Interested in game modding? Want to earn epic rewards? CityState Games is sending out the call for game modders backing Camelot Unchained to join The Mod Squad.
Utilizing UI built out of Chromium with Github for the code repository, Camelot Unchained supports unparalleled coordination between developer and fan supporter. As such The Mod Squad initiative hopes to push the best of the community to contribute their coding and ideas to help create the best game CU can be. Of course the biggest contributors will likely be rewarded with game credits, in-game rewards, upgraded tiers, swag, and cash!
Backers looking to get a feel for the game to come up with improvement ideas will have their chance this month as well, as Camelot Unchained introduces Friday Night Fights, bi-monthly Friday alpha server battles featuring internal testers, alpha, and beta 1 backers! This starts tomorrow (8/7/15) at noon so don’t miss the fun!
With two weeks left to go on its Kickstarter, Nova Blitz has secured 75% of its funding goal. Dragon Foundry also reports that over 20,000 matches have been played since the debut of its Alpha build.
The crowdfunding campaign will end at 9 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, August 20, 2015. To ensure that the goal is hit before the deadline, Dragon Foundry has come up with an innovative “Backer Achievement Matrix” to keep backers on their toes. Each square in the matrix is an achievement for backers to complete. For every four achievements completed, ALL Nova Blitz backers will gain one extra Smart Pack with their Kickstarter rewards. And, when all 25 achievements are complete, Dragon Foundry wil give ALL backers a very special reward.
You can find Nova Blitz, and alpha demos, on Kickstarter here.
Wargaming today announced that the German Tech Tree is preparing to cast off for World of Warships. This new lineup will set sail in October, with visitors to this year’s Gamescom getting exclusive hands-on experience with famed German warships, including the iconic Dresden and Admiral Hipper, far ahead of their release.
The World of Warships zone within the massive Wargaming Gamescom booth will be the only place where players can test the versatility of the Dresden and Hermelin cruisers, as well as discover the might of the Bismarck and Tirpitz battleships. Visitors will also get the chance to see how these warships operate while pitting them against other nations already in game for the very first time.
The German cruisers making their in-game debut boast remarkable endurance, especially at higher tiers, making them great for surviving tough encounters. Heavy German cruisers also feature solid armor and devastating weaponry fitting for any battle at sea. The German line has strong penetration, but even better damage per minute and outstanding missile velocity, which makes for an intimidating force in close-range combat.
“The World of Warships team is really excited to be adding the German national line into the game,” said Danila Volkov, World of Warships Development Director. “German shipbuilding has produced truly daunting and diverse warships. These vessels open up a whole new set of tactics for players and add additional depth to gameplay.”
The World of Warships Open Beta saw over two million prospective captains engage in thrilling naval warfare on the high seas with players around the world averaging 190 minutes or 12 battles per day. Of the dozens of ships offered, player favorites included aircraft carrier Langley, battleship Michigan, cruiser St. Louis and destroyer Wakatake.
2K and Gearbox Software today announced that Battleborn™, the new first-person shooter from the creators of Borderlands, will be available worldwide on February 9, 2016 for the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, Xbox One, and Windows PC. An open beta will be held prior to the release of the game and more details about the public test will be shared later this year. Additionally, today the companies revealed four new playable heroes at Gamescom, including Ambra, Mellka, Reyna, and Benedict.
Set in the distant future, Battleborn is a first-person shooter featuring 25 unique playable heroes who form an unlikely alliance to save the last star in the universe from a mysterious enemy hell-bent on its destruction. Battleborn’s narrative-driven story mode can be played alone or co-operatively by up to five friends splitscreen* and online. The game’s three different competitive multiplayer modes can be played by up to 10 players online in action-packed 5v5 matches. Regardless of the mode being played, players will experience deep and customizable character growth for all 25 playable heroes.
The four new playable heroes revealed today include:
Ambra: Born into an ancient order of priestesses responsible for discovering a way to prolong life indefinitely, Ambra was betrayed by her leader and her faction, the Jennerit Empire, and now fights alongside the Battleborn. She is a specialist hero, dealing damage up close through her melee attacks and powerful abilities, while healing her allies in the process. Mellka: A stealthy assassin, Mellka lost her parents at a young age before eventually earning her place among the Eldrid’s black op’s and intelligence bureau. Her life has been defined by a series of staggering losses, but her response to these losses was never despair – it was fury. She strikes quickly, disorienting foes with her nerve gas machine pistol and bio-glaive melee attacks. Reyna: Known by her followers as “The Valkyrie,” Reyna was born aboard the Rogue faction’s ailing junk heap of a flagship and is a native to the last star system. Reyna has fought tirelessly for the freedom of her space pirate comrades, finding her calling as their inspirational leader. She dishes damage with her laser pistol and uses her command glove to support her teammates. Benedict: August Benedict Jr. is one of several surviving races of bird-like “Aviant” refugees. He swore allegiance to the Peacekeepers where he’s gained considerable notoriety for being a self-centered jerk that’s capable of astounding destruction with his rocket launcher. Double jumping, rocket jumping, and flying – Benedict’s good at all of them and he lets his teammates know it.
For in-depth information on each of the new playable heroes, including their complete backstories and full list of abilities, visit the official Battleborn blog. *Battleborn supports 2-player splitscreen and can connect with other splitscreen or solo players online to create a full 5-player party
Space Engineers follows up last week’s update with new collision particles, more tutorial scenarios, changes to inertia and cargo weight, and a small ship cockpit model.
From gamescom 2015 in Cologne, Germany, Trion Worlds revealed major content updates for MMOs RIFT, ArcheAge, Trove and Defiance. Boasting some of the titles’ most significant updates in history, new content ranges from a brand-new soul in RIFT to never-before-seen mechanics and progression systems in ArcheAge Heroes Awaken.
