Category: Game

Console versions coming later Developer Heart Machine’s stylish action role-playing game Hyper Light Drifter will come to Mac and Windows PC next week, the studio announced in an update on its Kickstarter page. Those platforms will get the game March 31, while players on other platforms will have to wait a bit.
Here’s what the developer had to say about the planned Linux version:

We are still working out some final kinks on the Linux build; we still plan to launch it at the same time as PC and Mac, though there’s the possibility of needing a bit of extra time. So far it’s looking good, and like it’ll be out in time. We’ll keep everyone posted on this subject.

Hyper Light Drifter’s console versions will arrive sometime in 2016, according to a newly released trailer.
Heart Machine funded Hyper Light Drifter through Kickstarter in 2013, pitching the top-down action game as a “beautiful, vast and ruined world riddled with unknown dangers and lost technologies … inspired by nightmares and dreams alike."

Studio bites the dust Evolution Studios, developer of racing games like the MotorStorm series and DriveClub, has reportedly been shut down. The British studio was a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment which is responsible for the closure, according to GameIndustry.biz.
Evolution’s latest game was DriveClub on PlayStation 4. While that game was in development, the studio was hit with layoffs. The game’s director also made his departure during its production. First planned as a launch title for the PS4, DriveClub arrived in 2014 to mixed reviews.
A version of DriveClub exclusively for PlayStation Plus subscribers launched last June. Most recently, the company was working to bring DriveClub to PlayStation VR.
We’ve reached out to a representative of Sony for confirmation of the closure — and about the future of DriveClub — and will update accordingly.

At its core, Salt and Sanctuary does something impossible: It borrows the mechanics of another video game franchise without getting lost in derivation.
If you can think of an emblematic component of FromSoftware’s punishing action-RPGs — Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne — it’s probably represented somehow in Salt and Sanctuary. Death in From’s games is frequent, and forces you to risk losing precious upgrade resources. Characters are immensely customizable, allowing you to brave deadly worlds with mages, ninjas, knights and everything in between. Combat is tense, requiring skillful parries, well-timed dodge rolls or strategic spell casting to avoid an extremely quick death.
Salt and Sanctuary does an excellent job in transforming those ideas to fit into its 2D action-platformer design, but that’s not even its biggest success. Where Salt and Sanctuary truly sets itself apart is its keen understanding of what emotions those mechanics are capable of eliciting: terror, determination and accomplishment — all in equal measure.

you’re constantly exploring hallowed, untrodden ground
Salt and Sanctuary starts you with virtually nothing, save for the few traits given to the class you’ve selected and a few sentences of exposition. After squaring off against a Lovecraftian horror and surviving a shipwreck, you wash up on the beach of a nameless island, where you’re still given scant information on your motivations. Your goals are never explicit and never outlined through dialogue, always through play: You’re here to explore and discover, to improve and survive.
The world of Salt and Sanctuary feels so much bigger than it actually is because of that lack of explicit communication. To learn what’s happened, you’ll have to put in the effort, reading item descriptions and discussing history lessons with the few NPCs you encounter on your journey. It adds a layer of genuine mystery to the proceedings, but more importantly, it instills a sense of adventure, and the feeling that you’re constantly exploring hallowed, untrodden ground.

That illusion isn’t entirely necessary, because the world of Salt and Sanctuary actually is pretty gigantic, with massive temples, towering castles, festering dungeons and swamps all interconnected by hidden passages and shortcuts. The game’s 2D perspective drives home a powerful sense of scale; your hero’s sprite is minuscule compared to the game’s ancient, overbearing structures.
To battle that sense of powerlessness, Salt and Sanctuary gives you plenty of avenues of improving your character. The system is stylistically similar to Final Fantasy 10’s Sphere Grid, allowing you to unlock nodes on a massive board with each new level you gain by exchanging Salt, a resource dropped by enemies. Each general direction on the board will empower you in different ways, giving you proficiency in magic, miracles, armor, shields or any number of weapon categories.
On top of those vast progression loops, Salt and Sanctuary also borrows some gear-gating conceits from action-platformers like Castlevania. Areas on the map will be inaccessible until you learn a certain traversal mechanic, like the air dash or gravity reversal. These moves not only make platforming as exciting as combat toward the end of the game, they also make that combat all the more mobile and frantic.

