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République review

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment
April 20, 2016

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Big Brother’s still watching

When République’s Kickstarter launched back in 2012, I was instantly intrigued. Admittedly, a premise touting a dystopian future and corrupt government that you have to fight back against through stealth and sabotage is an easy way to perk my ears up. Then it was revealed to be episodic in nature, with the first episode coming December of 2013. As interested as I was, I knew I’d want to binge-play all the episodes in quick succession, so I decided I’d wait for them all to be released.

So I waited. And waited. And then I forgot about République. This was because for a while there it looked like the end might never come with huge gaps between episodes. Finally, though, here I am, sitting down to write a review I thought would’ve come much, much sooner. And with the long-awaited arrival of the fifth and final episode on mobile and PC came a PS4 edition collecting the entire adventure together for easier consumption, which is exactly how I wanted to experience it to begin with.

In the PS4 version of République, players take on a unique dual-role. Half the time you’ll assume control of Hope, a beaten-down young girl who has already been “recalibrated” several times, yet still her spark for rebellion keeps emerging. For the other half you’ll be a nameless friend from the outside who must help Hope finally escape by hacking the video cameras and electronics in the totalitarian République, turning the Orwellian dictatorship’s paranoia-inducing surveillance tactics against itself. Along the way, you’ll learn about the République’s faceless Overseer, escape his head of security—a masochistic man named Derringer—and his “Prizrak” soldiers, and peel back the layers of conspiracy to learn the truth.

République’s greatest strength comes in its storytelling. Although the beginning of the series may drag a bit as it establishes the universe you’ll be exploring, the pace soon hits its stride, giving you a perfect mix of drama, suspense, action, and just enough breadcrumbs to make you keep wanting to fall down the rabbit hole. Of course, the more you put into exploring République’s small, interconnected Metroidvania-like world—one that opens up some as your security clearance increases—the more you’ll learn about everything that led to the creation of the République in the near-future of 2020, and about the rigid structure you’re tasked with rebelling against.

A major element that gets République’s backstory across is the beautiful design of the world, which firmly plants one foot in modern reality and another in this possible future. Some areas feature the cold, gray technology you’d expect from a futuristic civilization, with supercomputers, biolabs, and advanced surveillance tech dotting the many hallways. Meanwhile, rainy graveyards, an intricate library with books approved by the state, and a museum that pays homage to revolutionary leaders—including a wing dedicated to the Overseer—show how society reached this point in only a few years.

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There’s also an interesting mesh of technology seen in the collectibles, highlighting the backwards, fascist thinking of the game’s antagonists. Rarely do collectibles add so much to a game’s ability to immerse you in a world (oftentimes it’s the exact opposite). Even though you are surrounded by all this future tech, it’s the discovery of cassette tape messages from fellow rebels, saving books marked for burning like Orwell’s Animal Farm, Nabokov’s Lolita, or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, or indie-darling video games like Bastion, Flow, and This War of Mine on floppy discs that help paint a picture of subjugation and isolation critical to the atmosphere the game tries to convey.

The characters themselves also go a long way to selling the plot. Hope’s plain white jumpsuit and pink control collar immediately scream oppression, whereas the Overseer dons a pristine white military uniform seen favored by modern dictators, trying to convey a sense of pureness and cleanliness despite his tyrannical ways. It also must be mentioned that tremendous voice acting across the board only heightens the tension of every confrontation between all the major characters.

The only negative about the story comes from the fact that if you want to replay any episode on the PS4 version of the game, you have to start an entirely new game. You can’t just jump into an episode at any time to go back and hunt for collectibles or change the couple of branching decisions the story gives you. At that point, why even bother rolling credits after each episode? Just cut that out and make it one long game.

As great as République looks and sounds, and as much as I may love the story, there’s still the matter of gameplay. République, at its core, is a stealth game. Memorizing guard patterns, sneaking around, and using the environment to your advantage to hide in plain sight is the only way Hope will survive the night and escape. The PS4 version of République is the third different control scheme the game has been given, though.

On mobile, where the game started out, tapping the touch screen was used to move Hope around and change cameras. The PC/Mac version was then given point-and-click controls to simulate the touch-screen experience. The PS4 version needed an entirely new system, however, to be playable. It works in some regards, though in others there has clearly been something lost in translation, detracting from the stealth required to make it through the game unscathed.

Whereas before you would simply use the cameras to see where Hope is going and then tap to start her moving, the PS4 version has you bouncing back and forth between Hope and the cameras, controlling only one at a time. The benefit of this is the duality I mentioned earlier, helping you feel like a separate character in the universe and not some omnipotent force controlling an avatar. When Hope is caught by the Prizrak, your options as the camera are also limited, and that feeling of helplessness—if Hope isn’t carrying a one-use item that lets her escape, like pepper-spray, Tasers, or sleeping gas bombs, that is—grounds you even more in the idea of being a friend on the outside.

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Having more direct control over Hope in this version of the game, though, leads to some frustrating moments. Since Hope only moves when controlling her and you can’t set her off a path like a Lemming, if you get too far away from a particular camera, the viewpoint may automatically shift to a closer one at a different angle. But in my playthrough there were moments where one camera would be farther away, but offer a better angle when sneaking up on a guard. When the camera suddenly shifted, so did my controls, and I’d bump into the guard or instantly start walking in the opposite direction I’d intended.

Speaking of guards, the Prizrak may be the dumbest enemies I’ve seen in a long time. Prizrak mooks have about as much peripheral vision as a VR headset, meaning if you aren’t directly in front of a Prizrak’s eyes, they won’t notice you. While their patterns are complex enough that you can’t predict them all the time, there’s a larger margin for error than you see in many other stealth games and often Hope can be standing right next to one without them noticing her.

You can also weirdly freeze time when controlling cameras, painting the world in a film-negative tone. While this allows you to scout areas up ahead, better plan paths around guard patrols, and hack computers without worrying about said patrols, it’s an immersion-shattering element. The last thing we need is another game with some sort of “radar sense” or “detective mode,” and I think keeping everything in real-time would’ve much better served the narrative the rest of the game supports.

Not every aspect of the gameplay is a mess, though. The few puzzles that players will have to help Hope overcome are fun and inventive. And some hacking mini-games, like twisting the state-run newspaper into incriminating high-ranking Prizrak, or deleting criminal records to free people from the Overseer’s grasp, offer enough variety to keep you on your toes and make things a little more interesting.

