Space Engineers - Brilliant...

This week in CookeRS Reviews, I'm in space! - Space Engineers is a relatively new PC title available through the Steam Platform as an 'Early Access' game for around $20. The game falls under the sandbox/survival genre, situated in the infinite reality of space. The game, whilst still under development, is maintaining a pleasantly playable state. This is with thanks to a highly commendable team of developers who are successfully keeping the game and it's increasing popularity, running whilst still managing to implement weekly content updates and bug fixes. There are certainly a lot of higher budget games with higher paid developers that need to take notes from the developers of Space Engineers.

Space Engineers - www.spaceengineersgame.com

The Space Engineers developers are also ones for listening to their gaming community. Their forums located here are daily bombarded with suggestions, complaints and compliments of which they appear to pay strong attention to. A large majority of posts on these forums are in positive light of the hard work that the developers are putting in to both please the community, and keep the game in line with it's focus.

In my eyes the game is (oversimplified) 'Lego in Space' or 'Minecraft in Space' with a survival twist if you choose. The Survival aspect so far is a bit limited, with the only thing to really 'survive' against is your slowly dwindling 'energy levels' (which can be easily topped up from any ship or medical bay); or an optional barrage of meteors that will occasionally bare down on your base, in which you need to build turrets to defend against. Outside of that however, there are no NPC's, Friendly or Hostile for you to interact with, which does leave you at times feeling a like you're lost in space.

Mining Ship built for gathering resources and clearing asteroids.

Mining

Despite this lacking in NPC interaction, the game makes up for it in it's other well developed aspects. The resources in which you build with in Survival mode all need to be collected from neighbouring asteroids through a drill, either by hand, or on a ship. Above is a screenshot of my first mining ship I used to collect resources and shape my home base asteroid.

My first interpretation of a Star Wars Tie Fighter.

Building

Building is still being developed but the major parts are all implemented. There are a variety of building blocks from cubes, to slope blocks, corner blocks, and more. There are also relevant functional blocks such as thrusters, cockpits, weapons, gyroscopes, reactors, welders, drills, and all the rest. The building in survival mode requires you to place a framework for the ship, and then weld each of the parts together. This gives a realistic feel to the game, and adds a sense of value to your ship when you considering some larger ships may take you hours, or even days to complete. The building formula is a bit of a balancing act. Yes you can make a huge ship with 1000 guns and all the bells and whistles, but without enough reactors and thrusters to power your ship, it's going to be hard to do anything with it. Design and engineering really have a part to play in this game which greatly engages your creativity.

Meteor hits my base!

Damage and Destruction

Crashing giant ships into each other at high speed in space? YEAH THAT'S COOL! The damage and physics in this game are right on cue. Above is a picture of one of my buildings that a small asteroid has hit. The damage looks fantastic as the metal bends and warps, it then needs to be welded back together again to be repaired. Sometimes you can lose entire chunks of your base or ship to the endless vacuum of space. Touching back on the physics, still in alpha testing and this game has done a fantastic job. I'm sure the final product will be even better. The vacuum of space and lack of gravity are entirely apparent, if you run out of power on your ship, it's going to just keep on floating through space forever, (or until it is so far away it gets deleted). There is also no 'up or down, left or right' as far as space is concerned, this is something that can be a bit daunting and disorientating for a new player, but it's very cool nonetheless.

Hangar internals, built into a meteor.

The other stuff

There are currently three building categories, 'Big Ships, Small Ships, and Stations'. Small ships (like my Tie Fighter), are quicker to build and require less resources. They are useful to start off with. Stations are essentially where you keep your ships, and are a place to land and refuel. Above is a picture of on of the hangars I built underneath my station inside an asteroid. There really is no limits to your creativity in this game. Big ships are, believe it or not, bigger than small ships, with a few more component options such as gravity generators, automated turrets, glass, and refining/assembling machinery. With a combination of each of these you can have your space fleet ready to dominate the galaxy!

