E3 2012: Runes of Magic: Fires of Shadowforge

Runes of Magic is back with Chapter V of their fantasy saga.  What once started with just humans, added a bit of elven flavor, and now is adding the fan desired dwarves to the mix.  Chapter V is the Fires of Shadowforge and you’ll be able to play it as soon as next week; June 12th to be exact.  These dwarves delved in some demonic magic centuries ago and have now paid for it.  Modern archaeologists have reawakened this ancient race thus introducing them as a playable race in Runes of Magic.  How will the world of RoN react to the remerging beings from deep within the planet?  

With the fantasy genre’s stout bearded friends, come two exclusive classes for dwarves only.  The ‘Champion’ is a melee class which can specialize as a tank or DPS role.  Their melee attacks use magic to bolster their prowess and to defeat their opponents.  The Champion also has the unique ability to turn into a robot for when they need to take on that absolutely tanky role.  The ‘warlock’ is a range class which specializes in both DPS and support roles.  The attacks of this class are based off soul magic attacks.  Dwarves are also able to play other classes that are not race specific.

The new content in Fires of Shadowforge includes the dwarf race (males only), two new player classes, a brand new starting zone, and a dwarf exclusive instance at the end of their starting zone: Taffrock Southern District.  Once this zone is completed you can join your other friends online in the above world of RoM.  While underground though, you can explore the mystical forest like cavers, cliff sides, and the dwarven homelands.

I got the opportunity to try out a dwarven warlock to get a feel of what to expect in Fires of Shadowforge.  I was only able to play through a few quests in my limited time, but both the game and warlock had a smooth feel to them.  Starting out, the warlock had a single target attack spell to start with and single target weakening curse to cast on foes.  The environment truly gave a feel of being hundreds of feet underground and the architecture gave the stone surroundings a truly fantasy dwarven look.

The great aspect of Runes of Magic is that it is a completely free to play MMORPG.  Through downloading the client from the RoN website the game can be yours in just a short while and you will never be asked to pay a monthly fee.  What, that’s not easy enough for you?  Fine.  Runes of Magic and all the chapters, including Fires of Shadowforge, can be played on any PC web browser.  So if you play at home, your laptop, work computer, friend’s house, etc, all of your characters can be found where ever you log in at.  It doesn’t get any easier than that.  Check out today if you haven’t already and prepare for the introduction of the dwarves.

Source : gamezone[dot]com

E3 2012: BandFuse: Rock Legends Preview

Anyone who wants to work in the gaming business must be passionate -- I think that goes without saying. Still, it's a breath of fresh air when you receive a demo or interview from someone who knows how to show their enthusiasm and project that excitement onto others. Jon Heiner, game director at Realta, is an example of a developer who knows how to make you believe. At E3, I had the chance to talk to him about his first gaming project, BandFuse: Rock Legends.


BandFuse, much like Ubisoft's Rocksmith, is a rhythm game that features a full guitar experience as opposed to the 5-button experience typically associated with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. It currently supports guitar, bass, and vocals, although they were primarily showing off guitar at the show. Realta hopes to differentiate BandFuse from the competition through authenticity. They claim their technology offers a zero latency experience and the use of tablature, guitar's equivalent to sheet music, instead of exploding gems will teach BandFuse players how to read any guitar magazine or lesson book. By the sound of it, Realta has a no compromises approach to creating their guitar experience.

Despite being new to the scene, Realta pulled in a growing list of names from the rock industry to assist them in development. Slash, Zakk Wyld, and Nancy Wilson are already tied to the project, and there's no telling if there will be more to come. Bringing so many musicians on board gives Realta the ability to create perfect to near perfect tabs of the songs. "This is how the part is played." Jon Heiner told me, in reference to Slash's song Back From Cali. "I know this, because I asked Slash." It sounded like the legends would also play a role in teaching the player guitar techniques, telling rock stories, and motivating the player to keep picking up his or her instrument. The legends are integrated into the experience and aren't just names on the box to sell copies. 

Realta has also courted favor from John Nady, developer of a wide array of wireless music technology. For BandFuse, Nady has developed the guitar cable that ships with every copy of the game and an acoustic guitar attachment to allow players to use their acoustic guitars in the game. That's right. For the first time in a game, songs like Drive by Incubus can be played using the proper type of guitar. Unfortunately, since they use their game is designed around their technology, Rocksmith's guitar cable has too much latency to be usable in BandFuse. Jon also showed me an audio adapter that will ship with their game that allows the player to plug a pair of headphones directly into the Xbox. There's a surprising amount of tech being developed for BandFuse; all in the effort to allow players to play how they want.

