Gaming News - Page 1624

The open-beta for Battleborn is coming on April 8th for the PS4 and the 13th for the PC and Xbox One. Both will last all the way until the 28th, but only one of those platforms will be getting the full progression system and all 25 heroes available. And it isn't the PC.

Gearbox Software is leaning heavily towards those that wish to partake on the PS4, letting you enjoy more content than is going to be available on the Xbox One or the PC. If you're able to, you're allowed to progress to the top level and grab, and use, the full compliments of gear available in the game. And you can do that with every hero that's been announced for the MOBA so far.

All platforms will be able to enjoy two story-mode missions and have access to two of the three different competitive multiplayer modes across two maps; Overgrowth and Paradise. The two story missions can both be played completely solo, or taking advantage of co-op play. You'll get the chance to take on the Algorithm mission that was shown in the closed, technical test from last year. The second missions is called Voids Edge, and pits you (and maybe another) against a veritable invasion force while you race to blow up a portal.

Nintendo may reveal its mysterious new NX console during its next investor's meeting on April 27, claims a renowned industry insider.

Despite tons of info from the rumor mill, Nintendo has been careful to keep official details of its new NX console quite vague, but the Japanese games maker will soon break the silence with a full reveal of the hardware. That's according to NeoGAF insider Orgen, who says that fans will "get more NX info before E3", and that a reveal during Nintendo's next April 27 shareholders meeting would "match the timeframes". Orgen rightly predicted Pokemon Black and White 2, so his claims may be accurate.

"You can bet that you're going to get more NX info before E3. I think it'll be more of a full reveal than a 'we're working on it, and we'll see more at E3'," Orgen said in the NeoGAF post. "I don't know if it's going to be the result briefing or some sort of direct but the 27th of April would match the timeframes."

The fate of Driveclub is no longer a mystery, as it's been revealed by Jamie Brayshaw, the community manager for the game, that it'll live on under the auspicious care of a team (hopefully bolstered by members of Evolution Studios) at PlayStation itself.

In an open letter to fans on Twitter, the Sr. Community Manager thanked the community and told us all that while Evolution Studios is no longer, the best is yet to come, of Driveclub and likely of the people from the now defunct studio. It's still not clear whether we'll see more, regular, DLC in the future or if the new team will be maintaining the servers and looking to fix bugs and glitches that come along. Whether or not there's still plans for a sequel, we don't know. That certainly shouldn't be ruled out regardless of the circumstances of the studio. The game was a success and the consolidation of the personnel could lead to rethinking that new game. Or more DLC and expansions.

This is good news for those that still quite enjoy the racing simulator, which happens to feature some of the best rain effects in any racing game on console.

Valve is doing some Spring Cleaning in Dota 2, getting rid of the fat and all those dust bunnies that have built up over the years. That is, they've detailed an absolutely massive update that's been designed to make some significant changes throughout just about every aspect of the game.

Chief among those are fixes that address some quality-of-life issues that have been annoyances, yet never quite taen care of in any previous update. There are now neutral spawn indicators, where you can view Neutral Creep spawn boxes when selecting Observer and Sentry Wards to place on the map. Camera control hotkeys are also making it into the update to help make switching between views a bit easier. The settings menu has been streamlined and the armory has been vastly expanded and updated as well. They've made nearly 200 different fixes in this particular update, all of which are shown below.

IO Interactive is asking a very important question to setup for the very first Hitman interactive contract. Who would you rather kill? Gary Busey, or Gary Cole? The video they've prepared features the two Gary's as they explain just how terrible they actually are with, hopefully, fictitious arguments.

This "Choose Your Hit" campaign is a way to kick-off their dynamic elusive targets contract mode, which puts high-profile individuals in the game for a limited amount of time. Those individuals will be decidedly harder to take care of due to not having nearly as much time to prepare, or redo a mission should something go awry.

You can head over to the Choose Your Hit website and see more media and reasons why you should choose each Gary, and there's going to be more videos coming in the future from the two, explaining why they're the best one for you to choose. The winner will be decided with the use of the hashtags #KillBusey or #KillCole.

With the Nintendo NX on the way, Japanese news outlet The Nikkei delivered not-so-surprising reports that Nintendo would cease production of the Wii U console in 2016. The Japanese games maker stepped in to squash these reports, putting Wii U fans at ease.

