A little over a week ago, we shared with you a video of industry luminary and creator of the original SimCity, Will Wright, interviewing SimCity’s (2013) creative director, Ocean Quigley. It was a special occasion to be sure. Well, today we have another video interview; this time Will is the interviewee at the mercy of SimCity’s lead designer, Stone Librande. Check it out at the bottom of this article.
Firstly, I must get this out of the way: is everyone on the EA Maxis team named after an element of nature?! Ocean, Stone… are we going to see Breeze next?! On names alone, EA Maxis is the “hippiest” dev team in history, and we love them for it! But I digress… it’s encouraging to see that the originator of the series enjoyed playing this upcoming reboot of his innovative original, released back in 1989.
Stone asks Will his thoughts on the experience, as a player and a person who is now looking in from the outside, so to speak. He also inquires as to Will’s objectives as he played the game among other things. It’s very cool to hear the feedback come from the series creator himself, and I’m sure EA Maxis were equally encouraged. SimCity is coming out March 7th in Australia and March 8th in New Zealand.
OGPlanet have announced that the free-to-play shooter Tactical Intervention is going to be launched on March 28th.
Minh ‘Gooseman’ Le is the games main developer, and Minh was the co-creator of Counter-Strike, the hugely popular FPS, which he created as a Half Life mod in 1999. Minh Le left Valve to create his own game – Tactical Intervention, created with South Korean studio FIX Korea. This runs on Valve’s source engine and is similar to Counter-Strike, with terrorists and counter terrorists fighting against each other in different game modes, including escort, hostage rescue and hostage grab objectives.
Le has added in features in Tactical Intervention that are not in any Counter-Strike games, such as driving missions and the threat of police dogs. Other aspects of the game which help to differentiate it from Counter-Strike include rappelling, the use of riot shields and the ability to shoot out of moving cars while in high speed car chases.
The plan for continuous content in Tactical Intervention is the development of new maps and releasing them on a regular basis for free. Micro transactions (as are a part of most free-to-play games) will come in the form of improving a player’s gear.
Gears of War: Judgment’s release is just around the corner on March 19th, and I recently received the opportunity to not only get some hands-on time with the campaign, but also interview the lead level designer at Epic Games, Jim Brown.
We have to thank Xbox Australia, EB Games and, of course, Epic Games for facilitating, organising and hosting the event. And a massive thanks to Jim Brown, who has worked on the Gears of War franchise now for a decade.
He is a consummate professional and very personable, which put everyone at ease. I actually spoke to him outside of our interview time and will add in some of those tidbits at the bottom of the interview. And no, there were no “off-the-record” details or information relayed – not like I would write them out anyway – so don’t hold out hope.
Please enjoy the interview!
First of all, thanks for being here and doing all of this; we greatly appreciate it. So, we’ve heard that the fans’ opinions really influenced the direction of the game, but did the team at Epic Games already have an idea of where they wanted to go with this entry in the series before polling gamers?
No, we really weren’t sure where we wanted to go. The one thing we knew was that we didn’t just want to do another ‘Gears’. We wanted to do something special, try something new and challenge ourselves along the way. And the Baird thing kinda caught us off guard a little bit as well, because he’s always been a supporting character. But what we found was that, because he’s a smart-ass and sarcastic and all of those things, he really says what gamers are thinking in their heads a lot of times so people identify with him a lot more. And, even in the worst case conditions, he’s a very interesting character and so he brought a lot to the table. And, he was the one character whose story – out of the whole Delta Squad – we never told; never in the comics, never in the novels and never in any of the games. So this was really a good opportunity for us to tell his story.
See, I would have thought that Cole would be the biggest fan favourite after Marcus and Dom…
Yeah, he definitely is, but by the end of ‘Gears 3’ and looking at some of the novels, a lot of his story had already been told as well; going back to visit his home town, his missing his Mother… we actually built a whole section of the game around him. Plus the beta and he had his own special downloadable content and his own multiplayer map and so…
He’s had enough of the spotlight!