The Multiplayer is well developed in it's current state, you can join other servers or host your own and play with as many players as your computer will support. With other players you can build together, have space battles, or just show off your creativity to one another as you build your new ships. The 'Combat' is functional, but a bit underdeveloped, you can destroy your fellow engineer's ships and bases with rockets and machine guns, but it feels a bit like griefing at times as the 'Factions' aspect of the game is yet to be implemented, where you can actually assign teams to each player. On top of this, the 'space combat' is certainly nothing from a flight simulator, but it does feel somewhat realistic.

With the implementation of new features and possibly some more NPC's and things for us to 'Survive Against' this game is on it's way to being a 5-star survival sandbox game. I am an increasing fan of this game as each week the developers manage to squeeze even more awesomeness into this fantastic game. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who has ever loved Lego (and yeah that's everyone), or who is a fan of any building games like Minecraft. It's one of the coolest concepts I have seen in PC gaming in a long time.

Congratulations to the developers for such a fantastic start on such a promising game, keep it up!

Overal Rating: 4/5 (Alpha Verison 01.033.010)

Gameplay: 4/5 - Needs NPC interaction and more developed multiplayer (in my opinion)

Difficulty: 3.5/5 - Space takes some getting used to, can be daunting at first, persist with it!

Multiplayer: 3/5 updates and more multiplayer content needed, but is supposedly on it's way.

Value: 4.5/5 - $20 AUD (Steam)

Graphics: 5/5 - Spot on for this genre and game style

Sound: 2.5/5 - Nothing standout, but this is only Alpha

Likes: Building to essentially no limit, plenty of features and engaging creative gameplay.

Dislikes: Lack of NPC interaction, fairly dull 'combat' in this alpha version, will hopefully be developed.

What's happening to me?! - FarmVille 2 and my wait for some new games... (Reaper of Souls and Hearthstone + PS4 Titles)

I guess it's what these games are made to do, but I am rather hooked on Zynga's "FarmVille 2" title on the Android tablet. Never a fan of the original, but this one sucked me in with an effectively placed Play Store advert.

Zynga's "FarmVille 2"

Meanwhile, the PS4 is sitting by the wayside waiting for some new games to come into the playing field. I may even pick up a copy of Thief or pre-order Infamous: Second Son today, both titles are of some interest to me. The fact that I am playing FarmVille shows that I do need to find some serious games to play, and fast!

Diablo III has been on the playlist a bit lately, for those who are unaware, the game's loot system was scrutinized upon initial release for taking away from it's predecessors 'smash and grab' looting style, where the player was motivated to continue destroying monsters with promise of better loot. The initial Diablo III looting system was far too 'random' and items that were dropped, even by the 'hardest' bosses would often be of no use to the player, making the system feel broken and too reliant on the 'Real Money Auction House'. My Girlfriend and I (who have sunk a few hours into the game on Co-Op) are more than familiar with this phenomenon.

However, after much crying from the community, the recent Diablo III patch introduced the 'Loot 2.0' system. A refined looting system where the items dropped by monsters and bosses are not only more rewarding with difficulty, but are more specifically tailored towards the character which the player is using. Loot will occasionally still drop that is suited to other classes, but this is at an acceptable rate and still allows for players to occasionally trade or swap gear pieces. It is strange that the patch also removed 'Gold Trading' but I'm speculating as to whether this is a temporary change whilst the loot 2.0 is introduced. And lastly, come March 18th the 'Real Money Auction House' will be shut down. Hooray! This is of course all leading up to the release of Diablo III's first expansion pack, 'Reaper of Souls'.

Diablo III - Reaper of Souls Expansion Pack

This is an exciting one, Diablo III - Reaper of Souls. I just want to start by saying, if you haven't seen the teaser for this game, do yourself a flavor and check it out on Blizzards YouTube page. (yes a 'flavor', cause this one tastes good!!!)

