So this is the first of many RTG weekly news articles giving you a brief rundown of what you may or may not have missed during the week.
APB
Well lets push out the bad news first and hopefully the bitter taste won’t last too long. A lot of gamers are pissed, and rightfully so. APB servers shutdown this week and chances for refunds are as real as the tooth fairy. There is a saying of sorts that goes, “For want of a nail the kingdom was lost,” or something like that. However it goes, the saying applies here in the case of Dundee studios. After the initial excitement and celebration of APB it all unfortunately started to fall apart at the seams and about their ears. Now the game is up on the chopping block, looking for a new daddy warbucks to fund the operation; but short of that, the intellectual property and rights will go up for sale and hopefully mitigate the damage to employees and their wallets and possibly save some jobs. The silver lining in all of this one of the buyers at the table is EPIC the creators of the Unreal Series and Gears, well thats just a rumor apparently. . .
Left 4 Dead 2
After a week of chasing gas cans and dodging zombies, who obviously support hydrogen power the guys and gals of Valve hit us with a whole new bag o’ hurt! This week on the mutation roster you and your fellow survivors will find Healthpackalypse. As if the zombiepocalypse was not bad enough now you can’t find any health packs to practice your first aid. Obviously self medicating is the go in any z-day scenario but Pills and needles full of funky green stuff, can only take you so far. You’ll find me and the rest of our steam group playing this one quite a bit. To round out the new mutation Valve gives us a chance to vote and weigh in on what we want to see as far as teaser for “The Sacrifice.”
Devil May Cry
And boy I’m sure Ninja Theory is doing a lot of crying. I mean no one expects these guys to get a helping hand from the previous developer or a mentor to help them along but I don’t think anyone expected the reactions thus far. Mudslinging could be a term for it but that would also be the nice way of putting it. Ninja Theory’s competence seems to be called into question as of late, and its not coming from the fans well not all of it. It comes from the creator of the series, Hideki Kamiya. I mean yeah they are playing with his favorite toy but a sour-puss routine is only going to hurt his pride and joy in the end right? Well however it works out Ninja Theory has all eyes on them. -Source
Mega Man Universe
It would seem for the last 2 or 3 weeks now every time you turn around you get blasted in the face by another Mega Man U update. This week in an exclusive with Game Informer, the MMU crew charges the blaster and lets her blow. The crew reveals more details about the game, including a homage to Mega Man 2. “So the original classic Mega Man 2 will be faithfully replicated in the Mega Man Universe style. Users will be able to play through all of them and defeat the bosses there.” That’s what I call good old fan service. Obviously the crew intends tie it all up in a nice bow of storyline that makes sense of some of the shenanigans that is this game (Ryu of street fighter included). But a lot of other points came to light such as, the idea behind adding customization to this iteration of Mega Man, as well as more comments that lead me to further believe this is a game for the fans. -Source & Full article
Phantasy Star Online
There was Blue Burst but the average North American player did not want to go through the hassle to play it. Obviously there was the free server editions that were equally tedious and lacking in fulfillment. But now a new PSO for PC is Official and confirmed via USTREAM at the TGS well . . . excuse me I messed myself again. Seriously I have been dying to get back to the series minus a Gamecube or Dreamcast and this is just exciting news! Trust that your’s truly will keep an eye out for any developments.
Blue Castle & Dead Rising
So as the trend goes; or maybe I have not been following game news close enough. Capcom has decided to gobble up Blue Castle the developer, and set it to work on Dead Rising 2. I know things are a little confusing because there is Dead Rising, then there is Dead Rising 2, but there is also Dead Rising 2 Case 0, and Case West. That is about the time when you start to wonder if Dead Rising is following its brother/cousin Resident Evil’s confusing ass naming standards. That said Blue Castle has been all over this sequel and Capcom finds them competent and they do know their zombie games so all should turn out well.
StarCraft II
Here is a friendly warning…. battle.net it ain’t just fer’ yer convenience! Battle net is a simple and easy way for Blizzard to say “stop that … oh ‘make you’ you say, well sure. Meet the ban hammer.” Oh yeah kiddies Blizzard is making it known if you hax, cheets, or show of unreal but very programmed leet skills you will get to know the Ban Hammer on a real intimate level. Oh and the Ban isn’t just for the game session or the day, the good ole’ boys at Blizz want you fucked and royally so. So they have somewhere in the terms of use agreement I am sure, reserved the right to PERMA BAN YOUR BATTLE NET ACCOUNT! Some of you may already know what this means and if you are Blizz fanboy or girl you definitely see the implication; this means your World of Warcraft account which is tied to your battle net account will also be Banned by Proxy. I suppose now I should mention this policy extends to glitches and exploits within the game as well as your conventional hacks.
SoapBishop’s SoulBox
May I have your attention please? Now I know there is tons more I could go on to inform you: the gamer, about; more mindless dribble and 3 line essays about games you don’t care about, but as a writer I must take care to bring you what I believe is important, worth my time to write, and your time to read. Now what this means is I’m going to wrap up this roundup gushing over Final Fantasy 14.
What can be said, despite the blinding blooms when going to sunlit areas, the game is beautiful, at least on my machine sporting 3 gigs of ram and a 1 gig video card. I can play the beta with settings on high and bask in the glory that is Final Fantasy. I know you have read a wall of text on the game before, but I will save your eyes the strain and break this down into bite size chunks so you can walk away wanting to play this game rather than see an optometrist .
Classes- You got your stop watch out? You ready? GO! For classes you got sorta a hierarchy that breaks down as you go, mind you more classes are expected but this is what I saw. Disciples of: War, Magic, Hand, and Land. Following that order they break down into physical combat classes, spellcasters minus a proper healer as far as I can see, crafting classes, and resource harvesting classes. Some classes to note that standout from other MMOs; still following the previous order, a monk type hand to hand class and a lancer, an elementalist need I say more, culinarians sorta like a cook, and a fully dedicated class for fishing and botany. Thats my brief rundown of the classes now a crazy thing to know going into this game is your class changes based upon the weapon you have equipped.
Leveling- Leveling comes in 2 classic forms, but with a twist, you can grind on monsters and other mobs like your normal MMO; granted you will need to be some sort of combat class or else you will find death comes swiftly. Or you can quest to level, but the twist here is that the quests themselves are geared towards particular classes meaning you can level as a fisher, or smith, or as any other crafting or harvesting class all without lifting a weapon for combat.
Fighting- Okay what I’m sure a lot of you are waiting for is the combat breakdown. Well simply put you have 2 modes weapon drawn or not. Normally when a weapons not drawn you aggro nothing however some creatures are naturally aggressive to players, but in this mode you run faster and creatures disengage after 20 seconds. Now in combat mode you slow down slightly but your weapon is drawn, you retain the freedom to move and position relative to target affects damage. Your shortcut bar pops up showing your commands, you select an attack and it will consume stamina from the stamina bar; think of it as a cool down bar. Now all moves cue up briefly, this is signified by a change in color of the stamina bar now if timed correctly you can unleash a combo without pause. However you can eat up your stamina fairly quickly as moves become more expensive.
Ease of Play- Overall the game comes off very easy to play. Sure things may get a bit fuddled as far as shortcut keys and macros go but adjusting takes maybe a hour tops? The entire game can be played without a mouse which I’m sure PS3 users will enjoy. There is a bit of hand holding in the quest, with map markers and such but it is only a bit. Exploration is recommended; the cities are huge. Final Fantasy fans, I hazard to say, will like it and MMO fans more often than not will too. But if they don’t meh I will still be playing till the servers shutdown if it comes to that. Expect a full write up the game after it comes out.
