Gaming - Page 910

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds continues sprinting into unknown territory when it comes to how big this game will get, with PUBG hitting a new peak 1.96 million users on Steam over the last 24 hours.

Even at the time of writing this at 11:46PM PST (California) there were 1.07 million players, which completely eclipses Dota 2 and its 375,220 current players, and 716,717 peak players in the last 24 hours. CS:GO is being utterly thrashed by PUBG in terms of peak and current players, with 159,439 current players and a peak of 608,748 players in the last 24 hours.

But you know what? I'm about to jump into the game myself, with three other friends at my office for a LAN. This is why there's 1.96 million peak players, it's freaking addictive and I'm feeling really hungry, and for some reason I feel like chicken.

Chris Avellone, the ex-Obsidian dev known for his work on Fallout and Icewind Dale, might've just teased a new Fallout project...or it could mean nothing at all.

A few days ago Chris Avellone changed his Facebook profile picture to a stick figure (presumably himself) hugging Fallout's iconic Vault Boy with the caption "I missed you so much," leading gamers to believe the developer has returned to the Fallout universe. The dev has a beloved following in the Fallout community: Avellone is responsible for key features in Fallout 2, and Fallout: New Vegas, the latter of which is regarded as the best Fallout of all time. This small update on his Facebook page has kicked off widespread hype for Avellone to "save" Fallout and inject core RPG concepts and story arcs back into the series.

No one knows for sure what this update means. It could be Avellone teasing a new DLC, or game, or maybe he's contributing to a new big Creation Club DLC (remember Avellone also lead the creation of Fallout: New Vegas' DLCs). Or it could simply be Avellone's way of celebrating Fallout's 20th anniversary. (Interesting enough Avellone changed his profile banner on September 30th to reflect the series' anniversary, adding the quote "So proud to have been a part: Fallout 2, Fallout Van Buren, Fallout: New Vegas + DLCs. Fun... fun never changes. Yaaaaay #Fallout20th").

With its distinctive style and beautiful art, Cuphead is a charming game...but it carries with it a beastly difficulty that requires skill to tame. This difficulty adds vivacity to the experience, and gives it life...and I think it's important the game is hard. Not only does it add value to the experience, it adds character to the game.

Cuphead is the type of game that instantly steals the show. It's the kind of game that people gravitate towards. I showed the game to a few non-gamers in my life and they all loved it, wanted to know more; it spoke to them, pulled them in and engaged them. The style and amazing hand-drawn art was very enamoring and completely broke the awkward ice that can frost up any encounter. But when I let them try it...well that was another story. Some laughed when they died, a few were determined to get through the first run and gun level. While most people I showed it to gave up with a smile, saying things like "Oh this is too hard," and "DAMN!", one of them beat the level, and the look on their face was priceless. That's the face of triumph, and it's something that can't really be explained in words--it's a raw voltage current of elation that anyone who frequently plays video games knows well.

But without this difficulty, the triumph wouldn't be there. Without its harsh, brutal and un-endingly cruel bosses and levels, Cuphead would be just another beautiful indie. If gamers weren't constantly beaten at their own game by nefarious bouncing blue blobs, mermaids with octopus hair, or killer sunflowers, that spiking current of victory wouldn't ignite the best emotion you can ever feel while playing a video game. That feeling is magic. It's the feeling you get when finally beating that Dark Souls boss, or getting your first Killtacular in a Halo: CE LAN match, or finally taking down that cutely animated boss that's killed you 30 times in a row--it's enthralling, live excitement, and it's something gamers live for.

The Witcher 3's open-ended fantasy world is beautiful, vibrant, and dynamic--constantly shifting with new things to do, with the cities bustling with life and teeming monsters roaming the wilds. To keep the world feeling alive, and to keep players interested and engaged with the world, CD Projekt RED's dev team made the "40 second rule."

When building a massive open world, it's important to keep players actively engaged and interested in the content and interactive features the world has to offer. Lots of teams focus on dynamism to pull this off, or the world's natural alive feeling where things change; mercenaries sharpen swords, city guardsman roam the streets, men and women work fields while monsters and animals roam, hunt, and die in the wilds. Even with all of that, players still have to know about the shifting world state, and more importantly, they have to feel engaged.

To tackle this problem, The Witcher 3's world-building team created the "40 second rule" which stipulated that players have to see something every 40 seconds. "We did some tests and we found the player is focused on the stuff which we produce. Every forty seconds they should see something and focus on it, like a pack of deer or some opponents, some NPCs wondering about. So we have our rule of 40 seconds," said Bartosz Von Ochman, who worked on Living World Design for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, said in the latest episode of noclip's Witcher series. If only BioWare didn't try to up the ante from Dragon Age II and followed the 40 second rule with Dragon Age: Inquisition.

