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PAX East usually has more than it’s fair share of big announcements, and this year was no exception. On the final day of the convention, Respawn Entertainment revealed the first DLC for Titanfall.
Called Titanfall Expedition, the DLC is scheduled to drop (pun intended) in May with three maps that take place after Titanfall’s campaign story.
The first map is “Swampland”, a map with a ton of trees that promises to give players some crazy wallrunning paths. The second, “Runoff”, has a ton of pipes and water. The final map, “War Games”, takes place within a titan pilot training area.
Respawn is also adding what is perhaps the most requested feature – the ability to customize titans with decals. They are also adding the ability to meet up with new Titanfall players using identical hash tages. This is an effort to allow players to coordinate so that they can choose teammates. The developer also added a Private Match mode in a recent patch, so it seems Respawn is serious about pushing the community aspect of Titanfall.
Titanfall Expedition will be available as part of the game’s Season Pass ($24.99 for all three confirmed DLC packs), or as an individual download for $9.99.
Will you be climbing back into your Titan for this DLC?
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.)
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’swhat 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.
This week I tried a recent addition to Steam. The Puzzle game called Eets Munchies. Eets Munchies is about a little creature that looks much like a mix between a rabbit and a piranha, who always seems to be hungry for sweets.
At first when I looked up screenshots of the game I thought it may be a platformer game where you control the little creature. But actually it is quite the opposite. The little guy moves on his own and you need to influence what he does and where he goes by placing items and environmental pieces, as well as interacting with the different things in the level to help him get to the 3 treats and lastly the cake at the end.
But as the game reminds you at times, it’s easy to get 1 or 2 of the treats, but getting all 3 before going to the cake is supposed to be the challenge. Because if you don’t do the right things, the little creature could end up going after the cake before you get all the treats in the area.
So this is how the game works. You start a level where everything, including the creature, is frozen in place. In this time you need to place the items they give you some place in the level where it could help the little guy go where it needs to go. These items include wood boards that can bridge gaps or block areas off, a flying whale that can inhale the little creature or other items and launch them in the direction its facing, bombs that explode when they come in contact with something, arrows that can dictate what direction certain items go, and many more items that you unlock as you go. There are also items that the creature can eat as well that affects how it moves. Like an onion that makes it unable to jump, a pepper that allows it to jump further and a cupcake that changes him back to normal.
Once you have the items where you want them you can then hit a button which puts everything, including the creature, in motion. While you can’t move the little guy around yourself, you can use some of the items in the environment that you either placed or were already there to move it or items around. While things are in motion you can click items like a spring flower which bounces things around, or click the flying whale to inhale the creature and items to shoot it in a certain direction.
Quite often you will fail a level, but don’t worry. This could happen if the creature jumps off into the void or if it doesn’t get all the treats before the cakes. You can restart the level anytime, no problem. In this game you practically need to experiment sometimes to see what works. This can take many tries. But all in all the puzzles aren’t too complicated. Once in a while you will get stuck on a puzzle or two but when you figure them out it feels good.
If puzzle solving is not enough for you, the game also has a built in level creator which allows you to make and share your own puzzles on steam.
One thing I do like about this game is the art style. It has a nice hand drawn cartoon look to it and the animation is really nice. Even the music supports that style. I can’t help but love the look of the main character. It looks cute but it also looks like it will bite your hand off if you got to close to it. 😉
Another thing that you would notice with this game when you first open it is that it is locked to a certain screen resolution. The resolution makes it look like it is more fit to play on an iPad then a computer. But then this game is also available on iTunes as well as Steam, so that may explain it. And while it would be nice to be able to change it, how the levels are laid out, it’s not too big of a problem.
So all in all I would recommend this game to anyone who loves puzzle games and who wants a game that they can jump in and out off quite easily. It’s a nice game to pick up if you want to spend a few moments figuring out things in a constructive mode where everything affects everything else. Otherwise this may not be the game for you.
You can get Eets Munchies on Steam and iTunes. (Steam currently has a deal where you get 20% off if you own any other Klei Entertainment games on Steam including: Don’t Starve, Shank, and the original Eets)
