Gaming - Page 692

Doom Eternal's latest new boss is an unholy fusion of machine and demon with one purpose: to annihilate the Doom Slayer.

Doom Eternal has double the demons as Doom 2016, and id makes good on its promise for maximum carnage with a new hulking sentinel boss called the Doom Hunter. Unveiled at Quakecon 2019 with some kick-ass footage, the Doom Hunter is basically a terminator created by the sentinel faction--only instead of hunting Sarah Connor, it wants to vanquish the Slayer.

The Doom Hunter somewhat resembles Sabaoth from Doom 3, and has tons of insane weaponry at his disposal including tons of back-firing rockets, a molten chainsaw arm, and a huge cannon-hand. And of course in true Doom fashion, this monstrosity zooms around on a hovercraft with two cannons in the front.

Death Stranding is coming out in a few short months, and Sony is slowly peeling back the curtain on the game's rather odd cast of characters.

Today Sony revealed more info on Death Stranding's Heartman, played by Danish actor Nicolas Winding Refn, who literally dies every 21 minutes. Originally revealed in the release date trailer, Heartman is so named because his heart stops in quarter-hour intervals. Heartman is part of the interdimensional BRIDGES team alongside Sam (Normal Reedus), and he wears a defibrillator that consistently resuscitates his stopped heart.

Kojima's rather interesting character lives his life in small 21 minute windows, and his dying actually serves a purpose. When he dies, Heartman travels to the weird inky and ghostly otherworld of the Death Stranding. When he's brought back, he enters the actual living world--in a very real sense he's travelling between the land of the living and the dead. Heartman is searching for something...but we don't know exactly what it is.

In 2013, Microsoft purchased Minecraft for a whopping $2.5 billion, turning creators like Markus Persson into billionaires over night. But Mojang asked Microsoft if they wanted to buy Minecraft, not the other way around.

In a recent interview with Fortune, Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed that Swedish indie giant Mojang actually approached Microsoft about the buyout of their huge indie darling. In particular it was then-Mojang CEO Carl Manneh who made the call (Manneh left Mojang in 2014).

"The next thing that happened is Carl calls up and says 'hey do you want to buy Minecraft?' We had the 360 relationship with them, with Notch and Carl through doing the 360 port of Minecraft," Spencer said in the interview while discussing how Microsoft doubled-down in the Xbox business. Buying Minecraft cemented Xbox and gaming as an important part of its business. "But it was a great point of clarity for us to go drive inside the company, when you're going to invest a couple billion dollars into buyinga video game...it's like you better be serious about being in the category if you're going to go make that investment."

What should've been a celebration of 25 years of ripping and tearing turned into a laugh riot for Bethesda.

Bethesda just released Doom, Doom II and Doom 3 on a bunch of platforms...but there's a caveat: you can't play unless you connect to Bethesda.net. Both Doom and Doom II require online connection for a one-time sign-in to Bethesda.net, which gives gamers bonuses for the Slayer's Club rewards program. Doom 3 requires a connection for specific features too.

The move was widely mocked and panned online and after lots of memes Bethesda issued a statement. "The BethesdaNet login requirement was included for the Slayers Club, to reward members for playing the classic DOOM games," the company said.

AMD has just dropped its new Radeon 19.7.3 drivers with some massive performance improvements for Wolfenstein: Youngblood that just dropped onto the market.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood receives up to 13% more performance with the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.7.3 drivers (what a mouthful, eh?) on Radeon GPUs. Also included in the new Radeon 19.7.3 driver is support for Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards in Radeon GPU Profiler.

There are some general issues fixed with games and software, with a bunch of known issues that will continue to get fixed in the drivers coming soon. Grab the new AMD Radeon 19.7.3 driver here.

Prepare the hype engines because Slightly Mad Studios CEO Ian Bell has come out saying that Project CARS 3 is going to be the next big thing, calling it a "revolution" and "a game changer" in a series of tweets:

Bell himself says a lot in the first tweet, but then he replied to some tweets that said "Don't know how you can improve on pc2 tbh. That was near perfection already". Bell replied, tweeting: "It's at least 200% better already. I can't stop playing it and I should be jaded at this stage..." -- remember, I did tell you to prepare your hype engines.

It's not just Bell that is praising Project CARS 3, it is the driver Slightly Mad Studios Chevrolet SS for Lengert Motorsports, Austin Ogonoski, too. He chimed in tweeting: "What if I told you that @bell_sms isn't actually kidding when he says the next pCars game is 200% better?"

If I could only go back 20-25 years to when I was in primary school and my teachers telling me "gaming is useless, computers aren't the future" and show them this article. Yeah, StarCraft II is helping to train the most state-of-the-art neural network in the world.

