In a surprise move for an age in which release dates are constantly being pushed back, Titanfall 2 has been announced to be releasing months before its previously estimated release date of before Match 2017.

While that usually means we’d be looking at maybe an early 2017 release window, GameSpot has seen an earnings report from the publisher EA in which the release date has been narrowed down to be launched during the third fiscal quarter of the year. In other words, around October to December.

This probably means that for their big sequel EA are aiming to get Titanfall 2 out just around Christmas towards the end of that quarter. They’ve another game coming out too that is similar, with Battlefield 1 having a release date of October 21st and Call of Duty’s latest incarnation Infinite Warfare from rival Activision releasing on November 4th. EA will probably want to avoid releasing too near either for the risk of losing sales due to players having to choose just one shooter genre game at the time.

Of course, this is far from a confirmation of any release date, but it’s a fair bet we’ll see Titanfall 2 being advertised as a gift for this Christmas, and it’ll be available on both Xbox One and PS4 along with PC so it’s hitting the three major platforms as well.

Hopefully it’ll be just as attention grabbing as the first game, but maybe have a little more longevity.

So, the sixth installment to Sid Meier’s Civilization series has just been announced, and unusually for a game that’s just been announced we know quite a bit about how the game’s going to work. That’s mainly because the announcement also contained the release date which is actually not that far away: October 21st 2016. It’s even already up on Steam for pre-purchase, along with a few bundles.

It’s going to be the same civilization builder type game, but with some key differences. Firstly the way cities work in Civ 6 will follow the same ‘unstacking’ rule that happened to units in Civ 5; instead of having all buildings in a city ‘stacked’ atop each other they’ll be spread out across the city’s territory via districts – the bigger the city, the more districts it’ll be able to support up to 12. This means that cities will now be made more specialised from the beginning. Districts will have specialisations that are affected by certain terrains, such as mountains giving religious and scientific bonuses to those particular districts. Map pins are also being introduced so that you’re able to plan out what you want your next district to be once your city has grown that much.

Because of this, sieges in cities have changed too, allowing for enemies to sack and loot districts outside of the city without taking the heavily defended city centre, weakening the empire it belongs to. Of course, if the centre is taken it once again flips ownership to the conquering army.

Combat is also getting an overhaul, with previously consider ‘military units’ such as catapults now being assigned as ‘support units’ that can stack onto the same tile as ‘military units’ to stop battlefields being so congested. Military units will also have an added layer of customisation now and units of the same type can be combined into a unit, further reducing the numbers on the board.

Research now also gains some bonuses depending on where cities are located, with a city on the coast having a boost to their researching of Sailing for example over land-locked cities. This means that your actions and playstyle compliment just how fast your chosen civilization will be researching and developing some technologies, to better tie it into the game and not have it feel as divorced from proceedings as it previously did.

Other civ leaders will now have their own agendas, tied to how their historical counterparts acted in real life. For example some actions will make some other leaders like you, while it might anger others. In this way it will be possible to potentially set them against each other as opposed to just against you in the game. For once the AI will attack the AI! This adherence to the historical counterparts doesn’t mean that they won’t act counter to that though; after all, Civilization’s greatest in-joke is Nuclear Gandhi and Firaxis have confirmed that they’ve not forgotten about that amusing little bug-come-feature of the series (although they didn’t go into details obviously).

Finally, one of the biggest complaints about Civ 5 was that multiplayer sessions could take a while. You’d often have games running over several sessions and Let’s Players could literally make a series out of a single 5/6-player session. Now Firaxis have said they’re going to introduce some pre-made multiplayer sessions that will let you “cooperate and compete with your friends in a wide variety of situations all designed to be easily completed in a single session.” They’ll also be available as single-player games too. I see an opportunity here ripe for the Steam Workshop developers.

Of course, there’s more to find out yet but given that it’s just been announced, this is quite the treasure trove of info. I’ll leave you now with the game’s trailer as we await more news.

Sega is teasing up a potential high definition remaster of both Shenmue and Shenmue II.

The news comes via a video of the unboxing of the “Europa Edition” of Valkyria Chronicles Remastered, from Sega Europe.

In the video, the publisher said there are various licensing issues involved with the original releases, and that despite this they would love to do it – they even said they are “currently investigating how to make it a reality.”

They also said the HD remasters would have to live up to the quality of the original releases.

The game’s final chapter, Shenmue III, was funded on Kickstarter under the leadership of series creator Yu Suzuki. It’s currently set for a release sometime later next year on PC and PlayStation 4, and is being developed by Ys Net.

I’ll be honest, I only recently got into Voltron and didn’t know much about it, but growing up I was a HUGE Transformers and Power Rangers fan, so Voltron should have been on my anime loving childhood…

However, Netflix has a new animated version coming and it looks Bad Ass!

Check out the trailer here:

Battleborn is an interesting collection of ideas. Taking Gearbox’s trademark humor, first person shooting, hero abilities and throwing them into a blender with a cooperative campaign and three multiplayer modes, it gets most things right but leaves some room for improvement. This is arguably an entry into the emerging Hero Shooter genre, similar to Paladins and Overwatch. Gearbox has put it’s own spin on things however, and the combat in the game is unique and feels surprisingly good. But more on that in a minute. First off, let’s break down the modes.

Single Player

Battleborn comes with an 8 mission campaign, with more missions to be added later in the year. This campaign can be experienced either solo, cooperatively, or with strangers via the public queue in game. Up to 5 players jump into scripted missions with minimal story. The story is told through radio chatter and dialogue between various NPCs. Most of this dialogue is going to consist of “Oh no, bad guy A is going to destroy thing B. We must top it!” It’s not ground breaking, but neither is it bad. The voice acting in the game is well delivered and gives each character a sense of personality and purpose. Its just that the story seems like so much fluff for some rather generic objectives.

