Here at Quarter to Three, we try to keep our heads above the fray and not report on rumors or baseless stories. So what if Ubisoft told investors that they can expect “the exciting returns of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, The Crew and South Park” this year? Maybe the next Assassin’s Creed will be a prequel called Origins and use ancient Egypt as its setting, but we can’t know for sure. Not even if we’ve been seeing this rumor since last year. What we do have is a spiffy new Assassin’s Creed logo, and that’s good enough to start some discussion.
Let’s do a deep-dive into the new Assassin’s Creed image after the jump!Continue reading →
Microsoft is giving away a remaster of Phantom Dust for free. That’s free for everyone, starting today on the Xbox One and Windows Store.
The 2004 Xbox game from Yukio Futatsugi and Microsoft Studios was based on deck-building and multiplayer third-person arena action. If that sounds like a bit of a puzzle to you, then you weren’t alone. While Phantom Dust got some critical nods, it just didn’t sell well. It remained a bit of a cult hit, so fans were delighted when a remaster for the Xbox One was announced at E3 2014. Nothing is ever simple though. The remaster by Darkside Game Studios was cancelled in February 2015 due to monetary issues and miscommunication between Darkside and Microsoft. While the cancellation resulted in Darkside’s liquidation, the project was quietly moved to an internal team at Microsoft. The only indication that the project was still alive in some form came from a quick blurb at E3 2016, but most took it as an optimistic projection.
That brings us to today. Microsoft is releasing the HD remaster for free to download and keep. Upgraded assets, new networking code, and widescreen support come with the re-release of the niche green machine original Xbox title.
Maniaplanet is still a thing. This is probably more news to gamers in the United States than in Europe, but Nadeo and Ubisoft haven’t given up on the shared universe of Maniaplanet games. You may not hear much about the titles stateside, but Nadeo has been chugging along quietly on their “planet” games and the studio is rolling out a major update across the network. Maniaplanet 4 brings a slew of improvements to the service like user-made channels, content creation, and enhancements to the games’ editors.
Along with the free update, Trackmania2 is getting a for-pay Lagoon expansion that adds 65 solo tracks and six new multiplayer game modes in a tropical setting. It’s palm trees, blue water, six-story tall looping tracks, and impossible stunt car acrobatics jammed together. It’s like being in The Crew’s version of the Bahamas. Trackmania2 Lagoon launches on May 23rd.
Shootmania Storm isn’t getting a new installment of paid content, but it is getting some upgrades. New weapons, new map assets, new modes, and vehicles have come to Shootmania. Specifically, Trackmania cars can now be used in a Car Elimination game mode in Shootmania. If running around on foot in the ruins of Shootmania while shooting a magic gun is your thing, you might enjoy six-story tall looping tracks and impossible stunt car acrobatics mixed in. It’s like being in the Ghost Recon Wildlands’ version of the Bahamas.
What we saw this week instead of the King Arthur movie that bombed. At the :59 mark, we toss around some of our favorite throw-and-catch scenes in movies.
“This case is nowhere near anything we’re doing,” McNulty complains to his partner. They’re getting ready to investigate the scene of an old unsolved murder case. But we know he’s wrong. We know it’s directly adjacent to what they’re doing. We know the murder was committed by the very same person who put into motion everything that has happened.
Baltimore is a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world (one out of every 2000 people in Baltimore has been murdered this year), and yet McNulty and Bunk have been randomly assigned the one murder that relates directly to everything else they’re doing? I’m not sure how I feel about such massive coincidence in a procedural. But I know how I feel about the investigation scene that’s about to happen. Continue reading →
Alan Wake may be disappearing soon. According to Remedy Entertainment, the 2010 horror game is being removed from sale on digital outlets, including the Xbox, Steam, and Windows stores on the 15th of May. The developer noted that music rights issues are the reason for the removal, and while they are looking into solutions such as relicensing, they cannot guarantee that a deal will be worked out. While the game will be removed from sale, if you already have it in your library by that date, you should be able to re-download it at any time.
While Alan Wake’s original score was created by Petri Alanko, the game did feature a few songs from other artists such as David Bowie, Roy Orbison, Nick Cave, and Depeche Mode which could be problematic for renewing the music licenses. Alan Wake will go on sale on the 13th at a 90% discount to allow for last-minute buyers to grab it. Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, the 2012 standalone sequel, is not being impacted by this music licensing issue and will remain available for purchase.
Chess has been around for well over 1000 years. It’s been played out as a metaphor in stories where people are trying to outsmart each other. Let’s call a moratorium on chess metaphors.
Oh, wait, I think we can hold the door for just one more.
