News - Xbox @ E3

-XBOX @ E3-

A summary of sorts

So here's what's going to happen, I'm going to rattle off everything that happened during the Xbox conference in the order it happened then give some kind of opinion...lets go

Boom Phil Spencer

Swish

So Phil Spencer exploded onto the stage to open the show and began with the usual spiel of "thank you all" "you shaped the future of Xbox people, YOU DID!" oh and "we're dedicating the entire briefing to games"..Well fuck there's the first shocker, then the non-shocker of starting with their biggest profit churning, racist simulator..

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Not the bees! Not the BEEEEES!

So we got to see some new footage of the yearly genocide simulator and it actually caused some levels of internal excitement for myself, it wasn't anything to do with the usual gruff militaristic dick swinging characters and it damn sure wasn't the overly emotional trailer where somebody gets exploded and we lose an arm or something. No. It was the fact that Codaw is set in semi-near future and there's fucking cyber suits and jetpacks and lasers and Kevin Spacey and homing rocket grenades and god damn robot bees that swarmed around for some reason not yet known! ROBOT BEES PEOPLE! 

It looks like CoD so nobody is going to lose their shit over that, the trailer showed us a nice quick transition between cut-scene and gameplay which I'll tell you now is a frequent theme in every damn conference this year. Yes it's nice and shiny and at least the new studio will bring some fresh life into the game..though really who gives a toss about the single player in Call of Duty games, you could cut it completely and not lose any money from the hoards of screaming children who have to play it on Xbox live in order to be cool

Cut to..Forza 5

Another quick speech about thanking the community followed by a track they forgot to put in the game to begin with, The Nürburgring, everyone's favourite track because most people can't name any other. They really wanted us to know how much effort they put into this, capturing the tracks curves millimeter for millimeter and such, oh and it's free, and you can get it now. What are you waiting for!! Nobody cares about Forza 5 though because there's...

Forza Horizon 2

Carrrrrrrrrr

Over 200 of your favourite cars that you'll never manage to afford because you're just not that special also look at this exclusive Lamborghini because cars you fuck! Apparently they're having a day night cycle with dynamic weather allllll in 1080p and fear not your drivatar will be waiting for you. 

Did you ever want to create a group of people for your driving, a club if you will, or rather a driveclub..*cough* yeaaa well now you can apparently. I don't know, Forza is just a racing game, the cars are shiny and so its the scenery and that's great and all but really cars can only look so much like cars and really I couldn't give a flying ball-sack about it. Nevertheless the "road trip of your life" begins September 30th so you better pre-order now before you can't buy it day one anyway.

Evolve

Ooo I'm tingling

Coming to you at some point in the future is this game from 2K wherein you can assume the role of 1 of 4 classes: Assault, Trapper, Medic and Support and in all likelihood ignore your entire team and run off to solo victory. Doing that however will end with you getting buggered sideways by the monster. Nothing of major interest to see here right now so I guess we're just sat here waiting for some gameplay which I'm sure we're all violently desperate for right...right?

Assassins Creed Unity

The four douches of the revolution

Hark, it is the sound of the yearly outing into the exciting life of an Assassin only this time it's in wonderful, exotic FRANCE. Set during the French Revolution you are Arnaeu/Arno/Arnold some studpid named guy who for an assassin stands out way too much in a crowd. The selling point this year is that you can play co-op with 3 of your friends making the combat even more trivial than it ever has been, don't get me wrong it looks like a  great way to spice up the gameplay and if you can go through the story missions with friends I'll be made up, if it turns out to just be specific co-op missions then that's a little less exciting.

Definitely have to give a circular clap to Ubisoft though because their crowd tech is damn good from what they showed here, like I said though the whole being an assassin thing doesn't work the further forward you go. They just stand out in every damn crowd, it worked great when you were skulking round Jerusalem in the first game but the French revolution? Come on. Well, it can't be worse than 3...

Dragon Age Inquisition

Rawr

Absolutely no gameplay to see here people move along. Things to note though, there are actual dragons in it and it's shiny looking, also there's premiere content first on Xbox so there's that. Morrigan will be disapproving everywhere October 7th

Sunset Overdrive

Eugh

Fuck all the grim dark mythological nonsense this games got blues and greens and a main character that makes me want to rip his eyes out. Sunset Overdrive is weird to say the least, it's totally ludicrous and self-referential and looks hella fun. You get to zip around on wires and jump on things and shoot carbonated beverages at zombies, why? Because fuck you that's why. You don't even have to do it alone, 8player online co-op with dedicated servers for all your zombie killing city traversing needs. Look for this slice of colourful pie October 28th

Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition DX Plus Alpha 

...

