The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the North American games industry body whose responsibilities include organising E3, have quasi-accidentally leaked personal details of over two thousand people. The names, addresses, phone numbers, and more of folks who registered for E3 2019 media badges [disclosure: including some of our own] were posted online in a spreadsheet that apparently anyone could download. The ESA, who also lobby governments on behalf of big publishers and founded the ESRB ratings board, have not apologised but do say they "regret this occurrence." Oh that's fine, then.
]]>Remember that thing you like from 10 years ago? It’s probably getting a sequel. Shenmue 3. Evil Genius 2. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. The calendar of upcoming games is packed with throwbacks that will revisit the worlds we left behind over a decade ago. Oddworld: Soulstorm is heading back to the strange homeland of Abe the skinny green freedom farter. Mechwarrior 5 is booting up a bipedal destruct-o-bot that was powered down in the year 2000. If your favourite childhood game is not getting a sequel, it's probably getting a glittering remake.
Reviving forgotten entertainment relics is nothing new (hi, George Lucas) but the recent glut of resurrections has made me wonder: why are developers and publishers so keen to go back to old ground? Why do they want to chase this sense of nostalgia? So, I asked them.
]]>"We all die, everything dies, every living thing dies."
Nicolas Guérin is reassuring me. He's the creative director at Thunder Lotus Games and they're working on Spiritfarer, announced at E3 2019 as a "cosy management game about dying." I need reassuring because I've played a 15-minute demo of Spiritfarer and I'm worried that a game that treats death lightly will make light of the suffering that is death's bedfellow.
]]>E3 2019 is finished! More importantly, we have almost recovered from E3 2019. To celebrate their convalescence, Alice B and Matt piled into the podcast studio for a 40-minute post-show chat about their favourite games from the show and thoughts on the many E3 press conferences.
]]>"I... I wonder who the bad guys are in this game." That's Samuel Malone, game director at Vaulted Sky Games, now deep in thought about the moral message behind his upcoming 4v4 prop hunt 'em up Midnight Ghost Hunt. It's about ghosts who have to hide from their would-be-busters, possessing household furniture in an attempt to survive till midnight. I've just asked him if the ghosts have actually done anything wrong, and he is equivocating.
]]>If your entire game is about munching other creatures as an increasingly super-powered shark, it's important to get the chomp noise right. I'm talking about Maneater, Blindside Interactive's upcoming sea dog sim*, which they describe as "GTA but you're a shark". Based on the hands-off demo I saw at E3, I'd say that's a bit silly.
But reader, they've absolutely nailed the chomp noise.
]]>This is Maximilian. As you can see, he is a very insecure criminal mastermind. Not content with having a scar on his left eye, he wears a monocle on his right. He is trying very hard to be the stereotype of evil. When you need this many sinister affectations to intimidate your staff, you are probably broadcasting your own neuroses straight to the camera. But maybe this is to be expected of the lead evil-doer in Evil Genius 2: World Domination. After all, Max is basically the slime left behind when you pass multiple Bond villains through the parody mincer. Ash Tregay, producer on the game at Rebellion, seems to know this, even if he is determined to indulge in some moustache-twirling spin of his own.
“He is definitely not Blofeld or Dr Evil,” says Tregay, “because he doesn’t have a cat. Totally different man.”
]]>Intricate 4X strategy games don’t benefit much from short demos, especially during the annual videogames vomitorium of E3. But a short demo is what I got with Age Of Wonders: Planetfall. I would need far more time to get an understanding for the Civ-like encroachment of its world map. And I can't give you a solid impression of the battles based on the single brief tussle I had. All I can say is that I liked this giant squidlike warbeast called the Plague Lord, and I think he should be elected Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
]]>Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers game was very clearly what the Square Enix conference of this year's E3 was building towards, and our expectations were finally fulfilled with an extended presentation on the upcoming story-driven action adventure title. If you can move yourself to look beyond the uncanny valley faces that makes the entire team look like a group of cosplayers rather than the real deal... Well, there's a fair amount to be excited about here. We'll break it all down in this here Marvel's Avengers game guide, with details on the game's release date, trailers, and story - and anything else we've gleaned so far from the reveal.
]]>Ubisoft's portion of E3 2019 began with a really rather intriguing look at Watch Dogs: Legion - the highlights of which were a lovely-looking London gone wrong, a growing Resistance group fighting against an authoritarian surveillance state, and a 78-year-old hacker named Helen Dashwood who's likely tasered more security guards than you've had hot dinners. Our Watch Dogs: Legion guide will break down everything we know so far about this extremely ambitious open-world title, from the game's expected release date to trailer breakdowns, story and setting info, and much more.
]]>My main memory of Desperados is repeatedly getting shot and not understanding why. That's because I tried to play it when I was eight, not because it was impenetrable or confusing. I'm simply making you aware that Desperados was before my time, and so based on my hands on with Desperados III I can't tell you whether it's living up that legacy.
It's from the same team that made Shadow Tactics though, and I can tell from the little I've played this absolutely lives up to that.
]]>Ronnie O’Neill is a scumbag. But that’s okay. In about 20 minutes he’ll be dead, slumped on the tarmac next to a black truck. That’s what happens when you mess with Al Capone, you filthy mutt. At least, this is one way things can go in upcoming mob strategy game Empire Of Sin. It’s part mobster management, part turn-based tactics, with a splash of the personality-driven pettiness of Crusader Kings 2. Which probably explains why Paradox are publishing it for Romero Games.
]]>Let me level with you: Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was mostly on my E3 schedule out of obligation. It’s the next big shooty Ubisoft game with all the military folk, sequel to the previous big shooty Ubisoft game with all the military folk. But now we're in the future, and it's got that bloke who plays the Punisher in it.
Point being, I wasn't expecting much from the Ghost Recon: Wildlands followup. After creeping my way through an hour at E3, though, I'm keen to creep through some more.
]]>The fight to become the best panda in videogames is the smallest, fluffiest battle royale. Until last week, there were two serious contenders. The Just Dance panda was the bookies favourite, for clear reasons. And the panda who became last year’s Tekken World Champion is the other (don’t @ me). But now we have a third competitor.
