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vg-sanctuary · 3 years

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Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

Moonsprout Games - Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC - 2019

I don't like the core gameplay of 99% of all RPGs, but the ones I do like have been some of my favorite games I've ever played. case in point, Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, a modern interpretation of the classic Paper Mario formula and an ideal example of indie developers adding to the legacy of a cult classic. its main feature is turn-based combat with action commands, like old Paper Mario or the Mario & Luigi series, and strategy in its intentional design and small health and damage numbers that goes way beyond "spam damage and heal every third turn, use mana items as needed". (in case you want to be 100% blind for your playthrough, past the Keep Reading link are some very minor spoilers: an item a specific cook can make after a side quest, some basic enemies, environments that are about halfway through the game, and the names of some medals.)

“wow, vg-sanctuary posting about a game that's not even two years old at time of writing? and it's an RPG? are you not a retro/legacy blog anymore? who are you and what have you done with the writer?” I still am a retro/legacy blog, mostly, just this time I thought I'd share something that its developers still get money from, and whose developers aren't mega corporations. and I just beat it, enjoyed it, and really felt like writing about it because it still doesn't have the popularity it deserves even after that puppet guy on YouTube talked about it. not that this post is going to reach any significant number of people, but still. I'll write about some more indie games sometime in the future. (and indeed I am writing about another RPG and you better believe it has a lot to talk about.)

anyway, Bug Fables starts with a brash little bee called Vi and a polite and honorable beetle named Kabbu wandering into an explorer's guild and not having a partner to join the guild with. they reluctantly decide they're going to fight together because companionship is a requirement for this guild, foiling off each other and sometimes off their third friend Leif, a blue moth they find in a cave, for the whole game. every character has a distinct personality and all the party members get some valuable character development through a side quest, which I really liked, but I'm no connoisseur of RPG stories. while I'm on story, people that come here looking for a well-made world will get what they want from the many optional lore books hidden around the world.

the plot becomes more complex and compelling as the game continues, though it generally lets gameplay take the spotlight. which is great, because the gameplay is also mostly great. about a third of it is doing puzzles on the overworld using the abilities of each character to move forward a la the Mario & Luigi series. they generally make use of whatever your newest overworld ability is, and some areas early on have inaccessible things you have to come back to, sort of like a Metroidvania except it isn't required to do this for progression. some puzzles take longer they could because they involve using Kabbu's horn to repeatedly fling an ice block many times over a distance. it's never egregious, but it could have been faster if the guy would use his arms. this is a minor caveat and not a majority of the game.

a lot of people probably don't know how the combat for this or Paper Mario works, and it's really important to Bug Fables, so I'll explain that here. it's turn based, which is typical, but basic attacks and skills need you to time a button press to do as much damage as possible. you can also time a button press when an enemy attacks to take less damage. Paper Mario and Bug Fables also both have medals instead of other equipment that give characters higher max HP or a new skill, for example. you have limited medal points and stronger medals require more points.

this is going to sound like a lot, but any RPG's combat will sound like a lot if you try to detail it in a single paragraph. the game introduces these things slower than I am here. in Bug Fables specifically, the character standing in the front of the group does one extra damage but is more likely to be attacked, and you can pass turns from one character to another in exchange for that character dealing one less damage (which is a lot because basic attacks only deal two damage by default). certain enemies can only be hit by certain attacks; some enemies fly, so Kabbu can't hit them until Vi knocks them down with her beemerang. not a typo, beemerang. and many of Bug Fables' status effects have upsides -- being paralyzed reduces damage taken everything by one, poison has many medals that make it a good thing, and being asleep heals the sleeping character every turn. there are others that are straight up bad things, though, and usually don't come until later. all of this adds up to even small encounters having strategic depth, which is great, and if you don't feel like small encounters you can just avoid them. skills that would typically be relegated to one character, like healing and support skills all going to one, are instead split between party members to make decisions more difficult in a good way. there's also a lovely medal that instantly kills any enemy the game deems too easy for you, sort of like in Earthbound.

I figure I spent more time doing housekeeping like cooking (simple A+B=C or A-becomes-B crafting), buying items, and arranging medals in Bug Fables than in any other RPG, which is because it was designed that way. by the way, cooking recipes start hidden, but a foodie at each restaurant will share some strong ones for free, which is a big help early on. anyone who's played The World Ends with You (i.e. me) will be spoiled by its excellent quality of life: no consumable items and you instantly heal to full after every encounter. it makes items seem like a ridiculous formality that RPGs only still have because they've had them for years, but in Bug Fables any item that isn't simple healing -- a lot of them aren't simple healing -- has great strategic use, and the exact way you spend your medal points can determine whether you win or lose any fight, especially bosses. for example, one character having one extra damage for two turns when they typically only do two is pretty important, especially when they use an attack that does multiple hits, and having it in item form saves valuable medal points and skill points. part of that time was kind of a waste, though, because I generally had one set of medals I use for multiple enemies and one I use for single enemies like bosses. being able to save loadouts would have helped a lot. I would like to compliment Bug Fables on allowing you to restart any boss with different medals without having to repeat cutscenes, and commend it for letting you do-over your level up bonuses late in the game when it starts to matter.

it's not like spending a lot of time on strategizing before fights is strictly mandatory. I was mostly playing on hard mode where enemies have more health and more difficult attacks, and mostly with a medal called Hard Hits that makes all enemies deal one extra damage in exchange for extra money after each fight. it can be less difficult if you'd like, but it's never mindless; even if you're doing a strategy that manages 20 or 30 damage (again, a lot in this game) in a single turn, it takes effort to choose your medals to do so much damage and actually play the strategy out in combat. the combat strategy is the best part of Bug Fables, and it makes each fight almost like a puzzle. I've typed some form of "strategy" six times so far, which is fair because it's the best part of Bug Fables. don't let it put you off, though, it's RPG combat strategy, not chess-like or RTS or something, so if you've enjoyed any other turn-based RPG it should be easy to get used to.

it's also worth mentioning the ample side content. each chapter of the game unlocks a handful of side quests, some about trading, some about combat, and almost as many bonus bosses as main bosses. you're allowed to fight them fairly early on, and a few become available after the final boss that are actually a bit harder than it in classic Paper Mario fashion. basically, if you like Bug Fables, there's a lot of it to play. there's even a trading card minigame because of course there is. it's fairly fleshed out, too, and unlike the one in Chocobo Tales the animations between turns don't take six years. the reward for the whole card side quest isn't something that's important for combat, so you can skip it if you don't like it; I didn't especially like it so I think that was a great decision on the developers' part.

rewards for some of the other side content, though, are so good it's kind of a wonder they can be completely skipped. it doesn't make the game harder to not have those skills or medals, but they are some of the best in the game and undeniably really useful. they make great side quest rewards in that sense, but it's important to know for the people that usually wouldn't do side content. I don't know if that's a common kind of player, but just in case. (this game's 100% achievement has been earned by a sky-high 5.9% of players on Steam. usually it's more like 2% or less. the point is none of the extra content is overly obtuse.)

I will complain about the forced stealth sections though. and be astounded that they fixed the main issue with them in the last stealth section. these are minor caveats and take well under an hour total unless you're really, really, really bad at sneaking, but they bothered me when I got to them. I mean, I understand why they're in the game, I understand why Zelda has them, but I didn't really like them. the main issue for all but the last stealth section is that there's no vision cone or other indication that "if you stand here they will see you" or even an opportunity to recover from mistakes which are incredibly important for playable stealth. the last stealth section does have a vision cone and does have an opportunity to recover from mistakes, which is a great step up. I would like to use even more italics to remind you that these sections total less than an hour of gameplay. Zelda: Breath of the Wild's forced-ish stealth was much worse than this.

I don't know where else to put it, so I'll add here that the soundtrack is great and the graphics are perfectly Gamecube-y and the sprites capture the cuteness of Paper Mario really well, even though they're, you know, bugs. each environment is distinct and themed well, and each one’s music matches well. I really wish I knew how to talk about music because there are a lot of different songs in this game that work well for what they go with. boss music sounds intense and boss-y and appropriate for each boss you're fighting, the not-music hits just right, and everything else feels good. some songs use Nintendo 64 MIDI instruments, which I loved. and the bee boss music has a synth that sounds like bees buzzing.

anyone that likes RPGs -- and even some people that don't -- will probably enjoy the story and strategy that make up the excellent Bug Fables. it goes beyond being a homage to Paper Mario and becomes its own thing entirely, though its roots are obvious from the art style. not that this takes away from it -- Paper Mario is a great legacy, and this manages to be even better. for all its little bad things there are a dozen great ones. I admit I haven't played the classic Paper Mario games, but this made me want more -- I guess I'll have to go back while I hope for Moonsprout Games to continue forward.

#bug fables #bug fables the everlasting sapling #my writing #this was also on amazon luna but i didnt figure anyone would care if i omitted it #also screenshots i took myself wow

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kcaruth · 4 years

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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

Before the dark times, before the mouse empire, LucasArts published several fun, memorable Star Wars video games, from Star Wars: Bounty Hunter to The Force Unleashed series. After Disney’s acquisition of LucasArts in 2012, the Mouse House stopped all internal developments at LucasArts and laid off most of its staff in 2013. Signaling its turn to the dark side, Disney awarded EA (voted worst company in America multiple times) a multi-year license to create Star Wars video games.

EA rebooted the Star Wars Battlefront series (2005′s Star Wars: Battlefront II has to be one of my most played video games) and released the new Star Wars Battlefront in November 2015. Critics acknowledged the game’s great graphics and visuals, but it quickly became apparent that the game lacked content. The hero and villain rosters were very limited, and the game only included content from the original trilogy, not the prequels.

Then came EA’s disastrous Star Wars Battlefront II, the repercussions of which shook the gaming world. Released in November 2017, Battlefront II had some promise. It was the first game since the Disney takeover to feature a single-player story mode that was canon to the film series. The game also contained content from the prequel, original, and sequel trilogies. Additionally, EA greatly expanded the hero and villain rosters. However, EA showed it true colors with the game’s loot boxes, which could award players significant gameplay advantages if they purchased them with real money. Essentially, the game turned into a pay to win system, thereby making players who did not purchase loot boxes feel so disadvantaged that Battlefront II virtually became pay to play.

Although Visceral Games, the studio behind the Dead Space series, was developing a single-player Star Wars game, even getting to the point in the development process where they could tease everyone with in-game footage, EA canceled the game and shut down the studio. Not counting the Lego Star Wars games and mobile games, EA’s Battlefront games were the only new Stars Wars video games on the market, an astonishing reality compared to the rate at which LucasArts used to produce games for the franchise.

Eventually, EA finally came to its senses and assigned a single-player action-adventure Star Wars game to Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind the Titanfall series. Former Santa Monica Studio employee Stig Asmussen served as game director, and heavy-hitting talent like writer Chris Avellone, perhaps best known for his work on Fallout: New Vegas, joined the project. Finally, Respawn released Jedi: Fallen Order in November 2019 to much critical acclaim.

Now, with that long-winded background introduction establishing the recent state of Star Wars video gaming out of the way, let’s get into the real reason why everyone is here. What did I think of Jedi: Fallen Order? I am usually well behind on newer video game releases, but our current state of affairs with the global pandemic has afforded me a bit more time to dust off my controller. Having just beaten Fallen Order earlier this week, I have plenty to say about the game. (I even made a pros and cons list! Can you tell I have also been spending my time watching the misadventures of Leslie Knope and company in Parks and Rec?)

At its core, Star Wars is about family, friendship, and good versus evil, so let’s start by talking about this game’s characters and plot. (Don’t worry; I won’t spoil anything from the story.) Fallen Order nails the spirit of Star Wars. Set five years after Revenge of the Sith, players control Cal Kestis, a Padawan forced to keep a low profile after the Jedi Purge. Cal lives on the planet Bracca, where he works as a scrapper salvaging ships from the Clone Wars. Kudos to the game here. I stopped a couple of times just to admire the visuals of Bracca. It was definitely a “wow moment” seeing TIE fighters shriek by overhead and watching a Separatist ship descend from the atmosphere. One day, Cal taps into the Force for the first time since Emperor Palpatine’s Order 66 to save a friend from certain death from a workplace accident. Unfortunately, an Imperial probe droid records the incident, alerting the Empire of a Jedi fugitive. Two Inquisitors quickly arrive on the scene to track down the Jedi. Introduced in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the menacing Inquisitors are an evil organization of Force-sensitive beings, some of them former Jedi, who have been tortured and turned to the dark side by Darth Vader and the Empire or otherwise willingly joined the organization out of hunger for power. They are tasked with hunting down surviving Jedi in hiding and others exhibiting Force potential. Somehow, Cal has survived this long even though he still carries around his lightsaber with him everywhere! When the Inquisitors corner him, he literally just pulls it out of his pocket! How has no one ever noticed it before? Did none of the Imperial probe droids floating around the planet ever take a snapshot of the weapon? Plot holes aside, two new characters, Greez and Cere, rescue Cal from certain doom at the hands of the Second and Ninth Sisters and ferry him off world.

Cere is a former Jedi who held the role of Seeker in the Order. A Seeker located infants with Force abilities who could be taken to Coruscant and trained in the Jedi arts (think the good version of the Inquisitors). Greez is a starship pilot with a bad gambling habit, a green thumb, and an insatiable appetite. Cal finds a small droid named BD-1, who reveals a message from Jedi Master Eno Cordova, detailing the existence of a hidden Jedi Holocron containing a list of Force-sensitive children across the galaxy. In the wrong hands, this list could lead to the children’s demise. Cal and Cere want to use the list to rebuild the Jedi Order. Thus begins the race between the Empire and our crew of ragtag misfits to secure the Holocron.

Overall, the story is good, great even for recent Star Wars standards. It fits the Star Wars cannon very well, and I loved the nods to the Clone Wars, mentions of obscure characters, and the foreshadowing of future events. Some moments elicit chuckles from the appropriate Star Wars humor, while others go to some truly dark places. The way the game tackles Order 66 earns it extremely high marks from me. The developers need to be applauded for bringing in new and relatively unknown planets that we have not really had the chance to explore before. There is no Hoth, Jakuu, or the like to be seen here, thankfully. Star Wars is a big galaxy; it is about time we saw different parts of it. We have spent more than enough time on Tatooine. The planets we do visit feel alive. Each one has a different color palette, climate, weather pattern (although the developers may have been a little heavy-handed on the fog in a few of the locations), and, of course, flora and fauna.

