Some companies announce their new games at big shows such as The Game Awards, E3 or PAX. Some companies announce their new games at online only events such as a Nintendo Direct or a State of Play. Other companies just tweet it out of the blue on twitter. That is exactly what Riot Games did.
Riot Games VP Greg Street took to twitter saying the following, “I have news! My recent job at Riot has been to help develop the League universe, which we’re going to need! Because it is time. My new job is to kick off a big (some might say massive) game that many of you, and many Rioters, have been asking us to create. PS We’re hiring!”
I have news!
My recent job at Riot has been to help develop the League universe, which we’re going to need!
Because it is time. My new job is to kick off a big (some might say massive) game that many of you, and many Rioters, have been asking us to create.
That is all of the details we have. I would expect it to take heavy inspiration from World of Warcraft, considering the fact that Greg was one of its lead designers. As far as when I would expect it to release? Well, lets just say that I am not expecting it to come out before I graduate college (which is over three years away).
About two months ago, the Xbox Game Pass social media team tweeted out a teaser that Doom Eternal would be coming to their platform soon. We posted about that rumor, and it ended up being true as you can see here. Once again, they have taken to social media to tease another game and we believe that it is Control.
Honestly we have no idea what gif or sinister red light Melissa is referring to pic.twitter.com/QaOK7jZNkM
In the tweet above, they mention a sinister red light which is something that we see often throughout Control. I may be wrong, but I can not think of one other game that had a sinister red light in it. The other thing feeding this rumor is the fact that Phil Spencer accidentally said that Control would be coming to Game Pass when he was on a podcast a few months ago.
Credit: TweakTown
We would expect it to be the original version of Control considering the fact that 505 Games were so cheap that they wouldn’t even give Control Ultimate Edition out to fans who bought the base game and the season pass prior to the next generation version’s release.
One of the Best and Worst Games From 2020 in its Own Ways
Watch Dogs Legion tries to make one of the most immersive game worlds we have ever seen, but another delay should have stopped it from happening in 2020. I will not be diving deep into the story besides a few basic things so you are safe from spoilers.
The Story
The first fifteen minutes of the story introduces you to one of my favorite characters in the game, who I would have liked to see as the main protagonist if there actually was one. This character is Dalton and he is a badass spy who unfortunately has to depart from the story. Besides from that, the next best character is Bagley, who is your AI companion that is filled with sarcastic jokes and witty humor which surprisingly doesn’t feel cringe. There are a few other characters that are pretty good but Dalton and Bagley hold the top spots for me. After the introduction mission, you are thrown into the sandbox world of futuristic London. Main missions are divided into chapters that focus on different characters who are sources of terror in London. The story after that is mainly dull and uninspired, concluding with a predictable plot twist. However, there is one storyline that was much better than everything else. Without going into too much detail, it includes a dog. That’s all you’re getting from me on that note.
Credit: Ubisoft
The Streets of London
Watch Dogs Legion was advertised as a game where you could play as any character that you see in the open world. However, there are a few that you can’t take over due to story reasons (they can’t give you missions if you take their character and get them killed). When you walk the streets of London, every character has a set schedule that they follow. You can find one of your very own characters shopping, at a bar, or even meeting up with a family member. Later in the game, you will have random encounters where potential recruit’s relatives are being arrested by Albion (London’s version of a private police force). If you save them, your recruit will end up liking you even more and may even join DedSec. You can also recruit characters by doing missions for them which are usually pretty repetitive. They usually involve stealing a van or deleting some blackmail off a computer. I would also like to note that there are a lot of hippies in this game. I know a decent amount of people preferred the original Watch Dogs over the sequel because of this, so I thought I would at least mention that most of your recruit options are going to be hippies. However, if you really need to cherry pick, you have the option to recruit whoever you want, so nothing is stopping you from going with an army of white collar grandpas. There is a team limit so the game does stop you from going overboard on characters being recruited to DedSec, but you are allowed to kick old players out to make room for the new ones. I never had to do this because even though my team had around 20 or so members, I stuck with the same five because that is all I really needed from them. There is a permadeath option but I decided against turning that on so I wouldn’t have to keep recruiting new players due to those missions being repetitive. Operatives can also be kidnaped, arrested, and more so there are some cool missions where you have to go save the day as another operative who you may not usually use. I also need to mention that I didn’t really see any grannies. Watch Dogs Legion showed off having a grandma on your team constantly but for some reason I never really saw any in the open world. Unfortunately, this is where any sense of immersion ends.
