SNK is developing a new entry in the Samurai Shodown fighting game series, and it will launch for PlayStation 4 in 2019. While details on game are scarce, it’s being created on Epic’s Unreal Engine and has a colourful visual style. As with previous entries in the series, combat is focused on weaponry, and iconic characters such as Haohmaru and Nakoruru make their return.
A trailer also sets up the story for the game, which takes place in 1787 in the 7th year of the Tenmei era. Matsudaira Sadanobu has been appointed counsel to the Shogun and given the task of ushering a new age of reform with the Kanei era. Fire, ruin, and famine still plague the lands, however, and a new evil threatens Japan.
The last entry in the series was Samurai Shodown: Sen, which released in 2009 for Xbox 360, so it has been almost 10 years since fans of the SNK fighting game series have had something to look forward to. Samurai Shodown, also known as Samurai Spirits, is revered by many fighting game enthusiasts, who place its importance as equal to the likes of Street Fighter and Tekken.
For fans of the genre, there’s quite a lot to look forward to in the months ahead. Not just with new content for Street Fighter V and Tekken 7, but also because of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which has seemingly captured the attention of those looking for a fast, tag-based game akin to Marvel Vs. Capcom.
Another big fighting game on the horizon is SoulCalibur VI, which is launching for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 19. Classic characters such as Astaroth and Seong Mi-Na have been confirmed as returning for the newest entry in the series, but developer Bandai Namco has also created a new character for it called Azwel. In terms of a guest fighter, Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher series will be filling that spot.
The Lara Croft who appears in Shadow of the Tomb Raider has made a ton of discoveries, lost a lot of friends, and killed countless living beings. She has incredible drive and self-confidence, and her enemies fear her. It’s taken a lot for the character to get to this point, and if you’ve been along for the ride since her excellent revival in 2013’s Tomb Raider, you may be pleased to hear that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the same style of experience we first saw in 2013, only bigger and with more added to it. In fact, there’s seemingly very little, if anything, that’s changed dramatically or been discarded from the formula. But while that means Shadow retains a lot of the components that give Tomb Raider that fantastic, timeless sense of wonder and discovery, it also means that Tomb Raider’s interpretation of blockbuster action-adventure mechanics is starting to feel half a decade old.
It’s a little unnerving to spend time with the seasoned Lara of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, because her experience has changed her into a hardened, obsessive, and selfish individual. She’s reached true colonizer form, determined to get the game’s McGuffin, blind to the collateral damage, much to the concern of her lovable partner Jonah. Her demeanor is reflected in a renewed focus on stealth, where the new mechanics and the jungle setting give Lara the opportunity for Predator-style ambushes. She can cover herself in mud for additional camouflage, string enemies up from a tree, and craft Fear Arrows, which cause humans to freak out and attack each other. You’re also now able to transition back into stealth after being discovered, provided you can get away and break line of sight. There’s a big emphasis on these new abilities, as tooltips throughout the entire game will continually remind you that they exist. But while her expanded skillset gives you more options to confidently and quietly hunt everyone on the map, it also highlights the cracks and inconsistencies in Tomb Raider’s enemy logic and the limitations of the game’s relatively unsophisticated core stealth mechanics.
Sound still does not play a significant factor in Tomb Raider’s stealth. While firing at someone and throwing objects will draw attention, moving through rustling vegetation and making loud footsteps don’t seem to phase anyone even though the game suggests that it will, nor will taking out a soldier right behind another with his back turned, but those rules also seem malleable. There were times when my attempted stealth approach went wrong, a gunfight broke out, and after the dust settled I was shocked to discover an additional patrol of guards in the same area, only a few seconds away from the action, carrying on with a conversation as if nothing had happened.
