New Games |
- The DTOID Show: Borderlands, Sly Cooper, & Amalur
- The Secret World talks combat and skills
- SkyGoblin releases The Journey Down: Chapter One in HD
- One more trailer for Harley Quinn's Revenge couldn't hurt
- Weekend PC download deals: God games, Ubisoft, Saints Row
- Grand plans for Tropes vs Women in Video Games
- Review: Origin EON15-S
- This weekend Dtoid TV: Put Ashley in the dumpster forever
- Here's what 38 Studios' Project Copernicus looks like
- Significant other playing Diablo III? Get a free vibrator
- Because We May indie game sale should be a memorable one
- MLG Spring Arena 2 airing NOW!
- Friday Night Fights: Man on Fire
- Sound Shapes teams up with Superbrothers and Jim Guthrie
- Review: Warlock - Master of the Arcane
- Something seems to be up with Brothers in Arms: Furious 4
| The DTOID Show: Borderlands, Sly Cooper, & Amalur Posted: 18 May 2012 04:30 PM PDT For starters, the Borderlands 2 collector's editions are rad, and Tara wants that funky box. Handheld gamers are getting some new games, including Rayman Origins, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. EA is opening up Origin as a publishing platform for crowd-sourced games, and Kingdoms of Amalur's studio is causing a ruckus in Rhode Island. |
| The Secret World talks combat and skills Posted: 18 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT
As the time draws near for the release of The Secret World more information is coming out, like this video which details combat abilities and skills. At eight minutes this is quite the detailed video, but if you're curious and haven't been paying any attention to the game so far it's a good way to find out more about it. Of course the second beta weekend started this Friday as well, so if you got into that you know all about the combat. Of the two, I'd personally rather try the beta than watch the video, but if you don't have that option here you are. |
| SkyGoblin releases The Journey Down: Chapter One in HD Posted: 18 May 2012 03:00 PM PDT
The adventure genre has been seeing a resurgence as of late through a number of indie and iOS titles. SkyGoblin has put a lot of time and effort into bringing out the full HD version of their point-and-click adventure The Journey Down: Chapter One for PC, Mac, and Linux. The story focuses on Bwana and Kito, two gas station employees having a hard time just trying to keep the power company, let alone other creditors, off of their backs. The HD version also features redone art and animations, new puzzles, new characters, as well as voice work done for all the characters. Featuring beautifully painted backgrounds and interesting characters, The Journey Down: Chapter One looks to be the start of a wonderful series. If you're still on the fence though, SkyGoblin was even nice enough to give players the opportunity to try the game in it's original, deliciously pixel-filled form for free. Those guys are so nice! |
| One more trailer for Harley Quinn's Revenge couldn't hurt Posted: 18 May 2012 01:00 PM PDT
Rocksteady Studios has got another trailer for "Harley Quinn's Revenge" ahead of the add-on's May 29 release on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, though this one isn't quite such a tease. We're shown the basic setup for how Robin gets involved and are given a good look at Quinn's less-than-pristine appearance. One of my favorite aspects of the core game was that the inhabitants of Arkham City looked suitably dirty and sickly -- particularly Batman as the story progressed -- so it's nice to see that attention to detail continue in the DLC. |
| Weekend PC download deals: God games, Ubisoft, Saints Row Posted: 18 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT There's not many games included in GOG.com's weekend promotion but boy are they good ones. There's 50% off EA god games, including titles like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Sim City 2000, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. There's some real classics there, so I'm tempted to pick up the whole bundle for $17.94. Origin have thankfully started highlighting special offers and right now they've got 50% off a lot of games and DLC, including Dead Space and Dead Space 2, Medal of Honor, Mirror's Edge, and Bulletstorm. Saints Row is the franchise on offer over at GamersGate; there's 70% off Saints Row 2 and 50% off Saints Row 3 along with the game's DLC. If you hadn't already noticed, Steam has a big weekend sale on Ubisoft titles. Right now, there's 50% off From Dust, Shoot Many Robots, and Rayman Origins. There's 33% off Ubisoft's entire catalog on Steam, but I'd recommend holding off until you see the Ubisoft game you want featured on Saturday or Sunday. As always, find a great weekend PC deal and post it below, it's much appreciated. |
