Gaming - Page 735

An announcement has shined a light on a new strategy game IP that is in the works with a partnership with Paradox Interactive and Romero Games.

Founders of Romero Games are the legendary John Romero and Brenda Romero who worked on DOOM, Daikatana, Quake, Deus Ex, Jagged Alliance and many more great titles. With such a great repertoire of games behind these developers and now a partnership with Paradox Interactive, who is known for the development of Crusader Kings II, Cities: Skylines and Stellaris. We can expect that the new strategy IP that is in the works will be well directed.

Ebba Ljungerud, the CEO of Paradox Interactive has commented on the announcement, saying; "We are thrilled to work with industry legends, Brenda and John Romero, whose games we've grown up playing ourselves and long admired. At Paradox Interactive, we've built a reputation for top-tier strategy games and we're employing that expertise to help build something really special with the team at Romero Games." Brenda Romero, the Co-Founder of Romero Games also added; "This has been a project we've been wanting to work on for a long time, so it's especially exciting that we'll be partnering with Paradox Interactive to fully realize that dream. We can't wait to tell everyone more, so make sure you watch this space!"

Nintendo are rolling out the next update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, bringing the version of the game up to 2.0.2 and making some changes to the game.

The new update hasn't been officially released yet, but a disclaimer has been released that says that "details" will be available on April 3, 2019 11:30 AM ACDT. On April 3rd, there will also be a pop-up that is available on the title screen, that pop-up when clicked will download the newest version of the game and also give you an option of viewing the changes made in the new version.

This new update could be the last patch we get before the big Version 3.0.0 update that should contain the first new DLC fighter 'Joker' from Persona 5. Nintendo has said that 'Joker' would be arriving "before the end of April", which means that we should see the version 3 closer to the end of April. If there are major changes within this version 2.0.2 update, I will follow up with what these changes are when the patch goes live. The update goes live on Wednesday, April 3, 2019 11:30 AM ACDT.

NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros. have decided to tease the reveal of a brand new character to join the Mortal Kombat 11 roster. Introducing Cetrion, a goddess that manages elemental powers.

The news comes from an exclusive piece by GameInformer, the above video showcases to viewers that GameInformer will be using the entire month of April to cover Mortal Kombat 11. The coverage will range from new features the game has, interviews with the NetherRealm Studio developers and even a deep dive on the new character Cetrion.

The video gives us a very quick sneak peak at what Cetrion is going to be like. Starting at around 16 seconds in, we get to see some very quick combo's from Cetrion on Noob Saibot. From the video we can say that Cetrion uses a variety of elemental attacks and abilities as she is a "Elder God" of nature powers. At the moment that is all that we have to go on for the new character, as soon as more information is released, I will be sure to update you. Mortal Kombat 11 is planned for release the Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch on April 23rd.

The entire battle royale phenomenon started with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and then into Fortnite and now Apex Legends, but behind PUBG there was avid gamer Brendan 'PlayerUnknown' Greene who announced just last month he'll be running a new studio in Amsterdam.

Greene's new studio will be called PUBG Special Projects, and is a dedicated space for all things R&D into game development. But during GDC 2019 a couple of weeks ago, Greene had some words about the stress of creating his next game, and the comparisons that it'll have against PUBG since it has been so damn popular.

GamesIndustry chatted with Greene at GDC 2019, where he said: "We're not doing this for profit. Eventually someday, we may do, but right now it's just about having time to explore. There is no deadline here, this is us with a few years to play. Gaming and the industry has become so hard, this is a very lucky thing to have. We can genuinely explore and be curious for some time".

I'm expecting Microsoft to announce its next-gen Xbox at E3 2019 and Sony to unveil its next-gen PlayStation 5 at its own event later in the year, and now we have GameStop all but confirming the news.

During a recent earnings call, GameStop CFO Rob Lloyd said: "With respect to new hardware, as we get closer to the end of the current console cycle for Xbox and PlayStation, we expect demand to decline as some customers choose to wait on the sidelines in anticipation of acquiring the next generation of innovative consoles".

GameStop recently posted a huge $673 million full-year loss for 2018, with the company acknowledging "the challenges facing our pre-owned video game business" and the dire need to change its business model. We should expect less second hand game sales from next-gen consoles as we move to many more digital sales (just like the PC has done over the last 10 years, I haven't purchased a physical disc in way over 10 years).

