After announcing yesterday that a "Realtime Experience" patch would be available universally starting at 12pm PT / 3pm ET time today, Blue Box Game Studios announced that a demo for its upcoming project Abandonded has been delayed due to technical issues.
Quick update: we are still working on it. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
The Realtime Experience demo is available to download right now on the PlayStation Store. Launching the app loads the game up to where it prompts you to select a language, before displaying a message that notes that it is not a playable teaser but an introduction of what to expect. Yet, launching the demo now, you will be met with a "Check back soon…" message over a black background.
Blue Box has denied rumors, stating that it has no relations with Konami or Hideo Kojima. Abandoned's director, Hasan Kahraman, made a video on the studios' Twitter account confirming he is not Kojima in disguise.
Developing…
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
Diablo II: Resurrected will hold a closed beta starting Friday, August 13 for players who pre-ordered the game, and an open beta starting Friday, August 20.
Beta tests will be playable on all consoles and PC, except for Nintendo Switch, according to Blizzard.com. Xbox Live Gold is required for the pre-order beta on August 13 but is not required for the open beta on August 20. PlayStation Plus is not required for either beta test. Both Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus will be necessary for multiplayer features at the game's launch.
From Friday, August 13 at 10:00 AM PDT to Tuesday, August 17 at 10:00 AM PDT, anybody who has pre-ordered Diablo II: Resurrected or the Diablo Prime Evil Collection will be able to take part in an Early Access beta. Players can preload the beta beginning August 11.
From Friday, August 20 at 10:00 AM PDT to Monday, August 23 at 10:00 AM PDT, the open beta begins without any pre-order necessary. Preloads for this beta begin for console players on Tuesday, August 17 and for PC players on Wednesday, August 18.
Progress will carry over between the two betas, but no progress will carry over from the beta held earlier this year. Cross-progression will be available during both beta periods, but a separate pre-order is necessary for each platform during the Early Access beta. There will be no level cap for this beta, and it's unclear whether beta progress will carry over into the main game.
Similar to a previous beta test, only Act I and Act II will be playable. The Barbarian, Amazon, and Sorcereress classes from that beta will be playable once again, along with the Paladin and Druid classes which are new for this beta. The game will launch with two more classes, Assassin and Necromancer, but those two classes will not be available during the betas.
It’s an amusing irony that the genre-bending Unmatched series started life as the strict franchise tie-in Star Wars: Epic Duels. That had a great game engine but vanished when the license expired, only to be reborn as an anything-goes tactical battler that pitched two legendary characters from across cultures against each other.
Later boxes added characters from film, such as Jurassic Park, and TV such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And they’re all cross-compatible, so it’s quite possible to have Bruce Lee facing off against Bigfoot. Now classic Victorian literature has been added to the mix with the gothic stylings of Unmatched: Cobble & Fog.
Box and What’s Inside
If you like big, pretty game boards when you open a box, Unmatched: Cobble & Fog will, like all its peers, offer an initial disappointment. The board is small, a series of interconnected circles printed over some drab background art. It’s double-sided, though, convenient and functional. It in no way prepares you for what’s underneath.
Because beyond that, the components are great. There are four miniatures for the characters in this set: Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Jekyll and The Invisible Man. They’re reasonable sculpts, improved by being good, hard plastic and coming already ink washed to bring out the detail and depth.
One of the big draws of the Unmatched series is that it’s simple to get going.
Each character also has a health dial and a deck of cards. The latter are great, from the stylized card back icons that tie into their character’s lore, to the clear text and stylized comic-style art on the front. Once it’s all set out on the table, the good stuff easily compensates for the dull board, making it quite an eye-catching spectacle.
Rules and How to Play
One of the big draws of the Unmatched series is that it’s simple to get going. Both players choose a character. Then, they decide on which board to use — one of them in this set has a novel secret passage mechanic — set up the figures in prescribed spaces, draw five cards, and it’s game on. In theory the game also works with four, playing as two teams of two, but it’s at its best as a head to head.
