Like so many open-world games, Just Cause 4 gives you the freedom to do some absolutely absurd things. Series star Rico Rodriguez makes Batman look like a grappling hook amateur, and his high-tech gadgets let players wreak havoc in ludicrous, physics-driven ways (including these 7 ridiculous things I did during 4 hours with Just Cause 4). But despite all the wanton destruction of property, the Just Cause games still endeavor to tell engaging stories, with Rico fighting on the behalf of disempowered people. Though you might be zipping around like a flying squirrel with an uzi during gameplay, the cutscenes establish Rico as a hardened hero for the people of Solis who have been under the boot of the Black Hand mercenary company for too long. It's definitely a pivot in direction compared to the previous game, whose main villain was a cartoonish, mustache-twirling dictator. And in talking with narrative designer Ben Jaekle and lead mechanics designer Hamish Young, it sounds like Just Cause … [Read more...] about How Just Cause 4 tries to separate Rico Rodriguez from more Nathan Drake types
Ordinary people doing extraordinary things
The Flare Path: Tankettes Etcetera
Perfect timing! After the Armored Brigade preview code shook the mothballs from my interest in post-WW2 Armoured Fighting Vehicles, along comes an unusually corpulent wargame demo absolutely packed with the things*. Lurking in this five-scenario Combat Mission: Shock Force 2 trial are not only modern warfare yeomen like the M1A1, Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and Bradley IFV, but rarely recreated exotics such as the pint-sized Porsche-built Wiesel AWC. In the unlikely event Pixar ever make a heartwarming story about an anthropomorphic tank, the star really has to be Wesley the wisecracking Wiesel. *Post-WW2 AFVs not mothballs. As the image above grimly testifies, Wesley’s nimbleness, dinky silhouette, and 20mm quips don’t always ensure his survival on CM’s unforgiving battlefields. The poor lad has the misfortune to appear in ‘Alamo’, a scenario in which a medieval Syrian citadel stands in for the titular compound and a lightly-armed contingent of German … [Read more...] about The Flare Path: Tankettes Etcetera
I love VR because you can act like a jerk and nobody cares
Do you ever get the urge to act like a bit of a jerk in public? I'm not talking about pure cruelty here, mind. I'm thinking more along the lines of knocking over an intricate row of dominoes while someone is carefully lining them up, or flicking the base of a house of cards just as the final one is about to be put into place. You'd never actually do something like that of course, but that little devil on your shoulder sure would like to see it happen...How about wandering into a house party, downing a bottle of champagne in one go and then roaring as you smash the glass bottle against a wall? That kind of swagger is probably acceptable for high profile rock stars and over-the-top characters in raunchy teen comedies but for your normal everyday person? I don't think they could get away with it.Imagining yourself doing crazy things like that is fun but acting on those impulses would see you swiftly ostracised by your friends and family. Not in VR though. In VR you can act like a total … [Read more...] about I love VR because you can act like a jerk and nobody cares
If Disney buys Fox, the first thing it should do is fix Alien. And Star Wars shows us exactly how to do that
The Alien franchise, frankly, is in a mess. The current situation is more than sequel decay. We’re now dealing with a once-great film series somehow still flailing to get back on its feet twenty years after it was initially laid to rest. By rights, that kind of a break should have already healed all wounds. However many weak sequels dump upon any particular cinematic legacy, absence, eventually, always makes the heart grow fonder. Or at least, the mind more selective. Nostalgia eventually papers over any residual resentment, setting a clean, refurbished stage for a reboot, hard or otherwise. Hollywood leverages this truth for successful restarts all the time.It only took eight years to get from Batman & Robin to Batman Begins. The deliriously hard-edged Mad Max: Fury Road picked up business as usual 30 years after Beyond Thunderdome’s descent into Hollywood-friendly lightness of tone, and even Halloween now looks to be getting back on track, after seven sequels and two … [Read more...] about If Disney buys Fox, the first thing it should do is fix Alien. And Star Wars shows us exactly how to do that
Platinum never loses its lustre
There's a story I've heard passed around a few times over the years about PlatinumGames. It's about how, so industrious is this Osaka-based studio, it never really stops working; how its employees are put onto shift-work, one working through the day while the other toils away through the night, ensuring a never-ending 24-hour production cycle. It's a myth, sadly - though that's fortunate for the studio's 190-strong workforce, you'd figure - but like all myths there's surely a kernel of truth in there somewhere. How else to explain how the studio has produced some 14 games in just over a decade? How else to explain the exquisite craft that's almost always on show? Maybe you'll find the answer in PlatinumGames' headquarters, spread over two floors of the Umeda Sky Building. It's not the tallest building in Osaka, but it's certainly the most ostentatious; built just before the economic bubble burst in late 80s Japan, it looks like a space invader squatting over the Osaka skyline, its two … [Read more...] about Platinum never loses its lustre