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 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
E3 2015 – Falling in Love with Fallout 4
At E3 this year Bethesda have made their very first appearance. They had a lot to show us, but Fallout 4 was definitely the highlight for me.
This time we’ll likely be in Boston, as is evident by the statue of Paul Revere in the trailer. The character we see in the video is wearing a Vault 111 jumpsuit, so one must figure that we’re not too far from Vault 101 of Fallout 3. Still, you never know; it wouldn’t be the first time we were misled by a game developer just too fool us. They certainly didn’t confirm the location in the presentation.
Nothing in the presentation doesn’t excite me. A flash to what is and what was just sends my imagination sky rocketing. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that if Bethesda did nothing different other than the story, many of us would still be very happy. We know though that we get so much more to go with our story and adventure. There will not only be weapon and power armour crafting, but we get to build our own little town. I don’t know about anyone else, but I bet I lose whole days to the crafting in addition to the random wandering of the landscape.
We get a peak into the character creation as well. You do get to play as a male or female and you have complete control over your features to a level not seen before. This time your chosen sex seems to be less superficial so chosing your looks actually my have more use.
There’s a whole bunch of little goodies in the Fallout 4 presentation though, such as a peak at the collector’s edition.
~Donna
It’s My Destiny
It will come to no one’s surprise that I’ve been playing Destiny. I did play it for a while when it first came out, (as well as the PS4 Alpha & Beta), but then I put it aside for a couple months while I dove into the holiday games and became an assassin for a couple of months. Before I turn into a sackgirl I’ve been taking a break and playing Destiny. After the full on story of AC:Unity, I just wanted to play something that was simple for my brain to process; point and shoot.
Simple isn’t really something Destiny does. Gameplay-wise, yes it’s straight forward, but the story keeps confusing me. You would think by now, I’m level 26, I’d be able to remember which are the Cabal and which are the fallen, but I keep getting my bad guys mixed up. I don’t know why I keep doing it, but I do. It could be that all of the aliens aren’t very alien. The only aliens I can consistently remember the name of are the Vex, but they’re all robots. Still, all of our invading alien races are humanoid in shape. I think this is what keeps confusing my brain. I’m sure the confusion is just me, but that aside I do wish the aliens were more alien. There are a couple of exceptions, but on the whole they’re humanoid. For once I’d like to see aliens that really look alien. My own character’s race is an alien, but I’m looking rather human-like.
The human shaped aliens and my goober brain aside, I do really like the story and the world. I like that for once it isn’t just a single bad guy come to take over the Earth. The enemies in Destiny not only don’t like us, but they don’t like each other as well. There are many times in the game when you’ll come across them fighting each other and paying you little mind until you decide to shoot them in the head. This gives a new dynamic to the conflict. The Earth isn’t just being invaded; it’s become a battlefield for these other races as much as it’s an invasion. Obviously when it comes to the gameplay in a situation like this you get the chance to use this to your own advantage and play them off each other to your advantage. With all this conflict going on I’m really excited to see what comes next and how the story evolves.
Speaking of the gameplay, this isn’t rocket science. The controls aren’t hard to memorise and they do have several different button layouts to choose from. I stuck with the default layout though and found it worked fine. A good button layout is one of my top priorities in a game. If I can’t re-map keys then there had better be options. I have giving up on games where the layout just didn’t work for me. Dark Souls was such a game where this happened to me; the buttons just didn’t work for me and made it harder for me to play. No problem here though and the button combinations for specials are easy to handle as well.
This is an FPS, so no shock that you’re in first person perspective shooting at things. Now, I am utterly shit at aiming on a console in first person, but once I got used to it I was pretty much okay. I do use a big gun that shoots a lot of bullets, so I do manage to hit things. The closest I get to a sniper rifle is my rocket launcher; point and boom. Destiny is the polar opposite of Borderlands 2 in their approach to the gun types available. There is a small selection of gun types and the power differences are minor. The main differences in power are between the rarity types; basic, uncommon, rare, legendary and exotic. I’m sure you’re all smart enough to understand the rarity scale. You’re able to equip 3 weapon types for a variety of situations and preferences. You have your primary, special and heavy weapon. Basically it’s like this; kill, fucking kill, blow it the fuck up. One big perk with the weapons is that any weapon can be used by any class. So you truly get to use the type of weapon you like to use best. It’s the best approach a game can have to enable catering to different play styles. I personally favour the Auto Rifle for my primary, the Fusion Rifle for my Special and as mentioned the Rocket Launcher for my Heavy. If you shoot enough bullets fast enough you will eventually kill what you’re aiming at.
Combat can get a little frenzied at times and I must admit that after a couple of long intense missions my hands need to be pried off the PS4 controller. Some of the big strike missions feel like you never stop shooting and you’re always all tensed up shooting and running and shooting and hiding. Sometimes during these big fights I may scream, but they are really so much fun. The story missions are more paced and not the constant killing spree. The Strike missions are bigger and involve other players in co-op with yourself. These missions on average take around 30 minutes to complete and they are usually 2 or 3 stages of intense fighting. It’s in these that I get all amped up and clutch my controller rather tightly as I shoot everything in sight.