Lara’s Survival Instincts ability once again will give you information on which enemies are safe to quietly take down without alerting others, but it can also reveal puzzling inconsistencies in enemy AI. There were too many times where I was able to get away with taking out a guard with one of his coworkers staring right at us, only meters away. Other times, the game will tell you it’s unsafe to take out an enemy because of someone with line-of-sight halfway across the arena. You can’t always trust your own perception of the map, even if it seems obvious, and using Survival Instincts feels necessary to constantly verify that the game agrees with your idea of what is safe or unsafe–expect to be taking out a lot of bright yellow men in monochromatic environments. When playing on Tomb Raider’s hard combat difficulty, which removes enemy highlights, this uncertain behavior makes stealth tougher than you might think.
The new abilities also have their quirks. Though camouflaging yourself with mud rightly makes you harder to notice, you can abuse it to the extent where you can roll right under the nose of a guard–it’s thrilling for you, but makes you pity the enemy. Mud is also typically available at the onset of major stealth sections, or very close to hiding spots that require it, making the mechanic feel more like an innate ability rather than a tactical option you need to seek out. Fear arrows have disappointingly varied results, too. More than a few times I would find myself stalking a patrol of men from a tree, shoot a fear arrow at the shotgun-toting soldier, and watch as he proceeded to miss every point-blank shot.
There’s still some satisfaction to be gained in Shadow’s stealth, though. Waiting with bated breath for patrols to move on, and figuring out the order in which to eliminate guards like some kind of violent logic puzzle, is still enjoyable. But the new mechanics don’t really add anything significantly interesting to that baseline experience–the big spotlight on them suggests a more sophisticated stealth system that isn’t there. You get the feeling that Lara is a cold-blooded predator, that much is true. But it’s not satisfying when the prey is so dumb and easy.
There’s a cutscene in Shadow of the Tomb Raider that mirrors Lara’s first kill in her 2013 outing–in both, she’s caught off-guard by a soldier and is thrown to the ground. But despite being at a severe disadvantage, the 2018 Lara confidently blocks and counters his attacks, and when she eventually kills him, there’s no emotion on her face. She barely even sighs. The game wants you to know that this Lara is fearsome. However, this depiction is betrayed by her actual abilities in the game’s toe-to-toe combat, where it’s often tough to get Lara to act like that efficient killing machine.
The game’s guerilla angle calls for more close-and-personal encounters, and the greater number of small combat arenas means that when things get hostile, soldiers close the distance quickly. Additionally, there are new melee enemies who focus on rushing you down with overwhelming numbers. Tomb Raider’s existing combat mechanics do not service this particular style of hostilities well. Lara’s dodges are still the hurried scuttle and roll from her early days as an amateur survivor, and her climbing axe is still largely ineffective as a melee option–most enemies will simply dodge her knockdown attempts, especially on harder combat difficulties. Melee doesn’t become a viable close-quarters tactic until you unlock a dodge and counter skill later in the game, and most of the weapons in Lara’s arsenal are inefficient as close-range keep-away tools until the events of the story give you a shotgun.
Additionally, Shadow of the Tomb Raider still doesn’t communicate damage direction–if you’re getting overwhelmed and are being attacked from the sides or behind, you won’t know exactly where from, meaning it’s more difficult to make smart evasive maneuvers on the fly. With so few certainties and reliable tools to assist you in close-quarters combat, these encounters typically result in making Lara scurry clumsily in whichever direction doesn’t have enemies coming from it and frantically trying to create enough space to effectively use your weapons.
When Shadow throws you into its few mid-range combat encounters, though, the difference becomes clear. Fighting suppressing fire, scampering from cover to cover, throwing improvised Molotov cocktails, and pinging out headshot after headshot after headshot feels empowering. The combat mechanics feel much more suited to these scenarios, as was the case in previous games, and it’s only here where Lara can feel like the ice-cold killer queen she has become.
But the game keeps reverting back to close-quarters encounters, and there is one battle that’s particularly frustrating and seemingly never-ending. One enemy will charge at you relentlessly, teleport if you create distance, and has a large, damaging area-of-effect attack which Lara’s double dodge will only just avoid. Other enemies in this battle can also, unfairly, knock you off the side of the level, but you can’t do the same to them. The environment is not your friend, and it’s an infuriating way to remember a grand adventure.