First things first, this is definitely one of my favourite blizzard cinematic trailers of all time. The feature list for the expansion isn't bad either. The addition of a new "Adventure Mode' and level 70 becoming the new maximum level are just the beginning. A new class the "Crusader" is being introduced as well. The crusader would appear to be a hybrid between Monk and Barbarian, whilst he would appear a rather 'tanky' class, the Monk and Barbarian will actually take a passive 30% less damage than the Crusader, so one would assume the Crusader has a lot of mitigation utility considering he generally in close combat (EG: his shield). Check out the Crusader video for a more detailed outline of the new class.

It's a big month for Blizzard Entertainment, shutting down the Real Money AH in Diablo III was a start. They also announced the Pre-Purchase for "World of Warcraft - Warlords of Draenor", and on the 25th of this month the "Reaper of Souls" expansion will be available. To top that off, on March 11, "Hearthstone" Blizzards casual 'card game' was released on PC and MAC. The Beta was rather successful with much player interest, and I expect the game will do rather well as it is somewhat unique and has a good plethora of characters and story creating the foundation for the game. The real test will be to see how successful the Android and iOS versions of the game will be, that for me is where a game of this style would be most successful, and is certainly the platform that I will be playing the game from.

All said and done for now, this month of March is looking somewhat exciting for the PC gaming world, and if I do manage to get my hands on a new PS4 title soon, we'll see how that goes...

CookeRS

PS4 - First experiences

I'm almost a month late in acquiring my own PS4, I wasn't even supposed to be getting it until next year, however, it seems luck has been on my side and I got the call today to say it had arrived!

I thought it would only be fair to write this post whilst I am first using the console, to get the 'freshest' emotions and thoughts noted down. It's 8:30pm, first impressions are good, the interface is simple and familiar, and the console sits looking very sleek in my TV cabinet, it feels good to have a next gen console in the household!

Right this second at 8:55pm as I wait to connect to the PSN (PlayStation Network) I would say that I'm experiencing quite a lull in my excitement levels as I begin to question whether or not I will get to use the console tonight. Not only had I forgot my password (seeing as I hadn't used my PS3 in a long time), but have been struggling to get it reset. The PSN must be having some serious issues tonight, which really is serious, because it's almost a month after launch, things should be stable now, or at least more so than on release. I am actually getting some 'deja-vu' back from when SimCity was released, and how unstable it's first months were.

After some persistence, it is 9:21pm when I first manage to log into PSN after a good half hour of trying (yay). 'Knack' is the first title I got with the console, I feel like there is such a small selection of games to choose from... or maybe that's just me, I don't want to play another Call of Duty or Battlefield, First Person Shooters have never been my favourite genre, I want something fresh! On with Knack!

CookeRS

SimCity (2013)

SimCity Logo

This week in 'CookeRS Reviews' I am looking at EA Games 2013 game, SimCity. The game itself is a very old franchise, with the first title coming out in 1989! It is a game all about building cities from the ground up, the latest installment has some really cool 'next gen' features to bring a fresh new spin to the popular city builder.

The new game is the first fully online SimCity game. The games online features were designed to allow players to share their cities with friends and other players of the game, however this meant an 'always online' style of game play, which spelt 'Natural Disaster' for the game around the release. Long story short, the servers could not deal with the load of players trying to access the game at the same time, and in turn, not many players could play the game for a good two weeks after release. Rest assured however for the servers have been much improved and the game runs a great deal better than when it was first released.

The biggest change of them all is probably the introduction of 'Regions'. Instead of just building one city to stand alone as a great dot on the map, you choose a plot from the variety of regions installed in the game. Each plot on any one region has specialisations from good water supplies to ores and oil supplies, and you can pick your plot with these in mind. Rather than it being about building one massive city, it becomes more about building a network of cities that work off one another's strengths to create a stronger region. Its an innovative change, but the worst part of it is that each plot does feel a bit small and limiting, particularly compared to old SimCity games, and filling up the city is something you can do in less than a day, so space management becomes a really important part of this game.

