EA has announced that we'll be treated to the first gameplay reveal for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order soon. Although it's probably not a surprise for anyone, the company plans on unveiling the gameplay reveal next month, during EA Play 2019.
This year, EA is skipping out on hosting a press conference at E3 2019. Instead, the company's annual EA Play event will be separated into multiple livestreams that air during the week prior to E3. The first day of EA Play will occur on Friday, June 7 and the event will continue until Tuesday, June 11. EA Play is scheduled to take place at the Hollywood Palladium, and attendees will be able to watch presentations and play unreleased games. Whether Jedi: Fallen Order is one of them has yet to be revealed.
Last year, EA used EA Play to show off gameplay for Anthem, BioWare's ambitious if troubled loot-shooter, as well as detail its future plans for Battlefield V and announce several new EA Original titles, such as Sea of Solitude. Some of the games shown off at EA Play, like Sea of Solitude, have still not yet released, so there's a chance we'll hear more details or see new trailers for these titles at the event this year.
Jedi: Fallen Order was revealed at E3 2018, with the first major details and story trailer released during this year's Star Wars Celebration. One of the six writers for Jedi: Fallen Order, Chris Avellone, said that story is "very important" to developer Respawn. "I think they do a good job of introducing various narrative layers into their games already, but they think the story is an important part of what they perceive to be a Star Wars game," Avellone continued. "That's one of the reasons I like Respawn, because when they tackle something like that, they understand what the important points are."
Scheduled to release November 15 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order takes place in the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith. The game puts you in the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi padawan who escaped Order 66 and is now living in hiding from the Galactic Empire. However, he can't remain hidden forever, and eventually the Empire sends one of its Jedi-hunting Inquisitors, the Second Sister, and Purge Troopers after him. Neither EA or Respawn has revealed much about Jedi: Fallen Order other than that, but there are quite a few people and places we hope we get to see in the game.
In honor of Star Wars Day (May 4), several movies, games, toys, and collectibles are also on sale.
One of the most interesting periods in the story of Star Wars is the 19 years between the end of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and the beginning of Episode IV: A New Hope. That's the section of time when Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa grew up on their respective planets, while the Empire consolidated its power and built the Death Star. The spookiest and most interesting story from that period, though, is the one about how Darth Vader scoured the galaxy after the formation of the Empire, hunting down and exterminating the last of the Jedi.
We haven't seen much of what Darth Vader was up to in the years after he turned to the Dark Side. There's a comic series about him that covers a part of that era, but there are still a lot of gaps about what happened to various Jedi in the Dark Times before what's depicted in the original movie trilogy. But we'll soon get a closer look at that period, thanks to one story directly related to Vader's campaign to eliminate his former friends and comrades: Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order.
Not a lot is known about Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars game, but the first trailer gives the gist of things. It follows a Jedi Padawan named Cal Kestis, who managed to escape Order 66--the order from the Emperor to his clone soldiers to execute the Jedi--and is now living in hiding. Cal uses his Force powers one day to save someone after an accident, and that exposes him; it looks like the rest of the game is about Cal becoming a fugitive as the Empire tries to hunt him down.
Undoubtedly, Jedi Fallen Order will expand on the greater Star Wars story while focusing on the coolness of the moment-to-moment power of being a Jedi Knight. Surely, Cal will send storm troopers flying, lock lightsabers (or maybe vibroblades) with the Empire's spooky Force-wielders, and maybe move some impossibly huge stuff with his mind.
It actually all sounds like another great Star Wars game about a Jedi and Darth Vader's campaign to destroy them, which took place during the same period in Star Wars lore and greatly expanded on its story: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Though it was released 11 years ago, Lucasarts' title is available on PC and through backward compatibility on Xbox One and Xbox One X. It remains one of the better realizations of Star Wars as a video game concept--and it told one of the Expanded Universe's best tales, in terms of bridging the gap between the prequel films and the original trilogy, and in fleshing out the enigmatic Darth Vader.
The Force Unleashed provides a look at what Darth Vader could have been like as a father.
