I had a chance to go hands-on with Halo Wars 2 at a recent Microsoft preview event, and there I played the new Blitz Mode. Blitz Mode offers elements of Survival, Domination, and Trading Card games in an interesting twist of players spending a different currency from the main game to call down units. You can only pick from one of four available at a time, before that unit is replaced in your “hand” with one of 12 cards in your “deck”. It’s a fast and frantic mode that offers unique gameplay for the RTS genre. Halo Wars 2 will be available on Xbox One and PC on February 21.
Tag Archive: hands-on
The original Watch Dogs tried some interesting new ideas for incorporating multiplayer, and at the top of the list might’ve been the ability to invade a friend’s game in order to try and hack them (leading to a cat-and-mouse chase between players). Building on that idea, Ubisoft has unveiled the new Bounty Hunter mode for Watch Dogs 2, which I recently had the chance to try for myself thanks to a pre-Gamescom event at their San Francisco office.
Watch Dogs 2’s Bounty Hunter mode allows players to put a bounty on their own head. Doing so automatically sends the cops after you, but it also allows up to three friends to join your game and team up with the police to hunt you down. However, one of your friends can join your side if they so choose, turning the mode into a 2-vs-2 (with AI police) in addition to the possibilities for a 1-vs-1 or even asymmetrical 2-vs-1 or 3-vs-1 confrontation. If you don’t feel like being hunted, you can also do an online search to see if anyone else is on the lamb in order to join the police hunting them if you want.
I had a chance to play as both the hunter and the hunted, and on both sides of the coin, it was nice that all my tools from the game’s single-player portion transitioned with me. I could hack cars and steam vents, use my automatic rifles, or even fly drones and place remote mines, just like in the single player, all helping to provide for a variety of options every time I played—making it so each time I tried the mode it never felt the same. Sometimes as the hunter, I would get a lock on the target, steal a car, and simply run them over when they were trying to escape on foot; other times, I would sneak up on them and snipe them from a distance.
Meanwhile, during the times when I was being hunted, my strategies shifted drastically. With my position immediately given to my enemies as soon as they signed in, I just tried to flee as fast as I could at first, hoping to lose my pursuers through back streets or by going off-road with a car. One time I had a friend drive the getaway car as I used my rifle to shoot out the tires of those hot on our tail. Sometimes, crippling would-be captors was more effective than trying to kill them outright.
At a certain point, though, I got tired of running. On my final shot at the mode, I found high ground and planted mines near locations I thought people would try to come at me from. Unfortunately, most of the mines went to waste, as my enemies took unforeseen angles. Luckily I could remote detonate them though, and I was able to pick off another player who wasn’t close enough to trip the mine, but who was definitely within the blast radius when I set it off.
All told, I spent probably about a half hour with Watch Dogs 2’s Bounty Hunter mode, and got in maybe six matches (victorious in all of them)—which means the mode is also pretty quick. You don’t have to worry about a long time sink, and with the hunters always knowing where the hunted player is, it usually promotes quick and decisive confrontations, perfect if you want to get in and get out with the multiplayer, or really mess with some folks and go on a bounty-collecting spree.
It’s nice to see Ubisoft continuing to support the multiplayer aspect of Watch Dogs, and this new mode feels like the natural evolution of invading someone else’s game while staying true to the tenants of the original’s gameplay. I can’t wait go collect some more bounties for real now when Watch Dogs 2 drops on November 15.
Usually when people think of Insomniac Games, over-the-top action and insane weapons are the first thoughts that come to mind. In a creative field like video games, though, patterns are meant to be broken and comfort zones are meant to be stepped outside of—and that’s what’s being done by a fifteen-person team within Insomniac. This small group of staffers is hard at work on Song of the Deep, a side-scrolling metroidvania-style passion project that definitely moves away from what some may consider the studio’s bread and butter. I was recently able to play about 30 minutes of the game, and you’d think Insomniac had always been working within that genre.
