Gaming - Page 1125

As confirmed by Nintendo's UK Twitter, the age-old classic Game Boy Tetris will be pulled from the eShop durng the last day of 2014.

This marks the end of an era, with Tetris on the original Game Boy being a title that helped define handheld gaming globally and showcased exactly how exciting and awesome potable devices could be. If you ask anyone about a gaming title they might know, Tetris is always one of the first to mind - a timeless classic that still facilitates global competitions and events being conducted to this very day.

There has been no confirmation from Nintendo America or other regions as to if this game will be pulled from the e-shelves in their respective regions. Some news outlets are speculating that this game was pulled due to Nintendo's recent 3DS release of Ubisoft's Tetris Ultimate. Currently avilable for the bargain price of $3.99, please don't let this news ruin your fun - go and pick yourself up a piece of gaming history. We really hope that Ubisoft isn't at fault for this ordeal, it certainly couldn't do too well in improving the current markets public opinion of the big-name developer.

As seen on the official Halo Twitter account, Halo 5's multiplayer beta has been opened up to the public, ending on the 18th of January 2015.

Anyone who has purchased the Halo: The Master Chief Collection automatically should have access to this beta, with the full game set for launch this fall and exclusive to the next-gen Xbox One console.

This sequel is said to continue the story of Master Chief and introduce Spartan Locke, a brand new addition to the series. Once again you'll be fighting against peace-shattering invader aliens, seeing Spartan Locke on a mission to find the somewhat-elusive Master Chief alongside solving a complicated mystery that threatens the entire galaxy.

If you're running a previous generation console and are looking for a few cheap titles to place in your collection before the new year rolls around, Xbox are offering up a plethora of deals running right until the clock hits 12:00 am on the 1st of January.

Whether you're interested in FIFA 15 for only $29.99 or Game of Thrones for $2.49, this comprehensive list has games on offer for almost any console fan.

There are a few 'filler' titles on the list, however Microsoft have done a fairly good job of offering up some solid gaming offerings at reasonable prices. If full games aren't you thing however, you can purchase things like the World of Tanks Currency Mega Pack and other similar items.

Fan-made mods are simply breathtaking in this age of gaming. We've recently seen things such as the Skyrim Enderal mod adding a whole new game within a game, another Skyrim fan-update offering 4K resolution textures, bug fixes and more and various community made Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competitive maps and add-on's. All of these additions are what help keeps a title active, strong and relevant for months, or years, to come.

Thanks to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes coming out on PC, some modders have taken to the model of developer Hideo Kojima that is on offer - adding him as the main playable character of the campaign. Thanks to the game engines capabilities, multiple models can be implemented as the main character on offer.

Stay tuned for more game modding news. It seems that we can only go up from here.

Known globally for their massive $78,000 season 17 incorporating American and European teams, ESEA have decided to further expand to the Asia-Pacific. This inclusion will see the prize pot increase to a sum of $100,000.

European teams being included in ESEA's online league and finals is still a rather new addition, seeing this competition gain massive global respect as many of the top CS:GO teams are located in European nations. It seems that the inclusion of Asia-Pacific is helping ESEA solidify their place as one of the world's largest tournament providers.

Along with this new region inclusion, ESEA are offering up a new recruitment section to assist teams and players in joining together for tournaments in preparation for their season 18 signup closure, set to happen on January the 5th next year. Over the next few weeks ESEA will be announcing further rule sets, map rotations and other essential tournament information. If you're interested in competing in this event, you'll have to head to their registration page before the cut-off date.

If you're not already aware, the Steam Sales Tracker is a brilliant tool, offering up an easy-to-see list of the current sales on offer, their time left of sale, the communities verdict on the game and also a handy extension to help link it to your personal steam account.

Steam are doing what they do best, churning out yet another sale period and drying up many other-enthusiastic gamers wallets. We've had a quick browse and consolidated some of the coolest game specials on offer right now.

As according to the Steam Sale tracker 'Community's Choice' section, the hottest titles available today include a 66 percent saving on Mercenary Kings, the indie side-scrolling puzzle game Gunpoint for only $4.99 USD and the addictive and simply designed LUFTRAUSERS game for half price.

