Gamer's Outpost Press (archived)

by Chris Reed via Cheatsheet

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a masterpiece on many levels. Whether you’re sneaking through enemy camps using slicker stealth moves than anything found in Assassin’s Creed, or solving meticulously designed puzzles in sprawling tombs, chances are you’re having a blast. It’s one of the best-looking games ever made, and it plays like a dream. So it’s a shame no one’s playing it.

A follow up to the 2013 series reboot Tomb Raider, this game follows Lara Croft on her path to become a modern-day Indiana Jones. To kick things off, she learns of an ancient city that, despite her father’s obsession, he was never able to find. The city’s mystical promise is that it holds the power of immortality.

So off you go, on a quest to find this city, fighting against a group of thugs who are after the very same thing. While you can simply dash from set-piece to set-piece, there’s a ton to do in the game for those who prefer to see and collect everything. You can root out collectibles and find hidden tombs. You can fill out an upgrade tree that increases your power and skills in all sorts of satisfying ways. You can even craft items and unlock new outfits.

Even more than its predecessor, this game proceeds with a sense of confidence that’s rare, but well earned. There are very few missteps here, with a fully satisfying core campaign, and tons of reasons to go back and sweep up anything you may have missed the first time through.

So why haven’t people been talking about Rise of the Tomb Raider like they have some other games this season? Shouldn’t pretty much every Xbox One owner be rushing out to buy it, since they get it a full year before the PlayStation 4 crowd?

Yes, they should.

But from the looks of things (Microsoft and Square Enix have been mum on the issue) the game isn’t selling very well. According to VGChartz, it sold just 230,000 units the week it released. And if this NeoGAF thread is correct, fewer than 60,000 of those copies were sold in the U.K. Compare that to Fallout 4, which came out the same day on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and sold nearly 5 million units that week.

There’s the rub, isn’t it? The biggest reason people overlooked Rise of the Tomb Raider is because it launched the same day as Fallout 4, a game that released to such thunderous fanfare that it drowned out nearly all other chatter that whole week. By the time gamers came back up for air, it was too late for Rise of the Tomb Raider. Everyone was already neck-deep in the Boston Wasteland.

Not to mention all of the other major titles to release in recent weeks, including Star Wars: Battlefront, Halo 5: Guardians, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. In that kind of environment it’s hard for any game, no matter how good it is, to grab gamer mindshare.

It also doesn’t help that Rise of the Tomb Raider is currently exclusive to a console that, by all accounts, has sold less than half of the units of its main competitor. After all, you can’t buy this game if you don’t have the only system it runs on. Plus, dedicated Xbox gamers may still be busy playing Halo 5, the other big Xbox One exclusive that launched just a few weeks prior to Tomb Raider.

Whatever the reason, I hope people come around on the game and give it a chance. No matter what other games are available now, Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best games of the year. Play Halo 5. Play Fallout 4. But play Rise of the Tomb Raider, too. You won’t be disappointed.

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Nintendo wants to take a leaf out of Apple and Google’s book for its next gaming platform, the Nintendo NX

by Richard Goodwin via Know Your Mobile

Nintendo has had a rather turbulent couple of years. The company’s approach to gaming and production cannot be faulted but changes to the gaming and technology space at large have resulted in Nintendo consistently losing ground to its peers and, in some respects, mobile gaming, which has increased in prominence exponentially in the last several years.

So what’s Nintendo to do? Simple: create a brand new gaming console that wipes the floor with everything else. It can’t be the Nintendo Wii again, that thing had some success with family gaming, but compared to the Xbox One and PS4 it was pretty much a flop. No, Nintendo needs to return to its heydey, back when the NES and SNES and GameBoy handhelds wiped the floor with the competition.

A new report from DigiTimes claims the Nintendo NX will launch in early-2016 with production of the console starting inside Q1. Nintendo said it wanted to create around 20 million units but more recently that number has said to have been reduced to somewhere between 10-20 million.

“That revision seems to be because of a supply line of components rather than Nintendo’s caution over sales,” reports Den of Geek. “Indeed, if Nintendo manages to sell 10-12 million NXs in its first year, that’s a good result – at least by the standards of the faltering Wii U. The latter system’s lifetime sales are between 10 and 11 million, and it’s now three years old.”

Still: exact details about the console are pretty thin on the ground.

According to multiple reports Nintendo’s upcoming NX console will run on Google’s Android platform and the reason, according to said reports is simple: Nintendo wants to attract developers to its platform once again.

