Category: Game

Harmonix is playing a stripped-down set on Oculus Rift I’m not sure what to make of Rock Band’s tour of virtual reality. Harmonix’s Oculus Rift title, which won’t hit the VR platform until the Oculus Touch controllers are available later this year, does away with the multiplayer “band" portion of the game, focusing primarily on being a virtual guitar player.
Rock Band VR is a solitary experience, putting the player on a virtual stage and letting them strum along to familiar note highways overlaid on stage monitors placed in front of the player and their bandmates. In Harmonix’s GDC demo for Rock Band VR, the song I rocked out to was Aerosmith’s "Walk This Way" and the setting was a dingy, basement rock club, packed with a few dozen adoring fans.
Harmonix does a good job of settling you into the experience; the player is asked to move their head to look around the virtual stage, then to lean forward toward a mic stand, then to look back at the band’s drummer, who will count off his other bandmates. The Rock Band VR demo had a few objects players could interact with and activate, simply by staring at them for a moment. Look at a flash pot on the side of the stage, and it’ll pop off some pyrotechnics. Stare at the guitar pedals near your feet, and you’ll cycle through guitar effects.

These are fun diversions, but one interaction helps sell the feeling of rocking out on stage: Give your bass player an extended glance, and she’ll walk over and passionately jam out with you as play.
Another interaction I didn’t personally experience, but was told about by Harmonix, was knocking over the mic stand with the guitar, which is recreated in the virtual setting. Seeing the guitar controller in that 3D virtual space is a neat trick, and as you press the fret buttons on the controller’s neck, colored light beams burst forth from each button. It’s helpful in placing your fingers, and frankly, is just a cool effect.
Harmonix is tracking the position and movement of the guitar controller —€” controllers from PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are supported in the Rift version —€” by attaching an Oculus Touch controller to the head of the guitar. They’ve even manufactured a small attachment device that holds the Touch firmly in place.
Some of the virtual tricks Harmonix pulls off are, admittedly, pretty neat. Seeing your virtual guitar strapped to your body and having your bandmates react to your motions helps reinforce the player’s place in that digital world. Less appealing though, is having to keep your eyes locked on Rock Band’s note highway, which sits at foot level, making every performance feel like you’re in a shoegaze band.
Rock Band VR plays like a dramatically scaled back experience —€” even more so than the reduced scope of Rock Band 4—€” but Harmonix says it has much more to reveal about its virtual reality game at this year’s E3. We’ll see what new material they have for virtual rock enthusiasts in June.

Will be released as a book first Director Michael Mann is bringing a group of writers together to write a prequel novel and film adaptation to his 1995 movie, Heat.
According to Deadline, Mann is launching a book publishing company with the goal to adapt each title that comes through for either film or television. The director will reportedly scour his own archive of films to look for potential ideas, but his highest priority remains bringing the Heat prequel to fruition.
Starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, Heat followed a gang of bank robbers trying to evade police upon realizing they accidentally left a clue at the location of their most recent heist. The prequel will reportedly focus on the “formative" years of each major character.
Mann is currently working on securing writers for both fiction and non-fiction projects. Once his writers are onboard, work can start on the prequel but there’s no estimated release date at this time.

Another collab with Paradox Interactive Obsidian Entertainment announced Tyranny, its next role-playing game, during a press conference held by publisher Paradox Interactive. The studio debuted the game with the short teaser above.
Tyranny is about making tough, morally gray decisions, Obsidian said during the press event. Players live in a war-torn world ruled by the evil overlord Kyros — who players can either serve or betray. Players have to consider the consequences of their choices as they choose to use their power as Kyros’ underlings to rebuild the world or further destroy it.
Further details were scant, including a release date and platforms. Tyranny’s official website promises further updates as it continues along in development.
This is the latest project that Obsidian and Paradox will work on together; Paradox published Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity in 2015.

