Gaming - Page 1016

Nier: Automata, the sequel to Platinum Games' celebrated original action RPG NieR, will be making the jump to PC via Steam.

Square Enix announced the news via press release, confirming that NieR: Automata would launch on Steam alongside the PS4 version in early 2017. The ARPG looks absolutely amazing and features some of the best talent in the industry, including Yosuke Saito (Dragon Quest X, Nier), Yoko Taro (Drakkengard, Nier) and Takahisa Taura who helped design Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

Accompanying the announcement, the publisher has dropped some fresh screenshots and a neat description: "Invaders from another world attack without warning, unleashing their secret weapon: the machines. In the face of this insurmountable threat, the human race is driven from the earth and takes refuge on the moon.

Respawn Entertainment will be hosting its open multiplayer technical test for Titanfall 2 starting this Friday, lasting for two weekends. The test will be made available for the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game, with the PC being left out of the testing phase for now.

Titanfall 2 features a 5v5 fast-paced team-based mode known as Bounty Hunt, where Pilots and teammates will fight the enemy and the Remnant Fleet to kill grunts and other enemies, all while depositing points at the bank between waves of enemies. The second mode is an 8v8 classic mode called Pilots vs. Pilots, where it's just an 8v8 team deathmatch, while the 6v6 mode is a tweak to the Hardpoint Domination mode where you score 100% extra for your team.

The modes will be made available for 3 maps; Boomtown, Homestead and Forward Base Kodai. There will be two new Titans up for grabs, with Ion and Scorch being joined by new weapons that you'll get to choose once you're deployed. Respawn is also debuting Titanfall 2's new Networks feature, that will made matchmaking issues a thing of the past, hopefully.

Remember paying $60 or more for Battlefield 4? Yeah, well EA has just dropped the price of Battlefield 4 to just $4.99, down from its listed $19.99 price. Battlefield 4: Digital Deluxe edition has dropped from $39.99 to just $9.99.

EA has also dropped the price of Battlefield 3 to just $4.99, down from its original $19.99 pricing. Everything Battlefield related has discount as well, with the DLC packs heavily discounted - like Battlefield 4: Ultimate Shortcut Bundle slashed from $39.99 to $9.99. The bundle includes all of the weapons, vehicles, and gadgets in the Battlefield 4 base game - saving you the time of playing countless hours to unlock all of those weapons.

If you weren't punished enough from Battlefield: Hardline already and wanted to see what all the fuss was about, it has been discounted from $29.99 to $7.49, while the Battlefield: Hardline Ultimate Shortcut Unlock has bottomed out from its $59.99 price to just $14.99. Get in on the Battlefield 4 discounted goodness right here!

Despite its issues, No Man's Sky has become the biggest launch on Steam of 2016. There were plenty of day one issues related to performance, and then negative reviews and even on my personal Facebook news feed, I had friends saying "is this it?" and "I'm already bored". Above it all, No Man's Sky still soared on Steam.

According to SteamDB, which collects data from Valve's official Steam Stats, there were 212,620 simultaneous gamers playing No Man's Sky on its launch day. Some of the biggest launches of 2016 couldn't keep up with No Man's Sky, with XCOM 2 only seeing 133,000 on its launch and Dark Souls III saw 130,000 while The Division had just 114,000 playing. This means that more people were playing No Man's Sky during launch, than any others at this point.

BioShock: The Collection requires a buttload of HDD space on the Xbox One, where you'll need a huge 70GB of HDD space in order to install all three BioShock games that are included in The Collection.

The new release is available for pre-order and pre-download right now, with BioShock: The Collection including the original BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock: Infinite. All three BioShock games have been remastered for the Xbox One, where they'll run at 1080p - and The Collection includes all of the DLC from the BioShock games, except for the multiplayer mode on BioShock 2.

BioShock: The Collection will be released on September 13 in the US, September 15 in Australia, and September 16 elsewhere in the world for the Xbox One. You can purchase and pre-download BioShock: The Collection right now, but be warned; you need 70GB of HDD space available.

