A new trailer for the upcoming Mazinger Z anime film was recently added to the official website for the movie. The new trailer contained footage that was shown off at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. A new key visual was also shown off as well.
The drought is over! After a grueling one-year absence from the cover of EA's hockey video game, a young Canadian man is once again the athlete on the front of NHL. (Not to be confused with a Canadien man.)
At tonight's NHL Awards, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid was named the cover star of NHL 18. McDavid is coming off a 100 point season in which he won the Art Ross trophy for being the league's leading scorer. Although he's only two years into his career, McDavid is already considered a generational talent by many -- the kind of superstar that comes around maybe once a decade. He was probably bound to end up on NHL's cover sooner or later.
As for Canada's return to cover athlete prominence, NHL 17 featured Russian-born Vladimir Tarasenko. Before that, NHL 10's Patrick Kane was the last time a non-Canuck (not the team) graced the cover. Between 2011 and 2016 the athletes were, in order: Jonathan Toews, Steven Stamkos, Claude Giroux, Martin Brodeur, Patrice Bergeron, and Jonathan Toews again.
Canada has good luck getting on the cover of NHL games; too bad it doesn't have the same luck winning the Stanley Cup.
Watching Freddy vs. Jason was the best thing I've done to unwind post-E3. What a good decision.
It had been years since I'd last seen the movie -- long enough to forget how stupid, and good, and stupidly good it is -- and I caught the last half hour on TV. That was the exact right time to show up.
I was a few drinks in at that point and quickly began rooting for Freddy. His goofy-ass theatrics won me over big time. But then it dawned on me: this gimmicky battle could only end one way. They'd want to leave room for a sequel. Sure enough, Freddy winks at the camera despite, uh, being beheaded.
Still, "The overwhelming evidence is that Jason [won]," per IMDB, "as Freddy has been reduced to a severed head which can only wink suggestively at the camera. With Jason X, we know that there is another Friday the 13th film, but no more Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, the 2010 film being a remake of the original. So this is finally the end for Freddy Kruger, his body destroyed and his soul burning in hell."
This is all a long-winded way of saying that Jason is apparently the best (or at least better than Freddy Krueger), and the best Jason, I'd argue, is his vividly-colored Friday the 13th NES incarnation.
Jason's purple outfit is now available in Friday the 13th: The Game as a swappable skin for "Jason, Part 3" thanks to the game's most recent update. That content has come to PC, PlayStation 4, and now Xbox One as of today, following a short hiccup with a certification failure. It's free, to boot.
There's also a double XP event, from June 23 to June 25, along with a 13,000CP bonus.
Friday the 13th Game [Twitter]
With Dominion going on ten years now, deck-building is fairly old hat. Once the concept was released upon the world, it blazed through the tabletop scene. Thunderstone and Ascension took the idea to the (yawn) fantasy swords and magic killing monsters theme, and at this point it seems like every big nerd franchise has got a deck-builder. There's Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Alien, and more. Some games slightly tweaked the formula to be dice pools rather than decks of cards, but the central progression remained the same.
I say all this to illustrate a point: these days it can take a lot for a deck-builder to get noticed. It has to bring something new to the table (hyuk hyuk) and that thing had better be good.
So on the heels of the more recent phenomenon of adventure card games (like Pathfinder or Warhammer Quest), Hand of Fate: Ordeals intends to meld the two mechanics into one smooth game. It does all right.
[It's always great to get someone else's perspective on the world, and to see how things you or I might readily and easily enjoy may encumber others' ways of life. Ricky Namara gives us great insight into his experiences as a Muslim gamer trying to enjoy his favorite hobby during the holy month of Ramadan. It's not only personal, but it's funny as heck - the part where he first asks his religious instructor about a particular move from Street Fighter might be the funniest thing I've ever read! Wanna see your blog on Destructoid's Front Page? Blog about something, ya jerk! - Wes]
Part of growing up where I live is to have a religious teacher (really an "instructor," if you want to be technical) come to our house every afternoon to yank me away from my precious gaming time to learn whether I'm going to the nice place where all the nice people go when they die, or to the not-so-nice place where the not-so-nice people get a pitchfork shoved up their bums.
