Advertisement

Joystiq Weekly: Titanfall gets co-op, Civ: Beyond Earth review, amiibo impressions and more

Thomas Schulenberg
Weekend Editor
Updated ·6 min read
0

Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet.

With Titanfall getting a co-operative, wave-based mode, Super Smash Bros. on Wii U ushering in eight fighters at once and Halo: The Master Chief Collection just a few weeks (and a ~20GB patch) away, we're ready to spend a substantial amount of time beside our friends. Cunning AI is great and all, but what beats teaming up with or taking down local, equally-frantic friends and rivals? Other than wish-granting sacks of money, we mean.

Single player diehards certainly aren't left out of this week's best content though – Rockstar launched a super-cheap, upgraded version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the Xbox Marketplace today, there are reviews for Civilization: Beyond Earth and The Legend of Korra, and we got our hands on amiibos and Sony's horror romp, Until Dawn. All of that and quite a bit more is waiting for you after the break!


News

  • Hopefully keeping track of 4-player Super Smash Bros. is just a mental warmup for you at this point, because a mode in the the upcoming Wii U version will support eight brawlers at once.

  • Once you're done imagining how you'll weave eight GameCube-style controllers around a living room's worth of friends, you can settle in for an in-depth presentation on new features for the Wii U version, or you can just commence with freaking out about Mewtwo joining the fray.

  • Halo: The Master Chief Collection will have a day-one update that's about 20GB, and while that's annoying, head of Halo franchise development Frank O'Connor thinks it'll be less annoying than having to switch discs instead.

  • Titanfall pilots will soon have a break from competitively smashing each other bits, thanks to an incoming patch that includes ranked play and the four-player, cooperative wave-based Frontier Defense.

  • Former EA CEO John Riccitiello has been appointed as CEO of Unity Technologies, developer of the popular cross-platform Unity game engine.

  • Awesome Games Done Quick, a reoccurring fundraiser that features people that are better at video games than any of us will ever be, is all lined up for another week-long event starting on January 4.

  • 3D Realms is taking a page out of the ol' Dragonball Z: Negating Your Own Death book, and it's offering a $20 anthology of its past to celebrate its resurrection.

  • You could hoard some cash for the PS4 or Xbox One port of Grand Theft Auto 5, or you could revisit today's prettied-up version of previous glory days in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on Xbox 360.

  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft fans, your days of relative productivity will probably end in early 2015, when Blizzard deals hands to Android and iPhone devices.

  • You can catch Pokemon Omega Ruby and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire in the fields of retail on November 21, but if you've yet to snag a demo code and are up for buying a second, unrelated Pokemon game, you can snatch up a Ruby/Sapphire demo on November 7.

  • Jade Raymond, Ubisoft's longtime producer and collaborator that has contributed to Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, has left her position to pursue "other ambitions and new opportunities."

  • Come November, you can freshen up your Xbox One dashboard scenery with the artwork from all those achievements you're earning.


Reviews

  • Managing Editor Susan Arendt took on the role of both conductor and DJ in Fantasia: Music Evolved, and while she felt its music-making composition spells "needlessly interrupt the core rhythm game," she remarked that its best moments make you "feel like an honest-to-goodness wizard, bending the forces of light and music to your mighty will."

  • Platinum Games' The Legend of Korra arms players with four awesome elemental powers wielded by the show's star, Korra, and while Community Manager Anthony John Agnello notes that capturing a sliver of the show's magic is "impressive," he added that it's a "fun, flighty, sometimes infuriatingly pedantic game that's admirably old fashioned but disappointingly limited."

  • News Content Director Alexander Sliwinski played many a turn in Civilization: Beyond Earth, and on one hand, he noted that it "streamlines gameplay in the long-running strategy series to enhance the pace of the historically-strapped franchise." On the other hand, "As a spiritual successor to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, however, it's a cut-rate disappointment."

  • Contributing Editor Mike Suszek put on the ritz in A Golden Wake, Wadjet Eye Games' point-and-click adventure that delivers "a delightful trip through the best and worst of times for its cast" during the post-WW1 era.


Featured Content

  • Things usually don't go well when youths are anywhere near secluded cabins, but somebody has to try and save the cast of Until Dawn, so Anthony John Agnello teamed up with the group for a few deadly scenarios.

  • Strategy is integral to winning in StarCraft 2, but in the competitive scene, your APM (actions per minute) rate is just as vital. Contributing Editor Kevin Wong examined what separates the best from the rest, including how boosting an APM rate works into a player's rise to becoming a Grandmaster.

  • Super Smash Bros. can welcome new challengers in the form of amiibos, figurine-sized replicas of some of the game's roster. Editor-in-Chief Ludwig Kietzmann spent some time training a pink-furred Donkey Kong at a recent event, finding the concept's execution "oddly cold for Nintendo, a company with lovable characters and a history that began with physical playing cards."

  • The gaming industry has been marred by arguments and harassment lately, and Ludwig reflected on our communal fight for the recognition of the medium's worth in a recent editorial.

  • A point-and-click adventure game from 21 years ago is an odd choice to launch a Kickstarter campaign for, but Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers has clearly earned a loyal following. Feature Content Director Xav De Matos spoke with the game's director, Jane Jensen, about the revival's process and what she hopes it will lead to concerning the return of Sierra.

  • Bullet-hell shooters, futuristic wars, music simulators, party games and a can of Friskies. This week's Super Joystiq Podcast has all of the above, and Managing Editor Susan Arendt and Contributing Editor Danny Cowan join Ludwig and Alexander to kick things off with Super Smash Bros., followed by Civilization: Beyond Earth, Fantasy Life, A City Sleeps, Fantasia: Music Evolved, Starwhal: Just the Tip and Fibbage.

[Image: Respawn Entertainment]