Boyd Multerer, the engineer who was responsible on leading development for Xbox Live and the XNA game development tools for Xbox, has left Microsoft after working with the Redmond-based giant for 17 years. Multerer announced he was leaving the Xbox team on Twitter, where he said "Goodbye Microsoft. It was a good run. Xbox was Great! Time to do something new."

Multerer joined the company in 1997, where in 2000 he was hired to lead development on the online side of the original Xbox console, which was called Xbox Online at the time. Multerer then hired the Xbox Live development team, leading the design of what would soon become Xbox Live. He not only lead the design, but the direction and implementation of Xbox Live, too. Multerer was the very first person to use Xbox Live, where he emphasized security and anti-cheating measures to be installed.

The engineer would later turn into the product manager on XNA, in order to meet "the pent-up demand of independent game developers" and build "the first open marketplace on a console." The all-rounder engineer eventually becvame the director of development for Xbox, where he was part of the Xbox One team and overlooked technical design and development of Microsoft's then next-gen Xbox. During a technical roundtable discussion, Multerer said "The last one, the box was fixed," explaining that the Xbox One can access "a growing number of transistors that are not that far away" that will allow the console push out "bigger world's, and take some of the things that are normally done locally and push them out."

Sony can't catch a break lately, with their internal servers being breached by North Korea - well, at least the United States government and FBI is claiming they did - while their PlayStation Network was slammed down on Christmas Day by hacking group The Lizard Squad.

Sony's PSN service still experiencing "intermittent connectivity issues," something the company has taken to its PlayStation Knowledge Center to talk about. Some are able to sign onto their PS3, PS4 and PS Vita devices, but aren't able to sign into, or access the PlayStation Store, or get their Friends list to display.

The company is now asking gamers to attempt tweaking their MTU settings in their console's network configuration options, which could fix the problems they're having accessing the PlayStation Network.

Are you able to log onto Microsoft's Xbox Live service? Days after being dropped by the Lizard Squad on Christmas morning, it appears problems are surfacing again. On Saturday afternoon, the Microsoft service website saying Xbox Live is down once again, with Xbox One and Xbox 360 gamers confirming the news.

Although the Xbox Live Status website reports the core services, purchase and content usage, website, TV music and video, and social gaming aspects are reported to be working again - many users are reporting they are unable to game and access content.

Multiplayer titles such as Destiny and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare require active Internet service, but titles such as Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition - which are largely played in single-player - still access third-party server connections.

Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network are clawing their way back to full functionality, a couple of days after crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by the Lizard Squad hacking group.

The Xbox Live service, which has almost 50 million global users, was working significantly better by Friday evening - but the PlayStation Network, supporting almost 110 million users, still had significant problems, preventing users from logging on.

In a tweet issued Saturday morning, Sony had this to say: "Update: PS4, PS3, and Vita network services are gradually coming back online - thanks for your patience." A follow-up statement noted: "We are seeing reduced reports of network issues. We'll continue to monitor."

The misery for console gamers stretched into a second day, following a suspected distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack launched by the Lizard Squad hacking group. Microsoft Xbox Live is working, sort of, with some gaming functionality still limited - and Sony PlayStation's online service is still reportedly down.

As frustration continues to mount, especially towards Sony, it would appear the Lizard Squad's efforts to disrupt Christmas - with millions of console gamers expected to boot up their Xbox One or PS4 consoles for the first time, or load new games - was a success for the hacker group.

Despite Kim Dotcom providing lifetime vouchers to his MegaPrivacy cloud storage service to Lizard Squad members, Microsoft and Sony still struggled to resolve network problems following the DDoS attacks.

Techland was aiming for 1080p 60FPS for their upcoming zombie survival shooter 'Dying Light' but the developer has locked things in at 30FPS instead, something that the developer says will provide a "perfectly smooth, gameplay-tailored performance."

The developer has said that a stable 30FPS is better than a varying frame rate, especially for a game where you jump between rooftops, climb buildings and more. Techland has said that the development team considers a consistent frame rate is better for the in-game environments of Dying Light. When talking with GamingBolt, the Lead Game Designer of Dying Light, Maciej Binkowski, would be 1080p 30FPS for both the PS4 and Xbox One.

