Civilization V: Gods and Kings – Into the Smokey Skies

We interview the team at Firaxis about their unique scenario in Gods and Kings.

Imagine a world divided into empires obsessed with steam power. In this world Empires ruthlessly undercut and smash their peers into oblivion – not in the name of god, but because such actions are considered valid for the sake of “progress.”

This is exactly the sort of world you’re dropped into when you start up the Empires of the Smokey Skies scenario in the upcoming Civilization V expansion, Gods and Kings. Only instead of the typical civilizations you’re given a set of fresh ones to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Alongside new leaders come a slew of reworked features, including alternate victory conditions, new steampunk-inspired units, and lots of new information to absorb in the fleshed out civilopedia entries for Smokey Skies. To get a bit more information on the design process and learn more about this unique scenario for Gods and Kings, we hopped on the phone with Civilization V Ed Beach and Anton Strenger, designers on Gods and Kings.

Empires of the Smokey Skies came about because the team at Firaxis wanted to do something cool that presented an alternate history. Marketing Associate Pete Murray came up with the idea originally, and Strenger was “attracted to the steampunk scenario and the setting because Civilization V is the ultimate history simulator.” Strenger loves how Civilization allows you to play through totally implausible situations, such as “when you win a space victory as the Mongols.” He wanted to design a scenario that takes fundamental game concepts like the tech tree and come up “with an alternate path.”

Smokey Skies is also shorter than a typical game of Civilization, something Strenger says was intentional. “The paradigm for a Civ scenario is something that is an interesting but short variation on the stuff that Civilization offers. Whereas a base game of Civ can take up to 10 hours, the scenarios are kind of an interesting peek into another very focused kind of experience.” “The other two scenarios that are shipping with the expansion are also kind of long ones,” added Ed Beach, “those do take probably five or six hours to play through. So we just wanted a good mix…keeping the steampunk scenario fit in with that.”

Despite being a shorter experience, the team at Firaxis didn’t shy away from spending the time developing the world of Smokey Skies. Included with the expansion are civilopedia entries for each faction, with lengthy quotes that give insight into the minds of their leaders. “We actually found out that internally the team got more and more into it the more we developed it,” said Beach. Strenger himself developed a lot of the base ideas for the civilopedia early on as well, because “establishing what the world was would be important. As a steampunk scenario it’s kind of in-between true history of the base game, and kind of something crazy left-field science fantasy.” Thus to place it properly Strenger developed a more fleshed out backstory, something he hopes will help players get into it since it rides the line between fantasy and reality.

With the world fleshed out, the real challenge was creating victory conditions that fit in with the scenario. To do this Strenger sat down with the rest of the design team to and figured out a system of five titles. To win players have to earn three of five titles and hold them for three turns. Each of the five titles is unlocked after certain technologies have been unlocked, and players constantly knock one another out of position. It results in a constant tug-of-war between civilizations, where one empire can go from fifth place to first in a matter of a few turns if they play just right. It’s also “the most open-ended of our scenarios” said Beach, adding that “there’s a lot of replayability” because of the various victory conditions and how they work on an array of map types instead of a specific land mass.

While religion is probably the biggest gameplay component of the Gods and Kings expansion, you won’t see it in Empires of the Smokey Skies. “Our religious game is focused up through the renaissance, and this is a scenario that occurs in an alternate industrial age, so it’s sort of after religion,” said Strenger. Espionage does make an appearance, though, and can directly affect your chances for victory since clever spy use can net you additional technologies, resulting in faster unlocks of victory conditions.

Empires of the Smokey Skies is only one component of Gods and Kings, which includes two additional scenarios and the ability to set up your own maps starting from the dawn of time. For a more detailed dive into what the base game of Gods and Kings brings to the franchise, check out our initial breakdown. For our review, check in sometime next week after Gods and Kings releases on June 19th.

Is Pro Evolution Soccer 13 A Title Contender?

Konami's football franchise looks set to make a play for FIFA's crown.

It feels unfair to begin a preview of PES 13 by comparing it to its nearest and dearest rival, but not doing so would ignore the proverbial elephant in the room. It would be an understatement to say that over the last few years, Konami’s football game franchise has had a considerable amount of its thunder stolen by EA’s FIFA series. To put it bluntly, it’s been booted firmly into second place.

It’s tempting to chalk this up to funding and cast FIFA as the footie sim corollary to Man City, a former mid-table club turned league dominating beast due to an injection of largesse and talent. An element of this is self-evident in PES 13’s presentation. The player models and animations look the part and the in-game commentary’s decent, but the crowd noises sound generic – presumably because Konami doesn’t have the funds to send a sound team around the globe capturing club chants and region-specific crowd reactions.

The overriding factor in FIFA’s success and PES’s downfall, however, is as crucial in the gaming industry as it is in professional sports: direction. FIFA had it and PES didn’t – that is, up until PES 11, a game that, while far from perfect, indicated that Konami had woken up to the fact that it could no longer rely on the affections of its rapidly deteriorating fanbase. PES 12 continued the push, providing a style of play that wasn’t arcade-like, but wasn’t exactly a straight sim, either. The emphasis here was on fast-paced attacking football and placing more control in the hands of the players in aspects like like shot-taking, dribbling and ball-trapping.

PES 13 feels like the next step forward in the journey started by PES 11. Its improvements can be broken down into the three key areas: gameplay, an improved AI, and Player ID (which has a bearing on both). First up is the PES Full Control (PES FC) feature, an advanced version of PES 11’s Total Control system. What this means, according to Konami, is that players can now put the ball pretty much anywhere they want on the pitch, in any direction, at any speed and at any height.

This being PES, the level of each individual player’s skill is brought to bear – you can’t just hammer the buttons and expect a result. Put the work in and you’ll become a defender’s nightmare, issuing quick cuts through the back four and lofting balls into space for headers. Players can also mess about with their Dynamic One-Twos; clicking LB and the A button sends a nearby attacker running in the direction dictated by the left thumbstick, allowing the player to either feed them the ball in space, or use this as a diversionary tactic to flummox the defence – although, admittedly, this works a lot better against a human adversary than the game’s improved AI.

