Monthly Archives: March 2015
Bladestorm: Nightmare Review
Somewhere in the world, there's a 14-year-old in an interminable high school history class who, just to stay awake, is probably imagining a scenario that looks a lot like Bladestorm: Nightmare. The Hundred Years' War is one of the longest and most pointless conflicts in human history, memorable primarily for Joan of Arc's involvement and as the basis for hundreds of years of Brits and the French throwing shade at each other, with decades upon decades of grousing about kings and succession happening in between. Surely, such a memory can only be improved by imagining the war being fought by anime-haired mercenaries commanding legions of sellswords to slay massive armored knights, vicious dragons, and snarling armies of demons, right?
On paper, that's a yes, and I wish the folks at Tecmo Koei were capable of doing it justice. Instead, Bladestorm's pretension of being a massive scale real-time strategy game with action elements turns out to be little more than a European coat of paint slathered over the tired Musou formula, with the RTS elements working to its detriment instead of providing much needed fun and depth. At least the game gives you a lot to work with. Bladestorm Nightmare is a remaster and a sequel all in one. The original game, released in 2007, is included here with a few new features to bring it up to par with the new scenario, Nightmare, which totals out to anywhere from 25 to 30 hours of gameplay, all told. If nothing else, it at least succeeds in keeping you busy.
Staying busy in the Hundred Years' War scenario involves making a mercenary in the game's fairly deep character creator to lead specialized troops--swords, spears, archers, and the like--into the fray of the ongoing war between the British and the French. Just as in the Warriors games, your job is to go from enemy base to enemy base, clearing out hordes of enemy combatants and their generals, lowering their defenses to nothing until the base commander shows. Killing him or her means that your side sets up shop in the base, and the enemy has fewer reinforcements to prevent you from taking out the big target on the map and clearing the stage.
While there's at least a measure of flash and flair to the ongoing march to war in the Warriors games, Bladestorm tries to throw an RTS twist into the mix, in which you don't directly control one single, legendary fighter, but an entire squad that swarms enemies at the push of a button. Special moves are powerful, but they all have a cool down period, meaning that each coordinated move has to be planned carefully. You also have the ability to pair up with another mercenary--either by switching back and forth at the push of a button or via online cooperation, both of which are new features in this version--and you can strategize your attack to leave enemies trapped in massive walls of zealotry and death.
Bladestorm's pretension of being a massive scale real-time strategy game with action elements turns out to be little more than a European coat of paint slathered over the tired Musou formula.
Though you could do that, chances are pretty good that it's unnecessary. Despite a slew of strategic features and options, generally any squad of any weapon can walk right up to any group of enemies, start slashing, and walk away no worse for wear. There is, ostensibly, a strength/weakness system in which specific weapons are more effective on certain squads than others, but aside from occasional trouble with troops on horseback when you're at a lower level, the chances of your squad being wiped out entirely are slim, especially since you can always retreat from battle to your nearest base, round up a new squad, and take another shot. Failure ends up being a virtual impossibility the further you go, since the enemy AI is profoundly awful. I have literally left the game unpaused to take a phone call, with my squad standing ten feet from a group of enemies, and not had the enemies take a single swipe the whole time. That's a characteristic of Warriors as well, but the fun of stringing together insane, crowd-slaying combos against nigh-defenseless masses is non-existent in a game in which all combat boils down to holding a button until damage numbers stop popping up.
Once upgrades start coming into play, enemies stop being a factor altogether, and pretty much exist just to be cannon fodder. The tavern, which serves as an ersatz base of operations, allows you to level up each squad's attack, defense, and item frequency, as well as giving you the opportunity to select variants with special powers. The variations are actually fairly extensive, which would be delightful if you didn't have the ability to sail through the game using just your hard earned points to buy attack and defense upgrades, never touching the rest. Instead, your enemy most often ends up being the clock, which times every stage at ten minutes, and stops the fighting no matter how much progress you've made. This would not be such a big deal if traveling from enemy base to enemy base didn't usually take two to three minutes, but even on horseback, you still face long stretches of riding through endless unchanging countryside looking for fights.