He reiterated the fact that Dying Light is 30FPS on both consoles, saying "Yes. They're both locked at 30 FPS. We did so much testing and optimizing and eventually came to the conclusion that we needed to lock at 30 FPS to ensure a smooth, fluid experience." Binkowski also mentioned that Dying Light will feature a Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA) T2X solution, something that will smooth out the graphics in the game, which should hide the various jaggies. He added "We're using SMAA T2X according to our super brainy hardware guys. That's all I know."

The Xbox One is one of the hottest consoles on the market, and Kinect technology is one of the best features. The Kinect, which comes standard with Xbox One, has many more applications than just gaming. In fact, it's being used for some amazing things. Here are just a few of its additional capabilities.

With the use of Kinect recognition, Microsoft has revolutionized the way people exercise. Taking advantage of all the amazing fitness programs available on the Xbox, you can train and exercise right at home with the help of some amazing professionals; and the Kinect can help you with everything from making sure you have the right posture and form during your workout, to monitoring your pulse, temperature and other vital statistics. It can even help you record how many calories you have burned by tracking the movement of your body and temperature change on your skin. In a Samsung article, Santa Barbara fitness instructor Alexandra Williams advises taking a minimalist approach to your workout gear and equipment. So, by using the Kinect as your overall tracking device, it is easy to keep track of your overall health and fitness program.

Hospital professionals are always looking for ways to improve the health, safety and efficiency of their employees when doing delicate medical procedures. Now, with the addition of a Kinect system in the operating rooms, doctors can use hand motions to manipulate and refer to images that they use when performing an operation rather than trying to use a remote or keyboard. This not only gives them more freedom and precise detail, it helps keep the room sterile and safe for the patients.

The dawn of the new era of gaming is breaking on the horizon. The rise of cloud gaming has promised a future where all game rendering and processing is handled in a remote datacenter and merely streamed to the user. The new consoles have started a partial transition to this future of gaming, but it seems that the future is now. Samsung's newest 2015 TV's will feature an integrated app that will allow users to play games from the PlayStation Now service, but without a console.

All the viewer needs is a DualShock controller and the app. An initial library of 200 PS3 games will be available. Integrating this service into smart TV's could foreshadow a world without consoles, but there are a few caveats. Streaming high-quality content always comes with bandwidth and latency concerns, making a solid internet connection a must. Any loss of internet will end the gaming session, but the game will be saved to the cloud.

It will be interesting to see how the systems operate when hundreds of thousands, and millions, begin to use these new TV's. The early games are notably from the PS3, and not the PS4. There are likely a few reasons. PS4 games require more computation and have better graphics, so it might not be feasible at this point to process all of the data for millions of users at a remote location, let alone provide the bandwidth to stream it with acceptable performance.

CD Projekt Red is pretty much finished on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with the developer prepared for its May 19, 2015 release. The developer has said that it has had more time since delaying the game from its original February 25, 2015 release date to the new May 19, 2015 date to get the game in much better working order.

When talking about the additional development time during an interview with Nerdacy, CD Projekt Red co-founder and CEO Marcin Iwinski said "We are removing the final bugs and still running optimization in various areas. What it will result in is a smoother and more engaging experience and, yes, the game looking better across all platforms. The content is locked, so no content changes are being made at this point. The scale of the open world in the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is unprecedented, so fear not - there is enough gameplay to keep you playing for weeks."

There was also talk of a second playable character in the form of Ciri, to which Iwinski replied "Ciri is this living weapon everyone wants to get a piece of. She has this inner power that is key to stopping the Wild Hunt, but she also has some of her own demons to handle, so she won't allow to be controlled by anyone. We decided to introduce her as a playable character because it adds a lot to the narrative, and offers gamers a unique perspective on the story." He continued, adding "Having said that, Geralt is the main character whom you will be playing most of the time and he is the guy. We think that the introduction of Ciri as a playable character is a great way to allow gamers to see parts of the story from her perspective and make it even more personal."

Valve's new End of the Line update for Team Fortress 2 has just evolved, with the latest Smissmas update. The Smissmas update includes a new mode called Mannpower, with some awesome new features in the form of nine power-up items that any class can use.The new update provides users with a grappling hook, which looks like it can be some serious fun. Check out the video below.

