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An update is coming soon for Battlefield 4, and by the sounds of it, it should be a well received one. There will finally be a way for friends to group up before entering the server as opposed to having to waste time trying to meet up before the action can begin.
DICE seemed to have no plans to ever add private lobbies to the game even a few months ago despite it being part of the previous game Battlefield 3, saying that the feature hadn’t offered quality on par with what they felt the players should be offered; but it seems that player demand and complaints about the system BF4 did have has won out once again and gotten the private lobby system, named ‘Platoons’ added to the game. Platoons will soon enter into a Closed Beta stage with a selected number of people being allowed to test-drive it for a short while and potentially give feedback to catch any bugs before it will be released to the masses, allowing matches to run a little more organised from the get-go.
At least… as organised as FPS games can ever be when you’re running around trying to kill without being killed…
A recent patch has also removed one persistent source of the game freezing; the (as DICE put it) ‘so called sound loop bug’ as well as a glitch that sometimes stopped people in a gunner position on some vehicles from actually shooting and better integrated the game with AMD’s Mantle card.
There’s a new post up on the Starbound site’s blog, in which creator Tiy outlines the future player progression of the game. It’s certainly… interesting.
Tiy talks about planets in the future game becoming inaccessible for players until they have the needed upgrades and technology to land and venture onto them (the example used is one of a planet without a breathable atmosphere), as well as a crucial change to the ship you start in: your fuel hatch will be broken and you won’t be able to visit new worlds until you get enough pixels to make yourself another one. A new quest system will teach the player how to farm, how to find trophies in dungeons and how to begin to build settlements… there will even be small ‘outpost’ settlements on some planets which will be populated by NPCs of all species and should be safe for trading etc.
The biggest change though is the removal of the multiple sectors that have so far been the setting for the game of Starbound, instead trading them for what seems to be just one area filled with planets and stars that you must work your way up to being able to land upon and three different ‘progression’ paths: farming, adventuring and building. There will also be three different seperate ‘sectors’ in the game, one for the survival-esque game, a PvP version of the game and a ‘creative sector’.
In his post Tiy says that they are doing this to make the game less linear, but at the moment this gamer thinks that the new updates sound almost the opposite, taking away a lot of area from the game and forcing the player to do certain tasks before they can progress. Sure there is no time limit or deadline for completing these tasks, but I for one will miss the multiple sectors of galaxy. As always though, nothing can be fully and accurately summed up through words alone, so we shall wait and see how these proposed changes have an affect on the game.
Gearbox are bringing a lawsuit for violating the Duke Nukem IP against 3D Realms, the original developers of Duke Nukem and another studio, Interceptor. Gearbox bought the IP off of 3D Realms back in 2010, but allege that 3D Realms has been telling other companies that they still own the IP and are free to develop new Duke Nukem games. Oh, and there’s the small matter of the Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction game that Interceptor is due to release in a few days.
Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction is set to release on the Playstation 4 and PC on February 25th, yet communications between all three companies have apparently been open since the 13th of the month, when Gearbox sent a cease and desist letter to 3D Realms asking it to “halt all unauthorized exploitations of Gearbox’s Duke Nukem intellectual property.” Even though 3D Realms replied 3 days later apologising for any violation of the rights, acknowledged that they no longer had the rights to develop new games for the Duke Nukem, that the right now belonged solely to Gearbox to do so and that 3D Realms would ‘refrain from any acts that use of violate the Duke IP’ the game’s release doesn’t seem to have been stopped or even slowed down, which has resulted in Gearbox’s lawsuit.
The suit, which was filed on February 21st, is against both companies although Gearbox seem to be placing most of the blame squarely on the shoulders of the former owner of Duke Nukem’s IP.
“After selling its Duke Nukem IP rights to Gearbox in 2010, 3DR sought to privately convince others that the sale never happened.
Unfortunately for Interceptor.. the 3DR Declaration makes it clear: 3DR no longer owns the unrestricted rights to Duke Nukem IP,and 3DR has no right or ability to make any agreements in violation of Gearbox’s exclusive rights.
The 3DR-Interceptor manoeuvre has left Gearbox with little choice but to bring these claims.”
As I said, it’s an unusual case. Everyone seems pretty sure of who owns the IP and who is in the wrong yet… the game is still being released? Certainly something we’ll be keeping an eye on, especially from Tuesday when the game is released.
Few series have enjoyed the level of success that Ubisoft’s flagship Assassin’s Creed has attained. Each new entry in the series is highly anticipated. Which makes it all the more strange that almost three months after the release of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag the company also released Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD. This remake of the PS Vita title has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it has almost as many things working against it.
Liberation will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played an Assassin’s Creed game. The free running, high flying, rooftop leaping assassination’s are all still here and for the most part, are just as satisfying as ever. Of course, in Liberation you palys as the only female assassin in the series, Aveline de Grandpré. Daughter of a wealthy family and of mixed French and African heritage, Aveline is a refreshing character. Unfortunately, shortly after you are introduced to the pre-Revolutionary War setting of New Orleans things begin to unravel a bit. The most immediate issues are in the graphics. While this is a port of the Vita game, it is also touted as being an HD remastered version. In actuality, its simply a Vita game with some HD textures slapped on it. And in places, these textures look a bit bland. While free running, everything looks fine. But slow down for a leisurely stroll as Aveline’s Lady Persona and muddy textures and pop-in begin to rear their ugly heads. Some animations appear stiff and stilted, and the voice acting is hit or miss. Still, as with all Assassin’s Creed titles, Liberation does manage to create a believable city filled with life. Which makes the swamp sections all the more disappointing. The game is split between the city and the swamp, and it is the swamp sections that really drag the game down. The swamp is filled with vegetation and wildlife, but it feels lifeless and flat. Nothing ever really seems to happen there outside of scripted events and side missions, and the animals feel as if they are only there for your hunting achievements. Even wrestling an alligator is reduced to a quicktime event – one that responds quite poorly to the timed inputs it demands of you.
