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I watched E3 from the outside this year, and it appears my experience was a little different from those who went to America's biggest gaming expo. People on the ground said the show felt a little subdued and smaller than in previous years, but from the outside looking in, it was one of the best years in memory thanks to the huge number of new IPs (and of course sequels and remakes) announced at the show. For me, there were a few real standouts. The ballet themed PS4 platformer Bound has me entranced. I want to cut off cyborg limbs to improve my gear in The Surge. I can't wait to see if the crying koala makes a return appearance in South Park: The Fractured But Whole and I long…

“THE ZODIAC AGE GIVES FFXII A WELL-DESERVED HD MAKEOVER, REDOING ALL OF THE VISUALS DOWN TO TINY DETAILS, INCLUDING THE DISPLAY FONTS” DEVELOPER Square Enix PUBLISHER Square Enix PLATFORM PS4, Xbone RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Final Fantasy XII is perhaps one of the more overlooked instalments of the storied saga. Many factors contributed to the game not getting quite as much attention: its protracted development time, general JRPG fatigue among the public beginning to set in, and perhaps most importantly, the English language version’s 2006 launch being next to the debut of not one but two consoles. No matter how good a game is, it’s hard to keep excitement high in the face of shiny new hardware. The fans that did play through FFXII, however, found a superbly crafted RPG…

“BASE BUILDING [WAS] LARGELY ABSENT FROM DAWN OF WAR II BUT WAS VERY PRESENT IN DAWN OF WAR. IT'S BACK IN DAWN OF WAR III” DEVELOPER Relic Entertainment PUBLISHER SEGA PLATFORM PC RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Watching someone play Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III is both engaging and intimidating. It looks like chaos, but the one behind the keyboard and mouse knows it’s a controlled chaos. Often real-time strategy games lack the flair of other action-focused genres, making them less fun for newcomers to watch. But man, when that orbital laser came down to wreak devastation across the icy planes of Acheron, I couldn’t help but think how much I wish I was the one doing that. “It’s been seven years since the main Dawn of War II and…

“LOADING HUMAN IS THE EVOLUTION OF THE CLASSIC ADVENTURE GAME; YOU’LL PROGRESS BY SEARCHING THROUGH VARIOUS ELEMENTS TO ADVANCE THE STORY AND/OR SOLVE PUZZLES” DEVELOPER Untold Games PUBLISHER Maximum Games PLATFORM PS VR, Rift RELEASE DATE TBA 2016 If 2016 is remembered for anything in the history of the gaming medium, it’ll be the year when the dream of home virtual reality was finally attained. With a multitude of PC VR headsets already on the market and PlayStation VR just around the corner, it’s an exciting new frontier in immersive gaming experiences that has the potential to create new game genres – or, in the case of Loading Human, bring an old genre to new heights. Loading Human is a VR-exclusive adventure game that’s been incubating for a while. It…

DEVELOPER SIE Bend Studio PUBLISHER Sony Interactive Entertainment PLATFORM PS4 RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Let’s face it: in the current crowded gaming market, you’re going to need a really good gimmick to get a game about the zombie apocalypse noticed. Yes, the term 'zombie' has fallen out of favour – a lot of games use some other term for their brainless, flesh-eating once-human figures but, come on, they’re still zombies. So in a release schedule packed with upcoming zombie games – Dead Rising 4, Dead Island 2, State of Decay 2 – what does Days Gone have to set it apart from the pack? Well, quite a few things, actually. Days Gone is the story of Deacon St John, a man who once lived a carefree existence as a biker…

“EVERY PIRATE IN THE WORLD IS A PLAYER, WICH MEANS IF YOU SEE ANOTHER SHIP, THAT’S ANOTHER SHIP CREWED BY REAL PLAYERS” DEVELOPER Rare PUBLISHER Microsoft Studios PLATFORM Win10, Xbone RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Bucking the recent trend in videogame trailers relying on maudlin cover songs playing over slowed-down game footage, Rare chose to actually show Sea of Thieves being played by real people. Real, overly excitable people. They wanted you to see gamers adventuring with friends in a massive open world. Having a few laughs, getting pissed, falling into the ocean, being left for dead. Typical pirate stuff. “[Sea of Thieves is] all about you and your friends going on adventures together in an emergent shared world,” says Rare Studio Head Craig Duncan. “You’ll see other sails on the…

