Quantcast
Channel: Media & Entertainment Technology » Ubisoft
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

E3 Games that Impressed by Dylan Chatterjee

0
0

June 2015, E3 is video gaming’s biggest stage without question. Almost every big name in the industry saves their biggest announcements for the show. There are always several games with a lot of ‘hype’ surrounding them that are announced or that will have playable demonstrations for the first time. Battlefront and The Division are two such ‘triple A’ games that had playable demonstrations a lot of people were looking forward to at the show.


EA/Dice Star Wars Battlefront for Xbox One and PS4



Battlefront is a multiplayer Star Wars shooter created by DICE that is a reboot of an old series of games that was made for the original Xbox and Playstation consoles. The game feels almost nothing like it’s predecessors, but in a very good way. The game controls much tighter than the original titles did and graphically the game was stunning, running on DICE’s custom Frostbite engine the game definitely has the same ‘soft’ yet lifelike look that the Battlefield series of games has. The gameplay was fun, there was both a multiplayer game demonstration as well as a co-op ‘hoardmode’ type demo that put you and another person against 5 waves of storm troopers and several AT-STs. The combat was excellent, the guns felt heavy, like they should, and they had minimal recoil, as you would expect of a laser weapon, but had enough movement and inaccuracy that you had to adjust your shots as your target moved. In terms of number of shots to kill, with the assault rifle type of weapon that was in the demo, I would put the time to kill similar to that of the Battlefield games with a typical assault rifle, not a one shot instant kill but still faster than something like Halo. Each character had a choice of ‘loadouts’ that had a tertiary weapon and several abilities as well. The loadout used in the demo had a rocket launcher type of weapon with a cooldown after firing instead of ammo for the extra weapon and also had a jetpack that operated on a cooldown. The loadout also had a personal shield that absorbed damage for about 15 seconds that had five uses in the hoardmode and operated on a cooldown as well as an area ‘bubble shield’ dome that you could deploy to block all incoming and outgoing fire that lasted about 30 seconds and had a very long cooldown. Overall the game was very impressive and while it didn’t feel like the old games did, it was far from just a generic shooter with a Star Wars skin slapped on, it is very much it’s own game and it is very fun.


Ubisoft/Tom Clancy\'s The Division - Early Game Screenshot



The Division was first announced at E3 2013 and people immediately loved the idea behind the game; a third person tactical shooter with a heavy emphasis on teamwork and an MMO-esque system where you can run into other players throughout the world. The demo available this year had six people pair up into three teams that were all doing their own missions initially, entering a ‘contaminated zone’ to look for resources and then exfiltrate. After successfully finding some good loot however you are told that all three teams would be heading to the same exfiltration point and you could choose whether you wanted to co-operate with them or attempt to kill them for their loot. As soon as the teams ran into each other everyone simply opened-fire, but there is a system in place that is somewhat like a karma system in many MMOs. If you attack another player unprovoked you become marked as rogue, denoted by a skull over your player’s head. Once you are rogue there is a bounty placed on you, incentivizing other players to kill you and your teammates. Killing rogue players does not in turn mark you as rogue, so you will not have to worry about people trying to hunt you down for a bounty. The more people you kill as a rogue, the more your bounty increases. This system allows players to weight the pros and cons of attacking other players or waiting to see if they attack first, it also tells you if another player has already killed someone so you should consider them hostile. In the end nobody was able to exfiltrate before time ran out so there was no winner, but the game was incredibly fun nonetheless. In terms of gameplay the game is a third person shooter with an over the shoulder camera angle and a snap to cover system like most TPS games do. There’s also a loadout type of system to the game so that you and your partner had different guns and abilities. One was an assault class with an SMG and assault rifle while the other had more support based loadout with a shotgun and LMG. The assault classes’ ability was a remote detonated sticky bomb that could be dropped at your feet or launched a short distance and then be detonated. The support class had a reconnaissance pulse that would mark all other players or npc enemies within a short range of you as well as a deployable mini turret that fired at any enemies within a radius. The two classes played very differently and complemented each other extremely well, it became apparent very quickly that you wanted to stick close to your teammate at all times to increase your chances of surviving, and also because if you were shot, you enter a downed state before dying during which your teammate can help you back up and heal you. The game had a very tactical feel to it and was a very unique experience from anything else at E3 this year.

Both these games not only lived up to their hype but maybe even surpassed it in some ways. They were both excellent in their own rights and managed to be wholly unique experiences that should definitely be on any gamer’s radar if you enjoy shooters and have a few friends to play with.
 

 


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images