Tag Archive: preview


Playmaker options will change the passing game forever in Madden NFL 16

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July 6, 2015

When I play Madden, I dominate in the trenches. My defense makes sacks on every other play, and it’s not unheard of for my offense to rush for 2,500 yards and 40 TDs.

My aerial attack is another story, though. I’m lucky to throw for 2,000 yards and have a 1:1 TD/INT ratio. I’m more likely to hit the lottery than to have one of my DBs intercept a pass. It’s been this way for years,  whether I’m playing Madden 95 or Madden NFL 15.

This year, however, Madden is looking to make things easier for players like me to take advantage of superstar wide receivers and ball-hawking cornerbacks with new playmaker options. As soon as the quarterback lets go of the ball, there are more nuances than ever to how much touch or zip you can put behind the ball. Whereas in previous years, you’d either fire a bullet pass or lob a lame duck, depending on how you held the button, an in-between pass offers a chance to hit smaller windows of opportunity, as Andrew Luck or Peyton Manning do every Sunday.

Once the ball is in the air, the possibilities get really exciting. Your receivers can catch the ball differently, depending on how it’s thrown and their own attributes. A receiver like Calvin Johnson can leap up for a ball at its zenith; take a chance, turn and run before the ball reaches its target location; or use his tremendous size to jockey positions with a corner to make a sure-handed grab, all depending on which second button you press after your quarterback lets go of the ball.

Similarly, though, defensive backs offer comparable options. Shutdown corners like Richard Sherman can now more aggressively jam receivers off the line, much the same way a defensive player could try to jump the snap in last year’s game. DBs can also choose to jump routes, or leap for a ball with hopes of coming down with a momentum-swinging interception.

Admittedly, I needed some time to become comfortable with making an extra button press while the ball was in the air. After just a few blunders, I made my first interception on a flat route, and a spectacular catch in the back of the endzone on a jump ball. If I’m able to pull this off consistently, get a better feel for when to make each particular move, and learn what I can do with each receiver, this feature can be a game-changer for guys like me. I’ll need more than the one Madden NFL 16 game than I got to play in my demo, though, and a couple of possible flash-in-the-pan plays to see if Playmaker is all it’s being made out to be.

Madden NFL 16 will launch on Xbox One, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on August 25.

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NHL 16’s revolutionary HUD wants to teach you how to pass tape-to-tape and bury the biscuit in the basket

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If you’re a hockey fanatic like I am, you don’t need someone, especially a video game, explaining to you why a slapper from the point on the power play is a great idea if you’ve got bodies in front of the net looking for a deflection. If you’re not a hockey connoisseur, however, even that sentence probably has you scratching your head.

Well, the guys behind the NHL franchise get that not everyone is as obsessed with power play percentages and puck luck as I am. To be honest, I wasn’t always this way. Video games such as NHL 94 sparked my passion for — and understanding of — my most beloved sport.

Wanting to get back to that pedigree, NHL 16’s biggest innovation this year isn’t about tweaked physics or mascots in the stands (although those are there). It’s about finding ways to help newcomers develop an understanding for the sport we love, much the way the games of yesteryear did for a 9-year-old kid who didn’t understand quite how big it was when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994.

A new option in NHL 16 allows gamers to turn on a special HUD that appears beneath each player you’re controlling and certain spots on the ice. This HUD will tell you when you should pass and who the pass will go to, and where you should skate to if you don’t have the puck. Most impressively, the HUD will draw a line from your stick to the net if you’re in a shooting situation to let you know your odds on whether the shot will result in a goal or a save, or miss the net altogether. And it all happens seamlessly in real time.

This display system is a vital new tool in NHL 16’s attempts to teach players how best to play their game, as well as how to play hockey. The hope is that you’ll learn the highest percentage chances for scoring in key situations, where to skate to successfully kill off penalties, and how to most efficiently play the game. Then, newcomers will have a better grasp of both hockey and the video game, and perhaps learn to love it. Who knows, we veterans might even learn a thing or two.

Even though I’ve been playing NHL for years, I was impressed with how well the new HUD assist blended into the gameplay. I never felt like the directions were a distraction for me as an experienced player. I was even happy they were there because I was more sure of myself when taking certain shots, and I started correcting some bad habits I’d fallen into through the years.