While developing the massive world of The Witcher 3, the devs at CD Projekt RED came across many bugs...but one of them, the zero-zero bug, was like the Bermuda Triangle of assets.

Bugs are common in games development, especially when the project encompasses huge open worlds like The Witcher 3. While making the game, CD Projekt RED's environment team had to deal with a unique glitch called the "zero-zero bug", which would see items, assets, renders and pretty much anything vanish in certain spots in the world. When the team hit CTRL+Z to move an item around in this spot, the physics bug would send the item falling through the map-- it was as if parts of the map were haunted, or there were windows to the Twilight Zone thrown open in the team's dev tools. Wormwholes that were swallowing up assets and putting them...somewhere.

"We were doing optimization passes, and part of that is figuring out physics, right? How many physical objects can we have actually move around in a space. And I remember we were being told that there's an area where there's a really weird house where items drop and disappear. We had to actually do research to figure out where the items went," said Miles Tost, level designer for The Witcher 3, in the most recent NoClip Witcher documentary.

The Evil Within 2, the sequel to 2014's cult macabre hit, comes out in a week and here's what hardware you'll need to run the game at minimum settings.

Bethesda today announced the PC spec requirements for the second chapter of its Evil Within series, and the results aren't too bad. While the publisher doesn't specify what resolution or frame rates the targeted spec configurations will support in-game, we should suppose that minimum requirements enable play on the lowest preset settings (possibly 720p resolution at 30FPS, etc), whereas recommended may enable 1080p 60FPS at the high preset.

In order to play The Evil Within 2 on PC you'll need at least an Intel Core i5-2400 or AMD FX-8320 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 GPU with 2GB of VRAM or an AMD Radeon HD 7970 with 3GB of VRAM. Recommended settings call for an Intel Core i7-4770 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X CPU (or better), 16GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM or an AMD Radeon RX 480 GPU with 8GB of VRAM (or better). The full game will also clock in at 40GB.

Activision have today announced a bonus multiplayer map for their upcoming Call of Duty: WWII, and it will bring a smile to all those veterans of Call of Duty. There is one catch however, you must have purchased the Call of Duty: WWII Season Pass...

Acitivision today announced that a new-old map will be made available to gamers who have purchased the CoD:WWII Season Pass, called Carentan. You may remember this multiplayer map from the original Call of Duty, Call of Duty: United Offensive, and Call of Duty 2.

The Season Pass for Call of Duty: WWII will feature four DLC Packs that will add new multiplayer maps, chapters for Nazi Zombies and new War Missions. Be sure to pick up the Season Pass prior to the official release on November 3.

Battlegrounds might be the only one getting into the headlines right now, but Fortnite is doing a good job of getting similar fan fare, especially after its new Battle Royale mode was released.

Developer Epic Games announced on Twitter recently that Fortnite had passed 7 million players. Two new features were also announced for Fortnite: Battle Royale, with Duos and Supply Drops now up for grabs. Duo lets you get into Fortnite: Battle Royale with another player, while Supply Drops see well... supply drops falling from the sky in random places, with the "best look you can find".

Remember that Fortnite is a free-to-play game, so those 7 million players aren't all paying customers. Epic Games announced in July that 500,000 people purchased the paid tiers of Fortnite in the days after launch, with the base version of the game costing $40 on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.

Epic Games' own Unreal Engine 4 graphics engine powers countless games, some of them you're playing are probably powered by UE4 and you might not even know it. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a UE4-powered game, which is absolutely killing it right now, and so is another Battle Royale game: Fortnite.

Unreal Engine 4 is one of the most, if not the most popular third-party engine on the market with massive games like Paragon, PUBG, and more powered by the engine. Epic Games is now working on optimizations to Unreal Engine 4 for larger maps, the perfect time for UE4 optimization now that Fortnite: Battle Royale is here, and PUBG killing the Steam most-played games chart constantly.

There are some huge changes for the console, with Xbox One and PS4 both receiving massive improvements. Check out what Unreal Engine 4.18 will deliver:

Shortly after announcing the PC spec requirements for its massive new Assassin's Creed: Origins game, Ubisoft confirmed that the ancient Egypt adventure can run at an uncapped FPS on PC--provided you have the hardware to do so.

Assassin's Creed: Origins is the biggest game in the franchise, and Ubisoft spent quite a bit of time plumbing the depths of ancient Egyptian history to recreate it before our eyes. Barring any major glitches or hiccups, PC should be the definitive platform to experience Origins in terms of frame rates...albeit the game does use dynamic resolution rendering on all platforms, including PC. Ubisoft says they were able to decrease the PC spec requirements because of this method, which typically attempts to hit an FPS target at the cost of lower resolution. This makes the game more accessible to gamers with lower-end builds.

