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E3 2015: Bethesda Recap

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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As far as debut’s go, this is probably one that will live long in the memory for all of the right reasons. Bethesda took a giant leap to the stage at E3 (at the Dolby Theatre which hosts the Oscars, no less) with an already impressive level of hype.

Doom, whilst teased last year to select convention attendees and an extra three second clip last month, was very obviously going to be on the agenda. Fallout 4 was also going to be hotly anticipated and late on Saturday some leaks began to appear for Dishonoured 2 thanks to some tech-testing fluffs. But we had no idea (which is actually quite a thing in this day and age) of what was going to happen.

Doom was first out of the blocks and it did not disappoint at all. iD Software have been incredibly quiet since RAGE and lost their lead guru John Cormack to another reality. But that doesn’t seem to have dampened the original core concept of Doom or its successors – over the top, gory violence. It’s a simple concept really, to just kill all the things in a outlandish manner with big guns, but it’s very rarely executed well (pun intended).

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We saw some excellent melee attacks including a guy having his face smashed in by his own, still attached, broken leg. We saw some fantastically smooth gunplay and weapon selection and some fast and fluid movement. The things that made games like this and Quake excellent is the fast frenetic pace of the games that heighten the excitement, the fear and the adrenalin of the game, and Doom looks to have it in abundance. We were treated to a very well lit and molten factory level set on Mars which seems to have channeled all the tropes of horror science fiction with the cinematographic flair of more recent times, including a good Red Dwarf-esque mobile hand passkey that got a good laugh. We were then treated to Hell with demons coming at us from all sides and the final shot of a BFG volley cutting to black.

The most interesting thing in this is what looks like the first Next Generation console level editor. A simple tool to snap rooms and place objects to create your own levels and game types for multiplayer. Think of Halo’s Forge but with much easier room placement. This is Doom Snapmap and it looks excellent for the creative people and modders that have always been key to the franchise’s extended success. It’s something that will certainly breathe a lot of life in to multiplayer and is a great way to get people to stay involved. Especially on the console market as the game will be coming on PC, Xbox One and PS4 in Spring 2016.

Keeping with the online focus, Battlecry announced an upcoming beta. The online team based combat strategy game looks like a crazy cross between Team Fortress and a non-fantasy MOBA. It’ll be interesting to see but we’ll have to wait until the beta’s have come before we get more of an idea on the game.

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Next up was the team from Arkane Studios, who’s Dishonored completely took the critics and gamers by surprise a few years ago. Now it’s most definitely back with you being put in to the position of Corvo once again… Or you can play as the daughter of the Empress, Emily Kaldwin. This is what we were shown and it’s great to have a new female protagonist to play with. The steam punk setting is well and truly alive with some focus on the high flying speed running and magical abilities, in a totalitarian world of death and decay.

If you’re worried about playing Dishonored 2 because you missed the boat, never fear. Arkane are releasing a collected edition of Dishonored this winter with some new textures and all the DLC. This Definitive Edition is coming for PC, Xbox One and PS4… I’ll be honest, I’m very excited for it and of all the ideas I had for a remaster (if you can call it that) Dishonored was not the one I was expecting to hear from at this conference.

Another game I wasn’t expecting to hear anything about was the recently released Elder Scrolls Online, but we got a nice little video of some new areas coming to Tamriel Unlimited on both PC and Console and we’ve also been treated to a new card game call Elder Scrolls Legends (Presumably “Scrolls” was taken by someone else?), although we’ve seen nothing of it. I was also hoping to see or at least hear some news of the other Bethesda franchises like Quake and The Evil Within, but we just got their logos at the end. At least they’re still there and more may come in future.

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Speaking of the future, ready your Pip Boys. I could talk to you a lot about Fallout 4 but you should just watch the conference from 1 hour and 5 minutes in. Returning to the Wasteland, you will walk the area of Boston with your companion Dog and do as you’ve always done – explore, fight and customise. You’ll start your story pre-bombs which give a little tongue in cheek look at the psuedo-1950s lifestyle and create your character. This looks incredibly as the old style of sliders and templates have disappeared. Instead you just select the part of the face you want and just play away, regardless of gender (hurray!). You’ll wake up 200 years later as the sole survivor and are set free to explore. No spoilers.

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The customisation is incredible though, from very specific parts of guns to your heavy armour set, clothing and even building your own settlement, Fallout 4 looks to be far and away the best open world role-playing game in terms of player individuality. Creating a world to you, the player that you have affected seems to be one of the things that Fallout 4 is bringing out, which is something the other hinted to. But the technology is now here to make it happen.

Speaking of technology, the Pip Boy is updated to be more than just a static menu (as the developers know you’ll spend a lot of time there) and has become a lot more dynamic. You’ll also be able to interchange memory tapes for audio and even games. We’ve seen a good version of both Donkey Kong and Missile Command in the demo (the latter is increidbly appropriate) and there’s a lot more to come. Especially if you’ve got your eyes on the collectors edition that includes a working Pip Boy… Well sort of. This soon to be gold dust peripheral is a wearable phone dock that allows you (with a free app) to use the whole thing as a second screen and be your Pip Boy access. The app is coming anyway so anyone can do it, but having your own Pip Boy as you play? Well that’s just swell. We also have the Sims/XCom/Tiny Tower-esque Fallout Shelter. A fun little distracting building game where you become the overseer of your own vault, released for free last night on iOS.

Bethesda didn’t show a lot but truthfully they didn’t need to. It was a lesson in how a company can show a minimal amount of products but with a huge amount of quality. All of it coming for next generation consoles and PC. All of it absolutely captivating. Sometimes you just need to do a good job and in their debut to E3’s conference schedule, Bethesda certainly nailed it.

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Rock Band 4 – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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It wasn’t actually that long ago that I put down Rock Band 3. It was probably about six months ago after I had an aching need to complete The Beatles Rock Band (something I’d forgotten I’d already done). I then went in to the old habit of looking through songs and making a playlist of mostly Pearl Jam songs and rocking out a bit, whilst getting frustrated that my well worn guitar was betraying me.

