Nintendo’s 2DS is now cheaper than ever. Play these games.
Who needs stereoscopic 3D, or a hinge? Nintendo’s cheaper, flatter 2DS is now a mere $80. It even includes a free digital copy of Mario Kart 7. That’s a bargain for a current-generation handheld, but where should you start your games collection? How about here, with Engadget’s favorites. (And remember, the console plays DS games, so there’s over ten years of hits to pick from.) We’d still advise starting with some of the most recent titles, which include animal villages, a particularly weird Zelda title, Square Enix’s resurrection of the JRPG, and Mario, somewhere, along the way.
‘Minecraft’ is making its way to China
Players around the world log hundreds of hours in Minecraft each day, but not gamers in China. Today, Minecraft developer Mojang announced it’s creating a whole new version of the game created specifically for Chinese consumers.
Partnering with Chinese internet company NetEase is what’s made this development possible, the very same NetEase that operates games like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone in China already.
There’s no official release date yet and no further information on what kind of alterations to the main game are even warranted for the Chinese market. What we do know is the Chinese version will only launch for PC and mobile devices, not consoles, when it finally makes an appearance.
“We are excited to bring Minecraft to Chinese audiences, and expect our large online community to embrace this preeminent game,” William Ding, CEO and founder of NetEase, Inc. announced. “With our deep understanding of the Chinese market and our ability to successfully launch world-renowned online and mobile games, we offer a strong platform for the introduction of Minecraft to China’s vast user base.”
Source: Mojang
‘Halo 5’ multiplayer is coming to PC… sort of
Leave it to Microsoft to fulfill fans’ long-standing wish of bringing modern Halo multiplayer to PC and then obfuscate accessing it in the most spectacular way possible. It’s coming by way of Forge — Halo 5: Guardians Edition for Windows 10. As the name suggests, the free download is for Halo’s custom map toolset, Forge, and it features full keyboard and mouse control, up to 4K resolution and the ability to build stuff on PC and then play on Xbox One. The devil is in the details here, though: the Xbox Wire post also mentions that you can test levels and play them with your friends on PC.
Microsoft confirmed to Ars Technica that yep, this is what constitutes Halo 5 online multiplayer on PC. Albeit without matchmaking and being limited to playing only with folks on your friends list, that is. There’s silver lining here, though: While the package is indeed rather light, at least PC players don’t have to suffer through the game’s awful campaign because it’s not a part of Forge.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Xbox Wire
Destiny’s next expansion will be called ‘The Rise of Iron’
Ignoring a welcome update last month, things have been pretty quiet on the Destiny front. That’s because Bungie has turned its attention to developing a sequel, which is slated to release next year. However, with E3 fast approaching, news of promised new, smaller expansion has started to slip out. According to a leaked poster shared on Reddit, the name of the next Destiny DLC will be called Rise of Iron and it’s likely to land in September.
The upcoming expansion will likely focus on the Iron Lords and the Iron Wolves. The Lords and the Wolves represented two groups of nine Guardians. The Iron Lords helped build the wall around the Last City and were joined by the Iron Wolves in the defense of the Last City against the Fallen at the battle of Six Fronts.
If you’ve played Iron Banner (a player-vs-player event), you notice that the tournament bears the Iron Lords sigil and that Iron Guardians lent their names to weapons available in the game (Felwinter’s Lie, Radegast’s Fury and Jolder’s Hammer to name a few). Oh, and that’s Iron Banner captain Lord Saladin brandishing the flaming axe in front of a partially destroyed wall in the poster.
Kotaku reports that the Rise of Iron expansion will feature a new raid, which was originally scheduled to drop earlier this year, and will be larger than the two DLCs that landed in the game’s first year. That also means there will be new missions and higher light levels, keeping you sweet until Destiny 2.0 arrives in 2017.
Via: Kotaku
Source: Destiny (Reddit)
‘Gran Turismo Sport’ races to PS4 on November 15th
The Gran Turismo series has always been about two things: speed and realism. Now, it’s coming back to PlayStation 4 with a very important update: native PlayStation VR support. Oh, and a ton of absolutely gorgeous cars. The latest entry in the series is Gran Turismo Sport, and it’s speeding to you on November 15th.
