When the quests in Secret World are hard, sometimes it’s because the game is broken. Other times, it’s because I’m an idiot. For an example of the latter, I submit to you a really cool quest early in the game that you have to solve by exploring the world as a ghost. In your ghost state, you have to find white ravens that will fly away when you approach, leading you to the next waypoint. I spent longer than I care to admit trying to get the raven in the above screenshot to fly away.
Up next: good-bye, cruel World
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Tom Chick discovers there’s no better way to be flu stricken than with a brand new iPad. And Jason McMaster discovers a game on the Steam sale that he should have played when it came out. Plus, bad news for Bioware, the Torchlight developer’s triumphant smackdown, a minor smorgasbord of boardgames, and what happens in Secret World when you party with McMaster (hint: it involves watching him die a lot).
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Zombie IAP — oops, I mean Zombie HQ — is supposedly a twin-stick shooter/RPG that intends to cash in — quite literally — on the zombie apocalypse craze. But, you know, zombies. What am I doing to do, not try it?
After the jump, shambling stinking inevitability Continue reading →
The new update for Tiny Wings, perhaps the most ingenuous combination of simplicity and charm ever to grace the iOS, adds a new mode in which you race three brother birds to the finish line. The brother birds are like ghost cars in a racing game, taking the same route each time you play. Any other game would simply dole out first, second, third, and last place at the end of the race. In Tiny Wings, a mama bird waits at the finish line and tosses fish to the baby birds as they arrive, from largest to smallest. Like I said, perhaps the most ingenuous combination of simplicity and charm ever to grace the iOS.
The Tiny Wings update is free because creator Andreas Illiger “[doesn’t] particulary like in-app purchases”. You and me both, brother!
To play Secret World, you have to buy the retail product, sign up for a recurring subscription fee, and subject yourself to the temptation of micropaying real world money for cool outfits. Fortunately, the last bit gets easier as you play.
After the jump, is it wise to wield a sharp weapon while wearing a hazmat suit? Continue reading →
The latest update to DC Universe Online, the MMO I’d probably be playing if it weren’t for Secret World, arrives today. It features a much maligned superhero.
The impending Atlantean civil war between Aquaman and his brother, Ocean Master, has come crashing into DC Universe Online. Today, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) unleashes the Tides of War Summer Seasonal Event, where the fight for the Atlantis crown has come to the surface in a fierce battle for all to witness. Players must choose a side and assist either Aquaman and his loyal Atlanteans or Ocean Master and Mutineers to victory.
Aquaman’s brother’s name is Ocean Master? That can’t be his actual name. I assume it’s just a title that he’s let go to his head.
Tides of War offers players an all-new boss battle with up to four players, open world missions on the waters between Metropolis and Little Bohemia, Atlantean turrets throughout the map, and a slew of new rewards and item drops including Atlantean Suit appearance, Fisherman appearance and new pets!
I’m glad to see an update that doesn’t shove everything into instances. DC Universe Online offered players a wonderful Gotham and Metropolis to explore, and I hope the latest updates have taken better advantage of that. I’m also glad to see Aquaman given his due. Can an Aquaman movie be far behind?
One of the obstacles for jumping into a real time strategy game like League of Legends or DOTA2 is the sheer variety. League of Legends has over one hundred characters. Picking one of them is literally just the beginning. Then you have to figure out the other nine in your current game.
One way around this is a license. Monolith, a once great developer who’s been on the rocks for a while, is bringing to bear the Lord of the Rings license to make a League of Legends style game (I just can’t bring myself to use “MOBA”, or multiplayer online battle arena, which does nothing to distinguish the genre from your average multiplayer shooter). Although League of Legends has developed a rich set of lore around its characters, I don’t know the first thing about it. But I do know my Lord of the Rings. Legolas is a ranged damage character, Gandalf is a support tank, Gollum is a sneaky assassin type, and Boromir will have some sort of self-sacrifice damaging power. There. I’ve never even played the game and I already know how some of the characters work. I didn’t even need to watch this video about the unique powers for Gandalf and Gollum.
Also, since Guardians of Middle Earth will be a console-only game, how hard can it be? We’ll find out this fall.
Margaret, the movie Fox forgot, is finally out on DVD. We all think you should see it. We also want to warn you that more podcasters than usual are drug addled this week, which might explain why Sony is berated for things that Fox did and why certain things said is the 3×3 about what would happen if Michael Bay directed scenes in other movies. The 3×3 starts at the 1:04 mark.
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Sure enough, there’s a theme park in Secret World. Haunted, natch. But otherworlded or otherwise, I love a theme park in a videogame. One of my favorite theme parks was a whole level in the Battle Out of Hell add-on for Painkiller which included a working roller coaster. Theme parks — I’m going to lump circuses into this category — aren’t as novel as they were back in the day of the original Blood or Bad Day on the Midway. But they’re still just as welcome a sight.
The recent corridor shooter Darkness II had a disappointing theme park level, which makes me wonder if theme parks aren’t better suited to open-world games. Part of the appeal of a theme park when you’re a kid is being set loose to do whatever activity you want: ride the rides, get some junk food, play some of those games to win prizes, go through the fun house, whatever you want. Bully really got this with its theme park, which was like an open-world game inside an open-world game. Grand Theft Auto IV and Crackdown both had abandoned theme parks. Were abandoned theme parks always this forlorn, or does that partly come from seeing those famous pictures of the ferris wheel at Pripyat after the Chernobyl disaster?
After the jump, how does Secret World’s theme park measure up? Continue reading →
Being a horror themed game, Secret World has its share of haunted houses. Two of them are among my favorite quests in any MMO. This isn’t necessarily saying much, given that the bar for making a good MMO quest is notoriously low. But these two haunted houses are examples of everything right and everything wrong with Secret World. For better and worse, this is what happens when you play an MMO partly designed by Ragnar Tornquist, the creator of the Longest Journey single-player adventure games.
After the jump, I won’t spoil anything Continue reading →
This isn’t a post complaining about the Red Ring of Death or Yellow Lights. It’s a far more serious problem than that. I have had a recurring console tech problem far more severe than those minor issues for the past four or five years. You see, I have two sons, ages thirteen and seven. That’s a terminal problem when it comes to televisions and console gaming.
I expect gamers in a similar situation understand where I’m coming from. For those who don’t immediately grasp the subtleties of the situation, let me explain.
After the jump, I go to gain a little patch of ground Continue reading →
Developer Ronimo announces that the first new characters for their side-scrolling console-based League of Legends-a-like, Awesomenauts, will be free. A patch scheduled to go live on July 23rd will include two new characters: Coco, a melee fighter who rides a hoverboard, will be Awesomenauts’ only chick, and Zork — hey, isn’t that trademarked? — is some mech dude who shoots cats out of a gun. Did you get that? He shoots cats out of a gun. Don’t believe me? Check it out:
The patch will also include a mess of the balance changes you see in any real time strategy game after its first round of contact with the player base. Read more specifics here.
Valve’s Steam sale has begun. Read it and weep, then duck and cover, because all those games you didn’t get when they came out are laying siege to your wallet.
This is just the opening salvo in what will be a sustained assault. Looking at today’s deals, I can understand Modern Warfare 3 for thirty bucks. A reasonable deal. But it’s very nearly a crime against humanity to get Shogun 2 and Crusader Kings II for less than $10. The one that confuses me is Ridge Racer Unbounded for $25, situated in the middle of the grid as if to give it credibility by proxy to so many other good deals.
Secret World has three starting cities, one for each faction. The Dragons start in Seoul, the Illuminati start in New York, and the Templars start in London. That guy up there is in London’s Haitian market.
After the jump, guess what he’s selling Continue reading →
Eric Flannum joins us to talk about the upcoming Guild Wars 2 and the classic RTS Sacrifice, each of which he designed. We also talk about Rocksteady’s inadvertently announced Silver Age comics game, the new Ouya console, Le Havre on the iPhone, Magic: the Gathering 2013 on the iPad, and the horrors of Spec Ops: The Line. Plus an update on Secret World and a vote on whether or not Aquaman is lame.
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