Cal fights everything from annoying rat creatures to ram-like slugs, from giant venus fly traps to trampoline spring-plants. Players can even collect plant specimens on different planets and plant them in Greez’s terrarium, which was a nice little way to take a piece of each planet with you on your journey. Oh, and the spiders. Cal has to kill tons and tons of spiders. Again, this is Star Wars! There is a whole galaxy at your disposal full of creatures that look like whatever your imagination can dream up, and the best we get is different species of spiders? That is probably nitpicking, but it felt like it was worth pointing out.

When it comes to the Empire, however, the variety is fantastic. Of course, the run-of-the-mill standard stormtroopers are here, but there are also variations like shock baton-wielding scout troopers, flame troopers, and the dangerous Purge troopers, essentially the special forces of the Inquisitors. The chatter between the troopers is great. Before they spot him, Cal can overhear them talking about their notorious accuracy, the planet’s hostile wildlife, or even mundane topics like food rations. Once Cal starts fighting them, they often taunt him, full of confidence in their abilities, but then they come to the realization that they are facing off against a Jedi. The confidence in their voices gradually turns to panicked fear as Cal slices through their numbers. By the time Cal gets to the last trooper standing, that trooper will regularly plead for his life or confess how scared he is. Every once in a while, the Empire will even throw AT-ST walkers at Cal, which are a fun enough challenge, though the strategy to defeat them becomes clear within a minute or two, and players are never forced to change up their tactics. I do love that after Cal destroys the walker, the trooper will crawl out of the wreckage and start shooting at him. Nice touch!

With all that said, the story is not perfect. In fact, once or twice it just feels dumb. For example, Cal goes on this grand mission seeking out an important leader in hiding, and when he finally encounters him, they exchange maybe one full sentence before the leader gifts Cal a rebreather so that he can swim underwater. You are telling me I conquered various obstacles and enemies, traversing across multiple planets all to get...a rebreather? This whole section could have been cut out and streamlined so that the storyline goes directly to the main setpiece of this planet I am talking about. Have one of Cal’s crewmates give him a rebreather and send him on his way instead. Regardless, at least the back and forth traversal gives players another chance to board the ship, ascend from the planet, and blast off into hyperspace. Seeing that never got old.

Respawn and its writers did a great job with these characters, including one of the Inquisitors (the other one is just kind of...meh). I enjoyed getting to know my crew, but I wish they had a little more to do in the game. In reality, they just stay on the ship 95 percent of the time while you are out running around on your mission (not that I entirely blame them...it is a cool ship). The conversations between these characters were usually good, but sometimes Cal would not mention huge, seemingly significant events or people he ran into to his crew! For a cinematic franchise like Star Wars, this game could have used a couple more cutscenes. The game often feeds the plot or a character’s mindset to players by making them idly stand near a crewmate and tapping R3 a handful of times to get them to cough up a couple of lines of dialogue.

As is to be expected from a Star Wars product, the game’s music is terrific. Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton composed the score and recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Bach Choir of London. Mongolian folk metal band The Hu also wrote and recorded a song that is featured during a couple of prominent portions of the game. The song lyrics were written in Mongolian and then translated into a fictional Star Wars alien language. The music compliments and elevates the game’s setpieces, with one standout part reminding me of Thor: Ragnarok. A couple of times, the game goes full John Williams to really make some moments hit home, and boy does it work! Hats off to Respawn for putting in this much effort in regards to the music for the game.

Getting into the gameplay, Fallen Order is an amalgamation of several other games. Dark Souls, Zelda, Uncharted, Metroid, Castlevania, Sekiro, heck even Sonic...they are all here in some form or fashion. Unfortunately for Fallen Order, it does not elevate the features it borrows from those games. The biggest reason? The bugs. Oh my goodness the bugs. How can a blockbuster release like this have so many bugs? Maybe it had something to do with EA or Disney wanting to push the final product out before the release of The Rise of Skywalker the next month, but the amount of bugs in this game are simply unacceptable. While none of them led to a complete game crash, I definitely caught myself grumbling, “I hate this game,” with my frustration levels constantly reaching the scorching temperature of Mustafarian lava, especially considering Fallen Order’s inexcusably long load times. Seriously, the load times after dying are so long that I had enough time to run to the bathroom, heat something up in the microwave, or make a cup of tea (to help relax me from this rage-inducing game) before the game finished loading. How can I lift off from a planet and travel through hyperspace faster than the game can respawn me after dying? It is not just dying, by the way. The game developers think they cleverly hid load times behind elevator rides, but that did not work either! At least throw in some elevator music or comm chatter if you are going to make me stand there for so long!

One time, I fell through the level to my death while walking on what was 100 percent solid ground. Speaking of solid ground, or should I say the lack thereof, enemies continued to fight me while clearly hovering in thin air when they should obviously be plummeting to their death. Woe is me if I tried to reach them, though, because my Jedi character must not have that ability, leading to, that is right, more death falls for me as the enemy looked on from his invisible sliver of ground above. If I was lucky enough to have an enemy remain in my relative vicinity and not stand off a ledge, that enemy had a chance of pinning and glitching Cal against a wall, leaving me trapped until I died from the beating. The enemy who kills Cal glows gold until players shave off a piece of that enemies health, which is great, but that means players cannot see that enemy flash red when he uses an unblockable attack. How could Respawn not notice this error when it is such an important component of the combat? For all the aggressive enemies with magical glitching powers, there were also those that would have a change of heart mid-combat and go pacifistic on me. I found this especially common in the later game and on one planet in particular with ranged enemies. They would fire at me, I would block their shot back at them and injure them, and then they would just stand there staring at me. It was really bizarre and made me uneasy turning my back on them to explore the area. I also experienced my health and Force bars completely disappearing from the screen. The first couple of times it happened, I thought it was intentional and meant that Cal could not die for that sequence of the game. Wrong! So much for thinking I was momentarily invincible with unlimited Force powers. This bug was especially crippling during big boss fights, as you can imagine. Respawn throws in some quick time events once in a while where players have to press the correct button in a very short amount of time. For the most part, I did not mind these, but one exception got my blood boiling. Cal is fighting a giant creature and ends up free falling. The game requires Cal to land in a very, very precise spot and pull of a quick time event. I cannot count the number of times I fell to my death during this part because of how finicky the game was being. Cal conveniently stumbles across every single icy or muddy slide in the galaxy during his travels, a way for the game developers to disguise a way to get players from point A to point B quickly, but these slides are also quite particular with when players jump and where they land. Another good portion of my deaths came from Cal not making a jump on one of these slides when he clearly had the distance or him seemingly landing and making the jump only for him to glitch and then fall backwards into a never-ending dark chasm. The game developers may have thought players would enjoy these slides, but I came to dread them.

The worst game bugs by far, however, dealt with frame rates and level textures. Not contained to one section or even one planet, unfortunately, garbage frame rates wreak more havoc across the galaxy than the treacherous Empire. I am telling you the frame rate is absolutely abysmal in this game. I can forgive a drop in frame rate if it happens a couple of times, but it is like it is a built-in gameplay feature of Fallen Order. It was maddening! How can Respawn expect me to properly block or dodge if the game cannot even keep up with my movements or camera adjustments? Texture pop ins and clipping were also recurring issues. One time, I noticed a soldier’s helmet load in late. Another time, a Wookie’s fur took a while to fill up the character model. (By the way, the Wookies in this game look horrendous.) Sometimes, it would get so bad that the game would just pause completely so that it could load in the content of the area. I honestly thought the game had crashed and was about to reboot the console before everything stuttered back into place and Cal got moving again.

I have done a lot of ranting about the game’s flaws the last few paragraphs, so let me get back to some things I did like. The combat works well. I cannot begin to tell you how satisfying and occasionally outright hilarious it is to Force push a trooper off a ledge, especially when he is standing there trying to intimidate you. I had so much fun simply blocking stormtroopers’ laser bolts right back at them. Best of all, I started taking every opportunity I had to pull enemies toward me, especially ones perched up on higher vantage points, and stab them straight through with my lightsaber. The lightsaber boss fights were a highlight of the game. Players feel the weight of every strike and every struggle when the blades cross.

In addition to Cal’s lightsaber, he also has his Force powers at his disposal. He starts out with Force slow and gradually adds other abilities, such as push and pull, as the game progresses. Players may question how Cal, a Jedi, can struggle with a squadron of stormtroopers or the local wildlife, or they may ask why he does not start with all of his Force abilities, but it all makes sense when you consider that Cal has to rebuild his connection to the Force. He has not used it since he was a child, after all. It makes sense that this amateur padawan who did not complete his training runs into a tough time in combat. When Cal does unlock new Force abilities, the game cleverly flashes back to show Cal’s master teaching him that ability during his training before Order 66.

Players can further bolster their Force, survival, and lightsaber abilities through a skill tree. Skill points accumulated from defeating enemies grant players access to increased health, stronger stim potency, increased lightsaber damage, and mass push, to name a few skills. Even later on in the game when most of your Force abilities have been unlocked and Cal has found a couple of fun new gadgets, the game still feels balanced. Cal never feels overpowered like Starkiller in The Force Unleashed games. Even when they are maxed out, his Force push and pull do not appear to have much of an effect on bosses. At most, they will briefly stagger them, whereas when they do it to Cal, he will comically tumble over like Palpatine when Yoda Force pushed him across his desk in Revenge of the Sith.

I will argue that a couple of Force abilities become outdated later in the game. At one point, I forgot I even had Force slow because I had not used it in a while. I only remembered it while I was trying to solve a small puzzle to escape from an area and had exhausted all other options. Can you blame me for always wanting to Force push enemies off a cliff instead of slowing them down?

I appreciate that the game developers allow players to adjust the difficulty at any time. I started out at a higher difficulty and found myself dying before I even left the first world, Bracca. However, I persisted. That is, until I faced off against Oggdo Bogdo and his trash hitboxes. Players can stumble upon Oggdo Bogdo very early in the game. Oggdo Bogdo, a carnivorous amphibian creature, is a boss variation of the more common lookalikes of him. There is a similar optional alpha creature boss encounter on most planets Cal visits. No matter how hard I tried or how many different strategies I employed, Oggdo Bogdo proved to be too tough for me, and after waiting through countless death loads and having to run back over to Oggdo Bogdo’s location time and time again, I decided to lower the game’s difficulty, allowing me to finally slay this ugly creature.

Like Sekiro’s sculptor’s idols or the bonfires in Dark Souls, Fallen Order relies on meditation circles as its save points. Cal can rest to full health and restore his Force meter as well as restock health stims. Meditation circles also allow players to access the skill tree and spend skill points. These meditation circles implement a good risk versus reward system. If players choose to rest at a meditation circles, all of the enemies he or she has defeated since the last rest will respawn. I regularly found myself weighing the pros and cons of my situation, questioning if I should heal and get more stims or push on so that I did not put more enemies in my path.

While I am on the subject of these meditation circle save points, I have to point out that Fallen Order does not have fast travel. Instead, it encourages players to backtrack and explore previously inaccessible areas that they can now open with their newly unlocked abilities. This was fine for a while, but I quickly grew tired of it when I noticed how much of the backtracking had me slowly climbing, traversing across narrow walkways that Cal has to carefully balance on, or shimmying over narrow cliff edges. This is padding by exploration. While the vine and rope swinging was fun, especially with Force pull, I stopped enjoying climbing up a conveniently placed arrangement of vines and the like by the halfway point of the game, if not earlier. I will admit that I believe Fallen Order contains just the right amount of playtime, but this stuff had it teetering on the too long side. This is compounded by one important world that players have to visit multiple times that feels too big. The developers’ creativity and excitement got a little out of hand here. Just pull up the map of that world to see how unwieldy it is. When I completed the story on a planet like this, I felt exhausted rather than triumphant. Why can’t I hail my crew to come pick me up in the ship where I am rather than having to run across the entire planet again to get back to the landing pad, fighting the same enemies I already cleared out a couple of hours ago? The game developers do provide a few shortcuts that players can open, but the amount of time they end up saving is negligible in some cases.

I was disappointed that there is no real endgame content. Sure, players can continue to explore or fight enemies for the heck of it, but the developers could have done so much more. After players unlock every ability in the skill tree, the skill points they collect after that become meaningless. I will confess that I chose to rush past enemies to get to my next destination rather than waste time or energy fighting them for the 50th time after I had filled out my skill tree. Why not unlock fast travel after players beat the story? How about adding in a fighting arena where players can test their maxed out skill set against waves of enemies? Heck, let the players unlock dark side Force abilites like Force lightning or Force choke after they complete the story so that whatever they do then is not canon. I would have continued to gather skill points for that!

Now I mentioned Cal’s droid companion BD-1 earlier, but BD-1 deserves a special shout-out. BD-1 is spunky and lovable. Not only does BD-1 shoot Cal stims to heal him, the droid also provides hints for puzzles, scans enemies to suggest tactics to take them down, plays recordings that push the story along, and helps Cal navigate the worlds by hacking locked doors or carrying him across zip lines. Additionally, BD-1 projects the holomap of each planet, which is vital to keeping track of where Cal is in relation to the ship or his destination. The holomap itself is decent. Color coding helps players see what is inaccessible and what is unlockable, but for the bigger worlds with multiple levels it can be quite a burden to scroll across. Not to knock BD-1, but I grew impatient waiting for the droid’s animation that it goes through every single time Cal finds a hidden chest. Cal opens up the chest, BD-1 jumps in and rumbles around, and then jumps back out with whatever was inside it, all while Cal repeats the same lines of dialogue, like “Woah, buddy!” or “Careful now.” or “What did you find in there?” There are 107 chests in the game. Let that sink in.

These chests are one of the rewards for exploration. They contain items that players can use to customize Cal, his lightsaber, BD-1, or the ship. While this is motivation enough at the beginning of the game, this customization serves no purpose beyond cosmetics. It comes down to which poncho or paint job players find more aesthetically pleasing. I love that the game developers let players change lightsaber colors, but I wish these different ponchos and lightsaber parts had some sort of effect on the gameplay, such as restoring more of Cal’s Force meter or refilling a small amount of health after defeating an enemy.

Force echoes serve as another reward for exploring. Cal uncovers lore from past events by reaching out through these Force echoes. They rounded out the worlds nicely and added to the feeling that they were lived in, real places in the galaxy. The final element of exploration is BD-1′s scans. While you are running around, BD-1 will occasionally crawl down off Cal’s back and scramble over to something the droid wants to scan. These unlock data entries on the planet, its flora and fauna, the Empire, or other characters. This is all fine and dandy, but the level of exploration the game developers expect players to do with all of the backtracking involved needs to reward me with more than just basic lore, especially when some of the entries feel like the writers did not even try when they wrote them. Is an entry on a storage crate telling me that the Empire stored materials in it really worth stopping to scan? I think not. Instead, the game developers could have really motivated me to explore more by throwing in a few interesting side quests or fun Easter eggs. Maybe players could stumble upon active Imperial transmissions and overhear characters like Tarkin or Thrawn. Maybe players could find an abandoned Imperial camp and watch Imperial or Rebel propaganda over a holofeed that was left on. They could have even hidden a squadron of battle droids that were forgotten from the Clone Wars. So many possibilities!

