“The average Call of Duty player spends 58 minutes per day playing multiplayer. That is more than the average Facebook user spends per day on Facebook. And yet, right now, there are very few tools to unite and super charge that social community,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. “Whether it’s allowing you to connect with your friends, or people of a similar skill level, people who live in your city, people who share your favourite passions, join competitive clans or social groups, or upload, view and comment on the incredible mass of player-generated content, or watch and comment on exclusive created content,Call of Duty Elite will give people more ways to connect with fellow players than ever before.”
The Elite service is said to offer two-way communication between it and the game, meaning that choices on the service’s website and various apps will transfer to the in-game experience. Some of the features that will be available on the website, mobile app, game consoles, and game interface are detailed below.
-As already stated, Call of Duty Elite is way to power up the social network beasts that rule the internet. Hence, players will be able to “compete against friends, players of similar skill levels and players with similar interests, join groups, join clans, and play in organised tournaments. They can also track the performance, progress and activity of their entire network, both in the game itself, as well as through mobile and web interfaces. Elite will be an “always on” way for players to connect with the Call of Duty community.”
-Gamers who compete in various events, competitions and tournaments will be eligible to receive in-game and real world prizes.
-Bungie Pro like statistical tracking will be a part of the service, meaning that every kill, match and statistic will be available so that CoD fans have a tool to strategize and improve their FPS skills.
-“Free map packs” for a year will be included if you choose to pony up the dough.
-Other original programming is planned. Stay tuned for E3, as more details will be announced then.
As mentioned yesterday, standard Call of Duty multiplayer will still be free of charge, excluding Xbox Live fees of course. Many of Call of Duty Elite features will also be free. However, “premium membership with a wide range of state-of-the-art services, exclusive entertainment programming and all-inclusive game content” will be an option for players who wish to pay. No definitive pricing has been revealed, but it is has been said that pricing scheme will be less than other online entertainment options. The cheapest Netflix plan is around $8/month.
A public beta to test the the service will be launched alongside Black Ops later this summer. Sign ups for the beta are here.
In summary, Activision is looking to “supercharge” the Call of Duty online experience with some interesting ideas. If your a hardcore player, this may be worth your money. For gamers who transfer to a new game every month, this service may not the service your looking for.
Costumes are nice, but this is the MK DLC most of us have been waiting for. Netherrealm Studios have released the first trailer for Skarlet, who will be included in an upcoming DLC pack for Mortal Kombat. The trailer shows off Skarlet and from the looks of things, this female Kombatant gets her kicks from blades and blood. Along with standard fighting footage, we also got a small look into what appears to be a couple of Skarlet’s fatalities, which of course include those daggers she uses so frequently as well as an awesome X-Ray attack.
Those attending E3 will have a chance to play as this new female ninja is the last promise listed in the end of the trailer. Hopefully a nice Kenshi clip will be forthcoming as well as he has also been confirmed to be another future DLC character. There is still no date for Skarlet at the moment, but I imagine E3 will reveal all. For now though, check out the bloody trailer below and let us know what you think of Skarlet in all her glory.
Can you believe E3 is just a week away? Crazy how that snuck up on us so fast. Konami look to be one of the first publishers to be ready for the event as they will be hosting a pre-E3 event online in which “new announcements, game trailers and interviews” will be shown on an international scale. Live events will also be hosted in LA, San Francisco, Toronto, São Paulo and Mexico City.
Konami will start with the live coverage this Friday (June 3rd) at 10am Australian Time. So now we have to wonder what Konami might have to offer with this event (I am hoping for a 3DS Castlevania …hintcoughhint). To view the live stream, just tune in at the listed time and date at http://konami.com/E3 and check back then either way as we will be sure to bring you all the news that comes from the show.
While a price drop of the DS Lite was a bit expected due to the 3DS being released, Nintendo have now knocked $30 off the MSRP for the system, putting it down to $99.99. I think the main reason the price hasn’t dropped sooner is that the handhelds are still selling well as 48.9 million Nintendo DS’ have been sold in the United States alone since the launching back in 2004.
