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Some games are grand adventures. Others are a thinking man’s puzzlers. Others still are character-driven narratives. And then there are those games that ask you to stab the crap out of other gamers until their avatars are dead, then do it some more when they respawn. Swordy is the latter.

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“We want people to look at it and say, ‘OK, that’s something Activision could make,'” Grip Games CEO and co-founder Jakub Mikyska says of The Solus Project following a hands-on session with the game at E3.

It’s a lofty goal, and I’m not entirely sure it’s one the teams at Grip Games and co-developer Teotl Studios are pulling off. But The Solus Project certainly does not appear as an indie game. So while you’re unlikely to mistake it for something with the visual fidelity of Destiny or the next Call of Duty, the Unreal Engine 4-powered game at least looks like it’s slipped into that somewhat barren in-between category. The Solus Project‘s graphics make it look like a AA game. It’s something more technically impressive than what gamers are used to getting at ID@Xbox price points, but you’re unlikely to mistake it for the next Activision blockbuster.

The demo opens with us taking control of an astronaut stranded on a grassy beach with a rocky outcrop to one side and a body of water to the other. Straight forward it is, then. Mikyska tells me that players can pick up things in the environment, so I immediately try to grab every plant I see, but most aren’t pick-ups. Eventually I do come across some plants that can be picked up along with water, health packs, a flashlight and other goodies.

Intelligently managing and holding onto items will be important, since you’ll need resources to prevent dying of exposure, thirst or starvation. Your inventory will of course be limited to prevent stocking up on too many resources to easily overcome the game’s challenges.

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The Xbox One is to get a completely redesigned user interface this fall. Microsoft are making some big changes to the overall design to ensure that gamers have a …
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Developer Nnooo announced that their pick-up-and-play endless shooter Blast ‘Em Bunnies will be coming to Xbox One.

In Blast ‘Em Bunnies the player will need to defend their …
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New ID@Xbox title Beyond Eyes will be launching on Xbox One this summer. First revealed during Microsoft’s E3 conference yesterday, Beyond Eyes is a game where players guide a blind girl through an unfamiliar world, revealing it through touch, scent and sound. The unusual premise of Beyond Eyes is set show players the colourful and imaginative world of 10 year old Rae, who lost her sight in an accident as a toddler, as she ventures outside her familiar surroundings in search of a fat cat named Nani.

Beyond Eyes is being developed by newcomer Sherida Halatoe under the name tiger & squid who hopes her first project shows that it is possible to create meaningful, emotion driven games without stripping away all gameplay elements. She is being assisted by veteran studio Team17 to bring the game to Xbox One in 2015. \Check out the beautiful E3 teaser after the jump.

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The Behemoth are bringing their classic RPG beat ’em up Castle Crashers to Xbox One this summer. The new Castle Crashers Remastered will feature various performance updates including an …
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In video games, boss fights usually come at the end of levels, acts, chapters, etc. You work your way through a series of smaller challenges, baddies or puzzles to earn the right to face off against a boss and, should you emerge victorious, move on to the next section of the game. That was the custom established decades ago, and it’s largely stuck ever since.

Not so in Cuphead, StudioMDHR’s debut old-time cartoons-inspired shooter. Cuphead has an overworld that you can wander around in and select where to go next, but your what you’re selecting from are boss fights, not levels. Yesterday at E3 XBLA Fans went hands-on with one of those boss fights — and died. Repeatedly. But damn if doing so wasn’t fun.

After selecting what looked like a rocking little music hall on the overworld, I was thrown into a boss fight with a pair of giant frogs with another random player at my side. Hurting the frogs was easy enough: keep holding down the shooting button and take aim at the one frog or the other. The overgrown amphibians soak up tons of fire coming from your characters’ index finger and thumb as they form the shape of a gun and spew forth a barrage of pew, pew, pews.

The bosses, of course, don’t just take this abuse laying down. One shoots ice balls at differing heights, requiring you to alternate between leaping over them and going prone to duck them, while the other spits out flaming bees that you can shoot out of the air. Once you inflict enough damage during this stage of the fight, one of the frogs rolls toward you before going into a new pattern.

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No Time To Explain was tinyBuild’s first project on a very low budget on outdated technology. After panning from critics for technical issues, tinyBuild has been able to rebuild the game for proper release. The remade No Time To Explain was built using Unity and features the player chasing after future selfs through time and alternate realities while fighting monsters, collecting hats and eating cake. The remake also features four player local multiplayer, redesigned boss fights and redesigned soundtracks. A quote provided by the game sums everything up in a nutshell, “I Am You From The Future! No Time To Explain, Follow m-OH CHRIST!”

No time to explain, look at the trailer from E3 below.

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Don’t drop till the music stops.
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For those that are unaware, the Game Preview Program is a newly implemented feature by Microsoft similar to Steam’s Early Access system where players can actively purchase, play and participate in a game while it’s currently under development.

Elite: Dangerous is a massively-multiplayer online space adventure bringing open world exploration of the Milky Way at full galactic proportions. As the third sequel in the series and the first to reach Xbox One, this game includes an evolving player-driven narrative and a connected multiplayer experience. Players start off in a small starship and some credits and gradually build up skill, knowledge and wealth to eventually reach the rank of an iconic Elite.

Elite: Dangerous is currently available in 1080p for $30.99, £24.99, or €30.99 based on regional equivalent as part of the Game Preview Program and contains achievement, Xbox party and friend list support.

In July, the Close Quarters Championship content arrives first on Xbox One to those that are in the preview. The CQC content provides an intense player vs. player environment with custom-built arenas to fight for supremacy.

See Elite: Dangerous in action below.

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