UPDATE: SHADOW OF THE ETERNALS...Looking DIMMER and DIMMER

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Adam Zimmerman

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A mere month after excitedly writing about how a long awaited (spiritual) sequel to Eternal Darkness was in the works, it now appears that the project is in serious jeopardy. The developer of the game is also being a little shady as well.


As I mentioned last month, with Nintendo still owning the actual Eternal Darkness name, the folks over at Precursor Games, many of whom were on the original Eternal Darkness team, were taking matters into their own hands and were crown funding a spiritual successor. At the time when I wrote the article, they were not using any of the traditional crowd funding sites like Kickstarter, instead doing all of the fund raising on their own site.


Their fund raising goal was 1.5 million dollars for the first episode of the twelve that were planned. Despite a very good initial burst of donations, about 100,000 on the first day, the donations started drying up pretty quickly. They then decided to use Kickstarter as well as their own site in hopes of boosting donation. Sadly, it only worked a little. Four weeks into the six-week donation window, the donations on each site are only at about 150,000, for a total of roughly 300,000, which is obviously well short of the 1.5 million goal.

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This is where things start to get a little shady. Precursor posted the following message on their Kickstarter page on June 4.


"To our community,

Since we announced this Kickstarter campaign we have seen more support from our community than we had ever hoped for. Along with this support has come a host of a new exciting opportunities that will make the game better than we envisioned. As a result, we have chosen to temporarily take down the Shadow of the Eternals crowdfunding campaigns on both Kickstarter and our own website on Thursday, June 6.


This doesn’t mean we are going away -- far from it. We’ll be re-launching the Kickstarter in just a few short weeks with a reveal of these exciting new developments.


As we’re closing the current Kickstarter campaign not a single dime from this campaign will be removed from supporters’ accounts and everyone from our website’s crowd-funding campaign will receive full refunds via PayPal. As we re-tool our campaign and continue development, the forums on our site will remain open and active and any interested fans can still join the ‘Order of the Unseen’ to see our progress and join in the fun of creating content for the game themselves.


We want to thank everyone who has participated, volunteered, and spoken up to support us. You are our community and we value you more than you know. Stay tuned and we’ll be back soon!"


Paul Caporicci + Precursor team

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There are a couple problems I have with this message. The first one is that they don’t, and of as the writing of this article still have not, said anything about what those possible “exciting new opportunities” are. Further, they say they are closing the Kickstarter campaign, but they aren’t closing it for 2 days. They have the ability to close it right away but are waiting 2 days. If the campaign is being closed, what’s the reason for keeping the donation page open?

 Also, they say they are going to return all of the money that was donated on their website, but once again, they have yet to do so.


Another thing I want to know is, even if they they do re-launch in a few weeks with a re-tooled campaign, how are they expecting to even get all of the original investors back. For me personally, if I had been an investor, I would be a little weary of doing so again. I still have high hopes that this game will eventually come out and be everything they are promising it to be.


Despite my hopes though, I now have serious doubts as to whether this game will actually be released unless the exciting new opportunities involve either an actual publisher or at least a business partner of some sorts to ease the financial burden.

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Image 3: Accessed On June 6th, 2013 ( http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U6X0N55RgQQ/UYPvARiTraI/AAAAAAAAfsU/jsILacla60U/s640/SOTE.png)

Preview: "The Last Of Us" (2013) "Stunning, Scary And Hard."

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By: Adam Zimmerman

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On May 31, Naughty Dog, finally released the long awaited demo for The Last of Us. If the rest of the game plays as well as the demo, the race for 2013 Game of the Year, with no disrespect to some of the excellent games that have already come out this year like Ni No Kuni and Tomb Raider, will start right here.


The Last of Us is a new franchise from Naughty Dog, the company that has previously brought us the Jak and Daxter and Crash Bandicoot series', as well as the Playstation 3’s preeminent game franchise, Uncharted. It looks like they have struck gold once again. The Last of Us is an action/survival game. It takes place after a plague wiped out much of the world’s population. Mother nature is reclaiming what were once the great cities of the world. Survivors are killing each other for weapons, food, and any other resources needed to survive. The character you play as, Joel, is a grizzled, brutal survivor who is hired to smuggle a young, 14 year old girl named Ellie out of Boston, where the game starts, and take her across the country.


