The highly anticipated next instalment in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops 6, is almost here, and ahead of its launch this Friday 25th October, we thought we’d add to the hype with some of the exciting new things to try and check out in the game, straight from Treyarch’s very own mouths.

For all the new mechanics, maps and modes coming to Black Ops 6 in general, you can check out our articles here on Omni Movement, Zombies & Warzone.

Zombies

Round-based zombies is back! And who better to get the hot tips of new things to try in this fan favourite mode than from one of the main guys behind BOPS6 Zombies himself, Kevin Drew, Associate Director of Design at Treyarch.

We had a chance to speak to Kevin at the COD Next event in Washington DC earlier in the year, and quizzed him on some of the must tries for players jumping into Black Ops 6 come launch, whether they’re veterans or newcomers to the game.

First off the rank was the new Directed Mode coming to Zombies, which will be the perfect avenue for first-time Call of Duty or Zombies players, as well as those who want a more relaxed approached to the normal chaos and mayhem the mode provides. Kevin spoke to how Directed Mode will give players a whole new way and feel to play Zombies, stating:

“It’s two big things. It’s one, actually guiding you through the entire main quest, which is usually like something that’s very cryptic and hard to discover; most people end up going online to watch tutorial videos on how to do this thing. The other thing is this time pressure of the rounds are just escalating, right? So you just kind of feel that pressure. And so this mode guides you all the way through, and it also gates the rounds as you progress. So until I get to the pack of punch, it will loop at round three.

And so, you can kind of just chill and kill zombies at your own pace and that was an element from Outbreak we wanted to bring over. And then, you know, you complete the first main step, now it goes up to round five, round eight and then at any point you can kind of like, if you feel underpowered or you died and got revived and I need to earn some points, you can just keep killing zombies and, you know, go to jug…get yourself set up again and continue.

So we’re really excited about it, we think it’s a nice alternative. What’s also really cool is now that we have this, we can make the standard mode a little bit closer to Black Ops 3. For example, we’re going to like turn off prompts and key lines at launch, so the Easter egg hunt, or the main quest hunt is going to be, hopefully, a little bit longer and long term fans will be more happy.”

Alongside Directed Mode comes other new ways to play such as the addition of 3rd-person in Zombies. With players having the ability to toggle this option on or off, Kevin said, “It’s nice to have that awareness of zombies coming around from all sides, for a game mode that generally is a little tight. And of course, just seeing yourself doing the new omni movement is also really cool, it’s a nice way to showcase it.”

Other surprise and delights for players will come in the way of the living world itself. Kevin mentioned that players will be immediately pleased by the storytelling in the world, by simple aspects never really experienced in Zombies before, such as a zombie coming out of the trunk of a car, or bursting out of a second floor motel room. But of course it’ll be the classic Easter eggs that’ll be the most fun for players, Kevin believes, saying “I think when you dive deeper like the Easter eggs, it’s gonna be what really surprises and delights, like we got some fun Easter eggs in there and we’re waiting for people to discover.”

We couldn’t walk away from our chats with Kevin without asking him his go to perk and loadout choices, and maybe the more fun weapons for players to check out:

“My go to perk is Deadshot Daiquiri first, because that is aimed down sights to the head. And so I just like favour that over everything else and then surprisingly I like pistols, just ’cause they’re so fast. So I can just kind of…I’m such a console gamer, like I’m just like, you know, ADS and I just snap, snap, head, head, head. Very satisfying. I’m a big, Cryo Freeze fan for the ammo mod too. Just the ability to like slow down zombies and do more damage is like, I like the crowd control. And then my field upgrade, Dark Flare, ‘cause I love that more powerful, but smaller use for the like penetrative beam, just like sweeping, obliterate the area.”

“In terms of weapons and wonder weapons, the Jet Gun is a beast! I think I like Beam Smasher though, cause I like to keep my mobility high. I like to be able to run around. The Beam Smasher is a very satisfying weapon, that’s the Terminus Wonder Weapon. And it’s just like this penetrated beam that just like dissolves zombies as you target guys. And it’s also when you reload it actually does a blast and it has an alt fire that stuns like a radius of zombies and actually weakens them to the beam. So it’s got this nice combo element, so that’s my answer. They’re all fun. It’s so fun making Wonder Weapons.”

Multiplayer & Warzone

We were also able to spend time with Yale Miller, Senior Director of Production, and Matt Scronce, Associate Design Director, from Treyarch to chat more on the Multiplayer, and some what Warzone, experience, and the must tries for players jumping in on launch day.

Of course the big one is omni movement, and if launch day will be your very first time jumping into the BOPS6 world and trying out the new movement mechanic, then Yale and Matt had some key pointers for you to try out. The major one being trying out the map Skyline with the new omni movement, with Matt stating,

“Skyline, that’s a great example of where level design and gameplay comes together. And we’ve got that balcony above the pool. And it’s like, well, what if I could dive from this balcony into the pool? And then what if I do a backwards dive into the pool whilst shooting back at an enemy?” Yale followed up with, “I think the biggest impact is going to be how people approach staircases and different situations, doors, all those kinds of things. I think it’s going to be more about how players use the movement versus the maps changing. I think more players will eventually and more of our level designers will play more and they’ll start to design little things. There’s definitely nuances. I think Skyline is a great example.”

Another feature that some players may forget is even an option to customise now is the HUD, with the addition of HUD presets. There was a lot of debate amongst the Treyarch team about what HUDs to use and which works best for BOPS, with the guys mentioning,

“We literally like, looked at all the HUDs we’ve ever done, all the HUDs that have ever been in the franchise, HUDs in other places, and there was literally debates about like, oh, what about this one or this one? We also do a thing at the studio called Team Dev Match, where people talk and they like basically do little projects, little game jams. And so it’s in some of that debate, it was debating like which HUD is better.”

In the end, the final decision came from the simple notion of letting players choose for themselves, and thus, HUD presets were born:

“Part of it was like, let people play the way they want to play, and like, I don’t think there is a best HUD, I don’t think that exists, because players have different opinions, so, and it’s so important to what people do, so, giving people the option, I think there’s gonna be a bunch of options in the beta, I don’t think we will ship with all those options, and I think some of the options that will be in the beta will change based on what we see, and then I think once the game comes out, we’ll start to see, and like, we’ll hear from the community like, I really want this version or why doesn’t it do this with those. I think it’s something that can evolve. So I think making the HUD just like everything else simple, easy to read, but then giving players the choice to customise, I think is important.”

Of course, during our time with Matt and Yale we did try to throw in some cheeky questions on post launch content to see what answers we could get from them (not too much as predicted), but they still had some things to say,

“We’ve got a bunch of cool post launch things planned, obviously things we can’t yet talk about, but yes a lot of cool stuff for Season 1, 2…obviously there’s big news in the spring for all of us and things that are coming out. But yeah, there’s gonna be maps, modes, gear, gadgets all those things, all the way through.”

With our final questions to the guys obviously being the most important question of all…

Jake: Is Prop Hunt coming to Black Ops 6?

Matt: I hope so…

Jake: Is that a little wink that won’t be picked up by audio?

Yale: *laughs* Ah!

Matt: Again…we went through every Black Ops game and said, what are the best Black Ops game modes?…

Yale: …We have data too. So like, we like, look at what are the modes that people play a lot? What are the modes that maybe not as many players play, but that have really devoted fans…and some of those modes, like a prop hunt, may be high on the list of things that we want to bring very soon.

Jake: Noice!

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches today  on PC, PlayStation and Xbox (including on Xbox Game Pass Day One for Ultimate subscribers).

The post Things To Try Day One In Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 appeared first on Press Start.

Probably the most anticipated news to come from today’s COD Next event, was the announcement of the all new Call of Duty Warzone experience launching alongside Black Ops 6.

Apart from the addition of the new Omnimovement system in Blacks Ops 6 making its way across to Warzone as well (which you can read about here), a ton of new map, weapon, perk and inventory information was revealed.

WELCOME TO NUKETOWN

The new Warzone resurgence map is the birthplace of Nuketown, Area 99. Having been a top secret government facility built in the 1950s nestled and concealed from the public in the unforgiving Nevada desert, Area 99 was the answer to the team’s question of how to bring Nuketown into the Warzone experience.

The map, which centres around its main POI, Reactor, has 10 key locations in total for players to land with their squad, with each location telling a story of how Nuketown came to be. Whether that’s at the Cooling Towers, Test Site or Mannequin Factory, players will enjoy hunting down the easter eggs to the origins of one of Black Ops’ most iconic maps.

Updates to the map experience and gameplay mechanics have also been made, like more fluid zipline and ascender access, faster usage of stims and redeploys, the addition of new perks to support movement style as well as the ability to gain infinite tac sprint in multiple ways.

PERKS HAVE BEEN REWORKED

The team has had a hard look at the current perk system and the way in which players are using them (or not), and have brought about a new way to play when it comes to perks.

The idea has been to increase each perks individual value, with some underused perks now being combined with others, to give what we think is some crazy, maybe even OP, combinations – one of which being the perk combination of Tracker and Combat Scout (gasp!)

In a nutshell, perks have now been honed in to suit play styles much more, like movement, or awareness, or survival etc. and will also be seeing the return of the pick 3 system. There are 18 perks for players to choose from in total with 5 of those perks being brand new. A lot of new things here, yes, but the ability to gain your perks in game remain the same – either by the way of obtaining your load out from a drop, or by specialist perk packs.

There will also be the new lootable perks system, with 6 ground loot perks in play. These are Veteran, Dexterity, Tracker, Cold Blooded, Tempered and Alertness – two of which are ground loot exclusives.

WARZONE WEAPON INTEGRATION

What good are perks though, without the right weapons to wield? The revamped Warzone will see the Black Ops 6 loadouts being the featured weapons in game, with the added note that players’ weapon builds will now be part of a global system – meaning that if you build and save a weapon loadout in Warzone, it will save across to all game modes! Eliminating the need to potentially build the same arsenal out in Multiplayer and then again in Zombies. Hooray.

Oh and did we mention doors will also now be able to be opened by shooting at them?

It was also revealed that two new kill streaks will be coming to Warzone, being the Care Package and Sentry Turret. This does mean that the Mosquito Drone and Guardian will be getting yeeted out of the game though. *pause for applause*

The goal this time around for Warzone and weapons is for each season to have a healthy meta, so be sure to test those weapon builds and combos pre-season 1 to be ready to go.

WILDCARDS ARE HERE

That’s right, wildcards are coming to Warzone Day 1, and will act as a significant loadout modifier for players. Players will have the ability to access and equip wildcards during a match, which may prove gaming winning or survival necessary depending on the situation. Overkill (the ability to equip two primary weapons) and Gunfighter (the ability to equip up to 8 attachments) are just a couple of examples of what players can expect from Wildcards in Warzone.

GOODBYE BACKPACKS

It’s out with backpacks and in with the OG inventory system. A new satchel mechanic will now assist players with expanding armour and ammo amounts, not to mention a dedicated melee slot. Which brings us to that infinite tac sprint mentioned. When players have their knife equipped (holding the melee button to bring it out), they’ll have an infinite supply of tac sprint at their disposal.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

We couldn’t leave without mentioning some of these planned Season 1 quality of life updates coming to the new Warzone, because some are just REALLY good:

• Weapon rarity outlines
• Pick up Self Revive whiled down
• Downed enemies don’t trigger High Alert
• Pinging loot triggers a navigational ping
• Firing Range Improvements like stats & faster dummy respawn

All in all, the new and improved Warzone is sounding like a welcomed addition to the Black Ops 6 revamp of the Call of Duty franchise, with a plethora of new and returning features that players have been asking for. And we’re for one pretty keen to jump into what is sure to be one hell of a time.

Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 launches on October 24th. You can grab it for $89 from Amazon HERE.

The post A New COD Warzone Experience Is Coming Alongside Black Ops 6 With Nuketown And A Bunch Of Other Changes appeared first on Press Start.

COD Next has finally given Call Of Duty fans the official reveal they’ve been practically biting brains for, Zombies

As we already knew from our last COD adventure, round-based Zombies in the Call of Duty franchising is making a triumphant return in Black Ops 6, allowing players to once again face off with friends against the decaying hordes of the undead through surviving increasingly difficult rounds by upgrading weapons and equipping ammo mods and perks to come out victorious…and alive (mechanically speaking though either, by reaching a new high round PB or by exfilling).

The gang at Treyarch also showed off during the event some of the wild gear and gadgets players can use to carve their way through the zombie crowds. We’ve listed some of the new weapons and ammo mods below:

The New Wonder Weapon – Thrustodyne M23

• A Jet Engine that pulls in zombies from afar to rip them to shreds.
• It never breaks, but players will need to manage overheating for optimal use.
• The Thrustodyne’s emergency alt fire will absolutely annihilate all zombies in its path.

Melee Macchiato

• Looks and feels as cool as it sounds.
• Essentially replaces a player’s gun with one lethal punch.

A New Field Upgrade – Dark Flare

• A brand new high damage attack.
• Dark Flare deals lethal shadow damage to zombies.
• It essentially generates a high powered beam.

New Ammo Mod – Shadow Rift

• This is a new crowd control ammo mod.
• It deals shadow damage.
• It has the chance to teleport enemies away, but some of them will reappear from portals above falling at high speeds to their final demise.

Gobblegums

• The gobble gum system has been simplified into specific types.
• All rarities of which will be earnable by playing.
• Players will be able to create packs of 5 gums, and store up to 3 unique gums on their persons.
• Gobblegums will only be consumed when activated.

Another exciting announcement for the world of COD Zombies, was the reveal that for the first time ever players will be able to switch between first and third person at anytime. So for those who may want a new way to play, or highlight the new omnimovement system also coming to Zombies, this will be the perfect option.

Other announced improvements to the overall Zombies experience coming to Black Ops 6 was the newly added shared door buy (allowing players to split the bill as it were), the ability to toggle Pack-A-Punch camos and change your field upgrade mid-match, as well as the means to switch Gobblegum packs at any time.

Treyarch also noted that the game over experience will vary depending on how players’ games come to an end, with the addition of Game Over outros. This means a custom cinematic will play players out, dependent on their actions that led them there.

More interestingly, a Directed Mode will be coming to Zombies post launch, as a way to reveal the Zombies main storyline and plot to players who are wanting a more guided experience through the dark lands. In this mode, players will get a little more hand holding and direction compared to the normal ‘figure it out’ vibe, as well as having rounds be a little more paced out, allowing more time for upgrading and gear finding needed to advance through the lore.

Bring all this together with the two new Zombies maps, Liberty Falls and Terminus, it’s looking like Call of Duty Zombies fan will be left feeling alive and well fed come October.

Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 launches on October 24th. You can grab it for $89 from Amazon HERE.

The post Here’s Why Call Of Duty Zombies In Black Ops 6 Is A Big Improvement appeared first on Press Start.

Black Ops 6 is bringing the foundation players love from the Black Ops franchise back with some new (and old) features that will define the future of Call of Duty as a whole. Treyarch has set out to build the best Black Ops game ever made, not with gimmicks or controversy for the sake of it, but with purposeful intention at the helm of their development mindset – and so far, they’re right on the money.

We were recently flown to Los Angeles, California to visit the Treyarch studio and talk all things Black Ops 6; what’s returning and new (like the game-changing Omni Movement system), the action packed campaign, multiplayer fun and yes, even a little bit of zombies. So let’s dive into everything you need to know about the Campaign in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

THE STORY CONTINUES…

Black Ops 6 continues on from the events of Call Of Duty: Cold War, where we see a new era of Black Ops infiltrate the CIA and the Gulf War commanding the global spotlight. However, when a operation in Kuwait goes sideways with the appearance of Russell Adler, the Black Ops team are forced into operating in a way we’ve never seen before – completely rogue.

Black Ops 6 introduces players to a squad out on their own and disconnected from Uncle Sam, meaning they’ll need to do whatever it takes to get the mission done. It’s all you, baby! With the story continuing to lean into the invisible world mentality of conspiracies and things that could have easily been, the backdrop for Black Ops 6 cements itself within the period of 1991, Bill Clinton, and toys with the morality of what needs to be done.

There’s no rules, no backup and no way to know who to really trust, making for one hell of a ride of unlikely team-ups, spy action thrills and the continuation of established Black Ops lore.

THE TEAM

Players will find themselves amongst new and familiar faces when it comes to the squad and characters in Black Ops 6. First, there’s the initial Black Ops team including our favourite veteran, Woods, the new leader, Marshall, and squad handler, Harrow, all of who players will love to see again or get to know.

However, with our team unplugged and out on their own, they’ll need to recruit the skillsets of those who may have been yesterday’s enemy. Like newcomers, Felix, and Sev, and of course not to mention the professional monster himself, Adler, all of who make up what is called the Rogue Squad. Needless to say, differences must be set aside if they are to come together to stop the greater threat known as, the Pantheon.

THE MISSIONS

Black Ops 6 is very much rooted in the spy, action thriller genre having taken much inspiration from films of the like, and the Treyarch team has made sure the mission variety and player strategy options reflect as such. Missions such as Gulf War, Casino Heist, Spycraft, Saboteur, Player Agency, Mind F*#kery and Assassin, will allow players to live out their espionage, action hero, rogue tactic dreams with the ability to dive in how they see fit – head on guns blazing, stealthy and spy-like, or just total mayhem… it’s up to you. There’s a big focus on player choice and ownership to how you can play.

Alongside this, new gameplay mechanics, enemy types and equipment have all been added to really beef up the player strategy. Players will see themselves come across Black Ops 6’s advanced enemies who sling special weapons to their advantage, implement advanced tactics and may even help each other out, meaning players will need to take a more strategic approach to taking these enemies down, or when they find their standard issue AR isn’t dealing any kind of damage, to utilise some new player equipment like the homing knife or tranq trap, and even the fan-favourite RCXD returns to help take down aggressors. 

In-between missions, players will be able to take a breath at their safe house – a place where they can learn more about their squad allies through dialogue trees, explore the mansion and any secrets it may hold, and of course, buy upgrades. But if it’s just more action that’s wanted, the Evidence Board will be the place to visit whilst here in order to load straight back into the chaos.

Overall, missions will have a ton of variety to them, either in the way the player can choose to play them or in the way the mission itself is set up. Treyarch showed us two mission types during our visit, one being Capitol Station where you could infiltrate the facility stealthily in a few different ways, such as going in undercover as part of a silent auction being held, all then culminating into a classic Black Ops ‘get out of dodge’ firefight situation. The other was Iraq –  with a much larger map and non-linear approach, unlike Capitol Station. Dropped in with the gear, gadgets, and a tac map in hand showcasing a number of different objectives to complete, players can once again choose how to tackle the mission and in whichever order that suits.

Black Ops 6 missions are definitely positioned to make players feel like they’re a part of one giant, Mission Impossible-like, badass blockbuster, so we’re keen to see more over the coming months as the game and experience develops more. 

(GRAPHICALLY) ADVANCED WARFARE

It is evident that Treyarch has spent a lot of time in finessing every single detail of the game to make it the best of the best, and players will notice this in the high fidelity, graphical treatment of both operators and gear in Black Ops 6.

Every character in Black Ops 6 has had time spent on them to make sure their key characteristics and personality come through on the screen. We’re talking every detail, from the storytelling scars of Adlers face, every little fibre on operator clothing to players being able to see the pores and sweat on characters’ hands whilst reloading, it really sets the tone and the idea that you are getting shit done.

Guns have also been given the same treatment and care, with visual elements like wear and tear, intrinsic details like scratches and engravings, and seriously, when you see the wood-based attachments fitted to your gun – damn does it look good. It even comes through the way in which some weapons and gadgets have been constructed to evoke that DIY ‘no more Uncle Sam’ aspect of Black Ops 6 like the Spring Mine. You can’t just get government-provided claymores now that you’re rogue, so the makeshift Spring Mines you’ll see have been MacGyver’d together with zip tied explosives and whatnot.

All this care for detail extends right through to the 12 new weapons never seen before in Call of Duty, as well as new gadgets like the War Cry, Signal Lure and Spy Camera. 

A PROMISING START

All in all, the care for detail Treyarch has put into Black Ops 6’s campaign is quite evident even in the current alpha stage of development. From what we’ve seen, it definitely feels like a true Black Ops experience with a whole new way to deliver the twists and turns we’ve come to love from the franchise. With the 90s setting and continuation of the Black Ops lore, and established characters like Woods and Adler making a return, it all makes for a promising start to the next instalment of the Black Ops franchise, and we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on its development as we get closer to launch.

Jake was a guest of Treyarch and Activision with travel and accommodation covered for the purpose of this preview.

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Black Ops 6 is bringing the foundation players love from the Black Ops franchise back with some new (and old) features that will define the future of Call of Duty as a whole. Treyarch has set out to build the best Black Ops game ever made, not with gimmicks or controversy for the sake of it, but with purposeful intent at the helm of their development mindset – and so far, they’re right on the money.

