YouTube Channel Game Maker's Toolkit Debuts Series About Accessibility
Game Maker's Toolkit, a YouTube channel by games writer Mark Brown, takes deep dives on certain aspects of gaming from level design to music. He explains in detail what works about, say, a dungeon in Zelda and sometimes what doesn't. Now Brown has launched a new series on the channel, Designing for Disability.
In the inaugural episode, Brown covers how to make games better for gamers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and talks about how some games get subtitles right and how some get it wrong. It's a useful look at a feature a lot of developers likely ignore, but it can make or break someone's experience with a game.
"That's the thing about video game subtitles, it's more important than any other medium that they're easy to read, because you're trying to divide your attention between the subtitles and everything else you need to think about," Brown says.
Make sure to watch the full video to see Brown's arguments for why developers should take more care to ensure everyone can enjoy their games.
As Hitman 2 gets closer to release, IO Interactive is making sure players familiarize themselves with the game's first season. A free Summer DLC pack is releasing tomorrow and the third episode Marrakesh is coming along with it.
Tomorrow the HITMAN: Summer Pack arrives. Giving you access to download Episode 3: Marrakesh. It's FREE to download for a limited time only. ☀️😎
Don't miss out! pic.twitter.com/iE9iWD8MEv
Marrakesh is home to civil unrest and seemingly multiple people behind it. Players can use underground tunnels, elite guard units, APC guns, and even falling art to kill their targets.
It is not clear how long the episode will be free to download, but you should be able to download it regardless of what other Hitman content you own. Hitman 2, which is releasing as a single disc and not in episodic format, will be out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 13.
Jordan Vogt-Roberts talked a little bit today about the creation of the Metal Gear Solid movie, which he intends to direct, but he already has his eyes toward another video game franchise: Metroid.
In an interview with IGN, Voght-Roberts talked about wanting to do the sci-fi franchise justice and his ideas for what the movie could be.
“I have a pitch for a Metroid movie," Voght-Roberts said. "They’ll never let me. It’s too crazy. It legitimately would be [Samus] alone. It would be a little bit of her talking to herself. As soon as they introduce other talking characters in those games, to me it loses everything. You put her alone and it’s almost got more to do with the silence of a movie like Drive. Like the quietness. and having it be like a real, intense mood piece, but mixed with sci-fi.”
Voght-Roberts talked a bit about how Super Metroid influenced him and his filmmaking style. It seems unlikely Nintendo would ever go for it, but considering that the studio that made Minions is making a Super Mario movie, stranger things have happened.
Who would be your ideal director for a Metroid movie?
[Source: IGN]
Back in April, Nintendo announced a contest for people to take their newly-purchased Labo kits and decorate them in interesting and creative ways. In the three categories Nintendo set (Best Decorated Toy-Con, Best Toy-Con Mod Using Toy-Con Garage, and Best Original Invention Using Toy-Con Garage), three winners were chosen in each category, so we'll show off a few right here.
One of the winners of the Best Decorated Toy-Con is this Zelda-themed piano with a Master Sword sticking out the top.
For best mod, this entry made a Simon Says out of the Labo house.
The original invention category is the most likely one to blow people away and this solar-powered Labo accordion with a Switch inside of it goes even beyond those lofty expectations.
You can find all the winners here.
The next contest, which has the much broader categories of "Kids, Customizations, and Creativity," allows contestants to win a cardboard-themed Switch which isn't available anywhere else. That one runs from July 19 to August 20.
Looking forward to Jump Force but feel like it needs a much more super-deformed artstyle? Konami might have your back with the newly announced Jump Stadium, a four-player Smash Bros.-like for mobile phones.
The announcement trailer goes through characters by the decades and shows off every single character, including a number of deep dives and a lot of obvious choices. You can check out the trailer below.
A western release has not been announced, but it's not terribly difficult to download games from other regions on your phone. It is also likely that the game will have more characters added to it as time goes on, so the base roster is likely to expand even further.
Which characters would you most like to see added?
