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At the Square Enix press conference tonight, developer Eagle Nest Interactive announced a partnership with Square Enix Collective to publish its top-down racer Circuit Superstars. Circuit Superstars, formerly know as Apex Racing League, offers bite-sized multiplayer racing and a customizable pit strategy to become the master of the circuit.
Curcuit Superstars is releasing on all platforms in 2020. To stay up to date with E3, tune in to our E3 live page.
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Publisher: Square EnixDeveloper: Square EnixRelease: TBDRating: Rating PendingPlatform: PC
Since its original unveiling, Final Fantasy VII Remake has undergone some changes. However, we know that the project is still a multi-part experience. At Square Enix's E3 presentation, producer Yoshinori Kitase revealed more about the scope of the first installment, and it's apparently focused on the iconic city of Midgar.
"The first game in this project expands on the story of Midar, and is such an elaborate retelling that it has become a solid standalone game in its own right," Kitase said.
Midgar took about five or six hours to play through in the original version of Final Fantasy VII, so getting an entire dedicated game is quite a step up. It's an understandable move for Square Enix, though; when fans think of Final Fantasy VII, Midgar is the one location that stands above all others.
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Publisher: Square EnixDeveloper: Square EnixRelease: TBDRating: Rating PendingPlatform: PC
Yesterday, we learned that the first installment Final Fantasy VII Remake is coming in March. Today, during Square Enix's E3 presentation, producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Tetsuya Normura gave even more compelling details, finally explaining the gameplay and giving fans an idea what to expect from the revamped combat.
As a hybrid between real-time and command-based battle systems, Final Fantasy VII Remake's combat is certainly a far cry from the original. That isn't a bad thing; players have direct control over characters, executing regular attacks with the square button and swapping among party members with a single button press.
As you fight, ATB gauges charge, but they don't restrict you from acting in this version. Instead, they act as charges that you can use to perform other actions. Casting spells (yes, materia is back), using items, and executing special techniques like Cloud's Braver all require you to expend ATB charges. These charges recharge automatically over time, but that happens quicker if you're landing attacks.
If you're worried about this sounding too button-mashy, you can also use your ATB charges to enter a time-frozen tactical mode, letting you strategize more deliberately.
Enemies also have a gauge that you should mind: As you land attacks, you build up a focus meter that staggers your foe when it's full, causing them to take increased damage.
The demo showed these concepts in action, as Barret and Cloud squared off against a familiar-looking foe called Scorpion Sentinel in a Mako reactor. During this fight, the heroes chip away at the robot's health – Cloud using close-range slashes and Barret firing his gun when the thing jumps out of range. They also take cover to dodge a charged-up laser blast from the scorpion's tail, and Cloud gets grabbed briefly as Barret tries to break the beast's grip.
The fight concludes as the robot's focus meter fills, sending it into a stagger as Cloud and Barret pummel it... then Cloud finishes the fight by executing one of his signature sword techniques: Cross Slash.
That's a lot of information, and it came from just a quick first look; over the next few days, come back for additional details based on our own hands-on impressions.
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Publisher: Bandai NamcoDeveloper: Bandai NamcoRelease: 2019Rating: Rating PendingPlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Last year, Bandai Namco was all set to launch their anime-stylized Souls-like game Code Vein at the end of the summer. Just a few weeks before release, Bandai Namco delayed the title to an indefinite timeframe. Now,the publisher has given the action title a new date almost exactly one year to the original date. Code Vein is now dated for September 27.
Along with the date is a new trailer celebrating that fact, which you can see below.
Click here to watch embedded mediaCode Vein releases on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on September 27.
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Publisher: Focus Home InteractiveDeveloper: Deck 13Release: 2019Rating: Rating PendingPlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
The Surge, a Souls-styled game set in a sci-fi universe, is set to get a sequel with a lot of the same ideas in a newly refined context. We really dug what we saw of the game at last year's E3 and it has been a year since then. Since we're already at another E3, we got another trailer for The Surge 2, this time focusing on the game's tone.
Click here to watch embedded mediaThe Surge 2 is scheduled to release September 24 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
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Publisher: UbisoftDeveloper: Ubisoft QuebecRelease: February 25, 2020Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Ubisoft closed out its annual E3 presentation by announcing Gods & Monsters, a brand-new IP from the team at Ubisoft Quebec (the studio behind Assassin's Creed Odyssey.)
