March 2020

The Elder Scrolls Online’s Greymoor expansion has received a new trailer, and it sets up an epic journey where players will clash with what goes bump in the night.

Streamed through the official Bethesda Softworks YouTube account on Mar. 30, the trailer shows off some of what will transpire before and during the expansion’s story. Set in the Northern region of Skyrim, it sees Lyris Titanborn, a warrior of some renown, attempting to convince warriors to join her in quelling a rising threat laying siege to the land.

Townsfolk are being killed and twisted by evil forces. These malicious entities range from the familiar, like Falmer and Werewolves; to the more extraordinary, like Hellhounds and a dark being drawn from a massive surge of evil magic.

The only way to stop this threat is if the land’s greatest warriors – including the player – join forces and put a stop to this evil before it consumes everything, facing it down wherever it sprouts up and forcing it back from whence it came.

It’s a properly fantastical setup, and a great intro for those diving into the expansion’s Prologue trial event kicking off today on all platforms. The trial will cover the set-up for the expansion with a quest detailing just how dire the stakes are, and what kind of threat is looming for the land of Tamriel.

Those diving into the Prologue, or even those with a passing interest in the expansion, will want to view the full trailer down below.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a notable impact on the retail release of some major games, but Square Enix has found a solution for the hard-copy release of the Final Fantasy VII Remake.

In a statement posted to the company’s official website on Mar. 30, it was revealed that the company had intentionally shipped copies of the game early in order to better ensure most retailers could provide the game to customers by its original release date of Apr. 10.

Copies have already been shipped to and received by some retailers in Europe and Australia. More of the game’s full release total will be shipped to other countries in the western regions in the near future, though the company can’t give a specific date or time due to the odd circumstances and the challenges in tracking said shipments at this time.

This also resulted in a heartfelt plea from the team behind the game to anyone who receives the title before its intended launch date.

“If you get the game early, please think of others and don’t spoil it for them. We know there are potential spoilers that have been out there for over two decades as the original FINAL FANTASY VII was released in 1997. But FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE is a new game that still has many surprises for everyone,” the statement reads.

“All our fans and players deserve to experience the game for themselves, and we ask for the support of our dedicated community around the world to ensure that.”

There have been more and more portable SSDs supporting the new USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard cropping up over the last couple of months. First, we had the Samsung T7 Touch, the latest, touch sensor-secured successor to my current [cms-block] champion, the Samsung T5. Then there was Crucial’s X8, which was a smidge faster than the T7 Touch and cheaper to boot. Now, WD’s Black P50 has finally landed on my desk. Clad in the same tough, corrugated shipping container-like casing as WD’s Black P10 external HDD, the P50 certainly looks the part of a high-end, no-nonsense portable SSD drive, but does it have the speed to match? Here’s wot I think.

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Runescape’s newest update, Archaeology, adds a whole new skill to the almost two-decade-old MMO, but there’s some necessary context for what it brings to the table – at least historically speaking. At only 10 years old, I was as industrious as they came, and actually set up my own in-game business. I had people – probably much older than I was – chopping wood for me, which I then sold for profit or used to increase my Firemaking skill, like a proper little capitalist. All I had to give them in return were axes worth a measly fraction of my wealth.

Runescape was a simpler game in those times, where ordinary skills could be paired with one another to create basic but effective economic structures, most of which were founded upon the exploitation of fresh-out-of-Lummy naivete. But that was 14 years ago. Runescape is a different beast now, and the addition of Archaeology is unprecedented in more ways than one. “Skilling is not traditionally a vehicle for storytelling,” lead designer Dave Osborne tells me in an interview conducted over Zoom. “This completely upends that expectation.”

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If Black Mesa actually getting finished left you lost without a fan-made refresh of an old Half-Life to cheer on, rejoice: the new hotness is bringing Half-Life 2 into Half-Life: Alyx. Several modders are already showing off their progress in bringing Gordon’s adventure to Alyx’s shiny new VR game, though it’s all hella far from finished. Hey, we all need something to believe in. Come check out these two projects.

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id Software's Doom Eternal is one of the best-looking shooters ever made. Powered by the id Tech 7 engine, the game delivers even higher resolution textures, more complex environments and a tight lock on its target 60 frames per second. It's also built from the ground up for the Vulkan low-level graphics API, meaning that in theory, it's a match made in heaven for Google's Stadia - a system that focuses on Linux and Vulkan for its technological backbone. However, after putting some time into the game, it's disappointing overall - at the most basic level, lag makes the Doom Eternal experience a good deal worse than any other platform.