How does Mannpower work? Here's an explanation "It's an in-beta CTF-like game mode with grappling hooks and nine different types of powerups. Mannpower alters a few game rules. For one, random critical hits have been disabled. Additionally, teams won't be able to capture the enemy flag unless your flag is at your base. (When your flag is away from your base, you can touch it to instantly return it to base.) Mannpowers exist in the world and can be picked up by all classes. When picked up they add abilities and enhancements to the player carrying it. Mannpowers can be dropped at any time by hitting your dropitem key, and will drop automatically when the player carrying it is killed. Note that you can only carry one at a time, and that you can't take powerups into respawn rooms."

The video above shows off all of the new weapons that you have to choose from. Let us know what you think! It makes me want to get back into TF2.

The remaster of one of the best, if not the best Resident Evil game is coming out next year, a game that will have support for Sony's cross-buy platform. This means that if you purchase the game on your PS3, you can play it on your PS4 without having to buy another version.

The listing of Resident Evil on Sony's PlayStation Store says that if you pre-order the game, it "entitles you to both the PS4 and PS3 versions." Pre-orders also gain an exclusive PS3 theme, too. This cross-buy platform is only available as an incentive to those who pre-order it, but I don't know why Sony would lock it to pre-orders only.

The Resident Evil remaster comes out on January 20, 2015 for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.

Evolution Studios has taken to Facebook to thank its consumers for the "overwhelming" support for Driveclub's initial launch, and in the months of the game being broken in various parts. Even after the boss of Sony UK came out and said he was embarrassed by the launch of Driveclub on the PS4.

The studio has said that there are some new updates coming next month that should have gamers excited. Evolution Studios wrote "Everyone here at Evolution Studios wants to say thank you for the truly overwhelming level of support from you this year, especially in the time since DRIVECLUB launched in October. Your messages, your feedback, your hot lap videos on YouTube and all of the absolutely amazing screenshots you've shared have all been a huge source of inspiration for the team." The team added "You've all been amazing and we're extremely thankful for your continued support."

"We have many more updates in the works, for the servers and for the game, which we're looking forward to sharing with you in the new year. In the mean time, please don't forget to claim all of the free DRIVECLUB downloads from PlayStation Store if you haven't already and please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback with us, so that DRIVECLUB can continue to evolve around you in 2015," they continued. Evolution Studios finished their pledge to fans with "Thank you all again - we really are uplifted by you on a daily basis. We hope that you all have a great holiday season and we wish you a very Happy New Year!"

Most people might have forgotten about STALKER, as it was one of the most interesting and different games of its time, long before Skyrim came in and scooped up the title of 'most awesome RPG ever' title. Well, GSC Gameworld, the original developers of STALKER, are back and teasing their latest secret project.

Valentine Yeltyshev who was part of the original GSC Gameworld crew and now the "spokesperson for the studio's return" has said "The market we're in is quite old fashioned. They're not 16 year olds, they're 25-40 years old. We don't think free-to-play is the right model for the game we want to make. So we're making an old-fashioned, full price game, we think our audience will be happy about that. We're expecting a lot of our old audience!"

He talked with Gamesindustry.biz, spilling the beans on GSC Gameworld's closure back in 2011, to the fact that West Games is trying to fund a successor to STALKER through Kickstarter. Talking about West Games' title, he said "I don't really know enough about them, but the story is quite funny. These guys were basically promoting themselves as being the STALKER team, that they were working on STALKER, but that's not true. When we were working on STALKER 2, we were also planning on releasing a browser game based on STALKER so we could keep the audience engaged until released." He continued, saying "That project was never finished. There were mistakes. But the guys at West Games, that was the STALKER project they were working on - a Flash game. So when they promoted themselves as having worked on STALKER, I was quite surprised."

Bungie has released some end of the year numbers for Destiny, showing off just how many gamers have pumped countless hours into the console exclusive. The developer has said "Staggering statistics aside. Destiny is more than a game of numbers. it's a world made of people... It's the human stories that lodge in our void-stained memories."

Over the course of its launch, nearly 13 million players have played Destiny, for a total of 22.9 million guardians. When it comes to in-game time, Destiny gamers have spent an insane 875 million hours playing the game, a number that translates to 99,523 years. The developer has released some other bullet-pointed numbers, too: