Gaming - Page 998

Windows 10's Xbox Game DVR is crippling performance in games like DOTA 2, and Valve has responded.

Valve has acknowledged that the Xbox Game DVR is causing a number of issues in DOTA 2, including dramatic frame rate drops, crashes, freezing and other hiccups. Now Valve has added an in-game prompt that warns gamers about the Xbox DVR's performance hitches, and even goes so far as to show players how to disable the recorder.

The warning prompt reads: "Your operating system has Xbox Game DVR enabled which has been reported to cause performance problems in games, such as reduced or capped FPS, crashing, or freezing. Would you l ike to learn how Xbox Game DVR can be disabled on your system?"

Battlefield 1 is one of the most gorgeous games ever made, but it's also super fun - and most important of all, fresh. It's not 'yet another Battlefield shooter', as there seems to be enough new from my couple of hours with it so far that it feels different.

So different in fact, that you get the chance to play as a pigeon - and we're not joking at all. During the single player mission which recounts the 1918 Battle of Cambrai, you're looking through the perspective of chauffeur turned tank operator, Edwards. Edwards drives the tank towards Cambrai, destroying field gun positions before getting stuck in the mud. Once the enemy surrounds you, the crew release a messenger pigeon to signal for help - which is something that happened during the early wars.

You get to control the pigeon for a little while, soaring over the battlefield which as Kotaku explains 'gives a very stark sense of the war's scale', with trenches and scorched earth for as far as you can see. Battlefield 1 has been depicting the war in a way we've never seen before, and with touches like this - you have to commend them.

Shadow Warrior was a more quotable game than Duke Nukem 3D for me, with Wang being a super-crass 'hero' that was just an awesomely fun game to play - both in singleplayer, and multiplayer where things used to get heated back when I played the game on a LAN with friends.

Well, developer Flying Wild Hog has gone the whole hog with Shadow Warrior 2, which is now out on the PC. Shadow Warrior 2 features open-ended levels that can be explored in detail, as well as the ability to double jump and climb walls. There are story-related missions as well as randomly generated missions, with different enemy placement and weather conditions. This means that replayability should be pretty high, which is something we don't see much of in single-player games these days.

Better yet, is that Flying Wild Hog has used a procedural damage system in Shadow Warrior 2 that lets you cut, or blow off enemy parts or limbs - depending on the weapon and playstyle used. In a throwback to the 90s, the developer has included cooperative play which allows you and up to 3 friends play the single-player campaign together.

Out of all the Xbox 360 games that have yet to arrive on Xbox One's backward compatibility, gamers have rallied behind a single title: Black Ops II. But Microsoft doesn't call the shots, and it's ultimately up to publishers whether or not the game gets backward compatibility support or not.

That's what Xbox division head Phil Spencer said in a recent Tweet. When asked for the probably millionth time if Black Ops II would ever come to Xbox One BC, Spencer replied by saying he eventually wants the full Xbox 360 games library available on Xbox One via the BC program, but publishers make the call.

"I like the progress on backward compatibility. We'd like to have all [games included] and work on third-party games is always a partnership with publisher."

To celebrate Ubisoft's 30th anniversary, the Ubisoft Club has been offering one special game to registered users each month, starting back in June this year. The games are kept anonymous until the date of release when the titles then become available to keep.

Ubisoft has recently revealed for the month of October, the classic action-adventure game 'Beyond Good & Evil' available in the Uplay game store now. The classic title was originally released back in 2003 for Sony PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Nintendo GameCube and PC.

Those interested in the game need to if not done so already, you'll need to register for a Uplay account.

2K Games has reportedly put in an automatic audio block in Mafia 3 that mutes NPC dialog during cutscenes and in-game music during video captures or live streams.

If your streaming Mafia 3 on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook or any other service, your viewers won't be able to hear cutscene voice dialog or rock out to the game's stellar soundtrack. This block has been reported on all platforms, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and includes in-game recordings as well as online livestreams.

It's worth pointing out that the player hears everything like normal, and it's only the viewers of the stream and recordings that can't hear the audio tracks. Reports indicate you can circumvent this audio block by using a capture card.

The third installment of Batman: The Telltale Series is almost here, with Episode 3: 'New World Order' to be available to fans digitally worldwide on October 25 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

The official website for Batman: The Telltale Series recently posted an interview in which host Greg Miller of kindafunny.com sat down with writer James Windeler, director Jon Stauder and voice of Harvey Dent, Travis Willingham in an all out exclusive chat about the second episode 'Children of Arkham'. The group discussed and explained details and motives of the Caped Crusader and the events that took place in Episode 2 but furthermore went on to release snippets of info about the backstory and ideas into Episode 3.

