Many also mentions that it is capable in virtual reality development, among other specialties. Nothing is known about what the studio is working on, but keep an eye on GameSpot for when more news becomes available.
Some of the coolest additions to Destiny coming with The Taken King are the new subclasses. With different super moves, skills, grenades, and melee attacks, the subclasses change the way you play.
This is the Hunter's Shadowshot super move, which is a Void bow with the ability to kill an enemy instantly if it connects. It also creates a well that slows and blinds enemies trapped within.
The Shadowshot super move will be very useful in cooperative modes, but in competitive multiplayer it seemed more irritating than effective.
The Shadowshot super move will be very useful in cooperative modes, but in competitive multiplayer it requires a quick reaction to shoot down the enemies trapped inside.
This is the Warlock's new Stormcaller subclass, which lets you shoot lightning bolts out of your hands with the Stormtrance super move. The bolts chain between enemies, too.
It's moderately effective in competitive multiplayer, although it takes patience to kill enemies and leaves you vulnerable while you're shooting lightning bolts. Using it feels like using Destiny's machine guns: they're powerful, but kills are not instantaneous.
This is the Titan's new class, Sunbreaker. It has the most powerful super move of the three: the Hammer of Sol. It gives you a flaming hammer that you can throw to kill enemies.
The Hammer of Sol seemed to be the most effective in competitive multiplayer, letting players kill three to four opponents with ease during each use.
One of the new maps, Crossroads, is reminiscent of Bungie's days with Halo. Teleporters and man cannons highlight this level, letting players move around quickly.
The new Mayhem game mode is crazy, and playing it showcased the differences between the subclasses. Short super move recharge timers make games quick and explosive.
Capture the Flag is finally coming to Destiny in the form of Rift, a game in which you attempt to score a ball with style in the opposing team's goal. If you do a backflip into the goal, you get extra points.
At this point in the demo, some enemy mechs appeared and took down the player's second-last squad member. The last man standing then did what I thought was the coolest new ability: they picked up the incapacitated squad member, put them over their shoulder, and ran. While fleeing the overwhelming enemy force, this squad member them used an ability which allowed them to call in their Skyranger dropship and manually place the evacuation zone on the map. I'm excited by the tactical possibilities these two new mechanics allow, along with the dramatic last stand scenarios which I'm sure will inevitably result.
XCOM 2 doesn't seem like a massive departure from its competent predecessor. But it does appear to be addressing Enemy Unknown's broader tactical issues, while offering cool new abilities that encourage emergent drama and memorable player-created narratives. That is enough to keep me well interested.
XCOM 2 launches exclusively for PC in November this year.
Volume is a stealth game about being heard and committing crimes. Developer Mike Bithell stops by to give the GameSpot staff a quick look at this unique-stealth, puzzler.
Check out the dynamic and immersive world of Tom Clancy’s The Division in this all-new gameplay walkthrough. Face off with enemy factions in the heart of Manhattan as you attempt to reclaim New York City and venture into the Dark Zone in search of epic loot.
You can stream files off of a home server or a USB stick that you plug into the system. Many of the major file formats you'd hope for are supported, such as MKV, AVI, and MP4. A full list of supported formats follows below.
PS4 Media Player Supported File Formats and Codecs
Video
MKV
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
AVI
Visual: MPEG4 ASP, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MP4
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4.2
Audio: AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MPEG-2 TS
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2, MPEG2 Visual
King's Quest would like to tell you a story. It would like you to pull up a chair and listen to a tale of brave knights and loyal friends. It would like to enrapture you with a fairy tale so magical, you might actually believe it to be true.
Of the many games I have seen in action at E3 2015, King's Quest is the one that planted a smile on my face and kept it there. How could it not? As Creative Director Matt Korba led a live demo of the upcoming episodic adventure game, I was drawn in by the beautiful environments, which are quite literally painted by hand and scanned into the game, lending it a special bedtime-story quality. I was drawn in by the incredible soundtrack--a soundtrack that would have made legendary Looney Tunes composer Carl Stalling happy in the way every onscreen action was accompanied by musical onomatopoeia in the form of colorful staccato woodwind phrases and trombone glissandos. I was drawn in by the indelible voice cast, which includes Wallace Shawn (Vizzini in The Princess Bride), Richard White (Gaston from Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast), and the inimitable Christopher Lloyd, who should need no introduction.
