Showing posts with label Ubisoft. Show all posts
7/30/14 2:30 PM |
Ubisoft has released a free online RTS title for Xbox 360 called AirMech Arena. It features 6-player competitive and 4-player co-op game modes. Free games are always awesome, so be sure to download it and check it out!
AirMech Arena requires 244.25 MB of space.
"AirMech® Arena is a highly competitive fast-paced real-time strategy game, where players team up AirMechs to amass unrelenting combat forces and destroy the enemy team’s fortress. In the future, the last survivors of the Great War continue their fight with the ultimate war machine: the AirMech®. Created using lost technology, Pilots have found, salvaged, or stolen AirMechs that they use to protect the weak, or to pillage. Which side do you fight for?"
Link To AirMech Arena store page
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Ubisoft has released a free online RTS title for Xbox 360 called AirMech Arena. It features 6-player competitive and 4-player co-op game modes. Free games are always awesome, so be sure to download it and check it out!
AirMech Arena requires 244.25 MB of space.
"AirMech® Arena is a highly competitive fast-paced real-time strategy game, where players team up AirMechs to amass unrelenting combat forces and destroy the enemy team’s fortress. In the future, the last survivors of the Great War continue their fight with the ultimate war machine: the AirMech®. Created using lost technology, Pilots have found, salvaged, or stolen AirMechs that they use to protect the weak, or to pillage. Which side do you fight for?"Link To AirMech Arena store page
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| 7/1/14 5:30PM |
Digital Vengeance
It's hard to talk about Watch Dogs without bringing up the game's debut a few years back at the 2012 E3 Gaming Convention. Ubisoft's then new upcoming property instantly wowed with it's visuals and hacking concept, and was slated to be the game to buy for the next-generation of consoles. Since the game's release in May, it has sold extremely well and while it didn't visually match up to the game's premeire footage, it was still proclaimed as a solid open-world title.
Watch Dogs is a cross-generation title, so questions arised about how it would fare on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, so hopefully my review of the 360 version here will help answer that question!
Watch Dogs is a cross-generation title, so questions arised about how it would fare on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, so hopefully my review of the 360 version here will help answer that question!
It shouldn't come to anyone as a surprise that Watch Dogs doesn't look that great on last-gen consoles when compared to the new consoles, but this doesn't mean it's a bad looking game. The character model for Aiden Pierce is fairly nice, and the open-world of Chicago is presented with great detail as you drive and hack your wa around the city.
While the visuals are good, it's the gameplay that is offered here as the star of Watch Dogs on last-gen consoles. The ability to manipulate specific areas of the environment with Aiden's extraordinary phone is awesome, and only gets better as you upgrade and unlock new abilities as you progress through the game's campaign.
While the visuals are good, it's the gameplay that is offered here as the star of Watch Dogs on last-gen consoles. The ability to manipulate specific areas of the environment with Aiden's extraordinary phone is awesome, and only gets better as you upgrade and unlock new abilities as you progress through the game's campaign.
Aiden's main goal as a vigilante is to seek out those responsible for the death of a family member, but overtime this evolves into something more as he follows a digital trail of conspiracies that creates a target on his back from multiple sources. It's a fairly engaging affair that will take about 20+ hours complete if you focus solely on the missions, but there are some fun and interesting activities to partake in outside the game's story that will add to the hour count of content available in the game.
The comparisons to GTA 5 have popped up several times since the game's release, but Watch Dogs mostly follows the formula that Ubisoft has established with their recent Assassin's Creed releases in terms of the gameplay structure. Areas around the game's depiction of Chicago are sectioned off and to fully unlock the available activities there, you must first hack into ctOS towers that are place in similar fashion to towers in AC. Once this is done, you'll be able to see the recently unlocked area, which will then be full of various activities to engage with. There's the interesting digital trips, a set of unique mini-games to play, as well as various activities around the city to partake in like poker and gang-hideouts.
Hacking is the main form of interacting with the world in Watch Dogs, and all of the abilities surrounding this are done with one button. There are times when you have to infiltrate a restricted area, but before you even make your presence known and begin a firefight, you can cause some real damage with your hacking abilities. It's a ton of fun to hack into a camera's feed to survey an area full of guards, explode objects to distract or dispatch of enemies in these areas, or you can even detonate grenades that enemies may be holding in their pockets –– all from Aiden's phone and all before you physically enter the area.
