You've thought about it long and hard, and now you've decided that you want to play XCOM 2. Only one question remains: Can you? The answer, I'm happy to say, is, probably, yeah. The system requirements turned up on Steam today and all in all, they're pretty light.
In your face with the facts!
The Sectoid:
OS: Windows® 7, 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 2.6 GHz or AMD Phenom 9950 Quad Core 2.6 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or better
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 45 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card
The Mechtoid:
OS: Windows® 7, 64-bit
Processor: 3GHz Quad Core
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: 2GB ATI Radeon HD 7970, 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 or better
Storage: 45 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card
Regardless of the hardware you bring to the table, you'll also require an internet connection for the ol' Steam authentication process.
And if you've thought about it long and hard, but still haven't actually decided whether you want to play XCOM 2 or not, be sure to have a look at our hands-on preview, which includes both words and video. The short version: If you're in the mood for aliens, you're in the mood for XCOM. XCOM 2 comes out on February 5.
The Jack the Ripper DLC that was announced for Assassin's Creed Syndicate a fewmonths ago now has a proper release date—December 22—and a story trailer that shines an entirely new light on what we've got to look forward to.
The DLC takes place 20 years after the events of Syndicate, as we already knew, but it now appears that Jacob is out of the picture, and it's up to Evie alone to "deliver the Ripper's head on a spike." But it won't be as easy as all that: The Ripper is a man of many talents.
More interestingly, it seems that Evie and Jack have a pre-existing relationship of some sort—there's a familiarity, at the very least—and they're clearly headed toward some sort of narrative denouement, as Jack alludes to when he asks, "How many more must die before you see the truth?"
It is perhaps a bit too obvious, even for a videogame, but Jacob's absence, coupled with Jack's reference to a reunion and his very Assassin-like moves, lead me to wonder if—shocking twist!—Jack is in fact Jacob. Jack is, after all, one possible abbreviation of Jacob.
We'll find out next week. Place your bets! (And check out those screens below.)
Update: The post originally listed the DLC as coming on December 15, which is actually the release date for consoles. It won't be out for the PC until December 22.
วันจันทร์ที่ 20 พฤษภาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Batman: Arkham Origins gets Deathstroke, Kevin Conroy
Kevin Conroy confirmed to be lending his voice-over talents to Batman: Arkham Origins; Deathstroke playable via DLC.
Long-time Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy has confirmed his involvement in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins, Joystiq has reported.
The actor revealed at Comic-Con that he has already spent 10 months in the studio recording lines for the game, although he did not specify which role he would be playing. Conroy was the voice of Batman inArkham Asylum and its sequel Arkham City. He also played the character in MMODC Universe Online, and the recently released DC brawler Injustice: Gods Among Us
The news contradicts reports earlier this year that the actor would not be reprising his role as the Caped Crusader in Arkham Origins.
Fans will have a chance to gain access to an unannounced Deathstroke DLC when pre-ordering Arkham Origins, according to an offer on Amazon.
No further details about the character's involvement are available, although Deathstroke was previously featured in a Warner Bros. teaser trailer fighting Batman.
Batman: Arkham Origins tells the story of Batman's early years in the Arkham series. It is the first game in the universe not to be developed by UK developer Rocksteady. The game is scheduled for release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Wii U on October 25.
UK Chart: Metro: Last Light surfaces top but fails to outsell predecessor.
Dead Island: Riptide falls to second, and FIFA 13 climbs back up to third.
4A Games' Metro: Last Light has emerged top of the UK charts after its first weekend on sale, although the well-received sequel failed to match the numbers shifted by its predecessor in 2010.
The original Metro 2033 was released in March 2010, and debuted fifth in the UK charts at the time.
FIFA 13 climbs back up to third place, and 3DS-exclusive Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity enters the chart in fourth.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II is fifth, Tomb Raider sixth, and the retail release of Telltale Games' serial adventure The Walking Dead is seventh.
The top 10 is rounded out by DC brawler Injustice: Gods Among Us in eighth, which pushed Assassin's Creed III into ninth by less than 200 sales, and BioShock Infinite in tenth.
Elsewhere in the chart, poorly reviewed movie-tie in Star Trek drops to 32nd from last week's 24th place finish, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter re-enters the chart at 37th.
The Top 20 UK chart for the week ending May 18:
1. Metro: Last Light 2. Dead Island: Riptide 3. FIFA 13 4. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity 5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II 6. Tomb Raider 7. The Walking Dead 8. Injustice: Gods Among Us 9. Assassin's Creed III 10. BioShock Infinite 11. Far Cry 3 12. Luigi's Mansion 2 13. Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins 14. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes 15. God of War: Ascension 16. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 17. Grand Theft Auto IV 18. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City 19. Skylanders Giants 20: Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
Eador: Masters of the Broken World Review
Game-crushing bugs overshadow the turn-based tactical goodness Eador: Masters of the Broken World offers.
The Good
Combat keeps you on your toes
Heavy management focus scratches that tactical itch.
The Bad
Crashes and stalls frequently
Menus are crowded and difficult to use
Offers tactical misinformation
Multiplayer has severe connection issues.
Eador: Masters of the Broken World is too difficult to enjoy. Even on the easiest setting, it does everything it can to keep you from making progress. Whereas some games lay honest challenges and let you learn your way through them, Masters of the Broken World offers false information that's difficult to plan around. It gives you the option to tinker with systems you can't understand until the game offers a half-baked explanation. To make it worse, it's so unstable that bugs and hard crashes frequently cut your adventures short, as if the game weren't already oppressive enough.
