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August 16, 2019

Publisher: The Pokemon Company, Nintendo

Developer: Game Freak

Release: November 15, 2019

Platform: Switch

Nintendo has released a new trailer for Pokémon Sword and Shield getting to the crux of the matter: Battles.

The trailer shows off new abilities like Neutralizing Gas (which cancels out ongoing effects of other abilities and prevents them from being triggered), the effects of held items like the new Room Service item and Eject Pack, and also Hidden Abilities like Corviknight's Mirror.

Nintendo has also released additional snippets of combat info on its official website such as additional effects of Dynamaxing and Max Moves' secondary effects.

Finally, Sword and Shield's online battles are detailed (paid Switch online membership required) such as Ranked Battles and its tiering system, Casual Battles (where you can use Legendary and Mythical Pokémon), and competitions.

Players can use rental teams – even in Ranked Battles – as well as make your own battle teams public, with up to five teams at a time.

For more on Sword and Shield's combat, check out the official site, and stay tuned until the game's release on November 15.

August 16, 2019

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Developer: Double Fine Productions

Release: August 20, 2019

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

Rad is a rogue-like taking place in a world that has suffered two apocalypses thanks to mistakes made by The Ancients and additional follow-up mistakes by The Menders (who only made things worse). As a teenager growing up in the post-post-apocalypse, the burden falls on you to explore the procedurally generated wasteland and bring life back to the world. Sometimes it goes well, and you get all the best mutations to help you complete your mission. Sometimes you sprout useless wings, take damage from health items, you lose all your currency, and you wonder what you’re doing with your life.

Highs and lows like this are typical of the rogue-like genre, and in many ways Rad sticks close to the rogue script, but it does manage to set itself apart with its leveling mechanics. Combat takes place from an overhead perspective, with the action playing out as a cross between a melee action game and a twin-stick shooter. As you defeat enemies, you build up experience that eventually causes you to mutate. These Exo Mutations are all unique, and even after successful runs and plenty of hours, I still saw new ones. You might sprout a cobra head and be able to perform venomous long-distance strikes. You might gain a tail that lets you lay eggs that birth helpful spiders. The mutations change your appearance and your approach to combat, and you can earn three on a single playthrough, so the combinations go a long way in making each run feel different. I was always excited to see what mutation I was going to get, but some (like the wings mentioned above) are a sign that the current run is a lost cause, which is a bummer.

Along with the Exo Mutations, you also find Endo Mutations, which offer significant passive boosts like imperviousness to fire, faster running speed, or one that makes your long-distance mutations (like a boomerang arm) fly farther. You don’t know what they will be until you activate them and they’re automatically equipped. Coming across these Endo Mutations is also exciting, but sometimes it doesn’t seem to take your loadout into account. Gaining the ability to throw long-distance attacks farther is great, but if your random mutations are all close-range, it feels like a waste.

You can also come across negative Endo Mutations, which is an interesting idea, but they’re all so damning that I learned to avoid them at all costs, even with the chance of getting something good. One I came across turned my screen orange making it harder to distinguish items and enemies and just generally made everything look bad. That mutation was active the first time I made it to the final boss, so I didn’t even get to see what it really looked like until I got there again on another run. When the negative outweighs the positive so heavily, it discourages you from rolling the dice at all.

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I like the look and sound of the world, but the layout can sometimes be frustrating, thanks to the procedural generation. Underground hallways filled with enemies sometimes turn into boring dead ends without rewards, and above ground, necessary switches might be difficult to find or reach. The later stages are particularly labyrinthian; I had one run where I killed every enemy and was just trying to find the exit while outrunning frequent lightning strikes, which eventually caught up with me and killed me. It just felt unfair. I never ran into game-breaking procedural generation, but the annoyances were enough to make me pine for hand-crafted levels.

One random element I enjoyed was the world-building. Occasionally, as you find new items or areas, a young woman’s voice narrates a random snippet describing what you found, giving you little factoids about what happened and who the various survivors you run into are. These little story moments are short and sweet and don’t interrupt gameplay, but they make the world of Rad feel like a real place with history.

The rogue-like is a difficult genre to nail as it relies on balancing challenging action and myriad random elements. The trick is making sure the frustration meter isn’t higher than the fun meter, and Rad generally walks that line well. I certainly had my attempts where I felt like the game was working against me, but when I had a good run with mutations that worked well with my playstyle, I enjoyed myself and was thoroughly proud of my accomplishments.

Score: 7.25

Summary: Frustrating lows and and exciting highs are typical of the rogue-like genre, and in many ways Rad sticks close to the rogue script, but it does manage to set itself apart with its leveling mechanics.

Concept: Explore a rogue-like post-post-apocalypse while earning game-changing mutations as you defeat enemies and explore

Graphics: The neon-drenched setting is an enticing, overgrown apocalypse obsessed with ‘80s arcade culture

Sound: The music all sounds like synthy ‘80s songs and it’s great. The infrequent voice announcing various achievements is charming without being obnoxious

Playability: The twin-stick and melee controls work well, though slowdown during rain makes dealing with lots of enemies unnecessarily difficult

Entertainment: Frustrations related to random abilities and level layout can be annoying, but the overall aesthetic is inviting. Successfully completing a run is always an exciting achievement

Replay: High

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August 16, 2019

Publisher: Team 17

Developer: Playtonic Games

Release: 2019

Rating: Rating Pending

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC

Despite being revealed just a few months ago in June, Playtonic has insisted that their Yooka-Laylee 2D semi-sequel was remarkably close to being finished. It turns out they weren't lowballing it, as the game is coming out in just a few months.

A playful tweet from Playtonic says that the Donkey Kong Country-inspired platformer will be out in October, though a specific date is not given.

https://twitter.com/PlaytonicGames/status/1162034427159035904

The game combines the 2D platformer sections from people who made the SNES Donkey Kong Country games and top-down exploratory and puzzle-solving sections. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is coming to PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC in October.

August 15, 2019

Developer: Alex Massé

Rating: Teen

Platform: PC, Mac

Paralives is an upcoming indie life simulation that is shaping up to be the first worthy alternative to The Sims. Players build their dream house, create characters, and manage their lives with as few limitations as possible. Imagine houses that can be square or curved, stairs leading to anywhere in any direction, and curtains or tablecloths available in a variety of colors. Whether you are in your car, on a bike, or riding horseback, you can explore an open world full of family, friends, and foes. Similar to the houses you build, the relationships in your town are a direct result of your actions. It doesn’t take long to figure out why many from The Sims community are keeping an eye out for Paralives. With the base game set to include dogs, cats, horses, cars, weather, and even boats all of which are customizable, it’s no wonder the title has drawn some interest.