“IT’S QUITE POSSIBLY THE BEST-LOOKING RACING GAME EVER CREATED AND COULD ALMOST JUSTIFY THAT 4K XBOX ONE S PURCHASE” DEVELOPER Playground Games PUBLISHER Microsoft Studios PLATFORM Win10, Xbone RELEASE DATE 27 September, 2016 Since I moved to America I’ve been told my home country of Australia is 90 percent desert, has two cities (Melbourne and Sydney), and is bursting with snakes and spiders. And koalas. Thankfully, UK developer Playground Games did a little bit more research than that for their open-world racing game Forza Horizon 3, set entirely in 'Straya. “Australia has always been one of our top choices for Horizon, ever since the beginning,” says Forza Design Director Jon Knoles. “We knew we couldn’t do Australia right until we could do beach driving, driving through the surf, and driving…

STRAFE HAS SOME OF THE GREAT MODERN AMENITIES OF NEW GAMES, BUT KEEPS STUFF FROM OLD›SCHOOL SHOOTERS DEVELOPER Pixel Titans PUBLISHER Devolver PLATFORM PC, Mac RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Wearing their love of '90s first-person shooters proudly on their sleeve, the team at Pixel Titans are making sure Strafe pays homage to the classics like Quake and Doom without being slaves to outdated design. “We aren’t trying to recreate that look exactly; we do put in some real-time lights and add some crazy physics,” explains Lead Programmer and company Co-Founder Stephen Raney. “It has some of the great modern amenities of new games, but also keeps some of the great stuff from the old fast-paced shooters.” For example, remember when classic shooters made you carry a tonne of different weapons?…

DEVELOPER Omega Force PUBLISHER Koei Tecmo PLATFORM PS4, PS3, Vita, Xbone, PC RELEASE DATE 26 August, 2016 Koei-Tecmo’s Omega Force team have to be some of the busiest folks in the industry. Ever since Dynasty Warriors became a huge hit, the company’s been laser-focused on taking its proven formula to new and interesting frontiers beyond historical fantasy. We’ve recently seen Fist of the North Star, One Piece, Dragon Quest, Zelda, and even Gundam get the 'one-man army decimating hordes of weak foes' action-game treatment. Now, Omega Force is taking on the biggest anime and manga property in years, Attack on Titan – but they’re changing things up quite a bit. In the world of Attack on Titan, humanity is under siege, living in fear of grotesque, gigantic humanoid beings known…

DEVELOPER Santa Monica Studios PUBLISHER Sony PLATFORM PS4 RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 If there’s one artistic medium where characters never truly stay dead, it’s videogames. Take the ending of God of War III, for example: it pretty solidly wraps up the saga, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any way Kratos could have survived, though, to this day, fans continue to write up their own theories and takes on what the ending really meant. Well, perhaps now we can put some of those forum arguments to rest. Not only has Kratos survived against hugely stacked odds, he seems to have left to go somewhere far, far away from the turmoil in fantasy Greece, but perhaps most surprisingly of all, Kratos has embraced part of his old life: fatherhood. DAD OF…

“I CLICK. I CACKLE, TOO, KNOWING THAT I AM LOST TO WHATEVER ELDRITCH POWER THEY HAVE CAST UPON ME. PERHAPS IT'S NOT BLOTTING ACID” Holy freaking balls, there’s a giant insect on the table. Like, seriously, it’s bigger than a goddamn football, it’s covered in spikes, and its chitinous shell is just sitting there, gleaming at me. For now, it’s not moving, but I think, if it did, I would wonder which of the CSIRO jerks leering at me now in mute understanding have slipped me some acid. Was it in the coffee? No, too mundane… Maybe one of them is some LSD-exuding mutant, the last survivor of a secret initiative now forever shut down by our tight-arse government. Maybe. Either way, they know what I’m seeing. They can probably…

