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http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:57:08 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/winning-bid-on-super-rare-nes-game-is-99-902/1100-6417342/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2425064-3578770730-24241.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2425064" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2425064-3578770730-24241.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2425064"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1535/15354745/2425064-3578770730-24241.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">$99,902 is the winning bid on the extremely rare NES game <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/nintendo-world-championships-1990/" data-ref-id="false">Nintendo World Championships</a> that was auctioned off on eBay today.</p><p style="">Historically, that is an extremely high price for this item. For comparison, In 2011 another copy of the Nintendo World Championships fetched $11,000 on eBay, and that version was in much better condition.</p><p style="">This could very well be a fake bid, which are common on eBay. However, while the winning bidder's identity is kept confidential, a limited view of his eBay history shows that he has made 16 bids within the last 30 days on a total of nine items. The bidder also has a 100 percent positive feedback score of 775. Interestingly, the buyer was the first and last to bid on the item.</p><p style="">Finally, there is always the possibility that the entire auction is fake to begin with.</p><p style="">If this is a legitimate sale, the media attention around the auction significantly raised the value of the item. The auction was covered on all the games and technology websites you'd expect, as well as mainstream publications like the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25878678" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">BBC</a>.</p><p style="">As we reported when we first noticed the auction, only 116 copies of <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/nintendo-world-championships-1990/" data-ref-id="false">Nintendo World Championships</a> were manufactured and were distributed in 1990 only to winners of a special competition. The game is considered one of the rarest and most valuable NES games in existence.</p> Sat, 25 Jan 2014 17:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/winning-bid-on-super-rare-nes-game-is-99-902/1100-6417342/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/top-5-skyrim-mods-of-the-week-top-immersion-mods/2300-6416949/ Join Kevin VanNord as he forages for his very life, across the Skyrim wilderness in an immersion-themed episode of Top 5 Skyrim Mods of the Week. Also he drinks too much mead. Sat, 25 Jan 2014 12:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/top-5-skyrim-mods-of-the-week-top-immersion-mods/2300-6416949/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/ <p style="">You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might &amp; Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.</p><p style="">Noting that M&amp;MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&amp;M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&amp;D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might &amp; Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&amp;MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&amp;M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>The M&amp;MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.</figcaption></figure><p style="">And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.</p><blockquote data-align="right" data-size="large"><p style="">It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.</p></blockquote><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Battles in M&amp;MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&amp;MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.</p><p style="">Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&amp;MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.</p></blockquote><p style="">In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.</figcaption></figure><p style="">M&amp;MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.</p><p style="">How dated M&amp;MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.</p><p style="">Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.</p><p style="">Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:01:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:57:08 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/winning-bid-on-super-rare-nes-game-is-99-902/1100-6417342/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2425064-3578770730-24241.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2425064" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2425064-3578770730-24241.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2425064"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1535/15354745/2425064-3578770730-24241.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">$99,902 is the winning bid on the extremely rare NES game <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/nintendo-world-championships-1990/" data-ref-id="false">Nintendo World Championships</a> that was auctioned off on eBay today.</p><p style="">Historically, that is an extremely high price for this item. For comparison, In 2011 another copy of the Nintendo World Championships fetched $11,000 on eBay, and that version was in much better condition.</p><p style="">This could very well be a fake bid, which are common on eBay. However, while the winning bidder's identity is kept confidential, a limited view of his eBay history shows that he has made 16 bids within the last 30 days on a total of nine items. The bidder also has a 100 percent positive feedback score of 775. Interestingly, the buyer was the first and last to bid on the item.</p><p style="">Finally, there is always the possibility that the entire auction is fake to begin with.</p><p style="">If this is a legitimate sale, the media attention around the auction significantly raised the value of the item. The auction was covered on all the games and technology websites you'd expect, as well as mainstream publications like the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25878678" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">BBC</a>.</p><p style="">As we reported when we first noticed the auction, only 116 copies of <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/nintendo-world-championships-1990/" data-ref-id="false">Nintendo World Championships</a> were manufactured and were distributed in 1990 only to winners of a special competition. The game is considered one of the rarest and most valuable NES games in existence.</p> Sat, 25 Jan 2014 17:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/winning-bid-on-super-rare-nes-game-is-99-902/1100-6417342/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/top-5-skyrim-mods-of-the-week-top-immersion-mods/2300-6416949/ Join Kevin VanNord as he forages for his very life, across the Skyrim wilderness in an immersion-themed episode of Top 5 Skyrim Mods of the Week. Also he drinks too much mead. Sat, 25 Jan 2014 12:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/top-5-skyrim-mods-of-the-week-top-immersion-mods/2300-6416949/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/ <p style="">You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might &amp; Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.</p><p style="">Noting that M&amp;MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&amp;M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&amp;D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might &amp; Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&amp;MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&amp;M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>The M&amp;MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.</figcaption></figure><p style="">And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.</p><blockquote data-align="right" data-size="large"><p style="">It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.</p></blockquote><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Battles in M&amp;MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&amp;MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.</p><p style="">Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&amp;MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.</p></blockquote><p style="">In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.</figcaption></figure><p style="">M&amp;MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.</p><p style="">How dated M&amp;MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.</p><p style="">Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.</p><p style="">Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:01:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/

