Gaming - Page 754

At the end of the Nintendo Direct that was streamed last week, Nintendo revealed to us that they would be bringing out a remaster of a classic Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

While many die-hard Zelda fans were more than happy to see a remaster coming to fruition from Nintendo, some fans weren't convinced. To really showcase the graphical improvements that have been made to the game, GameXplain has thrown together a side-by-side comparison video which can be seen above.

From the above video, we can obviously see massive improvements in the games graphics, smoothness, shadows, character movement, viewing angles and much, much more. Overall, the comparison video perfectly showcases all the hard-work that Nintendo have gone through to bring to life this remaster. In the entirety of this post you will find the official announcement trailer from Nintendo. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is planned for release on the Nintendo Switch sometime throughout 2019.

Respawn has been busy banning cheaters in the massively popular battle royale surprise Apex Legends, with the team already taking down over 16,000 cheaters since the game launched on February 5.

Apex Legends in its current form doesn't have a feature where gamers can report hackers and cheaters, but a community manager said yesterday that Respawn "have heard your feedback about a report feature in the game" and that it's a "very good idea". There is a way that you can report people, where you'll need to report their offenders ID through this support website.

The game will have a second patch this week, but we don't know what to expect with the upcoming Apex Legends patch. Respawn will have to be on top of it all as Apex Legends' first season kicks off on March 1 and it'll need a sure fire way to have gamers reporting hackers and cheaters, and a permanent way of dealing with them, too.

Blizzard may have laid off some 800 people last week, but that doesn't mean the Overwatch franchise is being left in the dark wtih the announcement of a bunch of toys and a Overwatch-themed Monopoly set that will launch this spring.

Monopoly Overwatch Collector's Edition will cost $50 and will see Overwatch maps turned into properies, the cards are loot boxes, and player pieces will be of course... characters from the game. The collection of Overwatch action figures will include 9 of the characters, with it leading in a huge giant-sized fully poseable Reinhardt with an even larger Barrier Field.

Hasbro are the ones making the Overwatch toys, where the single-character kits will sell for $23 and include Lucio, Reaper, Sombra, and Tracer. If you want to spend a bit more, you'll have the huge $50 Reinhardt figure, or the dual-team Mercy and Pharah combo or Ana and Soldier 76 combo for $50, too.

Despite missing out on short-term revenues, Activision is quite happy with its decision to split up with Bungie and rid themselves of Destiny.

Activision discusses why it sold Destiny back to Bungie, and it really comes down to freeing up its most precious resource: developer time. The game simply carried a weight that Activision wasn't willing to bear any more. All of the live service maintenance, all of the in-game changes and tweaks, all of the criticism and missed sales and badly executed plans--all these things added up and Activision no longer believed in Bungie's destiny.

According to Activision, Destiny just wasn't meeting its potential. The game's sequel wasn't re-engaging its core launch fanbase and sales of its excellent yet too-little too-late Forsaken expansion missed projections. The game wouldn't be a "material contributor" to Activision's 2019 operating revenues. Worse still, Destiny 1 & 2 were now commanding a portion of Activision's live service teams, which could be used to help fortify upcoming games. The split-up was a mutual and amicable agreement, the publisher says.

Activision-Blizzard recently traded 800 non-game development jobs for 20% more revenue to spend on making new titles. But this cash won't just be spent on new games. It'll also fund the services that power them.

The world of online digital gaming is always changing. First there were microtransactions and lootboxes, now subscriptions and battle passes are all the rage. To stay competitive with publishers like EA and even Microsoft, Activision-Blizzard wants to keep ahead of the curve and be able to quickly adapt and iterate on these trends. Even though the company makes billions every year on live services, it's not content with being overshadowed by the likes of Apex Legends and Xbox Game Pass. Once we consider Activision-Blizzard's avaricious hunger for recurring monetization cashflow, suddenly the restructuring decision makes a lot more sense.

It's true Blizzard is ramping up development on a ton of new games including Diablo IV, new unannounced IPs, and maybe Overwatch 2. All of these games will be monetized with live services, though. So the publisher will take the revenue from the job cuts and reinvest it both into game dev and service maintenance of new and existing titles.

Anthem will launch with microtransactions later this week, and now we have an idea of how much its optional cosmetics will cost.