On your turn you take two actions, which can either be to draw a card and move, or to play an attack or scheme card. Melee characters can only attack adjacent spaces, whereas ranged ones can attack any spaces the same color as that in which the attacker is located. That is one of the reasons for the lackluster board game, and it's worth the trade off for the speed and clarity it brings to play.
If you’re attacked, you can play a defense card from your hand or not, as you choose, and you take the difference between the values in damage. That’s it. Last character standing wins. You now know how to play Unmatched. So: given the striking simplicity of the rules, how on earth does the series manage to leverage any kind of depth and variety?
The answer is in the cards. Each character has a unique deck and a special power. Some of them also have “sidekicks,” weaker fighters they can command alongside their main, such as Holmes’ dependable assistant Doctor Watson. The way each deck leverages those straightforward rules to give every character a unique play style is a thing of genius.
They’re all cross-compatible so it’s quite possible to have Bruce Lee facing off against Bigfoot.
Let’s stick with Holmes for an example. His special ability is that his card effects can’t be cancelled or blocked, a nod to his fearsome powers of planning. Many of his cards let him look at his opponent’s hand, giving a sense that Holmes is always one step ahead. Others let you use that knowledge to try and predict the values of your opponent’s cards, which feels like the process of deduction Holmes is famous for.
Between them, the duo don’t have many attack cards, but the ones they field are powerful. Again, this represents the way the characters are written: Holmes as a reluctant but skilled pugilist and Watson, who has ranged attacks, grudgingly using his army weapons if necessary. Between them, the cards in the deck bring the characters to life on the board as you play, without flavor text and with a bare minimum of exceptions and special rules.
All the decks in Unmatched: Cobble & Fog work the same extraordinary magic. Dr. Jekyll can choose to flip into the terrifying Mr. Hyde or back at the start of each turn. Only Jekyll can play the best defensive cards and only Hyde the best offensive ones, but moving as Hyde costs health. Dracula must coordinate with his three unholy progeny, all of them relatively fragile but with attacks that heal as they injure their targets. He also has cards that can lure and manipulate enemy figures.
At first, it seems the four are not well balanced. The Invisible Man, in particular, feels underpowered. He has three fog tokens on the board between which he can flit at will but he lacks big attack and defense plays. With practice however, things even up. His game is one of setting up and executing ambushes, then vanishing into the darkness.
Indeed, all four decks reveal hidden depths over repeat plays.
Indeed, all four decks reveal hidden depths over repeat plays. The basic rules alone offer some solid strategic hooks. Characters with sidekicks can try and box their enemies into undesirable board positions. With only two actions per turn, it’s hard to set up an attack without leaving yourself vulnerable to a counter. You’re also forced to strike a balance between drawing and playing cards while trying to keep a range of options in your hand.
When you add in the layers created by special powers and unique card decks, there are all sorts of strategic levers to work. It’s true that the game can be frustrating when you can’t quite draw the cards you need to move your game plan forward. But without that seed of randomness, the game would devolve into stale repetition instead of retaining some vibrancy over repeat plays.
That said, repetition remains the worst fault in Unmatched: Cobble & Fog. Again, like other games in the series, despite all the great work that’s gone into giving each character a distinct style, those simple mechanics can’t quite take all the weight. Individual matchups do begin to feel a little worn after several attempts. Fortunately, with four characters to choose from, you’ve got six distinct combinations to keep you going.
Where to Buy
The MSRP for Unmatched: Cobble & Fog is $39.99, but you can often find it on sale at the retailers below.
Stardew Valley, the wonderful game that combines a farming simulator with RPG mechanics, will officially be released on Xbox Game Pass in Fall 2021.
Revealed during today's /twitchgaming Showcase: ID@Xbox stream, Stardew Valley is just one of the many new games headed to Xbox Game Pass alongside Aragami 2, Evil Genius 2, and Pupparazzi.
Stardew Valley was originally released on PC in 2016, and in our updated review in 2018, we said, "Stardew Valley is a beautiful, fun game that, when all of its parts are pulled together, make for a wonderful countryside adventure. Whether it’s rainy, sunny, snowy, or dusted with pollen drifts through the air, each day offers an abundance of great activities ready to be collected or mastered and new friendships waiting to be made."
The game, which is heavily inspired by Harvest Moon, was released on PS4 and Xbox One later in 2016 and since has been released on Switch, Vita, iOS, and Android.
This announcement was just one of the many at today's /twitchgaming Showcase: ID@Xbox stream that also shared new looks at such games as Lightyear Frontier, Sam & Max Save the World Remastered, OlliOlli World, and much more.
Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified is available to stream on Netflix.
Looking for one more thing to worry about?
Netflix's new six-episode Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified has landed in the wake of recent revelations regarding the U.S. military conducting active and ongoing investigations of unexplained aerial phenomena. For the completely uninitiated, this quick run of crashed spacecrafts, close encounters, and government coverups might make for a tasty meal, but for those who've been sitting with UFO lore for decades — or even if you just watched something like The X-Files in the '90s — it's an unformed mess that doesn't present all that well.
The individual episodes cover separate topics, but that format is often ditched and the chapters wind up recycling too much information from previous episodes. Plus, it's not until the fifth episode, "Hacked and Leaked," that it even starts to get into the specific reasons for this series existing right now, which are the findings over the past few years and the controlled release of information relating to mysterious flying objects and possible extra-terrestrial happenings here on Earth. It starts with all the big early U.S. events (Roswell, etc.) and Project Blue Book (which itself was turned into a fun, short-lived History series starring Game of Thrones' Aidan Gillen) but then it shirks chronology and hops around in a fairly scattershot way, bouncing from whim to whim, riding a wave of theories asserted as facts.
That's not to say there isn't overwhelming evidence of E.T.s out there, from all over the world, dating back hundreds of years even. It's even stated on the show that, in our oddly shaped reality, the world just continues to spin as if none of this insurmountable evidence exists. But the show itself is poorly sourced and often relies on talking heads — who have titles ranging from "UFO Researcher" to "UFO Field Investigator" to "Alien Hunter" — just saying things they believe are real in a way that shapes it as an absolute truth.
Then, in an even stranger piece of packaging, the narrator gets in on this too. Instead of staying objective, the way a looming documentary voiceover is usually employed, you'll hear things like "the question is no longer is there intelligent life in the universe, but how many forms can it take?" and "the being was questioned thoroughly by military intelligence. So how did they communicate? Telepathically." It's very jarring to hear those types of sentences mixed in with other parts where words like "alleged," "claimed," and other verbal safety nets are rightfully used.
Yes, the episodes have nominal topics, but mostly there's a sameness to them that makes the messaging here feel confused and directionless. The lack of linear information, or drive toward a climax/culmination of effort, ultimately just might leave one's head spinning. Are the aliens here to stop us from ruining Earth? Yes. Wait, are they here to help us learn new technologies? Sure. Are the crafts we've been seeing for the past 70 years here to study us? Probably? Do they mean us harm? Who's to say? Are we currently building things based on their science? All things are possible. Regardless, in the end, we're still at the mercy of our own government and how those in charge of these projects choose to dispense the information. If they want us to be fearful, we will be. So the end result here is… we'll either all find out or we won't.
The lack of linear information ultimately just might leave one's head spinning.
That's not to say that, within this jumble, there isn't some fascinating stuff. From the alien holdings and tech being turned over to the private sector as part of the massive Military Industrial Complex to international UFO events ranging from Australia to Zimbabwe to Papua New Guinea, the series isn't without its rewarding ruminations and musings. It's at its most illuminating when breaking away from the U.S.'s greatest hits and giving us a global perspective, or even when touching on Blink-182's Tom Delonge's To The Stars Academy (which, honestly, may have made for a better centerpiece for the series overall).
Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified wasn't made without effort, but it still comes across as rushed. In an attempt to get out all the information, it sacrifices focus, awareness, and an underlying confidence of message. The mosaic you're left with is one more of panic than wonder, as we now pile all of this E.T. stuff onto the pandemic and climate change and other enormously consuming and/or anxious thoughts. A meager effort is made, by a few of the speakers, to explain that these visitors are here to save us from ourselves, but looking out the window on any given day tells us otherwise.
