Launching on July 13, All-Star Fruit Racing will race on to Xbox One and PlayStation 4. While the name may sound a bit silly – childlike even – the game looks like it will be a ton of fun, just check out the trailer below. Including split-screen for up to four players, the karting racer is set within lush vibrant environments that could have been plucked straight from Wreck-It Ralph's Sugar Rush world. As you progress through the career mode, which is set across the four seasons of the year and in ‘Special Islands', the action unfolds over 21 tracks. As you progress, kart parts are unlocked so you can really pimp up your fruity vehicles with over 32,000 possible kart combinations. And no kart racer would be complete without the obligator weapons arsenal. Once powered up, the juicer can unleash a wave of fruit-based attacks to cripple your foes with individual shots as you gain juice or with an almighty attack once it is full to bursting. With Dragster races, Hill Climbs, Elimination races, Time Attacks and modifier modes, there seems to be plenty of juicy content in All-Star Fruit Racing.
War Thunder, which will enter a free-to-play format later this year, is now available for Xbox One. The cross-platform war ground between land, sea and air comes in three purchasable packs, which start at £15.99/19,99€, each with their own unique vehicle, decals and player titles. With over 1,000 military vehicles to choose from, the MMO takes place across 80 maps that have been created from real-life battle scenarios across our history. Playable in both PvP or PvE, War Thunder will appeal to those after an intense battle against other players online or for those wanting to partake in historical campaigns. With land and air squared away, War Thunder Naval Battles is the last piece of the puzzle for Gaijin Entertainment, with Xbox One players able to get access right away, while PlayStation 4 and PC players need to be owners of a Naval Pack for access to the closed beta.
Pro Evolution Soccer’s gameplay has captivated in past years, and after my hands-on with the game at E3 2018 I’m happy to say that realistic but eminently fun gameplay is still the series’ bedrock in PES 2019.
The main thing that strikes me about PES 2019’s gameplay is the ball itself. I’ve always liked the way PES’ ball has felt when shooting and for deliciously weighted through balls, and this year you can definitely see players reacting to it differently from last year. It may take an extra second for a player to bring down that chest-high lofted pass on the touchline or take an extra touch in order to get the ball under control. You can also see it in some passes, as a lofted pass with curve on it forces the recipient to adjust.
PES 2018 made a point to slow the game down, and ironically, the free movement of the ball makes the action tick along briskly even though PES brand manager Andre Bronzoni told me that nothing had been done to the game’s actual speed per se. PES 2019 features snow in appropriate stadiums, and although it does not accumulate, Bronzoni says it and rain will affect the ball.
Elsewhere on the gameplay front during my hands-on time I perceived that players got headers off quicker (requiring less of a windup) and fouls occurred when expected (for both teams) without it being a parade of yellow cards. This was a point of contention last year, and Bronzoni says that some leagues should be more strict about fouls (like in Brazil) than others (such as in Scotland).
Visable fatigue is new element of the game, and I certainly saw players with their hands on their knees while waiting for a throw-in, for example. The onscreen quick sub system (similar to FIFAs) can be used to adddress fatigue, but I don’t think players’ actual fatigue levels (viable in the pause menu) were different from last year. Despite this, pushing fatigued players will lead to injuries, and it will drain players’ overall stamina reserves game-to-game in the Master League mode.
The Master League is an area that PES 2019 needs to succesfully address, and one of the central components is the transfer system. Konami says it’s being overhauled <(a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/games/pro_evolution_soccer_2019/b/playstation4/archive/2018/05/09/pro-evolution-soccer-2019-officially-revealed.aspx">click for some more basic details on the game), but I did not get a lot of information on this front. I am, however, disappointed to hear that outside clubs don’t influence players' transfer prices during negotiations even though they’re listed as being interested the same player you are. Club prestige is a concept, however, that comes into play when it comes to whether players sign with your club or not. Smaller clubs will be out of luck for the big names until they are more established. This has been the case in past Pro Evos, so I’m unclear how PES 2019 is distinct.
MyClub is also getting a makeover, with the most notable being that Konami is releasing special versions of players through the year. It's also ditching the black ball system where scouts and agents based on certain player characteristics are stacked to increase the chances that you’ll pull the player you like.
MyClub in 2019 lets you see who you’re going to sign, although agents are still used to find specific players. Bronzoni wouldn’t say if the packs you’ll buy consist of players, agents, or a mix, but overall he says that the odds of gamers getting the players they want shouldn’t be vastly different.
The developer is still figuring out how it’s going to handle auctions – which had a useful two-stage bidding system – given the big changes to the mode, but the dual stars/GP currencies are the same. Moreover, users can still train players.
Nothing is written in stone just yet for PES 2019 – there are still a lot of details I'd like to know for the Master League and MyClub modes. We’ll have to wait and see how those shake out, but once again gains have been made on the gameplay front that certainly show that the game is putting its best foot forward.
During PlayStation's E3 2018 press briefing, Remedy wowed attendees and viewers with the first trailer of its upcoming game, Control. The trailer was exciting but left more questions than answers. Thankfully, I met with Remedy to see the game in action and learn more about the company's mysterious new world.
Remedy has always been known for narrative-driven experiences, but creative director Sam Lake says the team wants to expand beyond what the studio is known for. “Coming out of Quantum Break, I was concepting this with Mikael Kasurinen, who is our game director,” he says. “We wanted to, first and foremost, create a deep and mysterious world – a many-layered world that players would be drawn back to even when they have played for a long time to explore, find secrets, and piece things together.”
In Control, you play as Jesse Faden, a person who had a traumatic encounter with the unexplainable as a child. The encounter changed her and left her with questions about what she is and what is possible in the world. In search of answers, she travels to the Oldest House, a massive Manhattan skyscraper where the secretive governmental organization in charge of investigating unexplainable things, the Federal Bureau of Control, resides. However, just as she arrives, a mysterious, supernatural force known as The Hiss attack the Oldest House, possessing the employees of the Bureau and killing the Director.
Not realizing what it is, Jesse picks up the Director’s gun. However, the gun is an Object of Power with the ability to morph and shift its powers. In picking up this weapon, Jesse becomes the new Director, placing a target on her back for the possessed Bureau employees. As Jesse turns a corner, a man holding a gun creepily walks toward her. He slowly looks at her and readies his gun. Jesse realizes what’s about to happen and pulls a portion of the floor up to block the gunfire. Turns out the gun isn’t the only powerful part of the main character. She then blasts the debris at the assailant, stunning him. Using her powers, she grabs a computer monitor from across the room and smashes it into him, knocking him down.
“The thing that we wanted from really early on was to make a really challenging experience.”
Exploring the Oldest House is easier said than done. In addition to the myriad enemies trying their luck at taking down Jesse, you also must deal with shifting walls and rooms. Remedy relies heavily on elements of new weird, a subgenre of science fiction revolving around a normal world being changed by a foreign object that is often unexplainable by human science, as well as dream logic. The building behaves unpredictably, but you can sometimes trigger these shifts by performing abstract rituals that require you to think outside the box.
“It’s a Place of Power on its own… this weird, shifting, strange place that’s vastly bigger on the inside than the outside would lead you to believe,” Lake says. “If you know the rules, if the conditions are right, if you know the right rituals, you can keep on traveling – essentially forever – deeper into this building. And step by step, also, leaving our known reality behind.”
Quantum Break placed a heavy emphasis on story, but Lake says this time around, the studio is more focused on the gameplay. Lake and Kasurinen also wanted to deliver a less linear experience where players would want to dive back in time and again to learn more about the world, complete challenges, and discover new things.
This is evident as Jesse comes to a big, long room with multiple doors. Each door leads to different area, giving the Oldest House sandbox elements. As Jesse continues down the path, she comes to a chasm with seemingly no way across. The demoer says that to pass this gap, she must unlock the Levitate ability. Thankfully, Jesse already has this ability, so there’s no need to backtrack to find it. Jesse effortlessly glides across and continues down the path.
As you play, you encounter multiple side-missions. The optional quest I see is a guy who’s stuck staring at a refrigerator. He tells Jesse he’s been stuck staring for days without rest or food and he’s hoping she can relieve him of his duties. I’m not sure what that would entail, but there’s no time for that. Jesse leaves the poor soul behind and continues along her way.
