Oculus Touch officially releases to the world this December 6th, 2016, and will bring with it up to 50 titles from day one with support for the controllers on Oculus Home. Of course, if you include unofficial and patched-in support from games on Steam that were previously Vive exclusives, that number probably goes much higher. One of the upcoming games that will be available day and date with the new motion controllers is Cosmic Trip, a refreshingly original take on the real-time strategy genre.
Interestingly, the main combat mechanic in Cosmic Trip involves throwing Tron-like discs at enemies to fight back, as well as setting up defense turrets and robot companions to mine resources and fend off alien invaders. It plays like a mixture of a wave-based action game and a strategic base building game, creating a unique new sub-genre we’ve never seen before.
When we first went hands-on with the game back in June, we were blown away by its bright and unique visual style, as well as its inventive implementation of traditional real-time strategy mechanics into a vivid first-person atmosphere. Typically, RTS games occur from a top-down perspective, such as in AirMech Command.
Since it debuted in Early Access, Cosmic Trip has been slowly improving with updates and additions to its formula. Those updates include new weapons like the energy shield and bubble gun, new enemies, new robots, new game modes, and more. All of these new features and all previous work on the game will be included when Cosmic Trip debuts on Oculus Home — although it’s still in Early Access.
The potential for Cosmic Trip is tremendous, especially as the team continues to grow and expand the game with more content, levels, modes, and — hopefully — eventual multiplayer support.
Cosmic Trip is currently available on Steam for HTC Vive at a price point of $19.99. Oculus Rift with Touch support is arriving on December 6th and you’ll be able to find the game on Oculus Home at this link once active. You can visit the official website for more details.
Pokémon series developer Game Freak issued a worldwide challenge for 'Pokémon Sun' and 'Moon' players that will put their creature-taming skills to the test and participants will receive in-game rewards as an incentive.
Lego Worlds, the brick-building open world game from TT Games and Warner Bros., will finally hit console and PC with a full launch in 2017. The game launched earlier through Steam Early Access.
Universal and Nintendo have announced a partnership that will bring Nintendo-themed attractions to Universal theme parks. Parks in Japan, Hollywood, and Orlando have been announced thus far.
The Last Guardian director Fumito Uedo included a heartfelt message with media kits for the game, addressing the game's rocky development. The wait will finally be over on December 6.
Gamers looking for new games in May have a lot of things to get excited about, including comic-book fighter Injustice 2, long-delayed sci-fi shooter Prey, and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia on 3DS.
The main selling point for any game that aims to be successful in the growing and profitable eSports scene is its competitive nature. Can people play this game, over and over, for hours, days, weeks, and months on end — at the exclusion of all other games — and continue to improve and discover new strategies and wrinkles throughout that time? Will people be able to actually improve their skill, as players, to differentiate their rank in the game, rather than just upgrading stats and unlocking new items?
Those are important questions to ask and, luckily, it seems like Insomniac has thought of answers for their upcoming Oculus Touch launch title, The Unspoken [Review: 9/10]. Not only will the game come packaged for free with all Touch pre-orders, but it also includes enough depth and competitive flair to be well worth the time investment. It’s also the third VR title from the veteran studio, following Edge of Nowhere [Review: 9/10] and Feral Rites [Review: 5/10].
Finding A Competitive Balance
“For us, developing The Unspoken started with making a really good and fun competitive game,” said Chad Dezern, Creative Director of The Unspoken at Insomniac, during a phone interview. “Once we started getting into competitive matches at the office and realized the game needed to be about magic duels with a solid beginning, middle, and end, it really helped us find the core of the experience.”
No matter who you are, you’ve likely fantasized or thought about throwing fireballs at some point in your life. When you put on a VR headset and transport yourself to fantastical worlds of fiction, there’s no more appropriate time to indulge in the fantasies that come from the technology. But beyond the content and setting, the real magic (pun intended) comes when you face off against someone else inside the immersive environment.
“It really started clicking for us when we were able to make a very naturally competitive game,” said Dezern. “And once the mechanics were established, we were starting to realize what the habits of really high level players were. We started there — with competition — because that is the core of it, but we did’t specifically set out to make an eSport game, it wasn’t a game design goal.”
Which is a huge point to pay attention to. eSports isn’t a genre of video games. Even if you try your hardest, you can’t force your game to be accepted and promoted in the eSports community. But instead, the smarter idea, is to craft an inherently fun, well-designed, and balanced game and encourage the community to support and build it up over time. And that’s what Insomniac is doing instead.
