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Back in December EA told everyone that they were not going to work on any future projects or release any expansions or additional content for Battlefield 4 until they had sorted out the problems that continued to plague the game at that point.
Yesterday though they announced the upcoming release of a Battlefield 4 DLC, Naval Strike, coming at the end of March, hot on the heels of the Second Assault map pack being release on February 18th. As you can probably guess from the name, Naval Strike will add a lot of water-based craft and weaponry as battles are taken to the sea and will also add four new maps to the game: Lost Island, Nansha Strike, Wave Breaker, and Operation Mortar.
The problem seems to be that the reports of game crashes and players being randomly kicked from servers or even the entire game haven’t stopped. There are still people saying that doing certain actions, such as getting into a vehicle with another player is meaning that their playing of a game is stopped right there until they can reboot the game and rejoin the server. Some are even still reporting that they have a problem launching the game at all.
Back in December DICE general manager Karl Troedsson said that they had the “entire team working to stabilise the game” and that the reason they were working on Battlefield 4 before expanding it or concentrating on future projects was because “it’s the right thing to do.” and to be fair certain prominent bugs have been nipped in the bud already.
Hopefully the game will be a little more shipshape when the boats finally set out to sea.
So after 24 hours and 6 Xbox crashes I’ve completed my first play through of Fable Anniversary and I must say I was not disappointed. Hardware issues aside I loved playing this game. If you played the original back in 2008 like myself then going to back to where this fantastic series of games began and seeing that small farm boy once more will dump a huge dose of nostalgia into your system. If you joined at Fable II or III then it is a fantastic way to look at the humble beginnings of the heroes from those games and it allows you to see how much Albion has changed throughout the series.
For me though I was excited to see how the first game I ever played on an Xbox would look in HD compared to what I remember it looking like, which at the time was a very good looking game. I was not disappointed in HD this game is absolutely gorgeous really pulling me into the game just like it did before. Not only that but the soundtrack is one that sticks with you and is instantly recognisable adding to the nostalgia of the game, should you have played the original. As well as Jack’s creepy voice, which somehow manages to scare me more in this re-master than I remember it ever doing when I played the original.
Some of my favourite things about this HD remastering are that it comes with all the Fable: lost chapters DLC, which if you never played it really ties the story up nicely and adds an extra twist or two. Also the multiple choice achievements are another thing I love about this game, as it means you can play the game however you want to and not have to worry about achievements being unobtainable. However a word of warning comes with these multiple choices, because depending on which option you choose to obtain them you will get a different symbol achievement. This means that if you choose the easy way to get them all your friends will know you copped out, if such things concern you. Finally the fact that it gives you the option from the start to choose whether to play with the traditional controls or the controls from Fable II and III, meaning that no matter where you joined the series you can use whatever feels comfortable to you or if you played the original go for the full nostalgia factor.
There were only a couple of issues that I could personally find with this game. The first being that the running feels odd almost laggy to begin with but, it’s actually just that the running is a bit angular like in the original. The other issue I found was that on a couple of occasions (having failed a quest) when I skipped a previously watched cut scene the game would freeze causing me to have to dashboard. However this appears to be a rarity without it only happening twice throughout my entire playthrough.
So whether you’ve been with the series since the original or you joined at II or III, I could not recommend picking this up more if you’re a fan of the game. Now I would also definitely recommend this to people who haven’t played the series before. However if you don’t own any of the games but are interested in playing the series rather than buying each of the games singularly, there is a better way to do so because with the launch of this game there was also the launch of the Fable Trilogy onto the Xbox market place giving you Fable Anniversary, Fable II and Fable III for £45 which is a great price for this series of games. So there you have it if you don’t have this game already go get it or if you want to start your hero career go buy the trilogy. As for me I’m off to get those last few pesky achievements, have fun and don’t forget to kick those chickens.
Overall I would give Fable Anniversary a score of: Avo! (9.5/10)
“A Chunder has entered your dungeon!” Eagerly, I scroll over to my dungeon’s portal and watch the somewhat portly monster waddle off in search of new living quarters. It’s then that I realize I’ve lost the last hour of my life to the spell of War For The Overworld.
Pressing concerns like lunch and the wrath of my wife loom large in my mind.
For all of about five seconds…
Then, it’s right back to building my masterfully planned hero deathtrap.
Such is the magic of the spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper. The anti RTS, a game that tasks you with being the evil overlord and ruthlessly crushing any do-gooder that dares enter your twisted lair. All while revelling in the sheer pleasure of being evil.
Dropping today, the team over at Subterranean games have given us a rather substantial patch for the Bedrock Beta of this wonderful game. Among the stand outs from the patch notes:
Spell: Recall- Benevolent Underlords may now rescue their foolish minions from outside their own dominion.
Units will now work more reliably
Units will now need to sleep less often
Units will now need to eat more often
Units that spawn will now far more accurately reflect the rooms that you have in your Dungeon
New death and idle visual effects for some units
And a whole host more, including other visual updates, texture and bug fixes. All in all, it adds up to a rather nice chunk of work from the guys over at Subterranean. Some of these seemingly minor tweaks and fixes actually have a significant impact on the way you play the game. The new tweaks to hunger, units also get hungrier faster when fighting, force you to make sure you have enough slaughter pens to feed your slavering army.
And the game plays fantastically. The Recall spell in particular is a nice new tool for saving those foolish imps that think it’s a good idea to claim enemy dungeon space while a towering behemoth of a hero is flailing at them with an axe bigger than they are. While the game may still be in beta, it’s looking more and more polished all the time. I would encourage you to go jump into the beta right now, but honestly if you haven’t, you need to check your pulse.
Such was my experience with Flappy Bird, the surprise smartphone hit. This addictive little game is equally cruel, irritating and rewarding.
And… it’s going away.
Thats right. In a surprise move, Vietnam based Flappy Bird creator Dong Nyugen told the games fans “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore. It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore. I also don’t sell ‘Flappy Bird’, please don’t ask. And I still make games.”
This comes as he has suggested that his life has become overrun with the success of the game. A simplistic game at best, Flappy Bird sees the player tapping the screen to guide the titular bird character through a series of mario-esque pipes. Bring Flappy Bird into contact with the pipes, and he immediately dies. It’s a simple premise, and one that is maddeningly addictive.
The aforementioned legal issues that Nyugen references may be in regards to the graphics of the games. The pipes that comprise the levels only obstacles bear more than a passing resemblance to the same pipes that Nintendo’s famous mascot has been traveling through and jumping over for 25 years. The Japanese giant is famously protective of it’s intellectual property, leading many to speculate that Nyugen is cashing out before Nintendo can bring a lawsuit against him.
And cashing out would be the right word. Despite being a free app on Android and iOS, it is estimated by some that Flappy Bird was raking in approximately $50,000 USD a day from in app ads.
I find it interesting that Nyugen is insisting that this game has ruined his life and that he now hates it, despite the masses of money he undoubtedly made from the game. It’s been around since May of 2013, but only recently became a smash success. Flying under the radar early in it’s life may indeed have led it to escape the notice of the Big N, which is certainly not going to miss the inspiration for the design of those green pipes Flappy tries to avoid. My money, what little there is, is on the idea that Nyugen saw the writing on the wall and is getting out while he can.
And if that is the case, and if Flappy Bird was making even close to what analysts suggest, then he’s laughing all the way to the bank. If $50,000 a day is what it takes to ruin someone’s life, I’ll gladly have mine ruined for about three weeks…
