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10 CommentsWatch us get wet playing Resident Evil 7
It’s no secret that I’m a scaredy-cat.
Much laughter was had at my expense during E3, when the Polygon New York team crowded into a tiny room to watch Polygon editor-in-chief Chris Grant play the latest version of the Resident Evil 7 biohazard demo. While I cried and yelled at my boss of four months to stop fucking around, other Polygon staff whispered about upcoming scares and waited eagerly for my reaction.
Now you, too, can enjoy watching a woman slowly lose her mind, tortured by a fear that she cannot control. I’m talking, of course, about our gameplay video of Resident Evil 7.
Engagement editor Jeff Ramos and I sat down to play the first hour of the game — with a twist. I was holding a full-to-the-brim glass of water, and if I spilled three times, I had to play the game.
Let’s...
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10 CommentsCreating Church 2: the sequel to church
Here at CoolGames Inc, we believe in iterative design. It’s not enough to just crank out the same game each year — if you’re gonna put out a numbered sequel to something, you’ve got to build on what made the original great while also meaningfully contributing to the franchise.
That’s why, rather than annualizing it, we opted to wait more than 2,000 years before creating the sequel everyone’s been waiting for: Church 2, the sequel to church.
In this week’s CoolGames Inc animation, Polygon’s very own Clayton Ashley brings to life our unique vision of how one might reboot the “church” franchise for a hip, young, millennial 2017 audience.
Want to listen to the full episode? Check out the full-length podcast below, and remember to subscribe to CoolGames Inc on iTunes or via RSS for future...
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0 CommentsCar Boys: Creating the sequel to Beyblades with giant hammers
Plus: a visitor from the world of Grand Theft Auto 4
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16 CommentsHere’s the Switch-like Gamevice in action
Last month, Gamevice announced a new set of its iOS-device-hugging game controllers.
Today we hopped on Facebook to take the Gamevice for a spin with an iPhone 7 Plus and to answer all of your questions. Well, some of your questions.
The Gamevice controller features a thumbstick, directional pad, trigger and shoulder button on the left side and a menu button, face buttons, another thumbstick and trigger and shoulder button on the right. The controller, which now draws directly from the iPad or iPhone to power itself, also includes a Lightning port for charging the phone or tablet. Gamevice officials say that the controller draws about the same amount of power as a pair of headphones do.
Check out the video below.
Gamevice Mobile Controller Hands-onHands-on the new Gamevice mobile...
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4 CommentsFinally! A game about being nice
Being nice is one of those under-appreciated human qualities. It's the slighter, less impressive sibling of being kind. Niceness is almost admirable and it's almost bland. It's not really the stuff of heroism, and yet we mostly welcome this quality in others. Being "not nice" is a severe judgement. We all know people who are not nice, and we keep well clear of them, when we can.
Video games rarely call upon players to be nice. No-one in the Call of Duty series, so far as I can recall, is nice. Final Fantasy's swaggering principals come in all hues and shades, but niceness is rarely their defining quality. Even gentle walking sims are populated by people with issues.
And yet, here is Leaving Lyndow, a game that is nice to its very core. I don't want you to think I'm making mockery of...
PeaceCraft: Raandyy takes his pacifist journey into Hell
In the debut episode of PeaceCraft, our soft-hearted hero Raandyy began his quest to tour the world of Azeroth without killing a single thing. It was easy enough in the game’s starting areas, but when Raandyy rolls up to the Burning Steppes ... well, it’s way harder. That’s a way tougher area, you see. It’s not just all boars and whelps, there. They’ve got ogres, y’all.
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20 CommentsHas it really been a decade since Mass Effect launched?
If you're a Mass Effect fan, this will be 45 minutes well spent. It seems strange that the first game debuted in 2007 — an eternity in video gaming — but it did, and YouTuber Raycevick gives the series’ hold on the gaming consciousness a splendid recap in this retrospective.
Raycevick does not shortchange the viewer on the context. He establishes the landscape of role-playing games coming into the Xbox 360's generation, Japan's preceding dominance of the genre on consoles, and the fact a true science-fiction narrative, particularly an original work, was a relative outlier to the scene.
BioWare shook up that dynamic with a landmark work in 2003's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and a sequel one year later, and developed gameplay elements essential to Mass Effect's appeal with a...
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4 CommentsHere’s co-op puzzle Death Squared in action
Co-op games are so much fun, especially when they demand shared logic and putting brains together. What I really like about Death Squared is that it's challenging, but in a way that can be understood by anyone from a hardened puzzle fan to kids and grandparents.
As far as I can tell, no matter how convoluted the puzzle, you'll get there in the end. A lot of the puzzles are about metaphorically pulling the lever and seeing what happens and figuring out how to take advantage of that along with your friend.
In that respect, it owes a lot to Portal 2, one of the greatest games of all time, and a two-player co-op delight. Other great working-together games include Spelunky's co-op levels, Chariot, Don't Starve Together, Rocket League and Towerfall Ascension as well as any number of...
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2 CommentsCar Boys: Scaling the tower of Better Gridmap
For this installment of Car Boys, the episodic video series in which Griffin McElroy and I play BeamNG.drive wrong to devastating results, we’ve chosen to strip away all the chaff and get back to our roots: actually driving cars. Like, using the engine to power their wheels.
And what better way to dust off our driving skills than to ascend the challenging, labyrinthine spire that towers above Better Gridmap? Join us as we take an old jalopy from the bottom to the top, where a familiar friend awaits to help us get back down again.
For more Car Boys, check out the official series playlist, and be sure to subscribe to Polygon on YouTube to be notified when new episodes go live.
Touch the Skyrim
7 CommentsTouch the Skyrim: Griffin and Nick start over with a clean, erotic slate
I made Nick a promise at the end of the last episode of Touch the Skyrim: that I would abandon our current, thoroughly ruined version of Todd’s classic RPG, and start in on a new, thoroughly horny iteration. This presented any number of logistical problems that I dealt with in the following weeks; problems like “how can we create this video without getting blacklisted by YouTube,” and, “why did I promise this dumb thing to Nick.”
The fruits of our horny labor can be seen above. This episode is NSFW, right? Like, you put that together already, I hope. The word “erotic” is in the headline of this post, for Pete’s sake.
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8 CommentsTitanfall 2’s upcoming Live Fire mode looks intense and fast-paced
Life in Titanfall 2’s Live Fire mode appears to be nasty, brutish and short.
A gameplay trailer for Live Fire, which will be released this month as free downloadable content to all players, shows off the frenetic action that takes place in these small-scale matches. Live Fire supports up to six-on-six play, but with pilots only — no titans allowed. Oh, and each player only has one life. Also, rounds last just 60 seconds; when the clock runs out, the team holding the neutral flag wins. (To win a match, you’ll have to take three out of five rounds.)
The Live Fire update to Titanfall 2 will introduce two maps, Stacks and Meadow, that are specifically designed for the mode. It will also include a Coliseum map called Columns, among other additions. Titanfall 2 developer Respawn Entertainment...
Issue at Hand
25 CommentsBatman’s had five Robins — here’s why
For one of the most famous superheroes in the world, Robin has featured in big screen Batman movies a surprisingly small number of times. It’s almost as if there’s something about our modern idea of Batman that’s at odds with a wise-cracking teenager wearing primary colors.
The perception that Batman spent most, or even any significant part, of his career as a lone vigilante simply isn’t true, and this week’s episode of Issue at Hand, Polygon’s show about the weird world of comics, is all about busting up that myth.
There are really only a handful years in of Batman’s more than 75 year history where there wasn’t some kid or another serving as the Dark Knight’s kid sidekick, from Dick Grayson to Jason Todd to Tim Drake, Damian Wayne and Stephanie Brown. And if you’ve never heard of...
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19 CommentsFire Emblem Heroes: hands-on with Nintendo’s next mobile game
Fire Emblem Heroes marks Nintendo’s second foray into mobile gaming as a developer, and it’s a radical departure from Super Mario Run. While the latter was free-to-start but required a $9.99 payment to unlock the full version, Fire Emblem Heroes is a much more traditional free-to-play title, with stamina meters, in-game currency and microtransactions.
We recently got our hands on Fire Emblem Heroes, and returned with a few answers, a ton of new information and a boatload of screenshots. Above, check out 20 minutes of hands-on gameplay impressions from Fire Emblem Heroes, including a first look at free-to-play pricing, summoning new heroes, leveling your heroes and more.
Fire Emblem Heroes launches on iOS and Android devices on Feb 2.
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8 CommentsWatch Ken Griffey Jr. mo-cap his swing for MLB The Show 17
Ken Griffey Jr. may have retired seven years ago, but he’s the star of MLB The Show 17. And when it comes to his legendary swing, he’s still got it.
Watch the new MLB 17 trailer above to see the smooth stroke that sent 630 baseballs screaming over fences in big-league ballparks — good for sixth on the sport’s all-time list. Griffey appears to have put on a few pounds since his playing days, but that sweet swing remains as recognizable as ever. And hey, a first-ballot Hall of Famer who played pro baseball for 22 seasons is entitled to a comfortable retirement.
The trailer also contains footage of Griffey recording voice-overs for MLB 17. Some of them sound like things an umpire would say, like an exaggerated strike call, while others resemble broadcast commentary. There’s no word yet on...
Monster Factory
6 CommentsMonster Factory: Forming a Super Group with Knife Dad's whole family
In the last episode of Monster Factory, Justin and I gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, who was also made out of knives and muscles and rat fur. Knife Dad’s about as brave a hero as you’ll ever meet, but we didn’t want to spend a bunch of time leveling him up. Instead, we found power through another source: Family. When the evildoers of Champions Online meet Knife Dad’s Kids, they’re going to ... well, die. Horribly.