Marvel Heroes 2017 Review

When you first begin Marvel Heroes, you can choose one of five free starting heroes, which are Thing, Storm, Hawkeye, Daredevil, and Scarlet Witch. All of the other heroes can only be obtained by either buying them or rarely find them dropped by a boss Villain. The selection of heroes available in Marvel Heroes is expansive, and their factions range from the Avengers to X-Men. Heroes are able to collect gear to equip making them stronger, and earning skill points from leveling up and doing quests. Each will also have attributes that further make them unique from each other, such as endurance that will reduce damage as it goes up, and intelligence that increases how much experience you will earn. Health is what every hero uses to determine when they will fall in battle, and Spirit is in place of mana that is used in other games.

Along with the large amount of heroes in the game, theres even a larger amount of powers available. They are all unique when compared to each other, and complement each hero’s style of play. Large heroes like Thing and Hulk will spend their time jumping around and slamming the ground, while longer ranged and weaker heroes like Storm will stay at ranging zapping her enemies. Not all powers are to deal damage, as there are passives that benefit heroes greatly as well as ones that can even benefit your whole team.

Even though there is a lot of combat involed in Marvel Heroes, there are almost no quests that require you to kill a certain amount of X enemy, unless of course its a boss. All quests are story driven and most just guide you through the story, often ending with the killing of a zone’s main boss. Rewards can range from increasing your maximum amount of spirit to giving you extra skill points.

While out in the open areas defeating enemies and completing quests, you will run into a multitude of locations that you can enter. If you enter one that has an orange portal for its entrance, it will be a small and short area designed for one person, with stronger than normal enemies and a treasure chest hidden inside. Blue portal areas are larger instances that generally require more than one person to easily complete, and also follow along with quests and the storyline. All instances appear to only reset after a certain amount of time, since even logging out and back in won’t do it. One option is to join another hero’s group that hasn’t it yet and you will enter their version of it.

There are a lot of bosses in Marvel Heroes, as well as the evil factions that they belong to. There is M.O.D.O.K, Magneto, Doom, and Doc Ock along with A.I.M, the Purifiers, Hydra, the Hand, and many more bosses and factions to excounter. All bosses have a unique combat strategy, and some will require you to be on your toes more than others. After defeating a boss, you are always guaranteed a medal specific to that boss that has special attributes related to the particular boss. They are also the only way to rarely get heroes and their costumes without having to pay real money for them.

Killing any enemy has a chance to drop loot that can range greatly. Money and restorative orbs are the most common ones, along with experience orbs that you should be sure to grab. Lots of gear of differing quality will drop all of the time as well, and luckily most of it will be usable by your current hero. Each piece will have a base stat a long with randomly placed bonuses, that can range from simply higher health to making your powers stronger. The rarest loot will come from bosses, who each will drop a special medal and even the rare chance of additional heroes and costumes.

One unique thing in Marvel Heroes is that you can opt to donate your junk loot to stores and the crafter to improve the services that they offer, instead of just selling for cash. Even then, the weapon and armor merchants are practically useless, since you can find much better equipment out playing. The crafter, however, is where you should donate all of your useless junk to since they will help you to keep current with better gear. They can turn weaker rare pieces of equipment into much better epic pieces for a small fee, and this will always add a ton of stats to each piece. This is also where you can apply special attributes to your costumes, and even crafting a useful item that will let you give gear to another hero.

While playing through the story, you will encounter cutscenes that are drawn and animated like a comic book, while also being voice acted. Any heroes that you own will also cause loading screens to show little factoids about them. Zones that you are in or traveling to will also have facts told about them at the loading screens. Dieing to a boss will sometimes gives you hints when reloading back into the area.

Although you see a lot of people playing and it is marketed somewhat as an MMO, there isn’t a whole lot of community present. You are able to chat to people, but you almost never see anyone type anything even out in the large open levels. There are however Supergroups that you can form which are a lot like guilds from other MMOs, letting you easily group up with other people that you know.

When you beat the main storyline, you will be able to continue on with daily missions, or try out the PvP which is in beta stage. Dailies revisit a bunch of the end locations from the story missions, being quick 5 minute instances with a boss at the end. Completing these once a day will reward you with Cube Shards which you can trade for Fortune Cards. You are able to do them more than once a day, but you won’t get additional Cube Shards or chance for special items. You can also reset the storyline, which is helpful when you want to level up other heroes.

Marvel Heroes shares a lot of gameplay with other games like Diablo and Torchlight. It also has some basic MMO elements in it such as open worlds that are always populated by other players, and entering instances will automatically put you into groups. Gaining rest experience is even present, meaning logging off will cause you to gain bonus experience the next time that you decide to play.

Options in general are lacking, there is only two sliders that affect the graphical quality of Marvel Heroes and the gameplay options are bare when it comes to this type of game. However, the game surprisingly looks better than you would first imagine, and it even runs amazingly well at max settings. Especially when you’re one of the larger heroes like Thing and the Hulk, footsteps can be heard when walking on metalic floors. Your currently selected hero will often make comments about the current story situation while also making comments about other heroes that they may come across.

