Cover Story
Issue
26
February 27, 2017
What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch
We talk with third-party developers and industry executives about what to expect.
Read moreNews
23 CommentsThe Division’s Year Two content will be free
Today is the one-year anniversary of The Division’s launch, and after releasing three paid expansions over the past 12 months, publisher Ubisoft is going with a different strategy for the game’s second year: free content in the form of two large expansions, the company announced today.
“All of the content updates that we’re going to provide are going to be free content updates,” said Julian Gerighty, creative director on The Division at developer Massive Entertainment, during a Twitch livestream today. “There is no season pass for year two.”
“There is no season pass for year two”
If players wanted everything in the first year of The Division, they had to pay at least $100: $59.99 for the game itself, plus an additional $39.99 for the season pass, which covered the three expansions. (The...
News
3 CommentsBlackwood Crossing is out next month
We've been watching Blackwood Crossing with great interest, since it first showed up in June last year. Now the game has an official release date of April 4 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with the Windows PC version arriving on April 5.
Blackwood Crossing is a narrative game about childhood and loss. Its first-person player-character is a 14-year-old girl called Scarlett, who accompanies her younger brother Finn on a magical train journey. The player interacts with various characters, solving puzzles and working dialog trees.
It's being created by indie house PaperSeven, made up of former Black Rock Studio developers. It will cost $15.99 at launch. You can watch our most recent preview below.
News
24 CommentsThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild wins Best of Gamescom 2016
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took top honors in Gamescom 2016's list of award winners shown at the four-day expo.
Breath of the Wild, which caused near-stampedes at E3 2016, was tapped for Best of Gamescom as well as best console game for Wii U. For Honor, Ubisoft Montreal's hack-and-slash game, was named best game on both PC and the PlayStation 4 (it will also launch on Xbox One). Sea of Thieves, the pirate adventure from Rare, was named best Xbox One game and best multiplayer game. All three are due to release in 2017.
Little Nightmares, by Tarsier Games (to be published by Bandai Namco), took the Gamescom Indie Award and Electronic Arts' forthcoming Battlefield 1 claimed best action honors as well as Gamescom's Consumer Award.
The full list of winners may be seen here....
News
1 CommentQuake Champions introduces new champion Nyx
Quake Champions begins its first closed beta this weekend, and to kick it off, Bethesda has released a trailer showing off one of the game’s first champions, the agile assassin Nyx.
The reveal trailer demonstrates the new ability-focused, character-oriented direction that developer id Software and its partners at Saber Interactive are taking the series in. Nyx possesses the ability to “Ghost Walk,” vanishing in front of her enemies, avoiding detection and all damage — and reappearing while occupying the same space as an enemy instantly kills them. The Fathom agent also has the passive ability perform a secondary jump off of walls.
As shown in the trailer, the usual Quake tricks are in play, including rocket jumps and power-ups. But in a change for the series, different characters in Q...
News
2 CommentsVoodoo Vince remaster is coming in April
Remastered 2003 platform game Voodoo Vince will be released on Windows PC and Xbox One on April 18, according to an announcement from developer Beep.
A new trailer was released yesterday (above), showing how the game — previously only available on the original Xbox — is looking now that it's been reforged to run with enhanced visuals at 1080p resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio and 60 fps refresh rate. It's still got that murky look that players will recall from the early part of the last decade.
Starring a voodoo doll and set in a magical New Orleans, the puzzle-platformer was never available via backwards compatibility programs.
Although one of the Xbox's lesser-known exclusive games, it was received reasonably well in its lifetime, garnering average review scores of 73 percent,...
News
26 CommentsOverwatch players are exploiting custom games for XP, Blizzard is very disappointed
Blizzard Entertainment released an extensive set of new custom game tools for Overwatch last week and it didn’t take long for players to start exploiting that new feature. Shortly after Overwatch’s Game Browser went live, players started using custom game rules to quickly (or idly) earn experience and thus earn more of the game’s precious lootboxes.
Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan sounds none too pleased that players are taking advantage of the system, based on a very disappointed-sounding post on the Battle.net forums.
“When we introduced the Game Browser and new Custom Game features we were excited to allow players to earn experience playing the game in unique and different ways,” Kaplan wrote. “We also knew that there was the potential for this system to be exploited but we...
