Nintendo to end Wii U production this week
The Wii U game console has come to the end of the line — its production line, specifically. Eurogamer reports multiple sources have confirmed that the final Wii U unit will be built this Friday.
The Wii U has been a slow seller for Nintendo over the course of its production run. The console has sold barely 13 million units since its debut in November, 2012. By contrast the GameCube sold 21 million during its run, the N64 sold 32 million and the original Wii sold a whopping 101 million units.
When asked for comment, Nintendo declined, stating that “We have nothing to announce on this topic.” Though, given how tight-lipped the company is being with the upcoming release of is next console, the Switch, that response is not surprising.
Source: Eurogamer
Gun through ‘Gears of War 4’ as Run The Jewels in new DLC
Earlier today, the acclaimed rap pair Run The Jewels announced a new single “Panther Like A Panther (I’m The Shit)” that played in a trailer for Gears of War 4’s revamped horde co-op mode. Not long after, another video debuted showing both members of the group, Killer Mike and El-P, as playable characters available in new DLC for the third-person monster shooter.
With purchase of the $20 Run The Jewels Airdrop, players get both rappers’ models along with a smattering of extras, like emblems, bounties and weapon skins slapped with the pair’s iconic gun-hand gesture logo. Rabid fans can take their Gears-meets-RTJ pride into meatspace with game-themed swag from the duo’s store.
This isn’t the pair’s first rodeo with nerd culture. In the last couple years, Marvel released several alternate art covers for Deadpool, Howard The Duck and Black Panther comics homaging RTJ’s hand gesture emblem. Nor is it Gears of War’s first foray inviting rap personalities to contribute, as the series’ original studio Epic brought Ice-T on to voice a character in Gears of War 3 back in 2011 — though they had the grace to offer his additions for free in exchange for Facebook likes.
As fans have lamented on the game’s forum and its subreddit, the RTJ Airdrop isn’t included in Gears of War 4’s $50 Season Pass, meaning players who bought it anticipating access to every DLC will be sorely disappointed. Followers looking forward to the duo’s highly-anticipated third album could be likewise let down, as their original estimate for release by the end of 2016 might not make it in time for Christmas, as El-P wrote in a tweet this morning:
fyi we are still TRYING to finish, mix and master the record in time for a 2016 release as you may have heard. will update you when we know.
— el-p (@therealelp) September 1, 2016
Source: Xbox blog
Facebook reportedly planning deeper dive into eSports
The exponential growth of eSports is undeniable, especially as it continues to be embraced by big-name entities such as ESPN, Amazon and many others. Not surprisingly, Facebook too has shown interest in professional gaming, namely by partnering with publishers like Activision Blizzard to bring daily content to Facebook Live. Now, according to The Information, the social network is ready to double down on eSports video programming, which could make it a direct competitor to Twitch and YouTube.
Facebook is said to have recently held “extensive” talks with Super Evil Megacorp, the developer behind mobile eSport title Vainglory, to stream professional matches on its platform. That said, Kristian Segerstrale, Super Evil Megacorp’s chief operating officer, told The Information a deal isn’t set in stone yet. The report also claims that, per sources familiar with the situation, Facebook is in active conversations with Activision to acquire streaming rights to more eSport competitions.
Since launching Facebook Live last year, the company has been investing heavily in the technology. With this in mind, wanting to promote something as popular as eSports makes total sense. It would also be a great thing for eSports, of course, since it would be making its presence felt on a platform with nearly 2 billion monthly users.
Source: The Information
Introducing Engadget’s 2016 holiday gift guide!
Here in the US, holiday shopping season officially kicks off on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, but at Engadget we’re getting started early. Three weeks early, to be precise. Today we’re launching our 2016 holiday gift guide — our biggest and most ambitious yet. This year you’ll find 120 picks across 10 categories, up from 84 last year. You’ll also find 100 percent more video, with a quick few-minute stop-motion vid and highlight reel accompanying all of our recommendations.
As ever, we built our guide around shopping for specific people. You won’t find a “media streamer” section here, for instance, but rather, carefully selected sets of presents for the various types in your life — everyone from gamers to workaholics to wanna-be Martha Stewarts. (Lots of cooking gadgets for them.) And, with many of our picks coming in under $50, you won’t have to break your gift budget either. Have a look at our full guide here, and stay tuned over the coming weeks as we put the spotlight on our favorite picks in each category.
