My thoughts/highlights:
What are the big changes from LoL/Dota2? Where to start....ummmm....you can buy anywhere...
I haven't played all the characters yet, just the elephant and the panda. (I laughed)
Asian players have a hive mindset! (laughed again)
Microtransactions (YES!!)
"In a way it sounds like pay to win" (no it sounds EXACTLY like pay to win)
disapointed with UT this year, didnt hardly play it compared to UT 12.
The single matches being scrapped was a bad idea, while the leageu tournement rankings should of been a choice, not enforced.
This meant soo many teams with pace abuse players, same teams , same players. Sweaty arcady , scripted football thanks to the speed being higher on UT gameplay. Just frustrating.
Also getting coins was easier, which was good... but that then lead to trade being not as effective. Because playing in divisions allowed people to get good players quicker.
I have soo many ideas on how they could of added more cards , and depth.
And no place for silver squads , because everyone had golds with fast players. Just didnt feel good anymore.
I only play fifa now for offline play against a buddy, on manuel settings.
EA next time ,,, bring back singles.
Telltale clarifies earlier reports to say gamers will be able to play more of The Walking Dead this year.
Telltale's second season of its critically acclaimed The Walking Dead will begin its episodic release in Q3 2013.
Speaking to Game Informer, a Telltale representative said "the current estimated release window for Season Two of The Walking Dead is for fall of 'this' year (2013), and not 'next' year (2014) as has been reported after a recent interview. We apologize for any confusion and thank you and all of our fans for your continued excitement for Telltale's series."
In a previous interview with Eurogamer, Telltale CEO Dan Connors suggested the game's second season wouldn't see a release until the second half of 2014.
Telltale writer Gary Whitta has already teased the possibility of some new The Walking Dead content being released to bridge the gap between season one and season two, and presumably he's not talking about Activision's FPS take on the TV series being released this month.
The Walking Dead picked up two gongs at the BAFTA Game Awards on Tuesday night.
Alongside season two of The Walking Dead, Telltale is working to adapt Bill Willingham's Fables graphic novels.
Has absolutely never at all had the song from Beauty and the Beast sung to him at any point during his life, ever.
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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate stirs up conflicting emotions. On the one hand, it's a good action game that draws you into the depths of Dracula's castle with its beautifully tormented gothic design. Equally pleasing are the flexible and responsive controls that bring the exciting combat system to life. Apart from these highlights, however, Mirror of Fate struggles with a handful of issues. Prevalent quick-time events, and the often mundane situations that call for them, often feel unwarranted. The story, despite its good points, concludes with a twist that can be seen coming from a mile away. At the end of the day, demon slaying and clever platforming are the biggest reasons to stick until the lukewarm conclusion. Thankfully, the tight and entertaining gameplay prevents the experience from slipping into mediocrity.
Simon always was the forceful type.
You play as three different characters as you fight your way through hordes of enemies in search of Dracula. The prologue recaps a part of Gabriel Belmont's story from the original Lords of Shadow, and then you set out as his grandson, the crimson-clad Simon Belmont. Once Simon arrives at Dracula's throne, the game switches perspectives, putting you in the shoes of the mysterious Alucard, and eventually Trevor Belmont, Simon's father. The start of each act cascades back in time, leading up to the events of the act before it.
Despite its predictability, the story puts an interesting twist on the tale of the fabled Belmont clan. Traditionally, generations of Belmonts have faced off against Dracula in a never-ending battle to save humanity, with very little character development along the way. Mirror of Fate boldly reverses this trend, completely rewriting the Belmonts' history in the process. The notion of telling the story in reverse is as promising as it is unorthodox, but it needs to be handled delicately to work. By revealing big clues early in the game, Mirror of Fate fails to do so. Granted, the details of the plot are interesting, connecting characters in unprecedented ways that upset pre-Lords of Shadow lore, but these surprises, intended for the end of the game, are apparent too early into your adventure.
Every character possesses different skills and secondary items, but they all wield a whip of sorts. With their trusty lashes, they can conquer pretty much anything. Secondary items and magic are somewhat underutilized, and you're only forced to use them on rare occasions. Your primary weapon is often the most effective tool in battle, and like any good battle system, some attacks are better than others for a particular enemy-type. Discovering the right formula for a quick, painless kill is challenging, but the reward of impressive displays of might and speed are worth the time it takes to get it right.
Your weapon is quite useful outside of combat, too, aiding your progress into the castle depths. When grappling across chasms, or rappelling down walls, you need a keen sense of spatial awareness and timing to keep your footing and health in check. Fending off monsters while navigating precarious platforms builds tension, and they are the best moments Mirror of Fate has to offer, but since time is the only element at risk due to an overabundance of checkpoints and a generous revival scheme, the game lacks the invigorating urgency that the threat of death can deliver.