Where as many games press have stories of Rock Band and the preview party we’ve all attended over the past week, mine is slightly different. I was a musician for many years. Now I’m a non-practicing musician, but at the time I was (trying to remain as humble as possible) a damn good bassist who’d gone from fronting a cover band to being a bassist in a rather fast and riff frenetic punk-grunge band.

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This movement to our awesome power trio removed a lot of the covers we had previously played. This led to Rock Band, and others, being my escape to just having a bit of fun with songs I loved. Thankfully, I was joined in this by my drummer and some other friends that has led to many drunk nights, parties and a mysteriously broken drum kit foot pedal (we all know who broke it really).

So why did we fall out of love with the game? Well, we didn’t really fall out of it, did we? We just moved on. The market got so saturated with spin offs to other music types that it became a bit of a joke. When everyone started doing the karaoke games we kind of moved away because it was no longer just “our” thing.

Our guitars and controllers through years of aggressive use were beginning to fail and we just didn’t want to spend a load of money to upgrade them. The DLC flooded our Xbox Live and PSN screens making it frustrating to find anything else released on the same day. We all moved to smaller places… Put simply, life happened and we had said goodbye to the rhythm game genre without even an epitaph.

Which is quite convenient as both Activision and Harmonix are sure that it isn’t dead. So sure in fact that both companies are releasing new games: Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4. The former has taken quite a dramatic turn from its previous incarnations but Rock Band is sticking with exactly what it knows. So on Monday, me and our friends from Xtreme Gaming and Xtreme Academy took to the stage and rocked out… Here I am, right there, strumming and drumming.

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Like an old friend we had met in the pub for a nostalgic beverage, we instantly found where we were and got right back to embarrassing Dad-level party rocking in front of our peers. That is because Rock Band 4 is sticking very rigidly with what it knows, almost to a point where it looks that very little has changed whatsoever. The next generation graphics help to better animate the backgrounds going on, but the basic design is the same – square notes to hit, overdrive accumulation and deployment, vocals on top with guitar, drums and bass on the screen on scrolling towards you.

The obvious thing to say is “why change anything if it works,” which it does. The team behind Rock Band 4 are the same team that it’s always been with years of experience from Guitar Hero to the many Rock Band releases and making little tinkering adjustments each time to perfect the formula. The main thing for Harmonix’s perspective is to make sure that the gaming experience is as fun as it’s always been.

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So we have a new next generation engine, which is in alpha build, a load of new and more refined peripherals coming along with support for all of the previous ones released on the last generation with some, and I quote, “gnarly engineering” to make the Xbox 360 stuff work with the Xbox One.

The game will have a voting system so that playlists can be dynamic and you aren’t just lumped with someone like me putting on every Pearl Jam song. The dynamic system for drum fills and the like is more refined and the vocals now become freestyle, so that even if it isn’t your strong point you won’t be punished like you would have before.

There is a lot of focus on backward compatibility with the song library from Rock Band 1, 2, 3, etc, and DLC being mostly available (thanks to a few licensing issues, it isn’t everything). If you had them all on the previous console then you can get them again for free. Xbox 360 to Xbox One and PS3 to PS4, but not across the platforms it seems. That’s 2000 odd songs, TWO THOUSAND… Better make some hard drive space available for that one.

Rock Band and Harmonix are looking to make the transition to next generation as painless as possible and because of this, Rock Band 4 we’ve been told will be the only release for this generation. The improvements and digital ability to patch the games whenever the team want means that they will be adding new content and constantly evolving the game via this method. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s stuck to, given the theories on the projected lifespan of this generation of consoles.

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This is all happening thanks to the further development between Harmonix and Mad Catz. For Rock Band 3, Mad Catz actually made the official controllers and this time they’re also acting as publisher for the game, making a long partnership a lot more solid. We need to see more, as the game is scheduled for a 2015 release, from the engine, the new controllers and the soundtrack. We would like to see the new consoles actually hitting a higher frame rate and really tackle any latency.

What we want to see and what we have seen is fun. The same fun as we had before, the same well-tried and enjoyable formula that kept us all occupied with our impressive fourth button skills in the late 00s until YouTube showed us how much we truly sucked at the game. Music has changed though and the younger people (which normally translates to the best sales) of today probably won’t feel like the frustrated musicians we all did at the time.

Our decision on if we buy this game will be a mixture of the desire to experience nostalgia and if we can justify buying the equipment again if we sold it. It’s probably not a great time to release a game that can require spending £120 on equipment alone (although eBay, Amazon’s marketplace and Gumtree/Craigslist will become hunting grounds for good deals on old controllers).

Right now, the frustrated musician in me is going to put on Green Grass and High Tides and see if I can fix my broken bass-drum pedal. Then we can talk business on Xbox One and PS4 later this year.

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F1 2015 – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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The rain beats down heavily over Marina Bay. The flood lights are reflected, shimmering in the pools on the tarmac occasionally splashed with colour from the lights of ferris wheel. You’re thrashing through the streets, skating as you hit the puddles, the floor of your V6 turbo-charged hybrid monster scratching against the contours of the tarmac where it rises above the water. The raspy and angry sound of the 600 BHP engine roaring between the concrete barriers and bouncing under the stands as you enter the final chicane. It sounds like a petulant child as you carefully feather the throttle, taking every effort of your concentration not to squirm the misbehaving rear in to the wall, and screams with great freedom as the straight appears and you floor it, feeding petrol and recovered kinetic energy in to one last hurrah before crossing the line and taking the chequered flag… In 14th place.

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The changes to Formula One in the real world are finally ready to be properly reflected in the video game franchise from Codemasters. F1 2014 used the last generation engine and for those that played it, it definitely showed its need for an update. Yearly licences will always get to a point where the cross over of technology can betray it. F1 2014 was beset by this on both the gaming front with next-generation consoles and with the motor sport’s own evolution following a massive dynamic shift to more energy efficient vehicles. We previewed F1 2014 last year and you could tell from the games entire demeanour that this wasn’t going to be the game of F1’s past. In a way it was almost a good soft launch or education in to capturing the feel of the new cars.