We were recently flown to Los Angeles, California to visit the Treyarch studio and talk all things Black Ops 6; what’s new (like the game-changing Omni Movement system) and returning, the action packed campaign, multiplayer fun and yes, even a little bit of zombies. So let’s dive into everything you need to know about the Multiplayer and Zombies experiences in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

THE RETURN OF MULTIPLAYER FAVES (AND SOME NEW THINGS)

Black Ops 6 is set to bring back a ton of features that Call Of Duty fans have been missing since the good ol’ days of Black Ops 2, but it is also carving the way for some pretty neat features and settings we hope carry on throughout the entire COD franchise.

First and foremost, the signature Black Ops multiplayer experience has very much been cemented into the new Black Ops 6, with approachable and engaging gameplay, action packed opportunities and the ability to support all play styles. Players will be able to take control of operators from two opposing factions; one being the Rogue Black Ops with street wear operators such as new squad leader, Marshall (introduced in the BO6 campaign), and the second faction being Crimson One donning more of the military default skin look. There will be 16 brand new maps at launch – 12 classic, three-line maps for 6v6 modes, and 4 strike maps of all-new designs favouring more of your close quarter team modes as well as gunfight. These multiplayer maps will be set after the events of the campaign, giving players another way to interact and witness the aftermath of those events.

LOADOUTS: THE NEW AND THE RETURNING

One of the first things players will notice with loadouts is the return of beloved items such as Wildcards, Detailed Weapon Stats, Shared Optics, Gunsmith, Favourite Classes, Showcase Weapons and Shooting Range, with the ability to create 10 custom classes, test gear out with 5 default classes as well as have 1 dedicated quick pick.

In terms of new loadout elements, players will be introduced to items such as Combat Specialties, a Dedicated Melee Weapon Slot (where if you hold the melee button, you’ll put away your gun and hold your knife to run faster… and that’s whilst still having a dedicated primary and secondary weapon, mind you), mastery badges and more. Players will also once again be able to engage with loadout perks, highlighting the three play styles: Enforcer, Recon and Strategist. Choosing a perk from the same category for all 3 slots will unlock your specialty buff, giving players the ultimate extra advantage. Oh and I should also mention that the beloved Theatre Mode is making its return.

SHOW OFF YOUR SKILL IN MULTIPLE WAYS

Treyarch wanted Black Ops 6 to be the most rewarding Call Of Duty ever built, and we think it’s safe to say that it’s indeed looking that way, in particular, with the classic Prestige progression system coming back!

The feedback was well heard by the development team, and they’ve brought back the best version of classic Prestige players have ever seen. As per usual, players will begin in the Military levels – the standard 55 levels of progression. Once maxed, players will be given that all-too-missed choice of staying at the current level cap or going Prestige (with unlocks being locked back up, but gaining access to the initial 10 Prestige levels). But wait… there’s more! Once players have completed all 10 Prestige levels, they can choose to enter Prestige Master – the ultimate Prestige levelling system with 1000 levels to work through (yes, you read that correctly). Word on the street is that there’s also a super special reward for those that reach level 1000. With all that said, it’s also important to note that Treyarch has not implemented any seasonal levelling system, something I’m sure the majority of players will be thankful for come launch.

Prestige levelling won’t be the only way to show off your skills to your friends and lobby, however. Black Ops 6 will also bring back the favourite Best Play and Winners Circle scenes post-game. For those who missed it, Best Play is a version of Final Kill Cam, where the lobby gets to watch the best play of the game in all of its cinematic glory, with Winners Circle showcasing the top 3 players of the winning team, where they can emote and peacock all they want. Their triumphant return shall surely be welcomed by returning players, and potentially lead to some interesting post game comms.

EVEN THE MENUS ARE GETTING AN UPGRADE

It’s not just the gameplay and mechanics getting an overhaul in Black Ops 6’s multiplayer experience, the UI, UX and HUD are all getting reworked and extra settings added to make things more customisable and streamlined for players.

First of all, the general UI/UX of the menu system is getting a rework, making it fast and responsive, approachable, and content-focused. That’s everything from the moment players launch the game to being able to get into a match as fast as possible. More information will be coming out later in the year, but Treyarch did say that this rework includes the initial launcher screen, hopefully meaning a cleaner and less cluttered experience to choosing campaign, multiplayer, warzone and more. They also mentioned the launcher update will also be improving and optimising things like file size (woohoo!), but again, more to come. The UI/UX upgrade will also bring a cleaner look to the lobby visuals, with a more simplistic Challenges menu and a Quick Join list to easily squad up with friends without having to go into a socials tab.

But if you thought that was neat, wait ’til you hear about the new HUD presets. Traditionally, players haven’t been able to move elements of the HUD or remove elements (say if they wanted a more Hardcore HUD in standard mode) but that all changes in Black Ops 6. HUD presets will be a new way for players to customise the HUD to what they need – allowing them to choose from a number of presets that will move HUD elements to different parts of the screen – which is a first for Call Of Duty.

We were given a glimpse at some of the presets Treyarch have been playing around with, everything from the mini map in different corners, game type widgets in the bottom centre, ammo and weapon info on the left and right of your crosshairs, plenty of cool new ways to customise your specific HUD needs. We will note that this isn’t a freeform customisation for players, they are presets chosen by the Treyarch team, however this addition does open the doors to more player feedback regarding future preset options that the team can introduce.

ROUND-BASED ZOMBIES IS BACK!

This is why most of you are probably here, to hear more about the highly anticipated Zombies mode in Black Ops 6 and whether all of your dreams and wants have been answered. From the brief information and small tease we were given, it’s somewhat safe to say that Zombies in Black Ops 6 is looking like it’s heading in the direction we are all hoping for. Treyarch is well aware of the community feedback and has set out to make this the best version of it, so fingers crossed.

The Zombies mode in Black Ops 6 will continue on the Dark Aether story where it left off, set in the overarching BO6 time of 1991. Players will be introduced back into the Zombies storyline with Dr Peck chartering a boat to visit some old friends (how mysterious), and yes, it is indeed back to being round-based!

In Zombies, players will welcome back a dedicated zombie crew made up of 4 operators: Grigori Weaver, Elizabeth Grey, Mac Carver and Maya Aguinaldo. Although you can choose to play Zombies as any operator you have in your list, utilising these 4 main Zombies operators will give a richer and deeper experience, with more specialised voice lines and interactions (plus all the cinematics will feature them).

Come launch time, Zombies will have 2 all-new maps players can jump into. The first is Liberty Falls: Dark Aether Incursion, a small town with 90s elements sprinkled throughout. It’s a classic “fight a horde of zombies in an old town” type map that boasts a bright and sunny disposition. And then there’s Terminus: Blacksite 13 – the complete opposite to Liberty Falls, full of dark and moody vibes, rain, thunder… just straight up evil zombie threat sorta feels.

There’s not too much more to share about Zombies just yet, so we’re excited to see more come to light as time progresses and hopefully get back into the mayhem that is round-based zombies soon!

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer experience looks like it’s shaping up to be what players wanted in a Call of Duty game for a long time now. It’s really getting back to the roots of what makes COD enjoyable, with vibrant, classically-styled visuals and the kind player experience we all have fond memories of sinking hours of fun into. Black Ops is back, baby!

Jake was a guest of Treyarch and Activision with travel and accommodation covered for the purpose of this preview.

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Let’s face it, any time a Call Of Duty game launches there’s always a great debate around movement mechanics, for better or worse. Will that be the case with Black Ops 6? Probably, because the internet. But if there’s anything that points to where Treyarch has directed the majority of its team’s focus during development, it’s definitely into movement.

We were recently flown to Los Angeles, California to visit the Treyarch studio and talk all things Black Ops 6; what’s new (like the game-changing Omni Movement system) and returning, the action packed campaign, multiplayer fun and yes, even a little bit of zombies. So let’s dive into everything you need to know about the new gameplay and movement mechanics of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

OMNI MOVEMENT – THE FPS GAME-CHANGER

The mindset for the team in regards to player movement has been to keep players in the ultimate flow state and to have them feel like an action hero, the best of the best. This meant having a sole focus on fluidity and fidelity, for player intentions to seamlessly translate to actions and to sell that elite Black Ops power fantasy. In the words of Treyarch, movement should have players saying “OMG, this is a Black Ops game.”

This is where the new Omni Movement comes in, and stands to be the sole mechanic everyone will be talking about come launch. Not only is it the new system of movement for Black Ops 6, but I reckon it’ll quite literally change the entire first person shooter landscape. But what is it?

So far in first person shooters, if you sprint, you sprint forward. If you dive, you dive forward. If you slide… well, you get it. Treyarch wanted to build a movement system that felt familiar, but also answered the question of “How do the best of the best move?” And the answer was simple, they move in every direction.

Omni Movement means in Black Ops 6 you can sprint in any direction – forward, backwards, left, right, diagonal variations…any direction! But that also means you can do things like dive and slide in any direction and turn around in any direction too. This results in a super fluid, natural-feeling way of moving around a map and entering gunfights. And it also meant a domino effect of work needed from the team to pull this off to the high quality it currently sits in. Treyarch has recorded thousands of high-fidelity animations, all using mocap, to blend together into every single degree of player movement. Which means your operator will dive slightly differently any which way you move, and that extends to all movement in the game.

Every element of player movement has been reworked to amplify the Omni Movement system, like the ability to go prone. Supine Prone is Black Ops 6’s new way of going prone, where the player is no longer just a flat body pivoting around an axis. Instead, Supine Prone allows players to full body, tactically roll around in prone state – imagine diving to the ground and rolling on your shoulder to shoot the enemy’s feet from underneath a truck. This also applies to the classic dolphin dive. You won’t just dive forward through a window any more, you can now dive through a window, naturally turn and look back in mid air and shoot through the broken glass to take out an enemy and land on your back – full on action hero style.

It’s in the little, subtle areas where Omni Movement also seems to shine. Take something like the new Corner Slicing element, which will automatically tilt your gun around corners whilst ADSing – how this plays out also depends on the angle you’re coming in at, whether or not you’re sprinting and so on. Even the simple act of sprinting around a corner is touched by the system. Currently if you sprint and your player cuts too much into the turning circle, you’ll stop sprinting, but this isn’t the case here. Intelligent Movement has also been added within the settings for even more fluidity. Optionally toggled on, Intelligent Movement will take players from having to press multiple buttons in order to mantle, sprint, slide, etc in a sequence, to not pressing any buttons at all – playing into that mindset of player intentions translating to actions.

Needless to say, the entire Omni Movement mechanic that Black Ops 6 is introducing is just as exciting an update to gameplay as new guns or maps.

OTHER ADDITIONS

Speaking of guns, hit location animations have been reworked as well to give a more realistic, Black Ops style to them. Previously there had been 4 hit locations on a player body to trigger a bullet hit or death animation, so it didn’t matter if you were hit in the right or left leg, the same animation would play. In Black Ops 6, there are now 9 hit locations on the player body to trigger animations, and they also work in tandem with the particular weapons or gadgets dealing the hit. This means if you get hit in the right leg or the left leg, different animations will play, and to go further again, different animations will play for those hits with different weapons (ie. a shotgun hit to the body will animate differently to a sniper hit).

This will be particularly evident for players when viewing player deaths via the new dynamic death cam. Now, instead of the static death cam we know and love that abruptly stops the camera on a player’s death (and we watch the body yeet off screen), the new Black Ops 6 death cam will track the body death animation, allowing you to see that new and improved rag doll at its finest.

A NEW WAY TO PLAY

With additions like Omni Movement being such a fundamental mechanic in Black Ops 6, what does it mean for Call of Duty games moving forward? We can’t have this reworked movement foundation in one game and the old style in another, right? Looking ahead at the global systems of Call of Duty and whether Omni Movement will be running across all COD IPs, like Warzone, it’s too early to tell, with Treyarch mentioning they will have more information about this later in the year. However, the new Omni Movement system in Black Ops 6 will definitely be a new way for fans of Call of Duty to play and engage, and one which I can really see enhancing the overall experience.

Jake was a guest of Treyarch and Activision with travel and accommodation covered for the purpose of this preview.

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Apex Legends is about to celebrate its 4th Anniversary with its major new update, Revelry, marking the 16th season of the game. There is a lot coming to this update that fans have been asking for, like new LTM modes and a new weapon, but Respawn has also not shied away from bringing in changes that will completely change the way both new and veteran gamers will play. These are all the changes coming to season 16 of Apex Legends:

OLD LEGENDS MADE NEW

Let’s kick things off by mentioning that there will be no new legend this season. Instead the team has focussed on refreshing and revamping the legends you know and love to bring a whole new way to play. This has resulted in the Legends becoming even more legendary with new Remastered Classes, that will completely make players rethink their playstyle, team comps and character resourcefulness and value in matches. The roster of legends is now divided into Assault, Skirmisher, Recon, Controller and Support classes to better showcase each Legends area of expertise, as well as highlight each class’s new special perk. Yes, that’s right. Not only do you now have each individual legend ability in the way of their Passive, Tactical and Ultimate, but also an overall class perk which applies to all legends in that class (similar to before, but now much more defined and strategic). The legends and their class/class perks are:

Assault (Combat Utility & Initiation)

Legends: Fuse, Mad Maggie, Bangalore, Ash, Revenant

Class Perk: Access Weapon Supply Bins – Access the hidden loot in red Weapon Supply bins for High Value Weapon Attachments / Carry Extra Ammo – Can carry an extra stack of ammo in each Inventory slot.

Skirmisher (Combat Mobility & Escape)

Legends: Valkyrie, Wraith, Mirage, Horizon, Octane, Pathfinder

Class Perk: Care Package Insight – Reveal Care Package contents to see the highest value item inside.

Recon (Enemy Intel & Tracking)

Legends: Bloodhound, Seer, Crypto, Vantage

Class Perk: Access Survey Beacons – Scan Survey Beacons to reveal all enemy positions for a short time (Note: this is no longer a ring reveal, but more like the map ping from Map Room on Kings Canyon).

Support (Team Survival & Supply)

Legends: Gibraltar, Newcastle, Loba, Lifeline

Class Perk: Access Extended Supply Bins – Access the hidden loot in blue Extended Supply Bins for Healing and Survival Items / Craft Ally Banners – Craft unrecovered or expired ally banner cards at Replicators.

Controllers (Area Setup & Control)

Legends: Rampart, Caustic, Wattson, Catalyst

Class Perk: Access Ring Consoles – Activate Ring Consoles (a new device players will find on maps) to reveal the next circle’s location.

Legend Meta Updates

Seven Legends will also be getting major meta updates to their abilities, boasting some massive speed and distance changes, as well as some much needed reworks (mainly talking about you, Bloodhound and Seer).

Bloodhound and Seer – will be getting reworks on their scan abilities, with Bloodhound getting a shift away from their scan meta and more into a tracking focused mechanic. You’ll notice more ravens that guide your way, with their ultimate no longer speeding up tactical regen, but prompting ravens to fly directly towards enemy positions. Seer will have his Ultimate timing shortened and more importantly his heartbeat sensor tweaked to essentially only give readings when directly on an enemy.

Wraith & Pathfinder – are getting a major meta change when it comes to their Ultimates. Both Ultimates will now have the ability to be placed just over more than double their original distance, with Wraith gaining an extra boost in speed when placing her portal and Pathfinder (and allies) gaining a speed up when riding ziplines.

Horizon – is getting reworks to her gravity lift, with a speed boost to her and her allies when being lifted up, but a slow down occurring for enemy teams trying to utilise or caught in the lift, for better escape and offensive play.

Mirage – will be getting boosts to his revive ability, allowing him and his ally to stay cloaked for a few seconds longer after revive, but noting cloaking will be removed once a weapon is pulled. Mirage’s bamboozle has also been tweaked to give players more of a tracking mechanic when enemies shoot a clone, rather than just a ping they’ve seen previously.

Lifeline – has no doubt received some major love with the meta changes. The team has reduced the movement slow down on her when reviving allies and her care package now drops in about half the time (upon testing it goes from the previously 14 secs to secs).

TEAM DEATHMATCH AND PERMANENT LTMs

Apex fans can rejoice in knowing that a Team Deathmatch game mode is coming with season 16, alongside a permanent playlist of the LTM favourites of Control and Gun Run. The Team Deathmatch game mode will consist of a 6 vs 6, killed based, fast spawn play style, with squads needing 30 kills to win a match and a best of three matches win mechanic. Loadout choices will be similar to the systems players are familiar with from Control, alongside the random care package drops. Dropping launch day, gamers will be able to show off their TDM skills on Partycrasher, Skull Town and Habitat 4.

Mixtape will be the title of the new permanent LTM playlist, consisting of Control, Gun Run and the new Team Deathmatch. Respawn mentioned that players will get three weeks of TDM focus before the rotation starts, however when the mix begins, the game modes will be rotated every 15 mins.

With these new additions it’s important to note that Arenas will be getting sunset this season, as the devs found that Arenas gameplay had become “a bit too sweaty to what they had originally created it for”. Respawn had initially introduced Arenas to the scene in order to give players, old and new, a chance to experiment and get used to the combat mechanics in a more bite sized version of the BR classic. However, over time, it has become a place where gamers have felt the need to be strategically ready to go, and essentially not mess up in order to come out on top, which was never Respawn’s intent. This season they are hoping Team Deathmatch will bring that experimental nature back to players and give new and veteran apex fans a chance to explore their play style, metas and team comps more.

NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCES

Speaking of experiences for those new to the Apex Games, players will now find a whole new way to introduce themselves to the fast paced, strategy focused world of Apex Legends. The new Orientation Match system creates an easy introduction to new players where they can gather their bearings and learn the core mechanics of the game. They’ll be able to play solo or bring along their friends to eliminate a lobby made up of 16 bot teams and four squads of new players. Newbies will need to win or rank top five enough times on Kings Canyon to graduate out of the orientation system before being able to access the chaos that is standard BR.

Alongside the new orientation system, comes upgrades to the Firing Range. Players will now have a firing range customisation menu with an array of options including dummy movement and shields, unlimited ammo, dynamic stats, hit markers and more. Respawn has said that this will be the first iteration of features coming to the firing range.

New players (and old) will also have access to the new introductory challenges to help new players experience everything Apex has to offer, with a new Apex 101 badge up for grabs when completed.

NEW WEAPON AND QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES

Revelry introduces the Nemesis, a new energy class assault rifle that fires four rounds per burst. With a ramping burst delay that decreases the time between bursts and simulates a fully automatic weapon, the Nemesis is sure to be a game changer and even gun for fan favourite, over the R301 and Flatline. The Nemesis will be an Energy based weapon and take weapon attachments like barrels, mags, tactical stock and optics.

A new gold weapon attachment is coming in the way of Gold Shotgun Bolts, giving players the ability to automatically reload their shotguns (either in hand or stowed) whilst sliding.

Shotguns will also see an introduction of the tactical stock being attachable on the Peacekeeper and Mastiff, with projectile size being improved on all shotguns (hopefully meaning less of those nightmare 11 damage shots!)

The Hemlock will be Season 16’s Care Package or Red Tier item, with the Volt SMG and Longbow DMR going into the Replicators.

Assault Rifles will have the bullet spread on hip-fire increased, meaning they will no longer play the “good for every kind of firefight” role they’ve found themselves in over the last 15 seasons, alongside some bad news for R301 fans (so everyone). The R301 is getting a damage reduction this season, taking the current damage from 14 to 13.

This season’s map rotation will be Broken Moon, Stormpoint and World’s Edge for public matches, with the Ranked matches getting a rework this season with now a rotating roster. The Ranked map roster will rotate every 24 hrs for the entire season as opposed to the Split 1 and Split 2 map change previously. No other Ranked changes this season.

To celebrate Apex Legends’ anniversary, every player will receive login bonuses for the first two weeks of the new season. For the first week, players can log in from Feb 14th – 21st to automatically unlock Crypto, with a thematic pack guaranteed to include an item just for him. They can then log in from Feb 21st – 28th to automatically unlock Ash and a themed pack just for her. Players will also notice some exciting (and huge) party decorations on all maps and modes this season, with the sneaky return of Mirage’s infamous party boat.

Apex Legends: Revelry will be released for Aussie players in the early morning of February 15th, 2023.

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The 15th season of Apex Legends is just around the corner and with it comes a legend that players have been wanting for seasons (amongst some other changes you can read about here). Catalyst will the 23rd character to grace the Apex Games as well as the first transgender legend added to the roster of heroes.

THE NO NONSENSE TECHNO WITCH

As a teenager on Boreas, Catalyst (aka Tressa Crystal Smith) and her coven of friends prayed for and by the light of the moon. As seen in one of the new season trailers, things don’t quite go as planned for the teenagers as they try to sabotage machinery setup to aid in the moon’s restoration (a gesture the coven believed to be some smoke and mirrors). Instead of dealing with the incident, Catalyst instead runs away at fifteen to join a terraforming crew working to rebuild the moon. She took to the work, feeling a connection between her work with ferrofluid and the rituals of her past, but the unwelcome arrival of the Apex Games brought her peaceful life to an end. Catalyst now joins the games as a legend determined to bring change and defend her home.