Jedi: Fallen Order is far from a perfect game and has so much unrealized potential, but I would not trade away my time with it. For every flaw, I can point to a positive, and vice versa. At the end of the day, I got to be a Jedi, and that is good enough for me.

#star wars #jedi fallen order #video games #blog #blog post #review

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takuchat · 5 years

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

Today we got a huge amount of Final Fantasy VII Remake Information as well as a ton of interviews and pictures. Below you can see a large compilation of the information.

There may be some redundancy in here as I gathered info from multiple sources.

Weapon abilities

Each weapon has its own unique weapon abilities that increase in proficiency the more they are used. When an ability’s proficiency level reaches the maximum, that ability is then learned by the wielder and can be used when wielding any weapon.

Here we see Cloud’s Buster Sword upgrade screen. The different options allow you to improve the wielder’s status or increase the number of Materia slots available.

Switching to Classic mode

Classic Mode can be activated by selecting “CLASSIC” from the difficulty menu. In Classic Mode, party members will act automatically, with the ATB gauge filling up as they do so. In this mode, the player only needs to select which abilities, magic, and items they will use their ATB charges for. This brings the feel of the gameplay closer to the menu-based battles from the original FFVII but with the amazing immersive graphics of the remake.

It is also possible to revert to direct control at any time during Classic Mode by pushing buttons on the controller.

Using characters’ unique abilities

The triangle button activates each character’s unique ability. Cloud’s unique ability is to switch between different fighting styles. He can switch between “Operator Mode” which has a good balance between attack and defense, and “Punisher Mode” [pictured] which is geared heavily towards offense. In Punisher Mode, Cloud’s movement speed is reduced, but his basic Square button attacks are upgraded to even mightier blows.

Assess Materia

Assess – Materia that allows you to use the Assess ability. When you use Assess on an enemy, you can see their resistances and weaknesses, making it easier to defeat them in battle.

Up close with Avalanche

We have some new screenshots of fan-favorite members of the anti-Shinra group Avalanche: Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge.

Biggs is calm, cool and collected, even in the most extreme circumstances. He’s tidy by nature, and loves nothing more than cleaning and taking a shower.

Jessie is in charge of procurement for Avalanche. She can get her hands on everything from explosives to fake IDs. She’s also a skilled engineer, and earns money for the group by fixing water filtration units and devices to sell on. She does have a weakness for handsome men though…

Wedge is an invaluable member of Avalanche, who uses his wits and charm for to gather information and defuse tense situations – including those within the team. He also has another very important role – he tastes new menu items in Seventh Heaven. Well, someone’s got to do it, right?

Meet the Turks

The Turks are a small, elite organization with Shinra. The shadowy group does everything the company needs it to – be it scouting out candidates for SOLDIER, protecting VIPs, or even assassination. Here’s a look at a couple of them.

Reno has flaming red hair and a cynical, aloof attitude. In battle, his agility and specialized weaponry and attacks make him a real threat.

Rude is instantly recognizable thanks to his shaved head, sunglasses and imposing stature. A man of few words, he relies on martial arts and his strength in battle, and completes missions as efficiently as possible.

Getting to the action

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE features a fast-paced real-time battle system that gives you lots of choice in how you approach combat.

Each character a unique ability – in Cloud’s case, he can switch between Operator and Punisher Mode.

Operator Mode offers a good balance between strength, defense and mobility.

A press of the triangle button puts Cloud in Punisher Mode. Movement speed is reduced, but his attacks become much more powerful.

Cloud also has access to powerful attacks, including Triple Slash, which hits all enemies nearby with three consecutive strikes…

…and the ranged attack Blade Burst:

For a detailed rundown of how FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE’s battle system works, check out our full article on the subject:

So how does FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE actually play?

See our Impressions of the game here!

Switching to Classic Mode

For those players who prefer overall strategy over moment to moment action, or want an experience closer to the turn-based gameplay of the original FINAL FANTASY VII, Classic Mode is for you!

In this mode, characters perform basic attacks automatically, and when the ATB gauge is full, you can select a special ability to use from the menu – similar to how the original game played.

Here, you can see the option for Classic Mode in the difficulty menu:

Iconic locations reimagined

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE faithfully recreates beloved areas from the original game. It also adds new areas that couldn’t fit into the original game.

Here we can see the iconic Church in the slums. Just a stone’s throw from Sector 5, it’s one of the only places in the slums where flowers can grow, making it a very special place for Aerith.

The next shot is of Aerith’s home. Nestled in the corner of Sector 5, it’s a beautiful house that contrasts with the slums surrounding it.

Let’s Assess some Materia

Cloud and company are able to use special abilities, including magic, summons and more.

It’s all thanks to materia – orbs of crystallized mako energy that, when equipped, imbue the wielder with incredible power.

Case in point, here we can see Aeirth using the spell Fire:

Of course, not all Materia is about offense. Take the Assess Materia, pictured below. It shows you an enemy’s specific strengths and weaknesses, helping you refine your strategy when you take it on. Knowledge is power after all!

Meet the new Chocobo and Moogle

Summons are a special, exceptionally powerful form of Materia. Equip one, and once the summon gauge is full, you can call a powerful ally into the fight.

In the past, we’ve showcased the firey Ifrit and cool-as-ice Shiva. Today we can reveal a new Summon that’s just as powerful, but a little… cuter: Chocobo and Moogle.

Moogle can Blast foes:

The dynamic duo can also use Stampede to trample the enemy with a herd of chocobos. It’s adorable… although probably not for those on the receiving end of it:

Side activities and minigames

These new screenshots highlight some of the additional things to do in FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE.

If you need a break from battling Shinra, you can play a game of darts in Seventh Heaven:

You can also enjoy fast-paced bike battles. In this shot, we can see Cloud and Jessie in a thrilling chase with Shinra operatives.

Time For the Interviews!

YOSHINORI KITASE – PRODUCER

In the several years following 2009, when I was running around all over the world promoting the FINAL FANTASY XIII series, I had opportunity to speak to many fans and journalists. The question that I always got as we got up to part ways was, “When are you making the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE?”

It was to the point where it almost felt like an alternative way to say goodbye, so eventually I started pre-emptively giving my response to the question before they’d even asked it. “If we were to create a remake of that now, it would be an enormous amount of data, and who knows how many years it would take. But, if the ‘right time’ comes along, we might just do it someday!” This is how I’d respond back then, who knows how many hundreds of times. To all the people I had a chance to meet with back then, the “right time” has finally arrived.

For the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE, developers who worked on the original game have come onboard once again as core members, including myself as Producer, Tetsuya Nomura as Director, Motomu Toriyama as Co-Director, and Kazushige Nojima on Story & Scenario.

Additionally, we also have people like Co-Director Naoki Hamaguchi who are now part of the core development team, who was just a fan of FINAL FANTASY VII back then. And, to my delight, creators from younger generations all over the world have come forth upon hearing news of FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE’s production. While ensuring that the spirit of the original game is kept intact, these members are adding to it the power of a new generation.

As a result, the game that is about to be born surpasses even my own expectations as the one who voiced the desire to take this endeavour on in the first place. In fact, the one who’s looking forward to playing this game the most right now might actually be me.

TETSUYA NOMURA – DIRECTOR & CONCEPT DESIGN

I started up the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE project around the time of Compilation of FINAL FANTASY VII. We’d gone through Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, and Dirge of Cerberus, and I was planning this by myself for about a year as the fifth and final entry in the compilation.

Since that initial plan and my first ideas, other projects took-shape and I became very busy as they moved forward, but I never stopped thinking about VII. As such, I feel like I’m looking forward to the release as much as anyone, as I’ve been carrying around these ideas for a long time.

Opportunities for discussing our true intentions are few, but with regard to the size of the game that many are asking about – there’s no reason at all to worry. Even in this Midgar portion alone, the density and volume are so great that I had to give directions to lighten them.

With regard to new characters, of whom I said during past interviews that there would be “none” – though they aren’t main characters, their numbers ended up growing considerably in the process of creating a rich depiction of Midgar. When you think of Midgar’s final boss, you probably think of the M.O.T.O.R., but in this game new bosses will appear and add to the excitement of the story even more.

We’ve already begun working on the next one as well, but I’m confident that playing through this title will expand your expectations just like the world that extends beyond Midgar.

Until next time.

KAZUSHIGE NOJIMA (STELLAVISTA LTD.) – STORY & SCENARIO

It must have been in the very beginning stages of developing FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE that I got to see the Remake version of Cloud for the first time. It wasn’t post-Advent Children Cloud, with kindness brimming from within. Rather, here was a young man with fiery features, looking straight at me through the screen with aggression in his eyes. I knew right t hen: “Oh, this is it.”

This time, it was this Cloud that I needed to depict. When Cloud came to Midgar and was hired by Avalanche, this was the sort of look that he would have had on his face. So I revisited the experiences that he’d had in his life so far, thinking of the effect that each individual event would have had on him. His attitude toward his childhood friend Tifa. How would he act toward Barret? What sort of distance would he keep while interacting with passers-by on the street? I picture the scene of Midgar in my mind and imagine Cloud moving through it. Write new lines of dialogue to add for him. This is how Cloud in the Remake Version came to be.

It was an exciting task to introduce a new current of wind to FINAL FANTASY VII, but at the same time, there was some fear. The original game used cartoon-like, stylised art, and the story was completed by players using their imagination to supplement portions that couldn’t be depicted as a result. Even if they were seeing the same scene, the information they took away from it and how they interpreted it differed depending on the viewer. Perhaps it’s what might be considered a narrative form of storytelling nowadays.

In FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE, there will be much less room for player imagination. This fact will probably change the feel of the story considerably. People who know the original might not know quite how to take it. Such is the fear that I have. But I also have conviction. It should be possible to feel a much deeper connection to Cloud as you join alongside him. It would be amazing if you could feel that fiery flame together with him.

NAOKI HAMAGUCHI – CO-DIRECTOR (GAME DESIGN / PROGRAMMING)

When the original FINAL FANTASY VII was released, I was just another student who dreamed of being in the gaming industry. I of course played the game, but I also re-read the guidebook over and over again, my heart stolen by the engaging universe. I remember wishing strongly that I’d be able to create a game like it someday.

Twenty-two years later, that student who dreamed of FINAL FANTASY VII is now involved in developing the remake. I can’t help but feel like it’s fate.

In this title, I handled overseeing the development team overall, such as deciding development milestones, constructing a workflow using Unreal Engine, and taking responsibility for game design.

Here, I met staff members who were involved in the original game, who entered the industry with childhood dreams of FINAL FANTASY VII just like me, and those who were drawn by the allure of FINAL FANTASY VII and joined the dev team from overseas. It was a gathering of amazing creators with passion and ambition towards the game. All I have is gratitude for having the opportunity to meet this team.

With all this in mind, I’ve considered the following phrase important: “respect for the original.” FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE takes on the challenge of creating something that’s created specifically thanks to the technological power and entertainment quality that matches the current generation, while treating the captivating elements of the original game with respect.

For those who’ve played it: “new but familiar.” For those who haven’t played it: “experience the charm of FINAL FANTASY VII, which moved the hearts of many, now created with the most exciting modern technology available.” I hope you enjoy it!

MOTOMU TORIYAMA – CO-DIRECTOR (SCENARIO DESIGN)

For the original game, I joined the project as a planner who was just starting out on my career, and I worked on Sector 7 slums and Wall Market.

In producing FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE, the thoughts and feelings I had when I was just starting out back then were revived, and at the same time, I took on the challenge of new methods of expression that I’m able to execute now that I have the experience.

The original version was a forerunner when it came to RPGs that used 3D CG, but the characters were made of polygons, the dialogue was in text only, and cameras weren’t able to be used for cutscenes.

In FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE, we’re using the newest visuals, voice acting, and character facial expressions to redesign the FINAL FANTASY VII universe to be more realistic. By increasing the realism of the universe within the city of Midgar, which is made prosperous by mako energy, we of course also reimagined the characters who reside there, like Cloud and Tifa, more vividly as living and breathing human beings, depicting their daily lives and feelings in a more in-depth manner.

We took care to remake not only the main characters, but also characters like Johnny and the Shinra Middle Manager who I created back then. Please keep your eye out to see how they make their new appearances. Additionally, when remaking the Honey-Bee Inn at the Wall Market, we revived it is as a pantheon of entertainment, which couldn’t be realized back then. Here, the scene that many of you have been eager to see, where Cloud disguises himself. Please enjoy.”

SHINTARO TAKAI – GRAPHICS & VFX DIRECTOR

I created the effects for the original FINAL FANTASY VII. Back then, the scope of development was so exorbitantly massive that I just threw myself into the tasks for which I was responsible, without even fully understanding what sort of game we were creating.

Near the final stages of development, when I finally tried playing the test version, I remember being surprised by the graphics and the depth of the story, as well as how fully realized it was, and I remember enjoying the game as a player. It’s been 22 years after that, and I’m participating in the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE project as a developer, and today, I’m able to experience the impact and fun similar to that of the previous title.

For the remake, I’ve mainly directed the effects section, while also crossing over into other sections for decisions and directions on overall graphics.

Among the many major games that are celebrated for their photorealistic graphics, FINAL FANTASY VII is a little different. Not only is it realistic, but I believe you’ll notice that it incorporates “playfulness” in the design and colours for an originality not found in other games. Effects are an area that is particularly conducive to expressing various elements of “playfulness.”

I hope you’ll enjoy various effects that are not only beautiful, but also convincingly portray realism and magic!! Various elements of game design and graphic design have been packed into every corner of the vast Midgar. I hope you enjoy it!!

TERUKI ENDO – BATTLE DIRECTOR

When I played the original version, I wasn’t on the game creation side of things, and I remember enjoying it as a player and feeling constant surprise at the evolution of games. The three-dimensionality of the stage and the dynamism of the battle scenes have left a strong impression on me. Back then, I never even imagined that I would someday be on the side of creating games, or that I would be able to be involved in that game.

Speaking to my own personal experience, I had mostly been creating action games thus far, so for this title, I took on the challenge of remaking a system that was not of an action game originally and incorporating action elements into it.

Production was completely different than that of a pure action game, and the need for new design philosophy often arose. Production involved constantly searching for the best balance between action and command elements, but I believe we’ve managed to do this in an exciting new way.