So we fast forward to this year and F1 2015. A game that is coming DURING the season, which is excellent news. The game has traditionally, and rather annoyingly for Codemasters, launched towards the end of a season rather than other sports titles that precede their competitive starts. And as a bonus, although some may see it as a “thanks for sticking with us last year” present, last years Formula One season will be included along with the 2015 season. So you can dominate as Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes against two different seasons worth of driver lineups.

As you can probably tell by my opening paragraph, the game is tricky. It of course can be watered down with assists but, come on! The sport is deliberately trying to make these cars harder to drive, so go along with it. Like most simulation based games, practice and an appreciation of the learning curve needed to drive a virtual Formula One car is very rewarding. Especially when you see the work that has gone in to making the game stand out on Next-Genertaion hardware.

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You could argue that the EGO engine was due a facelift and it has got it. Whilst the Singapore circuit and the changing weather effects are quite obviously for our demonstration benefit, they are a great demonstration. The problem with many racing games, thanks to the realism in the cars and the track, is that the surroundings can suffer from not feeling very alive. But as you drive around Marina Bay in the lashing rain, you actually feel the tinge of fear. You have that worry that the beautiful puddle in front of you that’s majestically reflecting the light from the theme park is going to send you aquaplaning in to the floodlit tyre wall. As you enter the chicane under the grandstand towards the end of the circuit, you come close to where the waters edge is and you wonder if a big crashing wave will come over, through the barriers and on to the track right as you’re hitting the apex. Of course it won’t but that’s the feeling the game can evoke. Your fear and trepidation makes you falter with the intense concentration you need to drive these cars, and they are intense in the wet.

So much work has been done to make the game feel more alive and it’s not just a mechanical device in the gameplay, it’s also an atmospheric one. The new focus on broadcast cameras and new cutscenes, along with the return of Stevenage’s lesser known F1 master, David Croft, brings the game closer to the presentation that EA hit for their games. But this isn’t at the expense of the game or just added colour. If you remember the old F1 games on Playstation, you used to have Murray Walker making occasional quips which after a while grated and annoyed more than pleased. And commentary can quickly date a game. But the branding, the new camera angles, the more graphically televisual approach to things like menu screens, driver selection, etc can really get you in to it. Along with a new race engineer, the game is aesthetically getting quite the facelift, much like the sport.

I operate under a strange bias when it comes to Formula One games as I love the sport and I’ve really enjoyed Codemasters games. F1 2013 was a magnificent package. But I’m also quite demanding now thanks to what has come before it with Project CARS’s wonderful visuals, Driveclub’s amazing environments and the freedom and sense of vehicle character you get with the Forza Horizon games.

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Much like current Formula One, your management of your car and fuel is paramount. The control methods on both wheel and controller are easy to use (last year’s pad control wasn’t particularly great). But this heightened drama is being propped up by better AI and the Campaign mode. Picking a driver and playing an entire season with them has been a staple of ALL racing games so it’s good to see it finally appear in F1 2015. There’s the new Pro Championship mode which is for the purists (masochists) to give you the most authentic experience without having to individually turn everything off.

The dynamics of Formula One are changing all the time. For all of the Mercedes dominance, Renault’s failing’s, Red Bull throwing their frustrations at Renault, Bernie Ecclestone making soundbites that would probably dissolve many PR companies and McLaren Honda’s struggle to make their new partnership deliver on the track, it is the narrative behind all of them that grip up to those 2 hours on a Sunday where we live and breath our passion for the sport through our love of the racing on offer.

It’s something that the rule changes have done to give us a more open race and therefore a more interesting narrative. F1 2015 looks on course to give us the solid experience of racing and the drama we crave from the sport. If it’s the evoking of a powerful visual of a rain soaked track in Singapore, the elation of mastering a corner, the bittersweet sadness of seeing Jules Bianchi’s name in the roster from last season or the triumph of winning a race, the early impressions are that F1 2015 has it. Let’s hope it keeps up the pace during its final laps.

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GEEMU! – Bandai Namco’s Level Up Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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I’m incredibly westernised when it comes to games. Whilst I love Japan and its food and customs, I’ve never been able to really access its gaming and anime culture like so many of my contemporaries have. So for those of you who do know more about these franchises than I do (which is probably everyone), I apologise in advance.

Earlier in April, Bandai Namco invited us to their Level Up tour event. It’s a nice get together they’ve put on this year, touring the major cities and giving the press amongst others a first look in to the catalogue of upcoming games and a few bits of hands on experience. There’s another game that will be coming separately from this event. But for now I’m going to look at the incredible, and rather large, line-up of Japanese games coming to the UK. Another advance warning, as these are all Japanese games there’s very little to nothing in the way of Xbox here. Sony rules the roost in Japan and it shows with this lineup.

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Godzilla

Firstly, let’s look at something that everyone knows. Godzilla is the now 61 year old metropolis-crushing monster. Recently brought back in to media prominence by the movie of the same name starring Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston with less beard and more top hair. So what better thing is there to do than to bring the beast to Sony’s consoles and DESTORY! You will take charge of the titular character and destroy everything in your path to harness G-Energy. Us pesky humans have been using G-Energy as a power source and, much like most fossil fuels, is coming back to bite us and destroy our world by also awakening Godzilla. This time there’s no Al Gore to save us all.

There are around 25 levels to destroy along with an obligator versus mode against other monsters and a build-your-own mode where you can construct the perfect city to destroy. Your Godzilla will grow and level up with more of this G-Energy and apparently will also fly. I think Red Bull might have missed a wing-giving marketing opportunity here. What we have is a monster beat-em-up with smile inducing amounts of collateral damage. The game is coming this summer for PS3 and PS4 although there’s no local co-op or versus play, only online battles.

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One Piece Pirate Warrior 3

So my mind is a little blown here. It looks and plays like Dynasty Warriors, which is easily explained by the fact it s done by the same people. This is the third instalment of the series where you play as Luffy, or Monkey D. “Straw Hat” Luffy of the One Piece anime franchise, a young man with some super powers after eating a Gum-Gum fruit. So begins his adventures on the open waves and many lands to help defeat Doflamingo. You will travel through many worlds from the anime and earlier games, uniting your brothers and even playing in up to date areas like Dressrosa.