When not hacking into the accounts of unsuspecting pedestrians, security cameras, traffic lights, and other unique objects, Aiden will have to sometimes shoot and sneak his way through the game, and this is where the game becomes rather conventional, but still fun to play.
The comparisons to GTA 5 have popped up several times since the game's release, but Watch Dogs mostly follows the formula that Ubisoft has established with their recent Assassin's Creed releases in terms of the gameplay structure. Areas around the game's depiction of Chicago are sectioned off and to fully unlock the available activities there, you must first hack into ctOS towers that are place in similar fashion to towers in AC. Once this is done, you'll be able to see the recently unlocked area, which will then be full of various activities to engage with. There's the interesting digital trips, a set of unique mini-games to play, as well as various activities around the city to partake in like poker and gang-hideouts.
Hacking is the main form of interacting with the world in Watch Dogs, and all of the abilities surrounding this are done with one button. There are times when you have to infiltrate a restricted area, but before you even make your presence known and begin a firefight, you can cause some real damage with your hacking abilities. It's a ton of fun to hack into a camera's feed to survey an area full of guards, explode objects to distract or dispatch of enemies in these areas, or you can even detonate grenades that enemies may be holding in their pockets –– all from Aiden's phone and all before you physically enter the area.
When not hacking into the accounts of unsuspecting pedestrians, security cameras, traffic lights, and other unique objects, Aiden will have to sometimes shoot and sneak his way through the game, and this is where the game becomes rather conventional, but still fun to play.
There is a cover system like most action titles possess, but Watch Dogs lacks the ability to blind fire and even attack from vehicles, which is almost an must-have ability for any game of this type. While the game is much more than another open-world title, it weirdly lacks some of the features that are almost expected for third-person open-world games, which does slightly hinder the experience in terms of the action contained in Watch Dogs. Another issue that appears is the slippery car-handling for most vehicles except for the motorcycles, my personal favorite and preferred method to get around the game's environment. Two-wheeled vehicles are to way to go in this version of Chicago.
Aside from the hacking, Watch Dogs' other neat feature is its multiplayer modes. The next-gen versions have a mode where players can freely explore Chicago together, which is unfortunately absent for 360, and PS3, although the hacking mode and races are still intact to play here. In the hacking mode, players can invade the games of others, and will appear as an NPC with the goal of hacking the other player.
At first, it's a neat little game of cat and mouse, as you must find the other player among the crowd of NPCs before all of your data is stolen. Since it can happen at any time, you may be focused on campaign missions like I was, only being forced to stopped since anyone can invade your game unless you're offline or disabling the feature.
Recent Reviews
Watch Dogs isn't the revolutionary next step in open-world gaming, but it is still very fun and well put together. You won't have the visual wow factor of playing on the last-gen consoles, but the game still contains most of the features that are available on Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4. With the game selling very well for Ubisoft, I'm sure we'll see another iteration of the game down within the next few years, which will hopefully address the small negatives that are found in the game.
+ Interesting plot and hacking mechanics
+ Fun multiplayer modes that utilize the game's strengths
- Driving physics and lack of basic shooting maneuvers when in vehicles
Reviews on the thebuttonpresser.com are based out of a '1-5 controller' Scoring system. Purchased games by the reviewer contain no annotation, but review copies are always known to the reader via a review disclaimer.
Publishers- Ubisoft
Release Date- May 27th, 2014
Price- $59.99 MSRP
Review Platform- Xbox 360
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6/9/14 11:00PM |
If you're like me, you one day hope to attend E3, but I'm glad that I'll be able to check out all of the latest from the show, right from home thanks to all of the various gaming outlets that attend and provide livestreams for everyone to watch. Here's my overview of the big press conferences today, so read and enjoy!
Microsoft
Games. Games. Games.
That's what Microsoft focused on this year at E3 during their press conference, just as they did last year. Games that we already knew about or titles rumored to be coming were for Xbox One got were showcased including Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Sunset Overdrive, The Witcher 3, and Fable Legends.
