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Skyforge Preview – Is 2015 a year of Russian Gaming?

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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A few things come to my mind when you say Russian to me: Red October, The Dude’s favourite drink, and the orchestral cover of that crap Sting song that Charlie Brooker uses in every Yearly/Weekly Wipe. You might not think gaming is a synonymous word but it really is. From every WW2 shooter under the sun, to Catherine in every Civilization game, Chernobyl in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro 2033/Last Light, Russia, its landscape, its literature and its history has quite the plethora of gaming inspiration.

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It also has one of the biggest captive markets outside of China for gamers. Whilst the console market isn’t as strong as the West, the PC market and browser based games are a huge draw. My.Com is part of a much larger communications giant in Russia with access to over 100 million users. At several points over the past year, we were invited to look at the three big draws the publisher has to offer. But now seems the right time to look at them, probably because you’ve already finished your second play through of Dragon Age by now.

But it’s not just Russian companies that are in for this market as My.Com have recruited some of the best to work on their titles. World of Speed, an online multiplayer arcade racing game with various real world locations and licensed cars to boot, is being developed by Slightly Mad Studios. You may know them for being the developer behind the much anticipated simulator Project Cars, and various Need for Speed games. It’s a fun game, especially in the 2v2 style of racing that isn’t just positional based but points based as well, leading to much tactical thinking. There’s also Armoured Warfare, which on the face of it is a World of Tanks clone. But the game has a lot more of an arcade “pick-up-and-play” feel to it. It doesn’t have the military history of the aforementioned Wargaming.net game but it is a fun tank shooter in the familiar vein, like a slightly less futuristic Battlezone.

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Armoured Warfare and Skyforge, the main game we’re going to look at here, have something in common. They are being co-developed and optimised for the Western audiences by Obsidian Entertainment. You should know Obsidian… Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and the game you voted as your best RPG of 2014, South Park: The Stick of Truth. Along with Russian developer Allods Team, Skyforge is an MMORPG set in a mixed environment of fantasy and science fiction on the fictional world, Aelion. A very large and visually enthralling world at that. Skyforge represents an entire planet for you to explore with a mixture between the worlds you would imagine from a Iain M Banks novel mixed with visuals from a hodgepodge of Warcraft realms. It’s an incredible combination of a futuristic world mixed with ruins and nature that doesn’t resort to turning things in to a bland destroyed battlefield to give it some visual nuance. In the game’s story you are an immortal (quite convenient) who must rise to become a God and earn followers throughout Aelion.

Playing the game is incredibly open, and I don’t mean in the worlds but in the characters. The UI and combat system is pleasingly simple and is pleasantly just above spamming the keyboard all the time. This is mostly because your combat talents are actually pretty cool. There are lots of things depending on your class that you can do like fire a snowball that grows and collects all the enemies in its path. But the key in this is the character progression system and the ability to change your class. The progression tree, which is called the Ascension Atlas here, works in a very open way, much like a web. In fact, if you’ve played Civilization: Beyond Earth, the selection is very similar. Some things take longer to research and what you research opens up other classes and skills like a web. And, as long as you aren’t in combat, you can change your class. This is particularly intriguing as you can change what you are dependent to what you need, as can anyone in your party. It’ll make raids especially interesting. Just change from Paladin from Cryomancer in a couple of clicks. Easy.

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All of this is unlocked via prestige. And as in any MMORPG you unlock this via quests. Quite like Dragon Age Inquisition is at times, quests are attained locally rather than via a singular point. Which means instead of going to a quest giver, just entering an area will activate a quest. You’ll be able to see that quests are available in an area via the big sky globe map on the space station, called the Divine Observatory, circling Skyforge. Battling and killing enemies, will unlock prestiege, unlock levels, better attacks, more attack slots, etc, etc, etc. Normal fayre for your MMORPG. There’s no word yet on buy-to-play bonuses with this. But you can earn it in your standard PvE and PvP ways and if you can get a good group of people together it could be quite a fun distraction for those of you who seek new challenges after World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, ArchAge, etc. Something that will be interesting is the Guild PvP mode which will be coming in the future.

The game was certainly fun to play when we were playing it although it does have a very big audience to try and capture in the West. The Russian end will certainly warm to it quickly as long as they have a fairly good PC so it certainly won’t be a dead server zone. There’s no specs yet that are confirmed but it looks like it’ll need a decent package at least athough MY.Com promise to keep it as technically accessible as possible. The game is currently in Beta which you can sign up for now at their website. It’s PC only at the moment but as most players are PC based that’s probably a good thing. Obsidian are working mostly on “Westernizing” the game. We’re pretty sure that doesn’t just mean language translation but optimisation of where things should be on a UI, how stories are communicated in quests, etc. It’s quite amazing, when you look at how universal a lot of games are (WoW, LoL, and other Upper case-Lower case-Upper case acronyms, for example). Our recommendation? Give it a go. After all it will be Free-To-Play, so why not?

