BioWare has revealed what stage of development Mass Effect 4 is in.  Speaking with a fan on Twitter, BioWare Montreal studio director Yanick Roy revealed that development is progressing well on the next entry in the Mass Effect franchise.  According to him, the game is somewhere in the middle of the development process.

The fan asked, “how far along is the next mass effect, I’ve read some reports saying early stages development and some saying late stages :P.”  He replied, “Too late for one, too early for the other… So I guess we’re somewhere in the middle? .”

Mass Effect 4 is the fourth main entry in the Mass Effect franchise.  Though it will continue the story following the events of Mass Effect 3, it will not involve Commander Shepard.  Not much else is known about the game, including the title.  Mass Effect 4 might not be the final name of the game.

It’s still too early to say when we might get our first look at the game, but maybe we’ll get a teaser at E3 2014.

The PS4 has seen a ton of indie support in just a small amount of time. Those with bustling Steam accounts may have found the lack of new titles disappointing, though. Today Frima Studio shared a post with the PS Blog about a brand new PS4 platformer named Chariot. Touted as a couch co-op game, players are expected to work together to explore underground caves while dragging a chariot along with them.

What’s up with the chariot? The storyline tells that a princess has to take the late king’s remains to be buried. Her chariot-pulling partner also happens to be her fiance. The weird concept leads to physics-based puzzles alongside platforming action.

Chariot is all about couch co-op play, although it can also be played in single player mode. There is currently no word about online co-op functionality. Frima Studio hopes to release Chariot this Fall.

We hate to make these stubby PSN sale articles, but they keep happening and keep being for games worth noting. After the price of Vagrant Story was slashed to three bucks, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has dropped to $9.99 on PSN. The critically acclaimed Square Enix game can be played on both PSP and PS Vita.

For more deals on Japanese PSN games, check out the original sale here.

If you’re not completely spent from this week’s Japanese game sale on PSN, you may want to fork over three more dollars to snatch a copy of Vagrant Story. The classic PS1 game has dropped to just $2.99 and is playable via Cross-Buy on PS3, PS Vita and PSP.

Injustice: Gods Among Us might be getting a sequel sometime very soon. Injustice: Gods Among Us 2 was apparently announced at WonderCon, but the audience was so loud that no one noticed the announcement.

Furious Fanboys reports that the announcement was made after Warner Bros. and Rocksteady finished showing off the Batman: Arkham Knight CG trailer. People were cheering so loudly that they apparently missed the announcer saying, “prepare for the return of Injustice.”  The game will not release in 2014.  No developer or official title was mentioned.  As with all rumors, take this with a grain of salt.

Injustice: Gods Among Us made its debut April 2013 to strong critical and commercial success.  NetherRealm Studios, the same developers of Mortal Kombat, created the new fighting game IP set in the DC Universe.  The cliffhanger ending and the high sales of the game made a potential sequel seem obvious.  If Warner Bros. is confirming the game right now then it is possible we might get more details at E3 2014.

We’ll let you know if Warner Bros. makes any announcements regarding Injustice: Gods Among Us 2.

Watch Dogs will be out in less than a month’s time, but Ubisoft is already planning for post-launch DLC. The French company has announced today that there will be a season pass available through XBL, SEN and UPlay next month, giving players access to a bevy of new content as they roll out over time.

For $19.99, players will receive a new single-player campaign that centers around the eccentric hacker T-Bone. There will also be an additional set of Digital Trip missions where, after you take the digital drug, you are tasked with hunting down cyborgs. Past that, there will also be new outfits, such as classic 1920s Chicago mobster clothing, a larger arsenal of weapons and even more single player missions for Aiden.

Most importantly, Season Pass owners will receive all this add-on content a week early before those who buy it separately (which will run you an extra five dollars if you decide to do so). Watch Dogs will be available for PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC on May 27.

