EA Sports have announced that they will be releasing the first patch for the console versions of FIFA 12 sometime in the next two to three weeks.
Announced on their podcast, the patch will amend certain issues with the game. Whilst they haven’t given too many details on what will be fixed, they have mentioned issues with online controlling of goalkeepers and a few other areas.
“Two or three weeks from now the first patch will happen and that’s going to make big corrections to some of the things that are bothering people the most.” Said Romily Broad, the Senior Community Manager.
“We’re going to be doing this constantly, with our thumbs in the middle of the community trying to get people to tell us what they think, and then we’ll be acting on it for the rest of the season.”
In addition to this patch, EA Sports will be fixing the issues which FIFA Ultimate Team mode has been experiencing as well as a few download and online issues with the PC version. This will be implemented sooner than the patch.
We will have more details on the patch once they are confirmed.
First Taito took us on a ride through space with their cult hit Space Invaders. Now they are taking us on a ride through a vivid world of beautifully crafted visualisations and musical composisions. Ladies and gentlemen, please keep all body parts within the cart, the Groove Coaster is about to start.
Gameplay
As a tap based rhythm game for both the iPad and iPhone, Groove Coaster might on the surface appear to have a range of simple mechanics. At its core, it does. But there is a lot more going on than just tapping the screen as your avatar dances its way across a track. Tapping, flicking, and even scratching your screen in time to the music, as you ride along the Groove Coaster makes for a rather difficult game. The levels progress in difficulty, with the highest currently at 8. There is also the option to play different levels within the level, ranging from easy to hard, in an attempt to gain that perfect “S” rating on all levels. While this is extremely difficult to obtain, even on some of the levels deemed “normal” in difficulty, I think this makes the game much more enjoyable and gives a much needed level of motivation to the game. While a game structure like this is in danger of becoming very repetitive quickly, both the soundtrack and the graphics remedy this by working together to create a unique audio and visual experience every time you play.
Audio
Generally audio tends to get lost in the way of graphics, especially on iOS games. I often find myself writing, the audio complements the unique graphics. In short, I am very rarely blown away by the audio of a game. Even said “rhythm games” for iOS based devices, have left my ears wanting more. Groove Coaster has not only left my ears satisfied, but has done so to the extent that I am granting the audio its very own subtitle. Groove Coaster features an original soundtrack, that cant even be purchase on iTunes. Each track blends a range of stereotypical game musical elements, encompassing the bleeps of the 8-bit area, and pushing forward with rhythmic drum beats and heavy synthesisers. Even if you aren’t into this style of music, it’s hard to not nod a long and really get into the rhythm of the game.
On top of the base track, players can also add to the song in their own unique ways. Firstly, if you miss a beat, it won’t be played. Although some avatars have the ability to play the notes without hitting them, generally if you fail to hit the beat on time the music will not play correctly. However, if you are rather good at the game, you can still add a little something extra. Throughout the levels there are hidden ad-lib notes which can be found by randomly tapping. At least it feels that way at first, as you get into the flow of the tracks, you can usually anticipate where the hidden notes will be, and play them in time for extra points. If there isn’t a hidden note, the game still responds with a little drum beat, which often at times sounds rather fitting.
Visuals
There is something slightly comforting about a little pixel-based character. Whether it’s just simple nostalgia, or an actual joy of seeing something beautifully created with minimal graphics, I can’t help but have a soft spot in my heart for little characters like the Space Invaders aliens. Groove Coaster not only bridges the gap between their iconic game characters, but lets you run across the bridge dancing, celebrating their latest game with fireworks, flowers and a plethora of other equally captivating visualisations along the way.
The visulisations in Groove Coaster are nothing short of spectacular, and like the soundtrack, they are responsive to the players touch. While each level has its own unique graphical interface and design, there is also the option to alter these through upgradable skins. Skins alter the visual response to hitting a note correctly. Mixing up the skins creates a unique gaming experience every time you play. The more levels you complete, and the higher you level up, the more skins that become available to you. All up, there are 16 skins to collect and customise your Groove Coaster experience with. As well as 13 different avatars to collect and play with. Avatars range from small dots, to Space Invader aliens and ships, all the way to upgradeable avatars such as a goldfish or even a human. Each have their own unique ability that add to the game, for example Crab Version 2 lessens the strict timing required to hit a “Good” rating on a note. While they are more of a gameplay feature, I think their implementation as graphics really adds a touch of minimalism to the vivid and fluxuating game world that is Groove Coaster.
