Fighting EX Layer Adds Terry Bogard And More To Its Roster
At Evo 2018, Arika released a trailer for the upcoming plans for their PlayStation 4 fighting game Fighting EX Layer. It turns out one of those plans is Terry Bogard, Fatal Fury's wild man himself.
The trailer, which you can see below, starts off with introductions of Pullum Purna and Vulcano Rosso from the Street Fighter EX series. Arika owned the original characters in those games, which both explains why Capcom never reused any of them and why they're freely used in Fighting EX Layer.
In addition, the game will be getting an arcade version at certain places in North America. The trailer warns that the footage of the arcade version is simulated because its inclusion was added at the last minute, which is an odd thing to mention in a trailer!
Pullum Purna and Vulcano Rosso will be available in an update at the end of the summer. Terry has no date or information about whether he will also be part of a free update. This isn't even the only fighting game Terry was announced for this week, as Terry has also joined SNK Heroines Tag Team Battle in a slightly different form.
Fighting EX Layer is available now for the PlayStation 4 with a PC version on the table depending on the PS4 game's sales.
Back in 2015, we reported that Rob McElhenney was heading the adaptation of Minecraft as director. Today, The Wrap says that McElhenney has departed from the project, which was originally slated to be released in May 2019. The publication says it received word from McElhenney that his role with the project had come to an end.
McElhenney, who gained fame playing Mac on the raunchy sitcom It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, is the second director to leave the movie, with the first being Shawn Levy who directed Night At The Museum and was a producer on Arrival. The film's current status is unknown.
You can out The Wrap's article for more details. For more on Minecraft, check out our review on Minecraft: Story Mode season two
Hold on to your captain's armchairs, friends. It sounds like we might once again see Patrick Stewart exploring new frontiers. Multiple outlets, including Variety and Deadline, are reporting that Patrick Stewart will reprise his role as Star Trek: The Next Generation's Captain Jean-Luc Picard in a forthcoming Star Trek series.
Stewart reportedly made the announcement at a Star Trek convention in Los Vegas today. Alex Kurtzman, showrunner on Discovery, will be helming this operation to with help from famous author Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay). The show will debut on CBS Access but details about the plot and timeframe are being kept under wraps, except that it is not a reboot.
Variety says that Stewart said the following at the announcement:
During these past years, it has been humbling to hear many stories about how ‘The Next Generation’ brought people comfort, saw them through difficult periods in their lives or how the example of Jean-Luc inspired so many to follow in his footsteps, pursuing science, exploration and leadership. I feel I’m ready to return to him for the same reason – to research and experience what comforting and reforming light he might shine on these often very dark times. I look forward to working with our brilliant creative team as we endeavor to bring a fresh, unexpected and pertinent story to life once more.
For more words from Stewart, you can read the Variety report here. You can also read our thoughts on Star Trek: Discovery with this edition of Sci-fi Weekly.
Want to see more of the upcoming Switch Pokémon game(s) in action? You're in luck. The Pokémon Youtube Channel has uploaded some Japanese gameplay videos that showcase short clips of exploration, focusing on players roaming a pretty countryside with various Pokémon.
You can watch all of them here:
For more on Pokemon: Let's Go, you can check out our hands-on preview here.
Another trailer for Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth has arrived and while there's no new gameplay footage, we do get to see some beautifully animated scenes...as well as an unexpected guest. You can watch the teaser yourself down below and spy some old pals once more, as well as spooky theaters:
Did you catch the woman at the end? She was the playable protagonist of the PSP version of Persona 3: Persona 3 Portable. Wonder how she's gotten herself into this mess.
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth has a Japanese release date of November 29. No word yet on a Western release.
You can find our review of the original Persona Q here.
The Summer Games event for Overwatch will soon be upon us and today Blizzard teased just a little bit more of what players can expect to find in those sweet loot boxes. Widowmaker's skin was shown off in the previous trailer for the event, but today we got a look at new skins for both D.Va and Reinhardt.
Here's a look at both of them:
Break enemy lines with Gridironhardt Reinhardt (Legendary)! 🏈
Join us in Busan for Summer Games, kicking off August 9. pic.twitter.com/DIHj9XmaBv
Make a splash with WAVERACER https://t.co/JW0Aei8tV0 (Legendary)! 🌊
Join us in Busan for Summer Games, kicking off August 9. pic.twitter.com/0IO0BKZMuc
The event kicks off on August 9. For more on Overwatch, check out this feature on the 10 biggest changes that have come to the game's character roster.
