News::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.

Via: Polygon

Source: Overwatch forums

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News::'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.

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News::'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.

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News::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.

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News::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.

Source: PlayStation Blog

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News::Kratos finds his humanity in the new 'God of War'

It was never in question that God of War would return. The franchise is one of Sony's most successful exclusives of the last decade, and the main trilogy of games were both critically acclaimed and hugely popular. But the ending of God of War III seemed to put a pretty definitive end on the series, while the relatively lackluster prequel God of War: Ascension that came a few years later showed that Sony had pretty much run out of ways to continue telling the story of its anti-hero, Kratos.

That is, unless developer Santa Monica Studios made a break from the series' past, changed the gameplay, left Greek mythology behind and, most importantly, show us a more human side of Kratos than we've ever seen before. Judging from the preview of the forthcoming God of War that kicked off Sony's E3 event, that's exactly what's happened, and it completely reinvigorated my interest in a series that felt like it had nothing left to say.

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News::'Breach' adds a smart, stylish mode to the new 'Deus Ex'

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided lands in mere months, and while we got to tackle a relatively fully-finished Dubai level (it's definitely a glossier, bigger sequel to Human Revolution), instead I'm going to talk about Breach, an additional arcade(ish) mode that will launch for free within the main game. You're a hacker who's using VR technology -- of course -- to hack security nodes and get information. Security includes humanoid robots that'll shoot you and kick you out, and it cam also change the rules of the game as you play. Fortunately, you can break some of those rules.

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News::'1979 Revolution' arrives on iOS following Iranian ban

Shortly after its release in Iran, the country's government banned the sale of 1979 Revolution, a game that allows players to witness the unrest as a photojournalist. Created by former Rockstar Games developer Navid Khonsari, the title combines video games and documentary filmmaker for a first-hand look at the events in Tehran in the late 1970s. The Iranian government didn't think too highly of the project, as the National Foundation for Computer Games (NFCG) announced a plan to block sites like Steam and others that were selling the game less than two days after its April release. The NFCG called it "Anti-Iranian" and proceeded to confiscate copies of the title as well.

Source: iTunes

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News::Zombie thriller 'Days Gone' will need to find its humanity to survive

Lots of people are burnt out on the post-apocalyptic zombie trope, but I'm not one of them. I was fairly insulated from the genre until I played The Last of Us, which quickly became my favorite game of the last five years or so. So the trailer for Days Gone, a new title set in a post-pandemic corner of the northwestern US that was unveiled at Sony's E3 event, piqued my interest. The attention to detail in the ruined world was excellent, the narration intriguing enough to make me wonder what went down, and the idea of a former motorcycle gang biking around an open-world felt like a concept worth exploring.

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News::Nintendo's E3 'Zelda' booth is almost as good as the game itself

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is easily one of the best games we've gotten to try at E3 this year. And in true Nintendo fashion, the company's booth is nearly as impressive as the game itself. The company pulled out all the stops this year, building a huge Hyrule environment in its booth for attendees to stroll through. You could take photos with a wonderfully detailed Link statue, cover in fear from various goblins and stroll through the Temple of Time. There was even real grass all around the booth to help simulate the wonderfully alive world that you get to explore in the game.

Words don't quite do it justice, though -- check out this gallery of one of Nintendo's most lavish E3 booths yet.

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News::Facebook Messenger has a hidden football keepy-uppy game

Across Europe, soccer (or rather, football) fans are glued to their TV screens day and night, watching the continent's best duke it out for Euro 2016 glory. If you fall into that camp, you'll be pleased to know that Facebook has added a "secret" minigame to Messenger in a similar vein to its basketball time-waster. To get started, you simply need to send the football emoji in a conversation. Facebook will then launch the hidden game, which has you performing keepy-uppys with your fingers. It seems simple at first, but stringing together more than a dozen is surprisingly tricky.

Via: TechCrunch

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News::Sky and Virgin Media to host 24-hour eSports TV channel

The UK will soon have it own 24-hour eSports TV channel, covering multiplayer video games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. Ginx eSports TV is a relaunch of the existing Ginx TV channel, which covers a broader range of gaming culture. It's currently available online and through Virgin Media; for its relaunch on June 23rd, it'll also be coming to Sky as part of the broadcaster's "Original" TV bundle. Today, Sky and ITV are also announcing that they've taken minority stakes in Ginx.

Via: The Guardian

Source: Sky

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