Battlefield Hardline showcases the new Alcatraz, Chinatown, Thin Ice, and Cemetary maps coming in Betrayal.
Monthly Archives: February 2016
PvZ Garden Warfare 2 Live Action Cob for the Job Trailer
When the zombies take Suburbia, we must turn to the right Cob for the Job. Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 has arrived!
Father.IO Gameplay Teaser and Inceptor Introduction
Father.IO sets out to bring FPS action to the real world utilizing your smart phone as your weapon. Check out the Inceptor attachment technology and simulation gameplay below.
The Inceptor
Gameplay
Paragon Feng Mao Gameplay Highlights
More character specific b-roll arrives from Paragon – this time featuring Feng Mao.
Dungeon Fighter Online The Plane: Mirror Arad Trailer
Dungeon Fighter Online reveals a new but nostalgic dungeon, The Plane: Mirror Arad.
Ran World Battle Islands Introduction
This video reveals the new PvP feature in Ran World, Battle Islands.
Failure Gameplay Teaser
Dream Harvest introduces a short teaser for Failure’s gameplay. Failure is a multi-player and single-player RTS with CCG and tower defense elements.
Neverwinter: The Maze Engine Interview with Rob Overmeyer
by Andrew Skelton (Outfoxed)
Neverwinter has come a long way since its release. Its ninth expansion, The Maze Engine, is due to release very soon with heaps of new features and content. I had an opportunity to sit and talk with Rob Overmeyer, Executive Producer of Neverwinter, about the upcoming expansion and what to expect. Based on his enthusiasm simply talking about it, it quite easy to say there will be something for everyone.
The Maze Engine is the second part of the Neverwinter Underdark storyline. Since players are set to meet up with more famous characters from Forgotten Realms lore, I was curious how they would interact with the players. “The focus of the story is on the adventurers,” Rob iterates. The story focuses on the demons Baphomet and Orcus. While Baphomet is trying to warp our reality, Orcus has somehow come to the surface, and settled in the long-forgotten Castle Never. “The dungeon has been forgotten; no one goes there anymore,” Rob explains, detailing how Orcus has raised all the creatures killed and left there, including beholders and the dracolich.
One major thing of note is the fact this storyline is intended for solo players. Each of the major updates has touched on an aspect of the game the developers wanted to improve, Rob explains. PvP, Groups and Guilds, and now a brand new solo storyline thrown into the mix. These types of updates are going to be the norm, focusing on improving aspects with precision development. “Soft grouping is a good measure of how well a campaign is,” he goes on. For those unaware, soft grouping are zone events that occur where everyone who participates receives credit. There is no grouping required for these events, simply fulfilling the objectives.
For people more interested in group play, Rob provided some excellent news: dungeons are returning. Four dungeons are being brought back, leveled to ensure your character will receive a quality experience. They’ve been tuned to only require three characters now to provide fast, fun runs. They’re unlocked at the same levels they were on the leveling path (for instance, a dungeon that was level 50 before will require level 50 to unlock). With the smaller group size, and the focus on revamping them, Rob promises they will not be the same experience as before. In fact, they provide better loot, better experience, and best of all, can be run regardless if you’ve leveled past their requirements.
To facilitate this change, they’ve also completely updated the matching system. Now, players can create special groups of their choosing should they desire. There’s also extensive tweaks that can be made to really gather a group you want. “This allows for things like guild runs, or specific runs,” Rob elaborates on, giving an example of challenging Tiamat with a very specific group of classes, or having a bunch of friends attempt to run a raid with nothing but Trickster Rogues. One important allowance is you can fill in your group with others should you not have enough to challenge the content in your own group. You can also fill in slots for people who may disconnect or general loss of a member.
Of course, even though the tool allows guilds and groups of friends to customize their experiences, “you can still solo queue, no matter what.” There are a variety of rules being added to help completely streamline solo queueing. Best of all, this applies to all queued content across the entire game.
The last thing I touched on with Rob was the mount system. This was something Rob was especially happy to talk about, too. “Mounts will have slots for ‘gear’,” he informs me, going further by explaining that some mounts will already have gear slots with equipment. There are three main slots for mounts: active powers that allow the mount to perform actions for you in combat, passive powers that provide their ability just for having the mount, and speed power to allow your mount to travel faster. “These customizations are fully interchangeable,” he excitedly tells me. He gives the example of the warg being his favorite mount. However, in high level zones, he’s constantly getting knocked off of the mount. With this new system, he can have barding equipped to the mount that will prevent that, and can equip an active ability from, say, the flail snail, to really give it some oomph in combat.
One other change is the active stable, similar to how companions work. You get the benefits of the mounts simply by having them in the stable, which can give some amazing synergies for your characters. “There will be things like set bonuses, and insignias,” Rob says, which will allow for a huge amount of customization as far as mounts are concerned. They’re quite eager to see what players can do to push the boundaries of this new system to come up with ideas and builds of their own.
Neverwinter: The Maze Machine is providing quite a bit of content for everyone. Solo players can experience an epic, challenging storyline that helps conclude their Underdark explorations. Guilds have new tools to allow them to set up and engage in major group content much more easily than before. Mount collectors sound like they’re going to be in Seventh Heaven with all the customizations and combinations they can now achieve. The Maze Engine releases on March 15, so get ready for this exciting expansion!
Neverwinter: The Maze Engine Launches on March 15
Today, Perfect World Entertainment Inc., a leading publisher of free-to-play MMORPGs, and Cryptic Games announced Neverwinter: The Maze Engine is coming to PC on March 15, 2016 and Xbox One at a later date. The ninth expansion to the Dungeons & Dragons-based MMORPG pits players against the newest threats to Neverwinter, demon lords Baphomet and Orcus.
In the last expansion, Neverwinter: Underdark, players joined forces with iconic Dungeons & Dragons heroes to defeat the two-headed Demogorgon. Following these events, The Maze Engine introduces two new powerful demon lords, the Horned King Baphomet and Orcus, the Prince of Undeath. Down in the depths of the Underdark, Baphomet and his demons guard the Maze Engine, a magical mechanical device that can warp the very fabric of reality. Meanwhile, Orcus has taken control of Castle Never and re-animated defeated enemies of the past. Adventurers must eliminate these new threats by teaming up with classic D&D characters, including Drizzt Do’Urden, Minsc, Bruenor Battlehammer, Regis and more.
Neverwinter: The Maze Engine brings new gameplay updates, including the return of four regular dungeons and one epic dungeon, all of which have been updated visually and content-wise. Castle Never has received a massive overhaul, now that it’s been taken over by Orcus. The expansion will also introduce a new campaign, a system that gives customization to mounts and how they’re kept, and an improved queue system.
XCom 2 Launch Review: Is It Really That Different?
By Jason Parker (Ragachak)
Xcom is a franchise that has done an inordinate amount of things. Originally released in 1994, it received a reboot not too long ago called XCOM: Enemy Within, by 2k Games. Firaxis also took their hands to this franchise, and while I love the series, as I’m a big Sci-Fi/Tactical RPG kind of guy, I wonder as I settled in “Is it really that different from XCom?” I’m still not really sure that it is. Is it a beautiful game? You bet your ass it is. Character creation is pretty fantastic; there are mods for it [which is always a plus for a PC game], and they improved all the short-comings of the previous title. . . well. That’s not true. There are still some things that nag at me pretty hard. I love the XCom franchise, but I’m not sure if this one is a big enough upgrade from the other to really stand out. It’s fancy, pretty, and has a lot of new bells and whistles, but I’m not quite sold on it yet. I simply feel like they were trying to build a better XCom, which is fine. But it’s still considerably rough around the edge. The DLC and forthcoming patches will help! But that doesn’t excuse the fact that they didn’t just take more time to polish before launch. Read on for my full thoughts on Xcom 2.
The Procedurally Generated maps are pretty awesome, I dig it, but…but… I have had problems with these maps spawning so that my snipers virtually never gain line of sight, thanks to how the buildings are placed. What’s the point of having a damn sniper if I can’t get a clean shot at anything? That’s not even with the concealment system taking into account for cover! Not to mention a mission where I had to get to a radio tower, which seems like no big deal. Or it did, until the aliens set the house on fire that’s next to it, leaving me with nothing for my mission except smoldering rubble and crushed dreams. This goes hand in hand with another problem the game has, which is the infuriating inability to plateau difficulty correctly. As an aside, it’s kind of dark that you have to scavenge/save your own dead character’s bodies for the Advent Plates used for crafting, but that’s neither here nor there.
Not too far into the game, you have to Mindspike a particular alien target. Bear in mind, this was a regular objective on a regular target, no big deal. Then the boss alien blasts his way in to absolutely face-stomp your whole team [And he has the stones to back it up. 30 health or so, 5 armor, regens about 6 hp a turn… he’s a badass]. He has a great gun and all the cool PSI powers he needs. If you don’t know it’s coming, you can be in for a rough time. However, he met the business end of my shotgun and a flashbang. So, I got pretty lucky all things considered. I’m not anywhere near what I’d call a strategy pro, but it can be pretty damn frustrating no matter your skill at tactics games. As the game progresses, everything becomes more and more reliant on RNG, as actually difficulty levels ultimately bottom out.
One of the new big deals is that you can loot bodies for guns, parts, and the resource to make ammo. You “can” spend time crafting your own special ammo, armor, attachments and things, but why would you when you can just loot a body, roll the dice and hope it doesn’t suck? That’s considerably easier, but it’s just a combo of instant items [grenades, medikits]. Anything special or awesome requires input to get a random output that you can just pray isn’t a duplicate. It’s also pertinent to note you don’t buy guns anymore. You buy the upgrade and it’s unlocked forever. The system is more “pay now, pray you get something good later.” Being that there are 5 ammo types, 4 grenade types, 3 armor attachments, and 3 regular and upgraded versions of weapons, the odds of getting duplicates are pretty damn high.
