Gaming - Page 742

Bethesda today confirmed its E3 2019 plans, which include a stage show for its biggest upcoming games...and Starfield could be one of them.

Bethesda's E3 2019 gala will basically be a rehash of everything announced at last year's show, including the hellishly explosive DOOM Eternal, the two-player co-op Wolfenstein Youngblood, open-world post-apocalyptic RAGE 2, and plus maybe a few surprises. "E3 is coming, and on Sunday, June 9, Team Bethesda returns to Los Angeles for our 5th Annual Bethesda E3 Showcase. It's going to be a hell of a night. We have got an in-depth look at DOOM Eternal plus much, much more," the devs announced.

But one highly anticipated sci-fi game could make another appearance, as teased in the starry night sky on Bethesda's E3 reveal. Originally announced at E3 2018, Bethesda's latest game Starfield is its most ambitious project yet and is still probably a ways off from release.

OtherSide Entertainment have decided to separate with publisher, Starbreeze Studios while also announcing that System Shock 3 development is well on the way.

In a recent post to their website, OtherSide Entertainment has announced that the relationship between them and Starbreeze has ended due to the current finnancial situation Starbreeze is going through. For those that don't know, Starbreeze is dealing with massive company losses after the catastrophe with OVERKILL's The Walking Dead, the company is looking at losses of $135 million and is currently aiming for overall stability.

The post has also mentioned that despite the separation between OtherSide Entertainment and Starbreeze, the development progress of System Shock 3 has been unaltered. Deus Ex creator, Warren Spector has created a team for System Shock 3 and gave a statement in the post, here is what he had to say; "We parted ways with Starbreeze (amicably), which means we are in the process of lining up a new publishing partner. Happily, given the pedigree of System Shock and the progress we've made so far there's already a lot of interest. Has the situation affected development? Not really. The team is still, as we say, 'psyched and cranking' - in other words, continuing as normal. I'm confident we can bring System Shock 3 to market and have it take its place as a leading title in the immersive simulation genre".

Valve has just released a new DOTA 2 betting app onto the App Store and Google Play Store, the app allows users to bet on DOTA 2 eSports matches with in-game money.

The app has already been released and allows for Android and iOS users to win shards by predicting what DOTA 2 team wins the eSports Circuit matches. The betting uses in-game money instead of using real-world money, and also allows for its users to personalize their news feed which is in-built into the app.

Valve's new app also encourages its users to create their own 'pro-player' roster in the Fantasy Challenge mode which will reward playerss with shards. Its quite obvious of what Valve's motives are with the DOTA Pro Circuit app, they want its users to be always looking at the eSports games of DOTA and to keep its viewers there they will be rewarded with some currency. To check out the app on iOS click here, for a link to Google Play, click here.

Square Enix has confirmed that there is a brand new Octopath Traveler game in development for the Nintendo Switch.

In an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu, Tomoya Asano, the producer for the first Octopath Traveler has said that a sequel for the JRPG is currently in the works and will be released onto the Nintendo Switch. it is unclear when the title is planned for launch. According to Stealth, a Global Market Researcher, "the Yokoyama team of Square Enix is the one working on the Octopath mobile game."

The first Octopath Traveler was very-well received by the JRPG community, but that doesn't mean it didn't come with its faults. The expectations for the sequel will be quite high, but if the sequel is anything like the first game fans of the series shouldn't be disappointed. Unfortunately was no release date mentioned in the news tip from Nintendo First Order Reaver.

Valve has issued out a new update to the networking aspect of Steam, the update improves the SDK and bring it up to v1.44 which will improve the overall quality of connection as well as protection.

Valve has released onto their official Steam blog all the changes that are coming to Steamworks SDK. Valve say that for Steam partners the are tied to Valve through servers will now have improvements added to their network in the form of protection against denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, and network connectivity. The new update anonymizes users game traffic which protects it from DDOS attacks, while at the same time decreasing the amount of latency between two hosts.

