Category: multiplayer

The Division Delivers But Only in Fits and Starts

Tom Clancy’s The Division, a game about American sleeper agents taking back New York after a brutal viral outbreak, released at the beginning of March after one of the most prolonged hype cycles in recent memory. I’ve played a decent amount of the Division, completed the story and found every single collectible (all 290 something of them). I’ve fought tons of bullet sponge enemies and spent minutes scratch my head over whether some gear is better than others thanks to the somewhat impenetrable item stats.

The Division is getting a significant patch next week that is adding an end-game activity called Incursions and bringing in sweeping changes to loot, crafting and a whole bunch of other stuff. This impression covers everything pre-patch and some of my feedback might be addressed come release, but this is what I thought of The Division during the first month of its life. Continue reading The Division Delivers But Only in Fits and Starts

Helldivers is Hardcore Co-op Action

For you PlayStation Plus owners out there, Helldivers is available for free this month. The GamerSushi crew, plus a friend of Eddy’s, checked it out last night and an awesome time was had by all.

If you are not familiar with Helldivers, it’s a top down twin stick shooter where you play as the eponymous soldiers who are dropped onto various planets to wipe out the alien races for the glory of Super Earth. The game has a very tongue in cheek sense of humor; when you kill aliens, your person shouts things like “HAVE SOME DEMOCRACY!”. If you’ve seen Starship Troopers, then you’re familiar with the kind of milieu this game is going for. Continue reading Helldivers is Hardcore Co-op Action

Testing the Division Beta on PC

This past weekend the Division beta finally gave us a glimpse into the long-gestating title that Massive has been working on. The hype train for The Division has been a long and strange one and it felt good to finally get my hands on the game.

While the beta was fairly limited to one mission and the Dark Zone, I had an awesome time taking on the gangs throughout New York and going rogue against others agents to steal their loot. I played on PC and the game was fairly well optimized for a Ubisoft-published title. While there was some concerns about the “bullet-sponge” nature of the enemies from pre-beta impressions, I didn’t really notice it too much at the time. Continue reading Testing the Division Beta on PC

Star Wars Battlefront is Gorgeous Fan Service, But Not Much Else

Ever since EA and Disney announced their partnership to bring more Star Wars games to the market a Battlefront reboot helmed by DICE, the developers of the Battlefield series, was inevitable. The pre-release material showed us all the right stuff: gorgeously rendered Stormtroopers and Rebels mixing it up in iconic locations with tantalizing glimpses at the famous heroes, villains and starships thrown in for good measure. Now that Battlefront has been out for a while, how has this seemingly killer formula measured up?

There’s no getting around it: Star Wars Battlefront is quite possibly the best looking and sounding game I’ve ever played. With no last-gen version to hold it back, DICE went all out on recreating assets from the original trilogy down to the smallest scratch of paint on the X-Wings. DICE leaned heavily into their location research and promotional shots of the material they got from LucasArts as part of their marketing and their dedication to capturing the look and feel of the first three movies paid dividends. Continue reading Star Wars Battlefront is Gorgeous Fan Service, But Not Much Else

Watch 50 Minutes of The Division Gameplay Because You Know You Want To

Youtuber JackFrags (along with a bunch of other YouTube channels and outlets except for us and Kotaku) visited Ubisoft recently to get a peek at the long-in-development Tom Clancy third-person shooter RPG hybrid The Division. A lot of the videos that made their way to the Internet last week were short and had voice-overs, but JackFrags put up 50 minutes of commentary-free footage featuring some co-op mission action and Dark Zone shenanigans. The footage was recorded on Xbox One, for reference. Watch the embedded video below if you want to know more:

My hype level for the Division has been steadily climbing since the previews started hitting. I’ve seen some complaints about the “bullet sponge” nature of the enemies, but it makes sense if you think about it as an RPG first rather than a twitch-based shooter. I’m in the beta that will be hitting the PC at the end of January so I’ll most likely be streaming the game for anyone interested.

Who else is riding that Division hype train? Anyone on the fence?

Source – JackFrags’ YouTube channel

What Games Are You Looking Forward to in 2016?

