Konami

Announcing… Borderlands 3!

ISSUE 16 — 31 March 2019

by Shahan Ahmed and Dale Hurst

Top Story: BORDERLANDS 3 REVEALED!

After nearly seven years of waiting since Borderlands 2 (let’s put aside The Pre-Sequel), Gearbox Software have officially unveiled Borderlands 3! CEO Randy Pitchford was on the stage at PAX East 2019 to present the game to fans. However, it had a troubled, laggy reveal, possibly due to technical issues on the provided equipment. The trailer packed the usual Borderlands charm and humour. It provides a glimpse at the new characters, such as the new Siren. She is likely to be the mêlée-based character as she boasts plenty of muscle and can summon six arms made of pure energy. Plenty of old, familiar faces also showed up. Lilith, Marcus, Maya, Tiny Tina (who’s not so tiny anymore) and Mad Moxxi appear, as well as Brick conducting a sax solo. Characters from Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands also make an appearance. The game will have over a billion guns, which is actually not surprising knowing how the series procedurally generates its guns and their properties. But what is surprising and hilarious is Gearbox showing off a gun with legs! No one asked for this, but the mad men did it anyway. Borderlands 3 has yet to be given a release date, but the not-so-subtle Pitchford may be implying it’s not far off.

Gearbox also announced at their PAX East panel a Game of the Year Edition for the first Borderlands on PS4, Xbox One and PC. For PC gamers who already have the game on Steam, you can upgrade to the GotY Edition for free! It boasts improved visuals (4K and HDR, improved lighting, textures and character models), a Borderlands 2-like minimap, new inventory system and auto-pickup, 6 new Legendary weapons and 5 new character head options. It’ll be available in a matter of days; specifically 3rd April!  If you’re interested in other games that showed up at PAX East this year, check this out.

Shahan’s Opinion: This series is one of the best for some couch co-op fun. The Sirens are always my go-to characters when available. Burning everything as a Firefly-build Lilith was glorious. Maya looks great with her updated look too. Super excited to try out the new, buff Siren.

APPLE ARCADE ANNOUNCED

After Google revealed their gaming-related plans with the Stadia (see last week’s issue), Apple are following suit. Not doing exactly the same thing, mind you. Apple Arcade is not a streaming service. It is a premium, monthly subscription service in which all games will have no ads or in-app purchases and can be played offline on an Apple device. The initial line-up for the service will have games by Sega, Konami, Mistwalker (Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s new company), Annapurna Interactive and other developers. Apple says that more than 100 exclusive games will be available as part of the service. Apple Arcade is coming autumn this year.

Shahan’s Opinion: I’d rather pay as few subscription services as I can. Regarding Apple phones in general, I’ve gone back and forth from theirs and Android phones. Ultimately, iOS is too restrictive for me. Apple phones look nice and premium but now even the hardware has a down side after they implemented that screen notch. Picked up a Google Pixel and never looked back.

STREETS OF RAGE 4 GAMEPLAY

During the summer of 2018, beat ‘em up fans rejoiced as a ‘90s gem from Sega’s glory days made a return. Streets of Rage 4 was revealed featuring a fully-bearded Axel Stone and a never-aging Blaze Fielding. It was announced by DotEmu and Lizardcube (publisher and developer of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap) in partnership with Sega. Guard Crush Games (developer of Streets of Fury) will also be involved.

The new gameplay reveal this week gave a familiar feel, as if the developers are honouring the series’ past. The fighting is reminiscent of its predecessors, fly kicks and all. Throw your enemies and pick up weapons from the ground like before. But let’s move on to what’s new! Journalists who have had a hands-on experience with an early build of the game last year have said special moves take away health (like in SoR2) but regular attacks will restore that lost health. The new hand-drawn art style is a departure from the pixels of yore and look incredible. The devs have said SoR4 will have its own unique score and effects to help make it stand out from the original game. Does this mean the original composer Yuzo Koshiro won’t be making a return? They’ve been quiet on this matter…

Streets of Rage follows a group of young ex-cops who fight their way through a crime-ridden city to get to Mr. X in an attempt to stamp out the corruption once and for all. If you want to know more about the series including the multiple other cancelled attempts at a Streets of Rage 4, check out this video.

Shahan’s Opinion: I adore the original on the Sega Mega Drive so much. The characters. (Blaze! First video game crush.) The levels. (Freight elevator!) THE MUSIC. (YUZO KOSHIRO!) I NEED A RELEASE DATE. (And bring back Adam!)

SEGA MEGA DRIVE / GENESIS MINI

If all that Streets of Rage talk has got you feeling nostalgic, well we’re not letting up! Sega are joining Nintendo and Sony in creating their own mini console. On 19th September 2019, the Sega Mega Drive Mini (or Sega Genesis Mini for the US) will release. It comes with 40 titles ready to plug-in and play. Ten of the games have been announced. They are:

–          Ecco the Dolphin –          Toejam & Earl
–          Castlevania: Bloodlines –          Comix Zone
–          Space Harrier II –          Sonic The Hedgehog
–          Shining Force –          Altered Beast
–          Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine –          Gunstar Heroes

Shahan’s Opinion: I’ve not really been tempted by all of the Mini consoles when there are other, cheaper methods to play old games. But this one I’ll admit, I am sorely tempted. There’s always been Sega Classics Collections to play their gems on many platforms. But if this does well, could Sega be tempted to make another console? A Dreamcast 2!?! Sigh… Just a pipe dream maybe…

CD PROJEKT RED ON E3 2019

A conference was held by CD Projekt Group for their financial results for 2018. It covers not only their games but also their digital distribution platform GOG.com that even though it’s great, it only made $7.8K net profit in 2018. On the bright side, the Polish company has informed the conference they have obtained a new office building in Warsaw in close proximity to their current offices. This will enable them to expand and hire another 250-300 developers.

Let’s move on to their games. Gwent, the card game born from the Witcher series, will finally be heading for mobile phones. It will launch on Apple’s App Store this autumn, and a later date for Android phones. The Witcher 3 continues to make strong sales. Alongside Thronebreaker, it has made over $28.6M net profit in 2018. They’ve also acknowledged their talks with Andrzej Sapkowski who wanted more money from the developer as creator of the Witcher books. Negotiations are ongoing with the author, but they are unable to comment further.

Now let’s talk about Cyberpunk 2077 and E3 2019. After its initial showing at last year’s E3, Cyberpunk’s marketing has reached over 250 million people! Via their own channels and invited influencers who have tried a demo of the game behind closed doors. CDPR were asked if E3 is the best place to announce release dates of games. They agreed it is. They’ve gone on to say their E3 presence this year will have a surprise, but no pop artist will show up! It will be the most important E3 in CD Projekt’s history, according to CEO Adam Kiciński.

Shahan’s Opinion: E3 is going to be good this year! What surprise do you think they have in store for us? A trailer for a secret project they’ve been working on? Or maybe Cyberpunk 2077 goes gold? I can’t wait.

Dale’s Opinion: So, no Lady Gaga surprise appearance? That’s a shame – was wondering what she’d come dressed as…

GLOSSING OVER…

Shantae 5 Announced

A brand new adventure in the Shantae series is confirmed for later this year. Shantae 5 will be available on all major home consoles, and also the newly-announced Apple Arcade.

Layoffs at EA

350 employees in the marketing and publishing departments (among others) of EA have been let go this week. Also, EA Russia and EA Japan have both closed down.

Anthem Woes Continue

Looting issues with Anthem have been described by fans to be a regression from what they were before with the recent update. No masterwork weapons for you this update, freelancers!

PLAYING THIS WEEK…

Shahan has been playing…

Overwatch

I’ve hopped back on to Overwatch to check out the most recent character to be introduced to the roster.

Baptiste went live last week. He’s a combat medic with a difficult past. One of 30 million orphans from the Omnic War. He did what he could to survive and ended up as a Talon agent. After realising he has a choice and making a living wasn’t good enough, he chooses to fight for a better world and leaves Talon.

For the brief period that I’ve played him, it’s clear you’d need to spend some time to get to grips with this healer. He’s definitely one of the more complex heroes in his class. For example, it’ll take some time getting used to the healing grenade’s projectile and landing it on your allies. But hey, Baptiste’s DBZ scouter is looking super cool though!

AGDQ 2019 Comes to an End

ISSUE 6 — 13 January 2019

by Shahan Ahmed and Dale Hurst

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: This issue covers more of what happened over the holidays. So some of the news stories here may date back two or three weeks!

Top Story — ADGQ 2019 IS COMING TO AN END

If you are not familiar with Games Done Quick, this is a charity fundraising organisation that holds an event twice a year that involves video game speedruns and marathons. They are held in January (AGDQ) and in the summer (SGDQ), each running for a week. There have also been impromptu events set up to support victims of disasters such as Hurricane Harvey and 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

In keeping with previous years, these events support the charity Prevent Cancer Foundation. At this point in writing, they are on their way to $2 million and, knowing the last day rush, it is highly likely they will continue their trend of surpassing the previous year.

