Ubisoft - E3

Ubisoft - E3

Here's a summation of all the games Ubisoft showcased and lots of pictures. If you want to read ALL the conferences on Day One head over here.
 

South Park: The Fractured But Whole - Ubisoft opened their show with a trailer for the next South Park game and had Aisha Taylor MC. She invited Matt Stone and Trey Parker up to mostly rag on their stupid mikes and get off stage as fast as possible.

 Aisha mentions the rather virulent criticism Ubisoft deserved for a certain Assassiny game, but gave the cover of "We hear you though we're still releasing another AC game this year and didn't show any game play. It'll be fine. Look, more celebrities!"

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For Honor - Maybe my memory's kinda hazy, but I don't remember when the Crusader's waged and epic battle against Vikings. And then some Samurai got really fucking lost and wandered in. But in For Honor you can experience this long lost footnote in history. Experience the danger of melee combat on battlefield feel the strike of a winning blow and the crash of a shield as an enraged historian bursts through your wall and body slams you.

 

 No one fucks with historians.

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Expansion Packs: The Crew & Trials Fusion

You're supposed to want to play these because racing and a cat riding on a flaming unicorn? Ubisoft took the approach of "Yeah, we could explain it, but look at how awesome this is! Do you really want us to waste time telling you why you should buy thins game when you could be giving us the money already? I didn't think so."

 

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The Division - Having watched actual gameplay for the Division I'm left wondering do people playing at home ever shut the hell up? I wanted the virus to wipe out every single character so the game was just watching a tin can rolling down the street.

 A weaponized virus was released by secret agent pandas (okay, I made that last bit up). Of course, rather than people bonding together, coming up with evacuation and rescue plans, society crumbles. The obligatory scavengers are all wearing bright orange jumpsuits because nothing screams inconspicuous/city camo like bright orange.

Tom Clancy's: The Division drops in December.

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Anno 2205: You can build a city on the moon...eventually. For now just build yourself a Sim City on Earth. Maybe one day you can get to the moon. One day.

 

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Just Dance 2016 - Out of ideas, Ubisoft yanked out Jason Derulo and had him sing and vaguely sway while pawing at his crotch. There was a noticeable lack of dancing to sell a dancing game and barely any dancing gameplay.

On the plus side, at least no one lit off fireworks. It looked like it could have been a fire hazard.

So there's a dancing game that may or may not have dancing in it. But, hey, we got a live singer. It's ten times better than EA dredging up Pele. Suck it, EA!

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Rainbow Six | Siege - Another Tom Clancy game which gave Ubisoft the excuse to have Angela Basset come out looking very confused what this video game thing is all about. But hey, their check cleared so whatever. Now that Aisha could fawn over Derulo, she could get (rightly) starstruck over Basset. This felt less like a video game conference and more like watching the red carpet live at some award show. What are you wearing? My old AC/DC t-shirt with stairs by Cheetoh.

Anyway, Rainbow Siege is sadly not an elite team made of rainbow bright and her friends sent to take down Gargamel. But you can shoot through walls which is fun. Insurance companies probably despise whenever Rainbow Siege pops up though.

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Trackmania - More cars going in circles. It felt like watching sonic. I kept expecting the car to pick up gold rings. What was cool was the track builder which randomized locations, track layouts, and signs. Because live demos are the cool thing no one has the heart to tell you looks stupid, they had one of the developers plop down and have his car smash right into a sign.

You can't cheat physics, indeed.

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Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - Meet our new assassin Jacob Frye - the love child of Wolverine and Jack the Ripper. 

As he traveled the mean streets of Industrial Revolution London I kept expecting him and his gang to break out into "It's a Hard Knock Life." Also, did no one tell the game makers that the Industrial Revolution wasn't like the French Revolution. It wasn't a war. I got the impression they seemed to think so. 

Our assassin as well as the top hat has gotten himself a grappling hook. He already hangs out on top of gargoyle. We all know where this is going, the final assassin in the franchise will be Bruce Wayne. Despite the promise that women are not longer too hard to animate, we didn't see Evie here (we did later and she looks 10X awesomer than Wolvie the Ripper). We also saw no game play, unless...

