Yearly Archives: 2015

Project CARS Partners with ESL

Project CARS Partners with ESL news header

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe and Slightly Mad Studios are excited to announce the arrival of the official ESL online competition for Project CARS.

“When planning our Driver Network features around Multiplayer, Time Trials, Leaderboards, and Community Events we had a hope that the community were going to inspire healthy yet fierce competition amongst the players and a vision that one day this may be elevated to the professional scene.

You proved us right by immersing yourself in our regularly-rotating Community Events, by creating your own Online Leagues, and by pro teams participating in the ongoing SMS-R Driver Network Championship season.

Earlier in the year we attended Gamergy in Madrid to test how Project CARS would work as a live eSports event and we invited pro players from the scene to give their feedback. This was extremely promising and it helped us plan our second event at gamescom this year which was a huge success”. says Andy Tudor, Creative Director at Slightly Mad Studios.

Andy continues: “Therefore after the equal success of our PlayStation Plus European Cup tournament we are very pleased to announce that Bandai Namco Entertainment and Slightly Mad Studios have now teamed up with the Electronics Sports League to bring you legitimate, dedicated professional eSports within Project CARS.

The first step of this will start this Sunday on September 13th with the first of several online weekly competitions and then we head to the third live event at EGX in September hosted by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment UK. Players will be able to participate in multiplayer racing against each other, time trials, and Twitch-streamed finals, as well as experience live music, commentary, giveaways, and a few exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming Project CARS ON DEMAND content.

We’ll have more info and schedule of all online events available to play via ESL as well as the EGX show over at projectcarsgame.com in the coming weeks so stay tuned and we hope to see you both in Birmingham and online!”

Project Gorgon

Project Gorgon is a fantasy MMORPG by ElderGame. It features an immersive experience that allows you to forge your own path through exploration and discovery. It also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

Features:

Find an Adventuree: Project: Gorgon heavily rewards exploration. Go poke in corners and see what you find! Entire dungeons, hidden NPCs, all kinds of items, even entire skills and abilities… all waiting for you to discover.

Immersive Game Mechanics: Put yourself out of fire by jumping into a lake, inscribe messages on items for other players to read and more immersive game mechanics to make players feel one with the game.

Unique Combat: Combat features free-form attacks andplayers can can learn as many combat skills as you want.

Neverwinter: Elemental Evil Now Available on Xbox One

Neverwinter: Elemental Evil Now Available on Xbox One news header

Today, Perfect World Entertainment Inc., a leading publisher of free-to-play MMORPGs, and Cryptic Studios announced four free expansions* for Neverwinter – Elemental Evil, Fury of the Feywild, Shadowmantle and Curse of Icewind Dale – are now available on Xbox One. With over 2 million players since launch, Neverwinter continues to lead the charge as the top free-to-play title on Xbox One in 2015.

The newest of four expansions, titled Neverwinter: Elemental Evil, brings an increase to level cap, the Oathbound Paladin playable class and new adventure zones. Adventurers also gain access to four endgame campaigns and additional in-game dungeons for veteran Xbox One players looking to collect more loot as they adventure through the Forgotten Realms. In addition to new content, this update continues to bring quality-of-life improvements to the constantly evolving MMORPG. The full list additions include:

  • Level cap increase from 60 to 70
  • Oathbound Paladin playable class with two paragon paths – Oath of Devotion and Oath of Protection
  • Eight new adventure zones
  • Open world player versus player combat in iconic Icewind Dale
  • Four endgame campaigns taking players to areas including Sharandar and Dread Ring
  • Two dungeons where adventurers fight against King Malabog and Valindra Shadowmantle
  • Minsc & Boo join adventurers in the fight against the Cults of Elemental Evil
  • Three new epic skirmishes
  • Increase in companion quality cap from epic to legendary
  • Maximum level increase for all professions

“We’re thrilled to bring Elemental Evil to Neverwinter’s Xbox One community of over 2 million players.” said Rob Overmeyer, executive producer. “With six expansions’ worth of free content released since launch, our team continues to support Neverwinter and its players with all new locations along and outside of the Sword Coast filled with challenging dungeons to crawl and wicked monsters to battle. We’re excited to continue our support with the Strongholds expansion in 2015.”

Test Your Might in Cabal 2’s Trial of Champions

Test Your Might in Cabal 2's Trial of Champions news header

Calling all warriors! ESTSoft, Inc. revealed details for its next free update for CABAL 2, available starting Sept. 10. The new update includes two new battle arenas and a rewards system for players at the top of rankings.

 

The “Trial of Champions” features two new arenas, which both require players to be level 10 to enter. There is an instanced monster arena and a PvP arena. In the monster arena, players will go in alone and fight for survival against a variety of monsters across different stages. The PvP arena will give combatants the chance to prove their skills by facing off against each other in an effort to become the ultimate champion of CABAL 2.

