I went in to my Nintendo appointment ready to burn Metroid Prime Federation Force to the ground. In a Digital Event featuring absurd (but adorable) Muppet versions of Nintendo executives turning into even more absurd Muppet versions of the crew, this title would be known as the most laughable thing from the event. For years, the Metroid fandom has shouted to the heavens, "We need more Samus Aran!! Give us more Metroid!!" And Nintendo responded with this. Consider yourself trolled, Aranites.
Choose your own adventure from this deck of cards.
Upon approaching the E3 2015 demo for GambrinousÄ‚ËĂ˘â€šÂ¬Ă˘â€žË first commercial game, Guild of Dungeoneering, I was admittedly confused about what to do. Though charmed by the marker-on-paper art style, I was looking at my guildÄ‚Ë€â„Ës fortress, and the gameÄ‚Ë€â„Ës tutorial was telling me to lay down cards. This was one of those key convention moments when someone from the developer comes and asks, "Do you know anything about the game?" and I sheepishly shake my head, "Nope." But after some guidance, I started to understand what it wanted from me.
ItÄ‚Ë€â„Ës no exaggeration to say that good Star Wars: Clone Wars games were few and far between before Disney purchased Lucasfilm. Though Clone Wars has ended, it has continued in spirit with Rebels and the style of both are well-represented in their Disney Infinity play sets and figures, which then take that style and apply it to classic Episode 4, 5, and 6 characters, bringing them into that incredibly appealing aesthetic. In short, it not only makes up for the lack of adequate games for those franchises, but adds to them by imagining what the original trilogy would look like if it had been created that way in the first place.
Throwing them all together, like a big video game salad.
When a rip in the fabric of the universe can scramble together characters from various game universes—specifically Bandai-Namco, Sega, and Capcom—with no easy way to get back home, what better way to follow their exploits than with a turn-based grid RPG? When I think of all the characters I was able to play within the short demo fight of Project X Zone 2, thatÄ‚Ë€â„Ës the question that comes to my mind. How else would protagonists from Mega Man X,
IÄ‚Ë€â„Ëm probably repeating myself, but IÄ‚Ë€â„Ëm not a strategician. Maybe beating video games involves some modicum of strategy, but when it comes to planning out moves in turn-based combat, IÄ‚Ë€â„Ëm constantly nervous. Yet when I got to try out SkyshineÄ‚Ë€â„Ës Bedlam, a new strategic, single-player, roguelike RPG for PC, I found myself sucked in and regretting the short amount of time I had to dedicate to the demo at E3.
We first heard of Yakuza 5's localization in December, and now, Sega has a more specific time frame set. Its own official website lists the game as a "Fall 2015" release for North America. Click into the specific Yakuza 5 section of the site to see what I mean. Previously, it had only said "2015."
You have to enter your age to enter the site, but I encourage lying on that. I wonder if someone reads the birth dates on those? Like, does someone keep data? Does said data show an overwhelming number of birthdays on January 1st? I just pick January 1 every time, and then a year that was a long-ass time ago like 1926 or something. I'd pick 1770 or something if they'd let me.
Yakuza 5Ä‚Ë€ÂÂs late 2015 arrival puts it in North America almost approximately three years after its December 2012 Japanese release date. It will be coming as a digital exclusive on the PlayStation Network.
I've always been fond of tactical shooters, so this E3 was a particularly memorable one for me. Ubisoft alone had three of these games on the show floor, all with Tom Clancy in their name, and the potential to be great games. One of them I played was Tom Clancy's The Division, a title that was just as unique as I expected it to be, but not quite as polished this far into development as I hoped.
Franklin Lyons knows exactly where his virtual reality venture, Merge VR, sits in the emergent VR tech space. Merge VR, a gaming system for use with contemporary cell phones is aimed not at hardcore VR fans and bleeding edge tech enthusiasts, but the consumer who wants to get solid enjoyable VR experiences without breaking the bank, yet with a degree of quality that is difficult to come by in an inexpensive rig.
Merge VR is a system of a VR helmet—that is meant to house a cell phone for a display—made out of a light, durable foam with adjustable lenses and a paired Bluetooth LE motion controller that is like a miniature Wii Mote and Wii nunchaku rolled into one. Everything in Merge VR is made to be extremely durable; even the harder plastic parts have a degree of elasticity (including the controller). Perhaps the biggest shock was when Lyons put on the headset and casually dropped it (with a cell phone in it) from hip height onto the ground, where it squashed and bounced harmlessly due to the soft foam—the same property that makes it both lighter than most headsets and easier to fit on a user.
"The gyros in the iPhone are good enough," Lyons told me, speaking of getting accurate head tracking off of the phones. "And Samsung's are almost as good. I talked to them recently about getting the accuracy they have for Gear VR, but havenÄ‚Ë€â„Ët heard back yet."
Samsung may not want to get back to Lyons, since heÄ‚Ë€â„Ës producing a non-proprietary version of the same tech as their own Gear VR, created with Oculus support to house Samsung Galaxy phones. But with the addition of the controller and an app store for early cell phone VR gaming apps. This is also Merge VRÄ‚Ë€â„Ës greatest asset, with the foam headset simplifying the process. Lyons told me their goal was to have as few parts as possible, and that they removed 31 parts from the set once it was properly molded.
Super Mario Maker isn't the usual Mario title; it's a level designer, and so far the combinations have been insane in the membrane. The tool editor lets you design short or long levels with graphic sets from the original Super Mario Bros., the smash '90s hit Super Mario Bros. 3, the SNES launch title Super Mario World, or the redesign for modern consoles,
With the stunning announcement that Shenmue has been revived, and Shenmue 3 is indeed in development, we couldn't help but pop in the Dreamcast original and see where it all began. Lan Di, man, what a son of a bitch, am I right?
