Monthly Archives: May 2016
Microsoft Announces ID@Xbox Game Fest
Microsoft is hosting a new promotion in honor of independent developers
The month-long event is called ID@Xbox Game Fest, and owes its name to the Microsoft indie developer initiative.
Starting tomorrow, each week in the month of May will spotlight independent games available on Xbox One and Windows 10. The promotion will offer along with additional creator spotlight content and special discounts for our fans."
Tomorrow through May 9 the Game Fest will feature lesser-known titles, including The Park, Beyond Eyes, and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. May 10-16 will highlight free-to-play games —Smite, Warframe, and ROBLOX — while May 17-23 explores the Xbox Preview Program. Examples include The Long Dark, and The Solus Project.
GoT’s Balon Greyjoy Talks Being the Last of the Five Kings
Full spoilers for Game of Thrones' latest episode, "Home," continue below.
Balon Greyjoy was the last of the Five Kings, but finally he also fell -- literally. In Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones, Balon was killed by his younger brother Euron Greyjoy, meaning Melisandre's old spell finally took out Stannis Baratheon's final opponent (even though Stannis was long dead).
To discuss the death of the king of the Iron Islands, I got Patrick Malahide on the phone. We talked about the reason he knew Balon's death was coming, why he doesn't watch Game of Thrones and what he hopes Balon's legacy is -- plus which character he hopes succeeds him on the Seastone Chair.
Winter Soldier Takes the Lead in a New Comic This Week
We all want the best of the best, so let us point out the hottest comics released each week. We spotlight our favorite comics that we know are money-well-spent and new books that look cool and are backed by some top-tier talent.
Check out our picks, then take to the comments to let us know what looks good to you!
Also, don't forget that this Saturday, May 7 is Free Comic Book Day! Check back on IGN this Wednesday for a round-up of the best comics you should try and grab for zero money.
Nintendo Won’t Sell NX at a Loss
Whatever Nintendo's next console provides, the company won't sell it at a loss.
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima confirmed as much in a financial briefing for the company. During which Kimishima was asked about the Nintendo NX launch line-up, and the cost of the console.
Kimishima explained that Nintendo is "not thinking of launching the hardware at a loss." Although the Wii U did sell at a loss when it launched in 2012. Speaking to investors, he described the Japanese yen during the Wii U's launch as "very strong," but doubts that this will be the case around the launch of the NX.
Game of Thrones: Let’s Talk About Last Night’s Big Episode
Warning: Full spoilers for Game of Thrones' second Season 6 episode, "Home," below.
Game of Thrones: Season 6's second episode was a jam-packed one, filled with surprise deaths, long-awaited character returns and more.
This week, Dragons on the Wall tackles several of those notable events and what worked, what didn't and what has us curious going forward.
Topics include:
-Jon Snow's return and whether it was too predictable-Ramsay killing Roose and how this changes things for the Boltons
-All the unlikely alliances occurring right now, including Sansa & Theon and Davos & Melisandre
-The return of the Greyjoys and how it could fit into the larger story
Infinite Warfare Will Let You Live the ‘Top Gun’ Fantasy
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will allow players to pilot a transforming fighter plane that can be upgraded and customized.
The fighter, referred to in the game as a Jackal, "can transform between atmospheric flight mode and zero-G flight mode for when you have to dogfight in the vacuum of space," Infinity Ward design director Jacob Minkoff explained in an interview with IGN.
According to Minkoff, Infinite Warfare will offer a seamless experience in which players are fully invested in not only their character, but also their vehicle. "It's kind of the Top Gun fantasy," he explained, noting that "it's your fighter that you get to upgrade and customize. You get to walk along the flight deck and have the flight crew preparing it for you and saluting you and you get into it and you fly out into these crazy missions that you chose to go to."
Uncharted 4 Multiplayer DLC Roadmap Revealed
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's multiplayer content has been detailed on the PlayStation blog ahead of the game's May 10 release date.
Developer Naughty Dog implemented a new philosophy with its multiplayer content—and that includes making all Uncharted 4 multiplayer maps and modes free. Maps and modes will be available immediately, with all "vanity and gameplay in-game store items" unlockable through gameplay.
Uncharted 4 Multiplayer: Roadmap infographic
P.O.L.L.E.N Review
At their heart, adventure games are about delivering a narrative. They're mechanically simple. At their most complex, they offer puzzles that give the player some agency in the world, and slow their progression so they don't just blast through the narrative content. This means that in order to be successful, adventure games need to precisely execute on the few attributes they offer. There isn't anywhere for developers to hide weakness or inexperience.
First-person adventure games have received a lot of attention over the last couple of years. Releases like Firewatch, Gone Home, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter deliver strong, emotional narratives through high quality writing and environmental design, with artfully crafted atmosphere.
