Vinsanity

It does seem smoother in action, but still hitches up seemingly for saving/loading checkpoint issues for me. Also it keeps crashing to the main menu sometimes - I'll finish a mission, grab my weapons/sell my loot and then head back to Martyr's End... poof, back on the Xbox Home Screen.

Nice to see they're actively working on it though I wish it was faster. I know console releases have to go through certification checks and whatnot, but they pounded the Steam release with patches quicker and it needs it. It's a good start though; anything to make the action here shine better is appreciated. Hopefully the game gets into good shape sooner rather than later.

How about finally letting Human Head/Roundhouse Studios do that Prey 2 now that you finally managed to acquire them?

Personally, I don't care about Machine Games' Wolfenstein. They should be games about blowing away Nazis and robot dogs with dual-wielded rocket launchers as the big, beefy Jewish action hero BJ Blazkowicz. Instead they were ponderous affairs with a busted stealth system and too many cutscenes starring some depressed, borderline-suicidal lunkhead as he encounters a lot of obnoxious resistance members. Everyone knows an "Oscar bait" movie? I dunno what the term for a game equivalent of that is, but at times it feels like New Order and New Colossus does that; just FAR too pre-occupied with world-building when it should be getting to the action. Writing and Presentation are NOT gameplay. Raven's 2009 Wolfenstein looks a WHOLE lot better after Machine Games' titles. Interceptor's Rise of the Triad reboot too.

Meanwhile, Youngblood looked like they fixed the tone - because it actually sounded FUN - but they seem to have messed up the gunplay thanks to lifebars, level grinding and other myriad annoyances brought on by the co-op implementation.

If Machine Games and Arkane aren't making it, I could maybe get excited for a new Wolfenstein... but I also don't want id to do it because I'd rather see them do another Quake title instead. Personally I'm glad Machine Games' not working on one right now... honestly worried a bit for Indiana Jones though.

@Steel76
Roguelite elements actually work pretty well for FPS games. STRAFE, Heavy Bullet, SuperMotherGunship, Tower of Guns, Immortal Redneck, Void Bast*rd, etc. There's something about it, when it's done well, that results in a really good arcadey type experience. Especially in cases like SuperMotherGunship or Immortal Redneck, where they have procedural level generation that just attaches new rooms to the room you're currently in - it almost becomes like a first person Robotron or Smash TV.

I mean, if you're looking for a lengthy campaign, story, setpieces, RPG elements, etc. roguelite First Person Shooters certainly aren't gonna scratch that itch. But if you're looking for an FPS you can just fire up from time-to-time, get in the zone, focus on the combat and just blast some baddies, they're actually really, really good. If you haven't tried one before, you should perhaps pick one up during a sale or on Game Pass (I think Void B*stard might still be up there?) and give one a shot sometime.

It was held up by Microsoft. What did Nintendo bring to the table that even puts them in contention? They brought Breath of the Wild 2 - fine; it's more of Breath of the Wild. They brought a new Metroid... but a 2.5D one, which is just one in an ocean of Metroidvanias these days. Are people manufacturing hype because it's drudging up the name of the long-since cancelled GBA game? Prime 4 is still missing in action. Advance Wars is getting a budget-y looking 3D remake that looks pretty bad. C'mon.

This was Microsoft's show, plus one or two announcements by Square and... not a lot else, let's be honest. A ton of indie and AA games announced, but I don't even know if they had anything to do with E3 or if it was one of the myriad other little events taking place around the same time these past two weeks.

It felt unnecessary. This did not feel like an E3. This felt like a pretty good MIX (Media Indie eXchange) show or one of those other indie type showings, with one or two big publisher shows that jumped in too this week, but a lot of it was disappointing. This was not the "BIG RETURN OF E3" I'm sure the organizers were hoping for. Far from it.

The sprite art & presentation actually look pretty great - it somehow does remind me of the old Treasure & Konami Looney Tunes and Tiny Toons games (and makes me wonder why Treasure never did a Toon brawler back in the day a la Guardian Heroes... though I guess they DID try to get Tiny Toons: Defenders of the Looniverse out the door for years).

The original tie-in game for Space Jam on Sega Saturn and PS1 was a basketball game and it wasn't great, so I can understand them not wanting to do another one... this is still weird though.

