Gaming - Page 1812

Blade and Soul reached a concurrent player record in the EU and the US in nearly no time at all. Only a mere three weeks after NCSoft brought the MMO to the west it's now peaking at well over 2 million players.

In the press-release they confirmed the staggering number of people enjoying the game, stating that "NCSOFT has confirmed that Blade & Soul has now surpassed 2 million players in the US and Europe, only three weeks since its official launch." They also talked about the new content that's now live.

Rising Waters, the new update, is adding a significant amount to the core of the game. A new party dungeon known as Bloodshade Harbor, which is available only to those that have reached level 45, and should have some of the hardest bosses you can imagine. A single-player dungeon called Munshin's Tower is also available that has seven different floors of enemies that increase in difficulty with each one. They've also added Nightshade Harbor

The whole world mourned the loss of P.T. but it looks like we might see it live again in another way through Visage, which is inspired by the likes of P.T. and the Silent Hills series.

Visage has taken to Kickstarter with a funding goal of $35,000 CAD - at the time of writing and with 30 days to go, it has reached $47,603 CAD with 1424 backers. Visage is explained as: "The game will be set inside a huge house in which terrible things have happened. You'll wander through the gloomy corridors, explore every dead room, and get lost in endless mazes, your head filling with memories of the dead families that once lived in this very home. This twisted environment, void of any life other than yours, will take you to places you couldn't even bear imagining".

The next stretch goal doesn't seem too hard at $50,000, which will see the game made with VR support - but then once it hits $75,000 "it gets real" with more 3D character models.

Just as it was alluded to last month, the next great expansion to the free-to-play MMO, Neverwinter, is here for the Xbox One.

The new expansion lets you journey into the Underdark with a story that's written by one of the original Forgotten Realms creators, R.A. Salvatore himself. After the initial encounter there'll be a whole new campaign waiting for you. Complete with hordes of demons that obviously need your slaying.

Inside there'll be two new skirmishes, the Prophecy of Madness and the Throne of the Dwarven Gods that should prove to be quite challenging. After you whet your whistle with those, you can enjoy a better looking Tarmalune Trade Bar STore, which has been overhauled and has a lot of new items with vastly reduced prices. Below you can see all the great new things that're included in the new expansion.

The head of Sony's VR studio, Dr. David Ranyard is stepping down from his position at Sony's London Studio. According to a press release, he plans on pursuing independent VR projects.

In a statement he said that "2016 is going to be the year of VR so it's the perfect time for me to take this step into independent development." The potential opportunities in the industry are what drew him to alternative possibilities. "The emergence of a new medium like VR doesn't come along very often and I really want to be a part of this new world."

It's sad to see such leader in the industry move on from a large venture such as the one he was heading at Sony's London Studio. But even with the loss, that just means the proliferation of more opportunities and more competition to help fuel better innovation. PlayStation VR is looking closer to release, so it's likely he wants to help other startups and make VR a much more common and accessible experience. He hasn't said specifically where he'll be going next, though.

If you wanted to give Paragon a try during the PlayStation 4 test that they're having on February 13th, then you'll also be able to play on servers against PC players in a marvelous example of true cross-play functionality.

They started asking for beta testers just last month when they opened up the sign-up page to include PlayStation 4 users. If you were one of those that has beta access, you'll get some more information from them this week and a way to redeem a PS4 specific key. Just make sure you've linked your Epic Games account with your PSN account in order for it to work properly.

Below are the official testing times for the beta, dubbed Online Test 7.

Tomorrow's February update to DriveClub is bringing a whole new level of fun to the game. A hardcore handling mode and new tracks should help infuse some needed love into one of the better console racing games.

The new mode lets you turn off all traction control and any other driving assist features to let you truly feel the road. It also might make it that much easier to crash. But just imagine the fun you can have before the moment of impact. In case that isn't quite your thing, this update is also adding six variants of a new track, Scotland - old Town.

All of this is just a precursor to much larger expansions, No Limits and Suzuki, which are coming out on February 23rd. Those will add new cars, bikes and six extra events to play through. Those will be paid expansions, however, and this update with hardcore mode is completely free.

Rocket League has been promised to make it to the Xbox One this month, and it looks like they're releasing it right on schedule.

Starting on the 17th of February you'll be able to pick it up from the Xbox store for $19.99. The Xbox One version is getting all three of the previously released DLC packs bundled into it for free, adding a bit more value to it. That means you'll get six new cars and more decals than you'll know what to do with.

To sweeten the deal, prospective Xbox One owners will get two exclusive vehicles, the Armadillo, from Gears of War fame and a Warthog, from Halo. It would be blasphemy if these made their way to the PS4 or even the PC. They're also keen on adding in some garage items from Sunset Overdrive, again exclusive to the Xbox One.

Nine days before the beta for Hitman, the PC requirements have show up on the Steam page. Of course these could very well be subject to change after the beta reveals important data about performance. Check them out below to see if your system can handle it.

It looks like the more cores the better. And unfortunately we won't be able to play with DX12 or Vulkan quite yet, though those are rumored to be coming later on. But all you need for a good time is an R9 290 at a minimum or a GTX 770. Hopefully it's been a bit more optimized since the alpha version showed the Titan X struggling to keep up even at 1080P. We'll be in the beta, and we hope to see your thoughts too.

Minimum:

Descent: Underground is bringing on the six-degree of freedom (6DoF) revolution. The fast-paced action packed Early Access game has inspired the creation of another game of its ilk, Overlord, which is being worked on by some of the co-creators of the original Descent game.

The new studio, Revival Productions, plans on launching a Kickstarter later today to help raise $300,000 to assist in the development of their dream. When all is complete, and there's no estimated date yet, they want to have it available on the PC, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

Inside you'll have a complete single-player experience with 15 levels designed specifically to take advantage of the unique FPS like physics and 6DoF movement. You'll be able to choose from a dozen different, upgradeable weapons, to fight against more than 12 different enemies and three intimidating bosses. Just because these can be a bit fast-paced even compared to CoD, there'll be five different difficulty levels to suit nearly every player.

The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic developer platform for all skill levels. The amount of amazing projects you can create is just staggering, but it's been somewhat limited by the meager processor under the hood. And the underused GPU. Experimental GPU acceleration has just been added to the latest release of Raspian, extending the possibilities immensely. Install at your own risk.

The Pi already had some fantastic gaming chops and was a natural choice for a small retro console. Those graphics you'd be running, from the SNES, NES, Genesis and Jaguar era's aren't terribly demanding. But opening up the GPU gives you more emulation possibilities. Not to mention the ability to play actual 3D games.

Not to mention all the other great sciency things you can now do more quickly with that otherwise unlocked GPU. It could potentially mean using a farm of Pi's (despite the relative inefficiency, but it has the cool factor) to compute novel things. They do warn, however, that installing the experimental driver could break other GPU functionality, and might even prevent the camera module from working properly. Not to mention messing up video playback support. But this is just the beginning stages of something quite nice that adds to the value of the minuscule devices.