New World Order, captures Gotham City on the brink of destruction with the rise of infamous villains well known to the Dark Knight coming out of the shadows to cause havoc and chaos throughout the city. The episode will uncover more about the personal lives of other characters such as The Penguin, Selina Kyle aka Catwoman and the coin tossing Harvey Dent otherwise known as Two-Face.

Battlefield 1's teensy Easter egg isn't so much deadly as it is hilarious.

The ultra-tiny 2mm Kolibri, also known as the "world's smallest commercially available centerfire cartridge" handgun, will be a useable gun in Battlefield 1. As you can see in the GIF, the Kolibri, which is named after a hummingbird, isn't exactly lethal so there's no actual tactical reason to use it, but your opponents might actually die of laughter upon seeing it.

Nintendo has a new collector's edition available for those who enjoy the literature and art side of gaming. The "Nintendo 64 Anthology" book is now available to purchase from Geeks-Line official website. It comes in two versions: Classic and the Collector's edition.

Author Mathieu Manent, captures the 64-bit console's complete history. He reviews the story of from its pre-thought-out conception, right through to the end. The book also includes exclusive interviews with people involved with the creation of the retro gaming console whilst revealing a complete software library of all 388 titles that were officially released on the Nintendo 64.

Customers can have the choice between the Classic Edition priced $55.90 and/or the Collector Edition for a few bucks less at $44.90, which comes with an exclusive cover, slip case, and an extra 24 pages for those who really enjoy reading.

Rumor has it that Sledgehammer Games' scrapped Vietnam-based "Fog Of War" concept will be the main inspiration for 2017's new Call of Duty game.

Back in 2014, word broke that Sledgehammer Games was working on a unique and gritty third-person shooter dubbed Call of Duty: Fog of War.

Fog of War was set in Vietnam and was described as "Uncharted meets Apocalypse Now," and was aimed at pushing the franchise into new unexplored territory. The game was eventually canned as key Infinity Ward devs splintered off to form Respawn Entertainment, and Sledgehammer Games was conscripted to help finish Modern Warfare 3.

Valve has confirmed that full native support for third-party controllers will be coming to Steam in the near future, starting with Sony's DualShock 4.

Controller support will be added with a new Steam update, and once a controller is supported, it will have full functionality within Steam and specific games.

For example, once DualShock 4 support rolls out, the controller will act the same way it does on a PS4, including support for the gyroscope and touchpad. Users won't have to configure any extra key bindings or anything else--the extra controllers will be supported via the Steam API, so your settings will be the same across different peripherals.

Nintendo's Super Mario speedrun gamers are at it again, the latest scoop hitting the internet shows a quick video of speedrunners breaking records only days apart from one another. Literally four days after gamer 'kosmicd12' broke the fastest time once held by 'Darbian', the title was smashed once again with the near impossible by just a few milliseconds... kosmicd12 had beaten Darbian's previous world record by a single frame.

This had officially broken Darbian's initial record and was considered impossible to defeat for anything faster. Though in true gaming fashion, kosmicd12 enjoyed the title for only four days when Darbian turned around and broke kosmicd12's record, reclaiming his title once again. He produced a 4-minute, 56 seconds, and 878 milliseconds run which can be viewed on the official speedrun website.

Speedruns are considered to be somewhat challenging with records so fast they set unrealistic goals. With evidence such as this latest break on the Super Mario speedrun, it clearly hasn't stopped gamers from trying to make history, though for now, it seems that Darbian will remain the crowned prince for the fastest time in a Super Mario speedrun.

Three days before it was scheduled to be released, "Thumper", is set to see stores this afternoon in North America. The title will be available for Windows PC, Sony PS4 and PS VR.

The game's developer, Drool, announced: "We wanted to surprise and reward everyone who's been waiting years for Thumper to come out with the chance to play a bit sooner."

Drool did discuss that it will be supported on PS4 Pro right from today's release, allowing Thumper to be played at native 4K. It's set to see Oculus and other VR platforms in the near future. The game arrives on Steam and the PlayStation Store in North America at 3 PM PT/6 PM ET.

Most 3DS games have full 3D modes that leverage the handheld's gimmicky 3D feature. But oddly enough, Pokemon Sun and Moon won't support stereoscopic 3D except in a mini-game.

Unlike its predecessor, Pokemon Sun and Moon won't have stereoscopic 3D support in battles. In fact, 3D support is exclusively reserved for a small Pokemon Snap-like mini-game that has players traveling around regions taking pictures of Pokemon.