"It's a long story, but I shall tell it briefly," says the aging King Graham to his granddaughter Gwendolyn, with just enough of a wink to prepare you for the charms to come. King's Quest is structured as a story of old anew, the kind that the storyteller might embellish upon as the years pass. Indeed, this structure is exemplified in the way you can tell Gwendolyn it's a story of bravery, or a tale of friendship, regardless of how you play the fable out. ("Do as I say and not as I do," adults told me as a child, and it seems that philosophy is alive and well.) Once the story begins, however, grandparenting philosophies are temporarily forgotten: a younger Graham, seeking the location of a knightly competition in Daventry, alights from his trusty (and bizarre-looking) steed Triumph and proceeds to fall down a surprisingly lengthy incline, with musical cues emphasizing every bump and roll.
According to Korba, the first chapter's script alone is about 600 pages long--about the entire length of Grim Fandango's. Much of that writing and voiceover is committed to flavor narration that occurs when Graham tries to combine inventory objects that can't be used together, or continues to use environmental objects over and over again. Consider these lines that the older Graham might intone if you try to go west when the game is clearly prodding you to go east.
"After all that graceful rappelling, I was certainly not headed back that way!"
"As I was saying, I followed the road to the east, and headed to the knight tournament."
"Ahem. East!"
"Suddenly, a gust of wind pushed me down the road, and I headed east!"
This beautiful Kings Quest image was honored with an Into the Pixel award this week at E3 2015.
That same gust of wind also pushes a fallen log into the way, blocking Graham's attempts to go the wrong way. What a small detail--and yet, what I saw during the demo proved that King's Quest thrives on these details. And when every line is so cleverly written and so charmingly performed, how can you not be taken in?
Later comes a moment when Graham blows into what appears to be a summoning horn. What might the gangly, good-natured knight-in-training say if you continually interact with it?
"That large horn seemed to be missing some sort of mouthpiece."
"The horn was broken, but that didn't stop me from blowing on it."
"Realizing a lot of people probably put their mouths on that horn, I was disgusted. I slowly backed away and never blew that horn again."
The sequence next shown off in the demo , but even so, I was enchanted by details I had either missed or forgotten. The group of guards barring the way to the tournament entrance, for instance, squabbled over how one of them might be mistaken for another--in spite of each guard looking like a clone of the others. I also fell in love with the way the mirror that figured so prominently in the original King's Quest is used as your inventory interface. The sequence ended when Graham, having successfully built a raft and crossed the nearby river, befriended a squat knight named Manny, who is voiced by the ever-personable Wallace Shawn. Graham is so excited to have found an ally that he bounces around Manny, excitedly saying, "What's your favorite color?! Do you like popcorn-flavored jellybeans?! What's your availability for sleepovers?! Are we in a secret club?!" And wouldn't you know, Manny actually answers Graham's questions.
Korba says there are a lot of story branches in the game, but that King's Quest keeps its signaling of the various paths subtle. (I took this to mean that this is not a Telltale Game, and thus, the decisions you make will not be pointed out and dramatized at every turn.) The final section of the demo showed us such a decision being made when Graham attempted to cross a bridge, only to discover that the bridge was actually the back of a gruesome giant troll. "Hasn't anyone told you it's not polite to go stomping around on people's backs," says the troll, prompting Graham to consider a number of ways he could respond.
Another award-winning Kings Quest image, a watercolor painting by art director Evan Cagle.
