‘Pokemon Go’ beta arrives on mobile devices
Pokemon Go, the real-world equivalent to kicking off your own journey to becoming a Pokemon master, is finally available for beta testers in the US as of today.
After opening signups to users earlier this month, beta testers will be chosen and allowed into the program today to begin roaming the world capturing Pokemon, battling other trainers, and making those who weren’t chosen for the field test feel bad.
Along with revealing the field test is commencing today, The Pokemon Company and Niantic have also revealed several new tidbits about Pokemon Go as a whole. There will be more than a hundred different Pokemon to capture out in the wild. When one is near a player out in the wild, there’ll be a notification sent via phone to use the device’s touch screen to throw a Poke Ball, which may be purchased at PokeStops, or real-world monuments, historical locales, or public art installations.
Battling is an important and obvious centerpiece to the game as well, and players can use their captured monsters to assume control of Gyms out in the world. Attacking the Pokemon defending particular Gyms will reduce its Prestige level, and when it’s been taken out completely the player will take control of a Gym. The higher the Gym’s level, the more Pokemon that can be left to defend it. leading to several real-world turf battles that could grow to pretty impressive proportions.
If you signed up to participate in the field test, you should be receiving a notification that you were chosen for the beta. The signup page is still live, however, so if you missed out on doing so before you may want to hurry over and give it a try. You could be strutting around outside the office today catching your very own Pokemon.
‘Hohokum’ developers make a roguelike full of loot and cute
It’s been less than a year since Honeyslug, the trio behind games like Hohokum and Super Exploding Zoo disbanded to pursue solo projects. Today, we’re seeing one of the first such efforts, Loot Rascals, a roguelike strategy game.
Loot Rascals is the first title from Hollow Ponds, a new studio founded by Nikki and Ricky Haggett, both of who were on the Hohokum team, the latter as lead designer. Also working on the game are artists Swatpaz, an animator for Adventure Time, and Meowza, who worked on Alphabear and Road Not Taken.
Development pedigree established, what exactly is Loot Rascals? , The team describes it as a “roguelike strategy experience with collectible card game elements and a retro sci-fi aesthetic,” which is a mouthful but fairly easy to comprehend. In the game, you’ll be tasked with escaping a planet full of aliens, robots and monsters, all drawn in a cutesy yet mildly unsettling style.
You’ll mount your escape attempt by exploring your environment, collecting cards and fighting enemies. Each card does one of three things: offer a special ability, applies a buff or alter your life, attack or defence stat. You have limited space for cards in your inventory, so you’ll need to constantly be making decisions on what cards to keep or discard (tossing a card converts it into currency which you can use to replenish health or activate special abilities).
The entire game is turn-based — moving your character one square takes a turn, and foes move one square with each turn you take. If you’re adjacent to an enemy, a turn-based battle begins.
Because this is a roguelike, when you’re dead, all progress is lost, and you start again. As with many games in the genre, there’s a slight twist on the permadeath idea. When an enemy kills you, it keeps one of your cards. If another player then kills that enemy, they’ll get the option to keep the card or return it to you, its rightful owner. Depending on which option they choose, a hologram AI of your character will appear in the other player’s game and either aid them or attempt to kill them.
It’s early days for Loot Rascals, and we’re bound to hear a lot more about the game over the coming months. It’s currently scheduled for a release in early 2017 on PC and PlayStation 4.
Source: Hollow Ponds
‘Overwatch’ adding ranked play next month
Blizzard’s much-publicized shooter Overwatch is finally out today, but it released without one very important component: Ranked play. Don’t worry though. Lead game designer Jeff Kaplan has assured the community that feature is coming, as early as next month.
In a recent Facebook Q&A session, Kaplan made sure to note that ranked play would be part of a special content update in mid to late June. It was originally included in the game until Blizzard made note of some issues within competitive mode that caused lower-skilled players to be matched up with higher-skilled players. This obviously caused balancing concerns, especially when the entire point of ranked mode is to gain ground on the leaderboards.
