One Arrow, One Destiny

Titan Souls is a top down action game that gives you one chance to be killed or one chance to win it all. The game mechanics are simple. Find a Titan's week point and you can kill it with a single shot, but once you let loose your arrow you must retrieve it before you can try again. The game employs an 8-Bit art style that allows for very large areas. The game kinda reminds me of what the Legend of Zelda on the NES would of looked like if created in today's time. The Titans themselves act as the bosses in each area with each Titan having very unique game mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses. The game is designed to feel very rewarding similar to another "Souls" game I can think of. So don't expect it to be a walk in the park.

Titan Souls will be out Q1 2015 on the PS4 and PS Vita platforms.

From the Devs:
Between our world and the world beyond lie the Titan Souls, the spiritual source and sum of all living things. Now scattered amongst the ruins and guarded by the idle titans charged with their care, a solitary hero armed with but a single arrow is once again assembling shards of the Titan Soul in a quest for truth and power.

Gameplay Teaser:

Kill Bill Meets Mega Man in Transistor

The Process, a bio organic AI, has taken over the city of Cloudbank and the secret organization who unleashed it are also responsible for killing your love and stealing your voice. Somehow the key to stopping it all is in your hands, the Transistor. Will you seek vengeance or will you strive to set things right?

Transistor is one of the most well put together games I've ever played. The music, isometric view, the mixture of strategy and action, the overall art style, and the futuristic setting just sets the game apart. All those elements put together sets a bluesy jazzy melancholy mood that really brings you into Red's world.

Your main obstacle in the game is the Process, but your overall goal is to take down the Camerata. The lovely Sybil Reisz, the ambitious Kendrell brothers Asher and Grant, and finally the genius behind it all Royce Bracket. With each encounter you absorb their consciousness into the Transistor granting you new abilities and bringing you closer and closer to the truth.

The game is out now on PC and PS4.

From the Devs:
Transistor is a sci-fi themed action RPG that invites players to wield an extraordinary weapon of unknown origin as they fight through a stunning futuristic city.

The game seamlessly integrates thoughtful strategic planning into a fast-paced action experience, melding responsive gameplay and rich atmospheric storytelling. During the course of the adventure, players will piece together the Transistor’s mysteries as they pursue its former owners.

Launch Trailer:

Google goes for the Games with Android TV

Google is going back into the TV fray with it's new Android TV OS and streaming box. Their last attempt at a TV operating system didn't take content owners into account and attempted to connect any content on the web with it's TV search interface overlay. This resulted in everyone blocking it's content from Google TV and pretty much making it nowhere near as useful as promised.

This time around Google is looking to create a standard TV OS and UI that leverages it's Android/Google Play relationship with content providers. With access to the standard Google Play store comes access to music, a la cart movies/TV shows, apps, and games.

In fact games is an area that Google believes is the killer difference of it's OS that it's including a controller with every Android TV streaming device sold. The controller looks like a cross between an Xbox 360 controller and an Onlive controller. Familiar enough for anyone to use, but unique enough so that you know it's an Android TV controller.

If in the future every TV sold included a controller along with a standard remote we could be seeing gaming as an entertainment medium in the living room becoming part of everyone's every day lives. Interesting things are a foot.

Android TV will be released in the fall of 2014.

Android UI:

Run, Hide, Survive in Alien: Isolation

"In space no one can hear you scream", that was the tag line of the original Alien movie. It was a science fiction horror movie that was so critically acclaimed that it changed the face of science fiction forever. However, video games based on the franchise never fared as well. They never quite captured the essence of the films instead opting for more traditional action adventure game play.   Enter "Alien: Isolation", the game takes place 15 years from the end of the first film and puts you in the shoes of Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley's daughter. The game is unapologetically a horror game. During Amanda's journey she finds herself in a decommissioned trading station on the fringes of space, a station that some how finds itself with a Xenomorph (Alien) in it's mist. Survive or Die! Those are your choices, because help is not on it's way. After playing thru Outlast I have high hopes for this game. Horror, when done right can be oh so entertaining.

Alien: Isolation will be out on October 7th, 2014 for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PC platforms.

From the Devs: Discover the true meaning of fear in Alien: Isolation, a survival horror set in an atmosphere of constant dread and mortal danger. Fifteen years after the events of Alien™, Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda enters a desperate battle for survival, on a mission to unravel the truth behind her mother's disappearance.

As Amanda, you will navigate through an increasingly volatile world as you find yourself confronted on all sides by a panicked, desperate population and an unpredictable, ruthless Alien.

Underpowered and underprepared, you must scavenge resources, improvise solutions and use your wits, not just to succeed in your mission, but to simply stay alive.
Survive Trailer:

Neil Gaiman gets into Gaming

Wayward Manor is a puzzle/adventure game hybrid set in one of the worlds of Neil Gaiman's books. You play the role of a ghost who's after life is interrupted by your home's new residents. Learn about their lives as you try to scare them out and maybe discover the mystery of why you haven't moved on.

This is Neil Gaiman's first foray into gaming and he's partnered with The ODD GENTLEMAN an independent studio out of Los Angeles who's previous games include: The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and Flea Symphony. The studio focuses on instilling humor into everything they do.

The game is set to release on Steam for PC and Mac on July 15th, 2014.

From the Devs:
Set in a 1920s Victorian Gothic pastoral estate, Wayward Manor focuses on the plight of a ghost whose hope of a peaceful after-life is interrupted by a remarkable cast of intruders. Awoken from his post-mortem slumbers, our ghost must find ever-more inventive and brilliant ways to scare them away. As the ghost learns more about the living characters, he also learns more about his own death and after-life, and the danger they are all facing.

Teaser Trailer: