Hershel Beadle

It is extremely important for us that sword combat feels right for the Sea of Thieves world. We don’t want to use excessive UI elements, we want to maintain first person, and it needs work neatly alongside the numerous other game mechanics. It’s also critical for sword combat to work all kinds of emergent scenarios. it won’t always be 1v1, it might be 3v3 or 5v1,

Even though Rare Replay was one of the most pleasant surprises of 2015, it's been far too long since Rare has made a game that feels truly aligned with its original development vision. Yes, the masterminds of yesteryear have moved on from the heralded development studio, but when we got a glimpse of Rare's next project, it's hard not to feel that awesome blend of nostalgia and novelty that this UK-based developer seemed to capture so well.

To sail the seven seas, embracing the life of a pirate is a dream that E3 is keen to deliver with Rare's Xbox and Windows 10 exclusive Sea of Thieves . After debuting at Microsoft's press conference during E3 2015 , everyone expected more of the first-person pirate adventure game to be shown this year as well. Rare did not disappoint on expectation, delivering the first gameplay as well as a new cinematic trailer. Rare even went beyond expectations, going onto the Youtube Live E3 stream and showing off another block of gamep

It's been a while since we've heard new details about Capybara's long-in-development dungeon crawler, hasn't it. I continue to maintain that the demos of Below that I've spent time with are some of the best gaming experiences I've had in quite some time, but we are getting to the point where it's hard not to wonder what mouse click the next web site hold up is. Capy is a studio loaded with immensely talented people who take a ton of pride in what they do, and the hope here is that the final touches are being put into place. Below was originally set to be a 2015 title, and Capy has gone into the portion of its development cycle where it falls completely silent until the final title is released. Now that it's 2016, it would be wonderful to see a new trailer or two before a launch before March 31 of this year. Let's face it, if we go through another six months without hearing anything about Below, it's going to be hard to remind gamers why they should care about this wonderful title all over again.

And yet…as pleasing as it was to eventually get to grips with the ship’s functions — jostling between control of the wheel and micro-managing of the sails, during solo sessions — or as enticing the next island on the horizon was to make landfall over, it’s hard not to come away from Sea of Thieves and think: "OK…but what else is there?" Admittedly while the beta did restrict activities to purely hunting down treasure, to say the more "in-between" segments — the mundane segments if you will — proved to be the more entertaining and/or insightful segments brings up a worrying and (potentially) lacking hook that Sea of Thieves’ gameplay sorely needs.

It’s in no way surprising that the mantra of "…but what do I do?" or variations thereupon, has lingered over Sea of Thieves like a pungent-but-irremovable odor. While there was always a strong case that there’d already been a fair amount of intrigue built up for what Rare — proper Rare that is, not Kinect Sports-shackled "Rare" — was cooking-up, prior to and since its reveal back at E3 2015 (which admittedly garnered somewhat of a deflated "eeeeeehhhhhh" reaction from yours truly), details pertaining to its content, its progression, its finer details outside of an odd sample of footage and some rather unfunny plodding through voluntary player commentary, have been somewhat conserved. For what purpose though; after all, you and I both know Microsoft need all the good marketing they can get their hands on if they’re to give Xbox a reasonable chance in 2018.

Ah yes, 2016 is here. We've finally gotten to the point in our planet's history where the current year almost sounds fictitious. Bad quips about how the number of years that have passed aside, 2016 is set to be a downright fascinating 366 days when it comes to video games (that's right, it's a leap year - here's to hoping you found this out from a gaming article). If there's one thing that there isn't enough of on the Internet every year, it's articles hoping for certain aspects of a new year to be wonderful. In honor of this, we're bringing you three wonderful wishes for each major gaming entity (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC) over the next four days that, if true, might just make 2016 the best year for gaming yet. While the Xbox One is very much in second place, Microsoft's heavy consumer focus over the past year definitely has put the Xbox One in prime position to be a downright awesome console.

Of course, the abundance of open water does inevitably lend itself to islands to stop by and pillage -- hearkening, of course, to the more casual affairs of Wind Waker and the game does indeed share many similarities — obvious or otherwise, good and bad. But if anything, Sea of Thieves reminds me more so of Jalopy — a rather unexciting-yet-ironically-stimulating simulation of driving one’s car down a highway. And just like that game, there’s an uncanny loft of satisfaction to be had in the mundane and the repetitive. Particularly when you’re lucky enough to land yourself with a crew equally as focused as yourself...and not just there to troll or ruin the fun for everyone's sake, which sadly me and a friend got paired up with on our venturing for treasure. Disappointing as it is for some to play mutiny (albeit unintentionally) and ride your ship away from the island you’re stuck on, perhaps that’s just part of the general risk. After all, this is a game about pirates; just like the Souls games, the anarchy and unruliness of the real world bleed fittingly into the context of the premise.