In order to create battles that are surprising and never boring, we worked hard to create a variety of strategic elements for each boss and enemy. Also, in constructing battle systems for each character, we wanted to respect the image of the original version while additionally introducing many new abilities. I hope you’re able to find your own style of battle by combining those abilities with Materia.

TAKAKO MIYAKE – ENVIRONMENT DIRECTOR

For FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE, the graphics team worked to the theme of “how would Midgar look if it existed in real life?” As such, as the environments team, we examined those portions that were once left to the players’ imaginations, fell outside of the on-screen area, or were between scenes, and tried to supplement them in detail.

For all the fans out there, we worked our hardest in hopes that you’ll be able to relive an experience that also surpasses your memories.

For all of you who are playing for the first time, we worked our hardest with the sole hope that you’ll experience this amazing universe that has remained beloved by so many for 22 years, and to be able to convey its charm.

Additionally, in order to create a fitting backdrop for the drama unfolding around the main characters, and in order for it to be a stage where the various characters living in Midgar can be their vibrant selves, all of teams, including the environments section, came up with ideas and worked collaboratively. Midgar is a closed city. However, I would be very happy if by experiencing the drama unfolding around its residents and the main characters who go through it, you feel as though Midgar actually exists.

I am a FINAL FANTASY VII fan, so being able to take part in the Remake was something that made me happy but also nervous. It’s been an unforgettable development experience. I truly hope that everyone enjoys it.

IICHIRO YAMAGUCHI – LIGHTING DIRECTOR

FINAL FANTASY VII, for me, at the time when I was in school, was a very impactful game. It really pierced my heart as I was at such a sensitive age, with not only a rich story, but charming characters, world setting and music, not to mention that it was the first in the series to be in 3D polygon format. This was the piece that really brought out my interest in CG in general.

When I was able to join the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE team, I started by thinking back to how I felt when I first played it. Midgar, with its’ abundant mix of different elements and original characters like Cloud, became something unbreakable and the “standard” for me in FINAL FANTASY VII.

In the world of the game, just like in real life, if there is not some form of light then you won’t be able to see anything. So when putting up lights just anywhere, Midgar could lose its token Midgar-ness, and Cloud wouldn’t be Cloud anymore. I’ve taken as much care as possible to recreate the world that I had saved in my mind and attempted to remake it to a fresh and modern standard.

The positions of the few lights that illuminate the entirety of Midgar, the adjustments made to each and every voluminous cut-scene… it’s all a lot of work to do! However, alongside the rest of the wonderful lighting team we feel that we’ve brought something great to the table. We’ve left in the elements that will have you going “Ah, that’s what it was like!”, and yet you’ll still be able to enjoy the world of FINAL FANTASY VII in its new and fresh style!

MASAAKI KAZENO – CHARACTER MODELING DIRECTOR

I was amongst those who bought the original game on the day of its release and played it constantly, clearing it in under a week. Those that also have cleared it will understand this, but I also wasn’t quite satisfied with the locations, so I continued to play it after clearing in the same places as well.

And so, my memory of FINAL FANTASY VII was how I actually started studying CG, after being left with the strong motivation to want to create a FINAL FANTASY game when playing it and truly being moved by it.

So I just made my mind up and bought a PC to help me study – something that I had never even touched before. So for me, someone who had been so strongly influenced by the original, to be working on the characters of the remake, I want to do everything I can to make them in a way that shows both a charm and freshness whilst keeping that nostalgia.

So I want them to reflect in a fresh way that that also allows players of the original to remember the time that they played the original, as well as make them detailed and charming enough to give first-time players the understanding of just how charming they are.

I’ve ensured to arrange things like hairstyles and outfits to re-create the design from the original, so I encourage anyone to take time with their camera angles when playing to take a look. Also, there are several characters that stand out other than just the main characters that you’ll find. So please see for yourself as to what kind of appearance and characteristics they have! Other than that, we’ve got enemies in there perhaps too close to the original, and there are many surprises coming in the Remake for you to all look forward to! Keep your eyes out!

YOSHIYUKI SOMA – ANIMATION DIRECTOR

When FINAL FANTASY VII came out, I was actually more of a SEGA Saturn fan, so I didn’t play it straight away. However, when it was decided that I was to join SQUARE, I was put on the development of FINAL FANTASY VIII, and so I thought to myself “I’m screwed if I don’t know about FINAL FANTASY VII!”. That’s when I bought a PlayStation and played it so much.

Those memories feel like only yesterday. So I can’t say this too loudly, but I actually started it out of obligation rather than as a fan. However, I was absolutely enthralled by the world and lore as soon as I picked it up!

For the animations; each and every member of the team – from those responsible for battles, fields, simple events, cut scenes, mini-games, facial expressions, to swinging things in the background, actual behaviour settings – have all worked together to improve as one.

We’ve done our best to ensure that whatever you do, it feels like the characters are alive there with you. We really hope you enjoy the story of Midgar on a huge screen, with Cloud and his friends.

–Sources-

PSBlog

Square Enix

Squares Twitter

New Final Fantasy VII Remake Pictures, Summons And Interviews Final Fantasy VII Remake Today we got a huge amount of Final Fantasy VII Remake Information as well as a ton of interviews and pictures.

#action #aeris #aerith #Aerith Gainsborough #berret #cloud #Final Fantasy VII Remake #jrpg #square enix

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ladala99 · 5 years

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Spyro Reignited Countdown - Skylanders: Superchargers (Console)

From the beginning of Skylanders, one of the common requests was for there to be a racing game. When it actually happened, people hated it.

Not me, though. There was nothing I didn’t love about this game. Aside from the fact that online was dead by the time I got it, since after the first game I waited until most of the figures were out before getting newer games.

Gameplay

Standard Skylanders fare, for the on-foot sections. Closer to Swap Force’s gameplay than Trap Team’s, which I liked.

But now there’s vehicle sections. The only mandatory ones are the Land sections, in which you drive around, sometimes racing, sometimes battling, always keeping an eye out for secrets. The Sea and Sky ones are extremely varied with many different styles of gameplay. You never know what to expect next!

The Gates

Yeah, Trap Team’s didn’t really work out. Now, Elemental Gates are gone completely, and we instead have Supercharger Gates. But these aren’t even in every level. The real replacement are the Land, Sea, and Sky areas.

So really, you just need to buy two $15 figures to finish the game. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve played a Skylanders game before or not. And honestly, these figures add so much content to the game it’s worth it imo.

Old Figures vs. New Figures

Combat-wise, they’re pretty balanced aside from the bonuses Supercharger characters get when their specific vehicle is with them. Usefulness-wise... they’re also pretty equal because Supercharger gates hardly exist. And Supercharger characters really aren’t that special like previous special characters - they have no real gimmicks unto themselves.

The only real thing is that Superchargers get special quests just for them, and you get rewarded for completing these. But some of these quests require their specific vehicle, which does mean an additional purchase.

The Collectables

So, Hats, Skystones, Legendary Treasures, Winged Sapphires, and Soul Gems all exist, but they all come from RNG. The real hidden collectables are Epic Chests, which can contain any of these. They also come from Gifts and Wishstones.

In the vehicle sections, there’s Toolboxes instead, which give out vehicle parts.

All of these are weighted towards giving you bonuses for figures you already have, so it’s not nearly as scummy as it sounds.

They’re pretty much lootboxes before lootboxes were a big thing, but all earned in-game and often. I liked them, as it makes every playthrough different and rewards repeatedly playing levels. I can see how it’s baby’s first lootbox, though, and perhaps I should be more wary.

Lost Forever?

There’s one feature that’s just... gone.

At some point between the game coming out and me getting it, Activision added a daily rotation store that let you get paint jobs, stickers, and other aesthetic loot for your vehicle. This store uses a different currency: Gear Bits, and can either be grinded for or bought outright with real money. *gulp*

I never did anything with it because the Gear Bit grind was too much, the aesthetics did nothing, and I had already spent a ton on this series through the figures, let alone the cost of the games themselves!

But it’s gone now. You needed to access the servers to access the store, and you also needed to access the servers to access your purchased aesthetics. At some point or another, the servers were shut down. That means all of these aesthetics, grinded for or purchased, are gone forever. Poof. Like they never existed.

I thought for sure that they’d release a patch that made these aesthetics accessible offline once they shut down the servers, since these aesthetics were part of a downloaded update, but nope. And that’s the real scummiest part of this game.

Bosses

A lot of them are fought in your Land Vehicle, which is pretty fun. The ones that aren’t are standard Skylanders fare.

Also: Darkness is best boss in the series. You cannot convince me otherwise. Especially because I don’t remember the fight other than it being “awesome.”

Levels

Are really long again, but are broken up by the vehicle sections. Honestly I loved it. Don’t have much else to say about them.

Story

So uh, the story begins with Kaos already having won. He makes it impossible to transport the Skylanders into Skylands through normal methods. He imprisons all of the good guys from previous games. He destroys the Core of Light and summons The Darkness.

But, the good guys send these special vehicles to Earth, that have a Rift Drive, that allows your portal to work as long as the vehicle is present. Now to save your friends!

And then I forget the rest of the plot. I believe fourth-wall-breaking occurs as Kaos becomes aware you’re watching him in cutscenes. The Darkness betrays Kaos and Glumshanks is temporarily on your side if not Kaos too at some point.

I’m not doing it justice because I hardly remember anything but the coolest bits. Aside from the first game (maybe even alongside it?) it’s my favorite story in Skylanders. And it sort-of rehashes the first game by beginning the story with Kaos winning.

Unique in the Series?

Yep. Everything to do with the vehicles is unique. The next game only has the vehicles in a clone of the extra racing mode. It’s also the only Skylanders game where you need a particular type of figure on the portal to play, and thus need two figures on the portal at all times.

Conclusion

As someone who loves kart racers and gameplay variety, this was a blast to play. It’s really too bad that so many people hated it. This is the high point Skylanders should have ended on. Too bad there’s one more game.

#spyro #skylanders #skylanders superchargers #video game review #spyro reignited

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bjerre22tonnesen-blog · 5 years

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VBUCKS - Pick The best Approach

Fortnite Free V Bucks is the easiest way to make free unlimited v bucks , object with skin without having to pay any money in game. Other activities can ask participants designed for a Captcha number, prove the PayPal code or otherwise verify their personality before receiving an in-game purchase. Overwatch, for example, could ask participants to outline happening over prior to buying loot boxes. Hackers interviewed display that, because Epic does not do this, also due to Fortnite's incredible popularity, Fortnite right now, is as ready as might be for balance hacking. As revealed by, fortnite is meaningless to use. Moreover, it is clearly a hundred percent free to use, meaning that everybody is able to use this notch by using a fortnite v-Bucks generator. That online generator could end people over 90 thousands of v-bucks. However, if you are not likely to use this hack, then you will have to give hundreds of dollars to play this activity. 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Although the sport is violent in spirit, there cartoonish handle with the entertainment seems to negate just the way violent this entertainment is. The person will need to get the surprise or debit cards on their own once they get back to their system, but next, they can easily get through that cash to get everything through those digital mass. That means they can get another game, downloadable information, or Fortnite's V-Bucks. Exactly what the person chooses to use the present card for will be around them—you have no way to force” them to use it upon V-Bucks. Fortnite has taken the activity world through hurricane. It's been the top saw also performed gaming right to the older months and it doesn't really look like it's slowing down both, so obviously we're here to give you the report on the best Fortnite locations and gear. Fortnite presents the person with fast and inspiring games in a slightly cartoony setting but do not allow apparent casual element in the activity fool you - that match is incredibly competitive. Your Fortnite sensitivity for example is an incredibly important position a person really should constantly tweak in order to make yourself the best person you can perhaps be. Benjamin Preminger, a mature intelligence expert in Sixgill noted the money laundering company were performed with general work. He said, Epic Games doesn't seem to close down in any important road in criminal activity surrounding Fortnite, money laundering or usually.” He chances that Epic Games will take measures to better watch the in-game currency and to work more thoroughly with authorities. And that's essentially what we're working with as far as digital objects useful in Fortnite. After that, there's a wide array of merchandise that's become available in the past few months. Epic Games has an official retail store, even if the mixture is somewhat limited. These steps bodies are fairly neat, with you'll get bonus points if you can determine your giftee's favorite skin and get them the physical version. Funko Pops, also, are fairly consistent and oddly mesmerizing. The sport internal currency is Fortnite v-Bucks , and you can buy for it various cosmetic products which modify the character's beginning and gear. Digital resources can be allocated for Combat Passes , allowing to unblock appeal and generate more coins. Unfortunately, many products are quite expensive, so are the groups of v-Bucks. The manufacturing gets it possible systematically earn resources in compete, for even map on the entertainment and overcoming unique problems, but these practices aren't fast. However, that possible to get Fortnite Hack v-Bucks by way of the right internal generator. Both beginners with further players use this method successfully. Footballer Antoine Griezmann did a Fortnite dance move to celebrate resulting in the Earth Cup 2018 final - estimated viewing figures: 900 million Evidence of Fortnite fandom one of the planets biggest stages is no freak accident - the game boasts no small amount of celebrity fans (including Griezmann's France teammate Adil Rami, that said to be playing Fortnite naked over the World Cup, after a few boisterous teammates broke into, threatening to increase his furniture. Rami defended himself with a passion extinguisher…leading to an flight from the hotel). The confrontation pass rewards are bad In Fortnite's latest season , you can dress like a shapeshifting ninja or even an anthropomorphic banana. In Top, you're remained mostly with drab camouflage character skins and common weapon wraps. The only unlockable items special on the game, like the banner badges and showy finisher collections, are not often seen, getting them less desirable. Respawn gone to alleviate the issue with the release of their Fortnite-like battle pass, which reports a turn system based on experience spots that rewards you for instance spent playing. Unlike Fortnite, however, there are no weekly or seasonal problems that form activities to do outside of murdering other participants. To means that casual fans, those bad sufficient to help gain matches with regularity, are laid playing against an ever-improving player bottom with small incentive to keep follow in. If you do possess a gaming PC with more advanced items and hardware, the suggested processor is an Intel Core i5 to make sure the game could function smoothly. You need a graphics card in the form of also a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or an AMD Radeon HD 7870 to show off the full graphical abilities in the sport. With these requirements or higher, the MACHINE should have absolutely no problem rendering from the famous plan with many it is assets and participant models. A major part of the gameplay mechanics in Fortnite is the place gets minor and faithful here on the randomly generated point because game goes about. This means the game doesn't have to weight and development several things as it goes by (provided you're good enough to get that further!) making the game run smoothly. Additionally, that activity has no AI in their primary game mode ‘Battle Royale' that, in turn, doesn't position because much tension on the COMPUTER. Besides these systems, there is no other legit fashion to generate free V-Bucks. Using hacks can not simply get you barred by Fortnite, a person can even have to deal with some legal trouble While these processes do expect you to make a purchase, Battle Royale setting is free. So unlike other sports which cost you to $60 then include micro-transactions, Fortnite Battle Royale sacrifices the first part. Among those situations, forum users dropped download tie for 'œcombo lists,' hundreds of thousands of experienced forward and code combinations for Netflix, Spotify, Dominos and other PayPal-linked services. They'd been extracted from further leaks , like the 400 million-user MySpace opening and also the 164,000-user LinkedIn breach. Those combinations, Marksman told me, are the pitch to cutting Fortnite accounts. If you understand little pot of violet goodness make sure people snaffle it up, quickly. It will make a substantial distinction toward your own Fortnite gameplay. The 50% shield buff lasts for the length of the match, but, because it is a shield buff, it will not defend you from a few damage types, like falling. What's more, you can stack two, increasing the starting max health and giving you a serious advantage. So that's V-bucks. V-bucks are the most versatile thing you can offer your Fortnite-er. If you want amazing to help wrap up, your best guess is the Deep Freeze Bundle , which includes a handful of cosmetics along with several V-Bucks and lets you to give a physical reason. A person really should certainly able to locate this about store shelves: essentially the entire intention of that point is that Epic can laid a real item with projections for stumped gifters to air up for the register. Feel free to indulge. Both Epic Online sport with Vraspir agreed on the long term injunction involving Fortnite that end Vraspir from dishonest in almost any way, condition, or create Down the road. In Fortnite, you take to help to or defend the building ineptitude with certain older model gunplay. Individuals are all of the Fortnite Fight Royale recommendations Now we have for you, but what exactly views do you could cover? It is a unabashed ownership of the insanely well-liked a hundred-player absolutely free-for-all on an at any time shrinking road construction, tweaked with Fortnite's representation of center producing and source pick which adds a new twist in the components. So here's the thing…most fathers are reducing how much the child plays Fortnite of course, they want their product to have a balanced healthy life with varied activities. But that sensible approach also slows the child's ability to level up, develop the great skins and accessories and other extra's that get a Battlepass gives them. That contest is designed to make you to play a LOT and devote money, which is why the machines of Fortnite get about 300 Million U.S dollars a month! And your child wants to play as much as possible.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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15 Best Video Game Cheat Codes of All-Time