BioWare's big new IP Anthem is an online-only live service game that's monetized with cosmetic-only microtransactions. These purchases will help fund an entirely free roadmap of post-release content, which includes new beefy expansion-quality story modes, guilds, and Elder Content like strongholds and world-breaking cataclysmic storms.

Now that the game is now live for EA Access and Origin Access Premiere subscribers, we're seeing info come in on Anthem's cosmetic pricing. Shards, the game's premium currency, come in an exchange rate of about 105 Shards per $1 (Origin/EA Access subscribers get a discount), but if you buy larger packs you'll get bonus currency. Epic-grade cosmetic Javelin skins cost 850 Shards, or about $8. Higher-grade skins could cost more, though, and the rarity scheme goes like this: Common->Uncommon->Rare->Epic->Masterwork->Legendary. Everything bought with Shards can also be bought with Anthem's in-game Coin sweat currency.

Rather than sell consoles or full games, first-party games like Crackdown 3 are geared towards adding value to Game Pass.

Microsoft's Game Pass subscription has literally changed the game for Xbox. The all-you-can-download subscription comes at a time when Microsoft is focusing on services first and its own games second, and shows how the company has a morphing strategy when it comes to its own titles. Rather than follow the more traditional route of using high-quality first-party AAA games to sell consoles and the games themselves, like Sony is doing with God of War and Spider-Man, Microsoft's new titles are released on Game Pass for no extra charge. That means its own games are now additive to its services the same way the very services are additive to its whole-package ecosystem.

Crackdown 3 is a prime example of this forked business model. The game is described by and large as a mediocre game, and Polygon's Chris Plante said something quite interesting about it: the game seemingly only exists to buffer Game Pass. I think he's right on the money here, and it sets an interesting precedent for future games. Instead of releasing big marquee blockbusters, Microsoft can now get away with making the games good and entertaining enough to spark interest in Game Pass. Once people buy into the service they'll be taken on the ride of engagement and monetization that churns Microsoft's billion-dollar strategy.

Apex Legends is a lot of things starting as a new battle royale game from Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment, the most popular game right now, mega popular on Twitch and YouTube, and so much more.

Yeah well it's about to get much worse, as a concerned parent is claiming Apex Legends is turning their son trans sexual, because you know - a game can do that.

Anyway, this parent gave the game a one-star review on the Xbox Store and said: "My son has been playing this game recently there is only one problem he keeps using the female characters. I think this game is turning my son transexual. I am not the only one who thinks this everyone in my Facebook group is having the same problem in this game and others".

Yesterday we learned that Ninja Theory's 'Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice' will soon be arriving on the Nintendo Switch, what we didn't know was who was porting the title over and what features would be coming with it.

During the Nintendo Direct that was conducted yesterday, we learned that 'Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice' is planning to arrive on the Nintendo Switch during Spring of 2019. The short reveal of the title was mostly centered around the story of Senua and didn't share any details to what features the game would be coming with, or what developer would be handling the port. Kotaku UK has now reported that Dark Souls Remastered developer, QLOC will be handling the Switch port. The porting company is best-known for their work on the mentioned above Dark Souls Remastered Switch port, Injustice 2, Dark Ball Xenoverse 2, Dragon's Dogma and Rime.

QLOC seems to have a good reputation for game ports and with a solid library of games under their belt we should see the same efficiency with Ninja Theory's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Kotaku also claims that Hellblade will also be arriving on the Switch with optional motion control support. The website says that when 'Focus Mode' is used throughout the game players will be able to use the motion controls to look for symbols, puzzles or clues. Just like all Nintendo Switch ports expect a downscale in graphics as the hand-held console does have hardware limitations that are unavoidable. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is planned for release on the Nintendo Switch this Spring.

NetherRealm Studios has confirmed yet another returning fighter for Mortal Kombat 11, this time round we are re-introduced to 'Jade' the ultimate assassin.

