Tag: Multiplayer

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. Epic DLC coming soon

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

XCOM 2 is the greatest turn based strategy game, we at X35 Earthwalker, have ever played. The amount of options you have to deal with a situation, the different amount of enemies and the problems they bring, the different weapons and equipment that you have to buy and equip wisely is just deep and done very well. Off course XCOM 2 wasn’t perfect but man was it very good.

Good news for all XCOM fans. A new DLC is coming out and it’s a large one. Almost like a whole game. It’s called XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It will come out 29th of August for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. This DLC adds whole new content to the game. The fight against the advent continues so new factions of the resistance form together to take down the enemy. That’s right we have whole new allies and units to back us up; however a new enemy called the ‘Chosen’ show up and they have one goal in mind: recapture the commander. So XCOM 2: War of the Chosen has new hero classes, new enemies, new environments, new missions and gives the strategic level of XCOM 2 another layer. 

The Chosen are the most smart and dangerous enemy we have ever faced. They are sent by the elders to carry out this recapture mission. They are well organised and got different units to give them every advantage they can get. The three units that have been revealed are Assassins, Warlocks and Hunter.

The resistance factions bring new things for us. These new factions have their own background and story behind them. They all look clearly different from each other and have completely different abilities and strengths. The three new factions that have been revealed are Reaper, Skirmisher and Templar.

If having to face the Chosen wasn’t bad enough we also have whole new enemies who are more than willing to take us on. We haven’t been given much information on the new enemies but we do know their names. There is the Priest, Purifier, Spectre and ‘The Lost’. They also look real cool and very distinguishable from each other.

There are whole new environments in this DLC as well. Expect to have tactical battles in such environments like xenoformed wilderness regions, cities abandoned because they were destroyed by aliens bio weapons and even underground tunnels. Hope you guys aren’t scared of the dark.

There is much more, we learnt that even your scientists and engineers can get involved in the action. They can be deployed on covert missions that if they complete successfully, will reward you with supplies and boost faction favour. Your soldiers interact with each other to some extent. The website explains that your “soldiers can develop bonds with compatible teammates for new abilities and perks.”  You can even create and design your own resistance posters that you can share with your friend in-game. 

Overall this DLC looks amazing right now. It is deep and rich with content. It’s bringing whole new environments, enemies and resistance units shaking up the game to some extent. This is a whole new campaign as well with new strategic layers. We will reveal more concerning the units in another blog. This DLC is definitely worth checking out. You may not like the Chosen but you will like… the ‘Earth Walk!’.

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Halo Wars 2 new leader, Serina

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Halo Wars 2 latest new content brought a new character leader with it. Serina is here! She is the AI from Halo Wars 1 but here… she is an ice AI. That’s right, she just might be a bit too… cool (We see you laughing).

When we first knew that it was Serina we only wondered what she would bring to the game. Maybe a new concept or just crazy abilities. She brought both! She also has new units as well. These new units are Cryo troopers, Frost ravens and the hero unit Bison. All three are capable of freezing enemy units. How this works is that as they attack the enemy a meter appears under their health and it fills up. When that meter gets full, that enemy unit is frozen and cannot attack or move. If you shatter a frozen unit though, they will take a large amount of extra damage. This applies for both enemy units and structures. 

Now Cryo Troopers are exactly the same as Hell bringers but instead shoot ice. They are good against infantry and structures. Frost ravens are basically ice nightingales that don’t heal but shoot a beam of ice to freeze enemies. They also come a with a missile that does damage but better used to shatter frozen enemies. The hero unit Bison is a strong, shielded vehicle that launches ice grenades (or bombs whatever) at all enemy unit types, doing good damage. The attacks help to freeze the enemy units as well. Once upgraded the Bison can create a field of chill aura once planted. By the way, chill auras  and effects basically slows enemy units down and slowly freezes them meaning movement is harder and if they stay there too long they will be completely frozen and susceptible to being shattered. Bison has both interesting offense and defense.

Serina’s leader powers are very interesting and what gets things rolling.