Players also have more control over shots and dribbling. Players can place shots, which is an absolute boon during dynamic play inside the box or when faced with a one-on-one situation with the keeper. Players can curl shots around defenders, nutmeg other players and chip-shot over keepers who have come too far off their line. Deft Touch Dribbling offers a precise, tight control of the ball, allowing those who put in the practice to skin opponents, create space for shot chances, or just hang back and wait for the opposition to come to them while they consider their attacking options.

Dynamic First Touch dovetails nicely with PES 13’s emphasis on control, while also allowing a fluid style of play. Players can bring a bouncing or long ball to heel by hitting the right trigger, or they can opt to flick or backheel the ball onto players running into space on attack.

Player ID, one of the game’s three main pillars, governs a lot of the deftness in these moves. The focus here by Konami has been to make players on the pitch look and play like their real-life counterparts. The first half of this is cosmetic, and impressively so; Christiano Ronaldo and Kaka, for example, not only look scarily like their real-world versions, but their running and stance animations mirror them as well. Not only that, but both are better able to pluck the ball out of the air with ease or skin an opponent than, say, a defender like Eric Abidal (who, despite retiring in May this year, was still in Barcelona’s first team in the PES 13 build I played this week).

Speaking of defenders, the juiced-up ProActive AI positions the backs a little more tactically, so they’re not caught as often on the break by speedy attackers. They’ll adjust to compensate for where the attackers are putting the ball and move to close them down, while cutting out paths for through-balls. It should be noted that defending in PES 13 isn’t as easy as in FIFA titles, where you can actually allow the AI to do the heavy lifting for you. Then again, if you didn’t want a challenge, why are you playing PES 13 in the first place?

The improved AI also organises the player’s attackers a bit better, with AI players better able to anticipate where the player will put through-balls and lob passes. This happens when the player is defending too; depending on the Player ID, certain off-the-ball attackers will hover at the top end of their half, waiting for the opportunity to launch an attack on the break if the player picks them out with a lobbed clearance.

It may sound, at this stage, that while there’s much to admire about this year’s upcoming PES game, it still lacks that special something – that killer feature – to unseat FIFA from its position of dominance. It certainly has direction in its gameplay, sitting squarely in the sweet spot where fantasy meets reality and success is dependent on practice and experience. But looking at the list of features, tweaks and tucks, it’s easy to gain the impression that they don’t add up to much outside clinical evaluation. So, consider this riposte from a dyed-in-the-wool FIFA player who buys FIFA religiously year-in year-out.

I didn’t care much for PES 12 and cared even less for PES 11, but after less than an hour at its controls, I genuinely found myself warming towards PES 13. Once I battled through the initial teething problems (pressing Y for a header, for example) I found myself becoming fascinated by learning new moves, finesse dribbles and clever flick passes in attacking play.

Outfoxing defenders gave me a substantial charge, shutting down attackers was immensely satisfying and threading a series of passes into a goal-scoring chance made me positively glow. By the end of my time with the game I wanted to delve deeper into its interface and master its style of play. In short, I wanted to spend a lot more time playing PES 13, and if that isn’t an indication that FIFA 13 has some serious competition this year for its crown, I don’t know what is.

Being a Werewolf in The Sims 3: Supernatural

The latest details on what it's like to play a werewolf in The Sims 3: Supernatural.

The recently announced The Sims 3: Supernatural takes cues from the likes of Twilight and Teen Wolf to introduce the werewolf fantasy into EA's beloved franchise. So what exactly does it mean to suffer from lycanthropy in Sims 3? How exactly do they handle the violence and other issues that being a wolf-man would cause? To find out we've gathered details from EA, as well as spoken with Jon Leslie, a producer on the upcoming expansion.

Making a scene.

The biggest thing that the team behind the Sims 3 wants to change with Supernatural is how hard it was to become a werewolf in the older games. “In Sims 2 you had to figure out how to find the pack leader and get him to bite you, but now -- right from the get go-- you'll be able to create a wolf in Create a Sim,” noted Leslie, “not only can you control what the human form looks like, but you can toggle back and forth between so you can fully customize what your Sim will look like when he transforms.” You can toggle your wolf's fur style and color, as well as give them specific hairstyles for when they change. The werewolves in Supernatural aren't the ghastly creatures out of a horror flick, either, but look more human than you're used to -- such as how they do in the new Teen Wolf TV series.

As you might expect, lycanthropy-cursed Sims have to watch out when it comes to their relationships. Transformation occurs whenever a full moon rises, but can also sneak up on you and occur at inopportune times if your Sim's mood ever gets too low. Unlike the full moon transformation, though, the mood-based switch lasts for a tunable duration, which you can affect as you build up your Lycanthropy Skill. Additionally, werewolves can transform at will, and doing so enables you to bounce back to your human form whenever you choose. Be warned, though, when a Sim transforms back into its human form it will be disoriented, and transforming is taxing on your Sims' hunger meter.

Not quite the crazy wolf-man you might expect.

Disorientation doesn't sound good, right? Well, that's pretty tame compared to what your werewolf might do if he's around company. Whether you spawn your werewolf inside the included Moolight Falls city, or add them to your current town, you won't ever have to worry about them accidentally hulking out and murdering your friends. “In pre-production we had a tendency to go a little too dark,” said Leslie, but “it's probably darker than...what's been done in The Sims before.” So, no, your werewolf won't kill people, but they will cause fear in fellow Sims, might randomly kiss them and could destroy property around themselves.

Obviously the team behind Supernatural wants you to want to make a werewolf, and has also included a bunch of perks for lycanthropes. Building up your your Lycanthropy Skill can give you hefty benefits, including rare collectables when you're hunting as a werewolf, and decreased loss of various things like Energy and Bladder whether or not you're transformed. Werewolves also live longer, have bonuses to their Athletic Skill, can eat raw meats and fatigue slower.

