Category Archives: News

Battlefield Hardline First Impressions

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Battlefield Hardline is an interesting game. It’s very much Battlefield 4, but re-skinned into the cops and robbers feel. Through EA Access, I have a 10 hour trial, this includes access to the multiplayer modes, in which there’s a handful, and the first episode of the of the single player campaign.

Battlefield Hardline

6 multiplayer modes are included in the game: Hotwire, Heist, Rescue, Blood Money, Crosshair, and then the standards, Conquest (small and large) and Team Deathmatch.

Hotwire is where the vehicles are control points that need capturing, and the more you drive them and faster you drive them, depletes the other team’s points. First team to eliminate the other’s points, wins

Heist has the criminal team trying to escort cash from the vault to their base. Criminals have limited lives. SWAT’s job is to try and prevent them.

Rescue is Rainbow Six’s new Seige game essentially. 6 vs 6. The criminals are holding 2 hostages and the SWAT team needs to infiltrate the building to extract the hostages or eliminate the criminals. No respawns. Best of 9 rounds.

Blood Money is similar to Heist in that its Cops vs Robbers fighting over a pile of cash, the different is each teams needs to get the loot back to their respective vault.

Crosshair is another small competitive mode where the SWAT is trying to extract a VIP, and the criminals are trying to wipe them out. No Respawns.

Conquest is the Battlefield staple. Huge maps with players and vehicles, and the point is to capture key map points to reduce the enemy’s tickets, which is their ability to respawn.

Team Deathmatch is infantry only, no control points. Just shoot everything that moves.

Multiplayer is very much like Battlefield 4. It looks pretty good, and the game modes have a lot happening, especially with the larger maps of 64 people, so some moments can be a little intense. There is level destruction and map changer’s like sandstorms in the desert maps. The vehicles feel and sound a little clunky, but some of the tools are a nice touch, with the grappling hook and zipline.

The campaign, I feel, is where the game really shines. Obviously better looking than multiplayer, it’s a slower, more personal experience that previous Battlefield games. This is probably the result of Visceral Game’s leading the project. You play Nicholas Mendoza, detective, you play a series of episode chapters throughout Los Angeles in the center of a drug war. Aside of the shooting mechanics, you can shine your badge to get the perp to freeze, allowing for the arrest, you can throw bullet casing to distract people, and you have a scanner to scan rooms for evidence or people for warrants.

Unfortunately the single player trial ends after the first chapter, so the rest of my impressions will have to wait till I’ve completed the game and written the review. Stick around.

Only a bit of news to wrap up today:

Destiny Patch Update News

Bungie has opened up about the pending Destiny patch, stating that it’ll focus on increasing the vault size for weapons and gear, and fixing up some of the Raid bugs when facing off against Atheon and Crota. Lastly, Bungie announced that they’re always listening to fans and tracking the play stats about the Strikes, and focusing more on the popular Strikes that actually get completed, so that the playlists are more to the fanbase liking.

Goat Simulator Coming to Xbox One and 360

Microsoft announced today the Goat Simulator will make its console debut on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One in April. Coffee Stain Studio’s game will be worked on and published by Double Eleven.

Xbox One March Update

March’s update adds the Screenshot functionality, which can but found and managed in the Upload app. They can also be used as background images. Suggested friends has been added, allows players to find friends easier. Tile transparency has been upgraded a bit to add different levels of transparency. And you can now report messages as spam.

See you next week, with more news, Tuesday’s new games, further impressions on Hardline and AC IV Black Flag and a review on Thursday.

Go Outside!
-iRogan

Thursday iReview, Delays, and Cops Vs Robbers

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This morning the Review for Evolve was posted, written by a friend I work with. She’s playing it on the PC, and I don’t own it yet. You can find the review here. She even picked out her own notable achievements :O.

Last night I installed Battlefield Hardline, a whopping 43GB on the Xbox One HDD, and I’m excited to play it tonight. I’ll be streaming it on Twitch, and posting my first impressions tomorrow.

