Gaming - Page 468

Battlefield 2042 has some truly incredible dynamic weather effects that we've only had a glimpse at so far, but the time at DICE has been working on that technology for many years now.

During a recent DICE devstream, we learned that the team spent over 3 years working on the dynamic weather and upgraded Levolution technologies. DICE General Manager Oskar Gabrielson explained that team spent over 3 years on it, with a single developer saying how cool it would be for there to be a tornado in the game, ripping the level to pieces.

DICE spent a year working on the dynamic weather technology, showing off a prototype and having some developers at DICE thinking it was pre-rendered and simply couldn't believe that they were seeing a real-time tornado rip through what would eventually become Battlefield 2042.

Konami may release another collection of Castlevania games from the Game Boy Advance era.

Ratings for a Castlevania Advance collection have popped up on the Australian Ratings Board. The collection, which has been rated M for fantasy violence, should include Game Boy Advance games like 2001's Circle of the Moon, 2002's Harmony of Dissonance, and 2003's Aria of Sorrow.

Konami has yet to make an official announcement just yet and the ratings take some thunder out of the collection's reveal. Konami has re-released a number of old-school Castlevania games in bundles including 2018's Requiem collection, which packs the excellent Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood, and 2019's Anniversary Collection that includes eight sidescrollers across NES, SNES, Genesis and Game Boy.

EA introduces new preview boxes in FIFA that let consumers view the contents before they buy...for a limited time.

Today EA announced FIFA Preview Packs that allow players to open a pack and view its contents before committing to a purchase. These packs are part of the Festival of FUTball event and can be purchased with FUT Coins, which are earned in-game, and the premium FIFA Points currency.

"These packs will allow you to see all the specific Items contained within them before you need to make a decision on whether you want to buy the pack with FUT Coins or FIFA Points. Preview Packs will be the only pack type available in the FUT Store during this time, at the end of the campaign other pack types will return," EA said in an announcement post.

EA Sports recently announced Madden NFL 22 and confirms the game will be $69.99 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles with no free upgrade.

Like Battlefield 2042, Madden NFL 22 will not support EA's Dual Entitlement program, which gave current-gen players a free next-gen upgrade. EA used this program in 2020 to ensure a smooth transition between platforms. Madden NFL 22 will not support Smart Delivery on Xbox platforms either.

Madden NFL 22 is listed for $69.99 on both Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. EA is selling a cross-gen pack for $99.99, the same price as Battlefield 2042's dual-console SKU.

Elden Ring is one of the most exciting games coming in 2022, but it took a while before the game was ready. A long while. In fact, George R.R. Martin's work on the project has been done for years now.

For Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoftware wanted to create a new world set in an expansive dark fantasy mythos. So they hired one of the best worldmakers in the business: A Song of Ice and Fire's George R.R. Martin. This collaboration has been in the works for some time; Martin says he was hired to make a template for Elden Ring's setting. After he was done, FromSoft adapted it to fit their needs.

"It's actually considerably different [than writing a book]. I've played some video games, I'm not a big video gamer. The game is called Elden Ring. My work on it was actually done years ago. These games, they're like movies, they take a long time to develop," Martin said in a recent interview with PBS Chicago.

Call of Duty: Warzone on the Xbox Series X has been pumping away at 120FPS since November 2020, some 7 months ago now, but it's now time for PlayStation 5 owners to enjoy 120FPS in Warzone.

The new Call of Duty: Warzone update delivered Season 4 that packs new operators, new weapons, some map changes, and a million and one other tweaks as usual. But the big news here is that Warzone now has a 120FPS mode on the PS5.

You'll need to have COD: Warzone installed on your PlayStation 5 (duh) and then go to your PS5 system settings, then Screen and Video, then Video Output, and then set Enable 120Hz Output to Automatic.

Cyberpunk 2077 is coming back to the PlayStation Store next week, and CD Projekt RED is rolling out even more patches to fix bugs and glitches.

CP2077's new Patch 1.23 update corrects a ton of bugs across all platforms, including fixes for 17 different missions and gigs. Some other major tweaks include adjustments to NPCs as well as crash fixes across all platforms in an effort to maintain stability and performance. There's also an optimization for I/O and system memory to reduce the amount of repeated NPC appearances across Night City.

There's even a prompt surrounding corrupted save data--an issue that plagued gamers a few patches ago. "A popup message asking to verify integrity of game data will now be displayed when incomplete or corrupted game data is detected," reads the notes.