Overwatch is very much a competitive game that’s ripe for the addition of ranked mode. There’s still a good month’s worth of practice to be had if it’s a part of the game that concerns you, so there’s plenty of time to brush up on your skills before testing them against the rest of the world. And with the amount of players who signed up for the beta before the game’s release, you’re going to want all the practice you can get.
Source: Facebook
The Strong Museum opens a DICE Awards exhibit
The Academy of Arts and Sciences (AIAS) holds its annual DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) awards to recognize outstanding video games and the individuals who bring them to life., Basically, they’re like the Oscars of the gaming industry. Today, they’re opening an interactive exhibit at The Strong’s National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY to showcase winners and significant titles across gaming history.
The exhibit will feature a touchscreen exploring the history of the Academy, which has celebrated achievements in video gaming for 20 years. There will be a Greatest Hits section featuring Game Of The Year winners from Goldeneye to Fallout 4, along with a case full of artifacts and documents pulled up from the museum’s vaults. The Strong Museum plans to keep the exhibit open year-round, updating it annually after each series of awards.
Source: The Strong Museum
Blizzard is offering one free Battle.net name change
Sick of heading into games registered to your Battle.net account as ResidentsLover or BeautifulDarkness83? You’ve got one free shot to make a change on Blizzard with the release of Overwatch.
The official Heroes of the Storm Twitter account announced the news earlier this morning, likely much to the excitement of anyone who thought up a tag years ago for World of Warcraft based on their favorite song lyric at the time or a vampire OC they trolled AOL chats with (not that I’m guilty of that.)
Normally you get one free name change with every BattleTag, ever. Consider this a license to go crazy and change up your style. Just make sure you follow the naming conventions established by Blizzard here and go with something you’re not going to regret later. Again. And then when you’ve changed your BattleTag, remember that Microsoft is doing something similar, freeing up Xbox Live gamertags that you can jump on to give yourself an online rebirth of sorts.
With the release of #Overwatch, you can now change your BattleTag once! https://t.co/xK4nkBwyvk pic.twitter.com/bjn5Ax0t5w
— Heroes of the Storm (@BlizzHeroes) May 24, 2016
‘Rocket League’ gets cross-network play for Xbox One and PC
Rocket League players will soon have an even wider breadth of teammates to choose from, as Psyonix has announced that Xbox One and PC cross-network play is going live for all today.
Players around the world will be able to match up with cross-network Rocket League aficionados beginning today at 6pm ET/3pm PT. If your buddy primarily takes to their Xbox One and you find yourself gravitating to PC, you can finally play together across both platforms.
This isn’t the first time a platform has allowed for cross-network play, as evidenced with games like Shadowrun back on Xbox 360, Portal 2 on PlayStation 3. But it is a first for the Xbox One, tracing back to an announcement from Microsoft itself back in March.
It’s the beginning of an exciting new precedent where we’ll be seeing Microsoft further expanding its online gaming offerings, and Rocket League is a great choice for kicking things off.
“We’re really excited to bring Xbox One and PC players closer together,” said Jeremy Dunham, Vice President of Psyonix. “Cross-network play has been something that Xbox One gamers have been asking us for since the day we launched, and thanks to Microsoft’s new cross-network policies, we’re proud to give it to them.”
Source: NeoGAF
SteelSeries ships its OLED-packing gaming mouse
Did you look at SteelSeries’ display-toting Rival 700 mouse in January and think it was just the edge you needed for your gaming exploits? It’s time to do something about it. The company’s Rival 700 is now available for a pricey (though not outlandish) $100. As before, its centerpiece is a side-mounted OLED screen that both shows data (such as your in-game stats or your team logo) and helps you tweak settings without firing up software on your PC. You can also ‘feel’ events through customizable vibrations, and swap optical sensors when you’re eager for an upgrade. Is this overkill? Probably — but there’s no doubt that you’ll have a distinct gaming experience.
Source: SteelSeries
‘Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’ and the long shadow of a cult classic
“It’s a game that’s built a lot on momentum and forward movement and not stopping, reaching almost a zen-like thing.”