 

In addition to these two arenas, there is a new ranking system that will track players in events like the monster arena, PvP arena and in-game battlegrounds. This feature tracks the amount of points that players rack up during these events and gives them a ranking. At the end of each season players will be awarded prizes based off of their ranking.

 

“Expect much more to come and change the ever expanding CABAL 2 universe, as we’ve got many updates and improvements in store,” said Ajmal Popal, Assistant Product Manager, ESTSoft.

 

Red Awakening

Red Awakening is a multiplayer FPS Horror game developed by Domino Effect. Influenced by the slasher movie genre and classic FPS and stealth games of the 90s and 00s, Red Awakening lets players jump into a surreal blend of neon drenched environments, satirical storytelling, first-person dynamic stealth, parkour style movement, drug induced power-ups, ultra-violent gameplay and an unnerving “Carpenter-esque” synth soundtrack.

Features:

Freedom of Movement: Act like a ninja lunatic with Red Awakening’s fully dynamic parkour system that includes wall running, wall jumping, wall hanging, mantling, sliding, sprinting, crouching and the ability to kick.

Dynamic Detection System Enjoy a stylish stealth system where the screen changes color whether you’re detected by enemies or not.

Visceral First Person Combat: Experience up close and personal melee combat and executions, allowing players to collect, or even pull, weapons from the surrounding environment such as Fire Axes, Hammers, Circular Saw blades, shards of glass

Special abilites : Feel like the ultimate predator using stealth and thermal vision to stalk enemy players.

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

By Jaime Skelton (MissyS)

 

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

While mobile gaming has been a booster seat at the big kid’s table for video gaming, it’s also just as obnoxious. The games are colorful, draw attention to themselves, and often are the most awkward gaming experiences a gaming veteran can encounter. It’s no wonder that we’ve grown indifferent to them, only bothering to give a game a glance if it has one of our mental buzzwords (Did someone say Fallout?) or when one of those persistent friends or family members nag you with invites until you relent. In fact, when it comes to mobile games, we often wear our non-participation like a badge of honor. For instance, I’m still proud to have never crushed candy.

Perhaps I’m feeling a little snarky because one MMO publisher after another has slowly succumbed to the temptation of producing handheld gaming bait. To be clear, I’m not referring to games thoughtfully designed for mobile, like Vainglory or Orders & Chaos Online, or even logical ports like Forge of Empires. No, we’re talking about MMO companies jumping into the dirty ball pit of mobile gaming, full of energy walls, pay gates, and bribes to connect the game to every social network you ever existed on. It’s an easy pit to slide into when producing online games, but that doesn’t ease my sense of disappointment.

But let me step down from my soapbox and cut to the chase: En Masse has joined this group of publishers with its first mobile title, Fruit Attacks, and now a second title, Pocket Platoons. While I can’t explain why Bluehole’s western branch has jumped from playing Lolicon in TERA to destroying space fruit, I can at least break down what Fruit Attacks is all about and let you decide if it’s worth your time.

 

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

Meeting your Daily Recommended Serving of Fruit Destruction

Fruit Attacks is a 2D, arcade-style skill shooter. Players are charged with defending the earth from invading fruit-aliens by using robots known as SATIs, along with mini-SATIs and additional power-ups. Invaders appear on screen and approach the bottom in different patterns, and SATIs use sound attacks to eliminate these evil fruit before the shield protecting earth is destroyed. Stages are split across Episodes and Acts, and also come in a variant “Nightmare” mode for the veteran players ready for a challenge. As can be expected, a few boss battles are also staggered along the way.

Players also get access to their own Home, a small room which can be customized with cats (used to fetch currency in timed hunts) and a small assortment of furniture. At home, players also can access their refrigerator, where fruit kills are bottled up to make juice. At certain fill levels, players can empty their juice container in exchange for mystery box rewards.

 

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

This Isn’t Build-a-Bot Workshop

Though players start with only the default SATI, Dolbi, additional SATI can be unlocked through collecting blueprints (found as loot in a shell game at the end of the stage) or through purchase with either of the game’s currencies. Each SATI has an innate skill, which serves as their basic attack, and a vibro-skill, which is powered up during the stage limit-break style. To activate you need to shake your phone to get the motion sensitivity to set the ability off, which was one serious game of finger twister considering taking screenshots for this article involved pushing the power and volume button at the same time as shaking my phone! Though mastering this finger twister is needed for tackling tough stages, at least with a current range of six SATI available on the game’s release.

