Closure of the longest running super-hero MMO rouses anger and resentment from fan

Heroes and former villains gathered in the game's Atlas Park to mourn the game's passing.

 Do you remember a game called "City of Heroes?" 8 years ago, the world's only super-hero MMO graced the PC gaming world and surprised everyone. It survived a transition from its original publishing company to NC Soft, it survived the pretender "Champions Online," and it even survived "DC Universe Online" for a time.

Recently, at the end of November, the world within "CoH" was closed down forever by NC Soft. Rumors circulated that it was because the team from Paragon Studios was being moved to work on "Guild Wars 2." Others believed that the game wasn't closing, merely being taken from NC Soft by another company. Whatever the reason, the August announcement shook fans and players to their very core.

Not only were they saddened, but many of them were outraged at the fact that the game was closing. Still bringing in a quarterly profit of $2.76 million, according to market analysts in Korea where NC Soft's main offices are, many were confused by this move.

An article written for koreatimes.co has the headline "'Unethical' game closure.'" Why? Partly because everyone else in the world can't seem to understand the business move. While analysts agree the game doesn't make a huge amount of money for the company, especially after going free-to-play recently, it still makes money.

Players have begun to start rousing other NC Soft fans to boycott the company in anger, while even media outlets are covering the player-community disgust. Each day after the closure was announced, players began in-game protests. They would gather en masse at certain locations in game just to spawn multiple instance monsters and bosses so that the game would lag atrociously and cause issues. Others took a more political approach, creating petitions and awareness campaigns online to try and show the company the large amount of fans that were against the action.

It may not have been as pretty as other games, but it had a style all its own.

This kind of community love is rarely seen in an MMO, especially an NC Soft one. However, "City of Heroes" eight year run was one for the history books. The game had time travel, a morality system, almost unfathomable amounts of customization that put other super-power MMOs to shame, player-run radio stations, arena battling, an alternate dimension and a mission creation system that allowed the player to make custom enemies with custom powersets and write their own storylines for others to play.

Paragon Studios and those who worked on the game did something right. They created a game that had a community so invested in the franchise that it is making a media stink so large it can be seen hovering over the NC Soft corporate offices in Korea.

Why shut it down? Only NC Soft knows. One thing is for certain, the players will never forget that it happened, and NC Soft's image in the west has been severely damaged because of this decision.

Wii U sales after the first month

Seems a little cumbersome, right?

As of last month, around four hundred and fifty thousand Wii U consoles were purchased in the United States, with forty thousand units sold in the United Kingdom during the opening weekend alone. In just one month, and not even a whole month mind you, the newest console by Nintendo has sold almost a quarter of what the PS Vita's cumulative sales were in October. Just two months ago.

Not only that, but the website MCVUK.com has stated that the software attach rate for the Wii U is 2:1, giving it a higher rate than the PS Vita in another area. The GfK Chart-Track, which monitors the sales of video, music, and software through retailers, states that 60% of sales in the UK are the 32GB console, 30% are the "ZombiU" bundle console, and 10% are the 8GB console. With that being said, one need only look at the reviews of the system from globally recognized sites like Kotaku, IGN and even G4 to see that reviewers and industry buffs are impressed with the system.

While it may still lack certain features that many gamers have come to expect, the hardware itself may take some getting used to and the update download times are almost mind-bogglingly slow, consumers are warming up to the new console.

The tablet-style controller, of course, is the most unique feature and one that most people are curious about working out well enough for them actually play games with. Opinions here vary from "works well," "takes a while to figure out" and "gosh, I hate this thing." Thankfully, the system allows for Wii-mote and classic controller peripherals which can be used to adapt to the style of play for the owner. Choosing to use controllers other than the Gamepad means that some of the features in games requiring a touch pad are inaccessible.

One gimmick that has many people singing the Wii U's praises has been the ability to play full console games on the tablet while another person uses the television. Stories abound on Twitter illustrating ways in which gaming couples are able to share the same space finally and game at the same time in the same room. Kids are able to play while their parents watch TV and families are no longer divided to gaming rooms and living rooms.

If the Wii U did one thing right, it was this feature. Changing the entire atmosphere of the gaming room not only changes the way gaming is viewed, but it changes gaming to a more social enterprise without having to include many other people in the experience. In the past, a social experience was a party game or multiplayer. Now a gamer can lounge on the couch with their significant other as they watch their favorite show or play their own system, Wii U still plugging away.

Now, mobile and handheld gaming systems have been able to provide this experience for years. However, the quality of game has often not been on par with console gaming experiences, contrary to the PS Vita's tagline and sales. Gamers don't want to play "on-the-go" games at home unless, it seems, it's "Pokemon" or "Final Fantasy." Other than that, if they are at home, they'd rather play a title like "Mass Effect" or "Call of Duty."

You can't go wrong with basic black, it seems.

What does this mean for Nintendo? Well, they have continued their trend of creating a system or technology that raises the bar for their competition. I expect we'll see more streamlined, complex and sophisticated versions of the Wii U gaming pad in the future. But by that time I expect Nintendo will have announced another new technology like they always do when their competition catches up to their latest innovation.

Gemini Wars Review

 Space RTS games are really hard to come by. From "Sins of a Solar Empire" to the beloved cult series "Homeworld," there have been a multitude of games that have really tried to nail down intergalactic warfare.

Of course, this means there are some lack-luster games that make their way to shelves. While it may be clever but surprisingly pretty, "Gemini Wars" is one of those games.

Large scale battles are the big feature for "Gemini Wars."

Coming out of the indie publisher Camel 101, "Gemini Wars" is actually a good concept and I was surprised that I found the issues that I had with it after I realized they were recycling a formula from another popular space RTS, "Star Wars: Empire at War," a personal favorite of mine.


