Gaming News - Page 1619

Crytek recently announced its new next-generation CryEngine V graphics engine, which is optimized for DirectX 12 and VR gaming. The studio has been busily experimenting with the new engine, and now we have a nice glimpse at some of the fruits of their labor.

With CryEngine V, artists can create amazing environments with realistic effects like volumetric fog without bogging down CPU performance. Crytek lighting artist Damian Stempniewski recently showed off CryEngine V's lighting effects by applying the engine's SVOGI global illumination tech to forest scenes made in older engines. The results are pretty impressive, and Stempniewski says he built the environments only using stock CryEngine V assets.

Crytek's principal 3D/environment artist Finn Meinert Matthiesen spent just 30 minutes in CryEngine V to create the night scenes seen below. Matthiesen was playing around with various lighting and fog feature effects, showing just how versatile and powerful the CryEngine V is.

David Hayter, the immortal voice of Metal Gear Solid's legendary Snake, recently revealed what it was like to work with Hideo Kojima and Konami. And the results aren't so pretty.

Just about every MGS fan thought that David Hayter and Hideo Kojima were best buds, but Hayter revealed that Kojima actually tried to replace him on a separate occasion--way before Hayter was replaced by Keifer Sutherland. "I've got no particular love for Kojima," Hayter said, affirming he won't work with the beloved dev on his new game.

In a recent podcast interview with Game Informer, Hayter says that Hideo Kojima originally wanted Kurt Russell to voice Snake in 2004's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Snake's original character was based on a number of heroic archetypes including Snake Plisskin, portrayed by Kurt Russell played in the iconic Escape from New York. Hayter says that he was forced to re-audition for his role as Snake, even when Russell passed on the opportunity.

William Shatner is an icon in science fiction, not the least because of his role in one of the largest franchises in Sci-Fi history. He's now lent his voice talent to the developers at Elite: Dangerous for a high-quality voice pack that'll replace the already gentle and rather marvelous voice inside the game. Now we can hear Captain Kirk himself narrate our journey, courtesy of HCS voicepacks.

Orion is more than just replacing the in-game ship voice with his commanding presence, but they've also created an in-game tour, of sorts, which is narrated by William Shatner while you go to certain waypoints throughout the galaxy. He's contributed over 1300 different phrases to replace the original voice. This voice pack is officially endorsed by Frontier Developments and a completely legal and authorized mod to put into your game. William Shatner has signed a few posters and his new book that, if you pre-order by April 8th, you'll be entered into a drawing to win. His new book Leonard is part of the prize pool and is a tribute to his co-star, colleague and friend Leonard Nimoy. Check it out, it's a fascinating voice-over that adds a new element, if not terribly exciting, that's quite unique to the game. If anything it can add something from your favorite Sci-Fi franchise to it. When Leonard Nimoy himself narrated portions of Star Trek Online it was a wonderful surprise as his voice lives on in ways that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

Street Fighter V was marred by a terrible launch, with network performance issues and a lack of available content that was a bit off-putting to even the hardcore of fans. We were promised a story-mode that didn't quite materialize into the grand adventure we were told we'd get. It didn't even have the most basic of tutorials to tell the novice how to fight in the new Unreal engined game.

The first patch coming is completely free and will drop on March 28th. This adds a new Challenge Mode, a much needed alternative way to play, and tutorials that demonstrate some of the basic, yet essential components of beating up your friends in-game. The latter will culminate in a trial that's designed to test all of your knowledge. The reward is surviving, for what it's worth. These seem like basic components that should be included from the get-go, but we're consoled by the fact that the underlying structure and graphics were solid when it was released.

That second patch is coming on the 30th and is designed to add more content. Alex, a new playable character, is being added into the mix, someone who was very well-liked back in Street Fighter III. This too will be free, though you'll have to buy the right to use the new character with the in-game currency, Zenny, or your own cash. That system isn't quite ready for primetime, however, but you can "trial" him for free in the meantime. Capcom plans on fully implementing that at a later date, though quite soon.

Yesterday, the graphics options for the PC version of Quantum Break were leaked. While the list was long and impressive, it was missing a few key items: FOV, V-Sync, and anti-aliasing. Well, now developer Remedy has officially unveiled the options, which are identical to the leaked ones except for a few appreciable additions: Graphics Preset, Lock to 30 FPS, and Anti-Aliasing.

Graphics Preset of course lets you be lazy and quickly turn down multiple settings with one toggle for better performance with minimal effort. Lock to 30 FPS means the game won't be capped at 30 FPS after all (unless you want it to be), which is great news. As for why there's no 60 FPS lock, we realize now that as this is a Windows Store game, this means the game will have V-Sync and therefore a 60 FPS lock by default. Finally, anti-aliasing is the much needed inclusion, especially as the game seems to offer only the taxing MSAA. A more performance-friendly option like SMAA or FXAA would be very welcome, but it's sure better than nothing.