Throughout the KombKast live stream, developers NetherRealm Studios revealed a character trailer. This time we meet (not for the first time) 'Jade' and her repertoire of moves and weapons she has at her disposal. Diving into a bit of background on 'Jade' now, we were first introduced to the character back in Mortal Kombat 2 where she was an unplayable character, then she debuted as a playable fighter in the following installment Mortal Kombat 3. |

From the above gameplay video we can see that Jade is very good at spacing out against her opponent. Her long bo staff allows her to deal damage from medium range, and when at extended distances she has her razorrang to throw at her enemy. The video also showcases some brutal combos as well as one of her fatality moves. NetherRealm Studios commented on the announcement, here is what they said; "Now resurrected by an evil sorcerer, she serves the Netherrealm as an undead Revenant. Death hasn't slowed Jade down, though. She still thrashes her enemies with her bo staff, razorrang, and patronizing put-downs."Mortal Kombat 11 will be released on April 23rd for the Xbox One, PC, PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

In the Nintendo Direct that just passed we heard a lot about what Nintendo is bringing to Switch owners throughout 2019, and one of those things was the line-up of new amiibo's that are on the way. Today, Nintendo has begun showcasing three new figures in some newly released images.

Within the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate dedicated section in the Nintendo Direct, Nintendo detailed some new coming Super Smash Bros. Ultimated themed amiibo's. The character the we saw in the Direct were new designs for Snake, Simon Belmont, Squirtle, Pokemon Trainer and Ivysaur. Nintendo instead decided to surprise us today with Ken, Young Link and Daisy. The images were released onto the official Nintendo Twitter account and can be viewed above.

Nintendo have said that the amiibo's mentioned above will be released to the public on April 12th, I'd expect around this time or sooner that we will see some more images released for the rest of the fighters we haven't seen yet. The Direct also teased the coming up 'version 3.0' update headed to Smash Ultimate, they didn't say what the update contained but then reminded fans of the DLC fighter 'Joker' from Persona 5. The update is scheduled to release this Spring and 'Joker' is expected to be released sometime in April.

Every gamer knows the conversations that video games cause violence, and many studies have been done backing-up both sides of the debate, but now a new study has published. The study comes from Oxford University and it has shedded some new light onto the subject.

The controversy claims of video games causing violence has been around since the creation of the video games, and really took off after the Columbine High School Massacre. The tragic massacre was conducted by two high school students, Eric David Harris and his friend Dylan Bennet. Harris showed extreme enthusiasm for the Doom series, he owned novels from the game and even pointed out in the videos that the massacre would be much like Doom and even the shotgun used was "straight out of doom". This connection sparked the already present idea that video game use directly correlated to increasing levels of violence.

The new study that has come out of the online Oxford Internet Institute, which comes under the title of 'Royal Society Open Science'. The published study provides substantial evidence towards there being no connection between video games and violence. The method used ensures that bias' were not a variable when conducting the study, this was done through hypothesis' done before the research was completed. Research professor, Andrew Przybylski said; "A cherry-picked result can add undue weight to the moral panic surrounding video games. The registered study approach is a safeguard against this."

Metro Exodus will have a 2GB day-one update that developer 4A Games is blasting out to gamers, with the update fixing up a bunch of stuff on all versions of hte game and a bunch of PC-specific updates as well.

On the PC version of Metro Exodus we have improved DLSS thanks to updated learned data from NVIDIA, RTX improverments and bug fixing, tuned HDR saturation, additional HUD removal options in Ranger Mode, and added Motion Blur options. The full list of updates is after the jump.

I'll be starting my DLSS testing early next week on all GeForce RTX cards, as well as 8K benchmarking of Metro Exodus (and the nearly-released Far Cry New Dawn, too).

Well folks... here we are. We're at a time when I'm writing news about a nude mode for the super-successful Resident Evil 2 remake, with somone wanting to mod Claire Redfield into a nude model running around the horrific world of the RE2 remake.

The new nude mod for Resident Evil 2 remake is available on Nexus Mods, and will be invisible to you if you're a guest. You'll need to make an account on the site to enable the adult-rated mods, such as the nude Resident Evil 2 remake mod.

Claire isn't fully nude in the mod, with just the top half of her being naked and the bottom half of the character covered in pants. It's funny watching the videos of it though, because it even changes the cutscenes with the topless version of Claire crawling and running around. For those who want to check out the chops on Leon Kennedy, yeah well you aren't in luck just yet.

Respawn has just released the first patch for battle royale smash hit Apex Legends, with a bunch of fixes built into the patch and a surprise Valentine's Day treat for gamers, too.

The new update for Apex Legends has the usual improvements in performance, the UI, and to bugs that saw gamers exploiting holes in the Apex Legends. Respawn have improved stability on both client and server side, with the patch rolling out on Origin by the time you've read this. For the full change log, click into the full story to see what Respawn has tuned in Apex Legends.