The Force Unleashed dealt with Vader's campaign against the surviving Jedi, but from a different viewpoint: that of Vader's secret apprentice, codenamed Starkiller. The game fleshes out an idea that comes up in The Empire Strikes Back, and which got strengthened in Revenge of the Sith: Vader actually hates Emperor Palpatine for what Vader has become. His falling to the Dark Side and siding with Palpatine cost him Padme and all his friends, plus his legs and the ability to breathe properly. Vader is a true believer in the Empire's fascism as a means to peace, but he also wants to kill and overthrow the Emperor, as is the Sith way. Vader has secretly been training Starkiller to aid him with that goal.
Most of the game is just about getting more and more cool powers for Starkiller, who can pick up and throw people, zap them with Force lightning, throw his lightsaber and impale them on it, and a lot more. You defeat huge enemies like AT-ST walkers and rancors, slashing them apart with your lightsaber or using the Force to hurl huge objects at them at ridiculous speeds. Overall, no game has quite gotten at the phenomenal power we all like to imagine the Jedi wield (even if it's a bit over the top) like The Force Unleashed has.
But it's the story in The Force Unleashed that really shines. It does a lot to develop Vader, and to a lesser degree, Palpatine, with some great twists. We see Vader at his most intensely evil as he wields power in his abusive relationship with Starkiller, and the game provides a look at what Vader could have been like as a father. That's something the movies only ever showed briefly at the end of Return of the Jedi, and then only in the moment of Vader's redemption. Though he's an adoptive father to Starkiller, Vader is also, basically, his slave master.
The battle between the Emperor and Vader doesn't go as planned, though, when the Emperor finds out about Starkiller. Vader kills his apprentice to show his loyalty, but it's a fakeout--Starkiller is secretly saved, and Vader gives him a new mission to gather up the Emperor's strongest enemies and create an insurrection. The plan is to distract the Emperor with a rebellion (!) so Vader and Starkiller can surprise him and take him down.
In true Star Wars fashion, though, the conflict between good and evil in the formerly evil Starkiller starts to rage, thanks largely to the friends he's made along the way. While Starkiller is struggling with whether to stay true to Vader or to his new allies, he finally gathers all the rebels together in one place, and The Force Unleashed pulls the rug out again. It turns out, Vader was never trying to use Starkiller to take down the Emperor. This was actually all an elaborate plan created by Palpatine himself, to use Starkiller to gather up all the dissidents into one place, so the Emperor could destroy them with a single blow.
Yup, in a paranoid, overly complex bid to destroy all his enemies, the Emperor accidentally creates the Rebel Alliance. The Force Unleashed recontextualizes the entire Star Wars original trilogy in a way that expands on the character of Palpatine as established in the prequel movies, mirroring the Emperor's rise to power in the prequels with a move that results in his downfall. It takes Luke Skywalker's line to Palpatine from Return of the Jedi--"Your overconfidence is your weakness"--and turns it into the game's big twist. Meanwhile, it expands on Vader and Palpatine's relationship, hinting at its turmoil while staying true to both characters. And it gets at just how evil Darth Vader really could be.
The Force Unleashed had its problems--its age definitely shows, it's not particularly intuitive thanks to weaknesses with systems like locking onto enemies, and a lot of the story hinges on a love story between Starkiller and his pilot, Juno Eclipse, which does not get nearly enough development--but as a Star Wars video game, it tread a lot of new, interesting ground back in 2007. It's a bummer that a supremely cool explanation for how the Rebel Alliance came to be is no longer a part of the official Star Wars story, but Jedi Fallen Order has the same chance to expand on what we know about the Star Wars films in the same interesting way. We can see more of the galaxy, learn more about what it means to be a Jedi (or not), and most importantly, send more stormtroopers flying into the vacuum of space, using more Force powers. Here's hoping Respawn draws some inspiration from one of Star Wars' best gaming outings.
Happy Star Wars Day! It's the one day a year where everyone around the world talks about their love of one of the biggest franchises in the history of entertainment. Actually, most of us talk about Star Wars every single day, so nothing has changed. However, an announcement from Lego has revealed some very cool new buildable and programmable droids, which launch globally on September 1.
