The
Crysis saga will endure beyond Crysis 3's culminating events, but not
under the name Crysis 4, CryTek has revealed. Speaking to Eurogamer,
Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli discussed the future of the visually voluptuous
franchise beyond Crysis 3 and mentioned a future free-to-play version of
Crysis.
“I wouldn't name it Crysis 4 at this stage
because it would be misleading," he said. "We want to finalize Prophet's
story, and Crysis 4 would imply the story just moves on. But we are
excited about the DNA of Crysis and of the franchise. There can be
literally tons of titles out there within the franchise. Unlike Far Cry,
this time around we feel very flexible about Crysis."
Normally
Crytek would already be beginning pre-production on the next Crysis,
but Yerli says the next iteration's "radical" direction could mean more
of a lull between it and Crysis 3.
"Because we want to
make this something much more radical and new, we're looking at it as a
bit more of a long-term thing," Yerli explained. "It's too early to talk
about it for these reasons."
Yerli equipped an equally
strong silencer on any details surrounding the free-to-play Crysis
project, as its infancy prevented any solid information from emerging.
"We
do have a plan for a F2P version of Crysis, but how this looks and when
this will be done, whether this is the next one or the next next one,
is to be decided," he said. "I believe F2P is our inevitable future. I
believe there are F2P titles out there that can be story-telling and
cooperative with your friends and competitive with your friends. It's
all possible. The business model is independent from the way you design
games. It's a very important thing. People always make these things
dependent, but it's actually completely independent."
Coming to PS4 (reviewed), PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 PES 2015 release date - TBC
England
might be out of the World Cup but there is still plenty to look forward
to in the footballing world – enter PES 2015. The latest instalment to
the annual Pro Evolution Soccer series, PES 2015 is Konami’s answer to FIFA 15 and a game which is looking to mix things up with the addition of a new ball control engine.
Having
spent more than half a decade firmly in the shadows of FIFA, Konami is
hoping to return to past Pro Evo glories with PES 2015, a title which is
more of an iterative update than out-and-out refresh.
Like EA, Konami has sought to bring new emotion and reality to its football franchise, with the move to Xbox One and PS4 allowing developers to refresh stadiums and improve crowd reactions.
From
our early play, this does make a difference to the overall feel of the
game – adding some much needed atmosphere – but not as big an impact as
Konami would have you believe. It is a nice addition but an expected one
which, in all truth offers little effect to actual gameplay.
On a
more positive note, the game’s new ‘jinking run’ control is the true
star of the show. A simple addition which adds control and finesse to
the game, we found this more precise ball control brought a new
dimension to our play.
No longer just about punting the ball up
field, playing pass-and-move football or simply trying to sprint past an
opponent, the jinking run controls allowed us to keep the ball close to
our body, make tight turns under pressure and round defenders with a
combination of skill and agility.
Using the jinking run does slow
general gameplay down, making you more vulnerable to tackles, but timed
well it can help open up new avenues and spaces in which to push play.
This is a feature which will help evolve your play the more you use it. A
novel addition at first, even after just a handful of matches we found
ourselves starting to incorporate the new control into elements of our
attacking play to good effect.
Our
favourite use of the jinking run control didn’t involve running at all
though. Timed right, using the jinking run features when receiving a
long pass can really improve your first touch, trapping the ball or
pulling it into the body with an intricate, precise touch.
As
welcome as this new feature is, it doesn’t feel enough in itself to see
PES 2015 truly bring the fight to FIFA 15. Whereas FIFA is further
blurring the lines between gaming and reality, with evolving pitches and
enhanced player emotions, PES still feels more of an arcade offering.
The
power meter which accompanies every pass, shot or cross does help
better control your play but takes away some of the natural flow found
in FIFA. The Pro Evo collision engine is less advanced and intricate
than FIFA’s too – resulting in some rather clunky, awkward comings
together and slow, unrealistic tackles.
Another
minor issue we had with the game is one which will get old fast. The
endless mass of replays and celebration screens which follow every goal
or near miss quickly become a bore. Yes, these replays help make the
game better echo a football broadcast – and give you more opportunities
to gloat at friends – but skipping through half a dozen after every goal
is a tedious and laborious process, especially when playing solo.