We all know Minecraft isn't anywhere close to being associated with 'OMG it has the best graphics' but with the latest version of Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders, or SEUS Renewed, Minecraft is looking better than ever before.

SEUS Renewed was teased in some short videos of the new shaders at work in Minecraft on Twitter, with 'Notglacier' stating that it's not full ray tracing but rather path tracing, with the effects looking pretty damn good. In some instances there's a window with the sunlight coming through and it looks awesome, while tiles on a floor reflect light beautifully and almost real.

Another part of it is removing blocks from above the character, and the light gets shut out when the blocks are placed back. It looks GREAT... especially when you consider it still is only Minecraft. 'Notglacier used an Intel Core i9-9900K mixed with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti and was only hitting 25-40FPS with the new path tracing shaders enabled, but it looks a helluva lot better than stock Minecraft.

Valve have said in a recent developer post on the Artifact website that they will be taking the card game back to the their development laboratories to fix all of the major issues.

The news has come from this developer post which reveals that Valve are not strayinga way from Artifcat being a complete flop of a release. The game which was $20 and also featured a micro-transaction system received criticism for both of these aspects, as well as criticism for the lack of interest Valve has had in its other poor aspects.

According to the post on the website, Valve now completely recognizes that Artifact has numerous problems and that the reception that they have received about the game was not expected at all. "Obviously, things didn't turn out how we hoped. Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome. But we don't think that players misunderstand our game, or that they're playing it wrong. Artifact now represents an opportunity for us to improve our craft and use that knowledge to build better games."

A brand new trailer has come out of Focus Features and it showcases the new project from Jim Jarmusch, 'The Dead Don't Die'. We have gotten the first trailer for the new movie and it gives us a quick tease what what the cast is going to look like.

Straight off the bat we get introduced to quite an extensive cast. The movie will be starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver who play two local cops of a small rural town that are required to spring into action when they realize that their town has fallen victim to a zombie outbreak.

Other actors that are also apart of the cast include; Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Austin Butler, Bill Murray, Selena Gomez, Rosie Perez, RZA, Caleb Landry Jones, Carol Kane, Tom Waits, Danny Glover and Iggy Pop. The current release date for this movie is June 14th, 2019 and Focus Features will be production and distribution company. Personally, from the trailer I can see that the relationship between Adam Drivers character and Bill Murry's is going to be a center focus for the humor, and judging from what we have seen in the trailer, I don't think it will disappoint.

Some interesting RAGE 2 news has surfaced from this years PAX East, as id Software has spoken out about the possibility of RAGE 2 receiving a Nintendo Switch version.

Just recently, Tim Willits, the Software Studio Director at id Software said what kind of performance gamers can expect from the upcoming RAGE 2, more on that story here. Now Willits has dropped another information bomb and spoken to Dualshockers at PAX East about the possibility of RAGE 2 and a Nintendo Switch edition.

According to Willits, id Software has been "looking into it, It's just the technology, there are some challenges. But we're always looking for future platforms and future people to work with. So, we like to investigate, but we have no plans for that right now." It doesn't seem that RAGE 2 has been developed with a Nintendo Switch edition in mind, but perhaps sometime after the launch of the game we will see a RAGE 2 Nintendo Switch edition. Bethesda already has; The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus on the Nintendo Switch, so what would be one more title? Plus RAGE 2 hand held would be insanely fun.

Reddit has taken a stance on their r/Games subreddit with moderators closing down the post creation and comment section on April Fool's in a stance against derogatory comments targeted at minority groups.

The subreddits moderators have detailed their mentality towards the decision of not allowing for comments or post to be created for 24 hours in a large post that is pinned to the top of the page. The post says that Reddit has recognized on-going attacks against specific minority groups within the comment sections of some of their posts about informative gaming news. The r/Games mods says that they see "condescending, dismissive, vindictive and pessimistic attitudes" on a "day to day" basis. They further explain that this is espeically troubling when "those interactions involve harassing or outright targeting regularly discriminated communities."

The mods also back up these statements by compiling an entire album of screenshotted comments that could be viewed as intentional harassment, to check out that album visit this link here. Ultimately, the mods of subreddit sum up their post by saying that its members should be much more inclusive of the different types of minorities that are present on the subreddit, and instead of voicing what could be viewed as 'hate speech' embrace the different personalities that are on the platform. The mods conclude their post by asking its subscribers to donate to a selection of organizations that help these minorities out.

