In case you’ve been under a rock, heres a quick heads up: GameSpy Technology is shutting down on May 31. GameSpy has been around since 1997, when it was debuted as the server listing service for Quake server IPs.  The service provides multiplayer matchmaking, leaderboards and cloud storage across a range of platforms including Xbox 360, PC, Wii, Vita, PS3, Mac, Nintendo DS, iOS and Android. This technology has been integrated into over 1,000 games. And at the end of next month, GameSpy is coming to an end.

This certainly marks the end of an era. But, more importantly, it could mark the end of access to a significant amount of games, at least on the multiplayer front. While I don’t normally put a lot of stock in Reddit articles, one sub-forum has been busily compiling a list of games affected by the shutdown. The list is quite impressive. Here are a few highlights:

Arma, Arma 2, Borderlands, Halo: Combat Evolved, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Saints Row 2, Dungeon Defenders (Non Steam version).

Those are just games that are confirmed to be  affected. The “Status Unknown” sections is much longer, and MUCH scarier. Now, before you run about screaming that the sky is falling, a number of companies and publishers have come out stating that solutions are either in the works or already waiting to be implemented. These companies include Bohemia Interactive, Activision, Capcom and Epic. Still, a wide array of publishers including EA, Bethesda, 2K Games, Sega and Ubisoft have not announced plans to deal with the sudden cessation of GameSpy services.

For the Reddit thread detailing games and their current (probably) status, click here.

Farewell GameSpy, we hardly knew you. (But I hated you while I did.)

Net Neutrality is kind of a big deal. While the battle over net neutrality rages in the United States, the European Union has just voted to close loopholes that might have created a two-tier internet. The proposal still has to be approved by EU members states, but if it is it will soon be illegal for Telecoms to block internet traffic or charge more money for data-intensive services.

In a nutshell, Net Neutrality is the idea that service providers cannot artificially prioritize one type of traffic over another, or force customers/companies to pay fees for faster access to certain services. The EU proposal is built around the idea of creating safeguards that will keep start-ups, hospitals, universities and those without millions of dollars to draw on from being pushed out of the market. By contrast, the United States has just seen Netflix pay large fees to cable company and internet provider Comcast to ensure the best possible service is available to those using Comcast internet. The darker side of this is that, if unchecked, companies could eventually block access to sites in order to drive views to their own competing services. The EU has taken a step that closes many of these loopholes and is already being embraced by digital rights activists.

In addition, the new law also makes mobile contracts much simpler, in what is termed “plain language contracts”, as well as adding more consumer protection rights.

In an unsurprising reaction, the European Telecommunications Network Operators association has already warned that these changes could limit user choice in the long run, stating “The text approved today would introduce far-reaching restrictions on traffic management, which would make an efficient management of the network almost impossible, resulting in a lower quality internet for all.” While this remains to be seen, it does highlight the cast difference in perspective between telecommunications companies and consumers.

If the proposal is approved by EU member states, the European Union will have taken a firm stance on maintaining the free and open nature of the internet. The same, however, cannot be said for the United States. And if things don’t change in the US quickly, this writer might just be willing to relocate. Anyone in the UK have a couch I can borrow?    

Put simply yes she should have and I am personally so glad that she did. Let’s start from the beginning, picking up where the last game left off our iconic hero Lightning is awoken from her crystal slumber after 500 years by the God of Light Bhunivelze. He tells her that the world is ending due to an entity called the chaos seeping into the world and spawning creatures and that she is to be the saviour who will help him escort souls from the dying world to a new world he will create. In order to ensure that you agree and stay in line Bhunivelze says that if you save enough souls he will return your dead sister Serah to you.

There are some interesting new features compared to previous Final Fantasy games that will feel slightly alien to long time players of the Final Fantasy series and even to avid players of this saga within the series. The first concept that feels odd is that you aren’t in a party any more. You are now a lone soldier running around saving whoever you choose to, only briefly teaming up with old members of your party to complete certain parts of quests. This also slightly changes the way that combat works in that rather than using paradigms where you have characters taking up different roles, you now have schema’s which are essentially outfits that you change into mid-battle that change your abilities depending upon what you made the outfit from. The second rather odd part is that rather than one big enemy who is trying to destroy the world, there are 5 main quests (souls to save) in 4 different areas which you can go to and complete as and when you feel like it. This then means that everyone else’s soul to save is an optional side quest, so if you don’t like side quests you probably aren’t going to want to do the many many hours’ worth of side quests. Fear not though because the final odd feature added to this game and the feature I absolutely hate in most other games is that there is a timer, not only for the quests but for the entire game itself. You start the game with 6 days until the world ends and by saving souls and defeating monsters, spawned from the chaos, you gain eridian which gains the world time. The goal being to collect enough eridian to extend the world’s time to 13 days, however this will involve doing the insane amount of side quests. The other part of this timer is that some quests will only be available between certain times of day and for a certain amount of time, meaning that you can sometimes find yourself waiting around to be able to access a certain area or start a quest. Also if you miss the quest someone you could have saved could die but this doesn’t really affect the game as far as I could tell. For those who don’t want to do the side quests you can just do the main quests and sleep through the rest of the days at an inn, however I’m not sure how this would affect the game.