Filling In The Blanks

Alex Massé, the man behind Paralives, has been a fan of simulation games, especially The Sims, since he was 10 years old. Now that he has enough game development experience under his belt from working on PewDiepie’s Tuber Simulator along with demo projects for Unity’s Project Tiny, Massé decided to quit his day job and develop Paralives full-time. “Since I started in game development, I’ve always wanted to create a simulation game and I made different prototypes over the years,” he says. “With Paralives, I’m hoping to make the game I always wished I had and I feel a lot of people will appreciate this different take on the life simulation genre.”

With Paralives, Massé wants to offer players a sense of endless customization. “I think what life simulation games have been missing is powerful and intuitive tools that allow players to easily create any house with precision,” he says. “A lot of people want to recreate themselves and their own house in the game so it’s important that everyone is able to achieve this. Paralives is also built from the start to take place in an open-world neighborhood, offering many fresh options for exploration and story making.”

These gameplay features could be the solutions for most of the shortcomings that have frustrated faithful simulation fans; no more settling for off-colored furniture or being forced to place objects where you don’t want them due to a strict grid system.

Paralives offers plenty with its core gameplay, with building options down to the smallest detail. Players have the choice to use a grid like The Sims or go without one, so they are no longer limited to strict object placement within certain square units. While there are cheats in The Sims to get around this, fans will likely appreciate how Paralives is built with those solutions in mind. If you want to make a house look more lifelike by adding clutter and placing objects in realistic positions, Paralives has you covered.

Creating Complex Characters

We’ve had glimpses of the intricate building gameplay in Paralives, but the level of sophistication with character creation and animations is still up in the air. Massé’s main focus right now is on building, but he is eager to offer more in the character department, and Massé is putting a lot of faith into procedural animation. Procedural animation involves automatic computer-generated animation based on previously created animations. So rather than animating every single character, Massé can save time and letting the computer help out. “I wouldn’t need to animate a hug between two adults and a hug between an adult and a child, for example,” Massé says. “The system would adapt itself and make the adult crouch before hugging the child.” He is not only looking to incorporate this technique with the animations, but for gradual aging as well.

Massé has brought up the concept of ‘chance cards’ in the Paralives Discord and Patreon where he began a discussion on how to expand and create something more engrossing. ‘Chance cards’ are a common element in The Sims 4, where a randomized opportunity prompt asks you to choose between a few options for your sim. For instance, you may be asked if your child sim should cheat on a test because they didn’t study or own up to their mistakes and fail. Massé recognizes how these could break immersion if not done well.

“These random events need to have a meaningful impact on the player and they could be completed by real actions that you ask your character to do,” Massé says. “Another important aspect is that chance cards need to be relevant to you and your characters so the chance card algorithm needs to adapt to your playstyle as well as your characters’ skills and personalities.” He’s going to reveal more on character development with an upcoming announcement trailer. In the meantime, Massé made sure to let us know we’re going to be able to pet the dogs in-game.

By The Community, For The Community

Massé encourages those who are excited for the game to join the Paralives Discord and share their ideas on the type of content they would like to see. He’s been surprised by the sheer amount of replies that have been submitted so far. It’s been a little over a month since Paralives began marketing and there’s already a 100-page document the fans created that houses all the ideas called the Parabook. Many of the suggestions have given Massé inspiration.

“To name just a few that caught my attention: random events such as power outages, various customization options for furniture, different levels of intensity for personality traits, the option to make a loan at the bank, and many more,” Massé says. “I won’t be able to fit everything into the game as I need to focus on the core gameplay and make the game enjoyable. But being able to receive ideas from everyone is very useful and exciting!”

The Future Of Paralives

Concerning the future of Paralives, Massé is all about supporting the game after release with free updates rather than having players continue to spend money on DLC. That’s going to be a huge draw for Sims players. Modding is also going to be a big part of the game’s future. Though script mods are not currently planned at the moment, Massé is “working on tools that will allow people to customize the game in a lot of different ways and share these as mods on Steam Workshop.” He has opened up the floodgates and is encouraging players to let their ideas run wild. With lofty ambitions for what you can do in Paralives, I’m excited to test the limits of my imagination when it launches.

It looks like life simulation gaming is getting a strong, new addition. For more on the genre, be sure to check out my feature on the top Sims 4 DLCs. And if you’re looking for more games with an easygoing play style, take a minute to get familiar with Animal Crossing: New Horizons and everything we know so far.

August 15, 2019

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix

Release: July 2, 2019

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Mac

Over the years, expansions have continually infused new life into Final Fantasy XIV, helping it become the best modern Final Fantasy experience. Shadowbringers continues the trend, and while it suffers with strict adherence to old-school MMORPG structure, it soars to new heights with a package that pulls the player in to a massive questline that’s worth the price of admission alone, even if you never engage with endgame progression or even other players. In an unexpected twist, Shadowbringers excels at offering players an almost completely single-player journey through a brilliant new world.

As you explore, you become immersed in new environments that sell classic tales in beautiful packages. A shantytown of the have-nots resting beneath an opulent palace of the haves. An undersea adventure accessed on the back of Bismarck (there are of course, tons of nostalgia nods to the franchise that evoke joy for franchise adherents). A faerie realm with a sword-wielding frog. A classic tale of sacrifice and a few critical twists in this world are enough to make you forgive, if not completely forget, the fact that you’re bumbling around between main beats collecting bear meat and helping merchants find iron.

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“The grind” is an antiquated MMORPG component that’s pervasive in Shadowbringers, filled with stale objectives that send you from point A to point B killing a few critters here and emoting at NPCs there. However, these are blemishes on an otherwise enthralling main story path. The dungeon backdrops and bosses are especially inspired; in your first battle with a lightwarden in this new realm, you may lose the fight because you’re simply so captivated by the absurd sensory overload of powerful abilities firing off in a grand arena awash with the incredible soundtrack. Words cannot do justice to Masayoshi Soken’s score, and you may find yourself listening to it long after battles have been completed and you’re back in reality.

