Tag Archives: The Crew

IDL NEWS – E3 Recovery

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So with E3 2015 over and done, it’s time to sit back, relax, and dissect all the news. What happened? What’s coming out? Aside from all the notable news, what about the notable omissions from the show? Keep an eye on the E3 page, as I’ll still be posting opinions and thoughts there. At least until PAX Prime 2015 and Gamescon in September.

So, onward and upwards unto the news, as it never slows down.

Red Dead Redemption Leads Xbox Backwards Compatibility
Hot off the news that come holiday season, Xbox One will support Xbox 360 backwards compatibility, Xbox.com currently has a vote for the most requested games to be ported first:

https://xbox.uservoice.com/forums/298503-backwards-compatibility

Currently Red Dead Redemption tops the list, followed by Call of Dutys, Skyrim, Halo Reach and Gears of War 3.

Evolve’s Second Season Pass
Evolve is getting a second season pass, titled Hunting Pass 2, will be available June 23. The latest pass will introduce four new hunters and new monster, and some exclusive skins.

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Batman Arkham Knight Day One Patch
The release game will be a whopping 45GB install and the day one patch size has been revealed to be an additional 3.5GB. By the time the 1TB PS4 and Xbox One consoles hit the market it’ll already be too late. 2TB will be needed.

Arkham-Knight

Tales From The Borderlands: Ep 3 – Catch a Ride
TellTale Games has announced that episode 3 of Tales from the Borderlands, titled Catch a Ride will be released this week on its respected platforms. Means I should get on that Ep 2.

GameStop Retro
GameStop will be increasing its product lineup to include more used copies of retro games and refurbished game consoles. This will include more NES, N64, SNES, Sega Dreamcast, PS1, and Sega Genesis games.

Batman Arkham Knight

‘Nuff Said.

Looking ahead, I’ll be posting some more E3 stuff regarding Rise of the Tomb Raider and Dues Ex (among others) as these are two of the games I am looking forward to the most.

I recently started playing the indie hit BADLAND, and I’ll be posting some impressions of that soon.

What doesn't kill us, definitely reduces our numbers.

What doesn’t kill us, definitely reduces our numbers.

I’m still playing through The Crew and Splinter Cell The Blacklist. So, new games tomorrow, and then more news and further impressions on Crew, SplinterCell, and Badland to round off the week.

It’s summer . . . go outside!

-iRogan

E3 2015 – Ubisoft Press Conference – LIVE

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UBISOFT E3 2015 Press Conference: #UBI3

*Live blog. Please refresh*

-Just a few minutes away from the Ubisoft press conference. Quick hopefuls: Tom Clancy’s The Division, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Rainbow Six: Siege.

-3:00PM – Time for Ubisoft.

South Park

phpacmi7t-The epic RPG returns. An all new South Park game. Announcement trailer. Not a fantasy RPG, but a super hero game, South Park, The Fractured, but Whole.

-Aisha Tyler of course, introduces Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Continues the story of Stick of Truth. Kids are playing super heroes now.

-Aisha Tyler reassures us that Ubisoft does listen to their fans. And realize that 2014 and 2015 was not the best year with bugs and launch issues. Keep sending feedback.

For Honor

-Yves  Guillemot, CEO is on stage. Ubisoft has been a company that does takes risk. Announce a new IP and a new genre: Pre-rendered trailer showing knights and vikings. Sword fighting in epic battles. Castles and Knights. Lots of bloody sword fighting. Seems to be transitioning between generations. For Honor.

For-Honor

-Knights, Viking and Samurai. Creative Director Jason Vannenburg, introduced a new type of gameplay called the Art of Battle. Feel the game, feel the combat. Bring your friends.

-8 players come to the stage to show a live multiplayer demo, 2 teams of 4. Large battlefield, hundred or so enemies, knights vs samurai. Brutal sword fighting and execution kills. You can sense the weight of the weapons used. 4 v 4 multiplayer demo on the showroom floor.

The Crew Expansion and Trials Fusion Expansion

-Aisha is back to discuss two more games. The Crew up first, new expansion pack. Quick in-game footage trailer. Monster Trucks!! Drift races. Drag races. Motorcycles and dune buggies. November 17th, complete graphic overhaul with new vehicles and modes. The Crew – Wild Ride.

–Trials Fusion Awesome Level Max expansion. A WTF trailer??? A cat riding a fire breathing unicorn? Whisker physics, anyone?

Tom Clancy’s The Division

-Ryan Barnard, game designer for The Division. Showing the dark zone. Can work alongside other agents, or fight against them. This is no man’s land. Trust no one.