Being the only werewolf in the world is a lonely existence, but you can spread it around. You can have children that inherit lycanthropy (50/50 chance if you mate with a normal Sim), or you can work your relationship up with other Sims, converting them with a bite (as long as they accept the offer). If you earn enough experience and Lifetime Happiness you can purchase an Alpha Wolf reward, giving you a terrifying howl and the ability to bite anyone without being rejected. Your werewolf can also interact with other Sims who don't want to convert in a new special way. “You can become a protector, as you would in, say, True Blood,” said Leslie, wherein you make sure the human is saved from the vampires that also encounter the towns in Supernatural.

Werewolves run on all fours to get where they need to go.

If you're looking for a new fantasy life to live in The Sims 3 and are intrigued by what you've learned of werewolves, you can try them out for yourself when The Sims 3: Supernatural releases this September.

Offensive Combat -- A Shooter for the Crude, Cheap and Core

Fun FPS combat all in a browser.

Offensive Combat is a joke. No, really, the entire game, right down the name itself, is supposed to be funny. Generic name aside, Offensive Combat's success partially rests on the idea that it can stand out in an increasingly crowded space by forgoing the super serious or military look of other games and embrace the most childish and ridiculous aspects of online shooter communities. Like you'd expect from a shooter trying to appeal to fans of competitive shooters, it also has all the bells and whistles, with graphics on par with many Xbox Live or PlayStation Network games. In this regard it isn't really all that unique outside of its comedic factor...until you realize it's all playing straight out of a browser.

Looks pretty good, right?

After downloading a tiny Unity Engine plugin, you'll be able to immediately jump into Offensive Combat. Other free-to-play shooters like Blacklight: Retribution or Tribes: Ascend may look better, but there's still a higher barrier to entry for many people when they have to download and install a client. Developer U4iA Games wants to avoid that and make the entire experience as inviting as possible. Say, for instance, you played Offensive Combat and were into it, the idea is that you can then quickly text your buddies, have them sign up and start playing in your group within minutes.

Despite being browser based, Offensive Combat isn't going to limit you in terms of its mechanics. This isn't a social game shoehorned into a first-person perspective, but a real, competitive title created by a staff made up of shooter developers like Zipper, Zombie and Activision. Action in Offensive Combat is fast, and anyone who plays the likes of Call of Duty or Blacklight should feel right at home. Along with your main weapon, everyone gets access to a range of secondary and melee weapons, as well as grenades. How good you are matters, too, since Offensive Combat rewards skilled players more than anyone who spends money.

Of course if you do want to spend money the team at U4iA plans to give you plenty to buy. Avatars are highly customizable, and you can mix-and-match different heads, arms, legs, torsos, and gloves to create everything from serious looking soldiers to lizards with phallic looking bananas jutting from their crotch. Everything in the game outside of a few vanity items and boosts are planned to be purchasable with both in-game and actual money, and Offensive Combat will also utilize a rental system for people who want to try things out briefly.

Along with customizing your character's appearance, you can also tweak their weapons and what U4iA calls their "pwn." Killing an enemy nets you experience to level up your account, and earning levels grants you access to purchase new tiers of weapons and other unlockables, as well as new perks (which are earned solely through leveling up). If you manage to take someone down and it looks relatively safe, you can walk up to their corpse before the timer counts down and hit the G key, initiating a pwn. Pwns are basically taunts, though U4iA's put a large number of them in, and each one comes with a custom animation. Thus you might manage to take someone down with a well-placed headshot and then run over and fart on their face, dance on their grave, or even just rock out. Doing a pwn presents a risk / reward situation, since each takes a few seconds to complete and if someone interrupts you there's no bonus.

The most controversial design decision U4iA's made with Offensive Combat comes in the way they handle rewards for kills. You always get the experience you earn, but since each enemy drops in-game currency or other items upon death, you have to go and pick up the reward before someone else does. This makes sniping and camping less valuable, something I think is smart, but I'm not so sure how people will react to having others take something they might feel they've earned. Still, it could be worth the frustration because it can create dynamic focal points on the battlefield, where everyone is hustling to a particular choke point or landmark to try and score fat loot.

Closed beta starts soon, with a full release coming before the end of the year. Prior to release they also plan on putting in controller support, as well as integrating iOS into the Offensive Combat experience -- though not at all how I expected. Since the Unity Engine works across iOS and PC, I expected them to make some sort of port of Offensive Combat. Instead, they're trying to make the mobile version an accompaniment to the PC version, enabling players to do things like use their phone to call in airstrikes for PC players. Details are scarce, but we're supposed to hear more on that in the coming months.

Full on banana suits.

Offensive Combat's ridiculous take on character appearance and the pwn animations help it stand out, but the real reason it could succeed is how simple it is to get started. When all you need is a browser to hop in, you have a ginormous potential audience. The real question, then, is will Offensive Combat's low barrier to entry and quirky premise earn it the cash U4iA needs, or will it get pwned by its higher fidelity competition?

Is Horn the Next Infinity Blade?

The weak point is on its back. It's always on the back.

Last fall Phosphor Games came out of nowhere with The Dark Meadow, a twisted and horrific spin on Infinity Blade’s first-person combat. The game’s semi-open exploration, incredible visuals and surprisingly extensive & high-quality voice acting ensured that all of Phosphor’s future games would be highly anticipated. At least by me.

Today Phosphor has finally lifted the lid on Horn, its next title. If the early media and playable build I experienced are anything to go by, the studio seems determined to outdo itself. And maybe everyone else.

Gamers play as Horn (natch), a blacksmith’s apprentice on a mission to find out why his fellow villagers have been turned into monsters. Along the way players will encounter bits and pieces of a larger mystery. Hulking and rusted golems litter the landscape, hinting that Horn’s world has contains something greater than the typical fantasy backstory.

Horn’s third-person action-adventure gameplay allows for complete free-roaming movement through the nine stages - no virtual buttons. Players simple tap where they want to move, with all other controls handled by contextual touch-screen inputs. Shimmying along ledges, activating grappling hooks and all other specialized movements that would normally be handled with a button press have been translated to gestural controls instead.

