Gaming - Page 1041

Bombshell didn't quite come out of the oven exactly like 3D Realms had planned. It was a good concept with some interesting underlying gameplay, and a neat story. It was the bugs, glitches and other infernal problems that kept people from actually enjoying it. Update 1.1 should make it a lot better, if not far more palpable to play. They've also added some free DLC to entice current users back.

The massive list of changes and fixes includes a bevy of items that they've found and changed by scouring through both the user reviews and critical reviews. 3D Realms and Interceptor Entertainment are very optimistic about what they've done underneath, so much that they're offering the game at a 33% discount, along with the addition of retro-themed Shellshock mission as free DLC.

In the changelog, they mention having new crosshairs for every weapon, adding in a more minimalist HUD for those that thought it was a bit too busy, and having NPC's actually show up on the mini-map. The most important fix that they've made is with the aiming mechanism. Now you can actually hit what you're aiming for. And they'll only shoot at you while they're on screen, which was minor, if annoying issue. There's more fixes and changes than you can shake a stick at, but if you've got the game and were disappointed, this might be enough to get you re-interested.

Total War Battles: Kingdom finally has a release date. And on March 24th you'll get the chance to play, across Steam and mobile mind you, against your friends in some delightfully light-hearted combat.

The whole massive battle aspect is all there, as well as the hexagon city-building and actually looks very close to just about any Total War game you've played on PC. The idea is to let you pick up where you left off on any device you want. Start a game on your PC, and continue planning your city and raising your army while anywhere else in the world on whatever device is at hand.

This is a definite far cry from Total War Battles: Shogun, which took on a strangely different aspect that, while good in it's own right, wasn't quite a proper Total War game. You'll be able to find this one on sale on the 24th on iOS and Android as well as through Steam.

Remember that strange patent that hinted the Nintendo NX's controllers would have an awkward ovular touchscreen in lieu of buttons? According to a "leaked" photo, that design is actually real, and will be used by Nintendo's upcoming console.

The leaked photo was originally leaked onto Reddit by user Idriss2Dev, and shows a possible proof-of-concept of the infamous Nintendo NX patent. As you can see, there's no actual buttons on the controller's ovular touchpad face, and a set of twin knobbly analog sticks that look rather odd. Notice the trigger button in the upper lefthand corner, and if you look closely, you can see a hint of a trigger on the right-hand side, too.

All in all the controller looks extremely non-ergonomic, leading many to believe it's a fake. Destructoid passed the image through a photo-checker and says it wasn't Photoshopped, so it may be genuine. Or it may be a fake prototype made to look like the patent. Assuming it is real, however, we're not sure if this controller belongs to the console or if it's the mobile on-the-go 3DS-like controller--based on its shape and form, I'd say it's the latter.

Sources say that Red Dead Redemption 2 has not only been in development for the past four years, but the highly-anticipated sequel is slated to release as soon as next year. This year's E3 will be rather exciting, eh?

Gaming outlet Fraghero supposedly was given confirmation from an anonymous source via email, who outright said that Red Dead Redemption 2: Legends of the West (yes, that's apparently the sequel's name) is in development. The tipster says that Rockstar Games will reveal the sequel at E3 2016, and the game will feature "more than one playable character" and a "much bigger open world" to explore.

Although the source claims to have received this info from an ex-Rockstar dev, be sure to take this with a big tin of Morton's salt. At the same time, though, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has said that the Red Dead Redemption is a "permanent franchise" of the publisher, and a four-year dev window fits into his plan not to oversaturate the games market.

Destiny players are suffering from content fatigue, but Bungie is ready to unload a bounty of content with a new major update coming April 12.

In the latest weekly update, Bungie has outlined what Guardians can expect from Destiny's new "April Update". The content drop will include a fresh batch of activities across the full spectrum of the game, from PVE to PVP, so no players are left out. That's a pretty important designation considering PVE gamers have long been clamoring for new stuff to do in the interstellar sandbox. Check below for a bullet breakdown.