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http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Fri, 24 Jan 2014 21:56:37 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/league-of-legends-revenues-for-2013-total-624-million-update/1100-6417224/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2421277-6424573982-23871.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2421277" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2421277-6424573982-23871.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2421277"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1535/15354745/2421277-6424573982-23871.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Following the publication of this story, a representative from Nexon reached out to clarify that their game, Dungeon&amp;Fighter "surpassed the number one game, Crossfire, by a significant amount."</p><p style="">Although they're unable to provide specific revenue figures due to a contract with Tencent, the Nexon representative wrote, "If you were to take the figure stated in the Superdata report as net revenue and apply the industry standard 30% revenue share to the developer (as stated on page 25 of Deutsche Bank analyst Hanjoon Kim's July 1, 2013 report), that would make the gross revenue for Dungeon&amp;Fighter $1.4bn, exceeding Crossfire by over $450 million. While these are not our internal figures, I believe that this gives a good indication of the size of Dungeon&amp;Fighter."</p><p style=""><em>The original story appears below</em></p><p style="">League of Legends' revenues for 2013 totaled $624 million, making it the second top free-to-play game in terms of earnings, a report from <a href="http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/us-digital-games-market/" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">SuperData</a> reveals.</p><p style="">Coming in at the number one spot is CrossFire, a South Korean free-to-play first-person shooter which brought in $957 million in revenues during 2013. Tencent, which owns a majority stake in League of Legends developer Riot Games, publishes CrossFire as well.</p><p style="">Valve rounded out the top 10 list with Counter-Strike Online, which brought in $121 million, and Team Fortress 2 at the number nine spot bringing in $139 million.</p><p style="">Electronic Art's Star Wars: The Old Republic, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-the-old-republic-free-to-play-nov-15/1100-6399697/" data-ref-id="1100-6399697">which added a free-to-play option in 2012</a>, took the number eight spot with a little more than Team Fortress 2, and less than Blizzard's World of Warcraft, which generated $213 in microtransactions alone (not counting subscription fees).</p><p style="">Last week we also reported that <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-studio-beefing-up-its-microtransaction-efforts/1100-6417150/" data-ref-id="1100-6417150">Blizzard was beefing up its microtransaction efforts in World of Warcraft</a>, when it posted a pair of new jobs on its "Strategic Initiatives" team, calling for a <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=13000IU" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">director</a> and <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=13000IT" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">manager</a> for the company's new "Microtransaction Strategy" unit.</p><p style="">World of Tanks was fourth on the list with $372 million.</p><p style="">Overall, the digital games market in the United States (including social, mobile, DLC, free-to-play, and subscription) grew by 11 percent, reaching a total of $11.7 billion in sales during 2013. Mobile represented the biggest portion of the market with 26 percent, but free-to-play showed the greatest growth, increasing by 45 percent over last year. Meanwhile, revenues from social games dropped by 22 percent and revenues from subscriptions dropped by 21 percent.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 17:07:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/league-of-legends-revenues-for-2013-total-624-million-update/1100-6417224/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/call-of-duty-ghosts-onslaught-dlc-live-from-infini/2300-6416952/ Celebrate the launch of Call of Duty: Ghosts - Onslaught with us live from Infinity Ward on January 31st at 12:30 pm PST. We'll be interviewing developers, streaming gameplay from the Infinity Ward development teams, and giving away prizes, including Call of Duty: Ghosts season passes, Onslaught Tokens, and the Wolf skin micro-DLC. Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:49:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/call-of-duty-ghosts-onslaught-dlc-live-from-infini/2300-6416952/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/ <p style="">You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might &amp; Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.</p><p style="">Noting that M&amp;MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&amp;M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&amp;D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might &amp; Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&amp;MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&amp;M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>The M&amp;MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.</figcaption></figure><p style="">And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.</p><blockquote data-align="right" data-size="large"><p style="">It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.</p></blockquote><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Battles in M&amp;MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&amp;MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.</p><p style="">Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&amp;MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.</p></blockquote><p style="">In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.</figcaption></figure><p style="">M&amp;MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.</p><p style="">How dated M&amp;MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.</p><p style="">Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.</p><p style="">Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:01:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Fri, 24 Jan 2014 21:56:37 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/league-of-legends-revenues-for-2013-total-624-million-update/1100-6417224/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2421277-6424573982-23871.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2421277" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2421277-6424573982-23871.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2421277"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1535/15354745/2421277-6424573982-23871.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Following the publication of this story, a representative from Nexon reached out to clarify that their game, Dungeon&amp;Fighter "surpassed the number one game, Crossfire, by a significant amount."</p><p style="">Although they're unable to provide specific revenue figures due to a contract with Tencent, the Nexon representative wrote, "If you were to take the figure stated in the Superdata report as net revenue and apply the industry standard 30% revenue share to the developer (as stated on page 25 of Deutsche Bank analyst Hanjoon Kim's July 1, 2013 report), that would make the gross revenue for Dungeon&amp;Fighter $1.4bn, exceeding Crossfire by over $450 million. While these are not our internal figures, I believe that this gives a good indication of the size of Dungeon&amp;Fighter."</p><p style=""><em>The original story appears below</em></p><p style="">League of Legends' revenues for 2013 totaled $624 million, making it the second top free-to-play game in terms of earnings, a report from <a href="http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/us-digital-games-market/" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">SuperData</a> reveals.</p><p style="">Coming in at the number one spot is CrossFire, a South Korean free-to-play first-person shooter which brought in $957 million in revenues during 2013. Tencent, which owns a majority stake in League of Legends developer Riot Games, publishes CrossFire as well.</p><p style="">Valve rounded out the top 10 list with Counter-Strike Online, which brought in $121 million, and Team Fortress 2 at the number nine spot bringing in $139 million.</p><p style="">Electronic Art's Star Wars: The Old Republic, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-the-old-republic-free-to-play-nov-15/1100-6399697/" data-ref-id="1100-6399697">which added a free-to-play option in 2012</a>, took the number eight spot with a little more than Team Fortress 2, and less than Blizzard's World of Warcraft, which generated $213 in microtransactions alone (not counting subscription fees).</p><p style="">Last week we also reported that <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-studio-beefing-up-its-microtransaction-efforts/1100-6417150/" data-ref-id="1100-6417150">Blizzard was beefing up its microtransaction efforts in World of Warcraft</a>, when it posted a pair of new jobs on its "Strategic Initiatives" team, calling for a <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=13000IU" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">director</a> and <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=13000IT" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">manager</a> for the company's new "Microtransaction Strategy" unit.</p><p style="">World of Tanks was fourth on the list with $372 million.</p><p style="">Overall, the digital games market in the United States (including social, mobile, DLC, free-to-play, and subscription) grew by 11 percent, reaching a total of $11.7 billion in sales during 2013. Mobile represented the biggest portion of the market with 26 percent, but free-to-play showed the greatest growth, increasing by 45 percent over last year. Meanwhile, revenues from social games dropped by 22 percent and revenues from subscriptions dropped by 21 percent.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 17:07:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/league-of-legends-revenues-for-2013-total-624-million-update/1100-6417224/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/call-of-duty-ghosts-onslaught-dlc-live-from-infini/2300-6416952/ Celebrate the launch of Call of Duty: Ghosts - Onslaught with us live from Infinity Ward on January 31st at 12:30 pm PST. We'll be interviewing developers, streaming gameplay from the Infinity Ward development teams, and giving away prizes, including Call of Duty: Ghosts season passes, Onslaught Tokens, and the Wolf skin micro-DLC. Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:49:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/call-of-duty-ghosts-onslaught-dlc-live-from-infini/2300-6416952/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/ <p style="">You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might &amp; Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.</p><p style="">Noting that M&amp;MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&amp;M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&amp;D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might &amp; Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&amp;MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&amp;M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>The M&amp;MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.</figcaption></figure><p style="">And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.</p><blockquote data-align="right" data-size="large"><p style="">It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.</p></blockquote><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Battles in M&amp;MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&amp;MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.</p><p style="">Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&amp;MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.</p></blockquote><p style="">In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.</figcaption></figure><p style="">M&amp;MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.</p><p style="">How dated M&amp;MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.</p><p style="">Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.</p><p style="">Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:01:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/