+ Solid performance Affordable Excellent cooler - Slower than R9 390X May not handle 2nd gen VR titles well PRICE $440 COMPANY URL www.amd.com Welcome to the card that AMD predicts will be in over 100-million PCs within a couple of years. A bold claim indeed, but if they can lower that Aussie price, there’s a good chance it’ll be the $300 card of choice. If there’s one thing AMD is promoting about this card, it’s that it’s VR-ready, and after testing it with several of the launch VR titles, we can confirm it runs basically all of them without a stutter. It’s nice to see that AMD has finally jumped onboard the HDMI 2.0 bus, with a single HDMI 2.0 port, alongside triple DisplayPort 1.4 ports. These are…

PS4 Neo While we don’t know what it looks like yet because it wasn’t shown at E3 this year, Sony did finally officially confirm the PS4 Neo: a newer, faster, 4k gaming-capable version of the console. THE HYPE: A boost to CPU speed, GPU speed and capacity, and memory speed, means the PS4 Neo will be ideal for the first wave of 4k console gaming, and will also have the grunt necessary to drive gaming with the PSVR headset. THE GRIPE: Isn’t part of the point of consoles that you don’t need to upgrade as often? There goes that benefit. PRICE $TBA DISTRIBUTOR Sony COMPANY URL www.sony.com PlayStation VR The PSVR has the potential to bring VR to the masses in ways neither the Rift or Vive are likely…

DEVELOPER Eidos Montreal PUBLISHER Square Enix PLATFORM PS4, Xbone, PC RELEASE DATE 23 August, 2016 Human Revolution, Deus Ex's most recent offering, was predominantly a game about hope. Adam Jensen, enigmatic protagonist, found himself coming to terms with mechanical augmentations applied to his body and engaging with that most striking of cyberpunk questions: what does it mean to be human in an increasingly mechanised, digital world? Most of the answers were optimistic regarding cross-pollination between humans and machines. How times change. Events at the end of Human Revolution saw the cyborg dream come crashing down and the populace begin to treat augmented Homo sapiens with fear and suspicion. The Renaissance was over; a world of division was born. It's this that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided takes as its narrative entry…

“A COMPELLING EXPERIENCE FOR BOTH CASUAL AND HARDCORE GAMERS ALIKE, THERE'S A “GIANT PUZZLE” WOVEN INTO THE GAME” DEVELOPER Plastic Studios/Santa Monica Studios PUBLISHER Sony Interactive Entertainment PLATFORM PS4 RELEASE DATE August 2016 When you think of SIE Santa Monica, you probably think of big, angry bald men eviscerating various mythological beings in a shower of blood and frothing rage. You probably don’t recall the multitude of various PlayStation exclusives the studio has helped out on, though… and you most assuredly don’t think of dainty ballerinas prancing their way through colourful, abstract environments. Right? So you might be surprised to hear that, alongside the new God of War, Sony Santa Monica is currently helping developer Plastic wrap up development on Bound, a stunningly beautiful platform adventure game designed around the…

“AS A VAMPIRE HIMSELF, DR REID IS WRESTLING WITH THE ETHICS OF DOING WHAT HE NEEDS TO SURVIVE: FEEDING ON THE BLOOD OF OTHERS” DEVELOPER Dontnod Entertainment PUBLISHER Focus Home Interactive PLATFORM PS4, Xbone, PC RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 French developer Dontnod has given us an interesting string of titles in the past few years, starting with the Capcom-published Remember Me and continuing on into the heart-wrenching, episodic stories of Life is Strange. Dontnod's next title, Vampyr, feels like a bit of a departure from their previous titles. In fact, it’s a departure from humanity altogether. While Remember Me and Life is Strange were action-adventure and cinematic-adventure games, respectively, Vampyr is an action-role playing saga set in jolly old turn-of-the-century London, circa 1918. Well, okay, maybe we should scratch that…

DEVELOPER Nintendo EPD PUBLISHER Nintendo PLATFORM Wii U, NX RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 You have to respect Nintendo’s commitment to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nobody could accuse Nintendo of rushing it to market in an attempt to keep its flailing Wii U console alive. Let’s face facts: that ship has already sunk. But after getting some solid hands on time with Breath of the Wild, it’s clear why it’s taking so long. For starters, the world of Breath of the Wild is around 360 square kilometres in size, or 17 times the size of Twilight Princess. I got to play around in just a small fraction of that total area in a place called the Great Plateau, but even that section felt huge and filled with…

