Gaming - Page 587

In a surprise move, Konami today released Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for Android and iPhones.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is now available on both iOS and Google Play mobile storefronts for just $2.99, a huge fraction of the game's actual value. This is a big surprise as most Japanese publishers charge at least $10 for big legacy games. Symphony of the Night is easily one of the longest Castlevania games and will keep you busy with its Metroidvania-style nonlinear structure, with tons of RPG mechanics and exploration.

The mobile port is fully optimized with enhanced touchscreen controls, but also supports Bluetooth and wired controllers for better precision. There's some nice convenience features added in like macro-ing spells for quick execution, and save state functionality, which lets you save anywhere in the game and pick up right where you left off.

The PlayStation 2 was released 20 years ago today in Japan. Yes, really.

On March 4, 2000, Sony made history with the PlayStation 2. The system reigns as the best-selling system of all time and for good reason: The console was the most accessible DVD player of the era, it played old-school PlayStation 1 games and supported original DualShock controllers, and had an absolutely amazing library of games (Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 is likewise poised to do the same with PS4 backward compatibility).

The PS2 was a smash success right out of the gate and raked in a tremendous $250 million in one day. It was an era before the PlayStation Network and digital downloads crowded the market, a time where the only real way to get games was to buy them in a store. Retailer coffers swelled, Sony opened the gateway to a flood of new titles, and consumers flocked to the console due to its flexible multimedia capabilities--it played DVDs, CDs, and games.

A mysterious new Star Wars game called Project Maverick has stealthily appeared on the European PlayStation Store, possibly hinting at a reboot, remake, or remaster of a popular starship simulator.

EA may release a new Star Wars game in 2020 after all, and it could be a Rogue Squadron remaster. The newly leaked Project Maverick art strongly hints at an aerial starfighter game set in the classic trilogy, showing a brace of X-Wings hurdling towards a Star Destroyer. The locale is possibly Mustafar, the fiery lava planet where Darth Vader was essentially born.

This kind of game makes sense for EA and can recycle assets, features, and overall mechanics from previous titles. Project Maverick could leverage the existing ship-to-ship combat found in Star Wars Battlefront II, for instance, complete with enhancements in the DICE engine. Or it could be an entirely new entry in the Rogue Squadron franchise complete with its own story arcs, new ships, and chaotic battles. There's lots of possibilities here.

Respawn Entertainment have reworked many aspects of Apex Legends, including backpack size, and stack sizes for items.

The update has already been added to the live servers and comes as apart of the System Override Collections Event. The new patch has added a bunch of new content for players to enjoy, as well as introducing some new changes to in-game backpack size and how items stack in the inventory. Firstly, the new patch adds an additional two inventory slows to every variant of backpack. Gray has gone from 10 to 12, Blue from 12 to 14, and finally Purple 14 to 16.

Moving onto item stacking changes. Players will now have a much harder time stacking a bunch of grenades for the last fight, as Respawn has reduced the amount that can be carried. Not only does this affect grenades, but it also affects syringes, medkits, shield battery/cell, light, heavy, and energy ammo. Other changes that have come in this patch are: Peacekeep nerfs, Sentinel buffs, Crypto tweaks, Bloodhound buffs, and Gibraltar nerfs. For the full patch notes check out this link here.

FromSoftware is keeping their mouths shut about Elden Ring and how development is going, but sources close to the project are not.

According to ResetEra member, Omni, who has been revealing purported details about the title, Elden Ring will feature dynamic wildlife, and also dynamic weather effects. We already know that Elden Ring is the biggest project that FromSoftware has ever taken on, and that Game of Thrones writer, George R.R Martin is working alongside legendary game director Hidetaka Miyazaki. Both Martin and Miyazaki are creating a unique game world that has heavy emphasis on RPG elements, which ties directly back into what Omni is supposedly revealing.

Omni also touched on other potential FromSoftware projects and mentioned Bloodborne 2. According to Omni, FromSoftware isn't currently working on a sequel to the notoriously difficult game and instead is putting most of its eggs into the Elden Ring basket. Originally, fans thought that Bloodborne 2 could have a sequel dedicated to the PlayStation 5, but at the moment, a sequel isn't actively in development. This doesn't mean there won't ever be a sequel, it just means there isn't one coming at the moment.

Super Smash Bros. competitive players haven't always been happy about Nintendo's support for the competitive eSports scene, as there's barely been any. But it turns out they might not need Nintendo, as the biggest Super Smash Bros. tournament has just been announced.

The Smash Bros. community has taken matters into their own hands, and now has an unofficial Smash World Tour scheduled for 2020. The tour has been organized and designed by the people behind VGBootCamp and Super Smash Con and will feature a new tournament circuit that will connect players from around the world. The prize pool is the biggest prize pool yet, coming in at an astounding $250,000+ with expectations for it to grow even larger.

Nintendo isn't involved within this tournament circuit, but the Smash World Tour organizers do say that they "hope to team up with them in the future. One of our goals with the tour is to offer a unified way for Nintendo to directly support the competitive scene". This is incredible news for the Smash Bros. competitive scene and has no doubt lit a new fire under some competitive players to get out there and train hard to compete against the best.

