Halo 5: Guardians will have packs of items, weapons, and skins for purchase, but items that have an effect on gameplay will not be allowed in Halo 5's arena multiplayer.
REQ packs, according to the Halo Waypoint website, can be acquired via the in-game currency or by purchasing them with real-world money. These packs will give you access to armors and weapons as well as skins and animations. But to keep its 4v4, skill-based mode fair, developer 343 Industries is banning weapons and armor received in these packs from it. However, anything you get in a REQ pack will be usable in the game's newly announced Warzone multiplayer mode.
According to the developer, "While players will earn REQ Packs across both Arena and Warzone, only cosmetic items can be used in our Arena experience. This is to ensure that all players start with the same weapons and abilities as part of our vision for the balanced, competitive play in Arena multiplayer."
The developer goes on to explain that it wishes to provide a breadth of different play experiences in the big-team, MOBA-inspired Warzone mode. "Within Warzone, you'll have the ability to deploy a multitude of weapons and vehicles from your inventory of REQs throughout a match," 343i states. "These requisitions are governed and balanced by Warzone's in-match REQ Level and Energy systems, which are driven by player and team performance within the mode."
The developer promises that the option to purchase the REQ packs exists only "as a matter of convenience." Additionally, money from the purchases will help fund the prize pool for the Halo Championship Series.
Check back on GameSpot all this week for further news and previews about Halo 5: Guardians. The game launches on October 27 for the Xbox One.
During a panel presentation this week at E3 2015, game director Todd Howard was asked about how Bethesda Game Studios has leveraged the power of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for Fallout 4. Howard said better graphics help players to become more immersed in the virtual world in which they're playing.
"I think with each of our games, the graphics [are] always going to move along," Howard said. "Not just the graphics, but memory is important to us. How much memory it has. If we make a world that has, not just more details, but more dynamic details that we can keep track of and stream in and load quicker, all of that suspends your disbelief that this is a real world."
"The graphics matter, they do matter in suspending your disbelief," he added.
Also during the presentation, Howard was asked about the colorful world we saw in the Fallout 4 announcement trailer. Fallout being a post-apocalyptic series, seeing bright blue skies was something of a striking difference compared to Fallout 3, which was quite gray.
"Looking back at Fallout 3, there is a sameness to the environment," Howard said. "It can be, if you're playing the game for an eight-hour stretch, a little depressing."
Howard went on to stress that, while much of Fallout 4's world is bright and colorful, a section of the Fallout 4 map--where the bomb fell--will be a dark and dreary place, as you might expect.
The newly revealed Star Fox game for Wii U, Star Fox Zero, does not have an online component, according to producer Shigeru Miyamoto.
Asked about any plans for online support in the game during a roundtable discussion at E3 this week, Miyamoto said, "No, there isn't." This is because Nintendo's focus is on other aspects of the game.
"We're really prioritizing having smooth gameplay at 60 frames-per-second," he explained. "In previous Star Foxes, we had focused a lot on dogfighting, but here we're really focusing more on the single-player experience."
It's unclear whether Zero offers any kind of multiplayer support at this point. And while Miyamoto was pretty clear about not having plans for an online component (which wouldn't necessarily have to be a multiplayer mode), he did suggest that this could change.
"Of course, as we continue on, as people get a feel for the game and the development process continues and we think it'd be really good, we'll definitely consider it," he added. "But right now we're not."
The wildly successful Kickstarter for Yooka-Laylee, the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie made by former Rare staffers, is now over. The final tally? Just short of $3.3 million.
Yooka-Laylee was first unveiled at the end of April, when developer Playtonic was asking for about $260,000 in crowdfunding. That target was surpassed in less than an hour, and it's gone on to become one of the most highly funded games in Kickstarter history.
Due to raising so much more than its initial funding target, a number of stretch goals have been met that will see the game's scope expand greatly. These range from new multiplayer modes to an orchestral score to free DLC for backers.
In addition to Kickstarter, Playtonic has been accepting backer funds through Paypal, which it will continue to do for now. This means the actual total that's been raised is higher than the $3.28 million Kickstarter lists, though keep in mind that figure doesn't factor in Kickstarter's cut (five percent) and payment processing fees.
The last new Banjo-Kazooie game was the Xbox 360's Nuts & Bolts, which was somewhat of a departure from the earlier games. The only news involving Banjo was that Banjo-Kazooie, Tooie, and Nuts & Bolts will be included in the Rare Replay compilation coming to Xbox One.
The PlayStation 4 finally has a new media player that allows video, music, and pictures to be streamed from a PC or USB stick.
The app--simply titled Media Player--is now available on PSN. If you browse through the PS4's content area, you'll find a Media Player tile that allows you to download it.
You can stream files off of a home server or a USB stick that you plug into the system. Many of the major file formats you'd hope for are supported, such as MKV, AVI, and MP4. A full list of supported formats follows below.
PS4 Media Player Supported File Formats and Codecs
Video
MKV
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
AVI
Visual: MPEG4 ASP, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MP4
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4.2
Audio: AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MPEG-2 TS
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2, MPEG2 Visual
King's Quest would like to tell you a story. It would like you to pull up a chair and listen to a tale of brave knights and loyal friends. It would like to enrapture you with a fairy tale so magical, you might actually believe it to be true.
Of the many games I have seen in action at E3 2015, King's Quest is the one that planted a smile on my face and kept it there. How could it not? As Creative Director Matt Korba led a live demo of the upcoming episodic adventure game, I was drawn in by the beautiful environments, which are quite literally painted by hand and scanned into the game, lending it a special bedtime-story quality. I was drawn in by the incredible soundtrack--a soundtrack that would have made legendary Looney Tunes composer Carl Stalling happy in the way every onscreen action was accompanied by musical onomatopoeia in the form of colorful staccato woodwind phrases and trombone glissandos. I was drawn in by the indelible voice cast, which includes Wallace Shawn (Vizzini in The Princess Bride), Richard White (Gaston from Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast), and the inimitable Christopher Lloyd, who should need no introduction.
