Destiny 2 Has Been Unveiled...

The Destiny 2 reveal took place this morning and I've got to say, they've given us a lot to take in. Bungie doesn't disappoint when it comes to these types of events. They've always got juicy bits for us to bite on, but this was probably the most anticipated game reveal since World of Warcraft's Burning Crusade expansion. Why mention WoW here? Well, Bungie and Activision have partnered with Blizzard in order to bring Destiny 2 to PC through Battle.net. That means that the Destiny 2 experience will be vastly different on PC than on consoles, possibly even better. Let us also hope that Blizzard's involvement in the Destiny 2 project will keep Bungie and Activision from allowing another House of Wolves or Rise of Iron situation to happen.

As I've said before, players from Destiny will lose all of their progress. All of our gear, all of our achievements, all of our time will matter not. It's a full restart for everyone. Don't get discouraged, though. This game will be a sequel of scale unlike any game franchise that we have seen before. Bungie is delivering the true iteration of this "sandbox" gameplay that they are constantly talking about. You definitely won't have to have played Destiny to enjoy the deep and engaging story of Destiny 2, but it will be a worthy successor to the story and gameplay.

EDZ Outpost

There are a massive amount of story missions with the Red War campaign aside from our search for how to recover our light. We face invasion from Dominus Gaul, leader of ferocious and battle-hardened Red Legion. Gaul has decided that he should have been chosen by The Traveler, instead of us, so he has come to prove his worth by taking it from us and destroying The Tower. He and his forces not only kidnap The Speaker, but they bind The Traveler's light in order to strip it's gifts from us.

Amanda Holliday extracts the Guardian

The Vanguard is dispersed around the Sol system and we must collect them if we wish to have a fighting chance for the future. The EDZ or European Dead Zone, is where we'll meet the newest member of the Vanguard Elite Hawthorne and the grievously displaced and undeniably exposed denizens of The Last City who have they have fled from Gaul's Red Legion to the safety of the wilderness. There's a Titan on Titan: Zavala has gone to Titan to recover from the Red Legion's assault on Earth. On Nessus, Cayde has been captured and imprisoned by Vex. On the face of Io-- last place that The Traveler touched-- we'll find Ikora, desperately struggling to recover her power.

To help you in your new endeavors, there is a live map that updates as you play, revealing locations of events that pop up. Everything that you'd want to do at a destination, you can find there. Not only that, but players will be able to move from destination to destination without having to go to orbit first, unless you want to. This will be a huge time-saver for everyone. You'll collect treasure maps and find Lost Sectors, which are new spelunking activities like dungeon-delving in traditional RPGs. You'll navigate massive playable areas with public events happening constantly that players can hop into for cool loot. They showed us a glimpse of a strike called "Inverted Spire" on Nessus, wherein players will face off against a three-stage boss.

Golden Age city on Titan

Clans are making a return, but this time it's a bigger part of the game. In-game rosters to help manage your people and customized banners to show off your identity as a group. There is a rewards system for the whole clan. You can customize your clan's name and motto to be displayed when people browse through the new directory. Bungie talked a bit about Guided Games where solo players can join your clan for a single event. You'll be able to open up the party to instantly add them to the roster at any point. This saves you the hassle of constantly having to go online to frantically search for a replacement for when someone unexpectedly drops group.

All PVP game modes have been retooled to be four-versus-four on all game modes. There's also a new game mode called Countdown, the goal of which is to take turns attacking and defending. HUD elements will give you and your teammates the ability use information to make more accurate, swift tactical decisions for better outcomes. To make things more interesting, weapon types available to equip will be changed to Kinetic, Energy and Power weapons. We'll see what happens to Trials of Osiris with these new changes.

Dominus Gaul

There are three news subclasses, one for each of the three classes: the Dawnblade for Warlocks, the Sentinel for Titans, and the Arcstrider for Hunters. The Dawnblade is an arcane warrior, channeling the sun's might through the solar-imbued sword that they wield. The Sentinel is a defender of the weak and paragon of justice, bracing his shield derived from the power of the void. The Arcstrider is a disciplined warrior who his skill and finesse to devastate his enemies with his arc staff.

