The Dragon Age series has spanned many gens of consoles and with Bioware still at the development helm and EA Games (Electronic Arts) publishing, it has retained its deep lore and RPG gameplay consistently.

The newest instalment, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is no exception to the Dragon Age rule, it engrosses you into a deep narrative where two Elven Gods that were once imprisoned are released.

Set ten years after Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fen’Harel takes it upon himself to bring down the veil, a magical boundary between the metaphysical world and the Fade, a world of demons and spirits.

This releases Elven Gods who had previously misused their powers for no good deeds. Now free the Elven deities are on a rampage and all manner of beasts and monstrosities are loose.

You play as Rook, a character you customise at the start of the game and is a part of a party of six guardians.

Without giving too much away here, some of your party meet with ill fates and it is generally up to you and a couple of members of the gang to seek the Elven Gods and bring them down.

As with any good RPG, you will gain experience levels throughout play and this scores you points which can be cashed in to upgrade your skills.

Items can be purchased or found within the game, and equipping better weapons and armour of course aids you in your quest.

The world of Dragon Age: The Veilguard is full of hidden items and side path puzzles which will net you gold or items you can either use or sell at a merchant.

You will control the allies of your party in combat, while they will always assist in taking down a baddie, if you want them to do a specific spell or pack a punch, it’s as simple as using a hotkey on your gamepad, and selecting the character’s ability.

You can also swap out your allies weapons to something a bit more fiercer, or magical.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard may be party play, but it is a single player title.

There is an old school feel to it too. There are moments in gameplay that I felt myself reminiscing to the glory RPG days of PS3 and Xbox 360. Graphically Dragon Age: The Veilguard is okay. The world’s you’ll find yourself are well detailed, character renders could do with a bit more love though.

Nonetheless, just like prior Dragon Age titles, the lore, lineage and engaging narrative is there and solid.
As a fan of the series I have loved my time with Dragon Age: The Veilguard and if you’re also a Dragon Age player, then it’s time to jump back in from where things left off and save the world once again.

The post Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Xbox Series X|S) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Anthem is the latest and greatest from EA’s Bioware studio, famed for its hugely loved Mass Effect series, among others.

Anthem has been in development for a long time, and it’s the first game to emerge from the studio that reflects the world, release schedule and structures of games in 2019. It’s an amazing technical achievement, but one that seems strangely shallow given its long gestation period. I found my time with the game compelling, the core loop engaging, but am not yet convinced that it offers enough to build a lasting community around it in the way that it so clearly wants.

Anthem is set in a world where the wild gods of creation have never left. Instead, their incredible creative force spins out of control, gives rise to monsters and keeps the remaining humans locked up in citadels called “Forts.” You are a veteran pilot of Iron-man suits known as Javelins, suits that can fly, shoot missiles, pack special abilities and more. As a “freelancer” you are tasked with some simple missions that slowly open up the wider conflict about to overtake your home planet.

Your time in the game will be split between a linked-up open world and your home base, Fort Tarsis. Fort Tarsis is a separate area instead of a shared space, as the story is about one freelancer. I found this set up quite dissonant to the gameplay in the open world, where playing with other freelancers is fundamental to the gameplay experience. The Fort is also where much of the story plays out, with many NPCs to chat to, and get to know. Unlike say Destiny 2, your character does speak and have a personality (male or female selectable), which I found refreshing, but they are an irredeemable do-gooder. And while you do get to select one of two options to respond to NPCs, conversation choices don’t feel as weighty as in previous Bioware games.

Once you move out of Fort Tarsis, you’ll be introduced to something that you will become extremely familiar with – long loading times. You’ll be loading into your inventory/loadout screen, into the mission select screen, into missions and even within missions – despite the appearance of a seamless world you will still be faced with loading screen in between certain sections. Perhaps we’re spoilt these days, but so much loading promotes a stop-start cadence that seriously hinders any momentum in the story or mission design.