The demo places you in the Outskirts level. Your goal is to make it through the city to the capital building. You don’t actually get to play the whole level so you don’t see how the level ends, but it sets the stage. You start out exploring of foraging for supplies in long abandoned buildings. Through the course of the demo it walks you through the basics of exploration, combat, stealth, and upgrading your equipment. The stealth segment is appropriately tense, the combat is brutal, and upgrading and creating equipment is easy and straight-forward.


The exploration and foraging at the beginning of the demo has you searching desks and cabinets, climbing over and crawling under debris, and picking up everything you find to aid you in crafting and upgrading equipment later on. The stealth segment involved sneaking around a Clicker. Clicker’s are infected who whose heads have been effectively ruined by the infection, so they use a bat like radar to find their prey. They are very strong, but can only find you through their radar, so they can be avoided.


To get around it in the demo you need to hide behind cover, and use thrown bricks or bottles to distract it so you can move between cover and eventually out of the room without being seen. The demo ends with a challenging fight of you versus several infected. If you aren’t careful they will surround and overwhelm you.

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My personal strategy was to upgrade my melee weapon right before the fight, sneak up on the first infected and take him out with the few pistol bullets I had. The sound of the gun attracted the rest of the infected, including a Clicker, and took them out with my melee weapon first and then beat up the last 2 with my bare hands. The combat is not for the faint of heart, with finishing off enemies by breaking off shivs in their necks, or bashing their skulls in with pipes among other things. I would love to write more about the demo, but there wasn’t enough demo to write a ton about, which leads to my only problem with the demo.


I only problem I did have with the demo for The Last of Us was simple, it was too short. Don’t get me wrong, as I stated above it was very good, but it was also very short. After all the hype of being able to access the demo through God Of War: Ascension, it was over way too soon for me. I guess that is a compliment in a way that I wanted to keep playing, but it took longer to download and install the demo than it did to play it.

 **Video trailer for VGA 2011** (All Rights Reserved This Video Is Owned By Lastofus)


The actual gameplay of the demo lasted about 10 minutes.


The demo is only available for now to those that own, or at least can borrow, a copy of God of War: Ascension. Right on the main menu of GoW there is an option to download the Last of Us demo. Once downloaded you no longer need the God of War disc, and the demo is accessed on your PS3 system in the same place all of you other downloaded games and demos are.


Our Honest View gives The Last of Us demo a 9.5 out of 10. This game looks like it is going to be a leading contender for 2013 Game of the Year. The only reason I knocked the score down a half point is because the demo was over way too soon.


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Sources:
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Image 1: Accessed On June 2nd, 2013 ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/28423600@N02/8170080688)

Image 2: Accessed On June 2nd, 2013 ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/naughty_dog/8451038069/sizes/o/in/photostream/)

Video 1: Accessed On June 2nd, 2013 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGxubfC1Ik )

EA Sports: Online Passes And Nintendo

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By Solomon Carreiro

By: Adam Zimmerman

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With the recent announcement that Electronic Arts (EA) is abandoning its much-loathed online pass program, I began to ask myself, “is EA actually developing a conscience?” The conclusion that I came to was..... maybe. - By Adam Zimmerman

 Now before I get a thousand hate letters calling me an idiot and asking if I’ve lost my mind, here me out.


Now, for the few of you who don’t already know, an online pass is a one time use code that needed to be entered before you could access any of a game’s online features, whether it was actually playing against others online, or just downloading extra content for the game.

These codes came packaged with every new copy of a game, and could be purchased for ten dollars by those that bought the game pre-owned. When EA first launched this program back in 2010, gamers across the world raged, calling EA everything from a bunch of money sucking leaches to words that I cannot print in this article.

Soon after a few other companies such as Ubisoft and Activision started using online passes in their games as well. Now, the businessperson side of me could understand why they would do it. They wanted people to buy their games new because they don’t make money on used copies of a game, and this was a way to convince people to buy new. I may not have liked it, but I understood.