It could be that some of my tension comes from playing a Warlock. There are 3 classes; Titan, Hunter and Warlock. The Titan is the tank and big hitter, i.e., a fighter. The Hunter is the quick medium powered fighter, i.e., a rogue. The last is the Warlock which is the “magic” user, i.e., the weakling. During the alpha/beta I played a Hunter and I loved it a lot, but when I bought the game I went for the Warlock, because I didn’t want to be the fighter/tank class and I wanted something different. In my experience the Warlock is weaker in armour, but once you know that and adjust your play style you’re good to go. They have good ranged combat, such as awesome grenades, and you can get the ability to revive yourself. The Hunter is a very quick fighter with medium armour. Hunters are a good middle ground class. As mentioned, the Titans are the big bad fighters. They have good armour and can hit really hard. If you like running up and smacking the shit out of your enemies then you might want to play a Titan.
Destiny is a MMO though which means there are other people around, but the game mechanics allow for this and work well. You can choose to play through the main story with friends or on your own. When you’re out in the world you will see other players but you don’t have to talk to them. Same goes for the PUG Strike missions that require 3 players to play; you don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to. Sometimes you get good random groups and sometimes you don’t, it’s always luck of the draw. The console servers are split, so Playstation and XBox. The Playstation servers aren’t region split, e.g., UK can play with Canada. Most likely the XBox servers aren’t region split either, but as I don’t own the game on the XBox I couldn’t tell you for sure.
As you go through the game you get 2 transport modes. First is your ship that you go between planets in and the other is your Sparrow. The sparrow is kind of like the speeders in Star Wars. You use the Sparrows for zipping around on the planets’ surfaces. They’re great little things for getting places fast and they’re a lot of fun to ride. The big spaceship you have for going between planets is just cosmetic unfortunately. You can find or buy different ones, but currently they don’t do anything. It would be fun if Bungie created space skirmishes to use the spaceships in. I would suck fighting in space, but I think a lot of people would enjoy it and it’d be another game aspect to broaden the appeal. On some planets and in the PvP there are temporary vehicles you can use that also have weapons on them. Always be careful on any vehicle. You never want to be on it when it explodes; it hurts a lot.
To wrap up all this meandering through Destiny I’d like to touch on the PvP. As a general rule I don’t do PvP, but I have dabbled a little. There are 4 types of PvP so you should be able to find your favourite kind here. The one I usually opt for is Control and this is a 6 person per team based capture the flag type of scenario only there are multiple flags to capture and the other team can take them back and vice versa. You also have Clash; 2 teams of 6 competing for the most kills. Similarly you have Rumble which is a 6 player free for all everyone kills everyone scenario. The last is Skirmish and involves 2 teams of 3 players in a variation of team deathmatch. I don’t really enjoy PvP and prefer the co-op Strike missions, but the option is there for those who enjoy it. You can enjoy without ever touching the PvP and not be missing out.
Overall I am very happy with the game. Great action and story thrown into some beautiful environments. The videos and screenshots above are mine and I loved making them. If someone like me who is terrible at FPS games on the console can get to grips with it and enjoy it, then I think others will as well. Sure there is some grinding for gear, but that’s hardly unexpected for an MMO. For me even the grinding is fun though as I get to go through the bounties and revisit areas I barely survived through the first time. The first DLC, The Dark Below, is already out and the next should be coming soon. I only get time to play on the weekends really, but feel free to add me if you’re playing on the PS3 or 4; just mention the site so I know how you found me.
~Donna
Elite: Dangerous (p)Review
Astronaut Pianist, Obvs.
Scottish Highlands. Christmas. 1984.
Bemused parents indulge a child in her somewhat atypical (or so was believed for the time) interest in both Outer-Space and “Computer Games” – a fairly natural progression from the previous year’s SuperGirl costume request. For a computer game of the time it seemed to be absurdly expensive – £12.99. Previous parental protestations of “but you’ve enough games!” – surely an impossibility when the family computer is a BBC Micro (Dad had aspirations of poshness) – are put aside, and there was always the hope that at least one of the children might become a “Computer Expert” in the future, and allow aforementioned parents to retire early.
Hopes, alas, STILL not fulfilled!
The game was “Elite” – now of course so well known (or not?) as the defining sandbox game (in SPACE!)
I must admit to not being very good at the game – I don’t think I ever really made it much past “Mostly Harmless” – the game’s stat tracker for your spaceship killing prowess, “Elite” being the pinnacle. But being 10 years old, I had a blast trying to dock my spaceship, and jumping onto my escape-pod (bed) when I thought I was about to fail. Nevertheless, I knew a good game when I saw one, and enjoyed much play with it before a rogue coffee killed the computer. It would be replaced by a C64, and arcade games.
However, a soft spot was kept for Elite, and I would look in on the various ports as I got older and watched 16-bit come and go, space games go Epic (Wing Commander) and then die a near total death but for wee stalwart indie coders. Then David Braben came along with a Kickstarter, and promise of a 21st Century relaunch of Elite with ALL THE GRAPHICS, and lo, my long dormant space-heart gave a flutter.
Here then, is my preview of Elite: Dangerous (Beta V1):
As I write this, the next release of the beta is due for release, and promises much more content and an increase from 50 or so systems to explore/trade in/fight in/get lost in to a somewhat more sizeable 500 odd. We’re now approaching a decent sized gameworld to explore, but still only the merest fraction of what will be available at final release (due this year) – a procedurally generated 400 billion.
However, I’ve got ahead of myself – let me explain what Elite: Dangerous is, should you not be familiar with this great-grandparent of the open world sandbox game genre.
Elite is a first-person sci-fi space-based pseudo-GTA. That little soundbite is misleading, but mostly accurate aside from the car-jacking, violence, and “of the moment” bangin’ soundtrack. By first-person, I mean that the game world is viewed from your – as yet non-customizable aside from gender – in-game avatar’s viewpoint, exclusively from the cockpit seat of your spaceship. Planned post-release DLC will have you wandering about your ship and space-stations, but for now you are a somewhat alarmingly headless body sat in a seat, and invisible to other players.
At the start of the game, You – The Plucky Player – are a spacefaring person, gifted with a basic starship of modest capabilities. By modest I mean that it has 4 tonnes cargo capacity, 2 gun mounts, and a couple of spare utility mounts. These are used for some purchasable (using earned in-game credits) additional upgrades. For example – a “Heat Sink” a deployable dump of your ship’s waste heat produce, used both as a decoy, and a way to vastly reduce your visible radar signature – which when used in conjunction with “silent running” mode, essentially making you temporarily invisible, complete with neat slow frosting of your canopy glass.
Later upgrades include missiles, beam weapons, and Battlestar Galactica-style projectile cannons, but also non-combat upgrades like a docking-computer.
Docking computer you say? Yes, one of Elite’s notorious legacies is the fact that when docking your ship with the giant space-stations which in order to generate gravity… rotate. You have to navigate your suddenly giant-feeling spacecraft through the most apparently narrowest of letterboxes to enter the safety of the station’s landing pads. It’s deceptive in that the entrances are actually pretty large, but you get the distinct feeling of little headroom until you get a feel for your ship’s physical dimensions – no exterior views yet.
We’re going to need a bigger door.
Back in the original 8 and 16-bit incarnations of the game this was especially difficult as there were few analogue control surfaces to use. For my part I used to point at the entrance, put the engines on minimum, and hope for the best – inevitably jumping in to my aforementioned escape pod (bed) when things went disastrously wrong. (You could actually buy an escape pod, but I never made that much money!) Today, things are different, we all have mice, gamepads, and even Flight-sticks that allow much more precise control of rotation and whatnot.
Crashin’ it. Old School.
Speaking of rotation – the flight model is a curious one, in that it’s a blend of super-fun-sci-fi Star Wars type jet-fighter style, with bonus Physics™ – but with the option to switch off (and on, at a whim) “Flight Assist” – which basically makes the control system entirely “Newtonian Physics” – requiring you to apply reverse thrust to bring your craft to a halt, and apply inverse directional thrusters to counteract the proportional amount of… look, just watch 2001: A space odyssey, or GRAVITY, then you’ll know what I’m talking about 😉 I find it horribly complicated to fly the ship with Flight-Assist off, others love it (mostly those who grew up with Elite’s 16-bit sequels: Frontier and First Encounters) – but it does have its uses. Fancy pulling off Babylon 5 and BSG style flip-around whilst still moving in the same direction, allowing you to fire at a chasing attacker whilst still moving away from them? Flight assist off… just remember to correct your spin with your thrusters!
I say! Did you just cut me up?
So, what’s the plot? There isn’t one, at least not yet anyway. You’re basically plonked into your ship with no direction. At the beginning, the point is pretty much to Make Money. Money = ship upgrades. More Money= better ships. That’s largely it for the moment, in the beta anyway. In the beta money is earned from various activities, more of which will be available as the game develops. For now, here’s a few examples:
Trading products between planetary systems – a full commerce system is in place in the game, fluid and dynamic. One system might have high demand for farming equipment, and pay a high price to buy from anyone able to transport them in. The player might find a system whereby Farming equipment is cheap-as-chips, buy as many as they can afford and their ship’s cargo-bay hold, travel to the high-demand system, and make considerable profit. Whilst there, they might find something sold there that is in low-demand, ergo cheap, which they can sell back at another system for a higher-price. Trading like this can be slow-work, but it’s a good safe way to make money. There’s also the possibility of buying something legal in one system, but illegal in another, sold to the black market at considerable profit. That runs the risk however of the Space-Cops scanning your ship for contraband, and a: fining you or b: not asking questions and just blowing you away.
Bounty Hunter is another money-making method, though is obviously quite a bit more dangerous than being a Space-Trucker. Check the local station bulletin boards for jobs, then head off to look for The Mark(s) – earning cash for their destruction. There’s also considerably less legal assassination jobs to be had, though these can render you a wanted renegade in certain regions of space. You can also fly out to some notable pilot hangouts – e.g. “Resource Gathering Sites” – where player’s go to mine for minerals etc – spot someone with a “Wanted” tag? Take them out, earn some bucks.
Mining – take an appropriately configured vessel to mine materials from asteroids in the aforementioned Resource areas. Watch out for thieves and bandits tho.
Courier missions – similar to trading, but often you’ll be given cargo directly to deliver to some other location. The fee paid will be affected by how far it has to go, and whether or not you might have to avoid any “Imperial entanglements” to deal with… or Federation, for that matter. The Imps and the Feds are the two primary factions in our Sci-Fi world here.
‘Sup guys? Whatchadooin?
So – already there’s a fair bit to do, much more is planned closer to and post-release, including World Events. There’s already been a couple of these with a civil war breaking out between two systems, precipitated by nefarious underhand guerilla warfare missions offered to the player, and pleas for certain items of produce to be smuggled in and out.
Now here’s the interesting bit with this new generation of Elite as a game. It’s multiplayer. Also, it’s optionally singleplayer… but with the repercussions of the events in the multiplayer. How so?
Well, you can choose to play the game in full multiplayer – Open Play – out there with all the other players. That means all the usual caveats.. Trolls, Griefers, heroic saviours, co-op wingpersons, trading buddies, Clumsy docking, rage-quits et all.
Or…. You can play solo in an NPC-AI populated universe, but with the same world-state (politically and economically) as the multiplayer, but without the human player element. This is actually a great idea, and especially useful at the start of play when you’re getting to grips with the game mechanics and trying to earn a bit of money to get going. Penalties are the same as multiplayer, however – you earn enough cash to buy that big new fancy Lakon-9 hauler freighter, but accidentally push the booster button and crash headlong in to the side of a station… you lose the ship, and any cargo aboard and have to restart over with any remaining cash with the default freebie ship… unless you had enough spare cash left over to cover the insurance cost of the replacement ship!
You can also currently bounce between solo and open-play multiplayer modes, which could be perceived to be a bit of a cheat. Build up to awesomeness in solo, pwn in multiplayer. Except you wouldn’t be alone in doing that. Stuff gets too heavy in multi? Back off in to solo.
For now, however, multiplayer in terms of co-operative player interaction is still very much in its infancy. The developers recently added inter-player text and voice comms, but it still needs a bit of work, as well as willing players. Getting together with one or more friends though seems like a really exciting way to plunder the depths and wealth of the game, especially as the content increases in the run-up to release with options like actual recognized deep-space exploration being a career! Of course there will be “EVE-online” faction wars and such like, which could have huge potential for multiplayer… but you might be an everyman/everywoman who just wants to get on and stay out of the war.
Planned DLC for the game post-release includes adding features like player avatar movement within your own ship and stations, planetary surfaces (including obviously landing on said surfaces with your ship), multiplayer crewing of your vessel, and more. That complete set of features would be beyond even the imagination of my 7 year old would-be astronaut self – and I used my imagination A LOT to greatly expand what was on screen with those black and white vectors, I really can’t wait.
Ultra-detailed interiors already.
However, it’s not all joy and happiness. You’ll either love or loathe the control systems. It will very much depend on what you decide to use. Elite is definitely targeted in the main towards using a flight stick/throttle controller. After that there’s options for gamepads, and good old mouse+keyboard. I’ve tried mouse control. It didn’t end well. Or start well, for that matter. Yet others thrive using it.
The Head-up-Display (HUD) in-game can cause consternation. Its meant to be a holographic display whereby you turn to look at the relevant area for it to appear, using your controller to select options therein. I found this quite cumbersome until you’ve customized your controller of choice to quick-switch between the three primary menus.
And….. multiplayer. Like anywhere else, players can and will piss you off. Not all the mechanics for literal policing of player behaviour is in place. E.g. you’ll enter a system with police patrols, but they won’t always help you in time if you’re attacked by another player or NPC. But hey, maybe that’s realistic!
Also… It’s a beta at the moment, so it *will* crash, sooner or later, and stuff will be buggy, or act strange. I’ve been in my ship, happily parked on a landing pad only to have the station literally disappear out from under me, like Babylon 4 😉 But there’s also stuff that happens where you think… hmmm.. that’s cool.. I might be able to use that… like bringing yourself out of “Supercruise” too close to your destination only to find yourself INSIDE the station.. with only a few seconds before the intruder alarm goes off, and the cops blast you into oblivion.
Wonder if that’s LV-426?
Speaking of “Supercruise” – some of the game mechanics might cause consternation too. Hyperspace is the method used to travel vast distances between systems, fuel allowing. Once arrived, you are stopped in the system by the largest planetary body, still very far away from your actual desired destination – usually a space station. So, to speed up the travel to your “Final Destination” your ship has a mode called “Supercruise” a sort of very high speed but not quite hyperspace mode, where you designate your target destination from your HUD, and engage the drive. What you then have is a manually controlled acceleration and steering to your target requiring you to slow down as you close distance, disengaging the drive at a point of your choosing. Where this can frustrate is that it’s very easy to get impatient and over accelerate, causing you to be unable to slow down in time, therefore overshooting the target, meaning you have to pull a big turn to bring you back around, hopefully slowing down this time. A lot people are NOT happy about supercruise, they want some form of autopilot. I think this comes from the pseudo-MMO nature of the game. In many other MMO’s there’s auto-run options that mean you can effectively distract yourself with something else whilst still keeping one eye on the game. Not so in Elite. Look away at your peril. I suspect, however, that the Devs may make a purchasable auto-cruise system, as it could actually add to the immersion. Think Star Wars and the Millennium Falcon crew dossing about in the lounge, but getting a warning to tell them that they’re approaching destination/under attack/out of hydrospanners.
So much is forgivable however, whilst the game is in Beta. It’s certainly nearly cooked, but it is most definitely still in the oven. Visually it’s a treat, and pretty scalable in terms of performance. Aurally it’s an absolute stunner. The sound design is utterly amazing, hugely putting you “in the picture” – the music is a bit generic Space-Opera at the moment, but hopefully will improve… or you can do what I do… put on an ambient/spacemusic radio stream!
You have to pay a bit of a premium to get on board this currently PC-only spaceparty at the moment. £50 at present, final release will be £35 for the game and then more for the proposed DLC. I hope that we can have a few more women to play the game, as Space feels very much a bro-verse so far, and I hope to have a full gender spectrum conglomerate to fly with post-release. As release gets nearer though, I can already feel The Shape of Things To Come in the imagined vibration of the ship’s hull, and my inner 10-year old astronaut self is getting very excited indeed about her childhood dreams becoming virtually realized! 🙂 Speaking of which…
Addendum: VR – THE GAME CHANGER
Space. It’s big.
Elite: Dangerous as it stands is a hugely promising sci-fi space game, built on a prominent legacy, and coming at a time where the combined genres of Spaceship and Flight-Sim games are enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Elite is certainly a hugely enjoyable game already, promising much more at release. However, everything changes when the game is experienced via a Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display. I’m lucky enough to have obtained an Oculus Rift Development Kit 2, and I knew that Elite had been given optional configuration for play on these devices. It’s a bit clunky, a bit buggy, and plays sheer hell with even high-spec gaming PCs…. But… never before have I *ever* experienced anything like it. It is a completely different experience playing the game in VR. Background starfields and planets are no longer just background. They are there. Right there, outside your suddenly very real feeling ship’s canopy. The canopy complete with the handles you feel you must be able to reach out and touch. The glass of the canopy feels like it’s mere inches away from your head, and whilst the planet beyond the canopy is probably millions of miles away.. it is most definitely OUTSIDE your canopy, millions of miles away and huge. Huge beyond your normal comprehension of the definition of the term.
“They should’ve sent a poet…”
This is because everything is rendered to scale in the VR incarnation of Elite. I look down and see arms, and hands gripping controls just like mine. I’m completely bamboozled when I raise a hand to scratch my nose… but my virtual hands remain in place. I’ve emerged from a space-station in my ship innumerable times playing on the monitor to the same scene.. only to come to a dead halt in the same location when playing in VR, agog at the awe-inspiring majesty of the apparent infinity of space, and the sight of a sun emerging behind a Saturn-like planetary body surrounded by a ring of debris. In combat, rather than wrestling with mouselook controls to try and get a bead on a ship I’m pursuing, I merely follow its progress with my head and eyes, craning over my shoulder as I bring the ship into a steep turn to follow it, my head turning as I bring the enemy back towards the front of my ship as I open fire to finish it, then ducking instinctively as a piece of the ship debris bounces off the top of my canopy.
And those HUD nuisances I mentioned earlier? Rendered moot when you simply look to your left or right to activate them!
This time around, I think VR is going to be huge, and I think it will be accessible, especially if Sony can bring their “Project Morpheus” VR headset to fruition for PS4 players, where hopefully players will be able to join in the Elite: Dangerous world (as project leader David Braben has hinted as an option) –but also most especially as the Oculus Rift matures for PC owners. Like Morpheus said about “The Matrix”… “no one can be told what (VR) is, you have to see it.”
Where’s my coffee mug?
Fuck Yes More Borderlands!!! (Pre-Sequel)
I was watching the Borderlands Pre-Sequel E3 trailer again for like the millionth time and I realised I had said absolutely nothing about it here. So, new Borderlands coming in October. If you think I don’t have it pre-ordered then clearly you don’t know me. Not even caring that it’s on the PS3, it was ordered the second I found out about it. At first I kind of wondered why they had released it on previous gen, but then I got to thinking about it and figured it made sense. Your games linked together so it makes sense that the third likely would as well. I’m not sure it matters really where they release it, but just that they do. I lost count of the number of times I played through Borderlands 2 with the hubby. I know that game inside out.
So being a highly anticipated game, I’m practically counting the days until it’s released. For Borderlands I would return to my PS1 if it meant I could play it some more.
Watch the videos; the first one has a Moon Dance!
~Donna
Kill All The Nazis – Wolfenstein : The New Order
My first exposure to Wolfenstein was in the early 90s when Wolfenstein 3D came out. I was just beginning to get interested seriously in computer hardware and building PCs. Of course the best reason to build your own computer was to play all the best games. I’m sure you can see where this is going. These first entries into what would become the FPS genre of gaming were where I spent so many hours. There was no way I could pass this up even though I didn’t pre-order it.
Ya know it may be 2014, but taking a guy out while he’s taking a piss. Yes, I am a grown adult, but this still made me laugh. It’s just so over the top that it seems right in Wolfenstein. Besides, these have got to be the laziest guards ever.
Now I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I suck at being sneaky. Still though, this time I have managed to be as sneaky as a super sneaky thing. Only a little alarm but generally got through without having the whole of the camp coming after me. I tried to not move around real fast in this one and I did a bit of panning to show off how it looks on the PS4.
There is an easter egg in Wolfenstein that I’m eagerly looking forward to. I know where to go to get to it, but I’m not quite far enough in yet. Soon though I will be able to play the first level of Wolfenstein 3D. This one little easter egg alone makes buying the game worthwhile. I’ll make sure to get a video when I get in there though.
More soon, I promise.
~Donna
I Might Have A Kickstarter Habit – Backing Sunset
Anyone who listened to my interview yesterday will now know that I adore story. A game with a good story will make me squee with utter delight. I’m sure no one will be surprised by this news or any news related to me being a book addict. I love me a good story, a fun story, an interesting story. When it came across one of my games news feed that there was a Kickstarter for a game that has neither puzzles or combat and is nothing but pure story; you know I nearly made an audible squeek of joy.
The Kickstarter is for an Indie game called Sunset and is made by the Tale of Tales studio. I’ve never played any of their other games, but after watching their kickstarter vid I knew I had to back this. I’d embed their video here, but Kickstarter demands iframes, but iframes are shite.
I can’t do justice to this wonderful idea, so I’ll just paste a little synopsis from their Kickstarter page.
Sunset is a narrative-driven first-person videogame that takes place in a single apartment in a fictional South American city in the early 1970s. You play a housekeeper called Angela Burnes. Every week, an hour before sunset, you visit the swanky bachelor pad of Gabriel Ortega. You are given a number of tasks to do, but the temptation to go through his stuff is irresistible. As you get to know your mysterious employer better, you are sucked into a rebellious plot against a notorious dictator Generalísimo Ricardo Miraflores.
If that doesn’t sound intriguing to you, well fine. I am very stoked for this idea. They have reached their goal, but there is still 27 days remaining and they said they’d do stretch goals. Also, more money means more awesome.
I think I have a Kickstarter indie game backing habit. This isn’t the first one.
~Donna
Listen To Me Talk Games
Okay so a couple of weeks ago I got asked by DJ Jess at Break Thru Radio to do an interview about Femme Gamer. Besides talking about games I may have rambled a bit.
So, go have a listen and tell me I’m not crazy.
CLICK ME!
~Donna
Microsoft and Sony Conferences – E3 2014
In case you haven’t seen the Microsoft and Sony conferences at E3 for this year, below are video links for both.
My E3 Picks
So a few of my own highlight from yesterday’s announcements and I’m going to start with my top of the heap favourite. When I heard this news today I actually whooped a little. They’re remastering Grim Fandango.
Of course we have the beauty of the next Assassin’s Creed game. I’m really excited for this. It looks like the free running and combat has been changed and it looks good. I’m also happy to see more building interiors and a floating waypoint.
Then we have the wonderful news of another Uncharted and another Far Cry on the way for our loving joy.
And lastly we have a little puzzle game with some lovely art and should be with us soon; Valiant Hearts. Visually very stunning and just my sort of game.
Peeking In On Watch Dogs
I may or may not give up a full review of Watch Dogs, but I can assure you that I’ll be posting more videos to add to these ones. Last week I took Thursday and Friday off of work so that I could have a 4 day weekend of playing nothing but Watch Dogs. I have been waiting for a very long time for this game and I may be a little more than a little obsessed with it. This is of course more than my normal gaming obsession. I am pretty sure that someone has been peaking inside of my brain when they were coming up with ideas.
There’s something i need to say though before I go any further. Fucking stop comparing Watch Dogs to GTA!! I swear, if one more reviewer compares it to GTA I may kill someone. Yes Watch Dogs is a sandbox game. Yes it has main and side missions. Those are all traits of sandbox games, not just GTA. I love GTA, but it isn’t the be all end all of sandbox games. So stop fucking calling it a wanna-be GTA game. It’s not.
Okay, I suck at driving in any game. I rarely get to where I want to be in a very good condition. I will run into other cars and mow down pedestrians hopefully without blowing up my car. Now, driving in Watch Dogs isn’t the best. Some of the cars can be a little like driving bricks with wheels, but it is possible to get from point A to point B in one piece. Mostly this is aided by their nearly indestructible vehicles. I almost never get anywhere without side swiping a dozen cars and running head long into at least one car as I attempt to turn a corner.
I always try out the motorcycles in any game that has them cause I’m less likely to end up hurtling down the road as a fireball if the controls for it are any good. Usually they aren’t very good. This time though the motorcycles are my preferred mode of transport. Between the robustness of their structure I don’t blow up as often and I can actually go pretty fast.
Of course if I happen to misjudge an intersection I might get an impromptu flying lesson.
That second video is a little bit of showing off of the PS4 as well. Riding a motorcycle at night in the rain with a thunderstorm and it looks awesome. How could I not share that.
It’s not all about the cars though, you can steal the boats too. I have found this especially useful when I’ve managed to trigger the cops and they want my head on a platter. Solution; find a boat. I am generally very impressed by the NPC AI, but the cops are kinda stupid in this respect. Somehow they just become blind when you reach the water even if there are helicopters.
I’ll be back with more I’m sure, but for now here’s some proof that it’s not all about the videos. A lovely moody shot of our hero against the Chicago skyline.
Please Forgive Me, I Have Some PS4 Impressions for You
Yes, I know, I’ve been so majorly slack and crap that I have no excuse at all. I’m here now though and I have a shiny new PS4 to share with you all. Now, since I live in the UK I’ve only had this little beauty for just short of a month. Before you ask, no I did not go to a midnight launch. I pre-ordered it back in June when they announced it at E3. There was never any question about which console I was going to get this time around. I don’t normally buy at launch with consoles, but I’ve made a couple exceptions for Sony in the last year. I got a Vita at launch and now the PS4. It is not a decision that I regret at all.
In the couple of months that I’ve now had the machine there is one clear winner in all of the new innovations and changes that Sony has made; the controller. When Sony was releasing pictures of the PS3, the controller was redesigned and had a boomerang like shape and the arms were round and tapered. There was huge outrage at the change from the original style of the DualShock controller so they stuck with the staid design and we didn’t get the new one and I was unhappy. See, I used to have one of the old Sidewinder gamepad controllers and they had this boomerang shape with the tapered round arms. This controller was very comfortable to use. So with the PS4 controllers we got a melding of the two. The DualShock shape is there, but the arms are round and tapered giving them this wonderful shape to hold in the hands. I have managed to play 4-5 hours at a time without getting that hook-hand effect that happens with the old DualShock controller shape. This is a change that was a long time coming and I’m so happy that they finally had the guts to make this change.
On to the interface I think, which is very different. The most obvious change is that we no longer just have the single horizontal bar with all of our function icons.Instead we have two parallel horizontal bars. The top bar of icon are the functional icons like previously; so trophies, PSN Store, trophies, etc. Thee icons are all self explanatory so I won’t really go into them. what I will mention is the improvements in the Trophy section. Unlike on the PS3, the sync and display here is much faster and won’t lock up the whole damned machine as it slowly contacts tot Sony servers to update. I was very happy to see this had been improved as it always drove me up a wall. Also, if a game has trophies for DLC, these are separated too, which is kinda nice too. The bottom row are your installed games like the old game icon on the PS3. The big change here is that by pressing down on the D-pad you can go into the detail for the game that includes current DLC, fried events and your current trophies and news for the game. I find this info very useful as I’ve missed DLC before and I like knowing what my friends have been getting up to in the games I’ve been playing. This is a good social addition I think.
Speaking of social additions, we now have the Share button on the controller. This button will let you share video and screenshots to Twitter and Facebook. Now I’ve done a bit of sharing of screenshots and 1 video, neither are the full resolution of what you’re seeing on your screen. For the screenshots you can share them to Facebook or Twitter and the size is actually pretty good even if it has been shrunk, Videos can unfortunately only be uploaded to Facebook. Now the really big problem with this is that Facebook hides the HD better quality video though. Have a look at it here on the femme gamer FB page.
I ripped the HD video out of Facebook though and you can see it below. Still not as good as what I’m seeing on my TV, but it’s much better than the crap quality Facebook presents as default. I really would like to have more control over the quality and file size of what I share. Also, the ability to upload videos to YouTube or another such site would be most appreciated so e aren’t all hobbled with the crapness of Facebook.
Now that I’ve had the console for a couple months, I’m more than happy with my choice. It’s a great machine that has me moved flawlessly from my PS3 to the PS4. It was easy to get to grips with the interface, the game loads while installing is perfect. Sony has listened to all the gripes we had about the PS3 and they addressed them in the PS4. A couple of the most painful things on the PS3 was the syncing of trophies and exiting a game; they fixed it in the PS4. It is the small things with the new generation of the Playstation that has made me the happiest.
Oh, and it’s all very beautiful to look at.
E3 Sony and Microsoft Conferences
So the 2 big bad boys have gotten their conferences out of the way yesterday. Microsoft and Sony both made their announcements about the next gen consoles that we’re all waiting for.
I’ve pre-ordered a PS4 and that’s all I’m saying on the console wars. Here are both conferences in full.
Microsoft conference
Sony conference
And something to make you giggle.
Coming Back to Raid Tombs and Kick Ass (Tomb Raider)
Like so many franchises, Tomb Raider has gotten a reboot. I went into this high hopes for the story since it was written by Rhianna Pratchett. While I will never forgive her for Mirror’s Edge, she did write the Overlord games which were wonderful fun.
I was not disappointed.
Rhianna gave us a believable beginning to an iconic gaming woman. A story that builds on the genius that is a young Lara that isn’t so self assured. From the beginning we are presented with someone who is not only smart but also insecure. She knows she’s right, but she doesn’t have the years of experience behind her to be the confident Lara we’re all used to seeing. I like this a lot. It shows a humble, if smart, beginnings of the confident woman. As we travel through to very well crafted story, she becomes more sure of herself. By the half-way point we’re seeing that familiar Lara and by the end you know she’s gotten a taste for something that she’ll never turn away from again.
I will say one thing about the whole “threat of rape” thing that was spinning a few months back. Yes she is threatened in this way, but she’s threatened with horrible-ness through the whole game, including murder. So yea, she is threatened, but it’s nothing to write home about.
Gameplay is what you would expect. Plenty of running and shooting and climbing ever surface in sight. The controls are all very easy to use straight out of the box. There are some quicktime events, but they’re unobtrusive and not a pain in the ass to do. I’m notoriously terrible at aiming shots in games like this but he aim assist saved me. So even if you’re rubbish at aiming, like me, don’t worry. I used the fucking hell out of the bow & arrow too. That thing was so awesome to use as an alternative to guns. One of my only complaints is that here really just wasn’t the amount of puzzles that I’ve come to expect from a Tomb Raider game. There are puzzles that are integral to the game, but it just felt a little lacking for me. You could tell what your upcoming tools would be simply by having a look around at what you couldn’t climb. Sure it was a little predictable, but I can forgive it this one thing.
I really liked the music and sounds of the game. They conveyed mood and drama very well. I didn’t find annoying, repetitive or boring. There’s not a lot I can say about the music than that.
Visually the game is stunning. You have this deserted island full of mystery and wonder surrounded by this impossible storm. The world around you is rendered in a very believable way and really has been thought out and deigned nicely. It felt like a lost island filled with a mythical ancient story just waiting to be discovered. Also, video games have had hair issues for a long long time, but this has made some great improvements. On the PC version you get to use the TressFX engine which is a special engine for just rendering the hair. Just wish it had been in the console versions too.
Ya know really did like he prequel a lot. My only gripes are the lack of more complex puzzles and it really felt kinda short. Even with doing a lot of exploring and completing about 90% of the game extras outside the main storyline; I only got about 16 hour of play from it. I know that’s pretty much normal these days, it still feels like it’s too short. This isn’t uncommon for me though, I don’t want the goodness to end.
Go get the game. It’s definitely worth it
On The Border of Borderlands 2
I originally bought Borderlands 2 for The Hubby as he was a great fan of the first game. This time though he managed to rope me into playing it through with him using the co-op. So we played through it together even though he’d already finished it and maxed his character and all that jazz. I very fast found myself becoming addicted to this game. We easily clocked up a good 20 hours of play that first weekend.
Many games have multiplayer, but usually it’s over the internet only. Not a lot of games have same machine on screen co-op and I’m always so happy to find ones that do so that me and The Hubby can play together. Although I have no idea how people with normal sized TVs do this. Ours is 50 inch and it’s barely big enough. TV size may be a post for another time. So, the fact that there was a co-op on same screen/system in the game made me happy. It was there in the first game too, but for some reason the first game just didn’t grab me like this one did.
So we’ve finished it now and we’re currently on our second run through on the harder setting and it’s proving to be quite the challenge. On normal mode with 2 players, the game already scales things to be harder since there is more than one player. This is actually rather impressive. I watched The Hubby play it on solo and compared it with what we’d seen in normal and harder modes; there’s definitely a difference. The first thing is the amount of bad guys for you to kill, but also their toughness is subtly more hard to kill if you’ve got 2 players compared to one. In the Vault Hunter hard mode there are very obvious differences. The Badasses really are badasses and make you earn the XP you’re getting from them. The un-armoured Maniacs who run at you are suddenly Armoured Maniacs and a bit more of a challenge.
It’s brilliant. Seriously, Gearbox are fucking brilliant. The co-op is absolutely masterful.
I don’t know if I can explain the intelligence that the developers have coded into the co-op and the difficulty differences. They didn’t just decide to throw more bad guys at you just because there is 2+ people playing or to just crank up the hardness of those you gotta kill. No, they gave it some thought and it really makes the game that much more fun to play.
Intelligent difficulty instead of fucking hard for the sake of being fucking hard.
This intelligent design carries through all that they’ve done with the game. The button mapping (at least on the PS3) is smart and easy to use and remember. The inventory/mission/maps/etc screens are simple and easy to use. Something that made me extra happy is that they made it easy to compare weapons. Nothing annoys me more than not being able to easily see if the big gun I jsut picked up is better than what I’m using. With an easy interface, everything falls into place wonderfully for Borderlands 2.
The above would be nothing though without all the other bits and bobs that make a game great, like the sound and video.
Gearbox have taken that extra step with the graphics that leads you so much further from the photo realistic-ness of so many games out there. Yes it’s cell shaded and beautiful, but it’s also very stylised. This stylised approach really helps with world immersion and looks rather fabulous to boot. I really cannot fault the visual style and approach.
Now I really can’t say how much I like the music choice for the game. The title song is by The Heavy and is a song titled Short Change Hero. This song sets the scene well as the unlikely hero for the game and has this funk blues thing going on. The composers did a good job of integrating little riffs from the title song throughout the gameplay. You’ll end up humming this song hours after you’ve stopped playing. Of course the downside of this is that while you’re in the middle of your work day humming the song, you’ll end up really craving the game. I speak of this from experience as I’ve bought the album with the title song on it and now it keeps getting stuck in my brain.
So for the story we’re looking at the repercussions of the vault being opened in the first game. Your primary nemesis is Handsome Jack, but like any bad guy he’s a bit of a nasty character. Generally I’d say the story is a “World Domination” scheme, but getting there is so much fun and very not run of the mill. You can expect Killing, great characters and plenty of car driving action. I don’t want to give any of the story away. Even though I didn’t play the first Borderlands game I had no problem getting stuck into the story of this instalment.
Seriously, if at this point you think I have anything but a massive addiction and obsession with Borderlands 2, then you’ve not been paying attention. The game is fun, has a great sense of humour. It looks fabulous with a very well done cell-shaded art style. The gameplay is easy even if, like me, you’re a bit shit at FPS games on consoles. The game is very well put together and Gearbox should be very proud of what they’ve done here.
What fools these mortals be (Loc – PC/Mac)
Loc is a 3d puzzle game from Birnam wood games released earlier this month, this is the studios first game.
The games plot is really simple to understand; Humanity has caused so much damage to the earth that the last queen of the faeries has taken you prisoner and plans to keep you trapped in her realm as punishment for man kinds crime (Lucky you) ; In order to escape you must solve ‘Loc’ puzzles in order to make your way through the queens desolate realm and find your way out.
The game play is a bit more complex; using your mouse you need to drag a series of tiles across a face of a cube to create a path between the start and end tiles. As you progress the game’s difficulty will increase, adding tiles that you must use in order to continue; it gets even harder when you have to start building the path across more than one of the cubes faces, whilst making sure that your using the right tiles to create a working path. There is also a list of achievements that you can earn if you complete the level under certain conditions which is a nice little addition.
Overall Loc is a wonderful game,The art style is beautiful , the atmospheric music helps the player become more immersed in this intriguing setting that birnam wood games created. But why not try it out yourself, the game is available from their studios website Here for just over £3 ($5) and if your completely broke they even have a free demo.
~HeadphoneGirlZ
femme gamer 