Activision Blizzard has teamed up with esports group Torque Esports on a new "Collegiate Clash" tournament, that will inspire the next generaiton of gamers.

The new Collegiate Clash will see college esports teams battling each other, with 8 teams competing against each other every week, for 8 weeks -- culminating in a total of 64 colleges taking part. The grand prize? $40,000 worth of prize money that instead of going into the winning gamers' pockets, will instead be given to the winning schools in the form of scholarship funds.

These funds, will be to help "further esports at each of the winning schools" with Torque Esports Corp's esports tournament and broadcasting operations group, UMG Media Ltd. signing a new contract with Activision Blizzard for the new Overwatch Collegiate Series. Torque and UMG's mission is to "support and grow the esports space and help create a clear path to professional competition for these players currently on collegiate teams".

Fallout 76 will continue expanding in 2020 with user-requested features like legendary perks, a huge enemy level scaling system, and CAMP enhancements.

Bethesda is making a big commitment to salvaging, changing, and evolving Fallout 76. The big new Wastelanders update, which adds in human NPCs, dialog, and instanced areas, is a massive step forward for the game. But it's just the first step in a long series of content drops planned for the online-only Fallout.

In a recent PAX East stream, Fallout 76 devs outlined what's next for the survival sim after Wastelanders. As it turns out there's still quite a bit on the way, including an expansive new universal leveling system that automatically scales enemies to your level regardless of where you are, as well as an enhanced perk system that adds new avenues for creative builds.

Fallout 76's new ambitious Wastelanders expansion will transform the game into a singleplayer-multiplayer hybrid.

Wastelanders is the biggest Fallout 76 update to date, and it has one singular goal: To make Fallout 76 feel more like an actual Fallout game. Based on what I've seen so far, Wastelanders might actually do the job quite well. The transformation hinges on two major features including the new instanced dungeons and human NPCs with new dialog systems.

Fallout 76 isn't a reactive game. The game's loss of agency is one of the main reasons why I gave it such a low review score. Wastelanders wants to change that by creating special zones that are tailored specifically to your choices and character.

Riot Games' new hero shooter Valorant is putting speed and accuracy over everything else, and the devs promise servers with 128Hz tick rates for ultra low-latency chaos.

Today Riot Games officially announced Valorant, it's new free-to-play 5v5 hero shooter due out in Summer 2020 that has lofty ambitions of ruling the competitive FPS market. Valorant is kind of a mix between Overwatch, with its 10 hero characters with unique abilities, and also channels Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's precise gunplay.

A big part of Riot's focus with Valorant is attracting enthusiast FPS players with higher-end netcode and tweaked servers to drastically reduce latency. Riot's shooter will run on dedicated servers with 128Hz tick rates to optimize frenetic battles and push lag-free gaming, complete with response times lower than 35ms. Right now Counter-Strike: GO has 64Hz tick rate servers.

Death Stranding's Steam version on PC is getting some exclusive cross-over items straight out of Half-Life.

Norman Reedus' wardrobe is about to get a whole lot weirder. Kojima Productions has teamed up with Valve to inject some Xen awesomeness to Death Stranding's PC port, complete with extra cosmetics from the Half-Life universe.

Sam Porter Bridges can wear such stylish Black Mesa gear as Gordon Freeman's iconic glasses, a headcrab helmet (my favorite), and Alyx Vance's new makeshift gravity gauntlets from Half-Life: Alyx, the new VR-exclusive Half-Life coming in April. Even the Steam-maker's signature valve can be attached to the back of Sam's head.

Death Stranding's big PC debut will happen June 2, 2020 on both Steam and the Epic Games Store, 505 Games today announced.

Kojima's ultra-weird walking-simulator slash Lynchian horrorfest is coming to PC in just three months, and comes jam-packed with optimizations like boosted frame rates for higher-end rigs, a built-in photo mode, and ultra-wide 21:9 monitor support.

The official press release was a little light on the PC features and settings but we've reached out to 505 Games for more clarification. PC spec requirements were also not revealed.

Gamers can now try out Final Fantasy 7 Remake's full action-based combat with a new playable PS4 demo.

It's finally live: Today Square Enix stealth-released the Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo on the PlayStation Store. The demo clocks in at roughly 7.5GB on PlayStation 4 and contains a small slice of the overall Midgar-based game. Sadly your progress and saves won't carry over into the main game, and although the RPG is mostly finished, the publisher can still change things between now and release.

"The demo allows players to experience first-hand the opening chapter from the game, and the events of the iconic Mako Reactor 1 bombing mission," reads a press release issued by Square Enix. Anyone who downloads the demo will also get access to an exclusive PS4 theme that releases alongside the game in April.

In a new behind-the-scenes development diary from Cloud Imperium, the developers behind the ambitious Star Citizen, we are introduced to what is called 'Actor Status'.

Star Citizen's developers explain exactly what 'Actor Status' is, and why they are adding it to the game. According to the developers, 'Actor Status' will add a new level of survival mechanics that will force players to regulate multiple aspects of their character. For example, if a player lands on a hot/cold planet, they will be required to equip specific clothing to compensate for that planet's environment.

