Get ready to be infected by our most viral Flick yet! Strain Ultra Drop is almost here for Wildstar and it will reveal even more of planet Nexus: more loot, more content, and more awesomeness than you will be able to digest!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5KU6WY1PPw
For more information about WildStar and the Strain Ultra Drop please visit http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/.
Here is an early look at Supergirl, the latest champion from Infinite Crisis, the free-to-play MOBA from Turbine based in the DC Universe! On 2nd July, players can make the world a better place one punch at a time when Supergirl goes live!
Like her cousin Superman, Kara Zor-El survived the destruction of Krypton by escaping in a spacecraft of her father’s design.
Placed into a state of suspended animation, Kara’s craft followed the course set by her then-infant cousin. But instead of Kara’s trip taking a matter of seconds, like it had for her cousin, it took decades.
When she crash-landed on Earth, Kara awoke to her powers immediately manifesting. While wrestling with these powers, she was astonished to meet her cousin, now a grown man. The worst shock, though, came last when Kal-El told her they were the only survivors of Krypton.
Overwhelmed by despair, feeling anger toward the alien world where she felt trapped, Kara discovered a resilience she didn’t know she possessed. She now deals with her grief while discovering a love of her new home world, Earth.
Fast, strong, and always willing to pick a fight, Supergirl is a bruiser who loves getting up-close and personal.
It’s not often an Indie developed title grabs the limelight at one of the industry’s largest events. Holding strong alongside both press releases and lashings of AAA announcements, Sony demonstrated its love for the smaller companies too at this year’s E3, showcasing Entwined, an Indie title developed by Pixelopus stirring up ideals and images of Flower and Dyad to hopefully create a classic.
Whilst there is no strict narrative per se, it is heavily implied throughout your journey; being somewhat vaguely introduced to the playfully in-love bird and fish is all you’re going to get in terms of character development too. What is interesting however, is their eternal struggle to be together and how the player infers this.
Playing the game rings true of any ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ ethos, with the fish being controlled via the left thumbstick and the bird by the right, you must guide each party through appropriately coloured segments with the game delivering increasingly difficult sections to navigate the further you progress. Orbs of the same corresponding colour must also be picked up in order to fill each animal’s bar; once both are full, pressing L1+R1 joins their forms and speeds up the level; essentially making you repeat the process once more. Completing this sequence rewards you with the consummate conglomeration of bird and fish, the dragon. In this section the gameplay switches to a more relaxed style of play where the only objective is to fly around and collect orbs before sky writing your flight path and beginning the process anew.
Despite Entwined being privy to a relatively fresh and untapped genre, that’s not to say the novelty can’t wear off however. At least it might if there were more time for it to do so. The length of Entwined is not its strongest point, completing all nine levels along with the few challenges on offer will take less than 2 hours, admittedly more if you fancy yourself a spot on the leaderboards, but even with its meagre price tag of £6.49, it’s still not exactly great value for money.
As for a learning curve it can yield mixed results, the first few levels are inherently easy, yet in some of the latter stages, it’s not only precision that matters, but alternating timing patterns. I imagine anyone even remotely versed in time signatures will have little trouble acclimatising, but for others (such as me) being able to individually coordinate between my thumbs and my peripheral vision became a little tricksome at points.
Graphically, it looks pretty much exactly what you might expect, bright colours, entrancing effects and more tunnel vision than an underground tube train driver. Coupled with the slightly underwhelming music, save for the track played over the credits; you’ll find its distinct presentation either a delight or a little bland depending upon the level. The highlights most certainly being the sky writing pieces; yet whilst only performable for around 10 minutes over the course of your short journey, and viewable via the small cutscene afterwards for less, they always manage to garner your attention the most.
Entwined appears to draw ideals and concepts from others in its genre as well as mixing it up with a few of their own, however they’re not quite enough to truly set it apart from its peers. Once you’ve grasped the basics, that’s about all there is to Entwined, the gameplay doesn’t evolve beyond its two pre-sets and therefore, unfortunately offers no real reason to return once complete. Inevitably the comparisons between other Indie titles such as Flower and Journey are going to often get strewn around regarding Entwined; whilst it may not have the immediate beauty of flower or the excellent social play of Journey, it does however have one of the better endings I’ve seen in a while. The companionship of the two unlikely beings, always striving to come together as one, more enigmatic creature can be awkwardly heart-warming; coupled with the unspoken narrative that you’ll make your own, ensures that Entwined is exactly what you make of it.
