Re:Legend, still in Early Access, is announcing a free seasonal update, which will go live on a perfect day, Halloween (October 31st). That’s right, the Halloween-themed update launches on Halloween, and will be free to new and existing Re:Legend players. A new Halloween Island will be playable, overflowing with rare Shadow Magnus. Players who can overcome the Shadow Magnus will find them a powerful and exquisite addition to their collection.
The Outer Worlds is now live on a global basis, and the player awakens, after seventy years in hibernation. The Hope is the ship the player was trapped on, and are now at the edge of the galaxy. At Halcyon, corporations control life in its entirety, but they could be hiding a dark secret that could spell doom. There are many distinct areas to explore, and deep, multi-faceted characters to come across. Player choices are incredibly important though, and there are a plethora of options on ways to approach combat. The Outer Worlds promises to be a stand-out narrative-driven single-player RPG
Leonard Boyarsky, co-game director at Obsidian discussed player choice and its importance:
“Player choice in The Outer Worlds extends beyond the decisions players will make narratively, it applies to how players approach the gameplay as well. It was important for us to create an experience where players can not only enjoy shooting their way through the game with a bunch of crazy science weapons, but also have an equally enjoyable experience if they opt to avoid combat by focusing on dialogue or stealth. No matter what your play style, even if it’s ridiculous as how Tim Cain plays, there’s a great way to experience The Outer Worlds.”
Secret Neighbor has players creeping about their neighbor’s house, but one of them is a traitor. That player is really The Neighbor in disguise! Is it you?
We’re personally shocked that a King like Carnelian, who looks suspiciously like Dragon Ball Z’s Dr. Gero is secretly evil! Today we get a look at Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age‘s story.
Everspace 2 won’t just have new, gorgeous graphics when it goes live. It will also have a persistent, larger world, as well as a vast selection of ships: Over 100 of them! The game’s campaign will be about 20 hours as well, and continues on as a clone pilot from the previous game. Fans of the Everspace franchise should also expect a few familiar faces to crop up across the sequel. he creative team took inspiration from sci-fi film classics like Blade Runner, The Sixth Day and video games like Detroit: Become Human, which all deal with the subject of what it means to be human.
The idea is that Everspace 2 will be far more lively, making for a more enjoyable experience overall. Outlaws will be forming clans, and they will differ from one another for that extra bit of immersion. Everspace 2 should feel like a space opera, with plenty of action and drama to go around. Early Access is presently scheduled for September 2020, and the full version for PC, PS4, and Xbox One for the second half of 2021. It’s also important to note that Everspace 2 has reached more than 60% of its goal already, and interested backers can check them out on Kickstarter.
Michael Schade, CEO and co-founder of ROCKFISH Games discusses the EVERSPACE 2 campaign:
“In developing the campaign, it was particularly important for us to not only pick up the story from the acclaimed first part of the series, but also that our characters gain more emotional depth and multi-faceted motivation. We put a lot of time and effort into the storytelling and also have support from top storywriter Joshua Rubin to ensure the narrative quality of the 20-hour campaign to reflect our increased ambitions. In addition to the much more extensive story in an open-world, the role-playing elements and the loot system, one of the biggest features in EVERSPACE™ 2 is the modular system for an almost infinite number of different player ships that still don’t look arbitrary and also offer different playing styles and extensive customization options.“
It seems that for some people, all you need for a piece of work to fall into the cyberpunk medium is some cybernetics or an online virtual world. Kind of like how people think if you put a gear on a tophat it’s somehow steampunk. Sure, those are common enough themes in cyberpunk and steampunk, but it’s missing one crucial element: the punk.
In cyberpunk, we often see this ideology represented as resistance to the oppressive corporate overlords that will inevitably have more power than the governments, which even now they’re buying up piecemeal. But we’re here to talk about the quasi-dystopian cyberpunk of Neo Cab, not the dystopia we currently live in.
In Neo Cab you play as Lina: a young woman who has recently moved from a quiet small town to the big city of Los Ojos at the bequest of her best friend, Savy. Lina works as a rideshare operator for the company sharing a name with the game’s title, Neo Cab. Neo Cab is one of the last holdout companies operating real human drivers. A mega-corporation, Capra, has replaced the majority of drivers on the streets of Los Ojos, which its denizens colloquially call Automation City.
Lina and Savy have some history, and it is because of this history that Savy gifts Lina with a piece of technology called a “feel grid” bracelet. The bracelet reads Lina’s hormone levels and other biometrics in order to discern, and display, what her current emotional state is. Think high-tech mood ring/bracelet.
This bracelet is a central part of the Neo Cab gameplay experience, as is Lina’s emotional state. The other core mechanic, dialogue with passengers, is heavily influenced by Lina’s mood. Lina’s mood will influence the things she is able to say and the ways she is allowed to react to her passengers.
For example, if Lina is extremely happy, she’s likely going to be unable to tell someone off. Similarly if she’s irate because, say, the passenger puked in her back seat and lied about it, she’s unlikely to smile and shrug it off. Lina is, quite literally, ruled by her emotions.
Is it really multiple choice if your choice is forced on you?
As much as I love this mechanic and how the two blend, I also feel it can be a bit limiting. It often seems as though you’re forced into situations that have no possible positive outcome for Lina, regardless of what you might say or do. It can feel very much like you’re on rails in a way that I didn’t quite like, although I did understand it was part of the narrative. It made it feel more like I was experiencing a visual novel than playing a game, at times.
