This Week in Gaming - March 31st - April 5th

Tsaikotyk and myself have talked regularly about doing news wrap-ups in the past, and I figured it was about time that we do one.  There's not much from March that we haven't covered (besides D3: Reaper of Souls), so it's a pretty good time to get a jump on what's going on in April.

ANNOUNCED
Divekick Addition Edition hits tomorrow, April 4th, and has in store a BOATLOAD of changes. Not one character went untouched in this revision, and The Baz even got completely redesigned. In addition to this, the menus have been redesigned to work with directional pads, bugs have been fixed, and the style gem has been updated. For a complete list of changes, check out this list on Shoryuken.


RELEASED
Ashly Burch, famous for the webseries "Hey Ash Whatcha Playin" and her voice role as Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2, has just landed herself as the host in a new Geek and Sundry web-series.  Titled "Unplugged", the series takes two YouTubers and pits them against each other both in-game and the real world.  Contestants will have to battle it out in a predetermined game, but that's not the fun part.  After competing on the digital scale, players will then go head-to-head in a real-world competition that is as closely-related as safety allows to the game that they just completed.

Always glad to see the Burch family getting things done outside of HAWP, and I'm sure having Ashly as the host of Unplugged will do great things for both Geek & Sundry and Ashly herself.

PATCHED
Titanfall got its first major patch this week. After about a week of beta testing, Respawn has initiated changes in the way the matchmaking works.  The change is currently only in effect for Attrition and Hardpoint game modes, but is designed to put skill-matching above speed and level-matching.  After a few rounds, if the computer notices a clear difference in skill, it will make an attempt at remixing and re-balancing the teams. This should make games far more enjoyable and remove the frustration of being repeatedly dominated with no hope for new opponents.

Review: Titanfall - Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots

Last week I had the (dis)pleasure of being available for the midnight release of Titanfall on PC (via EA's Origin).  Now I know what you're thinking: "But Latency!  You told us you weren't going to be caught dead anywhere near that bug-ridden, server-crashing, lag-inducing piece of filth for the first week!"  Well, you'd be right except that money talks, and so when Tsaikotyk threw $80 at my PayPal and told me to go pre-order the digital deluxe edition, who was I to argue?

I probably should have though, because the launch was about everything I expected.  I spent roughly five hours in the game client and about one and a half actually playing.  The developers publicly acknowledged on launch night that there was a 'glitch' that caused the game to 'initialize' when searching for a server connection.  This didn't mean anything except that the client was now stuck diddling itself and didn't care much for connecting you.  Fucking called it.

First Impressions: Titanfall Beta (PC)

The new title from developers Respawn Entertainment (better known as "formerly Infinity Ward") dropped the beta for their upcoming sci-fi shooter, with giant fucking robots, this past weekend, and wrapped it up on February 19th.  It goes without saying that the good people working on this title have more than their fair share of experience in the first-person shooter genre.  The question that seems to be on most fans (or haters) minds is: how will Titanfall stack up to Call of Duty?  Lucky for you guys, I'm here to help answer that question with my limited experience in the PC beta for the game.

Next-Gen Garbage: Revisited

So E3 is over.  Now that Sony is done making Microsoft look like an ass and Microsoft is done making Microsoft look like an ass, it seemed like the perfect time to revisit this topic.  I know that I was originally pretty hard on both consoles, but this was also at a time where all we had to look forward to was a new Assassin's Creed, a new Call of Duty, and Watch_Dogs, which is releasing on both current and next-gen platforms.

Now, after press conferences from both MS and Sony, along with two major developers that will be releasing content on both platforms,  I have to say that I've got somewhat of a new outlook on the future of gaming.  That doesn't, however, mean that it's bright.

E3: Abridged - Part III

So here we are at the one-week mark from E3 and I still haven't finished my write-ups.  You can blame The Last of Us and, by association, @Tsaikotyk for getting me on that train.  Expect to see Part IV tomorrow, as I should finish this series off before it becomes too irrelevant.

Electronic Arts (EA):

Chief Operations Officer Peter Moore kicked off "The Download", EA's press conference segment.  He stated that everything we'd get to see would be for the upcoming generation's Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles.  He got things rolling with a "beloved franchise that, over the years, has captivated millions of fans worldwide".

