Next year will have you shoot demons and devils to the beat of headbanging metal music, as developer The Outsiders and publisher Funcom are proud to announce the upcoming rhythm FPS Metal: Hellsinger.

Metal: Hellsinger is a rhythm FPS, where your ability to shoot on beat will increase your power and intensify the music. Featuring an original soundtrack with vocals from metal icons such as Matt Heafy (Trivium) and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), Metal: Hellsinger innovates both the rhythm and FPS genre with layered music. Each level will have its own song, and every song will be divided into multiple layers. Your performance will impact how many layers of the song will be played at a time, starting with atmospheric background music, and ending with powerful metal anthems.

Metal Mayhem: The upcoming shooter will feature original music composed by Elvira Björkman and Nicklas Hjertberg, also known as Two Feathers.

“This gives the player an incentive to stay on beat, because the experience becomes so intense and so powerful that you want to keep it that way,” explains Funcom Chief Creative Officer Joel Bylos. “I knew that Dave and The Outsiders know how to make shooters, but I have never seen anything done quite like this before. It’s a very ambitious project and one we are proud to be a part of,” he says.

The Outsiders’ Creative Director David Goldfarb has previously been Lead Designer on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, as well as Game Director on Payday 2. He says he has never had more fun creating a game, than he has with Metal: Hellsinger.

“We want to make this the most metal game ever,” says David Goldfarb. “Or get as far as we possibly could, anyway! To make something that felt like a tribute to the epic imagination and joy and fury of metal – not just in terms of music, but art style, characters, lore. Trying to do it has been an amazing joy and we can’t wait to get it into the world for people to play,” he says.

Metal: Hellsinger is due to release on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X in 2021. The game will be optimized for next-gen consoles, with improved visuals, up to 120 frames per second, and drastically reduced loading time.

Everyone that works on STG is a volunteer. If you like the site and it’s contents please think about donating. Even a small amount helps keep the servers running.

The post Funcom Reveals New Rhythm FPS Metal: Hellsinger appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

During the recent Epic keynote at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, publisher Funcom and the developers at The Bearded Ladies announced from the stage that Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is finally making its way to Nintendo Switch and that the date to mark in your calendar is June 25th, 2019.

It was also announced that the Nintendo Switch version will come with an expansion DLC that will also be available for purchase on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Lastly, it was announced that a retail Deluxe Edition will also release on June 25th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch which will include both the base game and the expansion DLC.

Check out the Nintendo Switch trailer above.

The post Mutant Year Zero coming to Nintendo Switch appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

E3 2018 unveiled a raft of exciting titles but none more so than Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. 

The strange sight of a talking duck walking alongside a grumpy pig had me hooked from the outset and the fact that this was an RPG was the icing on the cake.

MYZ is a grim, wisecracking, hilarious, silly, ridiculous game that I’m in love with. This is less Saints Row silliness and more XCOM 2 tactical strategy, this combination of losing yourself in the ambience of the post-apocalyptic environment and having to keep your wits about you as you plot out your next fight is one that I couldn’t get enough of.

The game starts with you taking control of Stalkers Dux (the Duck) and Bormin (grumpy pig) as you wander through the surprisingly lush wasteland on your way back to the final Human settlement, The Ark. This also serves as your home base where you can buy everything that a mutated Duck and Pig could ask for, weapons, armour, medkits, grenades, upgrades and attachments are all here for you to purchase. Pro tip: buy the discount when you first get to the Ark, its the best first option. You are then sent on a mission to find the legendary stalker Hammon, who recently left the Ark to search for the fabled city of Eden, but he’s the only one who can keep the Arc running so he’s pretty important in the scheme of things. So off you go on your merry way.

You head North to see where Ol’ Hammon went and you encounter an interesting, albeit not entirely fleshed out, storyline that takes you on a good journey as you begin to understand more about what’s going on around you. Trekking through the forest, encampments, towns, bunkers are fun with the different terrain and obstacles providing a really interesting conundrum when plotting your attack.

