Frequent Gamer

Play the full featured console and PC title right from your Google Chrome Browser. It’s no news that google web store has games available but up until today Bastion was the biggest available. Now From Dust is playable as a free trial as well.

The framerate and resolution of the game are not very high but it’s running from Chrome - awesome. Streamed gaming is  still much better though.

Awesome news from China - “Sohu ChangYou continues to push boundaries with CryENGINE 3” what boundaries you might ask? Oh only the boundaries what an mmorpg game can look like. We recently saw what a mmorpg game on an Unreal enigne can look like with Tera online but now Sohu ChanYou, who made the following games:

(I recognize Battlefield Online but that’s about it)

are now going to create the first action rpg MMO - “God Slayer” using the  CRYENGINE 3.

“CryENGINE® has been invaluable as we’ve worked towards fulfilling our ambitious goals for God Slayer.” said Wang Yi, deputy CEO of ChangYou. “It’s a tool that offers unparalleled flexibility during the development process, and helps to ensure gamers will encounter a world filled with unexpected new playing experiences when the game launches.”

This has the potential of being the best looking, graphically most impressive grindfest on the planet, right? Ok in all seriousness though, it’s rather well known that MMO games, especially grindy and featuring small girls with animal parts go over very well over at China but the Western market is an entirely different story all together. 

Will follow this mmo with great interest, hopefully it’ll be something worth bringing over to the rest of the world as well.

Yes indeed, Bullet Run was announced today and also shown off too. We have screenshots and even an trailer. This is how you announce a game. 

“New Free-to-Play Shooter Developed by ACONY Games Will Soon Make its Premiere on PC With Customization and Persistent Online Multiplayer Gameplay”

We have not heard of ACONY Games before but if we were to judge the game at this time, based solely on the materials provided then it would definitely be positive. Hey it’s free to play. 

The game will follow an all familiar free to play model with an in-game marketplace that will have additional “content” Can’t help but wonder which content will be available for money, obviously it would be nice if people with more money doesn’t mean better gear and everything is balanced nicely.

The story or background for the game is a reality TV show. Cameras and commentators all follow players trying to reach stardom. I would expect something like Monday Night Combat - that game has a tv show theme an the commentators are really well done so this theme could work. 

Check out the ccrrrazy trailer here:

38 Studios is working on a Kingdoms of Amalur mmo game. Many reported that the single player RPG Kindoms Of Amalur reminded them of an mmo because the game had a ton of quests and loot as well as a big open world. 

38 Studios has now released a trailer to show off the world they are working on. There are all sorts of rumors about the Kingdoms of Amalur, financial trouble and all that. We are not sure how serious these rumors are but this trailer does feel like the developers have to stir some interest for their project or attract investors. It’s increasingly difficult to release a viable AAA mmorpg nowadays. Yet everyone still thinks they have what it takes to take on The MMORPG - World of Warcraft. 

To be honest the world of Amalur looks great from the trailer but without any context or game mechanics it’s just too empty and difficult to care about. Every mmo has an interesting setting. I hope Amalur or project Copernicus does well but I know they have a rough road ahead, more power to them.

Check the trailer out here:

With this new trailer comes a bit of sad news, we won’t be playing the best Aliens game this year. Gearbox Software announced that the game will launch next year in 2013 Feb. 12th. 

Is it sad though? Let them take the time and perfect the experience, let them be all that they can and if they need to take some additional time to develop the game then fine. There are plenty of awesome games coming out anyway, all the time so its not like there is a lack of games to play.

Enjoy this incredibly sharp looking trailer marines:

It’s been a long time coming but one of the titles that aims to push the Sony Playstation Move is finally launching on May 25. Today we can see the final trailer preparing us all to play the game on Friday. Sorcery was one of those Move games that really made me want to get the move when the game was initially shown, time has passed and hopes of Move and Kinect being the real deal have dwindled somewhat, so can this brand new game bring much needed innovation to the scene?

Check out the trailer here:

Torchlight 2 beta weekend has begun. This is essentially a stress test for the online portion of the game further confirmed by the fact that only the online game mode is available for testing. Here is what I thought of Torchlight 2.

10 minutes after reading the email about the test and and the key provided, I download and set up torchlight installer. And now we play the waiting game

I should note that I’m on an extremely fast connection with 100mb/download  and 20mb/up. I’m sure though that Perfect World are testing the effectiveness of their installer. It uses P2P to share the game files so they save on costs of having to host and share the game themselves. The game will be available on steam though so most people will probably be downloading the game in a few minutes not 4 hours.

