Guess who’s (kinda) keeping ‘Rock Band 4’ from PCs
Rock Band 4 arrives on the PC-like Xbox One and PS4, so it made sense for Eurogamer to ask if the game would ever make its way onto the real thing. Unfortunately, PC gamers won’t be getting a version of their own, and it looks as if the music labels’ heavy-handed demands for anti-piracy measures are to blame. In an interview, Harmonix project director Daniel Sussman explained that the two consoles have various secure tools that make it hard for users to get at the assets inside each game. PCs, in his words, are more of an “open platform,” which would put the onus on Harmonix to protect the “licensed music” that’s featured in the title. Squint hard enough and those lines roughly translate to: we could, but labels want us to lock their music up so tight that it’d be impossible to achieve on the PC.
It’s not the only objection to the idea of launching a third version of the music game, as executives are worried that there isn’t enough of an audience to sustain a release. After all, nobody has done it before, and you know how risk-averse these types can be. Sussman did leave the door open for a PC version further down the line, saying that nothing is “unsolvable,” but given the costs of making a PC game secure enough for a picky studio head, we’re not optimistic. Oh, and if you are the head of a major music label, just remember that people can listen to all of the title’s tracks on YouTube, you know, for free. Look, we can even embed some right here:
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Eurogamer
Poke monster heads and solve puzzles in VR with ‘GNOG’ on PS4
GNOG is a weird game from a strange studio, which is probably why it’s attracted the attention of both Sony and Double Fine, the company behind Broken Age and other big-name indie games. GNOG is a colorful, quirky game that turns giant monster heads into puzzle boxes, and it’s coming to PlayStation 4 and the accompanying Morpheus virtual reality headset in 2016, Director Saleem Dabbous announced today. The game is part of Double Fine Presents, an indie support program that includes Gang Beasts, Escape Goat 2 and Last Life, and it’s getting help from Sony’s Pub Fund program, which helps finance games for Sony platforms.
“It’s something we’re incredibly excited to be able to realize, thanks to the Sony Pub Fund program, and we think it’s a game that you’ll really lose yourself in if you’re a fan of puzzles, adventures, cool art and chill music,” Dabbous writes. “We’re also super honored to be part of the Double Fine Presents label and to have the good folks at DF helping us with production support and design feedback.”
GNOG isn’t a one-trick monster-pony: It’s also still heading to Steam (PC, Mac and Linux) and iOS after the PS4 launch. But of course, with Morpheus on PS4, it’s going to be an actual head-turner.
Source: PlayStation Blog
You can pre-order the first official Steam Machines starting today
Look, there’s literally no shortage of things you can slot into your home theater system for a spot of streaming media or some melt-into-your-couch gaming. If you want to be able to recline in your living room and comfortably sneer at people who play games on consoles, though, you can pre-order an official Steam Machine — and the accoutrements to make it shine — starting today.
In case you haven’t been closely following the Steam Machine saga, Valve first unveiled its vision of living room domination — high-powered PCs running a special Steam-flavored version of Linux — in September 2013. Anyone can shove a PC into a sleek box and proclaim its chops as a seriously console competitor (and we’ve seen a few already), but really, it’s about time these things emerged from the vapor. Up for pre-release grabs right now are rigs from Alienware and CyberPower, which start at $449 and $499 respectively. That base model Alienware Steam Machine will pack a dual-core Intel Core i3-4130 chips, along with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a (mostly unspecified) NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics card with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Meanwhile, you’ll spot one of Intel’s Core i3-4160 chips and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 lurking away in CyberPower’s poorly named Syber box, not to mention the same (relatively paltry) 4GB of RAM and 500GB hard drive.
If none of that means much to you, just know this: even at their most rudimentary, both machines will give your Xbox or PlayStation some solid competition. Oh, and naturally, you can throw more money at both companies involved to trick out your home theater computer even further. Just to top it all off, a pair of Steam Machine accessories are up for pre-order too — $49 will nab you one of those funky looking Steam Controllers or the Steam Link, a tiny box that’ll let you stream games from your existing gaming rig to any TV in the house. Normally you’d have to wait until November 10 to pick all these goodies up, but some immediate pre-order action might mean you’ll get your Steam Machine a full month ahead of everyone else.
