Gaming - Page 129

The original Doom from 1993 not only helped define a new genre and a decade of gaming, but it has gone on to become one of the most widely ported games of all time. And that's without counting all of the unofficial ports of Doom that have brought it everything from a calculator to a heart monitor and Samsung washing machines.

During the 1990s, the game was a cultural phenomenon. A defining moment for PC gaming, the original Doom also made its way to consoles like the 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis, the Sony PlayStation, the ill-fated Atari Jaguar, and the 16-bit icon that was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES.

Although the SNES was a pioneer in 3D gaming, thanks to the likes of Star Fox and the SuperFX chip, bringing Doom to the console was still considered an "impossible port." Fast forward to 2025, and the original programmer Randal Linden, Limited Run Games, and Bethesda have teamed up to deliver the definitive Doom for the SNES. And yes, it arrives on a cartridge that you can slot into the 16-bit console.

The ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld has been modded, adding much more battery life thanks to the use of the ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop battery, and an SSD update. Check it out:

In a new video from YouTuber Miner TechTips, he upgraded the 2023 ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld to the ROG Ally X specs. The original ROG Ally features a 40Wh battery, but he replaced it with a 90Wh battery that he used from an ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop.

The modification to the ASUS ROG Ally required physically replacing the battery, but because of its far larger size, he 3D-printed a custom back panel. The additional space allowed the YouTuber to upgrade the SSD to a full M.2 2280 form factor SSD, using a special 90-degree bracket.

Oblivion Remastered was surprise dropped on April 22 and gained a massive amount of attention from long-time fans of the series, and seemingly new players who have heard about the game that put Bethesda on the map, but couldn't play the original due to its age.

Bethesda gave Oblivion more than a facelift with its Remaster. The studio behind the overhaul, Virtuos, added new systems, modernized the combat, and added a pretty fresh coat of paint, breathing new life into the classic title. Most importantly, for players returning to the game, Virtuos captured the essence of what made Oblivion, Oblivion, keeping many of the same old bugs, quirks, and hidden elements.

However, there was a common complaint by players, and that revolved around the difficulty settings for the title, specifically the gulf between "Adept" and "Expert". Players reported there being an intense jump between these two difficulty settings, with Adept players reporting they want the combat to be a little bit more difficult, while Expert players are reporting that the combat is overwhelmingly difficult.

Halo Studios has reportedly been hit by the Microsoft layoffs that impacted as many as 9,000 employees across various companies falling under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella.

A developer from Halo Studios has informed Engadget that "at least five employees" from Halo have been fired as part of the recent sweeping Microsoft layoffs, following employees receiving an email last week from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer about incoming "organization shifts" intended to "increase agility and effectiveness." According to the report, affected Halo Studios employees were brought into a meeting with team leaders and informed about the incoming layoffs.

The developer also informed the publication that the environment at Halo Studios is quite tense, even before the scheduled layoffs. The reason for the tense environment is that the current state of the new Halo game isn't great, with that title currently undergoing significant development struggles. The developer said, "I don't think anybody is really happy about the quality of the product right now. There's been a lot of tension and pep talks trying to rally folks to ship."

Amazon Prime members can grab some compelling games for free this month, as the retail giant has pulled out the big guns due to the Prime Day sale.

The freebies for July include Football Manager 2024 and the very much underrated Marvel's Midnight Suns, so there's a heavy dose of strategy, planning, and thinking between those two games.

Amazon is also offering Amnesia: The Dark Descent for free, and the classic Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

Last week, reports surfaced from Call of Duty: WWII PC players that an exploit existed that allowed hackers to infiltrate player PCs mid-game and take control of them.

Some players who were experiencing this problem reported hackers taking control of their PC and opening up pornographic videos and even Notepad with a message informing them they have been hacked and need to contact some named users about the hack. Players who noticed this pointed to a Remote Command Execution (RCE) exploit, which, for those unfamiliar, enables a malicious actor to execute code on a target device. Essentially, RCE exploits mean a bad actor can install malware, viruses, or even harvest data from the target PC.

