WHAT I’M PLAYING – The Crew

The Crew gives us everything we could have hoped for from prior games such as Test Drive Unlimited 2 or Forza Horizons 2, or even Fuel. These games promised scale, a plethora of vehicles, an always online and connected world, and a means to drive anywhere. Most delivered.

TDU2L-4Test Drive Unlimited 2 worked. It had two large islands where you could drive everywhere, and compete in races whenever you wanted. It was online where you could join friends and compete in the solo story, 1 on 1 vs a friend, and group races. Unfortunately the game was ruined by its online handling, and never recovered.

Reviews_03_WM_ForzaHorizon2Forza Horizons 2 offered a decent size world, and a very pretty one at that. You could drive anywhere, and it boasted 200+ vehicles, and an endless campaign. It had an online presence where you could race in a group, go on road trips, or compete in games. But that’s where the online capabilities ended. It didn’t truly feel like an online connected world, just one where you join a lobby, and follow the leader. My review is here.

The Crew seems to take the best of these worlds and gets it right. The game world is huge. HUGE. The Crew’s map spans the whole USA, showcasing all the major cities, allowing the player to drive anywhere, or fast travel anywhere with almost zero loading. It’s a truly impressive feat. The visuals are decent enough; it’s no Forza Horizons, as with the scale such as this, does come some sacrifices.

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The game is connected to an online world as well, which I haven’t fully experienced yet. You start with the ability to have a crew of up to 4 people. These crew members can join in almost all of the story missions and faction missions. Factions are online missions that contribute to the online world competition. Every time you sign in, you earn some rewards that your faction earned while you were offline. There are 5 factions you can join, 3 available at the start with the final 2 unlocked at later stages.

I haven’t experienced PvP or much of the online competitions or challenges yet, but I hope to soon. The online race type I’m currently missing, found in Test Drive, was the ability to challenge a friend to a race on the go. The game would set up an unscripted race destination, and then you race. That was a lot of fun, and spontaneous. Maybe it’s a feature that I haven’t found yet. Maybe I’m just grasping.

The race types themselves seem a little limited, along with the car list. So far I’ve come across the typical checkpoint, race to the finish, off-road races, escape the cops, and take down mode, where you’re challenged with taking out a single opponent. I’m not very far through the story yet, so I’m expecting more to be unlocked. The vehicle list seems limited as well, but each vehicle allows for 6 class mods, standard, off-road, and perf (professional street racing mod) which I’ve unlocked so far.

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A couple days ago I posted a quick time lapse of a 1hr race that I streamed on Twitch. Expect more of these as this game has some pretty epic multiple hour races.I might add a video page to store these Game Night videos.

Tomorrow is a review for Unmechanical, and then Sunday will be the weekly Achievement of the Week. And keep checking back in as I’ll be posting more news as we head into E3.

-iRogan

NEWS – Forzas, Far Crys, Borderlands, oh my.

First things first, but not necessarily in that order: New Design.

I’m not sure if I like it yet, as visually, I really prefer the whole text-blog look. I find the feels of the tile mosaic overwhelming, but I can understand how reading the previous way, things get overlooked. These are raw emotions.

We’ll see how it goes for now. Once you actually start filtering things down into categories its easier to find things. I’ll start titling things to their respective categories, which I had previously only done with reviews.

Also posted over the weekend was a new screenshots page. So far I have Forza Horizons 2, GTA V (360 edition), and Saints Row III. I’m really liking the new screenshot options on the Xbox One, so expect some from Far Cry 4 once the Upload app gets up-dated. 😉

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Earlier today I posted a quick review of Forza Horizons 2‘s presentation of Fast and Furious tie-in game content. While not bad, its weird how it all came about, presented as its own stand-alone thing, with achievements, and free for a limited time. Its nothing more than a demo of what Forza Horizons 2 is, with some movie-centric cars.

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I completed Episode 1 of Tales from the Borderlands and will be posting a quick review of that for Thursday before starting Episode 2. I’ve also been playing Far Cry 4 a lot, inferred from the mention of screenshots I suppose. Expect a more thorough impression write-up on Wednesday for What I’m Playing feature, and a proper review. I’ve been playing it in co-op but reached a point where further story progression is necessary. The game elements are just so random and hilarious sometimes. I hope to get a Short Story out of that game soon too.

Well enough about me…


Evolve’s New Hunters

Probably better suited to tomorrow’s update, but Evolve is getting a big content update tomorrow, which includes 4 DLC characters. Slim, the new Medic, Sunny, the new Support, Crow, the new Trapper, and Torvald, the new Assault. Behemoth is the new Monster being released.

Sadly I haven’t had the opportunity to try this game yet. It doesn’t cater to my typical game, but if it drops in price like Titanfall, might be worth looking into.

