Rockstar has been busy fueling fan speculation over the weekend. The developer tweeted a familiar red Rockstar logo on Sunday, then updated all of their social media sites with the above image. If that’s not a Red Dead Redemption reference, then the studio has become really enamored of HBO’s Westworld, or really liked Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven playing in theaters now. Is an announcement of a sequel finally coming?
Blizzard is also seemingly playing the hint game. One of the tchotchkes included in this year’s BlizzCon souvenir bag is a set of RPG dice. The Diablo-themed goodie includes a four-sided die, or “D4” in gamer parlance. Unlike the other dice in the kit, the D4 is unusable due to the faces being incorrectly numbered with two ones and a four, perhaps referencing the start of BlizzCon on November 4th. Adding fuel to the fire is this late Saturday tweet from David Brevik, one of the original creators of Diablo, who may or may not be working again for Blizzard in an advisory role. The post from Brevik cryptically includes an image of the constellation Libra. Is it a hint of Diablo IV or something else entirely?
The Zubmariner expansion for Failbetter Games’ Sunless Sea is out today. Undersea (or “unterzee”) adventures await the crafty and resourceful captains willing to explore the depths of the Zee. More locations, more enemies, and more importantly, more stately prose comes with the expansion. The deliberately paced and difficult Sunless Sea has a lot of content regardless, but Failbetter has added a free update to the game that adds a few new quests. They don’t require the Zubmariner DLC to enjoy, but they do provide a small sample of the expansion’s mysteries.
In related news, Failbetter Games’ next chapter in the Fallen London series will be Sunless Skies.
Monty Python alum John Cleese is now in Payday 2. The Hoxton’s Housewarming Party update in Payday 2 adds a number of features focused on players now being able to customize and upgrade their safe houses. The new additions include masks, weapons, a shooting range with a damage calculator, and the ability to repaint the escape van used at the end of missions. (Gee, I wonder if that will include van skins to buy later?) The new safe houses come with another benefit. That’s John Cleese voicing Aldstone the butler!
The veteran actor is no stranger to videogame voice work. John Cleese was in Jade Empire, James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, The Elder Scrolls Online, Fable 3, and more, going all the way back to Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail.
That’s the trailer for the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic. The expansion continues the story from last year’s Knights of the Fallen Empire. There’s even a call-back to the older trailer in this one with the training arena. The trailers for Star Wars: The Old Republic have consistently leaned into the strength of its story, a curious tactic for an MMO, but one that works. I have no idea who these people are, but I want to see what happens next.
The Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion will be available for subscribers on December 2nd.
Dead by Daylight, the asymmetrical multiplayer game from Behavior Interactive, pits a killer against four plucky survivors in familiar slasher film environments. The killers are all generic versions of horror movie archetypes like the chainsaw hillbilly, or the undead nurse. They’re close enough to the originals to be scary, while deftly avoiding lawsuits. That’s worked fine so far.
Halloween is coming up and wouldn’t it be nice to run from someone a little more appropriate instead of a nondescript masked guy? Producer Mathieu Cote agrees. The Hallowe’en Update will add Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, and a suburban neighborhood map that will mimic the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Let’s hope the developers put a palm tree in there to really nail the movie setting.
The Silver Case, a 1999 game for the Playstation 1 at a time when it was also the only Playstation, is now available on Steam. Here’s the Wikipedia description:
The setting is contemporary Japan…. Within a place called the 24 Districts, a series of bizarre murders occurs, prompting the 24 Districts Police Department to send two detectives from their High-degree Murder Division to solve the case. The killings are soon linked to Kamui Uehara, a notorious killer who supposedly died several years before. The gameplay revolves around text-based situations, point-and-click mechanics, and interactive question and answer segments.
So other than being really old and apparently really Japanese (High-degree Murder Division?), what sets it apart from the hundreds of other point-and-click adventure games on Steam? Or even visual novels? I mean, really, what else should I make of “text-based situations”?
The Silver Case is the first game by Goicha Suda, aka Suda51, after he quit working for “The Man” and formed his own studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. Their credits include marvelous oddities like Killer7, No More Heroes, and Sine Mora. Especially Killer7. I’m convinced Killer7 has got to hold up (okay, it probably doesn’t). Their credits also include non-marvelous oddities like Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw. I have no idea where The Silver Case fits into their range of titles, but as a brand and a developer, Suda51 has been nothing if not, uh, distinctive.
