We had the opportunity to go hands-on with Square Enix's Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae on the PlayStation 4 at PAX East yesterday, and it definitely left us wanting more. From stunning visuals to the amazement over an open world in a Final Fantasy title, XV is set to not disappoint.
The Escapists fully released on both Steam and Xbox One earlier this month, already having earned much praise from Steam users during its Early Access phase. A strategy game at its core, The Escapists will keep you busy as you gradually work your way toward a prison break, with varying difficulty depending on the starting map you select.
The game only has a brief tutorial before you move on to the action. While this tutorial emphasizes breaking out, most of your time in the actual game is spent gathering everything you need for that breakout. You'll find yourself performing favors to curry money and respect from other inmates, pillaging those same inmates' unconscious bodies and desks for items, craft supplies and more.
The Daybreak EverQuest Next and Landmark team (above picture, left to right) of Rosie Rappaport, Michael Mann, Steve Klug, Terry Michaels, Darrin McPherson, Colette "Dexella" Murphy (community) and Emily "Pentapod" Taylor livestreamed a Q&A session this evening. Questions were taken from social media, the forums and leftovers from previous livestreams. Below are the notes we took, which are categorized for our sanity.
There were a few important things mentioned during the livestream tonight:
Near the end of the stream, there was discussion over a question regarding a final plan for the game. Darrin pointed out that a lot of research and development constantly goes into a product like this, and the discussion was a bit unclear beyond that point from my end. My interpretation of this response, based on the earlier discussion of when Landmark will hit open beta, is that the team only plans the next several months at a time and may not have set in advance solid milestones to hit to say the games are ready to roll into the next phase.
Here's the rest!
Many people guessed that Heart of Thorns was going to be the first expansion for Guild Wars 2, but that didn’t steal the thunder from ArenaNet as Mike O’Brien took to the stage and showed off the announcement trailer for the game’s first expansion pack.
Approaching a game is never an easy task; bias has to go out the window. It's like reverting to a turn-based strategy game after playing years of real-time games. It's hard to consider the factors of what might go into a title when someone plays it for scoring. I'd argue a sequel should be scored harsher than its predecessor, especially if there's an expectation set by the community. In the rules of game development, nobody expects a sequel to have worse graphics than the prequel, because these are just fundamental rules that are not only followed, but expected.
Sony Online Entertainment's superhero MMO, DC Universe Online, dinged level 4 on Sunday, January 11th. DCUO launched with fast-paced, physics-based combat, rich story arcs and the ability to play either a villain or hero while pairing up with well-known figures from the DC universe.
Since its launch the game has released a lot of content and features. To celebrate the 4th anniversary, let's take a quick look at how DCUO has grown over the years!
Fight for the Light was DCUO's 1st DLC, featuring Green Lantern and the introduction of the game’s seventh power set, Light.
In times of great need, the Green Lantern and Sinestro Corps would give out “reservist rings” to worthy heroes or enthusiastic villains who will help restore the balance of the universe for their side; these players can be deputized into either Corps and fight alongside legendary ring-bearers. In addition to the new light power set, DCUO players were able to interact with characters and missions based on the Green Lantern mythos in all-new gameplay scenarios.
This week we awarded our top gaming picks of 2014. It wasn't easy; there were many stand-outs this year!
Our Expansion of the Year award went to World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. ZAM's VP of Technology, Michael "Argo" Ender, said that "World of Warcraft fell off my radar a bit after Wrath. With WoD they made the WoW game I've always wanted to play. Thank you Blizzard!" President Cody "Micajah" Bye added that the release of Draenor "revitalized an entire game." Check out contributing writer Michael "Ragar" Branham's story about how Warlords drew him back to Warcraft in our Expansion of the Year article.
Consoles saw a lot of new titles this year, but Destiny took the prize home for our Console Game of the Year award. Bungie reached for excellence and delivered on many levels with the title that has half of our staff hopelessly addicted. It may not be all roses, as ZAM Deputy Editor Colt "ShdwFlm" Casey mentions in our Console Game of the Year article, but at its core Destiny is a fun experience with room to improve.
