Monthly Archives: March 2015
First Look at Halo 3: ODST on Xbox One
343 Industries today unveiled the first screenshot of Halo 3: ODST running on Xbox One.
ODST's campaign and Halo 2 multiplayer map Relic are both being added to Halo: The Master Chief Collection in an upcoming update. 343 says it's "finishing things up" on ODST and Relic, and will be ready to announce a release date soon.
ODST will be free for anyone who purchased The Master Chief Collection on or before December 19. At this time, 343 hasn't announced a price for those who have purchased the game after that date.
Check out the slideshow below for your first look at ODST on Xbox One, as well as comparison shots of Relic from the original Halo 2 and Halo 2 Anniversary.
The Orphan Black Comic Sells Big
IDW Publishing's Orphan Black #1 was the best-selling comic book in February, according to sales figures from Diamond Comics. This spinoff of the popular sci-fi TV series received a huge sales boost thanks to being included in Loot Crate's March box, allowing it to top other high-profile releases like Darth Vader #1 and Spider-Gwen #1.
Those two books placed at #2, and #3 respectively, while the final chapters of Spider-Verse and the debut of Silk's solo series also sold well for Marvel. DC had two books place in the top ten - Batman #39 and Justice League #39.
ESA Searching For Signs of (Robotic) Life on Comet
The European Space Agency thinks there may still be life to its Philae lander, now currently hurtling through the vastness of space on the back of a comet.
Its lander came to rest in a shady area of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12 of last year. This proved problematic for a probe whose primary source of energy is the sun.
However, as the cosmic ballet goes on and the comet continues its journey around the sun, the angle of sunlight hitting Philae has changed.
"Philae currently receives about twice as much solar energy as it did in November last year," lander project manager Stephan Ulamec said on the ESA blog. Ulamec thinks it may still be too cold for the lander to wake up, but figures "it's worth trying."
Jupiter’s Largest Moon Has an Ocean with More Water Than Earth
Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede may have a subterranean saltwater ocean that is thought to have more water than all the water on Earth's surface.
The underground body of water is estimated to be 60 miles (100 km) deep, up to 10 times deeper than Earth's oceans, and lays under a 95-mile (150 km) shell of ice and rock.
“This discovery marks a significant milestone, highlighting what only Hubble can accomplish,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a prepared statement.
Vikings: Jessalyn Gilsig on Siggy’s Big Moment
Warning: Spoilers for the Vikings episode "Scarred" follow...
In the Vikings episode "Scarred," Harbard the Wanderer worked his magic and threw Kattegat into chaos - with poor Siggy paying the ultimate price while trying to rescue Aslaug's sons, Ubbe and Hvitserk, from a watery grave. The boys survived, but Siggy succumbed to the icy waters of the lake. Catching a glimpse, right before she perished, of a young blonde woman in place of Harbard.
I spoke to actress Jessalyn Gilsig about her Siggy's frozen fate, her decision to leave the series, and the true identity of The Wanderer. I also asked her, as a Heroes alum, to share her thoughts on the property returning to TV with Heroes Reborn.
Destiny’s Next Patch will Prioritise Vault Space, Raid Fixes
Bungie is prioritising a number of player concerns in Destiny’s future 1.1.2 update , the Live Team outlined In the latest Weekly Update, including more Vault space and Raid fixes.
The team is looking at giving players more Vault slots to store items, weapons and armor and at why some Strikes are unpopular with players. The patch will also address bugs with Raid bosses Atheon and Crota.
While the update “ is still weeks away,” Bungie will share more details about the patch next week. What features end up rolling out with the 1.1.2 update is yet to be cemented so the list of fixes may change. Following is the current list of priorities:
HBO Puts an End to Game of Thrones Movie Rumors
HBO has renewed its most popular show through season 6 but, while the network hopes for several more seasons, it has decided against a Game of Thrones feature film—for now.
Programming president Michael Lombardo squashed movie rumors, believing a film would be unfair to HBO subscribers. He told EW, "Certainly there have been conversations where it’s been said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do that?’ But when you start a series with our subscribers, the promise is that for your HBO fee that we’re going to take you to the end of this. I feel that on some level
changing the rules: Now you have to pay $16 to see how your show ends."
Bloodborne PvP and Co-op Details Outlined on Japanese Site
Details of Bloodborne's player versus player and co-op play systems have emerged. Bearing mechanical similarities to Dark Souls, the online details have been translated from the Japanese PlayStation website.
Co-op play in Sony's upcoming PS4 action-rpg will be reminiscent of Dark Souls. The "host" will ring a bell which will then call in up to two allies who can then assist the host as a "guest."
Guests are banished if either the host dies, they're killed themselves, or the host uses an item to banish them. Completing an area's objective will also banish guests. For players who would rather not take their chances with a stranger, a passcode can be set up to limit guests to just friends.
Xbox One Price Drop Continues to Prove Fruitful for Microsoft
Microsoft has announced hardware sales for Xbox One are up 84 percent month over month in February.
While PlayStation 4 topped the NPD February 2015 hardware charts, Microsoft is boasting that Xbox One had a record February in the United States. The 84-percent increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including the recent price cut for the console.
