Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- OP-ED: I’m Getting Too Old for These Long Games
- Rift’s first 20 levels now free to play
- APB Reloaded MMO Review
- [TPGS 2012] Dragon’s Prophet
- Sony Right to Not Panic Over Vita Just Yet
- Dance Central 2 Can Import Dance Central 1′s Songs for $5
| OP-ED: I’m Getting Too Old for These Long Games Posted: 04 Feb 2012 06:54 AM PST Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has a lot of content. This much we know. Releasing next week isn’t the most perfect time as far as I’m concerned with the Vita’s launch on the horizon and both Twisted Metal and Resident Evil: Revelations competing for my time, but it’s also a much more comfortable spot than any point in the last quarter of 2011 would have been. One of its developers recently pondered if the amount of content crammed into the game was overdone, and I can’t help but think it just might be. “We recently had a content completion play through about two months ago… so, QA guys, they’ve been playing the game for years, they know all there is to know about it, its ins and outs, etc… their goal is to play everything,” lead designer Ian Frazier told Strategy Informer. “Do every quest, every dungeon, everything possible, but as fast as possible. That means easy difficulty, skip all cut scenes and dialogue, sprint everywhere that’s sprintable, fast travel everywhere you can, don’t do any combat you don’t need to do… that all took around 200 hours, and that was a speed run.” Even the main campaign is pegged at taking between 30 and 40 hours to complete. That begs the question: is there too much content? “I think in terms of a selling point — bang for your buck — I think it’s great,” Frazier said. “It should be on the back of the box. But as a developer I have to look at it and think, ‘Did we overdo this?’ I really don’t know.” The purpose of Frazier saying this might be a PR move more than anything else, a last-minute attempt to reinforce the fact that there is this game coming out that has a lot of stuff for players to do. But it’s also a very interesting, valid question he raised, and it’s one I’ve flip-flopped on as I’ve gotten older. I simply don’t have dozens, much less hundreds of hours to invest into a single game anymore. It wasn’t always like this, of course; when I was younger I was free to obsess over a single game if I enjoyed it enough to deem it worthy of such a time investment. I remember how excited I would get to play Rare games like Banjo-Tooie (and to a lesser degree Donkey Kong 64) because there was so much to do. So much to collect. I could spend what felt like countless hours finding and doing every last thing the cartridge contained, and I was going to dominate that trivia contest at the end of the game even if I was only competing against the computer. And when I was done it was back to spending dozens of hours in Perfect Dark‘s Combat Simulator, which would have no real impact on my ability to attend school and spend time with friends. If I really felt compelled to do so, I might still be able to devote a good deal of time to a single game today, but it would come at the expense of all my spare time. That means ignoring anything else I’m interested in doing, whether it be making use of that Star Wars: The Old Republic subscription I’m paying for or watching the latest episode of Archer. There are the occasions where I’m really able to throw myself into something like Fallout 3 for work purposes, but that’s an excuse the average person is not afforded. This shift came gradually, as I’m sure it did for many others, as I slowly accumulated more responsibilities. School became more time-consuming; work took the place of what previously had been time spent doing whatever I felt like. In what feels like a cruel joke, making a living meant having more money to spend on the games and systems I wanted, but it also meant having more ways to split my rapidly-shrinking spare time. While I wouldn’t be derisive about it, once upon a time I would be taken aback to hear a game had only a 5-10 hour story mode to complete. Now it feels like a relief. A shorter game is a game I’m more likely to finish, and while I have a propensity for leaving games unfinished because I feel the need to move onto something new, I now find a shorter game with a consistently strong experience to be preferable to something with filler that might have seemed better to me as a kid. I remember hearing stories similar to my own when I was younger; as gamers grew older and had families, gaming was forced to take a back seat to real life. “That won’t happen to me,” I told myself. I could live a productive, happy life and still devote the same amount of time to gaming as I always had. Fast forward a decade and Mass Effect 2 is taking me weeks to complete. Weeks. This would have been unthinkable to Young Me as ME2 was a game I could not be more excited for, yet here I