After revealing the content of its Day 1 and Collector’s Edition, BANDAI NAMCO Games Europe is offering its fans two new videos showcasing Jude and Leia; two returning characters for Tales of Xillia:
TALES OF XILLIA 2 will be available on 22nd August for the EMEA territories exclusively for the PlayStation 3.
D-Link was nice enough to send on a portable router/charger for review, the DIR-510L…read on for my review!
D-Link was nice enough to send on a portable router/charger for review, the DIR-510L. Let’s dig in and see what we have.
The DIR-510L is a combination AC750 router and a 4,000 mAh battery pack to charge your devices while on the go. Combining a travel router and a battery pack makes a lot of sense as it can lighten up your travel bag by eliminating one device. Here are a few pictures of the device; as you can see, it is about the same size as a cell phone. More than one person asked me if it was an iPhone 4S!
The idea of being able to combine two items into one small one (and a charger) makes sense for a road warrior, and when the router is the first 802.11AC portable router on the market, it makes even more sense. This is an AC750 device: dual-band N support at 300 Mbps on each band, plus 433 Mbps when connected on 5 GHz AC. This is not as fast as an AC1900 device, but having the 433 Mbps 5GHz AC connectivity option sets this travel router apart from the competition. Why a travel router? Well, when you travel, do you connect to open of free Wi-Fi? Do you pay a fee for every device that connects? If so, using a travel router can help to secure your connection by slotting a firewall between your device and the public Wi-Fi, and it also makes connections easier for multiple devices. Just connect the DIR-510L to the public Wi-Fi, and connect your devices to it. In addition, this device can share a cellular modem’s connection with multiple devices. And of course, having a charging battery is very handy, especially if you are using a cell phone without a removable battery. Let’s see how the DIR-510L does in practice!
First, plug the router in. I found that using the DIR-510L in battery mode as a router is possible, but the battery life is pretty short, and plugging it in keeps that battery for when you want to use it as a charger. Then, set the selector switch to the On position. (Setting the selector switch to Charger enables you to charge devices on the USB ports; the Off position turns off the device.) Once the router is on, find and select the Wi-Fi network being broadcast by the DIR-510L. The default is DIR-510L or DIR-510L_5GHz, depending on the band that you want to connect to. After you connect, point your web browser to http://dlinkrouter.local or http://192.168.0.1. I used IE11 on Windows 8/RT, IE10 on Windows 7, Safari on an iPad 4, Chrome on Android devices and IE11 on a Windows Phone. All worked just fine. You’ll see the following:
So far, so good! The default password is blank. Click Log In. Once you are there, click on Management then Admin and set an admin password, then click on Home.
OK, the red X means that the DIR-510L is not connected to another router, and the yellow caution sign also tells you that your device has no internet connectivity. Time to set up the network connection! Click on the red X.
Click Next.
Here’s a listing of available wireless internet connections. I’m going to pick ApacheAC as that gets me a 5GHz AC connection.
I selected ApacheAC and clicked Select.
Password time! Open/public Wi-Fi hotspots will not require a password, but you’ll have to authenticate in a browser later on in the process.
Success!
I have now connected to my secured SSID and have internet access. If you were connecting to a public hotspot, you would now have to open a browser and enter the hotel code or agree to terms of service before being truly on the internet, but that’s all there is to it. This took me 10 minutes to document while taking screen shots. It is very fast.
The DIR-510L remembers the connections that you’ve made, and if there is a password, it is remembered as well. Under Settings at the top of your screen, click on Internet Profiles to see your installed connections.
You can delete or edit any of these from this screen, making managing your connections convenient.
If you want to manage the Wi-Fi settings on the DIR-510L, click on Settings and choose Wi-Fi. Here are the options for managing Wi-Fi.
You have the choice of WPA/WPA2-Personal security or None, and can select N Only, B Only, Mixed B/G, Mixed N/G or Mixed B/G/N under the 2.4 GHz band. The 5GHz band can only be set to Mixed A/N/AC. You can select transmission power and channel width on each band.
Since this is a router, there are settings for networking. Click on Settings then select LAN. I left all of these alone.
I was a bit surprised to see a guest network SSID capability (actually two!). Click on Settings and Select Guest Zone and you see this:
I activated this and it worked quite well, connecting devices connected via these SSID’s to the internet while walling off connectivity to other devices routing through the DIR-510L.