Lego Star Wars Boost Droid Commanders allow users to build a droid and program code in order for the toy to complete tasks, like plotting a course, decoding messages, fighting, and more. Based on the characters from the Star Wars Universe, there will be three different droids to build in this set: R2-D2, Gonk Droid, and Mouse Droid, which you can see below.
The set may be pricey, coming in at $200, but all the droids are included. It contains 1,177 pieces, which is enough to build all three. R2-D2 and Gonk both measure at 7" tall, while Mouse comes in at 5".
The droids connect via Bluetooth to the free Lego Boost Star Wars app, which will be available on iOS, Android, and Fire Smart devices. Within the app, you can solve the 40+ missions and learn to code in a drag-and-drop environment, creating your own commands and actions for your droids.
If you are looking for more from the world of Star Wars on this special day, check out the best Star Wars Day deals, which includes discounts on Star Wars-related clothing, toys, movies, video games, and more. Additionally, GameSpot spoke with Stig Asmussen about the upcoming game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, where spoke up the setting and creation of Purge Troopers.
By Anonymous on May 04, 2019 07:58 am "Six Degrees of Freedom" is the sixth episode of Jordan Peele's revival of Rod Serling's classic series The Twilight Zone. Following a world-wide catastrophe, five astronauts face the uncertainty of their mission to Mars. Greg & Ryan are here to share their thoughts and point out all of the easter eggs they found while watching the episode. Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot's parent company.
Despite its departure from the novel, the film adaptation of World War Z was compelling because of its terrifyingly fast and uncharacteristically cooperative zombies. Seeing hundreds and thousands of undead bodies crawling over one another to create haunting swarms or towering pillars helped make the staple fictional enemy feel fresh, and it's the exact energy that gives its loose video game adaptation the same strong foundation. When it's all about gunning down thousands of enemies with a couple of friends, World War Z is at its most entertaining.
Simplicity is at the heart of World War Z. Each of its 11 stages are filled to the brim with undead enemies for you and up to three friends to mow your way through, using an assortment of firearms, special weapons, and explosives. There's not much else to each of these missions that make them more complicated, which works for World War Z in its initial hours. The straightforward nature of gameplay makes it incredibly easy to jump into a match and immediately understand how to contribute. Pointing a gun at enemies and pulling the trigger rewards you with satisfyingly gruesome kills that thin the horde, allowing you to push further to the next objective. Optional lower difficulties for each stage let you get by without much synchronized play, letting you get to grips with World War Z's multiple classes.
Unlike Left 4 Dead, which is clearly an inspiration for the cooperative gameplay, World War Z gives you the flexibility to choose which roles you fulfill in a team. Although you're able to equip any weapon you find, classes determine what you start with and what unique abilities you bring to each match. The Exterminator, for example, excels at lobbing Molotovs into gathering waves of undead enemies and has an upgrade tree that increases damage done to enemies that are on fire. The Medic can heal teammates without a first aid kit, and Gunslinger can distribute ammunition for use across all weapons. Classes can be tweaked slightly with unlockable traits (which you purchase with in-game currency earned from playing matches), though you can only equip a handful at a time.
The classes are fun to experiment with, and as you start taking on harder versions of each stage, they become more crucial to your success. At higher difficulties enemies are more ferocious and deadly, while you have fewer chances to revive downed teammates before they die. Friendly fire also becomes more unforgiving, making the frenetic nature of firefights a lot more challenging to deal with. These combine to better encourage well-balanced team configurations that capitalize on both healing and offensive abilities in order to survive, highlighting the usefulness of each class ability better than lower difficulties.
Playing as your favorite class unlocks perks for said class faster, and the same applies to the weapons you pick up. Kills accumulated with each weapon levels them up, giving you new attachments to purchase that increase damage, handling, reload speeds, and more. Weapons are separated into ascending tiers, with tiers increasing as you progress through a stage. Although you'll start with a Tier 1 pump-action shotgun, for example, you can just as easily find a magazine-loaded and automatic version before the climactic final battle of each story chapter. This gives you a reason to slow down and poke around each of World War Z's maps, as well as hunt down valuable explosives that give you entry into weapon-laden safe rooms. Picking up a new and improved weapon has an immediate and tangible effect on your ability to cut down increasingly large hordes, which makes finding the perfect one rewarding.
