We are now less than one week away from 1st October 2013. It's not generally heralded as a special day in particular out of the 365 (or 366 - leap year blah blah yadda yadda yadda) we experience each and every Gregorian monitored orbit of the Sun. This year it even falls on a Tuesday and I think we'd all struggle to place Tuesdays above seventh place in a popularity contest of the days of the week in terms of importance (Public Holidays are gonna help out Mondays' case, surely?!).
This coming Tuesday, however, looks destined to be something quite different if you happen to be a video gamer and particularly an online player. In fact it looks set to be a very special, if not deliriously annoying in the very best of ways Tuesday. Like some strange celestial phenomena, where heavenly bodies align their magnetic fields, playing merry chaos with the mental faculties of all in its path, we are going not only going to be confronted with the release of GTA Online, but also Battlefield 4's Multiplayer Beta and from Re-Logic we have Terraria's long awaited 1.2 update.
For many of you out there this collision of gaming occurences may mean very little; Rockstar's record breaking GTA V will no doubt get the lion's share of the publicity and press come October 1st when everyone with Xbox Live or access to PlaystationNetwork takes to the multiplayer having spent the past three weeks nestled in their dark, warm gaming pits discovering everything they can about Los Santos. I'm sure that the statistics eventually released will show it as the clear victor when it comes to hours clocked simply due to the sheer number of copies that have been sold. But I'm also sure that Battlefield 4's Beta will come in a close second.
It seems like only yesterday that we were all running around a Parisian lakeside park, sniping camouflaged heads, lobbing grenades, setting C4 charges and falling through the pixelated grass into a sea of graphical bugs and glitches, but the Battlefield 3 online beta was 2 years ago! With the current generation release of Battlefield 4 set for November 1st worldwide and the next gen releases a couple of weeks after that, it's time once again for fans of the series to spend a little while downloading a hefty level's worth of demo, take to the lovingly rendered and highly destructible streets of Shanghai for some Conquest and Domination fun, all the while providing the bods at EA and DICE with all of the data they need to make sure that come November things are running as smoothly as possible.
And then there's Terraria 1.2. This may seem like the little guy, the underdog of this gaming rumble, especially as the update release is only for the PC version, but then a year ago the PC version had clocked up 1.6 million units sold, has now easily passed 2 million units and that's still a good showing in many people's book. Following a fair amount of huffy uproar that came with the announcement of the console release of Terraria earlier this year and the apparent end of the PC version's development and update life cycle, co-creator Andrew Spinks finally quelled the angry fan-base beast... by announcing that there would be a further update containing angry beasts and so much more!
It's a damn fine time to be a gamer. Except of course, hmmm, which do you play first? And for how long? In my case this delicious dilemma is enhanced by a rather inconvenient trip to New York (First...World...Problems...).
The Battlefield 4 beta launches on October 1st for those who have pre-ordered the game and then for everyone else on October 4th. That will give me chance to play the other two titles certainly, but the Beta is only live until October 15th and so time with it is limited. Will I be giving up hours of sniping from vantage points, resuscitating comrades and careening through the streets in armoured vehicles to play the other two? I'm inclined to think that I certainly won't be.
I personally love Battlefield 3 as a multiplayer FPS. I enjoy it so much that in the approximately 180 hours that I've dedicated to the game, I know for a fact that only 2 hours of that has been put into playing the single player campaign, which I am yet to find enthusiasm to complete. I'm also of the belief that I'm a better than average player when it comes to Battlefield. My Kill/Death ratio is rarely in the negative in games unless faced by some well organised clan players and unlike some sessions of seemingly unending and infuriating Call of Duty multiplayer, I tend to come away from a Battlefield session feeling in positive mood. This stacks a huge positive in the EA/DICE game's column when it comes to October play time, yet there are other pieces of evidence to suggest that GTA V and Terraria may get a look in.
This evidence, particularly applicable in the case of the Rockstar heavy hitter, is 'friends'. At least two of my good friends, who just so happen to be Xbox gamers, have mentioned the prospect of us diving into the Los Santos cityscape and wrecking merry mayhem in the multiplayer antics to be had from a third person viewpoint. To be honest, GTA V - which I have only picked up my copy of two days ago good readers - will be only the second, three dimensional Grand Theft Auto that I will have played to any dedicated level. Vice City became something of a loved time sink on the first Xbox and I gave GTA 4 a go for a little while, but found it failed to grab my attention for any great length of time. Rockstar's exceptional Red Dead Redemption, which I have seen mentioned a few times in GTA V preview articles, did manage to lure me into the multiplayer side of it's open world with one of those aforementioned friends and I'm hopeful that GTA Online will be as enjoyable and easy to access as that Western gunfest was. The idea of exploring such a large city, goofing around and taking on missions with a couple of comrades is an exciting prospect indeed.
But then, so is exploring a large two dimensional world, mining materials, building houses and taking on powerful boss enemies! I'm not going to lie; the Terraria 1.2 patch has me buzzing in anticipation of discovering all of the new items, enemies and biomes added to Re-Logic's wonderful adventure/RPG game. As I said earlier I've had GTA V in my possession for two days now and haven't even put it into the Xbox because I've been mining away for hours on Terraria's Hardmode having finally decided to take on and defeat the Wall of Flesh before the update is released. Little hint; The Star Cannon is a good friend indeed! Now I've never played Terraria multiplayer, but having recently discovered that two PC gaming acquaintances are also looking forward to the update, the prospect of building something together and tackling the daunting new bosses is a tempting to say the least. I will of course quite easily sink 50+ hours into dungeon clearing and biome exploration on my own in the next few months, yet should not pass up the opportunity to see how the game works when working in a team with others.
And this is where the dilemma really comes in as everything is very much based on timing. How long will my friends be playing and interested in the online multiplayer versions of GTA and Terraria? I'll no doubt be playing at least one of them on and off for the next 6 months, but how long do such things keep the interest of others? Is it best to get straight into the multiplayer experience now while they're willing and able? And which do I pick? The Battlefield 4 Beta is only live for a couple of weeks of course, but I'll more than likely be happy blasting away on my own in randomly selected teams and there's only weeks to wait until the actual game is released when I can do that to my heart's content, so it won't be devastating to get minimal time with the demo. I've certainly a decision or two to make about my game choice and dedication in the next few weeks and I'm appreciative that I have such great options to pick from as I imagine many of you do too!
Of course I'll have to be making these choices quite quickly before others find themselves by Batman: Arkham Origins' release at the end of October. And then there's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag to consider after that. And Call of Duty: Ghosts of course. Oops, can't forget Watch Dogs... and then there's the Xbox One and PS4 launches to take into account too... awww bumlets!
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