Gotta love a Eurojank RPG with this much ambition. And a trailer flying in the face of 2021 by proudly pumping out Nu-Metal like it's the early 2000s. This is all literally madness; just tossing sci-fi and fantasy and post-apocalyptic assets together and hope it all works. Good on Pirahna Bytes; focusing down on one is for COWARDS

I am all for seeing how this turns out. Seriously, with Pirahna Bytes just doing whatever they want, you really can't mistake Elex for any other RPG franchise

I wonder what this'll be in the end. Avalanche is a very uneven studio - even just looking at the Just Cause games, there are good and bad games. For every Mad Max they do that's well-received, they have a Generation Zero or a Rage 2 that's a disappointment.

I hope this feels different than what they've done before. I was trying to pin down a tone for it when I was watching the trailer and at some point I was wondering if it was gonna be, like, "Bonnie & Clyde" style? Which would be dope - something like the cancelled Faith and a .45. No one does that kind of setting! But as it went on I was like, "Nah this feels like old-timey Cuba or something?" so I guess that's what it's going for?

At any rate, I hope they focus on vehicles again, and I hope it's not an FPS because they're 0-2 there. Their on-foot action is always a bit too loose or flat-out janky. Mad Max was their most solid game that I've played, but the star of that game was the vehicle combat, not the on-foot stuff. So hopefully when they say this has a focus on heists, they're going to pull off some old-timey Fast & Furious stuff. Imagine that ridiculous Fast 5 Safe Chase, but with colorful Ford Fairlanes and Chevy Bel Airs cruising through the streets of an off-brand Havana-inspired city of their fictional country.... if that's what this game turns out to be, I'm sold, lol.

Absolutely love the looks of this one. It's just got such a great art style. Hoping the gameplay manages to be fun too, of course.

@The_New_Butler I too immediately think of the Strike games any time I see a chopper in a game screenshot

Did you know the Mercenaries games were supposed to be a Strike series reboot? It sucks that both Pandemic's Mercenaries 3: No Limits and Danger Close' Mercs Inc. got canned. That series should 100% still be going. Anyway...

Every time a new heli game comes out, I'm hoping it errs on the side of arcadey, responsive action specifically because you'd figure SOMEONE would want to take on the mantle from those titles. Luckily, based on the trailer over on the Microsoft Store, it looks like Heliborne is nailing that kind of action. Hopefully it turns out to be a fun title.

I hope the "new features" include a third person mode. It would be neat to build your park, then plop yourself in as a playable character when things go wrong and see how long you can survive. Gamers who love park builders love just causing disasters; it would be a genuinely novel spin on the genre to put players in the shoes of park goers having to survive that kind of crap, and super fitting for the Jurassic Park/World brand...

I'll pass. Golf is one of those things that should only be done in 3D, like racing games. It's about hitting a ball a long ways away from the golfer - you need it to be behind-the-back with a good look forwards. Except for Ninja Golf on the old Atari, there's no point for any golf game to be done via sidescrolling or single-screen nonsense; it's far too simplistic this way.

Phil Spencer is such the face of Xbox at this point, I'm genuinely surprised he's not in commercials and TV ads. Microsoft should totally "Kevin Butler" the guy, unless he's just totally terrible on-camera... even then, they could hire an actor to portray a caricature version of Phil and people would still dig it, I think. Not like Kevin Butler was a real Sony executive...

I clicked that trailer hoping to hear some killer music since I know this title has an awesome soundtrack, and it did not disappoint. Seriously, Exiles' music does such a good job of matching up with the original film than any other piece of Conan media, even Conan The Destroyer or the Jason Momoa Conan 3D. Whoever scored the theme for Funcom's game knocked it out of the park.

I wanna take a big swing at a prediction. Let me think...

I'll predict a new Fuzion Frenzy. Online-only, F2P, supported by "Battle Passes" and cosmetics, gonna be run in seasons a la Fall Guys or any other modern game of this type. It's time to bring that one back, Microsoft - it's such a perfect fit for that model and there's still a weird amount of love for the IP, both from players and Microsoft (it's one of the few OG Xbox games on Game Pass perenially). Well, there's a weird amount of love for the FIRST one at least.

Do it you cowards

Oh and maybe Killer Instinct 4. Microsoft said they wanted to do it, but couldn't find a developer available to make it... which never held water for me. What the hell else is Iron Galaxy doing these days? Switch Ports? Get real Iron Galaxy

Freakin' Sunset Overdrive is so good! I bought my XBone FOR IT... a couple years later but whatever. It's still the game I wanted an XBone for. It was only $8 too, and that makes me so sad.