The way Valve has managed to improve connection to its servers for partners is through a relayed route. While in most networking instances a "direct" route is usually the fastest form of access, Valve explains that "The Internet is a packet-switched network; there is no such thing as a "direct" route. When a packet is sent "directly" to the remote host's IP address, it takes the route determined by standard IP routing protocols. This route is often not optimal! Our protocol puts the client in charge of routing decisions. The client considers each relay point-of-presence, and determines the end-to-end latency along this route. It then selects the route with the lowest latency."

Respawn Entertainment will be launching the first season and Battle Pass for Apex Legends any day now, with a new leak teasing that launch pads will be arriving in the battle royale smash hit... sometime soon.

The new launch pads have been found in the market area for players to test, with YouTuber 'Mokeysniper' providing a video showing how they work in all sorts of ways. The video above shows different speeds of running up to it and how you will be propelled, using Pathfinder to gain momentum to see if there will be any benefits from that, and more.

You can use the launch pads when when you've been knocked down, which will be a great way of getting out of a battle and surviving so your team mates can get you back up. The launch pads can also be used to throw projectiles around, including grenades and traps so I can see future battles in Apex Legends involving the launch pads to be super fun.

RAGE 2 is less than two months away, with id Software finally confirming what to expect performance wise from their latest game on both consoles, as well as the PC.

In an interview with Hardcore Gamer, id Software director Tim Willits said: "To make it simple, on the enhanced consoles, it runs at 1080p 60 FPS. On base hardware, it runs at 30 FPS. On PC, it's uncapped. We went for speed over 4K for the enhanced consoles". It's interesting to see that id Software is choosing 1080p 60FPS over 4K 30FPS, but I respect that. I would choose 60FPS over 30FPS any day of the week.

RAGE 2 will drop on May 14 for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Crytek has come out with a bang right before GDC 2019 showing off Noir, a new demo that highlights the impressive CRYENGINE with real-time ray tracing with a secret weapon: it works on any GPU, including AMD Radeon graphics cards. Check it out:

The demo is super-impressive, and even more so hwen you discover it is running on an AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics card which isn't anywhere near as powerful as NVIDIA's arsenal of GeForce RTX graphcis cards. Noir uses experimental ray tracing features that will be built into CRYENGINE 5, with Crytek using CRYENGINE's Total Illumination effects in the Noir demo.

The effects used in Noir are both API and hardware agnostic, meaning they'll run on most new graphics cards - including AMD's higher-end Radeon cards. We should expect that once more CRYENGINE 5-powered games are made, they will look even better, and run even smoother than what we're seeing here today on the Radeon RX Vega 56.

Despite making billions every year from lucrative services like Xbox LIVE Gold, Microsoft isn't locking the Master Chief Collection's PC port behind a premium sub.

Microsoft is finally bringing the six-game Halo Master Chief Collection to PC, and like most PC games on the market, it won't require a paid subscription for multiplayer. Microsoft confirmed the news to Windows Central, who says Xbox LIVE Gold isn't needed to play online multiplayer in any of the Master Chief Collection's six games on PC (even on Steam).

An Xbox LIVE account is needed to play MCC on both Steam and the Windows Store, however, but that's totally free. This move makes a lot of sense from both a PR and business perspective: PC gamers would be incredibly disappointed by having to buy into the sub, and Halo coming to Steam is because of full game sales, not services.

Red Dead Redemption 2's latest patch apparently makes some key changes to the game's singleplayer visuals, namely with lighting effects.

It appears Rockstar Games may have accidentally turned off ambient occlusion with Red Dead Redemption 2's new v1.06 update, giving the game a decidedly brighter and less defined look. Some say the game has been downgraded graphically...and there admittedly are noticeable differences. Twitter user Darealbandicoot scoped out the game's pre- and post-lighting shift.

No one knows for sure exactly what happened but gamers expect Rockstar temporarily shut off ambient occlusion, a unique bit of visual wizardry that makes objects more defined via shadow effects. This actually isn't the first time this has happened in a recent Rockstar game: GTA V had a similar visual shift after an online update.

Built on accessibility and universality, Google's upcoming Project Stream gaming platform may support all sorts of controllers...even the Switch's JoyCons.

