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JXE Streams: Going out into 'Final Fantasy XV's' great wide-open
Final Fantasy XV is playable right now and that seems impossible. Even just as Episode Duscae, the small demo included with the newly released Final Fantasy Type-0, it feels like a phantom. Final Fantasy Versus XIII was announced in 2006 as a PlayStation 3-exclusive side story to the impending Final Fantasy XIII. After years of trailers, delays and a slow trickle of art from the game -- a song from the soundtrack showed up on Yoko Shimomura's greatest hits in 2008, for crying out loud -- it was retitled Final Fantasy XV in 2013 and announced for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Now it's partially here. Nine years after that first announcement, we're digging into the expansive Episode Duscae on JXE Streams.
JXE Streams: 'Splatterhouse' makes a mess of Friday the 13th
Jason Vorhees' hockey mask in Friday the 13th was an accident. Special effects man Martin Jay Sadoff just happened to really like hockey and have a bag of old-school gear with him when the third movie was in production. As pop culture serendipity goes, the mask is a brilliant success: when Friday the 13th rolls around, it's impossible not to think of that chipped face guard. In turn, it's impossible not to think of pulpy horror and that infamous date when you see something that even sort of looks like the mask. No doubt that was the logic at Namco when it conceived Splatterhouse -- one of gaming's earliest gore-fests -- and its masked star. That's also why we're playing a whole lot of Splatterhouse for you on JXE Streams!
JXE Streams: 'Grand Theft Auto Online,' heists and you
The best laid plans of crooks and thugs lead us to nothing but loot and hugs! At least that's what we're hoping happens when we play the newly released heists in Grand Theft Auto Online on JXE Streams. Nearly 18 months after Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto V, the game's online multiplayer mode finally has heists, new missions in which you and a crew of other players try to execute multi-tiered virtual crimes. Think Ocean's Eleven but with markedly less George Clooney and markedly more video game violence. We'll be playing through the very first of the heists to give an overview of how they work on today's show.
JXE Streams: Sex, violence and 'DmC: Devil May Cry' on PS4
Devil May Cry, in addition to sounding like a scrubbed Pablo Neruda poem, was an evolutionary leap from the clunky 3D action games of the '90s when it hit the PS2 back in 2001. Capcom's game delivered a heady blend of The Evil Dead and anime flash, while redefining how free-flowing action felt in a video game. Oh, and it looked cool as hell. When it was announced that 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry would both reboot the series and come from the drastically different creative culture of the UK rather than Japan, fans balked. How could it possibly live up to the legacy? Now DmC is getting another shot with a PS4 and Xbox One definitive edition which we're playing on JXE Streams.
JxE Streams: Revisiting Rare with Xbox 'Conker: Live & Reloaded'
Rare Ltd., the storied game developer Microsoft bought off Nintendo for a hefty sum at the beginning of the century, has started to stir again. After years of developing poorly received motion-control games like Kinect Sports, all while members of the original staff left for other studios, rumors were swirling that the team will return to its classic series from the '90s. Conker, the foul-mouthed star of Conker's Bad Fur Day on Nintendo 64, actually popped up as a guest star in Xbox One game creator Project Spark. Just today a Reddit poster, verified as a former Microsoft employee, said that the company has been trying to get a new Conker game off the ground for some time. No time like the present to dig into Conker: Live & Reloaded for the original Xbox on JxE Streams.
JxE Streams: Bring on the Bright Lord in 'Shadow of Mordor'
Last year was a mixed bag for fans of magical rings and short dudes with a penchant for going barefoot. On the one hand, The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was a disappointing close to the mediocre second Tolkien film trilogy. On the other, Monolith Games made one of the best pieces of Lord of the Rings-related fare in years in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Its thriving world and "Nemesis System," which has you intimidating, manipulating, and confusing an army of monsters, made it one of the first standout successes on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. We're diving into "The Bright Lord," a brand new downloadable story campaign, on JxE Streams at 4PM ET.
JxE Streams: 'Resident Evil: Revelations 2' meets 'Code Veronica'
No one refers to video games as their "stories." Games tend to have a whole lot of sequels but they're hardly suited for serialized storytelling over a long period of time. Super Mario Bros. doesn't keep a thread running General Hospital style; the medium's just not built for soap opera. With the exception of Resident Evil, of course. For nearly 20 years, Resident Evil's absurd storyline has stayed intact: an unbroken string of evil corporations, bio-terrorism and the cheesiest one-liners this side of a Marmaduke comic strip. Unfortunately, Claire Redfield, one of its best heroines, has been out of the spotlight for 15 years. Now she's back and JXE Streams is looking back on her stories.