EA’s stated reason for abandoning the online pass is, according to Jeff Brown, EA’s VP of corporate communications, gamers didn’t like it. They tried it out for a little while, realized gamers seriously disliked the program, so they stopped. Now obviously I don’t believe that this is the only reason that they ditched the program, but if it even played a part in their decision-making, then to me it’s a good thing. Now you might say, just the possibility of EA listening to their customers does not the beginning of a conscience make, and I would agree, but that is just the beginning of my argument.
My next argument comes from the sports division of EA. Arguably the second most popular sport in the entire world right now is basketball, behind football here is the US, and futbol/soccer in the rest of the world. There is a lot of money to be made with a basketball video game. The last basketball game that EA released however came out way back in 2009, which was NBA Live 2010. They haven’t released one since. They made one. It just never got released because EA realized it was so bad that they didn’t want to release it and they haven’t been able to get it right since then so fans of NBA Live continue to wait. No matter how bad the game was; EA could have released it, made a few million bucks, and continued to put a new iteration out each year and kept trying to make it better. They didn’t do that though, and have sacrificed millions of dollars all in the name of quality control. That’s not exactly something a bunch of money sucking leaches would do.


My last argument involves EA’s purchase of Bioware. Back in 2007, fans of Bioware were horrified that one of the best RPG maker’s in the industry had been bought by the dreaded EA. Fans feared that EA would start making Bioware pump games out every year like their sports games. They also feared that the EA would start insisting upon creative changes and generally just seriously damaging the high quality of games Bioware was (and still is) known for.

These fears have proved unfounded in the long run. In fact, Bioware has been able to do more than they could before with EA’s massive financial resources at their disposal. EA has also stayed out of Bioware’s way, letting them keep their brand identity, and not interfering creatively with Bioware at all.


The cynic in me says that none of this has anything to do with EA developing a conscience. It’s all just good business sense. The online pass program wasn’t dropped because gamers did not like it. It was dropped because it was affecting their downloadable content sales. Not coming out with a basketball game hasn’t been about quality assurance. It’s been that the money that they could have made off a crappy basketball game wasn’t worth the marketing time and effort. The money saved by not publishing and promoting a bad game could be used elsewhere with much better results. Lastly, staying out of Bioware’s way was an easy decision. Why make the effort to get involved in the making of a game when they can just sit back, do some advertising, and reap the huge financial benefits?


In the end, it seems as though EA, the evil empire of the video game world, is pulling a Darth Vader on all of us. Yes they may seem mostly evil, and it is pretty awful to work for them, but deep down there is some good there. They have not entirely forgotten that they make games for gamers. They don’t make games just to make more money for their stockholders (though they have to do that too). Maybe these signs of having a conscience will allow people to see that they aren’t so bad after all. So keep it up EA. Maybe, just maybe, if you keep doing good things for gamers, they might actually start to like you again.

Now let's talk about EA's relationship with Nintendo! - By Solomon Carreiro

It truly breaks down to  Electronic Arts Vs Nintendo or EA vs the Video Game Industry.

I was looking at writing this before EA’s Bob Summerwill’s tweets came out, back when news that Madden was not going to make an appearance in Big N’s newest console. Back when news that Frostbite wouldn’t work on Wii U, but then EA had said that no new games was in the works for Wii U then a few days later EA was talking about how Frostbite could be made to work on smart phones and tablets.

It almost seemed like a shot at Nintendo,  but a major leader in Video Games wouldn’t do that, would they?

“The Wii U is Crap. Less Powerful than XBOX360. Poor online/Store. Weird tablet. Nintendo are walking dead at this point.”

“Nintendo are still operating like it’s 1990. They should have “done a Sega” and offered Mario/Zelda as PS4/Durango Exclusives.”

“Instead they make this awful console, and this…” (link to Nintendo online store for Wii U) “ … Just stop it! Just make great games!”

“It is utterly intentional Decision to focus our resources which actually matter… like mobile, and Gen4.”

“One more :-). Nintendo platforms have always been very poor revenue-wise for third parties. Only Mario and Zelda make money.” 

-Quotes on Twitter from Bob Summerwill showing EA’s cockier unprofessional side.

This has been bubbling up for well more than a year when Nintendo was looking at 3^rd parties for handling its online systems. EA was pushing its ORIGIN system and wanted full control over all Nintendo online titles (Mario Kart, Smash Bros) and would have basically taken over “Nintendo Network” and was something that made Nintendo Back out of Negotiations.