The combat I experienced was all one-on-one. The camera locks-on to your single opponent, allowing you to circle around them Zelda-style. This makes it easy to dodge-roll away from enemy attacks and counter-attack with swipes of your own.

A lot of questions about Horn still remain. Just how impressive the final product turns out to be will be determined by the quality of the puzzles, the characters and the exploration of the game world – all details not in place in the short demo I experienced. But the experience did prove that the iPad can play host to a console-style, freely navigable world; no rails required. It proved that clever and thoughtful developers can create touch-powered core game interfaces that don’t need to make compromises or slap a controller layout onto the corners of your iPad.

IGN will have more on Horn as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime be sure to check out our full gallery of screenshots.

SimCity Social: Facebook-style Simulation

Balancing depth with mass market appeal.

In SimCity Social, you’ll still build residential, commercial and industrial structures, put out fires in your cities, control crime by setting police stations, set up road networks and deal with pollution, all while trying to grow your population. You won’t, however, customize tax rates, manage power grids or sewage systems. It’s an attempt to balance the depth of the traditional SimCity experience with more mass market-friendly mechanics and social elements.

A core element of SimCity Social is competition related to the number of virtual people living in your city. Your friends on Facebook are displayed across the bottom of the in-game screen, and aside from their picture, the prominent feature is their city’s population number. If they’re way ahead, and you’re afflicted by an especially aggressive type of jealousy, you can travel to their town and exacerbate hazardous situations.

You can hop into a city while a friend isn’t logged into Facebook, and by doing so, you might find one of their residential structures in on fire. A good friend might alert their fire department. As a not-so-good friend, you can dump gas on the fire and flatten the structure. You could invite the local homeless population into their apartments, hide the keys to fire engines and help criminals escape. Whether you choose to do something malicious or not, you’re still rewarded, so not only the good guys win.

The points you receive for interacting with the cities of your friends can be put towards special structures. If you’re nice, the selection of special structures will be bright and colorful. If you decide to mess up your friends’ towns, you’ll be able to build towering spiky spires and giant robot factories, so the look of your own city could eventually reflect the way you decide to behave.

Interacting with your friends also rewards you with free Energy. Energy, as is the case in many Facebook games, is required to perform in-game actions. Pretty much the only thing you can do in without Energy is set up roads, which at least means you can set a grid around areas where you eventually plan to set up more houses or businesses until your Energy gradually recharges or you pay real money to purchase more. And in case you’ve been a jerk, before bailing out of a friend’s city, you can leave a gift; animal-shaped clouds, hot air balloons full of confetti and a number of other items the friend will see when he or she logs back in.

Assuming you have enough Energy and in-game currency, you can set up new businesses and industrial centers. These aren’t auto-upgrading zones, they’re just one-time purchase, pre-made buildings that you place around the game world. Their placement will affect population, so taking care to place commercial centers near residential areas and having proper fire and police department coverage of your city could be important to create a safe and effective metropolis. Or you could just build a giant robot factory and let everything else burn down.

If buildings do catch on fire and crumble, they aren’t destroyed entirely. They’ll come back after a while, so there’s no need to repurchase them. Though businesses won’t auto-upgrade, but they can be manually augmented by spending resources to boost their effectiveness. So if you have a sports stadium in the center of a dense residential area, it’s a good idea to upgrade it to broaden its effects on your city, which in turn will upgrade the structure’s appearance into something fancier.

Residential zones in SimCity Social function more traditionally, where you demarcate territory as residential and then watch as NPCs move in and the ever-morphing buildings that sprout from the ground show how well that particular tile is doing. After you’ve got a kernel of thriving metropolis, you can expand beyond the initial borders to the edges of what appears to be a large map. The undeveloped territory will sometimes contain bonus elements. You may find a plot of land where, for reasons buried somewhere in the tubes of the Internet, giraffes wander around, which can be turned into a tourist site if you develop around it.

With a number of elaborately detailed buildings and special animations within many structures, your eye will often dart from one thing to the next while staring at the SimCity Social screen. Things like a kid booting a soccer ball in the stadium, monster trucks roaring around an arena and cars loaded with moving boxes pulling up to empty residential zones vie for your attention, often punctuated by the explosion of virtual currency icons when something significant occurs. There’s also the mayor’s house, basically a visual representation of your city’s level of advancement, which you’ll continually be upgrading and customizing as you play.

Maxis and Playfish appear to have built SimCity Social from a stack of good ideas. Though it may not have the depth of the SimCity scheduled to launch in February 2013 for Windows, and assuming the Energy system isn’t overly restrictive, it could still be an enjoyable interactive experience for someone usually too timid to try more complex simulations. Expect SimCity Social to launch within the next few weeks on Facebook, and plenty of content updates to follow in the months afterward.

Stepping into The Secret World

Early impressions and video commentary of Funcom’s horror-themed MMO.

The Secret World seems kind of like the anti-Tera. The moment-to-moment combat is not the highlight, and should feel very familiar to any MMO veteran. Instead, it’s the questing structures, the setting and the mood of the world that really help it stand out, blending aspects of the point and click adventure genre into an MMO environment. But alongside every interesting progression system and non-traditional quest is another that asks you to kill five of this, then run over there and kill five more, then run over there and kill ten, so after sampling some of the early content of The Secret World, it’s difficult to say if it manages to differentiate itself quite enough.

It certainly has strengths. When starting out, you don’t select a class. Instead, you pick up different weapon types – shotguns, assault rifles, pistols, swords and more – and are free to custom-build your play style. Killing enemies and completing quests earns experience, but doesn’t level your character. In conversation with others about The Secret World, you’ll never say “I’m a level 60 Blood Magic user.” Filling the experience bar unlocks skill points and ability points, which can be allocated however you like to power up attack types and unlock new ways to heal, deal damage and tank effectively.

