Gaming - Page 681

Gamescom 2019 - Squall Leonhart's moody angst is coming back, this time with better graphics.

Square Enix today announced its hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VIII Remaster is coming quite, quite soon, complete with infamous one-liners, the beloved Draw system that made battles last for 20 years at a time, and those delicious cafeteria hot dogs Mr. Dincht oh-so-loves. The FF8 Remaster is due out September 8, 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch, and we're betting it'll be the most dashing remaster at the party.

All jokes aside, I'm ecstatic to see Square Enix give Final Fantasy VIII some love. All eyes are on the new Final Fantasy VII Remake (and for good reason, it looks damn good), but we can't just toss Selphie and her PAHH-TAYY!s under the rug. The Remaster isn't a fully-fledged remake, but instead features enhanced visuals, more streamlined FPS and performance, and some time-saving built-in cheats like a no-encounter mode, unlocking all GFs, abilities, and maxed out magic, and full ATB and HP gauges for easy battles.

Gamescom 2019 - Ubisoft today confirmed the titanic scope of Watch Dog Legion's now-playable characters.

Watch Dogs Legion could change gaming forever. You can literally play as every character you see, whether it be an old lady who's secretly a spy, or even a high-level enemy boss. The game's dystopian London is a playground where you can cherry-pick the city's best, brightest, and weirdest and fold them directly into your party. Thanks to Watch Dogs Legion, NPCs have changed from Non-Playable Characters to Now-Playable Characters. But just how many Now-Playable Characters will Legion offer? London is home to millions of people and they can all join your crew.

At Gamescom 2019, Ubisoft confirmed Watch Dogs Legion will have millions of playable characters that you can choose. "Luckily, our city is filled with millions of people and any single one of them can be your next recruit."

Gamescom 2019 - Square Enix finally released gameplay footage for its new Avengers game, and it looks pretty good. What were they waiting for?

There's been a lot of doubt about Crystal Dynamic's new Avengers game, primarily because we had a lot of promises without much footage to back it up. There's also the live service worries of 4-player online co-op and cosmetic microtransactions. But today at Gamescom the studio unveiled a lengthy 18-minute playthrough that shows each of the five Avengers in action. The result gives me more confidence about the project, which I initially doubted as a messy live-game/story-based hybrid.

The result exposes Marvel's Avengers as a highly cinematic game with a strong emphasis on action and combat. The experience is very movie-like and makes you feel like you're playing an extension of the films; there's QTEs, high-octane explosions as you fly through areas, titanic setpieces that provide dramatic backdrops for the chaos you help unleash. Everything looks and feels very linear and there's lots of perspective-shifting, at least in the A-Day prologue, but the combat itself looks pretty stellar.

Gamescom 2019 - Microsoft has just finished their Gamescom 2019 announcements and as expected they have added a new line of games to Xbox Games Pass.

Microsoft has detailed a new line of games that will be coming to the Xbox Games Pass over the course of August. The list of games that will soon arrive on the service is: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, Devil May Cry 5, Stellaris, Ape Out, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Bard's Tale IV: Directors Cut and Blair Witch.

The games will be added to the Game Pass' library from August 19, starting with Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, Devil May Cry 5 and Stellaris. Then on August 22, Ape Out and Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be added and then finally followed by, Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut and Blair Witch on August 27th and August 30th. If you are after additional descriptions on any of the mentioned games, visit the official blog post on the Xbox website here.

HBO has announced a brand new Westworld virtual reality game for fans, and the best news out of the entire announcement is that its already playable.

The new VR experience is called Westworld Awakening and is produced by Survios, Kilter Films and with the assistance of Westworld's showrunners. The game is planned to arrive on the Oculus Store, Viveport and Steam on August 20, but will only be available for VR users who have headsets linked to PCs.