All things considered, 2015 was a banner year for games. Granted I say this because last year let me play not one but two new Assassin’s Creed games (Rogue was released on the PC in March) so I consider that a mark of success by any metric.

Now that we’re speeding into 2016, I was wondering what is on your radar for the coming months. I’m also looking at producing some video content, so I’d be interested to know what games you’d like to see more of in that regard.

January already offers some tasty morsels with Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam for the 3DS and the PC release of Tomb Raider coming in pretty quick succession on January 22 and 29, respectively. Things don’t slow down after that as XCOM 2 comes out on February 5 and The Division (maybe) hitting in March.

Those are just the big titles on the horizon though and I’m sure there are dozens of smaller games that I’ve neglected to mention. What are you folks looking out for? Any games you’d like to recommend to your fellow Sushians to put on their wishlists?

Destiny Roll Call!

destiny roll call

Today is the day, Sushians! This is the day we step into Bungie’s brave new world and plumb the depths of Destiny for sweet loot.

Since Destiny is coming out on a fair number of consoles, I thought it would be a good idea to do a classic GamerSushi Roll Call! What system are you playing Destiny on? What class are you going to go with?

Personally I was leaning Titan for a while, but I made an eleventh-hour decision to roll a Warlock based on that classes’ level 15 healing and buffing ability which sounds like it will come in handy. Also, space magic and trench coats.

But what about you? How are you planning on playing Destiny?

Bungie’s Jason Jones Explains Just What the Heck Destiny Is

Are you confused by the lack of information about what the available game modes of Destiny? So am I, which is why I’m grateful that Bungie put out a video where Jason Jones explains what you’ll be doing when the Destiny Beta drops on July 17, or when the full game hits on September 9. Check it out:

So it seems like we have the Tower (third-person social space), story-missions, a free-roam/do side-quests type of thing, Strikes, and a multiplayer arena. Destiny seems to have a lot of stuff to do but I still can’t shake the feeling that it might be kind of bland. That might just be me though. How is Destiny shaping up for you?

Battlefield 4 Getting “Netcode” Patch on All Platforms

After weeks of testing in the CTE (Community Test Environment) the Battlefield 4 “netcode” improvements are being rolled out to every version of the game today in a patch according to a new post on Battlelog. The “netcode” patch improves (among other things) the server tick-rate, or how often you computer receives new information from the server. Battlefield 4 previously had a tick-rate of 10hz, or ten updates a second (industry standard for FPS games is 30-60).

The Sheer Joy of Mario Kart 8

mario kart 8 impressions

Over the weekend I played a healthy amount of Mario Kart 8 and I can firmly say that this is the most fun I’ve had with the series in a long time. This game feels like a perfect evolution for the series with new features that make sense and a lot of returning mechanics from the previous games that are implemented in clever ways. The new hover segments, where the tires on your vehicle turn sideways and you float a foot or so off the ground, manages to feel like an integral part of how you play in Mario Kart 8 and not just a new gimmick to put on the back of the box. Hovering turns the gameplay on its head, sometimes literally, and forces you to think differently, like purposely bumping into other races to get a speed boost instead of avoiding them.

It helps that Mario Kart 8 is an amazing looking game and even in local two-player splitscreen it still delivers a 60 frame per second performance. Across the eight different cups are 32 tracks, 16 new and 16 returning and all have been tweaked to take full advantage of the different modes of transportation. In one race alone you might be underwater, gliding through the air and hovering upside down. Mario Kart 8 keeps you constantly engaged by changing up the progression of the race so you never feel like you’re just going through the motions. The soundtrack is nearly fully orchestrated this time and is a huge improvement over the music of Mario Kart Wii. Continue reading The Sheer Joy of Mario Kart 8

Battlefield: Hardline Revealed in Battlelog Update

battlefield hardline

Update: Yep, Battlefield: Hardline is real.

Battlelog, DICE’s browser-based interface that they’ve been forcing on the gaming public since Battlefield 3, received an update this morning. Instead of the assignments for the upcoming expansion pack Dragon’s Teeth, an entierly different kind of surprised was included.

