A reminder of just how “wild” the situation around Ubisoft is is unnecessary given the numerous reports from the recent past. The French company is not doing well, its share price has been steadily falling, there is talk of a possible stock market exit as well as a lot of pressure from investors, and then, of course, there are the games themselves, which are not automatically and unreservedly scoring as they once did, and their development is becoming increasingly difficult for Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a case in point. While it takes players to blue-collar Japan, beyond that, the title has been mired in controversy over its protagonist, and its reputation certainly hasn’t been helped by its recent postponement from November this year to February next year.
Shifts in Ubisoft’s Release Strategy
However, developers at Ubisoft have hinted that Assassin’s Creed Shadows may be the game through which the release strategy will be altered, which was first reflected in the promise that the game would also arrive on Steam on launch day, followed by the cancellation of the season pass. Now, the developers have confirmed that they are also canceling the controversially received early access, which players pay for by purchasing a more expensive edition.
IGN.com’s official channel informs on Ubisoft Assasins’s Creed Shadows’ early access cancelation
Official Announcement and Changes
The developers made their plans known on the official Discord (via Reddit) in the Q&A section. They confirmed that, at least in the case of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, they will no longer be dividing the player community with early access. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean that the Collector’s Edition of the game, which initially included this bonus, has been taken for dead. The developers have adjusted its price to the current 240 euros and slightly changed its content. Specifically, players will get a 40cm statue of the two main heroes Yasuke and Nao, as well as a tin box for the game disc, a 76-page book of artwork, a katana guard of the heroine Naoe, a so-called cube, a world map, a poster, and two stylized engravings.
Gold Edition and Speculation About Future Editions
Suppose you were wondering about the Gold edition, which was also available before the delay and subsequent cancellation of all pre-orders. In that case, the developers have wholly canceled it, which could potentially indicate another effort to completely revamp the editions and release scheme for other games as well. However, the developers have been vague on this point so far, and it will likely continue to depend on specific decisions related to individual titles. Either way, Assassin’s Creed Shadows should be released on February 14 next year on PC, Xbox Series, and PlayStation 5.idual titles. Either way, Assassin’s Creed Shadows should be released on February 14 next year on PC, Xbox Series, and PlayStation 5.
Playing Telltale Games’ story-driven adventure games is akin to reading a book, as you as the player, are the driver of the action in a very small area and instead are led by the hand with the artificial vision that your decisions can have a greater impact on the unfolding story. In 2014, the studio released the episodic narrative Tales from the Borderlands in partnership with Gearbox, which has become one of its most successful brands. Gearbox has then looked to continue in its footsteps under its own banner. And if we’ve likened playing Telltale games to reading books, flicking through New Tales from the Borderlands will make you feel like a drowsy father trying to read a story to his kids after a twelve-hour shift while holding his eyelids with all his might.
Humor is like fast food. You don’t immediately grab your stomach after everyone, but when you do, it’s not without a violent anal discharge. Gearbox has made no secret from the start that their story doesn’t expand on the original series. Instead, it takes it as a springboard for its own narrative, which borrows themes from the main backbone of the Borderlands brand, super absurd and violent loot-looting action. It is, therefore, surprising that it puts the importance of story and narrative on the back burner, instead disingenuously relying on wit and situational humor built around the interactions between the trio of main characters and adjacent supporting characters. That decision takes balls, especially when the humor is a fiercely subjective affair.
You can like fart jokes, black humor, confrontational innuendo, situational humor, or just good old-fashioned dad jokes. In any case, you will get attempts at hilarity in spades, unfortunately often delivered in a maximum force style. Ironically, however, the funniest motif lies beneath the story’s surface and its ironic presentation through the main characters. The play begins on Atlas’ space station, where the plot opens through the eyes of Anu, a scientist who is a bit stuck in her career path. And where is the joke? Anu is anti-violence, and her main scientific focus is instead the preservation of life, which, if you’ve played at least one episode of Borderlands, is very funny because we all know that life is worth a jar of pickles in this game world, and where violence is also used for courtship.
Characters That Outshine the Story
After a small story section, Anu arrives on the planet Promethea, which is simultaneously occupied by the weapons giant Tediore and resembles an average slum in South America. Here, Anu is reunited with her brother Octavio and the ice cream maker Fran. The archetypal characters then serve as a typical binder for the narrative, with Anu representing the rational and worthy character, while Octavio represents the pompous and verbose smart-ass. And Fran? The one who comes between the siblings is the tough guy who balances both of the extremes mentioned above. Much more enjoyable than are the supporting characters, and the absolute icon overshadowing the protagonists is, for example, the hired robot, aka killbot, LOU13, who uses his cool logic to comment on situations, or the constantly teleporting TIMM-E, who serves as a sort of more balanced version of the iconic Claptrap.
