Archive for the ‘Game Articles’ Category

Somehow James Harden Just Leaked ‘Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4’

Posted: March 7, 2018 in Game Articles, Opinion Piece
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by Paul Tassi via Forbes

It’s starting to seem like Call of Duty’s next installment being Black Ops 4 is one of the worst kept secrets in gaming. The game has been whispered about for weeks now, still without any official confirmation from Activision or Treyarch, but this latest leak is probably the funniest one to date.

Houston Rockets star James Harden was spotted en route to a game yesterday wearing a full camo outfit and…a hat with what very much appears to be a Black Ops 4 logo.

The hat is a variation of the Black Ops 3 logo, the “III” symbol, but it appears that instead of going the actual Roman numeral route “IV,” they’re going with a tally mark system instead, as logo is one more notch, “IIII.”

After Harden was spotted wearing the hat, Kotaku checked with its sources who told them that yes, that really was the Black Ops 4 logo. It’s unclear why Harden has the hat, whether he’s part of the promotional campaign for the game or perhaps just a big Call of Duty fan wearing some swag a bit too early.

Kotaku also says that its sources say that Black Ops 4 will continue to be a “near-future” setting. That’s the first time I’ve heard that, and perhaps slightly worrisome to fans who were hoping the next game would continue the tradition of WWII and stay away from “future war.” That said, even if the setting is in the near future, it’s possible that the game will do away with high-speed movement like jetpacks and wallrunning, which fans seem to have grown sick of.

It definitely seems like it’s time for Activision to start talking. These rumors are turning into full-blown leaks, and this seems like the proper time to reveal this officially before even more details pour out of sources they shouldn’t.

Black Ops 4 would be set to square off against another military shooter that is now springing leaks, Battlefield V, which is a sequel to Battlefield 1, reportedly taking the game to World War II, where Call of Duty went last year. And both games will be up against Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar’s monster in the making that might end up eclipsing them both, if it can channel a bit of Grand Theft Auto 5 magic.

We are probably still a few months away from seeing a ton of info about Black Ops 4, which seems likely to be a large part of Sony’s E3 show in June, given the company’s ongoing relationship with Activision, who it stole away from Xbox in the last few years. Black Ops is the one remaining sub-series of Call of Duty that has survived and thrived into the modern era, and one that should put up significant sales, more so than usual, if Treyarch delivers. I’m guessing they will.

Just…start talking before Harden starts wearing a full Black Ops 4 tracksuit to games.

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PS5 And Next-Gen Xbox Will Be Powered By The Cloud – Hajime Tabata

Posted: February 10, 2018 in Game Articles
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by Ashish Isaac via GamingBolt

With each successive generation of gaming consoles, we’ve seen some major upgrades in terms of performance along with changes to the priorities of the gaming industry as a whole. With the PS4 and Xbox One, the industry seems to be focusing more and more on online services and on keeping consumers engaged to games for longer so as to increase recurrent revenue. Final Fantasy XV’s director Hajime Tabata has shared his thoughts on the subject in an interview published in the latest version of OXM and he believes that the next generation of consoles will move towards cloud based technology.

According to Tabata-san, the gaming industry will also follow the music and film industry in moving towards streaming services. In this way, people would pay subscription fees in order to access the games that they want. Of course, such a situation probably isn’t going to work everywhere since it would require strong internet speeds, but it’s still possible that such changes may come about with soon enough. Already, game developers and publishers are trying to focus more on online services, rather than just the base game.

We’ll have to wait and see when the next generation rolls around if such changes take place. What are your thoughts on Tabata-san’s prediction? Let us know in the comments below.

 

PS4 Pro update will make more games look better on older TVs

Posted: February 6, 2018 in Game Articles
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by Timothy J. Seppala via Engadget

The next PlayStation 4 firmware update will make the PS4 Pro a lot more like the Xbox One X. No, I don’t mean the patch will malevolently shrink the breadth of Sony’s first-party games lineup next time the console is in sleep mode, either. Instead, software version 5.50 adds a supersampling mode to the PS4 Pro.

On the Xbox One X, that translates to higher frame-rates, improved visual clarity and more detailed graphics on select titles when the console is connected to a 1080p TV. Here’s how Sony describes the situation on PS4 Pro: “Certain games already have the ‘supersampling’ benefits as part of their ‘PS4 Pro Enhanced’ feature set, but this new mode can enhance the experience for those games that don’t already have the feature.”

Just hop into the system settings menu to activate it and you should be good to go.

There are a handful of other new features that every PlayStation owner will benefit from as well. Once the software goes live for everyone, you’ll finallybe able to change your PS4 wallpaper to an image from a USB stick, and do the same to customize a tournament or Team page.

