PlayStation 4

The Rising Cost of Add-Ons and DLC

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Somewhere along the line, we lost faith as gamers that we were getting all that we paid for. Downloadable Content (DLC) has become a sticking point for many consumers who believe part of the game they paid for has been held back so the publisher/developer can milk some more heard earned coin from your digital pocket. This is regardless of the price, although this in itself has become more of a sticking point since the Next Generation consoles and game development costs have pushed the price of games up significantly in the past 24 months.

It also seems the higher costs appear to be based around publishers Activision and EA over most other publishers. How do I get that? Well I could have done some very deep research but the truth is that I didn’t have to. Here’s a list of Season Passes on the PS3 Playstation Store… Yes, there’s a dedicated section for them:

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  • Call of Duty Ghosts – £34.99
  • Alien Isolation – £24.99
  • Defiance – £24.99 (It is worth noting that Defiance is now a free-to-play game)
  • Sniper Elite 3 – £24.99
  • Destiny – £34.99
  • Battlefield 4 Premium – £39.99
  • GRID Autosport – £24.99
  • Assassins Creed 3 – £25.99
  • Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag – £15.99
  • Little Big Planet 2 DC Comics – £19.99
  • Borderlands 2 – £19.99

 

I’ve only selected some here. There are a lot that are free or that have dropped in price like The Last of Us. But it is easy to see why people are beginning to get angry when they are paying arguably the cost of a new game (based on internet retail prices) for DLC. This is a new area for retail where the availability of internet speed has basically made the retail space redundant for them to sell this extra content and they can price it as accordingly as they want.

Why do I mention the retail space? Because before DLC was the done thing, it was Add-Ons. In some cases they are still called that but the distinction for me in the current gaming industry vernacular would suggest that Add-Ons are physical copies of this extra content. This is something that has been in gaming for many, many years. Sonic and Knuckles was one of the first physical game add-ons although this was also a game in itself. Westwood had several different releases for the Command & Conquer series. Heroes of Might and Magic, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, Half-Life… The list can go on and on.

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The biggest cash cow for this is undoubtedly the one that completely changed the market. It didn’t give the game much extra other than things to use in the game, and some extra spaces but that didn’t stop its rise to being one of the most profitable franchises in gaming history. The Sims had seven expansion packs which roughly retailed around $24.99/£19.99 from what I remember (I am looking for confirmation on prices and will update the article if they come). The Sims 2 had eight expansion packs and ten extra content packs. Although these all did add things to the games, if you had them all you would have spent well over $300 on getting them all. It’s hardly EA’s fault really. They had a product that people were willing to throw monumental amounts of money at and they said “fair enough”, and provided them with ways to do that. Regardless of your thoughts on EA, it was good business. And if the cost of their packages had an effect on the industry and kept prices stable then it would have been great. I suppose you could argue that historically, additional content for a game in the form of an expansion pack, or more common nowadays a season pass, has roughly been around half or 2/3 of the original game’s retail price.

That is possibly the problem though. There doesn’t seem to be any industry standard as to what a recommend retail price for add-ons or DLC should be. Partially because the content can vary so much as to what you get and partially because the publishers have to decide on the offset of profit versus development cost recovery. That’s sadly just business, any business. Regardless if us as gamers want to hear it, we should know that behind the art we love is a business that needs to survive under the insurmountable pressure of rising costs and international market difficulties. Don’t worry, I’m not looking for an argument or defending any one company here, but it needs to be said that there is a business behind us being provided with this entertainment.

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The problem with that business is that the regulation on it appears to be quite sketchy. PS Store, Wii Store, Xbox Live are all digital retail spaces. Physical retail stores (supermarkets, specialist retailers, etc) will also sell this content by code card. So there must be some portion of this that has to be compliant with fair pricing across the board. But the consumer does seem to get a bum deal out of all of this. When you buy Battlefield and Call of Duty (the latter arguably having the possibility to have the best selling game of the year, as it always does), you are paying around $44.99/£38.99 on average for the retail game and now with the next generation, that’s more like $64.99/£59.99. You expect to pay some money for some extra content but the amount of content that these games are providing, with mostly extra maps and gameplay modes (which the game must be ready to support at launch otherwise it’d be a major code rewrite), can cost a massive amount of money to the consumer in total. That’s not to say that you don’t get a lot of extra stuff though. In the case of Call of Duty Ghosts from Activision, the Onslaught, Devastation, Invasion and Nemesis packs (the Dynasty map is pictured), gives you 16 extra maps and some extra weapons along with episodic content for the Extinction series. In the case of Battlefield 4 from EA there are five extra packs, China Rising, Second Assault, Naval Strike, Dragon’s Teeth and Final Stand, making an additional 20 maps, three new game types and a load of extra weapons.

So much is available that the season passes seems to be the obvious way to get it all for a cheaper price. In the case of those two games (you can see the prices above on the Playstation Store list for the most recent releases) the season passes are nearly the price of another game. These are all for extra maps which you have no idea if you’d enjoy and in a way are forced to buy in order to continue your full enjoyment of the game. Why? Because someone WILL buy them and so will many others and if that stops your online enjoyment with everyone playing the new stuff you haven’t got then you either buy it or ditch the game. In the case of Xbox and Call of Duty, and Playstation with Destiny, these expansions are mostly exclusive to that console and the expansions are the selling point. Which when you think about it is a completely ridiculous concept when you just want to buy a game and could arguably be damaging to the industry. But again that is just business. Look at how television handles exclusivity of certain shows/licences to get subscribers to their packages or advertisers to their viewers, and how that’s damaged the public broadcasting sector.

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The price of those season passes you could argue is roughly in line with the price idea I made earlier and that the model is still fairly accurate; Half or 2/3’s of the original game’s retail price. But in the case of these games, like Destiny, we have no idea what we are getting for these season passes and if they quantify the amount of money we’re spending on them for the entertainment value we receive, regardless of work being put in. The two Destiny add-ons that are coming don’t appear to give us new planets or places to visit, but additional missions and story in the existing worlds. In fact we know so little about them that our cynicism is being unintentionally qualified. Watch_Dogs was another example of not knowing what the game will give us. We have a few extra modes for the in-game mini-games and now a new single player story add-on. But how much content is there that takes the developer more money than was already spent on the game at launch? How much money are these companies looking to make from the post-launch additional content? And how justified is it to market your game or your console’s exclusivity based on these maps/modes/skins/extras? Our cynicism is based around a game already having the additional content spaces ready and that the content we buy is merely assets for it, updates for it or just a patch that unlocks it. Before when this content was physically brought, we were kind of assured that there must be more than we had before otherwise what would be the point in having a new disk for it?

