Gaming - Page 1023

Developer DICE is in a unique position with Battlefield 1 as it will be the first serious portrayal of World War I in pop culture. While far from authentic, the studio is showing what is possible with the setting (particularly the single player), and DICE general manager Patrick Bach says in an interview with Metro that he hopes it will influence future portrayals.

"I want us to be able to set the tone for World War I stories from here on," he says. "Because no one has really done it. And it kind of annoys me when you have all these facts on what it was. Because it was in many ways a more fascinating and more interesting war from almost any aspect."

"World War II was 'good' from the point of view that it was very clear. It was, like, two sides, this versus that, and it was clear who won. Everyone knows the iconography from the war even if post-war it has been tweaked to make it even more clear. I don't think it was as clear at the time. So to me, I see it as a huge opportunity to make, hopefully for the first time in gaming history, to set a target for all other media."

CD Projekt Red has sold close to 10 million copies of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, according to studio boss Marcin Iwinski.

Iwinski said during infoShare 2016: "We were totally overwhelmed because, honestly, we were not expecting such a degree of success. But sales-wise, The Witcher series has sold over 20 million worldwide, out of which almost half of it is from The Witcher 3. So we practically doubled the sales of the series".

He continued, adding: "Generally I think with The Witcher 3, and it was the case with The Witcher 2 as well, we released our game without any copy protection. So on day-one you could download the game from GOG and give it to a friend - enemy as well - but give it to a friend, on a memory stick, it works. And still we sold near to 10 million copies across all three platforms".

Console gaming has changed forever: the rythym and pace of games console generations has evolved. Microsoft and Sony are no longer interested in resetting their PlayStation and Xbox generations every eight years or so; instead, consoles new consoles will release every 2-3 years with upgraded hardware, thus becoming even more like PCs. According to Epic Games CEO and longtime dev Tim Sweeney, this is a hugely beneficial branching point for the games industry as a whole.

In a recent interview with Gamespot, Epic's Tim Sweeney did an excellent job in articulating the merits of the new console evolution, and how Sony's PlayStation Neo and Microsoft's new 4K-ready Project Scorpio will open new doors for developers and gamers alike. "Upgrading consoles midlife is a great step forward for the industry. The most difficult part of the entire console industry has always been resetting the user base to zero every seven years or so, whereas if we incrementally upgrade the hardware, then we can bring more performance to gamers without wiping the slate clean. That's incredibly valuable."

Sweeney goes on to highlight how Sony and Microsoft no longer have to set the reset switch; by adding in incremental hardware upgrades within the same family of consoles--ie how the PS4 Neo shares its games with the original PS4 and is still technically a PS4--console-makers ensure they keep the existing games library and level of engagement.

I still remember feeling so crushed and betrayed when Watch Dogs had its graphics downgraded and watered down because of the lackluster 'next-gen consoles' in the Xbox One and PS4 at the time, and now it seems Ubisoft is close to admitting it.

Ubisoft Montreal's Dominic Guay sat down with Evening Standard recently, where he was asked his thoughts on the downgraded graphics of the original Watch Dogs game. He said that Watch Dogs was revealed in summer 2012, before anyone knew the detailed specifications of the Xbox One and PS4.

Guay said: "One thing to remember is that the first showing of Watch Dogs came in summer 2012, before anyone knew what the Next Gen of consoles and hardware would be. We did our best at the time to predict what that would be and always were forward that this first showing was running on a very powerful PC".

The rush towards photo-realistic games is, in my opinion, held back so much by consoles. Well, with the PS4 Neo and Xbox Scorpio expected out in 2017 with 4 TFLOPS and 6 TFLOPS of performance, respectively - can we expect a large jump in graphics?

According to Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney, we're getting to the point where we have photo-realistic static scenes without humans with static lighting. During an interview with GameSpot, Sweeney said: "You know, we're getting to the point now where we can render photo-realistic static scenes without humans with static lighting. Today's hardware can do that, so part of that problem is solved. Getting to the point of photo-realistic dynamic environments, especially with very advanced shading models like wet scenes, or reflective scenes, or anisotropic paint, though...maybe forty Teraflops is the level where we can achieve all of that".

Sweeney continued, saying that we're going to need an algorithm to work it all out - as throwing more computing power behind it isn't the only solution. He added: "Not with humans. Humans are the harder part, but that's just ...We know exactly how real-world physics of lighting work, and so that's just a matter of brute force computing power. Give us enough computing power, and we can do that. We could do that today with algorithms that we know. Humans are a much harder problem, because rendering faces and skin is hard enough, but you quickly realize that the challenge with rendering humans is having realistic human motion to display".