Controls, masses of enemies, combo multipliers and crazy mad magic attacks abound, this is pretty typical “Warriors” stuff. it works well and it’s crazy. Of course if you’re looking at this then you’re probably a fan of the series and the game. It’s a nice button bashing game with some awesome anime graphics and specials. Travelling across these worlds nice scenery with completely obscured by mad particle effects and many waves of enemies before big boss battles. Although for me it was made better by one of the characters (Sabo, I believe) looking like Ginx TV presenter and comedian John Robertson due to some great top-hat game. If you’re a fan, then keep your eyes open around August 2015 on your PS4, PS3, PS Vita and on Steam for PC users too.

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Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

I am a giant frog in a straw hat crushing many tiny people who look like ants and beating big rock creatures. I then, after much Warriors like gameplay, jump onto some giant tentacled or armed creature and grind my way down it, slicing it open as I do and dodging fireballs into an anime big battle climax. I’ll be honest, with the gameplay that I played there actually didn’t feel like there was a lot to this game or at least anything that distinctly separated it from One Piece’s superior wave combat. After some research I’m actually a toad with a super katana named Jutso and the PS4’s triangle button charges our attacks. The attacks are simply controlled but are still pretty fun to unleash after you’ve charged yourself up at the expense of many tiny army’s, who have no chance against your massive webbed feet.

What I did get though was some excellent graphics. Violent and vibrant colours filled my screen at breakneck speeds mixed with anime-rendered characters and sequences. You could liken it for cel-shading but the style is all of its own. And out of every game I saw it was this element and this potential that gripped me the most. If the consoles can pull off this kind of magnificence then there’s a lot of exciting things that can come of the art style. At least that’s what I thought I saw, I could have just licked the toad and tripped out. You’ll be able to find out later this year on PS4, PC and Xbox One if the consoles can deliver the full package.

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J-Stars Victory VS+

This looks like a standard cross licence beat-em-up but it isn’t. There’s a lot more than that. As me and Steven (from our good friends at GGS Gamer) sat down and picked up the controller, we selected our battlers from various universes and were shown in to an arena of an old village. There we let rip, with me playing as Goku, and kicked butt in a massive destructible environment, charging up our special abilities and using the scenery to our advantage. Our 2v2 team battle was easily lost when we realised we didn’t know the controls but we thought we were cool and that’s the important thing.

The game is great for manga/anime fans, especially those of JUMP magazine. The game gives you a huge roster of characters and environments from many different series including One Piece, Naruto, Dragonball Z, Toiko and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure just to name a few. The PS4 graphics are excellent and although we didn’t get a great deal of the game or its characters, it certainly seems to be a one stop shop if you are a fan of multiple series and like cross overs. The game play, whilst a arena style team based fighting game, is an interesting departure from the other games in this feature and could keep you coming back, even if you’re unsure exactly how the story is working. You will play and mix across all the included licences though through that story and we’re going to get an arcade fighting mode. So keep your eyes open this summer if you’re a PS3, PS4 or PS Vita owner.

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Tales of Zestiria

The Tales RPG series has long been requested in the Western markets. For the 20th anniversary of the franchise this latest game, Tales of Zestiria sees you play as Sorey. Your curiosity of history allows you to see a race of invisible people called the Seraphim and leads you to become the Shepherd, a legendary figure in this universe and you will set forth to unite both your human domain and the invisible Seraphim world. Sadly there wasn’t anything of this game playable to us but we did get to see this great trailer. The game is dual voice over in language as you will hear. The game will be available on PS3 in the fall of this year. This game returns the series in to a more action adventure style game but even in last-generation graphics, it looks like and exciting and good looking fantasy environment.

As far as fantasy RPG’s go, we are going to be pretty spoilt in the coming months. Rumours of a new Fallout, The Witcher Wild Hunt (also a Bandai Namco release), Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy and whatever HD remakes are sure to come. But for owners that haven’t yet made the jump, this is going to be a really interesting and beautiful purchase. For all of the slight cliches of the genre in the trailer the world is pretty, magical and fascinating anime landscape that could probably be a last thing for you to enjoy on the last generation of Playstation. JRPG’s have a long history and if this as good as it looks then it’s a fitting end for the console.

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Anther notable game is Project X Zone 2. A sequel to the popular 2013 strategy RPG that sees a huge mix of video gaming licences. You’ll have Tekken and Tales of Vesperia characters from Bandai Namco, Capcom’s Resident Evil and Devil May Cry characters and Sega’s Virtua Fighter and Yakuza: Dead Souls all filling an impressive roster. Again this will be a single play game for the Nintendo 3DS coming in the fall.

 

There’s also Saint Seiya: Soldiers’ Souls. A game that has some excellent anime art based on the TV series of the same name. The premise is that you, being given the golden armour called God Cloths are to defeat the Gold Saints who have returned from the grave. Again this game is due in the fall and will be on PS3, PS4 and Steam for PC users.

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Dirty Bomb – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Dirty Bomb is the latest effort from Splash Damage. The PC aficionado out there might recognise the name, but for everyone else here’s a little history. Fourteen years ago a group of online game modders became their own company and caught the attention of Activision and iD after creating maps for games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Counter-Strike. The company then ended up working for many publishers, like iD, creating multiplayer maps for Doom 3 and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, working on the multiplayer elements of other games as well as making their own games. There have been some lows, BRINK being the most high profile, but now Splash Damage are back making games for themselves and doing what they do best – Online multiplayer gaming.

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So now we have Dirty Bomb. Set in a futuristic capital called New London, mercenaries and private militias are rulers of all. New London is empty after a dirty bomb was blown up over it. Now people are coming back to loot this city and get money. Those people are of course you and your employers leading this online first person shooter to pit teams against each other with the focus on objectives, mostly attack and defence. We got to play a small beta in actual London and tried two game modes in local online play.

The first game mode we played was a control-based game. The defending team had to stop the attacking getting through a wall and then, once they failed at that, they had to stop the attacking team from blowing up some containers. This was set in a pretty nicely designed map with some good open and constrictive flash point areas.  Secondly we played an objective match in New Camden where we repaired an armored vehicle just to go 500 yards to a medical centre and steal medicine.

