Most Recent: Xbox One

Xbox Store Today: Runbow, What Remains of Edith Finch, Moon Hunters

Posted on July 19, 2017 by John Scalzo

A trio of new Xbox One games are now available to download today, and one of them in a freebie if you’re an Xbox Live Gold subscriber…

July’s mid-month addition to the Games With Gold catalog is Runbow, a multiplayer platform racer from 13AM Games. Originally released for the Wii U (and then later the PC and 3DS), Runbow offers eight-player local multiplayer (and nine players online) and a ridiculous single-player challenge known as “The Bowhemoth.”

Also available to download today is What Remains of Edith Finch, a mystery game that promises to offer “a collection of strange tales about a family in Washington state.”

Finally today, Moon Hunters will make its Xbox One debut and it lets players experience multiple playthroughs of the same story to “see it from different angles and uncover new sides to characters, conflicts, and narratives.”

You can learn more about all of these game after the break. (more…)

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Telltale’s The Walking Dead will return for The Final Season in 2018

Posted on July 19, 2017 by John Scalzo

Ahead of this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, Telltale Games has announced plans to produce one final season of The Walking Dead. Fittingly enough, it’ll be known as The Walking Dead: The Final Season, and the first episode will be available for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, and mobile devices in 2018.

Players will once again follow Clementine as she navigates a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies in The Final Season. A short teaser trailer has been embedded above, and Telltale also created an accompanying retrospective video detailing Clementine’s impact on the development team and the video game industry.

In a series retrospective released today in celebration of Comic-Con through Telltale’s Summer 2017 Update, the development team at Telltale sat down to reflect on the journey of series protagonist Clementine since the first episode premiered in April of 2012. In discussing the character’s path all the way through 2017’s conclusion of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, Telltale confirmed that this fourth and final season would focus on Clementine in the lead role, allowing players to fully step back into the shoes of the fan favorite character.

“It’s going to be an amazing experience. Thank you all so much, from the bottom of my heart,” said the voice of Clementine, Melissa Hutchison. “It’s been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and so much love has been behind this whole experience. Good luck, I’ll be right there with you.”

Hopefully, we’ll learn more about The Walking Dead: The Final Season soon.

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Telltale will premiere the first episode of Batman: The Enemy Within on August 8

Posted on July 19, 2017 by John Scalzo

Batman returns this Summer, as Telltale Games has announced that the first episode of Batman: The Enemy Within will be available to download in August.

Picking up where Batman: The Telltale Series left off (and the choices you made in that game can carry over to the sequel), The Enemy Within will ask the Caped Crusader to do battle with The Joker and The Riddler. New foes will also stalk the streets of Gotham, along with new allies to help finish the fight:

In this latest chapter, both Bruce Wayne and Batman will be forced into precarious new roles. The Riddler has returned to terrorize Gotham City, but his gruesome puzzles merely foreshadow an even greater crisis. With the arrival of a ruthless federal agent and the return of a still nascent Joker, Batman must navigate uneasy alliances while Bruce Wayne undertakes a perilous series of deceptions. Which of Batman’s new allies will you choose to trust? And how deep into the darkness will you let Bruce descend?

The first episode of Batman: The Enemy Within will be known as The Enigma, and it’ll be released for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, and mobile devices on August 8. A Season Pass Disc, which will include the first episode and downloadable access to all subsequent episodes, will be available in stores for the PS4 and Xbox One in October.

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Major League Baseball might oppose Blizzard’s Overwatch League logo

Posted on July 18, 2017 by John Scalzo

Blizzard has big plans for their Overwatch League. Like traditional sports leagues, Blizzard wants to connect franchise owners in the Overwatch League to a city, and to help build fan support for professional Overwatch franchise at the local level. They even opted to create a logo that should look very familiar to sports fans… a silhouetted figure against a two-toned background.

Unfortunately, Major League Baseball believes the logo looks a little too familiar.

Major League Baseball has requested an “Extension of Time to File An Opposition” against the logo with the US Patent and Trademark Office. This request gives lawyers for Major League Baseball a chance to investigate the Overwatch League’s logo, and decide if its too similar to their own. If the USPTO agrees with Major League Baseball, Blizzard would have to change the design of the Overwatch League’s logo.