[author]

Total War Arena – Hands On Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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CRY HAVOC! AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR! These were words I did not scream at the top of my lungs to my teammates as I flanked my way around a mountain pass. But they were in my head rather poetically as the hoards of Roman armies powered forward. As I took command of Leonidas of Sparta, my little army of an archer unit and two spearmen units charged their way forward to take the enemies base.

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Total War Arena is the new venture into the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre from Creative Assembly and the Total War team. In fact, a completely separate and dedicated Total War team. This real time strategy MOBA, like the rest of them, will be free to play but will give the big scale of the historic battles that the franchise is known for and the accuracy in the units and commanders it uses. So as you would expect, it excels at this. There’s a great levelling system which rewards your battles with unit upgrades, a tech tree, fancy hats (they aren’t just hats they are actual upgrades) and unit customisation. You’ll also unlock special attacks that you can use during the battle between cooldowns.

Battles, battles, battles. The 10v10 real time strategy is very effective and forces you to do a few things. Firstly, it makes think about where you places your troops and how you move them. Much like the Total War games, the ability to flank and hold your archers back to get some good shots on the opposing troops, is essential. How you play the map environment is equally as important as how you play. Charging is a fools errand but being stuck down hill with a unit of archers above you is equally foolhardy. All of this really makes you think about how you approach your movement. Secondly it makes you communicate with your players. This is very much needed with such a large amount of teams and battles commencing and with two different ways to win a game. Having tactics is one thing but talking with others to make sure they work is equally important and using the in game pen drawing system works very well… As long as you understand what the person is saying.

This game follows in a similar vein as World of Tanks in creating a player controlled set up that makes you work with others and using historical military gaming as its set up. The maps we played were very challenging with their own quirks, sneaky ways to base capture or ways to funnel the enemy in to certain death. Which, if we’re honest, is half the fun of these things. The actual combat is easy and smooth and it works very well. Although it can be hard to pull your troops out of a situation if they’re bedded in to a ground skirmish. Well, it would be hard in real life when people are jabbing spears around you and others are smashing their shields in to your buddies. So in this way the game plays very real and in quite the epic scale.

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The upgrading system is privy to in-game purchases, despite the game being free to play. Whilst we are not fully sure how this will work yet, you can use your commander XP to upgrade your units as well as your commander. So we’re guessing the purchases would work in a similar way but we’ll see. The commanders range from the most historically notorious to the entertainment-friendly generals Hollywood has made us love. The aforementioned Spartan is joined by Julius Ceaser, Alexander the Great, Germanicus and their units all have the relevant and correct attire and tools from their period of history. Much of Total War has been their unerring attention to historical detail and with Arena, you get it for free and with a very accessible and dynamic feel thanks to the smooth multiplayer.

The game will be on PC and is currently in Closed Alpha, which means a Beta is surely on the horizon and it would certainly be fun to try. So keep your eyes open. We enjoyed what we played and it’s certainly something that serves the Total War fans and the community very well, as well as the MOBA players and curious minds. Although it might feel a little too refined for the die hard Total War players, it might also allow them to experience something new in either the ingenious way that other humans play, or find themselves some easy cannon fodder for them to destroy.

[author]

What’s Next For Resident Evil?

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Resident Evil has been mentioned quite a lot recently. In the normal run up to Halloween and when any survival horror game is released, the game of PlayStations past is invoked as if grand royalty has entered this panicky jump-ridden realm. It has also come up because of The Evil Within, a game that our writer Andy reviewed most positively, as Resident Evil creator/director Shinji Mikami was at the helm of that production.

But we have two new Resident Evil releases that are due early next year, thankfully not movie franchise releases that have been ruined by Paul W.S. Anderson, although one is coming apparently. You know if you look at the movies in his repertoire, you might not be shocked to see how bad that series of films are. But the guy did Event Horizon, I mean how much more intensely atmospheric do you want to get? You’d think Resident Evil would be in safe hands… I’ve digressed.

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We will be receiving the next generation spin off Resident Evil: Revelations 2 in 2015 along with the remake of the remake. The GameCube’s remaster of the original Resident Evil game is getting yet another remaster to bring it up to next generation standard. On Halloween, the lovely guys at Capcom invited us to their offices to try the games out and see what we thought. Bribes were only provided in the form of fizzy drinks and seasonal Krispy Kreme’s.

Firstly, let’s tackle the remaster. You’d be forgiven for asking why this is happening. It seems like games publishers are torn between what us as gamers want and what us as gamers want… Bear with me here. On the one hand, despite our critical moaning about a lack of creativity in big game producers to come up with new ideas, we do like to see the games we love brought up to date and given a new lease of life. We want be able to show them off to our current significant others as to why this was a life changing game for us and not get laughed out of our relationship because of the now very dated graphics and hilarious FMV cutscenes. So this edition of Resident Evil kind of satiates that itch.

