Tag Archives: Steam

NEWS – New Game Tuesday and New News Tuesday

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Welcome to Tuesday. We got some new games and some news.

Big releases this week are Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, and Goat Simulator. 

And the big news includes: Write/Director Leaves Gearbox, New Microsoft IP, Steam Features, Halo 5:Guardians, Alan Wake Sequel?, Gears of War Cinematic Director Leaves Epic for Black Tusk, Destiny, and this week’s Xbox Deals With Gold.

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Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China (PS4, PS3, XBox One, PC) – Chronicles is a series of 2.5D Assassin’s Creed games developed by Climax Studios, and published by Ubisoft. The games will feature a new protagonist. China’s protagonist is Jun, who was trained by Ezio Auditore.

The follow up games later this year will be Chronicles: India, and Chronicles: Russia.

 

Release Trailer below shows the story and gameplay. I’ll be picking this up shortly and playing through it. The art style and gameplay looks intriguing, and I’m all about the Assassin’s Creed titles.

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Goat Simulator (XBox One, XBox 360) – Finally released on all the Xboxs, Goat Simulator is here. I played some over the weekend, and I’ll be talking more about it tomorrow, with a review on Thursday.

Trailer

On to some news for Tuesday:

Writer/Director Leaves Gearbox

Matthew Armstrong has left Gearbox Software. Credited as a writer and game design director of Borderlands.

“Things changed. No longer working at @GearboxSoftware. I will always love Gearbox, but it’s adventure time.”

New Microsoft IP at E3 2015

Xbox head Phil Spencer announced that new exclusive IP would be announced this June at E3 2015. He confirmed that it would not be another military space marine game or racing title.

I’m excited about E3. And I’ll be live blogging the day of the press conferences, June 15. So look out for that.

Steam Features Unlocked to Paying Customers

Valve announced that, in a move to protect its customers against spamming and phishing, it would be locking some of its features to all but paying customers.

Users who have not spent the $5 will not have access to features such as sending friend invites, voting on Greenlight, or submitting content on the Steam workshop.

New Halo 5: Guardians Trailer

Regardless of the fact that its a trailer announcing pre-order bonuses, it is a pretty cool gameplay trailer showing off new weapons and abilities. The trailer focuses on Spartan Locke taking out Covenant in pursuit of Master Chief.

Alan Wake Sequel Possibilities

Remedy has announced that even though the Alan Wake 2 sequel project was scrapped, a prototype was created after the first was released. The company opted to work on their next game Quantum Break instead. But the possibilities are still there.

“For Alan Wake, from the get-go, we assumed there was going to be a sequel and we mapped things further out when it came to character, story, details and focus changes. We knew we would have to iterate and refine, but there was always a rough road map there.”

Remedy is 100 percent focused on the upcoming Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break, which was just recently delayed until 2016.

Epic Cinematic Director Leaves Epic

Greg M. Mitchell, who was previously responsible for the cinematics in the Gears of War franchise, has left Epic Games to join Black Tusk Studios, to most likely work on, yup, cinematics, on the next Gears of War game. Way to branch out.

“BIG NEWS!! I’m leaving Epic, but heading to @blacktuskstudio to work on #Gearsofwar!! I’ll quote Marcus Fenix, by saying “NICE!!” :)”

Destiny’s House of Wolves Reveal Trailer

Destiny has launched a newer trailer showing off some new information about the upcoming DLC House of Wolves: New social space, new characters, new gear upgrades.

There’ll be a Twitch reveal tomorrow.

XBox Deals With Gold

Mostly Call of Duty games this week on sale. Maybe it’s time to get Advanced Warfare? Let’s see . . . (nope):

Call of Duty: Ghosts and Ghosts Hardened Edition are 60% and 40% off on the Xbox One, respectfully, and Never Alone is 40% off. Ghost review is upcoming, and check out the review for Never Alone here.

Ghosts, Black Ops II, and COD 3 are on sale as well, on the Xbox 360.

That’s all for today. Check in tomorrow for thoughts and impressions of Goat Simulator, and Thursday for the review.

It’s raining, so don’t go outside.

-iRogan

WHAT I’M PLAYING/ iREVIEW – The Swapper

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In a random gift of love and affection towards my PC, I jumped onto Steam and perused the list of games that had been Recommended For Me. First one to show up was a little nifty game called The Swapper.

Title: The Swapper
Developer: Facepalm Games
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, PS3, PS4, Vita, WiiU
Publisher: Facepalm Games
Reviewed on: Windows

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Not really knowing anything about the game other than it was a puzzle platformer (gathered from the trailer), I jumped in. The Swapper is a sci-fi themed space game. You play a scavenger who crash lands on – and is now stranded aboard – a research station that appears abandoned. The goal, I suppose, is to find out what’s going on around this space station, and obviously try to escape.

THE PUZZLES THEMSELVES ARE VERY SMART AND DO REQUIRE THOUGHT AND PERSISTENCE AT TIMES

As the player, you acquire a hand-held cloning tool which allows you to create up to four simultaneous clones of your character, and grants you the ability to swap your consciousness across each one, as long as they are within sight. Once created, the clones mimic the moves of the player as long as there are no obstacles in their way. The clones can also die from falling from a great height or through general environment hazards. If a clone dies, they’re reclaimed and can be re-spawned. Clones can also be reclaimed by being absorbed by the player.

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Time also slows down when creating a clone with the Swapper and this game mechanic allows the player to traverse vertical areas. You can shoot a clone up towards the ceiling, and swap your consciousness over, and while the clone is falling in slow-motion, you can then create a 2nd clone to the platform you wish to reach (previously out of the field of view of the original player) and swap again.

Some rooms also have certain lights sources to illuminate the area. Blue, Red, and Purple – these lights can either prevent the clones from being created, or will prevent the player from swapping their consciousness to the clone across the room, or both. This is where using multiple clones to activate triggers comes into play. The puzzles themselves are very smart and do require thought and persistence at times.

The goal in each area is to acquire the orbs that activate the teleporters which then allow us to activate the next area.

SUPERB USE OF BLOOM EFFECTS FOR LIGHTING AND DEPTH OF FIELD

As you progress throughout the space station you come across terminals that start to tell the story of the game. Similar to Dead Space, the crew of this station have found space rocks on a nearby planet, and the rocks themselves seem to give off this electro-wave activity, leading the crew to believe that the rocks are somewhat alive or conscious. Once aboard, the rock’s telepathic abilities start to penetrate the minds and dreams of the crew, and without cause or reason, they start to die off, leading the remaining members to believe that the rocks themselves are driving the crew mad. Unfortunately they’ve brought so many aboard they can no longer get rid of them.

We actually come across these telepathic rocks throughout the game, unknown are their effects on us, but they do tend to share their disturbing thoughts with us.

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The game is straight forward in its design, and it looks very pretty, with superb use of bloom effects for lighting and depth of field. The characters actions are limited to walking and jumping, and there are gravity sections that will require the use of the Swapper to boost around. These areas can get very disorientating as the room itself rotates, and not the player. There is also the opportunity to use the occasion physics object to activate triggers or hold up walls.

The game’s atmosphere is to be lauded. Its quiet and creepy, deep and loud sounds can make you eager to press on, or have you looking over your shoulder. The score, with piano being the main instrument, tends to reveal the vast emptiness of this space station we’ve found ourselves in. Makes us feel very alone.

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– For those who like platformers, creepy empty space, or watching their clones walk off ledges.

-iRogan