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