Gaming - Page 1101

Earlier this week DICE teased a reveal for a new Star Wars: Battlefront multiplayer mode, and shortly after the devs unveiled the explosive Blast mode.

At its core Blast mode is pretty simple: it pits the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire for some enthralling laser-zapping 10 vs. 10 team deathmatch action, the kind that taps the game's fluid and frenetic pace. The objective of the game is pretty straightforward: the first of the warring factions to hit 100 kills or scores the most kills after a 10 minute round wins the game.

Vehicles won't show up in Blast, nor will there be any heroes of villains. In lieu of vehicles, DICE has peppered the maps with power weapons that can significantly turn the tide of the battle at any moment. "Whether you pick up a Droid scanning for nearby enemies or a turret that'll control a zone for you, the pickups can really turn the tide of a Blast match," says Battlefront Level Designer Dennis Brännvall "They are not around every corner though, so keep your eyes peeled."

Everyone expects Fallout 4 to be big--the previous games have boasted sessions that total up more than 100 hours of content thanks to expansive open-world environments and dynamic quest-lines. But no one expected that Fallout 4 has more than 400 hours of play time.

"I've played the game for probably 400 hours, and I'm still finding stuff that I haven't seen," Bethesda Softworks developer Jeff Gardiner told OXM.

We have to remember that devs play games differently than consumers. Developers have assigned tasks and are always looking to recreate bugs or test various elements of the game. And in light of the game's absolutely massive crafting system that lets you literally destroy and erect your own custom buildings, it's possible that a considerable portion of Gardiner's playtime was spent making his own post-apocalyptic town and fighting against incoming raiders.

DICE had its hands full while developing Star Wars Battlefront, understanding it's going to be nearly impossible to please all long-time fans of the iconic movie franchise.

"Our job has been to create a shooter that springs out of the IP of Star Wars and not the IP of DICE," said Patrick Bach, GM of DICE, in an interview with GamesIndustry International. "It's not supposed to be a DICE game, per se, it's supposed to have the DICE qualities but it's a Star Wars game first and foremost. That's the bigger challenge, first of all to figure out - what is the difference between this and that?"

"We chose to create this because we want to create this experience, and this is the emotion we want to evoke so this is what we're focusing on. And that pitch is really hard because Star Wars is so many things. If you try to do everything then everyone will be a little bit disappointed. Instead we are staying true to what we think is the right thing for this game."

Bungie dropped the banhammer down on hundreds of people cheating in Destiny, with the Security Response Team booting people off of Crucible PvP.

Specifically, the latest round of banned players were responsible for "manipulating network traffic," and Bungie would prefer players not even know what that means - saying "we love you. Never change."

"We're committed to protecting Destiny against cheaters," Bungie noted. "Enjoy your game. Just play it fair. That's all we ask. Short of your own commitment to honor, we'll take action ourselves. It's not a think we enjoy doing - and certainly something we'll never quantify or describe in agonizing detail. The damned shall remain anonymous - their nefarious actions a mystery."

In Bungie's most recent Weekly Update the developers take us on a tour of the Hive Dreadnaught--that vast starship made of graves, shadows and woe that serves as the major game zone for Destiny's new The Taken King expansion.

The studio takes us into the Dreanaught, a massive Hive interstellar cruiser that resembles a sort of lunatic conjunction of John Berkey and H.R. Giger; it's all wicked spikes and cruel black steel forged with a queer Borg-like symmetry...and it's very hard to look away.

The Dreadnaught will not only be a pivotal focal point for The Taken King's campaign story, the cyclopean flagship will be one of the game's new zones and feature Public Events, Patrol Missions, and Bounties. "The Dreadnaught is a major centerpiece of The Taken War, a progression that extends well beyond the traditional storyline, and will provide new ground to explore and Patrol. In that regard, like The Taken King itself, it represents a big leap forward."

We knew that a new Battlefield game was in development, and after the shockingly bad Battlefield Hardline, EA is hoping to hit a new home run with "another Battlefield title" being released next year.

The news came from EA's recent investors call, where EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said there was a new Battlefield game in development. Jorgensen said: "What we've said is that our intention over the next couple of years is to have a first-person shooter as one of the core titles. This year, obviously, it's Star Wars Battlefront. Next year, it's another Battlefield title".

But which one will it be? Could we see Battlefield: Bad Company 3, or do you want Battlefield 5 more?

If you believe Electronic Arts, it sounds like the game studio is seeing "extremely strong pre-orders" for its upcoming Star Wars Battlefront video game.

Speaking during an earnings call, EA COO Peter Moore didn't offer specific pre-order sales numbers. In addition, many gamers are purchasing - and then downloading - digital games, so pre-orders may not mean as much. "More and more, as we see digital start [to] take a hold with our consumers, that pre-orders become less of a key indicator."

