Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by William Usher

The resolution disparity continues on as the Xbox One and PS4 face off over the latest high-end eighth generation exclusive, Lords of the Fallen. The game is a Dark Souls-style hack-and-slash, action-adventure that focuses a lot on the strategy and skill of combat rather than just relying on rapid button mashing. It’s been revealed, however, that Lords of the Fallen won’t be running at native 1080p on the Xbox One.

Videogamer managed to get in word with Lords of the Fallen creative director Tomasz Gop, who talked to them about the spec performance of the upcoming game for the eighth generation home consoles.

According to Gop…

[They’re] “pretty much similar,” [but] “probably the resolution [on Xbox One] is like 900p instead of 1080p on PlayStation 4. But apart from that there’s nothing different I would say.”

Lords of the Fallen hasn’t been spread across the gaming news-wire quite in the same way as other titles, but it’s one of the few games coming out this fall that I’m thoroughly excited for.

Even though the game is still within the Dark Souls-clone arena, it manages to separate itself by focusing heavily on how combat plays out. For instance, enemies using shields require weapons that hook around or deflect the shield in order to get an attack in on the body of the enemy. Additionally, weapon weight and swing/strike/slash attacks alter how the player-character or enemies react to said attacks, opening them up for more devastating blows, combos or counter-hits. It’s an extremely tactical game that slows the combat down so players will have to think about how they engage rather than just engaging for the sake of it. Hit-spam combos from games like Dynasty Warriors are no where to be found in Lords of the Fallen.

As for the resolution disparity… it’s to be expected and it’s an expectation that we’ll likely see grow as the generation wears on. Software optimization can’t fix hardware limitations.

It’s been brought up many times previously that the Xbox One had problems hitting 1080p, and unless a game is specifically designed around certain architectural designs of Microsoft’s console, it’s likely to continue to running into problems rendering games above 900p.

However, this doesn’t mean that gamers can’t have fun with the game. If you don’t mind a slightly lower resolution then you might be find with paying the same amount for a game that renders 633,000 pixels less than the competition.

Of course, let be known that even some games on PC have a tough time maintaining native 1920 x 1080 full HD resolutions with the graphics maxed out, as evidenced in the performance analysis of the Asus ROG GL551JM. You sometimes have to give and take with these things.

As for Lords of the Fallen… the game is scheduled to release soon, and Gop mentioned that the title has already been certified and they’re just brushing up some bug fixes and glitches before release…

“It’s really, really close [to completion],” … “Pretty much the only thing that we’re doing is last minute fixes, but we’ve already been certified. We’re already past the US certification for PlayStation.”

The game is due to drop on October 31st for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

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by Sehran Shaikh

Holiday Season 2014 is just around the corner, and we have some great games lined up to arrive on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and last-gen consoles, but in this feature article I won’t be talking about what’s coming in next three to four months, rather I would take a look back and see what has really happened in the past eight months.

Few games released during this period performed better than our expectations, however there are few games which were expected to be “Next Big Thing” in that particular genre but failed to deliver on all the promises. This feature is about three Overhyped new AAA IPs of 2014 which failed to delivered.

Titanfall:

It came from the developers who gave gaming world the billion dollar franchise “Call of Duty”, Electronic Arts and Microsoft, in short all perfect ingredients to be ‘the next big thing’ in multiplayer gaming, it was marketed and overhyped like never before by the trio Respawn, EA and Microsoft: They called it “Call of Duty series killer, revive first person shooting genre and some other unrealistic things which never happened before”.

But the verdict of consumers was completely the opposite, Titanfall was not a great game it was a “GOOD” game, but not exactly an Innovative and Ground-breaking experience. Many gamers tag it as “It’s Call of Duty With Mechs”. Titanfall fell well short of its GOAL.

Watch Dogs:

Watch Dogs had a Show-Stopper reveal at E3 2012 and was followed by another astonishing showcasing at E3 2013. The hype among fans went beyond limits, and was awarded a tag “Top Competitor” of GTA V. However, just a week before its official launch, Ubisoft shocked the gaming community and announced a release delay of Watch Dogs to 2014 and cited the reason as “development team needs more time to deliver on the promises and polish”. The game was put under cover, and Ubisoft did not talk about it for months, this lead to numerous queries from fans: Did a game that looked astonishing at E3 2012/13 needed polishing?

