Battle Royale: The Last Generation Of An SNES-CD Saga

[RySenkari]

"It might be a few years removed from the peak of the roller derby craze, but Psyonix's new Rocket Derby combines the excitement of roller derby with the fun and brutality of car combat games like Twisted Metal. It's the successor to their previous car combat title, Battle-Cars, and it plays much like roller derby, with simplified rules. There are four players to a side, who cruise around a circular track, with one player on each team designated as the jammer. The jammer scores points by passing cars from the other team, while the blockers attempt to stop them... and here's where things get really chaotic, as cars can ram into one another and shoot missiles in an attempt to stop the opposing team's jammer! Games take place in tightly confined arenas, and usually degenerate into melees of exploding cars and flying missiles. It's quite easy to learn and play, but getting good takes lots of experience, and with games lasting only a few minutes, it's easy to jump in and start playing. Rocket Derby is already rising in the digital download ranks since its release in January, and at only $9.99 to download and play, it's quite cheap to get in on the action. It's becoming one of the most popular competitive online games on both console and PC, and with decals and custom designs available for players to purchase and win, the game has the potential to become quite addictive as well, as players compete to own the best skins for their cars. It might still be a ways away from becoming the next big e-sport, but it's definitely one of 2016's most popular new games, and its popularity is rising with every passing day.

Joining Rocket Derby as a potential future e-sport to look out for is Ant Agonizers, a brand new PC game in which two teams of five battle it out in various arenas, riding giant ants and using them to attack their opponents. The game has a deceptively cutesy aesthetic, with the characters themselves being childlike in appearance, riding ants that look somewhat cartoonish, though things can often get brutal, when riders get knocked off and the giant ants begin chewing on them as the rider flails around on the ground. The carnage is bloodless, and played up for laughs, adding to the game's absurdity. There are also special items based on various ant and anti puns, such as Ant Acid, which can be shot at ants or their riders to damage them. Arenas are based on common roaming grounds for ants, such as kitchen tables or picnic areas, and each arena has its own distinct quirks and attributes, making for a unique match every single time. Ant Agonizers isn't gaining in popularity as quickly as Rocket Derby, but it's been getting plenty of headlines since January, and the first major Ant Agonizers tournaments are set to begin in June."
-from an article in the April 2016 issue of GameInformer magazine

Reality, Nexus, Virtua Boast Nearly Identical Online Player Numbers

For the first time ever, all three major consoles posted almost identical online user figures last month, as the Apple Virtua used its holiday sales push to even things up with the Reality and the Nexus, putting the three consoles within 50,000 users of one another (in terms of the number of users playing competitively online). The Reality is currently the top online console, with the Nexus just 15,000 users behind, and the Virtua about 28,000 users behind the Nexus, but gaining quickly (to the point where it could overtake the other two by next month). Nintendo's online has long lagged behind its competition, with the Wave lagging behind the Microsoft Xbox, and the Sapphire posting inferior user numbers to both the Xbox 2 and the iTwin (at least until the Xbox 2's user base began to collapse in 2010). However, the Reality was actually the top online console for much of 2015, owing to its rapidly expanding user base and the launch of hit online titles such as Elemancers and Super Smash Bros. Reality. The Google Nexus, with its family-friendly online community and slew of online games (many of them being free to play), as well as its larger install base through much of 2014, led until the beginning of 2015, when it was overtaken by the Reality. Apple, on the other hand, has heavily focused much of its strategy on online play, with the SegaNet service (currently in its 5.0 iteration) still setting the gold standard for online play on consoles. However, thanks to the Virtua's initial slow sales and the Nexus' surge, the Virtua had the smallest online community throughout its entire lifespan, and is still in third, though as mentioned before, that gap has rapidly narrowed. All three consoles have their pros and cons when it comes to online play (we broke these down in our Online Gaming User Guide last November), but have all cultivated their own distinct base of loyal users, with Nintendo's Reality focused more on the hardcore gamer market, the Apple Virtua focused on longtime users and a different kind of hardcore gamer, while the Nexus focused on casual players, mobile users, and families. Each console has an outstanding lineup of online games for hardcore gamers and casual players alike, and each console has largely succeeded in pushing its online service with promotions and exclusives, which has led to this... the closest online userbase battle in history.

And 2016 could prove to be a huge year for the consoles and their online landscapes. Nintendo is launching its battle royale title, Rare's Battle Buddies, in May. A year after the launch of Elemancers, the game looks to cater to a more hardcore audience, but could have extremely wide appeal thanks to its colorful characters and easy to learn gameplay. Apple is launching Strikeback on the Virtua. Less of a battle royale game, and more of a massive "army battle" simulator (compare to a sci-fi Battlefield type game), Strikeback is definitely aimed toward more hardcore players, with Apple's John Carmack personally consulting on the game design. Then, there's the two huge shooter games coming to the Nexus this year: Nephilim and The Covenant Zero. Nephilim could be the year's biggest FPS title and in addition to its campaign, it's leaning heavily on its online multiplayer element to create a true old school style sci-fi FPS in the vein of Quake or Unreal Tournament. The Covenant has always been one of the biggest online multiplayer franchises, and The Covenant Zero looks like one of the slickest third person shooters ever made, continuing the series' reputation for deathmatch fun. Players hoping for some competitive online action this year will be satisfied no matter what console they own, and each console's online numbers should see their biggest jumps ever, though only time will tell who wins this latest round of the console wars.

-from a March 12, 2016 article on Gamespot.com

-

Cyberwar 4 remains the most popular competitive first person shooter on the market, even in front of the slightly more popular Call Of Duty games (it does help that the competitive Call Of Duty landscape changes from year to year with the release of each new game, whereas Cyberwar 4 was released in 2012 and has been played heavily since). The game's larger variety of combat modes, its use of drone warfare to mix up the traditional FPS combat, and its different types of unique weaponry have attracted a larger and more diverse player base, helping it to become not just the most popular competitive FPS, but the most popular competitive online console game overall. Amongst fighting games, Super Smash Bros. Clash has been king for some time, though Unleashed has also been extremely popular. Super Smash Bros. Reality is gaining rapidly on both, with a userbase expanding much faster than that of Unleashed, thanks to the greater character selection and what most longtime players consider improved combat mechanics compared to its predecessors. It can also be patched much more quickly for balance, aiding diversity in the metagame (though there are still fairly clearly defined character tiers). Super Smash Bros. and its ilk haven't quite been able to top the great FPS titles for overall online popularity, but as a mainstream e-sport, the Smash Bros. games have proven significantly more popular. The community weathered a sex scandal in 2012 involving numerous top tier players, but has been able to recover fairly quickly, and now sees more support than ever thanks to increased oversight and prize support from a new Nintendo and Sony supported Professional Smash Bros. League, which has established strict rules for player conduct at the highest levels of play. The first PSBL Super Smash Bros. Reality tournaments were held in January, and numerous major events are expected to take place this year, with greater prize support than the top Cyberwar 4 and Call Of Duty tournaments. On PC, however, the e-sports scene has been even bigger: games such as Leveler, in which teams of four attempt to complete a dungeon on the same map, leveling up and collecting treasures before battling one another on an open battlefield, have proven intensely popular. Leveler was released in 2013 to little acclaim, but has rapidly blown up in 2014 and 2015 thanks to numerous content and battle patches that have turned it into one of the most fun multiplayer titles on the market, and it continues to grow its userbase to this day, with highly lucrative tournaments and professional Leveler teams competing in front of thousands of people. Google has done some incredible things with the Android platform in recent years, and their Wakfu battle game has been one of them. Teams of four battle each other in various environments with powerful special techniques, all done with a simplified mobile interface that's easy to learn but very hard to master. Online card games such as Hearthstone and Apple's Shining Force Warpath have generated billions in revenue for their parent companies, and both are now staples of the e-sports circuit, with the latter surpassing the popularity of any of the original tactical RPGs that preceded it. E-sports have blown up enormously in the last few years, and Nintendo, Apple, and Google have all produced hits. As the viewership and prize pools of e-sports grow, it might be only a matter of time before one of these games challenges the big four sporting leagues for profitability.

-from an article on Zzzando!, posted on February 29, 2016

 

[RySenkari]

At the start of the decade, the WWE was going through a time of transition: though the company had bounced back somewhat from the tragic deaths of Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, and Kurt Angle, there were still some doubts that the company was doing enough to take care of its wrestlers' well-being, and in Mark Cuban's TAW, the company was facing its biggest competition since the WCW days, with numerous veteran wrestlers as well as some intriguing new wrestlers joining the upstart company. Despite the troubles, WWE remained the biggest company in the business, and headed into the decade on a fairly positive note. Over the next couple of years, the company would see the debut of some very popular new wrestlers, while also dealing with the retirements of Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Undertaker. Michaels would be retired in 2011, after an epic pair of matches with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania, in which Michaels would eventually pit his career against the Undertaker's legendary streak. 2011's Wrestlemania match between the two men would be one of the biggest the company had ever seen, as it would be not only Shawn Michaels' final match, but also the retirement match for the Undertaker, who had decided not to renew his contract after that year's event. After the death of Kurt Angle, Undertaker had realized that he'd been using a lot of painkillers as well, and retired to avoid suffering Kurt Angle's fate, leading to Michaels and Undertaker walking down the ramp arm in arm, walking off into the sunset together. As for Stone Cold Steve Austin, a career of injuries and brutal matches had taken its toll, and though he didn't want to call it quits, he ultimately decided to do so following that year's Summerslam. He would wrestle his final match against Robert Roode, a No Holds Barred Title vs. Career match that would turn into a ferocious 40-minute brawl that would see both men bloodied and broken by the end of the match. The match had been preceded by almost a year long feud in which Roode, playing an arrogant, rich heel character, had delivered insult after insult against Austin, while costing him numerous title shots and interfering in his matches. Austin would get his revenge numerous times, but Roode gave as much as he'd gotten, leading up to a non-title match at Wrestlemania that saw Austin defeat Roode, only for Roode to continue his vendetta against Austin, winning the title at Judgment Day, while Austin would eventually win a title shot with the condition that he'd have to risk his career. In the end, Roode defeated Austin cleanly, and despite his heel character, the two showed respect to each other at the end, shaking hands, hugging, and even drinking beers together, only for Austin to get the last laugh by giving Roode the Stunner and a pair of middle fingers, ending his career in the only way the Rattlesnake knew how, and leaving the arena having not won the title but getting a massive ovation from fans.

Fortunately, the WWE would get plenty of new talent over the next few years to replace the talent that was retiring. Windham Rotunda would enter the federation as Husky Harris, a bar brawling redneck character meant to be "sort of" a replacement for Austin, though with a bit more silliness to him... though when that gimmick failed, he reinvented himself as the creepy cult leader Bray Wyatt, and would become a top heel in the company for years to come. Kenny Omega would enter the WWE in 2011 with a somewhat silly gimmick: a professional gamer, making the jump to wrestling but still using gaming lingo and being obsessed with video games, playing them backstage between matches. Surprisingly, this gimmick actually made him somewhat popular as a face, and he got a major push in 2012, winning the Intercontinental Title twice and the tag team titles once, but after the gimmick got stale, he was rebranded as a heel, and his popularity resurged, especially after feuding with John Cena throughout 2014. Perhaps one of the biggest stars to come to WWE during this time would be Seth Rollins, who started off as an arrogant heel managed by Paul Heyman, though he quickly took over and spoke for himself, and also let his wrestling do the talking, carving a path through a number of popular face wrestlers of the time and even becoming world champion in 2013. He would turn face in 2014, briefly feuding with the likes of Bray Wyatt and Kenny Omega, though he would also feud with long time heel wrestlers Muhammad Hassan and Samoa Joe. Seth Rollins brought attitude and charisma that helped fill the hole left by the retirements of Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin, and he would establish himself as one of the top draws of the decade. Of course, there were plenty of outstanding veterans remaining on the roster. Triple H continued to wrestle as a heel well into the decade, though after 2015 he would begin to fulfill more of a backstage role. John Cena was one of the strongest faces in the company, though he never quite achieved the same level of popularity he did IOTL. And Brock Lesnar, who'd left to play football and try out MMA, was ready to return to the WWE, and his return in 2014 coincided perfectly with Seth Rollins' face turn, allowing the two to feud for a brief time, though Lesnar got the better of Rollins and would begin feuding with John Cena soon afterward. By the end of 2015, Lesnar was world champion and a dominant force in the company, having beaten Owen Hart at Wrestlemania in 2015 to retire him, but new challengers were slowly being built up to take him on.

Meanwhile, TAW, which enjoyed a two hour show every Friday on Fox Family, as well as a monthly pay-per-view, was thriving, even in WWE's shadow. Owner Mark Cuban did a good job of bringing in talent, both veteran talent and new talent, while also appearing occasionally as an on screen authority figure. Unlike Vince McMahon, who usually played a bombastic heel and involved himself physically with the wrestlers, Cuban always appeared as a face, and only appeared rarely, and never wrestled any matches. Though criticized for being somewhat of a "deus ex machina" when he did show up, Cuban was mostly praised for his on-screen role, as he was entertaining enough to make crowds cheer for him but wasn't so arrogant that he had to be involved in everything. TAW's biggest stars of this half of the decade were Bryan Danielson, CM Punk, and Angelico. Angelico was a high flying face character in the vein of a Rey Mysterio, CM Punk excelled in his role as an excellent heel, and Bryan Danielson went back and forth as a tweener, feuding with both Punk and Angelico, and even ending up in an epic feud with Hulk Hogan in 2012. TAW also enjoyed a thriving women's division. There were no "Divas" or T+A here, TAW featured excellent matches between highly talented women, and also featured smart storylines for them, eventually inspiring WWE to do the same. Trish Stratus even jumped to TAW at one point to wrestle for a couple of years, and Asuka got her start here as well, wrestling an epic 28-minute match with Stratus in 2013 that Dave Meltzer awarded five stars to. TAW was solidly TV-PG, but still featured great storylines, intense matches, and well booked feuds, with announcers Joey Styles and Tazz calling the action. Sheamus and Dean Ambrose would also wrestle on TAW, with Sheamus being a major heel throughout the first half of the decade, and Dean Ambrose mostly wrestling as a face and providing an intense brawling style that complimented his fellow wrestlers well (he'd have some memorable matches with Danielson, for example). There were some dud gimmicks here and there, including Cody Runnels being forced into a gimmick that saw him wrestling as the Archie Comics inspired character Arnold, a somewhat dorky wrestler with a 1950s "aw shucks!" gimmick that made him come off as a lamer version of Kerwin White, if that's even possible. He was even accompanied by two female managers who feuded over him, Betty and Veronica style, and he drew X-Pac Heat even when he was heavily pushed by the company (even winning TAW's equivalent of the Intercontinental Title). He spent 18 months as the character before the gimmick was mercifully shelved. Still, TAW proved incredibly popular, with ratings eclipsing anything TNA produced IOTL, and even at its peak coming within striking distance of WWE. As of the end of 2015, TAW was starting to decline in popularity a bit, but was still quite financially successful.

 

[rick007]

​

The Amazing Race: Season 28: Going online.

This season was interesting. CBS wanted to try an experiment and, according to Bertram van Munster, it was suggested to bring in younger viewers who may not have been born when the show first went on the air. I can see that. Anyways, this led to the use of internet celebrities to make up at least one person on each team. This was in an effort to generate interest in the show and possibly in earlier seasons. Whether this worked or not I don't know. Anyways, this season was filmed from mid November to early December.

The Cast

Doug and Rob: Brothers. The Nostalgia Critic and his brother provide some good commentary on the proceedings.

Scott and Blair: Father and Daughter. She does makeup tutorials on YouTube. I find her whining annoying.

Brodie and Kurt: Friends. They play pro Frisbee, but they are good competitors.

Tyler and Korey: Friends. I haven't seen their YouTube shows so I don't know what they do exactly but they are fun to an extent.

Zach and Rachel: Married. He performs "Digital Magic Tricks" online. I find them cute and entertaining.

Jessica and Brittany: Friends. They are both Instagram models. They seem ok.

Marty and Hagan: Mother and daughter. Marty was in this viral video of her doing an entertaining passengers on a flight she was an attendant on.

Cole and Sheri: Mother and Son. Cole is a YouTube star and both are incredibly entertaining.

Erin and Joslyn: Friends. They are gamers with their own YouTube channel.

Dana and Matt: Engaged. They are dance instructors and fun.

Cameron and Darius: Brothers. They mostly do stunts and post them online.

(OOC: Doug and Rob replace Burnie Burns and Ashley Jenkins. Too be fair, I wrote this before what happened with Channel Awesome came out.)

The Race

Leg #1: "This is Boy Scout stuff."

Original Air Date: February 12, 2016.

Starting at the racers own houses, (great start there guys), teams are told to fly to Mexico City, Mexico and find the Monumento a la Revolución. Here they pick up $230 and the Detour: Mariachi Madness or Great Bulls of Fire. In Mariachi Madness, teams go to Garibaldi Square and search through 350 Mariachi performers for one that is faking playing and take them to a judge. In Great Bulls of Fire, teams make a paper mâche bull called a torito as part of a fireworks display and light it when they get it right.

Teams then go to Cuevas de Parque Temático Tialocan where they spend the night. The next morning teams are given the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to go into the nearby caves and look for 13 pieces of a Teotihuacano mask. However, not all the pieces are for the same mask. Teams then go to the Pit Stop: Museo Soumaya.

1. Tyler and Korey 2:10 P.M. Won $2,000 each.

2. Dana and Matt 2:13 P.M.

3. Doug and Rob 2:43 P.M.

4. Zach and Rachel 2:50 P.M.

5. Darius and Cameron 3:01 P.M.

6. Brodie and Kurt 3:15 P.M.

7. Jessica and Brittany 3:51 P.M.

8. Sheri and Cole 4:09 P.M.

9. Marty and Hagan 4:10 P.M.

10. Scott and Blair 5:00 P.M.

11. Erin and Joslyn 5:02 P.M. NOT ELIMINATED/SPEEDBUMPED.

Leg #2: "It's the Gollum thing to do!"

Original Air Date: February 19, 2016.

Getting $30, teams fly to Cartagena, Columbia. On arrival, teams have to go to El Totumo. Here teams hit the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to go into a mud bath at the top of El Totumo, submerge, grab a satchel that contains an emerald and then wash it off. When they hand it in they have to swim for the next clue. Teams then go to Terraza Melló Farándula Jugos Naturales at Manzanillo del Mar.

Teams then go to Playa del Mar where Erin and Joslyn get their Speedbump. In this Speedbump, Erin and Joslyn help local fishermen haul in a dragnet then take out all the fish. They can then join the other teams at the Detour: Pop-up or Parrilla. In Pop-up, teams have to properly build a shelter with provided wood and tarp. Once that's done, teams then have to park a car under it. In Parrilla, teams have to properly cook three fish dishes on a Parrilla grill. Teams then go to the Pit Stop: Plaza Bolivar.

1. Brodie and Kurt 10:10 A.M. A trip for two to Saint Thomas

2. Doug and Rob 10:19 A.M.

3. Tyler and Korey 10:59 A.M.

4. Scott and Blair 11:17 A.M.

5. Zach and Rachel 11:34 A.M.

6. Sheri and Cole 12:03 P.M.

7. Erin and Joslyn 12:35 P.M.

8. Dana and Matt 1:20 P.M.

9. Jessica and Brittany 1:59 P.M.

10. Marty and Hagan 2:10 P.M.

11. Darius and Cameron 2:31 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #3: "Bros become jocks."

Original Air Date: February 26, 2016.

Getting $252, teams stay in Cartagena and go to the Plaza de San Diego where they will look for a group of pollera dancers for the next clue. Teams then head to Castillo San Felipe de Barajas and search the catacombs for the Detour: Tickets or Tejo. In Tickets, teams act as bus conductors and collect at least 20,000 Colombian Pesos (about $5.98US at the time) to get the next clue. In Tejo, teams played Tejo a traditional Colombian game involving hitting targets filled with gunpowder with stone disks, with teams hitting three to go on.

Somewhere around here there is a U-Turn but it goes unmentioned and unused. Teams then go to Calle San Juan de Dios, in front of Museo Naval do Caribe and find a vendor for the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to take a traditional Colombian knapsack called a mochila that has a design on it and find two exact matches among the nearby merchants. Teams then go to the Pit Stop: Baluarte de Santiago.

1. Tyler and Korey 11:00 A.M. Won a trip for two to Mykonos, Greece.

2. Brodie and Kurt 11:04 A.M.

3. Doug and Rob 11:31 A.M.

4. Sheri and Cole 11:45 A.M.

5. Zach and Rachel 12:13 P.M.

6. Erin and Joslyn 12:34 P.M.

7. Jessica and Brittany 1:12 P.M.

8. Scott and Blair 1:33 P.M.

9. Dana and Matt 2:10 P.M.

10. Marty and Hagan 3:00 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #4: "Trending my ass!"

Original Air Date: March 4, 2016.

Receiving $150, teams fly to Geneva, Switzerland. Once there, teams get to the Jet d'Eau then going to Chocolats Rohr where they spend the night. The next morning, teams get the Detour: Work Bench or Bench Work. In Work Bench, teams correctly make a Swiss Army Knife from premade parts. In Bench Work, teams go to the Promenade de la Treille and determine how many people can sit on the longest bench in the world, measuring by alternating sitting and a newspaper. If they are between 190-197, they get the clue.

Teams then head to the Broken Chair, after which they go to the Palace of Nations, where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to identify the flags of 10 of the founding nations of the United Nations: Belarus, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, India, Liberia, The Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Turkey and Uruguay, in the correct order. Teams then take a train to Chamonix, France. Here they go to the Place du Triangle de l'Amitié where they search the grounds for the Pit Stop.

1. Brodie and Kurt 3:14 P.M. Won $3,000 each.

2. Doug and Rob 3:47 P.M.

3. Tyler and Korey 4:10 P.M.

4. Brittany and Jessica 4:11 P.M.

5. Erin and Joslyn 4:12 P.M.

6. Dana and Matt 4:13 P.M.

7. Zach and Rachel 4:14 P.M.

8. Sheri and Cole 4:15 P.M.

9. Scott and Blair 4:16 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #5: "This is some really weird stuff."

Original Air Date: March 11, 2016.

Getting $201, teams have to search nearby for an SUV with a specific French license plate number. Then they tell their driver to get to Les Grands Montets. Teams then go to the top of a gorge to get the Detour: Dynamite or Campsite. In Dynamite, teams have to take a bag, with some dynamite and some baguettes in it, down a via ferrata to a mountaineer. In Campsite, teams have to pitch a tent and then put a wall of snow around it.

Teams then go to the Planpraz gondola station, where they have to do the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to ride the gondola to the top then, one team at a time, get a running start on paragliding with an instructor, getting to the back of the line if they fail. Once in the air they have to spot a yeti waving a French flag. On the ground, they have to answer France to the question: "Who's flag did you see?" Teams then go to the Pit Stop: The Dr. Paccard Statue in Place Balmat.

1. Doug and Rob 12:22 P.M. Won a trip for two to Boracay, The Philippines

2. Tyler and Korey 12:23 P.M.

3. Brodie and Kurt 12:54 P.M.

4. Sheri and Cole 1:12 P.M.

5. Brittany and Jessica 1:34 P.M.

6. Erin and Joslyn 1:59 P.M.

7. Zach and Rachel 2:11 P.M.

8. Dana and Matt 2:56 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #6: "Let's get this show on the road!"

Original Air Date: April 1, 2016.

Receiving $230, teams fly to Yerevan, Armenia. On arrival, teams go to the Yerevan Opera House where they are treated to a saber dance while they search for the clue (all they have to do is ask the janitor and he'll give it to them). Teams then have to climb all 500 steps of the Yerevan Cascade for the Detour: Bread or Thread. In Bread, teams have to go to a local bakery and make and bake 15 loaves of a traditional Armenian bread called lavash in an underground oven. In Thread, teams have to go to a carpet factory and make a row of 200 stitches on a carpet following a pattern.

Teams then go to Republic Square and catch a bus to Hatsavan where, on the roadside, they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to choose a taxi, get it on a ramp and then change the oil. Teams then use the taxi to go to the Pit Stop: The Temple of Garni where they are told to keep going.

1. Brodie and Kurt 1:12 P.M. Won the Express Pass.

2. Zach and Rachel 1:56 P.M.

3. Doug and Rob 2:10 P.M.

4. Sheri and Cole 3:05 P.M.

5. Tyler and Korey 3:45 P.M.

6. Brittany and Jessica 4:32 P.M.

7. Erin and Joslyn 5:00 P.M.

Leg #7: "Not slow enough!"

Original Air Date: April 8, 2016.

Getting $300 at the end of the last leg, teams travel by train to Tbilisi, Georgia. Once there, teams go to Freedom Square and look for the St. George Statue. Teams then go to Narakala Fortress and take a gondola down to Jvari Monastery. Here teams find the Detour: Clean or String. In Clean, teams head to Iago's Winery and wash out an enormous clay pot buried in the ground. In String, teams go to Arsekidzis 15 and thread five strings of 20 hazelnuts, then dip them in pots and hang them to dry.

Teams then go to Rustaveli Theatre for the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to learn and perform a very fast dance with members of the Georgian National Ballet. Teams then head to the Pit Stop: Rike Park.

1. Zach and Rachel 10:10 A.M. Won a trip for two to Turks and Caicos.

2. Doug and Rob 10:34 A.M.

3. Tyler and Korey 10:37 A.M.

4. Brodie and Kurt 11:04 A.M.

5. Brittany and Jessica 12:07 P.M.

6. Sheri and Cole 12:15 P.M.

7. Erin and Joslyn 1:00 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #8: "This is not what I had in mind."

Original Air Date: April 15, 2016.

Receiving $200, teams fly to Dubai, UAE. Once there, teams drive themselves to a Bedouin camp, with the men greeted nose to nose as per tradition. There they get the Detour: Races or Oasis. In Races, teams go to a racetrack and race against a camel on a bike for 1.2 mi. (2km). If they finish ahead of the camel, they get the clue, if not they get an advantage on their next attempt. In Oasis, lead four camels across the desert of another camp, where they pick up some bread and camel milk.

Teams then go to Atlantis, The Palm Aquaventure, where they get the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to put on a wetsuit, go into an aquarium, and get a canister containing a puzzle. Once out, they solve the puzzle, which includes floating letters that spells out RACE. Teams then, in a shout out to season 15, go down the Poseidon's Revenge waterslide. Then they go to the Pit Stop: Deira Old Souq Station.

1. Brodie and Kurt 12:01 P.M. Won a trip for two to Helsinki, Finland.

2. Doug and Rob 12:17 P.M.

3. Zach and Rachel 1:10 P.M.

4. Tyler and Korey 1:43 P.M.

5. Brittany and Jessica 2:14 P.M.

6. Sheri and Cole 3:46 P.M. NOT ELIMINATED/SPEEDBUMPED.

Leg #9: "Let's go fly a kite."

Original Air Date: April 22, 2016.

Getting $235, teams fly to Denpasar, Indonesia. Once there, teams go to Tanah Lot, where they spend the night. The next morning, teams deliver a gebogan to one nearby temple, then deliver a live python each around their necks to another nearby temple. Teams then head to Banjar Belatung Kusama Beach where Sheri and Cole find their Speedbump. In this Speedbump, Sheri and Cole go to Goa Lawah Temple, find a marked food vendor, and sell 10 bowls of a traditional Indonesian meatball dish called bakso. Once that's done, they can rejoin the other teams at the beach for the Roadblock.

In this Roadblock, one team member has to collect seawater in two baskets, shake out the water onto a bed of volcanic sand, go to a work station and scrape enough salt out to fill four plastic bags. Teams then head to Mertasari Beach, where they run into another Roadblock. In this Roadblock, the team member who didn't do the first Roadblock, has to assemble a traditional 30ft kite and then fly it along the beach with a team of kite enthusiasts. Teams then go to Semawang Beach and paddle an outrigger canoe to the Pit Stop: A Pinisi sailing ship.

1. Zach and Rachel 1:12 P.M. Won $5,000 each.

2. Tyler and Korey 1:15 P.M.

3. Doug and Rob 2:10 P.M.

4. Sheri and Cole 2:59 P.M.

5. Brittany and Jessica 3:21 P.M.

6. Brodie and Kurt 4:44 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #10: "Monkey Dance!"

Original Air Date: April 29, 2016.