The publisher also says that PC gamers can run Assassin's Creed: Origins at uncapped FPS (if their rig is good enough), and that the open world game will have built-in tools to help gauge performance and efficacy of their builds, including a native benchmarking tool and a program that measures and analyzes in-game performance.

Capcom today announced that Street Fighter V hasn't been abandoned: the fighter is getting a free arcade mode in 2018, alongside some other goodies.

Capcom is actually re-releasing the game in the new Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition for $39.99, but all existing owners of the game will get the new content included in the Arcade Mode, Extra Battle Mode, new V-Trigger Moves, and a Gallery for free. Existing owners will also be able to buy both seasons of DLC fighters with in-game Fight Money, or purchase them with premium currency. The new update will be out alongside the SKU on January 26, 2017 for PS4, Xbox One and PC. This announcement confirms early reports that no new Street Fighter V content would come until 2018.

The new Street Fighter V update will add:

Spurred by strong demand, Nintendo has dramatically increased the production of its new Switch handheld-console to 2 million units a month, sources in the upstream supply chain tell Digitimes.

The Nintendo Switch is in extreme demand, and is flying off shelves across the globe--in regions like Japan hundreds of people line up for lottery queues for the chance to buy a console. To solve this age-old "Nintendo Effect" supply problem, the Japanese games-maker reportedly raised its initial production order to 16 million units in March, and according to recent reports, has raised the order once again to 2 million units produced per month. Sources did not reveal the exact running timeline for this order, however Nintendo has only publicly confirmed conservative sales estimates of 10 million units in the fiscal year ending March 2018. Sources did say that the Switch may begin selling in China in 2018, and the production contract will likely further increase to reflect this.

Switch supply has currently been stymied by the current component shortage of key hardware like DRAM chips that are needed to make the console operate. Nintendo has strongly indicated that it has prepared for the shortage by stockpiling units in a massive surplus, and then releasing waves of systems when major first-party Switch games are launched; according to findings from the NPD Group, Switch sales skyrocketed alongside the release of first-party games like ARMS and Splatoon 2.

Assassin's Creed: Origins is nearly here, and Ubisoft has released a finalized list of PC specification requirements so gamers can prepare their rigs.

In order to play AC: Origins in 720p 30FPS at the lowest settings, gamers will need minimum PC specifications including an Intel Core i5-2400 / AMD FX-6350 CPU, an Nvdiia GeForce GTX 660 or AMD R9 270 with at least 2GB of VRAM, and 6GB of RAM. Recommended specs for playing the game in 1080p at high settings include an Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD FX-8350 CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or AMD R9 280X with 3GB of VRAM, and 8GB of RAM.

"The PC platform overall is really important to us," Assassin's Creed global producer Jose Araiza said in a blog post. "That is why the PC version was developed in parallel with all the other versions by the main team in Montreal, in collaboration with our PC-dedicated team in Ubisoft Kiev. This approach was adopted while the game features were being designed, making PC and mouse-and-keyboard controls a full part of the equation from the get-go."

Monolith Productions has made good on its promise to make Shadow of War's lootboxes 100% optional, but this balancing act throws the progression off-kilter--and the game constantly tries to tempt players with buying lootboxes at every turn.

According to Eurogamer's Shadow of War review, the game showers you with enough loot, exp and content to make buying War Chests pretty much unnecessary. This echos previous words said by game director Bob Roberts just days ago: "In the game you earn resources at a regular pace and the systems are tuned to that so you don't need another option. At the same time, it's there as a player choice," he said.

But there's actually a problem with the game showering you with content left and right: it makes the game too easy, and you can become too powerful too fast. That's why the difficulty slider was put in--yet another balancing act to offset the affect of lootboxes, balances upon balances to ensure the game didn't become overwhelmed by frustrated gamers and get bad press. There's also another problem: although War Chests are totally optional, the game tries to tempt you every time you pause the game. With every pause, a carousel pops up to remind you that yes, you can spend real money on Gold to buy War Chests and further your adventures in the land of Middle-earth.

There isn't much wrong with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, in fact the game has sold over 10 million copies and broke Dota 2's concurrent players by having over 1.6million concurrent players. Chinese players however do have an issue with PUBG and they have expressed their displeasure in the same vein that Firewatch and Dota 2 received backlash by flooding Steam Reviews with negative feedback.