République’s attempt at creating an Orwellian-nightmare is largely successful, giving us a deep conspiracy-laden plot driven by compelling characters, stellar world design, and good writing. It only really falls flat in some gameplay aspects, but it works well enough on the whole that if the story digs its hooks into you, you’ll be able to look past the shortcomings and hopefully guide Hope through to the end.

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Developer: Camouflaj, Logan Games • Publisher: GungHo Online Entertainment • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 03.22.16
8.0
République’s transition from mobile to console is a mostly smooth one, but does feature some control hiccups along the way. The star of the show is the modern Orwellian tale crafted here, though, allowing you to look past a fair amount of technical issues.
The Good Classic conspiracy-driven Orwellian tale will suck you in and leave you wanting more.
The Bad Camera controls are difficult to get used to and often switch angles at the worst times.
The Ugly You’re being watched now for reading this review.
République is available on PS4, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by GungHo Online Entertainment for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Just Cause 3: Sky Fortress review

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment

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Fly like an eagle, then fall like Icarus

When Just Cause 3 came out at the end of last year, it delivered all the insane, bombastic action the series is known for and then some. New tools for Rico Rodriguez coupled with another island nation to obliterate meant I ended up sinking close to 40 hours into this game over winter break and not regretting a single second of it. So, when the Sky Fortress DLC expansion—the first of three coming to the game—had finally been added, I was thrilled to have an excuse to take control of the maestro of mayhem once again and blow up a little bit more of Medici. Just how little that bit would be came as something of a shock, though.

The Sky Fortress DLC starts off like some of Rico’s other missions over the course of the game, with him getting a call from his shady friend and government handler, Tom Sheldon. Countless Medicians have been slaughtered by robotic drones that belong to the eDEN Corporation—a tech start-up that fell out of favor with many world governments decades ago—and the drones are now mining the explosive mineral Bavarium from various parts of the island. Rico will have to track the drones to their airbase located off the coast, stop eDEN from killing any more civilians, and force them to cease their mining operation.

In order for Rico to defeat an enemy that defies gravity, he’ll have to do the same. So, Tom provides him with a new Bavarium-powered wingsuit. The suit is actually more akin to a jetpack, giving Rico upwards boost that recharges when he levels out for a brief time courtesy of the actual wing part of the suit, and also straps a rocket launcher and machine gun to Rico’s back, making him more fighter jet than wingsuiter really at that point.

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Just Cause has never been known for a great story. Like french fries serving as vessels for various sauces, the loose narrative around Just Cause games is just an excuse to blow up as much stuff as possible. The Sky Fortress DLC is no different, centered on demolishing drones and the titular airship that eDEN Corporation is based out of. As epic as that may sound, unfortunately, it all falls surprisingly flat, especially in the shadow of the main game.

All told, I beat the entirety of Sky Fortress, optional side missions included, in about 90 minutes. That means if you focused solely on the narrative content, you’d probably be looking at an experience that clocks in at an hour long, if you’re lucky. Three main missions, four outposts to liberate, four Bavarium wingsuit oriented challenges, and then roll the credits again. Avalanche Studios couldn’t even be bothered to give us full cutscenes. Instead, we get what amounts to a few pieces of concept art stills of the main characters with voiceover dubbed over it.

One small saving grace for Sky Fortress at least is that you can carry over your new wingsuit and a couple of new guns over to the main game if you haven’t beaten it yet. And if you’re just getting started in Just Cause 3, the DLC missions unlock about one-third of the way through the primary campaign, meaning you’ll be even better equipped to overthrow General Di Ravello and his army. Just like the lack of content devoted to your new toys, however, there’s an unfortunate catch that comes with all of this.

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For as fun as it is to fly almost limitlessly around a hugely destructible open-world with a rocket launcher strapped to your back, the Bavarium wingsuit also makes your old tools almost null and void. Why bother with a parachute when you can air brake and come to a soft landing? Why worry about how many rockets Rico can carry when you have an unlimited supply when flying? And why even bother with a grappling hook when you can literally soar from point A to point B both vertically and horizontally now?

The Bavarium wingsuit takes away any sort of challenge for the game. There’s even a barrel roll maneuver when flying, which breaks all missile locks on you. This means it’ll be near impossible for you to ever take damage as long as you keep moving. It is basically like turning on god mode and removes the little skill it once required to get around and destroy stuff in the game. Just Cause has never been a punishing game, but a little bit of challenge can go a long way to having a good time, and this new wingsuit snuffs that out pretty swiftly.

Just Cause 3’s Sky Fortress DLC sounds amazing when you look at what it entails. But from the second it begins, it comes off more as a hastily thrown together weapon pack than a fully fleshed-out expansion. It is held loosely together by minimal content, and mitigates what already exists in the main game. There’s nothing inherently broken about what Sky Fortress does, but it adds so little to the overall experience of Just Cause 3 that you’d be just as well off if you had never played it at all.

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Developer: Avalanche Studios • Publisher: Square Enix • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 03.15.16
5.0
Any excuse to return to the world of Just Cause 3 is welcome, but by the time you just start getting warmed up and comfortable with the new weapons, gear, and enemies, this new chapter is already over and you’re left asking where the rest of it is.
The Good The Bavarium wingsuit is the natural evolution for causing chaos in Just Cause.
The Bad New gear largely nullifies need for grappling hook, parachute, and conventional weapons. Largely removes all difficulty from the game.
The Ugly You can 100% the entire experience in less than two hours.
Just Cause 3: Sky Fortress is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Square Enix for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Pokkén Tournament review

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment

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Gotta fight’em all

Whenever Nintendo develops a smash-hit franchise, it’s only a matter of time before spin-offs happen—and Pokémon is no exception to this rule. Whether it’s the Rouge-like Mystery Dungeon series, the safari-driven Pokémon Snap, or the arcade-inspired Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon has been a great resource for when it comes time to break away from its turn-based RPG roots. I think even those of us who have been playing Pokémon over the past 20 years were a little perplexed, though, when we heard of its latest mash-up: Pokkén Tournament, a mixing of Bandai Namco’s Tekken gameplay and Pokémon.

Set in the newest continent added to the Pokémon universe, Ferrum, players will choose from a roster of 14 Pokémon to fight by their side as they attempt to conquer the region’s different leagues and be crowned the Grand Master. Along the way, they’ll learn the history of the region, and come to understand why an old enemy has re-emerged and is threatening the sanctity of Ferrum’s battle tournaments.

