If the impending conclusion to the NFL season is giving you a case of the crazy eyes, it might be a good idea to take your aggression out on NFL Blitz, EA’s addition to (formerly) Midway’s hyperviolent football series. This downloadable title features the same frantic action that fans of the franchise have loved for the past decade — seriously, the exact same action. It’s so faithful that playing it takes me back to the halcyon days of 1998 when we had dial-up internet, a Clinton in the White House, and Chumbawamba had a bright future ahead of them. The only thing missing from this iteration is the post play grab-assing which allowed you to brawl for a few moments before the play selection screen reappeared. Evidently the NFL didn’t want their sport — which is built upon the pillars of violence — to be marred by such behavior. Minutia aside, fans of the original home or arcade versions of NFL Blitz will be pleased to know that this current outing does the series justice.
The basic game is still a fast paced, violently simplified take on the Sunday tradition, and this downloadable entry surprises with an impressive level of polish. The HUD and transition effects — things too often ignored — get presented with a certain sheen and flourish that enhances even the simplest menu navigation. Likewise, the announcers have just enough wit to keep me from muting my television — which is a rarity for sports games. While the core mechanics of the game may be carried over from the late ’90s, the presentation makes it clear that this is a Blitz for today’s gamer. This fact is further pronounced in the plethora of different modes. The Blitz Gauntlet charges you with climbing a ladder of opponents similar to how you would in a classic Mortal Kombat title. Every few victories against NFL teams rewards you with a Boss Fight: four quarters against a squad comprised of hot dogs, Neanderthals, and other assorted macho warriors. These specific matches take a page from NBA Jam by adorning the field with various power-ups, making the games even more frantic.
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Adhesive Games have confirmed the Meteor Entertainment division will indeed publish Hawken as a Free To Play game.
The news comes several weeks after NowGamer.com revealed a job advert for a Marketing Manager that said the : "Responsible for the marketing of forth-coming FTP FPS Mech Video game to core PC gamers and to leverage its cross over appeal to gain awareness from, and monetize against, a broader gaming audience."
The release date is currently set as 12/12/12 and you can find full details about Hawken's closed beta at www.playhawken.com.
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It’s funny what a mix of good and bad timing can do for a game. Take Radiant Silvergun, for instance: originally an arcade game and then a relatively limited Japanese Saturn release in 1998, the game became a favorite among the ultra-hardcore, import-happy crowd… assuming they could get the game. Due to its short life on the shelf and the general fervor over its developer Treasure, Silvergun quickly gained triple-digit price tags. Some would suggest that not playing Radiant Silvergun doesn’t make you a real gamer. Well, it’s not that good, but now it’s back and better and easier to get than ever.
Radiant Silvergun is definitely a shooter from 1998. It requires a different kind of skill than today’s arcade shoot-em-ups, where the number one strategy is knowing when to tip-toe between curtains of bullets. Here, enemies are typically small and everywhere, bosses and midbosses are frequent, and they all have tricky patterns that can throw you off if you don’t learn them or don’t kill the boss before they get really tricky. On top of that, the game has an orthodox emphasis on weaponry. You have three basic attack types — vulcan, homing, or spread — that can be combined to make different combinations, like a vulcan cannon that fires from both ends of the ship, or a homing laser that goes for any enemy in your radius. Oh, and a “radiant sword” that you can swing around or use it to absorb certain pink bullets and charge up a super slash. In this version, you can map the combinations to any button you want, but the tower of button icons on the side of the screen when playing can still look a little intimidating. Nevertheless, it’s a feast of firepower.
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(English website) Continent of the Ninth, more affectionately known as C9 in the online gaming world, recently added the new Bullet Shooter class into the official Korean servers. ThisIsGame uploaded a game footage of this new class, showing how it can be effective both in a group or when soloing. Note that the English server is currently having its VIP test right now!