Mini-SATIs can be discovered through looting spare parts to build them in the Minimaker lab. Here there is a random chance of obtaining an assortment of these little fellows, which act as mini-pets and boosters to the equipped SATI. Like SATIs, Mini-SATIs have two skills. The first of these is a predetermined boost ability to the SATI, such as adding an additional drop-shot to a fully charged SATI shot. The second is a randomly determined passive bonus which might grant extra defensive or offensive bonuses. Mini SATIs can also be fused together to create more powerful versions of themselves, although this becomes rather costly.

Besides a basic upgrade function, and the ability to mix-and-match one SATI and two Mini-SATIs when entering stages, there isn’t much to speak of for customization. Bots only level when they’re upgraded and do not gain experience on their own. In fact, the Home option has arguably more upgrade functions even if they are equally as limited. It’s a shame that there are no ways to, at the very least, cosmetically alter your SATI collection.

 

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

I’m All Thumbs

The real charm of Fruit Attacks is in the gameplay itself. Rather than a ‘tap to shoot’ or simple aimed shot system, the game uses a “hook shot” system. Using both thumbs (or whatever two fingers are the most comfortable or convenient), players create a path for their SATI’s attacks. Each finger controls a point on the shot. The first point will be straight from the SATI outward, but the second point will create an arced path from the first point.

This allows for some rather creative skill shots, as you can use the screen to twist and arc your shots just so before letting them go. Shots can (and should) also be charged by holding the fingers on the screen until the shot has reached full power. Some enemies take more than a weak shot, and each enemy comes in with its own formation, so beating each stage is a matter of increasing skill and familiarity with the attack system. This is, and remains, the most impressive feature of Fruit Attacks, enough that it makes up some for other lackluster parts of gameplay.

 

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

Moderately App’peel’ing

For the social mobile gamer, Fruit Attacks is limited: in fact, the game has essentially no multiplayer elements outside of leaderboards, and even those are limited only to Facebook friends. I’d guess that, coming from a studio so focused in online gaming, we’d see more multiplayer elements than this, and perhaps they are simply in development to be released in a future update.

Otherwise, Fruit Attacks is colorful and charming, with an upbeat soundtrack and silly game sounds that fit the ridiculousness of destroying fruit aliens with robots that attack through sound. The gameplay is fun and engaging, and there’s a moderate amount of depth in managing your SATIs and Mini-SATIs for optimal juicing. The game isn’t without its vices though, particularly its incredibly steep costs for upgrading everything that will have you either grinding or opening your wallet by the end of Episode 1.

 

Fruit Attacks Mobile Review

Final Verdict: Good

Altogether, Fruit Attacks is a good quality arcade-style game – just don’t expect too much out of it as a free-to-play mobile game.

The Break-down:

Features (4/5): For an arcade-style game, Fruit Attacks has a pretty good variety of features. Each offers enough depth that there’s more than just stage-clearing to work toward.

Customization (2/5): Very basic progression system for SATI. Mini-SATIs have more depth in their random passive abilities and fusion. Cosmetic upgrades are only to be found in the Home section.

Control (5/5): The ‘hook shot’ dual-finger shot system makes every shot impactful. There’s no brute-forcing your way through stages: winning is a matter of skill.

Community (1/5): There isn’t any real community to speak of, even outside of the game, and the only multiplayer is comparing scores with Facebook friends.

Graphics & Audio (5/5): Bright, cheerful, upbeat, everything an engaging and addicting mobile game could want.

Voting Now Open For Second Dying Light Dev Tools

Dying Light Developer Tools Updated news header

Beyond Dying Light II, the second Dying Light Dev Tools contest is now open for public voting. The contest will see the first place winner receive an Alienware Alpha machine + a stash of Dying Light merch. The core Dying Light production team played through all the submissions and based on creativity, gameplay, and overall quality selected their top 5 which now go to the public to vote on.

”The Dying Light fans seriously continue to surprise us with their creativity and it was the exact same thing with these mods. Some of these are so unique and fun that we found ourselves even playing them in our spare time.” says Producer Tymon Smektala. “That led us to start talking about trying to make these available for our console fans. We’re looking into it, but we’ll have to see.”

The top 5 mods include:

  • The Winchester Tavern –  a near perfect replica of the famous pub from the cult-hit movie Shaun of the Dead. Grab a pint and defend your local watering hole.
  • SkyFall – an intricate and twisted journey through a man’s troubled dreams. Various levels and puzzles that get more and more warped the further you delve.
  • Escaping Death – a classic action-packed Dying Light experience full of combat and parkour.
  • Repetition: Horror House – recreating the tension of the infamous P.T. house but with a Harran-flavoured twist.
  • Little Big World – “Honey, I shrunk the outbreak.” Battle and parkour your way through an infested house, all while being the size of a bottle cap.

You can download the five competing mods from Steam workshop and cast your vote on the contest website here.

Voting closes on September 13 and a winner will be announced shortly after.