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare - With a trailer opening that looked like it would be EA's cash cow Battlefield 4, we instead received a 4-player-cooperative-third-person-shooter variation on the PvZ franchise.  Goodie!  Just what every tower-defense player wanted!  Yet another bland, generic horde-mode shooter.  Dear PopCap, fuck you.  Nobody wanted this.  Your idea to take "everything we love about action games and blend it with everything our fans love about PvZ" (Brian Lindley, Producer) is a piss-poor excuse to pander to the OTHER masses.  The ones playing Call of Duty and Battlefield, and give them something.  Well guess what?  IT WON'T WORK.  Hardcore gamers already have their realistic shooters, 4-player-coop-shooter fans already have their Borderlands 2, and casual gamers already have the ACTUAL Plants vs. Zombies.  This is the kind of blind developmental stupidity that is causing so many studios to go belly-up.  When you try to cater to every demographic, your game loses vision, flavor, and becomes the bland forgettable first/third-person shooter #3234273 that nobody talks about.

Oh well, at least you announced Peggle 2, and that will keep you afloat for another 7-10 years.

Titanfall - Two games made their debut on stage during Microsoft's conference, and were later reshown during EA's own conference.  One of which was Titanfall (and the other being Battlefield 4, but who cares).  Having already shown us the semi-cinematic trailer, and some quality gameplay footage during Microsoft's stage time, Respawn gave us a little behind-the-scenes look at the game with some of the developers.  These people were working to create a fun game that blended the scale between the pilots and their mechs.  An attempt at creating a multiplayer game that still gave you the feeling of a single player experience.  And of course, redefining those giant robots.  Titanfall still looks awesome, and I can't wait to play it on the PC.  =)

There was a short blurb between presentations about EA's two new engines for the upcoming generation.  In-house you had the EA Sports division working with EA Sports Ignite, and you had DICE (developers of Battlefield and Mirror's Edge) using the new Frostbite 3 engine.  An engine that they'd be using in the upcoming game: STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT 3.  YES IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING.

Need For Speed: Rivals - Coming on stage after Ubisoft gave EA a huge disadvantage for their racing game.  The Crew already promised to blend single and multiplayer experiences together in a living open-world racing game.  So when EA showed us NFS: Rivals, it was pretty underwhelming.  Through "AllDrive", they'd blend single, coop, and multiplayer modes together into one fluid experience.  The game also has some level of tablet support.

Then star of Breaking Bad, Aaron Paul walked on stage and got to talk a little about his role in the Need For Speed movie.  Fucking why?  We've already got 6 Fast and Furious films.  Why make another branded by EA?  The director Scott Waugh commented that "Need for Speed is accurate and authentic to real car racing culture".  This quote was immediately followed by footage of a police SUV being flipped off the side of the road, so I'm not entirely sure he knew what he was talking about.  The movie will be hitting theaters in 2014 and I plan to ignore it.  I will probably be too busy playing The Crew to notice.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - EA didn't give us a lot of details on Bioware's new RPG heading to next-gen, except that you get to lead an inquisition.  The trailer showed us the sky tearing open and all hell raining down, and that we'd see the game sometime in 2014.

EA SPORTS: "IT'S IN THE GAME"

Now, I'm not a fan of sports games.  I consider myself to be an actual gamer, and if you do too, then you also probably ignored this section of the conference.  Well, to bring you some of the best out-of-context quotes from EA's press conference, I actually watched the damn thing.  Here you go:

"It's always lacked the depth of true ball handling." - Sean O'Brien, Executive Producer - NBA Live '14

"Through major gameplay innovation, we've given players the ability to think intelligently and move more like elite NFL athletes." - Cam Weber, VP and GM of American Football - Madden 25

"For the first time players can now make intelligent decisions." - Matt Bilbey, Group GM - FIFA '14

"Lets fighters organically alter their strategies throughout the fight.  This is a huge part of fighting and it takes a unique level of intelligence."  - Andrew Wilson, Executive Vice President - EA Sports UFC

Battlefield 4 - Yes!  The moment everyone who is not me has been waiting for!  Modern military shooter madness!  EA showed off the newest installment in the Battlefield franchise yet again.  With "levolution", players can now "experience destruction and dynamic environments that react to your every move" (Patrick Bach, Executive Producer).  Yeah, we had the start of that back in 2001 with Red Faction, where were you?  Though to be completely honest, Battlefield actually surprised me, because it's one thing to spew words like "dynamic", which doesn't mean shit in the game industry.  It's just a filler word that execs use to sound more important.  I was impressed during their gameplay demo when their 64 person skirmish ended with the collapse of a skyscraper, destroyed by human player gunfire.  That was impressive.

Mirror's Edge - EA closed it out by showing us Mirror's Edge, a poorly marketed, visually stunning and elegant first-person parkour platformer for the last generation.  It's getting rebooted for next generation, and it looks even more stunning this time around.  Let's just hope they don't fuck it up this time.

Part IV should show up tomorrow when I praise Sony for kicking in Microsoft's door and laughing in their face.