IndieCade is the best it’s ever been at E3 2016
IndieCade’s E3 installment always features a lineup of nifty games from independent developers, but this year it went above and beyond. Multiple games on display used physical objects or installation pieces as part of their gameplay, making the entire IndieCade booth a hub of joyful activity.
One game, Magic Dance Mirror from developer Kinetic Magic, used a Kinect motion sensor to track people’s movement and transfer it to a giant screen filled with neon starbursts that reacted to players’ dancing. The game did a great job of tracking my (admittedly terrible) dance moves and even allowed me to draw shapes like hearts and circles in twinkling lights. Magic Dance Mirror was built for clubs or large parties, not necessarily an everyday living room.
My favorite game of IndieCade’s E3 space was Beautiful Corner from Individual. It was indeed both beautiful and in a corner — the entire game played out in a small, fantastical bedroom complete with fox-and-rabbit wallpaper, cute creatures under the bed, a key in a wall and a trunk filled with magic water. It’s a coming-of-age story that plays out through letters, trinkets and postcards from the player’s imaginary friend. It’s moving and sweet, while commenting on the realities of growing up (or not). Lead designer and artist Martzi Campos created the game as her Master’s thesis in the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media and Design track. I’d give her that degree, for what it’s worth.
Check out these two games and a few more interactive exhibits, including a cuddly octopus and a full-body meditative VR experience, in our video direct from the E3 show floor.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
‘Portal 2’ and ‘Left 4 Dead’ are now playable on Xbox One
The list of Xbox 360 games backwards compatible with the Xbox One has now reached 200 titles with the addition of fan favorites Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead. Additionally, support was also added for Flashback, Brain Challenge and Babel Rising. Microsoft announced the backwards compatibility feature during last year’s E3, and rolled it out over the holiday season.
It was a particularly surprising and useful addition for gamers who still have large libraries of 360 games sitting around. While most of the big games are now supported on the Xbox One, it’s heartening to see new titles continually getting added. Support for multi-disc games was added last month, starting with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Since Microsoft has confirmed its followup console, the 4K ready Project Scorpio, will be compatible with all Xbox One titles, it’s very likely that backwards compatible 360 games will carry over as well.
Via: Polygon
Source: Major Nelson (Twitter)
E3 was secretly terrible for the future of virtual reality
After years of being teased with prototypes, developer kits and tech demos, it’s finally happening: Virtual reality is on the cusp of going mainstream. Need evidence? Just look at the events of E3 2016. Over the past week, the first-ever VR headset for a home console got a release date, and we caught a glimpse of virtual reality games from popular franchises like Star Wars, Final Fantasy and Batman. Better still, pretty much every major player in the industry (save for Nintendo) promised to support VR in 2017. On the surface, things are looking amazing. Dig a little deeper, though, and the situation just might be terrible.
Don’t misunderstand me: The VR announcements at E3 are a good indicator that consumer virtual reality is about to go mainstream. In a broad sense, that’s fantastic — but the details are a little worrying. Take Sony, for instance. At E3, we learned that the PlayStation VR headset would be available in October, and that early adopters would have as many as 50 games to choose from by the end of the year. Unfortunately, we also learned that some of those games might make you sick.
Even players who’ve spent countless hours in virtual reality (like our own Jess Conditt) found themselves on the verge of puking while playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard — and it wasn’t because of the horror game’s gory visuals either. No, it’s that the game is pushing the limits of PlayStation’s hardware, barely managing to run at the minimum 60 frames per second required for PSVR. The problem? Every other VR headset on the market recommends that games run at a minimum of 90 fps.
This wasn’t the game’s fault so much as the headset’s. By having such a low bar for entry, Sony is allowing PlayStation VR developers to create games that flirt with simulator sickness. Resident Evil 7 will probably improve its framerate before hitting the consumer market, but giving it the option not to be better sets a dangerous precedent: If the first console VR games to hit the market make players sick, that could severely damage public perception of virtual reality gaming in general.
Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey warned about this exact scenario two years ago. “When [VR] arrives, it has to be good,” he told me in 2014. “I think really bad VR is the only thing that can kill off VR.” Maybe that’s why Microsoft is holding off on offering VR to Xbox users until the arrival of its forthcoming Project Scorpio — an upgraded version of its console designed specifically for virtual reality and 4K content. Sony’s own PlayStation Neo will probably help with low framerates too, but Sony has also promised that all future games will run on today’s PS4 hardware. That means it’s possible that consumers will be exposed to nausea-inducing framerates. That’s bad for everyone.
Palmer Luckey may be right about simulator sickness, but Oculus VR isn’t off the hook when it comes to poisoning the well. The company spent much of E3 under fire for supposedly buying out multi-platform virtual reality games in order to make them exclusive to the Oculus Rift. Games like Superhot and Killing Floor: Incursion won’t be available to HTC Vive owners for a limited period of time after release, while others, like Ripcoil and Wilson’s heart, are first-party Oculus titles that will never be available to Vive owners. Nobody blinks when Sony announces an exclusive PlayStation game, but for the Vive and Rift’s platform, this is completely unprecedented. Until now, there was no such thing as a hardware-exclusive PC game.
To be fair, the accusations against Oculus are only partially true: Oculus is buying timed exclusivity in exchange for helping to fund a game’s development. It’s not actually taking games away from Vive owners; it’s just delaying their delivery. Even so, that’s never been done on PC before. Yes, game releases sometimes only sell on Valve’s Steam platform, or EA’s Origin, but players have never been barred from playing them because their PC wasn’t outfitted with a specific brand of component. If a PC was capable of running a game, it was allowed to play a game. That’s not the case with software sold through the Oculus store; if you own any other PC VR headset besides a Rift, you’re out of luck. Even if that same VR title is available on Steam, without hardware restrictions.
This directly contradicts statements made by Oculus’ own founder: “The software we create through Oculus Studios are exclusive to the Oculus platform, not the Rift.” That sounds diplomatic and fair, but the fact of the matter is that everything on the Oculus store lists the either the Rift or GearVR as its “platform.” If you don’t have Oculus hardware, you’re not going to be able to play anything. The only way to play an Oculus game on the Vive is to use a hack that bypasses the hardware check — except that tool, named Revive, was shut down by Oculus for stripping games of their DRM. It was the right business move for Oculus VR, which has a responsibility to protect its assets, but the move clearly drew a line in the sand: play these games on Oculus hardware, or don’t play them at all.
From a business perspective, Oculus has every right to lock the software sold in its store to its own hardware — but the practice is still disappointing. It’s expected that console VR market will fall in line with the console wars that define their marketplace, but that’s not something that’s ever existed in the PC market. By locking all software on the Oculus store to a specific brand of VR headsets, Oculus is declaring a platform war in a space that has been at relative peace for decades. That’s not just bad for the burgeoning VR market; it’s bad for PC gaming in general.
In the broader sense, however, things are still looking bright for the future of consumer VR. A major player in the consumer gaming space is releasing a mainstream headset, and another is building a console just to serve the market. Oculus’ immersive Touch controllers are getting prepped for launch, and there are a ton of great looking games on the horizon — but a fractured PC market and a headset that makes people puke could stifle the growth VR needs to make it big.
Maybe Nintendo is right to sit out of VR’s first consumer generation. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
A one-button wearable defeats the purpose of Pokémon Go
Whenever you ask Pokémon players what they enjoy about playing the games, it usually involves the actual Pokémon in some way. Some enjoy training up their creatures to create the ultimate battle team; others really get into the breeding aspects of the game. In some titles you can even enter your Pokémon in beauty pageants where you dress them up in gaudy accessories. And of course, there’s the thrill of finding as many species as possible in order to achieve the ultimate goal: a complete Pokédex containing every single known Pokémon. These characters lie at the heart of most of Pokémon gameplay.
Which is what makes the new wearable, the Pokémon Go Plus, somewhat puzzling. It’s an optional add-on for the new mobile AR game Pokémon Go that reduces the action of capturing a Pokémon to a series of blinking lights. The device lights up and vibrates when a Pokémon is nearby. You push the button to attempt a capture, and the device will respond with a blue light to indicate success, or a red light for failure.