Pretty much every single building is non enterable. You will see characters walk out of its doors, but behind them will just be a black invisible wall. The only buildings you can enter are mission related areas where enemies are at, bars, and your safehouse. You can’t even enter clothing stores anymore. Your character literally changes in the street. Could you imagine walking through London and just seeing some dude drop his underwear on the sidewalk so he can try another pair on? Remember the characters who felt immersive due to having a schedule? Well go talk to them and that immersion goes right out the window. Due to the crazy amount of characters that they would have had to voice as a potential protagonist, Ubisoft decided to use an AI to modify the voices of every character. Since there are nine million different characters you can pick from, that would be a lot of money to voice them with real voices. Majority of these voices sound terrible. Don’t get me wrong, some of them sound real but so many of them sound like a robot from the 90s. This is my main issue with Watch Dogs Legion. Ubisoft tried to be to ambitious with the game and it hurt them. Obviously doing this game without the AI would have been impossible, but some of these voices make certain recruits unplayable. Watch Dogs Legion also gives a ton of lore and sets up a nice backstory. The setting of London is amazing and it portrays a future that doesn’t feel that far away. The theme of AI and robots taking away jobs is something that is already happening in real life and I loved the fact that it was showcased in the futuristic version of London. There are letters and audio logs all over London for you to read/listen to if you really want to learn everything about its world. One final note is that the characters in the world will react as you start to free sections of London. Civilians will start to fight back against Albion and that doesn’t exclude you if you are wearing an Albion disguise.
Credit: Ubisoft
Gameplay
Watch Dogs Legion was a slight step up in the gameplay department compared to Watch Dogs 2. Most of the time gunplay feels really good but there are a few enemies who are extra bullet/taser spongey. As mentioned earlier, some of your recruits have disguise that they can wear thanks to their actual jobs. For example, the character I used the most had an Albion outfit that he could put on which made going into enemy locations easier. The game tells you to walk slowly and to avoid getting to close to other people inside. Guards and drones are way to sensitive and detect you very fast. The real benefit of the Albion suit is that it allows you to go through cameras and detectors without causing the alarm to go off. Though, the second someone sees you, you need to get out of their sight or take them out. Coming off of just recently playing Hitman 2, I really wish they took more inspiration from IO Interactive. In Hitman 2, if you have a disguise on, normal enemies won’t realize that you don’t belong there. However, there are higher ranking members that can detect you which is a much better system. Hacking is pretty identical to how it was in the previous games. I guess don’t fix it if it isn’t broken but I would have liked to see a little more variation. They do have a few unique missions with parkouring as your spider robot or going through the inside of a computer as a drone in the form of an obstacle course, but for the most part normal hacking feels the same.
Driving felt really sensitive for me, but I am not sure if this is because I just got finished playing Mafia: Definitive Edition. Obviously cars from 2030 are going to feel a lot less sluggish compared to cars from nearly a century earlier. I should also note that there are microtransactions in the game. They lock clothing behind a second type of currency. You can earn currency by playing the game, and you can find free clothing in the world at random locations but I know some people would like to know about this so that is why I am mentioning it. One final note is that a lot of the side missions and recruitment missions reuse enemy locations from the main story.
Credit: Ubisoft
Tech Nightmare
Watch Dogs Legion LOVES to crash on PC. Like it was happening multiple times a day. It wasn’t even like it was crashing during intense gun fights or car chases. All of my crashes were related to either interacting with an object in the game world or using the map to fast travel. I had at least 10 crashes which would force me to restart my PC every time since my audio would end up breaking from it. The rest of my tech issues weren’t game breaking but they are still issues. For some reason, Watch Dogs Legion loves to make things invisible. My character went invisible after getting hit by a boat while swimming, a main character went invisible during a cutscene which led to my character fist bumping an invisible guy, and finally my spider bot ended up clipping through the ground a few times after being thrown at odd angles which leads to, you guessed it, an invisible spider bot. This next one isn’t much of a tech issue but more of a flaw with the AI. When driving, characters love to just jump in the way of your car. For example, if you end up going on the sidewalk a bit to move around a car, they will dive towards the road rather then away from your car which leads to you hitting them. This means they now dislike DedSec which makes them harder to recruit in the future. The final flaw that I had was just general optimization. FPS really tanked while driving and the optimization of this seems to be a step in the wrong direction because I felt like Ubisoft was finally getting good at making games run better on PC.
