Gaming - Page 548

Ubisoft follows Microsoft's playbook and promises to give you a free game just from watching its new E3-style digital show.

Today Ubisoft confirmed more details about its big digital Ubisoft Forward showcase, and have tossed in a free game to boot. If you sign in any time between when the show starts at 12PM PST / 3PM EST and ends at 12:45PM PST / 3:45PM EST, you'll get a free copy of Watch Dogs 2. Back in 2016, I marked Watch Dogs 2 as my game of the year and said it's something everyone should play. Now everyone can actually play it.

The 45-minute live stream will highlight everything Ubisoft is currently working on. The company plans to ship four major AAA games this fiscal year, but we only know about three of them: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, and Rainbow Six Quarantine. The mystery game should be Far Cry 6.

The mysterious Diablo II Resurrected remaster could be revealed in late 2020, sources tell ActuGaming's Julien Blary.

Diablo II just turned 20 years old and Blizzard didn't really do much to celebrate it. There was no big in-game event, no surprise expansion, no anticipated Diablo II Resurrected remaster. The company missed a big opportunity to underline a rare 20th anniversary event, but new reports say Blizzard is saving an announcement for late 2020.

Actu Gaming's Julien Blary, who originally broke the Diablo II Resurrected news, now says progress on the nebulous remaster is accelerating at Blizzard. A reveal could be slated for 2020's end and a full-on release could follow in 2021 or thereabouts.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla looks like it'll be Ubisoft's next-gen answer to The Witcher 3, one of the best games ever made.

The new viking-themed Assassin's Creed looks damn good, and it could follow one of the best video games in existence. A new bit of leaked footage from a dev build shows a gritty, brutal and dark medieval style that instantly reminds me of Temeria, but the battles are much more wide-scaled. Out of respect for Ubisoft and the developers at Ubisoft Montreal, we won't be linking or embedding the leaked footage.

In the footage we see a castle siege culminate in a bloody and chaotic battle. The combat isn't as fluid as Geralt's acrobatic style, but Eivor has some tricks up their sleeves. The Spartan Kick is back, and this time we can dual-wield and deftly dodge attacks. There's siege engines and battering rams that you can actually interact with, complete with destructible environments like gates. There's beheadings and fatality executions too. A hefty boss fight punctuates the siege, complete with monstrous wolves.

Blizzard is preparing to launch a wide-scale global merger of some of its World of Warcraft servers to ensure a healthy and active playerbase.

Blizzard wants all of its WoW servers to be as populated as possible because, quite simply, an active server leads to better engagement (and monetization). The devs want to even out any discrepancies between realms by combining low-populated and high-populated servers together.

This isn't the first time Blizzard has done something like this. Realms have been joined several times in the past for this very reason, and the move could be prompted by lower-than-expected subscriber counts, players, or overall monetization. The migrations have often been successful and had a dramatically positive effect on overall play, from question to raids and everything in between.

Gaming titans Sony and Microsoft are temporarily suspending advertising on the world's biggest social media platform to protest misinformation and hate speech.

Facebook isn't just a social media platform. It's a giant megaphone that broadcasts millions of messages a day, and many more advertisements that affect buying habits of consumers. It's also so powerful it can sway the United States' presidential elections with informative--or mis-informative--ads and posts. Facebook is also a breeding grounds for hate speech.

In a bid to hold the platform accountable and force change, major companies are pulling their advertisements from Facebook. As part of the new #StopHateForProfit campaign, brands like Sony, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Unilever, LEGO, Starbucks, Verizon, Hershey, Honda, KIND, and Target have all stopped advertising on the platform.The idea is to hit Facebook where it hurts most: its wallet.

Due to tremendous demand, Mortal Shell's beta test is now completely open to the public on the Epic Store.

Dark fantasy action RPG Mortal Shell has a limited beta test on the Epic Store that anybody with the launcher can access and play. The game aims to recreate the macabre mythos of the Dark Souls series with its own in-depth lore, brutal and unforgiving combat, and unique RPG mechanics and systems.

The main draw of Mortal Shell is the combat, which is based around skill-based dodge-and-slash timing right out of Dark Souls, but also incorporates the unique shell feature. The characters/classes are just shells, kind of like empty suits of armor, which are inhabited by your spirit. Once you die you have an opportunity to retrieve your shell and get back into your body.

Sony's Japan-based manufacturing facility will be a tremendous asset when it starts producing next-gen PS5 consoles alongside the current PS4 lineup.