The idea is that by making it so that Pokémon trainers can participate in the game without having to pull out their phones, they’ll stay focused on the real world. If they’re on their way somewhere they can keep walking, and if they’re in the middle of a conversation they can keep on talking. However, Pokémon can be a bit of an obsession, and it’s unlikely that someone’s going to push the button and not going to want to pull out their phone. That’s because a lot of the joy of the game lies in the thrill of “What did you get?”
The button is also meant to save time, as Pokémon capture can be a bit of tricky business and often requires a bit of consideration: Which Poké Ball do you use? Would an item help? That thought process has been replaced by a strategy of “spray and pray,” which means that when you eventually pull out your phone you’ll probably still spend a bit of time pruning your roster of creatures. There are also bound to be occasional disappointments. What happens when the player encounters a rare Pokémon? Does the Go Plus automatically pick the best capture strategy? Or will players open up the app to find out their Go Plus tried to capture a Mew with a standard Poké Ball and failed? (Pro tip: You’re gonna want a Master Ball for that.)
There’s nothing wrong with trying to extend the Pokémon experience into the real world with some extra hardware. This isn’t the first time that a Pokémon game has flirted with add-ons, nor is the Go Plus the first device to encourage Pokémon trainers to be more active: The Pokémon Pikachu was a digital pet that also served as a pedometer, rewarding the user for walking by unlocking more in-game activities. Its successor, the Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS, could transfer data with Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal, essentially trading steps taken for in-game items. Years later the PokéWalker was bundled (for free) with copies of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, and served up a lot of the same functions. All of these pedometers are nice add-ons to the Pokémon experience, but they’re also gaming devices that can be actually used on their own. Your interaction with the Go Plus is limited to pushing a button and hoping it turns blue.
Perhaps this wouldn’t be a big deal if the Pokémon Go Plus were cheap and disposable; something you could try once and then forget about. But Nintendo doesn’t do cheap and disposable — though the game will be free at launch and doesn’t require the Go Plus to work, the device is sold separately for $35. That’s more than many people will ever spend on a mobile game. Heck, it’s about what you’d spend on the average 3DS game, Pokémon titles included. Casual users are likely to opt out, even though they’re the ones most likely to benefit from a wearable that makes it easier to get further in Pokémon Go without having to sink hours of effort into it.
You’d have to really like Pokémon to drop that much cash on such thing, never mind wear it openly. And there are plenty of people who will do just that. Hardcore trainers are always looking for new ways to improve their Pokémon experience, and may not mind the extra work the whole “throw a Poké Ball at everything” approach entails in terms of team management. But it’s also not what drew players to the franchise in the first place. If you really like Pokémon, wouldn’t you want more than just a blinking light?
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
‘ReCore’ is the mashup of ‘Metroid’ and ‘Mega Man’ I didn’t know I wanted
Several of the games I’ve written about at this year’s E3 have been massive reinventions of huge franchises. That made the all-too-brief time I spent with ReCore (developed by Comcept and Armature Studio) one of the more relaxed and enjoyable gaming experiences I had at E3 this year. Even though it’s not remaking legendary games of years past, ReCore still has a lot of fun and unique gameplay elements — it looks like you’ll get to do a lot of Metroid-style exploration, and swapping through your three robotic “bot” companions adds a level of depth and strategy to your encounters.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to do any exploration, but I did get a good taste of the smooth and fluid combat system during my demo. One trigger locks you on to your enemies and the other lets you blast away, making it relatively painless to keep up with the swarms of fast-moving attacking robots. Another button tells your robot companion to attack, and you can swap rapidly between them at any time. Each bot has its own special attack you can use to even the odds, as well.
The bots are designed to be crucial to your success — if you forget about utilizing those special attacks, you’ll likely end up in big trouble. But using those, as well as the Mega Man-style charge attacks, can help even the odds. There’s just something about the combo of dashing about and blasting away that reminded me of Mega Man, not in a hugely obvious way, but there’s clear inspiration here. No surprise given that one of Mega Man’s creators Keiji Inafune is a producer on ReCore.
