Torchlight 2 due September 20th!

Runic Games have announced that Torchlight 2 will be available on the PC on September 20th, 2012!

Torchlight 2 has vastly expanded on the original game, and has a huge open world with randomised levels, four customisable character classes, and online and LAN co-op multiplayer.

Players will be able to mod the game too, with TorchED, the Torchlight 2 editor coming shortly after launch!

Minecraft for the Xbox 360

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, 4J Studio‘s ported version of Minecraft, came out on Wednesday, and apparently broke the Day 1 sales records for the Xbox LIVE arcade and becoming profitable within the first hour!  Tim won a copy of the game, so he finally had a go.. watching him encounter zombies and creepers was amusing 🙂

I planned to have just a quick go, to compare it against the PC version which I’ve sunk many, many hours into.  As usual, I spent my first night up on a pole.. I’ve never been keen on the hole in the ground method!  Once I had some resources gathered, it was on to the crafting..

There have been a few changes to crafting, making it a lot easier to use!  The system allows you to navigate through categories and then just click on the item you want to make.. and as long as you have the ingredients to hand, the item will appear in your inventory.

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In the News – 6th March

Mass Effect 3 launched today for the Americans, with the UK release due on Friday.  The game currently has a Metacritic score of 93, while the user score is currently at 2.5.  Political voting?  I think so.

The latest that the multiplayer will have an effect on the ending of your singleplayer game.  As you complete missions and earn the support of different people, you gain them as War Assets: the game takes the number of collected War Assets into consideration when calculating your ending.. and it seems that you need a fairly high number of them.  During multiplayer, you can improve your Readiness rating.  This rating is used as a multiplier against your War Assets, so has a positive effect. (more…)

Mass Effect 3: Take Earth Back

BioWare have released a cinematic trailer for Mass Effect 3, showing the beginning of the War for Earth..

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBktyyaV9LY]

The demo is available now, on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, with both singleplayer and multiplayer sections.  The full game will be available on the 9th March.

Our impressions of the single-player demo can be found here.

Hawken – Mech Combat FPS

Hawken is a multiplayer mech combat game, developed by Adhesive Games using the Unreal Engine from Epic Games.

The team have now announced an official release date of 12/12/12, and confirmed that Hawken will be a free downloadable title, with in-game purchases allowing greater customisation and weapon variety.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwA03XsKzbY]

While the 12th December is a long way off, you can get in on the action sooner by enlisting for the beta.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City – Multiplayer Gameplay!

Slant Six Games and Capcom have released the first multiplayer gameplay video for Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B–_y6PhT0]

Multiplayer modes shown in the video include the usual Team Deathmatch, as well as Biohazard mode, where players must ensure samples of the G-virus are returned to their base, a Survivors mode, where you must survive until the rescue helicopter arrives, and finally a Heroes mode, where you must fight as and defend iconic Resident Evil characters such as Leon S. Kennedy, Hunk or Jill Valentine!

ScampLAN 2

The weekend just passed was ScampLAN 2, with a couple of friends bringing their PCs round to our house for gaming and silliness 🙂

We played a lot of Dungeon Defenders.. which I had a look at last week.  This game has really grown on me over the week..

I’ve now tried out all the characters, but the one I’ve played most has been the Huntress, who specialises in traps and ranged weapons.  I felt she was slow to get off the ground with.. the traps start off with only a few charges and are soon used up.. but after gaining many levels and improving both the traps and the character’s stats, she now feels quite powerful 🙂

When you level up, you can spend your points on stats for the character or for your towers.. I’ve spread my points out between the Huntress and her traps, but another friend has put most of his points into his Monk, making him fantastic in combat but with rather weak auras.  For the characters the three of us developed over the weekend, this worked very well, as it meant the mana could be spent on building and upgrading stronger towers and traps, without getting too close to the defense unit cap.  We got as far as the Servant’s Quarters during the weekend!

Another game we had a turn at was Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
We tried to play this previously, but thought we might do better if we were in the same room and able to communicate a little better.  However, as in our previous attempts to play, we found barely-visible enemies were able to take us out with ease.. the game is supposed to be about realism and tactics, but if I’m approaching on my belly through trees and bushes, I don’t think it’s realistic to be shot down so quickly by people I can’t even see yet.

I also suffered from a rather random bug, which had my character float up into the air before being thrown back down again.. and of course, taking realistic fall damage.  This happened a few times, but settled down enough to complete the mission.  However, the fun was lacking for most of us, so we didn’t go back for a second mission.

In between the gaming I had a bit more of a poke around with VoxelSniper on Minecraft.
I had a failed attempt to add Zombe’s flying mod.. not quite sure what went wrong, but the game wouldn’t launch.. before I installed VoxelAir, which allows me to jump high into the air and land without damage, or hover above the ground.

You can jump rather a long way up.. and when I came down, I was surprised by the crazy number of mobs which had spawned!

I found an interesting bug with VoxelAir too.. after being killed while hovering, courtesy of a few Skeleton Archers and a lack of care, I respawned still hovering.. floating upwards in fact!  Using the “/give” command simply dropped a new feather at my feet, out of reach.. a friend also tried to give me a feather but it also landed out of reach.  In the end I used “/kill” a number of times and eventually spawned close enough to a feather for it to pick up.