During a special event in London from Polyphony Digital and Sony, Gran Turismo Sport came packing a chunk of gameplay footage to soak up. While the game was originally released as far back as last October, this is the first official set of additional details beyond the game’s online sanctioned races and storied PSVR support.
Sony notes Gran Turismo Sport will be the “first racing experience” to be built for real online competitions sanctioned by the FIA (Federation International Automobile.) Not only can you go online and test your mettle against other players, but you can do it for real, representing your home country or even just your favorite car manufacturer with others around the globe. You can build your own racing career from the ground up as you make a name for yourself online.
The game will feature over 140 high-performance cars from the real world, with what looks to be amazingly detailed races both on and offline. There are 27 different tracks scaling 19 real-world locales to look forward to as well, such as the Northern Isle Speedway and Tokyo Expressway.
Whether you race online with others or offline, you can alter your vehicle’s livery with different logos and other personalization options, and there are plenty of new locales to take photos in as well.
The most recent Gran Turismo hit store shelves a lot longer than you may realize, back in 2013 for PlayStation 3 with Gran Turismo 6. While this is a separate spinoff entry that isn’t considered a numbered entry in the series, it’s been a long while since players have been able to put the pedal with Sony’s long-running series. An official beta has yet to be announced just yet, but one is likely on the way.
Source: PlayStation Blog
‘GunJack Next’ coming to Google’s Daydream VR platform
Google yesterday revealed a brand new VR platform for Android called “Daydream,” and now we know of at least one game for it. CCP, which developed Eve Online and Gunjack for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR, will make a sequel tentatively named Gunjack Next exclusively for Daydream. The original title was a VR shooter set in the space world of Eve Online, where you defend your ship by blasting enemies from a gun turret, arcade-style.
Google’s Daydream is a software and hardware virtual reality platform for Android N that includes a Gear VR-like headset and handheld controller. The search giant is partnering with smartphone manufacturers including Samsung, Xiaomi and HTC, along with content providers like Netflix and HBO. It calls Daydream a “high-quality VR platform” and will certify partner handsets to make sure that’s so. The best way to do virtual reality on mobile at the moment is with Samsung’s Gear VR, which is powered by Oculus software.
CCP shouldn’t have much trouble creating a game for the Daydream Android platform, because it originally built Gunjack for the Gear VR, then later adapted it for the Rift and Vive. The company also released Eve Valkyrie, a dogfighting game set in the Eve Online universe, to the Oculus Rift and plans to release it on the HTC Vive and Sony Playstation VR headsets later this year.
Return to Arkham with the remastered ‘Batman’ games
Batman fans, rejoice! Soon, you’ll be making another sojourn back into the Batman: Arkham video game franchise with the upcoming Batman: Return to Arkham remaster collection, releasing July 29th for $49.99.
Following leak after leak and silence from Warner Bros., a trailer finally dropped today showing off the graphical enhancements both games in the collection have undergone. Both Batman: Arkham Aslyum and Batman: Arkham City, as well as all of the DLC content previously released for both, is included with the package.
Both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners can get in on the fun, but curiously there’s no PC version announced as of yet. The ports for both consoles are being handled by Virtuos, the studio that worked on both Final Fantasy X and Heavy Rain’s remastered editions, and the games will feature improved graphics, models, lighting, effects and additional augments.
Both of Rocksteady’s first two dalliances with Arkham in the Batman mythos are excellent games on their own merits, and it’s well worth a walk down memory lane to experience them again. This time, maybe you’ll even find all of the Riddler’s trophies.
Google’s Android-powered VR platform supports Unreal games
Yesterday during Google’s annual I/O keynote, the company made a point of mentioning that Electronic Arts and Ubisoft — two of the biggest third-party game studios — were working on projects for Google’s new virtual reality platform, Daydream. Now the company is ready to announce another: Epic Games. The latest version of the company’s powerful and ubiquitous game-design toolset, Unreal Engine 4, is coming to Google’s next-gen mobile VR system. For developers it ensures easy porting of existing apps to Daydream with little extra work required. For consumers, it means higher-quality mobile VR experiences, and maybe more of them too.