PS! you are forced to share the game files as you download, you can limit the speed to 64kbit/s but you can’t stop sharing completely. 

An hour, maybe 2 later and we are in!

Character creation. Is very limited, even for this type of a game. I’m rather disappointed that there are only a handful of different hair styles and faces to choose from. I decided to go with an Outlander - using guns and magic. Should be an interesting mix.

There is however a much bigger choice between pets this time around. I immediately took to liking a ferret named Otis. He will be my loot carrier and companion, besides isn’t he cute. All the pets are very well modeled and detailed, some look even better than the the player character…

All difficulty options are unlocked from the beginning. Choosing hardcore difficulty means that death is permanent. I’ll be going with veteran difficulty which means that some grinding may be required to pass some points in the game. 

Only internet games are available during this beta. This means either joining someone else’s game or creating you own game where others may join into.

Story and background, some context is what this video provides. There needs to be something there so this short but sufficient video is provided. Some nice animation. Could have probably used a little bit more color and contrast.

After the short intro video I find myself in Echo Pass - the first location in the game. Looks like a nice camp. I love the name, can’t help but think of Echo base from Star Wars. Everything on the screen is familiar right away, giant red and blue orbs are visual representations of the player resources -  health and mana. Everything else is known as well. The playing may commence. 

My first quest where I’m instructed with going somewhere and talking to someone. Notice the rewards listed below: gold, xp and my choice of weapon.

Combat feels fluid and polished even early on. Shooting the dual pistols is a lot of fun. My ferret Otis is ripping these low level mobs up like nobody’s business. Torchlight 2 looks great too. Much more depth and contrast compared to the first game. More blood too, I witness Otis completely destroy one ratlin enemy, so that it exploded into a pool of blood.

Inventory is divided into three categories: Equipment, consumable and spells. This is a great way to space out the inventory management even more and streamline the process. I like inventory management, it’s a part of every rpg game but sometimes and for some people it can become too tiresome and people would much rather just play the game. Gold is picked up automatically after walking over it, much like in Diablo 3. I struggle to remember if it was this way already in Torchlight 1 as well or if this is a new mechanic? Either way it feels good. 

My first level up! Levelling up consists of assigning raw skill points to the standard str, dex etc attributes as well as picking a skill from a familiar looking skill tree:

As you level up the more skills and more power you can assign to each skill. Notice that some of those skills can take up to 15 points in them. Skills are divided into three trees: Warfare, Lore and Sigil.

Something you would notice by now is the fonts used in the game. Torchlight has always been more cartoony and wild than other similar games. The font has been somewhat synonymous with the game. Torchlight 2 font, you either like it or you don’t. I wish there was a way of making it look better or change is for something smaller.

Gameplay wise, Torchlight 2 seems excellent. Visuals are great, music is good world design perfect. Character runs at a much faster pace than in other similar games and that feels good, I know Torchlight 2 is a big game and I would like to see it all before I die of old age so a faster run speed is welcome. 

I like that I was allowed to choose the difficulty level in the beginning and not required to play through the game beforehand. On veteran I quite often need to use health and mana potions to survive from the very beginning of the first area. In comparison to Diablo 3 where I didn’t see a use for health potions for a very long time. And still in all the way into act 2 I rarely use them.

In addition to the hubworld additional dungeons and quests can be discovered out in the world. I quite like this, makes the game feel more lively. 

The classical “Hell” dungeon. Its red and huge and ancient-y looks evil and I have a quest in here. It’s becoming very clear to me that Torchlight 2 for me is mostly about the fun combat and loot and not so much about the quests or story. Really, I find myself skipping or not reading any of the quest text and just running around and killing things for loot. 

The loot text displayed on the ground looks out of place and terrible. It does not match up with the cartoony fonts everywhere else and it’s really difficult to see notice whats on the ground. It all looks the same and gray. I wish thy would bring more color and better looking text to the loot on the ground as well.

Torchlight 2 looks to have armor sets. Absolutely awesome. The armor sets mechanic offers further item and loot variety and a greater sense of customization.  Cool golves eh?

When you pass behind objects in Torchlight 2 you turn into a ghostly looking colorful outline of yourself. Traditionally the issue of world objects blocking players view is solved by turning everything obstructing the view transparent. Torchlight 2 does it differently. 

Enemies covered in blue seem to be more difficult to put down then their normal looking counterparts. This is the same in Diablo 3, curious similarity. 

