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'Star Wars: Battlefront' lacks a story mode thanks to some movie
When Star Wars: Battlefront launched, barring a lightweight solo play arcade mode, it didn't have a true single-player campaign. During publisher EA's recent earnings call, executive VP Patrick Söderlund explained that it "was a conscious decision we made due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact." Star Wars movies are a big deal, in case you didn't know.
Smash Bros. screenshot visits 3DS single-player mode
Another week, another excuse for Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai to tease players with a screenshot from the franchise's upcoming 3DS/Wii U debut. This time we see an image of the handheld's single-player mode. "To be clear, the new Super Smash Bros. games do not feature a story mode like The Subspace Emissary," Sakurai wrote in a message posted to Miiverse, where the above screenshot debuted. Despite this, the image appears to depict a 2D stage occupied solely by Mario's three dimensional character model. Superficially, that seems similar to both Subspace Emissary and the Adventure mode found in Super Smash Bros. Meleé, but there's not enough information available to deduce anything solid. The Wii U and 3DS incarnations of Super Smash Bros. currently lack a release date, though Nintendo claims that both games should debut before the end of 2014.
God of War: Ascension demo hits PSN alongside new trailer
The single-player demo for God of War: Ascension is available now for all users on the PlayStation Network. There's also a launch trailer out for the game, as seen above. Turns out the pre-divine Kratos is just as popular with the ladies as the fully-powered one was. Oh, and he's plenty angry, too.
Playing with age in Starbreeze's 'Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons'
"Nobody knows how to make a game yet," says film director Josef Fares, quickly clarifying his statement isn't an attack on the industry but a suggestion that game creation shouldn't be a set science. "It's still a time where we're open to experimentation," the international director adds.Born in Lebanon, Fares grew up in Sweden where he became a director, but his next project pairs him with developer Starbreeze Games to create a game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (formerly referred to as "P13" in Starbreeze's internal "project" numbering system). Brothers has been in development for a number of years, with Fares even working on a few of the game's prototypes before the team at Starbreeze locked down the Unreal-developed downloadable title for a 2013 release.The core feature of Brothers is, of course, the game's siblings. But Fares says he's fought off all suggestions by his fellow game makers that the characters should each be controlled by a separate player. Instead, he says, Brothers is designed to have both characters controlled by a single player in a very specifically designed campaign experience.%Gallery-169592%
Mass Effect 3 single-player DLC to focus on Shepard
So, what's next for Mass Effect? Producer Mike Gamble showed off one picture of future Mass Effect 3 content in his panel at Comic-Con, and from what he told Joystiq it seems to point to more single-player DLC. "We want to do single-player DLC," he said. "We want to do single-player, maybe more multiplayer if people still play it."That single-player DLC, whatever it is, will still be about Shepard, not someone else in the universe. "Mass Effect 3 is Shepard's story," said Gamble, "so the single-player DLC for Mass Effect 3 will probably focus around Shepard."The Earth DLC pack for Mass Effect 3 will be the fifth update to the game since launch, following three other multiplayer updates, and the Extended Cut update that fans begged for. Mike Gamble and his team have learned a lot over the course of these updates, but he told us there were quite a few things that surprised them about the reception to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer."We see people who have everything unlocked all the way up to level 20 on everything, plus all the mods, plus all of the gear, everything," said Gamble. "It takes a lot of time, a lot of time to get that stuff, like hundreds and hundreds of hours of play to usually get up to that level. And some of these people had done it in the first month to two months."Gamble was also been surprised by the response to the Vorcha class, playable for the first time in the Rebellion Pack DLC. "I expected people to shy away from the Vorcha because they're Vorcha, but everyone seems to love to play with them."
Might & Magic Heroes 6 beta starts on June 28, pre-orders in first
Ubisoft has announced that the latest iteration in the seminal fantasy strategy series, Might & Magic Heroes 6, will get a closed beta starting up on June 28. The announcement trailer for the beta is posted after the break and, as you can see, it features plenty of updated mechanics and gameplay systems, new graphics, and lots of strategy nerdery to geek out with. Pre-ordering the game early will get you access into the beta, which means you'll get to see both single- and multiplayer content before the game arrives in stores on September 8.