Dubbed the ‘Techno Witch’ by the Respawn team, Catalyst harnesses her knowledge of and skills with ferrofluid to aid in defences, trap her enemies and bring a much wanted counter to the Apex Games, Anti-Scan. Players have been yearning for seasons for a legend to counter the strengths of Bloodhound, not to mention the anti-ratting legend Seer – and now she’s here. Catalyst’s abilities that she will bring to the arena are:

Passive – Barricade 

Using her ability to manipulate ferrofluid, Catalyst reinforces doors, strengthening and locking them to enemies while allowing teammates to pass freely. It will take enemies twice as long to destroy a reinforced door. She can also create doors that have been destroyed.

Tactical – Piercing Spikes

Catalyst can throw out a patch of ferrofluid that turns into deadly spikes when enemies are near, while Catalyst herself remains immune to enemy spikes. Enemies will be slowed and damaged when spiked. Throw distance is quite far.

Ultimate – Dark Veil

Obscure the playing field with Catalyst’s Ultimate, Dark Veil. Catalyst can raise a permeable wall of ferrofluid that will slow and partially blind enemies (think the oil splash in Mario Kart but better) who attempt to push their way through it. Players can use these barriers to divide the battlefield or resurrect their team in a safe place. This ultimate will also block Bloodhound and Seer scans and has a 30sec activation timer.

It’s important to note that the Respawn team did state that the Dark Veil will not counter a Seer ult, mentioning, “The Seer ult is a large bubble that takes up a lot of space, so the Dark Veil doesn’t quite counter it.”

EXPANDING APEX’S DIVERSE LEGEND SELECTION

It’s quite an undertaking to add a new legend into a game like Apex Legends, with not only the play style and combat mechanics that the new character will add to the game, but also how they interact and play with the already massive roster of legends. Catalyst’s introduction goes one step further into the need to get her right as she represents an important expansion to the roster as the first transgender woman in Apex Legends.

The overall Respawn team, in particular the writing and design team, very much prioritised the importance of this legend addition and her back story, being sure to create and develop Catalyst in the most authentic, organic and considerate way possible. Respawn worked with transgender developers internally to help shape Catalyst’s journey, as well as getting onboard quite early a transgender Voice Artist to aid in navigating the story, personality and growth of the character. The team also engaged with GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) in order to make sure the portrayal of Catalyst and her journey was true and genuine for players.

Respawn have continued to put diversity at the forefront of the Apex Legends lore and character development and to be honest, is by far the only FPS/BR team holding diversity to such a standard within their games. Catalyst is not only a much welcomed addition to the game as another strong ability swinging hero, but as another real and genuine representation of the players who love this game day in and day out.

Look out for great Catalyst dialogue moments between Legends like Bloodhound, Loba and Rampart as well as some more spicy and confrontational conversations with Seer. Alongside the bewitching Eclipse Battle Pass, Catalyst will be a must try legend when she hits the Apex roster come November 1st (early morning November 2nd for us Aussies).

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Apex Legends’ newest season, Eclipse, is set to bring a bunch of new additions to the game when it launches on November 1st (or early morning November 2nd for us Aussies), not only including the new legend Catalyst, but also the new map ‘Broken Moon’, item gifting and stickers.

ZIP YOUR WAY ACROSS THE MOON

Broken Moon is the latest map addition to Apex Legends and brings with it more than just another location for players to drop into the games. The moon of Boreas continues the storyline of Seer that players were introduced to a couple of seasons ago, where his birth played a part of an ancient prophecy which foretold of the moon, Cleo, being struck by a comet.

While this collision brought debris and chaos to the world below as well as changing the lives of its inhabitants (who we’ll learn more about later), the Broken Moon also presented a unique opportunity for the trusty folk of Hammond Labs to experiment with terraforming technology. Safety nets were installed to hold together what remained of the shuttered moon to prevent the apocalypse for the planet below, but as the public lost interest in funding their work, they turned more and more to privatisation, and eventually, the lucrative hands of the Apex Games.

Broken Moon lives up to its name by showcasing a variety of biomes across the divided landscape. The Respawn devs set out to create this map with a Heaven and Hell like balance (similar to that of World’s Edge’s Fire and Ice contrast), constructing locations which align with the dark side of the moon’s alien-like, barren and desolate nature in POIs like The Perpetual Core and Breaker Wharf, as well as the light side’s bright, life-inhabiting and warm comforts in Eternal Gardens and Bionomics.

With some POIs set to have a larger feel to soften up the hot drop chaos, players will find themselves with more options to land, more space to share and more loot to gather when dropping with multiple teams, meaning more time to loot and make better, proactive decisions for survival. But for those who love the chaos, rest assured there will still be those sweaty locations to cater to all play styles.

Speaking of size, Broken Moon will come in at being slightly bigger than World’s Edge, but smaller than Storm Point. To navigate the second biggest terrain in the game, players will say goodbye to tritons and hello to the new Zip Rails system providing quick traversal and some rollercoaster-like fun (maybe even some hectic new combat meta).

REWARD YOUR TEAMMATES WITH A GIFT

Season 15 will bring with it the much wanted feature of gifting. Players can share the freshest Apex skins and styles with other players via the new Gifting system.

This will allow players to purchase bundles and cosmetic items in the Store tab for their in-game friends. Come launch, initial items available for gifting will be limited (players will see a ‘Gift’ button alongside items, but this range will be expanded on later. It’s the perfect new addition just in time for the holidays! *starts writing gift list for teammates I constantly carried*

ALL-NEW STICKERS

Skins and cosmetics aside, players will be able to show off their style even more come the new season with the introduction of Stickers. The all-new cosmetic category will be equippable on all healing items (hence the new animation updates), allowing players to customise their look and express themselves in-game. At the time of launch, players will only be able to equip one sticker per health item in one locked position.

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The latest season of Apex Legends is launching on 9th August (early morning 10th August for Aussies) and will be titled Apex Legends: Hunted. Respawn has utilised this season launch to introduce a lot of revamps to older mechanics and locations of the game to bring a whole new fresh take on gunplay, map strategy & more, particularly focusing in on Kings Canyon and the greater State of Apex.

Kings Canyon Back On The Throne

Kings Canyon is the OG map of Apex Legends and after 13 seasons of tweaks, add-ons and destruction, it’s safe to say the state of Kings Canyon hasn’t been one overly favoured by the community. One of Respawn’s primary goals for the latest season was to take a deep look at Kings Canyon, in particular the overall map health, and give it the revamp and makeover it so desperately needed. The newest Kings Canyon in Apex Legends: Hunted, has had tunes across the board, solving balancing issues like loot dispersion and balanced drops, pain points such as pacing and team collision timing as well as an overhaul to the map’s lighting providing a much more vivid colour palette. Respawn also combed through the maps POIs and traversal paths to give players, who are familiar with Kings Canyons layout, a noticeable difference.

Key POIs, where teams have been found bunkering down in, have received massive changes to assist in cleaner interactions and combat, forcing teams to play smart and hard, instead of favouring any classic “rat” mentality. The Cage has seen a level removed and majority of its walls taken away, Hillside’s (just near Capacitor) buildings have been largely removed and replaced by a more two tier platform location, Broken Relay will now be called Basin and has several buildings added to incentivize players to drop and move around the point more, not too mention the newest POI addition in Relic, taking its position as the new Skull Town and bringing back the classic Kings Canyon gameplay players love.

It’s not only Kings Canyon that is getting the ‘classic to modernised’ rework. A tonne of mechanics and systems players have become used to over seasons 1-13 have been shaken up.

Level Cap Increase Is Prestige

The much anticipated Level Cap Increase will launch with this new season, doing away with the rumoured additional 200 level increase and instead looking at a system which mirrors Call Of Duty’s Prestige levelling. Players will now be able to loop through the 0-500 level system an additional 3 times, making it a 2000 level progression system all together. But if that doesn’t excite you enough, with the new loop system in place, combined with the rate players receive Apex Packs whilst levelling, players will now be 100% guaranteed the acquisition of a Heirloom Apex Pack during their course of levelling up.

New Attachment Is Laser Focussed

A new attachment is hitting the battlefield in the form of a Laser Sight. The Laser Sight will be replacing the Barrel Stabiliser on SMGs and Pistols, pushing the two gun types into a more defined category and gunplay focus. The Laser Sight attachment will bring a ‘large hip fire spread reduction’ and players will be able to customise the colour just like reticule sights. It’s important to note that players will be able to see the laser sight design on their guns, providing new visuals and hip fire information during gunplay, however Respawn has specifically design the sight so enemies will not be able to see the laser in ways that give away player positioning (ie. across map, inside buildings etc) and instead may only notice a small beam during close quarter combat.

MAJOR Ammo Changes To Heavy Favourites

One of the massive change ups hitting this season is in the form of two major Heavy type weapons switching up their ammo categories. The Wingman will now use Sniper ammo as well as a sniper extended mag, and the Spitfire will now run Light ammo.

Shotgun Wars: The EVA-8 Strikes Back

The EVA-8 was once a prime shotgun choice in the Apex Games. Hitting hard and fast, it could apply a great deal of pressure and panic on an opposing team…and then it got nerfed. In the spirit of this new season’s theme of ‘reworking the classics’, Respawn has written a love letter to the EVA-8 saying “We want you back!” – so back the pallet blasting EVA-8 comes. The EVA-8 will now boast an increased fire rate, the bolt attachment effect will increase and the double tap is back baby!

And the Gold Knockdown Goes To…

The Apex community has screamed for months about the Gold Knockdown Shield’s Self Revive perk, being an element that has brought many a frustration to squads in final circle clashes. Well, grab your squamates and rejoice because this season the Gold Knockdown Shield no longer has a Self Revive perk (pause for applause). It will instead take the Gold Backpack’s perk of extra shield and health upon revive (a great compliment to those Newcastle mains). The Gold Backpack will now sport the Deep Pockets perk, allowing the user to stock extra health items per slot ie. the ability to stack 3 batteries in one slot instead of 2/to stack 2 phoenix in one slot instead of one etc.

So What’s Going In the Care Pack?

And of course, the major question you’ve been dying to know, what’s coming out and going into the care package this season? Well, for those G7 Scout and Volt fans, these guns will be returning to floor loot and the Bowcek and Rampage will be going in to be our new Red Tier dominators.

Not too much has been said by the Respawn team about this season’s Ranked modes, apart from them still monitoring the most recent changes and community feedback, but have stated to be on the lookout for some very exciting LTM modes dropping this season, which will be sure to surprise. All in all, Apex Legends: Hunted looks to bring some great new updates to the game, flipping the classic elements players have loved (or hated) and giving everyone a whole new way to play and become champions.

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The next and newest Apex Legends Season, Saviors, is dropping into action come May 10 and with it brings some map and game changing updates.

Of course, with every new season there’s a brand spanking new Legend to dive into the action with – and what a Legend to compliment the ‘Saviors’ title like the heroic Newcastle, but more on him soon.

Other than the obvious new legend and battle pass additions, Saviors will be introducing the first major map update to Storm Point, with its newest POI, Downed Beast. The season trailer showcased the Legends going up against a giant leviathan and coming out on top, but something had to be done about that remaining crustacean carcass right? Well, the Ecological Cleanup and Hazard Outreach (ECHO), previously seen on Kings Canyon, has arrived on Storm Point to clean up the mess so the games can continue. This new, high tier loot location is nestled between The Mill, North Pad and Checkpoint, and is pretty much like one giant pinata! Access the goodies inside via one of four battle wound openings, dance around flying bullets on top of the beast for height advantage or gather more supplies from one of the many ECHO tents surrounding the beast site. Whatever your play may be, Downed Beast is looking like a key drop/looting location for squads to check out come the new season.

Alongside Downed Beast, another major Storm Point update is the addition of the IMC Armouries. After being dormant underground for decades, these armouries have now risen to the surface after detecting the seismic threat of the beast and are bringing some very cool minigame-like mechanics to Apex Legends. Squads can approach one of four IMC Armouries across the map and once inside, they’ll find a payload of weapons and a button to access the valuable loot within. But there’s one catch…it’s protected by Spectres. Activating the button will close up the armoury, protecting the squad inside from outside threats, but at the same time unleashing waves of the Spectre sentry bots upon them. Survive for 60 seconds and the squad will receive smart loot that is catered to upgrade their specific loadouts. The more waves of Spectres squads eliminate, the more loot they’ll receive. Once completed, teams can exit the armoury via the ramp they entered on, or utilise the redeploy pad to shoot out the armoury roof and fly to their next location. The introduction of the IMC Armouries means teams will have the ability to hot-drop on them to get a pretty decent starting kit or consider their usefulness to any needed weapon upgrading during a rotation.

Apart from these major map updates to Storm Point, hundreds of smaller QoL updates have been done to smooth out the player experience across the map including spider nest improvements, as well as new and updated Prowler camps around Cenote and southwest of The Mill, bringing some fresh takes to the combat experience on top of more dynamic terrains for players and AI to traverse.

Be sure to check out the latest Apex Legends: Saviors gameplay trailer ahead if its launch next week.

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The latest season of Apex Legends is about to drop on May 4th. Apex Legends: Legacy has been deemed by Respawn as “the biggest, most game changing update” to grace the series over the last 2 years. Legacy will bring a brand new, permanent game mode in the form of 3v3 Arenas, a new legend, Valkyrie, having the biggest connection to Titanfall, Olympus’s first major map overhaul as well as a whole new weapon category fit for the games.

3V3 ARENAS

If you’ve been dropping into King’s Canyon with the squad over the past 8 seasons of Apex Legends, you’d be well aware of the variety of limited time modes the team at Respawn have been giving to the Apex community – anyone else still having grim flashbacks to those sweaty Mozambique drops?! Well for the first time in Apex Legends, players are getting a whole new way to deem themselves champions in the form of Arenas.

Arenas is the new, permanent game mode coming to Apex Legends: Legacy, condensing the 20 squad Battle Royale chaos into 3v3 strategic gameplay with all new custom maps and a completely new way of tackling your enemies. In a play to introduce something fresh to the series, whilst aligning with the increasing popularity and competitiveness of games such as Valorant, Arenas will have a very different way of playing to it’s BR counterpart. At the beginning of every round, each squad will start fresh in their spawn rooms at either end of the map, here they’ll have access to the shop, which will allow them to purchase a selection of weapons, abilities, tactical and health supplies by using materials (awarded at the end of every round and collectable throughout the map), allowing for better loadouts and upgrades as the match progresses.

To become champions of an Arena match, a squad needs 3 points to win (1 point awarded each round win), but there’s also a ‘win by 2’ rule in play. This means an Arena match can last anywhere from 3 rounds to 9 rounds, with that 9th round being a heated, sweaty battle of sudden death. With the smaller player count and head to head consistency of every round, players will have the ability to learn their opponents, adapt to their plays and create strategies to come out on top.

New maps are also being specifically created for Arenas with a mix of familiar locations as well as brand new ones such as launch maps, “Party Crashers” and “Phase Runner”. Party Crasher is a fast paced battle for control over the Downtown Plaza or Mirage Voyage (fittingly crashed by Mirage into the futuristic, neon district after having left King’s Canyon). Phase Runner is a bit more slowed in pace, encouraging more mid to long range weaponry and engagements where squads will battle it out over the maps two main POI’s, Phase Exit and the Construction Zone. Familiar locations from the Battle Royale maps will also be introduced into the rotation such as Golden Gardens (Olympus), Thermal Station (World’s Edge) and Artillery (King’s Canyon). From the launch of Legacy, these familiar POI’s will be hitting the Arenas mode every 2 weeks, starting with Artillery.

NEW LEGEND, NEW WEAPON

Apex Legends’ newest personality being added in Legacy is Valkyrie. She is the daughter of famed Titan Pilot Viper, meaning she is the biggest connection to the Titanfall franchise gamers faithfully love and what the Apex series is built on. If you have not seen the most recent story cinematic shedding light on Valkyrie’s background, then you can watch it here (it’s definitely worth the watch).

Valkyrie’s biggest draw card and what her entire arsenal and abilities are focused on is her jetpack – forged from the remnants of Viper’s Northstar Titan. She’s able to use it to fly across the battlefield, unleash a stunning blow of missiles to disorient her foes as well as pretty much being able to Superman launch her team out of a sticky situation. She brings an interesting dynamic to any squad up and her abilities will definitely be something to keep an eye on when facing her in the arena. You can find out more about playing as Valkyrie in our hands-on preview of Apex Legends: Legacy.

Not only are players getting a new legend, but the game is introducing a whole new weapons category, thanks to addition of the new Bocek Bow. The Bocek is a powerful and deadly precision weapon and if you’re able to master it’s firing rhythm and need for accuracy, then you’ll be inflicting some devastating damage to your enemies. Respawn has stated that if you’re someone who is good with a Wingman, then you’ll feel right at home with the Bocek.

The Bocek Bow adds the “Marksman Weapons” category to the game, now being home to not only the Bocek, but also current weapons in the game like the Triple Take and 30-30 Repeater to name a few. The Bocek will allow for two hop up spots, where players will be able to house “Shatter Cap” turning your bow shots into shotgun like blasts (meaning that your medium range bow is now super effective in close combat) as well as “Deadeye’s Tempo” giving those able to master the rhythmic timing of firing a bow a quicker rate of fire. Both hop ups attached at once can result in some truly destructive outcomes for your enemies.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN

With a new season also comes the new focus on map revamps. Legacy’s story and season will focus on Olympus, which will be the map’s first major overhaul since its introduction into the game. The newest map addition is in the form of a POI docked by Bonsai Plaza, the Icarus and with it has come a parasitic plant of unknown origin. Players exploring the ship can find the corpses of dead scientists who worked aboard – they may have left a keycard or two allowing access to the Icarus’s vault (which houses some quality loot) so don’t be too off put by them. Respawn mentioned that the most exciting thing will be uncovering the mystery of the alien entity and exactly which legend’s legacy it’s connected to. You’ll also find redeploy balloons have been reduced in numbers to avoid third partying and to encourage new rotations.

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The new season of Apex Legends is about to drop and not only is it mixing up the naming convention with the season title being called just “Legacy”, but it’s also adding in a game-changing way to play with your squad and become champion.

You can read about the latest updates coming to Apex Legends: Legacy here, but the quick overview is that Arenas is a new, permanent game mode coming to Apex Legends: Legacy, condensing the 20 squad Battle Royale chaos into 3v3 strategic gameplay with all new custom maps and a completely new way of tackling your enemies. Also in the new season is Valkyrie, the latest legend to hit the roster, devastating her enemies from the skies thanks to her Titanfall jetpack and array of aerial abilities.

I was able to play a few games in Arenas using different legends, but this was a good chance to see how Valkyrie played and handled. From the legend selection screen, I get a good look at V’s sweet looking jetpack, made even more awesome by the little launch animation, but more importantly it’s the first chance to notice that she’s deemed as a Recon legend – just like my Bloodhound. My squad was set and ready with my Valkyrie being supported by a Lifeline and Bloodhound – a pretty good line up considering Arenas new map sizes and change in pace to battle royale. 

The match starts by immediately dropping each squad into the shop, which if you’ve played or watched any Valorant or Counter Strike is very reminiscent of that. Here I’m able to purchase my round 1 loadout in the form of weapons, consumables such as health supplies or grenades and additional abilities like extra tactical uses or my ultimate (available from round 2 though). I decided to use 400 of my starting 550 materials to purchase an alternator and grab a Mozambique for free to use as my secondary. The 30 second timer starts sounding off as it hits 5 seconds, signaling to my squad that the barriers to our spawn area is about to unlock.

The round begins and the squad and I make our way to the left of the new Party Crasher Arenas map. The map is covered with shopping mall like infrastructure and POI’s creating a variety of cover as well as ways to get height on the opposing team. Our Bloodhound actives a quick scan once we get to one of two of the map’s POIs, Downtown Plaza, but no enemies. Having climbed up on top of the plaza’s roof, I quickly look over to the map’s other POI, Mirage Voyage, to gauge whether our enemies have come into view yet – but nothing. As I quickly divert my run to grab some materials from a canister to use later in the shop, Bloodhound calls out an enemy – the other team’s Valkyrie. She’s made the mistake of giving away her location by jetpacking up onto the roof of Mirage’s ship, giving us instant awareness of her squad’s location.

As we begin our advance on the enemy team the round 1 circle begins to close, alongside the announcement of this round’s care package being dropped in. These care packages bring in some kitted out gear, so our Bloodhound makes a bee line directly for the drop as myself and Lifeline begin our flank from the left side. At this point I’m still parkouring up walls, not wanting to mirror my enemy counterpart’s mistake of revealing our flank too soon by using Valkyrie’s jetpack. As we get close to the ship, an enemy peaks from the back corner and fires off some shots. As they duck away I initiate Valkyrie’s passive, the VTOL Jetpack, to get immediate height on top of the Mirage Voyage.