Ubisoft Quebec senior producer Marc-Alexis Cote took the stage for the reveal, emphasizing that this new property is more focused on mythological action, rather than historical.
The brief teaser trailer showcases a stylized artistic direction, with an Ancient Greek warrior clashing with a fantastical beast.
We'll undoubtedly learn more in the coming months leading up to Gods & Monsters February 25, 2020 release date.
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Click here to watch embedded mediaPublisher: UbisoftDeveloper: Ubisoft MassiveRelease: March 15, 2019Rating: Not ratedPlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Ubisoft has detailed its plans to continue support for The Division 2. Plans include Tidal Basin, the game's first 8-player raid, and the locations for its next three DLC episodes, which include "additional narratives and missions, new PvP and PvE modes as well as three entirely new specializations."
The first episode, "D.C. outskirts," will take the player outside of Washington D.C. Players will go to the woodlands, a university, and the National Zoo.
The second episode, "The Last Castle," journeys to the Pentagon, in an effort to secure the government's secrets from being released to the world.
The third and final episode is titled "Homecoming," which is set in Coney Island in Brooklyn. There'll be a manhunt to prevent a "nemesis" from spreading the Green Potion virus.
Episode one releases this July, episode two launches this fall, and episode three hits in early 2020. All three episodes will be free. The Division 2 is on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and will be available on Google Stadia.
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During the Ubisoft press conference at E3 today, Ubisoft unveiled a trailer for a new mobile game that unites all of its properties together to form one unstoppable team.
Tom Clancy's Elite Squad will bring different classes and characters from The Division, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher, to a mobile battle platform. Each character will be bringing abilities and assets from their respective games to the table, allowing players to combine characters for different play styles.
You can pre-register for Tom Clancy's Elite Squad on the game's official website to unlock a special character from Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.
For more E3 coverage, stay tuned to our E3 live page.
There were a few rumors, leaks, and hopes that Splinter Cell would be returning to this year's E3. While a mobile ensemble game may not be the way we wanted Sam Fisher to come back, it is still nice to see Splinter Cell representation somewhere in the Ubisoft roster. -
Click here to watch embedded mediaPublisher: UbisoftDeveloper: Ubisoft MontrealRelease: February 14, 2017Rating: MaturePlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Ubisoft has just announced the new For Honor event Shadows of Hitokiri, and it is now live. The event will last until June 27 and introduce the new female samurai character, Sakura. The character and event embody the spirit of death along with the new game mode Soul Rush. More customization items are available as well as a new, eerie map ambiance.
For more on the new female character Sakura, check out the trailer above or Imran's coverage of her here.
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Publisher: Electronic ArtsDeveloper: Respawn EntertainmentRating: TeenPlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends came out of nowhere early this year to be the surprise hit of early 2019. From its rock-solid launch, the battle royale set in the Titanfall universe experienced a meteoric rise, drawing in more than 50 million players in a month and surpassing even Fortnite's growth trajectory. Now comes the even harder part: Convincing everyone to stick around.
During EA Play this week, Respawn outlined its plans for Season Two, which include adding a new legendary hero to the roster, introducing ranked mode, and improving the battle pass. We spoke with Respawn executive producer Drew McCoy and lead product manager Lee Horn about what fans can expect in the coming months.
How hard is it to go from traditionally developing a game to developing a service game?
Drew McCoy: It has been probably the hardest four or five months of my career. Trying to manage the team that's trying to develop content that could be coming out in a month or 18 months. And we got 50 million people, and they're saying a million monkeys on a typewriter are going to write the complete works of Shakespeare eventually. But we had 50 million monkeys finding all the exploits that were impossible for us to find within 30 minutes on a patch coming out. The world has played our game more than we could ever Q&A. It's crazy. And then having to react to those fires and make sure servers are running. And then suddenly the Eye of Sauron of the world of like, marketing partnerships and EA business things. We were really under the radar during development. No one knew what we were doing within EA so we were just kind of left alone, and now there's this tidal wave of people who want to help. And they're trying to elevate the game and do stuff, but that's just time and effort and thinking process. It's been a huge change for us. It hasn't been easy, and we still have a long ways to go before it feels comfortable.
Is it hard to resist the urge to just stay at work 24 hours a day?
