A new trailer for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate released at Gamescom shows Jacob and Evie’s motivations for fighting the Templars in Industrial Revolution London.
This new trailer explores the psyches of the Frye twins a bit more while also highlighting some of the iconic locations the dual protagonists will get to explore as the fight against the Templars plays out all over London.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be available on October 23 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
Fable fans have waited three years for a proper return to Albion, and they’ll finally get a chance with Fable Legends, which I got to see firsthand on the Gamescom show floor.
Keep in mind, however, that what I saw simply scratched the surface. By the sounds of it, Legends is far from anywhere near complete. If I had to hazard a professional guess, a holiday 2014 release date would be optimistic at this point.
From what I was able to gather from the reveal—as well as a 10-minute demo further illustrating basic game mechanics—Legends will be a throwback to the era of the original Fable, where heroes were plentiful and it seemed that almost anyone could channel strength, skill, or will. Unlike heroes of the past games, however, players will choose from one of several pre-determined warriors who specialize in one of these three pillars of Fable combat. This is a drastic shift away from the customization for which Fable is known, and even if you’re able to create your characters, limiting their abilities might make longtime fans wary.
The major reason for shifting away from one-size-fits-all characters? Legends is designed around four-player co-op. Either with three friends, three AI characters, or a mix of the two, players will always be traveling with a pack of heroes in order to quell the coming threats to Albion.
Whether these quests will be individual adventures or be part of an overarching story is yet to be seen, but I think the latter’s less likely. A level-summary screen popped up at certain points in the demo, which seems to indicate that each specific quest will stand on its own. This would also fit the idea of players taking on a collection of legends from Albion’s past instead of going on a new adventure with semi-fleshed-out characters.
Not everything will be foreign to returning players in Legends, though. The game will still feature a central town that will host the same manner of minigames that have become staples of Fable, such as blacksmithing or chicken-kicking. It’s not clear yet whether this will serve as a hub world where you can recruit other heroes on your adventuring ways, almost like a MMO.
But it’s not all about being a hero—a unique gameplay twist in Legends is that players can now choose to be the villain. This core evildoer will look at the game from a RTS perspective and plant Hobbes, Balverines, and other manner of foes in the heroes’ way and will gain XP and gold depending on how well their defenses hamper the heroes’ progress.
As much as Fable Legends worries me in regards to story, gameplay, and every other key feature, I’ll admit that it does looks really nice on the Xbox One. The demo provided a level of detail on my favorite fantastical creatures like never before—and, if nothing else, Lionhead has shown that they can definitely tap into the power of Microsoft’s upcoming console. Since the game’s still more than likely at least another 18 months out, there’s plenty of time for Lionhead to work out the kinks. That’s the Microsoft way now, after all, isn’t it?
While the first two of seven new multiplayer modes were revealed last week, Activision saved another one for Gamescom. I checked out Blitz mode and the new map, Chasm, that was revealed during the Xbox One press briefing.
Blitz feels like a twist on Capture the Flag, but instead of grabbing a flag, now the players are the flags. This mode sets up two points on opposite ends of the map, with a simple objective: Any player on your team must get into the opponent’s scoring zone, and vice versa. If a player walks into the zone, they’re teleported back to their base and score a point for their team. This means that, essentially, both teams are on offense and defense at the same time.
An interesting little catch, though, is that the developers are already one step ahead of players and have built in a preventive measure to guard against massive scoring from a team working well together—say, four guys moving in tandem across the map. Once a player enters the scoring zone, a 10-second timer starts before someone else can enter. This gives the opposing team time to regroup, and it could put some folks’ survival skills to the test if they’re waiting out the timer near the zone.
This makes Blitz seem like a potential favorite stomping ground for lone wolves. Since you can only score with one person at a time, staying away from teammates might prove more useful if you can hold your own in a firefight. You’ll still have to work together to see who’s making their way to the base, but sending only one or two guys out a time and having the rest camp out near the base might prove a fruitful strategy.
What was most interesting about my hands-on time at Gamescom, however, was that the new map and mode were kept separate. So, I played Blitz on Octane and Strikezone, but I didn’t get to explore Chasm until I went back to Search & Rescue. This makes me think that Blitz may be limited to small to mid-sized maps.
Chasm’s probably my favorite of the new maps we’ve seen thus far. While it’s not as spread out as Whiteout, it’s got a lot of verticality: You’ll work your way through the rubble of a collapsed building and down through the street into a subway system. Since the map features several layers of small platforms, high ground will be critical depending on the modes you play, and several points are perfect for camping and protecting objective points—in this case, placing bombs for Search & Rescue.