Every activity in the open world features match-making, which as generally a solo player I appreciated. You can, however, spawn into a match-made mission halfway through, skipping crucial story details and removing almost any context to what you’re meant to be doing. Then you’re off to the next mission still slightly confused about what you’ve missed. If you want to experience all of the story beats, I’d suggest turning match-making off so you don’t miss anything.

At least the open world is a gorgeous, beautiful environment to explore. There is simply a gargantuan amount of detail on offer, with incredible lighting, even on only the “high” setting on PC. There are moments which demonstrate the extreme amount of care and attention that have been poured into this game. For me, it was joyful to fly low-down, just above a river as it weaves its way across the games map. Water spray and particles fly either side of me as I rush towards whatever mission that I’m off to next.

It’s just unfortunate that I never really felt like the exploration or mission structure tied together well with the flying. Where are the missions that are predicated on getting to the other side of the map as fast as possible, making me conserve precious heat long enough to stay aloft the entire time? Why don’t some missions make us fly through obstacle courses at high speed, giving us a bonus if we manage to do it perfectly? Why doesn’t the enemy design force us to fly up to meet them, chase them through ravines and through caves instead of giving them ranged abilities that knock us down and force us to hide behind pillars like every other shooter. Instead, it’s more just flying to combat arena A, then combat arena B, then C, then back to the start.

Fortunately the combat itself is quite good. Your javelin (of which there are four options) is equipped with special abilities and some unique weapons that work in tandem with other classes. At launch the Storm javelin seems to be the most popular, but we will see how that plays out over the longer term. Gunplay felt snappy and solid, though shooting definitely took a backseat to the javelin’s abilities which have only a short cooldown timer.

At least at launch performance on PC could be better. Even with a snappy Core i7-8700K and beefy GTX 1080 Ti I still only managed approximately 75-90FPS at 1440p with a mixture of high and ultra, and in moments of combat with explosions, alpha effects and hundreds of particles flying around I did occasionally see that number dip below 60FPS. A day-one patch is meant to improve performance somewhat, but considering that EA and Origin Access subscribers can play now I feel that it’s fair to mention it here, though you may not experience the same issues.

Ultimately after a couple dozen hours I came away with the feeling of wanting more, which is normally good for these loot-driven games. But this time was not in a good way. I was bored of getting the exact same rifles except with slightly higher numbers as loot and the combat abilities were great to use but ultimately repetitive. I’d love to see some more single-player content launch, and I haven’t had the time to see how the endgame holds up for extended play.

Making any definitive conclusions about Anthem at this early stage in its life would be foolhardy in the extreme.

Like Destiny, The Division, Fallout 76 or any number of “live games”, Anthem will twist and turn, be revised, patched and updated with new content as time goes by. Contact with millions of real-world players will do that to a game. So the game that you see in my review may be barely recognisable one month, six months, a year or even ten years into the future. Anthem feels like a game made by different teams in different locations who weren’t given the chance to fully integrate with each other. The story, while simplistic is told well, the scenery is gorgeous, the flying fun (who can go back to running around streets manually anymore?) and the shooting satisfying but it doesn’t gel in a way that feels natural and consistent. Anthem has a lot of promise, but it’s a promise that as yet remains unfulfilled.

The post Anthem (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Today, Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) and Neill Blomkamp, the Academy Award-nominated director of District 9, Elysium, and Chappie, have announced that they have collaborated on Conviction, an original live-action short-film based on BioWare’s Anthem™. In Conviction, Blomkamp brings the vast world of Anthem to life with his own story set decades before the beginning of the game. This live-action short invites viewers to experience Blomkamp’s unique style of creating photorealistic visual effects and bringing them seamlessly into the real world, this time with EA’s highly-anticipated new game.

In the short film, people will see the player city of Fort Tarsis in the game come to life, and the freelancers that live within it. These freelancers who use Javelin exosuits, have been re-created by Neill’s team to show them in live action as they fight off the main villain and head of the evil Dominion faction, the Monitor.