The rising cost of Add-Ons and DLC can partially be paired to the rising cost of games in general. But as the internet and journalism has begun to open the debate on this, and the gaming consumer becomes like any other consumer in a tricky economic climate, that being incredibly savvy and questioning, the conversation is only just beginning. Also with certain games being re-released with everything included some 12-18 months later for the same price as the original game, or with updated graphics for the new generation as well, this will add more focus on what makes good sense to a consumer. With the Christmas period around the corner and the publishers needs to release games on a yearly basis to maximise profit, we’ll see how this new generation handles the consumer when we feel that we are not getting enough for what we’re shelling out. I predict that some games will be guilty of doing less with their content in this regard and we can probably make predictions as to who will be more guilty than others. But in the next 12 months we’ll see how people will react to paying nearly 75% of the cost of the game for extra in that game, and I’m sure we’ll find out how much of that could have been included at launch.

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Shadow Warrior – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Shadow Warrior may be recognisable to those of you with longer memories as a PC title from the brains behind Duke Nukem 3D. It may also be recognisable to those of you who have shorter memories and remember a reboot of the game that came out on PC last year. Well this year it’s getting the console treatment and the next-generation will not be spared the violently comical franchises it so richly deserves.

Let’s be completely honest, Duke Nukem’s modern reboot (the long laboured and best forgotten Duke Nukem Forever) was a complete bust. Long loading times, some substandard gameplay, fairly poor graphics and humour that was so purile, it was like watching your very well hidden child home videos with your fiancee whilst your parents and her chortle with glee at your hilarious pre-pubescent self, while you sit and cringe waiting for it to be over. Shadow Warrior had the potential to be in the same boat.

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I say had as, given that the game has already been out for a year, you probably know quite a bit already. But in regards to the next generation consoles, it does benefit from some excellent vibrant graphics and a control system that very ably substitutes its WASD origins for a controller. In fact I was very impressed with the graphics. Games like this, a first person shooter/slasher, can suffer with ports and reboots by being to attached to their roots. This gives them a very repetitive and bland beige colour palette to work with and in the case of Shadow Warrior, this could have been the case given the original game’s closeness to Duke 3D. Thankfully though, its roots seem to be left purely in the basics of the game.

There is something that I adore about oriental gardens, architecture and the kind of mansions and areas that you see mostly in old Jet Li movies. The vibrant colours of the flowers and trees that mix brilliantly with the wood of the buildings and the Koi ponds that, while cliche, put you in the atmosphere. That is something that Shadow Warriors does very well. It gives you a nice sense of aesthetic grounding before the chaos and comedy begins. Lo Wang is every B-movie’s best character moulded in to one. A cocksure young warrior/assassin with talent but also an ego that would see him diva his way out of a Simon Cowell X-Factor winners contract and in to rehab. The slicing, shooting and general ass kicking comes with occasional one liners and observations that thankfully don’t make you cringe like it’s forbearers roots. It leads itself away from the older siblings blatant lampooning of action tropes and gives itself its own story.

A story that sees you at the centre of a battle for an old sword between your boss and a business man that leads to you allowing a fiery demon to jump on board and help you slay many weird demonic abominations coming your way. The Kill Bill-esque nature of the absurdity of the violence and the situation has always fitted quite well with video games and with what we played already, it certainly fits the console too. One thing we’ve never got right on consoles, and I’m sure most PC games haven’t either, is the ability to wield a sword and slash the living crap out of everything in sight and give a decent game at the same time. Redsteel possibly came closest in recent years but was devoid of anything involving fun. And that’s the key to a game like this, you need to have fun.

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And fun we had. We actually did, for a time where you don’t know what to expect, given the nature of recent 3D Realms reboots, we actually have a fun game that doesn’t take itself seriously but has enough work on the mechanics of the game and the control system for it to be good fun. Especially given its graphic violence. In honesty, my enjoyment of this could be a short term thing, but it will be fun while it lasts. And that interest in revitalising old FPS franchises seems to be a big thing at the moment, especially given the success of the newest Wolfenstein game. Those gameplay mechanics -look for a key card, kill all the things, find the way to do it that you enjoy the most – seems to appeal to me as an older gamer who’s a little bit tired of the modern style of levelling everything up and unlocking every single camo pack imaginable. There are cool collectibles to find along the way and a nice part of the control system is easily being able to change weapons and upgrade your abilities with money also found in the game, which manifest themselves in tattoos, which is a nice touch. There’s even weapons in a pre order version from Serious Sam and Hotline Miami, given that this is being released by publisher Devolver Digital. I’m looking forward to the arena mode where wave upon wave of things will come to kill you. That will be bloody, good fun.

The original game, along with this game, is nowhere near a viable representation of Eastern lore or story. In fact the original was heavily criticised. And if you’re looking for a new atmospheric dark Tenchu style game to sink in to, this isn’t it. But it is a good way to spend a weekend. Given the success of the recent revamps, Duke Nukem Forever not withstanding, these games seem to be bringing a simple and less involved sense of fun to the FPS genre. I hope that one day another offshoot of the 3D Realms engine, Redneck Rampage, will come back for more. For now though, work out a weekend you can put aside this October, go and get some Ashai’s ready, order some takeout and be ready for a slashing good time.

[author]

Project Cars interview with Andy Tudor

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Project Cars is the new offering from Slightly Mad Studios. Sean got to sit down and chat with Creative Director Andy Tudor about the game at EGX.

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Project Cars is a very big, graphically awesome simulation. Simulation is the key word here I suppose compared to everything else that’s out there.

Yeah, I think the word simulation or simulator kind of gives people the impression that it’s hard, or difficult and challenging. But actually, all it means is simulating real life so it’s accurate, realistic. But compared to the competition there is out there, we said from day one planting our flag in the sand, we were going to be a competitor for Forza and Gran Tourismo. Compared to the other guys that are in that arcade space. So if you’re looking for that Forza/Gran Tourismo kind of game with a bunch of features that have never been in those games but have been on the PC sims, just not on console, the Project Cars is just that.

I’m a child of the Geoff Crammond years so I love the… I say simulation aspect but I probably mean the more technical tweaking aspects of it. And there’s a lot of things in Project Cars in driving that you won’t normally feel in other games because of those options. Just tell us a little bit of how you managed to recreate that experience so realistically especially on tracks like Brands Hatch.

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With Brands Hatch we used a laser scan. So we have the mathematical data of it, we know the elevation changes and all that stuff. Next the track team go out there and take gigabytes of data so we know visually what its like. The third thing is getting the guys out there to try it out themselves. So if you were watching a race at Brands Hatch on TV, you would see the cars flying around the track and they’d look perfectly smooth. Get in there, get in to a Formula Brands/Formula 4 kind of car, and go down the main pit straight, the engine the right behind you 6 inches away from your head, the car is screaming, the wing mirrors are vibrating so much and you’re making all these micro little movements. When you’re braking the car is trying to get away from you and you’re hearing the tinkle of gravel, tarmac and bits of rubber underneath the car… That kind of stuff you never see on TV or hear about it in a press briefing afterwards from the drivers, you don’t see it in the grandstand. You only get to experience that when you’re doing it yourself. That’s the key to it. The mathematical data is there, there visual data is there but the emotional bit is the thing that we bring to the table.

You’ve had a lot of input from racing drivers across different disciplines. How’s their involvement in the game helped?

