30% discount with Nintendo's Europe Birthday Promotion

Emma Tucker | Gaming | Oct 22, 2016 3:32 AM CDT

Celebrating birthdays just got even better with Europe's Nintendo "Just for You" promotion starting October 2016. The info for this offer comes direct online from "Nintendo Insider" just yesterday via the Nintendo website.

The special allows a 30% discount for selected Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games at the Nintendo eShop for those birthday boys and girls. To obtain this promotion, users will have to register for a Nintendo Account and have selected to receive the promotion emails from Nintendo, then link their account to their Nintendo Network ID.

Selected titles can be bought directly from the Nintendo website or within the Just for You section on the Nintendo eShop. All games available for this promotion are listed on Nintendo's website.

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Watch Metallica's themed gameplay trailer that failed

Emma Tucker | Gaming | Oct 22, 2016 1:18 AM CDT

Long before Guitar Hero: Metallica made its debut in March 2009, Kotaku revealed in 2011 of another band-themed game that unfortunately didn't go anywhere. The title, named after one of Metallica's songs: 'Damage Inc.' never saw the light of day. The track was scheduled for 2005, but never reached store shelves.

The team at PtoPOnline recently published an extended gameplay trailer showing off the content and style of the game in more detail. Damage Inc was designed to be a post-apocalyptic vehicular-combat-action themed concept with a somewhat Mad Max influence jammed into the mix of it all. The video demo provides an incomplete version of the concept art by artist, Calum Alexander Watt and game extras for what was originally developed for Sony PlayStation 2, and eventually Xbox and PC.

Whilst the rumors for a comeback were spreading around the gaming industry to see it launch on the Sony PSP, that fizzled as well with any hopes of a return. It seems that the heavy metal band wasn't set out for making anything other than great music!

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Dead Rising 4 has 18 holes of mini golf to play through

Emma Tucker | Gaming | Oct 22, 2016 12:27 AM CDT

Dead Rising 4 will see a new addition to its DLC pack in the way of mini golf. Yes, that's right! The humble and innocent sporting game was announced recently via Microsoft , to be included in the content for Dead Rising 4's season pass.

The 18-hole mini golf course will be named "Super Ultra Dead Rising 4 Mini Golf." The DLC will feature an online multiplayer support for up to four players. The fairways are spread throughout the game's setting of Willamette, Colorado, with the inclusion of the infamous mall.

So as if Mini Golf and the living dead combined together wasn't already awesome, the best is still yet to come. Instead of a putter, players will use guns and shoot the ball in order to move it. Toss those clubs aside as they won't be needed anymore.

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Star Wars Battlefront DLC pack announced for November 18

Emma Tucker | Gaming | Oct 21, 2016 11:22 PM CDT

Star Wars fans hold onto your lightsabers as the gaming world just got a little bit better with a new DLC pack! EA DICE has officially announced Star Wars Battlefront Ultimate Edition will now be readily available to players on November 18.

The new and exciting DLC extra will include the standard base game and season pass to all four expansion packs:

Overall the Ultimate Edition is jammed pack with 14 game modes, 14 hero/villain characters, and 30 plus maps for gamers to play on.

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Xbox boss says Nintendo has 'bold vision' with Switch

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Oct 21, 2016 10:49 PM CDT

Nintendo made its codename NX console official with the announcement of Switch, one of the most interesting consoles ever, and Xbox boss Phil Spencer has nothing but praise for the company and its new console.

Spencer was asked on Twitter about what he thinks about Nintendo's new console, and he replied: "I'm always impressed with the ability to state a bold vision and build a product that delivers on that vision". It's not the first time that Spencer has praised the competition, as he has said good things about Sony and the PS4, and has said that Microsoft's relationship with Nintendo has been "great".

Read more about Nintendo Switch:

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Download Bungie's 2.4.1 patch update for Destiny now

Emma Tucker | Gaming | Oct 21, 2016 9:48 PM CDT

Developer Bungie has released the latest update, patch 2.4.1 for their hit game "Destiny". The patch is now live on PS4 and Xbox One.

The first person shooter has been altered so that the progression system takes the newly introduced Destiny: Rise of Iron's "Wrath of the Machine Raid" hard mode into account. The light level cap has also been revamped with an increased to 400.

The following Source Rewards have been updated:

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Hearthstone game costs players a pretty penny to play

Emma Tucker | Gaming | Oct 21, 2016 8:31 PM CDT

Game developer Blizzard has recently announced a new event for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft starting this coming week. The collectible card game will soon play host to "Heroic Tavern Brawl".

The new exclusive will cost customers $10 or 1000 in-game gold. Participants create a standard deck from their existing card pool and lock it in before their first Heroic Brawl match. Once this happens there will be no changes made to the deck once players are locked in.

Like all battles, an opponent will be assigned per gamer. Similar to the Arena, 12 wins will get the best rewards including 50 cards packs, 3 random golden legendary cards and a bunch of gold and arcane dust. A maximum of 3 losses will cause elimination.

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ISS crew arrives at Space Station after two-day trip

Lana Jelic | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Oct 21, 2016 3:35 PM CDT

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos have arrived at the International Space Station after a two-day trip.

Their Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft docked with the Station's Poisk module at 5:52 AM EDT. When hatches between the Soyuz and Space Station opened at 8:20 AM EDT, the three crew members joined Expedition 49 Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, who have been aboard ISS since July. The International Space Station now has six occupants.

Kimbrough, Ryzhikov, and Borisenko will spend a little more than four months aboard the Space Station, and their return to Earth is scheduled for late February. The crew members will contribute to more than 250 research experiments ongoing aboard the space station, in diverse fields such as biology, Earth Science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.

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Major cyber attack knocks out popular websites

Lana Jelic | Hacking, Security & Privacy | Oct 21, 2016 2:29 PM CDT

Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, Etsy and many other popular websites went offline earlier today due to a massive cyber attack on the DynDNS, a world renowned Domain Name Servers (DNS) service provider.

Dyn issued a statement acknowledging the attack.

Starting at 11:10 UTC on October 21th-Friday 2016 we began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. Some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time. Updates will be posted as information becomes available. This attack is mainly impacting US East and is impacting Managed DNS customer in this region. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.

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Cassini's final year of its epic voyage to Saturn

Lana Jelic | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Oct 21, 2016 1:23 PM CDT

After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is planned for September 2017.

Now, the Cassini spacecraft revealed dramatic seasonal changes in the atmospheric temperature and composition of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The images show a vortex in the upper atmosphere over the south pole. Cassini also discovered gasses in this vortex that are otherwise quite rare in Titan's atmosphere.

Athena Coustenis, a member of Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer team at the Observatoire de Paris, explained the importance of this discovery.

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