"It's a long story, but I shall tell it briefly," says the aging King Graham to his granddaughter Gwendolyn, with just enough of a wink to prepare you for the charms to come. King's Quest is structured as a story of old anew, the kind that the storyteller might embellish upon as the years pass. Indeed, this structure is exemplified in the way you can tell Gwendolyn it's a story of bravery, or a tale of friendship, regardless of how you play the fable out. ("Do as I say and not as I do," adults told me as a child, and it seems that philosophy is alive and well.) Once the story begins, however, grandparenting philosophies are temporarily forgotten: a younger Graham, seeking the location of a knightly competition in Daventry, alights from his trusty (and bizarre-looking) steed Triumph and proceeds to fall down a surprisingly lengthy incline, with musical cues emphasizing every bump and roll.
According to Korba, the first chapter's script alone is about 600 pages long--about the entire length of Grim Fandango's. Much of that writing and voiceover is committed to flavor narration that occurs when Graham tries to combine inventory objects that can't be used together, or continues to use environmental objects over and over again. Consider these lines that the older Graham might intone if you try to go west when the game is clearly prodding you to go east.
"After all that graceful rappelling, I was certainly not headed back that way!"
"As I was saying, I followed the road to the east, and headed to the knight tournament."
"Ahem. East!"
"Suddenly, a gust of wind pushed me down the road, and I headed east!"
This beautiful Kings Quest image was honored with an Into the Pixel award this week at E3 2015.
That same gust of wind also pushes a fallen log into the way, blocking Graham's attempts to go the wrong way. What a small detail--and yet, what I saw during the demo proved that King's Quest thrives on these details. And when every line is so cleverly written and so charmingly performed, how can you not be taken in?
Later comes a moment when Graham blows into what appears to be a summoning horn. What might the gangly, good-natured knight-in-training say if you continually interact with it?
"That large horn seemed to be missing some sort of mouthpiece."
"The horn was broken, but that didn't stop me from blowing on it."
"Realizing a lot of people probably put their mouths on that horn, I was disgusted. I slowly backed away and never blew that horn again."
The sequence next shown off in the demo was one I had seen earlier this year, but even so, I was enchanted by details I had either missed or forgotten. The group of guards barring the way to the tournament entrance, for instance, squabbled over how one of them might be mistaken for another--in spite of each guard looking like a clone of the others. I also fell in love with the way the mirror that figured so prominently in the original King's Quest is used as your inventory interface. The sequence ended when Graham, having successfully built a raft and crossed the nearby river, befriended a squat knight named Manny, who is voiced by the ever-personable Wallace Shawn. Graham is so excited to have found an ally that he bounces around Manny, excitedly saying, "What's your favorite color?! Do you like popcorn-flavored jellybeans?! What's your availability for sleepovers?! Are we in a secret club?!" And wouldn't you know, Manny actually answers Graham's questions.
Korba says there are a lot of story branches in the game, but that King's Quest keeps its signaling of the various paths subtle. (I took this to mean that this is not a Telltale Game, and thus, the decisions you make will not be pointed out and dramatized at every turn.) The final section of the demo showed us such a decision being made when Graham attempted to cross a bridge, only to discover that the bridge was actually the back of a gruesome giant troll. "Hasn't anyone told you it's not polite to go stomping around on people's backs," says the troll, prompting Graham to consider a number of ways he could respond.
Another award-winning Kings Quest image, a watercolor painting by art director Evan Cagle.
You can threaten the troll. You can try playing nice. Or, you can try tricking him, which leads to yet another delightful scene, which follows when you tell the troll that you, too, are a bridge troll. "You're pretty ugly for a troll," says the beast, after giving you a good sniff, at which point he invites you to participate in the secret dance of the bridge troll guild. The dance is quite something to behold, and you must keep pace by pressing buttons in the proper order. (I suppose if King's Quest is to have quick-time events, that a crazy troll dance is at least a good use of them.) The troll is impressed by your moves, and as well he should be: Graham has all the awkward grace of any proper troll.
The demo was then over, and I was left feeling saddened, because, well, the demo was over. I was ready to see more. I was ready to be part of this world, and hear these stories. I was ready to blow more broken horns and dance with more trolls. I'm happy to say that the first installment of King's Quest, A Knight to Remember, is due out in late July. Perhaps if I gaze into my magic mirror, however, I might find some kind of spell that brings this vibrant game to us even earlier. If magic truly exists, surely that would be a good use of it.
Lego Dimensions distinguishes itself from other toys-to-life games with its lack of restraints on how its characters interact with each other. No matter what intellectual property they hail from--Lord of the Rings, Portal, Back to the Future, Batman, and so on--characters and vehicles can be used anywhere and everywhere in Dimensions. It might sound relatively insignificant, but it's hard to overstate how key this is to the game's charm, as well as how it clashes to some degree with some gameplay limitations.
A presentation of the game at E3 today showed off a number of the game's IPs all intermingling. A cutscene showed Gandalf's famous Balrog bridge scene, only for things to turn out a bit differently when Batman saves him from falling to his doom. Afterward, those two and The Lego Movie's Wyldstyle wandered through Wizard of Oz, Portal, and Scooby Doo environments, and we also got to briefly see Scooby, Marty McFly, and even Homer Simpson. Developer Traveller's Tales is insistent that there are no limitations on where these IPs can mix, something that was demonstrated when Wyldstyle and Scooby each took the Batmobile for a spin.
Each character has his or her own power that can be used to deal with certain obstacles, like Gandalf using magic to rebuild something and Batman latching on to an object with a grappling gun. You can also further interact with the world not by using your controller, but by physically interacting with your Lego game figures. Moving them around the game's physical portal can have different effects, and you can also follow in-game instructions to upgrade and modify vehicles by attaching and moving Lego pieces on the toys themselves.
Most notable among the locations we got to see was Aperture Science. It was, at least initially, the most delightful part of the demo. GLaDOS and Gandalf had an exchange, cake was mentioned (without being grating--perhaps the game's greatest accomplishment), and it was all very endearing.
You interact with the game using the physical game portal by moving figures from one area of it to another. Depending upon what power you have equipped in-game, this does different things, such as allowing the in-game character to be sent through an in-game portal. This lets you reach otherwise inaccessible areas and cues up some humorous comments from a befuddled GLaDOS.
There are also Portal-style portals that play a role in navigating these environments, and Chell was shown as a playable character, Portal gun in hand. Intriguing as this was at first blush, when we saw Chell use it, the options appeared to be extremely limited. There looked to be very little freedom with how it's used--as the player's cursor moved across the screen, there were a scant few highlighted spots where a portal could be open. While there are limitations on where portals can be opened in the proper Portal games, what was shown in Dimensions made it seem as if there might be less room for creative solutions to puzzles.
This is perhaps to be expected, given Dimensions is a family-friendly Lego game (and there's now Lego Worlds if you want a true Lego sandbox). This boils down to playing like Traveller's Tales' other Lego action games, and offering the same amount of control as in a Portal game wouldn't make sense here. But this glimpse of what could be an exciting element does make me worry to some degree that there might not be as many opportunities to put the Portal gun and other in-game tools to use as I'd like. It's entirely possible this particular area wasn't indicative of what other areas have in store, and there might very well be more freedom elsewhere. Even if that doesn't prove to be the case, I still find myself--despite being outside its target demographic as an adult with no children--eager to get my hands on Dimensions, which is the first time I've ever been able to say that about a toys-to-life game.
It was the high-pitched, puppy-like whine emitted from the creature in The Last Guardian which tugged at my heart strings. Or as the internet would say, it was what caused The Feels. The moment reminded me of a pet dog I once owned. He was an innocent and loving border collie, energetic and incredibly loyal. Seeing the protagonist interact with the giant furry creature in a gameplay video shown at E3 made me think of him--something I hadn't done in a long time.
The footage shown was an extended version of the gameplay revealed during Sony's E3 2015 conference, and started inside the ruins of the temple. There, the boy found the large guardian in a spacious room. The boy greeted the creature by petting it for a good few seconds; unnecessary, but a nice way to highlight the nature of their relationship.
The charm of the game was largely because of how the guardian moved and sounded. The manner in which its ears twitched, how it squeaked with disdain upon having its feathers pulled out, and its puppy dog whine when it couldn't reach food. The boy would need the help of his furry friend to make it through the temple, and the barrels of food scattered around the next room over served as great motivation. The boy picked up a barrel with both hands and tossed it at the guardian, who responded like how most pets do when thrown a treat: by catching it deftly in its mouth. The action was simple, but uncannily familiar to look at for someone who has once done the same with a real life canine companion.
There's seemingly no end to the familiar mannerisms which have been captured in The Last Guardian; the twitch and flick of the guardian's ears, how it coiled back on its hind legs to prepare for a jump, the way it shuffled around when trying to find its feet on unsteady ground. With the help of more treat-filled barrels, the boy was able to climb to the next room and pull a lever to open a door which the guardian could then walk through. From there, the pair moved on to the outside section of the ruins shown previously.
The relationship depicted between the boy and the guardian is one that transcends words; the two don't converse and no dialogue is shared, but it elicits a sense of connection. As someone who frequently enjoys watching puppy videos, I can't wait to see more of The Last Guardian when it's finally released for PlayStation 4.
Guitar Hero Live will launch on October 20, Activision announced this week during E3. That's a couple of weeks after Rock Band 4, which we learned earlier this week will debut on October 6.
Avenged Sevenfold
That wasn't the only announcement Activision made this week, as the publisher also confirmed 20 new songs (see below) and announced a special preorder bonus focused around metal band Avenged Sevenfold.
Everyone who preorders Guitar Hero Live will gain access to an Avenged Sevenfold "Premium Show" for the game's online mode, Guitar Hero TV. This show will be available in the game October 20-November 2.
Activision also has confirmed pricing for Guitar Hero Live's various bundles. A package that comes with the game and one guitar will cost $100. You can also buy a bundle featuring the game and two guitars for $150.
Microsoft has published a list of all the Xbox One and Xbox 360 games on sale this week on Xbox Live for console owners with an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
Bethesda's just-released Fallout Shelter for iOS is racing up the charts. Released on Sunday, the game is currently the top free app on iTunes, and fourth overall (third for games) in the revenue gross chart. The game is only behind mobile juggernauts Clash of Clans and Game of War in terms of revenue.
During a panel presentation today at E3 attended by GameSpot, Fallout 4 director Todd Howard said he was surprised to see the game at the top of the charts, especially for revenue.
"This is not about making money. This is about getting Fallout out there," Howard said about Fallout Shelter when asked to respond to the fact that it's so high on the top grossing chart.
Fallout Shelter is a free-to-play game; revenue comes from the sale of virtual lunchboxes that contain extra content. You can buy a single lunchbox for 99 cents or pay as much as $20 for a set of 40.
"It just shows that fans are smart; and if you give them something they think is fun, they probably reward the people who made it," Howard explained.
In other Fallout Shelter news, Bethesda has confirmed that an Android version is in the works and should be released in the coming months.
Yes, we're also working on Fallout Shelter for Android. Hopefully out in a few months.
— BethesdaGameStudios (@BethesdaStudios) June 16, 2015
Fallout Shelter lets you build your own vault and act as its overseer. Basically, you control all the people inside the vault and must keep them productive and happy.
"In Mirror's Edge Catalyst, you won't be using any guns at all," senior producer Sara Jansson told Polygon. "We've completely removed that aspect of the game. You can't even pick them up."
Combat in the first Mirror's Edge was perhaps its most maligned aspect; taking down enemies with guns, in particular, rather than fleeing seemed to conflict with what seemed like the most ideal way to play.
This is welcome news to me, particularly after becoming concerned that combat would play a major role in the game following the release of a trailer at E3 this week. That may still prove to be the case, but the absence of firearms looks to be a positive move.
DICE is being very careful not to call Mirror's Edge Catalyst an "open-world game". Designer Erik Ortman says the studio prefers to think of it as "free-roaming". The difference is a subtle one; an open-world game implies a single, contiguous world to explore without interruption, while free-roaming is more vague and indistinct. Ortman says the studio isn't talking about the game's structure until later in the year, so I'm not sure exactly how large and how open the city of Mirror's Edge Catalyst will be. Despite this, Ortman says the game will still offer you "freedom of choice" in how you move through the city's alleys and across its rooftops.
