Gaming - Page 675

A modder packs a fully-fledged SFF PC into a Gamecube, complete with a Ryzen 5 processor.

Just for fun, Redditor ellio3 made a small form factor Mini-STX PC out of an old Gamecube chassis. The PC cube's specs include a Ryzen 5 2400G and 16GB of 3200MHz RAM and a roomy 1TB M.2 SSD all fastened to an ASRock A300M-STX motherboard.

Although the components were crammed into the small case with hardly an millimeter to spare, the build apparently doesn't get astronomically sizzly, sitting at roughly 30C idle and 80C under intense load. There's a CPU fan at the top and two Noctua NF-A4x10 fans--one for exhaust, and one for intake. Ellio3 was also able to use the Gamecube's original dust filter too.

Like all of Ubisoft's games, Ghost Recon Breakpoint will have an expansive roadmap of post-release content to keep players engaged.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint comes out next month and Ubisoft is already showing off what's next for the game. Breakpoint's first year will include three big episodes that're staggered in seasonal releases across October 2019 through September 2020.

Each episode promises a hefty amount of content like new Adventures, which are basically robust story-based expansions; a new class; special events like the Terminator: Dark Fate cross-over; new faction missions; and two new raids. Some content like the adventures can only be sampled by free players, and to play the full version you'll need the Year 1 Pass.

What if Doom 2016 was made in in the 90s? Then you'd have this nifty mod that rips and tears like its 1993.

Introducing Doom 4 Vanilla, a new mod that basically demasters id's beloved 2016 shooter complete with weapons and enemies straight from the maws of rebooted hell. The mod is standalone but is also compatible with open-source Doom versions, and was made inside of Doom II. It brings that visceral old-school look and blends it with the chaotic fast-paced flow of Doom 2016, all without any jumping or crosshairs.

Doom 4 Vanilla is built around one simple premise: "Doom 2016...the way 1993 did it." You can download it here and check below for more info:

Tomorrow's Nintendo Direct is a 40 minute showcase of Switch's 2019 games, but we could also get some SNES surprises, Switch Lite info, and more.

After lots of rumors, Nintendo today confirmed a Direct will be held tomorrow at 6PM EST/3PM PST. The main event will highlight games releasing immediately in 2019 including mainline first-party titles like Luigi's Mansion 3 and Pokemon Sword/Shield (probably Overwatch and the newly leaked AC4 port on Switch).

Apart from big new releases, a there's anticipation that Switch Online could evolve with SNES games. The Switch Lite is out this month, the time is right, and we could see SNES games arrive on Switch Online as soon as December to bolster subscription rates.

Australian gamers might want to jump on some exclusive Xbox body wash and deodorant, something I just told my wife to keep a look out for at the shops, as Woolworths is now selling for $4 each.

Xbox ANZ teamed with Lynx on the new anti-perspirant, deoderant, and bodywash -- with Lynx known in the US as Axe. Micorosft explains the smell of its Xbox products as: "Lynx Xbox is a fresh scent of pulsing green citrus, featuring top notes of kaffir lime and winter lemon, aromatic herbal middle notes of mint and sage, and woody bottom notes of patchouli and clearwood".

"Containing a range of natural essential oils, the Xbox Lynx range comes with a sleek new look and features a body spray, deodorant, and shower gel".

Gears 5 will be the biggest Gears of War game yet, with studio boss Rod Fergusson teasing Gears 5 rocks a map 50x bigger than any map in any previous Gears game.

The news comes direct from a PAX panel over the weekend, with Fergusson talking about Gears 5 and what to expect. One of them is Jack, a new companion bot that will float around helping you out by cloaking players for example, a totally new gameplay element unseen in Gears of War.

The 50x bigger map comes in handy when it's the biggest Gears of War game yet, given that it's now an open-world game with RPG elements this isn't the Gears game your Daddy knew.

Gears 5 is right around the corner iwth its release pegged for next week, and it is the largest game in the franchise with its push into being an open-world game and packing RPG elements for the first time.

In a recent interview with Rod Fergusson, the studio boss of Gears 5 developer The Coalition, it was unveiled that the game took inspiration from BioShock Infinite. Fergusson had his hands in all of the Gears of War games, but did leave Epic Games in 2012 to join the ranks of Irrational Games -- the company that made BioShock Infinite.

Fergusson explained: "We were saying we want to challenge expectations of player choice. What are ways that we can give the player more choice? And so one way is player-initiated combat. I learned that lesson from BioShock Infinite".