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In a season riddled with life-changing mega-sequels, Corpse Party couldn’t have arrived at a worse time — especially on a platform so ravaged by the deadly tag team of piracy and disinterest. With its distinctly fan-made presentation and digital-only availability, XSEED’s latest isn’t going to turn heads like the Uncharteds and Modern Warfares of the world; though, in the case of Corpse Party, this lack of attention just might be for the best. While most of our modern gaming blockbusters seek to offer either awkwardly bloodless violence for the sake of the coveted catch-all Teen rating or Bruckheimer-esque glorification of combat, the folks at Team GrisGris obviously didn’t suffer under these same publisher pressures. Corpse Party doesn’t seek to cast the widest net possible with a series of escapist power fantasies that gently nudge players down a path of rewards; from the outset, the game wears its heartlessness on its sleeve, dispatching characters in ways that have yet to debut in your nightmares (but soon will). This glorified visual novel may resemble a B-tier Super Nintendo game on the surface, but nothing else I’ve played over the past 25 years has been so relentlessly brutal, bleak, and terrifying.
Though Corpse Party looks like an ancient JRPG, trappings like hit points, an inventory, and tile-based movement only exist as lip service; the “game” portions of Corpse Party act solely as a conduit for the narrative. Like Phoenix Wright and 999, Corpse Party is a visual novel, though it looks and plays decidedly more “gamey” than other entries in the genre. Instead of transitioning from static scene to static scene from a first-person perspective — typical of the genre — the game employs 2D sprites and an overhead perspective, providing players with a more familiar means of input. And since you’re tasked with controlling a group of defenseless teens, combat simply isn’t an option; the few foes found in the game most often kill with a single touch, making their presence more disturbing than any turn-based ghost battles ever could.
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(Official website) So, everyone is raging about the public Closed Beta for Diablo III which went live recently. How many of you got in? Well, I sure didn’t. With tons of footage being uploaded and the experience limited to level 13 content (after killing King Leoric), I guess not that much is lost. So, to join in the festive mood, here is a small armor gallery I found on some Chinese gaming forums where they are debating about the Korean MMO-design elements found in them.
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Massively Speaking Episode 185 marks the debut of the Justin and Bree show as the microphone is passed on to a new generation. Many Bothans died to bring you this broadcast, so show some respect, you scruffy-looking nerfherder! Today we talk about RIFT's new trial, MMO anniversaries, and why Star Wars: The Old Republic may not be dying fast enough for everyone's taste.
Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to Massively Speaking directly in iTunes. [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. Listen here on the page:
Last year we got our first look at Line of Defense, a new MMOFPS from Derek Smart and his team at 3000AD. The title is looking good so far and the devs are certainly eager to show off their progress. As such, 3000AD delivered five brand-new screenshots showcasing the environments and outfits that players will experience, including desert and snowy terrains.
Line of Defense takes place in the same game universe as Smart's Battlecruiser 3000AD series, and promises to deliver "open-world FPS mayhem" from the depths of the ocean to the heights of space and everything in-between. You can check out the new screenies in the gallery below, and make sure to catch up on our Derek Smart interview about Line of Defense if you haven't already!
This week is Gamer Safety Week, and before you laugh at the thought of getting injured while playing your favorite MMO, we should point out that the safety has more to do with your accounts than your person.
Nine major game companies have joined forces to form the Gamer Safety Alliance, an organization that seeks "to break down traditional competitive barriers and share information and best practices within the computer and video game industry."
DUST 514 may be a PlayStation 3 exclusive for the moment, but CCP has confirmed that the title will offer USB keyboard and mouse control options. CCP Jian broke the news late last night on his Twitter account, though there's no word as of yet on whether using a keyboard/mouse combo will translate to an edge over players who are using a PS3 controller.
DUST is a sci-fi MMOFPS set in CCP's New Eden universe, and it is directly connected to the long-running EVE Online MMORPG. Players take on the role of ground-based mercenaries who fight for territory control and share the universal economy with EVE's capsuleers.
Diablo III may not be out yet, but that's no good reason not to be filling up your virtual coffers for the day that it hits the streets! Blizzard has thrown the switch on Battle.net Balance, activating its online payment service that allows players to charge up their Battle.net funds to purchase various Blizzard game services.
The new Balance system can be used to buy World of Warcraft game time (although you can't set up a recurring subscription with it), in-game pets and mounts, paid account services in WoW such as character transfers, digital copies of Blizzard titles, and the opportunity to buy and sell items on Diablo III's auction house. It's important to note that not all regions will be able to participate in Diablo III's real-money transactions, however.
Once real money has been funneled into Battle.net Balance, it cannot be converted back into cash. Blizzard does state that in some regions, players will have an option to get cash back on Diablo III auction sales via PayPal. The company also mentioned that there is a cap on how much any player can have in his or her Balance account and that there are potentially region-specific expiration dates for Balance funds.