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Assassin's Creed III: Liberation HD Review

As a former exclusive on the PlayStation Vita, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation arrived in time for the 2012 holidays as a promising system seller for Sony's fledgling handheld. While it fell short of its lofty goal, Liberation was nonetheless an impressive showcase of possibilities for open-world play on the portable platform. Now that it has been released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Assassin's Creed fans uninterested in the Vita can now experience all of the franchise's 18th-century storylines. Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD delivers what you would expect in upgraded visuals. And if you're hoping for the exact same gameplay that Vita owners experienced, you get that as well, even though it includes Liberation's original bugs.

Unlike other portable Assassin's Creed titles, Liberation continues the main narrative thrust of the major entries in the series. Aveline de Grandpre, the franchise's first playable female assassin, has intriguing ties to the protagonist of Assassin's Creed III, Connor Kenway, though it's a shame that Liberation doesn't feature more collaborative interplay between the two assassins. Liberation's framing premise also works as a prelude to the modern-day story portions of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, since these adventures are the first two "games" by Abstergo Industries' entertainment division.

"Aveline, why are you not facing me? And why are your feet underground?" -Agate

Like Assassin's Creed III, Liberation is set in a time of upheaval, a common occurrence in the New World in the 1700s. The Spanish have taken control of New Orleans from the French, there's a defection among the Assassin ranks, and the governor of New Orleans is in cahoots with the Templars. And that's just the first couple of chapters in a story arc that spans 12 years. The supporting cast features some of the more colorful characters you'll find in an Assassin's Creed game, including a pair of enterprising smugglers and an unlikely mentor in the Louisiana bayou. Then there's Gerald Blanc, who supports Aveline in various capacities and represents the behind-the-scenes administrative side of the Assassin's Order (someone has to keep their books balanced). Think of him as Alfred to Aveline's Batman, except that Gerald also has a crush on Aveline. Gerald's bland personality puts the "mild" in mild-mannered, and his inability to organize his thoughts in front of Aveline makes him more of a frustrating character than an endearing one.

The supporting cast features some of the more colorful characters you'll find in an Assassin's Creed game.

The majority of Aveline's missions are fundamentally recognizable, right down to the tailing and escort missions. As an assassin's playground, New Orleans isn't particularly noteworthy; it's easy to get around, and you don't even need to rely on hopping fences or rushing down side alleys to evade pursers. The bayou is a fitting wilderness of surprises like alligator ambushes. With spotty pockets of settlements, the bayou can feel larger than it really is, even in spite of objective markers you can still get lost very easily. Aveline's objectives in the bayou mirror Connor's missions in the woods of Assassin's Creed III. She speedily navigates large tree branches while stalking hostiles on the ground.

It would have been nice to see these two hang out more.

When you have a game series that places such a huge emphasis on stealth, it's surprising that it wasn't until Liberation that a disguise system was introduced. The ability to don the persona of a socialite, a slave, and an assassin is reflective of Aveline's complicated background as the daughter of a French merchant and a slave, and the game forces you to use all three personas in equal measure, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. If you dress as a slave, you don't have to worry about sneaking around in a plantation, though you won't have your best killing tools available. Unsurprisingly, Aveline is most useful in her assassin garb, but she sticks out from the crowd. She is attractive no matter the outfit, though her socialite ensemble makes her the most welcome guest at parties. Not only does she come off as charming in conversation, but she even has a charm prompt whenever she's near guards and powerful men. It's an asset that other assassins lacked, though to be fair to the equally charming Ezio Auditore, he didn't have enough targets of the opposite sex to impress in his Assassin's Creed trilogy.

Liberation on consoles is best appreciated during combat. It's simply more comfortable to play on a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 controller versus the denser button layout of the Vita. This HD version made me feel more confident about using the series' defensive moves, not that I could have protected myself from every attack. The exploitable Assassin's Creed smoke bomb returns once again , allowing you to breeze through combat by killing up to four enemies without interruption. Luckily, the combat remains compelling; Aveline is both adept and brutal in her use of weapons, like the cleaver-shaped sugarcane machete.

Liberation's cinematics have been overhauled to the point that you don't need to hold up the Vita version to tell the differences in textures. In fact, the changes in skin tone, eyes, and other facial features are so significant that, depending on the lighting and camera angles, some characters don't even look like their Vita counterparts. Roaming New Orleans in higher resolution is impressive, even though it doesn't achieve the level of detail of Black Flag. By going from the 5-inch screen of the Vita to a 50-inch television, I had an easier time noticing lighting effects like the orange hue of candles illuminating windows at night or torches lit in the villages of the bayou.

