Gaming - Page 1191

We've been hearing a lot about next-gen consoles recently, which means we should start seeing much more about them in the near future, and that's a good thing. President of EA labels, Frank Gibeau, is confident of the next-generation of consoles.

Gibeau admits that EA stumbled with the current generation of consoles, but is confident that they have what it takes to transition over to the next-generation. EA will push through "a big investment" this year, which will go into technologies that will be baked into the next series of consoles, with EA saying that they have a few new IPs that they're working on.

Gibeau told Bloomberg "we've already started three-to-five new intellectual properties that we're going to launch in that first 24 months on the new-gen". The Presidents label admits that while technology is a big part of that, the process begins with the game and building out from there, adding:

If you're a fan of the Assassin's Creed series but felt the multiplayer wasn't quite good enough, then you are in for a treat. Ubisoft has been hard at work on the multiplayer side of things for the upcoming Assassin's Creed 3 and the result is that players will receive monthly updates to the content in the form of files and videos.

The team behind the multiplayer aspect have been given the right to develop some of the story line and this is sure to affect the lore. You see, Abstergo has turned the Animus into a commercial product that allows people to relive "the past in HD." You play as a customer looking forward to doing just that.

"As you progress in the game and level up your character, you access these files and videos. Every month you'll have new challenges to unlock new content that will continue the storyline throughout the year," Ubisoft Annecy game director Damien Kieken told CVG.

At first glance, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes just sounded like an open-world game on a next-gen engine dubbed 'Fox'. But, in reality, it's looking bloody impressive.

Usually, we see CG bits from MGS titles, and when the game comes out, it looks great, but never as close to the CG we see beforehand. The Fox engine is completely next-gen and incapable of being run on current-gen consoles. Konami showed it off on PC, but the game will eventually hit next-gen consoles.

After watching it, you can see its running in 1080p, with anti-aliasing cranked up, with all of the bells and whistles. It's not completely mind-blowing, but it really does completely blow the current-gen console graphic capabilities out of the water. MGS: Ground Zeroes will hopefully look even better than this, as this would be a very early build of the open-world stealth shooter/adventure game.

I have a bit of bad news if you play Skyrim on PlayStation 3 and wanted the Dawnguard DLC: You may not ever get it. Bethesda has announced this simple fact. Due to technical issues, Dawnguard may never become available on PS3. It appears they have been unable to get it to run like they would like on the system.

"Skyrim is a massive and dynamic game that requires a lot of resources, and things get much more complex when you're talking about sizable content like Dawnguard," reads the statement, "We have tried a number of things, but none solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone. The PS3 is a powerful system, and we're working hard to deliver the content you guys want. Dawnguard is obviously not the only DLC we've been working on either, so this issue of adding content gets even more complicated"

"This is not a problem we're positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content."

As many of you know, Microsoft is trying to integrate all of its platforms like Apple has done. This means that bring Xbox to Windows 8 is a natural extension and something Microsoft has done with the latest operating system. Today, Microsoft has announced the first wave of games from Xbox LIVE that will be available at launch on October 26.

The list is rather extensive, and includes many favorites:

The games will be playable on any Windows 8 device, including laptops, desktops, and tablets. Since these are Xbox games, they will feature in-game achievements just like games on the Xbox console do. They will also take advantage of other features offered through Xbox live such as leaderboards, chat, and multiplayer modes.

Unreal Engine 3 has been ported to run on Windows RT ARM-powered devices, bring full gaming to the ARM market. The port was a joint effort between Epic and NVIDIA and was made available to developers last week. This means that some of your favorite Unreal Engine 3-powered games should be available on Windows RT tablets.

"The Unreal Engine 3-powered 'Epic Citadel' demonstration for Windows RT tablets implements the full DirectX 9 pipeline, with shaders and materials, all running beautifully on Tegra 3," said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. "By porting the full engine as opposed to a modified mobile version, NVIDIA and Epic have made it easy for UE3 developers around the world to bring their best content to Windows RT, Windows 8 and NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processor. Windows RT code is available to licensees from Epic now and we're excited to see the great games they develop with it."

The nice part about this port is that it is the full version that has been ported. It's not some stripped down version, which is good for developers and consumers. It makes porting games easier for developers and it allows consumers to receive the full version of the game and in a much shorter time frame than would otherwise have been required.

It looks like there will be two Call of Duty: Black Ops II special editions to be released this year, sans Call of Duty: Elite premium subscriptions. Late last year when Modern Warfare 3 came out, they featured a twelve month subscription, providing one year worth of DLC content. Black Ops II flips this, meaning you'll have to get it separately.