It's almost certainly Insomniac's best game; whoever designed Sunset City and whoever coded the traversal abilities need a raise. It is such a fluid, perfect platformer in its movement and it does such a beautiful job of piling on techniques the longer you're playing the game (when you realize you can jump cancel out of the undergrind flip to launch yourself super high in the air, it's mind-blowing)... it's like the best Tony Hawk game ever made. You're constantly, effortlessly on the move, never touching the ground, every freakin' bouncy umbrella and AC unit is perfectly placed, wall runs feel great... it absolutely embarrasses every other game on the market in terms of traversal. Even their Spider-Man game(s) - it's not their fault, they didn't design NYC and NYC was not designed to be a killer game level, but still.

Christ, Sunset Overdrive deserved a MUCH bigger marketing push by Microsoft, and it deserves FAR MORE ATTENTION by Sony now. More people need to play this one. The fact that there isn't an announced remaster for PS4 and/or PS5 is crazy - hopefully E3, but jeez c'mon. Do something with it.

@Bmartin001 I would love to see that kind of thing too, but Frontier has no background with action games like that. They could've staffed up to make more types of games by now, but so far they mostly just do park sims, with the occasional outlier like Elite or LostWinds. It's hard to imagine something beyond some kind of Jurassic World Evolution 2 coming from them.

Would be a nice surprise though! Unless Capcom announces an RE2 Remake-style Dino Crisis, a proper action/survival horror Jurassic World game would have a big audience all to itself. It really is a wonder no one's done that yet.

Babylon Fall is the highlight of this lineup then, by far.

I really liked Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Would've loved to see an original IP from Eidos Montreal, honestly.

I mean, it's Streumon. I expected some level of Eurojank from one of their games.

There's little things in a bunch of places, but the worst part is definitely how it gets pretty framey in places seemingly at random. That's just.... I mean, I'm not a fps wh*re by any means (ffs, I grew up with an N64. You're gonna have to be PRETTY TERRIBLE nowadays to be notable. Like "worse than Goldeneye" levels of terrible, lol), but it is annoying how it just shifts into "horrible stutter" and pops back out into "smooth sailing" with no predictibility. Especially since that kind of thing can cause some people mild motion sickness or headaches.

Still having a fun time with it on my XB1s after adjusting some aim settings at least, but I do hope they iron out the issues sooner rather than later since a) fast & arcadey FPS games should have smooth action, b) this kind of thing always puts off way too many gamers from buying and c) no game - especially AA releases - need this kind of thing.

I'm enjoying BioMutant atm, though I did mute the narrator. I just didn't dig it. The rest of the cons I've seen reviews bring up? I'm not seeing them to be honest - I'm enjoying exploration, combat and crafting - but that dude just rubbed me the wrong way. It's a pretty whimsical thing to have a storybook-style narrator like that, or a nature documentary-esque tone, but this game doesn't benefit from it. It's not a fairy tale, and it's weird to paste a Richard Attenborough feel on top of everything too in my opinion. That's the only thing that really was getting to me so far, but I'm sure I'll get annoyed by this or that later on. Right now though, I'm getting through it slowly because, dammit, I'm a sucker for photo modes in pretty games like this

Besides that, still Dragon Quest Buildin' and Super Bomberman R Online'ing. Man, SBRO is freakin' addictive... it's gotten in the way of my playing more Knockout City.

Anyway, good gaming everyone.

I was wondering about this the other day, and whether or not it was close to a Version 1.0 release or abandoned. I guess it's neither, and it's really far away from 1.0 if it's only up to 0.10 now

Oh well I don't really care. I gave it the benefit of the doubt when it hit Game Pass and didn't dig it. I'll give it another shot when it gets "finished." But in the meantime, there are games like Drake Hollow and Dragon Quest Builders 2 - really excellent games that do what Grounded does, being really great combinations of survival and multiplayer and crafting and questing with really appealing art styles - that are finished already. This small team within Obsidian can take their time as far as I'm concerned...

Though on the other hand, if Obsidian is going to keep a small experimental team around to make weirder titles like this, it would be kind of odd to see them spend 3, 4 (or more) years on a single game concept actually. Figured you'd set aside a team like that to be more agile and prototype things quickly, pick a concept, then refine that and get a full version out asap. That way you could release a bunch of smaller games in-between the multi-year development RPGs. If these guys & gals take multiple years too, that'd just make less sense to me, I dunno.

Now, after the bang-up job Climax did with Dreamworks Dragons: Dawn of the New Riders, I'll give Outright Games the benefit of the doubt. To be honest, they just have been doing a pretty good job of throwing these (sometimes very poor) kids licenses at competent-to-good devs lately, and after looking up 3D Clouds, it turns out they seem to have done it again.

