Last week Bethesda finally announced the hotly anticipated in Los Angeles on June 14. This is the first time the company is hosting its own press conference, creating the expectation that it has several big titles to showcase.
Disney has released a ton of new images from Its Star Wars-themed toys-to-life Disney Infinity 3.0 set, Rise Against the Empire.
Rise Against the Empire lets players play through iconic moments from the original Star Wars trilogy, Episodes IV-VI. Players will be able to explore open world planets like Tatooine on foot or on a Bantha, take down AT-AT walkers with snowspeeders on Hoth, and relive the speeder bike chase on Endor from Return of the Jedi as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca.
Travis sits down with Heroes of the Storm's game director Dustin Browder to talk about the Eternal Conflict event, the Battlefield of Eternity map, and the new Butcher hero.
Just before Bethesda aired the world's first ). All negative assumptions about Fallout 4, and its opening trailer, could easily fall apart once Bethesda shows the E3 build in action. Until then, let's keep the faith.
Developer Tripwire Interactive released its cooperative first-person shooter Killing Floor 2 in Steam Early Access back in April, and by all accounts it was a great success. In its Early Access review, .
Rejoice vault dwellers, Fallout 4 has a trailer! But do you think it's trying to tell us something? Danny returns to the wasteland to unearth what he believes are secrets hidden within it's frames.
Featuring Paul Rudd as a thief taking on the ultimate heist, Ant-Man looks like it will include the actor's laid-back charm and some hilarious action set pieces. After a tumultuous development that saw original director Edgar Wright replaced by Peyton Reed, the director of Bring It On, Ant-Man is finally set to release this summer.
May 5, 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Director James Gunn set Twitter on fire recently when he announced he had completed the first draft of the new Guardians screenplay. Star Chris Pratt has even confessed that the concept for the second film brought tears to his eyes when he heard it. Two years is too long of a wait for the follow up to this awesome new franchise!
July 6, 2018: Black Panther
The upcoming Black Panther film is still shrouded in mystery, but we do have that lovely official concept art above from Marvel to get our imaginations running. Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played James Brown in "Get On Up," is set to star as the iconic first black superhero in mainstream American comics.
May 6, 2016: Captain America: Civil War
The next Captain America film takes place immediately after the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, which means you can expect to see a broad roster of characters from the Avengers lineup, including Iron Man. Just as the title implies, the new film will feature a showdown between Avengers who find themselves on opposing sides of dangerous new legislation.
November 4, 2016: Doctor Strange
While this won't be the first time Doctor Strange has starred in his own movie, here's hoping it will be significantly better than the low-budget, made-for-TV version that came out in 1978. Now that Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast for the lead role, we can at least count on the black magic neurosurgeon to be charmingly handsome this time around.
July 28, 2017: The Spectacular Spider-Man
Spider-Man has been reset so many times that it seems like the poor guy's had an identity crisis. Marvel is hoping to right the ship with a story rumored to be set around a high-school-age Peter Parker. Marvel's got a great track record, so here's hoping Spidey will be slinging webs with style soon.
November 3, 2017: Thor: Ragnarok
If the third Thor film follows any of the storyline from the Ragnarok comics, prepare for some earth-shattering changes in the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe soon. With any luck, this story will have the same intense impact it had in print.
November 2, 2018: Captain Marvel
With the popularity of "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "The Hunger Games," movie studios are finally realizing that badass women can headline a hit. Fans have been clamoring for Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica to play the leading role. Please, Lords of Kobol. Let's make this happen.
July 12, 2019: Inhumans
If you haven't heard of the Inhumans yet, don't let that put you off. Ever since Marvel turned its lesser-known Guardians of the Galaxy property into an entertaining blast of sci-fi silliness, we've had no worries about this upcoming adaptation. If you want an early glimpse at the Inhumans, check out their storyline in the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
May 4, 2018: Avengers: Infinity War
A story so nice they had to tell it twice. The next chapter of The Avengers is actually coming in two parts, with the first film hitting in 2018. It'll be exciting to see how Marvel interweaves complex storylines from its vast universe into what looks like the ultimate showdown with Thanos.
In the broadest strokes, science fiction has always been about testing the limits of humanity in strange or unimaginable circumstances. Jules Verne's works raised questions about our boundless curiosity. Films like Blade Runner asked us to look at the Platonic ideal of a life well lived. These questions are important, and they tap the underlying fears and hopes we all share. They are curt expressions of the human experience filtered through the impossible or the surreal.
On the whole, Shadowrun fits into this grand unifying theory of science fiction. It melds classic fantasy elements like dwarves, elves, orcs, and magic with bleeding-edge cybernetics. On top of that, it supposes a future in which corporations take the role of national governments, and the only way to make a decent living is to steal from these cyberpunk renditions of the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. With such a rendition of the future, the game makes some important points about the role of class in this world and the tensions caused by unchecked corporate power. Moreover, cybernetics, while vital to bringing the lower classes up to the same level of physical and mental acumen as their well-funded corporate adversaries, sap users' humanity. Again, we have an implicit question regarding whether the loss of pieces of our anatomy is analogous to the loss of some ethereal sense of self or our souls.
