Playdate: Running wild in ‘The Deer God’ and ‘Castle Crashers’
Fun fact: If you do a Bing voice-search on Xbox One for The Deer God, instead of coming back with the option to download the indie sidescroller you’ll see results for the 1996 Greg Kinnear flick Dear God, an Avenged Sevenfold album with a song named “Dear God” on it and absolutely zero games named The Deer God. Actually finding the absolutely gorgeous venison-focused title takes a lot more work, which is strange considering that it’s one of this month’s free downloads as part of Xbox’s Games with Gold promotion. No matter! We did the digging for you and are going to play the game live on Twitch (along with Castle Crashers Remastered) starting at 6 pm ET / 3 pm PT.
Is the game worth subscribing to Gold for? Find out with myself and Sean Buckley right here on this post, the Engadget Gaming home page or Twitch.tv/joystiq. You know, if it, ahem, behooves you to do so.
http://www.twitch.tv/joystiq/embedWatch live video from Joystiq on www.twitch.tv
http://www.twitch.tv/joystiq/chat?popout=
[We’re streaming The Deer God and Castle Crashers Remastered at 720p through OBS, so rest assured these will look much better on your TV at home.]
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Tags: 2d, castlecrashers, castlecrashersremastered, deer, gameswithgold, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, indiegames, microsoft, playdate, sidescroller, thedeergod, twitch, xbox, xboxone
Is Acer’s Predator 8 tablet a Shield-killer or just a nice try?
Does another promising device bite the dust?
At IFA 2015, it was quite obvious that Acer is aggressively pushing its Predator line of elite devices. There was a whole flashy area dedicated to it, surrounded with the brand’s industrial, red-accented theme. To recap, we were shown powerhouse gaming laptops, large curved monitors packed with Nvidia’s G-Sync technology, a smartphone with a 10-core CPU monstrosity, and a sweet-looking 8-inch gaming tablet – the Predator 8.
Acer’s new elite tablet brings some fresh features to the gaming tablet segment, a segment that previously existed by one other – the Nvidia Shield tablet. So does the Predator 8 stand a chance? Let’s check it out.
In picking up the device for the first time, you can tell one of Acer’s objectives for the Predator tablet was to wow the user with the design. This thing is flashy and totally not for someone who doesn’t want to draw attention. Everyone will know this tablet is special, a completely different take from the subtlety of the Nvidia SHIELD. I love it.
Unfortunately, the feel did not back up the awesome appearance. There’s no other way to break it down, it feels cheap. The chassis is mostly plastic. OEM’s sometimes make plastic work, but Acer just didn’t with the Predator 8. My word to Acer: You can’t skimp on build with a premium device.
Okay, so it’s apparent Acer cut some corners to make the Predator 8 a reality, but how far does that fact extend? Let’s go over the performance, but first, a breakdown of the specs:
In addition, one of the staples of the Predator 8 are four front-facing speakers. You read that correctly, four. Like many OEM’s are doing these days, the external audio is supported by some Dolby Audio software trickery.
So with all that said, how does it sound? It’s good, just not superb. It can get loud, but the quality leaves to be desired. It is treble-heavy, almost shrilly sometimes. It reminds me a lot of the Nexus 6 speakers, where Motorola obviously made loudness a priority over quality. On the Nexus 6, bass was almost non-existent. I would have to do a review of the Predator 8 before I can conclude the same, as Acer’s booth wasn’t the quietest environment.
Next up is the display. Unfortunately, it left to be desired as well. This is often my experience with Acer displays, but I was hoping a premium product of theirs would be of better quality. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not terrible. Looking at the screen straight-on it’s fine, and colors have particularly nice vibrancy. However, tilt the device and the image slightly (but noticeably) washes out. We should be past the days of washing-out displays. Maybe I’m just spoiled by Samsung’s fantastic S-AMOLED panels.
And last but not least is the gaming performance. Bear in mind that this is not a full review, and I give the Acer the benefit of the doubt of maybe not having finished software. Asphalt 8 was loaded up on the device, which serves as a good gaming benchmark.
For some reason the gameplay stuttered, too much for my taste. It was playable, and bits where it didn’t stutter were smooth, but every time action ramped up (i.e. crashing into a wall, because I suck at racing games), the performance struggled. On a normal tablet I could look past this occurrence, but not on a “gaming” tablet.
So can I recommend the Predator 8? It depends. Acer does bring some neat things to the tablet, that weren’t there before, such as quad, front-facing speakers and gaming-tuned haptic, vibrational feedback. Only, quality isn’t where it should be for a stand-out, elite device. It’s almost like a normal tablet in disguise.
If you can look past the cut-corners and really want a sweet-looking, gaming tablet, there’s no other that pulls it off like the Predator 8. If you want a better overall package, look to the Shield.
