Friday, March 27, 2015

World at Arms (Win 8)

Story

World at Arms (WoA) is the typical "Earth has fallen into chaos, the last pockets of resistance fight to seize control and restore sanity" style war game. In WoA, you play as a General (or something similar) in Americas suedo army, fight back invading forces and reclaim North America (so far, not sure if it goes any further yet).

Graphics

The graphics are about what is expected for a W8 styled game, they aren't mind blowing, yet they don't suck completely either.

Gameplay

Have you played any recent "build something and wait for it to finish, while doing so, collect taxes, and invade other players" type game? If so, it's almost exactly the game.

You pick something to build, higher tier buildings take more time to complete, some take a few minutes, others take a few hours, even days, to complete.

Buildings can be bought with in game coins earned from competing missions, collecting taxes from your buildings, and from attacking other players. These are basic buildings that offer standard credit.

There are also buildings to be bought with medals, the games rare tier currency which can be obtained from completing certain tasks or bought with real money. Obviously, these buildings offer better income, troops, etc.

After you've trained troops, you can engage in PvP (player vs player) combat, though it's really more PvP with AI controlled enemies. You don't directly face the other player, rather the AI picks the best troops to use based on their defense rating.

The game also features Alliances, which are groups of other players who fight other Alliances and earn various rewards depending on the event that is currently happening in game.

Variety

The game offers the typical variety of items, plus a bit more. Items gradually get better as you level, so you can go from earning 50 gold/min to earning 200 gold/5 min, as well as better troops and even vehicles, planes, and aquatic combat vehicles.

The game does have a rather unique resource that I've not yet encountered in other games, and that's Electricity. Electricity is needed to build buildings, but doesn't regenerate over time like other resources in similar games.

To gain more electricity, and therefore build more buildings, you must build more electricity generating buildings (electricity buildings don't need electricity, but other buildings do).

You can also place boosters, which are things like fences, statues, trees, and other small items to boost the account of electricity or money generated by certain %'ages.

Achievements

Most achievements will require some dedication, such as "Attacking 1,000 enemies", "Collect from your HQ X Times" and a few others, but aren't necessarily hard. So if you're liking for a quick 200/200GS, you should look elsewhere.

Overall

WoA is your typical "build and wait" game that offers very little in the terms of uniqueness when compared to the many other similar games out there today, but if you like these types of games, it should hold your interest for some time.

7.5/10.0

Thursday, March 26, 2015

April Games with Gold (2x)

So if you haven't heard, April marks a year of Games with Gold, and to celebrate, Microsoft is giving away 2x the Games, which means 2 Xbox One games and 4 Xbox 360 games.

I've haven't played ANY of them, so I can't say if any are good, I've heard good things about most of them, so be sure to download these when you can.

For the whole month, One owners can download Child of Light (avg. 85/100) and Pool Nation FX (too new to determine score).

From April 1st to the 15th, 360 owners can get Gears of War: Judgement (avg. 80/100)and Terraria (avg. 85/100).

The last half of the month, 360 owners can download Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (avg. 90/100) and Army of Two: Devils Cartel (avg. 55/100).

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Square Enix and Microsoft: Love Story, or Gang War?

So, if you haven't heard, FFXI will be closing its servers on the Xbox 360 March of next year (2016), this lead me to express interest in having FFXIV: A Realm Reborn (read the review?) released on the Xbox One.

"That'll never happen." You say.

Not so fast, I respond eagerly.

Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida was quoted saying the following at last year's (2014) E3:

"We really want to do an Xbox One version, as a big Xbox player myself.

The thing is, A Realm Reborn (ARR) is all about cross-platform compatibility. Anybody from any platform can play together. We don't want to split our community into people who play on this platform or play on that one.

So we're currently in talks with Microsoft, trying to convince them that this is what needs to happen."

So he's very eager to have ARR released on the One, and Microsoft HAS been developing quite the relationship with Square rather quickly the last few years. Ten years ago, did you ever think we'd have Final Fantasy or a Kingdom Hearts game on an Xbox console? I didn't.

