Ubisoft has released some details of their support plans for Tom Clancy’s The Division. In a post on the official site, Ubisoft has listed their update schedule as well as the content of the season pass, at least for the first year. There will be two free content updates that will add new end-game activity for multiplayer groups, new loot, and more “features” for the player versus player Dark Zone gameplay. Starting in June, the paid content starts with Underground, an expansion centered on the tunnels and subways of New York, followed by Survival and Last Stand which are even more vaguely described. At least you have some hint of what you pre-ordered now.
Tom Clancy’s The Division launches on March 8th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC.
These days, you can’t swing a dead skaven without hitting some ill conceived and poorly implemented Warhammer shovelware. Which is too bad, because there’s some really nice stuff out there. Full Control’s turn-based Space Hulk series has a lot of crunchy tactics and satisfying character development squeezed into its claustrophobic corridors, and they’ve spent a couple years pouring a lot of content into it. Regicide’s chess RPG is awfully contrived, but it works about as well as the contrived narrow corridors of a space hulk. On the fantasy side, Vermintide is an excellent rat flavored variation on the Left 4 Dead formula. If you can power through some clunkiness, Mordheim is about as XCOM a Warhammer game as you could ever hope to play.
But how are you supposed to tell the good ones from the terrible ones? How are you supposed to know whether Warhammer: Arcane Magic, a “digital boardgame”, is any good? Is being a port of an iOS game something you should hold against it? Or should you pony up your $4 and give it a shot? Actually, make that $7 given the separately sold missions. The good news is that it’s a decent enough turn-based strategy grind in which your wizards collect spells as they work their way through a campaign.
After the jump, the bad news. Continue reading →
The Corpse of Anna Fritz opens with a shot of an unseen orderly wheeling a sheet-draped corpse down a corridor. A news voiceover explains that Anna Fritz, a world renowned actress, has died. Her body has been taken to an unspecified hospital to avoid a mob scene. The orderly rolls the gurney into the morgue, gingerly peels pack the sheet to reveal a beautiful woman, and snaps a picture with his cell phone. It gets worse from there.
In an American movie called The Body, three chicks accidentally kill a dude. Oops. To avoid getting in trouble, they posthumously stage a rape so they can claim self-defense. But that doesn’t work out so well when they discover they didn’t actually kill the dude, but just broke his neck. Awkward. The Body falls apart mainly because of the implausibility of its characters’ motivations and a conspicuous weak link in the cast.
The Corpse of Anna Fritz, a fascinating inverse of The Body, has no such shortcomings. The characters do what they do because they’re reprehensible. Spanish writer/director Hector Vincens isn’t interested in our sympathy. He’s just interested in subjecting us to his cruel thriller, setting the stage with one of the most ghastly reveals since Jack Nicholson’s tryst in room 237. It gets a bit clumsy from there, with lots of flopping around on the floor. But that scene — you’ll know it — easily sustains The Corpse of Anna Fritz until graves are spit on.
By the way, you know how you can hear outlandish things when you hear someone sing in a different language? Without the distinctive patter of that language, your brain translates the syllables into English. To my ears, it sounded like the song playing over the credits was “Cats Know Everything”. Ha ha. I must be mishearing a Spanish phrase.
Nope. The end credits song is in English and it’s called “Cats Know Everything”. Corpse of Anna Fritz: 2. Me: 0.
The Corpse of Anna Fritz is available exclusively on flixfling.com, whatever that is, starting March 8.
Chick and McMaster discuss Korean (South) MMO Black Desert Online, Pillars of Eternity, and Superhot. A completely different McMaster makes an appearance to tell us about The Long Dark.
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Greedo is coming to Star Wars Battlefront. The hapless bounty hunter (last seen taking a shot at Han Solo) is part of the Outer Rim DLC package coming later this month for the Electronic Arts shooter. Greedo will be a playable hero character along with Nien Nunb, the Millennium Falcon’s co-pilot from Return of the Jedi. Can we get some love for Lando, EA? New locations like Jabba’s palace and a factory on Sullust are part of the DLC, as well as new weapons and equipment.
The Outer Rim is part of Star Wars Battlefront’s Season Pass. It will also be offered for purchase separately, but pricing has not been disclosed yet.
It’s Super Tuesday in the United States. It’s unfortunately not about caped heroes or gamma radiation boosted warriors. It’s when some of the American people pick their nominees for the upcoming presidential election by voting for their respective parties’ delegates, who then cast votes in the conventions. Then the people get to vote again. But then the delegates’ votes supersede the popular vote. It’s all rather complicated. Luckily there’s a videogame to help make sense of it all. Stardock Entertainment’s The Political Machine 2016 is all about running for President. It gamifies what is already an intensely gamified process.
The long and short of it is that like Madden, pundits use The Political Machine to predict The Big Game. It’s as accurate as the early polling from news sources. What does the data from this year’s game tell us? You can’t stump the Trump, unless you’re holding the general election, in which case, the Democrats are winning. This conflicting news isn’t great for either party. Gamers clearly haven’t gotten the news that they’re supposed to stick to their home tribes.
The (unfair) narrative about Star Wars: Battlefront is that it’s a multiplayer-only shooter, like the Battlefield series by the same developer. Which is news to me. I’ve played plenty of single-player and plenty of local splitscreen with a friend. One of the hooks for me is that when I beat a map on the hard difficulty setting, I’m no longer limited to the designated loadouts. Now I can bring in whatever equipment I want to help me beat it on expert. Here I come with my choice of thermal detonators, jump packs, personal shields, and bowcasters. It’s a great incentive to play the higher difficulty levels and a perfectly cromulent single-player and splitscreen pursuit.
Wait. Hold on just a minute. I’ve beaten Hoth on hard. But before I can go charging back in with thermal detonators, jump packs, personal shields, and bowcasters, it turns out I have to unlock them first by leveling up. The thermal detonator is easy. I unlocked that so long ago maybe I didn’t even have to unlock it. But the bowcaster? I can’t use that until I’m level 32. And that will never — I repeat, never — happen until I’ve spent many hours playing online against random strangers.
Okay, maybe it’s multiplayer only, after all.
After the jump, hell and shooters are other people. Continue reading →
Forza Motorsport is coming to Windows this spring. In a first for the Microsoft CaRPG series, a PC version of the game is being made. Forza Motorsport 6: Apex is a “curated” free experience for Windows 10. Meant to showcase the strong tie between Xbox and Windows 10, the Microsoft and Turn 10 Studios project will include 63 cars with fully modeled cockpits and damage, 20 tracks from the full game, a career mode, and challenges that will be updated on a regular basis. The game will also feature the signature “Drivatar” AI opponents and “Forzavista” showroom mode.
According to information released during a February 25th Microsoft press event, the game will launch without wheel support, and actual race multiplayer beyond score comparisons may be off the table.
Mojang has updated the combat in Minecraft. The Combat Update has been a long time coming and it features sweeping changes to the game’s fighting. Player strikes no longer happen as fast as you can tap the mouse button. There is now a delay that forces players to time their attacks. To offset this cool-down, shields can be crafted from various materials to block incoming hits. Dual-wielding is now allowed. Swords have a sweep attack, and axes can deal crushing blows. Along with these changes, a host of new materials and items have been added to the game.
The Combat Update is currently only available for the older Java-based version of Minecraft. The Windows 10, console, and mobile versions of the game are still a couple of updates behind, so “old-school” PC players are the only ones that get to experience the new gameplay. The good news is that there are plenty of skin packs to buy on those versions of the game.
You know that part in a movie shootout when the bad guy runs out of bullets and he throws the gun at the good guy? Because why not? What else are you going to do with an empty gun? But it never works in the movies because the good guy tricks the bad guy by ducking.
Superhot, which is not the movies, will have none of this nonsense.
After the jump, what’s white and red and white all over? Continue reading →
The listeners have spoken and we have listened, so this week we watch The Goonies, the winner of the 2016 Make Us Watch Whatever You Want Fundraiser-palooza. Find out who stands with the Goonies and who stands against them! At the 1:41 mark, we hail a discussion of cab rides in movies.
Next week: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny
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This is the best item in Grim Dawn, the action roleplaying game from Crate Entertainment. Oh, you may find an item of armor with better protection, or a weapon with a more damaging effect on the enemy, but this is going to be the standard by which all other items are judged. Why bother with thorns or some kind of flame aura when you can throw the ultimate insult? Veni vidi merda.
Grim Dawn is finally out of early access and is available for Windows PC on Steam.
Bear with me as I proclaim the three most important commandments of boardgame design, because after that I’m going to sit down to talk to the designer of Clockwork Wars, one of my favorite recent boardgames.
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Frozenbyte, makers of the Trine games, have a proposition for you. They’ll reduce the launch price of their upcoming stealth game Shadwen based on the number of people that play the demo. It’s hovering at about $26 as of this post, and there are almost four days left for players to game the price down. Like any good stealth action title, Shadwen revels in lethal guards, hiding in shadows, and nifty tools of the trade like grappling hooks and traps. The Frozenbyte twist comes with the use of Trine-like physics and time manipulation. Objects in the game have physical properties and can be used in fiendish ways to knock about or stack to get access to new areas. The physics combined with the time-rewinding and pausing ability means Shadwen can offer some things an Animus-powered memory assassin can’t.
Shadwen is releasing later this year on Windows PC.
Firefight is coming to Halo 5. Between splitscreen co-op and Firefight, it’s a toss-up which mode was more sorely missed by Halo fans when Halo 5 launched. Microsoft and 343 Industries have released a preview of the free content coming to Halo 5 in the year, and included in the announcement is Warzone Firefight.
Among the vast array of new modes coming to Halo over the next several months is one that our fans have repeatedly asked us to deliver – Firefight. The new mode, called “Warzone Firefight”, will bring PvE to Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer and let players battle together against common foes (and truly show off their custom Spartans to boot!) That’s all we’ll say for now, but trust us, we can’t wait to tell you more about Warzone Firefight in the coming months.
This is no splitscreen co-op, but Firefight finally coming back to Halo is a welcome reveal, but you can expect Halo 5’s REQ microtransaction system to play a part. It’s slated for release this year after three other upcoming content drops. The latest free update is Hammer Storm and includes the powerful M6D pistol from Halo: Combat Evolved.