While most gamers don't really like the Nintendo 3DS' 3D feature and play their games with it toggled off (myself included), I do find it strange that Game Freak would almost completely abandon the feature. I think that most gamers would buy a 2DS clamshell handheld over the 3DS any day, but I don't see Nintendo doing this any time soon.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is scheduled for release on January 24, 2017 with the long-awaited game making headlines with sneak-peek video footage, and info cramming panels at game conventions - but now we're hearing about a new save mode feature.

The suspense-filled, heart pumping title has eliminated the chapter-based progression system as seen in previous Resident Evil games. The news comes direct from producer Masochika Kawata, as he confirmed the latest feature during an interview with Yugatech via the Sony PlayStation Universe. He went on to discuss the save system and how it changes depending on the difficulty as well as the auto-save feature.

Kanata had this to say: "However, as far as saving is concerned, there's an auto-save system, so if you die you can restart not as far back. There will also be rooms to act as manual save points. Just to note, depending on the difficulty situation that you choose, the saving system also varies. If you choose a harder difficulty, the saving system won't be so nice to you."

Sony has confirmed the new 4K-ready PlayStation 4 Pro console will support the SATA III interface, doubling the read/write and data transfer speeds of the original PS4.

With SATA III support, the PlayStation 4 Pro's hard drive storage can hit read and write speeds of up to 6Gb/s, or 600MB per second. This means games can potentially start up faster and data transfers will be much quicker. This is a pretty big deal seeing as the PS4 Pro can take 4K screenshots and 1080p 30FPS video, and SATA III will ensure these bigger media files are transferred to USB sticks much faster than SATA II.

In order to hit native 4K and upscaled 4K in its games, Sony's PS4 Pro has modest hardware improvements over the original PS4, including a 4.20TFLOPs Polaris GPU that sits below an RX 470 (likely 16nm FinFET), boosted RAM, and an overclocked Jaguar CPU. Sadly, the PS4 Pro won't launch with a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc drive, and here's why.

It seems that delayed issues for developers have become the hot topic for gaming news online. Pendulo Studios can now add to the delayed list of titles, with the announcement made by Microids VP Declare Eliott Grassiano, that Yesterday Origins' release date had been postponed until November 10th.

He went on to the official website and commented: "Unfortunately, due to manufacturing processes taking longer than expected, we are not able to deliver all territories. That's why we take the decision to postpone the launch of the game until November 10, 2016 in order to allow all players to play simultaneously."

The game had originally been scheduled for sale on October 13, but will now be pushed back a month because of citing issues regarding the manufacturing. For fans, it means that you will have to hold out just a little bit longer, with hopes of no more delays.

This week for Sony is going to be a big one, with the company announcing a large list of games that will be released in the US starting October 11. A total of 54 titles will see various Sony platforms, with the latest PlayStation VR added on to that list as well.

Ryan Clements, Senior Specialist, SIEA Social Media had this to say on the blog: "Compete around the globe in the sport of the future. Pilot an advanced starfighter through the depths of space. Race through gorgeous locales in high-performance cars. Or melt into a pulsating world of light and sound. With PS VR, the possibilities are virtually endless."

Amongst the great titles released for VR, the much awaited 'Batman Arkham VR' will be one of them. With the game already showcased to public audiences in video trailers, it supports Clements idea that Sony's new virtual reality will blow customer's minds away with their quality of simulation in bringing a game to life.

In an announcement made by Blizzard Entertainment recently, their sales smashing title Overwatch reached one heck of a milestone for registered players. More than 20 million gamers are now playing Overwatch, 5 million more than recorded in August.

The recorded number of players come after Blizzard's release of the new Halloween-themed event for Overwatch. No doubt the content and skins included in this spooky exclusive made for a nice addition to the tally of registered users.

Direct from a press release, Blizzard Entertainment had the following to say: "We also want to share the news that Overwatch has crossed a new milestone-20 million players-making this special holiday treat all the sweeter."

1930s animation Cuphead has been delayed until mid-2017, with Xbox One and PC gamers needing to wait even longer for the game, After being revealed at Microsoft's E3 2015 showcase.

Developer MDHR had originally scheduled the game to launch during 2016, though recent delays have proven otherwise. The studio decided that more time was needed in order to make it a better product. On the official Studio MDHR website, the developers released the following statement to audiences explaining the need for a later release date: "Hey everyone, we wanted to finish our game 80 years after 1936 but it will now be 81".

They added: "Throughout this year we discussed reducing the scope to make a 2016 release, but we made the difficult decision to delay the launch in order to ship with our vision intact. We are happy to announce that Cuphead will be coming to Xbox One, Windows 10 and Steam in Mid-2017".