Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry. More by Alex Cocilova
Late last week I got a chance to dive head-first into the upcoming zombie survival MMO The War Z, with Executive Producer Sergey Titov showing me around. Here's what I learned while racking up a significant virtual body count.
Betas first
Into the big city
We headed into one of the bigger cities to search for anything useful. As we walked the ravaged streets it was obvious a struggle had taken place; body bags lay near dumpsters, walls were crumbled and vehicles were scattered, some in better shape than others. I was told vehicles would be available in the game (though they were disabled for the alpha test) and would not require any maintenance. They do, however, require gasoline, which is a rare consumable. Aside from powering vehicles, you can also use gasoline offensively; pour it out, attract some foes and throw a flare to start a zombie-Q.
Alex is a freelance videogame writer who writers for PCWorld's GameOn. He likes Star Wars a lot, maybe a bit much. More by Alex Rubens
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that Assassin’s Creed 2 is one of my favorite games of this generation. There was a pure sense of exploration and discovery that I haven’t found in any game since, not even the semi-sequels Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood or Revelations. Since that experience, I’ve been looking for a game to revive that feeling, and, while things have changed in games since Assassin’s Creed 2 was originally released back in 2009, I found that feeling while exploring the frontier in Assassin’s Creed 3, and it feels good.
I was given free reign to run around in Connor’s land after Ubisoft flew me out for an event in Boston this past week. As I walked out into the forest on my way to Connor’s homestead, I realized just how far games have come in three years. I’m not talking about a deep philosophical change in games, but rather the simple stuff, like draw distance and the amount of objects that can be shown onscreen at once. That might seem somewhat trivial, but it becomes really important when you’re trying to sell the atmosphere of a dense and large area like the forest.
I ran toward a stump that was clearly signaling “hey, you can totally climb here” and started climbing into the upper branches of the forest. I initially thought traversing through a forest by leaping from tree to tree would be somewhat clunky and awkward, but it turns out that it works better than running through a normal city. You’re mostly following a preset path of branches that lead you through sections of the forest, but there’s the occasional off-shoot path that allows you to change course, though you shouldn’t expect total free-control over frontier climbing, as there aren’t low branches on every tree.
Movement through trees is really smooth too, almost to an alarming degree. Even when I encountered a tree base in my path, Connor quickly shuffled his way around to the other side without any input from me. It’s elegant (in a minimalistic sense) that he just does it without any slowdown or thought.
Once I finally got over how cool the forest running was, I decided to set out and do some missions. Before I could even look to find any, I ran across a woman crying in the forest. She had been shot by Red Coat poachers that were killing the wildlife in the area. I tracked them down and murdered them. There wasn’t any negotiation, but then again, we don’t negotiate with Red Coats.
David Daw has studied the history and future of television and has a master's in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts from San Francisco State University along with a BA in genre fiction from NYU. More by David Daw
Now the undisputed heavyweight champ, World of Warcraft, is droppng their new expansion. We’ve covered Mists of Pandaria before, but we thought it might be useful to give a brief overview of what’s new about the expansion before it launches next Tuesday, September 25th. If you’ve heard anything about Mists of Pandaria you’ve probably heard it’s the Kung-Fu Panda expansion, and that’s true to a certain extent.
Alex is a freelance videogame writer who writers for PCWorld's GameOn. He likes Star Wars a lot, maybe a bit much. More by Alex Rubens
After the announcement of Halo 4 at E3 2012, fans everywhere have been pining for more information and a deeper look at the upcoming sequel to the hugely popular Halo trilogy. Last week I was invited for some hands-on time with 343 Industries’ first attempt at a true Halo game, and walked away more impressed than I had thought possible.
Dawn, the first campaign mission, picks up right after the ending of Halo 3. Cortana wakes the Chief as the ship is under attack; it isn’t immediately clear what is attacking the ship, but she needs his help protecting it. This marks both the literal and figurative return of Master Chief, and that immediately comes across in the opening sequence. The Chief and Cortana reunite and he heads out to find out what’s going on. Unfortunately, what they find isn’t exactly comforting: they’re right in the middle of a Covenant fleet in the orbit of a Forerunner planet, Requiem.
Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry. More by Alex Cocilova
Captain's Log - It's been countless hours since I first started my mission of delivering sensitive information to the Federation in order to combat the rebel scum. This is not my first attempt, nor will it likely be my last; captaining a ship is a full-time job, and often comes with a side-effect of fiery explosions, death and addiction to this fun game.
FTL: Faster Than Light is a roguelike game with a heavy dose of real-time-strategy and spaceship-to-spaceship combat simulation. The goal is to progress through large distances of space, answering distress calls and fighting pirates while gathering scrap to upgrade your systems and acquire new weapons. The end goal is to make it back to the Federation before the Rebels catch up to you (and they are constantly on your tail) to deliver data that could change the war. You start with a ragtag crew of three and a simple ship equipped with basic weapons, shield and subsystems (such as life support and engines). Send a crew member to man a certain station and enjoy a boost to its productivity while they gain skill at that system over time. It's important to decide who does what at the beginning, because some stations are more useful than others and you'll rarely have enough crewmembers to man them all.
Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry. More by Alex Cocilova
When people think of great first-person shooters they typically recall Doom and Unreal Tournament. Not me, though; I think back to the game that really started it for me, the one that did single-player right: Half-Life. Published by Valve Software in 1998, the original Half-Life was a journey through an apocalyptic experience at the Black Mesa labs in New Mexico as seen through the eyes of a brave but silent hero, Gordon Freeman. Now, 14 years later, a team of modders have released Black Mesa, a recreation of that seminal experience with Valve's Source engine. It looks marvelous.
The project started back in 2004 after Valve released their new Source engine yet failed to satisfy fans with a remake of Half-Life in the new engine titled (appropriately enough) "Half-Life: Source." After some progress and a bit of positive press attention the Black Mesa project went quiet and was presumed dead for a number of years, until in June of 2012 when the Black Mesa Modification Team offered new media once their Facebook profile reached 20,000 likes. In September the project leader, Carlos "cman2k" Montero confirmed a September 14 release date for Black Mesa.
The big news out of Valve this week is their move into the living room with a new version of Steam. I got a chance to poke around Steam’s new Big Picture beta and while I was impressed by what I saw, I don't think this is the ultimate solution to gaming on the TV some may be hoping for.
If you’re not familiar with Big Picture, it’s a new beta product released by Valve on Monday that promises to make the company’s Steam gaming platform more TV-friendly. And it succeeds at that challenge: The Big Picture interface apes the best interface tricks of set-top boxes and game consoles. Big bright buttons with stripped-down and easy-to-navigate interfaces abound.
