At their E3 2016 press conference, Bethesda surprised fans by bringing Arkane Studios on stage to announce a brand new project: Prey. Fans were disappointed when the previously announced Prey 2 was canned after the surprisingly attractive game made a huge splash at E3 2011. The new game appears to be a complete reboot of the franchise with little or no connection to the original. Little else beyond the cinematic trailer has been revealed about the game at this time, though it is scheduled for release sometime in 2017 and will be available on PC and current-gen consoles.
Telltale Games has released an in-engine trailer for the upcoming third season of their The Walking Dead series of games. The game will be set a few years after Season 2, and Clementine is confirmed to be returning. Players with saves for the first two seasons will find the decisions they made have an impact on the story in Season 3. Along with Clementine, players will be taking control of a new character, Javier, who is described on the Telltale blog as “a fellow survivor who has been through hell, and has managed to remain alive as long as Clem.” Little else was revealed about the game, but it is expected to be released this fall.
Telltale’s Batman game was announced at last year’s The Game Awards in December. Telltale has arrived prior to the start of this year’s E3 to unveil some screenshots of the upcoming adventure game. Also revealed is the game’s voice cast which features Troy Baker as The Bat himself. The list of voices joining Troy Baker in the game’s cast is as follows: Travis Willingham as Harvey Dent, Erin Yvette as Vicki Vale, Enn Reitel as Alfred Pennyworth, Murphy Guyer as Lieutenant James Gordon, Richard McGonagle as Carmine Falcone, and Laura Bailey as Selina Kyle. Telltale is promising more reveals of characters and cast as the season progresses.
Kevin Bruner, Telltale’s CEO, said the following about their upcoming Batman game:
“We’ve been hard at work at Telltale creating an all-new iteration of the iconic Batman story that puts players in the suit of billionaire Bruce Wayne, just as much as it will put them behind the mask, deciding how to carefully navigate a complex drama, rich with action, crime, corruption, and villainy lurking around every corner of Gotham City. The complex life and fractured psyche of Bruce Wayne has lent itself to becoming a bold evolution of the signature ‘Telltale’ role-playing experience, and we couldn’t be more excited as we prepare to debut the series to players across the world this summer.”
Doom is synonymous with FPS. Early games in the genre were dubbed “Doom Clones” and often carried the stigma of never being quite as good as the id-developed shareware hit. Doom II landed in 1994, just one year after the original, but things would be pretty quiet for the franchise for about a decade after, with Ultimate Doom and Final Doom being the endcaps on the original Doom saga. Doom 3 brought some new life to the franchise in 2004, focusing more on jump scares and horror elements than just mowing down endless hordes of hellspawn, serving as a reboot to the franchise, but, again, things would go quiet. There was one expansion, Resurrection of Evil, and several promises of a sequel, but that would never see the light of day.
Fast forward another decade, and enter Doom – no numbers, no subtitles, just DOOM. Yet another reboot of the franchise, Doom the new brings things back to a more traditional styled action-oriented shooter experience.
The game begins with absolutely no exposition – not unlike starting up the original DOS classic. You play the voiceless DOOM MARINE and awaken bound to a table and surrounded by grotesque minions of hell. Evil things need killing and you have the means to do so. That’s your motivation, and that’s all the exposition you get as the game thrusts you head first into a nonstop killing spree. There is plenty of story in Doom, though, and you’ll encounter it by way of data logs, infrequent cutscenes, and bits of text on loading screens. It gives you enough motivation to continue killing (because just shooting ugly bastards may not be enough for modern audiences), but never actually gets in the way of said killing. It’s a story that does its job to keep you interested for the ten to fifteen hours it’ll probably take you to beat (it took me around 20 on Hurt Me Plenty) but it, thankfully, never takes itself too seriously.
The impressively large single player campaign is composed of 13 huge levels – all of which feature a smattering of secret areas and collectible items. Progression through the game feels similar to a hybrid of classic Doom and Metroid Prime, with sprawling levels and moderate backtracking to get to the next area after picking up a colored keycard or new ability. There’s plenty to go back for if you’re a completionist with dozens of well-hidden secrets to test your exploration skills, gameplay challenges for meeting certain requirements in any given level, not to mention just how damned fun the game is. It’s incredibly replayable.
Gunplay in the new Doom feels absolutely fantastic. Guns have weight, shots have impact, and, just like the game that spawned the series, there’s no reloading. You’ve got a number of rounds in your inventory, sure, but you never have to actively reload your guns which have seemingly endless clips. Ammo is always in abundant supply, as well. The game never leaves you out to dry and, if you do begin to run low on rounds, you can whip out the powerful chainsaw for a quick, on-demand ammo drop when you rip through a nearby enemy. To keep things balanced with the chainsaw, which can take down any non-boss enemy with one hit, the weapon runs on fuel and harder enemies will consume more fuel – so a possessed will take one bar of fuel, a revenant will take three, and a mancubus will take five. As powerful as you feel never having to pause to reload, the game makes sure you never feel too powerful at any given time. There’s plenty of death to be had in Doom and, depending on your difficulty, you’ll probably get more than your fair share.
Outside the campaign, the game offers a variety of multiplayer modes in addition to a scenario editor called Snap Map. While the multiplayer modes have received little love from fans and press alike, Snap Map opens up endless possibilities for new gaming experiences. It’s basically Super Mario Maker with guns. And demons. And gobs of goo. Snap Map is impressive in how much you can do with it – everything from the map layout, enemy placement, items, spawns, and sound effects are up to you. You can place interactive switches that trigger events in the level, program paths and behaviors for your enemies, set conditions and objectives to win your scenario. It’s a great, simple to use tool that basically makes you an FPS dungeon master in charge of mini campaign. The community offerings are hit and miss, to be sure, but there is so much potential with what is possible the Snap Map tools that you can spend countless hours in this game – whether you’re constructing your own scenarios, or playing maps posted by the community.
