Attendees at this year’s Microsoft Xbox Press Conference yesterday were treated to a first look at Ubisoft’s next entry into the Tom Clancy’s The Division franchise. However, the folks over at Ubisoft saved the juicy bits for their own press conference that took place earlier today.

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

Dontnod fans were pleased to find out that a new game called The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit was announced at Microsoft’s E3 conference yesterday.



The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a standalone story in the Life is Strange universe. This narrative experience stars Chris, a ten-year old boy with a big imagination.

As seen in the trailer below, Chris will actually become part of a supernatural experience not unlike what he’s always imagined in his head. The story of Captain Spirit will have links to the upcoming story of Life is Strange 2.

It’s apparent right off the bat that he has a very vivid imagination, creating and narrating a scenario. We are even led to believe that he’s about to move his toy spaceship with some kind of psychic force. Was it real or a figment of his imagination? Check out the trailer now!

If Majora’s Mask was reimagined as a traditional, 2D Zelda title, and then someone at Nintendo decided to slap on some visuals reminiscent of American Saturday morning cartoons and remove the time rewinding mechanic, then that’s where you’d find developer Onebitbeyond’s dungeon crawler. The Swords of Ditto is a roguelite action RPG that creates a unique adventure for each new hero of legend in the relentless fight against evil. And The Swords of Ditto is also unbearably adorable.

You may be familiar with the card game Mafia; this party and sleepover staple ruined many a nascent friendship and budding romance by setting you against everyone else in the group and putting the worst liar of the bunch at a disadvantage. It’s an attractive kind of game – competitively deceitful, occasionally collaborative, with the thrilling possibility of betrayal – which explains why iterations of Mafia have popped up across different forms of media ever since. Enter the NPCamoflauge (a term coined by RockPaperShotgun columnist Matt Cox) games like Assassin’s Creed, Spy Party, and yes, Murderous Pursuits, that require the player to blend in with the AI-driven characters in order to accomplish or prevent the completion of a specific goal for another party.

Murderous Pursuits sets the player against a host of other murderous psychopaths, all seeking the favor of the mysterious Mr. X. Set on the time-traveling steampunk-style airship the H.M.C.S. Brittanic, currently exploring the Jurassic on a voyage of celebrating Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, the colorful cast of characters, called Hunters, must kill or be killed in order to gain a place Mr. X’s right hand before he put into motion his plan to hijack the ship.

This includes a Fulani tracker, a Sikh prince, a British pickpocket, a Japanese assassin, and a handful of Victorian era tropes with a dash of homicidal tendencies. Each one has a unique design, and a lot of effort seems to have been put into their backgrounds, costumes, taunts, and animations. Each comes with unlockable skins, rewards for reaching higher levels. Although the player can equip two special abilities for the duration of the match, neither the selection nor the enhancement of these abilities are affected by the choice of character.

The abilities either improve the bonuses to Favor, the points given for each successful assassination, or your chances for foiling the other characters’ plans for killing you. Each has a recharge period of about eighty seconds, so don’t plan on relying too much on any of them to keep you alive or to help you identify your Quarry (target).

The mechanics you can use to help you identify Quarry from innocent passenger are a tracker at the top of the screen that lights up green based on when you are pointed toward your target, along with simple “floor above”/“floor below”/“same floor” text display for multi-level maps (most of them). This is not over-explained in the simple 11-page “How to Play” guide that serves as the game’s only tutorial, but becomes more helpful the more you play. You also occasionally get a helpful green target symbol floating on the screen to show which direction your Quarry is moving. However, without the Reveal ability equipped, you may try to kill the wrong character, which loses you points and causes instant “Exposure”.

A word about Exposure. Mr. X seems to value discretion in his murderers, so he gives more Favour to those who can kill without calling attention to themselves. A meter at the bottom of the screen shows how much you have “exposed” yourself at a given time (scale of 0 – EXPOSED! to 5 – inconspicuous) , which can be remedied by standing in the marked vignette spaces, which cause your player to take on some NPC behaviors- eating, observing the airships engines or artwork depending on the map, engaging in conversation, etc. They will also act suitably horrified if they witness a murder, or shame any player that attempts to murder the wrong person.