“Speaking to one of Japan’s biggest newspapers, Nikkei, the Nintendo leaker has it that the new device is going to house an operating system loaded with Android,” reports Tech Radar. “With Nintendo historically always using both its own hardware and its own in-house developed operating systems that all sounds like complete nonsense. The justification for it being considered though is that it will allow third-party developers a quicker – and easier – route into creating content for the Nintendo NX.”

Nintendo has lost legions of developers from its Wii U platform and, if the company is to grow, it must try something new, something that will attract these developers and more like them back to the fold. Content is KING in 2015/16 and Nintendo knows this which is probably why it is considering such a drastic switcharoo.

“Given how Android is normally employed, if what this insider says is correct it’s likely the NX’s OS will simply be based on Android (similar to the Ouya), not a direct implementation of the same software normally found on phones and tablets,” reports Kotaku, a specialist gaming title. “The Nikkei article explains that the apparent reason for this move is the Wii U is not compatible with other game machines. So it’s hard for developers to make back money on a title’s development costs when they have to create it specifically for one console. They can’t easily do a multi-platform release like they could on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.”

This Android Connection seems to be something of a mistranslation, however — a statement taken out of context. You see, Nintendo has officially stated that it wants a platform similar to Android and iOS in that multiple types of hardware can run on one platform. Doing so would make life a lot easier for Nintendo’s now-disenfranchised developers. Being open-source, Nintendo could, of course, adopt Android for this purpose and fork it as many companies have done in the past. We’ll just have to wait and see about this though…

Not much else has been said about the Android connection since, however, although there has been a lot of talk about the NX since. And most of it is very telling about the direction in which Nintendo wants to take its business. According to a very detailed report on Gaming Bolt, the NX platform will not be a console per se; rather it will be the platform on which all future Nintendo games run on, regardless of hardware. Sort of like Windows 10, then.

“Nintendo has begun issuing developers with software kits for the Nintendo NX, revealing some intriguing details about what the console might entail. According to the WSJ’s sources, the NX will include a mobile unit that could either be used in conjunction with the console or taken on the road for separate use,” reports Expert Reviews. “This would suggest that the NX will also replace the New 3DS and New 3DS XL, which Nintendo launched back in February, creating a handheld console hybrid that can be used at home or on the move. It would almost be like the Wii U’s GamePad controller could function as its own separate console, although presumably the NX’s “mobile unit” would be much smaller and more compact to make it remotely portable.”

As of December 11, reports have emerged that Nintendo has patented a design for a controller featuring a large touch display. As reported by Sky News, Nintendo’s patent details an “elliptical” shaped controller with a similarly shaped display. It also appears the analogue stick controls stick out through the display panel itself, which is confirmed to be a touchscreen, and the setup features a built-in speaker, two shoulder bumpers and two triggers as usual. The design document also makes reference to glasses-free 3D technology.

Nintendo NX: It’s ALL About The Platform

“The NX platform,” notes the report, “therefore, refers to both, a handheld and a console. However, it does not refer to a hybrid. Former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has conclusively come out and debunked that idea multiple times. The NX is not going to be a convertible system (i.e. a handheld that docks into the TV and becomes a console). However, it is going to be one brand that covers systems in different form factors- i.e., Nintendo will have an NX handheld and an NX console. Think iPhone and iPad, and you have the idea.”

This is something Mr. Iwata himself confirmed multiple times:

“Home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems. Still, I am not sure if the form factor (the size and configuration of the hardware) will be integrated. In contrast, the number of form factors might increase. Currently, we can only provide two form factors because if we had three or four different architectures, we would face serious shortages of software on every platform.”

“To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples.”

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by L.W. Barker aka ‘Sarge’

There are two types of gamers… those who embrace digital content, and those who tightly hold on to physical copies.

I for one is the latter who is quite aware that physical games for Xbox One, and PS4 are blu rays and cannot directly play content from the disc. And that these games are automatically installed on the console’s hard drive prior to playing. But, there is nothing like that feeling of actually holding that game in hand. Just being able to see and touch the game gives it value in my collection.

The fact is our Industry is going through changes that have transformed the  old “retail” formula into something new that promises to push it from its “tried and true” physical past to a “money making” digital future…like the Music Industry did a few years ago.

However, this does not bode well with some gamers. “Digital” to them means that games are not really owned.  And without that physical copy in hand, the thought of publishers and developers suddenly deciding to take back digital content is always on their minds. These gamers will collect physical copies of their games until they run out of storage space…and then they’ll make room for more.

