Ghost Recon: Wildlands seems like a fine game, if I could play it. It’s about the most Ubisoft game that I could think of, a co-op version of Far Cry, mixed with The Division and taking some cues from Rainbow Six Siege. We recently had the chance to check out the Wildlands BETA, and came away impressed with what Ubisoft have managed to put together, but somewhat weary of seeing the same gameplay mechanics we’ve seen for years now recycled yet again.

Set in Bolivia, which, in this story is a failed narco-state caught between the oppressive government Unidad forces and the narcoterrists of the Santa Blanca cartel. You are part of a small United States covert operations team sent to clean up the mess. It’s all very much Ooh Rah Americans saving the world sort of stuff. Technically you’re working your way up, taking out ever-higher ranking members of the cartel, but really the story is there to give you an excuse to stalk bases and kill some bad guys. Wildlands is a game that is unabashedly happy with murder, and all pretense of civility is tossed out the window in the name of fun shooty gameplay. And in fact realistic world-building in general is tossed out the window. That may be distressing to some, but what Ubisoft have created is not a world that is an attempt to mimic our own, but a sandbox designed just so for us to explore and have a good time with our buddies.

Despite this being only a portion of the world map, the map is huge. Wildlands gives you the walk, drive, boat and fly around a beautiful open world. You’re essentially transporting yourself and your three ops team members between a huge variety of outposts and villages chock full of enemies, and occasionally civilians and rebel AI buddies too. How you take on the outpost is up to you, though the game generally pushes you into a stealthier approach, unlike say Just Cause 3. You can use drones, binoculars and the environment to get a sense of the base and its defences before picking your way through it, or you can just land a helicopter right in the middle and take things as they come.

If playing alone your AI buddies aren’t the smartest – I found they lagged behind me significantly, and were often on another side of the village or base than I was. And of course unlike a real human, they don’t take the initiative, so they’re more alternate fire targets than any real help.

This is a game designed around co-op gameplay. Playing alone is fine, but the real stories and emergent gameplay experiences will be when teaming up with some buddies and developing intricate base infiltration tactics. And then having fun while it all falls apart. The game does give you the option of public matchmaking, but I can’t really recommend that. The specific type of communication is akin to what’s needed in Rainbow Six Siege or a raid from Destiny, unlike say a strike from the same. Strangers just can’t or won’t communicate at the level needed for it not to be frustrating. Especially in an open world public matchmaking isn’t the best way to play the game.

Apart from base storming there’s the usual Ubisoft multiplicity of collectables. Bits of intelligence, skill points, optional challenges and the like cover the map in a way that only Ubisoft can. The amount of stuff to do is already overwhelming, and you certainly won’t be short of diversions to spend some time with. Whether they will grab your attention is something that has yet to be proven.

But the main game of storming bases and shooting baddies is fairly satisfying. While normal traversal is over the shoulder third person, you have the option of switching between first person or third person shooting. Despite being somewhat skeptical of switching between first-person and third person, it works rather well. Both you and your cartel enemies go down fairly easily – no inexplicable bullet sponges (looking at you The Division) here. As a result, knowing the base you’re going up against before going in makes things much easier. Suppressors are on by default and if you play well they’ll never need to come off. But that’s rare. Most infiltrations end in some sort of firefight, where your drone missed tagging an enemy or a companion rebel AI does something stupid and ruins your plan.

It all ends up feeling a bit stealth-optional just as it is in Far Cry, which is fine by me but might annoy those looking for a different experience. Firefights weren’t too difficult even with the default loadout, but I feel that’s a part of the closed beta, and the full game will ramp up enemy difficulty as it develops.

There’s a wide variety of loadouts and customisability in nearly everything, from the colour of your skin to the colour of your gun. That said at the moment the character creator is relatively limited – there are no sliders for example, only set options. The clothing is somewhat limited too, but I can chalk this up to being a closed beta, rather than the full game. There were some #brands that were an unwelcome sight, but I think that’s just a personal preference of mine; others may love them.

I had issues connecting and playing with others with random but consistent disconnects and failed instance merging. There were extreme frame rate issues on my PC, leading me to lock to 30FPS, even with a powerful GPU hardware.