Of course Bungie doesn't reveal too much about the nebulous April Update--they're not about to break their infamous hype-building nature and expose full transparency--but we do get an actual release date and content hints. Bungie will also be streaming the new content on its Twitch channel every Wednesday for the next three weeks, so be sure to tune in if you're interested. Sadly, I think most of Destiny's playerbase has moved on to The Division by now.

GDC 2016 - During the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft's Principal Group Program Manager, Jason Ronald, held a programming session talking about the future of game development on Windows. In this session, Ronald talked about what Microsoft is doing to push their vision on game development, on both the Xbox, and Windows.

Ronald also provided an overview of a "host of new platform innovations for games in every genre". DualShockers sat in on the session, noticing some great news on DX12, with Ronald talking about how DX12 will offer gains in both CPUs and GPUs.

Ronald mentioned that Star Wars: Battlefront will be the first DX12 title on the Xbox One, but didn't provide any release window on when this would happen. He did note that Microsoft has strong partner support in DX12 thanks to recent releases like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Hitman and Ashes of the Singularity.

The Division has been one of the most successful new games that Ubisoft has ever released, reaching over $330 million dollars in revenue globally within the first five days after it was released. But it didn't just sell well, people are actually playing it too, with over 1.2 million players having enjoyed it concurrently over this past weekend across all platforms.

That's an impressive amount of people playing a game at any one time, despite it starting off with a few, nearly game breaking, problems. There's been an incredible amount of actual involvement by the player-base, with a generally positive attitude even with the problems and association with past Ubisoft titles. Right now there is a recorded all-time peak, just through Steam alone, of 113,887 players at any given time. That's not bad at all, and almost more than the Team Fortress 2 record of 117,917.

"The Division taking the top spot in the industry for first-week sales of a new franchise is a tremendous achievement. We are very proud of our teams, and humbled by and thankful for the millions of players who are giving us their feedback and support," Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot, said in a statement regarding the success. "The Division is the latest example yet of our unique ability to deliver immersive gaming playgrounds that keep players engaged, and that they eagerly share with their friends and community."

Gaming Evolved, or Raptr, hasn't exactly had the shining reception that AMD might have wanted when it was included with their driver set. But it's getting better with each iteration, and more useful too. The newest update vastly improves the video capture and recording features of the integrated Play.tv, beyond a lot of other free or premium platforms.

Recording, if you set it to, can begin automatically once you start a game up now. It can detect and begin without you having to remember to turn it on, capturing the entire play session and even going so far as to deleting older videos as time goes on to save storage space. They've added the ability to use a hotkey to "bookmark" a particular moment in the game, which will make a 30-second video clip when you press that hotkey. Play.tv will also record your mouse clicks, webcam, mic nearly everything so you can analyze your competitive play. And now they have a real video editor that allows you to actually edit those clips and make them viewable right from the app. It used to be quite the pain to get things ready for sharing.

Something quite revolutionary is the new integration with League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. When you play these games, the AMD Gaming Evolved client uses live match data to automatically create highlights that are completely pre-edited, ready to watch or share instantly. They plan on adding in more games that are compatible with it soon as well.

GDC 2016 - NVIDIA announced their latest GameWorks 3.1 package at the Game Developers Conference, and then Unity announced their latest version of their popular engine - and now, Unity Technologies has revealed that it will be adding support for NVIDIA VRWorks into the Unity engine.

VRWorks being added to Unity means that it'll soon support VR SLI and Multi-Res Shading, which will make it much easier for developers to build VR support into the Unity engine for GeForce video cards. As for the Unity engine, it continues to expand at rapid levels, with VR games like Cloudlands: MiniGolf VR, Hover Junkers, and Job Simulator.

But, the Unity engine isn't just there for games - as there are various VR applications it can be used for, such as social, medical, tourism, design, education and training. Multi-Res Shading is capable of providing a 50% performance improvement when used in the right application, which is something that game developers - and gamers - can get quite excited over.

Microsoft announced that they've changed their internal policies regarding cross-console play, but there's been the question of whether or not it was actually possible. The president of Sony Computer Entertainment, Shuhei Yoshida, says that the technical part of having the two platforms work together in games would potentially be the easiest part of the process. In fact, Sony has had cross-platform play available with the PC since the PlayStation 2 days, so they're definitely not against such an idea.

