The Kojima-less team making Metal Gear Survive needs a bit more time to finish up the game so Konami is delaying the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 release until "early 2018."
This is probably for the best. I just played the multiplayer component of Metal Gear Survive at E3 and outside of my general qualms with what's shaping up to be a grindy shooting gallery, there was something slightly low rent and off to how it felt, despite running in the same engine as Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain. And despite the initial planned 2017 release window, Konami still isn't even ready to talk about the singe-player.
Konami's attempt, in its post-Hideo Kojima future, to squeeze a little more blood out of everything the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain team built is frustrating. It's not necessarily bad, but it does feel uncanny, just a little bit wrong, and a little more janky and stiff than its beautifully tuned predecessor. You couldn't tell from the pre-demo presentation that talked about how proud Konami was to, "bring the survival genre into this brand."
Nobody asked for a Metal Gear Solid survival game with co-op, and my initial fear that this was Horde mode padded out with stealth isn't even sufficient because I did stealth for about 30 seconds in a 30 minute demo.
To run it back, Metal Gear Survive is a "survival action" game set after Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. A wormhole opened up, swallowing up the surviving Militaires Sans Frontières soldiers and sending them to an alternate reality that looks like a mangled version of The Phantom Pain. It does have a single-player campaign, notably not directed by Kojima, but Konami isn't talking much about the single-player and only had us try out the multiplayer. At the end of a successful run, a wormhole opens up and drops a bunch of cardboard boxes filled with loot, which is used for your single-player campaign. The goal is to "scavenge for resources, craft items, and ultimately find your way back home."
In Survive, you're playing as a custom-built character, but we had four prebaked ones to choose from for the co-op demo. I went with a shaved head woman who came equip with an assault rifle, bow and arrow, and electric baton. One thing I'd find out quickly: melee weapons are a huge part of Survive, because I ran out of ammo during the first of three enemy waves (this was specifically truncated for E3).
All four teammates start out in a blank, white room with infinite ammo and friendly-fire off (shooting your friends during the real thing will hurt them). It basically plays like Phantom Pain, but without the robust CQC, at least for the time being. If you're meleeing, you're meant to be doing it with giant polearms and the like. The main difference is that there are defense mechanisms (fences, guard towers, fire traps, etc) mapped to L1 and R1 that you'll want to place in the world when you enter the defense stage.
Once we all had a handle on what we were doing, we stood in a circle and started the mission. The first objective was to "infiltrate" the only significant structure nearby and set up a generator, which we'd then have to protect for three rounds. Infiltration, at least in this demo, took the form of shooting two zombified enemies with my bow (and retrieving the arrows -- ammo is scarce); I'm not sure what my team was up to, but after that we were already in. White arrows lined the ground of the facility showing where enemy waves were going to be funneled toward us, so we threw up traps and fences there, making a point to save some for subsequent rounds.
A "side-mission" popped up between waves one and two, which required me to leave our fortified position to a spot where two more mutants were hanging around. I clubbed them to death and found something I interacted with, which spawned an ammo box back at our base. Aside from the ammo squeeze and typical tower defense punctuated by new enemy types, Survive has things like stamina restriction, hunger and thirsts, and a bunch of numbers-based stuff that didn't seem to impact this condensed demo.
We hung around all three waves, S-ranked it, and I ended up the top scoring member of our team, but the whole thing felt lifeless, even with two Walker Gears stomping around in the last round. It's like someone ran The Phantom Pain through the clunky, grind-heavy Let it Die. And it just makes me want to play the former instead. Or Metal Gear Online. Maybe the full game will do some interesting things, but this taste doesn't have me optimistic.
After Marvel and Capcom had a rights fallout some time after the release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, I had assumed we'd never get another entry to the series. I had resigned myself to that disappointment until Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was surprisingly announced for release this year. My thoughts on it have been bouncing back and forth with each reveal trailer, but now that I was able to put in a solid hour with it, I'm definitely more worried than I was before.
Although Infinite has greater ambitions than past entries, and the new core additions to gameplay can be fun to figure out, there's an overall sense of something unseen tightening its grip on the screen.
