Apex Legends and.. wow

Just 5 days ago, Apex Legends was launched with no advertisement or press exposure. The smart thing has been to pay streamers and, bang, Apex is the number one most watched game on Twitch since release.

Published by EA and developed by Respawn, I was very concerned after reading the announcement, after having  freshly tested Anthem Beta  (that was not that good or impressive) and while still 

Came out of nowhere

waiting for Firestorm, the Battlefield 5 battle royale mode, which I hope will raise BF5 from its current mediocrity. 

So why EA publishes a new Battle Royale?

Well, after testing it for dozen of hours, I have to say that Apex Legends is amazing and it is clearly the best candidate to the "Save EA" spot.

There are many things that make it a great game. Let me explain some points:

• Hero Shooter and Battle Royale: Apex Legends mixes the most successful game mode of the recent years (battle royale) with the previous one (hero based game). People say that Apex is a mix of COD4 Blackout and Overwatch, but at its core one can say it is also League of Legends meet Fortnite, or PUBG meet Dota. It is clear that the devs worked very hard to implement TEAMPLAY in a very natural way into the BR genre, and why not putting different roles and skills? At launch the game has only 8 heroes (called "legends") but they already play very differently, because of the passive, active and ultimate abilities each of them has. Some of the "techniques" of other BR games are now implemented as character abilities: for example there are no smoke grenades in games, but one Legend has the ability to launch smoke grenades.
• Connected to the previous point: aesthetics. The game nails perfectly the tone, with legends design and voices, map layout, overall contextualization of the game. It is cartoonish, but not too much, it is serious, but not too much. It is sci-fi but not too much, a bit anime but not too much. In the end a lot of thought has been put in the overall appearance of everything, balancing in a very skillful way on the edge between realism and comic book style.
• The game takes on where other failed games attempted: this game looks and plays very similar to Lawbreakers,

  

  This game was almost good,
  but something was missing...

  the failed revival of arena shooters by Cliff Bleszinski. The robot hero Pathfinder especially looks and plays very similarly as a mix of the two heroes (robot and ninja girl) in lawbreakers. Apex takes also some inspiration from Quake Champions (the abilities and the aesthetics of heroes) which is another attempt to mixing hero shooter with old school arena shooters. While playing Apex with friends, we all thought something like "man, this is in some strange way similar to Unreal Tournament" and it is! The map, the music, the idea of the far away planet murder contest watched on tv. Basically Apex Legends bridges old school and new shooters styles perfectly. 
• The team play comes naturally. Thanks to the pinging system, that allows you to signal intentions and/or alarming situations, you can basically tell your team-mates everything. Need heal? Ping on your health bar from inventory. See a door open? Ping it and your character will say something like "someone has been here!". You see a weapon of value on the ground? Ping it. Moreover, the game has text chat! Something that PUBG forgets since launch! So even without mic you can always communicate. Or you can use both mic and text, why not!
• The movement! So unconstrained and free, people are saying online "no more double jump, no more wall running, this ain't titanfall". These people should try to play a little bit, and see all the cool parkour things that can be done in the game, especially with mobility heroes like pathfinder or wraith.
• Small details are totally on spot. An example: every time you reach a new area of the map,

  

  "new place discovered"

  the name of the area appears on the top left of the HUD, with also a comment on the tier of loot you can find. But this is not over... a sound is played like when you discover a new place in Skyrim or in Fallout 3... I know it is just a minor detail... but the fact that they added this thing is amazing to me. Just this small details makes every game a new game, a new experience, as if I have never been in that same place. Apex Legends is full of this small ideas that overall make the game great, and far better than other competing games.
• Think this is the Source Engine! How far did they bring it!

The game has still some problems, especially connection problems to the servers. Other problems may be the very pricey cosmetics items, but yeah, it's "free to play"...

Anyway, the game is really amazing, it is obvious this isn't a game created by some freshly graduated indie developers or some MMO Korean team trying to build an FPS. This is a game made by veterans of modern FPS's, from COD 4 to Titanfall. It is polished and feels like an amazing experience, well thought and well planned.

It is still EA, it is still a free to play, it is another battle royale. But it is totally recommended. 

I am very curious to see how it will be developed in the future (seasons, ranking systems, competitive plays, etc).

10/10

Far Cry New Dawn, pre-release thoughts

In less than two weeks (February the 15th) the new Far Cry will be relaesed. As for Blood Dragon and Primal, this is the "alternative sequel" that does not have number in the title and it is basically a reskin of the previous map (as BD was for FC3 and Primal was for FC4).

The first trailer was a bit "meh", but then many content creators on YouTube showed some of the first moments of the game (like the new edition of the Edens Gate sect).
Looking at comments at the videos and listening to the youtubers opinions, it is apparent that the game looks fun and the new changes are for the good.
In particular a lot of fuss has been made with regard to the "RPGsation" of the game, that has now weapons of different rank and rarity. Moreover the base ofthe protagonist can be expanded, there are scraps and materials to collect and in general there is a sense of progression in the game.

Honestly I am not surpised at all by this new introduction, since it follow the Ubisoft trend with other IP's, like for Assassin's Creed. But there is another reason that I will discuss later.
Secondly, a lot has been said about the post-apocalyptic setting. This choice also can be ascribed to Ubisoft's need to follow trends, especially this year after the groundbreaking announcement of Cyberpunk 2077 and before the release of Rage 2 and Metro Exodus (not to mention after the catastrophe that was Fallout 76). Again, yes, there is partially a precise choice to ride the trend of the moment which is the futuristic/post apocalyptic setting but also colorful and "crazy" (Mad Max and also Fortnite style).