Receiving $290, teams go by boat to Mushroom Beach. Here, they dive for their next clue in one of three boxes. Teams then go to Pura Puseh where they put on sarongs and follow a man in a monkey costume to their next clue. It's then Detour: Haul or Harvest. In Haul, teams carry 50 coconuts and four chickens across a congested bridge and load them onto a truck. In Harvest, teams propel a canoe through a marked course, picking up enough seaweed to cover a tarp along the way.

Teams then go to Warung Sunrise where they find the U-Turn, which no one uses. Teams then go to Pande Curly Paddle Shop where they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to ride a jet ski to Blue Lagoon where they climb a four story high cliff. Then, after loosen up with yoga, then jump off from a height of 40ft. Teams then take a boat back to shore and head to the Pit Stop: Bajra Sandhi Monument.

1. Zach and Rachel 2:59 P.M. Won an Alaskan Cruise for two.

2. Doug and Rob 3:12 P.M.

3. Sheri and Cole 3:33 P.M.

4. Brittany and Jessica 4:10 P.M.

5. Tyler and Korey 5:00 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #11: "It's nothing."

Original Air Date: May 6, 2016.

Getting $400, teams fly to Shenzhen, China. On arrival, teams have to search the upper floor of the departure hall for the next clue. Teams then head to the Window of the World station by bus and train and look for the scaled down version of the Eiffel Tower for the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to search the grounds of the park, which contains 130 scaled down miniatures of real landmarks for: The Pyramids of Egypt; The Coliseum; The Taj Mahal; Notre Dame Cathedral; The Merlions of Singapore and St. Peter's Square.

Teams then head to the Moon Bridge in Lychee Park where the find the Detour: Commuter Cycle or Master of Arts. In Commuter Cycle, teams dress in business attire and learn how to ride a self-balancing unicycle. Once they are comfortable, they have to do a marked course down a busy street, while holding a coffee cup and a locked briefcase, the combination of which they'll get at the end of the course. In Master of Arts, teams had to search for a plaza filled with painters at the Dafen Oil Painting Village for one who held a marked paintbrush. The painter would lead them to a shop where they found disassembled pieces of art. After bringing the pieces of art to another shop, they then had to properly install the artwork using hammer and nails to hang it on a wall. Once the art was properly assembled to the satisfaction of the judge, they received their next clue. They are then given a photo of the next Pit Stop: Shenzhen Civic Centre.

1. Sheri and Cole 3:12 P.M. No prize given.

2. Doug and Rob 3:13 P.M.

3. Brittany and Jessica 4:00 P.M.

4. Zach and Rachel 4:44 P.M. ELIMINATED.

Leg #12: "The only first that matters."

Original Air Date: May 13, 2016.

Receiving $200, teams fly to the final destination city: Los Angeles, California. On arrival, they go to Angelus Plaza. Here they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to choose a safety person, go to the Penthouse Suite, get tethered to a rappel line, and jump to their clue which is hanging in midair. If they miss they have to rappel to the bottom, come back up and try again, with each failed attempt bringing the clue closer. Teams then take a helicopter to Santa Barbara.

Once there, they make their way to the Santa Barbara Marina where the Theresa Ann is. Then they go to Gibraltar Rock in Rattlesnake Canyon. At Gibraltar Rock, teams had to take part in synchronized mountaineering. While one team member traversed horizontally across a suspended line to grab one half of the clue, this would cause their partner to descend down the face of the cliff to pick up the other half. Once returned to safety, teams had to join the two halves to read their next clue. Then teams go to Grassini Family Vineyards for the final Roadblock. In this Roadblock, the team member who didn't do the first Roadblock has to arrange wine barrel lids with letters and hashtags on them to spell out the names of the cities they visited in order. Then they search the grounds for the finish line.

1. Doug and Rob WIN

2. Brittany and Jessica PLACE

3. Sheri and Cole SHOW.

The Review

This season was seen by many as a ratings grab by many, myself included. However, the personalities involved, along with the locations and the tasks, made it slightly more bearable to watch. It's my number 18 season. Up next more from the Great White North.

-Globetrotting: An Amazing Race Blog by R.C. Anderson for the website Reality Rewind, April 3, 2017.

​

 

[RySenkari]

Dragonslayer

Dragonslayer is an open world RPG developed and published by Squaresoft. It's the company's first true open world RPG (other RPGs by Square have had open worlds, but this game plays very much like a WRPG, an Elder Scrolls or Witcher III type game), though it features plenty of classic Final Fantasy-style quirks and twists, a hybrid of the Japanese and Western RPG styles. It takes place in the world of Rindonia, a heavily stratified medieval-type world in which most people are peasants or tradesmen scraping out a meager living, and the true money and glory is in the slaughter of beasts, particularly the dragons that terrorize towns. Slaughtering dragons can bring in huge bounties that allow even the lowliest of peasants to rise to the noble ranks, and the game's protagonist Rath, who witnessed his family die of starvation as a youth, now seeks to become a dragonslayer himself in order to become a wealthy noble and perhaps claim a measure of revenge over the people who looked down upon him and his family. Dragonslayer's basic gameplay is a sort of hybrid of Monster Hunter and Nier: Automata (the combat system draws very heavily from the latter, and many people who worked on the OTL Nier series are part of the Dragonslayer staff, including Yoko Taro. Rath can wield a variety of weapons in combat, and though he starts with a sword and shield, later on he's able to dual wield weaponry. Dragonslayer is heavily loot-based, with a wide variety of loot able to be purchased from shops, found in the world, or dropped from enemies, and the Weapon Stories system from OTL's Drakengard and Nier also shows up in Dragonslayer, with unique, powerful equipment having a unique story attached to it. Rath can also use a variety of magical attacks, and these attacks follow the Fire/Fira/Firaga system of naming seen in the Final Fantasy series, one bit of lore the game shares with that title. The game has a wide variety of enemies, both human and beast, with an enormous variety of beasts able to be encountered and slaughtered in the world. There are bounties galore, with many of the game's side missions and even plenty of main missions revolving around the hunting and killing of beasts. Dragons also take many forms, ranging from small baby dragons to enormous dragons that are many times larger than Rath and must be killed in segments or killed with the aid of an NPC party. Dragonslayer doesn't actually allow the player to party up with other players online, but there are online features where players can leave signs or even certain loot items in other player's games for them to find, and also a combat arena where players can battle it out with one another for prizes and glory. Rath is able to move around quite fluidly, jumping and climbing on ledges, running and crawling and even riding on mounts that include horses or some other creatures, including a flying dragon and a chocobo (another allusion to the Final Fantasy series found in the game). Combat itself is fairly fast-paced (unlike the Monster Hunter series, most battles are over fairly quickly, even bosses, though there are a few larger beasts that can take more time to kill), and strategies can vary: a player can go for a slow, deliberate strategy involving single strikes, or they can use a faster strategy with dodging, weaving, and combo attacks with light weaponry. The battle variety in Dragonslayer is one of the most highly praised aspects of the game, allowing for a variety of flexible play styles. As for Rath himself, he can be customized in a variety of ways, from hairstyle and beard to costume, with the player able to choose between displaying Rath's current armor layout or wearing "vanity" armor that doesn't reflect the player's actual equipment. Dragonslayer features some of the best graphics of any open world RPG in its generation, a rich tapestry of sights and details and environments (it helps that the world isn't quite as big as some of its contemporaries, though it is quite big). The game has a sweeping musical score composed by Takeharu Ishimoto, and its English language voice cast features several popular veteran voice actors, including Keith Ferguson as the voice of Rath.

The game begins in a small, derelict village, in which people are struggling to survive as food and resources are few and far between. The village has a few hunters who bring in some bounties, but it's barely enough to keep the village going, and Rath's meager catches are also quite poor. He agrees to join a hunting party to take down a moderate sized dragon, and this is the game's first boss fight/tutorial, in which a more experienced hunter named Sunan takes Rath under his wing. After taking down the dragon, Rath is able to provide for his village, only for it to be raided by a group of elite knights who accuse Rath of hunting on the local lord's sacred grounds. This leads to Rath being forced to perform some missions for the lord, though the game does open up at this point to allow for proper exploration of the world, with Rath allowed to take his time and given a large area to roam in. Though working for the lord, Rath realizes that money and power are the only things that matter in Rindonia, and one can acquire that power by becoming a dragonslayer. At the end of his time working for the lord, the player is given the choice of leaving or returning to slaughter the lord. Slaughtering the lord causes Rath to earn more notoriety, though it also cuts off a future series of lucrative side missions that allow Rath and the lord to work together to cull a large dragon's nest overlooking the lord's territory. Eventually, Rath's dragonslaying earns him an audience with the High King of Rindonia, who tasks Rath with investigating the lair of a dragon high up on a mountain. This dragon turns out to be one of the Seven Sovereigns, seven dragons who represent a different force of nature, and whose awakening portends a great omen of death and destruction. Rath is eventually forced to kill the first of the Sovereigns, and before the main quest is done, Rath will have to kill the other six as well. Rath also makes the acquaintance of a man named Nogilus, who works as the king's court mage and who believes that dragons have special powers that restore life and create abundance, and that the world is balanced between this secret dragon power of life and the dragons' ability to cause great death. Rath also meets a young dragonslaying woman named Ailan, who starts as a rival but teams up with Rath for a few missions, and a noblewoman named Jade with a special connection to the dragon power mentioned by Nogilus. As Rath journeys through the realm, collecting bounties and killing more of the Seven Sovereigns, his legend grows, and he becomes a hero to more and more of the people, eventually sparking a peasant revolt that is aided by the appearance of the final Sovereign, a mighty dragon named Bladul, who is more intelligent than the other dragons and who sees Rath's talents as a threat, not just to dragonkind but to all living things. The peasant revolt causes the destruction of the king's castle, the death of the king, and chaos throughout Rindonia, while Bladul flies about the realm, causing destruction wherever he goes. Rath and Nogilus, who survived the revolt, agree that Bladul is a threat, and must be tracked down and slain. Rath engages Bladul in a mighty battle and defeats him, but as he does, Nogilus absorbs the power from the fallen sovereigns, setting in motion his plan to become the Dragon God, the returning deity that will conquer the world in the name of dragonkind. Nogilus offers Rath a place of power at his side, but Rath refuses, and ventures to the highest mountain in Rindonia to confront and destroy Nogilus once and for all. In a great battle that nearly shatters the mountain, Rath defeats Nogilus, ending the threat of the Dragon God and saving humanity. He retires to his village, and though there is peace in Rindonia, prosperity is uncertain. Rath is now known as a legendary hero, but this burden weighs heavy on him, and as dragons are all but extinct in the realm, he wonders if it was truly worth it. Dragonslayer also has a pair of storyline DLC packs, including a mid-game quest sequence and a sequence intended to take place in the postgame, in which Rath hunts down several more legendary dragons and monsters while also aiding Ailan and Jade in various endeavors. It provides a more satisfying ending to the game, though it still leaves a few questions unanswered.

Dragonslayer is released on March 1, 2016, for the Reality, Virtua, and Nexus. It gets mostly positive reviews at the time of its release, averaging in the mid 8s and earning praise for its combat and thematics, though it's not quite the revolutionary WRPG that some expected it to be. It's definitely a fun game, and quite ably combines the best elements of WRPGs and JRPGs, but it's slightly small world and its somewhat repetitive enemy encounters dull the experience a bit. However, the game would get a ton of pre-release hype, leading to huge sales in North America, Europe, and Japan. It's not quite a Final Fantasy game, but it does outperform pretty much everything else Square has going, making it probably their most successful original IP ever (outside of the Final Fantasy series). The game would spawn tons of online discussion and plenty of memes as well, becoming one of 2016's most talked about games, and putting Squaresoft's name at the forefront of gaming for a good while. Of course, with Final Fantasy XIV coming later in the year, it builds up hype for that title as well, and Squaresoft isn't done putting out hit RPGs before then...

 

[RySenkari]

Metroid Quarantine

Metroid Quarantine is a third person shooter/adventure title exclusive to the Nintendo Reality. It's the third game in what's considered the "Starfall Trilogy", consisting of Metroid Starfall, Metroid Gravity, and this game, and while it has a lot of gameplay and presentation similarities to those titles, there are also many ways in which Quarantine differs from not just those games, but every previous Metroid game. In some ways, it's closer to Metroid Fusion than it is to any TTL game, with Samus navigating a somewhat narrow space station (though it's more open world of a game than OTL's Fusion was) and absorbing viral particles from enemies to recover and enhance her powers. However, in Metroid Quarantine, there's a bit of a random element to these upgrades. There are no Energy Tanks in this game, or Missile/Super Missile upgrades. Instead, Samus can absorb viral particles to increase her health, weapon capacities, defense, and attack level. While some of these have definitive spots in the game where Samus can find them, most of them are found randomly, giving the game somewhat of an RPG-like feel. Samus' weapons and movement abilities are also bestowed by these particles, though these are found in defined encounters with certain boss enemies or sometimes simply found inside of rooms. Enemies can also acquire viral upgrades, and these can also be random, causing different mutations in various enemies that Samus encounters throughout the ship. Samus herself will acquire most of her familiar upgrades in this game, including things like the Morph Ball, the Charge Beam, the Grappling Hook, and the Space Jump, but there are, as always, a few new upgrades in the game (not nearly as many as there were in Metroid Gravity), including the Vacuum Gun that can suck in power ups/viral particles and can also suck armor and parts off of enemies, and the Drone Ball, which allows Samus to clone herself in Morph Ball form with various effects. Despite the game taking place inside a space station, there's plenty to explore, with a wide variety of areas inside the station. Eventually, Samus is able to disembark from the station onto a nearby planet about two thirds of the way through the game. Metroid Quarantine is the first game in the series designed to take full advantage of Nintendo's VR, and the game can be played in first person or in third person, with some of the most impressive VR visuals of any Reality title. Samus has up to six different visors, which can gather information, view virus particles, or view enemies in a variety of ways, similar to the visors in OTL's Metroid Prime. Kenji Yamamato returns to compose the score for this game, while Anna Gunn voices Samus for a third time (though this will be her last time voicing Samus in the series). With the game taking place in a space station during a viral outbreak, there are more human characters this time around, though Samus still spends a good deal of the game in isolation, and much of her human interaction is via radio chatter.

The game takes place primarily aboard a space station, with Samus hired by the Federation to guard a top secret shipment that turns out to be a strain of Metroid DNA. The shipment is attacked by Space Pirates led by a new commander (with Ridley still presumed dead): a female alien creature named Grexla (voiced by Julia McIlvaine). Samus holds the space pirates and Grexla off, and forces them to retreat, only for another emergency to begin as a resident of the space station has begun attacking people. Samus tries to talk the person down, but they seem to be unable to control themselves, and soon, several more people attack Samus. Samus, refusing to fire on human civilians, locks the attackers in a room, but seems to be having some strange physical symptoms, and collapses near the infirmary. She awakens to sirens, red blinking lights, and no civilians in sight, stumbling out of the infirmary in a damaged, altered Power Suit with barely any functionality. Her radio comm activates, and she hears from a young scientist named Dr. Morganstern (voiced by Mae Whitman). Morganstern tells Samus that she was forced to alter Samus' suit to save her life, and that she's been infected by the same Metroid virus that has infected many of the other people on the space station, forcing the remaining survivors to quarantine themselves in their quarters. Morganstern tells Samus that she has to find a way to expel the viral particles from the space station. Samus also hears from the station's director, General Bregg (voiced by Wade Williams). Bregg is much more stern and tries to boss Samus around, but she doesn't want his orders, only his help, and says that she'll stop the virus in her own way. Samus must navigate her way through the ship mostly on her own (though Morganstern, Bregg, and one or two others occasionally radio to her), battling virus-infected creatures that have escaped from the ship's science lab, and also battling Space Pirates, both infected and otherwise, that showed up with Grexla. Samus realizes that Grexla's attack caused the release of the DNA particles, which were actually a new virus being studied by the Federation. Samus also realizes that there is at least one Metroid on the ship, and that Metroid is Grexla's true target. There are four main sections of ship that Samus must explore: the Arboretum, where the ship's food is grown and which has become infested with giant creepy mutant bugs, the Armory, where the ship's weapon systems are stored and where Samus must beat back a massive Space Pirate incursion, the Laboratory, where much of the ship's scientific experimentation takes place, and finally, after Samus clears the station, she has to pursue Grexla to the nearby planet of Aster-7, where Grexla hopes to introduce DNA from the Metroid she stole to the planet's wildlife to create a biological weapon for the Space Pirates. There's a climactic scene in the Laboratory where Samus must battle an infected Bregg (representing the final boss of the space station itself). After Bregg is killed, Samus heads to Aster-7 (though it's possible to return to the space station to explore and collect various things). Samus explores Aster-7, battling more mutated creatures, and pursues Grexla to an ancient temple, where she finally battles the mighty Space Pirate boss on even terms. Grexla is defeated, and tries to mutate herself with the virus, but is shockingly killed by a returning Ridley, who absorbs the virus into himself and mutates into PLAGUE-Ridley, the game's true final boss. Samus defeats Ridley in an epic final boss fight, and now, the only remaining source of the Metroid virus is inside her. She is met by Dr. Morganstern (in person for the first time), as Aster-7 begins to come apart. Morganstern begs Samus to return to the space station, but Samus realizes that if she does so, there's a chance the virus inside her could begin spreading again, and she refuses to come on board. As the space station leaves, Samus disappears in a bright flash of light as the planet explodes around her, leaving her fate unknown.

Metroid Quarantine is perhaps the best reviewed game of the Starfall Trilogy, coming in with review scores in the low to mid 9s. It's released on March 4, 2016, to very strong initial sales, the best of any Metroid title since Homecoming in 2004. The game's graphics, gameplay, and voice performances are all praised, and the game's VR mode is especially highly praised, becoming one of the best reasons to pick up the VR headset for the Reality if one doesn't yet have one. Fans do criticize the apparent "death" of Samus, but it's clear that she'll return somehow, even as the series itself once again embarks in a new direction, and may not return for several more years...

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James Cameron's Metroid: Proliferation Trailer Promises An Exhilarating Sequel

Metroid: Proliferation, the sequel to James Cameron's hit 2012 adaptation of the classic Nintendo series, is on its way, set to be released this July 4th weekend. With the main cast from the original film (Taylor Schilling, Bill Paxton, and Rosa Salazar) all returning, and the return of Samus' nemesis Ridley (Andy Serkis) also heavily implied, the film will see the Chozo homeworld invaded by both the Space Pirates and the Federation, all clashing over the last Metroid, which Samus still has in her possession. The trailer reveals that Samus will be returning to her Chozo roots to evade Federation capture, while the Federation deploys bioweapons infused with Metroid DNA to battle the Pirates and hunt Samus down. The film also teases Salazar's character Martina donning an altered version of Samus' classic battle armor to aid the film's protagonist (who gets separated from her suit at several points in the movie during her Chozo training ritual). We're definitely getting Kraid in this movie, with the massive beast deployed as a Space Pirate bioweapon designed to counter the Federation's assault, though it looks like Samus herself will be the one forced to put Kraid down, as we got a few quick snippets of Samus (back in her classic armor) shooting a few missiles at the mighty lizard. We didn't QUITE get confirmation that Ridley will be back, though some keen-eyed viewers spotted a shadow that looks like it could be Ridley's tail. Metroid: Proliferation is expected to be one of the year's biggest blockbusters, and has a good shot at dethroning Pixar's Sonic The Hedgehog as the highest grossing video game film.

-from an article on Yahoo! News, posted on March 17, 2016

 

[RySenkari]

(Here are the rest of the notable games from January 2016 to March 2016!)

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Nintendo Reality-

Ninja Gaiden Unforgiven

An action beat 'em up developed by Tecmo, Ninja Gaiden Unforgiven is a Reality game that looks to take the series somewhat back to its roots, but also looks to take advantage of Nintendo's latest hardware. This game is packed with challenge across more than a dozen difficult missions, with a simple but very skill-focused combat system. There are few upgrades, save for some health and ninjutsu increases and some new skills, and the game mostly involves some basic combat and simple platforming designed to test players' reflexes and skills. The plot is also fairly simple, with Ryu Hayabusa out to stop an old friend turned enemy who slaughtered a family that Ryu was tasked with protecting. It's a very basic game, but quite beautiful and difficult, and though it's not for everyone, it's perhaps the closest a game in this series has been to the NES classics, giving them a new look for a new generation. Sales are modest, while review scores average right around 8/10, with the biggest criticisms being the short campaign and the steep learning curve.

Detective Club: The Reality Files

A story-based puzzle/detective game, Detective Club: The Reality Files tasks the protagonist, a young university student, with solving a series of murders (nothing too gruesome, but the game is rated Teen due to the subject matter). You'll have to gather clues and talk to lots of different people to solve the crime, while solving a number of smaller mysteries along the way. This game is fully voiced (with the English version performed by the usual group of Los Angeles based anime dub actors) and looks very much like a modern anime, with the Reality's VR used quite effectively to give players a first person perspective as they wander the game's large city setting in search of clues. It's quite a fun game, and does very well in Japan, though North American and European sales are significantly worse. It is a critical and financial success, and leads to some smaller DLC-sized games for both the Reality and the Connect.

Surface

A puzzle game combining numerous elements, Surface has some really spectacular production values, and involves both logic and physics puzzles, as the protagonist must find out how to delve into the secrets of a lost temple in search of a way to save his dying grandfather, and also to track down a mysterious spirit woman. With brain busting gameplay and a story that encourages the player to push forward, Surface is one of the best puzzle games of the year, and a major critical and commercial success.

Path Of Kroaira

A JRPG intended to take advantage of a lot of the Reality's technical features, this is a big and pretty game and one of the best looking JRPGs outside of the Final Fantasy series. It also introduces a lot of new elements to the genre, including a unique blend of turn-based and action combat gameplay, a hybrid exploration system, and dialogue trees more suited to Western RPGs. Its protagonist is a man named Mada who must go on a sacred pilgrimage, the expected custom for his people (somewhat like the pilgrimages in Final Fantasy X and Tales Of Symphonia). Along the way, he encounters friends and foes and unravels an ancient conspiracy that reveals a dark side to his journey. Combat itself takes place right on the open field, with the game entering combat mode once Mada and his party discover enemies, and then movement and attacking being free but some attacks involving a turn-based combat gauge (somewhat reminiscent of the combat system in the Final Fantasy VII remake). There are six total playable characters, though combat parties are limited to three. Eventually, Mada and his friends discover that the pilgrimage is meant to serve as a way to raise an army against a rival country that sends its soldiers to attack people on their pilgrimages in order to protect their ancient goddess. Mada eventually finds himself caught between warring deities, and decides eventually to fight them both to bring piece to the world. Path Of Kroaira is a very good game and some consider it even better than Final Fantasy XIV, but sales are a bit disappointing, especially compared to the game's sizable budget.

Apple Virtua-

Breath Of Fire: Undying Dragon

A traditional turn-based RPG for the Virtua, Breath Of Fire: Undying Dragon is Capcom's attempt to revive the series as a modern IP. The game's setting is more contemporary than the medieval style settings of previous games in the series, but its protagonist is still a young man named Ryu with the ability to transform into a dragon to battle the forces of evil. The Dark Dragon Gang returns in this game, taking the form of a Yakuza-like group of criminals terrorizing Windalia City, the game's main population hub, where Ryu meets a girl named Nina with the secret ability to become a winged bird-like creature. Ryu and Nina must recruit allies and journey through the world together, battling the Dark Dragon Gang and discovering more of Ryu's secret powers. The gameplay is fairly traditional, though there are some motion control mini-games here and there, and some fully voiced CGI cutscenes as well. It's a decent RPG, and does well in Japan, though reviews (especially in the West) are somewhat middling.

Captain America

Based on the popular Marvel character, this beat 'em up retells Captain America's origin story, and it's somewhat similar to the OTL film, with Steve Rogers becoming Captain America and fighting Hydra soldiers in World War II. The game can somewhat be compared to OTL's Spider-Man for PS4, though it's less of an open world title and more of a God Of War-style brawler, with Captain America able to throw his shield at enemies and learn a wide variety of skills to take them down. The graphics are excellent, and so is the voice acting, with Steve Rogers voiced by Nolan North, Peggy Carter voiced by Camilla Luddington, and Red Skull voiced by Rutger Hauer. Captain America is definitely a high quality game, and one of the more fun and exciting Virtua titles of the season, but it wasn't quite the hit that OTL's Spider-Man was, either in sales or in critical reception. It turns a solid profit for Apple, but isn't quite the definitive comic adaptation some were expecting it to be.

Inaflash!

A fast-paced, high energy, slightly retro styled anime fighting game, Inaflash! focuses on counters and special moves that can turn the tide of battle in an instant. It's not balanced for competitive play, but it's still a ton of fun to play online, and while sales are only mediocre, reviews are quite good and it becomes one of 2016's most successful and memorable fighting games.

Mystical Ruby

An anime-style JRPG with some similarities to OTL's Neptunia games in terms of humor, Mystical Ruby is a fairly simple game with a lot of sidequests, twists, and turns. It features a group of school girls who find an ancient treasure, but it's somewhat of a cursed treasure, forcing them to become magical girls to battle an ancient evil. Essentially, the plot is OTL's Madoka Magica, but played much, much, MUCH more lightly (TTL critics/analysts consider it a subversion/parody of Shadow Ocean, TTL's “dark magical girl” series). It's a hit in Japan and becomes a sleeper hit in the West, with memes and fanworks galore.

Panzer Dragoon Online

A rail shooter MMORPG, Panzer Dragoon Online is essentially Panzer Dragoon Saga combined with Phantasy Star Online, with its interface and combat system based heavily on the Panzer Dragoon Zeta/Phanta titles. Like Panzer Dragoon, players ride dragons in rail shooter-esque combat, building their skills by defeating enemies, leveling up, and finding loot. The game is mission-based, with small environments to explore rather than the big open worlds of most contemporary MMORPGs, and players are tasked with things ranging from finding a special item (or multiple items) to defeating a certain enemy. There's plenty of loot to be found and levels to be gained in Panzer Dragoon Online, expanding upon the combat and exploration of Zeta and Phanta, and players will typically need to team up to take larger bosses down, with parties being the preferred way to play. The game's graphics are comparable to a slightly upgraded Panzer Dragoon Phanta, so it's not the prettiest game on the Virtua, but it does take advantage of both VR and motion controls to make for a more immersive experience. The plot is focused on a war between two armies of dragon riders, with all the player characters on the side of the Daragon Republic, battling the evil Argulian Empire. It's a fairly basic storyline and serves mostly as a backdrop to the gameplay, which is pretty solid and quite addictive. Reviews for Panzer Dragoon Online are mostly positive: lots of people liked Panzer Dragoon Zeta, and this game has a lot of what made that one so fun. Sales actually start off fairly slow, especially in the West, but as the game's price comes down and more content gets added, a lot more people decide to buy in (it helps that there's no monthly subscription fee).

Google Nexus-

Hyper Light Drifter

A Zelda-like action RPG, Hyper Light Drifter was developed ITTL with help and funding from Google, making it a Nexus/Android exclusive. It's pretty much the same game as OTL's, with similar gameplay and story, and becomes a pretty significant critical and commercial success for the Nexus console. It's released at a $14.99 budget price on the digital store, but also gets a premium physical version for $39.99 including some goodies and a retro strategy guide. It's one of Google's more popular new IPs of the year, and would remain on the digital charts for the remainder of 2016.

Imaginary Friend: The Wandering

Imaginary Friend: The Wandering is the sequel to 2013's successful action/adventure title, and though it features similar gameplay and themes, it has a new protagonist, a boy named Angel who is later revealed to be the imaginary friend of an unknown child. Angel must find artifacts to piece together that child's past while fighting through a place called the “Dream Realm”, against mysterious enemies representing the various negative elements in the child's life. The player eventually learns that the child is a girl named Ally who created Angel in order to cope with the aftereffects of a tragedy, and that Angel must then piece together enough positive thoughts and memories to allow Ally to let him go. Like the original game, it's poignant and profound, though it's not quite as well reviewed as the original. It does include some unique new gameplay elements, including the use of the second screen to collect objects and re-watch memory snippets, and also some creative bosses that require different kinds of gameplay strategies for each one. It's definitely a successful game, with similar sales to the original, though the development studio has expressed a desire to move on from the IP in order to use concepts from the two games for something different.

Nintendo Connect-

Princess SaGa

Princess SaGa is a JRPG developed by Squaresoft exclusively for the Nintendo Connect, featuring seven princesses as protagonists, each one with their own 5-10 hour quest, and then once all of those quests are beaten, players can have all seven of them team up to battle a powerful final boss. The game uses a “storybook”-style graphical presentation, with lots of anime-inspired 2-D art, while the combat system is turn based, similar to other SaGa titles. The seven princesses include a traditional noblewoman princess, a black haired ninja princess, and even robot and monster princesses, giving this game a feel very close to SaGa Frontier. Princess SaGa definitely isn't a mainstream hit in the West, but it's a fun niche title with some of the better reviews in its series.

Boil

A fun little puzzle game where you have to redirect water and then heat it to a boil. Filled with humorous visuals and some surprisingly tricky puzzles, this one is pretty well reviewed and a decent digital hit.

Goblins: The Secret City

Developed by Naughty Dog, this is the fourth game in the adventure platformer series that last saw a release with Goblins 3 in 2005. This game has been a long time in the making, and is meant to be a sort of “wrap-up” game for the series, with Puckle and Luna returning as fully adult goblins with families of their own, trying to find an ancient city with an artifact that can save their realm. Their human friends Billy and Ava, also adults now, return as significant side characters, while a new generation of goblins and other mystical creatures are also introduced to the story. Puckle and Luna still have their magic and sorcery skills from Goblins 3, but are a step slower than they were as kids, and have learned some new tricks to help them keep up, including more powerful magic and also ranged attacks with whips and bows. The eldest children of the two goblins, Finra and Elb, are playable starting about halfway through the game, and though they have a lot less magic, they can move a lot better and attack a lot quicker. Despite the handheld release, this game has better graphics than even Goblins 3, with the Connect being a more powerful device than the Wave, allowing for better detail and animation than ever. The game also comes to a conclusive and happy ending, with the secret city serving as a new hub for goblins and humans living together in the underworld, becoming a place of peace and harmony for all. This is a fun family platformer for sure, but sales are slightly disappointing, better than Goblins 3 but not quite as good as the first two games. However, Naughty Dog North would take the lessons of this title and apply them to future platformers, starting with 2018's Anna Goldstar game.

Apple Gemini-

Danielle's Declination

This sequel to 2012's cult classic story-based game sees the titular protagonist Danielle return, this time to answer an extortion attempt against her family. Her amnesia from the original game has returned as a response to her trauma, and in order to save her family, she'll have to piece together her memories and figure out a way to save her family without giving up everything she cares about. This is definitely a niche digital game, but like its predecessor, it achieves excellent reviews, and features a VR mode for players to immerse themselves in Danielle's story (though one needs a Virtua to utilize this connectivity feature).

Gunstar Heroes Universe

A new Gunstar Heroes game for the Gemini, taking place across several planets and featuring the classic Gunstar Heroes gameplay with a new exciting anime aesthetic (similar to games like Star Siren). Unfortunately, this game doesn't quite hold up compared to either its predecessors or its digital contemporary Laser Star (and unlike that game, this is a full priced retail title). It's a solid run and gun with some really creative boss fights and better graphics than Laser Star, but it's not as good as it should be, and ends up being a critical and commercial disappointment.

Mega Man Battle 2

The sequel to the hit crossover fighting game title features more than 80 different playable characters right from the start (including all the returning characters and DLC from the original game). Like the original, it's a Smash Bros. esque title where characters from the Mega Man series battle it out across dozens of different arenas with a huge variety of weapons and special attacks. It's a really fun game, and with graphical and gameplay improvements over the first, it's a worthy sequel and one of the most successful Gemini titles of the year.

Multiplatform-

Mechatos 3

The third game in Squaresoft's giant mech RPG series, the Gemini gets this series for the first time (though it also got a port of the first two games via a digital re-release), while it also comes to the Connect. Developed by a new team at Square consisting of many of the people who worked on Final Fantasy XIII, it has a similar combat system, ditching the traditional turn based system for something akin to OTL's Final Fantasy XII or Xenoblade Chronicles X, with human fighters and giant mechs battling in real time against enemies. The game is more open world than ever, with a less defined main storyline path and plenty more side missions, though the typical method of equipping one's mechs (with scrapped parts, able to be equipped to a variety of places on the mech's frame) remains intact, and indeed, expands in this game. This game takes place a few years after Mechatos 2, but features a brand new set of protagonists who are oppressed by a group of warlords in powerful mechs of their own. The first half of the game is spent searching for a powerful mech that's said to have enough strength to battle back any foe, though the big reveal is that this “mech” is actually Annabeth, the Alita-like synthetic human/mech hybrid who was a major character in the last game. The second half sees Annabeth assisting the heroes in their fight against the bad guys, who have begun using retrofitted Purger tech on their combat mechs, inadvertently unleashing a terrible evil into the world. In the end, Annabeth seemingly sacrifices herself, but the ending reveals her to have survived, and she reunites with the protagonist (who declares his love for her and begins dating her). Mechatos 3 enjoys better reviews and sales than Mechatos 2, and ultimately sees more sales on the Gemini (it sells better on the Connect early on, but once people realize the improvements of the Gemini version, it becomes the preferred version to purchase). Overall, the game is a success, and the Mechatos series remains one of Squaresoft's most popular handheld IPs.

The Gobbler

A handheld indie platformer about a big creature who eats everything in sight. The creature is much bigger than Kirby, and instead of absorbing powers from eating creatures, he gets stronger (and clears his path) by eating objects and buildings. With eating and environmental destruction a big part of the game, it's a somewhat unique sidescroller, and gets some measure of success, with good reviews, decent sales, and some nice fame from let's play streams and memes.

Locked And Loaded 2

This sequel to the decently popular Reality launch title would come to all three consoles this time around, and would feature some significant improvements to the original third person shooter, including twice as many levels, a significantly improved movement system, loads more weapons, and of course it supports VR on all three consoles. It's one of the more fun titles of the year, and is released at a somewhat low price ($39.99), helping it to score lots of sales even if it's not a complete runaway success.

Soshiki

A puzzle/life-sim/adventure game for the Connect and Gemini, taking place in a big city and featuring mini-games, it's about a young man who performs various odd jobs to win love and respect. It's a bit of a quirky game and makes heavy use of motion controls, and with a total of five different love interests in the game, it gives players some intriguing story choices as well. It's definitely not a big commercial hit, but it's one of the more popular digital indies of the year.

Dungeons And Dragons: The Wizard King

Dungeons And Dragons returns to the video game realm with this WRPG title for the consoles in which the protagonist (which can be extensively customized using the creation system from the recent pen and paper games) must battle his or her way through a world full of danger and mystery. Unlike a lot of other WRPGs, the player is expected to party up in this one, and there are a lot of side quests in this game, attempting to re-create the feel of a pen and paper campaign by allowing for improvisation and going off the beaten path. The combat system and graphics, however, are somewhat on the simple side, making it a somewhat lesser experience than its contemporaries. Critics praise the high level of customization, and the fact that the game itself is one of the best attempts to actually bring the feel of a Dungons and Dragons campaign to a game console, but overall reviews are mediocre and the game ends up being a sales disappointment.

Tamagotchi Heroes

This is an action RPG in which the protagonist must raise up a Tamagotchi creature to become a great fighter and battle against the forces of evil. ITTL, Tamagotchi sort of occupies the niche that Digimon occupied IOTL, and the gameplay of this title can best be compared to the Digimon World series. It's a fun little RPG that comes to the Google Nexus as well as the Connect and the Gemini, and despite being somewhat low tech, it's really fun to play and captures the spirit of the Tamagotchi IP quite well. It doesn't quite bring back the series in a major way, and it's not quite as good as OTL's recent Digimon RPGs, but it's a solid game that sees good sales, especially in Japan.

The Numbers Game

An addicting puzzle title that's all about numbers and making them bigger and bigger. Essentially, the player must roam around a 3-D space, finding objects with numbers on them and bringing them together. Mathematical functions such as multiplication and even exponents add to the fun, and it can be quite exciting to see the numbers get huge as an enormous combo is racked up. Another of the year's biggest indie hits, it also does quite well on mobile.

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Top Selling New Console Games In North America (in terms of sales over the first four weeks of release):

January 2016:

1. Expedition (Google Nexus)
2. Captain America (Apple Virtua)
3. Ninja Gaiden Unforgiven (Nintendo Reality)
4. Mechatos 3 (Nintendo Connect)
5. Mechatos 3 (Apple Gemini)

February 2016:

1. Social Network (Google Nexus)
2. Surface (Nintendo Reality)
3. Laser Star (Google Nexus)
4. Laser Star (Nintendo Reality)
5. Laser Star (Apple Gemini)

March 2016:

1. Metroid Quarantine (Nintendo Reality)
2. Dragonslayer (Nintendo Reality)
3. Dragonslayer (Apple Virtua)
4. Dragonslayer (Google Nexus)
5. Castlevania: Nightshade Of The Witch (Nintendo Reality)

 

[RySenkari]

Strikeback

Strikeback is an MMO/FPS game exclusive to the Apple Virtua. Developed and published by Apple, with Apple gaming lead John Carmack consulting on development, Strikeback is an online-only war game that allows 256 players at once, 128 on each side, fighting across a massive battlefield to achieve a series of defined objectives before the other. The game combines elements of MMORPG titles (allowing for loot/level-ups, though on a single battle scale, somewhat like OTL's League Of Legends or other MOBA games) with FPS titles, with its combat combining elements of realistic games such as Battlefield with sci-fi games such as Doom or Quake. Combat itself is best compared to a slightly more realistic styled 2016 Doom, with powerful weapons and characters that are able to jump, run, and climb, and gain increased firepower and other abilities by leveling up during combat, either by defeating opposing players or by performing other objectives such as holding territory or finding power-ups. The game's storyline revolves around an interstellar war between the Echo Alliance, an alliance consisting of the remnants of armies from the few free planets left in the system, and the Occupation, consisting of human-like aliens called the Shard and their human allies, consisting of both traitors from occupied planets and also residents of subject worlds. Players are automatically sorted into either the Echo Alliance or the Occupation at the start of each match, and there are eight roles in each army, which players can queue up for depending on their individual skill, save for the two "Command" roles, which are bestowed upon a random high-skilled player on each team, but can be earned via promotion during the match itself, either by vote or when one of the commanders is killed. The roles are as follows:

Commander: This is the commander of each 128-player squad, with special powers and privileges, attack and defense buffs and the ability to assign other players to certain tasks within their role. While it is possible to "throw" and hurt a team's chances of losing a match, the benefits of successful command greatly outweigh this, and it is possible to relieve a Commander who isn't performing their job well.
Captain: There are three captains on each team, and it's the captain's job to lead individual squads into battle, with attack and defense buffs on par with that of the Commander.
Infantry: The main attack units in each army, there are 24 total infantrymen, and their job is to lead the attack and do most of the damage to the enemy.
Scout: There are 24 Scouts, who have increased movement abilities and are able to scope out the enemy's position, as well as capturing territory. They have reduced attack strength compared to the Infantry.
Medic: Each squad has 20 combat medics, who have some attack strength but who specialized in patching up downed units.
Defender: The 20 defenders have reduced attack but increased defense, and are best at holding captured positions.
Sniper: The 20 Snipers have increased attack when sniping foes, and are best at shooting from afar.
Specialist: The 20 Specialists are best at sabotaging enemy technology and using a wide variety of weapons, they're sort of a jack of all trades, and this is an ideal role for newer players, along with Defender and Medic.

It's possible to form "groups" of up to 16 players that can party up and be on the same team together, and it's not uncommon for guilds of players to form that specialize in certain roles. Later, Apple adds the ability to have up to 24 players in a party, so, for example, you can have a party of 24 filling all the Infantry or Scout spots on a team together. Players can "level up" from 1 to 10 by completing specific objectives focused around their tasks, though it's also possible to be granted XP mid-match by another player, as a sort of "thank you" gesture or just as a way to help a player performing well in a match. Level 1 players, of course, aren't totally useless, and Level 10 players aren't invincible, there are "equalizers" made available to sort of even the odds between players of different levels, though low leveled players are encouraged to hang back a bit and perform tasks focused on getting their levels higher. Each "game" takes between 20-30 minutes, but there's a lot going on in that time, and each team usually has five missions to complete, with the team that completes three missions first winning the match. These missions can consist of simply killing a certain number of enemy units, but can also consist of killing the enemy Commander, rescuing hostages, repairing a communications satellite (or sabotaging it), assassinating an NPC, or any one of 20 different missions assigned at the start of a match (the number and types of missions increase as the game is regularly patched and updated). Usually, certain missions are "grouped" together, so mission assignments aren't totally random, and sometimes, one army might have slightly different tasks than the other (though most of the time the five missions are the same for each). It's heavily encouraged for players to use a headset/microphone to communicate, though there's a robust system of programmed commands in the game for players who can't/won't use communication features. The game is also designed for the Oculus VR, with a lot of enhanced graphical effects for players using it (plus, the game provides a true sense of immersion, with some of the best audio in any console game ever released up to this point), but of course, use of VR is totally optional, and the graphics and sound are excellent regardless. The game's story, of a planetary system under siege from an ongoing alien war, is told via in-game cutscenes, but also some cutscenes presented outside of the game, though each "season" (of about six months) highlights a different phase of the war, with new cutscenes being added to the game via periodic update. Strikeback has a fairly serious tone, moreso than say, OTL's Overwatch, though the game itself is rated Teen, with minimum of blood and gore, as Apple wants younger players to be able to get into the game as well.

Strikeback is released worldwide on April 19, 2016, and is the Virtua's most hyped game of 2016 up to this point. Apple spent six years developing the game, which began as Project Echo on the very first Virtua development kit, and has put an enormous amount of resources into developing and promoting the game, with a massive ad campaign focused on the 256-player online battles and the game's outstanding production values. This gamble mostly pays off: Strikeback is one of the best reviewed games of the year, with critics praising the fun and addictive combat, the logistics of the 128-player teams, and the beautiful graphics and sound, and it's considered one of the most innovative multiplayer games ever made. It would sell well over a million copies in its first week of release, on par with expectations, though it would need to sell a lot more to make back its enormous budget. Fortunately, the game's frequent updates, great critical reviews, and strong word of mouth help it to maintain its strong sales throughout the remainder of the year and beyond, and Strikeback would receive an incredible amount of content. The game does feature a lot of cosmetic DLC, but no loot boxes: Carmack was strictly against them, believing people would be more likely to "bling out" their characters with some measure of control over what they would be able to purchase. Cosmetic DLC would span a huge wave of Sega/Apple properties and other third party IPs, allowing players to dress their characters up in an enormous amount of designs, both silly and serious, and the game would become a media sensation in the following months, driving both additional software sales but also Virtua and Oculus sales as well. There's nothing like Strikeback anywhere in gaming (the closest thing thus far is the Battlefield series), and with that exclusivity/uniqueness comes lots of sales and notoriety. Apple would add other modes to the game as well, including a 256-player PvE mode and a massive battle royale mode, though both of those modes would come to the game after 2016.

 

[RySenkari]

World Of Final Fantasy

World Of Final Fantasy is an RPG developed and published by Squaresoft for both consoles and portable systems to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary. It features a trio of original protagonists, along with heroes and villains from previous titles in the series, coming together to defeat an evil force that threatens all of their worlds. The game plays much like OTL's title, with an Active Time Battle system and a colorful, chibi art style for many of the heroes, but rather than a pair of twins, the game features three protagonists, a group of young friends who are pulled into a magical book and tasked with saving their world. This involves entering various "tales", essentially bite-sized retellings of many of the Final Fantasy games, to gather up champions to defeat this dark force. The monster hunting and capturing mechanic from OTL's title returns, but is based more on Mystic Creature's monster mechanics than the mechanics of OTL's game, which were based on Dragon Quest Monsters (ITTL, of course, Squaresoft hasn't merged with Enix). This means that there are a total of 80 monsters scattered throughout the game, and only one of each monster can be captured. There's also a giant mech mechanic in which the trio can enter mechs and fight in them (this is an allusion to Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XIII, which involved mechs ITTL). Between the trio, the 80 monsters, and the 17 characters that can be recruited, there are 100 total playable characters in the game. Similarly to OTL's game, party members can "stack" on top of one another, so, for example, small monsters can stack on medium sized heroes which can stack on big monsters (or big heroes), or medium sized monsters or heroes can be stacked on big mechs, etc., and the combined HP and attack power of each character in the stack is used to formulate combat damage (and also determines the attacks that can be used). Like OTL's game, World Of Final Fantasy combines light-hearted, comedic story elements with darker elements to create an exciting story full of twists, turns, and cameos from various characters in the series, with many boss fights being creatures or villains from previous games, and the ultimate dark force being sort of a combination of all previous major Final Fantasy villains. World Of Final Fantasy brings back many of the voice actors from the original game, but in some cases, that wasn't possible, and certain roles have had to be recast. The game also features an original musical score combined with some of the classic songs from previous games in the series, creating a true nostalgia rush for longtime fans. World Of Final Fantasy is released in April 2016 for the Gemini, Connect, and iOS and Android platforms, while a remastered version (similar to OTL's Maxima) comes to the Reality and Nexus in 2017. The game gets fairly high praise, though not quite as much as many of the mainline Final Fantasy games, and enjoys a similar critical and commercial reception to OTL's title.

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Dissidia Final Fantasy NT

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a fighting game featuring Final Fantasy characters, and is much like OTL's Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, though ITTL, it starts out as a console title from the beginning instead of coming to arcades, and also doesn't have the involvement of Team Ninja, but is instead developed in-house by Squaresoft, making it much more similar to the first two titles in the series (though with some upgrades to its campaign mode and combat system, as well as the obvious graphical upgrades). The game launches with 40 characters in all, including all 32 returning characters from Dissidia Final Fantasy 2, and would later receive 16 extra characters via DLC. The original roster of characters includes Warrior Of Light, Firion, Onion Knight, Cecil, Kain, Bartz, Terra, Celes, Cloud, Tifa, Squall, Elly, Scav, Aki, Lancet, Sylph, Montblanc, Adair, Lilith, Amyra, Gash, Ilayna, Jen, Garland, Emperor, Cloud of Darkness, Golbez, Exdeath, Kefka, Sephiroth, Hojo, Miang, Vela, Hein, Metamoria, Caius, Pandora, Monado, Belen, and Genesis. Future DLC would add characters from Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy Online 2, along with more characters from previous games in the series. The game features a lot more content than OTL's Dissidia NT, mostly due to being intended as a console game right from the very start, and also has improved online gameplay as well. This makes for a game that's overall a much more content rich experience than OTL's game, as well as being more content rich than its two predecessors. It's released in May 2016 for the Reality, Virtua, and Nexus, and would receive strong critical reviews and excellent sales, exceeding those of the two handheld titles and also exceeding those of World Of Final Fantasy. The two Final Fantasy games together in tandem would help to raise hype for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV, which Squaresoft looked to show off heavily at E3 2016.

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Infinitia Directors Selected To Head Up New Final Fantasy "Project Origins": Brand New Remakes Coming?

Infinitia game directors Masashi Takahashi and Tomoya Asano are working on a brand new project for Squaresoft, and based on some concept designs and leaked details, this new project is expected to be an HD remake of the first three Final Fantasy games, the first such remakes to be released since the games were ported to mobile devices in the late 2000s, and the first full-scale remake of the games since 1994's Final Fantasy Origins on the SNES-CD. The games aren't being fully remade like Secret Of Mana, but are instead being re-designed from the ground up to look much like the two Infinitia games for the Nintendo Connect, and one of the rumors are that the games will feature a blend of sprite-based and 3D world design (perhaps to go with the VR accessories for the current crop of home consoles)? Squaresoft is expected to announce Project Origins during their E3 presser next month, and we could see the re-imagined collection as early as next year. Even as Squaresoft has a number of new projects in development, the company has been re-releasing and updating many of its old games, with Secret Of Mana's upcoming full remake expected to be one of the company's biggest projects ever. It's also likely that if the Origins remakes are successful, the company could explore a similar treatment for the next few games in the series, or perhaps the SNES-CD launch title Final Fantasy: New Generation, which hasn't seen a remake or port since its original 1992 release (though the game has been available on various Nintendo digital stores).

-from an article on RPGamer.net, posted on May 11, 2016

 

[RySenkari]

Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia

Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia is a social/life-sim title for the Nintendo Reality. Like previous Animal Crossing titles, it allows the player to "live" in a fictional town populated by anthropomorphic animal characters, collecting various items and articles of clothing as they live out a fictional life. As the title would imply, the game takes place in a suburban setting, with the player living in a residential neighborhood populated by them and up to 15 other characters, along with various shops and businesses that are added as the game progresses. The game includes many of the same features as Animal Crossing: Everywhere And Nowhere, but builds upon that game by adding lots of new villagers and new shop types as well, including the ability to create one's own restaurant, and even introducing NookMart, a superstore like building similar to Walmart. The scope and scale of Welcome To Suburbia eclipses OTL's New Horizons by a decent amount, but in the trade-off, the landscape is less pliable, with terraforming not a part of the game, with the major focus instead being on development of shops and services (this is probably the most SimCity like of the TTL Animal Crossing games). Connie the Connectivity Cat returns as the player's gateway to the online world, and as in other Animal Crossing games, it's possible to visit friends and be visited by them in return. There's even the option to build a hotel for online friends to stay in while visiting your town, and this hotel grows as the town is developed. The game includes some VR features, including a VR sightseeing game and a picture option, along with the ability to walk around in first person and interact with the town, though building and other functionalities are only available in normal third person mode. Welcome To Suburbia includes a selection of mini-games, including miniature golf and bowling, giving it a bit more flexibility in terms of gameplay than some of OTL's Animal Crossing titles, and overall, the game feels a lot more populated and "lived in" than other titles of its type. The game's graphics are similar to OTL's New Horizons, albeit a bit more smooth and detailed, owing to the more powerful hardware. There's also a wider selection of music, with a more poppy/jazzy feel than that of New Horizons, more befitting of a more populated area.

Released on April 29, 2016, Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia enjoys excellent reviews, perhaps the best of any game in the series thus far. The huge variety of things to do, along with the wide selection of visitors and the ability to really customize one's town all win praise from critics, as do the game's colorful graphics and the online gameplay. However, despite the strong reviews, the game isn't the runaway sales success that OTL's New Horizons was, owing to a variety of factors (there's no global pandemic, there's stronger competition, the Reality isn't quite as popular as OTL's Switch, etc.). It achieves a similar level of sales to Everywhere And Nowhere, but overall, ends up far short of the huge sales milestone set by OTL's New Horizons, and despite the heavy promotion from Nintendo (thanks to company president Katsuya Eguchi), the game is only a moderate sales success and not a huge one.

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Nintendo has continued to use its Direct showcases to promote upcoming games for fans, but in recent months, has relied more on shorter, more focused "Mini" presentations, rather than the 45-minute full shows that fans are accustomed to. Recent months have seen the announcement of Pokemon Amethyst And Topaz, the new Pokemon title set to debut on the Connect later this year, and new information on Tales Of The Seven Seas: To The End Of The World, which will be released in June. Amethyst and Topaz will be set in the France-inspired region of Illum, and look to have a much lighter tone than the story-heavy Order And Chaos, with a return to a more "classic" style of gameplay. Players will once again be able to customize and choose their protagonist's gender, and we even got to see the three new starter Pokemon: a Grass/Bug type moth Pokemon, Wilfi, a Water-type dog Pokemon, Bowble, and a Fire-type deer Pokemon, Flambie. The Tales Of The Seven Seas Mini, which was 20 minutes and also featured some other Naughty Dog properties, mostly introduced some new characters and also detailed some new gameplay mechanics, including each character's "legendary skill", a brand new skill that each of the seven main characters specializes in and which can be leveled up to perform a special attack in combat. Nintendo has also shown off a "Nindies" presentation, in which some upcoming indie titles have been previewed, including Shantae And The Seven Seastones, a Zelda-like title in which the titular genie must venture to seven dungeons and find seven magical stones to save her friends, and Terror Trip 2: The Nightmare Revisited, the first announcement of the sequel to Pyramid Games' 2012 hit. Terror Trip 2 sees the cast from the previous game forced to journey back to Willamette Falls to solve a brand new mystery there, and though it's definitely an indie title, the success of the previous game allowed for a much bigger budget this time around, with improved graphics and what looks to be a much larger scale game.

Nintendo hasn't had a full-sized Direct presentation since last October, and with E3 just around the corner, it doesn't look like we'll be getting another for several more months. However, the lack of full-sized Directs could mean a much bigger E3 than usual, coming at a time when the Reality is starting to face some really stiff competition. We don't know if Nintendo will resume a full Direct schedule after E3, but fans are chomping at the bit for some news, and will only have to wait a few more weeks for Nintendo to deliver.

-from an article on Blargo, posted on May 18, 2016

 

[RySenkari]

Roundball Rock Returns As The NBA Comes Back To NBC This Fall

The NBA is headed back to NBC in the fall, after more than a decade of airing on ABC. The network secured a deal to air NBA games last year, after ABC declined to match NBC's offer. NBA games have been airing on ABC since 2002, but ratings have been in decline, and with ABC's ratings and fortunes also on the decline in recent years, Disney decided to focus on securing deals for their other sports broadcasts (particularly on ESPN) and also shoring up their other intellectual properties such as theme parks and films. Meanwhile, NBC has seen improving ratings, including for its sports broadcasts, and was willing to bid big to bring basketball back to the network. Games will air mostly on weekends, with special events such as playoff games airing primetime on weeknights. Most NBA fans fondly remember the network's basketball broadcasts during the heyday of the 1990s, when stars like Michael Jordan dominated the court, and games were commentated by the likes of Marv Albert and Bob Costas. Fans also remember the iconic "Roundball Rock" theme song, which has been confirmed to be returning. The song's composer, John Tesh, will be part of the advertising campaign for the NBA's return to NBC, appearing in several ads with sports stars and celebrities, and even helping to compose remixes of the song with musicians such as Pharrell Williams and Selena (though the original song will still be the one to play during game broadcasts). The promotions will begin airing during broadcasts of the 2016 Summer Olympics, while the first games will air as a double-header on October 29th: the Orlando Magic visiting the Philadelphia 76ers, followed by Lebron James' Cleveland Cavaliers visiting the Los Angeles Lakers.

-from a May 13th, 2016 article on Yahoo! Sports

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This fall will see the first of at least three new shows based on Marvel properties to air on the FX television network, as part of a cross-promotional strategy for 20th Century Fox as the company ramps up production of films and other media based on its popular comic book characters. Captain Marvel, starring Elisha Cuthbert as Carol Danvers, will begin airing its first 22-episode season in October. The show will focus on Danvers' transformation into the titular superhero after an accident at a military base leaves her with incredible superpowers, which she must use to battle back an invasion force of aliens known as the Kree, unaware that the Kree have already infiltrated Earth in the guise of numerous civilians and important public figures. The series combines action and intrigue, forcing the headstrong Danvers to learn her new powers while watching her every step, as even those closest to her might really be Kree spies in disguise. FX will also air Patriot, which starts early next year. The show stars Corey Hawkins and takes place in the modern day. Hawkins plays Jeffrey Mace, who is recruited into a secret government program attempting to replicate the 1940s experiment that created Captain America, only this time, the results aren't as positive, and Mace must deal with the aftermath while battling enemies both from outside the country and from within. The Patriot is said to be a darker take on the Captain America story, with more shades of gray on both sides of the battlefield, and even Mace himself isn't as squeaky-clean as the hero who inspired him. Finally, the fall of 2017 will see another superhero show, though this one is much earlier in production and we don't know quite as much about it. It's said to be an adaptation of Ghost Rider, and has been described as a supernatural action/horror show in which the titular Ghost Rider seeks vengeance and punishes criminals. The show is expected to carry a TV-MA rating (in contrast with Captain Marvel and Patriot, which are both expected to be TV-14), and is said to be even darker than the cinematic Marvel films. FX is putting major money into these three shows, both in terms of production and in terms of promotion, with Captain Marvel being pushed as FX's most hyped show ever. Fox considered releasing at least one of these shows to Hulu, but decided instead to push them onto FX to claim a wider audience on the more successful cable network (with Hulu getting soundly beaten in subscriber numbers by Blockbuster and Netflix, that's probably a wise strategy). Captain Marvel's early trailer footage looks quite promising, with special effects comparable to shows like Finalwar on HBO, and more impressive than shows like TNT's Falling Skies. Elisha Cuthbert's early footage as Captain Marvel is also being heavily praised, with the actress showing a mix of sensitivity and ferocity in the role, and looking appropriately powerful in early action scenes. Meanwhile, Patriot is also seeing a lot of early praise, and the first trailer is expected to be released in July.