Conclusion
In the end, I had around 26 hours of game time for the main story and all of the non-repeatable side content. I’m not going to score this game because I really don’t know how to score it. It does a lot good and makes some strides for the future of gaming but there are way to many flaws for me to go give it a good score. So I am going to rate it a little bit differently. If you have a PC, Stadia, or Luna, and you don’t mind essentially renting it, go buy a month of Ubisoft+ for $15 and beat the game. When your done with Watch Dogs Legion, go play Assassins Creed Valhalla. You are essentially paying $7.50 for each brand new game. I can’t even comprehend how good of a value that is. If you are on Xbox, PlayStation, or you just want to own the game on PC, I would recommend waiting for a sale. There are way to many good games coming out in the next few weeks to go rush and get this for its full price.
Time for another conspiracy theory. Now we all expect Bethesda’s library of games to make its way to Game Pass eventually. What we don’t know is when the games will start to be available. That was until today. We now know that Doom Eternal will be arriving to Game Pass soon due to a teaser by the Game Pass twitter account.
Melissa said not to drop hints so we're not dropping hints. there are absolutely no hints in this screenshot. don't bother looking for them. there are none pic.twitter.com/0PQ41B260S
If you look at the photo you can tell they are hinting at something but it isn’t obvious until you dive a little deeper. If you look at every capital letter, it spells out “LOOK BELOW.” If you look below you don’t see anything crazy. Until you really look and see that “THE SLAYER IS COMING.” It is in super faded text so it is hard to see.
Thankfully, a user on twitter used a filter to make it easier to read.
It’s Doom! Here’s the nice hidden text below – it’s nearly the same color as the background, but you can draw it out by adjusting the photo’s contrast etc. (try it yourself if you don’t believe it) pic.twitter.com/0axOhYzm69
This is perfect timing since the new story expansion will be arriving on October 20th. Game Pass users receive 10 percent off the DLC. I would expect the rest of Bethesda games to continue joining Game Pass in the following months.
Thank you to Daedalic Entertainment for providing a review copy for the Xbox One.
“Coming back to the family hotel after years, a young woman finds herself trapped with the ghosts from her past and an old cellular telephone as the only way to unveil a terrible truth.” If you were left intrigued by that synopsis, do not go into this game with the expectation that its going to be an action packed horror game. On top of that, don’t be alarmed by the name, the game doesn’t dive that deep into the theme suicide. It is mentioned a few times but the game focuses much more on the mystery around her disappearance. The Suicide of Rachel Foster is just a walking simulator, but that isn’t a bad thing because its a good walking simulator.
Gameplay
Walking simulators have always been a weird guilty pleasure of mine. Sure, the game-play loop of just walking may be incredibly repetitive but the strong narratives and interesting environments always come on top for me. Games like Life is Strange and Until Dawn nail this while also finding ways to keep the game-play interesting. The best way for me to describe The Suicide of Rachel Foster would be if Gone Home and Firewatch had a baby. Remember the walkie-talkie in Firewatch? The Suicide of RachelFoster has a very similar mechanic, just this time it is with a cell phone. You can talk about objects you see in the hotel over this phone which is the main way the game tells its story. You can also interact with objects in-game by picking them up but they usually lack details and they never seem to have the same level of interactivity that a game like Resident Evil 7 does. There isn’t any point in general to interact with objects that don’t have a phone symbol next to them. There are a few tools that you get throughout your play-through including the phone, a map, a crank flashlight, and a few other objects that I won’t spoil.