| Grand plans for Tropes vs Women in Video Games Posted: 18 May 2012 11:30 AM PDT Behold, Feminist Frequency! You may have heard about its popular webseries Tropes vs Women; the name appears on conference indexes due to its keen insights. It examines popular culture by identifying trends in the portrayal of women, looking at different forms of media such as comics and advertising. Now Anita Sarkeesian is looking to our fair hobby with a Kickstarter project that examines the tropes in gaming, schemed along the styling of last year’s fascinating video series. In the past, Feminist Frequency has scrutinized LEGO, The Hunger Games and the Smurfette Principle. As her critiques are always engaging, this project sounds exciting. Given that it has already reached its funding with just one day having passed, it seems there are plenty who want these videos to soon be freely at hand. You can look forward to hearing in a few months’ time about the five ways women are commonly represented which Tropes vs. Women in Video Games will assess, including the Fighting F*cktoy and the Damsel in Distress. I, for one, can’t wait to give them a glance! |
| Posted: 18 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT I love laptops. They are great for LANs, they allow me to play games on trains and planes, and most importantly, they don't weigh 80 trillion pounds. Sadly, laptops are almost always worse than desktops in terms of raw power. What they gain in portability, they lose in cost versus performance, which is especially a problem when it comes to high-end gaming. This is compounded by the fact that, unlike desktops, laptops are exceptionally hard to build for the average consumer. Enter the custom laptop manufacturer. I spent the past week and a half putting the latest 15" laptop from Origin to the test. It's equipped with the brand new Intel Ivy Bridge chip, as well as the Nvidia GTX 675M. On paper, this laptop is easily the most powerful one I've used, but how well does it perform in the real world?
Origin (not to be confused with EA's digital distribution platform), allows the customer to customize their laptop with quite a bit of freedom. They also offer higher-end hardware than you can usually find with mainstream manufacturers (e.g., Asus, Acer, Dell). Having only ever used mainstream laptops myself, I was eager to see what the custom crowd could conjure. When the EON first arrived at my apartment, the people at the office asked if I had recently ordered the Ark of the Covenant. Arriving in a 30lb wooden crate, it was more than a little ostentatious. I found a crowbar and busted it open, Gordon Freeman-style. Inside, there was a t-shirt, a poster, the largest power brick I've ever seen, and a stunningly light laptop. The first thing I noticed was how solid the computer felt in my hand. The lower portion of the case didn't squeak or visibly strain with pressure. The lid did flex a small bit, but I also had an older top -- shown on the left side of the image below. I cannot vouch for the build quality of the new lid. From a design perspective, the computer is very quiet. It's subtle and calm. A stark contrast with Alienware and the Asus G73 line. The darker colors of the chassis and the default deep blue of the keyboard backlights is remarkably calming and works to hide the ridiculous power held inside. Upon closer examination, there were a couple of slight problems. There are a lot of crevices, for example, which isn't very conducive for cleaning the machine. The speaker grill will be awful for long-term maintenance, and the lack of a "chiclet," aka "island"-style keyboard doesn't exactly fill me with joy either. I will openly admit, though, that the degree to which these things would bother someone depend very much on how anal you are. I, for example, take razor blades and clean the cracks on the edges of game pads and controllers. So take what I just said with a mountain of salt. When I actually started up the machine and got everything set-up, my first thought was to download and test Furmark. It's an absolutely brutal GPU test that has caused the death of quite a few cards -- great for testing your system's power and heat management. The EON did splendidly and after 30 minutes it was sitting at a balmy 85 degrees centigrade. I've only ever seen a handful of laptops that could actually survive the full 15-minute standard benchmark, much less hold a stable temperature below 100 degrees. Needless to say, I was thoroughly impressed. Encouraged by the first batch of results, I turned to 3DMark 2011 for my second battery of tests. This proved especially useful because the machine came with a paper detailing all of the QA tests the team at Origin ran before they sent it off, giving me a chance to make sure they weren't trying to pull a fast one. The provided score was P3809 running the standard performance tests and my own runs all landed with in five points of that. So it definitely performed pretty consistently and on the extreme upper end of what most laptop users could expect, though it's still quite a bit less than moderately powered gaming laptop. This is all well and good, and probably pleases the PC-playing patricians amongst our patrons, but what ultimately matters is the games. While I would like to create a nice-looking table filled with very detailed results pulled from console commands and Fraps, what matters is this -- every game I tried ran at a silky smooth sixty frames. Portal 2, Skyrim, StarCraft 2, Crysis 2, Mass Effect 3, and yes, even Minecraft all ran at max settings for hours on end without dropping a frame or heating up too much. Trying to push the hardware a little harder, I ran a Blu-ray