Know what's better than Gears of War 4 Gamescom footage? Gears of War 4 Gamescom footage in 4K, of course. NVIDIA teamed up with Microsoft to create just that, giving you an idea of what people are getting their hands-on at this year's event.

The footage is about 10 minutes long and features not previously revealed enemies and weapons. For Gears fans, especially those on PC, it's a treat and gives you a strong idea of what the game is all about.

Gears of War 4 launches October 11 on Xbox One and PC. To play it in 4K, NVIDIA recommends a GTX 980 Ti or 1080, an i7 4790, and 16GB RAM (2560x1440 asks an i5 4690, GTX 970/1060, and 8GB RAM; 1920x1080 asks an i5 3470, GTX 750 Ti, and 8GB RAM).

Overwatch's next map has been revealed at Gamescom, and it's a beauty. Set in the quaint German village of Eichenwalde, it features a town area that leads to a castle.

Interestingly, it appears Blizzard has put a twist on the usual Hybrid map formula here, requiring you to escort the payload first and then capture a point. Even better, the "payload" is actually a battering RAM that you're going to use to bust down the door of said castle.

"The site of one of the most famous battles during the Omnic Crisis, it was here that the leader of the Crusaders, Balderich von Alder, and a handful of his best soldiers made a last stand against an advancing automaton army," reads the map description. "Outnumbered and outgunned, they were ultimately slain during the resulting combat. However, thanks to their valiant efforts, the German military was able to push back the omnic offensive and win the fight."

Gamescom 2016 - A Half-Life 3 banner has been spotted at Gamescom 2016 in Cologne, Germany alongside concrete AAA games like Titanfall 2 and Watch Dogs 2.

Gamescom attendees' hearts no-doubt caught in their throats while gazing upon the worlds Half-Life 3 upon a massive orange banner. The canvas poster entices a fleeting thought--is the decade-long wait finally over? Is Gordon Freeman's journey going to continue? Is Valve a games developer again?

Alas, all of our hope is in vain. The banner is just a taunting trick--a real-life orange Rick Roll, if you will--from the teasers at GIGA Games. The poster is in German, and translates to "Half-Life: 3 editors who played it back then," not "Half-Life 3: your dreams have been answered."

Fnatic is one of the largest professional CS:GO teams in the world, and have just had a major announcement that has seemingly come out of nowhere. The team has taken to its website, announcing that it has had four of its players leave for GODSENT, and in return has two GODSENT players join the Fnatic line up.

Jesper "JW" Wecksell, Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson, and Robin "flusha" Rönnquist have left Fnatic to join GODSENT, a new Swedish clan that has some massive players on its roster. GODSENT is already home to a former Fnatic player, with Markus "pronax" Wallsten, which means GODSENT now has four of the fix Fnatic players that won back-to-back majors in the spring and summer of 2015.

Fnatic's press release says that there were issues within the team, and that these issues can "then weed their way into fundamental team dynamics, affecting the chemistry needed for success". The clan even talked about similar issues that happened before, saying: "For those that may remember a similar thing has happened before in another era of Fnatic Counterstrike. Back in 2010, the epic era of cArn dsn f0rest and getright came to an end over similar concerns, and led to the eventual reformation of NiP".

Splinter Cell was such a great game at the time, so the tease of a next-gen Splinter Cell game featuring Sam Fisher sounds exciting. Michael Ironside, the voice behind Fisher, is rumored to be returning to the game.

NeoGAF user Crossing Eden has had accurate leaks in the past, with an Ubisoft source telling him that a new Splinter Cell game was in development featuring Michael Ironside. The post added: "Regarding other games, I haven't been involved with Steep or Wildlands, but I was surprised Splinter Cell didn't appear at E3. I know Ironside is back. He was in the studio, I said Hi to him and his daughter. He was shooting a movie with Amy Jo Johnson, and I know someone who worked on that set and Ironside confirmed to him he was doing the new Splinter Cell. I know Toronto has the mocap studio for it.I'm hoping to hear or see something unofficial, if not official, this year, but its been hard to get anything beyond 'It's Happening'".

Crossing Eden added a more detailed update to his post, adding that Ironside himself said he was working on a new Splinter Cell game: "To throw a date on this: I did see Ironside and one his daughters at the TO studio last summer. This was just good timing, as I was there on other business. I have two sources who worked on the set of The Space Between (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4682922/), which was shooting in TO. Ironside mentioned he was working on a new Splinter Cell. One source is someone I trust, the other is an acquaintance by degrees. The movie shoot overlapped the same week as my encounter. As I understand it, he was here for the movie first and worked in the studio visit while in town".

AMD's Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.8.2 drivers are here with a few issue fixes, and support for the Paragon open beta as well as No Man's Sky. The latter game has suffered a bumpy launch, to say the least, so hopefully these drivers improve the experience for those in the AMD camp.

Issues fixed include the Overwatch hero gallery crash, Freesync-related flickering while the system is idle, and Windows 10 Anniversary Edition installs not doing what they should while secure boot is enabled.

Hit the source or boot Radeon Settings to grab the new drivers.

Gamescom 2016 - DICE is well-known for being among the best in the business for great gameplay trailers, and the newest for Battlefield 1 is a reminder of that. Straight from Gamescom, it features desert gameplay, horses, and a train as gameplay as promised, all on the new desert map (known as Sinai). It is, in a word, glorious.

With the trailer comes news of the open beta which will launch August 31 and earlier for Battlefield Insiders (the official Twitter previously stated August 30, but has since given out more vague information, so possibly that will change).

The beta will feature both Conquest and Rush modes, the latter of which will be tweaked over previous games. Among the changes: an official 24-player count, and the inclusion of "telegraph posts" which can be destroyed by attackers by arming the posts with explosives; defenders can use the posts to call in artillery strikes and can disarm the explosives.

Season 2 of Overwatch's competitive mode will feature major changes. Some of them you may already know (like the removal of Sudden Death), but some are just coming to light with today's developer update.

Most notably, Blizzard is replacing the current skill rating system with a more Starcraft 2-like system, complete with a 1-5000 scale, and Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum (our guess), Diamond, Master, and Grand Master tiers. And rather than go up or down notches and sometimes ratings, each match will see you go up or down whole numbers (e.g. from 4000 to 4002 or 334 to 330).

The reason, according to game director Jeff Kaplan, is to de-emphasize the specific number and to get players to care more about their general skill level, as well as to make top tier players feel more like they're top tier.

Final Fantasy 15 will take up 45GB of hard drive space on PS4, which almost equates to 1/10th of the console's base 500GB storage.

According to Japanese pre-order cards, Final Fantasy 15 clocks in at approximately 45GB on PS4--just 5GB shy of the dreaded "one-tenth of my console's HDD is already full" tickbox. If you own a console you know exactly what I'm talking about--and it's actually more than that because your hard drive isn't really 500GB to begin with. Following Square Enix issuing a two-month delay for FF15, this bit of info could disappoint some gamers.

After everything I've seen and heard about Final Fantasy 15, I'm not surprised the RPG clocks in at almost 50GB. I mean, Square Enix has confirmed FF15 takes 200 hours to completely master, so we know it's going to be huge. And it's been in development for almost a decade, standing as Square Enix's flagship iteration of the beloved Final Fantasy series. So it's definitely going to be big in more ways than one.

Lenovo has just announced its first-ever FreeSync-enabled display, packing in an impressive refresh rate and an immersive curved screen.

The Lenovo Y27f Curved Gaming Monitor costs $399 and rocks a 144Hz refresh rate with 4ms response times, and comes with AMD's FreeSync technology enabled. The Lenovo Y27f sports a 1920 x 1080 Full HD TFT panel at R1800 curvature that provides a 178-degree viewing angle, and has holes for a 100mm VESA1 mounting bracket on its back. As far as ports, the display alsoHDMI1.4 and DP1.2 connectors and features a USB 3.0 hub with USB Battery Charging 1.2 (BC 1.2).

"Our latest monitor, the Lenovo Y27f Curved Gaming Monitor, is optimized for gaming. AMD FreeSync technology along with a fast 144 Hz refresh rate eliminates screen tearing, and minimizes display stutter, input lag and motion blur to display more natural movement. Combined with full high definition 1920 x 1080 resolution and the most extreme curved display to date, the monitor provides our customers with the smoothest possible gaming and a great experience," said Lenovo exec Li Jun Su.

PlayStation 4 owners will soon get folders, a UI refresh, and small tweaks to the quick menus and share options.

Ask any PS4 owner what they want most from a firmware update and I guarantee the first thing they'll say is "folders like the ones PS3 uses." Sure it only took Sony a little over two years, but they're finally bringing this feature to the console with the new PS4's "Shingen" v4.00 update. Before you get too excited, the firmware patch only goes into closed beta testing in the next few days and won't be released until the quality assurance is done.

Given how firmware can brick consoles (Microsoft's own updates bricked my Xbox One) it's a great idea to let users beta test Shingen before it's released, especially since it fundamentally changes the software.

NVIDIA might've cancelled its upgraded Shield Tablet K1 handheld so it didn't compete with Nintendo's new NX transforming hybrid handheld/console.

A few days ago we reported that NVIDIA has apparently nixed its plans for a new beefier Shield Tablet because of "business reasons." Codenamed "Hawkeye," the new Shield Tablet purportedly rocked 3GB of RAM, 1920 x 1200 native resolution, 32GB of onboard space and, most notably, leveraged the company's Tegra X1 mobile processor.

But what are these specific business reasons that caused NVIDIA to scrap the tablet? Digital Trends posits that NVIDIA made this move so the tablet didn't compete with Nintendo's new NX handheld/console hybrid. This makes sense considering that the NX is likely built around similar Tegra-based hardware, and the two systems are quite similar to one another.

A trademark for Fallout: New Orleans has been filed in the European Union Intellectual Property Office, possibly hinting at the next installment in the series.

Remember when Obsidian Softworks's Eric Fenstermaker said "I'm always up for working on a Fallout. I think most of us generally are. Really fun property to work with"? Well it looks like Bethesda might have taken Obsidian up on that offer with Fallout: New Orleans.

A few months ago Obsidian dev Josh Sawyer posted up an interesting picture to his Instagram page depicting field notes for Lousiana. Now this could be a coincidence, but it could also mean that Obsidian is making a new Fallout game based in the Big Easy and answering every fan's prayers. Sawyer is a veteran Fallout dev who worked on the originals alongside Black Isle, and served as director and lead designer of Fallout New Vegas.

The leaked reports were right: Final Fantasy 15 has been officially delayed from its original September 30 release to a new release date of November 29, 2016 on PS4 and Xbox One.

Square Enix's Hajime Tabata confirmed the game's November delay in a video, and in the press release announcement the publisher says the team will use the extra time to "further polish and conduct quality testing so that the reality of the game can match the expectations of both the fans and the creative teams."

"From the moment we joined this project, our vision was to create a level of freedom and realism previously unseen in the series. Regrettably, we need a little bit more time to deliver on this vision and are confident that this new release date will help us achieve this," Tabata said in the video announcement.

Valve has hosted its 2016 The International competition, with DOTA 2 having a new champion: Chinese team TI6: Wings Gaming, taking home a huge $9.1 million. The overall prize pool surpassed $20 million, the biggest in eSports history.

Wings Gaming beat US team DC three to one, with DC taking the first game after breaking Wings Gaming's map control. Wings then took out the second game, capitalizing on bad positioning and decision-making from DC. The third game had DC on the back burner, with Wings taking it out and then continuing the same push in the fourth game.

By then, Wings passed DC's "inspired Timbersaw play to secure their multimillion dollar bounty, winning the best of five," reports Polygon. DC doesn't walk away empty-handed, with a swift $3.4 million for second place in the 2016 The International.