News:
ANYTIME, ANYWHERE
Microsoft has announced that all games it publishes will now be part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program. “Every new title published from Microsoft Studios will support Xbox Play Anywhere and will be easily accessible in the Windows Store,” wrote corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi on the Windows Blog. For those playing catch-up, Xbox Play Anywhere was introduced at this year’s E3 and will allow games included in the program to be cross-compatible for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC – including all-important save files. ReCore, the latest game from legendary creator Keiji Inafune, is currently the first title scheduled for the program. You can get your hands on it from Tuesday September 13.
KEEPING CONTROL
As the world begins to lose its collective mind over Nintendo’s debut in the mobile market via Pokémon Go, the company is already talking about its plans for future titles. First and foremost: the admission that there are no current plans to create physical controllers for its applications – though that could change in the future. “Physical controllers for smart device applications are available in the market and it is possible that we may also develop something new by ourselves,” Shinya Takahashi, Nintendo’s general manager of entertainment planning and development, said during a shareholder meeting. However, Takahashi admitted that it’s also possible to ignore them completely. “Releasing applications for non-Nintendo platforms is one challenge for us, and we will try all kinds of things as we continue this challenge,” he said.
Review: Trials Of The Blood Dragon (PS4, XBO, PC)
For the uninitiated, the Trials series harks back to a classically old-school style of game design – tasking you with guiding a stunt motorcycle along increasingly complex 2D courses with minimal failure. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, on the other hand, was an ’80s-inspired spin-off of the popular FPS franchise. From afar, the two franchises appear to pair as well as chalk and cheese, but the surprising release of Trials Of The Blood Dragon proves otherwise, painting over most elements with an ’80s and ’90s glow that helps breathe new life into Trials’ DNA – even if that isn’t necessarily always for the better.
Taking place a few years after Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Trials Of The Blood Dragon adheres to a Saturday morning cartoon framework, returning focus to Rex ‘Power’ Colt who has retired from killing Blood Dragons, and is raising children Slayter and Roxanne instead. That is until Colt’s wife mysteriously disappears and he himself dies fighting Vietnam War 4, leaving his teenage children to finish what he started.
Unsurprisingly, whenever the game focuses on motorcycles – RedLynx’s bread and butter – Trials Of The Blood Dragon is a boatload of fun. Not every level reaches the complexity of its often monstrous predecessors, but by toying with the ’80s aesthetic, the courses become zany, creative affairs. The inclusion of a grappling hook only amplifies this, adding another layer as you attempt to swing your vehicle from platform to platform, while an RC car that can rapidly accelerate and reverse also allows for some outside-the-box creations.
However, the moment Roxanne and Slayter dismount their bikes – which is far more often than you’d think – the game takes a sharp and harmful turn, swapping tried-and-tested gameplay for a rather underdeveloped platformer with twin-stick shooter foundations that fundamentally tarnishes the overall experience. Levels that grant you control over a jetpack with a highly sensitive bomb are particularly likely to send you mad.
There’s still plenty of enjoyment within Trials Of The Blood Dragon (especially thanks to a fantastic soundtrack), and the level of experimentation on offer has to be commended. But the varying degree to which those experiments work prevents it from being the no-brainer recommendation it should have been.
★★★