Zen Studios has carved a niche out for themselves as the definitive pinball creators of their generation despite the lack of physical pinball machines to work with. Their pinball games over the past decade have virtually brought some of the genre’s greatest games back to life and allowed a lot of people who have never been able to experience a real pinball machine to at least get an idea as to why it was such a popular pastime. Marvel Pinball gave Zen Pinball 2 a shot in the arm a while back, as did Star Wars Pinball. Now, the latter franchise has returned with a new four table pack focusing on the heroes of the Star Wars universe.

Han’s table is the first of the bunch and uses the Mos Eisley cantina marvelously. You get to hear the iconic music in the background while Han and C3PO audio clips play. The table features Han staring over the whole assembly with a great sense of pride as the Millennium Falcon fills the screen towards the back-end of the table. Its layout is full of ramps and turns, and includes a bit of Falcon interaction after some careful back-end flipper usages. As an introductory table, you couldn’t ask for much more since there’s always something going on in it and it’s easy to get hooked just racking up points. My initial goal with it was to just do well after losing a ball early, and then a couple of saves gave me hope (a new hope, some might say). I did better after that and wound up with a staggering two million points after getting over the initial jitters.

This table’s play session segued seamlessly into the second table, entitled Masters of the Force. My first playthrough led to five and a half million points, which felt incredible. This table’s theme is a basic good vs. evil — split right down the center vertically with bright red for evil and a subdued blue for good. It’s a stunning image and even extends to the flipper colors. The table itself is full of voice samples, Yoda in the top right-hand corner, the Emperor in the left-hand side, and hidden areas to gain tons of points in. There’s a lot going on here and it’s one of the faster-paced tables in the pack. The third table on offer focuses on the droids, and is the least exciting of the bunch. Hearing C3PO constantly is annoying and the tunnel-heavy design is a bit too different for my liking.

While it rewards higher-level play and skill shots, it’s not the most exciting table to just play and have fun with. The final new table focuses on the New Hope and fits that movie perfectly. Luke is in the lower-left with Tattooine taking up a lot of real estate on the left-hand side. The right features TIE fighters in the art, and the upper right-hand side can lead to a giant battle with ships being taken out by the extra ball in play on the board. Darth Vader quips are all over this table, with Luke also getting a healthy amount in too. The ship battle is easily the highlight of the table pack, and nothing quite tops the thrill of taking down all of your enemies in one fell swoop. This is quite an action-heavy pack since three of the four offerings are fast-paced tables. The droid one is great for when you’ve had a good run and feel confident in your skills, while the others are there to dazzle both yourself and others with Star Wars references.

Visually, everything here looks on par with the rest of the tables in Zen Pinball 2. The metal portions look nice and shiny, while the figurines of the characters retain that realistic-looking vibe that they should have since they’re usually based on actors. At the same time, the limited animation works in the game’s favor because it’s a pinball game and you wouldn’t expect moving parts within the machine to have much fluidity – they should look mechanical and do. The designs of the tables are all interesting to look at, with Masters of the Force being the most beautiful of the bunch. Episode IV has the most going on, and that’s probably going to be the showcase table for the game due to that. Like the PS4 versions of Pinball Arcade and the other Zen Pinball 2 tables, there are a lot of little lighting effects here that take advantage of the hardware. Also like the other versions, these are cross-buy and provide a fantastic value amidst the other Sony family systems.

Like all things Star Wars, your ears will love hearing the classic score from John Williams. It’s epic in films and works fine for pinball games too. The voice clips seem to be a blend of archival stuff from the movies and newly-recorded stuff, as I can’t think of a single context in which Yoda saying “skill shot” would make a lick of sense. Maybe there’s a bit in the Christmas Special where everyone plays pinball and snorts coke off the glass. Back to the game itself, the table noises are excellent and the metal clanking is particularly satisfying. It may seem like an odd thing to praise, but this a pinball game and you’ll be hearing a lot of it — so it had better be good. Everything sound effect-wise is realistic, or at least as realistic as you’re going to get for a pinball representation of a sci-fi space opera.

