Player Preview - Armored Warfare

Title: Armored Warfare
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Status: Open Beta
Release Date: Unknown

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1GJmjD0

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the Military vehicle sim, Armored Warfare, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the same guys behind Skyforge and Pillars of Eternity. Armored Warfare takes the extremely popular game play of World of Tanks but trades up from World War 2 era vehicles of war to the vehicles of today while also offering a PvE mode.

If you have ever played World of Tanks or even perhaps War Thunders Ground Forces you will feel very at home playing Armored Warfare. From the menus, matchmaking tiers, consumables, purchasable ammo to hiding in bushes and main domination game mode almost everything about Armored Warfare has been copied over from World of Tanks.

The general gameplay of Armored Warfare has 2 teams of 11 tanks either converging on an objective in the middle of the map or travelling all the way to their opponent’s base to capture it. The different types of Tanks provide the standard kind of set-up with fast low fire powered APC’s acting as scouts, main battle tanks bringing in the big guns and armor and Artillery to coax out any enemies in hiding or just camping from a far. There are a couple outlier classes but these other vehicles are just various combinations of the previously mentioned roles. There is one vehicle type that is different from the rest in the form of the Artillery vehicles that give you a top down look of the map while firing. Positioning of this vehicle is extremely important as it can easily have its line of sight broken by hills, buildings and other structures rendering your shots useless not to mention that if an APC or tank destroyer charges you, you’re pretty much dead. There are also certain vehicles that have extra activatable abilities like Designate Target for APC’s that tags an enemy vehicle for extra damage and ECU Override for light tanks that drastically speeds up their movement. The different vehicle types also have varying armour thickness which plays an extremely important role in the game as there is a ton of different ammunition types including Armour penetrating rounds, Heat rounds and explosive rounds with different ammo types able to be used by your tank in a game. 

With the tiered tank system in the game you have a good chance of penetrating the armour of tanks in your tier however the matchmaking puts you together with people from various tier rankings and if you’re on the lower end it will be pretty hard to get any shots off that actually penetrate an enemy’s armour. There are weak points in armour that you can find by moving your reticule over a tanks hull until it turn orange or green indicating that if the shot is accurate you will penetrate the armour and deal damage. Alternatively if you are going up against a main battle tank with no penetration points you can still be of use by aiming for its tracks and disabling its movement, at least until it auto repairs. There are other parts of a tank and its crew you can damage that will reduce the performance of it but are a lot harder to damage significantly compared to it’s tracks.

Out on the battlefield almost everything is destructible except for large buildings and structures. If it’s only 1 story high, it’s more than likely you can just drive straight through it. As an added bonus piece of visual information you can also see which part of your tank is covered by environmental objects via the grey lines surrounding the tank in the bottom left which can be useful if you are behind a small piece of cover and want to make sure no part of your tank is hanging out. For people playing stealthy spotting or artillery support classes there is also a cover mechanic that will prevent enemies spotting you. By stopping your tank behind or in foliage your cover meter will go up indicated by the bottom left meter. Being hidden only works while stopped and not firing, as soon as you do either the enemy will be able to see you especially if you fire. While this feature may sound like it encourages bush camping, something World of Tanks is somewhat infamous for, Armored Warfare’s map design providing no real open battlefields means you can’t really do it, instead the maps encourage a slow pushing play style. The different maps settings vary quite significantly too with you fighting in the snow and ice on relatively flat land then fighting on a tropical island in rough hilly terrain.

While the PvP battle mode will be where most people go to play in Armored Warfare there is also a Co-Op mission mode that will have 4 players taking on AI tanks while they try to complete certain objectives. Enemy tanks are a little weaker then player controlled tanks so they are easy to take down however they make up for their weakness by sending a lot of them your way so you can be overwhelmed if not working together with your team mates. 

Outside of the main game you have a 2 different factions to the game with their own unique vehicles. I would advise choosing one of them from the beginning as there is a fair grind to get the higher tiered vehicles unlocked. Unlocking a new vehicle has it at its bare basics requiring you to earn experience with it to unlock its full potential with speed, ammunition, armour and other types of upgrades. You’re vehicles also have a commander and crew that can level allowing them to gain small bonuses to its performance like faster reload, faster speed and better accuracy. Bonuses to experience gained, money earned, the cost of equipment and more can also be increased via your base by building and upgrading certain buildings. You earn resources for these buildings daily and the bonuses given can eventually be quite significant.