What’s interesting about Pokkén Tournament is that it didn’t try to just throw a bunch of elements from both Tekken and Pokémon together, instead working to find the right aspects of each one to merge in hopeful harmony. And when that harmony was achieved, the basis for one of the more interesting fighters we’ve seen in some time was born.

Before the battles begin, you start by customizing your own personal trainer, choosing their gender and a handful of visual options such as shirts, hats, and more. As you fight, you’ll earn PokéGold, which can then be used to buy more lavish items including background lens flares, feather boas, or even a pirate costume. To personalize things further, you can unlock fight titles like in other games of the genre—my favorite of which is “Living Legend”, perfect for when I take on other players (or even the CPU) locally and online with my mighty Machamp. You can also earn up to five bonus items a day by placing Amiibo on the Wii U gamepad; they had to work the figurines in somehow, I suppose.

Those personal touches are always nice in any game, but the real mixing of elements comes in the core fighting gameplay of Pokkén Tournament. Taking a page out of the Pokémon games, the more you fight with a particular Pokémon, the more they level up. So even though you can switch between Pokémon on the starting roster between fights, sticking with a single character rewards you more, and makes it easier to progress through the game, as they’ll have higher stats that can then be carried over into battle. For example, by the time I finished the single player story, my Machamp was a level 95, with points distributed relatively evenly amongst four categories: attack, defense, synergy (the speed at which your synergy meter fills up; think an ultra meter in other fighting games), and strategy (the strength of your support Pokémon).

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Those just-mentioned support Pokémon are an idea that adds an extra wrinkle of planning to every battle, similar to the Assist characters from Marvel vs. Capcom. There are 15 pairs of Support Pokémon, but while you’ll choose a pair before each battle, you can actually only use one of the duo each round. Each support Pokémon has a different effect: some do offensive damage, while others buff you or debuff your opponent, similar to the powers these Pokemon would have in the mainline games. This flurry of decisions can be difficult (especially with only a 10-second timer) but could mean the difference between victory and defeat. Personally, I prefer Quagsire and Magneton, mostly because Quagsire’s Mud Bomb has a nice area of effect and can do massive damage.

Besides Support Pokémon, players also get a cheerleader—the girl who introduces you to the Ferrum region. Between each round, she’ll give you advice (akin to real-life trainers in boxing or MMA), and while said advice is never really helpful, it can give you boosts to different meters depending on how you want her to coach you pre-fight. To be honest, I ended up finding her kind of annoying after only a few fights—another casualty of atrocious voice acting across the board in Pokkén Tournament—but I won’t argue with a fully-charged ultra meter to start round two, and it’s another surprising layer of choice to how you approach each fight.

The most impressive part of Pokkén Tournament’s gameplay, though, is the actual fights themselves. This doesn’t feel like some cheap re-skin of Tekken, nor is it some poorly-balanced clone. While I don’t agree with every move made, the heart of this fighter is strong. If you play other fighting games like myself, there is a bit of a learning curve, especially with the limited button re-assignment options. Like Mortal Kombat, you have to press a button to block instead of holding backward, but more unnatural was another button-instead-of-dpad-direction decision: jumping with the B button rather than up.

Once I finally got my brain retrained, I found that Pokkén Tournament might actually be a great introductory game for players new to the fighting genre. Its controls are super-simple, with no special move requiring more than a combination of a single direction and button press. Throws, counters, and ultras, meanwhile, all only require two buttons. While the move inputs may be simple, the core of gameplay is the rock-paper-scissors system not only found in many fighting games—throws beat counters, counters beat normal attacks, normal attacks beat throws—but also the Pokémon RPGs themselves. Of course, here everything is themed to the series, with moves such as Rock Throw, Ice Punch, and Seismic Toss.

When you combine all of that with the speed of the action (courtesy of devices that give players psychic links to their Pokémon according to the story), this is the first time in video game form we actually get battles close to what we see in the cartoon. In the back of every Pokémon fan’s mind, mine included, we’ve always appreciated the strategy and RPG aspects of the games, but have longed for a more visceral experience like we see on the TV show. Pokémon Stadium got us closer to that than the handheld entries, but it still never reached that fever-pitch that most competition brings because of a lack of speed and intuitiveness. Pokémon is extremely enjoyable, but you can take your time with it, often requiring dozens of hours per playthrough. Pokkén Tournament requires faster thinking and action and lasts 80 seconds, and that leads to a special kind of frantic fun that fans of Pokémon have been waiting for whether they realized it or not, and I couldn’t get enough of it, particularly when playing with my friends.

With that said, not everything in Pokkén Tournament is in perfect harmony. One major flaw I found was the “Phase” system, which dictates how battles play out and from what perspective. Each match starts in Field Phase, which sees players fight in a 3D space like the Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm series. When you perform certain attacks on your opponents, however, everything shifts to a more traditional 2D plane called Duel Phase. The primary problem with this system, besides the jarring movement of the camera, is the moves of your Pokémon change along with the shift. It’s almost like you have to learn two different characters and be ready to alternate between them on the fly. While I’m sure the best players will be able to transition seamlessly between Phases in due time and string out massive combos, the rest of us would probably prefer learning a single set of moves and mastering those. It feels like that while trying to keep the controls simple—to perhaps draw in that Pokémon crowd that may not necessarily be fighting game fans—the developers still wanted a large moveset that could appeal to fighting game veterans. This shifting phases was the result of that odd compromise and in the end I don’t think either camp will be completely happy.

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Now, most people will likely jump into single player when they start up Pokkén Tournament for the first time, but to say that mode is a grind would be like saying Charizard likes to burn things. To finish off the loose story woven through each of the game’s five leagues, I battled my way through about 150 fights (with only a handful of losses) before I could be declared Grand Master. And with a glaring lack of personality from everyone you fight (including the league leaders), the story feels horribly shallow and devoid of any character whatsoever. Only by continuously winning can you quickly shoot up the leaderboards in each single player league, filled with an ever-increasing number of dozens of combatants. You don’t have to fight through each person, but considering you only move up 10-20 spots every five battles before taking part in an eight-person tournament and then getting to fight the league leader, you can see where the grind starts to creep in.

Pokkén Tournament also features online and local versus. I played several matches online, and found no issues whatsoever with the servers. Mind you, there were probably never more than a few hundred people online at any given time during my pre-release time with the game, so hopefully the servers will hold up come release.

