In our Witcher 3: Wild Hunt review we awarded the game a 10 and said it’s “one of the best games ever made.”
“The Witcher 3 is always in a crescendo, crafting battle scenarios that constantly one-up the last, until you reach the explosive finale and recover in the glow of the game’s quiet denouement,” said GameSpot’s Kevin Van Ord.
“But while the grand clashes are captivating, it is the moments between conflicts, when you drink with the local clans and bask in a trobairitz’s song, that are truly inspiring.”
Our Ori and the Blind Forest review was also very positive, the game received a score of 9, and was described as “beautiful” and “unceasingly clever.”
The Enhanced Edition is described as a “full makeover” of the original game–which has sold nearly 1 million copies–featuring a “truckload” of changes, creative director Swen Vincke tells GameSpot.
Among the changes are a new interface designed specifically for controllers, as well as co-op play in the form of online and split-screen locally. Meanwhile, full voice acting has been added–featuring actors Alix Wilton Regan and Alec Newman–and more endings have been introduced.
“We went a little too overboard with it; we called it an Enhanced Edition, but I really think that we made it much more than enhanced,” Vincke said.
In terms of visuals, Vincke tells GameSpot that the Xbox One and PS4 editions are aiming to run at full 1080p.
Divinity’s new console edition also adds “hours” of new content by way of new quests, giving players new locations to explore and challenges to take on. New endings have also been added, Vincke says.
In addition, the Enhanced Edition will come with changes to the crafting system, variations to enemy encounters that should make the game more difficult overall, and storyline tweaks to make the game feel fresh for people who already played it.
“We were a little bit unhappy with some of the compromises we made on the narrative side of things, so we’re just going to take the opportunity to change everything,” Vincke says. “The ending wasn’t that rewarding, so we added a lot to it. On the endings side, we really added a lot.”
The Enhanced Edition’s online co-op mode, which Vincke says you really have to play to understand, supports online play. However, there won’t be matchmaking support, at least not right away. “We haven’t cracked that particular piece of the code yet,” Vincke said.
In addition, Larian has announced that the Enhanced Edition is also coming to PC, Mac, and SteamOS as a free upgrade for existing players. Vincke points out that gamers will need a 64-bit rig (compared to 32-bit for the original) with DirectX 11 to run the Enhanced Edition. Full system requirements will be announced later.
The Enhanced Edition is due out later this year for all platforms, but Larian has not announced a firm release date.
Finally, Vincke told GameSpot that the massive success of Original Sin–which was originally funded on Kickstarter–was a “huge turning point” for Larian overall. Looking to the future, he confirmed that Larian has multiple projects in the works, the first of which might be announced this year.
“It allowed us to do a lot of things we couldn’t have done before. And we’re doing those now,” he explained. “We’re experimenting a lot. We have two RPGs in production, which we’re not just ready to announce yet, but hopefully we’ll talk about at least one later this year.”
Vincke also said he sees the turn-based RPG genre making a comeback, with plenty of room for further growth. “It’s a genre that has a lot of potential where you can still do a lot of things that haven’t been done before,” he said.
Shares in King, the mobile games company known for its Candy Crush Saga series, fell as far as 14 percent following its most recent financial report.
The slump comes after King warned that it expects “softer” revenues, between $490 million to $520 million, in the current financial quarter. Despite this poor outlook, King’s first quarter net income rose to $164 million for the three months ending March 31.
King chief executive Riccardo Zacconi was nevertheless optimistic about the corporation’s performance, pointing out that three of its games are among the top-ten grossing games on the Apple and Google app stores.
Looking forward, the company said it plans to bring Candy Crush to Windows 10 devices, and also launch the first of its new games in the second half of 2015.
“We are pleased by the sustained popularity of our games, which is also reflected in our second consecutive quarter of company-high network reach metrics and we look forward to leveraging the extraordinary power of our massive player base in launching new innovative games in 2015 and beyond.”
Despite King’s struggle to maintain the same level of profitability, mobile games remain a key area of investment for the games industry in general. Nintendo recently announced it has entered into a deal with the global mobile games publisher DeNA, which includes the creation of “new gaming applications featuring Nintendo IP, which [both companies] will develop specifically for smart devices.”
Shintaro Asako, the chief executive at DeNA West, has said he believes Nintendo’s IP has the gravitas to reach unprecedented numbers of smartphone players. While Candy Crush Saga peaked in 2014 at 93 million daily active users, Asako thinks DeNA and Nintendo can top that.
“I’ve wanted to create something globally successful, not only for kids, but for mid-aged people and beyond,” Asako said.
“The game should attract a huge range of people. We wanted to get a huge audience like Candy Crush, like 100 million users. We wanted to create something with that kind of DAU [daily active user] base.”
Bandai Namco has released a new trailer revealing android fighter Jack as the newest member of the character roster.
Various iterations of Jack have been playable in Tekken over the years, each sporting a different look. His latest incarnation features a pink mohawk and neon lights in the seams of his body panelling.
As always, Jack looks like he packs a big punch. In the trailer he can be seen making up for his relatively slow movements with sweeping punches and crushing kicks that deal big damage to Alisa.
Watch the trailer below.
Tekken 7 was announced last year. The game, which is powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, is already in Japanese arcades, but Bandai Namco has yet to announce when it will ship on consoles and in other territories.
With Rage Arts, players can input specific commands, which are believed to be specific to fighters, to initiate a Rage State. In this state attack damage is increased and special moves become accessible.
Power Crush relates to a set of special moves that can’t be interrupted by attacks, but still leave you vulnerable to taking damage. You can use them as much as you want, but at the risk of chipping away at your health bar.
There have been hundreds of Halo figures released over the last ten years, but despite advances in technology (allowing for greater detail and “realism”), they haven’t changed that much. Not until these interesting new figures from Kotobukiya, anyway.
In this line of work, you see a lot of trailers. Almost all the trailers. So it takes a lot to make me sit up and go “wow, that’s a good video game trailer”.
Another day, another remake. This time it’s The Blob, which has been remade once (or twice) before. The original The Blob is a horror classic from 1958, and it was remade in 1988 into a just-as-good-if-not-better sci-fi thriller. Now they’re working on yet another remake at Goldcrest Films with Simon West (Con-Air, The General’s Daughter, The Mechanic, Expendables 2) attached to direct. If they want to keep everything nice and neat, this next one should debut in 2018 then it’ll be 30 years between each remake. The latest news is that Samuel L. Jackson has been officially cast in the new film, playing a biochemistry professor. ›››