After a long silence, Ubisoft finally re-revealed Watch Dogs in May 2014, but it was not the game which open world genre fans saw at E3 2012/13, instead of polishing, graphics received massive downgrades.

Watch Dogs showed lot of potential after its initial announcement but the dominance of GTA franchise in open world genre is so strong that other games need to do something really special to grab attention. A perfect addition to overhyped games and not delivering on huge promises.

Destiny:

Destiny was in making at Bungie for many many years, and like many other games, initial announcement was very well received by both fans and critics. After cutting their ties with Microsoft, Bungie made few press statements that caught gaming community’s attention, “we don’t want to make Halo anymore” and “we want to do our own things and not be tied down to large company”.

But for Destiny, they broke both these promises, fans termed Destiny as “Halo Clone” with few differences/upgrades and signed 10 yrs deal with Activision. Destiny received “Mediocre” game reviews because it failed to deliver on big promises from Sony/Activision and Bungie: “story/plot was almost non-existent, no memorable characters, no social interaction whatsoever between you and other online players, missions were repetitive, ridiculous and unbalanced PVP.”

The main reason for Destiny’s downfall was Overhype, it was all time high. I’ve almost never seen a new IP get this kind of hype. Right from the start, Sony hitched their wagon completely to this game, and was super hyped mostly for PlayStation 4, like if it was a new Messiah.

Conclusion:

Why we should not lambaste publishers/developers for creating a over-hype, this is their job. These companies market their titles, create hype amongst fans etc and sell millions of units worldwide. We can’t expect an employee of Bungie/Ubisoft/Respawn/Sony/Microsoft or many others to take center stage and announce that “we’ve got a new game, it’s not best game or going to revamp/re-define the genre, but I think you’ll probably enjoy it”? That’s not going to happen.

Just keep your HOPES and HYPE level in check. Titanfall, Watch Dogs and Destiny all sold millions of copies worldwide, and these companies have made $$$. Definitely, in a couple of years we will be seeing sequels to these games, and you people will again so on blasting it as a terrible decision as previous installment/original title didn’t perform as expected and everyone hates it, but still the sequel will sell millions of copies worldwide. Once again we will discuss among us the same old thing “HYPE, HYPE, OverHYPE” and other non-sense things. FULL CYCLE will continue. So, keep your HOPES and HYPE level in check.

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by Saad Dada

Sony has had unbelievable success with the PlayStation 4 since it launched back in November of 2013. Microsoft launched the Xbox One a week later, and has been playing catch-up ever since. In order to keep up with the competition they knocked $100 off the cost, making a Kinect-free model to match the PS4’s price. And while the Microsoft exclusive ‘Titanfall’ did good business, it didn’t have enough of a major impact in taking down the Japanese juggernaut.

But now the Seattle-based software giant has paid $2.5 billion to acquire Swedish company Mojang, the creators behind the popular videogame ‘Minecraft’. Could this be an attempt to one-up their Japanese rivals?

‘Minecraft’ is a hugely popular game but it doesn’t quite match-up with the likes of ‘Grand Theft Auto’, ‘FIFA’, or even the‘Call of Duty’ series. However, its popularity has allowed for it to be released on all consoles. It’s a fun game that appeals to all ages and requires creativity because one is able to create structures out of 3D cubes.

According to The Street, ‘Minecraft’ is “a kind of digital Lego without an instruction book – a building game where players construct their own world out of blocks, making anything from a forest to the Eiffel Tower”. For now, the game will continue to be available on all major platforms including Microsoft’s arch rival the Sony PlayStation.

However if Microsoft does decide to make Minecraft an exclusive title, it could possibly gain momentum over Sony. According to Eurogamer, the title has sold a staggering 54 million copies on all platforms (as of 25th June) and a landmark 100 million users were registered as of February this year. The fan base will no doubt want to get their fix, and if it’s not available on the PlayStation that could give Microsoft the upper hand. But even with the exclusivity, Sony has some major franchises to turn to. ‘God of War’, ‘Uncharted’ and upcoming exclusives like ‘Driveclub’ and ‘The Order: 1886’ offer limitless potential.

This generation consoles look to be more focused on hardcore gamers considering the PS4 was made to be a dedicated gaming machine. Xbox on the other hand went the ‘all-in-one entertainment system’ route with their Xbox One. And while Minecraft may prove to be a worthy purchase, it still may not be enough for them to match Sony’s lead.