The game plays exactly the same way as the GameCube version does with an upped resolution although the textures and general artistic design are basically a complete port with some shine on them. If you’re looking for a new look and angle for the game you love, this probably isn’t it. Unless of course you never played the GameCube version, in which case, this is definitely for you. The thing is of course that nothing’s changed, but ultimately you don’t want that much change. There is the option to go full retro controls, or “WHERE’S MY F**KING ANALOGUE STICKS???” controls as I like to call them. Which is actually quite a nice reminder of how much better and more patient you used to be at playing video games. You can of course update it to use the sticks and that makes for an interesting experience. The stick controls highlight how the newer technology is adapted to the older games control and movement methods, which is rather strange as they suit the turning and running but the rest of the controls don’t exactly compliment them. It’s something you get used to of course but is a learning curve to start with.

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The option to have the original FMV sequences is there although you should probably only do that if you’re the kind of person that regularly searches their TV’s channel guide function for the worst that SyFy, Horror and Movies For Men has to offer on a lonely Tuesday with a 2 for 1 pizza offer in the wings. The game is a great reminder of how games were and how the mechanics they used would scare the crap out of you.

In fact, it’s a great experience in seeing how good the original game was in inventory management, atmospherics (although it does feel a tad too bright for me) and how to navigate complex controls under panicked stress. It will certainly bring back good memories and if you’ve missed it before, and it looks worthy of being added to your collection.

On the other hand, there’s those of us that love the genre and what the franchise can bring, and so we want to see new things. More new ideas, more new environments, puzzles and games. NEW, we tell you, NEW! And so we have Resident Evil Revelations 2, the sequel to 2012’s Revelations. We’re in to the realms of all things third person now which is great because that naturally goes very well with survival horror. But it does make me lament for the sometimes obstructive but much more terrifyingly voyeuristic cameras that the original game has. This game has moved away from 2012’s nod to the Resident Evil lore and becomes a bit more of its own entity.

No more Jill and Chris in the demo we played. This time we get Claire Redfield and Moira. Moira’s gift with the more colourful expressions of the English language make this game hilarious at times, and undoubtedly will involve many different versions of certain lines having to be used. In all the new generation glamour of dirty abandoned places being wonderfully sharp in resolution, you can enter a new world of hunting for ammo and supplies, crafting magical herbs that heal you and, more importantly, seamless swapping between characters to your advantage. The way you move between your two protagonists to solve puzzles AND give yourself more inventory space is excellent. It’s like Skyrim’s companion but much more useful. She’ll find things with her torch skills and run distractions for you as you take on headshot duty.

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The enemies kind of move between your traditional slow moving big powerful zombie and super fast crazy psycho zombies, the ones you don’t want in real life. But fighting them makes you think about your ammo usage. You can’t just unload your gun in to one guy and then pick up more ammo. No this resource is scarce and more enemies will come, so you have to think about how to use your tools and your environment to your advantage. Especially where there are traps that can be used and different enemy weaknesses.

The demo we were thrown in to made us feel like it was some crazy Saw-like adventure. You have no idea what was happening and whilst your character remains quite resolute under this pressure (less so than Moira) you begin to get intrigued as to why you are here and what the hell is happening.

It’s this more contemporary take on the survival horror tropes that make Revelations 2 quite intriguing. You’ve got the quality and design hallmarks of Resident Evil but you’ve also got the inspirations from other successes like The Last of Us and The Walking Dead. The series has moved on a lot from the Romero inspired house of horror that the original, and the remake, and the aforementioned remake of the remake, provide. It almost feels that a different branch of the universe, one that doesn’t have to be stuck in the lore of the other games and characters, is begging to emerge and mature. Whilst it is tied by name and situation, it appears to be quite free. The only thing I’m finding is that there is potential for it to get a bit long in the tooth. There’s a very strange lock picking mechanic that I’ve never seen used before and, quite honestly, I can see why. It’s not awful and once you’ve done it a few times you’ll get the hang of using both analogue sticks to find an unlock point and tapping R1 to activate it, but it certainly could be more user friendly. The controls come in that weird backward option where X is back and Square is confirm (although I’m sure that will change for western audiences) and eventually it will become second nature to you rather than you screaming “What in the Cock is that?” in early game frustration.

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Both games should be out in 2015 and the last part of this year has raised the horror genre into interesting territory. The Evil Within has given us more of the same updated for a new generation and Alien Isolation has given us the ultimate in terror, crafting and very little action whilst still delivering an atmospheric game. There’s said to be a new Alone in the Dark in the works and newer first person games like Outlast and Daylight have taken the genre to a different area.