A refresher course in what DeepMind AI can do in StarCraft II is shown in the video above, but why the hell is the game being used to train AI? Well, the StarCraft II AI that Google's DeepMind network is using is a type of algorithm called PBT or population-based training. PBT was designed by DeepMind for improving video game algorithms.

MIT Technology Review reports that PBT "takes inspiration from biological evolution, speeds up the selection of machine-learning algorithms and parameters for a particular task by having candidate code draw from the "fittest" specimens (the ones that perform a given task most efficiently) in an algorithmic population".

DOOM Eternal has just received a bunch of new footage and details from the first day of QuakeCon 2019, with the new Battlemode teased and in the video below. Battlemode will see a fully-loaded DOOM Slayer battling two demons controlled by other gamers... check it out:

Battlemode will see the fully-loaded DOOM Slayer fighting two human-controlled enemies that can choose between different demons, each with their own respective powers and strengths. There will be 6 maps in total, 5 different demons, and Bethesda has said there will be plenty of post-launch maps and new demons coming to Battlemode, FOR FREE.

The 5 demons at launch will be:

Quakecon 2019 is kicking off, and Bethesda stealth launched a handful of classic Doom games onto the Switch to celebrate 25 years of ripping and tearing.

Doom Slayer's full bloody, demon-massacring saga is now on the Switch, which is a surprising turn for the family-oriented handheld. Every big mainline Doom game is now available on the Nintendo Switch's eShop: Doom ($4.99), Doom II ($4.99), Doom 3 ($9.99), and Doom 2016 ($59.99). And of course this year's huge heaven-smashing FPS Doom Eternal is coming to the Switch too, with double the demons in tow.

Both Doom and Doom II come with local 4-player co-op and multiplayer for old-school skull-smashing chaos, and the games are quite tiny at about 290MB and won't require any huge downloads. There's also expansions and bonuses levels thrown in for good measure.

NVIDIA's newest Shield gaming console appears to be getting closer to making a public appearance.

Eagle-eyed viewers have taken notice of the newest updated FCC filings for the new NVIDIA Shield game console (Model # P3430). The new NVIDIA Shield per multiple FCC filings shows a new chipset labeled 'Tegra X1 T210 B01', which is a different model than the original Shield TV model, which was 'Tegra X1 A2'.

We also see new accessories such as a new Shield TV Remote (model # P3700) which hints that new hardware is on the horizon, but the new console codenamed 'mdarcy' is still slated to be a minor incremental update. While the existing 2017 model (model # P2897) has been updated with the FCC showing a potential refresh to the now-aging hardware. The new P3430 could turn out to be a Shield TV dongle much akin to a fire-stick like device. This would be for those looking for the popular Android Shield interface without the size and grunt of the full-blown gaming console.

When building a world as diverse and futuristic as Cyberpunk 2077, one would consider the thought of religion still being present in it. CD Projekt RED did consider this thought, and religion will be playing a "very important" role in the immersion and world of Cyberpunk 2077.

According to a recent interview with polish site Gry Online WP, CD Projekt RED discussed the presence of religion in-game and how it would effect players. IGN managed to get an accurate translation of the interview, revealing that "Yes, and in many forms. As I mentioned, our vision is somehow based on the real-world. And religion is a very important part of the latter, society-wise. In our game we're going to see for example Christianity and its different branches, or religions from the East."

The developers continued and said "We do not want to avoid religion as a topic, authenticity of the world is what counts for us. Technically, the situation you mentioned is possible, but this is all about the choices made by the player. We won't encourage the player to do so. In our quests, which involve religious themes, we make sure there's no disrespect."

Techland's upcoming sequel to Dying Light has got gamers shaking in their boots with excitement especially since players will be able to metaphorically watch the world burn if they so choose.

In a recent interview with WCCFtech, Techland's, Chris Avellone the narrative designer for Dying Light 2, Kornel Jaskula, a producer and chief technology officer Pawel Rohleder. In the interview, it was touched on if players have the ability of playing a chaos agent in-game. What I mean by that is - do players have the choice of choosing to reign chaos on the characters in-game by turning the against each-other and creating complete disarray?

Avellone answered the question confidently, saying "Yes. Dying Light 2 is designed to allow the player to play any number of roles - helpful benefactor, selfish looter, ruthless pragmatist, betrayer, or even a trickster if they wish, and you can definitely turn the factions against themselves and individuals against each other."

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries has been announced as an exclusive to the Epic Games Store, ripping the game from Steam users' hands and throwing it onto the Epic Games Store on December 10.

The new release date is when the game goes live on tghe Epic Games Store, with refunds being offered through to September 1, while an 'Exclusive Closed Beta' opens up on November 5 if you pre-ordered the Community Edition of the game.