While not pictured here, Remedy confirms 4K support.

If you were hoping to get into the action as soon as possible, there may be a few hurdles that prevent the fun from being, well, too much fun. Unless you can read Japanese and are okay with having to go it alone for those quests initially.

It's possible to use an exploit or "loophole", to download Dark Souls III via the Japanese Xbox Store, and it's even in English, except for the menus, but it actually works. That's not the worst problem, though the most persistent until it comes out in NA and you swap out downloads. The other issue is that the multiplayer portion hasn't quite been finished just yet, which could pose a problem for the less experienced of fighters our there.

That issue will be resolved eventually, but the prospect of being able to partner up with your friends to take on the more difficult bosses was particularly tantalizing. It's a hard game, you need your friends to survive in some cases. There'll be a day one patch that'll deliver further optimizations to the game as well as adding in the now missing multiplayer and cooperative aspect, though you'll have to wait until April 12th for that.

The more I see Doom in action, the more I realized just how much I've missed its bloody carnage. The latest footage shows off a tasty look at the kind of fast-paced mayhem you'll be able to wreak in multiplayer, and gives us a glimpse at the coveted BFG in action.

Bethsoft recently showed off all of Doom's multiplayer modes, and now we get a fresh look at the kinds of weapons and powerups we can expect to wield on the hellish arena.

The new footage teases the different kinds of playable demons available in the Evolve-esque Demon Mode like the ferocious Hell Baron or the ultra-quick Prowler. Then there's powerups--Doom wouldn't be Doom without powerups. This time around we can expect full camo and a brutal one-shot kill powerup, plus two unrevealed boosters. Last but not least is the immensely satisfying power weapons: turn enemies into slabs of sliced meat with the chainsaw, or annihilate them on an atomic level with the BFG.

Along with Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare is working on a secret new IP--and both of them are looking "stunning".

According to BioWare design and art dev Alistair McNally, the studio's mysterious unannounced IP is currently in a playable state, proving the devs are making significant strides in the new game. While the gaming community scratches their heads trying to figure out the new IP, McNally actually revealed it at GDC 2016--although in a subtle way that no one noticed.

So what exactly is BioWare cooking up? Thanks to a recent job listing, the new secret IP isn't so secret. BioWare is hiring a new server engineer to create a backend for a its new IP, and mentions "extensive online components". So we could be looking at a MMORPG of some sort, but since it's a new IP, it won't be set in existing Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or Star Wars universes. Check out the Secret IP thread on the BioWare forums for more tidbits.

Final Fantasy XV is a treat on the eyes, with the wildly stylized hair and well-designed backdrops. But being a graphical showcase of what Square Enix is capable of producing as the primary developer also means that it has the potential of running a bit slower. But considering the genre and the type of action on screen, the targeted framerate will be 30FPS, for that cinematic feel, and because it's probably all the consoles can manage at higher resolutions.

That's at least their objective. At the moment, the game sometimes dips below that target, but they believe that further optimizations can help keep things well within 30FPS with no trouble. It's possible, however, that they may not be able to hit that target enough of the time for it to be viable, in which they might have to do something else completely to satiate fans. The final resolution that it'll be running hasn't been revealed yet, but it's looking more likely that it won't be 1080P if they want to hit that 30FPS target.

The game engine they're using, the Luminous Studio engine, is a very capable and impressive piece of technology. It's been the underlying engine that underpinned the Witch Chapter 0 [cry] demo that was shown off at Microsoft BUILD last year, with four Titan X's rendering a scene filled with 8Kx8K textures and nearly 63 million polygons. One Titan X was only able to push it to 35.9FPS, so imagine how even a less potent version of the engine would fair on the hardware inside the Xbox One and the PS4. Even a mere 5 million polygons per frame is still impressive, and not easy to render considering the other effects that are put on top of that. It'll be interesting to see how well it runs when it's finally released. Of course we'll have a performance analysis as soon as is feasible on the PC.

Like its JRPG predecessors, Final Fantasy 15 will be a pretty meaty game with plenty of content to chew on.

In a recent livestream with Famitsu, Square Enix game director Hajime Tabata confirmed that Final Fantasy 15's main story will take about 50 hours to beat. This is up from the original 40-hour estimate, with Tabata citing that the final game has "more volume" than originally projected.

Tabata continues by saying Final Fantasy 15's frame rate hasn't been fully optimized just yet. The devs are targeting 30FPS for the final release, but the current build often breaks the 30FPS threshold. Square Enix expects to lock down the frame rate before the game goes gold, but if they're unable to hit a consistent 30FPS Tabata affirms the studio will "do something different".