In a huge surprise at PAX West on the weekend, Gearbox Publishing and Black Bird Interactive (BBI) announced Homeworld 3. Homeworld 3 is being crowdfunded through Fig, with the announcement trailer below:

Homeworld 3 will return to its roots, not only in terms of gameplay and its world -- but BBI consists of the original Homeworld developers and artists, as well as a "dream team" of games industry veterans who worked on the Homeworld Remastered Collection at Gearbox Publishing.

Gearbox teases that Homeworld 3 will be a "gripping continuation of the story, fully 3D combat, and the classic RTS elements you expect".

Epic is longer setting tentative timelines for new features on its storefront, meaning gamers still don't know when basic additions like a shopping cart, wishlists, and mod support.

The Epic Store has made some moderate progress by adding in cloud saves to select games, but the marketplace is still missing a lot and has a long way to go. Now Epic is no longer setting delivery dates for requested EGS features. The company says its Trello board roadmap wasn't meant to be a deadline or hard ETA, but instead a general guideline to give gamers an idea of what's in the pipeline. It's worth mentioning that EGS achievements, wishlists, and mod support didn't have official delivery targets, but Epic did say the features could take 3-4 months. Back in March, Epic said a shopping cart was more than 6 months away (it should be here by now).

"The Trello roadmap is not fulfilling the goal we set when it was introduced. The goal with the Trello roadmap is to provide visibility into the development cycle for the store's more player-centric feature set," Epic said.

Konami's biggest franchises like Metal Gear could come back with a bang when next-gen console drop in 2020.

Konami's IP slate has dwindled considerably over the years. The publisher, a once-mighty games-maker commanding multiple respectable franchises like Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid, changed quite a bit over the years. After it fired its star Hideo Kojima, Konami became interested in recurring earnings rather than big AAA hits, depending strongly on PES, mobile gaming, Yu-Gi-Oh, and live service content.

That could change with next-gen consoles. We could see Metal Gear Solid return with a triumphant sequel on the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Konami Europe president Masami Saso said development other key franchises is underway.

The performance of Control on consoles is definitely an issue right now, and developer Remedy Entertainment is aware of this.

The original Xbox One and PS4 consoles are dropping into the 10FPS territory, which is just not good at all. Remedy is optimizing the console versions of Control, with a new blog post stating: "Right now, the team are looking at possible ways of improving console optimization in Control, but as you can hopefully understand, these things do take time and don't happen at the press of a button (as much as we wish they did)".

It continues: "We are also examining specific issues that some players have been experiencing and looking for fixes on those. When we have more info, we will be sure to let you know across our community channels".

Yes, another delay has hit Star Citizen -- this time, it's the single-player portion of it in Squadron 42, delayed into Q3 2020.

Squadron 42 had an original release window of Q2 2020 but that has been shifted into Q3 2020, with developer Cloud Imperium Games explaining it's because of their "Staggered Development" approach.

What is "Staggered Development" you ask? The developer explains it as "an approach that splits the various development teams between multiple delivery dates. This puts teams into a cadence whereby they are delivering larger features every couple of quarters instead of every quarter, but due to their staggered nature, you would still receive an update every quarter".

CD PROJEKT RED has announced that the cutscenes in Cyberpunk 2077 will be in first-person, including the "rather naughty scenes".

Cyberpunk 2077 is in the first-person perspective, so it won't break immersion when going into cut scenes in first-person unlike The Witcher 3 that was a third-person game.

In a new interview with Senior Level Designer on Cyberpunk 2077, Miles Toast, and the German fansite for Cyberpunk 2077 the cutscenes will be in first-person. Toast explained:

The addition of Unreal Engine 4 and a new progression system into The Master Chief Collection is maxing out Xbox One console memory, causing a hindrance on Halo: Reach testing.

A bit ago we reported on an issue that's basically delayed Halo: Reach console flighting indefinitely. The team at 343i is running into console memory limitations while trying to cram its big new progression system into the game, which should bring stats, armor customization, and rankings to all MCC games. Now the studio says it's still having issues with memory while making Reach, which is caused by tons of new UI content, the progression system, and inclusion of Unreal Engine 4 into the collection. 343i also says every single other Halo game will need special attention because the studio is quite simply breaking pieces of the games and re-molding them back together.

"Getting MCC Console to run within memory constraints with the addition of UE4 and our additional feature set is the most challenging thing we have to do. We've been working at this for a long time now and are making good progress but there's no magic bullet," said MCC senior producer Michael Fahrny. "It's a unique problem that just takes a lot of trial and error, figuring out what worked, what didn't work, and continuing to iterate. We are tweaking these games in ways that they were not designed or architected for."

Alec Holowka, who helped design, program, and compose music for the indie hit Night in the Woods, has died.