-from an article on Tubehound, posted on June 1, 2016

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Blockbuster And Netflix "Going To War" As Subscriber Numbers Increase Rapidly For Both

Blockbuster and Netflix remain far and away the two most popular streaming video platforms in the world, and the two companies show no signs of stopping in their struggle to beat out the other. While Netflix has enjoyed short periods at the top, Blockbuster has been #1 for most of their battle, and currently enjoys 37 percent of the online streaming market compared to Netflix's 33. The company also enjoys a substantially better physical video presence, thanks to their ubiquitous Blockbuster Entertainment locations and their existing physical media infrastructure, though Netflix has been attempting to grow its own physical presence in recent months by buying out Redbox and even opening physical "Netflix Store" locations inside malls and in some Target stores. As the rivalry between the two companies continues to rage, they've also been churning out original content at a rapidly increasing rate, in the form of original movies and many, many television programs, carving up the existing media landscape by making deals with various production companies. Blockbuster has secured deals, for example, to stream the content of DC and Acclaim, while Netflix has secured the rights to air Marvel content. The two companies have also begun producing ads not only promoting their own streaming services, but tearing into the other as well, with Netflix poking fun at Blockbuster's physical retail locations, and Blockbuster criticizing Netflix's relative lack of content and their slightly higher monthly streaming price. The competition has also led to bidding wars for certain films and shows: the bidding war over the rights to Marvel's content was a ferocious one that Netflix barely managed to win (avoiding giving Blockbuster a monopoly on the major comic book companies), and the bidding war to produce the adaptation of George RR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire is expected to run into nine figures or more, with Hulu also expected to put in a bid despite a much smaller market share. Many consumers have opted to subscribe to both services as the practice of "cord cutting" becomes more and more prevalent, and with the two companies commanding such a share of the market, it might just be one of the rare times when having an oligopoly is good for the consumer, considering how much content Blockbuster and Netflix currently share between them. As more and more hit shows appear on the services and more and more exclusive deals are signed, expect the battle between the two streaming giants to rage on, with no end in sight at least until the end of the decade. Though Blockbuster is currently beating out their rival, one has to think that the company is kicking itself for passing on the chance to buy Netflix back in the early 2000s (opting to start its own streaming service instead).

-from a June 9, 2016 article posted on Variety.com

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Drew Barrymore: So tonight we've got a really special guest lined up, and she's actually going to be the only guest, because I want to spend a lot of time talking with her to talk about what's been going on with her recently. My guest tonight is the actress Patroka Epstein, who hasn't been making too many public appearances as of late, you might've been hearing that she's been in rehab for the last 18 months or so. Not, you know, the kind of rehab I went to back in the day *the audience laughs*, but, medical rehab after she's had a series of procedures, and so we're going to talk about all of that and everything else that's been going on. She wanted to make her first public appearance since 2014 on this show, which is... I'm really grateful for the privilege of having her on tonight and I think all of you are going to be in for a real treat because she's really amazing woman. She was, of course, in a terrible accident at the age of 17, on her Disney Channel show The Smart Squad, which left her a quadriplegic *images are shown of Patroka in her wheelchair* but since then, she's gone on to do amazing work for people with disabilities, and she's continued acting! Not only voice acting, but on-camera work, including in the outstanding HBO show Net Worth, which she was in for four seasons and even got an Emmy nomination. Patroka is one of the bravest, sweetest, smartest, most talented people I know, and she has been through a LOT, and you all know what I've been through, and it's nothing compared to what she's been through, so I am so happy that she agreed to come on, and actually asked to... to come on and make this, this announcement that she wants to make, and I think you all are going to be very happy you're here tonight because this is going to be I think one of the best conversations I've ever had. So, welcome back to Late Night, my good friend, the beautiful Patroka Epstein!

*The music plays for a few seconds with no one coming onto the stage, and then we see a leg, and then another leg, and then Patroka herself, walking onto the stage, walking on camera for the first time since 2008. No sign of a limp, walking completely normally and confidently, looking like nothing bad ever happened to her, in a stunning blue dress, as the audience gasps and then roars with applause, some of the loudest sustained applause ever heard on a television show. Patroka is almost crying as she walks over to Drew, though she has her wits about her enough to do a little twirl and a dance, again looking completely like she did the day before she was paralyzed, not a single limp or abnormal movement. She walks to Drew and hugs her tightly, the two embracing, tears streaming down Patroka's face as the audience continues to cheer wildly. Drew whispers something in Patroka's ear, Patroka sniffles and nods and wipes away some tears and she turns to the audience and blows a kiss and takes a little bow before taking her seat, smiling but also crying and looking very, VERY grateful to be alive and grateful for the medical miracle that restored her movement, while also looking like she has been through absolute hell over the past 18 months to get here.*

Patroka: Oh, oh my god. *laughing* Thank you... wow. Um... wow. *putting her hands up to her mouth and just taking it all in, looking at her hands afterward for a few seconds as if still in disbelief that she can actually touch her own face with them*

Drew: Incredible. Amazing!

Patroka: *fanning herself with her hands as the audience continues to cheer*

Drew: This is why, this is why I wanted to give you the whole 45 minutes.

Patroka: *laughing loudly as the audience cheers even louder*

Drew: Keep cheering, there's plenty of time! *clapping for Patroka*

Patroka: Oh my god. *laughing, she lifts one of her legs and just kind of looks at it for a few seconds* Wow.

*Finally, after a minute or so, the cheering finally dies down and Drew and Patroka can speak without having to yell over the crowd.*

Patroka: ...you would not believe the year I've had. *loud audience laughter, Patroka laughing*

Drew: This is, this is a miracle.

Patroka: Yeah, um...*shaking her head in absolute disbelief* Yeah.

Drew: How did this happen?!

Patroka: Whew. *laughing a bit* Okay... well, first of all, hi. *smiling and waving to the crowd who cheers again* I didn't die... they're clapping like I'm dead and I came back to life or something.

Drew: You kinda did.

Patroka: I'm not the first paralyzed person to get the movement in their limbs back.

Drew: True, but-

Patroka: I'm the first with the kind of paralysis I had, yes, but...

Drew: How did they do it? How did it happen? Or, do you wanna talk about something else? It's entirely up to you.

Patroka: *laughing* no, no, this is... I do want to talk about it, yeah.

Drew: But how have you been, first of all?

Patroka: Amazing! Um, in a lot of pain, but not now. The rehab was brutal. The doctors described it as "all the pain of the last seven years or so coming back to you all at once", and yeah, that's pretty much... that's pretty much what it was. Let's start from the beginning, though.

Drew: Yeah, because this is groundbreaking medical surgery that they did on you.

Patroka: It absolutely is. Basically, they took...

Drew: Because your spine, it was severed, right?

Patroka: It actually wasn't, it was bruised and very badly damaged, but not actually severed. If it had been severed, this procedure, it wouldn't have worked. It was almost severed, it was, it was damaged, yes, and pinched... um... it's hard to explain but they basically took stem cells and injected them into me... more than once. Eleven times. They took these HUGE needles-

Drew: Ouch.

Patroka: Yeah. Yeah, have you ever had a spinal tap?

Drew: No, I have not, but it's... I've heard it's painful, right?

Patroka: Yes, EXTREMELY. Like, it felt like being shot in the back, but... constantly. Like the bullet just stays there for about a minute. And I had to do that eleven times.

Drew: Oh... oh, ow.

Patroka: Uh huh.

Drew: *wincing*

Patroka: I'm trying to think of a way to describe it that's funny... because this IS supposed to be a comedy show.

Drew: Oh, don't worry about that, it's okay.

Patroka: No, no no no no no no no... no, I want to be funny, um... it's like... it's like a Mortal Kombat fatality, but in real life. Like when the guy pulls out the other guy's spine and beats him with it? *the audience laughs* That's what it felt like!

Drew: And you had to do that eleven times?

Patroka: And then like a year of rehab to get the nerves responding again and to rebuild my atrophied limbs, yeah. So I had this bitch nurse come in and yell at me every day- *the audience laughs*

Drew: That's mean, she helped you walk again and you're calling her a bitch?

Patroka: She WAS! Every day she yelled at me to get up and move around, it was awful! *looks suddenly guilty* Lilah, if you're watching this, I love you, you're not a bitch, you're the best rehab nurse ever. *back to normal* So anyway, this bitch-

Drew: *laughing loudly*

Patroka: So yeah... slowly but surely, my nerves all went back to normal... mostly normal, the doctors say I have "95 to 99 percent function", which means I can pretty much do everything I did before the accident, there's just some occasional stiffness or weakness that crops up from time to time. Like sometimes, I'll feel a kind of buzzing feeling in my limbs, mostly my legs, but it goes away pretty fast, it's just an aftereffect of the stem cells causing a crossed signal... I honestly don't have any clue about the science behind it, really. I mean, I tried to figure out as much as I could, but honestly it's a miracle.

Drew: So you can feel everything in your arms and legs and everything?

Patroka: Yeah, my arms, my hands, my feet, everything. *holds out her hand to Drew*

Drew: *scratching up and down Patroka's right palm* You can feel that?

Patroka: Yep, I feel it just fine. *kicks off one of her shoes and holds her foot up to Drew* This also doubles as my audition for the next Quentin Tarantino movie, by the way. *mouthing "Quentin, call me" as Drew reaches up to poke her foot*

Drew: You're already aiming really high, aren't you?

Patroka: I wanna get back into it! *laughs and jerks her foot back as Drew barely touches it* Oh, god, I'm super ticklish now too. *laughing as she puts her foot back in her shoe* It's been like eight years since I've felt anything there, so yeah, super sensitive now at least for a while.

Drew: Well, if you're looking for a boyfriend, I know a few weirdos who will appreciate that.

Patroka: *laughing with the audience*

Drew: Is it just your foot that's super sensitive, or...

Patroka: *laughing harder* I haven't tested that out yet! I maybe should! *the audience is in hysterics*

Drew: Well not right here, wait until you get back to the hotel.

Patroka: *still laughing* Oh... but yeah, um... you know, I got out of rehab about a month ago and I'm just trying to do as much as I can. I exercise every day, I got one of those Peloton things and that's pretty fun, but I gotta turn the volume down because the bitch trainer on there reminds me of rehab.

Drew: I would think that someone like you would appreciate the chance to exercise really hard.

Patroka: I mean, I do, I do those Insanity videos too, at least that guy is really nice and encouraging.

Drew: That's actually really amazing that you can do those exercises, because I tried that and it wore me out!

Patroka: Oh, it wears me out too, I've got to build my lung capacity back up since it's been so long since I've gotten to do aerobic exercise. That's mostly the reason I've been exercising so much, to build up my lung capacity.

Drew: So how many people have had this procedure that you had, so far?

Patroka: A few hundred so far... it's estimated that somewhere between 10 to 33 percent of people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries could make a full recovery using this surgery *the audience applauds* So yeah, it is a major breakthrough, it's absolutely huge but unfortunately it's not for everyone, but they are using this to work toward being able to help other people too, like people with severed spinal cords that I mentioned earlier. I'm actually one of the most complete recoveries that there's been, but there's also... you remember the football player, the one from Toledo who was paralyzed back in 2012?

Drew: Oh, um... Donnie Tolbert, yeah.

Patroka: He's another one who recovered pretty much the same as I did, but he um, he can't go back to playing football, they said it's too risky even with the recovery he made, but he is able to walk and function just like he did before the injury, so again, it's... it's life changing. This is absolutely... to go from where I was, where they told me I'd never walk again, never even move my arms again, to... to being back completely to normal, it's... *she starts to tear up* ....I still can't believe it, honestly.

Drew: Well, Patroka, I'm really really happy for you and *the audience claps loudly* Everyone here and everyone watching this is so happy that you've been able to make such a great recovery thanks to this amazing surgery.

Patroka: I want to thank my doctors and nurses and everyone, ESPECIALLY my rehab nurse Lilah who is absolutely NOT a bitch... I love you so much Lilah and everyone else who helped me... *sniffling and wiping some more tears away* and... my friends and my family, my mom and dad and my sister Lana who has been there for me constantly through all of this and is here in the front row *waving to her*

Drew: Lana, stand up, stand up!

Lana: *smiling, she stands up and the audience gives her a huge round of applause, she smiles and blows kisses to her sister too*

Patroka: *wiping tears from her eyes and smiling back at her*

Drew: We've got to go to commercial but when we come back, more Patroka Epstein! *she gets up and hugs Patroka tightly again, then we see Lana coming up and hugging Drew and then Patroka before the commercial starts*

-from the June 24, 2016 episode of The Late Show With Drew Barrymore on CBS

 

[RySenkari]

Quantum Break

Developed by Remedy and published by Sony, Quantum Break is much like OTL's Xbox One title, in which players must make a series of choices and progress through a series of gameplay areas before watching a live action story sequence that follows the consequences of their actions. The gameplay itself, like OTL's title, takes elements from shooter and platformer titles, and sees its protagonists, Mark Scraff and Elena Serita, acquire time traveling abilities to battle an evil corporation. While Mark, a scientist, takes a more orthodox path, not willing to bend ethical boundaries to accomplish his goals, Elena, an investigative reporter turned vigilante, is much more ethically flexible, and is willing to do anything to take the corporation down, even taking innocent lives. The game has six "episodes" in all, which feature a Mark segment, an Elena segment, and then a 30 minute episode in which the player watches their choices play out on the screen. As the game progresses and the time stream gets more and more fractured, events begin to play out in a much more chaotic fashion, complicating the player's choices and even altering the gameplay itself. Mark and Elena both gain special "Quantum Abilities" over the course of the game, which give them a chance to alter the timeline and strike enemies in unique ways, but use of these Quantum Abilities also risks altering the timeline and changing how events play out, so players might want to avoid using them. As one of Sony's biggest budgeted games of the year, Quantum Break boasts very good graphics that do quite well in complimenting the live action segments, and the use of VR is possible during both live action video and action gameplay, immersing players even more deeply into the action. Like OTL's game, Quantum Break boasts a strong cast of moderately well known actors, who voice act the characters during the gameplay segments and also appear during the live action segments. Charlie Hofheimer plays Mark, and Stephanie Beatriz plays Elena. The storyline sees Mark working on a time travel project with a team of scientists under the employ of Monarch Solutions (which also appeared as an antagonist in OTL's title). The experiment is a controversial one, and as the scientists get ready to begin, there's an intrusion on the compound, by a reporter named Elena who's been investigating the company. All hell breaks loose and the time machine activates, with Mark and Elena caught in the blast and a lot of other scientists killed. Mark, realizing the invention's ethical implications, wants to contact an old scientist friend to determine his next course of action, while Elena wants to help take Monarch down using her new powers to do so. The conflict between the methods of the two protagonists becomes a major point of contention throughout the game, and many of the player's choices revolve around this dispute. Mark's choices of actions lead to less overall destruction and conflict, but numerous innocent people die as a result of Monarch being allowed to act freely during this time. Elena's choices of action lead to a lot of chaos and destruction, and deaths on Monarch's side, but more innocent people are saved. Mark's choices lead to a more straightforward path through the game, while Elena's choices complicate matters greatly. Through a mix of tactics, it's possible to spare nearly all innocents from dying, but this is a much trickier path to walk, and causes a lot of difficulty for the player. The final episode sees all of the player's choices come to fruition. Monarch's activities are disrupted regardless, but depending on the player's choices, there can be a lot of collateral damage, or none. In the collateral damage ending, Mark ends up dying, whereas in the ending where there's little collateral damage, Mark is forced to sacrifice Elena. It's possible to save both protagonists, but this ending is difficult to achieve and also leads to a tricky time paradox that threatens the space-time continuum. There's no clear "best ending", leaving it up to the player to determine what path they ultimately prefer.

Quantum Break is released in April 2016, right around the same time as Strikeback on the Virtua, and also a week after Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia, intended to be a sort of counter-programming game to that particular title, a game that appealed to adults in the same way Animal Crossing appealed to younger players. Reviews praised the groundbreaking graphics and excellent storytelling, though they did also criticize the gameplay itself for being a bit shallow, and the game for being a bit short. Reviews would average in the mid to high 8s, making it one of the more critically successful Reality exclusives of the year, and sales would be quite strong, not on the level of Animal Crossing but certainly enough to help the game make back most of its budget quickly, meeting Sony's high expectations and giving the Reality another big title for the year. A sequel would go into production immediately, though Sony would take its time, perhaps aiming for the sequel to be a launch title for the Reality's eventual successor. The game's huge focus on VR would also help to promote the technology on the Reality, though it wouldn't push VR units at the same level as the Virtua's Strikeback. Quantum Break also seemed like a game meant for 4K rather than classic HD, and indeed, rumors surrounding the game's development and promotion lead many to believe that Nintendo has been using the game to test a possible Reality hardware revision...

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Brothers

Developed by Fumito Ueda, Brothers is a cinematic puzzle game that tells the story of two teenage brothers, Shoda and Asuka, who become trapped in two parallel but seemingly identical dimensions, separated from one another and able to communicate only at certain spots, and only via certain methods, not directly but through symbols and objects. As the game progresses, the player discovers the secret that one brother is hiding from another, and the tragedy that has separated the two not just between dimensions, but emotionally as well. The game plays out a lot like the typical Ueda game, but most resembles a game like Ico, in which there's a minimal amount of combat, and exploration, experimentation, and puzzle solving are the main forms of progression. The game uses a third person perspective, with some puzzles shifting to first person, and is geared toward the usage of VR, with some of the graphics really popping in full 3D virtual reality, allowing for little background details or animation nuances to be seen. There is no spoken dialogue in the game, the brothers' inner thoughts are shown as words on the screen, with a lot of their thoughts and actions conveyed via body language and facial expressions, and the game features a subdued and quiet soundtrack given to hints of melancholy and contemplation. The action of the game takes place in a small Japanese town, with occasional trips into the fantastical. The town is mostly empty, though sometimes, NPCs do appear to communicate with the brothers or to assist with puzzles, with some NPC interactions serving as the puzzles themselves. The game uses a slightly stylized form of graphics to invoke the idea of a dreamlike state that the game takes place in, a blend of reality and fantasy that serves to enhance the surreal feeling of the brothers' circumstances as they attempt to make their way back to each other. The game starts the two off in the same house in parallel dimensions, with only subtle differences between the two. Once the player figures out the differences, they can have the brothers communicate via the manipulation of books in the home, and this first communication opens up the town a lot more for exploration. The brothers continue to make their way through the town, though occasionally, one brother has to deal with a dangerous circumstance, with Shoda nearly being struck by lightning, and Asuka nearly being drowned by a neighbor who turns into a monster. Through all of this, the player learns more about what the brothers have endured together, getting a glimpse at their past and the circumstances that have brought them to this situation. We learn of the deaths of their parents, and that Shoda wanted to go to university and see the world, while Asuka wanted to stay home and carry on the family business. This eventually leads to the revelation that Shoda burned down the family home as a way of forcing Asuka to leave town with him, not knowing that Asuka was still in the house as it burned. We also learn that Asuka sabotaged Shoda's car in an effort to get him to stay in town and not depart for university. We are led to believe that one brother killed the other, first that Shoda killed Asuka, but then that Asuka killed Shoda... but then we ultimately learn that in a terrible and tragic twist of fate, Shoda did not intentionally start the fire that killed Asuka, while Asuka did not intentionally sabotage Shoda's car... instead, after an argument, Asuka attempted to leave in Shoda's car, while Shoda wanted to destroy one of Asuka's prized possessions, but Shoda ended up accidentally starting a fire, while Asuka, unable to properly drive Shoda's car, accidentally damaged it. Asuka, trying to race home to save Shoda from the fire, ended up dying in a car crash because the car was damaged, while Shoda died returning to the house to save Asuka's possession. The two brothers have been in the afterlife, trying to reach one another, and once they both come to forgive the other, the barrier separating them is destroyed, and they reunite, their spirits fading together.

Brothers is released in May 2016, with much of the game's hype coming from Ueda's prior track record as a game designer, rather than the game's promotion (Sony instead is promoting Quantum Break, while Nintendo is mostly pushing Rare's Battle Buddies. Despite the lack of promotion, the game's outstanding reviews (perhaps the best for any Fumito Ueda title to date) generate a huge amount of positive word of mouth. The game is a tough sell, and doesn't quite become a blockbuster, but it more than makes back its budget, setting a new standard for graphics and storytelling. It immediately becomes hyped as one of the year's best games, and the Game of the Year conversation would focus around "Strikeback vs. Brothers" for a good amount of time afterward.

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Nintendo Pushes 4K Reality For 2017

Nintendo isn't expected to announce a 4K ready upgrade of their Reality console at this year's E3, instead choosing to promote upcoming games such as Super Mario Adventure and Pokemon Amethyst and Topaz. However, rumors are still swirling, and from what few leaks we've gotten, Nintendo is expected to release an upgraded Reality console sometime next year, perhaps as early as next February. Games such as Quantum Break seem heavily pushed for the 4K experience, and though it is possible to get 4K graphics with the base model Reality console, it does require compromising the game's performance somewhat, and if you want VR, forget about it, it's only available in regular HD. The Reality 4K model could solve all these problems, and numerous third party companies have let it slip that their upcoming games for 2017 are being designed with upgraded consoles in mind (including new models of the Virtua and the Nexus). Nintendo has been known to hold its cards close to its chest, and the company could well shock the world at E3 by announcing their new model Reality is ready for a release by this Christmas, but we expect instead that we'll first hear about the new Reality sometime early next year, after the holiday rush of people buying up the old console, and the announcement's lead time may not be very much: we could see a January announcement for a February release. With Nintendo's games pushing graphical boundaries so hard this year, it's only a matter of time before they hit the ceiling, and the new Reality model is likely what will help this new wave of titles push through and give Nintendo an edge over their hard charging rivals.

-from a June 4, 2016 article on Games Over Matter

 

[RySenkari]

The 2015-16 NBA season saw one of the best rookie classes in league history make a name for itself, though it also saw most of the usual suspects return to the top of the heap in the league standings. In the East, LeBron James and Russell Westbrook took the Cleveland Cavaliers to the #1 seed with 60 wins, making them the league's top team. They didn't have a lot of help, but combined to form one of the best scoring tandems in league history, with both averaging over 30 ppg. The Orlando Magic, energized by their trade to acquire Kevin Durant and Blake Griffin from Seattle, were the #2 team in the conference, barely beating out the defending champion 76ers, who took the 3 seed. James Harden was a force for the 76ers, though Dwight Howard struggled with injuries and regressed quite a bit. Rookie Bob Bing would help take the Celtics back to the playoffs, and speaking of rookies, Liu Fauzeng was the Rookie of the Year, carrying an otherwise awful Knicks team to the playoffs behind a 24.5 ppg rookie season. The young Chinese phenom was incredible, showing off both scoring and passing acumen and making an impact like few rookies ever have.

In the West, things were shaken up a bit more: the Dallas Mavericks rose to first place behind the outstanding play of Paul George, who was acquired in a blockbuster trade before the season. The Lakers, led mostly by Anthony Davis, also played extremely well, whereas teams like the Phoenix Suns and the Minnesota Timberwolves also rose to prominence in a conference that at times seemed like it was wide open. The Timberwolves proved to be quite the underdog story: a team without a true superstar, led by players such as Brook Lopez, Ish Smith, and Jonas Valančiūnas, scrapping together to win some close games despite a lot of losses. They went into the All Star break just out of the #8 playoff spot in the West, but gelled quite a bit before the end of the season. The St. Louis Arches, one season away from moving to Las Vegas, also did quite well as Giannis Antentokoumpo become a bona fide MVP candidate, leading the underdogs to a strong #5 seed.

Playoffs:

First Round:

Eastern Conference:

(1) Cleveland Cavaliers over (8) New York Knicks, 4 to 0

There was a lot of hype surrounding the "LeBron vs. Liu Fauzeng" matchup, and though the Knicks definitely put up a fight at times, and Fauzeng was impressive, they were no match for the dual scoring attack of LeBron James and Russell Westbrook, and the rest of the Knicks couldn't carry Fauzeng's load. Though both games at the Garden were relatively close, Cleveland swept this series easily.

(4) Chicago Bulls over (5) Detroit Pistons, 4 to 2

The Pistons played well behind the still cagey Carmelo and their rookie sensation Kristaps Porzingis, who was quite good when he was healthy, and the Pistons gave Stephen Curry's Bulls a good fight in this series, though they just couldn't close the deal. Curry's shooting was too good, though the Bulls didn't have a lot to back him up (their own rookie, Thon Maker, was still extremely green and played only very little off the bench). The Bulls triumphed thanks to Curry's shooting and Carmelo's age catching up with him a bit, and would move on to face the Cavs.

(3) Philadelphia 76ers over (6) Indiana Pacers, 4 to 3

The hot shooting Pacers very nearly knocked off the defending champs in this series that went down to the last minute. Dwight Howard struggled, though James Harden was able to ice things up for his team with a crucial three point shot in the last minute of Game 7 that put Philly up by four and the game largely out of reach. The Thompson/Hayward combo had been potent for Indiana, but hadn't taken the team out of the second round, and despite almost knocking off the defending champs in this series, some within the organization were looking to shake things up by dealing one or both of their stars.

(2) Orlando Magic over (7) Boston Celtics, 4 to 1

The scrappy Celtics played tough at home, but Orlando showed why they're considered one of the best teams in the league, with Durant/Griffin hoping to do what previous tandems like Shaq/Penny and Nowitzki/Gasol couldn't. The Celtics' young team made some big plays, with Bob Bing in particular showing his shooting and rebounding prowess, but Griffin in particular was too good on the boards, scooping up tons of offensive rebounds in this series (including 13 in a frustrating Game 4 that saw the Celtics with a chance to tie the series up at two a piece but unable to deal with Griffin's 36 point, 24 rebound performance). The Magic would advance to the conference semifinals in a highly anticipated matchup with the 76ers.

Western Conference:

(1) Dallas Mavericks over (8) Golden State Warriors, 4 to 1

Kobe Bryant's final series would end mostly in disappointment, as his Warriors would be outmatched and defeated by Paul George and the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavs played well all series long, and though the Warriors would win Game 4 (Kobe's final home game), they couldn't overcome the Mavs in Game 5, despite 53 points from Bryant in a 127-116 losing effort. The Mavericks looked extremely good against an inspired Warriors team, and would advance to round two.

(5) St. Louis Arches over (4) Los Angeles Clippers, 4 to 2

The talent-stacked Clippers, led by young Arvis Williams, couldn't overcome the Arches despite taking the first two games of the series. With their backs against the wall, St. Louis played incredibly well on their home court, energized by fans witnessing what they thought might be the team's last ever home games. Then, in Games 5 and 6, Giannis took over, guiding his team to a close Game 5 win on the road before routing the Clippers in Game 6 with 47 points. The Arches still had some fight in them, but would face a much stiffer test against the Mavericks.

(6) Minnesota Timberwolves over (3) Phoenix Suns, 4 to 3

The ragtag T-Wolves upset the Suns in a close seven game series, thanks to great play from Brook Lopez and Jonas Valančiūnas. The Suns, led by excellent rookie Jaylen Brown and white-hot scorer Kawhi Leonard (acquired in free agency from the Rockets, who had regressed significantly), showed a lot of the talent and skill that made them the #3 seed, but they couldn't overcome the Timberwolves, who played with heart and courage to take this one in seven.

(2) Los Angeles Lakers over (7) Seattle Supersonics, 4 to 3

It was definitely a rebuilding year for Seattle, who had Chris Paul and Karl-Anthony Towns, but not a whole lot else. Towns was excellent, finishing runner-up in the Rookie of the Year race, and Paul played great despite regressing a bit, but the Sonics could only manage the #7 seed. Despite that, they played the Lakers quite tough, wearing them down significantly, and it was only thanks to a gutsy performance from Anthony Davis in Game 7 that they were able to survive this series. The Lakers would move on to face the Timberwolves, who they hoped to dispatch a bit more easily.

Second Round:

Eastern Conference:

(1) Cleveland Cavaliers over (4) Chicago Bulls, 4 to 3

LeBron James was great in this series, but so was Stephen Curry, who played out of his mind and almost pulled off the huge upset. His three point totals for the seven games in the series: 10, 8, 17(!), 13, 17(!), 15, 12, indicate just how insanely well he played. He broke Michael Jordan's all time playoff record for scoring with 77 points in Game 5, which the Bulls won in overtime, 147-142, to take a 3-2 series lead. He then almost knocked off Cleveland in Game 6 with another ridiculous performance, scoring 68 points and putting his team ahead by three with just 7.2 seconds left, only for LeBron to make a driving dunk, steal the inbound pass, and make an assist to a wide open Westbrook at the free throw line for the game winning shot. This was one of the most insane playoff series in league history, though Game 7 was somewhat disappointing, ending with Cleveland winning 137-128 (it was close most of the way but didn't come down to the last minute).

(2) Orlando Magic over (3) Philadelphia 76ers, 4 to 0

In contrast with the thrilling Cavs/Bulls series, this series was a bit of a disappointment, though three of the games were fairly close. With Howard still dealing with lingering leg problems, the 76ers couldn't overcome Durant and Griffin, despite James Harden's best efforts. The defending champs were beaten with somewhat of a whimper, putting up a fight for most of the series but losing 114-108 in Game 4 to clinch elimination.

Western Conference:

(5) St. Louis Arches over (1) Dallas Mavericks, 4 to 3

Another crazy series, this one in the West, saw Giannis Antentokoumpo and Paul George dueling in seven tough, grueling games. It didn't have quite the fireworks of the Bulls/Cavs series, it was more of a defensive series that saw Paul George trying his best to contain Giannis while the two teams battled it out on the floor physically. There were numerous flagrants and technicals called in this series, two players on each team ended up getting injured for the remainder of the playoffs (including some key Arches role players), and it was a struggle all the way around. Mark Cuban even got a fine after Game 6 for criticizing the refs. The Arches would win Game 7 in somewhat of a rout, 101-77, after a demoralized Mavericks team just failed to perform well on their own home court, missing a ton of shots and ending up getting booed by their own fans in the fourth quarter.

(6) Minnesota Timberwolves over (2) Los Angeles Lakers, 4 to 2

More chaos in the West, as Minnesota knocks off the Lakers! This series saw a lot of sloppy play as well, most of it from the Lakers, with veteran Dwyane Wade making a few crucial mistakes down the stretch, especially in Games 4 and 6, while Minnesota's home crowd helped them to win all three of their home games in the series, taking a 3-1 series lead after the T-Wolves managed to steal Game 1. Minnesota played tough and hard all the way through, and their balanced team attack was too much for the Lakers to overcome, putting them in a winnable conference finals matchup with the Arches.

Conference Championships:

(2) Orlando Magic over (1) Cleveland Cavaliers, 4 to 3

This series, which many commentators considered to be the default NBA Finals, was tight and close all the way, with the Cavs and Magic trading games all series long. Cleveland took Game 1, Orlando took Games 2 and 3, then Cleveland took Game 4. The road team would win the last three games of the series, with Orlando winning a close 92-90 struggle in Game 5, and then Cleveland taking Game 6, 111-105. Game 7 would be back and forth all the way, neither team ever leading by more than eight, with Cleveland ahead through much of the first half, Orlando surging to a seven point lead in the third quarter, and Cleveland fighting back to take a 100-99 lead with 5:18 left in the fourth. It would essentially be LeBron vs. Durant the rest of the way, and Durant was just slightly better, edging out LeBron with some crucial shots and defensive stops that Cleveland just couldn't answer. In the end, the Magic would win, 115-111, and would advance to the NBA Finals to face a team that would be outmatched no matter who it was.

(6) Minnesota Timberwolves over (5) St. Louis Arches, 4 to 0

After all the sentimental hype surrounding the Arches' final season in St. Louis, and all the buzz surrounding Giannis, this series wouldn't be close at all. The Arches were banged up after their series with the Mavs, while Minnesota was mostly healthy and had a deep bench that helped them withstand Giannis' attempt to drag his Arches to the NBA Finals. Minnesota easily won the first two at home by double digits, and though the Arches made Game 3 sort of close, Game 4 was a blowout on the road, ending the Arches' time in St. Louis in spectacularly ignominious fashion. The St. Louis Arches would play next season as the Las Vegas Aces, while the Minnesota Timberwolves were headed to the NBA Finals for the first time ever.

2016 NBA Finals:

Orlando Magic over Minnesota Timberwolves, 4 to 0

It was thought that Minnesota might have a chance to win this series, due to being so well rested after the conference finals, while the Magic had played a grueling series against the Cavs. Instead, that grueling series just forged the Magic in fire, and the T-Wolves were totally outmatched, even at home. Durant played outstanding and easily won the Finals MVP, averaging 35 points and 13 rebounds and completely bullying players like Lopez and Valančiūnas. Blake Griffin chipped in as well, and Minnesota had no answer. It had been a fun ride for the team and its fans, but Cinderella's carriage turned into a pumpkin and burst into flames, while the Magic made the most out of the blockbuster trade that had given them their two All Star big men. The Magic had given up a lot to bring Durant and Griffin to Florida, but it had been worth it, at least for one season, and they'd be keeping their first rounder in 2016, the #30 pick overall.

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Speaking of picks, the 2016 NBA offseason and draft were somewhat muted compared to 2015. High school star Lonzo Ball looked to be the top prospect in the draft, beating out fellow high schoolers Markelle Fultz, Josh Jackson, and Earl Phipps. Oklahoma's Buddy Hield also declared for the draft, after leading the NCAA in scoring. The Brooklyn Nets, a team that struggled with injuries in 2016 and missed the playoffs despite their stacked roster, lucked out and landed the #1 pick despite only having the 12th worst record in the league. They would take Ball, sending him to the glitz and glamour of New York City, while the NBA's worst team, the struggling Rockets, would select Josh Jackson, taking him over Fultz to pair him up with Damien Lillard in the hopes of forming a potent scoring combo. Markelle Fultz would surprisingly end up on the Indiana Pacers, who traded Klay Thompson to the Memphis Grizzlies straight up for the #3 pick rather than allowing Thompson to test free agency in 2017. The Pacers would keep hometown hero Gordon Hayward, hoping that they could anchor a young team around him. One notable player absent from the draft: Jayson Tatum, who decided to go to college and play for Duke after a strong appeal from Coach K. Tatum would end up becoming a four-year player at Duke, incredibly rare for someone of his talent level (though for good reason: Tatum would lead Duke to four straight titles, one for every single year he played there, and would enter the draft in 2020).

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The 2016 Summer Olympics in Johannesburg, South Africa was an exciting one for athletes and fans alike. It would be the first Olympic Games to be held in Africa and the first to be held in its host country's winter (the games took place in late August and early September). The South African authorities made a major push to modernize Johannesburg for the Games, building and updating dozens of facilities all around the city, and a few outside the city as well, with some events to be held in cities such as Cape Town. The Games, held 22 years after the end of apartheid, were a celebration of how far the country had come since then, and were also to be a celebration of the culture of South Africa. Nelson Mandela, who ITTL would survive until 2016, just long enough to witness his beloved country's first Summer Games, was present for the opening ceremony despite his frail health, receiving an enormous standing ovation from thousands of fans.

-Skateboarding returned to the Summer Games after its successful first appearance in 2012, and once again, Avril Lavigne was competing for her home country of Canada. At 31, she was definitely one of the older competitors in the women's half-pipe and freestyle events, but she still performed quite well, though she didn't win the gold: she ended up with a bronze medal in the half-pipe event, and this time, she wasn't sure if she'd be competing in a third Olympics, as she'd been injured twice in preparation for this competition. 20-year-old American skater Scott Shumpert dominated the men's competition, winning three gold medals, and was one of the major stars of the Games.

-In gymnastics (which plays out a lot differently from IOTL, since many stars such as Simone Biles have been butterflied away, leaving most of the major gymnastics stars of the 2016 and later Olympics as original TTL athletes), Nora Sendicott was the all-around gold medalist in the women's competition, also leading the American team to a gold medal as well. Sendicott, of course, was best known for being the person to expose the Larry Nassar scandal after attacking him back in 2010. Though 20 years old, Sendicott decided to forgo professional gymnastics for one more gold medal run in 2016, and won a narrow victory over fierce rivals from Russia and China. Sendicott would win three gold medals and would emerge as another major star (and would eventually end up dating skateboarding star Scott Shumpert after the conclusion of the Games, becoming one of the more intriguing celebrity romances of the next few years and into the 2020s).

-Reebok would make another attempt at a "Dan and Dave" campaign for the men's decathlon, when they would heavily promote track and field stars Ashton Eaton and Damian Warner against one another, though this campaign would also have a friendly "US vs. Canada" component to it as well, with Eaton being from America and Warner being from Canada. This campaign would be much more successful than the 1992 campaign was, with Eaton and Warner both finishing 1 and 2 respectively in one of the most competitive decathlon events ever (and would make the decathlon one of the most watched events of the Games in both countries).

-Golf made its return to the 2016 Games, as IOTL, but without the fear of the Zika virus as in OTL's games, most of the top golfers in the world, including Jordan Speith and Tiger Woods, competed in the event. Woods and Speith both did quite well, finishing 4th and 5th respectively but it was 21-year-old Chen Yengfang from China who ended up taking the gold medal. Stacy Lewis from the United States would win the gold medal in the women's event.

-China also won the men's basketball gold medal, in an upset victory over the United States in the gold medal game. Liu Fauzeng proved to be the star, helping to beat a men's team that was somewhat depleted due to LeBron James and Kevin Durant both declining to compete, wanting to focus on the upcoming NBA season. China would win 87-85 in a close but not really controversial finish: the Chinese team just played better, with Fauzeng scoring 40 points in the gold medal game. Brazil would win the bronze medal, knocking off Croatia in another tight contest.

-The vuvuzelas came out, despite attempts from the IOC to prevent their use as much as possible. They were quite audible in the soccer tournaments particularly, especially thanks to host nation South Africa making a deep run in the men's tournament, all the way to the semifinals, where they would lose to France. Brazil would defeat France in the gold medal game in men's soccer, with South Africa losing the bronze medal game to Germany. In women's soccer, the United States would defeat China in the gold medal game.

-Overall, China ended up taking the most overall medals, both in terms of golds (39 to the United States' 37) and overall (116 to the United States' 111) showing the continued rise of China on the world athletic stage. Host nation South Africa would finish quite high up in the medal count with 25 medals overall, including seven golds.

-The 2016 Summer Olympics in Johannesburg were quite successful. South Africa did spend a lot of money upgrading and building facilities for the games, but avoided the expenditures becoming an economic burden by making good use of the facilities in future athletic events, hosting many pan-African sporting competitions over the next 20 years using the new facilities, and also building interest in soccer and rugby in the country. The games did very well in the television ratings, creating a lot of brand new stars and a lot of memorable moments. The 2020 Summer Olympics would see a surprise return to Barcelona, Spain, which beat out Paris, New York, and Rio for the right to host its second Summer Olympics in 30 years. Officials cited Spain's surging growth in the past decade as well as the extremely successful 1992 games as factors in the return to the city.

 

[RySenkari]

Rogue's Story VI

Rogue's Story VI is a WRPG/time management game for the Google Nexus and Android. A significant departure from previous games in the series, Rogue's Story VI features the same lighthearted and fun questing as previous games, but on a somewhat simplified and downscaled level, with time management elements added in. The player character is placed in charge of a guild of adventurers, and must recruit more and go on missions to free the world from the oppression of the Jackal's Guild, a guild of warlords and thieves that has conquered much of the world and seeks to destroy all the other guilds. The time management element of Rogue's Story VI comes from the fact that many of the game's missions are on a time limit, and it's not possible to conquer them all in a single playthrough, the player must instead decide what areas to liberate, what characters to recruit, and what missions to complete, and the choices they make effect the game's storyline. Rogue's Story VI is still a full-featured RPG, with graphics on par with previous titles in the series when you're out adventuring, it's just the missions that are scaled down, and also the world itself, with much of the recruiting done through menuing rather than being done out in the world. The game itself can also be downloaded on Android, and the Android version of the game contains all the menus of the Nexus game, along with mini-games and a Fallout Shelter-esque adventuring system. It's a full RPG in its own right, and the player can enjoy the Android version of the game without ever touching the Nexus version if they so choose, though the Nexus version is of course the full experience of the game. Being a smaller and simpler game compared to other Rogue's Story titles, the game can be purchased for $29.99, with the app on sale for $9.99. If one buys the app, they can get $10 off the console game, whereas if one buys the console game, they can get the app for free, so the $29.99 cost of the console game actually covers both the app and the game itself. Rogue's Story VI is controversial among fans of the series: Google is accused of simplifying the series for the mobile format, and that Rogue's Story VI is inadequate compared to the main games. However, it's still pretty good for its budget price, the app is quite fun, and the game itself provides a full, if somewhat downsized, Rogue's Story experience. Many fans believe that the game is fine but that it shouldn't be a mainline game in the series. The game and app are released together in May 2016, and the app does quite well, while the game itself doesn't achieve as many sales as Rouge's Story V, even with the budget price in mind. Still, the success of the app leads Google to see that there's still plenty of value in the IP, and more would be done with Rogue's Story in the future, especially in the mobile realm.

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The War For Rhyssia

A tactical RPG in the vein of a Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre-like title, but with a somewhat simpler menu/combat system and a more newbie-friendly feel, The War For Rhyssia is an anime inspired game with a heavy focus on character arcs, which play out across the game's 36 main missions and dozens of side missions. Like Fire Emblem, the game features small squads of 8-12 fighters each, fighting across various battlefields and engaging in combat with weapons and magic. The game's plot focuses on the struggle to conquer the continent of Rhyssia, home to four nations, each with their own reason for fighting: Glamoir is the richest and most powerful nation, full of aristocratic nobles and fighters with a code of chivalry, Lachese is high in the mountains of Rhyssia and has hardened fighters used to snowy and hostile conditions, Arvardis is a grassland nation of poor farmers and humble fighters, ruled by a kind and generous king, and Shadir is a nomadic guild of thieves who are trying to prevent the conquest of a small bit of desert they've carved out for themselves. There are heroes and villains in all four nations, and each of them have numerous intriguing characters who experience triumph and tragedy over the course of the game. The player starts out controlling Arvardis and the game's protagonist, a young knight's apprentice named Gill, but as the war plays out and all four nations come into focus, the player's army will expand to include a huge variety of characters from all sides of the war. As is the case with many SRPGs, it's up to the player who they choose to recruit and who lives or dies, though in this highly noblebright game, it's possible to save just about everyone, with the exception of a few irredeemable villains. Though the game has a lot of missions, they play out quite quickly, with most being over in around 5 minutes, with only a few taking longer than 10. The game can be played on the Nexus or Android (with cross-play and cross-save for both versions), and launches at an MSRP of $39.99, 20 dollars cheaper than the typical Nexus game (it helps that the graphics are fairly simple, while the voice cast consists of anime/video game regulars). The War For Rhyssia isn't the deepest SRPG, or even the best, but its huge cast of lovable characters and its accessible style of play earns it a surprisingly strong commercial reception, becoming one of the best selling tactical RPGs of its generation, and also spawning more fanworks than just about any game in its genre.

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"Even after the launch of the new Nexus model, which is expected to be called the Nexus Pro and will be formally announced at next week's E3, Google fully intends to support the original model of the Nexus, which will remain the company's budget priced gaming solution. With the Nexus Pro aimed at the hardcore gamer crowd, and intended to compete with Nintendo's Reality and Apple's Virtua, the Nexus will still be sold in stores and will remain at $149 for the base model. Google will also ramp up their free Nexus offers, with older Android phone models expected to come with the console free of charge or at a significant discount. Meanwhile, Google will offer the Nexus Pro as a free gift with flagship Samsung phones such as the latest model Galaxy and Galaxy Note. Of course, Google has been giving out the Nexus in significant numbers since early last year, it's estimated that the company has given away as many as ten million Nexus consoles in various promotional deals, and Nexus sales figures don't count those giveaways, so when you add those to the number of Nexus units sold, Google's Nexus is still very slightly ahead of the Nintendo Reality in terms of overall number of consoles out in the wild. So Google's install base for all those new games, quite high indeed, and we're still looking forward to Nephilim, Miraculous Ladybug 2, and of course The Covenant Zero, all coming out later this year and all expected to be a big part of Google's E3 festivities."
-Adam Sessler, from the June 9, 2016 episode of G4's X-Play

 

[RySenkari]

Google Keynote - E3 2016

This year's Google keynote began with Eric Bright taking the stage to thank fans for attending, then seguing right into a segment discussing The Covenant Zero. He introduced the game's producers, Cliff Bleszinski (returning to the series for the first time since The Covenant 2) and Josh Holmes, and the two men began discussing the game, including the storyline and gameplay. The Covenant Zero is, as the name implies, a prequel to the original Covenant, following Master Chief right after earning his promotion to that rank, leading his squad in the investigation of a crashed ship belonging to an unknown alien race. As the team investigates, an armada invades the area where the ship crashed, forcing Master Chief and his team to fight their way out. The Covenant Zero features a more "pure" combat system than previous titles, as Master Chief doesn't possess any of the superhuman abilities he learned in previous games, and must instead rely on his basic weaponry and tactical skills to survive. However, that doesn't mean he'll have to fight alone. Players will need to coordinate with Master Chief's squadron to win firefights, and there are new, never before seen weapons that they can use to defeat enemies. This style of play gives The Covenant Zero less of a sci-fi feel and more of a military shooter type feel, and there's also some advanced melee combat in the game which seems to be inspired by Squad Four Betrayal (it's clear the game's development team took inspiration from that title). The game will also include a robust multiplayer mode, one of the most complex to date, and also introduces a battle royale mode to the series for the first time, an idea pushed heavily by Bleszinski. The presentation ended with a story trailer, the ending of which teased the arrival of "present day" Master Chief... raising the specter of time travel and further supporting the idea that this game isn't just a prequel to the newer Covenant games, but a sequel as well. Following the presentation for The Covenant Zero, we got a quick little teaser of what looks to be a top down action RPG in which a hapless IRS worker teams up with a beautiful woman who happens to also be the Grim Reaper. The two must work together to bring death back to the world after an afterlife accounting screw-up causes life and death to merge together, wreaking havoc in the world of the living. The game is called Death And Taxes, and looks to mix humor with exciting Diablo-style gameplay when it comes exclusively to the Nexus sometime next year. Then, we see a video, showing off the Google Nexus and the great games of the last four years, which becomes a segue into a series of videos showing the improved graphics of the Google Nexus Pro, the brand new model of the Nexus. The Pro's graphics are a major improvement over the original Nexus, and in fact are slightly better than those of the Nintendo Reality, while also boasting full compatibility with Google's top of the line model VR goggles. The Nexus Pro is slightly larger than the original Nexus console, though smaller in size still than the Reality and Virtua, and is 4K display compatible. The Nexus Pro is shown working with games such as the upcoming Nephilim, The Covenant Zero, Miraculous Ladybug 2, and A Song Of Ice And Fire: The Long Night, and also with third party games such as Steep, Call Of Duty: Altered Warfare, Blackheart: Lucky 7, Pocatello, Ultima XII: Avatar Of Skye, and Watch Dogs 2. It's also shown to improve the graphics of already released Nexus games such as Grand Theft Auto III and Futureshock, bringing them up to the same level as their Reality/Virtua counterparts. After this sizzle reel for the Nexus Pro, Eric Bright returns to the stage along with project managers from Google and Samsung to discuss the new console. We get about ten minutes of tech specs and discussion, showing the Nexus Pro's ability to upscale Nexus titles that have received compatible updates, and also to play Android titles faster and smoother. The project managers emphasize that there won't be any Pro exclusive games, that the Pro is simply for hardcore gamers who want to play their Nexus games on 4K TVs with improved graphics and VR features, and also that the original Nexus will remain in production as the most economical option in modern console gaming. The Nexus Pro will be released on November 4, 2016, at an MSRP of $299.99, or $399.99 for a model including a Nexus Companion. The Nexus Pro will be released the same day as Miraculous Ladybug 2, and there will be a special pair of limited edition Miraculous Ladybug themed Nexus Pro consoles which include a copy of the game and will come with a red and black Ladybug design or a black and green Cat Noir design for $349.99.

Speaking of Miraculous Ladybug 2, that's the next game that was discussed, and the presentation for the game was included as a part of the Nexus Pro presentation, with game producers Michel Ancel and Thomas Astruc appearing on a video screen to talk about the game and how the Nexus Pro would enhance the graphics of Paris and the game's characters. The game itself returns players to Paris and will feature a lot of locations from the original game, but will also expand the game's world to new locations and will include more extensive underground sections such as the subway, the sewers, and the catacombs, along with more indoor sections as well. In addition to Ladybug and Cat Noir, two new heroes were confirmed, with Alya revealed as the new fox-based superheroine, Rena Rouge, and Chloe revealed as the new bee-themed superheroine, Queen Bee, both of whom are controllable by the player. Rena Rouge can use illusion-themed attacks to create decoys and fool enemies, while Queen Bee moves with quickness and agility, stunning enemies to land precise blows. There is more of a combat theme to the game, though the mechanics of rescue and protection taking priority over damaging enemies still remain in place. We also were teased with the potential for a few more superheroes, so Rena Rouge and Queen Bee might not be the only newcomers. The game looks gorgeous on the Nexus Pro, and the demo booth was absolutely packed as people rushed to experience Ladybug's newest adventure on the upgraded Pro hardware. Next up, another video, this one not a part of the Nexus Pro presentation, but instead, an update on Redshift, a game we haven't heard much about since it was introduced at E3 2014. Two members of the game's production team appeared on screen to discuss the game, which takes the form of a simulated MMORPG... though not ENTIRELY simulated, since it will have a heavy online component to it, and seems to be a blend of a single player adventure and an MMO. The game puts the player in a town plagued by attacks from monsters formed out of data, and the only way to fight these monsters is by using weapons constructed from similar bits of data. The world of Redshift is a world twisted by combat and violence, as newly armed civilians fight for their lives against an endless horde of monsters sent by the mysterious and diabolical Game Master. You'll need to rescue civilians and complete missions to get stronger, gathering up clues as to the Game Master's identity, which you can utilize to de-corrupt parts of the world, stealing back territory to liberate humanity from the Game Master's grip. It's a constant struggle, but you'll team up with other fighters, both CPU controlled and those controlled by other players, and you get to determine just how much interaction with other players you want to have. The game features an Android component as well, as you're able to log onto your mobile device and send gear to either yourself, a friend, or even a random stranger. Redshift is expected to come out in 2017, and could be one of the most unique MMORPG experiences in recent memory. After the Redshift update, we got another teaser trailer, showing a strange scientific experiment gone wrong: a man and a woman working on some kind of dimensional transfer machine. It activates, and the two get a glimpse of something horrific, a world being terrorized by enormous monsters. The portal is quickly closed, only for something to pull the woman in. The man tries to save her, but ends up only getting a snapped tether as the portal and the woman disappear. The man eventually gets the portal back open, but the woman is nowhere to be seen... and the man decides to leap in after her, entering a parallel Earth where nothing is the same. The game's title is shown as Devoid, then we get a cryptic "COMING SOON".

Next up is a trailer for the upcoming A Song Of Ice And Fire: The Long Night, which, instead of being a sequel to 2013's game, is instead a prequel, based on the events of The Long Night, an entire generation of winter and darkness, taking place during the Age of Heroes. Instead of playing as a defined hero like in the last game, the player will be able to create their hero, and must carve out their own legend as they attempt to save Westeros from the invasion of the Others. This game seems a lot more open ended than the original, and quite a bit more challenging as well, with more supernatural creatures to battle and what looks to be a more action-packed storyline, if the exciting trailer and brief gameplay snippets are any indication. This game will be coming exclusively to the Nexus in October. Next, a trailer for Zombi 2, which looks quite a bit more thrilling and scary than the original game, and will utilize more of the Nexus' split-screen functionality, while the player will be able to control two survivors at once instead of one, an interesting mechanic that looks like it will be used to solve puzzles and test the player's survival skills. Zombi 2 is coming this fall. Then, we got another trailer... and this one was considerably bigger than the last two. It started with some text and fluff that gave a vague inkling of what game it might be referring to, generating an audible buzz in the crowd, especially once the Blizzard logo appeared. Then, we got some proper gameplay footage, showing off a game that appeared to be World Of Warcraft, generating a few cheers... and then indeed, we got a full confirmation: World Of Warcraft is coming to console, exclusively to Google. We didn't get a timeframe, or even the name of a console (we're assuming it's the Nexus, obviously), but the trailer, which lasted about 90 seconds, showed the full featured World Of Warcraft, and also confirmed cross-play between Google consoles and PC. We also saw the game running on an Android phone, generating gasps and cheers from the crowd. We're not quite sure how Blizzard is going to pull this off, and we're also not sure why it's not also coming to the Reality or Virtua (or if it might eventually, if this is a timed exclusive type of deal), but World Of Warcraft is coming to console, presumably the Google Nexus, at some point in the future. After the video presentation, Eric Bright returned to the stage and gave a short speech discussing World Of Warcraft coming to Google, via a major deal with Blizzard to bring the game to consoles for the first time ever. He emphasized that yes, this is the full featured World Of Warcraft, and that you'll be able to pick up on Google where your PC character left off, or vice versa. He said that in the coming months there would be more information about this exciting development and that you'd be able to play a demo version of the game at Blizzard's booth, running on the upcoming Galaxy Note 7 via a stream from Blizzard's official servers (so not natively on the device itself). After this announcement, Bright thanked attendees once more, and Google's keynote ended.

The Google keynote was somewhat light on actual game announcements, instead choosing to focus largely on the Nexus Pro segment, which doubled as a sort of sizzle reel, showing off lots of third party and small indie titles running on the new hardware to demonstrate its capabilities. The Pro is impressive (though we doubt it'll be as powerful as upcoming 4K updates from Apple and Nintendo), and will have an impressive lineup of games to flex its muscles after it's released. And then, of course, the announcement that World Of Warcraft would be coming to the Nexus is a huge one... though it'll probably be a while before we actually get to see it, as Blizzard and Google probably have a lot of kinks to work out. Google has positioned the Nexus as the most accessible piece of gaming tech ever made, and is now pushing to appeal to hardcore gamers with their new Pro model. It'll be a few months until we get to find out if that strategy is a winner, but despite a light E3 lineup, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of games in Google's future.

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World Of Warcraft Impresses On Mobile

It's still hard to believe we're saying this, but we got to play World Of Warcraft on a phone, and it was... good? Yes, World Of Warcraft will be playable on Google devices, including Android phones and home consoles, and Blizzard was running a small demo version of the game at their booth, utilizing gameplay streamed to Galaxy Note 7 phones to demonstrate how the game would run. It's been said that bringing World Of Warcraft to consoles would be a tricky proposition because of all the different commands involved, but with Google Grip controllers, we were able to control the game just fine utilizing Blizzard's control scheme (though it was confirmed that we'd be able to use a keyboard and mouse with the console version if we so chose). We could move our characters and enter commands just like on PC, with a unique mix of hotkey functions programmed in. The demo version itself was just a series of small areas chained together, including a forested area, a cave, and a castle, as we controlled level 30 characters with a pre-determined set of equipment and spells designed to show off the game's functionality. Surprisingly, the stream had few if any hiccups, and looked gorgeous on the Note 7, if a bit cramped in terms of HUD. We also got to check out the game on the new Nexus Pro Companion, a controller with a Nexus Companion built in. The Nexus Pro Companion controller will retail for $149.99, and felt quite good in our hands as we played the game on it, though again, the small screen did cause us to have some trouble seeing the game's HUD and text boxes. It's likely that most players will prefer to enjoy the game on their TV screens, though Blizzard cryptically did not mention the Nexus when discussing what devices the game would be compatible on, only that it was coming to "Google". Hinting at a possible next generation Google console, possibly? Or some other form of streaming functionality? Regardless, we had a lot of fun with World Of Warcraft on "Google", and our only regret was not getting to spend more time with the game. We don't know when World Of Warcraft is coming to Google, but it should bring a horde of new players when it finally does launch, and will likely be a killer app for whatever Google console it's released on, either the Nexus or something in the future.