I’m probably the wrong person to preview this though as, despite my cynical sarcasm, I’m not someone that regularly enjoys team FPS games and my lack of a PC really prevents me from playing them. I know and watch many of them though and when you see CSGO, Team Fortress 2 and many other online game modes of other games like Battlefield, you have to wonder what the motivation is to break in to the market, or split it in your favour.

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However, I was surprised how easily I got in to the team aesthetic with four people on my team from various European news outlets. So whilst English wasn’t the first language of the team, we all bought in to the communication and the organisation. One reason was because you quickly realised that you needed to in order to accomplish your team goals. But the main reason was that the game made it really easy to get in to, especially for a fairly uneducated, crap player like myself. It is incredibly fast paced and there is quite a solid feeling of achievement for succeeding as a tema, and being the best on your team.

I have no muscle memory of WASD or clouded conceptions of these types of games. So coming in to it from a complete n00b standpoint has made me realise how clean and approachable the game was. Everything in the game was smooth and worked as and when you wanted it to work. From special tools to weapon switching and changing character, everything makes sense and does so without a large learning curve or an effort to buy in to the fiction.

Your loadout isn’t limited to the guns either. You get to choose three different characters, all of which have different classes and ability benefits to your team. And as you die you can respawn as any of them. There are big tank units, medics, scouts and engineers. Engineers are essential for the objective parts as they can quickly arm and disarm bombs and repair mechanical things quicker than anyone else and I spent the most time as this class. They seemed to be the most useful for the game types we were playing, and weren’t too slow or lacking in the firepower.

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The thing is that Splash Damage knows what they’re doing in creating maps. They evocative sense of tradition and arguably tourist-clichéd London is ever present, the design is great to create some balanced and enjoyable team play and works very well in getting you playing. The criticisms I have though is how needed this is. Whilst the game has its own take on the genre, it is almost scared to commit itself to having its own identity, which is understandable given the reception of BRINK. There’s a glut at the moment of both old and new team based online games. Evolve is discovering that it’s hard to move the audience across from what they know and have invested in. The game also has some micro-transactions, which can translate as pay-to-win. The game is officially free-to-win with free characters (mercs) that rotate but there are ones that you can pay for with in game or real currency. The packs that you see in Battlefield/CoD/CSGO/et. al, which Dirty Bomb calls Cases, are also available via contracts in game (so challenges) or by money, along with a Merc starter pack you can get during the Beta. So the micro transaction option is there, but not necessary.

Dirty Bomb so far is an enjoyable game and does everything right and well. But it’s not a departure enough yet to capture a new audience or steal them from other games. It doesn’t really have enough confidence in itself yet to compete. But it will, and if it gets enough traction, it could do good things. It’s certainly on the right path. It is tongue in cheek with its humour and design, it’s visually opulent enough to make your wonder where everything actually is in regards to current real London and who doesn’t love a casual mention of Wheaton’s Law in their trailer? But most of all, it plays well and that’s the most important thing.

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Super Dungeon Bros – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Super Dungeon Bros is a four-player game that brings some of the best elements of some of our favourite multiplayer indie games. You can see the inspiration of games like Castle Crashers. Dungeon raid, rouge-like, co-op smashing games have been a regular staple on people’s top console indie games lists although not many have done them too well. The aforementioned Castle Crashers is probably the best example.

Super Dungeon Bros takes this action into a top down, slightly isometric 3D view. The aim is to beat traps and puzzles along with occasional enemies to raid the dungeon with your three other compatriots. This is both on and offline, so you can all share a screen in your house or your own screens online. The game also allows you to craft weapons so that you can customise how you play, as well as use each other as weapons. There’s quite a nice set of weapons too from ranged crossbows to swords, hammers and even some mad co-op attacks. But the main joy is the constant trolling that will come.

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[Spectral ghost boss… Far more interesting than the title it’s spoofing.]

You can pick your fellow Dungeon Bro up and throw him as a weapon. Which also means you can throw him across chasms, much like dwarf tossing. You can also just descend the game in to constant madness by lobbing your friends off the map and endlessly kill them instead. You go from having great fun, to experiencing great annoyance and eventually end with uncontrollable laughter… a staple of multiplayer gaming if there ever was one. All of this ends with boss battles and then carries on continuously.

Each level is procedurally generated. That’s right, 2014’s buzz word returns and in this case, you get the fun of different levels every time. Although they do follow a basic rule set across the three different worlds of the game, set to some fairly heavy rock music. The game’s story is that it’s set in Rökheim, which is described as “a giant scar of godforsaken earth where wars are waged in underground crypts built by the gods themselves”… *Insert generic town insult here* But they are all yours to loot, pillage and get coin! Dungeons are awesome like that.

Whilst we were at EGX Rezzed we got to have a look at the game at the ID@Xbox stand. It was interesting to see the dynamic of four friends sat down and slowly realise that they can play the game and at the same time, screw each other over. It’s something this writer remembers very fondly, that communal sense of hating someone for ruining the experience of a game, but it was so frequent and often that much laughter was had. That particular experience was on Halo 3, but we can see ourselves having similar experiences with Super Dungeon Bros.

[Rule One: Where there are skull and monk like creatures - Avoid.]

[Rule One: Where there are skull and monk like creatures – Avoid.]

Do not fear though, as despite it being on the Xbox stand, it isn’t an exclusive. As we watched a group of people try hard to throw each other off of a floating tower, the developers told me that the game will also come to Windows 10 and will benefit from the same cross platform play as Fable Legends is going to have between that operating system and Xbox One. Although the game is also coming out on PS4, PC (older versions of Windows) and Mac and is also cross-platform on those formats as well. Which led us to presume that there will be some Steam integration for this cross platform support.

The game we saw was the first every playable version of the game and we were quite impressed with how stable it was (given that we have seen some games lately that aren’t at all). The game is due to be released sometime towards the end of this year by US developer, React Games and Watford based Wired Productions. The game is being developed in the Unity engine too so it should be rather pretty without being too strenuous on a system.