Yeah, exactly. But yes, he is a great character which is one of the reasons we brought him back here. He’s also Baird’s best friend so they play off each other very well. He’s a little bit different in this game, though, people will see; we re-did his character art – obviously because he is 20-25 years younger – but we also re-did all of his audio to try and capture that younger, more energetic feel as he’s not quite as worn down and war-weary as in previous games.
How much potential did you see for further balancing all the weaponry with this being your fourth entry in the series? Obviously, people are always going to be a little vocal about it, especially in regards to multiplayer…
A little?! Yeah, totally, be honest! (Laughter)
Well, in single-player it’s not as much an issue but when they take on multiplayer, people get very specific and outspoken about certain mechanics and how they are balanced when playing against other human opponents.
And that makes sense, because people who play the campaign are in it for fun and the story, but on a particular multiplayer map you’re playing a match however many times over and every little detail matters, for sure. But, now with our new load-out system where you can choose any one of these 5 weapons and 5 grenades to customise your class, so to speak, to play the way you want to play, we wanted to make sure that every weapon filled a very specific role. We didn’t want to have 3 or 4 rifles that all did the same thing but just looked different. So we wanted to make sure that each was tailored towards a specific type of player. So, even though they were all fairly well balanced across the board already, we re-balanced every weapon in the game against that system. We then used that as the basis for the entire game, where as in the past it was the other way around where the single-player came first and the multiplayer was the off-shoot. This time around we used the multiplayer as a baseline and built the single-player based on that.
That’s interesting because multiplayer has always been such a large focus for Gears fans, I would have expected that to have always been the case. Now, one thing I know you can’t talk about is next-generation, but I’m wondering if you guys plan to move forward with Gears of War as your sole focus in the future, continuing its legacy as the premiere Epic Games franchise on future platforms, or have you gotten the itch to do something different?
I would love to say yes; I mean, this is something that is very personal to a lot of us. We’ve been working on it for a decade now and the whole reason we did this one is because so many fans wanted us to and we weren’t done with it. And it’s such a big universe, so there’s any number of directions we can go with it. But we’re still not finished with Judgment yet; we’re still at home working on DLC. So we are constantly building and expanding on the universe as much as we can.
Speaking of DLC, I wonder if you can tell us if it will be multiplayer heavy as that has been the trend?
Uh, the DLC is gonna be what the DLC is gonna be. (Laughter) We’re not saying just yet, but stay tuned; in the next few days some details will come out, for sure.
I had to try. (Laughter) Do you think you could explain the Declassified Missions for people who may still be confused as to how that is implemented and what it means for the story?
Sure. So the game is framed around a series of testimonies. You play as Kilo Squad, who are on trial for committing war crimes. And as each members steps forward to give their testimony, you as the player take over and get to live that testimony and kinda make it your own and tell that story. So that’s basically the “public record” of what happened. Now, throughout the game you will be given the opportunity at several points to declassify what really happened along the way, and that gives you some context as to how they bent the rules and did things that ultimately ended with them being on trial. Each of the declassified testimonies changes something; it could be the weapons you’re using, environmental conditions, squad tactics or any number of things – there’s dozens of them in the game. And each time you do it, it’s us giving you the option as a player to say, “yes, I want to change the story” or “yes, I want a little more of a challenge”. And that feeds into the star system where, at the end of a chapter, we rank how well you’ve done and whether you’ve accepted those challenges, completed them and that sort of thing…
And that breeds replay-ability with the star ratings…
Absolutely right, so when you get one set of stars you might think “oh, I only got two, I need to get all three” or “hey, I got silver stars because I’m on normal difficulty. I’m gonna up it to hardcore and see what I can do this time”. And then you can use those stars to unlock things later in the game. What people don’t realise about the declassifieds is the way they change the game further on down the road. So, for example, if you choose to say “hey, here’s a declassified where we’re only going to use shotguns”, two hours down the road when you wish you had your lancer back, and three declassifieds ago you chose to give it up, it’s gonna affect the way you play through that chapter. So they start to have this sort of domino effect and interact with one other, and what happens is that you end up with a more custom experience as opposed to someone else who didn’t choose to do that or had a different combination of events and things they’d done along the way.