While it’s not hard to understand the MLB’s position (the two logos do look almost identical), I find it hard to side with the sports league over Blizzard. Putting both logos side-by-side-by-side with the National Basketball Association logo, which was adopted in 1971 and also features a silhouetted figure against a two-toned background, casts further doubt on the MLB’s tentative claim.

Major League Baseball has until July 26 to officially file the paperwork for an “Opposition” to the Overwatch League’s logo.

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Max Brooks’s Minecraft: The Island novel is now available at bookstores everywhere

Posted on July 18, 2017 by John Scalzo

Mojang teamed up with Max Brooks (the author of World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide) to create the first official tie-in novel based on Minecraft. Titled Minecraft: The Island, the book is targeted at a younger audience and it’s available on store shelves today.

When writing Minecraft: The Island, Brooks found inspiration in classics like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe to tell his own tale of survival and mystery:

Washed up on a beach, the lone castaway looks around the shore. Where am I? Who am I? And why is everything made of blocks? But there isn’t much time to soak up the sun. It’s getting dark, and there’s a strange new world to explore!

The top priority is finding food. The next is not becoming food. Because there are others out there on the island… like the horde of zombies that appear after night falls. Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow.

In this world, the rules don’t always make sense, but courage and creativity go a long way. There are forests to explore, hidden underground tunnels to loot, and undead mobs to defeat. Only then will the secrets of the island be revealed.

You can read the first chapter right now at the novel’s official website.

Posted in Etcetera, Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Tagged

Tekken 7 will add Fatal Fury’s Geese Howard as a downloadable character this Winter

Posted on July 17, 2017 by John Scalzo

The fighters from Bandai Namco’s Tekken 7 will soon be able to do battle with another crossover character, as the publisher announced that Geese Howard will be added to the game this Winter.

Geese Howard made his debut in 1991’s Fatal Fury as the final boss, and would go on to appear in more than a dozen games in the combined Fatal Fury/Art of Fighting/King of Fighters series including Fatal Fury Special, Art of Fighting 2, and the recently released King of Fighters XIV.

Tekken 7 is currently available for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and you can get a glimpse Geese Howard in his Tekken guise in the trailer embedded above.

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New Retail Releases: Splatoon 2, Fortnite, Aerea

Posted on July 16, 2017 by John Scalzo

The Squid Kids will make their Nintendo Switch debut this week, as Nintendo will release Splatoon 2 for their console/handheld hybrid this Friday. The sequel will feature the return of Turf War, as well as a brand new single-player Campaign, and the wave-based Salmon Run cooperative mode.

Also set to launch this week is Fortnite, a survival simulation from Epic Games for the PS4 and Xbox One. Players will be able to craft crazy weaponry for attack missions and build their own “extravagant” forts to keep the monsters at bay.

Finally this week, Triangle Studios and Soedesco will release Aerea: Collector’s Edition for the PS4. The music-themed action RPG includes four different character and a hand-drawn graphical style.

That’s it for this the Retail Releases Report, but we’ll be back with an update on the latest additions to the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Nintendo eShop later this week.

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

See the developers of Star Wars: Battlefront II discuss the game’s story at D23 Expo 2017

Posted on July 15, 2017 by John Scalzo

Star Wars is front and center at this year’s D23 Expo, and while Disney probably won’t release the next trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we did get a new look at Star Wars: Battlefront II. Developers from DICE, Criterion, and Motive, along with the game’s cast, got together to take fans “Behind the Story” in a new video:

Star Wars: Battlefront II is bringing an all new hero into the fold with the introduction of Iden Versio, Commander of the Imperial special forces team known as the Inferno Squad. Fans were treated to an appearance by the game’s lead actress Janina Gavankar, who plays Iden, and a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group, Steve Blank. In addition to discussing the single-player campaign that tells a story from the unique perspective of the empire, Janina and Steve introduced a new behind-the-scenes look at the development of this original Star Wars story featured in the game.

Star Wars: Battlefront II will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 17.

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