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It’s been a couple of weeks since the Fallout 4 Automatron DLc dropped on all platforms and I’ve been feverishly adding automatrons to all my settlements since then.
“The mysterious Mechanist has unleashed a horde of evil robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain. Hunt them down and harvest their parts to build and mod your own custom robot companions. Choose from hundreds of mods; mixing limbs, armor, abilities, and weapons like the all-new lightning chain gun. Even customize their paint schemes and choose their voices!”
Automatron is a four mission DLC that kicks off at level 15 for the sole survivor. Now only four missions seems rather small and I thought so too, until I played it on stream the night it released and realised I had been playing for over 7 hours and the sun was coming up. You can see my live stream below, and no worries, I didn’t finish the final fight on stream, not only for spoilers, but also cos I was half asleep at the time.
What I will say about the ending though is that it gives a really interesting moral decision, one that I’m glad I chose the decision I went with and has not only left me with a fun set of armour for my companions, but also a new settlement and a new set of random radio quests for that added experience and looting opportunity.
One thing I would reccomend to anyone just starting Automatron though, if you don’t have the robotics perk, max it out! The Hack ability for robots works on ALL enemy automatrons in the DLC and adds for some hilarious outcomes when attacked by the new raider gang that use the robots!
Speaking of them, this new raider group is called the Rust Devils. They use robot parts to make weapons and armour, and the armour is comparable with good tier Synth armour, only being out done by Legendary Synth pieces later on, so unless you have a full set of heavy combat armour like I did when i started the DLC, it’s a great way to get some extra protection from the bots you have to face.
Of course, everyone knows by now what the biggest draw of Automatron is and thats the ability to build and upgrade your own automatrons and put them to work in your settlements! You kick off getting this workstation when you finish the first mission of the DLC and also gain Ada as a companion. you can use the workstation to upgrade Ada with any of the items available to you based on your perks, Science, Armoury, etc just like other workbenches, but you can also find parts from dead automatrons you find in random encounters. The other fun thing is that you can also upgrade Codsworth and Curie if she’s still in her Miss Nanny body (not her synth body, oh sorry, SPOILERS!)
The new settlement, without giving away spoiles, is both amusing, but also a pain in the ass to use properly, of course, this weeks new DLC, Wastelander (out Tuesday 12th April) will cure some of those annoyances with the new settlement build options, but right now, it is pretty useless beyond giving some minuteman style radio quests. It does however make a good hiding spot for the sole survivor, especially when the new survival update comes along aswell.
I have utterly love playing Fallout 4 since the beginning (surprising, since I never got into Fallout 4 and I was never a fan of Skyrim), but something about it has just grabbed me and won’t let go and Automatron has just added tot he experience in spades. I love updating my provisioners to using sentrybots instead of humans (they are far more valuable than being pack Brahman anyway)
One gripe I would give though is the other new settlement item you can use, the Eyebot Pod, which, in functionality sounds really useful, however, is pretty useless. It works by giving the eyebot the command to search for crafting materials or ammo, however, especially when it comes tot he junk for crafting, the amount you find fromt eh two part mission it gives you are miniscule compared to the power (6) that the pod needs. Of course, some will say that it’s also useful for getting you back to places you previously cleared out for other loot aswell, plus it can be useful for finding rare ammo like Railway Spikes and Cannonballs. But even those really aren’t worth it to be honest, so frankly, after testing, I scrapped the one I built.
All in all this is a great DLC, certainly worth the season price cost (I’ve played full price games with shorter storylines than this…) but even after the DLC price increase,
looking at the other DLC’s and free updates that are on the way? totally worth it! A Solid 9 out of 10!
People who pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order have been blasting their way around Doom’s closed beta since March 31. Soon everyone will be able to join them: open beta falls April 15-18, no codes required.
For the duration, you’ll be able to play Team Deathmatch and Warpath (a moving king of the hill mode) on the Heatwave and Infernal maps.
Three DLC packs will follow launch on May 13 and, depending on how Bethesda handles matchmaking between owners and non-owners, their contents may not be well received. The first pack which goes live in summer includes:
… Three new maps
… One new weapon
… One new playable demon
… One new armour set
… One new piece of equipment
… New hack modules and taunts
… New customization colours and patterns
Each DLC pack will cost $14.99 (£11.99 [UK]), or you can get them all at a discount with the Season Pass for $39.99 (£29.99 [UK]).
July last year (2015), Station manager Digmbot was stupidly excited for a new shoot ’em up, or shmup that he’d found on STEAM.
That was Steredenn and we’ve loved it on STEAM ever since, but a week ago the guys at Pixelnest (Thanks Damien) dropped us a review copy for Steredenn on XBox One and I had to yoink it before any of the team found out.
