Gaming News - Page 1638

When Remedy Games trademarked "Alan Wake: The Return", the gaming world flipped out--it looked like we'd finally get the Alan Wake sequel we've been waiting on for ages. Sadly, Remedy has stepped in to squash the hype.

Alan Wake: The Return isn't a sequel, it's just a spoof serial TV show that'll be featured within Quantum Break's live-action segments. Basically, Remedy is having fun overlapping the two franchises in a metaphysical way--think of the recurring Invitation to Love TV serial in Twin Peaks, or the Lords and Ladies show in Max Payne. In Quantum Break's universe, Alan Wake is just a television show instead of a real-life person.

So why the trademark? According to Remedy's Sam Lake, the team had to cover all the bases. "A big part of the trademarking process all in all is the legalities of it and just making sure everything is covered. So, there's no real news about anything future Alan Wake-related."

It's no secret that there's a general, and seemingly persistent, level of saltiness in the air when it comes to gaming. Positivity exists, but it's not as prevalent as it should, or could be. Akamai has your back, and they're working towards finding a solution to your problems, making gaming the fun past time that it should be.

We all get frustrated with gaming at one point of another, with issues or problems that are out of our own hands that can eventually contribute to that feeling of disappointment that leads to abandoning a once enjoyable game. The player experience is a very important aspect of gaming, and it extends through the entire process, from signing up to play, downloading the game to the core mechanics inside. Perhaps one of the most

Akamai is no stranger to the gaming community. They happen to have close ties with around 23 of the top 25 gaming companies around the world. They're the force behind the delivery of a lot of the content that you consume, so for their business to be successful, they need to know and understand precisely what's frustrating us and driving us away from games. In fact, it's been found that something as simple as removing a "play" button on the games launcher can lead to a 10% different in people who continue through to actually play. Those small changes can inevitably lead to huge jumps in the quality of life, things that gamers may unconsciously be prejudiced against.

Star Fox Zero didn't quite get the fan reaction that Nintendo was looking for when it was revealed at E3 in 2015. It was missing an important ingredient that just didn't make it as attractive a game as it probably, by rights, should be. It's Star Fox, at its core is an enjoyable arcade shooter with an over the top story and lovable characters.

The Star Fox they showed wasn't any of that. In fact, according to the developer, Platinum, the game on screen at E3 was the result of a few experiments with the Wii U controller and a screen. It ended up being themed on the famous fox, but it wasn't really what we know deep down to be Star Fox. It sucked.

Nintendo and Platinum have listened to the criticism, and have realized the mistakes that they made when handling one of their most precious IP's . People wanted something where strategy was an important part of the premise, where the look and feel was classic, yet updated. And they've gone and done that. Just in time too, for the April 22nd release date. Miyamoto assures us that Star Fox Zero will be precisely what fans are looking for.

Up until now, No Man's Sky has been quite a mystery. When the game was revealed it built up tons of hype, but as time went by, myself and tons of other gamers started getting nervous. We had so many questions, and hardly any of them were getting answered. Luckily, Hello Games has blown the lid off of No Man's Sky and peeled back the game's many layers to reveal the juicy tidbits within.

Hello Games recently let various press outlets try out No Man's Sky, and while we weren't selected for the demo tests, we can still glean a ton of info from the coverage. As a die-hard fan of the game, I'm quite curious to find out what exactly we can do in the game, and I decided to put together this list.

By no means is this a definitive or comprehensive charting of the game's full content--it's meant to be a guide more than anything, so you can get an idea of the scope of No Man's Sky.

Star Citizen's latest update has just hit the public servers, bringing it up to version alpha 2.2. This update adds new playable ships, fixes a lot of bugs and glitches that have been found during the PTU sessions and adds a new reputation system that also brings a bounty reward system to the game.

The reputation system is one of the biggest changes they've added. It adds a sort of "monitored" area of space, where your actions, good or bad, can result in consequences. So if you're one of those griefers that wants to blow up an innocent pilots ship while they're trying to fix a comm array, you become a wanted man/woman.

They are five levels of criminals and each one carries with it an increasing length of time-out before being able to respawn When a person does enough terrible, grief-ridden things in the server, then all the players there can get a special reward for vaping the wanted criminal. And that person gets ejected from the server as a punishment. There's been some community issues, people being terrible to other players inside.

Let's face it, the Doom reboot has some audaciously bad box art. It's so bad that everyone thought it was just a placeholder image rather than the finished product. Bethesda and id have heard the call from fans, and soon we'll be able to vote for the kind of demon-slaying chaos that belongs on a Doom box.

Bethesda revealed two new box art images on the Doom Twitter account, saying that polls for voting will open up soon. Both pieces of artwork were designed in-house by id Software, and it shows: they're so deliciously devilish and match the brutality of the franchise.

The first box art image is my favorite--it's a throwback to the original artwork that made Doom an infamous game that our mother's cringed back in the 90's. The second one is rather simple but effective. It's something I'd expect to see on the halls of a dark, blasphemous fane where black-cloaked Satanists enact terrible rituals.

The planet of Faykreed from the upcoming Star Ocean doesn't seem to have the brightest of futures. The denizens are of the underdeveloped planet are under attack by something dark and menacing that seems to be unstoppable.

The heroes of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will have to make some tough decisions to save the world, and it's all being set up rather dramatically, and epically in this new trailer. It also reveals that a young girl by the name of Relia seems to hold to key to the story.

The trailer seems to be completely in-game, showing off the progress they've made with the graphics. This is also the first time that we get to hear the English voice actors as they take on the roles of their characters.

The momentum for Splatoon seems to have settled just a bit. Out of the gate it was an extremely popular game, and for good reason. It was a somewhat less violent (well, different in it's display of violence) third person shooter that let you shoot huge gobs of paint at your friends. Nintendo is definitely not neglecting this exclusive, either. They've announced plans for more free updates coming this year.

The first update will improve all of the less-popular abilities, such as "Cold Blooded" and others. There'll also be some changes to the ranked matchmaking and they're planning on putting in some new stuff for their Splatfest events. This update will be out on Tuesday, March 8th.

In two more future free updates Nintendo wants to add a few new weapons that also include some cool variations on some of the more popular ink-shooting weapons. We should be seeing those updates starting in April. It's really nice to see them stick to adding free content. Splatoon might have had a slow start, but once people actually play it, it grows on you pretty fast.

But only to the New 3DS. Older 3DS owners are left in the dust and won't have access to the SNES titles coming to the Virtual Console. For those that do have the newest model, they'll be able to enjoy a fairly good-sized catalog of games that originally were released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

During the Nintendo Direct yesterday, they were proud to announce that they'll be rolling out a number of new titles to the Virtual Console. Super Mario World, F-Zero and Pilot Wings will be available starting yesterday (March 3rd) while Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario Kart and Earthbound will make an appearance on March 24th and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country 2 will all be available on April 14th.

Even though the games are also currently available on the Wii U's Virtual Console, there isn't a cross-buy mechanism in place. You'll have to buy each version separately.

Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney is calling for gamers and the industry to fight against Microsoft's oppressive new push into PC gaming, calling it a "closed platform" that monopolizes PC gaming as a whole.

Sweeney recently wrote a scathing op-ed on The Guardian, calling Microsoft out for its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) ecosystem

"With its new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative, Microsoft has built a closed platform-within-a-platform into Windows 10, as the first apparent step towards locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce. Microsoft has launched new PC Windows features exclusively in UWP and is effectively telling developers you can use these Windows features only if you submit to the control of our locked-down UWP ecosystem. They're curtailing users' freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers."