New Game + March 25-31

State of Play

On Monday we found out exactly what Playstation’s new video stream showcase was all about. As hoped, this turned out to be much closer to a Nintendo Direct with constant games as opposed to Microsoft’s more talk show like approach that features games and chatting with developers etc. The downside is that it was a little lacklustre in terms of big information. I think the key going forward is for Playstation to set expectations before these showcases. This was the first edition, which meant there was a lot of speculation. When Nintendo does their Directs the generally give you some information regarding exactly what will be shown. How long it will be, what game it will focus on, when the release window is for the games being displayed and things like this helps keep peoples expectations in check, which leads to less disappointment. Beforehand a lot of people were mentioning things they think might be shown such as one of the big three exclusives which include Ghosts of Tsushima, Death Stranding and Last of Us 2. People even expected less than that and thought we might get some release windows from lesser AAA titles such as Dreams among others. Instead all they mentioned before hand was PS4 and PSVR titles. I didn’t think the show was as bad as some people have said but I do think it could be better and it could also use a little more information beforehand. I did enjoy the pace of it however as it didn’t dwindle on many games for too long with most getting a minute or two, the two exceptions were that we received a lengthy story trailer for days gone as this is likely the last time they will have as large opportunity to get as many eyes on it as possible. We also got a new story trailer for MK11. This featured some new character reveals as well gave us a glimpse into the story of the universes colliding. MK11 is shaping up to be another solid entry in the revitalized franchise. Its kind of amazing to think that there has been 11 mainline games, not to mention many spinoffs. I find it impressive that the team at NetherRealm has grinder over the years and withstood the test of time and adapted with the market. On the PSVR side of announcements there were a few that stood out to me. No Mans Sky will be getting VR mode a little later this year as part of the next free update. I never picked up that game but Sean Murray and the rest of the team at Hello Games have kept their head down to turn around a very poorly regarded game at launch to something that has garnered a lot more respect over the years from critics and fans by fixing a lot of the problems and expanding on the original idea. There was also mention of a Five Nights at Freddys which would probably be terrifying in VR. Nothing overly newsworthy to make headlines but its good first footing in my opinion. Its also good to start testing State of Play before PS5 comes along. The other takeaway is that its very clear Sony is happy with the performance of PSVR based on how they keep supporting it and showcasing it at events. This leads to a stronger possibility of a PSVR2 in the future, hopefully sometime around the launch of the PS5. New features could include better resolution, wire free and better tracking. If they made PSVR2 wire free along with minor improvements on the original I would be in on day one.

Wolfendaughters

As we were just speculating last week about the unknown whereabouts of the next instalment of Wolfenstein, well this week Bethesda announced a new trailer and release date. The game will be releasing on July 26 which seems like a sweet spot for that game. Summer is typically a very slow time for game releases, which could lead to it being a sellers market and it won’t have to compete with the fall blockbusters. There could be two takeaways from this. One is that Bethesda is clearing room for their big fall release which at this point could only be Doom Eternal. The second thing we can take from this release date is that it is very similar to the release date of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Clearly this worked for Bethesda the first time around because they are choosing a very similar summer date for this standalone. Their have been a few leaks that this series sales have been sluggish but clearly they are seeing good return on investment as they continue to push forward with the 4th game in the series with a rumoured Wolf 3 in development as well. I have enjoyed what Machinegames has done with the series since its reboot in 2014. The last entry, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus took the story telling up a notch and really hit some strong notes and got me in the feels in some parts. I found it quite impressive that in 2017, BJ Blaskowicz was one of the most richly written characters in the video game world; what a long way this series has come. The premise of Youngblood is that BJ Blaskowicz has gone missing and we are tasked with finding him. It is set in the same alternate universe of the previous instalments, except its 19 years since, we are in Paris and the year is 1980. It has a very early 80’s grimy look it in terms of style. From what I have seen of the game it looks very similar to the gameplay of the recent entries. Youngblood seems like a proper expansion as opposed to a fully new game in the same vein that The Old Blood was a proper expansion to Wolfenstein: The New Order. This would leave one more full game (most likely featuring BJ & MechaHitler) and one more proper expansion. As mentioned Bethesda has stated that their is a Wolfenstein 3 in development. There are a couple of neat facts about this game that you may find interesting. One that I didn’t know about from the get go is that this game isn’t just made by Machinegames but instead its being co developed by fellow Bethesda owned studio Arkane. Arkane are the minds behind the critical hit series Dishonored. It will be interesting to see what flavor Arkane Studios can bring to the Wolfenstein universe. The other interesting thing is that according to the Bethesda website this game is fully playable in Co-op. If you purchase the deluxe edition you will receive what they are calling “the buddy pass” which allows you to give the game to a friend and play the whole game in co op. If they want to play the game solo without you they can as well but if they want to play it with another friend they would need to buy the game. The game is also fully playable in solo if thats more your style. I think this is a great idea and should generate some good sales or at the very least provide some great data for Bethesda going forward. Also this is a standalone expansion which only cost 30 US for the standard edition or 40 USD for the deluxe. If you play this game with a friend using the Deluxe versions buddy pass it will only cost each of you 20 dollars. That seems like a great deal especially for good co op games which are hard to find these days. The game is coming out just about a month after E3 so it will be interesting to see how this affects Bethesdas conference.