This year, most people would’ve been fine with NHL just fixing things that were broken or restoring everything that was missing from last year’s game. So it’s great to see EA Canada’s innovations educate and grow not only the company’s fanbase, but the sport’s fanbase as well. 

NHL 16 is coming in September for Xbox One and Playstation 4.

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The wingsuit isn’t the only thing that’s changed about how you get around in Just Cause 3

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The Just Cause series has always tried its best to make getting around in its world just as fun as blowing it up. Rico’s iconic grappling hook allows him to get to places cars and copters can’t easily reach. Using the parachute with the hook lets you gain altitude while covering distance. At the same time, the combination makes Rico a harder target to hit and gives him a unique angle from which he can take out his enemies.

The new wingsuit adds a new wrinkle to how Rico will get around in his home country of Medici. Once Rico reaches certain heights, whether using the parachute or via the numerous flying vehicles in the game, the wingsuit allows Rico to get to almost anywhere on the island quickly  without losing elevation. In some ways, I’m reminded of how Batman gets around in the Arkham games; Rico can dive at great speeds, then pull up at the last instance to increase his time and speed. However, Rico can go farther than Batman can in the Arkham games. Here, it’s closer to actually being able to fly without a vehicle.

The speed and ease with which you can use the wingsuit to get around, though, would’ve made the parachute almost useless. So the parachute and how it works has been completely revamped. While you can still use the parachute to gain some height, it also slows Rico’s descent.

With these new tools, Rico can pull his chute above an area he wants to infiltrate or blow up, tether his grappling hook to the ground and slowly circle above his targets. During my time playing the game, I tried this technique while staging a prison break on top of one of Medici’s hills. Rico lost only minimal height while I shot at the guards and every red cylinder I could see, causing as much chaos and havoc as possible. The parachute slowed by descent so much that I  almost become a mid-air mobile weapons platform. I happily had the height advantage, but didn’t have to worry about losing it until enemy choppers scrambled, at least.

These movement options and changes are just a sample of what designers have done with Just Cause 3. They want to give players as much freedom as possible in Avalanche Studios’ sandbox, all in the name of causing as much destruction as possible. During my extended hands-on, flying through the air and firing rockets at enemies never got old. I can’t wait to do it all again when the game hits store shelves.

Just Cause 3 will drop December 1 for Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC.

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Starbreeze Studios reveals their own VR headset, StarVR

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Starbreeze Studios may have had one of the more shocking announcements of E3 2015, and it happened before the show even officially started!

As part of a pre-E3 preview event, the developer behind the Payday series, the Syndicate reboot, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and many other games unveiled their brand new virtual reality headset called StarVR yesterday evening.

Being the resident EGM VR junkie, I was fortunate enough after the announcement to be the first person in the world outside of the studio to actually go hands-on (head-on?) with this new piece of hardware.

The demo we were given was based on Overkill’s The Walking Dead, which was also announced to be the first game for StarVR. It was explicitly stated, however, that the demo we played would not be part of the final game, but instead would convey a feel for the title, while more importantly, showing off what the headset could do.

In the demo, I was a recently infected person who was on his last legs. The pair of people I had been traveling with did not want to leave me behind, or at least not until they could get my car and some supplies from me. So, they strapped me into a wheelchair and gave me a shotgun. As they pushed me through the halls of a hospital, I would have to cover them. It was an absolutely beautiful looking rail-shooter experience, but I felt it was a tad too heavily scripted for my tastes. At the very least, though, it gave me a solid sense of what StarVR was all about as it really let me put the headset through its paces.

Starbreeze global brand director Almir Listo stated beforehand that the StarVR headset provides a 210-degree horizontal field-of-view, which is easily the largest of any VR headset revealed to date when you look at the 120-degrees of Microsoft’s Hololens, the 110-degrees offered with Oculus’s Crescent Bay and Valve’s ReVive, or Morpheus’ 100-degrees. I can confirm that in my experience, StarVR provides more peripheral vision than any headset I’ve tried (just Hololens eludes me at this point), and only when I looked to the extreme right or left could I see the very edges of the displays.