Song of the Deep follows 12-year-old Merryn, a young girl whose fisherman father has been lost at sea. When Merryn has a vision seeing her father trapped on the sea floor, she decides the only way to save her dad is to find him herself. So, she puts together a makeshift submarine and sets off to explore the murky depths. What she soon realizes, however, is that all the old bedtime stories her father used to tell her about the sea might actually be true, and only by navigating various hazards will she ever be able to bring him home.
Dropped into the middle of Merryn’s adventure, I began by trying out the variety of tools and weapons that her sub has to help it navigate its surroundings. A grappling hook can be used to tether the sub to craggy surfaces in strong currents, pull and carry objects around a level when solving puzzles, or even to try to punch enemies. The sub also featured sonar with pulses that can stun certain enemies, a turbo booster which can really crank up the engines on the sub, and lasers and torpedoes to either defend yourself with or destroy crumbling walls for entry into submerged ruins.
Speaking of ruins, as I explored the world around me, I began to realize that some of the story was being told via the vibrant environments I was navigating. Large tendrils of seaweed acted as window dressing on larger set pieces, but also at times visually obscured hidden pathways. Intricately-carved stone, long lost to time, had eerily been preserved in the deepest recesses of the ocean. Unknown clockwork technology still operated when Merryn interacted with it, opening up new wonders to explore. Song of the Deep is nothing short of beautiful when it came to providing a visually captivating experience.
As I began to make headway during my hands-on time, I soon came across my first upgrade. It was a special suit that Merryn can wear in order to freely exit the sub. Being much smaller than the sub, the suit allows her to explore tiny crevasses and pathways that lead to special items or solutions to different puzzles. It basically serves the purpose of Samus’ morph ball from Metroid, but Merryn is far more vulnerable in this mode than Samus ever was, leaving Song of the Deep’s heroine open to far more danger.
And danger is something Song of the Deep is fraught with. Being underwater, Merryn and her sub provide a unique twist to other games in the same genre in that there is no platforming. Being submerged, you can always move in every direction as long as there isn’t a wall or other obstacle in your path barring progress. This means bottomless pits or spike traps aren’t on Merryn’s list of concerns, but in their place, Insomniac needed other ways to provide challenge along the adventure.
One way of doing this is to fill each level with hostile wildlife, with jellyfish, urchins, and other sea creatures trying to turn you into dinner if you’re not careful. Another way of upping the difficulty is with puzzles. Navigating labyrinthine corridors with jet stream currents trying to toss you to and fro, using your grappling hook to throw items through narrow openings in order to open up ancient, rusted gates, or working steampunk-like machinery to reflect light at different sensors were just some of the head-scratchers I came across in my time with the game. Although not impossible to overcome, they definitely added a welcome challenge to the adventure.
Although my time with Song of the Deep was short, its appeal is evident. Whether a longtime fan of metroidvanias, or just looking for another endearing digital story to experience, the team at Insomniac is showing their pedigree reaches far past extraordinary weaponry and mind-blowing action. Song of the Deep should be a game to keep an eye out for when it releases sometime before the end of the first half of 2016 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
If you’ve seen Epic Games’ Couch Knights or Showdown demos, or were one of the lucky few that attended GDC last year and saw the Unreal 4 powered Thief in the Shadows demo they did with WETA Digital, it is easy to tell that Epic is excited about the potential of Virtual Reality. The studio’s years of bringing us some of the most over-the-top gaming experiences could easily transition into VR, and each subsequent demo they’ve released has pushed the potential the tech holds a little farther. So, it was no surprise that I was blown away by their latest VR experience, Bullet Train, when I recently got to try it out for the first time.
Bullet Train starts off on a futuristic subway train, teaching you the basic mechanics of how to survive in the demo. Picking up, firing, and reloading your guns comes intuitively with the Oculus’ dual-hand controllers, with appropriate buttons for pulling triggers and actually holding onto the weapons. Besides using guns, your character can also slow time down Matrix-style, catching bullets out of mid-air and throwing them back at enemies with super speed. As well, your character is equipped with a teleport power, which is how you also move through the world.
