So, the sixth installment to Sid Meier’s Civilization series has just been announced, and unusually for a game that’s just been announced we know quite a bit about how the game’s going to work. That’s mainly because the announcement also contained the release date which is actually not that far away: October 21st 2016. It’s even already up on Steam for pre-purchase, along with a few bundles.

It’s going to be the same civilization builder type game, but with some key differences. Firstly the way cities work in Civ 6 will follow the same ‘unstacking’ rule that happened to units in Civ 5; instead of having all buildings in a city ‘stacked’ atop each other they’ll be spread out across the city’s territory via districts – the bigger the city, the more districts it’ll be able to support up to 12. This means that cities will now be made more specialised from the beginning. Districts will have specialisations that are affected by certain terrains, such as mountains giving religious and scientific bonuses to those particular districts. Map pins are also being introduced so that you’re able to plan out what you want your next district to be once your city has grown that much.

Because of this, sieges in cities have changed too, allowing for enemies to sack and loot districts outside of the city without taking the heavily defended city centre, weakening the empire it belongs to. Of course, if the centre is taken it once again flips ownership to the conquering army.

Combat is also getting an overhaul, with previously consider ‘military units’ such as catapults now being assigned as ‘support units’ that can stack onto the same tile as ‘military units’ to stop battlefields being so congested. Military units will also have an added layer of customisation now and units of the same type can be combined into a unit, further reducing the numbers on the board.

Research now also gains some bonuses depending on where cities are located, with a city on the coast having a boost to their researching of Sailing for example over land-locked cities. This means that your actions and playstyle compliment just how fast your chosen civilization will be researching and developing some technologies, to better tie it into the game and not have it feel as divorced from proceedings as it previously did.

Other civ leaders will now have their own agendas, tied to how their historical counterparts acted in real life. For example some actions will make some other leaders like you, while it might anger others. In this way it will be possible to potentially set them against each other as opposed to just against you in the game. For once the AI will attack the AI! This adherence to the historical counterparts doesn’t mean that they won’t act counter to that though; after all, Civilization’s greatest in-joke is Nuclear Gandhi and Firaxis have confirmed that they’ve not forgotten about that amusing little bug-come-feature of the series (although they didn’t go into details obviously).

Finally, one of the biggest complaints about Civ 5 was that multiplayer sessions could take a while. You’d often have games running over several sessions and Let’s Players could literally make a series out of a single 5/6-player session. Now Firaxis have said they’re going to introduce some pre-made multiplayer sessions that will let you “cooperate and compete with your friends in a wide variety of situations all designed to be easily completed in a single session.” They’ll also be available as single-player games too. I see an opportunity here ripe for the Steam Workshop developers.

Of course, there’s more to find out yet but given that it’s just been announced, this is quite the treasure trove of info. I’ll leave you now with the game’s trailer as we await more news.

Battleborn is an interesting collection of ideas. Taking Gearbox’s trademark humor, first person shooting, hero abilities and throwing them into a blender with a cooperative campaign and three multiplayer modes, it gets most things right but leaves some room for improvement. This is arguably an entry into the emerging Hero Shooter genre, similar to Paladins and Overwatch. Gearbox has put it’s own spin on things however, and the combat in the game is unique and feels surprisingly good. But more on that in a minute. First off, let’s break down the modes.

Single Player

Battleborn comes with an 8 mission campaign, with more missions to be added later in the year. This campaign can be experienced either solo, cooperatively, or with strangers via the public queue in game. Up to 5 players jump into scripted missions with minimal story. The story is told through radio chatter and dialogue between various NPCs. Most of this dialogue is going to consist of “Oh no, bad guy A is going to destroy thing B. We must top it!” It’s not ground breaking, but neither is it bad. The voice acting in the game is well delivered and gives each character a sense of personality and purpose. Its just that the story seems like so much fluff for some rather generic objectives.

Most missions will see you either escorting an NPC through the level, guarding a base of some sort, or doing both. This can quickly get tedious as failing to defend a base, or letting your NPC companion die means a complete restart. Seeing as how missions can take upwards of 40 minutes to complete on the higher difficulty levels, this can be extremely frustrating and punishing.  On a positive note, the game is well balanced, the levels are easy to traverse and in true Gearbox style, whenever you complete one you are showered with loot. Similarly, the hordes of enemies that you face are distinctive, fun to fight and can provide quite the challenge on higher difficulty levels. Although with a well handled team of five, none of the encounters I’ve played are what I would call Dark Souls level hard.

