Another Spring, another PAX East in the bag, and 2016 was a good one. Here’s some of the interesting stuff that happened this year:
A New Borderlands Game Confirmed / Detailed
Although we heard a new Borderlands game was in the works earlier this year, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford confirmed today that the game was in development. Details are still light as the project doesn’t sound too far along, but the art director from both Borderlands 2 and Battleborn, Scott Kester, will be on board for the new game. He also hinted at the possibility of references to Taletell’s Tales from the Borderlands series.
For more details, get a magnifying glass because Pitchford also said an upcoming DLC for Battleborn will feature some easter eggs for the upcoming game. No word on a release date, art assets, or any of that, but the confirmation that it’s under active development is exciting!
Warcraft Movie Not Strict on Lore
The Warcraft movie has been very closely watched by fans of the series since its first announcement. More details about the story of the movie were revealed at PAX East as director Duncan Jones says the movie will veer off from the game’s lore in certain situations. The choices were to “make for a better movie.”
Being ever conscious of the importance of the IP he’s playing with, Robert Kazinsky, who plays Ogrim, says had these changes not been made, the movie could have been fated to suffer the same fate of the 1993 flop Super Mario Bros. This delicate handling of the IP was reinforced by Jones as he said previous versions of the script had fundamental flaws.
“I really wanted to know what the film was going to be like,” Duncan said. “So I managed to get a sneaky look at the script and I was like ‘Ohh, it’s good, but there’s something really wrong with it.’ And it was the fact that it was human heroes against Orc villains. To me, that was fundamental misstep.”
The movie will be out June 10th of this year.
Overwatch Uber Truck Has Accident
Like most game companies, promotion is a big part of PAX East. From simple games tournaments to extravagant parties, video game companies love to do cool stuff to promote their games at PAX. This year, Overwatch and Uber teamed up to offer rides to people in Overwatch branded vehicles driven by people in awesome costumes.
Unfortunately, this promotion hit a bit of a snag when one of the drivers (and of all things, the huge truck) ended up getting in to a fender bender near the con. Randy Pitchford posted this photo of the almost non-event aftermath:
Everyone was okay, nobody was hurt, but that didn’t stop rumors of “Overwatch truck kills pedestrian” from circling around the con. Everything’s cool, though, no need to worry.
Be sure to keep checking for the rest of the week as we’ll be posting interviews, previews, and other stuff from PAX East 2016!
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
To help celebrate our theme of togetherness, I’ll be featuring top news from a crucial event for millions of fans and players: BlizzCon. Each year Blizzard Entertainment showcases news and upcoming products for thousands of fans, instilling a deep sense of community with in-depth content and providing a place for friends to congregate from every part of the globe. This year I am hoping to see quite a bit of news centered around Overwatch, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and the upcoming Warcraft film.
Featuring among the opening celebrations on Friday is the first trailer for Duncan Jones’s Warcraft. Early reactions from San Diego Comic Con footage and the 15 second teaser have been hailed the visual effects to be extraordinary.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.
After the opening celebrations the convention breaks off into 4 halls, each containing events tailored to showcase competitions, news cinematics, and developer panels.
Alongside those events the Main Stage and convention floor will feature demos for upcoming releases, various vendors for prized BlizzCon swag, and the famed BlizzCon Costume Contest.
“Cosplay Py (Grand Empress Shek’zeer)” photo provided by Blizzard Entertainment
My wishlist for this BlizzCon is to hear some specifics regarding the currently in closed beata Overwatch game, currently estimated to be a game changer among the first person shooter genre. Also I wouldn’t mind hearing some details on the upcoming expansion of World of Warcraft, Legion; revealed earlier this year at GamesCon.
If you can’t attend this awesome event in person, Blizzard also sells a virtual ticket which grants access to a live stream for all panels and events held at BlizzCon. It’s not the same as actually being there, but that doesn’t stop the energy from the crowds hit you as sensational events unfold on the center stage.
Watch this space as news comes in, I’ll be updating it with highlights from the convention along the various trailers. What are you looking forward to from BlizzCon this year? Sound off in the comments!
Day 1:
Day one featured a ton of cool news, at the center being a pair of fabulous trailers. Here is the first trailer for Warcraft:
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.This is just about everything I would have wanted out of the first trailer: part awesome scoop of Warcraft lore and part excellent visual effects. Now beings the hard wait till June 2016.
The next big trailer is the cinematic for the next World of Warcraft expansion: Legion.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.This trailer was loaded with information about how the next expansion will shake down. An alliance between the Horde and the Alliance? The Burning Legion making a serious offensive against Azeroth? This story has been developing since Cataclysm, and the pay off seems huge. The graphics for the trailer are incredibly beautiful, but to see a main character such as Slyvannis fighting alongside former hated nemesis King Wrynn is breathtaking. Not to mention a new classic, finally. It’s going to be a heck of an expansion.
Alongside all this, pre-purchasing options have launced for WoW: Legion and Overwatch. The important take away is that they actually gave Overwatch a tentative release period: Spring 2016. Not to mention also giving a release period of Legion: on or before September 21, 2016.
