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Scrabble is XBLA bound, Hasbro channel coming soon
After it was first rumored nearly a year ago (along with Monopoly), EA has announced that Scrabble is indeed heading to Xbox Live Arcade. The company also announced the creation of a brand new Hasbro Family Game Night "channel" in Xbox Live Arcade. The channel will serve as a "digital game closet," according to EA Hasbro general manager Chip Lange, where players can quickly access various Hasbro games without leaving the channel. Players will be able to "earn virtual trophies, furniture and themes" to decorate their closets by playing Hasbro games. In addition to Scrabble, other titles planned for the service include Sorry!, Sorry! Sliders, Battleship, Connect Four, Boggle and Yahtzee. The Hasbro Family Game Night channel is set to debut this spring, though no specific dates have been given for any of the individual game releases. Oh, one more thing: No Monopoly mentioned, folks. Sorry. [Via Joystiq]
XBLA receiving Hasbro game channel; EA's Scrabble coming to handhelds, consoles
Electronic Arts announced today that Scrabble will make its way to the DS and PSP in March, and to Xbox Live Arcade at a later date. Beginning in spring, XBLA will not only receive the perennial wordsmith board game, but also Boggle, Battleship, Yahtzee, Connect Four, Sorry! and Sorry!Sliders. In a very interesting development, XBLA will also receive a branded "Hasbro Family Game Night" channel. Chip Lange, general manager of EA Hasbro, says it'll allow players to easily find family-friendly digital board games. We only wish that Microsoft would extend such a courtesy to the high-quality European board games that are also available on the service.
EVE's call to arms: Thursday fleet battles on test server to help combat lag
EVE Online's latest expansion Quantum Rise brought some new features for the industry crowd, and a few enhancements aimed at PvP pilots as well. But some of the broad changes they've made to the game mechanics have triggered lag, and lots of it, which CCP Games is hoping to combat with the help of the players themselves. CCP Tanis says, "We take this issue very seriously and as a result, our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help." The help CCP Games is looking for requires relatively little from players, aside from logging into the Singularity test server and entering the fray, blasting each other apart in battleships. The Wednesday tests were already underway when we got word of this, but they're looking to get a large group of pilots (200 or more) for the Thursday fleet engagements on Singularity. The test will take place on Thursday at 11:00 GMT, and another is tentatively slated for 15:00, dependent upon what CCP learns from the previous fights. CCP Tanis lays out how players can get involved:
EVE Evolved: The cost of failure
The harsh death penalty in EVE Online is something that's talked about a lot. I even touched on the issue myself when I compared EVE Online's style of PvP to Age of Conan and when I investigated the phenomenon of suicide ganking. In EVE, your ship being destroyed means millions of your hard-earned isk is flushed down the drain. If you're unlucky enough not to get away in your escape pod, you'll be killed and recloned, costing yet more isk and destroying any expensive implants in your head. The brutal death penalty associated with PvP in EVE is responsible for putting a lot of players off playing the game but is the taste of death really as bitter as people make it out to be?In this article, I examine the cost of defeat in PvP and how to minimise these costs without ruining your PvP performance.
EVE Evolved: The cost of failure, part 2
As before, this doesn't hold true in EVE Online, where the quality of equipment is a relatively small factor in the outcome of PvP. The main factor in the outcome of PvP is skill, and not the type on your character sheet. Joining a good player corporation that specialises in PvP and learning from them will provide a bigger boost to your effectiveness in PvP than equipment ever could.
Empyrean Age factional warfare exploit identified
Factional warfare in EVE Online, by design, ensures that ships of a much greater ship class cannot engage smaller ships in certain deadspace mission pockets. If you and your fellow militia pilots are in a zone designated for nothing larger than frigates, for instance, you shouldn't find yourself getting locked by battleships fighting for your rival militia. Apparently this has started to occur; some players have found that the jump gates to these zones don't actually prevent them from warping in ships of a magnitude not allowed in such areas. GM Grimmi had this to say at the EVE Online site: "Flying bigger class ships than allowed by the jump gates to Factional Warfare complexes has been classed as an exploit. If you are found doing this we will be forced to take in-game actions as abusing game mechanics is not allowed." So there you go. You might still be able to get in there with something obscenely overpowered and pop frigates like balloons, but you'll say goodbye to your account over it.
Joystiq hands-on: Hasbro Family Game Night
Stepping into Electronic Arts' "EA3" event last week, we made a beeline for ... Hasbro Family Game Night, passing up the likes of Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Mercenaries 2, and Tiger Woods Golf 2009: Busted Knee Edition along the way. We know, we know. But who can resist the lure of Battleship, Connect Four, Yahtzee, Boggle, Sorry and its new sibling Sorry Sliders? (Answer: you maybe; not us.) %Gallery-26011%
Family Game Night is fun for the family
Remember when your family used to put one night of the week aside to play board games, so that you'd grow closer to one another amongst bouts of innocent fun and mayhem? Yeah, neither do we. Hasbro does, though, which is why the company is bringing six of its most popular board games to the Wii, in one small package. Called Family Game Night (not to be confused with Wii Fanboy's Game Night), this title includes the following classics: Connect Four Yahtzee (not the one that curses a lot) Battleship Boggle Sorry! Sorry! Sliders (who wants to tell EA and Hasbro that this doesn't count as a "sixth" game?) We know that going digital is the wave of the future, but is anyone else slightly against the entire "board games turned video games" genre? Call us old-fashioned, but when we cheat at Battleship, we want to cheat with style -- not by looking at a TV screen. If you think differently, though, keep an eye out for Family Game Night, which will hit European Wiis this fall. [Via press release]
EA announces Hasbro Family Game Night for Wii, PS2
Electronic Arts has finally revealed the fruits of its recent partnership with board game evangelist Hasbro, announcing Hasbro Family Game Night, a collection of classic board games for the Wii and PlayStation 2. Shipping this fall, the game will include a wide assortment of Hasbro properties -- six in all -- from Battleship, Yahtzee, Boggle, and Connect Four to Sorry! and its more recent incarnation in Sorry! Sliders. Purists will be happy to know that they'll be able to play the classic games as they remember, though EA notes that new versions will also be included as well for those looking for a different way to play. In addition, the collection will let players build and decorate a virtual game room, earn trophies, and play various mini-games once they tire of sinking each other's battleships. However, even with support for between two and four players, we doubt the compilation will have us tossing out our boxed favorites just yet, though at least with this game we know we'll never have to go searching though couch cushions for missing pieces before we can play.
First Impressions: Albatross 18
Have you been pining away for a great golf MMO? We have, too! Look, even if you haven't, let's just go along with this, okay? Albatross 18 is an engaging, colorful, whimsical game that doesn't disappoint. When one considers golf, there really isn't too much to it -- hit the ball into the hole, rinse, repeat. The beauty of its simplicity is that a developer can go crazy with that concept and add all sorts of madness to it, and it can only improve the game.And that's exactly what's going on with Albatross 18: beautiful environments, useful power-ups, crazy caddies, mascots, costumes -- this game is hilarious. Will you like it? Let's find out. As always, we remind you that this is not meant to be a full review of everything in the game; these are the first impressions we got after spending an hour or so playing. Excelsior!%Gallery-21821%
'You sunk my Millenium Falcon!'
At first glance, Star Wars Battles looks like a bare Battleship clone with a Star Wars skin, but there's more fun to it than that! Of course, the homebrew game begins with the series' main theme and signature text crawl. After you've positioned your crafts on the grid, each called shot fires a pair of lasers at your opponent's squares, complete with the appropriate sound effect. The game really gets interesting, however, when you register a hit. Instead of automatically knocking a piece off your opponent's ship, the game takes you to a dual-screen shootout between your X-Wing and a rival Tie-Fighter, asteroids drifting in the crossfire. The champion of the duel determines whether the shot counts or not.All it needs are some StarFox-esque scripted chatter during the combat -- we've already come up with a few possible examples: Han Solo: "You're all clear, kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home!" Gold Five: "It came from... behind!" Admiral Ackbar: "It's a trap!"
Battlefleet, a game for iPhone
It's not quite a native iPhone game, but it's one of the best games I've seen for the iPhone yet-- Roger sent us his version of Battleship (which is actually a pen and paper game that predates Milton Bradley's version-- I did not know that), called Battlefleet.It's super easy to play, and turns out to be not only a faithful recreation, but includes a lot of little fun graphical touches as well-- the ships look good, and bombs drop and explode or splash into the water. There's also three difficulty options, and you can even track wins and losses over multiple games. Unfortunately, there's no way to play two player (as it would probably require some networking wizardry), but it's as good a game as you could ask of a solo version. And the computer opponent is just plain devious, anyway-- I hate it when he finds my aircraft carrier and then just goes to town.You sank my battleship!