There are advantages though, of course. Taking Xbox One X as an example, you have a 41GB download to get through before you can pick up your controllers. Stadia's cloud-based set-up means that the process of getting your hands on the game is instantaneous. But in the case of Doom Eternal, that's where the plus points for gaming at Stadia come to an end.

In assessing this port, we're pursuing our usual strategy of running the game with the best quality set-up. That means we're using the Stadia controller connected directly to Google's servers via WiFi, with imagery delivered via Chromecast Ultra to an LG OLED B8, rated for 22ms of lag under Game Mode. A 300mbps Virgin Media fibre connection, with the Chromecast attached via Ethernet removes any home WiFi-related latency that might occur, while our lag measurements were carried out with no other devices sharing the line. Pulling up the Stadia connection tab, our set-up is rated as excellent with 4K enabled. Despite this, there are still some minor, very infrequent stutters in performance.

Police have pulled over a man driving around Stevenage, Hertfordshire, playing Pokémon Go during the coronavirus lockdown.

When asked the reason for his car journey, the man told coppers he was out catching Pokémon, ITV News reported.

Police officers informed the man this was "not essential travel" and directed him home.

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While hardware-accelerated ray tracing was first demonstrated by Nvidia with modern games like Battlefield 5 and Metro Exodus, where RT lights or shadows are used alongside traditional rasterised graphics, completely ray-traced versions of games have also been developed to stunning effect. From early demonstrations of path tracing in Minecraft via Sonic Ether's RT shader mod to the release of Quake 2 RTX, we've seen a series of old-school titles reborn with modern techniques, in a way that seems perfectly suited to demonstrating the unique capabilities of RT technology. Today, we get a fresh look at the most highly-anticipated ray tracing showcase: Minecraft with RTX.

It's important to note that this is the official Microsoft release of Minecraft with ray tracing, a near total overhaul of the game, rather than the shader mod that preceded it. We first went went hands-on with the title at Gamescom 2019, and since then we also got an exclusive look at the Minecraft DXR tech demo on Xbox Series X. While the game doesn't yet have a release date, some Minecraft creators have already gotten access to development builds - and today we're seeing the fruits of their labours for the first time.

UPDATE 31/3/20: Activision has finally announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered - and it is available now on PlayStation 4. But it is currently only available on PS4, as a timed exclusive.

PC and Xbox One owners will be able to pre-order the game today, Activision said, but not play it. [UPDATE: Activision has now tweeted to say it will become available on "other platforms" on 30th April.]

On PS4, it is available now from the UK PlayStation Store priced £19.99.

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Earlier this week we benchmarked Doom Eternal extensively, but only using modern GPUs. Seeing that the game keeps receiving praise, we decided to go further and test it on a more ample number of graphics cards. This time we have a little over 40 GPUs tested at 1080p using the low-quality preset, with and without…

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This weekend, perhaps due to an influx of Animal Crossing screenshots flooding my social media feeds, I felt like I wanted to play a game. Specifically, I felt an unexplainable urge to play The Oregon Trail, the classic computer game that puts you in the shoes of a pioneer heading out West.

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Despite fan protests and being encased within a costume without a movable neck, Michael Keaton’s 1989 Batman is fondly remembered as one of the Dark Knight’s best big-screen adventures. Those eyes, though. Damn those eyes.

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Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader-run community: Genre Reconstruction, Genuineness, and the Paradox of Change in The Quintessential Quintuplets • Game Diary: Mega Update #7 • TAY Retro: Nintendo Entertainment System - Toys R Us “The World’s Biggest Selection of Nintendo” [TV Commercial, NA]

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The Outer Worlds (Xbox One) | $27 | Amazon
The Outer Worlds (PS4) | $27 | Walmart

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A host of major game companies including Activision Blizzard, Twitch, Riot Games, and Unity have banded together to promote the World Health Organisation's 'Play Apart Together' campaign. ...

A remaster of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is indeed real, according to a PSN listing in Germany (now removed). It's also set to launch far sooner than you might expect, with the revitalized campaign scheduled for tomorrow, March 31. It will retail for 25€ (or an expected $30).

The remaster was leaked previously thanks to a ratings listing on a South Korean Ratings board, after having been rumored to be in development since the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 in 2018. Files pertaining to the remaster were then datamined out of the latest patch for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare over the weekend, before the trailer and release date leaked on PSN in Germany before any official announcement.

The remaster includes only the campaign of Modern Warfare 2, which continues the story of Soap MacTavish and Captain Price, and features the infamous "No Russian" mission. Although the remaster won't include multiplayer like the original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare remaster in 2016, some Modern Warfare 2 maps have already been added to 2019's Modern Warfare.

Even though it’s a remake, there’s a lot of new content

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Slightly more sensitive, still fantastic

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At least according to a page on the German PlayStation Store

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Watch Granblue Fantasy's female player avatar Djeeta flex her 10 Revenant Weapons in Granblue Fantasy Versus' new trailer.

The post Granblue Fantasy Versus Trailer Shows Djeeta Flex Her 10 Revenant Weapons appeared first on Siliconera.

Several years ago, I used to work at a toy warehouse. It was a lousy job with lousy pay and lousy holiday hours. But it also provided me with a lot of downtime, and in that time, I'd often daydream about hopping in the forklift that sat collecting cobwebs in the far corner of the warehouse and destroying that building piece by piece.

Of course I never actually did that, which is why I write for Destructoid and not Prisontoid, but those types of tear-it-all-down fantasies still stick with me, even now that I'm at a job I love. And while I may never be able to make those fantasies into a reality, I can at least simulate what havoc I'd wreak with Good Job!

Following yesterday’s announcement for Japan, today the western arm of Square Enix confirmed that NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… is coming to North America and Europe.

The press release doesn’t just confirm that the game is coming west, but it also clears doubts on which version of the game we’re getting.

It appears that NieR: Gestalt, the version of the original NieR created for the west (and also released in Japan on Xbox 360) will remain confined in the past, while Replicant will be the version at the center of this new releases on all regions and platforms.

The difference is that while Replicant’s protagonist is a brother on a quest to heal his sister, Gestalt replaces him with a much older and grizzled father, likely considered more suitable to please the western audience at the time.

It’s worth mentioning that the western arm of Square Enix has not mentioned a western release of the mobile game NieR Re[in]carnation, which was announced for Japan at the same time as Replicant ver.1.22474487139….

Below you can find the full announcement and the full key art from the press release.

Animal Crossing is a lot of people’s go-to feel-good game, and it’s not hard to understand why. You get to build any kind of island you want while designing your home, becoming friends with your neighbors, and spending your days relaxing on the beach.

However, the DIY recipes you can get take a long time to accumulate and it takes a while for your island to start to have a cohesive atmosphere. We thought it would be fun to make a list of ways you can make your island feel more like home!

Resident Evil 3 Remake Review on PlayStation 4

Resident Evil 3 Remake’s opening scene is a clever reimagining of the 1999 classic. Gone is the cheesy expositional dialogue, replaced by an opportunity to wander the confines of Jill’s apartment. In first-person. For a brief moment –and disappointingly so– we see the world through her eyes, isolated and afraid as she hunkers down from the spread of the t-virus. It’s impossible to ignore parallels to the coronavirus pandemic that’s gripping the world right now –a reality that gives the scene extra punch that hits frighteningly close to home.

But unfortunately, this is about the last time Resident Evil 3 Remake inspires that same sense of wonder and gravitas, the last time it offers something more than just defaulting to a modern and glamorous redo of Jill’s linear escape from Raccoon City. Indeed, while its slick production values and entertaining gameplay will ultimately thrill most players in the same way as its predecessor, I found myself disappointed that this next remade chapter of Capcom’s most beloved franchise never delivers anything too far beyond the original framework.

It’s a frustration compounded by a comically short length, even less than the original which I remember was criticized back in 1999. Six hours is all it took me to complete a first, fairly doddering playthrough of Resident Evil 3 Remake. Three hours at a second attempt on its hardcore difficulty, which is the only reason to experience the story again given there’s no A/B side feature adding to replayability.

20 years later, with Capcom having appreciated the criticism of the original and surely understanding how anticipated the remake is, the lack of content is particularly bizarre. It’s a missed opportunity that I sadly can’t avoid dedicating a large portion of this review to lamenting.

