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It’s time for the yearly shake-up of Hearthstone’s meta, and as the Year of the Kraken goes out, the Year of the Mammoth comes – and fittingly with huge changes.
The most obvious of those are the rotation of certain sets of cards out from Standard to Wild. Joining Naxxramas and Goblins vs. Gnomes are the cards from The Grand Tournament expansion, as well as the Blackrock Mountain and League of Explorers adventures. This should see the Wild meta become vastly different from the one in Standard, as more sets are now Wild-exclusive. Adding to this, there will be a few of the Classic cards made Wild-exclusive owing to how often they pop up in play right now:
Azure Drake
Sylvanas Windrunner
Ragnaros the Firelord
Ice Lance
Conceal
Power Overwhelming
These six cards the developers feel contradict what they’re trying to do in the creation of Standard and Wild; to diversify the cards used and make the meta more interesting for players. Because these six were often seen as auto-includes, Blizzard feel that it’s time for them to rotate out into what they’ve dubbed their ‘Hall of Fame’ set of cards. While they had entertained the notion of allowing a full dust refund for these cards, they have decided that goes against their other goal of making Wild seem like fun – so if you own any of the cards that are going out in the Hall of Fame set you’ll get the full dust value of that card (up to the number of cards you can put into a deck) the first time you log on after the Year of the Mammoth has begun!
The next big thing for the Mammoth is that instead of going between Adventures and Expansions, this year we will have 3 inputs of expansions that add around 130 cards – which means a LOT of new cards coming this year. But for those who enjoy the colourful stories of Adventures (I’m one of them), never fear – the storytelling is coming to the expansions to help make them even better and cooler. These will be in the form of option single-player missions that expand the lore behind each expansions card set. Additional details about this new idea will be revealed at later dates.
Blizzard are also going to be trying to incentivize Wild, with them collaborating with third-parties to promote additional Hearthstone tournaments that use the Wild format, as well as an upcoming Heroic Tavern Brawl that will utilize it.
Also before the next expansion (theorized to be Un’Goro themed) Hearthstone will have for a short time, daily login rewards to claim. Dust, gold and packs will all be on offer, as well as “a few other surprises” before the expansion’s launch “to blaze a trail for everything our next expansion has to offer.” One of these could even be the new Hero that Blizzard are planning to release. New Rogue Hero Maiev Shadowsong will be available to gain after the next expansion launches, just by winning 10 games of Heartstone in either Standard Ranked or Casual modes. Given that all the others have required payment of some sort or to use another game, it’s nice to have one we can just earn by playing this game.
And that is basically what we can expect from the Year of the Mammoth, as far as Blizzard have announced. It sounds like a lot of fun is in store.
Game reviewing requires you to sometimes play genres that maybe you’re not so interested in. When those come along, you can still judge a game to be ‘good’ if it is still a great game despite the fact that maybe it’s not your particular cup of tea. Some genres though, it’s very hard to do much different with.
Dungeon Escape is a 2D jumping platformer in the same one-hit, one-kill, start level over again vein as Super Meat Boy. You have hazards, you have one hit point. You need to get out of the level and onto the next one. Simple. The art style is simple but not basic, and the game moves and plays very fluidly. You are a prisoner in this dungeon and you need to make it through even dangerous level, grab the key, bring it to the door and exit to make it to the next level/room of the dungeon with the hope of eventually escaping.
The levels are clearly constructed, and since you usually enter in a spot out of danger you’ve time to evaluate which way you need to go and the hazards you need to avoid. Of course, jumping around, over or between hazards needs timing, poise and… well, as I said this is one of those one-hit, one-kill, restart games. One wrong move and you needs to start all over again. The game has a points system, and around levels you will find coins to collect if you wish to bring up your score. Of course, to get to those coins you need to risk restarting the level again so it’s perfectly possible to grab the key and run if you want. Levels will also gain enemies that can kill you also in one touch, but very much like a Goomba they can be stomped upon and at times will need to be to clear certain areas and make them safe for you.
As I said in the beginning, even if you’re not fond of a genre that doesn’t mean a game in it is necessary ‘bad’. There’s been games I am terrible at, but know that they’re great games – I just suck at them. Dungeon Escape however, does not feel like one of those games. There’s very little reward for making it through levels other than unlocking the next one in the chain. Timing jumps, getting through spaces, hitting something and having to do it all over again? It’s not fun and this is one of the few games I’ve ever truly felt like rage quitting on. There wasn’t even a decent story to follow from level to level; I don’t know who this character is I play as, why they’re in this dungeon in the first place, if there’s any antagonists with sentience and if there’s any secrets deeper in the dungeon to discover. That would have at least kept me engaged. That being said, it seems the game was the work of one person but surely even one guy can add a little backstory?