As many people know, the story or campaign of an RTS is rarely the reason you play it. I've really only found that in Blizzard games or the "Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War" franchise that the story has meant anything to me. Maybe "Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth" and "Command and Conquer" too.

The point is, there really isn't a reason to play through the story mode of this game. It just seems pretty forced and thrown in there in an effort to provide something for the person who is looking for a really long tutorial on how to play the game. After all, that's basically what the campaign in an RTS is.

The skirmish mode and online play seem to be the sole purpose of this game, and since that is the case, I will detail the mechanics for you.

"Gemini Wars" has your standard resource gathering. Both Research points and Minerals are your driving forces and can be gathered by creating mining facilities in asteroid fields or a research center above a planet. Points are then spent on building your fleets or researching betting engines, new ship hulls, weapons and the like.

Honestly, it is a pretty game and the ships are cool looking.

Ships range from small gun-boats and missile frigates to hulking capital cruisers that deal out damage by the blast. This is what makes the game really similar to "SW: Empire at War." The game even has a Battle Camera option that takes away the UI and puts the player in very cinematic views of the carnage that plays out. Just like "Empire at War." Seeing a pattern?

Worrying about the large ships is a simple matter of having enough smaller ships to survive the onslaught. However, if you have your own giant vessel, you may be able to target the vital points on that ship and knock out its life support or engines to completely disable it. Just like "Empire at War." See where I'm going with this?

Now there are several huge problems with "Gemini Wars." First of all, I encountered major framerate drops during the campaign at points where it seemed like there was very little going on. And then, I played skirmishes with double the number of ships on the screen and more detail and the game ran fine. Also, the framerate drops happened at the exact same spots each time, so I don't know if it's bugs or simple programming errors slowing the game down.

When I started a skirmish, there were absolutely no asteroid resources available to me or the NPC enemy. I actually saw their scout flying about in a futile attempt to find a place to mine just as I was doing the same thing. Which is weird, because I told the game to spawn 8 asteroid fields.

Resource gathering! You either love it or hate it. You'll have to make your own decision for "Gemini Wars." If you're able to get one of the fields in the game, you're pretty likely to keep it, unless some overwhelming force comes and blows your station out of space. Solution? Multiple mines! Only problem is that the game has the same tactic.

This results in a very sci-fi Cold War standoff where each player is systematically upgrading their ships and researching while building bigger and bigger ships. This is a little silly because you need to have a military space station to increase your unit cap, and you can only build those if there is a free planet to do this at. This complicates things if there are only two planets in game. You could always tell the game to spawn multiple planets, but then you're fighting a war on multiple fronts and if you're not comfortable with that, then you're stuck.

I also found that the game can paint itself into an extremely long and arduous corner. I made a bunch of capital ships, was ready to go do battle at my enemy's base after fending off a large attack, only to find that their nearest base was literally a grid of heavy turrets and they had barely any ships left. Not only that, but the turrets alone could destroy all of my heavy cruiser capital ships.

This situation explained why I hadn't seen any more enemy ships, because the NPC had literally spent all of its resources on turrets to defend itself. I ended up quitting the skirmish and saying, "Yeah, I don't have time for that."

Here's the thing: The game is pretty to look at, the formula is there and it is really hard to screw up an RTS. Camel 101 knows this. However with the bugs I ran into, not to mention the fact that when I told my ships to go someplace and they very obviously ignored me and or would just go for a bit then turn back around to the fight, I find the game somewhat lacking.

There's some good stuff in "Gemini Wars." Targeting the vital systems of the larger ships allows you to take it out before destroying it, and if you've got a bigger ship yourself, you can send over marines to capture the vessel and take it for you own, no resources needed. Downside? The amount of time it takes to repair is absolutely mind-numbing.

You're going to want to put a lot of research into shields. Just sayin'.

It seems like the ideas were here for this game, but the execution was just off. At the Vault, we always tell you to push old formulas and make it your own. Camel 101 really did try this, and for that I applaud them.

While this is nothing new for an RTS, it still is a good try at making a system like this new with mechanics like the marines and the large map sizes. "Gemini Wars" gets a 6 out of 10. Maybe next time, folks. Keep working at it.

Halo 4 review

 

“Halo 4” is like a love letter to the Halo franchise. Almost all of the memorable parts of every mission throughout the single-player campaign brought back fond memories of previous Halo titles. The best parts of the multiplayer portion of the game are throwbacks to fan favorites from previous Halo titles. This is the Halo game that fans wanted. This is the Halo that gives players the experience they've always loved. It's the closest we can come to playing “Halo: Combat Evolved” for the first time again, but with the awesome pre-rendered cutscenes from “Halo Wars,” the impressive multiplayer from “Halo 3,” the strong, strong personal story from “Halo 3: ODST” and the (good) armor abilities from “Halo: Reach,” and it's a damned good time.

Campaign

The direct continuation of the story of Master Chief, now often referred to as John, and Cortana floating aboard the disabled aft section of the frigate Forward Unto Dawn picks up roughly four and a half years after players left the two floating through space toward a mysterious alien planet now know as Requiem.

The story this time around focuses much more on the emotional strife that Cortana and Master Chief undergo throughout their adventures, and attempts to humanize the typically silent super soldier most players have come to recognize as a sort of surrogate for their own experiences within the game world through the degradation and impending insanity of the artificial intelligence that has been at his side through the past three games.

This filling of the shell that was Master Chief by 343 Industries, the group now in charge of all things “Halo” from here on out, while more fully developing his character and his interactions with other characters within his universe, also takes away the ability for players to insert their own feelings and emotions into their vessel throughout the events of the game.