But Resident Evil looks safe and appears to be satisfying both of the fans demands. Bear in mind that we are now around 22 games in to this franchise so you could forgive it for getting a little stale or similar. However Revelations 2 should be an interesting experiment in to where the series should go next and Resident Evil’s release will certainly nod us in the direction of the series forefathers and make us want to experience the new.

[author]

WWE2K15 – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Like an RKO out of nowhere, it’s time again for the franchise that layeths the smack down on the fighting game genre. WWE2K15 is the latest venture into the WWE universe but things are a little different this year.

When you first heard that 2K had taken the WWE franchise, you probably got very excited given their heritage with the NBA series. Last year though, you might have been forgiven for thinking this was a bit of the same old THQ thing. History, in case you don’t know is that after the bankruptcy and demise of THQ a lot of licenses, including WWE, were left in limbo. 2K jumped in and straight away brought on board the stalwarts of the WWE games Yukes and Visual Concepts. The 2014 version picked up what THQ had already done so it wasn’t that different to what was already planned or in production.

This year however is the first time that 2K have been able to guide the game from the start and their focus has been something that is in tune with what WWE want. That is a sense of a superstar and the progression of a career. One of the biggest problems, for me personally as a more casual WWE fan over the years, is the concept of the WWE Universe and what that translates to as a game mode. In my opinion it didn’t really settle you down or give you the feeling of definite progression and felt too much of a sandbox idea to work in a sports game. Of course the 2K specialty is a career mode and WWE is perfectly poised to benefit from it.

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The career mode starts with with you as a rough young potential who’s been brought in to the WWE’s training camp. You work your way up under the guidance of Bill DeMott in the Performance Centre and eventually get your way into the NXT ring as the path to career success unfurls before you. Rising through the ranks with the help of WWE superstars like William Regal, Vickie Guerrero and Triple H, much like you’d experience in the TV shows themselves, your journey will also unlock different options as you grow. Eventually facing the stars such as Daniel Bryan, Brock Lesnar and the like, this element of career progression takes you around the back offices and into some in-depth choices outside the ring, as well as fighting inside. This might seem familiar from the NBA career and that’s because it is. But it translates itself incredibly well to the WWE setting. How you perform unlocks the avenues for you to explore along with stat upgrades, the ability to train with other superstars and learn their moves, access different clothing and entrance options. You will work your way up and get decisions that also help your personality. You can mould yourself in to a face (good guy) or heel (bad guy) by respecting your way to the top or cheap-shotting people in their happy areas or with a slap. This evolves the story lines your character encounters with other superstars and eventually for your title runs, this plays a key component in who you face. This is the journey of you and who you create and, much like NBA, WWE’s personal touches and customisation really give you an immersive experience as a superstar.

Immersive is another word that’s probably synonymous with 2K’s treatment of NBA but has definitely leapt in to the squared circle. A fairly large overhaul of the game could have been overdue anyway but this particular update has certainly addressed a lot of issues. Firstly, and I don’t say this lightly, this game is not only the most lifelike and realistic looking wrestling game ever, but arguably that can extend to all sports fighting games. Whilst the crowd is slowly getting better in their animations, etc, the real look of the game stems from everything around it. The ring has been completely remapped and the sounds re-recorded, the animations for the wrestlers have grown (there’s over three times the amount), and the biggest thing is the wrestlers themselves. The scanning of the wrestlers faces and complete attention to their bodies, tattoos, mannerisms and expressions is unparalleled in the genre and one of the best things about what 2K has brought to the franchise. Even Paul Heyman has had his strut motion captured. This level of detail has taken quite the effort from 2K, given the schedule of the wrestlers so it’s something that is front and centre of the new game and deservedly so. Secondly, the commentary and the television presentation has been reworked. Michael Cole and Jerry “The King” Lawler have re-recorded the commentary to be more about the story and less about move calling like previous iterations. It’s no secret that the NBA has had the presentation of television and commentary pretty nailed in sports games and they’re trying to transpose that to WWE and from what we’ve played, that’s been successful so far.

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A few things you’ve probably already heard of, which I shall reiterate for you here, is that there are several pre-order bonuses, one of them incredibly historic in wrestling history. The inclusion of Steve Borden’s character, Sting, is a first for WWE at all. Formerly only a WCW wrestler who kept himself loyal to one company during the great turbulence of the Monday Night Wars and then later TNA, Sting is quite possibly the greatest wrestler never to hit a WWE ring. His inclusion in the game as both his 90s surfer dude persona and that mid 90s reinvention of him as a gothic outcast based on comic book character The Crow is a big deal. Hulk Hogan is available on certain deals with both his classic and Hollywood personas. The roster is pretty big so there will be more information to come in future announcements and John Cena, love him or loath him, is gracing the cover and curating the soundtrack… You know he had a rap album, right? He’s qualified… More so than Jim Johnston obviously… The 2K Showcase mode is back too, this time featuring on two classic battles in WWE history. Those being Cena Vs CM Punk and HHH Vs Shawn Michaels. So to answer the obvious question, yes CM Punk is back in this game, despite not being a WWE employee anymore.

