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Fans of HiRez Studio’s 3rd person action MOBA SMITE will know that the developer loves to runs sales, in game events and generally just throw things at players. This is partly due to the fact that they want you to spend money on skins. But, when the skins are as generally high quality as the ones HiRez turns out, you can’t really blame them. With the holidays here, HiRez is ratcheting up the in-game goodies even more. From Saturday Dec 17th at 5 a.m. EST until Tuesday, December 20th at 5 a.m. EST players can earn triple worshippers, experience and favor in SMITE. This makes the weekend the perfect time to work on your mastery levels with Nike and that pesky Fafnir.
And if that wasn’t enough for you, once Triple Everything Weekend ends on the 20th, the 7 Days of Saturnalia Event will begin. Similar to Triple Everything Weekend, thjis second event will offer Double Everything as well as free gems for completing quests themed around the in game pantheons. From HiRez themselves:
Beginning Tuesday, December 20th until Monday, December 26th, join in the 7 Days of Saturnalia once again! Indulge in free Gems, Pantheon Chest Sales, and double Experience/Worshipers all week long.
Each day, there will be a new Pantheon specific Quest players can participate in that will yield 25 Gems upon completion. That means you can earn up to 175 Gems during Saturnalia! Each Pantheon Quest and Pantheon Chest will be available for 2 days.
Kudos to HiRez for giving players a full ten days of Christmas gifts, especially those who might still be trying to earn some gems and finish off those Odyssey purchases in order to get that sick Anubis Tier 5 skin. Go log in and own some people on the Battleground of the Gods people, HiRez is literally throwing gems at you to do so!
The Elder Scrolls Online is due to get an update similar to Skyrim’s Hearthfire, in that players will soon be able to purchase and fill with items to make their very own dwellings. The update was originally mentioned at E3 this year back in June, and now a rough ETA has been put on it – Feb 2017.
Named Homestead, the update will be free and introduces 40 different homes across the map; all within base zones on launch, none within DLC-only areas. There will be over 2000 items to buy or craft as well for your chosen home, and the dwellings will be styled after the game’s ten playable races. There will be a variety of sizes too from small living spaces such as Inn rooms to huge manors with large outside areas included, and homes will be instanced to save players all rushing for the best plots of land when the feature launch. Fast travel to homes and the ability to invite friends and guild mates will also be available, and all homes are secure from other players who would try and steal furniture and other features from your home.
Bethesda wrote about Homestead: “Unfurnished homes will be available for purchase with either in-game Gold or with Crowns in the Crown Store. Fully furnished homes will be available for purchase through the Crown Store with Crowns. Players will be allowed to preview homes prior to purchase, whether furnished and unfurnished.”
For further information, visit the game’s official site.
About a week after dataminers found and revealed a bunch of details about what to expect from Overwatch’s winter event, Blizzard have officially revealed the date of when it’ll start – December the 13th had had previously been guessed.
Dataminers had already revealed a lot of detail about what was coming, although it was all pretty vague. For example we knew that a new gamemode would be coming, but not what it’d be; as well as which characters would get new skins but not what they’d look like. It did reveal some interesting details though, including that Torbjorn was the only character who would be getting a skin, a highlight animation and an emote through the special loot boxes – so was probably quite important for this update.
Ever since the game was revealed, there were rumblings about how well Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was going to do. Even packaging it with a remastered copy of Modern Warfare, which originally picked interest way up, turned out to be a bust when it was discovered that the disc copies wouldn’t play the remastered game without the Infinite Warfare disc – stopping gamers from buying the bundle for just the remaster.
Release brought more ridiculousness, with Microsoft refunding one PC player because he was one of only TWO players online looking for a match (because cross-platform play hadn’t been allowed by Activision). Now stats are coming out showing that the game’s sales are down around 50% compared to last year’s Black Ops 3 sales. Ouch.
The information comes via NPD sell-through data sourced by two Wall Street analysts. Share sin Activision Blizzard have recently dropped around 20% since it peaked in mid-October this year, and COD sale worries that were around even before its release are likely to be a part of that. The figures are very close to the physical Gfk Chart that was released in November showing that first week sales were down 48%. At the time people pointed out that it didn’t include digital sales, which count for a lot of sales nowadays and also that the news about the second game not working without the disc could have had an effect on sales too – however now it seems that the figures were very accurate.
