Gaming - Page 1090

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.

The Division will hopefully be one of the best-looking games of 2016, thanks to its impressive in-house Snowdrop engine. Ubisoft Massive has spent years on the engine, with it paying off for The Division.

During the "Tom Clancy's The Division" session at this year's GDC, Nikolay Stefanov, Technical Lead at Ubisoft Massive will detail more about the Global Illumination effects in the game. We already know that there is the great physically-based rendering pipeline for The Division, too.

The briefing teases some details on the GI effects in The Division: "Our implementation is based on radiance transfer probes and allows real-time bounce lighting from completely dynamic light sources, both on consoles and PC. During production, the system gives our lighting artists instant feedback and makes quick iterations possible".

Razer has a new controller coming out, the Wildcat, and it's a pretty ferocious new controller, with it's anti-slip grips and homage to the Xbox One design. They're bringing everything they learned from the Sabertooth with this one, so the quality and precision should be on point.

We were able to demo the controller in action while playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which isn't easy when you're used to playing FPS's with a keyboard and mouse. But it was easy to get into a groove due to the similarity with the stock Xbox One controller. I have to admit that a controller isn't exactly my first choice when playing CS:GO, and I'm not good by any means even with a mouse and keyboard. But that aside, the joysticks had a good feel to them, with just the right amount of resistance.

It's comfortable in the hand due to it being designed around the already comfortable and easy to handle stock Xbox One controller, so that shouldn't be an issue for anyone. The cool thing is that they're following the design language of the Xbox One Elite controller with extra inputs on the bottom, but instead of paddles, you'll find a trigger which felt like the top and bottom were separate buttons. It was much less confusing to use buttons as opposed to the paddle system on the more expensive Elite controller.

CES 2016 - I'm a huge fan of LinusTechTips, watching virtually all of their videos as soon as they're released, but their latest project is something truly glorious.

The guys at LTT built an insane $30,000 gaming PC that is capable of driving 7 different PCs, each with their own 3440x1440 UltraWide monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The 7 systems run as separate virtual machines, each rocking an Acer Predator X34 monitor (Linus and I have impeccable taste when it comes to 21:9 displays) with the beasty system featuring AMD Radeon R9 Nano cards.

The system itself is powered by two Intel Xeon E5-2697 processors, each with 12 cores (24 if we take into consideration Hyper-Threading), which provides the equivalent of a quad-core CPU per user. The motherboard of choice was an ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS, with an insane 256GB of DDR4 RAM (8 x 32GB sticks) and 8 x 1TB SSDs. An EVGA T2 1600W PSU was used, with the entire PC housed inside of a CaseLabs Mercury S8.

The age-old battle against pirates and publishers has raged for decades now, but it looks like the publishers may have just won the war with a new major advancement in DRM tech.

Denuvo's new-ish Anti-Tamper technology has slowed the once-steady flow of pirated games, allowing many key AAA hits to remain uncracked a full month after their release. The Anti-Tamper system, which protects DRM solutions, has ensured that most PC games that use it wont be cracked upon their release. Just Cause 3 and FIFA 16, which a both protected by Anti-Tamper, still remain uncracked.

Due to the advancements in DRM protection, the leader of notorious Chinese hacking group 3DM says that publishers may win the war in two years time. "Recently, many people have asked about cracks for 'Just Cause 3′, so here is a centralized answer to this question. The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up. According to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world," the 3DM leader said in a forum post.

In our tweak guide for Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, we uncovered an issue with the Skin Shading graphics option where turning it on or off would also turn Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) on or off. Fatshark graphics programmer Axel Kinner has confirmed to us this is the case while also noting Skin Shading is still controlled by this setting -- it's just a very subtle effect.

Kinner says "a fix for this will hopefully be in the next patch". One would think that because both SSAO and Skin Shading are enabled as is, disabling them would net an even bigger FPS increase than normal, but this is not the case right now. As such, when the patch hits, it's unclear what effect disabling Skin Shading will have on performance, but we do know the visual impact will be minimal at best.

Marc Laidlaw, the man responsible for writing Valve's magnum opus Half-Life series, has officially left the company after 18 years of work.

Valve has just lost one of its key talent juggernauts. Marc Laidlaw not only penned the legendary shooter that changed PC gaming forever (Half-Life) all by himself, but helped shape the continuation of the series by writing Half-Life 2 and its duo of episode expansions.

The news was confirmed by a string of emails between Laidlaw and a fan, wherein the Half-Life writer expressed a need to move out of the game's mighty shadow.