Once I had familiarized myself with the controls and completed the tutorial, the subway train came to a stop at a station with large glass windows and pristine floors, giving off the vibe of a possible near-future setting. I quickly scanned around the area and noticed guns, grenades, and teleport points littered around the station. With nary a moment to collect myself in this new virtual world, though, red armored hooligans carrying their own weapons started pouring in from escalators and elevators—and I was their target.
I grabbed the nearest two pistols and immediately began firing, hoping to get a jump on my foes before their superior numbers overwhelmed me, as new threats replaced the ones I took out as quickly as I was killing them. When my clips ran out, I used the slow time feature and tried my hand at grabbing bullets out of the air one at a time. As I hurled them back at my enemies, some would go flying off in a direction I did not intend, which left me wondering if it was pure human error or calibration issues. It didn’t matter, though—enough of my throws hit their mark, providing me an opening to teleport across the area to an assault rifle.
With a higher-powered firearm, I began whittling the enemy forces down more consistently, painting the station in a hail of bullets until again my clip ran dry. This time, I grabbed a nearby grenade and lobbed it at soldiers who had taken cover in the train track trenches below the platform. Again I teleported, this time snagging a pump-action shotgun. Instead of firing madly, however, I warped closer to my targets, where I’d be in position to perform headshots from close range. This continued for nearly ten minutes, jumping from teleport point to teleport point, slowing time as necessary, and changing weapons when I ran out of ammo. Finally, the unending horde of enemy soldiers came to a halt—and this was when an airborne drone joined the fray.
I had no weapons that could penetrate the steel hide of the drone, and so instead, I had to rely solely on my ability to catch enemy fire. The drone used missiles instead of bullets, but by turning its own firepower against itself, I downed the flying menace.
Bullet Train provided the most exhilarating demo I had played yet in VR from any company. It’s fast, frantic action and mostly responsive controls left me feeling as if I had truly just left the middle of a domestic warzone when I sorrowfully had to pry the Oculus off my head. It was the first time I had seen a demo in VR come close to not just replicating the experiences I have with modern action games, but surpassing them. If Epic could provide a full gaming experience centered on this gameplay, with a story and actual characters, Bullet Train could be the basis for the first major hit in VR gaming and it has me crazily anticipating what Epic does next with this new technology.
When Kerbal Space Program first rocketed onto the scene, I missed the shuttle. I openly admit to my preference of console games over those on PC, and thusly I’m usually late getting on board with every Indie darling that finds its way onto Steam. It’s not that I’m living under a rock and don’t hear of these games, to be clear. It’s just that, when not reviewing the occasional PC title for EGM, I instead often wait for them to inevitably go on sale—or, in this case, get ported to a different platform. So, it was with great zeal that I got a chance recently to finally try the fun, yet educational, game that has the likes of Elon Musk and scientists at NASA buzzing alongside the gaming community on the PlayStation 4.
For those completely unaware, Kerbal Space Program puts you in charge of a new space program on the planet Kerbin, modeled after that on our own Earth. You must construct rockets and other spacecraft in a state of the art space center, using those creations to then explore the solar system and its various planets and moons. Along the way, you’ll have to complete challenges that further the Kerbal people’s quest to better understand their universe, while also furthering your own space-faring knowledge.
As soon as the demo kicked off, I was tasked with building my own rocket ship. With far more parts unlocked for me than what you would start with at the beginning of the game, my creation could be described as nothing short of Frankenstein’s monster-like as I mixed and matched through the various ship component categories. Small thrusters connected to giant fuel tanks, with a mid-sized cockpit and a radar dish on the cone just for kicks. With his mouth agape in horror at my concoction, KSP producer Jose Luis Vives shakily told me to take it for a test drive.
Surprisingly, my rocket actually made it off the ground. With absolutely no balance, however, and my inexperience with the controls, the ship quickly came back down to the ground and began pinwheeling almost instantly. I found my abomination bouncing along the terrain before shattering into several pieces, and the thrusters flying off into the horizon before exploding.
For better or worse, though, I was hooked. I wanted to know how to make the proper spaceship. I wanted to learn and create in this universe laid out before me, and bring my newfound knowledge to the green humanoid masses of Kerbin. And if a few explosions happened along the ways of my trials and errors, well, so be it.
