On the Eve of War – Destiny Taken King

Here we sit on the eve of The Taken King finally landing on our consoles and I find myself very excited. I have taken Wednesday and Thursday off work even. I’ve spent the weekend working on the new subclass quests for my Warlock with my clan. We also had a bit of a go on the new Crucible mode called Mayhem. For those who may not know, Mayhem is a new mode where your super and grenades recharge very fast. I only ever play Crucible with my clan, because they make it fun, and Mayhem was fucking awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in The Crucible. Supers and grenades going off everywhere; bodies flying all over the place. It was great. I must thank my awesome clan, the Guardians of Sarcasm, for making Crucible fun. I never would’ve gone in there without them. Thanks guys.

 

Bungie did a series of live reveal streams on Twitch as well that allowed us to see some of the strikes and public events. They have done some serious tweaking to the Strikes that looks great. Bosses that tag team and then double team you. The new public events look really interesting. They’ve added in a some variables that should keep the events fresh and fun. I can’t wait to play then with the guys. So here you are, below are the videos from the Bungie live streams.

Enjoy and I’ll see you on the other side of the release.

E3 2015 – More of my Destiny (The Taken King)

After the last expansion bringing us into the Reef and closer to the Awoken, I was hoping we’d get more in the next expansion. My character is an Awoken so I have a vested interested, but they’re also very mysterious and that makes me want to know more. Instead though we get to see Crota’s daddy come for revenge. Not the most original plot device, but I’m sure it will be fun nonetheless.

~Donna

E3 2015 Female Assassin Hell Yea!

Ubisoft were sneaky bastards and they added another video to their YouTube channel several hours after their conference at E3. I love this one over them all too. So far we’ve only really had 1 female assassin, Aveline. I have no words for how much I loved Aveline and I’m really excited to be playing Evie in Syndicate. We know that you can play as both Evie and Jacob, but it hasn’t really been made clear how much choice you have between the two. I hope that I can choose to play Evie at any time and point.

Until then though we do have this prety awesome little show of Evie in action.

~Donna

E3 2015 Final Fantasy 7 Remake – Yes Really

I’m sure that by now you all know that Squeenix is finally doing that Final Fantasy 7 remake. I love Final Fantasy; it’s a top 10 favourite franchise. I can remember playing them on the NES and the Super NES and then later in the 90s playing bootleg ROMs of 2 & 3. I would go to the ends of the earth for Final Fantasy. I saved and bought a Playstation just so I could play Final Fantasy. I really love these games.

Oddly hearing the news of a remake of FF 7 didn’t fill me with the super excited joy like it did so many people, including these guys. Although watching them react did make me happy.

 

I think maybe the movie industry has burned me on remakes of anything. So many bad remakes just makes me wary of any type of remade thing. I mean, I am happy for it and I will buy it of course, but I just wasn’t brimming with excitement. I’m sure it will be awesome and I’ll love it, but right now I’m a bit underwhelmed. SO what do you think?

~Donna

E3 2015 Dishonored 2

You have no idea how crazy it makes me to spell dishonored without a U. Repeatedly when doing searches I will spell the word right then realise I’ve not spelled it the American way. These are the things that make me crazy. Well one of them anyhow. Still, seeing yet another game with a female lead made me all kinds of happy. Sure you can play as Corvo, but I’m happy that we get to have the choice and Emily and Corvo have different abilities so there is a real decision to be made.

I’ve watched the video a few times now and I’m very intrigued by that smoke ability Emily seems to have. This is going to make sneaking and surprise attacks a thing of joy Not to mention the possibilities of run the fuck away quickly. We don’t see much gameplay, but we do get to see some beautiful design on show. The art direction was rather stylised previously and from this small clip it looks like they’ve taken it one step further and I really like what I see.

Next year is going to be full of some very awesome games.

~Donna

 

E3 2015 Charting Uncharted

When it was announced the Amy Hennig was leaving Naughty Dog I must admit I did panic a little. She’s been the awesome force of the story behind Uncharted since the beginning. I feared that Nathan Fillion Drake just wasn’t going to be the same without her. As more information came out it became clear that some of the other driving forces of previous Uncharted games would be at the helm of A Thief’s End, I felt a little more comforted. Now of course the E3 trailer is out and it’s 7.5 minutes long. I think this may be the longest gameplay trailer for E3, or at least that I know of.

Watching this I laughed and I did a little squee. There are a couple places where it gets a little tense. It’s over 7 minutes long and in that time they really do show you a variety of gameplay, but they also show us that the wit is still there. After seeing this I’m so excited you’d think I was a 6 year old who got into the bag of jelly babies and ate them all. Totally bouncing off the walls.

~Donna

E3 2015 It’s All In The New

We don’t get nearly enough new IPs in the gaming world. Publishers like to go for the tried and true, but it can get boring. So it was nice to see a couple of exciting new IPs at E3 this year.

The top of the new list for me has got to be Horizon Zero Dawn. We’ve seen some wonderful post apocalypse setting in games like Fallout, but if this trailer is anything to go by then we’re in for something special. Living robot animals! The world of the Old Ones has slipped away and the remaining humans have had to learn to survive. It looks just awesome and I really don’t want to have to wait until 2016.

 

EA showed us a nice little light hearted game called Unravel. It’s a platformer with some new mechanics for getting from point A to point B. It looks like a bit of fun to be had.

 

Media Molecule have been busy busy little beavers. They’ve created two games. The first is Dreams which looks like a jumble of weird things. Who knows what it’ll turn out to be, but it definitely hs my interested. MM is good at quircky and unusual. Speaking of they’ve also got Tearaway Unfolded coming. There is a previous Tearaway game on the Vita, but it’s still a new IP and looks like a lot of fun.

 

 

For those of you who love your multiplayer and have been wishing there was a melee game for you, well there is. Ubisoft announced For Honor last night. This is a 4 vs 4 team medieval melee kill everyone game. Forced multiplayer isn’t my thing, but this still looks pretty awesome.

 

I’m sure there were more announced today but these are the ones that have caught my eye so far and look promising.

~Donna

E3 2015 Assasin’s Creed Syndicate

The Ubisoft conference has just ended and for me the highlight was Assasin’s Creed Syndicate. This really isn’t a surprise to anyone who has been following me over the years. I’m really excited to be playing a female assassin again. I loved playing Aveline in Liberation so much and I really want a full console AC game with a female. For now though I’ll just have to settle playing Evie.

So below is the AC section of the Ubisoft presentation, but also a new gameplay trailer. Enjoy.

~Donna

 

E3 2015 Bethesda Conference

I have waxed lyrically about the highlights for me from Bethesda, but there was so much more. There was Dishonoured 2, Elder Scrolls and Battlecry as well. So here’s the full Bethesda show for all your viewing pleasure.

E3 2015 DOOM!!

I remember when the original DOOM game was released. It was a new and wonderful thing. id created a new and interesting genre of game and we all took to it like ducks to water. I spent so many hours playing it and later playing Quake. I fell in love with id as a developer and they still hold a special place in my heart. They made me fall in love with adventure and showed me a new perspective that has shaped gaming for over 20 years.

There have been misguided attempts at DOOM games in the past and we try to forget them. This time though it looks like id has decided to go back to the things we loved about DOOM and been very true to that creation so many years ago. Watching the extensive gameplay portion of the video we can see that the focus is clearly on killing and those awesome guns.

Of course there will be multi-player as one would expect. Judging from what they’ve shown us there will get both competitive and co-operative. This makes me very happy as I usually con’t enjoy the competitive multi-player modes in games. To go with this they are introducing a simple and easy way to build out own maps and even mix up the game modes. I remember struggling to make Quake levels back in the 90s, so this will be a welcome feature. I foresee a lot of fun levels in my building future.

Enough babbling though, have a look for yourself.

~Donna