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Cheat codes may not be as prominent in video games as they once were, but there was a time when entire magazines, TV shows, and websites were dedicated to sharing these commands, codes, and tactics that would change the way you played your favorite games.

The thing about cheat codes is that they’re rarely just about the “cheat.” Yes, there’s a certain joy to becoming invincible, unlocking new items, or just skipping a few levels, but the thing that separates the best cheat codes from an endless selection of similar cheats is the way they would often go on to define the games they were in to such a degree that it almost feels stranger to think of playing those games without cheats enabled.

From tanks that appear out of thin air to secrets that made you the most popular kid in the neighborhood, these are the absolute best cheats in video game history.

15. Grand Theft Auto 3 – Spawn a Rhino Tank

The Grand Theft Auto series belongs in the Hall of Fame of video game cheat codes, but if I have to pick one cheat from this series to highlight, it has to be the “tank” code from GTA 3.

By entering CIRCLE, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, R1, L2, L1, TRIANGLE, CIRCLE, TRIANGLE (in the PS2 version of the game), GTA 3 players could spawn an invincible Rhino tank that could destroy any other vehicle with one cannon shot. It was the cheat you relied on when you were about to quit playing or were feeling especially frustrated/destructive. Sure, it sometimes broke the game and slowed the framerate to a crawl, but those drawbacks honestly just highlight how insane and delightful this cheat was.

14. NBA Jam – Unlockable Character Cheats

Long before Fortnite let John Wick shoot Superman, NBA Jam was the undisputed king of bizarre character cameos that led to truly wild competitive matchups.

Depending on which version of the game you were playing, NBA Jam let you take the court as Bill Clinton, Reptile, Warren Moon, “Air Dog,” Prince Charles, Will Smith, and so many more truly bizarre characters that we used to impress our friends before we refused to tell them the cheat code we used to unlock them.

13. Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast – Dismemberment Debug Code

For years, Star Wars fans asked the question, “Wait, wouldn’t a lightsaber just instantly cut through anyone it touched?” While most of us knew the reasons that we never got to see that effect in the movies, many of us secretly hoped that we would one day get to see what a lightsaber could really do.

That day came the first time you realized that Jedi Outcast contained one of the best cheat codes ever. By opening this PC classic’s debug menu and using the “helpusobi 1” code, Jedi Outcast players could unlock the “realistic” lightsaber combat option that allowed you to chop off enemy limbs and heads or even just give them the old Darth Maul special.

12. Metroid – The Mysterious Justin Bailey Code

While Metroid’s “Justin Bailey” password/cheat code is certainly memorable for what it unlocks (Samus’ bodysuit design and a collection of gear, weapons, and items), the enduring legacy of this code is its mysterious origins and the many myths it inspired.

For years, fans argued about the meaning and origin of “Justin Bailey.” Some speculated that Justin Bailey was the name of a Metroid developer (or their child) or that it refers to Samus being “just in” her bathing suit. Years later, though, we learned that it’s actually kind of a coincidence that this specific password works at all and that it may have been discovered by someone named Justin who entered their own name and found something incredible.

11. Sonic the Hedgehog – The Debug Cheat

“Debug” modes are pretty common in PC games, but it’s always been wild that Sonic the Hedgehog featured a cheat code that essentially enabled a kind of debug mode that not only let you spawn items but manipulate certain elements of existing levels.

The extent of this cheat’s functionality helps it stand out from the comparatively simpler codes of this era, but the thing that really impresses me all these years later is how this cheat showcases just how much on-screen chaos the Sega Genesis could handle without catching on fire.

10. The Sims – “Rosebud” Money Cheat

In theory, the ability to earn unlimited money in The Sims by using the “Rosebud” command should ruin a game built around the idea of growing your character and improving their life over time. In practice, though, this cheat just gave us a different way to experience one of the most influential PC games ever.

Unlimited money let us build the house of our dreams, engineer truly wild scenarios, or even just focus on elements of The Sims we wouldn’t otherwise get to enjoy. This cheat proved just how robust The Sims’ core mechanics and endgame options really were.

9. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater – “The End” Time Travel Skip

Ok, this isn’t actually a “cheat code” in the strictest sense of the phrase, but it’s impossible to talk about the best video game workarounds and exploits ever without mentioning this brilliant piece of game design.

The battle against elderly sniper “The End” in Metal Gear Solid 3 is arguably one of the franchise’s best boss fights, but if you just don’t have the time for all that, it is possible to skip this fight entirely. You just needed to set your PS2’s internal clock a couple of years into the future before starting this encounter. If done correctly, you’ll trigger a special cutscene that shows The End has died of old age and makes you feel bad about your tactics.

8. Age of Empires 2 – The Shelby Cobra Cheat

Age of Empires 2 features so many memorable cheats that you could honestly argue they helped define the legacy of this classic RTS. However, there is one cheat code that stands above the rest.

By using the cheat command “how do you turn this on,” you can spawn a Shelby Cobra in AoE 2 that happens to function as one of the better siege weapons in the game. Nothing beats turning this strategy game into a Fury Road simulator by assaulting a desert stronghold with a small army of sports cars.

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7. Super Street Fighter II: Turbo – Play as Akuma

Some of my favorite cheat codes ever are the ones you could use against unsuspecting friends to blow their minds and possibly ruin their day. So far as that goes, there are few cheat codes more memorable than unlocking Akuma in the arcade version of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo.

Actually, the only thing more memorable than playing as Akuma was actually managing to input this cheat code correctly. The series of steps required to unlock Akuma is so precise that it’s honestly harder to pull off than most combos in other fighting games. In fact, this cheat code (which required you to navigate the character select screen in a very specific way) was so tough to properly input that even some of those who knew the method suspected it was fake.

6. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 – Moon Physics

The only thing better than cheats that break a game are cheats that break a game and present an entirely new way to experience it in the process.

That’s why I’ve always loved Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2’s “Moon Physics” cheat. Does it make it possible to pull off record combos from a standing jump? Yes, but navigating these physics proves to be a challenge in and of itself, as anyone who has ever ruined a million-point combo by seriously misjudging a jump will tell you.

5. The Legend of Zelda – The Second Quest Secret

Sure, you can unlock Zelda’s “Second Quest” (a remix of the original adventure) by actually beating the game, but many of us discovered that feature by entering “Zelda” as our character name.

It’s impressive enough that Nintendo managed to pack this much content into an NES cartridge, but the best thing about this cheat is how easy it was to unlock it. More than a few kids accidentally played the Second Quest by assuming that their character was supposed to be named Zelda.

4. Doom – The “God Mode” Cheat

Doom’s invincibility cheat command (IDDQD) deserves some love for becoming a video game meme before memes were really a thing, but what stands out to me all these years later is how this code kind of changed the conversation about Doom for many.

As the first first-person shooter many of us played when we were young, Doom could be incredibly intimidating in terms of its mechanics, concept, difficulty, and even tone. However, when someone put in this code and made you invincible, it really made it easier to appreciate just what a joy this classic was and how that whole FPS thing was probably going to stick around for a while.

3. The Konami Code – Gradius

It’s the code you knew was going to be on the list the moment you saw it, but the slight twist here is that I’m specifically highlighting the use of the Konami code in Gradius: the game that started the most famous cheat code in video game history.

The story goes that Kazuhisa Hashimoto was working on the NES port of Gradius but found it difficult to properly test the game due to how punishing it was. His solution was to create a cheat command that would give him the power-ups he needed to progress. The game was accidentally shipped with the cheat code still enabled, players discovered it, and the rest is history. There’s just something great about a “work smarter, not harder” game developer/tester pretty much pioneering video game cheat codes as we know them today.

2. Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis) – The Blood Code

Early arguments between Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo fans usually ended in a standstill. Gamers on both sides typically refused to concede any ground to their “rivals” in the debate over who owned the better video game console.

That’s what makes this cheat code so special. The moment that Sega Genesis owners showed their Super Nintendo friends that it was possible to unlock blood in their version of Mortal Kombat, there wasn’t a single SNES fan in the world that could pretend to be anything less than impressed. You had no playground rep if you didn’t know the Mortal Kombat blood code (A, B, A, C, A, B, B) by heart.

1. GoldenEye 007 – The Facility Invincibility Run

There are a few cheats from GoldenEye 007 that belong on this list (DK Mode and Paintball certainly stand out), but if we’re talking about the best of the best, then we’ve got to talk about unlocking GoldenEye 007’s “Invincible” cheat.

In order to unlock the ability to become invincible in GoldenEye 007, you had to beat the Facility level in 2:05 or less on 00 Agent setting. At first, you think it’s impossible. Then, after about a dozen runs or so, you start to see how you might be able to pull this off if absolutely everything goes perfectly. What follows is something that defined many N64’s owners childhoods. To this day, few moments in gaming match the feeling of finally completing that one perfect Facility run and wiping out the heartache of the dozens (maybe hundreds) of failed attempts that came before.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Years later, we learned you could just unlock this cheat by entering a series of control commands. Of course, it’s the process that matters so much more than the cheat itself.

The post 15 Best Video Game Cheat Codes of All-Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

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tonxstark · 4 years

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The rise of subscription models in 2020? Here is a "operation guide" for the overall game to join the subscription mode

During the past two decades, the overall game industry has only had two business designs, the "try before buying" model that began in 2000 and the "absolve to play" model that emerged in 2010 2010. "Attempt before you get" premiered at the beginning of the 21st century. Big Fish Video games releases a game every day time that can be performed for the initial hour free of charge, allowing players to try it before selecting whether to get the complete game. This model has brought numerous female gamers to the gaming industry, especially older women. In the first 2010s, after download free + in-app purchase games dominated the Asian market, they began to get into the European and American areas. In this mode, the game is truly free, and more than 90% of players will not spend a cent. However, the real reason for free games is to allow the nearly all invested gamers to spend more cash to boost or accelerate their video gaming experience. Numerous top-up players will spend thousands or actually thousands of bucks on their favorite games. After free games, what will be the next model that will disrupt the gaming industry? Based on the development of other industries, subscription could become the next disruptive setting of the overall game industry. Developments inside other industries show that subscriptions could become the disruptive pressure. Amazon, the world's largest store, uses its premium subscription services to secure clients; Salesforce.com, one of the largest businesses in the enterprise software field, uses a subscription design, which puts the established rivals into problems; the world's second largest entertainment company Netflix uses subscriptions The design has gained present industry status; actually Disney is gambling its future on Disney Plus' subscription model. It is a switch inside people's attitudes that contributed to this change. Ten years ago, people would not purchase digital content material. For example, ten years ago, people would not pay for songs, but would buy a Dvd and blu-ray or CD. However now, people's attitudes possess changed. In accordance with Reuters, in the United States, the proportion of people aged 18-24 who purchase digital news has jumped from 4% in 2016 to 18% in 2017. So, are subscriptions equally effective inside the gaming business? First, many video gaming companies already are using subscription models. A post previously published by Google gave some information and functions about subscriptions. According to Google's blog post, the annual growth rate of global sport subscriptions is 70%. Secondly, the membership model has indeed played a role in the gaming industry. Google's post demonstrates game companies that use the subscription design have increased consumer retention by 20%. Finally, subscriptions offset the chance of creating and releasing brand-new games. The overall game joins the subscription service "Operation Guidebook"

Needless to say, the success of the subscription model depends upon the implementation. Just as a huge selection of game companies have failed to achieve success through free games, obtaining users a subscription successfully is equally difficult. Adding registration services to the game demands mastering the next 6 core concepts. 1. Subscription should be related to privileges The largest challenge for game companies is to provide users using what kind of subscription content. Virtual foreign currency? Do not. Effective subscription models provide a service that allows players to acquire privileges. In a casino game like "Legend of Bow and Arrow", it could gain a particular level or energy. The advantages of subscribing can also be special avatars or special in-game routines. In short, the main element is to allow players to obtain a privileged knowledge, not to allow players to acquire virtual currency or premium currency. 2. Keep it simple One of the core concepts of creating a successful product would be to ensure simplicity. In the event that you provide customers with way too many options, you might be overwhelmed and struggling to choose any of them. World of Warcraft has the very easy subscription design that emphasizes the value of long-term contracts without causing an enormous cognitive burden. If players have a variety of subscription options, including registration terms, monthly costs, revenue amounts, etc., they are likely never to choose. Therefore, the main element to subscription would be to make it possible for players to understand the value, choose between several plans, and decide whether to subscribe. 3. Be honest Among the reasons why subscriptions are usually difficult to be universally accepted is that some businesses deceive clients to register for subscriptions, and then it really is difficult to cancel. Preventing clients from leaving behind or deceiving them to subscribe isn't only unethical, but also bad for business development. Tezos One of the basic ideals ??created by subscriptions for companies is the connection with users. Top companies make use of subscriptions to improve their basic company, such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify along with other large businesses reap the benefits of user subscriptions. So when you add membership content material to the overall game, let worth drive the product rather than deceiving customers never to cancel. 4. Build an ecological environment An effective subscription plan ought to be tied to the game itself. The more you let customers play the overall game, the increased the value of the registration. Battle Pass is usually a good example, players can get reduced experience from subscription. In addition, it creates a very powerful ecological band, and subscribed players can get more rewards for continuous participation in the overall game. 5. The gradual upgrade of registration value The evolution of revenue is another essential aspect in the success of membership plans. In accordance with Google, ��As gamers invest even more in the overall game, be it time, abilities, or some other IAPs, the advantages of subscription increase accordingly.�� Although AFK Arena is not a good example of a casino game that uses subscriptions as a monetization model, its mechanism allows players to improve their income in the game as their VIP level increases. 6. Subscription as an affirmation for large R players VIP reaches the core of almost any game's success. 60% to 90% of most free game revenue comes from the very best 1% or 2% of players. Thus, encouraging players to be VIPs and retaining them should be the focus of the overall game team.

