Good, bad or otherwise, you can’t keep an online, service-focused Ubigame down. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is the latest in the publisher’s stable of multiplayer games to be signed on for a second season’s worth of content updates. Much of it looks to be free, which is always a reasonable price.
With great esports comes great bigotry. Not quite the snappiest of mottos, but relevant to Rainbow Six Siege, which has gone from strength to strength this past year at the cost of an increasingly ornery playerbase. In an attempt to help reduce the awfulness of public play, Ubisoft have outlined plans for the coming year to keep both verbal and mechanical abuse to a minimum.
Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they’ve been changed for better or worse.>
You d not think that a dude who calls himself Doomfist would be a particularly complex personality, but returning to Overwatch for the first time since Blizzard started adding new heroes to its team shooter, I found him the hardest to understand. That’s no bad thing. It’s a pleasure to return to a game and find new characters who aren’t simply the Ken to an existing Ryu. Overwatch’s new characters add a variety of playstyles, and have made the game more interesting and challenging. Despite the challenge of all this new variety, it might even have become a friendlier place to spend time since I last played.
Fans of FMV adventure cheese have a treat due this Halloween: The 13th Doll is a sequel to the 7th Guest series, officially licensed but developed by a crew of fans who grew up playing the originals. It promises all the hammy acting, obvious CGI scenery and logic puzzles you’d expect, and they’ve even managed to bring back one-time actor Robert Hirschboeck to reprise his role as the series’ ghostly villain Henry Stauf.
Amazon Game Studios, the development branch of the online bookshop/digital media empire, have officially ditched one of the three games from their initial PC lineup. They’ve confirmed rumours that the 4v4 MOBA-tinged fantasy fighty ballsport Breakaway is essentially dead, saying they couldn’t do it right. (more…)
In an ironic twist, GTA Online‘s latest competitive mode puts heavy firepower in the hands of players, but reserves it purely for shooting at safe, inanimate targets. In the new Target Assault mode, players pair up to crew a heavily armed vehicle racing down a circuit, with the driver trying to provide the turret gunner as clear a shot as possible at the big floating targets surrounding the track. Not to say that the mode is non-violent, of course…
At its very best, two player co-op game A Way Out explores a counterintuitive truth: that conflict is a necessary step towards good teamwork. It s a prison break game about two men, Vincent and Leo, incarcerated in an American prison. Vincent is a cool-headed strategist who solves problems using his words rather than his fists, while Leo is a young hothead who would rather strike first and ask questions later.
The most remarkable thing about this second game from Josef Fares, writer/director of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, is how it encourages both participants to roleplay as those strong personalities. Vincent and Leo are set in stone; unlike in games such as Telltale’s The Walking Dead, you cannot affect their character through in-game choices. You and another player surrender to the narrative, while the game aims to involve you through action rather than intent. It s a game that sacrifices freedom for character work. Here’s wot I think.
Minit is that most rare of joyful things: A really good idea, done really well.
In Minit you play a little bird-like pixel character who lives in a black and white pixel world, and is cursed with only ever living for a single minute. And yet despite this limitation, it presents a little RPG. HOW?! you ask, in your belligerent way. Hush, I shall tell you. (more…)
Got a mountain of resources stocked up, but nothing to do with them? Now you can just buy firepower direct as part of Fortnite‘s v3.4 content update. Vending machines have popped up across the Battle Royale map, ready to accept your scavenged savings in exchange for weaponry on demand, and offering a somewhat more static and predictable new facet to the otherwise chaotic shooter.
The awards ceremony at this year s GDC was fun. At least, that s what John told me from his seat in the crowd, where he saw the winners mount a stage some would consider too colourful for this planet. The Independent Games Festival Awards and subsequent Game Developer s Choice Awards saw a range of trophy-grabbers, from indie students to adventure game veterans. Unfortunately for them, I was hiding backstage, skulking behind a black curtain and holding a voice recorder like a cudgel. I had one question to ask them all: If they had to give their award away, who would get it?
It s like re-gifting, except you worked really hard for the gift and now you have to hand it over three minutes after your acceptance speech. Life is pain.