This week we bear the hottest of hot insights that probably
shouldn’t be viewed in pleasant company, Ubisoft game news, alien discoveries, and
more! Take a gander won’t you?
An Honourable Venture
Ubisoft’s For Honor will, the developers claim, have a
single player campaign. For Honor is the multiplayer sword-fighting game with
MOBA elements, introduced at last year’s E3 by its flamboyant creative director
Jason Vandenberghe. In a Ubisoft-produced video, which you can check out below,
producer Stephane Cardin promised that For Honor will have a “solo campaign”,
but sheds no light beyond that.
The cynic in me – or rather the realist – is preparing for a
Rainbow Six: Siege ‘solo experience’, which is to a say poor one. Stripped down
multiplayer scenarios limited to just one player, we’ll have to wait and see of
course, but my money’s on For Honor being distinctly multiplayer focused.
(Via Gamespot).
Crota Got To Them Too
The Division, another of Ubisoft’s multiplayer efforts got
an inspirational trailer this week. ‘Agent Journey’ tilts The Division’s cards
in our direction more so than the demonstrations of the last couple of years,
it outlines systems and means of progression, and presents social spaces in a
manner that appears similar to Bungie’s Destiny. Take a look!
Later in the week, Ubisoft released longer videos through
Gamespot showing combat with thugs possessing the fortitude to weather half a
dozen semi-automatic rifle rounds at short distances, and fire, plenty of fire.
Here’s some Dark Zone, and Side Ops gameplay.
Gamespot also published an interview with creative director
Magnus Jensen concerning microtransactions, the previously discussed paid
level-skip has been removed. Jensen said, "So there won't be any
microtransactions like that. No shortcuts."
Jensen went on to admit his desire to support “fair transactions”
and expressed concern over exploitative ones:
"What frightens me is manipulative trading, where you pretend that it's a free experience when in fact you're not being truthful because you don't intend it to be free. You're only saying that to draw people in. Your intention is to make people pay. And that's where I think there's an ethical problem with free-to-play games."
Interesting, considering The Division, a full priced $60
game appears to feature microtransactions and DLC, also from the company that
released Rainbow Six Siege just a few weeks ago, another full priced game stuffed
with microtransations. One hopes The Division will feel like a full-priced
game, perhaps we’ll learn more from the closed beta coming this month, starting
January 28th, the game’s due to launch March 8th.
(Via Gamespot).
That’s Not A Real Word…
In an interview with Dengeki PlayStation, a Japanese
magazine, translated by Gematsu, Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka discussed the company
upcoming release line up, reconfirming Persona 5’s summer release and teasing
multiple unannounced projects.
“…In 2016, starting with Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, we plan to release a large number of titles. In the summer, we’ll launch the long-awaited Persona 5. Of course, in addition to that we have several unannounced titles. I have no doubt this will be a year Atlus’ popular series all gather together.
“While the release date hasn’t been decided, I want you to also look forward to VanillaWare’s 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.”
Where There Are Barnacles, Tentacles Are Soon To Follow
Elite Dangerous is a game about space capitalism, a game of
jobs of varying legality, in a universe of surprising scale. With Horizons, the
second season of content, the lens used to view the universe increased in
definition as planetary landings became an option. Commander Octo made a
chilling discovery when they happened upon a grouping of alien barnacles
jutting surface of an arid planet. Labelled simply ‘Organic Structure’ they
emitted some interesting noises, Youtuber semtexzv recorded a fifteen minute
clip, embedded below.
The barnacles were found on Merope 5 C at the coordinates
-026.3496°, -156.4044°, 0.18G.
It’s not the first sign of alien life in Elite Dangerous,
unknown egg-like artefacts have been discovered in space, which appears to be
what led pilots to Merope in the first place. These findings seem to be related
to the ‘Thargoids’, an insectoid alien race believed to originate from outside
known space.
Flexible Contracts
The upcoming entry in the Hitman series, named simply
Hitman, has pivoted into a full episodic release as opposed to the pseudo
staggered release Io-Interactive talked about at E3 last year. Come March 11th
a downloadable version of Hitman will release on the current consoles and PC,
this will initially contain a prologue mission and a Paris location. An Italian
location will be added in April, Morocco in May, Thailand, US, and Japan will
all feature in subsequent updates on a monthly basis. Weekly live events and
“additional planned content” will release between the monthly updates.
Studio head Hannes Seifert offered this by way of reasoning:
“Part of that decision is for that little bit of extra time to ensure every location we release is at the quality level fitting for a HITMAN game. But the main driving reason is that this will allow us to create a living game that will expand and evolve over time and establish a foundation for the future – this is the first game in a storyline which will continue and expand with future Hitman games.”
The downloadable game containing all locations will cost
$60. An “Intro Pack” containing just the prologue and Paris will be available
at launch for $15, with the other locations releasing at $10 a pop. A disk
version containing all will be released at the end of the year.
PlayStation Users Doing The Numbers
Another update on the state of the ever merging Venn diagram
of videogames and porn, PlayStation users edge ahead of Xbox viewers – I’m so
sorry for that one. 2015 saw PlayStation porn traffic surge to account for
46.9% of all console-based traffic, meaning the traffic share is up 17.5% from
2014, meanwhile Xbox traffic dropped 17.2% to 37.9% overall. The PlayStation
Vita dropped a little but retained 5% overall, bizarrely the 3DS’ share leapt
up 18.9%.
The Porn Hub Insights site is visually at least safe for
work and the Year in Review article this came from offers some really
interesting statistics.
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