It's easy to travel in the bayou.

If you're the type who expects HD remasters to be an opportunity for developers to fix the original version's bugs, expect some minor disappointments with Liberation HD. Don't be surprised if characters are positioned oddly during conversations, and don't expect rope swing functionality to work consistently. There are even issues that work to your benefit, such as when the game skips an entire combat sequence altogether. And while this game retains the series' notoriety system, it's easy to avoid confrontation. Guards are so slow to react to Aveline's presence that I didn't need to waste time tearing down wanted posters to decrease her notoriety.

Gerald's bland personality puts the "mild" in mild-mannered.

This ease of play speaks not only to Liberation HD's low difficulty level, but also to the lack of incentives to deviate from the storyline. The game isn't short on side missions, which include a foot race, the theft of a ship, and the freeing of slaves. Liberation HD does a poor job of letting you know that these missions exist, especially when the game doesn't raise financial hurdles that force you to raise funds and take a break from the story. Many missions in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag required money and resources, which was a minor problem that could be overcome by hijacking ships or taking on optional assassination assignments. Liberation rarely encourages you to pursue side tasks, even though it has an economy system where you can kill business rivals and take over their shops, thereby making goods cheaper for yourself. The problem is that you don't need to buy a lot of things, and the game's most useful items, like the poison and berserk darts, often auto-replenish as you progress through the story.

Attaching "HD" to a previously released game often means you're getting a high-definition remaster rather than a remake with visuals reconstructed from the ground up. Judging by the quality of the cutscenes, developer Ubisoft Sofia aspired to the latter but ended up with the former. The time and care it put into those cinematics is obvious, so it's disappointing that the gameplay and its bugs--issues that existed in the Vita version--didn't receive the same level of attention. I still recommend Assassin's Creed: Liberation for fans of the series, but it's hardly worth revisiting if you've completed the Vita version.

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Assassin's Creed Liberation HD Video Review

Posted by Jeremy Jayne | Jan. 23, 2014 5:06pm

Though this HD port of Liberation looks spectacular next to its Vita-based predecessor, there are still quite a few elements holding it back from greatness.

Jeremy Jayne on Google+

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Former Ubisoft developer accuses Shadow of Mordor of using code from Assassin's Creed

While many viewers commented that the Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor video shown above bore a striking stylistic resemblance to Assassin's Creed, a former Ubisoft developer took those accusations one step further. In a series of Twitter posts today, Charles Randall, claimed that Shadow of Mordor was using code he worked on for Assassin's Creed II.

Randall is credited as a team lead in AI fight systems and senior gameplay programmer at Ubisoft Toronto according to his LinkedIn profile. His work on Assassin's Creed II focused primarily on combat.

Writing "Check it out guys! I apparently made a Middle Earth game" and linking to the Shadow of Mordor walkthrough video above, Randall followed up with the comment, "I know I don't have any legal rights to what I did on Assassin's Creed 2 but I sure hope I get a special thanks on that Middle Earth game." In the same thread, he clarified to another Twitter user, "I'm fine with it if people know what it is. But if they think they are going to sneak this under the radar... SO MUCH NOPE."

In another series of tweets, Randall wrote, "Seriously, can someone tell me how Assassin's Creed 2 code and assets are in this Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor game?" and, "Watch the video. That's AC2 stuff in there. Code/anim for sure." When another user claimed the battles bore more in common with Batman: Arkahm series than Assassins' Creed, Randall wrote, "I spent two years staring at AC2. I know it when I see it."

Despite the criticisms, Randall expressed his appreciation for Shadow of Mordor as well. "For the record though, that Middle Earth game looks pretty damn awesome. And I love AC2 so it's kind of a double win."

Representatives from Ubisoft had no official comment on the potential controversy. We've reached out to Warner Bros. Interactive (the publisher behind Shadow of Mordor) for further clarification, but have yet to receive a reply.

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Assassin's Creed II: Complete Edition

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Assassin's Creed III

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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The Cat Lady Review

Suicide is final. Unless, that is, you are Susan Ashworth, the Cat Lady. A bouquet of flowers is a symbol of love, unless you are Susan Ashworth, for whom they are a reminder of loss. If you're Susan Ashworth, life isn't fair--even after you've exorcised the most harmful demons from your soul.

The Cat Lady is Susan's story--a story of painful tragedy and cautious redemption, disguised as a horror adventure game. And it is at Susan's end that the story begins.

The surreal field you traverse in the opening minutes is at turns beautiful and horrific, just as you might term The Cat Lady's overall visual language. Susan looks as though she's been cut from a magazine and superimposed onto old Polaroid photos. She and other characters move gracelessly, and simple facial animations simulate only the vaguest of lip motions. It's a weird and striking look, and one that allows certain sequences to land with a weighty thud, leaving you feeling anxious, shocked, or melancholy. The surreality of The Cat Lady's characters is most evident in two women that provide Susan plenty of grief--one of which you meet after Susan has already decided that death is preferable to the grief of living.

If you're Susan Ashworth, life isn't fair--even after you've exorcised the most harmful demons from your soul.

One person's art is another's tragedy.

But even in death, Susan cannot find comfort. The old woman Susan encounters in this odd afterlife wants to strike a bargain, and Susan finds herself powerless to resist. There are monsters lurking in the world of the living, and if she hopes to find peace, Susan must vanquish them on behalf of this hag, this obstacle between her and her final rest. Just a few drops of blood should seal the deal.

