Xbox One will see a ton of releases this week, but the majority of them aren't your typical triple A titles. Instead, this week has one major launch, but the rest are remasters and smaller titles to keep your eyes on.
On Friday, November 3, four more titles will join the fray. The biggest of those launching is Activision's Call of Duty: WWII. All you need to know: co-op, all new zombies and multiplayer, and a campaign through the war that changed the world. Joining Friday's releases are the whimsical Steven Universe: Save the Light, gory Mutant Football League, and 16-bit 99Vidas.
Video games are a slow process of iteration. So in a sea of sequels, it's refreshing when one stands out. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is one such game.
As of Friday, Oct. 27 The New Colossus is out on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. In the video above, we explore the ways the sequel continues the legacy of its predecessor in terms of story, mechanics, and overall tone, creating a singular experience in itself.
For more of GameSpot's opinion and editorial show Reboot, stay tuned every Sunday at 11 a.m. PT, as we dive deeper into the most relevant games, news stories, controversies, and more.
We teamed up with SanDisk to give away new official Nintendo®-licensed SanDisk microSDXC cards for Nintendo Switch:
2x 64 GB microSDXC
2x 128 GB microSDXC
Four (4) winners will be chosen after the competition ends Sunday, November 5th, 2017 at 5:00PM PT. Entry is open to US residents only, void where prohibited.
Enter below (the additional entries are optional to increase your chances of winning):
With the new officially Nintendo®-licensed SanDisk microSDXC card for Nintendo Switch, gamers can count on reliable storage to download more digital games and content, and take it all on the go. Available in either 64GB or 128GB options, the cards offer quick and easy expanded memory to keep players' favorite digital games in one place so they are ready for game time anytime. The new licensed cards are certified to work with Nintendo Switch system, and deliver transfer rates of up to 100MB/s, to load games quickly for consistent, high-performance game play. The SanDisk microSDXC card for Nintendo Switch is backed by a lifetime limited warranty so games always have a dependable space to call home.
Developer WayForward has channeled its knack for crafting eye-catching retro games to make The Mummy Demastered, a licensed game based on the recent (and disappointing) Tom Cruise movie. It's an unusual fit, but don't let that dissuade you. Unlike most games based on movies, The Mummy almost completely abandons its source material to try something different, and mostly succeeds.
The Mummy is, at heart, a mixture of Ghosts n' Goblins and Metroid. It looks and plays as if it would be perfectly at home on the Super Nintendo, and everything about it will feel instantly familiar to anyone who's played their fair share of 16-bit side-scrolling action games. There's one giant map where new sections are opened by either finding new abilities and items or defeating bosses. Monsters immediately respawn as soon as you enter a new room or area and secret treasures encourage exploration.
Supply boxes are scattered throughout the world containing everything from an assortment of new weapons to health upgrades. Weapons include machine guns, a flame thrower, shotgun, rocket launcher, and more, including several types of grenades, ranging from standard explosive to fiery napalm. The Mummy also features destructible statues containing secret scrolls to grant you extra speed, higher jumps, and other necessary skills to reach new areas. It's a tried-and-true method of progression that keeps you searching every passage, and there's enough variety in the locations and room designs to keep the familiar gameplay from feeling stale.
The most notable aspect--for better or worse--is the way The Mummy treats death, which takes inspiration from WayForward's DS action game, Aliens: Infestation. When you die in The Mummy, your character turns into a zombie and you take control of a new agent. In order to retrieve all the goodies you've collected, you have to successfully kill the ghost of your former self. This is a great idea that fits in at first but becomes incredibly tedious during tough boss battles. Since you respawn in a save room prior to a boss battle, dying leads to an annoying series of events requiring you to kill the last agent, then go and kill a bunch of lesser monsters to regain health, before trying again to take down the boss. There's no option to simply revert to your last save file.
It's also a very tough game in general, ghost agents notwithstanding. Enemies constantly come at you from multiple angles, there are environmental hazards like toxic waste, and difficult bosses relentlessly test your shooting and dodging skills. All of these moments feel great in action, but the limited eight-way directional aiming is an occasional annoyance. Since you frequently have to shoot things at angles above and below you, the lack of finesse here requires constant position adjustments. It would have helped the combat flow to take advantage of modern analog controls and allow for a full range of motion when aiming.
