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

[Time_Traveller]

The assassination of video game consoles by the cowards Xbox and PS5 – Reader’s Feature

Mar 31, 2024, 3:00am

A reader is furious with Sony and Microsoft for their approach to the current video games crisis and predicts the death of game consoles.

I almost couldn’t believe what I was reading this week, with the news coming out of GDC (Game Developers Conference) where it turns out the hot topics were ‘What is going on with Xbox?’ and ‘What’s the point of the PS5 Pro?’ Admittedly, that is what most gamers have been wondering lately but I was kind of hoping that the people making our games had more of a grasp of what’s going on. But then given how clueless the heads of Xbox and PlayStation are, that’s not a surprise.

As far as I know there isn’t a head of PlayStation at the moment, while the head of Xbox is Phil Spencer, who has spent 10 years endlessly talking about and promising things that never happen. It’d almost be funny, if between them the two companies hadn’t sacked thousands of people – actual developers who make the games we enjoy – while still collecting their fat pay checks and company bonuses.

We’re already past the point of blaming people though, because now we have a new reality to deal with: one in which Xbox thinks exclusives are evil and PlayStation is convinced live service games are the future. Both of which are baffling conclusions based on absolutely nothing, but which are not only going to dominate the future of gaming but, I believe, lead to the early death of console gaming.

I don’t want to spend too long going over how stupid these ideas are, because I think it’s evident to anyone with half a brain. But in terms of exclusives, Xbox is clearly only saying that because they want an excuse for making all their games multiformat (only a month after saying they wouldn’t do that). There’s also probably some PlayStation envy in there too, because the idea that Xbox exclusives are having any impact on the games industry, one way or the other, is kind of ludicrous.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/31/assassin ... -20543565/

[Tadasuke]

What really matters in my opinion:

• lowest common denominator hardware (Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S, i3-12100F, Ryzen 5500, RX 6600, RTX 3050 6GB)

• affordability of decent and improving hardware

• how cheap, good and convenient are software tools available for game creators

• what is the overall atmosphere inside gaming studios and are the employees being treated fairly and equally

• is game monetisation fair

• are the games actually fun

• is every type of gamer able to find a game for themselves

• are games finished and bug-free

What doesn't really matter in my opinion:

• 1000 — 3000 USD halo products, like Titan XP, Titan V, Titan RTX, RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 4080 or RTX 4090

• power-hungry multi-threaded CPUs with additional threads which aren't really utilised anyway (i9-13900K)

• nonsense expensive products like the i9-9900KS, 11900K, 12900KS, 13900KS or 14900KS, which are factory overclocked with only +3% of performance and +35% power draw (so require deliding and soldering to an expensive cooler)

• generally all e-penis hardware which is only for show

• RGB lighting

• games which are realistic for realism's sake at the expense of fun

• games which loose any support after just 2 — 5 years

• games which don't offer anything substantial, only some shiny microtransactions/lootboxes/gacha

Switch 2 which could be 10x more powerful than Switch 1 or $300 console 5x more powerful than Series S would change more for the average consumer than some $3000 accelerator 7x more powerful than RTX 4090. Or $150 6-core CPU with single-thread 3x higher than Ryzen 7600X. Or $200 100W graphics card equal in capabilities to the RTX 4080. These things would really change the landscape!

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

I'm currently playing "Bramble".

A visually beautiful game... but quite disturbing in places. It seems to alternate between cute and terrifying!

This game has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" score based on Steam's user reviews, which I definitely think it deserves.

Synopsis: "A grim adventure set in a world inspired by dark, Nordic fables. Explore the beautiful yet dangerous and twisted land of Bramble in your endeavour to rescue your sister. Traverse a wondrous landscape and survive deadly encounters with Bramble’s many hideous creatures."

Currently 60% off the usual price, until 22 April.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games and Rollerdrome studio Roll7 are reportedly closing as part of Take-Two's big layoff plan

Wed, 1 May 2024 at 8:42 pm BST



A Bloomberg report says Take-Two Interactive is closing Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games as part of a plan announced earlier this month aimed at reducing the publisher's total workforce by 5%. Roll7, the developer of the OlliOlli games and Rollerdrome, is also being closed according to the report.

Word of the shutdown came by way of a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (via Game Developer) of layoffs at Take-Two Interactive Software in Seattle. Intercept Games isn't mentioned by name in the WARN post, but Seattle is where Intercept—founded in 2020 as part of Take-Two's Private Division label to take over development of Kerbal 2—is located. The WARN says 70 employees are being put out of work.

The WARN notice describes the action as a "closure," which led to speculation that Intercept Games wasn't just being cut, but eliminated entirely. Multiple job openings at Intercept that were listed on Take-Two's career page in January (via the Wayback Machine) have also been removed, although the Intercept website appears to still be trying to link to them. The closure is slated to take effect on June 28.

The Bloomberg report effectively confirmed that speculation, citing internal documents saying Intercept Games will in fact be closed. Roll7, which was acquired by Take-Two in 2021 and made part of its Private Division label, is also being shuttered. Roll7's most recent releases were the side-scrolling skater OlliOlli World and action-shooter Rollerdrome, both of which launched to acclaim in 2022.

The apparent shutdown of Intercept has led to questions about the future of Kerbal Space Program 2, which after multiple delays—it was originally supposed to be out in early 2020—limped into early access on Steam in February 2023.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/kerba ... 30426.html

[Tadasuke]

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is now Nintendo's best-selling game ever with over 70 million copies!

MK8D currently features 96 different race courses (divided into 12 different cups), 48 playable characters and 23 different items. On May 29th, the game will have its 10th anniversary (came out for Wii U and then was re-released for Switch as Deluxe, with new content added every few months).

Here's a short comparison of Mario Kart for 3DS vs Mario Kart for Switch. There are a total of 32 courses in Mario Kart 7 (spread over eight cups, featuring a mix of new and retro courses) and 17 playable characters.