There’s a whole new crop of games headed to your PlayStation console if you’re a subscriber to one of Sony’s various PlayStation Plus tiers. The additional games for the June update include 14 new titles featuring PS5-only games like the medieval RPG Crusader Kings III, the surreal action-adventure After Us, the industrial age strategy game Anna 1800 and Football Manager 2024.
The collection also includes several PS4/PS5 crossover titles starting with the critically acclaimed, fan favorite Monster Hunter Rise from Capcom. Others include the motocross racing game Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame 6 and the procedural police sim Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. A few titles originally released on the PS4 are also being added, including the first-person shooter Far Cry 4 and two Lego games including The Hobbit and Disney-Pixar’s The Incredibles. A few older titles are also being added to the Classics catalog for Premium subscribers: third-person shooter Ghosthunter, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and the wisecracking platformer Daxter.
June’s collection of PlayStation Plus titles is the first to feature a game for the PlayStation VR 2 with the free release of the nature paddling simulator Kayak VR: Mirage. Sony started offering PS VR2 games on its PlayStation Plus earlier this month as part of its Days of Play celebration that included a healthy collection of virtual titles include Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Before Your Eyes, Walkabout Mini Golf, Synth Riders and both chapters of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. You’ll need to be a Premium subscriber to try the VR games, though.
The first batch of new PlayStation Plus games for June announced in late May including SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, AEW Fight Forever, Streets of Rage 4 and EA Sports FC 24. These titles are available to anyone, regardless of which PlayStation Plus tier you’re subscribed to.
The update also offered a batch of PS2 classic titles for those on the Premium tier. Those include Tomb Raider Legend, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Finally, PS Plus Extra and Premium members also got access to Dredge, Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, Cricket 24, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The Definition Edition and a game trial of WWE 2K24.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/playstation-plus-june-offerings-include-monster-hunter-rise-and-three-lego-games-202307151.html?src=rss
Astro Bot is as precise as it is ridiculous, and this is exactly what makes it so damn delightful. During my 30-minute demo at Summer Game Fest, I crashed into spiky obstacles, flew off the side of sky-high platforms, bounced into deadly projectiles and popped my little robot protagonist like an overinflated balloon — and I could not keep the smile off my face the entire time. The art style, sound effects and animations in Astro Bot are infused with childlike joy, taking the sting out of each failure. Simultaneously, each death felt avoidable with a little more practice, each leap landable with just one more try. Resets were quick and generous, encouraging trial-and-error while maintaining a superb platforming flow.
Despite its kid-friendly appearance, Astro Bot feels like a mature — and super tricky! — platformer.
This competency makes sense, considering Sony has had more than 10 years to perfect the Astro Bot recipe. The first official Astro Bot title was Rescue Mission, a 2018 PlayStation VR game and a semi-sequel to 2013’s The Playroom demo on PS4. Next, Astro’s Playroom came pre-installed on the PS5 at launch in 2020, offering a short but memorable tour through the features of the DualSense controller. All of these experiences were cute and well-executed, but as it turns out, they were long-tail teasers for the full Astro Bot game coming out on September 6.
PlayStation
The SGF 2024 Astro Bot demo was on PlayStation 5 and showcased a few different worlds, each with a distinct gadget and map style. I tried out a dog jetpack that let me dash forward and a pair of frog-face gloves with spring-loaded punching abilities. The frog gloves were my favorite weapon of the day: the left glove was activated by the LT button and the right was attached to RT, and I spent most of this level rhythmically punching the air, just because it felt cool to do so. Throughout this stage there were also red sticky points to punch into, allowing me to hold the gloves in place and stretch out the springs, turning Astro into a robot-sized slingshot. You have to hold the triggers in place and pull Astro back before flinging its little body in the proper direction, which is sometimes directly into the face of a giant red octopus. Obviously.