That's not to say that Master Chief is constantly voicing his emotions and opinions to Cortana, he is still a very silent protagonist, but he does ask more questions and often offers his companion some emotional support during her more violent episodes of what is referred to as AI rampancy – essentially a being like Cortana reaches the age of seven and thinks itself to death.

All this tugging of heartstrings does quite a good job of making players feel sadness for the Chief, who is losing the closest thing to a friend he's had for the duration of “Halos” one through four.

Aside from the shift in storytelling, gameplay is true to the franchise's tradition of solid, balanced first-person shooter mechanics.

Fan favorite weapons like the battle rifle, designated marksman rifle (DMR) and beam rifle return alongside the light rifle, suppressor and boltshot, which belong to a new class of weapons used by the first new enemy class in the “Halo” franchise, the Prometheans.

The Promethean Knight is the toughest of Chief's new foes.

This new enemy class includes flying Watchers, Crawlers that attack in packs and the very tough Promethean Knights, which are slightly tougher than the franchise's old standby Elites.

Watchers will actively seek out and protect and even resurrect Knights from the dead, while crawlers will group up and overwhelm players.

This teamwork from the Prometheans forces players to adapt new strategies during firefights that serve to spice up the typical formula from past games in the franchise.

Multiplayer

Competitive Multiplayer:
“Halo” multiplayer has always been what keeps fans playing for years after release, and “Halo 4” is likely to hold onto players well into the next few years.

A major new feature to multiplayer is the ability for players to create loadouts similar to the custom classes in recent “Call of Duty” games. These loadouts allow players to choose starting weapons, grenades, an armor ability and tactical package like unlimited sprinting or extra grenades.

Competitive modes like capture the flag, oddball, king of the hill and standard slayer return as well as an updated version of the fan-made zombie gametype, now called Flood mode, in which two players infected with the Flood from previous games seek and and infect players. There is also a new capture-and-defend mode called Dominion, in which players take control of bases and build shields and turrets to defend the positions for as long as possible.

Flood mode is not without faults. Team confusion and players finding ways to hide inside walls plague the game mode, making it near impossible to play at times. These kinds of things are fixable via post-release patches, but for the time being entering a game in Flood mode is hit or miss.

Dominion is the most impressive new mode in my opinion. It is very similar to king of the hill, in which teams capture and hold bases on a map for as long as possible, but with the added ability to fortify each base. Over time, players controlling a base can build one or two defense turrets and spawn in vehicles to use in battle.

Flag carriers are now armed with a magnum for self defense.

In addition to new modes, one new vehicle appears in the game: the Mantis. It is essentially a bipedal tank with a machine gun on one arm and a missile launcher on the other.

Multiplayer is scored differently this time around. Rather than winning based on total number of kills per team, players get points for performing various actions during matches.

Assisting other players get kills nets you points, which encourages teamwork more than in any other installment in the series.

The point system can frustrate in slayer matches occasionally because there are instances where the player on the winning team with the most kills doesn't come out on top because another player with less kills made provided assists and netted more points overall.

Certain game modes like slayer and SWAT allow for instant respawn, which is another first for the franchise. Instead of waiting the normal 5 to 10 seconds to respawn between deaths, players can press the X button to instantly re-enter the battle, which serves to speed up the action and the match overall. This ability unfortunately encourages some players to rush into potentially dangerous situations without proper planning, sometimes resulting in defeat of the entire team.

The instant respawn ability is only present in these few gametypes, however. So you don't have to worry about it in capture the flag or dominion gametypes.

Cooperative Multiplayer:
While players still have the opportunity to play through the main campaign cooperatively in “Halo 4,” the developers have included a weekly episodic cooperative campaign called Spartan Ops with every copy of the game so that players can get fresh content for at least ten weeks after launch.

Each episode contains a short movie telling the story of the Spartan IV soldiers aboard the human ship Infinity roughly three months after the events of the single-player campaign as well as five missions that are ideally played with a group, but are possible to play alone.

I found that playing the missions over Xbox Live is very laggy most of the time, and most players don't use microphones to communicate during missions, so I may as well have been playing alone.

Players take control of Spartan team Crimson essentially running errands for Spartan Commander Palmer, who pipes up periodically throughout missions to make fun of the scientists aboard Infinity and tell you so kill all hostiles in the area.

Spartan Ops offers weekly missions for players and their friends.

Every missions eventually breaks down to that simple objective: kill all the bad guys.

So far two episodes of the Spartan Ops missions have been released, and episode two's missions are the exactly the same levels as episode one's except they are played in reverse. I don't know is this is going to be a common trend throughout the episodic content, but I find it to be very disappointing.

If I want to play the same levels over and over again, I would. Don't try and tell me I'm getting “new” content each week and just flip over the content I already have.

The short movies included with each episode are entertaining, and the animation is stellar. Not much has been done yet in terms of character or story development, but there are still several weeks left of content, so I will reserve judgment of it until season one is finished.

Primal Carnage review

Do you like dinosaurs? Of course you do. Who doesn't? Don't answer that.

Would you like to fight dinosaurs? How about devour humans as a dinosaur. In this "Counter Strike" meets "Turok" game, you can do just that. Get ready for "Primal Carnage," available now on Steam.

Just what is "Primal Carnage," you ask? Well, it is a multiplayer game wherein two teams, dinos and humans, face off against each other in a battle to the death that would make Charles Darwin proud and the producers of "Jurassic Park" drool at the sheer brilliance.
Some of you are probably really concerned about the teams being even. I mean, I was, because honestly dinosaurs are way more powerful and deadlier than humans. At least, according to every single movie I've ever watched.