It is early days yet for this game and there’s a lot that is sure to come over the coming months, especially with more game shows and the ID@Xbox banner behind them. The self-publishing vehicle already has a lot of great games that have been released or will be released shortly. This certainly looks like one game that will be an entertaining party choice for those of us inclined to troll our friends.

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LEGO Jurassic World – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Hold on to your butts… Clever Girl… Life will find a way… I’m getting these out of the way early so I am not tempted to fill this preview with many puns. But it’s true, there are numerous moments throughout the history of the trilogy (soon to be quadrilogy) of the failed Dinosaur theme park that have adorned our popular culture both visually and in quotes. Which is why it makes perfect sense for it to be a LEGO game. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before but if we’re honest, we’ve all wanted a great Jurassic Park game.

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[You know back in my day – the Cretaceous period – gluten intolerance wasn’t a thing.]

There have been people that have tried but in all honesty, LEGO as a video game franchise hasn’t produced a full on turkey of a game yet. So it’s good to see that the game we all wanted may well be best served by LEGO. In fact I’ve got a list of franchises that I would love to see in blocks. For now though, I can’t wait to build my first Dinosaur.

Yes, whilst there’s a lot that we’ll talk about with LEGO Jurassic World, the important thing is that you can build your own dinosaur and wreak havoc with it. Along with the dinosaurs from the movies, including the new movie, you’ll be able to unlock them all as you play the game. Much like in the films, Amber will contain dinosaur DNA for you to collect. This will unlock one of the twenty dinosaurs, which you can then use to create your own, much like the character creator that’s already there for custom players. Except in this case you’ll also get the abilities of that dinosaur’s part. Acid spitting? Sure thing. Finally giving a T-Rex long arms? It’s about time! And we’re told there’s an arena of sorts which you can pit your dinosaur creations against each other. Which, as a sentence, is pretty cool.

LEGO Jurassic World will have a lot from the new movie of the same name although right now we’re not allowed to know anything about it, because obviously that would spoil the movie. But the game follows the original three movies as well and there have been some very seminal movie moments in them. So we were given a few levels from the first movie to play.

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[Here’s a scene we all forget where human inability to do simple logistics ends in someone being eaten.]

First up, we got to takeover as extinct-species-poop expert Dr. Ellie Sattler who gets to delve into some LEGO dung and cure a Triceratops with lollipops and fruit. You can then control the Triceratops in order to bash things and complete the mission. It’s standard LEGO stuff until the storm starts approaching. Yes, THAT storm from the movie that so excellently screws over Dennis Nedry’s escape from Isla Nublar. There is a dynamic weather and day/night system in LEGO Jurassic World, which will enable things in the exploration phase of the game to change randomly, as well as in levels to suit the film’s transposed dramatic moments.

Our next dramatic moment involves our favourite lawyer getting eaten. The scene of the T-Rex escaping the disabled electric fence and bullying a couple of kids (stupid T-Rex) in an upturned car is replicated very well. Highlights include the original voice work from the movie (including the wise-cracking Jeff Goldblum), constructing a distracting musical box that plays a version of John William’s excellent theme, and the special abilities of the characters. Dr. Alan Grant’s Velociraptor claw can cut through foliage whilst Lex Murphy, the screaming granddaughter of John Hammond, can scream which will break glass.

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[Objects in this mirror may be more blocky than they appear.]

Finally, we see the cheeky and broken-legged Ian Malcolm being rescued by Ellie and warden Robert Muldoon, before being chased by the rampantly annoyed T-Rex. You can also shoot things in to its mouth for an added bonus, but I was personally gutted to see our favourite mirror joke not make an appearance. Again this kind of level design is something that LEGO has done very well before and LEGO Jurassic World is no different.

Whilst the mechanics of play may slightly change between the games, it is a truly tried and tested formula that lends itself to a lot of nuances in Jurassic Park. One of which is the return to a more expansive open world and hub system. The Tolkein franchise games (Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) all had a sense of the journey and the excellent areas of Middle-Earth. Whilst the two recent super hero franchise games have an open-ish world, it wasn’t the in depth and changeable areas that the Tolkein ones were, in my opinion anyway.

LEGO Jurassic World combats that by having two hubs and both the islands from the movies to explore, Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna. You’ll have the dynamic weather mechanic and of course the parks themselves. Mr. DNA, the theme park’s mascot, will be guiding you along the way as well as giving you education bite-sized Dino facts.

Mostly, I’ll be excited to replay various things from the movies and by association, watch all of them again. Too often I only watch the first one because it’s on TV conveniently on the same day and time that I order pizza. With LEGO Jurassic World, we appear to have ticked many boxes: Movie dialogue, excellent music, interesting levels replicated in LEGO and the beautiful South American islands of prehistoric genetically re-introduced doom. So if the early levels are any indication, then the LEGO franchise has found another new home in it’s chameleonic existence, and hasn’t jumped the Megalodon just yet.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNwFstNTdE&feature=youtu.be

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Not a Hero – Hands On Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

NOAFT

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Not a Hero will have a lot of attention coming its way. Developer Roll7 won a BAFTA for their skateboard game OlliOlli and their platform shooter is equally as addictive.

The game may hark back to the days of classic platformer design, things you’d likely see from a Spectrum, Commodore and occasionally 16-Bit consoles. But the look is very much of the 80s vibe. From the days when gaming’s limited colour palette meant bright and fun level designs.

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[Bunnylord is not afraid to get his paws dirty.]

The premise is intriguing and continuously funny (I’ll explain that statement later). The idea is that the not-so-evil visionary, Bunnylord, has decided to go back in time to become Mayor. Mostly because the world got in to such a state in the future that only he could change it by going back to the past. When he is there, he hires a group of mercenaries to eliminate those opposing his leadership. You are those mercenaries.

You’re not technically the bad guys though because Bunnylord is right and although his methods might be one you’d attribute to an evil megalomaniac, you are in fact cleaning up the town. And if you’ve played OlliOlli or any other Roll7 game, you’ll know that it’s something you’ll be doing at a frenetic pace that requires precision timing. Not a Hero does this perfectly with gameplay that’s reminiscent of the best shooting platformers of the 8-bit and 16-Bit age like Robocop Vs Terminator or that decent Batman game. You have very simple options but it’s the timing that makes it work. You can shoot, which is the easiest thing, get in to cover and shoot, fly through a door and tackle enemies or execute them.