As a note, there are elements of the single player that are shared with the multiplayer and I will go into them in more detail in that section – things like collecting shards to activate gear or build emplacements to combat the NPC enemies, and the levelling system. In addition, due to the way the single player campaign works outside of co-op (you vote on which maps to play, and people tend to choose the maps that offer characters as rewards rather than going through in order) I have been unable to finish 3 of the 8 missions due to lack of co-operative partners to play with. We plan to rectify this and will amend the review, but that’s dependent on Lonesamurai.

Multiplayer

The real meat of Battleborn lies in the multiplayer. The game is broken up into three distinct modes: Capture, Meltdown and Incursion. Capture is the simplest, consisting of three capture points that you and the enemy team fight over control of. The more points you control, the faster you accumulate points. The first team to 1,000 points wins.

Meltdown on the other hand is an interesting mashup of FPS sensibilities and MOBA elements. Each side starts in opposing bases. In between are two lanes running in between, each of which contains an insane talking furnace named MINREC. Teams must escort their minions down the lane and into the maw of the furnace as he screams about environmental responsibility, spouts statistics and gleefully shouts at the minions to be reborn as various new objects such as a replica sword or a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel. Once a team reaches 250 points, their furnaces will move further back, forcing them to protect their minions longer. Scattered about the map are emplacements that you can spend shards on. These shards are awarded for completing objectives, killing enemy Battleborn or minions and for shattering large and small shard crystals found around the map. Emplacements vary from damaging turrets, accelerators that will provide a speed boost and spawners that will place giant special minions onto the field.

Conversely, those shards can be used to activate gear that has been brought into battle. This gear is generally awarded through completing campaign missions, levelling characters up to a certain point or they can be acquired via loot packs purchasable with in game currency.  Up to three pieces of gear can be equipped at in any given loadout, and depending on the rarity of the gear costs a larger amount of shards to activate. This system applies to all three game modes and creates a surprising element of strategy within each match. You can choose to play the map and level up emplacements, earning XP as you do so. Or you can choose to save your shards and activate your gear to gain passive power and defensive attributes. Smartly, Gearbox has crafted this system in such a way that both playstyles are not only rewarded but can make a significant impact on the outcome of a match.

 
Incursion, the final mode, is a break the base mode that involves a central area with tons of minions and Battleborn clashing in a constant explosion of violence. Each base is guarded by two sentry robots. There are also multiple NPC camps about the level. You can attack these minions and upon their defeat, they will join you in battle as powerful pushers. Its important to have minion backup when taking on the sentries, as they will make quick work of a single player character.  Speaking of characters….

Presentation

Complimenting these game modes is a wide cast of characters. Battleborn features 25 characters, with more planned later. All characters and maps will be free, however Season Pass holders will get codes to unlock the new characters immediately. Players without the season pass will likely have to complete a challenge to gain access to the new characters. Unlike some other hero shooters, Battleborn has a both ranged and melee characters. There is a lot of balance on display here, and all the characters have their own unique moves and personalities. Theres Rath, the dual sword wielding space sith who is totally not a vampire; Kelvin the living crystal monster who likes shiny things and Orendi the four eyed magic wielder just to name a few. Most characters are unlocked via mission or challenge completion.

In game, each character has a primary attack, some type of secondary such as a shield or sidearm or blade and three abilities. Two abilities will be unlocked from the start of a match and the third Ultimate ability will become available once level 5 is reached. At the start of every match, all players start at level 1 and gain levels via map actions, completing objectives or killing enemy Battleborn. Each time you level up, you can access the Helix, which looks rather like a DNA helix. Each level of the Helix contains two choices that will modify your abilities in some way. The bow wielding Thorn for example, can have her scattershot of arrows changed to fire in a wider arc for more AOE damage, or tightened up to three more precise bolts for a concentrated punch. These levelling choices provide depth to each match by allowing you to react to the battlefield and choose abilities that will let you counteract the enemy team.

In terms of graphics, Battleborn is gorgeous in motion. It shares a similar art style with Borderlands in that it seems cellshaded in a way, but also has fully 3d models and some reasonably high resolution textures. It’s bright and cartoony, splashing the screen with brilliant color at every opportunity. However, this is a double edged sword. Battleborn in the middle of a giant 5v5 fight is a mess of chaos and particle effects. After a few matches, I found myself able to sort through the chaos, but I still had situations where I didn’t know quite where I was once a battle cleared up.

Characters are distinct, voice lines are well delivered and; on the PC at least; the game runs silky smooth. It’s important to note that the console versions are locked at 30 FPS, which may be a major negative for some players. All in all though, Battleborn is gorgeous and plays extremely well.