All in all, this game is shaping up to be great. Remember, Guardians make their own fate.

Marvel Heroes Makes It's Way to PS4, but Not Yet, Xbox...

The top-down MMOARPG-- in the vein of Diablo-- Marvel Heroes has been a boon to PC users who love to jump into action as their favorite Marvel superheroes since 2013. I played it on the PC when it first came out and I loved it. Sadly, my laptop at the time couldn't handle the amount of awesome graphics and beautiful visual effects that the game was constantly throwing into my face, so I stopped playing after a few weeks for fear of my motherboard melting down. Now, it's made it's way onto the PS4 and will be hitting Xbox this Spring.

Captain America

With the launch on the PS4 comes some re-branding; Marvel Heroes Omega is the new name from Marvel Heroes 2015, and hopefully this launch is better than the first two. The Omega seems to be fitting because I'm sure that this is Gazillion's final chance to make this game into something worth anything. If you purchase one of the Founder's Packs, you get early access to the game, a few heroes, some G's and some other items. If you buy all five packs, which will cost you $160.00, you get a Symbiote skin for Spider-Man and unlock Iron Fist. Fan-boys must be foaming at the mouth and throwing their cash and credit cards and the television. Good luck with that, Gazillion. When it full-launches, you can play and see it for yourselves.

Excelsior, true believers.

Games of Glory PS4 Beta Launches...

I came across this game purely by accident. I was browsing the PlayStation store on the morning of the 25th, as I am wont to do, and saw it sitting there in the "Free Games" section. I began downloading it, looked at the release date and realized that it had just come out a few hours before. Games of Glory has been out for a while on the PC, but now it's become the newest PC-PS4 cross-platform MOBA to hit the PS4's digital shelves. Created by Lightbulb Crew, this game mixes it up by being a top-down shooter sci-fantasy and a MOBA rolled into a ball of coolness. It's nice to see a MOBA game that cares about story, and as such, the characters each have a rich backstory and compelling personalities. As of Open Beta, there are two game modes to enjoy.

Svandia's Forge pits you and two team-mates against another team of three to kill each other in best-of-five, full-throttle combat, but with a twist. Each round, one player on each team is selected at random to become a superstar. If this superstar dies, your team automatically loses the round-- a similar function to VIP in other games, more especially FPS games. Beware, when the time runs down, the team with a VIP closer to the white point at the center of the map wins that round.

Svandia's Forge overhead view

Arkashan drops you and three other people into the true MOBA experience, in which you and your allies make you way to areas of the map to complete objectives, destroy turrets and harass your enemies. Arkashan is much bigger than Syandia's Forge and as such, players should pay attention to the minimap. Be careful not to get trapped in the rooms with enemies when the doors close, unless that was your plan all along. Be wary of enemy ambushes, because like most MOBA games, there is a similar mechanic to fog-of-war. If you are hurting for credits and want an attack buff to boot, teleport down to the boss room and take him out with your team to help you regain a foothold, unless the roles are reversed and you just want to deny that to the enemy team.

Arkashan overhead view

For the most part, a game will last about ten to fifteen minutes. Of course, the skill of the teams could determine if it goes on even longer or if it's over all too fast. You'll have to play solo up to account level 5 to unlock the ability to make a club, allowing you to invite your friends to games so you can play together. You'll be able to make a simple, rather lack-luster, team emblem-- even with a rather large selection of two-item combinations of a shield and an insignia. You'll be able to change the uniform colors for league games, which has a decent selection of colors.

Free game, free-to-play, so get at it, Clones.

Skyforge On PS4...

Skyforge has made it's way to PS4, but no dice for Xbox One. Faster than it took Perfect World to port Neverwinter and Star Trek Online to console, these no-purchase free-to-play MMOs are trying to fill the whole in the MMOARPG market where consoles are concerned. The PS4 consumer market is not an easy beast to tame. Elder Scrolls Online tried to fill this gap and made great strides to get there, too. A third of the Elder Scrolls Online player-base is on PS4 according to Polygon's interview with Matt Firor. With the recent trends moving people out of ESO's camp and into others, players are grasping desperately for something to keep them on their daily grind.