EA hopes for a busy time during Gamescom next week in Germany, which is expected to have an even larger crowd this year. It's the perfect time to show off Star Wars Battlefront: "We expect to see a tremendous response from that."

Rumors of its development were reported on a few weeks ago, but now Ubisoft has officially announced Zombi for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The reveal trailer is embedded below.

Hélène Henry, a Producer on Zombi, explains: "We knew from the beginning that maintaining the tension and feel of the original was one of the main challenges, as the way ZombiU was presented on Wii U cannot be reproduced. We maintain a minimal HUD as much as possible," Henry says. "It disappears when not required, giving the game a very lonely feeling. If you have surround sound, the awesome sound mix from the original still stands and greatly helps immersion. As much as possible, we've tried to keep those key elements".

The Xbox One, PS4 and PC do get a treat when it comes to the field of view (FOV), which has been increased on Zombi. Henry added: "Also, there has been a slight increase in the field of view and players can increase and decrease it a little if they want to, but not so much that it takes away that claustrophobic feeling. Some work was also undertaken on the control mapping and response to improve the look and feel of the first-person movement". To finish off, Henry said: "We kept the central idea that you're always vulnerable," Henry says. "Rummaging in the backpack still doesn't pause the game. We've added a dedicated button to access the backpack, which lets players see their full inventory and assign shortcut keys".

Are you playing Rocket League? If not, apparently you're missing out on a rather fun gaming experience that 5 million people are enjoying. It's an impressive sales figure considering the game was only released on July 7.

Since the primary game mode in Rocket League is online multiplayer, you get to essentially engage in an online soccer match - except you use cars instead of players.

Rocket League is now available for PC and Sony PlayStation 4 gamers - and is $19.99. However, PlayStation Plus members can get the game for free until this weekend.

It's no secret that the free PS4 games offered with Sony's PS Plus haven't been so exciting, mostly made up of smaller indies with a few choice gems here and there like Rocket League, Dust and FEZ. But now Sony wants to give the power to the players and let them decide what free games they'll get each month.

The new feature is called Vote to Play, and was originally spotted in the What's New section of UK-based PlayStation 4's. Now Vote to Play isn't an open poll where you can suggest and vote on great AAA PS4 games; Sony will pick three games and users will be able to chose one of those games.

According to the promo, Sony will kick off the new feature with three indies (not surprising) including Ubisoft's popular Grow Home, Zombie Vikings, and Armello. If the selection is handled just right Sony could possibly overshadow Microsoft's own Games With Gold service, and it'll be interesting to see what games are offered in the future.

Microsoft has endured a few different technical challenges when it comes to streaming PC games from Windows 10 to the Xbox One, Xbox chief Phil Spencer confirmed.

Prior to the launch of Windows 10, many gamers were excited about the ability to stream their Xbox One games to PCs - but streaming PC games to the Xbox One also created some attention. However, trying to work out the bugs has been a challenge, as Microsoft needs to ensure the games are encoded and streamed properly.

Streaming from the game console to the PC is a simpler process "because we know exactly what you have," Spencer noted. "It's actually a little more challenging doing the encoding on the PC side to the Xbox, but [the] challenge is good."

Microsoft and Sony have struggled in the short amount of time they promoted the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in China, but hope things begin to turn around. The country is beginning to change, and recently scrapped a ban on game consoles - so there is greater hope of future sales.

"The reason we are here today is not only to bring Xbox One to China but to open up the world to games made in China," said Phil Spencer, Xbox chief, speaking during Chinajoy. "We believe it is incredibly important to open up the opportunity to all developers in China."

Chinese gamers will get the chance to play the Halo: The Master Chief Collection in August - the first Halo game officially launched for the Xbox platform in China - and has great potential to win over gamers.

Square Enix's hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake might not feature the classic turn-based combat fans know and love; Square Enix's Tetsuya Nomura affirms that "dramatic changes" are incoming, but also affirms the game will still be recognizable to lifelong fans.

"We are bringing dramatic changes to the Final Fantasy VII Remake," Tetsuya said in an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine's UK branch. "That being said we want to clarify: we're not going to be changing it into a shooter or something like that. We are going to be bringing dramatic changes, but we want to make sure it's still recognisable."

In lieu of the beloved ATB system used by the iconic original, could Square Enix opt in for a sort of combination of real-time role-based combat like Final Fantasy Type-0, or maybe even go all in for the action like Final Fantasy 15?

Tom Cruise really makes the Mission Impossible movies something special, but with the release of the latest movie in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, they pushed it too far when it came to believable gaming in the movie.

In one particular scene, Simon Pegg (who plays Benji Dunn) is playing Halo 5 on a triple-monitor setup. To most moviegoers, this seems innocent enough until you see that the game is Halo 5, on a Xbox One, on triple monitors. This is an impossible feat for the Xbox One as it only supports at single display output.

