MMO News |
- Star Citizen: The Next Great Starship
- Steam Greenlight page for “TUG” now live
- Echo Prime
- TUG: Survival Games Alpha Milestone Video
- STO Celebrates Turning Four with Season 8.5 Update
- Star Trek Online: 4-Year Anniversary Spotlight
- Battle Command Review
- Akaneiro puts Spicy Horse Studios in debt
- Snail Games gains “Virtual Operator” license in China
- Echo Prime – Former iOS tablet game hits Steam
| Star Citizen: The Next Great Starship Posted: 30 Jan 2014 02:15 PM PST
More than 200 teams created a weapon for entry into the Next Great Starship design competition. The showdown begins January 31, at 6 pm EST. |
| Steam Greenlight page for “TUG” now live Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:45 PM PST Nerd Kingdom has announced that their Steam Greenlight page for TUG is now live. TUG is a single and multiplayer open-world sandbox RPG using emerging technology and social sciences to directly involve players in the game's design. Nerd Kingdom is a collaborative of social scientists, economists, artists, and developers exploring new frontiers in technology and design. Users can join TUG’s early access program and help support the game’s development. All money raised from donations and sales goes directly into supporting the game’s ongoing development, and towards funding our stretch goals. For more information, visit http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=220041725 |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:01 PM PST Echo Prime is a sci-fi action game developed for iOS and PC. Battle hordes of dangerous alien creatures, space pirates, and killer mercenaries with blaster and blade as you travel from star to star, uncovering the secrets of the multiverse. Note: This is a buy-to-play retail title.  Publisher: Robot Entertainment Pros: +Extra content on PC version, Reworked control scheme
Overview Echo Prime OverviewFeatures (PC): Optimized for PC: Echo Prime's real-time action gameplay has been redesigned for PCs, including improvements to visual effects, a retuned economy, and new PC controls with mappable hotkeys. More Enemies and Environment: Echo Prime for Steam includes new locations in which to do battle and a new enemy race, the alien "Tide". Hardcore Mode: Test your mastery. How far can you get without dying? Echoes of the Multiverse: Discover and unlock dozens of "Echoes," alien life forms from alternate universes. Build connections with them, and Echoes will offer you powers and abilities to help you on your missions. Experiment and find the best combinations to customize your ability loadout. Echo Prime Screenshots          Echo Prime Featured VideoComing soon… Full Review Echo Prime ReviewComing Soon… Screenshots Echo Prime ScreenshotsComing Soon… Videos Echo Prime Videos System Requirements Echo Prime System RequirementsSystem Requirements (PC)Minimum: |
| TUG: Survival Games Alpha Milestone Video Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:54 PM PST
TUG showcases alpha gameplay as it begins its Steam Greenlight campaign. |
| STO Celebrates Turning Four with Season 8.5 Update Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:40 PM PST In celebration of Cryptic Studios' four years of Star Trek Online, they are releasing a commemorative trailer along with plenty of fun, games, and prizes. And perhaps best of all update 8.5, "A Step Between Stars," introduces a new episode of content featuring Tim Russ as Admiral Tukov. Season 8.5 brings many new updates and changes including the brand-new Ship Management system, revamped Federation episodic missions, a small space PvP arena, and much more! The latest Featured Episode "A Step Between Stars" continues the adventure players began in "Sphere of Influence." Captains level 10 and above will brave the dangers of flying over the surface of the sun to meet Admiral Tuvok and help him complete his mission. Additionally, captains will get a chance to fly in one of the new Dyson Hybrid Ships that are being introduced for the first time. Captains will be rewarded with one of three unique pieces of ship equipment of their choosing (replay to get all 3!), and additionally, on their first playthrough, 400 Qmendations! This will provide a great boost to the start of their Anniversary Event reputation project. Qmendations can be inputted into the special anniversary event reputation project that will reward players with a Dyson Science Destroyer from their character's faction upon completion. Full info can be found on the two related blog posts. |
| Star Trek Online: 4-Year Anniversary Spotlight Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:35 PM PST
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| Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:16 PM PST by: Ojogo
Ever since the arrival of Backyard Monsters at Facebook, different game developers tried their hand in the strategy game that expends units once you throw them at enemies/npcs. Battle Command is a game just like that, but instead of using monsters or medieval stuff like what Little Empires did, it takes on the semi-futuristic military based approach.
Gameplay Battle Commands takes on the strategic approach where you build up structures and units that provide either defense, offense, and/or resources. Each structure is upgradable as long as you are able to pay the costs which can be either through oil or steel, the game's resource.
Invasion/Battle Moving on to the game's battle phase. Battle Command follows the steps of Backyard Monsters in terms of attacking bases. You must place your units within the bounds of your opponent's base, while your opponent, would need to defend against your attacks.