  • ‘Ice Barrier’ allows you to drop in giant blocks of ice which blocks enemies but also have a chilling effect so slow down enemies and can freeze over time.
  • ‘Cryogenic detonator’ is basically the  cloaked mines which do damage but freezes or chills enemies.
  • ‘Cryotech advances’ grants all Cryo troopers, turrets and power nodes chill auras. Kodiaks and siege turret rounds also chill enemy units.
  • ‘Frostraven’ unlocks the Frostravens to be built at your base.
  • ‘Seismic blast’ allows you to shatter frozen enemies in a selected area for huge damage.
  • ‘Restoration drones’ which we all know and love for their healing goodness.
  • ‘Cryobomb’ which just like in Halo Wars 1 drops a bomb to freeze enemy units.
  • ‘Turret drop’ as usual drops a turret which fires on any enemy unit.
  • ‘Cryo drop’ which fires down three seismic blasts and drops in 2 Cryo troopers, 2 scorpion tanks and 1 frostraven
  • ‘Glacial storm’ lets you drop in a huge cryogenic charge which creates a long lasting ice storm that chills enemy units over time.

 

Now if you are quite strategic then you would have come up with some ideas and combinations right now concerning her leader powers. You could get a good amount of Cryo troopers equipped with Cryotech advances, call in a Glacial storm but trap the enemy army with ice barrier, land cryo bomb on any high priority units by this time most are weak or frozen so drop the seismic blast to ruin the entire army. There is quite a bit you can do.

Serina is a very good addition to Halo Wars 2. She brings a whole new concept and shakes things up. When there is a Serina on the enemy team you know that you can’t keep your staying still for too long. You have to spread out a bit. What happens if Serina fights Kinsano? Ice vs fire. Interesting. Overall she is fun to use and with more practice, will figure out her true power.

Destiny 2 beta. Destined to succeed?

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Destiny 2 beta is already out and available for players. Now many people are waiting for the full release of Destiny 2. Destiny had so much hype and delivered a lot to the people. It wowed people with it’s graphics, definitely the environments and locations and the sounds in the game like the sounds of the guns and certain attacks. The question is whether the beta shows promise, whether the developers learnt from their past mistakes… whether Destiny 2 is destined to succeed?

X35 Earthwalker himself has tried out the Destiny 2 beta. The beta starts of with a very well done cutscene. Now this is the first thumbs up for Destiny 2. The cutscene showed the ‘leaders’ or ‘heads’ of the the groups: Hunters, Warlocks and Titans. It showed the difference in the personalities of each leader. The hunter leader comes of as the least serious, but claims to be serious and has a sense of humour with some jokes of his own. The head of the titans comes of as serious always, someone who may not understand what a joke is or have any time for a joke but polite. The head of the warlocks comes of as the most normal being naturally calm and friendly but when angered, gets angry. In the first scene this is all revealed clearly and they interact very well with each other, in a humorous way which works well. The cutscene also gets straight to the action and players get to see what’s going on. The opening cutscene did things very well and gives us a taste of what to expect.

After dropping in and learning what is happening to your home you must defend the place and fight back. The action is fast paced and continuous. It didn’t feel like a repetitive clone of some missions in Destiny 1. This first level all seemed like it was going somewhere. It created some questions in the players head like what happened to the speaker during the attack, why is this happening now, what happened to the leaders of the three groups and what does the Traveler have to do with all this (we have believe we know why)? Now this battle is fierce and is a real clash of great powers; however you soon learn that the battle is one sided though. On the ground the guardians are stronger and beating numerous enemies but the enemies have large ships that are bombarding us from far away and it’s doing major damage while transporting enemy troops and wouldn’t stop. It was when we did a counter attack and boarded the enemy ship that we encounter out new enemy…

This new enemy brings quite a lot to the table. He is called ‘General Dominus Ghaul’, the commander of the Cabal red legion. It has been said that he has never known defeat. He has come to claim the Traveller. This new villain has showed that he possess strategy as the attack was well organised and successful. The players get to have an encounter with Ghaul but it was brief. Ghaul walks in all cocky and mighty, weakens us by somehow taking away our strength but seems like he took away our light. Then slaps us around and finally kicks us of the edge of the in flight ship. How very charming of him. So Ghaul isn’t just intelligence, he can more than hold his own in a fight. This has to be the guardians most dangerous enemy yet.