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[Someone took the Blue Pill, we see.]

Instead of the awkward, or should we say challenging, control methods of other violent games like Hotline Miami, Not a Hero is incredibly easy because it operates with only one or two buttons, and very rarely are they operated at the same time. Like OlliOlli, the time that you hit the button and the moments you choose to pop out of cover, or jump out of a building is more important than the shooting itself. Scenes of buildings with a slightly isometric front on view give a great indication of what’s around you as well as an interesting city landscape dominated by “Bunnylord for Mayor” signs. He’s not evil, he’s cute…

Until he starts speak to one of your nine characters that is. This is where the game is continuously funny and incredibly sweary. A lot of people have put a big importance on procedural generation within games, however that’s been limited to the gameplay and the levels. Just check Steam Early Access or Kickstarter and you’ll see that procedural generation is now massively prevalent. Not a Hero has put some procedural generation in the speech rather than the levels, or at least you could say some randomisation. What happens is certain key words are replaced and changed when Bunnylord is talking to you and given you orders, leading to often hilarious and new passages of dialogue every time you play. It gives a new lease of life around the game repeatedly, especially when the levels are so gosh darn replayable.

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[It’s important to utilise cover against the gangs you’re cleaning up. You know, so you don’t die?]

We are introduced to the world when Steve, a former assassin, gets involved with “mayoral candidate from the future” Bunnylord, and becomes his campaign manager. Then begins the slanted 2D, or 2 and one quarter ISO-Slant technology as Roll7 call it, craziness of the cover-shooter… Which actually isn’t limited to shooting. Samuari swords, kick ass Tarantino-esque moments, jumping out of 5 story windows directly in to a van (which was a very enjoyable part of the demo we played) and a various cacophony of comedic 8-bit violence. The missions themselves are normally a fixed objective but you do get, much like in OlliOlli, a list of secondary things that you can accomplish in the level. Things like 3 executions slide tackle 5 enemies, that kind of thing. And these are occasionally randomised as well so that brings another new level of challenges to the game.

In our play through with Cletus, our shotgun gave us some great range. Being able to shoot through doors and enter a room straight in to cover like a violent pixilated ballet gave us great hope for the rest of the game. The characters all have their own weapons and unique personalities and I’m not sure there’s a better, non-evil, humanitarian potential candidate for government than Bunnylord in all of existence. I kind of hope he hijacks our actual national election and given the pictures on the official website I don’t think he’s beyond that, especially as the release date on Steam (PC) is May 7th… Election day. Coincidence? I think not. Whoever becomes mayor, the PS4 and PS Vita will see a release later in the year.

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Titan Souls – Hands On Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Titan Souls is a very interesting game by three man team Acid Nerve and is being published by Devolver Digital. What started originally as a game jam project between friends has grown up somewhat and will make its debut on PC, PS Vita and PS4 in April. The premise is simple. Boss battles. The game is a series of boss battles against you, your spritey little adventurer. There’s the added bonus that you don’t have to do much either as all of the bosses have one hit point/health point. So one shot and they are dead! Excellent.

["No Salesmen Please"... Phew!]

[“No Salesmen Please”… Phew!]

The problem with this is that you only have one hit point too. So one shot and you’re dead, although you respawn outside the boss battle room to try again. It’s made slightly harder by the fact you only have one weapon, an arrow. You can charge up your shot to fire from distance and POW! Except you only have the one arrow so you have to go and get it back or press the recall button to magically pull it back to you.

The art of boss battles is one thing that hasn’t been lost in gaming. By that I mean that, unless you play everything on such an easy level you could accidentally sneeze and hit the shoot button in something’s face, you have to study, learn and adapt to beat a boss within a game. It’s one of the things that stories are made of, how you defeated the boss, how you did it differently, how quick you did it. Boss battles are a narrative part of the gaming experience.

Titan Souls is no different. Each boss is unique and you have to adapt your approach for each one. For example, a boss with a heart in a load of slime globules will divide into more globules and that makes for a tricky area to move around in. Some bosses need to have a bit of puzzle solving applied before you strike. It’s these little nuances in boss battles that makes Titan Souls quite enjoyable.

["Follow me, I'll take you back to your FarCry 4 DLC!"]

[“Follow me, I’ll take you back to your FarCry 4 DLC!”]

One hit point and one shot may sound masochistic but the sense of achievement for beating a boss in that way is a very rewarding feeling. It’s made even better when you’ve worked out a plan and pulled it off. Or even if you surprise yourself, like I did, by accidentally killing a boss with the arrow as it was being recalled and the boss was in the line of sight. And from this you’ll absorb that bosses soul, much in the way video game characters have absorbed spinning etherial particles and exploded ever since the movie Highlander’s Connor MacLeod said “There can be only one!”*

*Disclaimer: Sean may or may not have said this rather loudly while playing.

Titan Souls is also very well put together visually. The 16-bit inspired RPG look is pretty but also uncluttered. It doesn’t detract at all from the game, the battles or anything, yet it’s atheistically pleasing. You might feel it’s more of a Pokemon style look rather than an old top down RPG one, but the actual surroundings feel more like a Lara Croft-eqsue forgotten temple to these behemoth bosses. Vines and waterfalls over stone and tribal architecture, along with murals and ‘open sesame’ doors.

The bosses as well are all incredibly individual and look great, really putting the imagination to work in the artistic approach of the game. I faced the aforementioned Heart-Glob (if it doesn’t have a name yet then I’m coining that one), a laser cube that’s adorned like the Hellraiser puzzle box and a frozen pink thing stuck in a seemingly impenetrable ice cube. There’s 18 in all and you don’t need to kill all of them to complete the game so you can approach it however you want. The best thing is that you can’t even predict the bosses when you first play. They are all so different in look, style and attack that there’s a certain excitement at what you’re going to find next.

