Mavericks is the next game to compete in the very competitive Battle Royale genre. It is talking a big game, and in some cases, even calling out what will likely be its direct competitor, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
The developer, Automaton Games, is made up of folks who have worked on games like Killzone, APB, and Wipeout among a few other impressive titles. It started out its presentation detailing some of the things it hopes will set Mavericks apart from the competition. It promised different weather effects in the environments, like snow and rain, and said it has the technical capabilities to go as high as 400 players in a match. Automaton Games also wants, long-term, to have 1,000 players broken into a collection of five-person teams. The area of play for the battle royale mode will take place on a 10 x 10 km area (as opposed to PUBG’s 6 x 6 km area), and that will only be a portion of its planned larger 16 x 16 km playable area. Basically, Automaton Games is making an MMO shooter that will have missions taking place in this large area and battle royale will just be one mode present in the larger game.
Players will impact the map as they play. One of the small examples Automaton Games offered was when you change bandages out to heal, your old bandages will be discarded on the ground. This way, other players will know someone has been there, and they’re injured. Bullet shell casings will also litter the ground, along with footprints, blood trails, and used med kits. You will also see animals in the world minding their own business.
The environment is also be destructible, with the ability to fire through thin walls, blow down doors with grenades, or even shoot the locks off of doors. You can also quietly pick those locks, too.
An area called The Capital will act as a safe hub where players will be able to collect quests, buy things in shops, or engage in player to player interaction. Automaton Games has a whole story premise for the world in place occurring after a World War III. People compete in the battle royale for a kind of limited immortality, but we didn’t get more details than that.
Automaton Games talked a big game with its long-term plans for Mavericks, and it is undeniably ambitious. It’s more MMO (or maybe Destiny would be the better comparison) than you might think, considering much of the talk surrounding the game has been related to its battle royale mode. After the presentation, we did get a chance to go hands-on with a very early version of the game.
Its built using CryEngine, so it looks sharp. The trailer released during the PC Gamer Show (seen above) uses the game’s engine, but all the animation and choreography is custom. It started raining during our demo, which looked cool, and I used a bandage and saw that I did leave behind a bandage on the ground. The destructibility was also in place, and I was able to shoot through the walls inside a random house, and shoot up into the ceiling to expose the attic. In theory, if someone is hiding upstairs and you can hear them, you will be able to shoot them from below. It had its hiccups in this early build of the game, and there was no option to go prone, but on its shooter merits (there wasn’t much opportunity to explore the larger open world) it felt pretty good.
Mavericks will enter closed beta in August <(a href="https://mavericks.gg/closed-beta">you can sign up for it here), and you can sign up for it now. In late 2018 the battle royale mode will be available, and next year Automaton Games is hoping to integrate its plans for the persistent open world, ongoing player-driven narrative, as well as player choices that will affect the larger world.
I admire Mavericks: Proving Grounds’ ambition. Automaton Games wants to make a massive shared shooter world where people can experience an ongoing narrative and level up their character while participating in battle royale. The promised tech is impressive, but it’s impossible to say if it will be able to deliver. It’s a game I will definitely be watching to see if it is able to live up to its potential.
[Editor's note: I previously listed the developer as Improbable, but the developer is actually Automaton Games. Improbable is developing the game's SpatialOS platform, the tech that makes it all work.]

As part of Microsoft’s massive E3 conference, Phil Spencer introduced a fighting game from Bandai Namco as a way of communicating Microsoft’s commitment to Japanese games. The trailer showed Dragon Ball’s Goku and Freeza, the titular character of Naruto, and Luffy from One Piece all fighting each other in realistic modern environments. Bandai Namco introduced the world to Jump Force, a 3D fighting game celebrating manga magazine Shonen Jump’s 50th anniversary.
The story of the game is that our world – that is to say, the real world – is colliding with the world, or worlds, of various Jump series. Unlike previous Jump crossover games, Jump Force is intended to have a story mode explaining why the various heroes and villains are clashing, though Bandai Namco would not tell us the reason quite yet. They only hinted that it would involve the machinations of Light and the Shinigami Ryuk, who were seen observing the fights from the top of a building at the end of the reveal trailer.