I love this game, it’s crazy hard but in a great way and makes you want to carry on killing the evil aliens and by evil I mean seriously, what other scifi game have you seen alien skips shaped like chainsaws?!?
The controls are perfect on the Xbox One, they are fluid and responsive, just as you’d expect them to be.
The graphics look lush for a pixel based game aswell, so much happens on screen you forget this is a pixel game.
But what really stands out in steredenn is the music, I would happily buy this soundtrack if I could (Please damien, if you read this review, drop me a copy for the station PLEASE!)
I can’t reccomend this game more, it’s the perfect example of this genre of game and very few have grabbed me since R-Type way back in the old days of my teens.
Ok, I’ll kick off this review by admitting I’m actually pretty bad at this game, I spent a couple of weeks trying and honestly, I’m just bad 😀
So, onto the review…
Bow we’ve been following Ironcast on PC since it was released on STEAM March 2015, roll on a year later and the XBox One version was released on the 9th of March.
At it’s heart, IronCast is a turn based gem collecting game, but calling it just that does it an incredible disservice. This is a roguelike tactical RPG if ever there was one.
Inspired by Victorian era science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Ironcast is set in an exciting alternative history; a time when refined men and women in top hats and bonnets commanded gigantic walking war machines, laying waste to the enemies of the British Empire.
Take control of a 7 meter tall walking vehicle called an Ironcast and face off against an invading force of enemy Ironcast in order to defend 1880’s Victorian England. Battles are fought by generating resource nodes which in turn drive the Ironcast’s various weapons and systems. You must choose how to spend these nodes wisely, either offensively in order to cripple and destroy your opponents, or defensively, if they suspect a barrage of incoming weapons fire is due.
As the blurb says, you are the commander of an 1800’s era steampunk inspired steam tank/walker. You have to collect gems in your turn the correspond to ammo, coolant, etc, which you then use to move your mech, fire your weapons and/or raise your shields, but you never really have enough to do all of it.
The game is simple in idea, but in the execution, its easy to forget what you’ve done and as you’ll see in my twitch playthrough below, I regularly forgot to do something or simply ran out of what I needed to keep myself alive or attack the enemy. Now this could just be me, watching other streams, people are gettign the hang of it, but i also wonder if for me, the transistion from keyboard and mouse, to a single controller system is, for me, the downfall. Everything in the controller layout makes sense, and on screen the items are marked with the button that makes them work, but maybe it was too much for this old senile head to master.
That aside, I really enjoyed playing Ironcast and I love the steampunk vibe of the game.
The sound is also great too, the voice acting is a wonderful cockney British that makes me feel like I’m part of the game (it is my natural accent anyway) and the force feedback of the controller suited the sounds of the gun fire and moving mech perfectly too.
The leveling up and skill system seemed a little tricky to get to grips with and my main gripe while playing it on stream was some of the text is too small to read, even on my rather large tv in teh front room, something that would be less of a issue on a pc monitor you’d usually sit closer to.
As I said though, I enjoyed Ironcast and I will play it a lot more and it’s definitely worth £10, so head over to xbox.com or check your Xbox One’s store page!
Almost three years after its announcement, development has stopped on the next iteration of the long-lived MMO franchise.
Daybreak Studios’ president Russ Shanks announced the news on the game’s official site:
I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next.
For the past 20 years EverQuest has been a labor of love. What started as a deep passion of ours, as game creators, grew into a much larger passion shared by you, millions of players and Daybreakers alike. Watching EverQuest’s ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It’s shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products. When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn’t aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary.
For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Nextwould not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.
The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak. EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts. EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong. Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished.
EverQuest Next was an ambitious attempt to evolve the franchise. The first phase of that evolution was EverQuest Next Landmark, which was released as a beta in 2013. Landmark was focused on player creation, letting users craft huge structures and then sell the blueprints to each other.
EverQuest Next began development at Sony Online Entertainment, a corporate cousin to the PlayStation brand that was sold off last year to investment firm Columbus Nova and rebranded as Daybreak Studios.
In an interview with MMORPG, Shanks says that EverQuest and EverQuest II are still in active development. He also says that Daybreak will continue to explore ways to modernize EverQuest and notes the company’s current priorities:
The future of the EverQuest franchise is important to our company and you have not seen the last of Norrath by any means. It’s just as engrained in our hearts as it is for our players. We helped usher in the era of MMOs because we loved the idea of bringing gamers together within the game worlds in massive numbers, and we’ve continued to build on that over our 20-year history. The adventures within the worlds of EQ and EQII continue unabated today, and there is plenty of room for more.
Right now, we are focused on launching Landmark, advancing H1Z1: Just Survive, bringing DC Universe Online to Xbox One players, and launching H1Z1: King of the Kill on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
