Gaming - Page 1981

Xbox One owners will get a four-day head start on Battlefield Hardline thanks to the preview program EA access offers, which should have owners of Microsoft's now current-gen console very happy.

The previews themselves are limited to just six hours of gameplay over the four days, but any of the save games and other files generated over that time will transfer over to the full release on March 17. The preview is free, but EA Access costs $5 per month, or $30 for the year.

Battlefield Hardline will launch on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC on March 17. But before the full launch, we are to expect another open beta, which there are no specific dates for just yet.

Remember the pang of regret and depression you felt deep in your chest when typing /played into your pre-Burning Crusade World of Warcraft account? Experience this wonderful feeling yet again when you see how long it would take you to complete every game in your Steam library from start to finish.

SteamLeft will tell you exactly how long it's going to take to finish every game that you currently own, letting you know that continuous Seam sale binging probably wasn't the best idea - but who cares, right?

We've seen a few users hit the 1,000 hour mark - please submit yours below and let us know how many hours you need to slog it out for.

Sony will be debuting its PlayStation-exclusive original series Powers on March 10, with the first season taking part over 10 episodes. The first episode will be teased to all PSN owners for free, after which you'll need to be a PlayStation Plus subscriber to watch the rest.

The show itself is based on the ongoing Image Comics series from writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Avon, with the world of Powers set in a police show based in Chicago where two homicide detectives investigate cases that citizens with superhuman abilities, or, well, powers. Better yet, the show stars Sharlto Copley, who was in District 9 and Elysium, who plays Christian Walker.

Walker is a former superhero who becomes a detective after he loses his powers, while his partner Deena Pilgrim, who is played by The Following's Susan Heyward. Eddie Izzard also stars, playing as the villain 'Wolfe'.

Microsoft had to grind its way to the top of the sales chart, with the Xbox One outselling the PlayStation 4 game console in November and December last year.

"Most important thing was Xbox fans sticking with us, they kept believing," said Phil Spencer, Microsoft's top Xbox overlord, in a statement on Twitter. "More work to do but it was a good holiday."

Spencer also responded to a fan via Twitter pointing out the PS4 still outsold the Xbox One: "PS4 is also doing very well. Console and game sales are strong, which is a good thing for the industry."

Steam for Linux has a nasty bug, one that can wipe entire drives of all information in a matter of moments. The problem stems from users that have moved their installation directory from the default location. Steam for Linux features a command, 'rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/" that is used to refresh the Steam directory, which is usually required if there are installation problems with a game.

Unfortunately, many users move their game directories to SSDs, or to other locations on the computer. This removes the part of the code that specifies the correct directory, instead issuing a 'rm -rf "/"' command. Users opening the app trigger a deletion of the entire contents of their drives, including external devices. Valve has confirmed the issue affected a "handful of users". Valve also states they are unable to replicate the issue internally, and are still attempting to do so.

Steam for Linux users are best to stay with the default Steam installation directory until Valve has either ruled out the bug, or corrected it.

BioWare has taken to a new blog post, stating that the third patch for the PC version of Dragon Age: Inquisition is nearly ready, and that it is "close" to release. Mark Darrah, an Executive Producer with BioWare spread the news on Twitter over the weekend.

The upcoming patch will fix up some of the issues with the multiplayer problems, balance issues, and adds fan-requested features like key binding that will allow walking on PC, armor upgrade menus and a new push-to-talk option in the multiplayer end-of-match summary. BioWare wrote on its blog post: "Based on feedback from our players, we tweaked the banter system to be less random in order to prevent extra-long periods of silence".

The studio continued: "We fixed quest blockers in the personal quests of Dorian and Sera as well as a spawning issue in Solas's personal quest (I won't elaborate to avoid light spoilers). [...] We continue to listen to feedback from our players, and we thank everyone for working with us to create an even better Dragon Age experience".

Project CARS isn't too far away from its March release window, so the developer has just unveiled a delicious new trailer for their upcoming highly detailed racing title.

As you can see, Slightly Mad Studios has been doing some great things to the game, showing off some damn impressive technology. The game looks incredibly detailed, with some truly detailed vehicles, slow motion drifting and much more. Slightly Mad Studios is teasing that Project Cars is "the most technically-advanced, beautiful, intense and authentic racing game on the planet that's been tested, guided, and approved every step of the way by both gamers and real-life pro drivers alike".

Project Cars slides onto the Xbox One, PS4, and PC on March 20. The Nintendo Wii U will also see a release, but no firm date has been announced Will you be picking this up in March? I know I will.

Destiny has been super successful for Activision and Bungie, with the former company investing some $500 million into it before things even kicked off. Well, gamers across the world are addicted, but I think we just found one that takes the cake.

'yavin427' has constructed himself a "servomechanism" that make meleeing automated, while the character in Destiny stands in one place. This leaves Yavin with the ability to open up an early Ocean of Storms level on the moon, and just let the 'robot' have at it. Enemies will rush the character, while the bot either performs a melee attack, or shoots until it dies. Once it has died, it will reload the level to that checkpoint, and let the character do it all over again.

This leaves Yavin to sleep and level up, and once he wakes up he enjoys the higher level, and all of the glorious weapon drops and experience rewards, all while he rests. Yavin took to Reddit, where he wrote: "Woke up this morning to a brand new 20! Had about 3600 kills, and 900 deaths (lol), and like 50 green engrams. I started at level 16.5 yesterday afternoon, and reached 20 sometime while I was asleep. With the armor I had waiting for him he is now a 26. Seems to be getting anywhere from 15 to 215 exp per run, depending on timing".

Diablo 3 gamers are reporting problems with "major lag" while trying to play online, with the issue first surfacing over the weekend.

"We've been asked to collect some information for our network engineers on this issue," a Blizzard support rep said in a Battle.Net forum thread. "We'd like to have your trace route info when you trace to 12.168.209.68. We'd also like to see the results when you run our Looking Glass utility to see the return path of the trace from Blizzard to you."

Blizzard also wants gamers to identify their ISP and geographic location when reporting data in the public thread. With that information, Blizzard engineers will work as quickly as possible to solve gamer lag problems.

Microsoft Xbox One gamers can now sign up for the Neverwinter closed beta, beginning on February 5 and running for just three days, according to Perfect World Entertainment. Gamers are required to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play the title.

Neverwinter is scheduled to launch sometime during early 2015, and is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). "Consoles are a perfect fit for action-oriented MMORPGs like Neverwinter, and we are thrilled to be one of the first publishers to bring premium free-to-play titles to leading next-gen platforms," said Alan Chen, CEO of Perfect World, in a statement.

Neverwinter originally launched on the PC in 2013, with the Tyranny of Dragons expansion released in August 2014.