Contra: Rogue Corps is a new twin-stick co-op shooter from Konami. Up to four players go blasting aliens amid the ruins of a place called the Damned City. This would not normally excite me. The old Contra games are ancient and difficult. The twin-stick shooter is one of my least favourite genres. But there is one thing I can appreciate about this new shmup. It features a panda with a minigun.
]]>Dismemberment. We've all done it, but Lucasfilm have reportedly forbade the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order developers from letting players chop off limbs too jediciously. In the trailers, gameplay footage and behind closed doors demo we've seen so far, all limbs have remained attached. The internet is aghast, even though developers Respawn Entertainment have stated that limb removal will be reserved for critical plot moments.
]]>When Sam Barlow released murder mystery game Her Story in 2015, he probably didn’t expect to get a two-page spread in Le Monde about this three-hour FMV game. Her Story worked because it was simple. You had a fictional desktop and a search engine that would bring up videos of an ongoing police interview. When you typed in “dead” or “argument”, you’d get a video of the main character, Hannah, answering the questions of an unseen detective, with those keywords somewhere in the testimony. A search bar ‘em up.
This year we’re getting a follow-up called Telling Lies. It’s not a sequel, but the same idea: a search bar and a bank of videos. It’s not clear what the big lies of the title are, but we can clear up another mysery right now. Why has it taken Barlow this long to come back to a formula that was so obviously good?
]]>I've just seen a game that reminds me of Deus Ex. It's set in a dystopia where corporations call the shots, and you can approach situations how you see fit. Guards can be persuaded, tricked, intimated or shot. Robots can be hacked. Sewers can be snuck through, if you can first lockpick the entrance.
There are no punks in sight. I'm talking about The Outer Worlds, a first person sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. I only got a hands off peek at E3, and one carefully curated slice might not represent the whole cake. But gosh, that slice looked delicious.
]]>I wouldn’t blame you for having missed Spiritfarer’s trailer at E3 this week, which came right after Keanu Reeves’ surprise appearance at the Microsoft press conference. But still, now that it’s the weekend and things are calming down a bit, it’s the perfect time to take a look at its pleasant management-y-ness and beautiful skybox. According to its trailer, which you can see below, its key verbs are “build, care, explore,” which are all lovely. And you can hug a deer, a long term ambition of mine.
]]>We've been drowned by E3 2019 this past week, but maybe you only waded into the river of game reveals and new trailers up to your ankles. If you didn't get your hair wet, there might be some gems among the flotsam and jetsam that you missed. That's what this post is for: we've rounded up our picks for the best games of E3, based on our own impressions of either seeing the games behind closed doors at the show, or of watching the videos from the comfort of our homes.
]]>Man is a complicated beast. I, for example, like to complain about not having any good JRPGs to play whilst shamefully ignoring the Tales Of series, which many anime-curve connoisseurs I know consistently tell me is excellent. That may all change with Tales Of Arise. The announcement at E3 only showed a smidgen of action, but what it did show was pretty enough to get me all hot and bothered, thinking about stats and builds and melodrama and stuff. Oh, and talking of hot and bothered, feast your eyes on the absolute unit in the announcement trailer below.
]]>“It’s a little bit like a molotov cocktail,” says Lorne Lanning, the head of Oddworld Inhabitants. He is holding a bottle full of flammable soda pop with a rag stuffed in the top. “So if I was about to use that on a guy who was pretty helplessly bound up,” he continues, gesturing at an alien henchman lying on the floor wrapped in duct tape, “that would be pretty bad, right?” He throws the bottle of fiery liquid. It explodes in a shower of flames, engulfing not only the struggling alien guard on the floor but two bystanding factory workers.
“Oops, everybody’s on fire.”
This is Oddworld Soulstorm, the latest game about Abe the clumsy Mudoken. It’s chaos.
]]>During this week's E3, Cyberpunk 2077 developers CD Projekt Red released a new CG trailer starring Keanu Reeves, showed the game to press behind closed doors, and handed out some new screenshots. Two screens in particular were released via Nvidia to show off ray tracing effects, and both seem innocuous enough. One depicts what looks like a science lab, the other a neon-lit stairwell, but a second glance at the latter will reveal something else. There are three adverts on the wall, the middle of which depicts a sexualised trans woman, her body objectified and fetishised to sell an energy drink for a fictitious in-world corporation.
Let's give CDPR the benefit of the doubt for a moment, before I explain why this image is bad, and why any context given in the full game doesn't excuse the image released.
]]>“We've looked at the current state of the world" says the Watch Dogs: Legion developer giving my E3 presentation. "We’ve looked at politics". (A man behind me hisses, vehemently.) "We’ve looked at how people are reacting to each other, and asked 'what if these tracks took us in a very particular direction?'"
After my hands-on with Watch Dogs the third, I can confirm that direction is facist street. Oh, hissy man in the back row. Let me take you by hand, and lead you through the drone-infested streets of London. I'll show you something that will make you change your mind.
]]>We all remember A-day. The infamous day in US history when San Francisco came under attack by skull-faced bad dudes, and the Avengers showed up to stop them. The superheroes flew in to display their skills at bash ‘n’ dash combat (almost as if this was a demonstration for the press). There was Thor, Iron Man, and Black Widow, all fighting goons. It was exciting and explosive. But something was off about the Avengers that fateful day. They just didn’t seem... themselves.
I’m talking about the fairground ride faces of the recently revealed Marvel's Avengers. I asked creative director Noah Hughes of Crystal Dynamics if he thought people would be happy enough to see a Hulk that doesn’t look a jot like Mark Ruffalo. He said inspiration comes from “a breadth of Marvel content”, not just the movies.
“We’re always pursuing the truth of the subject matter,” he said.
]]>There's a metaphysical thought experiment I like called The Ship of Theseus, which I'm not going to explain to you because a.) I'm sure you already know it and b.) It's casual Friday, not played-out philosophy Friday. That is next week. Anyway, this concept seems to have a legacy in Per Aspera, a story-stuffed strategy offering from Tlön Industries and Raw Fury, about terraforming the planet Mars as an artificial consciousness. In the trailer below, you can hear a fuzzy speech-giver talk about consciousness-bots succeeding where mankind have failed. Turn your soon-to-be-obsolescent jelly orbs toward the teaser:
]]>Spit-shine your spats, dust off the fedora you hid in shame, and prepare to give some goombas the ol' rat-a-tat-tat in Empire Of Sin, a 1920s mobster strategy game announced this week at E3 by Paradox Interative and Romero Games (the studio of those Romeros, Brenda and John). We'll get to do crimes and build a gang of toughs with excellent names including Dotty Bacon, Zee Zee, and Two-Ton Clyde Malone. No joke, those names are in screenshots. Making pals with cool nicknames is surely 90% of the motivation behind engaging in organised crime.