Overall
To borrow the rating system from Groove Coaster itself, being cateogirsed with either ‘miss’, ‘cool’ ‘good’ or ‘great’, Groove Coaster has hit the note with perfect precision, earning itself ‘great’ in every aspect. The result of great graphics, soundtrack and gameplay is Groove Coaster earning the final rank of the much coveted ‘S’, or if we rate it in Capsules, a rather high score of…
Following the excitement of Team NINJA confirming DEAD OR ALIVE 5 was in development during this year’s Tokyo Game Show at the “Team NINJA Unmask” event, we are now being treated to more of what’s in store for the next installment in the popular 3D action fighting series. TECMO KOEI America and Team NINJA today released extended footage of the DEAD OR ALIVE 5 pre-alpha demo which shows off one of the new stages and two of the fully
redesigned Dead or Alive fighters. (This is something I got to see at the Team Ninja Unmasked event in Tokyo but we were not allowed to record it)
The stage is set, the fighters matched. As the dark ninja Ryu Hayabusa and the karate expert Hayate face off, one thing is certain DEAD OR ALIVE 5 promises to be a knock out title. Watch as Hayate sends his opponent flying from the
side of this stunning hi-rise set on a gritty rooftop in Shibuya square. A nearby tank explodes upon crashing into the falling debris quickly turning the busy Shibuya streets into a flame-engulfed arena. Hayate claims Round 1 for his own as he slams Hayabusa into the ground. In Round 2, Hayate is no match for Hayabusa’s swift ingenious counter attacks as he soon finds himself face down breathless from a head on collision with a flying
vehicle.
Staying true to its legacy, this next installment will offer fast paced 3D action combat fighting while evolving the Dead or Alive series to satisfy both old and new fans alike. In DEAD OR ALIVE 5, the scenes are ever-changing and players will be able to advance their fighting skills in a whole new dimension. DEAD OR ALIVE 5 is currently in development by Team NINJA and scheduled for release in 2012on both PlayStation
3 and Xbox 360.
Check out the new DEAD OR ALIVE 5 extended pre-alpha demo footage below
We have the newest trailer from THQ’s Saints Row: The Third right here as we approach the final month of waiting. It’s short and sweet, just showing off another new bit of reckless fun you can have in the upcoming title.
Fresh from Steelport, the trailer is presumably one of many in a series of “Cherished Memories”. This one features exploding bullets as the player’s character takes aim at an Energy Drink mascot and torments him in mid-air.
Apparently we shouldn’t attempt to juggle a mascot with explosive rounds at home which is unfortunate. You can however check out the trailer down below!
Saints Row: The Third will be out in mid-November for 360, PS3 and PC.
The Transformer movie series has drawn huge amounts of money all over the world and of course the video game line-up to go with these titles has also seen marginal amounts of success. So of course it should come as no surprise that the Activision revealed via the cover of next month’s Game Informer magazine that they will be publishing Transformers: Fall of Cybertron for developer High Moon Studios.
The cover seen above shows what appears to be a transforming dinosaur, which most should recognize as Grimlock and Optimus Prime. Nothing is currently known about the title besides that it will involve Transfomers and will be released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sometime in the future.
Square Enix is quickly jumping on the PlayStation Vita, as not only do they have Lord of Apocalypse set to release alongside the new Sony handheld, but they are also working on Army Corps of Hell. Army Corps of Hell is meant to be another launch title for the Vita and is best described as a title where players have to manage small demons to do their bidding.
Currently there had been no announcement of localization for Army Corps of Hell, but Square Enix Europe revealed today that they are planning to release the title in Europe next year in 2012. Of course since the game is being localized for European release, the chances of a North American release are pretty much guaranteed at this point.
Never let it be said that a minigame collection is boring. Sure it may get repetitive after awhile but when a company throws in hilarious mascots it is enough to usually push a series to tolerable levels. Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids however have become a symbol for what a minigame collection can be and has spawned many titles, usually for the Wii but also a number of other consoles.
Ubisoft Motion Pictures announced today that they will be creating a series of 78 seven minute CG cartoons with the rabbids and Nickelodeon will then combine these seven minute episodes into 26 half hour shows which will be shown worldwide two years from now on 2013. This way everyone can enjoy the crazy antics of the rabbids without playing the games!
It just wouldn’t be a Nintendo handheld if the company didn’t consistently keep releasing new color varieties over the course of its lifetime. Despite the 3DS’ consistent under performance, Nintendo is releasing yet another color for the handheld, which is currently called ‘Ice White’ and like most would expect, is a white version of the 3DS.
At the moment the Ice White color has only been announced for Japan and will be released on November 3rd for ¥15,000, which is only a few weeks after the Misty Pink color that is meant to be released on October 20th. While the 3DS was only released with two colors at launch, does anyone feel like they’d want to pick one up now that it has a few more options available?