Firestorm

Early this week, Battlefield finally released their 64 player Battle Royale almost 5 months after the release of the main game. We are almost closer to the next instalment of an EA shooter this fall that we are to the Battlefield V release date. Currently there are a lot of deep discounts on Battlefield V due to the fact that it didn’t sell too well in the first place and because it is trying to get more players around for the firestorm mode. I haven’t had a chance to try the mode just yet but watching a few minutes of gameplay online it does feature some things we have hoped would be in it as we outlined in our article here.XXXXXXX. It also looks like it heads more in the realism nature of warfare as opposed to the boost jumps, perks and wall sliding of the other popular versions of Battle Royale out there. From watching a few clips it looks very much closer to PUBG than all other games currently on the market. I loved the pure sense of dread that existed in PUBG that I havent felt in other BR’s yet. I just always wished that PUBG was more modernized and built on a better engine. This seems to be a modernized version of that. I really love Apex Legends but sometimes I would just like to play a few solo matches without having to pair with randoms that ignore your communication and pings. I am very interested to get my hands on Firestorm to see how it runs for myself, but the problem that i’m having that Im sure many other people are having is that there are so many other good games available right now and there is only so much time in a day. I still think that releasing it free to the people that purchased Battlefield V is the right thing to do but I think they should have either released it standalone or as a free to play. I do wonder if within a month or two if the game doesnt have as many active users as EA would like if they would release it either FTP or standalone. One interesting thing to note is that Firestorm was developed by Criterion and not Dice. What does this mean Dice is up to at the moment? Are they working on a full standalone Battle Royale mode at the moment or are they already working on the next instalment of Battlefield or Battlefront. I can’t imagine the whole team is working on the remaining expansions for BF5. It will be interesting to see if this game gets a decent amount of support or if this is basically the end product. From what I have seen it looks like a very good starting point.

E3 round up

It was a fairly quiet this week in terms of news regarding E3. Ubisoft did announce they would be holding a press conference this year at E3 on June 10th. There are a few facts that we know about Ubisoft at the moment that can help us deduce what their E3 might entail. The first is that based on some of their earnings reports they plan to release 3-4 AAA titles in fiscal year 2019 which will run from April 1, 2019 until March 31, 2020. They said the same thing at a earnings report in 2015 and the releases were: AC Syndicate, Just Dance RS6, and Far Cry Primal. We also know that they have stated there won’t be any Assassins Creed this year, as the rumour going around is that that game is going to be a launch title for the next gen hardware, which comes as no surprise if you read my article here XXXXXXX about why the future of Ubisoft looks strong. Ubisoft is always a company supporting new hardware from day one and this is smart because when you buy a shiny new console you are going to need a shiny new game. The most recent example of this is with the Nintendo Switch and 1-2 switch. Not a Ubisoft title but the point I am making is that people were so hungry for content that the game sold well over a million for just a couple of tech demo mini games. We just got a release from Trials, Far Cry and The Division so its unlikely to be an entry from those series. You can hope that some of these releases will be New IP, but not all so if we look at their current stable of games we can try to make an educated guess on what could be coming. Active franchises that could make a return include Watch Dogs, Rayman, Just Dance and Rabbids. In terms of dormant franchises that could possibly be making a comeback would include Splinter Cell or Prince of Persia. They don’t even need to make these triple A titles. Splinter Cell does need to be AAA but something like Prince of Persia would work great in a variety of budgets from independent Dead Cells Style or a 2.5D adventure in the vein of Shadow Complex.