Oh god, what if we did see gameplay and that was just one cut scene into another? Not AC 3! Not again!

They offered up letting some people play there, but I'm still expecting lots of skinless assassin's running around Victorian London (at least the British accents make sense there).

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 Ghost Recon: Wildlands - Is a game about a quartet of college bound gentlemen who decide to spend their last summer together backpacking through all of south america.

Saw a pig, saw a plant, saw a lady praying.

Nah, I'm just shitting you. It's another black ops shooter. The difference is you can shoot people either directly, in stealth mode, or ambush them. That's different, right?

I should have kept up a tally of every post apocalyptic game and black-ops FPS I saw. Though if I turned it into a drinking game, I'd have to replace my liver. Next year, Ubisoft. You, me, and Viola Davis dancing with Macklemore!

Microsoft - E3

Microsoft - Xbox One - E3

Here's a summation of all the games Microsoft showcased and lots of pictures. If you want to read ALL the conferences on Day One head over here.

Halo 5: Guardians - Microsoft came out swinging and in major need of a thesaurus as they used epic three times to describe Halo: that franchise they nearly killed through litigation. But it's back with Halo 5. Master Chief is on the run, and Nathan Fillion's been sent by Admiral Anderson to hunt him down and stop him from harassing female spartans and doxxing Cortana.

There's also a Halo Warzone multiplayer pvp option as well.

Halo 5 is scheduled for an October 27th 2015 release, exclusive to the Xbox (if you just got in from Mars).

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Recore - Microsoft wanted to talk about the importance of having new games and not just continuing franchises, then played a teaser that told nothing about the game.

My best guess, you're a robot dog that can explode into fairy gazing balls, and your companion girl has to insert your memory core into bigger and badder robots every time you level up. By the end you wind up as the dog from Ghostbusters and she becomes Gozar.

2015 is the year of the dog in video games. It makes some sense, you want to give instant pathos give a character a pet. Cats will take over for 2016 and by 2020 games will be nothing but gerbils locked in a war with pygmy goats.

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Backward Compatibility - In doing everything they can to get you to go out and buy an Xbox One, this Christmas (everything is coming this Holiday season) these games will be backwards compatible off the 360. They showed it off by firing up Mass Effect one and talked about how it's great because now you can take screen shots and lord it over your friends trapped back in 2009. That was their biggest selling point for compatibility, the ability to use Xbox Live to share.

Xbox Elite Wireless Controller - We also got a peak at a super fancy controller coming with hair trigger locks, a trigger min/max, swappable components to break easier. It'll even julienne fries!

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Fallout 4 -  Bethsda wandered back to talk some more about Fallout 4 and their pipboy with computer technology from the '70s, and the laser musket from the 1770s.

But the real surprise was that mods done on the PC are no transferable across Xbox live to the Xbox One. No idea if Playstation is at all involved in that. Probably not. Expect hundreds of Lone Wanderer's dressed like Santa and fishing for irradiated tuna in Fallout 4 on the Xbox.

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EA -  EA wandered out to talk about Madden NFL 16. "I know you're all excited to play it," causing one or two people to clap in the audience. Yep, they're real excited. He was mostly there to talk about EA access which is another one of those great EA screw yous they're known for. If you pay for that then you can rent games like Titanfall or Dragon Age: Inquisition. An entire 12 titles. Wooo! I'm beginning to see why there was one clap guy. He was probably the EA presenter's cousin.

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Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 - Coming next spring. Welcome to zomberbia where plants and zombies fight. What more need be said? 

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Forza Motorsport 6 - Somehow a ford commercial slipped into the middle of the presentation. Yeah yeah, Henry Ford - right bloody asshole, and now you're lowering a car from the ceiling. 

 Okay. Guys, maybe you wanted the convention hall down the road and...No, this is a video game. Are you sure? I'm still pretty certain you want me to buy a car. I will say, the way the camera oggled chrome and curves of cut scene cars I started to feel bad for the vehicles.