I’ve seen today that the number of Locusts on any given battlefield has increased exponentially and the combat is much more frenetic… was that purely a design decision or was it connected to the plot seeing as these are the early days of Emergence Day when you’d expect the Locust army to be at full-strength and pushing their strongest onslaught?
Both, really. I mean, we wanted it to feel a lot darker and a lot more intense, much like the original ‘Gears’. We wanted to recapture that feeling where the creatures are scary again. Because, as you said, from a story perspective the Locusts at this point are a heck of a lot stronger than they were in later games; there’s more of them, they are bigger and stronger. They have a more powerful and intelligent leader leading the charge, who you chase throughout the game…so from a story perspective, and a gameplay perspective there’s a lot of different reasons for that. Even from a technical perspective we are pushing more enemies than we ever have before on screen at the same time, better lighting, more particle effects, higher frame-rate – so there’s a lot going on there that’s freshened the air.
Just going back as it relates to the star rating system, I have to ask how easy will it be to go back and replay a section to improve your rating? Will it be accessible as part of the main menu system for convenience’s sake?
At the end of each chapter you can immediately choose to continue or replay from that point, so you can say “ooh, I only got one star. Before I know what happens next I want to go replay that and try again.” And the other great thing is that the stars are based on your team’s efforts. So you can bring in a co-op partner, drop-in drop-out, and they can help you essentially get more stars along the way and in turn more rewards for both of you…or the punishment if you do poorly.
Awesome. Well, just to close this out, what is the one thing that you can say to prospective gamers and consumers to sell them on Gears of War: Judgment?
I think that what was really, really important to us as developers was to look at this from fresh eyes. So what we’ve done is created a very special game that is a Gears game; it looks like Gears, it plays like Gears, it feels like Gears, but there’s so much new there. We’ve really approached storytelling, gameplay, weapon balance, everything from a completely fresh perspective. So, I think that it’s going to be really good for first time players while providing a lot of depth for experienced/long time players. And, especially, for people who have taken a break – this is a really good chance to come back and re-experience the franchise from the beginning of the video game timeline.
Great, well thank you so much for your time Jim!
Awesome, thank you.
As mentioned, through natural conversation Jim relayed some further points to me on multiplayer and the new “Smart Spawn System”. I asked him if it was strange or maybe even frustrating to see people playing his levels a certain way and if he was thinking to himself “don’t do that, there’s a great spot up there!” He then reiterated the fact that the new Smart Spawn System prevents him from being able to do that as even he will play the same area over and over again and always be surprised. On multiplayer, Mr. Brown assured me that much work has gone into the server side of things and making sure that the user-experience is as smooth and accommodating as possible online. There are multiple new servers and he promises stability across the board.
Well, that’s all for my interview with Gears of War: Judgment’s lead level designer Jim Brown. As Jim stated, Judgment is a great jumping-off point for anyone who hasn’t played a Gears title before; they and the “Gears Nation” can cast down their Judgment on March 19th, exclusively on the Xbox 360.
The final week of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment’s Injustice Gods Among Us ‘Battle Arena’ round 1 battles has concluded. It was a big week; we got first footage of Sinestro and Hawkgirl in action and the quarter-finals of the tournament have been established.
First up we had the confrontation between Superman and Sinestro. I’m pretty sure there are scores more Superman fans than Sinestro fans, so I’m not entirely sure the intricacies of their fighting styles/powers and a conversation or debate on who would have the upper hand in a real fight matters in this instance; just on a pure popularity vote, you’d have to imagine that Superman would win. Watch the battle video below to see if Sinestro could indeed strike fear into the heart of the Man of Steel (highly unlikely).
