Delayed?

First Dragon Age gets delayed, now Battlefield: Hardline? In the case of Battlefield, maybe announcing your release date before starting the beta was a mistake. I don't even know why you'd do that, the beta is there to find bugs and problems with the game, so you know there is gonna be shit to fix afterwards, but you still have the stupidity up in your head to say you will be releasing it as a finished product on this specific date? With how many games these days that are delayed or come out half finished, you'd think game developers would be more interested in having more time to complete their games before they're officially announced or slated for release. I know it isn't the game developers who choose the release dates most of the time, but they could give an impression that the development process is going to take longer when publishers are deciding when they want the game out.

AC: Unity (quickie)

So, something has recently come to my attention that I find rather bothersome. It turns out that in Ubisoft's upcoming title, Assassin's Creed: Unity, you will not be able to create a female character for yourself for use in the co-op. That probably doesn't sound like a big deal, but really it is. It's a big deal when you consider that the reason they are not making both genders available to you is that they find it too difficult to add in the female animations to the player character. Now, that isn't exactly how they put it, they made it sound much more professional and legitimate, but that's what PR people are hired to do, make things not sound offensive. It's not like it hasn't been done before, a previous title featured a female lead. Now, I'm no game developer or animation expert, but if you already have the mo-cap done for a female character within the company I'm pretty sure you can just use that if you can't be bothered to make your own. Now, Jonathan Cooper, who was the Animation Director for Assassin's Creed 3 and worked on other titles such as the Mass Effect series in a similar role, went on to mention how the difference between male and female animation in games such as these was pretty much just walk/run movements and idle animations, the rest are shared. I'm not certain about how difficult it is to animate a virtual skeletal structure to walk and run different and to stand in a more feminine way, but apparently it is currently well beyond the Unity team. Maybe Ubisoft should consider hiring different people, perhaps more competent ones?

Watchdogs (quickie)

I think I might be the only person not gnawing at the bit for Watchdogs. Like, it looks beautiful, and it looks like it has a lot of really cool features, but it just hasn't grabbed me. Controlling all sorts of electronically controlled aspects to a city via your cell phone sounds great and able to provide innovative gameplay, but I'm concerned it won't be as fluid and awesome when enjoyed at home vs in the gameplay videos. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this will be the best game of 2014 and everyone will love it and play it all the time. Or maybe it'll flop like so many games with high ambitions have before. I think I'll wait till a few months after release to make any solid decisions about whether or not its worth the money.

Halo Series

So it has been announced that Halo 1,2,3, and 4 are getting remastered and re-released on the Xbox One. I for one am very excited for this, being a big Halo fan myself. There were rumors moving around about a Halo 2 Anniversary shortly after Halo Anniversary was released, as it made sense and fans wanted to see it. I don't think many people seen this coming though. It makes more sense, because at this point if they were to release a Halo 2 remaster it would be out on the One, but that would really mess up a run through the games if you wanted to do one, and the graphical quality would be all over the place. Now all the games in the main series will be on the same system, with the same graphics, with future games releasing on the same system. On that note, Halo 5: Guardians has been officially announced for a fall 2015 release. Along with artwork for the game being shown a possible box art image has been shown, depicting the Master Chief on the lower section and an unnamed soldier/Spartan on the top. So we will see what happens there. I am looking forward to the future of Halo, what about you? Are you a fan of the series? Are you excited for the remastering of the first four games?

Duke Debate

3D Realms and Gearbox Software are having a legal debate over who owns the rights to Duke Nukem. My question, why? This is happening because 3D Realms is trying to make a new Duke Nukem game and gearbox is claiming the rights to the IP were sold to them before they made the most recent game in the series. So I get why the fight is happening, but really, the series is dead. The most recent game was released approximately 15 years after it started development and was really not great, not that anything with that length of a development cycle can live up to expectations. The character is dated, the idea is very old, and most of us who enjoyed the old games are kind of turned off of the series due to the disappointment named Forever. Let it die and be at peace.

Elder Scrolls Online (Beta)

Ok, so the Elder Scrolls Online's beta has been made open to anyone to play, and the non-disclosure agreement has been lifted. So I can finally talk about the game which has stolen my life from me for the past couple months every few weekends. However, I am not going to talk about the game, not yet anyways. The reason I'm not talking about it is because it is still in beta, I am instead going to talk about what beta means, because it seems too many people misunderstand the term.

Over the past month or so I have seen quite a lot of talk about the ESO beta, even when the non-disclosure agreement was still in effect, and the vast majority of it has been complaining about how terrible and glitchy the game is. This bothers me because it is clear to me that the people complaining don't fully understand what a beta for a game is and what it's for. So if you or someone you know have some form of misunderstandings regarding the term, I suggest you listen close because I have some learning for you to soak up.

Purpose.
The purpose of a beta can be for a few different things. Popular reasons a game developer will put a beta form of their game out for the masses to poke at is to stress test the servers, discover glitches and bugs currently overlooked, find graphical errors, dialogue problems, easy hacks, balancing issues, etc. So when you enter into a beta it should be expected that you will discover some of the fore mentioned problems, and it is your job as a beta tester or participant to report any issues you come across to the devs through the channels they designate. Whether that is through specific email addresses, links to post game surveys, or forums on their sites, and if there is a non-disclosure agreement in effect it is required by law that you only speak of the game in those designated areas. The reason for this is that the game devs don't want an incorrect view of the game getting out, and painting a bad picture of the content before release, one which may effect game sales. They expect that if you agree to play a beta that you understand that what you are seeing is not the full game and that you should not be talking about it as it is. Which brings me to my next point.