WWE games have been pretty locked down for a while in getting it around 70% right. But somehow the fun of those early wrestling games we all played, whether you were of the SmackDown generation, the No Mercy Generation or even older with the Steel Cage Challenge generation, hasn’t been the thing that came across in the THQ attempts of recent years. Possibly that was due to the direction of the franchise rather than the game itself. But WWE2K15 looks, sounds and plays in a way that makes me want to delve deep in to my DVD collection and relive old memories. Most of the feedback and suggestion of how the franchise could improve appears to have been listened to and, despite the delay in the next generation release of the game, will be worth the wait albeit setting a high bar for 2K to trump on a yearly basis.

WWE2K15 is out on October 31st for Xbox 360 and PS3, with the Xbox One and PS4 versions to be released on November 21st.

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LEGO Batman 3 Beyond Gotham – Interview with Matt Ellison

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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On this day of DC Universe fun, we got a second interview in as many months with TT Games about LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. This time, Sean got some extended time to sit down with producer Matt Ellison from TT Games to talk about all the new things we’ve seen.

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We’ve just seen a lovely demo of the game, including London looking spectacularly small, Paris looking spectacularly small and Pisa looking very straight. What inspired you to go away from America and in to Europe with these levels?

It was always designed to be Europe actually. We do have Gotham as well so that’s American-ish. But it was an opportunity to show different things and different sights. It was really cool to be able to put London in there because we’re a UK developer and it was something we really wanted to do. Obviously Paris is very iconic and Piza with the leaning tower is very iconic and some of the other sites. It’s all things that are very cool that people recognise from a very young age.

As you say it allows you to have fun with those landscapes, like the Battersea Power Station having a load of toxic waste in it.

Yeah, stuff like that and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, it’s very cool to be able to show these things that people recognise because it gives you a different attachment to it.

lb3p2 You’ve got a very extensive character and sub-character list. As there’s so many, how have you managed to nail down which ones you wanted to do?

There are a few different things that go in to how we come up with the list that we ended up with. The first thing is the story, so the story governs which characters are going to be front and centre. Then we have the LEGO side of things. LEGO make their playsets and we always try to include all of the playset characters in to the game so if someone sees it in the game they can buy the toys. Then there are the ones we wanted to include. Some of the most famous ones, some of the more obscure ones, some of the more colourful ones, quirky ones and then we talk to DC to find out what’s coming up, who’s big right now, who should we be including. And they send us all the reference for the character outfits so that we can make sure they’re accurate and representative of what they should be. On this game more than any other we’ve been listening to the public. Throughout the game development cycle, we’ve been asking what characters people wanted to see and a couple of those have been added fairly late to the roster, but there’s so many people asking for them, we’ve kind of snuck them in.

There are so many different suit and sub character options across all the characters, how do you limit yourselves to stopping getting an OP character.

Five of the characters have 8 suits; Joker, Lex, Batman Robin and Cyborg have those eight suits you can cycle in between. But they have all these different mechanics and visuals and the visual representation of what you have to do in the puzzles remains consistent. So there are different characters you’ll have access to who’ll be able to do different things and as you unlock them, you’ll notice which abilities you’ve got and what you’ll be able to work through. It’s traditional with the LEGO games so people should know what they need and when with the characters and we’ll give them as many abilities as we possibly can. But they are all accurate as to what powers they can do and what they should have.

It’s quite a good position for the DC Universe especially with 3 TV shows based off it and as you announced at the weekend, the Arrow DLC pack is coming too based on the TV show with Stephen Amell.

It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to include this kind of add on content, which is totally outside of the game. But there is a way in which we can do something on it, so we can have a level, we can have these characters and find a way to include them into this and be part of this experience. Arrow was announced at the weekend and there’s The Dark Knight/Man Of Steel and you don’t normally get those kinds of opportunities – no one has done a Nolan Batman game before. So that’s the first time that’ll be able to be seen and we’ve been very lucky that we’ve been able to get the chance to do it.

You’ve been lucky as well to use different things from different studios and franchises, including the soundtrack, from Danny Elfman to John Williams. It must be quite good to have that freedom?

The Danny Elfman music we’ve used on previous LEGO Batman’s as well and it’s sort of tied to our Batman now, it’s part of his identity. But, as you hear that, it’s great that we have the relationship with that and it’s good that people are starting to relate it to our Batman. The John Williams theme from Superman is a must from LEGO Batman 2, that was fantastic and we had to include that again. Being able to add that to Wonder Woman as well is quite cool and again it’s something that people remember, especially that older audience we have. The younger kids probably aren’t going to know that so it’ll be something that the parents will recognise and be able to educate them a little bit about the history behind it. lb3p6

There’s a lot of artistic freedom with the game because you’ve gone outside of the confines of Gotham. How do you approach the new world that’s not as obvious on the page of the comics? 