While that might sound simple, many factors are taken into account to establish the planet and the player's overall temperature. The environment is influenced by weather factors such as wind, humidity, temperature, and more. These aspects then influence the players 'Actor Status', and players can view what is affecting their character through the UI. If players don't correctly compensate for the planets' environmental factors, they will begin to suffer the effects of it. Examples for this can include hyperthermia and hypothermia, which can lead to death.

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate community is patiently waiting for who Nintendo has selected as the next DLC fighter.

Even though Nintendo already has the next DLC's fighters set in stone, this hasn't stopped communities from running polls to voice who they would like most. The Japanese Super Smash Bros. Ultimate community has run their own poll and judging by the results, Sora from the Kingdom Hearts franchise is by far the most-wanted fighter. If you didn't know, Disney was recently blamed for blocking Sora from coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Disney Japan specifically was deemed the ones to have blocked the extremely popular character from joining the roster. This news was sourced from gaming industry insider Ihran Khan, which means Disney hasn't officially confirmed Sora can't make it, giving fans a shred of hope that he still can. The Japanese poll was conducted by Inside Games and received hundreds of votes. 86.6% of those votes were from males, while the remaining 8.3% were from females. In the entirety of this article, I have provided the top 15 most-wanted characters.

Riot's coming first-person-shooter title has had a bunch of screenshots leaked, revealing what in-game looks like.

From the screenshots compiled in the above video, we know that Riot's first-person-shooter will be called "Valorant" and will resemble a team-shooter that is extremely similar to Overwatch or Team Fortress 2. A dedicated fan account has appeared on Twitter, and it's leaking a bunch of different images of Valorant's characters and in-game. The leaks are rumored to be coming straight from IGN, which means they could have broken an embargo early to get them up.

From the screenshots, we can see three characters; Viper, Brimstone, and Sage. We also get a look at Sage's abilities, which are the following; Barrier Orb, Slow Orb, Healing Orb, and Resurrection. Judging by what we can see on Sage's character select screen, it seems that each character will get four different abilities. If you are after more screenshots, check out the above video. The leaks also indicate that Riot will officially reveal Valorant on March 2nd.

The Doom Slayer might be a crazed, demon-slaughtering psychopath, but he's still a big kid with a very nerdy side.

Doom Eternal's hub world, the Fortress of Doom, humanizes the rampant killing machine we know and love. Turns out that murderous buff action hero is a huge nerd. Doom Slayer has his own room with personal trinkets, collections, and artifacts, including an old gaming PC that hearkens back to Doom's glory days in the 90s where dial-up and 3.5-inch floppy discs ruled the platform.

"He's a nerd. He's like one of us, only he's 300 pounds, really swole, and he can slaughter demons. He's also a gamer and he's really into the history of games," Doom Eternal creative director Hugo Martin said in a recent PAX East stream.

Shadow Warrior 2 developer Flying Wild Hog has come out swinging in regards to teasing next-gen consoles, with a couple of new AAA games in development after they were acquired by Supernova Capital.

During an interview with Flying Wild Hog CEO Michal Szustak and Wccftech, it was unearthed that Szustak says getting to 60FPS on next-gen consoles is going to be "much easier". He's also, like me, an old school gamer and 60FPS gaming is important to him -- personally, I won't game at anything less than 60FPS minimum with the only exception in the last 20+ years being The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch.

During the interview, Szustak said: "So for us, since we do action games, we are super happy because it will be much easier to deliver 60 frames per second, obviously. I'm an old school gamer so 60FPS is important for me. So yeah, I'm super excited about it. In terms of difficulties with making the games, I think the new generation will be much more accessible".

Blizzard confirms some interesting new features coming to Diablo 4 on PC, including full controller support and total controller remapping/custom keybinding.

Diablo 4 is being developed for consoles and PC simultaneously, and Blizzard is going through great lengths to make the two versions as uniform as possible. This is actually the first time a Diablo game is getting made for two platforms at once--that could be both a good and bad thing.

It's only natural that the two platforms will share a lot of features in common, like being able to use a controller on both PC and consoles. There's also parity in aesthetic and UI design decisions. The inclusion of cross-platform controller support is affecting menu presentation, which is arguably one of the game's most important feature. For example, Diablo 4's skill menu is being designed so that it's controller-friendly, and a lot of the game's development decisions will center around compromising.

Borderlands 3's second major campaign DLC is called Guns, Love, and Tentacles, and it's a pretty strange adventure into the heart of Lovecraftian mythos.

Gearbox just announced Borderlands 3's new DLC at PAX East that centers around a Lovecraftian love story with a ton of abyssal horrors to slay. The DLC has the Vault Hunters traveling to a bizarre new planet to attend a wedding. Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs are getting married, but the reception is anything but ordinary. The planet is overrun by spectral terrors and weird occultists who want to summon a titanic sunken god.

So naturally your job is to annihilate all the baddies, which include witch-like occultists who cast spells, big flying devil birds, huge tyrannical musclebound ogres, and a whole manner of creepy-crawlies, insects, and other assorted monstrosities ripped right out of a Lovecraft story.