Other gamers have embraced digital content. From music to movies and now games, they were born into a world that only knows digital content, and physical copies are obsolete. Armed with the knowledge that their hard drives will eventually get full, these gamers are “Masters of the Cloud” so to speak.

Thus, our changing Industry has made some gamers uncomfortable with the thought of not having that physical game in hand. And yet digital is where the Industry is going. Developers are leading the way with many bypassing publishers and retailers and presenting their games directly to gamers, who for the most part, have embraced it.

Now as our Industry moves toward an all digital future, there might not be a place for gamers like me. A fact made all too clear the other day when a young gamer asked me with astonishment in his voice, “You still have games on discs!?”

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The audacity of charging full price for half a game

by L.W. Barker aka ‘Sarge’

Star Wars: Battlefront is a major disappointment. Yes, the game has fantastic graphics, and its sound is on par with some of the best in the first person shooter (FPS) genre, but even with those features, the game is half baked at best and is not worth its $60 asking price.

Why Electronic Arts and DICE decided on releasing Battlefront without a single player campaign is known only to them, but I can summise that their decision was based on the achievements of past games, such as EA’s own ‘Titanfall’ which was developed by Respawn Entertainment, and ‘Evolve’ by Turtle Rock Studios and 2K Games.

Titanfall was release on March 10, 2014, and like Battlefront it was highly anticipated by a vast majority of gamers. Much of this anticipation was a result of clever marketing and promotion techniques that convinced our Industry that Titanfall was “THE Call of Duty killer”. The reality though it is wasn’t, for when it was released, gamers quickly realized that unlike Call of Duty, Titanfall was missing a true single player campaign which is basically the heart and soul of a FPS. Thus, its popularity quicky dropped which resulted in the game currently being played by only a handful of hopeful gamers who are “hanging in there” for Titanfall’s promised 2017 second coming.

On February 10, 2015, Evolve was released to much critical acclaim from the industry which led to it being nominated for six different Game Critics Awards. And unlike Battlefront and Titanfall, it was widely known that the game was to be a multiplayer only fare prior to it being released. However, developer, Turtle Rock Studios received heat from gamers who felt that the developer was deliberately withholding Downloadable Content (DLC) from Evolve to be sold separately as a market strategy to make more money from the game. This controversy caused Evolve to received mixed reviews from critics which brought it an overall Metacritic score of 78% on all platforms.

So now, Star Wars: Battlefront is yet another game released with high gamer expectation that was quickly dashed when it was realized that the game did not have a single player campaign, little replay value, and not worth its $60 price tag. At best, without a single player campaign, Battlefront and all other games like it, to include Ubisoft’s recently released ‘Tom Clancy’s Rainbox Six: Siege’ should cost half their asking price with DLC making up the other half. No multiplayer only game should be full price with DLC costing upwards of $20 for each additional piece of content.

Thus, this Industry’s publishers and developers need to realize that the success of a game is based on appeasing ALL gamers and not just the ones who enjoy multiplayer. I enjoy my single player campaigns, and would have bought Battlefront if it contained one. But this game without single player is half baked and NOT worth its $60 asking price.

Finally, we as gamers have the power to change our Industry’s audacious perception that we are “suckers” who are easily taken advantage of with continual DLC. And the best way to do that is to keep our hard earned money away from games made for “suckers” and use it on ones designed for who we are…gamers.

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by Mat ‘Inferiorego’ Elfring via Comic Vine

There was no other game I was more excited for that Star Wars: Battlefront. I have been waiting for years, like many other fans of the original two games. Those were games where I spent quite a lot of nights playing with buddies, so again, I was pumped for Battlefront, especially since first person shooters have become to feel a bit repetitive for me: see every Call of Duty Game.

Then the game came out and I quickly spent time waiting for it to install on my Xbox One, which felt like it took for days. That’s not a knock against Battlefront though, just Xbox. Anyway, I spent some time playing match after match and all the tutorials and I realized that Battlefront, as a complete game, is insanely frustrating.

The biggest problem with this release is that it feels like half a game. After getting through some training missions, which were pretty fun, I decided that I wanted to do a single-player game. I had essentially four maps to choose from in that area. I wanted to play a level where I could fly around in an X-Wing or Tie-Fighter, but those levels do not exist in single player mode, minus the tutorials.