The fights take place, at least from what we were shown, in real-world locations. At E3, the only two levels shown were New York City and the Matterhorn, rendered with fairly realistic graphics. There weren’t any citizens fleeing from Naruto’s Kyuubi super or Freeza’s finger lasers, which is good, because that might have been a bit too much to take in.
The actual gameplay of Jump Force is not dissimilar to 3D fighting games already associated with the respective series. Mashing buttons will often get you exactly what you want to happen, usually a disappearing act as you dart across the arena and use your opponent as a volleyball. Holding a shoulder button and combining it with attacks gets you special moves like Goku’s Kamehameha, Luffy’s Gum Gum Pistol, or Naruto’s Rasengan. In that respect, the ease of execution is very similar to Smash Bros. more than, say, Dragon Ball Budokai or Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm.
The combat at the moment, however, is a little slow and unvaried. Characters all move at about the same speed and seem to have a lot of the same combos, making them feel extremely similar outside of their special moves. Mobility doesn’t seem that different between One Piece’s Zorro and Dragon Ball’s Goku, giving the possibly intentional impression that the game is designed to simply be picked up and played for anyone with any favorite character.
Bandai Namco wouldn’t give up the roster for the game, but hinted that there more than a few surprise characters that fans wouldn’t think of. While fighting ability and popularity are important factors, being able to please fans of more niche series is also a major goal for the development team.
Jump Force is scheduled to release in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Tags: PlayStation, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, E3, Microsoft, Bandai Namco, PC, IGN, Trailer, Namco

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The latest in the slew of games the Avalanche Studios, Generation Zero is much quieter than the chaos inherent in both Rage 2 and Just Cause 4, both in its gameplay and development. A small project with only around 40 people developing it and no publisher attached to it, the demo we saw for Generation Zero managed to leave an impression thanks to its unique vibe and killer presentation.
Set in an alternate version of the 80s, Generation Zero takes place in Sweden and finds you playing as a teenager (or a group of teenagers) who have come home to find from a trip from an isolated island to find that the nation has been overrun with violent robots made out of junky cart parts. People are missing or worse, and there’s only you, maybe your friends, and a countryside filled with murderous machines.
Generation Zero immediately draws comparisons to the cult classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R and earns them, giving you a wide and desolated landmass to explore, filled with towns and settlements, most of them occupied by neighborhoods with houses that you can go into and explore—or use as barricades for when the action gets tough. Runing on the Apex engine, the same engine that powers both Just Cause 4 and Rage 2, Generation Zero’s version of Sweden is stunning, with light that cuts through the trees and a slight fog that makes figures in the distance all the more ominous. Game Director Emil Kraftling points to some island in the distance, saying that co-op players can explore the entire island while in a multiplayer session without being tethered to one another, if they so choose.
The demoer spends the first few minutes scavenging ammo and loot from cars and boxes, armed with only a rusty PPK. We come across one of the machines, a runner, that looks like four pipes stuck to a car engine with a lamp for a head. The demoer manages to kill it with a few shots to the head but Kraftling warns that the vast majority of machines aren’t that easy to take down. You’ll have to be smart if you want to survive.
Many of the robots have specific body parts you can disable that will give you an advantage in battle. Clip a robot’s legs and it can’t move (though it can still fire at you with machienguns), shoot one in its visor and it won’t be able to use heat seeking signatures to track you. Environmental objects also let you even the odds when you come across a pack of foes. During our session, the demoer found three Runners in a town center. Using a boombox he picked up earlier, our player tosses it next to a nearby electrical station. The Runners investigating the song playing from the boombox immediately suffer a shock to their systems when the demoer unleashes a volley of bullets on the electrical station. He quickly takes them out while they’re stunned.
The best thing about Generation Zero is just how effective and uniquely eerie the game’s atmosphere is. Despite being set in the 80s, you won’t find an obnoxious amount of neon splashing your screen or hear Michael Jackson blaring from nearby radios. From what we’ve seen Generation Zero refuses to give into the temptation of paying excess homage to the decade of excess. Instead, there’s an unnerving level of HG Wells-style crypticness about the whole affair. Where did the machines come from? What do they want? How do you repel them?  Avalanche says that answering these questions will drive the game’s narrative which, again, can be experienced as a solo player or with a squad.
Our demo ends when our player comes across a new kind of mech in a field, one that dwarfs the Runner in size, awkwardly strutting about like a hobbled giraffe. There are square shaped boxes on its shoulder. The player takes a rifle shot at the mech and it responds by opening those boxes and showering the entire field with a rainstorm of missiles that kill the demoer and cutting to black.
We came away impressed with this slice of gameplay from Avalanche’s latest. As far as setting a mood, Generation Zero fires on all cylinders, engendering a spooky horror atmosphere that makes the game stand part from both Avalanche’s trademark zany output as well as the vast majority of other open-world survival games. We’ll have to wait more to learn about Generation Zero, which is due out in 2019, but this is one spooky co-op fest that has our undivided attention.

