Gaming - Page 1114

Although the acclaimed P.T. demo will turn a year old tomorrow, the game continues to spellbind players across the globe who continue to search for secrets buried in the hallowed depths.

One gamer shares his find on Reddit, saying that P.T.'s terrifying ghost Lisa will appear as a mini jump-scare in the starting basement.

"After you get trapped in the bathroom and are forced to be possessed on the next loop, get killed by Lisa to get back to the room you start in," says metatronicsauce, the finder of the new scare. "If you exit the room backwards, you will see Lisa very briefly before you enter the hallway. You might also sometimes hear her moaning in the basement room as if you were possessed." Lisa only pops up in the corner of your eye so you have to watch closely or you'll miss her.

Gaming company Nintendo announced earlier this year that it planned to enter the mobile gaming market - and at least five mobile games could be expected by March 2017.

"We can't deny the massive install base of smartphones out there, and some fans that aren't old enough yet to afford their own gaming console, perhaps for those consumers they can start to appreciate some of our content and build a relationship with some of our characters and our franchises," said Scott Moffitt, executive of Nintendo of America, in a statement to the Examiner. "We feel it's going to be an additive to our console business."

Just because Nintendo is dabbling in the smartphone game market doesn't mean investors and supporters need to be worried about executives abandoning the company's core business: "Normally, we wouldn't have taken that step of telling people we are working on the next system, but we wanted people to know we remain committed to the dedicated game device business," he said while referring to the Nintendo NX.

Smach has just surprised gamers by unveiling its new portable Steam Machine which will go on sale on November 10 for $299, the day that Valve begins selling its Steam Machines, but it won't begin shipping until late 2016.

The company that will be building the portable Steam Machine is Smach, which has said it will begin shipping out units in Q4 2016. The $299 price is the pre-sale price only, so expect this to go up a little. What was known as the Steamboy is now known as the Smach Zero, claiming to be "the first handheld console to play Steam games on the go" and will play "more than 1000 games" from the Steam library upon launch.

When it comes to specs, Smach announced back in June:

Video game studios try to deliver a great gaming experience, especially for multiplayer gamers, though must walk a fine-line. There has been more always-online functionality included in even more games, but many gamers don't necessarily like it - not surprisingly, some gamers interested in Need for Speed weren't happy to hear the news.

"We've been pretty big with Autolog throughout the years and, as we know, it's a really powerful feature," said Marcus Nilsson, executive producer of Need for Speed, in a statement published in the Official Xbox Magazine. "This time around we're going to give it more of a human voice. It will treat your friend's play as if it is part of the narrative experience."

The game studio is quite excited about including a new automatic image sharing system, which also benefits from always-online:

At Gamescom 2015 the renown master of macabre Hidetaka Miyazaki sat down with Gamespot to discuss Dark Souls 3, revealing some hints on what's next for the series.

"Dark Souls is my life's work. Everything I came up with for Dark Souls 3 is based on my personal preferences," Miyazaki said, his words offering huge relief for fans who preferred the "Miyzaki touch" that was present in the original game. "Dark Souls 3 is also actually the turning point for the franchise. This project was launched by the previous From Software management, before I was appointed president. In that sense, Dark Souls 3 is the turning point for the series. As president of From Software, I am planning to launch several new projects. I can't quite specify exactly what they are. Those could be something sci-fi, but you'll have to stay tuned for more about that in the future."

This isn't the first time Miyazaki echoed these words; at E3 2015 he squashed reports that Dark Souls 3 would be the final game in the series, but provided no concrete details on what's next. What we do know is that Miyazaki will have full creative control over the future of the franchise, meaning that Dark Souls 3 will act as a bridge towards Miyazaki's new grand scheme.

In an effort to dramatically improve performance, Skyrim modder UniqueUses created an ultra-low graphics overhaul that transformed the once-detailed continent into a majestic winter wonderland straight out of a Pixar movie.

The mod, officially called "Toon Skyrim", was showcased in a Reddit post that has seen some six-thousand upvotes, proving many gamers are eager to try it out. But UniqueUses still has a lot of work cut out for him before Toon Skyrim is ready for release--including fleshing out NPC's, fixing signs, and a number of tweaks across the board.

"I'm basically making my own potato texture mod, with an enb and weather that goes with it to help hide that ugly lod," the modder said in the post, using the term "potato textures" to describe low-def textures. "I like the potato texture style, but I think a lot of fixing up needs to be done for it to be playable. So I'm going to attempt to make things like signs and faces readable but still fit the potato style."

Rumors have been flying left and right about the next singleplayer Elder Scrolls game--could it be Elder Scrolls VI: Argonia, or even a Skyrim sequel?--but Bethesda's own Pete Hines has squashed these rumors, affirming that the studio won't be divulging any new details until long after Fallout 4 is finished up.