Just like at last year's E3, a new installment in a Nintendo franchise is stealing the show. Super Mario Odyssey already plays like a weird, wonderful new game with an expansive world to explore. But you won't have to go it alone: the new game will let another player take control of Mario's eyeball-lined sentient hat, Cappy.
Nintendo did a pretty solid job of expanding the rather basic launch of Splatoon with some DLC throughout 2015. While it may have been on-disc, all of it was free and it worked in a way to keep players engaged with the title over a longer period of time then they might have otherwise. While I'm not sure if ARMS has DLC on the cartridge, Nintendo is holding to the same plan with all post launch being free and releasing in increments over the rest of 2017.
The first of many new characters is Max Brass, a guy that looks straight out of F-Zero. I mean, he basically resembles Black Shadow in stature and Captain Falcon in terms of costume. Anyway, his in-game lore is that he's a returning champion who is looking to defend his title against new comers like Spring Man and Ribbon Girl. His arms are also made out of his previous championship belts, because subtly is not his forte.
In hindsight, this was a bad idea. I'm rubbish at almost every kind of competitive, multiplayer game, and motion controls are a waggling "am I doing this right?" nightmare. Still, at E3, I couldn't resist the chance to try Arms, the spring-loaded boxing game for the Nintendo Switch. So I recruited my handsome colleague (and Arms player extraordinaire) Sean Buckley to give me a crash course on the Engadget E3 stage. The results were, well, mixed. The game is loads of fun, and I love its cast of colorful characters, but I have to accept a harsh truth: I am absolutely dreadful.
If you want to see an Arms master ridicule and pulverize a beginner, click on the video player above. I apologize in advance for the random mess of jabs and grabs that follow.
Cartoon Network's Steven Universe practically begs for the role-playing-game treatment, with its deep lore, unique characters and gorgeous hand-drawn art style. The show got its first video-game treatment a few years ago with the mobile game Steven Universe: Attack the Light. Now that game's sequel, Save the Light, is finally giving the show's fans the full-fledged RPG they've been waiting for. And after playing it for a bit at E3, I think they have plenty of reasons to be excited.
PlayStation owners of Destiny: Rise of Rion (which was only on XB1/PS4) got some exclusive content that never ended up coming to Microsoft's platforms.
It looks like for the sequel, Bungie isn't going to omit content from everyone else, falling inline with what they did originally pre-Iron. While not the most informative quote, the game's director (Luke Smith) took to Twitter to proclaim, "Destiny 2's PlayStation exclusive content will arrive on Xbox One and PC in 2018."
Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 promises to be the franchise's best title in years, thanks to a combination of smoother gameplay and improved life-like graphics. Then there's the fact you'll be able to play My Club matches as Usain Bolt, the eight-time Olympic gold medalist. Sure, it's a pure marketing move, but that doesn't mean it won't be fun to have him play for your team. We had the game's global brand product and manager, Adam Bhatti, join us on our E3 stage to talk more about these features, as well as whether or not Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 will be getting a Nintendo Switch version. Spoiler alert: The answer isn't a yes-or-no question.
Following the likes of Amiibo, Skylanders and the rest, Ubisoft's latest take on the physical toy/videogame hybrid, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, already feels like an exciting proposition -- even if we didn't quite get to play the title itself. We saw a hands-off presentation of the spaceship-based gameplay (customizable load-outs, pilot-based superpowers, and weird alien threats), as well as how easily the add-on guns and mods digitally appear in-game. We then also got to handle the physical toys themselves -- Ubisoft has done a good job.
I haven't felt competent at Call of Duty in quite some time. With the series' move towards the futuristic came an ill-fated attempt to capture imaginations of the eSports crowd, overcrowding the once-storied Call of Duty multiplayer suite with each new installment. The further this franchise strayed from God's light, the worse I became. Remember when Black Ops III had different "heroes" with ultimate abilities?
All of a sudden, there was a "meta" to the base level of Call of Duty. What had once been a pick-up-and-play arcade shooter became a fast-paced game of rock paper scissors where you had to worry more about counter-loadouts than choosing the items that fit your playstyle – all exacerbated by a UI that resembles this Mega64 parody more than anything else. I like the idea of bringing Call of Duty to the future! Black Ops II is probably still my favorite game in the series, with Advanced Warfare not close behind. But these games needed to be dragged back in time, if only to make sure the rotating cast of developers would be forced to stick with recognizable iconography and weapons that didn't require extensive counter-picking.