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by Sam Machkovech

While opinions have been mixed on Destiny, Bungie’s first post-Halo video game, most impressions and reviews of the game thus far—including our own—have at least praised its online stability. That’s no small feat for an always-online game, especially in its first week, but error reports are beginning to accumulate from Destiny players across all four of the game’s consoles.

There’s a reason for that: Bungie launched its “shared world shooter” without much of a customer support structure in place. Eight days after launch, users who haven’t been able to connect—including one of Ars Technica’s own contributors, who still can’t get online with an Xbox 360 copy of the game—have exhausted all of the suggestions listed at help.bungie.net. At that point, those users are directed to visit Bungie’s forums, “staffed by community mentors who are here to help you.”

The end result is a funneling of complaints to a forum whose topics are broken down not by official categories but by hashtags. With nothing in the way of a trackable “ticket” system or a customer service hotline, users are stuck with a “#help” page that is currently dominated by topic titles like “I’ve Given Up on Destiny and Got My Refund; Here’s Why Maybe You Should Too” and “Bungie Please Give Us Info.”

Worse, our hunt for official Bungie posts resulted in only one major response thus far. A thread titled “Help us help you” starts with a post from an official Bungie account, which essentially asks users to figure answers out on their own:

We are working diligently to provide information that helps players resolve their Destiny issues. We are finding that many guardians are quite adept at coming up with new and interesting solutions to a number of the error codes they receive. If you received an error code and were successfully able to fix the issue, post your steps here.

Trouble in the zoo

Complaining users seem to be doing their due diligence before posting to Bungie’s forums, particularly a user who complained about Bungie’s animal-themed error-code system: “I have seen bee, fly, caterpillar, centipede, lion, flatworm, heron, etc,” PS3 user Lone Ronin wrote. “Really, enough to make my own zoo, and each as insulting as the rest since if the problem was my PS3 then GTA, BF, MOH, and COD would not hold a connection as well.”

Reported issues range from frequent disconnects within minutes of a mission’s start to the utter inability to log into the game at all, and none of Destiny’s four consoles is safe from reports. It’s hard to gauge how widespread the connectivity issues actually are, or which console has taken the worst drubbing.

Ars correspondent Robert Lemos confirmed issues connecting with the Xbox 360 version of the game; after following Bungie’s client-side recommendations, he additionally deleted every Destiny-related file and the system cache with hopes of success. “Two support chats with Microsoft later, and nothing is solved,” Lemos said. “They concluded that the Xbox is fine and my connection to Xbox Live is good.”

Comparatively, Bungie has given its players no phone number or even Twitter handle to contact with any complaints or concerns—which stands in stark contrast to Blizzard, another game developer in the Activision family, whose Battle.net support page offers a ridiculous glut of contact options. “I can’t even CALL you guys,” one Bungie forum poster wrote after talking about his help getting a digital download refund directly from Microsoft. “And if I did, the analogous scenario would be that I would just reach an automated voice that would say ‘PLEASE HOLD’ with no further information… and no one would ever actually pick up the phone.”

We have questions out to Activision and Bungie about current Destiny connectivity issues and whether the companies plan to institute a more robust support-reporting system for the always-online game. We’ll update this post if we receive a response.

Update: Bungie issued a statement to Ars Technica that blamed “a small number of issues” on “largely the result of Internet filtering from institutions like universities. Bungie’s networking team has been working actively with those institutions and hardware providers to make sure we’re doing everything we can to keep people playing.” Bungie did not respond to our questions about the company’s current customer service methods.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Eddie Makuch

When Activision announced Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare back in May, comparisons to Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall were immediately made, with claims flying that Advanced Warfare was an imitation of Titanfall because it was future-focused and had mechs.

Now, the studio behind this year’s Call of Duty, Sledgehammer Games, has responded to a criticism that Advanced Warfare is a “ripoff” of Titanfall. Advanced Warfare and Titanfall are two very different experiences and people will realize that when they play, according to Sledgehammer co-founder Michael Condrey.

“No matter how hard you try and try, people will always be convinced that Advanced Warfare is a ripoff of Titanfall,” someone on Twitter wrote to Condrey. He replied, “Not worried about it. When people play it in November, it will speak for itself.”

Titanfall launched in March for Xbox One and PC, before coming to Xbox 360 in April. Advanced Warfare, on the other hand, will be released across Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC on November 4.

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