I've been playing a lot of EverQuest II lately, and one thing that the game has in abundance is choice. Whether we're talking about combat vs. non-combat activities, group vs. solo content, or a huge class roster, Sony Online Entertainment's fantasy sequel is pretty ridiculous when it comes to play options.
There's so much choice, in fact, that it's occasionally difficult to decide what to do next. Take the aforementioned classes as an example. Thanks to the introduction of the Beastlord in last December's Age of Discovery expansion, the game now has a whopping 25 classes to choose from, and I have 13 of them sitting in various stages of advancement on my character select screen.
Which one should I play? Should I make one of the other 12? These are the times that try men's souls! OK, not really, but it can be a tough call. What about you, Massively readers? Do you have too many alts?
Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Those of you who've been waiting to pull the trigger on a TERA pre-order because of the uncertainty over retail collector's edition versions of the game will have to wait a little longer. En Masse Entertainment's Evan "Scapes" Berman posted an official statement on the TERA website a short time ago that basically says the company is aware of the problem but has no time-table for fixing it.
In a nutshell, the En Masse website has been advertising physical collector's edition packages for the better part of a week, but when gamers go to the various retail partner websites listed on the page, the CEs are nowhere to be found. Some TERA fans are a bit anxious because pre-ordering guarantees a slot in the fast-approaching closed beta period, and the only alternative thus far is to buy a digital version of the game directly from En Masse.
Diablo III delivered 100,000 beta keys to North American fans this week, but it also revealed that the epic death animations from the game's first gameplay reveal were actually faked and won't be in the final game. Upcoming online FPS Blacklight: Retribution has challenged players to play 20 ranked matchmaking games by Thursday to win an exclusive golden helmet, and Massively still has beta keys if you'd like to get involved.
Heroes of Newerth released its potentially overpowered new hero Berzerker this week, placing Artesia into the free hero pool for legacy accounts a week early. League of Legends introduced its updated AI, adding 40 champions to the bot roster for both Summoner's Rift and Dominion co-op games. Dota 2 released a new test version to trial experimental changes without interrupting balance testing, and dungeon crawler Path of Exile showed off two new screenshots of its upcoming 0.9.6 patch. Finally, Bloodline Champions increased all XP gains by 50% this week in patch 2.3 and has launched a hilarious new photo content that's sure to get some questionable entries.
If you live in China and play online, you know the name ChangYou. The company is a bit less well-known over in the US, but it's still made a name for itself with quirky titles like Zentia and Duke of Mount Deer. It's also apparently making a massive amount of money. According to the company's fourth quarter financial report, ChangYou wound up with a total gross revenue of $435.5 million, with profits surging to $248 million.
CEO Tao Wang says the company can thank a variety of games for its success -- the aforementioned Duke of Mount Deer, an expansion for Tian Long Ba Bu, and the browser-based DDTank. The success of the company in the online market is just part of the ever-expanding Chinese marketplace, which generated over $5 billion dollars last year alone. That's good news for ChangYou and its fans, since the company will enter the next year with plenty of money to generate more games.
Age of Empires Online has been bringing free-to-play RTS action to the masses since August of last year, but so far players have had access to just three civilizations: Greek, Egyptian, and Persian. All of that is about to change, though, so ready your shillelaghs as the Celts join the battle. This new civilization, which seems to draw inspiration predominantly from Irish and Scottish folklore, will bring players a variety of new units and strategies with which to drive the opposition to its knees. Whether you're wreaking havoc with the speedy Woad Raiders or sacrificing a deer with the druidic Augur, the Celts will certainly bring new twists to any playstyle.
And of course, a new civilization also means new quests. The Celts' quests will have players battling it out in the frigid north, where the icy weather will slowly sap the health of any unit caught in the elements. The Celts will also introduce stealth missions, such as infiltrating an enemy fortress without waking the sleeping guards. To see the new civilization in action, just click past the cut for a bagpipe-filled teaser video, then head on over to the game's official site to get in on the action for yourself. Sláinte!
RIFT Live Producer Hal Hanlin and Systems Producer Adam Gershowitz were flagged down by fansite Magelo to tackle a grab bag of various questions about the game, including the process of injecting this title into the hearts of the Russian populace. According to Hanlin, the Russian release of RIFT was "very smooth," and he credits Trion Worlds' partner in the region, GFI, with assisting in that.