First Impressions
Having
played both PES 2015 and FIFA 15 back-to-back, it is difficult to see
Konami toppling EA’s command of the football gaming space anytime soon.
That isn’t to say PES 2015 isn’t a top game in its own right, though.
Konami has made a number of improvements, namely the addition of the
jinking run control, sadly the overall package falls just short once
again.
Like many recent
multiplatform titles, the Xbox One version of Call of Duty: Ghosts looks
slightly inferior on Microsoft's new console when compared to the
PlayStation 4 version. This is due primarily to a difference of
resolution: Ghosts on Xbox One tops out at 720p, while the PS4 version
looks sharper and clearer at 1080p. But the next-gen lighting effects
found in the PS4 version are very much present, as is the series'
trademark 60 frames-per-second action. Ghosts remains an enjoyable
shooter no matter which new console you choose.
The
first few minutes of Call of Duty: Ghosts don't paint a terribly
accurate portrait of what lies ahead. You barely have time to take stock
of the idyllic Southern California setting before fire begins raining
down from the heavens, destroying every car and home in sight as a
shouty man commands you to follow him to safety. But whereas Infinity
Ward's recent work on the Modern Warfare
series was weighed down by bewildering plot twists and an affinity for
restricting its most exciting moments to noninteractive set dressing,
Ghosts tells a lean, straightforward story that throws you into plenty
of spectacular situations, but with more breathing room to appreciate
the action. Along with the outstanding new Extinction co-op mode and an
abundance of clever refinements to competitive multiplayer, Call of
Duty: Ghosts is a refreshing and thoroughly satisfying entry in the
blockbuster shooter franchise.
Much of Ghosts' success
stems from its own sense of humility. Infinity Ward has done a great job
reining in the excesses of previous Call of Duty campaigns, replacing
the crumbling Eiffel Tower and runaway Tube trains of Modern Warfare 3
with a less heavy-handed approach that employs spectacle--and there's no
shortage of that here--as more of a complement to its core combat. It's
a game that avoids falling in love with its own cinematic ambitions,
allowing the ruthless combat and well-paced encounters to take center
stage over the plot.
Ghosts is full of atmospheric touches, like bubbles discharging from your gun when fired underwater.
It's
a good thing, too, because the story is every bit a predictable tribute
to American military might. After the collapse of the Middle Eastern
oil economy, South America's oil-producing states join together to form
an economic and military superpower known as the Federation. Naturally,
the Federation decides to hijack a satellite weapon system and turn it
against the United States. The conflict that follows is one centered on
the Ghosts, an enigmatic tier one task force with a penchant for lethal
efficiency and sweet skeleton masks.
The whole thing feels like a geopolitical Mad Lib, but a functional and rather harmless one. Ghosts delivers just
enough narrative to serve as a catalyst for its whirlwind tour through
global warzones, while resisting the urge to club you over the head with
plot twists and gratuitous shock-and-awe moments. In many ways,
Infinity Ward has crafted a story that reflects the stoic nature of the
Ghosts themselves: focused, efficient, and committed to the task at
hand.
The approach pays off: Ghosts features a terrific
collection of shootouts and set pieces, largely unburdened by the
sensation that you're merely an extra in someone else's adventure. At
various points you go after a missile launch center by tank and an
offshore industrial facility by helicopter, each serving as excellent
examples of how well Call of Duty's zippy and responsive controls can be
applied toward massive, fully navigable battlefields. It's also a game
with a knack for crafting tense shootouts in unexpected locales,
highlighted by a brief jaunt into outer space that has you floating from
one piece of debris to the next, aiming the shots that will make a
Federation soldier's helmet decompress in a gruesome hiss.
Tank controls are unapologetically agile in Ghosts.
These
bombastic set pieces are complemented by more subdued moments, like a
deep-sea scuba mission that has you swimming through gorgeous reef
formations while avoiding enemies both shark and human. Then there are
the more tightly scripted scenes, like prowling through a dense jungle
while using a motion tracker to spot enemies, or rappelling down the
side of a Caracas skyscraper as you quietly snipe soldiers patrolling
its interior. Moments like these further the game's excellent pacing,
serving as welcome palette cleansers after some of the more spacious and
chaotic battles.
