Category: Written


Hands-On: Assassin’s Creed Rogue

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November 6, 2014

50 Shades of Shay

With so little information out there right now about Assassin’s Creed Rogue, I admit I was very worried about what I’d see when I finally got to play it. I was convinced that last-gen games couldn’t offer up as enjoyable an experience as their new-gen counterparts. But if Rogue proves to be the swan song for Assassin’s Creed on Xbox 360 and PS3, there seems to be no better title to possibly do it with.

Over the course of about four hours, I was able to play Sequences 3 and 5 in Rogue, where we first get to see Shay Cormac fall in with the Templars, who would tempt him away from the Assassin Brotherhood. They show him a different way of doing things—a possibly better way of doing things—and then we see his meteoric rise up through their ranks.

During these two sequences, what I found most interesting was watching how Shay reacted to how the Templars went about fighting the war, how he questioned his own motivations, and even second-guessed orders from Haytham Kenway, the Templar Grandmaster of North America at the time. This small cross-section of gameplay made me realize this was much more than a simple revenge story.

Shay has the potential to be one of the deepest, most complex protagonists we’ve seen from the series, because he’s constantly fighting a war within himself—as well as in, and around, colonial New York City. The underlying themes of “How far would you be willing to go to feel safe?” and “How much does freedom cost?” were also constantly on display each time Shay had one of those integral moments of doubt, making him highly relatable given the current temperature of world affairs.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the gameplay. When I first heard that the game was set in New York City again, there was definitely some trepidation that we’d see a lot of copied and pasted elements from Assassin’s Creed III. And, yes, the layout of the city’s roads seem to be similar to what we saw then, but because this game takes place 20 years before the bulk of Connor’s story, it’s a very different New York—one that’s not been touched yet by the Great Fire of 1776. This means new buildings to climb and new things to see, even if some will definitely serve as callbacks to previous games.

Speaking of the time period, though, I think the thing that excites me the most about Rogue is that, although you’re not playing as a Kenway, the game really seems to serve as the bridge for Assassin’s Creed III and IV, filling in key gaps in the story and tying up loose ends. Since it comes after those two games, though, it’s taking the best elements of both of them and mashing them together.

The sailing is just as good as ever, and the idea that you can now be boarded while traversing the high seas adds a brand-new dynamic to the North Atlantic and Hudson River Valley that Edward Kenway’s Caribbean in Black Flag didn’t have. Shay’s Fleet is also very different from Edward’s because while Shay is fighting the Assassin-Templar War, the Seven Years’ War is going on around him, and he can send his ships into the naval conflict of the war and actually have a more direct say in a huge historical event instead of just sailing for more coin.

Some old ideas also return in new ways in Rogue. A new economy system has been instituted so that as Shay liberates more districts from enemy control, he’ll see more money flow into his bank account. He can also spend money to fix up key buildings in and around New York to promote further development of his own wealth, all in the hopes of not only making his own life better, but hopefully better for the people he hopes to protect in the Colonies.

Rogue also brings new weapons. Besides iconic stuff like dual hidden blades and an assortment of swords from the time period, Shay will meet up with his old friend Ben Franklin, who’s working on a grenade prototype that Shay can attach and launch from his rifle. This is, surprisingly, historically accurate—Franklin did make a grenade prototype that never saw mass production. And maybe that’s because Shay was running around, using it for Templar plots instead!

We also see the return of the Stalker enemy type; they were prevalent in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and would dress in civilian garb and try to sneak up on and attack Ezio. Similarly here, Shay’s stalkers won’t just hide in plain sight but also in outhouses and bushes to try to get the drop on him when he least expects it.

Despite my early fears about Assassin’s Creed Rogue, this short preview demo allayed much of my worries. As soon as I picked up the controller and started running around New York and then sailed out on the high seas while listening to some classic sea shanties sung by my crew, it felt like I was coming home to an old friend. But while there’s more than enough here to make Assassin’s Creed Rogue feel extremely familiar, there’s also just enough new stuff to keep you on your toes. Couple that with Shay’s compelling story, and Rogue does more than enough to remind us that last-gen isn’t quite dead yet.

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MLG announces first Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare tournament for end of November

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The very first open tournament for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be held November 28-30 in Columbus, Ohio, Major League Gaming announced today.

Featuring 140 of the best Call of Duty eSports teams in the world, the tournament will be streamed live from MLG.tv and will officially kick off the first season of the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare MLG Pro League.

“Call of Duty eSports has become a mainstream phenomenon–there’s nothing else like it,” said MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni in a press statement. “With the introduction of Advanced Warfare, we are positioned for continued growth showcasing the best players in the world on MLG’s premier platform for a global audience of passionate eSports fans. This is just the beginning.”

The winning team will be awarded $25,000, 25,000 MLG Pro Points, and the last four spots in Season One of the Pro League.

If you happen to be in the Columbus area, VIP and spectator passes for the tournament are available for purchase if streaming it just isn’t enough for you.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be available for public consumption on Windows PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, and Xbox 360 November 4.

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EGM Review: Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

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Dostoyevsky would be proud

Even before his recent upswing in popularity due to Benedict Cumberbatch’s modern portrayal, Sherlock Holmes has been one of the world’s most beloved fictional characters ever since Arthur Conan Doyle penned his first adventure more than 125 years ago. Given his penchant for puzzle-solving and dealings with quirky characters, Sherlock Holmes seems like a perfect fit for the world of gaming.

Unfortunately, most of his gaming efforts haven’t really moved the needle. But developer Frogwares decided to give it another go by infusing this latest effort, their eighth with the deerstalker-capped man from Baker Street, with some elements we’ve seen from the modern TV shows.

Crimes & Punishments keeps the traditional setting of late-19th-century London, where you control Holmes over the course of several months as he’s confronted with six unrelated cases that deal with that most primal of crimes: murder. Taking a page from Cumberbatch and company, however (aside from the integral notebook, where you can easily reference facts for recalling later), this Holmes iteration has what can only be described as his own personal “mind palace.”

When key clues come up via witness testimony, examining the evidence, or some inventive re-enactments between Holmes and his trusted companion, Dr. Watson, the world’s most famous detective can piece together related facts to draw conclusions that appear as nerve endings in his mind. When enough conclusions can be clustered together, Holmes will have the ability to convict a potential felon.

Aside from how the ability to piece clues together in his mind, Holmes also has the ability to instantly analyze a suspect, looking them up and down and drawing conclusions—sometimes key ones like noticing particular tattoos or dirt under the fingernails. This “instant profiling” draws another parallel to the modern Holmes incarnation, and it’s another welcome addition in making players feel more like the great detective.

Something else new, though, is that Holmes can actually be wrong. Most cases will provide evidence that could allow Sherlock to convict multiple suspects, and while the game will move forward even with an incorrect conviction, you’ll always know that you sent the wrong man or woman to face the hangman. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the extra challenge that multiple suspects provided, since it really did make me pay closer attention to everything involved with a case, I wish there’d been more of a penalty for coming to a wrong conclusion and that some real weight had been provided to this branch of the morality system.

Even when you do solve the case, you don’t have to convict the culprit of anything, since Holmes uncovers crimes of passion or long-unpunished abuse finally facing karmic retribution. But, again, no matter what you choose—whether it means sending the criminal to jail or finding a shred of humanity within Holmes and absolving those responsible—there seem to be no real consequence to your actions beyond how they affect that single character.

Another disappointment was one of my own making, but I still felt cheated a bit while playing the game. If you should look at the Trophy or Achievement descriptions, the culprits for all six cases will be spoiled for you, since special actions involving those characters are tied directly to proper convictions. I know that may seem minor, but you’d think that something like this wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the developers, and it took away some of the challenge the game would’ve otherwise offered.

Despite the fact that the final verdicts were somewhat spoiled, I was surprised at how much fun I still had working out the process to find enough proof to convict someone. While most puzzles are unintuitive in regards to their controls, they offer enough of a mental challenge to practically make the game worth playing in and of themselves. And the variety was welcome, with only the lockpicking puzzles repeating frequently throughout all six cases. Whether it was controlling both Holmes and Watson to work a series of switches or using Toby, Holmes’ trusted Basset Hound, to sniff for clues, my only complaint is that I wish some of the puzzles had been reused more often because they were so fun.

Unfortunately, a few glaring flaws persist. The graphics aren’t the prettiest, even on the new generation of consoles, and though the voice acting for the major characters will grow on you, these actors aren’t going to win any awards for their distant, disconnected performances. At least Holmes being distant and disconnected fits the character, but not with anyone else.

Despite these cut corners, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments does a fine job of teasing your brain into coming up with the right conclusions. I wish the new morality system was more fleshed out, but the other additions help make this 19th-century stalwart character appeal to a modern audience, and I can’t wait to see what adventures Frogwares has planned next for Holmes and Watson.

Developer: Frogwares • Publisher: Focus Home Interactive • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 09.30.14
8.0
Fun puzzles, inventive murders, and new crime-solving features help make up for a morality system that needed far more fleshing out to be effective.
The Good Strong emphasis on puzzle-solving; open-ended solutions for each case.
The Bad Unintuitive puzzle controls; lack of moral weight to choices.
The Ugly The Trophies and Achievements spoil the end of each case if you look at them beforehand.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is available on PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Focus Home Interactive for the benefit of this review.
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Hands-On: Assassin’s Creed Unity

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United we stand

In many ways, Assassin’s Creed Unity aims to be the most ambitious game the franchise has ever seen. Featuring systemic gameplay, narrative driven co-op that uses the same world as the single-player campaign, and a huge emphasis on stealth mechanics that bring the series back to its roots—especially Assassin’s Creed II, which many still consider the best—Unity has vast potential as the first Assassin’s Creed developed solely for the new generation of consoles.

With all that in mind, I was excited to finally get the opportunity for some quality hands-on time with Unity, about four hours in all. Unfortunately, from the sample I played, Unity goes a bit too far back in time when it comes to Assassin’s Creed, because it reminded me more of the original game with Altaïr: tremendous ideas alongside some very poor execution.

My demo consisted of Sequences 3 and 4 in protagonist Arno Dorian’s timeline. He’d just been fully inducted into the Assassin Brotherhood and now had access to the entire city of Paris while he carried out missions to further the Assassin cause—and here’s where my first issue arose. Unity includes a new progression system where, much like in an RPG, players will be able to buy skills and abilities for Arno and customize him as they see fit. Since I was already into Sequence 3 when the demo started, I had some ability tokens in the bank. I like the idea of a progression system and unlocking more moves as you go along; when I went to assign these tokens, however, I was shocked at just how bare-bones Arno was.

Skills that we’ve come to expect over the years, like crowd blending, double assassinations, and even just carrying a pistol, all needed to be purchased with skill points. If he was a full-fledged Assassin now, I hate to think of what he’s like in Sequences 1 and 2. What exactly did he learn from his teacher? How to pull the hood up over his ears? I’m not expecting Arno to have everything at his disposal from the get-go, but these skills in particular are staples of what it means to be an Assassin—especially during the setting of the French Revolution in the late 18th century—and the fact that I had to spend points just to raise Arno up to the standards of those who came before him made me feel extremely underpowered. I suppose that’s one way to artificially amp up the difficulty, though.

And since skill tokens are acquired by completing many of the side missions around Paris, it’s also a way to force you to deviate from the main narrative. This could be a way to artificially extend the game, however, because the sequences I played were only four missions long, making me worry greatly about the length of the main narrative compared to previous games.

It also plays into a lot of the new systemic gameplay, where the player can tell their own story and have it play out as they wish—it’s very cool to see random fights break out in the streets as warring factions butt heads or approach an assassination target from multiple directions. Unfortunately, though, the only word that came to mind for me during some of these missions was grind. Yes, the sidequests are far more entertaining than hunting animals, since they’re a story within a story, but I felt like I was being pushed away from the main narrative instead of being sucked into it, simply because I needed to make Arno a more formidable force to take on the difficulty as it ramped up. And let’s be honest, folks—for most of us, the story is still the main draw.

Now, that’s not to say that Arno can’t defend himself at all. With his hidden blade, he can still stab people in the face rather effectively. But one change that I didn’t mind related to the combat, which is far more difficult than in previous games—piling up bodies in the street as never-ending waves of enemies swarm is a thing of the past. If you’re not trained well enough, taking on more than three foes will probably spell the death of you, since the counter button’s been removed. In its place is a parry button that must be perfectly timed for you to take advantage of your off-balance foes. Enemies also strike more quickly and more effectively, which puts an emphasis back on stealth and smarter enemy encounters. It’s now a must to wait for guards to be alone before going in for the quick kill or use the whole gamut of tools at your disposal, like poison gas, smoke bombs, and noisemakers.

You can also strengthen Arno by purchasing new items. You’re able to buy dozens of different outfit parts, such as hoods and boots, and you can swap between all items you acquire to accentuate different statistics in four key categories: armor, stealth, health, or effective range of weaponry. This aspect of customization and progression is a lot clearer, and it hearkens back to buying new armor and weapons in Assassin’s Creed II. I will say that the interface back then was a lot sexier than what we see here in Unity, though.

And speaking of Assassin’s Creed II, another aspect that I loved seeing was the Café-Theatre. It basically serves as Arno’s version of Monteriggioni, Ezio’s upgradable home and fortress from Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood. As you buy upgrades and renovations, you can unlock new missions and items—plus, you get a treasure chest that keeps collecting money as the café makes more money from its customers. Along with the new missions from Café-Theatre, Unity also sees a spiritual successor to Assassin’s Creed II’s glyph puzzles, called Nostradamus puzzles here. Since they’re so directly tied to landmarks, I wasn’t able to solve any during my demo time. The landmarks seemed to already be unlocked in-game, and many of the buildings just started to blend together, which sometimes made climbing up to a synchronization point a bother.