Most missions will see you either escorting an NPC through the level, guarding a base of some sort, or doing both. This can quickly get tedious as failing to defend a base, or letting your NPC companion die means a complete restart. Seeing as how missions can take upwards of 40 minutes to complete on the higher difficulty levels, this can be extremely frustrating and punishing.  On a positive note, the game is well balanced, the levels are easy to traverse and in true Gearbox style, whenever you complete one you are showered with loot. Similarly, the hordes of enemies that you face are distinctive, fun to fight and can provide quite the challenge on higher difficulty levels. Although with a well handled team of five, none of the encounters I’ve played are what I would call Dark Souls level hard.

As a note, there are elements of the single player that are shared with the multiplayer and I will go into them in more detail in that section – things like collecting shards to activate gear or build emplacements to combat the NPC enemies, and the levelling system. In addition, due to the way the single player campaign works outside of co-op (you vote on which maps to play, and people tend to choose the maps that offer characters as rewards rather than going through in order) I have been unable to finish 3 of the 8 missions due to lack of co-operative partners to play with. We plan to rectify this and will amend the review, but that’s dependent on Lonesamurai.

Multiplayer

The real meat of Battleborn lies in the multiplayer. The game is broken up into three distinct modes: Capture, Meltdown and Incursion. Capture is the simplest, consisting of three capture points that you and the enemy team fight over control of. The more points you control, the faster you accumulate points. The first team to 1,000 points wins.

Meltdown on the other hand is an interesting mashup of FPS sensibilities and MOBA elements. Each side starts in opposing bases. In between are two lanes running in between, each of which contains an insane talking furnace named MINREC. Teams must escort their minions down the lane and into the maw of the furnace as he screams about environmental responsibility, spouts statistics and gleefully shouts at the minions to be reborn as various new objects such as a replica sword or a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel. Once a team reaches 250 points, their furnaces will move further back, forcing them to protect their minions longer. Scattered about the map are emplacements that you can spend shards on. These shards are awarded for completing objectives, killing enemy Battleborn or minions and for shattering large and small shard crystals found around the map. Emplacements vary from damaging turrets, accelerators that will provide a speed boost and spawners that will place giant special minions onto the field.

Conversely, those shards can be used to activate gear that has been brought into battle. This gear is generally awarded through completing campaign missions, levelling characters up to a certain point or they can be acquired via loot packs purchasable with in game currency.  Up to three pieces of gear can be equipped at in any given loadout, and depending on the rarity of the gear costs a larger amount of shards to activate. This system applies to all three game modes and creates a surprising element of strategy within each match. You can choose to play the map and level up emplacements, earning XP as you do so. Or you can choose to save your shards and activate your gear to gain passive power and defensive attributes. Smartly, Gearbox has crafted this system in such a way that both playstyles are not only rewarded but can make a significant impact on the outcome of a match.

 
Incursion, the final mode, is a break the base mode that involves a central area with tons of minions and Battleborn clashing in a constant explosion of violence. Each base is guarded by two sentry robots. There are also multiple NPC camps about the level. You can attack these minions and upon their defeat, they will join you in battle as powerful pushers. Its important to have minion backup when taking on the sentries, as they will make quick work of a single player character.  Speaking of characters….

Presentation

Complimenting these game modes is a wide cast of characters. Battleborn features 25 characters, with more planned later. All characters and maps will be free, however Season Pass holders will get codes to unlock the new characters immediately. Players without the season pass will likely have to complete a challenge to gain access to the new characters. Unlike some other hero shooters, Battleborn has a both ranged and melee characters. There is a lot of balance on display here, and all the characters have their own unique moves and personalities. Theres Rath, the dual sword wielding space sith who is totally not a vampire; Kelvin the living crystal monster who likes shiny things and Orendi the four eyed magic wielder just to name a few. Most characters are unlocked via mission or challenge completion.

In game, each character has a primary attack, some type of secondary such as a shield or sidearm or blade and three abilities. Two abilities will be unlocked from the start of a match and the third Ultimate ability will become available once level 5 is reached. At the start of every match, all players start at level 1 and gain levels via map actions, completing objectives or killing enemy Battleborn. Each time you level up, you can access the Helix, which looks rather like a DNA helix. Each level of the Helix contains two choices that will modify your abilities in some way. The bow wielding Thorn for example, can have her scattershot of arrows changed to fire in a wider arc for more AOE damage, or tightened up to three more precise bolts for a concentrated punch. These levelling choices provide depth to each match by allowing you to react to the battlefield and choose abilities that will let you counteract the enemy team.

In terms of graphics, Battleborn is gorgeous in motion. It shares a similar art style with Borderlands in that it seems cellshaded in a way, but also has fully 3d models and some reasonably high resolution textures. It’s bright and cartoony, splashing the screen with brilliant color at every opportunity. However, this is a double edged sword. Battleborn in the middle of a giant 5v5 fight is a mess of chaos and particle effects. After a few matches, I found myself able to sort through the chaos, but I still had situations where I didn’t know quite where I was once a battle cleared up.

Characters are distinct, voice lines are well delivered and; on the PC at least; the game runs silky smooth. It’s important to note that the console versions are locked at 30 FPS, which may be a major negative for some players. All in all though, Battleborn is gorgeous and plays extremely well.

Verdict

Battleborn is a great game. It can be chaotic at times, and it suffers from a lack of map variety. Each mode only has two maps available making for a total of 6 multiplayer maps. The characters and voice acting are great, but they single player campaign suffers from some repetitive design and frustrating failure states. All in all however, Gearbox has crafted a lively and vibrant shooter with some truly unique game modes and playstyles.

Battleborn: 7.5/10