Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
So this weekend Minecon 2015 occurred in London, bringing many fans of the game to the ExCeL Centre to attend what ended up being the biggest video game based convention ever. It also brought with it a lot of news of Minecraft content to come.
Firstly, updates to the original version of the game, the PC version, were announced during a panel. The End, the smallest of Minecraft’s other dimensions is due to get a makeover, adding more to it then just the single floating island that you fight the Ender Dragon in. Now it’ll contain much more to find and do, as well as new recipes related to it including the ability to craft the Ender Crystals that you smash during the big boss fight and placing them atop the columns will respawn the Ender Dragon although it won’t be possible to gain another egg upon defeating it. These new areas can only be accessed through something called the Ender Gateway although details about that aren’t fully known yet. In other areas things such as dual wielding of tools (e.g. pick in one hand, torches in the other) or the ability to make your avatar left-handed are on the plans as well as ‘enchanted arrows’ although Mojang admit that they’ve still some thinking to do about the balancing of such a mechanic; future updates will also add shields to the game.
Then we move onto the two big other stories from the event, starting with Minecraft Windows 10 version.
The version was supposedly built to take advantage of Microsoft’s new OS and its features, and it’ll be offered free to all owners of the current PC version of the game while new players will need to play $10 to access the game and beta. That beta will start towards the end of this month on July 29th and will receive the same updates as the original Minecraft version which will also still exist as a separate game – Mojang have said that the Windows 10 version will not replace the original one that we’ve come to love.
Features for the new version will include:
Craft, create, and explore online with up to seven friends playing Windows 10 Edition Beta, through local multiplayer or with your Xbox Live friends online.
Play online and local multiplayer with other Pocket Edition players thanks to a free update, due to arrive soon after launch.
Multiple control schemes! Switch between controller, touch, and keyboard controls with little to no effort!
Record and share gameplay highlights with built-in GameDVR.
Help shape the future of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta with our built player feedback mechanisms!
Chickens, zombies, pigs, boats, armed skeletons, potatoes, zombies, baby squids, enchantment tables, villagers, naked sheep, iron golems, potions, ghasts, pickaxes, carrots, and all the weird and wonderful goodness you’ve come to expect from Minecraft.
The other big announcement of course was the details of Minecraft Story Mode, a Telltale and Mojang collaboration game announced a few months back. It’ll be a five part series based around the adventures of a group of friends led by the player character called Jesse, voiced by actor Patton Oswalt. The group is famed for slaying an Ender Dragon and look up to a legendary group called The Order of the Stone. Then a “Terror” is unleashed which sees the group called upon for their help for which they decent to seek out The Order of the Stone to save their world. The description on the video trailer says that the journey will take them through the Nether, the Farlands (woo!), the End and “beyond”.
Personally as a long-time player of Minecraft the only thing that has me really excited from this list of big things is the news of upcoming content to the version I play – the PC version updates. The ability to dual wield is something that players have been wishing was a thing for ages, and the addition of shields to the game just makes a lot of sense at this point. Anyone who has ever tried to charge a skeleton knows how hard it is to get close to them when they shoot you with knockback and maybe with a shield it’d be possible to finally block them. The redesign of the End is something I can get behind because I feel it’s been a bit sparse and underwhelming since it was implemented (I mean seriously, it’s not the greatest arena for a final boss fight in my eyes) and I look forward to seeing what new End resources get added to the game.
Windows 10 version is an interesting one. In a way it kind of reminds me a bit of Realms, a bit of the console versions (not surprising as integration with the Xbox versions are being pushed as a feature) and I feel it’ll attract a certain type of player, ones who still enjoy the vanilla game and the console versions over the heavily modded scene. As I’m not one of those players I can’t see myself being too attracted by this version of the game personally, but I can see the attraction for those players. The fact that there’s a cap on the number of players at one time does put me off too, even if I generally don’t play with that many other players at once. The ability to have many in one instance was one of the vanilla game’s drawing points in my opinion and limiting it feels a bit like a tiny downgrade. It’s not out yet though so I’ll save most of my judgement.
I’ll also be saving it for Story Mode, which is a game that while I’m curious about I must admit I find a little bit confusing as to why it exists other than for money. Minecraft was always about building your own story, not playing through someone else’s (unless it was an adventure map, and even then you could just blow it up if you felt like it… and sometimes map makers would booby trap a map to make something amazing happen should you) so… is this a necessary game? Do we really need this? I’m not sure, but I’m willing to have my mind changed when the game releases.
Of course, this isn’t all that happened at Minecon this weekend, but they are some of the most notable things. I have my opinions on them but then I’m biased as I am and will always be a PC Minecrafter, heavily involved with popular modpacks and what they can offer to me for story ideas. Minecraft is a lot bigger than that now though, and even if some of it doesn’t fully grab my attention I can see how big this once small indie game has grown to the extent that its own event hit around 10 thousand attendees and ended up setting a world record and be happy to be a part of it along with so many other people.
Playtonic Games are a fairly new game studio formed of old hands in the gaming industry. Ex-Rare employees responsible for parts of some of the N64 90s lineup of fondly remembered games, they set out to create a modern game that harkened back to those golden days. They chose to give Banjo and Kazooie successors in the form of lizard Yooka and bat Laylee.
And it paid off massively.
The Kickstarter reached its target in under an hour, it reached £1 million in a matter of days. Now almost 50 days later the Kickstarter has finally closed with every stretch goal met comfortably, pulling in a staggering £2,090,104 together. And the Paypal donation link is still open.