This leads me to another negative: the new parkour system. I actually felt like I had less control over Arno than most other Assassins before him. Unity features a new control scheme that allows you to parkour up or down across much of the landscape, and I admit that it takes some time to get used to. Once you’re experienced, though, and can pull off all manner of flips and stunts, it still feels like you’re fighting the controls to get them to go where you want—or, worse yet, you go bounding off in the completely wrong direction. Since there’s such a return to emphasis on stealth, the last thing you want is a lack of pinpoint control when free-running through Paris.

Besides the two single-player sequences, I also got to try out two co-op missions. The first one, the Heist, is great for earning a lot of quick cash, but it’s really meant more for players near the end of the game. Coordination among the team is critical, since Heist missions require four players to infiltrate a heavily guarded location and raid it to stuff their pockets with gold. If you get spotted, you’ll walk away with less gold, and if one person dies, the mission restarts.

Though I enjoyed the concept, everyone playing was at such a high level that we just started spamming attacks, throwing a bevy of smoke bombs into every room and then running in and clearing it out. I know that’s not the purpose of the game mode, but when you’ve got 25 smoke bombs, they’re cheap to buy, and you can walk away with as much as 60,000 credits, it’s hard not to.

The other co-op mission was the more narrative-driven one—and I loved it, because the reason I still play Assassin’s Creed is for the story. In this mission, I had to save a French spy who’d happened upon a Templar plot. Once they found him out, the Templars branded him a traitor and sentenced him to death. First, I had to free him from the Templars and then help him escape. My co-op partner and I were a force to be reckoned with as we used our environment to our advantage and quickly dispatched the Templar agents in our way, zigzagging across rooftops and using our smoke bombs when necessary to escape.

I appreciate that Unity offers players more to do than ever before. Whether it’s the new sidequests or the openness with which you can complete missions, it definitely feels like a step in the right direction for the franchise. But I can’t get over the progression system and the shoddy parkour. These are two definite missteps—and I worry about how they’ll affect the main game as a whole when Unity releases next month.

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Hands-On: NBA Live 15

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Hitting the hardwood

Trailers and behind-the-scenes looks at NBA Live 15 have continued to show steps forward since last year’s abysmal return after the franchise’s self-imposed three-year absence from the gaming scene. The next hurdle the NBA Live franchise needed to clear in order to continue its battle back to relevancy, though, was finally letting the press go hands-on with this year’s iteration.

After playing a pair of games as my New York Knicks, and getting about an hour’s worth of hands-on time with NBA Live 15, I can say there’s been a clear step forward in how the game handles itself on the court (I just wish I could say the same about the Knicks!). Starting off with a brief tutorial where I played as cover athlete Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers, I was taken through the ins and outs of basics of offense: passing, shooting, dribbling, and alley-oops. The HUD showed each player’s stamina bar, and a meter let me know my chances of making a shot from a particular range and how open I was. I then got the chance to move to a 5-on-5 scrimmage to try out everything I just learned.

On offense, I was immediately able to make significant strides as I stepped confidently down the lane for a powerful dunk with Amar’e Stoudemire or kicked it out to Carmelo Anthony in the corner for a clutch three once we moved to real game action. Ball movement felt swift and, for the most part, accurate. There were some moments in my haste, however, whether trying to beat the shot clock or the end of a quarter, where I wanted to pass to one player and instead passed to another, which led to an ill-timed turnover—and led to my questioning the intuitiveness of the system. Maybe I just needed more time with it, but there were several moments where the ball just didn’t seem to go where I wanted.

Another thing I noticed on offense was the new rag-doll physics. Though they weren’t prevalent throughout the court, everything near the basket seemed to have improved physics, with players naturally adjusting in mid-air to work around a steadfast defender in the paint or taking a hard foul and contorting in ways that would accurately depict contact. Considering the amount of action that usually takes place around the basket, it was impressive to see when players would fight for rebounds or try to draw a foul on a layup for a potential three-point play.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to the game of basketball than what the tutorial showed me, like the entire defensive side of the game. For as competent as I felt on offense, the only thing I felt when transitioning to defense was dread. At least in the demo, NBA Live 15 didn’t do nearly as good a job of teaching the defensive basics as it did the offensive elements. I ended up in foul trouble more often than not as I tried learning the best timing for steal attempts. Meanwhile, shot-blocking was an endeavor I’d rather forget about, and my players flew away from the shooter about often as they succeeded in getting a hand in the opponent’s face.

And in those few instances where I actually succeeded in making the shot attempts more difficult for my opponent, I had no idea how to command my players to box out, and my frustration only grew as I gave up offensive rebound after offensive rebound. These are basics that the game should’ve focused on just as much as passing and shooting.

At least the presentation for NBA Live 15 appears to be top-notch. Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy’s commentary, representing ESPN’s No. 1 broadcast team, provided a lot of authenticity to the presentation, and their commentary was hysterical—especially when talking about James Harden’s beard when facing the Houston Rockets. Meanwhile, Jalen Rose hosts the pre-, post-, and halftime shows that give game highlights and spotlight superstar players in a way that would make you feel like you’re actually watching an ESPN/ABC broadcast of the NBA.

I walked away from my NBA Live 15 time with more positives than negatives, and I definitely had fun while playing it. But I also think that if it’s going to successfully close the gap between itself and NBA 2K, it’s going to have to deliver a more complete package than what I saw in my brief hands-on time.

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Hands-On: WWE 2K15 – MyCareer Mode

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September 30, 2014

Best for business

Back in August, when I got to go hands-on for the first time with WWE 2K15, 2K revealed that the series would fall more in line with NBA 2K and feature a career mode for the first time. This past week, I was able to go hands-on with MyCareer mode for WWE 2K15 for about 45 minutes and take a look at life in the squared circle at three separate stages.

First, however, I must say that I was a bit disappointed I wasn’t allowed to play at all with the customization features for which the series is known. Of course, you’ll be able to do this in the final game, but “my” wrestler was pre-made. Although the couple of created characters we played with gave a nice overview of different hair colors, body types, and luchador masks, it wasn’t really the same as actually being able to dig through the creative options.

Beyond this, though, WWE 2K15’s MyCareer mode impressed me in a lot of ways. I began my journey as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie with a 55 overall rating. Without any pomp and circumstance, I was thrown into one of the seven rings available at a digital re-creation of the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, the company’s new home for training up-and-coming superstars.

And who was there, immediately barking orders and telling me how awful I was? WWE head trainer Bill DeMott. Now, Mr. DeMott is a very nice person, and I was fortunate enough to actually meet him at the Performance Center last week. But when you’re one of his students and you step into one of his rings, things change, and my created wrestler had Bill’s ire fall upon his head several times—and it was awesome.

