STACK NZ Jul #64

GAMES

FEATURE

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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.

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

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”

With so much content announced at the PlayStation media briefing, it quickly became

JULY 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.co.nz

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