Posting their thanks on the Kickstarter page the team spoke to their backers:
“47 days ago we started this Kickstarter campaign – our first Kickstarter – with little idea of what we were letting ourselves in for… Through these past 47 days we’ve felt an incredible level of positive support from everyone, whether they opted to back us or not. For that, we are extremely grateful!”
The post concluded by saying that the game was aimed for a rough release time of the end of 2016 and that they hoped it would be a game we could “look back and be proud to be involved with.”
I know I’m looking forward to going on my adventure with a new buddy-duo. Just as I did with Banjo-Kazooie as a child.
Square Enix took to the stage at E3 today with news on games both known and unknown, as well as announcing two mysterious ‘in-progress’ projects.
The press conference kicked off with a trailer for Just Cause 3, and between it and the one shown a few minutes later we’re certainly not going to be short on video game explosions when it releases. Avalanche Studios were there to speak about the game and how they want to make it the best of the series up to date, listing the addition of a wingsuit and improvements to the grappling hook as things they’d done to work towards that. The second trailer also showed off a bunch of crazy stuff you can supposedly do that looked amazingly fun. The game will release globally on December 1st for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Rise of the Tomb Raider also had a trailer shown during the conference, with a behind-the-scenes section on how they worked to make Lara as lifelike as possible also being shown. Not to everyone’s interest, but damn that detail was pretty. Tomb Raider also showed up in a new mobile game announced for phones and tablets – Lara Croft Go.
Deux Ex: Mankind Divided was also there, with a release time of somewhere around the early part of 2016 being announced as well as the platforms of Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC again. There was a reveal of what they called the first “in-game” trailer and we were informed that the game was built in a new game engine and focused around the ‘evolution’ of the main character.
One franchise I hadn’t expected to see make an appearance was the Hitman series, and a new digital game was announced. The new Hitman game will release on December 8th and will feature new quests added regularly that have a time limit before the target vanishes and even if you do kill the target the way you do it will effect what new options become available in future. The game will apparently be updated depending on player feedback as well, which is interesting.
The two mystery projects both looked interesting, with one being announced as a new original RPG and the other showing nothing but a short trailer. The one with just a trailer was by Platinum Games Inc. and called “NieR New Project”. The game itself was stated to be in a very early state of development so we didn’t get many details about it during the conference. The other project was called “Project Setsuna” and was being handled by a newly formed studio – Tokyo RPG Factory. Again, details were sparse. Platinum did choose to make their presentation memorable in quite a unique way though…
… Dear lord. o.0;;
Obviously as one of Square Enix’s biggest franchises Final Fantasy was incredibly visible. As well as showing off the Final Fantasy VII remake that was announced last night at Sony’s conference again (with a promise of more details coming this winter), a ‘Final Fantasy Portal App’ was announced to be coming to devices this summer. It apparently acts as an information database for all things Final Fantasy. Finally the Final Fantasy game that had the most time given to it was World of Final Fantasy, a game with cutesy style characters (which can convert to ‘proper’ sizes too) that was intended as a way to help new players get used to the Final Fantasy universe without overloading them with the history of it. That’ll also be releasing sometime in 2016.
Kingdom Hearts was also there, much to the happiness of the crowd (you could hear the “YES”es on the stream!). Two games were announced, for Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key, a mobile platform game that will be released in North America (no mention of Europe) and will link into the story of the other game: Kingdom Hearts 3. The trailer for that game was full of colourful scenes, fights, ridiculous moves (they included a train and TEACUPS for god’s sake) and a game of chess. Really.
A new Star Ocean game was also announced, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. Trailers were shown that included actual gameplay footage and a lot was made of the fact that everything was programmed to be seamless – no loading, no jumping from the action. There will also be two types of cutscene, the traditional one and ‘dynamic’ cutscenes. The game will release in North America and Europe next year.
The conference ended with a trailer listing all we had just seen with the creators coming back on stage to take one last bow. All in all, the conference contained a few surprises but was pretty much what was expected and because there was so much squeezed in, nothing really got a lot of focus which seemed a bit of a shame.
EA’s conference is done. We got new Mass Effect, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst gameplay, some Star Wars Battlefront…and a crap ton of sports. Oh, and apparently Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 is a thing. Because we all needed more of that, right?
Lets start off with Mass Effect. It has been confirmed that the game is coming Holiday 2016. It has a distinctly more Western (western movie) style feel to it than previous Mass Effect games. As someone who isn’t a fan of the series I found myself rather meh about the whole thing, but plenty of people are super hyped.
Need For Speed is back, and it looks like more of the same “edgy and gritty” story telling. What was different though was that the driving actually looked good. Smooth framerate, great lighting and dynamic racing. Hopefully this is a return to form, before Need For Speed became an every year franchise release.”
Next, we got to meet…Hoop Gawd….the…Gawd of Hoops? Seriously, this may have been the dumbest way ever to show off face scanning tech in a game. EA promises tons of new animations and realistic physics in its new basketball game. Maybe it will actually make basketball entertaining to watch when the physics engine inevitably breaks in hilarious ways. There was some fantasy mod stuff for madden NFL 16 as well, and a bunch of soccer stuff. MOVING ON.
Unravel looks amazing. Possibly the one game that wasn’t a sequel or a reboot, the puzzle platformer about a ball of yarn looks amazing, adorable and a ton of fun.
Oh, and there was a card game as well. Is everyone making one of those damn things?
And…thats about it for the EA conference. It was pretty lackluster. I’m not gonna lie, I had trouble staying awake for the whole thing. Even when I went back and watched it again to see what I missed and discovered I had missed…nothing. Except a mind numbingly boring Pele interview.
