Gaming - Page 1017

Pokemon GO took off like a rocket last month, making $200 million in its first month on the market and breaking records all over the place. But, there are some who always ruin the fun.

Cheaters have been having a field day in Pokemon GO, but not any longer with developer Niantic permanently banning Pokemon GO cheaters. If you have been using various tricks in Pokemon GO, such as GPS spoofing, using bots, emulators or something else, your account can be banned.

Niantic has said: "Your account was permanently terminated for violations of the Pokémon GO Terms of Service. This includes, but is not limited to: falsifying your location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner including through the use of third party software".

In an effort to optimize the deluge of No Man's Sky issues on PC, Hello Games has allowed Steam users to opt into an experimental update to see if their problems are fixed.

No Man's Sky is performing pretty badly for some PC players, most notably for those trying to run the game on integrated Intel GPUs or setups that don't have the required OpenGL 4.5 or VC++ Redist 2010 installed. The studio has hired a huge Quality Assurance team to help iron out these bugs, and rolled out a new Experimental Branch PC patch that promises to help enable max frame rates, boost performance on CPUs with 4 threads or fewer, and the frame rate stutters caused by inefficient GPU shader caching.

Sadly the game still runs awkwardly on AMD Phenom processors--"Thousands of lines of assembly have been rewritten overnight to support AMD CPUs," says Sean Murray--NVIDIA G-Sync has been disabled by default, and the game will likely never run on Intel GPUs. For the time being, Hello Games suggests trying the current workarounds to see if they fix your problem or opting in to the Experimental Branch beta update. Check the full patch notes below, and the Steam discussions board for more info.

Despite the publisher hard-locking a September release date ahead of E3 2016, the insanely anticipated RPG could be delayed as much as two months past its initial schedule.

Square Enix has delayed Final Fantasy 15 many times now, and it looks like we're getting yet another one. According to alleged leaks, GameStop employees have received instructions to put stickers over the original September 30 release date on Final Fantasy 15 promo posters. The stickers now list FF15 for a release on November 29, 2016.

Gamenesia reports that GameStop employees have been told not to put up Final Fantasy 15's new release date promos until today on August 14, so expect to see Square Enix reveal the news sometime today or tomorrow. This report has been corroborated by multiple sources, including Kotaku's Jason Schreier and Gematsu.

No Man's Sky has almost zero tutorial; you learn by playing, and by experimenting. Some things aren't self evident and you're going to get lost and mess up quite often--it's the only way to progress. Since most of the game is trial and error, here's as handy startup guide to help you on your journey.

I've been playing No Man's Sky for five days now, and there are so many things I know now that I wish I knew when I started. In that same spirit, I thought I'd share my discoveries with you to help save you time. Not to say you won't be spending countless hours in the game even still, but this should give you a better idea of how to manage your inventory and plan out your next move.

In this helpful guide we guide you through buying a ship, where to find upgrades for your multi-tool, exosuit and starships, how to manage your inventory, tips on how to make tons of cash, a primer on all the different elements and how important they are, and much more.

Microsoft has just made an interesting acquisition, securing Beam - a Seattle-based firm that provides low latency technology that allows viewers near real-time interaction with game streamers. Microsoft hasn't said how much it paid for Beam.

Beam CEO Matt Salsamendi says that delay is at around 200ms, compared to rivals like Twitch where the delay is anywhere between 10-15 seconds. The greatly improved latency helps chat elements, but it also allows for more active interaction for viewers.

This can be used in the way of viewers suggesting challenges, different weapon loadouts, and so much more. On the other side of the fence, developers can create a unique button layout that would allow improved input from fans, which sounds like an improved, polished version of Twitch Plays.

Overwatch is about to get an injection of awesome on the PC, with Blizzard updating Overwatch to support high bandwidth across all modes on the PC, something the company announced in a recent community update.

The higher bandwidth will allow Overwatch to keep up with its players, and will have gamers that were complaining about the game's tick rate happy. Blizzard's community manager explains: "In Overwatch, our high bandwidth option adjusts the game's client update rate (the frequency at which your client gets updates from the game server) from 21 updates per second to 63 updates per second".

The community manager continued: "This reduces the amount of time between when you complete an action and when your client hears back about the result, which in turn will help make the game feel more responsive".

THQ is back, after filing for bankruptcy in 2012 and auctioning off its assets after years of dominance with the company hitting record revenues of $1 billion in 2007.

Sega, Take 2 and Ubisoft secured a bunch of THQ's properties in the aftermath, with a smaller company - Nordic Games - taking the rights to Supreme Commander, Red Faction, Darksiders, and more - including the THQ trademark that allows Nordic Games to publish games under the THQ name. Well, Nordic Games has just rebranded itself, and is now known as THQ Nordic.

In a statement, company CEO Lars Wingefors said: "One could say the most defining moment for our company happened in 2013, grabbing headlines like; 'Who the F*** is Nordic Games?', 'Darksiders Gets Bought By...Nordic Games?' and 'Nordic Games explains who the f they are, plans for THQ assets."

Spotify has just made a move that might have gamers subscribing to its music service in droves, with a new gaming portal that makes it incredibly easy to find the soundtracks to your favorite games.