-from a June 15, 2016 article on Gamespot.com

 

[RySenkari]

Nintendo Keynote - E3 2016

Nintendo's E3 keynote began with a video showing an expansive world and several different environments, until we could see something off in the distance... revealed to be Mario, throwing his cap in the air and jumping on it to reach new heights. As Mario reached the top of a mountain and looked out over the world, a jazzy, upbeat, lyrical song, "Jump Up Super Star", began to play over scenes of Mario exploring an incredible world full of new environments. Two new mechanics seemed to be shown off in this trailer: the first is that Mario can now throw his cap and do tricks with it, allowing him to take out enemies and jump higher and farther than ever, and the second is that Mario seems to be able to go anywhere: no star doors or locked gates, he's free to explore the entire world from the get go. Of course, the main goal remains to rescue Peach from Bowser, who seems to have hired some anthropomorphic rabbit henchmen to help him stop Mario, and their designs are pretty interesting as well, including a fancily dressed one in a tophat, a girl who uses pigtails as a weapon, and finally, a mysterious goth rabbit girl who just flipped her hair back in an aloof manner. We also could see some first-person functionality, but mostly for mini-games and boss fights, the third person perspective remains the default for 3-D exploration. The song itself was quite jubliant, though it did have some cheesy lyrics (including the lines "Do the Reality" and "Adventure, yes sir"), though the trailer was very effective in showing off the game, and the audience clapped quite loudly at the end. The trailer was followed by Shawn Layden, Katsuya Eguchi, and Masahiro Sakurai taking the stage together to thank fans for attending and also to discuss the game, Super Mario Adventure, a bit further. As shown in the trailer, the game is the first truly open world Mario experience, allowing the player to go anywhere and do almost anything. There are a few locked doors and gated areas that can only be accessed after certain objectives are completed, but these are few and far between, and overall, it seems like the game will follow the formula of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, which allowed the player to visit the six worlds in any order... of course, this game is on a much, much larger scale. Mario has a new friend, Cappy, a sentient being that replaces his original cap and gives him the ability to throw his cap and jump on it. Mario can use his cap for all sorts of functions, giving the player untold ways to explore the game's incredible world, which contains a mix of classic Mario-esque locations and new zones based on some real world locales. We got to see a few of the sub areas of the game, which include classic platforming challenges and mini-boss battles, of which there will be plenty. The world of Super Mario Adventure is said to be bigger than that of any Mario game ever released, and there are still more surprises in store, some of which will be revealed later this week on the show floor. After the Super Mario Adventure presentation, the three men remained on stage to discuss the Reality's VR functionality, and how much technology has advanced in the three years since the console's release. This leads into a segment where Eguchi brings Ken Kutaragi to the stage to introduce a new VR headset for the Reality, the VR Super. The VR Super features improved hardware and improved compatibility with newer games, and is designed to work with both older and newer Reality titles. While the Reality's original headset will still work properly with all Reality VR games, the VR Super is an upgrade designed to enhance the sensation of immersion even further. It's expected to retail for $149.99, and will be included with the Reality VR package after it's released, replacing the VR package with the original headset, and costing the same price ($399.99 MSRP). The VR Super will launch on November 18, 2016, as will Super Mario Adventure. It's important to note that no mention was made of an upgraded Reality console itself, so it's likely that the VR Super is a sort of "stopgap" to enable the Reality to compete with the Virtua's Oculus on VR while we wait for the upgraded 4K model of the Reality to be released sometime next year.

After Eguchi, Sakurai, and Kutaragi leave, the next part of the presentation is a video focusing on Pokemon Amethyst and Topaz, coming to the Connect later this year. We got to see more of the France-inspired region of Illum, home to a wide variety of brand new Pokemon and some very beautiful sights, and while Pokemon Order and Chaos was focused on legends and myths, Pokemon Amethyst and Topaz is focused on knowledge and technology. High tech urban cities and bright suburban towns dot the Illum landscape, and the two mascot Pokemon, the legendary Psychic/Light-type Quartzark and the legendary Psychic/Steel-type Aurithia, are said to be the Golems of Enlightenment, who rise to defend Illum from threats, including the threat of the dangerous Team Jewel, who seek a series of stones said to power a weapon created by the people who lived in Illum 300 years ago. Also unlike Pokemon Order and Chaos, which gave players a clearly defined protagonist in the form of the young girl Ellie, Amethyst and Topaz allow complete character customization, with hundreds of different face, hair, and clothing styles (you still have to be an adolescent kid, but at least you can pick your kid). The graphics are better than ever, there's plenty of cutscenes and voice acting (though the game seems to have a more lighthearted and humorous tone than the previous game), and Illum has plenty of things to do, allowing the player to use their Connect's link functionality to generate random Pokemon eggs and items. After the Pokemon presentation, we saw a brief trailer for Gran Turismo Real, looking as beautiful as ever on the Reality, and advertising full 4K functionality and VR designed for the new Super VR headset. The trailer boasts that Gran Turismo Real will be the most realistic driving simulator ever, with over 2000 cars and hundreds of tracks from all over the world. We've waited a LONG time for this one, but we've still got a bit longer to wait: according to Shawn Layden, Gran Turismo Real is coming to the Reality in 2017. We next got a very brief teaser trailer for an upcoming game from Naughty Dog North... a Western-based title about a young would-be sheriff calling herself Anna Goldstar. We see some footage from the game, showing her using her lasso on some bad guys and getting into a dramatic gunfight on a runaway train, then we see the game's logo, in which the title, The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar, is revealed, along with "COMING SOON". According to Naughty Dog, this one's still early in development, and we can expect to see it sometime in late 2017. We then got another upcoming game teaser, showing off what looks to be an epic RPG involving dragons and magic, and taking place in a mythical fantasy world in the sky. This game appears to be either an action RPG or a real-time RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy XII, and the protagonist, who looks to be a white haired female witch, can capture these dragons with a magical rope, and then fly them into battle. We also got to see some anime cutscenes from the game, and what looks to be scenes from a sort of tactical-based minigame in which the player can fight a battle on a small map to capture segments of the overworld back from the enemy. We then got more dramatic anime cutscenes, followed by the game's title, Witchrider. It's coming exclusively to the Reality in 2017. Then, we got another upcoming game teaser, showing a young woman stranded on the open ocean. As sharks encirle her, and it looks like she's going to die, she hears a voice calling to her, telling her to dive under the water. She does so, and just as she's about to drown, she begins to grow gills and a mermaid's tail. She's then told to keep swimming, and barely evades the sharks. This segues into a few gameplay segments of what looks to be an underwater adventure game where the young woman has to complete tasks underwater, dodging predators to eventually find her way home. Though it would seem like it's a fun, lighthearted game (since it stars a mermaid), it's actually somewhat gritty and realistic, featuring some fantasy elements but maintaining a serious tone. The game's title is revealed as Open Ocean, and this one's also a "COMING SOON".

The next trailer is for the upcoming sequel to Fun Fair, coming this November. Like its predecessor, it's a VR based game about a group of six teens (the five from the original, plus a new girl character) who are out having fun when things go horribly wrong. This time, they visit an escape room, only to be trapped and forced into a series of life or death challenges in a game that blends survival horror with puzzle gameplay. The game, called Escape Fair, is launching on November 8th, just ten days before the new Mario. We then see a video of Keiji Inafune, discussing the upcoming sequel to Soul Sacrifice, Soul Sacrifice 2. It's coming to the Connect this October, and we got to see some footage of the new gameplay improvements and mechanics that will be featured in the sequel. Following this segment, we then saw another teaser trailer, showing a character who turned out to be Pit, battling against hordes of flying monsters, only to be brought down, falling out of the sky. He's discovered by a human girl outside a village, and then we see the game's logo: Kid Icarus: Ascension. The teaser trailer then ends, and David Jaffe, creator of the Lash Out series, appears. He's heading up the Kid Icarus: Ascension team, and says that he's been working on the game for the past two years, while others from his studio have been hard at work on Lash Out 5, coming in September. He says that he's always had a fascination with Greek mythology and that he'll finally get to properly explore that in the new Kid Icarus game, which will show a side of Pit's character that players have never seen before. He'll have more of the game to show at a future presentation, but there's a small gameplay demo that will be available on the show floor. We tried out the demo later on, and it's quite exciting: a hack and slash action RPG type adventure in which Pit has a huge variety of moves at his disposal, and can use both aerial and ground moves on enemies. We're definitely intrigued to see more of the game, especially with such a talented director at the helm. After this segment, Shawn Layden began speaking again, discussing the Reality's online community and Nintendo's upcoming plans for the future of the company's online gaming presence. We got a few quick teaser videos for some digital indie games, some new classic titles coming to the online store, and improvements to online matchmaking tools, including a brand new ranking ladder for the upcoming SOCOM: Battle Fury. We also got a look at some online community cultivating tools that will make it easier to find players of your skill level. Following this online-based segment, which did a good job of showing that Nintendo and Sony are still quite devoted to online play, we got some more third party footage, showing off Call Of Duty: Altered Warfare, Halloween: Rerisen (a sequel to the 2008 Xbox 2 exclusive, speaking of which, is no longer exclusive, since it's coming to the Reality and Virtua digital stores today with enhanced graphics for $29.99), Star Wars: Shatterpoint, and finally, Doom 4. Then, we got another trailer for a brand new Persona game, Persona 5, coming exclusively to the Reality this winter. The game will be based in cyberspace, in which the main characters are hackers who must team up with demons to break into the computer systems of the corrupt and the corrupted. It looks like a suitably epic and intense game, and it's one of our most anticipated RPGs of the year. Finally, we got a look at a new Rayman game coming in 2017, and this was followed up by a short trailer revealing Rayman as the third DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Reality (you'll be able to purchase him in August, along with some Rabbids-themed gear).

Following this segment, we got to see some footage of three major upcoming Connect titles: Mario And Wario: An Unlikely Adventure, The Legend Of Zelda: The Dungeon Fairy, and finally, Squad Four Kallista. All three look quite fun and exciting, with Mario and Wario being a sidescrolling 2-D platformer blending elements of traditional Super Mario Bros. games with the Wario Land series, The Dungeon Fairy is a fully realized 3-D Zelda title with seven dungeons and a unique fairy to rescue in each one, each with a unique special power to help Link through the dungeon, and finally, Squad Four Kallista being a fully 3-D title and a prequel to the main series, with Shad, Marcus, Rebecca, and Lane in the academy under the guidance of the heroic fighter Kallista. Kallista serves as a mentor to the four, and is fully playable, as the four work together to stop a new threat facing Lockstar. We actually got to spend the most time with Squad Four Kallista, and it's extremely impressive for a handheld game, taking some gameplay and graphical cues from Squad Four Betrayal for sure. It's the first handheld Squad Four game we've gotten since the Supernova, and Argonaut's clearly spent a lot of time on this one to get the most out of the Connect hardware. An Unlikely Adventure and The Dungeon Fairy are both coming on August 26 (what a day for Connect owners!), and Squad Four Kallista is coming in November. Then, without introduction, we got one last trailer for what looked like a Reality game. We could see a woman running through what looked like a futuristic facility, installing devices on the power pylons. We never see her face, but we do see her taking out enemies with quick punches and kicks. As all hell breaks loose and the factory seems to self-destruct, the woman flees, only to be confronted by someone... that someone is revealed to be Rebecca, of Squad Four. She's responding to a distress call from the factory... "it's you?" says Rebecca, sounding utterly shocked. We then finally see the woman's face, and at the same time, Rebecca says her name. "Raquel?" The woman is revealed to be Raquel, who we haven't seen since Squad Four Rebellion (though she's now sporting a patch over one eye). Raquel smiles and says "It's been a long time." The screen then goes black, and we see the Squad Four logo, followed by the words "Squad Four returns to the Nintendo Reality... in 2017". The crowd cheers loudly, and that ends Nintendo's presentation. The reveal of a new Squad Four game and the return of Raquel is definitely a high note to end an E3 keynote on, and it looks like the Reality and Connect both will have plenty of great games over the next couple years. We still don't know when we're getting the 4K Reality upgrade, but we are getting a new headset that looks every bit as good as the Oculus, and fifty bucks cheaper too. Nintendo's future is quite bright, and we can't wait to see more of a lot of these upcoming games.

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Bioware's Gearworld, Blizzard's New Orthodoxy Highlight PC Games

Bioware's upcoming MMORPG Gearworld is just a few months away now, and its booth was one of the biggest at the show, as Valve was eager to show the game running on the latest PC technology. The game takes place almost entirely in a massive steampunk-inspired city, and any game in which you get to be a robot hunting down and brutalizing humans (or a human scrapping hostile robots with extreme prejudice) is a winner in our book. We also got the reveal of enormous mechanical bird monsters called Raptors that wreak a terrible vengeance on anything that strays into their territory, human or robot alike, and we also got to see some amazing steampunk weapons, which players can actually invent and then sell in the game's real-world marketplace. Gearworld has been looking like the next big thing in the genre for the past three years, and now we're just a few short months away: the game launches in September. Then, there was the reveal of Blizzard's new game, New Orthodoxy. Even the reveal of the company's deal with Google to bring World Of Warcraft to home consoles couldn't overshadow this incredible game that's a blend of RPG, shooter, and RTS. New Orthodoxy is a single player title on its face, but in reality, the company hopes that players will invite the entire community into their games to help battle a religious order bent on brainwashing and conquest. The player is a rebel known as a Cloak, whose city is being taken over by a religious order known as the Clear Mind, which employs faceless assassins known as the Blanks to hunt down and kill heretics. Cloaks can transform themselves with mysterious powers stolen from ancient religious relics looted from Clear Mind churches, and squads of Cloaks can battle squads of Blanks in battles that can only be described as "real-time Starcraft with Gothic overtones". Players can rapidly deploy re-programmed machines or inspired followers to battle back waves of Blank soldiers, while the player themselves can either call the shots from high above or personally lead their mini-army into battle from the front, with other players allowed to join in with their own armies, or even taking control of Blank soldiers to wage war in fierce PvP combat. There's more to the Clear Mind than meets the eye: Blizzard says that many Clear Mind followers have "compelling reasons" for joining the order, and that the war isn't as black and white as it would seem on its surface. The game's single player story will take "20-30 hours" to complete, and more story content will be added via updates over time, which means that even though the game's single player campaign will tell a complete story, that story isn't the end the story, so to speak. New Orthodoxy is coming exclusively to PC, and when we played, we could easily see why: there's an insane amount of things going on graphically, incredible animation and detail, and the game's controls, though fairly easy to learn, are still somewhat complex, especially during the RTS segments. We could see Blizzard bringing this one to consoles down the road, like with World Of Warcraft, but for now, it's staying on PC, and Blizzard expects the game to be released sometime next year.

-from Dr. Rigmaster's PC Gaming Blog, E3 Edition, posted on June 15, 2016

 

[RySenkari]

Apple Keynote - E3 2016

Apple's keynote begins with John Carmack taking the stage and thanking those in attendance, followed by a brief speech discussing the recent success of the Virtua and the Oculus. He says that this year's presentation is all about "Stage 2" for the Virtua, the next level of interactive and immersive entertainment that will put players in their favorite games like never before. This is a segue into a presentation focused on three "Virtua" titled games coming to the console later this year. The first is Virtua Hero, an interactive RPG experience in which the player can customize their hero and then experience their own virtual quest that can have a variety of different outcomes depending on the player's actions. The game looks a bit simple in terms of storyline and gameplay, but as an immersive experience, it looks to be the most exciting RPG yet, with gorgeous graphics and very realistic motion controls, and when we got our chance to play this game at Apple's interactive booth, we were quite blown away. Next up, Virtua Daytona, a totally revamped version of Sega's classic arcade franchise. This game MAJORLY ramps up the number of tracks, with every single current NASCAR track playable in the game, meaning that there are dozens of racing levels to enjoy. This game will be fully VR compatible, and Apple plans to market a number of realistic accessories alongside the game, including a full racing seat and steering wheel accessory to give fans the full Daytona experience (this accessory will also be compatible with Virtua Rally, NASCAR 2K, and other Apple racing titles). We then got a presentation for Virtua Fighter Infinity 2, coming in September. In addition to being a full fledged traditional fighting game, Virtua Fighter Infinity 2 will also include an extensive first person fighting mode much more detailed and feature-rich than the one in the original game. Designed to be a fully immersive fighting experience that Carmack says will "change the way we look at fighting games forever", this mode includes complex motion controls, and Apple will also be launching a series of force feedback accessories so that players will be able to feel the blows of their opponents. We got to try this one out at the booth as well, and don't worry, the force feedback doesn't actually hurt, but it is pretty intense and far more realistic than the rudimentary force feedback gear that was sold in the 90s. With these three titles, Apple looks to be bringing the arcade experience back to homes in a big way, and after this part of the presentation, Carmack tells the audience that there's one more thing to show, but first, he wants to introduce more of the great games coming soon to the Apple Virtua in the next couple of years. We're then treated to a pair of "developer spotlight" videos, in which upcoming Virtua games are shown off by the development teams behind them. The first of these games is called Apis, a "bee RPG" of sorts in which the player is a young worker bee who is called into service by the queen to explore outside the hive. The game blends realistic bee physics and behavior with anthropomorphized bee emotions, so while it's a fantastical game about a colony of bees, it also takes itself quite seriously, and features gorgeous graphics depicting the individual bees and their hive. It almost looks like an "Assassin's Creed: Beehive" type of game, and we're excited to see where the developers take this one. Then, we got a look at a game still early in development. Simply called Vegas, it's an open world crime simulator in which the player is a small-time criminal in Las Vegas, and can choose to either become a professional gambler to make their fortune, or earn their fortune through criminal activities, or both. The game features a huge variety of casinos and casino games, but also a combat system reminiscent of the True Crime or Yakuza games. It's one of the more intriguing titles of the show, and again, we're definitely looking forward to it, even if it won't be out for a while.

Next came a segment focusing exclusively on Gemini games, pretty much the only such segment of the show. Sonic Worldbreakers, an exhilarating action title that eschews the more traditional platforming of The Rings Of Order in favor of a more speed focused title broken down into shorter segments, was the focus of the presentation, and as is the case with other Sonic games on the platform, it looks extremely good. Quintet's Walls Of Caradae was one of the best looking games of the show, combining elements of games like ActRaiser with the frantic slash and burn style of Dynasty Warriors. In it, a prince must defend his kingdom from invaders on all sides. This game released recently in Japan to the highest sales numbers ever for a Gemini game, and it's coming here in August. Then, we got to see more footage of the upcoming Alex Kidd vs. Commander Keen, perhaps the year's most anticipated Gemini game. This is a wild top-down action adventure in which the two young heroes have been pitted against one another by Kidd's earliest nemesis, King Janken, who has obtained an artifact that allows him to reach through worlds. Janken has kidnapped Becky Blaze, and has blamed Kidd for the crime, causing Commander Keen to go after him. Kidd's fisticuffs style contrasts well with Keen's array of blaster weapons, and as the two journey toward a confrontation, their friends must find a way to get them to team up before it's too late. The game looks utterly hilarious, and should bring plenty of joy to Commander Keen fans, while it's also awesome to see Alex Kidd again after 25 years. We got a few other small previews, including one for a crossover Puyo Puyo and Tetris game that should prove quite exciting to play, and also very addictive. After this segment, Carmack returned to the stage, and announced that it was time to talk about the rest of Apple's plans for "Stage 2" of the Virtua's life cycle. For that, he introduced Steve Jobs to the stage, to roaring applause from the crowd. Jobs spoke briefly about the original philosophy behind the Virtua's design, and that Apple had to sacrifice some horsepower for the sake of VR technology. Now, three years have passed, and Apple no longer needs to make that sacrifice. The company can finally bring together both hardware power and immersion tech, and they'll do that with the new Apple Virtua-S, the upgraded model of the Virtua. The Virtua-S is three times as powerful as the Virtua, more than capable of handling full 4K graphics and full HDR imaging, while also boosting the speed and detail of the Oculus VR and the responsiveness of the Virtua's motion controls. Jobs then displays the graphics from several upcoming games, including Doom 4 and Scalebound, to show the power of the new hardware. The games look incredibly impressive, with Doom 4's fidelity and frame rate nearly matching that of a high end PC. He pulls up a multiplayer battle from Call Of Duty: Altered Warfare to demonstrate the responsiveness of the controls, and uses a cutscene from Thrillseekers: Thin Air 2 to show off the Virtua-S' lighting and ray-tracing capabilities. He continues to discuss the upgraded tech for a few more minutes, showing off more graphical detail and high-end lighting tricks to show how well the Virtua-S does with first party games, and also how well the graphical upscaling works even on non-4K displays. After all of this, he announces the release date: December 9, 2016. Then, the price: $399.99 for the Virtua-S base system, $499.99 for the Virtua-S and Oculus combo. The release date is definitely sooner than some of us expected, while the price is right around the expected range. After this segment of the presentation is over, Jobs then briefly discusses some gaming related iOS updates and announces some new features and titles for the iPhone 7, nothing too major is revealed here but for those gaming on Apple's mobile platforms, it did show how dedicated Apple is to maintaining compatibility between the Virtua, the Gemini, and the latest iPhone models.

We got a couple quick game previews next: First up, Steel Combatant Vexial, a sequel to 2014's revival title. The mech cockpit style of gameplay returns, and while the preview focused mostly on the motion controls and Virtua-S graphical enhancements, we did get hints at the storyline, including the return of Crusher Gantz and the introduction of a new protagonist, a woman named Vex, while also teasing at the return of Layla. It's fun mech combat and looks really graphically impressive, not much more to say. This was followed up by an intriguing game called Vidnight, in which the player has to switch back and forth between different cameras to spot bad guys before getting killed. The VR aspect of the game makes for some really exciting horror, and we doubt you'll want to play this without an Oculus, as the VR REALLY enhances the visual effect. Then, we got a preview trailer for a brand new single player Panzer Dragoon title that looks to be in the vein of Zeta and Phanta. The preview shows a dragon flying over a world almost totally covered in water, and the protagonist, a young man, searching for any sign of land on the horizon as he rides his dragon across the endless ocean. The game's title is revealed as Panzer Dragoon Aquarius, and its release date is given as 2018. After this teaser, John Carmack again addresses the crowd and thanks them for coming, but just before the stage goes dark, we hear a sultry female voice with a British accent, saying "You didn't think you were going to end this show without telling them what I've been up to, did you, love?" The video screen turns back on, and we see a high-heeled boot stepping on the ground, which pans up to reveal the beautiful Bayonetta in all her glory. We then get a fairly long trailer combining a gameplay preview with a storyline reveal, essentially revealing that the final battle between heaven and hell is about to begin, and that Bayonetta needs to choose a side. She says that she honestly thought the final battle would be both sides teaming up against her, to which an exhausted Enzo replies "you'd like that, wouldn't you?" We also see the reveal of a new angel woman who fights like Bayonetta and Jeanne, using brutal attacks but with a holy motif rather than a demonic one, though it's not revealed whether this new character is friend or foe. We also see Bayonetta and Jeanne walking into what looks like Purgatory, battling both demonic and angelic forces as they go to rescue a friend who's being punished there. The new combat style looks more intense than ever, with more time-freezing and space-bending attacks, more complex combos, and more bloody brutality and sexy fanservice, and all of this insanity is set to a remixed version of the classic song "Blue Moon". We then finally get the Bayonetta 3 logo. The video ends with "2017" on a black screen, and Bayonetta's voice saying "don't keep me waiting...", and then the presentation ends.

Apple's presentation focused heavily on tech, but also delivered pretty strongly on the new game front, with some exciting previews for some of next year's biggest titles. Apple is leaning really hard on VR and interactivity, perhaps even moreso than Nintendo, and the Gemini looks to have a healthy crop of new titles coming as well. The Virtua-S is a LOT more powerful than the Nexus Pro, and power gamers will definitely want it, but is it stronger than Nintendo's Reality upgrade? We'll probably have to wait a few months longer to find out...

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All the big game companies were on display at E3 2016, and many of the little ones too! Here's the best of the games from E3's third party keynotes and floor presentations, and as you'll see, many of the best games of the show were shown outside of the big speeches...

Activision's booth was jam-packed with major games, but our focus was on four. Of course, Call Of Duty: Altered Warfare was the biggest game present, and while the main gameplay hasn't changed too much, the game's setting and premise are a major twist: it's the first Call Of Duty game to focus on alternate history. Instead of one big plot, this game returns to the old style of storyline for the series, with four different stories. There's a World War I themed scenario in which Theodore Roosevelt wins the presidency in 1912, taking America to war in 1915, and you play as an American doughboy entering the brutal trench warfare in France. Of course, the ever-popular "What if the Nazis won World War II?" scenario appears, in a 1960s era scenario in which America fights Nazi Germany in World War III. Then, there's another World War III scenario, taking place in the 1980s, after nuclear war has broken out and the American army rushes desperately toward Moscow to prevent an all out strike that will doom the entire world. Finally, there's a 2000s scenario, where you play as a soldier in the Indian army in a world where Pakistan and India fought a war in the aftermath of 9/11. The multiplayer mode even features a "create your own alternate history" scenario, in which you can have one of dozens of different armies from different countries and eras of time battling it out in a deathmatch to the finish. Altered Warfare will surely please FPS fans and alternate history buffs alike, while Thrillseekers: Thin Air 2 promises to please fans of beautiful women and extreme sports, in this sequel to 2013's game focused on aerial extreme sports. Thin Air 2 has a new feature called "Secret Spot", an open-world, procedurally generated mode in which players can look for the perfect place to engage in skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, and all manners of thrillseeking. The original Thin Air revivified the series in the eyes of a lot of fans, so Thrillseekers: Thin Air 2 should be another big hit. Activison also showed off a brand new IP, called Fightfest, essentially an open world, battle royale type game in which 100 players roam around a huge town (sort of modeled off of Sturgis, South Dakota from what we could glean from the preview videos) and beat each other senseless. It actually features a fairly deep and complex combat system, and even though the game looks like it might be fairly silly, it could also be the next big competitive game. We then got a big update on The Hidden City, which some fans took to calling "NoiRPG" after that intriguing black and white trailer from last year. The game takes place during the Great Depression, and you play a down on his luck private detective taking cases to make his rent. When you uncover a criminal conspiracy, you have to decide just how deep the rabbit hole you want to go. There's so much to do in this game, from simple missing persons cases to complex quest lines, and there's also an incredibly deep morality and relationship system. The game's 30s era aesthetic is absolutely beautiful, and we have no doubt that this will be one of next year's biggest hits if it's as good as the previews indicate.

Acclaim's booth wasn't quite so busy this year, though we did get another look at Destined 3, which comes out in November and introduces a lot of new characters, while promising players that some old favorites will die and their actions will determine which ones. It seems like that aspect of the game might have been included for shock value, but the combat itself looks really promising, and we do like the addition of branching storylines to what would otherwise be a fairly ho-hum action brawler. Of course, Acclaim is also publishing Doom 4, and people were crowding the booth to play. The graphics look incredible, combat is as brutal as ever, and there are a ton of weapons to choose from, along with a ferocious multiplayer mode in which fun is the name of the game. Doom 4 looks like pure, glorious fanservice and a big thank you letter to fans of the series, and we can't wait until we get to play. Unfortunately, it won't be coming out until early next year.

Electronic Arts devoted a surprising amount of attention to the upcoming game Lego Worlds, a massive, open world game focused on the Lego world and various other properties. EA has been quietly publishing Lego titles for many years, including games based on both the DC and Marvel franchises, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and others, but Lego Worlds looks to bring them all together and will allow the player to build pretty much anything they want, making this potentially one of next year's biggest sleeper hits. We've also been keeping our eye on EA's many, many sports titles, with Madden NFL 17 looking to be another thrilling installment of the popular football series, and NBA Elite 17 looking like perhaps the best game in the series to date, with an upgraded physics engine and the most robust career storyline yet. NHL 17 is also looking like a winner this year, thanks to improved graphical presentation and improved announcer AI to make games sound as realistic as ever... and of course, this year also features the return of the popular NCAA Basketball 17 and NCAA Football 17, after that historic 5-4 Supreme Court decision last year gave college players the rights to profit from their likenesses. The two games feature major presentation improvements and should be some of the best college sports titles ever made, and fans are quite happy to have them back, which should generate huge sales. We're also excited for next year's Derelict, in which players will be able to explore space looking through the wreckage of old spaceships and space stations. The sandbox horror title features some excellent FPS gameplay and gorgeous graphics, and will likely be finished sometime late next year. And Star Wars: Shatterpoint, a combat focused Star Wars title, also makes its way to console and PC sometime next year. Featuring what is easily the most complex combat system ever in a Star Wars game, with parries, ripostes, and timely dodges, it should revolutionize how players think of a Star Wars title, and could be the best Star Wars game ever.