Speaking of display, StarVR touts a 5K resolution due to dual 5.5-inch screens. The picture for The Walking Dead was crisp, clear, and had no framerate drops, but I can’t definitively say it was better or worse than the others without putting them side-by-side. StarVR also features orientation and positional tracking, so every time I moved my head around during the demo, my character in game would do the same.

This was critical because at this moment, StarVR lacks more traditional input devices so at least moving my head around gave me a sense of being in the world until I finally received my shotgun. In regards to controllers, Starbreeze CTO Emmanuel Marquez admitted they were still working on them, and were keeping an eye on what other companies in the VR marketplace, like Valve, do in that regard. It was also mentioned that they would love to be compatible with a wide array of devices, including those of their own design like the prop shotgun I was able to play around with and that was featured in the above video.

The idea that Starbreeze could come out with a special line of prop weapons for shooters like The Walking Dead is intriguing, and it’d be far from the first time we had large plastic guns in our hands to play games with. The prop shotgun, even with some sensors attached to it, felt like a real gun (minus the lack of kickback). Every time I did the pump-action, it responded in game. I could fire blindly behind me as we ran down an alley, or I could look down the sights to make sure I put each and every zombie down with a single shot. I’m just concerned how much it would cost to package extra sensors and a large toy shotgun with every copy of Overkill’s The Walking Dead. And what about other weapons? It was an interesting idea, and having a prop in my hands helped with immersion, but I honestly don’t know if it’s completely sound to think every gamer would collect prop weapons to play VR games with.

In terms of plug-ins, StarVR features a USB 3.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack so players can use their own headphones for comfort and ease. Of course, unlike Oculus with their built in headphones, this means that, for the moment, positional audio is not a part of StarVR and was noticeably absent from the demo I played.

A nice surprise from Starbreeze’s headset, though, came in how comfortable it felt on my head. While it’s a bit bulkier and larger than an Oculus Rift in terms of shape and size, it felt about the same in terms of weight and the cushions on the inside really kept it from feeling like it was pressing into my head at all. I actually think it may be my favorite headset so far when it comes to just how it feels on top of my head. It should be mentioned, however, that the headset was tethered to a nearby PC, but I was told wireless functionality is on the docket for future versions of the StarVR.

No potential release date or price point was set for StarVR during the event. Lionel Anton, Starbreeze’s lead VR hardware designer, said that what I got to go hands-on with was “a first prototype”, leading me to believe that, along with everything I saw yesterday, that Starbreeze is still some ways off from being ready to stand toe-to-toe with Oculus or Sony. They certainly seem to be on the right track, though. Expect more info and insights about StarVR this week at E3, where it’ll be fully on display.

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How Treyarch is changing Call of Duty Zombies mode

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May 31, 2015

Will the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 feature a stand-alone Zombies story mode? Will old friends (and foes) from previous Call of Duty games reappear as the undead? Could this be the first step towards a stand-alone zombies franchise? Watch the video for the latest info!

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Five things I want to see in Call of Duty: Black Ops III

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April 19, 2015

With today’s teaser announcement basically confirming Call of Duty: Black Ops III being Treyarch’s entry this year in Activision’s billion-dollar franchise (sorry World at War fans), I got to thinking about what exactly we want to see from this newest installment in the Black Ops series.  With a three-year development cycle this go around, I imagine Treyarch has had plenty of time to mess with some new ideas, or—more than likely—refine some older ones. So, here are the top five things I’d like to see from Call of Duty: Black Ops III.

Editor’s Note: There will be references made to the endings and plot twists of the previous Black Ops games in the following piece. Consider this your only warning. 

1. Returning Characters

So the teaser trailer features a number of echoes from the past Black Ops games. The ones that stood out the most to me is Black Ops II villain Raul Menendez saying “Your life will be consumed by absolute loss” and Sgt. Frank Woods mentioning “You’ll always need men like us.” Now, there were four different endings in Black Ops II, and we don’t know which one will be considered canon to pick up the storyline—but the hope is that it will be one where it allows both of these characters to return in some form or another. Menendez made a great villain, and Woods has been a fan-favorite since the first Black Ops. It’d make a lot of sense if we saw some returning faces for the series’ third installment, and that’s especially true for these two guys—and using those particular lines from them in the teaser makes me think it’s not that far-fetched.

