Gaming - Page 1078

Blade and Soul reached a concurrent player record in the EU and the US in nearly no time at all. Only a mere three weeks after NCSoft brought the MMO to the west it's now peaking at well over 2 million players.

In the press-release they confirmed the staggering number of people enjoying the game, stating that "NCSOFT has confirmed that Blade & Soul has now surpassed 2 million players in the US and Europe, only three weeks since its official launch." They also talked about the new content that's now live.

Rising Waters, the new update, is adding a significant amount to the core of the game. A new party dungeon known as Bloodshade Harbor, which is available only to those that have reached level 45, and should have some of the hardest bosses you can imagine. A single-player dungeon called Munshin's Tower is also available that has seven different floors of enemies that increase in difficulty with each one. They've also added Nightshade Harbor

The whole world mourned the loss of P.T. but it looks like we might see it live again in another way through Visage, which is inspired by the likes of P.T. and the Silent Hills series.

Visage has taken to Kickstarter with a funding goal of $35,000 CAD - at the time of writing and with 30 days to go, it has reached $47,603 CAD with 1424 backers. Visage is explained as: "The game will be set inside a huge house in which terrible things have happened. You'll wander through the gloomy corridors, explore every dead room, and get lost in endless mazes, your head filling with memories of the dead families that once lived in this very home. This twisted environment, void of any life other than yours, will take you to places you couldn't even bear imagining".

The next stretch goal doesn't seem too hard at $50,000, which will see the game made with VR support - but then once it hits $75,000 "it gets real" with more 3D character models.

Just as it was alluded to last month, the next great expansion to the free-to-play MMO, Neverwinter, is here for the Xbox One.

The new expansion lets you journey into the Underdark with a story that's written by one of the original Forgotten Realms creators, R.A. Salvatore himself. After the initial encounter there'll be a whole new campaign waiting for you. Complete with hordes of demons that obviously need your slaying.

Inside there'll be two new skirmishes, the Prophecy of Madness and the Throne of the Dwarven Gods that should prove to be quite challenging. After you whet your whistle with those, you can enjoy a better looking Tarmalune Trade Bar STore, which has been overhauled and has a lot of new items with vastly reduced prices. Below you can see all the great new things that're included in the new expansion.

The head of Sony's VR studio, Dr. David Ranyard is stepping down from his position at Sony's London Studio. According to a press release, he plans on pursuing independent VR projects.

In a statement he said that "2016 is going to be the year of VR so it's the perfect time for me to take this step into independent development." The potential opportunities in the industry are what drew him to alternative possibilities. "The emergence of a new medium like VR doesn't come along very often and I really want to be a part of this new world."

It's sad to see such leader in the industry move on from a large venture such as the one he was heading at Sony's London Studio. But even with the loss, that just means the proliferation of more opportunities and more competition to help fuel better innovation. PlayStation VR is looking closer to release, so it's likely he wants to help other startups and make VR a much more common and accessible experience. He hasn't said specifically where he'll be going next, though.

If you wanted to give Paragon a try during the PlayStation 4 test that they're having on February 13th, then you'll also be able to play on servers against PC players in a marvelous example of true cross-play functionality.

They started asking for beta testers just last month when they opened up the sign-up page to include PlayStation 4 users. If you were one of those that has beta access, you'll get some more information from them this week and a way to redeem a PS4 specific key. Just make sure you've linked your Epic Games account with your PSN account in order for it to work properly.

Below are the official testing times for the beta, dubbed Online Test 7.

Tomorrow's February update to DriveClub is bringing a whole new level of fun to the game. A hardcore handling mode and new tracks should help infuse some needed love into one of the better console racing games.

The new mode lets you turn off all traction control and any other driving assist features to let you truly feel the road. It also might make it that much easier to crash. But just imagine the fun you can have before the moment of impact. In case that isn't quite your thing, this update is also adding six variants of a new track, Scotland - old Town.

All of this is just a precursor to much larger expansions, No Limits and Suzuki, which are coming out on February 23rd. Those will add new cars, bikes and six extra events to play through. Those will be paid expansions, however, and this update with hardcore mode is completely free.

Rocket League has been promised to make it to the Xbox One this month, and it looks like they're releasing it right on schedule.

Starting on the 17th of February you'll be able to pick it up from the Xbox store for $19.99. The Xbox One version is getting all three of the previously released DLC packs bundled into it for free, adding a bit more value to it. That means you'll get six new cars and more decals than you'll know what to do with.

