Xbox One owners can spend this weekend testing Evolve. The beta for Turtle Rock Studios and 2K Game’s upcoming competitive/co-operative shooter will be available for free to all Xbox One owners until January 19th, 3:00pm AEDT. The beta will kick things off with Hunt mode and unlock the Evacuation campaign mode on January the 18th. Those who pre-purchase the game through the Xbox Game Store will be able to unlock the third monster and the third tier of hunters for the beta and the launch of the game.
Evolve is available for pre-purchase as a Digital Deluxe edition and a base edition. Those who pre-purchase will get the Monster Expansion Pack for free, which will provide the Savage Goliath Skin at launch and the Behemoth monster DLC that will launch in the year. Evolve launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows on February 10, 2015.
On January 14, 2015, the Australian Classification Board officially refused classification for Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital’s action video game Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. A screenshot depicting an edited version of the scene that resulted in this ban is included below. Reader discretion is advised.
The game was refused classification because of the uncut version of the opening movie, which depicts a man implicitly raping a bleeding woman after he violently struck her to the ground as the words “finish her” appear on the screen. This depiction is under the guise of a what appears to be a movie shoot. Some have suggested that it may in fact be for a snuff film. Officially, the game was refused classification for the following reason:
The computer game is classified RC in accordance with the National Classification Code, Computer Games Table, 1. (a) as computer games that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified.”
Players are given the option to disable all scenes alluding to or depicting sexual violence at the start, but the edited version is cut short by only a few seconds. It ends at the point when the man is standing directly over the nearly-dead woman who is attempting to crawl away, which shown in the screenshot above. Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital have no plans to challenge the Australian Classification Board’s decision.
Type Moon has announced that in conjuction with DELiGHTWORKS Inc. that they will be rebooting the original Fate Online Project as an iOS and Android game.
This title will be an RPG featuring a number of characters from the popular visual novel and anime series Fate/Stay Night, as well as other Fate series properties. While there isn’t much information on the title out now it has been confirmed that Kinoko Nasu will be writing the story.
Fate/Grand Order will be released in Japan for mobile platforms in Spring 2015. Whether or not the title will be translated remains to be seen. The Fate series does have enduring popularity in the west, and as it is iOS/Android based, perhaps we will see a localization.
Sentai Filmworks has just announced that they have acquired the rights to Student Council’s Discretion Lv. 2, a direct sequel to the first season. The first season will be released on home video on March 24, 2015.
The second season premiered on Niconico in October 2012 before its television broadcast in January 2013. Many staff and cast changes were made between the first and second season, including the change from Studio Deen to AIC as the animation producer, the change of director, series script writer and character designer and the change of the voice actresses for Chizuru Akaba and Mafuyu Shiina.
Sentai Filmworks desribes the second season:
Sometimes you have to think outside the box, but Hekiyo Academy’s Student Council may go a step further and rewrite their entire universe! At least, that’s what could happen as the second season gets underway and the Council decides that their own anime might need a little spicing up. Should they introduce new characters? Add a boy’s love subplot? Or should they just continue to do what worked previously and spend most of their time chattering between themselves while working towards odd goals that might turn out to have been a little misguided in retrospect? The answer is “yes” to all of the above and more: Class barriers and the fourth wall come tumbling down as a supporting character literally takes up the challenge of moving up to main character status. The plot thickens with the mystery of a missing cake. The boundaries of love between step-siblings get pushed just a few steps beyond what’s socially comfortable and there just has to be a hot springs episode, doesn’t there? Of course there does! Join 5 student council members in search of an author as the storyline runs amok in Student Council’s Discretion Lv.2!
Lv. 2 will be released on home-video at some point in the future.
Sega & Creative Assembly have released a spotlight trailer showing off some of the new mechanics for the next Total War game. Total War: Attilla takes place after the generally accepted fall of Rome, focusing of hordes, the Goths, and the Huns. This title will essentially follow the end period of Total War: Rome II.
Total War: Attila brings in hordes which will be a new type of roaming civilization, which will wander and rove. This is the major new feature and while players can bunker down and occupy settlements, there are a number of advantages to remaining a roving army. Changing to a static settlement will add a number of challenges to gameplay.
However, players will be able to leave settlements and return to being a horde. Players do lose their infrastructures from doing so, but it does add another layer to the strategy game. Huns will be unable to settle which does maintain their historical accuracy. The spotlight also focuses on the difficulties of famine, harsh climates, and bleak lands during the Dark Ages.
Other features promised from Creative Assembly include the following:
Apocalyptic destruction mechanics
Wield the ferocious power of fire in battle to set buildings ablaze and terrify defenders, or wipe entire cities and regions from the face of the campaign map with the new raze mechanic.
Legendary start position
Playing as the Western Roman Empire you will begin with vast territories under your control, but weakened by political in-fighting and threatened on all sides by enemies, your dominance will quickly become a struggle to survive.
Overhauled game mechanics
Improved core gameplay and UI through the latest optimised and modified Total War game mechanics, including politics, family tree, civic management and technological progression.