That’s how DICE Design Director Erik Odeladhl describes his latest game, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. It stars Faith, a freerunner, as she sprints, slides and leaps around a stark-white futuristic urban sprawl. The city is her playground. On top of a skyscraper, Faith builds up speed and swings onto a thin ledge, where she seamlessly dashes and jumps, rolling onto the roof of the next building and always running, running, running. For many fans, this constant motion is what the series is all about.
But Odeladhl’s favorite part of Catalyst involves no movement at all.
“I find it extremely nice to just climb up somewhere really, really high up and then just stand still there and actually just look at the city,” he says. “Since it’s been part of my life for so many years now, I’m basically really, really happy seeing the city and seeing that it works and everything is connected. That’s a big thing for me.”
Odeladhl is one of the masterminds behind DICE’s new game. He pitched Catalyst as a reboot, he helped conceive the City of Glass and he decided everything would be larger with a nonlinear narrative. He holds Faith’s future in his hands.
“She’s a truly unique heroine,” Odeladhl says. “First, the fact that she’s a heroine — she’s not your standard game hero. But she’s also so far removed; she’s not a cliche and she’s got a very unique look.”
The original Mirror’s Edge, released in 2008 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is a cult classic. Its hordes of fans are hungry for more freerunning, and they have specific requests for the new game. Essentially, they want more: more freerunning, more city to explore, more characters to interact with and more story to absorb.
It’s Odeladhl’s job to provide these things in Catalyst, while also retaining DICE’s own creative vision for the game. Luckily, Odeladhl knows what the series’ long-time hardcore fans want — because he’s one of them.
“Personally, I’ve always felt we were doing the right thing,” he says. “But you’re always worried. You never really know if you’re doing the right thing until people actually play the game. There’s a lot of heritage with Mirror’s Edge; it was very well-received, and it’s also a very unique title. And we wanted to build on that uniqueness; we wanted to create something that was true to the first game but improved upon it in a lot of areas.”
Odeladhl joined DICE in 2006, when Mirror’s Edge was in production, but he was brought on to build Battlefield games. He caught glimpses of Mirror’s Edge around the office, and when he finally got his hands on it in 2007, he was hooked.
“I immediately wanted to work on that game,” Odeladhl says. “But it didn’t work out that way.”
He ended up building Battlefield 3 and the 2010 installment of Medal of Honor before he was offered a chance to join a group working on the new Mirror’s Edge. Odeladhl and his team pitched the game to studio executives as a reboot with a vast, open city and nonlinear storyline. They wanted a clean slate in a fresh world with plenty of space for players to freerun. It wouldn’t have guns, it would feature asynchronous multiplayer modes and Faith would reprise her role as the star.
Catalyst hasn’t changed much from that initial pitch.
“We wanted to not just create a new game but actually to build a world with a big city, the City of Glass, where you free-roam as a player, but also a world with a history and a future — political conflicts and that type of stuff,” Odeladhl says.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has been delayed twice since its announcement. First it was pushed back from February to May of this year, and then from May 24th to June 7th (more of a two-week hiccup than a full-fledged delay). The original setback was because Odeladhl and his team requested extra time, and the second was to incorporate feedback from the game’s closed beta.
Even though it resulted in a small delay, the beta went extremely well from Odeladhl’s point of view.
“When you release games, and the internet being the internet, there’s always some negativity,” he says. “But I actually looked and I could find very little of it. That, to me, was the most surprising thing.”
Fans have waited a long while for a new Mirror’s Edge installment, but it hasn’t been in vain. Catalyst exists only because the proper amount of time has passed, allowing technology to catch up with DICE’s goals. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One finally boast enough memory and processing power to support a city on this scale (without generating a million loading screens).
“We literally couldn’t have built this game on the older consoles,” Odeladhl says. “It would have been a different game.”