Aside from occasional trouble with troops on horseback when you're at a lower level, the chances of your squad being wiped out entirely are slim.
The tavern and the loading screens provide most of the story, which also ends up being a wash. There's plenty of detail to be mined out of 100 years of war, and the game hits on the highlights, with major figures like Edward the Black Prince, Gilles De Rais, and of course, Joan of Arc all making cameo appearances. The historical highlights are, unfortunately, utterly disconnected from the gameplay. As a mercenary, you're allowed to choose which side of each battle you want to fight on, and no matter how much work you put into claiming territory for one side or the other, the cutscenes still generally ignore your progress in favor of the real event. So all your time spent in taverns, chatting up other mercenaries and a bartender with the worst excuse for a French accent this side of Eddie Izzard's Bond-Villain-With-Broken-Translator skit ultimately makes absolutely no difference to the story.
Does the Nightmare scenario change any of this? Somewhat. It does introduce a more varied throng of enemies than the Hundred Years' War, with magicians, dragons, and snarly goblins. You're allowed to carry over your mercenaries from the Hundred Years' War, and if you owned the original game on PS3, you can import your character from that version. The difficulty level is kicked up a minor notch, so you might actually catch the occasional beatdown if you're not a bit more careful at first. The ten minute time restriction is eliminated in favor of a more dynamic system of shifting objectives, fake enemies, and a map that actually expands as more enemies make their appearance. So, yes, for what it's worth, Nightmare is a better game than the original. However, the core gameplay hasn't been touched, and turning Joan of Arc into an anime villain--who probably-not-coincidentally bears a more than passing resemblance to Cia from Hyrule Warriors--just makes the scenario into a strange Soul Calibur RTS, rather than doing anything interesting with France's beloved Maid selling her soul to stop a war.
Bladestorm: Nightmare is a game trapped in 2007, awkwardly fumbling for a way to push a tried and true formula forward. The ideas are appreciable, but not nearly enough of the required effort has been put in to make this game great or even challenging. Somewhere, a history student is daydreaming of a Hundred Years War full of magic, danger, wild-haired mercenaries, and insane alternate histories in which Joan of Arc becomes witch mistress of Europe. Whatever that kid has in mind, it is certain to be more ambitious than what Bladestorm: Nightmare can provide.
Sonic Has No Single-Player Future, Says Boom Producer
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and its 3DS counterpart Shattered Crystal failed to set the world on fire when the pair of Nintendo exclusives launched last year. This has led SEGA to call into question the viability of the franchise, including whether or not we'll see any more solo adventures staring SEGA's blue mascot.
As for why these two games turned out to be such a major disappointment, former SEGA producer Steven Frost cites over-ambition as the primary culprit.
"The biggest mistake in Boom was trying to cram too much into the game," he explained on SEGA Nerdcast. "Not only were we trying to make just a really good Sonic game, we were trying to add more to it. We overextended our grasp in some ways. We're trying to add in a bungee mechanic, and we're adding combat, and we're adding puzzles, vehicles, hopefully a more compelling story and a bunch of different environments. And it's just a lot, you know? If there's any lesson for me, it's that being too ambitious can be bad."
Kirkman Discusses Overkill’s Walking Dead Game
The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman has spoken a little about the forthcoming Walking Dead game from Overkill.
Speaking to Polygon at SXSW, Kirkman says the game in development will indeed be “PayDay-esque” but it will be a bigger world than what we’ve seen in previous PayDay titles.
"One thing that we are doing, which I think is very cool about the Telltale game and the Starbreeze game and Air game is that they are all licensed games, and licensed games are usually somewhat crappy, but thankfully our's aren't," says Kirkman. "The key I think, which is very important, is that we're not doing, 'Hey, it's Daryl Dixon running around shooting zombies, because you like Daryl Dixon.' Or 'It's Rick Grimes doing this because you like Rick Grimes.' We're telling our own stories and doing our own things almost as if they are original games."