The feeling that these multiple aspects of sound and scenery convey during legendary encounters makes you oblivious to the fact that all you’re doing is mashing buttons and standing out of telegraphed circles. Even if combat can almost always be distilled down to standing in the right place at the right time, every boss encounter made me feel like part of a life-or-death scenario with the fate of the world at stake.

One of the new elements in Shadowbringers is that you can play through the many, many hours of the campaign almost completely by yourself. While you still must do four-person dungeon content at times, you can now use key story NPCs as your allies, called a Trust. The NPCs are smart and do a great job of teaching you boss mechanics, as they always know where to stand and how the fights work. This is ideal for players that might be called away during a dungeon, as you can go at your own pace without worrying about slowing a group down.

Utilizing the Trust also allows players that might have to wait a long time for a group queue to get into dungeons instantly. The trek from level 60 (new dancer!) to 80 took me about 70 hours, and during that time, Shadowbringers only has a few instances where you have to engage with other players, but this can even be done without uttering a single word to them. While this may rub classic MMORPG purists the wrong way, you can make the case that Shadowbringers is a full-fledged single-player Final Fantasy title – and it’s great at being just that.

Technically, you won’t need any prior knowledge of FF XIV to get through the main quest, but I’d advise you to do your homework and research what’s happened so far to enjoy what’s going on. The tale continues from the base game and previous expansions, so it’s not meant as a standalone experience. You can purchase items (with real money) to catch you up to the beginning of Shadowbringers, but completing the back content is the best way to engage with the tale.

Shadowbringers is the best expansion yet for Square Enix’s MMORPG, a world that comes alive in the player’s hands, with weight and gravitas moving you through every whimsical corner. Old-fashioned quest design and color-dodging combat add a dull tinge to a truly magical landscape, but those imperfections can’t keep down the scale and scope of excellent environments, grandiose bosses, and majestic music.

Score: 9

Summary: Fantastic attention to detail, wondrous environments, big bosses, and magnificent music make this one of the best Final Fantasy offerings.

Concept: Explore a new world, bringing darkness to a land of endless light

Graphics: Great variance exists between bland brown and green landscapes and elegant dungeons and boss setpieces

Sound: An awe-inspiring soundtrack contributes immensely to immersion

Playability: Some prior experience with FF XIV (or MMORPGs in general) is a must, but certain pay-to-catch-up mechanics are available for newcomers

Entertainment: Stale mechanics and features can’t bring down an epic experience featuring cool characters, incredible bosses, and a spectacular soundtrack

Replay: High

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August 15, 2019

Publisher: EA Sports

Developer: EA Vancouver

Release: September 13, 2019

Rating: Everyone 10+

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One

After years of minimal changes, the franchise mode took a nice step forward in NHL 19 with the introduction of a complex new scouting system and fog of war feature that changed the way users evaluated prospects, trade targets, and free agents. NHL 20 takes the remodel even further by adding a new coaching carousel, a redesigned line chemistry system, a trade finder, and a conversation system that applies across coaches and players. We spoke with producer Gurn Sumal to dig deep into how these new features change the experience of managing an NHL team.

COACH CAROUSEL CHANGES TEAM BUILDING

Madden did it. NBA 2K did it. Now it’s time for NHL to join the ranks of franchise modes where coaches play an integral role in the experience of running an organization.

Before breaking down how coaches affect the game, I should note that no real NHL head coaches are in the game this year. EA wants to eventually incorporate them, but there are some licensing hurdles to overcome that prevented them from making it into NHL 20. A wide variety of coaches are generated at the start of your franchise mode (complete with character models that will be seen in-game), and you can hire and fire them at will.

Each organization has a total of eight coaches split across the NHL and AHL. For each league, you hire a head coach, two assistants, and a goalie coach. Like scouts, coaches have their own set of ratings. These break down across six categories – offense, defense, power play, penalty kill, teaching (which helps grow or stunt prospect growth), coach influence (which helps develop staff). Each coach has a distinct teaching specialty. Where one may specialize in defense, another might work best with veterans, preventing them from suffering serious skill regression. Coaches earn XP across all six categories as they progress through their career by winning games, winning hardware, being at the top of the league in scoring, etc. Having a head coach with a good coach influence rating will help more XP trickle down to the staff.

Coaches have their own card where you can track their coaching record and see how many awards they’ve won. With bench roamers now in the mix, EA added the Jack Adams trophy to the end-of-year hardware.

Unlike scouts, coaches also have concepts of morale and staff chemistry. Across both players and coaches, the morale system ditches the happy faces in favor of a more informational bar system. The overall morale rating is an aggregate of four different sub-morale meters that cover team performance, management, coaching staff, and player relationships. The game also tracks which players and coaches each coach has the best and worst chemistry with.

The CPU-controlled teams set their expectations before the start of a season, and teams will put their coach on the hot seat during losing streaks or if a team fails to live up to expectations. The GMs aren’t afraid to pull the trigger on a firing mid-season if things are dire. Firing a coach can be a net benefit to the organization, as it resets morale for the players and staff. It can also lead to dramatic turnarounds. Sumal says he saw the Vegas Golden Knights fire their coach during a losing streak, and the interim head coach led them to the Stanley Cup Finals that same year.

As with scouts, sometimes an NHL player will retire and move into the coaching pool. You’ll even see them behind the bench during games.

NEW LINE-CHEMISTRY SYSTEM

The NHL series used to have a line-chemistry system based on pairing different styles of players together to optimize their performance. NHL 20 introduces a brand-new take on line chemistry dependent on finding players that fit with your coach’s tactical philosophies. The goal of this new system is to change the meta of how users build their teams. “Having a good coach and having a coach that fits what you're trying to do is very important,” Sumal says.

Every coach in the game has defined team tactics and line strategies that you can see by pulling up their coach card. These are the same basic systems we’ve seen in past NHL games, like forecheck system, powerplay strategy, penalty-kill strategy, etc. The same goes for the line strategies. One coach may prefer a Behind the Net approach for a top line, but use Overload for the second line and Crash the Net for the third and fourth. A scheme fit tab on the coach card shows how well each player fits the coach’s preferred strategy, so you can immediately identify players who are and aren’t a great match.

To better surface the chemistry between players on a line, the Edit Line screen receives an overhaul in NHL 20. To the right of each line, you can see how their chemistry modifies your team performance, on a scale of -5 to +5. These modifiers affect both simmed and played games. As you scroll through players on the Edit Line screen, you can see the various ways a player fits or doesn’t into his current role. “The goal is to have unique ways of building the teams – finding players that fit the team so you can get the best out of your team,” Sumal says.