Undoubtedly made for a mature audience, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken offers muther-cluckin humor for kids of all ages 18 and up. This is a story about a rebel cock named Hardboiled that has been caught up in a nasty battle with totalitarian penguins. With the general’s daughter kidnapped by the evil penguin regime, Hardboiled must destroy all that oppose him.
The co-op has its own 10 chapters to play through with six playable chickens that have their own unique weapons. I think that Chief, Esteban, Hawk, Hilga, Keets, and Mutt are all fitting names for commando chickens. See the opening co-op cinematic and screenshots below.
Stay tuned for the game’s October 18th release for the Playstation Network. Check out more information for Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken (HERE).
A Game of Thrones: Genesis Developer: Cyanide Studios Publisher: Focus Home Interactive Platform: PC Price: $29.96 (buy here) Release Date: September 29 2011
Overview:
Game of Thrones : Genesis has to contend with two things:
1. The popularity and complexity of the source material
The universe of a Song of Ice and Fire is a long, highly complex fantasy series. Fans of the novels have invested a lot of hours over thousands of pages and bear a great love for the sprawling world that author George R R Martin has created. The fifth book has just been released after a five year gap, and the recent HBO TV show pulled off the impossible by both pleasing fans and attracting newcomers.
2. The quality of its competitors
The PC strategy genre has (amongst others) the juggernauts of Civilisation and Total War to contend with, both of which have earned their status in over a decade of releases. Much like the Game of Thrones universe, these games are complex, packed full of detail and demand a great investment of time.
What was I doing before writing this review?Reading book number five. The first PC game I ever played?Civilisation.
Maybe that’s three. The same developers also have a Game of Thrones RPG in the works, so fingers crossed that things go well…
Gameplay:
Genesis is an unusual RTS in that combat and war are very much on the back burner. Instead the emphasis is on diplomacy and ‘underhand actions’, with spies, assassins, rogues and envoys the main players in the game. Eight houses from the ASOIAF universe feature (Tully, Stark, Targaryen, Tyrell, Lannister, Arryn, Martell and Baratheon) , and gameplay is divided into two modes – Campaign and House vs. House.
The focus is on gaining allies in the form of towns, ruins, septs, and gold mines. Each structure gained will expand your territory and increase the gold you earn – allowing for more units to be built and enemies to be strategically forced out of their lands. More often than not force will not come into play; you may have a few mercenary units and some guardsmen at the gates, but your spies, envoys, assassins and noble ladies will be the units winning the game. It’s a bold change that strays from RTS convention and stays true to the spirit of the books.
Envoys can convince a town to switch allegiances, but the envoy could be a turncoat, or perhaps the town has a secret agreement with an enemy spy. Noble ladies can cement allegiances with blood ties so that spies have no power, but they in turn can be assassinated. But what if the assassin is a turncoat? Then it will appear that she is dead, but the alliance will still stand until you uncover the treachery with your spy.
It sounds complicated, and it is to begin with. It’s also very good at making you utterly paranoid, to the point that I had spies doing a rotating check on every unit and structure that I held just to make sure I wasn’t being duped -very Game of Thrones! I don’t know if the snail like pace of the units was another attempt at echoing the page heavy books, but boy it takes forever for units to move across a map.
Combat is nowhere near as interesting, and runs on a simple rock paper scissors mechanism. Knights will beat archers, archers will beat men at arms, etc. Manoeuvring large forces in some sort of formation is pretty difficult and more often than not I ended up just flinging a heap of units at the enemy, keeping the archers to the rear – job done. There is a little detail to it but combat is definitely of secondary importance – genre fans after an in depth battle system should look elsewhere.
The gameplay ideas are solid, but the way they are utilised in the Campaign and House Vs House modes (multiplayer/skirmish) splits the game in two.
The campaign runs through the history of Westeros, and aims to have players experience events oft mentioned in the books but never fully explored (Nymeria’s landing in Dorne, Aegon Targaryen conquering the Seven Kingdoms etc.). Sadly the Game of Throne’s veneer is pretty thin, reducing characters that are considered legend in the books to irritable instruction givers. To give you an idea of how the campaign will run, here’s a run down of one particular mission…
Aegon Targaryen has just landed in Westeros, charging me with taking over more territory in his name. There is a Tully held castle in his sights but before I can assault it I have to take one of the enemy towns nearby, ensuring that I don’t stretch Targaryen forces too thin – perfectly sensible.