movie and two 1080p .mkvs in addition to all of the games above with pretty much the same result. Beyond the fantastic performance, the screen itself is gorgeous. The EON is fantastically bright with great contrast and color accuracy. It helps create a fantastic visual platform for playing games overall. The astute will notice I qualified that last sentence with "visual." Indeed, the only real failing of the EON is audio output. Now I realize that no laptop speakers will ever really deliver the best audio experience around, but there have been some pretty great entries in the past. Notably, the aforementioned Asus G73. This is something I tend to expect, though, so I'm never too disappointed. What did cause a problem, however, was the lackluster performance of the sound card. While far from the worst I've ever heard, the EON's auditory prowess simply isn't in the same league as the rest of the machine. Performance is inconsistent. After spending about 30 minutes configuring every conceivable setting, running output through an equalizer (first software and then hardware), I managed to get everything sounding pretty alright. Still, it was an awful lot of work to reach "normal." The one key exception to this short diatribe is the optical output, which was prismatic. The build that I tested runs for $2530. For that price, the EON is definitely competitive. That said, the market for custom-built gaming laptops isn't enormous, and many probably wouldn't even consider getting anything but a desktop. If you're a PC gamer on the go, and you're looking for a very solid piece of hardware to take to college or LANs, then it's worth a look. |
| This weekend Dtoid TV: Put Ashley in the dumpster forever Posted: 18 May 2012 10:45 AM PDT It's getting wild on Dtoid TV this weekend! Philanthr0py is finally getting to the good stuff of his Resident Evil series playthrough, and he's knee deep in Resident Evil 4. Phil is QTE'ing his heart out, and kicking the heads of Ganados for four straight hours this Saturday. Tune in if you want to see him shove Ashley in the dumpster where she belongs, or if you just want to tell Phil how to play better. We've got tons of other stuff coming your way. King Foom is going balls to the wall tonight with multiplayer shooters on Mash Tactics. Crux is playing the black sheep of the Castlevania series on Retroactive this Sunday. And Jonathan Holmes is talking to one of the minds behind a game with one of my favorite names of all time, Super Crate Box. Catch the full schedule below! At 4p.m. Pacific today, King Foom is going crazy on Mash Tactics. It's going to be multiplayer mayhem as Foom invites anyone and everyone to play shooters like Team Fortress 2, Super Monday Night Combat, and Tribes: Ascend. Substituted Reality is Destructoid's only PC exclusive gaming show, hosted by lovably offbeat caster, Awdamn, and airing every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 8p.m. Tonight, fists will fly as Awdamn plays Brawl Busters. Saturday is a night of duality with Binary Domain multiplayer. Sunday night, it could only be Diablo III. Saturday Morning Hangover with Conrad Zimmerman and Jordan Devore airs from 10a.m. to 12p.m. Pacific. Come watch as they play the latest Xbox Live Indie Games demos for your enjoyment, and revel in the beauty of Conrad's mustache! This week, the guys are feeding their addiction for Awesomenauts. Hang out with Destructoid Contributors Brett Zeidler and Caitlin Cooke every Saturday at 12p.m. Pacific as they play through entire games with a focus on co-op. It’s a safe bet that Cait is probably going to get mad at Brett for everything at some point. Chill with Phil airs this and every Saturday at 4p.m. Pacific. Phil is going strong in his playthrough of the entire Resident Evil series. This Saturday is the second part of Phil's run through Resident Evil 4. Sup Holmes is live talk show starring Destructoid editor, Jonathan Holmes, airing every Sunday at 1p.m. Pacific. Every week, Sup Holmes features games industry professionals discussing the issues, and answering viewer questions. This week, Holmes is hanging out with Tami Ismail of Vlambeer, makers of Super Crate Box. Super Fantastic Videogame Rad Show: Get There! starring Johnny Luchador and Bill Zoeker airs every Sunday at 4p.m. Pacific. Rad Show takes a light-hearted approach to gaming, with the guys usually focusing more on breaking games for ridiculous results than completing feats of skill. This Sunday, Rad Show is maybe playing some Minecraft, maybe playing some Max Payne 3 multiplayer, or maybe playing something else that starts with M. Retroactive centers around the games of yesteryear. Every Sunday at 6p.m. Pacific, and Monday at 8p.m. Pacific, its host, Crux adventures through nostalgic games on the consoles of his childhood. Sunday night will be Castlevania: Bloodlines on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. Monday night, Crux is shooting them all up in Super R Type on the SNES. Catch all of Destructoid's live programming by following Dtoid.TV! |
