Never has there been a more diverse package of the good and the questionable than the Mega Man Legacy Collection. There are some games from Capcom’s early days with the character that I love and cherish. But there are others that I can’t bring myself to enjoy.
Variable State, the studio being the striking vignette ’em up Virginia, today announced their next game. Last Stop is a supernatural mystery in present-day London with three playable characters who get tangled in the same quite strange and awful spookening, and I’m well up for it. While Virginia had no dialogue (to excellent effect), this one’s a proper chatty one with voice acting and all, and the English voices combined with everyday sci-fi shenanigans mean I’m already unfairly thinking of Doctor Who. Look, watch the trailer and draw your own connections.
The revamped PC rereleases of Bungie’s classic console shooter series Halo will kick off with Halo: Reach on December 3rd, Microsoft announced today. Reach was the fifth Halo FPS to be released but will be the first to come from The Master Chief Collection cos it’s a prequel to the lot. Have a gander at the new trailer below.
Today’s a big day for Age Of Empires. A revamped version of the second game launched this afternoon (and it’s still jolly nice, our Nate said in his Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition review) then tonight we got a first look at the all-new Age Of Empires 4. It’s set in the medieval era and ooh, I do quite like how that old cartoony look is being translated to modern 3D. Have a look for yourself.
I thought the post-apocalyptic horrors of Wasteland 3 couldn’t surprise me but goodness me, I’m chilled to the core. I’ve seen all the usual torments–nuclear winter, cannibalism, slavery, torture, famine–but I was not prepared for the sight of a giant robotic Ronald Reagan. My god, what have we done? We must change our ways before it’s too late. We can’t let this vision become reality. The vision’s coming up fast too, with InXile today announcing a launch date of May 19th, 2020.
Dontnod Entertainment today announced their next teen story ’em up, named Tell Me Why. It’ll see two twins trying to unravel grim mysteries of their childhood, a problem compounded by Tyler and Alyson Ronan having different memories of the events. Sticking to Dontnod’s beloved northwest America, this time it’s pushing into small-town Alaska, and mate I’m well up for whale-watching. Have a peek in the announcement trailer below.
Now that everyone has a battle royale and a subscription, everyone wants a cloud gaming service too. Google’s Stadia launches next week, and Microsoft today announced that their own Project xCloud is coming to PC. In the cloud gaming way, it’ll let people play Xbox One games on even a crappy old PC (it was initially made for phones and tablets) thanks to streaming video technomagic. Unlike streaming services which ha-ha-hilariously people expect people to pay full price for games, xCloud will let you stream Xbox games you own as well as those you have access to through the Xbox Game Pass.
Transforming the ordinary into the fantastical. It s a tenet of Magical Realist fiction, Brechtian theatre, staring too long at your hands while on edibles, and now Grounded, a new survival RPG from Obsidian. It features four plucky teens, a shrink-ray experiment and a mundane back garden transformed into a vast, dangerous, colorful wilderness. Gnats are now the size of your face. You can build trampolines from spider webs, or armour from acorns. Part Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and part Ark: Survival Evolved, Grounded is a game brave enough to ask, “What if those tiny cartons of fruit juice with the sippy straws that America calls juice boxes were like, absolutely massive?”
I recently watched a short presentation at Obsidian HQ and got a chance to chat with Grounded s director, Adam Brennecke. Typical to the storied studio, there s very few aspects of Grounded that haven t been approached with a world-builder s eye for detail and place. Even with Obsidian keeping some big story and setting reveals close to their chest, there s a lot to get through.
Rare, the English studio behind Banjo-Kazooie and Sea Of Thieves, today announced their next game. It’s a pretty fantasy thing named Everwild, and it’s a complete mystery. Rare aren’t saying about what it is or what you do. I can tell you it’s rather pretty, though. Have a peek in the announcement trailer below:
Obsidian Entertainment, the gang behind The Outer Worlds and Alpha Protocol, have announced a new game and it is… not an RPG? It’s named Grounded and it’s a survival game with more than a whiff of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, having us play as kiddywinkles shrunk down smaller than creepy-crawlies. Trying to survive in a garden looks a touch more challenging at that scale. We’ll be able to tell you more in a wee preview real soon but, for now, here’s the announcement trailer.
Update: Even sooner than I thought, the embargo has lifted – check out our Grounded preview.>