This lets you spend a lot of time in PvP, rather than be limited to only a few battles per day. When you enter, you can choose from one of two player teams to battle. Combat is the same as it always is, but in a smaller battlefield. As you rank up each week, you can gain multiple rewards, and the top three teams of the week will be displayed in everyone’s base. This is one of the most rewarding and engaging PvP modes I’ve run across in a mobile RPG, and it’s easy to dump hours into it. On the plus side, if you do dump hours into it and win a few matches in a row, you can earn bonus food and honor medals to speed up your PvE progress and hero evolution at the same time! So even if you’re not usually into PvP, this isn’t a mode you’re likely to skip.
Final Verdict: Stop the Mumblin’ and Start the Rumblin’
Really, if you’ve read through this review and haven’t yet installed Crusaders Quest, you should get that tablet or phone out and start downloading. Sure, CQ isn’t perfect: it could offer more in terms of hero customization, for instance, and no one could argue that more soundtrack variety would also be nice. Late game, too, can sometimes become grindy. What the game does offer, however, is active and engaging combat, multiple game play modes, a fair energy system, a well-told story, and some of the best 2D PvP on mobile. With constant updates, including a recent story chapter addition and new heroes, Crusaders Quest has just about everything good you could ask for in a mobile RPG. The only real downside of concern we care about now is the extended initial loading time involved with opening the game that will get on your nerves once the addiction sets in. You’ve been warned!
Overall Rating: Great (4/5)
- Graphics: 4/5 – Retro, but not overdone.
- Controls: 5/5 – Active, responsive, and intuitive.
- Features: 4/5 – Multiple game modes to keep you playing for hours.
- Customization: 3/5 – While you can build a team to your liking, your only real customization comes in the form of special skill and weapon selection.
- Community: 4/5 – Helpful, active, involved.
Grey Goo: One Month Later…
Grey Goo‘s developers talk about how the game is coming along one month later and future plans during an interview at PAX East.
Medieval Engineers – Update 2.008
Pickaxes and a day/night cycle make their debut.
Stormfall: Rise of Balur Update Receives New Features
Since its launch in January 2015, Plarium’s newest mobile title, Stormfall: Rise of Balur has accumulated 4 million hours of gameplay, with players from around the world creating more than 2,000 leagues and performing 20 million raids. Stormfall offers real-time strategic gameplay and base building elements, tasking players to rebuild the throne of a fallen empire by constructing their own castle and forming strategic alliances with other players.
Resulting from player feedback, Plarium has released highly anticipated updates to the game – version 1.66, now available on the App Store and Google Play.
The latest update includes a slew of features to increase engagement that diehard players have been waiting for:
League Quest Events (Clan Missions) – Gives players the chance to attack castles of rival leagues, conquer their settlements, collect objects and reach targeted battle goals that shift from event to event. Even more engaging, leagues can win various items such as game currency, special units, as well as ranking boosts for each completed event.
Session Chests – These Session Chests allow players to earn rewards like resources, units, boosts, and other special items simply by tapping an icon that appears during each game session. Unlike Daily Quests, Session Chests have no daily limit so players can collect rewards for each game session they play. This allows players more interaction with the game and yields more rewards along the way.
Fleet-Footed – All troops now move at 2x the pace in previous versions of the game, allowing for less waiting and more action.
Boost Items – Allows players to speed up travel times by 25-50%, making it quicker for troops to reach their targets.
Side Missions Map Overhaul – User interface improvements gives players more necessary game information and provides a clearer understanding of the side mission’s map. Players can now see their progress in the top right corner of the game.
“We’re always listening to our player’s feature requests, as well as tracking statistics and analytics toward improving the overall gameplay”, says Lidiia Kotliarova Director of Mobile Games Department, Stormfall: Rise of Balur “This round of updates focuses on improving engagement between players and also the Stormfall environment, while allowing more events and opportunities for users to reap the fruits of their labor.”
