Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

 the Call of Duty franchise is a well-oiled machine, Black Ops III is the replacement part that keeps the wheels moving into yet another year. It introduces minor changes to an established formula, and in some aspects, this is developer Treyarch near its peak. But in other areas, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 lacks inspiration.

Treyarch has set a high bar with its contributions to the Call of Duty series. The first Black Ops introduced a twisting, engaging campaign with vivid characters and historical conspiracies. Black Ops II revamped multiplayer customization, lending deeper player choice to a fine-tuned competitive experience. And now there's Call of Duty: Black Ops III, a shooter reaching in several different directions with vastly different results.

The newest iteration of multiplayer begins on a promising note as Black Ops III's specialists cover the screen. These are the soldiers of humanity's future, clad in titanium alloy armor, brandishing multi-million dollar weapons. They're also Black Ops III's new layer of customization. You still have the traditional loadout system with 10 slots to spend on weapons, items, and equipment--but specialists add a little more nuance.

Each character carries a power weapon or special ability that charge several times over the course of a match. You're forced to choose between the two, though, as only one can be equipped at a time. The Outrider, for instance, can enter fights with the Sparrow compound bow, launching exploding arrows into the enemy team's ranks. On the other hand, she can equip the Vision Pulse ability. As a more cautious player, I preferred this option. It reveals enemy silhouettes through the walls, giving me and my team the drop on nearby attackers and a better sense of the overall situation. This is even more crucial in hardcore matches when motion sensors are absent.

The Outrider is a microcosm of how the specialist system excels. That dichotomy between power weapons and abilities--and the possibilities they reveal--leads to dynamic scenarios from one match to the next. Certain powers work better in specific game types, and shift momentum when used well. And for the first several hours in Black Ops III's multiplayer, I explored as many possibilities as I could.

But that sense of discovery fades with time. Black Ops III grants you access to four specialists out of the gate, and subsequent options unlock at a trickle. By the time I earned Seraph and her one-shot Annihilator handgun at level 22, her two abilities didn't offer enough variety to keep me excited for the next unlock. And when I'm not learning the intricacies of a new character, Black Ops III defaults to a more generic Call of Duty experience.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Black Ops III's multiplayer offers some of the best map designs in the franchise. Each arena is a confluence of differing sightlines, hectic clash points, and diverse elevations. The new movement system also creates an action/reaction dynamic: you can wall run into capture points, ground slide out of firefights, and clamber over ledges otherwise out of reach. In short, Black Ops III is fluid. It just feels good.

But its lack of variety after about 10 hours erases much of the excitement present at the beginning. The normal experience-based progression is still here, and the variety of unlockable weapons and equipment may be enough to keep many players pushing forward. But it wasn't for me. The proverbial carrot still dangles front of us--it's just smaller than usual.

Any sense of continuation in the multiplayer, of maintaining a familiar franchise balance, evaporates completely in Black Ops III's new Zombies map, Shadows of Evil. Imagine a fictional city in the 1940s populated by Cthulhu monsters and slipspace portals. The four characters--played by Jeff Goldblum, Ron Perlman, Heather Graham, and Neal McDonough--round out a hardboiled cast straight from the noir novels of Raymond Chandler. Picture them firing augmented weapons into a crowd of shambling corpses to the sound of a languid alto saxophone. Make no mistake: this new take on Zombies is bizarre. It's also fantastic.

Experimentation pushes things forward as four friends claw their way through hordes of undead. There's a looming sense of mystery as you decide which doors to unlock next, which weapons prove most effective, and what that glowing green plant does. The difficulty is high here: I seldom made it past round 4 in my first 10 attempts.

But Zombies, now more than ever, is a learning experience. And seeing the tangible results of your experience in the alleyways of this strange world is a reward in itself. By the time I began reaching wave 20 and higher, I felt like a veteran. There's a sense of mastery that has always come with Zombies, and it's stronger here than ever before.

Battlefield 4

There's something evergreen about Battlefield's brand of online warfare. The combination of breakneck infantry fighting and explosive vehicular warfare breeds conflicts that are exciting, tense, and, perhaps most importantly, diverse. With weapons, gadgets, and upgrades tailored to create a wealth of combat roles, it can often seem like there's no end to the gratifying ways you can contribute to the war effort. This variety has enticed players into Battlefield games for years, and in Battlefield 4, it's alive and well. The online multiplayer is an absolute blast.