“Infinite Warfare units came in 17% shy of our expectations, down close to 50% year-on-year,” Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote. Elsewhere, another Wall Street source told CNBC that sales were actually down 51% year-on-year.
(For Digmbot’s initial impressions of Titanfall 2, head over to his article here ~Lone)
Along with many of you, I was a little apprehensive about picking up the new Titanfall sequel this past fall. As of recently, the game has been on sale and had a price drop for the holidays/Game Awards. The game did boast a single player campaign mode, which was entirely lacking from the first incarnation, and I was hopeful to see what the Respawn Entertainment writers had in store for us.
I’ve never been more impressed with a game that I had so little expectation of. Having completed the campaign, I can say that it was certainly a welcome surprise to play through such an accomplished story. Aside from being well written and developed, I found myself really feeling connected to BT-7274, a titan that we ‘fell’ into responsibility of piloting. With the game telling us right at the beginning that the connection between a pilot and a titan is paramount in being successful, I really felt that theme flowing through the whole story. I cared when he was in jeopardy, and I feel like he cared about me as well. I do think that the theme of connection was dealt with really well through the campaign with something I was also not expecting: speech options. Now, I’m not talking about branching Mass Effect/Witcher conversations, but as a player you are in regular contact with your titan. These conversations are usually limited to a few lines, and the player only has a few different speech options to choose from. As a result of the abbreviated exchange, and the fact that the game does not pause for these quips, there is no loss of immersion or speed at which you are playing. That is HUGE. Had they decided to have the conversations with the BT stop the gameplay, or even forced you to walk, they would have been incredibly annoying. Luckily, they thought of that already, so sit back and get ready to enjoy an adventure with your new Vanguard-Class titan buddy.
Aside from the writing and flow of the story, the level design was also extremely well executed. Each area looked independent of the last, but still flowed together. There is always somewhere for your pilot to explore in each level, which you may want to do because there are secrets in the form of fallen pilot helmets to collect in hidden areas all over the place. I found myself a fair few times jumping out of my titan to traverse the levels and leave my titan on auto to help me clear the areas. Why in the world would I jump out of my massive, destructive suit of amazing armor to clear anything? Because it’s fun! Which brings me to another note about the gameplay: It’s SMOOTHER. Insanely better executed than titanfall 1’s wall running. In fact, it may be better than any wall running/jump pack type game I’ve played to date. Strangely, that also brings me to the first negative I have about the game. Get ready to wall run, a lot. Even as early as the first level, the game will demand that you are able to execute complex chains of wall running, or you will not be able to progress. Luckily, if you sit in an area for too long, the game will generate a ‘ghost’ for you to follow through difficult areas. That being said, being able to chain jumps and wall running is a pretty integral part of the gameplay, so it is good that they create a steep learning curve for the mechanic early. Don’t worry, the game comes up with several other fun mechanics to play with during the campaign including: cranes to create pathways, a maintenance gun, and time travel. I will say, I’ve never seen a game that included a time travel mechanic where the story-line was note entirely based on time travel as a theme, so well played on that one Titanfall 2.
But of course, we all want to hear about the multiplayer. My statement before about the game feeling smoother applies here as well. As a pilot, you feel as if you can easily traverse the maps and as a result, the pace is very fast. There’s nothing like getting murdered in the first few rounds after coming back to a game because you’re out of practice, but I was quickly able to regain my stride. Some of the new pilot weapons brought onto the scene feel really well optimized, but I don’t have enough time in yet to say how balanced they are. I really appreciate the additional titan loadouts, and look forward to learning how they counter each other. Having such specific strengths in the new titan classes has added an additional aspect of strategy to the multiplayer, much more than just waves after waves of titans being summoned where only numbers on either side is all that matters. The game-modes are a mimic of the first game, with a few interesting things added that seem to be targeted towards either titan or pilot gameplay alone.
The game is definitely an improvement on the first Titanfall, and 100% worth picking up. If you were into playing Titanfall 1, and were always wondering what a backstory on the war was, this is your game. Get ready to be ‘tossed’ into a fantastic adventure with your new mechanical friend.