One particular afternoon my teacher set me aside and told me all about Ramadhan fasting, a grand tradition that only comes once a year where all of the bad things I did for that whole entire year will be forgiven by Allah, The Top Dog, The Big A Himself, for the low, low price of having my breakfast moved up from 6 AM to 4 AM. It's called a "Half-Day Fasting," and it was a very popular method of introducing children age ten years or younger to this annual event.
I was a bit dismissive with my last post about Ace Combat 7. The trailer released for E3 was pretty bad, in my defense, but I jumped to some conclusions based on having only played a small selection of the previous titles (6 and Assault Horizon). From the looks of this trailer (and what I was told by fans of the series), the games have a richly detailed back story mixed with some realistic gameplay mechanics that blend together to create a surreal universe.
At least this trailer ditches the melodrama for a more focused look at what Ace Combat 7 will be doing to differentiate itself from the more polarizing entries in the series (ironically the two games I've played). I love the touch of you having to retract your landing gear, but I also dig the developers talking about design decisions and their hopes for the title. Hopefully the game doesn't go full-on stupid like Assault Horizon did.
I've got to be honest with you all here. I may have extensive experience with the Senran Kagura series since I'm addicted to Dynasty Warriors-like hack and slash games, but I've never fully gelled with its, uh, packaging. I've got a preferred pick here and there (I'm not immune to anime), but once I found out Marvelous was steering further into the fan service skid with its boob water shooter Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash I worried I'd never be able to play it without feeling super embarrassed about it.
After getting some hands-on time with these soaking wet anime girls at E3 while a very, very enthusiastic fan of the series watched on and offered commentary, I figured out that while Peach Beach Splash is competent enough to keep me entertained for an afternoon, it offers enough material to keep that guy going for the rest of his life.
Up until this morning, I had no idea that a sequel to Cook, Serve, Delicious was in the works. I'm always down for more burger-flipping, salad-slinging restaurant management. It looks like Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 has all that and more. I think they call that "the works" over in the food service industry.
Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 is set to release on August 24. While the core gameplay -- managing customer orders and serving up delectable meals -- looks similar to the first game, the sequel's bigger in every way imaginable.
Seemingly every big TV network wants in on eSports. NBC Sports has revealed that it's launching an international two-on-two Rocket League tournament this summer. It'll start online July 22nd with regional qualifiers using Faceit's eSports platform, but players will eventually face each other in person through studio competitions and the grand finals on August 26th and 27th. Naturally, there will be plenty of video coverage: NBC is promising over 40 hours across both online sources and TV, including live coverage of the finals on NBCSN (in the US) and Syfy (in the UK and other countries).
Source: NBC Sports Group
Outreach got lucky. It's a Gone Home-like on a Russian space station set during the Cold War, and features no science fiction elements. I like Gone Home quite a bit, I love alternate history fiction, and I just started watching The Americans, which is just as good as everybody said it was. So you've got a narrative-driven historical thriller that reminds me of my new favorite TV show, and it's being shown away from the crowded E3 show floor. Of course I would be all about that. Of course I have a mountain of personal preference to overcome. Of course this game looks fantastic despite my own inclinations.
Much like the Outback Steakhouse Bloomin' Onion, the execution is just as good as the core idea. The space station feels as lived-in as you could expect from a game that has to work within the constraints of period technology, the dialogue flows well between protagonist Dimitri and the voice of Mission Control, and the space sequence where Dimitri leaps from handrail to handrail unmoored on the outside of the station was ass-clenchingly thrilling.
In Outreach, a Russian space station goes dark, so they send up a cosmonaut (you) to find out what's going on. Producer James Booth insisted – multiple times – that Outreach was not a science fiction game; it's a "historical fiction" game. I like the idea that good old human error is at fault here, so if any aliens or Mars ghosts show up, thanks for making a fool of me in public, Booth.
Nintendo Switch owners have a reason to revisit Snake Pass this week. A new update introduces time trials and online leaderboards, bringing that version of the game in line with the rest.
Sumo Digital also has a number of platform-wide fixes, covering things like broken achievements, exploits, and Noodle's unreliable tail grabs. The latter has my attention more than anything.
I'm bad at this game -- bad enough that I don't care to test myself with a time constraint -- but I'm still glad I bought it, all the same. I like supporting original games like this. I wanna see more of 'em.
At E3, I was reunited with Fortnite, Epic's long-in-development-but-almost-there game about gathering resources, building out fortified bases with traps, and gunning down and/or slicing up the incoming zombie horde. This was my third time playing the game at an event. This will also be my last.