Astro makes the most adorable wah wah wah wah sound when it dies, diffusing any disappointment. I heard this sound most often while attempting to clear a section of spinning, spiked balls and pink-glass platforms that shattered as soon as Astro skated over them. The fragile nature of the glass forced me to react with twitchy adjustments, ramping up the tension and encouraging replays. There were so many clever mechanics, tools and obstacles on display in the Astro Bot demo, including a throwable time-freezing item, a powerful magnet that picked up anything metal nearby, a line of flaming spheres that snaked rapidly across a platform, and even just the standard jump, which propelled Astro into the air and shot lasers out of its feet, injuring the blobs and other enemies below.
PlayStation
The full game will feature more than 50 unique planets of platforming proficiency, more than 300 bots to rescue (more than half of which are classic PlayStation characters), and dozens of weird and satisfying tools to use. It’ll take about 15 hours to complete, and according to Team ASOBI head Nicolas Doucet, that length was chosen purposefully.
“Usually games use like one or two mechanics really well, and they build up on top of that, but this is really more about us rebooting everything for every planet, and just keeping Astro and the crew as the center point,” Doucet told Engadget at SGF. “But it's something we decided from the beginning, that maybe as a result, it won't be like a 50 hour game — but that’s okay. It's better to have 15 hours of constant renewal than 30 hours where you feel like, sometimes, it drags a bit.”
Team ASOBI’s goal with Astro Bot is to offer a fresh experience at every turn.
“We want people to think, ‘What surprise are they going to throw next?’” Doucet said. “And if we can maintain that all the way to the end — even like, final boss, game ending, we are trying to keep that alive to the very, very, very last second of the game. If we succeed with that, I think people will have a good time.”
As in Astro’s Playroom, the DualSense controller has a starring role in Astro Bot. The game’s bots regularly fly around on a jet-sized DualSense and Astro is on a mission to collect friends and store them inside the controller itself. When new bots are picked up they appear inside an on-screen DualSense, and when players shake the controller in real life, it’s mirrored in the game. The little characters sway and knock into each other, and they can even pop out of the gamepad if it’s rattled in the proper way, and it’s all just pretty adorable.
PlayStation
It’s refreshing to see Sony leaning into silliness.
“The design of Astro has a little bit of a tummy, and actually, the bots originally were supposed to look a little bit like toddlers,” Doucet said. “They look a little bit clumsy on their legs and, you know, their butts sticking out as if they were wearing nappies and stuff. The design came from that, so that the silhouette would be endearing and also a little bit silly. But that was separated from the tightness [of the mechanics]. It's almost like there's two mindsets, because the silliness can be there and we kind of laugh about it, but when it comes to clearing a challenge, it's good to be tight. It’s only pixel perfect.”
The balance between acuity and absurdity is what makes Astro Bot so compelling, even just in its demo form. It feels like a solid platformer first, providing a mechanically sound foundation where all of the nonsense can thrive.
“The silliness usually comes from animation and the visual side, whereas the tightness of the gameplay comes from the engineering and really the game design and programming,” Doucet said. “If I go back to the origins of Astro, before being a funny-to-look-at platformer, it was actually a platformer that feels good, where the jump lands exactly where you want and starts when you want. Your input lag and all of that was really the focus point.”
The PlayStation demo space at Summer Game Fest was a cool cave of happiness, featuring Lego Horizon Adventures and Astro Bot, two games that turn classic Sony characters into irreverent cartoon versions of themselves. Considering some of PlayStation’s most popular protagonists are serious, grizzled warriors like Kratos, Joel, Ellie, Wander, the Bloodborne guy and Aloy, there’s room for these interpretations to go horribly wrong. Astro Bot gets it right (and it sounds like Lego Horizon Adventures does, too).
“The writing of the games isn't as important to us as what the character background is,” Doucet said. “In the case of The Last of Us, for example, the main characters are good characters. They have complex decisions to make, but fundamentally, they're good people. There would be nothing wrong about questioning, ‘Who is Ellie?’ and, ‘Who is Joel?’ And then, you know, parents and kids can exchange [ideas]. You can imagine a good conversation coming out of that.”
