Gaming - Page 1110

Microsoft Studios has owned the rights to Gears of War franchise for a little over a month now, but as of March 10, 2014 at 12:00pm Pacific Standard Time (PST), Epic Games will be shutting down and archiving the Gears of War forum.

Epic Games will also be handing over the Facebook and Twitter accounts to Gears of War over to Black Tusk Studios. Epic Games said on its Facebook page for Gears of War that "Black Tusk Studios asks for your patience and support as they set up new forums for the Gears of War community, and encourage you to communicate with them over Facebook (this page) and Twitter (https://Twitter.com/GearsofWar) during this forum transition over the coming weeks".

We now know why Ubisoft delayed Watch Dogs, but today is a new day, and today brings news of the resolution and frame rate that Watch Dogs will run along at on next-gen consoles on PC.

On the PS4, Watch Dogs will run at 1080p/30FPS, but will drop to 960p/30FPS on the Xbox One. On PC, you can drive Watch Dogs right up to 4K (and beyond) at variable frame rates of course. The PC version of Watch Dogs has seen Ubisoft team up with NVIDIA, so we should see some special details added to an already pretty game.

You can bet your bottom dollar we'll be running Watch Dogs through our multi-monitor, multi-GPU hoops here at TweakTown. We'll have it tested at 4K, and triple 1440p, too.

Ouya started out as a project on Kickstarter that blew up and made huge amounts of money. Since the project turned into an actual product, we have heard less from the company and sales haven't been much compared to other gaming platforms. Ouya announced recently that it was making itself into a service that would be embedded in other platforms.

Mad Catz and Ouya have announced this week that they have signed a content agreement. The agreement will bring Ouya to the MOJO console that Mad Catz unveiled last year. Along with the new content agreement, Mad Catz has announced that the MOJO console is getting its price cut to $199.99 in the US.

Similar price cuts are being made in other areas when the MOJO is sold. The MOJO is the first device to add Ouya Everywhere. The service will debut on the MOJO later this spring. An exact launch date hasn't been announced. When the service does launch all current Ouya content and future content will be available on the MOJO.

Oh my... Shaquille O'Neal is making a sequel to Shaq Fu, and has taken to IndieGoGo for the $450,000 he needs to make it happen. You might want to fund it, after you've checked out the trailer below:

Considering Shaq has mountains of money, why does he need to ask for crowdfunded money to get his game off the ground? Here's the explanation:

When Ubisoft delayed Watch Dogs, most expected it to have very nefarious reasoning behind it, but it's not that drastic. Watch Dogs' Senior Producer, Dominic Guay, wrote on Ubisoft's official blog, giving his version of the events.

Guay said it came down to issues with planning and testing, adding that Watch Dogs was complete, and playable from "front-to-back". He said that getting everything together and working like it needed to for launch "takes time", and "it's really hard to predict how much time that's going to take".

So now we know that Watch Dogs was complete, but needed that final spit polish before it was released to the foaming mouths of gamers across the world. Personally, I think there were some last minute performance issues that needed to be fixed up - with some of the videos I've seen (online, and in-person) not looking that great when the action on-screen was hectic. At the end of the day, I just want me some Watch Dogs.

If you have ever walked through the oil section in your local store, you have probably seen the yellow Pennzoil bottles sitting on shelves. Pennzoil is sponsoring what may be the coolest thing going on at SXSW 2014 in Austin. The oil company will be letting visitors race in real-world Mario Karts.

The event is called Mario Karting Reimagined and it is inspired by Mario Kart 8 and sponsored in part by Nintendo. Visitors to the show will be able to slip behind the wheel of a real Mario Kart and race around the track in competition with other users.

The karts will be able to run over Pennzoil logos on the track that will give their Kart special powers. You won't get to toss turtle shells at your opponents, but the power-ups will make the cart slower or faster. The racing action will be broadcast at SXSW on a big Jumbotron for everyone to see.

Sony has been winning the performance and resolution war with its PlayStation 4, but it did tout that Killzone: Shadow Fall was "a 1080p 60 FPS monster" but has only half delivered on that promise.

When Killzone: Shadow Fall is in single-player mode, it runs at 1920x1080 - or Full HD/1080p. Back in November before the game launched, Sony wrote in a blog post that Killzone: Shadow Fall "runs at native 1080p and 60 fps," but it turns out this is not true. In multiplayer mode, the resolution drops heavily in order to maintain the 60FPS frame rate.

CraveOnline explains: "Killzone: Shadow Fall outputs at 1080p in single-player and multiplayer, but it isn't native. It uses a unique processing method that blends 960 x 1080 images together. Therefore, the 1080p advertised on the box isn't inaccurate. Sony's imprecise marketing is still valid, though". As you can imagine, some PS4 gamers are pretty angry over this, with an excerpt from a post titled "Shame On Sony For Lying To Consumers" by a gaming enthusiast on the blog Crappy Reviews:

Today, Samrat Sharma, senior online producer for Guerrilla Games took to Sony's PlayStation Blog to announce the details of the new multiplayer DLC expansion pack for Killzone Shadow Fall. Titled the Insurgent Pack, the DLC includes new features for multiplayer including a brand new Character Class, 3 new abilities, 3 new weapons and 2 new game modes.