In my unfortunately short hands-on time with the game, I felt that freedom of choice come to the fore. I spent ten minutes undertaking missions in a free-roaming section of the city, and the difference between Catalyst and its predecessor, Mirror's Edge, was immediately apparent. Where Mirror's Edge locked you into a tight and controlled pathway from one end of its levels to the next, Catalyst gives you the breathing room to go off course and find your own way to your objective.
Those objectives appear in the world as points of interest. If you bring up the map, you can mark an objective as a destination, and the game will dynamically generate the appropriate runner vision--the way objects you want to parkour across turn red--for you. If you make a mistake, miss a vault, or get turned around, it doesn't matter - you can find another way around and keep your momentum.
And Mirror's Edge Catalyst is all about keeping your momentum. If you're running at a high speed, and chaining parkour movements together, enemies who are shooting at you will be unable to land a shot. This gives you the opportunity to take them down with two melee options: a flow attack, which knocks them down and maintains your momentum so you can keep moving; or a tranference attack, which tranfers your momentum to the enemy. Yes, you can kick people off rooftops; in fact, you're encouraged to.
But a new combat aspect that didn't gel with me was the introduction of third-person takedown animations. These seemed to initiate when I disabled the last enemy in an area, and the camera cut to an external view to show Faith acrobatically pinning a guard. For a game that gets the sense of first-person presence so right, it was disappointing to have that feeling interrupted for a flashy execution move.
"It's always been a game about first-person movement, but we did want to show Faith more because she's a really cool character," Ortman explains. "We do third-person finishers, we do third-person cameras when you finish races, and also third-person cutscenes in-engine. We want people to see Faith more."
Personally, I don't feel the need to see Faith outside of cutscenes; I already feel like I am her in action, and I don't need to be reminded of that in what feels like an artificial, immersion-breaking manner.
But beyond combat, the parkour in Mirror's Edge Catalyst felt fantastic. The grace period to execute moves seems to have been slightly extended over the game's predecessor, making the game less punishing so that you feel less clumsy. Individual moves also take less time to execute, and you maintain more momentum with each, so you can chain them together and achieve a "flow state" with ease. Combined with the new free-roaming direction, these ten minutes I played made me ache to go back for more.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst will release on February 23, 2016, for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will close the curtain on the story of Nathan Drake, and if you hadn't have already guessed that from the unambiguous sub-title, then you probably would get the hint watching it in action.
The development team at Naughty Dog appears to be throwing everything at this finale, with action scenes that are so ridiculous you wonder whether Nathan Drake will jump the shark before his closing scene with us.
GameSpot sat down with Neil Druckmann, creative director at Naughty Dog, at E3 2015 to discuss the final chapter.
From what I've seen, with all the crazy set-pieces that you're throwing into Uncharted 4, it feels as thought you're designing it as the final game in the series. Would that be a fair assessment?
Druckmann: Well our approach has been, the first three games were the set-up, and if we were to do one more, how would we top it all off? How would we bring Nathan Drake's journey to a close? Everything we're doing is constructed towards that; Bringing closure to a very long journey.
That journey isn't about just chasing treasure, it's also about your relationships you have formed along the way.
Is that what interests you most about Uncharted 4, the relationships?
Druckmann: I think as far as the story goes, relationships are the most important. In terms of what interests me the most, that fluctuates a little. Even with something like this, which is a stylised reality, with the classic 'good guys versus bad guys', you can still tell a human story.
Yeah you would think that, and at first it was an adjustment. After Uncharted 2, I thought I was done with the series. Bruce [Shelly, co-director] probably feels the same way. But our bosses asked us to come direct the game and, it was like coming home to something really special. And we didn't realise how much we missed it, because The Last of Us is such a different game, and we had a team that worked so hard to tone down all the bombast that Uncharted is so well known for.
Please don't take offense by this, but were I in your shoes, I think I wouldn't want to make a forth Uncharted. The third game ended so clean, and then The Last of Us happened, which was your chance to build a new story, and to create a new world, and everyone went bananas for it. I just think, the most amazing possibilities had opened for you, and then you had to go back and make another Uncharted.
Druckmann: So, that was the constraints of The Last of Us, and working on Uncharted 4 in some ways is freedom. As you can see in the demonstration, we can really go big and just have fun with it. In the real world, being dragged along by a jeep would probably kill you, but in Drake's world, he lives off of this stuff.
"After Uncharted 2, I thought I was done with the series. But our bosses asked us to come direct the game and, it was like coming home to something really special."
Speaking of that spectacle, you're adding so much craziness into the game, so much razzamatazz, that I wonder how far can you go without jumping the shark?
Druckmann: Well, we have a core team of designers who are always talking and keeping each other in check. We have people who are constantly asking the right questions of tone, and there are occasions where we've decided something is too big, so we tone it down. It doesn't always have to be on 11.
How much more effort is required in the transition to next-gen?
Druckmann: Oh, well it's a nightmare, right? We were finally coming to grips with working on the PS3, and then the rug was pulled from under us and we get whole new hardware to try and understand.
With the PS3, so much of the limitation was memory, and on PlayStation 4 we have so much of that, the new limitation is how can we get so much of that information from the disc to RAM as quickly as possible.
So different bottlenecks become apparent, and the world now is so big that we are driving through so much content that needs to be created. So to give you an example of how we simplify things, we tag certain materials in broad types, so you're not creating every single asset from scratch. A building is made from certain groups of materials, which lowers the processing load, which means we can create lots more content much more quickly.
This is your first attempt at a PlayStation 4 title, from scratch. How would you summarise working with the hardware?
Druckmann: I guess that working on The Last of Us Remastered really helped us. It allowed us to port our engine over. Because the hardest thing with working on new hardware is it takes so long to get something on the screen, and then get something on the screen at a good enough frame-rate so that we can analyse how it plays.
So, just doing The Last of Us Remastered helped. I mean, Uncharted 4 was rough at first, but now we feel we're at a good place. There's still a few more things we have to still add in, but most of the mechanics are in, and we're now iterating on them.
It was interesting to see in the trailer that Nathan appears to take one of several routes in his Jeep. How open-world is this game?