Yes that is the actual name of the DLC for Dead Rising 3 which is available right now. You'll be able to cosplay as your favourite Capcom character and fight the zombie masses using a ridiculous array of super moves and power ups with 4player co-op so go fucking nuts.

Dance Central Spotlight

Xbox exclusive, digital only annnnnnd who cares it's a dancing game they're all the same.

Disney Fantasia Music Evolved

No idea but it's coming out in Fall or Autumn for the real people out there.

Fable Legends

Legendary..

Ohhhh what fresh hell is this, it looks like Fable and smells like Fable and hell it even sounds like Fable, that is to say it sounds like terrible English accents from Ye'Olde merry LANDAN. What we were shown was some terrible looking multiplayer that was a bit Diabloy but not as good. You can either be Agar the standard strength warrior man, Rook the thief rogue person or Winter the incredibly obvious mage. If any of that sounds frightfully boring then you can always play as the villain/dungeon master/evil overlord and set traps and monster spawns and bugger it you could just play Dungeon Land because it's the same thing only the dungeon master gets a laugh button soo yea. Though the freeze and shatter effects looked nice...Multiplayer beta coming Fall/Autumn only on Xbox.

Some stupid cutaway nonsense with people talking about favourite games or something equally useless.

Spark/Project Spark

Well well well what is this game? Some kind of world creator with a shiny look to it withhhh multiplayer and co-op campaign and space and Conker of all the random characters to drag out of the retirement home. Not a damn clue but I like world creation so hopefully there will be more to see soon.

Ori and the blind forest

Enough fun it's time to get serious. Again it's a trailer that said very little but damn it did look pretty. You're some kind of fox/Eevee thing and either you're trying to save your giant panda buddy or rescue him or he's died or something but regardless you're going to go on an emotional roller coaster and probably feel quite bad for all these pixels at some point..assuming you have an Xbox One because it's exclusiveeee.

Halo, is it me you're looking...4?

Well, apparently it was kind of a big deal as far as franchises go so it seems only right that they reskin and re-release Halo 1,2,3 and 4. November 11th you'll be able to revisit those big floating rings in space to wipe out alien species for whatever reason. They talked a big game with this one, retouched graphics, switch between new and classic graphics, multiplayer is the same as it was and all this applies to all 4 games. In total we're looking at over 100 MP maps, every Halo map ever released on running on the original engines at 1080p all on lovely dedicated servers mmmmmmmmmalso if you like achievements then guess what there's a few with this..4000 gamerscores worth. Yes 4000.

After all that we were shown some Halo Nightfall, some digital series that leads into Halo 5: Guardians. Speaking of which the beta for that starts in December, oh and it will run at 60fps on dedicated servers because they're the right way of doing things god dammit!

Phil Spencer changes his shirt and really loves that hip new indie game Limbo

"oh hey look at all our betas now look at all the shit coming out in 2015 starting with something from the guys who made that hip new indie game Limbo"

Inside

Well what can I say, much like Limbo this game looks dark, miserable and oppressive. Lots of grey palettes at work here (probably).

ID@Xbox

Apparently these guys love indies which is why they threw a giant compilation of indie games at us that are all coming to that Microsoft console:

Aztez

Knight Squad

Plague Inc

White Night

Earthlock Festival of Magic

Cuphead

Drifter

Lifeless Planet

Slash Dash

Fru

Lovers in a Dangerous Space

Mighty no.9

Grave

Threes

Fenix Rage

Woolfe

Idarb

Hellraid

Below

annnnd then that ended...

Cut to more terrible filler about people who love games

Rise of the Tombraider

Tense..

Well, the professional antiquity thief is back. Fresh from her last romp Ms. Croft is now in therapy and we are told all about her nightmares and flashbacks which we can assume are all related to that island she removed all the inhabitants from. Well whatever the case she's bound to end up going somewhere else and stealing more ancient shit. Also the name is god damn awful.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Mmmmm

Holy balls and hell fire what a preview, Gerald is back once more doing some straight up witchin and shit. The footage we were shown was from 10 hours into the game and showed Mr.G quick footing around some forest and grasslands on the hunt for a big ass gryphon, on the way we see some fantastic decapitation of bandits at a camp. This game looks spec-bloody-tacular, it's one hell of a good looking overworld we see with fluid movement and traversal.

This damn game is going to murder my PC (because why would you get it on Xbox) and I'm fine with that, even more fine with the fact it's been pushed back to 2015. I want CD projekt Red to take as loooooonnnnng as they need to make this game everything it needs to be so we can bang all the ladies across the world.

