Gaming News - Page 1703

Hidetaka Miyazaki is responsible for creating one of the most dedicated cults in video game history. The Souls universe has given way to a tremendous following that transgresses the normal bounds of fandom; in a way, it's a kind of religion. But like all great things, the Souls franchise has to come to an end, and Miyazaki affirms that Dark Souls III will indeed be the blood-soaked elegy of the harrowed universe.

"I'm considering Dark Souls 3 to be the big closure on the series," Souls creator and macabre master Hidetaka Miyazaki said in a recent interview with Gamespot. "I don't think it'd be the right choice to continue indefinitely creating Souls and Bloodborne games. Dark Souls 3 will mark the last game where the development project began before I became president. "

The devs at From Software made their mark with a number of games, facilitating their medieval style with the King's Field games, but became most famous for the Souls series. Thanks to Dark Souls--and Demons Souls--From Software has become revered, but the team is eager to try something new and fresh. That's not to say that their next project won't have mythical and phantasmal aspects to it.

Bethesda has announced through a new blog post that the PC version of Fallout 4 will be patched first, with the Xbox One and PS4 patches to follow after. It feels like we're living in a Bizarro world right now.

The developer says that Fallout 4 is its "most robust and solid release ever", but knows that the game is far from polished. In a blog post, Bethesda said: "It's true that the freedom our games offer you can lead to unintentional consequences that are sometimes bad, when the game combines too many unexpected elements at once. Given the scale and complexity of the systems at work, especially when allowing you to build your own settlements, we're happy that Fallout 4 is our most robust and solid release ever, and we'd like to thank our amazing QA staff who worked as hard as anyone to break the game so we could fix it during development".

Bethesda added: "Our process for updating the game will include releasing a beta patch on Steam, followed by full release on PC, then release on the consoles. This process has worked well for us in the past and allows us to get more fixes out faster". Bethesda also added that we should "[e]xpect to see more updates, that are smaller and more frequent, than a few big ones. This allows us to make sure each fix is working right, as any change can have unintentional side effects in a game this huge".

Blizzard kicked off a closed beta of Overwatch a few weeks ago, but there'll be an open beta for select players between November 20 at 9AM PST and November 23 at 9AM PST.

The Overwatch beta is an invitation-only event, with Blizzard saying it would invite "a lot more players in North America and Europe". The developer has also published the minimum and recommended requirements for the Overwatch beta, with some strong GPU requirements at 60FPS on medium details.

Minimum (targeting 30fps):

Update: Sony has delivered the following statement to Wired, but hasn't officially confirmed disc-based PS2 support on the PS4: "We are working on utilizing PS2 emulation technology to bring PS2 games forward to the current generation. We have nothing further to comment at this point in time."

With Microsoft opening up its next-gen console to new heights with the oft-requested backward compatibility feature, Sony has been left out in the cold with its paltry and unpopular PS Now rental service. Now it looks like Sony could be reversing this with a major effort to make PlayStation 2 era games backward compatible on the PS4--a move that could hit Microsoft pretty hard.

The PS4 release of EA's new Star Wars: Battlefront brought something even more exciting that galactic conquest. Certain bundles of DICE's new shooter comes packed with a download code for PS1 and PS2 classics like Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, and Super Star Wars, which are all playable on the PS4. If Sony can do it with these games, what's stopping it from unleashing fully disc-based PS2 support?

The recent major patch for Batman: Arkham Knight improved the performance among other things, but multi-GPU support was still nowhere to be seen, leaving some to wonder if it would ever arrive. Well, developer Rocksteady has confirmed on the Steam forums that it's been axed.

"We've been working with our development and graphics driver partners over the last few months to investigate utilizing multi-GPU support within Batman: Arkham Knight," they write. "The result was that even the best case estimates for performance improvements turned out to be relatively small given the high risk of creating new issues for all players. As a result we've had to make the difficult decision to stop work on further multi-GPU support. We are disappointed that this was not practical and apologize to those who have been waiting for this feature."

It's a pity, but also expected given even single-GPU performance is still a source of grief for some.

For all of its time-absorbing tinkering, Fallout 4 has been aptly described as "Settlement Simulator 2015". Many gamers have spent thousands upon thousands of hours perfecting their digital homesteads and massive cities (myself included), pushing the limit as far as possible while giving birth to amazing feats of ingenuity.

