Category Archives: GAMING

GAMING

City of Titans: Kickstarter Goes Live!

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When most people think of MMO’s they think of either the dark reaches of space or some fantasy inspired landscape. NCSoft had a different vision back in 2004 when they released a game called City of Heroes. With this MMO you could create the hero you wanted and go out and battle the forces of crime. To the fans dismay however the game was shut down in 2012 as they looked elsewhere to fight evil. Missing Worlds Media have heard the cries of the fans and have launched a new project on Kickstarter entitled City of Titans.

This ambitious new MMO will allow players to create a hero or villain to step out onto the streets. As with other MMO’s there is going to be a deep customization system when it comes to choosing powers and appearance. However, you can also customize your powers as well (example: you can arc lightning from a wand, your hands or even a fantastic looking gun.) But that’s not all as there are going to be tools available for the players to make their own stories. Then you can take these stories and share them with other players in the game. When you purchase City of Titans you will be buying the game and be given 3 months of a VIP subscription. After those 3 months are done you can still play for free and there will be a cash shop in-game as well.

So how has the response been to this project? As of the writing of this article this Kickstarter has 29 days still to go…and has raised over $260,000.

They want to raise $320,000 to cover the costs of the project and right now they may reach their goal in just a few days. And some of the rewards you can get for pledging range from a simple thank you to a digital copy of the game to designing a costume to your specs and joining Missing Worlds at the debut party during  ‘a major convention’.

City of Titans

GAMING

Call of Duty: Ghosts – Squads Game Mode Revealed

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Evolution in an iterative game franchise is obviously slow-going; it’s difficult to try new things when your games are released annually. The Call of Duty series has often been criticized for being the same repackaged game year after year, but a new console generation opens the door for innovation and the upcoming Call of Duty: Ghosts seems to be one of the largest steps forward for the franchise since Modern Warfare took the world by storm so many years ago.

In addition to hiring writer Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) in a concerted effort to improve on the single player aspect, Ghosts seems focused on driving multiplayer further by introducing a slew of new refinements to expand on their current MP experience, including sliding, peeking around corners, and dynamic maps. Now, Infinity Ward has revealed a whole new game mode to multiplayer called Squads, which offers a whole new facet to the multiplayer platform.

Squads introduces a whole new level of competition to Call of Duty: Ghosts. Combining the unrivaled Multiplayer experience with cutting edge AI, Squads lets you play a variety of new game modes with your customized squad-mates. Play solo against another player and their squad, or cooperatively with friends, competing versus an AI-controlled squad. Best of all, the XP earned in Squads is directly connected to your Multiplayer progress!

In Squads, players create a number of different units, each with their own loadouts and customizable features, and drop into several different game types which test your ability to create a balanced, skilled team. There are a number of game types within Squads that allow players to play alone against AI or with friends, either co-operatively or against one another. Your squads will also remain active and gain XP even while you’re offline, which means multiplayer in Ghosts will have a level of persistence – Yes, Call of Duty is becoming even more addictive.

Squads looks like an interesting combination of traditional competitive multiplayer and online co-op along the lines of the Spec Ops game mode in previous CoD titles. If it works well, players will lose even more hours to the black hole that is Call of Duty multiplayer, and it’s a unique way for the series to differentiate itself from Battlefield, which continues to push open environments and vehicular combat as its foundation.

GAMING

VideoHeroeS Game Lets You Relive the Days of a Video Store Clerk

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For some, the idea of a shop where you physically had to get a title you wished to watch rather than download or stream seems like a concept conceived in the Stone Age. But for a whole generation, this was the go to place for hot (and not so hot) releases. The video store was a place where families could venture out together and get any type of film they wanted. It was a great bonding experience (this reviewer has great memories of those days) but also a thrill to know what new titles were coming out. In the 1980s, when the video store truly came into its own, there was little information about movies available to the public other than fanzines so it was always a gamble when taking out a movie. Also, there was some effort involved, with the staff needing to know about what movies they had in at the time. Hell, Quentin Tarantino used his time in video stores to further his knowledge and love of movies, eventually turning him into a big time director of terrific, generation-defining movies.