Stay tuned for an update with SimCity Cities of Tomorrow Expansion Pack, I will be reviewing this expansion for the game soon!

Overall I think the latest SimCity installment in the Franchise is a success, despite some hiccups around launch, the game has held up its reputation and provides hours of city building simulation and entertainment. For more on the game watch my 'CookeRS Reviews' video & check out the YouTube Channel 'Hyper Mode Games'.

CookeRS Reviews - SimCity (2013)

CookeRS Let's Play - Sim City Part 1 - NEW STUFF!

Overall Rating: 4 CookeRS

Detailed Ratings:

Gameplay: 4/5

Difficulty: 3.5/5 - Can be difficult managing budget for beginners.

Multiplayer: 3/5 (updates a bit slow sometimes)

Value: 4/5 - $39.99 AUD (SimCity) - $29.99 AUD (Cities of Tomorrow Expansion)

Graphics: 4/5

Sound: 5/5 - Excellent soundtrack, timeless and fits the game perfectly.

Likes: Disasters! (sometimes) + plenty of features and engaging gameplay.

Dislikes: Don't like small limiting plot sizes to build cities on.

CookeRS

Blizzcon 2013: World of Warcraft - Warlords of Draenor

Epic Art
Warlords of Draenor

"What if those dark days could come again...", Blizzard's Chris Metzen providing an excellent opening presentation for Blizzards latest upcoming expansion to the World of Warcraft franchise, 'Warlords of Draenor'. The preview video to follow was one to brace yourself for. As per usual the build up to the introduction of the new features kept me on the edge of my seat, and immensely excited.

One particular feature that caught my attention was this 'Instant level 90' feature which was announced towards the end of the preview. With your purchase of Warlords of Draenor, you can boost a character to level 90 instantly. This goes for a friend who has never had a level 90 character, or a existing player. This will make getting into the game for both a new players, and veteran players an more immediate experience.

Draenor

Draenor is the new continent being introduced into the expansion, although there is some speculation as to how 'new' this continent will actually be, (due to its striking resemblance and relation to 'Outlands' from the first expansion for WoW, Burning Crusade) the Blizzard team has done well in emphasising it's differences from the old shattered Outlands that we know.

• Homeworld of the Orcs before it was shattered into Outland.
• Also the heart of the Draenei civilisation
• A world of 'Primal Giants'
• Contains 7 'new' zones.
• The new 'Clans' of the Draenor continent are filled with history and create the opportunity for much  gameplay.

New Draenor Continent in Warlords of Draenor.

The Draenor Continent and its Content is fresh and detailed, the Dark Portal is being recreated, with a introductory mission for the players to experience the new content, by crashing through the Dark Portal in what the Lead Content Designer 'Cory Stockton' calls a 'Suicide Mission'  into this new world. Some exciting announcements include the new capital cities, with 'Bladespire Fortress' being made the 'Horde Capital' and the Alliance capital will be the 'Black Temple', Illidan's fortress of evil in 'The Burning Crusade' expansion, (in this world this city will be known as 'Karabor - The Draenei Holy Temple). It sounds like the content designers have done a really good job in recreating this world as it was before it became shattered in the 'Burning Crusade'.

Graphical Improvements - Character Models

New player models is essentially a graphical update for the World of Warcraft game, something that has not been done many times throughout it's history. Blizzard will be updating their player character models across the races of the game, it is an overdue and welcomed update for the game. World of Warcraft has never really been a game of amazing graphical detail, it's aged graphics are definitely showing in this day and age so graphical updates are more important than their face value. Speaking of faces, below are some images of a few of the improvements announced at Blizzcon, with the Orcs, Gnomes, Undead, Taurens and Dwarfs.

