Gaming - Page 1070

CD Projekt RED is extremely confident that The Witcher 3's final expansion, Blood and Wine, will be an amazing experience.

The upcoming Blood and Wine expansion isn't like your average DLC: CDPR says that it's actually like its own separate game. The content features a huge 20-hour story that's entirely separate of The Wild Hunt, featuring nothing but fresh gameplay experiences. Blood and Wine will conclude the epic journey of Geralt of Rivia, and CDPR is sending the legendary witcher out with a bang. While many regard The Witcher 3 as a perfect magnum opus, CDPR notes that they felt they could improve, and Blood and Wine will be the fruits of their improvements.

How can you top something like The Witcher 3? To start, the Polish devs have created a new "charismatic enemy" that players won't soon forget, and tied that devious antagonist with a winding, sprawling story that arcs across the new region of Toussiant. The result is something that CDRP says is "even better than the main game".

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is getting it's very own amiibo exclusive dungeon to compliment the already large selection of difficult dungeons in the classic Gamecube game.

The name of the new dungeon was revealed on the French Amazon site as "La Cave du Crepuscule" which translates, through Google Translate of course, to The Cave of Twilight. Ominous sounding, to be sure, and a good fit for the revival of Twilight Princess. Amazon France posted the details in error, though it seems that even Amazon US has followed and you can take a look at the unreleased amiibo, which is Wolf Link.

We've known about Wolf Link for some time, though what we didn't know is that Wolf Link would come with a special dungeon to complete. Other amiibo's will also have other cool effects and should give you in-game boosts and other incentives when you use them. You'll be able to replenish your health or arrows or some such. The listing also says that you'll be able to use these amiibo's with the upcoming Zelda title for the Wii U. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD comes out on March 16th, which isn't too far off. And the other Zelda game is still slated for a general "2016" release date.

One of the most requested features, and long awaited ones, is that of being able to play your own music in the background of a game on the Xbox One. But it looks like that feature won't be making it to the console until at least this coming Summer, says Phil Spencer.

That doesn't mean that it's impossible to interject your own music into the game, just that it's a bit more inconvenient. You're still able to use the Xbox music app, Groove, to play your favorite personalized tunes, though you'll have to do it with the Snap feature, having a slim line on the side with the app. It also doesn't replace the game music, either.

There's certainly a very large demand for being able to have personal soundtracks in their games with over 22,000 people having requested it on the Xbox Feedback site. So it's a natural progression, and having it play seamlessly would be just one more advantage over the competition.

Elite: Dangerous has just surpassed selling 1.4 million copies across both the Xbox One and the PC, and incredible and well deserved accolade.

Elite: Dangerous was among the first batch of space-sim revival kickstarter's, having easily surpassed their goal of 1.25 million. Over 25 thousand backers gave what they could to make the dream a reality, which was a revitalization of a genre that has been largely ignored in recent times.

The game finally released in December of 2014 and then officially on Steam in April of 2015 to a fairly great reception. A total of over 84 million hours have been played by its player base (and I've got only a paltry 81 currently). But it hasn't been smooth sailing completely, with the initial launch having been of a fantastic yet somewhat shallow game.

If you're excited for Tom Clancy's The Division, we have a bit of troubling news: the game will feature microtransactions. It is an Ubisoft game, after all!

The Division will support "optional in-game purchases", according to a listing spotted on the Netherlands' PlayStation Store. We're not sure if the purchases are limited to consoles or not, but they'll likely carry over to all platforms. Ubisoft is notorious for peppering its AAA titles with microtransactions that range from simple cosmetics to actual performance-boosting items, but the publisher has been quite careful not to push into the dreaded "pay to win" territory.

Thanks to its MMO-like elements, the Division is prime territory for microtransactions. The game features the kind of persistent world states found in MMO's or games like Destiny. The survival/shooter/RPG will be online only, and players will be able to jump seamlessly into co-op and PVP missions without needing to change mods."The game is built around seamless online integration. Going from playing alone, to playing in a group, to playing PvP will all be handled with very little or no interruption," Ubisoft explains.

The CEO of GameStop, Paul Raines, spoke at the ICR Conference 2016 in Orlando today about his thoughts on the future of VR in the industry, which is one of the leading trends going into 2016. He seems to prefer the PlayStation VR over the rest.

In general he's excited about the prospect of VR and where it's going. It has the potential to be a huge industry, even if the price is somewhat high initially. Raines thinks that all top-tier makers offer good quality headsets that are near equal in quality, but it's the quantity of material and content that'll make or break any particular brand. And in that case he's more a fan of the PlayStation VR, because of the sheer volume of games and the backing it has. It's a very focused device.

To explain, he said "The more important thing will be the title count at launch." Raines continued by saying "I think that's going to be big. And from what we can see at this point, Sony seems to have the strongest title count." VR is going to be a big part of the future, and Raines wants to capitalize on that, especially with Sony's device.

