Most Recent: PS4

Doomfist joins Overwatch’s PTR and he’ll available to all next week

Posted on July 6, 2017 by John Scalzo

After a ton of teasing and an almost unbearable wait, Blizzard officially added Doomfist to Overwatch‘s Public Test Region today. Everyone else will be able to play as the villainous character next week.

With his oversized right arm and a philosophy that demands combat, Doomfist is a formidable fighter. However, he doesn’t have the vocal prowess of Terry Crews, and that’s sure to be a letdown for some Overwatch players:

Doomfist
Doomfist’s cybernetics make him a highly-mobile, powerful frontline fighter. In addition to dealing ranged damage with his Hand Cannon, Doomfist can slam the ground, knock enemies into the air and off balance, or charge into the fray with his Rocket Punch. When facing a tightly packed group, Doomfist leaps out of view, then crashes down to earth with a spectacular Meteor Strike.

Abilities

  • Hand Cannon: Doomfist fires a short-range burst from the knuckles of his fist. Its ammunition is automatically regenerated over a short time.
  • Seismic Slam: Doomfist leaps forward and smashes into the ground, knocking nearby enemies toward him.
  • Rising Uppercut: Doomfist uppercuts enemies in front of him into the air.
  • Rocket Punch: After charging up, Doomfist lunges forward and knocks an enemy back, dealing additional damage if they impact a wall.
  • The Best Defense: Doomfist generates temporary personal shields when he deals ability damage.
  • Meteor Strike: Doomfist leaps into the sky, then crashes to the ground, dealing significant damage.

Blizzard produced an animated introduction for Doomfist, and his “Origin Story” has been embedded above. You can also learn more about the character in a new “Developer Update” video featuring Game Director Jeff Kaplan, which is available after the break. The video breaks down Doomfist’s backstory, abilities, and an overall strategy for how best to use him. (more…)

Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One | Tagged

Newest Agents of Mayhem trailer delivers “Magnum Sized Action” soundtracked by the Magnum PI theme

Posted on July 5, 2017 by John Scalzo

Volition has reached into their ‘stache and pulled out another Agents of Mayhem trailer… this time riffing on the cool cars and smooth moves of Tom Selleck’s Magnum PI.

The developer also delivered more details the open world game’s Q-like quartermaster, Gremlin, as well as a taste of what players can expect from its missions…

Agents of Mayhem’s vision of a futuristic Seoul is ruled by LEGION, but it can be taken back with the help of agents at MAYHEM’s base known as the ARK. Machining expert and resident engineer Gremlin runs the ARK’s R&D lab. Terminally positive, Gremlin engages her mischievous curiosity for all machines to create some of MAYHEM’s deadliest weapons, including the Gutterball Gun, which strikes down everything in its path with a barrage of giant electrified balls, and the Cabbit Bomb, which turns enemies into explosive Cabbits. Gremlin’s crazy weapons can be found hidden in caches around the city, and while her devices aren’t always the safest or well tested, they’re guaranteed to make a splash.

As agents battle Dr. Babylon and defeat his Lieutenants, LEGION’s hold on Seoul will weaken. Agents can locate and eliminate LEGION Patrols, destroy their supply trucks, rescue scientists taken hostage, or attack and capture one of LEGION’s major outposts and use the intel gained to pinpoint all of LEGION’s other nearby activities. Dr. Babylon won’t allow MAYHEM to carry on unchecked though; he’ll send troops to respond to attacks via Mole Machines, fortify his outposts with sniper nests, barricades, and mines, or counterattack in true evil style by dispatching one of his minions equipped with a Doomsday Weapon!

Agents of Mayhem will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on August 15.

Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One | Tagged

PS Store This Week: SpeedRunners, Toby The Secret Mine, That’s You, more

Posted on July 5, 2017 by John Scalzo

Not even the 4th of July can stop Sony’s weekly PlayStation Store update. Though it did slow it down a bit…

But there’s nothing slow about SpeedRunners, the multiplayer runner from TinyBuild and DoubleDutch Games. And it’s now available to download for the PS4.