On the Overwatch front, we got some interesting news on the closed beta. They dub the game, “perfectly balanced,” and note the average game length to be roughly 7 minutes and thirty seconds. The surprise news was that the game is also releasing on the PS4 and Xbox One simultaneously with the PC.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.
Coming sooner is the latest Hearthstone edition, League of Explorers slated for November 12th. This release is similar to the Gnomes vs Goblins and The Grand Tournament expansions, adding new heroes, mechanics and campaign modes. Visit the Hearthstone Facebook page to check out all the new cards that’ll be added.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.Day 2:
BlizzCon day 2 kicked things into high gear with semifinals and finals competitions for Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Starcraft II. The first ever Heroes of the Storm world championship was won by team Cloud9, and lead into the announcement of the 2016 circut. Hearthstone and Starcraft II both crowned their world champions; Ostkaka and second time champion sOs, respectively.
The judges have their verdicts with the Contest winners, and just watching the footage from day 1 it was an intense showdown of creativity and dedication. I think it’s a safe bet to say, that the BlizzCon cosplayers can give the SDCC’ers a good run for their money.
Closing out BlizzCon 2015 was a tremendous performance by Linkin Park. The closing acts for BlizzCon are always bittersweet but never lacking in quality and often rivaling the opening acts.
Till next year, BlizzCon!
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Overwatch
You know what was also one of the most fun online games I’ve played in years featuring a color array of characters and objectives? Overwatch. Some people say “I’m not too sure about this. Blizzard is good at RTS games and MMOs. They have no experience in FPS. This sounds sketchy.” But this is a classic example of a wildly popular video game company picking something new and knocking it out of the damn park.
I remember how refreshing, new, and interesting TF2 felt when it was first released. That feeling is back in a big way with Overwatch. The map I got to play was a combination of capture-the-point and push-the-cart types, both pretty standard. The real standout features of this game, though, are the characters. From people who can rewind time to areas that can only be accessed by certain types of characters, Blizzard seems to have put a lot of thought in to how to breathe new life in to the classic FPS VS gameplay style.
It’s only fair to compare it to TF2. Cartoony graphics, familiar map types, different classes, unique humor. Hell, the heavy in both games has the same accent. Granted, Overwatch’s heavy is a badass Russian woman with a ping mohawk and a sweet scar and TF2’s heavy is a sandwich-wielding brute whose has Dr. Robotnik legs, but they’re both pretty similar. It feels as if Overwatch is what TF3 would be if there was one. Minus hats (so far).
This is really a game to look forward to. Put it on your watch list, set aside money, buy a high powered mouse, and get ready to obsess over another FPS because Blizzard is doing what they do best — suck up your time.
Platform: PC, Mac
Release Date: 2016
Dragon Fin Soup
Full disclosure, I backed this game on Kickstarter. And I mean how could you not? The dev team wanted to bring the Grimm Brothers stories to life as gritty as they were meant to be. You play as Red, an alcoholic mercenary in search of the man who killed her parents. Accompanied by her wolf Big Bad, you’ll do quests for money and gather information on your parents’ murderer on your quest for vengeance.
The game play is very interesting, something I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s like a combo of a strategy game and an action game. Each action you take from moving forward to swinging your sword is one turn and when you take a turn, your enemies also take a turn at the same time. Sometimes, this doesn’t matter. Like when you’re a village, you just move around at will and do stuff with reckless abandon. When you’re out in the field though, you really take time and care with each move you make. It turns in to a strategy game whose pace is entirely up to you very quickly. It’s a bit like Crypt of the Necrodancer without the catchy music, but with really interesting characters.
The game is also procedurally generated, so depending on the seed, you get different layouts to the whole game. It’s highly likely that the starting village of my playthrough would look nothing like the starting village of a second playthrough. As a result, there’s a few interesting modes to try out when you don’t want to play the story. You can try your best at a rogue-like dungeon crawler to grab loot and level up, or you can choose an infinite dungeon and keep going until you can’t go no mo’.
The game is nearing completion, with finishing touches coming and just a few more bugs to work out. Look out for this game coming your way
Platform: Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Playstation 4, PC, Mac, Linux
Release Date: Spring 2015
Necropolis
Rogue-likes have been multiplying for the past few years and this year is no exception. Necropolis is a 3D third person action puzzler Rogue-like and if that’s not enough identifiers, I don’t know what is. You play as an adventurer plundering Armistead the Mage’s castle in search of loot. As you acquire more loot, you’ll also find more weapons, better upgrades, etc. You know, the Rogue-like formula.
The art style has very simple textures against mute colors and dark backgrounds, producing a really cool environment to explore. The monsters you encounter can also be encouraged to hit each other by out maneuvering their attacks, making one attack another which makes the victim mad and he counter attacks, so the aggressor attacks back and this goes on until they realize “wait a second, weren’t we killing that guy?”.
Each area of the castle is generated differently each time, adding almost infinite replayability to the game. For those who can’t stop their dungeon-crawlin’ fever, Necropolis is a title you’ll want to keep an eye out for.
Platform: Steam, Consoles (undetermined)
Release Date: TBD
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
