Matpat

Terry Crews Simulator Launches

ISSUE 11 — 17 February 2019

by Shahan Ahmed and Dale Hurst

Top Story — TERRY CREWS SIMULATOR IS HERE!

Crackdown 3 launched a couple of days ago. I’m sure you couldn’t miss the advertising campaign for the game, featuring Terry Crews in his sci-fi armour being his usual amped up self. Now you can finally BE him as his character, Commander Jaxon, in the futuristic city of New Providence with its holograms and Hot Wheels-looking space cars. You can also play as one of his agents… but that would be silly.

After all the hype and build-up, was it worth the five-year wait? Well, so far it has received a mixed reception. Many feel that the graphics and gameplay are very outdated. The multiplayer, ‘Wrecking Zone’, is said to be simple with no progression system but future updates will be coming so the potential is there. Whatever the case if you enjoyed the first Crackdown, this is more of the same and is considered to be the sequel that fans deserved more so than Crackdown 2.

Shahan’s Opinion: It may not be the prettiest looking game but it looks like simple, mindless fun! I’ve not played the previous two but it reminds me a little of Saints Row. I’d prefer to play this on console rather than PC. Which is unfortunate as it’s a Microsoft exclusive, their console being the one I don’t have.

LINK’S (RE-)AWAKENING

Nintendo Direct this week showed off plenty of exciting news of upcoming games and updates. It included Deltarune, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Final Fantasy and much more (sorry; still no Animal Crossing).

The news broadcast ended with an amazing reveal. Link’s Awakening, a beloved Game Boy classic from 1993, is being reimagined and brought to the Nintendo Switch this year. It boasts a new art style that is still incredibly faithful to the original. If you want to see how the new graphics compare to the old, GameXplain have recreated the trailer in the original Game Boy game.

On a side note, Super Mario Maker 2 was also revealed at the Nintendo Direct. To be released in June, it will allow a New Super Mario Bros. U art style for your levels. Luigi and Toadette wearing Cat Suits have also been seen. Hopefully more information won’t be too far away…

Shahan’s Opinion: I absolutely love the old 2D Zelda games, especially the Oracle ones. I’m liking the new style. Hearing Marin hum the Ballad of the Wind Fish at the end of that trailer. Oh. Lord. Can’t wait to relive this game and be crushed by its sadness again. It’s kinda like re-watching the intro to Pixar’s Up on YouTube. Am I right? No? It’s just me? Okay.

HOLLOW KNIGHT: SILKSONG REVEALED

Team Cherry, the small indie dev from Australia, are making a sequel to their acclaimed and beloved game Hollow Knight. What started out as DLC, Hollow Knight: Silksong has you playing as Hornet. She made an appearance in the first game as a recurring boss and one of the protagonist’s siblings presumably. Hornet is very acrobatic and wields a needle and thread.

If you’re unfamiliar with Hollow Knight, here’s a quick look at what it’s about. It is set in an ancient kingdom in an underground world. The inhabitants are insect-like beings who used to worship The Radiance, until the arrival of The Pale King, who was reborn from a dying wyrm. The Radiance brought unity but she made the bugs a hive mind without thought. The Pale King expanded their minds under his influence. He made a plan to supplant The Radiance using the Void, a substance from The Abyss that The Radiance considers her ancient enemy. The plan goes awry and an infection spreads across the populace. They lose their expanded minds and turn to husks. The Knight set out to seal The Radiance once and for all.

Shahan’s Opinion: What a mesmerising world Team Cherry have created. The characters make me think of No-Face from Spirited Away and the Kodamas in Princess Mononoke.

THE LATEST BATTLE ROYALE…: TETRIS!?!

Forget Apex Legends. Forget Fortnite. The latest Battle Royale is here only on Nintendo Switch and it’s… Tetris 99! Yup, that’s right.

You face off against 98 other players at the same time, clearing rows and sending ‘garbage’ to other players in a race to be the last one standing. While you play, you can see the boards of all other players. You can choose specific players to target or let the computer choose for you. Knocking players out with garbage earns you badges. More badges means you can send more garbage at a time. There is a sense of progression in the game as you can level up from the experience you earn from matches. Tetris 99 also promises to have special events.

Shahan’s Opinion: This is undoubtedly a great way to test how you fare with your Tetris peers.

UPDATE: MCN SITUATIONS

A couple of weeks back, we informed you on two situations occurring with two different multi-channel networks; Machinima and DEFY Media. Here’s an update on both.

