Gaming - Page 957

I've pumped over 50 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my Nintendo Switch, and I'm beyond in love - it's one of the best games I've ever played, and I'm playing it entirely in portable mode - in my hands. So the news of Zelda: Breath of the Wild being on the PC is a head turner, and the latest footage of the Wii U emulator 'Cemu' running the game at what looks to be a solid 30FPS, is impressive. Check it out here.

The latest time we saw Zelda: Breath of the Wild running on the PC through the Wii U emulator, it was barely maintaining 15FPS - but two weeks in development, and large strides are being made in performance. Cemu v1.7.4 is behind the improvements, which will be released to Patreon subscribers on April 2, and to the general public on April 9.

Cemu's new emulator build is seeing large improvements in the background, and while it's far from perfect - the fixes and performance improvements made in two weeks are pretty damn good. Where will we be in another month?

Ubisoft is hard at work on the new Assassin's Creed game, which is reportedly going to be called Assassin's Creed: Empire - and now we know that it will most likely be coming in October, and that the map will be much bigger than the previous game in the franchise.

According to the latest rumor from Polish website Gry-Online, which reports that Assassin's Creed Empire will be a prequel to the entire Assassin's Creed franchise. Altair's distant relative will be the protagonist, and is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the team that worked on Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Empire, is meant to have a map size that is 3x that in Black Flag, so it's freakin' huge.

Assassin's Creed Empire details so far:

I've been writing about Mass Effect: Andromeda for quite some time, chronicling its progress throughout the years. So it's a very strange and almost disappointing feeling playing it today, simply because it feels so...unfinished. This is a game BioWare should've delayed, and here are my first impressions.

Mass Effect: Andromeda should've been delayed. It absolutely feels unfinished. The environments are absolutely incredible and breathtaking in their visual fidelity and sci-fi feel--the Nexus' on-ship habitats are amazing, and deep-space exploration looks great.

But for every step taken forward by the game's graphics, it takes two steps back in terms of UI and basic features. As I predicted way back in my "Why I'm worried about ME: Andromeda" opinion piece, this is a heavily casualized Mass Effect meant to penetrate the mainstream market and be more accessible than the other games.

Back in 2013, Sony made a big deal about the PS4 being able to play games as you download them--play as you download, or Play Now, as it was called. It sounded great on paper, but in practice, it was quite frustrating to early adopters, and now we might know why: Sony might have made publishers literally obfuscate the install progress of digital games.

Even four years later in 2017, digital downloads on consoles aren't where they need to be. Both PSN and Xbox LIVE are slow and clunky--but it was much worse back in the old days. At the PS4's hey-day, Sony apparently mandated that games publishers hide the actual download install rates of digital games and just show the "Play Now" progress. I can confirm this happened. I still remember downloading all 50GBs of Wolfenstein: The New Order on PS4 back in June 2014 and my PS4 literally lying to me and telling me the game was "installed". About 20 minutes in my gameplay was interrupted with a message telling me the install wasn't finished. You actually used to have to jump through a bunch of menus just to see how much progress your downloads had made.

Interestingly enough, Jim Sterling might've uncovered who's to blame for this: Sony themselves.

Ubisoft released For Honor last month, with the melee combat focused action game receiving decent praise from critics and gamers - but the microtransactions that Ubisoft have implemented are... well... bad.

If you were to unlock everything in For Honor, including the Emotes, Executions, Effects, Outfits, and Ornaments - it would cost $732 in real money, or 2.5 years. Reddit user bystander007 worked it out, with the average hero requiring 91,500 steel (For Honor's in-game currency) to unlock everything - for one Hero. There are 12 heroes in total, so 12 x 91,500 = 1,098,000 of in-game currency - but you can buy Steel with real money, too.

For every $100 you pump into For Honor, you'll get 150,000 steel - but then you'd need $732 worth of real money converted into steel to hit 1,098,000 - a crazy amount of money.

Seiken Densetsu 3, also known as Secret of Mana 2 here in the West, never released outside of Japan. Fans have been clamoring for a localized re-release of the Super Famicom classic on Nintendo's Virtual Console for quite some time, but it's never happened. Now the official Mana series Twitter account gives us fresh hope.

Secret of Mana 2 was recently shown running on a Nintendo Switch console, teasing Western fans pretty bad. Since the game is a Super Famicom game, this could be the first confirmed Virtual Console title for the Nintendo Switch. Remember that the Switch is region-free, so U.S. and European gamers can download Japanese eShop games and play them as long as their profiles are set to Japan as a region.

However, just because Secret of Mana 2 might show up on the eShop, that doesn't mean it'll be localized for regions outside of Japan--ie no English dubs or subs. But we're hoping against hope that all gamers will be able to experience this Super Famicom classic, especially since it features two-player co-op, which is just absolutely perfect for the Switch's dual JoyCon functionality.