Incredible period detail
With new period-specific technologies, arms and armaments, religion, cultures and social upheaval, Total War: ATTILA delivers an authentic experience of this ominous chapter of our history.
Outstanding visual fidelity
Improvements and optimisations to both campaign and battle visuals create a chilling vision of a looming apocalypse and the ruin of the civilized world.
With breath-taking scale, atmosphere and improved graphical performance, witness the end of days and the rise of a legend.
The spotlight can be seen below. This period is considered a rather violent one in history, so there should be plenty of combat to go around. Total War: Attila is set to be released February 2015.
Syndicate is an old PC classic in which you played an evil megacorporation in a cyberpunk setting, fighting to take control of the world with the liberal use of heavily augmented agents. Satellite Reign has been described as a ‘spiritual successor’ to the old Syndicate franchise and as a fan of the old series I wanted to see firsthand what 5 Lives Studios had done to earn this title. Read on to find out what I thought.
Let me start by pointing out that Satellite Reign is currently in Early Access on Steam and the current build is at a pre-alpha stage. There are a fairly significant number of bugs with everything from abilities not activating properly to units getting stuck on various bits of terrain. Cars themselves are also somewhat prone to infinite donuts when making turns and occasionally NPC civilians decide to engage in flight when sitting on a bench so it’s easy to see that there are still a number of things which need to be ironed out. Similarly, a lot of features have not been implemented fully as black market fixers and info terminals (among other things) are yet to be implemented. A lot of the text appears to be a placeholder, but in the meanwhile you’ll be able to enjoy some instances of very geeky humour as you outfit your agents. Besides these points however, I was surprised and impressed by just how much content there currently is in the build and how well (relatively) it works.
This game oozes cyberpunk. Even at this stage in development, the city looks and feels great… at least as far as dystopic urban cityscapes can “look and feel great”. There are street markets and skeezy pizza joints across the road from fortified military complexes. Squares are illuminated by neon signs advertising everything from food to sex and are under the watchful eyes of security cameras. The sprawl of Neuromancer and Blade Runner is recreated in loving detail here with all the danger, squalor, and sleaze (this is the ‘Red Light District’ after all). This environment is the perfect mix of noir and science fiction, kudos to 5 Lives Studios for pulling this off so early in development. My one criticism with this aspect is that even with the population sliders set to maximum, the streets still felt a bit sparse of life… although I imagine this may have been a deliberate limit to improve stability at this point in the game’s development lifecycle.
One thing I really enjoyed was the soundscape which accompanies your exploration of the city. The soundtrack is suitably synthy and sci-fi, but what really gets the setting is the ambient noise of the city itself. Vehicles speeding by, radio chatter between security forces, and sporadic gunfire off in the distance all combine to give you the feeling that you’re immersed in a living, breathing, near-future dystopia.
Navigating through the city is simple enough with the player being given a god’s-eye view over the map as they give orders to their team of agents. The camera is able to zoom in and out but can only be rotated up to 45 degrees either way from its starting position. I found this restriction to be somewhat unusual but I was able to play through the current build fine. I imagine that this restriction might have been placed to save on rendering out a fully three-dimensional city. It certainly gives the game a quasi-isometric feel and if it means that they can focus on making the city look as awesome as it can be (in the limited span I can see), then it is a sacrifice I’m happy to make. The camera also has a subtle sway to it, to create the sense that the player is watching the action/carnage unfold through the camera feed of drone flying over the city.
The gameplay itself feels more like an action-RPG rather than a traditional real-time strategy game. The player has control over a team of 4 agents, each with their own class and abilities. The soldier is the muscle of the team and has upgrades which increase his potential to tank damage. The support has access to healing nanobots and stims (which slows down time for your team). The infiltrator has access to cloaking and silent, melee attacks which can eliminate most targets. The hacker has the ability to hack into secure systems and even the neural implants of guards/random citizens. The individuals in the team don’t get much characterisation beyond their abilities and visual design… but I guess this reinforces the fact that they are just pawns in your scheme to break Dracogenics control over the city.
The game gives you a variety of objectives which largely revolve around getting into various places where you shouldn’t be. Objectives generally have a number of sub-objectives which can be completed in order to make the main goal easier i.e. infiltrating into a compound is much simpler if the guards all have faulty cybernetics because you assassinated the main doctor and have his replacement on your payroll. These objectives reward you with items such as augmentations or weapons (which can then be researched) and district-wide bonuses which help with various aspects of your operation.
Your agents themselves are fairly adept at moving through the city and stick to cover when ordered to move alongside low walls and such. There is a bit of a problem with the agent pathfinding AI not accounting for characters and getting stuck on other agents or civilians occasionally. Furthermore, the pathfinding AI doesn’t appear to care much for respecting restricted access zones as my agents began waltzing through a security compound when I told them to get to a point across the map. I was aiming for more of a low-key approach at the time but kudos to the AI for sticking it to the man.
The stealth and combat mechanics work reasonably well with the movement system as both rely upon line-of-sight. Cameras and security forces will generally only detect you if you are in their line of sight (generally indicated by a cone of light). If they spot you, cameras will track you for a short while and call for reinforcements, while security forces will attempt to engage and call for back-up if they feel the odds are against them. Most of the time the system feels fair with detection resulting due to mistiming or some other mistake I made, but there were some instances in which the guards appeared to have developed omnipotence and spotted my agents while they were in cover. Overall this aspect works quite well, but more often than not I had my infiltration discovered.