A recent report from Nikkei Asian Review shines a light on one of Sony's little-known home field advantages: an ultra-efficient assembly line that can belt out two PlayStation 4 consoles every minute. The Kisarazu-based plant is wholly-owned by Sony, and owes its speedy productivity to a team of 32 specialized Mitsubishi robots who run a 100-foot assembly line. The plant has helped produce all generations of PlayStation hardware since the PS1 shipped in 1994.

The facility is almost completely automated, and apparently there's only four people on the line at any given time. Robots do most of the assembly, including twisting wires and threading them through small recesses, while the workers simply feed the unfinished consoles onto the belts and then package the finished products.

If you love Focus Home Interactive's smaller AA RPGs like Greedfall, then you're in luck: Spiders' next big game will be announced soon.

Spiders, the team behind the excellent BioWare-esque fantasy RPG Greedfall, The Technomancer, and Bound By Flame, will reveal their next RPG at Nacon's new live stream show on July 7, 2020 at 7PM CEST/1PM EST. We don't have any concrete info on the game but we did get a glimpse from the recent Nacon Connect teaser footage, and surprise, it looks like a fantasy role-playing game.

Remember that Nacon (formerly known as BigBen Interactive) fully owns Spiders studios, so their next game will be a frontline marquee reveal for the upcoming event. Nacon Connect also includes a ton of racing and sports games and the new Werewolf: The Apocalypse game.

The Super Nintendo World theme park is making tremendous progress,and literally looks like a real-life Mario game.

Universal Japan's Super Nintendo World theme park looks unbelievably good. A new bit of recorded amateur footage from Theme Park Shark shows just how much detail is being packed into the attraction. The entire setup is extremely authentic and looks like something right out of the Super Mario World 3D Wii U era, complete with spinning coins, koopas, piranha plants, goombas, power-up blocks--the works.

The layout isn't just simulating a game level, though: It's an actual video game environment. Super Nintendo World will have interactive snap-on wristbands that link up to a Switch game. Attendees can unlock rewards and other content as they play real-life mini-games at the park.

Corsair and Ubisoft let you create your own video game lightshow that'd make Daft Punk proud.

Corsair's RGB iCUE dynamic lighting software just got an update to support Ubisoft's new Hyper Scape battle royale game. With the latest software version, gamers can sync up their iCUE RGB devices with Hyper Scape to create some scintillating radiance that matches gameplay in real-time. The result is an immersive and chaotic experience that just adds to the thrill.

Hyper Scape is already pretty stylish and colorful so the iCUE integration is definitely welcome. The free-to-play battle royale hasn't released yet, but Ubisoft is holding technical beta tests and you can get in by watching an approve Twitch stream (check Dr. Lupo for a quick invite).

UPDATE: According to a new Walmart listing, the Atari VCS is set to launch on November 27, 2020.

After many delays, redesigns, and interruptions from COVID-19, Atari's PC-console hybrid finally has a Fall 2020 shipping date.

The new Atari VCS PC-console hybrid is set to start shipping to Indiegogo backers this Fall, the company said in a recent press release. The news comes alongside an announcement of Missile Command: Recharged, the latest remaster-style re-release of an old-school classic on the VCS system. The fleet of newly redesigned classics serve as the major draw to the VCS insofar as software, but it's the system's unique Linux-based design that stands out.

Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition is launching on Steam and the Epic Games Store on August 7, 2020, complete with PC-specific features not available on PS4.

This August, Sony is officially breaking PS4 exclusivity with its debut first-party PC port. Guerrilla Games' excellent sci-fi action RPG will look and play better on PC than it ever did on PS4 thanks to platform-specific optimizations like uncapped FPS, 4K resolution textures, 21:9 support, FoV sliders, and even an HDR toggle. The result culminates in one of the best-looking games Sony has released to date...and it's a PC re-release of a 2017 game.

Gamers can also play with a controller and Guerrilla has baked in full button remapping on both M&KB and controller options. There's also a built-in benchmarking tool that will automatically set in-game performance based on your rig's hardware capabilities.

Bloober Team says the Xbox Series X's raw CPU and GPU power lets them get "a little crazy" while developing The Medium.

The Medium, the new Beksinski-esque horror game from Layers of Fear dev Bloober Team, was built from the ground up to utilize the Xbox Series X's high-end power. The Medium will be a next-gen spectacle that pushes new features like ray traced visuals and audio, ultra-fast loading times for completely seamless transitions, high-end resolutions, tight frame rates, and new atmospheric effects that redefine the genre.