The recently released P.O.L.L.E.N (or Pollen for short) by Mindfield Games fails in this regard.
Pollen tells the story of a nameless protagonist sent to Saturn’s moon, Titan, to investigate a corporately-controlled research base studying something called "The Entity." The game opens with you sitting in a dark room at a retro-futuristic computer terminal. A robotic voice asks you to answer a series of personality test questions, each answer causing another row of pips to be added to a punch card produced by the computer. The scene quickly establishes the corporation, Rama Industries, as large and powerful enough to ask entirely unreasonable things of its employees, dressing the requests as boons or favors handed down to the "lucky" employee.
The introduction then moves to the interior of a lander craft on approach to Titan. Over the intercom comes the voice of a Rama Industries representative from HQ, reciting a well-rehearsed schpiel detailing the mission. Their tone artificially jovial, at odds with the perilous activity of hurtling toward the ground. After a successful landing, you head to a nearby comms array in order to make contact with the ground team, who seem surprised by the arrival. As they begin to explain why, the Rama rep's voice returns, drowning out the details with extraneous mission parameters. Immediately you're taught that something is amiss on Titan, and this ominous obfuscation of the details cleverly makes you aware that Rama would prefer for you to remain in the dark.
Pollen’s atmospheric introduction sets the tone for the rest of the game beautifully, but what follows fails to live up to its example. From there you’re asked to explore the research base, to investigate and uncover what’s really going on. All exposition is delivered via audio logs, cassette tapes found throughout the environment. Audio logs are a tired expository method, made even more frustrating in this instance by forcing the player to stand still next to immovable cassette players in order to listen to them.
You don’t encounter any other humans during Pollen--all exposition is delivered via disembodied voices. This is a limitation that other games have used to great effect. But in Pollen, it feels counterproductive. You quickly discover that The Entity is causing people at the research base to go insane, and to kill themselves and/or one-another. You only ever discover remnants of these encounters, meaning that your level of patience and attention to detail will determine whether or not you fully comprehend what had happened. Without ever witnessing the effects of The Entity first-hand, the impact of Pollen’s premise is greatly diminished.
Pollen’s primary interactive mechanic is an unexplained phenomenon which allows you to travel between two alternate versions of the research base. You can leap forward into the future, to sometime after the Entity’s effects have reduced the crew to a single mourning scientist. This allows you to transition between timelines in order to solve traversal puzzles, such as bypassing otherwise locked doors by moving into the dilapidated future, or returning to the past to bypass debris. This mechanic is a neat departure from simply traversing a static environment. It's still clearly a linear experience, but changing timelines provides the illusion of a more complex path. An explanation of the how and why of the ability however, is strangely absent.
As the game’s two to three hours wind on, three separate methods for destroying The Entity are teased in audio logs. The tools for enacting these methods are also provided, but it seems none of them were viable. No matter what was tried, The Entity remained unperturbed. Perhaps this was intended as a statement about the inevitability of the events that transpired, or about the unknowable nature of The Entity. Unfortunately, it merely resulted in frustration. The teased solutions are presented like foreshadowing, but were little more than flavour.
Pollen’s visual design is beautiful and the atmosphere it creates is strong, but the game falls short when the narrative and storytelling method fail to give it substance. The game ends with a bizarre 10-minute cutscene, which explains little. Short games are wonderful when they leave the player something to ruminate on, but they need to leave the player with something to ruminate on. They can sometimes take on a poetic quality, not in prose but rather in function, a musing on the nature of some aspect of human experience. Pollen seems to want to do this, but is too vague in its delivery to be successful.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Side Missions Provide Rewards
While Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will feature a linear story, Infinity Ward's upcoming shooter will also include non-linear elements that allow the player to earn various in-game rewards.
"As the captain of the UNSA Retribution, which is the carrier that you command, you can order it to go and engage in different missions in a non-linear order," Infinity Ward design director Jacob Minkoff told IGN.
"We are telling a linear story, but along the way you can choose to attack targets of opportunity, and attacking those targets of opportunity will reward you with various items and progression and loot elements that will help you to accomplish the next main mission that you accept from command," he added, noting they "will also reveal optional elements of the story."
Daily Deals: Call of Duty, Xbox One With $100 Credit, Iron Man Movie Three-Pack
You Can Get a Remastered Modern Warfare With the Latest Call of Duty
Infinite Warfare, the next Call of Duty, arrives in November. That's no big surprise, right? Well, what if told you the Legacy Edition comes with a remastered version of the game that started it all, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare? And if you use your Amazon Prime discount, you'll get it for $64, instead of $80. Of course, the standard version of Infinite Warfare is $48 with Amazon Prime, in case you don't care about the remaster.