Several product managers will avoid subscription plans because they are worried that when players can subscribe to VIP plans for a fixed amount, this can limit VIP spending inside the game. This concern leads to the first point of subscription design and style, that is privileges, not replacing present purchases. If somebody spends a lot of money on your game, don't make an effort to encourage them to invest another $5 or $10 membership fee every month. Instead, convert the registration into an affirmation of their VIP status. Give them a free subscription, and the goodwill worth will far surpass the short-term earnings produced by forcing VIPs to purchase subscriptions.

research study: Subscription assistance for "Legendary: Game of Heroes" "Legendary: Sport of Heroes" is a card elimination video game posted by N3TWORK Inc. in the usa. Gamers can cultivate their very own monsters and invite them to evolve continuously, thereby increasing the probability of winning the fight. The iOS version of the overall game has a total global income of US$2 million in October 2019, and typically the most popular country may be the United States. With regards to subscription solutions, "Legendary: Game of Heroes" did a great job. . VIP privileges. There exists a store specifically for VIP gamers in the game, where players can buy items that they might otherwise have to perform multiple steps to purchase. Players can shift openly in the overall game without viewing movie ads. After experiencing the game membership, the ball player cannot imagine how exactly to play the game without a registration. . Get content in advance. VIP gamers who subscribe inside a certain time period will get tokens, permitting them to start battling with higher-degree bosses before some other players. . Lifetime rewards. In addition to daily rewards, VIPs may also receive lifetime rewards. Lifetime rewards should be more important than daily rewards. . Increase the worth of in-app buys. Users will acquire loyalty or mileage points for every purchase. The more factors a player gets, the bigger the VIP level, the better the every day and lifetime rewards. . Create predictability for players. Set items that subscribers can do every day, such as for example daily benefits they can expect. This can ultimately provide players with rewards and fortify the above points. . Allow non-clients to furthermore accumulate life time tokens. In "Legendary", non-subscribers have also founded their VIP degree. Higher VIP amounts provide better value; therefore, if they reach a high enough VIP level, it is apparent that they can convert into subscribers in the next step. . VIP unique customer service. Compiled from "Here's How Subscriptions Will Disrupt the Games Industry". (Author: xiaohan) Recommended reading Apple company and Disney are usually stirring up the web video subscription market in the centre East. App Annie predicts that subscription services will grow quickly in 2020. App Annie 2020 5 major developments in the mobile business predict the rise of in-game subscription models. Through the membership subscription model, this company has taken 1 product from the iOS best-selling list in the United States 500 is pushed to the 99th place. The global membership market will exceed 500 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. Subscription services are becoming a fresh mainstream consumption design. Business cooperation Zheng Xusheng | Line�G18558713545 Overseas cooperation Hao Yijun | Series: 18513119881 Long press the picture to scan the code Sign up for the Beluga community

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lzimbu · 7 years

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Destiny 2's Infinite Forest Sucks

Forbes thinks it could be better

Destiny 2's Infinite Forest is such a minor problem, effectively a single branch on a tree in the forest of issues that affect player's looking for this game to have some entertainment value versus the amount of money we're paying for it, that I think most people will ignore that it could be the game’s saving feature in the short terms. But will probably not get updated and so will be disappointing and tedious for a long time. The issue as I see it is that there's problems with the format of Destiny 2's activities and rewards systems. This is both for returning veterans, who have experienced everything from the original game, through all of the new activities added to the game and which have since been removed, through deprecation. But for right now we're trying to figure out what it is like for all the new players who are trying to figure out what they paid for and where the game is going. Someone buying the base game because this didn't want to commit to the DLC packs having to decide on buying those apparently mandatory content updates based on the game as is.. I can't see any of them being convinced. It's just been controversy since it launched. Easy answer is none of us knows what's in store for the game and Bungie keeps fucking shit up by making stupid decisions for no apparent logical reason. Like removing all the useful materials and level gear up with things like Motes of light. Also.. what happened to the speaker after the campaign ends? Is there a reason why he's not at the new tower? etc I mean I understand that the solo stuff can be underwhelming and focused on learning the game.. but why can't it have value to players that just want to replay that content? There's a large number or people that would like to get their money's worth out of the game while playing solo, or at least without friends because it can be hard to play a game like destiny if you don't know anyone else that plays it, OR more likely because all of your friends have left the game already and aren't going to come back while Bungie keeps making idiotic decisions like dumping everything from the old game. Also there's the thing about having to use a mic for matchmaking activities, some people don't want to because of the negative behavior that they are subjected to when they do. The new raid happened to cause an outcry because it appeared that communication was mandatory for a couple of parts of the activity. Since then players have found ways to complete the activity without voice communication and even without any communication at all. That's the core of the Destiny experience.. that progression towards mastery. The activities might not come off as self evident due to sparse explanation of how they function, but after practicing them for a while it clicks and you can end up mastering the content. That isn't expected from the single player activities of course that tend to be heavy with help for the player to understand how to play.. but once you get into strikes and public events their mechanics aren't always obvious or well explained by the game. Other players will show you what to do. For Raids, you'll have to learn from other players because next to nothing will be explained. Some of the changes that have been made to the game affect those principals in that the single player activities aren't fun or rewarding, for example the Mercury public even which has 2 chests.. that give you nothing for completing it on its Heroic Mode. It feels like Heroic modes don't add much for increasing the rewards getting doled out versus the actual bump in difficulty. Why does that matter? Well as a player starting out you have certain activities open to you and what you're looking at is a couple of hours to a dozen of leveling up. During that process you can expect to collect some gear that is supposed to make those bigger activities easier and prepare you to confront the hard stuff. While that is the case, those harder activities ARE hard for some new players that don't benefit from an established knowledge of the general mechanics of the game. Worse is that the variety of game play in the assortment of activities available in Destiny 2 doesn't feel much different. At least if you're a veteran that has played everything the game has had to offer so far. Because of that difficulty curve and lack of players (because they keep quitting) it feels like new players are getting bored without trying everything. There's no reason for the game to be so poor with giving the player useful rewards. What's a useful reward? Perhaps those new Masterwork weapons that drop orbs? Maybe.. I wouldn't know.. haven't been able to do prestige Nightfall this week and otherwise it doesn't seem like any way to get any of them. It isn't even that the activity is impossible to complete but the time investment with strangers, after finding them, is demanding. Even the regular Heroic Strikes which are straightforward repeatedly caused wipes (not even due to lack of communication which is not expected) but because it is just too easy for all three players to get killed. Example.. one time one of the other players had randomly died.. no problem.. but just as we noticed it myself and the other remaining player got kicked off the platform by god only knows what. It becomes annoying when you're actually trying to complete something hard and then you get wiped for no apparent reason. That aggravation was pervasive in the original game because it was rife with significant bugs and garbage mechanics that Bungie didn't usually fix. Those issue for the most part don't affect Destiny 2 and so present one of the only critical advancements in the series so far.. that the game isn't laugh out loud buggy and you don't often here players saying they are getting Bungie'd. Yet stunningly.. there are those random moments when you just don't know what killed you, or wiped your team. Paradoxically it makes Destiny 2 even more tedious when it happens because it just isn't as common to lose progress for no reason. I say this after playing through the DLC on Xbox and PS4 with 5 characters and don't feel like I've yet seen all the rewards... and that's fine, but not because I haven't played enough.. or that the game is artificially limiting the rewards.. but that there are too many duplicates and some of the new stuff is locked inside loot boxes that take a shit ton of time to earn. The rewards system just feels broken. From the small things that Bungie has claimed to have fixed, like patrol chests that tend to be empty most of the time, and that otherwise offer next to nothing as rewards (just tokens most of the time).. it feels like there's no point in going out on patrols other than when the game forces you to in order to collect materials or complete x number of activities to complete a quest. I'm not really trying to get into the issue of how long it takes to actually earn then, because on 2 accounts with 5 of 6 active characters (one Titan is on vacation).. but that I HAVE seen shit loads of play earned loot boxes return nothing.. or duplicates. If money was actually a consideration in their decision making then there should be more stuff in the loot boxes and fewer garbage items. This has been an ongoing thing because these loot boxes are just for cosmetic things otherwise they'd tread into pay-to-win problems. Bungie could have imported things from the old games for the new players to purchase in the loot boxes like legendary weapons, had they not contorted the gun system so badly. That would give the boxes some value for returning players. As that isn't the case and as the available loot boxes are full of shit items no one wants.. I can't see why they would have designed the game around them and why people would even buy them unless you really are that pressed for play time that you'd buy the game, and DLC and pay extra to unlock vanity items. Buying any amount of them and getting nothing worthwhile would be far worse than spending the time in the game and earning them. And then fully ignore that the items that matter, the weapons and gear.. have been nerfed. There's even less play choice involved in how we set up our gear. Bungie has said that there's potential for Mods to evolve to replace the old min maxing system but they never said why the system was removed in the first place. It was time consuming and perhaps tedious for some players, but that system of complexity was rewarding and helped justify the loot system (dropping so many duplicates). We knew about these changes prior to the games launch because Bungie decided to let us in on, 1 resetting gear and level, 2 gear would no longer be unique, 3 we'd be losing an entire weapon class for no reason as two that have nothing to do with each other would be combined. So before releasing the game, and after the pre-orders were opened, Bungie DID tell us they'd be trying out so really dumb shit. The response was negative. The result is negative. Bungie don't give no fucks. But gear and levelling aside, there's the activities. Would there be activities that would make it worth loading up the game every day? 4v4 PvP isn't going over well. And oddly the most played activity seems to be public events. So popular are public events in patrol for rewards over time played, that Bungie nerfed them. They claim that the rewards are better but that's only because they swapped blue drops which are literally useless.. to purple drops, which tend to be duplicates. Thus the only recent changes they made was to give players more legendary shards. Which has no value. You can dump hundreds into whatever vendors take them and get nothing back.. compared to just playing the game. Some would argue that as you have them anyway.. you might as well just sit there in a tedious menu system mashing a button to empty your shards into a handful of engrams that will have nothing in them. Instead.. just play the game and get experience AND as good odds of hitting exotic drops. But those exotics will most likely be duplicates and can often be of a lower level than the one you already have. Its aggravating because Bungie claims that have systems in place to avoid duplicates. Bullshit. Losing access to several locations from the first game.. for no reason other than that they haven't yet been added to Destiny 2 means that players are forced to explore the new worlds. Had there been a story based reason to block off those locations from patrols at the very least would have been nice but there's no reason given. Bungie doesn't give reasons. They don't explain themselves. Yes the obvious reason is that it would have been too much for them to deal with to add all of those places in a game that would have to grow it's player base.. apparently because their retention from the first game was so poor. Perhaps another argument is that the reception for existing locations would have been lukewarm. We've been to these places already.. why are they still here. Because you're continuing the series not replacing it with something else? Idfk. Is there anything wrong with them? No. Not as such. Titan would be the main location to feel 'poor' because it is so small. I have spent the majority of my hundreds of hours on Titan.. and was delighted when one of the first ghost shells I got was to increase XP gains on Titan. I like Titan because the public events are close together and they used to occur frequently AND their Heroic variants are somewhat easy to complete solo. So as a loot farm, Titan is nirvana. But.. why aren't the public events inside the Arcology? No reason. Very disappointing as there are story locations within the campaign that suggest that Titan should be much large and there's room for other public events but more importantly different and bigger public events. The Curse of Osiris DLC highlights this because the much longer intervaled, more complicated, and much more rewarding public even (not really) public even seems to hint that Bungie wants to try adding much bigger public events. That actually matters now because they resolved and issue (if it was real) that was loading players into empty patrol zones making them have to master solo'ing the public events. Now that the world is getting more populated it makes more sense for bigger public events where there actually is an expectation that you'd have help. The result though is that while Mercury is populated at any given time, the public event takes a long time to cycle. And it's rewards are shit. There's no reason to do it as there are no rewards unique to it. I don't care about the other locations tbh. Io especially just annoys me. And I mean that's the main complaint.. there's no worthwhile rewards from anything. Once you have a set of gear that gets you through the majority of activities.. there's no reason to keep playing. By that time you'll have done everything ad nauseam. But the reason people tend to gravitate to Patrols and public events is that you can complete them almost all of the time so the flow of loot is constant. Trying to do that with Heroic Strikes and Prestige Nightfalls for example.. isn't a guarantee even if you're playing with friends unless you've mastered those activities. Year 1 nightfalls were a joke for a while for having joke rewards like horns and emotes if you got anything at all.. I actually thought those days were done until I started getting blue mods as rewards. Its aggravating to receive something that's worse than useless. These items are worse than useless because they clutter an already small inventory and force the player to spend significant amounts of time emptying bullshit from their inventory like blue mods and shaders. Those inventory spaces get smaller when you ad useless shit like ornaments that are permanent. They show that either Bungie doesn't learn or they intentionally keep designing their menus to be aggravating. There are too many duplicate items due to the gear system which gives the player exact copies of the same gear which requires them to dismantle or infuse virtually everything they receive as rewards for a given activity. This automatic response to the majority of rewards makes the entire rewards system feel very unrewarding. Adding to the tedium of inventory management. Gee I need x item but all I'm getting is 1000x of x. Like right now I have a Heart of Time on Xbox. It took a bit to try it because I hate pulse rifles. But holy shit it is great. https://db.destinytracker.com/d2/en/items/4145119417 I don't have one on PS4. So I'm looking for it but can't get it. In the meantime I'm trying the Nergal PR4. It isn't the same even though the rounds per minute are the same and it's full auto.. should be better. https://db.destinytracker.com/d2/en/items/339343290 And I then accidentally opened my Destiny 1 inventory and started seeing those old Prison of Elders guns... the primaries with elemental burns.. or that were energy weapons in the primary slot. There was no reason to remove them or split the primary slot. Could have just made low mag powerful weapons their own slot and put Kinetic secondaries. Leaving it as weapons determine the slow not what they shoot. A power weapon needs to do damage and have low ammo. Why is that complicated? I'm actually made about this now because Telesto is back and even when the ground is littered with power ammo.. in most encounters you don't have it where it matter. There's no heavy ammo synth for the times when it matters.. when you're in a boss encounter. Telesto should be useful in boss encounters but not when there's no ammo for it. But that in itself wouldn't be bad when you consider that the first games rewards had uniqueness, materials and ammo packs etc, AND encouraged the player to level up the gear they wanted AND some gear was better than others based on their perks. That's all gone and there's very little right now that makes the new systems worthwhile. You'd sometimes obtain GOD roll items which still didn't break the game, it just made it easier to play certain encounters. So.. No God rolls. Fewer perks. Locked perks and stats. Duplicates aplenty. Garbage rewards. No materials, no ammo packs.. and a buch of garbage like armor ornaments that takes up space in the mod inventory for something cosmetic. WHO IS DESIGNING THIS SHIT AND MAKING THESE DECISIONS?! So.. The Infinite Forest Why is the Infinite Forest the camel that breaks my back? I mean there's not much wrong with the design of the infinite forest area except that like the Acrology on Titan.. there's no reason why it isn't a public space with public events. The majority of time on Mercury patrols should be in the IF once you have access to it. That means you would have needed to play through the story to have access to it. FFS there's a god damned door. As long as you get through that door in the campaign then you should have access to that area. Had Bungie not made it so you didn't have a sparrow for the entire campaign (complete idiocy) then getting into the Arcology in patrols would have that same type of gate. Same could have been said for the Raid areas, once you have access to them becoming public areas with public events with rewards in the Plague Lands and Vault of Glass. To some extent even the Dreadnaught could have had a few more patrol zones inside the ascendant realm. Aren't there enough players that would have access to the infinite forest? Now here's the big issue. The old patrol zones don't have to be gone. They could be added into the IF. As well as the old Raids. This again blocks from somewhat from players that haven't yet completed that part of the campaign. But how would the current design of the IF integrate new simulations of those old areas without falling into the trap of too much work to redesign old activities so that they are familiar but still fresh. That's up to Bungie. Adding a forth simulation tower thing that contains all the old activities brought forward into Destiny 2 would help shoe horn it into the overall story. I mean as it stands Osiris is able to modify and build simulations. More importantly it allows Bungie to bring back content that they might not have thought appropriate to, such as the Skolas encounter, because he's dead. And what happens if you consider that any Vex exposure to SIVA would have meant simulations of SIVA.. A SIVA power Gatelord? sounds like another great public event for the Infinite Forest. All those old boss fights could be those bigger public events. So ultimately what we have is a convenient way for Bungie to add stuff back into the game if they wanted without yet opening back up the old patrol zones. It just doesn't answer the question of WHY those areas are gone or are inaccessible.