April Games With Gold

To celebrate 100 million games downloads, Microsoft is doubling down on the free Xbox Games with Gold in April:

Xbox One

  • Pool Nation FX
  • Child of Light

Xbox 360

  • Gears of War: Judgment (Available from April 1-15)
  • Terraria (Available from April 1-15)
  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (Available from April 16-31)
  • Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel (Available from April 16-31)

I’ll give Pool Nation and Child of Light a shot, but I’m not sure it’ll be my style of game. Unfortunately the 360 games I have. 😦

Half-Life 2: Update

The fan-created mod for Half Life 2, titled Half-Life 2: Update has been released on Steam free of charge. The 7GB update has numerous visual enhancements and bug fixes. Half-Life 2 has always been my favourite game and this serves as another opportunity to go back and revisit it. Maybe keep an eye out for some screen shots from that :).

Borderlands: The Handsome Collection

Requires a day one patch of 16GB on the Xbox One and 8.3GB on the PS4. Yikes. Luckily I have the storage. But do you?

I’m curious how big the game’s install is alone. I’ll be picking this up on Thursday. Eee!

Black Tusk Teasing Gears of War

Its not much, but Black Tusk has teased some Gears of War stuff via a Twitter picture Friday. Just a quick photo from a mo-cap shoot, but its still exciting to know that they are working on another Gears of War.

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Halo 5 Dates

At the end of the HuntTheTruth trailer featuring Master Chief and Locke, the release for Halo 5: Guardians is announced as Oct 27th, 2015.


See you tomorrow with this weeks new games and DLC.

-iRogan

Games Needing to be Played, and News Needing to be Read

…But not really. News is not important. It’ll be there tomorrow too. And the next day.


Some times I go through weird phases where I’m just absolutely addicted to playing games and everything else suffers. Currently I’m playing the following:

  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag –  To fill my 3rd person, open world, platformer void. To play an Ubisoft open world game, requires somewhat of a balancing act in priorities. Their games are typically filled with activities to complete, sights to see, side missions to pursue and stories to experience. The struggle is trying to balance these equally. Focus on one, and you start to get the feeling you’re missing out on the world around you, or your perks and upgrades are falling behind. Or, the dread of missing something entirely, which can’t be recovered. It’s stressful.
  • Battlefield: Hardline – To fill my FPS void. This is currently the freshest game on the market, and I don’t typically play games fresh. Normally to avoid bugs or server issues, or just my back-log of games. In this case I’m playing it for the single player campaign. And enjoying it! Stealth Battlefield, who knew! Continue to check back for my impressions, and Review.
  • Cities: Skylines – These type of games are great, but they’re a time sink. So going forward, to ensure I don’t lose focus on my other endeavors, I’ll probably just have to set a timer. Play the game, improve my city. Take a break until tomorrow. Continue to check back for my ongoing impressions and Review.
  • Sniper Elite 3 – Currently playing this in co-op with a friend. We’re about half way through, and we are not the stealthiest bunch.
  • Forza Horizons 2 – Still playing through this, wrapping up the Storm Island DLC, some achievements, and will check out the Fast and the Furious DLC  next week.

    I usually don’t like to overlap games of the same genre (or more than one Ubisoft game), so Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry 3 are currently on hold, and currently waiting on a fourth, to try out the GTA V Heists, but luckily nothing else new or notable is on the immediate horizon.

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Tomorrow I’ll be posting a new Review, of Never Alone, and I’m thinking about a new weekly feature centered around Achievements. Just gotta think of the concept and logistics – pretty much everything actually. Achievements are a pretty big deal to me.

And now, this:


OneDrive Supports Music

Microsoft announced today that the free cloud storage, OneDrive, included with Microsoft products, and Xbox, will support music uploads, which can be streamed through the Xbox Music app. The only issue I still have is that the app needs to be snapped to the side. Once minimized, the music stops. This is disappointing, as the 360 has the background music functionality. Hopefully this potential update comes soon, if they’re even working on it?

Nintendo Mobile Clarification

Further clarification came out today about the enlightening news regarding Nintendo’s mobile plans. As reported yesterday, Nintendo has partnered with DeNA to develop a mobile platform and service. Nintendo confirmed that they will be the ones developing the mobile games, with hopefully their first releases later this year, and DeNA will be developing the services to run on multiple types of devices.

Star Craft is Ending?

The Star Craft story is coming to an end. Revealed today, Blizzard has stated that the next expansion to Star Craft II, Legacy of the Void will be the conclusion to the Star Craft story, started way way back in Star Craft 1. They stated that the franchise will continue on, but the characters for now, fates sealed, will see a satisfying conclusion to their story.

Halo: Nightfall Blu-Ray

I haven’t actually had the chance to watch this series yet. I did enjoy Forward Unto Dawn, for the most part, but this new series has received mixed reviews, even with a notable producer in ridley Scott, and a larger budget.

The Master Chief Collection, however, is finally more stable, and I’ve been able to plug through more of the Halo 1-4 campaign missions in weekly late night co-op. 343 Guilty Spark in Halo: CE is still the buggiest level, nearly game breaking at points, but we made it through, thankfully, and we’re now able to complete the campaign.

Forward Unto Games!

-iRogan