Diretide, last year’s Halloween event for Dota 2, begins today. It’s coming as part of the Three Spirits update. The patch adds new heroes to the game’s roster, new items in the shop, and coaching options for vets that want to spend time teaching new players how to make the most of their Dota 2 experience. Halloween comes to Dota 2 with festive pumpkin theming and spooky – wait a minute. Why is the Halloween event happening in November? Valve says it’s because they didn’t realize the fans wanted it, then they didn’t react fast enough to the protest.
Due to our poor prediction of your reaction, and the team being focused on the next update, we didn’t spend enough time thinking about talking to you about our decision. As a result, by the time we’d realized we’d made a bad decision, the pitchforks were out.
There’s a point at the end of Batman: Arkham Origins where I thought the game was trying to tell me not to give The Joker what he wanted. He wanted a beating, that much was obvious, and as Batman stood at the ready and Joker pranced around, I was reminded of the boss battle at the end of the Mysteries of the Sith expansion for Star Wars Jedi Knight. In it, Mara Jade sets off to find Kyle Katarn who had become corrupted by the Dark Side of the Force. I tried like hell to beat Katarn but no matter what I did, he was too good. Looking at the stone panels in the hall we were in, panels that depicted one Jedi kneeling in front of another, I realized what I had to do. The point was to not fight, to not submit to the violence of the Dark Side. I switched off my lightsaber and the fight was over.
I hoped that Arkham Origins, a game that had been relentlessly raising the stakes on stupid up until this point, was making that kind of move, making the player deny what The Joker wanted, letting Batman realize that the only way to beat this madman was to not beat him.
Tom: While Secret World is uniquely suited to solitaire play — at least at a thematic level — it doesn’t always work out that way in terms of gameplay. The scenarios, for instance. But even in the wider world, it’s nice to have a sidekick. Or be a sidekick. It depends on which one of us you ask. Personally, I think Hornbostel (pictured, left) is trying a little too hard with the eye patch. That’s like something a sidekick would do.
Chris: The eyepatch makes me look tougher! Plus I’d just gotten it as a drop and it matches my outfit. The hell is that burqa ninja getup you’re wearing, anyway?
Tom: I’m a nun. A bad-ass nun. Or maybe a chick jedi. I haven’t quite decided, but either one of those is better than a transgender Snake Plissken.
Hobos riding the rails and back alley thugs know that the broken bottle is the deadliest weapon ever made. Rockstar knows this too, because they’re adding one to Grand Theft Auto V in the Beach Bum update. The free DLC will add new weapons, including the thifty broken bottle, and new beach-themed vehicles to both the single player and online modes. The update will expand the GTA Online offerings with new jobs, races, and customization options.
Days of Wonder is selling sculpted figures of four of the races from the Small World games. I can’t imagine who would ever buy them, considering they’re $100 each. There’s no telling what they’re made of. They’re each a bit over 20cm tall. I have no idea how tall that is in American. But they sure do look nice. Get a closer look here. But Days of Wonder cautions:
Note that the Amazon figure is mildly NSFW. If you, or your family, are offended by partial nudity, you should not view or purchase the Amazon.
It’s an odd choice of races. Isn’t the halfling the signature Small World race? The spiderine is from Underworld, so you won’t recognize her if you only know Small World from the excellent iPad version. But the wizard instead of the sorcerer? And what is the wizard doing to that sheep? No kobolds? And more to the point, what kind of skeleton, spiderine, wizard, and amazon are these? Flying? Heroic? Swamp? Dragon master? Flocking?
The premise of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is that you’re a pirate who gets pulled into a secret war between the Templars and Assassins. You’re shipwrecked with a crazy man who tries to strike a deal with you and who then tries to kill you. When his plan doesn’t work — you kill him instead — you take a rare item he needed to deliver to collect a reward yourself. You assume his identity and head towards the meeting spot for a drop off. From there, it quickly turns into a struggle for the fate of humanity. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
The upcoming free-to-play game previously known as Blizzard All-Stars, and Blizzard DOTA before that, up-ends a few conventions of the genre. Eurogamer reports that Heroes of the Storm eschews longstanding MOBA mechanics in favor of more casual gameplay that should appeal to a wider audience. Last-hitting is gone and teams level up as a group so new players aren’t as much of a handicap as in other games. Shops and items are also out, in favor of a regular Blizzard skill tree that World of Warcraft players will be at home using. Chris Sigaty, Production Director on Heroes, explained the thinking behind the changes to the game.
“First of all, the core game de-emphasises a lot of the things that create rockstars, that we think leads to people getting into that toxic space, and reasons to be angry at people who simply don’t know things yet. We want to emphasise the team side of it – the feel that we’re all in it together. The other side that we think is going to have a big impact is game time – we’re trying to keep it around that magic 25 minutes. In a 45 minute or longer game, the frustration just builds and builds and builds.”
Heroes of the Storm is open for beta registration now.