]]>I’ve got two completely separate takes on Maneater. It’s almost as if I split into two people when watching the gameplay footage released at E3 -- two fizzing outlines of myself, roughly tethered to my physical form like a bad 80s special effect.
One of those outlines, the crackly red one, loved it. I think he’s my inner nine year old, who used to entertain himself on long journeys by imagining a shark zooming alongside the car, crunching oncoming vehicles in its jaws and doing sick flips over roadsigns and overpasses. Maneater is his game. The ghastly fluidity of the game’s protagonist - a ten foot bull shark - is immensely satisfying to watch. It whooshes along like a brutish Ecco the Dolphin, slamming into hapless swimmers from below, then propelling them fifty feet into the air before grunching them with a sound like a kilo of raw chicken cartilage in a hydraulic press.
]]>The Bloodlines liker has, as they say, logged on. Paradox and Hardsuit labs have released a new gameplay trailer for Bloodlines 2. Excellent. It’s a smaller mouthful than the taste I had at GDC last year, but it’s a slightly different one. An amuse-bouche, we might say. Made of blood pudding, or something else all vampire-y. Brendy saw an extended demo, and has thoughts about the dancing. It’s pre-alpha, and does look a bit, whisper it, janky in places. But I am undeterred due to one small, key part of the video.
Look, I can tell you a couple of helpful things based on my own chats with the team. The voice over near the start, the whiny lad who says “welcome to the first day of the rest of your death!”, is your next door neighbour, and in full context he’s clearly meant to be a bit cringy. The loft apartment with brick walls and a big Charlie Day conspiracy map is your home. And the lady in a club with a lip ring who is pictured above? She is my best friend now. None of you can have her. Sorry, that’s just how it is.
]]>Do you ever get sold on a game purely on the strength of how its enemies look? I'm sure this happens to me a lot, but just off the top of my head, Killzone, XCOM, and Dark Souls all first got my attention this way. The trailer for Oninaki - an upcoming, classic-style JRPG from the I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear gang at Square Enix's Tokyo RPG Factory - features these awesome looking goblin lads on a mural. I'm not sure if they're for certain in the game yet, but I'm already quite into the idea of getting a chance to meet some. Have a trailer:
]]>If Disney Pixar did a remake of Inception, it would probably look like Psychonauts 2. At least, that’s how I’m going to explain it to those who have not played the original. Yes, I know Psychonauts explored the mind invasion angle years before Leonardo and the girl from The Last Of Us got lost in the brain of a trust fund baby. But that's still the predominant feeling I got from my short demo at E3. In this section of the game the aforementioned ‘nauts scramble around inside the emotional turmoil of long-time enemy and respected dentist, Doctor Loboto. It’s a bizarre and colourful world, and it’s run-o-jumping looks to be fine and dandy, even if it also seems at times a little unambitious.
]]>This is a weird preview to write, because I'm about to describe a game you can already vividly imagine. Borderlands 3 is a shoot 'n' loot about tearing through wacky enemies using outlandish weapons and abilities. From the half hour I've played at E3, it's a very good one, and a subtle improvement over boundary grounds 1 and 2. Is that enough? Maybe.
]]>The trailer for 12 Minutes opens on a tangibly moody, dimly lit scene of a woman and her husband, who then proceeds to use his knowledge of the future to correctly guess the contents of the elegantly-wrapped gift she's just plopped on the table. I have to say, this is generally one of the more dickheadish things you could use your powers of foresight for. Your loved one comes home, evidently excited for you to find out what they've got in that gift wrapped box, and you're just like "Gooigi body pillow, innit? Already know love," completely killing the mood. Nice use of powers, mate. "I swear to only use this power to suck all joy from the gift of giving." said the dickhead.
]]>Let’s get it out of the way: I have not played the Shenmues. For some this admission will immediately disqualify me from having a valid opinion on one of the most eagerly awaited (and expensive) Kickstarter throwbacks in history. I know how this will go. I will tell you I have played a bit, that the characters feel wooden, that the English voice acting is laughably bad, that the translation seems questionable, that the whole game appears only to be a big old walkabout with lots of minigames. And then you will tell me to shut the flip up. What does this Shenoob know, you’ll spit. Who does he think he is? Coming into this beloved world of kung fu and forklift driving decades late and kicking the village dust in our eyes.
But wait, don’t roundhouse kick me yet. Because I just raced some turtles in Shenmue III, that game you are determined to like, and it made me happy, too. We’re not so different, you and I.
]]>"You enter a forest, and things go wrong." That's the basic concept behind the upcoming Blair Witch game, a first person horror title from Layers of Fear and Observer developers Bloober Team. It's an original story taking place in what Bloober call the 'Blair Witch universe'. Which, as universes go, has definitely got the 'creepy forest' biome down pat.
From the demo footage below it looks to be a genre-adherent, if ambitious, horror exploration game. Making the player feel entrapped and claustrophobic in a large open space is going to take some doing, and I'm looking forward to see how Bloober handle it. It's also going to be interesting to see how the film-length slow-burn of the original translates to game length. In the film, we basically just got a load of hints and signs of ill portent, leading up to what was still quite a minimalist moment of concluding horror. The game is likely going to need to lay the spooks on a bit thicker than that, in order to pace itself. Gaze in despair at the clip below.
]]>Before your pants get too twisted, let me clarify with some italics and nuance I couldn't fit in the headline. I mean Roller Champions is the best game to play at E3. As in, the best game to play in a context where nobody has any idea what they're doing, can all physically see each other, and are up for a laugh. I finished half an hour ago (as of writing this), and I can't wipe this grin off my face.
