Techland’s open-world zombie apocalypse survival game Dying Light was back on-stage today at EGX and the presentation took the time to show off some new stuff that hadn’t been shown off before.

Two main selling points of Dying Light are being pushed. The first is that during the day you fight, scavenge, craft and do a lot of the stuff you need to do to survive; while at night the zombies are much much more powerful than you so you become the hunted and need to survive til the sunrise. The other is that Techland have aimed to make the world very open and ‘go-anywhere’; meaning that you can parkour your way across the urban landscape to escape zombies or reach certain points. It sounds very exciting.

Today the competitive parts of the main co-op game were shown off, little parts of the game that just add the natural fun-spirited competitiveness that comes about from having a group of friends playing in an open-world co-operative video game. Stuff such as killing the most zombies in a set amount of time or racing to a crate drop, with bonus experience prizes being the reward for the winner.

The other new thing demonstrated was what was called the ‘PvP’ part of the game: during the night it is entirely possible to drop into someone’s game and play a special ‘Night Hunter’ zombie trying to murder all the ‘human’ players. Fast, powerful but not invincible the Night Hunter can be fought off by being burnt with a special UV torch that the humans players have as well as weaponry making somewhat of an impact. What does hurt though is removing the ‘Zombie Hives’ that will be dotted around the map. Human players are also armed with a special ‘survivor sense’, but the Night Hunter does move tremendously fast and if the humans split up they become very easy prey.

Dying Light will be releasing on January 30th 2015.

Call of Duty has a long and chequered past, often considered to be a franchise on it’s death bed we still see a new game every year. A lot of people have said enough is enough, but Sledgehammer games is coming out with a new entry into the franchise.

Call of Duty: Advanced warfare is looking to change your opinion of this long standing franchise by trying to create a new world and concept within the overarching franchise. Advanced Warfare has been in development for three years by Sledgehammer games who have done extensive scientific research to bring us the Earth from 50 years in the future in the most realistic and engaging way possible. During their EGX presentation they talked extensively about how they wanted this world to feel real and visceral but they still wanted the player to feel like a bad ass. They’ve opted for a much more realistic graphical style and taken real world technology and tried to make it feel sleeker and more futuristic to create a believable world in which private military corporations, a real concern for the world’s governments, have gone out of control and grown in power to the point where war is the only way.

Their EGX presentation also revealed more about the main character and the EXO suit that he is wearing. The suit is based off of the real deal, which in the present is a bit clunky ,so the team at Sledgehammer put their own spin on it-  making it sleek and slimming it down while bringing more EXO based technology and vehicles into the game and even Sci-fi classics like tanks that can walk OR drive. There seems to be plenty of research and science influencing this game but it also appears to be keeping the core mechanics and feel of Call of Duty which are often criticised as being archaic and poorly implemented.

At the end of the presentation they showed a trailer (See below) which showed a portion of the multi-player including a survival mode and some of the single player story. There were also a couple of questions at the end including the very important question about PC support which he rather openly deflected saying more would be announced about that soon.

Will you be picking up the newest entry in the Call of Duty franchise? Could this game be what the franchise needs? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor brought a demonstration of it’s flagship Nemesis system to EGX today, and it was thoroughly impressive. Shadow of Mordor has been developed by Monolith studios and is set somewhere between the events of the Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring where you play as a ranger of Gondor resurrected by one of the most powerful elves to ever live after your death to exact your revenge and his own against Sauron and the forces of despair.

Possibly one of the most amazing things is that in a completely single player game it looks distinctly like no two play throughs of Shadow of Mordor will feel the same or yield the same tales, this is a game to talk about but it seems like gamers will rarely if ever be talking about the same things! When I tell you that it looks like every single orc will be different to one another and even the lowly grunts if left alone long enough can rise to become warlords then you will understand exactly why this game is so exciting and full of promise.

With all the enemies being randomly generated from a list of traits and evolving as they perform actions within the world this system will bring an interesting challenge to an already expansive and lovingly crafted game. It will be interesting what this system can do and we will find out over time no doubt hearing some amazing tales.

Looking forwards to ? Tell us if you are below and why!

We’ll be bringing you more on this promising title in the very near future.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt took the stage today at EGX in London, showing off the open world of the game. They began by reintroducing us to the concept of a Witcher, the game’s titular adventurer’s and monster slayers. Another key theme in the beginning of the presentation was the idea of landmarks, as well as the fact that everything you see in the distance can be travelled to. This point was quickly followed with the fact that while the game will let you go where you want, it might slaughter you mercilessly if you do. The flip side of this is that the game will also reward you for skill, meaning that if you can survive an encounter that is nominally above your level, the game will reward you for that skilled play.

Moving on, the developers talked a bit about the organic nature of the world. If you defeat a group of bandits that have taken over a village, the villagers will come back. But, the rotting bodies of the bandits may also attract monsters. This could lead to a situation where the villagers are killed by the monsters as a direct result of your actions. This type of cause and effect is indicated to be a significant factor in the world of Witcher 3. This even carries to the interactions between enemies later down the line. Actions that might effect characters early on will also have repercussions further into the game. This could determine when and where enemies spawn, boss encounters, etc. If you’ve helped a leader of this group, they might be neutral or friendly to you. Branching is a main theme of the game, and it seems to have more wide reaching implications than many previous games that have experimented with the idea.

Moving a bit further, it was revealed that what we had seen was only a tiny portion of a much larger map, which was then revealed to be only half of the full map in the game. The effects you have on one area of the game will affect other areas around the wider world. The game also has more armors than the previous games, including ones which can be crafted. When asked about the idea of good and bad in the game, the developer also responded with the idea that actions are more shades of gray in Witcher 3.

Also, the presenter was HILARIOUS. Watch this space, once the presentation is up, I’ll add it to this article

Volume is a game we’ve seen before on stage, but today at EGX Mike Bithell talked more about the game and what we can expect from it.

Firstly, the game itself is a combination of the typical ‘Robin Hood’ legend and cyperpunk elements. You play as a character with an AI who has hacked into a training ground for evil types, and is using it to teach the people of England how to steal from the rich around them. It’s basically your typical stealth game but with one big difference to most: you cannot use lethal force on anything. You have to rely entirely on your reflexes, your gadgets and your stealth skills to get past each level.

Within levels you will encounter single rooms full of corridors with patrolling guards with cone-of-sight in front of them. You can sneak around out of their sight, use gadgets (Masquerade to disguise as a guard character for example) to fool them or hide in places such as trapdoors. If you are seen you have time to escape, it isn’t an instant game over and use of certain gadgets when seen will confuse and eventually de-alarm guards. The guards are entirely stupid though, for example if you hover around them too long in Masquerade they will see through the disguise eventually, even faster if there’s more staring at you.

We were also told that the voice for the main villain in the game has been cast, although we won’t get more information on that until the end of October. The release date was also pushed back from the ‘2014ish’ previous date to sometime in the first half of 2015.