Reports of Call of Duty: WWII being vulnerable to an RCE exploit increased substantially after it was added to Game Pass, presumably due to the number of people it became readily available to, a small portion of whom would have taken advantage of the RCE exploit. Now, Activision has responded by taking Call of Duty: WWII offline, with TechCrunch reporting that an individual with knowledge of the topic said Activision took the game offline due to the reports of hacking while it fixes the issue.

War Thunder requires no introduction; the free-to-play, military-themed, massively multiplayer game has been offering players the opportunity to immerse themselves in real-world aviation, armored vehicles, and naval craft for over a decade. In that time, the game has received countless updates, with its latest, the Leviathans major update, adding real-time path-traced lighting to the game.

Now, when most gamers hear the phrase "path tracing," their mind goes directly to a high-end GPU like the GeForce RTX 5080. Granted, Path Tracing is extremely hardware-intensive, but War Thunder developer Gaijin Entertainment is limiting the technology to Path Traced Global Illumination, or PTGI. Alongside the new path-traced lighting, the studio is embracing new tech to boost ray-tracing performance.

This includes support for Opacity Micro Maps (OMM) and Shader Execution Reordering, which are currently included in the latest preview version of the DirectX SDK. War Thunder already features ray-traced shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion, and with the new Path Traced Global Illumination, the game looks even more impressive.

NVIDIA's DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation arrived earlier this year with the GeForce RTX 50 Series of RTX Blackwell gaming GPUs, and it has been a game changer for image quality and performance. With over 120 titles featuring either native DLSS 4 support or DLSS 4 support available via the DLSS Override feature in the NVIDIA App, we can add three more PC games to the DLSS 4-compatible list this week.

First up, there's the player-driven fantasy of Mortal Online 2, which offers players a sandbox world with no rules and the freedom to build, trade, build houses, explore, loot, and of course, raise more than a few swords in massive PvP battles. Developer Star Vault AB notes that the Unreal Engine 5-powered title offers the largest draw distance or "visibility range" for any MMO.

With the arrival of its first major expansion, Reckoning, Mortal Online 2 is adding DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support to boost performance. It's worth noting that the enhanced DLSS 4 Super Resolution is available for all GeForce RTX gamers, while the new Multi Frame Generation is exclusive to the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

Games industry analyst Chris Zukowski has shared a few choice words about PC gamers, specifically those on Steam, in a new blog post. "The amazing thing about Steam and its player base is that they buy games they aren't going to play," Chris writes in the opening, as part of a message to game developers. "More than likely, the person buying your game is not going to play it."

The post makes the point that, in the current entertainment field, with services like Netflix and HBO Max, alongside live-service games like Fortnite, game developers are competing for people's time in a fragmented market. However, when it comes to Steam, Valve's platform is so successful and lucrative for game developers of all sizes because the audience is "full of super die-hard hobbyists."

This means it's more about collecting games and building a library without worrying about "how much money they are spending." Granted, it doesn't hurt that Steam's annual Summer Sale (which is still live) brings significant discounts to a wide range of games annually.

MSI's new Claw A8 gaming handheld has been benchmarked, with AMD's new Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU tested against Intel's Lunar Lake processor.

In a new video from a Chinese content creator, MSI's new Claw A8 gaming handheld was tested as the new handheld has launched on Chinese e-commerce platforms, but it hasn't officially launched anywhere else. Inside, the new Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU has 8C/16T of Zen 5 processing power at up to 5.0GHz clock speeds, and 16 Compute Units of new RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU power.

This is a big upgrade over the lackluster Intel Meteor Lake processor inside the original MSI Claw gaming handheld, but the company did upgrade its Claw to the newer Intel Lunar Lake architecture, which is superior thanks to its improved Xe2 GPU architecture.

Romero Games hasn't shut down, and now it's looking to shop its new first-person shooter to other games publishers.

News of Romero Games' demise has been exaggerated. It's true that the Xbox layoffs led to the cancellation of Romero's new first-person shooter, but since that game is set in a new IP, the studio retains the right to bring the project to another publisher. And that's what they intend to do--the group is currently weighing publishing offers.

