21/09/2012 - Darkfall: Unholy Wars Release Date Announced!

Addict of Fiction: [Post]

The release date and the overall announcement for Darkfall: Unholy Wars has snuck up on everyone! The remake of the original Darkfall Online will be available to play from 20^th November 2012, with a box price of $29.99/€29.99 and a monthly subscription.

Although the original Darkfall Online also had a subscription, with the recent release of Guild Wars 2 – will this change their views on pricing? But trying to compare Darkfall to GW2 is totally wrong in my books, in my opinion I’d put both games in totally different leagues although they are both fantasy MMOs. I would link in Darkfall more closely to games such as EVE Online due to internal content governed mainly by the players.

Not a lot of information has been released about the new Darkfall: Unholy Wars, but if it is going to be like the developers describe it in the video above it’s going to definitely be a great game. The original community is fully behind the game providing comments and feedback which the devs are listening to help them create the perfect game for what the players want.

Darkfall: Unholy Wars is a largely PvP focused game especially with the full loot feature which makes “you keep what you kill” litteral, with players being able to loot all items from the enemies which they kill – and vice versa. I hope that features such as player created cities and participating in large PvP battles and sieges will be one of the features that bring in new players to test the game. I’ll definitely want to try everything out!

A large number of awesome screenshots can be found below.

You can sign up for future news about Darkfall: Unholy Wars here: [Link]

Thanks for listening!

Toodles x

18/09/2012 - Ecolibrium: PSVita Ecosystem Simulation Goodness!

Addict of Fiction: [Post]

Before I get into details some people just want to know this simple information: It’s FREE and includes TROPHIES!

Ecolibrium has been recently added to our PSVita stores this week as the next in the series of Discovery Apps to be added to the system, the first being the weird and *slightly annoying* Frobisher Says!

Like all games it is somewhat advised to run through the tutorials first, this is one of those games that I would highly recommend starting with the tutorials before jumping into any challenges. Once you get used to how the game plays and the whole idea of creating a thriving ecosystem.

So like I’ve mentioned above, this is a real-time ecosystem simulator – so the general aim of the game is to create a successful ecosystem. Ecosystems with a greater equilibrium and a more diverse biodiversity earns your more Ecopoints per hour, I’ll mention more about where you can spend these later on.

Starting with the basics of creating an ecosystem within Ecolibrium you need to pay attention to numbers! Yay! Everyone loves numbers right?! For example, you need to plant trees for vegitation for herbivores to eat – but trees uses up moisture and minerals so you have to plant other specialist plants and fungi to make up for this loss. Sounds pretty simple right? Now you have species with a tiered food chain system, reproduction, hunting for food, and adaptation to creative alphas of the pack/heard/etc. Am I allowed to also mention the 15 day 4 seasons cycle and the possible natural disasters that have the chance of occuring? It may sound initially pretty easy, but as a long term basis keeping your ecosystem alive and happy could be a lot harder ideal to maintain.

Ecolibrium provides a number of different modes you can experience the game in. Free mode Ecosystems gives you the classic unlimited game time for you to create an evolve your perfect ecosystem – there are a few free mode maps scattered across the globe with extras costing Ecopoints (the ingame currency). Like free mode Ecosystems there are Challenge ecosystems across the globe as well. These have timed objectives and once completed give rewards such as extra Ecopoints and access to new species. Finally there is an Online Challenge mode! This is similar to the normal Challenge mode but your up against the world and only the top 100 competitors are rewarded with a prize.

Ecopoints! You’ve acquired a vast amount but what can you do with them? Well you can purchase extra Ecosystem areas to help you gain the currency more quickly; or use them to purchase species/plants-fungi/or artefacts from the in-game auction house. The auction house uses the Ecopoints currency only, however there is an in-game real money shop available for those whom wish to purchase game boxes – for a chance of retrieving new species and artefacts.

There are also LEADER BOARDS! Everyone loves a good vanity boost! You can check your Ecopoints score against either your friends, your Country, or the World! Facebook integration is also an added option so you can share any images you take in-game.

Here’s the official trailer for Ecolibrium – so check it out!

Thanks for listening!
Toodles x

17/09/2012 - DevSoc: Uni Jam 2012

One of the biggest events in my university calendar this year is the Uni Jam 2012, hosted by DevSoc of Nottingham Trent University! This is the first inter-university 24 hour game jam competition that we have personally hosted and so far planning and support has been through the roof!

We are inviting Computer Science/Computing/Computer Games Programming students all to join us at this event to show us and other universities how good you, your team, and your university actually is!

DevSoc really need some good challengers! We have won at Birmingham Global Game Jam for multiple years running and now we want to find others that can better us!

If we haven't contacted your university and you believe that this competition is perfect for you - please send them this poster and hopefully you'll in with a chance of beating the home team.

You must remember that this is a first come - first served event and you would have to register you team on our official Uni Jam 2012 site. [I will add these links at the bottom of the post].