If you like driving around in circles, there are 26 new circles with this game that drops on September 15th.

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Dark Souls 3 - In keeping with the "teasers don't tell you jack shit or even what game this is until the very end" we have a bunch of scenes cut from Game of Thrones mixed with a bit of Lord of the Rings, and a bit of the desert. (not dessert, a pie scene would have really livened it up)

And this guy. No one told him "Don't put the chain mail on when it's still red hot." Undead wraiths never listen.

Early 2016.

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Tom Clancy’s: The Division - Ubisoft dropped out to talk early about this game that will have an exclusive beta trial on Xbox. Amazingly, their trailer actually explained what the hell was happening. It doesn't make it anything new, but I could follow along.

A weaponized virus was released by secret agent pandas (okay, I made that last bit up). Of course, rather than people bonding together, coming up with evacuation and rescue plans, society crumbles. The obligatory scavengers are all wearing bright orange jumpsuits because nothing screams inconspicuous/city camo like bright orange. 

Apparently this team your on is so elite you don't even know how many of them there are. Sounds like an easy way for people to infiltrate and take you down, but what do I know?

Tom Clancy's: The Division drops in December.

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Rainbow Six | Siege:  - coming in October 13th. The biggest selling point was destructible environments. That was pretty much all the presenter had to share. It looks like you get to tactically take people out by shooting them through walls, doors, stuffed animals, air craft carriers, space stations. All that great destructible environments.

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 Indie Game-a-plooza! - Microsoft shared its indie game division by throwing a bunch of 10 second trailers at us and smiling like: The Molasses Flood, Phantasmal, The Solus Project, Sword Coast Legend, Outward, Goat simulator (whatever number they're at now), Game 4, Below, Ark, Recruits. And then it focused on four specific ones.

Tacoma - Is in that horror genre game of drop your character off somewhere and have them piece together what the hell happened. In this case it's set on the moon. For being indie the graphics looked really pretty and who doesn't want to run around on the moon? I call first ride on the tilt-a-whirl!

Ashen - You have to discover who amongst you is friend or foe, which is going to be really difficult as no one has any faces. Maybe they have Rorschach like features and the phrase "friend" will appear on a good guy's face?

The game play shown looked more like an average adventure/explore game -- solving puzzles, collapsing bridges, getting stab in the gut with a skeleton one -- ending with the surprise visit of this guy.

I AM GROOT!

Beyond Eyes - A game about a little girl who first leaves her home to explore and the twist is she's blind. It uses a watercolor like palette to visualize the world through other senses. At one point a scary barking dog flashes various body parts as the little girl tries to back away from it.

Cuphead - The creators wanted an old 8 bit game with a 1930's aesthetic and they nailed it. It's like the demented love child of Mario Brothers and Betty Boop. If that's your thing, it's coming in 2016.

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Ion -  This guy. When you're standing on a stage saying the words “We are the architects of this new universe, but you will governs its destiny" you need someone to pull you back and say "Uh, you know it's just a video game right?" He uses all the spin in a salesman's bag to convince the world that Ion isn't just your run of the mill space MMO but a game that's a universe. And yet, all we see are some pretty space station pictures and then a human in a plastic bag. With no gameplay shown it's hard to see how this is a whole universe in a game.

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Rise of the Tomb Raider -  Lara's back and you have a hundred more fresh ways to cause her gruesome and graphic death! The gameplay looks much the same as the reboot with the preview being the first ten minutes as she tries to climb a mountain and fails spectacularly. This younger Lara Croft tends to fail upwards.

They said that this Tomb Raider would be an Xbox exclusive (because cutting themselves off at the hamstrings early is a great plan), but are also claiming it's timed and maybe they'll offer it on PS4. I have no idea. But you guys struggled with the last one, I don't see how cutting off your console numbers will help. You do you, I guess.

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Sea of Thieves -  An exclusive game from Rare, you can pirate ships and pirate gold, and pirate skeletons, and pirate sharks! Pirates! 