Stage-specific objectives are less exciting, though, only serving to push you from one combat encounter to the next without much strategy. Most of them just pad each mission with uninteresting interactions with switches or terminals just to group everyone up again before the next big zombie encounter. They're boring and rarely offer any opportunities for synchronized team play. Only a handful of scenarios attempt to add some variety into the mix, and even fewer succeed. One standout encounter tasked me and my team to venture into a multi-level room filled with toxic gases, forcing us to hunt for keycards that could be used to interact with terminals and bring the gas level down. This one scenario makes you wish there were more like it spread throughout the multiple story chapters, and it's frustrating that it isn't the case.
The combat set-pieces these objectives funnel you towards are more regularly engaging. World War Z replicates the signature dread of its film adaptation by inundating you with hundreds of enemies at a time. These "swarms" are fantastically exciting to strategize around. You'll get the chance to place up some defenses before the swarm invades, setting up automated gun turrets or electrified fences to aggressively attack chokepoints or establish new ones to slow down their movement. The sheer scale of these battles is impressive. It's haunting to watch zombies cascading off the sides of buildings or collecting to scale tall fences, all with the single mind to come and tear you and your team apart. Breaking down these swarms is both challenging and satisfying, giving you a sense of accomplishment when the tide subsides and enemy numbers thin to a slow trickle.
Each swarm is fun to battle against, but their predictability and placement in each stage quickly diminishes their effect on the action. World War Z's stages don't change outside of difficulty scaling. Sneaky Lurker enemies who can jump and pin you down will appear in the exact same areas of each map every time; a large and dangerous Bull will charge at you during the same set-piece battles that trigger in the same places during each chapter, while enemy-attracting Screamers will pool together foes at choreographed stages during each level. The predictable placement of these special enemies makes return trips to story chapters less exciting due to their predictability, which diminishes their appeal.
Breaking down these swarms is both challenging and satisfying... but their predictability and placement in each stage quickly diminishes their effect on the action.
This swarm mechanic permeates World War Z's limited PvP modes too, turning simple team deathmatches or king-of-the-hill skirmishes into fights not only against other players, but also dynamic pockets of undead enemies. This is the only surprising spin on PvP, considering that the loose shooting buckles under the weight of the precise requirements of more serious competitive play. It's nice to have something outside of the limited chapters in PvE, but it has a severely limited appeal without any competitive-focused progression or exemplary modes to make your time invested feel worth it.
It doesn't take long for the 11 chapters to feel tiresome, especially when World War Z struggles to remain stable and keep you in games. I had the game hard crash and boot me back to the PS4 dashboard on numerous occasions, during anything from intense firefights to simply joining an online game. The frame rate was also wildly unstable, especially when being rushed by hundreds of foes on screen. It's not surprising that it happens, but it still negatively impacts the fluidity of each encounter. The four locations that house each of the chapters are delightfully varied and immediately recognizable (the two chapters in the cherry blossom petal-littered streets of Tokyo were particularly beautiful), but they can sometimes also fall prey to flat and boring textures that struggle to enrapture you with the desolate apocalypse around you.
World War Z has many rough edges that are easy to spot, exacerbated by limited content that makes repeated playthroughs less interesting with each run. But it's also a cooperative shooter that has the space for those dynamic and ridiculous player stories to emerge in. The rush of taking down a swarm with friends is core to what makes World War Z's action work so well, and it rewards you well for the time spent on the classes and weapons you like. It could benefit from having more to go around, but if there's a future for World War Z and its chaotic cooperative action, this is a good foundation to build it on.
As the year progresses, we're slowly getting our hands on a variety of fantastic games across PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. And with E3 2019 just around the corner, the number of what's coming is about to skyrocket. Until then, there are plenty of big-name games and smaller indie experiences releasing soon to keep you busy.
May's biggest release has to be Rage 2, the latest open-world shooter from developers id Software and Avalanche Studios. Other big highlights include Team Sonic Racing and Total War: Three Kingdoms. The former is the newest entry in the cult favorite Sonic kart racing spin-off series, while the latter is the highly-anticipated twelfth mainline entry in the Total War series.