Once you have reached zero, or complete exposure, you are at risk of whatever Hunter is looking for you finding you. You also risk whatever Quarry you are pursuing being able to earn Favor by using certain abilities like Counter against you. Abilities like Disguise immediately remedy this, or you can take refuge in a vignette until your meter is refilled. You can track the Hunters pursuing you similarly to the way you track your Quarry, but you are only notified that by a symbol underneath your Quarry tracker how many of the Hunters are nearby, and occasionally their symbol also appear on the screen.

The game offers Practice modes versus AI (can you pretend to be an NPC so well that the computer can’t find you?), a Quick Play mode that will pair you with other players and fill in the blank spaces with bots, and a Private Party mode with a newly introduced feature that allows you to easily invite your Friends through Steam without have to use Server names and passwords. My husband and I had a ton of fun trying out the Private Party mode with the latest updates. I have to admit, I was easy for him to find… because the actual NPCs didn’t get stuck in corners as often as I did. My mouse is kinda sticky, so sue me!

But honestly, the camera control for Murderous Pursuits is far from the worst I’ve encountered and it fairly intuitive. As for hubs, he gave himself away because he had a tendency to pause a little too long after every kill- there’s a moment where you see a pop up telling you which weapon will get you the best Favour bonus on your next Quarry, but… NPCs are never still. It was honestly infuriating and really fun seeing what we were right and wrong about when we were trying to find each other.

A lot of the chatter on Blazing Griffin’s news posts and on other reviews points out some bug fixes and improvements that could take an interesting, pretty okay game to a unique classic. One commenter on their Cinco de Mayo update (boy am I glad they didn’t try to actually add those skins to the game) wrote: “We need more maps, characters and abilities. This game could be awesome. please do not leave it die. [sic]”

Murderous Pursuits has received Mostly Positive reviews on Steam, and it really has a great design. Every map has such amazing attention to detail, from huge picture windows looking out on active volcanoes, massive engines, art galleries, to the confetti littering the floor of the music hall, it’s often hard to keep your mind on the task at hand. I am definitely among those that hope that Blazing Griffin continues to add on to their fascinating universe… not just so that my husband and I can keep murdering each other.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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I remember the 90s well. TV was something you could watch without suffering from brain death, phones made phone calls (literally just calls), the console wars was a thing, and for the majority of it I was at high school. Being at high school, I very clearly remember the list of things you’d have taken off you if you where caught with them. For a relatively small period of time among the ever growing heap of contraband items were POGs. What’s a POG, I here you say? They were these little disk shaped things which were immensely collectible and with which you could play against your mates in an attempt at relieving them of their own prized collections. Think marbles but a lot more colourful. Surprisingly I didn’t just decide to come and spout my childhood memories all over the place. The POG craze may well be coming back in POGs AR.

Get our your motion controllers and your headsets; it’s time to go fishing. Specifically, it’s time to go fishing in VR with Catch & Release, a game for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that dropped today. It’s the first VR project for METRICMINDS, a company that focuses on animation for video games. Even if you haven’t heard of them, you’ve seen their work in games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Dying Light to name just a couple.

Rather than a realistic simulation, Catch & Release is meant to be peaceful and welcoming. METRICMINDS has put a lot of work into making the setting look beautiful; it’s a serene place, but still full of details. The gameplay can be described in a similar way: while peaceful free fishing is main attraction, there are challenges and other features to keep you busy. This includes different equipment for your outing and secrets to discover.

Catch & Release might be a good candidate for the TVGB ViveStream; this less serious and realistic take on fishing should work a lot better in VR than the more simulation-based fishing games I’ve tried. If you’re ready to try your luck, Catch & Release is available now on Steam and the Oculus Store for $19.99. Now we just have to see which is more immersive: this, or the Toy-Con Fishing Rod…

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When you think of Rick And Morty, the hit television series on Adult Swim, you think of a fun, sometimes confusing and chaotic experience. There are thousands if not millions of die-hard Rick and Morty fans around the world that may or may not have a platform to play the newest experience from the team over at Adult Swim Games. I bet they’re dying for an opportunity to play through the short but creative experience that is Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality.

Throughout your adventure in this hectic world, you play the role of Morty’s clone. Designed and created by Rick himself, you are put into the infamous garage from the show and immediately are given tasks. Don’t go into the game thinking you’re going to get a task that will hurt your brain too much, but there are some tricky missions.

