Battlefield Hardline

Battlefield Hardline is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Visceral Games in collaboration with EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. It is due for release on March 17, 2015. Unlike the previous games in the series, Hardline will focus on crime/heist elements instead of warfare.

Gameplay

          Battlefield Hardline features new variety of gameplay that breaks away from the traditional Battlefield game modes. The focus of the game has been shifted to police and the "war on crime", breaking away from the military setting that has hitherto characterized the series. As such, the main factions in Hardline are the police Special Response Units and criminals. Players will have access to various military-grade weapons and vehicles, such as the Lenco BearCat, as well as having police equipment such as tasers and handcuffs^.
Hardline also uses the Levolution mechanic from Battlefield 4. For example, in the map "Downtown" players can send a construction crane crashing into the building, ripping down debris from the central buildings in downtown, which falls down on the streets of Los Angeles. But, this time, every map features multiple levolutionary events, both small and gigantic.
Many new game modes are featured in Hardline, for instance: Heist, Rescue, Hotwire Mode, Blood Money and Crosshair Mode.

• Heist: The criminals must break into a cash filled vault (or as featured in some maps, blow open the doors of an armoured truck) then move the cash filled packages to an extraction point; the police must stop them. If the Criminals manage to escape by bringing all the money to the extraction point they win.
• Blood Money: Both factions must retrieve money from an open crate in the center of the map, then move it back to their respective side's armored truck. Players can also steal money from the opposing team's truck. The team that first deposits $5 million worth of money into their truck or the team with the most money under a time limit wins.
• Hotwire Mode: Drivable cars take the role of traditional Conquest "flags." Like Conquest, capturing cars (done by driving above a certain "cruising" speed) will bleed the enemy team's reinforcement tickets. The team who reduces the other's to zero or who has the most tickets remaining after the time limit wins.
• Rescue: In a 3 minute long 5 vs 5 competitive mode, S.W.A.T officers must try to rescue hostages held by criminal forces. The cops win by either rescuing the hostage(s) or by killing all the criminals. Criminals win by killing all the cops. Each player has only one life in this mode, that means no respawns.
• Crosshair: The second competitive game mode in Battlefield Hardline. Crosshair is also 3 minutes long, 5 vs 5 with only one life. In Crosshair the criminals are trying to kill a player controlled VIP on the cops side who is a former gang member turned states witness. The criminals win by killing the VIP and the cops win by getting the VIP to the extraction point.

Visceral Games ratified that the single-player campaign will not be linear and promised to deliver a better one than the predecessors. The campaign will feature episodic crime dramas where choices will heavily change situational outcomes and gameplay experiences. As a cop, players can use multiple police gadgets and personal equipments. The police badge can be used to strike fear into criminals' hearts and order them to lay down their weapons, the scanner is used to stake out a situation, identify high value-targets, log evidences, tag alarms, and mark other threats. To slip past unnoticed, players can use bullet cases to distract enemies.

Developement

          Battlefield Hardline was revealed on an EA blog post by Vice President and General Manager of Visceral Games, Steve Papoutsis. The game was due for announcement during E3 2014, but information was leaked early. Unlike other games in the Battlefield franchise that feature military warfare, Hardline features a "cops and robbers" gameplay style.The leaked trailer refers to the game as Omaha. "Visceral started work on Battlefield Hardline about a year before Dead Space 3 shipped," creative director Ian Milham has revealed, suggesting that the game may have entered development in early 2012.
         During Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014, EA confirmed that the game will be running at 1080p on the PlayStation 4 and was aiming to achieve the same resolution for the Xbox One version.However, on March 8, 2015, Visceral Games revealed that the PlayStation 4 version will only be running at 900p, while the Xbox One version will be running at 720p .

Ori And The Blind Forest

Ori and the Blind Forest is a platform adventure video game designed by Moon Studios, an independent developer, and published by Microsoft Studios. The game was released on March 11, 2015 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One. An Xbox 360 version is scheduled to be released later in 2015.

Gameplay

          The player controls Ori, a white guardian spirit. Long ago, Ori fell into the forest and was adopted by a bear-like creature who raises Ori as its child.A malevolent entity, Kuro, appears and takes Ori's mother from him, forcing Ori to explore the forest on his own. Initially, Ori is very weak and can only jump about. During the game, Ori meets Sein , who will both guide Ori on his adventure and attack enemies.As the player gains experience, they may choose new abilities for Ori and Sein, allowing Ori to explore more of the game world.In addition to save points scattered in the game, players can create "soul links" at any time they choose to serve as checkpoints. However, soul links can only be created using special resources collected during gameplay; the needed resources are not in abundant supply, forcing players to create them only when necessary.

Developement

          Ori and the Blind Forest is being developed by Moon Studios, a worldwide collaboration of designers and programmers who have been working on the game for the past four years, with Microsoft acquiring the game about a year after development started^. One of the lead team members is Thomas Mahler, an artist formerly working with Blizzard Entertainment. According to Microsoft producer Daniel Smith, Moon Studios is not located in any one location, but instead staffers can be found throughout the world, from Austria to Australia and Israel to the United States.^[7] Gameplay programmer David Clark described the team as being inspired by current and classic adventure games, notably the Rayman and Metroid franchises, and that Ori is intended as a "love letter" to those games.
        The core components of the game story have not been revealed, although the designers say they were guided by works such as The Lion King and The Iron Giant and that it would be a "coming-of-age story".The art style is meant to appear hand-drawn, similar to the more recent Rayman titles that utilize Ubisoft's "UbiArt" graphics engine; the game instead uses the Unity engine.The game takes place in one large map, and is planned to be rendered at 1080P and 60 frames per second with no visible loading time as the player explores. According to Mahler, the game's backgrounds are all individual components, with none duplicated as in other similar titles. As an example, Mahler explained, "You see this tree in the background and this mushroom and this rock? That's the one and only place you'll ever see those assets."

Critics

         Writing for Game Informer, Andrew Reiner gave the game a 9.5/10, praising its accessible yet challenging gameplay, well-designed controls, strong storytelling, surprising plot twists, rewarding exploration, orchestrated music, breathtaking and mesmerizing environmental design, as well as the wonderfully scripted challenges, which requires players to utilize creative thinking. However, he stated that the combat system in the game is not as refined as the platforming. He named the game "one of the best games of the year" and claimed that "There isn’t a bad moment in Ori and the Blind Forest".

           Chris Carter from Destructoid gave the game a 9.5/10, praising its well-executed and light narrative, satisfying upgrades as well as the visuals, which he compared to the Rayman series but he stated that "[Ori] easily surpass them in quality". He also praised the game for allowing players to set their own checkpoints anytime. He summarized the review by saying that "It succeeds in being both a great introduction to the genre and a rewarding experience for the hardcore audience" and called the game "a new classic [as a metroidvania]"

           Nick Tan from Game Revolution gave the game a 4/5, criticizing the short length, meaningless health bar, low replay value, as well as the game for not providing direction and guidelines to players in escape sequences