However, humor is also abused as filler, creating situations that would put even the kitschiest sitcoms today to shame. Watching 5 minutes of a scene in which Anu and Octavio argue about absolutely minor things unrelated to the narrative while marching around the set screaming while you squeeze in one quick time event after another is, unfortunately, the writers’ standard vision of humor. Ironically, then, the funniest situations come entirely from the side and from secondary characters. The joke here is intentionally meant to be the vehicle for the plot, but it’s the story and its delivery that drag New Tales from the Borderlands down the most. For one thing, though there was never much talking in Borderlands, the grandiose goals of vault exploration were always served up on a silver platter by the game, and you knew that even as a gun-toting sadist you were hurtling towards an epic conclusion.
In the case of the new game, you can’t talk about epic at all, as any hints of a deeper story are blocked by the characters’ momentary needs, such as trying to build their own company, making big bucks, finding corpses for scientific purposes, and… you can probably understand that the ratio of story-relevant events to supporting ones is desperately uneven, as is the quality of the conclusion itself. And what’s the most tragic part of all this? The main thing a game of this genre should be able to do is just tell a story and sell it to the player. The age-old question of the impact of player decisions on future events in the game is then also not addressed with any significant grace by the developers, as they apply the most widely used model to the game, giving you the illusion of decisions. In reality, your choices have little meaning, though they often result in humorous situations. A wrong decision, for example, can cause you to lose a character, which, of course, ends the game instantly, and you return to your saved position.
Gameplay Mechanics: Some New Ideas, but Little Impact
Both Anu and Octavio use unique gadgets when dealing with situations that, while they don’t bring a dizzying amount of variability, help separate the characters beyond their personalities. Anu relies on her smart glasses to identify important objects that have been carried into the environment, and Octavio, on the other hand, can contact characters and use smart apps with his wristband. Fran then doesn’t control you directly most of the time, but her space chair contains some very cool features, which you’ll pick up right from the start of the game anyway.
As a result, you’ll recognize most of the choices you make by the tone with which the other characters talk to you and how they react to your decisions rather than the functional branches of the narrative. It’s essentially the same principle that Telltale’s games have used. Don’t imagine titles like Until Dawn The Dark Pictures Anthology being built on radical twists. However, dialogue will often result in a comical scene, and it would be foolish to say that all decisions are meaningless. Especially when LOU13 gives your party a skateboard rating. Yes, skateboards. Don’t ask why. However, putting aside the story and narrative, the other often tricky point of debate is then the gameplay itself and the overall interactivity of the player with the world around them. It’s logical that the genre tends to rely more on cutscenes and dialogue, but New Tales from the Borderlands keeps players at bay even more than we’re used to.
A rigid division is that 80% of the game is dialogue and debates between characters, 10% is appropriated by the exploration parts where you directly control the characters and the rest is taken care of by quick time events and various minigames. Furthermore, the scenarios where you have to explore the environment are also minimal and usually boil down to a tiny room where you need to identify and find suitable objects, which can be done through trial and error. However, thanks to a few secondary mechanisms, the developers could afford to include a few optional activities and hidden rewards in the levels, making it intrinsically enjoyable to pay attention to even the tiny details.
The developers are trying to innovate the stale adventure game genre, which should be appreciated, although the importance of the new mechanisms is questionable. First of all, there is an economy at play! By exploring the environment and making certain decisions, you will earn money, which can then be invested in buying new skins for your characters and gadgets. This is a perfectly removable element that, if it wasn’t in the game, you’d practically not know the difference, as new costumes have no functional effect on the game. Secondly, in the game, you will find figurines of iconic characters from the series, which can then be used in special combat minigames based on quick time events, which the game is full of, and you use them to even complete absolutely banal actions.
Minigames and Side Mechanisms: Unnecessary but Enjoyable
Last but not least, you’ll come across a number of minigames involving, for example, hacking with the Octavia smartwatch. It’s one of those situations that dilutes the otherwise stale and often non-existent gameplay at least a little. None of these rather unusual mechanisms for the genre are outright bad, but they are entirely expendable. It almost seems as if one of the developers had a folder of broken prototypes lying on a disc that the team decided to use in the final product. The enthusiasm graph takes the form of a roller coaster ride when playing, where at times you’re very excited and screaming with joy, but then at other times, you’re just casting your eyes down to not see what’s coming next.
Conclusion
The graphics, sound design, and overall technical presentation are superb then, and New Tales from the Borderlands beautifully demonstrates how nicely an otherwise traditional genre can be portrayed audiovisually. The combination of a specific visual style, great dubbing, and soundtrack will bring tears to players’ eyes, especially when thinking about what Telltale Games’ otherwise brilliantly narrated games might look like today. However, the overall rigidity of the controls, gameplay mechanics, and story put the sequel on the back burner, and in many ways, unfortunately, they can’t match the other Borderlands, even those over a decade old. Still, this is a game worth playing, at least for Borderlands fans, if nothing else.