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ramajmedia · 5 years

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Gears POP! Review: Satisfying Strategy Weighed Down By F2P Elements

Gears POP! is an entertaining strategy game based in the Gears of War universe that's fun until its free-to-play trappings show their true colors.

Gears POP! is a rather strange new entry in the Gears of War series. Developed by The Coalition and Mediatonic and published by Xbox Game Studios on iOS, Android, and Windows 10, it's a mobile tower defense and strategy game based on Funko's POP! Vinyl figures. For anyone who's followed the Gears of War franchise since its inception, the idea of a simple mobile strategy game may seem odd, especially when coupled with the aesthetic of POP! Vinyl figures in general. But the end result is an adorable romp that's certainly fun to play – just bogged down by some particularly egregious free-to-play mechanics.

At a glance, Gears POP! resembles the massively popular mobile title Clash Royale in nearly every way. It's a PvP tower defense adventure where players must face off against each other in two separate lanes. You start on one end of the play field, while your opponent is housed at the other. As you drop troops into battle (represented in-game by "pins") they advance to secure barriers near the enemy's location. Each pin may be summoned into battle by paying their "cost," or the amount of points it takes to use them. You'll get a set amount of points each turn, and they'll regenerate over time.

Related: How and Why Gears of War is Called ‘Gears’ Going Forward

Units are characters pulled from all facets of the Gears of War universe and include familiar heroes like Marcus Fenix, Augustus Cole (the Cole Train, baby!) as well as Kait Diaz. You can also recruit Locust Drones, Wretches, and a wide variety of other characters to fight your battles for you. All of your pins will appear at random in sets of four, so you have no control over which will show up next, but a preview at the bottom left corner of the screen gives you an idea of which pins should pop up next so you can somewhat prepare to save points or spend them accordingly.

Each pin serves a different purpose, from the Butcher behaving as a tank that can draw damage like a sponge to the Snub Soldiers being reliable for gaining territory on your opponent. Since you can only place pins in parts of the map you control, you'll want to establish dominance over as much of the play field as possible. That way, your units can get closer and closer to the end goal and won't have as many enemies to potentially stop them from destroying their targets.

When a gauge on the bottom left of the screen fills completely, you'll be able to use an Ultimate attack, which you can place anywhere you'd like on the map. Multiple matches proved that one of the early Ultimate attacks was often placed near enemies' bases in a bid to do as much damage as possible without your party reaching them physically. It's a strategy that's tried-and-true, even this early in the game's release cycle.

Matches last two and a half minutes, and during the final few moments of each battle, power will generate at two times the speed as things get interesting. Suddenly, you'll be able to spawn your more powerful characters quicker than before in a last-ditch effort to protect your base and to make a move to attack your enemies' turrets and barriers. It gets hectic in this last volley, but the added speed makes it more challenging and fun. The player with the most points at the end of the match wins. If neither player has earned any points throughout the course of the match, a Sudden Death mode will automatically begin. If by the end of Sudden Death no one earns any points, the match will end in a draw.

It's an intriguing setup that will no doubt be familiar to mobile tower defense game players, and it's admittedly quite fun. It's simple to pick up your phone and jump into a game, and requires extremely little knowledge to get going, as gameplay requires you to mainly drag and drop units on the screen. But its core mechanics aren't the issue here – it's the game's push to ensure you spend money to progress, by any means necessary.

The main mode of play in Gears POP! is PVP in the form of Versus mode, meaning you'll have to play with others if you want to progress. This means you have to play against real people – and a variety of bots, from my experience – if you want to get anywhere. Unfortunately, this means that you're facing others who may have chosen to spend money to speed up the progression system. The game is sneaky in that, early on, it appears you'll see obviously named bots shuffled into play that are quite easy to defeat. You win, you get a chest of random goodies for winning (a typical loot box), and you start a winning streak that results in extra crates to open. This keeps you coming back for more, and it's works very well at first.

But after a few hours of play, you seem to be cycled into mostly-human queues, with players who obviously have been playing longer, or spending more money to progress. You see, to upgrade your pins, you need to have multiples of the pins. You also need to spend some of the in-game currency, Coins, to level them up. Leveling up pins will also ensure your player accumulates experience. This results in your turrets and outposts' health and attack power going up.

The problem lies within the fact that, in order to get additional pins, you need to have chests to open. If you can't win battles to get chests, you're stuck being unable to power up your pins or your character. This becomes a vicious cycle that you keep going back in to battle new opponents and continue to lose until you realize you should probably be spending a few bucks on premium currency.

You can easily buy more of the in-game Coins with real cash, as well as Chests and Crystals, which can be used to speed up how fast you can open the Chests you do get. And when you are doing well and have a series of Chests to open, you can only hold four at a time. This means you're encouraged to open Chests quicker by spending Crystals so you don't lose battle progress. It's all a system engineered to get you to spend the most money as humanly possible, and if you're unwilling to, you're not going to get far.

Meanwhile, Horde mode requires players to join "Crews" of players to game with other real people. There are several to join (many private ones as well), and this can help you gear up to join others for a co-op game, but often you'll simply miss invitations over and over, or others simply won't respond to them, making it a bit of a broken process. Creating your own Crew requires you to spend 1,000 Coins, so you could do so to invite friends you know in real life to make the odds of actually getting to play with others more likely, but it's not really worth the cost of doing so. Given that Horde mode is a quick way to earn crates, it seems purposefully engineered to make you play with friends who you know are around to fight for scraps.

It's such a shame things ended up this way. Gears POP! is actually a lot of fun, and it's a great casual entry in the Gears universe that makes good use of the license as well as the Funko POP! tie-in. But the egregious usage of free-to-play mechanics take what could have been a simple pick-up-and-play game and transform it into a cash grab that almost demands you spend cash to proceed. While it's possible to avoid spending a dime to do so, if you're really hoping to rise through the ranks and become a serious contender, you'd better be prepared to put in plenty of potentially non-fruitful hours or pony up. That's not a Cole Train anyone wants to hop aboard.

More: Why Gears of War 5 Won't Have 4-Player Co-op in Campaign

Gears POP! released on August 23, 2019 and is available on iOS, Android, and Windows 10.

source https://screenrant.com/gears-pop-review/

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Knockout City: Is EA’s New Take on Dodgeball the Next Online Multiplayer Phenomenon?

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Den of Geek was recently invited to play Velan Studios’ Knockout City, a competitive, team-based, over-the-top take on dodgeball set to drop as a new EA Original. The game releases May 21 for $19.99 on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch, and is backwards compatible on Xbox Series X/S and PS5. In addition, there is cross-play and cross-progression functionality across all platforms, too. It’s clear, then, that Knockout City is EA‘s latest attempt to tap into a very competitive online multiplayer market after the success of Apex Legends.

The core gameplay mechanic of Knockout City is about as simple as can be: throw and catch. As in traditional dodgeball, two teams (either 3v3 or 4v4) collect balls and hurl them at each other to score points, and can catch balls to defend themselves. The big change to the actual game of dodgeball is that instead of the field of play being flat and split in two, players are free to jump, dash, and glide around multi-tiered environments, pick up randomly spawned balls, and hunt each other down arena-shooter style, but with a twist.

The biggest distinction between Knockout City and most other competitive shooters is that aiming is virtually a non-factor. When you’re near an opponent, you automatically lock onto them, and when you throw your ball, it’ll find its mark every time unless it’s obstructed by an obstacle or your target catches the ball, which gives them an opportunity to hurl it back even faster, putting you on defense. Right trigger throws a ball, and holding the trigger for different durations determines various throw speeds. Defensively, pressing left trigger catches a ball, but you’ve got to make sure you time it perfectly or you’ll get clocked.

Essentially what this means is that Knockout City is a game of timing rather than sharpshooting. It has a fighting-game feel in that you’re constantly trying to feint and fake out your opponents while at the same time predicting their next move. For folks who struggle with competitive shooters, this may be a more approachable way to sample the genre.

Positioning is key as well. Each map has architectural characteristics that open up opportunities for flanking, ambushing, and taking cover, and sometimes when you’re up against a player who has great timing and can easily catch your throws, the best way to knock them out is by catching them from above or from behind, which requires a good deal of forward-thinking and strategy.

There are a few special ball types that appear each match that add an extra layer of depth to gameplay as well. There’s the bomb ball, which starts counting down the moment you pick it up and has the potential to knockout multiple opponents, and the cage ball, which locks opponents in a cage, allowing you to throw them off the map or at their teammates. The moon ball knocks opponents back a great distance, but I didn’t find this to be nearly as useful as the other two.

It took me a while to get used to the timing and strategy of the game, which essentially meant that I was getting whooped by other players one on one. But I eventually realized that good teamwork ultimately trumps individual skill. In other words, I found that three moderately skilled players could beat three higher-skilled players with good communication and coordination.

Traditional team strategies like flanking and double or triple-teaming work wonders, but the game also offers some unique teamwork techniques to employ. If there are no dodgeballs around and you and a teammate see an opponent in range, you can actually “ball up” and become throwable yourself. In addition, if you pass a balled up teammate to another teammate, the balled up ally becomes “charged” and can be thrown high up into the air where they can subsequently land on opponents with an explosion that has the potential to knock out an entire team at once. Balling up can be risky, though: if an opponent picks you up instead of a teammate, they can throw you off the side of the map for an easy knockout.

There were three maps available during the demo: Concussion Yard, an under-construction high-rise building with lots of moving machinery; Knockout Roundabout, a street-level map with moving traffic; and Rooftop Rumble, which takes place across two rooftops with an upward air current that allows you to glide between them. Of the three maps, I enjoyed Concussion Yard most because it had the most verticality of the three, which made for the most dynamic matches. Knockout Roundabout is more flat and radial, and I found that many of the matches I played here involved a lot of wandering around searching for the other team. With matches being 3v3 and 4v4, this map felt a little too big, which often resulted in the two teams clumping up in a small area and staying there for fear of getting separated from the action.

I played the game for about four hours, cycling between three game modes: “Team KO,” a traditional 3v3 team deathmatch; “Diamond Dash,” a 3v3 take on kill confirmed in which characters drop diamonds when knocked out; and “Ball-Up Brawl,” a 4v4 mode in which no balls spawn and teammates must hurl each other to earn knockouts.

Team KO and Diamond Dash are fun showcases for the game’s the core gameplay, but it’s Ball-Up Brawl that I really had fun with. It forces teamwork in a unique way and drastically changes the rhythm of matches. You have no choice but to be strategic and patient, a nice change of pace to the other, more chaotic modes.

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The three modes could get repetitive if the game was limited to them, but thankfully Velan has confirmed that it will offer post-launch content with each in-game season, free of charge, which could include new modes, maps, balls, cosmetics, and more. In the same spirit, the game will feature in-game purchases in the form of cosmetics, but there won’t be any pay-to-win microtransactions.

The developers are confident in the quality of Knockout City’s core gameplay, which means that there are no heroes and no character classes—it’s a completely level playing field. This was done to preserve the purity of gameplay, and I can say that after playing the game I’m convinced that the game is fun enough that it doesn’t need any classes or champions to be fun for long periods of time.