Even though there is a wide selection of heroes that you can choose from, each have a small number of abilities and passives that you can put points into. Not only that, but you will unlock upgraded versions of already available skills that are completely better, further limiting the number of combat options available to you. To make matters even worse, there is a limited amount of space to put your abilities on the hotbar so you will have to be careful which ones you want to use. The game feels like it is designed around experience boosts being mandatory, since when you finally finish the game you will have been fighting enemies a lot stronger than you and when you start doing the dailies, you will be even more so under leveled to do anything useful apart from dieing. Storage space is very limited for the extra loot and crafting materials that you will procure while playing, and it costs 3 to 5 dollars to buy an extra slot that is specifically designed for certain items, costing well over 50 dollars if you want it all. Non boss enemies that you encounter are all very plain and don’t do much from simply attacking you, and even the stronger enhanced enemies rarely have special properties and are just simply stronger. With the amount of stats and equipment involved in Marvel Heroes, you actually don’t see numbers appear during combat, or even the levels of enemies. This makes it hard to determine whether you’re in the right spot or not, and whether your abilities are even doing any kind of damage.

Most of the game is very easy, until you get to the later areas when you start to level slower. The starter hero that you pick will also affect the difficulty of the game, long ranged power users will die a lot faster than the heavy melee users. Since other people will automatically join when you enter an instance, even if you’re weaker or under leveled they will take some of the weight off of your back. Everything from the wide open areas to the villain dungeons can be completed very quickly. The only thing that may possibly be too long for you is the final mission of the story, but even then it is fast and you should easily be able to plan for it. If you are short on time, it is easy to jump and accomplish anything that you are currently doing.

Until later in the game, you won’t run into any difficulty. Each hero playing differently will also affect your ability to find a challenge, since Thing can pretty much survive any onslaught when playing solo. The dailies after beating the story puts you against very strong enemies and will be challenging for you for a while until you get stronger. With tons of heroes to find and play through the game with, you will undoubtedly have a long lasting game on your hands. Even so, the fact that heroes are expensive and very rare to drop, anyone wanting a game to have a lot to accomplish in will spend more time and money unlocking that ability to do so rather than actually doing it.

Marvel Heroes is free to play along with an in game store with various items and three starter packs available through Steam. The in game store has a variety of heroes, costumes, and miscellaneous consumables to improve your game experience. Special currency called G is required to buy anything, at a rate of 1 dollar per 100 G’s. Heroes will range from 6 dollars to 20 dollars worth of G, while costumes are generally 10 or more dollars. The consumables are experience and loot drop boosts, as well as an item to reset your skill points. Steam packs range from 80 to 85 dollars. Each comes with a different set of 4 heroes, 8 costumes, and 10 Fortune Cards which can be consumed to turn into a variety of other consumable items.

Everything in Marvel Heroes feels VERY overpriced for what you get. Boosts only last an hour at a time and they even encourage you to use up to 5 at a time in order to double the effect. Wanting to collect the heroes will set you back hundreds of dollars, especially if you want the costumes as well. If anything, you should only plan on buying one hero and maybe a costume, and ignore everything else in the game.

If you don’t care about buying anything, Marvel Heroes is a worthy game to experience at least one time through if you enjoy classic super hero comics and stories.

Paranautical Activity Review

Before you can jump into Paranautical Activity, you must first choose a class to play as. Each class determines what weapon you will start out with, how many bombs you get, and your beginning stats. Health and movement speed are first determined by your class, and damage and fire rate are just the stats of your starting weapon. Finding different guns during gameplay and picking up upgrades can all completely change how your character will act as you progress through the floors. You might start out as the really fast sickle thrower, but later down the line you might become the slow moving rocket launcher guy.

Each class has its own starting weapon, as well as weapons only available by finding them from playing the game. You can find replacement guns from either defeating bosses or buying them in a gift shop. Most weapons are just guns that shoot projectiles in different ways, such as the crossbow, shotgun, and minigun. More unique weapons come in the form of a sickle that acts like a boomerang and can hit enemies multiple times. Explosive weapons such as a grenade and rocket launchers also exist. No matter what weapon or class you are, everyone can use bombs which are consumable items that can be thrown to cause tons of damage.

There are many different shapes and sizes of enemies in Paranautical Activity, each with their own unique qualities. Most enemies just differ in how much health they have and how they shoot projectiles at you, though there are some unique ones. Evil butterflies will float in the air while shooting two homing projectiles at you, and there are ninjas that will either melee you or throw stars at you, while even becoming invisible to attack you.

All enemies and bosses will drop basic loot when they are killed. Coins will be the most common item to acquire, and it will let you buy items in the gift shops. Health and armor drops will restore one point in their respective attribute. Bombs don’t drop very often and it is a good idea to conserve them.

Instead of just basic loot, you will sometimes acquire upgrades that will affect your stats in different ways. You will always get a guaranteed upgrade after defeating a boss, and gift shops located on every floor will allow you to buy them as well. Some upgrades only effect one stat, while others will cause many to get stronger while causing one additional one to actually become weaker, so you have to be careful.

You will always encounter two bosses on a floor, though only one is required to advance to the next floor. There are many different bosses in Paranautical Activity, and it is always random which ones you will run into. For the most part, all bosses are the same in the sense that they are a large monster that shoots projectiles at you, but some are more unique such as Hanz who will chase you with a chainsaw, summon chainsaws from the floor, and sometimes shoot at you as well.

There are a few different types of rooms that you will run across in Paranautical Activity. Normal rooms will have obstacles strewn through them with just spawn a random assortment of enemies in them and just require you to kill them all in order to unlock the doors to surrounding rooms. Gift Shop rooms allow you to purchase randomly chosen items with the money that you have collected. Boss and elevator rooms both require you to defeat a random boss, but the simple boss room just rewards you with a random item after being successful, and the elevator rooms will always reward you with an item specific to the boss you just defeated.

Each floor will always have the same guaranteed enemies and hazards, but the order that you encounter them in will always be random. Progressing to lower floors will cause you to fight different and stronger enemies, while making the rooms themselves more dangerous to be in, such as large pools of lava.

