Latest Releases Video Game Edition he game is set in a world once filled with magic, which the ability to do so must first be researched. Tis used by its human inhabitants to build their civiliza- Factors affecting negotiation include race, tions. A race of immortal beings known as the Titans were relative military strength, current relations, attracted to the world by the creation of the reality-warp- trade routes, treaties, character, traits, and ing Forge of the Overlord, an artifact with the power to create family connections. magical items.[7] While engaged in civil war, the Titans im- In general, gameplay varies depending on prison the world›s magic in a number of elemental shards. At the chosen faction. Human kingdoms tend first, only the Titans can use the magic within the shards, but to focus on government and civilization, in time human channelers arise to challenge them. The result- while the empires of the Fallen are more ing battles lead to the destruction of the Forge, and ultimately about individual champions. the land itself. Each character in the game is individually century later, the player is a channeler Overlord. Pieces of the Forge may be found named and outfitted through a character Executive producer Scott Tykoski com- A leading a faction of humans or Fallen through quests, or created by researching editor with statistics that increase as they pared the game to Viva Piñata, but sub- (corrupted life-forms created by the and casting the Spell of Making, requiring gain experience. Characters may be com- stituting “shovels and creatures filled with Titans) in a still-devastated world, able to control of all elemental shards. bined into armies to fight more dangerous candy for swords and creatures filled with renew it with magic – or pervert it to their dark magic.” Players control a sovereign and belong to or numerous opponents. Combat takes will. The human kingdoms sometimes a faction, each with characteristics affect- place on a separate tactical map, although band together against the empires of the ing gameplay; they may pick from ten battles may normally be auto-resolved. Fallen, but each faction strives for ultimate pre-built sovereigns, or create their own. dominance. Players may negotiate with each other to They gain influence over land and resources exchange money, material goods, or diplo- Elemental has a single-player campaign, up by founding cities, opening up the abil- matic capital (but not technology]), and to to 16-way multiplayer and nonlin- ity to train characters and research spells enter into treaties and alliances, however, ear «sandbox» game play. In the latter two and technologies. Cities may be enhanced modes, players win the game by conquer- through improvements, providing addition- ing or allying with all other factions, or by al space, and generating money, resources reassembling or creating the Forge of the or prestige (one of the factors determining population growth).

Quests and useful items are scat- tered randomly across the land, as are wandering monsters and neu- tral characters; the latter may be hired with gildar, the game’s cur- rency. Both may be fought for expe- rience and treasure, although attack- ing civilians decreases the sovereign›s reputation, the number of quests available increases over time as ad- venturing technologies are unlocked. game sequences) and shadows.

Each mission features a series of objectives that are displayed on the head up display, which marks the direction and distance to- wards and from such objectives. The player is accompanied by friendly troops who can- not be issued orders.

Although being primary a first-person shooter, there are some variety of game play such as piloting a Hind helicopter or tactically guiding friendly troops from an SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance air- to either flee or toss it back to the enemy. craft.

The player assumes the role of various Single-player campaigns of Call of characters during the single-player cam- Duty games are action-packed and paign, changing perspectives throughout very scripted with various cinematic mo- the progression of the story. Common ments. Call of Duty Black Ops is a first-person shooter war game series and Black Ops is soldiers on the battlefield among several not an exception. The player assumes the role of a foot soldier and thus has access to allies were often incarnated in Call of Duty. various firearms (though only two can be carried), explosives such as grenades and However in this installment, the playable other equipments to fight against enemies. A one hit killing melee attack with a knife is characters are special force operatives con- possible when players are close enough to their victim. ducting black operations (hence the sub- A character can be positioned in one of the three stances: standing, crouching, or prone; title) behind enemy lines, and thus have each affecting the character›s rate of movement, accuracy, and stealth. Unlike previ- much more significant roles on the battle- ous installments, the player can field than their previous counterparts. In directly dive into prone from a this way, the player›s characters will have standing position. In order to their own traits such as voices (during in- move faster, the player can mo- mentary «sprint» (similarly to many other games). When the character has taken damage, the screen glows red. The player can recover by staying out of fire. When the character is within the blast radius of a live grenade, a marker indicates the direction of the grenade, helping the player I want to reiterate that. Your first tuto- sides at all times to stick with a faction. rial mission, which walks you through the same ground as the original tutorials, is the Fortunately, that turned out to be far from sort of thing that would be a multi-mission the truth. Almost as soon as you finish the chain in the classic game. You start off first mission string, you get the option of being told that you’re part of the Powers two different mission arcs -- one of which Division and working for Praetor White focuses on the more villainous side of your -- complete with dialogue trees to allow chosen faction; the other, on the heroic. you to get more backstory if you want it. You can do both arcs, or do only one -- They’re helpfully marked with a little tag whichever you want. The game cares inso- indicating that they’re optional, allowing far as different choices result in different players who want to skip straight to killing interactions, but there isn’t one path that’s the option of eschewing story. better or worse than another.

