If there’s one thing playing CCGs will teach you, it’s that Magic is a relic. Today there are so many better ways to collect, arrange, and play with cards. But getting there first counts for a lot. Magic’s gameplay comes from the genre’s earliest days. It’s not popular because it’s good. It’s popular because it has the weight of success behind it, like Monopoly, Risk, and the Grown Ups movies. That much momentum isn’t going to give way to better games any time soon.
However, if I’m going to play Magic, one of the best ways to do it is on the iPad, with one of developer Stainless’ annual releases, fingering and flicking the cards across the table, tapping to pick them up, thumbing through your hand as if they were physically fanned out before you. The interface is just so right and the pacing is perfectly executed. My cards versus his cards and we’re done in ten minutes tops. It’s worth noting Stainless also did the only decent way to play videogame Risk when they adapted Risk: Factions a few years ago.
Alexander J. Velicky is 19 and he wants a job with Bethesda Game Studios. He wanted to get hired by the developer badly enough that he started a crowd-sourcing campaign last year to raise enough money to fly him out to Maryland to visit the studio. It failed to get funded but that didn’t stop young master Velicky. He worked on his resume by directing and releasing an epic mod for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim called Falskaar that adds 25 hours of quests, a land mass that’s equal to a third of the base game, new characters with fully voiced dialogue, and a new original soundtrack. PC Gamer has more information about the massive project.
“Falskaar isn’t perfect,” Velicky says. “I’m not an expert who’s been crafting game experiences for the last 20 years, so I certainly still have a lot to learn, and I always will. I’m always looking to learn and improve, and Falskaar was a huge chance for me to do this.”
Velicky says Bethesda is aware of him and his portfolio addition. Falskaar can be found on Skyrim Nexus.
Electronic Arts’ SimCity has lost three key leads. Ocean Quigley, the former SimCity creative director, tweeted that he was leaving EA and Maxis to form Jellygrade, an indie studio to start on a new project. He is taking the former lead architect Andrew Willmott and lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz with him to work on an iPad game about the early formation of life on Earth.
Quigley told Polygon that SimCity’s botched launch wasn’t a deciding factor in his departure from EA.
“I was dismayed at the blundered launch of something that I had poured so much love and attention into, which made the leaving easier but it would have probably happened anyway,” he said.
“Honestly I think I would have left regardless of whether EA’s launch of SimCity was smooth or rough. It was basically my third SimCity. I did SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 and this new SimCity.”
Ocean Quigley admits that the concept for his new project was influenced by his work on Spore, but that it has not been pitched to EA because it’s a “little too weird and science nerdy” for them.
The Knife of Dunwall DLC was a great way to extend Dishonored by shifting the story from Corvo, in the main game, to Duad, the assassin that set the game’s events in motion in the first place. Bethesda has announced that players can return to Duad’s point of view in the upcoming The Brigmore Witches DLC. Your saved game from the previous DLC will carry over into The Brigmore Witches, so I hope you kept your chaos level low at the end of The Knife of Dunwall! The new DLC promises to bring Duad’s tale to a close.
Regardless of the way you reach your destination, one thing is for certain – you will finally answer for your treacherous actions and fall before the mercy, or punishment, of the Royal Bodyguard and Assassin, Corvo Attano.
The Brigmore Witches arrives on Xbox 360, PS3, and Steam ($9.99 or 800 MS Points) on August 13th.
Left or right? Main street or Wall street? Security or liberty? You’ll have the chance to take a political stand in the upcoming Cutthroat Politics update for Guild Wars 2. The Living World update will feature two characters vying for a spot on the Captain’s Council of Lion’s Arch.
Evon Gnashblade and Ellen Kiel are trying to work out a trade agreement with the Zephyr Sanctum in order to help them secure a spot on the Captain’s Council of Lion’s Arch. Use Support Tokens and coins to help out your candidate of choice!
The winning candidiate will enact a set of rulings based on their platform that will benefit players in the game. If Gnashblade wins, Black Lion Keys will be discounted in the in-game store, while Kiel promises to reduce waypoint travel prices if she’s elected.
As with previous updates, new items and activities will be added to the game for the duration. Cutthroat Politics will go live on July 23rd.
This week we saw Pacific Rim, in which giant robots fight stuff, but the director kind of knows what he’s doing. The action really heats up at the 55-minute mark, when we discuss our favorite seductions in movies.
Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch Games told participants of a Reddit thread that the developer was disappointed with the sales figures for Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine on Xbox Live Arcade. He put part of the blame for the poor XBLA performance on the launch delay the title experienced as last-minute bugs were corrected, and also theorized that the demo may not have presented the best experience of the game. Schatz also hinted at some friction between Microsoft and his studio.
I was never depending on the Xbox being our primary revenue generator, but I was very disappointed in Xbox sales nonetheless. We put a ton of effort porting the game, and to have that effort be largely wasted was really disappointing. OTOH, I don’t think the demo was particularly strong… so it could be that the game wouldn’t have done better on Xbox even if it had a simultaneous launch (though IMO it would have performed at least twice as well). We had to submit two patches, and luckily they had already relaxed the charges for that process about a month prior.
As for Microsoft’s treatment of us through the process… well we had a publisher (Majesco) that buffered us from them. I don’t really feel like it’s a good idea to piss in the pool, so whatever complaints I have I think it’s best that I keep them between me, Majesco, and Microsoft.
Monaco was highly rated on Quarter to Three. Andy Schatz even participated in a podcast with Tom!
Ubisoft says it won’t even consider making a new game unless they see franchise potential. Speaking to [a]list daily via GamesIndustry International, Tony Key, Ubisoft’s senior VP of sales and marketing, said that the expectation for multiple titles is a factor in greenlighting any new concept.
“That’s what all our games are about; we won’t even start if we don’t think we can build a franchise out of it. There’s no more fire and forget – it’s too expensive.”
Key pointed out that Ubisoft operates in a “blockbuster world” and that they must fully commit to a project by matching the marketing spend to the development effort.
Transport Tycoon is coming to iOS and Android devices. According to the website, this is the “definitive” version of the game, so you may as well put away all your old PC copies and get with the new hotness. The new mobile version of Transport Tycoon features the return of Chris Sawyer to oversee the development.
As an aspiring entrepreneur you’ll race to forge new and lucrative routes across a sprawling linving landscape. Succeed in business and watch your empire grow over a century from steam trains and sail ships to the supersonic aircraft and bullet trains of the modern era.
The Zephyr Sanctum is a massive airship temporarily anchored at the Labyrinthine Cliffs. That’s my necromancer standing on the prow. The airship will be there as long as Guild Wars 2’s Bazaar of the Four Winds lasts, which I think is for another week.
This latest round of new content is an impressive feat in completely changing how you get around. Guild Wars 2, a game without mounts and without flying, is mostly about walking around. It has had optional jumping puzzles tucked into various corners. Some of them even have a touch of personality and they all have some reward waiting at the top. But they’re still just jumping puzzles, and they often require trying to figure out the rules of footing on imprecisely drawn terrain. Did the level designer intend for me to think I can jump there? I often find out the hard way.
As you work your way up the cliffs to the Zephyr Sanctum, it’s clear there are going to be jumping puzzles. It’s just so darn vertical. And all the rigging up there. You know you’re going to be jumping around in that. The whole thing looks at first like a town where you can buy stuff and sell stuff. But it’s more than that. Unlike Guild Wars 2’s other towns, it’s got plenty of combat. You’ll be walking past a merchant stand and someone accidentally lets loose a giant demon. Now you’re fighting a big public battle. A couple dozen drunkards burst out of a tavern. Reptilian slavers storm the docks.
But what mostly distinguishes the Zephyr Sanctum are the three power-ups you can find scattered around the cliff and the catwalks, each of which gives you 10 bursts of special movement. You can shoot forward as a sunbeam, call the wind to leap higher than normal, and use lightning to fling yourself to a specific point. These powers are the basis for a multiplayer race to the top of a spire (with some reward at the top, of course). But you can also use these power-ups to find crystals tucked into unlikely places. Hold down the key to highlight interact points and you’ll likely see a few of the crystals. How are you supposed to get up there? With sun, wind, lightning.
There are 52 crystals all told, but you only have to get 40 to unlock the reward, which is an achievement that applies towards the overarching Bazaar of the Four Winds achievement. You also get a model of the race spire. It’s an object that you can only deploy in town, but anyone who clicks on it gets a nifty cutscene showing off the Zephyr Sanctum airship. I hate jumping puzzles. I didn’t hate getting those 40 crystals.