If the challenge and making it through is the payoff that matters for you in the game, you will probably like this game more than I do. I however cannot really recommend this one. It’s a well-put together game and functions perfectly – there’s just nothing to make me want to continue playing.
If you were hoping to get your hands on Halo Wars 2 physically and live in the States, I’ve some bad news. Microsoft have officially cancelled the production of the physical edition of the game in the US – although digital copies will still be available.
Speaking to Halo Waypoint, 343’s community manager Brian Jarrard said “Our retail plans have shifted and Microsoft has made the decision to focus the release of the physical retail version to Europe only. We apologise to any customers affected by the change in our retail plans, and thank everyone for the continued support as we look forward to the release of Halo Wars 2 for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC.”
Originally THQ Nordic was supposed to be responsible for the physical edition as they did with Microsoft for both Quantum Break and Ori and the Blind Forest’s physical editions, but now it seems plans have changed it seems. If you want a physical copy now, you’ll have to get one imported from Europe or elsewhere. The Windows Store will still have digital copies available globally though of course.
Halo Wars 2 will release on February 21st, and will be a Play Anywhere title, so if you buy for Windows 10 you can still play it on your Xbox One and vice-versa.
Welcome to the weekly update on interesting gaming Kickstarter campaigns. Firstly we catch up with some of our previously covered campaigns, and we have quite a few updates to bring to you.
In the good news camp, we have two campaigns that finished with goals met – UnDungeon and Pixel Princess Blitz, both of which I have noted met their targets in previous week updates. Either way, it’s nice to see both ideas set to become reality. Three other games have reached their goals, although haven’t yet concluded their campaigns. These are LEGRAND LEGACY, The Pedestrian (which might have just gotten a boost from a popular Youtuber’s video released today) and Die For Valhalla – all will hopefully become good games once the campaigns are concluded. BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION is also very close to reaching its goal, but has only 4 days to do it in – so we’ll see.
However, there are some other updates which aren’t so good. Project Life for example has 7 days to go to make a £2,000 goal of which it has only raised £5 of. Not quite impossible but very, very difficult to get done. What is most surprising though is the update I have to give you about Elite: Dangerous Role-Playing Game. The campaign page had listed that the project was officially sanctioned by the makers of the game – yet now the page redirects to an “intellectual dispute” page the same as Berghein’s does. Whether this means that the ‘official’ part was a lie or not, is unknown. I’ll update you in weeks to come on changes.
First up, we have something a little bit different from the normal things covered in this weekly article – a piece of hardware.
Marketed as a smartwatch for gamers, Gameband will apparently be coming with “a built-in upgradable MicroSD drive, gaming design” (which probably means it’ll light up in awesome ways) and “exclusive content”; whatever that actually means. The device has been covered on a number of different outlets already and the list on the campaign page includes The Daily Dot, the Discovery Channel and Engadget.
Whether you think this is a gadget or needed, enough people have already backed it to bypass its $75,000 twice over. Check it out if you wish to join them in funding the Gameband.
Now we have a top-down brawler game, which by the looks of it contains animal people.
The image of this one shows three different animal characters, including a bear with a braided dwarven beard – and that’s actually kind of awesome. You build your character from a list of abilities and outfits, then take to the arena to fight for your tribe’s glory as you compete to slay your opponents. Inspired by a mod from Warcraft III, the dev team is hoping to capture the fun of fast-paced, chaotic gameplay fun – which as long as your connection holds should be possible given that this game is online multiplayer PvP anarchy.
RUiN has a SEK 100,000 goal, of which is has made SEK 77,758 with 23 days to go.
Next up we have a game that’s attempting to make a new ‘type’ of game.
Dubbed a “technical platformer” by the developers, FictionSphere is combining elements from hack n’ slash, fighting games and platformers with a story. Said story can be experienced in two different ways based on which character you play as; Ratio who is more of a platformer-type character, or Paradox who is a hack n’ slash-type character. It’s certainly ambitious.
FictionSphere has 29 days to go to make its $30,000 goal, of which it has made $341 so far.
Finally we have a survival multiplayer game, as you can probably tell from the title.
Deep World seems to be inspired by Limbo’s aesthetic, being dark and shady. The backgrounds are in greys and the characters appear as silhouettes with white eyes on the background, as well as the game looking to be in 2D. You play as a character awoken on a hostile island and you must craft, hunt, eat, drink and survive while you scavenge the parts of a helicopter and build it to eventually escape this creepy place.
Deep World has made MX$ 2,510 of its MX$ 80,000goal and has 27 days to go.
