Gaming - Page 1043

Titanfall may have fallen off the charts fairly early, but it still has a healthy following of gamers with plenty of servers up and running. And now the 2014 mechanical shooter is making its way into EA's Origin Access Vault on the PC side.

It's already available on the Xbox One version of the Access Vault, but now you'll be able to enjoy Titanfall and all the expansions on the PC if you happen to subscribe to the monthly EA Access service. The game will be playable without restrictions of any kind, as well. Just recently EA confirmed that Titanfall is on track for a release sometime in the 2017 fiscal year, and will have a single-player campaign that features a well written and very grounded story.

This will be the 17th game to enter the Vault, coming just after Torchlight II joined the family at the end of February. The $5 a month service has proven strangely popular with it's value increasing with every game added. The catalog now includes Battlefied 4, Battliefield 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Sims 3, Dead Space and Plants Vs. Zombies Garden Warfare, among others. All of fantastic games that warrant even a paying full price for.

It was tragic news this week for PC gamers and Xbox One gamers when we heard of the shuttering of Lionhead Studios. But shutting down a studio isn't the end of the talent that worked there. Sony, in this case, is looking at opening its doors to the now former employees, to pick up some of the talented people that are now free-er agents.

In fact, they're specifically targeted those employees to see if they'd be a good fit and have taken to social media to voice their interest. There's a lot of talent in that studio, such that has worked on a number of high-profile and very well remembered games. The Fable series in particular was well received and Black & White nearly helped create the God-game genre, or at least refined it into something very enjoyable. It would be a shame to have such talented individuals fade away.

Sometimes even older games need some love from the original developer. Diablo II is getting just that with a new update. Though 16 years old, it was actually last updated in 2011 with varaious fixes that made it more reliable on modern systems.

This update, version 1.14a happens to concentrate on fixing even more glitches and bugs that might have made it completely unplayable on any modern PC or Mac. And, they say you can finally move onto a modern Mac, just in case you've been saving that PowerPC based one just for Diablo II.

They're also hard at work looking to catch up on preventing new and improved hacks and cheats from ruining the game. But that's an ever evolving project and they'll have a good solution soon.

Oculus has announced that one of their launch titles is going to be the very fine Internet spaceship simulation game, Elite: Dangerous. That means the game will support the latest Oculus SDK when the headset releases at the end of the month.

Elite: Dangerous is a game that had a VR experience at the heart of it from the very beginning. It's a natural fit for a simulator to be able to move your head around and, at least, track targets, and even interact with menus that'll light up when you look at where they'll be. It's a natural fit, and it already had Oculus support when the DK 1 was released what seems so long ago. This means it'll have underlying support for the latest SDK.

This'll be a natural fit for the release of the Oculus Rift which is happening on March 28th. The $600 price tag for the consumer version of the Rift might seem prohibitive, but it compares to the cost of a good gaming monitor that might be bought instead, though offering a far different and potentially better experience. Just make sure you have a PC that's up to snuff to play Elite: Dangerous in VR, with it's more intense processing requirements.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is shaping up nicely, with EA sharing a new developer diary on the game recently, detailing the reasoning behind Catalyst featuring no weapons, and how gameplay connects with the music dynamically, as well as how the movement in the game has changed from Mirror's Edge.

The developer diary video also tackles the combat in Mirror's Edge Catalyst, as well as the free roaming side of City of Glass. The fluid movement in Catalyst, mixed with the first-person combat create an experience that's different to traditional games - something that will be amplified by the dynamic audio. During the DICE art panel at the National Museum in Stockholm, Mirror's Edge Catalyst's concept artist, Per Haagensen explained that the team wanted to show off "her skill, confidence and attitude in a dynamic manner, without her looking like a martial artist or super hero".

He continued: "When I set out to sculpt her for the Key Art, aside from the realistic aspects of her appearance, more than anything it was to convey the pose with enough action, tension, and interest to make the audience curious about who this person is". Haagensen continued, saying that DICE wanted Faith to look "more mature" than she did in the first game. He finished off by saying: "She also needs to appear more mature than in the first game, so there was some work on getting a focused look on her face, maybe even some concern about the situation she is in".

CD Projekt RED promises that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to eclipse The Witcher 3 in every possible way--a feat we didn't know was possible.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the most ambitious project that the Polish devs have ever taken on, and CDPR has taken many opportunities to open up about the game's depth. At a recent earnings meeting, company president Adam Kicinski and studio head Adam Badowski said that Cyberpunk 2077 will be "even better, even bigger, even more revolutionary" than The Witcher 3.

All of that effort will take time, however, and Badowski says that the studio still has "a lot of work to do", and Cyberpunk 2077 is "still a long ways away from the premiere". CDPR is taking their time to make the game as amazing as possible, stating that the darkly futuristic game will be absolutely huge and push the bar even higher.

It was a bit concerning when it was annoucned that only the newest of Nintendo's 3DS models could support playing SNES games through the Virtual Console, but apparantly there's a really good reason for this.

And those reasons are technical in nature. The CPU, though only slightly less powerful than the new 3DS, just isn't quite powerful enough to actually handle SNES games at all. Those games are emulated using a Perfect-Pixel mode which allows you to play them at the original resolution that they were made in, which theoretically shouldn't be such a technical hurdle. But with the added overhead of emulation in an already limited environment, that just adds to the processing requirements, making it a bit more difficult.

But then, perhaps it's that they don't want to compromise on the experience that users would have. Why let the original 3DS users play it with a horrible experiences, because that would only lead to accusations of "unoptimized" games and poor development when in fact RAM might be limited by just enough to make a substantial difference, or that one more usable core is needed to make it run at the original framerate, and not a frame below. In retrospect, it's not really a bad idea to limit it if you want your customers to actually enjoy the experience and not complain too much.

Not content with having totally redefined the RPG genre with The Witcher 3, CD Projekt RED is already laying out its plans for the future of RPG greatness.

In a recent earnings call, company president Adam Kicinski highlighted CDPR's development strategy for 2017-2021. This multi-year roadmap not only includes the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, but also a brand new unannounced AAA RPG whose details are pretty much unknown.

Since the timeline is a full eight years after the release of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, listeners speculated that CDPR's new AAA RPG could be for the upcoming next-generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox Two consoles. Kicinski wasn't able to comment on this, saying that the plans of new consoles are "closely guarded secrets", and that he had no clue what Sony or Microsoft are planning.

When the minds behind The Witcher 3 says they're working on a project that "no one else has done before", we can only imagine what kind of awesomeness the studio is cooking up.

During CD Projekt RED's financial earnings call, company Adam Kicinski revealed that the Polish dev team will release a brand new game in 2016, and it'll be completely different than anything we've seen so far. Presentation slides reveal that the new game will be "a new type of video game format previously unexplored by the studio".

Kicinski didn't deliver concrete info, but teased that the new game will be "experimental", and it'll be something "no one else has done before". The Witcher 3's second Blood and Wine expansion is still on track to release this year, and will be the last of Geralt's adventures.

The Legend of Zelda for the Wii U was one of the most anticipated games of 2015, and now it retains that status for 2016. The producer for the game, Eiki Aonuma, says we should expect something new compared to the previous games, maybe even something more mature than we're used to.

In the latest issue of Famitsu, the producer was excited to report that progress for the game has been very good, and that the whole game is taking shape very well. He likens the change to how different The Ocarina of Time was compared to A Link to the Past on the SNES. It was dramatic, but it was also quite enjoyable. He even hinted at seeing a possible western influence to shake up the franchise.

He emphasized that we should look forward to what he has in store for us, that the differences will be good for Link and Zelda. "Perhaps, players will be surprised. Please look forward to it, because I think we'll be able to make 'something new' like Ocarina of Time was." Aonuma said to Famitsu.

The consoles seem to get patches a little later than the PC with Fallout 4, but that's not a bad thing at all, it just means further time for refinement and optimizations. Right? This patch, 1.4 is a big one and it has a lot of changes, specifically those that'll help to add support for add-ons and mods that'll be coming later on.

The list of fixes and additions is quite long with more metal and wood door variants to choose from when looking to create the perfect settlement, more signs to put up to confuse yourself and others and more clutter. But the important part is the support for future mods, something that consoles haven't been able to enjoy as much as their PC brethren.

The long list of what the patch brings can be found right here, and we'll be updating this if there's anything specific to the consoles that isn't quite listed in that list.

Things are looking up for the future of Dead Island 2. Sumo Digital has agreed to take up the project and continue development where it left off.

The publisher, Deep Silver, was left without a proper developer once they officially parted ways with Yager, who was contracted to create the game. That left an IP without a proper home. But now they plan on partnering with a company that Deep Silver believes understands the brand better and has the creative foresight to fully realize the idea.

Sumo Digital is a very well renowned developer, having exclusively created LittleBigPlanet 3 and helped a number of other developers realize high-end and complex projects, such as Crackdown and Disney Infinity 3.0. And because of their achievements, Deep Silver is incredibly excited about their partnership.

The body collision issue in The Division is a fairly serious issue that takes away some of the joy from playing The Division. The problem is that other players can physically block you from progressing by simply standing in your way. It's frustrating many players in safe-houses, the Dark Zone or any other area cooperative area.

Ubisoft has issued a statement on the matter and has detailed a very clever workaround that's been put into the game. If you find yourself unable to move forward, just move into the offending person for around 3 seconds and then you'll be granted access to where you're trying to go. Simple, effective and it doesn't completely remove object collisions because it's a surprisingly important part of a tactical game.

The Division has sold more than any other game for Ubisoft in a 24 hour period, which is quite the achievement. The launch of the game has been mostly successful. Servers have had small issues related to the unexpectedly high traffic though for the most part logging in and playing hasn't been an issue. The Snowdrop engine, too, has performed rather well in our initial benchmarks. In all, a much better launch than previous games from Ubisoft.

The original Max Payne was a huge game at the time, with its sequel improving on the game in many ways - but many gamers felt Max Payne 3 wasn't as good as it could've been - with developer Remedy selling the rights to Max Payne to Take-Two Interactive all the way back in 2002.

Under Take-Two's ownership, Rockstar Games (the developers of Grand Theft Auto) released Max Payne 3 in 2012 - which was met with success. Fast forwarding to now, with the impending release of Quantum Break, Remedy's Sam Lake talked with Metro Game Central about what the developer would do if they were to be in the position of making another Max Payne game. Lake teased: "They did contact us close to the end of Max Payne 3 and wanted us to be consultants. We were playing the game and giving them feedback, and I had a nice opportunity of working with Dan Houser when he was creating the prequel comic book for Max Payne 3. But other than that we were not involved".

Lake continued: "I don't know... if that kind of opportunity did present itself I think it would be fun. Yes. You can't help but have all kinds of ideas, but we did two Max Payne games. From a creator's perspective it was actually nice knowing that we had sold the IP to Rockstar after the first one, and part of the deal was to make the second one. So through that whole project I knew that in all likelihood this was the last Max Payne that we would make. So doing that and saying your goodbyes to that franchise had a lot of closure for me. But who can say, if something like that would suddenly happen I'm sure that we could come up with something cool".

Quantum Break's live-action video can be skipped on all platforms, alleviating the need for always-online connections.

We recently reported that PC players have no choice but to stream Quantum Break's live-action segments, raising questions whether or not the game would need a persistent internet connection on PC. Xbox players, on the other hand, have the option to download the videos for offline play.

Now a Remedy developer confirms that players will have the option to skip the game's video segments, meaning the game can be played offline on PC. "I see a few people who are upset that you can skip the live action show in #QuantumBreak if they want to... what? Are options bad?" Remedy developer Lennie Hakola said in a recent Tweet.

Now that The Division has launched, the first 24 hours have been a huge success for Ubisoft. The company has said that The Division sold more copies in its first 24 hours than any other Ubisoft game, ever.

The Division also sold incredibly well when it comes to digital sales, but Ubisoft didn't reveal any concrete numbers. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said: "The launch of The Division is a tremendous achievement for Ubisoft, and demonstrates our unrivaled capacity to create fantastic new game brands and transform them into entertainment blockbusters".

Guillemot continued: "This is a momentous day for Ubisoft, but more importantly it marks the start of millions of players' enduring engagement in The Division's game world, which we are confident they will love".

Driveclub just keeps getting better and better with each update. And the March update, which weighs in at a small 300MB, is no exception, even if it's going to be a bit small.

That 300MB includes an all new Drift Mode that's actually scored, with a leaderboard to compare your scores against others. Just remember to try not to slam into walls, even if it's the natural thing to do for the uninitiated. They've also added 25 more levels for Elite and the normal Driver level, so the Elite caps out at 60 and Driver at 120. 35 new club levels have also been added, capping that at 120 as well.

Some of the UI has also been updated a bit to help showcase some of the #PS4share images that are shared throughout the Interwebs. If you participate, then you might also find your photo being enjoyed by others in the future, if you're lucky. Two new cars and two new bikes are also making into the update; the Koeniggsegg Regera and the Jaguar XJ220, MV Agusta Brutale 1090 Corsa and the MV Agusta F4RC. The full patch notes are right here if you need to take a look

iD Software has finally announced the dates that the closed-beta for DOOM will be running, and it'll be on all platforms at the same time, not spread out like some others.

Starting March 31st and lasting until April 3rd 2016 you'll get the chance to enjoy some fast-paced demon hunting destruction in their closed-beta test. But to get in, you have to have pre-ordered or purchased Wolfenstein: The New Order digitally prior to May 26th 2014. If you did, you should have had a DOOM beta code in your email from doing that. Better go check your digital receipts to see if you qualify.

The closed-beta will encompass the multiplayer mode only, to stress-test network functionality and look for the usual bugs that might crop up in their new iD Tech 6 engine in the first wide-spread test. They've also listed the recommended PC specifications to play the beta, which may not translate over to the final game, of course.

XCOM 2 hasn't even been out for six months yet and we're already getting word that the first expansion will come flying in on March 17th.

It's called Anarchy's Children is more of a customizer's dream than anything else, with more than 100 different, new and colorful different options to personalize your soldiers. That means there will be more hairstyles, armor, decals, helmets, masks and even different styles of face paint to make your crew look great while fending off the Alien overlords.

The pack is $5 if purchased by itself, or it's included in the XCOM 2 Reinforcement Pack that's $20 total, but includes additional stuff as well. This will be the first of many different DLC packs that'll be coming to the game, giving you official customization options if you don't want to chance those fan-made mods.

With us recently reporting that Rocket League has tipped over 1,000,000 users, this popular video game has just announced a brand new DLC to hit the e-shelves, released in unison with the upcoming Batman v Superman film.

The Batman DLC allows gamers to adopt their very own Batmobile in-game and is available to Windows PC, Microsft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 users. Priced at $1.99, this DLC has been officially licensed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and was announced in a recently issued press release.

The above YouTube video gives you a look at what you can own if this DLC tickles your fancy, further containing three exclusive Antenna Flags along with the Batmobile itself.