This concludes my first play session, it’s time to head to the store to fill up on supplies and return to Torchlight 2. 

So far Torchlight 2 is nothing special on the surface yet it’s full of charm or something that just makes you like it, even love it. I can’t put my finger on it but Torchlight 2 makes me want to play it. 

Oh did I mention there is fishing in Torchlight 2? It makes a return from the first Torchlight game and is something I love in my RPG games.

Waring spoilers, obviously:

Watch the following video only if you don’t want to be surprised when and if you are lucky enough to encounter this secret level cow:

I think this is a perfect response to all those “hardcore fans” who said that Diablo 3 looks too colorful. Well done Blizzard, well done indeed.

Thanks to Eurogamer for reporting first on this.

Gaikai is the streaming games service that has up until today’s announcement been streaming demo games to us through browsers. The platform is solid and more then ready for full games streaming and the first game to do so is the amazing looking Hawken. 

“Developed by Adhesive Games and published by Meteor Entertainment, HAWKEN is an innovative free-to-play multiplayer online game where players battle giant armored mechs amongst the ruined cities of a toxic planet. The new PC title is set to revolutionize digital game distribution as well as the mech genre, by delivering fast paced mech combat action and state-of-the-art visuals to hardcore players worldwide on the web through a free-to-play business model where players buy virtual goods rather than paying for the game up front. Since HAWKEN was first announced on 2/6/12, over 200,000 players have signed up for the closed beta at www.playhawken.com and trailers of the game have generated over 3 million views from excited fans on YouTube.”

This is all very good news. I’m super glad that Gaikai is finally given the chance to stream a full game and that Hawken is that game. 

“HAWKEN is set to be one of the hottest titles of 2012, with stunning visuals and action-filled gameplay. It is a refreshing addition to mech genre, as well as an outstanding example of a high-quality development from an independent studio,” said Robert Stevenson, EVP at Gaikai. “By hosting the best gaming experiences available, we can fully showcase the capabilities of Gaikai’s open cloud platform.”

PS are you enjoying the big pictures? I mean why not?

Halo 4 boxart looks stunningly original and more beautiful than the previous boxes. What is that up there a huge evil mothership or something, awesome?

PS sorry internet, everyone is busy playing and streaming Diablo 3, I heard a dude beat the game in 13 hours already. Crazy. Anyway back to D3 now.

15.05 is a big day in gaming, many have suddenly “fallen ill” some have booked vacation time others just don’t need to sit in an office 8 hours a day.

Diablo III is launching. It has been a long time coming and fans of the original two games are very excited to finally log into the world of Diablo. I’d dare to say this lunch is on par with any mmo lunch in recent history, especially because playing the game requires an active connection and a log in at the start.

I did not pre-order a copy of D3. Why would I do such a crazy thing? Well mainly because I live off the grid. No, not because I’m cool but because Estonia is basically too small to get any of the cool things. Ordering a game from Amazon would of meant that I get the game two weeks later (if I’m lucky). Pre-ordering from a local retailer would have meant waiting the game for up to a week after launch…so the best course of action is to just go down to the store and pick up a copy. I’m hoping to be one of the first customers there tomorrow.

Besides Diablo III tomorrow also sees the release of Max Payne 3, equally as anticipated of a game. The early reviews are in and I’ve only seen good words being said. It’s no surprise though since Rockstar did this one right. Correct voice actors, decent development time and resources - oh it’s going to be good.

So what ever the genre, title or platform you game on why not sit back and play a cool game tomorrow.

UPDATE: In some parts of the world, D3 has already launced. If you want to see some spoilers or just hang out with some lovely gamer presonalities why not check out the streams here:

-Henri

You know what sells this game to me? The sound design, and only that. I’m not impressed by the visuals or the action, in fact if they didn’t include the original voice actor and or music it would be difficult for me to consider this a true max payne sequel. So rockstar did right by me.

I just don’t like the idea of using that GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption engine for a game that is not open world..anyway Max Payne 3 is a must play for me.

Pre-Alpha footage of the next Assassin’s creed game, enjoy. 

Notice how you can now go inside buildings 

Insomniac Games and EA opened a Outernauts Facebook page today and announced…well Outernauts a beautiful but simple browser game by the looks of it. I fear it might come with all the usual bits that all those games come with, like the buying items or gametime with real world bucks. Can’t fault a FB game for that though, it’s free*

If nothing else it at least looks original and better than most of those games.