Source: Engadget’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
The first Google Tango phone launches with over 35 new apps
It’s been years in the making but Tango, Google’s depth-sensing tech, is ready to make its consumer debut. That’s because today is when the first-ever Tango phone, the Lenovo Phab2 Pro, goes on sale for $499. To accompany the Phab2 Pro’s launch, Google is announcing over 35 new Tango apps, all of which will be available in the Play Store today. I had a chance to play around with several of them, talked to a few app developers and delved further into the future of Tango, including its relationship with Daydream, that other well-known Google project.
Tango first started life as a project within ATAP, Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects division. The idea was to integrate an array of sensors and cameras into a mobile device so that it could figure out its position relative to its surroundings. We’ve already seen how Tango’s 3D-mapping can be used to give directions in a museum, assist in home improvement projects and create cartoon worlds, but there are a few new ones that caught my eye.
One of them is Crayola Color Blaster, which is described as a “zombie color-blasting game.” Created by Legacy Games, the object here is to deal with incoming zombies by pelting them with paint. The zombies appear in an augmented reality view on the display, so it looks as if they’re there in your actual living room. It’s a very active game, and I found myself wandering around from one area of the room to the other just to get enough distance between me and the color-hungry undead.
Arielle Lehrer, CEO of Legacy Games, said that there’s also a “horde mode” for smaller spaces, where you’re just pivoting and shooting instead of running around. Lehrer said that the game was originally conceived as juat a coloring book in real space until they figured out there was so much more you could do with the technology. “We started to think about the magic window idea of Tango,” said Andrew Duncan, the game’s lead designer. “Anywhere you look, you change the environment. It really plays in any space.”
Next, I played with Sockethead Games’ Slingshot Island, which is pretty much as the name describes. Again utilizing augmented reality, you place a virtual island in your physical space — be it your dining table or your kitchen floor. From there, you’ll use a slingshot to shoot projectiles at it in order to solve puzzles, like knocking an egg off a structure. The interesting thing here is that instead of swiping down to aim the slingshot, your phone is the controller. That means as soon as you aim your target, you actually move the phone around to establish the shot — as if your entire phone is the slingshot itself. It took a little bit of getting used to, but I learned it eventually.
“This is the one big challenge that we had,” said Randall Eike, the CTO of Sockethead Games. “Users had no concept whatsoever that they can use their phone as a motion controller. It’s completely foreign to them.” After they figure it out though, Eike said, it feels a lot more intuitive. “This motion control ability of using your device and interacting with the object… It’s going to open up this huge class of mobile games.”
I also played a couple of titles that didn’t use augmented reality. One was Hot Wheels Track Builder, which had me racing toy cars down virtual tracks that I could create myself. You could pick up pieces by grabbing a hand and then move them into place by moving the phone to the right place. It’s once again using the idea of the phone as the controller. “We figured out a control scheme where you wouldn’t need a touch screen to build your tracks,” said Kris Jackson, the lead game designer. “That’s the thing you usually struggle with the most.” Another was Ghostly Mansion, where I collected clues in a virtual room by walking around a physical space. I could lean down to open a drawer or lift the phone up to grab a picture on the wall.
A few years after its debut, Tango then graduated to become its own project division in 2015. Now, it’s a part of Daydream, Google’s VR initiative. It doesn’t take much imagination to think of how useful depth-sensing and 3D-mapping would be in virtual reality. Indeed, the combination of the two could lead to perhaps a standalone headset in the future.
“A lot of the work we’re doing will enable inside out tracking in VR,” said Johnny Lee, Tango’s Director of Engineering. “There’s no product that we can talk about. But as Tango matures, as Daydream matures, there’s an obvious crossroads that we’re excited about.”
But before integrating that tech into VR, Google thought it was important to incorporate Tango into phones first.
“There are still a lot of phones being manufactured today,” said Lee. “We feel like this form factor is one that we’ll have with us for quite awhile.” Indeed, one of the reasons Eike was drawn to Tango is because he felt that smartphones are a lot more accessible than VR headsets. “A VR headset isn’t something you whip out of your pocket at a Starbucks,” he said, whereas everyone has a smartphone. “There’s a chance [Tango] will be more ubiquitous than VR.”