One reason that these passenger conversations are important is that passengers will always give you a star rating when you give them rides, in addition to Coin (the currency used by Capra corp, which seems to have taken over the USD for accepted currency). Your driver rating is an average of your last five ratings from passengers. In order to access certain portions of the story you must have a five star rating.
Perhaps there is ultimately a way to have a positive outcome with passengers such as the aforementioned puker, but when you immediately become so angry with said passenger that it limits your reactions for the rest of the trip, where you simply become more and more angry, it is hard to see.
There’s also no way to save the game to go back and try again with that passenger. If you screw it up, you have to either move on, or just start a new game. You can’t even just say “Well, I’ll never pick him up again!” because they’ll throw that passenger in with another one when you least suspect. Again, I understand that this is part of the narrative, but I found it to be more frustrating than satisfying personally.
But this lady is awesome. Make sure you pick her up as often as you can. Tons of fun.
The final mechanic you’ll find yourself faced with is money. As I mentioned, you earn Coin for driving people, but you also have to charge your vehicle at one of the many service stations scattered around Los Ojos. Depending on which station you’re at, this can range from extremely pricey to a real bargain, so there’s an element of strategy in regards to when, where, and how much to recharge your battery.
In addition to needing to keep your car running, you’ll need to find a place to stay at night. The whole reason you’re driving around Los Ojos is that your friend Savy first flaked on you, and then disappeared, leaving behind a distressed message and a mysterious clue.
Unfortunately Savy never gave you a key to the apartment the two of you are supposed to be sharing, nor even its exact location. As such, you’re left staying at various hotels around town at the end of each day. Hotels vary in their accommodations as well as their price, from the cheap Capra Pods to higher end suites.
I honestly didn’t do much testing to see if there were mechanical differences between the locations, because I didn’t really have the Coin to do so, but I did manage to stay at the Aztec hotel, rather than Capra pods, because Lina distinctly expressed her distaste at the idea of staying in such a place.
When you can’t afford Hotel California, this is the next best thing.
The Coin mechanic was mostly okay, but at times also felt a bit off to me. You’re given a daily objective to drive three passengers and to earn thirty-five Coin. In fact, you cannot, as far as I can tell, drive more than three passengers, but each passenger I’ve driven, even when receiving a five star rating, seems to give between five and seven Coin. This means you earn around eighteen dollars per night, twenty-one at best. Far less than the thirty five that you’re tasked with achieving.
All that being said, mechanically the game is overall enjoyable. The feelgrid system is quite innovative, and the developers over at Chance Agency really did their research when designing the game. Where the game really shines however is in its respect as a work of art.
I don’t just mean the artistic style of the game, which I loved, with its sort of cyberpunk noir aesthetic. Nor am I talking about the soundtrack, by Obfusc, which I fell in love with – it does wonders to create an ambiance within Neo Cab, that is in tune with the emotional impacts of the game’s dialogue. So, surely, you think to yourself, he must be talking about the game’s narrative, with its twists and turns and unexpected betrayals.
First, don’t call me Shirley! Second, all of the above. Neo Cab is one of those rare titles in the video game industry that transcends mere entertainment and makes its way into that realm of art. It is an emotional roller coaster filled with stunning imagery and synthwave music, with a healthy dose of social commentary.
Neo Cab’s central premise is one discussing the automatization of the modern world. Meanwhile it touches on LGBTQ social issues without making a flash about it. It’s done incredibly tastefully and subtly. At times it felt that Neo Cab was trying to dip its toes into was mental health issues, but this is one area where I felt they were lacking in breadth of research.
Lina felt at times as though she was being portrayed as a person with a mental illness, because of her… let’s call it emotional transparency. It’s never suggested she had an illness overtly, but there was some inference on my part that it was being hinted at, and not in a way I entirely liked, given my own struggles with mental health issues.
A lot of my mental illness is about feeling things in a big way, and for some people it can be hard to deal with. But I feel like the issue is under-developed.
Still, it doesn’t feel like it was done maliciously so much as condescendingly; like those people who tell someone with depression to “get out and exercise more!” or to just “get over it!” I fully admit that could be my own experiential bias at play.
I really think that Neo Cab is a lot of fun to play, despite any of the minor issues I might have with certain aspects. It’s on point where it really counts. I 100% recommend playing it, and I’m in fact hopeful they’ll make another one. I give the game an 85% and 4 out of 5 Woahs.
Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars has confirmed that it will go live on PC, Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Steam in Spring 2020, but Steam users don’t have to wait. Pre-orders of the game will give access to a closed beta, which also comes with the “Fangs & Bones” DLC, as well as a digital soundtrack. This also comes at a discounted price, if the beta wasn’t sweet enough.
The Closed Beta has a thorough tutorial to tackle, access to the first two Dracula campaign missions, a pair of sandbox maps and four skirmish maps. Those are both playable with the Dracul and Nosfernous factions. Further content updates and improvements will be added as the weeks go on.
Narcos: Rise of the Cartels, based on the hit Netflix show, drops onto Xbox One, PS4, Steam, and the Nintendo Switch starting on November 19th, 2019. But the important question is, what side are you on in this 1980s-era tactical game? The DEA, or the Medellin Cartel?
Rise of Industry offered a massive update to go alongside the latest expansion, “2130”. Today’s video gives you all you need to know about this update, and the second focuses on the Future of 2130. In 2130, your world is now in ruin, and capitalism has left the world a shell of what it was. But all is not lost, for there’s still work to be done.