And when you do get into combat, its turn-based system immediately forces you to make strategies and think through your actions. This is where Bedlam breaks with FTL and makes its own mark: Its combat is difficult from the beginning of the game, and it feels most like chess in its execution. Your characters have no set order and you can move twice a turn. I was most impressed with the style of the combat, however: your characters finish enemies off with flourishing, brutal animations. My favorite was when my mutant character spat green slime on an enemy, dissolving it to bones. Unfortunately, the simple act of selecting and moving your characters can be frustrating; I often clicked wrongly and wasted moves, or accidentally attacked an enemy that I wanted to inspect.
Problematic controls aside, Bedlam's combat shows great promise. Every encounter is a chess match, requiring all of your wits to line up shots properly and protect your characters. It's way more strategic than FTL, and it actually makes battles interesting and suspenseful rather than chores that you want to avoid.
Bedlam shines most in its exploration, however. I continually wanted to drive my Dozer deeper into the Mad Max-inspired wasteland and to see what was in the next sector. The little stories told at every junction fleshed out the world and added humor to my bumbling, ill-fated expedition. The developer has added small, amusing additions to the framework of the game, making something as simple as selecting your crew or jumping into a battle funny and interesting.
Bedlam channels FTL and Mad Max to great effect, but it also differentiates itself and brings an original take to the roguelike formula. I found myself drawn into the world and immersed in the tactics of combat, and I felt genuinely motivated to play again and push it further when I ran out of gas and died. If the developer tightens up the controls, Bedlam could inspire the passion in players to keep coming back and to forge their own stories in the game.
Among the indie games Sony showcased during its E3 press conference this week,
Eitr also impressed me with both its graphics and sound. This is a visually striking game, with a very dark, gorgeous pixel-art aesthetic that feels perfectly suited to this sort of experience. Combat moves are also wonderfully animated in a way that really stands out by being paired with the retro visuals.
In terms of music, there typically isn't a lot--it's very subtle most of the time, offering a creepy ambiance as you make your way through an area. When facing a boss, it really kicks in; the one I faced was accompanied by some intense music that inadvertently caused me to become too aggressive.
I walked away from my brief time with Eitr impressed. I do hope that the full game offers enough opportunities for exploration so that it doesn't feel like you're traveling down a linear path. Even without that, there are enough elements at work here--including those I didn't get to see in-depth, like a skill tree and gems with different effects that can be equipped--that make Eitr look promising.
The season pass has become a part of video games, like it or not. More than ever season passes accompany game releases, selling all the DLC for games up front.
Not everyone in the industry is on board with this trend, however. , and later on IO will release a retail disk with all of the additional Hitman content.
Keep an eye on GameSpot for all things Hitman in the coming months.
Genei Ibun Roku # FE, the working title of the Fire Emblem/Shin Megami Tensei crossover project in development with Nintendo and Atlus (and loosely translated as "Mirage Spinoff # FE") is the result of one woman's passion for Fire Emblem.
In an interview at E3, Fire Emblem producer and Nintendo group manager Hitoshi Yamagami told GameSpot that a Nintendo employee who loved Atlus games initially came up with the idea.
"In our team at Nintendo Co., Ltd, there's a woman who really loves the Shin Megami Tensei series," Yamagami explained. "This is how this all started. And when she started this conversation within the company, we were working with Atlus at the time on a purikura [decorative photography] program for DSi and 3DS. At the time she said, 'Mr. Yamagami, there's something I would like to do. I want to make a game that mixes Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei.' And we said, that's exciting, let's give it a shot! But when we brought it to Atlus, they said, we'd like to but we can't, we're busy."
Another interesting combat feature is characters' special attacks, which are tied to songs. Throughout the game, some side stories will lead to a character releasing a song, which in turn will grant them another attack ability. This was added because developers wanted to give players a meaningful reward for completing side missions, much in the way completing side missions in Fire Emblem games allow you to recruit additional characters.
That being said, despite the modern setting and prominent pop-idol elements, it sounds like the game will feel at home in the hands of longtime Fire Emblem fans. Yamagami suggested that players who have been with the series for a while will have a different, deeper understanding of the game than series newcomers.