Verdict

Battleborn is a great game. It can be chaotic at times, and it suffers from a lack of map variety. Each mode only has two maps available making for a total of 6 multiplayer maps. The characters and voice acting are great, but they single player campaign suffers from some repetitive design and frustrating failure states. All in all however, Gearbox has crafted a lively and vibrant shooter with some truly unique game modes and playstyles.

Battleborn: 7.5/10

Today Jesse Cox hosted a live one on one with Assistant Game Director Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas about LEGION and we had some big announcements.

The main announcement:

Development of the World of Warcraft: Legion expansion is well underway, and we’d like to take some time to update everyone on how things are progressing.

Assistant Game Director Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas will be joined by online gaming personality Jesse Cox to discuss a number of topics, including Class Halls, max-level content, the Demon Hunter, and a status update on what our next priorities are for Legion development.

We’ll be going live at 9:00 AM Pacific/12:00 PM Eastern time on the official World of Warcraft Twitch channel at twitch.tv/Warcraft. We’ll see you then!

Yep, Alpha is over… Beta is Thursday!

WOOHOO!!! and even better folks, loads of beta keys will be going out AND a load more will be offered from bigger sites, including our friends over at wowhead. So keep an eye here for news on that!

Talking about WoWhead, Perculia did a great job of live blogging (saved me a ton of writing) and here’s the full run down of points from the live chat:

Beta Information

– At BlizzCon, many people remember that beta would “start in a couple of weeks.” However, when they thought about it more, beta in the industry is a polished demo. The WoW beta would be pretty unpolished (like 2/3rds of specs unimplemented.) So an alpha happened instead with invite waves over the course of a few months.
– Finally at a point now where all specs, artifacts, dungeons etc are implemented. Legion right now is in the last stretch where it still needs to be polished.
– Ready to move into a formal beta! Current plan is to take alpha down over course of next day and send out big beta invite wave. 2pm Pacific on Thursday is when the formal beta for Legion begins. Characters will be wiped.
– Plan for only one character wipe, so they can get solid feedback from leveling up again.
– In the beta, you will start by completing the Broken Shore scenario, and then move into Legion content in new Dalaran. New Legion content starts with the artifact acquisition questline for your spec.

Class Order Halls

– Class Orders. Garrison 2.0? Not really. The Garrison was a personal private space. Fantasy was raising up an army. The Class Order Hall is a shared social space, a clubhouse for your class. There’s a different sort of customization and interactions. You are a paragon of your class and shape how your hall grows. The Order Hall serves the other core world content, while the Garrison felt like a standalone feature. The Order Hall has content that leads you out into the world.
– There are personalized class-specific quests in the Order Hall, you can recruit great champions. There are missions but they are very pared down–not dozens like Warlords. The missions have greater impact and are much less frequent. We know some people are scarred by the mission table!
– One problem with the Warlords mission system was that it competed with other content. It became a way to easily get anything–crafting stuff, items, currency, gold. When faced with a choice of going out or doing a mission for same reward…pushing the button was a compelling choice.
– There are dungeon and raid missions in Legion, but the reward will be a quest item to send you into the instance to get an item, not a cache that has an item.
– Order Resources – get them out in the world. At the start, you’ll likely send resources on your Order Hall tech tree.
– Order Hall customization – you could customize Garrison (guards, music, buildings). Order Halls have less visual customization but you can customize the gameplay. Order Halls are iconic locations that have been around long before you–you wouldn’t totally redecorate it. However, the Artifact Weapons have visual customization.
– Order Hall fantasy – you are a champion but also part of a group of famous peers. Think King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table.

Legion Questing

– There are several quest systems in Legion. There is a one-time epic storyline that unfolds over course of leveling which you unlock at your own pace (tracking down conspiracy as a Mage, raise new set of Four Horsemen as Death Knight, etc).
– Complementing that is a World Quest system – at a given time, everyone in your region can do those quests. The genesis for that idea was Garrison Missions for players–open up a map and see whole array of things for you to do with various objectives.
– What if you have limited playtime? The more rewarding quests will be around for a few days (chance of a mount, cool item drop). You won’t miss it because you were at work. The quests that have a short timeframe (eg 4 hours) will have generic rewards like gold.
– Every day when you log in, there is an emissary that asks you to do specific sets of world quests to aid a faction (eg all Dreamweaver faction quests in Val’sharah). Do four quests for the emissary and get an awesome chest. These emissary quests kind of work like Hearthstone dailies – they pile up for a few days, so you can catch up on ones you missed.

Legacy/Pristine Servers

– Heated topic with lots of feedback from fans.
– The developers on the Warcraft team are not directly involved in meetings – they’re focused on Legion.
– Response to Pristine Servers – the pros and cons. A big con against it, which is valid, is that it’s still the same, fast, leveling experience where you end up in your Garrison in a few days.