 EA Had originally planed on supporting the Wii U with a lot of titles but after the break down it had only 3 scheduled at launch and had no budget behind them. Madden and FIFA 13 were basically Madden 12 and FIFA 12 while Mass Effect was a buggy port.

 Criteron (the makers of Need For Speed Most Wanted) had no marketing behind the Superior Wii U version of its game and called out to web sites to see the amazing finished product. The games director was talking how much more powerful the Wii U is over the 360 and PS3 and was easily pushing PC graphics. Unfortunately this is the company EA actually is.

Back when Sega was in the “Console War” EA had major grips that Sega was Making Football, Basketball and other games that competed directly and beat them in sales. When The Dreamcast was released EA would not support it so Sega went and bought some talent to make sports games. The 2k sports line was born and was such a successes that EA had to start buying full rights to make games for the NFL Exclusively.  EA tried to do the same with the NBA, FIFA and MBL.

What I come away from all this is that EA is the Walmart of the Video game industry.

They strong-arm companies into cheaper dev costs and discounts on dev kits. They are more that happy to buy out companies and gut them to mill out recycled games and game ideas back into the consumer’s hands. Honestly how wouldn’t be happy with just an update as DLC on their favorite sports title rather than having to plunk down $60US a pop for what is basically roster and UI (user interface) updates? Im typing and my hand is raised. They have been voted the worse company in America to work for two years in a row. Give it a year or two and im sure we will have documentaries on them destroying the video game industry… well probably not. But the Wii had hardly any EA support and came out number one, try to name one EA game on Wii that isn’t Madden or medal of Honor! Okay Need for Speed good point. 

But when the Wii U get legs behind it (ZELDA and Smash Bros are released) then I can guarantee that like a gold digger EA will be back.

Hate or love EA they do have a presence on the Video Game industry and a tight grip on the revenue aspect... Only time will tell with next gen consoles if it's worth investing in EA games!


What are your thoughts on EA?

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Preview: "Eternal Darkness: Shadows of the Eternals." (2013) "At Long Last, Darkness is Returning"

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By: Adam Zimmerman

Nearly 11 years ago, one of the best games to ever come out for the Game Cube was released. That game was Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
  It’s survival-horror gameplay, and great sanity effects (hundreds of people fell for the effect that made it seem like it was deleting all of your systems memory) wowed critics and gamers alike. Ever since then, people have been asking if/when they were ever going to see a sequel.

Fans held out hope because Nintendo held onto the license. Alas, Nintendo still isn’t making the long awaited sequel. The fine folks over at Precursor Games however, are tired of waiting and are making a spiritual successor titled Shadow of the Eternals. Several members of Precursor Games worked on Sanity’s Requiem while they were employed at Silicon Knights, the developer of Sanity’s Requiem.


The game is schedule to release sometime in the third quarter of 2014 on the WiiU and PC. To fund they project, they are relying entirely on crowdfunding. Unlike other crowd funded games, they are not using any of the sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

They are using their own site, and offering different levels of perks for those that donate. Donation packages range from $5 all the way up to $10,000. For those of you with a giant wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, if you donate the max, you get a whole list of stuff including, but not limited to, the whole first season, the chance to work with Precursor to design a Sanity Event, exclusive in game content, and your very own personal dossier in the game.

 Anyone that donates will have access to the developer forums, which lets you talk to the developers and suggest things you would like to see in the game. Their goal for the first episode (out of a planned total of 12 for the first season) is 1.5 million. If they exceed their goal, the excess money will be put towards future episodes and possibly releasing on additional consoles.


Unfortunately with the game so early in development, there haven’t been many details released yet outside of their official press release, 9 minute gameplay video, and one interview with Dennis Dyack, the creator of the game. What we do know is that, like its predecessor, Shadows of the Eternals will cover a range of time periods, this time covering around 2,500 years of human history. Locations will include places like Egypt, England, Hungary, and the US.

The weapons you can use in each location/time will be era specific, so don’t hold out hopes for being able to mow down ancient Egyptians with a machine gun. Players will have to decipher what is real, and what isn’t. Those who played the original know to question everything you see and hear. Visually, the game will be powered by the Crytek 3 engine, which has been used in the Crysis games as well as many others.


Even though it is a long ways away, the gameplay that they’ve shown already oozes that great Eternal Darkness feel. I can’t tell you how excited I am for this game to finally come out. 12 years between games is about 10 years too many considering how good the first one was.


Our Honest View gives this extremely early look at Shadows of the Eternals a 9 out of 10. The only thing holding it back from a full 10 is that there are many details yet to be revealed, and nothing is certain until they reach their funding goals. If you would like to donate money, just head over to Precursor’s website, www.precursorgames.com/shadowoftheeternals/. In the first day of fund raising alone, they raised over $100,000.


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Review: "Dead Island: Riptide" (2013) "Hopefully I Won't See You On The Island....."

By: Adam Zimmerman

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When Dead Island: Riptide was first conceived, it was originally planned as a large expansion of the original. When it got too large for an expansion, they decided to make a full-blown sequel.

Because it started as an expansion, it does feel very much like the first game. It feels so much like the original that even the bugs from the first game return for the sequel.


Not everything is the same as the original though. A new character, John Morgan, has been added to the group. He’s a melee fighter, which fills the void between Sam B, the blunt weapon expert, and Logan Carter, the throwing expert. I really enjoy playing as John. He has sprinting kicks that send zombies flying, plus he lets you live out your Wolverine fantasies with his awesome deadly metal claws. He also has a very useful ability that sometimes, when you are very low on health, will let you, instead of dying, regain some of your health instead.

Also different in Riptide is the locale. In the original Dead Island, the game was split up into four sections. There was the resort, the city, the jungle, and lastly the prison. This time around, it’s just all tropical island. It’s a little like the island from Far Cry 3, except with no animals and a whole lot of zombies.


On the gameplay front, most of it is exactly like Dead Island. New to this game are defense scenarios. Basically you have to set up a bunch of defenses like fences and barricades, as well as traps, and survive several waves of zombies.

 They can be pretty fun, especially when you can coordinate your defenses with your friends. It also pays off this time around to try and focus on one type of weapon, whether it’s blades, firearms, etc. Beyond being able to just level up your individual weapons, you can now level up your skills with the different weapon types.

 For firearms it may mean being able to hold a little more ammo, or for blades it could be less stamina used per strike. It’s nothing major, but it does give you a small reason to focus on certain types of weapons.


Normally I am a story guy. Most of my favorite games are games with the best stories. Luckily for me, I don’t play Dead Island for the story. It’s not the worst I’ve ever encountered, but I wouldn’t call it very good either. Cut-scenes and the story are delivered using the in-game engine, which makes some straight to tv movies look like Alfred Hitchcock’s best.


Despite all the new stuff, as I mentioned earlier, Riptide suffers from some of the same bugs as the first game, plus has a few new ones to boot. The enemy AI is still shoddy sometimes. A zombie might spends a few minutes trying to tear down your defenses, only to have them just walk away aimlessly when the barricade comes down. The frame-rate in Riptide is also occasionally worse than the original. Throw an exploding barrel into the middle of a large group of zombies and watch frame-rate slow down to about 2 frames per second.


For those that played and enjoyed the first game, you will be happy to know that you can carry your character over from the first game into Riptide. You won’t be able to keep your equipment, but your level and all you skills will transfer over. If you had maxed out your character in the first game, you don’t have to worry about not being able to improve your character at all. The level cap has also been raised to 70, which is 20 more than the original.

New upgrades have also been added to each character as well. If you were a lower level character, or you want to play as someone different this time around, the game will still start you with 15 skills points to assign as you choose.

I should also point out that you didn’t need to have finished the first game with your character to be able to transfer them over to Riptide. Even if you are only a level 5 and played the first game for an hour and a half, they can still be carried over.


I was lucky enough not to experience almost any of the glitches during my time with the game, but they have been reported by many others. At it’s best, few games can match the brutal feel of combat and the levels of co-op fun that can be found in Riptide. At it’s worst, it can turn into an annoying, though still entertaining glitch fest.