But Battlefield is about more than just multiplayer these days, and the single-player campaign in BF4 also has some exciting moments. These are sequences that channel the freedom and variety of multiplayer; the levels spent mostly in corridors and in close-quarters combat are more frequent, however, and not nearly as enjoyable. The characters that drive the story show flashes of appealing personality, but these are drowned out by cliche relationships and boilerplate dialogue. Though BF4 outdoes its predecessor, the series has a long way to go before the campaign is more than a sideshow diversion.

Fortunately, the online stage is expertly set for some exhilarating moments. One of the best new things about BF4 is Obliteration mode, in which two teams fight to gain control of a bomb and use it to blow up three enemy positions. Unlike returning standby Conquest mode, in which the battle ebbs and flows between a handful of set positions, Obliteration boasts conflict zones that can change in a flash with the timely use ofland, air, and sea vehicles. Motorized transport has always been a pillar of combat in the Battlefield series, and Obliteration mode makes mobility more important than ever. (Thank goodness for the new test range that allows you to practice piloting every vehicle!) A skilled helicopter pilot can swoop in to pick up the bomb carrier and then zip off to an objective point, leaving enemy infantry in the dust. Escaping the chaos to grab a personal watercraft can turn the tide, but perhaps it's better to blow it up so your enemies don't grab it for themselves. Plotting your own dramatic maneuvers while defending against the enemies' is a lively challenge that takes on new urgency in Obliteration.

Matches without vehicles, however, have a different pace. Victory comes from solid squad support and sharp shooting. Battling for bomb possession in winding prison tunnels is a brutal close-quarters affair, and well-balanced matches run the risk of devolving into lengthy scrums in which neither team can make headway. Keeping your squad alive is crucial here, not just as mobile spawn points but also to preserve your field upgrades. These are new attribute bonuses that you gain through squad-related actions, bestowing you with resistance to suppressing fire or better flak protection, for example.

Being able to shoot a little straighter or survive a nearby grenade blast can make a difference in these fast-paced, infantry-heavy matches of Obliteration, as well as in small, speedy matches of Domination (small-scale Conquest) and Team Deathmatch. The other new mode also involves bomb-carrying, but because it has bite-size maps and no respawning, Defuse demands a more careful kind of infantry combat. Weapon choice and enemy detection are key in these short, fraught encounters, and while the heightened tension can result in some very satisfying wins, smaller arenas are not where Battlefield 4 is at its best

The standout action comes in large-scale conflicts that take advantage of the 10 large, well-designed maps. Richer color saturation makes them a pleasure to look at, from the lush alpine fields surrounding a massive satellite dish to the sparkling neon lights of a coastal city. Buildings frequently have stairs or elevators that allow access to upper stories, giving snipers long sight lines and providing parachutists with jumping-off points to better traverse the map. This increased verticality adds some strategic options, but the bigger change is the greater prevalence of water. Marine combat is a much bigger factor in Battlefield 4, whether you're zipping down the narrow canals of a seaside resort while your passenger mows down infantry or patrolling the lanes of a small archipelago and shooting helicopters out of the sky with a fully crewed attack boat.

Naval dominance can help you control a match, but water-based mobility is another huge consideration, as anyone who has trudged across a large empty field instead of hitching a ride knows. Swimming leaves you vulnerable, though you can at least pull out your sidearm, so it's best to secure transport when you can. This much is obvious when fighting in a stormy island chain, but until someone blows the levee on the slightly waterlogged urban map, you can do just fine scurrying around on foot. When the water does rush in, the whole place gets submerged beneath ten feet of water and things change significantly. If you don't stick to the rooftops or hop in one of the newly spawned boats, you're in trouble.

This deluge is the most drastic of the marquee environmental events that you can trigger on each map. Some of these occurrences bring significant change, like the destruction of a skyscraper, while others are more subtle, like closing jail doors to shut off a hallway or raising bollards to block a road. These special events are complemented by the wide range of destructible structures and deformable terrain. Blown-out walls and collapsed buildings have a hard time hiding enemies, and roads pitted by bomb craters are more difficult to navigate smoothly. Destructibility has been amped up from Battlefield 3, and being able to blast your way through certain obstructions is a liberating and empowering experience

brother in arms 3

Brothers in Arms 3: Sons of War is one of the nicer looking iPad games we've seen recently. It is a freemium game, and that's a term that is going to have a lot of people wincing and losing interest already. But the good news is that the microtransactions aren't bad enough to take you out of the gameplay experience, unlike some other recent gamesfrom the publisher.