Druckmann: Yeah, I mean the term we use is wide-linear. It's not open-world, because we wanted to tell a very specific story, with very specific tension. The thing I have a hard time with, in open-world games, is that there's a lack of tension. Say if my ally's life is in jeopardy; I can still go off and do five different side-quests, and I don't believe that jeopardy. So I feel we need some way to control the pacing, and it needs to be ways where you are still active as well.
For us, the story is king. I don't mean writing, and I don't mean script. What I mean is, there's a certain experience we're trying to make, and that's going to trump the gameplay, that's going to trump the graphics. This high-level experience we create should, eventually, win that argument of what this game is going to be.
There was a time when anyone could pick up a pad and chase high-scores in a skating game. And then the Tony Hawk titles withered away, the Skate games came along with realistic physics and complex controls, and I became sad.
I have no ill-will towards EA's Skate series, it was an impressively authentic realisation of skating and, as a person with multiple friends "about that skate life," I got a buzz off how much they enjoyed the series.
But it was always bittersweet, as the thrills of a realistic skating experience in a video game were lost on me. I preferred the arcadey feel of the Tony Hawk's series. In particular, the way it was so eager to positively reinforce my pathetic attempts at tricking with points--however meagre they were.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a return to that classic skate-first-ask-questions-later gameplay, where the fingers take priority over the brain. I'll be the first to admit that I was not very good at the THPS games and, if the reactions from the developers watching me play the newest entry are any indication, I'm not very good at this one either. But I still had fun.
There's an unmistakably retro feel to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. It feels fast, loose, and forgiving. Its developer, Robomodo, is taking every opportunity to include callbacks to previous titles. Our demo, for example, started off in the Bunker, an amalgamation of Warehouse and the Hangar.
From the moment you get your hands on the game, it feels familiar. Reverts, manuals, and most of all the tricks of the Tony Hawk trade are still there, and gameplay is still all about racking up points and rubbing it in your friend's face when you break his or her record.
However, Pro Skater 5 makes a few new tweaks. First among them is pushing, which lets players pick up speed by using the right trigger button and slow down using the left trigger. It's a great way to reduce downtime after eating floor during a failed trick, and lets you fine-tune your approaches.
Another tweak is the special meter, which is now activated with a button press instead of just automatically kicking in when it fills up. When the bar is filled, your board glows blue, and you can pick exactly when you want to put it into effect, avoiding annoying situations where it pops while you're doing a transition.
The third big change relates to grinds. Robomodo has introduced a new mechanic called Slam, which lets players shift weight and bring the board down immediately, which is handy for rescuing any overshot jumps and controlling when you want to hit a rail.
It feels like there's a good mix of familiar and friendly old mechanics, and smart new tweaks. They help in making it more accessible and more responsive to play, but without overcomplicating a game that thrives on simplicity.
Our demo also took us to a level known as School 3, a new version of the classic School. This time around, it will be playable in multiplayer sessions running on dedicated servers, so in the words of it's developer, the park is going to be there "long before you get there, and long after you leave."
Click image in full screen
Levels in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 can be played with up to 20 other people in a freeskate mode where everyone just hangs out and tricks together. Once you've gathered friends, you can queue up to do missions together, challenge everyone in the session to a high-score challenge chases.
Pro Skater 5's online mode is designed to serve as a player lobby, without the pressure of having to find something to do, and the inconvenience of sitting through menus to do it. It should feel like a real skate park, where friends can compete, teach or learn, and generally just chill out with each other.
Finally, Robomodo has introduced the ability to create skate parks, with on-the-fly editing and remixing. As you character jumps into the air, you can slide into the creation mode and place a grind or a ramp in the perfect place. All of your creations can then be shared online for others to enjoy.
There's a classic feel to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 that--thanks in large part to the soundtrack--ignited a feeling of nostalgia for the originals and then immediately satiated it. As as unskilled Tony Hawk player, I'm excited to see the series return, and glad to see that it's sticking so close to its roots.
StarCraft II is getting another expansion, titled Legacy of the Void, at some unannounced point in the future. To hold players over, developer Blizzard is making a free prologue for it.
Called Whispers of Oblivion, this prologue will have three missions, including the first focusing on Zeratul since the Wings of Liberty expansion. According to the developer, Whispers of Oblivion is meant to bridge the story gap between the last expansion, called Heart of the Swarm, and the upcoming Legacy of the Void.
As a blog post explains, "In Whispers of Oblivion, players will join Zeratul for the first time since Wings of Liberty to unravel the final piece of the Xel'naga prophecy."
More details will be shared in July.
Additionally, Blizzard announced that the expansion is getting another beta test in July. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news about the beta, the prologue, and the expansion as it becomes available.
Details were scarce on the Monk, who is said to be early in development. He's the first support-class HotS character from Diablo, and according to director Dustin Browder, the idea is for him to be very mobile and agile. He's capable of healing enemies, and at the start of the match, he'll be able to choose a trait that dictates whether he'll be more support- or attack-oriented.
The Skeleton King was more fully detailed. Upon dying, he turns into a wraith who is able to attack enemies. Rather than deal damage, he can impair them and, in the process, reduce his death timer so that he can get back into the action more quickly. When he does respawn, he'll do so at the location of his wraith.
Browder also explained the basics of his two Heroic abilities. The first, Entomb, creates a wall that traps enemies inside it, forcing them to face off against the Skeleton King. His other Heroic allows him to swing his weapon around while moving forward and healing himself; it's reminiscent of one of his attacks in Diablo III.
Also coming to Heroes of the Storm is the treasure goblin from Diablo. As part of a special event, it'll appear in the opening 30 seconds of a match, before teams are able to square off against one another. If you're able to kill him before he escapes through his portal, you'll earn some bonus gold.
Murray went on to say that Hello Games was planning to announce a release date for No Man's Sky this week at E3, but plans later shifted for unspecified reasons.
For lots more on No Man's Sky, check out the new E3 video below and a gallery of new images.
The developer announced today on Twitter that its game will finally make its way to consoles with a release on Sony's system. The game has been exclusive to PC, and requires a moderately powered computer to run it sufficiently. This is good news for people like me, who have put way too many hours into KSP but would love a way to play it without investing in a better computer.