Realta wants BandFuse to be more than just a personal journey; they want it to be a social experience. Every time you play a song in BandFuse, your performance is recorded. Afterward, you can upload that recording to their BandFuse cloud and share it with friends or even ask someone to record a backing track to combine with your leads. They were not showing any of the social aspects of BandFuse at E3, but Jon described it as one of the three major pillars supporting their game. The ability to share is woven into the fabric of BandFuse, but we'll have to wait to see how it all plays out. 

Any good guitarists knows you don't become great without practice. BandFuse's practice options were not finalized by my E3 appointment, but they understand how crucial practice can be to an experienced player. They know they want to make practicing simple, fun, and worthwhile. Realta also plans to build tutorials to help players learn and get better at guitar. Jon told me they want to "Game-ify guitar practice," and they may be on their way to accomplishing just that.

After my interview with Jon, I strapped on one of the guitars and tried out some of the tracks. I played through Reptilia by The Strokes and Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5 on two of the intermediate difficulties and had varying experiences. Multipliers in the thirties and fourties were not uncommon during Reptilia, but I couldn't even break ten in Harder to Breathe. It was hard to tell if the difference in score was because of the software, an out of tune guitar, or just my mediocre guitar playing. E3 is not the best venue to test a game with so many things that could go wrong. I will say the scoring system is more strict than Rocksmith, but not as restrictive as Rock Band 3's pro guitar. You still have the freedom to play what you want during guitar breaks, and you are never punished for not playing what's in the tablature. Your multiplier will slowly decrease if you aren't playing the notes as they are shown, but you will never fail out of a song. 

I had low expectations walking into BandFuse. Rhythm gaming has gone through a lot of turbulence the past few years, and I'm incredibly skeptical of new IPs in the genre. Rocksmith felt like a lucky strike, but BandFuse may solidify this as a trend. Rhythm gaming could be reborn with a focus on learning and playing real instruments. Based on what I saw at E3, could easily lead that charge.

Source : gamezone[dot]com

Mad Men: "The Phantom" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the Mad Men: Season 5 finale follow.

On the heels of a couple of standout and notably “big” episodes, the Man Men season finale was… decent. By this show’s rather remarkably high standards it was a good but not great episode that seemed a bit meandering, especially given it was the finale.

In a season where much bigger and more "TV"-type plot turns than were previously the norm have become more standard, Beth’s shock therapy (and related memory loss) seemed a bit too much. Perhaps because, unlike some of the other noteworthy events this season (Roger’s LSD trip, Joan prostituting herself, Lane’s suicide), it centered on a character, Beth, who doesn't feel fully fleshed out, nor someone we’re likely to spend significant time with in the aftermath of this event - if we even see her again at all. And as a vehicle for Pete to make some big realizations about his own unhappiness, it just felt so extreme. Not to mention, Pete’s language in his final scene with Beth, as he spoke about himself -- “Life with his family was some temporary bandage on a permanent wound” -- just felt too self-aware and "scripted" in a manner Mad Men usually avoids.

Also, Pete’s whole encounter with that train conductor just felt very odd and off, from the way the conductor insisted Pete apologize to Howard, to Pete ultimately getting punched again. The Lane/Pete fight (and Pete getting knocked down) was a great moment this season, but this echo of that scene felt a little forced.

I am curious about Trudy giving Pete permission to get the Manhattan apartment he’d been asking for. In the wake of his self-realization, will he take it just to give himself some alone time? Will he continue to cheat with other woman, even though he knows why he’s doing it?

Some Mad Men fans have accused Megan of being written as too perfect this season, though I never really had an issue with her – not to mention Peggy had specific dialogue about Megan being someone who was good at most everything, so it’s not like Matt Weiner was unaware of how she might come off. Regardless, it was very interesting to see her basically backstab her friend Emily in the finale and ask Don if she, and not Emily, could audition for a commercial SCDP were connected to. And I certainly felt bad for Megan, as we saw more of the casually insulting way her mother Marie could be with her and about her, making her feel even more driven to succeed, with the visiting Marie under her roof, watching and judging.