]]>One of the weirdest things about this year's E3 is Square Enix realising that they've got a huge back-catalogue of excellent, untranslated JRPGs to bring west. Trials Of Mana is the new English name for Seiken Densetsu 3, a Super Nintendo action-RPG classic that never (officially) made it out of Japan. While there's a gently remastered version headed to Switch, the PC is also due a full 3D remake early next year. They're also remastering and localising pair of Japan-0nly games for us, from their more esoteric SaGa series; Romancing SaGa 3 on SNES, and SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions on Vita. See trailers for all three below.
]]>Yet another series announced to be returning at E3 is Firefly's Stronghold series. Stronghold: Warlords transplants the RTS game of European (and Arabic) castle building and siege-ing to the east, with Japan, Korea, China and other nations represented. Warlords is also expanding the game outwards, and adding a 'light' grand strategy layer, letting players boss around the titular warlords; AI controlled minor factions that can work for or against you. While not quite as sprawling as a Total War game or Sins Of A Solar Empire, it's an interesting way to expand the design. See how the warlords work in the trailer below.
]]>Another surprise during yesterday's Nintendo Direct E3 show: Contra: Rogue Corps is the latest in Konami's long-neglected series of hard-as-nails arcade shooters, and the first to come to PC since the DOS era. Ditching the side-scrolling style of most good games in the series in favour of a roaming camera, and up to four-player via online co-op, it seems like an odd way to revive the Contra name. The new game lands on September 26th. Below, the debut trailer, featuring a Twisted Sister song, a cyborg panda, and a whole lot of overt wackiness. Plus some guns and explosions.
]]>Reveal trailers are funny things. Sometimes, they flawlessly showcase the brilliance of the game in question. Sometimes they show you absolutely nothing. And sometimes, they end with a crimson-tinted smog effigy of Hitler laughing at you from the skyline. The reveal trailer for Zombie Army 4: Dead War is one of those ones. Have a butcher's below (I'm so sorry, that Watch Dogs game has broken my brain.)
]]>Dying Light, Brendy will tell you, is the best 7/10 game in existence. I'd tell you that too, and add that it could easily have been more. Perhaps if the plot had been halfway engaging, or if the more interesting second area and grappling hooks (yes, there were grappling hooks) had appeared at some point before the ten hour mark. They're the kind of problems that a sequel could address, through dressing up fundamentally solid melee combat with necromantic bells and whistles. Based on the E3 demo I've seen, Techland appear to be doing just that.
]]>LAHNDAHN. The Grand Canary. Beelzebub's Toothpick. Queen Lizzie's Pisspot. The Grey Sneeze. Captain Concrete. Poundland Prime. Pintmageddon. The Bad Onion. Johnson's Jungle. Hard Mode Paris. Disneyland Extreme. Fumes-on-Thames. Four Weddings and a Dog Fight. Sir Rentalot. Pigeon Purgatory. The Big Piss. The Big Vape. The Big Snort. Barbara Windsor's Local. No Elephants, Some Castles. Canary Wharfare.
Whatever you call it, we call it FACKED.
]]>At some point, Cyberpunk 2077 has to evolve from a visually impressive - yes Keanu, even breathtaking - world and into something more interesting. I want more than meat and gun oil: I want moral dilemmas and a thoughtful exploration of transhumanism. More importantly, I want the game not to lean on racial stereotypes. After CD Projekt Red's latest E3 demo, I'm concerned on both fronts.
I have seen the face of Cyberpunk, and it's got blemishes.
]]>Have you ever seen a Banbaro? Oh, you sheltered child of reality. They are quite lovely creatures. Banbaros are large herbivorous snowbeasts with big, chunky antlers, presumably used for bickering and clashing with other Banboys down at the Banbar on a Friday. Bantlers. Ignore my jokes, they’re beautiful creatures. Serene, tranquil, perfectly at home in the cold ecology of their glittering wintry domain. I murdered one this afternoon.
]]>What have those scoundrels at Devolver Digital gone and done now? Oh look, it’s Devolver Bootleg, a mixtape of the Punk IPA publisher's classics that someone left in their jeans pocket before a wash and now the musics all fuzzy and the track list is garbled nonsense. Also it’s one percent off, yeah, because screw…discounts?
So, is this a delightful slice of performance-art-as-consumer-product brilliance? Or have Devolver, in their mission statement to point a funhouse mirror at the game industry’s cynical marketing, done a big old cynicism themselves?
]]>Press X to dance. It’s not the first demonstration of demonic prowess I expected to see during my brief hands-off playthrough of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2. But it is one of the very first things developers Hardsuit Labs show off. Our character has just been sauntering through the streets of Seattle. Sewer grates pump steam into the air, the lights of the city glare on the wet roads. The womp-womp of a nearby nightclub lures our boy in, and he proceeds to the dance floor, where a crimson prompt appears on-screen. This is it, he must be thinking. I am an avatar of darkness, I am a child of the night, the elegance of blood magic flows through me. Press X to dance.
The vampire starts dancing, and he is bad.
]]>Square Enix are but a fading spectre of their former glory. Square Enix can tie a crate of Final Fantasy trading cards to themselves and get in the sea. Square Enix are all horrible bastards who don’t understand what makes a good RPG anymore. Never again will I have to say any of these clearly untrue and potentially libellous phrases, because Square Enix - who I’ve always said were the best - have now confirmed that they’re remastering Final Fantasy 8. Well heck.
]]>Among the sentences I least expected to write, "At E3, Nintendo just announced a PC-bound strategy-RPG based on Jim Henson's cult '80s fantasy muppetfest The Dark Crystal" ranks pretty high. The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance Tactics (I'll just call it Dark Crystal Tactics, okay?) is based on the upcoming Netflix-produced prequel miniseries, and developed by BonusXP. It'll be a single player, turn-based SRPG ala Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, and expands on the conflict between the hobbity Gelflings and the vulture-like Skeksis. Below, a fittingly weird debut trailer.
]]>We're headed back to that old cyberpunk future next year in Read Only Memories: Neurodiver, a sequel to 2015's mystery game 2064: Read Only Memories. We'll be digging into people's memories as a telepathic detective with the aid of the eponymous weird critter, the neurodiver, searching for traces of a rogue psychic who's been wrecking people's minds in Neo-San Francisco. I'm game. I missed the first game but have heard good things, and cyberpunk psychic detectives are in my top-five types of detectives.