2. Parallel Storylines

Something that kept Black Ops II’s narrative feeling so fresh was the constant shift in perspective from the 1980s to 2025. And, again, depending on what becomes canonical for the series going forward, the return of Alex Mason in certain endings leaves a lot more questions on the table than answers. Why tell players where he was during all those years he was missing from his son David’s life, when instead you can show them? If Black Ops III goes with the ending where Alex lived in the end, then you can very easily have the game go back and forth between explaining where he was in the 1990s and dealing with the inevitable ripples caused by Menendez in the late 2020s—and still have it all tie together in an over-arcing plot line.

3. Remove Strike Force; add campaign co-op

The RTS element introduced via the special Strike Force chapters of Black Ops II was an inventive and interesting idea that just didn’t pan out as well as it could have. Often your ally AI would leave you to “super soldier” through missions, and considering how much of the plot relied on the outcomes of said missions, it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. The idea of special “metagame” operations with larger teams affecting the outcome of the plot wasn’t the worst idea in the world, though. When you also consider how much of Black Ops II saw you weaving your way through each level with an AI buddy, the obvious addition that needs to be implemented instead in Black Ops III is campaign co-op. Whether it’s Mason and Woods at it again in a flashback, David and a nameless squad member in 2025, or a pair of guys protecting key interests around the world with a small army of drones instead of a group of incompetent AI to replace the Strike Force missions, I think co-op could easily be doable as an option here.

4. Return to form in multiplayer

We know multiplayer is a bigger draw than the single-player narrative when it comes to Call of Duty. To me, Black Ops II remains the best multiplayer experience of the last generation of the franchise, and I’ll always go back to it over Ghosts or Advanced Warfare any day of the week. After all, Treyarch is the one who came up with the Pick-10 system, and it was at its best in terms of balance and implementation when in this team’s capable hands. I’d love for them to go back to it, especially with three years to tweak things. Plus, the power of new-gen consoles has me really pumped up for the future of multiplayer with Call of Duty—even if they do nothing but fix the Pick-10 system after Infinity Ward bumbled what Treyarch did the first time around.

5. Deepest Zombies mode ever

It’s Treyarch’s turn to shine, and that means one thing when it comes to Call of Duty: Zombies mode. After Black Ops II’s Zombies actually started to piece together a few elements from previous games, and paid homage to many of the theories put forth by the mode’s ravenous fanbase, you have to think that Black Ops III will offer not only a bigger and more robust experience with the mode, but maybe even finally provide players with that definitive narrative within itself. Since the constant speculation amongst players has helped turn this into one of Call of Duty’s most popular features, it feels like it’s time to finally be rewarded.

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Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China – Video Hands-on Preview

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April 6, 2015

I had a chance to go hands-on with Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China and get an early, firsthand look to see if the open-world action-adventure gameplay of Assassin’s Creed could transition into a 2.5D side-scrolling world. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is the first in a series of three new, standalone downloadable titles from Ubisoft and developer Climax Studios.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China will be downloadable to your PS4, Xbox One, or PC starting April 21. The next two chapters in the series, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India and Russia, were also just announced and will be available sometime later in 2015.

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Mortal Kombat X has become a family affair

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March 22, 2015

Back when the game was first announced, if you told me that “family” was going to be one of the key themes of Mortal Kombat X, I’d have looked at you like you had two heads. This was the franchise that 7-year-old me lied to his parents about the level of violence in order to get the game for home consoles. This was a series built on the decapitated heads and severed limbs brought about by countless arcade players with nimble-enough fingers to pull off some impossible Fatalities. I never thought something as wholesome as “family” could fit into Mortal Kombat.

But leave it to the developers at NetherRealm Studios to turn even this concept on its head. At GDC 2015, I learned that Johnny Cage would return as a playable character in Mortal Kombat X, and I briefly got to go hands-on with him in the first chapter of the game’s story mode.

