I probably lost you at the headline… Zombies and Virtual Reality? Is there a combination of things that been overdone in the past few years than immersive goggles and the undead? Well nDreams’ Bloody Zombies isn’t your typical wave based Zombie FPS title that has risen to flood the steam store as of late. It is more of a VR enhanced title with a cartoony art style and from the promotional trailers and materials looks like it will be one to keep an out on.
Bloody Zombies is a cel-shaded 2.5D brawler with colorful cartoony graphics reminiscent of Cel Damage HD or 2002’s XIII. It looks more like a gruesome over the top vibrant work of art come to life than it does the grey/brown mess other “realistic” zombie titles have adopted (is it fair to call a Zombie game realistic when it involves corpse reanimating themselves?) In this side scrolling beat ‘em up you and four friends get to explore a post apocalyptic London – finding new ways to re-murder the undead before they turn you into one of the shambling hordes. VR and non-VR players battle side by side with VR players being able to unlock hidden secrets for the rest of the party.
Anthony White, co-founder of Paw Print Games had this to say about their latest title in a recent press release:
“We’re massive fans of brawler games and have spent countless hours analyzing the genre, crafting Bloody Zombies in to a modern interpretation of the classics. VR adds a new twist to what is already a great TV experience; enhancing the gameplay and visuals and adding a wow factor. We can’t wait for people to get their hands on Bloody Zombies…”
Bloody Zombies is available for pre-order on both the PlayStation Network and Steam store front. It is currently priced at $15.19 CDN (including a pre-release 10% discount) on Steam, no official pricing is available on the North American PlayStation Store as of press time. It will launch worldwide on September 12th.
CCP Games has rolled out a new major update to EVE: Valkyrie on both Windows PC and PlayStation VR that introduces Wormholes to the multiplayer space dog fighting title. Wormholes are essentially weekly challenges that will introduce players to advanced encounters and gameplay types that will test their piloting ability. Each wormhole encounter will feature a different rotation of available ships, visuals that will help differentiate them from one another and special Wormhole only loot that may be available for a limited time.
Here is how CCP described Wormholes on their developer blog:
“Each wormhole also comes with its own pre-selected set of Ship Loadouts, which will automatically be assigned to your Launchtubes when you enter. Everyone gets the same set of Loadouts, fully upgraded, whether they normally have access to them or not. This provides an excellent opportunity for pilots to try out Loadouts that they might not currently have access to, or rarely fly, but also gives each wormhole its own distinct feel – its own little meta-microcosm.”
Wormholes are available in a separate matchmaking queue and these limited time events do not affect a pilot’s overall standings such as leaderboard rank, kill-death-ratio or other stats but players will still earn XP while participating in Wormhole events.
Also newly available is the Leagues Alpha system – Valkyrie’s answer to ladder matchmaking where players are placed in a specific pool. No longer constrained by your pilot rating players will find themselves assigned the rank of Emerald at the beginning of their League Alpha career and have a chance to ascend through the aptly named Sapphire, Ruby and Diamond ranks. CCP also wrote a blog about the basics of the League Alpha feature on their official Valkyrie league.
They give players more opportunities to be promoted within the Leagues
Seasons provide definitive end points where rewards can be given
Most importantly, Seasons can offer a clean slate so that cumulative data is not a governing factor in measuring our best pilots
In many ways, the alpha release of the Valkyrie League can be regarded as a Season in itself. Once the alpha is underway, we can see how the systems are holding up and then more accurately plan our first true Valkyrie Season.”
Vancouver based game developers Archiact VR Games are remastering their successful PC hacking simulator DarkNet for the PlayStation VR. This updated immersive hacking sim features a neon aesthetic and grid based user interface is due out this spring.
Archiact VR Games also released a small launch trailer to promote the game’s impending release on PlayStation VR. It gives the viewer a good sense of what the moment to moment gameplay of selecting nodes on a virtual grid in-front of the player but does little to explain the mechanics behind these selections. The devs obviously designed the game from the ground up for virtual reality – with the aforementioned grid requiring the user to turn their head in order to take all of it in. Underneath this grid user interface is a series of challenging logic puzzles which promise to test players ability to problem solve under pressure.
A brief interactive experience based upon the full game – not necessarily a traditional demo but more of an original experience designed after the principals of DarkNet – is available on the game’s official website if you happen to have an Oculus compatible headset. The game passed the Steam Greenlight process in the summer of 2014 but appears to be currently only available through the Oculus Home store right now, the full version is priced at $11.00 CDN on PC and will be priced at $14.99 USD upon launch.
NDreams’ interactive thriller The Assembly lands on PlayStation VR today as the new headset arrives at retail in North America.
The Assembly weaves a tale involving a morally ambiguous organization that may have made a groundbreaking discovery and the individuals that interact with the organization. Set against this world of corporate intrigue and science fiction developer NDreams explores the role of ambiguity, social phobia and the power of individual decisions in this narrative title designed to be experienced in Virtual Reality.