We tried out the multiplayer Destiny 2 and so far it does feel exactly the same as Destiny 1. The first game mode was strange. We couldn’t figure out what controlling the areas did really. Is the score connected to the controlled areas or for kills? This mode presented a more hide and seek style, where you have an area and wait for an enemy to come in and get the jump on them. The other mode was more to our liking only because of the style and mechanics of Destiny. It completely reminds us of breakout in Halo 5 where you must eliminate your opponents to win or complete an objective. This forces players to not hide forever but increases awareness concerning what’s happening around them. So in this mode, we must set the charges and stay alive until they detonate for an instant win or defeat all members of the enemy team. It is quite fast and ammo for powerful weapons are always available. X35 Earthwalker even got some nice grenade launcher kills.

Now we was hoping for some clear differences between Destiny 1 and 2. After all the moves, abilities, HUD and stuff all are the same pretty much. Now this does make sense as it is directly after Destiny 1 so things would be the same. Plus it’s also the beta, so who knows, they may spring in some new abilities and more in the full release. They have to bring something big and new to the table besides a bigger, fuller story. They have to otherwise what is the real point. Again we must say that this is a beta so don’t think everything is set in stone yet. It is just a taste of what’s to come. Graphics, sounds and especially visuals are all top notch. The environments, it’s creativity and how it all looks is really amazing. We expected no less though. This is Destiny after all. One big change is that the loadout has been changed. You can have two assault rifles but one is kinetic while the other could have an element. Look at it for yourself.

Overall we are excited for Destiny 2. The beta has come off a bit short but we did hear that more will be added to the beta. So let’s look out for that.

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Gears of war. About the characters

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Gears of war 4 has made some changes for the better while some stuff that was great in Gears of war 3, they didn’t bring over. The developers have to make decisions and not all the time it works well with the players but hey, decisions must be made.

Gears of war 4 has a lot of characters to select from. The largest selection out of all the Gears of war games. Yet some people are still not happy with it. X35 Earthwalker’s favourite character is ‘Day of the dead Del’. It has some gold on the armour, the clothing style looks real nice but the only problem he has with the character is the face paint which looks horrible. They should make the same skin but have it without the face paint. Most of the characters pretty much look to similar and not that different at all. In multiplayer, everyone is moving around quickly, doing what they need to do so the characters will need to be designed in such a way that you can recognise the differences really quickly. The V, E and whatever other day gears characters with the helmets on are not impressive at all. The carmines pretty much look similar except Clayton.

The point is that they could have been more creative with the characters. For example they can create new characters for the sake of multiplayer only. A completely new person and give them unique lines. We do know that it requires more work and effort but we think that’s necessary for a big game like Gears of war 4. Give some new characters signature accessories on their uniform to make it stand out. Maybe a new gear character with bright coloured hair. Or go crazy and create a chef who had to defend himself with a gnasher from a fallen soldier who tried to evacuate him. So the chef still has his chef outfit on or whatever. There is lots you can get away with in this game. Maybe a cool dude still in his suit, maybe he use to be a celebrity like the Cole train. 

Some characters should be in packs but they should have done what they did in Gears of war 3 which was make some characters unlocked through certain achievements get a certain number of multiplayer kills and even make some difficult ones like get the quad to unlock young Hoffman but in knights armour and it has that clangy noise that knight armour makes when moving. Something big like that. They should have brought back unlockable stuff as that gives a sense of progress to players. Last of all they need to bring out the Aaron Griffin character and hurry up! He was X35 Earthwalker’s favourite character in Gears of war 3 and by far the coolest character overall. His lines were epic level and he completely stood out. Bring back Mr Griffin and we will actually use our in game credits to get him.

Overall there is quite a lot that the developers can do concerning the characters in Gears of war 4. Too many characters seem similar and not as much stands out. We certainly have no interest in the colour blast characters but they are cool to some extent. We at X35 Earthwalker hope to see much more from Gears of war 4 in the future. What we can expect to see in the future though… is the ‘Earth Walk!’

Gigantic. Large battles coming to us soon

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Gigantic is a new MOBA game developed by ‘Motiga’ and coming out 20th of July for Xbox One and Windows 10. 