The “Sanctuary" half of the game’s title describes the checkpoints scattered throughout the world, each of which belongs to a particular Creed. It’s the game’s faction system, and probably the only part of Salt and Sanctuary that would have been better served by a more in-depth explanation — not because I used it wrong, but because I didn’t know there was so much I could be doing with my chosen Creed.
Each Sanctuary belongs to a Creed, though many you’ll discover are abandoned and can be dedicated to your chosen team. At your Creed’s Sanctuaries, you’ve got full control: You can customize the vendors or quest givers (most of which offer different inventories for each Creed), add fast travel points, or even hire a sellsword, allowing you to play the game with a couch co-op accomplice.
The main job of the Sanctuaries, though, is to offer you a brief respite from the dangers outside. You can level up, purchase survival essentials and refill your stock of restorative potions, which also differ between Creeds — worshippers of Devara’s Light gulp holy water to recover HP, while the hedonistic House of Splendor doles out healing jugs of wine, which can also get your character loaded.

factions could use some more explanation

Creeds add some systemic sophistication to Salt and Sanctuary — any Sanctuary can be "defiled" to change which Creed it houses, and you can change Creeds at any point but will be branded an Apostate by the jilted organization. But their bigger value is that they’re lenses through which to view this otherwise unexplained world, one where individuals, armies and religions are drawn toward unexplained powers belonging to long-forgotten gods.
Creeds are a twist on the Covenants of the Souls series, but the direct line of inspiration between the two — and between most of Salt and Sanctuary’s familiar components — will be obvious to anyone who’s ever kindled a bonfire. Salt and Sanctuary may ultimately lack its own discrete identity because of all of its tributes to FromSoftware’s titles, but it absolutely cannot be accused of halfheartedly adapting them. Salt and Sanctuary sticks the landing on every borrowed idea.

Big price cuts for new players, too Overkill Software has ported Payday 2 to SteamOS — and to celebrate, all Steam users can try out the game for free through the end of the month, the company announced on the game’s community page.
Current owners of Payday 2, like other Steam games available across multiple platforms, will now be able to play the game on Steam Machines at no additional cost.  For those who have yet to test out Payday 2, however, the company is offering several promotions for those who have yet to pick up the game. From now until March 31, the game will be free-to-play; those who want to pick up the full game after their trial run can then purchase it at a discount. Along with the game itself, available content for Payday 2 — and its predecessor, Payday: The Heist — is 75 percent off for the rest of March.
Overkill Software — and its owner, Starbreeze Studio — received criticism last fall when it introduced microtransactions to Payday 2. Players of the first-person shooter revolted when the developer locked loot crates containing stat boosts behind a paywall, despite earlier claims that it would keep the game free of non-cosmetic, paid add-ons. The company later apologized to the fanbase for the addition.

“Think we should ask that kid to play ball?" On the eve of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it seems fitting that we should remember that the reason why we care that Batman and Superman have come to blows is that the two characters have such a long history of being friends. And the best story about Batman and Superman’s friendship is one about how two short, quiet comics published ten years apart said something profound about the DC Universe.
It’s a story about how a single moment can change two lives, and when those lives belong to Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, it can change a whole universe.

We begin in 2003, with the publication of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s "When Clark Met Bruce" in Superman/Batman Secret Files, a single issue tie-in to the recently begun ongoing series Superman/Batman. Superman/Batman was a team up title, but in the few pages of "When Clark Met Bruce" Loeb and Sale — who’d already showed their Batman and Superman chops in books like The Long Halloween and Superman for All Seasons — flaunted that theme. (You can also find the story printed in Solo: Tim Sale, if you’re interested.)
In their story, a pre-teen Clark Kent plays baseball with a friend in a Kansas field. Naturally, eventually, the ball gets hit a bit too far, and Clark dashes over the hill to get it. On the other side he sees an odd sight for Smallville: a huge black car, broken down in the shade of a tree. A slight man in a suit works on the engine, and in the shadowy back seat, a pale boy sits alone. Narration boxes in the voice of an adult Clark and Bruce explain the circumstances. "After my parents died, Alfred thought that I needed to get out of Gotham City. We drove to California."
Mark Chiarello’s colors underscore the two worlds that are colliding: Clark and Smallville are all lush green grass and vibrant blue sky. Under the tree, Alfred and the car are rendered in black and navy blues; Bruce himself is basically a greyscale watercolor.
Clark considers asking the strange kid to play ball with him and his friend, and the panel that results is devastating:

