STACK NZ Jul #64

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FEATURE GAMES visit
JULY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
impression on us, so it seemed fitting then that
this year it was the first game we played with
Ubisoft, who should be commended for having
practically every game on their booth playable.
Our mission was to infiltrate an embassy,
seek out and terminate some explosives, and
kill all the enemy AI terrorists in the process.
Moving methodically from room to room,
checking left and right, and finally finding an
explosive device led to a defensive sequence
where the players were tasked with holding off
incoming waves of adversaries.
Siege is an exciting game where every
mission can be approached using varied
strategies, and where your fellow team
members are vital to your survival.
Since its big reveal in 2013 at the Ubi press
conference, the need to play The Division has
been paramount for STACK, and our wish was
granted in a three-player co-op mission where
we began in a bleak, deserted Times Square.
Our mission was to enter the quarantined Dark
Zone, eliminate any opposition, retrieve some
supplies, and head to an extraction area.
Cover is important in The Division – a few
hits from the enemy and it’s all over, so staying
protected is essential. Players can move from
cover to cover, targeting the opposition in a
series of running firefights. When we finally
reached the extraction zone, the two other
co-op teams were also in the vicinity, so we did
what any self-respecting gamer would do – kill
each other. This was just a snapshot of the
open-world RPG shooter, so expect more at
Gamescom next month.
“Awright, geezer, we’re edding to London”
for the next Assassin's Creed. We're a fan
of the Creed franchise so were eager to see
where Ubisoft would take Syndicate after the
maelstrom that accompanied the release of
AC: Unity. Set in 1868 during the Industrial
Revolution, the series has made a few new
additions to the most modern setting in an
Assassin’s Creed game yet. First up, you can
either play as Jacob Frye or his sister Evie,
fighting to take back London from the Auld
Enemy, the Templars. New mechanics include
a rope launcher enabling swift traversal of
buildings, although you can still climb and the
controls here immediately felt leaps and bounds
(pun intended) tighter than Unity. A further
addition is the ability to apprehend a horse and
carriage, and these are surprisingly responsive
to use.
Our four-player drop-in/drop-out co-op Ghost
Recon: Wildlands demo began in Bolivia,
where the Ghosts are tasked with tacking down
an informant known as Alvarez. This is the
largest game ever undertaken by Ubisoft and
purportedly has the best AI the publisher has
ever created. Players have complete autonomy
over how to take on and defeat the expansive
Santa Blanca drug cartel controlling the country.
The game doesn’t have to be played with
four players; one can lead a team of three
AI-controlled Ghosts and issue commands.
Wildlands is still pretty raw, so we don’t expect
to see this until late 2016 at the earliest.
With so much content announced at the
PlayStation media briefing, it quickly became
a destination hot on our list. This began with
a behind-closed-doors gameplay demo of
Uncharted 4.
After seven years, The Last Guardian
finally made its appearance at E3. A behind-
closed-doors extended gameplay demo with
Fumito Ueda leading from the front ended in
a flurry of questions, with him countering the
obvious, “Why has it taken so long?” with a
simple, “It wasn’t ready”. We were only privy
to a short segment of play but it’s a game that
will demand a lot of time and attention, and
clearly features the clever, offbeat and curious
gameplay design we’ve come to expect from
Team ICO.
On to Project Morpheus, Sony’s Virtual
Reality tech; we sampled this last year with a
title that involved street luge, and left believing
it still had some way to go before it ended up
on the shelf for sale at JB. This year we left
the Sony room buzzing, impressed with the
progress that had been made in just 12 months.
Kitchen, a two-and-a-half minute horror
sequence for Morpheus, proved to be
exceptionally popular and it was terrifying to
sit through. We watched as a female Dutch
journalist leapt up out of the chair screaming
and ran straight into the booth wall, still wearing
the headset during the same demo. It remains
to be seen how developers implement this
tech with games like CoD – area and tethering
limitations will restrict the compatibility of some
gaming genres, but it will be perfectly suited to
others. While the tech still isn’t as visually sharp
as we would like it to be, Morpheus certainly
brings an intriguing (and immersive) new