Closing Comments:

Heroes Within is a fantastic table pack for Star Wars Pinball fans. Three of the four tables are incredible and will get a ton of use from those seeking to top their own personal best scores. When you factor in online leaderboards, you’ll wind up getting hooked on these tables for a long time to come. Like the PS4′s other pinball offerings, this set looks really good and makes perfect use of archival Star Wars music to set the tone. Some of the voice clips are a bit much, but they’re thankfully not enough to hurt the overall package much. This is a must-buy for anyone who’s enjoyed the Star Wars Pinball stuff released so far, regardless of which platform you own the game on.

Kickstarter was a godsend for Black Forest Games when they pitched Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams and now they’re using it again for DieselStormers. DS takes place in Ravensdale – a place full of steampunk influences and really extreme color saturation. Unlike Giana’s platforming, this is more of a run and gun game akin to Metal Slug – only with Giana’s graphical style. Beyond just an all-out assault of bullets, lightning, and whatever firepower you have at your disposal, there’s also some platforming mixed in. Crumbling platforms and pits can send you, or your enemies, to their doom.  The mission setup features difficulty rankings and lets you know the core objective right away – much like Mercenary Kings. Easier tasks are going to give you less grief, but also yield fewer rewards than tackling on something that might be over your head a bit.

Reward-wise, $1 gets you a thank you, $14 gets you a digital copy of the game, while only $3 more gets you that and early access. $25 gets you all of that plus a digital OST and a digital artbook. This is probably the best overall value because a lot of games would keep these kinds of bonuses locked in the $50 range. Black Forest made an amazing platformer in Twisted Dreams, and based on their pedigree, this should be an excellent game as well. If the concept, its video, and their GIFs amuse you, consider backing it and helping the project get off the ground. They’re already 10% of the way there, so it seems like people are excited about it – and a playable prototype is available as well as a proof of concept.

Daylight wastes no time letting you know you’re in a horror game. You wake up in an abandoned hospital secluded on an island with no recollection of how you got there. You pick up an electronic device and start hearing instructions from a shadowy man that doesn’t identify himself but lets you know you should probably try and get out because bad things are coming. If there was a program on your computer called “DEFAULT HORROR GAME” this is the exact set-up it would go with. While the premise here might sound generic, the execution is anything but. The levels are randomly generated meaning you can’t look up a guide to tell you where to go. The enemies appear without warning so you can’t prepare yourself for the fright. This is a horror game for the sole purpose of horror, and if you can’t appreciate that then Daylight is more than happy to show you the door.

It is a survival horror game in the same subcategory as Slender. Essentially you walk around and pick things up and hope you don’t get your face eaten off by the boogeyman, here embodied by the shadowy creatures that follow you around. You pick up things called remnants which are little news clippings or photos or post-it reminders to murder whichever dummy is going around picking this stuff up. Unfortunately, whatever evil is inhabiting this island is apparently a compulsive hoarder and doesn’t take kindly to their treasure drove of creepy messages being disturbed, because as you do this you end up making it angrier and angrier until it starts manifesting and trying to kill you. In each area there is a “key” as well as a locked door, and by picking up a preset number of remnants you cause the key to appear and can use it to open your way to the next area.

You are armed with some very minimal things to protect yourself with, including a tablet for light and a map, flares, and glowsticks. The glowsticks illuminate which pieces of furniture you can interact with to find the remnants and which are just there to move around and scare you, and the flares will work to ward of whatever monster happens to show up to welcome you to the neighborhood and death. Judging from the achievement list on Steam these things are actually called “witches” but I preferred my designation of ninja terror death demons. After you pick up enough remnants and get far enough into the game, occasionally your phone will get all fuzzy to let you know “hey, you’re about to die!” and you can either prepare yourself by waiting and hoping it goes away, whipping out a flare (if you have one) to make it disappear instantly, or running for your life screaming like a little kid and crying for your mommy. Sometimes the AI is more aggressive than others, and there were a couple of encounters I seemed to avoid the witches by looking at the floor and pretending I couldn’t see them. Once, I looked at the floor and saw the creature hiding behind me, which was terrifying until I realized the witch was polite and wasn’t attacking me until I turned around. I set it on fire. YOU DON’T TRY TO SCARE ME JERK.