For those who are out of the loop, the way that these free-to-play games make their money is micro-transactions. On the PlayStation store, the minimum transaction is five dollars. That means big money for PlayStation and Allods Team-- both companies known for puttin' it up for their bucks. Allods Team has made a nice chunk of change from their oldest MMO IP Allods Online. They learned their lessons from Allods Online and pumped them into Skyforge and you can definitely feel that flavor if you've played both games. I liked Allods Online, but the pay-to-progress nature of it's gameplay when last I played it didn't seem like a solid strategy. Regardless of how I felt about it, Allods Online still has a player-base large enough to continually support the game to this day.

So, we come to the crux of the matter: I played Skyforge on PC when it first came out and wasn't a big fan of the experience. The game was full of bugs and the control scheme was not my cup of tea, not to mention the fact that my brand-new-- at the time-- laptop couldn't handle the amount of emitters and polygons in the social spaces. I played a couple of weeks and just couldn't take it anymore. However, when I saw that the game was now on PS4, I had to try it because I liked the lore and the look of the game. I also figured that I could afford to give it another shot because it was a free download, so why not, right?

Launching Skyforge on the PS4, it felt more epic than I remembered. The music seemed better and the colors seemed to be more vibrant. I saw that the game had changed quite a bit since I had played it on PC. The beginning is mildly different, but it now gives you a better sense of what it is to become an immortal. The player must kill enemy invaders from multiple different races and factions to protect Aelion, but I'm glad to see that there are more of these in the game since when I played.

The control scheme with a PS4 controller takes a little getting used to if you play mostly shooters and other kinds of action games. You'll realize that it's a press-modifier system akin to that of Neverwinter or Star Trek Online, or Dragon Age: Inquisition-- the kind that you'll see in most MMOs and sometimes RPGs that are ported to console from PC. The reason is mostly because of the amount of buttons on the controller are not enough for all of the commands that a player needs to have access to.

The way that you receive loot has changed. Now, the loot drops straight from bosses, rather than looting a chest. Players can now style their character directly from the menu. Getting into and out of dungeons is faster and easier. Amassing followers/worshipers seems to be beaucoup amounts easier. These are definitely some huge quality-of-life changes to this game. All-in-all, I'd say that this game is definitely worth playing on the PS4 if you like ARPGs. Good fortune on the path to godhood, Immortals.

On Destiny's Age of Triumph...

This is our "final hurrah" as guardians of the last earth city before Destiny 2 drops and everything changes. Once Destiny 2 is released, we will lose all of our armors, weapons and items. Also, from what we can guess so far, all of our progress as well. For these reasons, Bungie is finally fulfilling the prophecies and has released Age of Triumph as a free update for guardians to enjoy. The live team is spitting out the reworks for all of the raids with now light-relevant gear and new cosmetic options for our characters. Players have been waiting desperately for new content to Destiny and it has finally come. With this update, players can finally relive the moments that shaped their legend. They even gave us a new handy-dandy record book to track all of these new and renewed activities, awarding special emblems that you can only get from doing the activities in the book.

The player can now collect older gear from the different expansions and activities by purchasing engrams from the new kiosk in the tower with silver. How do you get silver dust? You do the different daily and weekly activities to be awarded Radiant Lockboxes (Yay, more game lockboxes) upon completion. You pop 'em open and inside of them can be practically anything from year two: emotes, ships, shaders, sparrows, ornaments, dust, chroma colors, and even chroma or event armor. If you don't like what you got, the non-collectable items can be broken down into silver dust, unless it's chroma armor, which will break down into chroma. As an awesome weekend bonus, Xûr is now selling bundles that include a weapon and an ornament for that weapon at the cost of a combination of both Strange Coins and Silver Dust.

Ornamented King's Fall, Vault of Glass, Crota's End and Wrath of the Machine raid armors.