DM: That's one of our biggest tenants of how we're going to get through this, is we can't crunch. There was some amount of crunch to get the game shipped. But in post-launch, we keep progressively scoping and scheduling so that people don't need to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week. Case and point, we had our lead designer, who's kind of heading up character development, update the whole team about, "Here's where we are, here's what we're working on, here's timelines for stuff, and here's how we're going to try and speed up development." But the number one requirement is we can't crunch to get there, so we've got to find ways to work smarter, not harder. We've got to find the right people to hire to make an impact that changes and not just throw bodies at it, because that just slows you down.
From a toolset standpoint, how agile is your infrastructure to keep servicing demand? Are you able to create content quickly, or has this rapid success made you go back in the lab and build out an infrastructure that can support quick updates?
DM: We definitely had to rethink about how we develop content, where we put our effort, and where we try and make things go quicker. We've always been huge on iteration, and trying things, scrapping them, and trying things and scrapping them. It takes a lot of time, and to then get good assets at the end of that process because it's all blank prototype ugly boxes and stuff. That's another huge period of time. So we're trying to figure out how we can layer these things so we can have a really consistent rhythm and pace to how we can deliver content. We've got a bazillion openings and hiring is actually one of the hardest parts. There's a lot of comments like, "You guys make a ton of money, just hire some people." It doesn't work that way. We shipped Titanfall with about 70 people, and Titanfall 2 with about 85. And now we're at about 120. And so it's taken us about eight years to go from 40 to 120 on our team. And that's with us constantly hiring. It's just hard to find the right people.
Are you aggressively hiring people to design cosmetics?
DM: We're definitely trying to increase the production of cosmetics, for sure.
I know you are trying to ramp up and do a lot of hiring. But when you look at where you want to be, what kind of content frequency is the aspirational goal?
DM: The kind of cop-out answer is you can ever make enough. The bad example is we spend two or three years on a Titanfall game. People finish all of that content that we spend years making in a week or two. It's literally impossible to make too much content. So we just got to keep finding ways to make cool stuff that people want in a timely manner.
Who are the most used and underused characters so far?
Lee Horn: I think to no one's surprise Wraith and Pathfinder are our super-played characters. And then Gibraltar and Caustic on the other side. As people have seen throughout the season, we've tried to sort of nudge those closer together. For Season Two we will have another set of balance changes that will....we always strive to make our characters pretty even choices. So it's sort of pick who you want to play who fits your style.
What kind of buffs are we talking about?
LH: I think in general, you got to see the whole package, but we'll be nudging maybe health here and there, something like that.
DM: In general, what we don't want to do is nerf kits very much because then the character becomes very bland. So we gotta find other vectors of balance, besides just, you know, knocking down some of the better abilities.
Click here to watch embedded mediaLet's talk about the new legend coming to Season Two.
LH: Wattson is our next defensive character. She has wireline, she sets some traps, some defensive areas, perimeters that it's hard to get through. Her ultimate is giant, another trap that basically stops all ordinances, so if Gibraltar throws his ultimate at you and shoots down all the bombs and then if someone throws a grenade, it'll stop that, and it charges up your shield so you can set up a really strong defensive perimeter. If you layer Caustic on top of that, you have a sort of an impenetrable fortress, which is really exciting, and her passive lets her use an ultimate accelerant to completely recharge her ultimate so she can throw out sort of two of those kinds of things... She’ll be live on July 2.
I know cosmetics are the main way battle royale games tend to keep the content drip going. But in terms of introducing legends, do you have a different philosophy about how frequently you want to drop new opponents into the battlefield?
DM: Not currently. We're making as much as we can, we would like it if we could make more, I bet we would get to a spot where we're like, “All right, we have a lot and adding more is not adding enough benefit, or it's making the game too difficult to learn too quickly.” So I'm sure there is a breaking point on characters specifically, but I think we're a long way away from that.
Grind has been a major community talking point in terms of Battle Pass, progression, and whether the leveling reward ratio should be based on kills or time played. What are you looking to tweak in Season Two?
LH: We redesigned the Battle Pass for Season Two. The big change we're making is we'll now have challenges. It's no longer just play the game and level up, which was where the grind was coming from. Every day, you'll get a set of daily challenges and weekly challenges, and they'll be different things like get some kills with shotguns or whatever it might be, but not too extreme, like backflips off towers and 360 headshots. It's not that, it's in the essence of what you normally do, but spicy. It gives you variety. So we'll have that, and then the overall time to level up should be way, way lower. And then we're increasing the quantity of content across the board. So we're going to have more legendary skins; we're adding three. We're adding Caustic and Octane legendary skins – we showed them earlier. In general, I think the reception was pretty positive. Our skin game is improving. We're making much cooler themes. Then we're taking out a lot of the low-value content like stat trackers and badges, and we're adding three new content types, which we will reveal at the start of the season. We want to keep a little surprise there, but three new content types. So it should be more exciting things, and they're content types you've never seen in the game, so exclusive to Battle Pass for the launch.
Are you changing the reward structure in terms of what you get at the end of the rainbow for Battle Pass?
LH: The end reward is still the same, it's an evolving skin. So this season, it'll be the R-301. And it's sort of a rhino themed molten-forged skin that as you get kills it has the effects that sort of shoot out the side. And that's pretty cool. And then at one time, there's sort of a golden version of that gun. Yeah.
Let's talk about battle royale and map design philosophy. Some choose to introduce brand new play spaces so people can rotate between different settings. Other games morph and evolve their pre-existing map. Where do you fall in that debate? Do you prefer one or the other?
DM: There are incredible benefits to both. It really depends on why you're doing them. If you're doing it just to change stuff up, or you're going to adjust an existing map. If you're doing it to try to make the game better or trying to find the ultimate version of the map, as opposed to just a constant cycle of change.
So you're leaving both doors open?
DM: Just not closing them.
Everybody likes to speculate about other elements of the Titanfall universe coming into the game. Everybody wonders about Titans jumping into the mix.
DM: We prototyped it for like nine months during development, and we couldn't get it to work well. Titans were created back in the day as a power item. As a sense of, "I am now a badass, don't mess with me." That fantasy fulfillment is destroyed immediately in battle royale once you've balanced them to a point where they don't ruin battle royale. We could never pull enough levers – how you get it, how strong it is, how fast it is, how big it is, what kind of weapons it has, when do you have it – all that kind of stuff. So I think for now, titans are just not a thing. We're no longer considering it.
How about dual-wielding?
DM: We have a giant list of things people have asked for in the studio, and it's definitely on there.
A lot of people are saying they're having some server lag issues after the most recent update. Are you seeing that on your end as well?
DM: We haven't seen a spike. We have a lot of metrics running to make sure that stuff is running smoothly, because we do have some server performance issues. We're constantly trying to pinpoint where those are happening and why. I don't think we've seen that particular spike. Although the day of launch, I know AT&T was having routing issues around both North America and over there in Europe. And it was probably a lot of packet loss. So when you first boot the game, we do a connection test to every data center in the world that we run, and we get both your ping and your packet loss and we take both of those into account and choose which data center to put you on. So if you have really high packet loss even to somewhere close to you, we're going to be like "That's not going to work," and we might have put you somewhere really far away. And so I think that was happening to some players early on.
Game streaming is a major conversation topic in the industry right now, with Stadia jumping into the game and Microsoft prepping xCloud for launch. Have you tested your games for streaming and do you feel like the performance is where you want it to be?
DM: We tested a lot of streaming solutions in the last five or six years. For the kinds of games we make, I don't think they're well suited. We're already fighting TV manufacturers and their image processing that's turned on when they pull it out of the box and everything and that adds like 80 milliseconds of input latency. And just because light moves at the speed of light, and not faster, it's only adding more. We put an enormous amount of effort on the engineering side to reduce the amount of input processing we do in the engine and so that it's only a couple frames behind what you're actually doing. There's no way to have it on the same frame. So things like streaming only exacerbates problems that we work really hard to eliminate, and it's really tough having those problems being taken out of our hands. We can't make whoever's streaming service better. We want to make our game better and the more reliant on them and a user's internet connection and how many hops they're going through and what kind of crappy Wi-Fi router they got from their internet provider eight years ago – there are so many problems.
I think for some games, it's gonna be fine, but the really fast-paced precision games, it's not going to be great for them. That's only for the people who can feel it, there's going to be a ton of people who are fine, and that's okay, but it's not like we want to target fast-paced FPS for streaming.
What are your feelings on crossplay between platforms?
DM: That it's awesome. If it wasn't a ginormous amount of effort and work, we'd probably already be doing something there. It's just one of those things where we're still a fairly small team so we have to pick and choose our battles.
Let’s talk about the inclusion of ranked mode in Season Two.