One type of player that has never been very valuable in previous NHL games, but now has a newfound importance, is the plug-and-play type who can move up and down your lineup without negatively impacting your chemistries. When you find these jack-of-all-trade glue guys, you’re going to want to hold onto them because they can stop the bleeding when your team gets hit with injuries.

Another factor to consider during roster construction: Each coach manages ice time differently. Some coaches may heavily play the top lines, whereas others divide ice time across four lines (or the defensive pairings) balanced fashion. This can affect everything from how many points your top liners put up to the amount of progression young players experience playing on your third and fourth lines or third defensive pairings.

EA doesn’t want these line chemistries to exist in a virtual vacuum; they should reflect what we see in the NHL. Therefore, dominant real-world groupings like the Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen line in Colorado or the Marchand-Bergeron-Pasternak line in Boston have chemistries that match their actual effectiveness. Sumal says they can update these over the course of the season as well.

You cannot edit coaches or their strategies to perfectly match your roster in NHL 20; Sumal says they may add this as a conversation topic in future. However, some of the more balanced coaches will re-evaluate their approach in the offseason and potentially make adjustments to better fit the current team composition.

You also aren’t forced to play with your coach’s strategies once you load into a game. While you won’t get the corresponding chemistry buffs/nerfs when you make changes in the pre-game or mid-game menus, at least you can play how you want to play. “We want to give the user that plays games some flexibility, but not necessarily being able to kind of cheat the system that we've kind of built,” Sumal says.

CONVERSATIONS SURFACE CONTROVERSIES

With coaches and staffs integrated into the organizational chemistry, it opens the door for more friction between these elements like we see in real NHL organizations. To bring some of these tensions to the surface, EA redesigned its conversation system.

Instead of players simply complaining about ice time, circumstances can arise based on your team performance and chemistry. If your team has a hard time putting pucks in the net, the coach may raise his concerns about the lack of scoring.

In conversations like this you have a few options. You could stall and say you need more to assess the situation, persuade him that the team will be just fine, or agree with him, which will move the conversation toward the coaching requesting the acquisition of a skilled forward. Here, you have two options. You could persuade them that bringing on another skilled player would cost too much, using the handy persuasion meter as a guide of how likely you are to convince the coach to adopt your thinking. Successfully persuading a coach means they won’t bring up the issue for the rest of the year. Or you could promise to make an acquisition in the next few weeks. A ratings impact meter will show you how successfully fulfilling this goal will affect the coach’s morale.

Player conversations follow the same general guidelines. The system currently has 15 different situations that can arise, and you can make promises or persuasions related to each, which impact morale, chemistry, and/or attribute effects. EA determines which conversations can arise based your team status. If you’re rebuilding, you won’t face the same types of issues as a team contending for a Stanley Cup. Star players stuck on a losing team with poor line chemistry may demand you fire the head coach, one of the tough decisions we see real GMs face.

EA doesn’t want morale issues to be as frequent as past games. Instead, it wants these conversations to be more meaningful, and only a few should pop up over the course of the year. Unless, that is, your organization is a dumpster fire. “Like in the real world, a team that's doing really bad is going to have more discussions with the coach to see what they may need or if they're really failing,” Sumal says.

The conversation system also allows users to interview head-coaching candidates and prospects. During these you can figure out what kind of system a coach or player likes, what they think about your club, and in the case of coaches, how much it will cost to get them on board.

If you have no interest in having these conversations, you can turn them off altogether.

IMPROVED TRADES AND FREE AGENCY

For years, we’ve been urging EA to take a page out of the NBA 2K playbook and add a trade finder to NHL. We finally get it in NHL 20. The trade finder is invaluable because it allows you to select a player from your roster and immediately see what kind of returns you would get if you tried to move them. Conversely, you can also target players on other rosters and see what it will take to get them. Even if you don’t accept these trades, it gives you a ballpark offer to work from.

Sumal says each team can come up with up to five different trade proposals, which are mixtures of players, prospects, and picks. Don’t expect to acquire superstars like NHL 20 cover athlete Auston Matthews for pennies on the dollar. You may not even have the assets to convince another team to entertain your offer, but if you do, the teams will ask for the moon.

Users have two ways to use the trade finder. If you press the Y/triangle button after you select all the assets you want, that will use the trade block you’ve set to generate potential deals. If you instead press the LB/L1 button, that will try to formulate a deal with any asset in your organization or on the CPU team.

Trades also get bolstered thanks to a few other changes coming in NHL 20. EA added exempt contracts for junior players under 20 years old signed to NHL deals so they don’t count against the 50-player contract limit. This means more teams have flexibility to make moves no matter what time of the year it is.

To further encourage trade movement, EA tweaked player valuations. Just like the real NHL, centers and defenders have the highest trade values, followed by wingers and goalies. This means an 85-rated goalie won’t have the same value anymore as an 85-rated center.

Trade values also take into account recent performance. A player who’s been performing well will have a boosted trade value during that year, and if they are in a slump you can get them at a discounted rate. Contract length comes into play as well. If a player’s in the last year of his contract, as you move closer to the trade deadline his value will decrease because other teams know he’s essentially a rental player at that point. Taking all of these factors into consideration, Sumal says the trade deadline is much more active in NHL 20.

One last minor but interesting trade tweak coming to NHL 20 – you can now trade players with expiring contracts before the start of free agency. As we see in the modern NHL, sometimes teams will trade for a player with no term left on their deal just for a period of exclusive negotiation rights. Now, you can at least get something for a player who intends to walk.

Player-performance modifiers affect free agency as well. Gone are the days when a high potential prospect who hasn’t even cracked an NHL lineup yet demands a $4 million per year contract. Conversely, free agents coming off seasons with great scoring numbers (or save percentages for goalies) now have higher demands.

Stats growth and regression factor in performance modifiers as well. If a first-line player has a brutal scoring season, their overall will drop. If they put up big numbers, their overall will raise even if they are past the peak progression years.

SCOUTING GETS A SECOND PASS

Last year’s scouting revamp was largely a success, but once we learned the nuances of the system, it was relatively easy to stack your farm system with elite youngsters. NHL 20 makes some changes to bring back the element of mystery to talent evaluation.

