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.
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.
After only a couple of minutes with its co-op mode, Survival, playing , 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.
In fact, I was most intrigued by that flexibility to change the song and make it your own. Each song has a backing track carrying a beat and a melody throughout, but when you play, your ship travels along one of several different lanes.
Each of these lanes corresponds to a different part of the song, such as drum fills, vocals, or bass. When you do well, your lane autofills and continues to play that instrument, freeing you up to move to a different instrument of your choice. This creates memorable moments when vocals swell and dominate the song, the bass thumps especially strongly in your ears, or a driving drum section takes over. It doesn't seem like much, but this creativity allows each song to feel a little different every time you play it.
I had no idea how Amplitude would play. I have none of the nostalgia for the original that drove so many Kickstarter donations. In Amplitude, however, I found an enjoyable game that scratched an itch I didn't even know I had. It gave me the sort of personal rhythm experience that I've been longing for, and enough freedom of expression to make me feel like I was a part of making the song.
Another boss battle threw us in an arena with Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons, who is rocking his purple colours again, for those interested. This fight required us to make use of the transformed vehicle mode to build up speed, rush at him, and execute an uppercut to break his guard.
Using the arena to build speed and unleash destructive uppercuts and area-of-effect spin attacks will no doubt become more important as harder enemy variants are introduced.
We’ll be honest, we came out way more excited for Transfomers: Devastation than when we went in. There’s lots of other little touches we love. The little animated character portraits that strike exaggerated poses at various points during the conversation. The vibrant visual style that renders the Autobots with beautiful gleams of colour. The fact that Optimus Prime's idle animation has him putting his hands on his hips and striking a sassy pose, instead of a gruff prepare-for-battle position.
All of this inspires confidence that Platinum is giving Transformers the care and attention it deserves, and helps put The Legend of Korra behind us.
At Sony's press conference at E3 2015, developer Bungie announced a new expansion for with a bunch of real-world extras. Keep an eye on GameSpot for impressions and news about the Taken King in the coming weeks.
Kinda Funny was surprised to hear about The Last Guardian's upcoming release. In this video they discuss the trailer and the talks surrounding the game.
This week at E3, Bethesda officially , with supported mods coming to Xbox One sometime later. The functionality is expected to launch on PS4 further into the future.
"We're hopeful that it's out on PS4," Hines said. "We'd like this to be something that works across [all] platforms."
Hines stressed, however, that the functionality doesn't yet work on Xbox One--there are still a range of problems that must be overcome.
"It's not a thing right now where we can go, 'Oh, we'll take this SDK and drop it into our game, and it works.' It doesn't exist as it needs to on any of these platforms and we have to build it," Hines said, noting that Microsoft and Sony have very specific requirements about how they want it to work.
"The simplest things have very specific requirements, and each one is going to be its own undertaking," Hines said.
What do you think about Fallout 4 mods on console? Let us know in the comments below. And be sure to check back later this week for even sight from Bethesda about Fallout 4 and mods.
I sat down to see about 20 minutes’ worth of Dark Souls III at E3 2015. My reaction to the first 10 minutes? “Yes, this is Dark Souls.” My reaction to the latter minutes? “Yes! This is Dark Souls!”
Game players reserve a special kind of cynicism for series that oversaturate the market, and as special as
Miyazaki says that fluid controls were a major focus for Dark Souls III, and to that end, not only are the dual blades apparently ultra-responsive to player input, but short-bow attacks can be combined with slashes, allowing you to land shots quickly, even under duress. Miyazaki compared these moves to those you might see from The Lord of the Rings’ Legolas, though I didn’t see anything quite that acrobatic. The tour de force of the presentation, of course, was the boss fight that closed it--and what a boss fight it was. Miyazaki referred to the lithe, imposing knight that descended from the ceiling as the Dancer of the Frigid Valley. This beastly foe moved about the arena with moves you might see in a ferocious ballet, and the creature’s ghostly cape and veil made its unpredictable moves all the more frightening.
The fight grew more and tense as the beast swung its flaming blade, which had an amazingly long reach, and set the room aflame as the battle raged on. Alas, the demo ended when the player succumbed to one last sizzling swipe, and my reservations had been vanquished, at least in part. Do I still worry that Dark Souls III is retreading too much familiar ground too soon? A little. But at least it is ground that has proven itself worth treading in the first place.
"Our goal is, because you are able to obtain world-specific Keyblades after you beat certain worlds, the transformations of each Keyblade will be related to the world you visit," Yasue explained. "We've made each transformation unique to the world.”
Another thing you can expect from Kingdom Hearts III is giant, Shadow of the Colossus-style boss battles. There will be fights against smaller enemies, but some of KHIII's bosses will be gargantuan, allowing Sora greater freedom of movement and room to experiment with attacks--including the new theme-park-ride summon attacks.
"When creating a Kingdom Hearts game, we start with a gameplay system that I think would be a fun element," Nomura said of designing gameplay, "and once we have an idea of what kind of gameplay or system we want in place, we flesh out the story around it, surrounding the basic concept of what kind of fun we’re going to have with this new instalment."
He added: "The gameplay mechanic is the skeleton, the root of building the game. As an example of how some concepts come about… the game system in Dream Drop Distance where you switch between Sora and Riku and interchange, that concept fell into place first and then I built the story.”
Kingdom Hearts III still doesn't have a release date. For more details, check out our trailer breakdown below.
Check out the E3 2015 trailer for Planet Coaster.
Check out the E3 2015 trailer for Soul Axiom.
Kinda Funny was surprised to hear about The Last Guardian's upcoming release. In this video they discuss the trailer and the talks surrounding the game.
Check out the stage demo for Assassin's Creed: Syndicate from E3 2015.
We get a look at Battleborn from our stage on the show floor of E3 2015
Take a first look at Rising Storm 2 - Vietnam in this new trailer from E3 2015.
Lucy James sits down with Ali Rapp of Nintendo to check out some new gameplay of Star Fox Zero on the GameSpot E3 2015 stage.
