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.
Shadowrun Chronicles has the veneer of a proper Shadowrun game. It uses a lot of the lingo, it has the right color palette, and the soundtrack is spot-on for a dystopian Boston. But on closer inspection, the façade is just that. On a minute-to-minute level, the majority of the game is spent running missions. Each one is a turn-based tactical scenario with usually one clear win condition and a few side items or collectibles. You'll infiltrate company X to steal McGuffin Y or hold off rival gang Z for some pre-determined number of turns. These missions are about as rote as they come, and they’re packed to the gills with clichés. At the end of almost every mission, some arbitrary twist occurs that is meant to raise the stakes or establish a sense of tension. However, Boston Lockdown misses too many necessities to be called an engaging drama.
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.
You can download all of this now from the in-game DLC menu, though keep in mind much of this is split up. You'll need to download it all individually, rather than being able to simply download one big pack.
The next set of free DLC will be available on July 3.
Following the recent revelation that digital games distributor Desura was Desura players to redeem their Steam keys as soon as possible.
Both companies note they have no inside knowledge as to what's happening with Desura; Norwind specifically states it hasn't heard anything directly from the site.
Desura is a relatively small games distributor that primarily focuses on indie games. Whether or not the the name seems familiar, it's possible you own games through it, as Desura was used to distribute some titles in early Humble Indie Bundles.
We've reached out to Bad Juju to find out more and will continue to follow this story.
Each Compendium costs $10, and 25 percent of the proceeds go to the prize pool. This means that total revenue derived from Compendium sales is actually somewhere in the area of $45 million.
The International 2015 takes place in Seattle August 3-8.
Square Enix has released a new tech demo for Luminous Studio 1.5, the engine that it is building , where it is expected that more of Final Fantasy 15 will be shown.
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.
On these courts, the story is everything. What will your story be? Narrated by Spike Lee.