The Xbox Series X's revolutionary PCIe 4.0 SSD will dramatically boost every game played on the system, but cinematic games will benefit even more thanks to interruption-free gaming.

Cyberpunk 2077's wall-running feature has been nuked from the final game. Why? It was a design decision and the mechanic just didn't fit the overall gameplay flow.

First-person wall-running is weird and doesn't always fit. Case in point: Wall-running in Mirror's Edge felt disorienting and was a big reason why I didn't continue playing the game. Now it looks like CD Projekt RED feels the same because they've removed that specific parkour maneuver from Cyberpunk 2077.

"Ah, the wall running! That is something that we removed due to design reasons, but there's still going to be a lot of flexibility in how you move, that's for sure," level designer Max Pears told GameReactor.

Cyberpunk 2077 is looking better with each day that passes, with two new screenshots being revealed in a recent exclusive by GameStar. Here's the first one:

We have a gorgeous shot of the Arasaka building and its logo, with a slick futuristic car and probably the best puddles we've ever seen in a game. The second new screenshot of Cyberpunk 2077 is a battle against multiple enemies.

In this screenshot we see a revolver being used for some old school feels in a fictional future world, with some beautiful fire effects and reflections on display.

Fortnite is celebrating July 4 in style this year, with developer Epic Games adding Captain America to the game as a comic-themed skin for you to buy.

Captain America will cost gamers 2000 V-bucks, which equates to $20 in the real-world. For $20 you're going to get the slick Captain America skin, his iconic shield -- which by the way isn't just cosmetic, you wear it on your back in the game and use it as a pickaxe -- awesome!

Not only that, but there's a cool Captain America-themed fireworks emote for sale... perfect if you wanted to celebrate July 4 with a bang this weekend. If you want to celebrate Independence Day with a bang, that'll cost you 300 V-bucks on top of the 2000 V-bucks for the Captain America skin.

One of TV's most fearsome villains could show up in one of gaming's most popular franchises.

In a recent interview with Collider, Giancarlo Esposito, who played Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad, said he's working on a big new video game project.

"It's been my year, so to speak. It started with The Mandalorian, and then a video game I did which is going to be huge, that I can't really mention," Esposito said in the interview (around the 11:06 mark).

Ubisoft's new free-to-play sci-fi battle royale shooter Hyper Scape could help revolutionize engagement by marrying streaming and viewers in a brand new way.

Hyper Scape isn't just an average battle royale game. Not only is it fast-paced, stylish, and quite fluid, it has the makings of an extremely powerful driver for long-term engagement (and, by extension, monetization). Ubisoft isexperimenting with features that could shake up the games industry as we know it, especially for big-name companies that focus strongly on live games.

The real secret sauce to Hyper Scape is the game's Twitch integration features. Viewers can see real-time data on streamers as they play, including loadouts and game stats, giving them instant info on-the-fly. With these tools, users can more easily emulate their favorite streamers' plays and strategies to become more skilled at the game, which will keep them playing for longer periods of time.

Sony is making a bid to buy Chinese games company Leyou Technologies, who currently owns a majority stake in Warframe developer Digital Extremes.

Sony wants to acquire Leyou Technologies, an overseas holdings company with a number of high profile IPs and developers attached to it, sources tell Bloomberg. The buyout would arm Sony with a plethora of major free-to-play breadwinners like Warframe, as well as other projects like the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO.

Leyou is currently valued at over $1 billion, but Sony has deep pockets when it comes to gaming investments. The Japanese games giant earned over $18 billion from PlayStation gaming in 2019. Leyou's arsenal of licensed and F2P games would contribute greatly to these earnings and give Sony a more established foothold in the Chinese and global markets.

2K Games is monetizing cross-gen access by charging $100 for something that EA and CD Projekt RED give away for free.

Today 2K Games formally announced NBA 2K21 and confirmed the game will be $69.99 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. In a bid to test the limits of the new generation and kick off an industry-wide price hike, the publisher is pricing next-gen optimizations at a premium while also clearly delineating current- and next-gen SKUs of the game.

The publisher is also charging extra for cross-generation access. Gamers who want to play NBA 2K21 on both current-gen and next-gen consoles have two options: buy each game separately, or purchase the $100 Mamba Forever Edition, which gives you a copy of the game on both platforms.