In other news:

Titanfall 2 Confirmed

Coming off the heals of the Titanfall one year anniversary, the previously rumoured, and more or less expected, Titan fall 2 was confirmed by Respawn CEO Vince Zampella, and will be a multiplatform release. No official title.

I’ll be playing some more Titanfall this weekend in honor of the anniversary.

Cities: Skyline Open House

Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive have announced its city-building sim Cities: Skylines has wracked up sales of 250,000 in its first 24 hours. There’s still lots of love out there for city sims, especially after the Sim City reboot struggled. A lower price point at $35 definitely helps, and no mandatory online connection required. I’ll be picking this up shortly to share my thoughts. Stay tuned.

Saddness on the Homefront

Homefront: The Revolution has been delayed until 2016.

Dambuster studios picked up the IP for the Homefront franchise off of Crytek UK, who had picked it up off of the now folded THQ. After the acquisition, and in the interest of focusing the efforts for a quality product, the studio has announced the delays. Not really unexpected as there hasn’t been a lot of information about the title.

Go Outside!

-iRogan

What I’m Playing, Pipe-line Projects, and your News Fix

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As Assassin’s Creed IV – Black Flag warms up, and I’m loaded into the head office of Abstergo Entetainment, I’m happy to see the triangle logo is still in place. Curiously missing or at least less prominent in the last few Creed title, I was beginning to worry they had done away with the logo entirely. Worrisome, considering I do have the tattoo on my wrist.

Animus Unite

Animus Unite

Assassin’s Creed IV – Black Flag, not really considered a new release anymore. Can’t fault me for sticking to my slow methodical pace through some of the AAA titles on my shelf. Not that I don’t bang off a new title now and then, but it really needs to grab my attention. Or must stray from the default 3rd person Ubisoft Open World platform genres, FPS, or Racing title.

But when it comes to the Assassin Creed title, I’m usually always at least one generation behind.

I think the title’s annual similarities is the reason. They sometimes take months to complete, and the next edition then comes out later that year, and is just more of the same type of game play with tweaks to the story. At least when you consider Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations. III started the trend into the right direction, and then IV really is a breath of fresh air. Because you’re on a boat. Ha!

Assassin’s Creed IV is the current title under review, and as mentioned in an earlier post, I wrapped Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) in co-op, so expect a quick review of that. I’m also playing Sniper Elite III in co-op, and playing through Forza Horizons 2 Storm Island DLC. In the pipeline is Far Cry 4, and Shadow of Mordor.

Lastly, I’ll be providing my first impressions of EA and Visceral’s Battlefield Hardline with the early Access on March 12th. Cities: Skylines is also on the list for the next PC game I want, but I’ll need to upgrade my graphics card first. So close :(.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be posting a friend’s review of Evolve, as she’s been playing it on the PC, and has some thoughts. Very nice of her to provide that.

To increase game-time, gotta get news-time out of the way…

Uncharted 4 Delay

Naughty Dog’s highly anticipated release of the next Uncharted game, 4: A Thief’s End has been delayed until spring 2016. It’s not uncommon for Naughty Dog to delay games, as they do have an incredibly high standard for their products. The wait will be worth it, and it gives me the extra time to save up for a PS4.

GTA Online Heists Launch Issues

Tell me if you’ve this before…Rockstar’s long waited Online Heists DLC update has had a bumpy start, as players are experiencing problems connecting. After about 24 hours the service seems to be more stable. This news isn’t entirely surprising as the GTA Online mode had a rocky start to begin with, and there’s been a lot of hype for this DLC to boot, so obviously a lot of people would be trying to play it as soon as they could. Now I just need some friends to play it with. 😦

Titanfall DLC for Free – One Year Anniversary

Celebrating the one year anniversary of Titanfall, the 3 DLC packs have been made free. This includes nine new maps. No use to me, as I had already purchased the season pass on launch, but this does give me the motivation to jump back into the game. Unknown is how long the free season pass will be available for.

Check my review from Titanfall: Not Here, but Here

Remember Me 2 is “Ready to be Made”

Capcom’s Remember Me developer, Dontnot, has made a statement that the sequel is, technically, ready to be made.

