When the Titans Fell, We Rose by W-E-Z



When the Titans Fell, We Rose

by W-E-Z

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What’s Next for Titanfall? Respawn Entertainment’s community...



What’s Next for Titanfall?

Respawn Entertainment’s community manager, Abbie Heppe, dropped some subtle hints to IGN about what players can come to expect, and not expect, from their mech-centric online shooter’s still brewing DLC.

For starters, if you were hoping to clamor aboard any titan models besides the three available on-disc, Abbie’s about to crush your dreams like a mech flattening a pilot. It seems appeasing you mecha fetishists out there – Wikipedia says I should call you technosexuals but that makes you sound like you get off to Moby – could possibly endanger the game’s stability.

“In order to [add a Titan] it takes so much balancing to make all the Titan abilities work with each other, and then against pilots. It’s a huge undertaking,” Heppe divulged. “Originally we just had the Atlas titans and then the team refused to add in the rest of the Titans until we were all sure that that one fitted perfectly with everything else in the game, so… I’m not announcing any new Titans right now!”

Spot-on balancing has been the cornerstone area of praise in almost every positive review Titanfall garnered since dropping from the stratosphere and into stores Tuesday. Not impossible to add new titan units, but not a task the dev team is anxious to jump at this soon after launch.

What we may see instead in future DLC are more of the exotic aliens indigenous to the battlefield IMC and Militia soldiers wage war upon. “We’re trying to give players as much of a varied look at things as we can so that is definitely a possibility,” said Heppe.

Once Titanfall is successfully released in its projected territories, the Respawn team will shift focus to free updates that’ll pad the game with additional features and modes. Downloadable content, the marquee of which is brand new maps, will follow.

Afterwards, what of sequels? Will Sony consoles see the first-person grace of Titanfall? IGN asked and Heppe “answered.”

“Vince, our CEO, has come out and said that while we’re exclusive for this game, it doesn’t limit us regarding console exclusivity for any of the future things we do.”

What a very exciting future that could be indeed. In the meanwhile, excuse me while throttle my PS4 until it learns to read X1 discs.

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Booze, Mechs, and Texas: The Red Herb at Titanfall’s Launch Party...



Booze, Mechs, and Texas: The Red Herb at Titanfall’s Launch Party

So us members of the Glitch crew gained access to the Titanfall launch party held in Austin. I’d like to send a very warm thank you to Annie and Phil Spencer for making that magic happen, especially on such wickedly short notice. By the way, absolutely lovely meeting you and I hope you enjoy the shirts (they bought them, of course; no one was bribed despite my unwholesome, checkered past of bartering in cloth).

Quite the eventful evening, all in all. After closing up SXSW’s Gaming Expo on Sunday, we were lucky enough to be the last group to get into the Game of Thrones Exhibition held at Austin Music Hall. Fantastic shit. We saw props, wardrobes, and an assortment of art relating to the best show you’ll ever put your eyes to. Didn’t get to sit on the iron throne but that’s okay; Westeros will be mine in time.

Trekking by foot from the music hall to the unexpectedly snug club the launch party was held at, we were met by a half-mile accordion of people lined up around the block. The event was open to the public but I’ll be damned if I can see how much more than those waiting at the tip-top of the line ever got in. The club was filled to the brim with VIP attendees as it was.

Your eyes didn’t have to travel far to spot a who’s who of industry figureheads. Larry Hryb, Xbox Live’s very own “Major Nelson,” was bouncing from conversation to conversation; Bonus Round’s Geoff Keighley was lounging about; and I’m confident I saw Respawn’s Vince Zampella vincing around.

The club was lined by several smooth and bright monitors, each accompanied by a sealed Xbox One unit, a corded headset (a Triton, if my memory doesn’t fail me) that swanky custom controller, and housing a full-on retail copy of Titanfall. You had a few guests lording over some stations – like one kid, who, either insanely or devotedly, spent his day waiting in line from 10 A.M. up until 9 P.M. when the doors opened – but most would throw down a match (or three) and allow the closest spectator to hop on.

It wasn’t long before I got my chance behind the wheel. Before the party, I’ve never played the game. Let me be curt: Titanfall is the truth. If there were ever a game capable of slamming Call of Duty into the ground, Titanfall is qualified for the job. It’s fast, engaging, and once that unfamiliar honeymoon stage learning the controller and the game’s quirks is gotten past, it plays like a goddamn charm.

