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Phoenix Point is a turn-based tactics and 4X grand-strategy game that puts you in command of a global battle against a terrifying alien menace able to mutate and evolve to adapt to your choices and actions. Phoenix Point gives players a huge variety of challenges on its procedural battlefield, as well as endless surprises in the strategic game. Research and develop new technologies and techniques, plan operations, build alliances to unite the planet or destroy your rivals, and deploy your customizable, upgradeable squad into conflict zones, featuring dynamic objectives and destructible environments.
Greetings, true believers! Darsch Pugs here with a sneak peek at Phoenix Point by Snapshot Games. Phoenix point is a strategy game with a tactical turn-based combat system from the creator of the original XCOM series. Everything I am about to discuss is subject to change.
The game features many of the same mechanics and concepts as XCOM, some of which have been expanded upon. Units all have specific armour unique to them for quick identification. You target enemy body parts through the scope of your units’ weapons in a first-person camera now to shoot off an alien arm holding a weapon to disable it. Your units have an inventory and loadout that can be set up before a mission and you can then modify equipped items like grenades during the mission from the unit’s inventory, adding an extra layer of strategy to your choices.
The overworld map is where you choose your missions, select your base and build it and its upgrades, build your gear and conduct research and perform diplomacy with the various factions of the game, and there are a few to choose from to ally yourself with to get their research shared with you, or you could just steal it.
Missions can be challenging if you do not think critically and plan ahead, sometimes they can be impossible without the right mix of units and loadouts, you need to experiment with your tactics and plan your moves as a team and not individual units to be successful.
Phoenix Point looks good, plays good, sounds good, and is just great fun if you like this style of game, and is a good jumping-on point for the genre if you have never played a game like this before. The best way to describe phoenix point is a more refined version of XCOM.
Phoenix Point will release in December 2019 on PC (Epic Games) and XBox One, for more info and to preorder the game, head over to the games website now!
Age of Wonders: Planetfall is the new strategy game from Triumph Studios, creators of the critically acclaimed Age of Wonders series, bringing all the exciting tactical turn-based combat and in-depth empire building of its predecessors to space in an all-new, sci-fi setting.
Planetfall is another 4 X game like civilization, where you explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate your way to victory, either peacefully or through war. This entry in the genre though mixes things up by giving you tactical turn based battles like X-Com. You can fit your units with special mods and weapons, and level up heroes and commanders with special skills.
The core gameplay loop is the same as most 4x titles, you set your production, move units, set your research, and then end your turn, ad nauseam, until you reach victory or defeat, and while that might seem like a slow paced snooze fest, I found myself losing track of time and having a blast with each and every time I played the game. Thanks to the ability to customize the look and skills of my commander I found myself more invested in the fate of my faction and its colonies.
The single player campaign is your typical generic fair, and an entirely forgettable experience. The story is bland at best most times and I found myself not really caring about it, and wound up ultimately abandoning it and just focusing on the free for all skirmish/scenario mode where you just go head to head against AI or other players. honestly 4x games excel when it comes to the multiplayer experience and Planetfall is no exception. Strategy and planning are key to victory in multiplayer and it’s a blast to see all your hard work pay off when you eliminate a rival.
The factions of Age of wonders can be broken down into various sub races of humans, and one alien insectoid race, which was my favorite. Each faction has its own gimmick and special units, the amazons are all female and ride alien dinosaurs and are one with nature, the Syndicate is a shadowy criminal nobility like faction, with lots of cloak and dagger style abilities and gameplay.
The vanguard are your baseline typical humans and one of two factions that can enter overwatch, they will be the most familiar and recognized as they feel the most like units from xcom, The kir’Ko are my favorite, they are psionic insect people that vomit acid and use psionic guns and are the second faction that can enter overwatch.The assembly are basically undead cyborg people out to get everyone else’s organs, and then finally we have the Dvar, the russian space dwarves of industrial steamrolling inevitability, these guys are all about softening the enemy up them ramming into them for the kill.