As I worked matches in the ring, I received a one-to-five-star rating based on how I did in the and the show I put on for the crowd (if there’d been an audience besides good ol’ Bill). A match’s ebb and flow is also taken into consideration, so dominating against a jobber might not be best for business when you’re trying to tell a story in the ring. This made the new stamina bar (which I’ve now confirmed cannot be turned off) make a lot more sense, since it allowed my opponent a chance to get in a few strikes and provide at least a little bit of offense as I tried to catch my breath to perform my finisher. After the match, I got points to spend on my wrestler and level up his in-ring abilities, such as arm strength, speed, and stamina.

Once I was done messing around with my rookie, I flashed forward in my career and made it to the main RAW roster. At this point, I’d only been on the show a few weeks. It was immediately evident that no matter whether I won or lost, MyCareer mode would carry on and adjust accordingly. If I was in the midst of a rivalry, matches against other wrestlers weren’t as important, but they helped set up the story—a rival might interfere with our match or try to get in a cheap shot when I wasn’t looking. And even if I lost the match against my rival, I could still elevate my status in WWE and try to become a main-eventer.

Since the WWE had clearly invested a lot in me, though, in order to help elevate my brand, they wanted me to start a feud with an established star—and, in my case, I drew Daniel Bryan. I had the choice of shaking his hand to start a friendly rivalry or giving him a low blow. I gave him the low blow, which promptly started a “No!” chant led by my character.

I then flashed forward one more time to almost seven years into my career. By this point, I’d won a few titles, including the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, and main-evented some pay-per-views. I was still wrestling at a high clip, but then Brock Lesnar decided to show up and demonstrate what he thought of me by F5’ing me in the middle of the ring. This prompted a Twitter feud between Brock’s advocate, Paul Heyman, and me, where I could choose to respond to Heyman via a couple of options—much like I had the choice on how to kick off my feud with Bryan. Meanwhile, in the ring, over the course of several weeks, Brock and I continued getting in each other’s faces—until finally, Heyman said the two of us would meet in a no-disqualification match at the next PPV.

Though I only saw a brief glimpse of MyCareer mode, it definitely feels like something that I could play again and again just to see how my superstar’s career could change each time based on decisions I made. Also, storylines you might see in real life started to unfold organically, which made it feel like I was watching actual WWE programming and not just playing a game. If MyCareer can give me this feeling for hours on end, WWE 2K15 now has a mode to elevate the franchise to the next level—and I can’t wait to really dig into it on the new generation of consoles.

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EGM Review: Forza Horizon 2

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Kicking the tires

The ideas of open-world exploration and story aren’t usually synonymous with racing titles. A spin-off game from Microsoft’s popular Forza franchise, Forza Horizon, bucked the trend, though, and delivered a fun, fresh take on the genre back in 2012. It was welcomed back then as a breath of fresh air, so it’s no surprise that high hopes surrounded the follow-up, Forza Horizon 2.

Primary developer Playground Games committed themselves to making sure Horizon 2 was bigger and better in almost every possible way. Moving from the Rocky Mountain roads of Colorado, the Horizon music and racing festival has now set up shop on the Italy-France border, creating a fictional space that’s not only far larger than the first game but also more diverse. Whether it’s the beach resort town of Nice, France or the fields and old-world charm of Castelletto, Italy, each of the game’s six regions feel unique and exude an authentic Western European vibe.

Also, as we’ve come to expect from every Forza, the cars look absolutely spectacular. The game’s cover car, the Lamborghini Huracán, the 1960s Chevy Corvette Stingray, or even something like the Volkswagen Rabbit—along with more than 200 others—have been crafted to look exactly like their real-world counterparts, and they all shine brilliantly on the Xbox One.

Each car also handles much like you’d expect they would in the real world, but a new addition to Horizon 2 pushes that handling to the limit. Along with the returning day-night cycle, a new weather system makes its debut here. Rain not only changes how your car drifts and takes turns in races and out in the open world, but roads remain slick well after the rain has stopped, providing not only a major new hazard for racers to contend with but also a little welcome variety.

Speaking of variety, each region features wide-open spaces that just scream for you to take your car off-roading and cut corners between winding roads. While you could do that sometimes in the first game, far fewer boundaries will impede you here as fields of roses, wheat, lavender, and dry brush dot the landscape. It became a guilty pleasure to carve crop circles into each respective field, racking up my wreckage multiplier, and then hightailing it back onto the road, looking in my rearview at the carnage I’d wrought. These off-roading segments are also the theme of many races and provide a true sense of freedom, since no barriers hem you in or tell you how to reach the next checkpoint (yes, there’s a suggested path, but you’re often better off ignoring it).

There’s more to do beyond just traditional racing at the Horizon festival, particularly since the game offers rewards for exploring the nooks and crannies of the map with the return of Barn Finds, 10 hidden gem cars scattered about the game world. Forza Horizon 2 also features six new showcase events, allowing you to race head-to-head against a train, several planes, hot-air balloons, and more. The most interesting addition, though, may be the new Bucket List—30 different challenges spread around the map that offer special objectives ranging from the simple, such as driving along the coast in a certain amount of time in a Ferrari, to the maddening, like driving a Bowler Wildcat through a forest back to the Horizon Festival main tent.

On paper, Forza Horizon 2 offers plenty more to keep you occupied compared to the first game, and there’s no denying that it plays wonderfully. The addition of Drivatar AI opponents even adds a little extra flair, with the knowledge that when one of my friend’s avatars tries to squeeze me into a sideboard on a track when we’re up against each other, that’s what they’d actually do if we were playing together. That said, playing the game on Medium difficulty and with only a couple of braking assists, I was still able to take first place in every race I was in and found the clock in Bucket List challenges to be far more of an opponent.

But there’s one thing missing this time around that left me horribly disappointed: the game’s heart. To begin with, the story mode is a shell of its former self. This iteration offers many more races (nearly 700 total across 168 championships, though you only need to clear about 65 races over 15 championships if you want to get right to the final race), but all the charm’s been sucked out.

Much like in the original Forza Horizon, your objective here is to become the champion of the festival. In the first game, however, you had to knock off other championship contenders who specialized in particular cars. They offered a rarity in racing games: nemeses with personality and panache. Here, they’ve been replaced by nothing more than the Horizon organizer telling you how many more races you have to win to qualify for the finale. It becomes just a mundane, soulless countdown of championships—punctuated by the same, dull repetitive commentary—that starts to feel more and more like a grind as you move from region to region, choosing which of each area’s respective 28 championships you wish to take part in.

The popularity aspect of single-player portion has also been removed. In the first Horizon, you had to perform tricks and win races to move up in the popularity standings of the festival. This was another way to prove if you were worthy of a championship run. Here, in order to help streamline the seamless transition to multiplayer, you have a pair of XP bars that can be filled in both single-player and online. As you gain levels from tricks, you receive skill points that can be spent on unique upgrades—of which there are only a couple dozen, and they aren’t nearly as satisfying to acquire as moving up the popularity leaderboard. As you gain levels from winning races, you get new wristbands, just like in the first game. In the original, though, these opened up new races; here, they do nothing except change the color of your XP bar—a sad attempt at carrying over aspects of the first game that have now lost all meaning.