3D Clouds are the devs behind the recent King of Seas, and they've made several perfectly cart racers. But most importantly, they did Xenon Racer. That sharp af-looking "Basically Ridge Racer, but in the future" racer that came out, like, two years ago on Xbox and Playstation and was unfortunately widely ignored? Definitely interested in seeing what they can do with an arcade racer here, and it honestly looks a bit like an HD version of Need for Speed Nitro or something to me (which, btw, is a thing that should happen. When will EA make an Need for Speed HD Collection and bring games like Underground 1 & 2, Most Wanted 2005, Carbon and Nitro to current consoles?)

I bet this is going to be a lot better than most people are assuming. Even if it's based on a pretty lame (but I guess entertaining in how baffling it is) cartoon. I wonder if Outright Games is going to end up making something based on the Jurassic Park Camp Cretaceous cartoon or something now, if Dreamworks Produced/Netflix movie tie-in cartoons are on the table now. That's, at least for them, a step up from the likes of Paw Patrol games (even though I bet that stuff sells crazy good numbers).

Yeah, Hired Gun is the highlight here for sure. I'm kind of hoping that some quality comes from Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt though. One of the greatest crimes in modern gaming is the lack of dinosaur themed shooters, and Turok especially. For a series that hit as hard as it did back in the '90s, I simply don't know how there aren't, like, 4 attempts at reboots in the generations since, and at least 2 ripoff franchises, Jeez. Why do devs nowadays not know how fun it is to shoot dinosaurs and monsters with creative weapons? We should absolutely be living in a world where, like, Crytek, Techland and Flying Wild Hog all took a stab at bringing back Turok by now, y'know? But we aren't so... I guess I'll just have to take what I can get.

While we're at it, Capcom should invest in a "resurrection" of Maximo - in the form of a "HD Remake Duology" obviously. Or heck, I'd be interested in a Gargoyle's Quest/Demon's Crest collection more than this. Ghouls n' Ghosts n' Goblins n' whatevers was always the worst series of those 3 related series if you ask me, and this new version looks weird. Never a fan of paper cutout-style spline animation, even if I do admit they executed the storybook style they're going for well enough. Capcom's really gotta move away from Arthur and start recognizing Firebrand's games and Maximo again.

At first I thought it was just going to be a Super Monkey Ball clone with a nice art style that gives me Snake Pass vibes for some reason, which would've been fine honestly (not enough of those imo), but seeing the cool puzzle-platformer elements layered on top really make this look like it's own thing and a much stronger design. I had low expectations checking this out (with that name I expected a somewhat barebones indie effort a la I Am Bread), but I'm actually really impressed. Looks charming and fun, and I'm always down for that kind of experience.

Well, they did experiment a bit with large open level designs in games here or there - most notably in Sonic Adventure, but also in Sonic Lost World (the sadly forgotten Hyrule Field stage, though short, is a great blueprint for how to more open spaces in Sonic games). Plus, there are many, many, MANY open world fan games out there that are just mind-blowingly good nowadays - from Sonic GT to Sonic Utopia to Sonic World. Heck, even Sonic VR, iirc, has open designs. Honestly Sonic needs to go open world now - they did a bang-up job with the more track-based level designs in games like Unleashed, Colors, and Generations so it's time for a refresh. So I hope they're making the effort and I hope it turns out pretty good.

Not a fan of hearing about that Skill Tree stuff though. That's one of the things that hurt Sonic and the Secret Rings; they absolutely struggled to balance everything when the player was constantly upgrading and changing Sonic's acceleration or top speed, and as a result, a whole lot of things tended to break down. Things that triggered normally (in front of Sonic when you were approaching them) as you ran through a stage early on in that game became things that triggered as you were running past (often times hitting you) in the middle of the game, and then finally becoming things that triggered AFTER you ran past them, thus making them useless. Sonic and upgradeable skills... ehhhhhhh..... I'm sure there's a way to do it right, so I just hope Sonic Team learns from prior mistakes.

Still, I'm just hopeful the rumors are true. It seems like a positive direction to move Sonic into finally, officially, so they should take a shot at realizing an open world Sonic. We're just gonna have to wait and see...

I pre-ordered Hired Gun (those pre-order discounts on Xbox are freakin' sweet, man. Even if it's not amazing, I'll be happy if its just fun. For $30, I'll take a shot at supporting a AA releases like that), so I hope its fun. It sure looks like a big step up for Streumon... I can't believe just two games ago they put together the uber-janky EYE: Divine Cybermancy.

I'm definitely checking out Dark Alliance when it hits Game Pass too. Huge fan of the over-the-shoulder brawling action in games like Anarchy Reigns, so seeing a D&D action game try for that sort of combat is pretty fresh and exciting. I hope its good, but I'm glad I won't have to buy it to find out

And Scarlet Nexus' demo was really slick. Absolutely gonna pick that up.

I have NeoGeo Battle Colisseum on PS2, and I got real into it for a brief spell back in the day... still barely unlocked anything, lol. I think just Athena? That boss (in true SNK fashion) is complete bullsh*t and I hate him. Hell, iirc, there are multiple bosses but I only ever saw that blue, floating Orochi-possessed a**hole

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to playing NGBC again!

Good. It's clear that EA learned a thing or two about how to launch games like this from how poorly they handled Rocket Arena. Game Pass, EA Access, that 10-Day Free Trial on Playstation... these are things this kind of game needs to see some success right out of the gate if they're not going to go f2p. Good to see succeed because it feels and looks pretty great (even if literally all the current character faces are g*ddamn trolls and goblins, lol. Seriously, how is no one talking about how hideous they all look?)

Well some of these issues certainly sound like a legitimate shame - I am no fan of generic "Collect x thingamabobs" sidequests though they're not dealbreakers for me, stories that are slow to get going can definitely annoy me, using too many made-up terms is always pretty obnoxious (FFXIII, for instance), and too many convoluted menus-in-menus make me cringe after PSO2 showed me how bad it could get - but I honestly expected scores around the 6-7 Range. It's a new IP from a new team after all; if it were super refined and X101 knocked it out of the park with this ambitious first release, that would've been... kinda weird. A bit of a statistical anomaly, honestly.

I'm fine with a game being rough and unrealized in some places as long as the moment-to-moment gameplay/combat is fun; I think I'll still pick this up. I'll just have to mentally re-adjust whenever I get frustrated by dumb things that this is one of those pickups I get half because it legitimately looks cool and half to support an original game. If there's a BioMutant 2 down the line though, hopefully they can realize everything better.

Looking at a little bit of Knockout City and DQ Builders 2 for me this weekend. Also trying to finish up Halo Reach (the OG backwards compatible one; not the MCC version), and if I can find the time, I want to re-install GEARS 5 so I can play Hivebusters... man, I wish that was an "expandalone" (standalone expansion) instead of requiring the base game install. I already beat Gears 5, so that's way too much hard drive space I need to carve out just to play the new content. Especially when BioMutant and Necromunda Hired Gun are launching so soon? I need space cleared out for NEW games, jeez.

Good gaming everyone!

@IndoorHero SR3 is fantastic. You're definitely going to love it if you've never played it before. A lot of people consider it the highlight of the whole bloody series, and its not hard to see why - SR4+Gat Outta Hell is also top-notch quality, but it is a different game in terms of mixing up the formula. Still, I freakin' hate people arguing over which one is better or why 4 doomed the series or whatever - just play 3, 4 and Gat Outta Hell all in a row and consider one huge Saints Row saga at some point, 'cuz they're all just a fantastic time.

Don't worry about Agents of MAYHEM though. That thing is so undercooked, tedious and disappointing... its one of those games where the bad totally outweighs the good, ugh. I don't care how cheap it is during sales, that thing is a waste of time sadly.

=======

Anyway, looking forward to Biomutant!

This is also the first I've heard about REKT, and it looks like it might be fun in a cheap Gripshift or Jet Car Stunts-kinda way? I mean it is just $5, but it's got that flippy, spinny "Rush 2049 physics" look to it, so that's promising. I'm hopeful. I could go for that sort of game every once in awhile.

Looks cool. Bloodborne + SteelRise-style automata is a combination that immediately piques my interest. Especially when it's one of these games from non-Japanese Eastern devs that look incredible. I don't know why it's happening now with stuff like Lost Soul Aside, Bright Memory, Black Myth Wukong, Project Eve, Crimson Desert, etc. Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean devs are suddenly putting out their incredible looking games on consoles and bringing them to the West and I'm ALL for it. Just adding Pinocchio to the pile of, "Cool stuff to keep an eye on"

"we have 21 titles planned for release, including... 10 free-to-play mobile games"

So they have 11 games coming. 21 sounded really huge tbh, but that is a lot of mobile games taking a big bite out of that.

MechWarrior 5 and Solasta are definitely games I might be interested in but probably won't get into (even though I used to love Mechwarrior 2 and Earthsiege back in the day), so it is AWESOME that they're hitting Game Pass. I'll absolutely check them out now, at least. Looking forward to checking out ManEater finally, and getting back into Knockout City when it launches - that beta was rad.