PlayStation
The character I was most stoked to see in Astro Bot was the red-cloaked protagonist from Journey. While the meeting immediately triggered memories of loss, discovery and introspection, I was mostly just happy to see an old friend in an unexpected place. The fact that the character was guaranteed to be carefree and comedic here added an extra layer of mental security to the experience. A colleague who was watching me play didn’t immediately recognize the Journey character in Astro Bot and I was happy to explain it, automatically recounting some of my own experiences with the game from back in the day. It’s easy to see how Astro Bot will introduce new audiences to classic PlayStation franchises, while also reigniting those feel-good hormones in veteran players.
But I’ll be honest: I don’t really need the PlayStation characters in Astro Bot. They’re adorable and capable of generating a warm tinge of familiarity, but for me, Astro Bot’s allure doesn’t lie in its nostalgia play. Instead, I view the character appearances more like easter eggs, cute but not crucial to the actual gameplay. Which, I have to say again, is incredibly competent, replayable and fun. Stellar platforming is Astro Bot’s true joy.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/astro-bot-is-a-supremely-silly-and-incredibly-smooth-platformer-200012651.html?src=rss
Sony takes games seriously. That’s reflected in its tentpole releases, which are overwhelmingly gritty, adult affairs like Horizon, God of War and The Last of Us. It’s surprising, then, that its Summer Game Fest demo area replaced Sad Dads and apocalypses with cutesy Astro Bot figurines and Lego. Lots of Lego.
Lego Horizon Adventures might not have generated the Summer Game Fest headlines that the new Doom and Assassin’s Creed games did, but in many ways its legacy may be more interesting. Co-developed by Guerilla Games (known for the Horizon and Killzone series) and the AAA support team Studio Gobo, it aims to bring the world of the Horizon games to a new generation — and a new platform, the Nintendo Switch.
Horizon Adventures isn’t the first Sony game on Switch. MLB: The Show routinely comes to both Nintendo’s console and Xbox, but that’s a licensed sports game, and Horizon is a key PlayStation franchise. It has a VR spin-off, a live-action adaptation confirmed for Netflix and an MMO heavily rumored in its future. Bringing the latest iteration of the series day one to Switch, then, is unusual.
“We’re trying to bring in as broad an audience as possible,” Guerilla Games narrative director James Windeler told Engadget. “The collaboration with Switch, that’s an incredibly unique opportunity … it will really help bring in a family-friendly audience.”
It’s also just a plain bigger audience. Nintendo’s console has been around since 2017, and the market for Switch games is over 140 million. (For context, there are around 58 million PlayStation 5s in the wild.) Lego titles are also in a tiny minority of non-Nintendo games to top the Switch retail sales charts.
The game itself, from the 30-minute demo I played, seems delightful. The world of Horizon translates well to Lego, with the robodinos in particular being a highlight. There is already a Forbidden West Tallneck Lego set and it would be extremely surprising if we don’t see Thunderjaws and Scrappers showing up in Lego stores soon. Combat is surprisingly faithful to the original games, with Aloy sneaking around tall grass to get a good angle on an enemy and using her Focus to spot weak points. Also faithful to the original games is that stealth can very quickly fall by the wayside in favor of frenetic dodging. Less faithful: I got through one tricky fight by repeatedly summoning a hot dog vendor to throw exploding franks all over the place. It is a Lego game, I guess.
Tone-wise, Guerilla is shooting for the Lego Movie-like cross-generational irreverent humor, which isn’t really my jam but I appreciate it. Windeler said Guerilla is trying to hit key elements of the first game without directly remaking it: “It's definitely not a one-to-one retelling, but neither is it a parody in the sense that you don't need to be a Horizon aficionado to really kind of respond to the humor. It's broader in that way.” The voice cast from the original games, including Ashly Burch as Aloy and JB Blanc as Rost, is back for Horizon Adventures and seemingly having a lot of fun. Burch’s delivery in particular is ultra wide-eyed and excited, more like her work as Tiny Tina in the Borderlands series or one of her many animated characters. It’s a fun spin on a traditionally stoic character.
