Grave Gamer News & Views — warner bros

Injustice’s Ultimate Edition Announced; Crisis Extends to Next-Gen

Warner Bros. and NetherRealm’s 2D comic book fighter is coming back to a store shelf near you with a DLC vengeance. Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition sees the original superhero slobberknocker repackaged with every shred of downloadable content dropped since the game’s release.

Besides a bonus of forty character skins to adorn your favorite hero or villain with, the Ultimate Edition is your chance to collect the full roster of additional fighters originally debuted as DLC. That includes Batgirl, General Zod, Lobo, Martian Manhunter, Scorpion (of Mortal Kombat fame, how dare you question it?), and Zatanna.

Released in April, Injustice went on to earn itself some favorable reviews, with some calling it more refined than 2011’s Mortal Kombat – the gameplay basis upon which Injustice lays its foundation on. Personally, any game that allows me to uppercut my opponent through the stratosphere earns my good graces automatically; it helps greatly that the game is righteously enjoyable, be you an open-minded fighting fan or an advocate of DC lore. 

The Ultimate Edition brings Injustice back to the PS3 and Xbox 360 for $59.99 while introducing itself to the PC ($49.99) and the PS Vita ($39.99), all dated for November 12th. On the very same day, a PlayStation 4 version of the game releases, featuring touchpad compatibility, streaming and video sharing, and remastered graphics. Its arrival does indeed make it the very first fighting game to launch for PS4 (it edges out Divekick by three whole days…not that you can play much of it without a PS4, what with its Nov. 15th date…Still, flawless victory).

[An Xbox One version has not been confirmed as of this writing.]

Mortal Kombat 10 (Briefly) Konfirmed

With an award winning game in 2011’s reboot/revival, a massively popular web series gearing up for its second season, and a brand new film adaptation swimming in pre-production, the bloodiest fighting series in gaming is returned to a level of success it hasn’t seen since the mid-‘90s.  And that calls for a sequel.

On the subject of a feature film’s status, GamerHub.TV managed to catch a tiny MK10 confirmation from Mortal Kombat: Legacy’s producer Lance Sloane amidst the hallowed, thickly geeky grounds of SDCC.  Sloane revealed the new film has a solid script in place, locked in with a passionate director (Legacy’s Kevin Tancharoen).

Sloane slipped in our first “official” mention of the next Mortal Kombat game while musing on when the most opportune time to release a film would be.  “It’s just figuring out the business side of it.  When would we do it.  When we would launch it.  How do we sync up with the launch of the game that they’re working on now?  The next game.”

After a short string of knockout moneymakers in Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice, it’s a forgone conclusion NetherRealm Studios is back developing their brutally entertaining claim to fame.  The title will undoubtedly be next-gen, and, if their track record maintains, it will undoubtedly be amazing, bone crunching, eye gouging fun (only gamers and psychopaths get to say that).  Really, though, how can the phrase “Next-Gen Fatality” not cause a menacing smile to spread across your face?

Watch what Lance Sloane has to say regarding all things MK hereabouts.

Dying Light (PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox One/X360 - 2014)

For those of you who were hoping the zombie game craze that buried us this generation would die out in the next, don’t you realize you can’t kill what’s already dead?

Techland, specifically the team that brought us the first Dead Island (and not the rancid Riptide), is jumping right back into the open-world zombie domain with another co-op onslaught in Dying Light.  What stops their latest game from being just another Dead Island offshoot?  At the surface, not much, but there’s two key gameplay mechanics that’ll really have your inner survivalist’s makeshift fire cooking.

The first being a night-day cycle that directly impacts your play style.  By day, the undead slog through the tattered city streets, allowing you to explore and hunt for supplies with relative ease – if you’re the kind of person to feel at ease around walking, moaning corpses, anyway.

By night, the situation escalates from George Romero to all-out Zack Snyder.  Zombies gain strength from the nightfall and become more agile, alert, and awfully aggressive. You’ll be chased down and made chow faster than you can scream “28 Days Later” but here’s where Dying Light’s second exciting feature comes in: free-running.

Avoiding obstacles, darting down allies, and actually taking to the rooftops will be your only chance of surviving.  Clever little design touches like being able to look over your shoulder mid-run for pursuers and the ability to spot dangerous “powerhouse” zombies in the environment add to the flight-over-fight system.  The comparisons to Mirror’s Edge are inescapable – there’s no way to write “first-person free-running” without having DICE’s game immediately flare in my synapses – but the implementation within a horror game is too good of a concept to ignore.

The genre is well worn (“decayed” even), yet harnessing the next-gen might send a jolt of life into the dead.  [Although, it should be noted, Techland intends on releasing some sort of scaled down version of the game for current-gen systems].  Dying Light is looking at an ambiguous 2014 release date; more than enough time for Techland to win our zombie killing hearts over again.

Arkham Origins: New Trailer, Screens, and Playable Character

This fine day has brought with it more than enough news for true fans of the Caped Crusader to go completely bat-shit over.

First up, a full trailer depicting an eloquent exchange of fists between Batman and hired killer Deathstroke.  Other personalities that make the cut – and Bruce’s life infinitely harder – are Deadshot, the marksmen that never misses, and Black Mask, the criminal ringleader that’s turned Gotham into a murder circus.  Gameplay doesn’t make a cameo, unfortunately, what with the whole trailer being fancy, schmancy CGI, so your eyes will have to chow down on the screens above for now.

Pre-ordering a copy of Batman: Arkham Origins scores you the inclusion of Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson as a playable character in the game’s challenge rooms.  Slade comes stocked with two of his own challenge maps and two skins.

Rounding out the rest of Origins news, let’s touch on this casting kerfuffle.  Initial reports had it that longtime Batman voice actor, Kevin Conroy, would not be reprising his role in the third Arkham game.  Everyone got sad, then angry, and rightfully so.  Then, Mr. Conroy up and outs his involvement, stating he wasn’t able to talk about it beforehand, having had to wait until the new title’s reveal.  While press quickly took this to mean Conroy would be Batsy once more, Warner Bros. squashed that insinuation into the ground.

Instead, our young Dark Knight will be voiced by Roger Craig Smith, whose laid down vocals for the likes of Ezio Auditore and Chris “Boulder Punch” Redfield, and the new Joker will be played by Troy Baker – a modern voice acting veteran most recently associated as Booker Dewitt in Bioshock Infinite and Joel from The Last of Us; more fittingly, Baker was Two-Face in Arkham City.  That still leaves the matter of Kevin Conroy, his role still unannounced, but the great detective in me thinks we’ll likely hear him narrate the affair as the older, battle hardened Batman we all love and wisely fear.

Batman: Arkham Origins Announced; New Dev Handling Franchise

Once prowling the night as a rumor, Warner Bros. has outed a new installment in the critically acclaimed and publicly loved Batman: Arkham series.

Batman: Arkham Origins is, naturally, a prequel to the duo of Rocksteady developed games which will follow an inexperienced Batman during his novice caped crusading days (a la Year One).  And, damn, if superhero-ing doesn’t have its share of turbulence.  Gotham City PD, not overly enthused by Batman’s vigilante antics, still considers him a public menace.  On the criminal end of the spectrum, Black Mask, professional mobster/megalomaniac, has put a city wide hit on the Batman, sending eight trained assassins after his cowl.

Rocksteady is taking a pass on the prequel, sadly, but Warner Bros. Montreal, an in-house studio, is taking over development reigns, utilizing their predecessors’ modified Unreal engine and assets in order to maintain that Arkham feel fans have grown so accustomed to.  Self-proclaimed comic aficionado, Eric Holmes, the creative director behind Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (rad) and Prototype (not so rad), is leading the prequel.

Arkham Origins is planned for release on October 25th for all current gen consoles including the Wii U; its existence on next-gen systems hasn’t been confirmed yet.  A handheld counterpart called Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, a 2.5D Metroid-vania title cobbled together by Armature Studios, is releasing for the 3DS and Vita the same day as its big console brother.  Game Informer’s May issue features the game as its cover story.