It’s kind of come full circle. Usually when you hear about racing drivers giving their input in to games it’s usually at the end where there’s marketing pushes. But we’ve had those guys from day one so it’s a different angle. Ben Collins, the former Top Gear Stig, we hired because he doesn’t like racing games so he’d give us completely honest feedback. Nicholas Hamilton (brother of Formala One world champion Lewis Hamilton) has been playing sim racing games on PC for years. So he gives valuable insight on the expectations of that community, what the games get wrong and how Project Cars can do it right. Ollie Webb is a test driver for BAC Mono. He’s a European Le Mans driver so he’s driven 75% of the tracks in our game as well. So he can give us incredible insight on the car on a one to one basis and give us a direct comparison and he can say “oh I was just at Monza and they’ve changed the rumble strips.”. So much so [is the games realism from driver input] that real drivers are using it for training for the real thing. It was completely out of the blue that Rene Rast, a German GT driver, showed up on YouTube with a video of him driving Project Cars on the Le Mans track and was within one tenth of his real life lap time. He was using it because the game is so accurate that when he’d go to do the real thing, he’d have the sense of training you can’t get on a multi million pound Formula One simulator.

I noticed racing on Brands Hatch, something that most racing games don’t achieve is how thin the start finish straight is and how claustrophobic it feels.

Brands has got great elevation. Your eyes have a certain field of view. In games you have a different field of view. So you need to do things to make sure you get the same as you get in real life. [At Brands] You can’t see the peak of the hill from the cockpit. So it’s little things like that .

There’s been a lot of feedback from the manufacturers. Who have you had involved?

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We’re an independent developer but we’ve been doing games for 10 years so we have a relationship with a lot of manufacturers and a lot of track licencees as well. So there are certain cases, those guys are coming to us saying “We loved what you did in Shift 2 or GT-R and we’ve heard you’re doing something new, we’d love to have our cars in the game.” They’ve been absolutely great. The cars are 1:1 recreations, we get CAD data, the technical data, the lap-time information, plug it in to our engine. The guys make the cars from million of photo references from the manufacturers. We make sure the liveries are all painted effectively. We make sure the paint schemes are all perfect as well. We make sure all the interiors are done; every car has a full cockpit with functional dashboard as well. And then we have to give it back to the manufacturers so that they can approve it. So they have to be accurate. Graphics wise, we have got to the point where we can make everything photo real. The next generation consoles are quite capable of achieving photo realisim with glass and metal which makes up about 95% of a car. So they are a 1:1 recreation.

Racing games create massive communities, people who share their set-ups, form clubs and clans. There’s already quite a big community and interest around Project Cars. 

Absolutely and it’s always in our intention to not be hypocritical and support our community after launch. Which is why we have the Driver Network. Your profile is your licence and your stats, showing your what you need to improve. Your favorite cars and tracks, tracking your reputation online, how much you cause yellow flags, etc. The other big area is sharing. Steam has the screenshot gallery, you can stream by twitch, you’ve got the Xbox One Upload studio, you’ve got the share button on PS4, and YouTube. If you go to our Driver Network Flikr pages and YouTube playlist, we’re showcasing all the best bits from the community. Some people live on different time zones and even if you aren’t, the chances of you being online at the same time as a friend is a lot slimmer than before. With Project Cars you can do time trials against each other by downloading the ghost of a friend or anyone on the leader board. So you can see how people get those amazing time. And finally you have the Driver Network Community events. These are regularly scheduled events happening all the time, and everyone loves bragging rights.

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What has the feedback from players and the community been like so far?

Honestly if it was terrible, I’d tell you. But it’s been really good. There’s so much feedback from people who are playing and what they want. Graphically it looks great, gameplay is great. We’ve got a FAQ’s on our page but everyone wants to know about what cars are coming, what tracks, Oculus Rift support, wanting to set up their driver clubs and clans. So it’s been great but we are an independent studio and it’s taken a long time. Project Cars is ambitious but it’s worked. The PS4 version is already there and Xbox One version will be 1080p and 60fps at launch. We’ve always been honest about getting there and we have.

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Project Cars will be available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 on November 18th US and November 21st in the EU, with SteamOS and WiiU versions to follow in 2015.

[author]

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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The legend of Sherlock Holmes is arguably much bigger than the character of Sherlock Holmes, although myth would be more of a pertinent description given that he is fictional. In recent times the harsh and terse nature of his personality has come through with the popular TV adaptation by the BBC and Steven Moffat. Even though that itself has become more clouded due to the absolutely gorgeous hunk of enthralling talented man that is Benedict Cumberbatch… What I’m a man, I can say it, right ladies?

But Crimes and Punishments, the new adventure by Focus Interactive and Frogwares does something that takes a literary starting point, grabs a lot of the old school TV characterisations, mixes them with the modern day artistic interpretations of Holmes’s mind and puts them in to an interactive detective story that will drive your moral compass around the bend. That’s one of the slightly out there things of this game, the inspiration from a literary source that isn’t even a Conan Doyle story, despite the game taking it’s characters, setting and tone from his books.

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The title of the game comes from Dostoevsky’s similarly titled epic novel following Rodion Raskolnikov who balances his decision to raise himself out of poverty by murdering a pawnbroker and robbing her. Therefore giving him money to live and perform good deeds whilst getting rid of a fairly odious person in process. It’s this ethos that has allowed Frogwares to create a Holmes character that, whilst you are playing through him, is not the central protagonist of the game. And that is something that could and should make you a little bit uncomfortable.

Because the issue here isn’t that the game allows you to solve mysteries. It allows you to deduct and conclude on a selection of many possibilities. Whilst there is a right and wrong answer (which you can spoil if you want to) the game presents you with the strange juxtaposition, strange for a game of its ilk anyway, of having multiple different outcomes that you decide upon. The clues are presented to you and you deductions allow you to not only decide who is guilty of whichever case you are on, but also how you handle their potential incarceration; with the full weight of the law or with a lenient more liberal approach to the situation they find themselves in. What that also means is that you can be wrong but still complete the case.

The clues are very easily presented to you. They aren’t too hard to find and if you get frustrated it is very easy to just back off slightly and take stock. Most of the complex issues in the game are logic puzzles which are easily solved with a bit of time and patience, some of them involving chemistry, metallurgy and other things in Holmes own desktop laboratory. Some of the puzzles require some research in Holmes’s extensive archive and others are ones that need his expert view or the use of his imagination. The way you explore the scenes of the crimes and the people you interview very much lends itself to the more modern interpretation of Holmes, which, in the interactive form of a game, is entirely justified. Including the deduction screens allowing you to form the cerebral paths of choices with the clues you have discovered. The case book is easily navigated and isn’t a burden to the game experience either, although could be a little more encompassing and possibly even allow for a hint or two if you are getting a bit stuck.