If you love 4X titles you will love Age of Wonders Planetfall, but if you find them to not be your thing then I’d avoid this title like the plague. while it is a great entry in the genre, it does not stray far from the typical 4x formulae which is both to its benefit and its detriment.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall is available now from Triumph Studios & Paradox Interactive, on PC, XBox One and Playstation 4, for more info or to buy, head over to their website here!
I give Age of Wonders: Planetfall a strong 8 out of 10 for great visuals, a great soundtrack, and being a great 4x title I could completely lose myself in.
Dragons return to Tamriel in The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr, part of the Season of the Dragon year-long adventure! Explore the savannahs and canyons of Elsweyr, defend the home of the Khajiit from an ancient evil, and command the undead with the Necromancer class.
Elsweyr is here, and it’s amazing. Elsweyr is Elder Scrolls Online’s newest chapter and takes place in the arid homeland of the khajit, Elsweyr. The main storyline centers around dragons returning and running amok in Elsweyr, Thanks to Abnur Tharn making a mistake again in his efforts to do what he feels is best for the empire. This chapter includes the amazing necromancer class and the beautiful desert zone of Elsweyr. Instead of dark anchors or abyssal geysers this time, Zenimax Online Studios decided to give us dragon invasions, random world bosses that take the place of dolmens and geysers. You’ll also stumble across some exceptional side quests with great characters. The chapter as a whole is something more than just the sum of its parts.
Elsweyr adds many new and interesting npcs such as Sarazi a Khajit hunter who wants to be the greatest khajiti hunter with the best shining fur coat and the most epic bulging muscles, or Sereyne the drunk mage with an eye patch and superb voice acting you recruit for a heist who is one of the Alfiq, talking house cats. Sereyne will at one point even barf due to the aftershocks from her wild bender from the night before while casting a spell that should drop the player and some friends behind enemy lines. Instead, it almost drops you right in the thick of them. She does feel bad about it though. The weirdness don’t stop here though, there is everything from emo necromancers to dragons that insult you while Fus Ro Dah’ing your ass to death.
Elsweyr itself is a joy to explore, the desert region sets itself apart from other desert regions in the game with unique landmarks such as the aqueducts and different flora and fauna all view-able from amazing vistas. Beautiful rocky night skylines and sunny stretches of sandy plains are abundant.
The new necromancer class is a blast to play whether you play tank, heals, or damage. The skeletal minions are not permanent pets like the sorcerer’s daedra pets but instead rotational abilities that do their thing then despawn leaving behind a corpse which can be interacted with by other necromancer abilities. They are gods of self healing and sustain and can be a nightmare in pvp with the right build and gear and fill all the pve roles very well.
New content this time includes several new delves, a new trial that pits you against dragons and undead that is a bit more new player friendly in terms of requirements to run it, and new skyshards to find, and new public dungeons. John Cleese even returns to voice cadwell for the main storyline of Elsweyr.
Elsweyr is best looked at and taken as a whole instead of focusing just on each individual part. It’s a blast to throw skulls at dragons as a necromancer and then forget you can’t summon undead in town or the guards will smite you. The Khajiit culture is on display in full and gives us a close look at these mysterious cat folk.
It’s a joy to be able to once again cover an ESO chapter release a year to the day after my very first review which was summerset.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr is available now on PC, XBox One and PLaystation 4, for more information and to buy it, head over to the games website!
Elsweyr is a solid 10 out of 10 and I can’t imagine being elsewhere other than Elsweyr.
Lead a party of aspiring heroes through a beautifully hand-drawn world and intense battles using only your wits and a handful of cards. Take on whatever threat comes your way by crafting your own deck choosing from over 100 unique punch-cards!
SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is a fun RPG game with an interesting card based gaming mechanic. Starting in a sort of jolly romp in the forest our first of six main heroes are on the search for an item that you battle through various wildlife and a small boss to get to. This serves an interesting tutorial and introduction to the personalities and dynamic between the two characters: Armilly a brash fighter with a heart of steel and Copernica a powerful spellcaster with a passion for discovery. The two bicker in a friendly manner as they exposit about their life, how Armilly wishes to be in the hero’s guild, and basic mechanics of the world explained through lore such as the save points being statues in honor of the mightier warrior Gilgamech. Using these can heal you but at the cost of respawning every enemy in the area, something that can easily be used to grind for experience early on.