"What I'm most proud about this game is the fact that despite everything that we've said about it, as you play through the story, you'll realize that, what happens happens for a reason, because this game is inspired by Fire Emblem," he said. "So as a Fire Emblem fan, you'll recognize why things are happening; it's happening because it's Fire Emblem."
Halo 5: Guardians' Warzone multiplayer mode is a worthy test of one’s focus and ability to adapt. Whether influenced by the growing popularity of online battle arenas or not, 343 Industries knew that it’s not enough for Halo 5 to rely solely on a traditional suite of familiar and novelty modes. Warzone hones in on the appeal of multi-phase adversarial combat, something that the Battlefield series has utilized for years.
Warzone marks a notable, albeit unsurprising change for the series and more importantly, a change that complements the foundation of Halo’s long-revered multiplayer. The match I played started off simply enough: liberate a UNSC base from Promethean occupation. I haven’t faced off against these bio-mechanical-ethereal warriors since the release of Halo 4 so it’s refreshing to once again disintegrate these foes into fading glimmers of light. With the base cleaned out and my initial kills under the belt, my team and I were on our way to unlocking the weapons and vehicles that weren’t immediately available at the start of the battle. It’s typical in-match progression rewards.
The next phase was to take over three neutral outposts, which is also when you clash against human opposition. A PvE skirmish then becomes a PvE-PvP hybrid match. This essentially turns the battle into a Conquest mode. By now, I managed to earn access to my preferred field weapon: the sniper rifle. I complemented this upgrade by summoning a Covenant Ghost from my base’s garage. While not the most potent armed transport available, was in the mood for its speed and maneuverability. Being able to run over a couple opponents is a welcome bonus.
With each of the three outposts claimed, the third and final phase of the match started: boss fights. Conquest-style matches have enough to keep you busy, whether it’s defending your outpost or going rogue on a vindictive kill streak. You’re doing whatever you can to help your team reach the score goal; in this match’s case, it’s 1000 points. The bosses range from flying vehicles to hulking beasts inspired by Halo’s Brutes. Defeating any of these can result in a lead change, even more so if you can also take over all three previously-neutral outposts. Again, you’ve never short of goals. Would you be most useful focusing on one objective or should you spread your contributions evenly throughout the map?
The Halo franchise was born out of a single player campaign, but it matured thanks to its multiplayer. With over a decade’s worth of competitive modes in Halo, Warzone is a promising addition to multiplayer, especially for those who find Slayer too straightforward.
The feature which first stood out to me in . I saw a live demonstration of the Alpha version of the game on the Xbox One at E3 2015, where creative director James Phinney helped provide big insight into its mechanics.
Gigantic pits two teams of five players against each other in a single map. Each team has a guardian, an enormous creature that can move around the map and possesses its own skillset. The goal of each team is to destroy the enemy team's guardian. Killing enemy heroes powers up the guardian and eventually prompts it to go on a rampage, wounding the enemy guardian and providing an opening for the team to deal some extra damage to it.
Phinney confirmed that the game will support cross-platform play between Xbox One and PC versions. The feature will be opt-in, so players can still choose to be matched up with others on the same platform as themselves if they so wish.
Few MOBA games have transitioned to console and experienced as much immense success as their PC counterparts, but simply seeing those two bars placed in the center of the screen gave me hope for Gigantic. Peripheral input aside, playing a MOBA game on a sizeable television screen is a very different experience to playing it on PC. Important information such as health and stamina could be easily lost in the interface on a bigger screen, but Motiga's design has resulted in a HUD that places everything you need to see, where it is the quickest for your eyes to see it.
When the character levelled up, the pop-up descriptive text for the skill choices on offer did not take up a lot of screen space nor was it difficult to read. Gigantic uses a branching skill-tree as an alternative to items, which typically provide an option to change up the way a character can be played in most MOBA games.
