Author: Trafficblast

Game developer Cliff Bleszinski, who designed and directed the original Gears of War trilogy, is keeping busy in his post-Epic life. His latest project is a little different, however.

Bleszinski said on Twitter that he’s seriously thinking about starting a Twitch channel. He was inspired to start streaming due to the “cabin fever” he’s feeling during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Bleszinski added that he’s starting to feel comfortable again on camera thanks to all the Zoom calls he’s been on lately.

Bleszinski potentially launching a Twitch channel of his own comes at an interesting time, given that he just recently announced he has begun work on a new IP involving dogs. An outspoken and opinionated individual known for decades of experience in games and his hot takes on various gaming industry topics, Bleszinski would certainly have a lot to offer viewers on Twitch.

When Bleszinski left Epic in 2012, he said he was stepping away from video games, but he went on to start the independent studio Boss Key Productions in 2014. That studio produced Lawbreakers and, facing financial difficulties, jumped into the battle royale market with Radical Heights just before ultimately closing in 2018.

Since then, Bleszinski co-produced the acclaimed Broadway musical Hadestown and has said he’s working on a memoir of his time in the games industry. He’s also offered to consult on the Gears franchise.

The Gears franchise is now being managed by The Coalition, a new studio Microsoft established as caretakers of the series. It most recently released Gears Tactics, a tactical spin-off in the vein of the XCOM series. For more, check out GameSpot’s Gears Tactics review.

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It was only a matter of time before Rick and Morty turned its attention to spoofing the Alien franchise. Honestly, it’s surprising it took this long. “Promortyus” gets about as much mileage out of that premise as it possibly can, lampooning both the obvious tropes and pushing the parody in some pretty wacky and unexpected directions. But as with pretty much every episode that commits itself to a singular pop culture spoof, the novelty factor eventually starts to wear off.

You do have to credit this episode with making the most of the Alien parody in terms of plot structure. The decision to kick things off in the middle of the story rather than the beginning helps kick things off on an amusingly disorienting start. We’re left to wonder how the duo got themselves into this mess and whether this phallic, slimy, HR Giger-inspired nightmare is the main focus of the episode or simply a launching point. Watching Rick and Morty utterly annihilate the Glorzos and drop plenty of self-aware meta-dialogue is entertaining, but the real payoff comes later when they realize they left Summer behind. Immediately, it becomes clear we only saw part of a much bigger and more disastrous adventure.

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Unfortunately, despite that fun twist, this episode starts to lose its steam after the return to Glorzoville. The flashback to the origin of the mission is fun, especially with the payoff to Summer’s newfound obsession with toothpicks. But after that point the whole concept starts to unwind a bit. This episode sort of has the opposite problem of last week’s “Never Ricking Morty.” That episode tried too hard to keep piling new layers on its mind-bending premise and ultimately sputtered a bit at the finish line. Here, by comparison, it feels like there should have been one or two more wrinkles involved before the Glorzo conflict reached its climax.

This is one case where the lack of a B-plot actually hurts the show a bit. Sometimes the minor asides featuring the other members of the Smith family just get in the way of the real story, but this is one case where the episode really could have used a subplot simply for the sake of variety. Especially because Jerry has really been underutilized in Season 4. His new “career” as a beekeeper might have been worth exploring in greater depth. Though you do have to admire the economy with which Jerry’s story is told in this episode. Not counting the post-credits stinger, Jerry is only in the one scene, but the disinterested reactions and the fact that he seems to have simply taped his name onto a sore-brand bottle of honey tells us all we need to know about his latest hobby.

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If the Alien parody eventually runs out of steam, this episode partly makes up for that by aiming big with gross-out humor and a general willingness to push the boundaries of good taste. The scene where Rick narrowly avoids causing an alien 9/11, only to gleefully launch into a recreation of the Pearl Harbor attacks, is definitely the funniest moment of the episode. And not for nothing, but the animation in that sequence is really impressive. It’s a testament to how far the series has come in that regard over the past seven years.

Other little moments (like that over-the-top Bruce/Steve kissing scene) are entertaining reminders Rick and Morty can and sometimes will go for shock value. It’s always nice to see another animated sitcom compete on South Park’s level.

Digital Extremes, developers of free-to-play shooter Warframe has held its latest Home Devstream, offering updates on many of the announcements made in last week’s stream. Most notably, Nightwave’s long awaited Series 3, Glassmaker, is set to drop very soon.

While there isn’t a set date yet, the devs have indicated that we can expect the all-new take on Nightwave to drop within the next week. Glassmaker is currently awaiting certification approvals, but will go live once those have cleared. The new Nightwave event is an interactive murder mystery, asking the player to find the identity of the mysterious Glassmaker. For the first time, the Nightwave vignettes will be interactive, allowing players to explore.

