Gaming - Page 1080

After 17 years of waiting, it looks like SEGA is listening to our dreams. The once-mighty Japanese gaming icon has been in contact with the organizers of Project Dream initiative, a group dedicated to resurrecting the Dreamcast console into the modern age of gaming.

Project Dream isn't just your average fan club--the group has laid out extensive marketing strategies, rendered mockups of a Dreamcast 2, and posed the concept of a PC and console hybrid. Project Dream has gained a lot of traction since launching its site, and even got over 27,000 signatures on a petition to bring back the system. Now after months of hype and lead-up, the team says a few of SEGA's higher-ups are listening to the pitch.

"It went from me ringing up to pester them for not replying to our mail and the receptionist asking for a full lowdown on what we wanted to talk to people about," Project Dream co-head Joanne Freeman told Twinfinite. "It all kind of happened quite quickly, and by the end of it, he finished chatting with me on the phone and sent one of our team members a message to say 'send what you got through when you're ready, and I'll make sure it gets to the right people.'"

The first video showing off footage from Ubisoft's upcoming foray into the mobile world with Assassin's Creed Identity has been released. They wanted to address some fan questions about the game and how they were going to handle the limiting mobile aspect. The graphics alone are quite impressive, however.

On the surface it essentially looks like it's merely Assassin's Creed II for iOS. They'e calling it a new experience, with a more open and RPG-type game with "bite-sized chunks" that can be played more casually. Ubisoft wants to appeal to both hardcore Assassin's Creed fans and new prospective junkies as well.

The controls are actually looking to be fairly neat, with the ability to play the entire game with one finger, and quite effectively, as shown at least. Something that's not easy to get right on a mobile device. The graphics are similarly downgraded, but it actually looks quite good.

Destiny is going to be updated to 2.1.1 next week, and Bungie is making some changes that are small, yet significant to the gameplay mechanics.

They're bringing in a new Special Ammo economy to help balance the use of those more powerful weapons, hoping to increase the use of the primary weapons instead. You'll have to wait for an ammo drop from green special crates to fill up.

Matchmaking is getting an overhaul with "Freelance" matchmaking where you don't have to be in a party to have fun. This'll be available to all solo players in 6v6 and 3v3 modes. Sometimes your friends just don't want to play with you, that and the number of players might be dwindling some.

The Division's beta test gave us a nice taste of what to expect from the final game, but many gamers felt like they've experienced it all before. In fact, The Division has been compared to a certain futuristic MMO-slash-RPG shooter mashup that's now crumbling under its own ambitious weight. According to Ubisoft, our fears are premature, as The Division is "very different" than Destiny.

While playing The Division, it was hard not to see how it parallels Destiny. Both have that same mix of shooter, RPG skillsets and progression, open-world MMO-style scope with drop-in drop-out co-op, PVP modes, and that distinctly grindy loot style. And both games have this sense of disconnect with NPC's, characters and environments. Apparently I'm not alone; most Destiny players feel the same way.

Julian Gerighty, The Division's associate creative director, says that the two games are quite different. "It's hard for me to talk about Destiny, obviously, but thinking about the qualities of The Division: contemporary; virus-ridden real-world city; open-world game. There are a lot of differences that make it stand out, so I think it's a modern game in the way that it's a very co-operative focussed experience. Progression is extremely important. So I would say that they are both very modern and different games."

Having one's own ideas and completely original IP seems like a positive direction to take for any developer, but it seems that it might not necessarily be the most practical route for everyone. Platinum Games, of Bayonetta fame, explained why that's a very difficult route to take.

Speaking to Famitsu, Tatsuya Minami, the chief executive for Platinum Games said that "We used to have the idea that we wanted to be a studio that only made 100 percent original games," He then continued, "However, it turns out that only doing that is considerably difficult, and so now we take on various work."

There are a tremendous amount of risks involved in developing your own and paving your own path. And they don't always pay off it seems. Popularity of your own idea is never guaranteed and you never know what the reception will actually be. You and your team could be incredibly excited about a particular game, but then it might flop before your eyes.

Things aren't looking good for Deep Silver's new Homefront sequel. Initial tests of the upcoming closed beta reveal that the game has tons of problems on the Xbox One, and needs a lot of work before it's ready to hit store shelves.

According to analyses from Eurogamer's Digital Foundry, Homefront: The Revolution's beta suffers from a myriad of dysfunctions, including FPS drops, jittery and jerky animations, and frequent glitches. Digital Foundry further notes that the wonky animations and enemy glitches can be attributed to the CryEngine's poor networking optimization.

The graphical hiccups and disruptive frame rates ultimately break the immersive fluidity that's vital to first-person shooters. Homefront: The Revolution beta apparently runs with an entirely unlocked frame-rate on Xbox One, which is a bad idea given the console's limitations. On top of the unlocked framerates, the game also has an adaptive v-sync that creates ugly tear lines on the screen.