Treyarch and Activision have announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's battle royale mode Blackout will be getting a brand new map tomorrow.

Treyarch will be bringing Blackout players a brand new battle royale experience when 'Alcatraz' goes live tomorrow. According to the above trailer, we learn that this new map will be much smaller than the standard map which will no doubt create a much more fast-paced adrenaline fueled experience. Treyarch's own description is; "The new Blackout Alcatraz map is set in a fog-filled island boasting a variety of environments that all lead up to the big cellhouse atop the hill. Requiring new strategies and tactics, players will drop in, gear up and fight through both close-quarters combat and long-range exterior firefights as they battle to be the last squad standing."

Since the release of Apex Legends, Blackout has suffered from a departure of gamers so this update is Treyarchs effort to seperate itself further away from other battle royale titles in a more unique experience. Perhaps this is what Blackout needs to succeed more consistently, perhaps a close-quarters map that changes gameplay into a more of fast-paced jump-in jump-out jump experience will increase the average playerbase. During the month of April, from the 2nd to the 30th Activision will be making Blackout completely free-to-play, for more information visit the official Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 website here.

Devil May Cry 5 players will be able to enjoy wave after wave of increasingly hard enemies in the new 'Bloody Palace' survival mode that has arrived in a new free update.

The new 'Bloody Palace' mode comes with 101 floors of progressively harder enemies, players will also be racing against the clock to beat a ticking timer. Above is the trailer for the new game mode, but before talking about it I would advise to anyone who hasn't finished the story in Devil May Cry 5 to avoid this trailer as it features some level of spoilers.

It is unclear whether or not this update contains some fixes for the base game, but it is known that it will automatically be downloaded for Steam users. Devil May Cry 5 is currently available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. For more information, visit the official Devil May Cry 5 website here.

When publishers release high-profile games too close to one another, bad things usually happen. One usually outsells the other at a rapid pace (as EA found out the hard way with Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2). Now 2K Games and Take-Two could do the same thing by launching Borderlands 3 in September.

Today Gearbox might've accidentally revealed Borderlands 3's launch date. The Tweet in question, which says Borderlands 3 is coming on September 13, was quickly deleted but not before it was archived. There's also evidence Borderlands 3 will be on the Epic Store instead of Steam, but this was to be expected given Take-Two's penchant for the store.

This is a weird window for a number of reasons, and would put Borderlands 3 in a rather congested Q2 release window (Take-Two's Q2 is from Aug - Oct). 2K Games' biggest franchise is NBA 2K, and these games always release every year in September. NBA 2K is always seen as a guaranteed money-maker via microtransactions and game sales. Since it's a big game for 2K, it's also a big earner for its parent company Take-Two Interactive.

Square Enix isn't doing too hot right now. The publisher's revenue has dropped consistently and outside of Kingdom Hearts III, it hasn't had a big winner for a bit now. But this lapse in game releases signals some big surprises behind the scenes as the company readies new exciting next-gen projects--one of which will be helmed by one of the most talented devs in the industry.

Naoki Yoshida, known as Yoshi-P to the Final Fantasy faithful, is working on a new project outside of the Final Fantasy XIV MMORPG. Square Enix's recruitment page confirms Yoshi-P is leading the a team of developers on a new unannounced HD game for next-gen consoles.

Yoshi-P is now general manager of Square Enix's new consolidated 3rd Business Division development team, who is making the new game. Following revenue losses, the publisher recently merged its 11 teams into 4 operational units in an effort to streamline games and services development.

Sony today announced a welcomed new addendum to digital refunds, joining other marketplaces with pro-consumer policies.

There's good news for gamers who impulsively pre-order bad games: Sony will now refund PlayStation Store pre-orders, but there's some caveats. Refunds have a limited 14-day window, but you can't have actually played the game, or downloaded it. In fact you can't even have started the download. This is a sharp contrast to Steam and GOG.com who both let you play a game for two hours and still refund it.

Sony's no exceptions policies have gotten lots of heat of the last few years and it's great to see them relent a bit. Before now anything you bought on the PS Store was pretty much written in stone and you were stuck with any lemons you picked up in a hype-fueled post-E3 purchase.