Not that there was a lack of action being showcased; according to Phinney, the goal is to have matches run for 15 minutes on average. This will be helped by the fast pace set by the combat in Gigantic, which was as colourful as it was frenetic. While having ten players duke it out on the battlefield brought with it some rather chaotic moments, it was when the colossal guardians went head-to-head that the situation felt like it really escalated. Like King Kong versus Godzilla, seeing the two giant guardians clash made the hero seem so small and insignificant by comparison.
With the promise of quick matches, a colourful setting, and epic-scale battles, I am interested to see what Gigantic can bring to the Xbox One in particular. Its control-scheme and interface make me hopeful that it will be the game that bring a new take on the MOBA genre to the console and experiences success there. Gigantic will launch its beta phase this August, with the full game to be released sometime this year.
The Last Guardian's appearance during Sony's press conference meant the world to fans of Fumito Ueda, the iconic Japanese developer who's responsible for , two pillars of the PlayStation 2's library of games. Will The Last Guardian follow in their footsteps? Ueda certainly thinks so. During a presentation by Ueda earlier this week, he made it perfectly clear that The Last Guardian is, in many ways, a combination of the two games' core design principles: "we tried to take the best of both worlds."
"We" is important, because beyond Ueda, there are a number of other developers working on The Last Guardian who've also had a hand in designing Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. "This is a collaborative effort between Japan Studio and genDESIGN, where Fumito Ueda is the Creative Director of The Last Guardian," said Ueda's translator. "genDESIGN is a game creation studio that is formed primarily by the original developers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus."
This isn't terribly surprising, as The Last Guardian looks like a distant cousin of Team Ico's previous work, with ancient, man-made architecture set in the midst of lush, desaturated landscapes. Even animation peculiarities of the boy, where he moves fluidly, swaying and stumbling with equal parts grace and imbalance, recall memories of Ueda's former hero characters.
"we tried to take the best of both worlds."
To hear Ueda describe the story for The Last Guardian, which is still largely a mystery, deepens the connection to Ico even further. Ueda pointed out that The Last Guardian is "all about a young boy who's been kidnapped under mysterious circumstances." The pair "take an incredible journey together. They encounter ancient ruins. Their ultimate goal is to escape from this environment somehow, and that's for the player to experience as the story unfolds." Details aside, this is broadly the same tale that was told in Ico, where Ico is locked away and he attempts to escape a fortress with Yorda.
Players are expected to read the environment that they're in, to utilize the strengths and weaknesses of each other characters. The boy is weak, but he has a logical mind--your mind. Trico, the hybrid animal, can't be directly controlled--like Yorda--but it obviously possesses greater physical strength than the boy. Finding a solution to the puzzles in The Last Guardian will require equal parts of the boy's mind, and Trico's physicality.
"Looking back," Ueda said, "Ico was more or less about the cooperation between the boy and Yorda. She was a non-playable character, so we've taken elements from that. Looking back at Shadow of the Colossus, he continued, "it was more about the dynamic interaction with the giant creatures."
Based on the demo at E3, The Last Guardian not only embraces height; it thrives on it to instil emotions into the player that solidify our perception of the symbiotic relationship between the boy and trico. Ueda's translator noted that "Ueda's games always have a sense of height and depth, in Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and in a different way for The Last Guardian. The difference here is that you have Trico there beside you to cling onto as a safety net. It also helps the player overcome the psychological stress when standing on ledges, and to overcome those challenges, therefore leading to a sense of accomplishment." In other words, height is the source of fear and stress, but it's also an opportunity to feel a real sense of relief, something that should be very familiar to fans of Ueda's past work.
Ueda and The Last Guardian have escaped a prison of their own, in a way, resurfacing from the rubble of political strife and years of missteps. To see Ueda appear on stage was the relief that many of his fans were looking for, who for years have feared his absence was a sign that the game was no longer in production. In that sense, perhaps there's a deeper connection to be made. The Last Guardian is, by Ueda's admission, a combination of his past games, but perhaps it's also an allegory for his journey developing the game. Be that true or not, I'm just relieved to see that the game is still alive, and that Ueda is committed to pursuing his vision.
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Greg & Nick give an Oscar-caliber performance breaking down the Uncharted 4 demo at E3 2015 and re-enacting certain scenes.
Persona 4's much loved music get remixed for this Vita rhythm title.