A big piece of Project Stream has been uncovered days ahead of Google's big GDC unveil: unique controller integration. According to info found in Chromium's source code, Google's Chrome browser will soon be compatible with Nintendo Switch's JoyCon controllers. This strongly hints that Google's new gaming platform will be cross-dimensional and bleed over into existing peripherals and maybe even hardware, and might lend credence to Google not actually making its own games console.

As 9 to 5 Google notes, Chrome already supports Switch Pro controllers on Linux in a limited fashion, but this new addition sees widespread compatibility with all of Switch's controller variants including separate JoyCons. Chrome will even eventually recognize the JoyCon Charging Grip when it's hooked up via USB.

Fans and developers are recreating Star Wars: Dark Forces in Unreal Engine 4, and it looks absolutely incredible.

As a kid, Star Wars games were magical experiences. The original old-school Dark Forces shooter was one of my favorite games growing up (second only to my love for Jedi Knight) and I remember blasting stormtroopers, sewer monsters, and droids on PS1 until my eyes practically fell out of my head. But what would my childhood memories look like in today's powerful games engines, like, say, Unreal Engine 4?

A team of talented games-makers and ardent fans answer that question with this magnificent recreation of Dark Forces in UE4. YouTuber BlueDrake42 found a demo for a Mos Eisley level that looks absolutely incredible, complete with a Millennium Falcon docked in the hangar. The demo didn't have any actual combat--it's not a game, per say--but it's still interactive enough and serves as a dazzling spectacle of skill and dedication.

As big players like Google, Amazon, Verizon, and even Microsoft ready their game streaming services, Valve makes a preemptive strike by offering remote streaming of Steam's juggernaut PC games library.

Valve recently announced Steam Link Anywhere, a new addition to its remote gaming platform that allows game streaming to mobiles, tablets, and other devices while on-the-go. Unlike the previous iteration of that limited game streaming to a home network, Steam Link Anywhere basically transforms your PC into a cloud server that beams Steam games to devices running the Steam Link app. Think of it as a version of PS4's Remote Play but for PC games.

Receiver devices include all hardware that can run the Steam Link app, including Android tablets and smartphones, as well as the Raspberry Pi and the discontinued Steam Link hardware.

The Epic Store is quite fledgling right now. Compared to Steam, it's pretty barebones and lacks the rich and robust feature set the PC games king currently offers. But that'll soon change: Epic plans to bring many of the same things found on Steam to its wholly-owned digital storefront.

Right now the Epic Store is setting itself apart from Steam for all the wrong reasons. Epic bought up big exclusives like Metro Exodus and The Division 2, causing a huge hurrah in the PC gaming community for "anti-consumer" practices. But the games-maker plans to copy many of Steam's best features to make its store more competent and alluring (which is something it should've done instead of securing exclusivity deals in the first place).

Epic recently outlined its store feature roadmap on Trello, confirming staples like mod support, wishlisting, achievements, and the ultra-important cloud saves are all coming to the platform. I hope these features come soon alongside a new Epic Store redesign, especially since the store doesn't give me nearly enough information about its games. Steam, on the other hand, tells me if the game is co-op, if it's online, if it has DLC and how much it costs, and a systemic deep-dive of info with player reviews, trailers, PC spec requirements, and a lot more.

Epic Games is getting lots of heat for buying up exclusivity deals for PC games for its new Epic Games Store, and company boss Tim Sweeney uses some rather interesting logic to defend the platform's choices.

With its favorable 88%-12% revenue split for games-makers, the Epic Games Store was originally touted as a way to force competition with the reigning champ Steam and push Valve to improve its policies to benefit both consumers and developers. But once Epic started buying out exclusives like The Division 2, Metro Exodus, and even a handful of indies, gamers were very, very wary. Why would a platform that lets devs and publishers keep 88% of revenues need to make exclusivity deals? Shouldn't the devs just bring their games to the store organically and treat it as an extension of other platforms? It's simple: to get more people to buy from the store.