It all adds up to a campaign that
follows the familiar rhythms of the series, but in a more varied and
generous way. There's a real willingness to let you stretch your legs
and soak up the spectacle, driven by the feeling that--for the most
part--you're the one at the center of the action.
There
are some missteps. Using your pet dog to take out enemies serves as an
entertaining staple of the game's early missions, but this gameplay
mechanic completely disappears for the latter half of the campaign. Your
AI squad mates still have a habit of occasionally running in front of
your gunfire as thought you don't exist, and a few levels follow the
bland corridor template a little too closely. But those issues aside,
this is an impressive campaign that uses the series' winning formula as
more of a roadmap than a shackle.
This is an impressive campaign that uses the series' winning formula as more of a roadmap than a shackle.
Ghosts
is even more impressive on the next-gen hardware of the PlayStation 4.
While the current-gen versions are just as competent as ever, rendering
the chaotic shootouts at a smooth 60 frames per second, the PS4's
next-gen artistry creates a much more immersive battleground. Those
effects are most noticeable in the levels that emphasize lighting: the
soft bokeh effects of floating embers on a burning oil refinery, or the
way moonlight refracts and ripples while underwater. It's essentially
the difference between a PC game running on high versus low settings.
Each version is functionally the same, but all those extra effects add
up to a more engrossing experience.
If Ghosts' story
campaign is an example of its developers leaving Modern Warfare behind,
its approach to co-op takes that trend one step further. Gone are the
Spec Ops missions from Infinity Ward's previous work, replaced by a new
co-op campaign dubbed Extinction. Much like Zombies in the Black Ops
games, Extinction presents a playful alternate reality where you and up
to three friends are dropped into a battle against fantastical enemies.
But instead of shambling zombies, you're fighting a swarm of buglike
aliens. The way these enemies scurry up the sides of buildings and burst
forth from underground hives changes the dynamic in a monumental way:
you're still employing Call of Duty's signature shooting mechanics, but
you're doing so against an enemy whose animalistic movement makes it
much more imposing and unpredictable than your average foot soldier.
Extinction's various progression systems make for a steep learning curve, but boy is it fun.
Extinction is an ambitious hybrid of tower defense, Left 4 Dead, and Borderlands.
You're drilling into alien hives as you move through the backwoods and
small-town streets of rural America, each drill site its own standoff
against swarms of incoming enemies who grow larger and nastier as the
campaign progresses. There's a class system that allows you to play
complementary roles, an in-game skill tree that lets you beef up your
character on the fly, and a scavenging system where taking the time to
rummage through a dumpster might reward you with a new weapon sight.
There's also an economy that encourages fun twists on teamwork, like the
ability to pool your money together to unlock a helicopter strike when
things get really tough.
None of these
ideas are remarkable on their own, but the way Extinction blends them
with Call of Duty's fast-paced action is tremendous fun. Throwing a
hypno knife at an acid-flinging scorpion to turn it into a friendly,
debating whether to buy a turret gun for yourself or a crate of
incendiary ammo for your team--Extinction is full of all these little
moments and decisions that add up to a stellar co-op experience. This is
Call of Duty venturing as far outside its comfort zone as it ever has,
but the payoff is immense.
A more familiar experience can
be found in Ghosts' competitive multiplayer. The frantic pacing and
close-quarters encounters are every bit as enjoyable as they've ever
been, augmented by contextual lean and running slide abilities that make
for more fluid transitions in and out of cover. Infinity Ward has taken
a delicate approach to the existing multiplayer progression, though a
new perk weighting system promotes better player balance while still
giving you plenty of ways to micromanage your loadouts.
One
of the features that Ghosts introduces to multiplayer is a character
customization system that takes those abstract player levels and wraps a
greater sense of ownership around them. You can now create a roster of
personalized soldiers, each decked out in a wardrobe full of custom
armor and equipment. Facial designs, skin color, and gender are all
options you can use to craft your own characters, and then you take
those creations one step further by leveling them all up independently
of one another. For a series that has long given you such granular
control over your weapons and abilities, it's nice to finally be able to
apply that same level of personalization to the characters themselves.
