Gaming News - Page 409

Horizon Forbidden West has been delayed to February 18, 2022 on both PS4 and PS5, Guerrilla Games has confirmed.

As many expected, Aloy's big ambitious new sequel won't release in 2021 and has been pushed back to early 2022 to give Guerrilla more time to polish the experience. The PS4 port hasn't been cancelled though and Forbidden West is still a cross-gen game on both PS4 and PS5.

"We have entered the final stage of development, but we were a bit uncertain if we would be able to deliver the game with the level of polish and quality that we strive for. It's no surprise that our teams were impacted by the global pandemic, and we've been adjusting to new workflows and other challenges while keeping our teams safe and prioritizing a healthy work life balance," said Horizon Forbidden West game director Mathijs de Jonge.

The new Saints Row is here, but it's not exactly what you expected.

Volition today revealed its new Saints Row reboot at Gamescom, but it's entirely new game set in a new city with totally new characters. There's no iconic banter between Johnny Gat and Shaundi, for instance. Instead, your crew is Neenah, Eli and Kevin set in an origin story of the Saints gang. The game takes place in Santo Ileso, a colorful and chaotic modernized Wild West overrun by lawlessness and gang warfare.

Characters aside, the devs are going all out with the reboot. Santo Ileso is the largest and most dynamic playground ever featured in a Saints Row game. There's tons of unique weaponry (does that distinct purple "bat" make a comeback?) and players will enjoy features like seamless co-op with a crazy amount of customization for their own specific boss.

Battlefield 2042 will be one of the biggest games of the year and once again NVIDIA has its name on it when it comes to technologies supported: DLSS + Reflex and more, but now you'll get it bundled for free.

NVIDIA is offering GeForce RTX-powered gaming desktops, laptops, and graphics cards will get a free copy of Battlefield 2042. Not only that, but the Battlefield 2042 Standard Edition comes with Early Access to the upcoming Beta, pre-order exclusive cosmetics including Mr. Chompy -- an epic weapon charm, the Baku ACB-90 tactical knife, and special player cards and in-game tag for online profiles.

Seth Christie, Head of Technology for EA Studios Europe explained: "With NVIDIA's game-changing suite of technologies, we're able to make Battlefield 2042 the most technologically advanced Battlefield ever. NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex provide maximum performance, image quality, and the lowest latency for the ultimate competitive experience. We're really excited to be partnering with NVIDIA as our official PC Graphics Platform Partner, to help showcase iconic all-out warfare, unprecedented scale, and dynamically-changing battlegrounds".

Minecraft is a weird and wonderful place but now it is filled with some realistic-looking motherboards from both AMD and Intel thanks to a talented Redditor.

Redditor "MasterKnight48902" spent many hours building AMD and Intel motherboards, with some of MSI's latest and greatest AMD X570S-based motherboards including the EDGE MAX WIFI, CARBON MAX WIFI, CARBON EK X, UNIFY-X MAX, and ACE MAX boards.

It took around 2.5 hours to make each motherboard using MCEdit 0.1.7.1 -- and each motherboard has an awesome amount of detail to them. We're talking down to component level with VRMs, heat sinks, RGB LEDs, and even pre-installed EK water blocks on the CARBON EK X motherboard. It's actually very impressive indeed.

Destiny 2's new Witch Queen expansion adds an awesome new melee/gun hybrid that shakes gameplay up a bit.

Destiny 2's new glaive weapon is the very first first-person melee weapon in the game, and it looks like Bungie's own unique take on Squall's gunblade in Final Fantasy 8. It's primarily an energy melee weapon that can slash out combos while also blasting mid-range projectiles--and even offers protection via an energy shield if it's leveled up. Plus it's not something you can find--it's something you have to make.

Weapon crafting is coming to Destiny 2, and the glaive will be the first piece of gear you make with the new feature. "This is a combat-based progression system. The more you use these weapons, the more objectives you complete with them, the more you'll level them up and the more powerful they grow over time," Bungie said in the Witch Queen stream. The devs confirm players will be able to make all Throne World weapons, raid weapons, and seasonal weapons with the new crafting mode.

The Fallout 76 community offers more feedback and tells Bethesda the kind of content they would most like to see in controversial live game as it enters its third year.

Fallout 76 will soon get Fallout Worlds on September 8, a new mode that's the closest thing to mod support the live game has received to date. With Fallout Worlds gamers can set custom parameters for in-game spaces including infinite ammo, zero AP cost for VATS, and CAMP free building. Only Fallout 1st players can set their own worlds, whereas free Fallout 76 players can join worlds made by Bethesda or other players.

This new feature isn't enough, though. Fallout 76 players want more--particularly more meaningful storylines, quests, and endgame content. These things are the foundations for any live game, and Fallout 76 engagement has apparently stagnated despite the new content Bethesda has rolled out. The core issue is that there simply isn't enough fresh and unique things to do, and things get repeatable and derivative to the point where the Fallout 76 community has to make their own fun (including in-game roleplays).

Final Fantasy XIV is so popular that Square Enix is currently having issues keeping up with demand.

Square Enix has announced that all of the worlds on its North American Aether data center are completely full, meaning players on these worlds can no longer create new characters. The devs suggest creating new characters on the Primal or Crystal servers for the time being. Square Enix's dev teams say they are working on adding new worlds and expanding the servers, but these fixes won't be in place any time soon due to COVID-19 restrictions. The European data centers are also heavily congested but are currently working as intended.

There's no news on whether or not Square Enix can add more data centers or worlds ahead of FF14's huge new Endwalker expansion on November 23.

Ubisoft is doubling the frame rate of one of the best Assassin's Creed games on consoles.

Today Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed Odyssey is getting a surprise upgrade to support 60FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. This effectively doubles the base 30FPS frame rate of the 2018 best-seller on PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Xbox One S, and Xbox One X hardware. What's even more surprising is that this isn't a next-gen optimized patch, but an upgrade made through each console's backwards compatibility functionality.

That being said. don't expect other massive improvements like upgrade visuals, ray tracing, or even a significant reduction in loading times (although the PS5's PCIe 4.0 SSD starts Odyssey 67% faster and loads up a save game 57% faster than the base PS4's slower HDD). The patch clocks in at less than 500MB on both platforms which is a nice touch.

Xbox One owners will soon be able to play Gen 8 Xbox Series X games via game streaming, Microsoft today announced.

Project xCloud game streaming is coming to Xbox consoles in Holiday 2021, bringing performance at up to 1080p 60FPS to both Xbox One and Xbox Series gen systems. Gamers will be able to jump right into any game with the press of a button without any downloads, offering a unique way to try and sample new titles.

One of the biggest benefits is that Xbox One owners can try out Gen 8 games without needing an Xbox Series X or S console. Microsoft confirmed that game streaming allows the 8 year-old Xbox One to be forward compatible with all upcoming next-gen exclusives when they start releasing in 2022, including the new Fable and Obsidian's Avowed RPG.

Google had a very definitive response to Epic's staged uprising: To force a hostile takeover with a mass share buyout.

Epic Games has earned the ire of mobile titans Apple and Google, leading to two very prominent monopolization court cases. It all started when Epic added its own payment processing system to both iOS and Android, and both Google and Apple responded by kicking Fortnite off their platforms. Now both are missing out on microtransaction millions. Ever since then, Epic has been a thorn in both companies' sides as court cases air their dirty laundry--like the time Google almost took over Epic.

A recent court documentfrom the Epic vs Google case confirms that Google was exploring options to subdue Epic. One of these possibilities including a hostile takeover with majority share buyouts. According to the document, Google thought about teaming up with Tencent to "buy 100% of Epic":