Looking at the shifting mass of the slickly presented ability wheel the first time can be intimidating. You pull back its layers like peeling an orange, revealing clusters of complexity nestled under each scrap of rind. It’s not clear at the outset if your decisions about where to spend ability points will result in peerless power or an inefficient mix. Funcom does provide some direction by offering “decks”, which highlight specific abilities on the wheel for you to work towards and, presumably, arrive at an optimal build. Only seven active abilities and seven passives can be equipped at any time, so you need to carefully consider how every ability interrelates, especially with regards to the various debuff states that can be placed on enemies. It's a system with quite a bit of depth, and though it’s still too early to judge it, the amount of freedom Funcom provides is certainly promising and provides a lot of opportunity for experimentation.

While fighting the shambling horrors inhabiting the opening questing zone of Kingsmouth you’ll take part in genre-standard Tab-targeting combat. Without auto-attacks (at least with my ability build) and with the ability to actively dodge out of the way of incoming attacks, fights can be a little more interesting compared to the World of Warcraft style, though they still feel similar. Perhaps that sense of familiarity will fade during some of the complex dungeon encounters that require a group, but for now, there’s nothing terribly exciting about peppering Kingsmouth’s zombified residents with bullets.

The questing system is really the intriguing part, as is the mood. Playing The Secret World encourages observation and exploration instead of a near-scientific pursuit of efficient experience gain. Quest goals are sometimes obvious and highlighted on your mini-map, but sometimes only vaguely hinted at. One quest description asks you to follow crows. The first crow is pointed out on the map, and when you approach it flies off and, after a short duration, disappears. Confusing? Sure is. I scanned the skies to see where it might have gone and saw the occasional crow soar by. I followed their paths while nervously eyeing the quest timer countdown, never sure if I was heading in the right direction. The quest failed and I restarted, wondering if the disappearing crow was a bug or intentional. I had no idea what to do.

Seeking help in moments of confusion seems to be one of the ways Funcom encourages social interaction. So I asked for an answer in general chat, and the results were surprising. Multiple players did not provide a direct answer, but only more hints. They didn’t want to ruin what they viewed as a core part of The Secret World, that sense of satisfaction derived from successfully solving a puzzle. In some cases, like when I had to resort to Google searches using the in-game browser to look up puzzle solutions, I agreed with their sentiment. Discovering secret door codes and hidden locations sometimes required a little bit of critical thinking that’s usually never a part of the MMO experience. Yet at other times, like in the case of the crow quest, it was just poorly designed.

As it turned out, the crows I was supposed to follow weren’t in the air, as the first flying crow seemed to so obviously hint at, but sitting on the ground. The next group of crows I had to trigger to advance the quest was pecking the pavement somewhere in the direction of the first crow’s flight. In cases like this, the lack of clarity is more of an obstacle than a clever tease, and there was no revelatory satisfaction associated with figuring things out. That’s not the case with every quest, but there seem to be just as many that are challenging for the wrong reasons, like when a quest goal requires an extensive amount of pixel hunting for a security camera at Kingsmouth’s gas station. So, in other words, it feels much like a point and click adventure game.

Funcom makes an effort to provide context for each of the major quests by introducing them with lengthy, fully voiced cut-scenes with NPCs presented with dynamic camera angles. The approach helps establish mood and convey the importance of each task, and makes it feel like the quest is being handed out by a person instead of a robotic dispenser. It’s odd, then, when a quest finishes to have no ending scene with the NPC. Instead, a completed quest is unceremoniously texted in, which gives each task an unbalanced quality, like a novel with its last page scribbled on a bar napkin. It’s at least convenient, letting you turn in a quest everywhere for experience and items, but the omission of true endings in a game seemingly so obsessed with exploration, tone and storytelling remains a nagging issue for me. The actual main story mission does seem to more consistently employ voiced cut-scenes, so perhaps it’ll provide more of a detailed conclusion.

What is consistent throughout is the mood. Circumstances in Kingsmouth and each of the three factions’ starting cities are desperate, but there’s still an element of tongue-in-cheek horror humor, such as street names like Lovecraft Lane and Elm Street in Kingsmouth. The quality of the visuals is impressive, with ominous tendrils of black wavering in the distance and light filters through Kingsmouth’s foggy forests, solemn houses and blighted seafront that meshes well with the game’s horror themes.

The attention to detail in the presentation extends to the menus, which, aside from the ability wheel, are compact and tastefully simple. The item upgrade mechanics seem pretty interesting as well, as they feature a Minecraft-style grid crafting system. If you find something you don’t want, you can quickly disassemble it into component parts, then fuse components into higher quality versions. When you’ve collected enough, these components can then be combined with higher quality crafting kits to generate new weapons and stat-boosting talismans, letting you deal more damage and increase things like crit power and heal rating.

In case you’d rather just beat up other players instead of questing, you can hop into PvP arenas to earn experience and unlock more skill and ability points. You can participate in standard territory control contest between small teams from the three factions, or check out a much larger persistent warzone where you’ll fight large teams of other players as well as AI-controlled bosses that guard capture points. It’s great fun, but feels very conventional in a game that seems to want to distance itself from convention wherever it can.

While The Secret World does quite a bit different, does it do enough? These are questions that’ll be answered in a review, which will appear on IGN within a few weeks as we continue explore Funcom’s new world.

Wii U Releasing This Week in Saudi

Nintendo's new console will launch in Saudi on November 27. But how much will all the versions cost? Find out inside!

Nintendo's new home console, the Wii U, will release on November 27 in Saudi Arabia.

The Basic version, sold as part of a bundle with 2 Wii Remotes with MotionPlus, will be sold at SR 2,399, whereas the Deluxe version, which comes bundled with similar accessories, will cost SR 2,699. The stand-alone edition of the Deluxe version will cost 2,499.
 

Nintendo's regional distributor weren't able to confirm the launch lineup at the time of writing, but has promised to release more information soon.

Wii U has been selling in some parts of Middle East already. Local retailer Geekay Games recently hosted an unveil party at their Dubai branch for the Wii U, and were selling the console in limited capacity. The system launched in the US on November 18; our International writers have already gone through the system and put their thoughts in a review, you can check it out here.

Report: Two Versions of the Next Xbox

Take your pick.