Mass Effect: Andromeda releases tomorrow, but it's already stuttering out of the game (like most modern gamers) with a few performance hiccups. BioWare aims to fix these issues with day one patches and updates...but nothing will fix those wacky faces.

PC gamers are reporting glitches and black screens while playing Mass Effect: Andromeda, even after the supposed day-one update that's included with the Origin trial downloads. As we reported earlier, the Origin Access/EA Access trial of ME: Andromeda comes with the day one patch baked in on PC, so if you downloaded the trial and buy the full game on Origin, you'll be playing with the day one update. So...this should be an entirely separate day one update considering the Origin download should have the day one update already installed. Kind of confusing, right?

The bottom line is this: if you plan to play Mass Effect: Andromeda on PC, make sure you always download the latest game updates. Don't skip them or neglect them as they're apparently needed to make the game function properly in certain instances.

As it catapulting the Polish studio to success, The Witcher series is extremely important for CD Projekt RED, but it's "not all that we have to offer," says CDPR President Adam Kicinski. Cyberpunk 2077 is coming, and it's even bigger than they originally planned.

CD Projekt RED is known for delivering juggernaut AAA games that truly exemplify the pinnacle of games development. Titles like The Witcher 3 are massive in scope, massive in size, and best of all, massive in quality. With its ambitious new sci-fi game Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR plans to top The Witcher 3 in practically every way.

"The success of The Witcher 3 influences our planning. It affects what we have to expect from Cyberpunk 2077," CD Projekt RED's Adam Kicinski said in a recent interview with TVN24 Business World.

CD Projekt RED will apparently have "lots of surprises" in store for us this year by the end of Christmas and the beginning of next year, and they could be Witcher-related--or even better, new Cyberpunk 2077 info.

We know that CDPR is making a new AAA RPG alongside Cyberpunk 2077, but the details are less than scarce. Both the new RPG and Cyberpunk 2077 are planned to release by 2021, and now the Polish blockbuster studio has announced they're ramping up a promotional tour in the United States, Western Europe, and Poland for later this year.

And more importantly, the studio says that The Witcher series isn't dead! Could this new promo tour be for Cyberpunk 2077, or perhaps The Witcher 4?

Chris Roberts teased DX12 support for Star Citizen a while ago now, but after the disappointing DX12 games so far - the developer has changed gears, announcing that it will only focus on using the Vulkan API for Star Citizen.

Cloud Imperium Games' Director of Graphics Programming, Alistair Brown, announced through the official Star Citizen forums that CIG will be pushing Vulkan into Star Citizen, making it the second large AAA game to drop DX12 in favor for Vulkan, the other being DOOM from id Software. Brown explained: "Years ago we stated our intention to support DX12, but since the introduction of Vulkan which has the same feature set and performance advantages this seemed a much more logical rendering API to use as it doesn't force our users to upgrade to Windows 10 and opens the door for a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux".

He continues: "As a result our current intention is to only support Vulkan and eventually drop support for DX11 as this shouldn't effect any of our backers. DX12 would only be considered if we found it gave us a specific and substantial advantage over Vulkan. The API's really aren't that different though, 95% of the work for these APIs is to change the paradigm of the rendering pipeline, which is the same for both APIs".

If you've played the Mass Effect: Andromeda 10-hour trial on PC or Xbox One, then you have a pretty good idea of how it'll play when it finally ships.

via GIPHY

Sony's long-standing console reign shows no signs of slowing down: the PlayStation 4 continues to dominate over Xbox in terms of sales and total console market value, growth, and momentum.

According to analyst firm IHS Markit, the global console market earned a total of $34.7 billion in 2016.

Sony's PlayStation 4 raked in a staggering $17.8 billion of that total global value, representing more than half of the total global console market's earnings. Microsoft's Xbox One pulled in $9.1 billion, or a 26% share. IHS notes that the PS4 was responsible for "almost double the sales value of hardware, content and services compared to its closest competitor Microsoft's Xbox One."

After more than ten years, Sony's PlayStation 3 console will stop being manufactured starting this month.

Microsoft celebrated the Xbox 360's 10th birthday by officially killing its life cycle, but it appears that Sony will at least have the grace to retire its PlayStation 3 months after the system's 10th anniversary.

Word of the discontinuation spread from Japanese website Esuteru, who spotted the info on Sony's official PS3 Japanese website. "Scheduled completion coming soon," reads the PS3 listing on Sony's Japanese site. Other users have been talking about it on Twitter, too.

Nintendo has put in a supply order for 16 million Switch consoles to be manufactured and shipped throughout 2017 and beyond.