Based on all of this information I would think it very safe to say we are getting another just dance is a for sure, watch dogs seems like a very strong candidate as the first game came out in 2014 and the second came out in 2016. With the setting of watch dogs being all about technology, the game could fit right alongside Ubisoft and their desire to have most games as a service. I think it would even be a smart idea for Ubisoft to get ahead of the whole Cyberpunk thing and base the next Watch dogs in a totally different universe from the previous entries. This would be similar to how they treat the Assassins Creed and Far Cry Franchises. They keep similar gameplay elements but take it to a whole new universe. The Watch Dogs gameplay could work perfectly in a Cyberpunk world and the world is very thirsty for that as that seems like a stone that hasn’t been turned over too many times.

Speaking of actual CyberPunk 2077, CD Projekt Red. They released a financial report where they talked about E3 and Cyberpunk 2077. They did mention that they have passed a big milestone in development. They then also talked about the reception of Cyberpunk at E3 2018 and compared to The Witcher 3. Either one of two things has happened, either The Witcher 3 was such a good game that its now put the company on everyones radar or much more people care about a CyberPunk universe than medieval one. Whatever the case may be Cyberpunk is generated buzz based on video consumption at a rate of approximately 700% more than content that was shown for The Witcher 3. Speaking of E3 It was said that they want this years E3 to be even better than last years E3. Another piece of important news that came out the conference was that the engine has been developed from scratch which allows for cross generation, which leads to a strong possibility that CP2077 will be a cross gen title at launch. They also mentioned that there is at least another upcoming project being worked on by a smaller team than Cyberpunk, and did not want to say if it was or was not a cyberpunk game. This caught me as a weird statement because if it had nothing to do with cyberpunk you would just say it didn’t.

Bored-Erlands

Pax east happened late this week in Boston. Pax is generally known for plenty of activations of games that we already know about and occasionally we get some new announcements. This time around we got a borderlands 3 announcement., but it wasn’t simple. Prior to PaxEast, Gearbox was saying they would have some big announcements and even a day prior they released a teaser trailer showing Borderlands. At the end of the teaser there was a live time for a press conference where it would be assumed that Borderlands 3 would be officially announced.

They didn’t establish good rapport with the audience from the very first minute. All fans are there and are thirsty for some new borderlands information. Instead they just talk to the crowd for about ten minutes before passing it off to the head of publishing. Then head of publishing talks about how this arm of the company is trying to bring cool games to everyone. They are probably just trying to make money and diversify their portfolio but mainly this is another thorn in the side of the people who are there in person and the people who tuned into the live stream. Then it goes back to Randy Pitchford who then invites up some people from the crowd who are having birthdays and then announces a new borderlands board game. I know feel like they are watering down this IP too much with multiple games, genres and now this. Finally just when you think it can’t get any worse he then performs a magic trick using the board games he has just gifted to the contestants. Keep in mind this trick takes about another 10 minutes and i’m wondering if this magic trick is just trying to prove innocence on that memory stick that got lost. After the magic trick we are finally treated to actual gearbox borderlands video games but the videos aren’t working, which would have been as little understandable if we hadn’t been forced to sit through a David Copperfield show. When the video finally gets working again its still not borderlands 3!!!! Instead it is more remastering of the old borderlands games. How many times do we have to be sold these games in one form or collection. After all that you’re probably not even interested in the product you actually came here to see but we finally get an official announcement of Borderlands 3 in the most lacklustre trailer.

Maybe its just me but it was boring. This isn’t the early 2000’s anymore, the teen humour just isn’t going to sell your game. It lack originality as it just appears to be a modern day version of the previous games in the series. My level of excitement for this game is zero and although we don’t know too much about the game just yet. I was hoping to see innovation and an improved look but instead the trailer focused on the amount of gun variety in the game. The last time a game from last generation didn’t do anything to improve upon the series and tried to make a current version was Crackdown 3 and we all know how that turned out. I hope that this trailer was just a poor showing but as it stands now. As it stands at the moment it really seems like announcing this game was just what PR thought was best due to the recent negative allegations that have been brought onto Gearbox. They said more information will come next week. At one point I was interested to see what a next gen Borderlands looked like. Now I wonder why its even happening.