ChrisWritesThings

Originally uploaded to MSPoweruser.com

Just Cause and Mad Max creators Avalanche Studios have been busier this past year than I think they’ve ever been. Just Cause 4, the upcoming Rage 2 and the just-released Generation Zero is a rather large line-up for one studio. But are all of these games of quality, or are they hindered by a spread workload?

Set in 1980’s Sweden, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Cold War tensions are at their peak. You play as a nameless 18 or 19-year-old in your first semester of university, the threat of thermonuclear annihilation constantly looming in the back of your head. It’s decided that a camping trip is a good idea, as a getaway, and your friend decides that a small island just off the coast is a great locale.

You grab a couple of coolers—for a cheeky bevy with the boys—and food before setting off. On your return, you get shot out of the water, have to swim to shore, discover that everyone has been murdered and that there are machines roaming the wilderness that are out for blood, and you and your friends are left to piece together the events of the last few days while attempting to avoid heavily armoured death, probably all while hungover.

This is the premise of Avalanche’s first foray into a co-op first-person action shooter since theHunter: Primal. At its base level, it feels like an amalgamation of Fallout and Far Cry with a sprinkling of Horizon: Zero Dawn.

However, before you can begin roleplaying your Swedish Rambo fantasies you must first create your character through a fairly rudimentary creation suite. It offers eight pre-set 80s stereotypes to build upon with gender options, face shape and skin tone. We’re not talking Black Desert Online levels of character customisation, but enough to give the player a distinct look from their allies.

Generation Zero starts out solidly, prompting you as soon as you make landfall to find a weapon and some first aid kids in the nearby buildings. There’s ammo in a police car parked on the road—sorted. Not long after you’re introduced to the games’ basic enemy machine, the runner. Fast and deadly, they pose a challenge from the get-go and don’t get much easier as the player progresses. Physically, they look like robot dogs or wolves with a fuel tank and a machine gun strapped to its back. Once these machines are dispatched, the game points you in the vague direction of the nearest settlement that might have people in it at one point and lets you off the leash.

It’s certainly not a game that will hold you hand or tell you where every objective and enemy is. The in-game compass functions purely as a compass, it always points north. It won’t tell you where objectives are, there won’t be a red dot highlighting nearby enemies, it just points north. Enemy detection is only signalled by two things: actual sound and a shotgun mic style detection meter.

This would be great if it wasn’t for the fact that both sound and detection are broken. This much becomes abundantly clear when you go into the first underground location you come across. While inside you’ll constantly have a detection bar even if you’ve cleared the entire building of enemies if you walk or sprint—not because enemies are down there with you, but because they’re above ground and can apparently hear you down there. The second time it becomes noticeable is when trying to sneak past a patrol. If they get too close, even moving while crouched will raise their awareness forcing the player to either sit perfectly still or attempt to engage them hope the entirety of Sweden doesn’t come running.

It’s unfortunate that Generation Zero is consistently marred with technical issues, all of which seem entirely unpredictable. For example, being downed and then reviving too quickly may make the player unable to sprint at full speed. The next time this happens, the same set of actions may have no effect. Machines locked in steel containers can seemingly warp out of them at will, and then there’s whatever this 28-second clip of nonsense is.

Despite its many, many flaws, I wouldn’t say that Generation Zero is a bad game. From the moody nightime lighting to the midnight thunderstorms followed by dense fog, its world is dripping in a thick, dripping atmosphere. The morning god rays and autumnal leaves are a definitive pep-up after a brutal firefight. Much like their previous games, Avalanche really does know how to sell a world.

All of this is backed by an 80s soundtrack that fits so beautifully to the design of the machines and the world they inhabit. The game is true for the player character who feels as weighty as their firearms, all of which have great audio-visual feedback. Encompassed in a story about a sudden invasion and a missing populace, never meeting a living NPC, interacting with hastily written notes and skittish recordings—it’s a unique and mystical world trapped in a rugged game.