Updates for each game will include:
RIFT – RIFT’s 3.4 update will, for the first time since the game’s launch, introduce a brand-new calling, the Primalist. This will launch with six souls and bring with it a slew of new content including the all-new Planetouched Wilds expedition zone, Lord Arak Raid, Rhazade Canyons dungeon and much more. Watch the primalist revealed in a dev diary here.
ArcheAge – ArcheAge‘s biggest update ever, ArcheAge Heroes Awaken, will feature significant updates and add fresh content to the game. The brand-new Hero System, updates to the Guild Progression System, Housing upgrades and a reborn Diamond Shore offer just a glimpse at the new content in ArcheAge Heroes Awaken.
Trove – Trove, Trion Worlds’ recently launched voxel MMO adventure game, has been a big hit amongst fans since it launched July 9. The upcoming Fall update, The Shadow Tower, will introduce an all-new class, the Lunar Lancer and endgame content as the game prepares to launch on Mac. Watch the new story trailer here!
Defiance – The upcoming Defiance patch will introduce a new race of enemies, the acidic Shrill who inhabit Silicon Valley’s arkfalls. Also added will be Supreme Weapons, a new higher tier of rarity which can be applied to all current and future weapons.
The makers of Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II prepare to send you onto a deep space voyage of epic proportions in Stellaris. Catch more details on the teaser site.
World of Tanks launched last week on the Xbox One. While it is still the same game, with a new audience, there are some differences; rest assured the solid gameplay fans know and love is as solid and complete as ever. But between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One there is visually a world of difference. The game is absolutely beautiful on the next-gen console, and I’ve never been happier to sit on the couch with the rather comfortable Xbox One controller in hand to decimate enemy tanks (or be decimated, as is more my case). It’s still a free to play game with all that that entails, and yes if you played it on the Xbox 360 you can play the same account on the Xbox One (the account data is saved to Xbox Live, so as long as it’s the same account you keep everything and can swap between the two. . . though I don’t know how you could go back to the 360 after seeing this!).
But I could gush on and on about how fantastic it looks on console. One of the big arguments has always been “PC needs a higher grade machine and can adjust graphics,” but consoles cannot. Luckily the Xbox One is a much more powerful machine than the 360 and even most gamers’ PCs, and it shows. The sight of smoke wafting in the air, the sound of dirt crunching under tank treads trying to scale a hill that your tank does not have the momentum to scale (which I will cover later), and watching with delight as your tank pushes its way through a German city, smashing against walls and seeing chunks of brick fall, it’s all visually stunning. Kudos to WGA for going all out. This is not just a port from 360 to One. Rather it feels having both such a powerful system to work with, and a single set of specs to optimize for, has finally pulled the chains off Wargaming’s art team to unleash their best work.
There’s a lot to be said about playing on a PC with keyboard and mouse, but many of my favorite tanks are not known for their maneuverability or grace; either way, a controller or mouse will not actively change how I play, and frankly, lounging on the couch with a controller is far more comfortable than being at my desk. The controls are responsive on the Xbox One, even if I did accidentally find myself to be moving my tank backwards sometimes because I got turned around on something silly. But everything I needed was on the controller. Swapping ammo is a snap, the scope controls are smooth, and no complaints on movement controls. And the Kinect makes it incredibly easy to take screenshots or video of fantastic (or awful) things you have done in game. It’s much easier to say “Xbox, take a screenshot,” than to press a button mid battle. It made recording and snapping shots for this article a breeze, and makes me hope that Cortana on Windows 10 will allow the same thing.
The other stand-out for this release of the game is the updated physics engine. It’s more than simply adding a few effects here and there. Nope it underwent a complete overhaul. I piloted my tank into a wheat and grass field and just watched as the wheat wafted and waved with the direction of the wind. When I fired on a tank, the flames and smoke flicked and wavered with that same wind. Buildings have a brick-by-brick hit detection; I drove downhill at full speed and smashed into a building, taking about a third of it down in one go. The world can be interacted with and used to your advantage in a fight. Firing a shell at a brick building will leave a hole that you can perhaps snipe through if an enemy tank is driving on the other side. One does not simply drive over everything and anything; things that a tank cannot power over, you won’t. But tents, fences, lamp posts, wooden structures? They stood no chance against the power of my massive Russian tank. While I’m no good at wargames, I found myself playing all afternoon, and when my tank would inevitably be destroyed early or late, I’d grab another one and head into a new match to see what other visuals I could discover.
All in all, I genuinely enjoyed World of Tanks on the Xbox One. Had I played it on the 360 first, I may not have enjoyed it as much, but I am familiar with PC gameplay. The maps were varied and did not look at all the same, and there were so many clever things going on. Vehicle rotation seems to be much smoother, being able to handbrake to allow cool turnback style maneuvers or move over uneven terrain without losing speed thanks to changes to tank suspension. The UI works well with the console version of the game, and I did not find myself struggling to navigate it at all. I say again that this is more than a simple port of a 360 version of a PC game. Wargaming clearly paid close attention to 360 feedback to hit every nuance of customer satisfaction out of the park. I’m glad that it will also feature crossplay with the Xbox 360, so it will widen the pool of players considerably. It does not have PC crossplay that I am familiar with, but that’s nothing surprising. But this is definitely a great catch for Xbox One owners looking for a new game to try, but without the funds to purchase a full retail title. Perhaps we will see more of the Wargaming machine hit the newest Microsoft console.
[Think I missed anything? Let me know!]
Catch some highlights of my adventures in World of Tanks One below!