Now this game will remind some gamers of Paladin and Overwatch. We can confirm that it isn’t exactly the same though. This third person shooter game is all 5v5 pvp action. Meaning that players have to think fast, act fast and be bold about it. 

So straight away we should know what to expect from this game except Gigantic has something else… Something big… Something gigantic (see what we did there?). Your team must power up, defeat the enemies and control the map to unleash your guardian. The guardian is basically that gigantic thing. These large creatures will rule the field and trash everything so make sure to have your guardian first. X35 Earthwalker, What happens if both teams unleash their guardians? Well that’s simple. An gigantic epic clash of gigantic monsters. 

Your team will have creatures which will help you control the map and gather power. These creatures are worth summoning and protecting. Simply because you can upgrade them making them tougher and more of a pain for your enemies to deal with. Gigantic is a fast and fluid strategic hero shooter. The key word is ‘strategic’.

Now there are a range of heroes to choose from. There is said to be 18 heroes. Each hero is very different from each other in looks and role. The many characters are said to cover every major type of gameplay there is. That’s a big statement. Heroes like ‘The Margrave’, a tank, who replaced the arm he lost with the arm of a demon. ‘Imani’, a shooter, who is said to wreck anyone who enters her sights. ‘Wu’ a fighter, everyone of his limbs including his tongue is dangerous. Mozu, a caster, who has a range of spells and can teleport. Many more heroes to check out and test for yourself.

Overall this does seem like a cool game. We checked out some gameplay but it was a beta so the real thing will be much better. The graphics were nice and colourful. Gigantic had really cool environments like the clouds, the maps that you battle on. The sounds could be better and should be for the real release. The action was indeed fast and quite a bit to do. The gigantic guardians are epic though but we hope that they do more on the battlefield though. This game might be worth checking out. Gigantic has powerful guardians but X35 Earthwalker has… the ‘Earth Walk’!

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Dungeon Defenders 2. This sequel is lit

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Dungeon defenders 2 is great. X35 Earthwalker himself played the first Dungeon defenders with a team and it created great moments for them. Now that the sequel showed up they went in on the sequel. So far they have done what we wanted.

First of all let’s quickly talk about the story which made us stop and think about how dumb the heroes or kingdom was. The enemies showed up and smashed the eternia crystals which were containing the armies of the ‘Old ones’ within. For some strange reason the crystals were left scattered around the land instead of.. you know… gathering them and locking them up in a secure location. Literally, the enemies just rolled up to where the individual crystals were and just smashed them. Seriously so you mean to tell us that after we successfully defended the crystals and sealed away the armies in those things, we left them were we found them, vulnerable to anything that comes by? Dumb move if you ask us. Now that everyone is aware of what’s going on, they decided to gather and hide away the last remaining crystals. Too Late! Too late guys but whatever.

They brought in a bunch of new characters while keeping the original four off course. That’s right. The squire, apprentice, monk and huntress are back with their comical glory and furious might. Much to our joy they made the characters grow up. It’s been five years we believe so they are teenagers now? Yet the squire looks like the biggest muscle teenager we have ever seen but whatever, they look cool and it’s great to see them making progress. The other characters are: The Abyss Lord, Series EV3, The Gunwitch, The LavaMancer, The Mystic, The Dryad and The initiate. They all, except the Initiate, have their own defenses but all do have different abilities. Seriously the Initiate looks like a real cool character, can’t they giver her, her own defenses instead of making her a copy. Disappointed by that but happy with the cast of characters who are coming together to combat the enemies. Off course the other characters outside the original four must be unlocked. Also what’s disappointing is the fact that the Squires description sounds so unimpressive compared to the Apprentice. We encourage you to go to ‘Create character’ and read their respective descriptions and see which one sounds cooler.

In the first Dungeon Defenders game we struggled with the bonus levels as they seem to require you being an immensely high level to tackle but we have lives and things to do so couldn’t really be at that requirement in some ways. There was one in particular level that had an certain enemy which made everything not fun. It was that stupid genie which always stayed in the air and attacked your defenses, destroying them quite quickly. Worse is that he was really fast so a squire player couldn’t really hit him enough times or quick enough. He has high health so it will still take forever for Monks and Apprentices to shoot him down. There were no defenses for taking him down. In Dungeon Defenders 2 the Monk now has an anti-air defense called “Sky guard tower” which as the name implies specialises in taking down air enemies like wyverns and anything else that flies. This would have made life in Dungeon Defenders so much easier. It has nice range, honestly think they should have increased the range, good damage and the rate of fire is something we can live with. Now when we see that flying enemies are showing up, we smile and know we got something waiting for them.