Both tablets have near-stock software, 8-inch 1920×1200 displays, front-facing speakers, and run $299 retail. However, Nvidia’s Tegra K1 chipset should have significantly more gaming power than Intel’s HD graphics.
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‘Fruit Ninja’ studio removes ‘designer’ as a role
Fruit Ninja studio Halfbrick recently fired its final two designers, as reported by Kotaku Australia on Monday. This marks a structural shift for the company: Halfbrick doesn’t plan on hiring new designers and instead wants its artists, programmers and other employees to work on game design together, Chief Marketing Officer Nicholas Cornelius tells Engadget. “The roles were made redundant and not laid off,” he says. “This is because of a change in the way teams will work at Halfbrick.”
Cornelius continues, “As per our CEO, our teams are being empowered to contribute to design rather than design being in its own silo. To add to this, we have a design coach to guide the teams on achieving this goal. Halfbrick’s focus remains on creating new mobile games while expanding on its core brands (Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride).”
Fruit Ninja was a massive success when it launched in 2010 and Jetpack Joyride kept Halfbrick’s mobile mojo rolling when it hit iOS in 2011. The studio has released successful games since, though none have garnered the same fever pitch of popularity as Fruit Ninja or Jetpack Joyride.
One game, 2013’s Fish Out of Water, demonstrated Halfbrick’s experiments in monetization and gameplay mechanics in real-time. It started out as a $1 app, but within the final six months of 2014 alone, its price fluctuated between free and $2 (the free version featuring a fresh injection of ads and other interruptions, of course).
This week, Halfbrick CEO Shainiel Deo told Kotaku Australia that the studio’s latest shake-up — making games without designated designers — doesn’t mean the studio will lack design altogether.
“Halfbrick remains a design-focused company and this change will empower everyone in our teams to contribute to design rather than concentrate design control in the hands of a few. Great ideas can come from anywhere and we want to create an environment that fosters this notion.”
Via:
Kotaku Australia
Tags: FruitNinja, halfbrick, HalfbrickStudios, hdpostcross, JetpackJoyride
How ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ hits 60 fps and stays there
The developers at 343 Industries won’t sacrifice Halo 5‘s aim for a buttery smooth 60 frames per second by adding local co-op (for now), and it turns out that the team isn’t married to 1080p resolution if it means a lower frame rate, either. The game’s creative lead Josh Holmes writes on Xbox Wire that maintaining that benchmark is the result of tech that allows the game to adjust the resolution on the fly. “This enables us to deploy resources where they have the most impact across a diverse series of experiences throughout the game while delivering the most visually stunning Halo game ever,” he says. From the sounds of it, that means when there’s less stuff onscreen it’ll be in higher detail.
Toss in a gaggle of tanks, ATVs, genetically engineered super soldiers, a field of adversaries and their instruments of mayhem into the mix and expect the overall fidelity to take a hit. It’s a balancing act.
To be fair, this isn’t exactly a unique situation. The Witcher 3 on Xbox One used a system that adjusted the amount of pixels onscreen at once in accordance with the graphics processing unit’s load at any given time, floating between 900p and 1080p. With games like Infamous: Second Son on PlayStation 4, or BioShock: Infinite on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the frame rate was locked at 30 fps for consistency’s sake. However, menu options in those games allow to unlock the frame rate at the expense of graphical fidelity and a constant frame rate.
Perhaps the closest point of comparison here though is the Call of Duty series — something that Halo 5‘s play style has already been related to. That franchise hits its 60fps by running at either a very low resolution (something it did on last-gen hardware) or something similar to what’s going on with Halo 5 for its modern incarnations. Digital Foundry reports Advanced Warfare swapped between 1360×1080 and 1920×1080 depending on the scene to maintain 60fps, for instance. Surely none of this is going to stop fanboys from gloating that the Xbox One is an inferior/superior machine (depending on which side you ask), but no one has exactly played Halo 5‘s campaign yet so those barbs are a bit moot until October 27th.
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Via:
IGN
Source:
Xbox Wire
Tags: 1080p60, 343Industries, 60fps, framerate, halo, halo5guardians, hdpostcross, joshholmes, microsoft, resolution, xbox, xboxone
The next ‘Resident Evil’ game is an online competitive shooter
Resident Evil‘s recent track record for hits is… patchy. And we’re being nicer than we should because of how fondly we remember the earlier games. More recent spin-offs and adventures for the series that all-but invented survival horror might have watered down that (t-virus) formula, but that’s not stopping Capcom’s very own hideous experiments. Tying into the 20 year anniversary of Resident Evil (or Biohazard), the company announced Biohazard Umbrella Corps, a game that’ll see you shooting zombies and… other people that also seem to also be shooting zombies. The trailer was heavy on the action and gore, but expect to control your characters in first person when accuracy demands it, as well as a bunch of new zombie not-so-friendly gadgets and weapons. The game arrives in early 2016 on PS4. (Update: and also PC.)