The game’s next core update Deadlock Protocol is also in the works, featuring a new Warframe and an associated story quest. Digital Extremes’ Rebecca Ford has teased that fans of 2017’s Chains of Harrow quest are likely to enjoy Deadlock Protocol too, with the two updates sharing a lot of similar themes. While there’s still no date confirmed for its release, Deadlock Protocol is still being planned for late May, although it could see a delay into early June.

For a look at some of the new skins features coming in Warframe’s upcoming updates, check out more of the Digital Extremes stream above.

Warframe is currently available on PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord has pushed beta version 1.3.0 to its main servers after just under two weeks of testing, bringing with it more refinements, crash fixes and improvements in the behavior of its many AI characters.

Leading the patch notes for the new game version 1.3.0 is a collection of crash fixes, which have been the main focus of most of the patches to date. While the game has suffered from crashes and bugs since release, the developers have been working hard in conjunction with player feedback and bug reports to fix them. The new beta branch has also allowed crashes to be detected before they make it to most players’ games.

The new patch also applies yet more AI tweaks to balance out the game–lords and other NPCs have become better at managing their money, while mercenary groups in taverns have become larger and stronger.

The full patch notes includes a number of tweaks both minor and major, to make the huge simulated world of Bannerlord a bit more believable. With such an intricate game, it’ll likely take a while yet for TaleWorlds to balance out all the different systems that have to work together.

If you want to be involved in the process, you can opt into the beta testing branch of the game via your Steam library.

Call of Duty: WWII developer Sledgehammer Games is ramping up. The studio’s COO, Andy Wilson, confirmed in a new interview that the developer is looking to fill 100 positions at its locations around the world as it moves to take on more responsibilities including working on two games at once.

Sledgehammer was founded in 2010 by Dead Space and EA veterans Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, both of whom have since left the studio. With Sledgehammer now entering its second decade of existence, Wilson told VentureBeat that the studio is launching an initiative called “Decade II,” and this includes hiring many more people across its offices in California and Australia.

Wilson shared that Sledgehammer has already received more than 2,000 applications for its numerous open roles in its offices in Foster City, California and Melbourne, Australia.

“Sledgehammer Games is entering a period of growth across both of our main studio locations: Foster City, California and Melbourne, Australia. We’re now a multi-project studio and we’re looking for a substantial number of new team members to join us,” Wilson said. “We’re looking across every discipline and various levels of seniority. It’s a pretty exciting time for our studio.”

Sledgehammer currently employs more than 200 people, and it plans to add more than 100 in the next year, Wilson said. The executive added that one of the benefits of Sledgehammer operating in California and Australia is that it allows the developer to be on the clock 24/7, which is required for the types of online, constantly updated games that it makes.

“The launch is really just the start, as games are being played around the clock, it’s a great advantage to be able to cover more of the 24-hour cycle for things like live operations and support,” he said. “Finally, there’s a certain momentum you gain from having the baton passed constantly between a team in one location finishing their day just as another is winding up for theirs.”

You can read the full interview here at VentureBeat.

Sledgehammer’s Melbourne office opened in 2019. It was recently revealed that the Melbourne team also contributed to Call of Duty: Warzone. The studio doesn’t have any announced projects at this stage, but you can expect they are working on a new Call of Duty title.

Activision, which owns Sledgehammer, has a number of studios contributing to the Call of Duty franchise. These include Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven Software, High Moon Studios, and Beenox, among others.

2020’s new Call of Duty is on track to launch later this year, though Activision has yet to confirm which studio is developing it or what the game is. Activision is historically known to announce the year’s new Call of Duty instalment in May, but it’s unclear if that will happen this year. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

After 12 years with Gearbox Software, audio director and composer Raison Varner has announced on Twitter that he will be moving to Obsidian Studios. Varner has worked on all of Gearbox’s flagship games over the years, as well as voicing various Borderlands psycho enemies and the Loader Bot in Tales From The Borderlands.

Varner was the music director on Borderlands 3, working with a team of composers to push the game’s soundtrack to be unique and creative, while still belonging cohesively to a single game. Under Varner’s leadership, Borderlands 3 pushed the possibilities of what a game soundtrack would do. In an interview with GameSpot, Borderlands 3 composer Jesper Kyd said the game featured “a really deep interactive music system with many layers and modular pieces that are randomly put together in-game, so the music sounds a bit different every time you play the game.”

Obsidian’s latest game The Outer Worlds launched in October 2019, with story DLC planned for an as-yet unknown date in 2020. The Nintendo Switch release of The Outer Worlds was pushed back due to coronavirus, now with a release date of June 5 2020. The future of Obsidian was made more concrete with Microsoft’s purchase of the company in 2018, with a focus on allowing the studio to make the kind of games it wants to make.