Generation Zero is a game propelled by its ability to be played with a group of friends. While its technical systems may be flawed, its world and mechanics are still engaging enough for fun-times-with-mates. Once you get into the groove, you’ll find amazing atmosphere, story, and a rocking OST. You’ll also discover busted mechanics, flawed AI and bugs crawling out of every corner.

7/10

Pros:

Weighty combat

Incredible visuals

Stunning audio

Cons:

Sub-par AI

Flawed detection system

Mehs:

Video games have always been a platform onto which a person could fulfill their greatest wishes, sometimes that wish is to be the saviour of the world. Other times that wish will be to be the best at a certain discipline and for some it is to simply travel the world with a good boi at your side. For the uninitiated amongst us a good boi is a doggo or pupper, generally the term is gender neutral, however some people use it solely for male doggos, and can very rarely be a cat. It cannot be understated how important good bois are to any adventurer, they are a source of constant companionship throughout an adventure and are often the only characters that won’t betray you. Unerringly loyal, they are the adventurers best friend. In no particular order 8 of the best good bois in video games.

D-Dog - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Arguably the most photogenic good boi in this list. Venom Snake’s companion in MGSV D-Dog is the only actual canine member of the private military company Diamond Dogs. D-Dog can be found in the first mission of the game as a puppy. After being sent to your home base via the fulton recovery system D-Dog greets the player with puppy licks and a generally excitable personality. Revolver Ocelot then offers to train your new canine friend as an attack dog while you are on missions, eventually allowing you to bring to him on missions.  

D-Dog is an incredibly good boi with a winning smile and a well fitting eye patch. 11/10 would rescue with a balloon extraction system.

Boomer - Far Cry 5

A close second in good looks after D-Dog, Boomer can be found very early on by the player after receiving a distress call from Rae Rae, Boomer’s original owner. Once the player arrives at Rae Rae’s farm they find the family dead and Boomer locked in a cage and surrounded by Peggie cultists taunting our good boi. After clearing out all the enemies around the farm the player then frees Boomer and he offers to lend a paw to the resistance.

Boomer is a Australian Cattle dog mixed with an unknown breed giving him a blue spotted coat and sports an incredibly stylish climbing rope collar his only downside is that Ubisoft won’t let him get into your car with you. 13/10 Spotted spotting dog #letboomerrideshotgun

Annoying dog - Undertale

Simply known as Annoying Dog in the game files and by most of the community this good boi is supposed to be an in game representation of Toby Fox, according to Toby himself. The characters sprite either represents a Samoyed or a Pomeranian, there is debate over this as in the demo of the game Annoying dog is represented by spr_tinypomwalk and snd_pombark however the sprite looks closer to a Samoyed due to its pointed ears and tail.

Regardless of the breed of this wonderful boi he will appear during the Papyrus boss fight to munch on Papyrus’s ‘special’ bone before being shoo’d away. Despite being dubbed Annoying this good pupper continues about his life with gusto, something we can all appreciate in life. 11/10 amour spécifique pour la vie

Dogmeat

Dogmeat is a recurring companion throughout the Fallout games, appearing in Fallouts 1 through 4 meaning the only games he doesn’t appear in are Tactics, Van Buren, Brotherhood of Steel and New Vegas. In Fallout 1 and 2 Dogmeat is a mut found terroising an old man in Junktown, distracting him for the old man allows the player to recruit our good boi as a companion. In Fallout 3 he is a cattle dog and is found in the scrapyard area of the Capital Wasteland fighting Raiders, helping him defeat the raiders allows him to be recruited. Finally in Fallout 4 Dogmeat is a german shepherd, a highly loyal species of good boi who will love the player unconditionally, and most importantly is set as essential in the game’s code meaning he can’t die. 13/10 Immortal, omnipresent good boi guardian

Sif - Dark Souls

The only good boi on the list that can’t be a player companion. Sif, also known as the Great Grey Wolf, is the companion of the Artorias the Abyss walker in the first Dark Souls game. While Sif is actually a wolf, that makes them a proto dog. Artorias and Sif would fight against the monsters of the Abyss together. Artorius eventually sacrificed himself to save Sif, and in return Sif guards his grave, making this good boi the most loyal on the list. Unfortunately to progress through the game the player must fight and kill Sif as one of the games boss fights.