Trackmania has never been your typical racing game anyway, with the ability to put together some of the most insane tracks, limited only by your imagination. And the newest insane addition, Trackmania Turbo, now has a March 24th release date.

The dynamic racing game was originally intended to be released in late 2015, but that release date was pushed into 2016 back in October so that the developer, Nadeo, could further refine the mechanics of the game based on feedback from fans. The expectations are rather high for a series that's won a Guinness World Record for being the most popular online racing sim with the largest content base of any racing game.

When it releases it'll be available on the Xbox One, PC and the PlayStation 4. It'll support the Oculus Rift and eventually have support for PlayStation VR as well.

There are concerns that The Division might not be as big as some think it is, with Ubisoft only teasing us with the beta. The developer reportedly opened 22% of the full map from the final version of the game.

The news comes from Reddit users who did some great work, overlaying the map from the beta (purple = 22%), while the blue part of the map is from the version of The Division. They put the map onto a grid, with 8165 squares - with the beta taking up 1167 squares. The full game however, has 5315 squared, meaning the beta represented just 22% of the full game.

So we know that the full version of The Division is going to be quite big, but what about the Dark Zone - where that glorious PvP action happens, with better loot and rewards? The Dark Zone is reportedly 18% of the entire map, which is just shy of the size we experienced during the beta. Not too bad at all.

The forums for the popular zombie apocalypse MMO DayZ have recently been hacked, and the devs at Bohemia Interactive say that the situation is much worse than they anticipated.

According to the dev's Twitter update, the forum user data has been compromised and downloaded by cyber criminals. The security breach is so severe that the developers are advising users to change their global passwords if they match those used on the DayZ forums. So if you use the same password for your banking as the DayZ forums, change it ASAP.

"A security incident occurred on forums.dayzgame.com recently. According to our investigation, all usernames, emails and passwords from the forums were accessed and downloaded by hackers," reads the update. "While the passwords were not stored in plain text, but in a more secure form, it is highly reccommended that you if you have used the same password elsewhere that you change it immediately on all applicable websites and services."

After a month-long lapse, the Overwatch closed beta test is set to wreak FPS chaos once again starting February 9.

Blizzard today announced the schedule, revealing that the beta test will be tweaked with a few content updates. Overwatch will now sport a brand new progression system, two new maps with a fresh game mode to keep things interesting, hero balances (which spells nerfs for some overpowered avatars) and a bevy of Private Game updates such as AI-on-AI battles.

If you had access to the Overwatch beta before the break, then you'll still be able to get in once it resumes next week. Blizzard says they're going to start enlisting fresh players, so if you haven't already, be sure to sign up today.

Microtransactions are a fact of life now, something that's inevitable in any online multiplayer experience. Of course there's a right way and a wrong way to implement them, and in this case, the $25 spent within Halo 5 is actually the right way; for optional items only.

The new singular Arena REQ bundle contains a whole host of different armor, weapon and other skins to help you define your individuality within the Halo universe. You don't want to be just any ol' Spartan, now do you? But this is a limited offer with 14 separate packs smashed together that have "Mythic" and "Legendary" items that you likely won't find elsewhere. It'll be available starting February 16th.

But, even though it seems like a lot of money, it's cosmetic only and doesn't change the gameplay or give you an advantage. Aside from people staring at your newly applied weapon, armor and other skins. So don't fret, because you don't have to buy it.

Gaming inception just happened. As it seems to happen with Grand Theft Auto games, someone went and recreated the look and feel of The Last of Us in Grand Theft Auto 5, complete with clothing and weapons.

The creator, taltigolt, captured the whole essence of the decrepit and dilapidated atmosphere. Nature has started to take back the city and there's detritus everywhere and a general feeling of despair with vehicles in the street and even a crashed airplane.

Despite being a simple visual recreation, the level of detail, care and time that put into the mod is pretty incredible. Sure, the vegetation isn't quite as lush as it is in the actual The Last of Us, plus there's no AAA actors voicing the character, but they've done a great job. There's a lot of other great mods for GTA V out there as well, with nearly anything you could possible imagine.

id Software and Bethesda have announced the release date for their hellishly chaotic Doom reboot, choosing a very fitting date of Friday, May 13th to launch the game.

According to id, the game is all about "badass demons, big 'effing' guns, and moving really, really fast", and based on the new bloodthirsty campaign trailer, the new reboot is everything we'd expect in a Doom game. The FPS mechanics are gracious and fluid, delivering obscene death to nightmarish hellions with equally insane weapons. We even get to see a three-barreled minigun tear through demons like tissue paper. Based on the trailer, the game will most likely be in full 1080p 60FPS on all platforms.

