Just Cause 3 Gameplay Trailer Reveals Insane Aerial Stunts
Square Enix has released the first gameplay trailer for Just Cause 3, revealing plane-jacking, skydiving and wingsuits.
The trailer, which you can see above, is the first proper look we've had at what's coming in the next entry in Avalanche Studio's series when it releases later this year.
Avalanche recently told IGN that Just Cause 3 doesn't need multiplayer, but that didn’t stop the Just Cause community from making a multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2.
How Wolfenstein: The Old Blood Continues to Shun Modern Shooter Trends
Wolfenstein 3D may be the granddaddy of the first-person shooter as we recognise it today but the relevance of Wolfenstein’s once-venerable name has faded over the decades. Today huge numbers of gamers flock to the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield; these are the modern era’s shooters du jour. To many, Wolfenstein is a curiosity from another age.
Nonetheless, 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order arrived as an extremely timely antidote to today’s increasingly homogenised shooter set. Rather than a multiplayer-focussed experience with a brief, token single-player mode tacked on, The New Order looked to the likes of rich and lengthy solo shooters like Starbreeze’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness for inspiration. It’s little wonder considering MachineGames, the team behind The New Order, was founded by several key former members of Starbreeze.
Silent Hill is the Real Victim in the Konami/Kojima Split
Less than a year after it was announced, Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hill project is dead. R.I.P., Silent Hills - we hardly knew ye.
The cancellation is a nasty little period at the end of a very public - yet frustratingly obscured - spat between Silent Hill publisher Konami and Kojima, its golden boy gone rogue. Konami’s subsequent voluntary delisting from the NYSE has fueled speculation that it’s on its way to the great publisher graveyard; particularly angry folk are arguing that it belongs there.
Life-Size Lego Car Actually Drives
Someone has constructed a life-size Lego car, and it works.
According to YouTube videos shared on Mental Floss, "a teenage genius from Romania" named Raul Oaida constructed the car in collaboration with Australian marketer Steve Sammartino.
The car is comprised of more than 500,000 Lego pieces and is based on a hot rod design.
The dials and wheels/tyres aren't made of Lego, but almost everything else, including the engine, which appears to be powered by compressed air.
The Lego hot rod reportedly has a top speed of 30km/h, powered by four orbital engines with a total piston count of 256.
GameStop Raising Money for Make-A-Wish Next Month
You could help grant a kid's wish by purchasing video games at your local GameStop next month.
GameStop has announced that beginning on May 1 and running through the end of the month, it will be accepting donations for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Customers will be able to donate $1 USD, $5, $10 or more in-store at GameStop, as well as the retailer's technology branded stores Spring Mobile and Simply Mac. Kongregate customers will also be able to donate with their online transactions.
As a reward for donating, the retailer is offering customers a coupon good for 10% off their next purchase of a used game and PowerUp Rewards members will earn triple rewards points.
"GameStop has a deep history with Make-A-Wish, and we are thrilled to have another opportunity to support such a meaningful organization," GameStop Chief Financial Officer Rob Lloyd said in a statement. Lloyd also serves as a member of the Make-A-Wish North Texas board.
Avengers 3 Movies Will Shoot Back to Back
Chris Evans believes that both parts of Avengers: Infinity War will shoot back to back over a nine-month period.
Evans spilled the beans in an interview with Esquire, which also confirms his Captain America character will survive Captain America: Civil War to make it to the third Avengers movie.
He also confirmed that shooting on Civil War commences "in a couple
weeks" and will conclude principal photography in "August or September".
EA Promises to Change the Way It Deals with Origin Refunds
Electronic Arts is changing its ‘no refunds’ policy for games purchased through Origin following warnings from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that the policy breaches Australian Consumer Law.
According to a statement issued by the ACCC, EA has submitted a court-enforceable undertaking to the ACCC where it acknowledges that Origin's refunds policy and representations made to consumers about their rights likely breached Australian Consumer Law.
“Businesses such as EA selling digitally downloadable goods cannot avoid their responsibilities under the Australian Consumer Law just because they are located outside of Australia,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a prepared statement.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 4: The Final Chapter Launch Announced
The last installment of Scott Cawthon’s point-and-click survival horror series, Five Nights at Freddy’s 4: The Final Chapter, is due to hit October 31.
The Halloween launch date reveal comes via the developer’s official website in the form of teaser image of iconic animatronic bear, Freddy Fazbear.
Shredder Cast for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
Brian Tee has been cast as Shredder in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 movie, according to Variety.
Tee starred in 2013's The Wolverine as Noburo Mori and in the web series Mortal Kombat Legacy as Liu Kang. Tee will work alongside comedian Tyler Perry as scientist Baxter Stockman and Arrow's Stephen Amell, who will be playing Casey Jones.
Crypt of the NecroDancer Review
You're tapping the arrow keys along with the beat, avoiding one trap and blowing up another with a bomb. A couple of skeletons shamble toward you, but you know how they move, so dispatching them with your spear is no problem. The floor lights up like a disco hall in celebration of your kill streak, and as you get closer to this floor's shop, you can hear the shopkeeper singing along with the music. You start tapping your feet, feeling the rhythm of the song...