Russ Bullock, an executive producer with Piranha Games said: "Our partnership with the Epic Games store allows Piranha the opportunity to make sure MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries meets our internal goal of creating the best MechWarrior game possible. Since we announced the development of the first single-player MechWarrior game in 17 years, we have stated that our goal was to deliver to fans a MechWarrior: Mercenaries experience with true freedom of choice and to be able to share that experience in a coop setting".

The Epic Store now has cloud saves in select new games, but widespread adoption will be slower.

The Epic Store is missing lots of basic features you'd expect from an online digital storefront, let alone one ran by a billion-dollar company. That's starting to change slowly but surely, and Tim Sweeney today confirmed that newer titles like the now-free indie Moonlighter will support cloud saves. Both new and old games require manual updates from the store team, and there's no word on when all games will get cloud saves. Sadly there was no update on a shopping cart (which is arguably more important).

"Cloud saves are enabled for a couple of new games right now. We have a bit more work to do before rolling it out more widely," Sweeney said on Twitter.

CD Projekt RED still isn't ready for press and gamers to try out Cyberpunk 2077, but their massive sci-fi opus will still be at Gamescom.

Today CDPR revealed its plans for Gamescom 2019, which includes live on-floor demos of Cyberpunk 2077 in action. Sadly gamers and attendees can't actually try the game out. The demos aren't hands-on and instead are played by the dev team. Similar to E3 2019, press will get access to a more one-on-one gameplay demo behind closed doors, likely conducted on insane PC hardware powered by an NVIDIA RTX Titan GPU.

"Entertainment area pass holders will be able to watch Cyberpunk 2077 being played live by members of the development team at the game's booth located in Hall 6, Stand C049. These presentations will take place Wednesday, August 21st through Saturday, August 24th.

It seems like Microsoft spends way too much time trying to "streamline" and "optimize" the Xbox One dashboard. Now they're doing it again.

The Xbox One dashboard is weird. At first it was the worst console UI that I've ever seen. Then it slowly got better, but slightly more confusing each time as Microsoft moved and shifted everything around. It seemed like once you got used to something, it changed. Now the tile-based interface is getting updated once again.

Key changes include the removal of Cortana voice-assisted searching and a shift to the home UI. Services are strategically placed on-screen at the home menu to remind you that yes, you can sign up for Game Pass, and the Discover tab is literally more visible than your recently-played games.

Ubisoft has kicked off the PC technical test of its latest game Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, with select PC gamers receiving an email from Ubisoft inviting them into the test.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint's technical test will run between July 26-29 on all platforms for a select few randomly selected gamers, where the online functions of Breakpoint will be tested. Ubisoft will use the Ghost Reckon Breakpoint technical test to stress test their servers, to make sure they are all good to go for its release in October.

NDAs will be given to Ghost Recon Breakpoint technical testers, and even if you've pre-ordered you won't get in - Ubisoft is choosing gamers at random here.

THQ Nordic has many games under their belt, and the massive conglomerate is ready to throw another one into the mix at Gamescom 2019.

According to a new press release, THQ Nordic will have a brand new announced title to reveal to their audience. The press release says that the new game will be shown behind closed doors, and it will be a world exclusive to anyone who is lucky enough to be in the room.

The official reveal of the title will be during the Opening Night live stream on Monday, August 19th at 8:00 PM CEST / 2:00 PM EDT. For anyone who is lucky enough to be in Cologne, Germany should visit THQ Nordic's booth in Hall 8, A011. The games listed in the entirety of this article will be available to play at the booth.

The release of Wolfenstein: Youngblood is only hours away now, with Bethesda releasing a new launch trailer that teases a mystery, as well as the return of B.J. Blazkowicz.

Before he disappeared, Blazkowicz was looking for something important, and now his twin daughters are kicking some ass in the Wolfenstein world. Wolfenstein: Youngblood is different to other entries in the franchise with a more sandbox-style world is given to you to play in.

THere's also the huge co-op side of things since there are twin sisters to play throug hthe story, so with a single-player heavy yet sandbox-style gameplay it sounds like Wolfenstein: Youngblood could be quite interesting.

Respawn Entertainment took many of the best elements from Dark Souls and Sekiro and jammed them into their new Jedi power fantasy.

Right away Jedi: Fallen Order brings Dark Souls to mind. Instead of using a medieval weapon, you're using a lightsaber, and instead of eldritch magics, you wield Force powers. But the core combat framework is quite similar--there's rolling, dodging queues, and striking combos. But one critical feature makes Jedi: Fallen Order more like Sekiro: the lack of a stamina bar. This freedom was extremely important for Respawn at the start.

"I thought it was pretty badass, and a little comforting to know that you could make this type of game without a stamina bar. [Sekiro] lets you attack, it lets you roll, it does all this for free - and then the AI will tell you if you're doing the correct thing," game director Stig Asmussen said in a recent interview with EDGE Magazine.