Woah, So I just finished up with the Xbox Presser, and although i didnt have as great a set of seats as Rae did (check the twitter and the post before this for pics) I was in section 105 and so I got to a pretty good seat.
My view was pretty great
I found myself seated next to some friends we had shared a Lyft over with, and we got to talk a bit pre show. Everyone was looking forward to seeing more Gears 4, more action from the guys at DICE with Battle Field one, and what was up with Re:core, as well as the dozen or so indie titles out there. Personally I was floored to see the Battlefield trailer even it was just cinematic, as well the awesome line up of indie titles that Microsoft has been working on. Take a look at all those indie games that MS had to spotlight.
Overall my first press conference was a HUGE adrenaline rush, the lights, the sound, the people, the games, we got to see so much and I am just so honored that I get to share all of this with you. Please keep it tuned right here for more coverage from E3!
We were there! Rae and I have just come from a packed full house at the Galen Center for the Microsoft E3 2016 Press briefing. We got to see some really amazing game play during the 90 minutes of non-stop action that Microsoft queued up for its beloved fans and press members. We will have a full gallery of images for all of you lovely fans out there.
Xbox seems to have been scooped. Despite there being a tight wrap on their supposed hardware announcements tomorrow at their press conference, at least one photo of a new Xbox Slim has leaked. The post first appeared on Neogaff but has since been verified by separate sources.
that’s about it, you get a 40% slimmer box, with a larger hard drive, the ability to push 4K video with HDR sound and a stand to make it vertical. Also announced with this apparent leak is the smaller slim controller, which is described as Sleeker, slimmer, sharper.
This box is not to be confused with the newer more powerful model of Xbox which is code-named “scorpio” and will presumably be announced tomorrow at the Microsoft E3 press conference.
Fans of CD Projekt red have long lamented the severe lack of opportunities for them to play Gwent, that stellar in game trading card game that appeared in the Witcher 3. Present in the Witcher 3, Gwent seems to be as wide spread in the world of Geralt as Sabbac is in Star Wars. New filings discovered by Nerd leaks now suggest that the studio recently filed for two trademarks with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, one for Gwent—which appears to be an expansion of a 2015 trademark filing of the same name—and the other, more tellingly, for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. Now if you never got the chance to play it Gwent is a bit like hearth stone, its a collecting and fighting card game. In case you want to see it in action here is a good video review. The Gwent filing also came with a logo, Which is the one you can see above this article. The filing is in the right place for this type of game at least covering computer games and videogames in various formats, online gaming services, and also doodads like jewelry, medallions, key rings, statues, clothing, writing instruments, stationery, and luggage.
It just makes a lot of sense for this game to exist. Card games are big money, players spend thousands of dollars in Hearth Stone, Magic the Gathering Online, and other online card battle games. Bethesda also recently threw their hat in to the card game ring with their Elder Scrolls Card game,CD Projekt has a great track record, and if you have ever played Gwent, you know its not the standard Magic the Gathering Clone, but rather a whole unique different type of game, employing a three tiered combat system and some other complex systems that as far as I am aware have not yet been implemented elsewhere.
popular table top RPG system Call of Cthulhu will soon be coming to PC’s near you. Focus home interactive, makers of other great simulation titles like Blood Bowl, Farming Simulator, and Battle Fleet Gothic, are now now bringing their talents for adapting table-top games to Call of Cthulhu. Fans of the system might remember that there was an earlier adaptation taking in 2006 headed up by none other than Bethesda (Elder Scrolls, Fall Out) along with Ubisoft and 2K games. This adaptation however is different, as it is an RPG-Investigation title, packed with psychological horror and stealth mechanics. Rather than a shooter.
In Call of Cthulhu, players will control Edward Pierce, a former veteran and private investigator in 1920s Boston. Pierce will be investigating the tragic and mysterious death of Sarah Hawkins and her family in Darkwater Island. The game’s E3 Trailer showcases this disturbing Island and the eerie Hawkins Family Mansion, and gives a glimpse at how the intensity of the investigation will slowly start chipping away at your Sanity. Insanity and the Cthulhu Mythos have long been entwined – as your investigation brings you closer to Cthulhu’s sphere of influence, madness will progressively engulf your senses, leaving you to increasingly question what is real and what is illusory.
Feast your eyes on the dark locales of the the very first trailer for the all new game! What do you think, good or bad idea? Tell us on Twitter or Facebook!