Title: New Tales from the Borderlands Type of Game: Adventure, Interactive Story Developer: Gearbox Software Publisher: 2K Games Released: October 21, 2022 Platforms Available: PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 5 Level of Maturity: Mature 17+
Players of the successful platformer Astro Bot on PlayStation can get ready for new content. The developers are announcing five new speed-focused levels that will put your skills to the test. The first level, Building Speed, challenges you to pass it as quickly as possible. The new levels will be released gradually every week in November, each with unique challenges to overcome. Compete for the best times with other players in the rankings. Another attraction is the 10 new robots to rescue spread across five levels. So you’ll find two in each. In Building Speed, you have to dodge cranes on a construction site and smash crates on your way to rescue your crew. A smaller demonstration is in the video below.
PlayStation Youtube Channel: Astro Bot Building Speed Add-On PS5
“We want to thank you again for all the love and support you have given Astro Bot, it means the world to us. That’s all for today, however, stay tuned as you may be in for more surprises soon,” the creators said in a press release. In addition to the speed stages, there should also be playful stages. In the previous game, time trials and levels were focused on getting as many points as possible. There were also boss fights.”
I was very surprised after discovering that it took four years to introduce the playable version of Exocross to the release date for developers iRacing and indie developer Orontes Games. After all, Exocross is a pretty special product, perhaps even one of the most conflicting games I’ve tried in years. Essentially, it’s an arcade racing game in the vein of Mario Kart, Motorstorm or Trackmania, where you drive a sort of moon buggy on an alien planet and are asked to win by any means necessary against a series of other cars on tracks that look like they’ve been ripped from Wreckfest.
WePlayGames.net Youtube Channel: Exocross from Iracing
Physics vs. Fun: A Losing Battle
It’s all about going as fast as you can on gravel roads, overtaking your rivals, and constantly pushing the limits, no matter the road ahead—arcade racing, plain and simple. The crux for me is that the developers have always focused on realistic and detailed off-road physics, which kind of gets in the way of the “fun factor” of the game. As a result, Exocross feels slow and lacks that sense of speed, excitement, explosiveness, and adrenaline that the best games of the genre always boast.
Another aspect that doesn’t work for me is that Exocross has an aesthetic that is too realistic to be suited to arcade racing and lacks imagination, playfulness, and color – which quickly gets tiresome. The developers should have spiced up the design with something that doesn’t just look like a big, grey-brown gravel pit and, above all, decorated the tracks with things like spectators, houses, or other buildings to create a better sense of speed. Exocross (released in Early Access in December 2020 and introduced in 100% complete form on July 17) feels more like a physics prototype than a full-fledged racing game if you ask me, and the fact that it costs nearly $40 is hard to believe.
There is no real career mode, the multiplayer portion lacks variety and immersion, and the races are often monotonous. The four (only four!) tracks are boring and lack any interesting or original elements, and I think the artificial intelligence of the opposing cars is poor at best. The game does include other game modes like Challenge, Time Trial, and so on, but everything still takes place on the same 4 tracks. The fact that there are only 3 cars to choose from doesn’t even need to be mentioned or elaborated on. The car physics is good, though, and I absolutely believe that iRacing will be able to make some really impressive things out of this system in the future, especially considering how realistic the movement of such car chassis is, for example. However, Exocross just isn’t an entertaining game.
About The ExoCross
Title: ExoCross Type of Game: Racing, Sci-Fi Developer: Orontes Games Publisher: Iracing Released: July 22, 2024 Platforms Available: PC, PlayStation 4|5, Xbox X|S Platform Reviewed: PlaStation 5 Level of Maturity: Everyone
Where to Buy ExoCross
Steam (PC): Available for $29.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam. Xbox Store : Available for $27.99 ($39.99). Check it out on the Xbox Store. PlayStation Store: Available for $29.99 ($39.99) You can find it on the PlayStation Store. Official Page: Visit the official ExoCross page for more information.
When Astro Bot was coming to PlayStation market, I thought the biggest challenge would be for the developers at Team Asobi and Sony to convince gamers that this is indeed a full-fledged game that deserves a normal price tag and is not just for kids. I didn’t doubt it myself, but the skepticism was often evident in discussions. Apparently, the authors have succeeded in this task. Journalist Christopher Dring of GamesIndustry.biz magazine said on his Twitter account that, specifically in Europe, Astro Bot has done better than any other new 3D platformer in recent years, except Mario.
It did more than that across Europe alone.
But it can only play in the market it's in. Astro Bot has done better than basically every new 3D platform game in the last 10 years (Mario aside). Its true success won't be known for years, but it's had a strong start for the genre.
Astro should have had a very strong start for a genre that has long since gone out of the mainstream. According to Dringo, Astro Bot sold a third better than Sega’s Sonic Frontiers and a half and Activision’s Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. Meanwhile, Christopher Dring is known to have access to accurate data, but he’s not allowed to share more specific numbers. Sony hasn’t boasted official sales yet, but from various hints from writers and analysts, Astro seems to be doing really well. It was the second best-selling title in the United States in its first week. Astro also reached the same position in its home country of Japan. We can only hope that the company waits for some nice numbers and eventually shares official figures.