Sony
Co-op is a big feature for Horizon Adventures. Local co-op is a drop-in, drop-out affair, which, as with most Lego games, enables an adult to easily help a kid get past a tricky area. But Lego games are also a lot of fun to play among consenting adults if you’re both into the particular franchise — I know plenty of grown-ups who live for Lego Star Wars. Away from the couch, there is online multiplayer, which is obviously more targeted at adults.
I am not a huge Horizon fan. Of all the open-world collect-a-thons, it’s one of my favorites, but it is very much not my genre. My partner is a fan, though, and we’re always on the lookout for middle-ground co-op games that can bridge the gap in our tastes. Maybe Horizon Adventures could be that, and I’ll become a real Horizon head because of it?
Finding new audiences is something Sony and Microsoft have been grappling with over the past couple of years. This Xbox-PlayStation generation has not seen as explosive growth as the last, and the kind of AAA experiences they typically shoot for are expensive to produce.
Microsoft seems to be committed to multiplatform releases for several established franchises it’s acquired, like Call of Duty, Diablo and Doom. It also ported four formerly exclusive titles — Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, Pentiment and Sea of Thieves — to rivals’ machines earlier this year.
Sony’s approach has, until recently, been to court PC players with ports of older titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War. This year it also released Helldivers 2 on PC day one, which went very well until it didn’t. Company president Hiroki Totoki told investors in February that he “would like to go aggressive on improving our margin performance” (what a gamer!) by focusing more on multi-platform releases. The assumption at the time was that he was solely referring to PCs, but the Switch release of Horizon Adventures seemingly opens this effort up to more platforms.
It’s unlikely that Sony will bring its giant AAA games to a rival console at launch. But it could be that Sony begins to treat the Switch much like Nintendo used to treat mobile devices. The mid '10s saw an influx of Nintendo games on iPhone and Android, including Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and Mario Kart Tour. The strategy was pretty clear: Introduce Nintendo characters to a more casual audience, and convert a number of them over to the “full” experience. If Horizon Adventures goes well — and why would it not? — it’s easy to see Sony opening the floodgates and sending a bunch of its franchises to Nintendo’s mass-market console.
Lego Horizon Adventures launches 'Holiday 2024' on PlayStation 5, PC and Nintendo Switch.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lego-horizon-adventures-might-be-sonys-most-important-game-of-the-year-160026354.html?src=rss
Bethesda announced Doom: The Dark Ages at the Xbox Games Showcase over the weekend, and easily the most exciting addition to the franchise featured in the trailer is the Shield Saw. As the name suggests it's a shield. Which is also a chainsaw. Naturally, modders have already programmed the weapon into the original Doom.
Modder Craneo shared a clip on X yesterday showing how they were able to bring the Shield Saw featured in the trailer for the upcoming Doom sequel into the retro computer game. They converted the old-fashioned chainsaw into an innovative weapon that both protects you from enemy damage and rips opponents to shreds, thereby providing the wielder with a brilliant balance of defense and offense. The video makes it seem you can also toss the Shield Saw, something that was surely a pain to program.
aight I kinda ended up trying to make actual decorate for it... it works, will upload in a bit. pic.twitter.com/OORmCydVL0
Craneo also brought another Dark Ages weapon to Doom overnight called the Skullcrusher, or Skul-Gun, as Andy Chalk of PC Gamer called it. As the name suggests, the Skul-Gun uses skulls as ammo and fires them out like oversized bullets. That mod remains incomplete however, because, as Craneo notes, the gameplay mechanics for its next-gen counterpart haven’t been shown yet. If you want to try these out, Craneo helpfully provided links to grab the mods for both the Skul-Gun and Shield Saw.