Overall the Wildlands BETA got me much more interested in a game that honestly I had written off. It offers a beautiful world and great gameplay. Bugs will be ironed out and the game will be (hopefully) optimised as development progresses.

But playing co-op is a must, and that can be a challenge. I’m sure there’s more to the game from what I saw but for people would play alone even half the time the way the game is structured isn’t really set up for them. Although it has all the trappings of a Ubisoft game, all of them, its appeal is actually quite niche. It’s too early to tell whether it will be successful or not, but it definitely already has the ingredients there. Whether you will have fun may depend on what you like to eat what you are being served.

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The post Ghost Recon Wildlands Closed BETA (PC) Preview appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

I have always thought an Indie MMO would be impossible, they require so much work, so much detail, and so many costly server resources, that I could not see one happening on an Indie budget, but Gloria Victis is taking a crack at what seemed unfeasible while putting their own spin on the genre.

Gloria Victis is a low fantasy style game, meaning it is more grounded in reality. It is also very medieval inspired, meaning you play as one race, humans, but still get plenty of fantasy elements.  This was a nice change as all the different races like elves are fun enough, but it is nice to have something a little different.  Aesthetically the game looks good, but the standard is a little below what I would expect for a MMO. The style of villages and greenery were fairly stock standard, but character faces looked weird and flat.

The most notable feature in Gloria Victis is that its combat does not use auto aiming.  With your average MMO you pick a target then just worry about the style of attack, howeverGloria Victis leaves it in your hands to ensure you are close enough every time you take a swing.  I really liked that element as it actually made the game feel totally different, even if the game looks a little generic.  There were some annoyances with the ranged weapons where it would show the name of the enemy I was aiming at but for no apparent reason the arrows would not hit, so I assume I was too far away to hit the target.  This is not an issue with weapons like the axe, sword or dagger because you can see if it hits or not, but with ranged weapons it is a bit of a pain not knowing what is or is not in range.

The crafting system is fairly normal.  Go out, collect resources from either enemies or areas to mine it, like chopping a tree for wood for example andthen craft.  You can get recipes throughout the game which allows you to craft a wide range of different things, so even though the crafting itself is average, with the plethora of things to craft there is at least some variety there.

The PVP in Gloria Victis is another star.  Aside from the usual PVP areas the events really caught me by surprise.  I got pulled into one fairly early andby pulled in I mean it popped up and I entered as it does not force you into the events.You get dropped into an area for a certain amount of time and need to take bases and kill the opposition.  It was fun, hectic and buggy, but mostly fun.

Bug are numerous and varied in Gloria Victis.  At this point it worth reiterating that this game has just gone into early access, which means the game is far from complete but playable and as such bugs are expected it still worthy to note for people looking to spend money.  There were weird things like spawning under the ground which required restarting the game which happened twice.  But combat bugs are considerably more common and more important.  At times the combat did not seem to be working correctly, epitomised by when I fired a bunch of arrows at the head of an enemy and he did not react.  I walked towards him to discover they got stuck in an invisible object a meter above a pot and unfortunately while I was looking at that the enemy noticed me and got the upper hand instead of the other way around.  On top of that I had the game freeze at its loading screen a couple of times and as one of those were the first time I played the game I left it for ten minutes before realising it was stuck.

There were also many bugs where attacks did not happen for no apparent reasonsuch as when a pesky very low level fox took five arrows to the head before running past to taunt me, with each of those arrows sticking out of his head, before escaping. The next fox of the same level died after two so that inconsistency was annoying at times as I never really knew what was going to happen as a consequence of my actions and found myself overwhelmed by enemies at times as a result.

Ultimately I had a fair bit of fun with Gloria Victis.  It is a MMO that could have some true sticking power at launch, but in its early access stage it is not without its faults.  Not all of the features are available either, like two tribes you can see the logo for but cannot pick, or being a woman where the option is there but greyed out.  Once all of the bugs have been ironed out and the features are done it really should be something special but one must be aware of its early access bugs, as amongst the fun there is plenty of frustration to be had.