DM: When we designed Apex, it was trying to be a really competitive game. Not like esports all the time, because competitive to some people means, “Oh, if I'm not gonna play an arena, I'm not gonna play that game.” But with the NBA, they can also go down the street, find a hoop, and play with friends. It's still a competitive experience and it's based in the real sport. So we look at Apex in that same way. At every level, it should feel like a very deep, masterable, non-random experience. It's on you and your team still to win. So ranked is our first big step. We had a top-five elite queue this week, a nice little baby step. It's interesting because while developing the game, you know getting 60 players into a match is a lot for a small team, and you so we all hated dying because we didn't want to sit and wait for the match to end if you died early on. So when we were developing the game, the pace was very different than in the live game. Because in the live game, sure, I'll hot drop into Skull Town, die in three seconds, "Cool, I got two kills, I'm re-matchmaking." And so the game is way too hot. People are playing it really intensely. Top Five is giving purpose to not dying, and I think it's doing really healthy things for the game for the most part. Ranked is going to continue with that because it's going to progress to different tiers with matchmaking at each tier, visual rewards that show how good you are, and always have good matchmaking.
LH: I think the skill-based matchmaking is really important for that. Because, you know, with Top Five, right now you're in with any top five. So that could be the best top-fiver ever, or a so-so top-fiver like myself. Ranked will [look at] like-for-like skill, which is really important, because then sort of the silver hairs of the world can play in a healthy environment where they have a chance to win and it can be challenging without just being stomped. It should basically reduce stomps as a whole, which will be nice.
DM: We'll finally see what it looks like when 60 of the best players in the world play the game, which I'm really excited for, because I feel like most of the time when really good streamers are playing the game, they're jump pub-stomping, and they're really good at playing the game. But it all comes down to their situational awareness and aim, and not so much on team composition, strategy, and tactics. For ranked, when you started watching Platinum or Apex Predator tier players, it's going to be really exciting.
That’s where you feel like the esports potential of the game will be realized?
DM: That's when the game is going to reveal itself to us, and we're going to finally get to see, "Okay, now this is what Apex competitive is."
LH: And along with that we're also adding a stats page so people can finally see their lifetime global stats, which are, you know, we're trying this season to identify skill, trying to find who really is good. So little tools like sorted stats that sort of say, "I am the best."
Do you feel like your community cadence is where it needs to be? Or is that something that's still work in progress?
DM: No, I mean, communities are always going to have issues, and it's usually coming from a place of a lot of passion and love, so you can't get too angry at it. It's like, content – you're never going to be enough. That doesn't mean you should stop. We've got a lot of things we're working on to try and have a more open and positive relationship with our community.
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Publisher: UbisoftDeveloper: Ubisoft ParisRelease: October 4, 2019Rating: MaturePlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Ghost Recon Breakpoint comes out on October 4, but you don't have to wait until then to get your hands on it. Today Ubisoft announced that a beta is on the way, starting on September 5.
To participate (or rather, for a chance to participate), you can register at the game's site starting right now.
If you are hungry for more information about Breakpoint, you can get a bunch of additional details here.
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Hello SuperHobbit,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
SuperHobbit joined on the 06/10/2019.
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Publisher: Deep SilverDeveloper: Ys NetRelease: August 27, 2019Rating: Rating PendingPlatform: PlayStation 4, PC
During Limited Run Game's E3 presentation, it announced a collector's edition for Shenmue III, that will be exclusively distributed by Limited Run.
The collector's edition contains a light box styled as a shoji door, a double-sided phoenix/dragon mirror, stickers and patches from the game, and the game itself. It's a somewhat modest edition, but everything looks high-quality.
There aren't any current details on price or when people can pre-order the collector's edition, but the game launches for PlayStation 4 and PC on November 19, 2019.
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Publisher: 2K GamesDeveloper: Gearbox SoftwareRelease: September 13, 2019Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
To see the sweet blood-soaked sands of Pandora has been the desire of many Borderlands fans since the Pre-Sequel (and Tales From The Borderlands) wrapped up years ago. With Borderlands 3 releasing this September, they'll soon get their wish. During E3, I had the chance to play a 20-minute demo of the game and discovered that playing the latest entry of Borderlands felt like more Borderlands 2, which is ultimately to the game's credit.
During our demo, I played as Zane the operative, the stealth/gadgetry rogue character of this outing. Zane has access to a massive barrier that enemies shoot through but that he can with his own weaponry as well as a hologram clone he can spawn to draw enemy fire while he flanks. His most impressive ability, however, is a drone he can spawn to attack enemies with laser fire. Each ability has its own skill tree that adds different effects and buffs out stats, like more damage dealt.