Beta.
What a beta is, is an unfinished build of the game. When you play one you are playing the unfinished, unpolished version of the full release. There are going to be bugs, graphical errors, weird animations, unsynced voices, etc. I don't see how anyone can expect any more. Typically games go through an alpha build first, which is becoming a popular state to sell games at on steam these days, then when it's almost ready for release it goes into beta. This is when the devs play test it as much as possible to work out all the problems they can find, which is one reason why they reach out to gamers to help, the more eyes you have looking for issues, the more issues you can find, the more issues that are found the less the issues encountered on day one. Also when you get games which have a large focus on multiplayer, such as ESO and Battlefield, the game devs need as many players on the servers to figure out how many servers they will need to handle the amount of players, which would be why a server might fail often, you might not be able to connect to a game because of it, it's just how it is, this happens now so it won't happen later.

So what I'm trying to say is that before you participate in a beta, please know what you're getting into, know that you will experience many issues and problems. You may fall through the floor into the endless pit of a fade of colour, but that is so that it won't happen when you're playing the full release. Also please think before you make a decision about a game after playing it's beta, you are playing a very unfinished and upolished version of the game, yea it's not great, but it isn't supposed to be great. Most importantly remember why you're there, you're there to help make this game as good as it can be, you are there to discover annoying problems so that they can be fixed by the time the game is released, you are there to tell the devs about the issues you encountered to make it easier for them to fix them, and if there is a non-disclosure agreement in effect please take that into consideration and not go all over the internet blabbing about how the combat doesn't work of the UI is clunky, or that at one point all the NPCs disappeared and the sky turned to a strange shade of purple for thirty minutes before all your character's limbs turned to jelly. It doesn't help anyone. You aren't helping the devs find and fix the problems and you are possibly turning people away from getting a game they would have otherwise enjoyed. Think about this the next time you feel like signing up for a beta.

Payday 2

I'm gonna start off by saying I'm late with this and have no excuse except that I have been busy playing the game, which says things for the game. Payday 2 is the sequel to a fairly smaller game named Payday: The Heist, both being first person shooters which support 4 player co-op and centre around 1-4 people performing heists and trying to survive the police assaults long enough to complete the job and get away with the money. I'll start with the story, there is none. The story is as robust as it was in the first one, you have something you need to steal, you get it, and get paid. However they added multi-day heists, these are set up like you steal something on the first day, hand it off to someone the next day, and then depending on how many days remain in the heist you may have other objectives to complete, and depending on a day's success you may have to complete a small section where the escape vehicle crashes and you have to hold off the cops until a secondary vehicle arrives. That is as far as the story really goes. There are identified people who you are doing these jobs for and they kinda try to throw some story in there but it doesn't really take well.
Gameplay is about the same as the previous game, fast paced, waves of cops attack you in increasing difficulty as time goes on. The biggest difference is that stealth is a much larger part of the game this time around. Almost all of the levels allow you to complete them in some level of stealth. I'll give an example, one of the most popular maps, Jewelery Store, can be done in a few different ways. You can rush in, get the customers on the floor, steal the jewels, get out, that is the fastest but one of the most risky approaches because of people walking outside, security guards, someone not under control that calls the cops, etc. You can however sneak into the back of the store and drill a safe to get loot from it, and if you're lucky no body will hear anything, if a guard walks in on you you just punch them out and respond to their pager to make everyone think everything is cool. They definitely put more work into making the game more versatile for different gamers.
Another big change is an improvement upon the severely lacking rpg element from the first game. In the original you can pick from three skills which you want to unlock next, but it didn't allow for much choice. Now you have four full skill trees to choose from, Ghost which is a stealth tree, Technician which employs sentry guns and improves your drill, Enforcer which helps ignore damage and deal more out, and Mastermind which allows more assets and gives you more power when controlling a crowd which includes forcing lower level enemies to give up. In the more gameplay area, the weapons feel much more like real weapons this time around and in my opinion feel more real than any other modern shooter these days, they have a real weight and force to them, they sound powerful, and they are very satisfying. The weapons can be modified from sights to barrels to stocks and grips, which all affect the weapon's performance.
For those who have played the original, the masks are back, and in greater numbers. You now unlock masks, along with weapon mods and mask customization options, when you complete full missions. When you unlock a mask it is just a white/grey colour and you can unlock colours and materials to customize them with. Although it is all random so you never know what you may unlock.
So improvements over the original, addition of stealth, improved rpg elements, more customization, better sounding/feeling/choice of weapons, more variety of missions, much improved controls, now on the 360 as well as PS3 and PC.
Would I recommend this title? If you enjoyed the original then definitely get it. If you haven't played the first but are considering this one, I suggest you play the first and keep in mind all the improvements I mentioned here, it is very good but not for everyone. There is a lot of action so if you are crazy about action but not so much story then get it, if you are the opposite then don't get it. But I think the majority of people out there will enjoy this title, and it has been released at less than normal price than any other new release so why not right? Not enough people are playing this game, literally nobody on my friends list is playing it even though it is really great. If you want to see some good gameplay I recommend either Roosterteeth who just did a Let's Play of it, or The Creatures, specifically Nova, Kootra, Seamus, and Spoon, if you don't know who any of these people are look them up on Youtube, won't take long. That's it for now, stay tuned for my review of the new Blops2 zombies map, I have a rant about the newer zombies maps cooking up so look for that too.