You can get The Silver Case here, with the option to pay more for a deluxe version with an art book, comic, and soundtrack.
It’s been a rumor for years, but it’s finally, officially going to happen. Ubisoft is working on Beyond Good and Evil 2. The original 2003 game was meant to be the first chapter in a trilogy, so fans have been waiting a long time for the story to move forward. A 2011 remaster fueled speculation that Ubisoft might be reviving the series, but all was quiet regarding a true sequel until creator Michel Ancel posted a pre-production image on Instagram for an unspecified game. The latest post from the publisher confirms that Ancel and Ubisoft Montpellier are collaborating on the long-awaited second installment.
In related news, Beyond Good and Evil will be free from Ubisoft beginning on October 12th through the company’s Ubi30 celebration. If you haven’t played it yet, this may be a good time to find out why people have been obsessed with this title for over a decade.
Earlier in the year, developer Respawn and publisher Activision announced that all map and game mode content added to Titanfall 2 post-launch would be free for all players. This was welcome news. One of the big issues with Titanfall’s multiplayer was that once the map packs rolled out, the community was split into smaller groups of haves and have-nots each time. It’s a problem for any multiplayer game that clings to the map pack DLC model unless it’s Call of Duty and has a core of players willing to loyally buy each installment.
Respawn has announced that the first free post-launch map release will be a remastered version of Angel City. It was fan-favorite in it’s original incarnation, so remaking the map for the sequel is an easy win. It’s coming sometime in December.
Along with that news, we have official confirmation of how Respawn intends to fund post-launch support. It’s cosmetic DLC!
These items will be available for purchase, but as always, gameplay is first here at Respawn and they will in no way impact the gameplay.
Fashion-forward players can pay for everyone else’s spot on the servers. It’s a win-win! Titanfall 2 is launching on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 28th.
I wish Ubisoft would quit adding cool updates to Anno 2205. I mean, seriously, who thinks up biomes for a city builder and comes up with space stations? The game already came with the moon, and now it’s on its way to the stars? Enough already! Anno 2205 was already an insidiously effective timesink and one of my favorite citybuilders.
In case you’re worried about sinking yet more hours into Anno 2205, the new Frontiers DLC is the bad news. But if you’re a season’s pass holder, the good news is that Ubisoft is officially done with you. You got Tundra, you got Orbit, now it’s time to quit being a freeloader and pay up. Frontiers will cost you $12 on top of the $20 you paid for the season’s pass, itself on top of the $40 you paid for the game. Seasons aren’t forever. Given Anno 2205’s 11/3/15 release, seasons are only 11 months and one day.
If former Israeli soldier and current Wonder Woman Gal Gadot played Wargame: Red Dragon, she’d be pretty excited that today’s nation pack adds 96 Israeli units. Here what your six dollars gives you:
In addition to the legendary Merkava tank family, one of many of Israels indigenous designs, the army also features heavily modified import units. These include British Centurion, American M60s, French Mirages III & V, as well as Soviet T-55 and PT-76 – salvaged from previous wars.
Import units? In other words, things already in the game? As much as I respect Eugen’s excellent post-release support, and as much as I realize that, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works in the real world, is it worth six dollars to spraypaint a Star of David on the side of some Centurions, M60s, Mirages, T-55s, and PT-76s?
Mafia III has a torture scene. It’s the cool thing in open-world games, it seems. Grand Theft Auto V had it and so did Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. In both of those games, the violence came with controversy. In Grand Theft Auto V’s case, the in-your-face requirement of being the torturer upset some players and made them recoil. In Metal Gear Solid V’s scene, the violence was slightly removed since it was in a cut-scene, but the victim was an important focal point of some people’s negative opinion.
In the latest preview video from publisher 2K, the torture scene in Mafia III is even more disconnected from the player because the torturer is a non-player buddy character. The player’s avatar, Lincoln Clay, stands idly by while pliers are judiciously applied to the victim. From the brief snippet in the trailer, torture is just a story beat. A violent example of how badass and Scorsese the fictional mob of New Bordeaux can be. It might be more substantial in the full game. Consider this a trigger warning for those disturbed by videogame torture.
