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 news regarding PlayStation’s schedule for it’s appearance at this year’s E3 event, Fallout 4‘s newly released Far Harbor DLC pack and release details relating to the long rumoured Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City HD remasters.
Sony PlayStation E3 Date and Time Announced:
The annual E3 event is almost upon us and this highlight of the gaming calendar will this year see the return of Sony PlayStation to centre stage. PlayStation will be making their appearance on Monday 13th June – ahead of the first day of the expo, at 5pm local Los Angeles time, which means an early one for us in the UK at 2am Tuesday morning!
As well as PlayStation VR there should be some tantalising details about the secretive PS4.5 / PS4K. Codenamed ‘Neo’, this upgraded console is said to include faster processing, sharper graphics and output for 4K TVs. Games expected to be covered for the PlayStation 4 platform at this year’s E3 include Battlefield 5, FIFA 2017, Final Fantasy XV and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
– Jay.
Fallout 4 Expansion Pack ‘Far Harbor’ Released:
The release of Fallout 4’s downloadable content pack Far Harbor on May 19th of this week gave us the first major instalment of the much-anticipated expansions following the games initial release.
The story sees our character pick up a case from Valentine’s Detective agency in Diamond City, in an adventure straight from a hardboiled fiction – similarities are even shown in the artwork for the expansion.
Far Harbor takes the protagonist off of the coast of Maine in search of a young woman and a secret colony of synths, a land still swath with radioactive creatures old and new, created by the Institute – a mysterious advanced scientific organization who are mentioned in previous games but have only appeared fully in Fallout 4 as their story was developed throughout the game.
As an initial expansion Far Harbor looks to be an interesting addition with the style of the game itself and somewhat interesting story line sounding like something out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. It really looks to add an excellent continuation and exciting new land – the largest seen from an add-on expansion, as well as additional new weapons and new power armour.
The Fallout 4 expansion pack Far Harbor will be available from May 19th for £25 standalone or included as part of the Fallout 4 £50 season pass.
– Stu.
Batman: Return to Arkham Officially Announced:
Finally confirmed this week was the existence of newly remastered HD versions of popular Batman titles Arkham Asylum (2009) and Arkham City (2011) after leaks over the recent months suggested that the games would get a next gen overhaul.
Combined in one pack for the first time ever, this dynamic duo of Game of the Year award-winners will be sold together as Batman: Return to Arkham. The bundle will cost £40 when released for Xbox One and PS4 on July 26th with all previously released DLC included. Graphics will benefit from an upgrade thanks to the Unreal Engine 4 (previous games used Unreal Engine 3) and these impressive visual tweaks can be witnessed in the exciting announcement trailer which will have you exclaiming “Holy Graphical Improvements, Batman!”
As well as just boosting the graphic performance, Warner Bros. Interactive and its developers have dug deep into the Caped Crusader’s utility belt and also updated the character models and environments making the familiar look fantastic and new for those experiencing Arkham for the first time, and even veteran vigilantes coming back to strike again.
Batman: Return to Arkham will also welcome back the original voice cast including Kevin Conroy as the Dark Knight and inimitable Mark Hamill as The Joker – which is worth the price of admission in itself.
– Jay.
This just in – from a Galaxy Far, Far Away..
Star Wars Celebration Europe will be crashing down on our capital city on July 15th to 17th and it’s been announced that gaming will be a focal point when the stars turn out in London.
Games playable at the Celebration will be Star Wars: Battlefront, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Commander, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars: Force Collection. It’s being billed as the largest gaming gathering in Star Wars Celebration history and with spotlight guests such as Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher already announced to appear weekend tickets flew out the door faster than the Millennium Falcon on the Kessel Run, but some day tickets are still available if you shoot first – www.starwarscelebration.com.
To close this edition of the Gaming Weekly we thought it would be worth mentioning the slightly mind-boggling news that classic puzzle game Tetris will be made into an $80-million live-action movie.
Yes, you read correctly – That’s an eighty-million dollar budget to bring the addictive block-buster to life on the big screen in a trilogy of movies no less! With that much dollar being dropped on the project those bricks are really going to look great!
How the Gameboy classic will fit into a real-world scenario is anyone’s guess at this point but with the Adam Sandler flick Pixels recently bringing a bunch of retro game characters to cinema and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson looking to face off against the beasts of arcade platformer Rampage, it seems that no gaming property is safe from the Hollywood treatment! Cue the music.
– Jay (Chief Editor).