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.