Month: June 2020

Revealed at GamesCom 2019, Ghostrunner made a big splash with its vibrant, slick cyberpunk aesthetic and fast gameplay. Blending the style and tone of games like Cyberpunk 2077, Hotline Miami, and Mirror’s Edge, it puts you in the role of a resurrected warrior known as the Ghostrunner. The protagonist must navigate a dystopian far-future city to learn more about his past and gain the strength to fight the ruler, known only as The Keymaster.

Coming from developers One More Level Games, 3D Realms, and Slipgate Ironworks, Ghostrunner is an incredibly stylish action game set in a cyberpunk dystopia. In the newly revealed gameplay trailer, we saw the reveal of gameplay set in cyberspace, along with some new foes who can use tactics to get the jump on the Ghostrunner. Before the reveal, I got the chance to dive into a new preview build of the game, which showed off the increased scope of the game.

With the means to travel between the real world and cyberspace, the protagonist also possesses some fast moves and killer attacks. He’s incredibly skilled in the ways of combat, yet the trade-off is that he’s also incredibly vulnerable. In a similar vein to Hotline Miami, you can die in one hit, which will send you back to previous checkpoints in each stage. To play Ghostrunner is to always stay on guard while maneuvering throughout the levels. Yet, there’s a certain grace in how you’re able to dodge enemy bullets, wall-run to your target, and pull of chain attacks against groups of enemies. Blending platforming and fast hack-and-slash gameplay, Ghostrunner presents each battle as a combat puzzle, where you’ll need to figure out the most efficient and quick way to dispatch the enemies in the arena.

While previous demos showed off the familiar dark alleys and rain-slick surfaces you’d come to expect in a cyberpunk game, the new footage revealed aspects of the game not yet known, such as the many sections set in a VR world. In these sections, the Ghostrunner will learn more about his abilities while exploring the bright and visually stunning world of cyberspace. These areas are also where you’ll be able to gain new powers and test them against enemies before heading back into the real world. One of the new skills that the Ghostrunner can get is called Tempest, allowing him to use a force push-style ability to knock back enemies. The tempest skill can also deflect enemy bullets, which can come in handy against some of the more aggressive sharpshooters you’ll encounter in the game.

As you make your way through the city, new enemies are introduced to switch things up when you get too comfortable in the flow of the game. These enemies include heavy guards that wield giant energy shields and close-range brawlers that will leap towards you for a fast kill. Just when you get used to the flow, the game has a way of reminding you that you can die in a single hit with its approach to the combat puzzle design–which just made me want to dive in again to perfect my effortless run through the dystopian city.

Set for release this year on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, Ghostrunner is shaping up to a fun and stylish take on the increasingly popular genre of cyberpunk games.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

It’s been about 10 years since Skate 3 and it seems like the calls for Skate 4 have never died out. Well, on July 28, we get the full release of Skater XL which draws much inspiration from the skating sim style. It’s been in early access since December 2018 and we’ve been able to play it, but the official launch will feature more content.

During the Future Games Show, we saw the first look at an all new skate park called Easy Day High School. It’s a large school ground based on California campuses and incorporates 25 real world skate spots in the level itself. You can see a tour of the location from game director Dain Hedgpeth in the gameplay video below.

In Skater XL, the two analogue sticks control the feet of your skater. Instead of predetermined animations to pull of tricks, it’s all physics-based with the skateboard reacting to the analogue stick motions.

Skater XL comes out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. For more E3-style news from this week’s big game reveal streams, be sure to check out our stories below.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

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Shoot-’em-up games aren’t as prolific now as they were in the ’90s, but developer KeelWorks’ new game Cygni: All Guns Blazing looks extremely impressive. Featured in a gameplay trailer during the Future Games Show, the bullet hell game mixes Pixar-style visuals–from a former Pixar artist, no less–with fast movement and dangerous enemies.

Cygni is technically a vertical shooter, but you have freedom of movement and can quickly run circles around enemies as you blast away at their shields and avoid projectiles. The trailer featured a bug-like robot enemy that fired both lasers and projectiles at the same time, and it will take extreme coordination to avoid getting hit. For fans of older retro shooters, it looks like it will be second nature, but it will make use of a twin-stick control scheme like the similarly-futuristic Nex Machina.

Right now, Cygni is planning to release on PC and Mac. However, the game’s developers are also hoping to release it on next-generation systems. You can wishlist the game now on its Steam page.

On Thursday, we finally got our first look at the PlayStation 5, and boy does it look weird. But what wasn’t immediately apparent during Sony’s digital press conference was just how big the next-gen console is. Sitting alone among digitally rendered graphics makes the console’s futuristic curves look sleek and slim, but if you put it next to the PS4, PS3, or the upcoming Xbox Series X , that illusion is shattered. This is a hefty chonker.