may post the wad file later, nah, won't remake the whole game, and ofc this skullcrusher is incomplete since we don't know it's full gameplay, only main fire I assume... pic.twitter.com/mfUEmZZ4Xp
The Doom modding community is well renowned for their creativity in adding features that make Doom more fun to play. They made Doomplayable within Doom 2, ported the 2005 Doom mobile game to Windows, modded the horror game MyHouse.wad into Doom 2, and programmed the Indiana Jones-inspired mod Venturous to the Doom engine, among other things. Of course, modders have also tried to get Doom to run on every piece of hardware known to man, from a lawnmower to a Roomba vacuum cleaner. The latter device was dubbed the Doomba because game developer Rich Whitehouse programmed it to translate the floor maps into Doom maps.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/modder-adds-the-vicious-shield-saw-to-the-original-doom-203628837.html?src=rss
Marvel Rivals pits its greatest heroes against each other and it’s a lot of fun. It’s also a familiar kind of fun if you’ve ever played Overwatch. As Overwatch 2 fightsto hold onto players (and attract new ones), there’s no shortage of new games with similar team PvP dynamics, modes and characters. Like Valve’s leaked Deadlock title, or PlayStation’s Concord, or Star Wars: Hunters. Add the now console-bound (and more strategy-heavy) Valorant, and yep, there are a lot of team shooters on the horizon. Oh and I forgot Foamstars, like most of us.
Rivals, made by Netease, has a headstart, however, with a roster of characters that most of us have heard of. These are also heroes whose powers and abilities we already know. And it’s certainly a roster: 19 characters, expanding now to 21 for the next wave of tests.
I was going to complain that this is a heady number of characters and combinations to learn, or at least get used to. But, well, Overwatch launched with 21. One leak, data-mined from the closed alpha, suggest there are plans for up to 39 characters. Oh my.
Briefly playing this alpha-build demo at Summer Game Fest offers a glimpse at the game, and nascent metas (combinations of characters and team builds), but it takes time to evolve and coalesce. It also takes time for me to get good at a new team shooter.
Like the original Overwatch, Rivals pits six heroes/villains against six other Marvel characters, with familiar team goals of escoring a slow-moving object, or protecting zones from the opposing team. It’s not all Marvel Presents… Overwatch, though.
I liked the destructable environments, with some walls taking only so much damage before crumbling and exposing your hero. It kept me on my toes. Other unique gameplay features include "Dynamic Hero Synergy," a sort of baked-in meta where two (sometimes three) characters can augment each other in battle.
One example of this happened as I found early success with Groot. Groot is a tank-type player, with the ability to make Mei-styled walls, just made of plants, not ice. However, if Rocket, his Guardians of the Galaxy team-mate, is on the same team, it increases the duo’s damage output. And Rocket can ride around on Groot’s shoulder, too. Cute.
I mentioned the Groot-Mei connection, but other skill overlaps with Overwatch characters are obvious, but with a twist. Hela, queen of Hel, has a few similarities with Overwatch 2’ s Kiriko, with the ability to escape tight spots, but swapping healing for a focus on damage dealing.
Meanwhile, Black Panther’s lunge attack gets an instant cooldown if you hit an enemy, mimicking Genji’s dash attack that recharges if you get a kill.
The third-person perspective, which a few early testers found divisive, takes some getting used to. Look, I get it: when the core USP of a game is the global juggernaut that is Marvel's intellectual property, you want to see what you paid for. You want to see Iron Man blasting Magik from the skies, Loki faking his death as he circles back around to attack Namor’s weak spot. In first person, a lot of that character design is lost, and your team mates and enemies rarely stand still in order for you to appreciate their character designs and lore.
I’m not sure why, but playing this kind of game from a third-person perspective made movement feel, somehow, sluggish. Unless you’re Spider-Man, who has an uniquely high level of mobility and speed compared to the rest of the current roster.
Overwatch 2 struggled with a lack of PvE features as well as the major change to 5v5 team battles. For a lot of Overwatch players, the game has fallen out of favor. However, for a lot of people it’s still the team shooter to beat. Will the draw of Marvel’s greatest heroes (and villains) be enough of a draw, and can NetEase sustain Rivals appeal when it launches? A closed beta test, which will include PS5 gamers this time, is scheduled for July.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-biggest-threat-to-marvel-rivals-is-all-the-other-rival-team-shooters-182005638.html?src=rss
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is lush. Set on the side of a mountain that’s been covered in a terrible black defilement, Kunitsu-Gami’s world is an ancient, psychedelic dreamscape packed with magic and otherworldly horrors. It’s also mechanically dense, with moments of slow strategizing and rapid-fire hack-and-slash combat. After playing for nearly an hour at Summer Game Fest, it’s clear that Kunitsu-Gami is much more than a beautiful screenshot.
