Today Bethesda Softworks announced that Doom 4 beta access will be given to anyone who pre-orders Wolfenstein: The New Order.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5-VfXDXLI
The news in was delivered in the Wolfenstein‘s latest trailer, which also revealed 23rd May as the release date for the MachineGames first-person shooter.
Wolfenstein: The New Order will launch on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.
Deafening crowd roars, rippling shirts and more animations than you can shake a goal post at. Fifa 14 on the PS4 is here; due to the lack of a competitor, can it cement it’s victory by default by showing us what a multiplatform, next generation experience can do?
It’s not long before you’re dumped into a match with names synonymous with football greatness. Instantly, the ‘production values’ are noticeably high, the pre-match intro screams broadcast, stadiums are fully realised with crowds that not only have actual depth but are placed in the correct stands. Fans will roar at each other and fill the stadium with opposing chants, ball boys will occasionally over eagerly help out and throw an extra ball on the field and throw-ins take place in cut-scene free, real time. Ball physics have improved over previous iterations, no longer does a wayward ball guarantee the opposition gains possession. Small, inconsequential animations such as rolling your feet over the ball happen automatically; though they have no real world effect, they all add to the overall impression of detail.
Pace isn’t the most important stat anymore, stronger players have a much higher capacity to fend off others whilst keeping the ball. Passing works well, if not with the immediacy you might expect, occasionally players might take an extra touch before offloading to a teammate which can be frustrating. Players can make ordered runs into space to receive an all to often, defence splitting, through ball. Headers are generally hit and miss, with at times attackers managing dubious feats one minute and the next, not even bothering to jump. Defending, once you’ve sussed it out, is a matter of pressing the attackers whilst keeping your formation intact, it’s just a pity it’s not explained very well.
Whilst the skill games are fairly intuitive and there is a practice mode to hone your set piece plays, the lack of a basic tutorial is rather baffling. Unlike previous iterations in the Fifa universe, you’ll struggle getting past the most basic defender in a one on one scenario. The AI can be infuriatingly adept at closing the distance and putting some serious pressure on the attacker. However, as usual, they’re incredibly susceptible to a not-to-well placed through ball. Fortunately for all the people that are either new, or have taken a break, difficulty can be tailored to your needs, as along with the several standard levels, there are also customisable tweaks to configure should you wish.
Despite the initial settings offer great playability as standard, you can also adjust the player and AI settings to create a tailored playstyle to suit you. The sliders can be adjusted to make differences as subtle or ostentatious as you like. Everything from the likelihood of wayward passes to the width of defenders and their ability to push up the wings can be altered to increase the believability of the game. Simply playing around with the sliders can yield trial and error results, yet there are many tutorials on the internet explaining what each of the somewhat vaguely named bars do; along with setups to create an altogether different feeling game.
In the past, Fifa launch titles have, on occasion, been a little lacklustre. Fifa 14 has made up the difference this time however. Despite lacking a local coop career mode and the bewildering occlusion of a tournament mode on the PS4 and Xbox One, other great things have taken their place. An all new engine bespoke for the next gen has been implemented along with new, more varied animations. Player collisions and rather their abilities to avoid collisions are spruced up and manage to wow in slow motion replays.
Ultimate Team has of course returned with an all new mechanic that rewards synergy with teammates. When considering your starting line-up, it may be best to swap a few players around to get the most potential out of your squad. For example, players who are of the same nationality, or even play for the same league team should be placed adjacent to one another to reap more of a benefit. Balancing this along with giving players their preferred role can become quite tactical, fortunately, there is an indicator bar that will show you how effective you’ve been. Another positive is that Ultimate Team will transfer across the console generation should you decide to upgrade.
The one major criticism I have of Fifa 14, is the complete lack of engagement if you are offline. The career mode, outside of playing matches is devoid of any personality, there are no press interviews or training games, just the arbitrary managerial decisions that dictate whether or not you’ll participate in the next match or not without any explanation regarding the outcome. The cycling news ticker that often highlights interesting posts to read, usually opens a list of unrelated topics, so when you do decide to click on an article you actually want to read, you must manually find it instead of it opening outright.