“I was really blown away by this incredible world BioWare created the very first time I saw Anthem,” said Neill Blomkamp. “Conviction sets the stage with a narrative that touches on Anthem’s beautiful and immersive world, which is ripe for exploration by these powerful Javelins. A world where danger is lurking on every ledge and in each valley.”

In Anthem, players can play with up to three friends to explore and battle in a dangerous, mysterious world with great characters and a unique BioWare story. As freelancers, players don Javelin exosuits, making them powerful heroes with strong weapons and incredible special abilities to help them survive in an ever-changing, unfinished world. Players will be able to customize and personalize their Javelins with unique paint jobs and gear so they’ll have the right tools to confront almost any situation and look good doing it. As players work together to find vast ruins, defeat deadly enemies and claim otherworldly artifacts, they’ll be unlocking their own individual story fighting against The Dominion, a ferocious militaristic society.

Players can unleash their power in Anthem worldwide on February the 22nd, 2019 for Origin for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The short film Conviction can be watched above this post.

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Anthem is developer Bioware’s next big game, and the importance of it to the company is hard to understate. Following the generally disappointing Mass Effect: Andromeda, this is the opportunity for Bioware to redeem itself and demonstrate that it can still make fantastic games. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work by dedicated teams have been poured into making this an experience that will not only rival the great online RPG experiences of today but set new standards.

Recently I was given the opportunity to take part in the VIP Anthem Demo, to see what the world of Anthem is really like. Despite the game releasing in only a few short weeks, there is still much that is unknown about what the game actually feels like to play and what’s like to explore its world in Anthem’s distinctive Javelin suits. And despite some early issues getting into the game, I came away impressed about the world that Bioware has built, but with some reservations about how this game will stick up again it’s contemporaries.

But let’s back up for a second. Anthem is a third person shared-world online shooter by EA’s Bioware, set in a future where humans live in small cities (“Forts”) surrounded by the dangerous wilds. Freelancers, in human-sized mech suits known as Javelins that can fly for short bursts are used to explore the world and keep the remaining humans safe. In terms of worldbuilding its fairly unique, but mechanically it has much in common with other shared world shooters such as Destiny 2 and The Division.

The demo I was able to use contained a couple of missions and the ability to fly around one of the world’s open areas. Playing on PC, I was struck by how cohesive and well thought out the game’s art direction was. This is a beautiful game to be sure, though I was able to ramp up all the graphical settings to their max thanks to a Core i7-8700K and NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti, so the console versions may vary somewhat in terms of what graphical capabilities they’re able to push. Textures were sharp, animations were fluid and character models were hugely detailed. In the larger environments, the jungles were lush and though I did see some texture pop-in, the draw distances looking over expansive vistas were also very good.

But what of the missions and reasons for exploring these worlds? To me, it’s still up in the air about if it will feel truly great or have a same satisfying hook as the way shooting in a Destiny game does. Though I knew the demo features only lower-level characters without as much of the significant customisation and weapon upgrades as you will find in the final game, I didn’t feel that I had a bonding moment with the game’s shooting, exploration or other combat mechanics in the same way as I have done with say, Mario’s jump in Super Mario World, or the addictive loop of a Civilisation game.

The experience that came closest though, is the flying. Your javelin mech suit can fly (including underwater) for short periods of time before overheating, time that can be extended by going through waterfalls or by dropping into a steep dive. I can see how this might be more fully explored in the final game, with missions tasking you to carefully manage your suits heat levels and navigate tight pathways. So far I haven’t really come to terms with how to incorporate flying into taking out enemies, though I can certainly see the potential of what high-level play could look like.

One area that I would like to see improvements in is the menu system, where you’re never quite sure if what you’ve clicked on has actually done what you expect. Sometimes it’s clicking, sometimes it’s click and hold, and other times its press enter and then escape with no confirmation. Some consistency in the menus would go a long way to making the complicated upgrade and mission select screen much more useable.

Of course, it is impossible to truly know how the final game will shape up. And that’s not even considering that as an ongoing, games as a service live game, Anthem will continuously shift, catch up and make mistakes as content is released, expansions are developed and millions of players engage with the games world and mechanics in, I’m sure, ways that the developer have not yet intended.

