Gaming News - Page 1612

Saints Row Undercover was going to be a hand-held exclusive on Sony's PSP, until the project was cancelled, but Volition is more than happy to show-off the progress they made.

Originally Volition wanted to just port over Saints Row 2 onto the PSP, but that idea evolved into a full-blown PSP exclusive that could better take advantage of the handheld form-factor and to scale down to the PSP's horsepower level.

Strangely it seems that the majority of the staff at Volition didn't even know it existed until an associate video editor, Josh Stinson, found it by accident while rummaging through a storage room. Thankfully, the senior staff have no problem letting the public know about this would-be project of yesteryear.

A very interesting themed hotel seems to have sprung up in Amsterdam recently, being dedicated to providing a gaming friendly atmosphere and experience.

This so called Arcade Hotel has 36 different rooms in the heart of De Pijp area of Amsterdam, that include consoles of various types in your room. Room service also includes game rental for those consoles, and any console you happen to bring along with. And if you somehow get bored of playing games, there's always the comic library you can visit as well.

But more than just allowing gamers a place to unwind, it's also a place to get together with like-minded individuals. This is a gamer paradise. And if you're hungry, never fear, for this special hotel also pretty nice restaurant with food from local farms. They'r especially excited about their cheese products.

Fallout fans agree: New Vegas is one of the best games in the franchise. But where's the sequel? Surely Bethesda couldn't lose by betting on Obsidian again, and according to lead writer Eric Fenstermaker, the studio would love to make another Fallout game.

In a recent Twitter post, Eric Fenstermaker was asked if Obsidian would consider making another Fallout game, maybe something like Fallout: New Orleans. "I'm always up for working on a Fallout. I think most of us generally are. Really fun property to work with," he said.

While this isn't a confirmation, it's great to see that Obsidian still wants to tackle the series. Fallout gamers have been clamoring for the devs to spin their magic on a sequel for years now, and Obsidian even drew up ideas and plans for Fallout New Vegas 2 back in 2013.

You won't be able to race against yourself in ghost mode in the newly re-released Mario Kart 64 on the Wii U. Just as it was missing in the Wii version, so too is it here.

The ghost feature lets you race solo against your best time, sometimes being a pretty good motivator. But the Wii U Mario Kart 64 version can't actually save any of your ghost data, because normally it would save that to the N64 controller pak memory card. The same problem was present with the original Wii re-release.

Nintendo has been unwilling so far to provide a work-around, and it might mean that any N64 game that absolutely requires the memory pak might not be able to work properly unless Nintendo modifies the game. Until then, you'll have to remember your time and race against an imaginary ghost instead.

Announced in November, backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One was almost like the holy grail for some. Despite being a newer console, there're still just so many fantastic games on the 360 that bear replaying, since a lot still had a plethora of games for the older console.

The library has expanded to well over 100 games, but performance issues might make some of them nearly unplayable. Digital Foundry did a test of every major Xbox 360 game that's available right now and found some surprising results. In general, performance is much improved since it was first available, but some games still perform much more poorly than they do naively on the 360.

Halo: Reach is the biggest disappointment with framerate that sometimes dip well below 15FPS. An unacceptable experience. But the underlying emulation might not be optimized for every game yet. Gears of War: Judgement also suffers a similar problem, suffering from horrible framerates that make it unplayable.

While Microsoft's Xbox One continues to move sizable volume in North America, other regions like Japan are completely disinterested in the all-in-one. Case in point: out of the nation's 127 million strong population, only 99 bought an Xbox One last week.

According to Japanese site 4Gamer, Microsoft only sold a measly 99 Xbox Ones in Japan from Jan. 11 to Jan. 17. For the sake of comparison, over 30,000 New 3DS handhelds were sold during the same period, along with 25,592 PlayStation 4 consoles. That's a pretty serious thrashing, but remember that Japan has traditionally been dominated by mobile and handheld gaming, with Sony's native PlayStation consoles for living room gaming.

This news isn't really surprising considering the Xbox One was pretty much DOA when it launched in the region. During its launch, Microsoft's all-in-one only moved some 25,000 units in its first four days of availability. The PlayStation 4, on the other hand, utterly smashed that number with over 300,000 sales during its launch.

Atari is launching a new compilation of classic games on Steam sometime this Spring. The Atari Vault will include a lot of the great classics you may love or hate, with Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Tempest and even Warlords making the cut.

The new Atari Vault is supposed to have full support for the Steam Controller so you can blast your enemies on a 2D plane with better precision. Atari is also adding in multiplayer support with a Steam leaderboard to help you compete.

This version of the Atari Vault is being developed by Code Mystics who has a lot of experience with bringing old-school Atari games to life again. This compilation will be playable at PAX South which is happening later this month in San Antonia Texas.

Bungie's sequel to its lukewarm MMO-style shooter Destiny has reportedly been delayed, with further rumblings that the developers may not know what's coming in the pipeline.

Many gamers feel that Destiny is less of a game and more of a kind of psychological experiment. Bungie has caught a lot of flak over the game's lifetime due to overpriced, insubstantial content, and now the devs fail to properly communicate with their dwindling playerbase. Amid this transparency breakdown comes massive speculation, some of which appears to be right: Bungie's plans for Destiny aren't set in stone. Thus, Destiny 2 has likely been delayed past its September 2016 projection.

At the same time, no one's sure what's going on with Destiny. That's basically the main problem. Bungie has this insanely ambitious idea, but things keep on moving around. First the Halo creators had a 10-year "Comet" roadmap for future content, but that plan ultimately evolved and shifted into a new microtransaction-funded model. Bungie promises that this new model will launch free, substantial new content, but there's been no announcements or reveals.

Many people dream of a career in making huge games like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, but an ex-Ubisoft developer dispels the fantasy and reveals the true reality of AAA games development, and it's not so pretty.

I've often wondered what it's like working with hundreds of other developers on massive projects. In a recent blog post, an ex-Ubisoft games architect known simply as Maxime answers many of these questions and shares why he left his cushy, well-paying job at one of the most renown studios in the world so he could go indie. The result is a truly eye-opening story about the inherently flawed nature of big-budget games development.

According to Maxime, big projects are inherently unfulfilling because no one feels like they're making an real impact on a game. When there's a huge team of people, the work itself is reduced to repetitive gruntwork, severely cutting off that personal pride you feel in your creations. There's also an incredible breakdown of communication, meaning most of your team members will be ignored, regardless if they have great ideas or not. Over time, motivation wanes and the roaring inferno of passion you once felt dies down do a flickering flame...until you quit, or come to terms with your reality. Maxime compares AAA games development to an assembly line on a factory: soulless, rote, and never-ending.

Rocket League hasn't quite release on the Xbox One just yet, which means it might not be the success that developer Psyonix wants it to be. In order to attract as many new players as possible, they're bringing some exclusive Sunset Overdrive themed stuff into the game.

It might not be much, but they've added in an Overcharge boost which is surprisingly delightful sounding, and the Fizzie car topper, shown above. "In short, Rocket League would naturally fit with the world of Sunset Overdrive," says Marcus Smith, the creative director for Sunset Overdrive. One might be about a hipster zombie apocalypse and the other about vehicle-borne soccer (everyone not in NA), they're both whimsical and quite entertaining with their particular styles.

The Sunset Overdrive flair is the latest exclusive content to appear for the Xbox One, following on the footsteps of Halo and Gears of War themed exclusive in-game items.