The first thing you notice about Masters of the Broken World is the overwhelming number of buttons, as colorful and varied as a candy shop. This is a hardcore turn-based role-playing game with base management, provinces to capture, stats to improve, and a slew of things to always be concerned with. It's overwhelming in an intense, classic PC game sort of way, and at its best it's a gripping brain twister with high stakes and high rewards. The various worlds you must conquer are called "shards," and each offers unique benefits that help you as you attack the next one. You are a god who manipulates mortal heroes to do your bidding and claim lands, which is a neat way for a game to justify its genre through fiction.
Combat takes place on a grid of hexagonal spaces. Various infantry units join your hero, who belongs to a powerful fantasy-standard class like a warrior or a mage. Before combat, you see how many and what type of foes to expect, and the game offers a battle prediction. This pre-combat assessment couldn't feel less accurate, which is a huge problem because it's often the deciding factor for whether you initiate a fight, negotiate, or retreat. Not only can the enemy outnumber your party, but nearly all of its soldiers might outlevel yours by five times. Yet the game might predict that "the enemy will be destroyed," displayed in reassuring green type. This is bad information. Lost troops are gone forever once a battle is over, so the cost of a party wipe is staggering. New fighters must be purchased and trained again, which takes time and feels like a grind.
When forces are evenly matched, combat is a wonderful game of resource and land management. Moving a character forward to a hill offers range benefits, but it might be more useful to send weak units into a forest patch for defensive bonuses. Magic isn't based on mana, but on a limited number of uses. This means you can't just nuke everything in sight to win. You need to move units out of hit zones. You need to be concerned with draining enemy stamina. It feels like a deep board game, but with particle effects.
Sadly, the game frequently stops working. A few hiccups could be tolerated in a game with so many systems running simultaneously, but Masters of the Broken World is, well, utterly broken. Everything from combat to movement to construction happens as part of a chain of actions. When you finish queuing tasks, you hit the execute button, and the game jumps into motion… sometimes. More times than you would want, the execute button, as well as the entire bottom row, simply fails to work. When this happens in combat, the only options are to quit the game and lose progress or activate auto-battle mode, which rarely ends in your favor. Sometimes the weapon switch command doesn't work. Sometimes your hero gets stuck in one province on the overworld map. And all too often, Masters of the Broken World just crashes completely.
There is satisfaction to be found in the game's vast and deep strategy elements. Building up your city's defenses and resource production rate helps you conquer other provinces and strongholds more quickly. Stationing guards can be an exciting gamble because the units can grow corrupt, stealing income or terrorizing townspeople. The problem is that you're given access to features that you can't understand because the game hasn't yet taken the time to teach you. Granaries can be built in provinces, for example, and they give each sector a population boost. However, overpopulation can lead to unrest, which can lead to a rebellion. The game's suggested counter is to build a guard outpost, which doesn't work at all. Provinces inevitably fall, and you're forced to battle and recapture areas you used to own. This isn't fun, and doing work you've already done just to rectify something you don't know how to fix is aggravating in all the wrong ways.
A system of karma and random events breaks up the typical bribe/fight/conquer gameplay. Sometimes a horde of enemies might attack one of your provinces, and you have to decide whether it's worth your time and resources to help defend it. If you leave your people to die, you naturally lose karma. You might be the kind of person to never accept bribes, but if someone is offering a lot of gold and you have your eye on an expensive new structure for your base, maybe you'll accept. Unfortunately, karma doesn't seem to have a substantial effect on anything you do. You'll appreciate the distraction from the core game mechanics, but a distraction is really all it is.
Masters of the Broken World has a Hot Seat mode, which has two players taking turns in the chair in front of the computer as they battle each other. It's a great idea, and it's fun when it works, but it's not immune to the bug problems found in the single-player campaign. There’s also an online mode, but finding a reliable match is a miracle. You might wait half an hour to play a single skirmish, only to have the connection fail before a game starts. When you could cook dinner in the time it takes to find an opponent, something is very wrong.
Any enjoyment derived from Eador: Masters of the Broken World is buried beneath a landslide of inexcusable technical issues. Building up a home base and expanding into the world should be rewarding, but frequent and unfair bugs make any progress feel less like victory and more like a stroke of good luck. Some serious patches could uncover the game buried beneath the flaws, but as of right now, playing Masters of the Broken World not worth the headache. In this high-fantasy world of trolls, archers, and the undead, it's a shame that your most dreadful enemy is the game itself.
วันอาทิตย์ที่ 19 พฤษภาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Call of Duty: Ghosts teaser video revealed
Official Twitter channel for upcoming first-person shooter hyping May 21 reveal with new teaser video.
The video, a short clip released through Vine, shows what appears to be several shots from an in-development version of the upcoming first-person shooter.
GameSpot will have full coverage of the presentation, which begins at 10 a.m. EDT. Microsoft is widely believed to announce its next-generation Xbox at the event and give first details about the long-rumored platform
SimCity Amusement Park Pack DLC confirmed after retailer leak
EA has confirmed funfair DLC for its controversial 2013 reboot of SimCityafter it temporarily appeared on a retailer website.
While it was quickly removed, the SimCity Amusement Park Pack DLC briefly appeared on UK retailer Green Man Gaming.
The blurb for the expansion offered SimCity players the chance "build the amusement park of your dreams, right in the middle of your city." The description also offered "classic rides, vehicle rides and thrill rides."
"Will you focus [on] the aesthetic look or maximising your profits? Perhaps you can have the best of both worlds," concluded the description.
Following the leak, the official SimCity Twitter feed confirmed a May 28 release for the DLC.
"Some of you may have seen thrilling new #SimCity content that arrived too early at the gate. It’s coming May 28. We think you’ll be amused," wrote the account.