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From a character point of view, you spend your time in the ego of Holmes. He is, for want of a better term, a bit of a prick. He has the smugness of intelligence and an overly authoritative air, but at no times does he become insufferable. And as soon as you finish the first case, you realise that he is merely the vehicle for you to make those hard moral decisions. As a character himself he does use the crime scenes and Scotland Yard as his own personal playground. He feels he is above a lot of the general day to day process of the police and the slightly dim-witted Inspector Lestrade and a fawning Dr Watson, who would have been great as a character to give hints if you so desired. He is complete with his vices, at one point coming down from what appeared to be a very heavy opium trip, which allows you to see how he is operating way beyond a merely human capacity. His eyes, his perspiration and his slightly ragged appearance at times allow you to see that he is flawed, despite his genius.

The characters around Sherlock, despite the two fairly tepid interpretations of Lestrade and Watson, are quite alive and enjoyable to talk to and discover. And by discover I mean completely judge them. The look of the characters of course allows your immediate reaction to their mindset, personalities and history, a bit like LA Noire. But their speech and utter Victorian stoic tones make extrapolating what they say more challenging in your deductions. Victorian London and its areas are very nicely recreated in the game. Everything from the Verulanium ruins in St Albans, Kew Gardens and the offices of Scotland Yard. Even the many stations in the railway case are very atmospheric and lovingly created. But they all also have that quiet and slightly antiquated air that you’d assume from a Victorian setting. Yet the stories that occur in them are full of intrigue and adventure and exploration. Especially the case where you explore the Roman baths.

From that point of view, and of course I will not spoil a single thing in these cases, they are very well designed, breeding intrigue, and have multiple characters that could all be guilty. The dialogue is well acted enough without being too hammy or not engaging enough. The addition of Toby, Holmes dog, is a nice touch too with his GTA V-esque smell tracing ability, along with some little parts of the Holmes universe that doesn’t serve a story purpose but exists for the atmosphere. The characters aren’t as well animated as LA Noire but are good enough for the type of game this is. In fact to call this is simple point and click detective game set in a 3D environment would be disingenuous as the moral aspect of the game and the lack of progression importance on what is right and wrong clearly defines it as it own.

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The only criticisms of the game that I have is that at times, and that maybe because of the nature of trying to explore absolutely everything on my part, is that the game can be a bit slow. As the puzzles become more trickier and the areas of exploration larger and more diverse you do end up taking more time to complete a case and, whilst the different endings do give you quite the replay value, it also puts you off a little because of the time you would need to sink in to it. Once you discover the run button with the right trigger/R2 it is a bit of a godsend because getting around at a walking pace is incredibly laborious. The soundtrack is nice, haunting and quite unobtrusive, but it is only really at the title screen that its noticeable and it would have been nice to have a little more in the game. The puzzles whilst challenging and as the game progresses become more challenging, also don’t seem to change much out of their three main types. Lock picking, chemical tests and the occasional logic puzzle. Some cases excel at it more than others which leaves the gameplay a little stale at times.

Crimes and Punishments presents a strange case for review because it is a successful game that you could argue doesn’t really have much depth out of its 3D adventure setting. Yet the success and point of this game is to challenge your perception of right and wrong and the moral choices you make. What kind of person are you to decide the fate of these suspects? A harsh master exacting the law to its fullest degree, a pacifist that sees the deeper side of the emotional torment in the cases or a flake who doesn’t want to get their hands dirty at all? In that way it is completely successful but does it make a game? Well we play The Sims in order to have this kind of perverse control of perceived life and this game in that way is no different. In fact it’s almost more perverse given that we discover a lot more and have a more intelligently formed decision about the characters and situations in the game. Which means that in this way, the game completely gets it right. It is pleasant to look at and enjoyable to play but is it open enough in its game play to be an amazing game? I’m not sure, I can’t decide. What I can decide though is that this game certainly sets a great standard for games of the detective genre and the shifting of moral choices directly in to your hands is the right amount of unsettling to keep me playing the game.

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Crimes and Punishments in one way fulfils its remit of being a high definition 3rd person investigation game which could be classed as middling. But the mind games it plays with its deductions and moral choice dynamic lifts it above that in to an unsettling yet enjoyable experience.

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– Moral Choice system works well
– Good stories and characters
– Visually great recreation of Holmes’ world

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[tab title=”Bad Points”]

– Can be a bit slow
– Support characters a bit tepid
– Puzzles don’t change too much

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[tab title=”Why an 8?”]

Because whilst the game had the potential to be a lot lower score, it is a very good experience, visually well presented and the stories are enjoyable to play. Even if you spend hours debating the moral choices you make in deciding who’s guilty.

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This review is based on the PS4 version of the game.

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[author]

Lords of the Fallen – Hands on Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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The last time we saw Lords of the Fallen was back in April. At that time, we got to see a big demonstration of a level by executive producer, Tomaz Gop, and had a few words with him. This time, he gave us the game for an hour and personally guided us through our play through! Which was nice, seeing the developer enjoying you playing and noticing how you play. So I apologise if I inadvertently nerfed anything. Given my last impressions, there were a few things that were worrying me, but with time spent playing the game these fears have definitely been addressed. Although the news broke just after I played that the Xbox One version will run at a lower resolution than the PS4 version, there is time to find some extra memory to ramp it up which I’m sure Microsoft will insist on.

The joys of having a game that shares similarities with other RPG titles like Dark Souls and The Witcher (the latter especially given Gop’s previous involvent with the series) does help you pick up and play the game, even though he admits the controls can be very tricky without the use of a tutorial. Whilst you get the basic idea very quickly there are a lot of nuances to the controls and your approach to the game that are best picked up in action. However the choice you make before you even start playing also dictates the style of game you play along with the controls you’ll be using.

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It’s not terribly over the top, you’ll have three classes to choose from. But the options after that and how you unlock things and progress later on in the game are all dictated by this choice. In this way the accumulation of spells, disciplines, armour class choices and the like owe a lot more to table top RPG gaming like Dungeons & Dragons. The way you can bank your experience is very useful. You aren’t set against just having enough XP for a level up. You can pick and choose how much you want to use towards each upgrade and slowly build it up without having to blow it all on one point upgrade at a time. It’s quite a nice system so that you can feel your progression and feel that you’re using your XP in the best way for you. The art style both, in game and in menus, is given a full on fantasy role playing vibe. Much like Magic the Gathering in the way a card system is used to help the character profile screens. You can still be over encumbered and things your character can’t use are still available, like boss drops. It all adds to how you handle the role playing element which doesn’t punish your smashing bad guys element of the game too much to be completely infuriating. Instead it compliments it well and visa versa. Which as a fan of fantasy but a hater of complex inventory/XP systems I very much approve of.

I started as a guy with medium armour which meant I was dead within a few shots but could move with enough agility to avoid most of the damage and time my attacks. There’s a lot of dodging but also the option for stealth which, especially when you get a few blind enemies around you, allows you to pick and choose your battles. The levels are very dynamic as well. It isn’t just enemy after enemy after enemy followed by boss. There’s lots of hidden places you can explore and extras you can get if you keep your eyes open. Hidden passages and the like can be found along with scrolls that open up a audio note style story nuggets, like Bioshock. Which is nice and it doesn’t move you out of the game. One thing with the controls though, especially given that they can be tricky to start, is how unobtrusive everything is to the in game screen. Everything is a nice size to allow you to see the world and spot all those nooks and crannies. If you change your weapon or magic for example, you’ll have a small notification of what it has changed to.