You can threaten the troll. You can try playing nice. Or, you can try tricking him, which leads to yet another delightful scene, which follows when you tell the troll that you, too, are a bridge troll. "You're pretty ugly for a troll," says the beast, after giving you a good sniff, at which point he invites you to participate in the secret dance of the bridge troll guild. The dance is quite something to behold, and you must keep pace by pressing buttons in the proper order. (I suppose if King's Quest is to have quick-time events, that a crazy troll dance is at least a good use of them.) The troll is impressed by your moves, and as well he should be: Graham has all the awkward grace of any proper troll.
The demo was then over, and I was left feeling saddened, because, well, the demo was over. I was ready to see more. I was ready to be part of this world, and hear these stories. I was ready to blow more broken horns and dance with more trolls. I'm happy to say that the first installment of King's Quest, A Night to Remember, is due out in late July. Perhaps if I gaze into my magic mirror, however, I might find some kind of spell that brings this vibrant game to us even earlier. If magic truly exists, surely that would be a good use of it.
if you want a true Lego sandbox). This boils down to playing like Traveller's Tales' other Lego action games, and offering the same amount of control as in a Portal game wouldn't make sense here. But this glimpse of what could be an exciting element does make me worry to some degree that there might not be as many opportunities to put the Portal gun and other in-game tools to use as I'd like. It's entirely possible this particular area wasn't indicative of what other areas have in store, and there might very well be more freedom elsewhere. Even if that doesn't prove to be the case, I still find myself--despite being outside its target demographic as an adult with no children--eager to get my hands on Dimensions, which is the first time I've ever been able to say that about a toys-to-life game.
It was the high-pitched, puppy-like whine emitted from the creature in The Last Guardian which tugged at my heart strings. Or as the internet would say, it was what caused The Feels. The moment reminded me of a pet dog I once owned. He was an innocent and loving border collie, energetic and incredibly loyal. Seeing the protagonist interact with the giant furry creature in a gameplay video shown at E3 made me think of him--something I hadn't done in a long time.
The footage shown was an extended version of the gameplay revealed during Sony's E3 2015 conference, and started inside the ruins of the temple. There, the boy found the large guardian in a spacious room. The boy greeted the creature by petting it for a good few seconds; unnecessary, but a nice way to highlight the nature of their relationship.
The charm of the game was largely because of how the guardian moved and sounded. The manner in which its ears twitched, how it squeaked with disdain upon having its feathers pulled out, and its puppy dog whine when it couldn't reach food. The boy would need the help of his furry friend to make it through the temple, and the barrels of food scattered around the next room over served as great motivation. The boy picked up a barrel with both hands and tossed it at the guardian, who responded like how most pets do when thrown a treat: by catching it deftly in its mouth. The action was simple, but uncannily familiar to look at for someone who has once done the same with a real life canine companion.
There's seemingly no end to the familiar mannerisms which have been captured in The Last Guardian; the twitch and flick of the guardian's ears, how it coiled back on its hind legs to prepare for a jump, the way it shuffled around when trying to find its feet on unsteady ground. With the help of more treat-filled barrels, the boy was able to climb to the next room and pull a lever to open a door which the guardian could then walk through. From there, the pair moved on to the outside section of the ruins shown previously.
The relationship depicted between the boy and the guardian is one that transcends words; the two don't converse and no dialogue is shared, but it elicits a sense of connection. As someone who frequently enjoys watching puppy videos, I can't wait to see more of The Last Guardian when it's finally released for
Volume is a stealth game about being heard and committing crimes. Developer Mike Bithell stops by to give the GameSpot staff a quick look at this unique-stealth, puzzler.
A quick glimpse of Deus Ex on PC at this year's PC Gaming Show at E3.
Check out the dynamic and immersive world of Tom Clancy’s The Division in this all-new gameplay walkthrough. Face off with enemy factions in the heart of Manhattan as you attempt to reclaim New York City and venture into the Dark Zone in search of epic loot.
Greg and Colin get the latest from Cliff Bleszinksi about his game, studio, and industry insight. Also, he really likes CS:GO.
The mastermind behind Mega Man, Mighty No. 9, and new Xbox One exclusive Recore drops by the GameSpot X Kinda Funny stage at E3 2015
Watch a live gameplay demo of Star Fox Zero including a boss battle.