While digging through the source code of Battlelog, denizen of the Internet Koen Vlaswinkel found a whole bunch of information about Battlefield: Hardline, including weapons, vehicles, classes, gamemodes and who’s developing it. From the images Battlefield: Hardline looks like it will be SWAT vs Thieves on a variety of urban maps with gamemodes such as Heist and Blood Money, giving it a very Payday feel. Continue reading Battlefield: Hardline Revealed in Battlelog Update

Having Some Dumb Fun with Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2

sniper elite nazi zombie army 2

About a month ago I got gifted a copy of Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2 on Steam and I didn’t bother playing it until this past weekend. I didn’t expect much from it, but I was surprised at how fun it ended up being.

If you’ve played Call of Duty’s zombie mode, then the set-up will sound very familiar: four WW2-era soldiers battle the Nazi zombie horde while searching for a way to end the onslaught. The difference here is that Sniper Elite is very much focused on long-range combat, so you’ll mostly be pulling sick headshots on a lot of shambling zombies. Unlike CoD’s version, the zombies (for the most part) in NZA2 are the slow, shuffling variety so you always have a fighting chance. There are a few “super” zombies like the machine gun guy or the summoner, but as you progress the zombies don’t get faster and more resilient, which I greatly appreciated.

Nazi Zombie Army 2 is by no means perfect, as I found that actually controlling your character was fairly sloppy and the cover system was basically useless. What NZA2 does well, however, is giving you slow-motion shots of your bullets destroying undead Nazi skulls and in the end, isn’t that all we really want?

A friend and I played this for a couple of hours on Saturday and I had a blast. The fact that it was free definitely helped, but it was much better than I expected and it got me interested in the Sniper Elite franchise in general (which has a three-quel coming out, wouldn’t you know it). Has anyone played any of the Sniper Elite series? What do you think of it?

Taking a Swing at Mario Golf: World Tour

mario golf world tour

It’s been a good ten years since we last saw a Mario Golf game, but longtime Nintendo sports collaborators Camelot are at it again with Mario Golf: World Tour, a 3DS title that came out on May 2.

The Mario Golf games have either been strictly arcade-like or had some light RPG aspects and World Tour seems to straddle both of these disciplines. Playing as your Mii in the “Castle Club” mode, you use the tried-and-true power bar to control your shots and for each course you complete (whether it’s a practice round or a tournament), you unlock a new piece of stat-altering gear in the pro shop which you can put on your golfer. Continue reading Taking a Swing at Mario Golf: World Tour

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Trailer Will Topple Your Expectations like a House of Cards

Originally the plan was for the newest Call of Duty game, made by Modern Warfare 3 collaborator Sledgehammer Games, to be revealed this coming Sunday, but you know how the Internet works. The official trailer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is out now and it features Kevin Spacey (who is a Southern accent away from portraying Frank Underwood), drones, exoskeletons, hover bikes and much much more. If you thought Black Ops 2 was futuristic, wait until you get a load of this:

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare certainly looks nice, but there are also a lot of signs that point to it being on an upgraded version of the same old engine (I swear, I’ve watched the same running animation for the soldiers in slow-mo since 2007). What do you guys think of this reveal? Back on the Call of Duty hype-train? Can Advanced Warfare pick up after the post-Ghosts slump? According to the trailer, the release date for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is November 4, 2014. No consoles were specifically listed, except for the Xbox One version which provided the footage for the trailer.

The Hardcore Tactics of Insurgency

insurgency game

It just occured to me that I’ve been playing Insurgency for the past few months but never made a post about it, which is a shame because this is a damn fine shooter.

Insurgency is a “realistic” team-based first-person-shooter based on an old Half Life mod. You play as either Security or the Insurgents in several gameplay modes but the kicker here is that the game is pretty unforgiving if you’re used to kill feeds, regenerating health or hit markers because it doesn’t have any of that.

The UI in Insurgency is minimal to the point of being non-existent, but for some reason that wasn’t a real barrier for me and actually makes Insurgency one of the most thrilling mutliplayer shooters I’ve ever tried. Because enemies aren’t called out for you, you have to move carefully around the environment, using the lean ability to peek around corners because one or two good shots will end you. So far my favorite weapons are the single-shot designated marksmen rifles, but I’ve been just as effective with the assault rifles or even pistols. Continue reading The Hardcore Tactics of Insurgency

GamerSushi Asks: What Are You Playing Heart of the Cards Edition

hearthstone

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with you, Sushians, to ask the age old question: what are you playing? We’re in-between bouts of big releases right now, so it’s a good time to take stock and see how your 2014 is shaping up.

