It’s time for another edition of What We’re Playing. This week it’s a video game you might have heard of called Minecraft. Does that ring a bell?

We’re joking, of course. Everyone’s heard of Minecraft, right? It’s only one of the most popular and successful video games of all time with 126 million players around the world. Yep, that Minecraft. 

Since some of us here at The Flickcast have kids, we’ve been trying to find ways to entertain them and distract from the monotony of quarantine. Fortunately, during the last year or so, we’ve discovered Minecraft . . . and, of course, we love it! Kids and adults alike!

If for some reason you’re not familiar with Minecraft, here’s a bit of info about the game from the Official Minecraft Wiki:

“Minecraft is a sandbox construction game created by Mojang Studios founder Markus “Notch” Persson, inspired by Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Notch’s past games Legend of the Chambered and RubyDung. Gameplay involves players interacting with the game world by placing and breaking various types of blocks in a three-dimensional environment. In this environment, players can build creative structures, creations, and artwork on multiplayer servers and singleplayer worlds across multiple game modes.”

We mostly play in “Creative” mode where you build amazing structures and contraptions out of various blocks in the game. However, if you’re looking for more of a challenge, switch to “Survival” mode where you’re forced to find or grow food, build shelters and fight off hordes of monsters including spiders, skeletons and zombies. Whatever you choose, it’s all fun . . . and you just might learn something too. 

LEGO® DIMENSIONS™_20150703082142

Have you ever been playing Portal and wondered how The Doctor would do in Aperture Science? Thanks to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment now you can find out. LEGO Dimensions announced at San Diego Comic-Con the upcoming inclusion of Doctor Who. It is the first time Doctor Who has ever been in a LEGO videogame.

The stars of the BBC America show have lent their voices to their respective characters in the game as well. Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Michelle Gomez have all brought their Doctor Who personas to LEGO life in Dimensions. The game is truly a mash-up of worlds. The TARDIS could pop up in Gotham City or The Doctor could ride along with Scooby and Shaggy.

As is seen in the trailer, all twelve doctors are included in Dimensions. In fact, LEGO has pulled out all the stops to please Whovians. When the Twelfth Doctor is defeated in a level, he returns as the First Doctor and then continues regenerating back up to Twelve. The TARDIS interior changes depending on which Doctor is “alive” but can also be manually chosen by the player. A jukebox inside the TARDIS allows players to select different versions of the Doctor Who theme music.

Another year, another COD, right? It is the one thing you can always count on to terrify publishers from releasing on the same date which makes the week’s purchasing decision a pretty easy one. You’re either getting Call of Duty or you’re not. There aren’t other games to even consider. But with this being the umpteenth release of the blockbuster franchise, how does it live up to previous years and even more importantly, how does it compare to the hype?

The Long

With their being three developers in the rotation now for the Call of Duty franchise, Sledgehammer enters the fray with a new IP with the Advanced Warfare story. A drastically different tone than either Black Ops 2 or Ghost, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare follows the world of the privatized military which are effectively government sanctioned mercenaries. As seen by all of the marketing materials, this corporation known as Atlas is headed up by the one and only Kevin Spacey and the role he takes as the player’s surrogate father after his own son is killed in combat.

Without giving too much information about the story, it follows pretty much every one of the expected beats. It’s not that it’s bad, but it is not going to surprise anyone either. It’s like going into a summer blockbuster that has no need for plot twists. It has a ton of polish and explosions that prevent you from having to think too hard.

At Comic-Con in San Diego we got the opportunity to take a closer look at the latest additions to Skylanders with Skylanders Trap Team. While we had already gotten a peek at the title, there were still some awesome announcements behind the game along with some great insight from the designers as well.

First came the announcement of the Skylanders Trap Team Dark Edition Starter Pack. Like last year’s SWAP Force Dark Edition, the set will come with some special dark paint variants of characters. Unlike last year’s though, there will be only three new Trap Team members without any sprinkling of classic characters.

It will also come with a new Portal of Power which will have a new feature in addition to a new look, the ability to use Traps to capture villains in game and use them while playing. The Dark Edition will come with a limited edition over sized trap allowing players to capture Chaos.

The funny thing is that movie games have a pretty terrible reputation in the gaming world. Most are quickly put together knock-offs of what could be considered a full game that depend upon riding on the fame of the established franchise. But back in 2004, Spider-Man 2 based off the Sami Rami take on the franchise changed all that.