Chinese players have received in-game advertisement, although they're only featured in loading screens and not in actual game play, it's still enough to upset the Chinese region and with great reason. The in-game ads promote a third-party VPN service that promises better internet connection for Chinese players when connecting to non-Asian servers. Steam Review show that in the past week over 29,000 negative reviews have been received, when compared to a total of 84,000 negative reviews since its release to Early Access in March this year.

Due to the fact that PUBG isn't free-to-play, why is there advertisement? Instead of promoting third-party services, shouldn't Bluehole use their resources to better support their Asian servers?

For all those fans of the Fast and Furious movie series, Rocket League developer Psyonix have announced that they're adding two new battle-cars from the iconic series.

Dom's 1970 Dodge Charger R/T and Brian's 1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 are the featured premium Battle-cars that will transition into the Rocket League arena. Both cars will feature a new set of wheels and 6 new decals.

Available decals for the 1970 Dodge Charger R/T include- Alameda Twin, Flames, Good Graces, Rally, Sinclair, and Wheelman Decals. Meanwhile the 1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 decals include- 2Bold, 2Cool, 2Tuff, Clean Cut, The Clutch, Home Stretch Decals

Obsidian Entertainment's Scott Everts designed the layout and built the worlds for every original Fallout game, including Fallout: New Vegas. So when he says New Vegas would've been a very different game if it hadn't been restricted by PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware, we should believe him--and wonder what could've been.

Fallout: New Vegas is a contentious point for both Bethesda Game Studios and Obsidian Entertainment: the former feels spurned and somewhat jealous that fans regard New Vegas, a game that was made in just 18 months, as the best Fallout game, while the latter at Obsidian likely feel spurned that they didn't get their bonus and promised royalties because the game's Metacritic score was 1 point off (New Vegas scored an 84 on Xbox 360 and PC). While Bethesda typically won't talk about New Vegas, Obsidian will, and world-builder Scott Everts told PCGamesN some interesting things about the game being affected by console limitations.

"New Vegas would have been a lot different if it was PC only," Mr. Everts asserted. "We had a lot of plans early on. Like, 'Here's where the water is stored, here's where the farms are, here's where the government is centralized'. We had it all planned out - it wasn't just a bunch of random stuff." The master world-maker said that content was cut from the game due to these limitations--content is always cut from any game, but moreso when hardware restrictions come into play--and the team had to simplify the content that did make the cut so the engine wasn't overwhelmed.

Cuphead is a nice fit for Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid, and here's why.

After years of development and two delays, Studio MDHR's Cuphead is finally out in the wild, 1930's cartoon style and all. And it's since become a smash hit. Since Microsoft helped fund the project with its ID@Xbox program the game may not come to the Switch nor the PS4...but it's a perfect fit for the former.

With its enamoring style, Cuphead will instantly attract anyone in the room. I've shown Cuphead to about a dozen non-gamers in my life, and they all liked it--they smiled and asked me what it's from. They all wanted to know more about this delightful-looking visual experience starring two anthropomorphic beverage brothers. This folds neatly into a byproduct of the Switch: engagement.

Sources reportedly close to Capcom tell YouTuber "Gaming History Guy" Liam Robertson that Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite's budget was rather meager, and that the team recycled art assets and animations from previous games in the series.

There's something off about Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite. Gamers knew right away from the trailers, which were near universally panned by fans, but the fighter's actual release confirmed their suspicious--something weird was going on with the game. According to unnamed sources who are reportedly close to the developer (who affirmed their veracity by being right about the upcoming Monster Hunter DLC for MvC: I), this is because Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite had a restricted budget and developers had to make do with what they already had from previous games like MvC 3.

How much did Capcom spend on the fighter? The sources say the "shoestring budgeting approach" amounted to little over half the reserved budget for Street Fighter V's DLC.

Spec Ops: The Line is regarded as one of the best storied shooters on the market, but veterans at Yager who made the game happen aren't up for a sequel.

Spec Ops: The Line's rough five-year development cycle has been chronicled many times in the industry, highlighting the game's unique narrative design and the toll the experience took on the developers. "It was a 5 year process, so that it would be hard to fully encapsulate that in a reply here. In short, it was hard, stressful, occasionally soul-crushing, educational, enlightening, and ultimately very rewarding. When development was over, I think a lot of us were left with our own lingering pain and trauma from the experience. But ultimately, were proud of what we'd made," Mr. Williams said in a recent Ask Me Anything post on Reddit.

But what about a sequel? Even if 2K Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive magically greenlit plans for a sequel, and sought out the original dev team to make it, Mr. Williams says no, it's probably not ever going to happen--he'd rather eat glass than do another Spec Ops game.