was struggling to find the time to play it. Likewise, I’ve spent a fraction of the amount of time with Skyrim than I would have if it been released years ago. And these situations are only made worse because I’m prone to collecting everything I can in games, no matter how useless, which tends to make playing even a game like Uncharted 3 more time consuming than it would be otherwise. The words of Roger Murtaugh have never rang so true for me. This change in the way I’m able to play games hasn’t lessened my appreciation for games like Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur. I do, however, find myself selfishly wishing the more linear games out there were designed to have less of the fluff they can sometimes be filled with. (Backtracking is something I rarely enjoy.) In the case of Reckoning I do wonder if time spent on some obscure content only a small percentage of gamers will ever see would be better spent polishing a section of the game that more people are likely to play. The answer probably depends on how open you are to spending a great deal of time with a single game. What I know I would like to see is developers recognizing not everyone can play games for long stretches at a time and creating ways that make it easier to play in smaller bursts. Not enough games allow you to save your progress at any time, despite the fact that there are ways to do so without opening the door for exploits. Temporary saves that are deleted once they’re loaded are one possible solution that could perhaps even be integrated at the system level. Failing that or something similar, I suspect I’m going to continue building up the most enormous of backlogs to take care of once I’m retired. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Rift’s first 20 levels now free to play Posted: 04 Feb 2012 06:54 AM PST Rift Lite débuts today with the latest Rift 1.7 patch, Carnival of the Ascended, with features the ability to get married in game, improvements to PvP and the new Rivel of Souls Chronicle among other things. "In the past ten months, Rift has evolved at a breakneck pace, through seven massive updates that set new expectations for live MMOs, in features, in content, and in service," said Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer of Rift and Trion's CCO. "We think a Lite edition with no time limit is the best way for players to see what an amazing experience Rift continues to be." Rift Lite is immediately available and is accessible to anyone with a Trion account on any of the games servers. Trion promise that the game is unlimited in every way bar the previously mentioned level cap. The new Carnival of the Ascended also starts its initial stage today, culminating in a few weeks time with what Trion promise to be the 'largest and most spectacular World Even Telara has ever witnessed'. You can get started with Rift Lite right here. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 04 Feb 2012 01:27 AM PST All Points Bulletin: Reloaded is a MMO set in the modern fictional city called San Paro, where players play the role of either criminals or enforcers in a fight for control of the streets. Originally released as a full-price game, APB closed and now returns nearly one year later on the free-to-play model and under a different publisher. Shooter and MMORPG fans both will find something for themselves here, whether it is on the streets in the thick of the action, or in the workshop customizing their cars with mods and decals.
Publisher: GamersFirst Website: http://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/ Pros:+Intense, high-speed action. +Vibrant city to play in. +Huge customization potential. +Beautiful graphics and art. +Super addictive character progression. Cons: -Abysmal matchmaking system. -Significant lack of content. -Money store prices are absurdly -A truckload of bugs and glitches. APB is a GTA-style MMO based around the tried and true concept of cops and robbers. It's deceptively simple, amazingly fun, and is bound to keep you latched to your screen for many hours on end as you rob, fight or arrest your way to fame. Wield a plethora of firearms, drive a variety of vehicles, and make your mark as you fight for the streets of San Paro as one of two factions: Criminal: Criminals get to perform a variety of missions and roles, such as ramming stores with their cars for loot, or mugging civilians for a little extra cash. Their pro-active role means they have to keep an eye out for Enforcers who can take them out or arrest them, then steal their "hard-earned" money. Enforcers: Enforcers play a more reactive role; they patrol the streets hoping to "Witness" criminals committing a crime, which allows them in turn to arrest or take them out. Enforcers gain access to a special range of weapons called "Less-than-lethal" weapons who's role is to stun rather than kill, in order to arrest (Check the full review for more on this).