Credit: Daedalic Entertainment
Narrative
The game starts off with the protagonist, Nicole, flipping through the pages of an old letter from her deceased mother. This letter gives backstory as to why Nicole is going back to the old family hotel and how Rachel Foster is connected to her. A major snowstorm ends up trapping you at the hotel, causing you to be stuck there. You receive a phone call from Irving, who says he is a FEMA agent. Even though you are “alone” in this giant hotel, you have Irving to keep you company over the phone. As your time in the hotel gets longer, things start to get creepier. I won’t go into detail due to spoilers but this game never turns into a horror game. However, things do get very creepy in a way that reminds me to how I felt when I explored the house in Gone Home. You may get anxious at times but don’t expect Jack Baker to start chasing you around the hotel. As you start to solve the mystery of Rachel’s death, more twists occur causing you to rethink everything you thought that you knew about the characters.
Visuals
The initial art style definitely takes inspiration from Firewatch. Unfortunately, it is only the initial art syle. The Suicide of Rachel Foster uses a hideous depth of field blurring setting that can not be turned off. Its essentially causes stuff to completely blur in the background to make what is closer to you stay clear. The only game that I can think of that did something similar to this was Grounded. There is also major head bobbing that can not be turned off. I felt sick for the first half an hour of my play-through. I eventually got used to it but it is definitely something that brought the review score down. Animations are also fairly limited. When you do an important interaction, the game usually zooms the camera in really close outside of the first person perspective. You can see what Nicole is interacting with but you can never see more then her arms.
Credit: Daedalic Entertainment
Glitches
I am happy to say that I didn’t have that many glitches during my play-through. The only problem that I can remember was that my head would occasionally bob up and down really quick when squeezing through a small door/vent.
Conclusion
After about three hours with The Suicide of Rachel Foster, I can say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Obviously keep in mind that I am someone who enjoys walking simulators, but it is one of the better ones that I have played. Of course it has its flaws, but the positives of the narrative outshine those. If you are someone who has enjoyed playing walking simulators in the past, then I recommend paying the $19.99. If you have never played a walking simulator before, maybe write this down on your wish-list and wait until it is on sale.
Thank you to Electronic Arts for providing the early review copy.
Earlier in the week, I posted my first impressions on Madden 21. For the most part, things were mixed. It had the enjoyable game play that you know and love from Madden but there wasn’t much innovation from previous games and there were a few bugs. I stayed fairly light on my first impressions article, so today I will be going into much deeper detail on the strengths and weaknesses of Madden 21.
Game Modes:
The Yard is Madden’s newest game mode which introduces 6v6 backyard style football. The Yard is a ton of fun. My first couple games on The Yard took place at F.O.B Field and I had no problems there. It is completely what you would expect from backyard football. It is fast paced, trick plays are common and most rules go completely out the window. However, the mode broke on me after I unlocked the second field. Players went invisible and the ball couldn’t be hiked. You can see what I mean in the video below. Thankfully, this bug was quickly patched as noted in the most recent patch notes.
But seriously, The Yard is a ton of fun. I haven’t even gotten the opportunity to play it with my friends but here is a taste of what I was able to do with the AI teammates.
Face of The Franchise: Rise to Fame starts out with a ton of a promise but its quality unfortunately fades as the game continues. High School and College play out similar to how all of Longshot did in Madden 18 and 19 but things change after that. I am going to show a video of how conversations are handled earlier on in the game in case you never played Longshot. After that I will have another video showing how conversations are handled once you are drafted. It is clear that they had to decide whether they wanted to give you the option to pick any team in the NFL or force you to play for a set team which would stick to a more cookie cutter story. Having coaches and players for every NFL team record dialogue would be very expensive and time consuming. Unfortunately, the switch from voiced characters to text boxes takes some time to get used to. You do have your character narrating your journey but it isn’t enough in my opinion. I really wish they forced you onto a set team similar to Longshot because the story is not worth caring about once you join the NFL.
On top of this, the story isn’t that great prior to the NFL Draft. The writing choices for what happens on signing day is unrealistic and it just feel odd. The story also doesn’t adapt to how you perform in the actual games. For example, in my first college game, our offense scored 70 points but then the coach says that he can’t decide on who the starter should be and that they will run a two QB offense which will be dependent on the opponent. In the very next scene, Rich Eisen mocks the QB situation saying that neither one is good enough considering the fact that the coach can’t make a decision between them. However, playing in a USC uniform felt really nice. It is a great reminder that we all want NCAA to return back into the world of video games. As I said earlier, the quality really drops once you get drafted. I got selected by the Chicago Bears and had my first chance to start in a NFL game after Mitchell Trubisky got injured. I ended up winning and went to a press conference scene where I answered some basic questions (with no voiced dialogue besides a narration). At the end, they asked me which player I thought was more valuable to the team. My options were Allen Robinson (who was the player I selected to be my mentor) and Khalil Mack. In 2019, Allen Robinson had close to 100 catches and over 1000 yards but anyone who follows football knows how much of a monster Khalil Mack is. So obviously I selected Khalil Mack. Instantly after that press conference, I got a notification saying that Allen Robinson has been traded away because management agreed that Khalil Mack was more valuable. A fourth round rookie who just finished playing his first game accidentally convinced his team to trade away their best receiver because he said that one of the best players in the league was more valuable than a top 15 receiver. Allen Robinson then texts you getting mad at you, like your character said something wrong. Look at their contracts and tell me who is more valuable. After your second game, a sports commentator mocks you by saying that your character isn’t playing as well as a certain other character that I won’t name for spoiler reasons. This scene just doesn’t make any sense in my play through considering both games were that I played in were blow out wins. The only way this can have some logic is if the other player had an MVP caliber season (trust me, he didn’t). In my second season of the NFL, Allen Robinson reaches out to our character on social media saying that he would love to be able to play with us one day. We get the option to pick between two players and he ends up back on our team the next day. Allen Robinson proceeds to ask for help learning the playbook saying that he is struggling learning all the new plays even though he knew them all under a year ago. Its obvious that Madden isn’t able to detect that he was on the team. I know some people disliked Longshot because they felt like their wasn’t enough weight to your actions but I would prefer a fleshed out story that makes sense rather then what we got here.
You can judge for your self based off the videos on this post, but I didn’t see any major enhancements over Madden 20. I am curious as to how the next-generation upgrades will look. If you want to read about how to get the next-generation version for free, click here.
Gameplay:
Game play in the normal modes feel slightly slower then Madden 20 and I like that. There are some updates to Skill Stick which adds another level to the game play. The new skill stick allows for more fluid movement when you are in the open field. Pass rushers now have a budget of how many moves can be performed before running out of stamina. The changes to pass rushing will definitely take some time to get used to but it is a much better system compared to the button smashing that we are all used to. Tackling and the AI have both also seen solid improvements according to the change log. Unfortunately, it is pretty hard for me to tell how much better the tackling has been since it has been some time since I have played Madden 20.
Bugs:
I unfortunately ran into my fair share of bugs and technical issues but I was playing on an early build of the game and most of the issues have been fixed. 2020 has been a crazy year for developers with everyone having to work from home, so some issues are expected.
My biggest issue was the bug on The Yard that caused players to become invisible but that was patched during the 8/25 update as mentioned earlier. I had choppy FPS (frames per second) during Face of the Franchise on the home high school field. However, this issue went away once I got to the State Championship game. My screen froze after completing my first Face of the Franchise NFL game. I still heard music but I had to restart my game to continue playing. There was also a text bug that can be seen in the photo that I posted above containing Allen Robinson.
Audio:
The soundtrack and the in-game audio from on the field is great. Unfortunately, everything about the audio isn’t perfect. There is one glaring issue that hasn’t been addressed. The announcers are dreadful. I have no problems with Brandon Gaudin or Charles Davis. It is just the amount of stuff they say that shouldn’t be said during a game. I understand this is a minor issue but it is still something that needs to be discussed. In an exhibition preseason game, I was up around 40 points. I threw another touchdown with minutes left in the final quarter and the announcer says something along the lines of how he hates to say it but that he thinks that the touchdown will just about end things. It was very obvious that a third string quarterback was not about to score over 40 points in the final two minutes of a preseason game. Early in my Face of the Franchise play through, I already had scored two touchdowns in a high school game. During the 4th quarter, I completed a screen pass that went for a first down and the announcer said “QB2 erupts for his first big play of the game. He decided to run and picked up the first down.” In a later game, I threw a ten yard slant that got broken up. The announcer goes “He tried to go long on first down but all it results in is a long walk back to the huddle.” The final thing I wrote about in my notes about the announcers was the fact that at one point, they reacted negatively to my QB kneeling with a minute left in the game. For some reason, they saw it as a run for negative one yards and congratulated the defense rather than seeing it as a game clinching play. I understand that these are very minor things that you hear while playing, think about for a few seconds, and then continue playing but someone still needs to talk about it. This has been one of my pet peeves with Madden for years and the AI really needs to be updated for the announcers.
