Metro Exodus Is a Bit Rough Around the Edges So Far
After Metro Exodus’ visually stunning reveal at last year’s E3, I came into this year’s event with the long-running post-apocalyptic survival shooter high on my list of games I was eager to get my hands on. Unfortunately, I walked out of my demo a lot less excited than I was going in, as technical woes plagued my hands-on session.
Metro Exodus isn’t an open-world game, the developers told me, but it does have open-space missions where you’re free to roam. And so my play session began on a bridge in one of these pseudo-open-world areas. We were on a train, which turned out to be our roving home base called the Aurora. We encountered a roadblock and slammed on the brakes. Playing as Artyom, I went to the engine room, where our group of allied survivors convened to figure out what to do next.
Rage 2: A Love Affair Between Two of the World’s Coolest Developers
Studio director Tim Willits tells me that he can’t remember whether it was Id Software or Avalanche Studios that spoke to the other first. “It was kind of one of those things where you meet in a bar,” he explains, “you look at each other, and you fall in love.”
Rage 2’s a passion project for many reasons - it’s the sequel to a game that never quite lived up to its promise, the chance to realise its original open world vision, and, yes, make up for that underwhelming ending - but, honestly, the passion that comes through strongest is from each of its developers to the other.
It’s an improbably perfect match. Id is now almost inarguably seen as the king of first-person shooters, having somehow made a Doom sequel that lived up to the franchise's own towering legacy. Avalanche, meanwhile, blazed a trail into emergent open worlds, often making those that followed look thoughtless by comparison. When it comes to Rage 2 - a first-person open world action game - this feels less like a development partnership and more like a supergroup. Willits calls it a marriage.
Exclusive New Ant-Man and the Wasp Poster
Check out this exclusive new poster for Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp, via Dolby Cinemas.
This new poster features an unmasked Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly as the title characters, surrounded by supporting cast members Michael Pena (Luis), Michael Douglas (Hank Pym), Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost), Michelle Pfeiffer (Janet van Dyne), and Laurence Fishburne (Bill Foster) against a backdrop of San Francisco.
Click on the image below for a larger version of this exclusive Dolby Cinemas poster:
This movie, directed by Ant-Man's Peyton Reed, is set in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War. The official plot synopsis tells us "Scott Lang grapples with the consequences of his choices as both a Super Hero and a father. As he struggles to rebalance his home life with his responsibilities as Ant-Man, he’s confronted by Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym with an urgent new mission. Scott must once again put on the suit and learn to fight alongside The Wasp as the team works together to uncover secrets from the past."
DC Celebrates Batman’s Wedding With Amazing Art
DC is gearing up for what may be the most significant Batman comic of 2018. Batman #50 isn't just a major milestone for the series, it also chronicles the long-awaited wedding between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. And to mark the occasion, DC has commissioned literally dozens of variant covers from a wide variety of artists.
If you're not sure which cover to buy, maybe we can help. We've put together a gallery spotlighting each of these covers, including both the standard variants and the retailer-exclusive covers. Be aware that many of these covers will come in several additional variations (sketch versions, black and white versions, etc.) but to keep things simple we're just spotlighting one version of each cover.
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Avalanche Studios’ Generation Zero Has Cool Combat Tools for Lackluster Enemies
1989 Sweden is suddenly infested with dog-like machines, and save for a few young adults, everyone has gone missing. From what I saw in my E3 2018 hands-off demo, Avalanche Studios’ Generation Zero is an open-world shooter that, despite its beauty and potential for neat ‘80s music and fashion, lacks a compelling foe.
The ultimate goal, it seems, is to figure out what happened to everyone and why the violent robots are running amok. The demo started with two players searching for any information on a countryside village’s missing residents. Along the way to the village, they looked through trunks of cars for weapons and found an equippable mullet then got in a fight with a Runner, a low-level enemy that went down in just a few hits. From there the two players made it to the town and started a mission after finding a distressed message left on an answering machine.
Who Is Spider-Man PS4’s Mystery Villain?
Sony’s E3 conference gave us a new look at Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 from Insomniac Games with some electrifying game play footage and a taste of the plot. In a page taken out of The New Avengers: Breakout comic, Electro attacks the supervillain prison known as the Raft in order to release its criminal population out into the world, and he’s soon joined by Rhino, Scorpion, Vulture and Mister Negative, who all beat Spidey to a pulp. Broken and beaten, Spider-Man turns and reacts to seeing a mysterious villain just as the footage cuts off, leaving us in suspense as to who the big bad could be.
Sony and Microsoft Took Vastly Different Approaches To E3 This Year
Every year, E3 is an opportunity for publishers and the studios they represent to put their best foot forward, setting expectations for the year and years to come. The challenge is in how they go about that representation. The battle of press conference ideologies, therefore, comes down to what role they’re going to play.
Do you show a lot of stuff quickly or a little stuff for a long time? It’s not a cut and dry question, and I’m sure everyone watching has their preference one way or the other. At E3 this year, Microsoft and Sony sort of traded their traditional press conference roles. Microsoft showed off a whopping 50 games, but didn’t dive overly deep into too many of them, while Sony showed significantly fewer but gave us long, salivating looks at their major titles.
Destiny 2 Kills Cayde-6 in Forsaken Expansion Trailer
Destiny 2 fans got a brief and bleak look at the upcoming DLC expansion Forsaken. Opening on a bloody, beaten Cayde-6, the minute-and-a-half long trailer ends with the fan-favorite character lying dead as Prince Uldren stands over him.
Check out the trailer below:
The final shot of the trailer shows us a Guardian carrying Cayde, seemingly implying that vengeance for the Hunter Vanguard's death is central to the story. And it should be as well, considering just how significant the Exo, voiced by Nathan Fillion, is to the overall Destiny 2 experience.
FromSoftware Announces VR Game, Déraciné
FromSoftware has revealed a new PSVR exclusive game, Déraciné, described as a "brand new story adventure" that "brings Japan Studio, FromSoftware and director Hidetaka Miyazaki together " It's scheduled for a 2018 release.
The reveal trailer showed very little of a definitive game experience, but Sony has provided a description:
"As a spirit summoned by a young girl in a secluded boarding school, the player must prove its existence and build a unique bond with the students through clever interactions. As the mystery of the story unfolds, the spirit must use its ability to manipulate the forces of life and time to change the fate of the pupils."