In addition, Xbox Live users spent on average 74 hours on the service throughout February, which breaks down to roughly 18.5 hours per week. Overall, that's "three times the amount of hours the average user spends on social networks," said Mike Nichols, corporate vice president of Xbox marketing at Microsoft.
Cities: Skylines Review
Now this is more like it. Even though my real-world occupation as the mayor of a Canadian town means that I try to escape such things as budget meetings and zoning hearings when I play games, Cities: Skylines still managed to hook me due to its authenticity. Unlike the latest SimCity, which was far too fantastical to let me build cities that resembled those in the real world (size limitations and not being able to establish proper zoning districts drove me crazy), this Colossal Order production nails just enough of what is fun about running a municipality in the real world. Proper zoning, room to grow, and the addition of policies and districts that let you plan out sensible city development make for a (mostly) bona fide experience in the virtual mayor's chair.
Making comparisons between games is not always helpful, but in this case, it's difficult to ignore the tight relationship between Cities: Skylines and its SimCity inspiration. Colossal Order delves deep into what Maxis and EA once made so popular with a traditional city-building approach. Few surprises or even significant innovations can be found here: There is just a standard single-player mode of play in which you choose from a handful of maps representing territory types ranging from flat plains to tropical beaches. You may also play the game with standard conditions, dial up the difficulty, and/or turn on sandbox and unlimited-money mods. No tutorial is included, either, which makes for a learning curve at the beginning. At least tips are provided on a continual basis during regular play.
Multiplayer is totally absent, as are frilly options like disasters and giant monster attacks. There are no multiple-city games, either. You have one city to deal with, along with a mostly invisible outside world that allows you to buy and sell goods on a common market. The game has been developed with modding in mind, however, and it ships with a full editor. Therefore, you can expect a lot of user-made add-ons to hit the net shortly. Nonetheless, at the present time, this "just the facts" focus makes for an initially bland experience. The plainness is exacerbated by stark menu screens and dated visuals that are attractive enough to get by, while at the same time cutting corners by cloning buildings and signs, as well as lacking amenities like a day-night cycle and weather patterns.
If you have been jonesing to be a virtual mayor, though, Cities: Skylines gets nearly everything else just right. First off is zoning. You have full control over zoning neighborhoods as low or high (medium is absent, although I didn't miss it) residential, commercial, and industrial. These basic mechanics provide thorough control over laying out cities, which gives you a real sense of being in charge. Second up is map size, which allows for a lot of stretching out. The initial size is restrictive at 2km by 2km, but you can access more plots of land to eventually expand to a metropolis spanning a whopping 36 square km. That allows for expansive burgs, and an incredible sense of freedom. You always have room to correct mistakes and grow out of early problems, making you feel more like the super-mayor that you should feel like, and not the goofball constantly demolishing whole neighborhoods to fix problems you couldn't have foreseen three hours ago.
Two other great features involve establishing districts and policies. This allows for the creation of boroughs with separate identities (policies can be set to take in entire cities, as well) by drawing them out with the Paint District tool. If you want your very own Brooklyn hipsters or a hardhat neighborhood for factory Joes, you can paint out city blocks and then tweak localized settings. This allows you to offer free public transit, boost education, give away smoke detectors, get into high-tech homes, ban high rises, and even alter tax rates for different zones. You can also set up specific industrial areas to focus efforts there. So if you want a green city, allow only farming use in industrial zones. If you want to go in the other direction with the sort of hardcore factories that killed grandpa, you can set up oil or ore districts and watch the smokestacks pump out poison.
Policies are on the fanciful side, and establishing wildly different rules on social activities and even tax rates between neighborhoods in the same city will not go over well on election day. But I still love the ability to fine-tune cities without delving too deeply into micromanagement. The district and policy features combine to let me sketch out what I want in each part of my city--yes, this will be my gentrified borough for snotty white-collar professionals, complete with a smoking ban, no pets, no high rises, recycling, allowance for the use of certain controlled recreational substances, high-tech homes, and, of course, stupid high taxes--and then sit back and watch neighborhoods evolve.
Basic mechanics provide thorough control over laying out cities.
The challenge is not pronounced, especially if you have city-building experience. You needn't worry about random sparks somehow taking down whole blocks, or other acts of God obliterating all of your hard work. This gives Cities: Skylines a relaxed character, instead of coming across like a rigorous game loaded with set objectives and problems to be solved. It's an old approach, but a great one, as it allows you to concentrate on the abstractions of building, instead of mindlessly racing around meeting random goals related to citizen happiness or residency numbers.
The only aspect of the game that becomes annoying to handle is transit. Given the same developer's Cities in Motion series, you might expect roads, buses, and the like to take on a vital role. Ultimately, however, transportation systems are overly Byzantine and convoluted, particularly when it comes to bus routes. It's difficult to tell if transportation woes are your own wrongdoing, or if there are problems with vehicle pathfinding in the game itself. You can muddle through, although you never exert the same level of control with transit as with everything else.
Nevertheless, Cities: Skylines is the best city-builder on the market right now. The game's presentation is stodgy, but it is all but guaranteed to provide you many hours of carefully crafting cities, laying out zoning, and establishing districts for specifics residential and industrial uses…all free from real-world mayoral headaches like 6 a.m. phone calls griping about snowplowing. Right now, there is no better way to take a peek at life as a mayor without filing your papers to run for office in the real world.