As you can see from our poster above we have an amazing TEN sponsors for the event! Thanks to these sponsors we are able to fund the whole event and have an amazing line up of prizes to give out!
The prizes range from a numerous amount of SDK software, Xbox Kinects, a multitude of games (including: game bundles from Indie Royale, and Sniper Elite V2, etc), plus much much more!
The prizes will be awarded as part of one of these 5 categories:

• Innovation
• Gameplay
• Accessibility
• Graphics
• Best Windows Phone/Windows 8 game

For more information about the whole event and to register individually (where we'll find you a team) or as a team, visit us here: [Link]

You can also find us on twitter: @DevSoc

Thanks for listening!

Toodles x

15/09/2012 - Blade & Soul is coming to the West!

Addict of Fiction: [Post]

NCsoft have finally released the official Blade & Soul website for NA and EU users and the new trailer they have released with it looks truly amazing!

For the best part of everyone I know and a large population of the internet – they would have never heard of Blade & Soul. To be honest I only found out after my time playing Tera when a lot of people on the forums were saying that this was the main game they were waiting for – so I started following the Korean version. The Korean version released earlier this year, so it was only a matter of time before NCsoft started bring out news about NA/EU release news – and this is the first step!

As a quick overview of the game, it’s not your classic ‘fantasy’ MMO – it’s a pretty awesome martial-arts MMO which is based on Asian cultures and myths. I don’t really remember any ‘major’ MMO that has come over to the Western market that has this theme – so it could pick up a really big audience, or sadly fade into the crowd.
The game features 4 races, which includes a female only race and a cute ‘chibi-like’ race with a variety of animal ears and tails. Along with that there are 6 classes, but like many Asian MMOs these classes are bound to the races – such as: the Lyn can only be either a Summoner or a Force Master, and the Gon can only be a Kung Fu Master or a Destroyer.

It’s not just the combat that looks truly amazing, the artwork for the game is so perfectly suiting. If your familiar with the Magna Carta games and recognise the art style then you will be pleased to know that Hyung-Tae Kim has moved on to Blade & Soul as the game’s art director.

An interesting question which I found in the FAQs asking whether the game will have a subscription fee or a micro-transaction model – in a nutshell they said that they wished to evaluate what the Western market really wanted first before creating a set business model. Currently the Korean version of the game has released with a subscription pay to play model (KRW 23,000 per month – which is equivalent to *nearly* £13 per month).
Will Blade & Soul be pay to play in the NA and EU market? I speculate not due to the recent release of Guild Wars 2, and that they won’t gain many players willing to pay a subscription come next year. In my opinion they’ll succeed more with a simple micro-transaction market filled with vanity items – everyone loves vanity items!

The Official NA/EU website can be found here: [Link]

Thanks for listening!
Toodles x

14/09/2012 - GW2: Did GW2 really need an official launch trailer?

Addict of Fiction: [Post]

Okay, so this is a possibly a little late to share my views on the launch trailer which ArenaNet released for Guild Wars 2, but I shall do it anyway. Have you watched it? If not – take a peak now:

In a nutshell the general consensus of it is “Eh?” and “Well that was rubbish”. It is true that every company suffers a flop every now and then, and this is ArenaNet’s first one. You can try and see that they were attempting to show live-action metaphors about the game – but did anyone actually understand what on Earth they were trying to get at?

My attempts at deducting the ‘Morse-code’ set of metaphors left me at these ideas at which they might have been aiming for:

1. While we were creating Guild Wars 2 many other games were being released/dominating the market and we were unable to do anything because we weren’t ready.
2. Now that we are ready and on the market, it’s time for us to show our dominance. “Our Time Is Now”. *Hot gamer chick*
3.  Joining us is like walking on hot coals?
4. To be immersed within our game: living room underwater.
5. Everything else should be obvious – Hot woman turns into a Norn and it’s the actual GAME!

So yeah… after watching the trailer a few times it looks more like an advert for The Secret World than it does for Guild Wars 2. Would you have expected the director of the Matrix Trilogy and V for Vendetta, James McTeigue, to have created such a flop for this game? I can imagine that the initial pitch sounded pretty amazing – live action with a woman turning into her in-game character. But sometimes… Once you actually put pen to paper to actually create these great ideas, they don’t always turn out the way you initially hoped.

Oh! Oh! Ohh! Did you noticed the gigantic SPOILER at the end of the video? What a depressing way to end an awful launch trailer. Yes, the dragon at the end is the infamous Zhaitan in all his Elder Dragon glory. Many players have yet to reach and meet Zhaitan in-game, and he is one of the main focuses of your story quest-line with your aim ‘to defeat him’ when you reach level 80. I guess this was one of the main things that personally upset me… I’m SOO close to finishing the story-line and ArenaNet just shoves him in my face and ruins my personal discovery.

But in the end that is just my little rant. The actual game is really amazing to play and although you get some really weird people that troll “Oh this launch trailer makes me like Guild Wars 2 less”, it really doesn’t. Someone should just run round the game and record 5minutes of it in action with “THIS GAME IS REALLY AWESOME!” at the end and it’ll be so much better than the official one above. Showing the game in all its glory is all that Guild Wars 2 needed in a launch trailer, but experiencing the game first hand is always a much better judge of character.

Thanks for listening!
Toodles x