Featured Posts
Preview: Path of Exile
Hello Toastervision patriots and new readers alike. Today I want to tell you about an up and coming free-to-play title from Grinding Gear Games that’s been in production for over 5 years and has managed to keep a relatively low profile in the Action RPG genre. I’m well aware Diablo 3 is less than 20 days away from release, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. The ARPG scene has been dominated by Blizzard with Diablo series of games, and I admit that I’ve spent many years playing Diablo 2 on and off for months at a time. With games like Titan Quest, Torchlight, Dungeon Siege, and Baldur’s Gate having a huge influence on my youth, it’s safe to say that I’m a bit obsessed with spending countless hours running through dungeons to acquire gear that has no use but to be prestigious or traded for aforementioned fake gold in an e-community. This leads me to my first point and what immediately caught my attention with Path of Exile. Read on, fellow dungeon dwellers, to see why I think Path of Exile could be a budding star in a newly-revived genre.
Preview: TERA (Open Beta Weekend)
Ah yes, The Exiled Realm of Arborea; some of you may know it better as TERA, that wonderful MMO that everyone’s been talking about. Some are even going so far as to tote it as the “WoW-Killer™” that many have been waiting for. With some rather risque armor, an intriguing new combat system and some traditional aspects, it’s definitely been getting a lot of notice in the MMO market. TERA’s official open beta happened last weekend, and I have to ask: what do we have to show for it?
Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend scheduled for next weekend (!)
It’s finally here, you guys: a chance to sit down for an entire weekend and play Guild Wars 2 in a hopefully only moderately restricted fashion. I haven’t played the game since August, and I’m incredibly pumped to see what’s been changed up since then. Next weekend, April 27th-29th, anyone that’s pre-purchased (like I managed to do today) the game will be able to romp around in the wilds of Tyria and kill all sorts of things in a dynamic fashion.
No lie, I’m super pumped. If you’ve already pre-purchased but you haven’t registered your account yet, that may be something you want to address. Do so right here.
Review: Tribes: Ascend – Going fast never felt so good
There is a distinctly foreign feeling to your first game of Tribes: Ascend. It seems strangely familiar at first glance, a sci-fi shooter with teams, loadouts, objectives, all the jazz you’ve come to expect from a FPS in today’s market. Ascend, however, is wrapped up in packaging that hearkens back to the days when PC shooters were the way to kill people over the Internet, and it revels in the knowledge that a player cannot just jump in and start wrecking things. Instead, they have to sit down and relearn how to move, shoot and survive. A first-person shooter with a lengthy learning curve is a rare thing these days, but when everything clicks and that player feels the surge of adrenaline that can only come from what Hi-Rez is bringing back to the shooter scene in Tribes: Ascend, it’s all incredibly worth it.
City of Heroes entering Issue 23, “Where Shadows Lie”
City of Heroes, which I guess has a subtitle of FREEDOM now, has always struck me as the MMO that everyone has at least tried. It’s got a nifty angle on the genre with its superhero-centrism and the shift to free-to-play that it underwent last year, and the content updates have just kept on finding their way into the limelight. That’s a good thing!
The latest content update is entitled “Where Shadows Lie” and from the sounds of things it’s more of a story conclusion to many of the plot threads that have been building up since the Going Rogue expansion began. Heroes of the world will be able to reunite to finish the Praetorian War against Emperor Cole, who in all likelihood has some nasty tricks up his sleeve. There’s also a new zone, “Night Ward” for mid-level players (30-35) and what I can only assume is a raid of sorts in the “Magisterium Incarnate Trial”…boy, that’s a mouthful.
In addition to the bigger actual “content” things coming to CoH, there’s a flurry of extra stuff you would normally expect in a big content update like this – new mobs, armor, a bunch of VIP content including new quest chains, costume sets and a “Hybrid Incarnate” specialization tree for level-capped folks. Other things slated for this patch are more “quality of life” implementations: look forward to a portal system so people don’t have to rely on those damn heliplanes all the time, as well as a server-wide LFG channel and the ability to join Super Groups at any point you want.
I might have to pop back to Professor Beaksmith, my hulking blue-toned basher with an afro and a sweet beak mask. There’s no official release on this yet, but I imagine it’ll be fairly “soon”. We’ve got some pictures beyond the cut for you, if that sort of thing tickles your fancy.