14/10 Fights with a greatsword, gives a great sense of regret when fighting.

Timber - Far Cry: New Dawn

Ring of Elysium is the latest battle royale to be released in the west, but does it stack up to the competition.

Ever since the boom of the battle royale genre every new game has fought to innovate in new and interesting ways, some of which have been insanely successful in the case of Fornite’s building mechanics, and others, such as Bosskey’s vague cash grab Radical Heights. I mention these innovations as Ring of Elysium brings with it a mechanic as of yet unexplored in the battle royale genre. Extreme Sports.

While the game is similar to most other battle royales the main way that it differs is the way you get around. Working vehicles are few and far between due to the games setting, an impending snowstorm, so are encouraged to take to the skies, slopes or ziplines to traverse the map using one of three classes you choose at the game’s spawn screen, each of which has it’s benefits and drawbacks. The hanglider can easily traverse the distance of the map when used from a high point, but has the lowest carrying capacity, the second option, the snowboard can essentially be used anywhere, but is not as fast or efficient as the other two options and the third option is a set of climbing and ziplining equipment, which comes with the largest carry weight, however is restricted to specific points on the map.

A notable difference from other games of the genre is the abundance of weapons of the same tier meaning the majority of gun spawns are viable and it’s unlikely to be outgunned and more down to individual skill or strategy to win engagements. With only 60 players per round the map does feel remarkably empty, however that does leave the potential to have double digit players in the final zone making for an all the more climactic finish.

The EU LCS is in a weird place currently. Worlds 2017 showed us that Europe is the only major region that can compete with Asia on a competitive level with Misfits being the only team in League of Legends history to take SKT T1 to a fifth game, yet it is the region with the lowest viewership in relation to its sizes, considered the experimental region for Riot’s broadcasts and to top it off Riot aren’t providing substantial enough funding for teams.

Riot still continue to mess with Europe as an LCS region, turning an entire split into a best of 2 format and broadcasting games on weekdays, which have been proven to have a lower viewer count than the weekend North American broadcasts. According to data from Twinge.tv a website that pulls data from twitch every hour the EU LCS peaked at week one of the Spring split, meanwhile NA LCS held consistent viewer numbers throughout the year, with minor peaks and troughs depending on which teams were playing so it’s understandable when some of EU’s major players leave for other regions.

It’s not just the LCS format that’s causing problems. Teams are reporting that the funding they receive from Riot just isn’t enough to cover the costs of competing. Core EU LCS teams such as H2K are reporting losses of ‘over €1 Million’ and large traditional football teams like Paris Saint-Germain temporarily pulling out, stating on their website ‘The revenue sharing model offered by Riot Games is very far from compensating the costs of a structure with European ambitions’. Riot’s mandate in 2016 hasn’t helped with this either. The mandate stated that players of a pro team need to be signed as employees rather than independent contractors. While this is great for the players it adds extra costs for organisations on top of the costs they already can’t cover. More recently Riot announced an increased stipend for the 2018 season, however H2K co-chairman Richard Lippe claims that this still isn’t enough to cover the costs. In an interview with thescoreesports Lippe mentioned that the average salary for an EU LCS player in 2015 was around €20,000 (£14,650, $23,296), however that has increased to €100,000 (£87,928, $115,983) and above

Riot’s announcement also brought the news that teams will receive a ‘viewership bonus’ for teams that invest in growing their fanbase, attracting more EU LCS viewers and building their brand. This move seems comes across in a similar manner as using a fire extinguisher to put out a forest fire, yes it might work, but you’re going to need a lot more fire extinguishers.

