hi-rez
Latest
Global Agenda launch trailer released
"They always warned us that if we weren't careful, our technology would outrun our humanity. Way I see it, it's finally getting interesting." So begins the latest Global Agenda offering from Hi-Rez Studios: the launch trailer. With the launch of Global Agenda just a few short weeks away, fans and developers alike are enjoying the excitement that comes as a game's release date approaches. The team at Hi-Rez has been keeping the hype machine going with interviews, pre-order goodies, screenshots, and all other manner of goodies designed to keep us anxious for February 1st. The new launch trailer is a flashy, fast-paced look at the world of Global Agenda complete with laser battles, jetpacks, giant robots, and women most definitely not wearing skimpy armor. It should serve as either a nice distraction while you wait, or make you even more impatient. Either way, follow along after the cut to look for yourself, and enjoy!
The women of Global Agenda: Wait a minute, full body armor?
Former Massively columnist Tracey John recently took a close look at the female characters in Global Agenda, the upcoming sci-fi offering from Hi-Rez Studios. Her story at Techland explored the reasoning behind Global Agenda's relatively unusual decision to move away from scantily-clad females and go the full body armor route. Lead character artist Sean McBride had plenty to say on the decision, pointing out that when you add guns to the mix, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have characters running around with vital body parts such as the heart completely exposed. "It's a little easier in fantasy games as it could be explained away with magic, or her ability to finesse around the other characters." He also points out that to the ladies of Global Agenda, beauty is in function, not necessarily form: "To them, true beauty lies in the perfectly timed explosive, the inevitable satisfaction of a poisoned blade, or the immaculately precise sniper shot." Check out the full story, as well as some exclusive screenshots, here.
Fan contest offers chance to win a copy of Global Agenda
Hi-Rez Studios recently announced the February 1st launch date of Global Agenda, and fans who have been waiting for this news are anxious to get their hands on a copy. Xeros from the Gaming Agenda Conglomerate podcast is willing to help out with his Global Agenda New Year's Giveaway. He's giving away one copy of Global Agenda via Steam, in exchange for a few small tasks. First, subscribe to his YouTube channel. Then head over to the forums on Cybernetic Punks and post in the contest thread, indicating your interest and giving your YouTube name. Once Xeros confirms that you're subscribed to his channel, you're entered in the drawing. It's not just a random drawing, however. You can increase chances by currying favor with Xeros. Follow him on Twitter, show some posting activity on the Cyber Punks forum, and you have a bigger shot at winning, according to the Youtube video . So get to registering, and good luck!
Hi-Rez Studios announces Global Agenda launch date
Here at Massively, we've been looking forward to Global Agenda for quite a while. Judging from the official forums, Hi-Rez is enjoying the same response from a significant fan base, and we know quite a bit about the game so far. Several closed beta tests have received a very positive reaction from fans, who have a good feel for what the game is like and how it will work. The question of pricing has been answered, and of course there will be no elves. Now, the obvious question remains at the forefront of every fan's mind: when? Well, as of today we have our answer. Hi-Rez studios officially announced that the game will launch on February 1st, 2010, and pre-orders are available through Steam, Amazon.com, and the official site beginning today. Those who pre-order will enjoy all sorts of perks, including access to the January beta events, ability to reserve their player and agency names, and special in-game items. Even better, there is a special limited edition box available for order that will include the pre-order bonuses plus an art book and poster. In the meantime, there is more beta testing to get through, so if you are interested but haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for?
Global Agenda hosting weekend beta event
Thanksgiving, for those of us in the US, is still a couple of weeks away. But beta testers of Global Agenda will have something to be thankful about earlier than that, as this weekend promises to host another beta event for the game. The testing will be running between 11 AM to midnight PST, and the event spans both Saturday and Sunday, each one testing another aspect of the game's growing combat systems. Saturday will be focused on PvE content, including a new mission type that promises to offer some interesting new dynamics to the gameplay. The "Double Agent" mission type, which is limited to regular subscribers at launch, puts one player amidst of a horde of NPC allies and pits them against a four-person squad of players, thereby mixing PvE and PvP combat into a single arena. Sunday's testing, by contrast, is a pure PvP slugfest. 10v10 matches will be run, allowing people to queue up in groups of up to four to help establish allies for coming events. The developers are also teasing at new maps being dropped into the mix during this testing. The bad news is that only a small number of new testers will be added for the event -- this party will mostly be confined to existing beta testers. Watch your mail closely, either in hopes that they let you in or for the preparation mails Hi-Rez Studios is forewarning testers about, and keep an eye open for a chance at some early testing starting on Friday.