Don’s decision to ultimately put Megan in that commercial seemed motivated by a lot of different things – seeing how upset a drunken Megan was, seeing how cruel Marie could be, and then his run-in with Peggy at the movies. Though his words to Peggy – “That’s what happens when you help someone. They succeed and move on” – seem ominous, given he then did help Megan so directly with her career.

Which of course set up that very evocative final moment, where a gal hits on Don, and we don’t see how he’ll respond – but get the idea that yeah, the old, cheating Don may be back, which is sad to see, if not shocking. But who knows, maybe Don will surprise us next season. Yeah, probably not...

I was pleasantly surprised to see Peggy in the finale. I never believed we wouldn’t see her again, but thought she might not appear until next season. But we see that things are going pleasantly for her at her new job – even with that rather random moment of her seeing two dogs having sex at the end. That was another "huh..." moment in the finale for me rather than the usual impact this show is so capable of.

I was glad to see Lane’s suicide weighing heavily on the finale, with many characters directly bringing it up. The scene where Don went to pay Rebecca back for the $50,000 Lane put into the company was a sad one, as she rejected any attempt Don made at condolences, while also insulting Lane in the process when she said, “You had no right to fill a man like that with ambition.” And her discovery of the photo Lane kept from that wallet he found (of a woman he never actually met) was a nice echo of that sad segment of Lane’s sad life.

When I first wrote my review of last week’s episode, I had completely blanked on the fact that Don’s half-brother, Adam, had hung himself – and that Lane’s suicide by the same method would have an extra impact as a result. But this week, that fact came into play in a major way, with Don seeing visions of Adam, who ultimately taunted him with, “It’s not your tooth that’s rotten.” Rather on the nose, but still, it makes sense that Don would feel very haunted by his past at this point, as he just had a horrible echo with Lane of a terrible part of his past.

Again, it was a decent episode. We had some nice character pieces. (Ah, poor Roger, trying to get Marie to do LSD with him to connect – and then doing it by himself when she turned him down). But it didn’t really add up to a super-compelling whole, like most Mad Men episodes do. Even the portions dealing with the company’s growing success and their move into bigger offices weren’t quite given enough of a spotlight to take hold.

It's not the end of the world though, or this show's awesomeness. The finale wasn't all it could have been, but as we've seen several times this season, Mad Men still has "it" and then some.



Source : ign[dot]com

E3 2012: The Cave Preview

While getting my tour of the SEGA booth, I was asked if I wanted to make an appointment to see a game called The Cave. I had never heard of the game, and my attempts to figure it out based on the logo were in vain. I knew it was appointment only, and that was all. Feeling adventurous, I accepted his offer without inquiring further. If it’s worth shutting a door for, it may be worth going in totally cold. At the appointment, a line of text in the trailer caught me up on what I had missed – “The Cave: An Adventure Game by Ron Gilbert and Double Fine.” Oh. Suddenly, I was very excited. 

Before reaching a character select screen, we were introduced to the primary voice of the game – the voice of the cave itself. The smooth talking cavern serves as a narrator for the stories of the characters within The Cave, leading me draw comparisons to Supergiant Games’ initial release, Bastion. One might think an alluring voice is unfitting for a dark, scary settling like a cave, but how else is it supposed to combat loneliness?

The Cave is home to a varied cast of characters destined for adventure. A hillbilly, a time traveler, and even a pair of evil twins make up part of the 7-character roster, but only 3 characters can be taken through the cave at once. The puzzles we saw in the demo focused on switching between the 3 characters similar to Frozenbyte’s platformer, Trine. Unlike Trine, The Cave seemed focused on pure puzzle solving instead of enemies or boss fights. There was no combat in the demo we saw. 

For our tour of The Cave, we were shown the hillbilly, the scientist, and the knight. The first puzzle required the player to dispose of a dragon blocking the characters’ path. He has a nasty habit of turning them into a pile of ash whenever they approached. I will avoid giving away solutions to the puzzles we saw because I believe part of the fun of adventure games is discovery, but I will say that it involved a hot dog coming out of a vending machine. Why would that be in an ancient, mystical cave? I think the only answer is a simple “why not?”

   

The second half of our demo saw the Knight trying to court a princess he found deep in the cave. He is seeking the amulet she holds, and he develops a foolproof plan to woo her with a piece of valuable treasure. Once she is smitten with the knight, she’ll surely hand the amulet over to him. Whether the princess is that material of a girl, we’re not sure. The knight is probably too dimwitted to realize if she is not. 