This feature first appeared in Game Informer issue 301.
For a brief time, full-motion video (FMV) games were omnipresent. In the ‘90s, the format seemed like the future, with games like The 7th Guest and Wing Commander III promising an unmatched level of visual fidelity due their use of real-life actors, like Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell, over polygonal models and 3D animations.
This fantasy led to a hollow reality. FMV ‘classics’ like Night Trap and Tex Murphy are often ridiculed for the terrible performances, hideous visuals, and frustrating gameplay. And yet there’s a certain charm and affection associated with the format.
Surprisingly, full-motion video games are now returning with games like The Bunker, #WarGames, and Sony’s mysterious Erica on the horizon. With the genre coming back in style, we decided to take look at its initial rise and fall, and talk with creators to understand why it’s returned.
Gobblin’ Up Quarters
Dragon’s Lair, the first true FMV must-play game, took arcades by storm in 1983. Dragon’s Lair entranced patrons with the simplistic-yet-twitchy gameplay of most arcade classics wrapped up in a traditional fantasy adventure beautifully animated by Don Bluth (The Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time). Its beauty stood out in the sea of other cabinets overflowing with rudimentary graphics. Though its innovation might be hard to notice today, for many people, Dragon’s Lair was the first game that made them feel like they were playing through a movie.
Despite setting the tone for FMV games overall, Dragon’s Lair proved to be a flash in the pan. Other FMV games came to arcades, but their premium cost (with each play costing two quarters instead of one) as well as the shoddy quality of clones like Cliff Hangar, which sliced up the anime Lupin III instead of creating unique animation, drove consumers away. Straggler titles like Mad Dog McCree would occasionally gain popularity, but by the early 90s, FMV had all but evaporated from arcades around the world.
And then something marvelous happened: the CD-ROM.
Directing Movies From Your Desk
The arrival of the CD-ROM was huge: oodles more space than cartridges and floppy discs meant developers had the real estate to take on more ambitious visions. Though the CD was a massive upgrade from previous data storage units, it was only capable of holding a few minutes of footage in a video game, with developers having to pack in multiple discs in retail to to hold more video.
The early-to-late ’90s became inundated with games that either were full FMV or contained elements of the format. The most famous example is 1992’s (surprisingly innocuous) Night Trap, which, alongside Mortal Kombat’s gory fatalities, resulted in the U.S. government turning its eye toward the content in games and how it reaches the hands of minors, ultimately leading to the creation of the ESRB.
Outside of Night Trap’s notoriety, other notable FMV games emerged, like The 7th Guest and the gory Phantasmagoria. Indeed, early FMV efforts shared a strong overlap with horror B-movies, and for practical reasons: Making movies and making games are expensive. Acting performances in these titles, outside of the occasional celebrity cameo, were awful. So were the special effects, resulting in interactive movies with amateur-hour production values.
However, that didn’t matter much for many years. The ability to make choices that had the illusion of steering narrative, resulting in different endings, was novel enough to make the obvious shortcomings easier to overlook. FMV rode on the back of an exciting multimedia notion that game tech was evolving by leaps and bounds, promising gamers the kind of adventure they’d never experienced before. Even titles from large studios and featuring huge intellectual properties made use of FMV, like Star Wars: Dark Forces II – Jedi Knight and The X-Files Game.
So why did it go away?
The Light That Burns Twice As Bright
As developers and publishers have discovered many times over the years, the problem with making the crux of your game the technology it runs on is that whatever is going to kill your game’s appeal is just right around the bend. So it was for FMV.
As time went on and innovations were made on both hardware and software fronts, FMV games just weren’t that fun or diverse. Most of them were adventure games or quick-time event button-mashers. As other genres began to embrace 3D graphics while offering more complex gameplay, consumers set their sights on games like Half-Life and Super Mario 64.
By the time the PlayStation 2 and Xbox arrived, FMV games were extinct, with the interactive movie adventure genre that had depended on the technology for so long finally embracing 3D graphics in games like the choice-driven Indigo Prophecy.