Ghouls and robots are running rampant around the world, each wanting to kill you for being a Stalker. Why can’t we have a little sit-down and talk through our problems over a nice pot of tea? Fine, have it your way, time to shoot faces.

The combat is tactically fun.

You need to scout the area to know how many enemies are loitering, where they are, the type of firepower they have and where the best position to attack from is. Your group can split up to make positioning easier, taking advantage of the terrain. One mutation that Dux has is the ability to grow moth wings and use these to gain a height advantage in combat. You can also use this ability to reach high perches and have the constant high ground in a battle. Each turn you get a set number of moves you can perform, move, fire weapon, reload, use an ability, throw a grenade, heal. Using each of these at the right time take a little work before you become familiar with the most efficient way to see off your foes.

Take your time to understand the fight before you engage as there can be enemy reinforcements just around the corner who can turn the tide for their comrades. Also, make sure you move to positions that provide you with a 100% hit chance. I don’t remember how many times I’ve missed 75% shots where if I had moved a few tiles in either direction, I would have killed the ghoul. Medkits are important too. Stock up if you can.

The weapons and armour in MYZ are good.

You have your traditional post-apocalyptic mash-up of 19th-century gunpowder weapons and modern accessories. Loud guns should be supplemented with a silenced weapon to pick off enemy stragglers without alerting their friends eating smores just around the corner.

On your travels, you will find scrap that can be traded for items back at the Ark, weapon or armour crates with hopefully something fun in them or a clue to the story. These items can be hard to find sometimes so make sure to use the flashlight to highlight these hidden objects. Sneaking is also a thing in MYZ which is not just useful when positioning before battles but is even better when using it as a tactic to not engage with enemies and just steal their loot. Some of the tougher early areas can be looted for good gear by using sneak.

The arc of the game is great and I really enjoyed the how tough the encounters were. If I was out of position or not concentrating, I was made to pay and failed a few fights by being too cocky and aggressive rather than sticking to my plan. My enjoyment of this game went through the roof when I realised that I couldn’t just steamroll everything and had to consider my strategy throughout (and I was only on Normal difficulty).

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Some won’t like the way it plays but I’d be willing to be there are a lot more people who will fall in love with the game just as I have. Give it a chance.

The post Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden PC Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

“From scorching deserts to frozen peaks, humid swamp and dry heat, the world of Conan Exiles is a large and hostile world where only the strongest will survive,” begins the narrator in this brand new video (above) showing the journey players will take as they strive to survive Funcom’s open world survival game when it launches on May 8th, 2018.

After 14 months of Early Access, Conan Exiles is about to launch complete with new content, features, and its first ever release on the PlayStation 4 platform. More than doubling in size since start of Early Access, the world players will get to explore and survive includes extreme locations from burning deserts to the frozen highlands, as well as never-before-seen locations such as the Swamp. There, players will find the perverted Lemurians who perform orgiastic rituals to worship Derketo, the twin-natured goddess who walks the line between lust and death. This new video will introduce you to the vast, new world of Conan Exiles and show you just what it takes to survive the savage lands of Conan the Barbarian.

Conan Exiles is a survival game combining brutal combat, powerful building systems, and intense player vs. player warfare, all set in a vast and open sandbox,” says Creative Director Joel Bylos. “But it’s certainly not an empty sandbox and we’ve gone to great lengths to give the world a sense of place and history. Players will come upon points of interest as they explore the world, characters they can interact with, and they can delve into dungeons and uncover the secrets of ancient civilizations. Conan Exiles is definitely about surviving and building your own world, but it’s also about discovering the world that we have crafted.”

Conan Exiles is an open-world survival game set in the brutal lands of Conan the Barbarian. Here players must survive in a savage world, build their kingdom, and dominate their enemies in brutal combat and epic warfare. You start with nothing but your bare hands and forge the legacy of your clan, building anything from a small home to gigantic fortresses and entire cities. Wage war using swords, bows, siege weapons, and even take control of giant avatars of the gods and lay waste to enemy cities.