]]>Among the storm of announcements at E3's PC Gaming Show, Cris Tales stood out because it's a JRPG that looked and sounded like an interactive cartoon, with a clever time-travel twist. Perhaps developers Dreams Uncorporated and SYCK are aiming more at the Sailor Moon and She-Ra crowd than I, but even I can appreciate that Sailor Uranus will forever be the best. After playing the debut demo -- available until June 24th -- I'm glad to say that my first impressions were correct. It feels like I've just played the pilot episode of a TV series, and you should do the same. Grab it here on Steam, and see the trailer and some thoughts below.
]]>Enduringly popular 2D mine-and-crafter Terraria's next big patch has been teased for a while, and at E3's PC Gaming Show yesterday, developers Re-Logic announced it will be its last. Formerly known as version 1.3.6, Journey's End will be adding one last big round of features and content. There'll be a variety of quality-of-life features, another 800 items to discover (or build), and the usual new bunch of bosses and monsters to hunt. There's an expanded weather system, a golf mini-game, a brutal new difficulty level and an overhaul to how the game generates worlds. Below, the trailer.
]]>Studio Ghibli and Level-5's JRPG Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch is the next console game of yesteryear to see a remastered PC release. Due September 20th, it seems that publisher Bandai Namco aren't changing much from the PS3 original beyond a boost in resolution and frame rate. Not there's much that needs changing, as the game's real-time art was almost as pretty in motion as its gorgeous, traditionally animated cutscenes. Overly padded combat aside, it's a lovely game, and Ghibli's influence shines through in its heartwarming but oft-tragic fairytale story. Below, a trailer.
]]>Not only are Valve making a standalone version of mega-hit Dota 2 mod Dota Auto Chess, the mod's creators yesterday announced they're releasing a standalone Auto Chess on PC too. And this came mere hours after Riot Games announced an Auto Chess clone mode for League Of Legends. It's rare to see a mod attempt to bloom into a full genre in real time.
]]>Turn-based post-crabpocalyptic strategy game Phoenix Point is on track for a September 3rd release, announced during yesterday's Inside Xbox presentation at E3. The X-COM-alike is due to launch simultaneously on the Epic Games Store and now the Xbox Game Pass for us PC folks, but won't hit Steam until a year later. It looks like it's coming together nicely too, after a few bare-bones early backer builds. It seems that Snapshot Games head Julian Gollop (of the original '90s X-COM) still has a few tricks to teach the young'ins. Below, a new trailer and a peek at the most recent backer build.
]]>After so many years of the big screen being dominated by the Avengers as portrayed by Evans, Hemsworth and company, it’s great to see the limelight passed on to some less well-known interpretation of the famed superheroes. Namely, those daubed on the side of janky-looking ferris wheels which appear without warning on turd-strewn commons across the UK.
]]>If you too have been watching enviously as your PlayStation pals post clips of them playing with an adorable wee raptor, chin up: Falcon Age is now headed towards PC. I've mostly been enthralled by people petting the bird, dressing it in costumes, and teaching it tricks as it grows, so I've honestly been surprised to see more now and discover the aviculture simulator has, like, combat? And dystopian robots or something? Fine, fine, as long as I can can teach my falcon to shake hands.
]]>Ave, citizens! It is I - Ghoastus, the famous Roman Ghost. This week, I have been haunting the streets of Los Angeles, in eager anticipation of all the thrilling Roman content soon to spill from the mouth of the games industry, like half-digested dormice from the maw of an overfed senator.
And yet, alas: I have found little to stir the patriotic embers that smoulder in my Roman soul at EIII. Those naughty Greeks have had a little time in the American sun, but it seems nobody cares much for us Romans this year. Nobody that is, except for Microsoft, who announced a thrilling new Definitive Edition for Age of Empires II, coming out this Autumn.
]]>On Sunday at E3 2019, Microsoft announced they had bought Double Fine. At last year's show, the tech giant announced they had bought Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Playground Games and Compulsion Games, then added Obsidian and inXile in November. In the last 8 months, THQ Nordic has purchased Piranha Bytes, Bugbear Entertainment and Coffee Stain Studios, as well as the IP for TimeSplitters, Carmageddon, Outcast and more. A few weeks ago Sega bought Two Point Studios, to add to their existing strategy studios which includes Amplitude, Creative Assembly, Relic and Sports Interactive.
The games industry is experiencing a wave of consolidation, and it's a cause for concern. I was more worried a few months ago when Epic Games bought Psyionix, makers of Rocket League, than I have been about any Epic Games store exclusive. Here's why.
]]>Listen, I’ll level with you, I am struggling this year. My hype train cannot currently build up steam. If I were to place myself on Matt and Brendan’s Cheerer-to-Jeerer E3 corporate Kinsey scale of awfulness, I am currently at a “1”: predominantly jeer, only incidentally cheer. Think the “What a piece of work is man?” monologue from Hamlet, but if it were about games instead of a searingly beautiful description of depression.
Like Hamlet, there are some things that I will still get cautiously enthused about, though unlike Hamlet mine do not generally involve avunculicide. Apparently, what excites me most these days is a jedi holding up his lightsaber like a torch.
]]>I’m frozen to the ground, unable to run, unable to move at all. A big hulking alien is lurching towards me. It was the icy blast of his frosty cannon has immobilised me. I would have shot him to death to avoid this, but I ran out of bullets a while ago, and I tried to make up for this by charging headfirst into the cold spray of his blizzard gun. I think the plan was to stab him. It doesn’t matter. He has just cracked me in the face. I’m dead, and my poor teammates will soon follow. This is Gears of War 5’s co-op multiplayer Escape mode. And it is all about hearing your gun go “click”.
]]>Bleeding Edge is the multiplayer hero slicer that was announced this week by Ninja Theory. It's a 4v4 learn-abilities-em-up. Which feels like an odd direction for the gang who've made their name by creating atmospheric singleplayer games like the anti-viking propaganda action adventure of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. But it made more sense when I got to play it at E3 this week, because it also has the mild taste of a multiplayer spectacle fighter (if that makes any sense). Think DmC meets Overwatch meets Dota 2. Anyway listen, none of that matters. Let me tell you about Granny Maeve.