As the demo nears its end, Jesse encounters Rooney, the head of security. Unfortunately, the Hiss have gotten to him as well, and he is much more powerful than any other enemy she’s encountered at this point in the demo. Rooney possesses similar skills as Jesse, but he seems faster and has more projectiles. After shooting him and smashing him with several pieces of debris, Rooney gives one last-ditch effort, but Jesse expertly dodges it and delivers the killing blow.
Jesse leaves the room and enters a bright, white room. She walks toward a massive upside-down black triangle – The Astral Plane. The demo ends after the impressive boss battle, and I’m left wondering what will await her in the Astral Plane.
Control feels like the ultimate realization of what Remedy has attempted in past games. “I would like to think that with each project, we learn what works and what didn’t work that well,” Lake says. “We always want to bring in new elements and try out new things. Here, I think we’ve done a bit more of that than times in the past. But also, I feel there will be a lot of things that the fans will see the evolution of and where certain things have come from.”
The more open structure, the powers Jesse wields, and the abstract shifting building lead to a complex title to wrap your head around. Control looks to keep players on their toes more than other Remedy games.
“The thing that we wanted from really early on was to make a really challenging experience,” Lake says. “We are dealing with weird concepts, but also from the gameplay side and storytelling side, if you have a linear game, what you end up doing is you are holding the player’s hand and leading them through the experience. ‘Look now, here is the next thing. And you go straight down the hall, and then you see the next thing.’ We decided very early on that this is hands off. We are not helping. We want this to be more player-driven, and the player goes in and pursues the things they are interested in. We are serving fewer things on the platter for you, and leaving you more to piece together for yourself, and try out and experiment, and discover, and learn. We do believe that this will make it more engaging and more rewarding.”
I can’t wait to see what else Control has in store when it launches in 2019.
Dead or Alive 6 was announced last week, the first full sequel in the series since Dead or Alive 5 released in 2012, and Dead or Alive 4 in 2006 before that. The series does not treat full sequels lightly and tends to try and interpret the wishes of its community through their own development lens with new features and characters and overall focuses with each new game. With Dead or Alive 6, Team Ninja and KOEI Tecmo are trying to fit the 22-year-old series into a more modern mold while not leaving what fans like about the series behind.
The new big addition to Dead or Alive 6 is the Fatal Rush button. Much like a lot of other modern fighting games, Dead or Alive 6 adds an auto-combo button, but places it as its own separate skill. Gone is the Power Blow from the previous game, with the button replaced by a combo that does fairly significant damage to the enemy. If the meter is full, a Fatal Rush culminates in a move similar to what a Critical Blow in Dead or Alive 5 ended with.
Unlike with most auto-combo functions in fighting games, DOA focuses heavily on reversal mechanics, making Fatal Rushes difficult to use against someone who knows where attacks will be coming from. As a method to make their game friendlier for casual players, the Fatal Rush seems to put a hard ceiling on how far a new player can go with it until eventually it becomes useless for competitive play. Combo variety has always been required to make DOA competitive, so making a combo that plays out the same way the entire time feels like the game has almost solely dedicated a button to training wheels that will eventually become vestigial.
Far teresting is the Fatal Reversal, which used the Fatal button and a direction to essentially dance around an enemy attack and appear behind them, with them completely stunned. With the ninjas, this obviously manifests itself as disappearing and reappearing behind them, but every character has their own unique flourish and animation to make it looks flashy and visually interesting.
The game as a whole is making a concerted effort to display a more modern version of cool. Of particular note are the UI and presentation in the demo, which are leagues ahead of the previous game, with special mention being given to the game's gorgeous character select screen. It gives the game more personality than the stark black and white industrial mid-2000s look of DOA5.
The demo had an option for the story mode, which was greyed out for our build. Game director Yohei Shimbori told us that they plan to include the story in a similar manner to Dead or Alive 5, but cautions that they will be tweaking the structure “because the story of the last game was hard to understand.” The previous game’s story mode jumped around to different times to hide a plot twist that was not made particularly obvious in the story.
