Grave Gamer News & Views — scifi

Here’s the First Gameplay Trailer from Arkane’s Prey Reboot

And it’s looking incredibly promising. I was on the fence about a complete reworking of the franchise. All right, “franchise” may be loftier a word than this IP deserves considering it has one 2006 release and a completely scrapped sequel to its name. But I dug the original Prey’s premise of a modern Native American falling on his ancestry’s ancient powers to battle a threat from the stars. It had style, a Quake-y atmosphere and physics-bending fuckery even before Portal became a household name.

But Arkane’s on to something here. A giant space station, an invading alien species akin to a “living ecology,” a mix-up of upgradable future tech and Plasmid-like extraterrestrial powers… This is a reimagining with serious imagination. Sure, we’re not getting the “alien bounty hunter” successor Prey 2 was proposed to be – and my heart still breaks each time I look upon the stars and wonder what could have been – but this? This might do just fine.

Arkane Studios’ Prey is slated for a 2017 release on PS4, PC, and Xbox One.

I think I just came. I could have probably said something more professional but I like to report the facts.

Destiny’s ‘The Dark Below’ Dated and Detailed, Drops December

I know what you’re thinking, Guardians. “Why in the world would I need even more content to contend with when I’m perfectly happy to play the same handful of Strike missions over again for the three-hundredth time?”

Listen, I’m with you. It’s a valid point. Originally, I was a little miffed at being locked into the same cutscenes where Dinklebot reads out exposition like he would names in a phone book sixty times over. But after sixty-one times, I loved it.

Come December 9th, though, it’ll be time to influx a brand new set of missions you’ll play into the ground, sanding your joystick nubs into… nubbier nubs. Destiny’s first expansion, “The Dark Below,” launches across all platforms, the standalone DLC pricing in at $19.99 or $34.99 when bundled in the Season Pass (which includes the upcoming “House of Wolves”).

“The Dark Below,” a supposedly substantial expansion to the Destiny universe, includes:

• Three new story missions doled out by a new character, Eris, who apparently spent her time hiding among the Hive like a sci-fi Dian Fossey
• New weapons, armor, and five additional bounty slots (that’s twice the grind!)
• Light Level cap raises to 32; irrelevant, I will forever be stuck at 26
• A new Strike, “The Will of Crota,” where you face down the Omnigul’s plans for Moon domination
• Another six player Raid called “Crota’s End” in which your Fireteam has to venture into the Hellmouth to prevent Sunnydale High from being overrun with uber-vamps (wait… no, that’s correct)
• Three new PvP maps — The Cauldron, a close-quarters Hive arena; Pantheon, a bout inside a Vex temple; and Skyshock, an abandoned defense array now home to your pulse rifle murder streaks

Additionally, if you count yourself apart of the PlayStation family, you’re privy to an exclusive Strike mission dubbed “The Undying Mind” which I sincerely hope pits players against a giant Dinklebot.

Been musing on Bioware’s new Mass Effect. Obviously, they’re going to carry forth a lot of what worked in the first three games; they’d be crazy not to. But I’m hoping to take a different kind of journey in the fourth game, especially when it comes to the narrative perspective.

I’d be fascinated to see the ME universe from a POV not associated with a militaristic outfit. I want to step away from Shepard’s world of rank, orders, and protocol. You’re constantly fed updates and mission goals from either the Council or Alliance in the original trilogy. I want to take control of a fringe character, man. Someone that doesn’t know what the hell is going on until it’s shooting at him/her.

I’d like to start off the game as a ne'er-do-well. A mercenary. A smuggler. Shit, maybe even a stoner clerk that works at a Citadel gift shop selling tiny replicas of the Normandy. I want to start as a nobody and build my legend from the ground up.

Shepard already had pretense – had already gained infamy in battle even before ME1 began. I want to start as a blank slate. Have characters in the world ask aloud, “Who the hell is this supposed to be?”

“I’m the guy that’s going to save your blue ass.”

I don’t want to be handed a glossy starship and assigned a perfect crew. I want to earn my ship and recruit my people. As violently and heroically as possible.

2014-SAMUS ARAN

by Daniel Vandrell Oduber