So, what’s the solution? One solution suggested by UoL’s manager Romain Bigeard is to fund the scene in a similar way to FiFA and the Premier League. He outlines it in this video with Blitz esports (I wouldn’t advise watching it in public, unless you want to get strange looks on the bus), but I will break it down as he talks about the finances of the EU scene as a whole. The way it works for these leagues is the team sells their broadcasting rights to one main company, then broadcasters buy the broadcasting rights from the company to have those clubs on their channels and the broadcasters make money through advertising and so generate more money to buy more broadcasting rights from teams. Riot have already started doing something similar to this, recently selling the rights to exclusively stream and monetise Riot’s tournaments to the streaming tech company BAMTech, while this is a step in the right direction, this is likely to only affect North America as BAMTech are a part of Major League Baseball. Riot could look at selling the rights in Europe, however there is no region wide recognised broadcaster like there is in the United States, so it is more difficult to set up. The second issue to be aware of when implementing this form of funding is the level of corruption in organisations like FiFA, a regulating body would have to be set up that is separate from any LCS tournament to attempt to prevent this from occurring.

Another solution suggested by Bigeard is using skin sales to support the funding of the EU LCS, as the money generated by it is more than enough to cover the costs. In an open letter to the community Lippe states ‘sales of one skin and one icon for 6 weeks made €18 - €20 million’, this is a significant figure when compared to the financial requirements of the legacy teams. In the same letter Lippe mentions that better subsidisation ‘it merely requires RIOT to provide the legacy teams collectively with a guaranteed yearly increase of approximately €6.5 million’. This is something that is definitely achievable by Riot considering their annual in-game sales of $2 billion or more.

While it all seems like doom and gloom the chief gaming officer, Patrik “cArn” Sattermon casts a more positive light on the situation, telling thescoreesports.com

DotA 2 teams are going to have to start playing better than they already are. Two minor tournaments have been cancelled since the announcement of the cancellation in early November of Beyond the Summit’s Major.

This means more than just less prize money for the potential winners of those would be tournaments, but less chances to qualify for DotA 2’s ‘International’ tournament. The way tournament qualification works in the DotA pro scene is each tournament can distribute qualification points proportional to the prize pool (the minimum prize pool for a DotA 2 tournament to be considered an official Valve tournament is $150,000, which valve will then add $150,000 to) meaning each cancelled Minor is worth 300 qualification points and a Major is worth 1500. Combining the cancellation of the two Minors with the Major hosted by Beyond the Summit cancelled in November means there’s a grand total 2100 fewer points to distribute to teams.

[Image courtesy of Polygon]

This week will go down in Destiny history as trials of the lens. Destiny 2’s first expansion Curse of Osiris was released this week and with it came a slew of new exotics, one of these exotics is Prometheus Lens. The weapon is supposed to work in the same way an already existing exotic, Coldheart.

Both weapons come under the category of Trace Rifles, beam weapons that have increasing damage the long you hold down the trigger. An interesting concept and one that has its uses in PvE content, but wouldn’t normally be usable in PvP content. Unless of course, you didn’t have to charge to full damage, and it was constantly at the highest damage possible for the weapon, but that would be silly right? That would never happen. Well thanks to a bug specific to the Prometheus Lens, that’s exactly what is happening.

Currently the weapon doesn’t have to charge to reach its full damage in PvP and it’s causing chaos amongst non-competitive players. Bungie stated in a tweet they were aware of the issue the day after the Launch of the expansion. However in their most recent blog post they said the fix won’t be available until next week. This raised an issue surrounding Trials of the Nine, Destiny’s most competitive game mode, will it be cancelled? Will it go ahead? Will Bungie disable the Lens? Nope They just said F’ it and in an Oprah-esk move, gave everyone access to the weapon, on the morning of the Friday reset, Destiny game director Luke Smith simply tweeted this as the reset happened, minutes later players discovered that Xur was selling the Prometheus Lens.

Mercy’s recent rework has been criticised as too overbearing by the community. The rework saw her resurrect ability changed from an ultimate to a regular ability with a cooldown - albeit a hefty 30 second one - and a significantly reduced range while her ultimate was changed to Valkyrie. On the current live servers Valkyrie will reset the cooldown of her resurrect as well as reduce the cooldown to 10 seconds for the duration of Valkyrie.