The DIR-510L will also function as a DLNA server and will allow access to data connected to the USB port that is onboard. You need a mydlink account and the mydlink SharePort app, available for iOS and Android devices. Make sure that you choose the mydlink version of this app; the other (older) version is not compatible with this router. To create your mydlink account, click on Settings and mydlink. Follow the prompts to register and then enter the account information, along with your admin account and password for the router, into Settings in the mobile app. Here is most of my screen once I set up the account:
I tossed eight episodes of Entourage onto the thumb drive that I plugged into the high-power USB port (the one nearest the switches on the top edge of the device). Once I opened the app and set up the account details, I navigated to Videos and saw all of the available media, and it streamed just fine to my Samsung Galaxy S3. This worked, but is a little cumbersome.
The DIL-510L has two USB ports: a 0.5A and a 1.0A. The .5A is intended for phones, and the 1.0A is for phones and tablets. To use this device as a charger, slide the selector button to Charger and plug in your device. Done! I’ve found that my S3 won’t charge well on the 0.5A port, so I use the 1.0A port to charge my phone, but having the charger built into the travel router is a real bonus.
The D-Link DIR-510L promises a powerful AC750 travel router and a battery charger all in one. It can be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot, can be connected to a wired internet connection and can also be used in conjunction with a 3G/4G modem to share that connection with multiple devices.
The SharePort app worked, but was a little cumbersome. However, if you wanted to share media with multiple devices, that is supported and it does work.
I also like having the battery built into the travel router. This means that I can leave the battery pack at home, and the small size of the device fits easily in my wife’s purse.
I’ve found this device to be indispensible when travelling. When our family travels, we have between four and seven mobile devices with us. It used to be a chore for me to connect all of these devices to the Wi-Fi hotspot. Now, since I’ve configured our mobile devices to work with the DIR-510L, I only connect one device to the internet. The other devices connect to the DIR-510L. Speeds have been quite acceptable. I did not do formal speed testing on this device; speeds seen will be driven by the Wi-Fi hotspot that you connect to. However, I have not seen any speed-related issues when using this device. In addition, I now place a firewall between my devices and these public Wi-Fi hotspots; used in conjunction with the VPN server on my NAS unit, we are secured when using public Wi-Fi access points.
If you travel, connect to Wi-Fi hotspots and use a battery pack to keep mobile devices charged, the D-Link DIR-510L should be in your travel bag. I award the CDW Gold Award with a 5/5 score.
Microsoft has once again snapped up Ultimate Team Legends for FIFA 15, meaning that if you want the likes of Gullit and Van Basten then you’ll need to play for team Xbox.
With the information coming from the box art of the game which has been posted up by a few retailers today.
FIFA 15 releases 23rd September in North America and 26th September in Europe on 3DS, PC, PlayStation 3, PS4, Wii, Vita, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
Why not watch the exclusive FIFA 15 Interview with Sebastian Enrique.
With Three years of development went into crafting the new world of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Sledgehammer Games Creative Director Bret Robbins discusses how research and technology come together to elevate the storytelling experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LvTfGuMs5Y
What are you looking forward to in this years adventure in the world of Call of Duty?
As Living World Season 2 approaches, we take a look back at Scarlet’s war and the events of Season 1. From the Gathering Storm in the Shiverpeaks to the final Battle for Lion’s Arch, Scarlet unleashed the Molten Alliance, the Aetherblade Pirates, her watchwork armies, and the Toxic Alliance onto the world.
Codemasters has revealed a new video showcasing the Street racing discipline, one of the five unique styles of racing set to star in the game’s new world of professional motorsport.
The new video reveals a wide range of GRID Autosport’s cars that compete in the Street discipline going wheel-to-wheel in dramatic and claustrophobic races. With the video also features Dan Trent and Matt Burton from PistonHeads (www.pistonheads.com), explaining the Street racing difference and what it’s like to race some of the most exciting cars in the world.
Dan Trent explains what it feels like to race on street circuits, saying, “driving on a tight circuit with no run off is very, very different from driving on the circuits. [With] Tracks with closed fences by the sides, narrow tracks, you get a heightened sense of speed. Everything is ramped up – the fear factor, the excitement, the adrenaline, everything is magnified. You just know that you can’t afford to make any kind of mistake.”