The game is basically a construction sandbox, allowing players to mess around with different parts to make rockets or space planes. It is easy to put together a simple spaceship, but it can get super involved and complicated if you decide to shoot for a moon landing or the creation of a space station.
You can read our review of Kerbal Space Program here, and then keep an eye on GameSpot for all news KSP as it becomes available.
Nier is a weird game. It's an odd spin-off of an already strange series, the brooding Drakengard franchise.
Drakengard tends to skew older in terms of target audience, but those who would enjoy Nier aren't just limited by the "grown-up" nature of its language and themes, but by the frequently bizarre twists the game takes. Its idiosyncratic nature works for it, however, which makes it one of the best "weird" RPGs to come out of Japan in the last decade.
It is, nevertheless, surprising that Square Enix would green-light a sequel. According to producer Yosuke Saito, and director Yoko Taro, it's not just about revisiting a world the developers loved--it's about giving the world a second chance to love it as well. The two felt that bringing Platinum Games on board will help give New Nier a better reception that its predecessor.
"With Platinum Games on board, we felt that we could really deliver on this experience we always wanted to get," Saito said. "As soon as the collaboration was decided, I felt, it's a done deal, we're gold."
"Platinum Games is a great company, so as far as I'm concerned, my job is sort of done as well," added Taro.
In addition to bringing on Platinum Games, developers revealed that the original composer for Nier, Keiichi Okabe, and FInal Fantasy XII and Bravely Default designer Akihiko Yoshida, are both working on the new Nier project.
Nier was originally released in Japan with two versions, one for PlayStation 3 and another for Xbox 360. The PS3 version featured a younger, teenaged protagonist while the Xbox version had a middle-aged man as the main character. In the version localised for the west, only the middle-aged man version could be played.
The two original character designs were geared towards different markets, based on feedback from Square Enix's North American and European counterparts. The new Nier will not take this dual-release approach, as the developers believe the time has passed for treating the western and Japanese markets so differently.
Taro did explain that the new Nier would feature three playable characters, two of which we have seen already; the white-haired girl who featured prominently in the trailer, and a small boy shown in a brief trailer shot standing on top of a building. The final character has yet to be revealed.
"For this new Nier, we kept an action RPG mindset and thought, this time we want to hit out a great, high-level JRPG, so we're going to stick to one character design," Saito added.
"Platinum is great at creating action games, and we've asked them to make things a little more simplified, slightly. At first I thought it was going to be a battle-heavy action game, but luckily for us, a lot of Platinum Games' staff members really respect Nier and took it to heart, and understand the project.
"We're really fortunate in that they essentially took the battle system and the game design of the original Nier and added Platinum Games-type elements on top of it to make this hybrid if you will. It's not like it's a completely new game, they really have respect for the previous game."
The new Nier currently doesn't have a release date, though Saito suggested that it may be PlayStation 4 only.
"Please play on PlayStation 4," he said in response to a question about what Xbox players can expect.
Taro and Saito explained that the new Nier project is more focused on creating an original story within the game world, and won't follow the narrative of the original. However, we can expect several Nier characters to make cameos. There will be these kind of connections, but Taro emphasized that newcomers won't feel alienated if they come to the new game without playing the original. Returning players, however, will enjoy a lot of nods and easter eggs from its predecessor.
Another feature that made Nier unique was how it treated player choice at the end of it the game and incentivized repeat playthroughs. There are five possible endings in Nier, all of which encourage you to go back into the game and try your hand at saving things again.
In one particular ending, you're asked to either sacrifice yourself to save someone or let them die. If you sacrifice yourself, the game wipes your save file--effectively deleting all traces of your adventure. To add insult to injury, it won't let you use the same file name you did on your previous playthrough, as if the game itself was telling you to move on. It's a bold move for a game, one that unfortunately (fortunately?) won't be repeated.
"We are going to maintain that multiple playthrough idea for the new project, but in terms of the save file deletion thing, we probably won't do it, since we did it in the original one and want to do new things," Taro explained. "But we will have multiple playthroughs involved. But you know... we're still in early phases of development. Maybe we will delete you save files."
The original Nier's level design was a mash of different genres; Players spent most of the time controlling Nier as you would in a typical third-person action game, but for select fights, the camera would swing up to a top-down perspective. On other occasions, it would switch to a side-on platformer, with some sequences more closely following conventions of shoot-em-up. This worked for some players, but not all, but the constant switching ensured that gameplay rarely got stale. The new game likely won't follow this pattern, however.
"Members of the media told me the original Nier is like a puppy someone threw out."
director Yoko Taro
The new Nier will, however, retain the tone of the original game and the Drakengard series. It will keep its mature subject matter and approach to dialogue and presentation, not shying away from hyper-violence and sexualization.
"Drakengard was my first game as director, and we were actually told a lot by our advisory board to do retakes and make changes and honestly, I said, screw this, I'm not making another one," Taro said.
"I thought, with Nier, I'm going to make a normal game. That's what I tried to make, a normal game, though people think it's very dark and somber. But for me, that's normal."
He added: "The way I look at original Nier is like your mom's home cooking: it may not be the best, but it's okay, you're comfortable with it. Members of the media told me the original Nier is like a puppy someone threw out. It's cute in a way, but there's something wrong in a sense, and you can't help but love it even though there's something missing and you can't put your finger on it.
"But now we're working with Platinum games, and with Yoshida and Okabe, and we feel we have these great ingredients now. Is it going to be too perfect? We have all these great chefs, if you will, working together, and now, is it going to be missing that thing that made it so endearing to our fans? But after thinking about it, we think, we're just going to try it and see how it goes."
Don't let the wave of game-related news in the last few days fool you: E3 2015 only "officially" kicked off today. Nintendo started the day with their pre-recorded Nintendo Direct Event, while Square Enix followed it up with their first ever E3 press conference. And of course, with the E3 showfloor now officially open, many of the biggest games we've only seen in trailers were finally playable.
The hunter Aloy stood on a cliff, surveying the expansive landscape before her. Grassy plains stretched outwards towards mountains topped with snow and peppered with tall trees. A healthy blue sky set the backdrop for the scene. It was a picturesque presentation of the natural world, and one that players could expect to explore most of, a developer explained.