Westworld Awakening is based in the second season of the TV show and will let players experience 5 chapters of madness. The main character is a host called Kate and players will be by her side as she becomes self-aware and attempts to dictate the outcomes of her own life. The game is expected to last around 4 - 6 hours and will cost $30. If you are interested in checking out Westworld Awakening on Steam, visit this link here.

A good real-time strategy game is extremely hard to come by in this day and age, luckily for fans who are missing sinking their teeth into a brand new RTS title, KING Art Games has your back on September 1st.

KING Art Games are the developers behind the upcoming real-time strategy game 'Iron Harvest' which is set in an alternate reality of 1920+. I've been following the progress of Iron Harvest for quite some time now, as real-time strategy games are some of my favorite games of all time. From what I've seen, Iron Harvest looks like a more than promising RTS title and is definitely placed quite highly on my "Definitely Need To Play" list.

Taking a trip down memory lane, we have the original kickstarter campaign trailer and article which can be found here, if you are interested in a bit of history about how Iron Harvest came about. There is also the 'Tech & Controls' demo that can be found here if you are interested in seeing what the game can achieve movement and positioning wise. Finally, there is the above trailer which announces the games official release date which is scheduled for September 1st. There is also the official Steam page for anyone who wants to keep tabs on Iron Harvest, check it out here.

Gamescom 2019 - A new announcement has come out from Gamescom 2019's Opening Night Live Show and this time its a brand new turn-based strategy game published by SEGA and developed by Amplitude Studios.

Right off the bat we can see the game which is titled 'Humankind' seems to be taking heavy inspiration from Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. The game will be released onto Steam and when checking out its listing we learn that the title will feature "one million civilizations" and that players will be able to "Create your own civilization by combining 60 historical cultures from the Bronze to the Modern Age. Each culture brings its special gameplay layer, leading to near-endless outcomes."

Players will also be able to engage in real historical events, scientific breakthroughs, discover natural wonders of the world and plan out your own design to your ever-growing city. At the moment we don't have a specific release date for Humankind, all we know is that we can expect its launch sometime during 2020. For more information about the title, or if you want to keep tabs on it, check out the official Steam page for it here.

Gamescom 2019 - Kerbal Space Program is a super-popular game with countless gamers putting even more countless hours into the game, with publisher Private Division announcing its sequel, simply named Kerbal Space Program 2. Check out the cinematic announcement trailer:

Interestingly, Kerbal Space Program 2 is NOT being developed by the developers of the original game -- Squad. Instead, Seattle-based Star Theory Games is making the game, with the team made up of "engineers and designers with aerospace specialization who have worked on a variety of titles including Monday Night Combat, Planetary Annihilation, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and more".

Kerbal Space Program 2 will include multiplayer, one of the key features that shows the game has heavily evolved from its predecessor.

Gamescom 2019 - Nintendo Switch fans can now kick back and really enjoy whats coming to them, as CD Projekt RED has officially announced the release date of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition.

We have known about the Nintendo Switch version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for quite some time now, we know that the game will be shipping on a 32GB game cartridge and will be including both of the games larges DLC's - Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine. What we didn't know was when the game was going to release, and now thanks Gamescom 2019's opening night we do.

Above we have the official The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition Nintendo Switch release date trailer, which reveals that the game is expected to arrive on the handheld console on October 15th, 2019. The Witcher 3 will be running at 540p handheld and when docked it will be bumped up to 720p. If you are interested in pre-ordering the title check out my post here to see what is detailed in the package.

Valve has kicked off the Dota 2 The International tournament with an eye-popping $33 million prize pool up for grabs, with a first prize of $15 million. Second prize is still a hefty $4.3 million, while third will net $3 million.

There are 18 places with $33.5 million up for grabs in The International 2019, with 18th place still a large $83K. Valve had a huge $25 million prize pool for the 2018 competition, so we're already at $8 million over the prize pool from last year -- and up significantly from the $1.6 million from the first International tournament in 2011.