A few changes are coming to music playback too. Music controls for Spotify, the media player and USB music player apps are coming to the quick menu. More than that, some PS Now games will let you listen to your own tunes while streaming a classic title from Sony’s servers.

There are a few other quality of life additions, like better organization for the game library and child play-time limits in the “Keiji” update, too. Xbox One added play limits last year with the Creators Update, and the One X hardware has been supersampling games since last November. Outside of a few games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, PS4 Pro owners without a 4K TV on the other hand, have been left in a lurch in terms of supersampling since the system was released in late 2016. Reset Era has a list of games that purportedly support supersampling.

It’s a little strange seeing Sony follow Microsoft’s lead considering how far behind the Xbox One is in sales, of course. But, maybe, that means we’ll see a PS4 Pro with an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive in it announced this year. We can hope, right?

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Nintendo’s Game Boy is BACK (And It’ll Work With Old Games Too!)

Posted: January 12, 2018 in Game Articles
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First came the NES Classic, then the SNES Classic. And now it’s the turn of the Game Boy, which is now making a comeback in 2018

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by Ghost via Know Your Mobile

The Nintendo Game Boy is a classic product in the world of gaming. It first launched 28 years ago, but is now making a comeback and, best of all, your old games will still work on it.

Launched at CES 2018, the rebooted Game Boy features an aluminium chassis, not plastic, and it will retail for $75 once it is available later on inside 2018.

This isn’t a Nintendo re-release, though; no, this Game Boy was created by computing firm Hyperkin. The product was demoed at CES but is still undergoing work. The company refers to it as the Ultra Game Boy.

Hyperkin has made several significant changes to the design, however, introducing USB charging, a battery that lasts six hours, and a new, backlit LCD display which means you can play the device in the dark without needing a “snake light”.

The Ultra Game Boy will not come with games pre-installed; instead, users will have to use their old ones, if they still have them, or pick up second-hand titles via sites like eBay and Amazon.

Nintendo sold 119 million Game Boy units during its active duty, with the product being taken off the market in 2003. How Hyperkin got permission to do this remains to be seen… Nintendo is usually very protective of its brands, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

In other Nintendo news, word on the street suggests the company is eyeing a re-release of its seminal N64, whereby the console will be redone and released with its original titles, just as Nintendo did with the NES Classic and SNES Classic.

Nintendo has even filed a trademark for the console, indicating it is now a case of when not if it happens.

As a HUGE N64 fan, this would be awesome for me and it is something I would definitely purchase. I spend most of my teenage years locked in three-hour long duals on Goldeneye with friends.

I want do to that again!

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The Blade Shadow could turn your iPhone into a Windows 10 gaming beast

Posted: January 6, 2018 in Game Articles
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by Daniel Howley via Yahoo!

The Blade Shadow could let you stream high-end PC games from the cloud to virtually any device you own.

The vast majority of gamers around the world play on their PCs. But as any keyboard jockey worth their salt will tell you, PC gaming can be expensive. Between systems that cost more than your standard home console and upgrades needed to ensure your PC is running at the highest possible graphics settings. PC gaming can quickly become an expensive hobby.

Which is where cloud-gaming platforms like Blade’s Shadow come in. Shadow is designed to give you remote access to a high-end Windows gaming PC on which you can play the latest games at their max settings for $34.95 a month. And it’s available for pre-order to select U.S. consumers today.

To be sure, Shadow isn’t the first cloud-gaming platform. Sony’s (SNE) $99 per year Playstation Now is already available for the PS4 and PC, while Nvidia’s (NVDA) $7.99 per month GeForce Now is available for its Android-powered Shield device. A version of the service for Apple’s (AAPL) Mac is currently in beta.

What makes Shadow so interesting is that you can use it to play any PC game or Windows 10 program you can think of on such disparate devices as an outdated PC, Mac, smartphone or tablet. Heck, you can even use one of Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Chromebooks if you want.

But you might want to wait to see how well it works before jumping on board.

Made in France

Blade originally launched Shadow in its home country of France in 2016. At that point, roughly 5,000 people signed up for the service. Today, the company says it has 10,000 customers within the country.

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Think of Shadow as a scaled down version of Amazon’s (AMZN) cloud computing services. You sign up for Shadow and get a access to a web-based PC that you can use without any sign of lag or slowdown. Blade says its cloud offering is equal to running a PC with 12GB of RAM, a high-end Nvidia graphics chip and an Intel Xenon processor in your home. You also get 256GB of personal storage on which you can store anything you want.

The Shadow Blade box is also available if you don’t have an existing device.

You’ll be able to stream games with a resolution of 1080p at 144 frames per second. That’s seriously impressive firepower. 4K games will also run at a speedy 60 fps.

According to the company, pro gamers who’ve used the Shadow couldn’t tell the difference between using the streaming service and a standard gaming PC.

If you’re so inclined Blade is also offering its optional Shadow Box, a small computer that you can use as your Shadow base station if you don’t already have an existing PC or Mac. That’ll cost you an additional $10 per month or $140 outright.

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But, to even use the service you’ll need to have both a high-speed internet connection of 15 megabits per second or greater and, and this is the important part, live near a Blade data center to get the best performance possible.

As of now, Blade says it will have its data centers online in California on Feb. 15. The company says the rest of the country will get access to the service by this summer.

So will Blade be the company that finally takes cloud gaming to the next level? We’ll find out later this year.

Gaming disorder is now officially a mental condition, according to the WHO

Posted: December 27, 2017 in Game Articles
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by Lulu Chang via Digital Trends

In what can only be described as a sign of the times, the World Health Organization has recognized a new kind of mental health condition. It’s a familiar ailment, though some of us may be slow to call it a medical condition. It’s called gaming disorder, and it’s characterized by “a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior,” or more simply, an addiction to gaming.

In the beta draft of the WHO’s upcoming 11th update of International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), due out in 2018, gaming disorder is now included as an affliction. Folks who suffer from the disorder are said to have “impaired control over gaming,” which is to say an inability to control the frequency, intensity, duration, and context of their habits. WHO also notes that those who prioritize video games over “other life interests and daily activities” and continue to escalate the amount that they play “despite the occurrence of negative consequences” are also showing symptoms of the newly classified disorder.

“The behavior pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,” the draft reads. “The gaming behavior and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.”

The appearance of gaming disorder in the ICD-11 may have broader implications than we think. After all, it is this document that stipulates the international standard for what does and doesn’t quality as a health condition, which means that doctors could soon diagnose patients with gaming disorder, and insurance companies could extend coverage for treatment of the ailment (though it’s unclear how that would manifest itself).

That said, not all health organizations appear to agree with the WHO’s recent labeling. As Newsweek noted, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is created by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), has yet to recognize gaming as an official condition. However, the guide does include internet gaming disorder as a potential problem to continue monitoring for future inclusion. So if you’re spending the holidays gaming away, you may want to take a look at just how much family time you’re deprioritizing in favor of those little avatars on your screen.

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PUBG on Xbox is authentic and terrifying

Posted: December 12, 2017 in Game Articles, Opinion Piece
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Like an old pair of your favorite blood-stained shoes

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by Charlie Hall via Polygon

I had deep reservations about the port of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds for Xbox One, but after a long night on the couch I’m a believer. Battlegrounds feels great on a console. There’s clearly an awful lot of work left to do, but I can’t wait to see where things go from here.

The secret to Battlegrounds’ success on Xbox One is its controller support.

The team at PUBG Corporation were uncompromising in their implementation. The movement and inventory systems have been carried over in their entirety to the Xbox controller. It take a little bit of practice to get the hang of it, but after two or three solid rounds of play it’s no big deal.

But it’s in the subtleties that Xbox One controller support really shines. The turn rates, both in third- and first-person, are smooth. In the menus, players have the ability to fiddle with controller’s sensitivity at each of the different zoom lengths. Tracking where your shots fall is easy, even at 1080p, and it feels as though there’s just the slightest bit of aim assist at ranges over 200 meters.

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Aiming with the Xbox controller was the hardest thing to figure out for me. You tap the left trigger to aim down the sights, and hold the left bumper to hold your breath. Changing from first to third-person also changes the functions of other buttons slightly. It takes some practice, but it’s dynamic and authentic to the PC experience. – PUBG Corp./Microsoft

Not only does it feel natural to move and fight, but all of the nuance of the PC game is there. Players still have the freedom to make tactical decisions, to move from third-person to first-person, to aim down sights, to free-look while parachuting or running around.

Perhaps the biggest improvement is in the game’s driving. No more pecking at the WASD keys to get your nose pointed in the right direction, as the analog sticks on the Xbox controller were literally made for this.

All that being said, there’s clearly some technical issues. Once, while I was in the top 20, I experienced a crash to a black screen that kicked me out of the game entirely. Texture pop is awful, especially in the opening few minutes of each round. I’ve also heard that there are serious issues with frame rate on the Xbox One X and at 4K.

But this is an early access game. These things should be expected.