For those who missed out on the VIP demo, then there will be a further open demo shortly, and despite my reservations so far, I am looking forward to seeing what else this game can bring to the table.

The post Anthem VIP Demo Experience appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Also today at EA Play conference in L.A. EA Games has revealed that Anthem, the brand-new IP from BioWare’s renowned team, will launch on Feb 22nd, 2019. Anthem is a social, connected Action-RPG with cooperative multiplayer at its heart. Players customise an array of powered Javelin exosuits and team up to face a dangerous and ever-changing world through exploration and combat.

In Anthem, up to four players explore and battle in a dangerous, mysterious place populated by great characters and a unique BioWare story. Players will also create stories of their own while they play, so no two journeys are the same. Javelin exosuits make their pilots powerful heroes in the world, with awesome weapons and incredible special abilities that allow for combat and exploration in a hostile environment. Players will be able to customise and personalise their suits with unique paint jobs and gear so they’ll have the right tools to confront almost any situation, and look good doing it.

Players excited to enter the dangerous world of Anthem are now able to pre-order the game. Those who do will receive VIP demo access and a unique in-game Founders banner. Those who pre-order the Anthem standard edition will also receive a legendary weapon and the Legion of Dawn Armour Pack for the Ranger Javelin as part of their pre-order content. In addition, those who purchase the Legion of Dawn Edition of Anthem for pre-order or after launch will also receive the full set of Legion of Dawn Armour Packs (including the Ranger Javelin Legion of Dawn Armour Pack), a Ranger Javelin gear attachment, the digital soundtrack and more.

Anthem is developed by BioWare and will be available worldwide February 22nd, 2018 for Origin for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Origin Access Premier members can be the first to play the full game with unlimited access on PC starting February 15th, 2018, and EA Access and Origin Access Basic members can enjoy up to 10 hours of play time as part of the Play First Trial.

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Electronic Arts Inc. is giving us all the world its first look at Anthem, the brand-new IP being created by BioWare. Anthem is a shared-world action-RPG, where players can delve into a vast world teeming with amazing technology and forgotten treasures. The world is also filled with savage beasts and ruthless marauders where Freelancers are called to defeat the forces plotting to conquer humanity.

“Our developers at BioWare have been creating something special, said Patrick Soderlund, Executive Vice President of EA Worldwide Studios. “We’re pushing Frostbite to new heights, developing a game unlike anything EA has ever made before. We’re telling a new story, creating a social, co-operative experience, and putting it in a contiguous open world that is dynamic and will be ever-changing for years to come.”

In Anthem, up to four friends can unravel the world’s mysteries and take on its most fearsome challenges together. Shared danger means shared glory, and successful Freelancers will all be richly rewarded for successful exploits. Throughout their adventure, players can outfit their Freelancers with powerful Javelin exosuits, each of which are equipped with unique weapons and abilities. Players can also customize their Javelin with gear they earn and craft throughout the adventure, and leave a lasting mark on the world.

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When Mass Effect 3 bookended EA’s epic series of sci-fi RPGs, it wasn’t exactly clear how a sequel would work. In order to continue the franchise, some creativity would be required.

With Mass Effect: Andromeda, Bioware cleverly transports us to another galaxy after a 600-year trip, totally insulating the new game from the events of the first trilogy. We have a lot of the same aliens and political intrigue, but a different location with different protagonists.

The Andromeda Initiative is a multi-species endeavour to create a colony in the Andromeda Galaxy. It involves five ark ships travelling on a 634-year one-way trip to find a, so-called, golden world in Andromeda’s,apparently, resource-rich Heleus Cluster. Aboard the mainly human ark, Hyperion, the fate of the 20,000 passengers in cryostasis is entrusted to a Pathfinder, whose job it is to find the ships inhabitants a new home.