]]>Well the season of conferences for E3 2019 is finally over, but the show itself has only just begun. Lots of games were announced, some surprises were had, and there have been moments of crippling disappointment. In case you have missed the conferences and want the full experience for each of them, I've compiled a list of links to the conferences so you can watch them at your own leisure.
]]>My friend Josh loves Halo. For nineteen years now, whenever a new Halo has come out, I’ve gone round to his place, and we’ve spent a night playing through its campaign as a sort of ritual. I’m garbage at shooters, mind, and Josh insists on playing on Heroic mode, so the whole experience boils down to him protecting me from aliens while we chat about our lives. There are few occasions I look forward to more.
But the actual game is virtually background noise: it’s a way for us to grab a few hours together and really catch up, in the same way that golf provides many grim men with a place to talk about deals. But still, I can’t help it - so many years of memories have given me a sort of emotional screenburn; an immense, vague fondness for Halo that has barely anything to do with what happens in-game.
]]>Earth's most lucrative heroes will reassemble in May 2020 with Marvel's Avengers, Square Enix announced today, to kick off a story that'll unfold over several years of updates. Unlike everything else to do with Marvel's marvelous moneymakers, story additions with new places and characters will be free to all players. Most importantly, yes, it will let you play superheroes with your pals and duff up baddies together in co-op. Come watch the announcement trailer.
]]>People Can Fly, the Polish studio behind Bulletstorm, today announced a new cooperative shooter named Outriders. This is the mysterious game they announced with Square Enix back in 2017 and... we still don't know much more now. It's set in a sci-fi world with demonic-looking beasties and guns clad in horn and bone and such and... nope, that's about it. The announcement trailer confirms that despite science, people get dirty.
]]>Matt: This is it. The final blog down. Square Enix are about to tell us about what they're up to, and we've both reported to our liveblogging stations for the very last time. Both Cheerer and Jeerer have one more opportunity to don their respective masks of love and loathing, but who will take up each mantle?
Actually, forget I asked. Jetlag has snuck up on us both and filled our hearts with jeer, but I'm the one writing this intro so I get to bagsy it. Plus it's my turn anyway. Nuh-nuh.
]]>The developers behind Spartan Fist and Hot Tin Roof are back with a new game: SkateBird. I played a little bit of it earlier this year at PAX East, and was delighted by its can-do optimism and low-fi "birb-hop" soundtrack. Now, this rather lovely skating game about a tiny bird trying their best is fluttering over to Kickstarter to help kick-flip it towards a final launch sometime in June 2020. And if you simply can't wait that long, you can try out a free demo right now. Here's a shiny new trailer for it.
]]>If a big reveal of two new Big Navi GPUs wasn't enough this evening, AMD also announced the world's first 16-core gaming CPU in the form of the Ryzen 9 3950X. The monstrous gaming CPU is now the top dog of AMD's Ryzen 3000 series, sitting above the previously-announced Ryzen 9 3900X, which made its debut back at Computex a couple of weeks ago. The bad news? This 16-core, 32-thread beast is almost twice as expensive, costing a whopping $749 as opposed to $499.
]]>AMD have finally lifted the lid on two of their new Big Navi GPUs, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and the Radeon RX 5700. Unveiled at their Next Horizon Gaming event at E3 this evening, the RX 5700 is AMD's answer to Nvidia's RTX 2060, while the RX 5700 XT is their RTX 2070 competitor, and if AMD's performance stats are to be believed, the race for best graphics card just got a heck of a lot more interesting.
]]>Bad news: The delightful stealth prank/bullying waterfowl simulator Untitled Goose Game has nothing new and fancy to show at E3 this year.
Good news: It is still on track to launch on PC this year.
News that will probably make you shout at me because you think I should be more or less shouty about it myself: it'll be exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC at launch.
]]>Ubisoft Quebec are about finished with Assassin's Creed Oydssey but they're far from done with Ancient Greece, today announcing an open-world action-adventure game set in Greek mythology. Gods & Monsters is its name, and looking like a cheerier and less murderier take on Asscreed is its game. I do worry that Ubisoft may have misread enthusiasm around Asscreedo's mythological DLC, thinking our Alice Bee was thrilled by monsters more than massive women, but surely they've been working on Gods & Monsters for a fair while now? The cinematic announcement trailer would suggest so.
]]>Among their lineup of grim games about gruff men with guns, Ubisoft dropped a little bit of joy during their big E3 show: Roller Champions, available to play now in pre-alpha demo form. It's an online three-on-three full-contact mutation of Roller Derby, mixed in with a little basketball. High-speed dunks and brutal tackles make it a sport that only lunatics would play in real life, but thanks to the wonders of videogames, we get to hurt people on rollerskates guilt-free. It'll be free-to-play when it launches, but the pre-alpha demo is open to all on Uplay and runs until June 14th, or you can add it to your account here on the Ubisoft store.
]]>Yesterday, Google's Phil Harrison teased that publisher subscriptions were coming to Stadia "in relatively short order", and he really wasn't kidding. Tonight, Ubisoft announced Uplay+, a $15 / 15€ per month subscription service that's coming to both PC this September and Stadia in 2020 - although if you sign up before August 15, you can try it for free for its first month.
]]>Mutant alien beasties will return to trouble the Rainbow 6 gang in new three-player cooperative FPS Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Quarantine, Ubisoft announced today. The two tangled in R6 Siege's Outbreak event mode in 2018 and now "a totally new breed of mutated alien parasite" is back for a full-on rumble. Ubisoft are pretty vague about this for now, sitting firmly in the "teaser" stage of their marketing plan. That said, the obvious assumption about Quarantine is that it's an an expansion of ideas in Outbreak and Ubisoft don't do anything to head off such assumptions. But here, enjoy a vague trailer.
]]>Ubisoft have announced, as had leaked, that they're off to merrye olde Londone tahn for more open-world hack-o-murdering in Watch Dogs: Legion next year. Once again we'll get to hack computers, dodge drones, punch men in the throat, and shoot other men in the face. This time we'll be doing the Lambeth walk as everyone from a cockney geez to a sweary old lady, with supposedly every civilian we meet being a recruitable--and playable--member of our hacktivist collective. How exactly that works is something of a mystery right now but huh, interesting. Here, have a gander at the staged gameplay demo from the announcement.