Square Enix released a new trailer for Star Ocean 5 that introduces one of the main characters, Fidel Kamyuzu, and walks us through some of the action we can look forward to when it releases. The combat sequences themselves look rather dynamic and exciting.

Fidel himself seems to be a fairly powerful character, useful for a variety of reasons. And of course the battles are of the more active variety, not static at all. The graphics, though certainly stylized, have clean high-resolution textures and it seems to make use of AA fairly well. At 1080P with the screen filled with particle effects and tessellation, it looks to still run at a smooth 60FPS. That's not bad at all!

Star Ocean 5 is set to come out in the East on March 31st, which isn't terribly far away at this point. It'll make a Western debut sometime later this year, though no release date for that has been set.

A dedicated Fallout 4 player channels the insight of Father Comstock to recreate the beautiful floating city of BioShock Infinite's Columbia in the skies of the Commonwealth.

As soon as I started playing with Fallout 4's settlement system, I sought out to answer one question: can you make things float? To my extreme elation, I found out that you can indeed make your creations float in the skies. You can recreate an M.C. Escher ladder-maze, or make whole buildings float, or even make your very own Ewok treetop village. I knew some day that someone would do something amazing with the floating mechanic. Lo and behold, that day is now.

GirlPlaysGames has created one of my favorite settlements of all time: a floating rendition of the colorful sky-city of Columbia, complete with an authentic 1900's feel. The Commonwealth's Columbia is resonant with the flavors of the original, and carries with it that sense of wonder and whimsy that enraptured us back in 2013.

Outages for the PSN seem to be as sure the wind in the mountains. That said, for this last round of outages that occurred, Sony is looking to compensate PS Plus users with for that downtime, with extended subscriptions, on the house.

Those of you that had active PS Plus subscriptions and were affected during the great outage that occurred over the holiday season should start finding an email from Sony that offer an extension that'll cover their services, from PS Plus, PS Now and even video rentals.

It's unclear exactly when and how they'll begin this process, but some users are reporting they've already received their extension. And from that, it would appear to be a painless and seamless process, where you don't have to do anything except enjoy another free month of service. Though you might not be getting a full free month, my email has yet to be received.

If you've been waiting to try out Ubisoft's rather interesting open-world RPG shooter mashup The Division, we have some good news: the beta test will indeed release this month.

Ubisoft has inadvertently announced that The Division's closed multiplayer beta will kick off this month across Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The info was spotted on the official The Division page on the mobile Uplay app, which tells users they can earn a trophy by "taking part in the Division's closed beta in January 2016".

If you have the Uplay app installed you can view the page yourself--just navigate over to All Games, pick The Division, and check the "actions" section to see the drop-down list.

After nearly twenty years of shaping the video games industry, key Rockstar Games executive Leslie Benzies has left the company.

As boss of Rockstar North, Leslie Benzies helped create some of the most iconic games of our era, including AAA juggernauts like the Grand Theft Auto series and the ultra-popular Western action-adventure Red Dead Redemption. Now Rockstar has confirmed that Benzies has officially left the studio after 17 years of rocking the gaming world.

"We can confirm that Leslie Benzies went on sabbatical on September 1, 2014 and has decided not to return to work for the company," Rockstar said in a statement to Kotaku. "We are very grateful for Leslie's contributions to Rockstar over the last 15 years as we worked together to make some amazing games.Leslie helped us build an incredible team that will continue to create great experiences for our fans. Leslie will always be a friend to the company and of course we are going to miss him but we wish him the absolute best for the future."

Sony just pushed out a new firmware update for the PS4 that brings it to version 3.15. The new update doesn't actually add anything new, however.

In the patch notes there's only one line that very simply states that it "improve the quality of the system performance," meaning they generically streamlined something to make it more stable, but what and why is unknown. As we download it ourselves we'll take a look at if anything actually improves.

I don't quite remember it having too many issues before with the last update, though just to be on the safe side, why not update to the latest. It should be done automatically for most, though you can always manually update within the PS4 itself, or head over to the website and update via a USB drive as well.

In a bid to challenge Steam's long-standing reign, EA has introduced its acclaimed all-you-can-play games service to the PC market.

The PC flavor of EA Access is called Origin Access, and comes with the same benefits as the Xbox One service: unlimited access to a smattering of games in the EA Vault, exclusive trials and beta tests to upcoming EA games, and 10% off purchases on Origin.While the two services look quite similar, the PC version actually has an edge: Origin Access isn't just limited to EA's Xbox One games, so you can expect a ton of third-party games to fill out the PC Vault's library.

Origin Access on PC will cost $4.99 a month, which equates to $60 a year--double that of the Xbox One's $30 annual membership rate. Obviously, you can expect to see more games on Origin Access, so the value is still there. Plus, you're not locked into a commitment on the PC version, so you can cancel anytime.

One of the great classics from the PS2 era is being remade for the modern age. Psychonauts will be one of the next games to get the remake treatment especially for the PS4 sometime this Spring.