Probably the coolest feature of Dungeon defenders 2 right now is the fact that you can switch between your selected character heroes. This is true. Even in the middle of combat. That’s awesome. So if you need to strike enemies from a distance then swap to the Huntress. Want to jump in the middle of the horde then swap to squire. You can build any of their defenses by switching between them. So use a Squires blockade for ultimate defense, use the Apprentices earth shatter tower for long range heavy damage, the Monks Boost aura to increase damage and the Huntress’s Blaze balloons to damage groups as they approach. Your heroes have separate ability resource meters. So you can switch between each hero just to use their abilities like the Apprentices Mana bomb, Squire’s Sword beam, Huntress’s Concussive shots and Monk’s Heroic wave. You can create some serious combos and different combinations of defense set ups. 

There are lots and lots of items and different relics and shards for you to collect, equip and upgrade to make your characters the most powerful in all the kingdom. Decide which relic bests goes with which defenses. Equip armour and weapons to suit your style and off course… pets are still here. Get eggs and hatch them unleash new creatures to aid you in your quest. The levels are nice but we do have some issues with them. We completely hate the whole portals can appear in levels thing. There were moments where we have our defences set up and ready but then a portal opens up right on top of the defenses or right behind them and they can’t defend themselves. Selling your defense isn’t the best thing to do as you never get your full money back for what you spent on it. It’s annoying. Some levels, the enemies at times stray of their path to attack a defense that isn’t in their line. This has only happened on one level though. We also feel that there isn’t enough defense space. When we reach our maximum capacity for defences, it’s like we don’t have enough and have to rely on our characters to handle the gaps. Yes we do know that different defense take up different space.

Overall we are loving Dungeon Defenders 2 right now. The levels have variety, the locations make sense for the story and where it is going. The graphics and sounds have improved. It has a lot of what we wanted the sequel to have. It’s so much fun with a team and everyone is running around to get to where they are needed. This game is free by the way so make sure to support the developers. Maybe a get a new skin for your characters. By the way the skins you can get are very cool, very creative and worth getting if you have the cash. This game is worth trying out. You know what else is worth a try?… The ‘Earth Walk!’

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Moon Hunter. Yep, it’s about the moon

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Moon Hunters is an adventure RPG, developed by ‘Kitfox Games’ and is already out on PC and PS4 but will be released on Xbox One July 19th. We have never heard of this game until recently but finding information on Moon Hunters is actually easy. This is another great example of how to display information for gamers in a easy way.

On the Moon Hunter official website it says, “Moon Hunters is a myth-weaving adventure for 1-4 players, solving ancient mysteries and building mythologies. Explore a hand-painted pixel art world that’s randomly generated yet rich with legends, non-linear stories, and secrets. How will you be remembered?” This sounds like ancient, fantasy world filled with mythological things and creatures. In the world of Moon Hunter, the moon is the source of all magic and spiritual power. Except one evening the moon doesn’t rise. Wait is this why we are hunting the moon? It’s up to you to solve the mystery of why the moon didn’t rise and return things back to normal. You can either go on this adventure alone or with other chosen children of the moon.

So what does it matter that the moon doesn’t rise? Well monsters show up and chaos increases across the lands. Lands like oceans and mountains. The world is dangerous and constantly changing which is why you must think carefully about what you do and how you use your weapons. You can craft in Moon Hunters as well. It’s about survival. The game does emphasise that your character has personalities. 

The journey in this game is random generated. There is said to be over a hundred different locations. The journey is centered around myths. The landmarks and different territories may contain myths. These are needed to advance your world and character. Your decisions will effect how different factions see you. There are new powers waiting to be unlocked. There are different myths, creatures and items. The story of Moon Hunter is not linear at all. It comes down to your decisions and responses to certain situations. For example, if a villager did you wrong, how would you deal with it? Will you let it go, get the truth out of them or kill them? So what kind of mythology will your character have? Best of all, this game has co-op action so you can play with your family and friends in the strange world of Moon Hunter.

