Century: Age of Ashes – The Final Preview

As a person who waited in a very small line to grab a PlayStation 3 launch and the action disappointment of riding a dragon Lair, you could say that any conversation about flying scaly wyrms fighting in a video game makes my scales bristle and ignites my curiosity. . After spending some time previewing with Century: Age of Ashes, I’m optimistic that the monster battles in the air don’t have to be just fantasy flights.

Century is a multiplayer third-person shooter that looks more like Ace Combat than Panzer Dragoon at first. Teams of three or six horsemen take to the skies to burn and destroy their enemies to secure kills and objectives in a handful of maps and game modes. Before I did any of that though, I had to go through tutorial mode, which does a great job teaching you the many technical aspects of flight, as well as offensive and defensive maneuvers to dominate your airspace. I initially learned the controls on my keyboard, but soon switched to an Xbox controller with no downtime required to readjust to the new layout.

Screenshots of the Century: Age of Ashes game awards trailer

However, skip the tutorial at your own risk. Learning to move your dragon is fairly easy to learn, but the trick to regain lost stamina, for example, is a less obvious core mechanic that you’re not likely to stumble upon. The tutorial also provides you with many opportunities to learn how to throw fire at opponents, both in ball and griffin form. Your fireballs act almost like bullets, automatically locking onto a target within range, allowing you to splash them from relative safety. Getting close still opens up the Flame Breath option, which drenches your prey in a constant drop of fire that quickly depletes their health. In combination, I found this to be my regular opener / closer. The auto-lock feature is welcome, putting less pressure on you for quick reflexes and aiming, and more emphasis on positioning and maneuvering in and out of danger.

All of this heats up even more when you factor into biker classes and their powers and abilities. Classes include the damage-focused Marauder and the Phantom stealth assassin, but I was in the mood for the Wind Guard, a support style class that can either rush to the aid of and protect allies, or conceal yourself and the team with a smoke trail as a Bond device. Both powers and abilities are abilities that you have to activate, but while the powers are static and completely unique to the rider, you can choose a couple of abilities that you can participate in battle with, and some of these abilities are shared options. between more than one kind of cyclist. In this closed test, that meant that the Marauder and Phantoms shared a skill, and in a game with so few skills at this stage of development, it really didn’t help those two classes feel very different from each other.

Once the training wheels were off, the Playwing team led me into the Rookie Skirmish 3v3 game mode. It’s a best-of-three round deathmatch, but your bonus abilities are gradually unlocked over the course of each round. If a game reaches the final round, each player will have their full kit available. This was an interesting way to get into the sometimes chaotic combat, but potentially not even going to win or lose in full force is a bummer.

After a round or two of Rookie, Playwing called in some big hitters from their QA team to join us in what would be my favorite mode of the entire demo, Spoils of War. In it, two teams of six dragons battle to accumulate gold from the neutral loot dragons that fly around an expansive map. Every few minutes, new subgoals appear that make it easy to gather your horde or threaten it altogether. Perhaps it is suddenly locked and a floating NPC is carrying a key that you must retrieve and return to your base to unlock it. A bomb could appear, and the team that can successfully secure it and deliver it to the enemy horde will set it off, spilling tons of their gold into the air, ready for theft. These kept the game tense throughout the round, and it was where player skill, map knowledge, and team balance merged into a rewarding, tactical experience that stands out among the free shooter deals available these days.

When Age of Ashes launches on December 2, it will launch with a market full of cosmetics for its Rider and Dragon available to purchase for real money or in-game currency earned by completing daily and weekly missions. Perhaps the most curious thing you can get into between matches is hatching dragon eggs and raising new dragons. If you are lucky enough to receive a dragon egg as a reward after the battle, you can equip him and complete his “growth steps” quest list to make him an adult. It’s an interesting, if not a bit tedious, way to now earn looks for your scaly frame.

If you’ve been burned out by a dragon fight in the past, or are just looking for a new multiplayer shooter out of the box to power up your Winter, Century: Age of Ashes might be worth a twist on scale. Its limited offerings in terms of classes and abilities can make teams look quite similar over time, but its stellar War Chest adds enough frantic target chasing that it’s sure to keep the interest of adventurous action game fans looking for. a new challenge.