Also available to download this week is Toby: The Secret Mine, a shadowy puzzle platformer for the PS4 from Headup Games and Lukas Navratil. Players will join Toby on an adventure into the deep forest as he tries to rescue his friends and family from a mysterious kidnapper.

Finally this week, That’s You is a party game for the PS4 that turns your smartphone into a controller. That way, everyone can join in the fun with “tons of funny questions, texting games, and drawing challenges.”

You can learn more about all of these games (and the rest of this week’s new releases) after the break. (more…)

Posted in News, PS4, Vita |

Zero Time Dilemma’s PS4 debut leads a packed announcement schedule from Aksys Games at Anime Expo 2017

Posted on July 4, 2017 by John Scalzo

The 2017 Anime Expo welcomed anime fans from around the globe to Los Angeles this weekend, and Aksys Games was there to announce a massive slate of upcoming games for release in 2017 and 2018.

The localization house started things off with confirmation that Zero Time Dilemma, the third game in the Zero Escape trilogy, will be released for the PS4 on August 18. The visual novel is currently available for the 3DS, Vita, and PC, but the PS4 re-release will be remastered with “impressive” high definition graphics. [Source]

Aksys is planning to bring several other visual novels to North America over the next year. During their Anime Expo panel, Aksys revealed a handful of such titles from Idea Factory including Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, and Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk. Both Psychedelica games are tangentially connected by haunted locales, and both will launch for the Vita in 2018. [Source]

The publisher will also team up with Idea Factory to bring 7 Scarlet to the Vita in 2018. 7 Scarlet features a story involving a mysterious town, a missing university student, and a search for the truth. [Source]

More ghostly tales will be told in Creeping Terror, a horror exploration game that’ll launch for the PC and 3DS this Fall. Players will travel through a haunted house, an old tunnel, and a shadowy cavern in search of a monster in Creeping Terror. [Source]

Players will also be in search of monsters in SG/ZH: School Girl/Zombie Hunter, a third-person shooter developed by D3 Publisher for the PS4. The goofy game follows five girls who attempt to save their school from a rampaging horde of zombies. [Source]

A different kind of “ghost” story is at the center of Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk. Developed by Arc System Works, Ghost of the Dusk is a hard-boiled detective story that’ll be released for the 3DS in North America in 2018. [Source]

Aksys announced plans to package together two games in the Code Realize franchise, Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth and Code Realize: Future Blessings, as Code Realize: Bouquet of Rainbows. The bundle will be available for the PS4 next year. [Source]

Moving on (or rather, not moving on), the publisher will release Bad Apple Wars for the Vita on September 29. The visual novel takes place in a school (not surprising)… that’s located in Purgatory (whoa). Bad Apple Wars follows a battle for the soul of Purgatory between the Delinquent Team of Bad Apples and the Disciplinary Committee. [Source]

Under Night In-Birth, a 2D fighter from Arc System Works, will receive a major update this Fall with the release of Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[st]. Set to be released for the PS3, PS4, and Vita, the Late[st] version of the game will include two new characters, Enkidu and Wagner, and a story-focused Chronicle Mode. [Source]

Finally, the craziest game on Aksys’s radar might be Drive Girls, which will be released for the Vita on August 11. In Drive Girls, players will control a team of superpowered girls who can turn into a fleet of speedy supercars. The girls will do battle with an invading alien force in a genre mashup that includes melee action and driving prowess. [Source]

That’s all for now, but new trailers for most of these games should be available online shortly.

Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita | Tagged

Content Crash #4: Indie Studios Versus AAA Games

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Dan Hartnack

Welcome everyone to the Content Crash podcast. I’m your host, Dan Hartnack, and as always, joining me is Keno Eastmond.

Today, I’d like to talk about indie studios versus AAA studios. What do indie studios bring to gaming that’s different from AAA? What defines the AAA space? And what indie studios are doing to push the industry to new levels?

Let’s go!

You can subscribe to the Content Crash podcast on YouTube or SoundCloud.

Posted in PC, Podcast, PS4, Switch, Top Story, Xbox One |

Dutch PR firm reveals that Dragon Quest XI will be released outside of Japan

Posted on July 3, 2017 by John Scalzo

Will Square Enix release the next Dragon Quest game outside of the Japan? And if they do, how long will we have to wait? RPG fans have had to go through this same song and dance for most entries in the franchise, and it looks like things won’t be in different for the upcoming Dragon Quest XI: In Search of the Departed Time. But a Dutch PR firm may have spilled the beans a bit early.