Global Agenda to feature Vivox voice integration
Massively has been following the growing prevalence of MMOFPS games poised to enter the market in the coming months and years, with the most notable of these being Global Agenda. The game's developer Hi-Rez Studios got in touch with us today to let us know about their partnership with Vivox, who will provide voice features for Global Agenda. Vivox will enable push-to-talk voice chat and in-game news broadcasts "that describe key victories and events associated with Global Agenda's persistent territory control gameplay," states Hi-Rez Studios. An additional (subscriber-only) feature will be out-of-game voice chat that will keep agency members in touch when they're not fragging their rivals. According to Hi-Rez, "Players can use a variety of access methods including the Vivox Web Voice within the toolbar controls, Vivox Voice on Facebook, or calling into a specified chat channel from their phone." Hi-Rez also announced they will hold a dev chat via Facebook on Wednesday, November 18th, from 10-11pm (Eastern), which will require participants to download the Vivox Voice app for Facebook. A Facebook group announcement from Hi-Rez today states that the dev chat will be limited to 75 people who will pose questions to the Global Agenda devs.
GameX coverage begins tomorrow!
GameX, the Northeastern video game industry summit and expo, is starting tomorrow! As we said earlier this week, we'll be there, getting face time with guests, visiting Mythic Entertainment and Hi-Rez Studios, and getting you information on some of your favorite titles. In addition to our coverage here on the site, we'll be updating our Twitter account with things we see at the expo and pictures! Now instead of running to us every five minutes for your Massively fix, you can get updates, pictures, and more from us in the form of tweets! If you're not currently following @massively, or if you're not on Twitter, now is the time to both sign up and add us to your follow list!
E3 2009: Global Agenda impressions, continued
My "Engineer" equipped, we ran over to the PvE mission master, grabbed a mission, and then got a cinematic of a dropship taking off and landing in the zone. After a little experimentation with the force fields and turrets (Robotics characters put down a marker which then needs to be repaired up to full strength with a special weapon), we dropped into the building, and were instantly confronted with some Star Wars-style droid robots. With the character at mid-level already, they were a little tougher than beginners will find, so at first, when we tried just a straightforward assault with the "flubber" gun, they got the better of us. But after a short delay (death brings just a few seconds' respawn time, and then you can respawn and warp back into the battle through a respawn beacon), we went back into the fray, and when we used our special skills (put up a one-way forcefield and created a turret and a robotic pet to help us fight), we finished off the robots (including a "worker," who served to bring in reinforcements and had to be taken down first, and a bigger ED209-esque boss robot). Next up, we tried jumping in to some PvP. Players in Global Agenda will be able to level up via either PvE or PvP -- PvE missions will accept 1-4 players, and while the enemies may be the same (though Harris said they were experimenting with putting players in at different spawn points or switching up enemy spawns a little bit to give the levels some more variety), they'll scale in difficulty depending how many friends you bring along. PvP missions are more common shooter settings (Attack and Defend, Capture the Flag, Escort), though sometimes with a special twist: The CTF maps are actually "capture the robot," where the flag is actually a giant mech that players need to jump in and return to their side to score. This time, we specced a medic together, and saw a few of the different ways you can play that class: you can make it very much like a TF2 medic with just a single target healing gun, or go with a chain-healing gun (that can hit multiple targets with the tradeoff of being weaker), or you can choose a "nanite" weapon, which hits with single shots rather than a channeling stream, and provides a heal over time when they hit. All weapons and abilities are governed by an energy stat, which works like mana in other MMOs -- there's no ammo, so if you have energy, you can fire, otherwise you'll have to seek cover and rest. Lower level guns can be fired indefinitely, but more powerful guns have a rate of fire just limited by how much energy you use with each shot. Turns out our medic did pretty well -- not only did we keep up some friendly players in the Attack and Defend map, but with the medic's boost ability (all classes also build up "boost" as they play, and when you fill that meter, you can use a special move that usually affects the whole team, very much like Call of Duty 4's perks), we laid down some great AoE healing that turned us into a pretty powerful force on our own, too. PvP was actually lots of fun -- given that the game is still in alpha, it wasn't completely balanced yet, but the feeling of a good shooter is there: we took attack points, Robotics turrets defended until they were overpowered, medics held up tanks through enemy assaults, and Recon characters snuck around with stealth and tried backstabbing with melee. But while the action is in a good place, the rest of the world still needs work. Harris says that outside of battle, there will be similarly instanced social areas to go through, but the places we saw were still pretty generic: you can visit mission givers, buy armor in an auction house, and buy dye to customize that armor, but otherwise the social areas were pretty lifeless. There were still people running around -- the game is currently in an alpha, and is starting up a closed beta this summer -- but there's no open world, no place to watch matches in action, and no real social mechanics to tie people together. At the highest levels of the game, the world depends on huge guilds working as a team: players will be competing for hundreds of different maps to try and advance their Global Agenda (see what we did there?). But while there will be a pickup matchmaking system in place, with no open world, it'll be interesting to see how players find each other. A little social boost might go a long way. But other than that, Global Agenda is shaping up well -- Hi Rez is doing a great job of mixing in some uncommon influences and combining them with the persistent MMO genre. We'll definitely be on the lookout for the beta later this year.