However, in recent years, thanks to the expansion of digital marketplaces like with Steam and console storefronts that make distributing a game easier, cheaper, niche-style games have found a new life. This has resulted in a number of genres undergoing a second life of popularity, like adventure titles, dungeon crawlers, and roguelikes.
A resurgence of full-motion video games is underway as well, with different creators breathing life into the genre for radically different reasons.
What’s Old Is New
In 2012, Chris Jones, developer of the cult classic Tex Murphy series, took to Kickstarter to crowdfund a new entry. Where many FMV games felt like B-movies incidentally, Jones and his crew played up how bad the production values of the genre were and how goofy the format could be, with his bumbling loser of a detective fumbling through mysteries in a Blade Runner-inspired version of San Francisco.
Murphy’s inherent cheesiness has made it one of the most beloved staples of FMV, and the nostalgia for that brand of goofiness resulted in a successful crowdfunding campaign. Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect launched two years later to mixed critical reviews, but the game found its audience, with players praising the authenticity to the quirky era of FMV adventure games and selling around 400,000 copies.
UK publisher Wales Interactive noticed the reemergence of the format and has since staked its fortune on it, their catalog filled with FMV games. However, Wales sees the popularity of the genre as something more than just playing on nostalgia. “For many gamers, FMV is an entirely new concept,” says communications manager Ben Tester. “For others it brings a wave of nostalgic feelings, so as a publisher, it’s exciting to be a part of something that receives such a positive reaction from its audience.”
What The Hell Is Erica?
Announced at last year’s Paris Game Week, Erica is a “live-action interactive drama” from London-based developer, Flavourworks. All Flavourworks and Sony have revealed is a small teaser trailer where protagonist Erica walks up to a ringing payphone, answers it, and has a mysterious woman tell her “I’ve been watching you, Erica.” Choices fly up around Erica’s head like thought bubbles and the trailer comes to a close shortly afterward. We’ve asked Sony about Erica, but the publisher is playing its cards close to its chest for now. Regardless, the high production values and the sense of mystery instilled by the trailer make Erica a title to watch for in 2018.
Wales Interactive strives to push beyond the low production values of heyday FMV. The Late Shift is a branching path heist movie with shades of noir with grit to spare. You’d also be hard-pressed to find any humor in The Bunker, a post-apocalyptic title that focuses on one man’s attempts to overcome the phobias and mental conditions that have set in after being raised in a bunker all of his life.
For the creators of these games, the reason they chose FMV is a combination of expertise and practicality. “I am a scriptwriter and director with a film background.” says Allan Plenderleith, creator of The Bunker. “The decision for us to use live action over CGI was always based on our skillset, and the fact that the emotional story we are trying to tell in The Bunker is easier to convey with real actors who get complex emotional scenes. Shooting film is expensive sure, but hiring a team of animators and designers to create your world in CGI is also expensive. At the end of the day it comes down to which artistic style suits the story best.”
The Crooked, Branching Future
Tester believes FMV has huge possibilities with an audience outside of gaming, “It’s only a matter of time before FMV reaches the mainstream audience with major TV, film or tripe-A game studios bringing big budget productions to the market,” he says. “We’re already seeing eyebrows raised from the likes of Netflix (Buddy Thunderstruck) and HBO (Mosaic), who have released their own interactive miniseries.”
Indeed, technology is changing and FMV is changing with it, mutating into new, hard-to-classify experiences. In 2015, Sam Barlow, a designer who worked on the Silent Hill series, released Her Story, a detective game where you try to piece together a crime with only a search engine and live-action interview segments with a woman who’s both suspect and victim.
“At its core I’m very, very attached to performance as a way of telling a story,” Barlow says. “The act of compression it involves, the way that collaboration and interpretation adds to the thing. And it gets to the heart of the emotion in the piece, it makes it real in a way that for me is often a little bit more wonderful than many of the other ways of telling a story. Previously I’d worked with voice actors and motion capture and performance capture and you were always chasing the next quality bar and the tech was always improving, but it always felt imperfect. I was always jealous of the video reference we’d have of a take – it always moved me more than the CGI version. So that’s really what drives me to do this stuff.”