Angry Birds Star Wars II has been announced by Rovio and Lucasfilm Ltd. The mobile game will feature more disgruntled exploding fowl, Star Wars characters, and a new feature to make parents sigh in resignation and open their wallets – Skylanders style collectible figures. “TELEPODS” figures made by Hasbro will allow players to add characters and powers to the game when they are scanned by the mobile device.
For the first time ever, players can choose which character they want to use in the app by “teleporting” their physical character into the game. Over thirty figures will be available at launch in September.
Hasbro ominously warned parents that TELEPODS figures will be used with more of their “incredible portfolio of brands.”
If you play Agricola for the ruthlessly honed gameplay, there is no reason the boar space in this iOS port should have a baby boar with a spotted coat snuffling around inside the pen. There is no reason a chicken with two chicks should stroll through the town center. There is no reason the cows should wag their tails. There is no reason sheep should wriggle when you pick them up. There is no reason plowed and sown fields should sprout rows of ripening crops as if you were playing some sort of latest-gen Harvest Moon. There is no reason successive turns should have icons representing different seasons.
Valve has revealed Pipeline, their experimental project to get young people involved in the game industry. According to the website, the goal is to guide students into the business with a focus on direct communication.
There are two main reasons that Valve is creating Pipeline. The first is that we are frequently asked questions by teenagers about the videogame industry. “What is it like to work on videogames? What should I study? What colleges are best for preparing me? How do I get a job in videogames?” Pipeline will be a place where those questions can be discussed. The second is that Valve is running an experiment. Traditionally Valve has been a very good place for very experienced videogame developers, and not so good at teaching people straight out of school (the reasons for this and the tradeoffs are covered in the Valve employee handbook). Pipeline is an experiment to see if we can take a group of high school students with minimal work experience and train them in the skills and methods necessary to be successful at a company like Valve.
It’s not the first time that Valve has reached out to kids. In June of last year, they rolled out the Teach With Portals initiative that supplied real-world physics lessons and teaching aids based on specially designed puzzles from Portal 2. Valve expanded the scope of the program by adding interactive space sim Universe Sandbox in November 2012.
According to Valve, Pipeline will begin in the “next month or so.” Hopefully, they will include a lesson about Valve Time.
I wouldn’t normally care about an upcoming MMO developed by an unproven studio. But developer Carbine recently saw fit to hire one of the best writers I know who, in the interest of full disclosure, also happens to be a friend of mine. Still, it’s an MMO with a cartoony sci-fi theme. If I wanted to play World of Warcraft with laser guns, I’d roll up one of those blue space elfs. The Drainae, or whatever they’re called.
But the above video demonstrates how Wildstar will be different from many of the MMOs I’ve played. You don’t target anyone. Instead, you hold down your mouse button or hotkey to bring up an overlay. This shows where your attack will hit. While holding down the button, you can move around freely to line it up. To attack, simply let loose of the button. This also applies to healing. Healing will require more than the ability to watch hitpoint bars go up and down. As noted in the video, you’ll know a good healer when you see one.
Plenty of MMOs have used a similar area effect for attacks. Guild Wars 2 and Secret World come to mind. But they’ve also used the traditional “tab lock” scheme where you target a single unit and therefore automatically land your attack if you’re facing the right direction. This can downplay the skill based element of combat, which Wildstar wants to emphasize.
But tab locking ensures clearly presented information about your target, such as health, mana, buffs, and debuffs. Even over-the-top action RPGs like Diablo 3 and Marvel Heroes rely on tab locking to show you information about your enemies. This also helps with something as simple but important as the name of the target, a significant part of world building. For instance, in Guild Wars 2, would I know a skelk from a river drake if the names weren’t so consistently in my face? I appreciate that Wildstar wants combat to be an action-oriented experience that involves player skill, and this is plenty of reason to look forward to trying the game. But it’s a solution that also presents its own problems.
End of Nations was going to be a free-to-play RTS developed by Petroglyph that had a near-future setting with gameplay reminiscent of Command & Conquer. In December 2012, publisher Trion Worlds decided that the game’s progress wasn’t where it should’ve been so they removed Petroglyph from the project, refunded gamers that spent money in the closed beta, and took the game’s development in-house.
End of Nations is back – in a way. It’s now another MOBA.
End of Nations is a tactical MOBA where your success on the battlefield depends on the heroes and units you command and quick decision making in the heat of combat. Dominate during team-based matches and catapult your commander to the top of the ranks.
The change to a MOBA is part of a “drastic overhaul” according to the executive producer, Scot Lane.