Matt Burton comments on the unique experience of racing supercars as featured in GRID Autosport, “it’s the relentlessness of the acceleration. The exciting thing with a supercar is having that much power that it never quite feels like it’s tailing off. There’s nothing better really when you’re a car fan. It’s like nothing else.”
In GRID Autosport’s Street racing discipline, players take the racing to the asphalt in iconic cities across the world as circuits are carved through the streets of Washington D.C., San Francisco, Paris, Barcelona, Dubai and Chicago. Player reactions and the ability to take chances are put to the test in striking urban environments for a huge range of production cars, from hot hatches like the Mini John Cooper Works GP and the Volkswagen Golf R to supercars like the Pagani Huayra and Mazda Furai and hypercars including the McLaren P1, Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport and more. To bring alive the authentic experience of racing in these events, Codemasters has consulted with real-world professional racing drivers who have put these cars through their paces.
In GRID Autosport’s huge career, gamers will specialise in their favourite racing discipline or conquer them all; players will feel the aggression of the pack in Touring Cars, race into the night in Endurance events, race Open-Wheel cars with precision, show car control in Tuner events and react on the fly in Street races. Each unique category features series dedicated to different classes, including Touring Cars, Hypercars, Endurance GT Cars, Prototypes, Single-Seaters, Super Modified vehicles, Drift cars and many, many more. Bursting with content, GRID Autosport features over 100 routes across 22 incredible locations and the world’s most exciting contemporary and classic high-performance racing cars to collect, tune and upgrade.
GRID Autosport is set to ship on 24th June in the USA and release on 27th June in Europe for the Xbox 360, Windows PC and for the PS3. A limited edition of GRID Autosport featuring exclusive additional content including the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupé Black Series, GRID Autosport Black Edition, is available to pre-order from GAME in the UK
Bungie have now revealed what’s the extra content for Playstation 4 and Playstation 3 players of the game Destiny. At launch, PS4 and PS3 owners will get exclusive access to a unique co-op Strike located on Mars, an exclusive competitive map, and a slew of exclusive guns, gear, and ships.
The Dust Palace Strike: An exclusive three-player cooperative Strike that can be played with friends or match made. You’ll track a Cabal extraction team through the husks of an ancient human skyscraper, the Dust Palace, buried in the shifting dunes of Mars and face a new enemy, the Psion Flayers.
The Exodus Blue Competitive Multiplayer Map: A mid-sized Crucible arena that pairs perfectly with Control and Skirmish game modes. The Exodus Blue, a long-dead vessel, once brought hope and humanity to worlds beyond Earth. Here, Guardians challenge one another, forging a new hope and future in the fires of the Crucible.
Gear (Armour):
For the Warlock class, Manifold Seeker armour that was built to help Warlocks survive the secret realms of the Vex. For the Titan class, Vanir, a battle-tested armour set forged to protect Titans against the heavy firepower of the Cabal. For the Hunter class, Argus, a durable all-environment wire-weave for those out to scout the frontier.
Weapons:
The Monte Carlo, an exotic assault rifle, is a handcrafted showpiece with a sleek look that masks the cruel reality of its function — the efficient elegant delivery of war against any who would tarnish its legacy. Upgrades increase the weapon’s “hip fire” effectiveness and boost melee cool down, providing a firm grounding for close range domination.
The Hawkmoon, an exotic hand cannon, is a true gunslinger’s weapon — a smooth sidearm that makes every bullet count with intricate “hawk feather” etchings carved into the weapon’s silvered barrel. Damage boosts increase the combat effectiveness, making it a formidable weapon.
Ships:
A hull lined with arcane instruments, crafted by a circle of Warlocks – gifting the ship with a preternatural sense for the strange.
A deep-strike insertion variant, built to carry Guardians safely through contested space. Carries hardpoints once used to hold Suros TL-SEAD anti-radiation missiles.
A rugged, versatile explorer for those ready to gamble everything in search of ancient secrets and alien power.
With the main release this week is Pullblox World on Wii U. This is the third game in Nintendo’s cult Pullblox puzzle series and the first to be released on Wii U.
Also this week are Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition (the remake of the 16 bit original) and the old NES title called Super C (US version of Super Contra), which comes to the Wii U Virtual Console.