A new report suggests that Microsoft's next generation Xbox will come in two very different models.

The first is the console we're all expecting, providing true next-generation gaming experiences, while the other will be a more affordable unit aimed at the casual market. The latter is said to use Windows 8 as the basis of its operating system, and won't be able to run the latest triple-A titles, but will support downloadable casual games from Xbox Live.

So it will function more like a set-top box, or an Apple TV, allowing a greater number of consumers to experience the console's growing range of entertainment apps. Apparently, the next-gen Xbox will be an 'always on' device that starts up almost instantly, letting you resume your game with little downtime.

This latest report comes from The Verge, which cites "multiple sources familiar with Redmond's plans". (Redmond, if you were wondering, is the location of Microsoft's research facility.) It also claims that this twin SKU approach is part of a larger Microsoft strategy to ensure that its core Xbox software is 'scalable' to run on a variety of devices. There's even talk of making it so that a phone could be capable of delivering a full Xbox Live experience. It has also looked into including licensing core Xbox functionality into television sets.

It's believed that both devices will be announced sometime in 2013 and made available before the end of the year.

Man Plays Black Ops II for 5 and Half Days Straight

Austalian man plays latest Call of Duty for a record breaking amount of time.

How long have you played a game for in a single sitting? Well, Australian Okan Kaya has set a new Guinness World Record for the longest ever gaming session by playing Call of Duty: Black Ops II for an astonishing 135 hours straight.

Record breaker Okan Kaya. (Also, where's Wally?)

The achievement took seven days to complete, since the rules stated that marathon game players must take a ten minute break each hour. Should they choose, the player can store up their breaks for longer periods in which they can eat or sleep properly.

At the end of the session, Kaya was 37th on the Black Ops II leaderboard. We'll put that down to fatigue, Okan. Now get some sleep.

Wii U Review

One-of-a-kind gaming experiences...and frustrations.

You probably haven't realized, but the Wii U is a bit like a giant Nintendo DS.

The TV is the top screen. The GamePad is the touch capacitive bottom screen. The GamePad even packs the same freakishly long feature list as the Nintendo DS. It's got touch and stylus support, a camera, a microphone, a gyroscope and accelerometer… all the usual suspects.

But the Wii U also combines many of the best parts of the Wii - including Wii Remote support and the eShop.

But does all this make for a good console, or just a dust collector?

The Hardware

Nintendo has never been in the business of making the most powerful consoles, and the Wii U likely won't buck this trend.

The Wii U has 2GBs of DDR3 SDRAM, one is dedicated to the OS and system functions, while the other is dedicated to gaming.

The processor is an IBM Power multi-core processor, but its specificities and true power is still under wraps. Fortunately, the GPU isn't. It's a fully capable AMD Radeon-based High Definition GPU. Depending on which version you get, the system comes with 8GBs of storage or 32GBs of storage, both of which can be expanded via SD cards or external hard drives.

Unfortunately, without knowing just how many cores the processor is clocked at, it's hard to tell just how powerful it is. But the power of the device is secondary to the new ways you can game with it.

The Wii U's appeal will rest in its first-party software and the novelty of the Wii U GamePad.

While the Wii U has a fairly solid launch lineup, none of the current software is genre-defining, like Mario 64 or Halo (with the possible exception of Nintendo Land, maybe). That means early adopters will doubtless pin their hopes on the GamePad, in much the same way Does it deliver?

Yes and no.

While the GamePad is an exciting controller that offers all the features you want and then some, it comes with its caveats.

The GamePad is light and ergonomic. It's only around 1.1 pounds, lighter than an iPad (1.4lbs), and it has comfortable ridges and grips. But it also feels a bit cheap. Shaking it audibly rattles the face buttons, and the triggers aren't analog, unable to gradually accelerate in driving games or fire faster or slower in shooters by holding them at various degrees.

The GamePad's 6.2" display adds gameplay mechanics we’d only seen in Nintendo handhelds, and still may also underwhelm tablet owners who are used to higher quality displays. Its resolution is only 158ppi - about the same resolution as the first iPhone - and doesn't support multi-touch. But the GamePad is more than the sum of its parts - and each part is a new gaming possibility.

The GamePad is at its best when it's delivering a new way to interact with your games. The ability to play a full console game – like New Super Mario Bros U, while others do something on the TV is as awesome as it sounds. Using it as a second display for solo experiences wowed me far less frequently than when I used it for asymmetrical local multiplayer. Games like Nintendo Land's Luigi’s Mansion, in which one player can see things on the GamePad others cannot, makes fun use of this dynamic.

But, at least for now, genuinely new experiences are the exceptions, not the rule. Few single player experiences utilize the GamePad quite as ingeniously.

Some of that can be written off as developer's limited time with the GamePad..In time, good ideas and development will inform more good ideas and development and the GamePad will be a more effective tool.

The GamePad cannot charge from the Wii U - and that means you'll need to free up an additional outlet to charge it - and this will be a pretty big deal for some. Many rooms won't accommodate another device in need of an outlet, and the GamePad will need to charge frequently.

The GamePad's battery isn't great. An average charge lasts about three to five hours – as compared to other tablets like the iPad, which frequently last over 10 hours of use. A full charge takes about 2.5 hours. In my tests, the battery lasted about four hours.

If your living room can't accommodate charging while playing (and at 8.5' the cord's not going to stretch from every living room's outlet to couch), this one problem could quickly lead to a constantly drained GamePad battery. Fortunately, when the day comes that your rechargeable battery doesn't last even that long, you can replace it yourself.

The Software

Nintendo wants Wii U to be your main media console, but it’s still missing a lot of the video features that will make that possible. But even without them, the Wii U may still usurp your current media setup by adding a tablet to the mix.

From your GamePad you can surf the web, play a game while someone else watches TV, or watch a video on Netflix while your TV is off. For anyone without a tablet, this experience will be mindbogglingly awesome - and even for longtime tablet owners, it still feels incredibly smooth.