Which leads us to combat which, although requiring polish, is dynamic and enjoyable. The enemy AI responds quite fluidly to offensive actions by your agents and will take cover when being shot at. The fact that you’re generally always outnumbered when you enter into these encounters reinforces the point that going toe-to-toe with corporate security head-on is generally a good way to get your team flat-lined. Planning out flanking positions and utilizing agent abilities are a great way to weigh the scales in your favour and even then things can go wrong. Luckily, the game doesn’t punish you for death too much as your agents are respawned (“flash-cloned) at nearby beacons some distance away and outside of any restricted zones with all their skills and simply needing to be re-equipped.
Overall, this is an unpolished gem which I quite enjoyed playing through despite its many bugs and glitches. I look forward to seeing all the new features being implemented as the game develops. I will especially be looking forward to seeing more of the city unlocked and will definitely be keeping an eye on the game as it develops.
If you want to read some more about Satellite Reign, I recently infiltrated my way into the offices of 5 Lives Studios to ask a couple of the devs some questions and you can read about it here.
Continuing from their impressive list of updates last year, NCSoft has announced a staggering amount of further updates for WildStar. Most importantly, NCSoft recognizes that while WildStar is complete and successful, it still has a long way to go.
WildStar Director Mike Donatelli has stated that they want to focus on player feed back to guide continuing changes to the title. With this NCSoft has stated that they wish to make all updates with the present and future player database in mind. These two notes show that NCSoft is dedicated to continued positive growth and change for WildStar.
With this, they’ve announced a umber of new specific features for their next update, title The Protogames Initiative.
Protogames Academy – a training dungeon to prepare lower level players for telegraphs, interrupt armor, and boss mechanics.
Ultimate Protogames – an exciting new dungeon for upper level players.
They Came from Fragment Zero! – a level 6 shiphand that introduces players to group gameplay at a much earlier level.
LFG upgrades – currently, some shiphands, adventures, and dungeons are intentionally hidden or need to be unlocked. Unfortunately, this keeps many players out of the content. Moving forward, all of this content will be added to an expanded LFG tool.
Datascape 20 – the 40-person dungeon wasn’t getting played as often as we hoped. Not only was the content challenging, but roster management was painful. In the next update we will lower the player requirement down to 20.
Other goals planned by NCSoft for 2015 include, but are not limited to the following:
A new Contracts system which will provide players with short, fun objectives throughout different kinds of WildStar content, enabling them to obtain rare and exciting rewards.
Revising overall levelling and elder games experiences and making adjustments to enhance story immersion, fight combat fatigue, and fine-tune our reward streams.
As our Raiding guilds begin to face Avatus in the Datascape, we’re working on your next challenge! A brand new 20-player experience.
All in all, the future looks quite secure for the future of this MMO.
Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios have announced that they will be bringing a new MMORPG to Xbox One. The game in question is Wizards of the Coast’sNeverwinter, a free-to-play title already available on PC.
Neverwinter will include all of the previously launched PC content when it launches on console. Cryptic has also said that it will bring the “living social world” to the Xbox One, which implies there will be cross-play with PC Gamers. Additionally, control optimization and friends list integration is planned for the title.
Players can sign up for the closed beta here, which will be available from February 5th-8th. Neverwinter will be free to all Gold membership subscribers.
Dark Souls II isn’t even a year old but Namco and FromSoftware are giving it to us all over again in a bright, shiny package with the upcoming Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin edition for Xbox One and PS4. The updated version not only includes the base game and the Lots Crowns expansions, but also includes new items, a new NPC and some balance changes for single and online play.
Here is a look at the new changes being made to the game:
Brand new NPC
The Scholar of the First Sin character appears throughout the game and will reveal a new path through the DARK SOULS II universe. What will this mysterious new character reveal to players?
Expanded item descriptions
Many items contain expanded descriptions to help deepen the lore in the DARK SOULS II universe.
New items
Players will gain access to a new item: the Agape Ring. When players equip the new Agape Ring, souls collected from kills during online play will be absorbed by the ring rather than the player. This allows players to control their online matchmaking experience by limiting their total souls collected.
Online matching improvements
The bonfire warp selection screen will now highlight the top three areas where players will have the best chance to connect with other players online.
White phantoms will remain in other players’ worlds for longer periods of time. Also, white phantoms will no longer return to their world if time runs out during a boss battle.
Other improvements to the matchmaking system will help players connect and enjoy DARK SOULS II online.
New enemy behavior
The Imitation spell now affects normal enemies.
Covenant of Champions
Choosing to enter the Covenant of Champions will now allow enemies to continue to respawn after being defeated.
These new changes will also be coming to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC players in early February while the next-gen version drop April 7th. While gameplay changes are fun, we also have a few new screenshots for you visually-inclined gamers out there so check them out below and remember to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Dark Souls II news as it becomes available.