That being said, it is a fairly  balanced system. But, I'll get into that in a second after I detail the classes and teams.

What does help to balance things out is the ammo and health caches for each team spread about. Humans can find first-aid boxes or ammo crates, while the dinosaurs can feast on the various flora scattered about the map to replenish their health.

For the dinosaurs you've got your velociraptors, flying dinos, spitting dinos, charging semi-t-rex dinos, and your t-rex.

The raptors can run fast, sneak up on the enemies and their alt-fire is this awesome lunging jump that has them maul the poor victim to death.

The fliers are actually really helpful because they've got this skill that allows them to see where the enemies are if they screech while in the air. Not to mention it's pretty fun to pick up a human and drop them from the tree tops to their doom.

The spitter is handy, much like the Boomers in "Left 4 Dead." They can blind the humans, and then allow the team to converge for a feeding frenzy of awesome.

The ramming t-rex dino is pretty much the heavy for the dino team. It can crash through the human forces and go toe-to-toe with the best of them.

The t-rex itself is the equivalent of an actual tank. It lumbers about with an enormous amount of health, but has a crap turning radius and really slow speed. However, it basically does an insta-kill no matter what.

You might need a bigger gun than that...

What I was actually impressed with was the fact that the giant t-rex can't spawn unless there's a proper amount of people on the server. This means that the game actually ensures that it's a fair fight between the teams without actually giving one team the dinosaur equivalent of a nuke to trounce the other.

In the human corner, you've got your machine gunner, shotgun surgeon, pistols guy, rifle lady and flamethrower dude. Now, the alt-fires for the humans get a little varied because each is suited to do damage in their own way.

For example, the commando machine gunner can fire grenades from his gun. Trappers can actually shoot a net that traps the dinos and allows the humans to run up and kill them. It's smart actually. I found myself trapped a few times while pouncing at a human and thinking, "Damn, I had him! But, that was kinda cool."

The maps are cleverly crafted to allow both humans and dinos to hide in large shrubbery or sneak up behind each other. This means open floor plans with very little elevation, which also means a little running around aimlessly. Of course, there are roofs and walkways for humans to run up to and attempt to gun down dinos from above. But that becomes moot when the raptors can practically jump onto the roofs of low buildings and the flying dinos can swoop from above. That and the spitters have a pretty good range to get folks on buildings.

Here's a fun little design choice that I liked. When you play as a human, it's all first-person, while as dinos it's in third-person. This means, as a human, you're literally watching your back and turning around frantically to make sure that the dinos don't sneak up on you from behind. I was blindsided dozens of times by pouncing raptors. However, the rex's weight means that the screen visibly shakes when one is nearby, so you know to duck and cover.

As a dino, the flares from the pathfinder or the tranq darts from the sniper blind and disorient the whole screen so that you will actually turn away from the bright light, or run from combat as you stagger aimlessly and sluggishly until the effects wear off. Clever ways to level the playing field for both sides.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from a few problems that, while totally fixable, are very common for multiplayer slugfests like this.

Fighting without a shirt and that safari hat are actually dino-hunting musts.

The raptors are almost too fast. Even while playing as one I had a hard time not over-shooting the target from sheer movement speed with both the melee attacks and the lunges. This might also have to do with the fact that you have to be incredible precises with every weapon. Humans and dinos. I mean, like, Bethesda targeting system accurate.

I found it nearly impossible to melee a human as a dino within the first three strikes before I finally connected out of sheer frustration and luck. Meanwhile, the humans are spraying-and-praying about in the hopes of hitting the almost unbelievably speedy raptors or how-the-hell-did-I-miss-that-sized rex classes.

In the midst of all of this, it's a meat-grinder. Sure, I was on a server where people were getting upwards of 17 kills or so. But they were also dying a dozen or so times themselves, making the kill/death ratio not nearly as impressive as any other multiplayer game like this.

As a human, I found myself rushing into the fray, shooting wildly, and then respawning within three minutes to do the same, almost infinitely until the round ended. As for dinos, I felt like I'd run about, pounce on a human or pick one up, only to be shot from the sky or blown to pieces by three or four enemies.

Not to mention the de-evolution of tactics that most people seem to go through. At first, the round starts good. The dinos are weaving through the map, trying to hunt down the humans, while some of the humans try to stay in groups and others go off on their own in the hopes of trying to bag a couple kills themselves.

As the round progresses, it seems like all the humans will invariably find a corner near a weapon or health cache and stick there with flares and wait for the dinos to come into the line-of-fire. The dinos will then send spitters to blind the humans and either a rex or a rammer to break up the humans and the raptors will swarm in. Half of each team will die, and then those that respawn will go back to their positions on their teams.

People will get bored of this, some will use the respawn to try and outflank the other team, which then results in entire teams respawning from death, and the cycle to repeat itself.

The game is a hard 7, maybe a 7.5. It's fun, but it suffers from meat-grinder syndrome and there is definite room for improvement. You may not even get to play a match to find out because often times I find myself having to restart the game half an hour after one try because the game will tell me that there's no servers available. Then when it opens up again, there's like 7 or 8.

So, if you do get online and get to play with a nice 20+ person game, you'll have fun, but probably only want to play for half and hour to an hour. For the money, it's a good buy, but you really have to want to play these kinds of games to try it. If you're looking for a study in how to do things a little differently or on how to make a new spin on the "Counter Strike" formula, this is a great study tool and example. I'd check it out purely for academic purposes if I was a game developer.

I can see your house from here!

Assassin's Creed 3 review

This review is a bitter sweet situation for me because of the incredible amount of love I have for this series. "Assassin's Creed 3" was my personal most anticipated title of this year. That being said, I'm going to have to be extremely harsh with it in terms of this review because there's no way my love of the franchise could possibly overlook the glaringly obvious problems with this game.