Yoshida is all for allowing gamers to play together whatever the platform, they've been pioneers since Final Fantasy 11 (which is still operational by the way). But connecting to the PC is much more straightforward with it being a much more open network. Speaking to Eurogamer, he said that "Because PC is an open platform it's much more straightforward. Connecting two different closed networks is much more complicated so we have to work with developers and publishers to understand what it is they are trying to accomplish." But it isn't an insurmountable challenge at all.

He continued by mentioning that the technical aspects of it were the easiest part to overcome. The challenge lies in whether or not it's in their best interest, from a business perspective, to actually allow it. It comes down to policy and business issues more than anything. But at least it's possible, and we're bound to eventually see Xbox One and PlayStation 4 gamers enjoying non-exclusive games harmoniously. Or at least semi-harmoniously.

Skyforge, an MMO that crosses the line between science-fiction and fantasy letting you play almost as a god, has received a new update called Dark Omen, and it's all about improving the quality of life for your pantheon (the equivalent of a guild) and bringing a bit more content before they drop an even larger and more substantial update coming very soon.

Overall this update is a quality of life update. In the update they've created a new operations system where higher level players can combine their powers to fight off any invasions much more efficiently, and spectacularly too. They've made this easier to use, and much better looking too. An Elder God questline has been added, so you have a chance to learn the backstory of what it actually takes to become a divine Elder God on Aelion. That questline culminates in a showdown with a massive boss battle unlike anything seen so far in the game.

One of the issues that players have noticed is that of merging their pantheon of warriors with another. Sometimes growth meant teaming up with others, but there was no easy way to accomplish this. Allods Team, the developer, have added a new Pantheon Fusion tool that makes it much easier to join forces against the invading forces that are trying to wipe you out.

A new online collectible card game is coming out of the gates swinging, and wants to capture your attention in a way that no other game of its genre quite has just yet. Star Crusade: War for the Expanse gives you a massive overarching story, where you get to be in control of one of the six different, powerful factions struggling for power.

Star Crusade offers a deep and highly customizable card battle experience with more than 400 playable cards and multiple different types of playable modes. They've got single-player matches and competitive battles against friends or random people. Four-player play, sharing and gifting of your deck is all coming soon as well.

Competitive collectible card games are a genre that's been growing as of late. The popularity is now crossing over into the digital realm with the likes of Hearthstone continuing to gain momentum since it was officially released in 2013. It's quite the phenomenon really.

Modder Kaldaien is at it again with a mod for the recently released JRPG Disgaea. While a decent port, Disgaea still has some room for improvement, particularly on the visuals front, and that's what the 'Pretty Prinny' mod, as he calls it, is primarily focused on.

Among other things, it adds 'proper' V-Sync support and removes the 720p internal resolution cap as well as artifacts related to sprite smoothing. Pretty Prinny is only at version 0.2.1 at the moment, so expect lots more to come, including additional visual enhancements as well as performance and stability improvements. Tonight version 0.3.0 will be released with SSAO and MSAA support.

Hit the source to download the mod and for configuration and installation instructions.

The Unity engine is one of the singularly most used game engines in the world. They've been working very hard at making game creation a more accessible endeavor, and that's paid off tremendously. Unity has been updated to version 5.3.4, which is stable, gorgeous and full of easy to use tools.

Unity has to keep up with the pace of innovation, so they're also introducing a more widely available public beta program for their unstable, yet advanced, beta versions. Which is now up to version 5.4. At their keynote at GDC they said that they're very committed to the future and evolving the engine to keep pace with the rest of the gaming community, and in order to better serve their users they've opted to open up beta testing to everyone. This way more people get to play with,and find all the things that could possibly go wrong with new implementations of technology, or new tech altogether.

Right now they estimate that Unity covers around 30% of the market. And that's across the 25 different supported platforms. That's a lot of games and developers that have their hands in the Unity pie. And so they're making it even easier to build games with improved collaborative functions that let you save assets to a cloud-based system to be shared among a team working far apart. And there's a lot in beta 5.4 to like and want to share with others. Just look at the difference above from version 5 to the 5.4.

