We gear up for Assassin's Creed Unity and Uncharted 4, Hotline Miami 2 puts us on hold
And the revenge of IllumiRoom
We're going to mention this once and one only: Alien Isolation is now out, and if you haven't already got it then you need to ask yourself "what the hell is wrong with me?", read this, then go get. Then come back, thank us, and read the rest of Week in Gaming. Capish? Good.
On hold
Sorry to kick off with a bit of a downer, but we thought you should know that Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number has been delayed to late 2014/early 2015.
Developer Dennaton Games announced this week over Twitter that the game is still getting "some final tweaks and polish". Which probably translates as: more blood.
We loved the first Hotline Miami, which combined fast-paced, addictive gameplay, neon-baked ultraviolence, and a thumping electronic soundtrack. It feels like we've been waiting for Hotline Miami 2 for ages, but we suppose a few extra months can't hurt.
Especially as we're promised that the second game will include a level editor, which will let us build and share our own tiny labyrinths of depravity.
A Thief's End
Uncharted 4 was confirmed for a 2015 release back at E3, but we've seen and heard very little about the project ever since. However, Naughty Dog has revealed that we could be in for a proper reveal very soon.
"It's coming along nicely," the studio's co-president Evan Wells recently told GameCrate. "We've been hard at work since E3 and all I can say is that we'll be having some stuff to show you very soon."
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The game stars an older, Dark-Knight-Returns-esque Nathan Drake, who's been . But of course, just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in. Some blurry photos of some soon-to-be-released concept art surfaced earlier in the month. The book, which looks set to celebrate the studio's 30th birthday, opens with an introduction:
"We haven't revealed a great deal about the game just yet, but in the following pages we are sharing some never-before-released pieces of concept art from Drake's upcoming adventure.
"We're not going to spoil it for you, but rest assured: he and his companions will be traveling the globe again discovering secrets lost to history-and you might even discover some secrets about Drake himself."
A tale of one very gory city
We recently got to enjoy several very intimate hours with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Unity, which is set to be the first proper next-addition to the series.
In case you hadn't already heard, it's set in French Revolution-era Paris, which feels incredibly befitting for the franchise. In fact, we couldn't help but wonder why it's taken taken so long for the series to get here.
Unity is the biggest and more gory entry in the franchise yet, but one that also goes back to many of the fundamental basics of the series. Ubi also told us that keeping the game down the 30fps was largely to remain a "cinematic" feel, adding that hitting 60 would have been a lot of hard work for little gain.
You can read our in-depth look at Unity here.
Oh, and finally, remember IllumiRoom, Microsoft's massive augmented reality gaming experience? Well it's back and under the new name of RoomAlive.
Unfortunately it's still a proof-of-concept idea, so it won't be coming to a living room near you any time soon. But maybe if you project the video below onto a wall, you can sort of pretend it's a thing.
Hugh Langley is the ex-News Editor of TechRadar. He had written for many magazines and websites including Business Insider, The Telegraph, IGN, Gizmodo, Entrepreneur Magazine, WIRED (UK), TrustedReviews, Business Insider Australia, Business Insider India, Business Insider Singapore, Wareable, The Ambient and more.
Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider covering Google and Alphabet, and has the unfortunate distinction of accidentally linking the TechRadar homepage to a rival publication.