Month: November 2019

Shenmue III has been a long time coming, but soon fans will finally be able to continue Ryo Hazuki’s adventure. It’s been over 18 years since Shenmue II’s September 6, 2001 launch on the Dreamcast, and after the console’s death and the commercial failure of the first two games, a third seemed unlikely. But now, Shenmue is finally coming back.

Shenmue III will release on PlayStation 4 and PC on November 19, which, as this new launch trailer (entitled “The Story Goes On”) reminds us, is a bit of a miracle. “18 years ago the clock stopped,” an opening text reads. “Time vanished into an unfathomable future. But passions never waver. A moment in motion, a story renewed.”

The trailer features Ryo and Ling Shenhua, as well as series antagonist Lan Di, who was responsible for the death of Ryo’s father in the original game. It shows many of the elements fans are nostalgic for–including some fairly wooden voice acting–and hints at elements of the Shenmue plot that are being carried over into this third entry in the series.

The initial Kickstarter for the project opened on June 15, 2015; now, over four years later, the game (which broke Kickstarter records) is finally complete. Director Keiji Okayasu returned for the project, and while there has been some controversy over the game’s Epic Games Store exclusivity, fans have been eagerly anticipating this release. Last year, a Shenmue I & II HD Collection was released, marking the first time the original game had ever been made available on a system other than the Dreamcast; unfortunately, a planned full Shenmue remake never happened. From the beginning, Shenmue was envisioned as a multi-part epic, and Shenmue III is not planned as a conclusion to the series–if it does well, we could see a Shenmue IV.

If you’re excited for Shenmue III, be sure to check out our hands-on report and interview with series director Yu Suzuki.

Shovel Knight, the 2014 indie darling that started life on the Wii U and 3DS before eventually making its way to the current generation of systems, is due for one last major update. Two expansions will release soon for owners of the Treasure Trove edition of the game, and now we have a release date for them.

Developer Yacht Club Games has announced on Twitter that Shovel Knight: King of Cards and Shovel Knight: Showdown will both release on December 10. The games will be available as part of the Treasure Trove collection, or can be purchased separately from digital storefronts. In King of Cards, players will take on the role of the titular king, and Yacht Club Games is promising that it will feature “more levels, mechanics, secrets, and content than any Shovel Knight game to come before it.” Showdown is a multiplayer spin-off, which offers a competitive take on the Shovel Knight formula, complete will a full story mode and AI bots.

Shovel Knight Showdown will not be available on 3DS or PS Vita, whereas King of Cards will be made available on all systems. The game also still has a trio of amiibo on the way, based on Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King Knight, and the game is getting a new physical release that will bundle together all of this content on December 10 as well (although the PS4 physical release has been delayed into 2020).

While this will wrap up the Treasure Trove collection, there’s already another Shovel Knight game in the works–Shovel Knight Dig, which will see Shovel Knight using his shovel for its intended purpose through underground dungeons. Yacht Club Games also has another game in the works, Cyber Shadow, which is a retro-styled ninja action game. It’s not yet clear when either game will launch.

Imagine being able to fling yourself over any obstacle or ledge with your own two hands instead of a pair of thumbsticks. Stormland, developed by Insomniac Games for the Oculus Rift, gave me a first glimpse into how the open-world shooter format can be morphed and reshaped for the better when brought into virtual reality. It’s brief, only presenting a grand total of four different regions across a roughly five hour campaign, and the combat isn’t nearly as strong as its exploration, but it was exciting when Stormland finally took the reins off and let me loose to propel myself through its eerie alien landscape.

Stormland’s plot isn’t its main draw, placing me into the generic robot shoes of Vesper, a lost android searching for his missing friends amid a violent robot uprising. While the story is decently told for a virtual reality game, what’s really exciting here is some of the most fluid movement mechanics and the coolest vertical world design in a made-for-VR game to date. You can climb trees, rocks, cliffs, and even up the sides of buildings. When you leap off of a surface, your rocket shoes kick in and you can control your flight path by sticking your arms out. And it’s great that you can do all of this with an online buddy at any time, which is definitely the better way to experience Stormland – though it’s a drag you have to complete the first hour before two-player co-op becomes available.

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New shortform streaming platform Quibi has announced plans to release a Marvel vs DC docuseries, which will be produced by Avengers: Endgame directors the Russo brothers. The upcoming show will be called Slugfest, and is inspired by the book Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC.

Anthony and Joseph Russo will be executive producing Slugfest. Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce will serve as the directors of the docuseries, while Todd Makurath (AGBO CEO), Peter Rieveschl (The Amazing Race, Undercover Boss), Nick Gilhool (Top Chef), and Jen Casey (Extreme Weather) have signed on as producers for the project.

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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege will change how bullet penetration works in its Y4S4 season update so that shots will do more realistic damage to their human targets. These updates will mean that some weapons will be able to hit more than one target per shot, while others will be able to pierce through one body part of an Operator and hit another, potentially doing more damage.

The exact details have been explained on the game’s dev blog, complete with a diagram explaining the levels of penetration different guns and bullets can achieve. This ranges from no penetration to full penetration (get your laughs out now because we’re going to use that word a lot in this write-up). This change aims to make shots more lethal and “reduce the impression of inaccurate hit registration.”

When this system is in place, shotguns and machine pistols will work much the same as they did before–your shots will hit the body part they hit without passing through. This is how most guns in Rainbow Six Siege have operated up until this point, and these ones will continue to have no penetration.

Simple penetration, which will effect most types of guns, will mean that bullets can pass through one part of an Operator’s body and hit another point. For example, the post states that if an Operator is shielding their face after a flashbang and you shot them in the hand with an assault rifle, the bullet will pass through their hand and potentially hit them in the head, resulting in a headshot. For guns with simple penetration, the damage taken from a shot will be modified by which parts the bullet passes through, but the essential takeaway is that you’ll now do more damage if your bullet penetrates. Bullets operating under simple penetration rules will not penetrate through to a third body part, though, nor will they pass through and hit anyone else.

Designated marksman rifles and sniper rifles will offer full penetration, meaning that if you shoot someone with one of these guns you could potentially hit the person behind them, too. If your bullet hits a second Operator, they will take 70% of the damage they would from an equivalent full shot, meaning that a well-timed sniper bullet will be extremely dangerous. Bullets cannot pass through into a third person, though.

This system will go up on the test server ahead of launch in the full game. Ubisoft is also currently working on Rainbow Six Quarantine, a PvE spin-off that will come to both current and next-gen consoles.

It wasn’t so long ago that the Green Lantern franchise was a major pillar of DC’s publishing lineup, with as many as four monthly titles shipping every month. DC has scaled back considerably in the last couple years. Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s The Green Lantern is now the only dedicated, monthly Green Lantern comic on the stands. As much as the quality over quantity approach is appreciated, there’s no doubt DC could and should be doing more with these characters. And now they are, thanks to Far Sector.

A joint effort between sci-fi novelist N.K. Jemison and Naomi co-creator Jamal Campbell, Far Sector is a 12-issue maxi-series about a lone, human Green Lantern patrolling the most remote sector in the DC Universe. In a technological utopia populated by 20 billion lifeforms, Sojourner “Jo” Mullein is tasked with solving the first murder case in 500 years. Making that task more difficult is the fact that Jo is dealing with a city where all inhabitants other than herself have been stripped of emotion.

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