Some of the tasks given require you to spawn a robotic mirror of yourself. This robot mimics your every move allowing the player to hand items across the room and in some situations out of the garage into a spaceship. The odd jobs given in the game range from doing Rick’s laundry to fixing his spaceship. Some more challenging, and pointless, than others.

As far as replay value for the game, there isn’t much of any. The story will not change if you decide to take it from the top. There is, however, some collectable tapes to find hidden throughout the game. These tapes are pretty hard to find because I only came across about 4 out of 13 and I was searching pretty intensely. Aside from trying to obtain the platinum trophy, which doesn’t seem to hard to get, there are some mini games within the game the you can play. It’s a VR-ception as you play a VR life simulation as clone Morty with different hilarious outcomes. The way you act within the side-game along with the choices you make will lead you to a different experience each time. I wish I could say the same for Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality itself.

Some of the cast that makes the show so great are also included in the game. Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon, Spencer Grammer, Chris Parnell and Sarah Chalke really bring the game together and make you feel truly immersed in the Morty-verse. While not all characters are seen in the game, you can hear dialog from most of the cast. Without the voice acting from the cast, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality would not be a game based on the show at all.

While some parts of the game weren’t all that entertaining, I found myself laughing out loud throughout most of the experience. The goofy, weird, sometimes scary universe that has been created by the show’s creators, Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, truly makes for one of the most interesting and hilarious experience out on the PlayStation VR today. If you are a fan of the show and have a PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, or an Oculus Rift then Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is definitely something you should look into.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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I’ll admit I’ve not played a Telltale The Walking Dead game in about five years, but that’s not due to a lack of interest. My distancing myself from the series had nothing to do with the game, which was expertly crafted, fun and intriguing in a way I’d never expected. No, I stopped playing because, at the end of the first season, I was reduced to a blubbering, snotty, inconsolable mess on my living room couch, unable to explain to my confused roommates (whose experience with videogames begins and ends with Candy Crush) why I was so upset. I think I managed to choke out a broken “Lee,” declaring in a crestfallen whimper that “Clem’s all alone,” but ultimately, they couldn’t possibly understand the breadth of what I was feeling. On one hand, they’d never experienced an emotionally compelling videogame and as such had no frame of reference, and on the other, they’d not spent the last week playing as Lee, the criminal with a heart of gold who was thrust headlong into parenthood, tasked with caring for and raising the young Clementine the best he could manage at world’s end.

They couldn’t understand that the agony I felt in that moment wasn’t because a character in a videogame I was playing died. The reason I felt his loss so intimately was because I was wholly invested in Lee’s commitment to Clem, and the understanding that now all she had to rely on to stay alive were the things I’d taught her. Lee died holding on to the hope that he’d done enough to prepare her for life on her own in an apocalyptic America torn asunder by undead cannibals, knowing that there was nothing more he could do and understanding the odds were stacked against her. And in that moment, I felt all of that as acutely as if I were Lee himself. Telltale’s The Walking Dead had managed to blow my expectations out of the water, delivering me a captivating, emotionally evocative experience fraught with choices that felt substantial, relationships that felt authentic and companions that felt multifaceted and really, truly human.

In short, it made me feel things.

The reason I never returned to the series could then be compared to someone who, after experiencing a car accident, is suddenly afraid of driving. The first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead burned me, and I was afraid to go back. Now bear in mind, this was when I was in my early twenties, when I still thought emotions were nasty, inconvenient things and that the pinnacle of the human experience was to float around in the ether of apathy, bouncing from one distraction to the next. I didn’t want something to emotionally compel me; I just wanted a good time.

Now that I am an older, wiser 27-year-old (yes, I’m being facetious, don’t @ me bro), one who is not convinced that emotions are the devil and who can appreciate, and actively seeks out movies, books and videogames that give me “the feels,” I’m starting to think a return to the world of Lee and Clementine is in order. And after watching the trailer for The Final Season, I believe that as the series seemingly comes full circle, now is the perfect time to do so.

Telltale Games and Skybound Entertainment has announced that episode one of The Walking Dead: The Final Season will be coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One August 14th, with a Nintendo Switch release slated for later this year. Pre-orders are available starting June 8th, with Telltale offering a slew of bonuses for getting the jump on it, ranging from immediate access to The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series Collection for PS4 and Xbox One players. This collection includes all 19 episodes from the previous seasons, so that players new and old can revisit each step of Clementine’s unconventional, harrowing journey to adulthood, complete with all the major decisions and cast of characters she meets along the way.