Montreal's Crea-ture Studios grabbed the world's attention with their skateboarding game Session at E3 when Microsoft showcased the title during their press conference. Session is coming to the Xbox One and PC, and will be in Steam Early Access and the Xbox Game Preview program in late 2018, with the first version of the title in 2019.
I met with some of the dev team at E3, and asked them about some additional game details since we covered it late last year.
Where Do We Go From Here?Since we last saw the game, a mid-spin catch mechanic has been added, which is just the start of how the game is going to continue to evolve until it hits Early Access and beyond. At that time Crea-ture says it wants the game to be "almost perfect" despite being an Early Access title. Having said that, it doesn't intend for the feature set to be locked at that time per se, but it will continue to add bits and work on what's currently there. One of the examples of this is the game's skater customization feature, which has already grown. There are plans to allow you to change the tightness of your trucks, board concave and width, and more.
Beyond the game's launch, there may be DLC with future cities or parks depending on how the game does, but Crea-ture says the core gameplay will always be free, so they won't be selling tricks, for instance.
A Full Bag of TricksSession's tricks are performed by assigning each of the skater's legs to their own analog stick, making it more complex but also granting you more control.
There is no scoring system in the game, but Crea-ture is considering putting in an indicator telling you which trick you've performed. In general, the title aims to give anyone their due if they can pull off tricks in the game, but it also wants to pack in optional features to help out those who want it. There are different control styles in the game, but there are no tricks that are restricted to one or the other. There are also ways to tweak the experience so you may be able to control the speed of the flip of the board, but still have the option to use an auto-catch mechanic.
Because of the game's controls, players have the ability to practically create their own tricks due to the title's physics (take a look at some of the sweet tricks posted on the sub-reddit). While grinds at the moment are more input driven, giving you a specific outcome corresponding to your inputs, the studio is also working to make these more organic depending on the angle you approach the rail, for example.
Most of the animations in the demos players are playing are placeholder. Crea-ture is tightening the timing of tricks, and trying to normalize them so people know what to expect. For instance, right now kickflips and heelflips are at different speeds. The devs want to cut down on these kinds of unexpected variances so players can be more comfortable with their tricks where applicable.
For those situations when it all goes wrong, you can bail out of a trick, but there won't be a Skate-style Hall of Meat where players generate biffs for laughs. The studio is also considering requiring some sort of extra input or control compensation to land big drops like the one shown in the trailer at the Microsoft's E3 2018 press conference.
Skaters of Different StripesWe've seen lots of street skating from the game so far, but ramp skaters worry not – Session has vert skating. Moreover, the team says it wants to differentiate how ramp and street skating feel, which makes sense. We don't know exactly how this will be achieved, but street and vert are different disciplines in real-life and should be treated as such in the game.
Speaking of different disciplines, I asked about flatland tricks, but those aren't being planned for the game at this time. However, Session is embracing different aspects of skating in that there is a filmer mode where you can contribute to skating's tradition of skating alongside someone and catching footage of their sweet stunts.
I hope to get more info on Session throughout the year, so stay tuned.
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It feels like Stranger Things' second season just came out, but Netflix is already teasing the third season with a commercial for Hawkins' Starcourt mall.
The commercial is about as 1980s as you can get, complete with nostalgia of stores long past, cool guys standing around with walkmans and sunglasses on inside, and neon signs. Check out the short teaser below.
The teaser ends with "Coming Next Summer!", so that is likely the target date for season three. Where do you expect the show will go next year?
Update: Ubisoft has stated that the game has no microtransactions on consoles and will retail for $9.99.
The original story is as follows:
Ubisoft has revealed that mobile title Hungry Shark World will be coming to consoles on July 17 after 500 million downloads on mobile.
The Shark series, created by Ubisoft studio Future Games of London, has had multiple games on mobile platforms, with Hungry Shark World being the sixth. Hungry Shark World lets players swim around, fight other sharks and aquatic life as multiple types of shark, and obviously eat people. You can check out the announcement/launch trailer below.