Are pirates still a thing? I thought Johnny Depp simultaneously revived and killed that genre.

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Fable Legends - A free to play game (we all know what that means). The trailer was missing Kate Upton squeezed into a breast plate, but was very pretty nonetheless. Told from the point of view of the bad guys who are sick and tired of your hero character trouncing in and ruining all the good things they've got going.

Fable Legends is coming this Holiday.

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Microsoft HoloLens - Okay, let's get to what everyone's talking about. Minecraft rolled out to show off the HoloLens an untethered holographic computer, so you can get killed by evil Lincoln in real time. While one woman played a Minecraft game on a tablet, a man slotted on the hololens and stared at a wall. Pretty interesting, we could see what he saw through a special camera.

What caused everyone to sit up and pay attention is when he transferred over to the table.

His Minecraft world expanded in three dimensions. He could zoom in on characters, peer through windows, and even raise the whole thing up to peer underground. The HoloLens responded to his voice. For the end he threw lightning at some pigs because if you're going to go out, go out on undead bacon.

Now to wait and see how great this amazing piece of technology actually works in the real world. At least make sure to leave the damn safety settings on so you don't have creepers attacking you at night in your bed.

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Gears of War - They're remastering the first game for the Xbox One (which shouldn't matter anymore if they're backwards compatibility-ing everything) and including a multiplayer.

It ended with a trailer for the coming Gears of War 4. Two soldiers wandering around at night looking for a thing, but not The Thing, because dogs are our friends now. Embrace the dogs of 2015!

Gears of War coming Holiday 2016.

iZombie: Blaine's World

Here we stand at the brink. Thirteen episodes, the rise of a zombie empire, a cracking of a man's psyche, adorable zombie rats, and -- at the middle of the storm -- is the battle of the undead: Liv vs Blaine. Only one can rise the victor.

       V                          

Let's get to it!

Still searching for those astronaut brains, Lenny's digging through Major's shit. While Blaine, showing his Lex Luthor skills, figured out that Major's interest in them is his connection to the kids he knew from his job somehow they all miss the Grand Theft Auto arsenal in Major's car.

Not that any of that will help Major (for now), as he finally achieved his season long goal of getting himself fridged. Blaine's preserving Major to torture him for information, but Major's smart enough to know that if he gives away his only card he's dead. After Major refused to divulge his brain storage, Blaine sighs and says: "I love the moxie but I'm the Mick Jagger here. Time is on my side." (Which sadly didn't lead to a duet of them singing "I'm so hot for you, I'm so cold!")

To fill in from the cliffhanger of the last episode, the crew stands around Teresa's bludgeoned body. Our only remaining suspect left a bit of blood on the bed, which somehow means that there's another killer out there and not that Cameron (who Liv already saw threatening Shaggy last episode) is behind it all. Your conclusion jumping makes no sense sometimes, Liv.

Thankfully, aside from some barely noticeable increase in snark there's almost no brain bleed this episode. There's only one zombie vision of a dark hand grabbing another dark thing and doing something with it. I'm glad Liv promptly explains whatever the hell she just saw because most of the zombie vision I'm nodding along "Okay, that was a bunch of what the hell was that?" Apparently, in this quick vision of a hand grabbing onto something green and red colored Teresa got her hands on the flashdrive that had the infamous Max Rager memo. We're back to hunting our Richard Branson like CEO - Von (I have no idea if that's his first or last name. He could be the Madonna of CEOs).

In a twist, we find Von sitting on a couch calmly interviewing his new head scientist who thought he hit the jackpot after leaving his job with Hydra before getting fired upon. They're watching a video of Sebastian sitting in a Max Rager interrogation room (always a great sign when your place of employment has one of those. Benefits include dental, vision, and a golf cart battery + nipple clamps.) While Von tells his new nerd about how Sebastian survived the boat accident and getting run over by a car, Sebastian goes full rage and bashes in the previous lead scientist's skull.