To go with the news of the price-drop, Nintendo have also decided to add some color into their Nintendo DS line-up as some of the more popular Mario titles will now be available in the snazzy red case you see above. Why the change?
Reggie Fils-Aime offered this statement on the Drop and color change:
“From the moment it launched, Nintendo DS Lite hit a sweet spot for consumers in terms of value, experience and fun,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “This new price point will introduce Nintendo DS Lite to even more consumers, and the new red packaging will make it easy for them to find their favorite Mario titles.”
There you have it. Interesting marketing technique with the red cases though. I certainly hope we might be able to see a “Player’s Choice” or “Nintendo Selects” come to the DS library as price-drops for first-party titles do not come all that often, but considering New Super Mario Bros. has been $34.99 since launch and has still sold 9.25 million units, I do not see any other drops coming in the near future for DS software. The DSi on the other hand..that is a strong possibility.
Game Name:Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale Platform(s): XBLA (Reviewed), PC, PSN Publisher(s):Atari Developer(s):Bedlam Games Genre(s): Action-RPG Release Date: May 25, 2011 (XBLA,PC) May 31, 2011 (PSN) Price: 1200 Points (XBLA) $14.99 (PSN/PC) BUY NOW!
Until a few months ago, I wasn’t very familiar with the Dungeons & Dragons series. After getting a brief tutorial of sorts by one of the writers on this site (Linkage, to be specific), I quickly learned how massive and imaginative the series really was and felt like a complete fool for all the wasted years without D&D. That alone is what sparked my interest in Daggerdale, Atari’s latest video game adaptation of the series. Sadly, this title isn’t exactly the experience I had in mind as while it does show promise, many bugs and glitches reared their ugly, goblin-like faces a bit too frequent to actually enjoy the game to it’s fullest potential. So what is right and wrong with everything exactly? Here is my review for Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale.
Story
I really wish I could write about an epic quest in which I took part in with this D&D entry, but honestly the plot is a very light one that is easily forgettable. When the evil cleric Rezlus seeks to destroy Daggerdale, a mysterious figure by the name of Lorin-Aria recruits four heroes to save the land from destruction. Players the pick one of four of the heroes which include a human fighter, an elven Rogue, a dwarven cleric and halfling wizard. Shortly after, the main quest takes off with many separate tasks to complete on your journey. These missions are rather short but the pacing of the story in my opinion was done rather well, with cutscenes popping in from time to time to fill the player in as the plot slowly expands.
While Daggerdale’s narrative is passable, the biggest problem I had in this area was with the characters that inhabit the game. You run into a ton of NPCs in Daggerdale, many of which you are not able to even get a line of dialogue out of as there is simply not an option. When you do finally find an NPC to talk to, the conversation is very limited and rather lifeless as it usually pertains to a quest at hand. I understand that the imagination of the player is one of the biggest elements while playing D&D, but every environment I encountered just felt completely dead on arrival as I felt no depth or meaning behind the characters set in this magical little world.
Gameplay
There is a lot to talk about when it comes to the actual gameplay inside Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale as it is a bit of a mixed bag. The best element in the game though is the actual combat system used. Combat is purely made up of the age-old hack and slash formula, which does it’s job fine as everything is executed smoothly throughout. Each class in the game have six different special moves as well as standard attacks that can be obtained by leveling up your character and then strengthened over time. I chose the halfling wizard in my game and I very quickly got a handle on the whole set-up as the controls are all mapped out well to the Xbox 360 controller which makes performing actions an afterthought. After a while though, this combat can begin to get a bit repetitive as battles are usually won by quickly downing potions while tapping the same attack button. Even with the small variety at hand, it quickly became evident of what attacks I would have to spam to effectively destroy enemies in a set area, watering down the strategy of the game greatly.
Instead of a MP gauge as we usually see within this genre, a cool-down time is given which usually lasts a few seconds at best for all special abilities. Since my character specialized in magic, the only problem this presented was brief moments where I literally had to run around in circles to wait for my next effective attack to charge. As I gained more abilities later on, this issue became less frequent for the obvious reasons, but the cool-down method just didn’t flow well with the overall scheme of combat.
Customization is yet another limited area in the game as aside from upgrading a few spells, mapping attacks, and equipping your standard weaponry and armor, there is simply not enough options given to make your character feel like your own. Not even gender or race can be chosen, leaving the player to deal with the four pre-set characters for their journey that all cap at level 10. Personally, I felt like this was highway robbery in a sense due to how expansive the series truly is as the watered down approach taken can leave you feeling very unfulfilled.
Quests are a bit simple for the most part, with fetch and slaughter quests being the dominate of what players will encounter in Daggerdale. Go to this area, defeat this foe, grab this item, you get the idea. Having the same types of quests being assigned by such lifeless characters got old pretty fast and had me waiting for the game to simply reach a conclusion.
Aside from those complaints, with a somewhat solid gameplay engine in place, you would think that Daggerdale would stay at least afloat on that alone. Unfortunately, there are bugs around nearly every corner that spoil the enjoyment of it all. For instance, in my very first quest I ran into many goblins that blocked a path. I paused my game for a second to check a menu, unpaused, and every single goblin was frozen. I could still attack the goblins and even kill them, but this glitch went on for every enemy in the game until I finally restarted the quest. Glitches such as that are actually quite common unfortunately, with other graphical bugs such as enemies and even my own character walking through environmental objects sadly becoming a more frequent sight as the game progressed.
Co-op was one of the most interesting features advertised for Daggerdale as up to four players can join up and tackle quests together. I attempted to try this out for myself, but after just a few minutes in a loading screen appeared out of nowhere during combat.When the game came back, my character laid slain. When co-op actually works however it does enhance the entire experience, but the online lag combined with the frequent kicks and errors made my time with the mode one less favorable.
Graphics/Audio
Much like the gameplay, the visuals of Daggerdale are somewhat mixed as well. Textures used for each environment are quite bland and lack of detail makes it hard to immerse yourself in this fictional world. I did however like the character models used as the faces for each look expressive, but models are often re-used and lack any true variety leaves a lot to be desired. Environments have a bad habit of eating your character as well as I walked into walls and objects more times than I can remember and had many occurrences of NPCs glitching out in the same manner.
The soundtrack of Daggerdale isn’t the most memorable, but it does fit well into the whole dungeon-crawling theme that the game presents. Cutscenes are fully voiced and while I felt while the voice acting wasn’t the finest work out there, it got the job done to convey the plot in a decent manner. Interestingly enough, I enjoyed the sound effects over almost everything else presentation-wise in the game as they sounded eerily realistic and added a lot more depth to the combat system. When you whack an enemy with a staff, it sounds as if you can literally hear the wood crack against a hard piece of armor. Yeah, it’s just a small touch, but it certainly helped make the combat more enjoyable.
Overall
Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale has some great ideas behind it as it comes from a franchise that paved the way for many RPGs we see today. Sadly though, it is weighed down with many bugs and the lack of customization makes the whole game a dull, unrewarding experience overall. Controls are mapped perfectly to the 360 controller though and combat works well enough to actually play the game, so some of the hardcore D&D fans may be able to look past some Daggerdale’s shortcomings. Otherwise though those looking for an action-rpg to sink their teeth into are better off looking elsewhere until a patch is released.
In an unusual move, Apple have pre-announced some of the things they’ll be covering at their annual developers’ conference, WWDC. Usually the event is shrouded in secrecy until our eponymous hero takes to the stage, but this year, Apple has confirmed that on the agenda will be iOS 5, OS X 10.7 code-named “Lion” and their rumoured revamp of MobileMe, “iCloud”.
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apples advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.”
Apple was reported to have bought the iCloud.com domain last month, which currently redirects to , the previous owners of the domain. Apple is also rumoured to be including a music streaming service in iCloud, to rival Google’s Android service “Music Beta”. Apple has been reportedly negotiating terms with the main music publishers, and is rumoured to offer a high-quality copy of all your purchased iTunes content without the user having to set it up.