I’ve always enjoyed playing as Johnny Cage, but part of his charm as a character has always come from his interactions with his beloved Sonya Blade, since she acts as a grounding force for Johnny’s over-the-top bravado. To my delight, she was present throughout many of his cutscenes, too. It’s always nice to see one of gaming’s earliest power couples reunited (and doesn’t CageBlade sound infinitely more badass than Brangelina?). Throw daughter Cassie into the mix, and you’ve got the whole Cage bloodline present and accounted for here.

As the story begins, Shinnok, the fallen Elder God and master of the Netherrealm, tries to invade Earthrealm. Among Shinnok’s army of winged, fire-breathing demons are the reanimated, undead bodies of Sindel, Kabal, Stryker, Jax, and others controlled by Shinnok’s necromancer disciple, Quan Chi. As the world goes to hell around them, Johnny, Sonya, and Kenshi take a helicopter toward Raiden’s temple (where Shinnok is focusing his attack) in the hopes of possibly ending this war at the source—but, as you can imagine, things don’t go according to plan.

Mortal Kombat X’s story mode plays out similarly to Injustice: Gods Among Us. You’ll control a character for several fights that clump together as a chapter; that moves the story forward, and you’ll then take over as another character on the roster. This way, players can become familiar with multiple fighters if they’re new to the series, as well as experience the story from multiple points of view.

In Johnny’s case, his chapter consisted of four fights before I switched characters—or I would have, but the demo ended before I found out who would pilot Chapter Two. Johnny’s signature moves like the Shadow Kick and Green Flame were present and accounted for, and I even got to try out some environmental hazards, such as jumping off a wrecked car to close the distance on a far-away Scorpion and deliver a jump kick.

The game looked like one of the best new-gen titles yet, with each level providing an exquisite amount of detail. Whether it was Raiden’s temple or a destroyed city street surrounded by crumbling buildings, Mortal Kombat X looks nothing short of gorgeous. How it plays might be another story, however.

For example, I was a little taken aback that Johnny Cage felt slower than I remembered. I adapted by the end of the demo and delivered some solid combos by the time the chapter was over, but I don’t know if Johnny’s just gotten slower due to his age or whether the game as a whole is a half-step off, since I only got to play as him in the demo. Of course, it’s also difficult to judge based on only four fights.

Aside from this, it felt really good bashing people’s faces in, and I couldn’t help but get more amped up for the final game, where I can mess around with some Fatalities and Brutalities. Since we had only a limited amount of time, however, I only pulled off an X-ray maneuver.

In regards to the little bit I saw of the actual story, I’m also curious to see where all that goes. Kenshi and Jax were confirmed as appearing in-game during my playtime (Kenshi in cutscenes, Jax as one of Johnny’s opponents), and their kids are playable characters, too. There’s also Kung Lin being related to Kung Lao somehow, and even Scorpion has a fatherly relationship with Kenshi’s son, since he trained him. From what I saw, there seems to be a stronger emphasis on character relationships in the story here than in any previous Mortal Kombat game.

I imagine I’ll get some sort of payoff once I get to play the entire story mode come review time, but for now, this theme of “family” in Mortal Kombat X’s story is an intriguing one. It could serve as a welcome continued evolution of the series, or it might end up as an overplayed premise that makes the experience more cheesy than cool. As someone who’s been a fan since that very first chapter back in 1992, though, I think giving these longstanding characters more depth can only be a good thing.

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Hands-On: Evolve

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January 16, 2015

If you’re like me, you love a great multiplayer experience—but so many experiences are just the same modes reworked over and over again, to the point where you just end up playing Team Deathmatch because it’s so familiar, and it’s the one mode that developers can’t seem to screw up, no matter how hard they try. The folks at Turtle Rock—the developers who brought us the original Left 4 Dead—are trying something a little different with their next gaming foray, though. Evolve is introducing asymmetrical multiplayer via a 4-on-1 concept, where the four are hunters and the one is their prey. That prey, however, is a monstrous behemoth of unbelievable size and strength.

The potential for mayhem should be obvious, since you and your crew can mix and match among the game’s four classes, or you can decide to ruin someone’s night by being a particularly brutal and unforgiving creature. A multiplayer-only game can sometimes get tiresome quickly, however, especially if there isn’t an offline mode to balance things out.