One of the best things about open-world role-playing games like the Elder Scrolls titles is they can be many things to many people. Some come for the combat mastery, or leveling characters to god status. Others are most invested in exploring vast open worlds. And then there are the . Some of this is inevitably lost in the transition to mobile platforms, but that's not to say fans won't find something to like about Elder Scrolls: Blades. 
at the Bethesda Showcase earlier in the week, Blades is a gorgeous looking mobile title divided into three modes – competitive arena, a story mode about building up a town, and a dedicated dungeon crawl. I got my hands on two scenarios that gave me a good idea of what to expect from the action. 
As Todd Howard explained during his presentation, the team wanted to design a system playable whether you have two free hands to play in landscape mode, or just one (which necessitates using portrait mode). Using either perspective, the touch controls are generally responsive and the control layout intuitive. I ran into some movement problems with navigating tight spaces, but the dungeon designs we played were so rudimentary you may not need to do much scavenging in the corners like you would a traditional Elder Scrolls game. There weren't many cabinets to peruse, books to read, or items to inspect. The only things I could interact with were some smashable vases (all of which looked the same) and the slow-moving enemies. Sneaking is removed from the equation as well, since the enemies don't really engage unless you willfully move their direction.
Combat is as straightforward as it needs to be considering you can play it one-handed. You press down on the touchscreen to charge up an attack, and also have hot buttons for blocking, a shield bash ability, and two spells. Spells and abilities run on cooldown timers, and aren't immediately available for use when you enter combat. For the purposes of this demo, I had a lightning attack and frost armor. The battles come down to careful timing. Parrying an attack opens up a counter opportunity, and some enemies use distance to stay out of your weapon's reach. To kill off the giant rats, you have to time our strike to the moment they moved in for an attack. The shield block and weapons aren't as responsive as you would get from a standard controller, but they're serviceable. 
Loot plays a critical role in Elder Scrolls games, but I'm not a fan of how Bethesda streamlined the goodies for Blades. Instead of receiving new weapons, armor, etc. when you kill an enemy or destroy an object, you collect one of two currencies – gems and coins. I assume these feed into a robust marketplace considering this is a free-to-play game. Harvesting currency doesn't feel nearly as rewarding as unsheathing a shiny new sword.
The inventory available to players feels line with standard Elder Scrolls games. You can equip multiple types of weapons, chest armor, gauntlets, shields, helmets, and the like. I just hope some of the rare items can be earned outside of the marketplace.
We didn't get a chance to check out the story mode, which could help the game feel more fleshed out. Based on my short time with the game, I think Blades fits capably in the time-killing mobile game genre. You could easily pick up the game for minutes at a time to grind out some currency to spend later. But as a long-time Elder Scrolls fan, I hope they don't give short shrift on the story, dialogue, and exploration, which are the true elements that make the franchise so special.  
Look for Elder Scrolls Blades on iOS and Android this fall. 

