Posts Tagged ‘real time strategy’
Dawn of War 2 ‘There is Only War’ patch tomorrow
The new Dawn of War II patch ‘There is Only War’, which has been in beta testing recently, now has a definite release date. Relic Entertainment posted on the official community site that the patch will be available starting tomorrow.
The developers also released a very extensive changelog, listing all of the improvements the patch has to offer. This changelog details numerous bug fixes and balance changes. These improvements differ from what you’ve seen in the beta, so it’s well worth a look.
Make the jump for the full changelog.
Starcraft II external beta coming this summer
Remember how we told you a few days ago that you could sign up for the Starcraft II beta? Well, that signup may be put to use sooner than we thought.
In a recent Activision Blizzard earnings call, Blizzard President Mike Morhaime was quoted to say that Starcraft II’s external beta testing will take place this summer.
So yes, this means that the general public (those who signed up) will actually get access to a beta form of Starcraft II. Hell, maybe us simple folk (those who didn’t sign up) will be treated to an open beta.
Hey, we can wish, can’t we?
Read (VG247)
EA Announces Competitive Pricing for Battleforge
Electronic Arts Inc. has released a new competitive pricing for gamers regarding its real-time strategy game Battleforge. For $29.99, gamers can experience the magical realm that comes with four ready-made faction decks based on the four elements in the game – Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow and 3000 BattleForge points.
The BattleForge Points allow players to buy an additional 12 booster packs bringing the box total to 160 cards. Players can use BattleForge Points to purchase new cards in booster packs. Booster packs contain eight cards – 5 common, 2 un-common, 1 rare or ultra rare, all for just 250 BattleForge points. This dynamic system allows players to customize their RTS experience with content that can be purchased at their own discretion.
“BattleForge is a specialized RTS which has so much more to offer to the players whether they are straight up RTS fans or collectible card gamers. The battles are becoming more epic as the players’ skills are advancing,” said Producer Michael Krach, “There has never been a better time to get into the action on BattleForge.”
(Source) Press
Dawn of War II demo available, sale on Steam
THQ announces today that a new single player demo has been released for Dawn of War II. It clocks in at around a hefty 3.8GB.
In celebration of the new demo, Steam has also given the real-time-strategy game a 25% discount if you buy the game before Monday, which makes the price at $37.49.
Read (Steam)
Zoids Assault Game Review–Story Packed But Dull As Dishwater
You know how I’m constantly
railing against games that are all gameplay and no story? How I wish, sometimes, plots would get deeper and richer and more fully realized? Well, today, I’ve seen the other end of the spectrum, and its name is Zoids Assault.
An extremely rare and hard to find title from the boys at Atlus, who for some reason don’t seem to be putting out a lot of product these days, Zoids Assault is a long and involved story, which is in turn part of a much longer and much more involved story, about two major nations at war. The Guylos Empire and the Republic of Helic have been at each others’ throats for years, and this time around, we focus on two smaller appendages of these great bodies politic, Maroll and Jamil. One of Marill’s military bases explodes under mysterious circumstances—which is odd enough by itself; explosions don’t tend to be mysterious, ever, they tend to be big, loud, and, in wartime, part of a series—and thus two covert operations teams are sent into their rival Jamil’s territory in response. They’re probably on their way to do some damage in the best loud, grotesque military fashion available, but we’ll never know exactly what they were doing. But what’s going on right now, with a cold war brewing between Maroll and Jamil, is irrevocably linked to events that happened around the end of the full shooting war between the Guylos Empire and the Republic of Helic, ten years prior.
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Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3 Game Review–What Might Have Been
Today’s word is “Alternate history”, folks, and it’s a kind of science fiction that deals strictly in the things that might have been. It goes back a long time, way back past World War II, and mostly encompasses books about Nazis or sometimes, the Confederate States of America.
But today, I’ve got a new and interesting example to bring to bear, and it comes to us in the form of real time strategy title Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3.
The plot is clear and tortuous at the same time–we’re picking up where Red Alert 2 left off, basically. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of the late fifties, and the Soviet Union is about to buckle and wind up a temporarily neutered third-rate power, conquered by the Allied forces. But since they see it coming, the Soviet Union is about to unleash its newest secret project, a time machine. Made from what looks like large amounts of brick and scrap iron, the time machine manages to transport three Soviet officials, a scientist, General Krukov and the always popular Colonel Cherdenko, back to Brussels in 1927, where Albert Einstein was delivering a speech before a convocation of scientists. General Krukov then kills Einstein, thus ensuring that the numerous scientific advances the brilliant man gave to the Allies instead never existed.