“One of the things we did is focus on a prospect pool and how efficient the scouts are,” Sumal says, “You won't actually be able to scout everyone in the draft class to the full exact report like we did last year. … We want it to be a little bit harder to get those, which then in turn makes gems and busts more valuable.”

On average, Sumal says it will take twice as long to get full reports on players in NHL 20 compared to NHL 19. They also tuned down the number of elite goalie prospects so you can’t stack your farm team with them and use them as trade fodder.

NHL 20 makes a few other changes to scouting as well. The scout recommendations are surfaced into the draft class hub so you all that information is in one place. The game has two new scouting reports available as well. The new amateur report tells you when a player is likely going to be ready to play in the NHL and how well they fit into your coach’s scheme.

The second new scouting report applies to the pros. Since scheme fit is a major consideration when exploring trades and free agency, the new scouting report better informs you how well a player aligns with your team. This critical information means you can’t overload amateur scouting at the expense of pro scouting this year if you have the fog of war turned on. “Knowing a player would actually fit in your lineup is completely different than how you would target a player in years past,” Sumal says. “Before, you would just target players who were just the best overall player. There’d be no reason for me not to go after a player like Rickard Rakell or Ryan Getzlaf from Anaheim. What we wanted to do is change that metagame up by having you find the best player available that fits your scheme, just like a real-world GM would. You don’t want to just get the best overall player, because that player may be a detriment to your team and actually negatively impact chemistry. They may not fit the way your coach wants your team to play.”

SIM ENGINE EVOLVED

For years now, the sim engine has been a mystery to NHL users. We never really understood why teams drop into slumps, why certain lines generate a lot of points while other lines stacked with elite players continually underperform, or why some goalies have absurd stats like a .90 GAA, yet they have a losing record. Sumal claims NHL 20 offers remedies to these problems.

“Coaches have letter grades for offense, defense, penalty kill, powerplay, etc., and those all have modifiers in the sim engine,” Sumal says. “And then you also have the mod for the line chemistry, which also has an effect on the sim engine, as well as all the morale boost and all that stuff. So there's quite a bit of stuff happening that the user has a little bit more control over based off of who they sign as a coach and how players fit in their lineups. This puts the onus more onto the user to build the right team and find the right coach.”

Thankfully, the goalie problem from last year is also fixed. You should no longer see those messed-up stat lines.

BURNING FRANCHISE QUESTIONS

If EA can execute on its vision, the new features coming to NHL 20 sound like they should further reinvigorate the experience. However, the NHL community has other burning questions they want answered as well. We posed each to Sumal to get his response.

On incorporating advanced stats:
“Because you can scale time in our game differently playing versus simming, that is a hurdle to overcome, but advanced stats has always been something we've wanted to do. The flip side is how do we make it important as well, because I just don't want the stat in there and then it not having actual meaning and merit to the game.”

On roster sharing:
“We see the world today, and like you mentioned, people are more savvy with teams and players and all that stuff. Roster sharing would be a great benefit, because reading through forums, Reddit, and whatever, not everyone has the same opinion on every player. Being able to edit and share that type of stuff would be really cool.”

On menu-navigation speed:
“We have done some tuning and bug fixes as well. Getting in and out of the franchise hub should be a lot faster, and just in general in the game as well.”

On GM Connected:
“As a big fan of those modes, that's something I've always wanted to reintroduce back into the game. As of right now, there's no real timeframe that I can honestly discuss. It's something I always bring up because I am a big fan of connected modes and franchise modes like Connected Franchise in Madden. That's something I do want to get back to.”

NHL 20 comes to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this September. The Play First trial for EA Access members begins September 5. Those who pre-order the Deluxe or Ultimate editions can jump on the ice September 10, and the worldwide launch happens on September 13. To learn more about the game, check out our feature breaking down the 16 biggest changes coming to the game and our exploration of what playing the beta tells us about the prospects for NHL 20.

August 15, 2019

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August 15, 2019

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August 15, 2019

Weta, who in addition to being a special effects house are also a merch company, have a bunch of Apex Legends stuff coming out, ranging from little vinyl figures to more expensive statues.

Realistic Movement

Players will spend dozens of hours with their special operators in Breakpoint, and nothing would kill Ubisoft’s desire for authenticity quicker than animations that make these characters look like weekend warriors rather than elite, highly trained military experts.

Ubisoft Paris wants Nomad and the rest of the Ghosts to feel like real special operators, so they enlisted Tier 1 Special Forcers operator Alex Auberton for three days of motion capture to make sure they move and act like the real thing. Given the varied terrain of Auroa, which has steep mountains, river valleys, and everything in between, they made sure to motion capture Auberton moving up and down slopes to get true-to-life animations of how elite soldiers would move over this terrain.

Ubisoft showed us several subtle details it captured, like sluggish but deliberate navigation in water, with the soldiers being sure to raise their weapon to keep the barrel out of the water. The Ghosts interact with vegetation as they move through it, use their hand to assist traversing steep inclines, and lean back to keep their center of gravity when descending slopes.

When they see a threat, the Ghosts move their weapon to the ready position – buttstock in the shoulder, barrel up, and rifle angled so they still have a good peripheral view. When the time comes to engage in combat, they face their enemy with their full body when aiming away from cover to maximize the protection of the ballistic plates in their flak jackets. If the Ghosts are moving while aiming, they use special forces duck walk, crouching slightly to keep their aim steady even when moving.

Prone Camo

Not every encounter in Breakpoint favors the Ghosts. Sometimes they will be overwhelmed and outgunned, so Ubisoft wanted to make sure they have a way to disappear when being hunted. The prone camo system allows the Ghosts to cover themselves with mud, dust, dirt, leaves, and even snow to blend into their environment and lose their trackers. It can also be used as an element of surprise to ambush enemies. To make sure this element of the game felt authentic, Ubisoft once again motion-captured Tier 1 operators to emulate the movement from a prone position while the engineers developed dynamic terrain displacement so you can see the ground being affected when the Ghosts grab a clump of mud to smear over their clothing and face.

Tactical Chatter

Ghost Recon Wildlands took a lot of flak for its ridiculous squad chatter, which felt overwrought and groan-worthy even though the writer later stressed these were indeed things special forces operators say. Ubisoft alleviated this pain point by cutting out the A.I. squadmates altogether (though the company plans to reinsert them post-launch due to community feedback). That said, idle chatter and combat conversations are still a concern considering the Ghosts face off against a dangerous faction comprised of former special operators known as the Wolves.