Nevertheless, I was somewhat expecting an evolution of this kind, a less "military and realistic" take on the Far Cry series. How could I know this, you may ask? Well, it is not me, but the developers themselves that gave me this idea. Watch the linked video ("E3 Roundtable: Far Cry, Dishonored, and System Shock"). The video is actually amazing, because the three developers involved (especially Warren Spector) are among the founders of modern action/FPS/RPG/stroy-driven games. Think at Deus Ex, for example.

The first time I watched the video I thought "wtf does Far Cry have in common with Dishonored and System Shock?".
System Shock was the perfect mix of sci-fi, FPS, RPG and horror game, so far ahead for its times. Dishonored, while not a perfect game, belongs to the same indefinable mix of FPS and RPG, with many endings and many ways to complete missions.
If you watch the video you will start understanding that Far Cry aims at the same objective, but from the other direction.
Let's say that the evolution for Dishonored/Deus Ex is to keep the shooting and RPG while increasing the world size (~open world) while Far Cry aims to keep the shooting and the open world while deepening the RPG/choices side.
The post-apocalyptic setting totally helps a supposed realistic game, to dive into the fantasy side, something that Far Cry has always tried to reach with the implementation of sections where the protagonist is under the effect of drugs.  With the cyberpunky setting this transition to the "fantasy RPG" is much easier.

Conclusions:
On one hand it is possible that Ubisoft is pressing for some changes and trend-following  but on the other hand I really feel that the developers are totally on board with these choices, maybe they have been almost limited to not push it too much.
Far Cry 5 was honestly a good game, I liked it and I finished it. But I would not rate it more than 7/10, it played well and all, but was something like an incomplete attempt. This is something to be expected from Ubisoft: a publisher always scared to push it too much and so eager to copy-paste the same mechanics game after game with very slight innovations, only if the market already proved them successfull (like Assassin's Creed Origins that started the RPGsation of AC, then improved in AC: Odyssey, only because of the gigantic success of The Witcher 3).

Still waiting for Splinter Cell -
 Assassin's Creed crossover.

Will Far Cry New Dawn be good? I think it will be better than Far Cry 5, but only slightly better.
New Dawn is the convergence of the yearly release and trend following by Ubisoft and the desire of the developer (or some of them) to push harder toward the next step for "Deus Ex"-like games.

Still I am afraid, especially after the half disappointment of Far Cry 5 and its ugly 3 dlc's. I may be buying and playing New Dawn, but only after some months when I will find it discounted at least of 50%.

Preview score.... 7/10: not bad, but come on Ubisoft! Let's see if New Dawn can prove me wrong.

Introduction to destruction

Hey all,
I hereby open my personal blog on the only thing that I am knowledgeable about.
Short introduction: I am fairly older and I started playing videogames (like seriously playing) in 2001.

does anybody remember 

this bad boy?

The first full game that I played was Blood 2 the chosen, that was bundled together with a videogames magazine of the time. I then went on playing almost all games I could find. It was after some years that I learned that I am awfully bad at RTS and strategy games in general. But I really enjoyed Commandos (especially the second) and StarCraft.

I then discovered something that at the time (mid 2000) was not very common (and nowadays sadly is, thanks Ubisoft): open world games.

I played the shit out of the following titles: Gothic 1, Gothic 2, TES 3: Morrowind, GTA 3, GTA Vice City, Mafia 1.

When TES 4: oblivion came out  (2006), because of my old and shitty PC I almost altogether stopped playing new titles, and I went back to old glories of the previous 10 years. Some of the best games ever, for example, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, Deus Ex 1, Diablo 2, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.

I spent more time with this guy here
than with anyone else 
in Summer 2003 (Creeper
the scamp merchant in Morrowind)

I then tried Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2 and Planscape Torment and Icewindale and all those Aurora Engine like games (Arcanum, Temple of Elementary Evil).
So I discovered that I also like RPG's, but not the "isometric read a lot" ones. But stuff like Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2 are totally fine and amazing. Guess it's only the 2D aspect that makes me feel less involved...

In 2011  I finally bought a decent PC and played everything I missed, from Crysis to Mass Effect, from the just released TES 5 Skyrim to Fallout 3.  I played the Witcher 1 and 2, some Total War games (the only strategic games I am kinda decent).
In 2014 some crazy friend made me try Dota 2 and now I have more than 2000 hours on Steam.
Dota 2 was fundamental for my gaming taste, because up to that point I only played single player games, and You may have noticed that I very much preferred 3D rpg/action games (Deus Ex like games, maybe with open world).

After Dota I dived in multiplayer games and you name them: CS:Global Offensive, Warframe, Path of Exile, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Ark Survival Evolved, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, The Division,  Heros of the Storm, League of Legends, Secret World, Tera, Battlefield 1, etc....

The template for my perfect game:
Alpha Protocol (by obsidian, duh).

I never stayed for more than some hundred hours in these games, except for Dota, but I kinda know my way in all of them.

So basically my perfect game would be something like Alpha Protocol, same cool plot and choices, but with better shooting and maybe with co-op and PvP (like the Division).

I usually follow with big interest all that is gaming, from preview/reviews/streams to all dramas behind people leaving or studios shut down.
I feel I have a good amount of experience with past games and I've always been very lucky, getting into Alpha test of so many games (Paragon, Hunt Showdown, Anthem, New World, Quake Champions, The Cycle, Insurgency Sandstorm, Rend, lawbreakers, to name the most recent), meaning that I am good at judging the developing of a game, not only at bashing or fanboying.

I sometimes feel the urge to explain my view on games, but nobody around me wants or can discuss with me (sad face forever alone).
So here is a blog to fulfil that desire!

Hope you have fun, and maybe some of you will want to play with me. In the end, that is what games are for!