The game’s setting, right off the bat, is its strongest asset. Taking place in an alternative dystopian 1950’s, Monochroma lends itself to some utterly stunning environments; from quaint, quiet farmlands all the way to titanic, robotic industrial zeppelins. The backdrops, scenery, and overall art design for the world deserves a high level of praise. While Limbo’s setting was wonderfully minimalistic in its approach, Monochroma goes at it full force to bring some utterly jaw-dropping, in-your-face bleakness that I have seldom come across in gaming.
However, the plot which ties the whole thing together is tragically lacking. You play as… a kid, with no name. You have a brother named… brother, I suppose? Regardless, you were both playing with a kite once dark and rainy day when he falls through a roof and drops around 10 feet and injures his leg… somehow? Now it is your loving, brotherly duty to carry him… somewhere? All the while not leaving him alone in the dark… because? Honestly none of this is explained at any point throughout the game. I’m aware that lack of text or dialogue is a good selling point of games of this genre, but there is a startling lack of context for a lot of goings on in Monochroma.
When it comes to puzzle-solving though Monochroma gets another big thumbs up. While some puzzles can end up being a little trial-and-error, a vast majority are well thought out brain teasers. Your brother is a surprisingly large factor in a good number of puzzles, as he can only be placed down in the light but you can jump higher without him. At first it all takes some getting used to, but once you wrap your head around the idea it offers an extra layer rarely exploited in platformers. Numerous times I found myself stuck on a particular area, but never so much that I wanted to rage quit and call it a night – which to me is a terrific balance.
Once again, however, I must counteract that positive with a negative, because the musical score of Monochroma did not sit well with me at all. At the beginning, the very first level, I thought it was excellent and set the mood perfectly. Unfortunately, as the game progressed for a vast majority of the areas there was no musical score at all. Then, on later levels, music would randomly kick-in and repeat throughout on a very easily noticeable loop. It’s a shame because the actual score of the game is great, but it is utilised very poorly. Perhaps it was their intention for a vast majority of the game to be completely silent, but it didn’t help to absorb me into the world. It merely made me feel more disenchanted.
During the final stages of the game the tone of the world gets really dark. I’m not talking in a literal “there are no lights” sense, I mean that some of the things you will see are depressing and morbid as hell. I did a literal double-take at a dead child, who had suicided himself with a noose in a prison cell – that’s the line we’re talking here. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, not at all, I’m in fact a little impressed at how far the developers were able to take the tone without ever really feeling as if they were pushing for deliberate shock value. Sure, I was shocked by the prison cell, but contextually it fitted in the world of Monochroma.
BUT, and it is a big but, I found the ending to be bloody awful. The final level was fine, the boss battle was fine, but the way the story ended really rubbed me up the wrong way. It felt so non-committal, and shockingly open-ended, almost as if the game was hoping for a sequel. Having already not been very story-rich to begin with, to have such a lacklustre character-focussed ending was a huge mistake. I don’t wish to spoil it here, but it didn’t feel at all satisfying, and was a rather disappointing end to the 5-6 hour experience.
Overall, I think it’s fair to describe Monochroma as a mixed bag. The art design, puzzles, and tone are fantastic, but the plot, sound design, and ending let it down tremendously. If you enjoy bleak 2D platformers then there is definitely enough here to warrant checking it out, but do not expect the level of quality which Limbo delivered.
Marvel have released a new poster and trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy.
From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team—the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits—Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand—with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.
Here is the new trailer:
Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which first appeared in comic books in Marvel Super-Heroes, Issue #18 (Jan. 1969), stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, featuring Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan,Djimon Hounsou, with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Nova Prime Rael Nand Benicio del Toro as The Collector.
James Gunn is the director of the film with Kevin Feige producing, and Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Jeremy Latcham, Alan Fine and Stan Lee serve as executive producers. The story is by Nicole Perlman and James Gunn, with screenplay by James Gunn. Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” releases in UK cinemas on July 31, 2014.
The new trailer for The Equalizer has been released.
In The Equalizer, Denzel Washington plays McCall, a former black ops commando who has faked his death to live a quiet life in Boston. When he comes out of his self-imposed retirement to rescue a young girl, Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz), he finds himself face to face with ultra-violent Russian gangsters. As he serves vengeance against those who brutalize the helpless, McCall’s desire for justice is reawakened. If someone has a problem, the odds are stacked against them, and they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.
The Equalizer is at cinemas September 26.