While the title is free to play on mobile, it is unclear what the pricing structure will be on consoles. Ubisoft did explain that the game will be optimized for consoles and also run better on the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X than the base consoles.
Hungry Shark World releases on July 17 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch.
In a summer crossover event that should please fans of both Destiny 2 and New Gameplay Today, the latest episode of NGT is also part of our month of Destiny 2: Forsaken coverage! This means we get to bring on Destiny 2 lore PhD candidate Jeff Cork to talk about some of his favorite parts of Destiny 2's fiction, a subject he knows a lot about.
So join us for a look at the second mission in Forsaken's campaign, "Scorned," as we talk about how Forsaken will hopefully improve on the storytelling in Destiny 2's main campaign and DLC with a more serious tone, the Barons, and our favorite kinds of fanatics.
Getting through the Mega Man X games, especially some of the later ones, can be fairly difficult. If you're someone who gets frustrated by one-hit kills, bosses that seem to track you when short-hopping and take out half your lifebar, or infrequent checkpoints, the games can be hair-pullingly tough to play through with a lack of time.
Mega Man X Collection is thus introducing Rookie Hunter Mode, a difficulty toggle which can be done per game or for every game in the main menu. In Mega Man X 1-3, the mode simply halves the damage you take. In 4-8, it also prevents you from instantly dying to spikes and bottomless pits. Much like Mega Man Legacy Collection's various modifiers, you can simply choose not to use it if you don't need it.
Additionally, the trophy/achievement lists for the collections have come out, hinting at a secret image for players to find. Almost exactly a year ago, Capcom included an image of what turned out to be concept art of Mega Man 11 inside the Mega Man Legacy Collection, so perhaps they are doing something similar again.
Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 and 2 launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on July 24.
[Source: 4Gamer via Siliconera]
During E3 in June, Fortnite released on Switch, and it's a solid port. After spending time with it, however, I wondered how it would play with the aid (or hindrance, depending who you ask) of motion controls.
Realistically I don’t know if I would use it, or if it would help my aim, but I would like to try Fortnite with motion controls. I would want them to function a bit like Breath of the Wild where they would only turn on when you aim down sights. Okay, bye!
— Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard) June 26, 2018On July 12, Fortnite made it clear it was also curious about motion controls and updated the Switch version of the game to include them, so I decided to try them out.
Motion controls are divisive, and my feelings on them fall somewhere in the middle of those like them and those who wouldn't be caught dead using them. Generally, I don't like them, but there have been a few occasions where I appreciate them. I like their implementation in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for aiming with the bow and arrow, and I also like them in Mario Tennis Aces for aiming the Zone Shot, but not for general tennis. In Splatoon, however, I just can't get the hang of motion controls, despite many of the game's best players swearing by their use.
Basically, I like motion control in moderation. I don't want to play a whole game with motion controls, but if I can activate them to adjust my aim slightly, I am happy. Thankfully Fortnite offers some settings to find this middle ground, but for the purpose of experiment, I turned everything up to the max at first. This was a bad idea.
There are three motion control settings available on Switch: Motion Sensitivity, Motion Targeting Sensitivity, and Motion Scoped Sensitivity. Motion Sensitivity applies motion controls to everything. If you move the controller at any time, the camera corresponds, and when it is turned all the way up, it is incredibly erratic. The GIF below demonstrates what even some slight controller movement looks like with that setting pumped up to 1.0. I didn't move the controller too much, but when it is maxed out, the camera move very fast. My recommendation for this setting is to turn it down to zero.
Motion Targeting Sensitivity applies to the motion controls that activate when you aim down sights. Below is a GIF of that setting turned up to 1.0, and it is similarly erratic and frankly only usable for those who have the steadiest hands.
And finally, Motion Scoped Sensitivity applies motion controls when looking down a sniper scope. This is the setting I adjusted and struggled with the most.
In the GIF below I have the Motion Targeting Sensitivity turned to about 0.25, which makes things much less erratic, but still felt a little too slow.