If you're big on Switch ports, there are a bunch coming this month. You can expect versions of classic Assassin's Creed and Resident Evil games all showing up on the portable platform. For a look at everything releasing in May, you can see all of the biggest game releases in the table below. For a wider look at what's ahead this year, be sure to check out our complete list of game release dates in 2019.
Rage 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) -- May 14
Rage 2 is one of the most unexpected sequels to be announced in a while. Both Id Software and Avalanche Studios are responsible for the upcoming open-world first-person shooter; the talent on both sides certainly helps. Avalanche Studios has years of experience crafting large and chaotic worlds in its games, with vehicle combat and special effects being a bit of its specialty as of late. On the other hand, Id Software is well-capable of making fantastic first-person shooters.
Team Sonic Racing (PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch) -- May 21
Team Sonic Racing is the third game in the well-received Sonic kart racing series. This time around it's focusing on cooperative play, having you work with a team and share power-ups in order to win a race.
The highly successful strategy series from the Creative Assembly and Sega finally will finally return this month with Total War: Three Kingdoms. Set just prior to China's Three Kingdom's period in the 14th century, the game takes you through the quintessential historical conflict often depicted in popular film and games. Featuring two distinct game modes, Romance mode plays off the supernatural character tropes defined in the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, while Classic is more focused on realistic warfare akin to what you've seen in previous mainline entries of the series.
Thanks to Disney's acquisition of Fox, the X-Men are now under the Disney/Marvel umbrella. And due to the sheer amount of time it takes to make movies, it will have to be years before we see them on the big screen as an integrated part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe--if we ever do. There's already a slew of movies slated for the next era of the MCU, known as Phase 4: a Black Widow solo film, a Guardians of the Galaxy three-quel, and a Black Panther sequel, just to name a few. There's even a Shang-Chi film in its planning stages. And none of those involve the X-Men.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who is notoriously cagey about the future of the MCU, was clear on the X-Men's hiatus in an interview with io9, where he discussed the new merger:
"It's all just beginning and the five-year plan that we've been working on, we were working on before any of that was set. So really it's much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now and more just the comfort factor and how nice it is that they're home. That they're all back. But it will be a very long time."
It's probably for the best; fans will need some time and space to accept anyone as Wolverine other than Hugh Jackman.
But Avengers: Endgame may have already set some X-Men-related plot points, though we may not see them pay off for another decade. And they have everything to do with the three Snaps in Infinity War and Endgame: the first by Thanos, the second by Hulk, and the third by Iron Man.
The Hulk had a potentially key line of dialogue, right before he performed the second Snap at the Avengers compound. He explained to the group that he must be the one to do use the Infinity Stones, because the resulting, massive amounts of gamma radiation they release would kill the average person. And since it was gamma rays that created the Hulk, he would stand the best chance of survival.
But just because everything looked normal on the outside, doesn't mean it was. What if these gamma rays affected more than just the Snapper, and also mutated people's genes? Maybe one Snap wouldn't do that, but there were three Snaps total, and the last two happened in close succession.
If a fraction of that gamma radiation could create a massive green rage monster, what could multiple Snaps, which affected not only Earth but the entire universe, have upon living creatures? And especially the ones closest to the epicenter, on Earth?
Could it cause varied, odd mutations in certain people? Like the ability to absorb life through touch? Or the ability to read minds? Or even the ability to control the weather? It would continue a key, running theme in the MCU: that many of our heroes' problems are the unintended consequence of trying to do good.
Tony Stark built weapons for America's troops, only to find out they were being used to kill them. After the Chitauri attack on New York, Stark Industries stepped in to help clean up New York, and inadvertently caused a bitter, unemployed Adrian Toomes to become The Vulture. In Avengers 2, Stark and Bruce Banner created an artificial intelligence to protect the Earth, only for it to gain sentience and grow evil. The Sokovia Accords were meant to bring accountability, but they turned out to be just another level of corrupt bureaucracy.
That the two "positive" Snaps--the first by Hulk, the second by Iron Man--could create such a life-altering, catastrophic effect, would be both thematically consistent and karmically justified. You can't do or undo something that big, and expect to get away with it scot-free.