Fortnite is going to be free-to-play eventually, but before that day arrives, the co-op action/shooter will first go through a paid early access period on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. That'll cost $40 -- a not-unreasonable price for this type of game for early adopters -- and it's coming July 25.
The game has been significantly refined since I last went hands-on -- and that polish can and does make a world of difference -- but the core remains the same. I went through a new tutorial that 1) served as a good refresher to Fortnite's easily-graspable but numerous moving parts and 2) injected personality and even some story that had previously been missing. My takeaway? It feels really good.
Epic hopes to hit that "AAA free-to-play" sweet spot, and to my mind, the only other vaguely similar rival (and a game the team seems deeply familiar with) is Warframe. That's good company to be in.
After a rocky weekend of early access Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood opened up its main story quest gating bug and everyone got to see what I've been experiencing since an hour after its early access debut. Since then, I've been playing it quite a bit.
So much in fact, that I'm already raid-ready, having cleared the highest level content at the moment -- Susano EX and Lakshmi EX 10 times each.
I still love this game.
I remember a surprising amount about the plot to Fable III, considering that I stopped actively thinking about it once the credits rolled some seven-odd years ago. I remember you were a prince, and your brother was the king, but he was a mean king. You had to put together a scrappy gang and overthrow your evil brother, only it turns out he was being a despotic ruler because he needed to save money to defend Albion from some generic evil threat. I think the morally ambiguous guy from the last game showed up. Then you leave your Xbox on for like three days while money just kind of accumulates.
That summary was what I rattled off to the developers of Fable Fortune when they asked me if I've ever played a Fable game. It's a fair question! Anecdotally, people don't care about Fable – in part because the studio behind the series was closed last year and Microsoft cancelled that free-to-play co-op game. Fable isn't being scrubbed from the public consciousness because of any active disinterest, it's just that pop culture only has so much room for middling role-playing franchises. When I ask people about Fable, all they ever remember is "chicken chaser" in a bad Cockney accent.
So I'm not the only one who finds Fable Fortune – a Kickstarted card game featuring Fable characters and iconongraphy – extremely curious. The collectible card game (CCG) space is well-tread in video games, with Hearthstone tearing it up on just about every platform. You could make a play for that genre by stapling your game to an established franchise, like The Witcher and Gwent, which Fable Fortune is almost certainly trying to do. As a game, Fortune is nothing to sneeze at, borrowing from Hearthstone by keeping things simple while still making each deck fun to play. But that Fable name might end up being more of an albatross than anything else – at best it might evoke a franchise players forgot because it was too uneven to remember.
When it comes to Anthem, let's get the whole Destiny comparison out of the way first.
When Destiny was announced, Activision explained that they had a "10 year plan" to work with Bungie on the game, which led people to erroneously believe that Destiny, that one game, would be supported for that long. Well, if it was on PC and they could make major infrastructure changes, push patches instantly without dealing with platform holders, and upgrade the visuals over time (just like an MMO), that could probably happen. But on consoles? That's a pretty rare thing (even Square Enix is working around it by dropping PS3 support for FFXIV and leveraging the PS4 Pro for more power). No, that "10 year" thing was more of an outline for their partnership, which includes at least four games.
Anthem, revealed at E3, is probably the same for BioWare (except they're fully owned by EA, so they have to do whatever they tell them to). It was explained last week that they sort of have the same arrangement, and when Anthem hits next year on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, it'll be part of a long term haul -- so get ready for more Anthem. More specifically, EA VP Patrick Soderlund stated, "I think it’ll be the start of a ten-year journey for us." However in this day and age, isn't that putting the cart before the horse just a 'lil bit?
Just look at Universal's The Mummy, which isn't expected to turn a profit given the monumental marketing costs and the low international box office take. They announced at least six films (!) in its "Dark Universe" before Mummy even debuted, and they even retconned (what might be the more successful) Dracula Untold out of it!
IP holders are so intent on MCU-ing everything with cross-media franchises, but the massive risk-reward factor is intense -- like, studio ruining intense. Let's see if BioWare can pull this off after their recent low with Mass Effect: Andromeda. Wouldn't it be killer if they were the first game to announce cross-platform play with Xbox One and PS4?