The thing is with this game is that you can play it how you want to. I’m not a stealthy guy. I’m a very smash and move kind of guy or I’ll pick people off from afar. Unless I know a lot about the world, I won’t care too much about the sheer volume of consumables and objects that can encumber you. In fact the size of Skyrim and everything you can get is one of the things I occasionally dislike about that game. But Lords of the Fallen has this very fluid, very easy to pick up feel about it which, once you acclimatise yourself to it, rewards you greatly. Its screens and options for objects, items and upgradable parts aren’t too overwhelming enough to detract you from playing the game.

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Additions to your weapons this way feel smooth and you really adapt them to how you play with them. When I switched to my second character with his dual daggers, but lighter more death inviting armour, it was a style I was not accustomed to and I found it harder. But with my starter character, I would have progressed him and made him better for my style of play. Lords allows you to do that very easily. The magic options are also very cool if you go down that route. There was a gauntlet which gave me a poison grenade launcher and a magic missile. It’s fun and adds more tactical elements to how you attract and damage enemies. My favourite magic has to be one that mimics your every move for a short time, including attacks, effectively doubling your attack for that time. It’s all very cool.

There are several little things that make me like this game a bit more than the onslaught that Dark Souls brings. Firstly, the lockable camera allows you to keep your focus in battle on a specific target and is easily switched. That’s a great help for the amount of times you duck and roll and keeps you in the fight rather than bouncing off the environment and getting one-hit-smashed to oblivion. You’ll find special challenges throughout the map that are dimensional portals. When you die the ghost of you remains, like Dark Souls. Except, this can be an advantage as your ghost gives you a health buff while you’re in the vicinity of it. I used it, once I died to a boss, as a health regeneration point and kept it there so I could fight the boss around this buff. You won’t get the XP straight away but it’s a nice tactical approach that can aid you. Strike combos make you feel like you’re achieving some awesome damage, much like a Dynasty Warriors game would. The influences from other games are very noticeable but that isn’t to the detriment of Lords, in fact it accentuates its positives.

Those positives are that the game is very easy to play, the control mapping isn’t all over the place and uses held buttons rather than complex D-Pad selections. In fact you can select and deselect your favourite consumable options to make the D-pad essentially your healing potion button. The art is visually stunning and each area feels as atmospheric as Dark Souls and the enemies are just as nasty looking as those in Doom and other horror/fantasy games. The demonic mini-boss I faced reminded me of the devil from Dungeon Keeper which has always looked incredibly cool. The game is tricky and challenging but not in the constant death way of Dark Souls. You don’t get that sense of frustration that sometimes Souls gives you. The game gives you the right amount of options to be able to carve your own Harkyn and your own style of play. The bosses do different things during their battles and it makes fighting them more challenging than just noticing their attack and vunerability cycle. The extras are nice to find and don’t completely obscure you playing the game and keep you in the world more so than the Elder Scrolls games do.

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Back in April I was excited for Lords of the Fallen but a little bit worried it’d be too much like other games or slightly tepid or more focused on the visuals to create a game worth playing. Now I’ve played it, my opinion has completely changed. It’s a game I can’t wait to play, I can’t wait to see speed runs for and I can’t wait to talk about. The next generation hardware was always going to give us good benchmarks for future games. There’s lots of fantasy RPG’s coming out with Shadows of Mordor and Dragon Age. But I think Lords will keep a very good and dedicated audience happy and set a bench mark for other RPG’s to aspire to in the coming years.

Lords of the Fallen is due for release on 31st October for PC, Xbox One and PS4.

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Dragon Age Inquisition interview with Neil Thompson

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Dragon Age Inquisition is the new offering from Bioware in the franchise that has very quickly become a fantasy icon in video gaming. Sean got to sit down at EGX with Bioware’s Director of art and animation, Neil Thompson, and have a few words about it.

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It’s a very interesting art style compared to other Dragon Age games, especially with the Frostbite 3 engine. How did that come about?

Well the interesting answer is the adoption of Frostbite. We did the previous two Dragon Age games on a Bioware engine called Eclipse and I think it’s safe to say it was starting to show its age. We wanted to take Dragon Age Inquisition on to the new hardware and new generation. What does that mean? Well a lush, diverse and complex experience and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t apply to us like everyone else. We’d already seen what Frostbite was capable of with Battlefield and we wanted a piece of that.

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How has that approached how you create the game? Before the previous Dragon Age’s single player experiences very much in the Bioware theme and the characters and now it’s multiplayer and more open.

Multiplayer is one aspect of the game but the single player and multiplayer are still two different things. The single player experience is still an immense priority for us. We wanted to extend that single player experience, larger worlds, and better combat. You don’t allow the paradigm of the hardware or the engine to dictate what we wanted to achieve with the franchise. We wanted push the pillars of Dragon Age with a more open world experience, a larger or more diverse world. That’s what we wanted to use for the game because we felt it would be a better experience for the player.

The advent of the new generation consoles has come along at the right time for you to embellish that as well?

We are on all five consoles with presents a challenge in itself. But the move to the next gen has made the older generation versions better because of it. We try to satisfy the needs of the players across all platforms. We don’t want the last generation console owners to get less of an experience than the other console owners.

The art style has changed, partly because of the Frostbite 3 engine and you’ve been able to put new features in to the game like the tactical view. Tell us a little bit about how that came about.

Well it’s the result, not really of Frostbite option, but between the team and the creative director that they wanted that RPG experience. Origins and many of our games have that dynamic and I think it really enhances the combat. You can play the game with the traditional third person way and its fine. But if the challenge becomes too much you can always pause and think about it more strategically and from a party perspective. Rather than just playing from the one view.

Where did the inspirations of that mode come from and for it to be as seamless as it is, because you can see comparisons to MOBA’s and Warcraft?

Well I think Bioware’s inspiration goes back further to Baldur’s Gate and those top down RPG’s.

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The game is the third in the franchise, so you’re fairly well established with Dragon Age and what you do. There’s a lot of other games as well coming around at the same time with competition like Lords of the Fallen, Shadows of Morder, Elder Scrolls Online. How will your game go in that kind of market as it is very different and unique compared to what is there?

It is and what I think is good and that is positive for the Fantasy space market is that it is possible to sustain multiple franchises. And it just encourages strength across the board. Fantasy has had something of a revival in recent years with Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and stuff which is fantastic, a positive environment for fantasy and the games that inhabit it. So I think it’s great for everyone.

You say fantasy is having a bit of a revival, I’d say role-playing as well is having a renaissance. Dungeon’s and Dragons is back again with new rules, simplified. There’s a lot more indie gaming that’s using the mechanics. How do you keep things accessible when there’s a lot of other options and different things about?