Even as itemization improvements continue to roll into RIFT, the devs state that they're constantly monitoring damage output. For the next patch, Warriors will see a buff to their DPS as attack power will be tweaked to boost the pain.
Hanlin promises that "soloable content is very important to us" and pointed at the success of Instant Adventures and the Chronicles of Telara as proof that Trion has responded to the desire for such content in the game.
The devs touch on small details from the recent patch and their vision for expert dungeons as well.
Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and aside from mad dashes to the Hallmark store for cards and boxes of chocolate, the season is also typified by various MMO events. This year is no different, and Sony Online Entertainment is queuing up a couple of noteworthy shindigs in EverQuest II and Free Realms.
Norrathians will be celebrating Erollisi Day from February 7th through the 20th, and there are plenty of contests, quests, and love-soaked goings-on to keep everyone happy. Free Realms' Festival of Hearts lasts a bit longer (February 7th through March 8th to be exact), during which time players may partake of Valentine's Day-themed environments, quests, and reward items.
Finally, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures is re-introducing a few Valentine's Day items to its StationCash markeplace, and you'll find more info on each game's celebration events at their respective official sites.
You know 'em -- those places shrouded away from the everyday grind of the world where you can chill-out without being interrupted (excepting spouse aggro), a private nook where you know there is a definite beginning and end to your adventure, one that offers the best possible loot. They are areas often steeped in lore.
They are... the instanced dungeon.
There are actually 19 separate PvE dungeons currently in Aion where Daevas can get their dungeon crawl on. If you include the Fortress instances, you can add another 10 dungeons to this list. Adding PvP instances raises the number even higher. However, since fort instances are seriously lacking in lore and fort ownership is required (so availability is not assured), we will forego including them. We'll also omit the Dredgions and PvP arenas to keep the list PvE focused -- after all, there are times you really may not want to bother with fighting the enemy!
This week, Wings Over Atreia explores the first half of the dungeon list for the benefit of both young whippersnappers and old-timer Daevas alike. Why would veterans need it? Because dungeons aren't just for certain levels anymore. For a change of pace or to break out of a rut, grab yourself some lowbies, mentor down, and check out one instance a day -- you'll pass two weeks before ever repeating. You might even have fun, meet new friends, and renew your enthusiasm for Aion.
I was sold on the original Shank in about 30 seconds; from seeing the main character linking combos, moving like an acrobat, and grinning in his half-cute/half-sadistically violent yet incredibly clean art style. As long as the developers didn't mess anything big up, the game was going to be fun. And they didn't, and it was.
Having just finished Shank 2, going back to the original feels like playing a prototype of the same game -- it's a bit slower, a few of the buttons are mapped differently, and the art is less detailed, but it's essentially the same thing. To a certain degree, that's expected -- such a comparison would be true for many titles after their sequels release. But in Shank's case the similarities stand out because it feels like the developers took another chance to get things right instead of moving on to big new ideas -- in an attempt to make a better version of the same game. And they did, and it is.
If one look at the Darkness II's lurid subject matter causes you to roll your eyes at all the extreme violence and gore on display, this review isn't going to change your outlook at all. For all the balling and wailing that happened on the Internet the day this sequel sans original developer Starbreeze was announced, I believe that new developer Digital Extremes has crafted an excellent adventure that furthers the grim adventures of Jackie Estacado, as he struggles to control an evil power lurking within him. And all of it is beautifully crafted in a graphic style that fits a comic creation brought to life.
The story takes place two years after the events of the first game, and presents a main character that has learned to suppress his dark gift. In the opening we learn that Jackie Estacado has locked away the evil entity known as The Darkness within himself, and runs the Franchetti Crime family as a young 23-year-old Don. Of course, everything quickly changes for the worse, and the developer uses a grim shootout at a restaurant early on as a opening tutorial -- providing context to go along with all the bravado, gore, and firearms.
I struggled initially to come up with a way to accurately state how liberally Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lifts ideas from other games while still managing to feel like its own distinct title. I was ready to cite Igor Stravinsky (or Picasso, or T.S. Eliot, whoever you prefer to attribute this to) when he said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal," or even serve up that trusty chestnut about how Steven Spielberg compressed every pulp adventure he loved into Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wasn't until I perused my music collection that I found a contemporary artist who gleefully takes the music of others while using that work as a solid foundation to add his own distinct style that results in something that can only be attributed to him: Kanye West.
If you abhor my taste in music (or simply Kanye in particular), feel free to substitute any sample-heavy artist, like early Danger Mouse or Endtroducing...-era DJ Shadow, instead. Either way, I use those analogues to express this basic point: Sure, Reckoning takes a lot from pretty much every other game you care to name, but it does such a good job of it that the mixing of borrowed elements and layering on of new ones coalesces into a damn fine action-RPG.
Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword captures the essence of what makes simple video game mechanics so enticing. Its big hook comes from rewarding players for perfectly-timed dodges, and while this type of required precision satisfies, it also points to one of the game's biggest flaws: its grueling and uneven difficulty.
I'm not one to complain about difficulty in games. Repetitively grinding through the harsh corners of Dark Souls doesn't bother me and, nearly a decade ago, I spent hours slicing my way through Shinobi -- a notoriously difficult game that pushed people's patience to its limits in 2002. But the thing about game difficultly is the rules have to feel fair. They need to convey that you're losing due to skill gaps and not improper balancing.
Used game sales hurt the bottom line of all console game developers, as the entirety of each sale goes to the retailer and not the game's makers. It's a familiar line we've heard from several developers and publishers in the past five years. With used game sales taking heat from fans and game makers alike, digital distribution, like Steam or GOG.com, seems to offer the chance to get cheap games with a clear conscience, but that's not quite true. Even new games suffer from the same issue as used sales; none of the money actually goes to the people who made the game.
As brought to attention by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, last week, developer Simon Roth created a quick list of "games that no longer support their creators," and classic titles from defunct developers or publishers make up most of it -- Ion Storm and Deus Ex, Looking Glass and Thief, Black Isle and Fallout 2. Other titles still maintain their original publisher but not the developer -- EA collects on Syndicate and Populous, Peter Molyneux does not. You may read the titles of these games and think that the issue only affects older games, but do you think the former members of Team Bondi are seeing any money for copies of L.A. Noire sold today? If you don't purchase used games for ethical reasons, you might have to give up many new games as well.
Those expecting a proper remake of Final Fantasy X for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita should start tempering their expectations. Although we still have very little in the way of details, it's been clarified that the project Square Enix has in the works is an HD remaster, not a remake.
Square Enix's Shinji Hashimoto made this clear at the recent Taipei Game Show, according to GNN (via Joystiq). The difference between "remake" and "remaster" may sound like semantics, but in fact there are entirely different expectations that come along with the two. Depending upon how you feel about FFX, the reality of this being a remaster may or may not be welcome news.
The final of three games Microsoft announced in 2010 as a demonstration of its support for PC gaming, Microsoft Flight, finally comes out later this month. Several pieces of downloadable content are releasing along with it, though they are priced in a way that could make it hard to interest those who are not hardcore fans.
Many gamers take issue with downloadable content being made available right at a game's launch. In the case of a free-to-play game like Flight, launching on February 29, it's a different situation as the game itself is being given away for free and Microsoft hopes it's good enough that gamers decide to spend money on new locales, planes, and so on.
I didn't know an awful lot about Acquire's Sumioni for PlayStation Vita until I checked out an in-person demo a few days ago. I knew it was (1) based on sumi-e, the traditional Japanese art that makes use of a charcoal-like black ink, similar to Okami; and (2) it has something to do with an oni, a mythological Japanese demon. I got that much from the title. Beyond that... who knows?
What I saw in person turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Sumioni could loosely be described as a combination of Okami and Kirby's Canvas Curse, in that you're using an ink brush to interact with the world and drawing platforms for your heroes. But I don't think that really does justice to the game's mechanics and design. Unlike Canvas Curse, it doesn't take a hands-off approach to traditional controls; you'd be hard-pressed to play this game on iOS, because despite its touchscreen-driven mechanics, it relies heavily on old-fashioned control mechanics. Your oni hero (or, rather, anti-hero, since he's a lazy bum forced to undertake his journey by a goddess who got fed up with his bad habits) moves with the left stick and jumps and attacks with the face buttons. Just like games used to do.
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Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's 
