Saints Row Goes To Hell

Earlier we reported that Saints Row developer Volition was teasing something and now we know. Introducing Saints Row IV: Gat Out of Hell



As the trailer shows the leader of the Saints is dragged to hell in order to marry Satan's daughter, It's up to Jonny Gat and Kinsey to rescue him. Obviously being in Hell leaves the door open for dead characters to return and some pretty incredible powers. The super powers of are replaced by angel wings, demon powers and dual blades.  Looks like hell will be home to some pretty epic powers


In this stand alone expansion you'll be able to switch between Gat and Kinsey at will or play co-op. You wont require Saints Row IV to play which is handy as Gat Out of Hell is coming to new-gen systems as well as old-gen. But you might be the collecting sort and want this to sit next to Saints Row IV and be on next gen... Yep introducing Saints Row 4: Re-elected. SR4:RE will feature the base game, all the dlc, the two expansions and (quoting the devs here) a slight graphics boost.

Both Gat Out of Hell and Re-elected will both hit January 27th, will be available either separately or as a bundle (UK pricing unknown). There is a detail worth noting here, you wont get to create your character in Gat Out of Hell so if you want to see your boss you need SR4 save data and there doesn't appear to be any cross gen save transfer.

Abe's Take
This dose look really great and I do love me some Saints Row. I am however torn between which gen to get it on. I all ready have a history on 360. It was great taking my Saints Row Initiation station character to SR3, then SR: Ingratiation Station and then in to SR4. However I was expecting 2015 to be the year my 360 stops getting new-new games.

New 3DS & New 3DS XL Announced

Well this is surprising, we knew there was a Japanese 3DS direct today but everyone thought it will be a run of the mill "upcoming games" direct boy was we wrong!

Update: Nintendo UK has said we won't see the device till 2015, Apparently (unconfirmed) the N3DS will launch alongside Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

Update 2: Seemingly backing up the rumour of the new system launching along side MH4U in the west, Nintendo has announced an Japanese bundle featuring the NEW 3DS XL and MH4G (which is the Japanese name of MH4U). Just to be clear MH4U is NOT a N3DS game but will "accept" the new buttons.

Update 2: Here is the announce trailer from the Japanese direct

Original Story: Meet the NEW 3DS and NEW 3DS XL (N3DS), let's get this clear these aren't your usual refresh/new design. According to the Nintendo direct these consoles feature a better screen where the 3D effect works at greater angle, NFC (for Amiibo), micros SD slot, triggers and a C-Button that will act as an analogue stick. (like the circle pad pro).

But most importantly Nintendo announced that Xenoblade Chronicles is getting a remake exclusive to the N3DS. The reason for the exclusivity? The N3DS has more powerful CPU. Apparently the game was something they wanted to do with the "old" 3DS but it simply wasn't possible.

An update is also on its way that will give us themes for the 3DS's menu. Starting with Mario and Zelda Themes.

Abe's Take
This is a surprising move, creating an sub generation of 3DS that can play games the other models can't. I want it on record that I predicted an 3DS Pro with these features to act as a backup Wii U gamepad.

I don't foresee major issues as long as the western naming is clear enough that these exclusive games won't work on 3DS. I suggest Super 3DS (i really like the SNES buttons on the N3DS) or 3DS U

SHULK COMFIRMED

This will be a short one but a new Character trailer has appeared on Nintendo eShop for the New Smash Bros


Update: Here's the Trailer


Original Story: The new trailer shows of Xenoblade lead character Shulk taking on Bowser, Link and Marth as well as assorted game play pieces. His blade's various forms are the basis for his attacks, he appears to have a dash, counters, dodge and blind side attacks. his final smash is shown to be a pumbleing by his party and an alternative swimwear costume briefly appears.

Check out the eShop trailer on Wii U or 3DS, We'll update when we find a more "usable" source. This however confirms the previous leaks as true which we wont repeat here as to not anger Sakrai-San

This isn't from the trailer.

Saints Row 5?