I'm guessing no one thought to run in and stop him because they wanted to get into the snuff film business. Max Rager knows about not only the rage issues (what with it being in their name) but also the zombie side effects as well. Von claims he wants the zombie bits removed while all the good stuff is kept in but I'm wondering if that's true. Sure, you don't want it in the product you ship commercially but the ability to sell undying stooges to all those super villains sounds like a great money maker.

"Tired of your hired hands succumbing to a few arrows in the gut or an eye blast to the face? Give them Super Max and you'll never have to deal with the time and money waste of thug high turnover again."


READ THE REST HERE

Dwarves in Space Nomination!

I had a bit of excitement today as the nominations for the Top 50 Indie Books Published this year continues. As a bit of encouragement for people to get out and vote, Rick's nomination for Dwarves in Space was included in a mailer:

You can read it all here

There's still time to nominate Dwarves in Space if you'd like. You can just fill out the form below:

Title: Dwarves in Space
Author: SE Zbasnik
Genre: Sci-Fi (probably)
What you loved about it: Excessive use of eggs. Or whatever you want to put.

Thanks so much and remember to keep watching the eggs. They know the truth!

And before I forget, you can win a paperback copy of Dwarves in Space right now! Well, not right now. When the contest is over.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Dwarves in Space

by Sabrina Zbasnik

Giveaway ends June 29, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to Win

Authors Being Dickholes

There is no shortage of authors behaving badly thanks to a culmination of social media, self publishing, and Max Rager in the water (is it Tuesday yet? No? DAMN IT!).

This one comes courtesy of the most pretentious of names, Dylan Saccoccio.

Seems someone dared to leave a one star review on his book The Boy and the Peddler of Death, and our Serious Literary Genius took it upon himself to tell the reviewer just how terribly wrong she was. She was taking food right out of his mouth, crushing his gossamer dreams, and then he compared the reviewer to a kidnapper or something. It gets really confusing as he goes on and on into the depths of rage (a great reflection of the book I'm certain.)

As this all blew up across Goodreads, Amazon, and Twitter, our Mr. Saccoccio of course deleted his comments and blog posts. But, as the ancient Sumerian saying goes - the internet is forever.

You can read the entire exchange lovingly preserved here.

I've been wanting to talk about the whole author/reader relationship for awhile. With social media, authors are encouraged to dole out info, quotes, and general excitainment for readers. And readers are invited to befriend and share with authors. But the review line is where that friendship runs into a brick wall.

Long before I did the writing thing, I'd review stuff; things I loved and things I hated. I spent a lot of time worrying about my take on Other Space because I had so many MSTies that were friends/how easily the review could wind up under Trace or Joel's noses. Even my poking fun of the idiotic Food Network show Halloween Wars invited a small bunch of people questioning me for daring to voice my unappreciative of shitty cakes.


As our vampire hunting president put it, "You can't please all of the people all of the time. Now duck while I stab this bloodsucker in the heart."

People have every right to say what they do and do not like. Trying to force everyone to only discuss things they love sounds like the plot of a dystopian novel.

Authors, you might be really really tempted to rush in there and defend your words or refute something a reader got wrong but don't. Even if the reviewer called your main character "one dimensional," your plot "invisible," and the writing "broke after I plugged it in" do not rise to the occasion.

Nothing freaks a reviewer out more than seeing a response from the author/creator. You just know they're coming to raise some hackles and rattle chains. And if they're not, if they have a very civil response, it still feels creepy.

It breaks down that invisible wall that readers want their review to be for other readers. When an author responds, your brain goes to the old canard "If you can't say anything nice..." and you want to rush to hide over your words. Actually, civilly responding to someone's 1 star review is a great way to get them to change it. They're reminded that it was a person who they just dumped all over and will feel bad. Their opinion of the material may not have changed but they're worried about looking like a jerk.

It may work, but is it honest?

And that's why I never respond to reviews I read (because we read them, we all read them). Good, bad, indifferent, I don't want readers to think I'm watching over their shoulder about to pounce if they don't click the right number of boxes.

For the sake of the reviewer I keep it all to myself and my dog.