Next up will be forming a nice piece of flat land for a huge project.. more later 🙂

With four people and a reasonably couch to take advantage of, there was also some console gaming.. though we found a distinct lack of co-op games allow four people on one console.  So many games boast “2-4 player co-op”, but don’t specify that this means two people on one console, and two on a second console.. annoying.  We tried Call of Duty: Black Ops.. we wanted the Nazi zombies, but only the arcade mode allowed all four of us to play.  We had a couple of runs on that, with me claiming the top spot for one run!  Red Faction: Armageddon failed us, as did Rainbow Six Vegas.. so we ended up shooting each other in Halo 3 which entertained us for a while!

Hunted: Demon’s Forge was picked up at the start of the weekend too, and we attempted some co-op in pairs.  We all found the game surprisingly hard, though Tim and Jason attempted to play without going through a tutorial first.. masochists!  I think the game would be a lot easier if you were able to carry more than one health vial each.. we also found the game punished deaths by sending us a long way back each time.  I’m looking forward to playing the game by myself at some point soon, too.

Another game which made an appearance over the weekend was Gears of War 3!
I hadn’t yet finished Gears of War 2, but the copy of #3 will be going home with Jason at the end of the week, and Tim wanted to start some co-op, so we’ve been playing through it anyway.. on hard!

So far, I’m loving it.. though noticing a few changes! The world has been destroyed by the Hammer of Dawn, and the enemies now include mutated Lambent creatures.. I’m noticing a huge change from the graphics of the original Gears of War as well, with the character models all being far more refined.  Good changes all round.. and still a great game, as far through as we’ve gotten this far! 🙂

Space Marine Multiplayer

I completed the singleplayer last weekend, and have since attempted to play multiplayer on the PC with little success, thanks to the only friend with the game installed being unable to join online games.  We tried with a private game, but eventually this crashed, taking out the network here and putting us off trying again..

However, thanks to work I also have a copy on the 360, and this weekend I went for a few sessions of multiplayer with randoms on the 360.  Surprisingly, the random players I met during the weekend were decent, and the only abusive phrases used were as part of banter with each other. 🙂

I discovered that in Space Marine, I much prefer Seige Mode to Annihilation.. capturing points adds a bit more direction to the game, especially when random players aren’t looking to work together as well as friends usually do.  This also gave me another source of XP, and so I was able to unlock the Customiser to make my very own purple Space Marine!

Sadly there are only five maps at this point, so eventually it started to feel a bit repetitive.

An update is due in October, and as this will add co-op, it may see a bit more action.. so long as there is no recurrance of the network problem!

Multiplayer Awesomeness with Bulletstorm

With four of us here at ScampLAN, it proved the perfect opportunity to try out some multiplayer Bulletstorm.

Anarchy Mode basically consists of setting up as many skillshots as possible between members of the team, to kill waves of enemies.  Solo skillshots apply as expected, but if two or more players work together to create the skillshot, it becomes a Team Skillshot, and earns more points.  This requires a little more communication.. or at least having players who care more about setting up skillshots than trying to get the most individually.. therefore, best played with friends 🙂

This was a lot of fun, with new skillshots being discovered during play.. such as Tug-O-War, for Leashing another player’s Leashed enemy.  This skillshot was apparently added at the request of the community, which I think is a good move on the part of the developer 🙂

(Screenshot from Ripten.com)

Some enemies appear with a specific Team Skillshot to achieve.. such as the Meatspin skillshot, which is earned by kicking the enemy into the rotating doors in the corner of the Grand Central map, or the Midnight Express, for kicking an enemy into the path of the train as it flies through the station.  These were harder to do as the enemy often appeared far away from the required location, but still worth going for based on points.

Echoes is the other multiplayer mode.. though this is more of a beat-your-friends’-highscore kind of mode.  Echoes are small sections from the campaign with plenty of enemies and loads of opportunities for skillshots.. the more skillshots, the more points.

As friends have already got decent scores, if I want to get to the top of our boards, every enemy needs to be taken out with a skillshot, and as many unique skillshots as possible, as only the first few uses get a high reward.  They’re all fairly quick to play through, though, so I should be able to fit them in somewhere! 🙂

ScampLAN

Instead of going to Multiplay’s messed up i43, we’ve gone for a smaller, friends-only LAN at home.. in our newly decorated lounge 😀

So far we’ve mostly played singleplayer games, with the guys nagging me to complete Crysis 2.. which I’ve now done, though I was shown up by Ali completing both Bulletstorm and Red Faction: Armageddon in two days!

The demo for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine made an appearance too..

Yay for lots of dead Orks!  I found the first level harder than the second, with many retries of the last room.. the big Orks were a bit painful.  The second level was much easier as the Jump Pack meant that for quite a way, all I needed to do was land on enemies to kill them 🙂

This game is now on the wanted list.. along with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Gears of War 3..

I’ve also tried out DC Universe Online, but I’m not going to rush to buy it.  Although what I played was quite fun, I think the appeal may run out after a while.. from what I’ve heard, there isn’t a lot to do at max level, and unless I had friends playing too, I can’t see that I’d want to run around doing the same thing too many times.  Maybe if the game turns up cheap..

We’ve also picked up the DLC for Borderlands, as it was cheap on Steam.. though we now have to get on with our game sometime!