Other than the basic options being in place, such as volume sliders and some graphical choices, a very important option of changing the Field of View is available. The graphics themselves are so far just basic voxel models with some lighting. The menus have no music or sound at all currently, though when you’re playing the game you will be listening to some loud metal music.

Some classes are easier than others, but in general Paranautical Activity is most likely too hard of a game for anyone that wants to simply sit down and play a game for fun. There is no way to save your progress and if you are doing well, you can expect to have to sit down for up to an hour if you are wanting to get far into the game.

With the combined quickness of old school FPS games with rogue-like qualities, everyone that wants a fast and challenging game will love Paranautical Activity. There is currently nothing at all to collect and unlock in Paranautical Activity, and you have to completely start over every time that you want to play the game.

Paranautical Activity currently costs 10 dollars. It is in a playable state, though it is obvious that it still needs a lot of work done on it. If you don’t mind a rough game with FPS and rogue-like qualities, it is still worth trying out.

Lucid Games announces free-to-play vehicle action game Switchblade for PC

Lucid Games have announced the official Closed Beta for Switchblade, a dynamic new vehicle action game for PC and PlayStation®4, developed using the power of Unreal Engine 4.

From a team that has worked on titles such as Project Gotham Racing, Blur and Geometry wars, Switchblade is an arena-based 5v5 vehicular shooter that combines high-octane combat with an ever-shifting array of strategic choices. Seamlessly switch between heavily armed vehicles at any time to create endless tactical choices. Chase down a rival in a speedy fighter, then swap to a heavy-duty battlewagon to attack your competitor’s tower as your teammates switch between healers & artillery to back you up.

Win battles, grab loot and create your own unique online superstar as you rise through the ranks of a spectacular e-sport championship.

‘We’ve got so much experience with driving games at our studio, but in a race there’s only ever one winner.’ said Craig Howard, Creative Director at Lucid Games. ‘We wanted to make a game that more than one person can win, a true team game and one that rewards tactics as much as reactions’

Switchblade will be released as a Free-to-Play title on PC and PS4 in early 2018.

Ubisoft Announces New Online FPS Multiplayer Title, Atomega

Today, Ubisoft announced Atomega, a new online multiplayer FPS available on September 19th, 2017 on Steam. Developed by Reflections, a Ubisoft studio, in the same small incubator which created Grow HomeTM and Grow Up, Atomega was made with a creatively experimental mind-set, deliberately seeking to create unusual concepts which will surprise and delight players.

Atomega takes place at the very end of time where reality is rapidly dissolving. All that exists are Exoforms, super advanced post-biological lifeforms, masters of matter, energy and the last distant relative to man and machine. As the laws of physics slowly repeal, the Exoforms fight for fun and dominance, replaying the final moments of the universe in an arena at the edge of destruction.

The player must acquire mass, by peacefully collecting it or via firefights, to evolve his Exoform from the nimble Atom to the godlike Omega. Competing for mass, players engage in a frantic battle for supremacy through intense 10-minute rounds, gathering up to eight players. Acquiring mass also grants points and the player with the most points at the end of the round wins. It is a relentlessly competitive experience, an easy to pick-up but hard to master game, with a light-hearted tone echoing the personality of its small development team.

Atomega will be available digitally worldwide on Steam on September 19th, 2017.

Infested Planet Review

Infested Planet is a point capture and defense RTS and is developed by Rocket Bear Games. During a basic level, you will start out with 5 machine gun marines. They can be given a move command, taking them to the destination, or an attack move command which will cause them to attack while moving. Shift can be used to create complex paths or orders for your soldiers, instead of them just moving in a straight line. All soldiers come with a grenade launcher, which you can activate to attack any building in range as long as you have enough ammo to do so. For the most part, they are actually fairly intelligent and will target the most efficient enemy, such as killing towers first. If a soldier dies out in the field, they aren’t lost forever and are instead spawned at a nearby point that you own. The respawn time depends on which gun they are currently using, better ones causing them to take a while to respawn.

There are two resources that you need to keep an eye on while playing Infested Planet. Ammo is a consumable resource that allows your soldiers to use grenades and will also enable stronger structures and technologies such as the siege turret or helipad to function. It will slowly regenerate over time, though you can find yellow ammo crates scattered on maps or even build the ammo technology which will double how much ammo you can accumulate and will cause enemies to sometimes drop ammo as well. BP is the most important resource as it allows you to become stronger through better guns for your soldiers and building technologies. It is earned everytime that you are able to capture a point from the aliens, as well as found in purple crates that you must drag back to a point that you own.

Your soldiers will start out with simple machine guns at the beginning of a mission, but with enough BP you can upgrade them to stronger and more unique tools of destruction. Fusion will allow your soldiers to use shotguns, which are deadly against groups but aren’t very good against single targets. Medics will passively heal one target at a time, while carrying around a grenade launcher with them. Scouts are very fast and weak units that can go invisible to disrupt the enemy hives. Flamethrowers are resistant to damage and can mow through hordes of enemies with ease. Snipers have long range weapons and are very strong against the smaller towers around alien hives. Minigunners have the best durability and massive gun, but are very slow and can’t throw grenades.

Turrets and other helpful devices are available to build while playing Infested Planet to help you defend or assault points. Three types of turrets exist, such as basic bullet and mortar turrets, to the massive siege cannon that can kill a hive all on its own. Defensive mine fields and even large shields that cover a huge areas can be deployed to make sure key points stay owned by you. Helpful teleport pads that let you travel between them and even a robot buddy that a soldier can tow behind them can also be deployed.

Technologies may be researched and are additional buildings that can be constructed with BP anywhere on the map and gives your soldiers and buildings passives that last while they are still standing. Offensive technologies such as grenades and helipad allow you to dish out tremendous damage to the enemies. Some defenseive technologies that you can build include health regeneration and the sharing of health between all of your soldiers.

The aliens that you encounter on the Infested Planet behave simply, but you must look out when they gain mutations. At first, the aliens just have hives scattered around on a map with smaller towers around them that either spawn more crawlers or shoot poison projectiles at your soldiers. Hives will send their crawlers at times to the nearest points that you have captured, so you must make sure you are defending every opening that you may have. If you don’t destroy the hives fast enough, they will rebuild the smaller towers around them for you to deal with again. The aliens are able to recapture points that they have lost to you and will rebuild a weaker version of a hive on them if you aren’t careful. Some hives have been able to capture human structures to use against you, such as turrets and even a shield.

When you destroy a hive of the aliens, it may cause the rest of the aliens on the map to gain a mutation. These are basically passive buffs that last for the rest of that mission or skirmish. With over 30 mutations currently in Infested Planet, your success and enjoyment of your mission is highly dependant on which mutations you get. A single mutation can possibly make your mission much more challenging than normal, such as the basic aliens gaining a ranged attack, or you may be lucky and get a bunch of weaker mutations that don’t add much challenge, such as the spore mines or counterattack.

Some missions will have crates scattered on them, and it is wise to pick them up. Only seen on campaign missions, large light blue crates will allow one of your soldiers to upgrade their gun for free to whichever gun was specified for that mission. Small yellow crates will refill your ammo completely, though they are consumed when too much ammo has been taken so you must seek out other ammo crates when you run out again. Purple crates give you extra BP when you drag them to a point that you own, making them the most important crate to go out and seek.

Most missions of Infested Planet just require you to go around and kill all the alien hives that are present on the map and capture the points under them. Main campaign missions don’t have randomly generated maps, as they were designed to be played a specific way and because of this they are also the most balanced and fair. When you progress further into the campaign, the missions become more unique and challenging. Some of the special missions that you will run into are where you must defend your outpost from the aliens for a certain amount of time since they have a ton of mutations and then attack when they go to sleep which removes the mutations, as well as having to escort a convoy through a dangerous environment where you also can’t capture the points under hives. There will also be non-campaign raid missions that you are able to complete for bonus money, which requires you to go around and capture all the points in a certain amount of time, giving an extra bonus of cash if you can capture them all.

During the main campaign, you will earn money for completing each mission. This can be used in the shop which will contain all the upgrades available in the game, and purchasing an upgrade will allow it to be used in all future missions. There are also single use buffs in which you can purchase as well, which gives you that upgrade right from the beginning in a mission, potentially allowing you to beat missions that were previously too tough for you. Some buffs include the many different types of guns being delivered to a soldier, to having an extra soldier out on the field.

When you’re either bored or done with the campaign, you may want to try out the skirmish mode that is available with Infested Planet. It allows you to choose one of 4 difficulty settings and puts you into a randomly generated map. All the upgrades and technologies that require money to unlock during the campaign will all be unlocked for skirmish levels, so you won’t have to worry about completing the campaign fully in order to enjoy the skirmish levels. The goal of these maps are the same as most other missions, where you must go around and capture all the points that the alien hives are on, while enduring the mutations that have been given to them. Since they are randomly generated, skirmishes will give you countless hours of replayability for Infested Planet. If you feel like a challenge, you can try out the abyss difficulty setting which gives the aliens a mutation from the start as well as preventing two random weapons, research, or structures from getting built.

If you aren’t a fan of the already existing skirmish difficulty modes, it is also possible to determine exactly what you will encounter in a custom designed encounter. You can choose how big a map is, how many hives and how close they are to each other, which mutations aliens may receive and whether they start with any, and of course how many marines you start out with along with BP. Even if you think you have perfectly designed a map, it is still randomly generated so you might have to reset it a few times before it turns out the way that you want.

Infested Planet could be said to be a combination of the basic RTS games like Starcraft and Command and Conquer, along with those rushing capture point games that has hordes of units trying to capture points next to them. It is safe to say that how you the player plays is the RTS part, and how the aliens play is the point capturing part.

Options available in Infested Planet are fairly basic, though it isn’t a very complex game so it can survive without all the options other games get. You have your basic resolution and sound options, and there is even a way to choose how many cores that your CPU uses, which is an intriguing settings since you never see that anywhere else. The graphics themselves are colorful and basic, and they don’t need to be anything else with how the game is played. Everything has nice sound and the marines themselves have multiple lines that they say when you give them orders. Unfortunately, there is very few songs in the game so you may get tired of listing to the same battle song the whole time that you’re blasting aliens.

The randomness of skirmish levels, and the mutations that the aliens can receive, aren’t a negative themselves, but the fact that they can easily determine how easy or hard a level is or even whether it is possible to win. It might place you and your first base in the middle of a map surrounded by alien hives, or in an alcove with only one entrance to it. You may end up spending a large amount of time resetting the level until it is more tolerable. Then again, Solitaire is still a popular game even though it isn’t possible to solve every layout of cards that is possible to get. Other than that, there isn’t anything else glaringly wrong with the game.

Main story missions don’t have a difficulty setting, while skirmish levels allow you to choose how hard they are. Even so, the fact that your marines have unlimited respawn and levels don’t generally end until you win, even the hardest campaign missions can be overcome. With mutations being completely random, you may never know how hard a level may be. All levels in Infested Planet don’t take very long to complete, usually around 10 minutes. The only reason that you may spend more time is when you play a skirmish level on one of the harder difficulty settings, since the aliens will take longer to kill and you will have a lot of trial and error if you’re not skilled enough yet.

