Gaming News - Page 1686

If you've been waiting to try out Ubisoft's rather interesting open-world RPG shooter mashup The Division, we have some good news: the beta test will indeed release this month.

Ubisoft has inadvertently announced that The Division's closed multiplayer beta will kick off this month across Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The info was spotted on the official The Division page on the mobile Uplay app, which tells users they can earn a trophy by "taking part in the Division's closed beta in January 2016".

If you have the Uplay app installed you can view the page yourself--just navigate over to All Games, pick The Division, and check the "actions" section to see the drop-down list.

After nearly twenty years of shaping the video games industry, key Rockstar Games executive Leslie Benzies has left the company.

As boss of Rockstar North, Leslie Benzies helped create some of the most iconic games of our era, including AAA juggernauts like the Grand Theft Auto series and the ultra-popular Western action-adventure Red Dead Redemption. Now Rockstar has confirmed that Benzies has officially left the studio after 17 years of rocking the gaming world.

"We can confirm that Leslie Benzies went on sabbatical on September 1, 2014 and has decided not to return to work for the company," Rockstar said in a statement to Kotaku. "We are very grateful for Leslie's contributions to Rockstar over the last 15 years as we worked together to make some amazing games.Leslie helped us build an incredible team that will continue to create great experiences for our fans. Leslie will always be a friend to the company and of course we are going to miss him but we wish him the absolute best for the future."

Sony just pushed out a new firmware update for the PS4 that brings it to version 3.15. The new update doesn't actually add anything new, however.

In the patch notes there's only one line that very simply states that it "improve the quality of the system performance," meaning they generically streamlined something to make it more stable, but what and why is unknown. As we download it ourselves we'll take a look at if anything actually improves.

I don't quite remember it having too many issues before with the last update, though just to be on the safe side, why not update to the latest. It should be done automatically for most, though you can always manually update within the PS4 itself, or head over to the website and update via a USB drive as well.

In a bid to challenge Steam's long-standing reign, EA has introduced its acclaimed all-you-can-play games service to the PC market.

The PC flavor of EA Access is called Origin Access, and comes with the same benefits as the Xbox One service: unlimited access to a smattering of games in the EA Vault, exclusive trials and beta tests to upcoming EA games, and 10% off purchases on Origin.While the two services look quite similar, the PC version actually has an edge: Origin Access isn't just limited to EA's Xbox One games, so you can expect a ton of third-party games to fill out the PC Vault's library.

Origin Access on PC will cost $4.99 a month, which equates to $60 a year--double that of the Xbox One's $30 annual membership rate. Obviously, you can expect to see more games on Origin Access, so the value is still there. Plus, you're not locked into a commitment on the PC version, so you can cancel anytime.

One of the great classics from the PS2 era is being remade for the modern age. Psychonauts will be one of the next games to get the remake treatment especially for the PS4 sometime this Spring.

Psychonauts is a strange yet satisfying platformer that had a near cult following after it was released on the PS2 in 2005. It's also one of only a handful of games that has an overwhelmingly positive, and 5 star or 10/10 rating from users on Steam. And soon you'll be able to enjoy it in remade glory on the PS4. Though it's unclear whether this'll take advantage of the newly minted emulation or not.

This news comes just one day after the studio lead from Double Fine Productions talked more about the plot of the sequel, Psychonauts 2, in an AMA on Reddit. Psychonauts 2 has successfully met its goal of $3.3 million, which it needs to bolster other capital to meet the total $10-13.5 million budget. Another Psychonauts game will also make an appearance on the PS4 via PSVR, titled Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin. That is a lot to look forward to, and hopefully it doesn't over-saturate the franchise.

It turns out that the leak from last week about the release date is actually correct. Homefront: The Revolution is set to arrive in our game systems on May 17th of 2016. That's not terribly far off, but it's not close enough either. The trailer, below, shows us what the horrors of guerrilla warfare in occupied Philadelphia looks like.

There will be plenty to explore and do as you fight to overthrow the Korean People's Army, with multiple separate zones that'll offer plenty of challenges and opportunities to try out different styles of play. Want to do it the stealthy way? Sure, give it a try. Want to go in guns blazing? That might work too.

The overall theme from the previous Homefront titles should be kept here, though expanded thoroughly with a better AI and more complex missions to go on. Not to mention we should be greeted with a more involved story and lots of cool guns with better graphics. Make sure to use Amazon Prime to get a good discount on pre-ordering games, if you chooses to do that.

Remember when we reported that Sony was trying to trademark the term "Let's Play" in reference to online video and gaming? Well, that didn't quite go as they planned, and it ended in failure, though not for the reasons you might initially think.

The USPTO issued a ruling on the 29th of December, which is publicly available, that denies Sony the trademark as-is because it could potentially be confused with an existing trademark of "LP Let's Play" which was initially established in 2013 and for a somewhat similar category of services; "Entertainment services, namely to provide online and offline opportunities for video game enthusiasts to meet and participate in live video game tournaments and on-demand console gaming."

While it might seem ludicrous to some that a common phrase could ever be trademarked, we first have to understand what a trademark is and what it actually applies to, and how the law actually works. Generic terms as a rule cannot and are not able to be trademarked, but if a term is sufficiently descriptive enough of a particular service, then it is indeed possible. But terms can evolve to become generic, too. General terms aren't even legally enforceable, either.

It's a long time in the making, but Metal Gear Online is finally getting it's much needed beta on the PC starting today at 10PM Pacific.

In order to be eligible to play you have to be the owner of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and you'll have to opt into the beta in order to play it. Because it's a beta, don't expect the smoothest of operations, but at least the stealthy cooperative shooter is finally available.

With Metal Gear Online coming to the PC, Konami wants to bring a new map that looks very similar to the Mother Base found in the main single player game and more weapons as DLC. Hopefully cross-play functionality makes it into the fray as well, though that's a bit more difficult to implement.

Good news DC universe fans, if you love MMO's and own an Xbox One, then you'll able to save the city from the super villains coming up this spring.

Daybreak Games' creative directory Jens Anderson took to a livestream to announce that they have plans to release their super hero MMORPG on the Xbox One, a platform that has somehow been skipped up until now. That'll open up the game to a much wider audience. They also announced that they'll be implementing cross-play between PS4 and PC on January 25th.

DC Universe Online lets you play as or alongside your favorite characters inside that universe, taking on a role either against the typical villains or heroes. It's your choice and there's plenty of story driven content available, though there are some complaints from veteran players about a lack of continued content. It has a 72 on metacritic and a very positive rating on Steam with over 8000 user reviews. Of course it's a free-to-play MMO with freemium elements.

Patch 1.12 for The Witcher 3 is out today with a lot of great bug fixes and other refinements and improvements to the game. They're citing over 70 changes to gameplay alone.

But really they've dropped this update to smash a lot of bugs that have been lying around on the underlying framework. This is more of a quality of life update than anything, but the list of bugs that have been properly fixed is really impressive.

Though performance initially was horrible, and was on our list of gaming fails of 2015, CD PROJEKT Red has been committed to improving performance despite the inclusion of GameWorks.