At the Star Wars Celebration in Europe, Visceral Games' Amy Hennig revealed some more tidbits about the studio's upcoming Star Wars action game set for 2018, including the studio's process in adapting the magic of the old films into their new game.

Amy Hennig has made it clear that Visceral Games' new action-based Star Wars game will have its own unique storyline. In fact, everything about the game will be brand new, but it'll still be deep-rooted and authentic to the existing Star Wars universe. Visceral's new creative director (Hennig) delivered a meaty speech on her methods to ensuring the game not only lives up to the films, but also delivers completely fresh gameplay.

Hennig starts off by telling us this game will be completely unique and new: "We're writing an original Star Wars story, with new characters, new locations, new tech, new creatures...you name it." Although everything will be new, the game still has to fit into the established motifs and themes of the franchise, so Visceral has to work very very closely with the loremasters at Lucasarts...but they've been digging deep into the font of knowledge the team has to offer. "Our game is a long ways out, we don't have a name yet, but we've been working hard on it and digging in with our partners at Lucasfilm. It's critical to have this collaborative relationship with our partners at Lucasfilm. All of it has to sit authentically alongside the stuff people know now."

At the Star Wars Celebration in Europe, EA has revealed that Battlefront's anticipated offline mode will drop quite soon--in fact, it's dropping next week.

Battlefront's new free Skirmish mode, which allows gamers to play offline, is coming to all platforms on July 21. Skirmish mode is more of an offline setting than a mode, and allows users to enjoy the game's "most popular modes" like Walker Assault and Fighter Squadron without needing to be online. PS4 and Xbox One players can take Skirmish's offline play a step further with split-screen co-op play on the same system.

"Skirmish will offer players the ability to play across two of Star Wars Battlefront's most popular modes on a difficulty level of your choosing. While offline, you can take to the battlefront in Walker Assault, or to the skies in Fighter Squadron. With multiple locations that span the Star Wars universe, Skirmish brings a new way to enjoy Star Wars Battlefront and there is even an option for coop split screen. (Console only)"

EA has revealed the final expansion pack for Star Wars: Battlefront will tie into the upcoming Rogue One film slated later this year.

Battlefront's fourth and final expansion pack will be called Rogue One: Scarif, and will be set on the film's paradise planet of Scarif. The expansion will drop in December, and promises to "continue the battle with heroes from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and explores a new planet from the upcoming film," according to the announcement page. Scarif's playable heroes will be Director Orson Krennic and Jyn Erso. Season Pass owners will get two weeks early access to Rogue One: Scarif.

EA also revealed that the upcoming Death Star expansion will drop in September, bringing a bunch of new combat to the game including new vehicles, blasters, and Star Cards. The Death Star expansion also two new heroes like Chewbacca and Bossk, and all-new maps set in interstellar space outside of the Death Star and its turret-filled trenches to ultimately recreate Luke Skywalker's death-defying run.

Activision released a new in-game campaign trailer for Modern Warfare Remastered, showing off the mission Crew Expendable rendered in the enhanced new graphics. Naturally the remaster looks quite impressive, with improvements across the board, but gamers are eager to just see how big of a leap the new version is over the beloved 2007 original. The results show there's a world of difference between the two games.

YouTuber Candyland has just posted up a video that compares the new Modern Warfare Remastered side-by-side against the original Modern Warfare. Even though the original is running on PC with max graphics settings, MW: Remastered gives it quite a thrashing in every way possible with eye-popping upgrades to lighting/shadows, water effects, atmospheric fog/smoke effects, character facial details, depth of field, particles--and pretty much everything else.

It's also worth noting that most of the video compares still screenshots against one another rather than actual video, but the last minute and a half is side-by-side gameplay footage. Modern Warfare Remastered is looking absolutely amazing, and Call of Duty fans are still pretty mad about having to buy the new CoD: Infinite Warfare to get it.

Pokemon GO is spreading further than Nintendo could've ever wished for, with Virgin Active now jumping into the hype wave announcing the world's first ever Pokerun.

Virgin Active's upcoming Pokemon GO 5K workout is a free guided 5K run along key London PokeStops, with a qualified personal trainer starting and finishing at Virgin Active's Walbrook Club. There will be a section of the run that will take place alongside the river Thames, which will allow Pokemon GO players to catch water Pokemon.