After a couple years of development, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward has finally arrived. As with Final Fantasy XI's first expansion in 2003, Rise of the Zilart, it ushers significant additions and improvements to the original game.
In one of those rare paradoxical moments, I was glad for a crash in the middle of a demo. After waiting in line for over an hour, following a briefing on how the controls of RIGS: Mechanics Combat League, the new robotic suit e-Sports title from Guerrilla Games, they added the caveat that the game was pre-alpha. And if it crashed, theyÄ‚Ë€â„Ëd get us back into the next session. I was halfway through a match when the controller suddenly stopped working.
This gave me the chance not just to play the game a second time (with a mech more suited to my playstyle) but also to talk to one of the gameÄ‚Ë€â„Ës developers, Lucas Van Muiswinkel, a Senior Producer at Guerrilla Cambridge, SonyÄ‚Ë€â„Ës first-party development team working on the game. We talked in general about the state of VR development and about his upcoming VR game.
To provide some background, in RIGS you pilot one of three mechs: a fast and small mech, a large beefy machine with a double jump, and a machine with a hover ability that splits the difference in size. RIGS is a sports game but an odd one. Your challenge is to power up your mech, and then jump through the hoop in the center of the map to score goals.
You can power up your mech by either finding energy orbs on the lower part of the map (RIGS features highly vertical gameplay) or destroying opponent mechs and gathering the energy that bursts out of their machines after theyÄ‚Ë€â„Ëre dismantled. From there itÄ‚Ë€â„Ës a dash to the hoop and down through it which drops the player through several levels of the map in the center.
The three-on-three matches we played were short, maybe three-to-four minutes (with about the same time for set-up of the hardware and matchmaking). This was perfect for the VR experience, which gave players enough time to figure out how the controls worked and really figure out gameplay.
The headmounted Project Morpheus display—upgraded heavily since I last saw at E3 last year, with Muiswinkel saying that the game was running with a refresh rate at 120Hz—would turn whatever direction the player turned their head to look in, and the center provided a pair of targeting lines for both right- and left-handed weapons. Since direction was provided by the head movement, only the left analog stick was required to move the mech forward, backwards, or strafing, while you locked on to opponents by looking at them and blasting them with your particular weapon set.
RIGS also featured the ability to switch between three modes: Fast, Attack, and Repair when in regular combat. Switching between these provided a slight tactical element to the game, since the added speed or attack gave definite advantages towards gathering orbs, but at the cost of having your mech half-blown-to-bits. Switching to Repair mode allows it to fix itself at the cost of attack power or speed. However, when your mech is fully powered up by orbs, all three modes are activated until you either score a goal, are destroyed, or the energy runs out (about 90 seconds).
One thing Muiswinkel and I discussed was the reason RIGS seemed to have used the hardware so successfully: the sense of place within the mech. Since youÄ‚Ë€â„Ëre in a seated position while using the Morpheus, it makes sense to be inside a mech, since your body wonÄ‚Ë€â„Ët feel displaced when the mech is moving.
"We know you need a cockpit," Muiswinkel said, "you need presence."
Presence has become the buzzword of VR, the ability to create an artificial sense of reality by establishing a sense of visual identity that makes sense for the VR experience. Since Project Morpheus is tethered to the player being in a seated position (or standing in one spot, at best) a cockpit is great since it provides a reason for the player to be seated, and provides visual cues for how the game is meant to be played within that artificial reality.
In my second playthrough, I quickly scored three goals, and destroyed a number of mechs; admittedly, I had the advantage of practice and a helpful Sony staffer who told me exactly where the orbs down below were placed in the level. Muiswinkel told me that my sudden jump in ability was fairly common, and that when he and the other Guerrilla devs recently played against their QA team, the QA players had schooled them, not just because of their own personal skill growth, but because they worked together as a team.
This was one thing we both liked about the direction of the game; while it was competitive, it also was heavily cooperative, and while it featured an FPS mechanic as its primary feature, it was also fundamentally non-violent. While thereÄ‚Ë€â„Ës no release date for RIGS (I wouldnÄ‚Ë€â„Ët be surprised if it released at launch next year with the Sony VR Device, though), it was the only first-party Sony game that IÄ‚Ë€â„Ëve played on the Morpheus that felt like an actual consumer title that people could really sink their teeth into.
This may sound unusual compared to some of the more prominent titles such as Super Mario Maker and StarFox, but when the Mushroom Kingdom takes to the court, it's all aces.
The Entertainment Software Association has announced that E3 2016 is in fact happening (like any of us doubted that would be the case) and will take place next year from June 14-16.
"More than any other E3, this year was about the gamer," ESA president and CEO Michael Gallagher said. "E3 demonstrated both the remarkable transformation of entertainment taking place on all video game platforms — virtual reality, augmented reality, hardware, mobile and handheld — and awesome games."
Faith is back in Mirror's Edge Catalyst, a franchise reboot from DICE of the first person free-running (now free-roaming) action title. With a larger story, a larger world, and a closer look at Faith, herself, Mirror's Edge Catalyst looks to up the ante considerably from the original title.
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Nothing gets better, down where itÄ‚Ë€â„Ës wetter. Get ready to scream.
Swipe right. ThereÄ‚Ë€â„Ës a giant snake. Swipe left.
Your mech is also the ball.
Hardcore Parkour.