So if the Snaps create mutants in the MCU's future, how will they explain the existence of older mutants, like Magneto and Professor X (assuming they keep the X-Men timeline true to the source material at all)? Maybe by exposure to the Infinity Stones earlier in the timeline, as seen throughout the MCU movies. Nazis experimented with the Tesseract in World War II in Captain America: The First Avenger (in the comics, Magneto was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp as a child), and it was later studied as a part of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., which we saw in The Avengers. The Stones could have been in any number of places on Earth or space since the beginning of the universe. And if a young Sabretooth and Wolverine came in contact with a stone centuries ago, they may be lying low, thinking they're the only mutants out there.
This would also dovetail with Marvel's timing issue. It might take several years for these mutant "gifts" to manifest; in the comics, they were often latent, triggered by puberty or a moment of trauma. There could be Phase 4 and a Phase 5--perhaps even a Phase Six--before the first wave of new mutants begin appearing.
And lastly, in the comics, Xavier's mansion was located in Westchester, New York. With the new, upstate Avengers facility now destroyed, what better place to build the mansion than on the land where the last two Snaps occurred? It would be a symbolic gesture on Xavier's part; he embraces his new students for who they are and how they came to be.
In short, the ending of Endgame is a little too neat. There has to be a loose end or catch to playing God. And this unexpected consequence would be a masterful way to bring the X-Men into the MCU fold where they belong.
If not for the studio logo when you start up Giga Wrecker Alt, you'd never know it was made by one of the most successful video game developers in history. It isn't just that this lacks any connection to Game Freak's iconic Pokemon series. Giga Wrecker Alt, an enhanced port of the 2017 PC release, doesn't have the cohesion present in the Pokemon games, and its blend of clever ideas is held back by poor implementation.
The core mechanic behind Giga Wrecker is novel: You destroy robots to gather debris, which can then be formed into objects like blocks, weapons, and tools. These help you to resolve both platforming and puzzles, and the giant debris blocks also make a handy melee weapon against the bots. The bigger the debris pile you carry around with your cybernetic arm, the better it will serve as a bludgeon against larger robots, and the more and bigger tools you can create.
For example, many puzzle rooms have pressure-sensitive switches that are only activated by the maximum size debris block. The solution, then, comes from taking down progressively heftier machines to build a big enough stockpile. Junk piles can also be cut or drilled through to make platforms, or a block piece can be used to deflect a laser. It's an inventive idea that merges combat, puzzle-solving, and platforming under a single gameplay hook.
However, it isn't long before the concept meets its limitations. Giga Wrecker often asks more of you than it's willing to give, making for an unforgiving and frustrating experience. Most pervasively, the physics systems at the heart of the game are inconsistent. Even when you already know the solution, you'll spend a significant amount of time performing it over and over waiting for the pieces to fall in place just so. Then, with the puzzle resolved, you'll be asked to escape to a door without falling into an instant-kill trap, which is where poor checkpointing issues arise--if you fail, you'll need to begin the puzzle again. At one point, I solved a particularly tricky puzzle and then jumped onto a moving platform, only to have the camera pull away to highlight that I had solved it. By the time camera control was restored, I was in a spike pit, dead.
The checkpointing that does exist is odd and erratic. Since the physics-based puzzles are prone to unresolvable errors, each major room includes a reset point highlighted in noticeable hot pink. These are activated by pressing up, which leads to unintentional activation on a fairly regular basis. If you don't hit these reset points, though, you'll find yourself sometimes checkpointed at the start of a puzzle and other times checkpointed when you first entered a room and repeating a dialogue sequence. I got in the habit of hitting a reset point as soon as I entered any room, just to make sure I set the checkpoint there.
Even putting aside unlucky moments and fiddly checkpoints, though, the platforming can be a struggle. The controls are imprecise, and you'll often continue to slide after releasing a direction or move an uncertain distance from a light, fine-tuned tap. Inching closer to an edge to prepare for a tricky jump will occasionally result in going right over it.
The platforming and puzzles are scattered across three major areas joined by a central hub. Progression generally comes from solving rooms to activate nodes, which then open up doorways locked behind a set number of those nodes. Rinse, repeat. The overworld map that shows how these areas connect is nonsensical, only giving the vaguest idea of direction to find the next doorway, but the areas are small enough that memorization eventually sets in.
The one area that works as intended is combat, but this element is underserved. The robot destruction is mostly about gathering debris, so enemies are few and far between, and you dispatch them with environmental hazards more than your limited arsenal of weapons. The more challenging combat comes from the boss battles: three named characters with two battles apiece, followed by a single final battle. These rare moments are where the combat shines, relying on the same debris-gathering mechanic but challenging you to gather it by countering their moves in between dodging devastating attacks. These fights are challenging, and as opposed to the rest of the game, they leave you with a feeling of accomplishment rather than exhausted relief.
Even putting aside unlucky moments and fiddly checkpoints, the platforming can be a struggle.
While much of the game grows more complex over time, the story actually becomes simpler and more accessible. You're put into the shoes of Reika Rekkeiji, a young girl who barely survived an apparent robot apocalypse thanks to an emergency surgery that gave her a cybernetic arm. The art style helps reinforce Reika's mindset, as her cyborg arm has a spindly sense of body horror. It looks twisted and unnatural on her frame, and as she starts to encounter humanoid "Astra" class robots, their appendages are similarly awkward, elongated, and misplaced on their bodies. It's a subtle and creepy way of showing rather than telling one of the story's major themes.
Giga Wrecker uses some staid plot tropes, like the classic amnesiac protagonist, and at first it feels like showing up to a book club without having done the reading. Characters make multiple inside references to the ongoing robot conflict with such ease and familiarity that I genuinely wondered if it was adapted from an existing franchise. As the story proceeds it slowly clarifies itself. It all carries a distinct tone of anime melodrama, complete with soul-searching soliloquies about the nature of war and violence. It isn't breaking new ground, but it's fine enough.
Despite its glimmers of inventiveness and artistry, Giga Wrecker Alt is its own worst enemy. The puzzles are too frustrating and the platforming too fiddly to recommend it. Game Freak set out to make something very different than the series it's most known for, and the studio's trademark creativity shines through in brief moments. The execution on the whole, though, is sadly lacking.
Though it turned out that Clint Barton's "protege" in those Avengers: Endgame trailers was actually his daughter, Lila, and not Kate Bishop, there's still room for Kate to make her debut--especially considering we're going to be getting a Hawkeye-focused Disney+ series here at some point in the future. But for all Endgame lacked in teenaged archery heroes, it did pave the way for another new hero to take the spotlight in a giant way.
Yes, pun intended, because we're talking about Cassie Lang, otherwise known over in Marvel Comics as Stature--Ant-Man's daughter and a member of the Young Avengers.
Cassie is by no means a new character for the MCU. She made her debut in Ant-Man 1 as Scott Lang's very young daughter--her age is never directly confirmed but Abby Ryder Fortson, who played her, was around six or seven during filming. Later, during Ant-Man & The Wasp, Fortston reprised her role at age ten. Though both movies showed her taking particular interest in her dad's line of work, both as a superhero and as a thief, she was way too young to be seriously considered for any sort of codename or mantle.
However, after Endgame's five year time jump, Cassie is now around fifteen or sixteen years old, right smack dab in the middle of the Young Avengers demographic and a suddenly limitless potential for the future of the MCU both in theaters and in streaming TV.
So, who is Stature?
Over in the comics, Cassie's story is actually pretty close to what we see onscreen, except she also has a heart condition, which helped motivate Scott to steal Hank Pym's tech in the first place so he could help wrangle a doctor to save her. The heart condition thing will come up again in a second, just bear with us.
Much like her live action counterpart, Cassie loved and admired her dad--both as a hero and as a thief, which inspired her to start experimenting with stolen Pym Particles on herself. This went on for a few years, though Cassie never quite got the hang of just how they worked and never saw the effects. A few major things happen--namely Scott dying during the Avengers Disassembled event--that inspired Cassie to try and sever ties with her mother and go on the run, first playing with the idea of joining the Runaways and then later seeing news about the formation of a new kid superhero team, the Young Avengers, which captures her interest.