It is challenging. I think you can’t be stuck in the position where you’re trying to please everybody. You end up diluting the experience so what we’ve tried to do is allow you to play Dragon Age the way you want to play it. If you want to get more in depth and in to the tactical side of things then you can absolutely do that. But if you are a more casual player and if you want to go through the narrative without getting as deep in to the ability trees then you can. What we’d like to see, if you are a more casual player, is that you get introduced to it and you just dip your toe in the more complex systems and if they enjoy it then they do.

With art & design, you’ve probably seen enough concept sketches to keep DeviantArt running for years to come. What kind of artistic inspiration do you take, how do you get that world created?

We try to go as broad as possible. We’re keen to have a broad palette for our artists, not just from the genre of games but from film, TV, architecture, fine art, contemporary art, sculpture, writing. You name it people are passionate about it and it provides the spark of creativity then it’s a wonderful thing. So we look very broadly with our inspirations.

There’s a lot of things that come from the games characters, how much of the classic Bioware character driven style is still in the game, given all the changes? 

It’s still incredibly core to the experience. You start with the narrative perspective, get the story outline, introduce the characters. Their personalities are explored and evolve right from the concept artist even before the 3D side of things. It is still absolutely part of it. Dragon Age Inquisition is a game about a vast and threatening diverse world and the people in that all have needs and desires and that’s key to the experience.

DAIINT4I suppose it might be a new thing for a Dragon Age game where you’re going in to an online world where the key is community. Destiny has shown already how many people, even on consoles, will form groups, discuss the game, play the game, etc. How do you see Dragon Age being received by the community like that, as the genre leans very heavily towards that kind of community?

I think Dragon Age and Bioware itself already has a very vibrant community. There’s no shortage of passion for the franchise. I hope Dragon Age will get people more involved and more emotionally interested in these characters and drive further conversation and further collaboration between fans and Bioware.

So what’s been your favourite thing so far in developing the game and what have we got to look forward to?

It’s hard to say, there’ve been so many things. It’s been a challenging development. Anything like this is difficult to achieve. I look at the final game now and I see how the design and the art has gelled in to the experience and I feel very satisfied and I and the rest of the team are very proud of it. We’re always working on new ideas and Dragon Age has always got more stories to tell. So there’s a lot more to come.

How about getting the Xbox One version up to spec with the PS4?

Game development is challenging, it’s always difficult. I think the key is trying to give the same level of satisfaction and experience across all the platforms so we hope to achieve that.

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Dragon Age Inquisition is due out on November 21st on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC.

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Dead Island 2 Interview with Isaac Ashdown

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Sean has been at EGX all this week. Here’s one of the many interviews he got, talking to Isaac Ashdown who’s a Gameplay Programmer at Yager for Dead Island 2!

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It must be really exciting to work on seeing how the well the community received the Dead Island games along with some of the critics.

Yeah, it’s certainly a great opportunity for myself, I was a big fan, and for Yager as well. It’s a really great game to be able to take to the next step by making the sequel.

Do you feel, because this is a different development team to the first Dead Island games, you need to do something slightly different, or get a good enough spin on it yourself to establish yourself in the franchise? 

We certainly aren’t letting ourselves be held back by anything in particular, taking it in the direction we want to make our own, and the next gen consoles give us a lot of opportunities to pull out the stops. We’ve got the seamless 8 player connectable co-op where you drop in and drop out of. We hope that will help bring the game to a more emergent level of gameplay.

I’ve played the build of the game, so lets talk about killing things!

Ok!

There’s a lot of death and we had a lot of competitions between the people who played for the highest death count. How much fun is it to programme that complete melee of destruction of zombies and that humorous tone of everything else about it? 

It’s a lot of fun. I’ve worked pretty extensively on the melee systems and the weapon systems in general. So our goals there are really take it in a direction that maintains the visceral nature of the first game, because melee combat was a lot of fun. We’ve expanded on it in a lot of ways, for a number of reasons. Because we’ve got an 8 player co-op, the number of zombies you’re fighting at any one time is a lot more than before. If you’re with a group of your buddies we’ve tried to keep the combat fun even with the amount so it’s been a lot of fun to do.

I got from playing the preview that there’s a very devil may care attitude about the story and everything in the game. There’s the bit with the Peter Fonda “we want to get loaded” speech on the radio. Obviously that’s very different to the original game so how do you see this fun element keeping people in and keeping the co-op going?

The story tone is a little different to the first game. It’s set in California and you’re one of the heroes that’s decided to stay in the state, even though its kind of been compounded by the government. And there’s also all the other guys there who are there for the same reasons but aren’t necessarily new like you are. But they’ve seen it as a new opportunity to build a life for themselves in a way that it wasn’t possible before in modern day life. So that kind of set up is what we’re going for with the whole combat tone as well. So you’re there to have a good time, basically, and embrace the lighter side of the apocalypse.

So the first game has given a lot of stylistic and artistic impressions to the franchise, but what are Yager’s inspirations for their take on the franchise?

It’s certainly a lot of fun to make such a colourful game. Taking this kind of paradise gone to hell and putting in a real world location like California, it’s a place I’ve been to a few times and have family there, so it’s fun to see a place I’m familiar with that’s been turned in to this zombie playground and still is recogniseable as a real place.

You’ve taken quite a lot of inspiration from the real life California and Los Angeles and how that city operates.

As Europeans, it’s not a place that we can really have a kind of claim to, it’s something that’s such an iconic location in popular culture and Hollywood has done a good job of presenting itself to the outside world. So it’s good as an outsider to be able to run with it, like a fantasy California. Like if the world of Hollywood was presented in this fantasy way, populated by these people who may be anarchistic or want to party, but not taking themselves too serious because… It’s LA.

We’ll see this in Spring 2015, so how’s the development all going?

The demo here we shipped for GamesCom a few months ago has come a long way. We’ve started playtests with the whole world with seamless 8 player. It’s fun to get in to the office, jump in the game and have other people also jump on your server. You’ll be playing and doing your own thing and then your buddy in the next room will jump in and you’ll team up, so it’s been great.

So the next gen tech much have really helped coming along when it did to give you more possibilities and scope?

For sure, the consoles themselves are much more powerful so you can do this open world and we’re using Microsoft’s cloud compute to run our servers so we can do a lot more than the traditional infrastructure of having a bunch of servers in a room somewhere in the world. Being able to spool up servers as you need them, being able to connect people with their friends, all that stuff makes the seamless 8 player co-op possible.

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Dead Island 2 will be released on PS4, Xbox One and PC in Spring 2015. You can check out Sean’s preview from GamesCom here!

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Destiny – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

Destiny is quite possibly the most ambitious console game we have seen, other than Grand Theft Auto V. Quite the statement I know, especially given what you have already read elsewhere. The traditional review calls for positives followed by negatives and then a summary. But I think what is needed more is some objective input on those negatives that we’ve heard.

The first thing I will mention though is the story. It is not very good and, despite everything I’m about to point out, it is fragmented too much in its linear progression to hold the attention of you, the player, during the minimal times where we get expositional dialogue. The exposition is garbled and that is because it is trying to convey a lot of information and lore far too quickly. It makes Peter Dinklage’s Ghost sound as apathetic as Robert Webb doing TV advert voiceovers. It sadly makes Bill Nighy as wooden as Michael Gambon’s Gandal-Doore Prophet in Elder Scrolls Online. But once again, out of all the well-known voices in this game, it is Bungie regular Nathan Fillion of Firefly/Castle/Halo fame providing some amusing and enjoyable sound bytes.

In its defence however, and I suppose to play devils advocate a bit, Destiny’s story is a very complex and intriguing experiment in creating a universe, not a linear narrative story. The company that brought us many Halo’s will always have a torch held against it to produce compelling single player narrative. This game doesn’t actually set out to do that except for establishing you in its universe. The stories are your own to make and whilst the back drop of galactic war and Dune-esque family creepiness in the Awoken give you a sense of a history, the game leaves you completely in charge of how you experience it. Which is quite the gamble when you think about it, but it works once you’ve leveled up enough to get some good gaming time with your friends. It’s also worth pointing out that I cannot think of an original MMO IP which has a decent story or hint of a narrative. Remember, the Warcraft universe had been going for 10 years before WoW. Lord of The Rings, Elder Scrolls, D&D, Star Trek, even DC Universe, all had long established canon and lore before an MMO license came along.

What I’m saying is, yes the story is a bit droll and lacks any kind of empathy to its characters. But it isn’t designed to do that from what I can tell. It’s not an excuse for lackluster dialogue though, which I’m sure is hurting Dinklage as much as it is the creative team at Bungie.

The universe that they have created is visually spectacular. Bungie’s application of lighting and atmospherics has never been in question, regardless of if you liked or disliked Halo. The next generation of consoles finally has a champion of graphical power and beauty. Little inclusions that you’d never think about make this game incredibly immersive. If you’re on the moon and you look at the International Space Station debris long enough, you’ll see a few satellites flying over. You’ll also see the Earth experience its dynamic night/day cycle. The Mercury Crucible map is a great example of a map with real environmental challenges and a glorious Sun enveloping the landscape. Venus’s terraformed world with its abandoned buildings are a thing that Bungie have done for a long time, and they excel at it here. The difference between the Xbox One and PS4 versions is negligible even to the tech wizards at Digital Foundry, thanks to the freedom of memory from Kinect. It is, in a word, beautiful.

Of course you end up playing little games to yourself as well, exploring the world and trying to find little things that amuse you. I like to listen to the soundtrack, which has Marty O’Donnell all over it, and try and find where new composers have tried to make their mark. They haven’t. O’Donnell’s trademark use of soft brass instruments with choral arrangements and string based tension heighteners, completely eclipse the other music in the game, despite their efforts sounding like a decent homage to Murray Gold’s Doctor Who work. But the sound design itself is incredible. The guns sound amazing and sometimes it’s chaotic and frenetic trying to have a party chat whilst the destruction around you is filling the audio channels. My favourite part so far is not only discovering that your Swallow has a reverse warning noise like a car, but that when one goes past you like that, you get a Doppler effect from it. It’s some amazing attention to detail.

The game itself is an experimental hybrid between MMO, RPG and FPS that few have achieved. Borderlands does, without the scale of the online element, Call of Duty does, without the RPG element. Destiny, in my opinion from the game play point of view, completely achieves the fusion they were looking for. Vast areas to explore with different enemies, excellent replay value, well designed multiplayer modes and levels, fun to use guns and an excellent leveling system that allows you to really play your own way and use what you want to achieve that. The quest for Legendary and Exotic items will keep people playing more than they’ll admit and from that point of view, Bungie have got the basics of this game nailed.

The criticisms of the game though are well known and, I hope, easily addressed. The 3-person size fire team limit is too small. But the Crucible can handle a 6-person fireteam and the maps handle multiple teams, so I’m sure that the number of people can be increased. Even if it is by one, that’d still be great. I’d like to add another niggle though and that’s the lack of loadouts. The difference in the style of play between levels, and the PvE to PvP modes, are great and allow you to use multiple weapons effectively for different things. But the inability to save a set of weapons and quickly change to them is a pain. Especially when you forget and have to spend about a minute standing still and change them over in game, losing your secondary weapon’s special ammo. In fact this is quite the oversight to the mode.

A further criticism, and this ties back in with the story and the lore, is the enemies, namely the amount of them. There are essentially five different races in the game: The Guardians, The Fallen, The Hive, The Vex and The Cabal. This really doesn’t help in progressing the already confusing narrative and lore. Which one came first? Who is the worst? Who is wiping out who? Why do they give a toss about The Traveler or Earth? It’s hinted that there were pre-human structures on Venus that were being investigated before the collapse. So a timeline of the universe as the story goes on gets sketchier and sketchier, and a race could possibly have been cut out if I’m honest.

You’ll also find a lot of parables in the enemies and the way to play against them that are incredibly reminiscent of Halo. The Hive are the new Flood, Cursed Thralls are suicide Grunts, The Vex take traits of the Flood’s Hive Mind, The Cabal’s Phalanx’s are defeated in the same way as Halo’s Jackal’s, a Cabal Centurion is a Hunter, and it seems that every race at every point are using Forerunner-esque ancient structures. The visual designs are great though. The enemies look very cool. I love the way the Vex Goblins feel like Terminators with their red eyes and keep coming whilst beheaded. And the shift of weak points does keep you on your toes, even if the AI doesn’t after a while. The Vex themselves also feel like Bungie looked at Halo 4’s Promethean units and sneakily thought that they could do a lot better, which they have.

The thing is with Destiny and the plan for the game is that it is fluid. It is going to be constantly in flux and added and expanded upon. The end game, despite some repetitive grinding, is intriguing and rewarding. The whole game is especially rewarding with friends in the same way that Halo’s co-op campaigns were. What Destiny lacks in compelling narrative and confusing lore is certainly compensated in the short term by its beauty, its size and its scope. In the long term, the expansions and extras may make more sense of the very in depth and expositional lore we have already and keep the gameplay just as entertaining and enthralling as the “just one more round” addictiveness they currently have. It is by no means perfect and as consumers, critics, hype revelers, gamers, lovers of Bungie; we expect a lot, possibly too much. But for what Destiny is, a successful cross over of massively online multiplayer, role playing and first person shooter genres set in a hybrid science fiction and fantasy universe with mind blowing graphics and atmosphere, it is the most ambitious console game we’ve seen, other than Grand Theft Auto V. Certainly that is something to experience and that is something for Bungie to be proud of.

Summary
What Bungie have set out to achieve has largely been successful. The game combines the Role Playing levelling element of fantasy MMO’s with its own take on online open worlds and blending in their expertise with art, audio, level design and first person shooters. Sadly that is at the cost of their normally excellent narrative style.

Good Points

– Visually spectacular
– Successfully fuses genres
– Amazing online experience

Bad Points

– Confusing narrative and set up
– Too many enemy races
– Team size limit too small

Why a 7.5?

The story isn’t great, but we’ve played a lot worse. The success is the fusion of genres, the ambition behind it and the beauty of its worlds. A triumph and an excellent showcase of what the new consoles can do, even if it is narratively lacking.