Infested Planet is a perfect game for those who are hardcore and looking for a challenge. Even though there is no difficulty setting for the main story missions to make them harder, the skirmish levels have 4 difficulty levels and the highest one will be the truest test of your micro and macro RTS skills. There is currently not a whole lot to unlock in Infested Planet, not just because it is unfinished but mainly because achievements and extra goodies are generally last on the list to implement. The main campaign does allow you to buy upgrades and unlocks through the shop however, and you can earn money for these from playing the main missions and replayable levels.

Infested Planet Costs 15 dollars and is currently in late beta. Because of this, most of the gameplay is already here so you won’t be buying a game with years worth of work still needing to be done. For the low price and high amount of replayability that Infested Planet offers, it is well worth the price to buy it.

Jurassic World Evolution Announced for PS4, Xbox One and PC

Frontier Developments today announced its new game, Jurassic World Evolution, and revealed the first trailer. Based on Universal Pictures’ iconic film franchise and created in collaboration with Universal Brand Development, the game expands on the official Jurassic World mythology and puts players in charge of cinema’s greatest tourist destination – where they will have the opportunity to create and manage their own Jurassic World. Launching in summer 2018, Jurassic World Evolution will be coming to PC, the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, and the Xbox One all-in-one games and entertainment system.

“As long-time fans of the entire Jurassic series we’re thrilled to be putting players in charge of their own Jurassic World,” said Frontier’s Chief Creative Officer, Jonny Watts. “We’re excited to bring over fifteen years of management, simulation, and creature development expertise to a destination and franchise that remains an inspiration to us.”

Jurassic World Evolution evolves players’ relationship with the Jurassic World film franchise, placing them in control of operations on the legendary island of Isla Nublar and the surrounding islands of the Muertes Archipelago. Players will build their own Jurassic World as they bioengineer new dinosaur breeds and construct attractions, containment and research facilities. Every choice leads to a different path and spectacular challenges arise when ‘life finds a way.’

The game is scheduled to release next summer and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will be in theatres June 2018.

Dynasty Warriors 9 to Be Released for PS4, Xbox One and PC in the West

Koei Tecmo America has announced today that Omega Force’s latest entry in the long-running action franchise, Dynasty Warriors 9, will be released on the PlayStation 4 Computer Entertainment System, Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, and Windows PC via Steam. Omega Force unveiled a plethora of new assets that offer a deeper look in to the vast Chinese landscapes and wildlife, new character designs, and brand-new characters!

Whether players choose to follow the main storyline quests or spend time exploring the vast natural wonders of China – from the lush cedar woods and bamboo forests of Chengdu to the legendary Great Wall – the ongoing war will continue to rage along their journey. Skirmishes, clashes, special side missions, and larger scale conflicts can be engaged at the player’s will as they venture through far –reaching lands, allowing for a sense of freedom of choice for the player previously unfelt in previous Dynasty Warriors titles. These battles range from scouting missions to discover powerful enemy officers, to guerilla actions to subdue messengers and scouts, to outright sabotage on enemy supply troops; success in these combat engagements offer great rewards and have an effect on future battles’ difficulty.

To further expand the choices available to the player, Koei Tecmo is also introducing two new playable characters to the game, each formidable in their own right! Man Chong, from the kingdom of Wei, is a brilliant general, skilled debater, and an excellent tactician. Meanwhile, Zhou Cang from the kingdom of Shu is best known for his incredible stamina and speed. Both characters join an already strong roster of fan favorites and will provide an even more diverse selection for players keen on exploring different storylines in different kingdoms.

Speaking of those old fan-favorites, Koei Tecmo is also releasing new costume designs for popular characters Sun Shangxiang, Lu Xun, and the powerful demon-god, Lu Bu!

Aarklash: Legacy Review

Aarklash: Legacy is a squad based tactical RPG developed by Cyanide Studio. The combat in Aarklash: Legacy is in real time with the ability to tactical pause whenever you wish. You can queue up abilities with the shift key which will allow you to chain abilities together so you don’t have to manually do each one when it is ready. It is possible to click on the portraits on enemies and bosses to see exactly what kind of stats and abilities they have, as well as if they have any buffs or debuffs. If one of your Wheel Swords go down in combat, you can easily click on them with another hero to revive them, but they won’t be successful if they’re being attacked.

In total you will run into 8 different characters you can add to your party, who are all called Wheel Swords. You can only have four of them in your party at a time, but you can freely choose who you want most of the time, since sometimes you will be forced to split into two groups. Luckily, even if they aren’t in your current group, they will still gain experience from battles. All Wheel Swords have a unique set of stats and attack types, resource pools, back stories, abilities, and passive bonuses and disadvantages. An example is Wendaroo who is a physical ranged Wheel Sword that uses healing magic, and can’t be silenced but must damage allies in order to gain mana instead of regenerating it over time.

Each Wheel Sword in Aarklash: Legacy has a total of 4 abilities, which can be enhanced later on with skill points. These abilities are all unique amongst each other and do more than just simply deal damage or heal allies. Except for one Wheel Sword, all abilities will have a cooldown as well as costing resource points such as mana or even health. A few abilities have the chance to affect both allies an enemies, which means you need to be careful since it is possible to heal enemies and damage allies. Example abilities are an area of effect knockdown which will interrupt everything around you including allies, and the ability to transfer buffs that are on enemies to yourself.