I was the most comfortable having this setting at 0.50 – not so erratic that my reticle goes crazy at the smallest movement, but not so slow that I didn't get some kind of accuracy benefit from having it turned on.
Sniping was a bit trickier, and I never found a setting I was fully comfortable with. Putting it at 0.50 made it too erratic, since the aiming requirement is much finer, so I dropped it down to 0.25, and that was about the best I could get it for my personal preferences.
Here's one final GIF from the starting area with the 0.50 setting for the Motion Targeting Sensitivity. It's still not perfect, but it was where I ultimately where it felt like it actually gave me a targeting edge, even if it is a small one.
As a recap, here are the settings I ended up locking in for all the motion controls. I tried making smaller adjustments, like trying 0.50 and comparing it to 0.60, but the change was so incremental that I didn't notice a major difference. It's also worth noting that using the d-pad moves the number slightly, while the control stick lets you select your number at larger increments.
After playing through a few rounds with motion controls, I don't prefer the game with them turned on. I was hoping it would improve my sniping, but I couldn't find a setting I liked when looking through a scope. The Motion Targeting Sensitivity for aiming down sights, however, I could see myself using again. It would take some practice to get used to the different style of aiming, but even after a few rounds, I could already see myself gaining at least a little bit of extra accuracy. I doubt it could ever replace the mouse and keyboard, but I could see it offering a slight edge over controller players on Switch and Xbox One. Unfortunately, it seems like I will probably never be able to test my theory against PlayStation 4 players.
For more on Fortnite, head here to read all of our features from when the game was on our cover in 2014. Needless to say, the game has changed a lot since then, but we were way ahead of the curve.
Despite the unfortunate name, GTFO is filling an interesting niche in the co-op shooter sphere. Left 4 Dead-style horde waves, but with an Aliens aesthetic and – according to this trailer – disconcerting enemies.
GTFO comes from the developers of Payday, and it looks like it uses their pedigree for tense cooperation while radically switching tones. The new teaser shows off shadow enemies, which only have shape when defined by an exterior light source. Because of this, they seem to appear out of nowhere, swarming the players and presumably scaring the pants off them.
GTFO will release at the end of 2018 on Steam, and you can check out our in-depth thoughts on the game here.
30 years ago today, the film adaptation of the manga, Akira, released in theaters in Japan. The legacy of both the film and the manga are important and far-reaching, both in the broader science-fiction landscape, and the cultural acceptance of anime across the world. You can see its influence in video games, but direct adaptations of the property are non-existent in North America and disappointing in Japan. I wrote this feature back in December 2012, but my desire for a video game based in Neo-Tokyo are as strong as ever on the film's 30th anniversary.
Akira (Amiga/CD32, 1994)
One of my favorite movies and comics of all time is Akira. I got my anime feet wet with Dragon Ball Z when I was young, but Akira was the first time I realized of what the medium was capable. After watching the movie dozens of times, I pursued the comics, and then watched the movie a dozen more times. Neo-Tokyo is one of my favorite fictional worlds, and the abrasive dynamic between friends Tetsuo and Kaneda has always fascinated me. I don’t know if it would work in a video game, but I would love to see somebody try.
For the uninitiated, Akira tells the complicated story of government experimentation gone terribly wrong, and the lasting effects it has on the individual citizens of a future Tokyo and politically across the entire country. The story mostly centers on two teenage orphans, Tetsuo and Kaneda, but there is a huge cast of characters, gangs, factions, government agencies, and telekinetic children who are too powerful for their own good. Tetsuo and Kaneda are members of a violent biker gang in a city frantically trying to rebuild itself, and things only get worse when the government steals Tetsuo and awakens his latent powers. It all gets very violent, very quickly.
Many of the themes and even story elements of Akira have made it into video games, perhaps most notably in Sucker Punch’s Infamous. Both Akira and Infamous open with a mysterious city-racking explosion, which sets the course for the rest of the story. Cole and Tetsuo are both overpowered super heroes with possibly misdirected senses of morality who are trying to figure out their roles both in what happened, and where they belong in this new society.