After the tutorial boss you’re expected to have an understanding on the card mechanics but have no fear for they continue to slowly add more to the basic knowledge of a card has it’s attack and abilities with other addons such as elemental bonuses/resistances, character abilities that get triggered when you play three of their specific cards in a turn, and crafting of new cards.
The story is fairly straight-through with a terrible evil militant force having attacked the town Armilly and Copernica reside in and taking all of the heroes from the previously mentioned guild and lighting the town on fire. With this sad destruction we’re introduced to Galleo, a somewhat timid and hesitant friend of Armilly and Copernica whose main abilities for the group are a strong defensive character and added bonus as the resident healer. His water abilities help stop the fire but they do not save the heroes and follow in pursuit after another battle.
Throughout each area are chests containing gold and sometimes healing items. With these, there’s no real serious punishment early on for rushing into fights without thinking. There are also quite a few game mechanics that you get introduced to in a short time span that they make up for with streamlining as you go along and having a help option always available.
After a few mini boss fights, you leave the town and follow the villains into another forest, in which you come across a mysterious retired hero, Orik, the once side hand to Gilgamech. He’s trapped in a cage and you must battle your way through a mine slowly going above ground to pass a locked door to open it on the other side while chasing a small goblin who’s got a key to Orik’s cage. This part may get repetitive but only if you’re like me and level grind in each area to make sure you’re above the expected level cap.
To keep the rest of the story a fun mystery I’ll stop here but the story maintains an interesting atmosphere throughout.
Personally, I found the game very enjoyable having been introduced to the series with steamworld dig. They did well to give each important character a unique and lovable personality while sprinkling in fun side one-off characters you may interact with. The gameplay can get repetitive if you are someone who min/max’s their build early on and level grinds. If you enjoyed the previous titles in the series I recommend you check out SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech as it’s creative use of card-based battle and quirky world features made the game by far one of my favourite to have played this year.
SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech i available now on PC, XBox One, Playstation 4 and Nintendo switch, for more information head over to the games website and check out the trailer below –
SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech gets a card carrying 8 out of 10 from me, enjoy!
That was when it happened, a miracle of heroic proportions. 5 days later is when I heard the news and my heart skipped a beat. The City of Heroes source code was dropped, not a reworked code, not new homegrown emulator code, it is the ORIGINAL game code. Let that sink in for just a minute, process it. Did your heart skip a beat too? Did you just experience a roller coaster of emotions like I did? If so, soon we can return home brothers and sisters! If not, its okay, soon you can discover why this is so huge for us.
City of Heroes was shut down for no apparent reason on November 30th 2012. The game was successful here in the west, maintaining profitability, but it is believed NCSoft shut it down due to poor reception in the Korean market. Petitions to save the game and numerous other attempts were everywhere. All fell on deaf ears.
Fast forward to today, City of Heroes still has a rabid fan base, numerous spiritual successors are in development, and there are more than a few groups working on an emulator. The release of the source code will accelerate these emulators by leaps and bounds, no longer are they reverse engineering scraps of code and writing new stuff from scratch, now they have the original source code to work with. Instead of taking years to get an emulated game we can get the real deal in a much shorter time.
Now to be fair the source code drop did not include Mission Arcs, other game content, or the character database. But the player and NPC databases are one and the same, and is currently being scrubbed and sifted through and will be dropped once that process is finished. everything that is currently missing is being worked on getting ready for release. Stay patient, and keep the faith alive, soon we will be in paragon city together again! Why am I so sure of this? Because there has been a secret CoH server running and in development for the last 6 years! Not only that but the Titan network is still working on trying to get a legal server running!On to the leaked secret server; it was outed by Destroyer stroyer, AKA Doc Boy, who says his real name is Brian. It was leaked in a video he posted to youtube which has since been taken down. He claimed to have been invited to the private server after dumping game screenshots to reddit, and claims the server was running for 6 years with the game’s original code and player character data. He also claims the devs had access to personal info, and was kept secret until now with ban threats and NDAs. Due to this leak of the secret SCORE (Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers) COH server Leandro Pardini, the lead dev on said server, confirms the server’s existence and spoke out about numerous accusations made by Doc Boy and the need for the secrecy in the first place. Here is the complete statement –
The Titan Network is in talks with NCSoft regarding a community-run City of Heroes server. Things are looking positive, so stay strong. We don’t have a timeline right now, but we’ll provide more updates as soon as we can. #SaveCoHhttps://t.co/zSq3nTEScM
“ The Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers
Before I talk about City of Heroes, I need to go back in time a little bit. It has been over six years since the shutdown, so a lot of people either forgot or never knew how the server project started. And for that, I need to talk about another game.
