It looks like PlayStation 3 purchasers of Battlefield 3 will be able to laud it over the rest of us Battlefield 3 fans on the PC and Xbox 360 for a week, as EA has announced when each platform can expect to see the Back to Karkand expansion for Battlefield 3. The company has stated that December 6th is the date that PlayStation 3 owners will receive it, while PC and Xbox 360 owners will be able to obtain it on December 13th.
This downloadable content will be free for anyone who purchased the game early, but will cost $15 or 1200 MSP if you chose not too. The package will contain a number of new additions to the game, including ten new weapons, an assignment system, conquest assault mode, the VSTOL fighter jet, Desert Buggy, and APC vehicles and of course the Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman, and Strike at Karkand online maps.
Anno 2070 Developer:Related Designs, Ubisoft Blue Byte Publisher:Ubisoft Platform:PC Release Date:November 17, 2011 Price:$39.99Available Here
Overview: The latest in the Anno series, 2070 for the first time jumps into the future, replacing the old world charm of centuries gone by with a futuristic world rendered unrecognisable by the effects of global warming. It’s a city builder with a heavy dose of economy management, and is definitely not one for the faint hearted – this game demands your brain in the ‘on’ position. Genre fans will love the depth on offer here, and the excellent graphics make Anno 2070 a great new addition to the series. It does have a steep difficulty curve that newcomers will have to watch out for, but for the most part Ubisoft’s latest is a solid, incredibly in depth title.
On a more technical side, you will need one of Ubisoft’s UPlay accounts to register and run the game, but despite some personal gripes about this sort of service it doesn’t restrict things to any great degree. The game is crucially still playable without an internet connection, although it does take a curious amount of patching and seems to need a brief update every time it is loaded. On the other hand it is incredibly stable, and I had no trouble with an crashes or bugs whatsoever.
Gameplay: Sea levels have risen drastically and changed the face of the world, leaving humanity to make the best of life on the remaining islands. The technology level is still high, and despite the world wide disaster humanity still seems to be doing pretty well for itself. Three factions jostle for position – the eco friendly Eden Initiative, the industrious Global Trust, and the scientists of the SAAT. Players will be able to build as either the Ecos or the Tycoons (that’s the Eden Initiative and Global Trust respectively), whilst the Tech’s of the SAAT fill more of a supporting role, providing access to science labs and the latest technologies.
Each group has their own building style, with the Ecos favouring crisp clean white and glass structures over the grimy, industrial feel of the Tycoons. The politics behind it all isn’t played up very much, and the factions are caricatures of an agenda more than anything. Eco citizens for example, will want to sip cups of tea and attend concert halls, whereas the Tycoons crave access to alcohol and entertain themselves at a casino – it seems like a perfect set up for some comedy, but it never really comes.
On first opening the game the sheer amount of things on offer can be a bit overwhelming. Without ever touching a tutorial there are senate and world wide elections to vote in (granting game wide bonuses to all players depending on which faction is elected), stock markets to be watched, world events to take part in and in game emails to check. Whew! The main gameplay is split into two main modes, the campaign and continuous mode.
Aiming to help you through all of this is EVE, an artificial intelligence with a Glados like voice who could do with a bit more personality. EVE will dish out objectives and introductory videos, and provides access to the game’s encyclopaedia via a data log. She’s very reflective of the straight laced nature of the game, which largely ignores all the potential for some wry humour with it’s characters and factions. Undoubtedly there’s a lot of information on offer here, and reading through the briefs on trade and commerce is helpful, but only on a conceptual level – how do you actually carry out some of these actions via the interface?
As ever with this type of game, the campaign is for the most part an extended tutorial, gradually unfurling the concepts and controls with a series of set ups that see you working for all of the different factions. Tasks can see you assisting the Tycoons with improving a hydroelectric dam, or helping the Techs reign in their rogue AI leader after it’s infected by an intelligent virus. It adds some structure to the gameplay and provides a good framework to get to grips with Anno 2070, but the tutorial aspect eventually becomes a bit dull and fetch quest orientated. It always amazed me how in 2070 I had to constantly sail from island to island to transport things like blueprints and planning permissions – not only fetch quests, but illogical fetch quests!