DEVELOPER Ubisoft San Francisco South Park Digital Studios PUBLISHER Ubisoft PLATFORM PC, PS4, Xbone RELEASE DATE 6 December, 2016 It took a long time to get a South Park game that didn’t suck. Now the sequel to The Stick of Truth is nearly here and it’s clear everybody involved is bringing their A-game once more. The Fractured But Whole sees the return of the New Kid, or King Douchebag as you are now known after the last game. But the kids of South Park don’t care about fantasy junk anymore; it’s all superheroes now. Now they fight over who will get a spin-off and how those spin-offs will tie into their bigger franchise plans. As you join them they’re right in the middle of their own civil war, which is…

“YOU CAN DO A WALL-RUN, THEN JUMP INTO A SLIDE AND CONNECT IT TO A GRAPPLE TO GO BACK TO A WALL-RUN. WE’RE GIVING LOTS OF MOBILITY OPTIONS” DEVELOPER Respawn Entertainment PUBLISHER Electronic Arts PLATFORM PC, PS4, Xbone RELEASE DATE 28 October, 2016 If there’s one complaint that was yelled loudest of all about Titanfall it’s that the game badly needed more content. More weapon unlocks, a real campaign, just more of everything. Well, Respawn Entertainment have heard your pleas and are happy to oblige. Aren't you lucky! Multiplayer is getting a much needed upgrade and will feature a new levelling system designed by Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer progression mastermind Todd Alderman. In addition to this, every new map and mode will be included as free updates for all…

“PLAYERS CAN TURN OFF COLLISION IF YOU’D RATHER FOCUS ON COMPETING WITHOUT IT BECOMING MORTAL KOMBAT ON ICE” It's clear Ubisoft Annecy is passionate about Steep. Every inch of this game looks and feels like a love letter to its part of the world and its natural beauty. Set partially in the Alps, the game focuses on snowboarding, skiing, paragliding and wingsuiting in an open world designed from the ground up to be a seamless multiplayer experience. How you get around the map is up to you, and you can switch your equipment at any point. This gives you the freedom to, for example, paraglide to one section of a mountain, bust out your snowboard, and ride all the way down to the bottom. The game also features an eagle-eye…

DEVELOPER NetherRealm Studios PUBLISHER Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment PLATFORM PS4, Xbone RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 NetherRealm Studios has had a pretty eventful year. Besides hosting the massive ESL Mortal Kombat X Pro League – a globe-spanning tournament series that young fighting game prodigy SonicFox won days before E3 opened – the studio’s been busy planning their next one-on-one fighter – the sequel to 2013’s Injustice: Gods Among Us. While the original Injustice was a fairly straightforward fighting game, albeit one with a very dark take on the DC superhero universe, Injustice 2 looks to shake things up by upping the stakes – and the rewards – on every battle you engage in. The tyrannical Superman has been imprisoned by Batman at the end of the first Injustice, but things have…

“JOULE EMBARKS ON A QUEST FOR ANSWERS WHILE TRYING TO GET THE MALFUNCTIONING ROBOTS BACK TO WORK” DEVELOPER Comcept, Armature Studio PUBLISHER Microsoft Studio PLATFORM PC, Xbone RELEASE DATE 13 September, 2016 It’s going to take a while for gamers to get over Mighty No. 9 and start to trust Comcept founder Keiji Inafune again. And rightfully so. But the man has also been involved in a number of brilliant games, so here’s hoping ReCore will go some way towards repairing the damage done. If you need more assurance, just know that the game is being developed in partnership with Armature Studio, and has the benefit of Game Director Mark Pacini’s years of experience from working on the Metroid Prime series to draw from. Set in the the distant future…

+ Twin HDMI 2.0 Fan headers Aura lighting system - Expensive Noisy PRICE $1249 COMPANY URL www.asus.com Strix is a new brand within the Asus Republic of Gamers range, and is meant to illustrate best of the best. If the Strix GeForce GTX 1080 is any indication, Asus is on the right track. Stacked with unique features, it might be one of the most expensive GeForce GTX 1080s on the market, but these extra goodies go a long way to solve this. As somebody who uses VR on a regular basis, having twin HDMI 2.0 ports is a godsend, as it makes setting up the VR kit and a secondary monitor that much easier. Most GeForce GTX 1080s only have a single HDMI 2.0 port with triple DisplayPort 1.4…

+ Incredible value Beautiful build quality Excellent performance - Identical to every other GeForce GTX 1070 Founder’s Edition PRICE $777 COMPANY URL www.msi.com Nvidia has taken a new route with its reference cards. In the past, when they released a new graphics card, they’d initially ship out reference cards for the first few months, until their third-party manufacturers could roll out their own stock in volume. However, with the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080, they’ve replaced this with “Founders Edition” cards, which will be around for the full life span of the product. Using a custom Nvidia cooler, third-party manufacturers are free to sell them as well, but they’re all identical. So, an MSI Founders Edition 1070 is absolutely identical to a Gigabyte Founders Edition 1070. Strangely, these cards…

 DEVELOPER The Coalition “IT’S A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT TO THE GEARS OF THE PAST WHERE YOU WERE DROPPED INTO THE MIDDLE OF WAR. IT'S MORE ABOUT THE CHARACTERS” PUBLISHER Microsoft Studios PLATFORM Win10, Xbone RELEASE DATE 11 October, 2016 A lot has changed with shooters since Gears of War first hit the scene. So the big question is: how does developer The Coalition evolve the series and keep Gears of War 4 relevant without losing its personality? Easy. By not doing too much of anything. “At The Coalition we talked about doing it right before we do it different,” says Matt Searcy, Lead Campaign Designer. “We went 25 years after the end of Gears 3 in order to give ourselves space and have new characters, new settings, a new conflict…

DEVELOPER Infinity Ward PUBLISHER Activision PLATFORM PC, PS4, Xbone RELEASE DATE 4 November, 2016 Set in the distant future, and in its own separate Call of Duty universe, Infinite Warfare portrays an Earth stripped of its natural resources, relying on the newly formed United Nations Space Alliance (UNSA) for survival and to handle off-planet colonisation. Now, a militant group known as the Settlement Defense Front (SDF) has declared war on the UNSA and killed the captain of the space-faring warship, the Retribution. It’s up to Lieutenant Nick Reyes to step up, take control of the Retribution, defend Earth, and yeah you get the picture. It’s Call of Duty, not Tolstoy. Clichéd storyline aside, right now Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare's biggest problem is its uphill battle against swarms of haters…

“PEOPLE WITH MORE MONEY THAN SENSE HAVE MADE KAMUROCHO A HOTBED OF ACTIVITIES, AND IT'S READY TO EXPLODE” DEVELOPER Sega PUBLISHER Sega PLATFORM PS4, PS3 RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Back in the 1980s, Japan looked poised to dominate the global economy. The country seemed to be unstoppable: it dominated multiple industries, property values were sky high, and the standard of living seemed to be the envy of the world. It was a period of extreme excess, and those who had gotten rich off of the economic bubble – particularly those involved in Japan’s underground organized crime syndicates – were living large and burning money like it was going out of style. In other words, it’s the perfect setting for a Yakuza game. Yakuza 0 takes us all the way back…

DEVELOPER Deck 13 PUBLISHER Focus Home Interactive PLATFORM PS4, Xbone, PC RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Deck 13 is a developer that’s been around for a bit, but who really burst onto the scene through Lords of the Fallen, an action-RPG that took a fair share of influence from FromSoftware’s venerable Souls series. The game was warmly received, and now all hands are on Deck 13 again for another tough-as-nails action-RPG adventure, but this time, we’re going to be fighting for our lives in the far-flung future. The world of The Surge is that of the technology that shapes our daily lives gone awry. Corporations rule the roost, citizens live in a surveillance state, the environment’s gone haywire due to global warming, and the best you can hope for in life…

“BECAUSE OF BOLSTERING MAGIC POWER, LUCIS HAS BEEN LOCKED IN FIERCE POLITICAL STRUGGLES WITH THE OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD” DEVELOPER Square Enix PUBLISHER Square Enix PLATFORM PS4, Xbone RELEASE DATE 30 Sept, 2016 It’s been a long, rough road for Final Fantasy XV. When the game was announced as part of a larger “Fabula Nova Crystallis” mythology spanning three games – under its original name of Final Fantasy Versus XIII – it was a PlayStation 3 exclusive. But the spotlight soon shifted to Final Fantasy XIII proper, and as that game received the bulk of Square-Enix’s international publicity push, Final Fantasy Versus XIII fell by the wayside. As years went by with only brief staff assurances that “it’s still being worked on”, fans assumed the game was vapourware. Now,…

DEVELOPER Compulsion Games PUBLISHER Compulsion Games PLATFORM PC, Mac, Linux, Xbone RELEASE DATE 26 July, 2016 (Xbox Game Preview, Steam Early Access), TBA (Final release) With one of the most interesting art styles I’ve seen in a videogame for a long time, We Happy Few is a dystopian survival game set in a retro-futuristic English village called Wellington Wells. You start the game working for the Ministry of Truth as a redactor, censoring the news and removing unhappy stories from history, all while popping the emotion-suppressing drug Joy. But, of course, things take a turn for the worst when you finally go off your meds and begin to see the world for what it is. After being labelled a “downer” and escaping the Ministry you emerge in the derelict town…

“AKUMA IN TEKKEN 7 MIGHT BE THE CLOSEST WE EVER GET TO BANDAI-NAMCO'S TEKKEN X STREET FIGHTER EVER EXISTING” DEVELOPER Bandai Namco Studios PUBLISHER Bandai Namco Entertainment PLATFORM PS4, Xbone, PC RELEASE DATE TBA 2017 Tekken 7 feels like it has been a very long time coming. While the game’s been doing very well for itself in arcades in Japan and other South-East Asian countries, the rest of the world has had to be content with replay movies and occasional playable showings at gaming and fighting game-oriented events. But with Tekken 7 on console finally confirmed for early next year, the Iron Fist Faithful can finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their long wait is almost over. The console (and, for the first time ever, PC) version of…

Sony is in a unique position when it comes to virtual reality. Of their console rivals, only Microsoft has expressed interest in actually entering the space, and that won’t be until the end of next year when its Project Scorpio console is released. Sony's nearest competitors, Oculus and HTC, both have quality headsets of their own, but they’re relying on the high-end PC market and are far more expensive devices. Meanwhile Sony has sold around 40-million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide, and each one of those units is a potential PlayStation VR customer. And if gaming history has taught us anything it’s that victories aren’t dictated by superior technology: just look at the PlayStation 2 versus the Xbox and GameCube. It’s about connecting with an audience. And that’s something Sony is…

Every year both Nvidia and AMD release new graphics cards, but over the last couple of years they’ve been minor updates rather than major refreshes. This year is similar in some ways, with both companies relying upon existing designs, but there’s a been one huge change – in the way they’re made. THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS All GPUs are made from tiny building blocks called transistors – the same as every silicon chip, in fact. For the last five years both AMD and Nvidia have relied upon the Taiwan Semiconductor Company (TSMC) to design these transistors, and they’ve been stuck on a 28nm process. This means each transistor is 28nm in size. Usually, we’d expect to see a shrink in size every couple of years – this brings lower power usage,…

“ONLY 14% OF GAMERS HAVE PCS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO RUN TODAY’S HMDS AT THE REQUIRED 90HZ FOR A SMOOTH EXPERIENCE” VR After recently returning from the world’s biggest PC hardware show, it was impossible to ignore the biggest trend sweeping PC makers – Virtual Reality. It makes perfect sense really. Only 14% of gamers have PCs powerful enough to run today’s HMDs at the required 90Hz for a smooth experience, so it’s no wonder that every motherboard and graphics card maker wants a piece of the VR action. Nearly every product at the show had VR-Ready printed in large logos over it, even though many of these products have not been certified by Oculus nor HTC. The fact that each of these VR kits cost over $1100, plus need a…