To help get the tactical chatter right, Ubisoft brought on Emil Daubon, a Green Beret with more than 14 years of combat under his belt. “He's helped us with a lot of the tactics and everything, but he's also helped us a lot with the dialogue between the enemies,” Gingras says. “For example, if you listen to the Wolves, their tactical chatter is really on point as far as how operators really talk to one another.”

Close Quarters Combat

The early demos of Breakpoint showcase a brutal new collection of stabby close-quarters takedowns. These weren’t just imagined by designers who ingest a steady diet of over-the-top action movies. Auberton worked with stunt actors to bring techniques real operators use into the fold.

“Depending on the different equipment that you have equipped or the situation, you'll trigger different animation for different sequences,” Gingras says. “You can start imagining the amount of animations that went into the CQC aspect of the game.”

The team motion-captured a variety of close-quarters combat scenarios from several directions, including attacking down a slope, springing from bushes, frontal attacks, and the brutal submissions that involve breaking an enemy’s arm or smashing their face to subdue them for grab and interrogate opportunities.

“Taking somebody out is no small task – it takes willpower, it takes skill, but it also takes resolve,” Gingras says. “The enemy wants to survive just as much as you do. And we really wanted to play it to feel that struggle to feel that life was on the line.”

Body Transportation

Stealth fans will be happy to know that Breakpoint allows you to pick up bodies and stash them elsewhere to preserve the element of surprise. You can also transport a fallen comrade to a safer area to attempt a revive. To bring this element into the game, Ubisoft Paris studied the different ways soldiers would do this.

Working with its special forces consultants, Ubisoft motion captured quick pickups from every direction, one-handed handling of victims, and using a handgun while carrying someone. They even captured different pickup and putdowns based on who you’re carrying. If your cargo is the dead weight of a fallen enemy, expect the Ghost to handle them roughly. Teammates needing evacuation are treated with much more respect and care.

Capturing The Little Things

To further drive home the idea that you’re controlling a highly trained operative, Ubisoft gathered a lot of seemingly mundane details from its consultants and captured them for Breakpoint.

“What you learn when you work with operators really quickly is that every move they do is calculated,” Gingras says. “This is built on years of combat learning, hours of training and repetition and muscle memory. And in the end, it's all about efficiency, economy, mastery, and safety. This is how they make order emerge out of chaos.”

Playing Breakpoint, you may notice these slight details. Ghosts always have a hand on the grip, ready to use the rifle. They also demonstrate finger discipline – keeping their finger out of the trigger until they are ready to shoot. The Ghosts carry guns differently based on weapon type. While they keep the weight of weapon on their hip for assault rifles, they bring their hands together and keep the weight of sniper rifles centered on their chest.

While moving through the environment, the Ghosts perform equipment check to make sure everything is in working order in advance of their next skirmish. They check their sight battery to see if the scope light and aiming laser are working by holding it against their hand to see if it illuminates their skin. They check the gun chamber for jams, and tap the magazine to make sure it’s still there and firmly plugged in. Occasionally, they release their magazines to check their ammo count, and use their fingers to make sure the gun barrel doesn’t have debris or mud in it. They even reach for their equipment like extra magazines and grenades to make sure it’s still there after moving through rough terrain.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint releases October 4 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can get your hands on the game in advance during the beta that kicks off September 5. To learn more about the game, read our previous coverage:

August 14, 2019

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Infinity Ward

Release: October 25, 2019

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Customization has become a bigger and bigger part of allowing players to express themselves in online multiplayer matches. For Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward wants to not only allow players to change the way their characters look, but also how they play. We sat down with several key members of the team to discuss all the ways players can make the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer experience their own.

Players can customize their characters on three main levels: looks, loadouts, and guns. As you play, you unlock new operators to choose from, new skins to equip them with, and new attachments to snap onto your gun. When many people think of deep customization systems, they look at the purely cosmetic ways you can make your character look cool. However, with Modern Warfare, the cosmetic side of multiplayer character customization is perhaps the shallowest when it comes to the options available to players.

Modern Warfare's multiplayer consists of two factions: Allegiance and Coalition. When you first start playing multiplayer, you only have access to generic soldiers on each side. However, as you play, you unlock new operators for each faction. From Coalition's grizzled, in-your-face Texan known as D-Day to Allegiance's eerie man of few words Krueger, you're likely to find a character to represent how you want to appear and sound in game. Despite the characters featuring wildly different looks and personalities, don't worry about being forced to play as a character whose personality you don't like just because you like how they control; the operators only differ from one another cosmetically.

“This is pure player visual choice," studio art director Joel Emslie says. "If people want to represent themselves visually in the game, that’s what this does. I think that’s important, because when you tie gameplay to visuals, what if I don’t like a specific character but I love that ability? I’m stuck with that voice and that look just because I like to play that way. That’s something we really wanted to acknowledge and make sure the two were nicely put together in a way where people could really have the ability to make those decisions for themselves.”

While you can't customize any of the characters' looks down to individual parts, each character has unlockable skins. “We went with a system that is more of an overall skin,” multiplayer design director Geoff Smith says. “We didn’t want to deal with knee pads and the noodly bits. We’d rather do highly authored looks on those characters, rather than having to deal with, ‘Will those socks go with those gloves?’ and trying to make yourself match.”

When I was able to dig into the character customization, each operator had eight slots for unlockable skins, but Emslie tells me that number isn't final. “We might have more or we might have less," he says. "For me, I don’t want to ever see a skin or an incarnation of a character that’s just arbitrary to fill a number. Our focus has been, whatever customization we put in has to be completely high quality. You don’t just put it there to put a number down.”

Instead of letting you customize every nitty gritty detail of how your character looks, Infinity Ward wants you to have a field day with customizing your weaponry. The Gunsmith feature returns, giving you full control over how your gun looks and acts. In my time messing around with the Gunsmith between matches, every attachment had some kind of give and take. Adding a suppressor might make you harder to hear coming, but it might affect the speed of your ADS. To combat that, you may want to try adding a lighter stock to improve your handling.

“It really speaks to, early on, recognizing that the gun is really the main character,” Smith says. “[Customizing] the guy is great, and that’s fun, and you pick whoever you just kind of align with, but we really wanted to have that MMO character with the gun. That’s why we invested early on with all those noodly bits, because that’s your tool to interact with our world.”