Local versus is another matter, though. While there were no technical issues, I found one aspect particularly irritating—and it goes back to the camera I mentioned while speaking about Phases. Because the 3D arena camera has been positioned behind each Pokemon, each player ends up needing their own personal view of the action. To accommodate this, Pokkén Tournament forces player one to use the gamepad’s screen as their main display, while player two must use whatever TV the system is connected to. It is a means to try to simulate the fight feel you have with the Pokémon RPGs, hiding what main and support Pokémon each player is selecting. One person playing on a six-inch screen, and another on a 46-inch screen always feels like the player with the better screen has a slight edge, though, and when dealing with competitive fighting games, anything that tips the balance in another player’s favor that isn’t skill-based is just asking for trouble.

My final gripe with Pokkén Tournament might’ve been my most disappointing. There are over 720 Pokémon now, yet only 14 are playable in the game (16 if you count the two special unlocks) with another 30 appearing as Support. There are 20 pure-fighting types alone in Pokémon, and Machamp is the only one on the roster. No Primeape. No Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, or Hitmontop. No Throh, Sawk, or Hariyama. And that’s not even including Pokémon with secondary fighting characteristics, of which there are only two others on the roster—Lucario and Blaziken—out of another 24. Not to mention all the other Pokémon who could’ve easily been worked into this game, like Greninja.

One saving grace that comes with such a small roster is that at least all the Pokémon are extremely well-balanced. Clearly some time was invested to make sure that no Pokémon, no matter its natural-type advantages in the RPGs, would be so outclassed here that it became frustrating to play with any of them. Whether it’s a power-type like Machamp who specializes in up close and personal melee attacks, a speed-type like Sceptile that can pummel you with a variety of high-counting combos in no time flat, a technical-type like Gengar that relies on its specials, or a standard-type like Lucario that is even across the board, all the Pokémon work nicely in combat and it shouldn’t be long before you find a main Pokémon to specialize in, again harking back to the relatively easy to learn controls.

When I started reviewing Pokkén Tournament, I had no idea how the gameplay of Tekken and the world of Pokémon were going to find a way to reconcile, yet amazingly, they did. In fact, when elements of both fit together, it arguably produced gameplay greater than the sum of its parts. But when those elements didn’t mesh, the train wreck it created was doubly worse, and the small roster is disappointing. There were enough successes amongst the failures in this odd marriage though, and because of that, Pokkén Tournament has created a solid core to build on for potential future continuations of this spin-off series—even if this game is not quite ready to be declared a champion quite yet.

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Developer: Bandai Namco Games • Publisher: Nintendo, Bandai Namco • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 03.18.16
7.0
Pokkén Tournament was a brave experiment, and it succeeds in many areas. However, it fails in some others—whether from lack of depth or outright poor design—that keeps it from reaching that upper-tier of the fighting game genre’s elite entries.
The Good Solid balancing of all the characters leads to fun and frantic fighting game action.
The Bad Small roster. Switching between phases. Single player is a grind. Having player one forced to play off the Wii U gamepad in local battles.
The Ugly “Luchachu” would’ve sounded so much better to me than “Pikachu Libre”.
Pokkén Tournament is a Wii U exclusive. Review code was provided by Nintendo for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Just Cause 3 Sky Fortress DLC – Taking Control Mission

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March 15, 2016

I played Just Cause 3’s Sky Fortress DLC, the first of three post-launch DLCs for Just Cause 3. In this video, I tackle the Taking Control Mission which will unlock the “Break a Leg!” achievement and show off the new Bavarium wing suit! Just Cause 3’s Sky Fortress DLC is available March 15 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC, unless you have the season pass and then it’s available March 8.

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Song of the Deep’s story will pull you in, its gameplay will keep you coming back

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment

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Usually when people think of Insomniac Games, over-the-top action and insane weapons are the first thoughts that come to mind. In a creative field like video games, though, patterns are meant to be broken and comfort zones are meant to be stepped outside of—and that’s what’s being done by a fifteen-person team within Insomniac. This small group of staffers is hard at work on Song of the Deep, a side-scrolling metroidvania-style passion project that definitely moves away from what some may consider the studio’s bread and butter. I was recently able to play about 30 minutes of the game, and you’d think Insomniac had always been working within that genre.

Song of the Deep follows 12-year-old Merryn, a young girl whose fisherman father has been lost at sea. When Merryn has a vision seeing her father trapped on the sea floor, she decides the only way to save her dad is to find him herself. So, she puts together a makeshift submarine and sets off to explore the murky depths. What she soon realizes, however, is that all the old bedtime stories her father used to tell her about the sea might actually be true, and only by navigating various hazards will she ever be able to bring him home.

Dropped into the middle of Merryn’s adventure, I began by trying out the variety of tools and weapons that her sub has to help it navigate its surroundings. A grappling hook can be used to tether the sub to craggy surfaces in strong currents, pull and carry objects around a level when solving puzzles, or even to try to punch enemies. The sub also featured sonar with pulses that can stun certain enemies, a turbo booster which can really crank up the engines on the sub, and lasers and torpedoes to either defend yourself with or destroy crumbling walls for entry into submerged ruins.

Speaking of ruins, as I explored the world around me, I began to realize that some of the story was being told via the vibrant environments I was navigating. Large tendrils of seaweed acted as window dressing on larger set pieces, but also at times visually obscured hidden pathways. Intricately-carved stone, long lost to time, had eerily been preserved in the deepest recesses of the ocean. Unknown clockwork technology still operated when Merryn interacted with it, opening up new wonders to explore. Song of the Deep is nothing short of beautiful when it came to providing a visually captivating experience.

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As I began to make headway during my hands-on time, I soon came across my first upgrade. It was a special suit that Merryn can wear in order to freely exit the sub. Being much smaller than the sub, the suit allows her to explore tiny crevasses and pathways that lead to special items or solutions to different puzzles. It basically serves the purpose of Samus’ morph ball from Metroid, but Merryn is far more vulnerable in this mode than Samus ever was, leaving Song of the Deep’s heroine open to far more danger.

And danger is something Song of the Deep is fraught with. Being underwater, Merryn and her sub provide a unique twist to other games in the same genre in that there is no platforming. Being submerged, you can always move in every direction as long as there isn’t a wall or other obstacle in your path barring progress. This means bottomless pits or spike traps aren’t on Merryn’s list of concerns, but in their place, Insomniac needed other ways to provide challenge along the adventure.