Another gameplay technique that sets ReCore apart is the fact that you have four different-colored blasters, each of which corresponds to an enemy type. So if you come across reddish enemies, using the red blaster will deal extra damage. But some bigger enemies can only be killed by using your grappling hook to rip their glowing “core” orbs out of their bodies, and some of those enemies have cores that switch colors at will. So you’ll have to keep an eye on which blaster you’re using at any given time to be most effective.
The big question I was unable to answer in my quick 10-minute play session was how Recore will hold up over longer play sessions — there have been questions about whether or not the combat will get too repetitive over the course of the game. I didn’t get to find out how long the entire campaign will be, but the game doesn’t feel like it’s going to have that extensive of a running time where you’ll get tired of it. In fact, the controls and combat felt tight and fun enough that I think I’ll be happy to play the game for hours on end. Plus, that robotic dog is so cute.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
‘Tekken 7’ is built for spectacle and spectators
The Tekken series has now reached its seventh major iteration. It’s already in arcades, but at E3 2016, Bandai Namco confirmed an early 2017 launch date for both Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The game has evolved to include a gentler learning curve, more cinematic scenes blended into the story mode, as well as adding slow-down to those nail-biting final moments to make them all the sweeter. Oh and a certain street fighter called Akuma. We asked Katsuhiro Harada, the outspoken producer of Tekken to explain the changes — as well as the challenges of combining a pedigree fighting series with virtual reality.
Competitive Play coming to ‘Overwatch’ soon
It hasn’t even been a month since Blizzard launched its hotly-anticipated hero shooter Overwatch, so they had little to reveal during E3. Amid their victory lap for snagging 7 million players the week after it went live, the game’s director Jeff Kaplan posted plans for releasing content over the next year. While vague on release dates for characters or maps, he did outline the social and competitive trajectory the game will take — and reiterate that every addition will be free.
The team’s highest priority is Competitive Play, a separate multiplayer selection to differentiate more serious ranked matches from casual ones. Kaplan gave no details on when this would be introduced, but like Blizzard says about every content addition, it’ll be done “when it’s done.” They may try it out early in a siloed Public Test Realm to get live player feedback, a method Blizzard uses to trial new features and characters in its MOBA Heroes of the Storm, but aren’t promising either way.
True to Blizzard’s extensive secrecy and refinement process, the only character or map detail Kaplan confirmed was that the team has greenlit one map for their artists to start animating. He went on to point out features they’d like to improve later on, like the spectating system, end game Highlights/Play of the Game and social features like emotes, but those are low priority.
Playing coy is an unfortunate protective measure for the team, Kaplan says: so many things get changed in development or scrapped outright that announcing anything now is a surefire method to disappoint players. Sadly, some fans have lashed out at developers for changing or leaving previously introduced gameplay elements on the cutting room floor — a relationship Kaplan says needs to change. Until then, the studio will be miserly with the details and fans will continue chomping at the rumor mill.
Via: Polygon
Source: Overwatch forums
PlayStation VR demos begin at Best Buy and GameStop tomorrow
At this week’s annual E3 game show, Sony revealed the exact ship date for its PlayStation VR setup: October 13th. Pre-orders have been open since March, but if you’re still weighing the pros and cons, you’ll have the chance to try before you buy starting tomorrow (June 17th). At select Best Buy and Gamestop locations, the virtual reality tech will be available for your to test drive.
This weekend, the demos are limited to 30 locations total, but Sony says that number will increase to 300 stores in the US and Canada starting June 24th. To find the spot closest to you, consult this handy map. You’ll want to check the dates and times carefully though, as the PS VR is available for a few hours at a time and some locations won’t have it every day.
Source: PlayStation Blog
The first 30 minutes of Telltale’s ‘Batman’ are sexy and gritty
Telltale’s Batman opens with a bang. A security guard sits quietly in the entryway of Gotham City Hall, when suddenly, bam — he gets a shotgun blast to the head. A team of criminals in full-body armor and masks walk past his body, murmuring about whether Batman will show up. He will, of course, as will Lieutenant Gordon, Selina Kyle as Catwoman, reporter Vicki Vale, politician Harvey Dent and Gotham crime lord Carmine Falcone. Note that Gordon isn’t Commissioner yet and Harvey Dent still has his whole face.