Unfortunately for the knight, the treasure is guarded by another dragon. Apparently the cave has a thing for dragons, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. For this puzzle, we are introduced to the knight’s special ability, guardian angel. This skill allows the knight to fall long distances and generally be invincible for a short period of time. Using this, the knight is able to distract the dragon long enough for another character to swipe the gold it protects. Each character has a unique ability just like the knight, and I imagine the skills will be most useful during character themed areas of the cave.

Despite the heritage of adventure games, The Cave doesn’t feature a robust inventory system. Each character can hold only one item at a time; that’s it. There’s no digging through menus to find which item you need to use in a specific moment. The item selection should be relatively obvious, although how to use it may be elusive. 

The Cave appears to have everything I love about adventure games wrapped in a fun, accessible package. Character stories, tricky puzzles, and a strong sense of humor make it one of my favorite games at E3 2012 and easily my biggest surprise. Story and comedy in games has been a strong pillar for Double Fine and Ron Gilbert, so I have faith they will deliver when releases early 2013.

Source : gamezone[dot]com

E3 2012: Hybrid hands-on

Developer 5th Cell is widely known for its Scribblenauts series, which pushes players to be inventive and creative. This style of game has managed to make 5th Cell not just a game developer, but a creator of experiences that are fresh and unique. So when you think about the fact that the studio is currently working on a third-person shooter called Hybrid, you just know it's going to be something completely different from that brown-and-gray breed of bro shooters. After spending some time playing the demo for Hybrid at E3, I can certainly confirm that that's the case.


Hybrid is an online shooter that features three-on-three match types, and it's a very fast-paced game throughout. Regardless of what mode you're playing, 5th Cell has made it a point to emphasize that even despite the cover-based mechanics, gameplay will be a delightfully hectic experience.

Rather than running around a huge field and taking cover behind massive walls and piles of debris, Hybrid requires you to move around arenas by jumping and hovering between platforms by pressing the A button. If you're looking for cover across a large gap, your aiming reticle will turn into a large dot, indicating that there's an area for you to jump to for cover. If you start to hover toward a platform and need to retreat while in the air, you can do so by pressing the B button. It's a simple formula that really works, and it keeps the action flowing smoothly and quickly.

In Hybrid, you're constantly on the move. Though you employ cover-based tactics, it's important to jump around the map, because you never know when you're going to be blindsided. Acquiring kill streak points grants you access to special drones that you can deploy to help you in battle. Likewise, any of your enemies can also utilize drones, so you need to stay moving to avoid the possibility of one of those suckers sneaking up on you. Drones are fully destructible, so if you spot one, you should definitely take it out.

There are three types of drones in Hybrid. Stalker drones follow you around and provide you with some extra firepower. The Warbringer is a larger drone that flies around, is heavily armored, and deals great damage. Last is the Preyon, a super powerful drone that zones in and attacks its target relentlessly like a heat-seeking missile. These drones really added to my action-packed session with Hybrid, enhancing the experience and giving me a leg up when I needed it. I also found myself on the receiving end of enemy drone attacks, which hurt my ego just a bit.

While gameplay options such as capture the flag variants and most headshot missions all add variety to Hybrid, it's the global domination aspect that will likely keep players completely hooked for a long time. The game features an overlying theme of conflict between two groups: the Variants and the Paladins. The two groups are fighting for a resource known as Dark Matter, and upon beginning the game, you'll get to join a side. You can battle to take over different continents, and the game keeps track of how much territory each team has taken control of. It's a greatly competitive and compelling feature that will allow for some intense competition, one-upsmanship, and team pride.

While specific launch and pricing details were under wraps at the time of my session with Hybrid, producer Caleb Arseneaux let me know that the game would launch sometime this summer as part of Microsoft's Xbox Live Summer of Arcade promotion, sporting a cost that's in line with other Xbox Live Arcade titles. If you're a shooter fan and you're looking for something new to play, keep an eye on this one. Likewise, if you're not really into shooters, Hybrid could still be for you. I don't fancy myself a big shooter buff, yet I still cannot wait to join the fight between the Variants and the Paladins. I'll see you on Xbox Live. Ain't no one taking my Dark Matter!

Source : gamezone[dot]com