The resurgence of id’s iconic properties like Wolfenstein and Doom is exciting to me as someone who grew up with those properties for the nostalgic value, but also to see how well the franchises can hold up in these new iterations. Much like Wolfenstein: The New Order that came before it, Doom is absolutely worth a playthrough. The multiplayer may leave you wanting, but the campaign and snapmap community should keep you satisfied for, potentially, endless hours.
Hello Games, developer of Joe Danger, has announced today on VGX the next gen title No Man’s Sky. The game will be a science fiction featuring a huge universe that encourages exploration with multiple planets to explore from top to bottom. The game promises that the stars in the sky are suns featuring planets that can be explored with a “living” persistent world. It looks like a game with a lot of promise and I’ll be sure to post more regarding this game when more details become available.
Tomb Raider was released earlier this year and was well received. Personally, I found the game to be the best I’ve played this year and easily one of the best on this current generation of gaming platforms. It had some of the best action platforming I’ve ever experienced and was a much-needed reboot to a stagnating gaming franchise. Needless to say, I’m ready to get stranded on a hostile island with Lara Croft again with the power of the new game consoles. The game will feature improved graphics with some of the highlights being a completely reconstructed face for Lara as well as more realistic hair effects. From the trailer that was shown on VGX, it wasn’t terribly mind-blowing with the graphical improvements, but the hair does look good. The game will be released on Xbox One and PS4 and will be available next month.
Today is the videogame awar… VGX. And with that, not only do we get some game of the year winners courtesy of GameTrailers, but also some exciting new game announcements. With that, the first announcement to come from VGX is Tales from the Borderlands. The game will be a collaboration between Telltale Games, the fine folks behind The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, and Gearbox Software, the studio behind the Borderlands and Brothers in Arms franchises. The game will be an episodic adventure, in traditional Telltale fashion. Stay tuned to PowerUp for more on Tales from the Borderlands.
Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami is bringing a new vision of survival horror to consoles and Windows PC next year. From the trailer below, it looks like it’s shaping up nicely. In a disgusting and terrifying sort of niceness.
I can’t really label this a review since I haven’t completed the game yet and don’t really have a fully formulated opinion of it. But, I have spent several hours with the console release (specifically the Xbox 360 version) of Diablo III and have some thoughts I’d like to put down on digital paper. The game is over a year old on PCs now and so it doesn’t really warrant a review in that sense. It’s Diablo – the king of dungeon crawlers. It’s awesome. Yada yada. But how does it play on consoles?
Pretty great, actually. Honestly, for several years now I’ve been favoring console dungeon crawlers over their PC counterparts. There’s not always a whole lot of ports, but since the days of the Dreamcast, I’ve been doing most of my killing and looting with a controller in hand. This isn’t to spark a PC vs. Consoles debate, this is just my preference (and you’d damn well better respect my preference). PC gamers tend to have a bit of apprehension when it comes to ports of their beloved mouse and keyboard exclusives. Sometimes they’re right to be worried (typically, real-time strategy games (RTS) don’t translate well to console controls), but sometimes their apprehension is unfounded. Thankfully that’s the case with Diablo III.
Personally, I wasn’t worried about the transition. I had enjoyed Torchlight immensely in its console release (and sincerely hope that its sequel gets some new life on consoles) and knew that Bilzzard was more than capable of delivering a high-quality port. They did, too.
I think the biggest selling point for me on the console version is the couch co-op. I can be old school at times and so I’d much rather be playing a game with my friends in the same room as me than as disembodied voices over the internet. It’s a much more enjoyable experience. That being said, killing, questing, and looting is so much more rewarding to me when I can sit back on the couch and maybe throw back a couple of drinks with my pals while making clever or not-so-clever quips. It’s great to have that social interaction mixed in with my favorite hobby. It also helps that the translation to consoles didn’t affect the fun factor of Diablo.
It would be insulting to say that there’s not much to the game on PC, but in playing games like Diablo it has a missing sense of control. With playing the game with a controller in hand, I feel much more like I’m playing a game. My character moves where I’m leading him and reacts to my every move – I’m not just telling him what to do and he follows my commands; I’m given a much greater sense of control. That is what I like about playing Diablo III on my console. Does the console version have its drawbacks? Sure. It’s not perfect, but it offers to me as a gamer more of what I’m looking for in a game than the PC version does.
The biggest disappointment I have with Diablo III is less of something the game did wrong and more of a hugely missed opportunity. Couch co-op is great. I love sitting with my pals and playing this game on the same screen. However, sharing the screen during inventory management sessions sucks. Only one player at a time can view his or her inventory or have any interactions with merchants. This breaks the flow of the game and results in several sessions of checking facebook or playing games on your phone while you wait for your pals to finish up their shopping, crafting, and customizing. This is something that could have been easily remedied with SmartGlass. Let’s say that you’ve got 3 friends over and you’re all looking to score some epic loot. Well, while Johnny McSlowshopper is browsing the shops, you can connect with SmartGlass and interact with a shop keep or examine and manage your inventory on your phone while the television is occupied with someone else’s menu. This would have been a great solution in keeping the game moving at all times rather than making every trip to town a 20+ minute ordeal because you have to take turns managing your inventory. With that said, it’s a relatively minor complaint. It’s not a broken gameplay mechanic or a fatal flaw in the game, it’s just a painfully missed opportunity.
Diablo III on the console is a blast. It’s pretty much everything you can expect from a Diablo game while giving you a little bit more joy with couch co-op. It’s a welcome addition to my gaming library and I’m sure I’m going to sink many, many hours into its loot-filled world.
Diablo III is currently available on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. A PS4 release is planned and in development.
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