The implementation of in-app purchases isn't perfect here, but it is still possible to enjoy the game on its own merits. The first thing that you will notice about this game is just how good everything looks. Still images don't really do it justice, as you're able to focus on flat textures and odd lighting, but when you see the game in motion is looks amazing.

Set during World War II, Brothers in Arms 3: Sons of War follows a predictable and easily ignored story that sees you shooting, stabbing and blasting your way through huge numbers of Nazis, with an ease that would make Captain America envious. The settings and characters you come across are all predictable, but the quality of the graphics, coupled with how smoothly the game runs, is an accomplishment in and of itself. Considering that the game is free to install and play, it would be worth downloading just to check out how it looks in motion.

The actual gameplay on the other hand is very rudimentary. Although the player can move freely - using a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen - Sons of War plays out more like shooting gallery games such as the futuristic robot shooter Epoch. These games are also described as "on-rails" shooters, because the action proceeds along a fixed path like a train track, so that you can focus on lining up your shots instead.

The levels in Sons of War are small - typically lasting just about two to five minutes each, which is convenient for the start and stop gameplay you'll have on a mobile device. While they're often depicted as open spaces, trenches, fences and hedges will line the sides of your screen, locking you into a small, straight corridor. That's handy because movement in the game is fairly awkward. You control your movement by using the virtual stick, and while it works well for moving forwards and backwards, moving from left to right feels both slow, and imprecise. You can't outmanoeuvre your enemies, flanking them to deliver death, but despite that, the action feels solid.

That's because, once you are near a piece of cover, you automatically crouch behind it, and then you can swipe anywhere on the screen to aim the crosshairs, and line up your kills. Shooting is actually very satisfying, with nice audio design and a good selection of guns that all have their own characteristic sound, recoil and general feel when used.

These sections of the game shine, and the touch controls are simple and forgiving enough that even if you're not a gamer, you can play the game and enjoy the missions. Lining up headshots earns you more experience and uses less ammunition, but it's not difficult to do, and you can quickly get the hang of this.

While the game is put together nicely, it starts to come apart a little when you look at how it handles monetisation. As we already mentioned, Sons of War is a freemium game that is free to download and play, but there are multiple different freemium elements to the game. For one thing, starting a mission costs energy - you start off with a big energy pool and this keeps growing as you progress as well so it doesn't seem like a problem to start with. As you progress through the game though, the energy cost of missions goes up, and the enemies get tougher. Dying and restarting missions costs energy too, and, after a while, you'll likely find yourself short on energy.

Some missions also require you to be carrying specific weapons - you can buy these weapons using currency earned in the game, but unlocking the weapons or upgrading them this way takes time. So, whether you want a mission to start right away or a weapon to upgrade quickly, spending a little money quickly becomes the solution. There are three different types of currencies in the game, and keeping track of all this becomes an inconvenience.

For publishers, IAP today represent an important monetisation strategy, but it's a fine balance between not making enough money, and ruining the player's experience. With Sons of War, the IAP is definitely prevalent enough to be annoying, but it's not game-breaking, and if you usually only play games for short sessions, then the different timers are not really a problem.

All told, Brothers in Arms: Sons of War is a fine looking game with very basic but enjoyable mechanics. It falls a little short in terms of its monetisation policies, but despite this, we would certainly urge you to try it out. You can download the game for free from the App Store.

Quantum Break

The beautifully cinematic Quantum Break is coming to Windows 10 and Xbox One on April 5 –brand-new trailer to show off for Remedy Entertainment’s tense, star-studded action-thriller.

The trailer (set to a cover version of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are,” performed by electroni rock duo Prep School) centers on Quantum Break protagonist Jack Joyce (portrayed by “X-Men” star Shawn Ashmore), who takes on the evil Monarch Solutions in a battle for survival in a world where time itself is broken.

Pre-ordering Quantum Break for Xbox One online or at participating retailers gets you some special treats, too: You’ll also get a downloadable copy of the game for Windows 10, as well as an Xbox 360 download of Remedy’s Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.

That’s in addition to the original Alan Wake for Xbox 360, along with its two downloadable content packs (The Signal and The Writer), which are included with every copy of Quantum Break for Xbox One and are playable via Xbox One Backward Compatibility.

Quantum Break is a unique, pulse-pounding cinematic gaming experience, featuring a companion digital series that is influenced by your choices in the game (and vice versa!). Pre-order your copy today, and get hyped for Quantum Break’s launch on April 5, for Windows 10 and Xbox One!

Read more at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/03/11/watch-quantum-breaks-new-cinematic-trailer/#ewY9M4j26V4Is3sR.99