firehose

There are plenty of big shooters coming to the PlayStation 4, from Destiny to Killzone: Shadow Fall. These games emphasize massive, open worlds, social connectivity, and incredibly detailed high-definition graphics. Mercenary Kings, an upcoming PS4 and Steam title from Tribute Games, goes a different route. It's a title that feels like the Metal Slug game that time forgot — a 2D shooter for a next-gen console.

Mercenary Kings is a run-and-gun shooter in the vein of Contra and Metal Slug. You play as a soldier of some sort, and you take on missions that mainly involving killing lots of dudes with really big guns. The gameplay is reminiscent of the classics, with simple platforming and an emphasis on action. But it also feels relatively open, letting you explore levels instead of simply moving from left to right. In the demo I played, the controls felt tight and the weapons satisfyingly powerful.

While it may sound like yet another retro-style indie game, Mercenary Kings has several tweaks that give it a modern feel. Chief among them is the insane amount of weapon upgrades at your disposal — much like in the Borderlands series, you can customize your guns by swapping parts, giving you plenty of freedom to build a firearm that works just right for you. You'll gather these bits and pieces with a Diablo-esque loot system that should provide added incentive for shooting bad guys in the face. According to the developers, there are more than 300 parts to collect and use. And though I played in single player, there will also be co-op play for up to four people, which should make a crazy game even crazier.

The over-the-top weapons and action are complimented by the big, exaggerated pixel art, which comes courtesy artist and animator Paul Robertson, best known for his work on the Scott Pilgrim beat 'em up for PS3. Characters are cartoonish and exaggerated, and the bad guys explode in surprisingly playful splashes of blood and gore. The bosses are gigantic and the explosions even bigger. The classic gameplay and retro visuals may make Mercenary Kings seem like a dated throwback, but the customization elements and terrific art style help make the game feel modern. It's also the most fun I had playing a PS4 shooter at E3 — and it's coming to both Sony's console and Windows later this year.

Gallery: Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (6/7/13)

Kanye West took nearly every measure an artist can to prevent his latest album from hitting the web ahead of its June 18th debut. Unfortunately, less than a week out that's exactly what's happened. All ten tracks of Yeezus have popped up across various bit torrent and file sharing websites — proving that despite numerous precautions, West isn't immune from what has become a norm in the music industry. The self-proclaimed Steve Jobs of "internet, downtown, fashion, and culture" is expected to sell at least 500,000 copies of the album when it officially hits stores (both physical and digital) Tuesday, joined by other anticipated rap releases from Mac Miller and J Cole. West has attempted to fend off leaks in the past, most notably with Watch The Throne — his joint effort with Jay Z — which was effectively kept from pirates until its release date.

Dean Hall, the lead designer of DayZ, will publish his survival zombie game on Xbox One if Microsoft does away with the self-publishing restrictions and software update fees imposed on independent developers with its next-generation console, he told Polygon.

"I mean, I like the console. They're still really early on in the process," Hall explained. "They are all still up in the air, we still don't know what will happen. We wouldn't even think about [a console version] until we release it on PC. So it is still a very unknown quantity and we have got see whether Sony will deliver on what they said. And there is some concerning stuff about the PS4 as well. Like, the sun is not shining out of Sony's ass or anything."

"But with the PlayStation 4, we can self-publish and we don't have to pay for updates," Hall said. "Why do we need the publisher? And why should we pay for updates? You know we are going to be updating this game for a year, so it kind of seems a bit stupid to me. Whereas, with the PlayStation 4, we can self-publish and we don't have to pay for updates."

Hall said that the cost of updating a game on Microsoft's console is "very, very prohibitive." Although, he did offer hope that maybe the corporation's stance will change.

"And I'm not hating on Microsoft or anything," Hall said. "It is a real problem. Paying money for updates is a very difficult proposition for DayZ. I'm mean, I'm sure that means you can turn around and you can negotiate stuff with Microsoft; but what happens to the other indies?"

Hall said that if more people raise their voices, maybe Microsoft will rethink its strategy. "That's what I am hoping. I'd love to see DayZ on the Xbox One, but then we'll have to pay for updates and find a publisher then."

Sony's interest in a DayZ release for PlayStation 4 was revealed in April; however, Hall says the Windows PC version is the highest priority. "I'm positive that if we don't screw up the PC release, a console release will be most likely," he said. "But with the console release, we want to start developing it soon and we want to use the lessons from the PC to make it better. So we need to be able to patch and update it, we wouldn't want it to become this different thing."

I played a hundred new huge-budget video games this week, but the only one that really made sense to me was a cellphone game called RYMDKAPSEL.

Like many tower-defense games the primary objective of RYMDKAPSEL is to grow and defend your population. But when designer Martin Jonasson set out to make a viable StarCraft for mobile, he discovered that StarCraft probably isn’t something you’d want to play on your phone, and its most memorable component would probably be how much it crashed your OS. So he boiled it down, reducing and reducing until he came up with the most efficiently brilliant game I’ve ever played on mobile.

The game begins on a vectorized orthogonal grid in space, your playable characters materializing as two tiny pixel-sticks. As you assign them projects like corridor and kitchen construction time passes ominously in a simple red timer; enemy attacks appear at the end of each period. As attacks get bigger and faster the need for more resources becomes drastically clear, so your two minions must broaden their skill sets to include food services, reproduction, and energy extraction.