Presentation across the board is high if not sometimes unnecessary, the graphics and player animations due to the newly developed Ignite engine are fantastic; especially considering it’s release on pretty much every console you can think of. Team rosters and licences are of the usual upmost quality, even if the eyes of some players posses a certain haunt-like quality. The main menu is a little over done however, a slew of content is strewn somewhat haphazardly across a few pages in a Windows 8 style, with many tiles being links to online portions of the game.
Some singleplayer frustrations keep Fifa from becoming all it could be. Matches flow with purpose, beauty and poise yet the immersion values of being offline are too low. Without an online connection, you’ll be missing out on some of the better parts of Fifa 14: Ultimate Team and generally playing against other humans enthrals such a different experience, even if you do get thrashed game after game!
The long-awaited Lego Movie is now out. And I can’t possibly imagine who wouldn’t want to see it. The humour in the Lego videogames has entertained me for long enough and to see it make it to a fully fledged movie is great. And then bizarrely we’ve now got the video game of that movie.
For fans of the Lego games there isn’t too much that’s going to shock and surprise you in The Lego Movie’s gameplay. The familiar combat makes a return although the characters don’t have quite as many abilities as we’ve become accustomed to. Especially when compared with the recent Marvel Superheroes the combat can at times become a bit tired.
But it’s reasonably well paced and you usually don’t do too much fighting without coming across a puzzle to solve or a cutscene to watch. And again the puzzles are nothing out of the ordinary but rather what we have all come to expect from Lego games. Usually it’s a case of destroying a pile of bricks to make a new object or finding certain parts before you proceed. It’s the simple gameplay we’ve all grown to love backed up with a reliance on the completionist that lurks inside all of us.
There’s the usual gold bricks to collect and red bricks that unlock crazy stud multipliers. Free play will allow you to replay a level with whichever characters you choose to pick up anything you might have missed. Although constant character switching that occasionally caused tedium on Marvel Superheroes is greatly reduced. Admittedly this means less variation between characters’ abilities but when all that actually means is having to complete a level repeatedly just because you can’t bring along enough characters I’m glad for the change.
And the amount of characters you can take to a level is larger too and without a ridiculously long load time if you decide to switch one out. So things are generally smoother and just less dull for the player, especially when going for completion. And because of the reduction in abilities there is less chance you will need to be constantly swapping anyway.
That’s not to say there isn’t any variation between characters and with the entire Lego universe at its command there are all sorts of totally different characters available. This obviously not only opens up options for comedy but for gameplay too. As funny as interactions between characters are it’s great to be a wizard or a pirate one second and a spaceman in the next.
In fact Benny has to be the best character in the film/game purely because I owned one (and still do somewhere) so long ago that had the exact same broken helmet. Or possibly Unikitty I can’t decide. Or Batman. It’s impossible to decide but watching the gruff caped crusader argue with the cutest character in anything ever is absolute genius. And when batman refuses to walk a plank claiming “I didn’t bring my shark repellent spray” I nearly died with laughter. This game is basically a family friendly Family Guy. Sure there’s loads of stuff for the kids but they likely don’t own a Robby with his crappy broken helmet. Or know the original Batman movies – how tragic for them.
Graphically things keep looking better for Lego games even if it is only by almost unnoticeably small amounts. The overly shiny plastic and all-Lego scenery looks better than ever and the muddle of pieces from all the completely different Lego universes creates a wonderfully vibrant world. And it’s been a long time since I’ve played a movie tie in that uses clips of the movie as cutscenes but I found myself looking forward to them every time.
The movie itself really does look stunning. Visually speaking it’s impossible to tell that the movie is CG and not painfully crafted from a million Lego pieces. It does stand as a rather stark contrast to the gameplay visuals and I wonder if eventually the Lego games might look more like the movie. I reckon that’d be pretty cool.
The Lego Movie Videogame is everything we’ve come to expect from a Lego game. Unfortunately it does very little above and beyond and I have to wonder where the future of the franchise will go – as far as videogames are concerned. I can’t help but enjoy the games thoroughly and look forward to each new edition but there has to come a point where things need to move forwards. It’s difficult to expect much from a game that is essentially a tie-in to a toy franchise but the Lego videogames are a lot more than that now and next time it’d be nice to see something new to keep the titles fresh.