Maybe it was the positive fan response to early Battlefield 1 footage that inspired the switch back to World War II, or maybe this change was always in the cards and moving away from the maligned future era is a serendipitous way to earn a little more goodwill for the series. Whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes, Call of Duty: WWII brings back the kind of straightforward multiplayer this series has been missing for so long. And because I'm uncomfortable with how glowing that last sentence was – yes, it's mondo uncomfortable to be playing as Nazis in the year 2017.
Super Mario Odyssey is weird. It took all of 30 seconds before we switched out of Mario's traditional garb and into a pinstripe suit and fedora. Many times, we threw Mario's hat at a Bullet Bill and then turned into that Bullet Bill. We spent time reuniting misplaced band members; the bass player was on a floating park that we could only get to by turning into electrical current.
We had our temporary visitor visa to New Donk City, and we want to become permanent residents. All it took was a 20-minute demo before we were convinced. Our stay was brief, but Jordan and I are confident that Super Mario Odyssey is shaping up to be a really odd gem.
Microsoft gave us the first glimpse of the upcoming Assassin's Creed during its Xbox One X reveal at E3. A day later, Ubisoft discussed the details about how it took a year off from the franchise to "reinvent" the game. Well, after spending some time playing on that newly announced console, what Ubisoft is showing off this week isn't a huge revelation, it's a continuation.
Similar to how Super Mario Galaxy handled multiplayer, Super Mario Odyssey will feature a co-op mode that lets player two take control of Cappy, Mario's now sentient hat. When active, Cappy will float around the environment separate of Mario and be able to collect various pick ups as well as defeat enemies. Cappy will also be invincible, because he's a bad ass like that.
The game's director, Kenta Motokura, said he was inspired to create this feature due to the Switch supporting two players straight out of the box. While I do love that feature, I'm not sure it will work well in a fully 3D platformer where camera control is tricky. Apparently both players can manipulate the camera with the split joy-con, so maybe its not that big of an issue.
As one of the more pressing titles I've been looking forward to playing ever since watching trailers for its arcade release, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a game I'm glad exists. Playing it, on the other hand, is a totally different story. Even with the many hours I've put into the two previously released PSP titles in the series, I still had trouble gauging exactly what was going on.
Gorgeous as the animation and stage layout may be, I couldn't possibly enjoy them underneath a sea of meters and systems I had too little time to fully comprehend. But then a Leviathan showed up, so that's cool.
Wild Guns Reloaded seemed like one of those flash in the pan releases on PS4, but I still boot it up every so often when I feel like low key blasting some dudes in a western setting. PC folks will get a chance to partake too, as Natsume has announced this week that the game is coming to Steam on July 14.
Priced at roughly 1,800 yen (a price hasn't been announced, but converting to USD, that's roughly $15) it'll have dual language support, and it looks like it'll have all of the bells and whistles from the PS4 re-imagining. If you have someone to play with locally it's a good pickup!
Logitech's main mission at E3 this year: proving to gamers that wireless mice are just as capable, and sometimes more so, than their corded counterparts. The company revealed two innovations at the show: Lightspeed, its low-latency wireless transmission technology, and PowerPlay, a way to charge mice while using them on a custom mat. Both solve the main complaints some gamers have around wireless mice: that they're laggy and could lose charge at any moment.
Destiny 2 will launch on PC October 24, and that's a big deal for a lot of people. It's a few weeks after the game's console launch in September, but Destiny developer Bungie has stated the delay is to "satisfy the PC gaming audience."
While PC players will have to wait until August to get their hands on the space shooter's beta, at least there's plenty of time to internalize the game's control scheme.
It feels like forever ago that Broken Age (Act 1, Act 2), one of the first great Kickstarter successes, actually came out. It kind of was as it came out in January 2014 (which is "forever" in gaming years), but its art style stayed with me even if some of its puzzles didn't.
A newly released art book from Dark Horse Books makes that even easier to do.