It was then decided I should instead see what a fully functional ship could do, so one of the team’s saved designs was loaded up—and this only made me fall more in love with what KSP was doing. This was a rocket ship, the kind you see in history books and old footage from the Apollo landings. After being walked through the controls, I took off, heading for the great unknown. My own personal mission, though, was just to make it to the moon.
As I jettisoned used fuel canisters and unnecessary sections of the ship, it wasn’t long before I had broken atmosphere. It was here, though, where my mission went awry. I found myself fighting with the controller often during my demo, the actually piloting portion of the gameplay for KSP requiring a more delicate touch than either the PS4 controller or I could provide. I wasted a lot of fuel course-correcting on my way up into orbit, and because of that, just as I kissed the blackness of deep space, I found myself being pulled down towards the ground faster than I left it due to Kerbin’s gravitational pull.
Human error was clearly a factor in my failure, but after having had a chance to familiarize myself more with the controls, I felt this was one area that the port was lacking. I’m fine with a port between systems simply repackaging the same game and just including previous add-ons and what not considering it’s the first time a new audience may be seeing it. But optimizing your controls for that new system is critical, and the more I learned about KSP, the more I saw that this was still an experience where a mouse and keyboard holds far greater appeal than a standard controller.
The button layout was not intuitive to what I needed to perform well, and while a deeper look showed some controller options, the defaults felt unnatural. Again, playing the game from the start might alleviate some of the difficulty I continued to have over my hour with the title, but clicking down on the controller’s sticks even brought up a mouse reticle to select different options on screen—showing that as far as the Kerbin people might travel into space, KSP had not traveled very far in its port over to consoles.
Poor controls aside, I refused to be deterred. I hopped into a new version of the previously saved ship, conveniently reconstructed for me by the Kerbal people, and again took off for the stars, this time breaking free of Kerbin’s pull. With enough fuel—and a straight enough trajectory—to steer towards a celestial body, my original goal of the moon was within sight. Once in the emptiness of space, I could finally truly plan my course. Pulling out to map view, I set a maneuver node—a device that would automatically correct my ship towards a particular path (great for deep space exploration)—to plot a course for my ship and my ragtag three-Kerbal crew. What I failed to take into consideration, though, was that the moon would continue to orbit as I made a beeline for it. And I had, again, run out of fuel. I drifted harmlessly by the moon, set off on an endless course into the abyss, having never reached my goal by the time my session finished up.
So, besides me being an awful astronaut, what did I learn during my experience with Kerbal Space Program for consoles? That it’s true in capturing the spirit of the original game, and is coming over with all the bells and whistles that had slowly been added over time on PC. Unfortunately, the controls are also a little too true to form, and had me longing for a mouse and keyboard. Still, it has me chomping at the bit to grab my space helmet and suit up alongside the Kerbin again when Kerbal Space Program drops sometime in the first half of 2016 on Wii U, Xbox One, and PS4.
I had a chance to go hands-on with the brand new Just Cause 3 Sky Fortress DLC recently and was able to put Rico’s new Bavarium powered wingsuit through its paces. As you can see in the hands-on video above, the wingsuit is equipped with a jetpack, rocket launcher, and machine guns, basically turning Rico into a mini-fighter jet. You can also take everything you acquire in the DLC into the main game of Just Cause 3, meaning that new wingsuit can be used to take out bases on land as well as the new Eden Airship over the western skies of Medici.
The Sky Fortress DLC is the first of three DLC packs for Just Cause 3, and will be available on consoles and PC sometime in March. It will be followed by the Land and Sea DLC featuring mech-suits and a heist on the high seas—completing the Air, Land, and Sea expansion pack for the game—by the end of the summer.
I had a chance to play the first couple hours of Far Cry Primal‘s campaign at a recent Ubisoft event. Here are two missions where I got to tame my first animal, and also took on one of Takkar’s rival tribes, the sun-worshipping Izila. Far Cry Primal will be available for Xbox One and PS4 on February 23, 2016, and PC on March 1, 2016.
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.
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.
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.
RayCarsilloWrites.com 