Overall we think this is a good game indeed. We checked out some gameplay and we saw the art style, the different characters in the game, the different constellation that your character could have, some combat and more. The graphics for it’s style is okay, the environments though look cool. The music is nice. Fantasy worlds are just always exciting to explore and play simply because anything could be in it. There is no limit so we hope to see the bigger stuff of Moon Hunter in the future. The developers ‘Kitfox Games’ did a great job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will wait to see more of this game first but we like what we see. This game is worth checking out. We don’t care about constellations but… we do care about the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Halo Wars 2. Arbiter and Jerome

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Halo Wars 2 is at it again. We must say though that the developers are doing an awesome job so far in bringing us new content, which is actually good and charging us at reasonable prices. Great Job 343 Industries and Creative Assembly. The newest character leaders are The Arbiter and Spartan Jerome.

So many gamers where looking forward to these two leaders and boy do they deliver. Both of these new Halo Wars 2 leader function very differently from all the others, which isn’t an easy to do while keeping everything balanced. 

The Arbiter is definitely more focused on his stasis leader powers. He has regular stasis and also mass stasis which is just stasis but on a larger scale. Basically if you use stasis on enemies their units can’t move or attack but cannot be harmed. So it buys you time. Time to escape or time to attack turrets first or destroy a base and they have no choice but to watch. If you use stasis on your own units then they can’t move or attack either but also become invincible. Use this to survive an eradication power from Atriox or keep your army alive until your team mates can show up etc. The Arbiter also has stasis mines which function like regular but also slow down units that trigger them. A mine is still a mine at the end of the day. What is most dangerous about his leader powers is Conduit of rage. This is because it causes any units or buildings near to heal and get a brief boost to damage and speed when near a leader power. So if you use plasma bolt to hit some enemies and your army is near the point of contact then they are instantly buffed. Rage of conduit can be upgraded to make the buff stronger and last longer. Combine this with Power surge and the match is pretty much as good as won. Power surge reduces the cost and cooldown time of all your leader abilities. So imagine upgrading that as well to reduce cooldown even more. You will be dropping mines so frequently, firing plasma bolts and buffing your troops more frequently for complete destruction. Arbiter requires planning and timing. You must be strategic. As a hero unit on the field he is really fast, probably the fastest unit in the game and does great melee damage. When he enters rage though he does more damage and once upgraded gains health from attacks and can even buff his allies while raging.

Commander Jerome is heavily focused on inspiring units. Inspired units have increased damage, armour (defense) and speed. Jerome has to keep his soldiers inspired at all times. Jerome’s leader powers in some way centers around inspiration. Firstly ‘Time for heroes’ naturally gives all your units a buff in terms of speed, armour and damage as long as your unit count is 40 or below. This is useful for the early game. Enduring Salvo let’s you drop debris from the ship ‘Enduring conviction’ to damage anything it lands on but it also grants inspiration to any of your units that are near where you used the leader power. Victory turret functions like any other turret but this turret also inspires any nearby units. Victory mine is like other mines but when it explodes it inspires nearby units. Field promotion is very powerful. It lets you instantly turn units you selected to level 1 veterancy. This sounds simple but can really change the tide of a battle. The most favoured leader power of Jerome is ‘Omega Team’ which drops in three spartans: one carrying a plasma turret, one carrying a railgun and one carrying a beam sword. When used properly they are destructive. Jerome as a hero unit uses a hydra mini missile launcher and functions like any other spartan but comes with a aura circle around him which inspires units within. Jerome can call down his own mantis which fires lasers. Jerome can enter the mantis and grant it more fire power. Once upgraded the mantis can call in a laser strike as well.

Lastly in Halo Wars 2, both leaders bring in a whole new type of unit to the game. The arbiter has the Phantom ships while Jerome has the Mastodon. What’s special about them? Both are tough units that have the ability to carry infantry units. For example, you can place a sniper and and some marines in the Mastodon and they can fire from the mastodon while being protected. This especially looks cool when you have hunters with the beam upgrade in a phantom because you see the hunters beams coming from the ship attacking enemies. Very cool indeed. We won’t give away our personal strategies but the rest is up to you.