Like most new Nintendo systems, its new handheld-console Switch hybrid is in extreme demand with supply pretty much nonexistent. In order to keep up with the demand, Nintendo has doubled its Switch production for this year and next, according to reports from Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki.

As soon as Nintendo's next fiscal year (FY 2018) begins on April 1, 2017, the manufacturing of 16 million new Switch consoles will begin. This massive influx of units will be shipped across the company's full FY2018 timeline that's held from April 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018.

Elgato, the company behind some of the best and most trusted games capture and streaming tech on the market, is currently working on a mysterious project called "Project Evolve." This could be it.

Since Elgato is making Project Evolve, it's likely a unique new capture/streaming device aimed at making content creator's lives easier. The company has been teasing Evolve since March 9, and recently let a bunch of Twitch streamers go hands-on with Evolve at PAX 2017.

So what is Evolve exactly? If these pictures are accurate, it looks like a tablet-shaped device with 15 pushable, customizable buttons.

If you're an EA/Origin Access member on the Xbox One or PC, you can get into the 10-hour trial of Mass Effect: Andromeda - the expansive new RPG from EA and BioWare. We dived in for a few hours, playing around with some of our graphics cards, playing Mass Effect: Andromeda at 4K on Ultra settings on NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

As you can see, we're pulling an average of around 60FPS at this resolution on the GTX 1080 Ti - something the developer promised. This is, however, just the trial - and there will be the full game release next week, where we can dive into the performance side in a bigger way.

I used:

After reporting from a well placed source that NVIDIA would be supplying a Pascal-based Tegra design for Nintendo Switch (Derek's super detailed, super awesome review on the Nintendo Switch is here), we've been proven wrong - thanks to a new teardown by Tech Insights.

The teardown shows that Nintendo used a stock Tegra X1 processor - not a custom Tegra processor, and a Maxwell-based GM208 GPU. Last October, NVIDIA teased that the Nintendo Switch would be powered "by the performance of the custom Tegra processor". But the teardown shows that it's nothing custom, and a stock Tegra X1 processor instead.

Tech Insights' report states: "After subsequent processing of the GPU from the Nintendo Switch, we have determined that the processor is the NVIDIA Tegra T210. The T210 CPU features 4 Cortex A57 and 4 Cortex A53 processor cores and the GPU is a GM20B Maxell core".

The more I see and hear about Arkane's new re-imagining of Prey, the more I want to play it. Now we get a nice personal glimpse at the inky shadow-aliens that will be hunting us like the prey we are.

While Arkane doesn't classify Prey as a horror game, it absolutely has cerebral and psychological elements: the game will get into players' heads (quite literally with neuromods) and has a definite Outer Limits or Twilight Zone vibe to it. This feeling is amplified in no small part by the Typhons, which are the vapor-like shadow aliens, who are almost incorporeal like a smoky fog--in many ways they seem like they might not be there at all, and Morgan Yu, the main character, could simply be going insane.

One of the most interesting cerebral mind-bending aspects of the Typhon is the Cacoplasmus, aka the Mimic. The Typhon come in all shapes and sizes, but none are so insidious as the Mimic: this Typhon can disguise itself as any nearby object like a chair or a box or even a coffee mug and patiently wait for its prey to walk by. Then, of course, it strikes.

Overwatch is one of the biggest games right now, with a solid foundation on the PC - but with the release of the new Nintendo Switch console, we're now hearing news that Overwatch could end up on Nintendo's new console.

During a recent Reddit AMA, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said: "I'm loving the Switch! My second favorite gaming platform of all time is the 3DS. Getting [Overwatch] on the Switch is very challenging for us. But we're always open minded about exploring possible platforms".

Now, "getting Overwatch on the Switch" sounds like Blizzard are working on the FPS for Nintendo's new console - but I wouldn't take this as a confirmation just yet. Also, I don't see how a super-fast paced FPS like Overwatch could work with the triggers and small screen, but in docked mode it could be fun - but without a mouse and keyboard? Pass.

OtherSide Entertainment, the studio working on System Shock 3, has announced a new publishing agreement with Starbreeze Studios - the team behind PayDay, with a $12 million investment into the production of System Shock 3 for the PC, and other platforms.

System Shock 3 is in development under the careful guiding eye of legendary game developer Warren Spector, who worked on the original System Shock and System Shock 2 - as well as the original (and the best) Deus Ex and Thief: The Dark Project.

Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson-Klint explains: "System Shock is one of those iconic franchises in the history of games that still gets my blood going and Mr. Spector is one of the founding fathers of the modern action RPG. We're greatly looking forward to bringing System Shock 3 to players world wide in our collaboration with Otherside Entertainment and Warren Spector's team. I'll be first in line to play".