The PTR nerf will remove the resurrect reset function of Valkyrie, however Mercy will be compensated by being able to resurrect from double the distance she currently can. The aim for the nerf is to reduce her immediate teamfight impact. Currently a teamfight in Overwatch will play out in one of two ways; either the Mercy will die first and the fight will continue as normal, or one team will pick off a couple of players, Mercy will resurrect one, pop her ultimate and resurrect a second causing a stalemate. The nerf will mean that she will have to wait before being able to get the second resurrect and requires more thought than just resurrecting the first two people that die.

The change being brought to Genji is changing the way the beginning of his ult functions. Currently if he is stunned while channeling his ultimate Dragonblade he will lose all use of the ability. The change aims to stop this happening by giving Genji full use of his ultimate even if he is stunned at the start of his ultimate. This will bring his ultimate in line with other similar ultimates such as Soldier: 76 and Bastion.

Bitcoin recently reached a purchase price of $11000 for the first time in the history of the currency. This news will cause issues for anyone looking to buy a graphics card in the near future as cryptocurrency miners purchase more and new graphics cards to mine ever increasing amounts. Essentially, the way bitcoin mining works is the miners either use graphics cards or application specific integrated circuits to guess a hexadecimal number faster than anyone else does.

What does this mean? Well it means that the more computing power they have, the faster they can guess the number. What does this mean for normal consumers? Cryptocurrency miners will have to buy more and more graphics cards to stay competitive, which means the stocks of these get lower and lower and the manufacturers have to push up the price to justify making more units to keep up with the demand.

This graph provided by the website pcpartpicker.com shows the price of the Nvidia GTX 1070 where we can see the truth in the data. The first spike in June happened when Bitcoin increased in price from $1000 to $2500 and while it has remained steady since, however you can see near the end the price is beginning to increase once again. This price increase isn’t just limited to Nvidia cards. The AMD RX 580 which was released just this year also saw the spike. It’s starting price was just $240 however the Bitcoin price increase saw it jump to around $400 just months later.

So what is my advice? If you’re looking to pick up a new graphics card for Christmas, or you’re expecting to find one in your stocking, buy now before the prices spike in the near future or wait for the market to die down after the new year.

Two of the best value for money cards currently avaliable are the

Zotac GTX 1070 mini

for £369 on Amazon at the time of writing, or if you prefer AMD the

NITRO+ RX 580

Destiny 2 doesn’t quite have a grip on how expansion gear should work.

Destiny 2’s first expansion came out last week and brought with it new content and new challenges, however it also brought with it locks on old content. Players hoping to play the prestige versions of the the first raid as well as the nightfall strikes were surprised to find out they weren’t able to without owning the DLC.

The issue arises from the new recommended power level of 330 for these harder difficulties. Players without the DLC are only able to achieve a power of 305. This isn’t something new, the same this happened in the first Destiny game when expansion The Dark Below launched. The community is obviously upset with this development, especially PC players who have only had the base game for a month and a half. Unfortunately, this is something that happens with MMOs, a genre that Destiny is a part of, once new content is released with better gear, you need to purchase the content to get that gear and the old gear becomes redundant, this is how it has been traditionally done by more storied MMOs like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars.

April marks the first dual champion release for League of Legends. Announced today on their social media, Riot games revealed the two newest champions to the Summoners Rift ‘Xayah’ and ‘Rakan’. Two separate characters that will be released at the same time.

In the lore the two are lovers, Xayah is described as a rebel while Rakan is her protector. This is represented in game by their abilities as Rakan takes on a more supportive role being a healer and disruption based champion whereas Xayah is more aggressive and tailored towards dealing damage. As well as their lore connections when the two are on the same team together they both gain bonuses by being close to one another.

Xayah:

Both champions abilities are fluid in their gameplay style as well as visually and aurally stunning, however they will have a high mechanical skill requirement as they rely on the player's ability to position themselves well in game.

Rakan:

The champions represent a very promising artistic direction for League of Legends, which began with the release of Jhin who began the trend of being incredibly colourful and packed with personality. This style has continued in some way with every champion released since.