The level I played through, taking Zane through a town filled with bandits and leading into a dungeon that felt like a mix between a junkyard and concert hall, gave me ample opportunity to see what's changed since the previous game. Not much, at first glance. From my brief hands on, it's clear that Borderlands 3 isn't a revolution but instead an attempt to polish the series trademark combination of RPG and First-Person Shooter.
The world and the characters have sharper textures but they're in the same ballpark as the previous games in terms of visual fidelity. However, combat has new effects that make trading bullets with foes a more lively affair. Heads and arms often pop and blow away under a hail of submachine gun fire. My drone's laser-beam straight up disintegrated one bandit while an assault rifle with flaming bullets set them on fire and quickly charred their bodies. This might not sound like a huge improvement but it does a great deal to make the combat feel less like you're pouring bullets into sponges and more like enemies are reacting to the damage you deal in a convincing way.
Zane's abilities make blowing through this area an ease but that doesn't mean it's not fun. Popping a shield and then throwing a teleporting grenade through it so it magically appears beside a foe's head and explodes is great fun. The drone is also a great tool for not only causing extra damage but catching foes' attentions while I snipe them from afar.
At the end of my journey through his underground trash hole, I run into the area's boss. His name is Mouthpiece and he's real annoying, a DJ encased in armor and wielding a huge shield. He sends out sound waves that damage you if you don't jump over them and has waves of minions crowding you with clubs. He's a bullet sponge but manages to go down after three or four minutes of dancing around him, peppering his dumb face with bullets. Once his body drops, the demo comes to an end, promising even more mayhem once the game releases in September.
I enjoyed this slice of Borderlands 3. I think, so far at least, that choosing to refine the gunplay instead of reinventing the wheel was wise and makes encounters feel much more dynamic than they were in the previous games. I still have questions about whether or not the loot system will be more satisfying than the previous entry and just what all our familiar faces, like Rhys and Brick, have been up to. However, for now, I'm eagerly anticipating returning to that wild, bloodthirsty world of Pandora.
For more on Borderlands 3, head here.
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Click here to watch embedded mediaPublisher: Deep SilverDeveloper: Ys NetRelease: August 27, 2019Rating: Rating PendingPlatform: PlayStation 4, PC
During today's somewhat sleepy PC Gaming Show, Yu Suzuki came onstage to show off more of the recently delayed Shenmue III. Details have been pretty light on the game, but it seems to be coming together.
Shenmue III will launch for PlayStation 4 and PC on November 19.
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If you and three friends can't get enough Nazi zombie-slaying action, there is some good news for you coming out of E3's PC Gaming Show. Zombie Army 4: Dead Army was revealed in an violent new trailer, boasting the return of the sharpshooting action from the developers of Sniper Elite 4 and the Zombie Army trilogy, Rebellion Development. New survivors were shown off and Zombie Hitler returns as the series' villain.
No gameplay was shown off in the reveal trailer, but a gameplay reveal was announced for tomorrow, June 11, on the game's official website.
To stay up to date on E3 announcements, check out our E3 live page.
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Tripwire's new Maneater trailer reveals the main story behind the shark RPG. The horrible fisherman in the video above is Scaly Pete, and he is the main Antagonist in the game since he claims to be the best at catching sharks.
Players will start as a baby shark and do exactly what the title says: eating people. By eating, your shark will grow bigger and stronger. There's no release date at this point, but look for it in the Epic Games Store later this year.
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Click here to watch embedded mediaPublisher: Paradox InteractiveDeveloper: Hardsuit LabsRelease: 2020Rating: Rating PendingPlatform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
The PC Gaming Show at E3 2019 showed off a new Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 pre-alpha trailer, showing off some characters, environments, and story aspects. Features like the X-ray ability and movement were also demonstrated.
During a developer interview on stage at the conference, the game was stated to be releasing in the first quarter of 2020, lining up with the game's intended March 2020 launch. For more on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, check out our coverage of two playable classes, the Brujah clan and the Ventrue clan.
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The PC Gaming Show's opening announcement at E3 began with the upcoming title Evil Genius 2. Though the trailer does not reveal any gameplay, it does highlight some of the future mechanics that are going to be in the PC game.
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Click here to watch embedded mediaDeveloper: Beat GamesRelease: November 20, 2018Rating: EveryonePlatform: PlayStation VR, Rift, Vive
Beat Saber has engrossed us since launch, and with additional music packs and mods growing the game's levels, support for the title doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. Launching today, you can play 10 new levels, each covering a different song from the popular band Imagine Dragons.