Attacking and Defending is asynchronous. The defending party would need to rely on their base-building skills while the attacker would need to rely on how he/she places his/her units out into the field to provide maximum damage to an opponent's infrastructure. The battles do not vary between PvP/PvE since the goal is similar. Destroy the enemy base. Units that are used in battles or invasions are automatically expended and will not return to your base even if you're successful in the mission. So in retrospect, your units, that come in the form of infantry-based or mech/vehicle based variants come in the form of a "military resource" that you would need to consider as one-time use assets. Also similar to strategy games, these units are not open from the start and would require you to do research and create specific structures to hold/make them which adds more to the game's strategy element since you'll have to take into consideration base defense as well (with the increase of structures that needs to be defended).
Features The game doesn't just rely on it's strategy as it's main draw. In fact the game has an achievement feature that provides you with the in-game premium currency as rewards. It also has a mission/quest system where you'll be doing most of your gaming in BC. the game also has an alliance system in place that ties neatly to the game's ranking system. In place of quests, the game uses the Mission system where you would spend the majority of your time since it provides not just helpful hints, but also rewards of resources for every successful mission.
Also, the game has a War system in place where you can test out your base setup in a simulated environment using the units that you have.
Currency Since Battle Command is a freemium based game, a lot of the game's features are enhanced by purchasing the premium in-game currency in the form of crystals.
Crystals in BC are used to primarily speedup structure upgrades and to compensate for purchases where the player doesn’t have enough resources to pay for the cost. The game does provide "free" crystals via the achievement system but in very small quantities. As for the amount of crystals expended per action, it depends highly on the action you would be doing. The more expensive acts or construction projects, longer a structure is being build higher amounts of crystals would need to be used as payment.
Critique Battle Command is one example of a game that was refitted because the gameplay that it’s based on works on not just a financial level, but on a gamer’s level as well. The problem with BC is that the game starts slapping you with its freemium content as early as its starting stages. Normally, other freemium games would ease into asking players for their cash. However, BC belongs to the other school of thought and asks from you at the start of the game. Of course the game doesn't force you to pay at all. However, in exchange for being a cheapskate, you’ll barely touch the game since EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING takes an excruciating amount of time to be done. All in all, Battle Command can be described as a Backyard Monsters rip-off, but in the end which game following this model isn't? The game is still fun even if you don't want to spend a dime on it, but you'll just find yourself playing quick bursts of the game at a time. On the other hand, if you're the type who has no problem on spending on games like this, I'd suggest you move on from Battle Command and look for a far more bang for your buck game since the game would just ask you for more as you reach later levels. And we all know that that kind of "hole" isn't a nice one to be suck in since it'll just suck your money dry, with you wondering in the end, "why did I even bother?"
Conclusion: Fair Of course that doesn't mean the game is terrible, by all means compared to the bunch of games that has been released lately, Battle Command scraped (barely) into the decent category. But because of how the premium market system is implemented, it just killed any enjoyment I had playing. |
| Akaneiro puts Spicy Horse Studios in debt Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:02 PM PST As the crowd-funding train keeps on rolling, one particular game studio ends up being set back despite their recent success on Kickstarter. Spicy Horse Studios, the indie develpoers behind Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, is now $1.7 million dollars in debt. “In total, around 360 man-months have gone towards development, bringing our investment in dollars to nearly $2 million USD. In that same period, we’ve generated roughly 300kUSD in revenue – this includes funds collected via the Kickstarter campaign, F2P purchases in-game, and one-time purchases via Steam. In simple math: We’ve spent $2 million, we’ve made $300k, we’re “in the hole” $1.7 million.” Due to this, the development team will be downsized and the development for the game will be moving in at a snail’s pace. For more details, visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spicyhorse/akaneiro-demon-hunters/posts/732953 |
| Snail Games gains “Virtual Operator” license in China Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:52 AM PST Today, Snail Games acquired the first “Virtual Operator” license from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MITT), seeking expansion into the mobile platform, becoming the only game company in China to receive the license so far. The Virtual Operator License will allow Snail to lease telecommunication network and hardware equipment to supply their own Telecom Services. In other words, Snail will now possess an exclusive Network, complete with in-house devices, customer service, operation & management system. With this announcement, Snail Games will be launching an exclusive online entertainment platform – The Snail Store. The Store aims to provide a well-rounded end user experience with better Data packages, personalized “butler”, customer service and a one-click access account to all games and applications including Age of Wushu, Black Gold Online and Voyage Century. For more information on Snail Games and their titles, visit www.snailgame.net or www.snailgamesusa.com |
| Echo Prime – Former iOS tablet game hits Steam Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:22 AM PST Robot Entertainment released an expanded edition of their sci-fi action RPG Echo Prime on Steam today. The Steam release includes new content, improvements to visual fidelity, and reworked PC controls. Players can now journey across the stars through an expanded array of exciting locations to battle against three races of alien enemies and huge bosses. Unique additions to the PC version include:
For more information on Echo Prime, visit: http://www.robotentertainment.com/games/echo-prime/ |
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