Resistance 3 preview: Variety pack
Just over a week after its Community Day reveal of new Resistance 3 gameplay, Insomniac was back at it again, this time showing off a new single-player level and a new multiplayer map in Hollywood. I also got a chance to actually play through the boat level we saw last time around, and had the distinct feeling that, more than anything else for this game, Insomniac is really playing with the pacing of a first-person shooter. "Part of it is really trying to keep a better picture of the game as a whole," lead designer Drew Murray told me. "Much more in Resistance 3 than in past games, the design department has been more aware of what everyone else is doing," he said, which means more playtesting, and more communication between the teams of just what a level is supposed to feel like. Murray said that early in development, each level in Resistance 3 was assigned a descriptive word, and the word for the start of the forest-based level, seen for the first time this week, was "hunted." %Gallery-121061%
Field of Glory, Civ 5 out for OS X
Here's two good strategy game releases for Mac OS X this week (in case you want to spend a little time away from the family after the turkey's carved and eaten). First up, Freeverse has released a game called Field of Glory -- it's a turn-based hex strategy game that's originally based on a tabletop title and has you fighting medieval Roman warfare across single player and multiplayer as well as a number of different scenarios and setups. The game is US $39.95, and includes three expansion packs from the PC version, all ready to go right away. But as cool as that sounds, here's the real hex-based strategy game you're waiting for: Civ 5 is out now for the Mac. And it's available on Steam under the SteamPlay banner, which means for $50, you get both the Mac and Windows versions, digitally delivered to whatever computer you'd like. If you've ever played any Civ game, you know this series is the pinnacle of strategy titles, and the new version not only adds hexes to the mix, but revolutionizes battle (no more stacks of doom) and streamlines city defense as well. I love Civ, and having it available in this way is something to be very thankful for.
IndieCade 2010: Spirits preview
This past weekend at IndieCade 2010 in Los Angeles, I bumped into our old buddy Steph Thirion. He's the creator of the great Eliss iPhone app and a title that he's still working on called Faraway, which despite still being in development, was actually chosen as an IndieCade finalist this year. He introduced me to a developer named Marek Plichta, whose German company, Spaces of Play, was showing off another iPhone finalist called Spirits. I asked for a quick demo and got to check out the game in progress. Spirits will instantly be intriguing to anyone who's a fan of the old Lemmings title (which hasn't officially made it to the App Store yet, though there are a few games like it). Spirits' basic gameplay is the same as Lemmings'. A set of creatures slowly enters an environment, and it's your job to guide those creatures (or at least some number of them) to an exit by using certain abilities that they have. Where Spirits really innovates is in its look and feel. Rather than little cartoony, pixelated creatures, you feel like you're controlling beautiful little beings. When the wind physics start to do their thing, the experience is pretty magical.
TUAW's Daily App: Strike Knight
I saw Backflip Studios' Julian Farrior speak at GDC earlier this year, and while there, he showed a few upcoming App Store games of his in a quick slide. Strike Knight was one of those, and it's now out in the App Store in all of its glory. It's a simple shuffleboard bowler game -- you grab a puck at the bottom of the screen, and flick it up towards the pins at the top, hoping to hit at just the right angle and knock them all down. Presentation is solid -- a bar crowd in the background cheers or boos you appropriately, and the titular Knight reacts to all of your shots while an arcade board flashes your high score as you play. The game is free-to-play, so it's definitely worth a try. The ads are slightly distracting (aside from the banner ads, currently all advertising the rest of Backflip's other titles, there are interstitials as well), but for a 99 cent in-app purchase, you can get rid of them, so if you like the game, you might as well make the buy. Aside from the regular singleplayer action, the app allows pass and play multiplayer for up to four people, and the gameplay's quite addictive -- that knight really pushes you to do better and better each time you play. Plus+ integration rounds out the experience, and there are awards to earn and leaderboards to top. Farrior and his team at Backflip are doing a great job pinning down some solid, quick experiences on the iPhone, and Strike Knight is nice addition to the company's lineup. If all of the apps he promised this year are as worthy as this one, they'll have an impressive stable of apps in the store.
Time-traveling RTS Achron now playable, available for pre-order
Indie developer Hazardous Software has announced that you can now preorder its still-in-development time-bending RTS, Achron, on its website. "Pre-order" in this case means something a little different than usual: By giving Hazardous $29.99 now, you'll get access to the game's current alpha version, which includes five single-player levels. According to the release calendar, you'll get access to the rest of the game later this year, with a multiplayer beta in February, a level editor around April and a full game release a year from now in January 2011. We spoke with the developer's rep, who tells us that it's hoping to stick to the release calendar like glue -- he even says the dates there are slightly "conservative." Dear readers of this post in 2011: If time travel does exist in the future, could you maybe come back here to the past and tell us if this complicated little game is any good?