At Gamescom 2015 Bethesda's VP in Marketing Pete Hines squashed the Elder Scrolls VI rumors, saying that it will be a "very long time" until a new TES game is announced and that the team is currently "100% committed to Fallout 4".

Speaking of Fallout 4, the team still has a lot of work on their plate with optimizing mods for consoles, tweaking bugs and fixing up the massive crafting system. Considering how huge Fallout 4 is--there are reports that it could take up to 400 hours to beat--this will be a lofty goal with post-release updates to keep the studio busy for some time.

The latest gameplay video on Star Citizen shows off a bunch of stuff, including Quantum Travel mode, the ZeroG mode that has you floating around your ship, and some of the multiplayer goodness, too.

The 13-minute video also features some combat, with some scanning technology being used to find bogies, as well as some aerial fighting through space which is always awesome. We get to see some of the different ships on offer, with different view points into space, and your enemies, depending on where you sit in the ship.

After watching the video, some of the shadows don't look too good, but the overall lighting when you get out of your quarters is super-impressive. The walking around effect is going to take some getting used to, and RSI has some serious optimization to go on the performance, but we are talking about a game that is still in development.

With just mere weeks away from release Konami has revealed the full specs for its AAA stealth espionage blockbuster Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain across all platforms, giving gamers a quick look of what kind of performance values that can be expected for next month's launch.

PlayStation 4 flavors of MGSV will hit a fluid resolution to frame-rate ratio of 1080p 60FPS, whereas Microsoft's Xbox One will be rendered at not-so-surprising native 900p at 60FPS. The PC variants are predictably beefier, with support of a maximum 4K resolution (3840x2160) output but is also capped at 60FPS.

The last-gen PS3 and Xbox 360, which were put on the back burner of development, will be both internally scaled at 720p and see their frame rates halved at just 30FPS. All-in-all these rates are wholly consistent with Ground Zeroes' cross-platform specs.

Although Windows 10 is touted as a boon for gaming as a whole, PC gamers worried that Microsoft would eventually break away from Steam integration and force users to the Windows Store. So far that hasn't happened and Microsoft continues to leverage marketplaces like Steam and GOG for the new OS, but what does the future hold?

"We are not intending to compete with Steam," Xbox's senior director of PC gaming Kevin Unangst told PC Gamer. "If anything, we want Steam to be even more successful-they've done great things for PC gamers in terms of having a single store. Over time do we want more developers to come over to our store and offer it in addition to Steam? Absolutely. But our goal right now isn't to do anything else other than support Steam and help it run great on Windows 10."

Unangst goes on to highlight the reasons why Games for Windows LIVE failed and what he learned from the approach. "Games for Windows was a prior approach where it was more, at that time, like 'how do we take things?'" the Xbox exec iterated. "We knew we wanted to help make great multiplayer, we knew we wanted to bring things over... but it wasn't the right approach. It was the approach of 'let's just take those things and transplant them'."

EA's latest interstellar AAA juggernaut Star Wars: Battlefront dominated Gamescom 2015's annual award ceremony with no less than five wins, including the prestigious "Best of Gamescom" category. The live-action reveal of Battlefront's new Fighter Squadron mode, which lets players relive classic space dogfights from the films, likely helped persuade the panel judges.

"Visually, it's extremely exhilarating. The skies are crawling with enemy ships, and you see sparks and explosions from ships about to be taken down," DICE's Associate Designer Peter Forsman said about the new mode. "On top of that, you've got this great music, sound design, and gameplay, making the whole thing feel like an authentic Star Wars dogfight."

Out of the total 18 nomination categories, Star Wars: Battlefront won five of them, which is more than any other game on the ballot. following Gamescom categories: Best of Gamescom 2015, Best PC Game, Best Online Multiplayer Game, Best PlayStation 4 Game and the Most Wanter Consumer Award. Runners up include Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Microsoft's Forza Motorsport 6 with two wins apiece.

Treyarch has come out swinging during Gamescom this year, announcing that Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on the PC will include some great support, with studio boss Mark Lamia teasing earlier in the year: "If you've really invested in your rig, we want it to pay off". During Gamescom, Treyarch provided a breakdown of what to expect on the PC version of the game:

It's great to see "strong GPU scaling" as well as "SLI and Crossfire optimizations" included in Black Ops 3, but one of my favorite additions that Treyarch are putting into the game is the FOV slider. An interesting node is the framerate cap slider, which is a different thing to see these days. Treyarch added: "As we add more optimizations and advanced graphics features, we're re-evaluating our recommended spec, so stay tuned. Rest assured that our goal is to provide the best performance across the widest range of machines possible".

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will reach the Xbox One, PS4 and PC on November 3, while the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will come out at a later date.

Xbox Game Preview is Microsoft's own spin-off of Steam's early access, a program that lets preview members beta test unreleased Xbox One games for a fee. Although the Xbox early access initiative was originally for indie games, Microsoft has since revealed it will use the program's community-driven approach to help develop and test its own first-party exclusives.