Shahan’s Opinion: It’s fascinating to see experts efficiently play and literally break through games for a good cause. It was also amazing to see that during the Final Fantasy IX speedrun, there were more viewers for the classic RPG than there were Fortnite viewers.

If you want to catch the action at AGDQ, here’s where to do it…!

New Character Spotlight — NEGAN (Tekken 7)

Last month it was confirmed that the dastardly, baseball bat-wielding villain of The Walking Dead, Negan, will be joining the line-up of Tekken 7. He, along with three other characters: Tekken alum Armor King, Craig Marduk and Julia (also from The Walking Dead), are additions to the roster made available by the game’s second Season Pass.

Dale’s Opinion: Unlike when Darth Vader and Yoda were third-party guest characters in Soul Calibur IV, Negan appearing in a Tekken game actually fits. It’s not something I ever imagined happening, but when I found out, I thought, “Hmmm, that’s an interesting idea!”

FAN RECREATES THE SILENT HILLS DEMO

Years ago in the summer of 2014, Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear Solid fame) showed off a Playable Teaser for an instalment in the Silent Hills franchise. He had been working on it in collaboration with film director Guillermo Del Toro and it included an obscurely hard-to-obtain ending featuring actor Norman Reedus. The game ended up being cancelled as Kojima left Konami. It was taken off of the PlayStation Store and Konami made it difficult to reinstall it again.

Fast-forward to the present. RadiusGordello, a fan and developer, spent the last nine months recreating Silent Hills PT from scratch in the Unreal engine (the original was made in the Fox engine). Radius has provided VR support in addition to keyboard/mouse and PS4/XB1 controllers. However there seems to be issues with the game when exploring the haunted hallways in virtual reality. Radius has made this available on itch.io for free so get it quickly before it becomes much more difficult to find once Konami takes it down in due course.

If you’d rather squint through your fingers and watch a play-through of the remake, check out GTLive’s video here. This is especially good for anyone who hasn’t experienced the original as MatPat and Steph haven’t either.

Shahan’s Opinion: Grabbed it straight away. I’m going to scare friends and family all month! The original was literally genre-defining and makes you wonder what could’ve been. It has inspired many indie developers to put their own twist on the concept. This fan remake is incredibly close to being just as good, which is remarkable for being made by a single human. Silent Hills PT had an entire development team behind it after all!

BETHESDA SETTLES WESTWORLD LAWSUIT

Cast your minds back to the announcement of Fallout 4 on June 2015. It was a huge surprise. They revealed that Fallout 4 would launch in a matter of months. Unheard of in the gaming industry! Not only that, they released a mobile app available to download immediately! It kept fans talking until F4’s November release. The mobile game was called Fallout Shelter. A resource management game that had you in charge of a vault (one of the series’ infamous underground shelters) and the residents within.

Now, fast-forward to 2018. Warner Bros. Interactive hires Behaviour Interactive, who helped develop Fallout Shelter, to help create a Westworld mobile game. It was launched in time for the finale of Season 2. On that same day, Bethesda filed a lawsuit claiming it was a blatant rip-off, using the same code plus similar game design, art style, animations, etc.

It has now been confirmed a settlement has been made but no details have been revealed. Bethesda and WB Interactive have reached an amicable agreement and Bethesda dismissed their claims.

Fallout 76 Catch-Up – Nuka Dark and the Dev Room Thefts

While we’re on the subject of Bethesda, here’s what’s been happening with Fallout 76 since the last issue of Warp Point Weekly.

If you weren’t aware, the special edition of Fallout 76 promised a bottle of rum as one of its goodies. Branded as ‘Nuka Dark’ following the series’ iconic ‘Nuka Cola’, they started to ship out towards the end of last month after delays. Lo and behold, fans were not happy with what they have received. The bottles are a plastic covering with a shorter glass bottle inside (adding pouring issues to the disappointment). It should be pointed out that usable Nuka bottles can be bought from Etsy at a fraction of the price.

Regarding the video game itself, F76 players have found a secret developer room within the game. D rooms are nothing new. They give developers space in-game to conduct tests. They are in Bethesda’s previous games; Skyrim and Fallout 4. World of Warcraft had an entire dev island for example. The Fallout 76 dev room was discovered to contain plans for every single in-game item as well as unreleased content that is to come in a future update. There are reports of players swiftly moving the stolen items to other accounts and/or selling them on eBay. Bethesda are suspending accounts of anyone who enter the room. The biggest surprise of all in the dev room is that an NPC can be found there! Could actual voiced characters be coming to the post-apocalyptic West Virgina of Fallout 76!?!