Telltale’s version of Batman begins just a few years into Bruce Wayne’s vigilante career and it reboots his entire storyline, according to Telltale maketing head Richard Iggo. DC Comics is allowing Telltale to craft its own, unique story in the Batman universe. The companies have a previous relationship; Telltale transformed DC’s Fables into video game form with The Wolf Among Us in 2013.
Batman’s characters and some of its situations will be familiar to franchise fans, but Telltale promises plenty of surprises.
“At the outset we made it very clear we’d love to do a new story about Batman and that’s what they’re letting us do,” Iggo says. “Our plan and our goal and what we are going to do is turn things completely on their head for you, as the player, and also for Bruce Wayne. There’s going to be things which are very, very different to the established canon.”
Telltale’s Batman is rated M and it’s going to get gritty. The story and gameplay focuses on the two masks that Bruce Wayne wears — the bat-suit and the fancy tuxedoes he dons as the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. This is classic Telltale fare: The action sequences are rapid-fire quick-time events and there are a smorgasbord of dialogue options that lead to different narrative outcomes and relationships. Players are able to choose how Bruce Wayne acts and responds to certain people, lending him varying degrees of emotional depth.
In the game’s first 30 minutes, Batman banters with Catwoman in an exchange dripping with believable sexual tension, even as they leap around the roof of a skyscraper and attempt to take down one another. The setting swaps to Bruce leaning against the mantlepiece in his bedroom at Wayne manor, injured and speaking with Alfred as he gets stitched up. Telltale’s Bruce is introspective and dead-set on defending Gotham, regardless of personal injury.
Bruce eventually dons a tuxedo and his bedroom doors open onto a fancy, lively party already taking place in his ballroom. It’s a fundraiser for Harvey Dent, who’s running for mayor of Gotham. The two have a friendly relationship that plays out in player-chosen responses, allowing Bruce to appear colder or warmer to Harvey in subtle ways. Their history is clear and the characters feel settled into their personalities right from the get-go. That’s probably a perk of working with a franchise that’s more than 75 years old.
“We’re definitely delving into the dark psychology of what it means to be Bruce Wayne, so that M rating allows us to do that with really no holds barred,” Iggo says. “The freedom that have is that we’ve been given characters that you might think of as an ally, who may turn into a villain. One of the questions that’s continually asked of Batman or Bruce Wayne is, is he actually responsible for creating the villains around him? That’s definitely something that we’re going to explore. And of course that will come from your choice as a player.”
Batman looks great, too. Telltale has updated its engine for this one and The Walking Dead Season 3, adding cloth and physics simulations, new lighting and optimization across the board, Iggo says. Though Telltale has carte blanche to play with Batman in new ways, he isn’t going to be a complete departure from the Bruce fans know and love (to hate, at times). Part of the game will focus on Batman — and Bruce Wayne — as “the world’s greatest detective,” Iggo says. Part of it will feature Batman as a skilled fighter. He isn’t a killer, though.
“He’s obviously very violent in what he does,” Iggo says. “He’s kind of ruthless as far as it needs to be. I don’t think we’re intending for him to be a murderer.”
The first episode of Telltale’s Batman series lands sometime this summer and all five episodes are set to launch before the end of the year.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
‘Here They Lie’ made a nightmare feel safe on PlayStation VR
The advantage that horror video games have over movies is that you’re an active participant in what’s happening; you make what happens onscreen that much scarier. But playing these games in virtual reality instead of a 2D screen is a different proposition: The display is on your face, and in the case of PlayStation VR, costs $400. Ripping the headset off and reflexively throwing it to the ground out of fright is going to be a very expensive mistake. That’s why the team at Tangentlemen is taking a different approach for Here They Lie, a psychological thriller drawing from directors Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam, and films like It Follows and Jacob’s Ladder for inspiration.