| Here's what 38 Studios' Project Copernicus looks like Posted: 18 May 2012 10:15 AM PDT It's been a busy day for 38 Studios. Amidst the company's recent financial issues, the future of its massively multiplayer online game Project Copernicus wasn't looking so bright. They've decided to go ahead and just put up a trailer which showcases a brief fly-through of the game's world, Amalur. For as long as we have collectively known Copernicus existed, this is somehow our first real look at the game. The art direction feels familiar for the genre, but unique in enough places to be its own thing. And that's about all I can glean. Here's hoping we get to see more substantial footage before too long. |
| Significant other playing Diablo III? Get a free vibrator Posted: 18 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT French sex toy provider Absoloo has had the savvy idea to capitalize on Diablo III's obsessive following and exploit a tired gag for fun and profit. Whether you choose to laugh or despair (I'm going for a mixture of both), you have to applaud the brilliance. We all know the joke. A hot new game has released, and long-suffering girlfriends everywhere are having to look elsewhere for sex. We all laugh so hard at the concept that our eyes start to crack and spill their vital juices down our faces. Anyway, Absoloo is taking the joke to its logical end, offering a free "small vibrator" to anybody who finds themselves lacking a sex life thanks to Diablo III's release. If you're worried that this scheme throws up troubling stereotypes about men and women, don't worry. The company assures its potential customers that the vibrator is "not exclusively for girls," meaning that not only can we safely enjoy this story without being bad people, I also get something to stick up my arsehole. Everybody wins. In order to get one, just go to Absoloo's Facebook page and share a photo of yourself with the game. Of course, this joke would have been funnier had Error 37 not kept many players out of the game this week, but there you go. French Sex Toy Site Offers Free Vibrators to Diablo III Widows [The Escapist] |
| Because We May indie game sale should be a memorable one Posted: 18 May 2012 09:30 AM PDT From May 24 to June 1, many noteworthy independent games will go on sale "to celebrate online stores that give us control over pricing." This initiative, dubbed Because We May, will include titles sold on PC, Mac, Linux, Steam, iOS, Android, and other platforms.
While prices aren't being disclosed yet, the selection is, again, excellent. Follow the links at the top of the site to see for yourself. It should also be noted that the list is still growing; if you happen to be a developer who wants to promote the project's message, you have until May 22 to sign up. |
| MLG Spring Arena 2 airing NOW! Posted: 18 May 2012 08:45 AM PDT Did you happen to catch Spring Arena the first? DongRaeGu took home first place and a check for $5,000 for his excellent Zerg play. Spring Arena 2 kicks off today and, just as before, you'll need to own either a Spring Season Pass for $30 or a Spring Arena 2 PPV pass for $20 in order to watch. The interesting thing about this tournament is that the top 15 seeds get to choose their opponent from the remaining players. In other words, the #1 seed DongRaeGu got to pick his victim opponent first, followed by the #2 seed picking and so on. The full, complete bracket can be viewed here. I'll also take this time to introduce Idra to those of you who don't follow the scene, since he's competing in this tournament. I can't say I know a ton about each big name on the SCII scene, but I sure do know about Idra. He is very headstrong and rarely says "gg" (good game) after losing, which has earned him a certain negative reputation. It is said that his keyboard looks just like this. He's still a great Zerg player, but he gets plenty of negative feedback because of his personality. And now you know! |
| Friday Night Fights: Man on Fire Posted: 18 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT Here's a fun way to spend great way to ruin your night:
2. Drink every time Max drinks 3. ???* 4. Wish you were dead (*Read "pass out and wake up two hours later to a fussy toddler and then go to work") Thank Christ for FNF. New to FNF? Read this! Each week, a bunch of us Dtoiders get together to play videogames online! It's a 100% community-run event, so feel free to join in or even host something yourself! The planning for FNF starts in the forums, where community members volunteer to host matches and post their pertinent details (game, time, Gamertag, etc.). Then, every Friday, reminder posts go up in the community blogs followed by a recap post here on the front page for last-minute planning. To join in, simply send a friend request to the match host! If you'd rather host something yourself, sound off in the comments section below! We'll see you online! (Still confused? Check out our FNF FAQ!) Tonight's Games:
Check out the 360 FNF blog for more info! Tonight's Games:
Check out the PS3 FNF blog for more info! Tonight's Games:
Check out the 3DS FNF blog for more info! Tonight's Games:
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| Sound Shapes teams up with Superbrothers and Jim Guthrie Posted: 18 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT Sound Shapes has impressed us time after time, and it's only getting better for the PlayStation Vita platformer. The folks who brought us the remarkable Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP have joined up with developer Queasy Games to create a series of levels in their familiar style. The PlayStation Blog has a post detailing what the design process was like -- this time, Jim Guthrie's audio work came after the art assets had already been produced, not the other way around -- and there are a number of lovely screenshots to look over as well. Queasy was responsible for putting all of the pieces together to form full-fledged levels, so the end result should be quite interesting. My expectations for Sound Shapes are getting unrealistically high at this point, not that that's a bad thing necessarily. "Available before too long" isn't soon enough! |
| Review: Warlock - Master of the Arcane Posted: 18 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT My army of undead warriors, vampires and minotaurs reached the walls of the reviled city of Cheesetown, home of King Rrat, somewhere around my hundredth turn. The settlement had become synonymous with death and destruction over the previous turns, sending fleet after fleet to attack my empire's capital. The enemy's sea superiority meant that the only route for retaliation was through the massive plains of lava to the east. What started off as a vast army became greatly reduced through battles with greater fire elementals and wandering giants that patrolled the desolate landscape. My mana reserves were low after spending so much on healing my units and casting spells on monsters, so things were not looking good. But it didn't matter, my forces had reached their goal. As my troops approached the city, all hell broke loose. It was as if we had woken up a slumbering beast; the landscape around the city became covered in rats, some big, some small, all armed to the teeth. I hate rats. The undead don't mind rats, though. So my troops stayed strong and cut down their enemies one by one. Things started to turn in my favor, Cheesetown would be mine! But then, betrayal. My undead ally, King Lich V, declares war, his forces come from the east to sandwich my soldiers between death and obliteration. The invasion was over, I slunk back into my cave as gracefully as a two-headed magical dragon can. If you can't trust a lich, who can you trust? In Warlock - Master of the Arcane, you can't trust anybody. Warlock - Master of the Arcane (PC) Warlock puts you in the shoes of an imperialistic, power hungry wizard in the irreverent fantasy world of Ardania, the same realm the Majesty series is set in. You can tell because the absurd Sean Connery impersonator who offers advice in Majesty 2 makes an unwelcome return. The goal is a simple one: Amass powerful armies, constantly fuel the war machine, and conquer all your foes. Ostensibly this is a 4X game, but the focus is very much on the final X, exterminate. Ardania is a hostile world, one where even neutral cities will attack you on sight and where roving bands of monsters can pose a legitimate threat to your empire. On the rare occasions when you are at peace with the opposing magical empires, you're still at war with every other creature. In my very first game, expansion was halted almost instantly when I discovered that the only viable locations for new settlements were blocked by three gigantic monstrosities surrounding a neutral city. I had to throw countless armies at them, which wasted my valuable resources very early on. The random nature of monster placement means that even early on you can find yourself fighting desperate battles, which means the choices you make when selecting or customizing your wizard and his or her early spells are actually pretty important. The predefined leaders are all interesting characters which draw from a variety of fun cliches, like dragon lords or Elminster. They all come with their own backgrounds, but their history doesn't come into play during the game, unfortunately. Each leader has default traits and spells, for instance Tendral, Son of Vendral (the aforementioned two-headed dragon) comes with bonuses to his mana and gold reserves and a fire spell. Each wizard also has the loyalty of one of three races: Humans, monsters and the undead. However, the leaders can be fully customized. If you want to play a gold loving Orc Shaman who rules over the undead with ice magic, go ahead. These initial choices are important at the beginning, but conquering the cities of the other races gives access to their units and new spells are constantly being researched. The first order of business for any aspiring conquering wizard is expanding the capital and building an army. Initially only two units are available, simple melee and ranged troops, but they can be augmented with new armor and weapons if you construct buildings like the smithy. New units become available once you add buildings from the predefined list based on the city's racial affiliations. Monster cities get goblins and ratmen and their ilk, while undead cities get skeletons, liches, vampires, and so on. Human cities get boring old humans (obviously) like knights and gross little gnomes, who are not human at all. At first I thought they were just children. Your soldiers aren't idiots, even