There are soundtracks from games like Max Payne and Mega Man, and big hits like The Last of Us and Uncharted 4. The company has been creating and hosting its own curated playlists, as well as getting in gaming celebrities like Day[9], a super popular StarCraft personality - that I only just found out in the last two days of hanging out with Luke from LinusTechTips is a StarCraft megastar.

Spotify has even tapped guest lists from people working at Engadget and Polygon, which is another nice touch. But which gaming soundtracks do you like the best? Let us know in the comments.

A fresh Titanfall 2 gameplay trailer has dropped, and it's pretty smooth, suave, and clicks all the right FPS buttons.

Respawn has promised that Titanfall 2's singleplayer campaign will be "grounded, dirty and human," but this bit of footage shows us some good old-fashioned fun. Players get some nifty tools like active camo to confuse foes, and employ the parkour wall-running skills in tandem with the new grappling hook for some ultra-slick locomotion. The actual gameplay is buttery smooth in 60FPS, matching perfectly with the rythmic player movements and satisfying gunplay.

We also get a glimpse at some campaign guns like a powerful high-tech sniper rifle that can shoot two bullets a time, a lightning gun that apparently manipulates nearby electronics like door locks etc in the tech-filled environments, mines that make you invisible, and neat little drones that act like walking grenades to destabilize your enemies.

Remedy Entertainment has announced it has a new CEO, Tero Virtala, who was the CEO of Trials developer RedLynx.

Virtala replaces Remedy co-founder Markus Mäki, who took the role of CEO during the final year of development on Quantum Break - which turned out to be a complete mess, and is now headed to Steam. Remedy says Mäki will return to overseeing studio productions, reports Polygon.

In a statement from Remedy Entertainment called "New Remedy boss unlocked", Virtala talks about Remedy, where he said: "At the core of Remedy are truly talented and passionate people, and their proven ability to create unique, world-class gaming experiences. As the company moves towards multiple simultaneous game projects, it will offer more opportunities for the gamers, our people, partners and us as a company".

PC port connoisseur Total Biscuit has gone off on a bit of a Twitter tirade, criticizing the fresh PC release of No Man's Sky for some serious performance issues. He cites major hitching and framerate drops, which he says are echoed by other Twitch streamers and Steam forum goers.

Given the issues, it's not hard to see why the game was delayed three days on our favourite platform.

While the company doesn't specifically cite performance in a Steam thread addressing user complaints, it does say it's hired a QA team today that's bigger than the developer itself. The purpose of the added bodies, they say, is to respond to the problems cropping up that are in part due to the higher than anticipated player numbers. Presumably, this will mean a better gameplay experience performance-wise, although when is tough to estimate.

Quake Champions is sitting right up in the top 5 games I want, and with everything I hear, I want it more. DOOM and Quake Champions game director Marty Stratton has detailed Quake Champions a little more, teasing that it will not be running on the id Tech 6 engine.

Stratton told Finder during an interview: "We had such success with Vulkan and Doom that Robert Duffy, our chief technology officer, was like, "alright guys, this worked out well for us. So we need to do it [with Quake]." But we still have to look at it, because Quake Champions' technology is part id tech, but also part Saber tech. It is not on Id Tech 6 [game engine]. If it was, it would be all good with Vulkan and we would be happy".

Tim Willits, Creative Director on Quake Champions, said that id Software is crafting the game to run fast on a variety of PCs. Willits said: "Because we had such success with pairing Vulkan and Doom, it is definitely something we are looking at, but I can't confirm it at this point. Hopefully you will not have to upgrade your machine too much, but we're all about speed with Quake Champions".

Quantum Break is coming to Steam, but what does that mean for the Windows 10 version of the game that is sold through the Windows Store?

According to Remedy's Head of Communications, Thomas Puha, Quantum Break will be stuck in time on the UWP version of the game. In a reply tweet to someone who said: "unless you consider a stuttering, constant-hitching, barely 30 always sub 60, lowest settings on a 780 "improvement", Puha said: "sorry to hear you are having problems. Its unlikely we release another Win10 patch".

This means Remedy will put its soul into the Win32 version of Quantum Break, meaning we won't see DX11 for the Windows 10 version of the game. But, it means the Steam version of Quantum Break could be better, with Puha tweeting: "We have worked on this release for a while. We got a lot more experience in shipping DX11 titles".

The latest gameplay series video for Battlefield 1 focuses on the vehicles of the game, but the more interesting part is the incidental reveal of a new desert map. It's not much of a reveal as the footage is based on watching someone play the game in real life as opposed to direct gameplay footage, but it's something.

In the screenshots (taken from 0:42 and 1:02 in the video), you can see the map appears to be quite open as you'd expect from a desert region, with a small section featuring buildings, barricades, and the like. You can also observe mountains, and of course the inclusion of tanks and planes.

YouTuber Westie also managed to grab a sneak peak of the map earlier this week which he says will be featured at Gamescom. In the screenshot, you can notice a light vehicle and some ruins in the background, and you get a broader perspective on what the map looks like. Whether we'll see a centralized design seen in the unpopular Silk Road map in Battlefield 4 or something more diverse is tough to say, but here's hoping for the latter.