Essentially, Romero Games was working with an unnamed publisher (believed to be Bethesda) on a new first-person game. This project wasn't even announced yet, and the publisher pulled funding because of the Xbox layoffs. Romero's game is now in limbo, a space in between funding rounds. The funding was cut, and Romero Games did indeed have to lay off some of its workers.

Yesterday was July 7, aka Bungie Day, and Destiny 2 community lead dmg04 shared an optimistic message to fans.

If you ask fans, Destiny 2 isn't in the best place right now. But to be fair, the same could be said about Bungie itself. Hit with mass layoffs, another art plagiarism scandal, and the indefinite delay of its new game Marathon, Bungie's internal morale is reportedly at an all-time low.

This schism has affected Destiny 2's development, with content being sparse and drawn out in seasonal events, updates, and expansions. There's also the potential looming threat of Sony's buyout clause, which states that Bungie could lose its independence to Sony if the developer fails to meet financial targets. While Sony does technically own Bungie after the $2.7 billion acquisition, the Destiny developer operates as its own entity.

Bethesda could be working on more than one new Fallout game, and it sounds like Fallout 3 remastered could be among the lineup.

Bethesda parent ZeniMax was recently hit by the Xbox cuts, leading to various team layoffs, the cancellation of an important MMORPG project, and the departure of a studio director. The company is currently riding the strong current of Oblivion remaster sales alongside Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76.

While Bethesda Game Studios continues work on The Elder Scrolls 6, there are now reports that work is underway on multiple Fallout games. Bethesda has said in the past that Elder Scrolls 6 comes first, then the next numbered Fallout, so one of the new games isn't the mainline Fallout 5.

Naughty Dog has just released a surprise update for The Last of Us Part II Remastered, which introduces a new mode to allow players to experience the game in a brand new way.

In a new post on the PlayStation Blog, Naughty Dog has explained that the new mode enables players to experience the game's story in linear order for the first time. The update adds "Chronological Mode" and is currently available on PS5 and PC via Steam/Epic Games Store in Patch 2.10 and Patch 1.5, respectively. The update includes a fresh perspective on Ellie and Abby's interwoven narratives that lets players observe cause-and-effect moments as they unfold naturally.

The idea behind this mode is to add a bit more value to The Last of Us Part II Remastered for players who have already completed the game, as Naughty Dog still recommends first-time players to experience the game in its non-linear fashion.

PlayStation has announced via a new blog post that it will be hosting a dedicated State of Play event for the upcoming release of Ghost of Yotei, the spiritual successor to the Ghost of Tsushima.

The State of Play event is only around the corner, with PlayStation writing that it is scheduled to take place on July 10, 2025, at 2 pm PT / 5 pm ET / 10 pm BST / 11 pm CEST. The event won't be a full-length State of Play and will only run for 20 minutes, but it will include a deep dive into Ghost of Yotei's gameplay and will feature the minds behind the title, such as the creative directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell.

The blog post also confirmed the presentation will include a showcase of important aspects of Ghost of Yotei, such as weapons, ways players can personalize their journey, and new modes. For those who don't know, Ghost of Yotei is scheduled to launch on October 2, 2025, and will be carrying the burden of performing extremely well for Sony's first-party fall line-up, as currently PlayStation hasn't got anything else releasing in the second half of the year.

Microsoft recently laid off 9,000 employees across its business, with many of them being part of its gaming division, Xbox. Following these firings, rumors have begun swirling about what put pressure on the company to let go of as many employees as it did. Fingers are being pointed at Xbox Game Pass, the seemingly too-good-to-be-true subscription model.

The rumors about Game Pass not being a profitable business model kicked into high gear when Arkane, the founder of Prey and Dishonored, Raphael Colantonio, said that "Xbox Game Pass is an unsustainable model damaging the industry for a decade," and the only way it exists is that its subsidized by Microsoft's "infinite money." Notably, the chief of Microsoft's gaming division, Phil Spencer, has previously stated in interviews that Game Pass remains a profitable part of the Xbox business.