When NCsoft closed Tabula Rasa in 2007, a group of devoted players banded together to code a server for it. It was called Infinite Rasa and it developed things in the open, with a project website and forum. The overall architecture was being discussed publicly and there was a buggy server that allowed players to log in and run around the initial area.
Then it was hit by a Cease and Desist order by NCsoft in November 2011. The website was seized, the forums went dark, and progress completely stopped. One thing was made abundantly clear to everybody: NCsoft was not going to tolerate the development of servers for their games, even four years after they were shut down.
When City of Heroes closed in November 2012, this was very fresh in my mind. Instead of trying to develop a server out in the open to suffer the same fate as Infinite Rasa, the efforts to revive City of Heroes focused on trying to acquire the IP from NCsoft through various means, with any server development being held in secret.
And here is the irony of the entire situation: the fact that a City of Heroes server is being developed in secret is not a secret. If you search for the phrase “Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers” in Google, the very first result is a post from 2013, in which a player is explicitly saying that the server development efforts “might want to stay as low as possible”.
So that is what SCORE did. It utilized closed forums with, closed access. Invite only; initially only for developers, though eventually expanded to friends and family of anyone who had access. Accepting an invitation to the project involved a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), and anyone who breached it had their access revoked. Over the years, multiple people who weren’t happy with how fast the project was moving or wanted it made public were removed. For the most part this was not an issue, because the community at large, at the time, understood that this was a secret project, a backup if everything else failed. That seems to no longer be the case.
There are currently calls to make SCORE public because of the extra exposure; the reason given is that, after six years, NCsoft surely wouldn’t care. But Infinite Rasa also thought they were safe after four years. This is not a mistake you make twice.
I believe that the reason this particular NDA breach gained so much traction when others didn’t has to do with the community evolving over time. Many people no longer remember that efforts to acquire the IP were ongoing at the time, and so server development was agreed to happen underground. It is possible that a lot of people that played City of Heroes while they were teenagers, and never engaged with the community at the time, are now adults who never knew about it in the first place.
Now, I need to address the connections, or lack thereof, between SCORE and other projects that have become entangled in this dramatic reveal.
Super Entity Game Server
The Super Entity Game Server project already existed back in 2012 when the City of Heroes servers were shut down, and their goal is to implement a fully playable server that connects to the original release client from 2004. At the time there was a lot of discussion about contributing to SEGS rather than starting a separate project, but the fact that SEGS uses the original release client, while SCORE targeted the latest beta client from 2012, makes both projects fundamentally incompatible. The projects are separate, and as far as I am aware, none of the lead developers or community managers ever accepted an invite to participate in SCORE.
SEGS has been given as a reason why the secrecy behind SCORE is unwarranted. After all, they have been operating for ten years now, and have not received any Cease and Desist orders by NCsoft. It should be noted that SEGS has not yet released anything to the level of what Infinite Rasa had: working weapons and enemies, though limited to just the starting area. It’s also possible that using the original release client makes them a less appealing target. In either case, they are certainly braver and more willing to take risks than I am, and I really hope that it works out for them. While my attempts to contribute to SEGS were extremely limited mainly due to my own lack of familiarity and patience with their programming framework, I still am cheering for their success and I hope that, if this whole situation attracts attention to them, it’s only in the form of new developers seeking to contribute their skills to the project.