The way the prize pool works is that as fans continue to buy in-game items for Dota 2, a large 25% of these sales are injected into the prize pool for The International. The more gamers spend, the more that tournament players have in their prize pool - and these numbers aren't dying down.

NVIDIA's answer to Google Stadia is nearly here, with GeForce Now for Android announced and coming "later this year" to Android devices across the world.

GeForce Now is currently in beta form for Windows, Mac, and NVIDIA Shield owners -- with the beta ending later this year. The beta ending should hopefully line up with GeForce Now for Android arriving, with NVIDIA rolling out RTX-powered servers in both California and Germany in preparation of GeForce Now for Android.

NVIDIA will continue adding in RTX servers throughout the US and Europe as hte big launch of GeForce Now spreads out, right in time to compete with Google and its own streaming product: Stadia.

Things are really getting out of control at Respawn, with developers attacking fans and fans rebelling against the recent Iron Crown event. Respawn developers went as far as calling gamers "ass-hats" and "freeloaders", setting things on fire -- as you can imagine. Respawn CEO Vince Zampella has now responded, apologizing to gamers.

Zampella said in his tweet: "On Friday, we gave Apex fans an update on how we were changing the Iron Crown event. Some of the team then joined a discussion with our community on Reddit, and things got to a pretty bad place. Some of our folks crossed a line with their comments, and that's not how we want Respawn to be represented. I apologize to any of our fans that were offended".

He continues: "I will always stand behind the team here at Respawn and support them on speaking out against some of the toxic and nasty comments aimed at their families and loved ones. But we shouldn't contribute to it when we do comment, and add to the very thing we want to prevent. Last week we didn't do that, going forward we will be better. Having an open, healthy relationship with our community is incredibly important to all of us at Respawn".

NVIDIA talked with CD PROJEKT RED about Cyberpunk 2077 in a little more detail at Gamescom 2019, with Cyberpunk 2077's Lead Quest Designer, Pawel Sasko, talking all things Cyberpunk in the video below:

The video goes for over 3 minutes, with the RTX portion of the video only a tiny portion which is unfortunate. I would've loved to have seen more RTX-powered footage of Cyberpunk 2077, but I guess we'll have to wait a little while longer.

The footage CDPR showed off at E3 2019 to the VIP guests in their suite (of which I was privy to see) looked great without RTX enabled, but I would like to see much more RTX-powered gameplay footage of Cyberpunk 2027, and ASAP. Maybe we'll see something new at PAX West which is August 30 through to September 2, cybernetic fingers are crossed for that.

As gaming's biggest publishers focus on live services and microtransactions, Sony plans to double-down on singleplayer story-driven experiences.

Photo: Marek Okon

Today Sony bought Insomniac Games and added the Spider-Man developer to its stable of first-party developers. This sets the company up to deliver even more high-profile exclusives on its next-generation PlayStation 5 console, which arms developers with mighty Zen CPU and Navi GPU processing power, a super-fast SSD, and ray tracing for improved visuals.

Gamescom 2019 - Bungie today announced Season of the Undying, the first season for Destiny 2's big new Shadowkeep expansion.

Soon Destiny 2's new $35 Shadowkeep expansion will be the gateway to all future seasonal content. Shadowkeep's first seasonal event, Season of the Undying (technically Destiny 2's Season 8) is centered around the time-travelling Vex, but no other official details have been confirmed. The new trailer is cryptic and mysterious in pure Bungie, offering intriguing glimpses of lore and content we can expect from the season.

"We say the Black Garden is the birthplace of the Vex. But it was not the beginning. It was the reason. The life in the Garden called out a question. The Vex are the answer. They will do anything to protect the Garden. In these things there is symmetry. The gateways have opened. The Vex are coming. The Garden of Salvation is only the beginning."

Gamescom 2019 - PS4 gamers will get to try out Modern Wafare's new fast-paced 2v2 Gunfight mode in an exclusive alpha test.