Akira (Famicom, 1988)
I got another minor taste of Akira in the form of The Lost and The Damned, Grand Theft Auto IV’s first DLC. It shared no themes with Akira whatsoever, but there were a few moments where you riding with your bike gang through Liberty City where I thought, “Man... I wish I was in Neo-Tokyo right now.”
The dream would be to explore a large, open-world Neo-Tokyo with visually distinct sections. Neo-Tokyo is broken apart into areas in the midst of being rebuilt. Some areas are completely unaffected by the explosion, while other areas have been completely abandoned and destroyed, ruled by the assorted biker gangs that have found refuge in the few remaining buildings that have not yet collapsed. The first 10 minutes of the film offers a sort of tour through the Blade Runner-esque city showing off many different areas in a short amount of time.
Then there is the consideration of who the player would actually control. I think regardless of what role you could conceivably take on, there could be interesting implications. You could be the severely overpowered Tetsuo and play a violent action game, or you could take on the role of Kaneda and try to tackle a giant any way you can. Even playing as a new character, or one who didn’t receive much exploration in either the film or comic could offer a different perspective on everything that happens.
Akira Psycho Ball (PlayStation2, 2002)
The first issue of the Akira manga was published in 1982, and the feature film released in 1988. The moment to strike on the series’ popularity has long since passed. There were three and a half attempts at a game though, which makes me slightly optimistic. All were exclusive to Japan, and only one released for the Nintendo Famicom, when Japan had Akira fever in 1988. In 1994 there was a game released for the Amiga, and in 2002 an Akira-themed pinball game released for the PlayStation 2. Apparently, the pinball game was the only game that was any good. There was a Super Famicom game in the works that was shown off briefly in 1993, but it was never completed.
I love the idea of a modern Akira video game, but I have little confidence in one ever existing. I will probably never know if it is a world that could actually work in an interactive medium, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for one.
For years, Nathan Fillion has been on the lips of many Uncharted fans when it comes to answering the question, just who would play Nathan Drake? The premise of Fillion, who gained fame playing Captain Mal in Firefly and later Richard Castle in Castle, playing the role of Drake has existed purely in the realm of speculation...until now.
Film director Allan Ungar uploaded a 14-minute fan film to YouTube that stars Fillion as gaming's cockiest explorer. We don't want to spoil too much here but if you're into Uncharted, you should definitely make time to watch this.
Well, there it is! Nerd culture's most popular Nathan as Nathan Drake. How did he do? Let us know in the comments below.
Square Enix has announced that the Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood/Monster Hunter: World crossover starts on August 7 as part of Stormblood's Patch 4.36 update.
The crossover brings in Rathalos, King of the Skies, as well as special game mechanics as an homage to Monster Hunter: World.
This special event also includes a new armor set, minions, mount, and furnishings.
For more on the crossover, including how it came to pass, check out Kim's conversation with Monster Hunter: World producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida. And go here for another look at the Final Fantasy XIV content that's coming to Monster Hunter: World.
Duncan Jones teased his next project on twitter with a small trailer that heavily implies he's working on Rogue Trooper. The Hollywood director even goes as far as shaving a blue mohawk into his hair, one of the elements of the comic book series.
Originally an '80s comic series published in 2000 AD, Rogue Trooper follows a futuristic, genetically manufactured super-soldier by the name of Rogue, who is seeking revenge for his fallen comrades at the hands of their general. His fellow soldiers have been downloaded into his gear and accompany him on his quest for vengeance.
Duncan Jones' teaser mentions 2000 A.D., the year Rogue Trooper takes place and even the universe it resides in. Jones leaves nothing to the imagination.
As promised... pic.twitter.com/6y3pzn2Cn1
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) July 15, 2018Rogue Trooper recently appeared on current generation consoles in the form of Rogue Trooper: Redux, a remake of Rebellion's game from 2006. The game met middling reviews, in its original form and the remake. Duncan Jones wrote and directed the Warcraft movie in 2016 and also directed Moon, Source Code and Mute, so hopefully he's a good fit for Rogue Trooper.
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