One way of doing this is to fill each level with hostile wildlife, with jellyfish, urchins, and other sea creatures trying to turn you into dinner if you’re not careful. Another way of upping the difficulty is with puzzles. Navigating labyrinthine corridors with jet stream currents trying to toss you to and fro, using your grappling hook to throw items through narrow openings in order to open up ancient, rusted gates, or working steampunk-like machinery to reflect light at different sensors were just some of the head-scratchers I came across in my time with the game. Although not impossible to overcome, they definitely added a welcome challenge to the adventure.

Although my time with Song of the Deep was short, its appeal is evident. Whether a longtime fan of metroidvanias, or just looking for another endearing digital story to experience, the team at Insomniac is showing their pedigree reaches far past extraordinary weaponry and mind-blowing action. Song of the Deep should be a game to keep an eye out for when it releases sometime before the end of the first half of 2016 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

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Bullet Train is the VR gaming experience we’ve been waiting for

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment

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If you’ve seen Epic Games’ Couch Knights or Showdown demos, or were one of the lucky few that attended GDC last year and saw the Unreal 4 powered Thief in the Shadows demo they did with WETA Digital, it is easy to tell that Epic is excited about the potential of Virtual Reality. The studio’s years of bringing us some of the most over-the-top gaming experiences could easily transition into VR, and each subsequent demo they’ve released has pushed the potential the tech holds a little farther. So, it was no surprise that I was blown away by their latest VR experience, Bullet Train, when I recently got to try it out for the first time.

Bullet Train starts off on a futuristic subway train, teaching you the basic mechanics of how to survive in the demo. Picking up, firing, and reloading your guns comes intuitively with the Oculus’ dual-hand controllers, with appropriate buttons for pulling triggers and actually holding onto the weapons. Besides using guns, your character can also slow time down Matrix-style, catching bullets out of mid-air and throwing them back at enemies with super speed. As well, your character is equipped with a teleport power, which is how you also move through the world.

Once I had familiarized myself with the controls and completed the tutorial, the subway train came to a stop at a station with large glass windows and pristine floors, giving off the vibe of a possible near-future setting. I quickly scanned around the area and noticed guns, grenades, and teleport points littered around the station. With nary a moment to collect myself in this new virtual world, though, red armored hooligans carrying their own weapons started pouring in from escalators and elevators—and I was their target.

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I grabbed the nearest two pistols and immediately began firing, hoping to get a jump on my foes before their superior numbers overwhelmed me, as new threats replaced the ones I took out as quickly as I was killing them. When my clips ran out, I used the slow time feature and tried my hand at grabbing bullets out of the air one at a time. As I hurled them back at my enemies, some would go flying off in a direction I did not intend, which left me wondering if it was pure human error or calibration issues. It didn’t matter, though—enough of my throws hit their mark, providing me an opening to teleport across the area to an assault rifle.

With a higher-powered firearm, I began whittling the enemy forces down more consistently, painting the station in a hail of bullets until again my clip ran dry. This time, I grabbed a nearby grenade and lobbed it at soldiers who had taken cover in the train track trenches below the platform. Again I teleported, this time snagging a pump-action shotgun. Instead of firing madly, however, I warped closer to my targets, where I’d be in position to perform headshots from close range. This continued for nearly ten minutes, jumping from teleport point to teleport point, slowing time as necessary, and changing weapons when I ran out of ammo. Finally, the unending horde of enemy soldiers came to a halt—and this was when an airborne drone joined the fray.

I had no weapons that could penetrate the steel hide of the drone, and so instead, I had to rely solely on my ability to catch enemy fire. The drone used missiles instead of bullets, but by turning its own firepower against itself, I downed the flying menace.

Bullet Train provided the most exhilarating demo I had played yet in VR from any company. It’s fast, frantic action and mostly responsive controls left me feeling as if I had truly just left the middle of a domestic warzone when I sorrowfully had to pry the Oculus off my head. It was the first time I had seen a demo in VR come close to not just replicating the experiences I have with modern action games, but surpassing them. If Epic could provide a full gaming experience centered on this gameplay, with a story and actual characters, Bullet Train could be the basis for the first major hit in VR gaming and it has me crazily anticipating what Epic does next with this new technology.

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Developer Chat: Hitman

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment

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The hit is on

The Hitman series has been a beloved staple in the action-stealth genre for a decade and a half now, and continues to force players to think outside the box when carrying out their objectives. Now, on the verge of the sixth mainline release for the series, we sat down with Io Interactive Studio Head Hannes Seifert to talk about how this latest adventure looks to reinvent Agent 47 and turn the series on its head by going episodic while still trying to stay true to the franchise’s gameplay roots.

EGM: Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Why make Hitman episodic?

Hannes Seifert: We had the vision of doing this very soon after finishing Hitman: Absolution. We didn’t call it episodic then, but we had this vision of our games having longer lives, and of being able to update and change the game post-launch. We had two epiphanies that led to that.

The first came when we had released Absolution in 2012, and we had done a few things new in that. One was we actually thought about what it meant for Hitman to have multiplayer, and multiplayer was something that, when we talked about it to fans and players, they didn’t want us to do it, usually talking about Hitman’s single-player nature. And if we were to do something PvP, that’d have been a fair assessment.

But that was also the time when YouTube was becoming big for gaming, and when we looked at what people did with older Hitman games, especially Blood Money. They had created these YouTube channels where they would make their own hits. They’d go through a level and say this is my target and I must kill him with a knife while disguised as a plumber, or something like that. They’d post the video, and then challenge their friends and viewers to do it better, faster, smarter—and post a competing video that led to them escalating the challenge.

And that inspired Contracts. It was basically those YouTube videos, but properly gamified. And we thought it was a nice gimmick, but it ended up being a runaway success. When it launched, we had server issues because so many people picked it up. Forty-percent of people who ever played Absolution played Contracts, and put at least one contract online. We now have 30 million contracts from Absolution, and that was a game where we didn’t have any DLC, we didn’t update with new features, yet 400,000 people are still playing it every month. That was when we saw the long life capabilities of the game, and wanted to do something that better catered to the fans.

So, when looking at Contracts, we asked ourselves if there was an opportunity to do some DLC that focused on that mode. We realized it really wouldn’t fit with the narrative nature of Absolution, though, to just do new maps. Looking back, we realized it made the most sense when compared to Blood Money, and that’s when the idea for a non-linear  episodic unfolding of our vision really came to be—which led to our World of Assassination. That was the ultimate vision for it. We wanted to have something we could ship, but then react to and grow the game while our players are playing, and learn what they like and don’t like more easily.