It is slightly different. We knew we wanted to make this game when we were doing LEGO Batman 2 so at the end of it we teased it by having Braniac say that he’s located the Green Lantern’s power ring. So we knew that we wanted to go in that direction. The Lantern worlds have so much stuff in them, the planets are so unique all with different vibes to them, lots of different enemies to encounter – visually they all look very different which works very well in a LEGO game having all these different colours and all the Lantern Rings, it was quite effective to replicate visually. So it’s just a great opportunity to be able to explore the wider reaches of it all. You’ve got the Watch town and the Hall of Justice as well so there’s lots of places for people to enjoy.

You’re all big fans of the DC Universe in the studio, what’s been your favourite parts?

I like the characterisation of some of the characters we have in this game. Solomon Grundy is probably my favourite addition of the new ones. The way he’s animated is just fantastic, walking around like he’s a zombie – he’s very funny. Just being able to include more of these characters I think is the best thing because we’ve got 3 times the characters we had in LEGO Batman 2, there’s just so many of them in there. Like Polka Dot Man, Condiment King, they seem so random but in a LEGO game they just add to the humour and add to the fun of it.

With the voice acting talent you’ve got Troy Baker back as Batman so you’ve got quite the talent behind the characters as well. 

LEGO Batman 2 was the first LEGO game to have voice acting in it, we brought Troy Baker back for this because he’s fantastic, it’s a bit of a no brainer. The voice acting is something we’re really pushing so we want to make it as good as it can possibly be. So there’s much more script, we’ve got Josh Keaton doing Green Lantern, Scott Porter doing Aqua Man and even Adam West doing voice overs for the game, it all adds to the authenticity of the game and adds to the weight behind it when you’ve got guys that really know what they’re doing.

Especially with Adam West it must be good for his amazing alliterative, totally tantalising dialogue that he’s got going on during this. And his era is replicated even down to the comic book “Kapow!” phrases and noises from the 60s Batman.

The 60s stuff is brilliant and is by far the most in depth bonus level we’ve ever done. That was really something we went all out on. Again it is just an amazing opportunity and was always on the wish list to try and do. So to suddenly have it happen is just fantastic for us because it’s the origins of Batman from the mainstream platforms. And it’s just fantastic having him voice it, having those “Kapow!’s”, having the Batusi dance… It all adds to it and people who know that Batman will love it and even those who don’t, it will still be bright and colourful and brilliant for them to enjoy.

lb3p5 The game is coming out in November, how much do you think you’ve left out from what you wanted to put in?

I don’t think there’s anything possibly left out. By far this game got bigger and bigger and bigger the more we got in to it. The original concept of what this game was and where we ended up is far bigger than what it was originally going to be. Because these opportunities present themselves as you’re going through it. You know you think “wouldn’t it be great to add this” and you just do it. It just builds and builds and builds and we’re so pleased we’ve got a massive game at the end of it.

I want to ask about Batcow, because that is very, very, very, very niche. So, why Batcow?

I believe the story goes: One of the designers said “We should put Batcow in the game.” And everyone said, “Who’s Batcow?” and then he showed a comic that had Batcow in and Batcow got put in to the game. I think it is almost that simple but it is a genuine thing that exists and it’s part of the humour that we have in LEGO games that we can do things that are obscure, chuck these things and widen the scope of the DC Universe in this game and it’s a very funny thing to be able to do. We’ve got lots of obscure characters in there but there are all the ones that people expect as well.

I’m guessing many other characters came about the same way.

Well, sometimes. We’ve got Manchester Black in this game because he has Manchester in his name and apparently comes from Manchester. So it varies and some of them DC said “these would be cool to include” and others people have been asking for them and we like to give people what they want. There are more than 150 characters in the DC Universe but the ones we’ve got we’re happy to have in this game.

Well if you used them all, you wouldn’t have a LEGO Batman 4.

[Laughs] Yeah, I dread to think where we can there.

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LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham will be available on November 14th for Xboxb 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC and WiiU

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LEGO Batman 3 Beyond Gotham – Hands On Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

lb3pft We’ve been furnished with some excellent news with LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham over the weekend. The list of characters, over 150 in total, is very quickly taking shape and we have some awesome new levels being revealed to play with.

LEGO games are LEGO games. Part of the big idea behind them is that they all have consistent mechanics. They are family games for children and adults alike, best enjoyed together. As such they all have, whatever the franchise on top of it, puzzles and gameplay that is instantly recognisable and transferrable from previous LEGO games. This ease of play and similarity with other LEGO games is key to the design of them.