Barlow has two more FMV projects in the works. #WarGames is being billed as “an interactive series” that lets players/watchers make choices dictating the direction of the plot. Telling Lies is intended to be a spiritual successor to Her Story, a political thriller with a bigger budget. “I’m most excited about seeing what people come up with outside of the FMV Game traditions,” he says. “Video is such an omnipresent medium now and we shoot video and share it and even use video as a whole layer in which to experience and share video games themselves. I think interesting ideas will emerge from this present moment that find new ways to use filmed content in interactive narratives.”
With the rise of streaming services and the digital marketplace, the intertwining of cinematic, FMV storytelling with the interactivity of video games is inevitable. Whether the effort will be successful is another story entirely, but developers are intent on mining this format for its worth in the modern age. Even major studios, like Remedy (creators of Max Payne and Alan Wake), explored FMV with Quantum Break’s filmed episodes playing between chapters in the game. We’ll likely have to wait a while to see the places that FMV’s evolutions take it, but for the first time in a long time, a genre that everyone wrote off as a fad has an exciting future bubbling with possibility.
For more on FMV games, be sure to check out our full replay (with commentary) of the zany Tex Murphy: Under A Killing Moon.
Developers are always trying to get more people to play, whether it's enticing new customers or giving new incentives for the current ones not to leave, and FIFA 19 is making some changes and adding new features to its Kick Off and FIFA Ultimate Team modes in pursuit of this goal.
Kick Off is an exhibition game mode I haven't touched in I don't know how long, but in FIFA 19 it's a standout multiplayer mode (sadly only local offline) due to the inclusion of House Rules. These are exhibition matches that take liberties with the rules of the game to create situations you wouldn't normally get to experience.
Long Range: Goals from outside the box count as two. Fans in the back rows better watch out. Survival: When a team scores a goal, a random player from that squad is removed. Headers & Volleys: Only goals by these methods are counted. First To: Whomever reaches the chosen score first wins. No Rules: Perhaps the most fun House Rules variant where there are no bookings, cards, or offsides. Go studs up or go home.I played these, and all of them were a lot of fun, but particularly No Rules, which as you can imagine becomes a free-for-all. Then again, if your opponent thinks they're going to run around just breaking your players' legs, you can make them pay by anticipating contact and dodging tackles, leaving them in the grass.
Kick Off also utilizes FIFA's new Champions and Europa League licenses, letting you drop into the competitions at various points such as the group, semifinal, or final stages, and you choose to play a best-of series or successive home/away legs. Finally, handicap settings offer a further layer of customization by letting you set the score at the beginning of the match as well as the intelligence of your teammates.
However you play in the mode, it's tracked via an ID system that records your stats versus A.I. as well as friends, and this can be tied to your PSN account and activated when you're at your friend's house. The ability to call up your account when you're playing somewhere else, however, looks to be only on PS4.
FIFA ULTIMATE TEAMEA says that Ultimate Team is FIFA's most popular mode, but one of the problems for the masses that sink loads of time into it is that they're sinking too much time into it. Specifically, the competitive Weekend League, which – if you qualify – consists of 40 games in a single weekend!
At this time EA hasn't mentioned if the number of games in the Weekend League is remaining high, but a new qualification process called Division Rivals replaces the Daily Knockout qualification tournament and online seasons (which is still available offline) to address, in part, the hellacious grind.
Players start out by playing placement matches, which puts you in one of 10 divisions. Placement matches are a one-time deal. At this time, it's unknown how many placement matches there are.You play within your division during the weekly competition, which includes promotion and relegation at the end of the week, and scaled prizes depending how well you do (similar to Squad Battles). Champions points are earned through division play. These are used to determine your entrance into the weekend league, and are also offered as part of a pick your prize reward.
Champions Points can be cashed in at any time to enter the Weekend league. So if you can't participate in a particular weekend you can save those up for use when you're ready.
Your performance in the Champions Weekend creates a feedback loop that contributes back to your Rivals score and helps with future qualification into the Weekend league.
This all sounds straight forward, but I'm curious how many games are in the Champions Weekend, because if it's still as high as 40 like the Weekend League, then this doesn't seem to be a major change other than you won't have to go through the Daily Knockout qualification tournament. Frankly, since EA hasn't made a point of announcing the number of games in the league, I fear it's the same.