PC gamers were treated to a plethora of excellent titles this year, with BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition landing our PC Game of the Year award. The in-depth story and replayability ultimately won many of us over as we took the Qunari by the horns and laid waste to all who stood to oppose Thedas. Managing Editor Ann "Cyliena" Hosler talked about how DAI excelled on every level in our PC Game of the Year article.
Finally, we looked forward to what next year will bring and agreed that Overwatch, which Blizzard unveiled during this year's BlizzCon, is our Most Anticipated Game of 2015. Project Manager Katie Welka teared up at the epic cinematic trailer, while Colt admitted that he gets the feels every time he watches it. ZAM's Brand Ambassador, Lindsay "Geektr0n" Ferguson, teamed up with Ann to explain why Overwatch is the game we all should be eagerly awaiting in our Most Anticipated Game of 2015 article.
Thanks for joining us for another fantastic year in gaming! We hope everyone is having a great holiday week and look forward to seeing what 2015 will bring!
When I originally heard about Warlords of Draenor, I was excited, but a bit worried about the premise. As much as I liked the idea of fighting these big name Orc Warlords and seeing how powerful they truly could be when free of the Burning Legion’s corruption, when you mix in time travel and alternate realities into any fiction, things always have the potential to go off the rails and end up a mess. World of Warcraft has dealt with time travel in the past with dungeons and even the Mount Hyjal raid, but this is an entire expansion built around having an alternate reality invade our own? Can something like this really hold up to scrutiny? In a word: absolutely. For a longer description, I’ll use my own starting experience to give an example.
Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade has had quite a busy year. They launched their Founder’s Program after E3, shown numerous demonstrations of the current build on their Twitch livestream, talked about their design philosophies, and constantly polled their fans to make sure they were both staying true to the WH40K lore as well as making a game that will actually be fun. As 2014 comes to a close, Behaviour Interactive will do their final Twitch stream of the year today at 1:30pm ET, but they’re planning on going out with a bang.
They’ll have a never-before-seen war zone, a Razer giveaway, and more! On top of all that, they released more details on what F2P players will get to experience on Arkhona as one of the Ork Boyz. To bring us up to speed prior to the stream, ZAM spoke with BI’s Studio Head Miguel Caron to learn what’s happening in this corner of the 40K universe.
Landing today, the largest update for Landmark so far is set to shake the foundations of the game. We were lucky enough to get a guided tour of what’s inbound from Director of Development Dave Georgeson and Senior Producer Terry Michaels.
After much time spent on polishing the building tools and laying the foundations of core systems, SOE is ready to unleash some features that signal a leap forward towards the game's ultimate destination. While Landmark has provided an excellent canvas for builders, the time has come to add the elements that make Landmark a full game, and this update includes a sizeable chunk of them.
There’s so much, in fact, we’re going to break it down into sections for the sake of clarity. There will be some overlap, but it’ll save me from going insane as my nerd brain tries to communicate all the awesome all at once. Have you ever heard a 7 year old excitedly explain Minecraft to a patient relative? It would be like that.
There are already surface caves to run around and get lost in, but this update is going to push them all the way down through Landmark’s massive underground space. As players travel deeper through the five layers the risks get riskier as the rewards get rewardier.
Featuring developer and player-made structures and points of interest, much larger caverns will be scattered underground, these will be the best places to find monsters and are intended to be quite a challenge for a lone player.
The team want these places to feel dangerous and to have an element of risk, which is why teleporting works a little differently underground.
A temporary change for this update actually sees the removal of surface caves, so we won’t be running down into the network from the surface for a while. Access to the underground areas will be via the Leyline point at the Hub. Surface caves are due to return for open beta, when the islands will be reformed. This means there is no chance currently that players will lose a claim to a pesky cave placement.