PC players shouldn’t feel left out, either. If you pre-order on Steam, GOG, GamersGate or the Humble Store, you’ll get yourself 10% off the retail price of $19.99 USD. And for those of you pre-ordering through the Microsoft store for Windows 10, you’ll receive the first season of The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series for immediate play. All pre-order offers expire on August 14th, so you have plenty of time to take advantage of these awesome deals, and to get caught up on/revisit the previous installments before diving into the final season.

Telltale’s not messing around this time folks; they really want this game to be as accessible as possible right from the get go. As such, The Final Season will contain a full French, German, Latin-American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese dub, available for download the day the game launches. In addition, there will be French, German, Latin-American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and both traditional and simplified Chinese subs available as well.

Now a young woman, it seems that this time round Clementine will be thrust into a situation resembling the one Lee found himself in years prior: taking care of an orphaned child and trying to raise them right, while simultaneously keeping them both alive at the end of the world. With young AJ’s life in her hands, Clem must find a way to juggle leadership and survival, and I don’t doubt memories of Lee will be what guides her through. Telltale has turned tugging at your heartstrings into a bonafide art, and with the similarities drawn between Clementine’s situation in the final season, and her experiences with Lee in the first, I get the feeling that anyone playing this game should grab the tissues and get ready to ugly cry, ’cause it’s gonna be a doozy.

The post Grab your tissues and get ready to ugly cry: The Walking Dead’s Final Season arrives August 14th appeared first on That VideoGame Blog.

I was recently honored with an invitation to preview Rocket Virtual Entertainment’s upcoming VR game, Buddy Adventures: ATTACK of the WOMPAS! It’s a family-friendly, interactive adventure for ages 8 and up.

Players partner with Buddy, a humanoid dog with a knack for getting in trouble. He loves adventure but his constant desire to explore and have fun sometimes gets the better of him. Such is the case when he gets dog-napped by Wompas; rock creatures who want to make Buddy the Wompa King’s pet.

Game play in Buddy Adventures was pretty straightforward. Exactly what one would expect in an adventure game for children. I wielded a comically large weapon that was easy to aim and had huge, slow-moving targets to shoot at. And while I did not get to experience many of them, there are additional weapons, gadgets and power-ups to collect too.

Immersion is a big part of the VR experience and I believe Rocket got it right. I truly felt like a character IN a game; not simply controlling one. With crossbow in-hand, I would fend off wave after wave of Wompas, physically dodging their attacks and restocking on ammo when needed. I even got a bow later and had to simulate notching an arrow and drawing it back to fire.

Combat wasn’t as fluid as I would have liked though. This was likely due to the early build I was playing, but also because of how I had to move. Instead of physically walking around I had to continuously highlight where I wanted to go and blink there. While not a big issue, teleporting from place-to-place did slow down combat a bit for me. Despite the motion controls, seeing a swarm of Knucklehead Wompas throwing their heads at you defintely gets the blood pumping.

As a parent, I can TOTALLY see Buddy Adventures being a game series that introduces little gamers to virtual reality for years to come. The premise is easily understandable, it’s light hearted and designed with children in mind. The biggest credit to that point is that the Wompas never actually die. After taking out a Wompa they simply crumble and reform later. It’s a small detail, but an important one to parents who don’t want their children even pretending to kill things.

On behalf of TVGB, I’d like to thank Rocket for allowing me to experience such an amazing game. I can’t wait to go on my next adventure with Buddy! You can go on your own adventure later this month when Buddy Adventures: ATTACK of the WOMPAS releases for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality.

It’s also coming out as a VR arcade game! I can totally see it. Check out this awesome VR locator to find one near you!

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Well, this is something I didn’t think I’d be saying any time soon. Atari have a new console coming out called the Atari VCS. That even felt strange to type. Okay, this might not be news to all of you so I don’t want any “we already knew that, get out from under your rock” comments, but from someone who definitely hadn’t heard this info it’s all pretty bloody cool. The Atari was one of the first consoles I ever owned. I remember how simple it was. It also came with cartridge games when virtually everything else was on tape. Commodore and Spectrum owners had to watch brain bleeding coloured lines moving up and down the screen while they waited for games to load. Not with the Atari. You plugged your game in, switched it on, and off you went. The games weren’t a patch on later generations, obviously, but it was all pretty hot stuff for the time.