Of course, I will be speaking on the awesomeness as well, but just know that stuff's about to get really real.

I'll try to avoid spoilers if I can.

The good news is that this game is incredible. It's written well, the story does justice to the rest of the franchise and I'll be damned if it doesn't look better than previous "Assassin's" games as well. Everything has been turned up to 11 and Ubisoft spared no expense.

Both Boston and New York are wonderfully built and lovingly re-created in a way that is both impressive and expected in this franchise. You really do get to see what 18th century living was like, and for American fans this will be a treat to see the early colonization of their country.

As is standard in the franchise, several famous historical figures make appearances throughout the game. From Benjamin Franklin to Sam Adams and George Washington, each individual plays an integral, through-provoking part in the story. Except for maybe Ben Franklin, but he's the Leonardo da Vinci of the game.

Oh, and Desmond finally gets to go someplace other than the cushioned seat of  the Animus. We travel with him to New York, Brazil and even back to Italy where he was held in the first game by the modern-day Templar organization, Abstergo.

Honestly, the scale of the game and the sheer power behind it was extremely impressive and pleasing to someone who is a fan of the franchise.

With the addition of two new protagonists, Haytham and Connor Kenway, the game also has a deeper story line that breaches more on the topics of deception and right and wrong more than any other game in the series so far.

Pull out a dollar bill to see this guy from another angle.

Connor questions the propaganda that Sam Adams and his fellow patriots put out because it is dishonest and immoral, while Adams explains that it is necessary to combat the British rule. Connor also calls out the hypocrisy of their fight for freedom when they own slaves.

Haytham attacks the ideas of the Revolution at its core, and even provides completely logical reasons for George Washington to be replaced by a more capable individual. Clearly, the creators didn't want to pull punches and really wanted to expose a lot of historical truths much like they've done in previous games.

Where combat is concerned, the game is a little more streamlined, but also a little more complex.

 While your character can string together attacks, heavy enemies need to be slowly disarmed so that they can be killed more easily.

Also, guns are still available, but they require a long reload time, so the player can't count on just blasting their way through a situation like they previously could with Ezio. However, there are multiple ways other than the use of firearms to kill those around you that are just as effective.

With the silence of the rope dart that allows Connor to hang, pull and snare his enemies, you have an additional silent weapon to accompany your bow and arrow. The hatchet replaces the knife slot that was in previous games, and the weapon wheel is customizable so you can prepare yourself for any sort of engagement beforehand.

Did we mention that there is naval combat now? That's right, you can now sail the East Coast and Caribbean Seas to thwart pirates and stop evil doers. Not only that, you can upgrade your ship as well.

Connor's got a base of operations, like Ezio did with his villa, in the form of a settlement on the frontier. By visiting all the areas in the game, you can even recruit settlers from all around to improve your own settlement and up the amount of items you can trade or make to improve your home and the surrounding area.

Now for the bad news. I'm sorry to say that this section may even be longer than the good parts of the game.

Holy crap are there clipping issues with this game. I mean, really. I understand we've not really had steeple roofs in the franchise very much, but quite often I found Connor falling through them into nothingness. Be prepared to have a frustrating time running across these rooftops as the game often glitches when trying to climb all over them.

You'll find yourself avoiding the rooftops almost entirely during this game, unless you absolutely have to use them, because honestly, they're useless when getting away from enemiese.

Thankfully, the game has provided you with shortcuts through the buildings that you can exploit. But really, it's best to just avoid getting chased. You're better off standing and fighting.

The notoriety system has become more compartmentalized, giving you four levels. Incognito, Level 1 (where enemies sorta kinda notice you), Level 2 (where they will approach you quickly), and the incredibly tough Level 3 (where you are not safe no matter what you do).

Occasionally, you'll do these awesome three-person kill combos.

Should you find a town crier, you can be reduced to Incognito if you're Level 2. A Printer for wanted posters will eliminate Level 3 and only be available at Level 3. Wanted posters only take you down a single level. This would all matter if they were easy to find or come across. Which they really aren't. So good luck with that.

Too many collectables. Seriously. The pages of Ben Franklin's almanac, or almanacs depending on how you look at it, are super hard to collect. You know why? They freaking move. Yeah, when you spot one, you have maybe 30 seconds to try and get level with the piece of floating paper so that you can catch it. I mean, I was running directly under a page for four roofs because I couldn't get high enough to pounce on the flighty parchment.

You know what else? They disappear if you don't get them within the time limit, and respawn at a later time. So you can scream and shout at the game again and again if you don't get it the first time.

As for your settlement, I really found absolutely no need to do the trading system there, or even collect the settlers. I was there so little that none of it mattered. I was honestly there more times to do the naval missions (which are awesome by the way), than I was anything else.

Get this. If you send out a trading convoy, it has the possibility of getting attacked. If you don't go to the frontier, find the convoy, and protect it, you will lose the money and inventory. I'm serious. When I got there the first time I saw about 10 armed guards and shouted at my game, "WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR IF NOT TO PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING?!"

Hunting is...pretty useless. I hunted a crap load of animals even before I got Connor to be an assassin and had 3,000 British pounds before I even had to really buy anything. The hunting, frontiersmen and brawler challenges all add spice like the Courtesan and Thieves Guild ones, but they're also just as pointless.

Again, you can recruit assassins and send them out to do missions and liberate states while training them to help you with missions. Certain assassins can be sharp shooters, brawlers and even start riots for you to cause a distraction. Too bad I never used them either. Seriously.