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-Snow wasteland in New York. Small squads starts to sneak up on a group and get flanked. Unsure how they’ll react but they decide to help. Seeder mine tool is shown, and small gun turret. Heading off to the park, the other players have joined up. “Cleaners” are shown. Flamethrower enemy type, but the group has loot so they don’t want to risk the interaction. Can call in for extraction. Need to defend for 90 seconds.

-Squad turns their back on the new strangers to steal their loot before extraction. 3rd member of the main squad decides to leave the group and take out everyone. Reinforces the do-no-trust-anyone in the dark zone functionality. Dick mood, sir.

-Game looks amazing. Hands on playable on the show floor. Beta’s on Xbox One , PS4 and PC next year. Releases March 8th, 2016 on all platforms.

ANNO 2205

anno-A Blue Byte Production, We’re leaving earth to the moon. New IP. Trailer shows a big facility and colony on the Moon. Zooms out and shows the entire moon has a population. ANNO 2205.

-Game starts on Earth, where you need to raise your city, and develop resources. Sort of like a Civ game then? A race to space?

Just Dance 2016

-The biggest music video game franchise of all time. Now you can use the smart phone as a controller. Also will work with the camera for consoles. Live dance demo with Jason Derulo – Want to Want Me. Typical Ubisoft. This October on all last-gen and this-gen platforms. Something special for WiiU, PS4, and Xbox One – streaming service, Just Dance Unlimited. Dance on Demand Subscription for all new fresh content.

Rainbow Six: Siege

-New CG story trailer. Biological threat. Shows biochemists. Rainbow Six: Siege. Close quarters combat. Everything is destructible. Once you die, you stay dead. Angela Basset is introduced. Plays the role of Six, leader of the counter-terrorism unit. They discuss what it’s like to do voice acting for the video game.

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-“More to Siege than multiplayer“. Terrohunt is back. Playable solo or with friends. Features the most difficult AI to date. Live Demo. Shows the breaching and drone tools. In co-op, communication is key. Destruction is incredible – blast little holes for viewpoints. Team makes it into the room to defend. Things get real intense.

-Beta starts September 24th, 2015. On All platforms, PVP and Terrohunt available in the beta.

Trackmania Turbo

-Coming from PC to consoles with all its tracks. Trailer shows the F1 car dropped onto the track from a helicopter and shows the wacky and wild race tracks. 4 player split-screen support. Time based races in the solo campaign. Fast crazy tracks with loops and banked turns and jumps, and obstacles. Game is fast. 200 tracks across different areas, modes and difficulties.

-Random track generator. Terraforming. Track creation, and details. Jump in and play within seconds on the new track. millions of auto-generated options. Rollercoaster style tracks.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

ass-creed-syndicate-Trailer shows the new world based in London. Trailer shows the gangs and street life. Horse & chariot gameplay returns. Guns will be more prominent this time. Fast brutal combat a mainstay. Trailer shows bar brawls. Showcasing Jacob Frye as the main protagonist. Doesn’t show his twin sister.

“Join the Rooks”

-Game takes place in 1868, right in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. First modern Assassin’s Creed game. Two Assassins and their gangs trying to remove the crooks from the streets and bring the streets back to the people.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands

-Yves  Guillemot comes back on stage for one last presentation to end the show. Group in Paris working in secrecy for the next announcement:

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-New Trailer: “Death is a Saint”. Skeleton and skulls. Trailer shows money and blood, and a Golden Gun. Pre-alpha game footage. New update on last year’s extreme sports game by the looks of it?

-First mission shows a group on the mountain tracking cocaine sales, sniper takes out the leader and the trailer jumps to dune buggy off-road chase. Next mission shows a stealth option, another lab. Lab is blown up, and the heroes race off. Next mission is an ambush option. Full assault with drones and assault rifles.

“How do you fight an enemy that doesn’t fear death?”

-Massive Open World. Trailer shows all the different terrain and modes of transport. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands. Like The Crew, but essentially a better version of Mercenaries. Awesome!

Aisha Tyler and Ubisoft sign off on their conference. Play On!

Last up is Sony’s press conference at 6pm.

-iRogan

WHAT I’M PLAYING – The Crew

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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.

thecrew

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

Game Night: The Crew – W/ iRogan and Illestrader

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Welcome back to the land of the living, you’ve been gone for quite some time . . .

Yes, I was dead, but I got better.

I’ve been playing The Crew a lot lately, and I’ll put together a review in progress for Thursday, but I thought I’d quickly throw together a quick time lapse of a recent race.

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I was broadcasting this on Twitch.tv last week. This is a race from The Crew, called Colorado Crawl; a race that takes over an hour to complete. I made a time lapse of it.