Ubisoft always brings a ton of new games to E3, and that's the case with their lineup this year as well. Blackheart: Lucky 7 is coming very soon, and looks as wild and ferocious as ever, though it's a bit more grounded than some recent Blackheart titles, with slightly less fanservice and more of a realistic combat focus. Surprisingly, players will start out as Messiah this time around, though it appears that she and Sadira are on better terms, and that players will have plenty of time to take the sadistic secret agent Sadira out for a spin as well. We also got a VERY brief teaser for Metal Gear Black, the confirmed Metal Gear and Blackheart crossover that will combine characters and elements from both worlds. It looks like Raiden will be the game's primary protagonist, and he'll be teaming up with Sadira and Messiah to stop a world threatening foe... though we may yet see Solid Snake return if the game is set before the events of Metal Gear Solid IV. The crossover looks to be at least a year away though, so fans will have to speculate on what's coming next. We also got to see a lot more of Steep, and this Thrillseekers meets Far Cry extreme sports adventure looks incredible, though it remains to be seen just how the intense storyline will serve the extreme sports gameplay. It looks like the four protagonists will spend a lot of their time dodging criminal pursuers, we just hope that leaves enough time for actual sports. Next up, For Honor, which will see warriors of different eras and places go into glorious battle, both with each other and against each other. Fans of intense hack and slash gameplay should be pleased, and the graphics look outstanding. Tom Clancy's The Operative, a mix of spy thriller and war shooter, is also headed to console and PC, and as the company's first new Tom Clancy IP in several years, it looks to mix the best elements of games like Splinter Cell and Delta Force, while also introducing some RPG elements to the mix such as loot and character progression. We like what we've seen so far, but we'll need to learn more of the story before we know if this will be another classic or just a pretender. Finally, we got a very early look at a fantasy themed project from Ubisoft's Montreal studio, Fairy: The Endling. Taking some dark fantasy cues from games like Fairytale and Haze, the game combines Zelda-esque adventure with some heavy storyline elements, and even includes work from Jim Henson's studio and voicework from Frank Oz. This game is extremely early in development, but the snippets reveal an incredible world and a whole new style of fantasy gameplay, and we're excited to hear more about this game in the months ahead.

Take-Two's presentation focused mostly on new gameplay and items for Grand Theft Auto Online, which has become one of the most lucrative MMO titles in recent years. There's some exciting new heists and a new race mode for Speed City, and we even got a tease at a riverboat casino that can either be gambled from or robbed. However, the big game announcement from Take-Two was focused on Doggerland, a Neolithic-themed open world survival game in which the player must gather resources and battle prehistoric beasts. Rockstar, who is developing the game, promised a very large multiplayer area with both PvP and PvE challenges, and this game definitely seems more like an RPG than anything else Rockstar has ever done. Some fans were hoping for a Valdoza sequel, but Doggerland looks really exciting, even if it probably won't be coming out until 2018.

Squaresoft had plenty of new footage of Final Fantasy XIV, which is just a few months away. We got a final storyline trailer, which was suitably epic and shows Brynn and Luminous forming a strong attachment to one another, while Shade, originally given the task of hunting down and killing Luminous, seemed like she could become an ally character to the two of them as all three are pursued by the relentless organization that made Luminous into a superweapon. The combat continues to impress, combining elements of real-time and turn-based combat, and the graphics are utterly gorgeous, and should look amazing on consoles like the Virtua-S. We then got to see the first footage of the next console Kingdom Hearts title, Kingdom Hearts: Princess Destiny, which features Kairi as the playable character and has her uniting all the Disney princesses to battle a new threat. We'll be visiting some new worlds, including the Goldilocks world (I don't know how Goldilocks is a princess, but the movie was awesome, so just go with it), and the new combat system, which is fully action based and focuses on ranged attacks and magic, operates like a really fun twin stick shooter. Princess Destiny is coming sometime next year. We're also getting a brand new 3D action RPG set in what looks to be 1800s England and focuses on a young couple fighting alongside one another. The game is called Court Of Verity, and will have a more realistic focus than the typical fantasy Squaresoft game, though it seems to have hints of fantasy elements as well, including some Alice In Wonderland-esque strangeness revealed at the end of the trailer.

Eidos was mostly showing off footage of two games: its upcoming Legacy Of Kain MMORPG Nosgoth and its upcoming prehistoric-themed RPG, The Gatherer. Nosgoth will see the player as a vampire or vampire hunter, battling it out in a series of wars to determine Nosgoth's fate, and featuring an improved version of the action RPG combat system from previous Legacy Of Kain titles. The Gatherer looks to be a more lighthearted and fantastical prehistoric exploration game than Doggerland, and also has a wider scope, but there's no multiplayer element, as Eidos is focusing entirely on single player gameplay. It's also coming out a year sooner than Doggerland, and ultimately it'll be fans that determine which game reigns supreme. For our money, Doggerland looks like the more intriguing of the two, but The Gatherer could be more accessible to a wider range of players, as it looks to be a bit easier and a lot less violent.

Game Arts surprised us with one of the absolute best games of the entire show, developed by the Japan-based company's San Francisco studio (we also got to see some games from the Japan studio that will be ported to the West in the next year, but the best game by far was this one). Volare is a fully dieselpunk JRPG, taking place in a setting full of adventure and fantastical gadgets, a fully Art Deco motif and some wild characters evoking memories of Golden Age comics and classic adventure stories. The main character is a bounty hunter turned hero of the downtrodden who's already acquired a reputation as a troublemaker, and he teams up with an intrepid young reporter and a rogue government agent to battle a mad scientist and his army of dangerous creations. The combat system blends turn-based and action gameplay, with weapons like Tommy guns and cattle prods used in lieu of traditional swords and axes (though we did get confirmation that there will be at least one sword). These battles play out in thrilling fashion in a variety of ways, depending on the battle environment.

Capcom confirmed what we've known for a while now: the company will once again start making games for non-Apple systems, starting in 2017. They'll be porting games like Resident Evil 6 and the recent Mega Man titles to systems like the Reality and Nexus, and we're also getting Resident Evil 8 on all major consoles sometime next year. There's a new Street Fighter spinoff in the vein of the Chun-Li game called Street Fighter: The Rise Of Bison, and a brand new installment of the Devil May Cry series focused on a female demon hunter who seems to be related to Dante in some fashion (though it's been confirmed she's not his sister) called Angel May Cry. Capcom also revealed a brand new IP, also coming to consoles in 2017, that focuses on Japan being taken over by strange mechanical creatures that have escaped from storehouses all over the country. Called Revenge Of The Metalbeasts, the game will have a 1960s monster movie type feel, hearkening back to old Godzilla movies, and its heroes are a bombastic team of heavily armed fighters with special powers. Capcom's pulling out all the stops for this exciting new game which is being developed by the team behind Star Siren, and we're excited to get a chance to play.

Psygnosis' booth was all about the big reveal for Cyberwar 5, coming sometime next year. There's a brand new protagonist, a man named Rafe Symar, who specializes in repairing technology destroyed by the logic bomb detonated at the end of Cyberwar 4. He's also tasked with hunting down scavengers and other cybercriminals, with Netizen X, aka Lucy Brunstein, on the top of his kill list. Rafe doesn't work for the Power Corps, which is still around and still growing in power, but instead works for a new organization called Blackstone Solutions, which rose to power in the United States after the logic bomb's detonation. Blackstone works with the new American government to restore order, as the country is threatened by dangerous groups, including groups funded by the Power Corps to destabilize the country. As for the gameplay, it's a bit more traditional than Cyberwar 4's, with no drones controlled by the player (at least not in the segments we saw). Looting and scavenging is a big part of the game now, as is the construction of weapons and devices from scavenged tech, and the game itself has a bit more of an open feel to it, like Cyberwar 4 but even moreso. The multiplayer is also back, of course, and more intense than ever, as Psygnosis wanted to top what they've done for Cyberwar 4 and push the game heavily as an e-sport. Psygnosis has also been hard at work on Wipeout Electro, the gorgeous new futuristic racing title that will be released next year as well. Car customization is a big part of the game, with parts earned from winning races on the game's dozens of new tracks. Finally, we got a preview for a brand new IP, Stream Story, in which a young woman who likes to stream fantasy games is transported to another world, and though she can't get back home, she still has her phone and is able to communicate to her followers. As she battles her way through the world, solving puzzles and doing quests, she gets more and more followers, and if she gets enough followers, she might be able to find her way back home. It's as interesting of a concept for a WRPG as we've seen in quite some time, but we'll have to wait a while to play: it's early in development and not expected to be released until 2018.

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Game Critics Awards E3 2016

Best Of Show: Volare
Best Original Game: Volare
Best Console Game: Volare
Best PC Game: New Orthodoxy
Best Handheld Game: Walls Of Caradae
Best Peripheral/Hardware: Apple Virtua-S
Best Action Game: Star Wars: Shatterpoint
Best Action/Adventure Game: Miraculous Ladybug 2
Best Role Playing Game: Volare
Best Racing Game: Gran Turismo Real
Best Sports Game: Thrillseekers: Thin Air 2
Best Fighting Game: Energy Brawlers
Best Shooter: Cyberwar 5
Best Party Game: Sydney
Best Online Multiplayer: Merkabah

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E3 2016 saw the announcement of some truly amazing games from first parties, third parties... it was just one big party, and pretty much every gamer could find something to love. Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Call Of Duty, Final Fantasy... all were well represented at E3, and whether you played games on a console, a handheld, a computer, or a phone, you got something huge announced just for you. Like E3 2015, there really wasn't a clear winner, so it pretty much depended on who you'd been rooting for going in.

For Nintendo fans, Super Mario Adventure was the big game of the show, and it didn't disappoint. Combining classic Mario platforming with the open world feel of an RPG, the game promises to be the most exploration heavy Mario game ever, with a big world that only the Reality could bring. The Connect was fairly light on games, though with Pokemon, Mario, Zelda, and Squad Four all seeing new titles in 2016, it was definitely quality over quantity, showing that Nintendo's handheld was still at the top of the heap, even as the Gemini surged. Nintendo didn't have a 4K upgrade for the Reality on display, but did they need one? Super Mario Adventure looked plenty good on its own, and to top it all off, there was a new Squad Four game announced as well, along with intriguing new exclusives like Open Ocean.

Apple went all-in on immersion, with the Virtua-S announcement and a slew of new games inspired by arcade-style VR gameplay, Apple aimed to provide with the Virtua an experience that couldn't be had on any other console. If you wanted traditional games... well, Bayonetta 3 was coming. Apple's presentation had something to please everybody, and with the surprise announcement of a 2016 release date for the Virtua-S, managed to beat the Reality's 4K solution to the punch, at least by a few months.

Google showed off a lot more games this year, and the news that World Of Warcraft is coming to consoles proved to be earth-shattering, ensuring plenty of people buying into the Google ecosystem in the future. Miraculous Ladybug 2 looks to be a fun one as well, and if it sells as many Nexus units as the first one did, we could see the Nexus Pro become a major success, even if it's not as technically impressive as the Virtua-S.

There were lots of great new games announced at this year's E3, from Blizzard's promising New Orthodoxy to Rockstar's surprising new prehistoric sandbox game Doggerland to interactive gameshow simulator Sydney, video games continued to push the boundaries in every which way, and as we reach the height of this generation and start to slowly build up anticipation for the next, the big game makers look to be pulling out all the stops to make us buy, buy, buy. While some troubling trends such as microtransactions, lootboxes, and the Nexus' occasional privacy intrusions have crept up over the past few years, the game industry is still as healthy as ever. One thing's for certain: this is the closest console generation ever in terms of hardware and software sales, and all three major hardware developers will continue pushing hard in search of that killer app to get them over the top. Have we seen that killer app this year, or will we have to wait until E3 2017 to get the next big thing?

 

[RySenkari]

A new Apple Gemini game, Sailor Moon U, will be released in the West this week, capping off a year of new Sailor Moon-related releases worldwide. The game, a traditional turn-based RPG that plays much like Sailor Moon: Another Story, is a "sequel" of sorts to the original final season of the anime, Sailor Moon Stars, and sees Sailor Moon and friends uniting once more to battle the dangerous Universal Empire, led by Emperor Quasar. Several prominent foes from Sailor Moon's past make appearances in the game as resurrected "shades" working under Quasar, and a multitude of new characters, both friend and foe, also appear, while the game itself contains around two hours of brand new anime cutscenes, the equivalent of five episodes of new footage. The game was released last year in Japan to rave reviews and strong sales, becoming one of the best selling Gemini titles of the year, and Western critics are giving it high marks as well, praising the game's graphics, voice acting (performed by a brand new Los Angeles-based cast rather than the Vancouver-based Ocean team that dubbed the anime in English back in the 1990s), and the length of its storyline (around 30 hours total). Sailor Moon U is part of the "Sailor Moon Alterworlds" series of works that have been released in Japan, including a new manga and new chapter books depicting alternate stories about the Sailor Moon universe, exploring what might have happened had certain events played out differently. These include the questions "What if Queen Beryl's generals had lived?", and "what if Sailor Saturn had been present during the events of Sailor Moon Super S?", which are explored in a pair of 4-part manga series that were released in Japan last year and are being released in North America by Sega.

Of course, all of these releases are leading up to the Sailor Moon 25th Anniversary Remaster, which will see a full remake of the original five anime seasons, compressed from 200 episodes to 100 and incorporating more manga events, as well as including some new "surprises" as well. This remake has already been announced for North America, and will incorporate the same dub voice actors from the Sailor Moon U video game. The remaster will be released over the next two years in Japan, airing weekly from 2017 to 2019. There will also be a new movie, Sailor Moon Stars: The Movie, though the details of the movie have not yet been revealed and it likely won't be released until 2018 or 2019. The new remastered anime will be dubbed for North America and released via Blu-Ray and DVD a few months after it airs in Japan. As for a re-release of the original anime, there are currently no plans to produce a new Blu-Ray or DVD for the North American market, but the original anime (with the Ocean dub and in its uncensored version) has been available on streaming services, while the TV-Y10 version produced for Fox Kids and Toonami has been airing on certain OTA stations. There are currently no plans to air the remaster on cable, though it's rumored that Cartoon Network might be interested in picking them up to begin airing in 2018 on their Adult Swim block. Interest in Sailor Moon has spiked in recent months thanks to all the new material being released, both in North America and other territories such as Latin America and Europe. Sega is currently the major producer of Sailor Moon-related merchandise worldwide, and it has become one of the company's most lucrative brands as of late.

-from an article on Anime News Network, posted on May 11, 2016

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Sensekai Takes Anime World By Storm

Japan's latest massive hit anime, Sensekai, is on the verge of its international release, and it's already taking the world by storm, with the subtitled version topping the charts on streaming services in North America. The anime, based on the manga released back in 2014, focused on a youngster named Senzo who is tasked with restoring the balance between the "1000 Worlds", one thousand different dimensions all contained within the same multiverse. Senzo is one of two characters who can travel between dimensions, though unlike the other character who can do this (High-Heaven, the godlike being who gave Senzo his task), Senzo is able to bestow this gift upon others, allowing them to travel between dimensions with him to help him on his journey. Like many popular action-based anime shows, Sensekai has a mix of drama and humor, never too much of both, though there are moments that are particularly dramatic and moments that are particularly funny. Most of the dimensions that Senzo visits are quite humorous in nature, including a mall dimension based entirely around shopping, and the Janken dimension, where disputes are solved entirely based on games of "rock paper scissors". Senzo himself is a fun-loving, everyman protagonist with a brave heart and a kind spirit, and unlike a lot of similar protagonists, he's actually fairly smart and doesn't often have the moments of stupidity that many shonen heroes seem to suffer from. The series is full of fun and memorable side characters as well, including shopping-addicted Akiko, who wields giant blunt objects in her shopping bags to defend herself, and stoic samurai archetype Hashima, who often finds himself suffering from culture shock when he enters a new dimension. The show moves along at a fairly brisk pace, and few episodes deal entirely with one dimension, in fact, during fight scenes, Senzo will often travel between dimensions to grab objects quickly, leading to Benny Hill-esque chase scenes when his enemies pursue him (he unfortunately can't always control who he bestows his gift too, and often just being in close proximity to Senzo when he jumps will allow everyone around him to gain his ability), and dimensions are revisited often (Akiko will often go back to her home dimension to participate in a sale, much to her teammates' chagrin). Sensakai's exciting action scenes and big cast of fun characters have lended the series well to shipping and fanworks, and the series has been one of the top trends on social media for the past several months, even before its official American release. It's already been picked up by Cartoon Network, which will begin airing the series in the fall (and has been marketing it alongside highly anticipated upcoming action cartoon Lyte and Darke, which it plans to air in the same block with).

-from an article on Kotaku, posted on June 16, 2016

 

[RySenkari]

Battle Buddies

Battle Buddies is a shooter/battle royale game exclusive to the Nintendo Reality, developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. Combining elements of OTL games such as Fortnite, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, and Overwatch, Battle Buddies is a third person shooter that features a stylized graphical motif (though it's not as wild or wacky as Fortnite, it's also not as barebones as PUBG. In development for four years, it takes inspiration from the rising popularity of battle royale games on the market, and from the Japanese book/movie Battle Royale (which was still released ITTL). Battle royale games actually became popular slightly earlier than they did IOTL, and were developed by larger studios rather than the indie teams that initially popularized them IOTL. In addition, a number of bare-bones battle royale games made it to PC as early as the late 2000s/early 2010s, and while they didn't sell a whole lot of units, they did inspire battle royale-type games to be created in SimSociety and Pixelworld, which were ultimately what gave rise to the genre ITTL, and what inspired Rare to begin work on such a game for the Reality. The game operates like many of the popular OTL battle royale games, with 120 players parachuting down into a large island-type area filled with buildings, environments, and tons of randomized loot. Once they arrive, they shoot each other until only one player (or team, in duo/squad/team modes) is left standing. Like in OTL's popular battle royale games, the battlefield gradually shrinks as the game progresses (though in Battle Buddies, the battlefield is constantly shrinking, unlike in OTL's Fortnite where there's a few minute wait between phases, however, the shrinking in Battle Buddies is a bit slower than the shrinking in Fortnite). There's no building element to Battle Buddies, though there is a platforming element, with more things to jump on and between, meaning that players will need to master both shooting and platforming to truly "get good" at the game. In addition to weapons and armor, there's also items that help with mobility, such as shoes that allow players to jump higher or more times, shoes that allow players to survive large drops, and even jetpacks and helicopters. There are also items that produce a temporary "battle buddy" to fight alongside you, and this buddy usually takes the form of a character from a Rare video game, such as Joanna Dark or Dick Gumshoe (from TTL's Dick, not OTL's Ace Attorney games, obviously). Players themselves can also choose one of these characters in the selection screen, where there are 28 different Rare characters to choose from (and more added via DLC), along with generic characters, and a custom character feature in which players can create a human character or something wacky. Unlike in Fortnite, DLC isn't sold piecemeal, it's sold in packs, and there's no "daily" download DLC, it's just $9.99 for a pack with a bunch of cosmetic content, of which there will eventually be a total of 10 packs. There's no lootboxes (other than the boxes players find in the level that give out a random item), there's no major push to buy DLC (since there are already 50+ "default" characters and literally trillions of customization options in the base game), once you buy the game (which is $59.99), you have pretty much everything you need to deck out your character with tons of new looks, and you CAN spend more on the DLC packs, but it's completely optional, much like the DLC for Super Smash Bros. As for other gameplay mechanics, each character has a unique "ultimate" ability that provides a special effect, some focusing on offense, others on defense, and others on mobility. When creating a custom character, you can choose from 10 different ultimates to bestow on them. These ultimates are strong abilities, but they're not "required" for victory, except perhaps at the highest levels of play, and good shooting/platforming abilities can make up for the lack of skill with an ultimate. Ultimates are charge by dealing damage, taking damage, and from items picked up via looting. As Battle Buddies has been made with the Reality in mind, it has a significantly more graphically polished look than OTL's Fortnite, since it doesn't need to be ported to any other platforms. It runs incredibly well, at 60 FPS, even when some truly crazy stuff is happening (like a firefight between dozens of players and mass destruction going on). The game also features a good amount of voice acting, with Eveline Fischer even returning to voice the announcer (though Rebecca Mader still voices Joanna and Velvet Dark in the game), and also a lot of music from Grant Kirkhope and David Wise. It's not just an intensely fun battle royale, it's also a celebration of all things Rare, with tons of Rare cameos and references to Rare games, and along with Rare Replay, is a deep nostalgia dive for any fan of the company. In addition to the game's battle royale and team battle modes, there's also a 10 hour story mode which serves to introduce the player to the mechanics of the game, and is essentially a fun third person shooter/platformer in which the player creates their own character and must then fight in various combat scenarios to liberate the island from an evil mad scientist supervillain. For a tutorial, it's extremely fun (much like the single player mode in OTL's Splatoon), and though it's not worth the price of admission on its own, it's definitely worth playing.

Battle Buddies is released on May 6, 2016, to strong reviews from critics, averaging in the 9/10 range. It's not QUITE seen as a critical Game of the Year contender, with the shooting and platforming mechanics earning some criticism, as well as the fact that it's not the first battle royale game to hit the market (and thus isn't seen as majorly innovative). However, it gets a ton of hype from Nintendo and from fan anticipation, moreso than last year's Elemancers (which has also become quite the popular online game), and sales are through the roof after launch, beating out games like Metroid Quarantine and Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia to become the fastest selling Nintendo Reality game of the year thus far, as well as Rare's fastest selling game in years. It's hugely popular with men and women, kids and adults, and players all over the world, and while it's not nearly as ubiquitous or influential as OTL's Fortnite (the $59.99 cost of admission is somewhat steep, after all), it doesn't attract nearly the hate fandom that Fortnite does either. In a rapidly growing genre of battle royale titles, Battle Buddies emerges as the most popular, and becomes the first true killer app of the year on the Reality. As for the battle royale genre itself, it's picking up steam in a more decentralized fashion, with battle royale modes in popular games becoming the norm, rather than dedicated battle royale titles. This has the consequence of making the genre more expensive, as, at least right away, there are few true free to play battle royale titles IOTL (which also has the effect of making the genre more popular amongst adults and less popular amongst kids). However, this also, at least in the early going, limits the battle royale genre's potential as an e-sport compared to IOTL, where popular streamers helped raise the popularity of the genre overall. Richard "Ninja" Blevins, for example, remains a popular gamer and streamer ITTL, but mostly focuses on Cyberwar 4, and doesn't get into Battle Buddies (though he does get into Strikeback on the Virtua, his preferred console of choice). As for Rare itself, the company begins to devote a segment of its studio to working exclusively on Battle Buddies updates and balancing, while the rest of the studio prepares for the launch of Slaughtered Planet 2, which they hope is an equivalent success, even if it's hard for them to imagine anything catching on as quickly as Battle Buddies. Battle Buddies quickly joins Elemancers and Super Smash Bros. Reality as Nintendo's most popular online titles, though as time passes, Rare's battle royale game begins to surpass them, showing that the battle royale genre still has the potential to become as popular ITTL as it does IOTL.

 

[RySenkari]

Tales Of The Seven Seas: To The End Of The World

Developed by Naughty Dog and published by Nintendo, Tales Of The Seven Seas: To The End Of The World is a cinematic adventure game exclusive to the Nintendo Reality, and is the final game in the Tales Of The Seven Seas series, providing closure to the stories of its seven protagonists. Like its predecessor, Tales Of The Seven Seas: Horizon, To The End Of The World blends swashbuckling action with open sea exploration, and gives each of its seven protagonists time to shine. In terms of basic gameplay, it actually doesn't change all that much from Horizon, in the same way that OTL's Uncharted 4 (the game that this one best compares to) didn't change all that much from Uncharted 3, maintaining the fairly simple combat and cinematic-based exploration of the previous title and instead focusing on upgrading presentation and the scale of the world. The biggest change to this game from Horizon is its non-linearity: To The End Of The World is divided into eight chapters, with each of the first seven focusing on one of the seven protagonists and actually having the player take control of them while they're alone, and giving them a large, open area to explore at their leisure. This segment sometimes comes at the beginning of the chapter, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes at the end. Sometimes, the player will have a lot of time with that character by themselves, while other times, it's possible to find other characters straight away, and in addition, there are a variety of optional story elements and upgrades to be found during these open segments, while the player will always be warned if they're about to advance out of the segment, giving them a chance to explore to their leisure. Each character's basic skill set remains fairly intact, though there have been some slight upgrades to each character's movement. Erick and Dona have more sword skills, Victoria (as well as Jack) can invent things with component parts, McKenna has incredible range of movement with even more parkour skills than Dona, Creel can find treasure and hidden objects more easily, and Albert has influence over certain enemy NPCs and is able to make them stop attacking or even attack each other. The movement itself has been majorly upgraded as well (much the same way that Uncharted 4 had more range of movement IOTL), with characters able to climb and jump with much more precision, hanging off of ledges (even upside down), moving their limbs more freely in combat, and using more context-sensitive controls. Every character has their own distinct method of movement, giving everyone a unique feel when controlling them both in combat and outside of it. Combat itself has been improved, but only slightly, taking a bit of influence from the combat of Squad Four Betrayal in that it's more cinematic, enemies have better AI, and there are different reactions to the same attack at times. The game features probably the best graphics of any Nintendo Reality game to date, and it's possible to get spectacular first person views that are even more breathtaking in VR, while the third person camera angles have been improved to allow for easier movement than ever before. Characters are voiced and mo-capped by the same actors as in the previous game, while the soundtrack is composed by Hans Zimmer, like in Horizon.

The game takes place four years after the events of Horizon, with Erick and Dona having settled down to raise their four year old daughter (but still going on occasional pirate voyages in the Venture), Creel having become an infamous and wanted pirate, Victoria trying to settle into a life in the aristocracy (but still inventing and practicing fencing), Albert going on a voyage of his own with his daughter Sana, and Jack and McKenna exploring the world. The seven of them are brought back together by Victoria, who has been contacted by James (the prince from The Victorian Legacy), now a king, who asks Victoria to help him locate a ship full of people that's disappeared after sailing to parts unknown. Victoria believes that the ship has found it's way to "the end of the world" on a search for a mythical lost continent. We're also introduced to a few other characters here, including James' brother Frederick (James' brothers were briefly referred to in The Victorian Legacy, but were absent, and it's stated early in this game that James and Frederick's other brothers were killed), a trader named Longfellow (who makes repeated appearances throughout the game and is sort of a comic relief character), and an ambitious young woman named Charlotte, an aristocrat like Victoria who idolizes Creel and wants to become a pirate like him. The first chapter gives players control over Victoria, and consists mostly of a brief "getting the band back together" segment in which most of the people she needs to find are fairly close to the opening town, while the only one she needs to go out on a limb to find is Creel, which she does by getting "captured" by him, only to easily escape and make him an offer he can't refuse (an offer he'd never refuse, since he's madly in love with her). Once the crew is reunited, the player can choose which of the seven to control for the remainder of the chapter, which is a voyage to an island where the crew was last seen, in search of a rumored wreck site that turns out to be an ambush from a group of pirates that are a rival to Creel, who are easily defeated by the heroes, who set sail once more to end the chapter.

The next three chapters are set against the backdrop of the search for the mysterious lost continent, with Creel's rival pirate crew (led by a man named Boggs) as the main villain of the story. During this time, a series of story threads are set up, including Victoria and Creel's strained relationship (Creel has done some fairly morally bad things during his time as a lone pirate, and Victoria is ashamed of him), Albert's desire to give Sana the childhood she never got to have, Jack and McKenna's continued dispute about whether they want to sail the seas or settle down, and Erick and Dona weighing their own adventurous proclivities against their desire to give their daughter (who spends most of her time with either Erick or Dona below deck while the other one goes on adventures) a normal life. At the same time, we see that Victoria is in regular correspondence with James via carrier pigeon, and that James has never lost his affection for her, even after Victoria rejected (in canon) his marriage proposal to her. Chapter two centers around Albert, and features a sea exploration segment, chapter three centers around McKenna and her return to the city where Jack's family lives as she searches for a clue to the whereabouts of the lost continent, and chapter four centers around Erick, who must rescue the other crew members after the ship runs aground on a deserted island and they all get captured (except for Dona, who easily evaded capture, though she is somewhat hampered by having to take care of her daughter while fighting off the rival pirates' crew), and Creel, who is looking for Victoria. Victoria is absolutely furious to have to be saved by Creel, though she's mostly worried for him after he takes a really stupid risk to save her from Boggs. Boggs and the remainder of his crew make it off the island, with Creel in hot pursuit on a stolen vessel, by himself after a furious Victoria abandons him. She and the others head out onto the open sea, where they come across a settlement constructed out of boats and anchored to a peninsula with a large jungle behind it. Chapter five takes place in this area, and after a segment in which the crew reunites with Charlotte (who stowed away on a pirate vessel), the player is eventually given control of Jack for an open exploration segment in which he and McKenna eventually reunite and discover a clue about the lost crew and the lost continent.