Shahan’s Opinion: Fallout Shelter was a fun mobile game. I personally had no idea there was a Westworld one! The best thing about Fallout Shelter were the pick-up lines the little characters would say to each other before they would procreate and pump out another vault dweller.

BOWSETTE CONFIRMED NON-CANON BY NINTENDO

Bowsette — the fan-made character that took over Japan and set the Internet ablaze at the tail end of last year. He/she has been indirectly confirmed to be non-canon by Nintendo. Bowsette was born from Bowser donning the newly-introduced Super Crown. However on the official website for New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, it confirms that only Toadette can use this item.

The website explains, “Super Crown – When Toadette finds one of these, she can transform into the super-powered Peachette. (Sorry Luigi – only Toadette can use this item!)”

Mentioning Luigi is likely a reference to the two times he has dressed up as Peach, (i.e. in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and the comic Super Mario Adventures.)

Shahan’s Opinion: Toadette is adorable in Super Mario Party. Peach is my best girl. Combine the two together? Hnnggg.

Dale’s Opinion: I’ve never quite been convinced what the fuss has been about regarding Toadette and this Super Crown, much less the whole Bowsette thing! Personally, I think they could have given a playable role to a much more prominent character like Wario.

SOULJA BOY STILL SELLING BOOTLEG CONSOLES

Soulja Boy has resurfaced by selling bootleg video game consoles. The Crank That rapper, who self-proclaims that he has made the biggest comeback of 2018, started selling ‘fake’ consoles that are available on Amazon or AliExpress. He slapped on his own brand on them and sold them at a much higher price on his website. These consoles boasted having hundreds and thousands of games pre-installed. These games are old classics from popular IPs (Mario, Crash, Pokémon, Final Fantasy and many more) alongside some knock-off games too. The issue is this has clearly been done without any licensing done by Soulja Boy. So, it is essentially theft.

On Twitter, Soulja Boy has responded to this. To paraphrase, he claimed Nintendo aren’t going to do anything and they would’ve done something the first day. He isn’t scared of Nintendo or any “nerds making YouTube videos”. A few weeks later, they are no longer on his website. Rumours are that Nintendo were looking into taking action.

But now he is back at it again! His newest ‘SouljaGame handheld’ looks just like the PlayStation Vita. Next he’ll have Sony’s lawyers in pursuit. It is priced at $99.99 while the original bootleg (that sounded silly to say) is half the price on Amazon and even cheaper on AliExpress.

Shahan’s Opinion: Wow. The sad thing is that one of them actually sold out. There must’ve been a lot of casual gamers who were taken advantage of. Or there are a lot of Soulja Boy fans showing their support…

JACK BLACK IS A GAMING YOUTUBER!?!

Not long before Christmas, Jack Black amusingly threw forward his gauntlet as he called out PewDiePie and Ninja. He is now a gaming YouTuber, with his son being one of the editors. Jack and junior have played at the arcades but have yet to make a real gameplay video. He promises they are coming soon. Videos on the channel are posted every Friday.

This is not Jack Black’s first foray into the world of gaming. In terms of YouTube, he and his son had a taste of the infamous Five Nights at Freddy’s series in a video with Markiplier (a prominent gaming YouTuber). Jack Black also stars as axe-toting and guitar-strumming roadie Eddie Riggs; the protagonist of Double Fine’s Brütal Legend.

Shahan’s Opinion: Nachoooooooo- ahem. I like Jack Black. It was great seeing him in that Gorillaz music video last year. And Brütal Legend was righteous! Until it reached a point where it became an RTS…

GLOSSING OVER…

Smash Bros. Ultimate Smashes Sales Records in Japan

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate already took its huge fan-base by storm when it was first released, but as confirmed by Twitter, it took them five weeks to do what its 3DS predecessor did in three years! It is confirmed to be the bestselling title of the series in Japan.

Money Trouble Drama for Odd Tale Games

The developers of the highly-anticipated indie game The Last Night confirmed in a string of Tweets on New Year’s Eve last year their recent financial difficulty. This even forced them to cancel a new trailer at 2018’s The Game Awards.

It’s Divorce for Bungie and Activision!

On Thursday, it was confirmed that gaming developer Bungie and publisher Activision will be going their separate ways. Bringing an eight-year association to an end, but also leaving their project Destiny solely in Bungie’s hands.