The second season of Telltale’s award winning The Walking Dead is coming to consoles, PC, and mobile soon and to drum up some excitement for what is sure to be a heavily emotional experience, they’ve released this brief teaser. The first season was easily some of the finest adventure gaming I’ve ever experienced with some incredibly heavy moments (the season finale was just brutal), so I’m really looking forward to what this next season has to offer.
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.
Fable fans waiting for the HD remake of what is arguably the best game in the series are going to have to wait a little bit longer. Lionhead by way of Ted Timmins has stated that the studio needs a bit more time to provide the best Fable experience for fans. He even hinted at some “top secret announcements” for the game. So, it’s entirely possible that Lionhead is working on some new content for the decade old action RPG.
Xbox One is not that far away now. And, since it is not that far away, Microsoft needs to drum up a little more interest in the system. What better way than to show off some new footage from the absolutely gorgeous launch title Ryse: Son of Rome? There is no better way.
The trailer starts off with a pre-rendered segment before showing off gameplay in Gladiator Mode. It’s violent, it’s bloody, and it’s beautiful. I noticed some neat new things with the finishers. It appears now that button prompts are gone (which is great) and are replaced with colored outlines. I could be wrong in this assumption, but I’m fairly certain that the colored outlines indicate what button to press. Instead of an obtrusive button prompt on your screen, a slick colorful outline will help keep you immersed. You’ll see in the trailer yellow and blue outlines which seem to indicate Y and X button presses.
Anyway, the game’s looking better now than it did at E3 with more depth than a simple quick time button masher. Take a look for yourself.
Telltale’s upcoming adventure series The Wolf Among Us, based on DC Comic’s Fables series, has its debut trailer. The developer is most recently known for its fantastic interpretation of The Walking Dead and before that reviving the Sam & Max and Monkey Island properties. The Wolf Among Us will be available on PC, Mac, Xbox 360, and PS3 in quarter three of this year.
It really doesn’t look like much, but, hey, it could surprise us all and be surprisingly fun. It could also be a major turd, which is much more likely, but you won’t know unless you try it when it comes out this fall. And now, the first gameplay trailer for Rambo: The Video Game.
Currently, Microsoft’s Games with Gold promotion is only set to run through the rest of this year. However, according to Major Nelson, that is subject to change depending on audience reaction. Given that people like free things, even when there might be some disappointment there, I’m sure it will be a resounding success throughout the gaming community.
Microsoft first announced its Games with Gold promotion at this year’s E3 by promising gamers with an Xbox Live Gold subscription two free games every month throughout the remainder of the year. The first two games to be announced were Assassin’s Creed II and Halo 3. There was some expressions of disappointment with the two free games, given that they’re already several years old and most anybody that wants to play them already has them (and, c’mon, pretty much everybody has a copy of Halo 3 by now), but they’re free.
The major benefit of this promotion, besides the two free games thing, is that the games will be yours to keep. Unlike Sony’s free games for PSN+ subscribers, games made available for free on Games with Gold will not expire even if you cancel your Gold subscription. While I’d certainly like to see something newer than what Microsoft has shown so far (or at least something I haven’t played yet), I’m not going to complain about free games–even if I already own those games, it doesn’t hurt to have a digital copy… especially if it’s free.
Defense Grid is the first free Game with Gold and will remain free through July 15.
Source: VG247
Telltale’s special episode of The Walking Dead, meant to expand the universe and sate gamers’ appetites while we wait for the second season, will be releasing on various platforms this week. The game will follow five characters in their own stories and will be available for $5. The North American release schedule is as follows: July 2nd on PlayStation Network, July 3rd on PC and Mac, and July 5th on Xbox Live. PSN in Europe gets the episode on July 10 while iOS gamers worldwide will get it on the 11th.
Source: IGN
Capcom’s upcoming Xbox One exclusive Dead Rising 3 will give gamers a reason to boot up the Xbox extension SmartGlass. The game re-skins players’ SmartGlass devices to look like the character’s phone within the game universe. From there, players will receive calls which will grant them exclusive missions otherwise inaccessible. Capcom has stated that the missions players gain access to via SmartGlass will expand the game’s story but will not be essential to it for gamers who don’t have access to a SmartGlass capable device.
SmartGlass will also grant players access to bonuses like air strikes. Completing missions in-game grants players codes which can be used in the SmartGlass application to purchase the special attacks and such in-game. Josh Bridge, Dead Rising 3’s executive producer, confirmed that the game does not have microtransactions and that all these purchases will be “within the game’s own ecosystem.”
Dead Rising 3 is coming exclusively to Xbox One as a launch title this November.
Source: VG247
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