I will say, at least, that the multiplayer transition is impressive. Mind you, it should be noted that I played with only a handful of others online, and it worked fine, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the servers when the game actually launches with, I’d imagine, many more people populating them. The idea, though, is that with a simple button press from the menu or map, you can start searching for online games. When you find enough people, it becomes an impromptu race to one of the game’s six regions if you select Road Trip, or you can simply Free Roam with your friends and challenge others on the fly.

If you do Road Trip, when everyone gets to the destination, you begin a series of four events to determine the winner and see who takes home the online championship. You can also play the returning Playground Games, a group of offbeat multiplayer challenges that are less about racing and more about surviving—like Infected, which declares that the last person to be hit by an “infected” car wins.

In many ways, it’s clear that Forza Horizon 2 is definitely bigger than the original. It’s a great racer in terms of gameplay and chock-full of content that could potentially keep you busy for months on end. But gutting the story—and taking away one of the key pillars that made the first Forza Horizon so special—to blur the line between single- and multiplayer left a sour taste in my mouth. If all you care about is getting behind the wheel and scenic European vistas, though, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better experience.

Developer: Playground Games/Turn 10 Studios • Publisher: Microsoft Studios • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 09.30.14
7.5
Bigger doesn’t always equate to better. Forza Horizon 2 definitely delivers a gameplay experience a step above its predecessor, but gutting story mode leaves the single-player soulless and more akin to a grind.
The Good A larger, more beautifully detailed world to explore; seamless multiplayer integration.
The Bad The story is nearly nonexistent.
The Ugly Tons of new music tracks—and still nothing good on the radio.
Forza Horizon 2 is available on Xbox One and Xbox 360. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Microsoft for the benefit of this review.
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Afterthoughts: Wolfenstein: The New Order

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It’s never easy trying to reboot a franchise, especially when you’re doing it to an IP that has as much history as Wolfenstein. But new developer MachineGames wasn’t going to let that deter them from telling the kind of story they felt B.J. Blazkowicz deserved. We sat down and talked with Jens Matthies, Wolfenstein: The New Order’s creative director, to get the lowdown on this process and how the project first came about.

EGM: How did Wolfenstein: The New Order come about?

Jens Matthies: We knew [Zenimax] had bought id Software at that time about a year earlier and had all of their IP, and everyone at MachineGames are huge id Software fans. We all grew up playing their games. Games like Quake are the reason many of us at MachineGames are even in the industry, because you could modify that game. I started building levels and textures for Quake, and that allowed me to build a portfolio, and that allowed me to get a job in the industry back in the day. So, for me personally, id’s games have a special place in my heart.

When we started talking with Bethesda the first thing we asked them was if anyone was working on Wolfenstein. They said nobody was, so we responded by asking if we could give it a crack. Then we reached out to id and talked some with them, and everything just grew from that. We had a number of meetings with id Software, where they talked to us more in depth about Wolfenstein, and from there we started tinkering with several ideas for the kind of setting for a new game. This idea of the Nazis taking over the world, and having done so using some sort of very advanced technology came about. Then we figured we could move the timeline forward, so the world would be completely different from what you were used to with a Wolfenstein game. This was a very powerful concept for us, because it had such fertile soil for us to build creative ideas on.

We pitched it to id and they really liked it, and then we pitched it to Bethesda and they really liked it, and that was the game that we made.

EGM: For a very long time, people really didn’t know what to expect from this game. It never really seemed to fully come together until people sat down and actually played the game the entire way through. How hard was it to convey this was still a Wolfenstein game to people while saving all the major details that made it so good in the end?

JM: It’s always a problem for us to really sum up the experience in a short segment because of the kinds of games that we make. One of the reasons is that we love to give lots of variations in terms of settings and player interactions and storytelling. So, if you cut a half-hour segment out of the game, it’s not representative enough of the game, because the next half-hour will be different and the half-hour after that will be different from those. It’s hard for us to condense it into something that gives an overview. Depending on what half-hour segment you pick of the game, you’d have a different view of what the game is [based on] that snippet.

I think that’s very different from most other games, which tend to be more vertical slice–focused, where you have that half-hour and the rest of the game simply repeats that half-hour. It has the same look and feel and the same gameplay rhythm. Whereas we just don’t operate in that way. We look at the game holistically and build an arc for the player from start to finish, with ebbs and flows, and that has a much more strategic narrative flow. But I’m very happy now that the game is out and people are out there playing it and we can communicate about it since people understand fully what it is now.

EGM: Wolfenstein is a gaming franchise with a very rich legacy. Was it ever extra daunting or intimidating once it sank in, that you were working on the next chapter on a franchise with so much history?

JM: Well, I wouldn’t say it was extra daunting, because anytime you do this kind of game, it’s such a monumental undertaking that even if everything goes perfectly, it’s still at least a three-year process. This game ended up being three and a half years for us. That’s a big chunk of your life. That’s a big chunk of the whole team’s life. And it’s very important then that at the end of the development process you have something that was worth that kind of commitment in regards to the work and time you put into it. I think that, more than anything, is where the pressure comes from. Whatever IP you’re working on carries less pressure than the fact you are spending such an incredible amount of time and money and resources on making something, and it’s really important that it comes together.

Most of the major decisions that you make are early on. Things that don’t get their final polish and their final stage of execution until the final months of the project have all been planned and conceptualized very meticulously in the early months of the project. So it’s very important that the foundation you build early on is solid enough so it doesn’t break halfway through, or suddenly lots of things don’t work and you can’t do anything about it because the train is already in motion. I think that’s something we’ve gotten progressively better at over the years. There’s been a lot less rolling with the punches this time around, and we could focus on executing the vision we had early on.

EGM: You guys bucked the trend by not including a multiplayer mode, which is almost unheard of nowadays for a FPS game. What went into that decision? Was there ever any push back?

JM: This was really a testament to Bethesda as a publisher. They will give you a huge amount of trust as a developer. Whenever we say things like we feel the best possible game we can make is when the team is just focusing on one thing—in this case the single player—and we eliminate all the distractions around that, Bethesda is the kind of publisher that respects that. They trust the developer, but they are also primarily focused on whatever factors there are that can provide the best possible game, because they feel comfortable on selling a game on it’s merits and its quality. And this is vastly different from many other publishers, which operate under different sets of rules. Other publishers, they talk about a lot of things that are marketing-driven, a lot of things that are driven by other goals than what the developer feels will make the best possible game. This is also the big reason why we really wanted to work with Bethesda, because they have this tremendous process of working with developers. There was never any pushback. Obviously, questions were asked, but this is a publisher that you can explain your point of view and they’ll get it, and that’s very rare in our industry. It’s an amazing thing as a developer.

EGM: Let’s talk about B.J. a little bit. This is the most fully fleshed out B.J. has ever been as a character. Was it difficult expanding on a character who already had a bit of a history in gaming? Were there specific things from the past you wanted to keep? Was it hard filling in the blanks?