Microsoft would be very stupid to shun Square, they have a large library of games and a large fanbase, the potential profit in it for both companies is quite high.

So while this doesn't mean a whole lot, it does mean that if it were up to Square, Xbox WOULD be getting ARR in the future, but that's up to Microsoft.

Microsoft has had experience with cross platform in the past, namely Shadowrun (X360 and PC).

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Getting the Most Out of Iron Banner

For anyone who's been playing Destiny for a decent amount of time, you've likely heard of Iron Banner and know how it works. For everyone else, this is for you. Iron Banner is an event that puts you against other players (much like Clash or Control), but with a small twist.

Your level and great matter like in Rumble.

The event only lasts a week and you can earn some event only gear by reaching Rank 5. Normally, this would be a simple matter of grinding from event to event, but in Iron Banner, your tank resets after each event, so you only get the week to hit Rank 5.

Luckily, you can equip a few things to earn more rep.

There are emblems, shaders, and class items to be bought at various ranks, these all increase the about of rep earned for the Iron Banner faction by 10% each, and there's another buff called "Tempering" that you can purchase for a Mote of Light that increase rep gain exponentially, increasing each day the event is active, however it last only 12 hours.

On top of those items and buff, if you lose, you gain a Medallion of Iron that will still give you partial rep that is automatically used after a win. You can only hold 5 at a time.

There are also event bounties that function the same way as the others do.

REP BONUS BREAKDOWN:

Class Item, Shader, Emblem - 10% increase in rep for each equipped.

Tempering - 10%, 15%, 25%, 40%, 60%, 100%, 150%, depending on consecutive days used.

Medallion of Iron - 40 rep each, 5 max for a total of 200 rep.

All rep bonus items (shaders, class items, etc) apply to Medallions and Bounties as well.

IRON BANNER RANKS & REWARDS:

RANK 1 - 100 EXP

Rewards:

Iron Banner Emblem, grants 10% rep bonus within Iron Banner while equipped

RANK 2 - 1200 EXP

Rewards:

Iron Banner Shader, grants 10% rep bonus within Iron Banner while equipped

RANK 3 - 2400 EXP

Rewards:

2 sets of armour pieces (light lvl 30)

RANK 4 - 2400 EXP

Rewards:

Weapon, 2 sets of armour pieces (light lvl 30), Iron Banner Class Item, grants 10% rep bonus within Iron Banner while equipped

RANK 5 - 2400 EXP

Rewards:

Weapon, Iron Banner Shader, grants 10% rep bonus within Iron Banner while equipped

Weapon and armour are not the same (USUALLY), so we won't know until the event what the Iron Banner vendor has for sale. You can see what he will allegedly have here.

There's also random loot you can obtain after a match like normal gear, so watch out for that.

If I missed anything, let me know. Otherwise, have fun out there next week, Guardian.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Extending your Controller Battery

I've seen posts recently about battery packs dying and people wondering how to extend their life, or just get more 'umph' out of them.

1. Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way, when not in use, turn off your controller. Not going to explain why, you should know.

2. Disconnect all accessories. Obviously, if you have a headset or key pad attached, they will drain power. Remove them if they aren't in use.

3. Turn off rumble. It doesn't offer much, and consumes power, turn it off.

4. If you use batteries vs a charge pack, use Lithium. These last between 5x and 7x times longer than alkaline batteries, the downside being they cost about $5 a battery, but again, you'll save in the end.

4A. Why not rechargeables, you ask? They don't last as long, as we established, but they also lose their capacity after awhile (this goes for charge packs too). You'll notice a much shorter charge after a few uses. They also can take hours to charge.

5. If you use rechargeables, replace them after a few months. Got the above reasons, they don't Kat forever and will charge less each time. Sirens the $20 for a new pack.

6. If you have extra you aren't using, refrigerate them. In high temps, or prolonged periods of no use, batteries lose their charge, you can slow that by cooling them. Batteries need to be room tenp before use, so allow them to warm up.

If you're looking for a good brand, check Energizer Advanced Lithium.