It strikes me a bit like “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. There’s very little to fault with The Lego Movie Videogame but at the same time it doesn’t do much to wow us. The humour derived from having so many different characters involved rather than just limited to a single universe is brilliant and it carries from the movie to the video game with aplomb, with jokes not even seen in the movie. So it’s good fun, looks nice and this instalment is particularly funny.
Even given this I feel the Lego videogames need to change something up. I’m not sure what it might be but if they continue to follow the same formula over and over eventually they will become stale and this was the first time I felt they’re rapidly approaching that point. It’s a little formulaic but it’s also probably the best videogame movie tie-in I’ve been on in a long time. Everything is average, and that’s just fine for now.
Ubisoft has announced that the single-player adventure, Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry, will be available today, 19th February as a stand-alone game exclusively for download on PlayStation4 and PlayStation 3. The Windows PC version will be available on 25th February. Originally released as an add-on adventure for Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry will not require the purchase of Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag.
Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry tells the story of Adewale, a man born into slavery. Once a pirate and now a trained Assassin, Adewale is shipwrecked in 18th-century Haiti, home to the most brutal slavery in the West Indies. In an effort to get back to the sea, Adewale assists the locals in exchange for a crew and a ship.
The more he fights for freedom from slavery, however, the more he is drawn into the Maroon slave community, forcing him to face his vicious past. In the game, Adewale will take his new crew and set of weapons, including a machete and a blunderbuss, to assassinate enemies and free slaves, delivering merciless justice in plantations and cities alike.
No stranger to the sea, Adewale will command a fearsome brig to take down slave owners in the Caribbean.
Today BioShock developer Irrational Games is being cut down to a team of 15, the Co-Founder Ken Levine revealed in an update on the studio’s website. When to think that the developer was sitting strong at 200 employees fewer than two years ago for Bioshock Infinite.
“I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team,” Levine wrote. “There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition.”
Levine says on the website that current staff will “have access to the studio for a period of time to say their goodbyes and put together their portfolios,” and that other Take-Two studios will be available to “discuss opportunities within the company.” Third-party developers and publishers will be able to participate in a “recruiting day” hosted by Irrational Games, offering outgoing employees interviews for other positions.
Irrational’s goal moving forward is “to make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable.” Additionally, Levine says the developer will move into the digital space exclusively to “foster the most direct relationship with our fans possible.”
Square Enix Ltd today announced that its massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN is now available on the Steam PC digital service.
In addition, to celebrate the launch on Steam, FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn will be available for 50% off the regular price for both the Standard and Collector’s Editions. This special promotional offer, which is running across Europe and North America, commences the first week from launch and will end on 25th February 18:00 GMT.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn is available now on the PlayStation 3 and Windows PC and comes to PlayStation 4, 14th April. A free 30-day trial is included for new accounts, with monthly subscriptions starting at £7.69 / €10.99.
Ubisoft announced that Rayman Legends, the acclaimed platformer developed by Ubisoft Montpellier under the direction of Michel Ancel, is now available in the United States for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and will hit UK shelves on 21st February.
It’s now even better on next-gen with exclusive content and new features. With the upgraded capabilities of next-gen consoles, the award-winning visuals of Rayman Legends have been enhanced to show the gorgeous hand-drawn artwork and fluid animations in even sharper detail, while loading time between maps has been suppressed.
Each platform will have a set of exclusive playable characters to unlock in the Heroes Gallery. On Xbox One, there are two characters designed after the infamous villain from Far Cry 3, Ray Vaas and Far Glob, as well as Splinter Ray, inspired by Sam Fisher. PlayStation®4 players will have access to Assassin Ray, inspired by the hero Edward Kenway from Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag. Both platforms will also include a new VIP status and hero, Champion Ray, which will be granted to the most active and highest-ranked players in the Online Challenges, as well as to players who are actively involved in the Rayman Legends community.