Though, it’s not all bad, that’s for sure. The game sort of scales with you, so instead of fighting weak, wimpy, worthless alien troops [RE: XCOM: Enemy Within], you can expect aliens to keep up with your RPG arms race. For example, if you spend a fair amount of time exploring and working up your gear early in the game, you might encounter something like the “Gatekeeper Alien,” a formidable foe normally waiting to terrorize you later in the story. What makes this thing so terrifying? It’s “Gateway” attack is unavoidable, 8-10 damage, and then it’s going to resurrect any dead bodies around it as zombies. It has 6 armor and 35 health, and it’s here to kick your teeth down your throat. Chrysalids are also pretty disgusting, with an incurable poison, digging and hiding capabilities, and other unmentionable vile surprises. In a lot of ways, it’s much much better than XCom: Enemy Within. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s not going to hold your hand.
Other cool features? Cover! Line of Sight and cover are definitely your buddies. It’s great, because you can hide out of line of sight and be pretty much safe from enemy fire. This made me far less inclined to throw my keyboard into the toilet, furious about not being able to see an enemy you can CLEARLY see on the screen. The game makes it pretty damn clear what you can and cannot shoot. [Also, the AIM stat is generally your friend. Learn to love it.] Concealment/Sneaking made me feel like kind of a badass, but it also caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I’m not very good at stealth, but trying to move around all the patrols caused them to come up behind me when I’m feeling cocky and brash. And instead of ONE group of aliens, now I have two or three to deal with the second I misplay my movement by a single square. And the damn Pod system made me want to bash my head against the desk. The Pod System keeps enemies in set locations, only activating once you get near them. Should you not come across one of these locations and complete an objective, the enemies are likely to come rushing with damn near omnipotence, leaving you to be ganged up on by swarms of pissed off, psionic aliens.
This is why I love Mindcontrol; almost anything can be mindcontrolled, and I liberally use it to get myself out of sticky situations. I love PSI characters in this game. PSI characters are pretty ridiculous: They don’t take fire, poison, acid, or explosive damage, can remove negative effects, lock down multiple enemies, and have a pile of useful AOE moves. However, you have to spend the time in the PSI chamber amping them up.
It’s DEFINITELY worth the effort in the end. I also really like, as far as combat goes, having the melee option on Rangers. It’s bad ass! If you can stealth your way in and stab the throats of your alien menace, it’s pretty gratifying. As I mentioned before, character customization is phenomenal, and the game now follows a pretty basic formula so that your squad won’t be unbalanced or ill-prepared to deal with whatever comes ahead for you. I rather like this, and felt it would have been a satisfactory effort. But the additional option to train and temper them with the skills you desire makes the customization experience unparalleled in the genre.
Ready, Steady. . . GO!
Score: Great
In so many ways, XCOM 2 is a step above “Enemy Within,” though to be totally honest, I was incredibly let down by the reboot of the franchise. It’s a landslide without question, that this is leaps, bounds and miles beyond what the last XCOM game offered us. It’s not perfect, but you know, it gives the XCOM fans what they want: Character creation that’s fantastic, tactical gameplay, awesome abilities, and the enjoyment of obliterating an alien menace with plasma grenades and psychic powers. Do I think it needs fine tuning? Absolutely. Will upcoming patch work fix what’s not so great about it? That’s Firaxis MO these days. There are mods, but they aren’t really that great, yet. They exist, and they work; that’s what matters. The game is still new; give the devs and modders a little time to play with it – see what really works and what doesn’t. There are lots of things I didn’t really get to cover, like how you can evacuate from almost anywhere now. Though, some maps that have particular evac points might not agree with this. But I’m glad it’s there! Performance though isn’t perfect. It runs on a modded Unreal 3 engine and tries to keep all the high detailed options/visuals. No wonder the load times/running can be absolutely atrocious!
Score Breakdown:
[Combat, Balance]
+ I love the concealment ability, and the ability to line of sight alien attacks. It really gives the game the tactical edge it deserved, and frankly, I don’t think it got in the previous title.
- Some of the enemies are absolute bullshit. Being too greedy can get you bogged and overran by these enemies and their broken, infuriating powers. Line of sight can be your ally and even your enemy.
[Intelligence]
+ In general, WAY better class definition, AI, strategy and strategy options. The item array is expanded, and all around … more rounded.
- The game is FAR too reliant on the Random Number Generator, and performance. I intensely dislike playing through, feeling like I’ve sunk a good amount of time in, and suddenly an interstellar asskicking machine pops up and rends my whole squad asunder.
[Sound of Shooting]
+ God I love the sounds of this game. The characters sound like they are genuinely into what they’re doing; it doesn’t sound bland. The gunfire, explosions, it all feels very gritty and as close to realistic as it can. Being Sci-Fi.
- However, having my game interrupted with a voiceover that tells me shit I already know about the game, completely throws my swag off. That bothers me a great deal.
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