Take part in The Maiden's Rhapsody: Memories of an Unseen Realm to get Iroha's armor in Final Fantasy XIV.
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Back in the late 2000s, digital rights management – more commonly known as DRM – made itself difficult to ignore. CD copy protection programs such as SecuROM infamously limited the number of times players could install games like Bioshock on their PC, while Assassin’s Creed II required players to maintain a constant internet connection despite the fact it was a singleplayer game. At the time, this was a bit like asking people to play Assassin’s Creed II with a vase balanced on their head. Unless you’d invested in a highly stable, fibre-optic neck, at some point that vase was going to come crashing down.
Today, it’s easier for DRM to fly under the radar. Between the popularisation of digital stores and service-model games, and the fact that people today are generally a lot more online in their daily lives, anti-piracy solutions can be bound to games in a way players never notice or readily accept. But that doesn’t mean that the issues surrounding DRM have been resolved – it only means we talk about them a lot less.
After working through delays, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is planning an August 27, 2020 release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, iOS, and Android (although Square Enix warns that the timing of the mobile versions is "subject to change"). Somewhat surprisingly, the action-RPG is getting a digital-only launch in the West. Japan, meanwhile, will have physical console editions.
"Far from a simple re-release," the Crystal Chronicles remaster includes online cross-platform multiplayer, new dungeons, new voice acting, improved audio, HD visuals, and a cool Mimic function.
As Square Enix's Duncan Heaney explains on the PlayStation Blog, "by collecting stamps, visiting Moogle Houses, or completing difficult dungeons, you'll get Memory Crystals which you can use to change your characters' appearance to that of various characters you'll meet on your adventure."
When it comes to multiplayer-centric RPGs, you can never have enough customization choices.
A Kenneth Cole home sale, a Tile Pro 2-pack, a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2, a Belmint water flosser, a pack of two-way radios, and a
Publisher Headup and developer Bleakmill has today announced an upcoming FPS called Industria, slated for launch in Q1 2021. A press release sent to Twinfinite cites Half-Life 2 and Portal 2 as inspirations for its dystopian setting, and it’s a pastiche that’s on full display in the game’s first trailer.
Industria’s grim locale helps ground a narrative that is said to encourage players to question our “scientific responsibility, the nature of the universe’s inner workings as well as how far we should go with artificial intelligence and self-learning algorithms.”
The story’s premise is inspired by the work of American filmmaker David Lynch, who directed iconic sci-fi movies such as Dune. Here’s Industria’s story synopsis:
Berlin, 9th November 1989: The streets are full of people. After four decades of division, thousands of cars are rolling across the inner-German border. The Wall is finally open! At the same time, a man by the name Walter seemingly disappears in a secret research facility near East Berlin. His goodbye message reaches you too late and you are forced to track him down.
The search for Walter takes you deep into the facility – right into its center where time seems to stand still. A dark secret lurks – well hidden – behind the curtain. In the end, horrible insights make you dive deeper and deeper into a strange, surreal yet familiar world
All these themes merge into one story for Nora, a woman searching for her loved one and constantly being confronted with the result of Walter’s past actions. This results in intense fights against an artificial intelligence which, like a cancer on the human body, has infested the city with technological tumors linked together by a network of sprawling cables. Emotional and supernatural confrontations will give the players a glimpse into a world they are not supposed to fully grasp.
If you’re really feeling Xenoblade fever like I am right now then you can’t help but think about how things would be different if you could beat down Shulk as Riki. Oky, maybe it’s just me, but it’s hard to argue that a fighting game spinoff of Xenoblade wouldn’t be incredible.
Gearbox has issued a new Borderlands 3 hotfix, but unlike most of the weekly updates this one is particularly light. In fact, it only addresses a single issue, but the team notes that it's working hard on a bigger patch to come next week.
As detailed in the announcement, this week's hotfix only addresses one bug: reports that the "Talk" prompt would sometimes fail to appear if you were in multiplayer during the Pandora's Next Top Mouthpiece mission. That bug risked blocking progression for players, but it should be resolved as of May 28 at 12 PM PT.