Final Thoughts:
In the grand scheme of everything, this is a Madden game. For fans of the series who love playing online, there is nothing here that should convince you not to buy this game. If you know you are going to play it all year long, go buy yourself a copy because the game is a lot of fun. If you are someone who only likes to play franchise, I would recommend waiting for a sale or just waiting for Madden 22 because there aren’t really any changes in that department. If you just want to play some football to scratch that itch and know you will stop playing after a month or two, I defiantly recommend checking out EA Play Pro. You are essentially renting Madden 21 (and a ton of other great games). Madden 21 isn’t a step down from Madden 20 but with The Yard being the only new bright spot, it isn’t really enough to push the score to anything higher then what it was during previous years.
Update 2: We have published what we want and don’t want to see in Cold War. Click HERE to give it a read and to share your own opinions.
Update: In case you missed it, click HERE to see game play of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War that leaked about a month ago.
Yesterday, we finally got the reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War which will be a direct sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops. At the end of the trailer, it was revealed that the game would be releasing on November 13th for the current generation systems and at a later date for the next generation consoles. On top of that, the beta was announced as a timed exclusive to PlayStation (something we are familiar with). The only detail that was missing was when the beta would be happening.
During previous years, the beta would take place during August/September but we knew things were going to be different this year considering how long Activision took to announce the game. Fortunately for us, it appears Activision has slipped up and leaked the date early.
Thanks to CODTracker, we now know that the beta will be coming to PlayStation users on October 8th. Activision messed up by having this text show up on the Arabic version of the Modern Warfare store.
Thank you to Electronic Arts for providing the early review copy.
As a huge National Football League fan, I was really hoping that this years Madden would be as good as possible since so much about the regular season is still up in the air. Please note that my final scored review where I will be able to go more in detail will be posted on Friday, August 28th at 12:01 AM ET when the embargo lifts.
Game Modes:
The Yard is Madden’s newest game mode which introduces 6v6 backyard style football. The Yard is a ton of fun…when it is working. Obviously keep in mind that I am playing on an early access version of the game, so there is a good chance that this and any other bugs that I mention will be patched by the time you start playing. My first couple games on The Yard took place at F.O.B Field and I had no problems there. It is completely what you would expect from backyard football. It is fast paced, trick plays are common and most rules go completely out the window. However, the mode broke on me after I unlocked the second field. Players went invisible and the ball couldn’t be hiked. You can see what I mean in the video below.
Face of The Franchise: Rise to Fame starts out with a ton of a promise but its quality fades as the game continues. High School and College play out similar to how all of Longshot did in Madden 18 and 19. I am going to show a video of how conversations are handled earlier on in the game in case you never played Longshot. After that I will have another video showing how conversations are handled once you are drafted. I am only on the first year in the NFL on it, so hopefully it improves as I continue playing but I honestly doubt it will. I understand why they did it this way but I wish they didn’t. I will have a deep dive into the positives and negatives of Face of The Franchise: Rise to Fame in my full review.
You can judge for your self based off the videos on this post, but I didn’t see any major enhancements. I am curious as to how the next-generation upgrades will look. If you want to read about how to get the next-generation version for free, click here.
Gameplay:
Gameplay in the normal modes feel slightly slower then Madden 20 and I like that. There are some updates to Skill Stick which I will talk about more in the full review. The changes to pass rushing will defiantly take some time to get used to but it is a much better system compared to button smashing. Tackling and the AI have both also seen solid improvements.
Bugs:
I unfortunately ran into my fair share of bugs and technical issues. As I mentioned earlier, there is a pretty good chance that these will be patched out by the time you play it, so I wouldn’t reach to much into it. On top of that, 2020 has been a crazy year for developers with everyone having to work from home.
I will go more in detail about the bugs I ran into in my full review but in the two days that I have been playing, I have ran into four bugs. The only major bug was the one that took place during The Yard which I talked about earlier.