Finally, it’s harvesting season! The long wait for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, a game that’s been eight years in the making, is drawing to a close. Today the Early Access period kicks off, providing the first opportunity to sample its single-player content. Naturally, there’s a trailer to celebrate, and it’s suitably epic.

As the sequence showcases, Bannerlord is a third-person/strategy hybrid that combines action-RPG combat with the tactical nuances of building an army and forging a kingdom across a sandbox campaign. There’s an extremely deep character customization system, and the game also features a realistic world economy.

But the Mount & Blade franchise is best known for its skill-based, directional combat system, which looks to have been even further polished this time around. In addition to the smaller encounters both in its single-player and competitive multiplayer, Bannerlord’s largest battles see clashes of soldiers up to 2,000 strong, and the full release could more than double that.

You can check out today’s new trailer below, and if you’d like more details on the game then head over to its steam page. The game is currently discounted at the moment for those that want to jump in straight away.

The Resident Evil 3 remake comes out just over a year after the Resident Evil 2 remake, which is particularly satisfying timing when you consider the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came out just a year after Resident Evil 2, back in 1999. Resident Evil 3 launched just before the launch of the PlayStation 2 and a transition to the next-generation of consoles, and the Resident Evil 3 remake launches not long before the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series X - another satisfying parallel. But unfortunately there is an unwelcome parallel: the Resident Evil 3 remake, like the original upon which it is based, is inferior to its predecessor.

Don't get me wrong, when the Resident Evil 3 remake is good, it's fantastic. The remodelled Jill Valentine, if not inspired by Milla Jovovich then certainly developed with the Resident Evil movie star in mind, is a wonderful character. Her desperate attempt to escape Raccoon City with the relentless Nemesis monster on her back quickly turns into a save the city operation - she's likeable, determined and I couldn't help but root for her throughout.

I was surprised to find myself rooting for Umbrella mercenary Carlos Oliveira, too - once I got over his spectacularly vibrant bouffant hair. Carlos comes across as, well, a bit of a dick when he saves Jill - early doors - from the clutches of Nemesis. But as the story progresses so does his character. In reworking Resident Evil 3's plot, Capcom has placed greater emphasis on Carlos, and you play as him in two extended portions of the game. Jill is of course the star of the show here, but Carlos benefits from the extra quality time - and his new hairdo, which I'm convinced has a life of its own.

Nintendo Switch's first-party line-up for the rest of 2020 will be dominated by Mario games old and new, to coincide with the original Super Mario Bros.' 35th anniversary.

That's according to Eurogamer sources with knowledge of Nintendo's upcoming plans, who have corroborated a report posted by VGC.

First, the report states Nintendo will release "most of Super Mario's 35-year back catalogue this year, remastered for Nintendo Switch".

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About five minutes into the Resident Evil 3 remake, I uttered the word “brilliant.” I don’t use that word often. I don’t know if I should have used it then. Brilliance is an incredibly rare thing, but Resident Evil 3 hooked me from the start. So I used the word. It is an explosive game brimming with intensity and some…

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A dumb, yet glorious shelf, Aukey dual plug charger, Spalding NCAA Hoop, and a pair of Fitbits lead off Monday’s best deals from around the web.

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Nintendo is reportedly planning to release remasters of most of the games in the Super Mario. Bros. series and announce new ones to mark the plumber’s 35th anniversary.

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UK based publisher Future has shut down the long-running Official Xbox Magazine, almost two decades after the publication first hit shelves. ...

Resident Evil 3 Remake is out this week, offering another dose of zombie survival-horror in the style of last year's Resident Evil 2 Remake. This time the focus turns to Nemesis, the ever-present danger who defined the original. But how long can you expect to be on the run from this looming threat?

How Long Is Resident Evil 3?

• 6 hours (standard run)
• 11 hours (completionist run)

A standard critical path run through RE3 will take you about six hours, while taking your time to gather all the collectibles will last roughly 11-plus hours. That means getting all of the weapon upgrades and secrets, opening all of the locks, and finding all of the bobbleheads.

Resident Evil 3 is coming alongside Resident Evil Resistance, a standalone multiplayer mode that pits four survivors against one mastermind controlling the output of zombie hordes. A final open beta for Resistance was planned recently, but the PC and PS4 versions ran into technical problems and had to be postponed.

Capcom’s latest remake is once again excellent, but safe and short

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