Rather than choosing the gender of your character like you did with Shephard, this time you choose to play as one of either of the Ryder siblings, Sara or Alex, offspring of famed pathfinder, Alec Ryder. Whichever Ryder you choose, the other will be involve in an unfortunate accident that puts them out of action for the duration of the game.

For the first couple of hours I feared that I was stuck playing a young adult novel adaptation. Taking the mantle of Pathfinder from character’s father, felt a bit too much like a schmaltzy coming of age drama set to a Mass Effect background. Maybe it’s more to do with me getting old and cynical rather than Andromeda being a game developed by Gen Ys fed on a diet of Twilight/Hunger Games/Maze Runner etc.

As the game progressed, though, I was drawn into not only a superb piece of high-brow sci-fi, but also a rather wonderful interactive role-playing game experience, set in a rich, believable universe. Despite the vast gulf of space that distances Andromeda from the original games, this is still Mass Effect with the technology and vehicles being instantly recognisable to fans.

The Citadel from the previous Mass Effect games, which served as a hub of sorts, is replaced with the Nexus, a vast base that was supposed to be complete by the time the first arks arrived. This has not gone to plan, and so the base remains half completed.

Your transport, and Normandy surrogate, is the sleek-looking starship, Tempest. The ship serves to get you about interplanetary, with your surface vehicle, Nomad, providing ground transport.

There’s been a lot of press about the games visuals and, whilst you do get used to them, you need to be mindful that, up close, the character models and facial animations are appalling. Bioware may have been able to palm this sort of stuff on us back in the day, but even with Dragon Age: Inquisition they were pushing their luck a bit. Against the likes of the virtually photo-real characters in Call of Duty Infinite Warfare and the PlayStation 4’s Horizon: Zero Dawn, dodgy looking hero characters with bad skin, bloated faces and bee stung lips are not going to pass muster.

Now, you may be tempted to create your own character’s features in the editor, but I recommend that you don’t. As bad as the default characters look, yours will look ten times worse, and you are going to be stuck looking at that mutant for the entire game.

Thankfully it’s only the cut scenes that drag you into uncanny valley, as the environments look great and from the usual third person view, you can’t really make out your character’s iffy visage. Also, only the human characters that seems to suffer, the aliens in the game fitting seamlessly into the otherwise faultless visuals.

The switch from the over-the-shoulder view of the original games to the straight third-person view borrowed from Dragon Age: Inquisition works very well, giving you a better view of your surrounds rather than just the back of your character’s head.

Whilst PC players still have to put up with some dodgy facial modelling, the visuals are otherwise impeccable. As great as all looks on Xbox One, EA’s proprietary Frostbite Engine, that powers everything from FIFA to Battlefield, performs gloriously on PC. Our Asus-based i7 6700K machine running with a GTX 1080 and 32Gb of memory was able to pump up crisp visuals across a triple-monitor setup at 5760 x 1080 at a consistent 60fps.

Like it’s predecessors, Mass Effect: Andromeda is, first and foremost, a role-playing game. It seems to have aspirations to be a shooter, which it doesn’t do very well. The weapons feel too weak for combat to be anything other than a series of pew-pew exchanges. Were the guns a bit meatier and the subsequent destruction a bit more Hollywood, they might’ve got away with it. But, no, you are on board for the narrative and the role-playing aspects of the game, not the shooting.

Andromeda’s multiplayer Apex element, in a similar manner to that of Bioware’s Dragon Age: Inquisition, manages to be a capable addition, but is missing the narrative that makes the single-player game so compelling. It lowers the game to that of a third-person shooter. Whilst it adds longevity, it’s not really the game’s strong point.

Mass Effect: Andromeda serves well as a fresh start for the franchise, new players are going to be able to dive right in, and whilst old players may need to ignore the bitter taste the ending of ME3 may have given them, they should still enjoy the game immensely.

The post Mass Effect: Andromeda (Xbox One) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Gripes that I have had with previous entries making this game a truly great RPG.

In typical RPG fashion, the game starts with character creation screen where you select your gender, race, class and looks. Somewhat of a letdown is the poor selection of character customisation options for most these categories, especially in terms of looks.

