The Rezzed Report 2013

In an industry such as gaming, it’s surprising how often things can change and surprise you. In the past few years we have seen whole segments of the gaming industry rise and fall, with indie gaming most notably emerging as a dominant force. At no other point since the twilight of games development in the 70’s, have we seen such a prominence of “bedroom coders”. Is it any wonder when titles such as Minecraft (which recently hit 11 million sales) and Super Meat Boy (which has sold over a million copies) have captured the gamer’s attention, even managing to outperform some publisher backed blockbusters?

So if indie games are really such a big thing why don’t we see more at expos? Better yet, why don’t they have their own specialised events? This is what RockPaperShotgun and Eurogamer aims to address with the follow up to their indie focused event – Rezzed 2013.

First Impressions: Tekken Revolution

Tekken Revolution is Namco Bandai's free to play fighter now released as a PS3 exclusive. This comes completely out of the blue as it was only announced last week, and confirmed it's launch at E3 a few days ago. However this is not the first venture into free to play Namco have taken as the rock, paper, scissors styled Tekken Card Tournament was released not too long ago.

Revolution unlike Card Tournament is a fully working brawler with a roster of 12 characters, 4 of which need to be unlocked. The game itself is probably one of the best sounding and looking Tekkens to date, with stylized menu backgrounds, flashy character intros (cheesey voice acting can be forgiven), and full HD combat arenas. Even the combat has been tweaked a little with certain moves blurring the character when moving to highlight the speed of the actions. The character selection screen also highlights key moves for each of the characters, giving the little bit of feedback so even new players can understand the basics behind each character's combat style.

New Warhammer 40K MMO announced

The ashes of THQ still burn hot for many gamers, none as much as the Warhammer 40k fanbase; who lost their hope at a series of 40k based titles from the publisher. One title that got axed with the closure of THQ included the multi-faction MMORPG Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium, created by Darksiders creators, Vigil Games.

Hope returns today as Games Workshop and Behaviour Interactive announce Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade, a third person MMORPG set to be released currently at the end of 2015. Not much is known at the moment, but by heading to the Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade website you will see the site is on the first of 9 phases, with the press release found below.

Montreal, 10th June, 2013 – Behaviour Interactive and Games Workshop® proudly announce a new online game in the Warhammer® 40,000® universe: Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade. Behaviour Interactive has obtained the rights to create a wholly new MMORPG persistent war experience for PC, PS4 and Xbox One set in Games Workshop’s universe of the 41st Millennium. In the game, players choose aWarhammer 40,000® race and fight directly as one of their warriors in massive conflicts for territory. It will be up to each faction’s community to determine their own destiny as they vie for control of an entire planet.

The developer Behaviour Interactive is known for creating a host of cartoon/movie tie in titles as well as the games Wet and Naughty Bear.

Blizzard re-spawns Spawning into Starcraft 2

Blizzard has reintroduced a very old friend back into the Starcraft fold, a process known as 'Spawning'. What this was is players were able to boot up a copy of Starcraft 1 on their PCs after their friend had on their PC with the same CD - hence giving a 'free' version of the game to their friend while they play.

Just announced Blizzard has brought back this process to Starcraft 2 in the form of allowing members of the party to freely 'upgrade' to the highest level expansion that a member of the party currently has. For example a player with the Starter Edition (found free on Battle.net itself) can party with a player with the current Zerg expansion Heart of the Swarm, both players then are classed as 'owning' HotS as long as they remained partied.

Doing this will unlock Multiplayer (ranked and unranked), all custom game maps, Vs. AI and the Arcade in the highest level of content the party members have, those with the Starter Edition will only be able to play the race currently playable in that version (at time of writing that is Terrain), and have limited access to social features, for example Clans are locked out to those not currently owning HotS. However the limit of players allowed to do this is the current party cap, thus 14 of your friends can benefit from your purchase.

To celebrate this new feature, Blizzard have added a new Achievement and Portrait to the game for players Spawning in new players or are the ones being Spawned at this current time. The release date of this is right now, however globally it may take until the end of the day to become active in your area.

For the full information watch the following Youtube video below the divide.

Plants vs. Zombies Adventures Beta Impressions

Plants vs. Zombies was my first tower defense game and I loved it. Originally I had purchased it for my ex boyfriend and watched him play it; but it wasn't until a friend  eventually purchased it me for Christmas, (where I managed to finish it in the same day) that I became a fan.

I wanted to play more of it, but it was too short and I was relying on survival mode to still feel like I would benefit from playing it (if you grow your tree of wisdom to one million feet you will unlock zombie mode, but that’s overboard despite mine currently sitting over halfway to that goal) and not go insane via the achievements for vase breaker and I, zombie.

For anyone who has not played Plants vs. Zombies or perhaps haven’t played a tower defense game before, you’re the plants defending your home (and brains!) from a variety of unique hungry zombies.

You start off with sun power which is used to purchase offensive and defensive plants, and sunflowers that can then generate more sun power for you. The action takes place in different environments, with different weather effects. You can be battling in the back garden on a foggy or clear night, outside a swimming pool, or even on the roof of your home.