As with most modern games, Doom will release with its own $120 collector's edition that includes a 12-inch Revenant statue based on an in-game 3D render. The dastardly skeleton statue also sports LED lighting and a low-power, spinning turbine to boot. The Doom CE also includes multiplayer skins and a stylish metal case, but all in all it seems like the standard fare for these types of deals.

When Asteroids: Outpost was announced back in February of last year it was an exciting prospect. A revival of a brand but with a completely new perspective using a modern genre with a significant and distinct science fiction twist.

An open-world sandbox survival game that let you build massive manufacturing plants on remote outposts on asteroids. The idea really added inspired a lot of excitement. Sure it wasn't the traditional Asteroids game from so many years ago, but it was so much better. At least it had the potential to be. The game development was going slowly but surely, moving along with regular updates that candidly talked about the issues and problems they encountered.

But then, it suddenly stopped. The last update was on July 7th 2015, and since then the servers have seemed to go offline with almost no communication. That didn't seem right, especially for such an intriguing project. It was a survival game that takes things to the next level, and you don't have to press P to poo. In the wake of the missing communication, I reached out to Atari to see what was going on internally. The answer we got is good news, though.

Sony just announced the special 500GB PlayStation 4 bundle for Uncharted 4 that'll be available this April. The limited edition console will have the visage of Nathan Drake silk-screened onto the console with a golden logo on the bottom to commemorate the release of possible the final chapter in his adventure.

The limited edition bundle will also include a matching DualShock 4 controller and an actual physical Blu-ray copy of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. The phrase "SIC PARVIS MAGNA", which means "greatness from small beginnings," in Latin. will also be silkscreened on the other side.

As an added bonus, those that buy this bundle will get a voucher for a special outfit, a golden weapon skin and Uncharted Points, the in-game currency, for use in the multiplayer mode. The entire limited edition bundle will cost a cool $399.99, and you can pre-order it later today.

Warner Bros. won't be finishing development on the Mac or Linux versions of Batman: Arkham Knight. If you happened to pre-order on the pretense that those would eventually be released, they're asking that you apply for a refund through Steam, which will be granted.

When it finally released, after much anticipation, Batman: Arkham Knight suffered from performance issues that rendered it near unplayable on a variety of hardware. The game was removed from Steam after receiving more than 1000 negative reviews at launch and sales were suspended in retail stores until they could find and fix the issues. It was assumed that the inclusion of GameWorks might have been related to the issues at hand, though it was only a correlation.

Rocksteady was able to fix the majority of the issues with the help of NVIDIA, though the damage had already been done. Performance with NVIDIA's GameWorks turned off did eventually become acceptable, however it was perhaps too late in the eye of the consumer.

EA is giving away the 2012 version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted as part of their On the House program. That means you can enjoy it completely free and for as long as you have an EA Origin account.

The 2012 reboot of Most Wanted was an enjoyable game on it's own, though it wasn't exactly the most fast-paced for ground breaking title to ever come from Criterion Games' collaboration with Ghost Games. Free is a good price, and if you were ever curious, head on over and download the 6.25GB game (remember when games were that small?).

EA's On the House program has been an interesting success for EA, with them having given away Sim City 2000, Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2, Dead Space, Wing Commander 3 and Battlefield 3 in the past. Games are rotated frequently enough as well. Free is always the best price.

Winning the best demo of the year award from MEGA64's famous and over the top yearly game awards was one of Electronic Arts' biggest 2015 releases, Star Wars Battlefront.

"Yo, they gave you 90% of the game in the demo!" Proclaimed the enthusiastic hosts, explaining that this title was their favorite demo (or beta) throughout the entirety of 2015. Also making the list was a shout out to the best mini game, poking fun at The Order 1866 and its short storyline.

Other comedic inputs included the worst 'story mode' being Minecraft (there is no story) and plenty of other over the top gaming references. Without spoiling any other award-winning titles for you, check out the full video above if you're interested in dry gaming humor. There are some possibly-NSFW things happening throughout the show, so you might want to wait until you're home to witness the action.

Square Enix is preparing for the launch of Hitman, which is now in episodic form, with a new 'World of Assassination' trailer - check it out, below.

The trailer says "we live in a world of assassination, and once you know... there's no going back". It does a great job of pulling you into the Hitman world without playing the game, and I felt better after watching the 1-minute 50-second video than I did watching the absymal Hitman movie late last year.

The PS4 version of Hitman will also be receiving exclusive content, as we reported on yesterday.

Blizzard will be re-opening the closed beta of Overwatch on February 9, after it was taken offline in December, and pushed into February 2016 release from its original January 2016 re-release into the beta world.

Once the Overwatch beta is back and kicking again, it'll feature two new maps, a new game mode, a new progression system, and new updates to both the private games, and character balancing. Blizzard has said that these are the areas it would work on the most when it took the beta down in December.

You can sign up for the Overwatch beta, but those who were involved in the original beta will get in without a problem. Overwatch officially launches later in the spring, for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.