Steve Jobs will also be making an appearance at WWDC, which seems to suggest that his health-worries are easing.
Launching today is a slew of downloable content for Rockstar Games’ crime thriller L.A. Norie. “The Naked City” Vice case and “A Slip of the Tongue” Traffic case is now available for download on both Xbox live and Playstation Network for 320 Microsoft Points and $4.00 respectively. As well as this, seven brand new downloadable content packs for the game will be available for purchase individually or as one combined pack “L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass”. Players that buy the L.A Noire Rockstar Pass will have access to all seven paid-DLC once they are released on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live.
L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass will be available for $10 on Playstaion Network and for 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. Half the price of the DLC purchased individually however this is only for a limited time until June 14th. After this discount period, the Rockstar Pass will cost $12.00 on the PlayStation Network and 960 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live.
Future L.A Norie downloadable content includes:
Chicago Lightning Detective Suit (Social Club only) – May 17;
L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass (limited-time discount price) – May 31;
“The Naked City” DLC case – May 31;
“A Slip of The Tongue” DLC case – May 31;
Broderick Detective Suit and Gun – May 31;
Sharpshooter Detective Suit and Gun – May 31;
The Badge Pursuit Challenge – May 31;
Chicago Piano Machine Gun (free community unlock) – May 31;
L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass (standard price) – June 14;
“Nicholson Electroplating Disaster” DLC case – June 21;
“Reefer Madness” DLC case – July 12.
L.A. Noire available on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 – Check out our review of it here
Last week we did a write up on SHADOWGUN for mobile and tablet platforms, which frankly, looks amazing. So amazing in-fact, that it was hard to believe it was actually running on the hardware. Lets go ahead and put those thoughts aside as a video displaying the game running on an NVIDIA Tegra2 based Android tablet surfaced on the interwebs today. Now it’s just a tech demo so far but I’m happy to see the game running so smoothly already, especially on the Tegra 2, which isn’t as graphically powerful as an iPad 2. You can go ahead and list me as waiting with baited breath.
Each year, retailers usually spill the beans on many big company’s announcements. With that being said, it’s now looking like Target could be the latest to be added to that list due to a listing which has the Xbox 360 250 GB & Kinect for just $299.99, $100 off the MSRP. The actual advertisement can be found here(Unless it is taken down by the time you are reading this). If you actually click on the ad though, the price is still $399.99 for the bundle. Yes, typos happen, but with just a week until E3, one has to question if this could be one of Microsoft’s cards they plan to play at the event.
Since the launch of the slim, we have seen retailers offer gift cards heavily with the purchase of the rather expensive bundles, making this “coincidence” or “error” of sorts seem more of a future reality. If by chance the Kinect bundles do drop, the question then rises for the 4 GB unit as well as the Kinect price tag, which could very well see price cuts after E3 as well. It has been a year after all since the Slim made it’s debut and a nice summer price drop just seems to make too much sense to doubt at this moment.
So what do you think? Error, coincidence, or a future announcement?
Activision’s new Beachhead Studio is in charge of a “digital platform” that will make its debut in the upcoming Modern Warfare 3 video game. This platform is a subscription service called Call of Duty Elite. “Portions of the service will be free” but most of the features are reserved for members who pay a monthly fee. According to Activision, the fee will be less than the cheapest Netflix plan. Some of the features to be included are:
-A Facebook inspired group feature to allow gamers who share various affiliations and interests get together more easily. This a free part of the service.
-A statistic tracking tool to analyze performance details after matches. This will require some mulah.
-One years worth of “free” map packs for paying members.
-Added parts of the Elite service will be spoken about at E3.
Part of the money paid will also go toward the investment that Activision made in the implementation of the service and to customer service jobs relating to the service’s operations.
Take note though! EVERYONE will be still be able to play online on their respective console for FREE (minus Xbox Live fees of course) when the game releases.
In conclusion, it is best we prepare to batten down the hatches and keep a firm grip on our digital budgets. Depending on Activision’s success with this business model, it is only a matter of time before other companies try to do the same.
For more details, check out our other coverage here.