Superman vs Sinestro
The second fight of the week was between the tricky Green Arrow, and the swift and tough-as-nails Hawkgirl. This is a much closer match (granted, almost any fight with Superman in it is not going to be close). Ice, Explosive, Electric, Fire, Rope… all arrow types in the quiver of the skilled marksman, Green Arrow. Hawkgirl, however, has the Nth metal mace, can fly, is ruthless and does not give up. Watch the resultant battle below to find out if the arrow stops the hawk.
Green Arrow vs Hawkgirl
Here is the fight bracket showing the quarter-final match-ups, which will commence on March 11th:
Remember to visit injustice.dccomics.comto cast your votes on all future battles. For those who are unfamiliar with the competition, its rules or the prizes at stake, go herefor more information.
According to work in a new study, scientists have said that playing action games may actually help to boost reading skills in Dyslexic children. The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Padua in Italy, and was funded by grants from the CARIPARO Foundation and the University.
The study found that twelve hours of gaming achieved more than a year of reading development and was as effective as the best remedial treatment currently available. The Children involved in the study played nine sessions of 80 minutes on either action games or non-action games. The children playing the action games provided the only notable benefit with the improvements including being able to read faster and more accurately than their counterparts. They also improved in other tests of attention.
This study could support the idea that the roots of dyslexia lay in visual attention deficits. Video games are thought to affect visual attention pathways in the brain which may influence reading ability. The fast paced nature of action games forced the children to focus more efficiently in order to gather the information which was needed to progress in the game.
Dr Andrea Facetti, who is from the University of Padua in Italy, said:
“Action video games enhance many aspects of visual attention, mainly improving the extraction of information from the environment.”
This could be a way of getting video games into the classroom, as many scientists and educational thinkers now profess that not every child learns in the same way, and that video games may be of major benefit to both academic learning as well as cognitive skills in many children.
However, more research is needed before games should be considered a treatment for dyslexia and the amount of time children spend playing video games should be limited, warn scientists. What do you think about the findings? Let us know in the comments section below.
Thanks to Xbox Australia and EB Games, I recently got some hands-on time with Gears of War: Judgment’s campaign. Epic Games lead level designer Jim Brown also graced us with his presence, and an interview which you can readright here.
To preface this preview, I must say that I did not get too much time with the game as there were only 5 game stations and more than 20 guests so we all gave up the controller after a short while to be courteous and allow everyone a fair chance to play part of the 1.5hr long chunk of gameplay (but I did observe A LOT and make many notes).
So, this time around you will be playing apparent fan favourite Lt. Damon S. Baird. Along with Pvt. Augustus Cole (COOOOLE TRAAAAIIIN!), Kilo Squad has some familiar faces. Joining them are trainee of the Onyx Guard Academy, Sofia Hendrik, and COG soldier Garron Paduk. The story starts off as Baird and the team are being tried for war crimes by Col. Ezra Loomis. Players will then get to experience Kilo Squad’s actions brought forth as testimony in the trial as a series of flashbacks. This is the story structure for a sizeable portion of the game.
The majority of this opening section takes place in and around the ‘Museum of Military Glory’ in Halvo Bay; one of the first big cities to get attacked on Emergence Day. Kilo Squad jump straight into the action, defending the city from Locust swarms. I am not a fan of detailing plot points, so I will just get into the mechanics and gameplay. Judgment makes some key tweaks and changes to the control scheme that, if you’re like me, may catch you off guard at first. Firstly, gone is the use of the D-Pad to select your weapon. That functionality has now been assigned to the ‘Y’ button (Up on the D-Pad now zooms in on a point of interest and Down on the D-Pad brings up your mission objective).
It’s a move that mirrors many FPS’ out there, but has good reason to. In Judgment, the “Smart Spawn System” means that enemy types and enemy spawn locations are randomly generated, sort of like how ‘The Director’ worked in the Left 4 Dead series. Coupled with the fact that the sheer number of threats on screen has increased, you may find yourself surrounded or overwhelmed and streamlining the weapon swapping – which is also quicker animations-wise – ensures you aren’t caught off guard while an animation cycles or distracted by an unnecessary interface element in the heat of intense battle. Those moments are critical.