JM: The thing about B.J. is that, when we started this project, he was a lot more open because he’s been interpreted differently a couple of times before in different games, and the agreed upon facts about him are fairly few. There’s some backstory and some lore, but there was never an in-depth characterization we had to worry about conflicting with. The hard part was making our own choices on what we considered to be the roots of the character and building on those to make the most compelling character we could.

Very early on, we settled on his image from the pixel face in the original Wolfenstein 3D, because we felt that was the most pure and true piece of information about him. At that time, when the guys at id decided, with the sensibilities they had at the time, inventing a genre as young guys, that this was the guy, with the square jaw and the muscles on this grunt—which I’m sure was very inspired by the Sylvester Stallones and Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the late ’80s and early ’90s. And that, at least, we didn’t want to shy away from. We wanted to see if we could make that character, who is really sort of an action hero cliché, and give him the depth and really make the player experience what it is to be this guy. That, to us, was just so much more interesting than doing some sort of modern version that just turns [him] into, like, a Nathan Drake clone, because that’s what most shooter protagonists are like these days. But that was our thought process around that.

EGM: Will shooting Nazis ever get old?

JM: [Laughs] Well, there certainly was a period there with Call of Duty and Medal of Honor where that was the norm. And I guess Battlefield did that, too. But it’s been a while, so I think the timing felt especially right to bring back some good old fashioned Nazi killing.

EGM: I think the moments in Wolfenstein: The New Order that surprised me the most were the downtime segments you had in the resistance base. It was such a huge change of pace, and almost felt RPG-like in regards to the missions you had to do there. What was the reasoning behind those levels and what were you hoping to accomplish with them?

JM: From very early on, both internally and from when we started talking to the media about the game, we wanted this to be an action-adventure shooter more than just a straight-up FPS game. In broad stroke terms, it is good for pacing because if it was all action all the time the game could get numbing after a while. You need to mix it up and activate different problem-solving skills in the brain just to keep everything fresh and interesting. But it’s also great to find a way to anchor the story and the player experience into something that is more emotional relatable, because a game like this, fundamentally, is just so over-the-top crazy that if you don’t provide a counter-balance with intimacy or drama that you can feel something towards it can become alienating emotionally for a player. So, the moments with the resistance serve that purpose.

It’s all well and good to have strong gameplay mechanics and an addictive gameplay loop, but if you can also anchor that in a way that makes the player feel like they’re fighting for something worth fighting for then it just makes the experience that much stronger, and that’s always our goal. We want to integrate the story and the gameplay in a way that they’re both pulling you in the same direction. The story reinforces the gameplay and the gameplay reinforces the story.

EGM: The New Order has a perk system where you normally have to accomplish a certain set of objectives to activate the next set of potential perks to then unlock. Is setting that up in a linear order like you did a way to challenge players to possibly try different play-styles in the campaign? What was the reasoning behind that?

JM: Another focus for Wolfenstein: The New Order was definitely that you could play it in a broad array of ways. It allows for many playstyles. You can play it more tactically and stealthily, creeping forward through the levels. Some situations force you think more on your feet, with enemies charging you and the cover breaking so you can’t really camp out for too long, but it’s definitely easy to miss out on some of those aspects of the gameplay. So the perks were a way to incentivize the player to try different things. You can also play the game very aggressively, dual-wielding massive shotguns and whatnot. The perks system was a way to make you get a taste of different playstyles if you wanted to unlock their rewards. Plus, it could be a bit of an eye-opener if you’d suddenly rather play these other ways. What we found was people who default into one playstyle or another, would incorporate these other methods at certain points and broaden their playstyle over the course of the entire game.

The reason why they’re not all unlockable at the start is that they would just unlock too randomly. We want you to engage more directly with the system and think about how you’re taking on each situation strategically. If everything was unlockable from the start, the system could end just being some sort of background noise for you, and suddenly you’d get better or have more of something and not realize why because you’re engaging less with the system. But by structuring the system the way we did, everything happens less by chance and more by you choosing to go after a perk and unlocking it. This also makes it feel more like an actual achievement for the player and not a random reward.

EGM: Part of what that also speaks to, I believe, is that it adds another layer of replayability to the campaign. Another aspect of replayability came through in the critical choice you force players to make at the start of the campaign. What was the inspiration behind that singular choice and what affect did it have on you developing the game?

JM: It had to do with creating meaningful, emotional engines for the player to propel them through the narrative. That’s the thing with a game: It’s not enough to just have a story, or just have context, because, in a game, you as a player are in charge of advancing it and finishing it or not. From a story point of view, then, you need players emotionally invested in the outcome. When we develop and antagonist like Deathshead, he has to do something to you, the player, that motivates you to hunt this guy down and sticks with you the whole game so that you keep going after him to put an end to him. That choice was one of those things where if you, the player, are the one making the choice, then you are emotionally invested from then on for the rest of the game. Once we came up with it, we realized that we had to do these two timelines and decided how we would separate them from one another. There was a huge ripple effect from that one idea, but we felt that it was so cool because no one had really done anything like that before in this kind of game.

EGM: Were you ever tempted to insert more choices like that and have several branches in the story?

JM: It’s an interesting question, and I think it’s just the difference between how we view the game as the developer and how a journalist or just a player might view it. For us, it’s not about milking an idea until its dead. We do a lot of things in the game only once, because it’s really powerful once, but the more you do something, the less powerful it gets. Whatever ideas we may have, its rare that we think we should do it 20 more times. It’s more that we have a cool idea, we implement it, and then try to come up with more cool ideas. It helps build up a unique narration full of unique moments as opposed to just variation on the same moment. And, of course, doing something like this has a production aspect to it. If we were to branch off several more times, it would lead to a copious amount of work to support all that. But we never really got into that discussion. We felt like the choice was a really great, signature moment from the game and we never felt like that needed to be repeated.

EGM:  The atmosphere of the game is almost unto a character in and of itself. Can you talk to us some about the use of music and voice acting was critical to helping convey some more subtle messages within the game?

JM: There is one aspect of it that has to do with sticking with the vision. And that is harder than you may think, because there are so many different disciplines that go into making a game. It’s very easy for the disciplines to get atomized and isolated from each other, but what you really need in order to execute a project properly is cross-disciplinary cohesion. So, if I write a scene, just because I know what the scene is about and what the scene is supposed to convey, I will have information about that, which can help guide other aspects of it. It’s everything from audio to lighting and camera angles. If we had hired some script guy to write the script and someone else to record the voices and someone else to lay music over that, it wouldn’t be as strong. You need the understanding about what everything is and what they mean and why they’re there to in order to be available to everyone who might work with it. So that’s one side of it, and why we keep everything that has to do with that original vision very active throughout the development.

The other aspect is that you have to have really talented people that can take an idea and actually execute it the way it needs to be executed. The audio designers, for example, are involved with the creative process the entire way through, and the composer that we hired, Mick Gordon, is just an incredibly talented guy. We could just give him very basic, broad stroke thoughts about a scene or a moment or a gameplay section, and he was able to turn those ideas into the perfect pieces of music. Unless you have those kinds of people on the team, it just doesn’t work, but we are fortunate to have a lot of talented people here.

