Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX
Square Enix had an exhibition at E3 this year, like usual. Sadly, there was no news on the highly anticipated Kingdom Hearts III or Final Fantasy XV. They did however come with up with Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX. After the first Kingdom Hearts compilation was so well received, Square decided to do the same thing with the remaining games: give them a visual upgrade and bundle them together. And, just to prove to people that, yes, they are still working on Kingdom Hearts III, they included a new trailer at the end of the announcement.
It’s nothing groundbreaking, but there’s also nothing wrong with rereleasing classic games. After all, they are games that have been proven good that are receiving an HD remastering, so they’ll still be good. This will no doubt please fans of the series and at least give them a distraction while they continue to wait for Kingdom Hearts III, which they’ve been doing for years.
Civilization: Beyond Earth
Firaxis announced Civilization: Beyond Earth, a spiritual successor to the much beloved Alpha Centauri at PAX East in April earlier this year. More information was revealed at E3, including a hands-off gameplay demo. In many ways, it seems like Beyond Earth is Civilization in space, but there are some interesting things they decided to do. First of all, civilizations are not preset. In Civilization V, you picked a civilization to play from the start. In Beyond Earth, you start as a generic default survivor civilization, and the techs you research and early moves determine what civilization you’ll play for the rest of the game. This brings me to the next big change, which is that the tech tree has been redesigned into a tech “web”. This gives the player more choices and more freedom while researching techs than previously. Also revealed were three new philosophies, or “affinities,” namely Purity, Supremacy, and Harmony. It seems that your affinity will have a large influence on how your civilization will play. Of course, there are usual sci-fi things as well, like aliens, dangerous vegetation, poison gas blobs, etc.
I’m pretty excited for Beyond Earth. It feels like it will take a more organic approach than Civilization V, which locks you into playing a certain style based on your civilization power, and special units and buildings. They seem to be sticking a bit too close to the Civilization formula than I’d like, but the changes that have already been announced seem great, and there’s still time for Firaxis and 2K Games to wow us further.
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