This latest creation is a prime example of simulation mastery. Reddit user Theowest has created a gigantic working Rubik's Cube with Fallout 4's workshop system, putting a good portion of workshop creations to shame. The Rubik's Cube creation took over 25 hours to build and is powered by an absurd power matrix consisting of some 180 generators and thousands upon thousands of power cords. The sheer scope of the project is awe-inspiring, especially since most people can't keep track of a single power grid...not to mention hundreds of them.

This Rubik's Cube is absolutely amazing, and I'm beyond impressed with this creation. Fallout 4 lets you push your creative skills to the next level, but I have to say that this kind of thing is much easier on PC as you can simply use console commands to add infinite materials. Let's hope Theowest contemplates a job in structural design--he's a pure natural.

Star Wars: Battlefront is finally here, and while gamers might be torn on the first-person shooter from EA and DICE, the PR boss of Remedy had some choice words to add. Remedy Entertainment is the developer behind huge hits like Max Payne, Alan Wake and the upcoming Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break.

Remedy PR boss Thomas Puha posted on his Twitter account some of his thoughts on Battlefront, where he said: "[I'm] really glad #StarWarsBattlefront is simple and has less modes and stuff. I don't get into many games anymore since they have so much stuff". Now, while I understand that in a way, we don't want watered down games because some people are too busy, or find it hard to get a handle on the game.

Puha added: "Having a lot of features and 'stuff' in a game doesn't mean it's giving lotto value for my money. Less is more". Now this is a quote to keep... "less is more". We should remember that for Quantum Break, as it will most likely be a play once and forget it game, so maybe this is why Puha hints towards this type of mantra. To finish it off, Puha said it's fine to "complain Battlefront does not have a lot of features, but don't be surprised. Game had to be made in about two years". He added: "Its stunningly good considering that".

Microsoft has made good on its promise to bring customized button-mapping to all Xbox One controllers, adding a new level of interaction to the platform. The Xbox community requested the feature as part of the feedback program, and Redmond decided to cater to its fans and roll it out to the console. But as most Xbox fans already know, any good Xbox One news is accompanied by the inevitable bad news disappointments.

The button mapping appears to be universal for all Xbox One games; rather than having different control schemes on a game-by-game basis, it's a hard preset that games will recognize, meaning you won't have to reconfigure anything in-game. Being able to map your control scheme is a nice addition as it lets players change things up and universally tune up their controls to funky settings. The mapping feature also returns functionality to those controllers with broken buttons. Thankfully, we can now swap out the horrible analog-breaking sprinting control for games like Destiny and assign it to something less destructive.

Unfortunately, this feature has a caveat, just like nearly every functionality on the Xbox One. You can customize every in-game button but the left and right triggers, which can only be swapped. Games like Halo 5 already let you swap out different controller presets, but if you were hoping to use the left or right triggers to do something different, then you're out of luck.

As part of its huge holiday push, Microsoft is hosting its own Black Friday sale on Xbox LIVE that promises huge price cuts of up to 70% off across 150 different games.

Microsoft is really breaking out the big guns for the holiday season, and is actively trying to sway users over to Team Lime-Green's court. The Redmond tech giant knows that a ton of people are going to snag the $299 Xbox One bundles on Black Friday, so its slashing prices on more than 150 digital games so users can fill out their library.

From November 20-23, Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers will get early access to the Black Friday sale with savings up to 40-60% off select games. Major Nelson was quick to note that Gold members will also get an extra 10% off, so you might want to re-up your subscription to take part. If you've let your subscription lapse, Microsoft will let you get a full month of Gold for just $1 if you re-up from your Xbox 360, but we're not sure if this price counts towards renewed or brand new subs.

Intel has launched a new promotion that bundles three free games with purchases of select Skylake and Haswell Core i7 CPU's, including the anticipated Just Cause 3.

The Intel Enthusiast Game bundle emphasizes chaos and action, with over $100 of free games including Avalanche's upcoming open-world Just Cause 3, a copy of Valve's immortal shooter CS: GO, and premium credit for the free-to-play World of Warships game. After buying a qualifying Haswell or Skylake CPU, users can redeem their voucher at Intel's promo site. We're not sure if the keys are for Steam versions of the games, but likely so.

Qualifying purchases include the full range of Intel Core i7 Haswell CPU's from the Core i7-4770 S to the expensive Core i7-5960X, as well as the new Skylake Core i7-6700 and Core i7-6700K processors. Newegg notes that all keys must be used and redeemed by February 16, 2016.