Tags: biohazard, residentevil, sony, tgs, tgs2015, umbrellacorps, video
‘Danganronpa 3’ brings the weirdness to both PS4 and PS Vita
If you’ve not played (or heard of) Danganronpa, they’re a visual novel series that lie somewhere between Battle Royale and a high school dating sim: it’s all about as murderous and plot-twisty as you might expect. Populated with anime characters and obeying the same stretched rules of logic as Phoenix Wright, the dark (sometimes very dark) series is getting now another sequel. Danganronpa v.3 made its first appearance at Sony’s TGS press event — two days before the thing officially starts — sans release date, but with the fact that it’ll land on both PS4 and Vita. Monochrome murderous bears for everyone.
Tags: DANGANRONPA, danganronpa3, kuma, playstation, ps4, psvita, sony, tgs2015, vita
Sony’s Project Morpheus is now ‘PlayStation VR’
Sony’s Project Morpheus VR system has a new, more obvious name: PlayStation VR. The announcement came today at the company’s Tokyo Game Show press conference, but that’s about the only new information Sony was willing to part with. Explaining the change, PlayStation product business president Masayasu Ito says “The name ‘PlayStation VR’ not only directly expresses an entirely new experience from PlayStation that allows players to feel as if they are physically inside the virtual world of a game, but it also reflects our hopes that we want our users to feel a sense of familiarity as they enjoy this amazing experience.” He adds that the hardware itself will continue to be refined in the coming months, and that Sony is working closely with 3rd parties and in-house studios to ensure there are actually some games for the thing when it launches. There’s still no official release date for the headset, which is due for release at some point in early 2016.
Filed under:
Gaming
Tags: PlaystationVR, ProjectMorpheus, VirtualReality
PlayStation 4 is getting a price cut in Japan
If you were holding off on a price drop before buying a PlayStation 4, I hope you’re living in Japan. Sony just announced that its latest home console is getting a price cut to 35,000 yen (around $300) in the region, starting October 1st. You might be asking how this affects everyone else. Well, for starters this is a Sony sanctioned price cut and this is the first official one for the PS4. With the upcoming Paris Games Week (that Sony’s pledged to be at in a big way) this could very well signal a price drop in Europe. And then we have the upcoming PlayStation Experience show in the United States later this year, which could see the asking price drop domestically too.
We didn’t get any new info on how the system is selling worldwide, but this coupled with the official name for Project Morpheus PlayStation VR is at least something from the otherwise lackluster pre-Tokyo Game Show keynote.
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Tags: gaming, hd, hdpostcross, japan, playstation, playstation4, pricecut, pricedrop, sony, tgs2015
Sony debuts new DualShock 4 hues, colorful hard drive covers
If you already own a PlayStation 4 but want to add a little bit more flair to your console, Sony’s Tokyo Game Show press conference has delivered some good news. First up are new hard drive panels, which let you add a touch of colour to your console with a variety of yellow, gold, pink, yellow, light blue, red and purple plates. Sony introduced us to the idea of swappable faces when it debuted its Project Skylight beta back in December 2014, but its latest accessories focus on solid colors more than game tie-ins.
If you’re happy with your console but could spring for a new controller, Sony’s delivered on that front too. It’s unveiled four new models, which come in Gold, Silver, Steel Black, and transparent Crystal. Both the controllers and the hard drive panels will launch in Japan ahead of the holiday season on November 6th. Sony says the plates will cost 2,500 yen each ($21/£14), and the new DualShock 4 pads will retail for 6,480 yen ($54/£35). The company has confirmed that the gold and silver controllers will make their way west first, but hasn’t said when we can expect them. It’s likely we won’t have to wait long until they all become available.
Source:
Sony
Tags: dualshock, dualshock4, hdpostcross, playstation 4, playstation4, ps4, sony
PS Vita gem ‘Gravity Rush’ is getting a PS4 port and sequel
Gravity Rush leapt onto the PlayStation Vita in 2012, when the console was in desperate need of some “triple-A” titles to compliment its blossoming indie library. It was a beautiful game with a few novel gameplay mechanics — to traverse the world and land on different objects, you were forced to jump in the air and pull gravity down in new, unusual directions. The handheld title was received favourably but, like Tearaway, never reached a large audience on the Vita — so Sony is giving it the Unfolded treatment with a port-remaster-remake-thing on the PlayStation 4. It’ll be coming out on December 10th in Japan — no word yet on an international release — followed by an all-new sequel called Gravity Daze 2 (the original was also called Gravity Daze in Japan) next year. For fans of Kat and her occasionally headache-inducing adventures, this is an unexpected treat from Sony.
Tags: gravitydaze, gravitydaze2, gravityrush, playstation4, playstationvita, ps4, psvita, sony, vita
AIVAnet 