CyberPunch83's Blog (39 followers)

One game I will always keep on my console, even through long droughts where I don't play the game, nothing new is added either content or achievement-wise or I'm just busy with other titles on other systems, is World of Tanks. Assuming the sheer amount I've played and blogged about this game in the past isn't an indicator of that. To wit, as of this writing I have over 1,150 hours logged into just the Xbox One version alone. This does not count the two years this game was only available on the Xbox 360. Who knows how much higher that number would climb?

Recently the game updated to version 4.4. Nothing in the way of new achievements, for better or worse since the Xbox 360 version was dropped from all future achievement updated after 3.4. That platform was only dropped because the game had maxed out at 99 achievements and that console can't support more than that, even for digital titles and having the additions spread out as much as possible. To be perfectly honest the Xbox One version is due for another addition soon, since we haven't got anything since Update 4.0 back in August of last year.

The big new additions of late have been to the 'singleplayer' War Stories mode. Bite-sized missions where you complete objectives, battle AI enemies and have a chance to try out other vehicles you either won't have researched or may not have any interest in driving. I put singleplayer in air quotes only because while playing one of the missions last week, my connection went for a derp and I found myself dealing with input lag in a singleplayer game mode where I was the only human around. To say I wasn't impressed was quite the understatement. That did clear up soon enough.

Three new War Stories were added, each one chapter in length. They deal with German, American and Soviet tank commanders effectively going against orders to do either what is right or what is most profitable. The American mission has you fighting German vehicles, while the German and Soviet missions both have you fighting Russian vehicles. It's almost a shame in some respects to have the one mission where you're playing as a German commander is where you turn on your superiors and have a change of heart of sorts, leading into the mission proper.

A previous War Story had you driving a German Tiger with a French crew who managed to infiltrate a production facility and steal the aforementioned tank for research by Allied forces. This is the only previous instance of using German vehicles. I can understand the subject being slightly touchy to some people, but if Wargaming really believed that was the case and people would be somewhat offended, Germany wouldn't be one of the best tank nations in the game and the one where many new players flock to in order to get an early leg up on the competition.

As always, I'll keep posted here with updates and other large significant changes to this game. Expect at least one new nation added to the game before the end of the year if the PC version, which is usually a few updates ahead of us, is any indication of where the game is going next. In the meantime here's a quick update on a game where you play as an alien, and few people seem to really care.

Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon Progress Report: The game is broken down into five main areas, and I'm in the progress of cleaning up all of the side missions in the third area, the game's equivalent of Hong Kong. The game fancies itself as mission-based open world, since every mission has a name, usually some sort of pun to shove the word alien in there somewhere or an equivalent. The XP rewards are going up quickly, which is nice since the next upgrade I need costs 1,000,000 points. That is a lot and may be the single most expensive upgrade in the whole game.

Whenever you press the center button on the controller during gameplay, the game pauses in the background. This is a good thing, since then nothing can happen when you're not looking. This is especially useful in heavy combat situations and you absolutely must look at something else and not let the action pass you by when checking a message. The quirk about this pause feature, and the only reason I'm bringing it up here, is the game pauses itself, even when you're already paused. The game can't tell the difference between the two and pauses anyway.

This can lead to some rather humourous situation wherein you're at the pause menu, bring up the Xbox guide, and for a fraction of a second, see 'Game Paused' over top of big letters that say 'Paused'. If you pause too hard or too many times, does time begin to move backwards? I mean time bending is a skill you learn in the game, and becomes incredibly useful pretty much as soon as you gain access to it, to the point some collectibles and missions would be basically impossible without them. Don't worry about not knowing how to use it, as the game proved ample tutorial for this skill.

As it turns out, each area not only has collectibles, but they are also unique to the area as well. This serves no other purpose than for the game to have some more unique assets and for the achievement list to be a little less boring, so credit where its due for this one. This was a situation where they could have got away with nothing but the same collectible in each location and no one really would have complained. This effort can and probably should have gone elsewhere, but it's a nice and ultimately appreciated touch.

Coming up on Friday: A challenger reappears.