Even if you didn’t want to complete it, RYMDKAPSEL’s first sub-mission (of three) renders itself unavoidable — "researching" four TMA-1 type obelisks to gain speed enhancements, shields, and generator upgrades. It sounds a lot like any other tower-defense game, but the indie game’s reductionist foundation informs every aspect of gameplay and requires a level of meditative simplicity I’ve never experienced in a game this nuanced. Move too fast and perish for lack of resources; move too slow and perish for lack of resources. There is no level of button-mashing or lazy idling that will get you anywhere in this tiny universe — just a subtle balance that takes a huge amount of discipline to develop.

Simplicity also rules on a design level: It reminds me of my previous-favorite mobile game Drop7. Blackness and basic polygons dominate the landscape; every sprite is illustrated with the old Swedish maxim in mind: "Everything you need, and nothing more." When a game is this tightly designed you don’t need texture maps to make it interesting — but when creative design choices do arrive they are full of subtle nods to other contemplative masterpieces like 2001 and Tetris. Even the soundtrack is a minimalist achievement, feeling something like an opioid 16-bit Boards of Canada.

Amidst E3’s world of billion-dollar budgets there were very few experiences that felt truly revolutionary. Like the film industry, gaming’s biggest hits are nearly always sequels that rely on iterative improvements to the last installment: slightly more accurate player depictions in sports games, a new fighting technique in a tactical shooter. That’s probably why RYMDKAPSEL was the only thing on the whole show floor that felt remarkable to me on all levels — a small-budget strategy game with a lofty ideology; a one-screen world as opposed to an open universe; a defiantly individualistic challenge in a market that demands player connectivity.

The ever-efficient Swedes always seem to be my favorite artists; now Martin Jonasson has become my new creative champion by extracting a game from a precise vision like a sculptor shaves away miniscule layers from a block of marble. His artistic constraints required him to make something that’s far too rare these days: a game that makes you feel smarter as you play it. It is definitely my favorite game — and I haven’t even beaten the first level yet.

RYMDKAPSEL is $4.99 from the PlayStation Mobile store / platform. You can get it for your late-model Android phone here.

Sony's press conference trouncing of rival Microsoft was a gift to the news media and to anyone who enjoys high drama. But for third party publishers like Electronic Arts, the balance of power between console manufacturers is something worth preserving.

We can't be an industry that is dominated by one manufacturer.

According to EA chief operating office Peter Moore, an overly dominant first-party power would be "terrible news for the industry". For EA, it's not enough that many consoles are bought and sold, they need to come from more than one company. Rivalry between Sony, Microsoft and (to a lesser extent) Nintendo confers power to its own bargaining position.

"The idea of two incredibly powerful and talented companies like Sony and Microsoft ... for them not to be in the boxing ring with each other slugging it out while the rest of us benefit, it's going to be bad. We can't be an industry that is simply dominated by one particular manufacturer," said Moore.

"It keeps them focused. They have to outdo each other. The amount of investment they make in our industry is important. If it's true that Microsoft has some catching up to do, having spent a lot of time in Redmond, Washington, I know what will happen up there. I can guarantee you that [Xbox supremo] Don Mattrick has the resources corralled to make that happen. [Microsoft boss] Steve Ballmer will be driving that hard from the top."

Moore speaks from experience. He launched Sega Dreamcast in the United States back in 1999, now considered by many to be a heroic failure against the immense power of Sony's PlayStation brand. And he launched Xbox 360, which vastly increased Microsoft's share of the console market, following the previously unspectacular performance of the original Xbox.

Moore told Polygon that he believes there's a long way to go before winners and losers can be declared in the next generation console race. "The dust will settle on E3." he said. "People like [the press] are going to declare winners and losers. It's just the nature of the beast. Then you have the critical period, which I've run twice. E3 is over. Now it's launch minus 122 days."

He said that first and third parties have a few months to get the launch games right, and so tempt early adopters. "It's less about what you see at first blush at E3, where you're still working in a lot of instances with alpha software, or even pre-alpha. What you're going to see at Gamescom, which I think is going to be a very important show this year. Late August, if you're not cranking on next gen in late August and that stuff isn't looking truly next gen, then you have a real issue you have to be able to deal with."

Moore said that Microsoft would draw a line under E3, and would seek to learn lessons. "Both companies are very good at reaching out to us and saying, 'What did you think?' Jack [Tretton] does that very well. Don Mattrick does that very well. We're a major third-party publisher and we're a partner. We've been around the block a lot longer, in a lot of instances, than their teams have. We've seen it from both sides. They will, I think, represent our opinion on things very aggressively in their meetings. They'll be interested in what we have to say. That'll add to their data."

I'm digging it, because now it's like, game on.

He said the console companies would look at reactions from the media, retailers, third-parties, investors and gamers. "They have to get all that data in and figure out where they go from here. That's pretty standard operating procedure when you go post-E3. You don't spend the money and not have a full official debrief when you get back. What have we learned, what do we need to do, and when do we need to do it so we get our launch right?

So, what will Moore be saying to Microsoft on Monday morning?

"Well," he said. "I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to say to Don because I can see that headline. 'Moore Says - Don, Get Your Shit Together'. That's not what I'm going to say. But I was in Don's position. They will do what they need to do. It's a very talented group of people."

He added, "I'm digging it, because now it's like, game on ... I'm a great friend and fan of what Jack does. You've got Andy House. You've got Kaz [Hirai]. That's a lot of experience at the corporate level. The same thing applies to Microsoft. You've got Don, who's been around for many years on both sides of the equation. You've got the likes of a Marc Whitten, one of the more talented individuals I've ever met in my life, doing the platform. Aaron Greenberg is their chief of staff. They've got a good group as well. I think it's great for us, quite frankly. You've got two very motivated, large, multinational, global corporations saying, 'We've gotta get this right. What is it going to take financially?' It feels good if you're sat in the middle of that."