Can the problem of bullying in the virtual world be stopped before it gets bad? Patrick Harris of Minority Media (Papo and Yo) opened his cautionary presentation during Game Developers Conference 2016’s virtual reality series with a warning: His talk, on the potential for — and overwhelming effects of — harassment in socially minded VR spaces, could get uncomfortable.
Although “viewer discretion" was advised, Harris warned the audience that he wasn’t going to shy away from the harsh realities of harassment over the next half hour. The cyberbullying he detailed was both familiar and foreign to much of his listeners, however, making it all the more fascinating — and, in a way, frightening.
Harris is a lead game designer at the studio, which is now working on multiplayer VR experiences. Similar to typical online games (he often referenced Dota 2 and Call of Duty), players in massively multiplayer online VR releases will likely be the target of harassment at some point during play, he explained. But what isn’t quite apparent yet is the form that harassment will take with this technology, which encourages total immersion and players having presence within the virtual environment.
It turns out that, according to Harris, harassment is "way, way, way worse" in VR. "It is intense, it is visceral it triggers your fight or flight response," he warned, his tone becoming more grave.
"They can lean in and touch your chest and groin"
In VR, a player can do much more than send a death threat over text. Minority Media developed a multiplayer prototype to understand what harassment looks like with VR technology, and found players can abuse the presence afforded by virtual reality to get right up in the faces of others.
"They can lean in and touch your chest and groin and it’s really scary," Harris said. As part of his experiment to figure out the depths of VR harassment, the designer played his MMO prototype with an unsuspecting woman. Their gameplay session was shown to the audience with a short video that left the room in stunned, dismayed silence.
He described the shame he felt as he pushed the game’s immersive capabilities to their limits, making obscene gestures with a "phallic" object, invading his fellow player’s personal space and ultimately trying to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible — with great success. All of this was shown to the audience, too, as the video cut between the woman’s palpable discomfort and Harris’ increasingly disturbing victimizing tactics.
Afterward, Harris apologized profusely for the way he acted during the game session — he was so stricken by how real the experience felt, he said, that he immediately felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. Even worse, according to the woman he played against — and harassed in the name of research — it was "a damaging experience."
"if we’re not going to change it, who the fuck is?"
Yet Harris sought to do more than instill fear into the audience, thanks to his detailed descriptions of the discomfort he caused and felt as a faux VR abuser. Although he admitted that there was likely no one great method for protecting players from every possible instance of virtual harassment, he suggested several gameplay mechanics for creating precautions and punitive measures for damaging behaviors within VR. These include creating opt-out "personal boundary lines" which turn opponents invisible once crossed, improved report systems and saving replays of offending incidents.
But in a field that’s still untested, none of these ideas are safe bets just yet. Just how severe and affecting harassment can be with technology that requires true presence within the game world remains to be seen.
It will be up to Harris and his fellow pioneering VR developers to figure out how to curtail the problem before it reaches its worst potential, he said.
"We’re the ones with the power to change it," he told the crowd with increasing volume. To end his talk, he shouted:
"If we’re not going to change it, who the fuck is?"

Part puzzle game, part reflex challenge. Like many VR games, Headmaster starts with a simple concept. The game throws soccer balls at you, and you move your head to hit them back. It’s wrapped in a story where you visit a center for soccer players who need help, but it’s really all about the feeling of a soccer ball hitting you in the head.
There’s a nice sense of timing when the ball flies in, a satisfying suction cup sound effect when it hits you and a quick bounce when it flies away. And you don’t have to move your head to the point of discomfort — you can slowly lean in and still get a pretty accurate shot, as long as you approach it from the correct angle.
Similar to something like Portal, the game is primarily a series of challenges, with bits of story and humor snuck in around the edges. Your main goal is to aim the soccer balls at specific targets. The more difficult the targets are to hit, the more points you get for them. Then as you progress, the game throws in obstacles and twists on the concept, with an excitable employee named Carl mixed in.
“It’s not wacky,” says Frame Interactive CEO Ben Throop. “It’s more like dark humor. The guy that runs it, you never see him. … Let’s just call him the headmaster. … He’s kind of only half paying attention, because he’s got a lot of other stuff going on. He hired Carl to do stuff, and Carl gets a little bit excited to make the challenges for you.”

Carl is the center’s only employee, and isn’t allowed to talk to you, so he leaves notes behind to tell you what’s going on and add some flavor. The bulk of the game, though, lies in the challenges he creates.
In the demo version on display at GDC, this plays out initially in a realistic sense, but soon ramps up. In one challenge, you get a giant beach ball that knocks over multiple targets at once, making aiming easier. In another, you get soccer ball-shaped bombs, which you use to blow up wooden crates and clear a path. One stage puts a forklift carrying an outhouse in your way, making you aim around it to hit your targets. And in the final stage before the GDC demo fades to black, you see the outlines of a rock concert stage, hinting at something more elaborate.
The developers are also planning a multiplayer mode called the “group session” where players take turns wearing the headset and pass it around, competing for score. “It’s kind of like you’re all visiting a football improvement center together,” says Throop. “You’ve all been bad players and got sent there by your club to improve.”
Frame is planning Headmaster as a PlayStation VR launch title to ship in October, exclusive to Sony’s headset because Sony funded the game.