When you aren't confronted with throngs of enemies or tricky platforming sections, you might struggle with some of the environmental puzzles strewn throughout the castle. While it may seem like arranging mirrors to direct a laser around a series of twists and turns isn't the most logical way of powering on a contraption from the middle-ages, it's a mildly challenging diversion and a welcome change of pace. The few puzzles in the game are generally well designed, but they primarily task you with finding the appropriate arrangement for a series of objects. They're enjoyable, if fairly simple in their execution.
Throughout the course of each chapter, you spend a good amount of time developing your character's skill set and learning the particulars of each attack. Developing your grasp of combat mechanics is a fulfilling journey, but the prevalence of quick-time events repeatedly deflates the value of this progress. This is most obvious during boss fights, which demand precision and quick reflexes. The problem is that every boss battle concludes with a multipart quick-time event, and failing to hit the right timing simply resets the cinematic to the last successful input. Performing complex finishing moves with one or two well-timed button presses feels like a cop-out after mastering the tricky techniques and quick reflexes required during the heat of actual, not pseudo-cinematic, combat.
Mirror of Fate is best when it separates interactivity and passive entertainment, so the fact that it hurts itself by blurring the two so frequently is a major disappointment. Worse than that, there are numerous occurrences of a particular door in the later half of the game that can only be open by enduring repetitive, button-mashing quick-time events, and that's after you've acquired the skill that's supposed to enable you to open the door to begin with. Quite annoyingly, any treasure chests you find require the same rapid button presses to open.
With the return to 2D, there's a renewed attention to exploration and discovery. There aren't any fake walls or turkey roasts hidden away in bricks (barrels are a different story), but there are a fair amount of tempting opportunities lying in wait. Most hidden passages are easy to spot, and the handy map-notation tool makes returning to explore suspect locations a mostly simple affair. Unfortunately, the rewards fail to impress, and since there's very little variety to what you discover, the sense of wonder soon fades. You might discover a health or magic upgrade, or perhaps a new entry for your bestiary, but that's about it. It takes time to get used to the game's compartmentalized, as opposed to singular, map, but it's not too hard to navigate when the time comes to backtrack for secrets. The element of exploration is a nice nod to the past, but Mirror of Fate fails to match the joy of discovery found in previous Castlevanias.
All told, Mirror of Fate is a fun and occasionally challenging action game with successful elements and an unfortunate, but small, selection of poor design choices. By taking liberties with the series' lore, it opens the door for an exciting conclusion to the Lords of Shadow timeline. Had some of the inconsistencies in gameplay been ironed out, the experience would have felt much more cohesive, but as it stands, Mirror of Fate is a good, but not great, addition to the historic Castlevania series.
This week we check out SimCity, Tomb Raider, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, MLB 13: The Show, MLB 2K13, DmC: Devil May Cry - Vergil's Downfall, The Sims 3: University Life and The Showdown Effect.
Posted Mar 1, 2013 | 3:09 | 21,301 Views
It's the most cherished of World War II stories: There was Hitler, then Hitler summoned demonic zombies, and then the Allied forces really wished to be rid of both those things. That's pretty much the extent of the plot in Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, the stand-alone, multiplayer-focused expansion to the much more serious Sniper Elite V2. And that's perfectly fine--zombies and Nazis are already two of video gaming's most hated enemies. Do you really need a good reason to shoot hundreds of zombies in the head?
The twist that supposedly sets this zombie experience apart from the many other zombie-related games available right now is that Nazi Zombie Army is built on the Sniper Elite format, except it's so far removed from the source material that it almost doesn't feel similar at all. Gone are the stealth elements and deliberate pacing of the original Sniper Elite V2. There's no sneaking up on a zombie or trying to get through an area without being detected. In fact, most areas require you to eliminate most, if not all, of the undead around you before you can move on, and there's nothing quiet about it.
There is less emphasis placed on bullet drop and wind than you may expect if you've played other games in the series; here, where you aim is usually where your bullet is going to go. This is good for the more action-heavy pace NZA sets, because you can't spend too long lining up a perfect shot when dozens of enemies shamble toward you, but it also means that one of the staples of the Sniper Elite series is missing from this game that bears its name. As a result, the game feels a lot like plenty of other third-person shooters out there.
One thing that's not missing from the franchise, though, is the kill cam, which shows off some of your better shots in brutal slow motion, cutting to an X-ray shot of your bullet smashing through a zombie's skull or into another vital organ. While this feature could make some uncomfortable when applied liberally to the human enemies of past games, it feels more over the top and even humorous when zombies and skeletons are the victims. The killcam helps make headshots immensely satisfying throughout the game, though it can grow tiresome if you it's triggered too frequently. Thankfully, the frequency of these slow-motion shots can be adjusted or they can be turned off completely.
You find yourself on a lot of linear paths and in several small spaces while marching across undead Berlin. Tight corridors can be great for certain aspects of a typical zombie game--they can make you feel claustrophobic, as if there's nowhere to run--but they don't work as well for a game in which your primary weapon is a sniper rifle. Yes, you have a pistol and a sub-weapon (usually some sort of machine gun) at your disposal, but shooting them isn't nearly as satisfying as firing the rifles, and you aren't usually given much ammo for them. Empty your Thompson clips too fast, and you may find yourself frantically trying to snipe a skeleton from about three feet away. Items like grenades, trip wires, and land mines can help you out of sticky situations (or help prevent you from getting into them), or they can be used to gleefully blow up a dozen zombies at once just to watch their bodies fly.