Pokemon GO players will be challenged with interval outdoor bodyweight training, with a workout that will consist of press ups, tricep dips and lunches, reports VR Focus. The Pokemon GO 5K workout is perfect for Pokemon GO players, as your eggs will need 2K of travel, while some need 5K - so if you participate in the run, you can put your egg into an incubator, and by the end of the 5K workout, you will have a new Pokemon.

Battlefield 1 is already looking like one of the best-looking games to be released in 2016, but it looks washed out - unfortunately, that's what war probably looked like back 100 years ago, and that's the look DICE went for.

YouTuber 'jackfrags' has released a new video from the Battlefield 1 closed alpha phase, with some color correction applied using the BF1 Cinematic Tools released by Hatti Watti. Color correction was used, and the HUD was completely removed - providing an amazing look at a custom Battlefield 1.

Let's hope that DICE have seen this, and provide an option for the more colorful, HUD-less Battlefield 1 when it launches later this year. Remember to watch the video in 4K 60FPS, as it's truly glorious.

Microsoft could be ready to fight in a new way with its upcoming Xbox Scorpio console, which will be powered by a new semi-custom design from AMD, where we should see it featuring Polaris-based GPU cores. This power will unleash 4K gaming in the console space, which hasn't been done before - at least not by Sony or Microsoft.

Aaron Greenberg, the Head of Xbox Games Marketing has talked about Project Scorpio in his latest podcast, where he said that it's a really exciting project that has huge support from Microsoft partners like DICE and Bethesda, as well as Microsoft's own internal studios. Greenberg didn't say much that is new, but he did reiterate that Microsoft is serious about ushering in true 4K gaming.

I don't think we're going to see full 4K gaming on the new Xbox, but rather 1080p 60FPS gaming that is upscaled in a way that is better than anything we've seen previously. I wrote a report about AMD acquiring HiAlgo, a firm that works on upscaling technology that is actually very impressive.

Ubisoft found itself in hot water over the downgraded graphics in Watch Dogs, and it looks like the publisher has learnt its lesson for its sequel, which is due out very soon.

During an interview with The Evening Standard, Ubisoft Montreal's Dominic Guay - Senior Producer on the Watch Dogs franchise said that the world of Watch Dogs 2 has much bigger than the original. Guay added: "Watch Dogs 2 uses an evolved version of the first opus technology. With many years passing doing R&D on this hardware generation, we were able to expend the game's graphics significantly".

Guay also said: "The San Francisco Bay area is a great place to have long view distances with high detail and atmospheric effects. The lighting and effects are more realistic and the world much more detailed and dynamic. The game world is more than twice as big as the open world in Watch Dogs. But beyond size, it is much more of a varied, dynamic, and flavourful setting. It encompasses San Francisco, Oakland, part of Marine county, and a scaled down version of Silicon Valley".

Whether you're a grognard who likes the video games "how they used to be" or you like the newschool and the oldschool, Fallout 1.5: Resurrection is here. A mod, Resurrection takes place between 90s darlings Fallout and Fallout 2 and offers a new story to play through. The setting: New Mexico.

It's been in production for 10 years, and features about as much content as the original Fallout (which is to say a lot). Among what's included: new characters, locales, and quests, and multiple quest solutions.

Resurrection requires only a copy of Fallout 2 and the mod itself to get started. No need to fiddle around with mods either, as it already includes the High Resolution Patch and the Sfall tweak pack for the most pleasant experience possible.

Sony's new 4K-ready PlayStation Neo console may release this year for a surprisingly cheap price point, if recent Amazon listings can be believed.

According to VG Leaks, Amazon Spain has listed a curious PlayStation 4 console for 399 Euros ($399 since tax is included in Euro prices) and an October 13, 2016 release date. So it looks like the PS4 Neo could launch alongside the PlayStation VR--Neo and Morpheus together. The retailer has pulled the listing shortly after the news broke out, adding even more plausibility that the listing was indeed accurate. Given Amazon Spain already has the original PS4 listed, the leaked listing could be for the new PS4K or the upcoming PS4 Slim model.

Although we don't know exactly when the PS4 Neo will launch, there's a lot of evidence that points towards an October release. An October launch lines up perfectly with the timeline put forth by French games distributor Innelec, who said the PS4K would launch in 2016. If recently leaked Sony internal slides are genuine, Sony has set a mandate that all PS4 games released in or after October must support the new PS4 Neo--further corroborating a release date.