"That's [Nikkei's report], not an official announcement. We plan to continue production through the rest of the year," Nintendo said in a statement to ITMedia. The company's response was quite vague and only confirmed that the Nintendo NX isn't going to instantly kill off the Wii U when it launches in 2016.

Given that the NX will be compatible and interact with the Wii U and existing Nintendo hardware, it makes sense that the current console would still be in production. That being said, the NX will be a "very different experience" than the WIi U. Nintendo continues to push out new Wii U games regardless of extremely underwhelming sales, but big upcoming hits like Zelda Wii U have been delayed to coincide with the NX's 2016 launch.

Some more sad news rocks the industry as the developer of Driveclub, Evolution Studios has been shut down. Their parent company, Sony, has reviewed their assets and have determined that it's in their best interest to shut the studio down.

The company had an internal review process as part of a restructuring and has determined that there is some redundancy in the staff and function at Evolution Studios. "Regular reviews take place throughout SCE Worldwide Studios, ensuring that the resources that we have in such a competitive landscape can create and produce high quality, innovative and commercially viable projects," Sony said in a statement. "As part of this process we have reviewed and assessed all current projects and plans for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to the European studios structure. It has been decided that Evolution Studio will close."

Some of the positions will be shifted to other internal studios, but as is the case the majority of time, it also means that there will be some redundancies and thus layoffs as a result. "It is regrettable that this decision will lead to compulsory redundancies. We accept that this decision will mean that we risk losing high calibre staff but by focusing on other Studios that already have exciting new projects in development we believe we will be in a stronger position going forward and able to offer the best possible content of the highest quality for our consumers."

The renowned Cryengine gets an upgrade with a new, fifth version, as shown off in the new video below. Some of it is developer-centric and won't interest you, but quite a bit will be exciting to gamers of all kinds.

Graphically, Cryengine V offers support for DirectX 12 and VR and advanced particles and clouds with much less of a CPU hit, among other things. The latter you can see an example of in the video; the clouds are pretty realistic and impressive, particularly those seen in the distance.

In an intriguing twist, Crytek has adopted the pay what you want model with this version, with the option to contribute as much as 70% of your payment to its Indie Development Fund, much like the Humble Bundle setup. For more information, head to the website.

Rise of the Tomb Raider has a very good base-game story, with a lot to explore and do in former Soviet Russia. But the final piece of DLC is going to add something that was clearly missing; zombies. Or zombie-like creatures that seem to be very blood-thirsty, for both your death and likely your brains as well. Even though that isn't explicitly mentioned. Zombies, in some form or another, seem to be a tradition with DLC.

The Cold Darkness will be the absolute last content pack coming along and can be purchased separately from all the other DLC. In this, though, there are nightmarish predators that are actually soldiers from an abandoned Cold War base in Russia. The Trinity soldiers have been transformed and are extremely dangerous. This'll present new dangers and challenges to Lara as she has to shut down the decommissioned base.

It's $9.99 by itself for the new DLC, or you can opt to get the Season Pass for $29.99, which includes the entire set of DLC that's been released thus far. The newest, and last, will be available on March 29th 2016 via Steam, the Windows Store or through your Xbox One's store as well. Good luck with those zombies.

Sometimes it stings a little when you see a game that was supposed to be, but never quite made it out of development. Especially one like the cancelled Superman game from Factor 5, best known for their very well done Star Wars games. It could have been a great game, should have been. But it's no more. You can watch some footage from the unreleased game, however.

The game was being developed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and even the Wii, though it really never exited the concept stage, of the most part. A good portion of Metropolis has been created and a number of models to showoff the ideas they were working on, as a tie-in to the also cancelled sequel to Superman Returns.

At the stage that it was finally left, a story hadn't been created yet, though it would be fairly simple to translate any number of different story arcs from the comics into a viable backdrop. Factor 5 was working on finding and developing interesting gameplay elements to add to the game, and had some very interesting Superman specific ideas. Of course there would be a slew of his enemies that you would eventually face-off against, and you'd be able to grapple with them while flying furiously through buildings, with destruction being dynamically rendered in real-time in your wake.