“We know what we would do for Remember Me 2,” said Dontnod creative director, Jean-Maxime Moris. “The main story has been written, we know what we would add to the recipe. We know what we would fix. It’s a game that’s ready to be made, but that decision is Capcom’s to make.”

So development hasn’t been started. Better than no news I suppose. I have a lot of Reviews “ready to be made” too. They just have to be written first. :p

Check my review of the first game:  Remember Me

That’s all for now. Check out the Evolve review tomorrow.

Go Outside!

-iRogan

New Game Release Tuesday, and the Report

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Tuesdays come and go, and my wallet becomes a tad lighter, and my game shelf, or Steam account, a little fuller. Also, after the break is some news. Tomorrow we’ll discuss current works in the pipeline, and what I’m playing.

We’ll start things off with some new and notable releases for Tuesday, March 10th, 2015:

  • DmC: Definitive Edition (Xbox One, PS4) – I played this game when it first came out on the 360 and really enjoyed it. It was very stylized, quick paced, and didn’t require the same amount of  practiced button mashing sequences it’s predecessors required. Definitive Edition includes the DLC and some different modes. I don’t need to re-buy it.
  • Hotline Miani 2: Wrong Number (PS4, PC) – I played the first on the PC, and will likely play this one as well. The first was original, and colourful, and brutal. And difficult. While it was interesting, I quickly found it to be repetitive, and inevitably didn’t make it much further than the first few levels.
  • Assassin’s Creed Rogue (PC) – The PC release of last year’s, last-gen finale to the Assassin’s Creed III and IV Black Flag trilogy. This game came out the same week that Assassin’s Creed Unity was released on the current gen consoles, and was plagued with some bugs and lack of polish.
  • Cities: Skylines (PC) – I’ve always loved simulation games. I’ve never been particularly good at them, as I’m usually pretty quick to go bankrupt. That being said I am excited for this new City Sim game. Reading through some of the reviews, the game sounds like a better version of the SimCity reboot in scale and management, but lacks the visual quality and helpfulness if something is going wrong within the city, and does not have any disasters to play with. Very excited to try this out.
  • Far Cry 4: Valley of Yetis (Xbox One and PS4) – DLC for Far Cry 4. A further reminder that I have yet to open this game, yet its been sitting shiny on my shelf since November.

In other news…

Turkey Bans Minecraft?

Last month, the country’s family and social policies department initiated an investigation into Minecraft, for allegations that it’s too violent. Arguably, Minecraft is a game that encourages creativity. Granted, there are monsters in the game, and you have some weapons to defend yourself, but the game doesn’t encourage the player to attack the other players or villagers. As of today, the proposal to outright ban Minecraft is moving forward, as the report shows that the game is too violent.

Who knew?

Xbox’s Weekly Gold Deals

The latest offering of Deals with Gold for Xbox Live Gold subscribers is up, offering some new discounts for established titles. XBox One has 2013’s Tomb Raider Definitive Edition on sale, Ryse: Son of Rome Legendary Edition, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Xbox 360 has 3 Assassin Creed games for sale: Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, and Assassin’s Creed III.

Battlefield Lo-Res

Visceral Games announced today that Battlefield Hardline, the next installment in EA’s Battlefield franchise, won’t be able to hit today’s standard TV resolution (1080p) on either major console.

As Visceral is targeting 60 frames per second, Battlefield Hardline will run at 720p on the Xbox One and 900p on the PlayStation 4. This is the same situation as we saw for Battlefield 4, which launched at the end of 2013.

Hardline on the PC will be optimized for 1080P of course, with higher quality settings. March 17th is the launch. I’ll be playing it March 12th, with EA Access, to let you know my impressions.

Out!
-iRogan

Gamenight, Twitch, and Today’s Updates

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Game nights are fun, and sometimes necessary. They help get friends together, to settle differences, and to remind us what gaming once was, and how it continues to keep us together, even if we’re miles, or countries away.

Game night is usually quite the event at my place. Usually involving 4 large flat screen TV’s, 4 Xbox’s (360 and now the One), and two handfuls of people. Quite the epic Friday night filled with Pepsi and drinks.