Horizon: Zero Dawn will be an open-world game which players can choose to explore at their own pace. Its setting juxtaposes a natural world inhabited by very unnatural machinery and somehow makes the two blend together in a fashion that works. It was during a live play-through of the game with developer Guerilla Games at E3 2015 that I realised the game's ability to mix the old and the new in a way that allowed them to fit together.
For all of the natural beauty on display in the world of Horizon: Zero Dawn, strange robotic creatures would be its lifeblood. Aloy stalked through the underbrush towards her prey, armed with a bow and arrow for long-ranged attacks and a knife for quick stealth kills. She sprang out from cover to take down her target, but it was not an animal like I would have expected a hunter like her to tackle; no, it was a mechanical four-legged creature comprised of metal and tubes. Despite its cold grey exterior jutting out sharply against the warm greens and oranges of the vegetation around it, it fit in. Aloy stabbed at it in the same manner that I would have expected her to do with animal prey. Its last cries quickly dissipated as she muttered a brief prayer for it. It was a seemingly strange thing to do for a robot, but the action spoke volumes of how mechanical lifeforms were viewed in this world. All things natural and synthetic were equally respected, and it was that prayer which cemented the relationship between the two in my mind.
Even when faced with a large lumbering metal beast Aloy's tactical arrow shots were similar to how an archer would take down a mammoth. She was a hunter garbed in simple cloth and furs, and yet her weapons and enemies were seemingly synthetic, human-made, technologically advanced.
Aloy rained down explosive arrows, harpoon-like arrows with ropes, and armor piercing arrows to take the mechanical beast down. It wasn't supposed to make sense, but it did, and the ancient-modern oxymoron of the setting was what made it so interesting.
The paradoxical nature of Horizon: Zero Dawn both intrigues and perplexes me, and I look forward to unearthing its secrets when the game is out next year.
Progress made in first-person shooter Killing Floor 2 during its Early Access period will carry over to the full version of the game when it is released, developer Tripwire Interactive confirmed today at E3 2015.
The game is can be purchased via Steam in its Early Access stage for $30. Tripwire has been regularly releasing new content for the game, a recent update introducing a new map. Killing Floor 2 brings back some of the zombies and classes from the previous game, and Tripwire as confirmed that it will continue to add new maps, perks, zombie types, and more.
After only a couple of minutes with its co-op mode, Survival, playing Star Wars: Battlefront felt like being part of its wider universe. But at the end of the demo, when the magic begins to wear off, I began to lose interest in the gameplay.
And yet, from sound design to animations, Battlefront nails the Star Wars feel. The Stormtroopers move in that familiar, semi-robotic, a-little-bit-clumsy way, like their armor is a half size too big. The blaster sounds like it was lifted straight from A New Hope. When my shots hit one of the troopers, the impact and shower of sparks mirrored the Rebels' when they fought hordes of Imperial soldiers in the films. The AT-STs are big, hulking, menacing machines. They stomp around corners, sending massive blasts to take me out when they catch sight of me.
It's rare and pleasant to see a game set in a movie universe encompass the essence of that movie so well.
The same cannot be said for Battlefront's co-op mode. In this game type, you take on waves of enemies and try to survive for as many rounds as possible. In other words, it's a take on Horde mode. For this kind of mode to stand out at this point, it has to do something special.
Battlefront seems to rely on the Star Wars universe to provide that hook. Its co-op is par-for-the-course, featuring fifteen increasingly difficult rounds that you and a partner have to fight through. My demo was capped at six rounds, and it began with a wave of simple foot soldiers and ended with a mix of infantry, jetpack troopers, and an AT-ST.
A representative with developer DICE assured me that there would be more enemy types in the final game, but I saw only a few during my time with this version. Intelligent AI makes up for a lack of sheer variety, but at the end of my six rounds I was ready for a new challenge. Periodic drops that we had to claim and protect did little to shake up the gameplay. After a couple without any substantial reward, we gave up trying to claim them.
Additionally, split-screen co-op seemed frustratingly limited in visual scope on the map that I played on. I expected the usual problems that come with split-screen, but this was particularly egregious. We played on a map set in a canyon with a good deal of verticality. In the limited perspective of split-screen, I was constantly swinging around, trying and failing to pinpoint the enemy that was shooting from far above me. There just was not enough room on the screen to sufficiently play the game on that map.
For all that, however, I still had fun. I still loved watching the Stormtroopers racing around and flanking me and my teammate. The blaster felt great to shoot, and the perks we had gave a little color to the running and gunning. I had access to a shield, a rocket launcher, and a jetpack, and I was surprised at how satisfying it felt to simply jet up to the top level of the canyon.
What impressed me the most, though, was that Battlefront does not feel like the singe-player in Battlefield, Dice's other shooter franchise. It does not have destruction, nor does it have the same sort of hectic and high-octane atmosphere. Battlefront is, at its core, a Star Wars game, and its enemies, weapons, and sound go a long way to helping it feel like it has a place in the Star Wars universe.
At the end of the demo, I didn't think that the co-op mode itself was anything special. But the promise of joining up with a friend and taking on an AT-ST and a wave of Stormtroopers together is something I cannot ignore.
You'll be able to play Battlefront's co-op mode either split-screen or online when the game launches on November 17.
During the PC Gaming Show tonight at E3 2015, Bohemia Interactive announced the next expansion for military shooter Arma 3.
It's called Tanoa, and it's set on a South Pacific archipelago featuring a land mass of over 100km2. Tanoa is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2016, though a price point was not announced.
Players will find all manner of tropical vegetation in the Tanoa expansion, as you can see in the announcement trailer below. There are also new vehicles, weapons, attachments, gear, and characters included with the expansion.
Tanoa represents the first South Pacific destination for the Arma series. Prior locations for the franchise include the Mediterranean (Arma 3 base game), Eastern Europe (Arma 2), and the Middle-east (Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead).
For a closer look at Arma 3's Tanoa expansion, check out some screenshots in the gallery below.
The detail was revealed today during a Halo 5 presentation at E3 attended by GameSpot. Lead producer Chris Lee also mentioned during the event that campaign co-op will also support drop-in, drop-out play.