The game is divided into day and night mechanics, but all of the action takes place in various camps along the mountainside, set under green canopies and among dense foliage. The defilement creates plants with glowing pink orbs and slathers some areas in an iridescent black goo, trapping villagers in putrid sacs and infecting the local deer population.
Players are tasked with protecting the Maiden Yoshiro from the Seethe, the monsters that spawn out of the defilement at night. Yoshiro is the key to cleansing the mountainside, but her ritual takes time and she’s incredibly vulnerable. It really takes a village to protect her.
During the day, players purge the defilement and rescue locals from their containment sacs, while also clearing a path for Yoshiro’s dance. Press B on the gamepad to assign an attack role to a villager, and then press RB to place them in the environment. At night, the Seethe pour out of the Torii Gates — the basic hordes are composed of globular, juicy monsters with long, thin arms and gaping mouths, their pink tongues dragging on the ground.
Capcom
Combat plays out in a rhythmic “sword dance” style, with simple inputs that can be combined into fancy combos. Using just two attack buttons and a 360-degree camera, players slash through the Seethe, make sure the creatures don’t get too close to Yoshiro, and manage their additional attack units. Combat flows smoothly, with satisfying swordplay and a challenging rush of monsters to defeat at each Torii Gate. After cleansing an area, players can hang out in the camp, upgrading their skills, unlocking new abilities, and learning about the food and culture of the region that’s been defiled.
There are also challenge areas with bigger, deadlier monsters to kill. Here, players are provided a small team of villagers plus upgrade materials to assign these units specific roles, like archer or woodcutter. The challenge enemy I encountered, Gakinyudo, was a giant, eyeless beast that ripped its own jaw in half before the battle began, revealing an even more disgusting form. The monsters in Kunitsu-Gami have distinct backstories dripping in vile details, and I adore the amount of attention their designs have been given.
Capcom
Here’s how Capcom describes the beast I battled: “The ravenous Gakinyudo are born from the corpses of lecherous monks who fell to defilement from their debauchery while alive. They prefer to dig up their meals from graveyards.” Metal.
I defeated the Gakinyudo, but it took some time, unit rearrangement and a new group-attack move to finish the job. I enjoyed every slice of my sword in this fight.
The game’s environments and character designs are dense with fascinating details. The Maiden Yoshiro wears layers of flowing fabrics, a delicate face covering and intricately adorned jewelry, and she dances with a slow, focused purpose. She feels both fragile and incredibly powerful. The distanced, third-person perspective and fully adjustable camera encourage players to investigate every corner of each new area, slashing plants to receive resource orbs and purging shrines that have been covered in ooze.
Capcom
As each night approaches, the game’s background music becomes more unsettling and discordant, until it’s overrun by hellish screams and the Seethe begin spawning. Details like this make Kunitsu-Gami memorable, even just in demo form. It's clear that there's much more to uncover in this game and I'm eager to explore its ancient, magical mountainside in full.
Kuntisu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is due to come out on July 19 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. It’ll be available on Game Pass at launch.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kunitsu-gami-path-of-the-goddess-feels-as-luscious-as-it-looks-150059627.html?src=rss
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was given a proper unveiling at Summer Game Fest, with an Ocean’s 11-style intro to the gang of heroes and fantasy character tropes that will make up your cadre. Bioware also invited me to a hands-off demo of Veilguard, where I got to briefly see the character creation setup and the opening chapter of the game, as you join the likes of Varric and other characters from Dragon Ages past.
It does look different, though. I’ve only dipped into the Dragon Age series in the past, but the character style of Dragon Age: The Veilguard (especially in the trailer) looked, initially, like some kind of League Of Legends-style spin-off or even a, gasp, mobile game. There’s undoubtedly a cartoonish spin on characters, although Solas, the primary antagonist (and sadsack elf), seems to be his miserable, mournful self.