Filed under: HD
JXE Streams: Blending ‘Advance Wars’ and ‘Hearthstone’ in ‘Duelyst’
Keith Lee and his partner Emil Anticevic have some serious gaming cred on their resumes. Lee was one of the project leaders on Diablo 3 and Anticevic is responsible in part for the cloud based technology that makes League of Legends work. Together they formed Counterplay Games, the studio currently developing an intriguing mashup called Duelyst. Halfway between Final Fantasy Tactics and Hearthstone, Duelyst blends card gaming with the spatial manipulation of tactical role-playing and tops it off with some truly fetching art. At 3:30PM ET/12:30PM PT we’re going to stream an alpha version of Duelyst alongside Lee himself on JXE Streams.
Join us right here in this post, on Engadget.com/gaming or on Twitch.tv/Joystiq to check out the game and chat with one of its creators. How do you blend Magic: The Gathering with Advance Wars? Ask Lee yourself in the Twitch chat and make sure to click the follow button when you’re done.
[We’re streaming Duelyst at 720p on OBS.]
Drugs and dystopia in 1960s England: ‘We Happy Few’ hits Kickstarter
We Happy Few takes place in 1964 in the isolated English town of Wellington Wells. On the surface, it’s an ideal place, filled with smiling residents and all the conveniences of retro-modern technology. But Wellington Wells hides a dark and terrifying secret: During the German occupation of World War II, the citizens had to do something so awful that they devised a drug to make them forget their actions and guilt. The drug, Joy, makes the Wellies friendly and complacent, unless they encounter someone who isn’t dosing; that’s when they turn violent and beat any “Downers” into submission (or death). The town is on the brink of collapse and its residents are starving, but everyone keeps on smiling — or else.
We Happy Few is a first-person game where you play as a Downer trying to escape the madness by blending in with the happy crowds, crafting weapons and finding allies, and developer Compulsion Games is looking for $201,353 on Kickstarter to make this dystopia a digital reality. It’s a twisted kind of stealth game, since players have to hide in plain sight. Plus, any players that approach We Happy Few as a classic video game — randomly breaking into people houses or smacking people in the streets, for example — will be immediately targeted by the smiling, but violent, mob. We Happy Few is a procedurally generated roguelike, meaning that every time you restart, the game will offer different environments and scenarios, and when you die, you lose all progress. It features three playable protagonists with three sets of skills, flaws and personalities, meaning each character also changes the way the game is played.
“Our stories are definitely Not Appropriate For Children, unless your children are already reading Neil Gaiman novels, in which case, good on you,” the Kickstarter page reads. “But don’t worry, it’s not all frowns and sadness! It’s also laced with dark humour, hope and even a spot of redemption.”
We spoke with Compulsion’s Marketing Director Sam Abbott in February, right after the reveal of We Happy Few, and he said that the studio wanted to focus on community feedback for its second game. Its first game, Contrast, was artistically stunning but suffered from gameplay hiccups. “The biggest thing we took away from [Contrast] is that working in a vacuum for a long time can be great, but we’d have made a better game last time around if we’d had more people playing it right from the start,” Abbott said.
If all goes as planned with the Kickstarter, We Happy Few should launch in 2016 for PC first, followed by Mac and Linux, and finally consoles. Get a taste of the vibe in the video below and watch some live gameplay on Compulsion’s Twitch stream today.
Popular card game ‘Apples to Apples’ takes its deck of laughs to iOS
Enjoy the hilarity of making silly comparisons in Mattel’s Apples to Apples card game? Well, you can now play it on iOS devices too — and not have to futz with a handful of cards. For the uninitiated, the game centers on players selecting the card from their hand that they think best describes the clue card played by the judge. The judge then selects the winner for the round. What’s more, the role of judge rotates from player to player, so there’s a bit of strategy involved. And yes, plenty of potential for inappropriate jokes. In addition to playing solo, you can challenge up to five friends in real time. There’s also a selection of themed decks to choose from, covering topics like animals, dessert, geography and more. If you’re looking to give it a shot, the game is available for iPad and iPhone via iTunes now.
‘Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection’ brings Naughty Dog’s trilogy to PS4
After Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was pushed into 2016, PlayStation 4 owners hungry for supernatural-tinged archaeological adventure, adequate gunplay and roguish quips were braced for a disappointing year. Then with the easy charm of a cad with his shirt only half-tucked in, Sony made a reassuring announcement on Thursday. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection will bring all three PlayStation 3 games in the series to the new console with a bevy of technological upgrades this fall, making the wait for Uncharted 4 that much easier.
