The Rare We Knew Is Dead

For someone who was initially miffed about Rare going the way of a massively-multiplayer, online experience — and admittedly heralding a much lower level of excitement as a result — the outcome, after a fair number of days at [virtual] sea in the closed beta, are more upbeat. Albeit, still mixed in a number of ways. Let’s start with the positives and work our way down: Sea of Thieves Guide|https://seaofthievesfans.com/ of Thieves has a peculiar degree of charm to it. Perhaps not to the same degree of colorful personality of previous titles, but subtly present nonetheless. Anyone who’s followed Rare for a long time will instantly recognize the degree of care and consideration for the details, both grand and minuscule in equal measure. The glare of the sun as you swim your way back to your ship, the ruffle of paper as you scour your chartered map for the desired island to reach; even the way your on-board lanterns flicker and crackle as the waves collide and risk snuffing out the flames.

Now the current occupation of creative team members in the company rely on one thing and one thing alone to sell their games: nostalgia. The current Rare as we know it relies heavily on gamer's nostalgia of IPs of gaming’s past. It's no coincidence that Rare Replay (an amazing collection of old Rare Games) was released during the same time Microsoft was announcing that Rare was going to be making more "Traditional" games again. Don’t be confused; even though Rare Replay was released on Xbox and marketed as Rare titles, these are in no way a reflection on the current company. The majority of the games seen in Rare Replay were done by employees that no longer exist at the company.

The reveal of Rare Replay and the teaser for Sea of Thieves was a marketing poly to get gamers excited to play Rare games again, even though the game will not be anywhere near the same quality we have come to expect from "old" Rare titles during their run with Nintendo. This isn’t to say the game has no chance, but the point is that "old" Rare is officially dead and this new incarnation is building up hype off of titles they had no affiliation with.


A recent datamine of the game's files uncovered lots more Sea of Thieves content, including new enemies and animals such as parrots, pigs, and seagulls. The leak also pointed to lots of character and ship customization , from tattoos and eyepatches to a variety of ship hulls. With the game's microtransactions still a few months away, Rare is still working on the finer details but these datamined options do sound like the sort of cosmetic items that could be unlocked via microtransacti

But perhaps it's this deliberate restriction that lends itself to some interesting interactions between players and novel use of player skills as a means at working better together. While the skill at merely turning a map around to show others sounds ridiculously basic, it’s a clever move in context. A means to build bridges between similarly-plucked team-mates and better incentivises Sea of Thieves’ core, principle lesson in working together. Granted the perk is proven moot when, upon agreeing on a particular voyage, you simply get handed the same maps in your inventory, but the physicality of such interactivity in-game is welcome regardless. When it comes to your ship, though, all hands are most certainly on deck. There are sails to align and angle; potential hazards to flag and shout out to the player steering the ship (whom, if the sails are set at full length can’t see where they’re steering, again a nice nudging toward better relationships)…and if worse comes to worse, leaks to repair should you collide. Or even worse, cries of "FRAME-RATE!" -- as I had to do when a teammate is barking compass directions but I have no means to control the stuttering performance -- when the game (on PC) decides to nose-dive from relatively stable 60FPS to, at its worst, the high-teens -- the most notable drops occurring mostly at sea, relatively afar from shore.

Naturally, then, gamers have been eager to find out exactly what the online component of Sea of Thieves ' multiplayer would entail. Unfortunately, those expecting that the title would be free-to-play once initially purchased are going to be sorely disappointed. Sea of Thieves design director Gregg Mayles shot down the idea of a free multiplayer experience in an interview with Eurogamer at E3 2016 yester


Yes, Days Gone is another zombie game, but its approach to the horde could put a unique spin on traditional third person action. Where most games tend to be about clearing out the entire enemy force, Days Gone seems to make that impossible. It’s a game where survival is not necessarily about bullets and accuracy, but tactics and speed. We still need to see more of the story to decide whether the game has more to it, but for an E3 experience, Days Gone took the familiar and made it fr


However, with so many games on-hand it might have been hard to pick a favorite, or even 10 favorites. But Game Rant did just that, and so without further ado here are the the winners of Game Rant's Best of E3 2016 Awa