Leveling Experience

– The leveling-up experience in classic zones is pretty broken right now and not well tuned. It’s way too easy and it was neglected for a bit. Due to ability changes over the years, you basically feel invincible (even before heirlooms). You’re running around more vs actually fighting. The pacing of the game isn’t what it should be. They’ve been looking to fix this (even via hotfixes now).
– Barriers of entry to new players – Blizz realized around the time of Cataclysm/Mists of Pandaria that it was a daunting experience for new players who wanted to play with their max-level friends. To help this, they made leveling through past expansions faster and faster…but now leveling isn’t paced correctly. With the addition of max-level boosts, there is less of a need to rush people through leveling, it can be a satisfying well-paced experience. You shouldn’t be out-leveling zones before you finish a story.
– Potentially able to add flexible zone tech to old zones. They’d have a wider level range so you could stay in the zone without skipping the story.

Demon Hunters and Classes

– Demon Hunter double jump is awesome – you could probably double jump/Glide from Highmountain to Azsuna.
– Ion partially picked a Shaman because he wanted to tank!
– There will be 3 in-game cinematics just for Demon Hunters which you won’t see in the beta. You’ll have to play one on live!
– Demon Hunters: very flashy, high-mobility, a lot of fun to play.
– What about other races for Demon Hunters in the future? Anything is possible. The lore dictates that only Elves can be Demon Hunters and they went back and forth on it for a while. For anyone who had a picture of a – Demon Hunter in your mind, you think of Illidan. So they wanted to deliver on that fantasy. For the future…Demon Hunters could instruct other races in their rituals…but that would be something to consider for the future.
– Other race/class combos? Gnomes can be Hunters in Legion with awesome Mechanical pet family. However some don’t work, like Tauren Rogues. (Although Dagg the Subtlety Rogue Ogre is awesome.)

Artifact Weapons

– The concept of Artifact Weapons: incredible weapon of power and lore. You can level up and customize a weapon for your spec. From an art perspective, they worked closely with the art team. The Ashbringer was the first artifact weapon created since they had a solid idea about the fantasy. However they didn’t want everyone to have exactly the same powerful weapon. So they had the idea from the outset for radical visual customization. Challenge was to keep weapons distinctive while maintaining silhouette.
Some appearances are easy to unlock but others reflect significant accomplishment like killing a Mythic Raid boss or PvP. There are even secret appearances that you need to figure out how to unlock!

Dungeons and Raids

– “Done a disservice” to dungeon gameplay. Right now, dungeons are fun for the first month – run a few each night, find people in guild. Then…raids open and that dungeon loot becomes obsolete. That’s been the story for the past many years.
– Mythic Dungeons in 6.2 were a trial for how to keep dungeons relevant in Legion. In Legion, when you beat Mythic Dungeon, you get a keystone that lets you run them at a higher level.
– Definitely some inspiration from Greater Rifts, but some key differences. If players run dungeons for longer period of times this expansion, they need more variation. Mythic dungeons will have affix modifiers that appear at different threshholds/levels. Affixes do things like “massively reduce tank threat,” “when you kill a non-boss enemy, it explodes to buff other enemies.” The affixes are fixed for the entire world for a given week, so there isn’t heavy RNG where one group has it easy and the others do not.
– These affixes will change how you approach the dungeon week to week. They will also create group variation–there won’t be one set group of specs that is best for every set of affixes.
– Dungeons are being set up as an alternative path, or a complement, to raiding.
– You can keep leveling up your keystone by completing the dungeon in a certain timeframe. These are less hectic than Warlords Challenge Mode times. If you handle the difficulty comfortably, you can move up to the next one. For the highest level dungeon you clear in one week, the next week you’ll have an awesome chest in your Order Hall with loot, as well as a new keystone that’s around 70% of your past best, so you don’t need to grind from Level 1 again. Similar to when a new season starts in Hearthstone – you lose some ranks, but you don’t go back down to Level 25.

Transmogrification

– You will be collecting and permanently learning new appearances in Legion. It will be easier to customize your character’s look.
– Artifacts: visually, you’ll be sorting through dozens of potential appearances. But you can also transmog over your artifact.