BioWare's Ray Muzyka on how to make single-player gaming more social
The good folks at IncGamers had a chat with one of BioWare's founding medical doctors, Ray Muzyka, about the company's history of classic single-player gaming and its upcoming foray into the world of massively multiplayer with Star Wars: The Old Republic. Muzyka says that the line between solo and collective experiences is blurring: even traditionally single-player games are dipping into the vast realms of multiplayer co-op and competition through online social tools and downloadable content. Speaking specifically, he says that Dragon Age: Origins is a good example, with online social features for what is definitely a single-player experience. And Mass Effect 2, he says, will explore these ideas through its own DLC. In fact, he outright guarantees us that BioWare is "planning more [DLC] than in Mass Effect 1." As players who couldn't get enough of the two packs on offer for the original game, that's Muzyka to our ears.
Outnumbered presents an interesting twist on iPhone multiplayer
Veiled Games sent word of their new game, Outnumbered [iTunes link], on the iPhone app store, and it seems intriguingly different. It's basically a multiplayer arcade game, which pits two iPhones or iPod touches against each other via Bluetooth. One player takes over the role of the O.N.E., a singular robot armed with weapons and special attacks, and the other player controls M.A.N.Y., which is a top-down view where you can control waves of attacking units and robots. The two players duke it out, with the first controlling his robot around the arena, and the second overseeing the armies and buying new units with collected currency. When the single robot is dead, players switch sides, and whoever earns the most points while fighting (for attacking, moving, or a few other criteria) wins the game. Interesting idea. Of course, you'll need a friend with their own iPhone or iPod touch to do all of this, and you'll have to be in the same room, as the connection only works (so far) over Bluetooth. If you're still confused as to how it all works, there's a nice tutorial video up (although that voice gets to be a bit much after a while) that explains how the game goes down. Most of the big iPhone titles we've seen this year mostly focus on single player gaming, so it's cool to see an attempt like this to try something that more than one player can share. Outnumbered is available in the App Store [iTunes Link] right now for 99 cents, and a lite version (that will allow a second player to play along, although one of the two players must own the full version) is due out soon.
Defeating the anxiety of running your first instance
One of my favorite WoW blogs, HoTs and DoTs, has a great post up about Dungeon Groups 101 -- the very basics of running instances. You may think that there's nothing more basic to the game than getting in an instance with four people and taking down a few bosses and trash, but you'd be surprised. Even in a social game like this, one of the first hurdles newbies have to deal with is joining a group to play together. They worry that they'll do things wrong and that other people will make fun of what they're wearing or playing, and that worry keeps them from enjoying my absolute favorite part of the game. Cassandri's writeup is an excellent read for anyone who feels that way (and feel free to pass on this post to any friends or relatives you know who've been too leery to join an instance yet). She does do some basic knowledge stuff in there, just hints on the classes and what they can all do -- and our WoW Rookie posts will help out with that stuff too -- but more importantly, she says what lots of new players need to hear: that messing up in an instance isn't that big a deal, and that playing together with others (which is the reason why we're all playing an MMO rather than a single player game in the first place) is more than worth getting past any anxiety around joining a group. I've read a lot of comments like the one Cassandri quotes in her post, too, and I'm here to tell you: if you haven't run an instance yet, it's time to stop worrying about what it'll be like and give it a try.
It takes two to duo content
Spinksville has a great post up about the great benefits and joy of duoing in MMOs, or playing alongside one other person as you level your way up. I haven't been able to duo in a while, but I have done one character with a good friend -- he played a Priest and I tanked on my Warrior, and we shot up through to max level (even before the leveling changes) just because not only did our characters compliment each other, but we knew each others' play styles and were able to take on lots of big mobs and quests without a problem. I agree with Spinks: playing the game alongside someone you know well is the perfect mix of a singleplayer and MMO game.There are certainly issues -- if one of you plays more than the other and pulls ahead or falls behind, it's not quite as fun for either of you. But especially if you're both playing alts and you've got good, regular amounts of time to play together, it can be really fun. In fact, it's kind of surprising that Blizzard and other MMO companies haven't gone in for more of the very-small group play -- singleplayer instances got a pass, but then again, phasing has changed things since then, and the LFG system has improved, so maybe it's time for Blizzard to put some two-player content in the mix.It would definitely be great to see some official support for two-player content -- not everyone has a partner to play with all the time, but I think you'll find way more two-player groups in the game than you will find full raids of 25 people, and that group certainly gets their share of things to do. Spinks makes some great suggestions about duo content, and it's definitely a realm of gameplay that a lot of MMOs haven't yet officially explored.
Redefining MMOs: Massively Singleplayer?