if you might expect ratmen pirates and gibbering goblins to be somewhat mentally stunted. They learn from their grizzly encounters, and level up. Usually that just means their stats improve, but occasionally they will learn new abilities. In one intense battle, my powerful vampires were having a terrible time, as they ineffectually flung death magic at some immune elementals. But when it looked like their goose was cooked, they leveled up and they gained some new additions to their magical arsenal. They walked away from that battle with smug self satisfaction. Probably. They are vampires. Dotted about the landscape are various resources, which can be built upon to provide passive bonuses or new units. Some resources can provide one or the other, so there are lots of routes you can take with your cities. For instance, if you have a minotaur resource in your influence, you can construct either a palace or a labyrinth. The palace will allow the recruitment of the smelly, hairy bull-men, while the labyrinth makes your troops stronger. See, puzzle solving really does make you tough! City management is a complete doddle, something I'm exceedingly glad about. When the focus is on conflict, the last thing I want to do is fiddle about with sliders and pour over building lists. There are three key resources that cities produce: Food, mana, and gold. Hovering over the UI clearly shows how much you are making, how much you are spending and from where. So it's easy to fix any deficits. You can keep churning out units as long as you have the funds, but buildings can only be constructed when the city increases in size. There's an annoying bug that stops you from being able to destroy buildings, so I hope that gets sorted soon. It's the only bug I encountered, but it's a rather problematic one. While the words "Warlock" and "Arcane" might lead you to believe that this is a game where magic is king, it's actually the "War" secretly nestled in there that shows the true nature of the beast. Yes, magic is still important, it's a resource and a weapon, plus it's integral to the game's concept. But honestly, you're not a particularly powerful wizard. Despite a spell book brimming with destructive magic, casting even one spell renders your leader helpless until the next turn. Some spells can't even be cast until you wait for a turn. It makes these power hungry wizards seem like impotent magicians at a kid's birthday party. Magic feels more like a backup. If your army is struggling, cast a heal or set an enemy on fire, then go back to not being able to even pull a rabbit out of a hat. To make matters worse, there's no magic tree or list. Once a spell has been researched, you're presented with a series of new spells, arranged in a circle. I frequently found myself selecting spells I knew I didn't need in hopes that it would unlock better ones, but I simply had no idea. I was just hoping for the best. There's a serious lack of documentation, and I'm still not sure if there's any logic behind the magical research. Commanding your bloodthirsty horde, on the other hand, is a delight. Taking a leaf out of Civilization V's book (something the game does generally in terms of presentation), the map is arranged in hexes and stacking is not allowed. So a massive force is slow to move, but it also acts like a giant wall closing in on its foe. Getting your army where it needs to be is pretty easy, there's no faffing about loading troops onto boats, for instance, as all units come with their own combat ready ships when they hit water. There's a vast array of soldiers willing to lay their life down for their aggressive master -- from the mundane, like swordsmen and archers, to the bizarre, like donkey knights or flying ghost ships. Ino-co Plus certainly appears to have had a lot of fun coming up with the units, as is evidenced in their descriptions, which are appropriately silly. The donkey knights, for example, originate from a knight who fled a battle on the back of a stolen donkey. After his enemies caught up to him, the only living souls that were left alive were he and his trusty steed. Thus began an order of knights on donkeyback. Unit placement is obviously important, with the tough guys at the front, and the squishy ranged units protected behind them. Some powerful foes can attack from three hexes away, though, so every unit is somewhat vulnerable. While foes are aggressive and the AI is suitably reactive, significantly better than in the Civilization series, they do a terrible job of protecting their cities. They are great on the offense, but their defense is a joke. Cities themselves could really do with beefing up, something I really hope to see in a patch, because right now it's just too easy to conquer a settlement with weaker units. The hostility of the opposing leaders and the neutral forces gives the game a constant forward momentum. In a lot of other 4X and grand strategy games, after taking a few cities you might sue for peace and disband your troops to save money, in Warlock, that's just asking for trouble. Sure, you might find yourself in a spot of financial bother, and maybe you made a shitty investment; you're a normal wizard, not a financial wizard. But I found it helpful to have