Multiplayer-focused games also often live or die depending upon who you’ll have at your side (or facing off against you across the battlefield). If you play with your friends, not everyone will be available every time you get a hankering to go online, and sometimes some of the people you have to deal with while playing can make it more exhausting than fun, even if you’re the lone monster in this case.

So, I was particularly intrigued when I had the chance to go hands-on for the first time with Evolve, offline and solo. If you don’t have a group of friends to team up with (or against, in the case of the monster), you can still jump into one of the game’s maps and get your hunting fix.

In order to see the full potential benefits of playing Evolve alone, I jumped into the recently announced Evacuation campaign mode (a series of five random games that determine the fate of the game’s planet, Shear). Playing this mode offline allowed me to test out strategies with unfamiliar characters and maps, as well as get a taste of some of the 800,000 supposed variations in which Evacuation could play out. I switched characters between each chapter, and playing against the computer allowed me to level up different loadouts for different situations, a particularly useful ability considering that each stage of Evacuation’s campaign changes objectives. One stage could be the straightforward Hunt—the long-publicized standard 4-versus-1 deathmatch—while the next could be Nest—where the monster’s trying to protect six eggs scattered around the field from the hunters—or any of the other modes in the game.

Despite the addition of being able to go solo, Evolve is still heavily multiplayer focused. Evacuation, along with the game’s other modes, is still more enjoyable when playing with or against friends—after a few rounds, the enemy AI definitely seems to lack the tenacity, randomness, or organization you can get from a seasoned team of humans. Allowing people who might not run with a dedicated multiplayer crew to still experience the world is a nice option, though, whether you’re the monster picking off AI hunters or a hunter working with an AI team against an AI monster.

My introduction to playing Evolve alone served a second purpose beyond its reveal, however. I also got to go hands-on for the first time with a third monster: the Wraith. If Goliath is the “fighter” archetype of monsters and takes elements from Godzilla, and Kraken is the “wizard” inspired by Cthulhu, then Wraith is described as the “rogue/assassin,” taking its visual inspiration from mermaids and harpies. Wraith doesn’t have a lot of health or armor, but it’s easily the fastest and stealthiest of the monsters.

Taking advantage of these attributes, to a degree, are the monster’s four powers. Its Decoy maneuver does exactly as it says, dropping a clone of Wraith onto the battlefield. This turns the player invisible, perfect for making a quick escape when overwhelmed or great for prepping an ambush from behind as hunters unknowingly unload into your doppelganger. The decoy can also dish out damage on its own—making it all the more believable—but the second you attack as the real Wraith, the decoy dissipates, preventing any unfair double-monster scenarios.

Another of Wraith’s powers is Supernova, which triples its attack speed and strength as long as you remain in an area-of-effect circle that appears during the buff. Supernova is great for when you finally want to go on the offensive or focus on picking off lone hunters.

What I worry about when it comes to Wraith, however, are its other two abilities. I played probably a dozen games as this newest monster in my hands-on time, and I found myself relying a lot on Supernova and Decoy to perform hit-and-run-style tactics that just decimated my enemies (both human and AI). Throughout all of my domination, however, I struggled to find use for Wraith’s two additional powers: Warp Blast and Abduction.

Warp Blast sends Wraith shooting forward a short distance, culminating in a contained explosion (though the creature is literally blowing up part of itself to accomplish this, it doesn’t actually get hurt). The explosion, if it hits, does a good amount of damage—but considering that speed is Wraith’s strength, Warp Blast seemed to leave me vulnerable for longer than I’d like as I waited for the move to finish.

Its final power, Abduction, sounds cool and might work better in tandem with other powers than by itself, but I never really found a time to use it to my full advantage. Abduction has Wraith fly forward a great distance, and if it bumps into a hunter, it teleports the both of them back to the spot where the ability was activated. While it can help break up tight packs of hunters, given Wraith’s poor attack power, it might really only be effective after having already activated Supernova.

Wraith does provide a nice change of pace from Kraken and Goliath. I just wonder if she won’t end up getting a bit of a balance update down the line—and if I’ll find more usefulness in her full array of abilities once other players have shown off how to better use them.