Nope, it’s not an April Fool’s gag. Big news today, folks.
Destructoid has agreed to be acquired by Enthusiast Gaming which is headquartered in Toronto. Yes, Mr. Destructoid is an honorary Canadian now (eh!). This means Papa Niero is no longer the owner of Destructoid, as I’ve traded in all shares of my LLC and taken shares in their company. One independent company joining another.
This isn’t my resignation, though. I’m not going anywhere.
My decision to join Enthusiast Gaming was not an easy one, but a necessary one as Facebook, Google, and Apple continue to squeeze small publishers into their walled gardens. The web publishing business no longer resembles what I was able to once hustle on my lonesome. Sailing that crazy ocean with my team has been incredibly challenging and rewarding for us, but we’re happy to come ashore to an all-gaming focused network that is ten times our size. If Destructoid was a cute curiosity before then we’re going to be fucking adorable soon. Oh, you think I’d go corporate? Fuck that. We’re an even bigger indie now.
Taking a page from Telltale's recent book (where it's less of a puzzle adventure game and more just choosing things), Netflix is getting into the modern adventure racket. This just announced this week that they're starting with the children angle with two projects -- Puss in Book (coming June 20) and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile (coming July 14).
It remains to be seen if this is going to be an ongoing "thing," but for now, Netflix is getting games. Game...things. Maybe you don't consider Telltale games or some walking simulators "games." Man I don't want to have that conversation. Let's agree to disagree, that they're games.
Are we having that argument now? Okay they're games, it's settled.
Ubisoft's new pirate game, Skull & Bones, is a recycled idea. No one has delusions that it's wholly original, because its source material is so obvious. Ubisoft is borrowing from itself here, but not in a way that feels uninspired. Rather, Skull & Bones feels like the natural evolution and conclusion of a genuinely great mechanic.
Quick history lesson: The first iteration of Skull & Bones' pirating systems debuted in Assassin's Creed III. At the time, it was just a series of side missions but somewhere during development, Ubisoft realized it had a hook that could carry an entire game. The next series entry, Black Flag, was built around the ship stuff. People ate it up.
I have a minor confession to make. I didn't really like the naval direction of Black Flag (and Rogue, I guess). In a vacuum, I actually loved the sailing and sea dog combat. But, it wasn't what I wanted from an Assassin's Creed game. The emphasis on pirating stripped away too much of the running around large cities and jumping off tall things that I had come to mindlessly love.
Fans of classic role-playing games have had a lot to be happy about these past few years. The isometric genre has seen somewhat of a resurgence lately thanks to high-profile crowdfunded games like Wasteland 2 and the Divinity series -- both of which got console ports, no less. That trend continues with the news that Pillars of Eternity will make its way from PC to consoles as well. As the name suggests, Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition will pack all the expansions and patches from the PC version when it is released August 29th on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Via: Kotaku
Source: Paradox Interactive (YouTube)
Blizzard has been playing the field when it comes to eSports. While at least one Overwatch tournament has aired on TBS, they've also dabbled in YouTube and Facebook live for various eSports events for games like Heroes of the Storm. But that all changes this week as the company has inked a two year deal with Twitch. So that's why we all got free stuff yesterday, with more to come.
What does this mean? Well, all tournaments will air on Twitch (or official channels like Blizzard's site). So the HGC (Heroes of the Storm Global Championship) that was previously aired on YouTube? It's Twitch now. The same goes for Hearthstone, Starcraft II, Overwatch, and WoW arena championships.
The battle of broadcasting rights is so weird now that many folks are pulling the plug on cable. While you used to be able to get sporting events over the air for the most part (for free), now they're incentivizing all sorts of perks like Twitch Prime and YouTube Red in an effort to monetize us all. It's a brave new world.
Over the course of all the E3 appointments I've attended in my six years covering the show, I don't think I've ever heard someone place equal emphasis on their game and why it's better than the competition. Project CARS 2 creative director Andy Tudor did this. It was half sales pitch and half obnoxious truthering. After thinking about it for a bit, I can't say I blame him.
"The first truth is that we still have the largest track roster of any console racing game," Tudor started out. "And it is great that other games have only just added dynamic weather because we had that in Project CARS 1," he continued. There's no lapse between these statements; these sentences are literally said back-to-back.