The two packages are known as the 'Hardened Edition', and the 'Care Package'. The Hardened Edition comes with a soundtrack CD, steelbook case, Xbox Live avatar prop and zombie avatar consume, two collectable coins, and the Nuketown 2025 map for in-game play. The Care Package is pretty damn sweet, sporting an actual remote control MQ-27 Dragonfire Drone and two PlayStation 3 themes, as well as the soundtrack, case, coins and a massive, awesome looking crate-like box to keep it all in.

Which pack would you pick up if you were to buy Black Ops II? The Care Package looks pretty awesome, and I'm not a fan of the latest versions of Call of Duty, yet I'm somehow tempted to get it, just because it looks so damn cool. It has a damned remote control Drone! Come on!

After five years of development, you would have thought that the developers of Guild Wars 2 would have been able to prevent launch day login issues and that they would have learned from other botched launches--Diablo III comes to mind--but apparently they didn't. Since it is an MMO, we'll cut it some slack.

However, since they allowed some to have access to the game over the weekend, that should have offloaded some of the load. Apparently they overestimated how many people would pre-load or end up buying the game on launch day as users have been experiencing login delays and problems all day today.

Guild Wars 2 is set 250 years after the original and players are tasked with reuniting the members of Destiny's Edge. These members are the only people capable of killing the five elder dragons that have been awakened and are now wrecking havoc around Tyria. Have you managed to log into Guild Wars 2? Like it? Hate it? Let us know!

Sony is starting to think differently about how it presents the PlayStation brand to users. Previously, with the PlayStation 1, 2, and 3, only games approved by Sony could be played on the system. Well, at least until modders and hackers got their hands on the system. However, with the massive losses that Sony showed during its last earnings, it's doing everything it can to expand.

Sony has realized that the PlayStation can no longer be a closed platform. They need to open it up and allow other developers to write games and other manufacturers to create controllers that interface with it. In order for it to compete with mobile and PC gaming, these things are a must as they are already available in the competition.

"[The] old model of these very siloed platforms is breaking down a bit," said Ryan, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe head honcho. "PS2 was not a connected device. PSP was not really a proper connected device. PS3 is and PS Vita most definitely is. So we have the ability now to have devices talk to each other. We are having to reset a lot of our thinking. And I am enjoying that. But it is a challenge, because we've been pushing PS1, PS2, and PS3, basically the same way, and then all of a sudden we are like 'You have to forget that and think differently.'"

"Planetary Annihilation brings RTS gameplay to a new generation of players in a way that's never been seen before." Sick of all those games that are produced by massive publishing companies? Thankfully, Kickstarter has come along and provided a way for games to get funding without having to get the OK from these giant companies.

This allows games such as Planetary Annihilation, a game which the developers have said likely wouldn't get funding from a big studio, to be created, the way the developers and players want them to be. At their Kickstarter page, the developers, Uber Entertainment Inc, have provided a video and full description of the game:

Just announced at the Unite conference that is currently being held over in Amsterdam, Unity Technologies have officially announced that they will be supporting both Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8. What does this mean?

This means that developers are not going to have to do much work in order to port high-quality, graphics-intensive games to Windows Phone 8 from the iPhone. The news was confirmed by Edge-Online.com, where it was also revealed by Unity Technologies' CEO, David Helgason, that 53% of mobile game developers already use the Unity3D engine. Helgason said:

If you thought you'd thrashed Diablo III enough, Blizzard have some great news for you. They've just announced a new Paragon system that is set to unleash another 100 levels of potential character advancement on top of the currently 60 level max.

Blizzard's upcoming 1.0.4 patch for Diablo will see level 60 characters in the game begin earning experience toward a new set of "Paragon levels" with each monster they slay. There'll still be the usual character stat upgrades like standard levels, but each Paragon level will see your characters ability to find gold and magical items increase by 3%. Paragon levelers will also receive "a distinctive increasingly impressive border" around their character portrait for every ten levels they earn.

Blizzard's new Paragon level system should definitely create some smiles on Diablo III players, with the developer saying that reaching the top levels "approximates the long-term time investment required to get a level 99 character in Diablo II." Blizzard's upcoming 1.0.4 patch for Diablo III will also include some general balancing and class-based changes, which is set to include new legendary items that are much more unique.

"With less than two months until Dishonored's release, we want players to prepare their weapons of revenge. No, I'm not talking about our website, I'm talking about the rig PC players intend to play the game on." -Bethesda Blog. What they're really saying is they want to make sure your computer can play the game so that you'll buy it!

The game comes with some fairly demanding specifications--minimum NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850 for the GPU--so it's nice that Bethesda is giving users a chance to upgrade their rigs before the game officially launches. Ironically, the only difference between minimum and recommended specifications for the GPU come in the form of memory.