To sweeten the deal, prospective Xbox One owners will get two exclusive vehicles, the Armadillo, from Gears of War fame and a Warthog, from Halo. It would be blasphemy if these made their way to the PS4 or even the PC. They're also keen on adding in some garage items from Sunset Overdrive, again exclusive to the Xbox One.

Nine days before the beta for Hitman, the PC requirements have show up on the Steam page. Of course these could very well be subject to change after the beta reveals important data about performance. Check them out below to see if your system can handle it.

It looks like the more cores the better. And unfortunately we won't be able to play with DX12 or Vulkan quite yet, though those are rumored to be coming later on. But all you need for a good time is an R9 290 at a minimum or a GTX 770. Hopefully it's been a bit more optimized since the alpha version showed the Titan X struggling to keep up even at 1080P. We'll be in the beta, and we hope to see your thoughts too.

Minimum:

Descent: Underground is bringing on the six-degree of freedom (6DoF) revolution. The fast-paced action packed Early Access game has inspired the creation of another game of its ilk, Overlord, which is being worked on by some of the co-creators of the original Descent game.

The new studio, Revival Productions, plans on launching a Kickstarter later today to help raise $300,000 to assist in the development of their dream. When all is complete, and there's no estimated date yet, they want to have it available on the PC, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

Inside you'll have a complete single-player experience with 15 levels designed specifically to take advantage of the unique FPS like physics and 6DoF movement. You'll be able to choose from a dozen different, upgradeable weapons, to fight against more than 12 different enemies and three intimidating bosses. Just because these can be a bit fast-paced even compared to CoD, there'll be five different difficulty levels to suit nearly every player.

The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic developer platform for all skill levels. The amount of amazing projects you can create is just staggering, but it's been somewhat limited by the meager processor under the hood. And the underused GPU. Experimental GPU acceleration has just been added to the latest release of Raspian, extending the possibilities immensely. Install at your own risk.

The Pi already had some fantastic gaming chops and was a natural choice for a small retro console. Those graphics you'd be running, from the SNES, NES, Genesis and Jaguar era's aren't terribly demanding. But opening up the GPU gives you more emulation possibilities. Not to mention the ability to play actual 3D games.

Not to mention all the other great sciency things you can now do more quickly with that otherwise unlocked GPU. It could potentially mean using a farm of Pi's (despite the relative inefficiency, but it has the cool factor) to compute novel things. They do warn, however, that installing the experimental driver could break other GPU functionality, and might even prevent the camera module from working properly. Not to mention messing up video playback support. But this is just the beginning stages of something quite nice that adds to the value of the minuscule devices.

As reported last week, JRPG Tales of Symphonia is in pretty bad shape on PC, sporting a default rendering resolution of 720p and 30FPS lock, among other issues. Fortunately modder Kaldaien has come to the rescue again, releasing a fix similar to the one for Tales of Zestiria.

At present, TSFix gets rid of the framerate limiter, adds a fullscreen borderless windowed mode option, integrates Durante's neat character outline mod, matches the rendering resolution to the resolution you've chosen, and cures crashes. Not too shabby for version 0.1.1.

Download the mod at the source. Note Kaldaien is busy modding Dragon's Dogma and also says Symphonia's VMProtect DRM is making modding the game more difficult than it should be, so don't expect too much more to come, or at least not quickly.

Bethesda has just rolled out Fallout 4's newest update on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which significantly boosts in-game performance and squashes pesky bugs.

Since consoles don't have access to mods (yet), Fallout 4 gamers are pretty much at Bethsoft's mercy for any kind of alterations or fixes. While the new v 1.3 update doesn't add any new content perse, it does inject a host of significant visual and stability overhauls to the game. Now Fallout 4's draw distances and object fading have been dramatically increased on both systems, making the Commonwealth look much better.

Sure the PS4/XO flavors won't get the new HBAO+ ambient occlusion setting on PC, but it's still great to see that Bethsoft is still making huge visual tweaks for consoles. As for actual mod support, the studio says an announcement will be made "soon". Let's hope that the news comes sooner rather than later, and console players aren't stuck waiting until Bethesda's E3 2016 showcase.

Final Fantasy IX is finally out on iOS and Android after being teased back at the end of December. We were unsure whether it would be a staggered Japanese then western release, but it looks like it's now available worldwide.

This is one game that has been long in the making, much anticipated and actually wanted. From what can be gathered, it's not just any old port, but the controls have been sufficiently optimized to allow for some good mobile gaming, and the graphics are all nicely upgraded to be high resolution. Some cheats are also available if you need them, like turning off random encounters or even a fast-forward button.