During Dead or Alive 5’s development, Team Ninja was reactive to community concerns and worked to fix them before the game’s release. Whether or not the community will find long term issues with the new Fatal action system, it might be something Team Ninja needs to take a closer look at before Dead or Alive 6 launches in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
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.
The Tomb Raider reboot has been about building up Lara Croft from a determined but inexperienced explorer to the hero we know today. During our E3 demo of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we got to play her as a full-on predator, culminating in a chilling scene that shows her confronting – and dismissing – any remaining fears or lingering insecurities.
Unlike , which featured a gunfight that didn’t end until either Lara or her Trinity adversaries were dead, today’s demo was more flexible. It’s set in a Peruvian jungle, with multiple routes and paths to explore. Lara moves through a dirt trail, as a radio crackles to live with a warning that “Croft is heading to your location.” She climbs a tree, and sees a trio of enemies below her. Jumping down and taking them out with her knife would be a dangerously stupid thing to attempt, so I draw my bow and fire a new fear arrow into the neck of the closest goon.
The projectile hits its mark with a satisfying “Thwack!” and the victim looks around. He begins firing wildly at his comrades, clearly under its spell, taking them both out. A few seconds later, his panic turns to distress as he finally succumbs to the poison and hits the ground dead. It’s reminiscent of the berserk darts and similar toxins from the Assassin’s Creed games, but that familiarity doesn’t make the effects any less enjoyable. Ahead, I use the same tactic to eliminate a cluster of four enemies. The fear arrows are a limited resource, and they’re also not effective on armored enemies, so I take advantage while I can.
Lara is agile as ever, and climbing trees and getting the drop on enemies remains a solid approach. When a Trinity soldier gets too close to me on a patrol, I use a stealth kill that has Lara fire a rope arrow at him, drop from the tree, and string him up. I’m doing so well that I start to get a little cocky; I try to deactivate a generator while a guard is coming back, and he notices me – even though I stopped by a puddle a bit earlier and covered myself in mud.
The fighters are aggressive and relentless. I try to juke their attacks, but it’s hard to avoid bullets with fancy footwork alone. I do manage to scramble away and backtrack to a vine-covered wall, where I can hide in its greenery. It’s enough to fool the guards into thinking I’m gone for good. That was a mistake. I find a gas can in an elevated spot, and throw it on the ground near several guards. They react the same way they do when I chuck bottles at them: firing blindly at the sound. It’s a fatal error, as their shots detonate the container and the explosion clears out the stragglers.
Lara radios for her friend Jonah, and hears an unfamiliar voice. Jonah’s dead, the voice taunts, and his body can be found in the refinery. “I’m coming for you,” she replies.
Lara moves past a gate, and the jungle gives way to a dustrial setting. Steel drums and vehicles are scattered along the path, which leads to the refinery. She’s midway across a bridge when a spotlight blasts on face, mounted on a helicopter. Stealth is no longer an option. An army of Trinity thugs open fire, and an extended platforming sequence begins. We’ve all seen the basic elements here before – collapsing catwalks, rails that bend and swing when grabbed, and death-defying leaps – but the graphical fidelity and effects from the now-flaming refinery keep it exciting.
The demo ends with Lara falling into the water, and her body is limp as it sinks. A montage of audio memories plays; people from her past and Lara herself doubt her resolve. But she refuses to give in. Her eyes open, and she slowly rises from the water, standing tall as walls of flame flicker behind her. A wounded guard is on the dock, and Lara methodically bears down on him, knife ready. It’s a powerful moment, and the screen cuts to black before we see how it ends. I can only imagine it’s not going to be good for him, for Trinity, and possibly for Lara herself.
Look for Shadow of the Tomb Raider on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Sept. 14.
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.
"My experience with the NieR franchise is mostly limited to the release of NieR: Automata when it launched on the PlayStation 4 last year. I did play a few hours of the original NieR back on the Xbox 360 some 7 years ago, but I would be surprised if I played more than 4 or 5 hours of it. While not much has changed for this Xbox One release, at least in any substantial way, Xbox One gamers finally have the chance to play this wonderful action masterpiece. " Jeff Young - Analog Stick Gaming