However, that profitability was thrown into question following the comments from Colantonio, comments from Christopher Dring, the Editor-in-Chief of The Game Business, which were later rectified, and the general suspicion of how Microsoft is making any profit with titles such as Starfield releasing day-one on Game Pass, but having an approximate $400 million development budget. Dring previously stated that Game Pass is considered profitable because Microsoft doesn't account for the cost of developing first-party games, such as Starfield.

Sonic Adventure, developed by Sega and Sonic Team, made its debut in 1998 for the Dreamcast console. It was the first game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to feature full 3D gameplay, similar to Super Mario 64 and other 3D platformers from the 1990s, and is widely regarded as one of the best games in the series by fans.

Sonic Adventure RTX Legacy Version is a little different from the usual RTX remix projects we've seen, as it adds real-time Path Tracing to the original Dreamcast version of the game, alongside AI-enhanced textures. This means it requires SADXModLoader and Dreamcast Conversion to run, which can be found on the ModDB page.

Created by a single modder, reV, the mod encompasses the entire Sonic Adventure game for Dreamcast, with only a handful of areas including the game's original textures. In addition to full ray tracing, the mod also utilizes RTX Remix's PBR system, or physically based rendering, to update materials and surfaces for enhanced realism.

Since Xbox decided to ax thousands of jobs under its Xbox Game Studios umbrella, a debate has emerged online regarding the profitability of Xbox Game Pass and whether or not it's beneficial to companies and studios that support it.

In the past, Xbox has claimed that Game Pass has remained a profitable aspect of the Xbox business, but that would depend on how that profitability was measured. According to Chris Dring, The Game Business Editor-in-Chief, who responded to our own Derek Strickland on X, Xbox considers Game Pass profitable because it doesn't take into account the costs associated with developing first-party games, such as Starfield.

Dring suggests that if those development costs were taken into account, the profitability of Game Pass could be very different. In the social media post, Dring writes, "Costs associated with the Game Pass business is fees paid to third-parties, marketing, service costs... and by that measure, it's profitable." Adding, "What they don't count is the lost revenue that Xbox's first-party studios are seeing as a result of the service. I have to imagine if first-party studios received similar compensation, that profitability might not be correct."

NVIDIA is currently holding an RTX Remix Mod Contest, where it's giving away $50,000 in cash prizes to some of the most impressive PC gaming mods. RTX Remix is NVIDIA's groundbreaking modding and remastering tool, allowing modders to add real-time Path Tracing or Full Ray Tracing to a game, with new assets and a suite of AI tools at their disposal.

Black Mesa, a fan-made remake of the original Half-Life, is widely regarded as the best way to experience Valve's iconic shooter, and its Steam release has received Gabe's blessing. With Half-Life 2 RTX being one of the most impressive RTX Remix projects currently in development, we can now add Black Mesa Remixed to the list, as it adds some truly stunning Path Traced or Fully Ray Traced lighting to the opening sections of the game.

Uploaded to ModDB by modders xoxor4d and Beylerbey, it features remastered textures, high-quality meshes, and jaw-dropping RTX lighting. As this was released specifically for the RTX Remix Mod Contest, it's a demo that encompasses the iconic inbound tram ride and a few laboratory sections of the game.

EA has yet to officially reveal the new Battlefield game, presumably called Battlefield 6, but as the title continues to go through its public testing phase, details are emerging online.

It was only last week that details about the upcoming Battlefield 6 battle royale map surfaced, with a short video (since removed) of the start of the battle royale map, presumably what players will see right before they start plummeting to the ground with their teammates. Now, details about the Battlefield 6 campaign have leaked online, with reports pointing to the BF1 Telegram group as the source, as well as datamining efforts.

While no specific details have been revealed, information such as objectives, locations, team name, nationalities, weapons, and vehicles has been leaked. The details below were published by mp1st.com, which also stated the development team behind the single-player campaign was headed by a newly formed EA first-party studio, Ridgeline Games, which also had Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto as the studio chief. However, in early 2024, Lehto left EA, and Ridgeline Games was shut down by EA without even releasing a single product.