Sorry, but Ubisoft isn’t making a Blade game, says the developer itself
Despite what you might have recently heard, Ubisoft itself has squashed any rumours that it’s working on a Blade game.
The initial rumour that Ubisoft was developing a game based on the Marvel character Blade was due to Instagram posts from July showing motion-capture actors in Ubisoft-branded suits. Not only that, but one of the images shows one of the actors holding a clapperboard that says the production name is Marvel.
The flame of this rumour was then reignited when YouTuber and Ubisoft leaker JorRaptor pointed out how the clapperboard also lists Bassam Tariq as the director, who is directing Marvel’s 2023 Blade reboot. However, in a move that is quite unusual for a developer to do, Ubisoft actually put out an announcement to say that, no, the studio isn’t working on a Blade game.
“Sorry to slice up the rumours, we’re not making a Blade game,” wrote the official Ubisoft Twitter account. “We can’t wait to see what our friends at Marvel Studios are cooking up for next year’s movie!”
Typically, most studios won’t bother responding to rumours, particularly if there’s no accuracy to them, but obviously Ubisoft felt like it needed to on this occasion.
To be fair to those that thought a Blade game could be on the way, both of the actors featured are video game mo-cap actors. One of the actors, Alex Martin, has even previously worked with Ubisoft on a trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2, as noted by Eurogamer, so the speculation wasn’t entirely unwarranted.
The clapperboard could have been just a bit of fun the actors were having, but there’s no solid way of knowing unless Ubisoft explains in more detail, or if one of the actors provide an explanation as to what was going on, and if it even was a Ubisoft project they were recording for.
Sorry to slice up the rumors, we’re not making a Blade game but we can’t wait to see what our friends at @MarvelStudios are cooking up for next year’s movie!
Destiny 2 datamine shows off Fortnite crossover skins, zero mentions of best-fruit Peely
Destiny 2 fans that feel like the game is missing a certain chug-jug flair might be happy to learn that some Fortnite crossover skins have leaked online.
While both Destiny and Fornite are both shooters, in general their tone is quite different, with one obviously meant to be taken a bit more seriously than the other. So when you hear ‘Fortnite x Destiny 2 skins,’ you might rightly think ‘oh no, are they putting a giant banana man in Destiny,’ but as shown by dataminer Ginsor, the skins actually fit the bill pretty well.
This weekend, Ginsor posted a tweet showing a screenshot of three skins that will be coming to Destiny 2 at some point in the future, showing what looks to be a Titan, Warlock, and Hunter donning some new cosmetics, inspired by the Black Knight, Drift, and Omega skins in Fortnite.
Because all that was found so far were these three skins, it isn’t clear how the collaboration might expand beyond that, or if any kind of Destiny 2 cosmetics will appear in Fortnite in return.
A showcase is set for tomorrow (August 23) that will show off the future of Destiny 2, providing details on Season 18, the Arc 3.0 subclass update, and more as-of-yet unannounced plans.
While we don’t know if anything Destiny related will come to Fortnite any time soon, there is one current crossover that’ll have you rockin’ the dragon. Skins for Goku, Vegeta, Bulma, and the deadliest cat-god around Beerus are now available in the battle royale, including some other fun activities too.
The event is running until August 30, and has a number of cosmetics to collect, including the Shenron Glider. Similar to the Spider-Man web swinging mechanic, there’s a unique move that’s been added to the game – the famous Kamehameha, which for some reason Vegeta can also do, which is just plain wrong.
Yakuza creator wants his next game to “be like a Tarantino film”
In a recent interview, Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi said that his next game at his new studio will be “like a Quentin Tarantino film.”
Nagoshi recently spoke to German publication 4Players (translations by VGC), where he provided some light details about his next game, a new IP from Nagoshi Studio at NetEase. While he wasn’t able to provide any concrete details, he did talk about how he doesn’t want to move too far away from his roots.
“Of course, I can’t reveal too much about our game yet, but I can give a rough idea: It will definitely contain violence as a game element, but I don’t want to go too much in the direction of thriller or even horror,” Nagoshi said.
“I want my game to be more like a Quentin Tarantino film – so there can be humour. Something that’s just intimidating or just bloody and brutal doesn’t suit my taste – I want a human touch, a bit of silliness and a bit of seriousness, that’s what I’m in the mood for at the moment.”
Nagoshi also touched on when everyone can expect to see something, which he had to keep vague, but he did note that he thinks he will go public with the title “sooner than other developers would.”
Late last year, Nagoshi confirmed that he was leaving the studio behind Yakuza, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, before announcing his new studio in January of this year. Ironically, when Nagoshi announced his new studio, he did note that the reason he left is wanting to do something different, but clearly there are certain parts of his video game style he just can’t leave behind.
While it was only very briefly teased last month, Yakuza 8 is in development, and looks to be a direct sequel to the turn-based Yakuza: Like A Dragon.
Saints Row Review: Stripped-back shooter-focused sandbox feels aimless outside of super set-pieces
The corporate military is muscling in on my turf.
I’ve got a nice little racket going where I hurl myself in front of traffic, get fired 50 feet up in the air and rake it in from multiple bogus insurance claims, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them steal my innovative idea.
So as I gun it over to where they’re set up in my pearlescent lambo, I need to select the perfect piece of equipment to show them who’s boss. The uzi will do nicely.
It doesn’t take long and with the still-hot uzi holstered, it’s back to launching myself under the nearest semi-truck – only six more runs until I can afford a tuxedo.
Saints Row has always been the dream game for people both 13 and 13-at-heart, but this one is a soft-reboot of the sandbox series that started life as a more straight-laced GTA clone that progressively got sillier and sillier until its boots didn’t have laces anymore, just half a can of Silly String and spaghetti where they used to be.
Where things inflated to a super-powered degree with Saints Row 4, this instalment doubles down on the gun-toting, action movie-quipping jumble of fun that Saints Row earned its gurning reputation with in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s.
But while some of its storytelling and expansiveness has evolved with the times, a few of its core ideas feel like a holdover from that very specific era of open-world gaming.
Saints Row is at its best during showpiece missions.
This is where it can make the most explosive use of its shiny environments, the tightest use of its solid, kinetic action, and the most joyous use of its goofy script.
The Saints Row series has always low-key had top-tier voice work – like in Saints Row 4 how Keith David basically played the same character as he does in Rick and Morty, just years earlier – and it’s no different here. Everyone in the booth is obviously having a blast and it shows.
It’s also where you get the best combat encounters, because there’s more design, direction and context than out in the open-world of Santo Ileso – the brand-new city that the Saints now call home.
From the tighter camera angle to the easy-trigger explosions – where you just have to press a button for your character to snap and shoot flammable barrels and the like – everything seems geared to making the shooting more intense and engaging, since it’s now the main focus for your powered-down character.
Whether you’re rescuing your buddies, storming cardboard castles in a city-wide LARP, or firing dynamite from a cannon to stop a museum heist, there’s loads of memorable, moreish, and mad-cap mischief to get lost in. And with a handful of fully voiced character personalities to choose from, it all feels very personal to you.
That’s as well as the rightly-lauded Boss Factory character creator, which gives you some good old-fashioned sliders to mess about with to give your character a unique look, with everything from more normal hairstyles to more outlandish metal skin to choose from.
There are a huge amount of customizable cars and other vehicles to collect in Saints Row
The design of the other characters and factions feels more pedestrian though. It seems very inspired by Ubisoft open-world games, with that corporate-mandated neon-pink punk vibe that feels very familiar and like what we’ve seen already in the likes of Watch Dogs 2, Rage 2, Dying Light 2, and most similarly, Far Cry 6.
It’s great to see different kinds of characters represented too, but it feels a little shallow, particularly next to the stereotypical portrayal of the Latin American gang, Los Panteros.
Pre-release, a lot was made of this being a more “grounded” entry in the series that had spiralled out of control, but I feel like this Saints Row is maybe even looser than Saints Row 4. There you had the central conceit of being in a simulation that gave you superpowers, but now there isn’t a similar peg that holds things together.
Yes, you’re building your criminal empire by founding different crooked enterprises, but the main way you interact with them is still through icons on the map, dotted around the city, that teleport you to where you need to be.
This, coupled with cueing main missions up from your in-game phone, can make you feel quite disconnected from your surroundings. So although the music and atmosphere is really good inside of the missions, small activities and moving around the open world can feel flat and abrupt.
One example I can think of for this is the chop shop side missions where you steal a rare car and race it back to your garage to sell for parts. After the ride back, which functions like a GTA-style police chase with different levels of aggro, you drive into a glowing circle outside of your destination and everything stops dead.
It’s quite low-stakes and arcadey, which is good if you like ticking off boxes and watching your income number go up – which I do – but it’s definitely not the grounded, more believable role-play that some people might be expecting.
In Saints Row you establish your gang and take on the other factions throughout the city
Another issue is that you can feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over. While there are a lot of different Side Hustles and activity types, there are a lot of instances of the same activity all over the map and your businesses require around 7-ish repetitions of the same kind of mission to max out.
Again, because you’re mainly interacting with them as icons on a world map and the city is so big, the discovery factor is quite low and the temptation is to just slog and grind through all of one business type because there’s not a lot of impetus to drive to something different.
It’s a very hard balance to strike between giving the player freedom of choice as well as lots of variety, but Saints Row slips slightly into aimlessness when you’re scanning the map for your next diversion.
With that said though, in 4K on PS5 the world looks good with a huge sense of scale and decent density once it gets going – even if the frame rate can suffer when the going gets tough.
There’s a lot to like and a lot to laugh at in Saints Row as you raise hell around Santo Ileso with your unique boss. Collecting clothes and cars as you scale up your network of businesses is compelling as you accumulate wealth and solidify your spot at the top. But outside of the super set-piece main missions, it’s easy to bounce off the more repetitive elements of the open-world.
Saints Row drops on August 23, 2022, on PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Google Stadia. Tested on PS5, code provided by publisher.
Rockstar is taking down prototype Grand Theft Auto videos released by one of the game’s creators
Mike Dailly, one of the founding members of the studio that created Grand Theft Auto, seems to have had some prototype videos of the original game taken down by Rockstar.
If you aren’t familiar with Dailly, he was the first employee at DMA Design, which later became Rockstar North, and went on to make the graphics engine for GTA. Dailly also runs a YouTube channel where he uploads a variety of techy things, including some behind the scenes, early tests of games he worked on, including prototypes of the first GTA, but he’s now claimed that Rockstar has filed a takedown on them.
Two of the videos that were taken down, as reported by PC Gamer, showed off some renders of prototype graphics developed by Dailly in the early 90s. The first was a rotating, isometric prototype, and the other a top-down one, both of which showed buildings and streets. Another video showed an old beta copy of GTA.
Dailly explained to PC Gamer that the reason for the takedown was due to him posting development footage without permission. In response, Dailly has now removed all development related GTA work from his YouTube. “Only direct examples of my own work are left – work that was never used in GTA, but ‘inspired’ parts of its evolution,” wrote Dailly on Twitter.
In a message to PC Gamer, Dailly expressed frustration at the situation, saying “Developers should always be allowed to show their work, especially works that are 28 years old!” It’s important to note that the original GTA isn’t legally available in any format other than second-hand, original copies of the game.
So even from a financial position, it doesn’t make sense for Rockstar to takedown these videos, because they’re not even profiting from any sales from the game. Dailly’s videos only take in a few hundred views, so they aren’t even likely to cause any material harm, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like Dailly will be able to continue posting about GTA related content.
I see Rockstar are going full fuckers mode again, issuing copyright strikes to any GTA video they can find – including both my prototype videos. So now they’re trying to block all release of anyone’s work on a game – and any old development footage.
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