Lee shares the same sentiment. He thinks of Tango in the same way as GPS; we were able to get through our lives before it came along, but now we can’t imagine our phones without it. The spatial reasoning and depth sensing allowed by Tango, he said, will be just as important. “I believe there is a whole new suite of experiences that are possible. The way we interact with our computers will change.” Plus, he said, the rise of Pokemon Go shows that the public is a lot more accepting of augmented reality apps than it used to be, which is good news for Tango.
Google is so bullish on Tango that it’s already built up a pipeline of partners. In other words, look forward to more Tango-enabled phones next year. According to the company, they’ll come in varying price points, designs and form factors. So if you’re wary of the giant 6.4-inch screen on the Phab2 Pro, maybe wait a few months for a smaller Tango phone.
“This is not just a research product. It’s a product in the market today,” said Nikhil Chandhok, Tango’s product director. “Should every phone have GPS? Yes. Should every phone have a camera? Yes. Should every phone have inside-out tracking? Yes,” Chandhok continued. “Every phone should have it.”
The Morning After: Tuesday November 1st 2016
It’s the morning after we were reminded that war is hell, sneakers can fit themselves and jingles don’t last forever. We also reported on the quiet rise of the high-end tablet and the return of CD piracy. Join us below for everything you might have missed.
People die‘Battlefield 1’ reminds you of the horror of war
‘Battlefield’ games aren’t bought for their amazing single-player campaign. In fact, players ignore the series’s solo experiences so routinely that this was actually a reason we didn’t see a campaign mode in ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’ last year. This time around, however, it’s worth playing through the game’s opening level. What follows is a very real history lesson.
Not just for time travelersPuma’s self-lacing shoes were made for athletes
Nike might have gotten there first (with some science fiction nudges), but Puma is working on its own auto-adjusting sneakers. Despite being unlikely to race at Tokyo 2020, Engadget Chinese editor-in-chief Richard Lai got the first look at the athlete-centered shoes.
Defender of the First Amendment?Tech billionaire Thiel talks legal rights and Silicon Valley with the National Press Club
For months, Peter Thiel has found himself in the middle of multiple legal and political firestorms. A speech he made today, in front of the National Press Club, marked the first time he has publicly defended his $1.25 million donation to Trump’s campaign. He argued against military intervention and free trade and attacked the Democratic Party, calling out Silicon Valley for being disconnected from the rest of the country. And then he talked about why he funded Hulk Hogan’s legal fees, and how a “single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan” has “no effective access to our legal system.”
No more F-sharpApple’s new MacBook Pros drop the iconic startup chime
After cutting out all those ports on its new MacBook Pro family, the company also cut out the startup chime. Yep, the familiar F-sharp chord that accompanied the boot-up whir of previous MacBooks is gone. At least the new machines turn themselves on and boot up when you open them.
$100,000 per six seconds18 of Vine’s biggest stars asked for money in a bid to save the app
Long before Twitter announced the app’s demise, Vine’s biggest stars had seen the views on their videos fall as users left for Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube. A group of twelve in-demand users decided to give the Twitter-owned team an offer: $1.2 million each in exchange for 12 original Vines per user every month, to help the short-video platform live on. Vine didn’t bite, and the rest is now history.
But wait, there’s more…
- iPad regains share in a shrinking mobile tablet market, but the story’s more complicated than that
- The Milky Way may be several times larger than we thought
- Pirates are flooding online stores with counterfeit music CDs
‘EVE: Valkyrie’ blasts onto HTC Vive this month
EVE: Valkyrie might have started life as an Oculus Rift tech demo, but this month the space-shooter will arrive on Steam for HTC Vive owners. The exact release date is coming “soon,” according to developer CCP Games. “We’ve also got some big celebrations planned for that weekend; all pilots on all platforms are invited,” the blog post teases. Oh, and there’s an announcement of some kind coming during the PlayStation Experience keynote this December 4th. Intriguing.
Valkyrie already supports dogfights between PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift owners, so it’s not a huge surprise that the Vive version will connect to the same servers. But it’s good to see an early Oculus exclusive fully embracing cross-platform play. Maybe Rocket League will come next.
Via: VR Focus
Source: EVE: Valkyrie
What’s on TV: ‘The Crown,’ ‘Atlanta’ season finale and ‘Call of Duty’
While the World Series wraps up this week, we’re waiting to check out Netflix’s next big-ticket original series: The Crown. Also arriving to all on Friday is the new Call of Duty, although it’s hard to tell if people are more excited for Infinite Warfare or the remastered edition of Modern Warfare that’s packed in. FX’s excellent new series Atlanta brings its season finale this week as TBS kicks off Wyatt Cenac’s People of Earth, and Star Trek Beyond ships on Blu-ray. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Blu-ray & Games & Streaming
- Star Trek Beyond (4K,3D)
- Outlander (S2)
- Bad Moms
- Nine Lives
- The Walking Dead (S6)
- Not Another Teen Movie
- Hell on Wheels: The Complete Series
- Ronin (PS4)
- Super Dungeon Bros (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
- BlazBlue: Central Fiction (PS3, PS4)
- Seraph (PS4)
- Destroy All Humans! (PS4)
- Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PC, PS4, Xbox One – 11/4)
- O! My Genesis VR (PS4)
Monday
- Chewing Gum (S1), Netflix, 3AM
- Monday Night Football: Vikings vs. Broncos, ESPN, 8:15PM
- Supergirl , CW, 8PM
- Kevin Can Wait, CBS, 8PM
- Gotham, Fox, 8PM
- The Voice, NBC, 8PM
- Dancing With the Stars, ABC, 8PM
- WWE Raw, USA, 8PM
- X Factor UK, Axs, 8PM
- Man with a Plan, CBS, 8:30PM
- People of Earth (series premiere), TBS, 9 & 9:30PM
- Jane the Virgin, CW, 9PM
- 2 Broke Girls, CBS, 9PM
- Lucifer, Fox, 9PM
- Street Outlaws, Discovery, 9PM
- The Odd Couple, CBS, 9:30PM
- Scorpion, CBS, 10PM
- Timeless, NBC, 10PM
- All Access Nashville: Celebrating the CMA Awards, ABC, 10PM
- Mary + Jane, MTV, 10PM
- Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, TBS, 10:30PM
- Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM
Tuesday
- MLB World Series Game 6: Cleveland vs. Cubs, Fox, 7:30PM
- The Mindy Project, Hulu, 3AM
- 30 for 30: Hit it Hard, ESPN, 8PM
- The Flash, CW, 8PM
- Brooklyn Nine-nine , Fox, 8PM
- Ben & Lauren, Freeform, 8PM
- The Middle, ABC, 8PM
- 16 for ’16: Bush/Obama (season finale), PBS, 8PM
- NCIS, CBS, 8PM
- The Voice, NBC, 8PM
- WWE Smackdown, USA, 8PM
- Undrafted (season finale), NFL Network, 8PM
- New Girl, Fox, 8:30PM
- American Housewife, ABC, 8:30PM
- True Life, MTV, 9PM
- Channel Zero: Candle Cove, Syfy, 9PM
- Bull, CBS, 9PM
- The Letter, Freeform, 9PM
- Fresh Off the Boat, ABC, 9PM
- This is Us, NBC, 9PM
- No Tomorrow, CW, 9PM
- Inside the NFL, Showtime 9PM
- Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove, Discovery, 9PM
- From Dusk till Dawn, El Rey, 9PM
- Forged in Fire, History, 9PM
- The Gary Owen Show, BET, 9:30PM
- The Real O’neals, ABC, 9:30PM
- Chicago Fire, NBC, 10PM
- Atlanta (season finale), FX, 10PM
- Aftermath, Syfy, 10PM
- Black Market, Viceland, 10PM
- A Season with Florida State Football, Showtime, 10PM
- Adam Ruins Everything, TruTV, 10PM
- Drunk History, Comedy Central, 10:30PM
- Cyberwar, Viceland, 10:30PM
- Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM
- The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail, Comedy Central, 12AM
Wednesday
- Chance, Hulu, 3AM
- Triumph’s Election Watch 2016, Hulu, 3AM
- The 50th Annual CMA Awards, ABC, 8PM
- Arrow, CW, 8PM
- Blindspot, NBC, 8PM
- Lethal Weapon, Fox, 8PM
- The Story of Cats, PBS, 8PM
- Survivor, CBS, 8PM
- Lucha Underground, El Rey, 8PM
- Unsung: Hill Harper, TV One, 8PM
- Speechless, CBS, 8:30PM
- Lip Sync Battle, Spike TV, 9 & 9:30PM
- Law & Order: SVU, NBC, 9PM
- Criminal Minds, CBS, 9PM
- NFL Turning Point, NBC Sports Network, 9PM
- Frequency, CW, 9PM
- Stan Against Evil (series premiere), IFC, 10PM
- The Real World, MTV, 10PM
- That Awkward Game Show, Spike TV, 10PM
- Chicago PD, NBC, 10PM
- Code Black, CBS, 10PM
- You’re the Worst, FXX, 10PM
- American Horror Story FX, 10PM
- Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, Viceland, 10PM
- Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons, HBO, 10PM
- Rectify, Sundance, 10PM
- Impastor, TV Land, 10:30PM
- Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM
Thursday
- Falcons/Buccaneers football, CBS, 8:25PM
- DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, CW, 8PM
- Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, 8PM
- The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 8PM
- Superstore, NBC, 8PM
- Rosewood, Fox, 8PM
- The Great Indoors, CBS, 8:30PM
- The Good Place (fall finale), NBC, 8:30PM
- Mom, CBS, 9PM
- Supernatural, CW, 9PM
- Chicago Med, NBC, 9PM
- Notorious, ABC, 9PM
- Life in Pieces, CBS, 9:30PM
- Pure Genius, CBS, 10PM
- Falling Water, USA, 10PM
- Almost Impossible Game Show, MTV, 10PM
- Balls Deep, Viceland, 10PM
- The Blacklist, NBC, 10PM
- How to Get Away With Murder, ABC, 10PM
- Better Things, FX, 10PM
- Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM
- Wonderland, MTV, 11PM
- This is Not Happening, Comedy Central, 12:30AM
Friday
- The Crown (S1), Netflix, 3AM
- Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, Netflix, 3AM
- The Ivory Game, Netflix, 3AM
- World of Winx (S1), Netflix, 3AM
- Thunderbirds Are Go (S2), Amazon Prime, 3AM
- Trailer Park Boys: Out of the Park: Europe, Netflix, 3AM
- Macgyver, CBS, 8PM
- The Vampire Diaries, CW, 8PM
- Last Man Standing, ABC, 8PM
- Dr. Ken, ABC, 8:30PM
- One & Done, Showtime, 9PM
- Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, CW, 9PM
- Hawaii Five-0, CBS, 9PM
- The Exorcist, Fox, 9PM
- Hawaii Five-0, CBS, 9PM
- Shark Tank, ABC, 9PM
- Z Nation, Syfy, 9PM
- Van Helsing, Syfy, 10PM
- Blue Bloods, CBS, 10PM
- Tracey Ullman’s Show, HBO, 11PM
- Comedy Bang! Bang!, IFC, 11 & 11:30PM
Saturday
- Who Killed Jon Benet?, Lifetime, 8PM
- Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, BBC America, 9PM
- Zero Days, Showtime, 9PM
- Saturday Night Live, NBC, 11:30PM
Sunday
- Broncos/Raiders Sunday Night Football, NBC, 8:20PM
- 60 Minutes, CBS, 7:30PM
- Bob’s Burgers, Fox, 7:30PM
- The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, Showtime, 8PM
- 2016 MTV EMAs, MTV, 8PM
- Durrells in Corfu, PBS, 8PM
- Ash vs. Evil Dead, Starz, 8PM
- Once Upon a Time, ABC, 8PM
- NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS, 8:30PM
- Son of Zorn, Fox, 8:30PM
- Blunt Talk, Starz, 8:30PM
- The Walking Dead, AMC, 9PM
- Westworld, HBO, 9PM
- Alaska: The Last Frontier, Discovery, 9PM
- Poldark, PBS, 9PM
- Secrets and Lies, ABC, 9PM
- Shameless, Showtime, 9PM
- Berlin Station, Epix, 9PM
- The Last Man on Earth, Fox, 9:30PM
- Madam Secretary, CBS, 9:30PM
- Edge of Alaska, Discovery, 10PM
- Eyewitness, USA, 10PM
- Graves, Epix, 10PM
- Divorce, HBO, 10PM
- Masters of Sex, Showtime, 10PM
- Talking Dead, AMC, 10PM
- Elementary, CBS, 10PM
- Insecure, HBO, 10:30PM
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, HBO, 11:15PM
- Kevin Hart: Hart of the City, Comedy Central, 11:30PM
‘Battlefield 1’ reminded me that before war was a game, it was hell
The Battlefield games aren’t exactly known for having the best single-player modes. In fact, players ignore the series’ solo experiences so routinely that this was actually a reason we didn’t see a campaign mode in Star Wars: Battlefront last year. “Very few people actually play the single-player on these kinds of games,” EA’s Peter Moore said at the time. “That’s what the data points to.” So, naturally, when I picked up a copy of Battlefield 1 earlier this week, I planned to skip directly to online multiplayer — but the game didn’t let me. First, it had to teach me a history lesson. “Battlefield 1 is based upon events that unfolded over one hundred years ago,” the game told me immediately after booting up. “What follows is front line combat. You are not expected to survive.”