The Young Avengers initially reject her application, but the stress of the moment triggers the Pym Particles within her (apparently) and allows her to manipulate her size just like her dear departed dad. Impressed, the Young Avengers leader and financer, Kate Bishop, welcomes her aboard. Rather than take on the name Ant-Girl or Giant-Girl, Cassie lands on Stature for her new alter ego.
For the most part--supervillains and life threatening peril notwithstanding--things go pretty well for Cassie for a while, until her mom discovers her secret (though it really couldn't have been that hard--the list of suspects when it comes to size-manipulating teenagers in the Marvel Universe is pretty short). She doesn't outright make Cassie retire, but she does fear that the heart condition Scott had effectively become Ant-Man to cure all those years ago would return thanks to all the continuous size-changing.
A few years down the line, she went on to join the Avengers: Initiative after the Young Avengers disbanded, but was tragically (temporarily) killed by Dr. Doom. Upon her eventually resurrection, her heart was stolen (like, literally, as in a forced heart transplant) which effectively depowered her.
Will all of that happen in the MCU? Probably not--but there's definitely the groundwork laid. Cassie's been interacting with Pym Particles for two entire movies and most of the moving parts of her backstory have been dealt with in one way or another. Also, now she's got five whole years of off screen time where anything could have happened--for all we know Stature is already an active hero in the MCU and has been for the last year or so.
Either way, the five year time jump solved the issue of Cassie's youth just in time for the next phase of movies to start rolling in. And while the original six Avengers may be done, at least for now, no one said their kids can't get in on the action at some point. And Scott Lang isn't counted among the dead or the retired--both he and Hope are still active in the MCU, meaning Cassie could start her superhero career with the Stature codename under their supervision. Now all we have to do is keep an eye out for teases of other Young Avengers staple characters--anyone have any theories about how Wiccan, Hulkling, and Patriot could make their debuts?
Crunch is currently one of the hottest conversations in the games industry, with big-budget titles like Epic's Fortnite, NetherRealm's Mortal Kombat 11, and Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2 reportedly pushing developers to extremely long work weeks. In light of this information, Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games has vowed to avoid allowing such a thing happen to its staff.
"A big topic in the gaming industry recently is development crunch. Some studios make their teams work 14 hour days to pack every patch full of the most fixes and improvements possible," writes Grinding Gear Games' CEO Chris Wilson. "I will not run this company that way."
The news comes via Reddit where Wilson chose to answer growing concerns over the state of the game. "However, one thing that the Q&A doesn't address is how we got here," Wilson leads the post, referencing a Q&A scheduled for later this week. "I wanted to personally post an explanation of what has been going on behind the scenes at Grinding Gear Games that led to this state."
In the post, Wilson lays out the studios plans for addressing the issues Path of Exile currently faces in the Synthesis update. "Synthesis was more work than we expected," Wilson writes. "While our improvements after its launch have helped a lot and many players are enjoying it, we fully acknowledge that it is not our best league and is not up to the quality standards that Path of Exile players should expect from us."
According to the post, there are "a large number of critical projects" happening simultaneously. "[From] 3.7.0 through to the eventual release of 4.0.0, [we] are going to make massive and lasting fundamental improvements to Path of Exile." While it's a huge undertaking, the New Zealand-based company will not overwork its employees, according to Wilson.
"Sometimes when we read our own Patch Notes threads and community feedback, we feel that we are being asked to do the same," Wilson says. "While there's inevitably a bit of optional paid overtime near league releases, the vast majority of a Path of Exile development cycle has great work/life balance. This is necessary to keep our developers happy and healthy for the long-term, but it does mean that some game improvements will take a while to be made."
With the action RPG finally out on consoles, Wilson confirms that, while there are "promises that we haven't yet fulfilled," the studio will "make headway on console features."
But first, update 3.7.0 will be detailed soon. "When we reveal 3.7.0 in three weeks, you'll see that its league has a focus on repeatable fun, and the combat revamp has a lot of focus on improving the fundamentals of Path of Exile's gameplay," Wilson says.
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