At this year’s Summer Game Fest, which was held at City Market Social House in downtown Los Angeles on June 9th and 10th, the good people from NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros. Games gave journalists — present company included — some hands-on time with the upcoming fighting game Mortal Kombat 1, which will be out September 19th for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC, and Switch.
What follows are my limited impressions of the game.
Two weeks after unveiling an impressive new trailer for their upcoming third-person survival horror shooter Alan Wake II, the fine folk from Remedy Games gave journalists a deeper look at this scary shooter behind closed doors at this year’s Summer Game Fest, which was held June 9th and 10th at Los Angeles’ City Market Social House. And while we didn’t get to take the game for a test drive, the live demo did make this attendee even more excited for this scary game, which will be released October 17th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Expectations can be tough, especially when a lot of time has passed. Just ask George Lucas about The Phantom Menace. Or Axl Rose about Chinese Democracy. Or George R.R. Martin — no, don’t bother him.
Or, you could just ask the good people at Blizzard who made Diablo IV (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC), which comes eleven long years after 2012’s Diablo III (and, well, a year after the wrongly convicted Diablo Immortal). Especially since Diablo IV is not a huge jump forward the way Diablo III was over 2000’s Diablo II.
But while Diablo IV may be more of a refinement than a reinvention when it comes to this series’ third-person hack & slash / bow & arrow / magic spell action, it still ends up being as effortlessly addictive as the most recent installment. And Diablo III.
Like other game developers who’ve made co-op games in the vein of Left4Dead — including the people who made it and its spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood — the good people at Arkane Austin who made the vampiric first-person shooter Redfall (Xbox Series X/S, PC) assured us that we could play their game solo. So, as someone who doesn’t play well with others, I decided to test this theory, and found that while it has some issues, I actually had a lot of fun playing this supernatural shooter on my own.
Of all the questions I had after reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, not once did I ever wonder what Gollum was up to in the years between them. Mostly because I just assumed he’d spent them in his cave, eating sushi, listening to Led Zeppelin, and lamenting the loss of his precious. But having played the deeply flawed third-person stealth action game The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, PC), which covers this time period, but is a complete fabrication and not based on anything Tolkien wrote, I find myself even less interested in Gollum’s sad little life.
In the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, fans of the historical action games will go on another adventures with Basim Ibn Ishaq, who was originally introduced in 2020’s Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. But if you can’t wait for the game, Basim’s exciting life will also be explored in Jaleigh Johnson’s new novel, Assassin’s Creed: The Golden City (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Johnson discusses what (aside from the titular games) inspired and influenced this historical action story.
In the third-person hack & slash action game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, former Padawan Cal Kestis had to relearn all the Jedi skills he’d forgotten while trying to survive in a post-Order 66 universe.
But as Jedi Master Albert Einstein said, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”
Which is why, despite now being a Jedi, Cal still has a lot to learn in his new adventure, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC). Good thing Jedi’s learn by doing…
As someone who’s lived in Los Angeles since the mid-’90s, I find I’ve been burned by games set in my adoptive hometown more often than not. True Crime: Streets Of LA, for instance, had my street, but not my home, while L.A. Noire‘s open world didn’t even include my neighborhood. So it was a pleasant surprise when playing Burning Shores, the new add-on for Horizon Forbidden West (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4), that I actually felt like I was in L.A., even if it was so far in the future that all my stuff is gone.
In all my years of reviewing the pinball tables made by Zen Studios for their virtual pinball games Zen Pinball and Pinball FX, and their sequels (and it’s a lot of years), the only tables I’ve done have been ones based on movies, TV shows, and video games that I was already familiar with. Not on purpose; they just never made any games based on movies, shows, or games I didn’t watch or play. But that changed recently with the release of the Crypt Of The NecroDancer table for Pinball FX (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X /S, Xbox One, PC), which is based on a roguelike rhythm game that I’ve heard of but not played (it’s not my kind of thing). But as I quickly learned from playing this pinball table, you need not be a fan of the original game, or even know anything about, to enjoy this virtual pinball machine…though it helps if you like old school pinball tables (and have Google).