All I know is that I can get a solid 30 minutes of highly technical, thrilling, PC-style shooter action from my living room couch. Battlegrounds’ port is an achievement. For their next trick, PUBG Corp. just needs to follow through and finish the game.

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Sony may finally let you change your PlayStation Network name

Posted: December 10, 2017 in Announcements, Game Articles, Opinion Piece
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by Jon Fingas via Engadget

Many a gamer has had regrets about their choice of username — xXxDeathCrusher420xXx might not be quite so appealing in adult life as it was in your teenage years. And for PlayStation fans, that’s been a big problem when your PSN name has always been set in stone. Sony may have seen the light, though. In an interview at PlayStation Experience, the company’s Shawn Layden said he hoped to have a name change option available by next year’s Experience. So what’s the holdup? Layden didn’t dive into specifics, but he said the technical solutions were “more complex than you think.”

As Gamespot notes, Layden said in 2014 (yes, 2014) that Sony had to take steps to prevent griefing. It didn’t want trolls to cause havoc in one game, change their name and promptly ruin someone else’s play session. There’s also the matter of making sure that all your friends see the change. It’s unclear whether or not Sony might ask you to pay to change your handle, as Microsoft does on Xbox Live (again to discourage griefing), but setting up those exchanges could involve some work as well.

There’s no guarantee that Sony will have name changes in place. As you might have noticed, it’s been talking about the idea for years. The narrow time frame suggests the feature is getting close, however, and it’s easy to see this becoming a higher priority given that a PSN account is increasingly vital to making full use of your PS4.

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‘Battlefront II’ under investigation in Belgium over loot crates

Posted: November 16, 2017 in Game Articles
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by Mariella Moon via Engadget

EA isn’t only getting a lot of flak over Battlefront II’s loot crates, it’s also under investigation from Belgium’s gambling authority. According to VTM Nieuws, the country’s gaming commission is in the midst of taking a closer look at both Battlefront II and Overwatch, since add-on boxes that have to be purchased before you can see what’s inside might constitute gambling. As Commission chairman Peter Naessens points out, random loot boxes are a game of chance.

Authorities are especially concerned over the fact that the games are marketed towards children. Naessens says kids could feel forced to spend a lot of money under social pressure. EA made earning heroes easier after facing backlash, but players might still end up spending serious money on the game — according to a computation by Star Wars Gaming, it will take at least 4,528 hours of gameplay or $2,100 to unlock all its base content.

We reached out to Blizzard to find out the developer’s stance on the investigation. In a statement provided to GameSpot, EA made its position clear and insisted that Battlefront II’s loot crate mechanics aren’t gambling:

“Creating a fair and fun game experience is of critical importance to EA. The crate mechanics of Star Wars Battlefront II are not gambling. A player’s ability to succeed in the game is not dependent on purchasing crates. Players can also earn crates through playing the game and not spending any money at all. Once obtained, players are always guaranteed to receive content that can be used in game.”

If Belgium’s gaming authorities decide that loot boxes constitute gambling, EA and Overwatch will have to secure a special permit if they want to continue making those games accessible in the country.

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Report: GameStop halts used-games subscription service

Posted: November 14, 2017 in Game Articles
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Photo credit: Jose Cordova/GameStop

Put on hold five days before full launch

by Owen S. Good via Polygon

GameStop’s all-you-can-eat subscription to used games has been suspended, apparently over concerns with how the aging computer systems in the company’s 7,000 stores can handle and track checkouts.

Kotaku first reported the suspension of GameStop’s PowerPass program. The retailer confirmed that it had halted the initiative in a statement, citing “a few program limitations we have identified” as the cause.

The retail giant announced the program at the end of October, with sign-ups set to begin Nov. 19. Under its six-month terms, the program would allow customers to take any used game from a local store’s catalogue, play it as long as they wished and exchange it for another until the subscription expired. At the end of the period, they could keep any one of the games they had checked out.

The program went through a soft launch in some locations earlier this month, with its full rollout to follow later. Those stores have been told to pull all promotional materials related to the PowerPass, according to Kotaku. Customers who got in on the soft-launch are being offered full refunds, plus their choice of a used game as a make-good for taking down the service.

Asked for comment, GameStop replied to Polygon with this statement.

We have elected to temporarily pause the roll out of the new PowerPass subscription service, based on a few program limitations we have identified. We feel this is the right thing to do for now to ensure we are able to provide our guests an exceptional service.

Those guests who have already purchased the service, we are allowing them to bring the pass and video game they have checked out, back to receive a full refund. In addition, we are allowing them to pick out any Pre-Owned video game for free.

There is no word when the program will be reinstated.

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