After party members have learned all of their skills, leveling up will start to earn them skill points. Since the max character level is 20, you will only get a total of 17 points per hero to use, which means you can only fully level up at most two skills at one time. You are able to apply these points to the four abilities that each character has, making it stronger, more efficient, and gaining special properties. It is possible to reset your points at any time which allows you to easily adapt for the current situation, as area of effect abilities won’t do you much for large boss fights. As you go down the ability tree, there will be branches that you have to decide on since you can’t go every direction at one time. An example is a simple healing ability that can later either heal both the target and caster, or become a channeled spell that continuously heals the target.

The only items that you will run into are four types of jewelry, such as rings and relics. Each type is completely equal to all of the others, you are just simply allowed to equip one of each onto each member of your party. They have differing values of rarity which of course increase the stats on them, which range from junk, magical, rare, and epic. Each rarity rank will increase the number of stats on them, from one being on junk and up to six on epic pieces. Stats can range from simply increasing the max hp, and increases magic damage by a percentage. When you are running out of space to carry jewelry, or just want to simply get rid of the pieces you will never use, it is possible to recycle pieces that add up on a counter. After the counter is filled, a random epic rarity piece of the last jewelry type that was recycled is created in your inventory.

As you explore the world of Aarklash: Legacy, you will run into groups of enemies consisting of many different types. Whether you are fighting humans or the undead, there are generally three types of units such as melee, archers, and spell casters. All enemies have the chance to drop an item of some kind, but it doesn’t happen too often. As you progress through the game, the same types of enemies will appear but with stronger stats, and even sometimes adding additional abilities that you need to learn about, so it is somewhat refreshing to see similar enemies.

While you’re adventuring through the world of Aarklash: Legacy, you will come upon large bosses at times. These bosses are unique and will act very different compared to everything else you will run across. It is wise to click their portrait and learn about all of the abilities that they use, since knowing how to prevent abilities like the automatic killing of your party is essential to victory. On defeat you will be rewarded with experience and a large pile of jewelry, usually containing at least one epic piece.

When you reach the second act of Aarklash: Legacy, you will start to encounter many different types of puzzles. Most of them are required in order to progress farther, but they aren’t too difficulty and just require a little bit of thinking. You will run into the same types of puzzles over and over, but they get more difficult and add in different elements at times however. Example puzzles are walking through a hallway with projectiles that will teleport you back to the start if you touch them, and creating shapes with switches to match an example shape given to you.

Most of these types of games just have you running around as a single character, or groups of characters in turn based combat. Aarklash plays a lot like Dragon Age: Origins in that you are able to pause the game and give orders to everyone, though nothing is able to be automated. It also feels a lot like a single player MMO raiding game, since the boss fights require a lot of coordination and you only have to rely on yourself.

All of the important options that you would need exist in Aarklash: Legacy such as rebindable controls, volume sliders, and graphical options. There is a unique gameplay option that you can turn on which will automatically pause the game when certain conditions occur, such as start of combat or one of your party members go down in agony. Graphical quality is quite standard with nothing bad or amazing about them. For some reason, the game randomly causes your GPU to go up and down in temperature for no apparent reason, and may cause weaker computers to overheat(just guessing). Everything is voice acted, though the quality of it could have been better, especially when the dog/kangaroo hero growls and snarls.

Especially on higher difficulty, it feels like you have to pause way too often, and thirty second cooldowns feel like five minutes. There’s nothing negative about being able to pause the game and coordinate all of your attacks, but since nothing happens automatically except for basic attacks, you will have to be constantly giving your party the same orders over and over. Other games like Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Age series had ways to let your party automatically use abilities while you can still manually give orders.

You will accumulate tons of jewelry to equip on your heroes, and eventually it can take a long time to equip your heroes, especially when you have 8 of them. Although it’d be best to manually do it, a “Equip Best” button could easily shorten the amount of time it takes to outfit everyone. Even though every hero that you can use in your party is unique from one another, some are just plain better than others and when you can only have 4 in a group at once and everyone gains experience even when not in your group, there’s just no reason to use some of them. There is one time where you are forced to split into two groups though, which is nice when you want to experience even the weaker wheel swords.

You can easily put the game into normal or easy difficulty if you don’t want a challenge. Even so, you will still need to know what types of abilities enemies and bosses can use as well as your own party. You will eventually run into puzzles, but they aren’t too challenging as long as you use your head a little bit. You can save at any time and the battles don’t last very long so anyone with a tight schedule can easily enjoy Aarklash: Legacy.

When you put Aarklash: Legacy on hard or even Ragnarok difficulty, you are in for quite the challenge. Enemies will be doing a whole lot more damage and fallen comrades will take even longer to resurrect if you can even get to them. Giant bosses are possibly the best thing you can look for, since it is a lot like doing a raid in MMOs but only with you in command. Other than possibly finding hidden bosses and treasure chests, there currently is nothing in the preview version that involves collecting or completing other than the main story. Achievements are available however, though they don’t affect the game in any way. Haven’t solved the game yet, but you can easily expect to get well over 12 hours of entertainment from it, depending on the level of difficulty and how often you have to reload.

Aarklash: Legacy is priced at 21 dollars and there is currently no DLCs announced at this time. If you are a big fan of commanding a small group of heroes around and using strategy and tactics to get past the hardest of obstacles, Aarklash: Legacy is well worth your money to buy.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 Kang The Conqueror Trailer

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today released a new trailer for LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 featuring Kang the Conqueror, a time-travelling Super Villain who has stolen numerous cities from across time and space to form the expansive Open Hub World of Chronopolis. First revealed at Comic-Con International: San Diego, the video spotlights Kang in his ultimate quest to take over the universe, as well as the many Marvel locations that make up Chronopolis, including Ancient Egypt, New York City in 2099, Wakanda, Xandar and many other Marvel settings.