a decently sized marauding army at all times. There's always another battle just around the corner. Especially when you take into account the existence of other worlds. Up to five extra realms can be added to a campaign, accessed via magical portals. These worlds make Ardania look like a land of peace and sunshine. Entering one of these new dimensions will require a powerful force if you hope to stand a chance of survival. While it's a lot of fun getting into these extra tough battles, there isn't really much point in it. The extra worlds can be ignored entirely without any negative repercussions. They aren't unwelcome additions, but they fail to really add anything. A lot of the warfare is caused by the fickle nature of your opposition, and diplomacy. I don't know what emissaries I was sending to chat to the other wizards, but they weren't very good. It all boils down to making demands, declaring war or making a fragile alliance. Trade is pretty much non existent and any pacts that are made just ensure short term peace. An alliance means that you're not going to war today, but anything can happen tomorrow. It's not a big problem, as the game is about conflict, not friendship or politics. However, it would have been nice to have the option to build strong alliances and to conquer the world together -- before turning on each other. On top of trading words with enemies, you can pay lip service to a bunch of gods. Devoting yourself to a deity nets you some powerful spells and building their temples on holy sites lets you purchase incredibly strong units, like liches. Unfortunately, there's not much personality behind them and gaining their respect is annoying and arbitrary. Every now and then quests appear, and usually they just require you to attack a city or build something like a harbor, but occasionally you'll be tasked with constructing a temple or defeating a foe for a god. The problem is that if you fail the task, you piss off the god. That wouldn't be so much of an issue if it wasn't for how random these quests can be. Holy sites are not particularly abundant and it's not uncommon to be told to build a second temple only a few turns later, which is usually impossible, even with the 20 turn time limit. Upsetting these petulant powers isn't always a bad thing, though. If a deity hates you, then it will send an avatar to topple your empire, while defeating said avatar will inexplicably lead to you winning the game. There are four victory types, but they are all pretty uninspired. I just stuck to killing everyone. While wanton destruction is something I'm very much in favor of, when that's all there is things start to get a bit boring. The excitement of crafting a mighty empire ceases once you start to unlock the strongest units (which doesn't really take very long) and from then it just becomes a series of repetitive battles. Campaigns might start differently, but once you've put in around a hundred turns it generally plays out in the same way. But there's always the chance an AI opponent does something terribly sneaky, or you find yourself beset on all sides by enemies right from the get go. Enough interesting things happened to hold my attention for another click of the Next Turn button. And another. Warlock is full of surprises. It looks like Civilization V (albeit set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world complete with towering volcanoes and wastelands filled with demons), the premise sounds like Masters of Magic and it plays like neither of them. 4X fans looking for a deep fantasy game will probably not find what they are looking for, but should still find a lot to keep them occupied. For those who are unfamiliar with the genre, but are looking for a place to dip their toes in, then Warlock is a great place to start. For all of its flaws, it's still a remarkably fun game with plenty of character. When you're commanding armies of dragons and giants to annihilate cities protected by ghost ships or rat snipers, it's easier to overlook the game's shortcomings. I know that I'll certainly be playing a few more campaigns, and once the multiplayer gets added I'll play even more. |
| Something seems to be up with Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 Posted: 18 May 2012 06:30 AM PDT Has Gearbox Software dropped Brothers in Arms: Furious 4? We certainly haven't heard much of anything pertaining to the ridiculous WWII first-person shooter in recent memory. When asked if the game has been canceled, or if it'll even be present at E3 2012, Ubisoft responded with the classic "We don't have anything to share at this point in time." Adding to the concern is the fact that Ubisoft has abandoned its trademarks for Furious 4. As someone who has never gotten into the traditional Brothers in Arms games, Furious 4 sounded much more appealing. Evens still, when it was revealed back at E3 of last year, I distinctly remember wondering how the project even got the go-ahead in the first place. I'd like to see more, but to hear that the game might be canceled or perhaps taken on a new form does not strike me as unexpected. What’s Going On With That Crazy, Over-the-Top Brothers in Arms Game? [Kotaku] |
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