Oh, yeah, and remember how everyone complained about the traveling between locations in the first "Assassin's Creed" on horses and crap. Buckle up, that's back. Sure you can fast travel to certain locations, but be prepared for a five minute horse ride or a ten minute run somewhere. It's...painful.

The secondary objectives to get full synchronization range in difficulty from doable to completely asinine. It's not helped by the fact that the game itself is extremely unhelpful. Sometimes you'll do all the secondaries, and find that you don't get 100% because there's a hidden secondary of doing all of the secondaries in a single playthrough without starting over at a checkpoint. Seriously, it didn't tell me that during the mission that I had to do them all without restarting the mission to get 100%.

Sometimes the game glitches so poorly that the game won't even realize it's preventing you from continuing. The Paul Revere mission is a perfect example. During the mission, you ride with Revere to warn the patriots that the British are coming. Simple, right?

No. No it's not. Because Revere will have to follow you to each door to tell you if it's the right house. Guess what? Second time I had to do that? He just stopped telling me which house it is, so the mission would not go forward. I knew which one it was, but it wouldn't activate the door until Revere said it was the right house. We just stood in front of each door for several minutes, waiting for something that wasn't going to happen.

Those kinds of bugs will pop up every now and then. Sometimes the enemy will spawn so close a fire line will make it impossible to get to a location in the given time. Other times, things like the Revere incident will occur.

The problem with this game is that there's too much. Too many extraneous things to do.

Eliminate hunting, and no one would care. Why? Because a settler you get will hunt for you and you can sell those pelts instead. Or just limit hunting to the settlement entirely.

Eliminate the travel in the frontier. No one wants to do that.

Don't take out the naval missions, but get rid of the assassin recruits, or at least the missions for them.  Honestly, I rarely did those.

Get rid of some of the collectables, specifically the almanac pages. As the meme says, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

"Oh, let me just run right into this line of fire, no big deal."

If some of these changes were made, the game would be perfect. Unfortunately, it's not. This might be the most well written and creative of the "AC" games, but it feels like the most over-stuffed and poorly put together of them all.

I wanted to give it a 10. I really did, but I can't even give it a 9. It's a 7.5 or 8 if I'm being honest. A 9 feels too generous with the bugs and clipping that are too evident and frequent to be excusable. Especially when the bugs limit game progression. The annoyance I felt bumps it down a grade too. I've never gotten a headache when playing these games, but this "AC3" gave me one.

If you are a fan of the franchise, you need to buy this game because it's incredible. But, you will be disappointed in a lot of areas, frustrated beyond reason, and utterly furious at times. Be prepared for that, and enjoy what you can.

Hotline Miami review

Okay, so I really didn’t know what to expect from this game only having the trailer and people’s tweets to go off of, but I’ll show you the trailer and let you make your own assumptions and draw your own ideas about it, then we’ll to the review.

If that wasn’t enough to make your head tilt to the side in a sort of "Whaaaaat?" gesture, then you’re a better person than I. However, I spent the $10 on Steam and downloaded the game. It’s amazing. You can quote me on that. It. Is. Amazing.

While it may not look like much, the game is a cleverly constructed piece of top-down shooting and crazy story. You may not understand it right away, but it is just enough to keep you from going, “Is this game just killing people randomly?” If it was, there would honestly be no real lasting appeal or motivation to continue playing after you got tired of it the first time.

Fortunately for us, the game has an eerie sort of Stanley Kubrick/QuentinTarantino thing going on that is both disconcerting and incredibly hypnotic. The music is just the right kind of late 80s lazy with a creepy indie vibe to it that makes you cringe but also entranced. Honestly, the game is a cross between one of their movies and “Super Meat Boy.”

This game is not for the faint of heart.

The game expects you to die and even encourages you not to give up. I found myself not frustrated or angry when I got killed, but motivated to do better and to keep trying. It does a wonderful job of teaching you that none of the situations in the game are impossible, only that they require a solid bit of thinking.

You’re able to shoot, stab, cleave, throw, punch and crush people to death. But be warned, every shot and hit is a one-shot-kill, even to you so there’s no stand-offs and there’s no way to charge into a room guns blazing without feeling like you’ll get mowed down yourself. You have to be smart in how you tackle certain situations.

Luckily, you’re able to move the screen a bit to see what’s ahead, if only a little. But the biggest help are the masks. The main character, a nameless man who is killing all of these people at the behest of mysterious voicemails on his phone, goes to each job with a rubber-animal mask on his head.

You can unlock new masks that have different powers. Some make throwing weapons automatically lethal, others make it so that dogs don’t attack you or display certain secrets spread throughout the missions.

It’s not an overly complex game, and there’s not a lot to talk about because you truly have to experience it for yourself. It’s worth the $10 and it has a lot of replayability because at the end of each level your score is tallied and calculated off of your combinations and creativity of kills. That, and the secrets and unlockable masks are fun to get.

Yeah, this is a pretty accurate description of the game in a single frame.

This game could have been done wrong in so many ways, but it’s so good that I’m thankful to find an indie game that shows the ability to remake an old type of gameplay and make it fresh and innovative. If you haven’t played it yet, you really should. It’s only just been released, so there will be bugs, but if you have the patience and the will, you’ll really have fun with “Hotline Miami.” It's a 10/10 throwback to crazy arcade games with an interesting story to keep you going.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter review

While Electronic Arts’ franchise pre-dates “Call of Duty,” it doesn’t seem to even come close to the quality of its younger competitor anymore. “Medal of Honor Warfighter” tells you exactly what kind of game it is when you open the box and you find that the multiplayer disc is on top and the single player campaign disc is on the bottom.

Basically, that says the developers put very little work into the single-player campaign, and the multiplayer is where the game shines. Writing that statement makes my soul ache because, goodness gracious, the multiplayer is not well put together. I’ll talk about that first since that’s what EA wants you to focus on first when you buy the game.

