Month: January 2019

As Rare’s high-seas adventuring game Sea of Thieves approaches the first anniversary of its release, the studio has addressed some player feedback. In the hopes of balancing and providing consistently enjoyable content for players in its open-world sandbox, the developer took to YouTube to announce that, in a future update, Xbox One and PC cross-play will be optional.

In an official developer update, Sea of Thieves’ executive producer, Joe Neate, talked at length about the developer’s plans for changing the way cross-play works between the platforms. While Neate acknowledged that cross-play has brought many benefits to Sea of Thieves, he admitted that, with the game’s new PvP mode, Arena, on the way, he wants everyone to feel that “they have a level playing field.”

In this forthcoming Sea of Thieves update, console players using a controller will have the option to only matchmake with other controller users on console, effectively splitting the player base as such: a controller-only pool and the cross-play pool. The cross-play pool is just as it sounds: any user who wants to play with anyone, regardless of controller input, will be able to do so. According to Neate, players will be able to toggle the option on and off at will. The option, as Neate confirmed, will be available whether players enter free-play or the game’s upcoming Arena mode.

In addition to the option of cross-play in Sea of Thieves, Neate announced that mouse-and-keyboard input will makes its way to the game on console. Neate didn’t provide a release window for when this update will hit the game, nor did he specify when this cross-play update will hit the game. However, Neate did confirm that Rare has discussed optional cross-play at length internally and the studio’s already hard at work on implementing the update.

In our Sea of Thieves review, we said that, at the time of launch, “it’s a somewhat hollow game that can be fun for a handful of hours when played with friends, and something worth trying out if you happen to be an Xbox Game Pass subscriber.” Our reviewer, Peter Brown, continued, “Even though it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend, I like enough of what I see to hold out hope that things will eventually improve as the game continues to be patched and updated with new content.”

Acclaimed writer Stephen King’s no stranger to his work getting adapted to the big screen. From It to The Dark Tower, King’s work has made the jump from words to visuals since the 70s. Now as detailed by the Hollywood Reporter, another novel from King’s expansive bibliography is set to hit the big screen.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, CBS All Access has ordered a 10-episode, straight-to-series adaptation of King’s best-selling post-apocalyptic epic, The Stand. The drama will see a script penned by Josh Boone (All We Had, The Fault in Our Stars), who was initially scheduled to write a feature film based on the 1978 epic. Ben Cavell (Justified, SEAL Team) is reportedly writing The Stand’s script alongside Boone.

Both Boone, who will also direct, and Cavell will write and executive produce this King adaptation. Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee (Death Note, The Disaster Artist) and Mosaic’s Jimmy Miller (Bad Teacher, Semi-Pro) will also executive produce The Stand. Richard P. Rubinstein (Dawn of the Dead, Dune)–who served as a producer on several King adaptions throughout the 80s and 90s, including Golden Years, Thinner, and a 1994 mini-series of The Stand–is confirmed to executive produce the CBS drama with Boone, Cavell, Lee, and Miller. Will Weiske (Bridge of Spies, Her) and Miri Yoon (Behaving Badly, Death Note) will co-executive producer the drama. As the Hollywood Reporter states, Owen King, Stephen King’s son, will produce.

”I’m excited and so very pleased that The Stand is going to have a new life on this exciting new platform,” King said. “The people involved are men and women who know exactly what they’re doing; the scripts are dynamite. The result bids to be something memorable and thrilling. I believe it will take viewers away to a world they hope will never happen.”

Stephen King’s The Stand, a novel almost as long as David Foster Wallace’s 1996 epic Infinite Jest, expands on King’s Night Surf, a short story published in an issue of Ubris magazine in the spring of 1969. The nearly 1000-page novel imagines the total breakdown of society after a modified version of the flu used for biological warfare is accidentally released. This causes widespread panic, triggering an apocalyptic pandemic that wipes out the majority of the world’s human population.

The TV series will see the fate of mankind rest of the shoulders of a few of the survivors of the pandemic. With the world caught in an elemental struggle between good and evil, the nightmares of the remnants of humanity are embodied in Randall Flagg, the Dark Man, an individual with unspeakable powers.

Along with The Stand, CBS All Access’ roster includes Star Trek: Discovery (which launched its second season on January 17), The Twilight Zone, Why Women Kill, and more.