Rooster Teeth, the company behind animated series such as Red vs. Blue and RWBY as well as YouTube channels such as Achievement Hunter and Funhaus, worked hard to save all of the lost gaming video content and series that were lost when Machinima shut down. Some of the more popular videos were done by a group called Inside Gaming. The original crew of Adam Kovic, Bruce Greene, James Willems and friends left Machinima years ago after witnessing signs of its downfall first-hand. They went on to create Funhaus with the help of and being under the umbrella of Rooster Teeth. Now everything has come full circle and they have Inside Gaming back in their hands. Machinima’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts are converting to Inside Gaming. On YouTube itself, what used to be Rooster Teeth’s channel ‘The Know’ is now Inside Gaming’s official YouTube channel. All of their old videos are available on the Rooster Teeth website under ‘Classic Inside Gaming’.

Moving on to the situation involving DEFY Media’s shutdown and content creators such as Game Theory and SMOSH. Ally Bank, the current holders of the $1.7 million, made a tweet saying they also lose out in this situation and a professional has been hired by Defy’s board of directors to liquidate the company. Matpat goes on to explain that Ally Bank is using false equivalence to show itself as victims just as much as the content creators who might as well be considered small-time business owners. Check out his video for a full and well-spoken explanation.

Shahan’s Opinion: It’s great news to be able to watch the old Inside Gaming content. I highly recommend their Drunk Mario Kart video.

GLOSSING OVER…

Massive Layoffs at Activision-Blizzard

This should have been a much bigger section in this issue, but once you trawl through all the corporate jargon, you don’t come out with much useful information. In short, nearly 10,000 employees at Activision-Blizzard are being laid off as of last Tuesday’s report. Apparently, the staffing cuts are not affecting game development departments.

Darksiders III Breaks Even

Following on from us covering the game’s launch, we’d like to bring some good news for the Darksiders series’ potential future. The game has recouped the money spent on development and marketing. Surely we’ll get to play as Strife, the final Horseman, in his own game.

Apex Legends Tops on Twitch

It was a great first week for Apex Legends on Twitch, as it beat out Fortnite on viewership figures. The only question is now… will the success continue or will it be short-lived?

Metroid Prime 4 — Nintendo Speaks Out

ISSUE 8 — 27 January 2019

by Shahan Ahmed and Dale Hurst

Top Story — OVERWHELMING POSITIVITY TOWARDS METROID PRIME 4 HONESTY

Nintendo has come clean to their Metroid fans. Shinya Takahashi, Nintendo’s General Manager of Planning and Development, presented a development update, in which he states that the current progress on Metroid Prime 4 was not up to their standard. They have taken the decision to restart production from the beginning and have producer Kensuke Tanabe work with US-based developer Retro Studios, who worked on the original Metroid Prime series as well as Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze.

Even though it’s not happy news for everyone eagerly waiting for Metroid Prime 4, the reception to Nintendo’s actions have been positive. The fact that they themselves were not happy with how their game was turning out and being transparent about it. It comes across sincerely and can be seen as respectful towards their customers. They are setting an example for everyone else in the gaming industry. It is a stark contrast compared to recent stories of how certain developers have let down their fan-base.

Shahan’s Opinion: Honesty is the best policy. Also bringing back Retro Studios to continue the Metroid Prime series seems like a no-brainer! They know the games inside-out and no doubt they will push the franchise to new heights with the fourth instalment.

New Character Spotlight — DAI (Jump Force)

dai

Dragon Quest protagonist Dai is the latest revealed addition to the roster for the upcoming anime crossover game Jump Force. He was revealed alongside a new story trailer; however no details as to a moveset or anything else have been given as yet. However, an educated guess suggests that Dai’s magical abilities and sword will both be the cruxes of his in-game capabilities.

Shahan’s Opinion: I am super stoked to see Gon and Killua from Hunter x Hunter be in Jump Force. But the game itself looks kinda ugly to me…

Dale’s Opinion: It’s much too early to say for certain how I feel about this revelation. The way they’re packing all these characters into Jump Force, we won’t exactly run out of choices who to play…

STREAMER RAISES OVER $340K FOR TRANS RIGHTS

Hbomberguy started a charity stream to raise donations for Mermaids UK, an award-winning group that supports transgender rights. The stream involved playing Donkey Kong 64 to 101% completion – not an easy feat to accomplish even for experts who know all of the secrets of the classic Nintendo game.

Harry Brewis, the real full name of Hbomberguy, has done this in response to the actions of Graham Linehan, creator of UK TV shows Father Ted and IT Crowd. Upon hearing that Mermaids would receive a £500K grant from the National Lottery, Linehan started a campaign telling his followers to send emails for the grant to be revoked. Thus the grant has been halted.

The charity stream was complete after 57 hours. It garnered views from across the globe and attracted the attention of various famous figures. Two examples are US Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Matilda actress Mara Wilson.

Shahan’s Opinion: The highlight for me was Grant Kirkhope, Donkey Kong’s own voice actor and DK64 composer, calling in to say “Trans Rights”!

BLIZZARD PERMANENTLY SLASHES OVERWATCH’S PRICE

The Standard and Legendary editions of Overwatch can now be bought at a cheaper price from now on. The difference between the two editions are that being Legendary Edition has cosmetics for the heroes as well as additional goodies for the other Blizzard games.

As their player-base lessens, this may be a way for them to bring in newbies who have otherwise held off from their popular first-person shooter.

It is the Year of the Pig and Overwatch’s Lunar New Year 2019 event is currently underway, to end on 18th February. As with previous recent events, it brings new skins, emotes, voice lines, etc., but nothing fundamentally new gameplay-wise.

Shahan’s Opinion: The miniscule amount of Overwatch lore being trickled out is not keeping my attention. It’s a shame what with the incredible world and characters they’ve created.

THE END OF MCNS

Here’s a quick overview on what MCNs (or Multi-Channel Networks) are. They are organisations that offer services to content creators on video sites like YouTube to take care of the behind-the-scenes aspects of their job. This includes dealing with AdSense, which is how YouTubers monetise their videos. Essentially, this meant that money in the form of ad revenue go through MCNs first. They receive the money, take their cut and send the rest to the content creator. Examples of MCNs are Maker and Fullscreen. This week, the 2 MCNs that have hit the news are Machinima and DEFY Media.

Machinima Hides All Videos

After Fullscreen’s acquisition of Machinima, all the videos on their YouTube channel (of 12 million subscribers) have been privatised and therefore cannot be watched. Many years’ worth of gaming content just vanished as if by the snap of your fingers. You can’t go back and see the classic playthrough of Chaser by the old Inside Gaming crew. Content creators who are part of Machinima’s network received a letter stating they are now part of Fullscreen’s creator network instead. However, some were completely dropped.

This along with the news of the Wii Shop Channel closure at the end of this month is a reminder that something put on the Internet is not as permanent as you may think. Potentially your digital goods, from video games on PS Plus or Xbox Live to movies on Amazon Video or Google Play Movies, may be lost to you for any number of reasons temporarily or permanently.

DEFY Media Steals $1.7 Million

This story comes from Matthew Patrick, otherwise known as the YouTuber MatPat who is known for the Game Theorists, Film Theorists and GTLive. For legal reasons, he has not spoken of these circumstances until now. In November 2018, DEFY Media shut up shop with no notice and laid off workers without warning. They did this without providing the money that their 50 content creators had earned. This amounted to $1.7 Million, the sum of which has ended up with Ally Bank. Matthew Patrick and his wife Stephanie have been spending money out of their own pocket to get everyone’s money back and are now looking for help. Hence why MatPat has come out with this story. He says the next big decision is to be made in May.

Shahan’s Opinion: Regarding Machinima, it is likely the bigger names will have their content stored by fans and shared in certain places of the Internet. When it comes to the DEFY Media situation, it’s pretty shocking. Especially if it affects any content creators who are relying on that money for their everyday lives.

A NEW CONSOLE COMPETITOR?

Slightly Mad Studios, the developer of Project Cars 2, have announced their goal to create their own game console. This week CEO Ian Bell has unveiled on Twitter how the controller will look like. Ian Bell has made incredible claims regarding the console. This includes:

  • Be on par with a fast PC two years from now
  • 4K Visuals
  • Support for major VR headsets
  • 90FPS “per eye” for VR

He has also said the company will give the game engine to studios for free if they want to develop games for the Mad Box. The system is estimated by him to be three years away from release.

Shahan’s Opinion: I prefer the simple yet effective approach. A minimalist design can often be the best and most pleasing to the eye. It’s pretty futuristic I guess!

GLOSSING OVER…

Incineroar Nearly Didn’t Make Smash Bros. Ultimate…

…But Decidueye nearly did! It’s always the way. A new Smash Bros. instalment always calls for new representatives from the stalwart series — Mario and Pokémon, anyway. The grassy-ghostly arrow-slinging owl Decidueye very nearly joined the roster instead of the fiery feline pro wrestler Incineroar, it was revealed recently. Some may have preferred it that way, to be honest. Who agrees?

Smash Bros. Celebrates 20th Birthday

While we’re on the subject of Smash Bros., it has been 20 years since the original instalment debuted on the Nintendo 64. Who feels old now?

New League of Legends Cinematic Revealed

The headline pretty much speaks for itself. If you love League of Legends and haven’t watched it yet, go ahead and click here.

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.