Monthly Archives: November 2019
When Does Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Take Place?
With eleven Star Wars movies, multiple animated shows, multiple live-action shows, books, comic books, and video games all connecting in unison to form one large official Star Wars canon (not to mention decades of recently deemed non-canon Star Wars books and shows, officially labeled as “Legends”) it can be pretty confusing keeping up with the entire Star Wars timeline and putting together the pieces of what fits where. So, when in the official timeline does the new EA Star Wars video game Jedi: Fallen Order take place?
Wondering when Fallen Order takes place? Here's the official canon timeline for every Star Wars movie, TV show, and video game. We didn't include books and comics because this list would be three times longer!
Everything Announced at X019’s Inside Xbox Conference
Microsoft held a packed Inside Xbox conference at X019, featuring new first-party game reveals, teaser trailers for several other games, and plenty of other developer discussions.
Read on for every major trailer shown off during the X019 press conference, every major reveal, and more.
Rare Announces Its New Game, Everwild
The Sea of Thieves developers confirmed a brand new game during X019, called Everwild.
Not much is known about the new franchise from Rare, outside of its mysterious reveal trailer, which you can watch above for a first look at the game.
Project Resistance Feels Like Friday the 13th in a Resident Evil Wrapper
In 2017, my two (perhaps unpopular) choices for game of the year were Resident Evil 7 and Friday the 13th: The Game. And after a brief hands on, both games can be found in Capcom’s Project Resistance. It feels like a very satisfying merge of the two, and while it never quite hits the highs of either, it ultimately provides an enjoyable and unique Resident Evil experience.
The premise is a simple one, but unique for Resident Evil. Four players must work together to survive through three stages- both in terms of changing physical locations and increasing difficulty - while solving puzzles and overcoming other obstacles. So far so familiar, but the spin on this format is the addition of a fifth player known simply as Mastermind. When playing as Mastermind your goal is to stop the other four players from achieving their goals at all costs. This is achieved thanks to Mastermind having complete control of the level’s camera system, and the ability to place traps, weaponise cameras, and set up zombie ambushes.
KartRider Drift Hands-On Preview: It’s the Thinking Man’s Kart Racer
Crazyracing KartRider has been an extremely popular racing game in Korea for the past 15 years. 2019 marks the game's 15th anniversary, and the company is celebrating by releasing KartRider Drift on Xbox and PC in North America in 2020 which, barring a few forgettable false starts, represents the first time the franchise has made the trip across the Pacific. Eventually, publisher Nexon says that KartRider matchmaking will be global, which means that dewy-eyed Western players may come face to face with battle-tested KartRider veterans.
"Servers will be located in each region, and it will match by ping," says DS Choi, producer on KartRider Drift, detailing the ways he hopes his brand new international player base won't get stomped out of the gate from those who've had a 15-year head start. "But I'm pretty sure there's going to be a certain amount of that."
BattleToads Adds Strategic Depth to Classic Couch Co-op
Rare is gearing up to deliver the most mechanically-rich BattleToads game of all time. The forthcoming reboot, which was announced at E3 2018 and is being co-developed with DLala Studios, outfits the titular meathead amphibians with an SNK-ish number of combos, wrinkles, and synergies to their moveset. Yes, Rash, Pimple, and Zitz will once again beat up on an endless corridor of antagonistic woodland creatures, but this time they can do so while juggling them in the sky, by lining up frame-perfect finishing moves, and by combining the strengths and weaknesses of the trio into the most menacing force ever assembled on a dorm-room couch. A typical sequence had me initiating a three-punch combo on an enemy, uppercutting them in the air, before transforming one of the Toads into an anthropomorphic power drill to rain down chaos on anyone left in the hitbox. It felt like playing as Dante, or pre-fatherhood Kratos, and I mean that in a good way.
Flight Simulator is Equal Parts Relaxing and Challenging
Playing Flight Simulator is such a serene, calming experience it feels more like an exercise in mindfulness than a game. Flying over the historic city of Naples is as welcoming as a warm embrace, with its clear skies and sun-drenched buildings, and the gentle hum of the Cessna 172’s prop is enough to make anyone drift off. If this is what flying a real plane is like then I’m amazed more pilots don’t fall asleep at the flight stick.
I’ve never been to Naples and it would be ridiculous for me to say I don’t need to after my brief flyover, but I certainly got a really good feel of what the city is like, albeit from 3,000 feet up. It’s a beautiful place (or at least it is in Flight Simulator), its winding streets and medieval architecture a stark contrast to the lush green forests of Seattle shown previously. I flew along the coast, where the busy port is punctuated with ancient turrets - apparently Naples was once called the City of Seven Castles - and from above it’s almost as if the past is fighting off the sprawl of modern day industrialisation.
Kingdom Hearts Collections Coming to Xbox One
Kingdom Hearts 3 has been the only Kingdom Hearts game available on an Xbox console so far, but Square Enix has confirmed that the entire group of remastered collections will be available on Xbox One next year.
Speaking during X019, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix, as well as Kingdom Hearts 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue were confirmed for a 2020 release on Xbox One.
As of E3 2018, franchise director Tetsuya Nomura told IGN "we haven't even started the conversation yet" with Microsoft about porting these collections to Xbox, though obviously things have changed since then.
Tons of Games Confirmed Coming to Xbox Game Pass
In what's quickly becoming a must-have service if you play in the Xbox ecosystem – and if you don't, a reason to start – Xbox Game Pass will be getting another round of new additions as nearly 40 more games will be free to play for subscribers in the near future and beyond.
Announced today during X019, the list includes a collection of indies to AAA games that will all roll out sometime between this very instant and an undisclosed point next year, including all first-party Xbox Game Studios games when they are released. You can find the list below.
Additionally, Microsoft is once again incentivizing a subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, offering your first three months for $1 USD, which is a crazy good deal if you game on the Xbox One family of devices.
Anson Mount on the Past, and Future, of Captain Pike
When Anson Mount took on the role of Captain Christopher Pike at the start of Star Trek: Discovery’s second season, the challenge he was facing was clear. The actor wasn’t just joining the established ensemble of CBS All Access’ flagship series, but he was also tasked with breathing new life into a character that had been created a half-century earlier and who is near and dear to many fans’ hearts, no matter how fleetingly he had appeared (Pike was famously only in the pre-Shatner Trek pilot and then a two-part episode in the show’s first season).
But Mount’s turn as the temporary captain of the USS Discovery helped to bring the show to new heights, so much so that these days the common refrain among Trekkies is “When are we getting a Captain Pike show?” On the occasion of Disco’s Season 2 Blu-ray release this week, as well as the Short Trek episode “Ask Not,” which stars Mount as Pike and just dropped, I spoke to the actor about his past, and potential future, in the role of the iconic captain.
Microsoft Flight Simulator Gameplay Trailer Shows Off New Planes
Xbox highlighted Microsoft Flight Simulator in a brand new gameplay trailer during X019, revealing the first group of aircraft manufacturers set to be included in the game.
Airbus, Boeing, CubCrafters, Daher Socata, Diamond, Icon, Robin, Textron, and more aircraft makers will be included in the upcoming revival of the longtime series.
Check out the trailer above to see the upcoming game in action.
First announced at E3 2019, Flight Simulator is set to be released in 2020, and IGN recently went hands-on with Microsoft Flight Simulator.