This is a sad tale of both how great and how awful The Secret World can be. It is a tale of the investigation missions, which are unique in a genre when so many missions involve collecting ten boar hides or delivering a doo-dad to the next quest hub. It is a tale of backstory and clues and demonic rune alphabets and world building and characters. It is a tale that spans the globe. It contains spoilers. And I should warn you that it does not have a happy ending.
After the jump, meet Daniel Bach, who’s covered hell, you know.Continue reading →
I’m in bed sweating through my long johns. I feel so hot I’m on top of the covers. I have strep throat for what seems like the fourth time this year. It hurts to swallow and I’ve been having weird dreams. Two nights ago my folks told me I was walking around the house with my finger pointed like a gun, hallucinating due to a high fever. Last night I thought I heard my grandfather in the house. I look out the window and I see his car in the driveway, a big electric blue Thunderbird. I smell bacon cooking.
After the jump it’s Christmas morning and I’m 10 years old.Continue reading →
It was not easy for me. I hovered over the Amazon “cancel order” button for quite some time before forcing my finger down upon the left mouse button. I love gadgets and I love technology, but I couldn’t make myself buy a PS4.
GameInformer has announced their next cover story and chock full of Tolkien. Monolith Productions and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is bringing us Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor for current and next-gen platforms. You’ll play a ranger – no, not Aragorn – this is a prequel! You get some guy named Talion as he treks across Mordor, presumably fighting orcs and questing for some hard-to-pronounce thingamabob.
The Nemesis System assures that every enemy you fight is a named foe, and if they survive their battle with you, they continue to grow, improve, and act in the world, even as you attempt to do the same with Talion.
Sounds promising! I can’t wait to fight some orc with a lot of consonants in his name again and again.
Based on spending a little time with Enemy Within, the new add-on to XCOM, I can totally see through 2K’s evil scheme. They must think they’re pretty clever. By adding mech suits, cybernetic implants, new upgrades, medals with selectable perks, and scads more options for customization, the goal here seems to be giving you more ways to upgrade and therefore care about your soldiers. But by tying a lot of this stuff to a new resource that expires if you don’t rush headlong into battle to claim it, the other goal here seems to be giving you more opportunities to get your soldiers killed. In other words, more risk for more rewards. Pretty sneaky, 2K. Pretty sneaky.
Enemy Within is available today either as a full-priced standalone release for console systems or a relatively pricey add-on for the PC version.
Capcom’s Xbox One exclusive Dead Rising 3 looks like it covers all of the franchise’s tropes. Improvised weapons, insane human enemies, barricaded survivors, loads of zombies to kill in satisfying ways, and a time-limit imposed by the apocalypse. Protagonist Nick Ramos seems to have a pretty good reason to rush. It’s not as sappy as rescuing a helpless waif in Dead Rising 2, but it’s also a lot better than needing to make a news deadline in the original game.
“Kemet” is the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for ancient Egypt. At least that’s what Wikipedia claims. After several sessions with the boardgame of the same name, I’m not convinced. Granted, Kemet does have a very very ancient Egyptian theme. But I figure “kemet” means “get out there and attack someone already, because you’re not going to accomplish anything by hanging back”. The boardgame Kemet is carefully designed to encourage players to bang into each other early, often, and decisively, at which point they readily come back for more. It is one of the most elbow throwing boardgames I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. You’d think ancient Egypt was like the NFL what with all the frequent banging into each other.
Now that the scenarios are live in The Secret World, I realize I’m not ready for them unless I have help. I was hoping they would be accessible enough to my character, since I’m definitely at the level where I want to start using augments, which you can only find in scenarios. But I can’t get through a single wave of enemies on normal difficulty in a solo scenario. There’s no way I’m going to survive the later waves, much less the bosses.
Fortunately, I can easily handle the scenarios with a group. But then I’m competing with up to four other players for the dropped augments. In my last group scenario, eight augments dropped. Since Secret World is still one of those MMOs where you have to choose need, greed, or pass every time a trinket drops, I rolled “need” on all of them. As did everyone else, naturally. I got zero of them. I’m willing to keep trying, but because I’ve spent almost all my time in The Secret World playing solo or with real-world friends, I have no idea how to go around finding a group. The protocol is different in every game. The lobby for the scenarios, the Sunken Library in Venice, makes me think I should have no problem finding a group. Look at all those people (pictured)! They obviously want to play scenarios, too. But why is no one LFGing in the general chat? Am I supposed to LFG? Is there an LFG channel? Should I be using the built-in LFG tool that no one else seems to be using? Is there a separate website somewhere? I type secretworldscenarioslfg.com and get nowhere. Maybe it’s a .net address.
It’s like walking into a crowded restaurant and not being sure if you’re supposed to seat yourself. This sort of content, which is a great addition to The Secret World and a fantastic exercise in group combat, needs a better infrastructure for those of us used to playing this as a solo game.