The new Modern Warfare alpha test is set to begin this Friday, August 23, will be free for all PS4 gamers worldwide, and stars Infinity Ward's new chaotic Gunfight mode. Gunfight is 2v2 team-based deathmatch with strong emphasis on frenetic action and twitch reflexes, and takes place across five small-sized maps: Stack, King, Speedball, Docks, and Pine. Infinity Ward will use the alpha test to gather valuable network feedback.

As for the rest of the game, Infinity Ward shared some more details on what Modern Warfare will offer when it drops on October 25, especially when it comes to multiplayer. "Our overall goal for MP this year was to create the ultimate multiplayer playground. So we've got all sorts of shapes and sizes of experiences, we've got our smaller, tighter and faster 2v2 maps, we've got our more traditional 6v6 maps, and we've also got experiences on our larger-scale maps that're going to support upwards of 100 players," said Infinity Ward producer Dino Verano.

Gamescom 2019 - Death Stranding's cryptic Bridge Babies get decoded in a new character story trailer.

Today Hideo Kojima brought lots of Death Stranding tidbits and footage to Gamescom, including magical pee and more backstory on the game's mysterious fetus baby-tanks. The so-called Bridge Babies are essential to the game's plot, and are essentially the keys to the doorway between the living and dead worlds.

The BB's, or Bridge Babies, are kind of like batteries. They power Sam's sensors to detect the shadowy BT monsters, and like batteries, they have to be recharged...in their mother's womb. Every BB has a "still-mother" that's brain dead, and the BB's periodically have to be returned to their mother's womb in the United Cities of America's capital citadel. The pods are a simulation of the still-mother's womb, but they're not perfect, and Sam has to frequently sync the pod to the Chiral Network (the main framework that ties players to the world).

Gamescom 2019 - Peeing is a big part of Death Stranding. I didn't think I'd ever type that, but there it is. At Gamescom 2019's Opening Night Live, Hideo Kojima managed to make his new game even weirder.

We know a lot about Death Stranding now. It's an open-world game with a bizarre storyline about a plane of shadow monsters that intermingle with the real-world, and has a distinct emphasis on connecting gamers. But it's also about changing the world. One of the ways you'll be able to do this is by peeing everywhere you go.

And if enough people pee in the same spot, something good will happen. No, really.

Gamescom 2019 - Illfonic is making a new Predator game that perfectly captures the suspenseful, clastrophobic chaos of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

Predator: Hunting Grounds looks to be the ultimate Predator game. It's essentially Friday the 13th but with a different setting, skin, and action-based FPS chaos. Set in the legendary Fox franchise, and follows a simple premise: four elite Army Rangers who go into the jungle and encounter the universe's perfect hunter, and get picked off one by one.

The new Predator game isn't narrative-focused though, not really. It's a PVPVE online multiplayer game where a team of four go up against the Predator and its interstellar arsenal complete with active camo, heat vision, and pulse cannons. The Rangers complete missions and take on other human rebels in firefights, all while being hunted by the Predator. The Rangers see through a first-person shooter view complete with crosshairs and HUD indicators, but the Predator can switch between third-person and first-person

Gamescom 2019 - Insomniac Games will now be part of Sony's first-party development stable, the PS4-maker today announced.

In an effort to bolster its first-party games lineup for the incoming PlayStation 5 console, Sony is buying Insomniac Games, one of the most talented developers in the industry. The deal, which sees Sony buying out Insomniac for an undisclosed sum, comes after Insomniac's blowaway success with the PS4-exclusive Spider-Man game.

Sony's announcement confirms Insomniac will continue focusing on story-driven exclusive games for the PlayStation platform. We could even see a Spider-Man sequel for PS5, complete with full high-end optimization of the next-gen platform. Under Sony's Worldwide Studios label, Insomniac joins other top-tier studios like Sony Santa Monica (God of War), Sony Bend (Days Gone), Sucker Punch (Ghosts of Tsushima), and Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us Part 2).