The new audio system for Ghosts really shined on Chasm. During my session, players would shout out targets near cubicles or on railway lines rather steadily. I don’t know if the excess noise at last week’s event prevented the system from working as flawlessly as it should’ve, but I heard everything loud and clear at Gamescom.
So, three down, four to go on the Ghosts multiplayer reveals. As of right now, Search & Rescue remains my personal favorite, but Infinity Ward is certainly capable of topping it with something surprising down the line.
EGM Game Over Podcast 010: German Moose Be Ballin’
The EGM crew brings you the Game Over Podcast, our end-of-the-week conversation where we discuss some of the biggest recent events in gaming.
[Hosts] Andrew Fitch, Ray Carsillo, Josh Harmon, and Eric L. Patterson
[Date] August 24th, 2012
[Now Playing] NBA Baller Beats
[News] A whole lot of talk about Gamescom 2012, and then a little talk about how games journalists are racist when it comes to Japanese games.
[EGM Reviews] Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Way of the Samurai 4
Want to send feedback to the show? Drop us a line on Twitter: @EGMLogin
[Subscribe via iTunes] http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/egm-radio/id538629924
[Subscribe via Feedburner] http://feeds.feedburner.com/EGMRadio
As much as Black Ops 2 looks to ensure that the single player campaign isn’t just lost in the shuffle, it’s not like Treyarch has completely forgotten about multiplayer, either. By taking advantage of the new 2025 setting and completely overhauled killstreak and create-a-class systems, Black Ops 2 is looking to give Call of Duty fans the most intense yet streamlined multiplayer experience yet, as we saw during our hands-on preview
The most striking difference was the overhauled create-a-class system, which boasts some big, readily apparent changes. Not only does the interace look completely different, the feature now acts similarly to an RPG inventory. Whereas previous games in the franchise presented you with a rigid set of inventory options, Black Ops 2‘s system is much more flexible, allowing you to assign weapons, perks, and equipment to fill up the slots you’re allotted in any way you see fit.
As game design director David Vonderhaar explains, this new system—dubbed “Big 10” internally—will work to provide players with a truly customizable experience. “You can take any ten pieces of content in the system—and this is the key differential between all create a classes before and the one in Black Ops 2. In Black Ops 1, you had to take content. You had a secondary weapon. You had a tactical grenade. You had those things whether you cared for them or didn’t care for them, whether you used them or you didn’t use them, but in the create-a-class for Black Ops 2 you don’t have to take those things. You can straight up not take a secondary weapon if you’re never going to switch to it, and then use that freely allocated point and put it somewhere else. That could be an attachment. That could be an extra perk. That could be a second lethal grenade. That’s the core of the system. That’s the difference, the key pivotal difference between this and the systems that have come before.”
David also pointed out that you’ll need to get to Level 4 in Black Ops 2 before you can unlock the create-a-class. With 55 levels and 10 levels of prestige, you’ll need to prestige at least once before you can unlock all possibilities this time around. In the hopes of us playing around with it some, though, everything was unlocked for us from the start, and I was immediately able to appreciate the changes.
I dropped my secondary weapon—admittedly, I rarely stay alive long enough to need it—and second lethal grenade, affording me two points to play around with. I then made sure my tactical grenade was what would become the bane of riot shield users (now referred to as an “assault shield,” as much like Gears of War 2‘s Boomshield, you can plant it in the ground and use it as makeshift cover), my electro-dart. Basically, this handy little device would temporarily paralyze anyone who walks by it with a mildly damaging electric shock. Of course, whoever was unfortunate to walk past it and start twitching violently didn’t need to worry about the pitiful damage, as I was more than happy to finish them off with whatever assault rifle I was messing around with.
These extra two points though I took and equipped a second top-tier perk, as David explained to us the concept of create-a-class “wild cards.”
“Wild cards are an entirely new type of create-a-class content. What makes these wild cards special is they allow you to break the rules of the traditional system. So, by allocating one of your points on a wild card, you can do things like take a third attachment for your gun, take a second Perk 1, take a second lethal, take two primary weapons, or add additional attachments to your secondary weapon. It’s wild cards that really open up the create-a-class possibilities, and there’s an intrinsic cost. They cost one of your ten. You can break those rules, but it will cost you. So, wild cards are the rule breakers.”