But man, I just bought the Hivebusters DLC recently when it was $10, so I'm supposed to be FINISHING games and clearing room off my HDD so I can re-install GEARS 5 and play that... plus Biomutant when I nab it later in the month. This is too much stuff to play... not a bad problem to have, but I don't appreciate it because I'm bad at staying focused, lol

@Nightcrawler71
Man, Ubi Soft Massive is working on Avatar 2, an open world Star Wars game, Heartland here, and continued support for Division 2 atm. If you think they even started PRE-PRODUCTION for a Division 3 yet... let's just say you're going to be waiting for a loooooong time, lol.

X1: Dragon Quest Builders 2
PS4: Genshin Impact and Dragon Quest XI
PS3: Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z and Ratchet & Clank Future: Into the Nexus

I have a lot of stuff on my backlog so I'm generally pretty happy, but I'm also really gettin' antsy for the end of the month so I can pick up Biomutant for my XBone, probably Necromunda Hired Gun too (it's hard NOT to pre-order that when it's pretty much just $30 right now for pre-order on the Xbox store), and even the Ryu/Chun-Li DLC for Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. Lot of stuff is dropping in that last week of May for me.

With both Obsidian doing FPS RPGs (Outer Worlds) and InXile, and it probably being safe to assume Starfield will be one as well (unless they're all Klingon-type spacefarers inexplicably fighting with bladed weapons), it seems like maybe all these series might end up stepping on each others' toes a bit. I dunno.

InXile's going to have to cook up a really, really visually interesting & unique world to make sure their new game stands on its own and has big appeal is all I'm saying. And even then, how unique can Microsoft let them get - have you ever seen Obsidian's Stormlands? That was cancelled by Microsoft, but it looked & sounded way more unique than Avowed's traditional western fantasy. I hope Microsoft isn't discouraging going TOO wild with ideas in favor of polishing up the ol' tried-and-true tropes of the cRPG genres...

Guess we'll just have to wait and see more on this one.

I was keen to check this out anyway, especially at the low/AA price point, but I'm DEFINITELY going to check it out on Game Pass on launch day now first. Very cool get; the action combat in this looks pretty great and we really don't have enough fantasy-themed brawlers out there anymore. D&D should put out WAY more, considering their track record includes cult classics like Chronicles of Mystara and Demon Stone - really hoping Dark Alliance here becomes the next great D&D brawler.

It looks pretty cool. But if it isn't going to have a weapon like a turret mounted on it, it would've been even cooler if they equipped it with a futuristic cow-catcher or spiky shield or something. The thing's big enough to be a weapon on it's own - might as well make "plowing into things" the way it attacks

I know it wasn't on Xbox, but voting for anything other than BF2142 would make me a liar, so I won't vote. That game was pretty damn cool; I'm always a fan of futuristic takes in series like this, and the Titan Mode in that one was so cool. They should remake it on a budget as a digital only release a la Battlefield 1943.

Battlefield Heroes is probably my second favorite too. I am too weird for your poll, lol

I avoided Like a Dragon partly because of the turn-based combat, though moreso because they really need more variety in setting imo. I have no problem with Turn Based combat, I simply don't need it in Yakuza - I play Dragon Quest and other classic style RPGs for my fill of that. The fighting did make Yakuza feel different, but they're smart to do this now that they have Judgment so they can differentiate the two.

That being said, seriously, they need more settings. They run through the same Kamurocho districts in far too many games, too quickly. I know I can't keep up with the series because of that repetition, and just check out every 3rd entry or so AT BEST (the last one I played was the fantastic Song of Life). I'm hoping that the Yakuza team is working on another anime licensed title like with Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise just to force them to do something completely different in terms of setting - there's a decent number of IP that would slot into the Yakuza design template nicely besides Hokuto no Ken. It would be incredible to see them announce, say, a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Cowboy Bebop game this hardware generation. A new setting and new general aesthetic would be much more refreshing than a change to the combat system.

I'm looking forward to Sega announcing Virtua Fighter 5 again, so the few crazy people who think they're actually rebooting the series will shut up already

I mean honestly, when they did their "eSports focused" Puyo Puyo title, they just took their most recently released game (PP Tetris), modified it (took out the Tetris) and re-released it - that's the precedent here. In their "Virtua Fighter x eSports" reveal trailer, Akira is literally just watching footage of Final Showdown in the background. Plus, ratings boards in certain countries have leaked Virtua Fighter 5 ULTIMATE Showdown. Sega doesn't have the money or the team to make a brand new Virtua Fighter, and I have no idea why some people tried so hard to push a rumor out suggesting as such. Sega should've really just gotten out in front of this whole business with some honesty instead of announcing it then going quiet, imo.

