Gaming - Page 1044

With the announcement of Forza Motorsport 6 Apex Edition, the thought was that we'd be able to compete with our friends on the Xbox One, at least with the courses available. That, however, has just been debunked and is completely untrue. Cross-play functionality is not going to make it into the PC version of Forza 6.

Aaron Greenberg explained that the curated nature of the experience means that it's a Windows 10 only ordeal. He stated that it's not planned at the moment, though that it could be an option in the future. Right now they're concentrating on getting the game polished and released, with that feature possibly on the roadmap later. Of course, with enough pressure from fans, it might become a reality.

Forza Motorsport, and Horizon, have previously been Xbox exclusive games relegated to being the definitive racing sim experience on that platform. This will mark its debut on the PC following Microsoft's commitment to bridging the gap between console and PC games. Turn 10 Studios will be developing the PC version and implementing DirectX 12 and other more advanced effects as befits a proper PC port. Considering the wider use of UWP, this port could theoretically run quite well when released, if lessons are learned from the release of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the PC.

The Coalition is making some great progress on Gears of War 4, bringing back the cover-based shooter to its overarching roots. Some new information regarding how the game will be played has surfaced. Notably a new cooperative play mechanism and just how the story will unfold.

Cooperative play has been a hallmark of the series over the year, where you and three other friends can play through the game together, suffering through some of the worst of times, and the best of times. That co-op has been reduced to only support two total players. Player one is always JD Fenix, and the second person can play as either Kait or Del.

Gears is now taking a page out of the book of some very successful series', where the action unfolds in real-time. That is, the entire story unfolds over a 24-hour period, which starts 25 years after the events of Gears of War 3. Does that mean that there's only 24 potential hours of gameplay? Possibly, but then again, the replay value is most notably going to be in the multiplayer.

A lot of controversy and speculation as to the health and the future of the Xbox One after the closure of Lionhead Studios. Phil Spencer used Twitter to help reassure fans that shutting down Lionhead Studios and Press Play studios don't mean the end of the Xbox, nor is it the end of the world, either.

Furthermore, he continued to explain how important first party studios are to their business model. "I'm proud of the games our 1P Studios have shipped on XB1," he told a fan via Twitter, "our plan is continue to build new IP and expand our franchises."

Despite the outlook seeming grim, closing of studios and consolidating resources is a normal procedure. Without further information as to why we can only speculate based on what we know. Which simply that a studio now no longer exists. Spencer further reiterated their commitment to strong first-party designs in another tweet, explaining that specific information just can't be released at the moment. "It's impossible to go into all the detail and I apologize for that. Just know I'm committed to our 1P."

According to Microsoft's former Xbox community manager, Raj Patel, Hello Games' upcoming title No Man's Sky looks "stale". With No Man's Sky explained as a "science-fiction game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe", I don't see how that can be.

In a few tweets, Patel said: "Every gameplay image I've seen of No Man's Sky looks like it could take place on the same planet. 'Infinite universe' eh? I don't see it". Then someone tweeted him, saying "procedurally generated games don't interest me too much after about an hour you've seen most possible biomes and creatures etc".

Patel tweeted a reply, saying "Yeah, I mean it has potential and COULD be great but from what I've SEEN so far, it already seems stale. I haven't seen the fun". Someone asked Patel "have you seen all hundreds of trillion planets or half a dozen?" with Patel tweeting back "I've seen everything that has been publicly shown. As my tweet indicated I'm commenting on what I've seen".

As a kid, I played the hell out of point-and-click adventure games like Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, Leisure Suit Larry and Day of the Tentacle. DOTT holds a special place in my heart, so the news of Day of the Tentacle Remastered got me excited, and now we're nearly here - the day of its release.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered will arrive on March 22, with pre-orders now open on GOG.com with a 10% discount offered for the first two weeks of its availability. Day of the Tentacle Remastered will allow players to relive their youth through the game, all on modern hardware with new features that weren't in the original release - such as a new interface, in-game developer commentary and more.

The game is explained as: "Day of the Tentacle Remastered is all the adventure you may remember with an optional layer of sweet improvements on top. You can mix and match between the unmistakably 1990s pixely art and a fresh high-res coat of paint, remastered audio, and an all new interface. There are extra goodies in the Remastered release as well, including in-game developer commentary and a fully playable version of the original Maniac Mansion. Your pre-order also comes with three exclusive Day of the Tentacle wallpapers, available right away to fuel your anticipation".

We thought it was coming, and now the day is here - Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been delayed, with consoles to blame. Developer Warhorse Studios wants a simultaneous release on consoles and PCs, and has delayed the PC version of the game so it can do just that.

PR manager Tobias Stolz-Zwiling said earlier this month: "The idea was to release the game in the summer and then to follow up with the console versions. Right now we are still indie developers but we are in negotiations with publishers to, well, we need someone to bring the games into the shops, so we need a distributor, and he kind of wants us to synch it with the console versions. We are still in negotiations, we will see. Best case for you will be summer this year for the PC version and then with the follow-up for consoles; or if the publisher wants us to synch it we will release everything let's say by the end of the year, so we will see about that".

But now Polygon is reporting that Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been delayed, so that Warhorse can release the game onto the consoles and the PC at the same time.

It's always nice to see the inner creative processes that go on when making a video game. Getting behind the scenes can help you to appreciate the game even more if you hadn't before, or even help give insight into the difficulties a developer goes through to bring us the final product. The latest developer diary for Final Fantasy XIV is all about the narrative and creating the overarching story.

The creative process is different for everyone and is always, almost, a sacred process to be cherished. In the case of the stories that are in Final Fantasy XIV, the main loremaster, Kazutoyo Maehiro, doesn't ever write scenarios around characters, but that they naturally emerge as he's working.

The end result is a very well put together narrative that's coherent with not only the entire Final Fantasy XIV story, but with past games from the franchise. It all comes together quite nicely. And this MMORPG is one that will likely continue to call upon the inspiration from previous games to make for a very personal and exciting experience.

SEGA and Creative Assembly are going to delay the launch of Total War: Warhammer for a month longer than they originally intended. It'll now be launching on May 24th 2016 instead of the earlier April 28th release date.

The developers are very excited about the game and want us to be able to get the most out the game. Namely they want it to be as polished as possible before they release it, hoping to avoid the pitfalls that some recent releases have suffered. "This could be the best Total War game we've ever made. We don't want to rush it," said the creative director, Mike Simpson.

This is the first foray into high fantasy for Total War, with a lot of excitement surrounding it. That said, because it's a PC only game, and previous Total War games have had some performance issues, they're looking at making sure that it's optimized on a variety of hardware. Specifically, they want us PC gamers to have a chance to enjoy it at 60FPS in even the most massive of battles at the highest of settings.

The Khronos Group's open source Vulkan API launched publicly last month, which brought some to wonder if Star Citizen would come to support it. Development subscriber Kyran inquired on exactly that for the '10 for the Chairman' Q&A video series, to which Chris Roberts, Chairman of developer Cloud Imperium Games, responded with what could be interpreted as a yes.

"We have looked at Vulkan; we're pretty excited by it," he says. "So we are considering our options between Vulkan and DirectX 12. We haven't made a full decision."

He continues: "Vulkan has some advantages, the biggest one being as long as it works properly that it can work on a PC but also work on Linux and work on other platforms, whereas DirectX 12 is specifically just for Windows. They are both very similar architectures; essentially Vulkan's not that different from what Mantle was originally set up to be. So we're considering it. You never know whether we will do DirectX 12 or Vulkan first."

Far too often publishers milk games franchises to the point where the cash cow dries up. We've seen this with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise, whose lukewarm reception led the publisher to rethink its annual strategy. Thankfully, Take-Two Interactive affirms that we won't ever have to worry about Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption games going down this path.

In a recent presentation in New York, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff discussed why the company doesn't ship out annual sequels. "We don't intend to change annual strategy because of product fatigue. We create franchise value and games have to be managed deliberately. It's tempting to have continuous releases and milk a franchise as far as you can, [but] we've seen that fatigue in other franchises in the games industry. With almost every single franchise for us, the latest release is bigger than the one before."

Take-Two Interactive understands that there's a delicate balance when it comes to the games industry. A high-profile AAA has to be carefully curated and managed in the marketing sector, and it's important that the companies build up as much hype and interest as possible. If you saturate the market with too many franchise releases, interest starts to wane, and the whole thing falls apart rather easily.

In the games industry, it's only natural that any high-profile online game is accompanied by a rocky launch. In The Division's case, though, dastardly gamers have already found a way to grief other players by simply standing in their way.

In The Division, players can stand in the way of doorways and block them off from other players. Ubisoft made the decision to make all in-game avatars solid rather than allowing players to pass through one another, which is standard for any huge MMO-style online game. This oversight has caused a substantial amount of grief in the community, and armed trolls with an effective way to frustrate just about every would-be Division agent in New York.

Sadly, griefers can inhibit progress right at the game's start. Right after the opening cutscene, players start off in a safehouse that has only one exit. By simply standing in the way, griefers are pretty much denying access to the rest of the game, taunting other players by dancing and waving in place.

Were you affected by the massive 2011 hacking of Sony's services? Do you happen to want some free stuff for your trouble?

Sony is sending out emails to those that were affected by the massive 28-day hack from April of 2011 and allow those that filled out the lengthy claim form the ability to redeem codes for free stuff on the services that you were signed into.

The free download codes are for a number of different PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PSP games. If you were one of those that downloaded a free game as part of the Welcome Back promotion that happened right after they got their services back up, then you're only allowed to have one free game. You can also choose from some premium themes as well.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 was just released at the end of last month and PopCap and EA just now announced the Graveyard Variety Pack, the first of many free DLC packs for the amusing game.

The update is quite generous with what they've added to it. They've created a new Aqua Center map that's rather elaborate in design and have put a lot of different, new, quests throughout the Backyard Battleground map. It wouldn't be Plants vs. Zombies if they didn't add in more options to customize your characters in wild new ways, either. So there's a lot of fun new costumes and options to choose from. They've also gone and balanced the characters a bit more from all the great feedback they've had from players.

And in case you're in love with microtransactions, EA has also added a few more packs so you can get even more customization options. $2.49 can get you 56K coins to spend on your wacky characters. But, just remember that these microtransactions are optional and solely cosmetic. It's a nice surprise to see PopCap dedicated to bringing value to a game that's always had a special place in a lot of gamers hearts. This franchise is genius.

Contrary to the promises made by an Ubisoft developer, console players have no option to improve frame rates in The Division.

According to the claims made by an unknown Ubisoft developer, PS4 and Xbox One gamers would be able to scale down lighting effects to boost frame rates in The Division. Now that the game is out on all platforms, console gamers can confirm that the settings simply aren't there.

"You can disable certain lighting aspects to improve frame rates in the console versions. I don't know of another game that does that. So if you want to choose frame rate over visuals, you can if you want," reads the erroneous quote given by a purported developer on a Team Epiphany stream.

Yesterday we were shocked with the news that Microsoft was going to shut down Lionhead Studios and cancel their titular product, Fable Legends, but they've announced they won't be shutting down the current beta immediately, and will let players that are already in, continue to play until April.

No new players are being let into the beta, but if you're already in, and enjoying yourself, then you'll be able to continue your adventures until April 13th at 3:00PM GMT. After that, the servers will officially be shut down and the game will be gone for good.

So far there's been no word as to whether we'll see Fable be taken up by another studio, but we do know that for the time being, development has ceased completely. Fable Legends was a showcase of the capabilities of DirectX 12 and was one of the best examples of it too. It didn't use asynchronous compute quite to its fullest, but it did end up using it right. It's sad to see a game that's also quite fun to play, wander into oblivion.

The March update for Star Wars Battlefront is quite small, probably because the next major patch and content drop is going to be the Outer Rim expansions coming later this year. But we get to enjoy a new survival mission on Tatooine and a new map based on Endor.

The new survival mission is called Rebel Depot, and like the name suggests, you'll have to attempt to survive against all odds, defending the precious depot. The new map is Survivors of Endor and can be played as part of Walker Assault, Supremacy and Turning Point.

This update is small, but the developers are hard at work putting the final touches on the Outer Rim update that will add in new playable heroes, more maps and even a new game mode, Extraction. Extraction looks interesting and depending on how it's implemented, it could be quite a popular new mode. As the name suggests, you'll be tasked with extracting resources from hostile areas.

The leaks are already starting for Fallout 5, with voice actor Ryan Alosio teasing that Fallout 5 is in development. Alosio was the voice of Deacon in Fallout 4, and is quite active on social media like Instagram - which is where the leak on Fallout 5 started.

Alosio started a conversation about a collage of himself voice acting, and what he thought was a picture of Deacon wasn't actually Deacon, but it ended up being a picture of Zeek, instead. Well, his followers caught wind of it quickly, and corrected him. Alosio put up another picture, this time a correct one, but posted a weird explanation - which we've got below:

But things got even better, with 'fallout_temple' replying, saying "I knew you'd click onto it, I saw your last one and was like BRUH. I'll repost this one and shout out this week ok?" - to which Alosio replied to the Fallout Temple account, confirming that work on Fallout 5 was already underway, with the game in pre-production right now. He said:

Can you believe that The Division is finally here? The opening cinematic for The Division has been leaked, which is something you can watch below.

The Division is available right now on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC - with Ubisoft detailing its extensive DLC plan for 2016 recently. We should expect around 26 missions in total for the game, with more missions to arrive with the various DLC releases throughout the year.

Sniper Elite 4 has just been announced, with developer Rebellion saying that the game is in development, and will be released later this year.

The new game will hit the Xbox One, PS4 and PC - missing out on the last-gen consoles, with Sniper Elite 4 taking place in Italy. Rebellion teases that Sniper Elite 4 will offer breathless emergent stealth action, with unrivaled sniping freedom throughout a bunch of maps that are much bigger than the ones found in Sniper Elite 3.

Rebellion explains Sniper Elite 4's storyline as: "Italy, 1943. Covert agent and elite marksman Karl Fairburne must help free Italy from the yoke of Fascism and defeat a terrifying new threat that could halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it's even begun".

The new Need for Speed has been shown off once again, ahead of its release next week, this time on the PC with 9 minutes of footage. Check it out below, running at 1080p 60FPS on the PC.

The footage is courtesy of YouTuber 'BlackPanthaa' who says he captured the footage at 1440p (2560x1440) but had issues with his video editing software - so he dumped it down to 1080p. The footage still looks great, thanks to the gorgeous Frostbite 3 engine powering Need for Speed. The smoothness that 60FPS provides is beautiful, with BlackPanthaa noting that the framerate is completely uncapped - so if you've got an awesome 144Hz or 165Hz gaming display - you're in for a treat, if your PC can handle it, of course.