APB Reloaded RequirementsMinimum Requirements: Recommended Specification:
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| Posted: 04 Feb 2012 12:52 AM PST
Currently around 80% of completion, a 15 minute demo client, which is actually one of the dungeons, was available for attendees to try the the game out first-hand. Remember about the cross-server functions I talked about earlier (link)? New information was released, including cross-server player search to form dungeon parties, cross-server auction, cross-server guild application and more. Also mentioned previously, guild territory, towns and PvP wars will take place on individual sky islands, which is pretty similar to the guild system found in Perfect World’s Forsaken World. The first test phase is currently scheduled for the 2nd half of this year. Once again, only the Taiwanese and Japanese servers are confirmed. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Sony Right to Not Panic Over Vita Just Yet Posted: 03 Feb 2012 06:50 PM PST Not unlike the situation Nintendo was faced with in the months after the launch of the 3DS, there has been talk of doom and gloom regarding the Vita. Sales of the new handheld have not been particularly mind-blowing in Japan since launch, and Sony has not attempted to portray its launch as anything it is not. More importantly, it has not yet begun to panic — and nor should it. After 325,000 units were sold in its opening week, Vita sales in Japan have declined week-over-week more often than not. 3DS, PlayStation 3, and even the PlayStation Portable have routinely outsold it, although this finally changed last week when the Vita sold almost 3,000 units more than the PSP. Still, that’s nothing to write home about, which is perhaps why Sony CFO Masaru Kato didn’t go as far as it seemed he was going to when describing Vita’s sales. “Now the company has not publicly announced the units of shipping and sales. At the appropriate time, we would do so,” Kato said during an earnings call this week, Eurogamer reports. “But as far as sell-through, three weeks have passed and our sell-through is 500,000. This was announced on the 10th of January. So as a start, I think we had a very — a good start.” “Including software and hardware, we are carrying out the sales promotions and we do it to boost the sales, and we do not think we have any problems,” he added. PlayStation Portable was a much larger success in Japan than in other markets around the world, and that was due in large part to the availability of Monster Hunter. As of yet Vita has neither a Monster Hunter nor anything even beginning to approach that level of popularity to drive hardware sales in Japan. The biggest launch title in the west is almost undoubtedly Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Although Uncharted 3 did do a great deal better than its predecessors in Japan (selling 124,989 units in its first week according to Media Create), Golden Abyss wasn’t about to sell a great deal of Japanese gamers on an expensive new piece of hardware no matter how good it looks. A French Sony exec reportedly stated recently that a Monster Hunter game is due out for Vita sometime this year. If true that would be a major boon for the platform, just as the announcement of Monster Hunter 3G (pictured above) and Monster Hunter 4 were for the 3DS last year. Just because there is no point in worrying about Vita sales in Japan until the system fails to sell with a game like Monster Hunter available, that does not mean there are no matters that should concern Sony. Among them is a problem Nintendo will be faced with when trying to sell the Wii U, and that is the concerns of early adopters who fear Vita will get a 3DS-style price drop shortly after release. It’s a problem for Nintendo because it’s already shown its willingness to drop the price of new hardware if deemed necessary, and it’s a problem for Sony because it, like Nintendo, is launching portable hardware for $250 (or more, in the 3G system’s case) in a market rife with competition from iPads and iPhones and iPod Touches that did not exist when the PSP was launched. The truly devoted fans of Sony and those who can’t stand to live without a new piece of hardware will buy a Vita on February 22; there’s no doubting that. Others may not be able to so easily look past worries that the Vita’s price could be dropped if early sales figures disappoint. I could not resist the urge to pre-order a Vita following the announcement of the Launch Bundle last week. I do, however, remain unconvinced I need one badly enough at launch to forgo the opportunity of getting one for less money six months down the line. Another area of concern for prospective buyers is the sour taste that may still be lingering from Sony’s most recent PSP iteration, the PSP Go. (The PAL-only, budget E-1000 model doesn’t count.) I’m fairly confident Sony has learned its lessons from the Go, but not everyone who bought one is necessarily so forgiving. After paying a premium for the Go its owners were faced with paying as much as, if not more than retail prices for games, not all of which were available through the PlayStation Store — the only place to get games on a Go. We should have a clearer idea in the next few months whether the memories of these things will impact consumers’ interest in the system. With such a strong launch lineup, particularly compared with that of the 3DS, the Vita has a lot going in its favor. But should the system struggle, it will be quite the dilemma for Sony to deal with knowing that quickly dropping the Vita’s price could make it more difficult to sell the eventual PlayStation 4. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Dance Central 2 Can Import Dance Central 1′s Songs for $5 Posted: 03 Feb 2012 01:27 PM PST Microsoft’s Twitter account revealed a price earlier today: 400 Microsoft Points ($5) will be the cost to play the previous game’s songs in DC2. Of course, you’ll need a copy of the first game in order to import the songs in the first place, as well as 200-250MB of free space on your 360′s hard drive and an Internet-connected system (Xbox Live Gold isn’t necessary). You’ll need more than just a DC disc — you’ll be asked to input a code from the back of the manual, meaning you can’t pass around a copy of DC with friends or rent it to get the songs in DC2 on the cheap. A pre-order deal will save you from having to pay at all. A free 400 points awaits those who pre-order DC2 at select retailers. Instructions for how to do the importing can be found here. Whether or not you elect to pay the fee, any downloadable content you purchased for the first game will automatically show up in DC2. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
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