Last month when members of the Massively team were tossing around ideas for a new series called, "Redefining MMOs," I jumped all over the more solo direction MMOs have taken lately. I wanted to point out that today's MMOs are less about we and more about me. I wanted to list off a dozen or so features I felt were responsible for killing social gaming. I wanted to rekindle the debate over whether or not this is a good or bad thing.It seems I'm a bit late to the party because two bloggers, Ryan Shwayder and Keen, beat me to it by a few days. Wolfshead also put together a fascinating post on MMO communities, which is only slightly related to what I planned to talk about but still well worth the read.So, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel here, I'm going to add on to the discussion already taking place. It should be said up front that I'm a heavy solo and casual player, which is a bit strange given my stance on the issue. I'm slightly bothered by the recent trend toward individual content and individual rewards. It seems the line is blurring between singeplayer RPGs and MMORPGs every day. Luckily, a few titles are keeping the dream alive.Please share your thoughts on page three.
Rob Pardo talks about how WoW gets developed
Rob Pardo sat down to chat with PC Gamer recently about all things Blizzard, but as you might expect, WoW got a nice chunk of the conversation. He talks mostly about design -- after saying that PC gaming isn't dead (duh), he talks about the lore of a dungeon, and says that whenever you step into an instance, even if you haven't researched all the lore of it, and read all the quests for it, Blizzard wants you to know that the story is there.He also talks a little bit about how Blizzard works as a team -- everyone working on the game has the power to veto something if they don't feel it works right, which is probably why we haven't seen things like player housing yet. It also explains why Blizzard takes their time -- when anyone can step in and say, "This isn't working" at any time, you get a lot of iterating and a lot of unreleased content. But as Pardo says, it pushes the whole team to do it better -- he can go to the people he'll know will have a problem with a certain mechanic and work with them to make it right.Finally, they chat a little bit about whether, as Raph Koster is quoted, "the singleplayer game is an aberration." Pardo calls out Super Mario Galaxy's co-star mode as an example of a terrific singleplayer game that incorporates multiplayer in an innovative way, and says that singleplayer isn't gone forever -- it's just going to look a little different.[via WorldofWar]
Instances are for groups, silly solo player
We've mentioned solo instances before -- just like more midlevel content, Heroic versions of old world instances, and player housing, they seem to be the kind of content that players seem really interested in, but Blizzard isn't all that excited about implementing. And now they've come up again on the forums, and once again Bornakk has given a few good reasons why it just wouldn't work for the game Blizzard is making.Tremallyn of Shu'halo is actually asking for scalable instances -- he says that if 10 and 25man groups are going to be playing the same instances in Northrend, why not scale those down to five man and even solo versions, so all players can get a chance to see the content? Bornakk replies that the rest of the game already is solo content, and that they want the endgame dungeons to be more exclusive. We've heard other good reasons before -- to tune an instance for every class, with all of their varied strengths and weaknesses, would require Blizzard to water down the instance so much that it wouldn't be nearly as dynamic an experience as you can have with a minimum 10 people in the party.Not that it's impossible -- other games (I know of one in particular) have scalable instances, some of which are even tuned for one player. But at the same time, we play MMO games for a reason -- if you really just wanted to play a great single player experience, there are a wealth of single player games to choose from out there. And if you really want to do an instance solo, you could always just wait 10 levels and do it solo anyway.
The Digital Continuum: Single-player MMO
Injecting the single-player special sauce into MMOs is hardly a new idea. In fact Phantasy Star Online has done it more than once in the past. It's also been done in small amount, though. Nobody has taken the chance to go all out and merge the single-player and massively multiplayer styles of gaming together like a tasty digital version of peanut butter and chocolate.My recent excursion into the Age of Conan closed beta has made me realize that I really enjoy having some singleplayer flavor in my massively multiplayer online games. There is definitely something to be said for a game that can give you the best of both worlds: solo story and grouping experiences.
Sierra and Radical Entertainment remove multiplayer from Prototype
Those who harbored desires to go on Crackdown-esque romps through New York City with a genetically mutated pal will undoubtedly be crushed to learn that developer Radical Entertainment and publisher Sierra have decided to scrap Prototype's multiplayer mode in order to encourage players to truly delve into the single-player storyline, and, more truthfully, so they could meet their original Fall 2008 launch window.Radical's Tim Bennison defended the decision in an interview with TeamXbox, hinting at a possibility of co-op functionality in post-release DLC, and confirming that "multiplayer will definitely be on the table from the start" when, should the game be well-received, it comes time for a sequel -- which we can only guess will be titled Reference Design, followed by the critically acclaimed Initial Model, and then the action-packed conclusion, Finished Product.