Overall these two new leader for Halo Wars 2 are an awesome addition to the game. They are worth buying and worth checking out. X35 Earthwalker himself has tried both and he loves them. If you love them, that’s great but make sure… to love the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Halo Wars 2 – Banished vs UNSC Unbalanced

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Halo Wars 2 is absolutely amazing. The graphics, sounds and whole gaming mechanics are top notch. Even the matches can be intense and take up some time. Halo Wars 2 is even more strategic than the prequel. More leader characters that brings more flavour and options to the matches. Even so, there are some big issues concerning balancing.

Straight up we are going to say it. The Banished have a big advantage over UNSC and it’s big enough that it makes a difference in every match. Seriously. The biggest advantage is the fact that Banished bases get the chance to place shields in the turret sections. These shields are powerful and soak up all kinds of damage. Why is that so bad? Didn’t Halo Wars 1 have shields. Well yes but their shields occupied a slot for building like energy generators, and supply pads. So if you wanted to stack two shields then that’s two less slots for you. The shields in Halo Wars 2 are more powerful because if the shield was dropped due to too much damage but another shield gets built, instantly the shield goes up regardless of whether the base is taking damage or not. The if another shield is built in time then it’s a double layer straight away. Also any Banished (or allies of the banished) withing the shields are protected and take significantly less damage until the shield drops. The problem is that an UNSC army would spend a hard time fighting the enemy army and lose because the shields protect the enemy army but if through leader powers and other means beat the army then you still have the shields which lasts long but skilled banished players leave a slot at the back ready for when they get attacked just to build another shield for instant shield regeneration. It’s so unfair. Don’t listen to stupid who say it isn’t an issue when it clearly is.

The next big Banished advantage are the Banshees. The banshees are practically the strongest units in the game. Surely X35 Earthwalker is exaggerating though. No we aren’t. We have seen a group of banshees beat wolverines and reavers of same group size. We aren’t joking. X35 Earthwalker himself has had his banshees beat anti-vehicle units many times even when there were more of them and vice versa he had his anti-air vehicles lose to banshees. How does that work? How do air units beat anti-air units? Sure air has a advantage over vehicles but anti-air is ANTI-AIR, full stop. Now in recent matches pretty much every Banished character user is always using banshees in great numbers. Either full population of banshees with engineers or half locusts (or something) mixed with them. It gets boring and predictable. It’s too strong. Banshees are suppose to be main air vehicles, in other words basic air units but their strength is much higher. Thanks to their own anti-air upgrade, they can take on two groups at the same time. The anti-air lets them attack nightingales and hornets while their fuel rod cannons and main plasma guns can fire at tanks, wolverines and whatever. That doesn’t sound fair at all.

Lastly, many, almost all, banished players are copying and using the chopper rush and then get engineers as fast as possible. It just makes matches boring now and predictable. X35 Earthwalker himself likes discovering and trying new strategies to accomplish different things. Some work and some don’t. This is how he ended up discovering a big secret. Choppers are vehicles. They are stronger than jack rabbits. They counter marines very well. They counter hellbringers. The way to beat them is to rely on your marines and turrets but that strategy is defensive, meaning while you stay near your base, the banished players can grab power nodes, mini bases and control the map. If you go out there then your marines will get caught by the choppers who can also ram for maximised damage. If you get the grenade throw ability for your marines then you can destroy some but you would have spent so much energy that the banished players will reach tier 2 way before the UNSC do. It’s not fair either way you look at it. 

So basically Banished have the advantage in defense, early game and mid game. This stuff has put some of us off the game for a while because unless we also play as banished, mainly Atriox, Decimus and Colony, you will have a real hard time. Until this is fixed we won’t be playing this game as frequently as before. Either way, this is what we and many others have experienced. If you are a banished player then aren’t you happy but if not, you could always do… The ‘Earth Walk!’ 

Bomberman battlefest. MLG ain’t ready for this

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Bomberman Battlefest is crazy. Crazy fun. Crazy good. Crazy intense. If you haven’t played Bomberman Battlefest then we understand as it is quite old-ish now but it’s one of those games where you can keep playing for years to come. Want proof? When X35 Earthwalker is still by a nintendo gamecube he will still sometimes play Pario party, Pikmin and Monkey balls which were all fantastic games but old. Bomberman battlefest is one of those games because of how simple it is to play but how deep, competitive and intense it can really get.

Intense? Don’t you just run around and blow up blocks and your opponents in Bomberman battlefest? Yes but so much more. When you play against easy difficulty bots then it feels like that but when you play against 3 hard difficulty bots then it becomes a struggle. The bots dodge bombs like they were paid to do it. They will do tricky things like throw and punch bombs out of the arena just for it to bounce around to the otherside and trap you. Yes we admit one of us did get trapped by this before. It’s embarrassing but it happens. Many times it comes down to sudden death to beat the bots as they have problems with falling blocks. Just wait. It gets crazier. It’s up to 8 players. So imagine a all against all standard battle mode against 7 hard difficulty bots. It becomes chaotic. Wait! It gets crazier.

The types of bombs are to blame. The power bomb makes your bomb blast go all the way to the edges of the arena. The remote control bomb lets you detonate bombs when you want. Pass through bomb (use to be spike bomb) allows your bomb blasts to pass through soft blocks instead of stopping at one. Laser bombs explode when someone crosses the laser lines it sets up. Cluster bomb sends out a bomb to the left, right and forward when it explodes. Rocket bombs travel in the direction you was facing when you placed it and then explodes after hitting something solid. Dangerous bomb explodes not in lines but squares, at max range this covers one quarter of the arena. Now imagine everyone fighting to get these and combine them with fire ups to increase bomb blasts, speed ups to move faster and bomb ups so that they can drop more. There are more power ups that help like power glove which lets you pick up and throw bombs. Double special which lets you drop 2 of your special bombs at a time and ‘Barrier-drop’ which lets you drop in a soft block. Now play against 3 of your friends and see how hectic things can and will get.

One of X35 Earthwalker’s favourite is when you play an all against all battle game mode on the giant map. It’s basically a standard level but with a much bigger arena. Here all players get a bit of a chance to breathe and then kick of the battle. The worse part is that bots will target you more than each other so the pressure is constantly on. A rocket bomb flying over there. A laser bomb prevents you from getting to that side of the arena. Some crazy guy running around dropping max range dangerous bombs forcing everyone to run away for their lives. Lastly there’s always that one player who stays away from everyone and keeps kicking bombs towards the others from a safe distance. That dirty coward. It’s also about speed. You must start off fast and not waste a second. Plant bombs as fast as possible and get power ups as fast as possible. The most important power ups are definitely speed ups as they allow you to compete for other power ups better and evading bombs become much easier. Off course more bombs and more blast range is also important but the main thing is to get them and keep the advantage. There is nothing worse than going up against players that are literally moving twice as fast as you. You never get power ups and they try to trap you in between bombs.

The ultimate intense strategy is when you and 3 friends take on 4 human player or even worse, hard difficulty bots in Zombie mode. This is where the real challenge comes. The aim of zombie is to paint the arena floor with your colours by your bomb blasts. Off course anyone can take over your coloured sqaures. Everyone is invincible as in they come back after every death but everytime you die you lose all your power ups and they are scattered across the arena for everyone to take take for themselves. So now what happens when the player on your team with the most power ups dies and your enemies get some of the scattered items? Winning becomes that much harder. Your top bomber could be the player with the power bomb painting many squares with one bomb. So your team makes sure to protect him but then that player dies and it’s a mad scramble. The worst is when someone has ‘Double special’, dangerous bomb and full fire. They control the whole match. Oh yeah, by the way, it’s all friendly fire so watch out for your teams bombs as well.

Not too long ago X35 Earthwalker did some serious Bomberman tournament and the matches were so intense. The bots are not easy at all. They are really tough. The best was the team zombie matches. It got to the point where the matches came down to 4-4. whoever won would have won the whole tournament. Lots of laughs, screams and strategies with a hint of frustration included for some gamers. We have never got so tactical for some fun matches before. All we are saying is that Bomberman Battlefest is absolute gold in terms of fun. Play with family, friends or even solo, it doesn’t matter. X35 Earthwalker will do some livestreams and videos of this game and the action it brings in the future so make sure to follow him on Twitter and Mixer to know when.

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