A regular look at gaming-related stories from the past week or so whereby conclusions are drawn from anything and everything. These may be incredibly well reasoned based on events from the week. Alternatively, they may be highly speculative, drawn from very little evidence. More likely, they will be somewhere in between.
Conclusion One: We have nuclear fallout
The quite brilliant Fallout 3 was being remade by the Road to Liberty team and was known as The Capital Wasteland Project. It was being remade as a mod within Fallout 4. Unfortunately, work has stopped says Twitter user @JuiceHead3311 based on information they have from the project’s lead, Nathan, or @NafNaf_95. Communications between the dev team and Bethesda indicated that if they went ahead and executed what they had planned, then there would be copyright claims to answer. Given the seriousness of this, and the relationships between Bethesda and this modding group, the decision to end the project has been taken. Unless something changes in the future.
So, we have nuclear fallout. A damn shame too, as Fallout 3 is fabulous.
Conclusion Two: Monster Hunter (takes over the): World
We’ve mentioned Monster Hunter: World before on Jump Dash Roll and since then the game has continued to cause a stir all over the place. Not only has it become Capcom’s best-selling title ever, but it also keeps getting special guests from other games as playable characters. Via the crossover events we’ve had Ryu going on a hunt, and Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn on PS4, but now we have Capcom’s very own Dante.
These events, and the eventual unlocks you obtain from them — allowing you to hunt as the above characters adds to the game for sure and maintain its longevity even more than perhaps it would on its own. I wonder how many more famous gaming folk will join the hunt in the weeks and months to come?
Conclusion Three: It’s Lara Croft week
So this week we see the release of Lara Croft’s origin story — based on the Crystal Dynamics game from 2013 — in cinemas, starring Alicia Vikander as the latest cinematic Lara Croft (after the 2001 iteration played by Angelina Jolie).
Quite excitingly we’ve had the leaks, and subsequent announcement, of the third game starring Lara from Crystal Dynamics, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This is apparently the moment she becomes the Tomb Raider. The first two were really rather good, in a Nathan Drake sort of way, so we can’t wait to see what lovely things we get this time around.
Conclusion Four: Google enables the world
Brilliantly, Google has this week released an application programming language alongside a Unity software development kit and the availability of its maps to everyone who wants to use it. This means anyone can use the real world maps which already exist to build the game they want to make. No need to do your own cartography. This is something.
Already numerous games using this tech have been announced — Jurassic World Alive, The Walking Dead: Our World and Ghostbusters World. This is the start of something big. Yes, here we have mobile games, but think how Rockstar could more quickly create their next open world, or perhaps use a real place, without even blinking. Maybe Ubisoft can more swiftly generate the next Assassin’s locale. It promises a whole heap of cool things as it provides power and ease to devs around the world. This move by Google — who by the way, and perhaps entirely coincidentally, are getting into the world of games themselves — is a fantastically open one that hopefully will result in some pretty cool stuff from now onwards.
Conclusion Five: Xbox Game Pass is getting off to a rocky start
It’s barely launched, but Microsoft’s new “Netflix for games” service is already experience some issues. Some players have reported not being able to launch games which they own — even those who have physical copies. The error people are receiving mentions that the games cannot be launched because their subscription to Xbox Game Pass has expired. What’s even weirder is that this is also affecting people who have never subscribed to the service in the first place.
A Reddit user reported that the service has prevented him from launching Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One due to his lapsed subscription, even though he never signed up to it, and the version of the game is a physical disc. A second user has reported that after not renewing his Game Pass sub, Halo 5 is no longer launchable — even if he tries it offline.
In a separate thread, Major Nelson has confirmed that Microsoft are aware of the issue and are investigating. However, for a service in its infancy, preventing users from being able to play games that they have bought (whether physical or digital versions) is very concerning, and even more so if it’s affecting people that haven’t touched the service at all to date. If you have experienced similar issues with Game Pass or if you receive an error mentioning Game Pass when trying to launch a game, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section.
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