What the environments are, though, is beautiful. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is nothing if not a gorgeous game, and it features some stellar level design, both aesthetically and mechanically. Exploring the impressively dense locations in Mexico and Peru is a joy. Jungles feel imposing and endless, ruined tombs are intricately detailed, hub cities are enormous and lively, and it’s easy to be completely distracted by discovering new paths and areas. Hunting down the game’s artifacts, treasure chests, and numerous other collectibles–however meaningless you might think they are–is also still enjoyable, as they give you a reason to go sightseeing. There’s a lot of emphasis on underwater exploration in Shadow, too. And while underwater sections can be frustrating as part of story missions (instant-kill piranhas that require you to hide in seaweed get old fast), it’s hard to resist swan-diving into a huge body of water when you get a chance to explore on your own.
But it’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s numerous challenge tombs and crypts that are the undisputed stars of the show. The impressive design of ancient mechanisms and the obscure solutions to using them and unlocking the path forward feel amazing to decipher after minutes of head-scratching. Some of the answers can appear straightforward if you’ve tackled a number of these in the past, but it’s always satisfying to watch the complex parts come together regardless. Shadow of the Tomb Raider also rewards you for completing these activities with exclusive skills and gear, making them more than worth your time.
Traversing the treacherous environments in these tombs, as well as during the game’s story missions, is thrilling in its own right too. Despite there always being an expected sense of peril, the designs of Lara’s foolhardy paths between locations never gets old–there’s always some kind of dicey maneuver at a terrifying height that makes you hold your breath.
But these exciting traversal puzzles also feature their own unique moments of frustration, because though the locations have changed since 2013, Lara’s platforming ability has seemingly not. Her jumps across gaps still feel floaty and inconsistent, meaning she’ll sometimes get a mysteriously divine boost in the air to make sure she latches onto a faraway edge, but sometimes she might not grab onto a ledge at all even if she’s easily cleared the gap. The same goes for tool-related maneuvers–there were enough instances where Lara completely (and amusingly) whiffed a grapple axe or zip-line that caused her to plummet to her death, prompting me to check that my controller was still connected and that I still had my primary motor functions. Her jumps and traversal maneuvers still feel loose in general and lack a strong sense of weight, which makes them feel imprecise–the way she unconvincingly flops her climbing axes directly into solid rock faces after jumping onto them always raises an eyebrow.
Altogether, these elements bring a dire uncertainty to Shadow’s more demanding traversal sections–every time you try and make a jump, it’s a gamble. The result you get after jumping the first time might not be the one you’re supposed to get. But while that adds to the perilous nature of the task, and everything works out fine most of the time, it’s annoying when it doesn’t. It’s especially demoralizing while playing on the hard exploration difficulty, which completely removes the subtle white paint that hints at the forward path. This difficulty setting is great–having to pay such close attention to your surroundings is engrossing, and there’s a small pang of delight and relief every time you discover the first step. But sometimes you’ll try a jump, the right jump, and Lara won’t latch onto the ledge for whatever reason. Because you don’t know any better, it discourages you from trying the jump again until you’ve pointlessly tried every single other option and decide to come back to it. When you can’t completely trust Lara’s abilities to jump and grab a ledge that she’s supposed to jump and grab, that’s a problem. It’s these kinds of moments make you incredibly frustrated that Tomb Raider’s core platforming mechanics don’t seem to have been refined in the past five years.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider adds so many more pieces to the formula of previous games, but there are also so many little things that it just doesn’t quite land. The game’s obsession with collecting crafting materials has only become more profuse–there are now 21(!) different items to gather–causing everything to seem less valuable and the act of gathering them to be more of a chore. The side quests are poorly paced, as each will lead off with roughly 10 minutes of fetch quests across the game’s huge hubs and watching talking heads before getting to the meat of things, making it easy to lose motivation. The game has an option for immersive voiceovers which causes NPCs to speak in their native languages, but Lara continues to speak to everyone in English, which feels like a missed opportunity.