In the PlayStation-exclusive Here They Lie, everything moves at a very deliberate pace. From the creepy, masked humanoid creature that shadowed me, to the speed I moved through a subway station and how the hammerhead sharks swam through the air (yeah, the game gets weird), everything moved at a leisurely gait. Unlike Resident Evil VII, which occupied the demo station immediately next to it and gave two of my coworkers severe motion sickness, Here They Lie feels like a native VR game even though it’ll also be playable without a headset.
Art director Rich Smith said that the main difference between a VR game and a traditional one is that the camera can be doing anything. That means developers have to employ periphery elements like spatial audio and lighting design to ensure the player sees exactly what they’re intended to. Then they combine it with the medium’s inherent sense of immersion to amp up the creepy factor. “That’s the way you structure a horror experience that still feels like you have agency, and that you can go anywhere and see anything,” Smith said.
Image credit: Giphy
During my brief demo, a subway station went from dingy and dirty to me wading through an ankle-deep pool of blood toward a door. That immediately drew the infamous tide of blood erupting from the elevators in The Shining to mind. As soon as I reached the door, it shifted ahead, forcing me to reluctantly keep trudging forward. The next time I reached for the doorknob, it shifted again. Earlier, before the blood took over, I found myself walking backward down a flight of stairs to keep an eye on the vaguely human creature following me before it disappeared just out of sight.
“It’s surreal, psychological, existential horror,” Smith commented.
A feeling of present danger pervades everything, and yet nothing was an imminent threat. When the demo ended with the game’s twisted, fiery “big bad” enemy grabbing hold of me, I was extremely unsettled, but not scared. He didn’t jump out of a dark corner; crouching under the low ceiling, he slowly stalked toward me on an unnaturally long pair of legs and I was helpless to stop him. I felt like I was playing through a nightmare.
That comes from the team’s cinematic inspirations. “There’s a kind of dread involved in [It Follows] that’s different than slasher horror,” Smith said. “We’re definitely looking more at the kind of Kubrick vein of horror. What he did in [The Shining] is about building a mood and setting a tone. And when you do hit [players] hard with a scare, it has a little bit more weight.”
What Here They Lie does so well is it builds an atmosphere and feelings of unease by taking recognizable bits from our world (like the hammerhead sharks) and twisting them in ways that don’t add up (like them swimming above my head in a subway tunnel). It creates an overall sense of uncertainty and fear in indirect ways rather than lazily signposting the emotions with piles of rotting bodies or a few jump scares.
Smith said this is a strong, direct inspiration from the 1990 cult movie Jacob’s Ladder.
In that film, Vietnam War veteran Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) sees all manner of horrific imagery like someone asleep on a train who quickly curls a bloody tail into their trench-coat and a nurse with a set of ghastly, diminutive horns under her uniform hat. During Singer’s time in the war, the government administered a drug that made soldiers hyper-violent and more effective killers. The side effects aren’t pleasant at all.
“You really don’t know what [Jacob’s] deal is. Is it all a hallucination? Is he in hell? Even all the way to the end of the movie, it’s intentionally ambiguous,” Smith said. “That’s what we’re grabbing at as well: The kind of ambiguity where parts of the game are recognizable, where you can see figures and locations you recognize from real life, but they’re not quite right and they don’t stitch together the way you want them to.”
As for why you’re enduring these horrors, Smith was intentionally vague about the game’s overarching story. You’re chasing after a woman in a yellow jacket and you’ll have to rely on other characters to fill in the blanks for you, but that’s about all Smith revealed. How you learn about the protagonist is from other characters, who know more about you than you know yourself. “You’re thrown into this space where, almost [Terry] Gilliam-style, you don’t know where your stance is in relation to the world you’re in,” he revealed.
There are morally ambiguous choices to make regarding these characters, and by story’s end you’re complicit in how the narrative plays out. “The game persistently asks questions, and in the end, it asks the player a particular question based on their experience throughout. That decision is pivotal to the experience.”
Of all the games launching with PlayStation VR this October 13th, Here They Lie looks like the one that’ll take advantage both of the format and the Halloween season.
Follow all the news from
AIVAnet 