The retouched raid weapons are awesome, but there is a catch. If you want the elemental solar, arc, or void damage, you've got to use the exotic version of the weapon, otherwise, the legendary versions of those weapons will do kinetic damage. All of the perquisites are the same; it's just one has the elemental damage and the other doesn't. Also, the exotic weapons do have a little change to them that colors them nice and pretty-like, and are always the same rolls.

There are other new items as well: Age of Triumph Ornaments and Knuckles of Eao. Age of Triumph Ornaments are new legendary ornament items that serve the function of unlocking cosmetic changes to raid armors, allowing the player to express their guardians individuality or to just show off. Unlike the weapon ornaments, Age of Triumph Ornaments can be used on any piece of the new raid armor, not just a particular set or piece. Some pieces of armor even taken more than one Age of Triumph Ornament to activate their special look. Knuckles of Eao are a new consumable, similar to Three of Coins, that grant the player a wish when killing raid bosses. This wish gives the player a chance at more and better loot drops from these encounters. I say "player" because you only get one a week per game account.

They began with Crota's End. It's strange that they released the new version of the second raid, instead of the revamped Vault of Glass, the first raid. Crota's End was the raid at the end of The Dark Below, in which the actions of the guardian, having finished the raid by killing Crota, would be responsible for the setting into motion events that would ultimately foment the coming of The Taken King. Crota's End has seen some improvements and a few changes to it's mechanics, adding new challenges for the guardians to overcome, granting them more loot. When activated, the raid armor's ornaments make the armor emit green and blue spikes.

The new Hunter armor from Vault of Glass with ornaments on.

The next week came and we were given the gift of Vault of Glass, the first raid from vanilla Destiny and the favorite of most of the people in my personal gaming circle. We went down into the vault to destroy Atheon and stop him from messing with the flux of time. This opening of the Vault of Glass would lead to the events of House of Wolves, wherein the Fallen commander Skolas would use the Vex technology in the Vault to attempt to make himself into the legendary "Kell of Kells". Vault of Glass has seen only minor changes with the addition of Challenges. Make sure you don't let that Templar teleport and you kill Atheon in one round or your whole fireteam will be forfeiting your chance for extra goodies. The armor, once socketed with ornaments, take on the appearance of being Vex-infused, the warlock boots even looking like Vex Hobgoblin legs.

In the third week of Age of Triumph came the refreshed King's Fall, the raid from the release of The Taken King. The guardians killed Crota and, as a result, he wants his vengeance. This is the raid where the guardians raid the Dreadnought, use the Court of Oryx to invade Oryx's realm and destroy his threat for a second and final time. None of the mechanics have changed, but all challenges are active. That means no one can hold the brand during Warpriest more than once, everyone must hold the gaze each round during Golgoroth, and you must kill Oryx from full health to dead by detonating at least sixteen orbs in a single round. Using ornaments makes your armor glow cyan-colored.

The final raid to get a rework is the more recent one: The Wrath of the Machine. During the story of Rise of Iron, the Fallen splicers have taken charge of their own evolution and become one with their gods, using the nanotechnology of Siva to do it. As for the challenges, the Vosik and Aksis challenges are both active. This means that a fireteam must use Siva charges to close the clean-room doors during the Vosik encounter, and guardians who have empowerment will have to supercharge on those plates every time Aksis teleports during the second phase of the final fight. The ornaments unlock the ability for the your guardian to look like they are fragmenting physically, but it's slightly different for each class.

All of this and more await those who get in and get going for this Destiny update. Also, Bungie is selling t-shirts for $777,777.77 USD. Who's gonna' pay that much for a t-shirt? Oh, wait, what's this in the book about hitting rank seven? That's right, you get a discount code once you hit rank seven that drops the price to twenty-five bucks; thirty if you want the personalized name-tag on the sleeve. Good luck with that, Bungie. We don't know what the future of Destiny will be with the sequel on the horizon, but we are hopeful that it will be better than it has been and we can hope that until our hearts are either filled with light or disappointment. Good hunting, guardians.