Phantom Dust

So I was completely lost when this went down, never heard of it, never played it, never knew it was a big thing. Random cutscene of angel vs demon fight aside it is or was at least a card action game of sorts apparently so there's that.

Random BS about hours played on live 



The Division

Ahhh Ubisoft sure do love their weird future tech games don't they, almost as much as they love to hype up a game then delay it then it end up to be disappointing..anyway. The division is some kind of third person cover based shooter set in a world where some kind of virus is killing people and then the army nazis are killing the infected and stop me if this starts to sound familiar. We're not killing zombies or anything though no no, killing other people trying to survive is what we're in this game for though you can bet your balls that the other people trying to make it in the new world are painted as evil violent bad guys.

False promises go hand in hand with terribly commentated on-stage multiplayer and it's possible they took the cake with this one, it always comes across as completely false and disingenuous and just down right bad. "Ok I'm going to flank from the right, John you storm the front and"blahhh blahhh bollocks. Stop doing this, please, it really hurts my insides. Anyway The Divison will be getting all new content first on Xbox One along with all it's damn lens flare.

Scalebound

Well fuck Platinum games are out in full swing on the batshit-o-meter. We're treated to some hipster douchebag wearing headphones listening to his phat beats in a jungle or forest of some form and then BAM dragon dinosaur alien thing! and then BAM the hipster turns into a fucking knight who's all scaly (LIKE THE TITLE GET IT?!). But then, a new challenger approaches, a giant hydra with heads everywhere. Sounds horrific and un-winnable until your hipster jumps on the dragon thing and rides into battle like some kind of glorious..thing! I need this and I want this and Platinum take my money you wonderful people.

Crackdown

Well I didn't see this happening but it did and ooooo it looks shiny and cartoony and explodey. No gameplay to be seen but if I can drive a truck covered in C4 into a building in order to blow said building up to crash into the adjacent building and kill a guy like the trailer shows then sign me up now. If we get even half as much destructibility as the trailer implies then this game will easily surpass Saints Row as the new dicking around simulator.

Phil Spencer changes his shirt again
Blah blah thank you all, thank you we love you thank you etc etc who cares.

END!

Summary
Well credit where credits due Microsoft really did well this year, they had to after the severe beating they got last year so yes well done. Some promising exclusives on the horizon for the Xbox One so the competition is on like Donkey Kong.

Review - Watch_Dogs - PC

 

What is it?

THE FUTURE OF GAMING!!! Pfft not even close. Watch_Dogs is the highly anticipated new IP from Ubisoft, an open world, third person action game which lies in a similar vein to GTA though with less emphasis on fucking shit up and instead on hacking things like some passive aggressive nerd on the Internet.


Story

So in this rendition of Chicago you are Aiden Pearce, notorious hacker and terrible person. The game opens with you scouting out a hotel or store or something that isn't made incredibly clear but as you're doing it something goes wrong and another hacker is on to you and orders a hit on you. Cut to you driving through a tunnel when some guy on a motorbike comes along side you and blows your tyre out causing your car to flip and killing your poor little niece in the process, after that it's all just a revenge story at the core. A few twists here and there but nothing that will completely shock you. There are some likeable characters, or one at least (Jordi) though there are plenty of unlikeable expressionless sacks of meat...

Gameplay

Watch_Dogs is another sandbox simulator from Ubisoft. The big selling point for this game was the ability to "hack anything" which in this case actually means: cars, phones, ATM's, traffic lights, bollards, helicopters, radios and bridges. There are more things to hack of course but the anything part of the earlier statement is way off the mark. Your time in sunny/rainy Chicago will be spent doing one of 3 things: Driving, hacking and getting involved in the games terrible combat mechanics. Driving isn't the best of times, the cars feel very loose and the way they take damage is just bizarre, you can plough a sports car at full speed into a pick-up truck and drive away from it, we're a long way from the damage modelling we saw in GTA:V that's for damn sure. The hacking is...shit. If you remember the plumbing/hacking mechanic from the original Bioshock it's basically that but with current and nodes, needless to say it's a little uninspired and every time I was presented with one a little piece of myself died. As for the gun-play...Terrible. No customisation options for things like silencers which make life a lot easier since you can pop a guy in the head with the silenced pistol you get at the start and nobody even bats an eyelid, be prepared to die a lot in gunfights as you aren't exactly wearing Kevlar so you're going to be hitting those checkpoints a lot.