“We want to focus on making the individual player experience fun, more so than creating a team game,” said Dezern. “We made it a duel because we wanted to really focus on those dynamics.”
In this way, it’s actually different than most popular competitive gaming experiences. MOBAs like League of Legends,DOTA 2, Paragon, and Heroes of the Storm are all about team dynamics, Counter-Strike and Overwatch are team-based first-person shooters, and other than the fighting game community, most eSports — and physical sports in general — are all team-based. It’s a unique opportunity for a game like The Unspoken.
By focusing on individual players, the core skill-based gameplay is able to shine more clearly. Master your class, memorize the spells, and create strategies for moving around the maps, baiting opponents to open them up to your more powerful abilities, and more. The Unspoken, and other VR titles, become just as much about your physical endurance and coordination as they are your knowledge and ability as a gamer. VR eSports are getting closer to, well, actual sports. We’re approaching Tron-like levels of immersion and competition.
Identity Through Magic
“We have matchmaking features, you can invite friends to matches, and ranked matches,” said Dezern. “For single player content, you can go into a practice mode with all the classes and spells to get the hang of things, as well as battle a very challenging A.I. opponent. It’s great for learning how to play the game.”
There’s a story as well, but it’s just not the focus. “The narrative is there to setup the game, we want everyone to be intrigued, its just the tip of a very big narrative iceberg, said Dezern. “We didn’t go all in on everything because we wanted to do one thing very well instead of sprawling ourselves across several modes. For us, that one thing is competitive 1 vs. 1 multiplayer duels.”
Rather than a traditionally fantastical or mythical world of magical creatures and forbidden lore, like you might find in The Lord of the Rings, or something similar, The Unspoken features a much more grounded “What if?” scenario. This isn’t about a fictional world of witches and wizards, but instead asks a very Harry Potter-esque question: What if the world of magic was hiding just beneath our collective noses?
“Think about that feeling you have when you’re in a new city and you don’t know what’s going on just around the corner,” said Dezern. “How do we work that notion into a spell? We don’t have many straight up D&D spells, for example, except for maybe the Fireball, because come on, it’s a fireball.”
Time will tell whether games like The Unspoken, or even RIGS, are able to find footing in the competitive gaming scene as VR titles. In the meantime, developers should take a note from Insomniac’s book and focus on creating well-designed, fun, and balanced games that can stand on their own. If that’s done well enough, then an eSports scene will form organically.
The Unspoken releases on December 6th with the launch of the Oculus Touch controllers. What is your most anticipated Touch title next week?
A new Marvel vs. Capcom game with a focus on the Marvel Cinematic Universe is apparently in development, and could be unveiled at the PlayStation Experience event scheduled for this weekend.
On Monday, AMD launched a new Radeon Software Crimson Edition driver optimized for Watch Dogs 2, which hits the PC on Tuesday. The new driver also resolves issues related to two games: The Division and Battlefield 1.
As more and more developers start to engage in creating content for the virtual reality gaming industry, delays are an inevitability. Platforms change or are added onto a project, scope is adjusted, budgets alter, and teams both grow and shrink — all of these factors can lead to a game getting delayed and pushed out of its target release window. Today, we learned that Giant Cop: Justice Above All has officially been delayed into 2017.
In Giant Cop, you take on the role of a super-sized law enforcement officer that stomps around a city seeking out criminals and no-good scoundrels. The perspective is comical to say the least and helps sell a sense of scale that’s only really possible inside a VR headset.
In a statement posted on their website, Other Ocean Interactive, the game’s developer, stated that, “creating a compelling narrative experience in virtual reality is no easy feat but the team is committed to releasing a game that meets a high standard. For this reason, we have to delay the release of Giant Cop on the Oculus Rift + Touch by a few months. This means that our plan to bring Giant Cop optimized for Vive and PSVR are also delayed, but we believe the extra development time will make the game better.”
The game made headlines earlier this year amidst the stirrup of controversy surrounding the topic of exclusivity on VR platforms. As stated above, the incoming delay impacts the game on all three of its intended platforms.
“We know this announcement is going to disappoint a lot of people, but we want to make sure we get this right, so we ask for your patience as we continue to work hard on Giant Cop: Justice Above All,” the press release goes on to say. “We’ll be updating our website & storefronts over the next few days with some new information, so stay tuned!”