Tetris is one of the most readily available games in the world, and yet people keep making new versions of it. Most of them are generally unaltered, content to act as a quick and easy way to get the game on new platforms and services.
Tetsuya Mizuguchi's take on Tetris is a bit different. While the basic premise is still the same (I'm not going to explain Tetris to you), the way Tetris Effect alters the experience is more about altering the experience of playing Tetris than the game itself, and from my short demo at E3 this year, I think it really works.
I didn't think I'd come away excited about game I've played all my life at E3, but here are five reasons I'm excited to put on some headphones and play some damn Tetris in 2018. Tetsuya Mizuguchi has good taste in music
Although his games are often carefully designed, fun, and hypnotic puzzlers, the biggest appeal of Tetsuya Mizuguchi games for me is having another chance to delve into his taste in music. After playing hours of Lumines: Electronic Symphony a few years ago, I made a Spotify playlist of all the songs from the game available on the service, and had it on regular rotation for about two years.
The guy knows how to curate a playlist and enhance it through gameplay. You could easily sell Tetris Effect by saying "It's Lumines, but you play Tetris instead." That sounds crazy, but you also know exactly what I mean; while the puzzling aspect is a key part the experience, it's how the music and visuals intertwine with that experience that make Mizuguchi's work stand out, and that's what Tetris Effect is.
The songs I listened to during my demo are still stuck in my head, as are the various sound effects you can make by rotating and dropping Tetrominoes. As much as Tetris Effect is another Tetris game, it's also another Mizuguchi game, and those trappings enhance the trance you enter while playing Tetris. It's gorgeous
As in Lumines, Tetris Effect has you play through a series of songs rather than simply clear lines 'til you drop. When the music transitions from one song to the next, the backdrop and block aesthetic changes with it. During this transition, you get the kind of dense, colorful explosions you might want to test out a new 4K TV with, and it adds to the experience.
Some of the backdrops in my demo were especially trippy, including one themed after Egyptian pyramids, where all the blocks where cleverly made up of two triangles and a sea of enormous diagram-like shapes of spheres and pyramids approached the screen at high speed. Another involved a sort of tribal ritual, where part of the song and sound effects were the primal "huhs!" of a chant acted about the tribe on-screen. By default, the actual Tetris board is fairly small on the screen, placing a larger emphasis on the backdrop. It might a little distracting to your actual Tetris play, but it works. Especially In VR
Strapping on a headset to play Tetris sounds like something out of a dystopian future, but doing so is worth it for a couple of reasons. For one, it sort of forces you to put on headphones, which should be a given for a Mizuguchi game. Second, the visual flair that occurs when you transition from one song to the next is heightened when the particle effects fly right at your face.
You can also zoom the view of the board in and out, and at its most zoomed in, you actually have to look up and down to see the entire board. It's weird and again probably won't make you a better Tetris player, but this is more about the experience of playing Tetris than getting high scores, and it's a pretty fun novelty.

The Zone mechanic adds to Tetris without ruining it
The only real change to gameplay Tetris Effect makes is the introduction of the Zone mechanic. As you play you build up a meter, and when you unleash it (preferably when your board starts filling up), time slows down, letting you stack up and clear lines more easily. Even better, every line you clear is instead moved to the bottom of the board, and when the Zone timer ends, all the lines you've cleared disappear at once, making for some easy points.
Tetris is as perfect as any game is ever going to be, but the Zone adds to it in a fun way. It doesn't meaningfully alter the way you play Tetris, but does add a fun pace of building meter and pulling off Zone maneuvers, which again serves to distinguish Tetris Effect from other versions of the game without adding a layer that ruins the whole thing. It has a story mode
Okay, maybe not a story mode the way you're thinking. You don't play as the square Tetromino and recruit the other Tetrominoes to take down the malevolent Top of the Tetris Board or something. It's a little more like Rez, where there's a loose narrative between all the songs you're playing through, but nothing too overt. There's a plot and message in the Tetris Effect, but it'll be delivered through the music and game itself.
There's also a menu where you select different stages made up of three or four songs, each are which act as a short, tailor-made medley designed around a theme or feeling. The length of these medleys changes depending on what difficulty you play on, and you'll have to work your way up to the hardest difficulty in order to see the complete version of a given stage. It's a neat way to repackage Tetris, and I'm hoping it delivers the same sort of euphoric denouement Mizuguchi tends to go for in his games.
I'm still a little surprised by how excited the changes in Tetris Effect made me to play Tetris again. I'm still a bit on the fence about VR as a whole, but playing it with a headset on definitely pushed me closer towards one. But even if that doesn't appeal to you, can play the entire game without it. Just make sure you wear headphones.
Tetris effect is scheduled to release this fall on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR.