RPG's with savestates make for great on-the-go games because you can theoretically easily pick up where you left off. If you can put it down. And if you can't, I don't think anyone would blame you.

A new Far Cry Primal trailer takes you on a quick exploration of all the possible dangers that you'll cross paths with in the developing world. And it looks like you'll have some horrible odds against you as you try to save humankind.

Primal isn't just an inconsequential label to describe the time-period. When they appended that to the title they meant it in every way. Everything in the world is against you and even the flora presents a deadly challenge. But with time and patience, you might be able to be the victor against all odds.

The trailer has a great husky voice-over that guides you through some of the various challenges you'll encounter, from different tribes to the wildlife itself. From all appearances, Ubisoft hasn't held anything back in designing this game to be mostly true to the period it's set in.

Ubisoft is opening up new doors to help ensure fluid performance for The Division on consoles. According to a Ubisoft dev, the game will let players adjust particular in-game settings to enable more responsive controls and FPS.

In a recent preview Q&A session, a Ubisoft dev revealed that PS4 and Xbox One users will be able to scale back certain graphical and visual settings in order to boost frame rates. "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."

Metal Gear Online is getting its first DLC campaign sometime in March of 2016. The DLC pack will include three brand new maps and the ability to actually play as Quiet. All for the low low price of $3.99.

The new DLC is called Cloaked in Silence and also has an Appeak Action feature, which is something that triggers unique action poses for your characters. You can have up to five different poses preset to use. All of those poses can be individually purchased in the store as Appeal Packs.

A new Sabatoge mission type is being added, where you'll have to destroy an enemy missile before the round is up. There'll be terminals that you have to hack in order to make the would-be projectile ready for destruction first, though. Quiet will be a particularly good addition for this, with her ability to move about stealthily, able to sneak up on your enemies silently from behind.

World of Tanks is getting a pretty hefty update soon. Wargaming.net showed off the progress their making and what they're working on with version 9.14.

Like always they're hard at work meticulously recreating new tanks to bring into the fight. For this version they plan on introducing us to the mighty M41 from Germany (showed above) as well as some new Russian, French and British tanks. They slowly add in new tanks and replace others it keep things interesting and to add some flair. The level of detail is astonishing as well.

But this isn't just about adding new vehicles. They're improving the movement physics and improving sound-effects to make it sound and feel a bit more like you're actually driving a huge hulking piece of metal around. Module research will be simplified for the starting stages, to help make it easier for beginners to get into the game. And of course there's more.

In an attempt to woo developers, Amazon has released a brand new cloud-connected games engine to go up against established suites like Unity and Unreal. And the best part is that it's totally free.

Amazon's new engine is called Lumberyard, it's completely free with full source code, and it's a fully-realized suite of tools that can power high-end AAA games. Lumberyard is partly based on the CryEngine so it's able to create games for a smattering of platforms including PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Amazon even promises that VR support is in the pipeline, along with mobile integration.

Unlike most game engines, Lumberyard has a secret weapon that gives it a distinct advantage: full cloud integration with Amazon Web Services. Devs can tap the power "the vast compute and storage of AWS Cloud" for an extra computational boost and to optimize server-side processes in a variety of games.

In a move that surprises no one, Ubisoft has just announced The Division will get an open beta test.

According to the blog reveal post, The Division's open beta test will only be three days long and kick off next week on Friday, February 19 thru on PS4 and PC. Xbox One gamers will get priority once again, with a 24-hour headstart over other platforms. The open beta will include an extra singleplayer mission, and players will be able to pre-load the open beta starting Feb. 16 to ensure easy access.

The devs say that most of the cheating exploits have been nixed on PC, so the open beta's Dark Zone battles should be relatively painless. Well, they'll still be painful as there's tons of random baddies gunning you down, but at least this time you'll have a chance. All feedback garnered from the open beta will be closely monitored, and Ubisoft says that all of the cheating issues will be fixed for the final release.

The latest update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 has arrived, though only for the PlayStation 4 today. The change-log focuses heavily on the multiplayer side of things, improving the quality of life and making a few small adjustments to weapons.

The big patch does a bit of a re-balancing act for the various specialists so that none of the different classes are necessarily too over-powered. The official notes seem to have increased the likelihood of actually hitting someone. And of course the obligatory weapon stat changes help you to be a better player at long and mid-ranges with a few weapons.

Zombies is also getting a few helpful bug fixes. If you did it just right, an anti-gravity trap wouldn't ever turn off. How convenient, though now it does.The full patch notes are below for you to peruse.