The drops of blood you shed, however, are more than a few. And in return for her services, Susan receives the "gift" of temporary immortality--a gift that, for the suicidal, is a horrific curse. That first gruesome glimpse of bloodshed is an emotional bludgeon, and The Cat Lady smartly balances moments of quiet sadness with similar scenes of rage and misery throughout the game. It's important to note, however, that as shocking as some of these scenes are, they are not gratuitous, though at first they may seem so. Rather, The Cat Lady draws important parallels between Susan's suffering and the monsters she's been sent to annihilate. These monsters are incredibly, terrifyingly real, but they represent the depressed individual's enemies. And as anyone with depression might tell you, internal demons cannot be painlessly subdued.

The Cat Lady draws important parallels between Susan's suffering and the monsters she's been sent to annihilate.

The first of seven chapters effectively simulates Susan's confusion as she awakes in the hospital to find a sweet nurse at her side. But Susan is not inclined to share much about herself, and so early events, such as her reaction to a bouquet of flowers, are subtle mysteries that later become enlightened. Progressing is a matter of wandering from left to right with the arrow keys, accumulating objects, speaking with others, and solving puzzles by using those objects in particular ways. I was never stumped, but nor was The Cat Lady a complete cakewalk, though it isn't the challenge that the puzzles present so much as the atmosphere they create that makes them so interesting. To solve one early puzzle, for example, you must allow a psychiatric nurse to inject you with God knows what. You then find yourself in a foggy mental purgatory you must explore to move the story forward.

It's hard to recognize beauty when you view it through a blackened lens.

I know this haze. I've survived a suicide attempt, and I spent years in and out of hospitals as I traveled the road to recovery. The Cat Lady deftly depicts events and emotions I've experienced--the defiance toward doctors, the feelings of worthlessness, the mistrust of anyone attempting to get too close. More importantly, however, it also depicts the long road to recovery, and does so without sugarcoating the painful realities of life. For Susan, true hope first arrives in the form of a young woman named Mitzi. Mitzi's life is no less troubled than Susan's, but her manner of dealing with her hardships is far different, though not necessarily any less violent.

The two bond over one of The Cat Lady's more interesting mysteries, and the one that leads to the game's final catharsis. The puzzles throughout the later chapters become both more macabre and more playful. My favorite among them involves frightening Susan's upstairs neighbor, a sequence that's told in flash-forward as you describe to Mitzi the urban legend that inspired your prank. You can mold the outcome of certain story events in this chapter and others, though sometimes, the dialogue choices are more about building up your own image of Susan than they are actually steering the plot.

The puzzles throughout the later chapters become both more macabre and more playful.

Cats love piano music., it seems. Or at least, Susan's playing.

Perhaps you come to The Cat Lady for the creep factor rather than for the remarkably human, empathetic story. There are a good number of eccentric and disruptive scenes, including one featuring a malformed, convulsive figure that shouts "misery!" when you approach. These scenes are carefully constructed for maximum effect so that even if you see the consequence coming (as I did in a puzzle involving some intricate machinery), you're still startled (as I was when I finished the puzzle). The horror is all the more effective for the quiet scenes that precede them, such as a flashback sequence that uses superimposed text to terrific, dramatic effect--and reveals the events that led to Susan's bottomward spiral.

Both Susan and Mitzi are ably voiced, as is much of the supporting cast. As Susan grows more confident, so too does the actress's performance crescendo from passionless victim to assertive companion. There are a few weak performances, a fast-talking Scottish mother among them, but it's the audio's recording quality that most detracts from the story. The voice-over often changes volume or tone abruptly, as if that particular line were recorded on a different day, in a different room, with a different microphone. Certain events, such as a ghastly one involving a bottle of bleach, are noticeably quiet, as if the intended voice-over and sound effects were never inserted. These aren't major issues, but given how important the sound and performances are in encouraging you to invest in Susan's struggles, they still stand out.

For Susan Ashworth, suicide is meant to be a way out, but it instead becomes a way forward. If you seek horror, The Cat Lady may sometimes freak you out, though probably not outright scare you. But that horror is in service of a touching character portrait--a portrait that's authentically, poignantly askew.

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OpTic Gaming joins Beat The Pros - Call of Duty: Ghosts

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PlayStation Vita card game to be censored for US and EU release for "intense sexual imagery"

Idea Factory, the company behind an upcoming card battle game Monster Monpiece sent out a statement today explaining their decision to censor parts of the game for its Western release. According the the statement, Both the Japanese and Western versions of the game contain the same total number of cards, but some of the high-level cards were replaced with "less exposed" lower-level versions of the game's Monster Girls due to some "intense sexual imagery."

Monster Monpiece allows players to power up their cards by getting the girls (in card form) to "expose themselves (take off their clothes) via the level-up features called First Crush Rub and Extreme Love." This specifically involves vigorously rubbing both sides of the Vita (see image below).

Image Source: Wikipedia

"The number of censored cards is about 40 out of the approximately 350 card images available in the game. This means that over 300 cards are left untouched from the original images. That said, each card that has had its image removed will still have the same number of levels for the player to increase, but the higher level card images will be the same as the lower level, even though they have leveled up and have become more powerful." However, the statement says that this will not effect the length of the game, or any of the game's systems and features.

Monster Monpiece will also have a separate rating for the US and EU. In North America, the game was given a Mature rating by the ESRB; Europe's PEGI system rated the game 12+. Idea Factory says, "We received a Mature rating for Monster Monpiece from the ESRB with the censored material we submitted. However, for PEGI, and with the same material assets for their review, they rated it 12+ because of the minimal amount of violence shown in the game."

Idea Factory says their reason for the censorship deals with cultural differences. "Western society is not as lenient as that of Japan when sexual images are involved--especially images of humanoids that appear to be younger than a socially acceptable age. The borderline of what is 'acceptable' will always be extremely gray and vary from person to person, but as a responsible company working in the U.S., we had to make the difficult decision that we did. We sincerely apologize for those who do not agree with any level of censorship, but we greatly appreciate your understanding with the decision we have made."

Monster Monpiece is schedule to arrive on Vita in the US and EU sometime this spring.