There were also some nice surprises as well. New DLC was announced for Dead Rising 3 which features 4-player co-op modes with past protagonists from the series including like Chuck Greene and Frank West.
The Halo Master Chief collection which sounded like a crazy rumor is actually true, and will feature Halo 1-4 with a seamless menu to navigate and will allow players to create a custom playlist of missions across those four games to play back to back.
Pre-ordering that collection comes with a beta token for Halo 5, which will offer players a chance to check out the game's multiplayer later this year.
Ubisoft was also at the Microsoft conference and showed off Assassin's Creed Unity, an all new AC game with 4-player co-op. It looked incredible and appears to take advantage of Microsoft's new hardware. Their other big game, the Division, was also demoed and continues to impress.
Microsoft did a great job of showing games that are set to arrive this year, next year, as well as independently developed titles. It was awesome to see Inside, the next game from Playdead, creators of the hit arcade title LIMBO. I'd give Microsoft's conference a solid grade as they displayed many games although I wish there were more new titles shown that would compel more gamers to pick up the console.
Electronic Arts
EA started strong with their conference showing a behind the scenes look at development on Star Wars: Battlefront and sneak peeks at Bioware's new projects which includes a Mass Effect title and a new IP. It was a nice tease and I can't wait to learn more. They then went on to give new details on their 2014 sports line-up which includes the new Madden, PGA, and UFC title, all of which look very impressive.
Mirror's Edge was briefly discussed, and is set to contain a story that shows Faith's beginnings as a runner. You can check out a bit more in the video embedded below:
Dragon Age: Inquisition looks great which had some more time on the screen. Sales for that title are sure to be strong when it arrives in a few months. EA finished things out with a demo of Battlefield: Hardline, and announced that a beta for the game would be available today. Be sure to sign-up to check it out on PC and PS4. Both EA and Ubisoft have a ton of content coming for gamers, and 2015 will be the time when the major ones come out and seek to impress us all.
Ubisoft
Ubisoft is riding high off the success of Watch Dogs, but they showed at their conference that they still have plenty of games coming to be excited about. Far Cry 4 opened the show and it looks to continue the great pattern of having an interesting villain to battle against as Far Cry 3 did. The game was also showed again at Sony's conference, and is set to arrive later this holiday season for most major platforms.
The Division was also shown a bit more, and looks like it will be a big hit when it arrives some time next year.
Ubisoft has a lineup of titles that will reach different audiences, including their new fitness games and Just Dance, as well as The Crew and Rainbow Six: Siege, the nice surprise at the end which focused on a possible multiplayer mode scenario.
Overall, it was another great conference with a nice range of titles, some of which will be making its way to various consoles later this year.
Sony
Sony had a lot of content packed into their conference. While it was mostly games, the middle segments included hardware and media announcements that slowed down their pace just a bit, but it was fairly informational. PSVita TV is coming to the US for $99 and there's a White PS4 bundle coming for Destiny.
Sony's plan is to get consumers to pick up a PS4 seems to include great exclusives as well as providing great PlayStation-only content for third-party titles, something that Microsoft does for certain titles as well.
Once again Sony showed great investment with Indie titles and had quite a few to display. This was led by the announcement of a remastered Grimm Fandango and the game that wowed viewers at last year's VGX: No Man's Sky. PlayStation Now was also detailed a bit more, and will have an open beta next month, so every PS4 user can check out titles that are stream-able from the console.
While it was just announced for Xbox One and PC, Grand Theft Auto 5 will be making its way to PS4 this Fall, which Sony was happy to announce first. The game will feature visual enhancements, as well as the ability to transfer GTA Online saves to PS4. Pretty awesome stuff!
The Last of Us: Remastered will be coming next month for PS4, but Naughty Dog closed the show with a brief in-game teaser for Uncharted 4. While very short, it was awesome to see and I can't wait for the full game which will hopefully come out next year.
Conclusion
Great games and announcements were made today at the press conferences, and more will come throughout the week. There's also the Nintendo conference tomorrow, who may have some stuff to show that will blow everyone away. Happy E3 week!