You can use cybernetics to boost your stats, but without a heady narrative, potentially interesting moral choices are reduced to seeing which numbers are bigger than others.
These pieces are all fundamental to Shadowrun. They are an intrinsic part of the property itself, and they cannot be extricated, though Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown certainly tries. In doing so, it betrays its namesake by incorporating a long list of technical and gameplay missteps to create one of the most underwhelming releases in a long time.
There are still a few witty jokes, but they feel like token nods rather than honest embodiments of an ideal.
You begin each mission by selecting from a list of NPC helpers to fill out your team. You can also bring other players along with you for cooperative multiplayer--one of Boston Lockdown's signature features. The game expects you to get the same feeling you might if you were playing an original tabletop role-playing game. It tries to foster a community on which players can build an interesting game, but it fails in the most basic ways. Whether you rely on NPCs or bring in outside help, your teammates are disposable and their tangible utility isn't clear. As you prepare for specific missions, Boston Lockdown never provides enough information about the coming challenges for you to make a reasonable, informed choice about which companions would be best to take along. Even worse, no explanation or rundown is given regarding the specific strengths of different classes. You know, for example, that summoners can summon some … things ... to help them in battle, but the game never tells you what scenarios that ability is useful in. I had to fumble my way through missions using trial and error to brute-force a solution to tactical troubles that didn't have easy solutions.
Boston Lockdown misses too many necessities to be called an engaging drama.
That belies a deeper problem--the lack of tactical options at any given juncture. I've said before that great tactics games need to give their characters enough skills and abilities to tackle different problems. As a player, you must be able to think your way through a problem and apply creative solutions to otherwise insurmountable problems. Games like excel at this. In XCOM, if you find that a group of enemies has you pinned down, you may use explosives to blow open a wall or retreat, forcing enemies to reserve their attacks for the first sign of movement. There is an option to fight back and win in almost any condition.
Shadowrun Chronicles isn't just limited--it's the tactical video game equivalent of checkers. You can move and attack, but not much else. There's no defensive option other than to take cover. Your teammates have virtually no items to use, and items you do collect offer little more than minor stat buffs. The simplicity is odd, because it makes classes simultaneously more and less important. If you need to take down a large group of enemies and spreading out the damage dealt by any one member of your team is of prime importance, picking a summoner is the only viable option. While that's a valid role that can encourage closer cooperation on its own, the fact that you have no other way to accomplish the same goal wholly diminishes Shadowrun Chronicles’ success as a strategy game.
This is about as deep as conversations in Shadowrun Chronicles get.
To make matters worse, Shadowrun is also a terrible role-playing game. There are few characters to chat up, and those that do exist have only a handful of lines. There's no character development at all, nothing to react to, and no means through which to play a role. Exploration is limited to a tiny hub world where merchants sell you gear for lackluster missions. Boston Lockdown is set in Boston, of course, but the token references to Fenway Park and a few god-awful voice actors hamming up their Bostonian-ness don’t exude "Boston," one of the most iconic American cities.
It's hard for Boston Lockdown to escape comparisons with the other recent Shadowrun releases, which are far, far superior. They nail their settings, tell rich, deep stories with vibrant characters, and back all that with deep, interesting mechanics. Boston Lockdown, in comparison, is a barely functional demo. Without a solid draw, the game is pointless besides its online co-op, and even then, without a strong system of tactical play to back it, that mode is as pointless as any other.
When Shadowrun Chronicles was first released, the influx of players brought the game's always-connected servers to their knees. It was unplayable for over a week after the release. Now, with some of those obstacles vaulted, it's clear that the underlying game wasn't worth the wait. Shadowrun Chronicles isn't just a bad Shadowrun game. It's a bad game. That it comes from a series with such an exceptional pedigree and plenty of exceptional recent successes just makes the disappointment that much more bitter.
This week we get The Elder Scrolls Online, LEGO Jurassic World, Adventures of Pip, Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure and Kholat.
Travis sits down with Heroes of the Storm's game director Dustin Browder to talk about the Eternal Conflict event, the Battlefield of Eternity map, and the new Butcher hero.
Travis talks about the lore in League of Legends and how disappointed he is in the lack of strong narratives being produced by Riot Games.
Rejoice vault dwellers, Fallout 4 has a trailer! But do you think it's trying to tell us something? Danny returns to the wasteland to unearth what he believes are secrets hidden within it's frames.
Steam Machines, Steam controllers, and Batman: Arkham Knight made Top 5 this week, but you'll never guess the top story of the week.
Watch extended gameplay footage from Massive Chalice featuring the Giant Bomb crew.