It would be remiss to talk about Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements without considering its overt inspiration: Quest for Glory, a series of Sierra games from the early ’90s. Quest for Glory was an ambitious hybrid of point-and-click adventures and Dungeons & Dragons-inspired role-playing featuring multiple classes, real-time combat, comprehensive statistic-based character building that all affected and changed the way you approached the game’s obstacles. It remains a concept very few games have directly replicated, but Mage’s Initiation proudly embraces this influence at every turn and draws liberally from the Quest for Glory template. It feels like a spiritual successor in many ways, but while the fantasy adventure it creates is enjoyable in its own right, its attempts to execute Quest for Glory’s RPG-inspired diversity in its different playstyles aren’t as robust and meaningful as they might initially seem.

Mage’s Initiation follows D’arc, a teenager residing in a magic boarding school, as he faces his initiation to, well, become a mage. His big test requires him to overcome three major trials that ask him to deal with the mythic and fantastical, and along the way he hits some unexpected twists and uncovers a greater conspiracy. At the beginning of the game, you’re given the opportunity to choose from four different mage classes, each focused around an element (fire, earth, wind, water) which will determine the selection of spells D’Arc will have at his disposal for both puzzle solving and combat. The path to overcoming the trials involves conversing with a diverse cast of characters, hunting for items and information, solving puzzles with logic and the environment, and fighting enemies with both force and wit.

Much of what Mage’s Initiation does is enjoyable without the context of its influences. It’s a well-paced adventure game throwback with solid voice acting, an intriguing mystery, and satisfying puzzles. As someone whose formative years were defined by endless replays of Quest for Glory, it’s exciting to see the game trade so heavily on nostalgia for those games. Almost every element of Mage’s Initiation can be immediately identified as a connection to Sierra adventure games. The beautifully illustrated environments, character portraits, and interface perfectly evoke the aesthetic, most obviously. But there are also parallels like attempts at Quest for Glory’s signature pun-heavy humor, exotic character archetypes, and unique dark fantasy atmosphere. There’s also the blatantly anachronistic, maze-like structure of the wasteland and forest areas that encouraged me to draw my own real-life maps to get around–just like I did playing Quest for Glory as a kid.

The issue with Mage’s Initiation is that in a lot of cases, the clear ambitions to ape its source material don’t reach the same meaningful depths of that source material, and as a result, the existence of some of these elements eventually feels like window dressing–whether you’re aware of its influences or not. The aforementioned maze-like areas are fun to map out initially, but unlike Quest for Glory, you don’t really need to internalize them because you don’t have to navigate them regularly–key locations in Mage’s Initiation are mostly clustered together in a straightforward manner. As a result, these environments feel strangely tacked on, an excessive obstacle you need to overcome to find a couple of quest items.

In a similar fashion, the four classes provide some minor variations in how you solve puzzles, but few of them actually feel like fundamentally different approaches. For example, to find a way into a particular second story window, you can use the air mage’s levitating spell, use the water mage’s water jet to activate a water wheel to ride, or grow a vine to climb as an earth mage. But the fact that these solutions are all just spells activated in the same manner never made me feel like I was thinking in a drastically different way for each mage or using a different set of tools–merely changing the location I pointed the cursor. This aspect becomes especially apparent upon multiple playthroughs.

Similarly, the classes’ combat abilities fail to be fundamentally distinct. Each starts with comparable projectile attacks corresponding to their element, as well as defensive abilities that mitigate damage. None of these skills feel particularly unique in practice. Toward the end of the game, each class gets more powerful and varied spells, but their presence highlights another issue with combat: The high mana cost of these powerful skills rarely made using them feel worthwhile. I found it most effective to simply cast the low-cost basic projectiles repeatedly for basically all of the game’s combat encounters, which rarely felt challenging or tense. This is due in part to the game’s convenient auto-saving before any hostile encounter, which has the unfortunate effect of making it unnecessary to ever upgrade your character’s constitution stat–I could just reload to the start of the encounter if I died.

There are a few major branching paths and decisions that affect the outcome of your relationship with certain characters and events of the plot, but these aren’t tied to your class. Many of the more devilish roadblock puzzles that need to be cleared before you can progress, while satisfying to solve, have the same solution in each playthrough. The major point of difference between the adventures is that each class has its own unique side quest, which are interesting, but they’re completely optional, easily missed, and feel like an afterthought because of that.

Some of the game’s unique additions don’t quite hit the mark, either. An entire economy of gems you can equip to augment your combat capabilities is initially interesting, but they’re too bountiful, and easy to forget about because of the exploitable nature of combat. And for all the beautiful art in the game, there are a few key cutscenes that take a jarring deviation from the game’s visual direction and a strange dip in quality, detracting from revelations they portray.