Evolve DLC Adds New Monster and Hunters This Month
Four new hunters are coming to Evolve on March 31, 2K has announced. The previously-revealed Behemoth monster will also be available starting the same day.
The four hunters are part of Evolve's Hunting Season Pass, which is priced at £20 / $25 USD. They'll also be available individually, each priced £6.19 / $7.49 USD. The Behemoth monster will be free for anyone who pre-ordered the game, or it can be purchased for £12 / $15 USD.
We've reached to 2K for other pricing and will let you know once we hear back.
Mars One Mission to the Red Planet Won’t Happen, Says Ex-Astronaut
Former Canadian astronaut Julie Payette believes the one-way Mars One mission to send people to live on Mars won’t succeed, saying “nobody is going anywhere in 10 years.”
Largely using existing technology, the Mars One mission aims to begin human colonization of Mars by landing teams of four on the Red Planet by 2025. The US$6-billion project primarily seeks funding through donations, sponsors, private investors and a planned reality TV show.
“We don’t have the technology to go to Mars, with everything we know today, so I don’t think that a marketing company and a TV-type of selection, is sending anybody anywhere,” The Canadian Press reports Payette as saying during a keynote at an aerospace symposium at the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal.
Carmageddon: Reincarnation Gets Full PC Release Date
Carmageddon: Reincarnation will release in full for PC on April 23, Stainless Games has announced. The British studio's gory racer has been on Steam Early Access for just under a year.
The release proper will include at launch a 16-chapter career mode, 8-way multiplayer (LAN or online), 24 vehicles, 9 maps and 36 race routes. Kickstarter backers who helped the game achieve $625,143 in crowdfunding will also receive a Special Edition Red Eagle vehicle among other rewards.
Carmageddon: Reincarnation is also due to come to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. According to the game's official Twitter feed, there's no further word on a release date for the console versions.
Dying Light Reaches Over 3 Million Players
Techland has announced that Dying Light has amassed 3.2 million players since its release in January.
According to the press release, "with that timeframe applied, it makes Dying Light the most popular title in the company’s history."
The news also came with an infographic detailing some other information about the game. Players have killed nearly 400 million zombies, and have collectively travelled about the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
Valve Boss Talks Game Development, Half-Life 3
Valve boss Gabe Newell recently shared his thoughts on the future of the Half-Life franchise, and how the company he co-founded many years ago has evolved into a service platform as it shifts away from game development.
During an interview with Geoff Keighley in a one-off podcast called GameSlice (via Polygon), Newell was asked whether or not fans will ever see a proper Half-Life 3. Newell replied: "The only reason we'd go back and do like a super classic kind of product is if a whole bunch of people just internally at Valve said they wanted to do it and had a reasonable explanation for why
Final Fantasy XI Will Close Next Year for PS2, Xbox 360
Square Enix has revealed Final Fantasy XI for PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 will close in March 2016.
There is some good news, however, as the PC version will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.
Aiming to go out with a bang, the final scenario – Rhapsodies of Vana’diel – brings three new chapters, with the first hoping to launch in May. Chapter two and three will follow shortly after, in August and November, respectively.
On top of that, as a show of appreciation for the 13 years of support, a new event will be introduced called The Goddess’s Gala, which will bring back fan-favourite campaigns for new and returning players.
Milky Way May Hold Billions of Life-Supporting ‘Goldilocks’ Planets
Astronomers calculate there could be billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy that may have one to three “Goldilocks” planets each in the habitable zone, the region around a star that makes it just right for life to potentially exist on a planet.
Using the NASA’s Kepler satellite, astronomers have confirmed about 1,000 planets around stars in the Milky Way and 3,000 potential planets, to date. The Kepler satellite discovers exoplanets by observing if the light curve of a star shows a reoccurring small dip in brightness, indicating a planet obscuring its light as it orbits its host.
To estimate how many of these systems have planets in the habitable zone, researchers from the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute made calculations based on an updated version of the 250-year-old the Titius-Bode law.