One of the major takeaways from this hands-on experience was the feel of this ability. It’s a mix between Octane’s bounce pad in terms of forward push and Horizon’s Gravity Lift in terms of the height you can get. However, Valkyrie is incredibly vulnerable when it’s in use. In an effort to balance the awesome ability to jetpack around an enemy squad wreaking havoc, Respawn had made V’s movement when using the jetpack quite slow; I’m also not able to use any grenades or weapons when it’s in use too. There is a limitation to the time I’m able to be in the air as well by way of a fuel gauge on the right side of the screen, but if I choose so, I’m able to stay in the air for quite some time. I, alongside many other attendees, gave the Respawn team some feedback in terms of perhaps increasing the velocity speed for less air time, so hopefully this ability is polished up a little more come launch.

My squad and I immediately start firing upon our opponents, who are ground level opposite our rooftop. As one of my team members rushes an enemy for the takedown, he’s flanked by another. I quickly utilise my passive again to get some serious height and launch Valkyrie’s tactical, Missile Swarm, on one of firing foes. This ability shows a 3×4 grid of where the missiles will impact, and appears to be less about damaging enemies and more about stunning them (visible by the classic “stunned” electricity known by Apex players surrounding the now knocked enemy). I land next to the knocked foe and finish them off, knowing that revives are available in Arenas, but no respawns. I go to pop one of the shield cells I was automatically equipped with at the start of the round, when the enemy team’s Lifeline surprises me with a clean Peacekeeper shot to the face. I’m out for the count, but my squad are able to finish her off quickly, pinching her from either side.

We’ve won our first round! Time for round 2!

Now having 1350 materials to purchase my loadout with, I opt for R-301 and decide to upgrade it to boast all blue attachments (I can upgrade it right up to purple, but choose to save some materials). Instead, I grab an EVA-8 to round out my kit and the squad once again enters the arena.

Better equipped and with a round of understanding our enemies moves, my team very swiftly move to our relative advantage points aboard the Mirage Voyage – I make an early break with my Jetpack to get on top of the structure, knowing last round it was this delayed move by my opponent that gave their position away. The squad is sticking close, whilst having a good variety of angles, we’re in the flow now. Bloodhound activates a scan revealing our enemies are here and ready to play. I fire off shots, take out some enemy shield, their Bangalore pops a smoke, I jet over to the next roof whilst also launching a Missile Swarm into the enemy smokescreen.

Gameplay feels faster now – myself and my teammates are moving to cover and our next advantage points more quickly than before, and complimenting each others abilities well. My missile swarm stuns one and deshields the other left in the smoke causing the opposing team to disperse and scramble to reset. We’re on top of them now, able to keep our cool, shield up and watch them through the glass roof of the Mirage Voyage trying to gain a new angle. I get the drop on the enemy Lifeline about to scale the roof and flank us, taking out 70% of her shield, before scaling back up to the roof to lay down the final shots needed to knock her. 5 seconds later our own Lifeline rains bullets from above on the final enemy securing us the Round 2 flawless win.

It’s now match point. We win this round and we are deemed champions. The stakes are high and the combat has been escalated now with teams sporting purple armour instead of the first two rounds of blue. I grab another upgrade R-301, leave a secondary but holster a Arc Star instead. The squad immediately rushes up on Mirage Voyage, I’m feeling that victory so get a little cocky and jetpack up onto the highest fin of the ship, but our Bloodhound scan reveals the enemy have been super slow off the spawn mark.

They’re now stuck downhill with little cover and as Obi-Wan would scream out in the last moments of battle, “We have the high ground!” My team had done well applying pressure to the opposing side in previous rounds (we know it makes them scatter), and it works again this time. Bloodhound takes one out, makes their way down to take out another – “I’m down!” comes over my headset as my allfather brother is crawling metres away from the final foe. As a fellow Recon character, my Valkyrie needed to avenge them. I slid down the grassy plan on the backside of the Mirage Voyage to the rounded garden cover the enemy Bangalore was behind – BAM! YOU ARE THE CHAMPION! The sweet taste of victory was secured in a minute! GG squad.

Overall, my time with Apex Legends: Legacy before it launches on May 4th was indeed game changing. I was left with the excitement to jump into Arenas with my go-to squad members and take on some intense battles togethers. It is definitely a different Apex experience to what we’ve come to know with the Battle Royale, needing a completely different mindset and play style. It’s cool to be able to take on an enemy squad multiple times (normally it’s a one and done situation in BR), learn their tactics, adapt and harness the abilities and skills of your team to come out champions. Respawn also seems super invested in updating the Arenas mode regularly with new maps coming post launch as well as a ranked mode for competitive play – very much putting Apex into a whole new light on the competitive stage. I can not wait to jump in again come launch.

In terms of the question of whether Bloodhound will be replaced by Valkyrie in my main roster, well, having time with her during this hands on experience both in Arenas and Battle Royale I think it’s safe to say that Bloodhound will still be in the top mix. Valkyrie’s paced movement and limited arsenal in the air whilst using the jetpack takes her down a few points in getting her poll position in my roster – however with some tweaks this very well could change, so I’ll have to wait till launch or during the season to see if anything been polished up. With that said, she does have some very cool abilities, which

I recommend all players to try out her ultimate in battle royale both in a much needed “get out of there!” situation as well as just for fun as it just feels awesome. She also has a very handy passive (and awesome HUD) whilst dropping out of the BR ship – where she can tag all surrounding players also dropping within her line of sight, so no more free-looking around trying to find out how many players are dropping with you.

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Outriders is the most ambitious game People Can Fly have undertaken yet in the array of previous game titles they’ve developed in the last two decades, such as Gears of War: Judgement, Bulletstorm, Painkiller and co-developed games like Fortnite and several projects in the Gears franchise.

People Can Fly’s Studio Head, Sebastion Wojciechowski, and Game Director, Bartosz Kmita shortly took to the stage and started the Outriders showcase, opening with one of the many cinematic trailers I saw throughout the presentation, providing a good overview and visually pleasing first look at the Outriders world, story, RPG depth and customisation as well as the character classes and powers.

FIRST AND FOREMOST

Outriders is a Co-op RPG shooter set in an exciting dark, sci-fi universe releasing this holiday on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC as well as being available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Outriders has been created with a traditional video game sensibility in mind – giving an intense, hard-hitting combat experience with deep RPG mechanics and a compelling story. It’s not a Games of Service, nor will there be loot boxes or pay to win shortcuts and we will have a complete experience straight out of the box. The game is first and foremost an RPG with the combat system being a top tier shooter. I asked Bartosz Kmita more on the emphasis on RPG,

“We wanted to give more people more freedom to play in the shooter genre, because most shooters define your play style, nothing changes from the beginning and when (let’s say) you change the sniper rifle for the shotgun, nothing changes. I think here we wanted to go a little bit more, with skills, modification, skill trees; you can almost create your own shooter, and this is the RPG element I wanted to say was so important – as well as having other RPG aspects like the story, the side quests etc.” said Kmita 

During my time with the game, I very much discovered what Bartosz meant by RPG first. In my first play through, it felt like a lot of other Sci-Fi shooters we’ve seen release this gen – another Destiny, another Gears and even another The Division with it’s cover base shooter mechanics and RPG loadouts. However, after another couple of playthroughs utilising different classes as well as really delving into what loot I could acquire in the game, it became clear what People Can Fly had implemented.

Outriders very much leans into its RPG core. My squad and I were left dying time and time again against ruthless and brutal enemies unless we really tailored our gun loadouts and armour right, not to mention utilise our classes effectively. Each character class (which I’ll dive into shortly), not only played differently, but still allowed me to play how I really wanted – did I want to play strategically, hang back and snipe or run and gun with all things blazing? It didn’t matter, I could tweak and use my characters gear sets, skills, and upgrades the way I wanted.

THE OUTRIDERS WORLD: A DARK, TWISTED STORY

 My first experience of the Outriders universe was the prologue mission the game started with. Laying down the foundation of the lore, gameplay and brutality of what was to come. Before jumping into the mission, I was able to customise my character in the ways of gender, body elements such as head type, skin colour and eye colour, hair elements like hair style, facial hair and colour, Markings aka scars, piercings, tribal like paint, and finally name. A button press later, and the origins of Outriders played out in front of me.

Outriders are a force of explorers tasked with securing the lush and unexplored world of Enoch with the hopes of sustaining human life. The Earth can no longer be home to humanity thanks to its destruction by war and climate change. In 2159, the last efforts to save human life were launched in the form of two massive colony ships, but after 80 years of travelling with their crews in cryo sleep, only one ships arrives in orbit around Enoch. It is up to the Outriders aboard this ship, The Flores, to be the first boots on the ground and the tip of the spear for the human colonisation effort.

 However, in their efforts to set up camps on the wonder filled world, a signal is discovered emanating somewhere on the planet. As the Outriders journey to the signal location, an unnatural storm, The Anomaly, engulfs the surroundings of Enoch, with its winds tearing anything caught in the open apart, frying technology and disintegrating some Outriders to nothing but molecules. Some survive, I survive. But I’m now changed, I am now Altered.

The prologue mission finished up with my character heading back into cryo sleep after being badly wounded by The Anomaly and waking up 30 years later on a vastly different Enoch. The Anomaly still rages, the once beautiful and peaceful planet is now an ugly, savage wasteland, brimming with hostile flora and fauna and deadly creatures. The colonisation has failed. The remaining colonists are trapped in a valley by The Anomaly, with no advanced technology, and are fighting a civil war against each other. The only remaining hope is the signal, which is still emanating out in the unforgiving, dark world – a beacon of light which may lead the Outriders to someone, somewhere, with the means of saving humanity.

ALL CLASS, ALL POWERFUL

After finishing the prologue, my avatar surged with the power of The Anomaly – granted great power, but slowly leaving my humanity behind. I’m greeted by the character class and powers menu and am now able to choose which archetype I wanted to play as. There are 4 character classes/power types available in Outriders, however only three were available in the hands on session. They were:

 Trickster – Bender of Space and Time

The hit and run damage dealer of outriders. They do their best work in close combat and are equipped with powers that allow for unrivalled mobility. Tricksters bend the laws of space and time, able to slow down time for both defence and offence play, can teleport across the battlefield and wreak havoc with their melee attack Temporal Slice – turning foes into skeletons.

Pyromancer – Wielder of Fire, Heat and Radiation.

Specialists of medium range attacks, they can utilise their fiery powers such as the thermal bomb to turn any enemies hit into walking bombs that explode on death. Others are Heatwave, which is a useful range attack lighting up enemies and flushing them out of cover as well as Ash Blast which solidifies surrounding enemies in molten ash stopping them in their tracks, ready to execute.

Devastator – Controller of Gravity and Earth.

The backbone and tank of the Outriders group. Strong and tough, they are a close combat specialist that is not swayed by flying bullets. Their powers allowed them to cover themselves in rock like skin which is impenetrable by bullets, send enemies flying with powerful (and Hulk like) ground pounds and can literally leap into fights with heavily damaging landings. 

I was able to spend time with each playable class, all of which played entirely differently. The Trickster by far had some of the coolest visual and sci-fi-esque attacks. Being able to slow down time around a horde of enemies as limbs are slowly tearing away and have bullets create walls reminiscent to The Matrix had me voicing my awe. Even though the trickster is built for close quarters, I found myself playing more from afar, utilising snipers and rifles to gun down enemies then teleporting in behind to finish them off with a shotgun, melee attack or my temporal slice.

The Pyromancer definitely felt like a mid range attacker with its powers really set up to send across the battlefield a lot more than the other two classes. It’s a great class to exercise a “one two” approach to combat, utilising your fire powers to flush enemies out and either stop them in their tracks or turn them into exploding bombs and then finishing them off with a few gunshots.

Surprisingly, the Devastator was the class I had the least amount of time with, but the most fun. I’m not normally one to choose a tank type, as I find that style play in other RPG and Sci-Fi shooters a bit slow and boring. But the Devastator in Outriders was nothing like that. If you are like me and love a bit of fast pace, running and gunning when it comes to shooters then the Devastator is the power type for you. Equipping myself with a shotgun and SMG loadout, I would effortlessly preform the very useful leaping attack into battle and devastate the arena, smash some enemies, deflect bullets and leap off to the next group of foes. The Devastator is the class I felt the powers worked very cohesively and I would find myself chaining a lot more power attacks together rather then using each in the right circumstances like the other two classes.

The other aspect to the classes, which once again brought to the forefront the RPG element of the game, was that each class had a different way in which they’d regenerate health (for example, the Devastator would regenerate health with each kill) – and with each class I found myself needing to reference back to what I needed to be doing in order to gain some health back – especially when waves and waves of enemies were continuously coming at me. It was a nice touch to the RPG core in needing to really understand the character type I was using.

YOUR LIFE AS AN OUTRIDER

Story and powers aside, with an RPG generally comes more customisation options, side quests, world design and upgrades; and Outriders brings all this and a little bit more. The Outriders world is built around hubs, which in my gameplay session I only experienced one. It had the “safe zone/HQ” area where you can buy weapons and armour from merchants, interact with other players in your squad (whether you can interact with others online outside your squad in these places I am unsure of yet) and receive various quests and main missions from the residents and commanders of the location. As I ventured out into the barren wasteland of the Enoch valley, along the way I would encounter checkpoints and triumphantly place a banner down allowing me to then travel between the checkpoints I had found and the safe zone, making traversing in these hubs much easier.

The other means of traversing, not in the hubs but the wider Enoch world in-between the hubs (which unfortunately I did not get to experience) is by the way of a your Outrider vehicle. In a trailer I watched during the presentation, these futuristic half tank, half RV type vehicles were showcased as mobile hubs, a way to customise your character, switch out loot as well as the way in which to join up with squad mates. And of course they are also customisable with cosmetic and other upgrades. Not delving into too much more about these vehicles, People Can Fly only briefly spoke about these vehicles being your home between areas and that squads would have the ability to create convoys with each of their vehicles to travel to their next destination.

With that, obviously comes questions about the level and world design of Outriders, is this open-world? Sadly no. In an open Q&A with the development team, the level design was not intended to be open-world, somewhat more constricted with different paths you can take to get to your final destination. I also felt the levels design to not restrict you to one way of playing. There was plenty of cover, plenty of different heights but also plenty of open spaces, which meant in times I wanted to be tactical and use cover to take down enemies and plan my approach, I could. If I wanted to just run around shooting and dodging or make camp in a higher structure or peak, I could do that too. How the world design is built in the outer-hub areas is yet to be fully seen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a similar approach to Outriders in the way the Gears 5 exploration areas were constructed.

Another big factor to Outriders is the emphasis on the dark, twisted world and characters it outlines. As I only got to experience the very start of the game, and unfortunately was not given the opportunity to play or see any late game, so it’s hard to say exactly how dark and twisted things are meant to be. It’s clearly a selling point of the game, being the way in which it’s described at every given chance, but I do wish Square Enix and People Can Fly gave us a little taste. The closest thing I saw were promotional artworks and character mockups around the event space, which showed off the three character classes in very cool, very sci-fi, fantasy dark twisted armour. It was briefly mentioned during the presentation that the gear sets and weapons become much more beautifully twisted, combining the human weapon/armour look with the elemental, almost cursed nature of Enoch and The Anomaly.

I’m sad no hands on experience allowed for a quick taste of what this really meant, as I can see how much more brutal, savage and violently relentless time on Enoch would become seeing your character slowly grow less human like, yet hell belt on saving humanity – which ironically, in the end you may be too far gone from to be welcomed back. Rest assured there seems to be plenty of cool weapons, loot and armour to turn your character into one badass Outrider.

 Alongside weapons, loot and armour to upgrade your character stats and game style, your hero tree or skill tree is the final piece of the puzzle to character customisation. As with any skill tree mechanic, you utilise skill points to unlock certain attributes in three areas unique to your character class. These class attributes, such as “Increase your Anomaly power bonus by 6%”, are branched and structured in a way which gives an array of ways and combinations to upgrading and building out your character allowing for many different styles of play and character builds come replay. It is also the RPG element that will differentiate two of the same classes playing together. 

EARLY THOUGHTS ON OUTRIDERS

In terms of a first real look into what Outriders is all about, I think this game has potential to be a great next gen launch title and do this genre justice. I say that cautiously though, mainly because of how many times we’ve been burned before with hyped promos and “game changing” features, however as I mentioned we only got a first 3 or so hour taste of the game with People Can Fly stating a 30-40 hour playthrough depending on your need to complete side quests and explore.

I feel as though this is a game that will increase in enjoyability tenfold the more you play and once the underlining story and character upgrades start rolling out. However I can say those first 3 hours were definitely RPG shooter fun. Out of all the sci-fi RPG shooters to grace us over the current gen, Outriders feels the most polished and the best parts of all those games.

The story and themes are intriguing and engaging (I want to know what the hell is going on and what will become of my Outrider), the gameplay is action packed, brutal, fun and backdropped by such a cruel world that only heightens that violent, powerful brutality of the Altered. The character class and powers aren’t just cool sci-fi/fantasy gimmicks, but actually make sense to play styles.

With Outriders being a next gen launch title, it’s definitely one to keep an eye on and have on your day one list. I’m extremely keen to see what comes of this game over the coming months.

The Author travelled to Poland as a guest of Square Enix for an early look at Outriders

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The Division 2’s first major expansion, Warlords of New York will be coming out on March 3rd. Ahead of the game’s release, we got to go hands-on and chat to Associate Creative Director, Yannick Bancherau, who revealed how the content strategy will change going forward and how they plan on continuing to support the game.

By far the biggest introduction from the expansion comes in the form of a seasonal endgame. Warlords of New York’s Seasons will will deliver the ongoing support to The Division 2 in the form of the iconic seasonal/battle pass mechanic we’ve come to know from the shooter genre that’s driven by community feedback and desires,

“Seasons is not just for us in terms of we’re creating mini campaigns and that’s it but also a mindset for us in terms of development that’s really a change where we’re going from one season to the next and trying to have something that’s a bit more agile so we can react to community feedback and go one way or another depending where the community wants us to go, so we’re really going to go one step at a time and go for as long as the players want us to keep going.” said Bancherau

Seasons will give players plenty to do, unlock and achieve with modes like Manhunt, where every season will introduce a new threat and require players to take them down, continuing and connecting to the narrative of The Division 2. Others to mention are Global Events with world and game changing modifiers, Leagues which will have you going head to head to see who comes out on top, as well as the 2nd Raid to hit the game – The Foundry, which will push players towards the ultimate showcase of teamwork. The Foundry will be accessible through levels 30 – 40 and available to players Autumn 2020.

As like any game you’ve seen with seasonal and battle pass elements, The Division 2 will allow players to level up over the 3 month period, unlocking rewards such as skill mods, gear and cosmetics as well as give the option to purchase a battle pass for even more unlockables.

The post The Division 2 Will Be Supported With Seasonal Content For As Long As Players Want It appeared first on Press Start.

Over February and March, Ubisoft is upping the ante and bringing a whole new load of content to The Division 2. From game changing improvements, narrative expansions to seasonal end game updates, new players and fans of the franchise have much to look forward to in the world of The Division 2.

To kick things off, Episode 3 marks the end of The Division 2’s first year lineup when it releases on February 19th 2020 (early access players can jump in today). Episode brings players back to the streets of New York, in particular Coney Island. It is the mission of the Division agents to find and rescue the virologist, Vitaly Tchernenko, who is key in mass producing a cure and is being held captive on Coney Island by the elusive Black Tusk. If that doesn’t sound exciting enough, the narrative in Episode 3 acts as a prologue and an opening to The Division 2’s first massive expansion, Warlords of New York.

Warlords of New York is by far the biggest expansion The Division 2 has had to date. Not only is it expanding on the storylines of both The Division and The Division 2, but Ubisoft has delved deep into a RPG overhaul and major gameplay changes to aspects of the game players should get excited about.

Warlords of New York has players returning to a hurricane ravaged New York City, bringing familiarity and nostalgia to the setting, but at the same time changing up the sights and landmarks for a fresher feel. Yannick Banchereau, Associate Creative Director, mentioned

“Coming back to New York was something that was always on the back of the teams mind, if we had the chance it would be great to go back to New York with a new weather setting after the summer and with the hurricane and really transform New York so it’s not exactly the same to what you’ve seen in The Division 1 it’s something different, but still our roots.” said Bancherau

Warlords of New York will see you roaming Lower Manhattan in well known area such as Wall Street and China Town in brand new areas of the map. The overall narrative sees Division agents responding to a distress call about a biological disturbance of unknown origins and inevitably going head to head with fan favourite rogue agent, Aaron Keener, and his 4 rogue agent lieutenants,

“From our community, from our players there’s a real fandom in the lore (of NYC) and especially the characters, like Aaron Keener, these are very dear characters to our players, so (returning) was always something we wanted to do.” said Bancherau

Other characters from the original game will also be making a comeback as well as upgraded and revamped enemies such as The Cleaners and Rikers. New campaign mechanics have been added too, such as the ability to play the main campaign how ever you want, however you want. Meaning you are able to track down whichever rogue lieutenant you’d like whenever you’d like in the overall search for Aaron Keener. This particular new addition is even more rewarding knowing that each rogue lieutenant is the owner of a brand new skill – these skills are Decoy, Sticky Bomb Launcher, Shock Trap and Fire Brand. Once each leitenant is defeated, you get to pry that new skill right from their cold, dead hands. The side missions are also a lot more connected to the main missions, acting as part of players’ investigation into the location of Aaron Keener and is ruthless plans. There will be 5 brand new missions in total each ending in an epic boss encounter, 8 side missions and 8 control points.