The Titan Network
While the initial recruitment for SCORE happened on the Titan Network forums, the project was split off as soon as possible. Because of the then-ongoing efforts to acquire the City of Heroes IP from NCsoft, the owner for the site did not want a server development project to jeopardize the negotiations, and has on multiple occasions disavowed the server project completely, although discussion of SCORE are still allowed as far as I know. This might seem overzealous, but it is perfectly understandable; the Titan Network aims to be a hub for the City of Heroes community and their many projects, and being linked to a specific underground project introduces a liability that could cause them to be shut down as well.
Once it was clear that acquiring the IP was not going to happen, the Titan Network created a project where all the user data is held on the players’ own computers and the game processes are distributed among players. This is a brilliant idea, as it means that there’s no server to shut down; Paragon Chat operates on a standard, open source chat client. I collaborated on this project’s early days, but again, the goals are too different for the projects to be merged into a single thing. And because of the difficulty in properly implementing a distributed server, I recommend that anyone with the development skills to contribute to a City of Heroes server project joins SEGS instead.
Paragon Studios
This is where things get less pleasant. This last NDA breach has had some malicious elements to it, probably to inflate the claims and make it feel more dramatic than it is. While I won’t deny that some former Paragon Studios developers are aware of SCORE and have provided helpful tips in the past, this should not be shocking to anyone who has been around the community long enough; I have seen some former Paragon Studios developers in the Discord server for SEGS as well. Under no circumstances should there be fingers pointed at them; anything they shared was done so with the tacit understanding that it would not endanger their current or future employment. I am very happy to take the heat over this entire situation, even though I think it has been overblown. Leave them out of it.
There is one specific rumor that needs outright debunking, though: at no point did I, or anyone else I know, receive a database containing player names, emails, birth dates, payment information, or any other personally identifiable information. Not only would this have been a massive breach of privacy, but that is not information that a game server would ever need to operate, and so it would have been completely pointless to share.
Reddit
The person behind the current NDA breach cites Reddit moderators being too quick to remove all mentions of any private server, except for their two stickies for SEGS and Paragon Chat. While this again might seem overzealous, it really isn’t. Reddit as a whole does not tolerate when a forum triggers legal complaints; very recently, the subreddit where piracy is discussed had to delete 10 years of archived discussions to prevent being shut down. There are also the very valid concerns that malicious actors would post links to City of Heroes servers that turn out to be scams which infect the player’s computer with malware or stealing payment information. Reddit offers no accountability regarding who posts anything, and so it should be heavily policed to guarantee a safe environment. If this feels like censorship, you are always free to start your own subreddit. I do not moderate the City of Heroes subreddit, the Titan Network or any Facebook group.
Trust and Feelings
This is a difficult thing to address, because nobody likes feeling lied to, even by omission. At the same time, operating under an NDA comes with some rules that are well understood. The fact that we’re talking about a server project for a game while the company that owns the IP is still active and used aspects of the IP very recently for Master X Master makes things more complicated.
My approach to enforcing the NDA has always been to not reply to any public posts that revealed details about SCORE, and just contact the specific party to have the information taken down. Others have gone as far as to call them liars or crazy, which goes against my wishes. I do apologize for anyone who was on the receiving end of verbal abuse due to this situation.
Back in 2012, the City of Heroes community agreed that SCORE would operate in secret until we had something ready for release. The fact that nearly nothing has been released six years later is probably part of the reason why this attracted so much attention; the community has shifted and changed, and not many remember how the project began. I am sure a lot of people are curious to know how much progress has been done; however, with SEGS having regular and interesting releases, it feels quite unfair to come out of nowhere and steal their thunder with a progress report on something that is hidden by design.
Unless and until we are certain that a Cease and Desist order is no longer a threat, the NDA regarding SCORE development will remain in full effect. For most people this will seem like a moot point since most of the community are aware of it, but keep in mind, that is also how we started. Until then, support SEGS! They are very close to a new release and I will be very disappointed if the ghost of SCORE overshadows their accomplishments.”
That is a lot to take in. Many people are understandably angry that this server existed in secret for so long with no way to play other than an invite. Now it remains to be seen how this will affect the future of the SCORE server and other projects now that the source code has been dropped by the people over at SCORE and how this all might affect the attempts by the city of titans folks to get a legit community server running with NCSoft approval. As of the time of this article a new public test server was launched with 14000 registered users and over 2000 active players, the servers current cap.
