Another week flies by and there’s been quite significant gaming news during the week, as well as rumours picking up steam.
Small Radios Big Televisions
I mentioned last week that I’d been giving this little puzzler a try, well I had a proper sitting with it on Saturday evening and ended up completing it in just shy of an hour. To be completely honest, I’m not exactly sure what the game was about in terms of a story or point? But basically you’re exploring old power stations picking up some cassette tapes and visiting worlds in these tapes collecting a gem. The worlds within these tapes are not large at all, they’re very linear. If you struggle to find the gem you require in this world, you might need to put the cassette next to a magnetic wave which results in the world being slightly distorted and reveals a few more things.
Anyways, yes, I’ve played through the 4 powerstations within the short game and figured out the puzzles. It had some moments of frustration as you’re going back and forth remembering where something was and if you open the wrong door. But that aside a nice challenging little puzzler that was very bright and original.
PlayStation Experience 2016 – Hype Train is in full swing
Sony’s 2016 with regards to media briefings or conferences has been a little bit lackluster compared to previous years. I loved E3 2016, but people have mentioned it wasn’t as big as last year (well no shit, holy trinity). But their absence from Paris Games Week and not overly impressive TGS means people are getting speculative that they’re going to blow our minds at the PlayStation Experience this coming weekend. And as more and more people board this hype train, the rumours are now beginning to gather steam, the ‘leaks’ appear to be happening and of course people are actively losing their shit.
The Last of us 2 rumours are picking up traction (from where I don’t know), now there is genuine belief that this will be revealed next weekend. Grasping at straws to confirm this, so far all we’ve got is “The Last of us DLC was announced in the same month that Uncharted 4 was confirmed, so we’re more than likely getting UC4 DLC revealed at PSX, so Maybe TLOU2 will be revealed”…. It’s a stretch, I did say people are going crazy.
Crash Bandicoot Remastered footage is apparently also likely to be shown for the first time, and recently Shenmue 3 footage to be revealed was also doing the rounds.
And another big one that has caused massive discussion points is leaks of Marvel vs Capom 4.
PlayStation 4 see it’s biggest hardware sales since Launch in the UK
PlayStation Slim & PlayStation Pro are now both out in the wild in the UK, after a few months of XboxOne dominance in the UK, PlayStation Hardware has skyrocketed in the UK. Black Friday bundles are sure to have helped as the UK games chart has seen software reentering the top 40 charts such as DriveClub, Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted 4 all thanks to bundles. The hardware was up from last years Black Friday week which saw 139,000 units shifted, Launch in the UK saw 250,000, so that’s a heck of a high number of PS4’s shifted last week if it’s between last years Black Friday figures and launch figures.
A tweet from a Ubisoft employee suggested PS4 had shifted 2 million units globally last week, given the surge in UK sales it could well be legitimate.
UK Still Loves Pokemon… A lot
Another release during the festive build up, Nintendo released the latest generation of Pokemon in the UK. And we ate it up. The latest generation Pokemon titles are Nintendo’s largest UK launch games ever. Bigger than any Wii game. From Tom Phillips of EuroGamer:
Pokémon Sun and Moon are Nintendo’s biggest ever UK launch. Bigger than any Wii game, even. Incredible.
Bigger than any other Pokémon. Any other 3DS game. Anything on Wii or DS…
Dat Pokémon Go effect.
Hard to put into perspective – Pokémon Sun and Moon managed in one day what Wii Fit sold in two weeks.
Pokemon Sun and Moon combined has outsold Infinite Warfare and Watch Dogs 2. God Damn!
No Man’s Sky Foundation Update
After months of nothing, the radio silence has been broken by Sean Murray and Hello Games as they revealed the first of many updates to try and get us back into the universe that is No Man’s Sky. The update does look impressive and adds lots of new features including base building, freighters that can be purchased and new game play styles such as survival or creative mode. The patch was released yesterday and has seen steam active users increase massively.
I’ve yet to download the patch, I’m still a little apprehensive, the don’t believe his lies statement still stands out here.
– Murr
The Division
The most recent DLC for The Division has release on PC and Xbox One – survival. As you might expect you have to survive, it’s kind of like a more extreme version of the Darkzone, you start with nothing and have to scavenge supplies and weapons and basically try and last the longest against other players. I also think there is a just an AI mode too. What I like is that as the name suggests it is a lot more survival focused, you can die from the cold and have to get to fires to warm up or find warmer clothing. I’ve not actually played it so my knowledge of it might not be that great, but I think it looks really cool and it got me wanting to play the game again, so I’ve got it all up to date and jump back on for a little bit last week. I have to say that from the off set it doesn’t seem all that different, but then I didn’t get too long on it and I’m still fairly low level with no top tier loot. I’m going to keep play though as I hear a lot of people saying its now much better than it was.
I didn’t hate The Division though, I do like it, I just felt a little let down by the repetitive nature of the missions and the Darkzone wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. I’m hopeful that with the changes that have come along, once I’ve played a bit more I will start to get back in to it!
Hello Neighbor
A big update came to Hello Neighbor last week so I’ve been playing that also. I have to say Hello Neighbor is becoming a real sleeper hit for me. I wasn’t expecting much from it but I actually really like the gameplay and think it has a lot of potential. You can check out my latest video of it below.
-Will