The RPG elements of the game is another area the team has spent time improving. Gear and attributes have been streamlined and are now a lot more easy to read and understand as well as the focus on “exciting” loot making every piece of loot useful in some way, shape or form. Additions like diversity in skill builds and a brand new endgame progression system where you’ll unlock some cool bragging rights and cosmetics (on top of all the new exotics and gear sets) are just more pieces of this expansion to call in the squad over.

Another cool overhaul to gameplay is within the Dark Zone, making it more intuitive than ever before and having more of a focus on PvP interaction. Warlords of New York adds the encouragement of positive player interaction into the Dark Zone. Meaning you will be rewarded for helping other players extract, protecting each other from rogue agents and a whole lot more, giving a fresh take and probably an even more intense experience within the Dark Zone now moral aligning is truly in affect.

By far the biggest introduction from the expansion comes in the form of a seasonal endgame. Warlords of New York’s Seasons will will deliver the ongoing support to The Division 2 in the form of the iconic seasonal/battle pass mechanic we’ve come to know from the shooter genre that’s driven by community feedback and desires.

“Seasons is not just for us in terms of we’re creating mini campaigns and that’s it but also a mindset for us in terms of development that’s really a change where we’re going from one season to the next and trying to have something that’s a bit more agile so we can react to community feedback and go one way or another depending where the community wants us to go, so we’re really going to go one step at a time and go for as long as the players want us to keep going.” said Bancherau

Seasons will give players plenty to do, unlock and achieve with modes like Manhunt, where every season will introduce a new threat and require players to take them down, continuing and connecting to the narrative of The Division 2. Others to mention are Global Events with world and game changing modifiers, Leagues which will have you going head to head to see who comes out on top, as well as the 2nd Raid to hit the game – The Foundry, which will push players towards the ultimate showcase of teamwork. The Foundry will be accessible through levels 30 – 40 and available to players Autumn 2020.

As like any game you’ve seen with seasonal and battle pass elements, The Division 2 will allow players to level up over the 3 month period, unlocking rewards such as skill mods, gear and cosmetics as well as give the option to purchase a battle pass for even more unlockables.

The Division 2: Warlords of New York will be available on March 3rd. The author of this article traveled to Sweden as a guest of Ubisoft to get an early look at the upcoming expansion.

The post The Division 2: Warlords Of New York Preview – Back To New York We Go appeared first on Press Start.

Over February and March, Ubisoft is upping the ante and bringing a whole new load of content to The Division 2. From game changing improvements, narrative expansions to seasonal end game updates, new players and fans of the franchise have much to look forward to in the world of The Division 2.

Warlords of New York is by far the biggest expansion The Division 2 has had to date. Not only is it expanding on the storylines of both The Division and The Division 2, but Ubisoft has delved deep into a RPG overhaul and major gameplay changes to aspects of the game players should get excited about.

The post Watch Us Play The Division 2’s Warlords Of New York Expansion appeared first on Press Start.

After attending a preview event for Square Enix’s upcoming co-op shooter, Outriders (which we’ll have a bunch of coverage out for soon), we were treated to a studio tour of CD Projekt Red, the studio behind the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher franchise.

Upon entering their offices, you can find the Collector’s Edition statues for both The Witcher III and Cyberpunk 2077 (in huge forms). The Cyberpunk 2077 statue is incredibly detailed and entirely 3D printed. Interestingly enough, if you’re lucky enough and happen to be in Poland, you can head into their offices and see these for yourself.

As we walked through the studio, each boardroom is themed from a part of CD Projekt Red’s history. So for instance, you have a Cyberpunk themed one (which you can see below), there’s a Gwent one, one for The Witcher and an insane archive room where they’ve got all of the board game equivalents and collectives for the games that they have created.

There’s magazine walls for each of their games, so you’ve got walls dedicated to The Witcher 1 and 2 (including the Playboy cover, where the first time a CGI character was an official playmate), The Witcher 3 magazine wall and a Cyberpunk magazine wall.

The toilets have Ciri and Geralt signage, which was cool to see (and a nice touch to their most popular characters) and there’s GOG and The Witcher art work all over the wall.

We got a brief look at the Cyberpunk development area, where there were neon signs and cool Cyberpunk areas, which is what you’d expect. What is immensely evident, is just how much these studios care about the game worlds that they have created. The little details that you’ll find in their games are littered throughout the office.

Enjoy some of the 50+ photos that we took below. It doesn’t quite deliver the feeling of being inside one of the most popular studios, but hopefully there’s a few little cool tidbits that you can take from it.

The post We Went Inside The Cyberpunk 2077/The Witcher Game Studio And It Did Not Disappoint appeared first on Press Start.

It feels like a no brainer to have a decent headphone and mic these days, but where do you even start? There are a plethora of brands out there offering the latest features, ultimate comfort, clear communication quality and whatever else they can fit over your ears, but which one is the right one?

This has been the question I’ve been toying with over the last few months, trying to round out my setup with the perfect set of headphones. I’ve tried different styles and setups in the past from USB mic and headphone combos to standard console branded headsets – but there’s always been something lacking, whether that’s mic quality, discomfort or time it takes to actually setup and get going.

So here I am on a journey to find the perfect gaming headset for my setup and I’m starting with Turtle Beach’s Stealth 600. Turtle Beach are a reputable brand, favoured by many gamers, streamers and pros alike and who, in my experience, have had some very good sounding headphones in the past. So the 600’s felt like a good place to start being one of Turtle Beach’s entry level headsets.

SETUP

The 600’s have a super simple setup – plug in the usb transmitter into your PS4 and turn on the headphones. Done. Literally that’s it. They are already paired out of the box, so you will be good to drop with the squad before you even ready up. There has been a couple of times where I’ve turned on my Playstation and the headset and it hasn’t seemed to pair with the transmitter properly, but it’s been a quick “turn off and on” again fix via the headset.

COMFORT

The 600’s have pull down adjustability and a mesh cushioning around each ear as well as across the head rail, all of which give solid comfort around your head. Even after extensive gaming sessions, there was no feeling of sore ears or a sore head as with other headsets I’ve tried in the past and the 90 degree turning ability from the Left and Right ears made it very easy to rest the 600’s across the shoulders when taking a quick break. There is a possibility of the mesh lining to potentially cause some friction marks around the ears due to its texture and as the headset does wriggle a little with excessive head movement. But that is very dependent on how much head thrashing you do whilst gaming.

SOUND

The first big difference I noticed with the 600’s was the sound quality. Previously I had been rocking a pair of headphones which I still think have pretty decent sound, but these Turtle Beach’s changed my gaming life. TLDR: the 600’s sound took me straight to #1 position on match leaderboards in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Technically the 600’s have 6 different sound presets available:

• 4 EQ Presets – Signature Sound, Bass Boost, Bass + Treble Boost, Vocal Boost
• Superhuman Hearing
• Virtual Surround Sound

The 4 EQ presets pretty much do exactly what they are labelled as, no surprises there. Superhuman hearing is a feature a couple people had mentioned to me about the headphones, but I found that if anything it was a fancy name to a gain boost preset. Essentially it’s advertised to “pinpoint quiet audio cues like enemy footsteps and weapon reloads” which absolutely it does, but that’s because it’s your “Turn it to 11!” notch. Where my ears found the most pleasure and the preset that up my gameplay 10x was the virtual surround sound. Instantly I went from thinking I was hearing where enemies were pretty well to absolute god mode and “that person you yell at in a match because there is absolutely no way they could have known you where there” – but here’s the secret, they do know your there because VIRTUAL SURROUND SOUND.

I was blown away by how accurately the sound this entry level headset pumps out could pinpoint enemy movement. Literally game changing!

MIC/COMMUNICATION

The mic and communication quality of my setup has always been a high priority, which is probably why Virtual Surround Sound blew me away so much. As I play quite a bit with my fellow Press Start team members, as well as record and make content for the socials, the mic quality has always needed to be clear, but also have a solid balance with gameplay audio. And this is probably where my biggest gripe comes from with this headset.

Firstly, what it does well. The 600’s have a flip to activate microphone, meaning you flip it down to turn on and flip it back up to mute. I found this feature very useful and easy when playing, as in the past I’ve had either a button on the back of an ear, which was often hard to find, or with a USB mic, I would have to jump into the group chat and actually turn my mic level off. It also has two very easy to find and use dials at the back of the left ear – one for overall volume and one for your microphone volume (how much you can hear yourself through your mic). The microphone quality is also nice and clear in comparison to other headsets at the same pricing. I did a little test with my previous headset (similar pricing) and the 600’s – the old headset mic sounds like I’m talking with my head inside a toilet, muffled but weirdly echo-y at the same time; the 600’s mic is crystal clear, still a little echo due to the room I was in, but it actually sounded like I was in a normal room, not down a toilet.

However – and this is a point which had the Press Start team in a hot debate for several hours – where the audio and mic combination of Turtle Beach’s Stealth 600’s let it down is in the fact that there is no seperate dial for voice chat volume. Which means if you have a party chat happening with some very vocal players, you’ll either need to tell them to turn down their mic or just suffer the ear bleeding screams of them dying, winning, taking revenge. The volume dial on the headset dials up or down the overall volume, meaning on playstation as either just chat audio or all audio is sent through headphones, when you turn up the volume you turn up both gameplay and chat volume.

Yes, party chat as a “Non-Party Audio to Party Audio” slider – but come on, that thing really does not do anything. The only thing this headset is missing is just one dial – Gameplay/Chat Balance. Other headsets in its price bracket have this dial or button on them, but Turtle Beach has decided to forgo it on the 600’s. It seems like a weird choice to me to put in a Microphone Volume dial instead of a Gameplay/Chat Balance dial, as how much I can hear myself through the mic is something I can definitely live without over a well balanced chat and gameplay setup. At first I thought I just hadn’t set it up right, but upon trolling the internet it does indeed seem like my worst fears were correct.

Don’t get me wrong, there are work-arounds, like asking your squad mates to turn down their mic, or using in-game chat and features like in Modern Warfare where you can adjust the chat volume parameters. But having this easily accessible on the back of my ear which I am in full control over is just hard not to live without (especially after having a headset which could do this, but lacked in other areas).

The post Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Headset Review – A Good Starting Point appeared first on Press Start.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is without doubt one of the most highly anticipated (and important) Star Wars games that has ever released. Earlier this week, I got a significant amount of hands-on time with the game as well as the opportunity to sit down with Respawn Producer, Kasumi Shishido and Writer, Megan Fausti. 

I definitely came away with the sense that Jedi: Fallen Order is the Action/Adventure game that Star Wars fans and gamers alike have been waiting for. The depth in combat, customisation and gameplay mechanics that feel authentic to the Star Wars universe and naturally fit into the game are all great. The story also looks set to be great, with the taste that I got being enough to hook me in.

Jedi: Fallen Order takes place between the events of the animated series, Clone Wars and Rebels and before Episode 4: A New Hope. Kasumi spoke about why and how they went about creating the lead character, Cal Kestis. 

“We didn’t want to have a protagonist that read as a Skywalker. You can’t really be a Skywalker type in this era. So we wanted to explore what it was like to be someone who lived through a massacre coming into their own.” said Kasumi.

The game sets you up as not starting as a Jedi. You begin playing as someone who knows the ways of the force, but due to the events of Order 66, distance yourself from it.

“Your journey involves trying to restore the Order and finding your way as a Jedi again. You start as more of a Padawan – not really knowing much about the force and with the help of your companions, you learn different abilities and skills, same with lightsaber combat.” said Kasumi. 

The combat in Jedi Fallen Order is highly enjoyable and challenging and not a button bashing frenzy at all. In fact, I’d say it’s quite the opposite. Combat is highly strategic and it almost punishes you for even trying to go at it in a button bashing way. There were some concerns with how deep the combat would be, as gameplay trailers obviously make it look a little easy/shallow, but my experience differed greatly from this. 

Every enemy encounter had me thinking about my approach and made me think about prioritising which enemies to take down or distract first. The controls accessible during the sessions were: X for Quick Attack with your lightsaber, Y for Strong Attacks which preformed strong lightsaber attacks by channeling the force, A to Jump, LB to Block, RB to preform Force Slow (as seen in gameplay trailers), and RT to preform Force Push (which I unlocked later in the play through). Blocking and dodging attacks are crucial to landing hits at the right time and staying alive. Tapping Block at the right time would deflect laser fire back at enemies, whilst holding it would cause general deflection, however you have block stamina, so you can’t just stand there and continue blocking machine gunner fire or Stormtrooper melees.

The combat mechanics drives you to consistently analyse your enemies, time your hits right and play both offensively and defensively to take down your opponents in true Jedi fashion. In a nut shell, this is the first Star Wars game, where I actually didn’t feel like some OP lightsaber wielder slashing through waves of enemies, I felt like a true Jedi – thoughtful, purposeful and one with the force. This is important, as obviously as a Jedi, you should feel significantly powerful, but not to the point of being overpowered. 

One of the things that surprised me most is not only is the game Souls like in combat, there’s actually a mechanic that Souls fans will be familiar with. Meditation locations are where you bank your skill points. You can upgrade skills and rest to restore health and stim packs. However, you’ll be punished for making poor combat decisions, in a risk/reward scenario. If you die, you’ll lose all your gained XP and you’ll only get it back by damaging the enemy that killed you. So, finding meditation locations during exploration and before tackling harder enemies is crucial as to not risk losing everything you’ve earned to that point. Resting at meditation locations to restore health will also respawn enemies you’ve defeated. The three branches of the skill tree are Force, Lightsaber and Survival, which all have their specific uses throughout combat.

Exploration is an obvious key element to this game. The planet I played on (Zeffo) was huge. I played for about three hours  and by the end of the objective I was playing, I had only completed 30% of the map – and I explored a lot. There’s many places to explore on the map, but is also dependant on what skills you’ve unlocked. Once you’ve unlocked skills, you can go back and explore previously unreachable areas. This should hopefully had a bit of length to the gameplay and will force you to explore every nook and cranny of every map before your play through is complete. 

Another key aspect to gameplay is BD1. As your companion, friend and buddy (as well as the quirky droid personality Star Wars fans know and love), BD1 plays a big role in the game progression as Kasumi states:

“Traversal is a big part of this game and with upgrades he’ll (BD1) help you do so. Also other areas like healing, BD1 is the one that heals you with stim packs out of his head as well as there being certain points where he’ll guide you through exploration or things of interest.”

BD1 will also give you access to your Holomap which is your ultimate guide to the areas you’ve explored and are yet to explore. There are no prompts or objective markers on screen to direct you to your objective, so I found myself continually referring to the Holomap to see where I’d been and where I needed to go.

The game refrained from holding my hand too much. This added to the feeling of finding my own within the force and combat and discovering the planet and creating that challenging nature of the game. But the great news is that the difficulty is changeable right from the menu at any time. There were 4 difficulty modes I could see, with three stat bars changing (parry timing, incoming damage and enemy aggression):

• Story Mode (PT: 100% | ID: est. 10% | EA: est. 10%)
• Jedi Knight (PT: 75% | ID: 25% | EA: 30%)
• Jedi Master (PT 50% | ID: 50% | EA: 50%)
• Jedi Grand Master (PT: 10% | ID: 100% | EA: 100%)

During my play through I had the difficulty set to Jedi Knight, and I died a few times during combat, so for context I’d say Jedi Knight is around the intermediate level with Grand Master being your Super Hard.

There’s a lot of customisation in the game, especially with the lightsaber.

“There’s a lot that you can customise – most exciting part of it is the lightsaber customisation. There’s an experience at Disneyland that we took inspiration from where you can build and customise your own lightsaber and you can do that on a work bench in the game and you get to experience Cal how he starts as a ship yard worker with his handyman work. We wanted players to have the freedom to customise, things like their ponchos, base outfits so that you can be the Cal you really want to.” said Kasumi. 

From what I could see in the menu and via one of these work benches, there were 5 different areas of customisation in the play through – Cal’s Base Outfit, Cal’s Ponchos, BD1’s cosmetic look, the Mantis’s (your ship) cosmetic look and your lightsaber. The lightsaber customisation then broke down even further with the ability to change the colour of your saber, and then the styles of your emitter, switch, sleeve and material it was all made from – like Durasteel and Copper, two I had access to during the play through. Being able to customise your lightsaber to this extent was amazing and had me looking forward to finding a workbench whilst exploring or when I got back to the ship to try out the new parts I had found throughout the planet.

The next month can’t go by soon enough. My time with Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order has made me more excited for the game that even I anticipated. Respawn is one of the marquee studios at the moment and continue to keep nailing it out of the park. Everything from the graphics, to the story, to the combat to the customisation look to make this a Star Wars game that everyone can get excited about. Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is shaping up to not be only the best Star Wars game that EA has created, but potentially one of the best Star Wars games that we’ve ever seen.

THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE FLEW TO LA TO GET HANDS-ON WITH STAR WARS: JEDI FALLEN ORDER AS A GUEST OF EA.

The post Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order Hands-On Preview – Living Up To Expectations appeared first on Press Start.

Gears 5 is set to be the biggest and best Gears Of War game yet. It’s no secret that it’s packed with a tonne of returning and new game modes. Not only did I go hands on with the campaign (which you can read right here), I got to spend a bunch of time with Horde mode. 

As returning players may be aware, Horde is an epic endurance survival mode of 50 waves of enemies. After every 10 waves a boss is needed to be defeated and as you progress to each boss stage something known as ‘poison’ is added to really shake things up. Poison are traits added to the enemies to make them more difficult to defeat, such as extra health or increased damage.

In the Horde lobby menu the tweaks and changes are immediately visible. Firstly, multiplayer characters are now known as heroes and are differentiated by abilities rather than a weapons based split like in previous instalments. Similar to other online multiplayers such as Apex Legends, the Gears 5 characters have a passive and an ultimate ability with the ultimate ability really defining the reasons to pick who to play as.

Below is a quick run down of play style and ultimate abilities I could see from each of the 9 available characters:

• Kait – Scout – Ultimate: Camouflage (Become invisible to enemies. Can melee whilst cloaked).
• Del – Engineer – Ultimate: Reinforce (Del is the only character that has full access to build all defensives).
• JD – Offence – Ultimate: Artillery Strike (Air Strike area of the map).
• Marcus – Tank – Ultimate: Living Legend (Automatically hit headshots).
• Fahz – Sniper – Ultimate: Xray (Can see and shoot through walls).
• Jack – Support – Ultimate: Hijack (Takes control of enemies).
• Emile-a239 (Halo Reach DLC) – Ultimate: Drop Shield (Iconic Halo Drop Shields for team cover).
• Kat-b320 (Halo Reach DLC)- Ultimate: Hologram (Hologram of player continues to run forward and distract enemies).
• Sarah Connor (Terminator DLC) – Ultimate: Heavy Hitter (ballistics weapons knock back and stun enemies).

I decided to play as new character, Fahz (equipped with a Markza MK I, Longshot Sniper Rilfe, Bolta Pistol and his X-Ray ultimate). At first it was fairly easy to churn through the incoming waves of locust and evil robot enemies – gradually collecting ‘power’ which is needed to purchase defensives (like turrets and spike barriers), upgrade Fahz in 4 different fields (Critical Damage, Ammo Capacity, Precision Weapons, Feedback Boost), or we could deposit the power we collected individually into the fabricator for a group pool of funds.

The first 20 waves felt controllable, and a good pace to get used to the chaos, work out the best way to manage ammo and work together to collect power and create the right defences. Once it hit wave 25 though, there was a definite increase to difficulty, chaos and enemy numbers (and a lot more screaming and shouting through headsets). From what I experienced, the multiplayer modes like Horde are definitely game modes you’ll want to play with regular squad mates as communication and strategy are key to getting through all 50 waves. My team didn’t do too bad at all, but it definitely took the first 20 waves to work out each other’s play styles and communication. Deciding when to spend power is key to making sure the right players and defences are in place and upgraded at the right wave number. We made it through about 35 waves in total, which took around hour and a half, so be ready to buckle in for the long haul when deciding to go the full 50.

Apart from playing the multiplayer modes with the same squad mates for strategy, The Coalition announced that Gears 5 would also be introducing a mechanic called Gear Allies – where players will be rewarded for playing with the same people time and time again. Rewards may vary for players but they will come in the form of benefits such as 5% extra experience earned during play for example. After launch, players will also receive access to a free battle pass like system The Coalition is calling ‘Tour of Duty’.

Tour of Duty will bring elements like challenges for players to complete during their online play which will help unlock rewards like the new card system (bonus traits to add to your character such as 10% damage increase for example). Not only this but each tour will bring new rewards, maps, characters, banners and more. The Coalition stated during the event that they are wanting the multiplayer and online experience to be accessible by all players, so there will be no loot box mechanics and tour of duty unlockables will be able to be earned as well as purchased to cater for players who love the grind or just want the latest elements straight away – this includes hero characters too.