The main menu for multiplayer? Awful, confusing, cluttered with information and downright annoying. I can’t even begin to go into detail because, honestly, I played several hours of it and didn’t even venture past just finding the Team Deathmatch option and jumping into it.

A player has a team of about five or six classes to choose from, each from a different country. The more point and kills you rack up as a class, the more you can unlock other countries and weapons. This is kind of silly since none of the countries have any sort of advantage over each other and the weapons can all be altered and customized, but none of them have more firepower than another.

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since sometimes it’ll feel like an opponent’s gun will just utterly destroy you before you even get close to killing them. I’ve unloaded entire clipsinto people and they haven’t died only to find myself shot twice at full-health and get killed.

None of this is made up for by the terrible maps, the often useless streak-perks such as mortar barrages or helicopter spawns and the utterly baffling discrepancy of the graphics from multiplayer and single player. Honestly, the textures are always behind when loading and it looks like an entirely different game at times when you play online rather than offline.

Yes, there is environmental destruction and sometimes it actually helps.

The only redeeming quality of multiplayer is the fireteam system. The game pairs you up with a partner on your team so that there are four teams of two, and by sticking with that individual you can get extra points from their kills and success and vice versa.

It’s a neat little idea about making you care about what happens to your team and working together. Honestly, it reminded me a little of “Ghost Recon: Future Soldier,” just not well done.

A friend and I played together and the saddest thing we found was that if we stayed in a single building on a couple of the maps, we could actually cover each other and camp the entire match, racking up enough points to almost be the best team for the whole game.

He said, and I quote, “This game makes me so depressed I want to just finish this can of Pringles while we play.” That about sums up multiplayer: a depressed person sitting in the dark playing “Warfighter” and eating and entire can of Pringles.

Multiplayer in a nutshell: the graphics are not as good as single player, the modes are not that enjoyable, the weapons and classes really don’t make a difference, the streak perks don’t make that much of a difference and are useless on certain maps, the maps are poorly constructed and frustrating, and none of it is made up for by the fireteam system that is only just slightly rewarding.

And now we move to single player. What’s to say about this other than it tries too hard to be a “Call of Duty” or the “Battlefield 3”-style campaign and it obviously isn’t.

The prologue mission is eerily like the ending scene in the recently made “A-Team” movie. There’s another mission that is eerily similar in beginning objectives to the gulag mission in “Modern Warfare 2” and I’ll be damned if that is the best of all the shooting missions.

I’m going to be honest here and say that the two driving missions, a chase sequence and an escape one, are the best missions in the game. Let me repeat that. TWO DRIVING MISSIONS ARE THE BEST MISSIONS IN A FIRST-PERSON-SHOOTER GAME.

Either they’re the best because they’re first person too and you really feel the urgency in each scene by looking through the car as you would normally, or just by the fact that they’re structured very well and control excellently.

Lookout! It's a bad copy of another game! Oh wait, it's us.

Other than that, the sound design is superb and the door-breaching is kind of fun, but when that’s your main check-out-how-awesome-this-game-mechanic-is thing, you’re in trouble. Especially when one of your missions is literally to fire a single shot at someone. I kid you not, the mission is literally to shoot one person and it takes about five minutes.

Also, the cutscenes are…iffy. The character models are not pretty to look at and I really don’t care about any of them, not even the main soldier characters. I’m also confused about the man who is actually structuring all of the missions himself because he’s just some guy in a room with a laptop and computer screens. Is there no structure to the army anymore or can any man with a network of intelligence agents just send special forces troops anywhere in the world?

At first, I wanted to give the game a 7 because, frankly, it is a game and it does run. However, I can’t in good conscience give it anything above a 6. Maybe a 5.5 out of 10. It’s just honestly not that good. I felt bad for spending money on it. I really did. This game is definitely something not to go out and buy right away. Wait for it to go down to $30 or something and then give it about an hour and a half’s worth of thought before you go into the local game store. And ask the clerk’s opinion as well.

From reporter to salesperson: the potential fall of games journalism

 [Ed. note: this article has been edited to remove an error of fact.]

Games journalism is a scary place to be right now.

Not in the sort of way that makes hopeful writers run away and choose a new career, but in the way that makes trained writers uneasy and question what it is they do with the words they write.

Robert Florence, a columnist for Eurogamer, wrote an editorial piece on Wednesday criticizing some of the behavior of his fellow games journalists. He noted that some bite quite regularly at the chance to win free games, consoles and other merchandise from PR representatives out of various development houses, particularly in a contest held on Twitter.

This is the image that drove Florence to voice his controversial opinion.

I must admit that I am guilty of the rush for swag at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Comic Con and other such conventions. I also accept the criticism that participating in that type of behavior brings, and have been stirred to rethink what it means to be a games journalist.

It is the duty of a journalist in any field to report the news, and in our case critique art, and remain objective above all else. Going to E3 and snagging a bunch of free lanyards and flash drives branded with “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” on them and then writing about what a great demo the game had is not a perfect example of journalistic integrity.

Sometimes it can be very difficult reporting on video games without being influenced by PR reps because those are the people that deliver information to press from developers. 

Games journalists don't call up Ken Levine or Cliff Blezinski and ask how the latest project is coming along. A public relations expert compiles the necessary information for optimum potential audience excitement, and they tell these figureheads of big games what they can and cannot say to which media outlets.

Now that the Internet has made it so simple for so many avid gamers to become freelance games journalists, and a select few have garnered enough of an audience to warrant the stream of free games and swag from PR teams, it seems to have turned into a mad dash to fluff up the most popular games in an attempt to get free stuff.