Once you figure out the perfect combination of attachments for your favorite gun, you can save and even name the gun. "I think everybody wants to use Excalibur rather than broadsword #3," Smith says. "So once you name it, it becomes a thing and kind of a talking point. We see it in the office: ‘I made this combination, here’s the recipe, and it’s really cool, give it a try!’ It just becomes a cool talking point of what kind of Frankenstein experiment you came up with.”

It might sound like players will be finding "overpowered" combinations, but Infinity Ward isn't particularly concerned about that, as long as there are ways to counter those setups. “A good goal for the system for us is that it’s not that we want to have a Golden Gun in there, it’s that we want to have three or four,” multiplayer design director Joe Cecot says.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Call of Duty game without being able to customize your loadout. While the Gunsmith customizations are certainly a part of your loadout, it goes well beyond that to allow players to cater to how they want to play. Similar to previous years, players can choose a primary weapon, secondary weapon, three perks, a lethal grenade, a tactical grenade, and a field upgrade.

In addition, killstreaks return, meaning you can choose from a list of effective rewards for strong performance. Are you the kind of player to rack up long killing sprees? You can gamble and put all your points in the higher end of the killstreak spectrum. However, maybe you're the kind of player who gets two or three kills at most before you die. In that case, you'll want to stick to the lower end of the rewards to try and wring out every last kill you can get. From enemy-spotting UAVs to airstrikes to even seemingly unstoppable juggernaut suits, the killstreak rewards are just one additional way you can cater to your playstyle.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare impresses with its level of customization, particularly with regards to how granular the modifications are for the weapons themselves. However, if you're concerned that it'll be a race to unlock the best weapons, Infinity Ward says you shouldn't worry. “Our default classes will be some of the best stuff in the whole game,” Smith says. “You put those up front, and if those are solid enough to play in some league-play finals, then we know we’re doing our job well. Then when I buy the game six months later, I’m not at a disadvantage because I have all the best stuff right here. Then you’re just chasing your agency out of it.”

I'm excited to see what kinds of experimental monsters players can come up with when the game launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC October 25. To see the customization in action, check out our episode of New Gameplay Today below.

To learn even more about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, click on the banner below and follow along with our month of coverage.

August 14, 2019

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Ghost Games

Release: November 8, 2019

Rating: Rating Pending

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Electronic Arts has released a reveal trailer for November 8th's Need For Speed Heat (PS4, Xbox One, PC), a tale that appears to adhere closely to the series' tentpoles of crooked cops, customization, and wild racing.

The game takes place in fictional Palm City, where players street race by day and escape the police by night. Along the way you can customize your car, build up your garage, and roam the streets of the open world, taking on any challenges that come your way.

"Our fans have been clear that they want more cars, more customization, and more challenges," says Riley Cooper, creative director at developer Ghost Games, "and we're tuning up on every aspect."

The game goes into wide release on November 8, but EA Access and Origin Basic subscribers can start playing for up to 10 hours beginning on November 5. If you're an Origin Premier member you get unlimited access to the game at that time.

For more on Need for Speed's pre-order bonuses and various editions, head over to the game's official website.

August 14, 2019

Publisher: 2K Games

Developer: Gearbox Software

Release: September 13, 2019

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

I've played a lot of Borderlands 3 at this point by my own reckoning, but I was still eager to jump at the chance when 2K and Gearbox offered a chance to play the game from the beginning with the final hunter, FL4K. The beastmaster is an emergent AI with a touch of bloodlust and not a lot of moral ambiguity about matters of life and death and, until now, hasn't really been given any hands-on time. So we got to take the newest vault hunter robot out for a spin in the game's opening few hours.

FL4K starts out like pretty much every other hunter in the game's tutorial area. Until you beat Shiv, the first boss, he is just a moving gun with the occasional robotic one-liner about killing everyone. Once you get the action command in your skill tree, you can start taking advantage of everything that makes FL4K different. As a beastmaster, FL4K keeps around one of three animals: a Skag, a Spider-ant, or a Jabber, all with their own skills and strengths.

And yes, you can pet the Skag. Little hearts come out when you do.

Each beast stays out the entire time, unlike Moze's mech. Left to their own devices, your pet will just run around and attack enemies and take damage. You can also choose targets for them which focuses their attention on a single enemy and, in the case of the Jabber, toss a radioactive barrel in their direction like Donkey Kong. You can further interact with them using FL4K's special skills. One skill creates a nuclear blackhole in the middle-distance, which does massive damage and teleports your beast to that spot, superpowered for about 20 seconds to use for ripping enemies in two. Another skill lets you cloak yourself in an invisibility mode, manipulating the beasts from the shadows and guaranteeing that your next three gun-shots will all be critical hits.

After playing around in the beginning of the game for a little while, I loaded up a later mission and chose to go in as Moze, the mech-controlling vault hunter. In this mission, the head of Jakobs manufacturing has sent the vault hunter to a long-abandoned ship that contains a piece of the vault key. Upon landing, Moze discovers a distress signal from a Nagivation A.I. that controlled the ship, voiced by rapper and actor Ice-T. The Law & Order: SVU star plays BALEX, who was placed inside of a teddy bear by his jilted lover, another AI named GENIVIEVE.

In the end, both she and BALEX both take control of rival mechs and the two of you square off against her in a boss fight. Borderlands' history of having static boss fights without movement has been more or less upended with each new boss fight I see, as the fights now seemed to designed to force you to move around, or even assign roles amongst your party.

In what is theoretically the last time I will play Borderlands 3 before it releases next month, I'm coming away pretty excited to experience all this content with my friends and see the interplay between all these hunters I've tried out so far. I'm also hoping every other vault hunter can pet the Skag.

You can check out a New Gameplay Today of these missions with me, Jeff Cork, intern Blake Woog, and Leo Vader talking over a supercut of my hours with Borderlands 3. Or, on the same page, you can find the raw video of those several hours put together in a way that is sure to not be entertaining to anyone, but you can try it for yourself and find out!

August 14, 2019

Publisher: 3D Realms

Developer: Voidpoint

Release: August 15, 2019

Rating: Not rated

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

Ion Fury is loud. From its introductory level, packed with hooded transhumanist cultists for you to mow down with your handy revolver, all the way to the epic showdown that marks its end, this is a first-person shooter with no patience for realism or a slow pacing. Ion Fury (formerly called Ion Maiden and inspired by Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior) is a glorious pixelated playground for you to run around with high-powered weaponry, reducing armies of monsters and henchmen to goo, as you search for countless secrets tucked away at its fringes. It’s a hell of a time.