The environments we saw during the demo are suitably fantastical. During parts of the game, several vantage points appear to show off all the mystical landmarks. Oh, and a large chunk of the opening chapter is a town under siege by dimensional beasts.
Other significant changes appear in combat. While you’ll still be able to pause to consider tactics and enemy targets in a controller-friendly move, unique attacks for your character can be launched from a quick launch menu while the battle continues around you. It appears that The Veilguard could be more fast-paced than its predecessors.
I watched several battles between Rook, your custom-made character, and allies, including crossbow-wielding Varrik, fan-favorite Harding the scout, and the frostmage (and detective?!) Neve. We weren’t able to issue commands to our allies, but you will be able to in the final game. We watched a rogue build in action, which combined bow attacks with close-quarters dagger moves. If you choose a warrior, expect to focus on defense and heavy strikes, while a mage seems to lean on ranged combat.
Enjoy this sneak-peek at tomorrow's Gameplay Reveal!
It’s an action RPG, though, and you’ll have to work with your party members to strip away armor and protection before doing damage. Parries seem to form the core defense mechanic for rogues, but Veilguard Game Director Corinne Busche noted that, alongside difficultly modes, there are custom difficulty settings you can make fast-twitch battle mechanics more forgiving.
While we only got a brief look at the character creation process, you’ll be able to choose from different voices, fantasy races, and even a cool triangular ‘build’ generator for the body of your character. The dadbod dwarf mage of your dreams is, finally, here.
For fans of the series, though, the latest installment is aimed at expanding the world you probably already love. Areas and spots mentioned in passing in previous games will open up for exploration later in the game, we’re promised. When crafting a character, you’ll be able to flesh them out with one of several back-stories, which will often tap into groups and organizations from the series’ past. They’ll also get referenced by both your companions and other characters in-game when relevant. Neve and our build of Rook had a connection through a group in Rook’s past.
The decision wheel is here, too. While the battles and the monsters and the dragons are a core part of Dragon Age, the series is best known for letting players take the story into their own hands, making decisions, forgiving enemies (or not) and more. That looks like it’ll be a core part again of Veilguard. As Rook reacts to Varrik’s approach to Solas, as he wields dimensional forces, you can say it’s a bad idea, and your companions will act accordingly. Was it a bad idea? You’ll have to wait for the release, which is sometime in fall 2024.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-is-a-fantasy-epic-filled-with-big-decisions-150030570.html?src=rss
Thrasher, which its developers describe as a "mind-melting arcade action odyssey," will be available for the Meta Quest and the Apple Vision Pro on July 25. The SteamVR version will follow at a later date. Thrasher was first announced at The Game Awards last year as a new project by Brian Gibson, who was the artist and composer behind the nightmare-inducing rhythm game Thumper. For Thrasher, Gibson teamed up with Mike Mandel, known for working on games like Rock Band VR and Fuser, who took charge of the coding and research and development.
The player takes control of a space eel in Thrasher, which they have to guide with "fast-paced gesture controls" through unsettling landscapes, so that it can evolve and defeat a cosmic baby god by the end of their journey. Based on the images and teasers the developers have released so far, the game's environments truly do look mind-bending with their psychedelic neon colors and their geometric patterns. Even the eel's powers sound trippy: Players can fight bosses with a rainbow spray of bullets or bulldoze environment elements in a blaze of color and light.
The developers said that Thrasher's "music, visuals, and gameplay mesh into one transcendent experience" for the player. While the virtual reality version offers the most immersive option for gamers, Thrasher is also expected to be available for consoles and PC in the future
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/thrasher-the-psychedelic-game-from-the-artist-behind-thumper-arrives-in-july-133026724.html?src=rss
If you think Just Dance would be a great addition to your library of virtual reality games and experiences, then mark this date: October 15. 2024. Ubisoft is launching Just Dance VR: Welcome to Dancity that day for the Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 3. You'll be able to customize your avatars for the game and choose your own body shape, facial expression, skin color, hair and outfit. Once you're done creating a virtual version of yourself, you can enter the Dancity social hub to meet other players.