Square Enix has revealed the PC specs for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and they're about what you'd expect.

The impressive-looking new Deus Ex game launches in just a few weeks on August 23, and Square Enix has dropped the PC specs to give you time to tweak your rig. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided requires at least 8GB of RAM and at least a AMD Radeon HXD 7870 with 2GB of VRAM, and it takes up 55GB of HDD space with the base game and DLC. Recommended specs aren't too heavy: the devs want you to have a Radeon RX 480 or a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 GPU for 1080p play, 16GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i3-4770K CPU.

Pre-loading on Steam begins on Friday, August 19 at 9PM PST (12AM EST), and PS4 gamers will have to wait two days before the game releases to pre-load their version, which starts on Sunday, August 21 at midnight local time. Xbox One pre-loads are already available. Check the full PC spec requirements below.

No Man's Sky limited edition boxes have stickers covering online play icons, but Sony says it was just a simple mixup.

Does No Man's Sky have multiplayer? Hello Games' Sean Murray has said outright that it's possible for two players to meet and see each other, but it's not very likely. But recent events say otherwise: on launch day two players did the impossible by meeting each other, but they couldn't see each other. The devs haven't given any clear explanations on why the players couldn't see each other, and if that will be addressed.

Now it's been revealed that Sony has put stickers covering up online play icons on the back of No Man's Sky limited edition boxes. Sony says that this was just a simple mixup, but fans are thinking Sony and/or the devs yanked the light multiplayer interactions before launch because of difficulties:

When Xbox division head Phil Spencer said "we will ship games on Steam again" I never thought major AAA exclusives would be included. As it turns out, Quantum Break will be making the jump from the Windows Store to the other side of the fence on Steam on September 14.

This is a pretty strange way to do business. Microsoft is dead-set on building up the Windows Store platform, and it won't do that without games. Quantum Break was notorious for breaking its Xbox One exclusivity to jump to Windows 10 PCs. This caused a lot of flak from Xbox One gamers, who saw their library being misappropriated at the last minute. Now Redmond has done the same thing, only this time they're selling a major first-party title on a competitor's storefront.

This begs everyone to question how many more "Windows 10 exclusive" games will follow suit. Are all the "exclusive" games shown at E3 2016 just timed exclusive on the Windows Store? Can we expect them to jump over to Steam after five months too?

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will have eye tracking technology for the PC version of the game, courtesy of Tobii's EyeX technology, according to Square Enix and Eidos Montreal. Here's what to expect from the eye tracking tech:

Tobii Tech president Oscar Werner talked about his company's technology getting inside of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where he said: "The commitment by Eidos Montréal and Square Enix to bring eye tracking to the mega Deus Ex franchise is another demonstration of the industry's belief in the value of eye tracking. We applaud the team at Eidos Montréal for their forward thinking approach and drive to give their gamers more".

Executive Brand Director for Eidos Montreal, Andre Vu said: "With the Deus Ex franchise being a window to the future, we always try to provide innovative, ground-breaking experiences for our players. The numerous Tobii eye tracking features built into the game will provide PC gamers an extra layer of immersion that blends perfectly with the futuristic universe depicted in Deus Ex".

No Man's Sky isn't the end-all space exploration sim, and it's not Minecraft in space. So what is it exactly? After playing for two days now, we aim to answer that question, and tell you exactly what you should and shouldn't expect from Hello Games' infinitesmal exploration simulator.

Let's get one thing out of the way first: No Man's Sky is a lonely game. It's not a multiplayer game, and when you meet someone in the vast expanse of the universe, you won't even know it: other players are invisible to you. But that's okay, because it's not the strong point of the game. The point of the game is to see what's out there. You're driven by one of man's strongest motivators: curiosity. You never know what you're going to find out there, and that's really the magic of the game.

You don't place as a space marine in No Man's Sky. You're an explorer who starts off with the basics, and you build up your tools--Exosuit, Starship and Multi-tool--with random upgrades. Sure you'll get more powerful, but you'll never really be Rambo. It's not that type of game: it's not about killing, or conquering. It's about serene exploration and discovery, an intimate look at the exotic far-reaching depths of space.

EA knows it has a huge upcoming hit on its hands with Battlefield 1, expecting to sell around 15 million copies of the next-gen first-person shooter. But, would you pay $130 for Battlefield 1 Collector's Edition... if it didn't come with the game at all? I thought not.

Throwing down $130 for the Battlefield 1 Collector's Edition will give you a status, steel book, cloth poster and "Messenger pigeon tube with exclusive DLC content, Exclusive patch, and Premium packaging", reports Destructoid. The listing on Amazon actually states: "Battlefield 1 Exclusive Collector's Edition - Does Not Include Game".

If you want to cough up $190, you can get Battlefield 1 included - oh, how nice! - and if you want the Deluxe version of the game, you'll need to spend a hefty $210. Now, I totally understand hardcore fans spending $130 on Battlefield 1 Collector's Edition, but to not even include a copy of the game for $130 is utterly ridiculous.