]]>The enormous Assassin's Creed Odyssey is now endless, as Ubisoft just rolled out a free quest editor and sharing site. The Story Creator Mode lets you build multi-quest story arcs from scratch, complete with branching dialogues and objectives, then share them with the world across all platforms. At their E3 pre-show, Ubisoft also unveiled the final part of the Odyssey puzzle; another Discovery Tour mode, letting you take a non-violent, narrated trip through Greece, now with historical quizzes. The Discovery Tour is out in autumn, but the Story Creator is out now, with a trailer below.
]]>Brendan: We were not invited to Ubisoft's press conference this year, Matt. So we are sitting in our hotel across from each other, pretending to the masses that we are special, when in reality, we are not. We could have done this from our beds at home. All this puts me in a grouchy mood. I think I'll be jeerer for this one, if you don't mind.
Matt: Brendy! You’re back! I’m so relieved I’m only capable of cheer anyway.
]]>The first-person melee murders of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare will resume next year in Chivalry 2, a sequel announced today by developers Torn Banner Studios. After dabbling in magic with Mirage: Arcane Warfare, which flopped pretty hard, Torn Banner are returning to good, old-fashioned whacking folks in the face with pointy metal. Out with the magic carpets and in with horses. Fewer fireballs, more facestabs. Have a peek in the trailer below.
]]>Almost two years after announcing it, Rebellion have given us our first glimpse of James Bond-ish super-criminal sim Evil Genius 2 at E3's PC Gaming Show, plus plans to launch next year. Sequel to Elixir's entertaining 2004 Dungeon Keeper-alike, it's all about balancing the (evil) books and designing your volcano isle hideout for maximum work efficiency and resistance to super-spies. From the brief glimpse we get today, the sequel offers more of the same, but with the surprisingly major addition of multi-floor lairs, all the better to hold the loot your minions steal. Below, a trailer.
]]>Another reveal during E3's PC Gaming Show, Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy is sequel to one of my favourite action-roguelikes of all time. The original Unexplored was purely limited to subterranean dungeons, but the sequel is expanding the action out into the wider world, and assembling adventures that span multiple generations, hence the 'legacy' part of the title. The sequel has a completely new look, upgrading from minimalist 2D to sharply shaded top-down 3D. It's out next year, and developers Ludomotion are running a Fig crowdfunding campaign with a demo for backers, though it'll still get made even if it's not fully funded. Below, the debut trailer.
]]>Over in LA, Frontier Developments have just shown the latest trailer for their upcoming menagerie-’em-up Planet Zoo, as well as setting a launch date for November 5th - and it’s looking very powerful indeed.
I’ll be straightforward with you here: with the exception of the extremely relaxing Megaquarium, I’ve always been disappointed by zoo games. And that’s not because I’m not into the concept. I spent a good slice of my childhood making zoos for toy animals out of tupperware and wooden blocks, and more of my teens than is normal drawing designs for reptile houses on graph paper. I even worked in a couple of zoos (although that’s a story for another time), and I’ve been to loads of the good ones.
]]>I'm still not entirely convinced that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is a real game that's really coming, given its tortured history, but watching the first gameplay video today is starting to turn me around. It appears to show some of a newly-bitten vampire's first nights in Seattle, running errands for the warring powers that be, and I want to believe. Original Bloodlines storyman Brian Mitsoda is lead writer on the wonky-but-much-beloved first-person RPG's sequel and ah heck, who needs my words, just watch the video below.
]]>Matt: Brendy never made it home last night, after jeering his way through Bethesda's conference in person. The hotel room is lonely and I miss him very much, but the PC Gaming Show must go on. Welcome to the "I'm the only one that's here-ah", where I cheer and jeer at the cheery RPS fanzine's show by myself.
Brendan Wraithwell: Don't worry, I've got your back.
]]>Bordering on a miracle, Sega have confirmed an English version of Phantasy Star Online 2 after seven years of their teaser site saying it was coming soon. Sonic Team's free-to-play action RPG has been a Japanese online gaming staple for yonks, but the publisher have been deathly silent about an English release for years. Announced to much surprise during the Microsoft E3 presser, it's headed to Windows 10 on PC next spring, in America. Just not Europe, until further notice, Sega say. Below, a new trailer, and some thoughts as an active player currently using an unofficial translation.
]]>Get one hundred people together in a wasteland their natural inclination will be to find guns and murder each other to pieces, the ongoing glut of battle royale shooters would have you believe. It wasn't always this way. Television gameshows like It's A Knockout, Wipeout, and especially Takeshi's Castle once showed us that dozens of competitors can come together to fanny about in weird minigames, no murder necessary. We can get back there. Devolver Digital last night announced Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, a hundred-player rumble where the path to victory is a long and foolish obstacle course.
]]>I once spent an entire week in a $6 Saigon hotel room doing basically nothing but eating Subway and reading dodgy pirate copies of the Game Of Thrones books -- we're talking copies where the text would occasionally bleed into the spine and some of the maps were upside down -- and it was the best. When I got back home, I played Dark Souls, then proceeded to spend the next several years refusing to shut up about it. I’m predictably excited in a multitude of ways about Elden Ring, but perhaps none more so than how it has exponentially increased the likelihood of one of my favourite half-baked, tinfoil-coated suspicions: The Caterina Knight’s onion shaped helms were an oblique tribute to everyone’s favourite geordie smuggler, Davos Seaworth -- also known as "The Onion Knight". Coincidentally, coating an onion in tin foil and baking it on a low heat is a delicious way to get your daily onion.
]]>I understand that spiders are our household helpers and it's wrong to hate them, but I also understand that the fungus-infected giant spiders in Ori And The Will Of The Wisps are horrible and I hate them with my entire being. The purpose of the new trailer debuted at E3 was to announce a release date of February 11th, 2020 but that has only caused me to blot out that day on my calendar with black marker to pretend it's not happening. Come look at how horrible this spider is.
