The Gadget Helpline’s GAMING WEEKLY has returned!
Each week our dedicated team of gamers will gather some of the top gaming news and announcements from the last seven days and deliver them here to you, our fellow players!
It’s our penultimate issue before the gaming world goes E3 crazy, and this week we have new game confirmations galore including Dead Rising 4, Watch Dogs 2, XCOM 2 hitting consoles and Injustice 2 is finally official – that’s a whole lot of twos!
Dead Rising Resurrected for Fourth Installment:
Do you remember the first time you took the reins of Frank West in Dead Rising. The game was a pretty big deal when it was released back in 2006. Capcom had jumpstarted the sandbox survival horror genre with something fresh. Its mixture of creativity, arcade influence, and in-jokes and references to some of gaming and films greatest undead filled escapades marked it out as something different.
The game was successful enough to spawn two sequels, both featuring new characters, and the inclusion of new mechanics, each one receiving great reviews. The original protagonist even returned for downloadable content.
Whilst many thought the franchise over after the third instalment. It looks like Dead Rising is set to make a return. A pair of images have seemingly leaked out purporting to show the Dead Rising 4 logo and at least one of them showing what appears to be Frank West in a burning building.
The reappearance of the original Dead Rising protagonist would fit nicely with the other information that is floating around in regards to the game, namely that it would be set in Willamette, Colorado like the first game, and secondly that it would be a remake of some description.
Whether that last piece holds up to scrutiny after E3 is another matter entirely, but it will be good to see the return of the original Dead Rising hero.
– Vince.
Watch Dogs Franchise is Back to Hack Again in November:
Watch Dogs hit us in 2014 and it spent the entire time tapping into the national fear of “hacking” and the dangers of an increasingly digital world. It did very well, receiving a number of awards and great reviews across the board. It even had the record for biggest first day sales in Ubisoft history, until The Division came out.
The game was announced in true Ubisoft style with the announcement of the announcement. Rumours had been swirling for a little while in regards to a return to the dystopian wet dream and social commentary of Watch Dogs and it looks like the sudden reveal may have been in response to a number of rapid information leaks regarding the game.
Watch Dogs 2 looks set to take us to sunny San Francisco, a far cry from the dense urban sprawl of Chicago, a location hinted at towards to end of the first game with mentions of it becoming the second city to feature the “Central Operating System” now upgraded to 2.0 after the actions of the first games protagonist Aiden Pearce.
The game looks set to take the story down a route towards looking at hacktivism, digital corporate accountability, and the ethics of data collection and trading. A chunk of the information released relates to the idea of corporations maintaining digital profiles of citizens, which are traded, sold, and stolen all without the citizen’s knowledge.
Aiden Pearce, our unlikely hero from Watch Dogs who went into hiding after the games climax will not be returning, with the game now focusing on a new character, Marcus Holloway, an idealistic young hacker accused of a crime he didn’t commit by the Central Operating System.
Ubisoft are attempting to take this latest iteration of their franchise down a different route to the first, no more towers need to be unlocked for you to enjoy free reign in an area, from the start San Francisco in its entirety will be available to you to explore and enjoy as you please.
To tap into this further every action you take now helps you move towards realising your ultimate goal, no more will your actions have seemingly no effect on the city around you, you’ll be shaping it with your actions, for better or worse.
Whilst hacking played a major part of the previous game, it’s in world applications were drastically reduced from what was expected, but that’s also changing. In the reveal it was mentioned that everything in the game is essentially hackable, it’s a technophobes nightmare. The players are even being provided improved tools such as a remote control car and a drone in order to further their ambitions.
A large part of Watch Dogs 2 has been generated from the response fans of the first game have provided. Ubisoft have worked to make sure the feedback from the first game was addressed, in a statement released the company claimed to have scoured forums, emails, tweets, and comments in order to collate information on what we all wanted, and what we didn’t.
Whether any of that comes to pass in a way that the fans are happy with is another matter entirely. All that matters now is the wait, and you won’t have to wait long to be able to play it. Watch Dogs 2 is set to hit shelves both physical and digital November 15th this year, and if the videos and screen shots provided are anything to go by, it will at least look fantastic.
– Vince.
XCOM 2 Landing on Consoles This September:
In February of this year XCOM 2, the follow up to Firaxis reboot of the cult XCOM series hit the PC market with a bang. It got rave reviews, it followed up everything good about XCOM: Enemy Unknown by flipping it onto its head, and it worked.
No longer were you a global organisation with the backing of a dozen countries, no longer did you have a blank cheque to wage war against an extra-terrestrial invasion. Gone is the need to balance political agenda with the ability to beat a foe boasting technology far in advance of your own.
Now you’re a rogue group. An insurgency. Now XCOM truly does work in the shadows of a world conquered by an alien intelligence greater in power than our own. It gave the game a sense of tension, it made you fear the fate of your fallen and abandoned soldiers.
The only truly major downside to the game was its exclusivity to the PC platform. When XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and its expansion Enemy Within) were released it was simultaneously on consoles. When XCOM 2 hit there seemingly didn’t seem to be any intention to make a console release. Yet here we are.
We heard you! #XCOM2 is deploying to new battlefields: September 6 on Xbox One & PS4.
►https://t.co/X6abJEafKX pic.twitter.com/q47GnuRXLp
— 2K (@2K) June 7, 2016
This week 2K announced that the phenomenally received XCOM 2 would be making its way over to consoles, considering the response it received on the PC all fans of waging combat against Alien forces would be loath to miss it. Thankfully they won’t have to wait that long, the announced release date is 9th September this year.
Console gamers everywhere should be excited to join the fight.
– Vince.
Injustice 2 is Real! DC Superheroes Suit Up in First Trailer:
We have an exciting follow up from some news which dropped last week regarding a sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us.
An official trailer has now been released which confirms that the game is indeed on the way and will be released under the title of “Injustice 2” – with the slogan “Every Battle Defines You”.
Also confirmed are appearances by Superman, The Flash and Batman with the intense promo featuring the Man of Steel, the Dark Knight and the Scarlet Speedster all engaging in furious combat while a gravel voiced narrator gives us the low down (likely to be Batman – nobody needs a Strepsil more than Master Bruce’s alter ego!)
What’s pretty awesome about the incredible moody trailer is that it appears that suits of armours are being switched mid fight, so we hope it’s actually possible that additional character skins and DLC might be activated during battle.
As well as the trailer a poster was also leaked and shared by Polygon who’s report suggests that Injustice 2 will be available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC and more should be revealed at E3 next week. The game is once again being developed by NetherRealm Studios, the makers of Mortal Kombat as we currently know it.
– Jay
We out, yo.
Speaking of Mortal Kombat, did you know there’s actually an official Mortal Kombat X branded beer now? It’s true. And names such as Scorpion Imperial Stout, Raiden Imperial Saison and Sub-Zero Imperial IPA all sound super cool.
A flawless beverage for summer time – or even after a hard fought tournament. Pop a cap, fill your cup and FINISH IT!!
To close, we leave you with this awesome video of a modified Nintendo Power Glove being used to control a drone.
For those old enough to remember the greatest gamer road-trip movie / feature-length Nintendo advert of the 80s, The Wizard, then you’ll know of this mythical gaming wearable. It’s still out there. We still love it, and it’s still so bad (in a good way!)
See you next week for E3 news a-plenty. We’re off for a long nap in preparation for those early morning announcements here in the UK!
– Jay (Chief Editor).