The post Just Cause 3 Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Following an incredibly successful E3 2015 for JUST CAUSE 3 – with 10 award wins and over 20 nominations – Square Enix and Avalanche Studios are proud to share the new ‘Official E3 Playthrough’ trailer (above).

The island republic of Medici is the ultimate sandbox. With Rico’s new abilities and countless weapons and vehicles, there’s an infinite amount of possibilities around every corner. Each obstacle presents countless options for an explosive outcome – how creative can you be with Rico’s vast arsenal of equipment?

“At E3, we wanted to show our fans a sneak peek into the sheer volume of creative choices they will have access to in the game,” said Christofer Sundberg, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Avalanche Studios, “Today, we’re excited to share the fun with the rest of our Just Cause fans around the world.”

Get ready to ‘Set the World on Fire’ on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and high-end Windows PC on December the 1st 2015.

The post JUST CAUSE 3 Official E3 Playthrough Trailer appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

My recent behind closed door demonstration of No Man’s Sky has turned me from a skeptic to a believer. If you are unfamiliar with Hello World’s upcoming science fiction sandbox game then let me catch you up.

No Man’s Sky takes sandbox to the next level by creating an infinitely big galaxy for you to play around in.

Players start the game by being spawned on a random spot on a random planet in a random solar system. While the universe is shared with all other players, Hello Game developer Sean Murray stated that it is unlikely that you will actually meet other players due to the incredible size of it.

The game takes place in three different environments, on land as you walk around, under water or in space on your own personal spaceship. Going between each one is seamless requiring no load screen.

Sean stated they wanted the game to feel alive and be a living breathing universe. The game manages to give off this vibe incredibly well. The galaxy features numerous different factors, each planet is filled with unique animals in the water and on land and everything just generally feels like a natural universe.

Each planet, solar system, animal species, spaceship and weapon is procedurally generated. This means that each planet you visit will be different, featuring different flora, fauna, landscapes, resources and points of interest. This works into the heavy focus of the game on discovery.

Each time you visit a solar system, you can scan the planets and the landscape for new discoveries. If the planet or species hasn’t been discovered before by another player, something that seems likely given how enormous the game is, you have the opportunity to name the species or planet and add it to your personal Pokédex -esque index.

To rename the things you discover you first have to upload it to a beacon which is located on each planet.

Each planet has on it various points of interest which include buildings, trading posts among many other things. While buildings do feature in the game, there is no cities as such. Instead Hello Games is going for more natural and uninhabited environments.

The game features a multitude of game mechanics including crafting, trading, upgrading, resource mining and exploring. Each aspect of the game appeared to be incredibly well integrated into the universe making everything feel active and alive.

There is no story as such. But there is much lore built into the universe.

While the lore isn’t explicitly told, the developers use it to design certain aspects of the game. The central goal of each player however is to get to the centre of the universe. No explanation was given as to what the player will receive if this is achieved or the reasoning behind it.

Combat in the game can take place either on land or in space. The randomly generated native species on each planet can prove hostile and deadly.

To take them down you use your trusty multi-tool. Killing local fauna, or even excessive mining can raise your wanted level. The wanted level acts similar to Grand Theft Auto with local sentinels, who aim to preserve the planet, beginning to chase you once you get a level one of being wanted.

As your wanted level increases you began to face stronger sentinels with an AT-ST reminiscent robot being featured in the demo I saw.

Dying on a planet results in you losing all resources gained and discoveries made since you last uploaded them at a beacon. Dying in space however results in much more significant losses with you losing your ship and respawning at a nearby space station.

The resources you gain from mining things on planets, buying things at trading posts or killing others allow you to upgrade your ship, suit or weapon. In order to upgrade you must first have discovered the technology. An extensive description on how you unlock these technologies was not given however it was told that they can be unlocked by discovering buildings.

I came into the conference unsure whether it will be a suited for me, I left with certainty that I will sink countless hours into the game. No Man’s Sky is coming to PS4 next year and PC sometime after that.

If you love the idea of exploring, crafting and upgrading then you should certainly check this game out

The post Hands On with No Man’s Sky appeared first on Shane the Gamer.