I ultimately enjoyed my time following D’arc through his journey, and Mage’s Initiation left me curious about the events still to come. It’s an entertaining adventure game, but its ambitions to incorporate a meaningful diversity of role-playing options fall disappointingly flat and feel inconsequential. Mage’s Initiation is a fair appropriation of a hybrid formula that I was happy to consume, but its shortcomings made me more eager to revisit the series that inspired it for another run-through.

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Earlier this week, publisher Deep Silver announced it will offer the PC version of Metro Exodus exclusively through the Epic Games Store–a move that Valve, the company behind Steam, decried as “unfair.” Deep Silver parent company THQ Nordic GmbH tried to distance itself from the controversial decision, and now its parent company–THQ Nordic AB–has issued a response in support of the move.

Following the announcement that Metro Exodus would be skipping Steam, THQ Nordic took to Twitter to explain it had no involvement in the decision. “The decision to publish Metro Exodus as a timed Epic Store exclusive was made entirely on Koch Media’s side as Metro is their intellectual property. They are a sister company of THQ Nordic (Vienna), which is the reason why we can and will not comment on this matter,” the company wrote.

In a follow-up tweet, THQ Nordic said: “We do not want to categorically exclude the possibility of timed exclusives for any of our games in the future, but speaking in the here and now, we definitely want to have the players choose the platform of their liking and make our portfolio available to as many outlets as possible.”

Now, THQ Nordice AB, which owns THQ Nordic GmbH, released a statement of its own supporting Deep Silver’s decision. “I believe it’s in the group’s, and ultimately the consumers’, best interest that business decisions are made close to the market and this is the group’s consistent business model,” CEO Lars Wingefors said. “I firmly believe that Deep Silver and Koch Media have carefully considered the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and risks in their decision to go solely with Epic Games Store. The decision has my full support.”

Metro Exodus was available to pre-order on Steam before Deep Silver decided to bring it exclusively to the Epic Games Store, and while it is no longer available on Valve’s storefront, any Steam pre-orders will still be honored. According to Deep Silver CEO Klemens Kundratitz, Epic’s more appealing revenue split–the storefront gives developers 88% of their revenue while Epic only takes 12%–was one of the deciding factors behind the move.

“Epic’s generous revenue terms are a game changer that will allow publishers to invest more into content creation, or pass on savings to the players,” Kundratitz said. Indeed, in the US, the PC version of Metro Exodus will retail for $50–$10 cheaper than the $60 price tag the game carried on Steam while it was still available.

Metro Exodus isn’t the only big game skipping Steam entirely. Ubisoft recently announced that The Division 2 will likewise only be available through the Epic Games Store, in addition to its own storefront.

Blizzard has announced a new map for Overwatch is now live on the PC test servers. Called Paris, the new map takes place in the French city.

Paris is a new Assault map and it contains many narrow streets and corridors. Despite taking place in the city of love, the new map looks as if it’s structured to funnel players into fierce firefights as they battle it out for capture points. Noticeable landmarks on the Paris map are the Cabaret Luna, the Pâtisserie Galand, and the Maison Marat–a palace in the center of the city.

Overwatch’s latest event, the annual Lunar New Year celebration, is still live across all systems. Modeled after Chinese culture, each celebration adds new content to Overwatch that makes reference to the country’s historical and cultural figures. This year’s event, titled the Year of the Pig, will continue until February 8.

The Year of the Pig event largely pays homage to Chinese generals and famous figures during the Han dynasty, especially with all its new skins. For example, Reaper, Hanzo, Reinhardt, Torbjor, Zenyatta, and Tracer have new Lu Bu, Huang Zhong, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang, and Hong Gildong skins respectively. Orisa also has a new Epic Sanye skin, and Brigitte has a new Epic General skin. Past Overwatch Lunar New Year event skins are available again too.

The Lunar New Year also brings along a patch and balance changes. There’s nothing major, although armor now works a little bit differently. Damage reduction is now only -3 instead of -5, so you will see a difference when shooting armored targets with heroes that have burst-fire attacks. Previously, automatic weapons had a noticeable advantage over burst-fire when shooting armored targets, but now the latter should perform a lot better.

Overwatch is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Although Paris is only live on PC’s test server, it will make its way onto other platforms eventually. To access the test server, go to the Battle.net client and click on the drop-down menu for Region/Account. From there, you’ll see an option to install the test server.