While the game doesn’t offer unique heroes to unlock, you are able to customize your character’s look to your heart’s content by unlocking cosmetic items, taunts, KO effects, and more either by earning them in-game via “holobux” or paying with real money. There’s also a clan system which lets you team up with up to 32 friends and choose your clan name, customize the car you show up to battles in, and more. The game’s “hideout” is a hub where you and your clan members can meet up and practice your techniques in a simple tutorial mode, enter a quick game in “Street Play,” compete in a league, or enter into a private match.

Knockout City is a new kind of competitive multiplayer game, but it also captures an old-school, arcade-y vibe that I liked a lot. It reminded me of Jet Set Radio with its poppy cartoonish art style, and the rhythm of gameplay recalled Power Stone. The most exciting thing for me might be the cross-platform play, though. I look forward to playing with all of my friends online regardless of what platform they own.

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At launch, the full game will be available for free to all players for a limited time. If you decide to buy the game for $19.99 during this period, your save will carry over. The game’s first beta will take place this weekend (Feb 20-21) on PC via Origin and Steam in North America and Europe.

The post Knockout City: Is EA’s New Take on Dodgeball the Next Online Multiplayer Phenomenon? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years

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Metal Wolf Chaos XD Review

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/metal-wolf-chaos-xd-review/

Metal Wolf Chaos XD Review

At no point during Metal Wolf Chaos XD is it easy to forget this a re-release of a 15-year old game. From the bulky menus, cumbersome controls and over-the-top action to the hilariously tongue-in-cheek voice acting, heavy focus on high scores, and complete lack of seriousness throughout, this is very much a video game from a different era, for better and for worse.

Metal Wolf Chaos XD clocks in at a breezy seven hours to complete all of its missions, which feels like the perfect length for a game like this. You control Michael Wilson, the 47th President of the United States of America, as the Vice President stages a coup and usurps control of the country through force. So now it’s up to you as a lone mech pilot to single-handedly wage war against the dirty rebels and take back control of the country in the name of freedom, justice, and the American way.

The plot is absolutely ludicrous, but it embraces the tone whole-heartedly. The superbly campy voice acting and borderline cringe-inducing writing help sell what is intentionally designed to be a full-on parody. You have to approach Metal Wolf Chaos XD with some understanding of just how tongue-in-cheek it all is or it’s close to impossible to enjoy yourself. I laughed during every conversation and cutscene. One-liners like, “Suck on my missile punch!” were just top-tier and the sheer ridiculousness of each premise had me chuckling non-stop. Liberating the country as the President by demolishing buildings and murdering thousands of people is par for the course in this twisted version of America.

You have to approach Metal Wolf Chaos XD with some understanding of just how tongue-in-cheek it all is or it’s close to impossible to enjoy yourself.

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This is very much a direct parody of American government, politics, and national security policies that feels extremely poignant, even all these years later. From Software originally released this game a mere three years after 9/11 and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. And neither is the fact that it somehow only ever released in Japan. Frankly, it’s shocking that it’s seeing the light of day in the rest of the world at all even now.

Basically, Metal Wolf Chaos XD is like if you took From Software’s classic Armored Core series, ripped out most of the complexities and customization and then replaced the premise with something that feels like a Team America spin-off. All this re-release does is upgrade the visuals to HD resolutions for modern platforms, and that’s about it.

As someone who can appreciate a bit of mindless action, Metal Wolf Chaos XD definitely delivers on that front, even if actually controlling your mech never feels quite right. Turning to line up your shots is sluggish and using the boost to evade is extremely inaccurate. Hovering in the air isn’t anywhere near as useful as it should be and you’ll often be fighting the camera in addition to your enemies.

Luckily, the aiming system adds a bit of nuance to keep things more interesting. Each gun has an aiming radius displayed as a box on-screen. As long as an enemy is within that box when you shoot your weapon, you should hit them. But that box is shaped differently for each weapon, which adds a lot of interesting strategy in how you approach combat encounters.

For example, missiles and bazookas have a very small square aiming reticle, typically move slowly, and don’t lock-on to enemies, but a machine gun has a widespread area it could hit. It’s a strange way to aim and fire weapons that takes some getting used to, but picking the right weapon for the right enemy and situation is extremely important. For example, slow-moving tanks and hovering helicopters are susceptible to bazookas if you can aim them well, whereas ground forces are best handled with machine guns. Big, powerful weapons like railguns and multi-missile launchers don’t have a lot of ammo capacity, but are extremely powerful when used against heavily armored boss enemies. Sadly, most enemies are uninspired bullet sponges that are far from a challenge when not collected in massive swarms, with bosses acting more as a test of your patience than your skill.

Because your weapon decisions are so crucial, the lack of information offered about missions before you play them is extremely frustrating. Having more intel to better prepare before going into a mission blind would be great. All it tells you is the basic objective, such as destroy all targets or destroy the canon before it fully charges, but you never know which types of weapons you might need. This becomes even more problematic since there are no checkpoints at all during missions. After spending a half-hour meticulously clearing a map only to run into a brick wall with a boss you weren’t prepared for is devastating since you have to reload your last save as if none of that progress ever happened.

Screenshots From the Metal Wolf Chaos XD Re-release

Trial and error design like this feels extremely outdated, unsurprisingly. But I wish this XD release would have added things like checkpoints or extra mission briefing intel to help smooth things out without sacrificing the core design and intended challenge. Wasting my time by forcing me to replay a mission isn’t fun.

I wish this XD re-release would have added things like checkpoints or extra mission intel to help smooth some of its outdated rough edges without sacrificing the core design and intended challenge.

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Thankfully that didn’t happen very often. Most of the time missions are straightforward and a diverse loadout covering all bases will get the job done. Especially since the vast majority of missions have you stomping out enemy vehicles, blowing up towers, and shooting down helicopters. After a while it all starts to feel the same except for occasional boss fights. Other than one or two levels, they’re all very flat with next to zero variety in elevation or enemy types.

In between missions, you can spend money and materials on investments and manufacturing in the Garage. Each type of weapon has multiple tiers to unlock that let you manufacture new, better guns. It’s a decent customization system that adds just enough complexity to make progression feel constant and rewarding, but eventually you hit a point where it doesn’t matter anymore because of how powerful you become.

Mission structure is pretty problematic overall. For starters, there are zero checkpoints. If you die at the boss after a half-hour of monotonous gameplay clearing out spongy grunts, being forced to replay the entire mission over again feels like a massive chore. Most of the missions are completely linear without any variation making it get real old, real fast.

After beating a mission you can return to try and find hidden prisoners to rescue, or even change the difficulty to try for better rewards and new mech skins, but that level linearity meant I didn’t find myself wanting to replay them very often. Some other sort of game mode would have been a welcome addition as an alternative way to earn cash, like a wave-based mode or some randomization to make things a bit more unpredictable.

Source : IGN

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4colorrebellion · 5 years

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4cr Plays - Judgment

Kamurocho - the slightly fictional red light district of Tokyo that serves as the setting of the Yakuza series, and new “spin off” Judgment - is a study in contrasts. Its streets are bathed in colorful neon, but that shine barely distracts from the bleak brutalism of post-war Japanese architectural design. Its population is filled with some of the worst criminals you can imagine, yet many of these imposing mobsters double as some of the most loving, fascinating characters you can imagine.

This setting works well for the Yakuze series, a pastiche of action movie tropes that deftly alternates between testosterone-fueled shirtless brawls, serious mediation on family and love, and slapstick comedy. Kamurocho has grown along with the Yakuze series, and is a living, breathing setting like nothing else in gaming - able to serve as the source of a thousand stories, and able to handle stories that wildly differ in tone.

Judgment is, by virtue of a shared setting and gameplay, a spin-off of the Yakuza series. Yet, this also downplays what it really is. Both reassuringly familiar and wildly new, Judgment is Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s test of whether Kamurocho can serve as the setting of a very different type of tale.

If Yakuza is an action movie filtered through the open-world genre, Judgment is film noir. The ingredients are there - our protagonist, Takayuki Yagami, is a disgraced lawyer, working as a private eye, who is not afraid to get his hands a little dirty. His partner is ex-Yakuza. He’s perpetually late on his rent, his friends are disappointed in his lack of interest in returning to the law practice. Oh, and there have been a series of brutal murders - gangsters keep being found with their eyes gouged out.

We begin with Yagami being brought in to exonerate Kyohei Hamura - a captain of the Matsugane family, part of the Tojo Yakuza clan. Hamura stands accused of one of the murders, and with his debts to the Matsugane family, Hamura can hardly refuse to take the case. Sure, Hamura is a monster. He’s clearly a remorseless, brutal thug. Still, maybe - just maybe - he didn’t commit the crime.

All of the ingredients are in place for good noir - a disgraced private eye, supporting chatacters with buried secrets in their past, soul-crushing tasks without clean outcomes. Kamurocho is a brilliant setting for this tale too. A seedy neon-drenched red light district in one of the most crowded cities in the world? It’s brilliant, and works wonderfully.

My favorite part of the past Yakuza games has easily been the “substories”. These short missions broke up the core storyline by focusing on the plight of one of Kamurocho’s residents. Many of the substories veered towards the absurd, and they tended to be creative as hell - these fun little pockets of weird that brought the world to life.

Many of the best noir movies also bring their setting to life by introducing, and breathing a bit of absurdity into, the “nobodies” that populate their settings. To that end, Judgment expands on the concept of substories in a couple of really interesting ways. First - Judgment takes advantage of having a private eye as the protagonist by expanding the substories into “subcases” - small investigations that break up the core storyline. The people of Kamurocho will come to Yagami with their problems, and you will have to look into them. Like the substories in the core Yakuza series, these subcases are incredibly creative and often hilarious. A favorite early-game case of mine revolves around a pervert who steals panties with a drone. Yagami has to figure out a way to lure him into a trap, and the entire sequence of events keeps getting better and better until you finally kick the perp’s ass. Subcases are one of your primary means of making money, but you’ll want to seek them out anyways just for how creative they are.

Subcases are not the only way to get to know the residents of Kamurocho.. Throughout the game, you can meet and become friends with NPCs. Fifty characters can become your friend, and as you get to know them, you’ll find out more about their lives. Whether it is the waitress who took a job at a hotel to learn English, the baker who dreams of becoming the best in Tokyo, or your landlord - who wants to learn to cook and open a restaurant - it’s really fun to stop in, chat, and see how you can advance their dreams. Each person you befriend enhances your reputation in the city, earning you items, information on ongoing cases, and the ability to unlock new subcases.

All of this works because of the incredible writing in this game. The Yakuza series has the best localization team in the entire video game industry. Not only do they have fantastic dialogue writers, but they have an uncanny ability to translate the nuance of the Japanese language and culture into English. I’m hardly an expert, but I have been to Japan a few times and it’s amazing how well these games get across the feel of Japan. Some of that is in the graphical details - the picture-perfect recreation of a Don Quijote store, the lovingly crafted food, the product placement - but a lot of that also comes from the writing. That’s a heck of a feat, and something that would have been lost with a direct textual translation.

Of course, this also leads to something of an elephant in the room - the dub. Leading up to the release of Judgment, SEGA announced that they would add the option of playing with an English dub. Although I often prefer dubs, I was a little skeptical. Kamurocho is such a Japanese setting that it would be weird to hear English voice acting. Still, with all of the effort clearly being spent on the dub, I had to check it out. It.... was definitely jarring at first. It feels really weird to hear English acting. Yet, it’s also a really good dub. I’ve ended up sticking with it, and after the “getting used to it” period, I actually quite like it. The voice acting is really well-done, and the voices fit the case members. Again, playing with the English dub is optional, but I’d actually recommend trying it out if you prefer playing with a dub in other games.

Those of you who haven’t played a Yakuza game are probably wondering what you actually do in these games. Well, as I mentioned, Kamurocoh is a small open-world section of Tokyo you can run around in. Between talking to important characters, you get into a lot of fights with random punks - mostly drunk. Fighting is relatively simple, but fun. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, a grapple, a block, and a dodge. You can string together light and heavy attacks into simple combos. Block or dodge at the right time, and you can gain the advantage. As you land combos, you’ll build up a “heat” meter, that can be spent for powerful finishing moves. You can also spend your meter for a charged mode that temporarily boosts all attacks. You can grab objects near you and use them as weapons - bicycles, traffic cones, baseball bats, all are fair game. You can also use the environment to your advantage, bouncing off of walls, shoving enemies through glass doors, and getting your friends to dive to your defense. One twist, shared with various Yakuza games, is that you can switch between two fighting styles. The controls and base actions remain the same, but the style dramatically changes how you fight. The crane style is fast, allowing Yagami to hop between different enemies and dodge movies. The tiger style is slower, but packs more of a punch - and allows Yagami to better take a punch. Completing tasks and defeating enemies grants experience points, which can be spent on new moves and skills that can be used in the open world - better lock-picking ability, for example. Health can be restored by stopping in one of Kamurocho’s many restaurants or convenience stores.

Judgment adds a few new gameplay twists, to reflect Yagami’s line of work. You will occasionally have to examine crime scenes for evidence, looking for relevant items in a first-person mode. You have to pick locks, and manage keys for doors. You will tail subjects, keeping your distance and trying to avoid detection. You also have to catch fleeing suspects, dodging obstacles with carefully timed button presses. Some of these additions work better than others - I have yet to enjoy a tailing mission in any game - but they do a nice job of capturing “detective” work in a way that wouldn’t work if they had just lifted Yakuza gameplay unaltered.

Of course, Judgment would be a disappointment if that was all you could do. Kamurocho is full of ways to kill time. You can go to the bar and play darts. You can go to the batting cages and practice your swing. You can redecorate your office, then sit back with a record and play some pinball. You can go the casino and play poker or blackjack, or try your luck at mahjong or shogi. Want to play a video game in your video game? Hit up the SEGA arcades for some Virtua Fighter, Puyo Puyo, or even a new version of House of the Dead. You could even toss a few yen into a crane game, and see if you can take home a new plushie.

Hell, that only scratches the surface. Judgment even adds a major new way to waste time with the inclusion of drones. You can pilot your drone around Kamurocho, snapping pictures of the sights. This obviously comes in handy during the main storyline, but you can deploy the drone at almost any time. You can also take part in drone races, using parts found throughout the world to gain a slight edge. Believe me, this mode alone will pull you in for hours.

Judgment is a wonderful game - probably my favorite of the year to date. I fell in love with the Yakuza series a couple of years ago with the prequel Yakuza 0, and have been ranting about it every chance I get. Judgment expands on the Yakuza formula in masterful ways, while managing to tell a very different type of story in the same setting. It’s a great place to jump in - you don’t need any knowledge of the broader Yakuza series - as well as a great standalone experience. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A copy of the game was provided for this review.

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#video game #review #video game review #judgment #yakuza #sega #ryu ga gotoku #ps4 #sony #playstation 4 #greg4cr

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