Many bad things have recently been said about The Division, which it would seem to many people has lost its way. Ubisoft has certainty not done a great job up till now dealing with cheaters, providing new content, and fixing broken exploitative content at all. Well now it seems they have head the cries of their fans and will at least attempt to remedy some of the worst cheaters in the game.
anyone still playing the division will tell you happily that the game is broken, that PvP is unusable, and that they still love the game, god only knows why. The dark zone in particular has been literally unusable due to cheaters and exploiters. Since the best of the game’s loot is contained in that zone, and you have to do an extraction that globally notifies everyone on the map you are extracting in order to be able to get good gear.
In a blog post today, Ubisoft talks about how it took action last month against more than 30,000 accounts for cheating, banning 3,800 accounts permanently in the process. “This led to a significantly improved experience, particularly in the Dark Zone,” it says. But if reports on the main Subreddit of the game are any indication this was not nearly enough. The post goes on to clarify “Following this campaign of suspensions and bans, it also became clear that while huge progress has been made in terms of cheat detection, our 14 day suspension on first offense policy has not been dissuasion enough,” its post continues. “Judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game, we have now decided to push our policy one step further: we will now start applying permanent bans on first offense when players are caught using cheat engines and we will communicate clearly when new ban waves are taking place.”
So there it is, right from god the words of UbiSoft themselves. 14 day bans are out for players who cheat (exploiters are not named as cheaters in this instance) and in their place are much longer life time account bans. Despite the dozens of posts that have been made and Ubisoft saying “take all steps necessary to track down cheaters and make sure they cannot spoil your enjoyment of the game.” its honestly still not enough for me. the game sever lack of content basically still means that even with out cheaters, those who were able to exploit the game to get top level gear will always have a huge advantage, and fixing that is no easy task at all. Cheating has been present in this game since the Beta, and I have no faith in Ubisoft being able to stop or control it this late in the game.
developer Blue Isle Studios have released the first trailer for their upcomming game ValleyThe new trailer, which we have embedded above this article, showcases several minutes of gameplay footage, and features a mix of combat, freerunning and environments from the game. It sure does look pretty, but with only previous micro-horror title Slender under their belts you have to wonder if such an expansive game is too much for Bue Isle to take on.
Set for release this summer for PC, PlayStation®4 and Xbox One, Valley will introduce players to an mysterious and magical world, filled with secrets and danger. Through the powers of the L.E.A.F. Suit, a special exoskeleton that grants users incredible speed and agility, players will leap to great heights, explore secretive spaces, battle dangerous foes and even bring back the dead.
Phoenix Online Publishing and Digital Bounce House have sent forth a decree to all the lands to announce the release of the hilarious 8-bit adventure, Tick’s Tales: Up All Knight! Be on the look-out and ever vigilant against the mischievous Tick, whose ulterior motives have sent him on a good old-fashioned quest!
Colorful retro-graphics meet a modern comedic narrative in this send-up and homage to the classic point-and-click quest adventures. Now available for PC, Mac and Linux on the Phoenix Online Store, Steam, the Humble Bundle Store, the App Store and other online retailers for 10% off the regular price of $7.99 for one week.
The game features a story of knights and ticks, told in a beautiful pixel based world. Tick’s Tales is a true homage to the classic adventure games,” said Katie Hallahan, PR Director for Phoenix Online Publishing. “From the art-style to the puzzles and the in-jokes that will get a laugh from everyone who’s ever enjoyed a classic Sierra or LucasArts adventure: This game is made by a fan for the fans and feels like a game straight out that era in all the best ways. And the fact that Bryce made this entire game by himself makes it even more impressive!”
Most people (including Rae) who played the single player campaign of DOOM said “wow this is good” but then found the multiplayer to be lackluster, generic, and boring. Some of the complaints were legitimate and the internet was full of players trying to get their money’s worth out of a crappy game with little online content, while also having to contend with cheaters and a lack of standard features like custom games. Speaking to Eurogamer, executive producer Marty Stratton revealed how id is tackling complaints.
“There’s certainly no lack of commitment to Doom as a multiplayer game on our side. We are already working on private matches with custom game settings and expect to include that in a free update this summer.”