Herein lies the main problem with Assassin’s Creed Liberation. It uses the same tree-centric free running system as Assassin’s Creed 3. But, in the case of Liberation, the controls feel stiff and imprecise. More than once, I would find Aveline endlessly running up the side of a tree trunk and plunging to her doom on the swamp floor below rather than sliding gracefully around the trunk to the next branch and continuing on her way. While combat is fast and fluid, I encountered multiple instances where the “Mark And Execute” feature of combat – which lets you select opponents to dispatch in quick succession mid fight – simply refused to function as the onscreen prompts said it should. I expect long dialogue and heavy story when playing an Assassin’s Creed game. What I do not expect are clunky controls, yet Liberation delivers both in equal measure. Things get a bit more bearable if you play with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard, but not much.
Aveline has three main guises, a new gameplay mechanism for the series. her lady guise sees her dressed like the wealthy scion of New Orleans she is, and reduces her to either walking or a modest jog. No free-running is allowed, and the most combat you will engage in will be some bare knuckle fisticuffs or using the dart gun hidden in your parasol. To balance this out, the Lady guise gains notoriety much more slowly than the other two. The Assassin guise, on the other hand, is your typical Assassin’s Creed outfit. Equipped with darts, hidden blades, pistols, and your melee weapon of choice you can run, jump, climb and air assassinate to your bloody little heart’s content. Of course, you pick up notoriety very easily as the Assassin. In between the two is the Slave guise. This guise gains notoriety more slowly than the assassin and is able to sprint and engage in some combat. Switching between the three is as easy as ducking into a convenient shop and selecting them from a radial menu. While the guises do add a refreshing element to the gameplay, to often I found myself stuck in the Lady guise and unable to change so that I could explore the city around me.
Rounding out the game are the usual Assassin’s Creed side activities. Taking random assassination contracts, buying and renovating buildings, and engaging in a bare bones trading game that has you sending ships full of goods throughout the Gulf of Mexico will keep you occupied if you so choose. The most glaring omission from the game is the complete lack of multiplayer. Recent Assassin’s Creed games have incorporated innovative and entertaining multiplayer modes, but the complete lack of them in Liberation is a puzzling decision.
All in all, if you are looking for a good Assassin’s Creed game, you would be better to buy Black Flag or find a copy of Assassin’s Creed 3 on sale. While Liberation isn’t a terrible game, it falls far short of other entries in the series. Muddy textures, pop in, stiff controls. the lack of multiplayer and some laughably bad voice acting all drag down what could have been an excellent port of one of the best Vita out there.
ARMA 3 may be the premiere hardcore military simulator on the market, but things just got a bit more interesting in Bohemia’s love letter to modern war fighting. Now available by selecting the game’s Development Build in Steam, the new Zeus mode looks set to change the way the huge armies of ARMA engage each other on the battlefield.
The concept of Zeus mode will be familiar to anyone who has ever played a Real Time Strategy Game like Starcraft. The player in Zeus mode is granted a free flying view of one of ARMA 3’s massive maps. They can move around the map, zooming in and out, panning the camera and getting up close and personal with individual units with ease, while also easily surveying the entire map with a few clicks of the mouse. While in this mode, Zeus players are able to place enemy squads, animals, NPCs, vehicles, waypoints and more for the players on the ground. Even if this were the extent of Zeus mode, it would be a worthy addition to the multiplayer component of the game.
Fortunately, Bohemia has gone much, much further in implementing Zeus. The tools available to the Zeus player extend far beyond simply placing waypoints and summoning squads of Anti-Tank infantry from thin air to harass unsuspecting convoys. The player in command of this mode is able to sculpt a living story for players on the ground, through objectives he can place and change on a whim, ambushes along the road and easy improvisation, that has been made available through the tools that Bohemia Interactive provides. The player isn’t locked into one side of the conflict either. Able to interact with any of the myriad forces and factions deployable across and ARMA battleground, they can provide swift and varied reactions from multiple allies or potential threats in any given scenario as they create and morph it around players on the ground. In essence, Zeus mode turns the player in command into the GM in a DnD game, albeit in a hardcore military sim, with a lot less dice rolling, but the comparison is strong as the Zeus player guides those on foot through a custom built story that’s never the same in any given play session.
The sheer depth that Zeus brings to the game has yet to be fully explored, but developer Bohemia showed off some of the functionality in a large scale battle during a live stream. The results were impressive. Maneuvering squads of AI in support of opposition or heroic forces, morphing objectives and waypoints on the fly were all demonstrated. While the developers did of course demonstrate the most basic capabilities of the mode, they were also quick to stress that this tool was conceptualized as a way for players to experience an interactive story on the battlefield, likening it to player created campaigns on the scale of other military shooters – with, I hope, less Michael bay style explosions. Theres a laundry list of things Bohemia plans to add to Zeus mode, including loading AI into other vehicles, making helicopters fly on there own (currently the Zeus player has to drag them airborne) and several balance fixes, but the basic start of the mode is very promising. It remains to be seen what can fully be done with this tool, but if the demonstrations are anything to go by, the most in depth military shooter on the market just got even more intense.
Want to see Zeus mode in action? Check out the video below:
