Month: June 2018

EA announced a push toward streamed gaming at its E3 2018 conference, followed by Microsoft announcing similar plans of its own at its conference today. Those come hot on the heels of the very unexpected release of Resident Evil 7: Cloud Version, an exclusively streamed version of a game that assumedly wouldn’t have been able to run on the Switch’s hardware natively.

This surprisingly widespread push toward streaming games to devices instead of running them natively paints a strange and somewhat scary vision of the possible future of gaming. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot even recently said that the next console generation would be the last, and that he thinks “streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home.”

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During Microsoft’s E3 2018 briefing, dedicated Gears studio The Coalition showed up to debut a trio of new Gears of War games. Among those was a brief teaser for Gears Tactics, a PC turn-based strategy game.

Tactics takes place 12 years before the first Gears of War. You can customize your own squad to take on threats in what was described as a more aggressive version of the classical tactics formula. And of course, as a Gears game, it will feature larger-than-life boss battles.

Microsoft unveiled a trio of new Gears of War titles during its E3 2018 press conference, including the next proper installment in the series–Gears 5–and a strategy spin-off titled Gears Tactics. In addition to those, the company announced a Gears game for mobile devices, but it’s radically different from anything else in the series.

Dubbed Gears Pop, the game is described as a “mobile Gears experience with an official Funko Pop twist.” Few details about the title were revealed, but it’s slated to launch on iOS and Android in 2019 and features Gears of War characters who resemble Funko Pop figures. You can take a look at an image of them below.

While Gears Pop may not be the direction fans were hoping to see the franchise take, the next mainline entry, Gears 5, is also slated to launch in 2019 and features the series’ trademark brutal action. Gears Tactics, meanwhile, is described as a “true PC strategy game where brutal action meets turn-based tactics.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most-anticipated upcoming games of E3 2018, and so far developer CD Projekt Red (of Witcher fame), has been tight lipped about what the game will actually be like. However, at Microsoft’s E3’s press conference, the studio officially changed that by showing off the game and revealing some details about it.

The press conference was about to end before being hacked to show the first full trailer. It opened with a narrator saying poverty and other social issues had made his city the worst place to live, and yet, everyone wants to be there. It then showed a train emerging into a dazzling xity of dreams, a metropolis of giant buildings adorned with dazzling screens, where organic skin is meshed with futuristic tech. The narrator describes himself as a “dreamer” before opening a case with a rifle in it. Viewers were then treated to montage of violence, with punk-stylised figures brutally attacking each other.

While it was a short trailer, it was certainly sweet. Bright and vibrant visuals and dense details brought to life a city of the future, and given that The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red is creating Cyberpunk 2077, we’re expecting there will be hundreds of compelling stories to be found within. Check out the trailer above.

There wasn’t any gameplay, but this was a good trailer for setting the tone. The first teaser took place in a dark alleyway where a bounty hunter-like figure was about to kill someone, this felt drastically different.

Cyberpunk 2077 was first announced six years ago. It is an RPG that is at least loosely based on Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop game Cyberpunk 2020. The game is set in a “dark future” of 2077 where advanced technologies have become both “the salvation and the curse of humanity.” The game promises a nonlinear story designed for “mature” players and is set in the metropolis of Night City. According to CD Projekt Red, it will have some sandbox elements and a form of multiplayer.

The studio has taken steps to stress that Cyberpunk 2077 is a “true RPG” and definitely not a multiplayer shooter. The game will release in 2019, for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

During Microsoft’s E3 press conference, Bandai Namco announced a new 3D arena fighting game called Jump Force along with a reveal trailer. What makes this game special is that it brings four manga/anime franchises together for a huge brawl: Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Death Note. While it’s not entirely clear how the game will play, it appears to share similarities with the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm games.

The tagline “Unite To Fight” could also indicate that these four worlds might come together to fight a common enemy. One of the highlights of the trailer showed Naruto hitting Frieza with a Rasengan. Nods to each franchise were featured in the trailer and a few of your favorite characters were shown battling it out in what seemed to be a destroyed metropolitan area in the United States.

Jump Force is set to launch sometime in 2019 for Xbox One, but it’s unclear which other platforms it’ll release on. Keep up with all our coverage of Microsoft’s E3 2018 press conference without news roundup.

CD Projekt Red gave us our first good look at the world of Cyberpunk 2077 during the Microsoft E3 2018 Xbox briefing. The game was shown running in-engine, showing off the world and the characters.

Developer CD Projekt RED is best known for its Witcher series. The Witcher 3 was released in May 2015 to critical and commercial acclaim, and went on to win our Game of the Year 2015 award.

After being announced in May 2012, CD Projekt RED went mostly quiet on Cyberpunk 2077 for years. But just recently, talk of the game bubbled back up, with the company’s president hinting that we’ll finally get to see the game in action at this year’s E3.

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Gears Tactics, a realtime strategy game, was announced as a new addition to the Gears of War franchise at the E3 2018 Microsoft press conference.

The new title will be released on PC, the Coalition studio head Rod Ferguson revealed. In it, “you create a whole new squad in a completely different genre 12 years before the events of Gears of War 1 as they hunt the locust monster maker responsible for destroying whole cities.

“It’s our take on the classic turn-based strategy genre with a character-driven story, faster, more aggressive gameplay and a customizable squad and equipment,” he added, confirming Gears Tactics will also have “massive boss battles.”

Gears Tactics is just one of three Gears of War games announced during the Microsoft conference. Additionally, Gears of War Pop was revealed, as well as the hotly anticipated Gears of War 5.

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Gears 5 has been announced for Xbox One.

Microsoft revealed the game during its Xbox E3 showcase. In Gears 5, you’ll play as Kait Diaz, one of the key characters from Gears of War 4. Unlike prior entries in the franchise, it appears Microsoft has dropped “of War” for the series’ fifth main entry.

Gears 5 will be released for Xbox One in 2019. The game will be available via Xbox Game Pass at launch.

This wasn’t the only new Gears game announced during Microsoft’s E3 showcase, as Gears Tactics and Gears Pop are also on the way.

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Gears Pop was revealed today during Microsoft’s E3 2018 press conference. It will be a mobile game that combines the Gears of War with Funko Pops.

The Gears of War series made its debut on the Xbox 360 back in 2006. The most recent entry in the series, Gears of War 4, was released on Xbox One and PC back in October 2016. It has since went on to get a 4K update for the Xbox One X.

Gears of War 5’s existence was outed back in May via a Walmart Canada online listing. More recently, Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista said that playing Marcus Fenix in a Gears of War movie would be a “dream role.”

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Just Cause 4 was officially revealed on the Microsoft stage at E3 2018. It will be released on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on December 4, 2018 and is available for pre-order today.

Steam leaked Just Cause 4 earlier this month via a pre-purchase advertisement. The leak came a month after a major leak from Walmart Canada, which revealed Just Cause 4, Gears of War 5, Rage 2, Borderlands 3, and more.

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