General gaming news and discussion

[Tadasuke]

Blizzard [in 10.2.6] adds a separate "Battle Royale" mode for World of Warcraft, available to everyone paying WoW's subscription (which is currently 14.99 USD/month, 14.99 EUR/month, 21.99 CAD/month or 9.99 GBP/month).

It uses a separate interface, characters, items, abilities and play style. You can play solo or with 1 friend (solo and duo modes are independent). You can fight both computer controlled monsters and player controlled characters. It takes place in Arathi Highlands and the overall theme is pirates (the fantastical romantical entertaining ones). Each match is 10-15 minutes long and has 60 players per match, with the winner being the last one standing. There is also the storm mechanic, which adds more suspension, because of frightening weather, of which players must be wary of.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/world-of-w ... ale-338113

[Time_Traveller]

Assassin's Creed Jade could arrive in 2025 according to a new report

15 minutes ago



The upcoming Assassin’s Creed mobile game Assassin’s Creed Jade could now be set to be released in 2025 according to a new report.

The information comes from Reuters, who spoke to internal sources at Tencent-owned Level Infinite that suggest the game has spent at least four years in development, will be released in 2025, and was originally intended to be released this year.

Developed by the Tencent-owned Level Infinite in collaboration with Ubisoft, the internal delay comes amid a wider shift in focus at the mobile gaming giant which is reportedly reallocating its resources from large-scale open-world adventures to more casual party games.

One such title is the recently released DreamStar, a colorful online game that looks like an interesting blend of Fall Guys and massively multiplayer online (MMO) mechanics. Original properties like this avoid the costly royalty fees associated with developing mobile installments for existing franchises owned by other developers.

https://www.techradar.com/gaming/assass ... new-report

[Tadasuke]

Some of the games I wish would (and could) receive decent remasters (not remakes) had already received such:

• Myst (1993) <-- this one is for VR

• STAR WARS: Dark Forces (1995) <-- the first FPS game in which you could look up and down (!)

• Quake (1996) and Quake II (1997) <-- ID Software classics

• Turok 1 (1997), Turok 2 (1998) and Turok 3 (2000) <-- games based on comic books

• Age of Empires 2 (1999) <-- this is a very big upgrade over the original with lots of new content (after buying DLCs)

• S.W.I.N.E. (2001) <-- an old RTS

• Praetorians (2003) <-- an old RTS

• Xenoblade Chronicles (2010) <-- a good JRPG

I don't know why JRPGs remasters are usually bad-looking and cheaply-made (I myself prefer crisp pixels rather than blurred pixels using . I hope classic spy action game with female lead No One Lives Forever (2000) is going to receive a remaster in the coming years, no one knows to whom the rights belong to at this moment and Nightdive Studios is interested in making this a reality. There are also a few nice remasters of visual novels like i.e. AKAIITO. As for classic RTS games, Age of Mythology is soon going to get a fresh new look thanks to the World's Edge studio. Alan Wake Remastered is on Epic Store, but I don't want to use Epic Store...

I think most of these games look better when you actually play them in real time rather than on screenshots or on videos.

[Powers]

As for classic RTS games, Age of Mythology is soon going to get a fresh new look thanks to the World's Edge studio.

If you mean graphics then "fresh" is not always good.

[Tadasuke]

As for classic RTS games, Age of Mythology is soon going to get a fresh new look thanks to the World's Edge studio.

If you mean graphics then "fresh" is not always good.

I 100% agree, but AoE II DE (or III DE) does look better than the old AoE II in my opinion. Especially on large, high-res, new LCD or OLED monitors.

However, for example, Full Throttle (1995 adventure game from LucasArts) looks better in the original version, rather than the remaster:


Grandia (RPG developed by Game Arts, came out in December 1997 for Sega Saturn and in June 1999 for Sony PlayStation) "HD Remaster" is extremely low-effort in my opinion. It looks worse than the original (for me). And pretty much every Final Fantasy "remaster" (not remake) is low-effort (and high price) as well, which is sad, but at least there is FF7R.

Grandia looks best on Sega Saturn in my opinion:


Here are a few PS1 screenshots (with no modifications), which also look really nice (when you take PS1 capabilities into consideration):









I could provide "HD Remaster" footage, but it's a waste of time.

Here's what the creators themselves had to say about the game back when it was cutting-edge:

Also forefront in my mind for this development was to show players that “this is what a next-gen RPG looks like,” from the gameplay system to the story. I’m not talking about using polygon graphics just because we can use polygon graphics now. In truth there are a lot of RPGs like that though. If it is only the graphics that improve with this next generation of hardware, it will be quite a sad state of affairs. No matter how much graphics may improve, if those improvements aren’t directly connected to the gameplay, then the game itself has not improved. The important thing is presenting players with new gameplay and entertainment.

With the advent of the next generation of gaming hardware, we at Game Arts have been challenging ourselves to imagine what new kinds of RPGs can be created. On that point, and I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I think that Grandia represents the very first RPG of the next generation. It’s a veritable parade of details and features–the result of four years of care. But to say this is “perfect” would not be true. We wanted to do even more, but that probably would have meant asking for an additional four years!