The update suggests that fixes next week should be more substantial since the reason this week update is so light is that "testing resources are currently being directed at the upcoming patch on June 4." That date will also mark the end of Revenge of the Cartels, which will be replaced by the next mini-event, Takedown of the Guardian Breach.
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We've known the next-generation Xbox Series X will offer extensive backwards compatibility support for some time, but now Microsoft has explained precisely how the console will run older titles. ...
Today Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment released a new developer diary video dedicated to The Last of Us Part II.
The video focuses on the extreme attention to detail that went into every aspect of the development of the game.
We also get a deep dive into some of the technological advances that went into enabling said attention to detail.
Of course, research was also an important factor, and it’s another aspect covered in the video.
You can check it out below.
If you want to see more, you can check out the new gameplay from yesterday. We also learned that a new official podcast is also coming, and will launch on June 9.
Sony Interactive Entertainment recently reopened digital pre-orders for the game on the PlayStation Network. The game is ready and has “gone gold” ahead of its launch.
Image: James Bareham
For the past 10 years, artists have taken inspiration from Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and many more
Super Nintendo World was planned to open up this summer in Japan but due to COVID-19 concerns, the date was pushed back. However, the new Mario-themed section in Universal Studios Japan looks incredible in a new birds-eye view, courtesy of imaiko02 on Instagram via ResetEra.
Even though the area may look small from this point of view and unfinished, Universal has managed to fit in so much of Mario’s essence into the lot, and if you look closely, there are so many tiny details to gawk at.
You can see the image here:
If you played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on your Switch, you'll get a Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition bonus when you start.
The post Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition Rewards Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Players appeared first on Siliconera.
Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath is now available to purchase. This paid DLC expansion to NetherRealm Studios' flagship fighting title offers a five-chapter epilogue to the base game's story mode, along with three new characters: Shokan Queen Sheeva, wind god Fujin, and the subject of this brief guide, RoboCop.
The Future of Law Enforcement, Alex Murphy was gunned down on the first day of his new placement in crime-ridden Old Detroit. Seizing the opportunity, capitalist mega-corp. OCP took hold of Murphy's decimated corpse and outfitted it with state-of-the-art cybernetic armour and weaponry, creating not only the perfect police officer, but also an obedient pawn to be used within OCP's own political machinations.
Fortunately Murphy, (with help from his street partner Anne Lewis), is able to regain his sense of humanity, taking down both his killers and some of the corrupt officials responsible for his new form. Now unleashed in the realm of Mortal Kombat, RoboCop is already making his presence felt thanks to his wide array of zoning attacks, bone-crunching combos, and projectile-defying shield. In the right hands, RoboCop could prove an unstoppable force.
There’s one big graphics card deal this week, and while it may not appeal to most of you, anyone with nearly a grand burning a hole in their pocket won’t do better than the PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Blower, which has dropped to £920 over at Amazon.
Elsewhere, graphics card prices haven’t changed much this week regardless of which side of the Atlantic you reside, and continued coronavirus-related stock shortages means it’s not exactly a golden age for epic graphics card deals. Still, to help you keep track of all of the top graphics card deals that are going on right now, we’ve put together this list of all the best prices for the today’s [cms-block]s so you can see exactly how they compare against one another, and whether they’re a good buy or not. Regardless of whether you’re upgrading your PC or building a new PC from scratch, here are the cheapest graphics card deals on offer this week.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge takes place between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker and is set on the outskirts of Batuu's Black Spire Outpost of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.
It will tell an original story and features both new and iconic Star Wars characters and "multiple style of gameplay and difficulty settings to accommodate a wide variety of players."
“We are so excited for fans to step into Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge later this year,” said Vicki Dobbs Beck, ILMxLAB executive-in-charge.
In a new blog post summing up the Xbox Series X's backwards compatibility features, Microsoft has hinted it may not be done adding more games to its back compat program.
While much of the blog serves to reconfirm details first revealed exclusively to Digital Foundry back in March, Microsoft does include the following line about expanding its catalogue in the future:
"The team also continues to listen to feedback from the community on additional titles you would like to see added to the compatibility program.
