‘Oh… Sir!’ is our favorite insult-em-up

Officially, it’s day two of Gamescom here in Cologne, Germany. For us, though, it’s day four of Nick Summers and I marching up and down a vast convention center, visiting developers to find out more about their games. It’s been a stressful 100 hours or so, working together without a break, but we finally got to let off some steam today with Oh Sir. It’s a game that let us sling abuse at one another in a way that wouldn’t involve a call to HR in the morning.

The idea is simple: you and your opponent pick a character and a location, and then the game starts. In the centre of the screen, you’ll see a batch of words and short phrases, and each player takes turns to pick in order to build out an insult. Once both are done, the game decides how good your insult is, and your opponent’s life bar is reduced as a result. You continue along that path until one of you runs out of health, and the character concedes defeat.

The game is styled with pixel art based on British gentry, and most of the insults you build are of a similar ilk. There’s some depth in the gameplay, too. Each of the characters has its own weakness; an old lady is particularly fragile when it comes to insults about age and death, while a sharp-looking gentleman is vulnerable to jokes about his sense of style. You can also build combos by using the same elements in succession. When I played against Nick, I went for “Your mother” insults three times in a row, and it was that tactic that led to my victory.

Oh Sir, like many indie titles before it, was born from a game jam, where developers come together, hang out, and code. These events promote creativity, and often give birth to some fantastical games. It was released for free on Steam last year, and has been downloaded over 140,000 times since, developing something of a cult following. In the meantime, developer Vile Monarch has been turning the idea into a full game, published by Gambitious. It’s just about complete, and now features AI opponents and online matchmaking. It’s going to release simultaneously on Steam (PC, Mac and Linux), the iOS App Store and Google Play.

We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.

Blizzard built a World of Warcraft cafe

World of Warcraft is an institution. After 12 years, Blizzard’s seminal MMO is still running, and although player counts have fallen since its 2010 peak, there were still 5.5 million active accounts last September. Germany has always been a key market for the company, consistently ranking among the top five countries, and to celebrate the game’s sixth expansion, Legion, Blizzard has given players a treat. In the heart of Cologne, Germany, home to the annual Gamescom convention, the developer has transformed the 14th century festival hall Gürzenich into a WoW locale.

At the venue’s launch event on Wednesday, fans were invited to wander around a recreation of “The Fel Hammer,” a starting zone in the new expansion. Inside, they were treated to heavy metal renditions of WoW music, face painting, photo booths, and WoW-themed food and drink (including Alliance and Horde cocktails, of course). Cosplayers were everywhere, and there was even a quest giver with an exclamation point above their head, who directed attendees to another “NPC” with a question mark who gave out free prizes. As well as being great PR for Blizzard, it’s a nice way to give something back to the fans that pay the bills.

We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.

Invite all your Twitch friends to a stream or broadcast

Twitch’s social network-like Friends feature just got more useful if you want more company for streaming or broadcasting. A new feature called “Activity Sharing” will notify your entire Friends list if you’re doing something interesting so they can join in. Conversely, you can check your Friends list to see what others are doing and join in, as shown in the GIF below. Users can keep broadcasts or streams private, if they prefer, by un-ticking the “share my activity” box.

The Friends feature, which recently launched on mobile, is still in open beta. Much like with Facebook, Friends can send each other Whispers at any time, but followers need permission. Twitch created the feature to make it easier to send “Whispers,” or private messages, to pals, but has since expanded it considerably. While some users are dubious of the “Twitchbook” feature, it’s undeniably good for broadcasters and socially-minded streamers.

Source: Twitch

Crafting a story for ‘Titanfall 2’

Titanfall 2 represents a huge opportunity for Respawn Entertainment. When the first game launched in 2014, the Xbox One was still in its infancy, and struggling from Microsoft’s disastrous messaging. Titanfall received plenty of accolades for its human-versus-robot combat, but never found an audience befitting a veteran Call of Duty developer. The follow-up could be different, however, because it’s headed to the PlayStation 4 in addition to the Xbox One and PC. The game will also feature a full-blown campaign — a first for the franchise and something the original was criticized for not having.

“A lot of people are going to be playing this franchise for the first time, so we can’t take anything for granted,” Drew McCoy, a producer on Titanfall 2, told Engadget. “It’s a difficult balancing process, because you don’t want existing players to feel like the first game didn’t matter, but you also don’t want new players to feel like they’ve been left out of the loop. It’s something we’ve always been aware of while making the game.”

The story centers on a lowly grunt called Jack Cooper, who inherits the robot Titan BT-7274 from a dying pilot. Stuck in enemy territory, the two unlikely allies are forced to team up and continue their mission, battling the villainous Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) along the way.

McCoy is the first to admit that the campaign has been a challenge to develop. Titanfall is a game about mobility, with countless ways to sneak up and flank foes. You can wall-run along the side of buildings, or vault over walls and debris with your jetpack. Then there are the Titans — huge, lumbering machines that can obliterate both robot and human foes. Containing all of this movement and destruction in a linear story mode is no easy task. Initially, the team tried to apply all of their mechanics to a single-player campaign, but it didn’t jell. “We wasted a decent amount of time trying to make that work,” McCoy said.

Titanfall 2 would need a different approach. The team split up and went to work on new ideas that would later be called “action blocks.” These were smaller, simpler experiences that revolved around a particular weapon, mechanic or level idea. The only requirement was that they be fun and that they work with an individual player-controlled character. More than 100 of these were produced, before being whittled down to a set that could be chained together in a coherent series of levels.

The result is a campaign that’s more varied than the Call of Duty franchise. Of course, there will be some explosive shootouts, but you can also expect some quieter, more reflective moments. A bit of light platforming. Perhaps a puzzle or two. McCoy says Respawn has been inspired by Valve games such as Half-Life and Portal, and how they convey the story to the player.

“A lot of the people that bought or were interested in the first game would have classed themselves as an action-adventure gamer more than a shooter player,” McCoy suggested. “So that helped us be comfortable with the fact that you’re not always shooting guys in Titanfall 2. There are sections where you’ll go for minutes and minutes without shooting anything, and that’s fine, because that’s what this game wants to become.”

A robot rumble

Titanfall 2 will feel a bit like a buddy cop movie. Cooper and BT are wildly opposed in their abilities and the way they view the world. They’ll start off as awkward comrades but slowly bond over the course of their adventure. The Titan will have its own personality too. In one scene, he casually explains the probability and likely causes of death before throwing Cooper across a large gap. At certain points you’ll be able to choose from a few different dialog options too, shaping your relationship and, hopefully, developing an emotional attachment to the machine.

Respawn has drawn inspiration from countless pieces of pop culture. During our interview, McCoy mentioned Terminator, Robocop and an anime series called Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. If you walk through the company’s offices, you’ll see figures and posters for classic mecha properties such as Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion. “All of the stuff from the last 30 years that you would expect to see — we’re all fans of it.”

The Titanfall universe is a blend of Western military shooters and the Japanese robots that have been drawn on manga pages for decades. While the game is still quite violent — it’s nothing like as playful as Overwatch — it will have a lighter, more upbeat vibe than Call of Duty. McCoy compared it to Indiana Jones, which manages to present murder in a way that’s still family friendly. “It does have a more playful tone at times,” he explained. “We’ve got some over-the-top characters, and there’s a little bit of levity in there — some comedy, if you will. It’s more of a high adventure.”

Titanfall 2 has some tough competition this fall. It’s up against Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty, as well as ongoing service-style shooters such as Overwatch, Star Wars Battlefront and Destiny. Titanfall has a solid reputation already, but it still has to fight for attention.

“No matter what, we’ve crafted a game that’s unlike anything else,” McCoy said. “I think it’s going to stand off to the side of everything else, and it’s not going to be the head-to-head that everyone thinks it will be. So I think the chances of us gaining an audience that likes what we’re doing are pretty good. Regardless, we’re making a game that we think is fun, and our philosophy has always been that if we like it, there are probably going to be other people out there that like it as well.”

We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.

Duel your friends ‘Tron’ style in ‘Project Arena’ VR

Project Arena is a full-body VR game that pits two players against each other in a Tron-esque light disc battle. It was born from Icelandic developer CCP’s “VR Labs,” an initiative of experimentation and iteration, where teams are free to create lots of working concepts before working out which can become full games. Project Arena has already passed the first test — it morphed from the concept phase last year (when it was called Disc Arena) into the “project” phrase this year.

Playing the game is intuitive. CCP is only showing off ‘brawl mode,’ which is a straight player-versus-player experience. I wore an HTC Vive headset, and in each hand I held a Vive controller. A voiced tutorial then talked me through the basic mechanics. The aim of the game is to hit your opponent with a light disc, which you can either throw directly at them or bounce off walls. You only have one disc, and if you miss, you need to wait for it to come back and catch it. At the same time, your opponent throws their disc at you, and you need to either deflect it with your hands or dodge it entirely. You also have a large shield that you can use three times if you’re in trouble. Each player gets three lives, and there are two rounds to decide a winner.

I had a lot of fun with Project Arena, and it’s a very polished VR experience already — just like Eve: Valkyrie and Gunjack before it. I’m hopeful that CCP will take it further and turn it into a full game, as there’s no reason this couldn’t work with a Rift, a Vive or PSVR at home. And that’s not just blind optimism: So far, Project Arena has followed the same development path that led to the Gear VR shooter Gunjack being released.

We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.