So there you go. If you were one of those people who bought DOOM for nostalgia, because you love ID or just because you thought it looked cool you might be getting a massive content update soon. Though private matches are mentioned here, dont expect those to occur on private servers, rather what Marty is probably saying is that they will allow for games with custom options. This doesnt fix one of the most rampant issues, the cheating, but it also means that people wont be able to set up say a surfing server or a server will all of one type of gun, or a server running a hacked lobby. It leaves more control in the hands of the developers, which I can’t see as being too bad. ID is looking into implementing a traditional match browser too. Bots are also planned, but according to Marty they are still some ways off.
“Our bot system was actually written by one of our long-time senior programmers, John Dean, known online as ‘Maleficus’, who also wrote the Return to Castle Wolfenstein Fritz bot and the bots in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, so he does great work with bots. But John also just happens to be our internal lead programmer on SnapMap, so he’s very busy.”
In my most humble opinion, shipping a game with something as powerful as snapmap and not giving people the private server to play those maps on, and the bots to practice against, was a poor move by ID. Bethesda will be talking more about their newest shooter at their E3 showcase on Sunday 12, 7pm PT. We will be covering it live, so be sure to tune in!
In a move similar to the one that first launched them to fame Psyonix have today kicked off a free-to-play weekend for their iconic car soccer game Rocket League on the Xbox One. If you havent for some reason read every one of my published articles, I wrote up a review of this amazing amalgam of cars, rockets, and soccer many months ago. The long and short of it is that this is a great game. With fast aggressive fun, console and PC cross play, and endless hours of laughter and friendship ending. This free deal will only last untill June 12th so give Rocket League a try now, and it you like it Rocket League is also on sale for $17.99 (10% discount) until June 13th.
Tip from a pro, do the tutorial. Its very good at teaching you how to use the games more nuanced air combo system. Or, do like I did and just jump in and get destroyed. Either way this game is a ton of fun, and since its free no one should be passing it up. Ill see you out there on the soccer pitch!
Its finally here, the trailer we have been waiting years for. Kingdom Heaerts HD 2.8 the final Chapter prologue has gotten its first trailer. This is is a game that we have confirmed will be playable at E3 and we hope to bring you game play impressions from there, but right now your going to have to be happy with just this trailer.
HTC is all caught up (im looking at you Occulus) with their orders for the Vive and are now shipping them with in 48 hours of them being ordered. uploadvr.com is reporting that the HTC group has today announced that it’s stepping up shipping of the HTC Vive. Orders placed through the official Vive site will now ship within two to three business days to any of the 24 countries that the kit is available in. Well shit, Occulus still hasn’t even gotten their headset out to most of the world and here HTC is just stepping it up, like you want an HMD you can have one in 48 hours practically anywhere in the world. Not only that but the Vive is now available to buy at select retail sites including some Microsoft Stores, GameStops, and Micro Centers. So if you want one in a many places in the US you can just drive down to the local computer store, or Game Stop and get one!
In addition to that over 100 US locations of those stores will be getting demo units in the near future, allowing the common public (like my self) who could never afford a VR HMD to go and take a look at how the other half lives! This can mean nothing but good for HTC whom have clearly come out with an early lead in the VR wars.
HTC’s vive offers whole room vr, with touch controllers, while the Occulus is still having logistic issues with shipping preventing any new orders from going. Occulus does cost less, but they also dont have the whole room VR and the touch controllers are not included. Which one do you prefer? Leave us a comment and let us know.
Remember when Microsoft announced it was bringing (limited) mod support to the Xbox One? Well they did it, and a few games now have the ability to use the most popular PC mods on the console. This has raised a never been seen issue with console gamers, but one that PC gamers are intimately familiar with, stolen mods.
Some of these stories are pretty benign. for example the inclusion of DogtoothCG’s NCR Ranger Veteran Armor in Spawn Item was passed off as an accident and quickly removed, the files purportedly having been obtained in an email exchange. Other have not been so accidental.
This type of thievery is fairly common in the modding world but seeing it spread to consoles is pretty disheartening. In response to the issue Bethesda have cooked up this document which is meant to tell people how to have unauthorized copies of their mods removed from the Xbox. Dont expect that link to be anything easy, its a full DMCA request, but what it does do is hopefully give the mods creators an avenue to get their products back from the offending uploaders. But hey, at least you don’t have to pay for these mods right?