At Comic-Con, TT Games also revealed a brand new character created in tandem with Marvel Games, fusing together the ever popular Carnage and Venom to form a new Marvel Super Villain called Carnom, a character who has never existed in the Marvel Universe before and is completely unique to LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2. Along with Carnom, TT Games announced a slew of other characters coming to the game, including Howard the Duck and his Iron Duck variant, who will be voiced by Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller, Gwenpool, the fan-favorite amalgam of Gwen Stacy and Deadpool, Vulture, from the “Spider-Man: Homecoming” film, Cosmo the Spacedog, Doctor Octopus, Forbush Man, Greenskyn Smashtroll and Throg. These Super Heroes and Super Villains will join the recently revealed Medusa and Lockjaw of the Inhumans, all playable in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2.

Arcane Saga Online Review

Arcane Saga Online is a free to play massively multiplayer online role playing game developed by CJ Internet Game Studio. There are 4 races and 7 classes to choose from, while 3 races have both male and female options and each of the 7 classes can only be accessed from one of the 7 character race and gender options. Because of this, there isn’t a whole lot of character customization, since you will just have to pick the race and gender that has the class you are interested in. Each class will eventually have a total of 3 jobs to choose from, a party job at level 30 and PvP job at level 45, which all range from dps, tanking, healing, and PvP. After picking your desired class, you will be able to somewhat customize what your character will look like. Only the hair and face will have options to choose from, though there is a large selection of colors that you can choose for your hair and skin. Even though this is a free to play game, all of this means that there will not be paid options to change genders or even races, since it is all tied to your class. You might think you’re done, but you will also be able to choose what your Anima looks like. The options are the same as your character, in regards to hair and skin choices.

When you are around level 15, the Anima that you designed during character creation will become available to you. Other than simply following you around everywhere that you go, the anima can be quite useful in different situations. Moreso when you apply skill points to it, the abilities that you use during combat may be imitated by your Anima, which effectively causes the selected ability to be used twice. This can be deadly or helpful when you use an especially strong ability. Your Anima can also use a purify ability on either dead or alive enemies, which will give you crafting reagents. There is even a way to take control of it, allowing you to walk around in its shoes. . . you might even discover something this way.

If you have played other MMOs, there will be nothing new here. You will be going from zone to zone doing quests that involve killing different enemies over and over. Every once in a while you will get a quest that will want you to do something else, but they generally just require you to click and item when you get to a certain location.

Many activities, from simply using the in game ui and completing quests, will earn you simple achievements that will reward you with Star Coins. This kind of currency can be used in an in game store always available to you through the interface, with lots of different tools to help you on your journey to max level. A lot of these items are the same ones that can be bought with real money, though you can buy Star Coins with money as well, so if you prefer to earn items instead of simply opening up your wallet you are able to.

Along with the Star Coins that you are able to earn, you will also be given a lot of gifts through the mail system automatically when you reach certain character levels. These gifts come in a wide variety of the same ones that you can buy with either the coins or real money, even Star Coins themself, making another way to earn items without spending a dime. The issue with this though is that since you get quite a ton of them, if you try to accept them all at the same time your inventory will fill up fast and with limited space, this will cause a problem.

Every job will always have every skill in its arsenal available to you, so you will be playing with the same abilities from level one all the way up to 70. This may sound boring, but the skill points that you earn from leveling up can be applied to any of your abilities, causing them to either be stronger or work more often. You will have to wisely choose when and where to spend your points since they are per class instead of per job, since if you put them all into a healing role you will have none to put into your PvP job.

Except for a few jobs, most just have abilities that don’t seem to work or go together well, and you just feel like randomly pushing buttons. The addition of the combo system gets rid of this and allows you to create your own rotation. You choose which ability starts the combo, as well as 5 abilities after it that must be used in order. Each of the 5 abilities can be paired with a buff, which have a small chance of being applied to you when the successfully cast each ability in the combo. Buffs can range from simple status bonuses such as STR+, to healing you or regenerating mana. The combo system is very strict in how long you get to activate your abilities in a row, which balances it for PvP and rewards damage dealers for standing in the correct places.

The gear that exists in Arcane Saga isn’t very special on its own, which is where all the spheres come into play. Each piece of gear, from weapons and armor, to jewelry such as rings, has a base stat on it such as physical or magic defense. They all also have different colored slots to put items in called spheres, which have a large variety of colors. Each sphere is limited to which slots they can go into, base colors can only go into their own slot, while mixed color spheres can go into any color that they are part of. Since gear itself has almost no stats, the bonuses that you can get from spheres is huge and is important to pick the best stats for your job. The stats that spheres have can be any of the stats that exist in the game, such as extra hp and mp to bonus strength and wisdom. Each piece of gear also has two locked grey sphere slots that require special items to unlock, and the grey spheres that you can acquire are very powerful such as giving you a bonus of 30 to every stat at once. All spheres can easily be taken out and put back into any piece of gear at any time, so you can easily save your strong spheres for newer pieces of equipment.