All the while, we kept getting a message at the top that the servers would be turning off for scheduled maintenance, at 12:30am, which was approximately the time we would be completing the race. This added unnecessary stress, as you can expect.


Enjoy.

Everything should be back to normal again. News, New Games, What I’m Playing, Reviews, and Achievement of the Week.

-iRogan

E32014 – Ubisoft Press Conference

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3rd of the big 4 today, starting up. Ubisoft hosted by Aisha Tyler.

UbiPress

Far Cry 4’s first 5 minutes is on display. The game looks very similar to Far Cry 3, maybe just a next-gen boost, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s last gen and Next-gen. Assuming its going to be a very story driven FPS again. Game is based in the Himalayan mountains. Our character is on a bus with a passport, and we’re heading towards a militant checkpoint. Bus gets stopped, the papers our guide has gets rejected and all hell breaks loose. Our villain arrives via helicopter and grills the militant leader – ” I said stop the bus, not shoot the bus. Very big difference”. The villain has a similar psychotic entrance that Vaas had, he’s very calm and disturbing. Get the impression that the protagonist is related to the villain. Shout out to the villain w/ protagonist selfie. Nov 18th release.

Aisha Tyler is out, and the language censorship is turned off. Watch Dog’s success gets a brief mention, as does the fact that she’s in the game. Moving on to new stuff.

Just Dance 2015 – Yay dancing. #pee_break. This got a long presentation, 20+ people on the stage included.

The Division is up next with a long time lapse story trailer of the outbreak. Really shows the engine, day/night cycles, and city seasonal changes. Very awesome. Not an engine gameplay, as we already got that during the MS press conference.

Ubisoft’s next big project, once delayed – The Crew. Boasting gameplay that allows you drive across the entirety of the USA with no loading. We get a lengthy time lapse showcasing some cars and the different types of terrain to travel: deserts and snowy mountains, tarmac and off-road. Many different styles of cars, day/night cycles. The scope of this game is incredible, gigantic, and gorgeous. The time lapse showcases one of numerous 2+ hour missions. The game is to be released Nov 11th, 2014 on XBox1, PS4, and PC. Closed Beta available July 23rd, 2014.

Ubisoft’s biggest franchise, Assassin’s Creed is gonna be their big focus this year. the MS press conference had a brief showing on the multi-player side of Assassin’s Creed Unity, and at the Ubisoft side we get to see what single-player plays like, and how multi-player can be integrated. It seems like co-op can be drop in, as we pass some potential missions they advertise the option of “4 players”. We start of with the E3 staple – the story trailer set to lovely appropriate music. Unity focuses on the French Revolution. 4 assassins with the focus on co-operative gameplay. There are a ridiculous amount of NPC’s on the screen, hundreds, that you have to navigate through to reach your targets. Very simple, minimalistic HUD. Nothing static, just contextual. Eagle vision returns showing off the level’s focus, and enemies, and small context elements can pop up as requested so you know where to go. No maps on the HUD from what I can tell. New traversal elements, the ability to angle yourself up walls to grab ledges, instead of running straight at them. Similar combat mechanics, slow, paced. It does seem like the game is going back to the slower original assassin’s gameplay, scope the area, find info on the target, strike, or instigate a strike, and then run. To be release October 28th, 2014.

Time for a breather – another fitness game – Shape Up where your workout is a game, in a game, presented as a game. #gamer #focus

Time to pull on the heart strings, Ubisoft. Valiant Hearts – The Great War is next. Cartoon 2D side-scroller, made on the Rayman Legends engine, similar art style to Behemoth’s Castle Crashers. Focus is 4 players and a K-9 companion. The game is based on real WW1 history , 1914-1918, inspired by letters, taking place in a stylized universe. Bringing art and the past to life.

Nearing the end of the press conference now, as CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot is out to say thanks….and here our next new game:

Rainbow Six: Siege!

We’re shown a pre-alpha multi-player match of a house breach. Starts of with the Six’s drone view inside of the house as the terrorists are barricading the walls and windows, and a one minute countdown for the match to start. Six’s decide to breach from the roof and upstairs windows. 5 vs. 5 gameplay – 5 minute breach. Match/breach starts, and the level of destruction to the house is incredible. No need top go through the doors when you can shoot your way through the walls. Crazy damage model being shown. The character’s models do have a cartoonier look, not unlike Team Fortress in a way. Matches finishes with a cliff hanger as 2 Sixs breach through a wall into the room while one breaches through the ceiling. Incredible showcase. Rainbow Six Siege.

Aisha Tyler and Ubi out!

Last up will be Sony’s Press Conference to wrap the day.