The toys-to-life genre needs a shake-up. We’ve winnowed out Disney’s half-hearted effort, but that still leaves us with Lego Dimensions, Nintendo Amiibos, and Skylanders which are still burning through sets and revisions each year. What can you do if you’re a publisher of these gewgaw based videogames but keep cranking them out and hoping the fad lasts another year? Activision’s Skylanders Imaginators may have found the answer. Buying a toy to unlock new game content is so last year. Spend money to create your own toy to unlock new game content instead!
Kaos has discovered the ancient power of Mind Magic and is using it to create an unstoppable army of Doomlanders! Eon is calling upon all Portal Masters and Skylands’ greatest mystic warriors, the Senseis to stop Kaos and his minions. Now, you must use the power of your imagination to create your own Skylanders to battle in the ultimate adventure alongside the almighty Senseis to save Skylands.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand that. It’s just word salad. All you need to know is that Skylanders Imaginators allows you to create your own Skylander hero out of character creation options like voice, powers, body types, heads, costumes, etc., then teaching that figure a skillset via 31 “Sensei” heroes for $14.99 each and locking the newly created hero into a crystal for $9.99 each. Then, if you’re feeling particularly rich, you can spend another $49.99 and use a separate mobile app to have a real figure 3D printed and shipped to you. It’s like printing money, except you’re paying someone else. Skylanders Imaginators hits store shelves on October 16th.
Super Mega Baseball was something of an underground sports hit. The goofy big-headed players and cheery presentation evoked strong memories of kids’ titles like Backyard Baseball, but hiding underneath all the cartoon charm was a damn good single player baseball arcade game. Metalhead Software have announced Super Mega Baseball 2, and the developers are keen to refine the experience so the sports audience won’t mistakenly dismiss the sequel as another kiddie game.
First, Super Mega Baseball 2 will have multiplayer gameplay. Either online or in the same room, players will be able to pit their teams against one another. Second, Metalhead is revamping the art style so there isn’t as large of a disconnect between the playful look and the serious sim. Everything still looks bright and exaggerated, but the cartoony assets have been taken down a notch. Finally, the sequel will offer more team customization and stats reporting, so players feel more invested in their teams.
Super Mega Baseball 2 will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2017.
Wasteland 3 has been announced. InXile Entertainment will be posting a crowd-funding page on Fig on October 5th for the next game in the series. (Brain Fargo, head of InXile, also sits on the Fig advisory board.) The game is being made for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 and this time, the studio aims to include cooperative multiplayer at launch. According to the press release, Wasteland 3 will feature vehicle travel in the frozen post-apocalypse of Colorado.
You start the game as the sole survivor of Team November, a Ranger squad dispatched to the icy Colorado wastes. This is a land of buried secrets, lost technology, fearsome lunatics, and deadly factions. No one here has ever heard of the Desert Rangers. Your reputation is yours to build from scratch, and your choices may save this land or doom it. With a renewed focus on macro-reactivity, you’ll be picking between warring factions, deciding whether locations are destroyed or saved, and other far reaching decisions that have a marked impact on the shape of your world.
The crowd-funding campaign will have a goal of $2.75 million with equity investing capped at $2.25 million.
OnLive, the ambitious (and some would say deeply flawed) game streaming service may have died in April 2015, but the dream of a subscription gaming platform lives on. Startup LiquidSky just secured $4 million from Samsung and former Sun Microsystems executives Scott McNealy and Bill Raduchel. The promise? Desktop-as-service gaming, just like OnLive, but without all the problems that plagued the previous company. LiquidSky claims to solve the issues of latency, server cost, scalability, and game support. It’s in private beta already with about half a million registered users. Players can either pay for the service via a $0.50 “SkyCredit” per hour of streaming, or opt for a $14.99 or $39.99 monthly subscription plan depending on the amount of storage they need.
Assuming LiquidSky actually solves the issues the company says it can, it remains to be seen if the service can overcome other objections like questions of ownership and digital rights management, while growing its user base. If the time is finally ripe for game streaming, you can bet that competitors will jump into the market, including publishers that already have their own game clients.