If you grew up in the 90s you probably remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were spunky comic book turned Saturday morning TV show heroes on the half shell. TURTLE POWER! I still hear that in my head every time I read the name. Now nearly 20 years later, like all things ripe for nostalgic re-makes we are getting a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, rebranded as TMNT (to sound cooler?) and as with most movies these days we are getting a tie in game. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan is that game. Created by developer Platinum Games (who also did the Transformers tie in game) and published by Activision this game takes a cell shaded look at the what a game that is meant to be the successor to all time classic beat em ups like Turtles in Time could be.
So let’s get this out of the way to start with, this is not a great game. I personally enjoy it because I am a HUGE fan of Ninja Turtles, Simple Combat, and two button beat em ups in general. Unfortunately not even I could look past the slew of problems that this game presents to call it a “good” game. Featuring 4 player co-op of AI controlled teammates this is a team brawler game. Co-op is limited to online only play, which is a HUGE mistake as the best part of previous 4 player turtles brawlers was playing with your friends. Its all about beating up huge numbers of enemies in Manhattan, around an open world concept then fighting a boss at the end of each level. there are 8 levels in all, and in between each level you will be able to use currency to upgrade your turtle and its abilities.
Hey remember these bad guys? Probably not, I know I don’t. (They are Bebop and Rocksteady)
Let’s start with the premise, it’s your standard Saturday morning cartoon style plot. Villains want to take over the world (or just Manhattan I guess?). This time is Kang and Shredder they have brought along with them a host of other characters, from well-known ones like Bebop and Rocksteady to some that will make you scratch your head and go who are they, like Wingnut and Armaggon. This rather diverse case of villains will use all of their knowledge of well telegraphed attacks, millions of generic enemies, and simple obstacles to try and stop you from saving your beloved home.
The first thing you are going to notice when you boot this game up, is the art style. Its cell shaded just the Transformers game was, so if you don’t like that style, then probably stay away from this game. Personally I loved the look of the game, its lines are dirty, and in that cell shaded style so popular these days, the characters look like they rolled right out of the a comic book on to the screen. The heavy nod to the origin of the characters (comics came before TV shows kids of the 90s) made me feel like maybe the game was going pay homage to the original and that I would enjoy it, sadly this was not the case.
The art style was basically the end of my enjoyment of this game. Beyond here this review is going to go quite heavy handed in to criticism of how the game plays, whats going on with its mechanics, and why it doesn’t work with the idea of my beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so if you don’t want to see your favorite team of green renaissance artists getting put to the sword, probably stop reading now. I will tell you that if this game ever goes sub 20$ its probably worth picking up for the story and dialog and art alone, since it does feel a lot like playing a comic book.
The game is very vibrant and the art style is great!
Ok disclaimer over, now let’s talk dirty. Remember Turtles in Time? The great classic arcade beat-em-up from the 80s? That’s what clearly inspired this game, I get it Platinum Games I do, there is a powerful market for nostalgia and you want to tap it. Sadly this is not how you do that. This game is at its core a two button beat em up. You will spend your time pressing either X or A (on an Xbox controller) or using what ever fucked keyboard combination Platinum decided on using instead. Oh, you were thinking of using a keyboard to play this game? No, that’s not a good idea at all. With a control scheme almost as dense as Dark Souls, it really seems like you should be able to figure out how to map TWO KEYS to a keyboard. However, Since your turtles also have to dodge, use combos, hit a button to bring up a a HUD, use parry’s, and do half a dozen other actions, instead of two buttons there are like twelve! A two button beat em up, HAS TWO BUTTONS! I dont need a button to lock on to enemies, or a button to make me go in to my shell, and dont even get me started on the stupid HUD thingy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not berating games with complex combat systems – this game doesn’t have that – instead it has an incredibly simple combat system (light and heavy attacks, one button activated combos) with a bunch of useless shit you wont ever use tacked on. I have the option to block or parry, but why would I? Instead I can just hack my way through whatever I need to hit and hope I don’t die trying. The game should have been rescued by an arcade style combat system, and indeed it does have nice arcade scoring (counting combo hits etc) and pretty slashing motions, but that’s it. To activate combos you don’t need to press a set of buttons, you just hold left trigger and then press on button. This triggers an almost cut scenes like piece where you combo whatever is in front of you. which leads to some hilarious moments where I found myself using a combo, with no one to hit because my AI teammates had killed them already. The tedium of this combat is made even worse by the fact that every single enemy is just a sponge. No matter what you are fighting, and the game does have a bit of diversity for its enemies, featuring rock soldiers, foot ninja, and even some mousers, you will be able to just hack it apart with no skill needed. Enemy diversity is mostly limited to the three aforementioned types with a lot of pallet swaps, and some weapon changes.