Other features of the game include a guild system called a Battalion that offers members some bonus rewards at the end of games. You can also customize your tanks with decals and camo’s and this is where the game will be aiming its free to play model along with a premium subscription that increases your end game rewards by 50%. For those that want to speed up their progress and play in higher tiered games you can purchase premium vehicles that are all slightly less powerful then the vehicles you have to work towards. Consumables can be purchased with the in-game currency but is honestly not really needed unless you really want to get absolutely every little bit of performance out of your vehicle as they are only around 5-10% bonuses. Similarly you can add retrofits to your vehicle that add around the same kind of percentage bonuses.

Altogether Armored Warfare is basically a modernized World of Tanks both in terms of its graphics and its available vehicle line-up. The map design has almost completely eliminated the whole camping in a bush strategy while still having a hiding mechanic for the support vehicles to take advantage of. The game leans on the arcade side of things rather than the realistic something that I feel War Thunder does a little bit better especially with their collision meshes. If you liked World of Tanks then Armored Warfare is an easy transition to make and a nice step up graphically. If you’re expecting anything new or innovative to the formula you may be a dissapointed as the game follows it to T. 

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Armored Warfare. The game is currently in open beta with no official release date. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time.

Player Preview - Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Title: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
Developer: Treyarch
Status: Open Beta
Release Date: 6/November/2015

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1UBiQfv
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1OcOPxF

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the multiplayer portion of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 developed by Treyarch. The series continues its setting in the near future with robotics and advanced weaponry with Black Ops 3 containing a couple of changes with new movement mechanics and the introduction of classes.

The classes aren’t the kind you would find in something like Battlefield or Team Fortress 2 were each class is locked to a certain loadout. Instead in Black Ops 3 the class that you pick only effects your special ability and each class has the option between 1 weapon ability or 1 utility ability. For example the Sharpshooter has an explosive arrow firing bow as her weapon and an enemy revealing pulse as her utility. These special abilities slowly recharge during the game enabling you to use them around twice a game however by using a certain perk this can be increase to around 4 times a match. There will be a total of 9 different classes available to play on release resulting in 18 different abilities that you can play around with. The most impressive abilities during the beta though definitely has to include the Outriders Bow because for some reason bows always feel good to use in these kinds of game plus the explosion is a nice little addition, and for the utility, Prophet has this one down with Glitch which allows you to teleport back to where you were a couple of seconds ago allowing you to get out of tricky situations or lead enemies into a trap.

 

Movement has been becoming more and more of a focus in the Call of Duty series and this time around there are a couple of new mechanics to help you get around the map faster and better. Wall running is by far the most noticeable change allowing you to get some height on your enemies or to avoid hotspots on the map like this bridge. The feature is implemented pretty solidly in terms of its usability, just jump into the side of a wall and you will attach and continue on your way. Most of the main walls you can run will be clearly indicated but after playing a map for a while you will find smaller lengths of walls that will give you that tactical height advantage as your enemies will expect you to come around a corner at floor level rather than a meter or 2 in the air. 

 

The other movement mechanic is the slide and is arguably the more important mechanic of the two to get a hang of. While wall running gives you height you are a pretty easy target with a predictable movement direction but with the slide it’s basically allowing players to dolphin dive while still moving extremely fast. Mastering this with the shotgun can be devastating and can confuse enemies when 1 second your standing in front of them and the next you are now firing at them from behind as you’ve slid straight past them. It also makes for a great way to cross open areas so you’re not such an easy target which is extremely important as you die extremely quickly once in an opponent’s sights.

Due to the extremely fast paced nature of Black Ops 3 non structured or non-objective based game modes are extremely chaotic and not it the good way. For instance in Team Deathmatch, while you are spawned into the game at opposite sides of the map you can get to the other side in a matter of seconds resulting in you constantly getting shot at from behind. The spawns in Team Deathmatch also change to prevent spawn camping but this also adds onto the problem of being shot from behind. This problem is somewhat corrected in the more objective based game modes like Search and Destroy and SafeGuard. Search and Destroy manages to slow the game down the game quite a bit due to the mode being 1 death and you’re out for the round. Safeguard however has continuous spawns as you try to either escort the robot to the point or prevent the robot from getting to the point but the gamemode plays so much better then Team Death Match while still maintaining that chaos factor. Safeguard was definitely my favourite mode of the beta providing really intense closing moments of the round as each team desperately fights for the win with the robot only a couple meters away from the point.

