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All Articles: Gamescom 2015
Mafia III explores organized crime in 1968 New Orleans next year
As promised, 2K Games released the first trailer today for Mafia III at the Gamescom expo in Germany. The accompanying announcement also includes plenty of details about the storyline, which takes place in New Orleans in 1968. And you know its 1968 because most of the action in the trailer is scored to “House of the Rising Sun.”
Rather than follow a foot soldier’s rise in La Cosa Nostra, Mafia III flips the player’s perspective and follows Lincoln Clay, “a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran” who is at war with the Sicilian Mob.
Mafia III follows the story of Lincoln Clay, a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran, returning from combat and looking for a home and a place to belong. Orphaned as a child, Lincoln at last achieves a semblance of family with the city’s black mob, finding the surrogate father and brother he has longed for. But when Lincoln’s new family is betrayed and slaughtered by the Italian mob, he becomes fixated on revenge and wages a brutal war against the Italians, disrupting the balance of power in the seedy underworld of New Orleans. As the story progresses, Lincoln allies himself with other criminals and builds an empire and a new family of his own that transforms the city.
As Clay, players will be able to “choose their [own] path” when building their crime syndicate. And their revenge can be exacted through “cunning, stalking, and deception” or through “overwhelming force and firepower.” If the trailer is to be believed, players will even be able to feed rivals to crocodiles.
“The Mafia franchise is known for its immersive sense of time and place, and for presenting compelling stories about life within organized crime,” said Haden Blackman, the game’s Creative Director. “In Mafia III, we are introducing players to an unexpected new anti-hero and an iconic city to explore, all within a hard-boiled drama set during one of the most turbulent years in American history.”
Mafia III is in development at Hangar 13 and will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One sometime in 2016.
Lego Avengers will assemble on store shelves on January 26
WB Games has announced that Lego Avengers will deliver of lightning bolt of superheroics to store shelves on January 26, 2016 (January 29 in Europe).
Lego Avengers is in development for a huge number of platforms (3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One) at TT Games. The Lego adaptation is expected to recreate the events seen in The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, TT Games also plans to go beyond the two films by including heroes and villains from throughout the Marvel universe.
If you’re already planning to purchase Lego Avengers, you might want to know that GameStop is offering a pre-order bonus of a “Silver Centurion” Iron Man minifig, based on the armor worn by Tony Stark in Iron Man 3.
Beatbuddy developer Threaks announces Retro Invasion, a shooter/brawler mash-up
Threaks, the German developer behind the musical platformer Beatbuddy, has announced their next game as the 2015 Gamescom expo opens its doors.
Retro Invasion is a side-scrolling mash-up of shooters and brawlers that pairs up modern Mike and “retro infected” Brawler Rik in a co-op “Shoot N Brawl.” In a bit of a Pixels-like twist, the land of old video games has turned the real world into voxels and its up to Mike (who looks a little like Gordon Freeman) and Brawler Rik (who is a dead ringer for Mario) to save the day.
“We’re super excited to finally announce our next game Retro Invasion.” says Wolf Lang, Co-CEO at Threaks. “With more than a year in conception and production now, it’s amazing to see how well this crazy idea works. Retro Invasion kind of feels and plays like the unholy child of Gears of War and Streets of Rage.”
Retro Invasion is playable all this week at Gamescom’s Indie Arena in Hall 10.1. It’ll be released for the PC and a number of unspecified consoles in 2016.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Gamescom 2015
Killer Instinct Season 3 will kick off in March with Rash (of Battletoads fame) as guest fighter
Microsoft has announced that Killer Instinct Season 3 will kick off in March 2016, which is good news for all the fighting game fanatics out there. The previously-announced PC edition, featuring characters from all three seasons, will also be available beginning in March.
Killer Instinct Season 3 will once again feature eight new characters, including Rash, one of the tubular toads from Battletoads. Best of all, you won’t have to wait until March to try him out. Everyone who has purchased the 30-game Rare Replay compilation will be able to download an early beta version of Rash starting today.
The Rash beta is expected to be available until sometime in September.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Killer Instinct, Rare Replay
Deep Silver shows off Homefront: The Revolution at Gamescom 2015
At Microsoft’s 2015 Gamescom Briefing, publisher Deep Silver finally revealed a gameplay trailer for the upcoming Homefront: The Revolution. They also showed a short, but poignant, two-minute CGI trailer (which is available after the break).
The short gameplay snippet shows a rebel squad in Philadelphia, the new location for the game, driving vehicles through the streets (and roofs) to take down a warehouse full of North Korean soldiers. It doesn’t look like anything too revolutionary, if you’ll pardon the pun, but if Deep Silver Dambuster Studios can fix the flaws of the original game, it could be a decent title.
Homefront: The Revolution will be hitting store shelves in Spring 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The Xbox One will also be getting an exclusive multiplayer beta sometime this Winter. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Homefront: The Revolution
Halo Wars 2 announced at Gamescom 2015
Microsoft announced Halo Wars 2, a followup to the original Halo-themed RTS from 2009, at their Gamescom Briefing just a short few hours ago.
Interestingly, Sega’s Creative Assembly, the same team behind the Total War series, as well as Alien: Isolation, will be leading development. Ensemble Studios was responsible for the original Halo Wars, but they were shut down by Microsoft shortly after the release of the game.
Halo Wars 2 will be coming to the Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs sometime in Fall 2016.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Halo Wars 2
Crackdown 3 crashes onto the Xbox One with Multiplayer Beta in Summer 2016
The Crackdown series is coming back in a big way next year with Crackdown 3. Re-announced as part of Microsoft’s 2015 Gamescom Briefing, the open world action game will include “100% destructible environments” and a “criminal hierarchy to be dismantled any way you choose.”
The developers at Reagent Games have created a new behind-the-scenes trailer, embedded above, which gives us our first look at some gameplay. Reagent will use Microsoft’s Cloud service to funnel additional computing power into Crackdown 3’s four-player co-op campaign and its competitive multiplayer mode.
Unfortunately, we still have no idea when Crackdown 3 will be released. A Multiplayer Beta will take place in Summer 2016, but a final release date for the Xbox One-exclusive is still a mystery. Hopefully an Agent of Justice is on the case…
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Crackdown 3, Gamescom 2015
Microsoft unveils first gameplay trailer of Scalebound at Gamescom 2015
Announced during last year’s E3 Expo, Microsoft has finally pulled back a scaly curtain and gave us our first look at Scalebound during their Gamescom 2015 Briefing.
In Scalebound, your dragon is your brother and you’ll be able to customize him in a variety of different ways. Here’s what the Xbox Wire had to say about the game’s story and it’s use of Platinum Games’s trademark action style:
In Scalebound, you will experience the journey of a young loner named Drew, who is pulled into the strange, beautiful, and dangerous world of Draconis – where he is bonded to a fearsome and noble dragon, Thuban, the last of his kind. These two lone-wolf heroes, thrown together by fate, must learn to fight as one to defeat the powerful enemies that threaten Draconis, Earth, and a vast universe of parallel worlds.
You’ll explore the beautiful and dangerous world of Draconis, as you and your dragon companion work to defeat legions of enemy soldiers and epic scale beasts. Scalebound’s accessible-yet-deep (and very stylish and over-the-top!) gameplay gives you the power to fluidly chain attacks with your dragon too, creating devastating combos to unleash upon your foes.
In development under the direction of Hideki Kamiya (Devil May Cry, Bayonetta), Scalebound will be released exclusively for the Xbox One in 2016.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Scalebound