Even the levels are repetitive, each level is semi-open-world, which basically means you run around a closed off level area doing something, until you finish it and then you come back and fight the areas boss. This format is terrible, and honestly makes me think im just checking boxes. While there is a story here and its fully voiced and features a nice cast of characters, its just lost among the repetitive boring gameplay. After playing just three levels, I was already feeling fatigued, and the game has 8! Each level longer than the last!
See that silly headset? Its the games primary story mechanic, you talk to April on it and she tells you where to go punch people next.
One such mission early in the game found me spending three minutes protecting a pizza stand. Imagine the worst escort mission ever, and then make it even worse. I stood on top of the pizza stand as my AI controlled team mates killed wave after wave of easily disposable enemies, then the boss of the area spawned INSIDE THE PIZZA STAND, making it so I could neither see him, nor damage him. So after 3 minutes of standing around doing nothing while the AI killed enemies, I lost the mission to an enemy I could not see, because he was inside the missions objective.
Each mission is formulaic and they all end up felling like a tedium after the first couple. I would rather have had a long hallway full of enemies I needed to beat up to get to a boss than the current format. That would make sense in a classic beat-em-up sense. Instead, each level features a limited pallet of subway, sewer, and city buildings, which all start to blend together as you go on. Despite the amount of unique architecture in Manhattan, you will see none of it here, and the tallest buildings seem to be just a few stories so my hero’s can easily climb them. The game also has an odd nonsensical system of rail riding, where you can ride a series of rails that are inexplicably on the top of every single building, or across power lines strung from building to building. But be careful, random motes of electricity (i think?) roam around these trying to knock you off because reasons? It really doesn’t make any sense at all and I just stuck to the ground to avoid it entirely.
The game is saved from total mediocrity by the combat system. Yes, you will press A and X until your enemy dies. The monotony of this is broken up by a ninjitsu system where you hold a trigger and then press a button to fire off a combo, or a ranged attack , or a heal. These abilities make things interesting during combat and in particular the boss battles. Bosses have a lot of health, and you can’t just hack your way through them. They are the only enemies in game that require even a ounce of strategy to beat. One warning to those who would come face the bosses, the spike in difficulty is severe. Imagine going from say, walking one mile to running a marathon overnight. I liked it, but I’m a bit of a masochist. More easily frustrated players could easily get fed up with the spikes in difficulty and end up quitting.
Platinum have tried to help with this curve by giving player an upgrade system where they can spend the games in game currency on more powerful combos, weapons, and items, but it all feels sort of hollow. I haven’t beat the game yet, but I’m more than 80% of the way through and the enemies difficulty curve is very flat, so as soon as I started getting upgrades and figured out which items and combos were best, it started to just get too easy for me. Bosses are now the only thing that really offers any sort of resistance to my blades (I chose Leonardo to play of course!).
Overall this game feels like it could have been great, but it just lacks something. It has such a high bar to meet, the Turtles have starred in some of the best beat em up games of all time after all, and it just doesn’t make it there. I don’t mind the two button combat, the skill ceiling, or the upgrades, but I do mind the way the levels are laid out, the forced open world, and the lack of coherent plot. If this game ever drops to the 10-15$ range it would be a great value for a fan, but at 40$ it feel a bit like your getting taken for a ride.
If you haven’t heard or Mirage: Arcane Warfare the new first person mage fighting game from Torn Banner Studios (Chivalry: medieval warfare) now is the time to take a look at it. Torn Banner have released a new trailer for their upcoming game Mirage: Arcane Warfare that gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the team is utilizing technology to infuse this “first-person slasher” with their trademark brutality.
If you ever played Chivalry, you understand how much fun and how brutal a game in first person about non-ranged combat can be. Now we will get to jump out of the world of swords and armor, and in to a whole new world of sorcery. Mirage: Arcane Warfare will be shown at the PC Gaming Show at this year’s E3 starting at 11:30 AM PDT on Monday, June 13th 2016. Brokenjoysticks will be there bringing you all the news from this years E3, so make sure you follow us on twitter, Facebook, and youtube so you can see all of our content from the floor!
