Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the beginning of the Geoff Keighley replacement for E3 called the Summer Games Fest. Quite honestly I think I like this construct better as it is something that sort of meanders its way through the summer connecting a number of disparate events and looping in Gamescom as part of it. I am going to talk about a few games that piqued my interest, but really… you are going to have to listen to me gush about the new Path of Exile II Teaser that we got as part of it. All in all, I think the show was well worth your time, so if you are interested you can check out the official video here.
Path of Exile II
It would not be Path of Exile if we did not start on a beach somewhere. The challenge with this teaser is that it is very much the definition of a “sizzle reel”. In the gameplay trailer from two years ago, the game did not feel that fundamentally different from POE1. This however feels way more story driven as combat unfolds as you are clearly investigating a location. I also find it deeply interesting that just a very short way into the fight the character seems to do a dodge roll, which makes me wonder if this means that like D4 and D3 on the console… POE2 is adding some sort of an evade button. This does worry me a bit because the way movement abilities work in Path of Exile generally negates the need for an evasion button. However Ruthless mode lacks movement abilities of the same caliber as the base game, so it does make me a bit concerned that they are leaning into that more sluggish gameplay style that bugs me with Diablo IV.
The other thing that is interesting in the trailer is that the character seems to be using a lot of abilities. Like in Path of Exile, you tend to build around one main ability and I guess in part this is due to the lack of access to multiple six links. However with Gems working completely differently in Path of Exile and them socketing support gems into ability gems… does that mean we will have access to a six link for every ability? Again this sort of concerns me in a different way because it makes me wonder if we are going to be forced to use a ton of different abilities due to cooldowns on each individual one. Again the cooldowns and the sluggish pace of combat in Diablo IV drive me up a wall, so it does concern me a bit that what I am scrying from this teaser might be heralding a slower-paced Path of Exile experience. Slower-paced does not equate to a more enjoyable experience for me at least. I guess we will have to wait until ExileCon at the end of July to see more details.
Alan Wake 2
I was happy to see more discussion about Alan Wake 2. The more I see of this the more I am interested. It seems like you will be shifting between Alan and a new character called Saga. It sounds like essentially Saga will be playing through the story that Alan is telling, with the ability to shift back and forth between the characters at various points. My biggest hope is that we also get a crossover with either Director Faden herself or at least some Federal Bureau of Control agents. I am here for Alan Wake, but what I am even more here for is the expansion of this nonsense shared “Remedyverse”.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Another game that we are getting to see a bit more of is Banishers, which feels like a gaslight-era game where you play a medium of a sort that can banish restless spirits. What is interesting about this specific trailer is it adds a bit of the hook of the game. It seems like you have lost your partner and have to make a Bioshock-like decision do you spare the inflicted humans, or do you steal their life essence in a vague attempt to resurrect your love? The combat looks interesting and the visuals are most excellent. I want to play through this whenever it lands but given my affinity for “forever games”, it will likely have to wait until a holiday break when I seem to grind through a bunch of single-player stories at once.
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando
I feel like this game is calling me out directly. I still love Zombie movies and games. I am not tired of them. I was a fan of the Zombie genre long before it blew up with Walking Dead, and I am still a fan all these years later after that same series more or less ruined it for the masses. This seems like a Bulletstorm-style nonsense shooter with lots of zombies and an 80s soundtrack. Putting “John Carpenter” in front of it is also a siren song for those of us who grew up idolizing Snake Pliskin. Will I actually play it? Who the fuck knows. It is going to have to compete with all the other games that seem to look just interesting enough to buy, but never critical enough for me to actually devote the time to finishing them.
Space Marine 2
There are a lot of Warhammer games out there. At some point Games Workshop went from carefully curating their licenses to the maximalist approach of letting anyone use their licenses… which resulted in a ton of shovelware. Space Marine is maybe the single best game that ties into the Warhammer franchise and it is good enough to stand alone as an amazing experience even if you do not care one iota about Adeptus Astartes. I’ve been playing Boltgun lately which apparently sits in between the story of the first and second game, and I am highly looking forward to ripping into things with my chain sword again in non-retro glory. Well worth checking out the first game if you have never played it as well.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
The Prince of Persia reboot… got rebooted again. Do I have any faith that this one will actually make it to market? Absolutely not. However, I do have to say that this looks much better than the previous attempt at rebooting this franchise. I like the focus on a more 2.5D feeling harkening back to the original games a bit at times. The Sands of Time remake may at some point make its way out of development hell, but this definitely looks way more interesting.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
They closed out the show with a powerhouse and gave us footage of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I am here for this game and unlike many single-player outings, this really probably will be a day-one play for me. I loved the Remake and the Yuffie expansion, and quite honestly dig the action reboot of this series way more than a turn-based option. I get that this is a divisive thing, but it works for me personally. I honestly even liked the tweaks and changes to the setting that this alternate version of the world has presented. The open world looks gorgeous and apparently, on consoles this is going to be a two-disc game, which seems like nonsense. I feel like you are either into this with all of your heart, or you have long since checked out of everything Final Fantasy VII related and just do not care in the least. FFVII is not my favorite of the series by any means, but I greatly enjoyed the first bits of this reboot universe so I am here for the continuation.
I think the next show that I am looking forward to as part of Summer Games Fest would be the Xbox/Bethesda showcase at 10 AM PDT on the 11th. It apparently also has a follow-up “Starfield Direct” with a further deep dive into that game since we are getting closer to its launch. I often watch the PC Gaming Show as well since it occasionally has some weird PC-only gems in it. That takes place on the 11th but a bit later in the day at 1 PM PDT. The Capcom and Ubisoft show on the 12th are definitely going to be “look at any relative trailers later” shows because I am not that deeply connected to either publisher. Quite honestly I think I am bored with the Ubisoft formula at this point, and I am not into a return to stealth gameplay with the Assassin’s Creed franchise either. It may not be E3… but it certainly feels like the same sort of experience that I used to have watching the streams leading up to the official trade show that none of us had access to anyways. As much as Geoff Keighley claims that he didn’t kill E3… he certainly helped prove that the companies no longer actually needed a costly in-person show.
The post The Reign of Not-E3 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! It was in June of 2022 that I first saw the teaser trailer for a new Warhammer game called Boltgun, and I could already tell that I was probably on board with its particular brand of nonsense. Very rarely is a video game so directly targeted at my soul. In the mid-90s when I was obsessing over making levels for Doom 2, I was also obsessed with assembling plastic “beakie” Space Marines with my friend Jason and waging epic battles on his ping pong table semi-permanently converted into a battleground full of scratch-built terrain. That Proto-Bel would have been all over this game… in fact I kept trying to pretend that the EA-released Space Hulk PC game was actually a Doom clone at the time.
About a week ago the Boltgun trailers started to make their way into my feed and I remembered how much I wanted to play this game. Yesterday it officially released and I picked it up over on Steam, but it appears to pretty much be available for all platforms. Having spent part of my evening playing through the first half dozen levels or so… it very much feels like more of an actual spiritual successor to Doom and Doom 2 than the extremely excellent 2016 Doom release. As someone who cut my teeth on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Blake Stone, Rise of the Triad, and of course Duke Nukem 3D… this FEELS like you remember those games feeling. Modern audiences probably won’t really appreciate this fact, but even the sprite work in this game FEELS like it is 2.5D in the way that the transition of the model animations is ever so slightly abrupt.
You start off with just your chain sword and a little way into the first level you pick up your holy Bolter seated on top of an altar… with the reverence one would expect a holy instrument of imperial might. The chain sword takes some getting used to because effectively it throws you into a sort of bullet time as you line up your attack. You charge your sword, which pauses the game and then your character leaps forward and attacks with the blade. Essentially low-level minions will be finished off in a single hit… for higher-level minions, you will need to wait until they only have a sliver of life before it becomes a really effective attack. Essentially it can also be used as a movement ability of a sort where you charge forward and can sort of do a mid-air charge if you time it just right.