We learn a lot in chapter six, which features some story segments in which it's revealed that Boggs' crew is working with Duke Frederick, who plans to usurp his brother James from the throne. We take control of Creel here, who pursues Boggs' crew to James and Frederick's castle, where they execute a daring plot to kidnap James. After some soul searching (Creel is jealous of James for his relationship with Victoria), Creel does manage to rescue James, who is still believed to be dead, allowing Frederick to execute his coup. Frederick orders the entire royal navy to make way for the lost continent, using the information Victoria sent James via their letters. Creel and James set out to go find the rest of the crew before it's too late, and the rest of chapter six focuses on the Venture crew finding the Lost Continent and beginning the search for the wreckage of the lost ship. Chapter seven mostly centers around the exploration of the lost continent, with a large exploration segment focused on Dona (while Erick takes care of their daughter). Dona eventually finds the wreckage of the lost ship, and learns that the voyage was sent by James in order to find an ancient artifact that will allow him to gain the wisdom of King Solomon, so that he can be a good ruler (he still blames himself for the events surrounding Libertalia in The Victorian Legacy, which led to many innocent deaths). Dona wonders if such an artifact can help her decide what's best for her and Erick's child, and begins to follow the clues to search for it, but before she can get far, she's attacked by Boggs. She bests him in straight combat, but the rest of his crew arrives, and Dona is outmatched. She's saved when Victoria shows up, and the two fight off Boggs' lackeys, though Boggs himself gets away with the clue to King Solomon's treasure. As Dona and Victoria give chase, they can see Frederick's fleet over the horizon. Victoria, thinking it's James, leads Dona to them, only for the two to realize too late that it's a trap, and both of them get captured. Meanwhile, Albert, Jack, and McKenna are forced to flee the Venture after it's sabotaged and sunk, but can't reach Erick and his daughter in time, and the two seemingly sink to the bottom of the ocean as the chapter ends. Chapter eight begins with Dona and Victoria escaping together amidst a humorous and heartfelt dialogue scene, Erick and his daughter pulled out of a seemingly watery grave by Creel, and Albert, Jack, and McKenna outsmarting their pursuers. Boggs is the first to find King Solomon's treasure, and uses it to set a trap for Creel, while Creel and Erick reunite with Victoria and Dona (with more heartfelt dialogue as the result). James is also there, though it's clear that Victoria still loves Creel more than him, which James accepts, though he admits to Victoria that he wanted to be a good ruler to impress her. Creel wants to go face Boggs alone, but his friends insist on going with him, not realizing that they're all walking into Boggs' trap, while Frederick and his crew are right behind. There's a massive battle, and during this segment, the player is actually able to switch between all seven heroes in real time, taking part in any part of the battle, with three main objectives to complete: destroying Frederick's flagship, defeating a certain number of soldiers, and reaching the area of the island where Boggs is holed up with the treasure. Unfortunately, once this segment is complete, Boggs springs his trap, resulting in Dona, Jack, McKenna, and Albert all being incapacitated (not badly hurt, just taken out of the fight). Creel, Victoria, and Erick continue on, but Boggs is ready for them as well. Eventually, Creel seems to have Boggs caught, but Boggs springs one more trap, aimed at Victoria. Creel takes the hit and is mortally wounded. Victoria wants revenge, but because of the trap, only Erick can reach Boggs, so Victoria stays behind to tend to Creel. Erick confronts Boggs for the game's final boss fight. Unlike when Dona defeated Boggs, Boggs is MUCH smarter this time thanks to the treasure, and this is one of the toughest battles in the final game. Once Erick prevails, all the heroes, along with James, show up to tend to Creel, but it's too late, and he dies in Victoria's arms after one final kiss and heartfelt goodbye. Erick and Dona are tempted to use King Solomon's treasure, but are forced to abandon it after the area it's in collapses and they have to relinquish the treasure. The entire continent (which is more like just a large island) is sinking into the sea. The crew is fleeing to Frederick's flagship, the last ship remaining. We don't see them make it, but we do see Frederick and what's left of his crew. The usurper king laughs as the ship sets sail, only to turn around to face Victoria, who is standing next to him with a gun pointed at his head and a look of pure hatred in her eyes. The king asks Victoria if she's here to arrest him, and says that instead, she's under arrest, at which point all of Frederick's men point their swords at her. Frederick says that even if Victoria shoots him, she'll be taken back in chains, and as he starts to imply that she'll be sexually abused after she's taken prisoner, she shoots him in the face, killing him on the spot. Of course, before Frederick's stunned men can apprehend her, they're in turn surrounded by Erick, Dona, Albert, Jack, and McKenna, and also the rightful king, James, who arrest Frederick's soldiers and take command of the ship as it sails back to the kingdom's capital.

The end of the game sees Creel mourned as a hero, and reveals all the characters' fates in a lengthy ending sequence. James is restored as the rightful king, and though he doesn't have Solomon's treasure, he's inspired to become a wise and just king nonetheless. Victoria becomes the head of the king's admiralty, allowing her to live as both noble and adventurer, and it's implied that she might eventually become James' queen, though the fate of their relationship is left ambiguous. After much soul-searching, Jack and McKenna settle down, and build a beautiful tower to live in, while also taking in lots of orphans to give them the childhood that the two of them never had. Albert settles on an island with his daughter Sana. His island becomes a refuge for escaped slaves, under the protection of King James and the royal navy. Erick and Dona live their lives as pirate captains on the high seas, with their daughter Bonnie, and we even get a "ten years later" epilogue with her at age 14, much like Cassie Drake in OTL's Uncharted 4, where it's implied that Bonnie is on track to become the greatest hero pirate in the history of the seven seas.

Tales Of The Seven Seas: To The End Of The World isn't praised quite as highly as the groundbreaking Horizon, but it still gets excellent reviews and sales upon its release in June 2016, becoming one of the most successful Reality games of the year. It wraps up the story of the Venture crew in incredible fashion, satisfying most fans (though the reaction to Creel's death is quite mixed). The series would go down as one of the most epic sagas in video game history, wrapping up after 21 years and seven mostly excellent games. Naughty Dog would consider returning to the series some day, and there would be some Sana-focused DLC, along with a Longfellow and Charlotte story, and of course some spinoff media, but there wouldn't be another game in the series, at least until much, much later (beyond the scope of the TL, and of course focusing on Bonnie). Naughty Dog would concentrate its efforts from this point on into Mystic 3 and potentially a new IP, though production at the company would slow down in the coming years as more crunch controversy rears its head. Overall, the game is a successful and satisfying conclusion to an epic saga, and Naughty Dog is praised for allowing the series to end with dignity.

 

[RySenkari]

(Here are the rest of the notable games from April 2016 to June 2016!)

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Nintendo Reality-

Justicar: Absolute Verdict

One of two Justicar games released in May 2016, Absolute Verdict is an FPS/RPG title centered around a new protagonist, Mikhail, and tells a spinoff sidestory to the main Justicar universe. As the first game in the series to be released for consoles, it features the best graphics in the series to date, and an extensive online mode, while its plot follows Mikhail's journey to destroy a group of rebels known as the Dark Order. The game's plot is connected to that of the Connect companion title, The Wasting Of The Ways, and this game takes place before that one by ten years. As Mikhail roots out and destroys the Dark Order, the player realizes that things aren't everything they seem, but the quest continues until Mikhail wipes out the entire Order, despite their clearly morally good intentions, and the game ends with Mikhail renouncing his title as a Justicar to become a shiftless wanderer. The game is praised as one of the Reality's better FPS exclusives of 2016, and tells a story in the series that heavily contrasts that of the noble Damon, while also tying in extremely well with the Connect game. It would see moderately good sales, and would ultimately sell more copies than its handheld companion.

Excitebike Reality

Excitebike Reality is a motocross video game featuring races and stunts, and though it's a fairly basic experience, with only a small amount of extra modes, the actual racing is quite fun, and the stunt gameplay, which allows players to ride around a track or race in one of numerous open dirt areas, is exhilarating and exciting. The racing itself features 16 tracks with varying difficulties and features, while there are a total of 14 stunt arenas and tracks to enjoy, with more of both types of tracks available through DLC. There's online gameplay, and the game also makes good use of the Reality's VR features, making this game a fairly complete racing package and leading to strong reviews in the 8.5/10 range. Sales aren't huge, but the game does moderate numbers around the world and makes back its budget by a healthy amount.

Shantae And The Seven Seastones

Shantae And The Seven Seastones is an action/adventure title for the Nintendo Reality, and is a blend of traditional Metroidvania style Shantae gameplay with some fun Zelda-like dungeon crawling. The game sort of plays like Zelda II: The Adventures Of Link, with sidescrolling in both towns and dungeons alike, as Shantae ventures the world to gather up seven stones to save her friends. She starts out the game battling Risky Boots, but eventually the two end up working together, as they face a common foe in the powerful sorceress Grimoria. Shantae and the Seven Seastones is a fun game with gorgeous graphics, and though it doesn't really take advantage of the Reality's features, the animation is incredibly beautiful and the game has a lot of funny and heartfelt moments.

Apple Virtua-

Impact Radius

A futuristic third person shooter about an elite team of strike troops who must drop into a besieged city to liberate it from rebels and robots, the game gets immediate comparisons to The Covenant, but is significantly faster paced and features more energy weapons. The rebels in question are a group of anarchists seeking to strike at the galactic government by holding the city's mayor and city council hostage (with one of the people on the city council being the protagonist's girlfriend). Meanwhile, the anarchists have invaded a robotics factory, causing a multitude of powerful AI robots to begin attacking humans wildly. The game mostly consists of missions where the player needs to get from point A to point B, killing everything they see along the way and not really going off the beaten path. Impact Radius has a big budget (with excellent graphics that pop spectacularly in VR, and a voice acting team stacked with big names), and it's generally a good game, but does get criticism for being relatively generic, limiting review scores to around an 8/10. Sales, however, are quite good, ensuring that a sequel goes into quick production.

Mega Man: Chip Quest

A traditional JRPG based on the characters from the original Mega Man series, this game sees Mega Man team up with allies including Protoman, Roll, and several other friends he makes along the way, as they battle the diabolical Dr. Wily, who is attempting to build the most powerful robotic monster ever created. In lieu of level-ups, players instead install chips onto their heroes, with chips found from defeated enemies or in treasure chests, or purchased in shops. Of course, bosses drop the biggest and most powerful chips (usually), and there's also an element of RNG to what chips drop where and when. As far as RPGs go, it's decent enough, and has lots of allusions and references to keep Mega Man fans satisfied. It's no Super Mario RPG, but it's a solid 8/10 game and sells decently well, especially in Japan.

Superhot

ITTL, this innovative first person shooter relying heavily on time manipulation and careful strategy is funded by Apple, and thus is exclusive to the Virtua (but benefits heavily from improved graphics and a larger game overall). It becomes a digital indie sensation, and is extremely well reviewed, while at just $10 MSRP, it sells a lot of copies to become one of the Virtua's top digital exclusives of the year.

Vectorman: Twin Motion

This console-based Vectorman title launches at a budget price of $29.99, and is structured fairly similarly to other recent titles in the series which have appeared on the Gemini. The game's graphics are of course a step up from those titles, while the game also includes new motion controls allowing the player to raise their arms to directly control Vectorman, allowing for a new range of rotational movement and some really innovative platforming. The game's plot, involving a pair of diabolical scientists who modify their bodies and attempt to take over the world, is fairly simplistic (though the scientists themselves, a pair of young and talented prodigies whose personalities call to mind Troy and Tyreen from OTL's Borderlands 3 minus the streaming element, are quite popular amongst fans), and the game is a smidge shorter than Omega Factor, but it's still plenty fun and makes some of the best use of the Virtua's motion controls to date.

Google Nexus-

Mystery Of The Mirror

Intended for younger players, this game is essentially LA Noire meets Nancy Drew. A young girl becomes a detective and has to help her friends stop some very real criminals (not really violent criminals, just fraudsters and thieves, though they do resort to some violent threats and kidnapping as the young sleuth and her friends close in) in this action packed but ultimately kid friendly story that achieves decent sales and reviews.

Shadowrun Tactics Hexadecimal

The sequel to the acclaimed Shadowrun Tactics, it's much the same game as the last in terms of basic gameplay, but includes some hacking and puzzle elements, making it one of the more innovative SRPGs in recent memory, with players given the choice of attacking enemies straight on or subverting them through hacking, and it's entirely possible to win the entire campaign and all the side missions with hacking and social engineering alone, without a single attack (this becomes a popular speedrun category as well). One of the best tactics games of its generation, with incredible use of the Shadowrun lore, it's one of the best reviewed games of the year, and though it makes a profit, its sales are far below what it deserves.

The Metallurgist

One of the year's more innovative games, this game is all about crafting, starting with stone and ending up with futuristic super materials. It's basically Civilization for material scientists, with a bit of Doodle God thrown in, and it's pretty fun. It's a budget title, released for $19.99, and becomes a digital store sale staple.

Crashlands

OTL's silly action RPG title combining elements of games like Diablo with lots and lots of crafting is a Google exclusive ITTL, and becomes one of the better received digital titles of the year, thanks to some strong promotion and a few interesting guest characters that the game's affiliation with Google makes possible. Eventually makes it to other consoles, but is a Google exclusive for several years.

Stardew Valley

The hit farming title from OTL also makes it to TTL in much the same form as our reality, only ITTL, it's Google who steps in and offers to help creator Eric Barone with production rather than Chucklefish. With Google's money and development resources, the game expands somewhat, and like Crashlands, benefits from numerous guest characters as well, while also being promoted more by Google initially than by word of mouth (though word of mouth does come later). It comes to both the Nexus and the Nexus Companion, and later gets a port to Android phones, though unlike Crashlands, it never comes to other platforms (Google buys the rights to the game outright, realizing how good it is). Despite being a budget indie title, it's as acclaimed as it was IOTL, and becomes a major driver of Nexus console sales, regarded as one of the Nexus' best titles of the year.

Nintendo Connect-

Works Of Arte

A Nintendo-developed JRPG about a group of heroes who emerge from paintings to save the world from a great evil. Each hero has a different aesthetic, based on a different style of painting. A very fantastical JRPG with rather traditional gameplay (it's turn based, and there's not a huge amount of attack variety, though the game does have some unique timed-hits type systems to spice up battles a bit), the game does have a rather long and epic quest, and features memorable characters and dialogue spiced up by some solid voice acting and good graphics and music. This is probably one of the better RPGs of the year, and a solid new IP for the Connect.

Captain Shock

A superhero/Metroidvania title about a superhero who can blast bad guys with different types of lasers, this gets a lot of comparisons to the recent Vectorman games (and also the Star Siren series, though it's not quite as fast paced and combo heavy) but is somewhat more humorous. As Captain Shock progresses through the world, he gains new powers, and new bad guys emerge to challenge him, while old ones rear their heads, giving Captain Shock a nice little rogue's gallery that will keep the player amused the whole way through the game. A fun little adventure title, this becomes a cult hit.

Justicar: The Wasting Of The Ways

The fourth mainline title in the Justicar series sees Damon on the trail of a strange new group of enemies, while finding clues vaguely hinting at the destruction of a group of soldiers some time before, which turns out to be the Dark Order from Absolute Verdict, ultimately leading Damon to the wandering soldier Mikhail and the truth about his own squadron. The Wasting Of The Ways is more of a traditional FPS title than either Justicar 3 or Absolute Verdict (both of which blend RPG elements with FPS elements), and features a slick new combat system allowing the player to switch between four weapons at once or combine their effects. It's quite a fun and fast paced FPS title and one of the best looking Connect games to date. It ties in well with the Reality game, though not everyone will be willing to spend 100 dollars on both.

SNES Remix

The “Remix” game we never got IOTL, this minigame compilation brings together elements from 60 classic SNES and SNES-CD games, both first party and third party alike, and gives players challenges based on them. With 15-40 challenges for each game, that means there are well over 1,000 challenges in all, making this one of the most robust experiences for the system, and a whole lot of fun for nostalgia junkies and new players alike. It would ultimately see better overall sales than NES Remix, though it doesn't quite sell enough to be considered a blockbuster.

Apple Gemini-

Porcu-Pining

A sidescrolling platformer about an anthropomorphic porcupine who falls in love and must complete a series of increasingly convoluted tasks to win his dream girl. It's a fun and cute game, albeit a bit short, and manages some decent reviews. It does decent sales as well, helped out by the fact that it's a budget title, released at $19.99 MSRP.

Railstorm 2

Railstorm 2 is the long-awaited sequel to 2012's killer app Gemini hit, and this game is much the same as the first: an FPS focused on big, heavy weapons and lots of dakka, bringing back supersoldier Hotch and his companion Elle to do battle with the forces of evil. This game sees invaders from the sky in the form of giant space crustaceans that seem to operate off of a hive intelligence, with Hotch tasked with fending off the invasion and making his way to a glowing object in space that seems to be the center of the hive intelligence. Compared with the original, Railstorm 2 is a lot crazier, with huge enemies the norm (though the space crustaceans also spit out human-sized enemies that lumber on two legs and wield weaponry). The plot is a bit silly, though Hotch is still his normal, soft spoken self. There's another ally character, Winona, who is a general of the human armies and who doesn't like the way Hotch operates, the two frequently clash throughout the game, though she eventually does come around once she realizes he's getting results. The game is an exhibition for the Gemini's graphical capabilities, with smooth animation, polish everywhere, and lots of destructible objects and flying crab parts. It's not as well received as the first game, but it's still really fun and is one of the most critically and commercially successful handheld games of the year.

Multiplatform-

Batman: The Tender Toxin

The follow-up to 2013's Batman: Dark Legend, Batman: The Tender Toxin centers around Poison Ivy, and her plot to kill several prominent businessmen in Gotham to crash the stock market and destroy funding for a project that would cause immense destruction in the world's rainforests. At the same time, Poison Ivy is also looking to find a way to help Harley Quinn escape from jail. Batman, separated from Nightwing and Batgirl (who are on their own after Dark Legend, and who star in their own DLC coming out later in the year), must protect these businessmen from Ivy's plot, though as he investigates the murder attempts, he stumbles upon shady dealings in the city. This is more of a detective-centered game than an action title, though it certainly has plenty of action and fighting, with a more nuanced combat system than Dark Legend, relying on more counters and deliberate strikes. Ivy is usually just beyond Batman's reach, and she's very nearly a dual protagonist in the game, as we get to hear and see her plotting alongside Batman's search. We also get some snippets of Harley Quinn, who is still recovering in jail from her time with the Joker. The game features the voice work of Kevin Conroy as Batman, and in a pair of debuts, Julie Ann Emery as Poison Ivy and Sarah Stiles as Harley Quinn, the first time someone other than Tara Strong or Lyssa Fielding has voiced the character since Arleen Sorkin stepped down from the role in the 2000s. Both Emery and Stiles are highly praised for their performances, while Kevin Conroy does an outstanding job as he usually does. The game itself gets strong reviews for the storyline, though the gameplay is seen as a bit boring, and the game becomes one of the best selling titles of April 2016 (when Virtua/Reality/Nexus sales are combined, only Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia and Strikeback sell more).

INSIDE

OTL's puzzle platformer comes to consoles, handhelds, and mobile, and is pretty much the same game as it was IOTL, receiving similar praise and similar sales, while becoming acclaimed as one of the year's best titles. There are a few plot changes, obviously some of the level hazards are different, but the overall plot and the gameplay itself are the same. The Reality and Virtua versions add some interesting VR effects, while the Virtua allows for full motion controls and also for force feedback once those accessories are released, making it probably the best version of the game.

Tale Korinthia

The latest entry in Game Arts' acclaimed Tale series of action RPGs follows eight heroes and heroines with elemental powers based around a specific color. The primary protagonist, Arch, is a knight with the power of light energy, symbolized by white, while other members of his team have various powers based on plants (green), ice (blue), water (violet), earth (orange), metal (silver), fire (red), and electricity (yellow) respectively. The villain is a sorceress named Queen Maricela, who opens an object called the Black Book that grants her incredible dark magic, which she immediately uses to launch a campaign of conquest across the world. While the plot is fairly straightforward (there's no real villain twist, Maricela is the villain for the entire game, save for the end when the Black Book itself becomes the villain), the game's plot is mainly character based, with each of the heroes and Maricela herself enduring their own struggles to control their powers. Maricela does redeem herself in the end by sacrificing herself to weaken the Black Book so the heroes can destroy it, and the world is saved, though the eight heroes end up relinquishing their elemental powers at the end to restore balance and peace to the world. Tale Korinthia, with its huge world, epic quest, and detailed characters, is considered the best game in the series in quite some time, and is considered one of the best RPGs of the year. It's released for the Reality and the Virtua, skipping the Nexus, though it achieves strong sales on both consoles it does release on. The series has fallen a long way from Phantasia in terms of mainstream popularity, but still consistently pumps out popular RPGs that players generally enjoy.

Viricle: The Subversive

The sequel to the moderately successful 2013 spy action title, Viricle: The Subversive centers around the protagonist's efforts to infiltrate an organization of assassins, while maintaining a network of contacts on the outside. Missions generally involve sabotaging an assassination in some way, though rarely, the player is forced to carry the assassination out to maintain their cover. Though the protagonist is a new character (once again customized by the player), many characters from the original game, including double agent Alice Summers, show up at various points, with Alice being a late game assassination target who ends up saving the protagonist after an attempt to protect her goes awry. The final series of missions has the player infiltrating a large prison to rescue Alice after she's captured attempting to take the villainous organization down, and the player will need to use all the skills they've picked up to complete their final mission. Viricle: The Subversive is a bit of a disappointment, both from a gameplay and a plot perspective, not quite as innovative or exciting as the original, and resorting to hackneyed tropes a lot more often than the original game. As a result, sales are fairly disappointing, and the series ends up being canned after this title.

A World Away

A horror/shooter title and a sequel to 2015's game, A World Away had one of the quicker production turnarounds for a modern shooter, with production rushed after the first game's success. Despite this, the game manages to be a fully realized and polished game, largely thanks to its smaller scope than the original, taking place mostly in two locations: a government facility and a parallel horror world directly linked to one another. Protagonist Rick Carver returns, after enduring months of interrogation in a government facility as agents try to discover the horrors he saw in Caster City. The only reason he's being kept alive is so scientists can figure out how he was able to survive the horrors of the city, but as he's taken from his cell to be experimented on, an explosion rocks the facility, and Carver ends up in a hallway, surrounded by terrifying mutated creatures, while heavily armed military soldiers attempt to hunt him down. As Carver kills the things trying to kill him, he learns more and more about the experiments that have been conducted over the past few years, both at Caster City and at this facility, and it's eventually learned that something from a parallel dimension made it to Earth and that scientists have been attempting to use its DNA to give special abilities to humans. Eventually, he's thrown into an opened portal by the game's main antagonist, the scientist leading the project, Dr. Veld, who was the one who initially began conducting experiments on the monsters that crawled out of the portal. Carver then explores a parallel facility in this strange horrorworld, and learns that this is the world of the dead, and that the dead have opened up a portal of their own in an attempt to resurrect themselves with the flesh of the living. Carver must explore this facility until he finds the device to shut off the portal, but Veld has pursued him, and injected himself with the flesh of the dead to make himself immortal. Carver eventually defeats Veld and uses him to destroy the portal, sealing him up in the device and escaping just as the portal closes. Carver has been successful in saving the world, and he stumbles out of the government facility, but doesn't know that one living being injected with dead cells still roams the world, and has begun experimenting on others to spread its contagion. A World Away, despite its quick turnover and fairly short length, is about as highly praised as the original game thanks to its intense horrors and solid shooting mechanics. Sales are quite good as well, considering the success of the original game, and a third title enters production for release in 2018 or 2019.

Bully 3

An open world school-based sandbox title, Bully 3 got a slightly lower budget than the last two games, as much of Rockstar's development resources at the time are focused on Grand Theft Auto Online and Doggerland, and indeed, Rockstar actually brought in another studio to assist with development on this game. Despite that, it still manages to be a content-rich game featuring all of the fun gameplay and classic humor that the series is known for. Unlike Bully 2, this game's protagonist is always male. He's a “nerdy” student named Josh who arrives at a technical school for highly intelligent people, but even at a school full of nerds, there's still a social pecking order, which Josh learns fairly quickly. There are some interesting science-based minigames, and more “weapons” than ever before (nothing lethal, just potato guns and the like), while the player ends up tasked with solving a cheating conspiracy that goes all the way to the school's administration. Unlike the last two games, the main villain isn't a student, but instead, is a psychotic professor who frames students he doesn't like for cheating, while extorting those students he helps into helping him down the road. While Bully 3 isn't as highly reviewed as the last two games, and features an overabundance of geek humor and memes, it's a solid sandbox title and scores excellent sales.

Ex-Military

An FPS about former soldiers down on their luck who go on a crime spree, this title is somewhat of a dark take on a Call Of Duty-type game, and one of the more controversial titles of the year. You play as Hud Ellis, a former Silver Star recipient who suffers from PTSD, who gets in with a criminal gang also consisting of ex-soldiers suffering from various traumas or financial hardships or both. The gang decides to commit a bank robbery, but things go horribly wrong, and as a result, the four end up taking hostages and going on a county wide crime spree that includes murder and shootouts (though much of the shooting in this game actually takes place in flashbacks to their time in the war). It's a dark, intense game, with protagonists that can best be described as a “slightly more sympathetic Kane and Lynch”, and a story that addresses trauma in a darkly realistic way while also not excusing the protagonists' actions. With its uniquely dark story coupled with some of the best shooting mechanics of the year, Ex-Military splits critics, with some calling it brilliant and others giving it surprisingly low scores for how high quality it is. It ends up being a high profile sales disappointment, though with price drops it ends up doing better than its initial launch window would indicate.

Pankration

A 3-D fighting game based on the ancient Greek wrestling sport (with a combat system best compared to the OTL UFC games with a lot more brutality). Has a bit of an RPG element of needing to work up the ranks and train. It's as brutal as the real thing and has a surprisingly heartfelt storyline, focused on a low-class family man who goes into the sport after the tragic death of his wife and young child. He starts out with a death wish, but as he rises through the ranks and gains more fans, he finds a new purpose on life, but also draws the attention of powerful enemies. The game becomes a critical success, though the sales don't quite reflect that.

Quixsters: The Grabblegrass

The bite-sized action franchise returns with a huge cast of dozens of heroic kids working together to stop an evil plant menace from taking over the universe! Challenges mostly revolve around yanking or cutting down vines that are ensnaring innocent bystanders and trying to ensnare you, and the game features some hilarious animation of the little brats being flung around the screen, yelling and making loud smacks against the walls or the screen itself, a lot like the animations in Super Smash Bros. Of course, being as competitive as they are, the kids are also attacking each other, racing to stop the plants first and get all the glory. It's as wild and crazy as it sounds, and the game gets fairly high marks, though not quite as high as Enter The Maze. Sales aren't quite as good either, though the game is a big hit on the Nexus, and also does well on the handhelds, where the bite-sized levels and challenges can be played in quick bursts.

The Tavern District

An old school crime-based sandbox game, with some similarities to OTL's Mafia III. Features a somewhat politics heavy storyline, with race and economics playing majorly into it. The game is a bit polarizing, with great reviews from some critics and disappointing ones from others, and ends up being a bit of a sales disappointment (in that way, it draws a lot of comparisons to Ex-Military, another high profile but highly polarizing game, though The Tavern District isn't quite as controversial).

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Top Selling New Console Games In North America (in terms of sales over the first four weeks of release):

April 2016-

1. Strikeback (Apple Virtua)
2. Animal Crossing: Welcome To Suburbia (Nintendo Reality)
3. Quantum Break (Nintendo Reality)
4. Batman: The Tender Toxin (Nintendo Reality)
5. Batman: The Tender Toxin (Apple Virtua)

May 2016-

1. Battle Buddies (Nintendo Reality)
2. Impact Radius (Apple Virtua)
3. A World Away (Apple Virtua)
4. A World Away (Nintendo Reality)
5. Brothers (Nintendo Reality)

June 2016-

1. Tales Of The Seven Seas: To The End Of The World (Nintendo Reality)
2. Railstorm 2 (Apple Gemini)
3. Bully 3 (Nintendo Reality)
4. Bully 3 (Apple Virtua)
5. Stardew Valley (Google Nexus)