When it was announced that a Japanese Nintendo Direct would air regarding Dragon Quest XI, and "mostly," deal with the 3DS edition, we expected some Switch news. I mean, we haven't seen it in action yet, and although it's slated for 3DS and PS4 next year, we don't even have a Switch launch window yet. Well, it turns out "mostly," was "all 3DS all the time."
If you're interested in that version (you should be, it looks rad), you can watch the entire Direct below. It's roughly 15 minutes long and shows off a bunch of mechanics like the world map, minigames, the old school 2D art style that's exclusive to the 3DS (and an 8-bit mode that triggers around 10:30), mounting, and some battle footage.
I really wish I had the option of buying into 3DS and Switch next month in the west -- but none of those things are happening at the moment. It's yet to be officially unveiled on Switch or confirmed for the west (but they'll probably happen at the same time, possibly next year).
If there's one thing I'm awfully good at, it's putting off PC upgrades.
If there's a second thing I'm also really dang good at, it's buying Destiny around launch, playing it for like two hours, and then never touching it again, instead selfishly focusing my energy on tempting die-hard players like Darren into picking up games I'm into, like Overwatch, and then failing to make ground.
After playing a bit of Destiny 2 on PC at E3, I need to rethink both of these life choices.
I can't speak to the sequel's intricacies, because they were lost on me as an unfamiliar player who was in a decent hurry to finish up and make it to his next appointment on time. But I can say this: it feels fluid and crisp. The gunplay is wonderful. And the first mission, Homecoming, made for a far more arresting opener than what I remember of the original's (which, again, failed to grab me).
I played on mouse and keyboard, and after glancing at the standard E3 demo control leaflet that's always nestled safely under the screen, I was pretty much good to go. Everything just worked and made sense. More important than that, I was having a grand old time. Now, don't go telling Darren or doing anything rash like that, but I'm staaarting to think I can get down with this whole Destiny thing.
It's a shame I'm going to need a new PC to make it happen, but, counterpoint: it feels so good.
Transformers: The Last Knight is proof that Andy Kaufman is alive.
When the first film arrived it was a classic Michael Bay film. Yes it was dumb, and full of stupid, but it had awesome action, and Optimus Prime, so it worked. Since then the films have spiraled out of control, but before The Last Knight I would've believed they were just making bad movies because they made a lot of money. The only way this latest installment could have been made is if the entire franchise was just one long Kaufman joke.
A series of films getting progressively worse while destroying the childhood nostalgia of an entire generation. A comic punchline so terrible, and awful, it could only come from Andy Kaufman himself. A comic pastiche of everything wrong with blockbuster Hollywood slowly played out over decades. It has to be a massive joke, right? I cannot explain it any other way.
Andy Kaufman is alive and has played the greatest joke in the history of mankind.
Since it was announced that publisher Square Enix was selling off Hitman developer IO Interactive, the studio's fate has been uncertain. With last week's news that IO bought the Hitman license, things have been looking up, though. And now, in an effort to get more people playing (and purchasing) its fantastic back-to-basics reboot of the long-running stealth franchise, the newly independent studio is giving it away. Well, a portion of the murderous puzzle game, at least. Specifically, Hitman's the ICA Facility section of the first episode is available for free on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Via: Eurogamer
Source: IO Interactive
Rumor has it Thursday, June 22 is the Steam Summer Sale. Granted, it's just a rumor and not confirmed, but ahead of its speculative launch date both GamersGate and GameStop have summer sales of their own with several hot PC games at aggressive pricing. At least on some titles, you don't need to wait until Thursday to take advantage of deep publisher discounts.
GamersGate's sale fired up earlier this Sunday, and while hundreds of games are on sale, the best of the bunch are from Ubisoft. Everything Assassin's Creed and Fry Cry is at summer sale price levels with new low prices on Assassin's Creed Syndicate Gold, Assassin's Creed Rogue, and Assassin's Creed Chronicles Trilogy among others.
The GameStop PC Game Sale is technically not a summer sale, but they do have a handful of titles that rarely go on sale. Namely Bandai Namco games like the lowest price ever on Dark Souls III and its Deluxe Edition (which includes the game + Season Pass).
We've waded through the hundreds of deals in the sales and come up with a list of our top picks.
GamersGate PC Gaming Summer Sale
Ubisoft Titles
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The Sims 4
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