Minimum Spec:

We all know that zombies are all the rage these days, where first-person shooter games seem to feature the brain-eating, vicious creatures in droves. The latest to bring zombies to the genre is Valve with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

CS:GO launches next week, and in collaboration with a mod team over at Plaguefest.com, Valve have released a zombie modification for CS:GO that will be made available alongside the FPS' launch, specifically for PC, on August 21. A blog post over on the official Counter-Strike site has said:

Crysis 3's graphics may look good, but we all know how Crysis 2 turned out, even after Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said just how important PC was to Crytek, and now we're hearing the same things, yet again. Yerli has revealed during an EA livestream that Crysis 3 will push PC gamers' rigs like the first one did.

We all know the next line, "will it run Crysis", was the first comment on most threads, reviews, and websites when a new GPU was launched, it looks like Crysis 3 could do this yet again. Yerli even comments, saying "that joke will be resurrected again with Crysis 3, I'm quite sure about that. There are brutal expectations around the PC version of Crysis 3. So this time we promise to melt down PCs."

I'm disappointed, because I feel like we've heard it all before. Crysis tells us how PC will be looked after, then releases Crysis 2 in DX9-only, with a DX11 patch afterwards. Even then, it didn't look all that great, considering how Crysis launched and virtually blew every other game engine out of the water. The original Crysis also launched in DX10, which was strange that its sequel years later, launched in DX9. This is because Crytek switched from developing for PC only, to multi-platform to cater for those juicy console sales.

Developer Uber Entertainment wants to get out from behind games such as Super Monday Night Combat and create a real-time strategy title called Planetary Annihilation. Uber Entertainment has taken to Kickstarter to finance the $900,000 cost of the game, but they're also taking donations through the game's website, too.

What the best bit of this news is, is that Planetary Annihilation is described as "Total Annihilation-inspired gameplay on a planetary scale". Now, when I was in high school, I would've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours on Total Annihilation, I had a non-cached version of the Celeron 300, and if I reset my computer 20-30 times, it would somehow clock in at 333MHz instead of 300MHz. I would get a decent frame rate boost when there were tonnes of units on screen. I upgraded so many times for this game it wasn't funny. Nostalgia, check.

Planetary Annihilation will give players the chance to create their own maps, and in the case of this planetary game, their own planets and systems, where players will be able to publish and share out to the community. Multiplayer skirmishes are said to have anywhere between two and 40 players, and in order to handle the amount of load on the server, Planetary Annihilation will employ a client-server model to handle the majority of the work on running multiplayer matches, meaning that real-time multiplayer won't be slowed down by slower systems.

A lot of cool announcements are coming out of Gamescon and EA has just joined the party with their announcement that Command & Conquer would become an online, free-to-play game. Taking the best of a popular game and putting online for free, with some restrictions, seems to be the way of the future as more and more companies are doing it.

Command & Conquer will receive regular free updates to keep the content fresh and fun to play. It's not clear if everything will be unlockable through gameplay, or if certain troops and maps will have to be purchased separately. The latter is likely the case in order to provide more income for EA.

Command & Conquer Generals 2, a game previously announced, is going to make up a majority of the new game. The new free-to-play game is based upon the Frostbite 2 engine and features detailed units, fully destructible environments, dynamic physics and high-quality visual effects.

Survival horror third-person shooter, Dead Space 3, has had its released date finally unveiled at Gamescom in Germany. The game is looking at February 5, 2013 release in the US, followed by a European release three days later on February 8.

The February release window was previously teased at E3, but not we have a concrete couple of dates. If you're like me, you'll be hotly anticipating this title, as the previous two titles were some truly standout games. If you haven't played them, you should definitely hit them up.

Dead Space 3 pits its protagonist, Isaac Clarke, into new territory this time round. Instead of being stuck on scary spaceships, you'll be exploring frozen planet called Tau Volantis.

The PlayStation 3 never had any issues play YouTube before, thanks to it's browser with Flash support, but the user experience from a browser is never quite as good as a dedicated app. Last year, YouTube released a similar app for the Xbox and this release is likely to bring that user experience to Sony's PlayStation 3.

Even cooler is the app supports using your smartphone as a remote control for the app. After following a simple pairing process (screenshot below), the device is the controller. The app also supports instant suggestions and will offer suggestions as users type. Additionally, it can pull your subscribed channels.

As YouTube puts the features:

We probably should admit we knew this was coming, and not just TweakTown, but most readers of our site. But, Electronic Arts, the world's second largest game maker, has announced their working with Microsoft to bring games to Windows Phone 8. Electronic Arts' COO, Peter Moore, told Bloomberg:

Game sales haven't been the best for the company this year, where they've been down 37% so far, but the game maker is looking to think out side the box, with that box being the retail box game market. EA wants to get more titles online, onto tablets, and phones. The company believes that Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 8 will be central to this new handset strategy.