Without reliance upon the movie, Spider-Man 2 as a game was just good. It was a great movie game, a great super hero game and most importantly a great Spider-Man game (considered the best of the character up to this point). But ten years later, the game and movie franchises have both gotten a reboot and that’s not always a good thing.

The Long…

First let’s talk about the story of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. While I applaud the writers trying to separate themselves from the movie slightly be adding in a whole new subplot connecting the scenes between the movie as previous games often do, the beats in this one just feel off. The early beat that introduces the game’s main antagonist also directly messes with the whole Uncle Ben story and what happens to Ben’s killer. It feels about as accurate to the character as Superman killing in Man of Steel.

Microsoft knows that Halo is a system seller. That’s why last year at E3 we saw the TBD titled Halo get a tease. But without knowing when the next Halo would be coming out, they needed to keep the appetite wet for gamers before the hoopla of this year’s E3 kicked in. What better way to do so than open up preorders to the world. If you head to Amazon you can place your preorder on Halo 5: Guardians which is set to ship by end of year 2015 (no doubt, this will be more formally announced with an actual release date at E3 or at least a quarter).

There are two things that stand out about Halo 5: Guardians based off the current cover artwork. The first is the name. Since Halo: Combat Evolved, this is the first proper Halo title to have a suffix attached to it. This leads one to believe it is either because they feel just another number isn’t enough of a differentiator to keep motivating new purchases or these new Guardians are that essential to the plot.

Yesterday, Microsoft dropped what they were hoping would be a bomb, but has truthfully only ended up being a cause for more contention in the console war. After about six months of being outsold by the PlayStation 4, Microsoft has announced they will be releasing a Kinect-free version of the XBox One. Hitting shelves on June 9th, this will be just in time for the E3 frenzy and most likely hope to capitalize on new titles being announced at E3 bringing more popularity to the system. It will also drop the price to $399.

Instead of people being happy about the new lower price, the negative backlash came. Sony fanboys decried the move as desperation. While it can be said that Microsoft did need to do something to put the console on even ground with the PlayStation, it wouldn’t be an act of desperation.

Microsoft listened to the feedback and instead of dropping the price and losing money due to cost, they removed the big elephant in the room that was associated with that higher price point. Had they kept the Kinect and dropped the price or dropped the Kinect and lowered the price below the $399 mark before Sony had enacted any price drop at all on the PlayStation 4, that would have been an act of desperation.

“Let’s Play” videos are all over YouTube. You can’t make it through the site without a horde of Let’s Plays. Because of this, the Whiskey & Waffles team decided they needed to get some going as well.

Check out their first in a series with the release of Trials Fusion.

Only a few weeks after Disney decided it was time to shoot a volley in the smart toy war by introducing the Avengers to Disney Infinity, Activision has fired back with a premiere for the latest Skylanders sequel. Again, focusing on innovation with gameplay implications, Skylanders Trap Team is coming to systems in October.

As you’ll see in the trailer below, Skylanders Trap Team introduces a new element to the series. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this means traps. But it isn’t just a matter of trapping defeated foes. This game encourages players to take those villains and use them for good. Boasting 60 new Skylanders and 40 trappable villains, this could be the largest release of Skylanders to date.

It’ll be interesting to see how the traps work but it the trailer hints that specific traps work on specific enemies which means to catch them all, you have to buy them all too. How they are packaged will be interesting though. Skylanders may come paired with a trap or maybe a trap pack will be created with four or five traps sold together. Regardless, Activision has just renewed their license to print money.

When we play games around here, they usually fall into two groups. Sometimes you want to run around and blow stuff up with games like the Call of Duty franchise and sometimes you want to go fast. Project CARS falls in that second category.

Developed by Slightly Mad Studios, Project CARS (Community Assisted Racing Simulator) is “the most authentic, beautiful, intense, and technically-advanced racing game on the planet.”

In the game you “create a driver, pick from a variety of motorsports, and shift into high gear to chase a number of Historic Goals and enter the Hall Of Fame. Then test your skills online either in competitive fully-loaded race weekends, leaderboard-based time challenges, or continually-updated community events.”

The game features “world-class graphics and handling, a ground-breaking dynamic time of day & weather system, and deep tuning & pit stop functionality, Project CARS leaves the competition behind in the dust.” They’re not lying, the game looks amazing.

To prove it, check out a trailer for the game after the break. Look for Project CARS to drop for PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC and SteamOS this November.