At the EGX conference, Creative Assembly revealed their take on the critically acclaimed franchise with their latest game; Alien: Isolation. At the conference itself, we learned that Creative have spared no expense in creating an almost living, breathing replica of the 1979 Horror film. By digging deep into the 20^th Century Fox archives, CA have managed not only to find enough pictures of the original cast to rebuild the characters in a very well rendered style, but they have also managed to find the original analogue recordings of the soundtrack and sound effects. These finds have allowed CA to create a very impressive world that does a very good job of mimicking the tense, atmospheric feel that Alien delivered when it first hit the screens. CA stressed that they had spent a very long time replicating and expanding every detail of the film into the game, and this is shown in how even the everyday items like calendars are in the same place and position that they were to be found in the game.

One of the main points that came across during the stream was their emphasis on sound. CA talked about how sound made up a third of a good gaming experience, and they wanted to create  a game with sound that evoke a subconscious emotional reaction from the player as well as music that would fit the horror theme and keep the player on edge without exhausting them. Alien: Isolation features a newly built context driven sound engine. That is to say, a sound engine that will change and adapt the music within the game based on events that play out as you traverse the newly designed ship “the Sevastopol”. The sound (adapted from the original soundtrack with some tracks from the film added in for good measure) will change in volume, pitch and even climax as the Alien hunts you down and attempts to dispatch you.

This brings me onto the third aspect of the game discussed at the conference; the stealth. Gameplay footage played during the stream showed the player (revealed as Ellen Ripley) creeping through an abandoned ship. As as the Xenomorph is constantly hunting you, you must avoid him by remaining quiet, hiding under desks or in lockers; even crafting improvised weapons to distract him quickly become necessary to complete the puzzles you are presented with and to ultimately stay alive throughout the game .The music is low and ambient, portraying a feeling of being hunted, like the Xenomorph is coming personally for you, despite the fact that there are multiple androids and other human’s on board. These other characters will often hinder you, either acting aggressively or causing a commotion, which inevitably attracts the Xenomorph to your location. Whilst on the subject of mechanics and gameplay, CA has informed us that they are working with Oculus to bring Alien: Isolation to the Rift, allowing the player to fully immerse themselves in the Alien world. Pre-order content has also been made available, however CA says that it will be purely additional content separate from the main body of the game.

Are you ready to take on Xenomorphs in their latest digital outing? Let us know in the comments below!

Omega Mode is free DLC for Street Fighter IV takes all 44 characters and gives them different (I’m hard-pressed to say new) abilities making them feel bigger, better, or in some cases, like the old versions of themselves. Capcom had a little something to say about it on its blog:

“As the primary goal for this mode was fun, we placed more emphasis on making the characters feel new, than on their balance.”

The video above gives far more detail and pretty moving pictures, so watch it and let us know what you think in the comments. Then look for the Omega Mode DLC later this year.

The dev sessions at EGX kicked off today with a presentation by both Yager and Deep Silver and a video with some demo gameplay from a pre-alpha build of the game.

Dead Island 2 is set in ‘sunny California’ with different locations located in and around LA and San Francisco and will be a co-op multiplayer game for up to 8 people in which the goal seems to be to move around the area, scavenge as much as possible and then upgrade yourself and your weapons to make surviving the apocalypse as much fun as it’s possible to have while fighting for your life.

The game will have a number of different playable classes, including 2 not yet seen in video demos, and all will have their own unique styles of attacking and special moves. For example the Berserker can execute a special move that lets them kick a zombie. Either into other zombies, creating a domino effect or just sending them flying over the horizon. You can also launch zombies with a moddable weapon that combines a bowling ball and a baseball bat, so I think you can see why this game is about making survival fun. And somewhat ridiculous in a hilarious way.

One of the things that this game does differently from previous Dead Island games is that crafting is no longer tied to worktables – you can now craft on-the-fly. However you’ll either need teammates to watch your back or to find a safe and secluded little corner of the map to do it, the world does not stop just because you need to equip some parts to your weapon. however crafting does allow you to add extra effects to your weapon, such as the ability to set enemies alight and electrocute them. The zombies will even blacken as they take fire or shock damage. There are set to be more weapons, more blueprints in the game and while weapons will still need repairing, they won’t ever be so broken they can’t be saved. There’ll even be a in-built system to distribute level-appropriate loot so that even if you’re a different level to your friends, no battle together ever feels like it’s a waste of your time.

The environment is set to be dynamic with interactable elements such as canisters of gas that can be used as flammable explosives and the ability to set traps. and obviously a lot of noise means that zombies will inevitably be attracted towards it, and some of the in-game tasks revolve around keeping said attracted zombies away from the noise source.

Dead Island 2 is being planned for release sometime in Spring 2015 for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

Saints Row fans are currently waiting on the release of a standalone expansion for Saints Row IV, Gat Out of Hell. It’ll see the ever-popular Johnny Gat and Kinzie taken to Hell and obviously in typical Saints Row fashion, it will be totally over the top and very very funny. One of the new weapons is a lounger with guns attached for example… yeah.

Just to show us a little of what can be expected, the people over at Deep Silver have put up what is hinted (by the #1 in the title) to be the first of a series of dev walkthroughs for Gat Out of Hell.

This time we’re getting a tour of  New Hades, the city featured in the game.

It’s now about a year since Battlefield 4 was released, and it’s still being patched. This patch seeks to address the netcode issues that were hampering the game. High frequency support has now been added for the console versions of the game, and this setting has also been made the default across all platforms. The time difference for damaging other players has also been lowered to tackle trade kills and behind cover kills that occurred due to high ping rates.

There’re other additions too of course, including the addition of the new Obliteration Competitive sub-game mode, some tweaks made to weaponry and attachments (mostly slight debuffs but the lasers have received a small improvement in their hip-fire accuracy), a less cluttered UI, an easier to understand Revive mechanic and so on.

And of course, the soldier movement has now changed to be almost parallel to that of the soldier movement of the previous game, Battlefield 3. But we knew that one was coming anyway.