Each console will also have a set of exclusive gameplay features. The Xbox One version will include 10 exclusive challenges to unlock new achievements. These challenges require you to perform specific actions during a limited amount of time and are associated with various aspects of the game, such as player skills, co-op play, Kung Foot, and more. The PlayStation 4 will allow use of the controller’s touchpad for actions such as scratching Lucky Tickets, as well as a new Camera Mode. In this mode, players use the touchpad to freeze the screen and zoom in and out of the picture. Focusing on the hand-drawn visuals and animated-nuisances created during development, camera mode allows you to share these treasured moments with the rest of the community.
Rayman Legends on PlayStation 4 will also support Remote Play so you can continue playing from your PS Vita while the TV is turned off.
Daedalic Entertainment today announce Untold Legends, new DLC for turn-based RPG Blackguards releasing 4th Match 2014. The release a major update for the game that will implement balancing improvements.
Shedding light on the background and heritage of the former slave and arena fighter Takate, Untold Legends expands the story of Blackguards. From his home in the foothills of the rainforest of South Aventuria, players will learn how Takate became a slave gladiator and get the opportunity to carry out his revenge on the slavers who caused him a life of pain. In addition to new story elements, Untold Legends introduces new weapons, additional quests, more than 10 new battle maps as well as 25 previously unreleased music tracks.
Alongside the DLC, Daedalic will release Patch 1.3 for the main game, implementing improvements to the games balancing system as well as giving players further insight into their character’s hit chances and how these can be improved. Hit chances will be shown during all battles for all characters and is no longer dependent on Animal Lore or Warcraft talent, giving players the opportunity to weight the odds of their attacks. The patch will also give players the option to display a full battle log, including dice rolls, during combat enabling full transparency of events.
Players who purchased the Blackguards Contributors Edition through Steam will receive Untold Legends automatically for free. Those who purchase the Deluxe Edition will receive the 25 previously unreleased tracks for free when installing Patch 1.3.
Untold Legends will release on 4th March 2014 through digital download portals for £3.99.
Watch the new trailer of The Order 1886, the Ready at Dawn’s upcoming PS4 exclusive, The Order: 1886 looks to be an interesting new take on Arthurian legend. The game being a third-person shooter, details on gameplay have been a bit scant, but Ready at Dawn has now shared a little of what Ready at Dawns unique take on Victorian London will bring to the PlayStation 4.
The Order’s most distinctive features is the ambitious blend between cutscenes and gameplay.
Here are 18 screenshots from The Order 1886 what do you think so far of game.
The Order: 1886 will be released on PS4 in 2014, with an Autumn release recently teased.
NCSOFT and ArenaNet, has introduces the penultimate chapter in the saga of super villain Scarlet Briar today with its latest living world release, “Escape from Lion’s Arch”. The release opens with the cosmopolitan city of Lion’s Arch, a multicultural centre of trade dating back to the original Guild Wars, under siege by Scarlet’s forces. Even as the heroes of Tyria, made up of players and the iconic characters of this diverse world, rally to save the city, the ominous sense that Guild Wars 2 will never be the same is evident from the opening scene. Lion’s Arch is burning!
For the past year, players have battled Scarlet’s minions, foiled her schemes, and discovered more about her sinister goals. Now, after months of planning, Scarlet’s attack on Lion’s Arch sets the stage for a final ruthless push in her still mysterious grand plan. In “Escape from Lion’s Arch”, players battle alongside the Lionguard to take on Scarlet’s dark allies and evacuate as many citizens from the city as possible. They will face ferocious challenges as her minions roam freely through the besieged city and in the waters of the harbour. To protect the innocent, players will have to battle everything from the brutal charr of the Flame Legion and the towering clockwork watchknights to vicious creatures such as the krait and the feared Aetherblade sky pirates.
As all of this takes place, a deadly miasma poison spreads across the city, forcing desperate survivors into refugee camps in the outskirts. At the Vigil Keep in the Gendarran Fields, players will find a new rallying point and an impromptu hub of trades and services they’ll need to defend Lion’s Arch. Only they stand between Scarlet and total devastation for one of the most important cities in Guild Wars 2.
GAME and PlayStation are joining forces with Square Enix to offer 100 lucky GAME Reward members and their friends the chance to win their very own VIP launch night event for upcoming title Thief, released on 28th February.
