This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about Super Mario Bros Wonder and Super Mario RPG, coming to the Nintendo Switch, and the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection and Batman Arkham Trilogy, also coming to the Switch this fall. We also talked about Sennheiser’s SoundProtex earplugs.
Detective Pikachu Returns is the return of the unlikely Pokemon spinoff that casts the cute creature as a gravel-voiced mystery solver. It’s scheduled to release on October 6.
The board game turned video game, Gloomhaven is also coming to the Switch on September 18.
And two major series are coming to the Switch this fall in collected editions that bring multiple games.
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol1 collects Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. It’s coming on October 24.
And Batman Arkham Trilogy, also coming this fall, includes Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight. These games from Rocksteady reinvented superhero games.
Also coming this year: DLC for Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and Splatoon 3, WarioWare: Move It, Sonic Superstars, You can watch the entire Nintendo Direct event here.
Protect your hearing with Sennheiser’s acoustic expertise, create 3-D models with your smartphone and Epic’s RealityScan.
Sennheiser’s reusable earbuds are designed to preserve hearing
Hearing protection is important, and Sennheiser’s SoundProtex earplugs are reusable protection for your hearing designed by a company that knows sound.
The earplugs are designed with filters that lower decibel levels while maintaining the clarity of sound. Sennheiser says that the filters dampen low frequencies more completely while keeping some higher frequency details, so you’re still able to hear speech even while wearing the earplugs.
These are better than the cheap, foam earplugs you get at the dollar or drug store, and they have three sizes of ear tips to provide maximum comfort.
The SoundProtext ($50) come with two filters, medium for festivals and events and a total block filter that surrounds you in silence.
The SoundProtex Plus ($100) adds two filters, a strong filter for loud music events, motorsports, or when you’re using power tools, and a low filter for busy offices or bars.
Create 3-D models with your smartphone or tablet using RealityScan
RealityScan is a free application that will turn your photos of real world objects into “high-fidelity 3D models”.
It comes from Epic, which creates and publishes video games, and develops Unreal, software used by many other developers to create their own games.
It’s no secret why Epic would make RealityScan available for free. Unreal is also available for free. Epic’s idea is to make the tools for game development available to everyone. If you’re an indie developer, you only need to start paying for Unreal after you’ve earned more than $1 million USD.
And these tools aren’t only used for game development. As 3-D tools, they can be used for any animation or art project.
This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about Starfield and other games profiled during the Xbox Showcase, games featured during Summer Game Fest, playing Diablo IV, and notable updates to Apple’s various operating systems.
It’s the time of year when, once upon a time, we’d be talking about the Electronic Entertainment Expo – E3. That event didn’t happen during the shutdowns caused by covid-13 and this year it didn’t happen because the entire industry has shifted. Instead, we get briefings and events from the various publishers themselves.
Xbox showcases games coming to its gaming platforms
Sunday has traditionally been the day for Xbox, and that was true last Sunday when the Microsoft division delivered trailer after trailer for a solid hour, and then spent another forty-five minutes diving deep into Starfield, the highly anticipated game from Bethesda, the studio responsible for the role-playing classic franchises the Elder Scrolls and Fallout.
Starfield, which releases on September 6, continues to astound. We saw lots of footage of the game, which looks to pull bits from other space exploration games like No Man’s Sky and Mass Effect. But it’s very much a Bethesda Game Studio game with other bits you’ll realize are similar to elements from Elder Scrolls and Fallout.
Todd Howard, who leads the development teams at Bethesda, says that they’ve been talking about doing a game set in space for years, but it’s taken this long for the technology to enable what they wanted to do.
In the game, players will become part of Constellation, an organization set up to explore, and as in other Bethesda games, you’ll be able to make the game your own in how you build your space ship, the companions you add to your crew, and how you develop your character.
As for the Xbox preview, it was non-stop game reveals and demos with a total of 27 games featured.
Among them were exclusives like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Fable (with Richard Ayodade in a leading role, it seems?), Clockwork Revolution (with a time reversal mechanic), and South of Midnight (set in what looks like the bayous of the American south).
There’s also a new Microsoft Flight Simulator coming next year, but in the meantime you can pilot an ornithopter, the flying vehicles from Dune, in an expansion coming to the existing flight sim. That arrives when the second film releases on November 3.
And Sea of Thieves is also getting an expansion thanks to a partnership with Lucasfilm Games that incorporates Guybrush Threepwood and the Legend of Monkey Island.
Games developed by external studios that were profiled during the showcase included Jusant, a puzzle game about rock climbing, Payday 3, and Still Wakes the Deep, a horror game from the Chinese Room.
Here’s the entire Xbox Showcase and Starfield Direct.
Highlights from Summer Game Fest
Xbox and Starfield were part of the Summer Game Fest program, which kicked off on June 8 and included in-person and online presentations by publishers like Capcom, Devolver, and Ubisoft, as well as showcases of PC games and indie games.
From Massive and Ubisoft, the first open world Star Wars game is set after the events of the Empire Strikes Back and features Kay Vest, a Han Solo analogue. It’s coming out next year.
Also from Massive, this one has you playing as a Na’vi child raised by the humans and the RDA corporation. It’s also an open world adventure. It’s expected this December.
This is the origin story of Basim, who was introduced in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Set in Baghdad, Mirage is scheduled for release on October 12.
Diablo IV is dark and dreadful and I’m playing it with my kids
I’ve mentioned Diablo IV before. A few times. I talked about it while it was in development and I played the beta along with many others. Now I’ve been playing the finished game and enjoying more than ever, in part because I’m playing it with my kids.
I should mention that my kids are closer to being adults at this point than they are children. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be playing a mature-rated game with them. But because they’re comfortable with dark themes – Diablo is about the battle between light and dark after all – and they’re comfortable with fantasy violence (and blood and gore), we now have another game we can play together.
Being able to play couch co-op may be my favourite thing about Diablo IV. I love the different character classes – necromancer for me, rogue for my daughter, sorcerer for my son – and the graphics are stunning on our 4K television. The rich, nuanced story and excellent acting only make this a more compelling experience for us to enjoy together.
Is it any wonder that Diablo IV is Blizzard’s fastest selling game ever, with more than “$666 million USD” in sales in its first week?
The Mind Control Division is the intelligence arm of Blaine Kyllo's Solo Corps Creative Incorporated. This department conducts investigations and experiments into media and technology culture.