PC
27 CommentsGet ready for Mass Effect: Andromeda with these PC specs
Mass Effect: Andromeda launches March 21, but is available a week early to PC users through Electronic Arts’ Origin Access subscription service. Nvidia today published its PC specifications for maximum performance and also revealed the game's numerous graphics options.
There are 16 options affecting image quality, most of which have variable detail levels. They include (deep breath): Ambient Occlusion, Anti-Aliasing, Chromatic Aberration, Effects Quality, Film Grain, Lighting Quality, Mesh Quality, Post-Process Effect Quality, Resolution Scaling, Shader Quality, Shadow Quality, Terrain Quality, Texture Filtering Quality, Texture Quality, and Vegetation Quality.
To get the maximum out of all of those options, Nvidia is recommending a GeForce GTX 1070 or 1080, which launched last year, or...
News
16 CommentsThe time has come for Rime (update)
Mediterranean adventure Rime is coming out on May 26, developer Tequila Works announced today.
First announced in 2013 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, the Tequila Works title is now also coming out on Windows PC and Xbox One. Sony pulled out of its exclusivity deal following the development's long gestation period. Rime will be released May 26 on those three platforms, both digitally and at retail, for $29.99 in the U.S., £29.99 in the U.K. and €34.99 in Europe.
A Nintendo Switch version of Rime is also in development. It will be released “later this summer,” according to a news release from Tequila Works and co-publishers Grey Box and Six Foot. The Switch version will cost extra — $39.99 in the U.S., £39.99 in the U.K. and €44.99 in Europe. It will also be available in physical and...
News
1 CommentLeft 4 Dead crossover comes to Dead by Daylight today
Cult hit horror game Dead by Daylight — in which four players try to escape from a rampaging killer — is adding a survivor of a different sort today. Bill from Valve’s Left 4 Dead is coming to Dead by Daylight as part of a free update titled Left Behind.
The grizzled Vietnam vet, who also appeared in Left 4 Dead 2, joins the ranks of Dead by Daylight’s survivors as part of a partnership with Valve, developer Behaviour Interactive and publisher Starbreeze Studios announced today. Dead by Daylight Left Behind is a non-canonical follow-up to Left 4 Dead’s downloadable add-on, The Sacrifice, in which Bill sacrifices himself in an attempt to save his fellow survivors.
Bill’s appearance is more than just a re-skin of an existing character — though a handful of Left 4 Dead-inspired costumes...
News
32 CommentsNo Man’s Sky Path Finder Update trailer details PS4 Pro support, base sharing, permadeath mode
Since release, the team at Hello Games has been steadily expanding the feature set of No Man’s Sky, and today it has shared the contents of the upcoming Path Finder Update. Notable additions include: PS4 Pro support “optimized for 4K” and with HDR support, planetary vehicles to “aid home planet exploration,” base sharing and Steam Workshop support, permadeath mode and more.
The above video details much of the update’s feature set, and the update’s official website goes into way more detail on everything that’s included. It’s ... a lot. The website has it broken down like this:
Visual updates
Online base sharing
Own multiple ships
Starship specializations
PlayStation 4 Pro
New vehicles — exocraft
Exocraft races
New shops and traders
Base building variety
Multi-tool specialization and...
News
15 CommentsConan Exiles’ infamous ‘endowment’ options won’t be on Xbox One
Conan Exiles has been rather ... notorious for its presentation of ding-a-lings in the game's early access release on PC. That feature won't be a part of Conan Exiles’ launch on Xbox One, says the game's creative director.
"Xbox has been pretty clear with us that it's not going to fly," Joel Bylos told Glixel (via Kotaku). He's referring to the infamous "penis slider," which allows users to adjust a male character's endowment.
"It's just going to be off by default, I think," Bylos said, adding that he's not sure that partial nudity is OK. "We haven't spoken to Xbox about breasts. They do allow breasts in some of their games, but the penises definitely won't be there."
Developed and published by Funcom, Conan Exiles launched in early access for Windows PC on Jan. 31. It hasn't gotten a...
News
7 CommentsCrytek sells off Black Sea studio to Sega, Total War creators
Sega Europe and Creative Assembly have acquired Crytek’s Sofia, Bulgaria-based Black Sea Studio, according to an announcement from Crytek. The studio, previously known as Crytek Black Sea, will now operate as Creative Assembly Sofia.
Crytek announced in December it was closing five studios — including its Bulgaria office — with only the developer’s Frankfurt, Germany and Kiev, Ukraine studios remaining. That announcement came after reports that Crytek employees were not being paid.
“In the past few weeks, we have worked closely with Creative Assembly and the team in Sofia to ensure that the talented staff at Crytek Black Sea would be well taken care of,” Crytek’s managing director, Avni Yerli, said in a news release. “We are delighted to be able to announce that SEGA’s acquisition of...
News
12 CommentsOverwatch’s new hero isn’t ready to come to consoles just yet
Orisa, the 24th Overwatch hero, will continue to be exclusive to Windows PC players for the time being, according to game director Jeff Kaplan. That may seem like a longer wait for eager console players than usual, a concern Kaplan acknowledged in a forum post.
“We're getting great feedback and fixing a lot of issues. I know this feels a little longer than other PTR periods, but we think it will be for the better,” he wrote on the Battle.net forum. “We know how anxious you all are to have Orisa join your ranks... and she will soon... but most likely she will go live later in the month rather than this early.”
The reply comes in a thread started by Overwatch players speculating on when to expect Orisa’s console debut. When previous new heroes Sombra and Ana first hit the PC-only public...
News
9 CommentsQuake Champions beta sign-ups are now open
Quake Champions, the new arena shooter unveiled during the Bethesda press conference at last year’s E3, is now taking sign-ups for its closed beta. A press release issued today says it will begin “in the coming weeks.”
The latest in id Software’s long-running series, it’s the first title since 2007’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. A new website went up today, allowing players to sign up for the closed beta. Neither Bethesda or id have mentioned when the game will officially release, or how much the Windows PC game will cost. The game will be playable this weekend at PAX East in Boston.
Quake Champions was shown off most recently at QuakeCon 2016. Messaging at the time centered around the game’s speed, which will support 120 Hz monitors and feature an unlocked framerate. The team also...
News
18 CommentsNo Man’s Sky’s next update is imminent, adds a planetary vehicle
The next content update for No Man's Sky, the Path Finder Update, will be released this week, developer Hello Games announced today.
“It introduces a new vehicle that will aid home planet exploration, building on the Foundation Update to hint at a path ahead for the future,” Hello Games said of Path Finder. No Man’s Sky’s previous content update included files that hinted at an upcoming ground vehicle.
Hello Games did not provide any other information on the contents of Path Finder, but said it will release full patch notes when the update goes live.
This will be the second major post-launch update for No Man’s Sky. The game’s debut on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC in August was met with a firestorm of controversy, with players feeling like they had been misled as to the nature of the...
Esports
0 CommentsRiot Games accuses Arizona man of trafficking stolen League of Legends accounts
Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, is again suing in federal court to shut down users who are trafficking items and services that violate the game's agreements. This time, they're going after someone who allegedly selling stolen user accounts.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accuses Zachary Kaufman of Peoria, Ariz. of operating a website called "DivineSmurfs," and selling stolen League of Legends accounts through it. "Defendants pretend, through the unauthorized use of Riot's intellectual property, to run a legitimate business instead of a fraudulent enterprise," says Riot’s complaint.
Riot says DivineSmurfs use promises of bonus game content to lure users into buying these accounts, which are impermissible under the game's...
GDC 2017
6 CommentsWargaming CEO accepts blame, vows renewed focus on World of Tanks
Wargaming’s chief executive office, Victor Kislyi, was in a mood to spill his guts last week. During an interview with Polygon in San Francisco, he was candid about his recent mistakes and vowed a renewed focus on his company’s flagship title, World of Tanks.
“We were a little arrogant, let's say, three years ago,” Kislyi told Polygon. “We were thinking we know everything that our players need without talking intensively to them ourselves. It turned into — I wouldn't call it a disaster, but we hit the wall at some point.”
That wall had a name: Rubicon. The update was delivered nearly two years ago, but the ill will from players, especially from WoT’s rabid Russian fanbase, still haunts the game. It was so poorly received, Wargaming couldn’t simply roll it back.
“We were a little...
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