Here’s something to mull over while you’re waiting for the level to reload in Prey: 26% of game players prefer a mobile device over a console or PC as their primary game platform. Only 7% of non-gamers even know what a Nintendo Switch is for, while 29% of gamers do. According to the Nielson Games 360 2017 U.S. Report, 69% of console gamers still prefer physical media. There’s a lot of interesting, if non-specific, data in the report and it gives a good high-level look at the state of gaming. Check out this tidbit: In order of importance, people admit that the factors that influence their game purchases are genre interest, then graphics, and finally storyline. Good news for publishers! On the bad news side, 34% of gamers don’t buy more games because the games they already own are keeping them busy, 30% say they just play free stuff, and 24% of you cheapskates are waiting for better prices.
Superficially, this week’s episode was a courtroom drama. That’s going to happen sooner or later in a series about lawyers. But on a deeper level, this was an episode about the closeness of two brothers. Continue reading →
Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk have started a game of Afghanistan ’11 using the same seed (8B52H7SA1K1W, if you’d like to join us). Every week, they’ll post an update for ten turns of gameplay.
After the jump, where we stand after the first 30 turnsContinue reading →
Larian Studios has unveiled Game Master Mode in Divinity: Original Sin 2. The feature, originally a $2 million Kickstarter stretch goal, adds a suite of tools to the upcoming video game that allows an asymmetrical multiplayer session in which one player guides the others through an adventure like a traditional tabletop roleplaying game. It’s a proposal that games like BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights and n-Space’s Sword Coast Legends have delivered with varying degrees of success over the years. Larian’s take on the design blends their proprietary setting and rules with easily configured custom modules that allow players to create their own scenarios, and even handle unexpected situations with on-the-fly tools. There’s even a generic dice roller!
As with previous efforts to create a video game version of sitting around a table eating pizza and Cheetos while arguing over dice rolls, the tools’ flexibility and ease of use will be a big factor in how widely the community adopts it. How does Game Master Mode in Divinity: Original Sin 2 measure up? Keeping in mind that it’s still a work in progress for an early access game, this video shows Larian’s Swen Vinke putting the mode through it’s paces at Wizards of the Coast’s headquarters – the home of Dungeons & Dragons.
Rising Star Games, best known for publishing No More Heroes and the more recent Harvest Moon games in the west, has announced Deadly Premonition: The Board Game with a cryptic video. The web site gives almost no details except for a countdown timer that has about a day left on the clock. A tabletop version of the 2010 cult release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 seems like an odd fit, but it’s as logical as a Japanese developer making a survival horror title with a strong Twin Peaks vibe thanks to sometimes intentionally campy dialogue.
I could watch a full hour of Lance Reddick giving a briefing. And then I could watch another full hour of him at home being debriefed by his wife. He listens as she walks him through the dilemma he’s in. “You can’t lose if you don’t play,” she explains. For an officious hotel clerk in John Wick and a sinister government agent in The Guest, it takes an actor who can listen as well as he can tell.
Okay, this is really dumb, but I might as well get it off my chest before it fades into technological obscurity along with phone cords, typewriters, and Crown Victorias. All of which appear in The Wire, by the way.
Do Guardians of the Galaxy get better as they progress, like Iron Mans, or do they get worse, like Avengers? At the 1:32, we play around with a discussion of toys in movies.
Here I am, finally watching The Wire. How long has it even been? How long did I miss out? How long have I had to endure people prattling on about how good The Wire is? Ten years? Twenty years? Who knows. I saw a pager in the title sequence and my mind shifted into “okay, now you’re watching something from the 90s” mode. It certainly has the cinematography and the aspect ratio of the 90s. To think we used to watch TV is a narrow square box. Then there’s a scene with McNulty and an FBI guy about how the feds have been “getting out of drugs” since the Towers fell. Oops, okay, not the 90s.
My mind’s 90s mode explains why I thought the kid who plays one of the drug dealers looks like Michael B. Jordan. He does a thing where he knits his brow while he licks his lips, and then pulls his lips in, like he’s thinking really hard about something. Just like Michael B. Jordan does. He also has a funny bit where he points out that Alexander Hamilton was not, in fact, a President even though he’s on the $10 bill. And this from a time when most people associated the name Manuel with a Panamanian dictator instead of a Broadway sensation. Then the credits roll and, hey, it is Michael B. Jordan! Well, yeah, that’s about the age he would have been ten years ago, when The Wire began its run. I guess this is the dawn of TV getting good enough to have actors worthy of being movie stars. And there’s Idris Elba, who I used to think of as the guy from that British TV series about vampires. That’s how most people know him, right? From Ultraviolet? Or was it this Wire thing that really kicked his career into high gear?
See what happens to your perspective when you go twenty years not watching The Wire.