I guess their new Sonic could be neat too, but honestly, some of the newer fangames have really re-adjusted my expectations for what a new Sonic game COULD be (just look up Sonic GT. Seriously impressive stuff).

Also hoping Bandai Namco brings some kind of Blue Protocol western announcement/roadmap

I remember back in the day that magazines were BLOWN AWAY by the water fx here. They couldn't shut up about 'em, lol. How far we've come, eh? I never played this (only Gauntlet Legends and Hunter: The Reckoning ever looked interesting or exciting to me in the "topdown hack-and-slasher" genre), but man, these environments really look bland and drab... except for that water, I suppose. The ripple effects are still quality. Those magazines really should've noticed... the everything else when talking up the game's presentation. Oh well, apparently this one's fun, so for people with fond memories of this or who are curious to check it out for the first time, it's always good to see older games get remasters and brought to the current gen.

I will say it's pretty crafty of Interplay to drop this the same month Wizards of the Coast and Tuque are going to put out their new (much more exciting looking) Dark Alliance. Drop it while people are hearing the name again, and piggy-backing off of someone else's marketing campaign while barely having to market anything yourself, basically. Sneaky!

I wonder if this idea Mr. Cuisset speaks of is the same idea for Flashback Legends, which was in development for the GBA before getting cancelled? If so, than... yeah he ain't joking about having this idea for a long time!

Very curious about how Microids will do this. Is it going to be a third person shooter, doing right where Fade to Black stumbled? Is it going to be 2.5D, like Oddworld Soulstorm? Is it going to be fully 2D, utilizing crisp, high-res sprites and smooth rotoscoped animation? If it is 2D, will they make the controls more fluid, or keep it as stiff as the original game? If it IS revisiting the Flashback Legends idea, than is it also going to have that more Moebius/Heavy Metal (Metal Hurlant)/"French Comic Book"-inspired look that they were attempting with that game?

Man, there's so much I want to know about this before letting myself get excited. C'mon Microids! How could you not have shown anything with this announcement? It is pretty interesting to see this happening though!

@Krzzystuff Not for Nintendo. Ever since the Wii, they've been interested solely in piecing together garbage from decade-old tech they can nab on the cheap and duct tape, then slapping hardware together and selling it at a huge markup versus what the components actually cost them. Its one of the advantages when you target casuals and families/young kids - they're too ignorant about tech. They don't care about how future proofed this thing is. They just wanna know if it plays Mario, Mario Kart, Smash and Pokemon.

For everyone else though? As long as putting out hardware that's on the bleeding edge is important, than yeah that's how it works pretty much.

XB1: Homefront Revolution and Halo Reach. Still slowly headed towards whenever that TimeSplitter 2 arcade machine shows up, and just generally taking my time with Homefront trying to enjoy it for what it is (I don't play many open world FPS games). And Halo Reach has just been on my backlog for some time, so I'm slowly working my way through that too. Pre-loading DQ Builders 2X as well - I have a copy on PS4 but it's currently with my sister. That game rules though, so I can't wait to start again on Game Pass as soon as it unlocks on Tuesday

PS4: Genshin Impact and Dragon Quest XI

PS3: Ratchet and Clank Future: Into the Nexus. Never played it; the Ratchet games up until the PS4 always came out so regularly that I just couldn't drum up any enthusiasm for certain entries so I skipped this one on release. With Rift Apart getting attention lately, I'm keen to find out how the last original game leads into it. I picked this up for $10 when Sony said they were shutting down the PS3 store so its time to check it out finally.

Dreamcast: I bought some CD-Rs at a Rite Aid so I can burn that E3 demo of Castlevania Resurrection that leaked over the week and give that a shot Also I gotta burn a bunch of those Atomiswave games that came out a few months ago too, like Sammy's Dolphin Blue, Dimps' Rumble Fish and Dream Factory's Kenju. Exciting times for the ol' Dreamcast as long as you can find CD-Rs/CD-RWs, lol!

How could I get through this whole article without a single mention of "Team Green?" I thought the writing quality here was supposed to be good!