Despite these changes this is still a Final Fantasy game and it is still fantastic to play. I actually prefer the single character rather than a party as I feel it focuses the attention more on one story rather than having to keep track of a whole mess of separate stories that happen to intertwine. However it doesn’t take away other character’s stories it’s just that they’re put in as you meet characters and end after you finish their quest keeping the focus on Lightning and what she is doing. It also has a lot of references to the previous games which I love, including stuff like songs from previous games and even the return of the ridable Chocobo (with a slight twist), as well as maintaining its reputation for its large magnificently beautiful free roam environments. It also brings back certain creatures from previous games such as oozes and reavers, as well as what is by now a Final Fantasy standard of at the end of the game having a ridiculously hard boss, which I actually had to start a new game+ before I could beat them. A feature added to the game in conjunction with the timer is a kind of monster temple, which if you manage to extend the world’s time to 13 days on the last day there is a monster temple that spawns in the desert environment containing all of the last ones for all of the creatures that roam the world. I really liked this addition as it meant on the last day when I had nothing left to do I could fight all the last ones and fight the toughest creatures that could possibly spawn in the world all in one place.

All in all I’d say that although there were a few additions to this game that felt strange at first they all actually work really well, even the timer, taking nothing away from the game on its own or from the saga as a whole. So if you’re a Final Fantasy fan and you don’t already have this game I implore you to get this as it rounds this saga off beautifully.

Overall I would give Final Fantasy: Lightning’s Return a score of: 8.5/10

At the recent Eurogamer Expo event in Birmingham, 4 developers from the world of horror games took part in a developer session all about fear and horror in games. This got me thinking, what is the future of the horror genre going to look like?

The possibilities of what a game can do has come leaps and bounds in recent times, the new generation of consoles and graphics cards are letting developers create photo-realistic creatures that move and act so fluidly that it’s easy to forget they’re only computer generated. But it isn’t just the appearance that’s been improved; creatures in video games are now being made to act and think, you can’t rely on memorising set paths anymore.

What does this all mean?

Well, if you take a look back to a game like Bioshock, here the true scares come from the scripted events. The first time you play it through and the dead body on the table leaps at you when you get close, the first time you encounter the creepy little sisters or their Big Daddys, it’s terrifying. Setting this script lets the developers create these perfect moments for the scares to happen, they can orchestrate it so that everything is working as they want it to be.

Surely this must be the best way to scare someone? Removing all the error, the chance that the dead body may not notice you and might end up being no more than a corpse in the corner. Why are they going away from this perfect construct, removing the script and letting the players ad lib their own story? Suspense.

Suspense is where the real fear lies and game developers know this now, whether they knew it already and needed the tools to create this ultimate fear is unknown, but what I do know is that suspense is the future. Ok, so that dead body can end up being useless, but now, with the player knowing that anything could happen at any moment, every moment becomes the time when a creature could appear. As broken as DayZ is in it’s current state, with zombies walking through walls and all, the suspense is incredible. When I think of a game with suspense, what comes to mind is dark, dank, confined spaces; a room cluttered with junk dimly lit with limited ways of escape. But DayZ is set in wide open fields, the map is huge and scarcely populated with urban areas, yet all the time you’re on your guard and that’s what makes a horror game. Never letting you feel safe.

One final mention is to VR, I’m still not sure just how big of an impact it’ll have in gaming, but the one genre that would benefit the most from it, is horror. Putting you into that scenario and making you believe that you are really there is a huge thing, when a monster jumps at you, it won’t stop at the edges of your monitor… oh no, it won’t stop at all. What you see won’t be a figure on a screen, it’ll be there, in front of your entire vision, close enough that you should be able to feel it’s breath hitting you in the face.

So whether it’s still a hit or not after it’s recent set-back, I still can’t wait to see what it brings to the world of fear.

Theres been a lot of news coming out of ArenaNet about the April feature pack for Guild Wars 2, and today they dropped a huge announcement. Starting on April 15th, GUild Wars 2 is going to be getting Megaservers. That sounds great, because clearly Mega is better than normal, right?

So…what does it actually mean. Basically, ArenaNet is making it easier to play with friends on every PvE map, no matter their homeworld. This change is geared at creating a more social experience for players. In essence, the new system is going to make it more likely that you’ll be placed on a map that has more of your friends/guildmates, people who speak the same language as you, and more people that you regularly see in game. According to ArenaNet, this will lead to maps having more players adventuring per map, giving you a better experience overall.

With the new system, ArenaNet is ditching overflow maps. Instead, the system creates as many maps as needed, assigns players to the version that makes the most sense based on factors like party, guild, and language.Interestingly, it seems the system will dynamically create new maps as needed, eliminating that artificial limit that had people bouncing off of servers as they tried to get a group of friends all in one place. In addition, all maps are now created equal, so it becomes more about the people you are playing with, rather than trying to get into that one map instance that has spawned the right encounter you need to get that nice shiny level 80 helmet. While the system weights the load in favor of players now, it is using a ton of data gathered behind the scenes to do this. No, ArenaNet isn’t spying on you. But they are leveraging all the in game meta-data they have access to to try and optimize your PvE experience in Tyria.

Personally, I’m excited about this. It can be hard to get together enough people to tackle difficult encounters (looking at you Tequatl) during non-peak hours, not to mention the fact that certain Living World moments require a large group – unless you like being pounded into the ground. The new system should make it a lot easier to get a group together to tackle these when I want to play in the middle of the afternoon, instead of waiting till evening primetime. Of note, however is that this does NOT remove region restrictions. Players are still grouped by NA and EU servers. It also does not change your homeworld, nor does it change which world receives Guild Influence. ArenaNet also hasn’t announced how this will be affecting world bosses and World v World yet, though they do promise that information will be coming soon.

All in all, it seems like ArenaNet is making a concerted effort to make the PvE experience more seamless and more player oriented by allowing you to join up with friends and guildmates more easily. The Megaserver system launches with the APril Feature Pack on level 1-15 maps, cities and the PvP lobby. Once ArenaNet is satisfied everything is working correctly, they’ll roll it out to the rest of Tyria by the end of 2014.

For more on Guild Wars 2 and the Megaserver roll out, stay tuned to Sanitarium.fm