343i talks a bit more about Halo Infinite's multiplayer, but leaves out some really important details as well.

Halo devs showed up to talk about multiplayer at the Xbox Extended stream and revealed a few more tidbits about the F2P mode. According to 343i, the AI bots can be played on any map in the game, which allows gamers to practice the ins and outs of specific areas. Bots can also be scaled to difficulty and their loadouts and equipment usage can be customized.

Next we have something that will change the dynamic flow of multiplayer. Weapons and spawning equipment will be mounted on objects in Halo Infinite (e.g. walls) and they will also have active respawn timers that are visible to all players. So now you'll know exactly when the rockets, sword, or sniper will respawn. This affords more tactical strategy to gameplay, planning, and execution across team-based and FFA modes.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the most demanding video games ever made. It pushes today's highest-end PCs to their limits. So how did Microsoft get it running on Xbox Series X/S hardware? It borrowed power from the cloud.

Microsoft Flight Simulator on consoles both rides the clouds and is powered by them. Today the company confirmed that Flight Simulator's console release is driven in part by Microsoft's potent Azure servers, which can stream the massive 2.5 petabytes of Flight Sim data from the servers directly to console hardware. Machine learning is also a big part of what makes Flight Simulator tick and is responsible for building the game's staggeringly-detailed environments in real-time.

"The Series X is a super-powerful console and we're also using the Microsoft tech stack in an interesting way. The Series X/S are like beasts, the GPU is awesome, the CPU is multiple cores, fast RAM so we can run in 4K, the SSD is super-fast. It's basically the equivalent of a high-end PC," said Flight Sim boss Jorg Neumann.

Top Gun's Maverick is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator for PC and console, complete with another expansion pack in 2021.

Today Microsoft announced the Maverick expansion pack for Flight Simulator, which brings the eponymous big screen legend to the gaming world. Not much is known about the crossover other than it will coincide with the movie's release on November 19, 2021.

The company says the expansion is all about going fast: "All I can say is that we're going to go fast, like really fast, and we're going to be in the danger zone." More expansions are coming this year and next year; Microsoft has one other big expansion planned for 2021 and six more planned for 2022.

Xbox Design Lab is back and now allows players to customize the new Xbox controller variants.

Microsoft has brought back Xbox Design Lab due to popular demand and gamers can now customize their new-gen Xbox controllers. The controllers start at $69.99 and offer lots of paint job variations and unique designs, including custom share/back/options buttons, unique D-Pad schemes, and more.

"We had to take a pause when we launched the latest generation Xbox hardware, but now we're back. There's tons of color options, you can choose from 18 different colors for the pieces on the exterior. Three of those colors are new to Design Lab: Shock Blue, Pulse Red, and the Electric Volt."

Today Ninja Theory confirmed Hellblade II: Senua's Saga isn't in full production yet, meaning it could be a while before it releases.

Hellblade II was missing from the Xbox E3 2021 show for a good reason: There's not a whole lot to show just yet. Ninja Theory says the game isn't in full-scale production yet and the teams are currently ramping up assets across the board, from motion capture and real-world photogrammetry captures.

"We're building a big chunky slice of the game before we move onto full production to build out the rest of the game," Ninja Theory boss Tameem Antoniades said.

Rainbow Six: Siege has received its new update that enables NVIDIA's amazing DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology that boosts performance by up to 50% at 4K. Check it out in action:

NVIDIA can now say that all of their GeForce RTX GPUs can offer over 100FPS+ when gaming at 4K with DLSS and Rainbow Six: Siege, which is an impressive feat. All you need to do is make sure your Rainbow Six: Siege installation is fully updated, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU installed into your PC, and then to enable DLSS.

Note: This is for the Vulkan version of the game, which you'll have to choose to boot into as you load into the game. DLSS is not available for the DirectX 11 version of the game.

Nintendo announces a new 2D Metroid game to help celebrate the franchise's 35th anniversary.

Metroid Dread came out of nowhere yesterday and surprised millions of fans. The game is a direct sequel to Metroid Fusion and continues the storyline of the original NES and SNES games like Metroid, Metroid II, and Super Metroid. It's also a 2D game, marking a big departure from Samus' most recent adventures.

The new Metroid takes big cues from previous games like Metroid: Samus Returns, making big innovations on existing moves and abilities like the melee parry attack.

Microsoft will start releasing next-gen exclusive Xbox games in 2022, but last-gen Xbox One owners won't be left behind.