The songs included are:
- “Bad Liar”
- “Believer”
- “Digital”
- “It’s Time”
- “Machine”
- “Natural”
- “Radioactive”
- “Thunder”
- “Warriors”
- “Whatever It Takes”
Furthermore, Beat Games are showing off their new 360° level of "Believer" on the show floor at E3, which will launch sometime later this summer.
Beat Saber is available on PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and the newly released Oculus Quest. You can buy each song individually for $1.99, or all 10 for $12.99.
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Hello Volkoff,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Volkoff joined on the 06/10/2019.
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Publisher: AtlusDeveloper: AtlusRelease: 2020Platform: PlayStation 4
Persona 5 Royal, which is an enhanced version of Persona 5, received an E3 trailer this morning. The trailer offers the first listen to the game's English voice cast (though obviously you heard plenty of that if you played the original release) and introduces some new characters.
Laura Post is playing the new playable party member, Kasumi Yoshizawa. Yoshizawa is a talented gymnast. Billy Kametz is playing Takuto Maruki. Maruki is Shujin Academy's counselor and new confidant.
For more on Persona 5 Royal, head here. For our review of Persona 5, head here.
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Sky: Children Of The Light is the first title from thatgamecompany since it released Journey in 2012, and it finally has a release window, and a new E3 trailer, which you can see above. The game has been in beta for iOS devices in July.
In Sky: Children Of The Light, you explore seven "dreamlike" realms with your customized character while connecting online with other players.
You can pre-order the game for iOS by heading here. The game is also planned for Android devices and consoles in the future.
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Publisher: Microsoft Game StudiosDeveloper: The CoalitionRelease: September 10, 2019Platform: Xbox One, PC
Despite its aggressive themes, visuals, and weapons, the Gears of War franchise has been defined by its defense. Whether you're talking the cover-based style of gameplay that makes you methodically navigate a battleground, or the pioneering Horde mode, the series often brings the enemies to you while you and your squadmates do your best to dig in and weather the storm. While many of those elements are present in Gears 5 through the campaign, Horde, and competitive multiplayer, developer The Coalition hopes to bring something unique to the franchise with a new co-op mode called Escape.
Escape puts you in control of one of three new characters to the Gears games. Lahni, Keegan, and Mac are Hivebusters – characters who willingly get captured by the Swarm in order to infiltrate and destroy the hive. Lahni is the assault-type character, Keegan is a support, and Mac is a tank. Each character has their own ultimate ability that charges as you play; Lahni's blade is charged with electricity, Keegan deploys an area-of-effect ammo replenishment field, and Mac opens up a shield other characters can huddle behind. These three make it a habit of infiltrating the hive, but it turns out that's the easy part.
Click here to watch embedded mediaAfter cutting free from the Snatcher that brought them into the depths, the team plants a venom bomb and the rush to get out commences. With a poison gas cloud working its way through the hive, the three hivebusters don't want to waste any time making it to the surface. Unfortunately, that means blasting through the hive's inhabitants. In my hands-on session, I quickly learn that ammo is a precious resource. After just a few enemies, my pistol lets out an alarming clank as it reaches my last few bullets. As I run out of ammo, I need to get up close and personal with a few grunts before Keegan activates his ultimate and I can replenish my ammo. Soon after that, I grab a Hammerburst rifle and things start picking up.
Pushing the envelope
Gears 5 represents the third game in the franchise developed by The Coalition. According to studio head Rod Fergusson, Gears 5 is where the team really gets to flex its creative muscles with the formula. "When we first took over the Gears of War at The Coalition, we were thinking, 'Okay, we're a new studio where only three of us have ever made a Gears of War game before,'" he says. "We felt like if we tried to do something new and drastic, people would have said, 'That's not innovative. You just don't understand how to make a Gears of War game.' For 4, we wanted to focus on making a good Gears of War game. We wanted to prove ourselves. Now that we've done that, my commander's intent was to challenge expectations. How can we push this in a different way for a Gears game?"
The gas cloud is hot on our tails, as we took a bit too long clearing the first couple of rooms. We sprint ahead, wasting no time. After gaining some ground on the cloud, we stumble upon a room of grunts. As Lahni, I try and flank the first couple, but I'm spotted. Thankfully, Mac charges in with his shield ultimate to give me some moving cover. After a tense firefight we get a grasp on the situation and move on to the next area.