Now there are a lot of pictures here because I simply got a bit overexcited with how awesome it all was, and let me say, if you haven't seen the actual animation tweaks along side all of this, you really have only seen half of it, the level of detail and improvements made on the animation, particularly in facial expressions, is incredible.

Old and New, Dwarf Male models

Old and New, Gnome Male models

Old and New, Orc Male models

Current Undead models

Updated Undead models.

Updated Undead Male heads

Gnome Female,new models along side some facial animations.

New Tauren Male models

The content creation team has done a good job on these updates, it is important to remember that the game needs to be kept at a fairly basic graphical level as to not upset the large number of players that enjoy the game on a lower powered machine. Improvements:

• Improved visual fidelity
• Facial details improved
• Drastically updated animations/emotes

Key Added/New Features

There is a menagerie of new features being added. Some have got me very excited, particularly the addition of the new 'WoW Houseing' (as Game Director Tom Chilton calls it), 'Garrisons'. I have always wanted some form of 'Base Building' or 'Guild Hall' style feature in the World of Warcraft game since experiencing a similar feature back in the ArenaNet MMORPG 'Guild Wars', and that was back in 2005! I am not particularly 'impressed' with Blizzard introducing this 'been there done that' feature, but it is certainly an exciting addition to the game. Features Include:

• Customisable Bases
• Collect Followers
• Run missions (with your followers)
• Offline Progression
• Sending followers off on missions may take time that progresses whilst you are offline.
• Garrison Progression can also get your gear.
• Garrison progresses over 3 tiers.
• Pick what buildings you put into your base.
• Interaction with followers and buildings
• Monuments and Trophies
• Building Bonuses
• Buffs for your character
• Improve your followers
• Specialise buildings with upgrades

So this was all the updates that caught my eye about the new expansion for World of Warcraft. I am definitely keen to get my hands on this game as soon as it is released and get the most of it.

Below is the Warlords of Draenor preview video that was aired at Blizzcon in the Opening ceremony. Have a quick look and get keen for the latest World of Warcraft expansion!

Warlords of Draenor - Preview Video (YouTube)

CookeRS

Blizzcon 2013: Heroes of the Storm

Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm

In a Post-DOTA 2 & Post-League of Legends world, it is a daring move for Blizzard Entertainment to announce another similar RTS style of game to enter the gaming market. With no real love for this particular genre myself, nor previous experience with the gameplay of these aforementioned titles, I cannot say too much. Afterall, the game looks very polished and the concepts behind it, sound momentously epic. All of Blizzards greatest heroes and villains coming together in one game to battle it out for glory, wow!(not World of Warcraft WoW, just 'wow' wow....)

The kind of wow I'm talking about.

The gameplay itself looks properly fun, there is a wide variety of characters to be played with an even wider spectrum of moves and attacks to be utilised on the battlefield. There also sounds like there is a reasonable level of depth to the gameplay, with different battlefields having different goals and perks to be unlocked.

In all honesty however, I was not super excited by many parts of this game (other than the synergy of all the blizzard franchises), however, because it is a Blizzard title, and all of their games have given me hours after hours of entertainment, this is likely to be a game that I will step into the realms of and quite possibly open myself to this genre of games... and never escape...

CookeRS

P.S - Do yourself a favor and check out the Cinematic linked below, you will be likely left jawdropped and desperate for some Blizzard action!

Link to: Heroes of the Storm official website.

Link to: YouTube Cinematic Trailer for Heroes of the Storm

Blizzcon 2013

This year at Blizzcon, Blizzard Entertainment is bringing a huge amount to the table. From new games (on new platforms) to a Warcraft movie, there is a tonne of content to take on board.

I have been a fan and player of World of Warcraft since 2006 along side the Diablo II and Diablo III titles, and the Starcraft Franchise. So Blizzcon, naturally is an exciting time of the year. So keep an eye on my blog over the next few days for my recount and opinions on Blizzcon 2013!!

CookeRS