Things flow by fairly easily until you reach the end of the second chapter. From then on the difficulty kicks in for the finale, and you really need to keep an eye on every production line and every trade route to keep that budget in the black. Playing through the campaign will give you a good enough feel for the game, but there are still times when Anno 2070 forgets that you might need to be told how to do something – the sheer amount of stuff you have to juggle is more than enough without an unhelpful help system. The basics are covered fairly well, but between the campaign and EVE there are still some holes in the games ‘manual’, it really could do with one of those book like guides that sadly seem to be a dying feature in todays digital world. You really need to explore Anno 2070 and learn it on your own, and accept that a few games are going to fall by the wayside until all of the numbers and buttons make sense.
Production lines, resources, and use of space are all key to this game. Whilst each faction has its own building style, there is only one type of house, which gradually upgrades as the needs of its citizens are met. From basics like food and drink, citizens will ‘level up’ to have needs like information, or more complex food items – requiring ever more production lines and resources to keep them happy. Reaching a certain population level will unlock more of these need fulfilling structures, and expansion to other islands is a must to keep up with demand. Each island has a limited number of fertilities (vegetables, rice etc), and players may even have to delve beneath the waves to find a particular resource.
The underwater aspect of Anno 2070 did leave me slightly disappointed. Something of a big selling point for the game, I had expected to be able to build entire cities underwater, but in reality this second map is only used for a few more resource sites, and doesn’t really add anything to the game.
That aside, the resource management and city growth side of things handles very well. It takes a lot of getting used to and the interface is not entirely friendly, but get your head around it and there are a lot of hours to be found here. The campaign mode is a bit on the brief side, but the continuous mode – the sandbox – is where the real value lies. Let loose on a myriad of options and not held back by the limitations of any missions, you’re free to build as you see fit.
As well as meeting the needs of an expanding population, you’ll need to set up supply chains for building modules, establish trade routes to raise money, and balance exports with production to make sure your own population has enough of a resource without it consuming too much storage space and backing up the production line.
Energy needs can be met with eco friendly wind turbines or polluting power plants, and where one will keep your ecology rating high another will be more powerful, and less prone to inefficiency . Ecos thrive from building farms and other long term projects, but production can be thrown off course when the slightest bit of pollution affects the fertility of your land. Citizens will occasionally come to you for aid, diseases will break out and have you scrambling to build a hospital, pirates will attack your ships…
If it all sounds like a virtual reality job, then you’d be right. Newcomers to the genre will probably balk at the huge amount of concepts to juggle, and the tutorial and help system just isn’t thorough enough to support them. It takes a while to get into the flow of things, but when you do you’ll find yourself stuck in your cities for hours, tweaking minute details in trade routes and rethinking your layouts for optimal production.
It’s a game for genre fans, and when you get over that initial accessibility hurdle and get the campaign out of the way, it’s one of the most in depth and addictive city builders out there.
Audio & Visual: The presentation of Anno 2070 reflects its gameplay style – it’s all about the detail. Now the graphics themselves are of very high quality, but it’s the intricate detailing on the buildings and the animations that really bring your cities to life. You can watch your citizens amble around the streets, or keep an eye on a mech as it fells trees for your lumber plant. Everything feels like it’s genuinely working for you – production lines aren’t just static set ups. Whilst there isn’t a huge variety of houses on offer, the individual build styles of the factions have a massive effect on the appearance of your city. Islands can fast become grungy, cluttered affairs under the Tycoons, whereas the Techs and the Ecos have a more futuristic feel to them.
The entire interface – particularly the home screen – goes for a fairly stereotypical futuristic theme. Everything is sleek and crisp, awash in the usual colour combination of silver and pale blue. In keeping with the simplistic sci fi nature, the sound effects beep away and the music keeps itself to a low key, soft piano affair. It does a good job of keeping up the futuristic setting at all times, even if it is science fiction setting 101.
The talking heads that pop up to dish out quests are well animated and voiced, although everything is played with a totally straight face – the game would benefit a lot from a little bit more personality. That aside the presentation quality here is very high – when you’re playing through a sand box session it’s very easy just to take a step back from all the management and watch things at work.
Overall: If you’re a fan of this style of game and have never played an Anno title before, this is a great place to start. 2070 is incredibly in depth, and although some may be put off by the steep learning curve, the package behind that initial barrier is well worth it. The futuristic set up is fresh in comparison to the historical settings seen in the previous Anno games and others like the Caesar series, although the underwater map isn’t as much of a selling point as it could have been.
Players after an engrossing city builder that will take up their lives with endless production lines and resource management (without the pesky addition of armies and war) will find a lot to do here, and the additional online content does a lot to add some variation and longevity for those moments when you crave something a little more mission orientated. The production values here are fantastic too, and with a little more personality thrown in there, Anno could find itself competing for the city building top spot.