Today Eileen Holowka confirmed the news that her brother, Alec Holowka, had passed away following abuse allegations from inside the games community. The controversy caused Infinite Fall, the team behind Night in the Woods and Holowka's friends, to cut ties with the creator.

Alec's sister Eileen gave a statement on Twitter:

Obsidian goes full tongue-in-cheek with its latest trailer for its new FPS RPG The Outer Worlds, complete with some nifty snippets of gameplay, weapons, and more.

The Outer Worlds is a sardonic, sarcastic, and humorous take on our incoming corporate future. It's a space age dominated by snark, high-tech hijinks, and that distinct Obsidian look and feel. It channels that classic Fallout humor, and rightly so since Fallout creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky are leading the project. Now the devs rolled out a new trailer to sell you on a vacation to the Halcyon Colony, the system of planets ruled by a corporate entity where the game takes place.

The footage is a general highlights reel that underlines core features of gameplay, albeit with a goofy style. We get to see lots of weapons and mechanics used, from the awesome shrink ray that miniaturizes your foes to devastating 2H hammers and and a weird bubble gun that makes enemies float. There's even tidbits on the new flaw system lifted right from an old-school Fallout cRPG.

Crytek might be teasing a Crysis remaster or remake in its new high-end games engine, complete with amazing lighting effects, physics, and visuals.

Crytek's new CryEngine 5.6 tech demo is pretty insane, showing a glimpse at some next-gen tech that'll power new games. Most of the footage was for its Hunt: Showdown IP, but around the 2:17 mark we got a big surprise: Crysis music accompanied by island footage that closely resembles the game's setting, and the nanonsuit camo sound effect at the very end. Is this Crytek's not-so-subtle way at teasing a new Crysis remake?

The studio could use a big hit right now and remember EA might still hold exclusive publishing rights for the Crysis franchise. Crytek probably owns the IP, but they can't make any new games without EA's approval if the publisher still holds the rights. But this could be huge for both EA and Crytek. What if we got a new Crysis remaster on the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett next-gen consoles?

The new Modern Warfare reboot will indeed have microtransactions, but details have been quite light and fans are worried. Infinity Ward says more info is coming soon but we can make some guesses how monetization will work.

Like all of Activision's games (especially big AAA juggernauts like Call of Duty) the new Modern Warfare shooter will indeed be monetized. There's no way it won't be. The company enjoys billions every year from microtransactions thanks to strong online engagement and Call of Duty is always a big cash crop. This time around the publisher has a new trick with cross-play on PS4, Xbox One and PC that'll maximize player counts. This new method is so potentially potent that every new Activision-Blizzard game should support it.

So why hasn't Infinity Ward or Activision talked about microtransactions yet? It's a sore topic, something that has to be handled with finesse. They've all but confirmed mTX by saying Modern Warfare has the biggest post-launch DLC pipeline out of any CoD game, and that MW won't have a season pass. Why not just spill the beans and confirm cosmetic microtransactions? That's the least harmful way to monetize games these days--just toss in a bunch of skins and vanity items, and bam. It's the lesser of two evils.

Deep Silver says it'd like to do more timed-exclusivity deals with the Epic Games Store, hinting its biggest future hits could skip Steam.

Epic is paying big bucks to buy up timed exclusives for its storefront, and publishers like Deep Silver, 2K Games, and Ubisoft want in on the action. Deep Silver in particular caused a big ruckus by switching Metro Exodus from Steam over to EGS, delaying the game's Steam launch until 2020. The move was controversial but it was also quite lucrative for Deep Silver thanks to the Epic Store's 88-12 revenue split, and the switch didn't impact sales.

In the quest for more money, the games-maker wants to sign more exclusives with Epic, which could mean its biggest upcoming titles like Saints Row V, Dead Island 2, and 4A Games' brand new Metro game could all skip Steam for an entire year.

Remedy's new supernatural sci-fantasy shooter Control is getting some much-requested features, including a motion blur toggle and a photo mode.

Launching a game as beautiful and dazzling as Control without a photo mode is a crime. But Remedy redeems itself in many other ways; the game is a spectacle of environment destruction physics, a unique artistic style, and wickedly fun gunplay. Gamers are still annoyed with some things though, namely the motion blur and incredible performance drops on base PS4 consoles. Now Remedy says fixes are on the way...but they could take some time.

Remedy plans to add an on/off toggle for motion blur with the game's next update, which could come out mid-September. A photo mode is also coming so gamers can easily freeze frame bizarre moments, snap them, and share them online. The big FPS drops on consoles will take longer to adjust and there's no ETA on that front.