Quibbles aside, The Mummy delivers a creative and action-packed adventure. Full of running, jumping, and gunning through tombs, forests, sewers, subway tunnels, and beyond, the game brims with challenging old-school charm. It's sure to bring back a flood of nostalgia, while still managing to be a solid game on its own. Still, a few more modern touches to make it slightly more playable wouldn't have hurt. As it is though, this is a fun and tough monster-filled trek that surpasses the license it's attached to.
Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You! won't just be making a theatrical appearance in the US. Three weeks after its weekend event in theaters, the film will air on Disney XD after the premiere of two new Pokemon Sun and Moon anime episodes.
This new film is a retelling of Ash and Pikachu's fateful meeting and their journey to find Ho-oh. The movie movie is being released to celebrate 20 years of Ash's adventures.
Despite widespread love for the series, this new take on Ash's origin story has already been met with controversy. Ash's pals Brock and Misty were replaced by two new characters, Verity and Sorrel. But that doesn't mean Brock and Misty are gone for good. The Sun and Moon episodes airing before the movie feature the pair for a special two episode arc.
Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You! will air in theaters next weekend; you can find more information about a showing near you here. The Disney XD premiere will begin at 9 AM EDT with the two anime episodes, and the film will air after at 10 AM EDT on November 25.
In March last year, Microsoft made the announcement that it was closing long-running British studio Lionhead, which made the Fable and Black & White franchises, among others. The closure of the studio also meant that the Xbox One and PC game Fable Legends was being canceled. A digital card game called Fable Fortune was released, though this game was released by an outside studio (with support from Microsoft, which owns the Fable rights). But will there ever be another mainline Fable game? That remains to be seen, but if Microsoft were to bring it back, that would please Xbox boss Shannon Loftis, who heads up Xbox's first-party publishing team.
She told GameSpot this week as part of her PAX Aus travels that Microsoft loves Fable as a franchise. One of the main reasons why Loftis moved to England years ago was to help lead the production of Fable II.
Fable Legends
"Fable is very near and dear to my heart," Loftis said. "Actually one of the primary reasons [I moved to England] was to work with the team on Fable II. Fable Fortune is now out, the card game. We love the IP. I can't talk right now about whether we're doing anything with it or not, but if I ever get the chance to go back to Albion ... "
Loftis' role as GM of Xbox Publishing for first-party games means she would be a key player in bringing back the Fable franchise. Though as of yet, we don't know if there have been any pitches internally at Microsoft to do so. She told GameSpot that her team receives between 350 and 400 pitches for games every year. Given the name and prominence of Fable as a franchise, we would be surprised if it never came back. But for now, it sounds like Microsoft is taking a similar to approach to how EA is handling Mass Effect, in that it is giving the franchise time to rest before potentially bringing it back.
Fable Legends had big ambitions. Microsoft envisioned the free-to-play cooperative game living for as many as 10 years, with Microsoft releasing updates constantly to keep players engaged. You would have played as a hero or villain, and the game was not in its earliest stages, as Microsoft was testing it in the wild. But it was not to be.
Another year of PAX Aus, another year of freaking amazing cosplay. Check out some of the best costumes we saw at the show, give the cosplayers some love on their social channels, and be sure to come back as we update this galleries with even more amazing stuff!
Identical twins Shenae & Mel Guzzardi had a couple of killer Overwatch alternate skin costumes. Here's everyone's favourite Australian maniac, Junkrat, in his Halloween Dr. Junkenstein costume.
GameSpot Theatre returns to PAX Australia this year, and we're hosting a bunch of great panels featuring the GameSpot Australia team--Jess McDonell, Dan Crowd, Eddie Makuch, and Edmond Tran--as well as our friends from all over the video game industry, including developers from the likes of Sonic Mania, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Netherealm Studios, and Square-Enix Montreal and so much more! My gosh!
If you're in Melbourne, come visit us! The theatre is located by the main entrance on Level 1, next to the Take This AFK Room. If you're not lucky enough to be at PAX Aus in person, you can watch all the action via livestream on this page as it happens, and check out the full schedule here.