Microsoft re-confirms that Project xCloud game streaming will allow Xbox One owners to play next-gen exclusives like Starfield, Fable, The Outer Worlds 2, Avowed, and the new Perfect Dark shooter.

"For the millions of people who play on Xbox One consoles today, we are looking forward to sharing more about how we will bring many of these next-gen games, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, to your console through Xbox Cloud Gaming, just like we do with mobile devices, tablets, and browsers," Microsoft wrote in their E3 blog.

The long-awaited sequel to Psychonauts has finally received a release date at the Microsoft/Bethesda E3 broadcast.

The announcement aired on June 13, and fans of the 16-year-old title were undoubtedly pleased to see that Psychonauts is getting a sequel, Psychonauts 2. Unlike many of the other titles that were announced at this year's E3, Psychonauts 2 will be releasing this year on August 25. To go along with the announcement, Microsoft has released a new trailer that shows off some hilariously fun gameplay.

For those that haven't played the original Psychonauts, here's a quick synopsis of the game; Psychonauts is a platformer adventure title that introduces players to a character called Raz that has psychic powers. Raz is a Psychonaut-in-training or, "Psycadet", and throughout the game, players will jump through people's minds to help them overcome their fears. Psychonauts 2 will also feature Raz as the main character, but this time he's a graduated intern at Psychonaut Headquarters. Psychonauts 2 will drop on August 25 on Xbox and Windows.

The time has come, and Microsoft has finally revealed the release date for its highly anticipated Age of Empires IV.

The Microsoft and Bethesda joint E3 broadcast featured many exciting titles, but one that stood out from the rest was Age of Empires IV. The series is beloved by many real-time strategy gamers, and a sequel to Age of Empires III has been highly anticipated for many years now. Microsoft debuted a brand new gameplay trailer that can be seen above, and according to the video's description, Age of Empires IV will be coming will all the bells and whistles gamers have been hoping for.

Microsoft states that Age of Empires IV will come with 4K support, 8 diverse civilizations, 4 distinct campaigns with 35 missions, tools to create custom games, 8-player multiplayer modes, tutorial mode, and a story mode. Microsoft will be releasing Age of Empires IV on October 28th on Windows PC, and it will be included in the GamePass subscription service. Preorders are also available now. Below you will find a quick synopsis of the game by Microsoft.

STALKER 2 is going to be one of the biggest games of 2022, with it definitely being "the new Crysis" with its next-gen graphics, ray tracing support, and an SSD being a requirement on the PC.

In a new post on the official Xbox website, PR Specialist at GSC Game World Zakhar Bocharov details STALKER 2 and its debut at the Xbox Games Showcase during E3 2021. Bocharov talks about everything STALKER 2, but it was one particular part that caught my attention.

Bocharov writes: "Finally, we would like to finish this update with a development status. We're progressing smoothly, including Xbox Series X|S versions as well. The aim is to deliver the product of the highest quality possible on every platform it's announced for. With fast SSD, RTX support (both Series X and S), and 4K-resolution (Series X), we're pleased to see how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is shaping up to be the ultimate experience we've initially promised".

STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl is shaping up really beautifully so far, with the open-world shooter set in the world after the events of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl -- but on the PC you're going to need an SSD.

The PC system requirements for STALKER 2 are now available, where at a minimum the developer wants you to have Windows 10 and 8GB of RAM. CPU wise, STALKER 2 needs at a minimum an Intel Core i5-7600K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X processor. You will need an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics card, and at least 150GB of free space on your SSD.

STALKER 2's recommended requirements on the PC are a little higher-end than that, with an Intel Core i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor required, and 16GB of RAM. GPU requirements are boosted up to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER graphics card for Team Green, while Team Red has the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT recommended.

If you've been patiently waiting for STALKER 2 all of these years, then you will be ready to open your wallet for the various physical releases of STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl.

STALKER 2 will be coming in four different physical editions, with the Standard Edition, Limited Edition, Collector's Edition, and Ultimate Edition all coming with various goodies, add ons, and even a lamp -- because GSC Game World must love lamp.

But it's the Ultimate Edition that has my attention -- where it comes with everything else that the Collector's Edition comes with... but with an "Artifact Container Lamp" and a "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Backpack". These two items are costing nearly as much as the entire Collector's Edition... with the Collector's Edition priced at $180, and the Ultimate Edition priced at $340.