Clark and his friend run back to their field. In narration, Bruce muses that even if they’d asked him to play, by that point in his life he had no more time for games. Clark has always wondered if he should have asked Bruce to play. "If it would have made a difference."
In 2013, Greg Pak and Jae Lee’s Batman/Superman would pick up a ten year old, not-even-really-explicitly-canon story, and answer that question with an emphatic "yes."

The New 52, in one one of a plethora of changes that condensed 25 years of canon, reduced the number of parallel earths in the DC Multiverse from 52 to two. Earth 2 — named in homage to the DC Universe’s first parallel universe — was characterized by the absence of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.
The three heroes had recently died saving the world from the forces of Darkseid, and so Earth 2 stories were generally about the remaining, not-entirely-the-same superheroes of that world, and their attempts to fill the void they’d left behind. However, in the first arc of Batman/Superman — the New 52’s Batman and Superman team up series — we find out what Earth 2 was like before all the tragedy. In it, Batman and Superman meet for the first time in the main DC Universe — and are transported seven years forward in time and into Earth 2 by a malevolent spirit, coming face to face with their more seasoned counterparts.
It’s a grand old adventure to be sure, but there’s another short story woven through its third issue that refreshes the reader’s memory of the events of "When Clark Met Bruce." And on Earth 2, young Clark asked young Bruce if he wanted to play.
The two boys bond immediately, as Alfred and Pa Kent share their experiences in caring for their lonely young charges. The butler winds up surreptitiously stalling his repair of the car, as "hours" turn into "overnight" and eventually a week of orphaned Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth as guests on the Kent farm. For Bruce, Clark is his first real friend. For Clark, Bruce is the first person, after his parents, who realizes he’s an immensely powerful alien — and isn’t the least bit frightened.

Batman/Superman is clearly saying that Earth 2’s differences can all be chalked up to this small moment. It’s a world where Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent have been friends since childhood — where they were friends throughout their journeys toward becoming Batman and Superman. Earth 2 Superman can heal flesh at the cellular level with his laser vision: Being friends with Bruce — and his ambitious, analytical mind — has guided the Man of Steel into a precision-like grasp over his powers.
In turn, Bruce’s friendship with Clark has crafted him into an adult who is actually capable of trust and emotional self-reflection, and Gotham is safer when the Dark Knight’s life contains less anger and loneliness. He’s still dark, calculating and driven — but he’s married to the love of his life, Selina Kyle, and has raised their daughter from birth to be the first Robin.
In fact, Clark is married to Lois Lane, as well. On the whole, Earth 2 is a more technologically advanced earth, thanks to Wayne Enterprises breakthroughs, and a more peaceful one. Most major supervillains are frozen in a cryogenic prison and even Gotham City has torn down Arkham Asylum to build an amusement park.
And it’s all because Clark Kent asked Bruce Wayne if he wanted to play baseball.

Episode 5 premieres on March 29 Minecraft: Story Mode is getting three more episodes this year, Telltale Games announced today. That means Episode 5, which launches March 29, won’t be the last chapter of the series, but will instead bridge it with the rest of the story to come.
Those who want to play Episodes 6, 7 and 8 will need to have purchased at least the first episode of Minecraft: Story Mode, which debuted back in October.
The fifth installment, titled Order Up!, sends the player protagonist Jesse and his or her friends to an abandoned temple, where they are ambushed and find themselves in an entirely new world. The ruler is told the group of heroes, the New Order of the Stone, are up to no good, setting up the conflict and showdown of this story.
Minecraft: Story Mode stars voice actors Patton Oswalt and Catherine Taber as Jesse (depending on the player’s gender choice); Paul Reubens of Pee-wee Herman fame as bad guy Ivor; and Sean Astin of The Goonies (OK, OK, also The Lord of the Rings trilogy) as Reginald. Melissa Hutchison, who voices Clementine in Telltale’s acclaimed The Walking Dead adaptation, features in Episode 5 as a new character.
For more, see Polygon’s review of the first episode, “The Order of the Stone." The game is available on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Mac, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita, and Android and iOS.