Like most "next gen" or rather current gen games Watch_Dogs comes complete with it's own iPad (or Smart Glass if you prefer) app and through this you can engage in some of the multiplayer systems of the game. Playing with your particular brand of tablet device will allow you to take on the roll of the police as you try to prevent people in game from getting to a certain waypoint, to do this you follow them with your helicopter whilst sending in various levels of police power and altering traffic lights etc., it's a nice new experience that actually feels like something "next-gen". The other interesting part of the multiplayer is the invasion style mode where somebody enters your world (disguised of course not just running round as Aiden like you are) and the longer it takes you to find them the more the hacking bar fills up and when it's full they win, you lose, the usual. Don't worry yourself too much thinking you'll have to drive round the whole city to find the scum who's stealing your shit, all these events take place in a finite radius which gradually gets smaller making it easier to find them with your magical Macguffin phone and well if you don't want to be part of any of this new age multiplayer nonsense then you can just turn it all off and be alone in your city with no-one to play with just like in real life.

It's not all doom and gloom and people stealing your hard stolen cash though, you can take a Digital Trip and become a giant spider tank and basically destroy Chicago and all it's inhabitants for points, it's one of the few "fun" side-quests or mini-games to take the edge off the gritty revenge story you're dealing with in the story which is always nice.

Graphics

Now...I am reviewing the PC version here which at the time of writing is...shit. Besides the poor optimisation the game just isn't as pretty and shiny as it should be, it's definitely not even close to what was show at E3 and in various trailers etc. It all reeks of something that had to be toned down to run on consoles which is just a little sad at this point as it happens far too often, Ubisoft have said a patch is coming but unless they add in another 30gb of textures it's still not going to look as good as we thought.


(Waters nice though)

Ignoring all of that however the game does have it's moments, the water textures are incredibly nice and you will occasionally find yourself staring at a beautiful sunset with just one too many lens flares. Don't get me wrong it's not an AWFUL looking game but for a game that was delayed for as long as it was it should look better than this.

Audio 

Why don't open world games like this have metal in their soundtracks anymore? That was the best thing about Saints Row 2 and 3, driving round like a mad bastard listening to heavy ass guitars and bands screaming about whales or something. Suffice to say Watch underscore Dogs doesn't have any metal which to me is a bad thing, though I could forgive them if the rest of the soundtrack made up for it but it just doesn't. To clarify I'm talking about all the in-game radio music here since that's what you'll listen to 90% of the time. It's a mishmash of songs of varying genres that must have been pulled from Guy Blands iTunes account in the office because there's just no logical reason for half the music to be there, especially something as unpopular and insignificant as an Alkaline Trio song, I wasn't aware that being from the area the game is set in grants you a spot on the soundtrack...I'll remember that next time a game comes out of Warrington (my hometown).

It's not just a bad choice of songs though, the sound design is a real let down for the game. The guns sound fairly poor and the voice acting is Ubisofts usual brand of terrible, I'm not sure but I'm fairly confident some of the main characters were random people plucked off the streets. When I was playing an announcement came on over the radio in the car and was a good 400% louder than what was previously on, now I understand that the dialogue contained in that broadcast was at least somewhat relevant to the games lore but I really didn't need it to be so deafeningly loud. By contrast another news announcement was barely audible (and no I didn't lower the volume). Audio is one of the most important things in a game to me and they really missed out with this one I'm sorry to say.

Yay or Nay

I think I've talked enough shit about this game already so I'll just sum up my main problems here:

• It's on Uplay and that is a terrible terrible thing
• Needs a lot of work (future patch may improve things)
• Story is a bit bland
• Something of a let down after all the hype
• Poor audio assets in places
• Can't jump over a small gap

 
 (Damn small gaps ruining my sweet parkour)

HOWEVER I do think the game has some good things going for it, the hacking is new and interesting and could definitely have potential depending on what they choose to do with the game down the line and the multiplayer has definite potential and definitely removes some of the monotony of going from mission to mission to mission. We were all so excited when this game was announced and the hype got well out of hand which is a shame because I really wanted to enjoy this game but I just couldn't overlook some of the issues that were staring me in the face.

The game is not bad by any stretch but it definitely lets itself down in a good number of ways, if you're after a sandbox to dick around in because lets face it that's what they all become when you finish the story, then buy GTAV. At least in that you won't lose reputation for covering all the cars in stick bombs and blowing them up..if anything you'll be loved. Probably. OH one more thing, there's too much damn DLC, okay I'm done.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/243470/
http://uplay.ubi.com/en-GB/game/watch-dogs