And perhaps most sad of all is the fact that Lara herself, with her single-minded selfishness, is a harder character to empathize with in Shadow. Her attitudes and obsessions are intertwined with the game’s plot, and you might find yourself in disagreement with her a lot, which is a big deal when trying to overlook the flaws in her abilities. Jonah is the one you’ll be rooting for in this game because he acts as Lara’s centre, he’ll likely echo a lot of your own sentiments, and he has a more sympathetic arc. It’s a shame that the Lara you grew so incredibly fond of in the Tomb Raider reboot, and the scrappy skills you used to help her survive Yamatai, have both grown to be some of the most frustrating parts of her latest adventure. Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes you long for the days of a Lara that was easier to empathize with, where being inexperienced and imprecise made sense, and there was only one crafting resource to gather.
Thankfully, the parts of Tomb Raider that make it really fantastic–uncovering the mystery of ancient ruins, solving impressive challenge tombs, and exploring exotic environments–are still here in Shadow, and they are just as outstanding as they have always been. But the core mechanics that have been with the series for half a decade are starting to show their limitations. Making the journey to Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s peaks is certainly an attractive goal, but like the challenging terrain Lara needs to traverse, the path there is getting rougher and more unpredictable.
The team behind the Yakuza series has revealed a new title called Judge Eyes, which is being developed for the PlayStation 4. The game was shown during the PlayStation Lineup Tour event, ahead of the start of Tokyo Game Show. The trailer, which you can watch below, shows that it is a narrative driven experience.
Judge Eyes seems to involve playing as a lawyer and investigating a series of murders and crimes. It is expected to launch in December in Japan, and a western release will follow in 2019, though an exact date has not been confirmed as of yet.
The Judge Eyes project was originally teased during a Sega livestream, where chief creative officer Toshihiro Nagoshi described it as “something completely different” from the studio. He also revealed that it has been in development for around three years.
A short gameplay video has also been released, and shows the investigative elements involved in the game. A character can be seen identifying a person of interest in the city, and then using stealth to tail the man. He eventually follows him into an alley and confronts the mark, which results in a chase. There are quick-time button presses to keep up with the target. In terms of combat, it seems very familiar to the Yakuza series, both in terms of having multiple enemies to engage in hand-to-hand combat and the ridiculous, over the top finishing moves.
Disguises are also a big part of the game, as the character is shown breaking into an office and taking pictures of clues. Snapping pictures can be done with a phone, but there’s also a segment where a drone. You can see all that, as well as the more ridiculous scenarios that are typical of the Yakuza development team, in the video below.
The Yakuza team has been quite prolific of late, having released the excellent Yakuza 0 in 2017, to widespread critical acclaim. This brought the quirky open-world action series a much broader audience, which it has capitalized on by remastering the first two entries in the series and releasing them as Yakuza Kiwami and, most recently, Yakuza Kiwami 2.
The latter of the two received a glowing review from GameSpot’s Edmond Tran, who said “the tale of Tokyo and Osaka, Kiryu and Sayama’s partnership, and Kiryu and Goda’s rivalry remains one of the Yakuza’s best stories, and Kiwami 2’s minor missteps don’t affect the heart of that experience.
“The modernization of its presentation and its mechanics elevate it, making it absolutely worth revisiting or experiencing for the first time. Yakuza is an exemplary, if flawed series that does an incredible job of steeping you in contemporary Japanese-style crime drama, and establishing an evocative sense of place. Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an excellent example of the series at its best, coupling its most memorable stories and characters with its most sophisticated mechanics yet.” Read our full Yakuza Kiwami 2 review for more on the game.
The Yakuza team is also currently working on Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, which is based on the classic Hokuto No Ken manga and anime series. This is expected for launch in western territories later this year. In the mean time, you can check out some brutal, over the top gameplay here.
Left Alive, the third-person shooter set in the Front Mission universe, has been given a new release date. The title was originally set to launch in 2018, but during the pre-Tokyo Game Show PlayStation Lineup Tour event a new February 28, 2019 release date was confirmed. This date, however, is just for the Japanese release and a western date has not been revealed yet.
A trailer shown at the event provided some new details on the game. It is set in the fictional city of Novo Slava and takes place in December 2127. Novo Slava looks to have been ravaged by an unexpected attack, and people are just trying to survive amidst the chaos. At one point in the video, a condemned criminal designated D105U is mentioned.
“Humanity has learned nothing from its mistakes,” reads a bit of text. As previously mentioned, survival is a key part of the game, as is saving citizens, and a voice over stresses this while scenes of giant mechs tearing through the city play. The game will focus on multiple characters, all who have their own perspectives on the events of the game.
“In this struggle for survival, three lives are laid bare, each with their own stories, their own missions, and their own paths to salvation,” the trailer says. These three characters are featured on the game’s key artwork, which was created by Yoji Shinkawa, the artist known most for defining the look of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Shinkawa is serving as character designer on Left Alive.
Shinji Hashimoto, meanwhile, is Left Alive’s producer. He has worked on the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises. Joining Shinkawa and Hashimoto are Toshifumi Nabeshima, director of the Armored Core series, and Takayuki Yanase, mech designer on Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Marvel’s Spider-Man, developed by Insomniac Games, takes the No.1 spot on the UK sales chart for the week ending September 8. According to sales monitor Chart-Track, the PS4-exclusive is the “biggest debut on an individual format since the PS4 version of Call of Duty: WWII.” Spider-Man also has become the fastest selling title staring the Webslinger and the fastest selling Marvel title, beating Lego Marvel Super Heroes by “a big margin.”
Square Enix’s Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age makes its debut at No. 2, ahead of chart mainstay Grand Theft Auto V at No. 3. Following it are F1 2018 at No.4, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy at No. 5, and Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 at No. 6. The other new entry in the top 10 is Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion at No. 8. Further down, Lego The Incredibles re-enters the top 10, moving from No. 12 to No. 10.
You can read the full top 10 sales chart below, courtesy of UKIE and Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
Want to get an early look at Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s upcoming battle royale mode?
Come hang out with us as we livestream our initial reactions to it as we dive into the Blackout beta on IGN Plays Live.
The action begins on Monday, September 10 from 10am-12pm PT/1-3pm ET/8-10pm UK (Tuesday, September 11 from 3-5am AET), right here on the front page of IGN.com, or on YouTube, Twitch, or Mixer.
Fringe premiered on September 9, 2008, and despite the fact that it never became the ratings success it deserved to be, the smart, inventive sci-fi drama still gave us five seasons and 100 episodes of alternate universe-hopping, time-traveling adventures anchored by Olivia (Anna Torv), Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Walter (John Noble) – and variations thereof.
In honor of Fringe’s 10th anniversary, we’re taking a look back at what we consider the 10 best episodes of the series. Check out IGN’s Top 10 Fringe episodes below.
This was the first part of the two-hour extravaganza that brought the Fringe series to a conclusion, and it was a perfect way to start things off. The importance of Michael (aka Observer Kid) becomes solidified as he turns the tables on Windmark’s interrogation techniques and leaves the old cueball bleeding and humbled. Then Olivia, who had been in the background for much of Season 5, comes back to the forefront via a series of cortexiphan injections that get her all juiced up to be Super Olive again. In short order, Olivia is hopping back to the parallel universe to enlist the aid of her alternate self and Lincoln (who haven’t aged convincingly, but that’s the only gripe with this story). Olivia saves Michael and kicks a whole lot of butt in the process, but the action wasn’t the only thing this story had going for it. The theme of liberty was reinforced through the episode’s title and the Statue of Liberty in both our world and the “other side”. In the parallel universe, where there are no Observers and Fauxlivia and Lincoln have a happy family life, the statue is seen in shimmering copper and lacking the signature green patina we’re familiar with. In this future, the statue is practically destroyed, which is certainly an apt metaphor for the destruction of liberties that the observers brought with their invasion. “Liberty” is an episode that pulls off the clever trick of being action-oriented while enhancing the story through a subtle metaphorical theme.