The second thing was when we patched Absolution post-release with a balance update to the disguise gameplay after seeing what the fanbase was saying. It was the first time Io Interactive had used a post-launch patch to not fix a bug, but change balancing according to feedback. And, to be honest, Absolution wasn’t made for that. It wasn’t easy, it was a classic AAA-release, and old technology was really more about shipping and less about modifying—so that also heavily influenced our mindset about how the next game should run. Really, just scratching the surface of what we wanted to do. So, having Contracts that come from us, and also from the community, plus some new features as well, and it’s all about catering towards the community playing it, because Hitman is not meant to be a game you play once on a weekend—it’s a game meant for you to keep coming back to.

So, those two things are what inspired us to go episodic with Hitman. It was a long journey—convincing ourselves that it could work—because we needed to plan and think differently as a development team for this, and have the technology change enough to better accommodate this. But, I’m actually very proud we’re still the first to do it with a such a big title, even if that might leave us open to being scrutinized a bit more, and looked at from more angles. When you do something new with something that people are so passionate about, you also need to be respectful with that. Now, we just have to prove this is the best possible way to make a Hitman game.

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EGM: With the episodic release schedule of maps, though, are you worried it could hurt the life cycle of each location? What will you do to keep interest up in older content?

HS: We didn’t see that in Absolution, even though you could see some people did have their favorites. I think Absolution’s linearity really worked in its favor. I do expect when we ship Italy in April, America in May, etc., that people will focus on those for a while. But, we also are growing features overall in the game, polishing them and tweaking them, adding content to all locations over time in the ever-growing World of Assassination to give you those reasons to travel back and forth. One of these features is Elusive Targets. It’s a hardcore feature for the online community, where a target is available for only 48 hours. So, imagine Thailand just came out, and you are playing that, and then an elusive target is spotted in Paris. You don’t want to miss out on that, so you spend that weekend going back to Paris and getting that elusive target before heading back to Thailand.

We also have a large chunk of players who care about the story, and the way we structured this is like a modern thriller. So, we have an overarching storyline that weaves through the missions like a TV show, and a lot of the story is told in the actual level. There are cutscenes that carry the narrative forward, but when you are in the level and listening to conversations and seeing what people are doing, you can get a better understanding of what’s going on in the overall plot. So, once you have played a few episodes, you may realize that a character you may have interacted with earlier on plays a specific role in the story. As things unfold, I expect some people will go back and play those early levels again just to get the different perspective and context they now have.

So, yes, the new stuff is obviously going to be the exciting stuff that garner attention, but Elusive Targets will keep coming, Power Escalation targets will keep coming, Contracts will keep coming from us, and then there’s the idea of fully understanding everything that’s happening.

Of course, I’m also curious to see how it all actually plays out, because that’s what we can do with data. We can see what the majority of the people are playing, and how they are playing, and tailor content more towards what players want. And, we also know that one-percent of the people are the most vocal and 99-percent will rarely say anything, so we also need to look at both and balance that, too.

EGM: You show Agent 47 meeting Diana Burnwood for the first time in the very beginning of the game. Why go back to his early day as an assassin and what does this do for the story of the game? Are you rebooting the universe?

HS: Well, first off, it’s not a reboot. Nothing in the game is a reboot. It’s a compliment to the lore and universe of Hitman. I think why people see this as a reboot is because of the name. There was never any Hitman game called simply “Hitman”. You had Codename 47, Silent Assassin, Blood Money, etc. And we did that to emphasize the start of this World of Assassination. It’s setting up a foundation for more games to come. It’s the first time in Io’s history that we are thinking of this multi-season storyline. In the past we weren’t very good at that. It was six years between Blood Money and Absolution, right? And the most interesting characters we introduced in each game we killed off. [Laughs]

So, all we have to carry forward is Diana and Agent 47. But that’s what we want to emphasize: this is the start of a new generation. The game will take you back 20 years to when Diana and 47 first meet, because that is a pivotal moment. But, in the timeline it fits into all the previous games. The main story takes place after Absolution, except that Prologue, which focuses on this meeting between Diana and 47. Absolution was more like a road movie, and now Hitman is a modern thriller. Agent 47 is back at his peak after hitting his low in Absolution.

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EGM: Given we see the first meeting between Agent 47 and Diana, do you think this is a good time for new fans to get into Hitman, considering it does have such lore and history behind it?

HS: We are always trying to cater to both new players and our longtime fans, but that doesn’t always align 100-percent, because we have a reputation of being a difficult game. Absolution was the exception I would say, but a lot of longtime fans disliked that because it made it feel more like a third-person action game, and not necessarily the best Hitman game there ever was. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve now.

You could play Absolution like a Hitman game, mind you, but you couldn’t kill every target, as you might have wanted, with some characters dying in cutscenes. It was a deliberate decision, but we learned it’s not necessary to cater to everyone. We are a game for gamers, and want to make sure our fans are happy with it.

Of course, the advantage of doing this episodic model now, though, is that if you are new to the series and have heard how hard it is and are not sure if it’ll be for you, you can try it for a few dollars and see if it’s the game for you. I think many people will take that step and find out.

The other thing is that we took the controls to a new level. I admit they were perhaps a bit clunky in the past, and Absolution was the first that felt really right on the sticks. So, we built on that with this game, so it feels right. That should make it easier not only for gamers, but also newcomers to the series, to jump right in.

Lastly, we have the opportunities feature now that gives you hints on how to take our your target. We know from the beta already that our fans don’t use this.  New people use it a lot, though, and it’s great seeing the statistical distribution. Of course, some are more popular than others based on who saw the trailer or previews and wanted to replicate what they saw, but there isn’t one that dominated the statistics. No assassination opportunity even hit 30-percent according to our data. So, everyone is getting completely different experiences when playing the game, and it’s very evenly distributed. Some fans just want to find everything themselves and take pride in that, but when new to the franchise, I think it’s important you understand the buffet of opportunities you have in a true Hitman level. I think this is where we have to teach players, and we try with the tutorial to show that this is how you get the maximum enjoyment out of a Hitman game.

