Once again we come, LATE, with news of the world (for which there is actually a good reason for once). And not the unimportant news of the world such as droughts and wars and other things of that nature. No here we deal in the important and the serious. For here my friends we talk about the news of the world of Games. A cut-throat world. A game eat game world. In fact, it’s much like the real world only there is about 100 times the possibility for awesome and guns with chainsaws attached to them…
ENOUGH TALK! What happened in the virtual world last week?
DayZ doesn’t spawn Clone – War Z
This is actually one of those big universal coincidences that makes me wish I knew what the odds were of something like this happening. You see if someone were to say to you “big zombie-apocalypse, survival, MMO, with perma-death and a big ‘Z’ in the name” I’m fairly sure that everyone would instantly think “Day Z”. Which is fair enough. The zombie survival mod for ArmA 2 has become insanely popular with, according to the website, over 800,000 unique players having tried the game. And for a mod of a game, a mod STILL in Alpha stages, that is absolutely insane.
However, it turns out that The War Z, a game by Hammerpoint Interactive, actually began development over a year ago. So while it seems to have an incredible number of similarities, right down to that big “Z” in the name, it is by no means a clone or a jump on the bandwagon.
As well as the fact that it’s not actually a clone, although it may well be fair enough to say that it draws some inspiration from DayZ, it actually may well have a lot more polish than the mod for ArmA II (which as I said is still in alpha). Because along with the mistrustful interactions between players, the gathering of supplies and gears and that general framework of careful moving around interspersed with incredibly tense moments, it also has an experience system which allows you to level your character up and upgrade your survival skills, there are safe-zones which can be used for socialising. Also Permadeath is actually only an option on The War Z. If you don’t feel up to the hardcore stresses that DayZ introduced us to then you can also play on “normal” mode in which you will ONLY be incapacitated for 24-48 hours in real time. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s still a big enough penalty to make the kill or be killed system keep working properly.
It actually sounds pretty awesome and from the few screenshots around (like the one at the top) it looks pretty good too. It’s just a shame that it’s coming out at a time to make it seem like a knock-off rather than an innovation.
Fortnite – Minecraft with Zombies! Oh wait…
Honestly I haven’t got much to offer you here. Epic Games are still right in the middle of the design process of Fortnite so there isn’t much in the way of mechanics and details of the game. You may recall the rather cool little teaser trailer that we saw near the end of last year and so you might remember the main focus of the game. Essentially it will be similar, in a way, to Minecraft in that you will be building your zombie shelter and defences from the ground up and exploring the world during the day to find resources and other bits and pieces to make your base more awesome. As Epic themselves say:
“In Fortnite, players will explore, forage, collaborate and build by day in their own dynamic and expanding world. At night, they’ll work together to defend their prized fortress from the forces of darkness. [Comic-Con] attendees also received a first look at Fortnite’s building system, which is designed so that players can use scavenged materials to quickly build and renovate structures of varying materials and complexity.”
Recently Epic have said a little more about the game, and released some tasty screenshots, essentially they are building Fortnite to be primarily a co-op experience. There will be single player but the main idea behind the game is that you will get your friends to help you out in fighting “the forces of darkness”. While I actually approve of a game that allows socialising through the medium of games it also appears that Epic are considering using a system similar to Diablo 3’s where you need to have a constant internet connection to be able to play.
Now Epic did go on to confirm that this was in no way actually what they were doing and that they honestly didn’t even have plans yet for every aspect of the game. However, it is “not off the table” so it is something that MAY come into play. I’m not sure what my take is on this, frankly I’m just going to wait for them to actually start telling us stuff before starting my judgements.
Dying to Play Games
I apologise for the cheesy title because this is honestly a sad, if rather ridiculous, story. Taiwanese 18-year-old, Chuang recently booked a private room at an internet cafe where he proceeded to play Diablo 3 for 40 straight hours without eating. When someone came to check on him he stood up, took a few steps and collapsed. He was then taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on arrival, with police speculating that the cause of death was that sitting down for so long adversely affected his cardiovascular system.