For more info, visit
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/stormfall-rise-of-balur/id916728593?ls=1&mt=8 (iTunes)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.plarium.stormfallrob&hl=en (Google Play)
HEX: Shards of Fate tournament announced
During the IEM Katowice (Intel Extreme Masters) in Poland at the end of last week, Gameforge and HEX Entertainment announced the first worldwide HEX: Shards of Fate tournament for 2015.
The Karlsruhe publisher advertised a prize fund of at least 100,000 USD, strengthening their commitment to the eSports scene. The exact dates for the tournament will be revealed soon.
After the successful launch of the game’s first PvE content last week, the announcement of the tournament represents the next step for the two companies, aiming to underline the title’s balanced mix of PvE and PvP facets.
‘HEX combines the classic realm of trading card games with the possibilities of the digital world like no other game,’ said Carsten van Husen, Gameforge’s CEO. ‘The game promises challenging and exciting PvP duels with the regular release of card packs, and with this newly announced competition, we’re increasing the focus on competitive gaming, as well as reaching out our thanks to the community. HEX has arrived and it’s here to stay!’
Tournament Overview
All players registered for HEX: Shards of Fate will have the ability to earn qualification points for the tournament during regular, ranked duels. Earning ten points will afford automatic eligibility to participate in the next round of the tournament.
The places for the final will be decided during twelve online qualifier tournaments, which will be free for all qualified players to take part in. Contestants who get through to the grand offline final will be invited by Gameforge to determine the competition’s winner at home with HEX Entertainment in Irvine, California.
The online qualifiers will take place at various times at the weekend, thus guaranteeing that all qualified players will be able to take part in these knock-out competitions over a period of two months, irrespective of their particular time zones.
For more info, visit http://en.hex.gameforge.com/#/
Etherium: Multiplayer Beta Available to Pre-order Users
Etherium, your new futuristic RTS from Tindalos Interactive – developers of Stellar Impact – warps into closed-beta today, accessible by those who pre-order the game from the Steam page.
During beta, you’ll have access to the full multiplayer content, single player tutorials allowing you to get to grips with the basics before heading into the fray. We remind you that pre-order players also enjoy 10% off. For a taste of what to expect for the release of the game on March 25, check out our first gameplay video covering the basics of the game.
For more info, visit http://etherium-thegame.com/
Dungeons 2: New ‘Demons’ Faction Revealed
Recently revealed, the Demons are the second playable faction in Dungeons 2: offering a different style of gameplay and featuring their own unique dungeon rooms, traps and creatures to control. While The Horde faction has powerful brutes bred for war, The Demons utilise more magic based abilities. Use the corrosive acid of the Chaos Weaver to damage enemies over time and protect your army with The Shield of Emptiness spell. Or, give your demons a self-esteem boost in the Room of Admiration and alleviate worker boredom by torturing poor souls with The Succubi.
Both The Horde and Demon Factions are featured in the main campaign of Dungeons 2; and can also be used in sandbox and multiplayer mode. Watch the brand new ‘Demon Reveal Trailer’ below for your first look at them. We’ll also be hosting a live Dungeons 2 walkthrough via Twitch.tv this Thursday (19th). Tune into www.twitch.tv/kalypsomedia at 9.00PST/16.00GMT/17.00CET and get a look at the basics of the game ahead of launch next month.
For more info, visit http://www.dungeons-game.com/en/
Total War ATTILA: Celtic Faction Announced
Playable for the first time in Total War™: ATTILA, the Celtic tribes of the Ebdanians, Caledonians and Picts specialize in swift and deadly warfare. Every unit in the Celtic roster has the Guerrilla Deployment trait, enabling them to deploy almost anywhere on the battlefield – even behind enemy lines.
The Celts offer a unique play-style focused on raiding, looting and sacking. Each faction benefits from its own unique traits, but all share Celtic cultural traits that vastly increase their income from these activities. An all-new Celtic roster is available for recruitment, alongside new units unique to each faction.
With new objectives, skills, tier-5 buildings, ancillaries and a new narrative event-chain, the Celts Culture Pack, features a huge array of new content for ATTILA players. An exact release date for the Celts Culture Pack will be announced at a later time.
For full details, please visit http://wiki.totalwar.com.






