[The Return of Audrey II]

[The Return of Audrey II]

It’s a game that has a simple premise and a simple look (which is actually very hard to pull off). The gameplay itself is challenging and something that makes you think about how you approach a situation or a battle. Not just in the tactical sense but also how you react to your plan going south, as all plans normally do. It will certainly be one of those games where you have to beat everything just to feel like you’ve accomplished something, especially as it’s a game that’s happy to kill you repeatedly for your troubles.

The PS4 and PS Vita is getting this game along with PC but it has to be said that it really does suit the controller with its simple aim, shoot and dodge mechanics. It puts itself very nicely in to your hands. It may not keep you busy for a long time, but it has a lovely look, and an interesting charm to the idea of boss battles. It kind of makes you a little nostalgic to the way boss battles used to be in platform games, and how rewarding they were before a singular omnipresent antagonist. Enjoy it when it comes as it’s a nice example of a gaming staple being given a new and interesting life.

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Project Cars – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Project Cars is responsible for a first in my life, my first 4K gaming experience. In an era where open world driving games seem to be the more successful of the four wheeled genre, Project Cars has gone to a very traditional route. One that games like Gran Turismo has treaded and arguably worn out over many years.

Photo-realism in both environments and cars is not just possible but also essential. Manufactures get the final say on the cars they’ve licensed as well as track owners and sponsors having to clear their input as well. We’ve said before, in an interview with Project Cars Creative Director Andy Tudor, that photo realistic driving games should not only be the norm but are practically the only option. The technology is there, the capability is there and the requirement to produce games like this demands it.

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However, pulling off the technical excellence is one thing. Giving a game a feel and a character on top of that is another thing entirely. It’s something we felt DriveClub was lacking. It’s something I find personally with the later Gran Turismo’s. Something about them feels a bit nebulous in the cars and the driving itself. You could argue that I’m being a tad pious but simulations and arcade games should be able to define the cars ability much clearer in these times. Especially when a game like Assetto Corsa is doing it independently of big publishers and money.

So where does Project Cars sit in this? I have to say, especially to a console audience, it sits at the top of the pile. There are many things that games like Forza Horizon 2 and DriveClub have done well independently like great lighting, dynamic weather, day/night cycles and car customization. Project Cars does it all, excellently, from the get go.

Firstly when tackling the selection of cars, this is very much a racing game, not a streetcar racing game. These are the kind of cars you’d see at a weekend at Brands Hatch, Silverstone or Nurburgring. Not just your big DTM, LMPG supercars, McLaren’s and Pagani’s but the other classes and manufactures closer to the street like Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. The interesting thing is that the vintage cars are well represented here too. From my guilty pleasure of a Ford Capri to my non-guilty pleasure of old Lotus F1 cars, everything is not only perfectly reproduced but the way the cars drive are all unique and challenging in themselves. This is a game for people who know names like Jason Plato, Alain Menu and Jim Clark as well as names like Andre Lotterer and Tom Kristensen.

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The tracks range from actual circuits like the ones listed above and including many others across the globe like Australia’s Bathurst and California’s Laguna Seca with its infamous Corkscrew turn. But it also stretches to real albeit less licensed areas like the Cote d’Azur or Monaco, as we all know it. There are even some nice fictional road trip areas to the region, as well as the California area, to give you that off-the-track feel.

The real magic of this game is its dynamic environment system. The game has settings that can change the weather randomly or by design, everything from clear days to rain and thunderstorms. The date and time is also customizable with an option to speed up the progression of time so that you can literally experience four seasons in one day… One full day, that is, with night included. You can also historically set the date and time of a race so that it takes historic weather data to produce what was actually happening at the time. June 3rd 1984 at Cote d’Azur would certainly be one of my recommendations.

All of this works perfectly well straight from the off and whilst there are still a few bugs in the preview we played, these are mostly fine-tuning of cars handling and collision dynamics. Make no mistake about it, this is a game that will be enjoyed by the virtual petrol heads, as well as the more casual intrigued racer, but it will take some mastering, as it should do. If playing Gran Turismo has taught me one thing it’s that repetition is key to driving. Project Cars however makes that just a bit more fun than previous genre titles. This is definitely helped by the immersive graphics. These look great on the PS4 preview build we played and it has all the traditional views you’d expect, including the more immersive helmet cam.

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This is where my first 4K gaming experience came in to play however. I was lucky enough to play the game on a PC at 4K, 30fps (the game can handle 60fps, but the TV we were using couldn’t) and with a wheel. At this point the game really blooms. Things that you might not notice so much on the console really shine. For example I went around Cote d’Azur circuit in a generic pre-hybrid Formula 1 car in the helmet cam view. Firstly the things you notice are the things that racing drivers actually do.

Your view naturally turns to look at the corner but your virtual head barely turns. What it does is focus on the corner, which completely alters the depth of field you have to your dashboard and the surrounding environment. It’s a subtle touch that naturally happens anyway if you drive and might even pass you by because it is that natural. Secondly, the lighting changes and the shadows move around the inside of your helmet as you go around a track. It’s when you notice that the game is doing this everywhere that it really begins to impress you. With the future of Oculous Rift support, this game’s immersive racing will be a massive cut above other PC options and definitely a rival to the independent games currently available.

Driving with the wheel certainly left my arm a little sore thanks to force feedback and occasional collisions. But what was certain was that it was far easier and much more fun than using the controller. That deftness of throttle control is hard to achieve any other way and the game certainly rewards you for using this method. Having used a wheel for other games, this game is definitely worth the sacrifice of savings to get a good wheel and seat combo.

The game has had a few delays, which is understandable once you play it and see the work that has gone in to it. Mid-March is the current estimate but I wouldn’t be surprised if it went a bit further back just to perfect it. Because that is something this game prides itself on, its perfection. With a 30fps cap*, the PS4 handles the game well and I would presume that the Xbox One does the same thanks to the newer SDK’s giving more memory usage. Although the release is planned to be 60fps. How the Wii U version will turn out is anyone’s guess. But if you are the kind of person who has the time and money to build a phenomenal PC and can support 4K gaming, then start saving now.

*This cap refers to the experience of the preview build on PS4 that we played. Not the final product.

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This preview is based on a preview build, played on a PS4 and a PC.

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