The premise is refreshingly simple. The story leans hard into ‘80s sci-fi (RoboCop in particular), casting you as police officer Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison as she takes on an evil scientist who is turning the citizens of Washington D.C. into cyborg monsters. This showdown plays out across seven chapters, and I enjoyed every single moment of my ten-hour playthrough. The combat is fun and interesting thanks to weapons that sound powerful and challenging foes. During the campaign, you’ll fight decapitated heads roaming around on mechanical spider legs, mechas, cadavers fitted with jetpacks and missile launchers, and a host of other disgusting creations.

One of Iron Fury’s most notable accomplishments is the velocity of its action. Movement is fast enough that it doesn’t embody the now awkwardly stilted maneuverability of its inspirations, but it’s never too fast for the player to control. The action is so balanced even though it’s fast most of the time I felt like a death-dealing force moving at the speed of light as I danced around foes and peppered them with lead. Your arsenal is highly creative and powerful, with each weapon being useful in a number of situations. Even your starter pistol, usually a last-ditch effort in other shooters, is both handy and satisfying in combat thanks to its ability to let you paint multiple targets and then unleash a volley of murderous headshots in one swift motion. This maneuver is particularly useful for taking down airborne foes. The chaingun, on the other hand, is great at stunning and putting down enemies that can charge through your other weapons, while your homing bowling bombs can zip around corners to kill targets. Learning the strategies to use with each foe, and then combining those strategies to emerge victorious from overwhelming encounters is much of Ion Fury’s charm. I never ran up against an encounter that was unfair and instead was constantly engaged by how the enemy makeup of each battle would force me to change my tactics to progress.

The true star of Ion Fury, as it is with the shooters that inspire it, is the level design. The campaign is technically a point A to point B affair all the way through, with loading screens, simple puzzles, and boss fights that punctuate each chapter. However, the levels are massive and creatively distinct. You fight in mansions, malls, downtown districts, metro systems, underground complexes, and even duke it out on a moving train. These levels also contain a ridiculous amount of secrets.

Nearly every environmental fixture you come across in Ion Fury, whether it’s a light switch or a refrigerator, can be interacted with. Sometimes that light switch might just turn on the light. Other times, an innocuous switch might open up a floor panel hiding some grenades and health packs to help with the battle waiting just down the corridor. Even without the secrets waiting to be discovered, interacting with environmental objects can reveal tactics to help you throughout the rest of the game. Cracking open a soda machine will garner you some health-restoring energy drinks, which is helpful since those things are all over the place. I had so much fun running down secrets that even after I had technically beaten a level and killed all the enemies, I’d spend more time roaming around in search of hidden stashes of weapons and ammo or goofy Easter eggs. All of these secrets and charms go a long way toward making the already-enjoyable action of gunning down foes more exciting. I always felt like I was exploring a world that had been meticulously crafted as opposed to churned out on an assembly line or procedurally generated.

Ion Fury’s limited storytelling and humorous attempts are ultimately charming and refreshing, managing to pay homage to the attitude-first persona of Duke Nukem 3D without bringing the icky sexism attached to it. Like Duke, Shelly’s got a number of quips she loves to throw out that go from blatant pop culture references (like lines drawn from Tim Burton’s Batman) to nonsensical (“Clean up on aisle Your 'donkey'”) with the delivery of those lines doing a lot of the heavy lifting to make her a fun, if not particularly deep, character.

Outside of an odd quirk where you can’t manually reload weapons even though they have clips that reload automatically once they run dry, Ion Fury is everything that I’ve wanted from a modernized take on the arcadey shooters of the 90s. The pitch-perfect movement, the enemy variety, creative weaponry, and fantastic level design all add up to a superb shooter campaign. In a sea of retro shooters looking to channel the glory of the genre’s early days, Ion Fury emerges as the title that pushes those thrills into the present in an engaging way, deftly capturing their timelessness.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

Score: 9

Summary: This retro shooter lives beyond its nostalgic ambitions to become a fantastic, timeless FPS experience.

Concept: Take back a futuristic city from an evil scientist in this ridiculously entertaining retro shooter

Graphics: The 2D pixel art for characters and weapons is clear and eye-catching, as are the cityscapes and underground lairs you infiltrate

Sound: The weapons roar and the MIDI rock-and-roll background music rules

Playability: This twitch-based shooter might take some getting used to if you haven’t played one since the ‘90s (or ever), but the learning curve is fair and mostly gentle

Entertainment: More than just a throwback to frenzied ‘90s shooters, Ion Fury is a fantastic game filled with creative weaponry, oodles of humor, and memorable levels.

Replay: High

Click to Purchase

August 14, 2019

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Smirfus joined on the 08/14/2019.

August 14, 2019

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August 14, 2019

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August 14, 2019

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August 13, 2019

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix

Release: 2019

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC

At E3 this year, Final Fantasy VIII got a remastered edition announced, which is partially significant for how the game just never seemed to get ported anywhere else after release unlike the other PlayStation titles in the series. It was also a big deal because it seemed like, from the brief trailer, that significant work was being done to update the graphics. While it wasn't a Final Fantasy VII Remake-style overhaul, it was not a simple resolution bump, either.

Today, Square Enix used a well-known joke about the game to advertise how big that difference can be. The image below circulates around social media sites, showing Rinoa Heartilly complimenting protagonist Squall Leonhart in order to convince him to dance. She tells him that he's the best looking guy there, while the next image shows a close-up of Squall's PS1-resolution face.

Today, Square Enix tweeted this from the Final Fantasy Twitter account, referencing the same joke.

https://twitter.com/FinalFantasy/status/1161261369456517122

The video also does give us a chance to directly compare what has been improved. While it doesn't look like a ton of work was done on the backgrounds, the character models look generations better than their PS1 versions. While the font is higher-resolution and slightly different, an effort was clearly made to make it look like the original game's text, which has not always been the case with Square Enix remasters.

As someone who defends Final Fantasy VIII a lot, and by virtue of not getting a chance to play it through various ports over the years, I'm pretty excited for a Remastered version with an apparently noticeable bump. Final Fantasy VIII Remastered releases sometime this year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.