Also, grenades are now mapped to the ‘LB’ button and can be thrown without any wind-up, although that is still an option for when you have the spare time to aim. Many weapons were featured in this demo, including the Boomshot Grenade Launcher, Mortar, Gnasher, Lancer, One-Shot, Scorcher Flamethrower, Breechshot, Mulcher and Boom Shield. The newly revealed Stim-Gas Grenade was also made available, which heals anyone who enters its radius of blue mist. I was surprised to see so much of an arsenal acquirable from the get-go, but with wave after wave of Locusts, I was glad to have access to them.
Speaking of Locusts, a litany of enemy types entered the battlefield throughout the play-through. Grenadiers, Tickers,Wretches, Kantus, Mulchers, Boomers and Butchers were all present. I found the A.I. of the average Locust Drone to be disappointedly simple, and even confused at times. I experienced them, first-hand, facing the complete opposite direction to me as I brushed by them, lost as to who to attack as a priority; me or my teammates. Nonetheless, the onslaught is brutal across the board and you will actually find yourself frantically on the move quite often, rarely able to stay behind a piece of cover for too long before being forced out.
Back to the weaponry, there are certain weapons that are utilised only in specific scenarios, such as the Sentinel – a placeable turret that adds significant firepower to your defences. The Hammer of Dawn even makes an appearance, although specifically during a Declassified Mission. These missions are a huge selling point for the campaign, along with the new star rating system. Every section of the game is bookended by a stats page of sorts that lists all your battle achievements, adding up to a star rating out of 3. It’s a system that encourages replay, which can be done immediately by pressing ‘Y’ instead of ‘A’ for continue on said page.
The aforementioned star rating system carries over to the Declassified Missions, which pose a series of challenges for the player to complete in the ensuing level or area. These conditions vary from restrictions on weaponry to time limits and more. Successfully completing these tasks and the missions themselves grant more points that fill up your star rating much faster. This, in turn, will unlock special items or weapons down the line. These missions are billed as the “off-the-record” recounts of Baird; the events that actually went down, although, it’s up to you if you want to tackle them – and if you don’t, then they never really happened did they!?
These alternate events take place in different routes and locations than you would normally experience outside of attempting them. The same ground is not being covered here; there is always something new to see or do in these missions, which hold even more value because of that fact. Again, replay-ability is clearly something the teams at Epic Games and People Can Fly wanted to instil. It also makes the game that much less linear, which is always welcome. So when you get your copy, I suggest accessing that massive red Gears omen plastered on a wall somewhere in your current level. Oh, and play on higher difficulty levels for more rewards!
All in all, Judgment looks like the original Gears of War in the sense that it is grittier, darker and much more muted than the later titles. The action comes on thick and heavy, more than ever before. To me, with the added elements of the Declassified Missions and the star rating system, I felt like the campaign took on an arcade style approach, and adopted particular multiplayer ideas/concepts as well – especially the Horde mode-like moment or two. It plays like you want it to; faster, more refined but also familiar. But this is definitely not just another Gears game. The team took risks here, and it’s refreshing to see.
All good things must come to an end and it seems that the end of the Fairy Tail anime is coming to a lot sooner than anyone would have thought. As first found by 0takomu, it has been announced in the latest issue of Kodansha’s TV Magazine that Fairy Tail’s anime broadcast will end on March 30th.
The scan of the announcement from the magazine can be seen above and is clickable for a very high-res version of the announcement. It is currently unknown as to why Fairy Tail’s anime is ending, especially since the series is currently in one of the longest arcs in the Fairy Tail franchise.
The Fairy Tail manga appears to be continuing without interruption, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a popular manga’s anime come to an end despite the manga itself continuing with no interruption.
Update: Hiro Mashima, Fairy Tail’s mangaka, has taken to Twittersaying that he has good news, but that he will not reveal it yet and fans have to wait until the time comes for the announcement. Considering this Tweet comes immediately after news broke of the anime’s ending and is being classified as “good news,” we’ll leave it up to you to decide what this news could be.
