From No Man’s Sky to a new Destiny expansion, have a look at some of the biggest games for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS due this summer.
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Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness
You’re headed for the stars some 6,000 light years from Earth by way of another motley cast of heroes with outlandish hairdos and gloriously gaudy duds. The fifth in studio tri-Ace’s Star Ocean roleplaying series hopes to reinvigorate its classic realtime combat with up to 7-player battles and a story about first contact with an alien species.
PlayStation 3 & 4
June 28
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Longtime LEGO custodians TT Games applies its lightly irreverent block-building formula to the newest Star Wars film, adding a few new wrinkles like Multi-Builds (choose from multiple possible build piles as part of a new puzzling element) and Blaster Battles (cover-based, over-the-shoulder shootouts).
PC, PlayStation 3 & 4, Xbox 360 and One, Wii U, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS
June 28
Song of the Deep
Developed by a small team within largish studio Insomniac Games (Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, Sunset Overdrive), Song of the Deep is a side-scrolling, exploration-driven adventure starring a young girl who cobbles together a submarine in an attempt to find her vanished father.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
July 12
Monster Hunter Generations
Capcom’s newest Monster Hunter (in which players do just what the title says) was originally known as Monster Hunter X (as in “cross”) in Japan. The “X” reportedly inspired producer Shintaro Kojima to approach the game design by fours, thus Generations offers four hunting styles, four villages to base from, and four primary monsters to defeat.
Nintendo 3DS
July 15
I Am Setsuna
Studio Tokyo RPG Factory’s roleplaying riff on tales of human sacrifice explores the lives and choices of a small group of individuals (including a girl selected as oblation to demonic creatures) through the lens of gameplay concepts pioneered in 1990s console games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger.
PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita
July 19
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
The sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution revisits cyber-protagonist Adam Jensen as he grapples with escalating cultural-political tensions prompted by the rise of augmented humans. It also ships with a new “Breach” mode, that distills the main game’s tactical concepts into VR-themed “sneak in, then sneak back out” hacking missions.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
August 23
Destiny: Rise of Iron
Quasi-online shooter Destiny‘s fourth expansion further expands the game’s no-longer-skimpy story, adds new competitive maps and modes, provides a customary uptick in loot-hunt items and lifts the game’s light level cap significantly. The one downer: They’ve removed support for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
PlayStation 4, Xbox One
September 20