Lynch on the big screen David Lynch is hard at work creating his new Twin Peaks series for Showtime, but the network’s CEO said fans may have a couple of different viewing options.
In an interview with Bloomberg, David Nevins said that he believed movies and television were going to blur as the mediums became on par with one another. In an attempt to bridge film and television, Nevins said that a series like Twin Peaks was the perfect place to start exploring those options.
“You’re going to see television shows produced primarily for television that’s going to play in theaters for an occasional out-of-home collective experience," Nevins told Bloomberg. "So I guarantee you when we put Twin Peaks out people are gonna want to put that in theaters. So I see those lines blurring."
Nevins also said that when the show does premiere, it will be on a traditional week-to-week basis instead of the current Netflix trend of releasing all of the episodes at once. Nevins said they want to turn Twin Peaks into an event and part of that is exploring the realm cinema may play.
Lynch is still in the midst of production on the series. It was originally supposed to premiere this year, but was pushed back after creative differences between Lynch and the studio arose. It’s now slated to premiere early 2017.

Go download ’em Bully is the latest game to join PlayStation 4’s line-up of PlayStation 2 classics. It’s now available for download on the PlayStation Store for $14.99, and offers trophy support, remote play and 1080p upscaling.
Also available for download today is XCOM: Enemy Unknown for PlayStation Vita. Owners of the portable can now purchase the strategy game — rebranded as XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus — for $19.99.
Bully first launched on PS2 in 2006. Rockstar Games’ high school-set title lets players run amok inside a private school setting.
XCOM is Firaxis Games’ popular strategy series. A sequel, XCOM 2, launched earlier this year.

Legendary series celebrates a big birthday Capcom released the first Resident Evil game in Japan 20 years ago today — Biohazard, as its known in its home country, made its PlayStation debut on March 22, 1996. To commemorate the big birthday, the company uploaded an interview with longtime series staff member Hiroyuki Kobayashi, in which he recounts Resident Evil’s first two decades.
The video above reminds fans of the series’ lasting impact on gaming over the years, from its popularization of the survival horror genre to the critical acclaim of games like Resident Evil 4. Since its release 20 years ago, the very first Resident Evil has made its way onto various other consoles — including, just last year, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, in the form of a high-definition remake.
Capcom hasn’t announced much in the way of other anniversary plans for the franchise’s 20th year. In a press release, the company said it would upload more developer interviews in celebration of the anniversary throughout the coming months.
The developer will also launch remastered versions of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year. Resident Evil 6, the first of the ports — Capcom is releasing them in reverse chronological order — will arrive next week on March 29.
Also in the pipeline is Umbrella Corps, a team-based shooter. That game will be out on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC sometime in May.

The biggest differentiator between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets seems to be the Vive’s ability to allow gamers to walk around inside an entire room as they play.
But Oculus could deliver that option as well if it wanted to, the company says.
“Some people will really want room scale," said Oculus head of worldwide studios Jason Rubin. "It’s definitely cool. We have the tech ability to provide room scale. Our tech doesn’t preclude that.
"At some point we’ll demo that."

Oculus Rift ships on March 28 with a single sensor designed to track the head and upper body movements of the user. When the Oculus Touch controllers ship sometime in the second half of the year, it will include a second sensor. Those two sensors could be used to deliver a more confined version of the Vive’s room scale VR. Where the Vive’s two Lighthouse sensors can track movement in a 15-foot-by-15-foot area, the Rift’s sensors are designed for tracking a smaller space, about 5-feet-by-11-feet.
While at least one game — Fantastic Contraption — supports room scale on the Rift, Oculus doesn’t believe that room scale VR is in big demand.
"We don’t believe that the consumer has the space in general," Rubin said. "Has the commercial viable space of the 15-by-15 foot square."