After THQ imploded luckily several titles and studio was auctioned off. Saints Row developer Volition was luckily bought with the Saint's Row IP by Deep Silver (publishers of Dead Island) and everyone wonder what was next? Well the developers are teasing something for PAX.

The above image was released with the tagline "something wicked this way comes" now obviously that's a "Fler De Saint" the symbol of the Saints Row series. However there is clearly 666 in the Fler De Saint and the image appears to be a Ouija board. Could be be approaching a supernatural psudohorror Saints Row game? The developers did say they wanted to take the series in a different direction.

The thought occurs to me that the Saints Icon is in between the Yes and No, with this being an teaser image is possible that Saints Row ISN'T the game they'll be announcing.

The last Saints Row game to be released suffered from THQ wanting to maximise money. SR4 was 3 different Saints row projects fused together. Rise of the Domimatrix was going to be a stand alone DLC where the Saints was trapped in a computer simulation. Saints Row: The fourth was going to be about the saints becoming heroes after saving the city twice and becoming a spec ops team and finally Saints Row 5 would of been about becoming President.

Abe's Take
Saints Row has been a favourite of ours ever since SR1 thanks to its sense of fun. When GTA 4 appeared in all it's angsty, somber brown-ness Saints Row was doing Co-op stunt jumps on Mini Moto fighting motorbike samurai. I look forward to the games return

Dragon Age Multiplayer Trailer Lands

Yesterday we reported that Dragon Age Inquisition would be getting an multiplayer mode based on the Mass Effect 3's survival styled mode but turned into randomly generated mini campaigns. Today we have a game-play trailer!



first thing would like to post a correction, it appears the multiplayer in fact has 12 characters; 4 for each class, and not 9 as mentioned yesterday

Back to the video. As you can see there is a lot of interplay between the different class's abilities, we also get a look at the games rather nice crafting and customisation features. The Missions will be given to us by the main games' advisers which provides a nice link

Abe's Take
The multiplayer is shaping up to be really interesting and I am might impress by the crafting syetem

Blocker Who?

Minecraft for 360 and ps3 has received lots of DLC skin packs and mash up packs that tie into upcoming films and even other gaming franchises for mash up packs but coming in September is a big one.

The Doctor is in... Minecraft. in September the FIRST pack will hit featuring  5 doctors (including attack eyebrows), their companions and a selection of playable monsters which yes includes an Dalek. The pack will cost £1.99
They will be several DLCs that will launch along side new episodes of the show and will reflect those episodes. Here's hoping that's more monsters and less Clara outfits.
Oh go on here is a picture of the Dalek in Minecraft that I know you're dying to see

Abe's Take

It's always been a shame that I wasn't able to use my PC Minecraft skin I made on the console version. However the Skin packs have been good and certainly are cheap enough. I just hope this skin pack transfers to the X1/PS4 versions as we know some of the skin packs are "trapped in licencing" agreements. We still dont have an expected release date for Minecraft new-gen as it's failed cert testing on PS4 and nearly ready for cert tests on X1. "all goes well" we're looking at mid september

Miyamoto Wants To Leave "Passive Gamers" behind

The Wii did well, I mean really really well, A 100,000,000 sales. It probably really kickstarted the "casual game" trend and something Nintendo has tried to cash in on during the Wii U's life but Legendary games designer and father of Mario, Zelda and Metroid, Shigeru Miyamoto wants to change that.

During an interview with EDGE magazine Miyamoto was discussing his plans moving forward and his desire to move away from gamers who what he refers to as having a "passive attitude". The designer lamented their attitude of "Okay, I am a customer. You're supposed to entertain me" he even goes as far to say "it's pathetic they don't know how interesting it is if you move one step and challenge yourself".

The gaming legend believes it time to move one "Because of the spread of smart devices, people take games for granted now" and the shift away from the "passive" gamer is a good one for Nintendo going forward, they no longer need to worry about the game fitting in with the daily lives of the general public.

Abe's Take
I dont see this as an attack on the casual gamer as the casual gamer doesn't care what "behind the scenes people" think, as evidenced by the whole " Candy Saga" early this year. But I think this is also aimed at the Call of Duty "hardcore" gamers, those who dismiss Nintendo based on style of graphics alone. As such I don't see this as the end of Mario or Nintendo's style.

I also don't think his words (pathetic) wasn't meant as an attack seeing as his is probably the only man in the increasingly corporate world of video games that is there for fun and refuses to take himself seriously.

Dragon Age Gets Co-op

We're big fans of Co-op here in the GK-UK (not) Tower and when ever we see a game where you have more than one chum with you through out the game we always ask "is it co-op?" usually it is not. Bioware has been trying co-op out, Mass Effect 3 had a progression based horde mode that turned out to be a lot of fun and they are back to take another crack at it with Dragon Age Inquisition 

Unlike their previous attempt Dragon Age's co-op has a lot more depth. At launch you'll be able to play through 3 light narrative campaigns that will play out in randomly generated levels, Though the campaigns are themed so you unlikley to be discovering an human castle in the middle of the Elven ruins campaign.

Who will you be playing as you ask? Not your Inquisitor (Spin on it!), not your companions or an random custom character. You'll be playing as what is basically the Inquisitor's (that's you) Spec-ops team. They're being described as Sub-Followers. They wont be fleshed out as much as the main characters but they will have distinct personalties and will apparently "banter" with each other. At launch there will be 9 playable characters, three for each class and each will have their own skill trees. You'll be able to collect and use the same loot as in single player for your co-op character.

Like Mass Effect 3's mode there will be the option of using real money to buy loot chests, which can yeild new characters, skins and weapons but they can also be bought with in game money and nothing is "locked behind a pay wall" so there will no paying to win (which frankly in a co-op game isn't as much of an issue). They plan to surport the co-op the same way as Mass Effect 3's there will be regular FREE DLCs that will add loot, levels, missions and characters. Loot found in missions can be shared between your player characters as-well as broken down to craft new items.

Team work will be vital in co-op as the single players tactical camera wont appear in Multi player teams will have to coordinate attacks, buffs and heals to take on these missions. If a player is killed outright (assuming there is a timed revive mechanic) then the enemies become stronger.

But why not full co-op you may ask, apparently like Bethesda co-op is something they always put on the board when making a new game but for various reasons it never sticks. Bioware say that this time it was they wanted to deliver 5 things Open World, Story, Characters, Visuals, and Inquisition. That combined with the strain of working on an brand new engine it wasn't "the right time" though they did point to Star Wars: Old Republic to show they are working on bring "true co-op" to Dragon Age (and possibly Mass Effect)

Abe's Take
This sounds very promising. Mass Effect 3's co-op turned out to be amazing by adding RPG levelling to an horde mode they fixed the obvious lack of progression. People are all ready bringing up Diablo and Borderlands comparisons thanks to its plan on abusing you're LOOT lust. Overall this seems like a decent upgrade to Mass Effect 3 and the amount of depth seems rather fantastic.

Dragon Age Inquisition can be preordered HERE which also comes with the nifty flame weapons

Mario Kart gets expanded!

For years people have wanted Nintendo to scrap Mario Kart and replace it with Smash Kart. Basically the same thing but with other Nintendo characters but looks like Mario Kart DLC might just grant that wish!


Update - Some promo art work for the DLC has appeared on the Mario Kart 8 site and appears to show (in rather tiny images) tracks based on F- Zero, Animal Crossing and Excitebike. As well as classic tracks such as Wario Gold Mine return

Yes Link and others are coming to Mario Kart 8 as part of two upcoming DLC's.

So far Nintendo has announced 2 packs at £7 each. The first is set to hit in November and will feature Tanooki Mario, Cat Peach and (Skyward) Link, 4 vehicles including Blue Falcon (Captain Falcon's Ride) and a Cat-Mobile, and 8 new tracks.

 The second DLC will hit in May and will feature Animal Crossing's Villager and Isabel, Dry Bowser, 4 new vehicles and yet another 8 tracks.  

Purchasing both packs (bundle or separate) will also score you 8 coloured Shy guys AND Yoshi

Abe's Take
It is worth noting that November is suspected release date for Smash Bros (acording to Amazon's Preorder page for the Smash Bros "fight pad") which comes with Amiibo, which was confirmed to work with Mario Kart 8 and seeing as Link and Villiager have Amiibos (Sadly Dry Bowser dose not!) its not hard to see a connection, Though I doubt you'll need the figure to unlock them unless you can unlock Link with out the DLC by using the Amiibo

Pokken Annouced

It was rumoured, hinted at and even trade marked but no one thought it would of actually happened but it has Pokken Tournament has been officially announced



For those who don't know you (but can probably guess from the name) Pokken is a combination of Pokemon and Tekken (see what they did there?). The game is developed by the core Tekken team and will hit Japanese arcades next year. we can assume that it will reach over here on Wii U because the Japanese trailer is full of lovely Germanic letters and English words, in fact not one piece of Kanji is spotted in the trailer.

Abe's Take
This like Hyrule Warriors at first seems like a bizarre cross over yet makes perfect sense and I cant wait to hear more about it, I sure hope it dose land over here on Wii U as it is desperate for more fighting games

A Wild WWE 2K14 Gameplay Fottage Appears!

As we start to see true new-gen graphics appear do you know who i feel sorry for? Realistic Artist and Animators. Those guys who've spent the last 15 years painstakingly rending real people's faces or every bump and dip in a car's design, and spending 100 hours watching how they move and behave to accurately represent that in-game.  Why do i feel sorry for them? because look at what can be done without them.

The new game features laser scanned wrestlers (same tech used to make Forza 5's cars) and motion capture in a special built (to regulation) wrestling ring. As you can see it looks might impressive but you might say "sure in a screen shot it looks good" which is true most published screen shots are prettied up a bit. so how about 3 videos of it in action. 2 are entrance videos so you can see the graphical quailty (sadly one had to be "acquired from gamespot" but one is off screen (video recorded of a tv) of an actual match played (baddly) by joe public in Gamescon



I really liked the number of "hit" animations there was in that video. As of someone who spent a lot of time recently playing 2K14  its nice to see the number of animations increased (5 fold we're told by press release)
I also liked how the wrestlers leg stayed hung on the rope after the suplex, It would be fun if something can be done with that.

Here are Randy Ortons and Goldust (who i assume is a different guy now) entrance videos




As you can see those realistic artists best start learning how to draw fantasy and SciFi if they want to keep working

Abe's Take
Always been a fan of wrestling games but ever since the wrestlers I grew up with in both WCW and WWE have disappeared to be replaced by American wish fulfilment i have become enamoured with the custom character suites so i wonder how my "traditional" character created with sliders will compare to these laser scanned icons.

Zombies Coming To GTA V?

What game cant be improved by adding zombies? Seriously think we'd all play a football game where the dead also roamed the pitch and keepers become exceptionally nervous being not allowed to leave the goal area and all.

This WAS NOT found by the code monkeys

The reason for the Zombie infused talk? Seems that code monkeys have discovered evidence of Zombie DLC for single player and multiplayer in the games coding, there are in fact "screenshots and videos" but they are just of the game loading then screens of code checking for said undead DLC before crashing And as such not really worth sharing here, a quick Youtube or Google search will help if you need that curiosity itch to be scratched.

As always take this with a pinch of salt as it possible the code they found was a place holder or a scrapped idea.

Abe's Take
The Zombie DLC for Red Dead was fantastic and well done, if we see a similar take in GTA V and GTA Online it could be a game changer. If Red Deads head shot only zombies invade GTA Online it could present a breath of fresh air to the "watch the dots" nature of GTA:O

Looks like someone pressed the wrong button

Whopsy looks like someone pressed the wrong button at Xbox Live and a game has gone free!

UPDATE: It appears that trials is apart of a new feature called play day, which seems to offer 1 day of free access to a game before it locks up and asks for money.

Head to the Xbox Live page HERE and claim a free copy of the rather brilliant (if not frustrating) Trials Fusion for Xbox One.

Abe's Take

F***ing run before they realise!

UPDATE: the non-demo demo idea was a key selling point of EA's Access program and its cool to see MS jump on that idea

Rise Of The Tomb Raider becomes X1 Exclusive

Well this was completely unexpected, after being annouced at E3 Rise of the Tomb Raider (sequel to the awesome Tomb Raider reboot) as a multi-platform title we assumed it would be coming to all systems but not any more!

Today at Gamescon Microsoft dropped a bomb shell Rise Of The Tomb Raider is Xbox One exclusive. During the stage show they used the word "exclusive" and not another phrase that popped up alot "first on Xbox" and interviews with Crystal Dynamics seem to suggest that Rise Of The Tomb Raider is Permanently exclusive to X1 and not a timed exclusive which has some serious implications for the series future. If TR3 isn't exclusive to X1 then how will PS players know what is happening plot wise. Time will tell we still have to get to Rise of The Tomb Raiders Winter 2015 release date.

Abe's Take
Obviously angered an lot of PlayStation owners who see Lara as an Sony icon though others are claiming it is no loss as they have uncharted which is rather short sighted. Reguardless of the sore feelings this is a major win for Microsoft and reminder that the gaming industry isn't what it used to be and platforms can't be taken for granted

Space Engineers Comes To Xbox One

Space Engineers was a surprise indie title that claimed our time, that gave us some serious Minecraft vibes. So we're excited that its coming to Xbox One as an timed exclusive.




We don't currently know what features the game will have outside of the current slate of PC features. Survival or creative modes in single player or multiplayer. We'll be grabbing this as much as we love the PC version, it is somewhat resource intensive and can be rather unstable on modest PC rigs. Space Engineers has a 12 month exclusive contract with MS so we can expect to see the PS4 version 12 months after launch

Abe's Take
I'm looking forward to playing this on Xbox One and will be happy to "double dip" to support the excellent developers. The only thing I want to see added to the X1 version would be splitscreen. Playing Minecraft in splitscreen was amazing and helped make it feel slightly less lonesome

Toy Soldiers War Chest Annouced

Here at GK-UK we really love Toy Soldiers, It's one of our highlights of the XBLA program so naturally we are psyched at the news of a sequel, Can you guess what time period this one is in?





Yeah the tricked you didn't it. I was expecting something like WW2 but that was unexpected.

So the Kiazer from Toy Soldiers (WW)1 will return but he will be joined by 3 other forces, One we saw in the trailer featuring Fairies and unicorns the other 2 are blanked out in the trailer though we can guess the others. One appears to be Sci-fi whilst the other appears to be some type of warriors.

I'm sure we'll find out more as we approach the "early 2015" release date but we do know it will hit PC, X1 and PS4.

Abe's Take
Could not be more excited for this, if it maintains TS2's co-op modes this could become an regular stable in our games rotation

EA Access Goes Live

You may recall us telling you about the EA access Beta last week that nets you Unlimited access to games in the EA vault, 10% discount on digital content and early access to full game "demos" before launch well now its rolling out.

The same 4 games from the Beta are available in the vault Battlefield 4, Fifa 14, Madden 14 and Peggle 2 but more are due soon and judging by the image we can expect to see NBA 14, UFC 14, Need for Speed, Plants vs Zombies and Dragon Age to appear in the vault and/or in the "Full Game Demo".

a quick reminder 1 month access costs £3.99 and 1 Years costs £19.99 so if you finish 1 game you're all ready made a profit.

Abe's Take
I'm very intrigued by this service I suspect games will appear in the vault once they get sequels announced or as sales dry up.

Himaru's Take
An list of upcoming vault games would help persuade me to sign up, though £3.99 for early access to Dragon Age alone might sway me