In GameDrone Monthly I give a recap of my gaming activities in the past month, some new articles on GameDrone that you might have missed and what I expect to be doing in the coming month.
Maybe you’d like share your experiences, send in a game you’d like me to cover on GameDrone or team up for a multiplayer or co-op game this month. Whatever the reason, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll discuss :)
Now June was a month of numerous interesting new releases, but I actually haven’t gotten around to trying out most of them just yet. There have also been some huge summer sales on Impulse and Steam, so I’ve added a few more games to the ‘to be played’ list. I still have plenty of games to play and talk about, so be sure to stick around.
June on GameDrone
June was the month of E3, which got a bit of attention here at GameDrone as well. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood looked really good in both single- and multiplayer, contrary to what I had expected. And Medal of Honor finally showcased some multiplayer gameplay which really seemed like a great mixture of Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 gameplay. But easily more impressive than anything else on show was the Deus Ex: Human Revolution E3 trailer, which amazingly appears to have been an in-engine trailer!
Also a running theme this month was the 8th EVE Alliance Tournament. This annual tournament is actually covered with full HD quality commentated videos to support the on-screen action, so I picked the best games of the first qualifier round, second qualifier round and final matches to show to you. It may not be a game for everyone, but there’s no denying that the combat looks awesome.
And since I’ve been playing a lot of real-time strategy games lately, there was a fair bit of coverage on that front too. I discussed the new Battle.net service in StarCraft 2, which isn’t quite as good as you might expect. I also uploaded a screenshots galore based on the StarCraft 2 beta and recently uploaded my first beta match commentary of a 1v1 I played before the beta went down. And finally finishing the WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne singleplayer campaign inspired me to write about the lack of variation in modern real-time strategy games.
There were a bunch of Guild Wars 2 updates as well. Most notable was the introduction of the Warrior profession and Traits system, which was soon followed by even more information on the same topic. There’s also been a lore-related talk on how fictional written languages will be implemented in the world of Tyria to much greater degree than in the original game.
Sticking to the MMOG realm I also did a new take on what I think will be the ten most successful subscription-based MMOGs of this year. And I managed to find a way to play the brilliant action adventure game Outcast in fullscreen. Also worth checking out is the Dragon Age: Warden’s Fall machinima, which sees some very impressive editing. I also covered the Counter Strike: Source patch with a review of the new functionality and changes.
Lastly, GameDrone saw two polls close down this month with interesting results. Many of you (58%) are apparently looking forward to StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, but not quite as many as I had expected. A fair amount doesn’t seem very interested in an oldschool take on real-time strategy. Also interesting was the poll that asked which consoles you own, with a very large portion (53%) owning Xbox 360 consoles. Much more-so than any other option. Also interesting is that many of you (23%) actually abstain from consoles altogether.
So it’s been a busy month, but July looks to be even more packed with good stuff. So be sure to subscribe and stick around for great new articles, guides, videos and other PC game related content.
I finally completed The Frozen Throne in June!
Games I played
It’s done! My one true goal for June was to finally finish the WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne singleplayer campaign and while it took a bit longer than I might have liked, I have succeeded! It was an awesome strategy game and really set me to thinking about why more recent strategy games tend not to be quite as good. At least now I know what-all happened prior to the beginning of World of WarCraft and can scratch this game off my list.
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty was the other big strategy game this month, because the beta ended in early June so I had to play it like crazy for those final few days. It does look like the beta will be returning any time now, probably sometime next week. My level of play finally seemed to be improving as I made it up to high in Gold league (1v1/3v3) before the beta went down. Still need to work a lot on that team communication though. Oh and be sure to check out the beta commentary videos I’ve uploaded to YouTube. They give a pretty good indication of what the game plays like.
I also picked up Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers this month, which I’d tried before on Xbox Live Arcade but actually bought this time because the pre-order was cheap. I’ve played it for a few hours already, which is quite a lot for what’s basically just a virtual card game with very short matches. I’d prefer it if it had an actual campaign like Spectromancer, but the gameplay is a bit better so that’s alright. It does suck that it doesn’t have online co-op though, which is contrary to the pre-launch advertising.
The Counter Strike: Source patch also had me checking out the new stuff, which was actually mostly good. So I played that with TENSHi, a buddy of mine who plays it competitively at top level here in the Benelux. Got some good patch feedback from him as well which had me looking at it a bit more critically. And otherwise I mostly just played Modern Warfare 2 whenever some friends were online and playing, so that’s mostly every day. I hope to cut down on that now that I’m in the Medal of Honor beta! Yeah!
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty will be the talk of July ... if not the year.
Games I intend to play
Let’s start off with some new games. I just got into the Medal of Honor beta, thanks to FilePlanet (Play.com is really slow on the uptake with sending my pre-order beta key), so I’m definitely going to be playing that. It looks like a very heavy mixture of Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2, which is a good thing in my opinion. Bad Company 2 doesn’t really have great infantry combat, whereas the destructible environments and great weaponry do tend to push Bad Company 2 ahead, so a mixture of that should be awesome.
Then there’s Singularity which should be arriving tomorrow, because I did pre-order it. It certainly looks like that was a good call, because what I’ve heard about it thus far has been extremely positive. I’m going to try to steam through that singleplayer campaign first chance I get and maybe get some multiplayer impressions up too. That doesn’t really get covered much yet, but from what I’ve been able to piece together it sound a lot like a futuristic take on Wolfenstein’s (2009) multiplayer which actually was pretty good.
I also really need to get going on Fallen Earth. I’m just going to finish reading a few more guides and getting some basic pointers jotted down before comitting to it. And I want to get in some singleplayer RPG action as well with Alpha Protocol, which I haven’t even installed yet (oops). I do tend to willfully ignore bugs in favor of proper storytelling and decent gameplay, so I’m fairly certain I’m going to fit in with the rest of the European crowd in rating it very highly once I get around to playing it… strangely most Americans seem to think it’s crap. I guess they don’t like singleplayer cRPGs.
And there is of course the usual suspect with Modern Warfare 2 getting a new map pack. I’ll try to cover that with some early impressions, but from the videos they don’t look to be as good as the overpriced Stimulus maps. Those may have been overpriced but they were better than any of the maps in MW2, but this new Resurgence Pack doesn’t seem quite as good. I hope I’m wrong on that count.
More importantly there is one major release this month that I’m going to be covering all month long for sure! StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty will finally hit store shelves on July 27th and I’ve got the collector’s edition pre-ordered locally so I should be able to cover the full game from the very day of launch. I’m also in beta, which should be returning any moment now, so there are going to be more match commentaries and likely a fair few guides and tips for multiplayer now that I’ve gotten decent at playing Terran.
I may also try to squeeze in the StarCraft and Brood War singleplayer campaigns, because I’ve never actually played those to completion. Well I finished StarCraft, but not Brood War, so I need to play through it all again before I really sit down with StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty singleplayer. So there may be a bit of coverage on that as well!
Man, that’s one busy month.
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