There is a tendency for the gameplay to become monotonous, especially when you're playing alone. Press the right mouse button, aim at zombie head, shoot, and then do it again. The structure of the levels tends to encourage finding a spot to kneel down, unmoving, and shooting things for a while until the enemies either get too close or are all dead. This approach loses its luster sooner than you would like. Cooperative multiplayer for up to four people breathes some extra life into the formula, though, and is the preferred way to play. While your actions are mostly the same, things get more frantic when the enemy count is high and you have allies to watch out for. Get a group of four reliable partners together, bump up the difficulty level, and you have the best way to blast through the game's five missions, which will probably take you around five hours to finish.
You do want reliable partners if at all possible. If someone disconnects on you mid-game, you have no option to invite new people without dropping back to the lobby and losing all progress. So if you lose a teammate or two near the end of a level, you can either finish alone or take a big 45-minute step back. Thankfully the game adjusts to the player count and goes easier on you when you're by yourself, giving you much more generous checkpoints when you don't have allies to bring you back from the brink of death. But it can still be disheartening when you're marching through a level with three buddies only to have to end the journey alone (though there's something to be said for being the last survivor of a zombie outbreak).
There's a good chance you will have had your fill of Nazi Zombie Army by the time its five missions end. Its five enemy types (six if you count a boss you fight twice) and linear structure don't allow for enough variety to keep things fresh with repeated playthroughs. Those desperate for an excuse to return to levels after finishing them can try to hunt down hidden Nazi gold and well-hidden bottles of blood, but this isn't a fantastic incentive to boot the game up. You may find more enjoyment in going after a high leaderboard score, earning more points for success kills at longer ranges. It's a fun game with friends, but most of the action is as brainless as the undead hordes you're slaughtering.
After committing a variety of unspeakable acts against your fellow man, you have finally gained the trust of the evil sorcerer Demonaica. Your reward for walking the path of darkness is a crystal that grants you immortality. Tarnished though your soul has become, you hope to use your new strength to destroy the very individual who foolishly placed his confidence in you. Wiping out evil and saving humankind isn't a simple task, though. To persevere, you need to rely on both reflexes and intellect.
Careful: the wind can affect the trajectory of your spells.
Despite featuring a rather conventional premise, A Valley Without Wind 2 stands apart from the crowd of similar action games by deftly combining a slew of platforming stages with what initially seems like a generic turn-based strategy interface. First impressions may lead you to dismiss the latter element as unimportant, but that would be a mistake. If you don't consistently pay equal attention to each aspect of play, you won't be able to complete the game, because your progress is frequently auto-saved, and a few critical mistakes can render victory impossible. If you're ready to embrace that unusual and rather demanding dynamic, you'll find a worthwhile experience that might surprise you.
As the game begins, a randomly generated world presents you with a number of colorful tiles placed near the center of a black expanse. A few units materialize as well, and you need to move them to available spaces where they can search for resources, rescue additional soldiers and scouts from captivity, and so forth. Troop deployment serves as only the first half of a phase, though. Once you have directed all of your soldiers, you can then enter an action stage. Those levels are also randomly generated, though some are similar enough to one another that you might believe otherwise. They tend toward large open areas that are a perfect playground for your character as he runs and leaps through passages and along ledges, hurling primary and secondary spells specific to his class, or slows down to avoid hazards like thorn patches and floating blades. Each turn concludes only when you reach the end of an appropriate area and destroy a waiting windstorm generator.
You can also enter previously visited stages without ending a turn, and look for loot that ranges from an armor pickup (which wears down and breaks over time, a sometimes annoying fact despite a landscape that overflows with treasure chests) to perk tokens and sometimes even blueprints that allow your character to gain additional moves that affect his mobility. A failed attempt at an action stage doesn't have sweeping consequences, but the resulting drop in army morale can make your troops less effective when facing the creatures that roam the map.
After each turn ends, you get to see how you did. Early on, the game babies you as it acquaints you with the rules. It walks you through exercises such as building shelters for your troops and turning grassland into farmland so that you can generate precious resources. You may be immortal, but your troops need to eat, and they need to feel satisfied that the resistance effort is going well. Otherwise, they won't fight effectively when monsters inevitably start arriving in waves that emanate from Demonaica's castle and from various other landmarks that may eventually enter the equation. You soon have to worry about the sorcerer himself, as well. He moves around the map and eliminates any soldiers that cross his path. If your army's population drops to zero, that's the end of the game—no matter how many hours you might have played—and you have to start fresh with a new world.
I hope this game is more like AC1 when it comes to actually assassinating the target, I want more freedom when it comes to killing major characters in the game, not do some shittty chase and then watch the assassination, like I was not even that character at all (connor)
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