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst would also be a completely different game if it was built from scratch for virtual reality. As an immersive first-person freerunning experience, it seems like an obvious candidate for VR, and series fans haven’t been quiet about that. Odeladhl and his team have certainly talked about Mirror’s Edge in VR, but it’s simply not in the cards — or the code — right now.
“The thing with VR is that it requires you to design and build for VR from the beginning,” Odeladhl says. “It’s very hard to port an experience. … Mirror’s Edge could very well work in VR, but we wanted to focus on the body awareness of a standard game now.”
DICE will release Mirror’s Edge Catalyst on June 7th, offering Faith another chance to prove the value of first-person freerunning. The City of Glass is complete and ready to be conquered; its buildings stand sleek and tall. And on top of one towering structure stands Faith, completely still, surveying the city that Odeladhl and DICE built.
‘Battlecast’ turns ‘Skylanders’ into a collectible card game
Activision Blizzard has seen a ton of success with two franchises in recent years: Skylanders, which kicked off the toys-to-life craze, and Hearthstone, which made collectible card games (CCG) accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Now, it’s mashing the two together for Skylanders Battlecast, a CCG aimed at children. Announced last summer, it’s finally available across North America and Europe from today.
Just like regular Skylanders games, Battlecast is very much focused on you buying real-world items. The game itself will be available on iOS or Android (both Google and Amazon flavours) as a free download. To make the most of it, you’ll need to buy cards. There are 24 character cards to collect, along with numerous Spell, Gear and Relic cards that will allow you to attack enemies, change stats or modify the playing field. Think Magic: The Gathering’s Equipment, Artifacts and Enchantments and you won’t be far off.
In battles, you’ll have a 30-card deck containing just three characters and a mix of Spells, Gear and Relics. Each character has basic attack and health stats, and every move will cost you “crystals,” (think Mana). You’ll need to decide which cards to use and when in order to win battles.
Although the basic setup will be familiar to anyone that’s played Hearthstone, Magic or Pokémon Trading Card Game, Battlecast has its own twist: augmented reality. You play via the official application, which will turn the cards into 3D models on your device’s screen.
There are 300 cards in total to choose from, but you’ll need to splash out a lot of money to get close to that figure. They’ll come in Battle Packs (two are available, each priced at $9.99 / £9.99 for 22 cards including three characters) and Booster Packs ($4.99 / £4.99 for a random selection of eight cards). To add them to your collection, you just scan them with the app.
There are five “layers of collectability,” ranging from “Common” to to “Foil,” the rarest of which will only be available through Booster Packs. Simple math will tell you that, even with the best luck, you’re still likely to be spending a couple hundred dollars to fill out your collection.
You might have already thought of a problem with this scanning system — what’s stopping you from just scanning any card, or even a photo of a card? Well, each card has a unique identifier hidden on it, and can only be used with one account at a time. As such, the Battle Packs come with a “trading shield” that prevents sneaky players from scanning cards into their system and essentially stealing the right to use them. You can get around that by forgoing the physical realm and buying Battle and Booster Packs in digital form through the app, but that kinda takes away the fun of it all in my mind.
There’s a big focus on player-vs-player in Battlecast, with casual and ranked matches online, as well as an option to play gamers on your friends list. If you’re more the solitary type, you there are 60 solo missions to run through, with pretty much endless replayability if you approach them with different decks.
Skylanders Battlecast is available from today on iOS and Android in Europe and North America. If you live in New Zealand of Australia, it soft launched there last month.
‘Ori and the Blind Forest’ finally makes its way to retail
What began on Xbox One as a digital title, then a definitive edition on the same console, followed by one on PC is finally making its way to bricks and mortar stores. On June 14th, you’ll be able to walk into your favorite fine purveyor of video games and grab a hard copy of Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition for $20. More than just the base game with added bits to explore and story to (probably) cry over, a post on Xbox Wire says the domestic physical release includes Ori’s soundtrack on CD. It isn’t glow-in-the-dark vinyl, but hey, at least you won’t have to get up to flip the record every 20 minutes or so next month.
Source: Xbox Wire
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