Audio:
The soundtrack and the in-game audio from the field is great. Unfortunately, everything about the audio isn’t perfect. There is one glaring issue that hasn’t been addressed. The announcers are dreadful. I have no problems with Brandon Gaudin or Charles Davis. It is just the amount of stuff they say that shouldn’t be said during a game. I will dive deeper into this in my full review but an announcer calling a completion a rushing attempt breaks the immersion.
Overall First Impressions
It is Madden. If you liked the previous games, you are going to enjoy this one. If you disliked the previous games, there probably isn’t anything here that is going to convince you to change your opinion.
Earlier in the week, insider Jeff Grubb started teasing that there would be another big reason to get game pass coming soon. I, of course, had to respond to him asking if Cyberpunk 2077 was coming to game pass (I know CD Projekt Red said it wasn’t like two months ago) and he responded saying it wouldn’t be a game.
Now he tweeted the following:
here's everything you need to know: i'm ready to play
Normally, I would say this is a major reach but Jeff Grubb and Timdog (the person who started the thread saying news is coming soon) both liked the tweet. On top of this, Jeff was a guest on the podcast SpawnWave and confirmed that these were his expectations.
We know Xbox and EA have always had a pretty solid relationship. Xbox and EA gave a free month of EA Access (Now EA Play) to all Game Pass Ultimate users back in November. Considering the fact that EA Play is only $30 for a year so I feel like it could be fit into Game Pass Ultimate. EA would benefit from this by getting financial compensation from Microsoft as well as gaining additional subscribers for EA Play Pro which is the higher tier version that gives access to their AAA games on launch day.
For the last few years, Microsoft has been focused on growing Xbox Game Studios. Since 2018, they have acquired Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment. On top of that, they have founded The Initiative and World’s Edge. We know that Microsoft is looking to grow Xbox Game Studios to get rid of the narrative that “Xbox has no games.” Considering the fact that Xbox just delayed their biggest launch title, announcing some new studios at their Xbox Series X price reveal would be a good way to convince new players that exclusive games are on the way. Lets look into some of the rumored studio acquisitions that Microsoft has been linked to.
At the end of 2019, rumors started to fly that Microsoft was trying to acquire a studio from Poland. Lets knock the obvious one out first: CD Projekt Red. Unfortunately for Microsoft, there is no way that it is for sale at this time.
Bloober Team is a definite possibility. They previously worked on Blair Witch which was on Game Pass day one. Their current game The Medium, is coming to Xbox and PC exclusively this fall. About a month ago, Bloober Team announced that they picked a short list of advisers for a merger/acquisition. There were three companies from the United States in on that bidding war, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft was one of them.
Credit: Xbox
Another option would be People Can Fly. Microsoft worked closely with them on Gears of War: Judgement and they have been working hard on Outriders since their split from Epic Games. They also have a AAA action adventure game that just started development recently. They have around 200 employees spread out between four studios.
The Farm 51 is a smaller studio who have worked closely with People Can Fly in the past. Most recently they worked on World War 3 and Chernobylite. They have shown that they can make good first person shooters with a limited budget so if they are giving an open checkbook, Microsoft could have a gem here.
My personal favorite would be Techland. After creating Dying Light and Dying Light: The Following, they have been hard at work on Dying Light 2 which looks like it will be a massive step up from the previous entry (which was already a great game). They are putting more of an emphasis on choice and consequence in an already interesting universe. It is crazy to think about how we know more about the second Dying Light game then Dead Island 2 which has been in development before the creation of the original Dying Light.
Credit: Dying Light 2
Poland isn’t the only country with talent developers that we think Microsoft could be trying to buy. Here are a few other options:
Asobo Studio is a company that Microsoft has worked with many times in the past. They were the main developers on Zoo Tycoon and Disneyland Adventures which were both Microsoft titles. On top of that they assisted on the development of ReCore. In 2019, they released A Plague Tale: Innocence which was a breakout game for them. It sold over one million copies and was also played by many through EA Access and Game Pass. Currently they are working on Microsoft Flight Simulator which will be coming out exclusively on Xbox and PC. Microsoft loves acquiring AA studios that have showed promise and giving them the funding to make AAA projects.
Dontnod Entertainment is an AA studio that worked on the Life is Strange series and Vampyr. Dontnod gave players two main games, one prequel, and a free spin off episode in the Life is Strange universe. They took what Telltale started and improved it in almost every area. Vampyr was a very underrated RPG that had one of the best conversation systems I have seen in a while. Most recently, they are working on Tell Me Why which is a game similar to the Life is Strange games that is being published by Xbox Game Studios for Xbox and PC. They are also working on a similar game called Twin Mirror which will be a multi-platform game.
Credit: Tell Me Why
Relic Entertainment is a studio that focuses on real-time strategy games. They most recently released Company of Heroes 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III. They are currently working on Age of Empires IV which will be published by Xbox Game Studios on Xbox and PC. It is possible that Microsoft could acquire them and convert them into an AAA studio like they are currently doing with inXile Entertainment who also used to work on isometric titles.
Turtle Rock Studios who used to be known as Valve South, is the developer team that worked on some of the older Counter Strike games and the Left 4 Dead series. They are currently working on a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead called Back 4 Blood which is being published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. (This will lead us into our next topic).
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has been a headline for a few months now. There were rumors confirmed by many insiders that AT&T were looking to raise funds by selling off some of its divisions including its gaming line. Microsoft were one of the few companies interested along with Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take Two Interactive, and Tencent. The rumored acquisition price was around $4 billion and no one is sure if that would even include temporary licensing to some of the products that they have agreements for (D.C, Harry Potter, etc). However, talk died down when Warner Media stated that Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment “remains part of the Studios and Networks group.” Although multiple reputable insiders believe that it is still for sale, it seems that it won’t be the fire sale that people originally expected. If Microsoft was able to acquire them, they would gain the following:
Avalanche Software which has worked on Disney titles before being acquired in 2017. It is rumored that they are working on a Harry Potter RPG which should be getting revealed sometime before 2020 is finished.
Monolith Productions which has worked on F.E.A.R and the Middle-earth games.
NetherRealm Studios which has worked on the Injustice and Mortal Kombat series.
Rocksteady Studios which has worked on the Batman: Arkham series and is currently developing Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League which will be shown off at the DC FanDome event.
TT Games which has six subsidiaries. They are best known for their work on Lego games.
WB Games Boston which has most recently worked on mobile games for Batman and Game of Thrones.
WB Games Montréal which developed Batman: Arkham Origins, and assisted on Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight’s DLC. They are currently working on the next Batman game which will be revealed at the DC FanDome event.
WB Games New York which has been a support studio to help on bigger projects around the company.
WB Games San Diego which opened in 2019 has been working on a free to play mobile game.
WB Games San Francisco which most recently worked on an AR mobile game called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.
As you can tell, that is a lot of studios and hundreds of employees. It would be a very costly acquisition but it could easily pay off especially if they could get the licensing to the games they are currently working on.
Credit: Warner Bros
Finally, we know Microsoft has been trying to make Xbox become a more prominent figure in Asia. Sony and Nintendo have dominated the market share and Microsoft wants to take a piece of that cake. But to do that, they will need to give fans of Sony and Nintendo a good reason to make the switch (pun) over to Xbox. They started this by making Yakuza: Like A Dragon a next generation exclusive. However, it will still be releasing on the PS4 at launch, so I am unsure at how much weight this deal will really hold.
There were rumors earlier this year that Microsoft was attempting to acquire Platinum Games but their game director shut down those rumors. Obviously things could change and money talks but I would say things are unlikely especially after how Scalebound got canceled after they worked together a few years ago.
Capcom, FromSoftware, Sega, and Square Enix are four other companies that have huge footprints in Asia but all three are probably to big to acquire. However, I would not be surprised to see more Sega and Square Enix products making their way to Xbox as it seems like a relationship between those companies have grown.
One possibility would be Mistwalker Studios. They are best known for their work on Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and The Last Story. Microsoft’s backing could help them get back to where they were during their glory years. However, it may just be better for Microsoft to create their own studios in Japan. Mistwalker Studios have struggled recently and buying a studio based on the reputation of one guy could lead to a ReCore/Keiji Inafune situation.
Credit: Mistwalker Studios and Silicon Studios
Whether Microsoft acquires a studio or creates their own, we can expect Microsoft to expand their footprint in Japan for the launch of the next generation of Xbox.
The Game Preview 