Wesley Mertz

Sea of Thieves is primarily about social interaction between the players in the shared world experience. Whether playing with real life friends, regular online gaming partners, or complete strangers, the goal is to interact and work together as a crew. In game ice breakers will be included to help strangers loosen up and bond with each other, an analogy that was given was it is like going to a pub to have a drink and meet new friends.

Even though the gaming world-renowned name remains with the company, Rare as we knew it is dead and everything we ever knew and loved about them was laid to rest years ago. I can already hear you now: why is this a big deal? Why does Microsoft purchasing a company that was actively seeking a buyer mean that the old Rare as we knew it is gone? They're still around making games for related the Xbox One, with Sea of Thieves on the way, but a huge chunk of their creative development team was lost during the transition from Nintendo to Microsoft and it shows. After founders Tim and Chris Stamper quit in 2007, they were replaced by Gregg Mayles, the current Creative Director for Rare.

Below will challenge players with a mysterious, randomly-generated island where exploration, discovery, and survival are at the forefront of the experience. The game is said to offer a Dark Souls level of danger and intrigue with its combat, which by itself will continue to garner incredible attention until the game’s release later this y

For now, though, Rare will continue with the development of Sea of Thieves in preparation for its forthcoming launch. There's plenty to do, and Rare seems like they're adding new ideas as fast as they can come up with them. The studio just revealed how players can now get sick and vomit into a bucket, then use the bucket as a weapon against friends (or alli

Although the initial reaction to The Last of Us 2 's absence was that of concern for its development status, that, at least, doesn't appear to be an issue. Sony president Shuhei Yoshida went on record after the E3 2017 presentation as saying that PlayStation held back on its E3 presence in order to make both its Tokyo Game Show and PlayStation Experience conferences more exciting. Given the fact that Yoshida was likely cognizant about how much buzz the lack of The Last of Us 2 was generating within the PlayStation fan base, it seems as though fans of Joel and Ellie won't have to wait until 2018 to receive some more significant news about Naughty Dog's second crack at a post-apocalyptic adventure ti

Like many titles announced in the last few years, Crackdown 3 has experienced numerous delays, with the latest information saying the game will release later this year, with Project Scorpio support . That said, player excitement for the massively destructive action game has waned very little, if at all, since the game was revea

Tomas: I was surprised by how involved and dynamic it all was. I took the role of captain, so I had to steer the ship towards our destination. My vision was impaired by the sails, but I knew the island we were heading to was Northwest, so I had to use the compass to aim the ship in direction. It’s a level of involvement you don’t often see in games, but it felt quite fitting for one with pira

According to Rare, the studio wants to offer a balanced experience that's equal in almost every facet. In practice, that means a game with full feature parity, but more than that it means an equal playing field from day one. So Rare also says they're planning on launching Sea of Thieves day and date on both console and PC, with launch still on track for early 2

Below is another highly-anticipated indie title , except this one comes from a small developer that has already garnered plenty of respect in the industry. Capybara Games, the developer working on Below , previously released Super Time Force , the action shooter title that received rave reviews from both gamers and critics with it released in 2

Logan: That was honestly one of the funniest parts of this demo to me. Throwing your crewmates into a cannon and shooting them either onto an enemy ship or onto land is a nice little Rare-like touch to _ Sea of Thieves _ . Of course, because I was the one launching everyone out of the cannons, that meant that I had to swim to the island by mys

Azario: Exploring the island with only a riddle to guide us added the right amount of difficulty to cause us some confusion without making us feel stupid. I could only imagine what the other riddles would ask of play

"One of the things we’re very aware of is the need for the balancing to be right. After running some recent tests, we found that PC players were 4.5% more efficient at killing skeletons than Xbox players, and this feels close enough that it’s something we’ll continue to monitor. However, PvP between platforms, or more importantly device input, is the big focus point for us as a Design team, and already we’ve been working closely with the Game Experience team to change the way the guns work to be better balanced for cross play. We’ve put in a bunch of telemetry around this, and with the change to guns it’s made them feel tonally so much more fitting, as previously they felt more like laser weapons than ancient plundered-and-pillaged gunpowder-driven blunderbuss