Wii U's user interface is similar to the Wii's. You have channels to navigate through on either your GamePad or HDTV screen, and the other screen displays the Wii U's new features, like Miiverse, Friend Lists, and more. The channels are clean and easy to navigate, especially with the GamePad, but you'll quickly find the loading screens can last anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds.

Those loading screens are a big concern, especially since some of the longest loading screens are the ones you'll use the most. Accessing the Wii U menu, for instance, often takes over 15 seconds, and there's absolutely nothing you can do while your console loads.

Miiverse is Nintendo's new Twitter/Facebook/Forum hybrid, in which you can "Yeah" people's posts, share doodles made on the GamePad with your Miiverse network (which is as addicting as it sounds), post screenshots, receive tips on how to beat hard bosses, and more. It's just one of the many things that's so intrinsically wonderful and Nintendo.

Internet features are a big part of the Wii U and a big step for Nintendo. But for every major accomplishment Nintendo has made on these fronts, small niggling annoyances abound.

Friends Lists and Miiverse requests are inconsistent and confusing. The eShop has navigation issues and is desperately in need of more hubs. The lack of dedicated voice chat means that games will have different setups and functionality, and is sure to be problematic for core gamers. Those core gamers will also find the Wii U Pro controller's lack of a headset jack to be patently absurd.

Then there's the weird, crippled solution of the Wii Menu - which requires your console to reboot to load a Wii menu. That Wii Menu is the only way to access old Wii content. Your old Wii content won't migrate into your Wii U channels; instead it lives in a separate dashboard, which requires your Wii U to completely reboot to display the old Wii interface. Wii Mode requires a paired Wii remote, looks ugly, and requires a long pause while your system reboots.

It reminded me of the lamentable "desktop" in Surface RT, which utilized a familiar façade to keep users from confusion, but ended up making the OS feel less integrated. And still, having it is better than nothing, but we still wish our Wii content would just integrate with our Wii U content without rebooting.

The good news is that once it loads, all your old Wii content will work, from purchases, to save files to channels (so long as you've transferred them using the Wii U's downloadable transfer tool). Wii games don't have GamePad functionality, and the Wii U doesn’t have GameCube controller ports, so you'll need to use Wii controllers.

Value

Is there ever a better value for a gamer than a new console? For the same price as many on-contract phones, you can get a console that will supply you with countless hours of entertainment.

When you factor in the accessories that are compatible, the Wii U is One of the most economical consoles to date. While the Wii launched for $50 less at $249, it also needed a whole slew of new controllers and accessories, which quickly ran that price up. With the Wii U, all of your Wii controllers will work.

Better yet, you can opt for the 8GB version and expand it with just about any external hard drives and SD cards. That means Nintendo isn't forcing you to buy the Deluxe Version.

You could manage just fine with the $300 version, although we definitely recommend spending the extra $50 if you can.  The Deluxe Set comes with more storage, a charging cradle, Nintendo Land, and a savings program that will net you around $6 back for every full price game you purchase through the eShop.

THE VERDICT

Like most consoles at launch, Wii U is a mix of awesome new ideas and mediocre execution. This is Nintendo's first foray into HD, into true social offerings, into the dangerous business of internet communities, and for the most part it's been handled fairly well.

The Wii U's software speed bumps will likely be ironed out in future OS updates. The same can't be said for its hardware limitations - of which there are a few of note. The GamePad's mediocre battery and outlet charging needs, and maybe even the inordinately long loading screens are pain points you may just have to live with. Right now, the Wii U doesn't have any next-gen competition, but it will soon.

It's hard to compare the Wii U to hardware that hasn't even been announced yet, but if you're going to spend $350 on the Wii U, it's not a thought exercise without value. If horsepower is your main concern, you might choose to wait until next year when we'll doubtless see new, more powerful offerings from Sony and Microsoft.

But the odds that anyone else will release anything as innovative as the Wii U are unlikely. If you want something that'll offer absolutely one-of-a-kind gaming experiences, crazy same-TV multiplayer, and the ability to play next-gen games on a tablet, the Wii U is king.

Despite some growing pains, Nintendo has taken a huge step in the right direction. This is a console in its infancy, with lots of room to mature.

Rabbids Land Review

A party for two.

The Rabbids Land box art features 14 of the wide-eyed, buck-toothed Rabbids doing wacky things in an amusement park, all surrounding big, bubbly text exclaiming, “THE PERFECT PARTY GAME.” That’s a bold claim for a four-player game that really only supports two at a time.

To Rabbids Land’s credit, it takes full advantage of the Wii U’s wide-ranging gimmicks, and with one player on the television and the other on the GamePad screen there’s an asynchronous element to each game. While one player steers a boat with the Wii remote, another blows into the GamePad’s microphone to push explosive penguins at their opponent. You use the Wii remote to run away from me, I chase you using the GamePad. Sometimes you’ll turn the GamePad vertical, flip the Wii remote sideways, tilt, waggle, or touch. Rabbids Land is all about creating different one-on-one interactions, leaving the other two players waiting for something interesting to happen to them. For those actually playing Rabbids, the mini-games are serviceable standards that amuse in the same way these games often do – they’re simple and empty.

In the odd case four friends interact together, it’s in a limited capacity such as three players betting whether or not another will answer a quiz question correctly. These are rare occurrences during the process of playing the Rabbids Land board game, which, like Mario Party, is the excuse for playing mini-games. It’s also an excuse for Indiana Jones and other pop culture references in an amusement park setting. Here, you’ll roll dice, move around a board, and try to collect trophies, whether that’s by sabotaging friends with traps or winning mini-games to earn your own.

Rabbids Land suffers from the same issue party games like this often do: Watching your friends play a video board game isn’t fun at all. The slow-paced presentation of rolling dice and watching the Rabbids move to their space is agonizing. When it’s your turn to step up, there’s cheap thrills in rolling balls using the accelerometer or shouting at a friend where they need to be.

And this emphasizes Rabbids’ greatest problem: You spend most of your time not playing it. Even then, when you’re lucky enough to land on a mini-game square, the game itself is likely uninspired. Worse, mini-games open up in groups, leaving you to grind through the same games until more unlock.