 

The available arsenal in Black Ops 3 while being slightly futuristic, still have the general form as weapons of today like the ark-7 is a futuristic AK-47, Kuda is a UMP and the Drakon is a Drakanov. Being set in a futuristic setting I would have liked to see more unique weapon designs and weapon mechanics however this seems to only be reserved for your characters special weapons and kill streaks. The different attachments for your weapons are all a bit the same as previous games in the series with basic scopes, grips and stocks that all effect your weapons stats. As for grenades there isn’t anything to innovative here either, you can equip both a damaging grenade like a frag, sticky or proximity mine and a utility grenade like a flashbang, concussion or EMP grenade. Equipping weapons, attachments, grenades and perks take up 1 slot each in the return of the 10 slot system were you can only have 10 items equipped at once so you will have to decide whether you want to run a full weapon accuracy set-up for instance or a multi primary and multi grenade set-up instead of being able to just have the best loadout your level can achieve.

Other features of the game include multiple customization options for your weapons, profile and tags. The most important customization feature being the paintshop, here you will be able to play around with different graphics, colours and gradients to customize the look of certain parts of your weapon. You will also be able to share your designs with others and use other player’s designs yourself. The gunsmith feature in the game will allow you to customize the physical appearance of your weapons via cosmetic variations of the weapons attachments which is rumoured to have 4 to 5 variants of each separate attatchment. You will also be able to name your weapon, apply your custom paint jobs and apply a camo for the parts of the weapon that the paint job doesn’t cover. As for your profile customization options you can create your own emblem or logo out of the same graphics, colours and gradients available in the paint shop feature. The end result will be displayed on your player card as well as being overlayed on your chosen calling card when you kill someone. Your calling card being a set graphic design that you select out of a big list. There is one final tab on this customization screen simply labelled classified but this maybe just the sharing feature for the paintshop.

 

Altogether Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 does do some interesting changes with the movement system and introduction of classes albeit in a small way. The game is extremely fast paced delving into the twitch shooter genre far more than any previous Call of Duty title before it but I feel the game is struggling with the combination of speed and movement while still trying to maintain its close quarters combat, something that another game called Titanfall managed to do a lot better. If you are looking for that kind of mix between open areas that you can move freely in and small enclosed spaces then Black Ops 3 may be of interest to you but if you are expecting a futuristic shooter with a unique arsenal to play around with, it doesn’t really offer that despite being based in the future.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. The game will be officially releasing on the 6^th of November for $60 or your regional equivalent. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next time.

Americas Army: Proving Grounds

America's Army: Proving Grounds is a free to play, multiplayer version of the Americas Army Franchise. This first person shooter appeared at first to be nothing special. Just another modern military shooter seeking the Call of Duty masses. While playing for a while I started to notice some nice features, the game wasn't just a run and gun shooter.

 Some of these features included bleeding out, multiple times I saw players forget to bandage themselves and watched their health slowly dwindle to 0. Being able to go prone, this shouldn't be included as a feature as it should be in all FPS but for some reason is forgotten about. The revival and capture mechanics make the game more interesting. If you're not killed by a sniper rifle you can be revived at low health by teammates or you can be captured by the enemy making it impossible to be revived. While in the process of both of these actions you make a very distinctive sound which makes it essential to play with the sound on to be competitive. Suppression fire in Proving Grounds is one of the best I've seen, or should I say heard. Whenever fired upon behind cover the screen shakes and the sound quality of the bullets hitting your cover is outstanding. This is most present while using the sniper rifle as it causes a much larger and louder effect. There are some essential features I believe should be tidied up such as grenades randomly appearing at your feet without warning  and not being able to change the mouse speed while scoped, it seems the mouse speed slows significantly.

Proving Grounds controls are the basic FPS controls which includes pressing "Q" to spot enemies like in Battlefield. There is also the ability to take cover behind some of the environment, which allows for ducking and popping up from cover and the ability  to slide while running making for some interesting moments while sliding around corners. The maps are well designed with multiple ways to flank without being unnecessary and enough cover so as not to be left out in the open. The graphics are high quality but with some noticeable texture popping in some of the foliage areas. There are multiple game modes including Capture and Defend, Assault and Deathmatch all available in 3 different difficulty modes including Veteran. VoIP is available and can be disabled easily through the UI which is user friendly and easy to navigate. Proving Grounds runs on its own client/menu pop up which includes the server browser and the ability to change your settings before you enter a game. I found the scoreboard popping up every time the round ended to be annoying and taking away from the game. It should only show at the end of the match or the time it is up dropped drastically. Some of the key bindings may need to be changed to suit. Going into cover instead of going prone can be frustrating as you can't go prone from being behind cover and have to instead walk backwards then hit the key to go prone.

America's Army: Proving Grounds is currently in open beta on Steam. It's a quality First Person Shooter with many additional features and average to good graphics. With so much polish on the game it is a shame there isn't an FOV slider and you will have to play around with resolutions to get the best result depending on your screen. I would suggest this game to those that want a more tactical shooter where the run and gun style of gameplay is punished hard.