JxE Streams: Taste the rainbow in 'Kirby and the Rainbow Curse'
What seemed so novel and strange about Kirby: Canvas Curse when it came out now seems almost quaint. Only one part of the screen can be touched at a time? There aren't gyroscope controls? What is this, an Android store launch game? Please. Just shy of its tenth birthday, though, Canvas Curse still feels like a pristine lesson in touch-control video game design despite its antiquity. It had the depth and challenge of a classic arcade game as well as a strange but clean, immediately understandable interface. Canvas Curse was a colorful dollop of fun that begged for a follow up. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is finally here, and we're playing it for the very first time today on JXE Streams.
JXE Streams: Fight the werewolves of London in 'The Order: 1886'
Sometimes you just have to walk in blind. Could there be monsters waiting inside the dimly lit alleyways of The Order: 1886's merry London town? Of course! Could the game be god awful? Almost certainly. That isn't going to stop JXE Streams from walking into the game, having never played a single second of it previously, for a solid two hour stream this afternoon.
JXE Streams: Exploring the murderous beauty of 'Apotheon'
This afternoon -- as we do every Tuesday and Thursday -- Joystiq X Engadget Streams is taking a trip back through Greek mythology with Alien Trap Games' Apotheon on PS4. Also available on PC, it's one of the free games this month for PlayStation Plus subscribers and brings 2D action that's more than a little similar to the old Metroid and Castlevania games. For a fresh twist, it's got this pottery-art graphic style and a unique combat system. Your hosts today are Edgar Alvarez and Richard Lawler, so follow us on Twitch.tv/joystiq between 3PM and 5PM ET where we'll give this sidescrolling throwback a try.
JXE Streams: Diving blind into 'Life is Strange' from 'Remember Me' studio
It makes sense to stream the debut episode of Life is Strange with only barebones information about the game -- after all, life itself is often a blind stumble through odd and surprising events. I'll go live, solo-style, with Life is Strange at 3PM ET today at twitch.tv/joystiq. This is poised to be a weird one, featuring a coming-of-age narrative and a sci-fi twist: The main character, Max, has the ability to stop and move through time at will. She returns to her hometown to find a mystery involving a missing girl and Max's own former best friend, who has grown colder and more reckless. Get ready for angst, teenage rebellion, friendship lost and regained, and crazy time travel. So far, developer DONTNOD (Remember Me) has emphasized both the sci-fi and emotional plot points equally. Life is Strange -- let's find out how strange together from 3PM - 5PM ET.
JXE Streams: The wild and weird 'Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask'
This week -- tomorrow -- Nintendo is re-releasing its polarizing Nintendo 64 third-person action game, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. But today -- at 3PM ET! -- we're streaming the game and hosting a rousing discussion. No "expansion pak" required! Though we'd love to show you the re-release for Nintendo 3DS, there's simply no way for us to stream from our handheld game systems. As such, today we're streaming the original Nintendo 64 game. No, we don't have a magical Nintendo 64 with HDMI-out, but we do have a Wii U, which has a Wii built into it, which has Virtual Console. All that to say this: we're streaming the Wii re-release of Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The future! We're in it!
JXE Streams: Creeping through 'Darkest Dungeon'
We're back! Like clockwork, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon you can expect Joystiq X Engadget streams on Twitch, and today is no different. I'm jumping into Darkest Dungeon, a game only available on Steam's Early Access program right now -- I'm told it's both excellent and scary as hell. Given that, I'm going in completely blind and learning as I go. Won't you join my expedition into the mouth of madness? I sure hope you will! The pre-show kicks off just ahead of our official 3PM ET start time -- head blow for the stream and comments, or head to our Twitch page right now and follow along so you know when we're streaming any time of the week!
JXE Streams: Life finds a way in 'Evolve'
Steps up to mic. Cues "Muzzle" by Smashing Pumpkins. My name is Anthony John Agnello, onetime Joystiq community manager, host of Joystiq Streams and known scallywag. I've been knighted in three countries, thrown out of the Madame Tussauds wax museum five times (but only once for a good reason) and I've been writing about video games professionally for eight years. My work's appeared in The Onion's The AV Club, The Gameological Society, Edge, Digital Trends, Fast Company and many more.
