Martin Waterhouse

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Stories By Martin Waterhouse

  • Previewing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn on the PS4

    The original release of Final Fantasy XIV in 2010 and subsequent updates received a poor reception from the public with significant criticism over quality and stability. After several years of fundamental redevelopment including a new game engine, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was successfully launched on the PC and PS3 in 2013, receiving strong accolades from players. Buoyed by the strong relaunch, it is now is set for a full PS4 launch on April 14th in most parts of the world including Europe and North America. This will be quickly be followed by a launch in China sometime in the summer of 2014, followed by Russia, Taiwan and the Middle East. I recently had a chance to preview the game on the PS4 and chat with Square-Enix's Naoki Yoshida.

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  • A glimpse of World of Tanks on the Xbox 360

    Last week, Wargaming showcased its latest beta of World of Warplanes alongside its flagship World of Tanks for the Xbox 360 at a Promenade event in San Francisco. Promenade events are aimed at generating a high degree of buzz and consumer interest for emerging innovative products. One aspect worth watching will be Wargaming's dedication to e-sports, which the studio outlined during the Wargaming.net League competitions on Twitch.

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  • An early look at Phosphor's survival pseudo-MMO Nether

    When I first learned I'd be jetting off to meet with Phosphor Games for a first look at its upcoming title Nether, I must admit I wasn't enthusiastic. I expected to see just another zombie-esque first-person shooter in a genre already overstuffed with shotguns and undead targets. But now that I've seen the demo in person, I might just have changed my mind. It's not really an MMO, not with 64 people on a map, but it's certainly skirting the boundaries; I'd consider it a happy marriage between Left 4 Dead and DayZ, so it's certainly the type of game fans of post-apocalyptic survival pseudo-MMOs will want to watch. The game's backstory features a near-future world, about a decade after a major mutation event called "the Cull" in the game's lore. Thanks to the Cull, the majority of the population transformed into zombies violent mutated humanoid creatures. I guess there's an attempt to avoid the classic zombie trope in Nether, but who's fooled, really?

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  • HEX: The MMO is in the cards

    Massively was recently invited to meet with Cory Jones, president and chief creative officer of Cryptozoic, to get some greater insight into HEX, the studio's upcoming MMOTCG -- that is, massively multiplayer trading card game. At first, I had a difficult time associating a "massively multiplayer" aspect with a trading card game. My two-decade-old memories of very briefly playing Magic: The Gathering simply wouldn't let me get past my initial assumption about the head-to-head nature of these types of games. Even the online version of Magic used essentially the same structure as the offline version, with digital representations of Magic cards and an online challenge ladder. So imagine my surprise when a well-established box-and-trading-card-game company like Cryptozoic announced it was producing HEX, an MMOTCG using Kickstarter as a funding vehicle.

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  • Hands-on with the pre-launch Defiance demo

    Defiance: It's a game, it's an MMO, it's an FPS, it's a TV show! Before attending this past week's Defiance pre-launch event in San Francisco, I was aware of only one place on earth where all of those elements have seemingly been mashed-up before in quite this order: South Korea. And even there, the TV portion was more in a standard game show format. It's a risky combination in the West. Thus it was with trepidation and a hefty dose of skepticism that I attended the TV show pilot's screening, which itself was followed by some intense cooperative PvP gaming on the mainstream platform of my choice. The folks at Trion Worlds set up an impressive demo area, with PS3 and XBox systems trailing behind the PC platforms.%Gallery-181065%

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  • Hands-on with DUST 514 on the cusp of open beta

    Less than a week before DUST 514's January 22nd open beta launch, CCP invited Massively and other publications to attend an orbital bombardment event in San Francisco. We've been regularly reporting on the progress of the orbital bombardment system, but this time we witnessed the process in action. We also got a preview of the larger implications and long-term expectations of metagame elements that will exist between DUST and its sibling sandbox, EVE Online.

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