Gears 5’s Horde and intended multiplayer will undoubtedly become one of Xbox’s flagship experiences for gamers, especially with the exposure and accessibility via Game Pass. It seems The Coalition has kept their ears to the ground and have created something a lot fans and players have been waiting for, not just within the Gears series, but across multiplayer and online experiences in general. I’m excited to see how it all continues come launch day.

The post Gears 5’s Horde Mode Improves On A Series Favourite appeared first on Press Start.

If you’ve been missing that little bit of gory, chainsaw impaling, bullet flying action in your life, wait no more. Gears of War is back with Gears 5 and after getting some hands-on with the game, I can say it’s just as brutal as ever. Gears of War is definitely one of Xbox’s most defining franchises and it’s safe to say that the team at The Coalition would be feeling incredibly proud of what they’ve achieved with the game. It feels like the biggest and most expansive Gears game yet, with new ways to play as well as the modes that you know and love. 

Gears 5 is all about Kait and follows on from where we left off at the end of Gears 4. I was dropped into Act II (which takes place four months after the events of Gears 4). The demo started with Kait, Del, JD and Jack (our support both) all exploring the outsider township.  The town felt big, but not overwhelming, with many little buildings and places along the way to my first objective that encouraged me to look around for collectibles and components (used for unlockables). As I walked around the town, I listened in to the townspeople’s conversations; some discussing local news, bits and pieces that felt like throwbacks to previous instalments and/or events prior to this part of the game, and their not-to-happy feelings towards the COG entering the town. This area felt inviting – I wanted to explore, I wanted to search every nook and listen in to find out more about what was happening around here.

I finally reached my objective and spoke to the head honcho of the town, Oscar, Kait’s Uncle. After a back and forth from Kait and Oscar about fighting the enemy together and Kait not wanting to lose him to the Locust like she did her mother, an explosion goes off in the distance. It was time for some action.

Things heated up quickly, and as you’d expect, I was straight into some combat. I was playing on Experienced, which was challenging, but didn’t feel cheap. Wave after wave of varying Locust hit the town hard and it was a great opportunity to try out different weapon load outs (like the ever popular Gnasher shotgun, the new Lancer GL, Markza MK I and Longshot sniper rifle) and new combat mechanics like Jack, which I’ll delve into a little later.

After many exploded enemy heads, and a couple of shameful deaths, I got a glimpse of what the element driving the Gears 5 story was – and it was indeed all about Kait and more importantly her family (which I’ll let you experience for yourself). It’s very clear at this point that the Gears 5 story will circle around Kait’s background and what it means for the world of Gears. It’s a story which I felt had this very well balanced structure to it – I empathised with Kait, felt connected to her through the story that was unravelling and the gameplay I was experiencing, but I didn’t feel like it was just a standalone Kait story. It was still very much a GoW storyline and supporting characters like Del and even JD still felt like they were a big part of it. In other words, I still felt like a team that was on a journey together.

Only only are the story and protagonist a change up from other games in the series, there’s also a number of other ways to play that keep the game feeling fresh.

First let’s talk about Jack, the squad’s support bot, and someone on the team I was very glad was there to help out in the gun fights. Jack has been given RPG -like abilities which helped create different play styles for myself as Kait during the campaign. I could choose to equip and upgrade different weapons and tactics for Jack via three different categories: assault, support and passive. There’s 11 abilities to unlock in total, with each ability having three upgrades available to unlock through spending components found out in the world and a fourth ‘ultimate ability’ unlocked by completing side missions.

I felt in control of my play style the whole time, as these abilities for Jack were not in the form of an upgrade tree, but much more reminiscent of the way The Division 2’s skills system worked, in that I could choose what I wanted to unlock, when I wanted to and could easily switch between those unlockables during combat simply by holding the left bumper and tapping the directionals.

With Jack, it meant I didn’t need to rely on just running and gunning it, I could be tactical with calling in flash bangs or stealthy by having Jack cloak the team or get a much needed health boost when things got real hectic. These new combat abilities partnered with Gear 5’s new player initiated combat system meant I had time in some situations to scout out and plan how to attack, instead of just being rushed by Locust like in previous instalments. Jack is also a playable character. The campaign is 3 player co-op with one of those players being Jack and he’s great way for returning players to invite new players to experience the greatness of Gears of War without the “OMG I’M DYING ALL THE TIME! WHO’S SHOOTING ME FROM WHERE?!” or, for returning players to try something new.

Exploration and discovery is a huge part of how Gears 5  moves the series forward, with numerous points and items to find across the map. From main and side missions, to points of interest (where I found anything from collectibles, ammo and weapons), as well as components to upgrade Jack and Relic weapons. These relics weapons are specifically customised with certain attributes, skins and attachments to add to the gun fight chaos like sniper rifles that shoot two bullets at a time. Some relic weapons are also “easter eggs weapons” which returning players to the series will enjoy uncovering. The greatest and most enjoyable part of the open world nature of Gears 5 was sledding and sledging the terrain in The Skiff.

The Skiff is the ultimate vehicle when it comes to traversing the map. It has somewhat of a metal sleigh contraption for passengers with a wake-boarding/windsail element for steering. It was easily manoeuvrable and took me around different locations in no time at all. The best part about the Skiff was that I could hop on and off it whenever I liked, which greatly added to the exploration and the swaying from just wanting to progress the story. I could be making my way to a side mission, but pass by an abandoned train tunnel that I’d check out first for any spare loot, or be on my way to a main mission, see a old boat house across the frozen lake, which I was sure would have some goodies inside, and quickly pull a Fast and Furious like manoeuvre to divert my path. And yes it did have goodies in the form of a Relic Weapon sniper. Obviously with things like weapons to find out in the world, especially relics, the question that comes to mind is how do you choose what to keep on your back or throw away? This is where the skiff adds to more than just traversal.

At the front of the skiff, on each side, is a weapons locker that allowed me to stow two weapons (one on each side) for combat later. I really appreciated the weapon locker mechanic, but more specifically that it was with you on the skiff and not in some main or checkpoint hub. I could have a different load out and play style ready and easily accessible at a whim.

It’s these types of things that will potentially make Gears 5 the best one yet. Jack, the skiff and the open world elements are great, but things like the environmental changes in the terrain (I played a snowy environment in Act II and a dessert terrain in Act III) and how there’s changes within each of those that had me seeing things differently. Even the addition of the accessibility features within the menu that helps open up the series to even more people as well as cater for different preferences in things like subtitle sizes, colour blind controls and the ability to turn off things like the gore or camera shakes.

The Coalition has taken the approachability focus as far and wide as they can with a total revamp of their difficulty system too, which no longer places players into buckets of what kind of gamer they are (casual, hardcore etc), but instead with their tenure within the Gears series (beginner, intermediate, experienced etc). They’ve also created a dedicated boot camp mode (which I didn’t have the chance to play) for new players to get focused time to develop and nail all the great gameplay mechanics Gears has to offer, instead of rushed through in-game tutorials.

I really enjoyed my time with Gears 5. The Coalition has done an amazing job in reflecting on what makes Gears of War great as a series, but also in how it needs to progress forward to further its greatness. From what I experienced with the campaign, it is an arch that I think returning and new players alike will be drawn to. There’s so many different things for players to do and I can say with absolute confidence that gamers will spend hours and hours with the huge amount of content that Gears 5 has to offer.

JAKE FLEW TO THE COALITION STUDIOS IN VANCOUVER TO GET AN EARLY LOOK AT GEARS 5. FLIGHTS AND ACCOMODATION WERE PROVIDED BY MICROSOFT. GEARS 5 RELEASES ON XBOX ONE AND WINDOWS 10 ON SEPTEMBER 5TH.

The post Gears 5 Campaign Hands-On Preview – Bigger And Better appeared first on Press Start.

Last week, I had the pleasure of heading to the Forza Horizon 4 Drive-in Cinema. Not only was it a fantastic event, I also got the opportunity to play the latest build of Forza Horizon 4, experiencing a more in-depth look at the game then what we’d previously been shown before.

I am not the biggest racing guy, however what I got to experience of Forza Horizon 4 has definitely given me some rev-head goosebumps and I’m keen to buckle-up and jump back in upon release.

In saying that, here’s the five most exciting things that I came away with after playing.

WINTER IS COMING…AND ALSO SUMMER, AUTUMN & SPRING

Forza Horizon 4’s big game changer and, of course, the opening act for the hands-on experience, was its dynamic seasons. Snowing tracks, muddy valleys in the dark and sun blaring straights are all set to change not only the way the game looks and feels, but how players adapt their skills to cater for the changing conditions. Seasons will also open new routes and events and give a whole load of new fun to the open-world exploration.

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

Great Britain is an amazing location for a driving game. Some might say for its beauty, in my case I’ll say for the sheer fun of the off-road experience. The newest section of the demo gave accessibility to the open-world gameplay, and the moment it was available, I found myself yearning to ditch the track, drive through a stone wall and head full-throttle over the hilly, British countryside. It was in this first few minutes of the game that really perked my interest in what Forza Horizon 4 had to offer. The feeling of freedom in how you explore the huge world was strangely exhilarating (I mean it’s not like open-world gameplay is new). I guess the choice of executing a route to the next mission or race either with precision driving or totally going off the rails, destroying walls, my car and maybe even a couple of sheep along the way, is what I’ve been waiting for in a racing game.

IT’S B-E-A-UTIFUL

I feel it’s a bit of a cop-out – as who really cares that much these days about graphics (queue heated debate) – but one of the things that impressed me the most was just how pretty and vibrant everything looked. The gameplay I experienced was set around the Forza Festival  (the main hub) and the colours and overall vibe of this setting were rich and vibrant. It had the true feel and look of a summer festival and would without a doubt be one of the first games I’ve played where I would have happily just sat, cranked the in-game radio and experienced my surroundings. My infatuation with Forza’s beauty extended even more when driving through the valleys and plains surrounding the festival and literally forgetting I was playing a game. The detail in the world design is most impressive.

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE CARS… HAT OR NO HAT?

I almost didn’t give myself enough time to enjoy actually driving due to the fact that the character customisation in Forza Horizon 4 is HUGE. After getting through the dynamic season showcase, I was immediately invited to tune my look. Honestly, I say HUGE in caps lock, but it still doesn’t properly represent the level of detail you can go into for your character. From shirts, pants, shoes, hats, sunglasses, watches, other accessories, license plates to even more like the Fornite-esque emotes you can equip – because of course nowadays you can’t win without expressing yourself in dance. I can confirm that the first 7 hours of my replay will be dedicated to styling my character right – and learning all the dances moves.

BUT LET’S BE REAL, IT’S KIND OF ALL ABOUT THE CARS

I mean it is a racing game, so of course, something to get hyped for are the cars and just like the character customisation, there is a huge list of cars in the lineup. From off-roaders, luxury, rally, transporters, drifters and family fun combis there is a plethora of good-looking vehicles to acquire, race and call your own. I’m intrigued to see and hear more of what will be available to players as there were nods to other vehicle types during my time with the game – dirtbikes, hovercrafts, planes. We know the team will be introducing cool packs and monthly events like the recently showcased Halo Experience where you can drive a Warthog against Banshees and Pelicans, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some more out of the box vehicles introduced to players.

It could have been the addition of free hotdogs and soft drink, but after my time at the Forza Horizon 4 Drive-In Event, I feel that this is one driving game I would love to spend more time with and experience it in its entirety. To see how the hyped dynamic season system works in the full-fledged open world and with more time to see how it truly impacts your driving does lure me to grab the game at release and spend more time behind the wheel of Xbox’s 2018 champion.

The post The 5 Things I’m Most Excited For After Playing Forza Horizon 4 appeared first on Press Start.

It’s the news pretty much all Kingdom Hearts fans have been waiting to hear during E3 2018, and it looks like it’s a bitter sweet moment. It’s been revealed that Kingdom Hearts 3 will release on January 29th 2019 on Xbox One and Playstation 4.

KINGDOM HEARTS III will be releasing on Xbox One and Playstation 4 on January 29, 2019! #KingdomHearts #KH3 pic.twitter.com/vpcpxbkreX

— KINGDOM HEARTS (@KINGDOMHEARTS) June 10, 2018

The game was originally announced to be released in 2018, however it’s looking like Square is taking that little bit of extra time to polish off what already looks to be a great game. Unfortunately it just means the KH community will have to wait just a little bit longer (which by now they are definitely use to) to finally get their hands on the last instalment to this beloved franchise.

The post Kingdom Hearts 3 Delayed Till Early 2019 appeared first on Press Start.

Melbourne is set to be the home of the biggest esports event in Australia coming September with the inaugural Melbourne Esports Open.

John Eren, Minister for Tourism and Major Events, announced the massive deal today, which is set to attract the world’s best gamers and thousands of visitors from all over the world.

“The Melbourne Esports Open is a massive scalp for Victoria, tapping into one of the world’s most popular sectors of the sports and entertainment industry. We’re turning Melbourne Park into every gamers dream – giant screens, the best talent and latest technology. With millions of gamers both at home and abroad, it’s time to bring all the action and fanfare of esports to our backyard.”    

The event is currently planned to fill the likes of Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and the Melbourne Park Function Centre, with the hopes of 10,000 people gracing the facilities each day. It’s exciting news and a huge step forward for the Australian gaming industry and esports. With event partners like TEG Live and ESL to deliver the event in Melbourne until 2022, the MEO is set to be something big! 

The post Melbourne Is Now The Home Of Esports appeared first on Press Start.

In the lead-up to E3, we’re counting down with our most anticipated titles. You can find out when all the press conferences are taking place in Australian/NZ times HERE.

Kingdom Hearts is a massive Action-RPG developed by Square Enix featuring Disney characters from all walks of life. The series has existed since 2002 and has seen two main entries as well as a bunch of spin offs across Nintendo and PlayStation platforms.

WHEN WAS IT ANNOUNCED?

Kingdom Hearts III was originally announced at PlayStation’s E3 press conference in 2013. It was literally revealed alongside a small teaser that said that the game was in development for PS4 (before being announced that it would come to Xbox One as well). Fans have been waiting for 13 years since Kingdom Hearts 2 but Nomura, the creator of Kingdom Hearts said that he was too busy working on other projects in 2010.

WHERE WILL WE SEE IT?

Square Enix has their own press conference this year (for the first time in many years). It’s almost certain that we’ll see a bunch more of the game at this event, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it at either Sony or Microsoft’s conference as they ramp up to release later this year.

WHEN WILL IT RELEASE?

It’s the question on everyone’s lips. Square Enix has continued to say that it will release in 2018, but fans have waited for this game for the past 13 years and Square has always remained tight lipped about the game since it was first announced. It should definitely release in October/November of this year, but it’s not a game that Square will ship out until they’re 100% sure that it’s ready, so it could potentially slip to Q1 if the game can’t be finished for the holiday.

WHAT DO WE WANT TO SEE?

The biggest question on everyone’s lips is what worlds are we going to see! Fans have been able to get a tease of Disney worlds like Toy Story, Tangled and Hercules featuring in Kingdom Hearts 3, but with the plethora of Disney movies made in the last 13 years since KH2 as well as Disney acquiring massive franchises like Star Wars and Marvel, there really is an “anything is possible” mentality. Imagine the mayhem that will occur if Square features gameplay at E3 of Sora wielding a lightsaber keyblade or Ironman like get-up! With the sheer size in level design showcased at the recent KH event there’s no denying such worlds would work well and look epic if included.

Another point is that KH2.8 added the element of character customisation to gameplay, which only makes sense for Square to add this feature into KH3. The ability to complete challenges or acquire items that lets players customise and personalise Sora with their own style or Disney/Square Enix memorabilia would be a small but nice touch to the gameplay.

And of course we can’t forgot about the 16 year story coming to an end. For such a beloved franchise, they’ve really made fans work to understand and absorb the full story of Kingdom Hearts. With recent editions like UnionX, 2.8 and the Back Cover feature, not to mention the cross-platform spin-offs, it will be nice to see how such an extensive, in-depth and decade-spanning story comes to a close.

The post E3 Countdown: Kingdom Hearts III appeared first on Press Start.

SODIUM SQUAD is a new comedy web series from Brisbane based production company Stranger Films, following a trash-tier team of Overwatch players. Led by Reynolds, their ambitious and scheming captain, the dysfunctional team try to skill up and climb the season rankings.

Joined by a basement-dwelling edgelord, an excitable Twitch streamer, a house-bound gym junkie and an anonymous fifth member that takes role playing a little too seriously, they try every outlandish strategy in the playbook to try to win – but their efforts are perpetually undermined by silly infighting, personality clashes, burnt pizza pockets and terrible internet

After the successful release of their pilot episode ‘Placements’ – they’re now crowdfunding for their first season. If it reaches its goal on Kickstarter they’ll begin production in early 2018.

I watched episode 1 here at the Press Start HQ and this is definitely a series we’ll be keeping our eyes on. In the last few days, it’s received great praise on YouTube and Reddit with 100’s of comments coming through from Overwatch fans and players supporting the series and wanting to see more!

If you’ve ever played a FPS and thought “I’ve got what it takes to go competitive” to then realise “My K/D’s 0.2…it’s still good” this is definitely worth the watch.

You can watch the pilot episode below, as well as checking out their Kickstarter and Facebook page.

The post Check Out This Aussie Overwatch Trash Talking Comedy Series appeared first on Press Start.

After only announcing the new attraction two months ago, Zero Latency is today opening the doors to their new Brisbane, Free-Roam VR Experience. The Brisbane site is the second to open here in Australia (after Melbourne’s launch in 2015) and is the 13th Zero Latency site globally.

Brisbane has the up on Melbourne with the new warehouse boasting an epic-scale space allowing for Australia’s first dual game arena, which means simultaneous groups of up to 8 players each can gear up and jump into different worlds at the same time.

Zero Latency Brisbane will launch with three gaming experiences:

Zombie Survival: Trapped in a zombie apocalypse, with the undead lurking around every corner, survivors must band together to take down wave after wave of zombies and rebuild safety barriers before extraction by the rescue team.

Singularity: Something has gone wrong in a secretive military research space station. While investigating the mystery, teams must battle rogue robots and killer drones through narrow corridors and the zero-gravity environment of space.

Engineerium: This puzzle adventure is set in a fantastical world with flying whales, giant parrots, and colourful creatures. Players challenged to solve physics-based problems as a team to advance along floating platforms high above the exotic planet below.

We were invited to visit Zero Latency Brisbane earlier in the week to experience the fun for ourselves, and 10/10 would recommend to the people of Brisbane to try it out. Tim Ruse, Zero Latency CEO, mentioned to us that having such VR sites like this now in Australia could mean the potential for partnerships with developers to bring certain content or special event experiences to the VR franchise. Friday night sessions of COD VR could be on the horizon? Sounds good to us!

For more information or bookings visit www.zerolatencyvr.com 

The post Brisbane’s New VR Experience Launches Today! appeared first on Press Start.

A few weeks ago, we had the chance to speak to Janina Gavankar about her upcoming role as the lead character in the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront II. It was clear from the moment that we got onto the phone with her that she was absolutely brimming with excitement over not only playing Iden Versio, but the games industry as a whole.

HOW DID YOU END UP LANDING THE MASSIVE ROLE OF IDEN VERSIO IN BATTLEFRONT II?

JG: Well you know that I’m a massive gamer right? So, I didn’t grow up playing video games because I wasn’t allowed to play them. I started playing games in 2007. It was the dawn of the AAA game and honestly felt like the best time to fall in love with video games. This put me on the path of begging everybody that I knew to be a part of the games industry. I first got to do this in Far Cry 4 and then when I got the position for this, because I was a massive creeper on NeoGAF, I knew what the game was before it was even announced. The breakdown just said the word DICE and I knew that DICE meant Battlefield but I knew a new Battlefield had just come out, so I figured it was a new Battlefront game that must have a single player. I actually didn’t know I was the main protagonist until they scanned my face, and even then I still couldn’t believe that I was about to play the main character in a Star Wars story. I’ve honestly never wanted anything more than I’ve wanted this part.

DID YOU HAVE FAMILY AND FRIENDS THAT HAVE ABSOLUTELY LOST THEIR MIND ABOUT THE ANNOUNCEMENT? 

JG: Absolutely. It’s Star Wars. It’s permeated every single person’s heart on the planet. It’s part of all of our lives. Obviously I didn’t get to tell people. Obviously, I told my mother (because she’s a vault) but I knew nobody would even believe her even if she did tell people. I had to keep it locked away until it was announced at Star Wars celebration, an entire 6 month period.

WHAT’S BEEN THE MOST CHALLENGING THING ABOUT WORKING ON THE GAME?

JG: I would say keeping my cool at various times throughout the whole process. Obviously today we’re doing a press day. I just watched the brand new story trailer in front of a room of 10-15 people and I literally started weeping. I feel a massive responsibility to keep my shit together to represent the project, but I fail at that often. It’s really hard.