World Quests

– World quests are evolution of system. In Mists of Pandaria, there were a lot of daily quests. However the negatives were the reward structure (Valor Gear behind reputation), and limitation of daily quest system (you were behind everyone else if you missed a day). There was also a lot of repetition. If you did the quests diligently, you rescued the same panda dozens of times.
– World Quests improve upon daily quest structure. There is far more variety with hundreds of world quests and variety of quest rewards. You won’t see same quests over and over again.
– There are Legion factions with cool rewards when you hit different levels, but it’s not like the MoP system where you had to do dailies for reputation for Valor Gear.
– Ion admitted to feeling daily quest fatigue in Mists of Pandaria. The moment the game feels like a chore, the moment its less what we want it to be.
– What about the people that liked familiarity/getting dailies done quickly? The map is very user-friendly, it’s easy to see what the rewards are at a glance and where all the quests are.
– In Legion, outdoor world quests have story component. Giving people variety (can meet objectives 6 ways) is good but you need context behind it, not just raw mechanics to kill and loot things. Story is essential, which was lost sight of a bit in Warlords.
– “Gameplay first” doesn’t mean “gameplay only.”

Again, massive thanks to Perculia from WoWhead for the live blog notes!

And keep it here for more info as we get it!

Disney is putting an end to their Disney Infinity toy-game line and discontinuing their “self-published console games business,” the company said today. After June, Infinity will stop getting new updates.

Disney is also shutting down Avalanche Software, the Utah-based studio responsible for Infinity. As a result, around 300 people will lose their jobs.

Along with cancellation of “Infinity,” Disney is closing Avalanche studio in Utah. Close to 300 jobs will be cut.

— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) May 10, 2016

“This was a difficult decision that we did not take lightly given the quality of Disney Infinity and its many passionate fans,” Disney said in a statement.

There will be two new Disney Infinity releases in May and June before the series ends for good: one based on Alice Through The Looking Glass, and a second from Finding Dory.

“Our goal for Disney Infinity was to bring the best of Disney storytelling to life in homes around the world, and with your support we accomplished that,” GM John Blackburn wrote on their blog. “We hope you had as much fun playing the game as we had making it.”

This news comes just two months after Disney announced that there will be no new edition of Infinity this year, as there had been since the series launched in 2013.

Disney says they plan to continue licensing their properties to other video game publishers but will no longer make their own console games.

On a call with investors this afternoon, Disney boss Bob Iger said that “the risk had caught up with” his company and that they were pleased with the success of the first Disney Infinity, but sales went downhill after that. “[The video game] business is a changing business,” Iger said of the company’s pivot out of making games. “We did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of it being stable enough.”

Pokémon fans, it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for! Earlier today Nintendo released the first official footage of Pokémon Sun and Moon, confirming such details as the next generation of Starter Pokémon, the name of the next Region, the games’ release dates and more!

Pokémon Sun and Moon will be set in the Alola Region, a name that immediately springs to mind Hawaiian Islands or such similar climates, though it’s unclear as yet just where the real life basis of the new region may lie if any. Artwork of the new region was shown during the footage and appears to depict an island with various different land types, which may make for a very varied journey.

But what’s a new region without new Pokémon? As always, the next generation of Pokémon introduces a bunch of new critters to catch; and as always, you’ll start the game by choosing your starter from the standard mix of a Fire, a Water or a Grass type. Gen VII’s Water-type is known as Popplio and is based on a performing seal, who appears to like to blow bubbles and balance them on his nose. The appropriately-named Litten is your Fire-type choice, being a kitten capable of breathing fire; and the trio is completed with Rowlet, a Grass/Flying-type Bird Pokémon capable of launching its feathers like Razor Leaves, at least so the art implies. You can see all three in action in the video below. Oh, and apparently, the character who gives you your starter will be named Hala, though this may be different in other regions.

A lot of people complained about the character customisation options introduced in X and Y being taken out of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and while it has not yet been confirmed if full character customisation is to make a return in Sun and Moon, the footage appears to show the character’s shirt and shorts differing in certain scenes, hinting to a potential return. Nintendo HAVE, however, confirmed that you will be able to change your skin pigmentation, as with X and Y, so it seems some customisability is planned at least.

The very last thing revealed today was the official box-art for English-language regions, which you can see above (click them for a larger image). This artwork also offers one more tantalising new fact – a look at the Legendaries of the two new games. Sun’s legendary seems to mix Pyroar with Reshiram in the appearance stakes; while Moon’s entry seems to be a very cool anthropomorphic bat with crescent-shapes on its wings and head.

Pokémon Sun and Moon will be released on November 18th 2016 in the US, Australia and Japan; and November 23rd in Europe – WHY NO SIMULTANEOUS RELEASE, NINTENDO?!? You proved it possible with X and Y, after all… Oh well, a five-day wait doesn’t seem all that bad. Hopefully we’ll have more tantalising info to share about Pokémon Sun and Moon coming up in the remaining six months to launch, but until then, take a look at the footage below. Until next time, Pokémaniacs!