Psychonauts is a strange yet satisfying platformer that had a near cult following after it was released on the PS2 in 2005. It's also one of only a handful of games that has an overwhelmingly positive, and 5 star or 10/10 rating from users on Steam. And soon you'll be able to enjoy it in remade glory on the PS4. Though it's unclear whether this'll take advantage of the newly minted emulation or not.

This news comes just one day after the studio lead from Double Fine Productions talked more about the plot of the sequel, Psychonauts 2, in an AMA on Reddit. Psychonauts 2 has successfully met its goal of $3.3 million, which it needs to bolster other capital to meet the total $10-13.5 million budget. Another Psychonauts game will also make an appearance on the PS4 via PSVR, titled Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin. That is a lot to look forward to, and hopefully it doesn't over-saturate the franchise.

It turns out that the leak from last week about the release date is actually correct. Homefront: The Revolution is set to arrive in our game systems on May 17th of 2016. That's not terribly far off, but it's not close enough either. The trailer, below, shows us what the horrors of guerrilla warfare in occupied Philadelphia looks like.

There will be plenty to explore and do as you fight to overthrow the Korean People's Army, with multiple separate zones that'll offer plenty of challenges and opportunities to try out different styles of play. Want to do it the stealthy way? Sure, give it a try. Want to go in guns blazing? That might work too.

The overall theme from the previous Homefront titles should be kept here, though expanded thoroughly with a better AI and more complex missions to go on. Not to mention we should be greeted with a more involved story and lots of cool guns with better graphics. Make sure to use Amazon Prime to get a good discount on pre-ordering games, if you chooses to do that.

Remember when we reported that Sony was trying to trademark the term "Let's Play" in reference to online video and gaming? Well, that didn't quite go as they planned, and it ended in failure, though not for the reasons you might initially think.

The USPTO issued a ruling on the 29th of December, which is publicly available, that denies Sony the trademark as-is because it could potentially be confused with an existing trademark of "LP Let's Play" which was initially established in 2013 and for a somewhat similar category of services; "Entertainment services, namely to provide online and offline opportunities for video game enthusiasts to meet and participate in live video game tournaments and on-demand console gaming."

While it might seem ludicrous to some that a common phrase could ever be trademarked, we first have to understand what a trademark is and what it actually applies to, and how the law actually works. Generic terms as a rule cannot and are not able to be trademarked, but if a term is sufficiently descriptive enough of a particular service, then it is indeed possible. But terms can evolve to become generic, too. General terms aren't even legally enforceable, either.

It's a long time in the making, but Metal Gear Online is finally getting it's much needed beta on the PC starting today at 10PM Pacific.

In order to be eligible to play you have to be the owner of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and you'll have to opt into the beta in order to play it. Because it's a beta, don't expect the smoothest of operations, but at least the stealthy cooperative shooter is finally available.

With Metal Gear Online coming to the PC, Konami wants to bring a new map that looks very similar to the Mother Base found in the main single player game and more weapons as DLC. Hopefully cross-play functionality makes it into the fray as well, though that's a bit more difficult to implement.

Good news DC universe fans, if you love MMO's and own an Xbox One, then you'll able to save the city from the super villains coming up this spring.

Daybreak Games' creative directory Jens Anderson took to a livestream to announce that they have plans to release their super hero MMORPG on the Xbox One, a platform that has somehow been skipped up until now. That'll open up the game to a much wider audience. They also announced that they'll be implementing cross-play between PS4 and PC on January 25th.

DC Universe Online lets you play as or alongside your favorite characters inside that universe, taking on a role either against the typical villains or heroes. It's your choice and there's plenty of story driven content available, though there are some complaints from veteran players about a lack of continued content. It has a 72 on metacritic and a very positive rating on Steam with over 8000 user reviews. Of course it's a free-to-play MMO with freemium elements.

Patch 1.12 for The Witcher 3 is out today with a lot of great bug fixes and other refinements and improvements to the game. They're citing over 70 changes to gameplay alone.

But really they've dropped this update to smash a lot of bugs that have been lying around on the underlying framework. This is more of a quality of life update than anything, but the list of bugs that have been properly fixed is really impressive.

Though performance initially was horrible, and was on our list of gaming fails of 2015, CD PROJEKT Red has been committed to improving performance despite the inclusion of GameWorks.

Amazon has opened a special sale for Prime members on select video game pre-orders.

If you're an Amazon Prime member and are looking forward to upcoming games like Kingdom Hearts 3, Dark Souls 3, Zelda Wii U, and the insanely anticipated Final Fantasy VII: Remake, then we've got some good news for you. Amazon is currently discounting a ton of video game pre-orders by 20%, which could indicate that the online retailer wants to counter Best Buy's money-saving Gamer's Club Unlocked membership.

The sale was originally spotted by notorious discount-finder Wario64, who announced that Amazon's pre-order sale has expanded to "almost every game". The list has grown by the minute, including a smattering of upcoming console games, from the Xbox One-exclusive ReCore to Square Enix's cross-platform Final Fantasy 15, and even Ubisoft's new Stone Age fantasy game, Far Cry: Primal.