It’s a sad and rather horrifying story and it’s also one of those stories that occasionally pops up as the darker side of video games, complete addiction to video games having caused deaths before.
That said, it is also rather ridiculous, this is a kid who literally killed himself from playing too much Diablo and honestly I just don’t understand how that’s possible. Yes it’s sad, but also it’s just completely stupid! I mean COME ON!
So to those of you reading, if you ever plan a massive gaming marathon, consider eating occasionally, stand up every once in a while and stretch out some of those muscles.
Diablo 3 – Time Limits on Killing
Ironically our next story is ALSO to do with Diablo 3 and is to do with limiting the amount of time you can play on Diablo 3. Essentially Blizzard are introducing a system where they will limit the number of games of Diablo 3 a player can start in quick succession. This system is in place to prevent the use of bots and other third-party programs which go online and, presumably, farm for items to sell on the Diablo 3 market.
If you receive a message saying “Input Limit Reached” and you haven’t been up to any nefarious wrong-doing then all you need to do is contact Blizz and explain why you were creating so many games.
Battlefield 4 Beta in Medal of Honour: Warfighter
EA have recently announced that as a pre-order bonus for buying Medal of Honor (HONOUR! Learn to spell!) Warfighter players will get exclusive access to a Battlefield 4 beta in Autumn 2013. Medal of Honor: Warfighter will be released on the 23rd and 26th of October in North America and Europe respectively.
And I bet that because this is a pre-order bonus the number of pre-orders for MoH just shot up by a lot!
Heroes of Newerth F2P
Heroes of Newerth is another one of those TDHBRTSG (or MOBAs) along the same vein as LoL and DotA. However, unfortunately for it, it’s never really achieved the same level of fame and number of players as LoL (which is fair enough considering it is now officially the most played computer game in the world) or even DotA 2. To try and build up their player base S2 Games have changed the model of the game to a completely Free to Play model, like League of Legends was from the start.
More than this, however, following in the footsteps of Valve’s DotA 2 Heroes of Newerth is now offering all of it’s Champions to all players completely for free. This means that, unlike in LoL, players will be able to access all the champions form the moment they start up the game rather than have to slowly build up the number they own through time spent in game or through spending lots of money.
Unfortunately this does mean that some people who have already spent a lot of money on buying the little champions will in many cases lose the money they’ve spent. If you bought any Champions in the last 15 days your money will be refunded and everyone who’s spent money at any point on the game will get a Mecha Gemini alternative avatar. As well as this, Legacy players will get a lifetime bonus in game where they will earn an extra two silver coins every ranked match. If, however, you do not fit into any of these categories then sadly for you the money you spent on the heroes is gone for good.
Borderlands 2 – Most Guns EVER
You know, it’s something of an accomplishment to say that maybe, just maybe, your game will have more guns and weapons than any other game made… ever… The original Borderlands had a “procedural system” which randomly generated the guns that people spent time trying to get and the grand total number of weapons it could conceivably create was 17.75 million guns. This number was so insanely massive that it resulted in the game earning a Guinness World Record as it contained more guns than every other FPS on Xbox 360 and PS3 combined.
And Borderlands 2 is set to possibly be able to smash that record. Even taking the original Borderlands into account it may well be possible for Borderlands 2 to have more guns than every other shooter for the 360 and PS3 since they were launched. In fact Borderlands 2 will supposedly be, thanks to a bigger budget, twice as big as it’s predecessor overall and won’t just have more guns.
It’s definitely something you can stick on the box: “Borderlands 2: Most guns EVER… until we make Borderlands 3”.
That’s the end of the news folks! But remember to keep an eye on the website where I will shortly be uploading last weeks videos, release dates and the bits and pieces which intrigued me most!
MMGaming.net 