Same thing with the voice performance aspect. Our director specializes in directing actors. His name is Tom Keegan, and he is very much my mentor when it comes to directing actors. We had this very intense collaboration with everything from the casting to all of the recording of the performances. Just making sure you cast a game correctly is incredibly important. I had worked on a couple of games before, and that extra experience when it comes to casting was critical. Its weird, too, because there are some parts that you think are going to be hard to cast turn out to be easy and some parts you think will be easy to fill turn out to be extremely hard. But you cannot compromise on that. And then you get into the studio for full performance capture, which we helped pioneer back in 2005 with The Darkness, so we have a lot of experience with it. That helps, because it is a completely alien environment. [The actors] have nothing they can relate to with regard to real world objects or people because everyone is dressed up in these crazy looking tights. In that high pressure environment, the actors have to find an emotional truth for them to express, and directing all of that it is critical to know exactly what you’re after so that you can help the actor get there. So when we’re in a recording session, I’m the only one in the room who has some sort of conceptual understanding of how that will look in the game. Everyone else doesn’t know how everything will come together in the end, so you have to have that vision with you all the way through so you can measure what you’re seeing and recording and see how all the puzzle pieces will go to together in the end.

Basically, over the years you accumulate a backlog of f***-ups and you try not to do them again. That’s what experience is all about.

EGM: You mentioned earlier the advantages of cross-disciplinary knowledge. Does that help you maintain focus over a three and a half year development cycle?

JM: I think it does. I started out making textures and levels. I’ve done art for computer graphics in one way or another longer than anything. I started when I was 12, so it’s been a long time. I’m very much an artist; it’s my foundation and visuals have always interested me. The more experience I got in making games, the more I realized it wasn’t enough making sure textures and levels looked good. There are so many other dimensions to a game that matter, and if they don’t do their part it doesn’t matter if the textures and levels look good. What started happening was, I started broadening my skillset and scope of a game and from that I became an art director and from that I started dabbling in the story aspects and that naturally got me into dealing with the animation side of things, which led to audio, and then for this game I figured I might as well write the whole thing myself. It’s not all me, of course—I had help—but I had never really been behind the keyboard before. Actually writing the story, I’d write a scene here or there and I’d be more focused on the execution of the story on the recording side and the implementation side and all that. But that’s been my journey, to broaden my skillset and the depth and breadth of my scope. I think it has to be that way.

This kind of game is so big and so vast in its complexity that one person cannot be on top of everything, though. There has to be so much cooperation for everything to work and negotiating with people’s different sense of sensibilities to come together into a cohesive whole. That is essentially what it’s all about. But there is also the side of it where it’s very personally rewarding for me to do different kinds of work throughout the process. In the beginning it was just me and the keyboard writing text. Then later it’s massive shoots and recording sessions, and even later on after that it’s doing camera work for our cinematics and just talking to the audio people and the animators and the lighting people and the modelers, and its very rewarding to have that much variation in your work.

EGM: The game has been well received by fans and press alike. At this point it’s been a few months after the release. Have you given any thought as to what MachineGames next project may be going forward at this point in time?

JM: We think about that all the time and we would love to do a sequel. We always thought about a sequel while making this game, so we have a lot of ideas in The New Order that we could build upon for a sequel. A sequel would be the dream next project for us.

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EGM Review: Hyrule Warriors

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A magnificent mash-up

Whenever players first hear about a videogame mashup, there are typically two distinct reactions. Some will freak out as their eyeballs gush tears of joy in a manner befitting an anime character and their mind explodes due to the onslaught of unbelievable awesomeness. Others have a more subdued reaction: their face plastered with a look of puzzlement as the world around them slowly shatters due to the immense confusion with which they’re suddenly burdened.

When I first heard about Hyrule Warriors, I admit I fell into the latter category. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Legend of Zelda. I even like Dynasty Warriors, to be honest. But mixing the two together? Please don’t tell Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé, but my body was simply not ready. My state of corporeal preparedness aside, the day has come where Hyrule Warriors now sits in my Wii U.

What surprised me right away about Hyrule Warriors was the story. On the surface, sure, we’ve heard it all before. A hero named Link must once again save Hyrule from an unfathomable evil. But this time, he must do it across time and space, visiting Legend of Zelda realms from the past (Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword specifically) to prevent the four fragments of an eternal evil from reuniting.

Though it sounds simple enough, the story finds a way to stay true to the classic Legend of Zelda formula—paying proper homage when necessary—while also adding its own wrinkles on how characters came to be and how they aid Link on his quest. Everything’s familiar enough to give welcome pangs of nostalgia, but not quite so unoriginal as to feel brainlessly derivative or lacking in value of its own.

The narrative was also far longer than I expected. The main campaign lasts 18 missions, each about 30 to 40 minutes, and the story takes unexpected twists and turns, thrusting you into the shoes of heroes besides Link to take advantage of the Dynasty Warriors gameplay elements. The only part of the story that disappointed me? The fact that Koei Tecmo couldn’t find a way to work with Nintendo and make this adventure fall somewhere in the convoluted Zelda canon.

If the story makes brilliant use of its Zelda source material, the gameplay is where the Dynasty Warriors part of this mashup comes through. Droves of Bokoblins, Stalfos, and other classic Zelda enemies fill the screen as you hack and slash your way through literally thousands of them during each mission while trying to capture castles, keeps, or forts, and rout the dark forces.

However, it seems like the the development team’s efforts went into trying to fit all those enemies onscreen at once, because the levels that you fight through are some of the most generic, bland locales ever to exist in Hyrule. At least you get something for flaying as many baddies as possible, since Link and the other playable heroes and villains can level up by grinding through those seemingly endless hordes, earning better weapons and crafting materials that provide stat boosts to each character.

To give the gameplay a Legend of Zelda twist, however, each new level often contains a classic dungeon item—such as the boomerang, bow and arrow, hookshot, or bomb—which are then used to vanquish familiar bosses like King Dodongo or Gohma.

Unfortunately, even the addition of these classic items can’t prevent the gameplay from getting a bit tedious, even for the most devoted of Zelda fans, since the game quickly devolves into the mindless abuse of a single button. The lack of enemy difficulty is only trumped by the pitiful ally AI that always seems to find a way to get into trouble with these simpleton minions. Even the boss battles quickly become tiresome and simple, with no single creature proving to be a true threat—except when you’re surrounded by the never-ending waves of underlings that often come to their aid.

Fortunately, there’s a lot more waiting to be discovered just beneath Hyrule Warriors’ surface if you can tolerate the somewhat monotonous gameplay. After beating the story, you unlock Hero Mode (an ultra-hard difficulty for all the levels), as well as the ability to go back and replay any level with any hero in Free Play mode. Each level also has hidden gold skulltulas—with a grand total of 100 in the game—that unlock special art and items as you find more.