In the DLC we learn that the Helghast government has been covertly providing funding The Black Hand, whose operatives have been infiltrating Vekta City. The DLC allows these insurgents to be playable for the first time in the games history, and is what the DLC is centered around. Rather than type out all of the new details, I have pasted the full list provided by Sharma below.

Grinding Gear Games today officially released its free update to Path of Exile, the free Sacrifice of the Vaal mini-expansion much to the delight to current Path of Exile gamers. TweakTown was able to take the game for a test ride last week during a special briefing in San Francisco, and was initially impressed on gameplay.

This is the first mini-expansion to Path of Exile, with the original game being released in October 2013, and includes numerous improvements to keep players engaged. During TweakTown's meeting with game developers, there was a large amount of emphasis placed on the craftable chests that are now available in the Ambush league. Gamers can modify the chests and unique bosses and items will drop if the player is able to kill all of the bosses.

The expansion gives gamers the chance to try and defeat Atziri, returned Queen of the Vaal civilization, though beating her isn't a requirement - and from how badly TweakTown's Michael Hatamoto and his developer partner were getting killed, best of luck to Path of Exile: Sacrifice of the Vaal gamers!

We are pretty excited about Titanfall around here. If you are an Xbox One gamer or a PC gamer, you should be excited too. We think that Titanfall is going to be a strong contender for game of the year even though it's very early in 2014. Some new tidbits about the game have surfaced today.

A rumor was going around that Titanfall might not have a season pass. That has been proven false after Respawn's Vince Zampella talked recently about the game. Zampella said that Titanfall would indeed get a season pass option. That means paid DLC is coming to the game.

Another interesting tidbit is that the developers will offer free feature updates to gamers. Zampella says that there were things that the team wanted in the final game that didn't make it. Those features will be added for free at a later date.

Yesterday Warner Bros. announced the next title in the Batman: Arkham franchise and we were one of the first sites to break the news. Today WB has unveiled the first trailer for Batman: Arkham Knight, and after watching the three-minute long video, it appears that the rumors were true. Batman: Arkham Knight could be the best Batman game ever made.

Batman: Arkham Knight will be a PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One only title, and is rumored to take full advantage of HD and Ultra-HD resolutions depending on which platform you prefer. The developers are able to take full advantage of today's graphics power by choosing not to launch on the PS3 or Xbox 360, and will allow them to take the franchise to the next level. More importantly, Rocksteady Studios is back at the helm which should make up for Batman: Arkham Origin's short falls.

The game will center around a villain named Hush, who will be accompanied by Scarecrow, Penguin, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face in an effort to take over Gotham City and clip Batman's wings forever. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Batmobile will finally be driveable a first for modern Batman games, and if anyone can pull it off, Rocksteady is the studio to do it.

During Gabe Newell's AMA on Reddit, the Valve boss confirmed that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is coming to Linux. Newell said: "It's being worked on but we don't have an ETA".

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released in August 2012, on Windows, Mac, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live Arcade. It was the first version of Counter-Strike to land on consoles, which included updates to classic modes and maps from the original Counter-Strike, as well as a slew of new content.

A Linux-capable version of Counter-Strike would make sense, as SteamOS is built from the groundwork of the open-source OS. Newell was of course asked about Half-Life 3, but was very coy about it, he said: "When we announced our products years in advance in the past and then were really late delivering them, it was pretty painful for both us and the community. We'd rather not repeat that".

Peggle was one of those games that you could not just spend a few minutes playing. I remember many nights spent trying to top my high scores and making the pegs disappear with as little balls as possible. The game grew to be so popular that entire websites popped up with hints and guides on how to beat it with as few moves as possible. When Microsoft announced that Peggle was returning during its Xbox One launch event, I was one of millions who instantly became excited.

Today Electronic Arts announced that Peggle 2 would be headed to the Xbox 360 on May 7th of 2014. The game will include Peggle Masters as well as a Duel mode in which players can challenge their friends in a heads up dual to see who can clear their pegs first. "With all the excitement from our fans in December at launch we knew we wanted to continue growing the Peggle universe starting with more content and then expand onto the Xbox 360," said John Vechey, General Manager at PopCap Games. "By offering the addition of Duel Mode, our fans will be able to challenge their friends continuously to find out who is the ultimate 'Peggle Master'."

HBO GO has finally appeared on PlayStation 3. The online video service app from HBO was available for Xbox 360 and other devices for a very long time, but it look a very long time to make its app service available for for Sony's older game console.

Phil also pointed out that they are 'working diligently' with HBO to make the app available for Sony PlayStation 4.

Sony's Phil Rosenberg said via a blog post,"Watch every episode of every season of the HBO's best shows, including True Detective, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones. Speaking of Game of Thrones, with the season 4 premiere airing on April 6th, you've got more than a month to get caught up on the first three amazing seasons. If you haven't seen the latest season 4 trailer, click here to check it out."