This weekend saw the official beginning of the Road to EGX Overwatch tournament. The tournament was kicked off with the first qualifiers being played at EGX Rezzed this weekend. All eight teams played a best of one quarter final, with the winning four going through to a best of 3 semi-final and the two remaining teams went through to play in the best of 5 grand final.

The tournament is the first to be run under the ‘EGX esports’ banner. It is officially sponsored by OMEN by HP and run behind the scenes by a team from epic.LAN.

Saturday’s tournament day drew in plenty of crowd members as well as players, the room was packed full of spectators throughout the day. The crowds were made up of a mix of people just wanting to watch Overwatch and others supporting the players in the games. The atmosphere was constantly positive with cheers going up for both teams playing at the time as well as rounds of applause at the end of every game.

After a convincing 3-0 sweep the grand final winners were announced as team HoggyHogs, a group of six individuals who came together on the day and formed a team at sign up. They will be moving forward to play on the final stages at EGX in September.

Arms claims to be the Switch’s premier fighting game with Nintendo stating it will be widely accessible while still rewarding dedicated players by being mechanically complex enough to challenge them on a competitive level. If Nintendo can deliver on this Arms could be entertaining enough to watch at a professional level to draw in a significant following yet still easy enough to understand at a base level that new players will be able to pick it up in an instant.

The most popular esports at the moment are all games that are able to be picked up in an instant, yet take time and understanding to be truly good at them. The best examples of this currently would be CS:GO and Hearthstone, both of these can be played by anybody regardless of their gaming history. Players become better by understanding map layouts or card counters. This is where games move from simply competitive experiences to true esports. Arms needs the ideas of counters and the ability to outplay your opponents and finding ways to win that nobody has found before. One of the most well-known moments from eSports comes from a DoTA 2 game between NoTidehunter and Evil Geniuses in which team NoTidehunter did something unexpected which led to them winning the game. This kind of freedom allows games to truly become esports.

From the hands-on at the Switch announcement press event, we saw the levels of complexity involve a limited moveset, most of which we saw in the trailer. If this is the case and it is limited to the small set of moves, then it is unlikely that Arms will have a large future in esports. It will definitely be a competitive game, however the chances of seeing ARMS as a large scale esport will be low.

On Tuesday Crytek confirmed that its Black Sea studio has officially been sold to SEGA Europe and Creative Assembly. This is the fourth of Crytek’s studios to be sold after managing director Avni Yerli said in December they would begin closing five of their studios in order to “refocus on its core strengths”.

It’s no secret that Crytek have been notably struggling since the height of the company’s heyday. In 2014 it was reported that the CEO Cevat Yerli chose to delay payments to the Crytek staff to keep the company afloat as well as downsizing the US and UK studios, and eventually selling both off to other developers. Since then it has been reported that the company had to delay payments to its employees once again. As of today, Crytek still owns three of its studios namely the headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, its Ukraine studio in Kiev and a studio in Istanbul, Turkey.

Prior to its acquisition by Crytek the studio was known for a historical strategy game called Knights of Honor, once it was bought by Crytek the studio began work on a free-to-play MOBA called Arena of Fate which entered beta in 2015. All 60 Crytek employees were taken on by Creative Assembly.

The first two expansions of the year for free. This is the first time Ubisoft has done something like this for any of it’s multiplayer games.

In an interview with GameRant, creative director Julian Derighty had this to say, “We are looking to reengage the players in light of the first year celebration for The Division by committing ourselves to the game in the upcoming 12 months. We will be delivering two separate expansion packs for the game free to everybody in the next 12 months.” During a livestream on March 8th celebrating the beginning of the second year. Gerighty says the livestream will outline what fans can expect from the free expansions.

Supposedly the first expansion will focus on PvE content and rewarding players for spending time in the game. It will add new events for groups of players to work through. While PvE is the focus of the expansions Gerighty has said that expanding on the game’s PvP content isn’t entirely off the table. It is possible the developers will look at increasing the size of the dark zone, the game’s open PvP area or adding new game modes similar to the recent Survival DLC.

Many players are hoping to see the addition of Central Park as a PvE area as fans found early evidence of placeholder assets outside of the games boundaries near the games’ initial launch.