While Atlus created the special “Love Is Over” edition of Catherine for North America, it appears that Deep Silver will have a similar treat for those who want to play the interesting game that is Catherine. Unfortunately for European gamers, the packages won’t be the same, also it is unfortunate that they had to wait so long to get a chance to even play the title.
Deep Silver revealed today that they will be releasing a special “Stray Sheep Edition” next year. The special edition will still come in a pizza box from the Stray Sheep bar in-game, but will also include a set of coasters from the bar, a “seductive” Catherine poster and a T-shirt designed after the one worn by Vincent, which is likely the one seen above. The Stray Sheep edition will be available for £54.99 when Catherine is released in Europe February 2012.
Community while never truly breaking into mainstream popularity, definitely has a strong fanbase. A fanbase who have followed it for 3 seasons of paintball episodes, halloween episodes, a “My Dinner With Andre” parody episode and now they will be treated to the holy grail of themed episodes: The Anime Episode.
Tonight Community, will enter the anime universe, in what manner is currently unknown however it’s not long now until the episode hits television screens so be sure to check it out to see what all the fuss is about.
So Community fans despite the recent news of the series being put on hiatus come mid-season; 6 Seasons and Movie? Let us know your thoughts in the shoutbox and comments section.
Earlier today, I was lucky enough to get to enter the world of Amalur, with a chance to get hands-on with the Amalur universe and it’s inhabits at EA’s Kingdom’s of Amalur: Reckoning event. Upon entering into the realm in which EA hosted the event, it quickly became evident that what I’d be witnessing today would be nothing short of special and I was right.
Immediately upon getting my hands on this monster of a game, I knew that I was playing something big. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, is one of those titles that grabs you from the get-go. Within the first few minutes of Reckoning I was thrust into a thrilling joyride that just kept getting better as I played on.
The game is jam-packed with incredibly intense combat, which rewards strategy instead of mindless hacking and slashing (unfortunately I learnt this the hard way). The key to victory in most battles is how intelligently you can use the games mechanics to combat enemies. This is most interesting when engaging a large group of enemies, which feature the most impressive group AI, I have ever seen.
They will work as a cohesive unit and try to surround you, with some even trying to ambush you from a hiding spot should you try to flee. Not only that but I even noticed some enemies who use their own individual abilites together, in particular a large spider with the ability to imobilise you with webbing then has his smaller spider ally go in for the kill with his poisonous bite technique. The enemy AI is simply astonishing.
That is not all that is astonishing about Reckoning, the sheer size and beauty of the Amalur universe is immense. I was amazed that after my entire play time at the event I had only explored a small splotch over the entire world map. This right here impressed me beyond words, as I felt like I had taken a journey across an incredibly vast land as it is, but the revelation upon viewing the Map later on blew me away.
If you one for exploration you will definitely not be left with nothing to do, as there is simply a plethora of things to experience in Reckoning, with all the other gameplay mechanics and features on top of all that, your definitely in for hours of playtime.
A feature I found particularly brilliant was the Destinies feature. Now this is essentially your class system, except there is a major difference between this is and your regular class system. For starters, Reckoning does not force you to make a massive decision regarding which class you want to play as from the get-go. Instead the game’s starts you off as a blank slate, with no destiny. You then go on to play through getting a taste of each different destiny’s play style. I loved that this option was available, because nothing is worse then creating your character in an RPG and then being immediately forced to choose which class you will play as for the rest of the game.
That is the other interesting portion of the destinies system. It allows for the player to customize their destiny, to play a specific type of character. You can change your current destiny on the fly it seems, with easy access in the pause menu. As you progresses your character and level up, you will eventually be able to play as combined destinies such as Rogue/Mage for example. It’s a very unique system that gives the player the power to decide how they want to play, and that is the biggest achievement of Reckoning.
There is utterly so much possibilities available to the player. With so much power and control in the hands of the player Reckoning allows the player to play this game the way they want. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s biggest advantage over other RPG’s on the market is it’s diversity and ‘power to the player’ mentality. If you love Western RPG’s but haven’t been pleased with what is currently on offer, Reckoning will make you rethink what an RPG can truly be.
The zombie craze continues, spreading it’s way through the gaming world like, well, a zombie virus. The latest ip to get it’s own undead spin off is Yakuza, with Yakuza Dead Souls. The game has of course already seen a release in Japan under the Yakuza: of the End title, but is making it’s way to Western audiences for a March 2012 release.