We typically dabble in Halo, as it’s the easiest game to organize a large group of people, over multiple boxes and TVs, into one online lobby. Alternatively we’ll play some arcade style games. This past Friday saw us playing in The Master Chief Collection, Riptide GP2, #IDARB, and Rayman Legends.

Lately I’ve also been playing around with my streaming capabilities, and Twitch.Tv. This started when I first got the Xbox One when it was released. Streaming through the Xbox is great, especially since it has the Kinect functionality with the camera and microphone. Less great is when you want to switch games, or stream from another console entirely. This problem was apparent to me around the time of the Extra Life charity marathon last October. I was going to be playing a full play-through of Half-Life 2 through the Xbox 360 Orange Box. I had my Xbox 360 plugged into the One, but Twitch only supports XBone games.

My fix was to pick up a capture card. The Elgato Game Capture HD, and a couple webcams. This allowed me to record and broadcast through my TV, game, audio, and the surrounding room, through the webcams.

Ready to Broadcast

Ready to Broadcast

I use Open Broadcast Software to record and stream. It supports multiple inputs, and allows for text overlays. So with my 24 Hour stream, I had the game, the name of the game, 2 webcams, a tinyURL to my charity page, my webpage, and a 24 hr countdown clock.

Lately I’ve been streaming my game nights, or just the random nightly session. I’m not pro yet, mind you. But one day I might start doing game-play videos. We’ll see.

Moving on to some newsworthy stuff….

GTA V – Online Heists

New info started coming out today about the GTA V Online Heists content patch, for those lucky few that started seeing it already, patch is reportedly sitting around 4.8GB in size, on the Xbox One. I have the re-mastered XOne version. However, as I’m writing this, none of my friends do, so I don’t have anyone local to test out these heists with. We’ll have to wait and see, or maybe try on the 360.

Halo Master Chief Xbox One Bundle

Microsoft is launching a Master Chief Collection XBox One bundle to help boost their numbers. The no-frills bundle is available without a Kinect, and a digital copy of the Master Chief Collection. No custom box, no custom controller, standard 500Gb HDD. Kind of a letdown.

Borderlands Aplenty

At Pax East this weekend, Gearbox announced both, the next installment to the Tales From The Borderlands, and the next DLC for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

Tales From the Borderlands, Telltale’s game, will have episode 2 released March 17th, 2015. I’ve been sitting on the TellTale Collection for the XOne for some time now, and I haven’t gotten the chance to start these games. But will soon.

Also announced was the next DLC to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel – Claptastic Voyage. The DLC takes place inside Claptrap’s head, and is supposed to help bridge the gap between the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2. Release March 24th, 2015.

Also released that week is the Handsome Jack Collection, which I’ll be picking up. I was uneasy about the idea of the Pre-Sequel being released on the Xbox 360 and figured that it might be re-released on the One, and lo, here we are. Combo of the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2 re-mastered. The Pre-Sequel also includes the Season pass for DLC.

“”I wonder if i plant you in the ground, if you will grow taller?” -Psycho”

Destiny News

A new interesting tidbit from Destiny this week is the Inferno game-play mode in the Crucible:

From the Grimoire:

“A modified variant of multiple Crucible match types, Inferno tests your Light against the darkest of conditions.

Darkness prevails, leaving Guardians to rely on their weaponry and combat skills alone. The enemy can only be found by sight and sound alone. Rely on your teammates and keen tracking to stalk your enemies and shut them down without the trust in your most powerful abilities.

True skill put to the ultimate test. No trackers. No Supers. No bonuses. Only kills earn points.“

I’ve been meaning to do a follow-up to December’s review, as I did continue to play, and made it through the DLC, completed the Raid, and made it to level 30. I also quit cold turkey one day, and haven’t really looked back.

Maybe I’ll do a quick play through of the first DLC and write up a follow up/2nd opinion piece. Title it “Change of Heart”, as its both applicable, and the name of an achievement from the game.

Change of Heart (Reverse a decision you made in the upgrade grid) – 20G.

So witty.

Out!