My first three minutes with Mad Max presented me with two wildly different experiences. A group of three enemies swarmed me as soon as I gained control of Max, and after a flurry of button-mashing punches and a missed dodge or two, they were all lying limp on the ground. It was an underwhelming way to start, and yet not a minute later, I was in my car, using a harpoon gun to rip the tire off an enemy vehicle and boosting head-first into another that promptly exploded.
It's the tale of Mad Max's two halves. On the one hand, the open-world game allows you to freely drive your vehicle--the Magnum Opus--through this post-apocalyptic world, powersliding around corners, slamming into vehicles at high speeds, and harpooning helpless enemies with impunity. On the other, you're moving around on foot, taking on enemies with what feels like a rudimentary version of the Batman Arkham games' combat without the gadgets or initial opportunity for stealth.
That the vehicle stuff is the superior component in Mad Max comes as no surprise, in light of what's been said about the game previously. It's not necessarily that the on-foot action is bad; it just feels--based on what I was able to play--thoroughly outclassed by Batman's combat, which clearly served as its inspiration. You have light attacks and heavy attacks that create powerful combos when combined, and you'll be alerted to incoming attacks that can be countered with a properly timed button press. You'll occasionally, through no specific action on my part that I could tell, pull off an especially brutal counter, breaking arms or otherwise eliminating enemies without the usual bevy of punches.
Beyond that, you have some additional tools at your disposal, like a shotgun and the bomb-tipped spears seen in Mad Max: Fury Road. But these are clearly intended to be used only on occasion--you have limited ammo, and they're also tremendously useful while driving. It's Max's fists (and the occasional melee weapon) that are meant to dispatch the majority of foes when on foot.
And all of this is fine provided the on-foot combat serves as an occasional distraction more than an equal to vehicles. Driving is the real highlight of Mad Max. My first task was taking down a convoy to earn an upgrade for my vehicle. And while I was somewhat disappointed the convoy wasn't anywhere near the size of those seen in Fury Road (something that might be due in part to how early in the game I was), the options I had in dealing with the main vehicle and its escorts made this a delight.
Just in this one encounter, I took down enemies in at least a half-dozen ways. One foolishly rushed at me head-first and was destroyed by boosting at him myself (which provides an especially wonderful sense of speed); another went down after side-swiping him repeatedly, the last of which sent him careening off a [ridge] to his death; one I shotgunned when he pulled up alongside me; yet another I burned to death with a flamethrower when he pulled up alongside me. Most satisfying of all were the various uses of the harpoon gun, which can be used to pull tires or other parts off of vehicles, incapacitating them, or to pull drivers right out of their rides.
And having all of this happen while driving at high speeds makes it all the more tense, enjoyable, and--when you manage to pull off exactly what you intended--satisfying. Combined with the vehicle upgrades that allow you to customize the Magnum Opus (making it faster or tougher, for instance), there's potentially a huge amount of diversity in how these encounters can play out. I'd love to try out different approaches--I can see it being fun to build a tank that crashes through everything, as well as a speed demon that circles around groups of enemies, picking them apart with the harpoon.
I'll be very curious to see what balance the full game strikes between time spent in-car and on-foot--we've previously heard it'll be in the neighborhood are 50-50. While you're free to choose between the two when exploring, there are certain areas that require you to get out of the Magnum Opus. If these segments are skippable to some degree or they find some way to introduce new wrinkles to combat, Mad Max can avoid being a game that alternates between being an absolute joy to play at times and somewhat of a drag at others.
Turn 10 Studios are ambitiously aiming to master rain in Forza Motorsport 6. We're not about your standard issue downpour in a racing game with superficial weather effects. It's more about drops of water beading on a triple-waxed chassis, the smears from a swing windshield wiper, and how large drops of water elongate as you accelerate. It's striking to see this play out in real time that it's almost distracting. This might be the first Forza game I play where I genuinely won't care that I'm not in first place.
The Turn 10 spokesman was so thorough with his verbal bullet point list of the pervasiveness of this dynamic water that I was compelled to quiz him on how the rain affects the Forza experience beyond visuals. Sure enough, he responded by saying that even the sound of the rain will change based on your camera angle, whether it's inside or outside the car. Ever notice how the sound of heavy raindrops on a car sound when you're at a full stop and how it's less cacophonous when you're in motion? You can experience the same sound changes in Forza Motorsport 6.
It's seldom that something seemingly superficial as drops on a car would be a selling point, but these water effects go beyond the car itself. Forza Motorsport 5 already established a solid design foundation that Turn 10 could work on other aspects that weren't explored in previous iterations. Water as a hazard is one of those features. That means puddles are large enough that driving into it at the wrong speed or angle can significantly impact the result of a race. Skidding on wet tracks isn't new, but losing control due to aquaplaning (or hydroplaning) is a different matter.
Turn 10 Studios also introduced me to the term "perocity", which is the measurement of open space in between rocks and other hard objects. In the context of Forza Motorsport 6, these are the spaces, grooves, and cracks in the myriad driving surfaces. There's a type of racing pavement that feels sticky to the touch on dry days, but feels slick on rainy ones. Don't be surprised if you feel these nuanced differences where driving over the 100-plus surfaces in Forza Motorsport 6.
Yet, Turn 10 knows their limits. Rather than toy with different precipitation levels in a given race, a soaked track will be wet the exact same way every time you race on it. That means the same puddles will be in the same spots, with the same size and depth. Sure it's unrealistic, but at least you can anticipate each hazard in the same way you can anticipate a hairpin turn. Race tracks are meant to be conquered through the course memorization. You still have other racers as the unpredictable variable. Speaking of competition, Turn 10 added a much-requested alternative to the often unpredictable driving habits of the Drivatar AI featured in the last two Forza games. Now you can toggle a setting that lets you race with more professional AI competitors.
Tonight during the PC Gaming Show at E3 2015, Frontier Developments announced its next game, a roller coaster simulation title called Planet Coaster: Simulation Evolved. The game is coming to PC, of course.
You can expect to play Planet Coaster in 2016, though a specific release date was not announced.
Frontier's latest project was space game Elite: Dangerous, which launched in full in December 2014.
The UK-based studio has a history with the roller coaster genre, having developed RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and various Thrillville games.
Check out the announcement trailer for Planet Coaster below.
No comments:
Post a Comment