"First party will be using Game Preview for our games," Microsoft's head of publishing Shannon Loftis told GameInformer. "It's not 100 percent. It's very much developer choice, but it is definitely an option."

"We are curating that program very much with an eye for making sure that the games are high-quality games. A lot of the issues we've seen with the folks that tried this sort of service earlier are things that we've been able to learn from," Loftis says, nodding toward Steam's cluttered Early Access platform. "There is a little bit of extrapolation that the gamer has to make in order to guess that the end product is good. So far, nothing has backfired as far as gamer reception, but we are being very cautious."

Joining ESWC in the promotion of female-only gaming events, Ninjas in Pyjamas TV has announced a $1,000 online tournament featuring six teams.

Kicking off in a double elimination format, each initial match will be played as a best of three map series, with the finals ramping it up to best of five. With the winner set to take home $650 and second place taking the remaining $350, all six teams have been invited directly by the tournament organizers.

Seeing a wide variety of nations participating, Team Acer (French) and Games4U (multiple nations) are automatically seeded into the second round as they are the top two ranked teams in this competition.

With almost a full decade in development, fans are quite eager to finally get their hands on Final Fantasy 15...but up until now Square Enix has been quiet on any kind of release info. According to game director Hajime Tabata, the wait is almost over, and the devs have some extra goodies to share during the wait.

"At the very least, I can tell you that it isn't going to be released this year," Tabata said in an interview with GameSpot. "We can certainly say to people: it's going to be before 2017. I think we'll be able to tell you when we're making the announcement around PAX Prime, at the end of this month."

Sadly this isn't the fully fledged release date confirmation that gamers had hoped for. Square Enix seemed to be teasing something big for Gamescom 2015 and everyone thought at long last a release date would be announced. Amid this disappointment Tabata affirms that Square Enix has indeed set a release date for Final Fantasy 15, and that a strategic plan is in place.

In an interesting announcement, Bethesda has said that Fallout 4 will not have a level cap at all and that the game doesn't end when the story is over. Players can "keep playing and leveling" once the main story is wrapped up.

Previous Fallout games have all featured level caps, so this is a big departure from previous entries in the franchise. The studio has said that it is also reworking the way enemy difficulty scales with the player's level, which is an obvious move with the lack of a level cap. During E3, Fallout 4's Game Director, Todd Howard, told Game Informer: "We call it rubberbanding; we'll have an area [where enemies scale from] level 5 to 10, and then this area will be level 30 and above".

Gamescom 2015 - As promised, 2K Games has revealed the cinematic trailer to Mafia 3, with the game being set in a beautiful, reimagined New Orleans.

Mafia 3 is filled with era-inspired cars, fashion, music, characters and is a "haven for organized crime". The Italian mob controls illegal gambling, drugs, prostitution and more through corrupt police and politicians. Mafia 3 sees protagonist Lincoln Clay returning home after a stint in Vietnam, with family being the central point of the game.

But, his family was betrayed and killed by the Italian mob, making Lincoln's story all about revenge. As you progress throughout Mafia 3, Lincoln will align himself with other criminals in order to build his own empire and a new family, where it will transform New Orleans in the process.

Shiro Games has announced its Evoland 2: A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder game will be released on August 25.

Evoland 2 isn't your traditional video game, as it is designed to help take players "on a truly epic journey through time and across a variety of classic and contemporary video game styles." The standalone gaming experience features a character who learns to "understand events in different timelines," while improving the future.

The initial game launch is for PCs, with Mac and Linux versions scheduled for a later release. It will cost $19.99.

Xbox chief Phil Spencer thinks Microsoft needs to push third-party game developers harder when it comes to creating different style of games for first-party Xbox One titles.

During Gamescom, Microsoft will show off exclusive game titles including the following: Crackdown, Scalebound and Quantum Break - with all three titles providing third-person action play. Unfortunately, Microsoft wants to see different types of game genres:

"More diversity in terms of genre and mechanics, I think it's a great thing for this industry to push," Spencer recently told GameSpot. "So yes, you do find a lot of third-party action games from us, and I do think we should be pushing harder on genre and control."

Xbox chief Phil Spencer is excited about Microsoft's decision to support Xbox One backward compatibility, saying it provides a "valuable" way to keep gamers engaged.

Since Microsoft must emulate each Xbox 360 game to make it playable for the Xbox One, receiving publisher support is critical. It's a great sales and marketing campaign, allowing players the opportunity to catch up on previously-released games if they haven't already played them - and allow those of you with an Xbox 360 game library, the chance to play select titles one more time.

"We're having great conversations with all the publishers about backward compatibility," Spencer recently told GameSpot. "It's really been a good time for something like backwards compatibility to come around, because so many of the publishers have built more service-based games where they're able to find a business opportunity in the longevity of games."