And things look good for Mother Russia when the threesome returns to their present timeline–the altering of the space-time continuum has produced interesting fruit. Cherdenko is no longer a colonel, but rather the Premier of the Soviet Union. And business is good in the Soviet Union–they’re about to completely conquer Western Europe. But as Cherdenko is settling behind the big desk and about to start gloating, a sudden communique comes in–the Empire of the Rising Sun has just invaded eastern Russia, even seizing the Russian Pacific Fleet’s headquarters at Vladivostok and pushing as far as Leningrad. General Krukov orders an immediate nuclear strike, only to be met with confusion. What IS a “nuclear weapon”, anyway?
The “Empire of the Rising Sun”, of course, is just one of many changes that took place within the confines of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. Students of alternate history will LOVE to see the sheer array of them–from a Japan that never got nuked by the United States that became the Empire of the Rising Sun and followed its own technological path (it’s LADEN with robots, by the way), to the rest of the world developing bizarre technologies for use in a continual war.
This is where you come in. You can play as the Russians, the Empire of the Rising Sun, or the Allies, and you’re out to conquer the world for each. You’ll have a dizzying array of options at your command, and most of the game will be spent playing the same campaigns over and over until you learn all the enemy’s tricks and surprises, then counter them all. The sheer depth of this game is amazing, and will likely keep you playing for hours as you advance in each faction’s campaign. The additon of naval warfare is a development that’s been widely heralded, but on the down side, the game treats it like a kid with a new toy, badly overusing it, even to the point of neglecting the other kinds of combat.
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 is, overall, a deep and satisfying game experience that will prove to be even a match for Microsoft juggernaut Halo Wars.
Stormrise Game Review: Tough Times, Tough Timing, Tough Luck
With a name like Stormrise, you think it’s got to be a really interesting game, right? When I first heard about this one poised to invade markets literally just a few days ago, I was picturing a nice Baldur’s Gate style medievalist fantasy. Of course, if I’d read up on it in advance I likely would’ve been sorely disappointed right from the word go, but instead my disappointment had to wait until I finally got my hands on a copy of Stormrise.
Now available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC, Stormrise presents an ominously possible future, as humanity faces a global catastrophe brought on by what seems to be a combination of its own willing ignorance and global warming. In response, humanity develops a kind of satellite network to counter the resulting superstorms. It works, for a while, until things get vastly worse through humanity’s meddling. The result? A hellish apocalypse unleashed on earth, and two warring factions left to fight over the ruins: the Echelon, a technologically advanced human society that sealed itself in shelters for protection, and the Sai, a race of mutants who’ve learned to live on the now-blasted surface of earth and instead depend mostly on monsters for assault where the Echelon would instead have tanks.
You play an Echelon commander who’s been out of the fight for some time, and wage war against the Sai for your own survival. You’ll be in charge of several different kinds of battle unit, including several classes of infantry, aerial units, and giant mech suits.
It’s hard to pan Stormrise directly. It’s an innovative enough idea, and the real-time strategy subgenre has been badly underappreciated, especially in these days of constant nonstop first person shooters every time I turn around. There’s even some stuff to like in how easy it is to move from one unit to the next with the right analog stick. The plot is deep and interesting with a lot of room for growth.
But there are problems here. Of course, there’s almost inevitable comparison to fellow recent release Halo Wars, and you can rest assured that, giant mechs aside, Stormrise will not even vaguely be able to compete with Halo Wars. I liked how rapidly I could switch between units in Stormrise, but I found that getting them to move anywhere was a confusing prospect. The much-vaunted 3D aspect of the game has to take an unpleasant backseat to the sheer fact that, often, you can’t see where you’re supposed to be going next around the buildings and hills and valleys and assorted whatnot that’s cluttering up your field of vision.
There seemed to be a lot of problems with unit balance—at one point, I dispatched a mech and two units of infantry to seize an energy node, while leaving the balance of my force behind to shepherd the portal from which further troops could emerge. My expeditionary force was chewed to bits by what I later discovered was a nigh-infinite flood of Sai troops, and when that happened, the game apparently decided that I just suck too hard as a commander and forced me to restart the level from the last save point.
Suffering from unpleasant control schemes and a really lousy sense of timing, Stormrise will almost inevitably wind up as second banana to the Microsoft juggernaut as presented by Halo Wars. And this is sad, as the innovative ideas and interesting storyline will inevitably be lost to bad controls and better alternatives.
Ubisoft announces R.U.S.E
Ubisoft has recently released a press statement pulling the covers off of their all new RTS, R.U.S.E. This won’t be your run of the mill RTS as Ubisoft promises it will have a “twist that will thrill gamers”.
But what’s this twist? Well, the press release says that players will be able to “bluff their enemies to lead their nation to victory” utilizing tactics never before seen in an RTS.
It seems that Ubisoft is really focusing on the different angles included in the game, thanks to the IRISZOOM Engine, as the press release frequently references the fact.
Ubisoft’s R.U.S.E is expected for the Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 sometime this year, or next.
Press release after the break. More »