After it’s initial announcement, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hasn’t revealed all that much about the world that players would be exploring other than just how much bigger it would be than Witcher 2. Luckily however, CD Projekt RED has talked more about this huge world for their players as well as a set of screenshots to show it off.
Detailing the story it was stated that inside of the living-open world players would be free to complete missions in any order, but their decisions would have a deep impact on everything from the locations, to the creatures, to the NPCs. Better for those that missed out on the first 2 games, the story has also been designed as a standalone adventure to allow those new players to not have to worry about details in the games they didn’t play.
As for the world that the story will take place in, only three locations have been confirmed so far: the archipelago of Skellige, the City of Novigrad in the delta of the Pontar river, and No Man’s Land. In addition, these locations are set to differ drastically in terms of cultural and adventure, as well as being filled with “living” props that will change under Geralt’s influence throughout the Northern Kingdoms. As such, the world will have predators hunting prey and monsters attacking villages organically through the games AI.
Combat in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has come further since it predecessor as well, with more abilities and skills as well as more animations for Geralt as he fights, a total of 96 almost 5 times that of Witcher 2. A greater variety of tactical options through the use of equipment like traps and bombs means players will have more than just basic combat sequences to engage in during fights. Players will also be able to use the environment to their advantage, such as using bee hives to get their inhabitants to attack enemies.
Lastly, the RPG elements in the game have also bee expanded upon from an expanded Witcher Sense that will aid players in more than just combat, to a broader sign casting with each of the 5 signs having 2 different modes of use, an intuitive alchemy system that allows players to make things from pyrotechnics to elixirs, and a crafting system that can impact gameplay. Even though that seems like a lot to learn and handle, Witcher 3 will feature a tutorial system a feature sorely missed in Witcher 2.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt looks to include a whole lot of expansion in many of it’s different areas, which is great to see for the final installment in the trilogy story of Geralt. Interested players can check out the new full-size screenshots in the gallery below to see some of the locations Geralt will be visiting when the game releases next year, 2014, for PC, PS4, and all high-end platforms.
After THQ went bankrupt and it’s assets were sold off to a number of different publishers, many fans wondered what would happen to games that were meant to be released soon, such as Metro: Last Light. Well today Deep Silver, the company that acquired the license and the studio for Metro, has announced that fans can expect Metro: Last Light on store shelves on May 14th in North America and May 17th in Europe.
The title is coming out to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and is still set in Moscow 2034 where the underground tunnels have become home to the survivors from the nuclear war that devastated the world. Players step into the boots of Artyom as he fights for survival against other factions in the tunnels and tries to track down a doomsday device that could lead to their victory.
The Museum of Modern Art, better known around the world as MoMA, has acquired 14 video games to include in its ‘Applied Design’ Exhibition opening on the 2nd of March. ‘Applied Design’ focuses on the how design can be used in problem solving, whether the problem is found in the real world or constructed by the designer for the purpose of creating meaning. Sitting along designs that have changes the world, the games will be archived for MoMA’s permanent collection. Other works in the collection include Massoud Hassani’s ‘Mine Kafon’ landmine detonator, a glass maker that utilises the desert sun and sand for 3D printing and ‘The Earthquake Proof Table.’
The playable games on exhibition are:
Passage
Tetris
Pac-Man
Katamari Damacy
Vib-ribbon
Cannabalt
flOw
Portal
Another World
Games that are to be demonstrated through video or walkthroughs are:
Eve Online
SimCity2000
The Sims
Myst
It’ll be interesting to see what Robert Ebert has to say about this exhibition. For now though, check out the promotional video for this exhibition down below.
Gears of War: Judgment’s release is just around the corner on March 19th, and I recently received the opportunity to not only get some 
![Fairy Tail anime to end on March 30 [Updated]](https://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/fairy-tail-ending.jpg "Fairy Tail anime to end on March 30 [Updated]")