You'll also have your own "apartment" in game, where you can dance with up to six players or do other interactive activities with the group, like play basketball. The game will let you send emote stickers to players who aren't in your friends list, but you can do voice chats with dancers who are. Welcome to Dancity features 360-degree environments and what Ubisoft describes as an "all-new gameplay with two-hand scoring."
You'll be able to dance to 25 hit and original songs at launch, including Don't Stop Me Now by Queen, Bad Liar by Selena Gomez, Starships by Nicki Minaj and Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. As UploadVR notes, the game was supposed to be exclusively available to Pico headsets. However, after the ByteDance-owned company laid off a big portion of its workforce, Ubisoft started working with a new partner (Meta) to develop the game.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/just-dance-vr-is-coming-to-meta-quest-headsets-in-october-043151830.html?src=rss
The long-running Assassin’s Creed video game industrial complex has finally reached Japan – and I’ve been waiting. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set in feudal Japan, in the late 16th century, to be precise, at a time of political upheaval that birthed the ninja. While I didn’t get to play Shadows, at Summer Game Fest 2024, Ubisoft offered a hands-off gameplay demo, revealing how the game will play with two different but equal protagonists.
If you missed the initial reveal, Shadows' protagonists are Yasuke, a powerful outsider samurai who can strike the armor off enemies, and Naoe, an assassin/ninja with a killer “sickle on-chain” kusarigama and those traditional AC killing methods — she has a wrist blade.
Instead of choosing a single character to play the entire game, you can switch between the characters for assassination runs and exploration segments. I prefer my assassinations stealthy, so I was surprised by how intrigued I was with the beastly Yasuke.
Yasuke is based on a historical figure: An African man who served as a retainer to the Japanese lord Oda Nobunaga for roughly a year. Naturally, this is Assasin’s Creed, so the team has taken some liberties with historical fact. Here, he plays the part of an outsider, a foreign-born samurai walking a path of honor. He’s also a powerhouse. What he lacks in parkour elegance and dive drops, he makes up in having the power to cut down powerful enemies, charge through doors and enemies and scare the crap out of locals. As Yasuke walked through a village in the demo, villagers rushed to get out of the towering samurai’s way, bowing respectfully at the side, while children just gawped, frozen still.
As the duo fight to end the corruption rife in Japan, they’ll learn hints and tips on where to find their next assassination target. These will narrow down where you need to search. Once you’ve identified where they are, the characters can then task NPC recruits to hoedown exactly where, although this mechanic wasn’t explained in any detail.
Later in the demo, Yasuke cuts down some abusive guards and goes head-to-head with another samurai, and I got a deeper look into how Yasuke fights. He’ll have a range of weapons, and this time, he was swinging a hulking club, cracking skulls and armor alike.
After Yasuke wins his duel with the samurai opponent – with swords – he’s joined by the other main character, Naoe, the assassin. She moves like an assassin, vaulting up walls and kicking off surfaces before launching her grappling hook into roof awnings directly above her. Like the most recent AC entries, she can utilize Eagle vision for a better view of enemies and obstacles. A new addition in Shadows is the ability to kill light sources like lanterns and fires, so Naoe can easily get up close and assassinate. She’s not the only one with upgrades – I also saw Yasuke wielding a musket-style single-use gun during the demo too.
The game is very pretty, too. I say this as a huge fan of the style of Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima. Ubisoft’s take is a more detailed one: there are more people simply living in this feudal Japan. The shifting seasons and weather make for even richer environments, too. In a later assassination attempt during the demo, Naoe had her infiltration interrupted by a torrential downpour. I’m not sure yet whether this will affect visibility dynamics, but hopefully, it will have some effect on how you play Shadows.
I’m intrigued. I’ve long carried a torch for the cult ninja seriesTenchu. It offered its own takedown animations (in PS1 graphical glory), grapple hooks and stealth gameplay. It also offered two different characters: a speedy kunoichi assassin and a powerhouse ninja with samurai moves. Doesn't that sound a little familiar?
Assassin's Creed Shadows will land on November 15, coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Mac and iPad.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/assassins-creed-shadows-gameplay-demo-sgf-2024-200016644.html?src=rss