10:30 AM - A panel for ANTS?!? Pro coaches total amateur at miniature painting
Come watch a master miniature painter attempt to teach a total novice the ancient art of painting miniatures. One of them can drybrush and wash with the best of them. The other has the fumbling hands of a three-year-old. Whatever the result, you'll learn pro tips on getting your miniatures battle ready, from painting basics to expert hacks that make those fine lines and shadows a breeze.
12:00 PM - Cosplay 101: A Maker's Guide to Cosplay
What does it take to turn an on-screen avatar into a real-world cosplay masterpiece (aside from a lot of duct tape)? We grill cosplay experts Henchwench and Scrap Shop Props' Cain Halliwell on designing, constructing and finessing the perfect cosplay creation. Do you need to be a serious seamstress or pro painter, or can you get started with the basics and build from there? Come along for practical advice, design ideas and tips to make your cosplay legit enough to make the mainstage.
What are the pathways to creating video games, from both industry and educational perspectives? How do you break into the games industry? Is it valuable to study game development at a degree level? Can anyone create a game? These questions and more will be deliberated by panellists with combined decades of experience.
PANELISTS: Jordan Browne [Senior Lecturer at Media Design School, Pixel Barons], Himanshu Khanna [Media Design School at Torrens University Australia, Program Director], Ellen Jurick [Game Designer and Producer, Blowfish Studios], Amanda Schofield [Senior Producer, EA Firemonkeys], Katie Stegs [Co-Founder, Lumi Consulting], Josh Birse [Producer, EA Firemonkeys]
3:00 PM - Microtransactions Are Great (Or Are They?)!!!
Love them or hate them, microtransactions are in many of the games we play today, from smaller titles up to the AAA products from big-name companies. And they aren't going anywhere. This panel will provide a look into why controversial microtransaction systems exist with expert insight from developers and journalists.
PANELISTS: Eddie Makuch [Associate Editor, GameSpot], Luke Dicken [Principal Data Scientist, Zynga], Artem Safronov [Executive Publishing Producer, Wargaming], Matt Hall [Co-Founder, Hipster Whale], Clara Reeves [President, Hipster Whale]
4:30 PM - 30 Hour Games In 3 Minutes: The Story Arc Speed Test
Franchise fanatics explain complex game story arcs in three minutes. Well, they try to. I mean, how long could it take to explain what happens in Final Fantasy anyway?
PANELISTS: Dan Crowd [Video Producer, GameSpot], Adam Perry [Community Manager, FFXIV], Jess McDonell [Video Host, GameSpot], Joab Gilroy [Esports Editor, Red Bull Australia], Daniel Van Boom [Asia News Editor, CNET]
The upcoming Xbox One X will be the most powerful console to date, and Microsoft has released a full list of games that will feature Xbox One X enhancements. Aaron Greenberg alluded to the list during a livestream at Gamescom 2017 and mentioned Quantum Break and Halo 5: Guardians as key games to receive optimizations.
Every game that gets the Xbox One X enhancements will receive the updates for free, which can include--but are not limited to--4K resolution (checkerboard or native), anisotropic filtering, HDR, and high-resolution textures. However, developers decide how their games take advantage of the more powerful hardware.
As of right now, more than 100 Xbox One games will be upgraded when the new console launches on November 7; check out the entire list of confirmed enhanced games below.
Insomniac's wildly vulgar and flamboyantly artistic Sunset Overdrive could very well get a sequel in the future, but there's a catch: it will only happen if the studio can get adequate support.
Studio founder and CEO Tim Price said during a Twitch live stream that Sunset Overdrive 2 is something he sees fans want. And it could be a thing in the future, but only if there's a publisher willing to bring it to fruition.
"Sunset is something that I know a lot of our fans talk about wanting to see the sequel," Price said. "We need a partner for that. That's a big game; Sunset 2 would be a very large-scope game."
Although Microsoft was the publisher behind Sunset Overdrive, Insomniac retains ownership of the IP, allowing it to decide its future. Despite still needing significant publisher support, the sequel could go a number of different directions, including losing its Xbox One exclusivity if Microsoft backs out. And considering we haven't heard anything yet about a potential sequel and Price's hinting at needing a publisher, it seems like Microsoft isn't currently interested in a sequel.
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