Gaming News - Page 83

Spider-Man 2 is the latest first-party PlayStation game to achieve blockbuster status.

With Spider-Man 2's spectacular success, Insomniac has proven lightning can strike in the same place twice (three times including Miles Morales). The successful sequel has garnered a 90 on Metacritic and has now unlocked game sales to match the hype.

Sony has confirmed that Spider-Man 2 is now the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time. This is an impressive feat to be sure, but it's hard to match the webslinger's performance with other first-party record-holders like God of War Ragnarok, the original Spider-Man from 2018, and The Last of Us Part II.

Square Enix once again goes meta with its mega-popular MMORPG, adding in a new in-game crossover with another game in the series.

The worlds of Valisthea and Eorzea will soon clash as Square Enix prepares an official Final Fantasy XVI x Final Fantasy XIV collaboration event. The two games will cross-over with a special experience called The Path Infernal, and will see players fight alongside FF16's protagonist hero Clive Rosfield against the fiery eikon Ifrit, who is also lifted directly from the PlayStation 5 mainline hack-and-slash game.

At the official Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest 2023 event in London, Yoshi-P gave an update on the cross-over event, confirming a Torgal mount and other content:

The Evil Within is one of the free games on offer from the Epic Games Store this week, to give you a dose of horror and get you in the mood for Halloween.

There are two freebies, in fact, and the second game to be given away is a very different kind of puzzler, Eternal Threads.

Head on over to the store to scoop these up now, and don't hang around, as they'll only be available for a couple of days (until October 26).

Criterion Games joins the ensemble of studios working on Battlefield, but a new Need For Speed game is also in preliminary stages of planning.

In a bid to optimize budgets, reduce spending, and tighten up its gaming business, Electronic Arts recently splintered its gaming business into two parts: EA Sports, the label that develops and publishes heavy-hitters like Madden and the newly-released EA FC24, and EA Entertainment, the division that essentially develops everything else, ranging from Battlefield and the Jedi series to The Sims and Apex Legends.

This split has seen a variety of studios gravitating towards certain projects and labels. Naturally, studios like Criterion (and BioWare, for that matter), are now a part of EA Entertainment. In a recent announcement post, EA's Vince Zampella confirmed that Criterion would join 3 other studios and work on the Battlefield franchise. Right now DICE, Ripple Effect, and the newly-launched Ridgeline studio run by Halo veteran Marcus Lehto are working on the future of Battlefield, which is believed to include an inter-connected webwork of titles and experiences ranging from dedicated a dedicated campaign to a free-to-play mobile title.

A sword which was supposedly dropped from Elden Ring (among other cut content) has been discovered in the game - though don't get too excited (we'll come back to why in a moment).

However, the finding of the blade is a definitely a cool story, as it was only known to exist in Elden Ring thanks to data miners who had previously stumbled across unused icons, one of which was the battered and aged looking sword.

As GamesRadar (via TechRadar) points out, the weapon was discussed in a YouTube video by Ziostorm, who then flagged on X (formerly Twitter) that a player had actually found the blade in the Lands Between.

The other day, we got a fresh look at Squadron 42, the ambitious single-player spin-off of the perpetually in-development Star Citizen. With the head of Cloud Imperium Games being industry veteran Chris Roberts, it's described as a modern-day reimagining of the classic Wing Commander series, albeit with space exploration and tactical first-person shooting joining the star-studded dogfighting amongst the stars.

It uses the same tech and engine as Star Citizen, now dubbed StarEngine - the long-in-development Squadron 42 is feature-complete and in the "polish phase." Alongside that impressive demo, there was perhaps an even more impressive StarEngine demo showcasing the full potential of what it can do and Star Citizen's incredible scale.

Okay, talking about this game 10+ years after its initial reveal is often met with skepticism - and rightfully so. However, people have been playing an early version of Star Citizen for several years now (and spending big on virtual ships), and the tech we see in this demo is next-level next-level.

With a 26-minute presentation covering the game's cinematic story, space battles, all-star cast, first-person missions, and stunning visuals - it finally looks like Squadron 42 is on track to deliver the modern Wing Commander game we've all been waiting for.

For those needing a refresher, Squadron 42 was announced alongside the long-in-development Star Citizen in 2012 - described as the 'single-player' component of the ambitious sci-fi universe sim. The original release window was 2014, and from there, it was continuously delayed as the size and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 expanded. It's a game that has been in development for over a decade.

"Squadron 42 is now feature complete and has entered its polish phase," Chris Roberts, Founder and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), says in the impressive video demonstration of the game. If you're into sci-fi games with cockpit action like the Wing Commander series or more modern titles like Mass Effect and Starfield, it's a must-watch.

Alan Wake 2, the highly anticipated sequel from Remedy (the studio behind the brilliant Control and Max Payne franchises), is set to launch globally on October 27 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The latter has been dominating the PC gaming headlines of late because of the super demanding PC requirements for the game.

For 30 FPS performance at 1080p, you'll need a GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600 with DLSS or FSR 2 set to 'Quality' mode - which means the game is being upscaled from an internal 720p resolution. Also, this is 30FPS using the game's Low graphics preset without any ray-tracing effects.

This makes Alan Wake 2 the most demanding PC release ever. However, it doesn't stop there. The developer hasn't included GPUs from the GeForce GTX 10 Series or Radeon RX 5000 Series because they're not officially supported.

Rockstar Games has been steadily improving its in-house graphics engine -- Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) -- for years. It has powered Grand Theft Auto over the years and Red Dead Redemption 1 + 2, but it is being suped-up for Rockstar's next-gen Grand Theft Auto 6.

We're now hearing that the evolution of the RAGE engine in GTA 6 will be a huge step above what Rockstar has done before. With the graphics gap between Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 being huge, we're being told that the graphics gap between Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 will be even bigger.

A new post by Rockstar Mag France is a reminder that a Rockstar Toronto studios developer had their Slack account hacked by the hacker group "Lapsus$" and revealed a bunch of new information on Grand Theft Auto 6. The hack was so big it gutted the staff at Rockstar... but now we're hearing about the graphics side of things, and it has me excited.

Alan Wake 2 is shaping up to be one of the best-looking games of the year on a fully tricked-out PC, but it's also going to look beautiful on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, says Remedy.

Remedy Entertainment's Communications Director, Thomas Puta, has taken to Twitter to discuss the performance of Alan Wake 2 on consoles. Puta said that the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Alan Wake 2 are "great" and that the PC version of the game is as "good as it can be", with the developer recommending NVIDIA's second-fastest GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card for 4K 60FPS with ray tracing and path tracing enabled.

Puta explained on Twitter: "Especially as a console player, I'm really happy how good Alan Wake 2 is on console platforms. We had a lot of focus on them throughout development ensuring the game would run well and look as incredible as it does. Focused on all platforms to be fair, as well as we could".