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Monster Monpiece

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Gamespot's Site Mashup

http://auth.spacecat.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Tue, 21 Jan 2014 21:55:09 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pandora-first-contact-review/1900-6415642/ <p style="">There's a special kind of fear that aliens can tap into. They are often unknown, unreasonable, and unrelenting. Many 4X strategy games are strongly tied to real events, people, and cultures in human history, but some of the best games in the genre are set in space against powerful and hostile alien races. Pandora: First Contact is one such game, and it takes heavy cues from games like Sid Meier's <a href="/sid-meiers-alpha-centauri/" data-ref-id="false">Alpha Centauri</a>. While it is meant to be a respectful tribute, Pandora is laden with awful design choices and a confusing mishmash of old and new mechanics. The pieces that stand up are pulled directly from other, better games, and the original ideas aren't developed well enough to carry the experience.</p><p style="">Pandora: First Contact opens with a smattering of people desperate to find a new Earth after decades of environmental destruction. The most prosperous societies have each launched their own expeditions, loosely representative of several modern-day nations and ideologies. These groups form the different factions and have their own vaguely defined play styles ranging from brutal, polluting industry to hyper-religious zealotry. Unfortunately, while they are thematically distinct, none of the factions stand out. Besides how the diplomatic options are phrased, and a few starting bonuses, they are all more or less the same. In my games, playing as the super-scientific faction wasn't terribly different from playing as the environmentalists. All of the units are the same, and the victory conditions are far too limited for any of your decisions to have much of an effect. There really is only one correct play style: extreme aggression.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422381-combat2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422381" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422381-combat2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422381"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2422381-combat2.jpg"></a><figcaption>Pandora borrows heavily from the works of Sid Meier, but it's missing too many pieces.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Civilization has often been lauded for allowing you to seek scientific, cultural, military, or even diplomatic victory, and each of these routes is supported by an entire system of mechanics that help support that path. These systems connect with one another and can be attached or separated, giving you an enormous amount of freedom in how you play. Those choices are meaningful because they are symbolic; they represent different and distinct ideologies. Pandora, too, has "different" victory conditions, but none of them are well developed. There is a scientific victory that amounts to having 75 percent of all possible research items complete. To achieve military victory, you have to take control of over 75 percent of the planet's populace. Unfortunately, the mechanisms by which you accomplish these conditions are nearly identical, and there's virtually no way to stop a player who's nearing victory. The element of choice and the ability to consistently have any efficacy or agency in the game is totally subverted by this design.</p><p style="">The planet of Pandora is crawling with aliens when you first touch down, and it takes only a few turns for those forces to turn aggressive; unlike the barbarians from Civilization, these creatures are absolutely everywhere and are much, much stronger than any of your starting units. For example, a unit of marines has a starting combat strength of 2, while aliens range from 1 to 18, with 2 and 8 being the most common. How well you handle these early foes determines how much land and resources you have to work with in the mid to late game.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">While it is meant to be a respectful tribute, Pandora is laden with awful design choices and a confusing mishmash of old and new mechanics.</p></blockquote><p style="">Sadly, ignoring them isn't an option. Even if you never attack the aliens or show any sign of aggression, at a certain point they begin attacking you. Expanding and fortifying your armies, and then raiding alien hives for their massive cash reserves is the only way to play. Any land you don't grab for yourself is land a future opponent will use against you, and any aliens you don't kill feed the resources and experience of your rivals. This design choice forces the game into a two-stage system. The first stage is rapid expansion and extreme brutality against the indigenous aliens, and the second stage is focused more on developing the land you've claimed and steadily pushing back against enemies. While the first stage might be frustratingly limited, the second is fundamentally broken.</p><p style="">In better-designed 4X games, much of the mid- to late-game conflict stems from resource scarcity. You need a specific plot of land that an opponent has; this causes conflict, which then buttresses the final stages of a match. In Pandora, land is certainly important, but expansion is agonizingly slow. Even on the fastest setting, with the exception of a handful of rare tiles, there's absolutely no scarcity. Aside from mountains, just about every tile can be converted into every other kind, and they don't carry the bottlenecking effect that's common in other games. Without scarcity, there's very little to fight over, and the monotony of expansion across hundreds of same-y tiles wears down to tedium very quickly.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422383-techtree.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422383" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422383-techtree.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422383"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2422383-techtree.jpg"></a><figcaption>Classic sci-fi homage.