Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
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.
Pop culture, and video games in particular seem to have a fascination with giant robots. Coming along to scratch that itch is Titanfall from EA and Respawn Studios. The multiplayer version of the game is currently in Beta for both XBOX One and PC, allowing you to run, jump, shoot and punch giant mechs to your hearts contents.
My time with the game has been interesting so far. But before I get to that, a brief layout of Titanfall’s Beta. There are currently three match types available: Attrition, Hardpoint Domination, and Last Titan Standing. Attrition is a standard Deathmatch with teams competing for the most score. Hardpoint Domination is a Titan-centric take on the traditional “capture objectives and hold them for points” mode, while Last Titan Standing sees every player spawn in a Titan. There are no respawns, and the last team standing wins.
One thing that will immediately stand out to FPS veterans is the freedom of movement you have as a pilot in Titanfall. Your Titan is not immediately available, instead being on a two minute countdown before you can call it in. You can decrease this timer by killing enemy players and AI controlled grunts. During this time, you are merely a pilot on foot with a primary weapon (like a rifle), some form of pistol and an Anti-Titan weapon. Pilots are outfitted with gear that allows them to sprint, double jump and even wall run. It is entirely possible in Titanfall to come into an alley and spy a nice rooftop vantage point that you can access simply by wall running up one side of the alley, leaping to the other wall to continue your run and gain height, then leap off and grab the edge of the rooftop and heave yourself up.
This mobility is a key part of playing a pilot particularly when a Titan enters the field. These hulking machines are surprisingly mobile and are almost instant death to an unwary pilot. Being blown away in one shot from a chaingun three times your size, stepped on or just punched out of existence are all standard ways a pilot will die if he takes a Titan head on. Fortunately for the squishy pilot, he has an arsenal of tools to help deal with these behemoths. Anti-Titan weapons such as sidewinder missiles will put a dent in the offending mech. Also available is the ability – if timed right – to leap onto the Titan, rip off a panel covering some of it’s vital electronics and blast them to bits. Satisfying in the extreme, its a neat twist on the gameplay that keeps Titans from feeling all powerful.
While on foot, the game plays smoothly. Controls are snappy and responsive, shooting feels good and each kill is satisfying. Then there are the Titans themselves….
Call down a Titan and you are rewarded with a massive ball of fire raining down from the sky. Pressing the embark key will see your Titan pick you up in it’s giant metal paw and shove you into the cockpit. From here, everything changes. The sense of power that comes with a Titan is immensely satisfying. Armed with formidable primary weapons, offhand rapid fire rockets and the Vortex shields, these mechs are walking weapons of mass destruction. Firing down on offending pilots and grunts is satisfying as you exact revenge on the same people who moments ago were sniping you from third story windows. The real challenge is taking down another Titan. Combat is fast and fluid, particularly when you employ the shield mechanic of the Titan. Engaging it allows you to throw up shield that will catch incoming projectiles. Upon release, they can be fired back at your target. This ability has a short cooldown, so don’t expect to spam it. Even when a Titan is doomed, as the game calls it, not all is lost. You can eject, catapulting up and out of your Titan as it explodes. Landing safely will allow you to jump right back into the fight.
If I sound like I’m enthusiastic about the game, I am. It plays wonderfully and has enough balance to keep titans from becoming unstoppable juggernauts. The only times I have felt completely overpowered was in a handful of matches where my team was playing poorly and the entire enemy team ended up in Titans. Among my only complaints with the game is that the on foot shooting does feel a lot like Call of Duty. This is to be expected, considering that the developer of titanfall, Respawn, is comprised of many former Infinity Ward employees – the studio responsible for many Call of Duty games.
In the end, the one thing that has me impressed with Titanfall is the fun factor. Despite feeling frustrated after a bad match, I was never directing that frustration at the game.Instead, I was berating myself for poor play or bad decisions. All in all, I can’t wait to jump back into the game, call down my Titan and go unleash some hell.
Here’s some gameplay footage to hold you over till the game releases on March 11.
If you’re a massive fan of the Bioshock games, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. The developing company of the game, Irrational Games is being closed.
On their site at irrationalgames.com every page was taken up with a long message from Ken Levine, one of the founders of the company and the current Creative Director saying that after seventeen years and some enormous success in the recent years he had taken the decision to concentrate on other types of projects and so “I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it” and moving to a smaller group within Take-Two with only fifteen of the people currently working at Irrational Games coming with him.
He does stress however that they are committed to helping those who are being let go survive the transition and find new work.
Besides financial support, the staff will have access to the studio for a period of time to say their goodbyes and put together their portfolios. Other Take-Two studios will be on hand to discuss opportunities within the company, and we’ll be hosting a recruiting day where we’ll be giving 3rdparty studios and publishers a chance to hold interviews with departing Irrational staff.
He says that the next thing for him and his new smaller group of game developers will be to work on new narrative-driven games for the core gamer community, with hopefully a closer working link to those players and digitally delivered content exclusively. As for the Bioshock Universe? There’s no need to worry about it vanishing for good as Levine states that the reins for the games and its world are being handed over to the people at 2K who have worked with Irrational on the games in the past.
The message on the site will be updated with an FAQ later as questions come in, so more information will slowly be made available for those with questions that need answering.
Today sees the release of a game featuring a character who might be familiar to long time Capcom fans, but who hasn’t actually been front and centre of a game for a long time. That’s right, Strider is back in a new game!
Strider is, for those who don’t know, a Capcom character who first appeared back in the late 80s in his first game on arcade systems. It was celebrated back then for its play-style, definitive music and was notable for its use of multi-lingual voice acting during the cut-scenes (Japanese, English, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish) and was one of Capcom’s hits before Street Fighter II brought the company’s name to everyone’s attention. The main character was a young member of a group called the ‘Striders’, a ninja-like group within the world and you as the player were tasked with travelling through the side-scrolling world to eventually kill the ‘Grandmaster’, the rule of the dystopian future world Strider was set in. The game also saw home releases for many platforms such as the Mega Drive and Commodore 64, some which omitted the ending or replaced it entirely.
The game went on to have two sequels, Strider 2 and Strider Returns, which was a Western-only release that had no involvement from Capcom. The sequel Strider 2 introduced new mechanics into the game and had releases on arcade machines as well as the Playstation 1 in 2000.
Other than these games, the character of Strider has made many cameos in other Capcom games down the years.
The new game aims to combine the best aspects of the original game and the sequel as well as improving upon them using the technology of today. Hopefully gamers who fondly remember Strider will not be disappointed by this new adventure.
Strider releases for the Playstation 3 and 4 today and for Xbox 360, Xbox One and many PC digital distributors (including Steam and Green Man Gaming – pre-order for the free 20 track soundtrack and concept art!) tomorrow, February 19th.
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.