As I played a couple rounds of battle mode, squaring off against a group of AI, I quickly found that there’s no reason to keep playing this mode. You don’t unlock anything, since all the weapons are already unlocked for you, and the only mission you have is to “shoot people that aren’t on your team.” Single player mode became something that felt like it was shoehorned into the final game with no thought behind it. If they simply mirrored multiplayer mode for offline play, it would actually feel like a bit more complete game.

The real driving force of the game was behind online multiplayer and again, there’s no real story there, just things happening. The last online-only FPS I truly enjoyed was Titanfall and there was a campaign mode in the game which at least gave us a bit of a story. Within Battlefront, depending on what mission you play, there are objectives which are pretty much the same for every level. There isn’t much variety here and before you know it, you’ve played through all the levels in the game. There is replayability, but it’s frustrating to not be able to talk to your teammates, in a game that needs strategy.

Luckily, EA is really good at taking money from people and got suckers like me to pay $10 extra in order to buy the deluxe edition, which gives players access to a level a week before anyone else. In addition, there’s a $50 DLC where we’ll get a few more levels. That’s right: $50. The most insulting season pass for a major video game, especially when you compare it to other games, like Witcher III which offer a ton of bang for your buck.

That lead me to come to the conclusion that this isn’t a full game. It’s half a game, at least it feels like half a game. In order to get the full game, you need to dump down $110 in total. That sucks. It’s a kick in the crotch after you’ve already been kicked in the crotch.

Why this has been nothing but complaining and the venting of frustrations, I actually do like the game, even if, at times, it just feels like a bare-bones FPS with a Star Wars skin pasted on top. It’s fun and it looks really pretty. You can fly around in a Tie Fighter or ride around in an AT-AT and blow people up. That’s one of the many cool moments you can get experience in this game. The control scheme works well, and again, everything looks so incredibly pretty and true to the Star Wars universe. Even playing as the heroes or villains like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader is a pretty cool addition to the overall game, but it’s simply not enough to get me to ignore the fact that so much feels missing.

Overall, there’s a lot to love but so much within this game that doesn’t reach its potential. It’s a bummer to see what could have been with this game because so much of it feels halfway there. If you’re a Star Wars fan, like myself, you’re going to pick it up. You probably already picked it up, but with the $110 price tag to get everything this game should have originally come with is an insult to those who purchased it. As for me, I’ll probably keep playing the game, and most likely, I’ll eventually cave on the season pass because I’m a sucker and the exact type of person EA wants to buy their game. So, in the end, I’m the one that loses.

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Digital sales are gaining on those archaic discs and plastic cases — and it’s about time.

by Damon Beres via The Huffington Post

New data suggests people are buying more of their video games digitally, rather than banking on clunky plastic cases and discs.

A report published Tuesday by SuperData, an industry analysis firm, says that the digital video game market has grown 7 percent since last year to a total of $5.5 billion. That’s pretty good news for one reason in particular: Physical video games are basically obsolete wastes of space and resources.

You may not realize it, but if you’re gaming on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the actual disc you buy at the store doesn’t really do much. Games need to be installed on your system’s hard drive because the consoles can’t run games directly off of the Blu-Ray discs. Beyond that, you’re buying into a system that produces plastic waste for basically no reason. The industry isn’t exactly ruining the planet on its own — plastic cases are recyclable — but why support physical games at all when most titles are released digitally?

Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData, told The Huffington Post that digital game sales are trending upward while physical purchases are trending down.

In the third quarter of 2015, Electronic Arts, a massive video game publisher, made $666 million in physical sales and $480 million in digital, according to numbers provided by SuperData. At the same time last year, it made $692 million in physical sales and $348 million in digital.

“We’re anticipating digital to outperform physical for the first time this year, which indicates a sea change in the industry,” van Dreunen said in an email.

In the past, it was easier to justify buying physical video games because it was cheaper to get them used or otherwise marked down. But times are changing. Digital game vendors like Steam, GOG.com, PlayStation and Xbox have become known for frequent sales — especially around the holidays — meaning it’s easy to make impulse purchases.

Gaming is also more convenient when you move to a digital library. Any games you want are stored on your hard drive and boot up the moment you select them — no getting off of the couch to switch discs out. (The horror!)

Some people are always going to prefer having physical collections. But the rest of us might consider giving digital games and gift codes this holiday season to avoid paying into a dusty old system.

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by Paul Tamburro via Crave Online

More speculative information regarding Hideo Kojima’s departure from publisher Konami has been revealed, with Metal Gear Solid composer Rika Muranaka reportedly discussing the reason behind Kojima and Konami having severed ties.

According to The Codec podcast’s co-host Clayton Daley, an interview held with Muranaka by another podcast he hosts called Metal Gear Central shed some light on the reasons why the relationship between the publisher and Metal Gear creator soured, with the reasoning being that Kojima frequently over budget during the development of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Read an excerpt of Daley’s explanation of Muranaka’s claims below (thanks to NeoGAF user Jindrax for the find):

Daley: “The main reason for the falling out, at least in her opinion, is that Kojima gets paid a salary, and doesn’t make any profit share on the game. He gets paid a certain amount no matter what, and he was spending so much money and delaying the project, and adding all these features and making sure the game was the biggest and best thing it could be, and Konami was unhappy with that because [delaying] has no effect on him. He was spending the budget on this and that and upgrading the Fox Engine and then delaying further because the engine wasn’t ready, and Konami wasn’t happy with that because he gets his salary and he takes a more traditional “Japanese man” approach by not taking a profit share. So in doing that, he gets a little more than a game creator would but doesn’t take bonuses from the game selling well.”

Yong: “So you’re telling me that Kojima wanting to make the game the best it can be is what started the conflict?”

Daley: “Yes. In her eyes, Kojima’s a fantastic creator, and probably the best creator of his time, but he doesn’t have a strong business sense like Konami would like him to have. Where instead of, for example, cutting corners by lowering foliage resolution, he wants to make sure everything looks as good and polished as possible. She said they paid for her to write 30-40 songs that ended up not being used, and he’d tell her to write another one, then another one, then another one, because he settles for what he likes and has a good mind for what people want to see and what people want to hear.

Daley: “She’s worked directly with Kojima for the music before so she does have some insight, and personally believes that the music has suffered in MGSV because she’s not a part of it, because they couldn’t afford her. So instead of paying her to go to all these people and recruit them for the music, they chose to remove her from the equation and go to the people directly.”

While we have still yet to hear the reasoning behind Kojima’s departure from either Konami or Kojima himself, if Murunaka’s claims are correct then this certainly adds an interesting spin on the whole debacle. Refusing to accept anything less than the very best for the next entry in the Metal Gear series certainly sounds like something Kojima would do, and I can imagine his dedicated to recreating his vision for the game would have certainly sent it over budget, but if Kojima was fired by Konami then, from an outsider’s perspective, it seems that was the fault of the publisher and the contract they had signed with him.

Scalding and actively punishing a creator for wanting to create the best thing they possibly can seems like a huge backwards step, and though we’ll likely never hear of the real reasons why Konami and Kojima parted ways, this latest rumor comes from a pretty credible source.

by Dave Thier via Forbes

The Xbox One continues to change. Microsoft’s flagship console is more or less unrecognizable from the machine it sold at launch, and that’s an eminently good thing. It might not be enough for it to catch up to the PS4, but it’s enough to save it from failure, something Microsoft should be pleased with. This trend continues, the company just detailed in a new blog post, as the machine gets its most significant update since it lost the Kinect and cut the price. Microsoft is promising a “completely re-imagined” Xbox One experience, and they’re finally fixing what’s been my biggest gripe about the actual system since launch: the interface. Just in time for Windows 10.

There was a time when Microsoft thought tiles were a really great idea: that time did not last very long. PC users were able to avoid Windows 8 by just skipping on back to Windows 7 before upgrading to Windows 10, but people with Surfaces, Windows phones or Xbox One’s still find themselves saddled with the company’s curious design choice. But aesthetics aren’t the whole problem with the Xbox One UI: the thing just doesn’t work very well. It’s slow, difficult to navigate, and much-vaunted features like gesture controls are more or less nonexistent. I found myself shouting “Xbox go to Xbox Video” at my console 10 times or so yesterday before giving up and using the controller. I had once succeeded in getting it to “snap” Xbox video, but this is not what I wanted it to do.

We already knew about backwards compatibility, probably the biggest single new feature of this update. But I’m very curious to see to what degree Microsoft can fix the seriously hobbled experience of doing anything but basic tasks on the Xbox One. Anyone who’s used a PS4 knows what a joy it is when smooth navigation between games, friends lists and other features goes well, and hopefully Xbox One can get in line with that next-gen feel. I’m not sure we’re getting it this time around, but I would love to see the return of that mini-menu you could get from pressing the center button the Xbox 360. That thing was great. Here’s Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra:

We’ll have more on the new interface once it rolls out, but until then, the Xbox One continues to be one of the most interesting things to watch in video games.