Conan Exiles can be experienced in both local single-player and in persistent online multiplayer.

The post Journey Through Conan Exiles this May appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Of course the world ends, it was just a question of time.

Extreme climate change, global economic crisis, a lethal pandemic, and increasing tension between old and new superpowers. For the first time since 1945 nuclear weapons were used in armed conflict. Mushroom clouds rose from east to west before the dust settled. The humans are gone. The Mutants are here.

Funcom, the independent games developer and publisher, and Bearded Ladies, a Sweden-based game development studio that includes former ‘Hitman’ designers and Ulf Andersson the designer of ‘PAYDAY’, today announced a brand-new game called Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Proudly standing out as a tactical adventure game, it combines the tactical turn-based combat of ‘XCOM’ with real-time exploration and stealth gameplay, wrapping it all up in a deep storyline set on a post-human Earth.

The game, which is being developed by Bearded Ladies and published by Funcom, is set to release in 2018 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Players must take control of a team of unlikely heroes, such as Dux (a crossbow-wielding, walking, talking duck) and Bormin (a boar with serious anger issues), and help them navigate a post-human Earth with its abandoned cities, crumbling highways, and mutated monsters on every corner. The ultimate goal: save yourselves by finding the legendary Eden.

“It’s an unusual label for a game, but tactical adventure really fits the bill, no duck pun intended,” says Executive Producer Ulf Andersson at Bearded Ladies. Andersson is also known for being the designer of the 2011 megahit ‘PAYDAY’. “Our goal is to blend the deep and tactical combat of ‘XCOM’ with a branching storyline that unfolds as you explore overgrown forests and abandoned cities with your team of Mutants. Mixing that with real-time stealth gameplay gives you a unique way to approach or avoid combat situations you encounter while exploring.”

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is powered by Unreal Engine and will be available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in 2018. The game is based on the classic ‘Mutant’ IP that has spawned several popular pen and paper role-playing games since the 1980s, including the current Mutant: Year Zero from Free League and Modiphius Entertainment.

The post Join the Mutants on the Road to Eden appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Very soon gamers on both PC and Xbox One will get to journey to that very age in Funcom’s upcoming open-world survival game Conan Exiles. Starting January 31st 2017, players on PC will get to unleash their inner barbarian in Early Access.

Soon after, Xbox One players too can jump into the fray as Conan Exiles hits the Xbox One Game Preview program in the spring same year. Inspired by the great Robert E. Howard stories, Conan Exiles will have players fighting to survive, build, and dominate their enemies in a vast and treacherous open-world in both single- and multiplayer.

To celebrate today’s announcement, Funcom is releasing a brand new trailer showing how the game looks in action. This is the first ‘Conan Exiles’ video released in almost six months and shows the results of the hard work the developers have put into both graphics and gameplay since June.

“The open-world survival genre is ripe for Conan’s conquest,” says Game Director Joel Bylos. “If there ever was a world that can truly test your strength and skill, it is the brutal and savage world of Conan the Barbarian. Conan Exiles is not just an empty sandbox, it is a world rich in history where you must discover the secrets of ancient civilizations as you struggle to build your own.”

Conan Exiles is an open-world survival game set in the brutal lands of Conan the Barbarian, the world’s greatest fantasy hero. The game can be played on private and public servers, either in multiplayer or local single-player. In the world of Conan Exiles, survival is more than tracking down food and water. Journey through a vast, seamless world filled with the ruins of ancient civilizations and uncover its dark history and buried secrets as you seek to conquer and dominate the exiled lands yourself.

Start with nothing but your bare hands and forge the legacy of your clan, from simple tools and weapons to gigantic fortresses and entire cities. Enslave the bandits of the exiled lands to do your bidding by breaking them on the grueling Wheel of Pain.

Sacrifice the beating hearts of your enemies on the blood-soiled altars of your deity to seize true power and glory. Summon the colossal avatar of your god and see them lay waste to your enemies and their homes.

The post Latest Gameplay Trailer Released for Conan Exiles! appeared first on Shane the Gamer.