DID YOU GET TO PUT YOUR OWN SPIN ON IDEN OR WAS IT VERY STRUCTURED?

JG: I thought it was going to be structured, but it’s been surprisingly collaborative. I got the script and started talking to Mitch Dyer immediately. We started working with military consultants so I could learn how to move together with a squad. We had a LucasFilms story member with me every step of the way in case I had any questions. They were on speed dial too, just in case I needed anything. A massive amount of attention to detail has gone into it to make sure we absolutely nail each and every one of the characters.

HOW DID YOU GO WITH PORTRAYING IDEN? YOU DO KNOW YOU’RE ON THE BAD SIDE, RIGHT?

JG: Who says that I’m on the bad side? It honestly doesn’t feel like I’m on the bad side. The story begins with you watching the Death Star exploding. It is an analysis of an empire without an emperor.

WE KNOW THAT THERE’S QUITE A FEW ICONIC CHARACTERS IN THE CAMPAIGN. WITHOUT SPOILING TOO MUCH, IS THERE A MOMENT IN PARTICULAR THAT MADE YOU FANGIRL?

JG: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah. More than one, but I can not tell you any of them.

WHAT KIND OF EMOTIONS DO YOU THINK THAT STAR WARS FANS WILL FEEL WHEN THEY GO THROUGH THIS STORY?

JG: I think that they’ll feel conflicted as they play the character because they’re used to only seeing only side of history, but this will show them that there’s more than one side to the story.

THERE’S A LOT OF VOICE WORK IN THIS GAME BUT HOW DID YOU FIND THE PERFORMANCE CAPTURING?

JG: I loved it. It’s not the first time that I’ve done it, but I love it because it’s a more liberating version of what you would do on television and film. Because it’s a little bit more physical and it’s also a little bit more like theatre in the sense that the takes are long and you can’t screw up so you have to release a lot more. It also lacks vanity so you don’t have to worry about hair or makeup. You can just worry about the emotional work. Our Director Tom Heagan is the best Director that I’ve ever worked with in any medium. He expected a lot from us, emotionally so it was invigorating.

DO YOU PREFER MOTION CAP OVER ACTING FOR TV OR FILM?

JG: As an Actor, I prefer making a game because it’s an experience. In this game, we’ve basically made multiple movies. We’ve made our own trilogy essentially.

IF YOU COULD CHOOSE ONE OTHER CHARACTER TO PLAY (IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE), WHICH WOULD IT BE. OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE JAR JAR BINKS SO HE’S OFF THE TABLE.

 JG: It’s funny that you say that because Ahmed Best has actually become a really good friend of mine. Anakin is probably my favourite character. I actually learned something from Jett Lucas’ son. The name Anakin is actually based on Ananke, the Greek goddess of Inevitability. That’s what you feel when you watch his journey. That creeping darkness is inevitable, you cannot stop it. The process of him growing and turning into who he was going to be was fascinating. Does that mean I would want to take his place? That’s a pretty tough thing to think about. R2 would also be great. He saves the day constantly.

BATTLEFRONT II WILL OBVIOUSLY BE THE BIGGEST GAME OF 2017, BUT WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU ENJOYED PLAYING AND WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO?

JG: Oh yeah, I’m looking forward to finding some time to play The Lost Legacy. I’m also super pumped for the Horizon Zero Dawn DLC. There’s so many games to play this year. I’m also playing through The Witness on iPhone at the moment and that’s super awesome.

WHAT GOT YOU INTO GAMING IN 2007? WAS THERE A SPECIFIC GAME?

JG: My ex-boyfriend who was the founder of Deviant Art was obviously into gaming and he was playing Bioshock one night. I would constantly help him hack the tubes until the point that I took over and would always do those parts. It came to the point where he would go to work and then I would just jump on and play for the entire day. Then one of his friends told me that I was a gamer at heart, but didn’t know it. He then handed me The Orange Box and I started playing Portal. We also had a Wii, so I started playing Twilight Princess and Resident Evil 4. It was the best year of my life, realising that there was a whole entire world that was made for me to discover.

STAR WARS IS THE BIGGEST BRAND IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. WHAT’S NEXT? HOW DO YOU TOP THAT? 

JG: I’m obviously working on a few big things, that I can’t talk about. The thing that is crazy is that this is a dream that I didn’t even know I could be allowed to dream of. I honestly can’t say that I dreamt of this, because I didn’t think it was possible. Now that I know that the impossible is possible, I know realise that I have a lot of work to do.

Star Wars Battlefront II releases on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC on November 17th.

The post We Spoke To Janina Gavankar About Her Massive Role In Star Wars: Battlefront II appeared first on Press Start.

The trailer for ‘Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You!’ recently dropped and it will seriously hit you right in the feels.

The movie will span right across the Pokemon series, from Ash’s humble beginnings in Kanto all the way to Alola and everything in between.

The trailer gives viewers a glimpse of the story fans originally fell in love with, as Ash and Pikachu meet for the first time and their wild adventure begins as they search for the Legendary Pokemon Ho-Oh.

Event Cinemas will be holding screenings on the 11th & 12th of November with a limited number of Pokemon trading cards available featuring Pikachu wearing its trainer’s hat, as seen in the movie.

The post New Pokemon Movie Trailer Hits You Right in the Feels appeared first on Press Start.

Last week I got to spend an extended amount of time playing Assassin’s Creed: Origins. It’s fresh, challenging, stunning and downright enjoyable. So here’s a list of the 5 most exciting things about Assassin’s Creed: Origins.

AC FINALLY FEELS LIKE A RPG

The player menu has a load of RPG elements which make you actually want to complete side quests and take note of your weapon load-outs. Weapon types like swords, blades, axes & spears have always been common within the AC franchise, but in Origins a ranking system has finally been introduced. Based on the standard RPG rankings (Uncommon, Rare, Legendary) you’ll be able to strong-arm your enemies by finding and equipping the higher ranked weaponry, like the sweet legendary spear you acquired through a side mission (GET IT!). Much like Assassin’s Creed 3, Bow and Arrows play a big part, however this time around there is a huge range of styles.

From close quarter, shotgun like bows and fast paced, rapid-fire bows to long range, precision bows, all-round hunting bows, and a ton more bows! Long story short, there are a lot of bows – once again, all ranked and with certain stats. Apart from the arsenal, the upgrading of armour is more streamlined too, having it readily upgradable at any time by crafting the right amount and combination of animal skins & resources. Then finally, the skills tree. That booming skills tree full of glorious new ways to sneak up on enemies, survive the wilds of Egypt or run head on into combat with explosive surprises and brutal combat moves. So many skills.

THE WILDLIFE IS DEFINITELY WILD

Assassin’s Creed: Origins has definitely taken a page out of the Far Cry books, because the wildlife is everywhere and ready to turn on you at any moment. You’ll be minding your own business, assassinating thugs and sword fighting multiple guards when all of a sudden a rogue hippo will come charging out of nowhere, knock you to the ground and have you running around frantically trying to equip the right weapon. Then there’s the crocodiles to watch out for whilst traversing the waters or river areas, hyenas in the hills, vultures guarding the skies…you really just need to watch where you’re going at ALL times, and it’s absolutely fantastic. It makes travelling across the huge map more exciting and dangerous and can create a huge amount of chaos in a battle that needed no more. It also adds to the strategy of taking out patrols or guards when on a mission. Should you sneak up on them and take them out one by one, or just let the two caged lions out to do your bidding? Spoiler alert: the lions.

THE COMBAT IS WAY BETTER

Long gone are the days of the AC fan favourite “Wait, Parry, Combo, Repeat.” As much fun as it was spending a whole weekend stacking body after body like this in previous AC games, Origins’ combat system is a HUGE game-changer. Combat controls have been spread across the controller with shield blocking via the left bumper, quick and strong attacks via the right bumper and trigger, plus dodging, shield charge and more mapped to your face buttons. You can then trigger stronger attacks by holding down certain buttons or execute your “special” attack by a simultaneous press. Needless to say you feel in complete control of every limb and movement, which at first is daunting, especially when certain load-outs may not come with a shield or may slow you down; the combat is completely dynamic. You’ll find you can’t just run into a battle, execute some moves and BAM! battle won. Not every enemy can be defeated by the same combat approach, and it’ll take a few deaths or close calls to understand that. Origins has widened the strategic approach of this franchise, and it truly makes every aspect rewarding, challenging and refreshing. It’ll pay to take your time and be a true assassin – stealthy, smart and prepared.

EAGLE VISION TAKES ON A WHOLE NEW MEANING

It’s clever how Eagle Vision has been reimagined for this game that not only makes complete sense in terms of setting and lore, but also in a way that brings new life to the franchise. Eagle Vision takes form in Origins through the connection between the Egyptian Assassin, Bayek, and his eagle companion, Senu. When activated, you’ll take control of Senu, flying high and low through your surroundings. Not only is this complete fun, but it literally gives you a bird’s eye view of your path ahead or the mission area you’re about to try get through. You can target enemies, scout for mission objectives, plan your entry, exits and assassinations or even, with certain unlocked abilities, use Senu to distract enemies or aid in battle. It’s a nice change to the old highlighted colours and greyed out vision of the past.

IT PAYS TO TAKE NOTE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS

It’s been established that the wildlife of Assassin’s Creed: Origins will definitely make you keep a watchful eye, but it will also aid players to listen to the village chatter and explore the alleyways, rooftops and landings of the old world. Why? Because Origins isn’t a game that will mark every step you need to take and will have you thinking at times “I have no idea where to find anything.” It’s in the exploration where you’ll pick up clues to mission objectives, valuable loot, animal lairs and hidden secrets.

You may be in a side mission that has you hunting for animal skins, but if you haven’t already come across certain animal lairs or know of areas where those animals like to hang out, the mission isn’t suddenly going to mark these locations on the map for you. So you may need to do a little detective work by catching a sentence or two from a random villager talking about their recent hunt. Even whilst exploring and climbing the Egyptian setting and terrain you can find resources that may help obtain a bonus in a mission. Let’s say like some perfume you randomly find abandoned on a rooftop, which you can give to a hunter during a side mission to help his wife overcome his stank issues thus getting you a bonus reward on completion of the mission. Nothing specific, just as an example. But also find that perfume! Exploration is definitely key, and there’s finally a reason to pay attention to NPCs.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins releases on PS4, Xbox One and PC on October 27th.

The post The 5 Most Exciting Things About Assassin’s Creed: Origins appeared first on Press Start.

Imagine a world where everyone has the chance to be a hero. To rid the neighbours of crime, defend those who can not defend themselves, be a beacon of hope and justice. Now mix that with a range of profanities, references to your parents doing the deed and a lot of moments where you laugh and immediately think how ashamed your mother would be if she knew. You now have South Park: The Fractured But Whole.

Last week, I visited the Ubisoft Sydney office and go to spend an extended period of time with the second instalment in this hilarious series. Getting through the first few missions, I left feeling quite surprised at how eager I was to continue on.

To be honest, I have never been a dedicated fan of the TV series, nor did I play The Stick of Truth. However, I did watch a few walkthroughs when the first game released, and have watched a TV episode here and there. I feel like anybody who knows nothing about the series would be completely with some of the things in this game. In true South Park style, nothing is sacred and don’t think they won’t go there cause they will. In fact, they’ll go past what you thought were the boundaries.

The game opens with the tale of a neighbourhood ridden by a malicious crime spree of missing cats. The narrating voice urges for the villainy behind the pawful (#sorrynotsorry) attacks to reveal its motives, and calls for justice and peace to be restored. From the shadows, I find out the voice is none other than The Coon! Half man, half raccoon – He is 100% the hero South Park needs. Not to spoil the facade, but The Coon is Cartman.

I’m shook after the whole ‘The Coon’ reveal, so it was nice to get some time to piece together my blown mind at a customisation screen. Once again, we are playing the New Kid of the neighbourhood and I’m given the ability to style my avatar in a bunch of ways. I don’t know how Ubisoft learnt about my kryptonite for customisation, but rest assured I spent way too much time, as per usual, wondering whether or not I wanted freckles or the hairstyle I’ve always wanted, but could never pull of in real life. Of course, like any true superhero franchise, I decked myself out in the appropriate Press Start colours.

The game kicks off at the end of the Stick of Truth. The neighbour kids are still battling it out in the fantasy world of wizards and dragons and the game utilises this as a way to quickly bring you up to speed with the combat mechanics and new features to gameplay. Once the tutorial is complete, The Coon is back and interrupts the magical war with, well insults, as well as the news of the catty crimes. Coon and friends assemble.

The fun of this game ramps up from here. I found myself greeted with another customisation I got to choose my hero class (Speedster, Brutalist and Blaster). I also got to choose the ability to once again customise my avatars hero suit and colours. The Coon then revealed the origin story – as all superheroes must have one. In true Cartman style, your origin story reveals maybe a little too much about your parent’s’ “after dark activities”, but it was also also the first time I got to try out the sweet new combo moves, so I guess a win? The premise of the game is then revealed to be attracting as many followers on Coonstagram as possible, because by doing so you’ll be helping to keep the South Park superhero franchise alive. You do this by taking selfies with the residents of South Park – some will be eager straight away, some only when you have a worthy number of followers, and others after completing missions.

I was able to play 3 different missions before my time as ‘Quick Feet Fury’ (yes that’s the superhero name I gave myself) came to an end. The first was helping ‘The Kite’ (aka Kyle) destroy his alternative-universe self (aka his cousin), the second, was my gender assignment – part of your superhero journey is to fill in your player card (like a stats card with strengths, weaknesses etc). Once finding the school counsellor, he asked me my gender as well as my sexuality, and, of course, confirms the given information with my parents (via some South Parky dialogue), before letting me go. Upon exiting the school, I’m then greeted by some Rednecks who don’t quite like the “choice” I made with my gender and sexuality, and engage my comrades and I in a battle.

The final mission I played had me visiting a church, where the head priest directed me to the store room where I would find what I was looking for for my mission. Unbeknownst to him, there were two “unruly” priest lurking in the darkness of said room and you can probably guess what they were after. Of course to defend myself, a battle commences, where phrases like “wes anyone under 12 wanna wrestle?” and “want to go to Heaven with me?” are uttered and rosary beads are pulled from places with sound effects I can not un-hear.

But my time as a superhero kid had to come to an end. Reflecting on that time I thought about the fact that the game is definitely worth playing through but there’s definitely things in the game that I shouldn’t be laughing at. It’s extremely enjoyable and quite challenging depending on the difficulty the you choose. The humour is out there, but honestly something you won’t be able to hold back from laughing at. The new combat mechanics will make you play strategically which makes the repetitive nature of turn-based combat disappear. As somebody who has never fully gotten into the South Park franchise, I’m definitely keen to get my hands on this and rejoin The Coon in his quest for justice.

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Wargaming recently invited us to their Tokyo Studios in Shibuya to reveal the next exciting expansion to their World of Tanks Console line up.

If you’ve never entered the historically-driven universe of World of Tanks Console, then imagine this:

15 vs 15 online tank warfare combat with 465 vehicles from 8 different nations at your mercy, all customisable including camo, emblems and inscriptions. Hold up though, there’s more. You can go as far as customising your entire crew (from names, voices, gender and even portraits) as well as play on 85 different maps with minor climate changes. Did I mention it was Free to Play too? If you’ve been a fan of the series since it emerged on PC, it’s important to note that the console version boasts a number of exclusive features that make it not just a simple PC port like 30 more maps, 40 more vehicles and monthly Spec Ops missions to earn premium tanks.

Where do I enlist?!The next level for the Wargaming franchise is a campaign expansion – World of Tanks: War Stories. The expansion brings the launch of new single player and co-op PvE story-driven campaigns with challenging, original and deep storylines for new players to develop their skills in becoming a tanking badass before hitting the big leagues in online matchmaking. Upon release, there will be two campaigns to experience: ‘Brothers in Armor’ (an introductory campaign based on the Battle of Romania), and ‘Flashpoint Berlin’ (an alternative history storyline with the collapse of the Berlin Blockade). In total, we’ll see 4 War Stories playable each with 3 chapters (including boss-based style combat), with objective-based missions and full progression and award systems included. In an interview with Darold Higa, Producer of War Stories, he told me about the ongoing support the team plan on giving War Stories and the new direction,

“We don’t have the exact release cadence yet, but the idea is that this is not just a “one-off update”, we’re gonna keep updating this and build that library of content so that the single player experience is very very robust. In the same way we’ve been doing monthly updates for our online players, I think we should…not that we’re gonna release one every month, but the idea that we are constantly adding new content to the War Stories side of the World of Tanks Console equation.”  

Wargaming is all about being as historically accurate as possible, not only in their creation of the playable vehicles but also in the timeline that the gameplay surrounds; that’s what makes World of Tanks such a unique experience. Players will find themselves on a map, or in an event, or in War Stories’ case, a campaign mission that will have a narrative driven by historic facts, but the team like to have fun with it too. Alternative timelines, like what is found in the campaign ‘Flashpoint Berlin’, will be a key factor in War Stories’ deep narrative, as well as some fun fantasy based missions,

“In terms of fantasy, one of most popular event modes was fighting on the moon, so ah…this is not something that is planned yet, but you can imagine us revisiting the moon as one of these war stories that’s more of a fantastical story.”

The War Stories team mentioned that there’ll be plenty of features that will allow gamers nothing but endless enjoyment and challenges through the expansion:

• Completing Story mode will unlock a Challenge Mode for higher earnings.
• Pickups will be available in-game such as repair tokens, missile types etc.
• Climate changes will be even more impacting than previously seen (ie. affecting visibility, strategy and gameplay mechanics).
• Comic book styled cutscenes for an appealing and in-depth narrative.

On top of this, War Stories will be a Xbox One X launch title come 7th November 2017, and it looks real good in 4K! The Xbox One X version will have you driving tanks and blasting enemies in enhanced and immersive Full 4K gaming, smooth and steady 30fps with faster load times, Full Range HDR support, increased shadow resolution and incredible life like detail for environments and tanks.If that’s not enough to get your turrets turning, War Stories’ music will be composed by none other than Inon Zur, the legend behind the scores for favourites like Fallout, Dragon Age and Prince of Persia.

For gamers who are unaware of the World of Tanks franchise, War Stories is the perfect opportunity to get on the battlefield, with more information to come later in the month at Gamescom.

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At a press event in Tokyo, Wargaming recently announced some exciting new additions to their ever popular naval combat game, World of Warships. Publishing Producer, Hisahi Yaginuma, presented two exciting elements that will be getting introduced to the franchise – a new commander and an ocean’s worth of new ships!

Players will be able to acquire the unique naval commander, Yamamoto, well-known in history for commanding the First Fleet in 1938 and Combined Fleet in 1939, as well as incorporating carrier tactics into the plan to attack Pearl Harbour. You’ll also be able to unlock specialised items for Yamamoto by completing certain missions (unlockable at level 9). The items are historically accurate and include such belongs of Yamamoto’s as, service medals, his famous katana, war diary photos and more. Hisahi also hinted towards the next commander, after Yamamoto, to possibly being an American favourite…but he would not say anything more – “I’ve said too much!”

Wargaming is also set to release a plethora of new warships to the game – British Battleships and Pan Asia Destroyers (screenshots below). Each warship is built to scale, which is quite an impressive feat considering the sheer detail that each warship possesses. Hisahi mentioned to the us that one of the things he’s most proud of is the accuracy of those ships and the work that goes into them – the process takes about a year and a half to complete! The team also spends that time tweaking each ship to make sure it’s not only historically accurate, but that it also works effectively in a game environment – such as extra torpedo tubes or armament, or even removing certain features, as Hisahi pointed out. Wargaming takes the creation of the warships quite seriously with dedicated research teams collecting as much historical information as possible, including the actual battleship schematics, to bring the true testament of war to the game.

Needless to say, viewing the Pan Asia Destroyer screenshots below, you can not help but give the Wargaming and World of Warships team a round of applause. Those ships are impressive!

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When we heard Mario Kart VR was a thing, I’m pretty sure every single person on the team were crazily excited that the concept actually existed. Mario Kart is a classic Nintendo game that has brought joy to all kinds of gamer…not to mention has also aided in ending relationships with one well-timed blue shell (my sister still doesn’t answer my calls).

So when I recently was given the opportunity to play the game in Japan, how could I say no?

Shinjuku in Japan is the home of VR Zone – a theme park like facility centred around Virtual Reality and really showing how it should be experienced. Upon entry you are given 4 tickets (red, blue, yellow, green) with the colour on each corresponding to a certain group of games. There are 15 VR activities to choose from and it’s insanely hard to choose which 4 out of the 15 you want to spend your time in.Mario Kart VR was the first activity that I was eager to try and boy does VR Zone know how to really immerse you in a game. The Mario Kart area boasted 12 karts (4 racers in 3 different races). I’m talking actual karts on moving platforms, rigged with pedals for acceleration and brakes, a steering wheel and a wind machine. You can choose from 4 of the iconic Nintendo characters – Mario, Luigi, Peach and Yoshi. Upon choosing my kart, the attendants helped place the Vive VR goggles on, wrist straps and headset with mic for voice chat. The controls were what I expected: use the pedals to go and stop, steering wheel to steer and use your hands to grab items and toss them at your opponents. The race was on!I can not describe what it was like once the headset turned on. You are suddenly at the starting line on a Mario Kart course. You look to your left or right and there’s Peach or Mario staring back at you, then the player controlling that character waves at you or does the Macarena.