For the world of Grandia, there were several ideas floating around, but we settled on a dynamic, lively world. A world where you can hear steam whistling in the air–that’s the strong, vigorous age we wanted to have as our backdrop. The stereotypical RPG is usually either sword and sorcery or science fiction. With sword and sorcery you can depict a fantastic world, but that will have a strong image of the middle ages, and the denizens of that world, the villagers and such, won’t have an atmosphere of liveliness about them. On the other hand, with science fiction you can have a stylish, dark setting, but it tends to be either a world of superheroes or a world of decay and dystopia.

We didn’t want either of those for Grandia. In searching for an era that would be appropriate to a dynamic and lively world, we came upon the idea of a post-Age of Exploration, post-Industrial Revolution era, a time of new and sudden prosperity for mankind. Everyone living in that time would have their thoughts turned toward the future, and their present time would be overflowing with energy and optimism. In people’s hearts, there would be a desire for new horizons and unseen worlds–“adventure”. Hence the “age of adventure.”

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

One of the first computer games I ever played.

The BBC Micro had 32K of memory. This was later expanded to a whopping 128K.

[Time_Traveller]

Video game firms found to have broken own UK industry rules on loot boxes

Fri 29 Mar 2024 12.51 GMT

The UK government’s decision to let technology companies self-regulate gambling-style loot boxes in video games has been called into question, after some of the developers put in charge of new industry guidelines broke their own rules.

In the past six months, the advertising regulator has upheld complaints against three companies involved in drawing up industry rules, including the leading developer Electronic Arts (EA), for failing to disclose that their games contained loot boxes.

An expert who submitted the complaints said he had found hundreds more examples of breaches but had only taken a handful to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in order to highlight the problem.

Loot boxes are in-game features that allow players to pay, with real money or virtual currency, to open a digital envelope containing random prizes, such as an outfit or a weapon for a character.

Despite warnings from experts that loot boxes carry similar risks to gambling, the then Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said in July 2022 it would not follow other countries, such as Belgium, in choosing to regulate them as gambling products.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ints-rules

[Time_Traveller]

AI innovator Sir Demis Hassabis: Video games can boost creativity in young

5 hours ago

Parents tearing their hair out over children spending hours gaming should instead be encouraging their creative use of tech, a recently-knighted AI millionaire has told the BBC.

Sir Demis Hassabis said they should be encouraged to create and programme.

The co-founder and boss of Google's DeepMind himself grew up playing chess and gaming. Google bought his firm for a reported £400m in 2014.

Sir Demis told BBC Radio 4's Today that gaming helped him to become successful.

"It's important to feed the creative part, not just playing them [games]," he said. "You never know where your passions lead, so I would actually just encourage parents to get their children really passionate about things, and then develop their skills through that."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68692950

[Time_Traveller]

The Fallout TV show episode 1 release date has been confirmed

23RD OCT 2023

The release date for Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout TV show has been announced.

A tweet from the official ‘Fallout on Prime’ account shows a new teaser video which seemingly confirms the date the first episode will be made available.

The video shows a computer terminal, which shows various messages including one that says “Holotape found: 101_The_End”.

It then ends with 04.12.24, implying that the first episode, titled The End, will be released on April 12, 2024.

Bethesda and Amazon confirmed in August that the Fallout TV show would be released in 2024, and is set in Los Angeles.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/new ... confirmed/

More news of this:-

‘I was freaking out’: Walton Goggins on fear, The White Lotus and being a 200-year-old mutant in Fallout

Sat 30 Mar 2024 05.00 GMT

working today. “Love how if you put Walton Goggins in your thing you have a guaranteed instant additional 20% goodness factor,” they wrote. It’s a claim that stands up. Watch Goggins in The Shield or Justified or megachurch sitcom The Righteous Gemstones – even the second Ant-Man film – and you’ll see a man who knows exactly how to elevate the material by sheer force of charisma alone.

There’s no such thing as a Walton Goggins type. At one point, he simultaneously starred as an assassin attempting to murder Santa in bloodthirsty Christmas movie Fatman and an adorable, newly widowed father in sunny sitcom The Unicorn. They came hot on the heels of his role as a goofy 19th-century sheriff in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight – and he played them all with the same unwavering commitment. There’s a sly magnetism to his work, a sense that no matter how challenging the material, he’s always having fun.

It’s a quality that has opened progressively more doors in his career, and now he appears to have hit the motherlode, balancing several high-profile roles at once – which we’ll come to later. When I talk to Goggins over Zoom, I’m half expecting to see someone wrung dry from the pressure of competing obligations. But I’m wrong. “I’m fantastic,” he beams when I ask how he’s doing. “I couldn’t be better. It feels pretty good, man.”

Obviously I’m sceptical. You couldn’t be better, I repeat, as bewildered as if he’d just told me he’d grown a second head. “You know, I got back from Thailand a week ago and went straight to South by Southwest, like a 30-hour flight, to launch Fallout, which was extremely successful,” he says. “And my wife’s movie premiere just so happened to coincide here in New York. I have no problem expressing gratitude. I wake up with it at the forefront of my thought process first thing in the morning. I have a lot to be grateful for.”

We should start with the project he’s officially here to promote, Prime Video’s adaptation of the Fallout video game series. To call the games a phenomenon would be a heavy understatement. A franchise stretching back to the 90s, the four games (plus assorted spin-offs) throw players into a post-apocalyptic, retro-futurist wasteland, where they are forced to fight for survival in a world primed to kill them.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... in-fallout