There are many different types of equipment, potions and food, spheres, and gear upgrades that are available for you to craft. All crafting requires many different types of materials, and all of them can be found while killing monsters or disenchanting already obtained gear. The need to go around and hunt for shiny rocks to mine or plants to pick doesn’t exist in this game, which gets rid of a lot of grind and wasted time of waiting for your character to mine their 5000th rock. When crafting gear, you may or may not get a random assortment of already equipped spheres in the piece you made, making a good way to accumulate different types of spheres. Potions and food just require items you can find while killing enemies, and they are all simple ones that just restore health and mana. While you can’t directly make the colored spheres on your own, you can gamble ones that you already own along with a little bit of money which will randomly change its color and stats either for the better or worse. Grey spheres are the only ones that you can directly create, and they cost a lot of material to make.

Starting at level 30, you may begin to explore the many dungeons that are available every five levels. Grouping together with 5 other people, a tank and healer accompanied by 4 damage dealers will work their way through the many different rooms full of enemies, while periodically running into bosses to defeat. At first the dungeons are very easily done, even two people can complete the first dungeon, but as you get higher in levels the dungeons and their residents will become stronger and use more complex abilities. Bosses in the beginning just require the healer to keep the tank alive while everyone else kills it, but later on the bosses will indirectly attack the group with are of effect spells so everyone will have to make sure they’re paying attention to what they’re doing. All bosses have a chance to drop an item that can be sold for a large amount of money, as well as pieces of a dungeon specific set that can benefit any job.

Compared to other MMOs, you could say this game is simply unpolished and not worth the time. The grind to max level as well as materials to craft items is drastically reduced in Arcane Saga Online, since you can easily get to level 30 in the first day of playing. Gear having the ability to be greatly customized is another plus, since you can decide exactly what stats go on your gear.

The available options are very limited, but luckily you are able to rebind what every button does. A lot of the nice features and options in other MMOs however don’t exist. Even at the max settings, graphics for Arcane Saga are very simple and basic, though the character models do look fairly nice while the world and everything else look like they were made a decade ago. Every area has its own music while all abilities and attacks also have unique sounds, so they didn’t skimp there.

Overall, almost every mechanic in the game feels like as if it is unpolished. Everything feels and looks very simple, as well as being stiff and unresponsive when you try to do certain things. Not only does it exist in the game mechanics, but it is another MMO that feels like it was quickly and rushed through a translation team, since at times it can take a while before you figure out what something means. Skills and different specializations have always been a staple mechanic in MMOs, but in Arcane Saga they really limit your ability to change them around easily. You can only switch your job around 4 times every 24 hours, and in order to move your skill points around you must reset each one separately… which will cost a lot of Star Coins. Along with the previous restriction, you also can only enter each available dungeon four times a day, which can put a hamper on your journey if you don’t like quest leveling. Inventory space is very limited, and you can’t buy and use extra bags which you can do in almost every other MMO. With the amount of free goodies that they send you from leveling up, your inventory can get filled up very fast unless you decide to use all the gifts. Although it doesn’t affect gameplay, the fact that each race is tied to one class, that creates a big limitation in the customization of characters. Some people probably don’t want to be forced into a male role for tanks, or female role for healers. This is even moreso bizarre when you realise that both human choices only come with dps as both of their PvE jobs. . . male having two magical dps jobs and female having two ranged dps jobs.

As long as you are around the level as the enemies that you face while questing, they are all very easy since it is as simple as pushing buttons until the monsters are dead. If you ever struggled as a tank or healer in other MMOs, you might just want to stick to being a damager dealer when it comes to dungeons since both of the other roles will most likely be too much for you again. Even so, as you progress through the game even the people doing all the damage to bosses will have to make sure they aren’t causing the enemies to attack them as well as dodging all of the abilities that bosses tend to use on groups. Leveling your character out in the field while doing quests and killing enemies will allow you to quit at any time, since none of that content takes more than a few minutes to complete each task. However, if you are more interested in doing dungeons, they can easily take from 30-60 minutes to complete, and that is only if everyone is doing their job right. If you are doing a dungeon with possibly weaker players or strangers in general, you might not want to be willing to stick around for the amount of time it will take to complete the dungeons.

As with all other MMOs, PvP is an aspect that exists in Arcane Saga and it can happen out in the world while you’re leveling or in designated areas. With the wide selection of skills and abilities that exist on all the classes, as well as PvP specific jobs, you can expect PvP combat to be engaging. Even the PvE in Arcane Saga is challenging, which we don’t seem to see anymore in newer MMOs these days. A group that is above the dungeon’s level with a very good healer and tank can easily struggle on the bosses, meaning that groups that plan to do PvE content at the minimum level will definitely have a rough time. The achievements that currently exist in the game aren’t very difficult and most people will have earned most if not all of them by time they are at max level. Peros, on the other hand, will be what all collectors will be after because there are well over 100 of them. Some can simply be bought, but others will have to be found out in the world and collected with your Anima, such as a few guaranteed ones that can be found in the dungeons.

Arcane Saga Online is a completely free to play mmo and it does not suffer from having microtransactions. Currently, 99% of everything that you can buy with real money makes it a faster leveling experience to the max level of 70. There are a few cosmetic items though mostly for your Anima. Everything bought in the store uses NC, which costs a dollar per 1000. Star Coins can also be purchased, and with the most expensive purchase of 1000 of them being 27 and a half dollars, you might want to just earn the ones available in game first in case you don’t need that many. Most of everything costs between 1-5 dollars each, and can last either one day or 7 days, so it isn’t too overly expensive considering it is a free game. Mounts can also be rented for up to 30 days, which cost 4-5 dollars. Nothing in the store can give people large advantages, only unique convenience items such as being able to revive at 100% restoring at the spot that you died, but they can be costly. Compared to other free mmos, Arcane Saga Online has one of the best micro transaction models that won’t drain players of money. . . unless they want to reach max level very fast.