Apart from that, what do you think of the game? I've played it for a few hours and I'm thoroughly impressed with what Respawn has done. I want to play a bunch more of it and definitely write about it from the perspective of an Overwatch addict, as it's all I play.

A group of collectors have just spent a huge $100,150 on a copy of the original Super Mario Bros. in mint condition, with Heritage Auctions selling the original NES game that "set a world record for a graded game".

Super Mario Bros. in mint condition being auctioned off for $100,150 makes it the most expensive copy that had its condition professionally graded and certified, which is pretty crazy. The $100,150 wasn't a single person purchasing it either, rather it was a group of collectors that purchased a piece of gaming history.

The unopened copy of Super Mario Bros. changed over the course of its run between 1985 and 1994, with Nintendo pumping out 11 different box variations. The first two variations of the game were "sticker sealed" copies that only reached New York and LA test market launches of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 and 1986. This mint condition copy of the game that sold for over $100,000 is the only known "sticker sealed" copy that was certified by Wata Games which gave it a Near Mint grade of 9.4 and 'Seal Rating' of A++.

Microsoft reveals key data about its buffet-style Xbox Game Pass service, underlining why the subscription is so important for its current and long-term growth.

Xbox Game Pass is doing wonders for Microsoft's engagement-driven strategy. The $10 a month service feeds into every moving part of the new cross-platform Xbox business strategy: not only do Game Pass subscribers buy more games, but they actually play more games too. With a selection of more than 100 games, the service tremendously boosts visibility across genres and invites players to try out both new and old titles. In short, Game Pass users are buying more titles and spending more time playing games (this last part is great for live games with microtransactions and will typically ensure subscriptions don't lapse).

Although Microsoft is typically coy with data, it makes exceptions when things are going well. In a recent interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, key Xbox execs gave some interesting data points. Game Pass users are playing games 20% longer, and subscribers are playing new games; their overall variance jumps by a huge 40%.

Ubisoft's new slate of games for Fiscal Year 2020 (April 1, 2019 through March 31, 2020) will include up to four new major frontline releases. And one of them could be Watch Dogs 3.

Today Ubisoft announced strong nine-month revenues on the back of continued engagement monetization, game sales, and long-term appeal of its IPs. But what does the future hold? Ubisoft's game release cadence will continue as it has with a steady stream of titles. In the Ubisoft earnings call, company CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed it'll release anywhere from 3 to 4 major new AAA games in FY2020.

"I cannot comment on the contents, but I can tell you that our usual template is to come with 3-4 AAA games per year, and this is still a valid template for next year. At the same time we're going to come with 3-4 AAA games but we can't comment more," Guillemot said.

Hollow Knight is getting a fully-fledged sequel with a new hero, new environments, and new bosses--it's more of the same classic hack-and-slash platforming in a new exciting wrapper.

Today Team Cherry announced Silksong, a sequel for their fantastic indie hit Hollow Knight. Originally planned as a DLC to the main game, Silksong morphed into something much bigger and became its own beast over time. Hollow Knight vets will recognize Silksong's hero, Hornet, and her ninja-like reflexes and iconic needle-spear.

That distinct exotic visual style is there in spades, and Silksong's combat looks absolutely amazing. Hornet zips around like an insectoid acrobat, deftly double-jumping, rush-slashing, and flipping across the game's eerily beautiful stages. As a huge fan of the original Hollow Knight, I can't wait to try this one out--I have a feeling it'll be like Specter Knight was to Shovel Knight's original launch.

Today Nintendo revealed how it'll keep adding value to Switch Online memberships: more free games.

Switch Online was always different than competing services like Xbox LIVE or PlayStation Plus. For one, it's a lot cheaper at $20 a year. Secondly, Nintendo dusts off its archive of NES classics and releases 3 free retro games every month to the service. But now we're seeing Switch Online morph closer to other subscriptions with free third-party games made specifically for the console. This is a trend that should continue and attract a lot of gamers to the service.

In its recent earnings report, Nintendo promised to boost Switch Online's value by "expanding the service offerings." With over 8 million subscribers, almost 25% of Switch owners have subscribed to Switch Online...but Nintendo wants more. Now we have an idea how Nintendo will add value: enter Tetris 99, a huge 99-player online tetromino battle royale extravaganza exclusive to Switch Online.