Continue reading VideoHeroeS Game Lets You Relive the Days of a Video Store Clerk →

GAMING

Spoiler-Free: First Impressions of Grand Theft Auto V

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Grizzly Bomb knows its audience: Fans want to know as much as humanly possible about upcoming titles without having the whole thing spoiled for them and plot details, twists, and an overload of content run rampant on the internet when a game like Grand Theft Auto V hits store shelves. Which is why we’ve put together this quick piece to give you our opinion on the early moments of the game, without getting too deep into the details.

Here are our SPOILER-FREE impressions from the first hour of GTA V:

1. A visual step up from GTA IV, but not quite next-gen graphics: GTA V is a gorgeous game, don’t even dare get me wrong, but you will notice some muddy details and texture hiccups in the opening sequences. There are some janky animations in the establishing shots of Los Santos that might be distracting, but rather than get bogged down by the blemishes, consider that this is a wide open sandbox world (A massive one, too) that looks just below the quality of Max Payne 3. Los Santos is far more beautiful than Liberty City, both in physical attributes and raw graphical power, and it’s far and away the best GTA has ever looked.

GTA V Plane

2. A story that embraces play: We haven’t seen much of Los Santos yet, and the majority of mission types, activities and emergent scenarios within the game haven’t even been introduced, but it’s already evident that GTA V has learned from fan feedback on GTA IV. Niko had plenty of mini activities to do in Liberty City, but many of them felt restrictive, hands-off, or just plain boring. The story and pacing pushed the player more toward the next mission than, say, stealing an ambulance and playing pedestrian shot-put. GTA V feels a lot more generous in letting you handle the play style. The characters in V aren’t as mopey and goal-focused as poor ol’ Niko, which makes hauling off and painting the sidewalks red feel less like a no-no.

GTA V tennis

3. Mechanics, mechanics, mechanics: Grand Theft Auto has always suffered from the Jack of All Trades issue, in that there are so many gameplay elements that few of them, if any, feel particularly honed. This time around the shooting and driving have been completely reworked and they feel a lot more responsive. Driving takes a while to get used to, as there’s much less a sense of hover-gliding over the asphalt, but that’s a change for the better, and those of us who have played Max Payne 3 will recognize the gun mechanics, which have essentially been cut and pasted into GTA V. Even the menus and the mini-map have been refined to make cycling through information that much more efficient.

GTA V driving

4. That Rockstar shine: It just feels good to be playing a Rockstar game again. The satire seems a little more on the playful side than it did in GTA IV, with the first few digs at the California lifestyle made quite early. The character writing is exactly on par with the developer’s pedigree, introducing characters that you’ll immediately feel like you already know. Finally, the game is just fun. Where we left off, we’d just completed a mission that already felt like an exhilarating, Indiana Jones-style action sequence and our save state shows only 6% game completion. Whoa.

GTA V finger

 

GAMING

New Characters Revealed in Batman: Arkham Origins Screenshots

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The cast of characters in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins game has been slowly rounding itself out as its release inches closer and closer, and recently a batch of screenshots surfaced confirming the appearances of several new faces in the Dark Knight’s video game franchise.

Firefly
All images courtesy Comics Alliance

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Here we see Anarky and Firefly, two of Bats’s more minor villains, who should mix up the combat scenarios a little what with the flying and fire-shooting and gadgets and such. However there’s another character in the set of photos who just might be more of a surprising addition:

Katana

The sword-wielding femme fatale seen here mid-fight with Deathstroke is likely Katana. Her inclusion in the game makes a lot of sense considering Arkham Origins allowed players to step out of the cowl and play as Robin and Catwoman in certain areas of the game. It will be interesting to see if Katana is a multiplayer-only character or if she’ll have more of a presence in the single-player campaign.

[UPDATE: Yesterday Arkham Origins‘s official Twitter page confirmed that Arkham Origins will not be released on Xbox One or Playstation 4, making a strictly current-gen game:

Capture

Does this change your purchasing plans for Batman: Arkham Origins?]