I could see a sequel improving greatly on the title, and honestly? It's been years since I've really looked at it, but it looks a lot like Hellblade & God of War (The "Dad of Boy" reboot one, not the original) in retrospect - that kind of over-the-shoulder style of combat focused on brutal animations. It seems like it was kind of ahead-of-its-time there, even if it was rather/somewhat undercooked (but all launch/year 1 titles are, to be fair).

If Crytek is working on a direct sequel, or another game with the Ryse name that simply transplants the same gameplay style onto a new story (I see no reason why it would have to continue the story instead of just take place against another culture/war. This is one of those franchises that could easily be about a Chinese soldier, a Mayan one, an Eyptian one, etc.) they could improve the formula massively now that they have other examples of this kind of brawler/adventure to look at. There's honestly a lot of promise here.

And it also makes sense to me that they'd be exploring this. They've seemed a little lost for the past few years what with legal battles against the Star Citizen people, seemingly pulling back from VR development entirely, employees painting a bad picture of the studio, and putting out only Hunt Showdown (and, like, a remaster of Crysis). In this situation, it would make sense for them to lean on older and already-established IP like Crysis and Ryse rather than try to try something new.

I'd be very interested to see what happens here. Heck, I should replay it on Game Pass...

@endlesssleep: Nah, Crytek self-published it on Steam. MS lets a lot of their IP trademarks lapse after a few years, honestly, unless they're HUGE hits or they own the studios that made the games in question. Jade Empire, Sudeki, Voodoo Vince, etc. - you can look up re-releases/remasters for all of these on modern storefronts like Steam and GOG and note that they're published by their developers now. Which frankly is a pretty cool deal for the studios; instead of letting IP languish if you're not using it, let the people who DO want to use it HAVE it. It's... honestly weird that Microsoft's approach isn't industry-standard, come to think of it.

I genuinely don't know why bots fell out of favor. They were such an important part of legendary multiplayer-focused FPS titles like Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Turok and Perfect Dark and then devs kinda got lazy there. Programmers took pride in making really good, really competitive, really smart and customizable opponents to play against, and it absolutely helped the longevity of any multiplayer game. As well as the communities. Every online-only game now suffers from having a continually shrinking playerbase over time, and it's no wonder why; no new player will show up because the only way to "practice" is to go up against people who have been playing for years and they'll just get slaughtered and learn nothing. When you have bots, you can actually get practice and familiarized with maps, etc. and feel good about jumping into the multiplayer properly. When you don't have bots, new players simply won't jump in. They'll wait for a sequel or some other jumping-in point that may or may not (in the cases of titles like Lawbreakers) ever come.

I know game productions are huge & complex now, but at the same time, we also know that 343 wrangles external developers SPECIFICALLY to handle MP work on Halo titles (like Certain Affinity or Sabre Interactive, who also does Quake Champions, ANOTHER game that should have bots). Someone should be working on this. Hell, at this point, there should be a middleware studios can nab for their FPS games - like how fighting games can just nab GGPO to start building good netcode from? It's genuinely mind-boggling that there are so few (if any) FPS games now that have bots. You can STILL fire up Unreal Tournament and have a great, very engaging time against bots. The AI on those bots put so many modern games' single player enemy AI to shame... I am not a fan of the attitude of, "We don't have to worry about it because it's so easy to connect to live players now." There's a lot of worth to good bots.

Honestly though, I can understand it being low-or-no priority for MCC though, since it's been out for so long and it's something where at least the infrastructure should be established when you're prototyping (rather than glopped on to a codebase when the game is done; the tools for navigation alone should be something map-makers have access when creating them instead of trying to jam that information into maps after they've been made), but I would like to see 343 give a sh** about this feature for future Halo games, that's all. It would be great of them to take the lead here for the industry. If a major series like Halo validates the worthiness of MP bots, maybe there'd be a renaissance there with other studios investing in good bot AI too.

Between this and Tales of Arise' new videos, it's a great week for trailers showing off amazing looking RPG-environments

I'm very much pulling for this one. I love promising new IP with ambition, and action-RPGs with good melee combat, so I really hope this is good. SINCE it's a new IP though, I really feel it's important to wait for some positive pre-launch previews/launch week impressions/reviews though. Since it went totally quiet during its lengthy delay, AND they didn't add any new SKUs to push it out onto, that strikes me a good sign they actually have been putting in the work to get this right on XB1/PS4/PC, but it's still not a good idea to pre-order it or anything... at least for me. Definitely crossing my fingers though. C'mon Experiment 101; knock this outta the park!

Huh, they didn't develop The Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norsewest. That was done by another studio (Beam Software iirc). I'm shocked they added it to this collection, but it's kinda cool.