But the move has seemingly backfired. The Epic Store is now embroiled in a PR nightmare that seems to only get worse. Rather than wooing PC gamers, the store has repelled them en masse with accusations of "anti-consumer" practices. Buying up exclusives has further fragmented the already-split PC sector into a wider galaxy of launchers, deals, and storefronts.

That recently "leaked" Modern Warfare 4 promo art wasn't authentic, but Infinity Ward could still be working on a sequel.

The Call of Duty community saw a big stir when some Modern Warfare 4 flyer art circulated the web, but alas it turned out to be a hoax. The supposed leak was debunked by eagle-eyed gamers who traced it back to artist Rene Aigner, and the "quick sketch" was based on meshes from someone else.

The art, which was dubious from the start, shows four identical-looking soldiers all holding the same gun. A random person just slapped a stylized Modern Warfare 4 over the image and called it a leak.

Hello Games today announced No Man's Sky Beyond, the largest and most ambitious update to the galactic space sim to date.

With base-building, light co-op, freighters, and a near-infinite galaxy of procedurally-generated plans to explore, No Man's Sky is already a massive game, but Hello Games is intent on pushing the bar even further with new expansions. The devs are going all out with Beyond, No Man's Sky's colossal new update, which aims to completely overhaul its online component and re-shape the game as we know it.

Exact specifics about Beyond are light at the moment, but we do know it'll take flight this Summer on all platforms and bring a whole new dimension to the game's online multiplayer.

In a bid to appease its rather frustrated playerbase, BioWare has tuned Anthem's loot on a server level to increase the chances of higher-end gear drops.

For a brief period, Anthem was actually quite fun. Gamers were being showered with the most powerful weapon grades in the game and activities actually felt rewarding. But this was a bug, an unfortunate glitch that BioWare had to "fix" by cutting off the now-famous Loot Shower. Yes, BioWare fixed its own game by making it less fun. But now the devs want to turn things around. Following a massive boycott protest over measly loot rewards, BioWare has given in to popular demand by boosting drop rates for Grandmaster 2 and 3 difficulties.

BioWare community manager Andrew Johnson announced the news on the Anthem subreddit and confirmed the drop rates are now live as a server-wide tweak. This means BioWare can flip a switch and make specific changes without requiring patch or update downloads, which is super convenient for gamers.

Microsoft's new cloud-powered game streaming service is more ready than we thought, and should start beaming AAA games to phones later this year.

Built on accessibility, ease-of-use, and universality, streaming is the future of gaming and it's coming fast. With its new Project xCloud service, Microsoft wants to be a big pioneer of this market by bringing its monetizable Xbox-as-a-service platform and games to all devices. It recently brought Xbox LIVE to iOS and Android to make ready for xCloud and serve as the glue for this cross-platform foundation.

The idea is that Project xCloud, which is described as the Netflix for games by Microsoft, will ensure that console-quality gaming experiences can be enjoyed on-the-go on laptops and phones for non-interrupted gameplay (and monetization). Project xCloud uses the power of remote servers to beam the games wirelessly via Wi-Fi or cellular internet, meaning higher-end gaming is possible even on underpowered devices. It'll basically be like a Switch, but without the transforming hardware; play a game at home and you can pick right back off where you left while waiting in line at the DMV or doctor's office. But the proof is in the pudding. The company came prepared and recently showed off a live demonstration of its new game streaming tech during a recent Inside Xbox showcase.

Ubisoft are remastering one of the more classic Assassin's Creed games, Assassin's Creed III. The remastered title will be coming to the Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch, but what cool features will the Switch version have?

We have been talking about the Assassin's Creed III Remastered for quite some time now, and back in early February Ubisoft released a press release that detailed the new features that would be arriving with the remastered edition. Now, Ubisoft has updated Nintendo Switch users with the features that will be coming with the Switch version of the game.

Ubisoft has detailed in a blog post the exclusive features that Nintendo Switch users will be receiving if they pick up the game. According to the blog post, Nintendo Switch users will get; HD rumble, touchscreen support, motion controls and specific UI design. The Assassin's Creed III Remastered edition will be released on March 29th for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The Nintendo Switch version will be released on May 21st, for more information visit the official blog here.