Normally, a game that automatically shoves me into its single-player campaign would have me scrambling for the skip button — but that lead-in text lingered in my mind. Why had the game bothered to tell me I wouldn’t survive? The Western Front appeared onscreen, along with a directive to defend my position against waves of German soldiers. I fought valiantly but, like the disclaimer said, I was doomed to fail.
As my fictional soldier fell to the ground, I expected the game to cut to the Battlefield 1 logo. Instead, the camera zoomed out to reveal an epitaph for the character I had just failed. A somber voiceover touched on the futility of war as my view settled behind the eyes of another soldier. Soon, he fell too. Then another, and another, each expiring under their own floating epitaph showing the character’s birth year and time of death. The narrative’s emotionally manipulative hook was obvious, but still effective. This wasn’t a game — it was a war. I left the experience feeling like a soldier myself. One who might not make it home.
This isn’t what I was expecting. Most first-person shooters border on power fantasies — walking the player through a series of overblown, high-adrenaline sequences designed to make them feel like action heros. Battlefield 1 shatters that illusion by putting the player through a carousel of death, complete with narration. “We came from all over the world, so many of us thinking this war would be our right of passage. Our great adventure,” the voiceover coldly explains. “Instead of adventure, we found fear.”
This helps players empathize with the soldiers in a way other war games often don’t and gently reminds them that this is more than a game — it’s history. Battlefield 1’s intro isn’t just hinting that its campaign is story driven; it’s asking you to respect the memory of the soldiers of the war it’s based on. “Behind every gunsight is a human being,” says the voice, driving the point home. That’s not a sentiment I’m used to hearing in my war simulators.
By contrast, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and previous Battlefield titles are games first, offering great action experiences and more than enough danger to keep players on edge. That’s perfectly fine — and exactly what these games are supposed to be — but as a result, they almost never break free of the typical tropes. Namely, the player is the hero and the good guys always win. Real war isn’t like that, and neither is Battlefield 1’s prologue. Despite being scripted and even a bit preachy, it’s poignant too. That’s enough to get me to do something I’ve never done before: Play the campaign mode of a Battlefield game.
Unfortunately, the harsh realism of the game’s introduction doesn’t quite carry over to the rest of the game’s single-player experience. The five “war story” vignettes that make up Battlefield 1’s campaign mode take players to five different fronts of the Great War, following five soldiers through their respective adventures. Each story is unique and uses a distinct narrative to draw you in — but they all also fall back on the same heroism tropes used in other war games. It’s easy to forget the bleak prologue when you’re running across the bow of a German airship in a last-ditch effort to single-handedly take out the rest of the Zeppelin fleet.
Even so, Battlefield 1’s single-player stories are still worth playing. Clever writing goes a long way toward softening some of these war hero cliches. One story has you questioning if the over-the-top adventure you’re playing is reality or the exaggerations of a braggart. Another is framed as the somber reflections of a soldier struggling to cope with being his team’s only survivor. These stories didn’t hit me as hard as the game’s opening sequence, but they’re still strong, character-driven narratives deserving of your time. In fact, they’re good enough that they made me go back and see if I was missing anything in Battlefield 4’s single-player mode. I wasn’t, but I’m glad Dice tricked me into trying Battlefield 1’s campaign. Next time they release a game, maybe I won’t forsake the solo experience in favor of mulitplayer.
‘I Expect You To Die’ will come to PlayStation VR this year
Schell Games has announced that its forthcoming title I Expect You To Die will arrive on PlayStation VR in time for the holidays. Previously the game was announced for the Oculus Rift, and was designed to work with that platform’s touch controls. I Expect You To Die is a locked room mystery, wth a spy trying to escape capture by solving a series of puzzles and avoiding death-defying traps. The company hasn’t issued a specific launch date for PlayStation support, but given that the game launches for PCs on December 6th, it’s not hard to assume it’ll be around there.
AIVAnet 