You can still play it how you want, though. If you want to go full action, you can; it’s not the easiest shooter, but you can try it out. If you like pure stealth, go for it. If you like adventure, it’s like solving puzzles when trying to get the most impressive kills. And that’s what we have to teach new players. I sincerely think we found the right balance now, because Absolution alienated some of our hardcore fans who felt we were taking them by the hand. It’s much more open now, and you can only be taken by the hand if you want to.

The game will even ask you after showing you everything if you want waypoints and opportunities and notifications, or nothing at all. It’s our new take on difficulty. All the notifications being on is super easy, and going pure with no notifications is super hard, where even the producer like me can’t finish it, because it is so hardcore.

EGM: The freedom or illusion of choice in games has come up in a lot of topics of discussion lately. Hitman is one of many games where everyone has the same start and the same end, but the choice is in how you get there. How difficult is it to work in a system like that, and how do you keep every choice entertaining?

HS: There are a lot of games where you do work exactly like that. You give people subtle guidance. For example, in level design you’ll often use light. People always follow light, and follow the position that will lead them along that path. That is a very valid design approach, giving people a sense of choice where choices are really limited.

In Hitman, we approach things differently in that we don’t necessarily approach every path with the idea of making it enjoyable. When we look at our opportunities for example, we have plans to have 10, maybe 15 per level, and hope they are memorable more than enjoyable. Like in the tutorial level with the ejector seat, or crashing the light rig in Paris—we have a few of these in each level, because they are funny or impressive moments. But when you look at the statistics, the maturity of players leads them on their own path, and they find their own way to kill the target. This is because we do our levels systemically.

The game design is actually very simple. There are two characters, you kill them, and you get away with it. Go in. Kill. Get out. There are so many ways of doing that, and the game environment is made for you to try them all out. I saw this in the beta: One guy actually killed the target by burying him under the bodies he stacked on top of him. It was so crazy when I saw the video. He lured the target to a morgue, blocked the target with body bags, and then killed him by dropping bodies on top of the target. And that is not enjoyable. That takes hours and is a chore, but people find ways like that all the time. And the game allows this kind of choice. So, that’s what I mean when I say we don’t make everything enjoyable. You simply use the tools that we provide, and they are systemic.

Sure, some scripted things always take place. There’s always a fashion show in Paris. The show will start, climax, and finish. But, say you just stand around the entrance at the start of the mission and wait two hours. Eventually the show will end and it will go into an after party and you’ll never again have the stage kill opportunity because he only does his speech once. So there are certain scripted elements in how the level is directed, but the moment you step into the level, you’ve changed the outcome. It’s a butterfly effect. Say you have a favorite sniper spot. Getting to that spot unobstructed the same exact way twice is really difficult because you need the right timing and mustn’t interact with anything else. The second you distract someone, or someone sees you, it might send guards on a different patrol pattern or delays timing by just a second so your gap is now non-existent. And that could affect other characters who are set to interact with that NPC—and it just multiplies. It’s a butterfly effect. If you kill all the waiters, who can serve the poisoned food?

That is something that happens when you interact with the level and that’s why it’s so unpredictable—and I think that’s what people really like.  Everyone having different experiences excites me because it means we succeeded.

 The first episode of the new Hitman drops on March 11 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

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Kerbal Space Program’s console port is reaching for the stars

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When Kerbal Space Program first rocketed onto the scene, I missed the shuttle. I openly admit to my preference of console games over those on PC, and thusly I’m usually late getting on board with every Indie darling that finds its way onto Steam. It’s not that I’m living under a rock and don’t hear of these games, to be clear. It’s just that, when not reviewing the occasional PC title for EGM, I instead often wait for them to inevitably go on sale—or, in this case, get ported to a different platform. So, it was with great zeal that I got a chance recently to finally try the fun, yet educational, game that has the likes of Elon Musk and scientists at NASA buzzing alongside the gaming community on the PlayStation 4.

For those completely unaware, Kerbal Space Program puts you in charge of a new space program on the planet Kerbin, modeled after that on our own Earth. You must construct rockets and other spacecraft in a state of the art space center, using those creations to then explore the solar system and its various planets and moons. Along the way, you’ll have to complete challenges that further the Kerbal people’s quest to better understand their universe, while also furthering your own space-faring knowledge.

As soon as the demo kicked off, I was tasked with building my own rocket ship. With far more parts unlocked for me than what you would start with at the beginning of the game, my creation could be described as nothing short of Frankenstein’s monster-like as I mixed and matched through the various ship component categories. Small thrusters connected to giant fuel tanks, with a mid-sized cockpit and a radar dish on the cone just for kicks. With his mouth agape in horror at my concoction, KSP producer Jose Luis Vives shakily told me to take it for a test drive.

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Surprisingly, my rocket actually made it off the ground. With absolutely no balance, however, and my inexperience with the controls, the ship quickly came back down to the ground and began pinwheeling almost instantly. I found my abomination bouncing along the terrain before shattering into several pieces, and the thrusters flying off into the horizon before exploding.

For better or worse, though, I was hooked. I wanted to know how to make the proper spaceship. I wanted to learn and create in this universe laid out before me, and bring my newfound knowledge to the green humanoid masses of Kerbin. And if a few explosions happened along the ways of my trials and errors, well, so be it.

It was then decided I should instead see what a fully functional ship could do, so one of the team’s saved designs was loaded up—and this only made me fall more in love with what KSP was doing. This was a rocket ship, the kind you see in history books and old footage from the Apollo landings. After being walked through the controls, I took off, heading for the great unknown. My own personal mission, though, was just to make it to the moon.

As I jettisoned used fuel canisters and unnecessary sections of the ship, it wasn’t long before I had broken atmosphere. It was here, though, where my mission went awry. I found myself fighting with the controller often during my demo, the actually piloting portion of the gameplay for KSP requiring a more delicate touch than either the PS4 controller or I could provide. I wasted a lot of fuel course-correcting on my way up into orbit, and because of that, just as I kissed the blackness of deep space, I found myself being pulled down towards the ground faster than I left it due to Kerbin’s gravitational pull.

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Human error was clearly a factor in my failure, but after having had a chance to familiarize myself more with the controls, I felt this was one area that the port was lacking. I’m fine with a port between systems simply repackaging the same game and just including previous add-ons and what not considering it’s the first time a new audience may be seeing it. But optimizing your controls for that new system is critical, and the more I learned about KSP, the more I saw that this was still an experience where a mouse and keyboard holds far greater appeal than a standard controller.

