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Image by Aaron Souppouris | @AaronIsSocial | 14 hours ago

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XCOM, Renowned Explorers, Hard West

2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a revelation. I'd never played the '90s original or its successors, but I was immediately drawn in by the reboot's story, world and, most of all, combat mechanics. At its heart, XCOM is a turn-based strategy game that pits your team of four soldiers against an alien invasion. As anyone who has played it at all will tell you, though, it's so much more than that. A sequel is coming this November, but in the meantime, a pair of independent developers are readying their own takes on the genre, and they both have the potential to be truly special games in their own right.

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Image by Nick Summers | @nisummers | 15 hours ago

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Even now, after seven years, Mirror's Edge is a unique and exhilarating parkour thriller. It's littered with flaws -- a paper-thin story, some frustrating level design and unnecessary gunplay -- but the clean, dystopian world and fluid motion still impress. The game didn't sell particularly well, so it was a surprise when EA first announced that it was giving developer DICE another roll at the franchise. Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a complete reboot for Faith, but it could also be the team's last chance to prove the series has a future. If the game can't find a larger audience this time around, it's unlikely that EA will green-light another.

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Image by Sean Buckley | @seaniccus | August 7th 2015 at 4:18pm

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Later tonight, Nintendo will celebrate Splatoon's latest update with an official Splatfest event, but forget that noise. Here at Engadget, we're having our own. Welcome to the Engadget Splatfest, a two hour squidtastic stream celebrating everything that makes the game's new update great. You'll see tweaked maps, new outfits, updated weapons and the feature that makes today's game possible -- enhanced matchmaking. It's everything the game needed in one fantastic package. Join us at 5PM ET (2PM PT) on Twitch.tv/Joystiq, right in this post or on the Engadget Gaming homepage, or right here in this post to watch a gaggle of Engadget editors tear each other apart as adorable squid-people.

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Image by Nick Summers | @nisummers | August 7th 2015 at 12:10pm

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The Star Wars Battlefront franchise has a simple goal: to put players in the middle of huge, sprawling battles ripped straight from the films and wider fiction. Whether that's battling the AT-AT walkers on Hoth or an X-Wing squadron above Sullust, you're made to feel small -- just one of many soldiers fighting for the Rebel Alliance or Galactic Empire.

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Image by Aaron Souppouris | @AaronIsSocial | August 7th 2015 at 10:50am

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Mighty No. 9

Mighty No. 9 is one of the most successful video game Kickstarters of all time. It's also been delayed. First until September, and then, earlier this week, it was pushed all the way to 2016. In the months between the two delays, the studio announced it's working with Armature and Microsoft on the Xbox-exclusive ReCore, and its developer Comcept launched two more crowdfunding campaigns for other projects. Backers are upset. So upset that the campaign for the new game failed to reach its goal. We sat down with Mighty No. 9 producer Nick Yu to ask why the game has been delayed, what Kickstarter is for and whether he feels bad. (He does.)

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Image by Timothy J. Seppala | @timseppala | August 7th 2015 at 10:30am

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It wasn't until after I'd repeatedly pummeled an oversized rat's testicles that I realized why preserving video game history is so important. Were it not for Rare Replay, an anthology of 30 games spanning 32 years, I'd never have played Battletoads Arcade and would've missed one of the finest moments from one of gaming's most storied developers.

Replay is an invaluable record of developer Rare's legacy, but it's neither complete nor perfect. Before Microsoft purchased the studio for $375 million in 2002, Rare made games almost exclusively for Nintendo. GoldenEye and the Donkey Kong Country series (arguably its biggest hits) are absent here thanks to publishing and licensing deals, while other games have been scrubbed free of Nintendo references entirely. While Replay's remastered contents are the best they'll likely ever look, games aren't movies, and visuals are only one part of the equation here. So can a slick, modern package make up for any shortcomings that result from playing decades-old games? The answer isn't so simple and it fluctuates wildly from one classic Rare title to the next.