The PlayStation VR version is currently on sale for 25% off for PS Plus subscribers although it is also available on Windows PC via Steam. The PC version of The Assembly comes in both non-VR and VR enabled flavors depending on your preferred play style.
CCP Games VR exclusive space shooter Eve Valkyrie is going to be released as a console exclusive for PlayStation VR this coming Tuesday. Ahead of the game’s launch CCP & Sony have released a launch trailer featuring some of the characters from the game’s single player offerings.
EVE Valkyrie is CCP game’s attempt to bring the long running Eve franchise to the action flight genre. Utilizing a VR headset, like the PSVR or Oculus Rift, players are thrust into the boots of a clone fighter pilot aboard one of the larger ships within the Eve universe. While the game does feature several “single player missions” that are aimed at allowing pilots to learn the mechanics rather than to tell a cohesive narrative.
The heart of Eve Valkyrie is the Player vs Player combat – a number of modes have been since the game’s launch on PC including a carrier attack mode, a trench mode as well as new maps. The game was originally exclusive to Windows PC and has yet to make the (faster than light) jump to other platforms like Steam.
An upcoming update for the PlayStation VR version will allow cross-platform play with the Windows PC version.
As an EVE Online player I pretty much squealed at the Gurista emblem on one of the pilot’s jackets.
According to a popular post on the Resident Evil sub reddit the next entry in the franchise might be locked to PlayStation VR for a period of one year. Poster Xx-MCXCVI-xX says that they encountered an advert for Capcom’s upcoming first person horror experience on Facebook and that the small text at the bottom of that advertisement states that RE7 is “PlayStation VR exclusive for 12 months,
Capcom plans to bring Resident Evil 7 to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC next January, so this exclusivity window must pertain to just the VR exclusive features. It is not known currently if Resident Evil 7 will support VR functionality will work on existing PC VR headsets right away – meaning that the VR features are only console exclusive – or if intrepid fans will have to mod the feature into the game before the exclusivity period ends.
Sony’s PlayStation Meeting is scheduled for just two and a half weeks from now, the world will finally know what Sony’s R&D department have been quietly working on for the past few years and get a fresh look at the upcoming PlayStation VR as well as the confirmed PlayStation NEO. Not only has the PlayStation Slim’s final production design been leaked but rumors are suggesting that Sony may unveil a mysterious third product. Here is why that makes a lot more sense than you think.
PlayStation 4 Slim Confirmed In The Wild
Prior to the PlayStation NEO’s official confirmation fans speculated that a ‘PlayStation 4 Slim’ and ‘PlayStation NEO’ could indeed be one in the same. This has now been confirmed false as the PlayStation 4 Slim’s final production model & retail packaging have leaked. At least one person has a retail unit in their hands at this very moment and comparisons to the 2013 PS4 are popping up all over the place.
According to The Verge the production PlayStation 4 Slim originally appeared on an online auction. The soon to launch configuration would include a 500GB hard drive, one Dual Shock 4 and the newly redesigned console. Ideally this would replace the existing larger PlayStation 4 launch model from 2013 rather than exist alongside it, there is no need for three separate SKUs + holiday bundles on the shelf. Now would be the perfect time to phase out the launch model and offer the re-design to consumers who don’t want to spring for the premium NEO experience.
Here is a look at the retail packaging thanks to Twitter:
What We Know About ‘PlayStation NEO’
PlayStation NEO is an iterative version of the PS4 architecture that will offer players a ‘premium experience’ thanks to several pieces of upgraded hardware under the hood. Not only will it provide support for 4K media & Ultra-High-Definition Blu Ray disks but it will also offer a specific ‘NEO Mode’ for games launching as early as this October. The hardware was initially rumored for months before being confirmed by Sony’s Andrew House back in June.
So what has changed under the hood? Given that this is not the PS5, don’t expect anything too radical, instead think of the NEO as the difference between a game on Medium or High graphics settings on a PC versus Ultra.
Here is a quick run of some of the rumored changes, it should be noted that multiple outlets have vetted these changes through development sources:
Base clock speed increase from 1.6GHZ to 2.1 GHZ
GPU clock frequency upped from 800 MHZ to 911MHZ
GDDR5 Memory BUS speed upped from 176 GBS to 218 GBS
Unanswered Questions Surrounding PlayStation NEO
While we have a detailed breakdown of the specs on offer by the upcoming PS NEO there is still a lot of things we simply don’t know.
First off is how much of a boost that the NEO specific mode will give players, with only a 100MHZ~ boost on the GPU this jump is very similar to the increase is similar to the one that Microsoft included with the Xbox One S, and digitally foundry found it only meant a few frames per second in select titles. Really the core improvement will be in the memory transfer speed and processor clock speed, let’s hope they give devs enough headroom to improve beyond the base PS4 model.
How will PS4 NEO interact with the PlayStation VR which is set to launch this October? It has already been confirmed that the PlayStation NEO does not exist because the PS VR experience on the original PS4 was subpar – this rumor was swiftly and officially debunked. PSVR requires an external processing box, about half of the size of an original PS4 console, in order to provide the processing needed to render two simultaneous images for the headset. Will NEO’s updated specifics mean that the processing box will not required? Hopefully we will find out at the PlayStation Meeting!
Lastly – what kind of fabrication process and AMD APU architecture does the NEO use? The original PS4 utilized AMD’s Jaguar Core, which originally made its debut on store shelves in 2012. Graphics card technology & processor tech have come a long way in the past four years, with AMD’s own Radeon 480 (based around the long in development Polaris core) not only setting the standard for price point but also enabling mainstream to enter VR at an affordable $200 USD. Polaris has been so successful that retailers can barely keep the cards in stock – could AMD pack in the latest version of their GPU technology into the NEO?
Here Comes A New Challenger
This is the part where things go off the rails completely with absolutely no factual basis whatsoever. Notice how one particular Sony platform was not only absent from this article so far but also missing from Sony’s E3 press conference? Yup, the PlayStation Vita seems to be missing in action for the past few months – especially after a Sony Exec referred to the platform as a “Legacy Platform” cast a shadow of doubt on the 4 year old handheld.
Today on NeoGAF someone reiterated rumors that sprang up in June – that Sony would announce 3 products at their next big reveal including a “PSP like device”. It seems that the leak of the PS4 Slim spurred the resurfacing of these unsubstantiated rumors but with Sony recently patching a Kernel Exploit on the console within a matter of days perhaps there is hope for a PS Vita revival.
It doesn’t seem likely that a PS Vita successor would be announced at the PlayStation Meeting, word about this would have simply leaked from development sources unless Sony is going to chock both the general public and the development community with an early teaser – the same way that Microsoft did with the Project Scorpio announcement at E3.
Fans have stated they’d an all new handheld with a lot more power – perhaps something in line with what Nintendo is planning for its unannounced NX Handheld. Others have speculated that Sony may embrace an open source platform like Android to power a PS Vita successor.
Realistically we are more likely to see a new PS Vita SKU sometime in 2017 rather than this holiday season. Not only does Sony have two large products launching this October – PS Neo & PSVR but PS Vita and Sony is already going to have their hands tied to selling consumers on VR and iterative hardware. With the Vita continually losing retail shelf space, developer support and facing an all-digital future perhaps a refreshed hardware SKU could include often requested like triggers for use with remote-play and HDMI out port.
The Choice Is Yours
Even if a potential PlayStation Vita successor or upgraded SKU does not appear there is a lot to be excited about. This wrap-up is over 1200 words and doesn’t mention any GAMES, you know the things that you own the multi hundred $ box for. Sometimes it can be hard to get wrapped up in specs and the future of technology but there is a lot to be excited for in the near term. Sony is going to have a bit of a challenge selling console owners on VR given how niche VR experiences are on the PC – which has had access to high-end VR for months. With the availability of the NEO potential owners will have a new choice to enter the 8th generation of games and it should drive down the cost of second hand launch PS4s, making the platform even more accessible.
We will see what Sony has in-store on September 7th!
It’s going to get seriously creep in July. Capcom showed off a teaser trailer for Resident Evil 7 biohazard at the Sony Interactive Entertainment E3 press conference last night. And it looks slick.
Resident Evil 7 looks to be going back to its roots as it puts the story right back to where it all began – in the middle of nowhere. And to make things even more terrifying the game is going to be set in first person view in a photorealistic style. There hasn’t been a first person Resident Evil game since the side-game Reside Evil Survivor.
Resident Evil 7 is scheduled for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC in North America and Europe on January 24th, 2017. The full gameplay experience will also be available via the included PlayStation VR Mode.
Could the PlayStation VR, formally known as Project Morpheus, make its’ way to retail as early as next week? According a report filed by the Uk’s Daily Mail Sony has sent out invites to an exclusive event centered around the technology for next Tuesday. This event which is clearly aimed at the tech enthusiast press just so happens to coincide with the 2016 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Citing a retail listing that briefly appeared on Amazon.ca, the Daily Mail estimates that the add-on will be priced at approximately $1125 CDN (or $800 USD). Where things kind of really jump off the rails, so to speak, is their assertion that device will have a stealth launch right after the press event next week. Not since the disastrous launch of the SEGA Saturn in 1995 has a major gaming company attempted to pull the now famous “and one more thing”, launching a product at the end of a press presentation. While it might work for Apple (repeatedly), would it be the right move for Sony’s fledgling VR technology?
Sony’s major competition in the VR space, the Oculus Rift, launches later this month on the 28th for a suggested retail price of $600 USD. HTC and Valve’s first VR kit, the HTC Vive, will ship a week later on April 5th, and is already available for pre-order at a staggering $799 USD price point. Do you think Sony will beat them all to the punch, even if they launch the PSVR in select markets?
Whatever happens, BrokenJoysticks will be sure to bring it to you. While we have yet to receive an invite for this specific PlayStation event we will have staff on the ground at GDC 2016. VR is sure to be the talk of the show and with just a few short days until the doors open who knows what surprises GDC has in store for us!
