Turtle Rock took a little flack for their game Evolve and its DLC policy. However as part of it they did say that all new maps were going to be made free to all players, and now they’re about to implement two new ones at the end of next month.

The maps, called Broken Hill Mine and Broken Hill Foundry will be exclusive to the Xbox One version until April 30th when they’ll be made available for PC and PS4 players too. They’ll be playable in Hunt, Nest and Rescue modes, as well as part of an Evacuation campaign, a Skirmish or a Custom match.

The Mine is basically a map that takes place in a big hole in the planet of Shear that’s had all its valuable minerals mined out already for other things. For the evacuation campaign effects, Hunters can repurpose mining drones into shield drones for the next match while a Monster win will mean earthquakes disturb birds more often in the next round, confusing the Hunters as to the Monster’s actual location.

The Foundry is where a lot of those mined materials go for processing and refining. Evacuation effects sees a Hunter win supercharge their jetpacks with energy-rich bohrium while the same bohrium engulfs the Monster and makes its melee attacks hit harder if the Monster wins.

HELLO EVERYONE NEKOKITWOLF HERE TALKING ABOUT LA COP

It’s a 3-d top down shooter much like Hotline Miami. With the art style of classic American Pop art also in the style of 80’s cop-shows and yes they come with handle bar mustaches. There are 13 levels and 6 cops to choose from which is quite diverse. With the music style of rock from that era.

Currently available on STEAM Early Access and on XBox One

Opinion: The Art style in my opinion isn’t something I like though the bright and vibrant colors are quite appealing. And what little gameplay I saw wasn’t that impressive to me mostly because it looked like Hotline Miami. What caught my attention though is that we saw co-op which would be something different and nice in this day in age. To bad it seems to only be local, a small lost opportunity there. And the early access version on steam doesn’t have co-op but I’m sure in future installments it’ll be added. All and all this game doesn’t grab me but if you did dig games in that top down style then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this one.

With EGX Rezzed  in full swing, one of the panels I was interested in today was Titan Souls. Being developed by Acid Nerve and published by Devolver Digital, the game places you in the shoes of a tiny pixel hero armed with a bow and one arrow. Your goal is to take down the titular titans. Every fight is a boss fight, pitting you against a foe with only one hit point. Giving a presentation at EGX, they talked a bit about the design philosophy of the game, as well as  demonstrating some of the boss fights.

Interestingly, they revealed that they would gauge the balance of a boss by how many times testers died before beating it. They also expanded a bit upon the idea behind the single hit boss fights, discussing how they wanted it to be relatively easy to remain alive during a fight, but difficult to actually win the fight.  This was, of course, accompanied by a gameplay demo- which ended in a few unfortunate deaths for the devs.

With an obvious attention to detail, gorgeous art style and unique one shot, one HP mechanic, Titan Souls is looking better than ever. Keep an eye out for this game when it releases simultaneously on PS4, PS Vita, PC and Mac.

Ok, EGX Rezzed 2015 kicked off today and teh press were invited to check out ArenaNet’s 40 minute demo of the new Heart of Thorns expansion that’s coming soon

The first thing that jumped out at me was how the game honestly feels like nothing has changed… at all…

So rather than roll a new character and try the new Revenant class, I decided to basically make my main lvl 80 necromancer that has served me well since day one of the Guild Wars 2 release. And again, nothing new. apart from having to bind the controls slightly based on how I’ve played the game from release, the game felt exactly as it has the whole time.

The demo kicked off with a quite nice intro sequence in typical Guild Wars 2 style, but you very quickly realise that this is mid campaign, as you have no idea WHY they are doing what they are doing and what for, and this lack of info drops you squarely into what appears to be a Destiny’s Edge/Pact team up against a new jungle dragon, which quickly goes HORRIBLY wrong, leaving you and a few survivors to make your way through the jungle to save other survivors and find out what happened to Destiny’s Edge and the rest of the very quickly destroyed fleet.

What DOES happen very quickly is the learning of your first Mastery Point, this leading to learning how to glide for short distances. I must admit, I used this only once, to jump between a platform for a boss event that you stumble on pretty much straight away. This was interesting, albeit typical GW2 style, everyone is in it for themselves, 99% of people won’t help you if you are downed and the rest only for the extra experience for helping you back up, not for team work at all

This was a fun boss fight though, much more movement from the boss, a Wyvern instead of a dragon this time, on a roundish platform, although his rotation of moves got memorised very quickly and his fire breath attack is reasonably easy to evade. It was still enjoyable though, but I can see it getting boring quickly if too many people did it regularly, but then this is the problem with all the GW2 world boss fights

Now, some reading this will ask why I didn’t try the new Revenant class and there are two reasons… 1, I plan to make one and live stream it on release. and 2, I had to wait in the que to play this for nearly two hours. I watched every other person play one, apart from the odd veterans like me that wanted to see if our main class had changed.
Now the Revenant looks interesting, and I’m sure I will enjoy it when I play it, but really? If I wasn’t going to get it to stream, I’d wait a while after release and get it at discount.

I must say on a personal note though, the day was made all the more fun by the awesome Gaile Gray, the Guild Wars 1 community manager that always had time for us idiots in GW1, even the super opinionated ones like me and the PVP community, and although I very much doubt this gets read by anyone at ANet, I highly recommend the devs listen to the Lady Gray and bring back Lions Arch and International Districts, the game needs more conga lines and Froggy

505 Games, a global publisher of video games, Overkill, a Starbreeze Studio, and film director Demian Lichtenstein brings you the live-action PAYDAY web series.

 

Director Demian Lichtenstein, of “3000 Miles to Graceland” commented, “The PAYDAY web series has been a solid and very close collaboration between all parties involved. I have never experienced such a high level of commitment to excellence from PAYDAY creators Bo and Ulf Andersson, to the rock-solid input of game director David Goldfarb, and the combined efforts of the powerhouse global teams at 505 Games, Starbreeze, Overkill, Solaris, Equilibrium and Lightstone. Simply said, this is the best experience of my career.”

 

Executive produced by Greg O’Connor of “Warrior” and “Pride and Glory” fame, the web series was filmed on location in Los Angeles with a crew of over 100 and sets the scene for the next steps in the evolution of the PAYDAY story.

The series can be watched live on your PC or Downloaded, episode by episode to watch how and when you want

We’ll have a full review later this week