Our Honest View gives Dead Island: Riptide an 8 out of 10. While a very fun game, especially with friends, technical glitches and a pretty weak story keep it from greatness. If you liked the first game, or love killing lots of zombies, I highly recommend getting this game. If you did not like the first game, then nothing in Riptide is going to turn you into a major fan.

Replay Value: Moderate


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Similar Games:

Dead Rising - M Rated

 

Dead Island - M Rated

Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City - M Rated

Review: "Defiance" (2013) "MMO On Consoles Mean Syfy Channel Show?"

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A few weeks ago I played the beta for Defiance and said that if Trion tightened up a few aspects and polished a few, it could be a very good game. Well now that the game is here, a polish was added to the graphics and audio, but they forgot to tighten the gameplay.

By: Adam Zimmerman

Graphically, while still not on the level of most AAA games, it is improved over the beta. Now instead of looking like a really good PS2 game, it at least looks like a slightly below average PS3 game. One somewhat odd thing is how accurate the faces of characters from the TV show, but how stiff they are as well. Their faces hardly move when talking. I wish the game looked as good as it does in the commercials, but sadly it doesn’t. Nothing really stands out for being really good or really bad.

On the audio side of things, it’s a mixed bag. The sound effects are decent. You don’t feel things in your chest, but it’s not like the sound effects are tinny or anything like that. Dialogue is where things go wrong, very, very, wrong. One of the first NPC’s that you team up with is an alien named Cass. I’m not sure but I suspect the writer’s were having a contest to see who could give her the worst dialogue. She’s a badly written stereotypical bounty hunter. It’s bad, really bad. Also, apparently aliens can’t swear in English. Human soldiers have no problems dropping F bombs all over the place, but she says “shtako.” Everything else she says in perfect English, but swearing is in her native tongue.

When you first start the game, you have to make your character. There is a good variety of option to choose from, but unfortunately except for your looks, your initial choices don’t matter all that much. No matter which class you pick, the only thing that is different is the weapons you start with. All the characters have the same powers and upgrades, and they can use every type of weapon. So if you start as a survivor (sniper) and decide you don’t like bolt-action sniper rifles, don’t worry. You can change everything soon enough.

Just like everything else with this game, gameplay is mixed bag as well. One major issue I had was how long it takes to get through the introductory area. It literally takes roughly 12 hours of gameplay to move on to other areas. It wouldn’t be so bad if the first area was incredibly fun, but it isn’t. Most shooter campaigns don’t last more than 10 hours these days. 3 to 4 hours would have been perfect. As it is, it drags on way too long. Mission objectives offer a good variety, but sometimes the difficulty expectantly ramps up and you end up dying way more than you should. Luckily the penalty for dying isn’t too much.

You lose some money and that’s about it. There’s no respawn timer or anything. Once you do finally get out of the initial area, there are signs of improvements. I played a few missions that were more fun and had better dialogue than anything up to that point. It would have been a much better game if they started with missions like these instead of the way the game actually started. Another issue I experienced a few times was problems with quest objectives not working properly. I could see dozens of other people completing the objective with no issues, but I wouldn’t be able to activate it. I had to restart the game to get them to work properly.


The action still is lacking for me unfortunately. Things may get more difficult, but I never felt my heart beat rising with the action. There is still a lack of intensity for me which takes away from the experience a bit.

Where the game really does shine is what are called Arkfall events. These are random events with big boss like creatures that draw in players from all around the surrounding area. They turn into large co-op battles that everyone looks forward to.

I haven’t really played the PvP part of the game yet so I won’t get into that.

While I played the PS3 version, I do feel obligated to tell you that the Xbox 360 version has been having a lot of problems so far. There are widespread reports of framerate problems, login issues (which I did experience on the first day with the PS3 version, but not since then), and server crashes. A patch that was released helped with some of these problems but they still occur when too many players and NPC’s are in the same area.


Our Honest View gives Defiance a 7 out of 10. The bad has been set for Bungie’s Destiny, which comes out later this year. It’s not an incredibly high bar, but a bar nonetheless. It still has potential, and there are both high and low points. Hopefully future patches with address some of the bugs, and once the TV show starts on April 16th some new, interesting story elements will be added.

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Replay Value: Moderate

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