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Hands-On: Assassin’s Creed Rogue

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November 6, 2014

50 Shades of Shay

With so little information out there right now about Assassin’s Creed Rogue, I admit I was very worried about what I’d see when I finally got to play it. I was convinced that last-gen games couldn’t offer up as enjoyable an experience as their new-gen counterparts. But if Rogue proves to be the swan song for Assassin’s Creed on Xbox 360 and PS3, there seems to be no better title to possibly do it with.

Over the course of about four hours, I was able to play Sequences 3 and 5 in Rogue, where we first get to see Shay Cormac fall in with the Templars, who would tempt him away from the Assassin Brotherhood. They show him a different way of doing things—a possibly better way of doing things—and then we see his meteoric rise up through their ranks.

During these two sequences, what I found most interesting was watching how Shay reacted to how the Templars went about fighting the war, how he questioned his own motivations, and even second-guessed orders from Haytham Kenway, the Templar Grandmaster of North America at the time. This small cross-section of gameplay made me realize this was much more than a simple revenge story.

Shay has the potential to be one of the deepest, most complex protagonists we’ve seen from the series, because he’s constantly fighting a war within himself—as well as in, and around, colonial New York City. The underlying themes of “How far would you be willing to go to feel safe?” and “How much does freedom cost?” were also constantly on display each time Shay had one of those integral moments of doubt, making him highly relatable given the current temperature of world affairs.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the gameplay. When I first heard that the game was set in New York City again, there was definitely some trepidation that we’d see a lot of copied and pasted elements from Assassin’s Creed III. And, yes, the layout of the city’s roads seem to be similar to what we saw then, but because this game takes place 20 years before the bulk of Connor’s story, it’s a very different New York—one that’s not been touched yet by the Great Fire of 1776. This means new buildings to climb and new things to see, even if some will definitely serve as callbacks to previous games.

Speaking of the time period, though, I think the thing that excites me the most about Rogue is that, although you’re not playing as a Kenway, the game really seems to serve as the bridge for Assassin’s Creed III and IV, filling in key gaps in the story and tying up loose ends. Since it comes after those two games, though, it’s taking the best elements of both of them and mashing them together.

The sailing is just as good as ever, and the idea that you can now be boarded while traversing the high seas adds a brand-new dynamic to the North Atlantic and Hudson River Valley that Edward Kenway’s Caribbean in Black Flag didn’t have. Shay’s Fleet is also very different from Edward’s because while Shay is fighting the Assassin-Templar War, the Seven Years’ War is going on around him, and he can send his ships into the naval conflict of the war and actually have a more direct say in a huge historical event instead of just sailing for more coin.

Some old ideas also return in new ways in Rogue. A new economy system has been instituted so that as Shay liberates more districts from enemy control, he’ll see more money flow into his bank account. He can also spend money to fix up key buildings in and around New York to promote further development of his own wealth, all in the hopes of not only making his own life better, but hopefully better for the people he hopes to protect in the Colonies.

Rogue also brings new weapons. Besides iconic stuff like dual hidden blades and an assortment of swords from the time period, Shay will meet up with his old friend Ben Franklin, who’s working on a grenade prototype that Shay can attach and launch from his rifle. This is, surprisingly, historically accurate—Franklin did make a grenade prototype that never saw mass production. And maybe that’s because Shay was running around, using it for Templar plots instead!

We also see the return of the Stalker enemy type; they were prevalent in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and would dress in civilian garb and try to sneak up on and attack Ezio. Similarly here, Shay’s stalkers won’t just hide in plain sight but also in outhouses and bushes to try to get the drop on him when he least expects it.

Despite my early fears about Assassin’s Creed Rogue, this short preview demo allayed much of my worries. As soon as I picked up the controller and started running around New York and then sailed out on the high seas while listening to some classic sea shanties sung by my crew, it felt like I was coming home to an old friend. But while there’s more than enough here to make Assassin’s Creed Rogue feel extremely familiar, there’s also just enough new stuff to keep you on your toes. Couple that with Shay’s compelling story, and Rogue does more than enough to remind us that last-gen isn’t quite dead yet.

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