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FIFA 17 came with a lot of things, including a story mode. Unfortunately it seems that in the midst of making this year’s game “the most realistic ever” and adding “intuitive AI”, EA didn’t fully cross-check all the fake social media tags they used in game. One of them is an actual Twitter handle, and the owner’s not impressed.
Story mode involves you playing as a young up-and-coming footballer called Alex Hunter, and includes a social media feed that mimics Twitter’s own. The fake users provide some commentary on performance and use the type of language you’d expect to see on there. Just not quite as filled with colourful language and all spelt correctly. One of these “fake users” has the name of @CalWong – a real-life tag shared with a Cartoon Network director of all people.
Calvin “CalWong” Wong has unfortunately become a target for a Twitter mob because of this, receiving abuse in the style typical of online mobs. Mr. Wong himself has little interest in the game and is not pleased to have found himself suddenly being targeted because of this mix-up and is only receiving more abuse from users who can’t get why he’s not pleased to find himself in the game.
Fortunately EA have agreed to remove his tag from the game, patching him out in a coming update. This is a good example of why it’s a good idea to check these things first before you do it.
The Division is getting a big overhaul soon with update 1.4. Ubisoft is trying to make the game more challenging, and to pull that off it sounds like all gear, armor, weapons and skills are open for big changes. While the entire post over on the website is pretty involved, we can hit the high points briefly to give an idea of what it is Ubi is trying to accomplish.
“One issue facing The Division today is that the power difference between optimized and non-optimized builds is too great. We still want people to optimize their gear and min-max to their heart’s content, but in order to balance the game, we need to reduce the gap between the two extremes. As part of Update 1.4 we also want to bring back the shooter feeling, add more decision making and hard choices when building your character and add more variety to the viable builds.”
Gear
All World Tier 2 and higher gear will have stats for Firearms, Stamina and Electronics
Stat overlaps between gear have been removed
Gear scores will be adjusted to match High end gear scores withing the same World Tiers
All gear will lose their skill bonuses.
Backpacks, holsters and knee pads will gain new performance mod slots
Weapons
New DPS formula on weapons has been introduced, but is a work in progress and will change over the course of the PTS.
The damage and roles of certain weapons have been changed. Some weapons have seen a damage increase; others have had their damage lowered.
Named weapons will not be changed in this update.
Weapon mods will now come with one major bonus and an amount of smaller bonuses, depending on the quality of the mod.
Damage bonuses are now additive instead of multiplicative, reducing the current spikes in damage which made the game hard to balance.
The Firearms stat will become a much more significant source of damage output, leading to more decision making when building your character.
Weapon talents have been rebalanced; some have been buffed, others have seen their numbers reduced.
Skills
Electronics will be the main source of Skill Power.
Skill Power will not scale linearly anymore, instead it will follow a curve of diminishing returns.
Certain skills are currently much more popular than others. Some skills are overpowered, others underpowered or bugged.
Skills have been rebalanced to fit the new game balance or to bring them up to par, in the hopes of creating a more varied meta.
First Aid no longer allows for multiple heals, since those happened due to a bug. First Aid’s healing has been increased to make up for this fix. It will now heal instantly.
Smart Cover and Pulse have been reworked. Smart Cover is now more defensive and Pulse’s high damage boost has been lowered to make it balanced with the new enemy health.
Ballistic Shield and Support Station have been given more health. Support Station’s healing has been increased.
Many bugs associated with skills have been fixed.
There are a lot more changes, and I’d recommend digging into the complete post if you are a serious player of The Division. No word on when update 1.4 will be released for all platforms, but if you play on PC the Public Test Server is up and running as we speak.
Today was the first day of the EGX Developer Sessions, and the first thing to take to the stage was an indie title from studio Tarsier Studios – Little Nightmares.
Originally revealed at Gamescom a month ago, Little Nightmares is a suspense-adventure game in which you control the protagonist in her bid to make it through and escape the floating, travelling location of The Maw – a place that draws in people to offer them the fulfillment of their desires. Some remain stuck there though, as prisoners and our protagonist aims to not become one of them.
Speaking of our protagonist, we play as a young child called ‘Six’ throughout the presentation, a small figure in a yellow raincoat. The world around her is full of strange things that she doesn’t understand and that are larger than her, but with some clever thinking and manipulation of objects she may just make it out from The Maw.
The game presented on screen was one that out sized Six greatly, and this was deliberate as it was explained that they had hoped to catch the perspective of childhood – one of uncertainity, size, fear, but also playfulness and adventure. You can move objects around and some you can even break. The aesthetics of the game in both visuals and sound try to keep up an atmosphere that is suspenseful, slightly creepy but not overly horror-themed. The strange world around Six is meant to depict only that she is of an age where not everything yet makes sense to her and it shows.
With a lighter to light the way and a few lanterns, and a whistle to attract things towards her, it’s easy to see that this game’s puzzles will take some figuring out and there is a story waiting to be discovered inside The Maw as you progress. Look forward to this game coming out some time in the Spring of next year.
I’m sure it’s not too long ago that GTA Online had an update for CEO shenanigans… although apparently it was a few months ago. either way, it seems enough time has passed that Rockstar are ready to release yet another big update to the game, this time focused around bikers, their vehicles and all the things biker-related.
This will give players the chance to form their own Motorcycle Clubs, with up to eight players per group. There will be roles for all, from Prospects who are fresh to the club President right at the top. It will also bring (unsurprisingly) new bikes and properties to the game – but also some new co-op and competitive gameplay as well.
“Beyond a range of opportunities to climb the ranks within a gang and build lucrative businesses as a formidable MC, Bikers also includes a selection of appropriately-themed new modes for bikers of all kinds, along with new weapons, styles, tattoos and features to make this a huge addition to the world of GTA Online. And while loyal MCs will fight to expand their foothold alongside black-collar CEOs and Organizations, there’s always another opportunity to make your mark just around the corner. Keep an eye out for high-level, high-risk vehicle based business ventures to spring up across Los Santos and Blaine County soon.”
These new places will be Clubhouses with biker mechanics available as well as some dodgy businesses.
No release dates yet, but keep your eyes open for this one. As if GTA Online wasn’t noisy enough with all the explosions and jets nosediving into the ground…
If you have beta access for Frontier’s massive space sim game, get ready – the beta for the next big update is going up next week.
Update 2.2, The Guardians, will be available for beta testers to try out from September 20th. It will bring along the new features teased at Gamescom, including a new ship the Beluga liner, ship-launched fighters to protect your larger less combat-worthy ships (which you can choose to control or leave for the NPC to do so), passengers and passenger missions and more besides.
One of the new updates will be a much asked-for ship transfer option. The community voted on how they wanted that to work last week, choosing to let transfer take a little while to complete in a bid not to ruin immersion of the world Elite is set in. If you already have the PC exclusive beta access all you need to do is download the beta and select it from the launcher as you usually would. Otherwise you can get access by paying £6.99, provided you own Horizons already.
The next big update after this one (2.3) has already had some big details revealed at this stage, including a customisable avatar for our pilot and the long-awaited multi-crew option for ships that will allow us to travel with a friend.