I'm just afraid that video games journalism in on its way to becoming the largest public relations effort in recent history. A branch of journalism that serves only to hype and fluff, and never to call out or criticize.

It's important for those of us writing about these games to remember that journalism is not gushing about your favorite franchise and talking trash on those games you don't like. And the ability to spell and form grammatically correct sentences is another important requirement that many seem to forget.

Let's not sell the games we love. Let's not let ourselves be used by the people helping to create them. Let's use our voices to make the medium better by saying what is true, and not what is expected.

Zynga has massive lay-offs

Yep, that's right. Zynga has again laid-off in large numbers. This time, the company has released some 100 employees, or more if the tweets about the situation are correct, and gave them 2 hours to vacate the offices of their Austin studio.

Not only that, they did this during the Apple press conference that was occurring at the same time. Many think that this was done to avoid major press coverage of the issue.

Now, is it questionable to lay-off so many employees and think that no one would notice that suddenly about 100 free agents would enter the market place? Slightly. Also, it's pretty odd to do it during a press conference that most digital and gaming media would be watching carefully.

Do we know for sure that Zynga intended to keep this on the down-low so that no one would find out? No, we do not know this for sure, nor do we want to start pointing fingers at the company and call them out for "clandestine management practices."


For all anyone knows, the company could have fully intended to make a statement about it and happily answer questions. The Vault does not know if the employees were given notice ahead of time and today was the day they were given two hours to clear out.

From the look of Twitter and many other sites who are covering the event as it happens, it does seem to be a rather unexpected move by the company that no one anticipated.

Granted, the company has been doing less than stellar since they went public some months ago, the stock not being picked up as successfully as the company hoped. This might be due to the claims that the company threatened to fire its employees who still held company stock and refused to give it up since that was their method of compensation for their work.

What is certain is that the company, like many others in the game industry, are suffering large bouts of lay-offs that are putting many out of work. Obsidian Entertainment let go much of its own workforce a few months ago. THQ even did lay-offs during one of E3.

This is not an isolated incident, but the fact that so many are rapidly and angrily posting about does merit some looking into. Should more details arise, we'll try to keep you up to date.

For those taking the gaming industry seriously as a place of employment, this is a good hard look at it right now. This is not a frequent occurrence, but you have to be prepared for every eventuality.

UPDATE: Zynga Boston has "shuttered its doors."

Resident Evil 6 Review

These two look familiar...

Zombies, zombies, & even more zombies! This is just only a fraction of what the latest iteration of the “Resident Evil” franchise throws at you in an attempt to separate you from the undead.

“Resident Evil 6” is by far the most ambitious of the whole series. Sporting not one, not two, but four different campaigns to play through, each with their own style

The question is though, with four different campaigns, is it enough content to make the game a great one?
The answer is a yes and no. The game has a lot of content to play with, but by the time you complete two of the three campaigns, you find the third stretches on and your only goal is to finish the third as quick as you can to unlock the fourth story.


That’s the only bad part of the story mode. The story itself is seen through the eyes of Leon, Chris & newcomer Jake. Leon’s story is a nod to classic “RE” games with a more horror feel to it.

Spooky!

Dark environments, few herbs, and even fewer bullets all the while there are tons of zombies trying to feast on you. Chris's story has more of an “RE5” vibe. Its straight shoot'em-up against a new type of enemy called the J'avo who can mutate any lost limbs in to new weapons.

Sadly though, this is the one story that lacks a little compared to the rest. It’s largely due to the focus on shooting but it’s still good enough to play through.

Jake's is a mix-up of both Leon’s & Chris's. Since he is Wesker’s son, there is a focus on melee combat which is easily the best melee combat in the series. His story revolves around him and Sherry being chased around the globe by Neo-Umbrella.

Ada's story is just a kind of behind the scenes to the other three characters, but it is one of the most enjoyable thanks largely to the stealth and her trusty grapple gun. Each character has a fraction of the story and playing all clears up the whole picture.

The gameplay is still reminiscent of the “RE4” and “RE5” style but with some tweaks. Players can now dodge to all sides of their own accord without needing a quick-time-event. This comes in handy now that enemies run, jump, and shoot at you in every level.

On that note QTEs are back and now there a more of them. There is almost one for everything which is nice, but can make you feel flustered having to to push them or dodge every couple of seconds.

Another addition is that the inventory system has been simplified to be able to switch to any weapon or item on the fly. Generally, everything has been streamlined to deal with fast paced action that leaves little time to just sift through your items.

Partners are now invincible and smarter than in previous games. They will actually avoid danger and come to your aid when you need it. Capcom has listened to the fans criticism after the fiasco known as Sheva. Overall the gameplay is good enough to keep you enticed throughout the game.

The graphics look okay considering they’re still running on the same engine as “RE5”. Characters do look a bit more detailed than its predecessor. At times it has kind of a glossy feel which may not mix with the zombie ooze fest, but overall it’s not too bad on the eyes.

Ada looks prepped for some serious action.

 The soundtrack is perfectly in tune with game. It helps add tension when you hear an unwound piano being slammed as you’re being overpowered by the hordes. It also varies from character to character. Leon’s has more horror type instruments playing while Jake & Chris have heavy drums and orchestra melodies to go with the action. Ada has a kind of cat-sleuth vibe to it with soft melodies. With all the differences. The music still manages to hit the right note at the right time.

All in all, “Resident Evil 6” is a good game, not the great game we were hoping for but a good game none the less. Despite the, at times, lackluster story and streamlined gun-battle segments, It is still worthy of the price tag. That’s why I have to give “Resident Evil 6” a 7/10. Now "get the hell out of here!!" (That's the most overused line in the game.)