Gaming Weekly 13/05/2016 – Pokémon Sun & Moon, Last Of Us 2, Overwatch Beta

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!

This week we have a line-up including new characters from the upcoming Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, a hint at plans for a Last of Us sequel spotted in Uncharted 4 and also a hands-on with the new Overwatch Beta.


Pokémon Sun & Moon Starters Revealed:
With the trailer announcing Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon Nintendo has given the date for launch of the game, on November the 18th planned for the pre-Christmas release on the 3DS. So far we know the game keeps to the traditional Fire, Water and Grass type Pokémon as the choice for the new adventurer.

Pictures of the adorable starters shown above include Popplio, a Water-type that resembles a Seal; Litten, a Fire-type with the looks of a cat and judging by the pictures a similar attitude; and Rowlet, a grass/flying-type owl with a dapper attire rocking the stylish bow tie.

The box art featuring the new unnamed legendary Pokémon, Sun presumably giving you access to the majestic lion-esque creature, in front of a Sun, which is juxtaposed by Pokémon Moons what I can only describe as a space-bat, all of this giving the user the choice of one or the other… or both (if you’re really that dedicated).

With a graphical style typical of the newer X&Y which used 3D models for all the people in the game. We look to see larger explore-able in the Alola region, this region appears to be much larger compared to previous regions like Sinnoh, Unova and Kalos.

It is known that trainers across most of the recent games will be able to trade, this includes X&Y Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire, also including the 3DS Virtual Console versions of the older yellow, red and blue through the updated Pokémon bank application.

And as with all Pokémon games, the challenge returns to eventually, hopefully catch them all; (Before they release a new game. Arrrgh.

Stuart.


Last of Us 2 Teaser Potentially Found in Uncharted 4:
Naughty Dog has made a significant impact on the world of gaming yesterday with the release of Uncharted 4. Hidden away in an epilogue of the game however, is a little Easter egg potentially teasing The Last of Us 2.

The Easter Egg consists of a single poster on a cork board, it shows a pregnant woman in a gasmask a familiar pistol in hand stood next to partially obscured words that look suspiciously like “The Last of Us: American Daughters”.

Frankly that’s a cool title, especially considering the ending of The Last of Us. This isn’t even the first time that Naughty Dog has teased an upcoming game in a current one. In Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception it’s possible to find a newspaper article stating: “Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus.” In and of itself pretty much a non-starter and interesting as background world information, until The Last of Us came out, and then it was more significant.

This is of course a little more overt than that, and considering it’s accompanied with a Savage Starlight 2 poster (the comic series Ellie read in The Last of Us) the chances of this being Naughty Dog giving us a little tease for the upcoming Last of Us sequel we already had suspicions of are pretty high.

Vince.


Overwatch Beta – First Impressions:
I’ve trying to work out what to say about Overwatch for a while. I got to play a good few hours over the course of the beta. I played solo and with friends, against bots and against real meat people. I want to write a comparative view looking at what makes it good and what makes it bad. I can’t.

Now I haven’t played a squad based shooter competitively for 7 years and I haven’t managed to stand a competitive shooter *un-competitively* for about that long either. I enjoyed Overwatch and it showed me something, I haven’t got bored of first person shooters, first person shooters got boring.

Overwatch is a breath of life into a stale generic genre. We have more gritty “realistic” shooters than you could shake a stick at (nothing like the real thing), and none of them work there is always this one thing or that thing that is “too overpowered” and the games become a constant run of nerfing, until you are all running round with cap guns shouting bang at each other.

Overwatch works though, every single class feels right, at times I thought certain things were to powerful (Bastion) then you realise that Junkrat can destroy him in two well placed shots and all of a sudden he isn’t a threat at all. Maybe with more time holes will start to appear but even when I lost I still enjoyed the games.

The graphics are great (cartoony) the game play mechanics are smooth and feel right, I could not fault the game if I tried. The only issue I could foresee is whether two game modes and a handful of maps is enough to keep anyone entertained long enough for a competitive scene to take hold.

Sam.


In other gaming news, this week EA confirmed that Titanfall 2 is due to arrive in Q4 of 2016 and also the publisher is already talking about a follow-up to the hugely popular Star Wars Battlefront which was released last year, a sequel is loosely planned for a 2017 release.

We were also very surprised this week to see that Disney will withdraw itself from games publishing – this sadly means the end of Disney Infinity game/toy platform which crossed over classic Disney characters and landscapes with those of Marvel and Star Wars in a massive sandbox experience that was bags of fun.

It was launched in 2013 and saw dozens of figures released and a fourth wave was set to release this year but this has now been cancelled.

Until next time – Play on my Playas!

Jay (Chief Editor).