Examining the towns with my spy tells me that both have blood alliances – a noble lady has been married into them, making my envoys and spies completely useless. Time for some assassination! I pick a town and make sure my spy is scoping the place out for enemy units that might see my assassin and arrest him – all clear. I keep the spy dashing back and forth between territories to make sure he remains stealthed, waiting patiently for the assassin who seems to be moving at half his usual pace for no obvious reason. Eventually he makes it into the town with a good twenty seconds left on his stealth meter, he sneaks up to the noble lady…and is promptly arrested by guards who shouldn’t have been able to see him. Instead of being carried off to the enemy castle (from which I could have ransomed his release) he is trapped in the town. Hm.
I ditch the subtlety and take over a different town by setting my big ass dragon on it. One quick spray of purple flame and I have myself ‘Town’. Yay! I’ve got it! Now I get to smash the castle with the army that I’ve been buil- wait, no, the AI does it. WHAT?
The campaign is essentially a lengthy, slow tutorial. On the odd occasion it enjoys making no sense and has a habit of taking the best battles out of your hands. It does open up a little towards the end, but in all honesty I was struggling to make myself play it. And guess what – YOU CAN’T SAVE IN LEVEL. That’s right, in the Game of Thrones you win, or you lose all level progress.
Thankfully there is House vs House mode, and it saves Genesis from being a complete failure. Players can pick from a handful of scenarios set in various different locations, with anything from two to eight AI or player controlled houses competing. I would say that they compete for the Iron Throne, but in reality winning the game just gets you a ridiculous victory screen made up of a sepia fat bloke with a sword. Considering what a visual icon the throne is for the series I was a bit confused by the complete lack of it in game.
Victory is instead gained by amassing 100 Prestige Points, which can be won and lost in a multitude of ways. My favourite way to lose points? Leave your Great Lord unmarried and he’ll start having bastards – pale and frightened looking little boys that if discovered subtract 10 Prestige Points from your total.
Unlike in the campaign players can gain access to every unit from the word go, and half the fun is in figuring out what you can do with all the units on offer. A bar at the top of the screen keeps track of the peace level, and when this runs out it’s time to put the envoy’s away and get ready for war. Scoring the game and splitting it in two do wonders for the gameplay, which is freed from boring missions and puts all of the game’s features in the players hands. The peace time diplomacy and espionage are still far more interesting than the combat though, and once again: you can’t save your game.
Audio & Visual:
This is where GOTG falls flat on it’s face. Graphically it looks about five years old, with rough textures, blocky environments and drab colours. Load times are ridiculously long and lag is a problem. However it’s the bugginess and lack of detail that really hammer that last nail into the presentation coffin.
Units can’t move through obvious gaps in forest, yet can occasionally be found walking through mountains. Wiping out a unit can confusingly leave half of them still on the field, and completing missions in the campaign mode doesn’t actually guarantee that you complete the mission – I had to replay a few levels because the game didn’t register that I had won. Enemy units can get stuck outside their town if you take it over whilst they’re approaching, and checkpoints sometimes decide to be just for show. SOMEONE PLEASE PATCH THIS GAME.
Oh, and occasionally, this happens…
In the course of your adventure you can conquer such well known places as ‘Town’, ‘Ruin’, ‘Town’, and ‘Town’. Unless you’re playing the campaign then the Great Lord from every house looks and sounds exactly the same – a disgruntled, bearded old man. Despite the fact that every house has its own visually unique seat (one plus point at least), no one could be bothered to name them.
Winterfell is ‘Feudal Home’, along with the Eyrie, Casterly Rock, and all the rest. What is so hard about naming these structures? There are even campaign missions where the mission brief tells you to capture Harrenhal, but it’s still called Feudal Home! Some of the tutorial and mission text evidently still needs to be proofread, with archers ‘loosing’ their advantage in close combat and the minimap ‘on the right’- that would be the left, dear developers.
The voice acting is at least passable and has the usual fantasy obsession with UK accents. It’s quite funny to note the units from Great Lord to Peasant working their way down the class ladder in an English to Scottish/Irish fashion.
I don’t know what it was that ran out on Genesis – time, money, interest – but the Game of Thrones universe, and indeed any RTS game worth it’s salt, needs to be more polished than this. Low end graphics are forgivable, the rest is not.
Overall:
A muddled mish mash of good ideas and poor execution, Game of Thrones Genesis will be disappointing to fans of the series and of little consequence to fans of the genre. The diplomacy and espionage gameplay and House vs House mode redeem it somewhat, but ultimately the game in its current state is too buggy and too expensive. There’s no nice way of putting this – the Game of Thrones world is just too big for a small developer best known for Pro Cycling Manager.
If you must play it, wait for a patch and a price drop.