Multiplayer maps have you fighting everywhere from Scottish castles to Alaskan fishing villages.
That
customization system is what drives the new Squads mode, a feature that
pushes Call of Duty eerily close to the realm of management sim. Squads
is where you take your custom characters and turn them into a
full-blown team of AI soldiers, leading your creations in competitive
matches against teams designed by your friends--even if those friends
happen to be offline. It essentially spreads the rewards of repeated
prestiging out across different soldiers, giving dedicated players a new
kind of progression for the countless hours they will spend leveling
up.Squads is clearly a feature designed for the most hardcore
Call of Duty players, but it's also a testament to just how deep the
well of competitive experiences has become.
Yet Squads is
hardly the only addition to Call of Duty's competitive landscape.
Ghosts introduces a number of clever multiplayer modes that keep a keen
eye on the series' strengths while taking a playful approach to how you
can interact with one another. Blitz is like a twist on American
football: players dash toward scoring zones on the other team's side of
the map, warping right back to safety if they're successful and becoming
sitting ducks if they fail to properly judge the scoring cooldown
timer. Hunted takes a Hunger Games approach to multiplayer
design, giving players one handgun and 10 bullets to start and forcing
them to fight over randomized weapon drops that fall from the sky. And
then there's Grind, an evolution of Kill Confirmed that makes players
take the dog tags dropped by fallen enemies and run them back to a
handful of specific locations in order to bank points. Each of these
game modes adds a devilish new wrinkle to the multiplayer experience,
taking an already exceptional collection of competitive options and
expanding them further.
From an exuberant campaign full
of spectacle and variety to the way Extinction's unpredictable aliens
force you to use those targeting skills in entirely new ways, Ghosts
strikes an excellent balance between the familiar and the novel. This is
a game that's keenly aware of the series' strengths, but doesn't find
itself beholden to them. No matter what standard you apply, Call of
Duty: Ghosts is a terrific first-person shooter.
The
first few minutes of Call of Duty: Ghosts don't paint a terribly
accurate portrait of what lies ahead. You barely have time to take stock
of the idyllic Southern California setting before fire begins raining
down from the heavens, destroying every car and home in sight as a
shouty man commands you to follow him to safety. But whereas Infinity
Ward's recent work on the Modern Warfare
series was weighed down by bewildering plot twists and an affinity for
restricting its most exciting moments to noninteractive set dressing,
Ghosts tells a lean, straightforward story that throws you into plenty
of spectacular situations, but with more breathing room to appreciate
the action. Along with the outstanding new Extinction co-op mode and an
abundance of clever refinements to competitive multiplayer, Call of
Duty: Ghosts is a refreshing and thoroughly satisfying entry in the
blockbuster shooter franchise.read more
England
might be out of the World Cup but there is still plenty to look forward
to in the footballing world – enter PES 2015. The latest instalment to
the annual Pro Evolution Soccer series, PES 2015 is Konami’s answer to FIFA 15 and a game which is looking to mix things up with the addition of a new ball control engine. Having
spent more than half a decade firmly in the shadows of FIFA, Konami is
hoping to return to past Pro Evo glories with PES 2015, a title which is
more of an iterative update than out-and-out refresh. Like EA, Konami has sought to bring new emotion and reality to its football franchise, with the move to Xbox One and PS4 allowing developers to refresh stadiums and improve crowd reactions.read more
The
Crysis saga will endure beyond Crysis 3's culminating events, but not
under the name Crysis 4, CryTek has revealed. Speaking to Eurogamer,
Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli discussed the future of the visually voluptuous
franchise beyond Crysis 3 and mentioned a future free-to-play version of
Crysis. “I wouldn't name it Crysis 4 at this stage
because it would be misleading," he said. "We want to finalize Prophet's
story, and Crysis 4 would imply the story just moves on. But we are
excited about the DNA of Crysis and of the franchise. There can be
literally tons of titles out there within the franchise. Unlike Far Cry,
this time around we feel very flexible about Crysis." read more
McAfee Labs Stinger 12.1.0.1011
Citrio 33.0.1750.237
Debut Video Capture 2.01 Beta