The levels themselves are randomly generated for each playthrough, meaning that no two experiences will be the same. I am of two minds as to how this affects the game, and while I certainly see the appeal I’m not entirely sure in the end if it helps the game. The good news is that by making the levels randomly generated, this is one of the first horror games I’ve played where I can jump back in at any time and still not be prepared for what the game has to offer. I know where are the scares are lurking for me in Bioshock or Silent Hill 2, so subsequent playthroughs lose that punch the first one had. In Daylight, while you know that horror is always hiding somewhere, ready to pop out of the shadows and slap you across the face, you never know when or where that might be. Each playthrough is different, each one unique, and I could certainly see myself dropping in for another playthrough a couple months down the line and having just as much fun as my first time through.

However, there is something to be said for a well scripted scare, and a designer that knows exactly what they are doing can set up the situation perfectly to absolutely ruin your dreams for weeks to come. In Daylight, there are no real moments of psychological horror, and all the frights are of the pop up “screamer” video variety of scares. These can be excellent, don’t get me wrong, and I’m certainly not saying there aren’t moments when I jumped because there were plenty of those. At one point while navigating the prison I spent too long trying to open a door (it was opening into me – shut up), and decided it would be best if I just went around to the other side. As I was turning to move around, a witch appeared out of nowhere and the game ever so kindly suggested I run but the part of my brain that reads and understands things had already ran outside, jumped in my car and drove off. I feverishly attempted to smash the button that whips out my flares, but in my panic I instead punched the one that brings out glowsticks so it looked like I was inviting the witch to a rave. It did not end well for me. The game does an excellent job instilling a real sense of uneasiness into you because you just know something is going to pop up and scream in your face – you just don’t know when.

Also, if you ignore things from a horror standpoint and look at it objectively as a game, the random generation of the levels does no favors to the overall enjoyability. I played through the first level several times to get a feel for what sort of changes I could expect, and none of the layouts would I consider “good.” If this game had one specific level design, and you could choose any of the ones the game managed to randomly generate, there isn’t a specific one you could put in the game that I would deem to be anything better than terrible. With so many different ones that are randomly generated, you sacrifice cohesiveness and well crafted level design for replayability and unpredictability, and I’m not entirely sure it was worth it. As the game is putting together random pieces, you are mostly stuck with identical looking corridors occasionally punctuated by several similar looking rooms that may or may not be empty. With how samey everything looks it becomes very easy to get lost which I think might be part of the point but it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable to have to refer to your minimap because you can’t tell if you already walked down this specific hallway yet or not. Disoriented in a maze chased by monsters certainly works from a horror perspective, so if you are solely looking for a good scare you might be able to overlook the fact that with nearly infinite different level designs there isn’t one that would stand out as good.

Beyond just my qualms with the randomly generated level, the gameplay itself isn’t exactly what I would consider “fun.” In fact, if you aren’t a big fan of getting scared the game doesn’t have much to offer you. Reaching the end of the level but having to go back because you missed a remnant down one of the random hallways you didn’t check filled me with equal parts dread of possibility encountering a monster and dread of having to slog through the same hallways all over again because I missed a piece of litter. Even with the change of scenery between levels, most areas play out exactly the same and you are just collecting notes in new areas to get to the next area so you can get more notes. The enjoyment comes not from the gameplay itself, as you’re basically just walking around and hoping not to die, but from how unsettling the game is and never knowing when your run of the mill scavenger hunt is going to turn into an all out sprint for your life. The fun in this game comes solely from the enjoyment of giving in and letting yourself be scared. If you can’t get into that, there is nothing here for you.

Closing Comments:

Daylight’s shortcomings will scare away genre detractors. The gameplay is repetitive, the level design annoying and backtracking quickly becomes a chore. It falls short because because of these things, yet remains an amazing experience. As a survival horror junkie, I had a blast running and screaming my way through the three hours of terror Daylight has packed in and will undoubtedly dive back in at a later time to experience it all again. This is the kind of game you have to be a survival horror fan to get, but if you are, it will push all the right buttons and you will be able to ignore the shortcomings in the actual gameplay.