Then you let your guard down, taking a hit from a ghost that should have been easily avoidable. Now you've got a ghost on one side and a bat on another, both ready to strike. You have to keep moving with the music, so you have no time to think about what you did wrong or how to recover from it. You move the wrong way, taking another hit--your last. You kick yourself for losing all that gold and all those items, but you restart the game, hoping to do better next time.
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a turn-based adventure that tosses you into a series of randomly generated floors, usually with no more than a basic weapon with which to defend yourself. Moving one space at a time around the grid that makes up each crypt floor, you’ll bump into enemies (sometimes literally, as you attack simply by moving in an enemy’s direction), find secrets under walls, and collect items from various chests, ideally getting stronger and stronger along the way. The catch is that you have to do all this in time with the floor's music--and if the song ends, you move deeper into the floor whether you're ready or not.
You won’t level up by killing enemies, but the equipment you find or buy with gold can make you practically god-like. Say, for instance, that you fight your way through a few basic enemies and collect the gold they drop upon death. Among the shop’s randomized inventory on this floor is an extra heart container, allowing you to take a couple more hits before death. Paired with a suit of armor you find in a nearby chest, suddenly you can take (and then dish out) a lot more damage. This equipment is invaluable while it lasts, but it disappears if you die, forcing you to start fresh for your next attempt
In other games of this ilk, moving around on the grid would be a slow and cerebral affair in which every move is carefully considered. Here, though, each floor is also tied to a song, and you can only move from space to space in time to the beat of that song. Furthermore, the enemies don't just move when you do; they move along with the beat. Miss a beat in the song? The monster headed toward you will not. You have to always be moving, always thinking on your feet.
Not all enemy units move the same way you do, either. Some skip over spaces or move diagonally on the grid. Imagine you’re playing a very fast-paced game of chess where you only control a single king piece and your move clock lasts about a second every turn. All the other units on the grid could have various tricks to their movement, often leaving you vulnerable.
Fortunately, you can acquire new weapons in the crypt to give yourself an edge, such as a broadsword that attacks three spaces at once or a crossbow that can shoot enemies at a distance. It would be wise to learn how all the different weapons work, as you usually won't have a choice in what weapon you wield. You'll just have to make use of what you find.
When you get a monster's movement down and can maneuver around it in time with the song, combat can start to feel like a dance. "Forward, forward, back, forward, slash, dodge, slash..." It takes the concept of tapping your fingers to a beat to a whole new level, especially combined with a fantastic soundtrack featuring music you naturally want to tap along to.
The controls feel like they were built with a dance pad in mind--appropriate, since there is an easier difficulty mode where you can play the entire game with a dance pad accessory if you choose. Every action is mapped to a direction or combination of directions, giving the game a strong Dance Dance Revolution vibe. When using a keyboard, this means that you can play with one hand, but certain aspects of the controls can be awkward, especially at first. Bombs, for example, can be dropped by pressing down and left at the same time. Items, on the other hand, can be used with up and left.
Imagine you’re playing a very fast-paced game of chess where you only control a single king piece and your move clock lasts about a second every turn.
If you get those two button combinations mixed up in the heat of the moment, you're going to have a bad time. Furthermore, if your finger slips and you only hit one of the buttons instead of two, you can very easily lose your coin multiplier--or worse. You could always assign these combos to dedicated buttons, though doing so can diminish the DDR feel of only using directional buttons.
You can expect to die quite a bit in Crypt of the NecroDancer, and while it's easy to feel as if the game is stacking the deck against you by not giving you any useful item drops, you'll soon get better at staying alive with practice. Losing progress when you die is a bummer, but like the best of songs, Crypt of the NecroDancer is still pretty good on repeat.
While you drop the majority of your items upon death, not quite all is lost. The game is broken up into four "zones," and unless you're attempting to get through them all at once, you're allowed to start from any zone you've reached with your selected character. Within in the crypt, you can also find diamonds, which are the only item that will stay with you after you die. These can be used to buy a few permanent upgrades for your character (including more starting health) as well as unlock items and equipment (such as new spells, new variations of weapons, etc.) that can then show up in chests and shops the next time you play. These unlocks give a good sense of permanent progression as you play, though you can buy all the items relatively quickly. I purchased all of them long before I was finished playing through the game, making diamonds feel somewhat useless on later runs.
That's not to say that there isn't stuff to keep you coming back to Crypt of the NecroDancer after you've discovered all its items, though. There are a bunch of other characters you can unlock and play as, each with unique twists that force you to play in different ways (with one character, for example, you get free items from shops, but picking up money kills you). There are also daily challenges and Steam Workshop support for mods.
If you're feeling a particular beat, you can also import your own music to play along with, which works well. It doesn't change the actual content of the game, just the rhythm at which you play it. "Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars, for instances, is playable but kind of slow, while the DC Talk hit "Jesus Is Just Alright" leads to more upbeat and faster exploring. Regardless of your musical tastes, Crypt of the NecroDancer takes a proven but basic recipe and improves it with a seemingly simple twist. It would have been a fine roguelike game without its musical side, but the rhythm mechanic makes it a truly special experience.