Tags: PlayStation, PlayStation VR, PlayStation 4, E3, Tetris, IGN

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At a behind doors demonstration during E3, we got to see some more of the sequel to Ori and The Blind Forest in action. The original game with its Metroid-like gameplay and beautiful graphics. From what we saw Will Of The Wisps, a sequel due out on Xbox One in 2018, will give fans of the first game even more beauty to gawk over while also adding a surprisingly in-depth combat system to the mix.
The demo we watched was short, focusing on Original explore a desert area called The Windswept Wastes. A new burrowing mechanic let Ori dive in and out of sandpits to tangle with nasty, fanged worm enemies. While on the surface, Ori had a whole suite of abilities to take on baddies, including a magical spear, bow & arrow, hammer, and self-healing ability. 
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Will of the Wisps, like the original game, is the fluidity of movement. Ori's movements recall an almost 90s Disney-like animation style, with the little fella zipping back and forth, launching volleys of arrows before bouncing out of a pit with two well-placed jumps. The speed and beauty of Ori's attacks and evasive maneuvers is lovely to behold and, just as it did with the platforming in the original game, gives Will Of The Wisps' combat its own unique identity.
We came away impressed with Will Of The Wisps. Though the game's release window is still a bit away, the offerings that Moon Studios showcased are a promising sign of where this platforming-action series will go.

OK, so this is Android, but is harkens back to the glory days of Psion, classic Symbian, Communicators, the HTC 7 Pro(!), and much more. The Gemini was designed by the same guy who designed the Psion Series 5, back in 1996, so it's worth taking a look, at least. For my Phones Show, I've now reviewed the Gemini and I think many people will find my verdict of interest. It can run Android, Linux or Sailfish (currently), it can run at a wide variety of screen scalings, it has full travel keys and pretty modern phone internals.

Video games aren't that good at friends. Oh sure, they can be great for making them. Various multiplayer games have facilitated very real and valid friendships, but the games themselves scarcely contain an ounce of the same stuff in their characters. Bonds of friendship in-game are generally left to barks and grunts of command. Vermintide 2, despite taking place in the grimmest, darkest fantasy land there is, somehow manages the impossible and gives us a party of unlikely heroes whose bond feels terribly sincere.
Vermintide 2 does a great job of forcing players to work together no matter which hero you choose to play as. No weapon or class reigns supreme and only a combination will see you survive the hordes of rat-men. This isn't the first co-op game to, well, encourage cooperation. What makes it special though, what makes it so memorable and pleasant on every visit is the banter between characters.
In the fiction of Warhammer pretty much all these characters should be at odds with each other, forced only by circumstance to work together. The first game saw them working out the kinks in their relationship, but this sequel shows them having bonded, veterans of the perpetual apocalypse. Snarky remarks and in-jokes linger, they rib each other plenty as all good friends do. Equally though, they constantly throw compliments to each other. Hearing "Look at the elf go!" from the party's witch as you tear into a horde of baddies is the sincere encouragement that puts a little smile on your face.

From Destructoid: "Agony is a bad game. It's fundamentally bad, as the core gameplay design is a tedious slog of stealth mechanics affixed to unpredictable and aggressive AI. It's also technically bad, as Agony suffers from significant performance issues on all platforms. All of this flies in the face of developer Madmind's pre-release promises of a game that doesn't compromise, as it ended up compromising heavily on both quality and content."