THE VERDICT

Rabbids Land doesn’t make much sense as a party game. It has little ambition and middle-of-the-road execution. Nothing about this mini-game compilation stands out above any of the others we’ve seen on Wii – or Nintendo 64, for that matter. Worst of all, it’s exclusionary and isolating for the majority of the players most of the time. So, no, this isn’t the perfect party game – it’s quite the opposite.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition Review

In with the old, out with the new.

Chances are, you’ve likely been turned off by a fighting game in the past what with the thousands of combos to memorize, strategies to learn, and teams to experiment with. And most of them don’t particularly care if you are into their particular brand of brawling. Tekken Tag Tournament 2, however, attempts to be different. It wants you to learn how to play it. It wants you to spend countless hours mastering its timing, tooling around with its dozen of characters, and making it your own. There’s a slight problem, though: It doesn’t make any of that terribly easy.

Players new to the Tekken universe will want to make their way directly to the Fight Lab to learn the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 basics. Acting as a tutorial of sorts (and a replacement to the traditional Story Mode), Fight Lab drops you into the role of the Combot, a creation of Violet Industries that can learn any Tekken fighter’s techniques and use them in training exercises. Each level of the Fight Lab mini-campaign is designed to teach the player how to pull off some of the Tag 2-specific fighting maneuvers like Binds or Tag Assaults. What’s more, it does it in a charming and often absurd manner, with levels filled with Power Ranger-looking combatants that toss pizzas and turn your head into a pig. Hell, one of the chapter bosses is a fat Ryu from Street Fighter. Silliness abounds.

Theoretically, a tutorial to teach newcomers how to get their martial arts on is a great idea. Fighting games are constantly struggling to bring new players into the fold, and a step-by-step set of interactive instructions could be a great way to do that. Problem is, Fight Lab teaches via the “trial by fire” method. Can’t regularly figure out the timing of the Bind into Team Assault? Too bad, you’re going to keep attempting it until you do. For those who already have experience with fighters, it’s a solid way to learn a few of Tekken’s intricacies. However, it is too demanding to serve as a proper newbie-friendly experience.

Of course, once you get into the fighting itself, you’ll realize that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is still Tekken. It’s still got all the perfectly solid fighting mechanics that you’ve come to know and love since the series’ inception in 1994. You’ll still be working on your air juggles, your one-two(-three-four-five-six) punches, your precision blocking, and throw breaks. If you’re a seasoned Tekken fan, you certainly will not be disappointed.

The biggest change to the Tekken series is the advent of the Tag Assault system. By bringing in your tagged out teammate while your opponent is in the air, you can lay down ridiculous air juggling combos that seemingly go on for minutes at a time. With dozens of characters playable, the Tag Assault combinations are damn near endless. I’ve got my apprehensions about how well Tag 2 is balanced, but all that will only shake out once it’s being played on a truly competitive level.

Options are plentiful for those who decide to dedicate their fighting time to Tag 2. You’ve got your standard versus modes, your practice mode that allows for recording and uploading videos, and your Survival Mode. The netcode isn’t perfect, as I experienced a few slowdowns here and there, but they were few and far between. Those looking for a lengthy online experience will definitely run into hiccups, but hopefully the more egregious moments will be culled out by future patches.

But perhaps the most fun I had with Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was with the Pair Play mode. Designed for four players, it allows each person to take the role of one character each, to be tagged in and out at their leisure. The end result is a group of folks screaming and shouting and laughing all at once while the party chaos ensues on screen. It’s a mode decidedly not designed for competitive play, but man is it a good time.

Even with an absolutely bonkers-huge roster, fights tend to get a little same-looking. Run into King enough and his weird leopard head becomes rote and slightly boring. That’s where the character customization options come in. Want Marshall Law to sport some hipster glasses? You got it. How about a Samurai haircut for the Russian fighter Dragunov? Done. The cosmetic items largely don’t change the way that fighters do their thing, but the options are great for dedicated players that want to make their favorite characters their own.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U isn't all that different from the game that dropped for PS3 and Xbox 360 back in September. In fact, everything that you got in the original release is right on disc. The main differences here are the addition of a few extra modes in Mushroom Battle, Tekken Ball, and Tekken Supporters. Oh, and a whole bunch of Nintendo-themed costumes. Ever wanted to watch a pair of bears fight in costumes from the Mario universe? Well, here's your chance.

Remember Tekken Ball from Tekken 3? It's basically volleyball but instead of scoring points when the ball hits the ground, you do damage to your opponent. It's still just as simple and fun as it was in 1997, but with the joyful addition of being able to spike a ball into the face of Jin while he wears a full Link costume.

The highlight of the additions, though, is Mushroom Battle. It works like this: You fight while Super, Poison, Big, and Golden Mushrooms float around the level. Grab one of the good ones, and you get bigger. Get caught with a Poison, and you shrink in size. Get too big, and your punches will constantly fly over the head of your opponent. But get too small and your kicks won't do any damage.

You won't see either of the new modes being played on a competitive level any time soon, but they are both fairly enjoyable little distractions from the highly technical brawling that the other modes feature.

The biggest disappointment, however, is the lost potential in the Wii U controller. Outside of brawls, it can be used to read character background info or draw on their costumes. In combat, you'll be able to tap the screen to pull off certain combos and moves. It's fairly bare bones, and I couldn't help but feel like it could have been used for a lot more. Even simple menu navigation would have been a welcome addition.

So, while the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 doesn't change up many of the problems that we had with its original release, it adds some more casual-friendly modes for the Nintendo crowd. If you've been holding out, it's the definitive version. But for those who've already picked it up elsewhere, don't worry about skipping out.

THE VERDICT

With its gigantic roster, in-depth character customization options, and breadth of modes, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is definitely a worthy addition to the franchise. That is, if you make it past some of the more frustrating and impenetrable aspects of the Tekken universe. As a way into the genre, it could certainly do a heck of a lot better. But once you’re in, it’s a perfectly solid experience in which brawling fans will find a lot to love.