While the game lovingly replicates the feel of “random doodads all over the place for you to pick up” that was common for this era of shooter, it also has a lot of modern messaging. For example, the Chaos Cultists have lovingly painted platforms with yellow paint so you can know where you should be leaping to in order to kill them more efficiently. The game also features a “ledge pull-up” parkour system so if you leap across a gap, you can catch on the lip and pull yourself over onto the next platform. This isn’t over the top but feels pretty natural even within the framework of a “retro-inspired” shooter. There will be no blinking arrow telling you where to go… but I feel like a game like this doesn’t really need it. In some of the larger maps, there will be a bit of fumbling around and looking for the exit, but that also comes with this era of the genre.
What is so pure about this game is the fact that you get an endgame summary screen just like you did in Doom. The only thing that I feel a little iffy about is what it seems to count as secrets are not what I would have called secrets back in the day. Generally speaking, so far it is finding your way to a hidden powerup or something that is just off the beaten path… and less opening up new chambers and finding new areas of the map. I guess gone are the days of “humping” the wall while spamming your open key looking for a hidden door… and instead, it is just efficiently clearing every corner of every level. I admittedly missed several secrets on each level so maybe there were hidden doors that I just didn’t find.
The story is a bit on the light side, but really… did we care about the story in Doom? The story was largely an excuse for us to kill more demons, and the story in Boltgun is the story of EVERY Space Marine game… PURGE! There is a lovingly crafted number of chaos mobs that you will end up fighting along the way from mere cultists to Chaos Marines… to Chaos Terminators… to even Chaos Daemons like the Great Unclean One. Basically don’t expect high art here… this is a game with just enough story to keep it from falling on its face… as it should be for any 90s-era shooter. If you are also of this era then you will probably love it. If you were NOT from this era… I have no clue what you will think about this game. It’s a relatively fast-paced retro shooter with weapons that feel powerful and combat that feels visceral. For me personally… it really hit the spot.
The post Boltgun Initial Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring:Â Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Earlier this afternoon a large chunk of the AggroChat crew spent a few hours playing Among Us, a two year old game that is now suddenly the most popular thing on the planet. So of course we lead off the show talking a bit about that experience and how we are making tentative plans to do this as a regular thing. Maybe at some point we should even offer it up as a stream. From there Bel talks about a bumped topic from last week and the delay of the World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion to an undetermined time in the future. The pre-patch starts this coming week which means the expansion likely lands in November. However we discuss some of the core problems this expansion cycle has had and the frustrations the players have brought up. This leads to a further discussion of Genshin Impact and how much Bel has been playing it. This time Thalen also was able to chime in as he recently started and had some general thoughts to share. Finally we wrap things up with a discussion about how Games Workshop once again should really stop being afraid of the internet and how their actions are just going to lead folks to pirate copies of their products.
Featuring:Â Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Earlier this afternoon a large chunk of the AggroChat crew spent a few hours playing Among Us, a two year old game that is now suddenly the most popular thing on the planet. So of course we lead off the show talking a bit about that experience and how we are making tentative plans to do this as a regular thing. Maybe at some point we should even offer it up as a stream. From there Bel talks about a bumped topic from last week and the delay of the World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion to an undetermined time in the future. The pre-patch starts this coming week which means the expansion likely lands in November. However we discuss some of the core problems this expansion cycle has had and the frustrations the players have brought up. This leads to a further discussion of Genshin Impact and how much Bel has been playing it. This time Thalen also was able to chime in as he recently started and had some general thoughts to share. Finally we wrap things up with a discussion about how Games Workshop once again should really stop being afraid of the internet and how their actions are just going to lead folks to pirate copies of their products.