Using the disc drive as a point of reference, we estimated the PS5 to have the rough dimensions of 15.74″ x 8.79″ x 3.97″. For comparison, we’ve estimated the Xbox Series X size to be roughly 11.85″ x 6.03″ x 6.03″. The important number here is the height. Sony has displayed PlayStation hardware vertically going all the way back to the PS2, but I’d wager that in most homes, the console ended up sitting on its side in an entertainment center or on a shelf. The PS5, though, seems designed specifically to stand up, with side panels that curve upwards like a skyscraper in the Dubai skyline.

It can still be positioned on its side, of course, but it looks like it will take a small support stand to keep the system from tilting awkwardly. Either way, that nearly 16-inch height is by far the tallest PlayStation console to date – towering three inches over the next-tallest Sony console, the original-body full-fat PS3.

 

The Xbox Series X is obviously quite heftier in the mid-section, but I’m not bothered by that as much due to its overall smaller footprint. The thing that concerns me about the PS5’s massive height is that it will likely be too large for some shelving units and entertainment centers. The bold, futuristic PS5 design isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but those looking to hide it away out of sight might be out of luck. For example, the cubes in the popular Ikea Kallax shelving unit measure just over 13″ x 13″ – too small for the PS5 unless you plan on sticking it in diagonally (please don’t).

Regardless, I’m certain there’s good reason for all that extra heft – specifically in the name of cooling. The PS4 Pro is considerably smaller by comparison, but it also has notoriously loud cooling fans. Personally I’d rather have a little bit of heft in the console than have it sound like a jet engine is taking off every time I fire up the console.

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Bo Moore is IGN’s Executive Editor of Tech. Follow him on Twitter @usebomswisely where he frequently tweets about his cats. PlayStation vs Xbox Size Comparison graphic by Nicole Cagampan.

It’s been quite some time since we’ve heard about Twin Mirror, the new psychological thriller from Life Is Strange developer Dontnod, but it made an appearance during the PC Gaming Show in the form of a new trailer.

Twin Mirror casts players in the role of Sam Higgs, an investigative journalist who returns to his hometown of Basswood, West Virginia to attend his friend’s funeral, but he soon finds that things aren’t as they seem. The new trailer, which you can watch below, sets the tone for the dark, surreal story you’ll be navigating, with every choice you make influencing your investigation.

Twin Mirror was first announced back in 2018 and was originally slated to launch the following year before being pushed back. The game still does not have a release date, but the trailer says it is “coming soon,” and it’s available to wishlist right now on the Epic Games Store. Twin Mirror is also coming to PS4 and Xbox One.

We got a look at a ton of other games during the PC Gaming Show, including No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games’ next title, The Last Campfire, and the first PC footage of Godfall. A number of new games and demos are also now live. You can catch up on everything that’s available in our roundup of all the new games and demos that surprise-released today.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Following Outlast, Outlast: Whistleblower, and Outlast 2, developer Red Barrel Games is continuing the first-person horror franchise with The Outlast Trials, the first cooperative experience in the series. During The PC Gaming Show, a new trailer for The Outlast Trials was released. You can watch it below.

In the trailer, you can see someone being fitted with the gear necessary for joining his fellow human lab rats as test subjects in a horrific experiment. The person is later seen running down a long hallway in hopes of escaping from a demonic-looking entity.

At the end of the hallway, the man reaches up to grab the outstretched hand of their partner in order to escape. Unfortunately, his ally is shot through the neck and the man falls–only to then be killed by his pursuer in a most gruesome fashion.

The Outlast Trials can be played solo but is designed as a co-op game where you and your friends work together to survive the horrors of supernatural-like Cold War experiments. If it’s anything like its predecessors, darkness will play a heavy factor in its gameplay–forcing you to keep your night-vision goggles powered and working in order to see.

The Outlast Trials is currently slated for release in 2021.

Escape From Tarkov had a ton of new content detailed during the PC Gaming Show, and players of the military sim shooter can look forward to the next map, the revamped skill system, and a new boss. These features are part of Tarkov’s upcoming 12.7 patch, which was said to be more of a technical update.

The major reveal was the new map and it looks to be a highly detailed rundown city full of buildings to explore, and Battlestate’s head of PR Nikita Buyanov said that this will be the “biggest and most detailed location” for Tarkov. Sound design will be very important as the trailer showcased the different audio cues of walking on different surfaces. You can see the preview of the map in the video below.

Buyanov also stated the the Customs map size will increase by 30 to 40 percent. Although 12.7 will overhaul the skill system and include the new Senator boss, we didn’t get further details on those features. For more on the game, be sure to check out our Escape From Tarkov coverage.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.