The biggest replayability factor, however, might be Adventure mode, which opens up on a 8-bit world map from the original NES Legend of Zelda. Here, you can take on an assortment of challenges, such as killing a certain amount of enemies within a specific time limit, fighting all the bosses in quick succession, or even just answering a quiz based on the game. Each completed challenge unlocks more and more of the map and will sometimes reward you with new items that can be taken back into Story mode. You can also level up the heroes you don’t play with as often, since some sections require specific characters to earn an “A” completion ranking.

Overall, Nintendo and Koei Tecmo did a great job putting a unique spin on one of gaming’s crown-jewel franchises. It’s a mashup that most of us didn’t really want, but we should be happy now that we have it. If you love hack-n-slash games or are just a Legend of Zelda aficionado, then there’s more than enough in Hyrule Warriors to satisfy both those needs.

Developer: Team Ninja, Omega Force • Publisher: Nintendo, Koei Tecmo • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 09.26.14
8.0
If hack-n-slash games are your jam—or you can tolerate them but really just love The Legend of Zelda in all its iterations—then Hyrule Warriors is a more-than-worthy warmup for Link on the Wii U.
The Good A unique take on the Legend of Zelda formula that will appeal to fans of the franchise.
The Bad The hack-n-slash gameplay can get repetitive; bosses feel like pushovers.
The Ugly Darunia’s victory dance makes me never want to play with him ever again.
Hyrule Warriors is a Wii U exclusive. Review code was provided by Nintendo for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: NHL 15

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A shorthanded debut

NHL 14 was the pinnacle for EA Sports’ NHL franchise—and that’s saying something, considering its quality and consistency for more than two decades. It seemed like the folks at EA Canada had crammed in every mode and feature they could come up with and pushed the technology to its limits on the last generation of consoles. But this peak seemed to come at a perfect time, since it was just as we began the transition to new consoles. It seemed more than plausible that EA Canada could reach new heights this year with NHL 15 on new-gen hardware.

Unfortunately, this is another case where expectations were greater than reality. It’s not that the on-ice product is bad with NHL 15. In fact, once you decide to start a game in Be a Pro, Be a GM, or any of the other modes, actually playing a game of hockey might be better than ever. The new NBC presentation package makes it feel like every game is Game of the Week, and commentary from the team of Mike Emrick, Eddie Olczyk, and Ray Ferraro is stellar. I’m about 40 games into my Be a GM mode (I play every game of the season), and I’m just now starting to hear some repeat commentary, but I’m still getting surprised here and there.

The graphics have also made a spectacular transition to the new console generation, and everything looks sharper and crisper—you can almost feel the chill of the ice itself. What’s more, the player models are amazingly realistic and even borrow a few tricks from EA Sports UFC when it comes to bruising and facial contortions from fights. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the eye of a guy you pummeled in an earlier bout swelled shut by the third period.

The biggest improvement comes from the revamped physics, though: huge player pileups when you crash the net, realistic puck bounces that lead to frustrating turnovers or fortunate close calls, and more dynamic goalie saves make it seem like you’re watching a game in real life. All the goal-scoring glitches of past years have seemingly been erased as well—the AI’s improved all around, and your opponent always tries to anticipate your every move. And even the issues with faceoffs—my one disappointment from last year’s game—are now fixed, since you can use your stick with more pinpoint precision than ever before.

When you get off the ice, however, everything takes a horribly sour turn. Countless modes from previous years have been nixed. Even with patches coming in during the next 60 days to bring back Playoff Mode and Online Team Play, you’re still missing EA Sports Hockey League, Winter Classic, and Be a Legend. NHL Moments Live mode from NHL 13 was brought back to cushion this blow, but you still don’t want modes completely removed from the game. It feels like instead of continuing to build on what they’d created over the previous few years, EA Canada instead hit the reset button with new-gen.

The worst part, though, may be the fact that EA Canada scaled back the modes that did make it into the game. Be a Pro has lost the “Live the Life” feature introduced in last year’s game, which allowed you to interact with teammates, family, fans, and the front office and deal with a balancing metagame as you tried to keep everyone in your life happy while also maintaining a high level of on-ice play.

You’ve also lost the ability to simulate to your next shift in Be a Pro. Now, you have to watch the entire game on the bench when you’re not playing, whereas last year, a button press would move you forward in time. This becomes particularly painful if you take a penalty and then have to watch the minutes tick off on the clock from the sin bin. I don’t want to watch a hockey videogame. I want to play. These subtle omissions have turned one of my favorite modes from last year into an afterthought when I boot up the game now.

Be a GM has its own set of issues now, too. To begin with, your team’s AHL affiliate has been completely done away with—now, minor-league players are just “in the system” instead of accumulating any stats or progress whatsoever. There’s also no GM tracking mechanic anymore to let you know how you’re doing or to give you an idea of what goals you need to aim for. The preseason and fantasy-draft options have also been removed, and the year-end draft for each season is fully automated by the CPU. If I’m running a franchise, I want to run the franchise! Don’t take any aspect of that away from me—and especially don’t assign it to the computer!

To make matters worse, the little control you still have left becomes all the more complicated due to the panel user-interface system that’s now permeated every EA Sports franchise. Yes, being able to jump to my favorite modes as soon as I start the game up is a welcome addition, but making trades, changing my lines, and even just resting my goalie have all become a chore because of this new system. The old list system had its problems, but it was nowhere near as bad as what this universal UI homogenization by EA Sports has done. Changing your lines is so difficult that in Hockey Ultimate Team, one of the patches is solely to help adjust this. I wish this patch were for all game modes, because changing lines and making adjustments in Be a GM right now is a nightmare.

And speaking of HUT, nothing has infuriated me more than not being able to earn pucks (the HUT currency used to buy packs to get new players) in single-player modes outside of HUT. Yes, you earned many more for playing online, but as someone who loved Be a GM and Be a Pro modes and spent more time there than anywhere else, it was nice to still earn a few pucks for playing the modes I wanted to play. This only helped extend NHL 14’s life for me; after a while, I would play a little bit of HUT because I’d accrued so many pucks. Now, it feels like the best way to get pucks is to buy them through microtransactions. EA Sports trying to squeeze more money out of us? Color me surprised.

After playing limited demos of NHL 15 leading up to its release, I could not be more disappointed with the final result. It feels like so much time and focus went into getting the graphics and physics systems up to snuff for new-gen that EA Canada forgot about the rest of the game. At the very least, there’s hope, though. Now that the transition’s been made—however painfully—next year’s title can bring NHL back to its former glory.

Developer: EA Canada • Publisher: EA Sports • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 09.09.14
7.0
The new physics system, presentation elements, and graphics are definitely a step forward for the franchise, but the wholesale removal or scaling back of so many modes leaves you wondering how such a great series could struggle so mightily with the console transition.
The Good The physics and graphics are the best the series has ever seen.
The Bad So many modes and features are missing compared to NHL 14 that it’s hard to believe this is the full game.
The Ugly This will go down with Madden 06 as one of the most disappointing generation transition games for a sports franchise.
NHL 15 is available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, and PS3. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by EA Sports for the benefit of this review.
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