OMG THIS IS SICK!! MY HANDS ARE YOSHI HANDS!!

*Insert other over excited, yelling phrases that make you sound like crazy person*

Whilst in 100% gamer awe, you’re suddenly rear ended by Bowser and Wario (AI players) in HUGE karts as they push through to pole position. The moving platform you are seated in performed not only at great accuracy (it didn’t just jolt generically, if you were hit on the side, back, front, corner…it made sure you knew), but with quite a punch. It’s the first time I actually thought about needing a seatbelt whilst playing a game. The countdown began and we were off.

It’s important to mention that VR Zone and its games are powered by Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. So going into Mario Kart VR, I didn’t expect it to be an authentic Nintendo experience, whether that was through design elements, map configurations or just the sheer vibe, but I was 100% wrong on that. It is super authentic. You race through 3 different sections of a course each representing classic moments or tracks in the other games. You drive along roads lined by Giant Piranha Plants hungry for drivers, dodge flying bullets whilst paragliding after a jumping, try not to be crushed by those angry, huge block things in Bowser’s Castle – all of which are way more intimidating in VR. The feel of the kart is quite accurate too.

Unfortunately there was no power sliding, but the kart controlled exactly like it would if I was playing with a controller in hand; the back would slide out around corners and that frantic speed at which you turn or crash into other players were all there. One of the coolest features was definitely collecting items. Instead of driving through item blocks, green shells, bananas and hammers were attached to balloons floating just at arm height. Driving past you needed to reach out and grab that item to equipped it and then throw it forward or backwards to spin out the other racers or actually whacked them continuously with a hammer (by far the greatest feeling). It required you to not only drive with one hand (which only aided in the chaos) but also had you waiting for the right opportunity to aim true and let your friends have it. No aim assist available here #sorrynotsorry.

The only drawback to this whole experience is the motion. You really need to be prepared if you suffer from motion sickness or find yourself even feeling a little queasy after any of the VR games you find with Playstation VR, Oculus etc, you will definitely feel it with Mario Kart VR. I’m not too bad with motion sickness when it comes to VR, but after winning and dominating in the race (for legal purposes I will say the winning occurred in the second race), I needed a little rest. But other than that I will say that by far Mario Kart VR was and will be one of the greatest gaming experiences in my life! I HAD YOSHI HANDS, I MEAN COME ON!

If you ever go to Tokyo, be sure to hit up VR Zone and try it out, not to mention other games like Dinosaur Survivor Run, Winged Bicycle, Dragon Ball VR and more. Fun for the whole family and gamers of any age. I went up against a couple that were in their 70’s. 

Also if you hear a story about a guy throwing up all over the Yoshi Kart…it definitely wasn’t me.

The post We Played Mario Kart VR And It Was Absolutely Insane appeared first on Press Start.

Fresh off the back of recent news from Game Freak posting job listings for “a title that just about anyone knows” on their website, Nintendo has announced today a highly-anticipated and long-awaited sequel to the breakout Nintendo 64 classic, Pokemon Snap.

Featuring on the Nintendo Switch, Pokemon Go Snap takes the original game’s premise and expands on it massively, including more monsters to be snapped, more locations to explore, and even connectivity with Niantic’s smash hit app Pokemon GO! Players can traverse in real-time seeking Pokemon found within Snap, and unlock new locations in Snap with distances travelled in the application.

NO RELEASE DATE HAS BEEN SET AT THIS STAGE, BUT YOU’D BE AN APRIL FOOL FOR NOT WANTING TO PICK THIS UP ON RELEASE.

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First things first, before putting that Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (here forth referred to as KH2.8) into your PlayStation, you are going to want to re-familiarise yourself with its storyline. Yes, the storyline that has stretched over 15 years, across 6 different gaming platforms, with every title adding more to the in-depth, and let’s be honest, confusing-at-times plot.

To be transparent, I’m a massive Kingdom Hearts fan. Ever since it’s release in 2002 I have been hooked to its button-bashing gameplay, beautiful cutscenes, deep storyline and that sweet, sweet tune that is ‘Simple and Clean’. Having such passion for this franchise I wanted to make sure I looked at KH2.8 with a level head; love is blind and all that. However, after playing through for the purposes of this review, I stepped away feeling confused, excited, frustrated and happy…in true Kingdom Hearts style, there are now so many more questions unanswered.

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue features a collection of titles: Dream Drop Distance, Birth by Sleep 0.2 – A Fragmentary Passage, and Kingdom Hearts X[chi] Back Cover. As a tip I would play through them as the welcome menu suggests – Dream Drop, Birth by Sleep 0.2 and then Back Cover.Dream Drop Distance is a full-HD remastered version of the 2012 title released on Nintendo 3DS. It picks up after the events of Kingdom Hearts 2 with the franchise’s protagonists, Sora and Riku, taking on the Mark of Mastery exam in preparation for the coming threats (essentially what we will see in Kingdom Hearts 3).

The first noticeable element of Dream Drop was that it is indeed a 3DS port, with my biggest strife coming from the controls. Don’t get me wrong, Square Enix have done a great job taking a game from a two-screened handheld device to a home console, but the controls are still locked off to their original mapping. For instance, target lock on an enemy is triggered by the R1 button, but to change targets you must hold R1 and use the left analog stick to select another enemy. What are you complaining about Jake? Well when you have 10 enemies flying around you, attacking in every direction, instead of an easy tap of R2 (like it’s brother and sister titles), you must now sacrifice your movement to switch the lock to the desired enemy, resulting in a number of smacks to the face and lose of health. Not a big deal I know, but it still would have been nice to include an extended control map specifically for the PS4 remaster. But to be fair, this was my only gripe.

It was refreshing seeing the introduction of new combat and traversal mechanics, such as Flow Motion and Reality Shift, which at first were odd in comparison to previous titles, but the more I played the more I began to enjoy and combine the two with the standard combat elements to be rid of enemies at a surprising pace. The game utilizes a “Drop” system that has you switch between Sora’s and Riku’s perspective of the world’s events. I believe this would have played out well on the 3DS and the time frame you’d play for on a handheld, but on the PS4, it creates more time pressure to complete tasks and get to a save point, before it forces a switch to the other character. This, however, aided in the pace of the game.

Dream Drop Distance is by far the title amongst the three that you’ll spend the most hours playing. It’s fun and introduces a lot of different combat and traversal mechanics not seen in other titles, as well as providing a substantial gameplay experience in this collection.Birth By Sleep 0.2 – A Fragmentary Passage was the title of the collection I was most looking forward to. It is a completely new episode in the series that links the story to the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3 and takes place after the events which occurred in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, released on the PSP in 2010.

Throughout the game, we play from the perspective of Aqua, who after sacrificing herself to save her friends, Terra and Ven, walks the plains of the Dark World (a Disney version of hell you could say). In true Kingdom Hearts fashion, the story highlights the war between good and evil – the light versus the dark – and for Aqua we witness her doing this both physically against Heartless as well as internally as she battles her inner demons. It was definitely a story I appreciated more after completing the game and reflected upon, however, at the time of play-through, seemed a little disjointed and messy within the series timeline. The episode (what we play through as Aqua) links with the original Kingdom Hearts game – and due to spoilers I won’t say how, but it is also a retelling from King Mickey who is sharing the story after the events of Dream Drop Distance – the last game in the current timeline (yes it’s confusing, it took me a while to piece that together). It’s not an enriching story, but very much ties a bow on a lot of loose ends and sets up character motives for Kingdom Hearts 3.

Apart from the story, Birth By Sleep 0.2 introduced us to the beautiful, new look of the Unreal 4 engine on top of some gameplay elements I hope they continue in Kingdom Hearts 3. Graphically it is stunning. I spent the first few minutes of gameplay staring at all the little details in the surrounding landscape, brick work of the first town and saying phrases like “Damn!” and “Ooh that’s nice!” at the smoke, particle and lighting effects. It gave a taste of what I hope Kingdom Hearts 3 will look like, and I’m excited! I also loved the somewhat trivial addition of the customizable wardrobe. A list of objectives is available within the pause menu, which once achieving one will unlock a new item of clothing you can equip to Aqua. Her head, arm, back, material textures and colours all have unlockable items, which really allow you to parade around your own personal style – if you must know my final look boasted a set of Minnie Mouse ears, Tron-like pixie wings and some dope gradient colour textures I designed myself (I’m available for fashion work). Situation Commands was another mechanic presented, which I found very similar to Kingdom Hearts 2’s Form Drive. Essentially a special move or fighting style would become available (activated via the Triangle button) dependent on your combat style – magic heavy or keyblade driven. This definitely had you thinking about your move sets and how you would approach certain battles as some enemies were easier to pick off with a quick acquisition of a magic situation command like giant fireball explosions, or whether you needed the extra combos achievable with the mechanic’s transformation in fighting style, like Spell Weaver.

The best way I can describe Birth By Sleep 0.2 for anyone thinking about getting this collection is that it’s a great experience, not game. It’s short in length (about 3 hours), the combat is fun and new ways to play are engaging, however, there isn’t much to it. Majority of the time, you’re fighting the same enemy types and even the boss battles are against the same character. The story like mentioned is a bit all over the place, with the main and most important plot points occurring in the very beginning and very end of the episode. But even with all that, it is worth the play through for any Kingdom Hearts fan and those anticipating Kingdom Hearts 3.

Lastly, we come to the movie in the collection, Kingdom Hearts X[chi] Back Cover. Back Cover tells the mysterious story of the Foretellers, and evidently how the historical event of the Keyblade War came to be…well kind of. Honestly, I don’t spend a lot of time reviewing movies, so I’m going to keep this brief and start off by saying…huh?

If you were like me and hoping this addition to KH2.8 would finally help you understand how the Keyblade War came to be and how the world survived the fallout, well you might as well put that hope back in the drawer next to your hopes for the Kingdom Hearts 3 release date, because that ain’t happening. Once again without spoilers, this movie is (if anything) a collection of cutscenes all highlighting the 6 apprentices of the Master – a man (who is dressed in an Organisation XIII black coat, yet you really learn nothing about) who can see into the future, and therefore foresees the Keyblade War. You witness conflict amongst the 5 apprentices (the 6th is not present till the last scene) but never truly understand what causes the historical event that is literally spoken about in every Kingdom Hearts game in existence. What makes things worst is just as it seems to be leading into an epic final showdown after finding out more about the 6th apprentice (who also dons a black coat), it ends. Yep. It literally ends with like 6 billion cliffhangers…maybe an exaggeration but still. This is a movie that will answer some questions, but prompt more. What you (and I) need to do is then download Kingdom Hearts X[Chi] Unchained on your mobile to (what I believe) get the full story. Once again, thank you Square Enix for spreading your entire storyline across a billion different platforms…ok sorry, again an exaggeration.

CONCLUSION

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 – Final Chapter Prologue left we with even more questions when I was hoping it would answer the ones I had. However, upon reflection, I think it’s important to see what this HD collection is, a prologue. I mean it says it in the name. It works beautifully to set up what will surely be the biggest and most anticipated game in the series franchise once Kingdom Hearts 3 finally releases. It allows for fans to engage with a game they may not have been able to play previously with Dream Drop Distance, it links together a previously distant story from the original game in Birth By Sleep 0.2 on top of setting up characters and plot points for the final game, and, I hope, Back Cover was an addition to help link and explain some of  the earliest parts of the series’ history with events we will see play out in Kingdom Hearts 3. All in all, KH2.8 is worth the experience for any Kingdom Hearts fan and I look forward to piecing more of the story together and enjoying more of the series’ back catalogue with the other two remixes set to release early this year.

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On this episode of the Start Cast, Jake, Kevin, Fergus and Shannon journey to Professor Oak’s and discuss the hype which is Pokemon Go including the social, health and weird elements it’s brought . They also discuss what games have released this week, the looming doom of Batman: Return to Arkham, a new TV show from EA and Sportbets new venture with Respawn.

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We had the honour (see what I did there) to play Ubisoft’s next highly anticipated release, For Honor. The E3 2016 demo left us wanting more! What clan will you choose when the time comes…Samurai, Viking or Knight?

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We had the chance to play Gran Turismo Sport at E3 2016. Join us for a lap of this stunning-looking game!

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We had the chance to play Dead Rising 4 at E3 2016. Join us for some smashing, zombie impaling fun in the latest Dead Rising installment!

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We had the chance to play Forza Horizon 3 at E3 2016. Join us we race around the iconic Australian landscapes…maybe we can find our house on here?

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild introduces all new Open World gameplay to the franchise. Join us as we play through the demo available at E3 2016!

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We had the chance to play the new The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at E3 2016. Join us as we play through the first 10 minutes of the main story!

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We take a Behind The Scenes look at The Start Cast 50.

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Jake sits down and ponders his thoughts about mobile gaming and the perspective that surrounds them.

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Jake’s back with another YOUR MOST ANTICIPATED! You guys told us what you were keen to get on release in April…and it’s definitely going to be a big month.

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Join Jake as he plays through Superhot, the game where time moves when you do. Such fun, much frustration.

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We wanted to ask YOU what games you were most excited for in March. This month we have the oft delayed The Division finally releasing as well as some quieter titles like the controversial Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 and long awaited remaster of the PC adventure classic, Day of the Tentacle.

A special shoutout to some of our Twitter/Facebook followers.

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Join Jake has he dives for the first time into the world of Plants Vs Zombies…apparently it didn’t go great. Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 will be released Feb 23 on PS4, XBOX & PC.

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Come join the fun as the Press Start team have their first game of Rocket League together! They soon find out Matt is a pretty excited and passionate player…

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Microsoft have revealed that a brand new Dash UI will be coming to Xbox One in the spring. The main additions will be a redesigned home screen, new guide, avatars returning as well as Cortona joining Xbox. You can find a walkthrough video as well as a list of major changes below.

A redesigned Home: We’ve redesigned Home to surface your most-used Xbox content. You can scroll vertically to see your recently played games with deeper information about the content and games you are using. You can see game DVR clips, achievements and add-ons for your games and can also quickly discover new content.

A new guide: Gaming must-haves like friends, party invites and messages can be accessed directly from Home or while in a game. Scroll left from Home or double-tap the Xbox button while in a game and the guide will slide over on the left side of the screen. From here you can access gaming must-haves like your friends list, party invites, messages, and notifications.

Community section: We’ve expanded upon the current Friends section so gamers can more quickly and easily access all their social activities. This includes the Activity Feed to see the latest updates from friends and game developers as well as What’s Trending on Xbox Live to interact with the most popular games and content currently on Xbox Live. Scroll right from Home to see what games your friends have been playing, interact with their posts and see the top things happening on Xbox Live right now.

Xbox Avatars: We saw the passion from the community toward Xbox Avatars and are excited to bring them back in a more prominent way on Xbox One. We are modernizing the look of avatars with better image quality, keeping all the familiar customizations fans loved on Xbox 360.

Cortana comes to Xbox One: On Xbox One, Cortana becomes your personal gaming assistant. Cortana helps you elevate your game, gets smarter over time, and works across all your Windows 10 PCs, tablets and phones (Cortana will also soon be available on iPhone and Android phones). Through voice commands on Xbox One, Cortana will assist you to more quickly find great games, new challengers and friends on Xbox Live, or accomplish common tasks. Cortana can also help you get achievements by surfacing videos and information to help you succeed. Working across Windows 10 PCs, tablets, phones, Xbox One, and iPhone and Android phones, Cortana can assist you wherever are you are – like setting an important reminder from your phone to receive on your Xbox One when you log on at home. Cortana will launch first in the U.S. and the U.K. on Xbox One this fall.

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After being announced at the Playstation E3 conference, Shenmue III has shattered Kickstarter records, reaching it’s 2 million dollar pledge in 8 hours.

According to the Kickstarter page, the game is set for release on PS4/PC in 2017. You can view or back the game on Kickstarter HERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orAXfiwB4-c

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For the first time in 8 years, Sony have worked out an agreement with Activision to bring all post-launch content of Call Of Duty: Black Ops III to Playstation consoles first. This is a huge announcement when you take into account what a huge partnership this has been for Xbox since it’s inception.

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Square Enix and Sony have taken the stage of the Playstation press conference by announcing the long-awaited Final Fantasy VII Remake. It’ll release in 2016 and will release first on the Playstation platform.

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Guerrilla Games have taken to the stage to unveil a brand new PS4 exclusive game. Previously rumoured, Horizon Zero Dawn will release in 2016. It’s unclear whether the game will be mostly single play or include multiplayer elements. It’s very different from what Guerrilla have previously done with Killzone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BN8tyv9dQ0

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Sony have dropped the biggest of bombs to open their E3 press conference. The Last Guardian lives on and will release in 2016 exclusively for PS4. An extensive gameplay demo was shown off which closely resembled the games reveal many years ago.

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EA have revealed a brand new puzzler game titled Unravel. The game is based around a tiny character who is made up of a single thread of yarn.

“The idea of Unravel was created from a very personal place. We didn’t start out by saying we’re going to make a puzzle platforming game. We started by thinking more about our lives, and the things we hold meaningful. We wanted the game to have a heart and the gameplay could always be designed to represent that,” says Martin Sahlin, Creative Director at Coldwood . “The tale of Unravel is about love, and the bonds between people. And the yarn is a representation of that. Yarny’s red thread is the tie that connects everything in the game, from the gameplay mechanics to the story, and the people in it.”

Unravel will release on Xbox One, PS4 & PC.

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The biggest announcement to come from Ubisoft’s press conference is that Ubisoft Paris are working on a brand new Ghost Recon game. It will be an open world game titled Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

A release date has not yet been set for the game.

Ubisoft has released the following information regarding the game:

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Ubisoft have revealed a sequel to South Park: The Stick of Truth. It is being developed by Ubisoft San Francisco. It is expected that the game will release in 2016.

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Microsoft took to the E3 stage to show off how HoloLens can be used with a brand new version of Minecraft. Using a blank table, Microsoft were able to show how you can create a virtual world that you can interact with using your voice and gestures.

It allows you to see things that you previously wouldn’t have been able to see using a new virtual perspective. No further details were released about HoloLens however a 2016 release appears to be on the cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NdUv-yLae8

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Microsoft alongside Crystal Dynamics have revealed that Rise of the Tomb Raider will release exclusive on Xbox One and 360 on November 10th. A brand new gameplay demo was shown off at E3 showing Lara at the peak of an icy mountain.

It’s going to be a tough day come November 10th. Will you be playing Fallout or Tomb Raider?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZSqVingXdI

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Coalition have taken the stage to show off the brand new Gears of War. Whilst not a whole lot is known about the game, it’s clear the the game will continue down the path of it’s dark and grungy colour palette. Both characters shown in the game are brand new characters which suggest that a new story will be told.

Gears of War is expected to release in Holiday 2016 exclusively on Xbox One

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Rare has revealed that it will be bringing a collection of 30 games to Xbox One. It’s not yet clear what sort’ve upgrades the games will feature however it has been confirmed that there will be a gamerscore of 10,000 points up for grabs.

Amongst the sizzle real were games such as Battletoads, Banjo Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. The game has a release date of August 30 in the US.

The full list of games is as follows, listed in chronological release order. Some games will support multiple players, both online and offline.

Jetpac
Atic Atac
Lunar Jetman
Sabre Wulf
Underwurlde
Knight Lore
Gunfright
Slalom
R.C. Pro-Am
Cobra Triangle
Snake Rattle N Roll
Digger T. Rock
Solar Jetman
Battletoads
R.C. Pro-Am II
Battletoads Arcade
Killer Instinct Gold
Blast Corps
Banjo-Kazooie
Jet Force Gemini
Perfect Dark
Banjo-Tooie
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Grabbed By The Ghoulies
Perfect Dark Zero
Kameo: Elements of Power
Viva Pinata
Jetpack Refuelled
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise

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FROM Software took to the stage at the Xbox conference to reveal the previously leaked Dark Souls III. It will release in early 2016. Below is the debut trailer for the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA69xxVPyO0

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Microsoft took to the stage to reveal the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller. With swappable components, hair trigger locks and limitless customisation. You’re able to choose from a variety of thumbsticks, D-Pads and paddles for a tailored feel.

A release date and price for the Elite Wireless Controller has not yet been set.

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Microsoft took to the stage to announced that Xbox 360 backwards compatibility would be coming to Xbox One as soon as today for Xbox One preview members. It’ll be available to the general public this holiday season.

Over 100 popular titles would be available starting this holiday season with more to come in the future. Gamers will not have to pay any extra to upgrade to an Xbox One compatible version. You’ll also be able to take screenshots of your Xbox 360 games running on your Xbox One.

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