100 GAME stores throughout the UK will give fans the chance to win an exclusive lock-in launch party for themselves and three friends to be hosted on Thursday 27th February. To be in with a chance to win, gamers need to visit their local participating store or head online to its Twitter page and make their claim for why they deserve to win, using #GAMEthief100 (participating stores listed below). Entry opens from 11.00am 18th February and closes at midday on 26th February.
The best pitch will be selected by the participating stores and 100 lucky gamers will win their own private GAME lock-in as well as a sleeve signed by Nicholas Cantin (Art and Game Director) and Daniel Windfeld Schmit (Lead Level Designer). At the end of the night, the winners will also be able to purchase the much anticipated game before anyone else.
Gamers must be aged 18 or over with a pre-order of the game on their GAME Reward account to be considered. ID will be required for all attendees.
Ailsa McKnight, Marketing Director at GAME said:
“Our exclusive lock-in events give gamers the chance to come together as a community and get early, hands on access to the best titles in gaming. We’re once again partnering with the teams at Square Enix and PlayStation, this time to bring the long-awaited and hugely popular Thief to life in our biggest lock-in series to date. For one lucky gamer in each of the 100 stores taking part this really will be a money-can’t-buy experience.
“The biggest titles demand the best events – and at GAME we will always deliver for our gaming community, whether that is with incredible lock-ins, exclusive in-game content or the best midnight launches on the high street.”
The 100 Thief Stores taking part can be contacted in store or via twitter below, further details can be found on http://instore.game.co.uk/
HTC will unveil the successor to its HTC One smartphone on 25th March its was announced today.
The company will launch the HTC M8 handset with simultaneous press conferences in London and New York.
The news broke via HTC own Twitter account, posting an image bearing the release date along with the caption, “The best is about to get better”. With rumoured specs of the phone is expected to feature a 5-inch 1080p display, 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage.
With a larger 2900mAh battery and Android 4.4 KitKat and HTC’s Sense 6 user interface come pre-installed.
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes: Universe in Peril is now out for the Nintendo DS, bringing the highly popular brick-smashing adventure to the palm of your hand. Fans of the Marvel Universe will never be far from their favourite Super Heroes, as they fight their way through key Marvel locations to save the world from dastardly evil villains like Loki and Dr. Doom.
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes: Universe in Peril for Nintendo DS, which is also available for PlayStation® Vita and Nintendo 3DS™, features 45 action-packed missions, where players take control of Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America, Wolverine and many more Marvel characters as they unite to stop Loki and a host of other Marvel villains from assembling a super-weapon capable of destroying the world. Players will chase down Cosmic LEGO Bricks as they travel across key locations from the Marvel Universe, such as Stark Tower, Asteroid M, a Hydra base and the X-Mansion.
The Fifth Estate has just been released on Blu-ray and DVD, we have a great new competition for you to win a copy on Blu-ray.
BAFTA award-winner BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH gives an outstanding performance in the adrenalin-fuelled dramatic thriller, THE FIFTH ESTATE. This powerful exposé based on the real-life events of the notorious WikiLeaks.
Driven to expose corporate crimes and government secrets no matter what the cost, activist Julian Assange (Cumberbatch) and computer hacker Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Bruhl) team up to become the underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. As their Wikileaks organisation starts to gather support and influence across the globe so the stakes are raised; pitching them into conflict with the US intelligence agencies and putting the lives of thousands in danger.
The home entertainment release takes you further inside the conspiracies with the DVD featuring an additional featurette ‘The Submission Platform’ and the Blu-ray packed with even more behind-the-scenes action with ‘In-Camera Graphics’ and ‘Scoring Secrets’.
We have teamed up with Entertainment One to offer three lucky winners The Fifth Estate on Blu-ray.
So all you have to do to win one of the three The Fifth Estate Blu-rays is to click on the Contact Us link here or at the top of the page and tell us which fictional detective Benedict Cumberbatch plays on BBC One – simple!
Just retweet the message below, and make sure you are following @aedney on Twitter:
Usual contest rules apply, and the winners will be selected at random. This contest is open only to those in the UK – sorry! You can enter as many times you as you like, but only one entry per day will be counted.
The contest closes Sunday 23rd February, so good luck.
The Fifth Estate is available now on DVD and Blu-ray from Entertainment One.