In other Ultimate Team news for FIFA 19:
No surprises here – Champions and Europa League FUT items will be added.New Icons for the year: Rivaldo, Johan Cruyff, Frank Lampard, Eusébio, Clarence Seedorf, Raúl, Makélélé, Steven Gerrard, Miroslav Klose, and Fabio Cannavaro.
There are no console-exclusive Icons this year, and producer Mat Prior told me the plan is to make the previous Xbox exclusive Icons available on all systems, but he doesn't know if this is possible due to potential rights issues.
When opening a pack there are new management shortcuts – flick the analog stick up to send a card to the transfer list and down to quicksell. The ones untouched go to your club.
There's a Player Pick Pack giving you a choice of one out of five players.
The table is cleared for Evo to take over Las Vegas this weekend, as thousands of fighting game fans descend on the scene's biggest tournament for another year. But that doesn't mean other games don't have some events going on!
Evo is the premiere fighting game event of the year, so if you're at all curious about what the big fuss about fighting games is, this is a fantastic place to start. Street Fighter V, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7, and more all have events at the show, and Sunday looks to be fantastic. (Streams and Schedule)
If you're not a fighting fan, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's big major this weekend is in Shanghai, so you can catch all the shooter action you want as long you're willing to keep up with time zone differences or are willing to wait for the archives. (Stream/ Schedule)
League of Legends' North American league is trucking along just fine, thanks! So if you've been keeping up with all the League action, there's really no reason to stop now. (Stream / Schedule)
StarCraft II's GSL Vs. The World tournament pits the best players from the league against all kinds of other players voted in by fans in a 16-person bracket. Will The World take this one? Aren't the GSL players also part of "The World?" Find out! (Streams and Schedule)
Rainbow Six Siege heads to Canada this weekend to host the country's national circuit there. Siege is consistently one of the best shooters to watch, so make sure to check it out. (Stream)
That's it for this weekend! Let us know if we missed an event, or if there's a scene you'd like us to cover, in the comments below.
Update: Hey everyone, the 100 keys we had went surprisingly quick! We're out now.
-- Javy
The beta for the new Call Of Duty is already underway, at least if you're on PS4. Next weekend (Aug 10-13) PC and Xbox One players can join the fray as well. If you want to get in on either beta, well, good news: we've got quite a few codes to give away.
If you want one, here's what you've gotta do: email me (the giveaway is over!) your favorite Call Of Duty series campaign moment. First come, first serve. You've got until 11:59 PM (CST) to participate.
For more on Call Of Duty, be sure to check out our New Gameplay Today on the beta.
Update: While the first two episodes are free for everyone, you have to list a cable provider with access to Cartoon Network in order to watch the remaining eight episodes online.
Mega Man: Fully Charged, the first cartoon for the blue bomber since the debut of the 1994 cartoon series, has finally premiered after delays and leaks for well over a year. More than that, you can watch the first ten episodes streaming right now, provided you live in the U.S. or are otherwise located here.
The Mega Man: Fully Charged website has put up the first ten episodes for streaming, starting with "Throwing Shade Part 1" and ending with "Running Wild," which has the description of Air Man lending his support to protagonist Aki's rival for class president in the student elections. You can't beat Air Man.
The concept of the show puts a young boy in the role of Mega Man, with a Mega Mini living in his head and helping him fight off the robot masters attacking the city. The concept is fairly standard for a children's cartoon, but who knows, maybe the show itself is surprising?
Todd McFarlane is a comic book artist with quite a few achievements to his name. One of the bigger ones is that he co-created the popular Marvel anti-hero Venom, and it looks like McFarlane has some thoughts on the new movie.
Taking to social media, the artist praised the film, saying it looked very promising, but also took some time to offer constructive feedback for the actual design of the suit. You can watch the whole two minute video, where McFarlane actually draws his advice onto a screen of the character from the trailer, by clicking on the link in the tweet below:
The new @VenomMovie trailer dropped yesterday! I think most of the #Venom costume looks COOL...BUT here's some tweaks from the co-creator of Venom (that's me by the way). https://t.co/GJzsf0tS5M pic.twitter.com/pywOecGHaW
— Todd McFarlane (@Todd_McFarlane) August 3, 2018For more on McFarlane, you can read about the Fortnite figures on the way from McFarlane Toys.
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