Personally I’ve been playing plenty of Hearthstone: Heroes of WarCraft, Blizzard’s new online collectible card game (or CCG for the purpose of brevity). This is the first CCG I’ve gotten into in earnest and I’m starting to realize just how freaking bad I am at them. I’ve won one Ranked match in Hearthstone and other players regularly take me apart. I’m still learning the ropes though, so I’m confident I’ll at least get one other win soon.

Other than that I tried out a couple conversion mods for Sins of a Solar Empire. There’s the always classic Star Wars mod Sins of a Galactic Empire but I also tried out Dawn of the Reapers, a Mass Effect-themed one. Dawn of the Reapers is in very early alpha but the Reaper models are in there as well as most of the Council/Cerberus ships. I’m definitely looking forward to the end product on that one.

So what are you guys playing?

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 90: Alan, Please Add Title

gamersushi show ep 90

After an unexpected week break we’re back in your digital media player with an episode of the GamerSushi Show. I couldn’t think of a clever title this week, but Jeff, Anthony and I talk some video game news and give thoughts on what we’re playing. You know, the usual deal. We also find time to bust out a few impressions at the end.

Just in case you forgot, this is how it goes: listen, rate and we’ll catch you next time.

0:00 – 3:06 Intro
3:07 – 18:53 Watch Dogs multiplayer video (and other stuff)
18:54 – 30:10 Dark Souls 2 and Trials: Fusion
30:11 – 37:41 Marty O’Donnell terminated by Bungie
37:42 – 40:10 Snoop Dogg Call of Duty: Ghosts announcer pack
40:11 – 42:54 Outro

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Watch Dogs Walkthrough Video Shows off Competitive Multiplayer

Watch Dogs will be upon us very soon, and as such Ubisoft is rolling out walkthorugh videos detailing what you’ll be doing in the game come May 27. The most recent video showcases the multiplayer modes, which range from asymmetrical mobile app versus in-game combat (which I saw at last year’s PAX Prime) to a four-on-four objective-oriented mode. Check out the multiplayer offerings of Watch Dogs below:

Is it just me or does Competitive Decryption Combat look like a ton of fun? What do you guys think about this glimpse at Watch Dogs’ multiplayer modes?

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 89: Super Sushi Bros.

gamersushi show ep 89

Fans of Patrick‘s last appearance in the days of yore of the GamerSushi Show (well, episode 83 actually) will be overjoyed to learn that the site’s most Easterly Canadian is back for another go.

Given Patrick’s stance as a Wii U supporter, it’s fortunate that we brought him in to discuss the massive Super Smash Bros. info-dump that came out this week. We also talk about out impressions of the Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number trailer and break down the beneficial changes Blizzard has brought to Diablo 3 for the new expansion, Reaper of Souls.

So listen, rate, give us five stars on Twitter and we’ll be back in your ear holes soon!

0:00 – 1:06 Intro
1:07 – 13:19 Super Smash Bros. Nintendo Direct
13:20 – 17:49 Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number trailer
17:50 – 26:07 What we’re playing
26:08 – 37:05 Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
37:06 – 39:50 Jeff’s Titanfall obsession
39:51 – 42:10 Outro

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Review: Titanfall

titanfall review

The tumultuous fracturing of Call of Duty creators Infinity Ward in 2010 represented a significant shift in the first person shooter landscape. Free from Activision, IW founders Jason West and Vincent Zampella and a team of former employees founded Respawn Entertainment and joined forces with EA to create a new franchise.

The result of that union is Titanfall, a multiplayer-only FPS where players can control either the agile Pilots or utilize one of three giant robot suits, called Titans, to duke it out. With a massive groundswell of anticipation surging it to the forefront of the collective gamer consciousness, is Titanfall the new king of first person shooters? Continue reading Review: Titanfall