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Image by Nick Summers | @nisummers | August 7th 2015 at 10:00am

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PlatinumGames is on a roll. The Japan-based studio is less than a decade old, but already it's put out a string of critically acclaimed titles such as Bayonetta, Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. It's built a reputation on fast-paced action and deep, rewarding combat, and now it wants to prove it can deliver a compelling RPG experience too. Scalebound, the studio's Xbox One exclusive, is scheduled for release in 2016 and until recently, we've seen little of the game beyond a short CG teaser. At Gamescom, the studio revealed a glimpse of its gameplay and now, after watching an extended demo, I've decided Scalebound is the Xbox exclusive I'm most excited about.

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Image by Timothy J. Seppala | @timseppala | August 7th 2015 at 2:50am

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We got up close and personal with the Xbox One's incredibly expensive Elite controller at E3, but how do all those modular bits and bobs work? A new video from Microsoft out of Gamescom sheds some light on just that. The Elite's customization goes much deeper than just swapping out different lengths of thumbsticks: you can adjust trigger deadzone, download custom button-binding profiles for certain games, tweak haptic feedback intensity on a motor-by-motor basis and even completely remap button functions. Long story short: if standard gamepads regularly fall short for your high-level needs, this is the paddle for you.

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Image by Mat Smith | @thatmatsmith | August 7th 2015 at 1:28am

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Looking to stream Sony's TV service to your PS3 or PS4? Living in Fort Worth and Fort Lauderdale? If that particularly specific Venn diagram has you smack in the middle, then good news: PlayStation Vue launched there, today. While it won't be on your iPad or Vita just right now, expect compatibility to roll out as soon as Sony deems it ready -- then that Venn diagram overlap will get at least a little bigger.

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Image by Sean Buckley | @seaniccus | August 6th 2015 at 8:45pm

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Blizzard ended 2014 with a promise to release bigger, better expansions faster -- and today at Gamescom it finally showed off the goods. The next World of Warcraft expansion is called Legion, and like its name, its additions to the game world are many. Legion will bump the max player level up to 110 (from 100) and introduce a new continent: the Broken Isles. Here players will search for the Tomb of Sargeras, and prepare for the invasion of an all-powerful demon army. How do you fight demons, you ask? With an all-new Demon Hunter Hero Class, of course.

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Image by Timothy J. Seppala | @timseppala | August 6th 2015 at 5:52pm

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More than any other artistic medium, video games have a dire need to preserve their history. Unlike movies, books or music, it's incredibly hard to enjoy a classic game years or even decades after its release because of how quickly the technology powering gaming advances. Lately though, the influx of HD remasters and digital distribution have made it really easy to enjoy works from years gone by. So when Microsoft announced Rare Replay at this year's E3, the idea of 30 (!!!) games from developer Rare's past being playable on a modern console struck a chord with many people. But how do games from the UK studio's storied history hold up to? Join us at 3PM PT / 6PM ET on Twitch.tv/Joystiq, right in this post or on the Engadget Gaming homepage to find out as we broadcast two solid hours of classic Rare weirdness.

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Image by Jessica Conditt | @JessConditt | August 6th 2015 at 3:10pm

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It's amazing to see Palmer Luckey -- creator of the Oculus Rift and custodian of the tech industry's current obsession with virtual reality -- on the cover of Time magazine this month. It's another sign that virtual reality has a real shot at entering the mainstream conversation, following previous signals like Facebook buying Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, and Sony, Valve, HTC, Samsung and dozens of other companies revealing their own VR headsets. As amazing as Luckey's Time cover is, it's also really, really odd. Why is he on his tippy-toes? Does he really need to be squatting like that? What are his hands doing? Where's the controller? And why the hell is he in front of a fake beach? The world may never know, but through the power of photo-editing tools, we certainly can imagine. See some of our ideas below and please add your own chops in the comments (feel free to use our cutout).

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