BECOME ORIGIN’S TEAM FORTRESS 2
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lectronic Art’s digital distribution service Origin still attracts a lot of hate, in the same way Valve’s Steam service did back when Half-Life 2 launched back in 2004. Origin’s issues have been ironed out somewhat and EA are beginning to organise the kind of sales Valve musters during certain points of the year, yet there’s still something missing – some kind of vehicle to encourage would-be shoppers to buy a game via Origin rather than competing providers. The kind of thing where, for instance, you pre-order a copy of a big game, say Total War: Rome 2, and get a bunch of free unique goodies for a different game, say Team Fortress 2. We’ve lost count of the amount of times we’ve bought a game via Steam specifically because a title has some kind of new gun skin or hat for our Team Fortress 2 class of choice – it’s the Medic if you’re wondering – and Garden Warfare could very easily perform a same kind of role for EA. Obviously this has the effect of muddying the waters a little bit between classes, and balance would be thrown out of the window a little bit, but with the Chomper currently terrorising servers en masse, we don’t think balance is high up on Popcap’s agenda anyway.
BOT SUPPORT
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arden Warfare is a shooter built for all ages. Think about it… the colourful visuals, the simplistic combat, and the cute character designs are all tailored to ensure that kids and parents can play together in a clean, safe, and comically violent environment. The 7+ rating on the box suggests that much, but as soon as players venture online and get exposed to the sort of talk that permeates Xbox Live, all that innocence completely evaporates. Garden Warfare does support co-op play via the wave-based ‘Beat the Boss’ mode but it’s only natural for players of a young age to want to test their mettle against others online and the toxic nature of Xbox Live negates that. Adding bot support to simulate the experience of playing online would provide an ideal solution for this need, with believable procedurally generated names and a separate progression system so as to not skew the competitive landscape. TO READ OUR REVIEW OF PVSZ: GARDEN WARFARE CLICK HERE