MercurySteam, developer of Konami’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games, showed off a trailer and gameplay of its upcoming third-person shooter, Raiders of the Broken Planet, during a presentation at GameLab Barcelona 2016 last month: Now, the studio has released a full-length video of the presentation, allowing the rest of the world to get a closer look at its new project.
When it was announced in April, MercurySteam described Raiders of the Broken Planet as a “Multiplayer Online Asymmetric Adventure” that will be released as an episodic campaign. The description did not, however, paint an especially vivid picture of the game’s moment-to-moment gameplay. Based on the gameplay demo, we can now see the game will be a third-person cover-based shooter, but with an emphasis on close-quarters and melee combat.
At a glance, it layers the MOBA-influenced conventions of “hero shooters” like Overwatch and Battleborn on a Gears of War-style cover-based shooter. Each player controls a unique character with their own weapons and abilities, which may make them better suited to melee combat, or long-distance shooting and stealth.
Running out of cover causes players to build “stress,” which makes them more resistant to melee attacks, but also causes their silhouette to glow and makes them visible through walls. That stress energy, called Aleph, is also used to complete mission objectives in some cases.
While the game is being designed with multiplayer in mind, chief game designer Enric Alvarez said the gameplay will revolve around a narrative, and will be playable solo or with friends, on or offline. Set on a mysterious planet light-years away from Earth, criminals and outlaws fight for control of an “ability enhancing” resource called Aleph.
Alvarez said the game’s “primary inspiration” was not a multiplayer game or a sci-fi story, but such classic films as Akira Kirosawa’s Seven Samurai, and its western adaptation, The Magnificent Seven.
“We have a group of characters that are united in a very random manner,” Alvarez said, based on a translation from GameReactor. “They share nothing and are looking for their own stuff, so watch out who you turn your back on … And the plot, the narrative, is really fed by the conflicts among them.”
That narrative conceit also what seems to be the game’s asynchronous mechanic: Alvarez emphasized that, in addition to controlling the “anti-heroes” at the heart of the story, players can opt to play as enemies in another group’s play-through. Though the details remain in flux, the system sounds reminiscent of invading another player’s game in the Dark Souls series. Alvarez suggested that the story mode will feature four-player co-op, but the enemy side will presumably allow a different number of people to join in.
If Raiders of the Broken Planet sounds like your cup of tea, you can sign up to join the game’s upcoming PC beta on the developer’s web site. The first episode will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC “later this year.”
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.