The video gaming industry is a unique one, all right. Relying on burgeoning technology, industry professionals are able to actually record short gameplay experiences from titles that haven’t even been released.
What the hell do you even call that? Before-Plays? Precognitive Product Viewings? Hands-Off Game Watchings? Unplayable View ‘Em’s? I’ll narrow it down later. In the meantime, welcome back to the Trailer Park.
Call of Duty: Ghosts - Multiplayer Reveal
Why mess with a good thing, especially when that good thing is Call of Duty’s airtight FPS formula? Well, we’ve had about six consecutive “good things” in a row without much variation. You can call that consistency but, lately, I’ve taken to calling it boring.
Ghosts, however, is looking to shake up the military shooter’s status quo with a number of tweaks and improvements. Vaulting and peeking around corners aren’t new to the genre but mixing them into CoD’s twitch-heavy cocktail certainly raises an eyebrow. An impressive customization suite allowing you ten soldiers to deck out – male or female – featuring over 20,000 equipment and appearance options, paired with a retooled perk system, and 20 new killstreaks look to carry the series into the next generation with as much polished grace as possible.
It was the RPG influenced stat system that catapulted the first Modern Warfare into the throes of mass addiction, and it may just be that extra mile of RPG-ness that’ll keep this franchise afloat for years to come until, finally, Call of Duty sequels will mark a full year instead of rotations around the sun.
Dying Light - 12 Harrowing Minutes of Gameplay
Whereas Techland’s surprisingly fun effort in Dead Island was met with a cheap, expansion-disguised-as-a-sequel in Riptide, Dying Light looks to pick up the true successor torch and run like hell with it. Literally.
Branching from Dead Island’s notion of a melee-heavy, zombie infested open-world, our first injection of Dying Light is enthralling. Our main is seen leaping around a dilapidated, rural environment minutes before day winks out into night. Being able to climb objects like light poles and trees in order to get to (or get away to) where you’re going opens up the playing field greatly. Lateral thinking will come in handy since next-gen horsepower allows a significantly upped number of zombies on-screen at once.
Similarities to Techland’s previous tango with the dead come to a startling halt once night falls and we watch our main forced to haul ass across the cityscape, cutting through buildings and circling around alleyways so that the fast-footed dead – empowered by the nighttime – don’t turn him into a screaming buffet. It’s about time a zombie game gave us a reason to fear the dead again.
Grand Theft Auto IV brought the series online, now GTAV seeks to perfect the experience. Los Santos is host to you and fifteen other of your friends’ completely customizable characters. From there, the world is yours.
Reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption’s stellar multiplayer, you can lone gun it in the city – completing missions (which Rockstar will continually generate), buy property, and deck out your character with new weapons, upgrades, and pretty, pretty things to drive and crash – or you can team up with a squad of fellow ne'er-do-wells and paint Los Santos red as you earn that green.
But Rockstar understands you’ll want way more than what their people can feasibly pump out. That’s why they’re giving players a content creator that lets you design missions, races, and all sorts of custom chaos that you’ll be able to share with friends and vice versa. Rolling out two weeks after GTAV’s mid-September launch, Grand Theft Auto Online, if successful, may even outgrow the disc its coded onto, says Rockstar. Where it goes from there? Who knows? This is just the beginning of something far bigger.