GAMING

Grand Theft Auto Online Revealed: Not Your Average Multiplayer

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Today Rockstar Games unveiled the core details of its new multiplayer service, and boy it’s a doozy. Like the gameplay trailer that came out a month ago, a lot of information is divulged in a short amount of time so let’s get right to it:

“A persistent and continually expanding world” is the mission statement of Grand Theft Auto Online. In it, up to 16 players can run amok in Los Santos, engaging in a ridiculous amount of activities that include the expected things – ‘classic online modes’ (We’re guessing team deathmatch type stuff), racing, recreational sports and random acts of violence – but also what appear to be more scripted missions similar to those featured in the single-player game. These ‘jobs’ reward the player with cash which can be used to customize characters, vehicles and weapons or homes and garages to keep some of the fancy cars, planes, boats (and telescopes?!) amassed over time. It’s basically a whole separate version of Grand Theft Auto V you can play with 15 of your friends.

What’s more, the trailer promises that Rockstar will be dedicating itself to adding more and more content to the multiplayer over time and, on top of that, a content creator is built-in to allow players to custom build their own deathmatch arenas and vehicle races. In short, GTA Online is designed to keep expanding long after its release.

GTA Online

A wonderful Redditor who goes by the username /u/ColdPhone compiled a list of additional details on GTAO from CVG’s impressions of a 50-minute off-hand preview:

  • Characters from GTA V will appear in GTA Online
  • GTA Online will not always be limited to Los Santos; additional locations are in the works
  • CVG says you can do anything in GTA Online that you can do in GTA V. They list the following: heists, co-op missions, gang attacks, death matches, impromptu deathmatch, races, tennis, golf, base jumping, shooting range, ambient events (hold ups of stores, armored van robberies, crate drops, import/export missions involving car theft, bounties that you can set on other players and people can claim), betting
  • If you are killed while holding money (CVG says 1million as an example) you will lose a large portion of it, and others can steal it. Use banks to keep money safe
  • An in-game smartphone can call your friends whether they are in GTA Online or GTA V. You can also use this to set waypoints for your friends. While using the phone, your avatar moves their lips with yours.
  • While you are driving, you can choose to grant someone else permission over the radio
  • In-game AI will respond to how aggressive you are on your mic (as in, if you’re shouting during a robbery, the AI will react and speed up/become more frightened)
  • Whoever sets up a heist decides who gets what cut of the final money when that money is obtained
  • Garages range from two car ports to 10 car ports
  • Cars can have retractable roofs controlled by the player
  • Missions can be accessed by physical markers or through a quickmatch sort of menu
  • User-made missions can be favorited and rated
  • You can assign other players certain roles in missions based on the particular abilities they have leveled up
  • You can share cash and ammunition with other players
  • There are stealth kill animations, possibly with a knife. The game tracks the amount of noise your character is making, and the AI will respond accordingly
  • You can steal physical items. During the demo, a mission was done in which a bike warehouse was robbed. The bikes had to be transported out in a large truck
  • “RP” are the points you get to level up your character
  • You can use physical gestures, such as flipping the bird
  • All of your info/communications in the game appear in the “Feed.” Rockstar mentioned this as a sort of Twitter for GTA Online
  • You can purchase insurance for your car. By insuring your vehicle, if it gets destroyed or stolen, you can have it replaced by paying a small premium
  • Police helicopters have cameras mounted to the front of them. In real-time, you can watch on live TV (on the news channel in your apartment) players with a high wanted level being chased by the police. There are additional channels with programs such as a crime noir show
  • Heists can have up to 20 different components. A heist is mentioned where a Titan (largest aircraft) is guarded by “Maryweather” (sp?). The Titan is indeed a flyable aircraft
  • There is a heli-pad on the roof of (at least) the largest AmmuNation and the store can also be accessed from there
  • Off the west coast of Los Santos, there is an another island with lots of buildings. This has not been seen before, but the folks at CVG saw it from afar
  • There is a “passive” mode where you cannot shoot or be shot
  • Your online world will always be populated with by 16 human players. You can still have friends in the game with you, but the other slots will fill up with random people around the same reputation level, as well

Some of these details, like AI reacting to your voice on-mic, sound like major gameplay breakthroughs, while others, like car insurance, are smaller elements that altogether deepen the experience considerably. This is not tacked-on multiplayer or a companion piece to the main game. GTA Online is a stand-alone, immersive world-building exercise that happens to be centered around one of the most entertaining video game franchises of all time.

Grand Theft Auto Online goes live October 1st, 2013 and access comes free with retail copies of GTA V.