</figcaption></figure><p style="">In place of a varied and interesting landscape, Pandora has a fairly robust unit upgrade and operations system. As you progress technologically, you have access to a wider variety of weapons and equipment for your various units. For example, initially your legions of marines only have access to their basic machine guns, but once you develop the flamethrower, you can bring marines back to a city to refit them with the latest gadgets. This is typically done for a significant cost, though, and can become overwhelmingly expensive when upgrading masses of units. Additionally, at each new stage of technological development, you also gain access to advanced versions of every unit. The colonial marine, your bread and butter, later becomes the assault trooper. After you've unlocked the next stage, it's often more practical to simply send your old units to their death at the hands of a foe and just start production on the next batch of souped-up soldiers</p><p style="">To cut down on some of the banality of this cycle of production-upgrade-sacrifice, you can set your cities to crank out new units with the upgraded tech. This costs extra production time, but typically that's much easier to manage than trying to purchase all of the upgrades outright. Unfortunately, there's no system or mechanic allowing for the retrofitting of old units with new gear via production capacity, nor is there any way to take an old unit and make it into one of the newer variety. This is probably intended to be balanced by the experience system, which can dramatically enhance the combat effectiveness of older troops, but that loses relevance in the mid to late game because of operations.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="right"><p style="">Without scarcity, there's very little to fight over.</p></blockquote><p style="">Operations can range from nuclear strikes and satellite scans to field training missions. They are produced much like standard units but are immediately consumed upon use. These field training missions are ridiculously cheap, particularly in the late game, and I often had one city of mine constantly producing them. After I finished a new batch of troops, I'd march them all to my most forward base, dump 10 field training missions on them to max out their level, and then let them heal up for two or three turns before marching out my legions of tanks, airplanes, and marines to conquer whatever stood in their way. It's much faster and less risky than trying to naturally level up fresh recruits, and it always ensured that my warriors would be at the top of their game.</p><p style="">At the end of the day, unit management is bogged down by a plethora of underutilized mechanics. Instead of adding to the gameplay, they simply encourage you to abuse other systems to circumvent the poorly designed interface. That seems to be par for the course for Pandora. There are a lot of neat ideas here, but none of them pan out. The game's creators clearly adore 4X strategy games in general, and Alpha Centauri specifically, is clear here, but Pandora: First Contact is not a proper tribute. I want to love Pandora, I really do, but nostalgia can't fix a game that doesn't work even at the most basic level.</p> Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:59:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pandora-first-contact-review/1900-6415642/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/brutal-legend-2-i-would-love-to-go-back-there-tim-schafer-says/1100-6417258/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/0/0/4/9/2030049-703985_20130228_032.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2030049" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/0/0/4/9/2030049-703985_20130228_032.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2030049"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/mig/0/0/4/9/2030049-703985_20130228_032.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">Industry veteran Tim Schafer, head of independent developer studio Double Fine Productions, has yet again expressed his admiration for the metal-inspired Brutal Legend series, telling GameSpot today that he hopes to return to the franchise some day.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I love that world and I would love to go back there. And I think [actor Jack Black] might be up for it, too," Schafer told GameSpot today during a <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/videos/broken-age-act-1-now-playing/2300-6416868/" data-ref-id="2300-6416868">live-stream for his new game Broken Age</a>. A replay of the stream is available below.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Black played Brutal Legend hero Eddie Riggs, a roadie turned warrior.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Brutal Legend fans shouldn't jump for joy yet. The original Brutal Legend cost around $25 million to develop and Schafer said raising that much money--or more--for a sequel "might be tricky."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Though a full-on sequel may not be in the pipeline just yet, Schafer said a DLC pack surrounding Brutal Legend's Lionwhyte might be more likely. Lionwhyte, leader of the fictitious Hair Metal Militia, was voiced by Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I would love to go back to that world or even just do a DLC pack...we're always trying to get Lionwhyte in there; a playable Lionwhyte army," Schafer said. "Maybe that would happen someday. I would definitely love to do that."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Brutal Legend launched in October 2009 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 published by Electronic Arts, while a PC version of the game arrived in February 2013. It is Double Fine's best-selling game ever, Schafer told GameSpot today, though it's unclear how many copies of the game have been sold to date.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6416868" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6416868/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:42:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/brutal-legend-2-i-would-love-to-go-back-there-tim-schafer-says/1100-6417258/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-microsoft-buys-positive-xbox-one-comments-/2300-6416895/ Resident Evil 4 HD is coming to PC via Steam, leaked documents reveal that Microsoft have been paying YouTubers for Xbox One praise and just what is Dead Rising 3's enormous update for? Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-microsoft-buys-positive-xbox-one-comments-/2300-6416895/

http://auth.spacecat.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Tue, 21 Jan 2014 21:55:09 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pandora-first-contact-review/1900-6415642/ <p style="">There's a special kind of fear that aliens can tap into. They are often unknown, unreasonable, and unrelenting. Many 4X strategy games are strongly tied to real events, people, and cultures in human history, but some of the best games in the genre are set in space against powerful and hostile alien races. Pandora: First Contact is one such game, and it takes heavy cues from games like Sid Meier's <a href="/sid-meiers-alpha-centauri/" data-ref-id="false">Alpha Centauri</a>. While it is meant to be a respectful tribute, Pandora is laden with awful design choices and a confusing mishmash of old and new mechanics. The pieces that stand up are pulled directly from other, better games, and the original ideas aren't developed well enough to carry the experience.</p><p style="">Pandora: First Contact opens with a smattering of people desperate to find a new Earth after decades of environmental destruction. The most prosperous societies have each launched their own expeditions, loosely representative of several modern-day nations and ideologies. These groups form the different factions and have their own vaguely defined play styles ranging from brutal, polluting industry to hyper-religious zealotry. Unfortunately, while they are thematically distinct, none of the factions stand out. Besides how the diplomatic options are phrased, and a few starting bonuses, they are all more or less the same. In my games, playing as the super-scientific faction wasn't terribly different from playing as the environmentalists. All of the units are the same, and the victory conditions are far too limited for any of your decisions to have much of an effect. There really is only one correct play style: extreme aggression.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422381-combat2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422381" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422381-combat2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422381"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2422381-combat2.jpg"></a><figcaption>Pandora borrows heavily from the works of Sid Meier, but it's missing too many pieces.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Civilization has often been lauded for allowing you to seek scientific, cultural, military, or even diplomatic victory, and each of these routes is supported by an entire system of mechanics that help support that path. These systems connect with one another and can be attached or separated, giving you an enormous amount of freedom in how you play. Those choices are meaningful because they are symbolic; they represent different and distinct ideologies. Pandora, too, has "different" victory conditions, but none of them are well developed. There is a scientific victory that amounts to having 75 percent of all possible research items complete. To achieve military victory, you have to take control of over 75 percent of the planet's populace. Unfortunately, the mechanisms by which you accomplish these conditions are nearly identical, and there's virtually no way to stop a player who's nearing victory. The element of choice and the ability to consistently have any efficacy or agency in the game is totally subverted by this design.</p><p style="">The planet of Pandora is crawling with aliens when you first touch down, and it takes only a few turns for those forces to turn aggressive; unlike the barbarians from Civilization, these creatures are absolutely everywhere and are much, much stronger than any of your starting units. For example, a unit of marines has a starting combat strength of 2, while aliens range from 1 to 18, with 2 and 8 being the most common. How well you handle these early foes determines how much land and resources you have to work with in the mid to late game.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">While it is meant to be a respectful tribute, Pandora is laden with awful design choices and a confusing mishmash of old and new mechanics.</p></blockquote><p style="">Sadly, ignoring them isn't an option. Even if you never attack the aliens or show any sign of aggression, at a certain point they begin attacking you. Expanding and fortifying your armies, and then raiding alien hives for their massive cash reserves is the only way to play. Any land you don't grab for yourself is land a future opponent will use against you, and any aliens you don't kill feed the resources and experience of your rivals. This design choice forces the game into a two-stage system. The first stage is rapid expansion and extreme brutality against the indigenous aliens, and the second stage is focused more on developing the land you've claimed and steadily pushing back against enemies. While the first stage might be frustratingly limited, the second is fundamentally broken.</p><p style="">In better-designed 4X games, much of the mid- to late-game conflict stems from resource scarcity. You need a specific plot of land that an opponent has; this causes conflict, which then buttresses the final stages of a match. In Pandora, land is certainly important, but expansion is agonizingly slow. Even on the fastest setting, with the exception of a handful of rare tiles, there's absolutely no scarcity. Aside from mountains, just about every tile can be converted into every other kind, and they don't carry the bottlenecking effect that's common in other games. Without scarcity, there's very little to fight over, and the monotony of expansion across hundreds of same-y tiles wears down to tedium very quickly.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422383-techtree.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422383" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2422383-techtree.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2422383"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2422383-techtree.jpg"></a><figcaption>Classic sci-fi homage.</figcaption></figure><p style="">In place of a varied and interesting landscape, Pandora has a fairly robust unit upgrade and operations system. As you progress technologically, you have access to a wider variety of weapons and equipment for your various units. For example, initially your legions of marines only have access to their basic machine guns, but once you develop the flamethrower, you can bring marines back to a city to refit them with the latest gadgets. This is typically done for a significant cost, though, and can become overwhelmingly expensive when upgrading masses of units. Additionally, at each new stage of technological development, you also gain access to advanced versions of every unit. The colonial marine, your bread and butter, later becomes the assault trooper. After you've unlocked the next stage, it's often more practical to simply send your old units to their death at the hands of a foe and just start production on the next batch of souped-up soldiers</p><p style="">To cut down on some of the banality of this cycle of production-upgrade-sacrifice, you can set your cities to crank out new units with the upgraded tech. This costs extra production time, but typically that's much easier to manage than trying to purchase all of the upgrades outright. Unfortunately, there's no system or mechanic allowing for the retrofitting of old units with new gear via production capacity, nor is there any way to take an old unit and make it into one of the newer variety. This is probably intended to be balanced by the experience system, which can dramatically enhance the combat effectiveness of older troops, but that loses relevance in the mid to late game because of operations.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="right"><p style="">Without scarcity, there's very little to fight over.</p></blockquote><p style="">Operations can range from nuclear strikes and satellite scans to field training missions. They are produced much like standard units but are immediately consumed upon use. These field training missions are ridiculously cheap, particularly in the late game, and I often had one city of mine constantly producing them. After I finished a new batch of troops, I'd march them all to my most forward base, dump 10 field training missions on them to max out their level, and then let them heal up for two or three turns before marching out my legions of tanks, airplanes, and marines to conquer whatever stood in their way. It's much faster and less risky than trying to naturally level up fresh recruits, and it always ensured that my warriors would be at the top of their game.</p><p style="">At the end of the day, unit management is bogged down by a plethora of underutilized mechanics. Instead of adding to the gameplay, they simply encourage you to abuse other systems to circumvent the poorly designed interface. That seems to be par for the course for Pandora. There are a lot of neat ideas here, but none of them pan out. The game's creators clearly adore 4X strategy games in general, and Alpha Centauri specifically, is clear here, but Pandora: First Contact is not a proper tribute. I want to love Pandora, I really do, but nostalgia can't fix a game that doesn't work even at the most basic level.</p> Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:59:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pandora-first-contact-review/1900-6415642/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/brutal-legend-2-i-would-love-to-go-back-there-tim-schafer-says/1100-6417258/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/0/0/4/9/2030049-703985_20130228_032.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2030049" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/0/0/4/9/2030049-703985_20130228_032.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2030049"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/mig/0/0/4/9/2030049-703985_20130228_032.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">Industry veteran Tim Schafer, head of independent developer studio Double Fine Productions, has yet again expressed his admiration for the metal-inspired Brutal Legend series, telling GameSpot today that he hopes to return to the franchise some day.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I love that world and I would love to go back there. And I think [actor Jack Black] might be up for it, too," Schafer told GameSpot today during a <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/videos/broken-age-act-1-now-playing/2300-6416868/" data-ref-id="2300-6416868">live-stream for his new game Broken Age</a>. A replay of the stream is available below.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Black played Brutal Legend hero Eddie Riggs, a roadie turned warrior.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Brutal Legend fans shouldn't jump for joy yet. The original Brutal Legend cost around $25 million to develop and Schafer said raising that much money--or more--for a sequel "might be tricky."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Though a full-on sequel may not be in the pipeline just yet, Schafer said a DLC pack surrounding Brutal Legend's Lionwhyte might be more likely. Lionwhyte, leader of the fictitious Hair Metal Militia, was voiced by Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I would love to go back to that world or even just do a DLC pack...we're always trying to get Lionwhyte in there; a playable Lionwhyte army," Schafer said. "Maybe that would happen someday. I would definitely love to do that."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Brutal Legend launched in October 2009 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 published by Electronic Arts, while a PC version of the game arrived in February 2013. It is Double Fine's best-selling game ever, Schafer told GameSpot today, though it's unclear how many copies of the game have been sold to date.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6416868" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6416868/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:42:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/brutal-legend-2-i-would-love-to-go-back-there-tim-schafer-says/1100-6417258/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-microsoft-buys-positive-xbox-one-comments-/2300-6416895/ Resident Evil 4 HD is coming to PC via Steam, leaked documents reveal that Microsoft have been paying YouTubers for Xbox One praise and just what is Dead Rising 3's enormous update for? Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-microsoft-buys-positive-xbox-one-comments-/2300-6416895/

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