Telltale Games has revealed that its new Batman series adaptation will launch in August, and a physical retail version will be sold in stores.

The first chapter of Telltale's anticipated five-part Batman game series will release digitally in August, with a disc-based "season pass disc" launching on September 13 on current and last-gen consoles. No PC physical SKU was spotted. The physical version will come with the first Batman episode baked-in and unlocks digital access to all four future episodes for free. No pricing for the physical versions has been announced, but we're guessing it'll be $49.99 or so.

The studio plans to announce the official release date next week alongside a world premiere trailer for the Caped Crusader's new adventure. Attendees of the San Diego Comic-Con will be able to see the world premiere trailer on July 23 with a special on-stage screening accompanied by Batman voice actor Troy Baker. If you're heading to SDCC and want in on the event, be sure to email Telltale Games at this address telltale_batman_sdcc@telltalegames.com and let them know.

Although Sony has officially confirmed the PlayStation 4K's existence, there's still plenty of unknowns about the new console, mainly with how it'll handle 4K upscaling and if the performance discrepancy compared to old PS4 games. Now a batch of purportedly leaked slides from Sony answer a few of these questions, and also seem to confirm the leaked PS4K specs as accurate. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these documents might be the leaks that Giant Bomb cited in their PS4 Neo reveal.

Note: We have no way of confirming if the following slides are accurate or not. Take the following content with a grain of salt.

The slides start off by telling us what we already know: the PS4 Neo will co-exist with original PS4s, with the same games, same PSN presence, etc. Then Sony goes on to corroborate what we've heard about the new games: all games after October 2016 will need to have two modes, a Base Mode for original PS4 consoles, and a Neo Mode for PS4 Neo, which enables 4K upscaling, 1080p 60FPS, etc. The slides reinforce that you won't have to have a 4K TV to play games in Neo Mode, and HDTV owners will enjoy "higher, more stable framerates" as well as the expected higher fidelity and "additional graphics features" with the PS4 Neo.

Nintendo is bringing back the old-school 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System in a new smaller NES Mini form factor with original games built-in, but there's more to the system that you need to know.

We already know that the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition (dubbed the NES Mini) costs $59.99, comes with 30 games baked-in, hooks up to HDTVs via HDMI, and launches on November 11. But most gamers might not realize that the NES Mini features no online capabilities, meaning it can't download new NES games via Nintendo's eShop.

This means the NES Mini's games library will remain static and a ton of classic titles won't be supported. Considering the NES has some 713 games in its library across North America and Europe, this leaves out a huge amount of games. This also means we can't connect the NES Mini to our Nintendo Accounts. Nintendo likely won't be making small tiny SD-card sized cartridges for extra NES Mini games--that'd be quite awesome.

GeForce owners can now take pro-grade 2D, 360° and Virtual Reality 360° screenshots, courtesy of NVIDIA's Ansel technology. All you need to get going is a 600 series card or newer, the latest drivers, and a copy of Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, the first game to support it.

Just hit Alt-F2 in-game to access Ansel, at which point you can capture freecam screens, change the field of view and rotation, throw in filters, adjust contrast and brightness, and more; if you use Android and Cardboard, you can download the NVIDIA VR Viewer to check out or upload your handiwork in 3D; lastly, head this way if you're a VR user for instructions on getting started with that.

Sony has launched a new video series aimed at answering the age-old question gamers have had for years: what do you actually do in No Man's Sky?

No Man's Sky has four pillars of gameplay: explore, trade, fight and survive. The latest video highlights the first--and arguably most majestic and interesting aspect of the game--exploration. Remember that No Man's Sky has a near-infinite universe made up of "18 quintillion planets to be explored across billions of miles of space," ensuring that every single planet is completely different than the last one. Hello Games has wasted no opportunities in demoing the insurmountably massive space-sim on numerous occasions, and the sixteen-man studio is now underlining those experiences in preparation for the game's launch next month.

We've also done our part to explain what No Man's Sky has to offer in our massive list of everything players can do in the game. Essentially No Man's Sky is a game where your only real objective is to travel to the center of the universe, exploring millions of planets and unfolding your experiences as you play. The planets are the main selling point; everything from the bizarre plant-life and strange alien creatures are procedurally generated, offering "limitless variety" from an exploration standpoint.