The story begins with a somewhat confusing cut-scene involving you being chased by a horde of very large spider-esque monstrosities and crawling towards a strange glowing lady.

After falling unconscious you wake to find out a breach has opened to the demon realm and that you may hold the key to closing it. In order to deal with the threat you join up with a new faction called the Inquisition whose prime goals involves closing the breach.

Overall I found the story very engaging and interesting. About halfway through the game, the story ups the ante and really hits its stride.

The main story alone is insanely long. On-top of that there are tons of side missions to complete.

Together it would be easy to sink many weeks or even months into this game. Unlike the story though, most of the side missions aren’t very engaging. While many try to have a well-developed backstory, they fail to escape the fetch quest vibe.

There are ample rewards for doing these missions with experience, items, factional rewards and money all being gained along the journey and in reward for completion.

As all of these are useful I actually wanted to spend many hours away from the main story completing them, despite how mundane some of the missions were.

Belonging to a faction creates some interesting gameplay mechanics. Completing side missions gains your faction power and influence. At your home-base area, you are able to access a map room which gives you an overview of the world.

Here you can spend earned points for your faction on perks for such as being able to carry more items or gaining knowledge of a certain topic which opens up new dialogue options.

There are also more side quests that you can send your agents out to compete for minor rewards. In addition to this, main story missions are unlocked here by using some of the power you have gained for the Inquisition.

Dialogue and conversational options is another one of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s fortes. It manages to provide enough dialogue to give enough information however unlike many RPGs I’ve played, not too much that made me want to skip over it.

And of course where would Bioware RPG be without choices. During conversations you are given numerous options to how your character responds. Some of these decisions only affects the immediate conversation whereas others can alter critical aspects of the story.

The choices you make are however under close scrutiny from your accompanying companions.

As each of them have vastly different backgrounds and views on the world, each character reacts differently to your choices which affects your relationship with them. Also instead of a very generic good and evil option, Dragon Age’s options are considerably more grey, making each decision very difficult to make.

This decision making aspect makes the story truly feel like your own.

Combat in Dragon Age: Inquisition is party based, meaning you may have up to three companions accompany you. You can choose any combination of classes in battle however I found that only the two warriors, a mage and a rogue combination works well.

Since these characters play a major role in your journey, I expected them to all have very strong and colourful personalities. What is given however is somewhat of a mixed bag with some of the characters, especially the starting three, being a lot more dull and uninteresting than required.

During battles you get the choice to take direct third person control of a character or a more tactical top down approach letting you issue orders for each of your characters.

Both are easy to use although the third person controls feel a lot more natural and enjoyable with a controller.

During third-person combat with a controller, you attack by holding in the right trigger in combination with using up to eight special abilities, each mapped to various buttons or button combinations.

Overall I found the combat particularly enjoyable and easy to use, especially in comparison to many other similar RPGs, while still having great depth to it.

The leveling up system has also been done very well. For each class there are four categories of abilities which you can choose from.

Each category as well as abilities inside them have a very different play style allowing you to customise your characters to how you play. The abilities are also very useful making you want to level up and grow stronger.

The game is semi-open world. As you progress through the game, you unlock various areas which you may visit at any time. Areas are typically massive and completely open to you exploring wherever you want.

Each area has a unique look and personality ranging from grasslands to desert. Spending too much time in any one area though, which is easy to do given the seemingly endless supply of side quests, can make the area start to feel bland.

The environments also look great but are far from stunning and often feel too overcrowded.

There is also a multiplayer component which offers a surprisingly enjoyable four player online co-op dungeon crawling experience.

The character you use in this mode is separate to the character in the main story. This mode almost feels like an entirely new game, focusing more on the loot and party based gameplay.

With friends, you could easily sink a countless amount of hours here.

Dragon Age: Inquisition has managed to provide a great balance between depth and accessibility, something many RPGs struggle to do.

Along with this it performs strongly in almost every aspect of the game and in doing so it has become not only one of the best games of the year, but also one of the best RPGs to be released.

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