Once you get into the meat of the mission, But it gets better. The big villains at the you’re sent into the Underground, where ends of arcs? They will chat with you. you immediately find a commandeered They›ll try to bribe you, try to reason Clockwork that you can either listen to or with you, or sometimes just trade insults send back to the PPD for dissection and with you briefly. Sometimes it›s a ruse, analysis. The choice doesn’t change the and sometimes you can actually negotiate central choice at the end -- to back up the something significant. As someone who has Resistance officer who helped against a long felt the game was lacking the option First Impressions: City of Heroes Going Rogue huge swarm of ghouls, or to do your job as to get a proper banter going with opposing by Eliot Lefebvre of Massively.com part of the Powers Division and take him leaders... well, this pushes all of the right out. The choice itself is presented through comic book-geek buttons. It›s a beautiful a cut scene, albeit one that almost makes thing. the Resistance leader a bit too sympathet- To hear the team talk about it, Going Rogue isn’t simply an expansion for City of He- ic. To be fair, the new tech included with the roes but a full-on reboot of the game in general. It’s hard to see how, on some level; expansion also includes open-zone glowies outside of the new powersets and a new starting area, not much is visibly being added The impressive part is that the game isn’t for the clicking. It›s a nice idea, but I can›t with the expansion. But sitting down and playing through the starting area and the starting high and then dropping you into say it›s breaching untold regions of design. game›s opening suddenly feels like an entirely different experience. It›s not a new game -- street-sweeping against random gangs. I mean, it does tie in nicely with optional but it feels like a leap forward from where the game had been just a few days before. Your second Loyalist mission (the first objectives and so forth, but... they›re glow- “real” mission) involves fighting through ies that you click. Same sandwich, different I didn›t get nearly as much time with the Going Rogue beta as I would have liked, and I’ll hordes of Resistance operatives in a climac- bun. be the first to admit that I’m biased when it comes to City of Heroes. But even with those tic rooftop fight over a slow-rotating fan. standards set, I was impressed right away with how the game has been revamped from The game just keeps going upward, and the the start -- and what these revamps mean for the game as a whole and moving forward. handful of missions that were at a lower Click on past the cut for the first impressions of the latest expansion, which launches key served as a nice trick to break up the today. (Coincidental, yes?) flow rather than coming off as filler.

Branches within branches Starting at 11 When I penned my columns on the two The first thing I noticed about the opening mission was that it involved fighting off an major Praetorian factions, some people army of ghouls, then facing off against either a respected police officer or a high-ranking were a little upset at the implication that Resistance leader. they were all-or-nothing. There were good and bad aspects of both groups, but it seemed as if you had to be awash in both So much more to see

There’s a lot more in the game than listed right here. After all, there’s the whole moral- ity switch at higher levels, which I didn’t play around with. There are new costume sets, with individual pieces that work wonderfully on their own. (The Clockwork torso is espe- cially impressive.) And there are little tweaks to the UI and game play... but all of that is getting past the point.

If you’re sick to death of City of Heroes, you might not find a lot to like in the expansion. Rest assured that it is the familiar game. But there are many subtle changes in the , and each one of them has a surprisingly large impact. It’s the herald of a very different and progressive design philosophy, and it’s going to make the future of the game very exciting to watch.

Going Rogue isn›t a perfect expansion. But it›s a pretty darn good one, and it›s laying the foundation for refining and updating the core strengths of the game. That›s a hit in my opinion.

Kinetic Melee is a wonderful

The header says everything.

Think older zones or older costume pieces need a revamp? Older powersets need a revamp. Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning are familiar ground at this point, and I›m a terrible control player, but boy if Kinetic Melee wasn›t all that and a bag of chips. Accessing the powerset and seeing how smooth the animations and attacks flow together really show the age of the older sets.

In practical terms, I don›t know if I›d say that it›s particularly better or worse than other sets. You do have a little bit more range, which is nice, and the arrangement of knockback and stun effects certainly helps mitigate the need for more control when melee classes get into the mix. It›s a reasonably useful set, certainly, but I›d hesitate to call it a big jump in power level. So it›s still balanced with its contemporaries, but it gets a big heaping dose of cool factor as a new set with excellent animations.