 

New Magicka 2 Trailer Karaoke Competition, More Exploding Cats

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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The lovely people at Paradox Interactive have just sent us over their new karaoke trailer for Magicka 2 and… Well I am in no way, shape or form going to describe it to you. You should just watch it below.

Suffice to say that my personal highlights, other than a tune that is completely stuck in my head and is making want to go and fish out my old Yamaha DX7, is the poor dog shedding a tear over the thoughts of many exploding cats and fire… Mans best friend is a sensitive creature. I wonder if the dog from Fable feared such feline combustion? I also cannot help but enjoy the faux VHS tracking effects and the inescapable reminder of how strange it is when karaoke videos are playing in Chinese restaurants.

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The trailer is not only a bit of fun and has Vlad dancing around in his robe, but is also a competition. You budding Wizards with dreams of Lost In Translation style, karaoke booth entertainment (there’s a cross over that you never thought would be mentioned on a Friday afternoon), get the chance to upload your own Magicka karaoke music video.

That’s right, you can download an instrumental version of the song and create your own video, your own lyrics and upload them in order to win an awesome prize. As far as gaming launch competitions go, this is one of the most intriguing. Oh and if you do enter it, do not set fire to any cats. If you’re interesting in winning a yet to be announced prize (I’m hoping it’s a set of deluxe robes and staffs so I can go around the town pretending to set things on fire), you can enter at www.magicka2.com/singalong.

If you want to see more of Magicka 2, as there is some gameplay in the trailer, you can check out our hands-on preview from Gamescom. The game itself will be out in early 2015 for PC and PS4.

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My Love Affair with Bungie

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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If you are reading this then it means you aren’t playing Destiny at this moment. Which is fine. Maybe you’re at work and haven’t received it yet. Or maybe Bungie’s new outing and its first in the next-generation sphere isn’t for you. Which is also fine. I however need to confess my love for Bungie.

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly unbiased in my gaming critique. But Bungie have had me sold for a very long time. My experience started when I first got Halo. Back in those days I was a PC gamer, despite owning a PSX  for Smackdown games and a (new at the time) Playstation 2 for Grand Theft Auto 3. So my first Halo experience wasn’t with an Xbox… Actually I did play it on my friends Xbox so I guess it technically was, but I never actually owned an original Xbox. My first full on Halo experience was with the Gearbox ported PC edition. A game that still has people playing its multiplayer even now.

Halo as a PC experience was absolutely incredible. It wasn’t the most graphically superior game even then, but its atmospherics were the same as the Xbox version and were utterly enthralling. There were PC games even then that could trump Halo in many regards but something about it just stuck with me and many others I’m sure. It’s this dedication for scope and environment I think that make Bungie games great and, no offence to 343 Industries, makes the later Halo games/ports a little tepid. But I’ll come on to that.

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I have to admit that Halo 2 was a game, because of my lack of Xbox ownership, that took me 4 years to get around to playing. Several things get in the way of gaming when you’re just entering your 20s. You start social gaming a lot more and you don’t get as much time to play. So you sacrifice and dedicate yourself to one game. I had a good run playing the Grand Theft Auto games and the then excellent Pro Evolution Soccer series… The memories *sniff*. I was also dabbling in having meaningful relationships and doing all of that affection rubbish which meant my PC became my Laptop, became my girlfriends possession when visiting me and then became a Sims only zone. I enjoyed The Sims of course but Halo was still installed, hiding in programs menu waiting for us to sneak some playing time in together.

When I realised that the meaningful relationship endeavour was not only harder than gaming but that Microsoft’s offering had superior graphics to my Sims-top and the exclusive Halo 3, I pulled together some money and brought myself an Xbox 360. A full six months before Halo 3. Which meant that it was finally time to play Halo 2. It’s weird now, having seen and played the Halo 2 Anniversary edition, that I was incredibly impressed by how pretty the graphics were and how big the game was. Even for most PC games, and Half-Life 2 was out by this time, Halo 2 had so many different environments, two different story lines that came together, two different playable characters and a story that elevated the series far beyond its humble Science Fiction homage beginnings.

This is where I get to tip my hat to Bungie and explain why I have this love affair and why it was rekindled with Destiny, because they have directly decided which console I have brought for the last two generations. There is something about the feel of a Bungie game. It’s the perfectly designed and executed combination of easy to pick up controlling, ethereal music, absolutely beautiful concept art realised magnificently and imaginative storytelling not yet dictated by the Boxset/Netflix generation. Which is why the Anniversary editions of Halo feel so weird. They are great visually and are completely the same game as they were but the combination of them feels like Halo wearing a mask. It’s a bit like when your favourite footballer leaves your team for a rival and starts getting the goals. You like them still but it feels a bit sad.

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Which is why, when Halo 4 came out, I was sanguine. I had bid a fond and hard farewell to Halo with Halo Reach. I expected there to be more of course with the formation of 343 Industries but for my own personal journey with Bungie’s lovechild, it was over for me. And I was happy it was over. We left in a great place and we would always be friends. It was a time fondly remembered and will always bring me some glorious nostalgia when I reach into the shoebox of Halo memories. I wasn’t sure I was ready to let Halo back in to my life again. I enjoyed my brief flirtation with Halo 4. I gave it a lot of time and the same level of achievement hunting and completion I had given all of its elder siblings. But it wasn’t what it was. That spark that Bungie had lit for me wasn’t there and I knew it wouldn’t be. I wasn’t sad or disappointed. I’d enjoyed my time in the new Halo universe. But much like when your favourite bar changes ownership and gets renovated, I knew it wasn’t for me anymore.

So here I am with Destiny. I played the beta and it hit me. That feeling that I last got with Halo Reach was here with Destiny and I was excited. This was a new chapter, a new story but with the same love and affection that I had enjoyed before. That’s when I realised that my love affair wasn’t just with Halo. It was deeper and for the first time since being a PC and PS2 gamer, I fell in love with the way a studio designed a game rather than the game universe/franchise they create. I can describe the many different faucets that make this happen to me but the best way to describe it is simply thus: Fun.

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It’s fun to play! It really is as simple as that. Which is why my favourite Halo game isn’t anything directly related to Master Chief, it’s the excellent and vastly underrated Halo 3 ODST. Which is why when Halo Reach ended I was happy and I felt satisfied with the ending of this universe. Which is why when I think of multiplayer gaming I think of the private games I had with many friends of my own creation in the Forge, my version of Predator, and the good times we all had. Which is why my fondest memory of Halo is the 4 player co-op of the final level of Halo 3 where all of us kept crashing our Warthogs to annoy everyone else. And which is why, when I picked up the Destiny beta, I felt like I had picked up the fun where Reach had left it.

Destiny has just finished installing on my Playstation 4 now. I’ve been to friends houses to make sure they receive their deliveries of the game and console while they are at work. The extra content codes and season pass are all redeemed and I’ve made sure that I’ve had breakfast and coffee. Finally, I’ve come clean. I’ve opened my heart about my love for Bungie and now, for the first time in four years, I think I’m ready to fall in love all over again.

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