]]>Obsidian Entertainment's oddball sci-fi FPS-RPG The Outer Worlds will first launch on October 25th, Microsoft announced during the night's newsblast. What surprised me in the trailer is a feature I'd missed: the game has a shrink ray which blasts wibbly shrinkbeams until the target becomes diddy. A must-have weapon. I know young Matt will meet Obsidian at E3 later this week so I must press him to press them for an answer to the pressing question: can I shrink myself by shooting the ray into a mirror?
]]>Trying to keep up with E3 2019 is a fool's errand, and the foaming river of content streaming down the internet's face doesn't always make it easier. So here's a round-up of every news story from the show we think matters to you, with links to our full stories (and bantful liveblogs) where relevant. We'll be updating this hourly, so keep coming back.
]]>It's been four years since Microsoft unveiled their first Xbox Elite controller, but now there's a new Series 2 model coming that offers even more customisation options and better battery life. You'll still have to fork out a mildly ludicrous £160 / $180 for it, but pre-orders are open now if you want to be one of the first to get one when it launches on November 4 for PC and Xbox later this year.
]]>Forza Horizon 4 was fun, joyful and generous - one of our favourites of last year (scroll down) - and so this Lego DLC is in some senses the perfect colission. Forza Horizon 4 LEGO Speed Champions introduces a world of colourful blocks to the racing game, with Lego cars to drive and the same seasonal changes as the base game. It'll be out in three days, but for now you can watch the trailer below.
]]>In between your Deathloops and your Doom Eternal announcements this morning, Bethesda announced something called Orion. It wasn't a game, but rather a sexily-named "group of patented technologies" designed to make game streaming a heck of a lot faster, cheaper and easier for both developers and players alike. It's not their answer to Google Stadia. Far from it. Instead, it's an underlying bit of tech designed by the folks at id Software to work with Stadia (and Microsoft's mobile-based Project xCloud, or indeed any streaming platform) to help address the two biggest problems facing streaming services today: latency and bandwidth.
]]>Bethesda announced tonight that they're bringing two revolutionary new features to Fallout 76: human NPCs and a battle royale mode. Far out, man. Where do they get these ideas? Wild, just wild. Give me some of what they're on, right? Ha ha! They're sticking with their multiplayer survival sandbox after its shonky launch, mind, and judging by the wild hooting from the audience of industry professionals these two fanciful features will make it a runaway hit. While human NPCs are a while away, a battle royale test week starts tomorrow (today? today. it's Monday now. oh god) - coinciding with a free trial week inviting all to play.
]]>Tango Gameworks, the studio behind the splendid spookings of The Evil Within, have announced a new spooky game and I can't tell you much of anything about it. It's set in a Tokyo where some manner of bad rapture has happened, and we're left to fight ghosties. Not the good type of rapture, where those of us left behind are free to listen to rock 'n' roll music and do kisses. After The Evil Within, ah hell go on, show us your uninformative cinematic trailer and for now I'll trust you're making a good ghostgame.
]]>That game where you play a horrible John Carpenter's The Thing squiggling through vents with far too many meaty tentacles and adding the biomass of hapless humans to your own, or Carrion to use the actual name you can never remember so you end up spinning long descriptions that start with e.g. "you play a horrible John Carpenter's The Thing", has found a fitting publisher in Devolver Digital. Who else enjoys guts quite so much? Last we looked, developers Phobia Game Studio were still seeking a publisher, so it's grand to hear we should get to be a wonderful and terrible squigglebeast next year.
]]>I'm sure the chainsaws and shotguns and evisceration of Doom Eternal are grand and all but tonight when watching the trailer announcing its release date, I could only think "Ooh that's a lovely landscape." Hellish gates opening to reveal a Bosch-esque, Babel-y spire is a good view. A wee snippet of pure red figures bowing in synchronised worship is grand. I like that the smooth white architecture of the mysterious angelic (?) faction is the wrong sort of white, like bone or teeth rather than purity. Also there are loads of chainsawings and shotguns and evisceration and all that. Oh, and it's coming out November 22nd.
]]>Arkane Studios, the gang behind Dishonored and the new Prey, tonight announced their latest game, a first-person shooter trapped in a deadly time loop - hence the name Deathloop. I mean, I'm assuming it's a time loop but details are real thin for now. It's definitely set in some sort of loop, on a weird sci-fi island where two assassins are forever murdering each other. With peeks at the sort of superpowers I'd expect from an Arkane game, not to mention a natty spy-fi vibe, the trailer certainly has my interest.
]]>While Microsoft's E3 mediablast had nothing to say about Age Of Empires IV, and more's the pity, they did gab more about their ongoing efforts to fancy up older games in the historical real-time strategy series. Following 2018's Definitive Edition of the first game, we'll be getting Age Of Empires II: Definitive Edition this autumn. Yes, I know Empires 2 received an HD Edition with fixes and fancying only a few years ago, but this is a grander endeavour with new art and a new expansion and such. Have your first peek in the new trailer.
]]>Brendan: There is no end to the videogame onslaught of E3 2019. We almost perished escaping from the Microsoft conference mere hours ago, and we are already at another one. Joining me at Bethesda’s live show is Matt, who is lookin-- Matt? Matt!? Oh god. I’ve lost him. MATT.
Matt: Matt is dead. There is now only Cheer.
]]>As rumoured, the next game from Dark Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice studio FromSoftware is Elden Ring. Revealed tonight during Microsoft's E3 blast, it is some manner of FromSoft-y fantasy action-RPG. All we have to see for now is a pre-rendered cinematic trailer narrated by a chap stuck in a drainpipe. Elden Ring is being directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also directed Sekiro, Bloodborne, and the first and third Dark Souls. Also some fella named George R.R. Martin, who I'm led to believe writes books about shag-mad wizards melting an ice chair, is pumping lore into the game's world.
]]>The Xbox Game Pass For PC, Microsoft's clumsily-named subscription service which lets you play a library of games without buying 'em as long as you're paying the monthly fee, launched in the middle of tonight's E3 blast. For the curious, it's only £1/$1 to try the Pass for one month right now. The lineup will grow over time and is due to be 100-strong within a few weeks. Along with Microsoft's own games, such as Forza Horizon 4 and Sea Of Thieves, the library contains games from other publishers, like Imperator: Rome and Metro Exodus. Everyone who wished for Metro to escape Epic Games Store exclusivity will notice one finger has now curled on their cursed monkey paw.
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