It also makes them rather hard to review and preview. Because we all know exactly what we are getting. There’s some awesome things in LEGO Batman 3 that allows us to go in to further detail but for the main part, this is a fully functioning, comically entertaining LEGO game. The story is that (spoiler for LEGO Batman 2) Brainiac has the Green Lantern’s ring and is going to embark on a dastardly scheme to gain control of the Earth. There our heroes of the Justice League and usual suspects Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc will come in to save the day… Or at least prolong the saving. lb3p3

Different things occur which allow the characters to move a little bit out of their normal comfort zone thanks to the Lantern powers, especially from characters you wouldn’t normally expect. But in the scheme of things, the plot allows the game to move out beyond Gotham and out to other planets and  in to outer space. People who played the Star Wars games will easily recognise the flying/shooting mechanics and whilst the game is fun, it is never exactly challenging. But, see above… That’s the point.

You’ll also get some landscapes you’ve never seen before unless you’ve been in a LEGO shop recently. The game will take you to various European cities as well as Gotham, including our very own London. It’s interesting to note that all of the buildings like the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and Buckingham Palace could all be built with actual LEGO and the games are all designed so that you could actually build the things in them. Quite neat I thought, and maybe that’s something I should have known. Why the Battersea Power Station is filled with toxic waste, I don’t know. Maybe TT Games know something we don’t.

Speaking of what you should know, the list of characters goes way out of the established norms for Super Hero games. The DC universe has been well and truly pillaged of almost everything and the deepest darkest vaults of characters have come to grace the obsessive collecting we must achieve when playing a LEGO game. Niche people from Batcow to Condiment King to the real life comic Conan O’ Brien, director and Comic Book author Kevin Smith, the Green Loonton, the Darkest Knight (all Green Lantern off shoots) and DC Publisher Jim Lee. DLC was announced at the weekend with Stephen Amell voicing his TV Character of Oliver Queen/The Green Arrow along with other characters from that series. More niche with Toyman, Trickster, Manchester Black… The list actually can go on for a long time and will require you to have more knowledge of the DC Universe than you ever thought possible. lb3p4

The best thing so far for me is the 1960s Batman mode. You probably don’t remember the TV series starring Adam West but you definitely know the theme tune (ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ber-BAT-MAAAAAN). You probably only know Adam West from Family Guy. But the art and design including the alliterative brilliance of voice acting from West, KAPOW! exclamations with brass instrument sounds and even building the Batmobile (everyone’s favourite Dinky car when they were little) put you in to an amusing trip of nostalgia and if you don’t know the series which arguably shot Batman in to the mainstream then you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Other touches exist around the game, like Troy Baker (don’t pretend you don’t know him by now) voicing the eponymous hero, the John Williams Superman music returns when Superman flies and that has even been stretched to Wonder Woman getting her theme played when she takes to the air.

All told, we’ll be able to review the game closer to the release date and comment on its great level design, its fun story and its excellent humour, most of which is already apparent. But it has all the hallmarks of a LEGO game. Which you have to say is something that TT Games have done very well. They have created constantly entertaining and fun games, whatever the veneer on top of their mechanics and LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham promises to be no exception to that trend.

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LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham will be available on November 14th for Xboxb 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC and WiiU

[author]

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.

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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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Preview – F1 2014

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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It’s time again for Codemasters to let us in for a little preview of their efforts with F1 2014, which in real life has been a new and exciting time for the sport. For those of you that haven’t seen the fallout of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg this year over the news and the papers, you might be forgiven for even noticing anything different about this years Formula One season. Of course you’d also have been living under a rock that was stuck beside a stalagmite that was in the back of a very deep dark cave that had yet to have been discovered somewhere in the depths of the Amazon jungle that native tribes fear to approach due it possibly containing a soul sucking monster that could only be appeased by the sounds of a V8 engine… I digress.

Engines are a good place to start given that the real world F1 has had drastic changes to it this year. In an effort to be more representative of the current consumer vehicle climate so that manufacturers will stay attached to it, F1 ditched the petrol guzzling V8 super noisy beasts that had been powering them for the past eight years in favour of a V6 Turbo Powered engine linked to a hybrid energy recover system, or ERS. Basically the engine draws power from a battery that charges up kinecticly throughout a lap, as well as petrol. You may remember this as KERS last year which was available as a power boost. Now it is integrated into the car, which lights up the rear tires like never before giving you a squirmy torque nightmare to handle, along with a software adjusted braking system and the return of the rear wing drag reduction system (DRS). The aerodynamic changes, along with some safety improvements, have led to a step nose which is a design to replace the straight noses of previous years. Apparently it’s to stop the cars taking off in a collision but it has created some fairly ugly phallic designs.