It's been a few months since the hidden Cortana functionality was accidentally found in the November Xbox One update, but it seems that the full functioning digital assistant is getting much closer to being released. And the Xbox boss is quite excited about it too.

The Xbox One already has a great voice command system, one that's evolved upon their successful Sync and other speech recognition technologies, but in order to bring it into parity with the rest of their brand, they need to bring Cortana, a true digital assistance, into the mix. There's no release date quite yet, but Mike Ybarra did say that it was "coming along great."

Cortana would be just another feature that the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's current lineup doesn't have. Just how useful it would be for a primarily gaming (re)focused device is unknown. It also means you'll need a microphone in order for her to hear you, which is either Kinect or through a headset plugged into your controller (or USB port). It'll be interesting to see just what kind of commands will be available and how they'll be used on the Xbox One. Just using your voice to launch a game isn't exactly exciting, or new, so there's hope that something more is coming from the infusion of Cortana.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward added in something very special when it came out. Aside from the great addition to the story, they gave us the ability to fly about the different locations of Hydaelyn with customizable winged mounts. The process to create those and really integrate them fully into the greater game was a bit more difficult than you'd think, and that process of animating the mounts is detailed in the newest Developer Diary video from Square Enix.

It was a challenge to make sure that flying was a smooth process that didn't detract from the beauty of the game. The designers had to decrease the overall amount of data while flying so there wasn't any stuttering. That and adding in an element of elevation was tricky, you can't have the controls be jerky or unintuitive.

The most important part, naturally, was introducing the Fat Chocobo as a potential aerial ride. But how does one make a gigantic creature like that capable of flight? Well, with the right motivation; cake. Check out the video, it's a very enlightening look into the creative processes that they go through to bring things to life.

Blizzard isn't done with StarCraft 2 just yet, and their next expansion, called Nova Covert Ops, will have three episodes of content with the first one coming on or before June 19th 2016.

There'll be nine new missions across those three episodes, where you'll get to play as November "Nova" Terra, who's a psionic ghost. You'll get to use your abilities to infiltrate bases and try to find out what happened to the other ghosts that seem to have disappeared. There's a large consipiracy for you to unravel here.

Being almost entirely story and character based, it's supposed to bring some interesting new elements into the fold, things that aren't traditional "StarCraft" at all. You'll also get a chance to use some experimental technology to properly complete those missions, and maybe even save the entire Dominion itself.

There was one particular race that we were very interested to see just how they'd be integrated into Total War: Warhammer, the Vampires. Who, by the way, they've been able to keep very quiet about up until now. And it's been worth the wait.

They are undeniably evil and even take pleasure in that fact. The Vampire Counts, here led by Mannfred von Varstein, you can watch as he raises your once dead army to use them to wreck havoc over anyone in their path. As would be expected you'll get to call upon death magic, necromancy and take a zombie dragon into battle. One can imagine that anything else dead can also become their pets, and possibly a lot more. They're the opponents that you won't want to face, but inevitably will have to. The Vampire Counts won't be playable right away, and will only make a playable appearance on May 24th due to a small delay.

GDC 2016 - Battlezone fans are quite excited for Rebellion's reboot of the game, as it'll be including support for not just the PlayStation VR - which has just had its $399 pricing and October launch window revealed - but Oculus Rift support, and DX12.

AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy revealed during GDC that Battlezone will have DX12 support, and during an interview with VRFocus, Rebellion CEO and Creative Director Jason Kingsley said: "We are doing a lot of work on DirectX 12, and it really depends on how well Oculus works on DirectX 12".

Just how successful has The Division been? Quite successful, thanks to Ubisoft announcing official revenue numbers for The Division.

In its first five days of release, Ubisoft pulled in over $330 million - beating out Destiny's $325 million five-day haul from September 2014. AlsoDestiny launched on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, while The Division launched onto the PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said: "The Division taking the top spot in the industry for first week sales of a new franchise is a tremendous achievement. We are very proud of our teams, and humbled by and thankful for the millions of players who are giving us their feedback and support".