The camera pans back and you can see Pegg clearly holding an Xbox One controller, and then the camera pans to the cover of Halo 5. It's not much, and as I said to the normal moviegoer this isn't going to break the movie for them, but for me, it was definitely a laugh. Hopefully people don't go out and buy an Xbox (the only place for Halo 5 when it's released later this year) expecting to hook it up to triple monitors.

Bethesda is currently knee deep putting the finishing touches on Fallout 4, with the studio teasing that mod support won't be arriving until 2016. Pete Hines, the VP of Marketing for Bethesda announced the news during a brief talk with IGN recently.

Hines said: "Our entire focus is on finishing the game. Nobody cares about mods if the game sucks. This has always been our philosophy. We shift energy to construction tools, the creation kit, and all of that stuff once the game is done, and we start to figure out what all of that is going to look like".

He makes a very valid point, and I'm sure most would agree that they're rather have a more stable, better-performing Fallout 4 than mod support early on. Hines continued: "The idea is that [the tools] will work on all platforms, but the truth is the system doesn't exist. It's still being built and worked on and it's going to take awhile. It's going to take clearly into next year because we can't even start it".

At E3 2015 Microsoft delivered a strategic bomb by announcing backward compatibility on the Xbox One, which will allow gamers to play older Xbox 360 games on the console for free. Although the Redmond-based console-maker plans to kick off the feature with a slew of games, the future of backward compatibility will ultimately be left to the discretion of developers and publishers.

"So, we'll start with 100 titles this autumn, and we'll be adding titles as time goes by," Microsoft's corporate VP Kudo Tsunoda told the Official Xbox Magazine. "At some point we're going to need to get - obviously - the permission of the owners of the content, the publishers and the developers. So 100% is always a hard thing to achieve in anything."

Microsoft currently plans to support 100 Xbox 360 games by this Fall, and expects to have the feature fully up and running by holiday 2015. The feature is currently its actually testing phase for Xbox One Preview Program members, but the library is quite small and includes games like Perfect Dark: Zero, Banjo Kazooie and Mass Effect (which actually runs pretty good on the Xbox One).

Microsoft is working on Xbox One games being streamed to your PC, but now it looks like we might see PC games being streamed to the Xbox One according to the latest interview with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, and The Verge.

Spencer said that Microsoft is working on getting PC games streaming to the APU-powered Xbox One, but in order to have that working, the company wants to see proper mouse and keyboard support on the console. Not only that, but the company will have to overcome many other obstacles, such as the consumer having enough horsepower in their PC to render the game and then stream it over the network.

Furthermore, the Xbox One would need some tuning to be able to handle the game coming in over the network and the added overheads that come with it, as well as the mouse and keyboard control scheme in the games. If Microsoft does manage to get PC games streaming to the Xbox One, it will be competing with NVIDIA's GameStream technology which streams your PC games to your compatible Shield devices.

Nintendo is enjoying great success with Splatoon, as the game has topped 1.62 million units sold - and helped drive Nintendo's revenue. The company is continually adding new content, and is enjoying a successful sales and marketing campaign focused on the family-friendly game.

"With respect to Wii U, Splatoon, which was released globally in May and gathered attention, marked 1.62 million units in sales and contributed to vitalizing the Wii U platform," according to a Nintendo report. "By maintaining the attention level of Splatoon, which enjoyed a good start, we will strive to further enhance the sales toward the year-end sales season."

The Christmas holiday shopping season is a major time for gaming hardware and software, so Nintendo hopes Splatoon will help convince consumers to pick up a Wii U.

Nintendo has finally sold more than 10 million Wii U units, with the sales figure reached during its fiscal quarter that ended last month.

During its most recent quarter, the company sold only 470,000 units - a drop from 510,000 units year-over-year.

The Wii U publicly launched across the world in November, and has endured an incredibly slow growth rate - though Nintendo hopes that begins to change with games such as Splatoon.

id Software has blended characteristics from the original Doom video games with a more modern twist, hoping to keep gamers interested.

"Ultimately, I don't think it's about old and new," said Marty Stratton, executive proder of Doom at id Software, in a statement to IGN. "It's about what's fun and what's Doom. We started early on with trying to figure out the game's identity. Not what is 'old Doom,' but what is Doom? How does it make us feel? What do we want from a Doom experience? When we boil it down, are the things we're doing feeding into that?"

When playing Doom next year, there are a few things you'll likely notice: your health doesn't regenerate, so you won't need to bother trying to hide and wait fights out. You also won't need to bother reloading, and your actual movement in the game is quite fast. The multiplayer experience features loadouts, and the minute you spawn, you'll be ready to go.