Forge maps that will ship on-disc. Forge «Generator Defense» pits three Spartans tools have also been improved; objects can against three Elites (A type of Covenant now be phased into other objects, and can soldier). The Elites› objective is to destroy also be snapped to specific orientations. three generators, while Spartans defend the installation. After every round the players switch roles. «Invasion» is a six versus six mode with 3 squads of two on each team. Reach will feature multiplayer support [10] via Live, System Link, and split The gametype pits Spartans against screen. Reach features “Loadouts”, a Elites; Elites vie for control of territories feature that allows players to pick a pre- to disable a shield guarding a naviga- defined choice of weaponry at spawn. tion core; once the shield is disabled, they The veto system has been improved, allow- must transfer the core to a dropship—the ing players to vote for their preferred map Spartans must prevent this from happen- and game mode out of a few choices. In ing. As the game progresses, new loadouts, order to give mul- vehicles, and areas of the map become tiplayer a longer open. «Inva- lasting appeal, sion» also offers players are now a Slayer vari- rewarded with ant where both teams goal is to Halo: Reach is an upcoming first-person shooter video game, developed by and «credits», which reach a certain published by Game Studios for the console. Reach will be released players can spend number of kills on September 14, 2010.[1] The game takes place in the year 2552, where humanity is on aesthetic ar- in the allotted locked in a war with the alien Covenant. Players control Noble 6, a member of an elite mor customiza- time. Vehicles super soldier squad, during a battle for the world of Reach. tions. Players can also choose the and weapons Originally unveiled at E3 2009, Reach was preceded by a multiplayer beta available to gender of their are unlocked those who purchased Halo 3: ODST, in order to gain player feedback for fixing bugs and Spartan; virtu- by controlling making gameplay tweaks. ally all armor set- a moving terri- tory. Halo: Reach is a first person shooter. Players assume the role of a supersoldier, Noble 6, tings and invest- engaged in combat with an alien collective known as the Covenant. ments translate Alongside across Reach’s other multi- [9] In Halo 3, players could wield one-use equipment power-ups that offer temporary of- game modes. player options fensive or defensive advantages.[2][3] This system of single-use equipment is replaced is «Firefight», a version of which appeared in Reach by reusable and persistent armor abilities which remain with a player until Among standard multiplayer modes such as Slayer and King of the Hill, Reach in- in Halo 3: ODST. In Firefight players take they are replaced. Like Halo 3: ODST, the ability to wield two handheld firearms (dual on increasingly difficult waves of foes in a wielding) has also been removed. Among the abilities are a hologram, where the player cludes gametypes new to the franchise. In «Headhunter», players drop skulls upon game of survival. Players can customize spawns a «dummy» twin, jetpack, active camo, sprint, and “armor lock”, which makes Firefight options, including the number the player invincible in exchange for the loss of mobility. In addition to tweaks and death, which other players can pick up and deposit at special zones for points. When and types of enemies. It has also been an- changes to existing weapons from the Halo series,Reach features new weapons fulfilling nounced that a firefight versus is playable various combat roles. a player dies all their accumulated skulls are dropped as well. «Stockpile» has teams in which there is an elite team trying to keep the spartan team from scoring points. Forge, a level editor that first appeared with Halo 3, is updated for Reach, set in a race to collect neutral flags, holding them Some game modes such as Generator De- large map known as Forge World. Forge World itself is home to several Bungie-created at capture points every minute for points. fense are playable in Firefight.[12][13]

Reach takes place in a futuristic sci- ence fiction setting during the year 2552, shortly before the events of the 2001 video game Halo: Combat Evolved. Humans, under the auspices of the United Na- tions Space Command (UNSC), have been waging a long war against a collective of alien races known as the Covenant. By the events of Reach, almost all of humanity’s interstellar colonies have fallen. Reach itself is an Earthlike colony that serves as the UNSC’s main military hub. In addi- tion to the military presence, the colony is home to over 700 million civilians.

The game follows the actions of Noble Team, a UNSC special operations unit composed of elite supersoldiers known as Spartans. Players assume the role of an unnamed new addition to the team, identi- fied by the call sign Noble 6. Noble Team›s leader is Carter-A259, a no-nonsense sol- dier. His second-in-command, Kat-B320, has a bionic arm; together, Carter and Kat are the only two remaining original members of Noble Team. The other mem- bers include heavy weapons specialist Jorge-052, Emile-A239, and marksman Jun-A266.