The Hangar Module for Star Citizen launched late last year, but the dogfighting module was delayed, disappointing fans. The creator of the game, Chris Roberts, has announced that the dogfighting module for the game will launch after PAX East.

Star Citizen's dogfighting module was due in December last year, but was delayed at the last minute. The module will appear at a premiere event just before PAX East for a special "citizens-only" event. Roberts wrote: "As I write this, the Star Citizen team is all around me hard at work on the dogfighting module. The team is scurrying to take care of thousands upon thousands of necessary details: variable damage states, HUD detailing, weapons cameras, engine sounds and countless other things that go into creating an immersive space combat experience. At this point, we can now regularly dogfight here in the office".

It looks like Star Citizen's servers backend was the biggest problem, where Roberts explained: "We have high hopes that the solution will be ready in time for launch ... and that that solution will stand up to the hundreds of thousands of citizens waiting to battle it out. The very success that Star Citizen has had in building such a large community so early in its development is also one of its most challenging - launching the [dogfighting module] will be akin to launching a major online game".

With Batman: Arkham Origins nearing its next DLC launch date, Warner Bros. has just announced the next title in the franchise. Batman: Arkham Knight will be the fourth installment in the blockbuster series that chronicles the efforts of the efforts of Bruce Wayne to cleanse the streets of Gotham City from the criminal scum that plague its streets.

Warner Bros. says that this will be the highest-detailed, and fully realized version of Gotham the series has seen, and the Batmobile will be derivable this time around as well. The game will arrive in late 2014 on the PS4 as well as the Xbox One, and PC. No word was given on an exact launch date and pricing was not mentioned either. Box art for the game has popped up on Reddit though.

Back in late February, Sony offered up some details on the PS4 game console and the number of units sold globally since it launched. The numbers showed that as of February 18, the console had sold 5.3 million units globally. Sales in Japan have helped that number grow significantly in short order.

Sony announced yesterday that the PS4 game console has now reached 6 million units sold globally. That is a gain of around 700,000 units sold in only a couple weeks. Sony also detailed some other interesting items about the console.

There have been more than 3.6 million live broadcasts and 56 million spectate sessions via Twitch and Ustream from the PS4. Sony notes that PS4 gamers account for almost 20% of all daily broadcasts on Twitch. Another interesting tidbit is that the share button on the PS4 controller has been pressed over 10 million times.

Watchdogs is one of the most highly anticipated games arriving on Sony's PlayStation 4 this year, but up until now, Sony has kept quiet about its launch date. We first got a glimpse of Watchdogs during PS4's launch event last year, and the game wowed us with its new style and ideas, but since then we have heard very little about the game other than a few features and specifications.

Today Sony accidentally let the release date for Watchdogs slip when it published the games launch date on its website. The leak says that Watchdogs will release on June 30, 2014, as well as showing a retail price of $59.99, and that 608 people have already rated it... This leak is most likely the result of a website developer testing functionality, and all the information could be false filler, that was entered for testing purposes.

Today DICE released an official response to all of the complaints it has been receiving about issues revolving around Battlefield 4's "netcode." While the term netcode is made up by the community, the issues in Battlefield 4 are quite real and very much a nuisance. For some players lag, rubber banding, and pre-mature deaths are causing the game to be unplayable and it all seems to revolve around network connection issues.

DICE says that it is currently working on problems ranging between faulty networking latency compensation, to glitches in the game-play simulation itself. Before DICE went into any of its fixes, it described how the game actually works. "The game receives updates from the game server and displays these to the player using a system called latency compensation - this system makes sure players move around naturally on your screen when network updates arrive. We have found and fixed several issues with latency compensation, and thereby decreased the impressions of "one hit kills" in the game."

DICE has also fixed issues that cause rubber banding in the form of server optimization and is planning several more client-side fixes to reduce packet loss in an upcoming patch. This patch will also fix the Kill Cam animation from popping up prematurely and causing players to think they died before their health was deplenished. Additionally fixes for damage not registering for some users as well as a rare glitch that catapults some players at high speeds across the map resulting in death will be fixed as well.

Information and images from upcoming game 'Titanfall' is still being leaked. This time it contained a lot of information about the game which was present on the files of the BETA version of the Windows version of the game. The leak was done by 'FallenFusion' in Reddit's Titanfall sub-reddit section.

The game's campaign will have nine matches: five rounds of death match called 'Attrition' which can be played as either Intersteller Manufacturing Corporation or Militia. There's also 'Capture the Flag' and 'Last Titan Standing'. The 5th game type is called 'Pilot Hunter' mode where killing every pilot (human) is killed, but killing the AI opponents would lower the time to earn titans and the ability to regenerate the titan core.

The leak contained a total of 10 screenshots which shows different maps and more. One of them was about 'Generations' where once the players reaches the level up cap, they can reset their progress. It will reset the player's experience, unlocks and completed challenges. What will not be reset is their Burn Card collection. What's more is that second generation pilots can earn experience 10% faster than the player's first gen counterpart. It was also revealed that the rate of experience boost increases as your player resets its experience and crosses to another generation.