Progressing through the hive, we stumble upon safe rooms. These rooms don't spawn any enemies and often offer ammo and grenades. These safe rooms also act as checkpoints, saving your progress as you work through the hive. And chances are, you'll need it.
Escape mode requires coordination and strong chaos-management skills in order to succeed. When we reached the final room, various more difficult enemy types emerged, including The Warden, a giant dual-knife-wielding monster with one weakpoint: his head. Unfortunately, he uses his knives to block his head as you shoot, and maintains constant forward pressure to get within slashing range. While I dealt with that difficult task, Keegan was swarmed by a bunch of Swarm, and Mac was abducted and subsequently decapitated by a Sire. If your teammates are killed, you can revive them, but with how fast our situation went downhill, we didn't have the chance and we were met with a bloody "Game Over" screen.
According to head of The Coalition Rod Fergusson, the idea for this mode came from trying to make a defensive, cover-based game like Gears of War into a faster, more offensive experience. "If you're familiar with Horde, it's that idea that you need five players, it can take a couple hours to play, and it's all defensive," he says. "We wanted to have a much faster mode on a shorter timeline, fewer players so you didn't have to get as many players in matchmaking, and it's about a 20- to 30-minute experience each time you go through the hive. It's all aggression; you go in, you plant a poison bomb, it chases you as you try to get out as you try to get out through the monsters. You're actually moving forward through them, as opposed to them coming to you."
Each hive is designed to be like a maze, bringing different challenges, layouts, and available difficulty mutators. The Coalition plans on releasing a regular stream of hives for players to explore and destroy, but even beyond that, players can use the new creation tools to design their own labyrinthine hives with a simple tile system. As the community creates hives, The Coalition may begin featuring those hives as the weekly challenges or in other capacities.
There's going to be an exciting amount of content coming out for people to really demonstrate their mastery. – Rod Fergusson, Studio Head at The Coalition
Of course, it wouldn't be a Gears of War game with the myriad mainstays of the franchise. While the E3 focus for Gears 5 is the new Escape mode, we do know that character abilities will play a role in Horde mode, and we have some clues about the story mode. Since the campaign is focused so heavily on Kait uncovering secrets surrounding her family, the role of protagonist shifts to her, meaning player one controls her throughout the story.
Gears of War 4 ended with the revelation that Kait's family has some history with the locusts, and Gears 5 picks up that thread. "It's really Kait's journey to understand her origins and what her family is doing with this knowledge about the locusts," Fergusson says. "At The Coalition, we believe it's not as fun to watch someone go through something, so if you're going to have something happen to a character, why not be that character when it happens? In continuing to tell Kait's story, we realized it would be most impactful if you were Kait."
Multiple Gears Turning
Studio head Rod Fergusson is optimistic about the overall state of the franchise moving forward, citing multiple new releases and several advancements since The Coalition took the franchise over in 2014 with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. "Now we're doing Tactics on PC, we're doing Pop on mobile... we're on our second comic-book series, we've restarted our novels... the movie continues to progress. So as a franchise and an IP, even our licensing with great merch... I feel it's a great time. It's the year of Gears because we're going to have three games land probably within 12 months of each other, and we have all this stuff going on in the transmedia world as well. That's why you see us pushing the envelope and trying to change the gunplay mechanics and change some of the ways you play: to stay relevant and contemporary."
The Coalition plans on rolling out information on the remaining gameplay modes; July will feature deep dives on competitive multiplayer, August will give players a look at Horde, and September will offer glimpses at what to expect in the next chapter of JD, Kait, and Del's campaign. Thankfully, after that, fans won't have to wait much longer to see how it all pans out, as Gears 5 launches on Xbox One and PC on September 10.
Square Enix Unveils New Dark Co-op Shooter Outriders
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Square Enix External Studios and Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly unveiled a new game tonight at the Square Enix E3 press conference. Outriders, a one- to three-player co-op shooter, invites the player to travel to the planet Enoch to follow a mysterious signal. The announcement trailer for this dark, science fiction shooter boasts a barren landscape, massive creatures, and lots of gunplay.
“Outriders is a very exciting project for us at Square Enix External Studios. We’re focusing on giving players a true AAA co-op shooter with a deep feature set and strong narrative,” said Jon Brooke, co-head of studio at Square Enix External Studios. “The team at People Can Fly really know how to make gunplay feel tight and powerful and we can’t wait to show you more later this winter.”
The game is set for a summer 2020 release on all platforms. For more E3 info, stay tuned to our E3 live page.
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