I logged in two matches, failing terrifically in one and crushing it in the other, before passing the controller to a dude looming over my shoulder, hoping to initiate a chain of playtime equality. It was around this time that I found out my VIP badge meant free drinks the bar. After giving the bartender permission to surprise me with anything equal parts sweetness and alcohol, I dove back into the mech on flesh carnage. I kept my loadouts pretty vanilla, aside from minor tinkering and nudging, so as to pick up the basics; I had enough on my hands figuring out the wall-running and jetpack mechanics. Though I was a ways from perfecting this form of mobility – a necessity in laterally driven maps – I never once felt frustrated or stunted introducing it into my playstyle.
I don’t know how many matches I blew through before I realized I was thoroughly sloshed, but I can tell you it only took one mystery drink and two cups of light beer to get me there. I’m a rare drinker, which is to say I’m a feather-class lightweight. Childish Gambino took to the stage, and instead of gravitating to the sound of his music, I took the opportunity to get in uninterrupted, delightfully tipsy play. I was entirely less magnanimous about sharing the controller by this time. I couldn’t even tell when Gambino’s set ended.
My go-to mode was Attrition, the closest thing to Team Deathmatch I could grasp. A Respawn employee overseeing the demo stations revealed I was competing against both developers back at home base as well as players in the Southern hemisphere that somehow snagged street date broken copies.
I felt gleefully inclined to shake this stranger’s hand and thank him for making something unfathomably awesome. You can snap a man’s neck with the click of a button. You can rodeo a marauding, thirty-foot mech and bring it down in a mess of metal and fire. There’s dinosaurs attacking players in the middle of a firefight. Fuck and yes I wanted to shake this man’s hand, regardless of how little or how much he contributed. Speaking with a subtle British accent over the dull, drunken bustle in the club, he told me people have trouble going back to their standby shooters after playing Titanfall. Thinking back to a moment where, in my own mech, I ripped a titan’s pilot out their cockpit and tossed them away like a dirty tissue, I understood how this could be.
“Hell, after just watching the streams for this game, I was bored of Call of Duty,” I said.
Smiling, he said, “That’s what I love to hear.”
Both the booze and the night’s experiences begin to wear from my mind. What remains is the slight stiffness at the creases of my mouth, no doubt from the dumb, unself-conscious grinning I was doing during the entire party, and a pressing, though errant, need to adopt an Xbox One into my living room family.
All for one game.

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Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn Brings an Endless Waltz of Hack...



Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn Brings an Endless Waltz of Hack n’ Slash to the West

My childhood appreciation for the piloted mechs of Gundam lore combined with my weakness for repetitive hack n’ slash combat against massive hordes of moving fodder has allowed Tecmo Koei’s Dynasty Warriors: Gundam crossovers slip right past my usually unrelenting wall of cynicism.

But after buying into three below average games trickled with modest, barely-an-inch-forward improvements? …Good Gundamn am I ready to do it all again! Call it a guilty pleasure, if you want. I’m not here to excuse myself. Take this old adage to heart if it helps you understand: I likes what I likes.

This summer brings Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn, the fourth installment in Japan’s Gundam Musou series, to Western shores. Not without some shake-up’s in its release format, be warned. Gundam Reborn is dropping exclusively for the PS3 – no Xbox 360 counterpart this time – and it will only be made available as a downloadable title on PSN.

The fact that anything Gundam doesn’t find the same widespread appeal stateside as it does in Japan probably explains why we’re not getting a physical release (North America, after all, has far less to-scale Mobile Suit replicas dotting our parks than Japan does). Worse news hits the handheld community, as the PS Vita version of the game, including its cross-play functionality, is not being ported overseas.

If, however, you’re in the qualifying bracket to attain the game, the good news is that you can expect to man over 100 Mobile Suits along with the ability, for the first time ever, to pilot gigantic Mobile Armors. It’s a mecha wet dream turned wet reality.

The returning Official Mode centers on the Universal Century timeline, which spills across the continuity of eight different Gundam animes and features actual footage from the shows. Ultimate Mode, however, is a cross-dimensional free-for-all that sees you hacking through mechanical hordes using a mixed stable of Gundams from every timeline. But it just ain’t a mobile infantry without friends, though. Fans can also expect split-screen and online co-op to make a return.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn for PS3 will release digitally in the Summer while Europe can expect both retail and downloadable copies near the same time.

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New Titanfall Gameplay Makes the Last Seven Years of FPS’s Look...



New Titanfall Gameplay Makes the Last Seven Years of FPS’s Look Tame

If your address places you snugly beneath a rock, I can understand your confusion as to why the term ’Titanfall’ has the gaming populace shitting mech proportioned bricks. Watching all ten minutes of this video will bring you right up to speed and have you shitting bricks with the best of ‘em.

This footage makes the countless...

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