Game devs are starting early these days The Magicka series’ next entry is a card game, Paradox Interactive announced today. Magicka Mayhem is now accepting donations on Kickstarter — a campaign that was launched by 10-year-old Ethan Erickson and his dad, Ken.
Ethan himself premiered the concept for the game on-stage during Paradox Interactive’s event. The Kickstarter page offers more details but, according to Ethan, the strategy-based card game will translate the elemental wizardry and sense of humor of the Magicka games from the TV screen to the living room table.
The Kickstarter is open for the next 30 days. The Ericksons, to whom Paradox licensed the Magicka brand, are seeking $2,500 to fund the tabletop game project.
The latest release on the video game side of the brand is Magicka 2, which launched on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC last year.

Available April 1 One of the most anticipated features on the upcoming Blu-ray and digital release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the movie’s behind-the-scenes documentary, Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey.
The doc — which premiered at South by Southwest in Austin this week and was introduced by director J.J. Abrams —followed different effects supervisors, the cast and crew as they worked on the project.
In the trailer for the documentary, which can be seen above, different actors can be heard giving voice-over responses to unheard questions while Abrams directs them around set. There’s footage of the first table read, scenes with John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, and a special look at that scene.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available to download digitally as of April 1, with the Blu-ray combo pack being released a few days later on April 5.

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I was aware that Salt and Sanctuary would be a 2D incarnation of the Souls games — think Castlevania, not Slashy Souls — but after playing a few hours of the final game on PlayStation 4, I was not prepared for how punishing an adaptation it really was. Sure, it’s got Souls-like mechanics, like resource loss upon death and hugely customizable characters. But what’s more impressive is how it has adapted the moments that the Souls games can deliver: Like, for instance, the delight of having a game trick you into running to your death through a field of spike traps.
You can watch Justin and I play through a bit of Salt and Sanctuary, including a genuinely upsetting boss fight, in the Overview video posted above.

Head back to World War 2 for the fourth time Hearts of Iron 4 will be available this June, Paradox Interactive confirmed during a press event today. The World War II strategy game will launch in time for D-Day, June 6, in keeping with its theme.
The game was first announced in 2014. Paradox planned it for a late 2015 release, a window it missed. A delay pushed it to the June launch date.
The previous entry in the series launched on Windows PC in 2009. Hearts of Iron 4 is planned for release on Linux, Mac and PC.
For more on the game, check out our interview with Paradox’s Johan Andersson about the series’ combination of historical accuracy and grand strategy. You can also take a look at the gameplay below for a peek at Hearts of Iron 4 ahead of its release.

Space conquering for a more casual player Ironhide Game Studio cofounder Gonzalo Sande has a concise but very tall comparison for the developer’s upcoming game, Iron Marines.
“Have you played StarCraft?" he said. "It’s like a mobile version of StarCraft."
The similarities are obvious and immediate. Iron Marines is a real-time strategy game with spacey, sci-fi elements. Its tiny world is filled with warring marines and aliens. But against the complicated systems or long-arching story of Blizzard’s space opera, Iron Marines can’t compare — and, it’s not exactly trying to. This is real-time for a casual mobile player, Sande explained.
"It doesn’t exist, a game that is an RTS for mobile, that is more casual," Sande said. "If you take an RTS game and you put it on a iPad, it’s pretty complicated with the controls. What we tried to do is adapt it to more casual gameplay where you can play on the subway, everywhere."

Iron Marines pares down the typically click-based gameplay with simple taps and drags. Players can move their units solo or as a group, upgrade their base and take on enemies with a few quick motions. The game, due out later this year on Android, iOS and Windows Phone, will also allow players to swap out different heroes. Each new hero will open up new units and strategies as players attempt different mission objectives.
While the main campaign will toss players into fights anywhere from 10-15 minutes long, Iron Marines will also offer shorter mini-games for players with no time to spare.
"It’s a strategy game where you have to adapt and conquer," Sande said. "You conquer territories and you adapt your strategy depending on the kind of enemies that are attacking you. It’s more like an RTS, but it’s adapting to a mobile device."