To be of any effect though, the wild card cost me my two open points—one to unlock the card and one to actually equip the extra perk. It would be worth it, though, as I really only needed the one weapon and its attachments.
And speaking of attachments, this is where things got really wild. I could barely wrap my head around how many different goodies I could strap onto my assault rifle. Some are your first-person shooter staples, like laser sights and what not, and others have been heavily influenced by the 2025 setting, like the millimeter scanner, which could well be the greatest anti-camping tool conceived. By equipping the scanner, you’ll actually be able to see through walls to find players who are standing still and allow you to eliminate them before they cause any real havoc. But, as David was quick to point out, the idea of gun attachments have been taken to a new level as well.
“The laser sight increases accuracy, specifically hip-fire accuracy. Now, if you’re a Call of Duty player, you know that as Steady Aim, and you know that as a perk, but in Black Ops 2, there are no perks that modify a gun. If you want to modify a gun, you will take an attachment for that gun. That is the best way for us to allow you to have an experience with that gun that’s appropriate for that gun. Whereas a perk might modify all guns evenly, this allows us to, if we think that perk-like ability is inappropriate for that weapon, then that attachment’s not available for that weapon. It’s a very key pivot here, because I can also tune this laser sight specifically for the gun, so if it’s already a gun that hip-fires very accurately, this laser sight might modify it differently than something that would have to modify all weapons evenly. That gives us a really good opportunity to balance all these weapons, because there are so many guns and so many combinations of attachments. It’s a very important part of our strategy.”
So, I had my rifle, I had my gun, I had my perks, and I had my grenades. I was ready for combat! This was your more traditional Call of Duty experience: running around, trying to capture objectives and mow down your enemies as much as possible before they got to you in order to not only win the match, but also achieve killstreaks—now called score streaks—to help your cause as much as possible. But this was another aspect of the game that had been overhauled. Not only were there rewards that were unique to the 2025 setting, like the various robotic drones you could call upon and control to bring death to your enemies, but now there were added benefits to using rewards that helped your team, like the Call of Duty staple, the UAV.
“The UAV doesn’t get kills for you, but it still helps you win, and it helps your team win,” David explained. “Those are the only rewards that stack in, that actually give you score. So, a UAV is up and your teammates get kills, those are giving you +25 every time. +25 every time someone gets a kill while your UAV is up. Well, that assures I’ll make the enemy team shoot down UAVs, right? No longer something to just be ignored, and you’re not doing much except helping your team, which is helping your team win. So this strategy is super-important to us. We want to reward players who are helping their team win the game mode—not just the game, the game mode—and we want to reward players who are helping their team. There are lots of scoring events like this. The UAV is just an example of one. Anything that doesn’t directly generate kills for you but helps your team gives you a little bit of score. Not a lot. 25. Normally, one fourth of a kill.”
This also explained the name change, as acquiring points was what allowed you to unlock rewards and so heavily objective based players (like myself) could help out the team or capture objectives and see his score increase without ever firing a shot. We saw this some in Modern Warfare 3 with obtaining experience points like in Kill Confirmed mode by just picking up dog tags, but now we’ll see a more direct advantage to this within the game.
The effect is surprisingly noticeable. When I was carrying the flag in CTF, I saw my score multiplier double each time I got a kill. There was one match where I took down four guys who’d been unlucky enough to bunch up around my electro-dart (electro-dart for the win!) and got the point equivalent of 15 kills because of the multiplier that was added on for being the flag carrier.
Aside from the standard Team Deathmatch and CTF games, we also saw Hardpoint, the newest game mode added to the Call of Duty multiplayer repertoire. The best way to describe Hardpoint is that it plays exactly like Gears of War’s Annex mode. There is one point on the map worth a set number of points, and when those points run out, the hot spot moves to another section of the map. When one team captures enough points, they win the match.
When all was said and done, I was rather impressed with what I had seen of Black Ops 2’s multiplayer. The four levels we saw—Aftermath, Yemen, Cargo, and Turbine—were designed in the usual Call of Duty fashion to keep the action fast and frantic, and they all looked great graphically. The create-a-class really made me feel like I had a say in how I went into a fight and helped me perform better than I usually do because I could make my class conform more to my strategies. Last but not least, the new score system helped me feel like I had a fighting chance to help the team out with some rewards that are normally just out of reach for me. From what I saw, it definitely looks like Treyarch is definitely upping the ante with Black Ops 2‘s multiplayer. I’ve got a hunch that Call of Duty fans will be very pleased come mid-November.
RayCarsilloWrites.com 