The button layout was not intuitive to what I needed to perform well, and while a deeper look showed some controller options, the defaults felt unnatural. Again, playing the game from the start might alleviate some of the difficulty I continued to have over my hour with the title, but clicking down on the controller’s sticks even brought up a mouse reticle to select different options on screen—showing that as far as the Kerbin people might travel into space, KSP had not traveled very far in its port over to consoles.

Poor controls aside, I refused to be deterred. I hopped into a new version of the previously saved ship, conveniently reconstructed for me by the Kerbal people, and again took off for the stars, this time breaking free of Kerbin’s pull. With enough fuel—and a straight enough trajectory—to steer towards a celestial body, my original goal of the moon was within sight. Once in the emptiness of space, I could finally truly plan my course. Pulling out to map view, I set a maneuver node—a device that would automatically correct my ship towards a particular path (great for deep space exploration)—to plot a course for my ship and my ragtag three-Kerbal crew. What I failed to take into consideration, though, was that the moon would continue to orbit as I made a beeline for it. And I had, again, run out of fuel. I drifted harmlessly by the moon, set off on an endless course into the abyss, having never reached my goal by the time my session finished up.

So, besides me being an awful astronaut, what did I learn during my experience with Kerbal Space Program for consoles? That it’s true in capturing the spirit of the original game, and is coming over with all the bells and whistles that had slowly been added over time on PC. Unfortunately, the controls are also a little too true to form, and had me longing for a mouse and keyboard. Still, it has me chomping at the bit to grab my space helmet and suit up alongside the Kerbin again when Kerbal Space Program drops sometime in the first half of 2016 on Wii U, Xbox One, and PS4.

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Augmented reality from castAR offers another unique way to play games

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — 2 Comments

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For many in the gaming world, virtual reality is the hot topic of conversation right now—and understandably so. After years in development, Oculus is on the verge of releasing their headset at retail, and many suspect Sony will unveil the release date and price point for PlayStation VR in the coming weeks. Coming up hot on VR’s heels, however, is the concept of augmented reality. First demonstrated via headset with Microsoft’s HoloLens at last year’s E3, augmented reality differs from virtual reality in that VR will put players in the game world, whereas AR puts the game in ours. And, much like how Oculus quickly had competition from every corner of the gaming industry, Microsoft’s HoloLens is no longer alone in the AR race.

Founded by former Valve employees Rick Johnson and Jeri Ellsworth, castAR is a tech company on the forefront of AR. They were in the news recently for returning the one million dollars they had raised via Kickstarter after getting $15 million from Playground Global, an investment fund run by Android creator Andy Rubin. After having a chance to actually play around with castAR’s first headset last week at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, and being blown away by what I saw and experienced, it’s no wonder Rubin thought they were a sound investment.

Before the demo began, I took stock of the equipment we were using. castAR’s headset may not look like much, but the experience it provides—and could potentially provide—shows that big things can come in small packages. The headset looked like a pair of Blues Brothers sunglasses with a silver projector bar on top. Connected to this was a Wiimote-like controller, and the entire package was hooked up to a small laptop running the software I was trying. Once the headset was placed on my head, I found it far lighter than what you’d experience with Oculus or PlayStation VR. In front of me was a two-foot-by-two-foot square of white retro-reflective material that could be broken down into four smaller pieces for easy storage. It was on this surface, and only this surface, that the games I would play would appear.

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And right off the bat, that was the great thing about AR. I could play games in an immersive setting with the 3D hologram-like projection castAR could create, but could also turn away without affecting the action to look at someone as we had a conversation—which I often did with Rick and castAR CEO David Henkel-Wallace during my demo time. It was while speaking with these gentlemen that I also learned that castAR is aiming for a retail release by the end of 2017, but the hope was the setup I saw before me would be more streamlined with less wires and—potentially—not even need a laptop to run the games. Yes, castAR has the goal of making the entire package able to run independently of other technology, so that you can take whatever components out of the box, quickly set them up, and jump right into a game.

One of the more exciting things was the idea of additional retro-reflective material, allowing you to expand the potential game world. While I was playing an isometric view arcade shooter demo, Rick added a fifth segment of game space at one point, set up perpendicular to the original sheet. Suddenly, the map expanded, and I could see more of the level ahead of me. It may sound crazy right now, but could you imagine what a set-up with 10 or 20 retro-reflective squares would look like? I could see people lining entire sections of rooms with the material to further enhance immersion—although, at that point VR might be more practical.

Other demos I got to play with castAR’s headset was some two-player games, such as competing with a friend of mine in a game of Battleship, where we each saw completely different game boards, and Jenga, which offered up a fully-realized 3D tower of blocks stacked in front of us. My favorite demo, though, may have been the solo Marble Madness-like game that I tried, as it really showed off more of what castAR could do. As I moved my ball through the course, the world spun around me, or I could get a better look at the virtual environment from different angles by walking around the 3D space. I never lost track of surroundings due both to the game being confined to the retro-reflective material, and my being able to see my actual physical environment.

Unfortunately, it’ll be a while until we’ll get to own a device for ourselves, as castAR is looking to stay in development until at least 2017. At the same time, I’m immensely excited to think of how far the tech can come in that time, and what other, more complex games can be added to the system before its eventual launch. It’s also clearer than ever before that the world of video games is changing. Whether you find yourself on the AR or VR side of the fence, or are trying to toe the line between both, game immersion is increasing at an exponential rate to the point that it’s hard to predict exactly where the next great experience will come from—but I now wouldn’t be surprised to see castAR’s work become one of the major players in that new world of entertainment.

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Just Cause 3 Sky Fortress DLC hands-on video shows off Rico’s new wingsuit

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Video — Leave a comment
February 25, 2016

I had a chance to go hands-on with the brand new Just Cause 3 Sky Fortress DLC recently and was able to put Rico’s new Bavarium powered wingsuit through its paces. As you can see in the hands-on video above, the wingsuit is equipped with a jetpack, rocket launcher, and machine guns, basically turning Rico into a mini-fighter jet. You can also take everything you acquire in the DLC into the main game of Just Cause 3, meaning that new wingsuit can be used to take out bases on land as well as the new Eden Airship over the western skies of Medici.

The Sky Fortress DLC is the first of three DLC packs for Just Cause 3, and will be available on consoles and PC sometime in March. It will be followed by the Land and Sea DLC featuring mech-suits and a heist on the high seas—completing the Air, Land, and Sea expansion pack for the game—by the end of the summer.

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