The plugin is a joint effort between Epic, Google and Hardsuit Labs, according to Epic’s VR and augmented reality technical director Nick Whiting. To show off the progress the Unreal team has made so far, Epic has created an app currently dubbed Dungeon that takes full advantage of what is perhaps Daydream’s most important feature: its motion-sensing, Wiimote-like controller.
“We’re making Dungeon a tech demo like we did with Showdown and Bullet Train to kind of feel out the platform, figure out how far we can push the visuals and kind of experiment using the motion controller,” Whiting says. At its most basic level, Dungeon is a fantasy role-playing game where you’re casting fireballs at spiders with a wand, drinking various potions and eating apples bite-by-bite to regain health. As the working title suggests, this all takes place in the bowels of a medieval castle.
Whiting adds that Daydream’s input device is the first three-degrees-of-freedom (up and down, left and right, forward and backward) controller Epic has encountered, so Dungeon acts as a way to establish a set of standards for the nascent platform — much like Showdown did for head tracking on early Oculus Rift prototypes, and Bullet Train did for the Oculus Touch controllers.
“We’re figuring out the best practices and ways to fool your brain into thinking you’ve got a full arm [in virtual reality] even though it’s not positionally tracking,” he says. The relatively simple remote is a stark contrast to something like the the Oculus Touch controllers or HTC Vive’s input devices, which offer full 3D input recognition and more buttons.
It has to be simpler, though, considering those other controllers work with hardware that’s considerably more powerful than the smartphone in your pocket. But, thanks to the previous work Epic has put into Unreal Engine 4 with other motion controllers, things are progressing quickly. In fact, Dungeon is the result of just one developer, environmental artist Shane Caudle, working on the project with pre-made assets pulled from the Unreal online marketplace. Based on the video embedded above, it already looks impressive.
What’s more, starting today, applications developed in Unreal Engine 4 will join the some 50 million mobile VR apps currently on Google Cardboard. “If you enable this plugin and deploy your app, and it’s not [running] on a Daydream qualified device,” Whiting says, “it’ll fall back to basically Cardboard-level support.”
That’s pretty important considering that the number of Cardboard-ready devices is still going to outnumber Daydream-certified ones for quite some time. “A lot of people developed applications [in Unreal Engine 4] and wanted to deploy on Cardboard,” Whiting says. “This opens up the door to that.”
The free Unreal Engine 4 plugin is available to download now from GitHub.
‘Star Wars: Battlefront’ lacks a story mode thanks to some movie
When Star Wars: Battlefront launched, barring a lightweight solo play arcade mode, it didn’t have a true single-player campaign. During publisher EA’s recent earnings call, executive VP Patrick Söderlund explained that it “was a conscious decision we made due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact.” Star Wars movies are a big deal, in case you didn’t know.
He added “We got criticized for the depth and breadth of [Battlefront], So as we look at why that was, we have to go back and course-correct that for another version.” That makes a whole lot of (marketing) sense, but left players that prefer the solo experience with a game that was a bit lacking.
Perhaps some incoming Death Star adventures will keep them playing, at least until we get the campaign mode everyone wants.
Via: Wired
Nintendo has a new game plan
In case you didn’t get the message yet, Nintendo is trying lots of new things. To that extent, it’s formalizing some of that in its official charter next month. While most of it is rewording in places, the updated charter includes new references the manufacturing and selling of medical devices and computer software — the latter possibly being different from the gaming software it’s famous for. It also offers a reminder of all the things that Nintendo does that you might not know about, including office equipment and the management of “restaurants, dining halls, cafes”. (Where’s my Mario Cafe?)
Former president Satoru Iwata had intimated some of the company’s moves into healthcare, including a “quality of life” arm that Nintendo was interested in developing. It worked on both a sleep monitor and a Wii-connected “inconsistent” vitality sensor that was eventually canned. Whether the reworded charter represents a stronger, concerted push, or just formalizes what Nintendo’s trying out in recent years, remains to be seen. It’s not the only new approach for the games maker: it launched its first mobile game, is looking into movies, and is even building theme park attractions in Japan. (Coming! Summer 2020!)
New ideas are needed: the company dropped almost 40 percent in overall profits in its latest earnings report. The Cliff Notes version? Nintendo is profitable, but game sales are shrinking.
Via: Polygon
Source: Nintendo (PDF)
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