Like many people, I'm sure, I've found myself reaching for the wine a little more frequently than normal to pass the time during lockdown - and apparently so has the visual effects team at Valve, although perhaps not in the way you'd think.
As shared by visual effects developer Matthew Wilde, Valve has released an update for Half-Life: Alyx which adds liquid to bottles, and it's truly impressive work. Not only does the light pass through the wine in a realistic way, the liquid physics react to the way the player holds and moves the bottle, with some nice-looking air bubbles and sloshing.
While the booze bottles look particularly delicious, alcohol wasn't the only liquid that was added, as you can see in this fan showcase where the player throws big containers of water around. And, of course, you can smash the bottles to make a mess.
Microsoft has provided a new update on the capabilities of its upcoming Xbox Series X console today via newswire. Jason Ronald, director of program management for the console, explained that not only will players have access to over a thousand older games at launch but they’ll also experience substantially better performance when playing them too.
After reaffirming that Microsoft’s 15 first-party studios are hard at work delivering what will be the “biggest and best line up of exclusives in Xbox history,” Ronald switches attention to the console’s compatibility with older generation software:
“With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites. Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless.”
But it’s the performance of these older games when running on Xbox Series X that is most exciting. Ronald explains that the console’s hardware not only allows it to run the games at their maximum settings but actually with a level of performance even exceeding their original launch in some cases:
“Not only should gamers be able to play all of these games from the past, but they should play better than ever before. Backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD. No boost mode, no downclocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game.
The home office has proven to be nothing like working in a game development studio. Here are some stories of how developers are dealing with working from home. ...
Fresh off of giving away Grand Theft Auto V and Civilization VI, the Epic Games Store is offering another popular title for free for the next week. Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is up for grabs until June 4 at the same time. The collection comes with Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, so really you're getting two free games this week. To claim Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, simply sign up for a free Epic account and turn on two-factor authentication.
Normally, Epic reveals free games a week ahead of time, but during the ongoing Mega Sale, Epic has chosen to tease mystery freebies each week. Epic revealed Borderlands: The Handsome Collection as this week's freebie before its unlock time in a now deleted tweet. A leaked list of the mystery freebies has proven to be spot on so far, which leads us to believe next week's free game will be Ark: Survival Evolved.
Snagging Borderlands: The Handsome Collection from Epic will also net you a $10 off coupon--if you don't already have one--to use during the Mega Sale on any game $15 or more except for pre-orders. Each time you purchase a game priced $15 or more, you'll earn a new coupon.
The next company starting to dabble in cloud gaming is... Valve! The Steam Cloud Play beta has begun.
The post Steam Cloud Play Beta Takes Its First Steps With GeForce Now appeared first on Siliconera.
Activision has air-dropped a fresh trailer for the next season of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its sister title Call of Duty: Warzone. Focusing on the ongoing CoD narrative, which runs across both titles, the trailer officially announces the return of one of the franchise's most popular characters: Captain John Price.
Debuting in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Captain Price becomes an anchor of sorts, guiding the player characters through numerous intense firefights and Black Ops. Seemingly killed at the game's end, Price would go on to become a figurehead for the Modern Warfare sub-series, known for his gruff British manner, fearlessness in combat, and ruthless desire to "get the job done," no matter the cost.
Image: Studio Ghibli
Studio Ghibli executive Steve Alpert details the translation efforts in this excerpt from his new memoir
The Dune-esque psychic warriors of RimWorld‘s Royalty expansion are great, but what if you want your spacewizards to not be dukes and lords but rather monks, hippies, or goths? The latest update has you covered. It revamps psychics by making them mediate to charge their wizardbrains, and different types of character will use different focuses. Sure, lords will still love their thrones and that, but maybe you’ll have a tribal lot who love a big psychic Avatar tree, a spooky wizard who mediates around graves, or other weird wizzes.