Series creator Naughty Dog isn’t producing these touched up versions of Drake’s Fortune, Among Thieves, and Drake’s Deception. Remaster masters Bluepoint Games are on the job, sprucing up all three with improved textures, lighting and new character models to prepare the trilogy for a 1080p presentation running at 60 frames per second. For those not versed in this gaming jargon, Bluepoint is prettifying the old Uncharted games in a similar way to The Last of Us Remastered, another Naughty Dog fan favorite that jumped from PS3 to PS4.
Bluepoint, whose other remaster credits include the spectacular Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, will also introduce other changes and improvements to the Uncharted games that remain unspecified in the trailer below.
Diehard fans that have already played these games so many times that a facelift won’t entice them, the collection won’t be entirely Uncharted 4-free. Anyone who buys the collection gets access to an impending Uncharted 4 multiplayer beta. Is that as appealing as a new adventure where Nathan Drake says, “No no no!” repeatedly while standing on a cliff edge? Certainly not, but it will at least be a chance to feel how Naughty Dog’s series feels on new hardware.
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection will be released in the US on October 9th and Europe on October 7th.
[Images: Sony]
‘Battleborn’ has the trappings of a modern shooter and more
The folks at Gearbox Software want you to know a few things about Battleborn, the incredibly colorful “hero shooter” ahead of its grand showing at E3 in a few weeks. Why? Probably so it can expand upon the following details and/or show off even more stuff in Los Angeles. Let’s get down to business. First up, the game has a story mode that you can play solo or co-op — either split-screen or online, with replayability encouraged so you can go back for better loot when the mood strikes. There’s also some 25 playable characters, all with different abilities, armaments and personalities according to a press release. Of course, there’s multiplayer as well, which is where the MOBA-inspirations perhaps show through strongest.
“Incursion” tasks you to defend a base against waves of AI minions as you try to destroy an opponent’s stronghold, while “Meltdown” has you defending your minions so they can throw themselves into an incinerator and score you points for doing so. Not into these? An objective-based death match mode is here too, dubbed “Devastation.”
And of course, it wouldn’t be a modern shooter without a progression system. That comes in a few flavors, with character ranks affecting, you guessed it, individual characters and “command rank” pertaining to your overall profile, with perks that you can bestow to any character you play as. If none of this info is enough, there’s a brand-spankin’ new trailer below as well. Beyond that, well you’ll just have to wait for E3. Patience!
http://www.engadget.com/embed-5min/?sid=577&playList=518865444&responsive=false
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Epic Games wants architects to make Unreal Engine more lifelike
While gaming graphics keep getting more realistic, they’re still a far cry from what architects can do. That’s why Unreal Engine maker Epic Games and architectural site Ronen Bekerman are marrying the two in a new competition. For the 2015 Vineyard Challenge, competitors will “interpret a modern winery setting” (of all things) in Unreal Engine 4, where they’ll be judged on categories like lighting, design and interactivity. Winners will draw from “the largest cash prize in architectural visualization contest history,” with a $25,000 grand prize for the group winner and a $12,500 individual award.
Epic’s latest engine now comes with a marketplace so that developers don’t have to build common objects like rocks, trees and chairs from scratch. Other new tricks include subsurface scattering for more realistic surfaces, ray-traced soft shadows and streaming video textures. The company said it wants to encourage a “deep collaboration” between game development and architectural rendering “that will result in something entirely new.” Of course, it’s also a way for Epic to draw attention to its now-free gaming engine and away from competitors like Unity. If you think you’ve got what it takes to create GTA VI: Chateau LaTour, hit the Unreal Engine site for more info.
[Image credit: Bertrand Benoit, Ronen Bekerrman GH House Challenge]
Filed under: Gaming
Microsoft’s dedicated ‘Gears of War’ studio has a new name
Microsoft’s done it again. After buying the Gears of War franchise last year, it’s tasked one team to focus exclusively on that franchise and change its name in doing so. Sounds familiar, right? Canada’s Black Tusk Studios is now known as The Coalition (a nod to the series’ Coalition of Ordered Governments’ hulking soldiers) and, you guessed it, the developers have one job: making Gears of War games. In a post on Xbox Wire, studio head Rod Fergusson says that like 343 Industries and Halo, he wants you to immediately associate The Coalition with musclebound meatheads wielding machine guns with chainsaw bayonets. So, a “real” game every few years with plenty of less-than-awesome output to fill in those gaps. Got it!
He also teases that we’ll see what the team’s been up to come E3 in a few weeks. Whether that’s the Gears reissue that knocked a handful of testers offline or something else entirely, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Via: Polygon
Source: Xbox Wire
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