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Why am I furnishing you with all of this technical information? Because it will answer quite a lot of your questions about Codemasters newest addition to the franchise. Your first question is “Why isn’t this on next generation consoles?” This is because those rule changes alone have drastically changed the way the game plays, Handling is now a completely different beast and different cars with superior design stick to the road a little better than others. The sounds the engines make has totally changed as well, along with two brand new tracks and a complete change in the way these cars behave aerodynamically. There is no way a next gen version of the game would have been ready. Disappointing, yes. But with the next iteration coming early next year, we hope it will be an easily satiated itch.

Your next question “Is this just another yearly franchise update and why should I get this when I can wait for the next gen version?” It seems FIFA has come under criticism lately for not adding much year upon year, if this years reviews are anything to go by. You could argue that until the classic mode, F1 was in danger of the same. The changes in the sport though require two things: practical testing of making those game changes work, and a comfortable experienced engine in which to implement it. Yes this is a yearly update but a lot has changed in the sport to warrant it, especially if you haven’t brought the recent iterations of the franchise. In fact, I’d say the combo of F1 2013 and 2014 are very clear pictures of several generations of F1 including this newest.

So your final question is “What’s it like and have they succeeded in adapting to the changes in the sport?” Here’s my disclousre of what I played. I did a three lap race in the Mercedes around Australia, a five lap race around Italy in a Ferrari and a three lap race around the new Russia circuit with a Lotus. That way I had all three different engine manufacturers (Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault) and three very different handling perspectives. The car selection actually comes with a difficulty meter now so you can tell which ones are the more challenging.

With the first race, I immediately had to find new braking points. The new brake by wire system does shift your bias quite a lot and with the 8 speed gear box, everything is a bit confusing if you’re a seasoned F1 veteran and are playing with the racing line off. The low growl of the V6 turbos has replaced the echoing roar of previous years and almost sounds a little dull and lifeless compared to the previous years engine. At this moment, there isn’t the raspy kind of sound the real life counterparts have in the down shifts and braking, which is a bit sad because I like that noise but hopefully it will come. The handling is, in the Mercedes, surprisingly responsive. I wasn’t having to correct the car nearly as much as I thought I would be which, when you think about it, is pretty indicative to how the Mercedes have dominated the season in real life. The Ferrari on the other hand was much less stable around Monza, especially after slowing. The first chicane was tricky getting around without the luxury of being glued to the road like before. Hitting your apex will be incredibly rewarding, not just for nailing perfect lap, but also for getting the car hooked up well with enough speed and grip for the next turn or exit. I didn’t notice too much of a change in the engine noise between them but there was slight differences.

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The Lotus was a very realistic representation… Utterly shit. If you’ve been following F1 then you’ll know Lotus’s fall from prominence compared to the past few season’s competitive car has been quick and nasty. Changes of drivers haven’t helped, especially with one of them running up the bill for spare parts quicker than you run up the bill at your works Christmas party bar. It might not have helped that I was driving around the new Russia circuit in Sochi that I’ve only seen in a BBC feature. The track is surprisingly tight and has a lot of potential to create missed braking points and wall collisions. The tightness, especially with kerbs and sharp apexes really make the car quite unstable and the torque bites the car as soon as you hit the gas. It does not have the raw pace of the other two cars which is quite nice compared to the other slightly unrealistic representation of lower grid cars. It presents more of a challenge to you by upping the difficulty of the car, rather than having to rely on upping the difficulty of the AI and of the driver aids.

There’s still a few weeks left before the chequered flag falls on F1 2014 and the last generation of Formula One racing games. In a way, it’s a shame that the rule changes happened for the game because last year’s effort, especially with the classic cars, was a great love letter to the sport, if not lacking more DLC opportunities due to licensing. The current £40 price tag will definitely be a sticking point for a lot of people, especially given the reception for GRID Autosport and its lower pricing. The only thing this game is missing visually is the red stripe of alcohol sponsorship on the Williams, but we shall see, puns aside, if the team at Codemasters can churn out a challenging racing game or an annual iteration. I’m hoping for the former.

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Christopher Brookmyre’s Bedlam – Let’s Play

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Yesterday, we previewed Christopher Brookmyre’s Bedlam, the early access Steam game by author Christopher Brookmyre and RedBedlam. Today we bring you something a little extra.

Sean has recorded a whole first level play through of Bedlam on his Mac… That’s right, Mac. So regardless of your computing choice, you can play!  There are two levels in the early access and there will be more coming so keep checking back on it. It’s currently available on Steam for £12.99.

For those who don’t know what it is, Bedlam is a independently produced UK game involving several generations of first person shooter inspirations. It’s funny, great to play and… Well we won’t spoil the entire video for you. Suffice to say that the video does contain some colourful language from the story. So people, you have been warned, this video is not safe for work.

If you enjoy this, Sean will also record the second level too, which you’ll see a glimpse of at the end of the video.

So settle back and relax. It’s time to enjoy Bedlam.

P.S. Sean takes no responsibility in how bad he is at playing video games. Feel free to comment and tell him so.

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