Many of us have felt afraid of the dark at some point in our lives, but Those Who Remain takes that irrational phobia and imbues it with some tangible menace. A creepy psychological thriller that will kill you should you so much as set one foot into its shadows, Those Who Remain forces you to seek solace under streetlights and puzzle your way to illuminate new paths through your shady surroundings, sort of like the inverse of a standard stealth game design. It’s an intriguing horror premise that Those Who Remain uses in some fairly creative ways, but control shortcomings and a disjointed flow to its narrative prevent it from being a consistent thrill for its full six-hour duration.
Compile Heart announced that the Nintendo Switch version of Azur Lane: Crosswave will release in Japan on September 17, 2020.
The post Azur Lane: Crosswave Nintendo Switch Version Will Release in Japan on September 17, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.
In a Xbox Wire blog post, Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald wrote about backwards compatibility support for Xbox Series X. Microsoft's next-gen console will support backwards compatibility for original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games and Ronald promises that thousands of those titles will be playable on Xbox Series X on day one. New backwards compatibility techniques will allow the games to run at higher resolutions and with HDR support they originally lacked, too.
"With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites," he wrote. "Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless. By the time we launch this holiday, the team will have spent well over 200,000 hours ensuring your game library is ready for you to jump in immediately."
Series X won't just play your old Xbox games--it will also improve how they look. "The team was not content to just rely on the increased hardware performance to improve your playing experience," Ronald wrote. "Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game's performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR."
A huge talking point going into the upcoming console generation centers on compatibility. Players have already invested a ton of money on games and accessories, and many are crossing their fingers that those investments won't be completely canceled out when new systems hit store shelves this holiday season. Xbox has already said that Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox games that run on Xbox One through that system's backwards compatibility initiative will work on Series X, and that accessories will also carry forward into the next generation of hardware. Today, the team at Xbox gave more insight into the backwards compatibility features of the upcoming Xbox Series X.
With more than 600 games from previous generations working on Xbox One, as well as the massive library of games released for Xbox One available, the Xbox Series X will have thousands of compatible games at launch. This feat required Microsoft to clear major hurdles when it comes to system and chip architecture to allow games from multiple generations to be played on the newest hardware. In addition, Microsoft has put in more than 100,000 hours of playtesting to make sure that Series X is not only compatible with your current libraries, but also delivering an optimal performance in ways past systems couldn't.
Microsoft explained some of the ways the Xbox Series X will play older games even better than the hardware they were originally created for in a blog post this morning.
I almost gave up on Those Who Remain halfway through. It was the lions, you see. A first-person blunderfest for horror obsessives only, the game's setting is split between a menacing night-time reality and a weed-choked, oceanic otherworld in which objects float and the puzzles are more, well, videogamey. One such puzzle is a labyrinth dotted with lion statues. The idea is to carry the statues to candlelit plinths. The problem is that there's a monster in your path, an oily personification of buried guilt and suffering. There's a lot of that kind of thing in Those Who Remain - accusing messages on walls, silver-masked demons chortling about sin and forgiveness - but for the most part, the emotions you're repressing are boredom and frustration.
The main character has no means of defending himself, so you must take winding routes to those plinths while lugging chunks of Umbrella Mansion Surplus stoneware that prevent you from sprinting, block the view and have a habit of jumping out of your hands. These burdens create tension, of course, but only for the few seconds it takes you to realise that you're playing a mandatory-stealth McGuffin-fetching puzzle with instadeath. After my eighth try I decided that life was too short. But I came back the next morning and beat the area, thanks partly to bloody-mindedness and partly (I speculate) to a developer update that prevents the monster from chasing you endlessly once alerted. Let me tell you: I wish I'd stopped at the lions.
Outriders, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X game from the developers of Gears of War: Judgment and Bulletstorm, is getting a monthly video series. Titled "Outriders Broadcast," the monthly program will deliver news and information about the game, which is due for release later this year.
Episode 1, titled "Built for the Core," will release on Thursday, May 28 at 9 AM PT. It will focus on Outriders' gameplay features, environments, character classes, and special abilities, featuring insights and commentary from the developers at People Can Fly. The embedded video stream is available below.
In a statement, People Can Fly creative director Bartek Kmita said the studio came up with the idea for a video series to respond to the current climate.
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Image: Microsoft