The premise is a simple one, Kamurocho is infested with zombies – kill them! Players will be able to take on the role of four playable characters, including two fan favourites that have never before been playable – Goro Majima and Ryuji Goda. Goda has possibly the best prosthetic limb in the history of the universe, in that it turns into a rather awesome Gatling gun.
Rounding out the quartet are Shun Akiyama and Kazuma Kiryu, and to round out their leading zombe killers, SEGA have just released a brand new character trailer -do they enjoykaroke or enjoy going to hostess clubs? Well now you can find out (and also watch them kill some zombies, that may be the more relevant thing here).Yakuza Dead Souls is a PS3 exclusive, and will be released in North America and Europe in March of next year.
Who doesn’t love Tetris? Such fond memories of the trials and tribulations of trying to finish off a line and desperately waiting for that long line block. Well EA Mobile is teaming up with the Tetris Company to launch a re-imagined version of Tetris.
This new Tetris game features the ever popular Marathon Mode, Galaxy Mode where you can use game-changing powers, Marathon One Touch Mode with a different, easy-to-use control scheme using touch screen gameplay, brand new gameplay challenges in the Tetris Log system, Tetris Rank to track all the lines you’ve ever cleared, and the T-Club that gives members exclusive access to mobile challenges and content for $2.99 a month of $29.99 a year.
Personally I can’t wait to try my hand at the Tetris Log system, it’ll bring something extra to an already awesome game.
Tetris is available on the iPhone, iTouch and iPad for the introductory rate of $0.99 however there is no release date. For more information go to the EA Mobile site
EA’s new take on the Syndicate ip is doing it’s very best to capture it’s own corner of the first person shooter market. In that pursuit a new trailer has been released that’s all about the guns and gadgets of this sci fi world. Coolly narrated by an artificial intelligence with just a pinch of the right humor, the trailer talks up the games 19 weapons and their numerous upgrades and secondary fire modes. As well as the usual collection of assault rifles and pistols, Syndicate has some pretty interesting weapons with a bit more of a sci fi flavour – be sure to check them out in the trailer.
Syndicate is being developed by Starbreeze studios, who are putting their first person shooter expertise into good use – they are the developers behind the Darkness and both Chronicles of Riddick games. The full title is scheduled to drop on January 3 2012, and will come packed with a four player co-op mode as well as the single player experience.
Does Syndicate have the potential to break into the iron clad world of triple A shooters? Make sure and check out ourhands on preview to find out.
Unity boss David Helgason has proclaimed that the home console will always be more superior than portable devices, despite acknowledging that the technology gap is in fact getting smaller. He also acknowledged that the mobile scene is making some great leaps in technology as well, noting that,
“What’s interesting is that mobile phone hardware cycles are as short as 18 months. It’s very quick, and there’s enormous investment in it because it’s so competitive, so the hardware sophistication is advancing at a crazy rate.”
Helgason, speaking to Develop, believes that smartphones can match the memory capacities of consoles but are still behind in terms of the GPU and CPU scene. Here is more on what Helgason had to say,
“But I think by the time mobiles reach current generation console quality, a new set of consoles will be released, which will raise the bar again by a lot more.”
He also believes that the biggest factor on portable development is in fact how to balance the progress in technology with the battery life of the portable hardware, whether it be a smartphone or a dedicated gaming device. The Nintendo 3DS and Sony’s Playstation Vita will have battery lives in the 4-5 hour mark. Smartphones, running applications and everything else, also suffers a short battery life.
“With mobiles you have to balance everything with the progress of battery life”
This may be in response to a current trend where social and mobile gaming will take over the traditional home and portable consoles. I tend to agree with Helgason. Instead of a challenge to the home market, just make them as a portable device, as they should function.
Square Enix have been a little bit busy recently. They are prepping up two portable games next month and have revealed a new medieval inspired RPG game that will run on the Unreal Engine. Now, at a financial briefing, Square Enix boss Yochi Wada has revealed that the medieval RPG will not be the only new intellectual property that Square Enix has in mind.
Here is a direct quote from Wada himself,
“Regarding yet unannounced IPs, we should certainly be able to announce 2 to 3 titles to everyone within a few years. With a requirement that an IP has to be capable of making a continuous profit contribution, we are aiming to establish 10 IPs.”
10 IPs? That is quite a lot. But Square Enix is a big publisher, so they might pull it off. However, he did not make it clear whether those 10 IPs include Square Enix’s core IPs: Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Deus Ex, although I would assume so. Wada also revealed that, due to the success of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the IP will now expand as a franchise, so expect more games and other merchandising soon.