Speaking to Gamer.nl, the unnamed company revealed they would be handling public relations for the title after Square Enix launches Dragon Quest XI in Europe and the rest of the “Western market.”

But assuming the company is telling the truth, we still don’t know when Dragon Quest XI will be available outside of Japan. And we also don’t know if all three versions of the game (it’s in development for the 3DS, PS4, and Switch) will make the trip.

All we know for sure is that Dragon Quest XI: In Search of the Departed Time is set to launch in Japan for the 3DS and PS4 on July 29. I hope you have your dancing shoes on, because anything after that (including the launch date for the Switch version in Japan) is still a mystery.

Posted in 3DS, News, PS4, Switch | Tagged

Insomniac shares some more story details about their upcoming Spider-Man game

Posted on July 3, 2017 by John Scalzo

We still don’t know what part Miles Morales will play in the game, but Insomniac shared some new story details for their upcoming Spider-Man adaptation on Twitter over the weekend.

According to the tweets, Peter Parker has been Spider-Man for eight years, and he built all of his own technology (unlike the Stark Industries suit Peter will wear in this week’s Spider-Man: Homecoming). Players will also do battle with The Kingpin in an early level, and later tangle with Mister Negative and his Inner Demons in back half of the game:

Explore a new, original Spider-Man universe and story. [Source]

Peter Parker has been Spider-Man for eight years, and is masterful at protecting the city. [Source]

After you defeat Kingpin, the Inner Demons move in on Fisk’s territory. [Source]

Martin Li [Mister Negative] is a philanthropist, and runs the F.E.A.S.T. homeless shelters. Aunt May works for him at one of those shelters. [Source]

Peter Parker uses his ingenuity and lab experience to build his own suit and tech. [Source]

Insomniac’s Spider-Man will be released exclusively for the PS4 sometime next year.

Posted in News, PS4 | Tagged

Yacht Club continues to joke about Shovel Knight 64… and talks seriously about King Knight expansion

Posted on July 2, 2017 by John Scalzo

Developers from Yacht Club Games have joked about creating Shovel Knight 64 for a few years now. But the company’s “Pixel Artmancer,” Nick Wozniak, revealed that their fanciful daydreaming about a Shovel Knight sequel that uses the blocky polygonal style made famous by the N64 might be real during an E3 2017 interview with App Trigger:

App Trigger: I’ve seen a little bit of Yacht Club talking about working on more Shovel Knight, or more things besides Shovel Knight after all this is done. What would your personal preference be? If you could work on anything, what would it be?

Nick Wozniak: Anything? I think one of the things we want to work on in the far future is definitely like a Shovel Knight 64, a 3D platformer. We would all love that. We all love Mario 64 to pieces and would just love to be able to jump into that.

Of course, this wasn’t an official announcement for Shovel Knight 64. Wozniak said that Yacht Club doesn’t just want to be known as “the Shovel Knight company,” and that they’re currently hard at work on “something new.”

However, the developer is also putting the finishing touches on Shovel Knight’s King Knight expansion, and Wozniak also had a bit to say about the game’s final add-on:

App Trigger: [King Knight is] great. He’s the light-hearted guy. Even though you guys gave us choices at the beginning of Shovel Knight, your eye is drawn more toward King Knight, so I think that’s the one a lot of people start with.

Nick Wozniak: He’s great. He’s the first guy you probably encounter, and he sets the tone of the rest of the game. You know what to expect, kind of, when you see King Knight. He’s a joke, even in his name. He’s not a king, he’s a knight who’s kingly, and that’s ridiculous and stupid and it sets the bar for your expectations of what the game is and what the knights are. His campaign is going to be a big departure from the very tragic story that Specter Knight was, but it will be interesting and focused on his journey to becoming King Knight. I’m not sure what the timeline is now, we’re still working through what it is, but it’ll be goofy.

Yacht Club has previously said they want to release the King Knight campaign before the end of the year, so it shouldn’t be too long before we can all be royals.

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