Risk of Rain 2 is a thrill ride of total havoc, carnage, and addictive action that reminds us that indies are magical.

Today I played Risk of Rain 2 for the first time. Suffice it to say I think I've found my next obsession. The game has this kind of intense magnetism that resurrects the old-school shoot-em-up feel of arcade games. The pixellated graphical charm is met with an enthralling and quite dire chaos that only roguelikes can bring...but this one is more interesting than most. With online multiplayer set in a third-person shooter wrapper and a strange, enamoring sci-fi world, Risk of Rain 2 has everything any AAA multiplayer game should have: engaging combat, tons of team synergy afforded by classes, and sweet, sweet loot.

Risk of Rain 2's main draw is its destroy-everything-in-sight focus. It's all about blasting tons of randomly spawning enemies and collecting cash to unlock gear. But it's actually quite layered in many different ways. At it's core, the game is madcap scramble for survival and loot. You're encouraged to work together to survive, but also compete against one another to open boxes for passive upgrades.

During an interview at PAX East, Phoenix Labs revealed their motivation on bringing their title Dauntless to the Epic Games Store. The studio says that their deal is based around a strategy for cross-play.

The interview was conducted by DualShockers and the information that was revealed was from Robin Mayne, the co-founder of Phoenix Labs. Maybe says that "Every decision we make on Dauntless is a very thoughtful decision and we try to align it with our vision. One, Dauntless is about bringing as many players together to be able to play this PvE co-op experience". Continuing, Mayne says that one of Phoenix Labs' main focuses is bringing Dauntless to as many platforms as possible and once the title is released onto consoles the studio wants to allow gamers to be able to experience the world of Dauntless together with cross-play.

Mayne also says that "Our partnership with Epic allows us to do that". Since Dauntless is a PVE experience, cross-play makes perfect sense for the game. Phoenix Labs doing this will create one large community instead of seperate lines drawn between each of the platforms. Dauntless is currently only available on PC in beta form, but the finished title will be launching PS4 and Xbox One sometime this summer. For more information about Dauntless, you can visit the games official website here.

A new image has been leaked by none other than Best Buy's very own advertisement, the leak showcases what appears to be the amiibo render for Joker.

Back in December we learned that the first DLC fighter for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's Fighters Pass would be Persona 5's Joker. We then learned about a month later through Nintendo's smaller Direct that Joker would be added "before the end of April", then some data mining revealed what is to be believed as Joker's stage name 'mementos'.

That is all we know of Joker so far, we have not seen gameplay of the fighter, just renders, images and a little bit of footage that was shown throughout the Nintendo Direct. Now, we have another leaked render that if I was to take a guess at what the its for - I would say it would be for the 'Joker' amiibo. Best Buy seems to have leaked the amiibo image through an advertisement on their website, to check the ad out for yourself visit this link here.

You can't deny that Fortnite is a runaway success at this point, with over 250 million players it is the most popular game in this universe right now. In its inertia, Epic Games went from an already ridiculous big gaming-focused company to how-in-the-F much bigger can they get.

There are 7.5 million developers using Unreal Engine in some form, where it's not just used by game developers but by students and teachers, the medical field, in TV and movies (there's even a kids show called LazyTown that my girls used to love and I saw that the backgrounds used in the show were infused with Unreal Engine). UE is everywhere, and you might not even know or see it.

During a recent interview between Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and Business Insider at GDC 2019, Sweeney said that Epic plans to take Fortnite "beyond its roots, and make it a true online world", BI says it best. Sweeney added: "We see that as 'Fortnite' evolves, it's evolving beyond being a game" and that "there'll be more and more interesting things happening in that world" that will let Fortnite "evolve in ways that previous games haven't".

We all know that the internet will be rife with April Fools Day pranks and while we had our own with the announcement of Half-Life 3 exclusive to the Epic Games Store, DSOGaming got into the same fun with a headline that reads "Crysis 4 has been announced, powered by Unreal Engine 4, will be exclusive to Epic Games Store". Alrighty.

No, Crysis 4 wasn't announced.

This sucks, and just as my disappointment seeped in with writing the Half-Life 3 announcement post, it made me want to see Valve get off their ass and get Half-Life 3 to market. The same thing sparked in my mind when I read the Crysis 4 news, and now I just want to see a totally rebooted Crysis on a new CRYENGINE and next generation graphics.