Curtain lifts on first ‘Rock Band 4’ songs
Not to be outdone by Guitar Hero Live, the folks over in the Rock Band 4 camp unveiled the first handful of tracks for this fall’s face-melting simulator. And they’re pretty diverse! As noted on IGN, the half-dozen ranges from Avenged Sevenfold to The Who. Developer Harmonix is debuting gameplay on Twitch with the IGN folks as well. Sadly there’s no word of Deftones, High on Fire, Katy Perry, Mastodon, or Taylor Swift yet, but we still have a long ways before this new tour kicks off. There’s that whole song request form in case there are any dream songs you’d want included, too. Prep your air guitar and jump past the break for the full list.
Songs announced so far:
Avenged Sevenfold – “Hail to the King”
Fleetwood Mac – “You Make Loving Fun”
Jack White – “Lazaretto”
The Killers – “Somebody Told Me”
The Spin Doctors – “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”
The Who – “The Seeker”
[Image credit: Vince Bucci/Invision/AP]
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: IGN
‘Divinity: Original Sin’ casts its classic RPG spell on consoles
Lots of people thought that Diablo 3 wouldn’t have been possible on consoles and it proved the best version of the title. Now it’s time to see if the same holds true of last year’s breakout role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin in the form of an Enhanced Edition. The decidedly old-school RPG’s getting a revamped interface, split-screen couch co-op and full-on voice work throughout for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The tweaks don’t stop there either, as it’s also getting some new quests among others along with tweaks to the combat system (likely to accommodate gamepads) and story.
If you were worried about the Kickstarted fantasy game abandoning its PC roots for the console peasants, backers get access to Enhanced Edition as part of a free update across Linux, Mac, SteamOS and Windows. When it all happens isn’t immediately clear, but developer Larian Studios teases more info will come at next month’s Electronics Entertainment Expo.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Xbox One pulls off an unlikely sales victory over the PS4
Well, this is kind of surprising: the Xbox One lead console sales last month. I say it’s surprising because there wasn’t an exclusive game that launched for the system, nor was their a new bundle deal going at the time, either. Regardless, it’s good news and something that Redmond hasn’t seen in an awfully long time. The company says that domestic sales of the console increased some 63 percent compared to last April while active Xbox Live users on a global scale grew by 24 percent in the same window. Of course, we still don’t have hard numbers in terms of sales about the Xbox One, and until the console breaks 20 million sold you can bet that we almost assuredly won’t.
What’s Sony have to say about it all? That it led software sales for the month (Mortal Kombat X was the top selling game overall) and that it remains the cumulative sales leader in the United States. So there’s that.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony, Microsoft
‘Rainbow Six Siege’ raids PC, PS4 and Xbox One on October 13th
While The Division might not be launching in 2015 (it was pushed back to early 2016), you’ll have at least one way to get your Tom Clancy gaming fix this year. Ubisoft has announced that Rainbow Six Siege will ship worldwide on October 13th. The counter-terrorist raid shooter will be available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and players who pre-order will have guaranteed access to a closed beta test. It’s hard to say if this title will do justice to the original Rainbow Six games it’s trying to follow, but you’ll know for sure in about five months.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Ubisoft (YouTube)
Driveclub lets you race Rimac’s ultra-rare electric hypercar
For most of us, ultra-realistic racing games like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport are as close as we’ll ever get to driving the world’s most luxurious motors. We’ve drooled over Rimac Automobili’s Concept_One electric hypercar for years, but given that only eight have ever been made, our chances of getting behind the wheel seem pretty slim. Now, the EV has been added to Driveclub, giving you the chance to thrash the high performance racer around Norway, Scotland, Chile and more. If you need a reminder, the $980,000 car boasts a carbon fibre body and 1088 horsepower, which can take you from 0-62 mph in 2.8 seconds. Its green credentials might be irrelevant on a virtual racetrack, but hopefully you can appreciate them all the same in Evolution Studios’ (no longer broken) racer.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Autoblog
Source: Rimac Automobili
Sony told off for unfair 20th Anniversary PS4 competition
To celebrate 20 years of PlayStation, Sony created 12,300 limited edition PS4 consoles and offered them to gamers all over the world. In the US, they were sold to whoever could click the buy button fast enough, but in the UK, the company took a more convoluted approach. First was the PlayStation ’94 Shop in London, where 94 consoles were put aside for the low price of £19.94 (with all proceeds going to gaming charity GamesAid). Then came a partnership with GAME, which required gamers to solve riddles, click iconic PlayStation characters and enter a competition before anyone else.
As expected, it was all a bit of a mess. People quickly realised they could pool their resources and share the answer seconds after the riddle was posted, effectively locking out those who had taken time to work it out themselves. Then, an enterprising developer found a way to extract the clues before they were publicly shared by Sony. This led six people to file a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which argued that “promotion’s terms and conditions had been breached in a number of ways.”
Today, the ASA upheld the complaint, noting that the competition was not fair and had “caused unnecessary disappointment.” Although GAME had disqualified anyone who had submitted a competition entry before Sony had posted their clue, five people had managed to acquire two consoles while the promotion was taking place. This, of course, went against the terms of the competition, which was meant to allocate a single 20th Anniversary PS4 to each winner. To make things worse, those extra consoles then found their way to eBay.
So what’s happening to Sony and GAME? Well, they’ve been given a slap on the wrist. Both companies have been told that they must “ensure that future promotions were administered fairly and avoided causing unnecessary disappointment to participants.” Okay then.
Via: Eurogamer
Source: ASA
‘Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’ brings stealth action to Victorian London
Ubisoft’s last Assassin’s Creed title didn’t exactly get a warm reception, but the game developer is apparently bent on making amends: meet Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the next installment in Ubi’s historical stealth action series. The new game moves the setting forward to Victorian London, where the industrial revolution and social inequality are the hot-button issues of the day. However, the real centerpiece is the franchise’s first use of multiple main characters. You can take control of either Jacob Frye (a “brash and rebellious” character) or his sister Evie (a “master of stealth”) when you’re in open-world situations. You’re locked to playing one or the other in key story missions, but the move should otherwise add some variety to gameplay that has gradually become formulaic.
Notably, the studio is also backing away from its multiplayer efforts in Unity. Syndicate is strictly a single-player game — Ubisoft says it wants to “focus on creating the biggest world” yet in Assassin’s Creed (30 percent larger than in Unity), which encompasses six key London boroughs. That’s undoubtedly important, although the move should also help the company polish Syndicate‘s experience and avoid the glitches that plagued its 2014 ancestor. You’ll know how well Ubi fared when it ships Syndicate on October 23rd for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and later in the fall for PC gamers.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Ubisoft
Hunt dinosaurs and craft tools while stranded naked on ‘ARK’ island
ARK: Survival Evolved begins with a simple premise: You’re stranded on an island, naked, cold and hungry, and you must survive. Also, there are dinosaurs. And other survivors. And… dragons? (Maybe it’s not so simple after all). ARK is an open-world, first-person survival game, where players roam around an island occupied by dinosaurs and other legendary creatures, building tools out of natural resources, growing crops, researching technology and hunting for food — or for sport. Every creature in the game is able to be “tamed” and the first screenshots show people riding around on the backs of dinosaurs. Awesome. Once it launches, play with friends in the same room or with hundreds of people online on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (with full Morpheus VR support!) or Steam — ARK goes live on Steam Early Access on June 2. Check out the game’s announcement trailer below.
Source: ARK
The Rockstar Editor is coming to ‘GTA V’ on consoles after all
Apparently “exclusive” doesn’t mean what it used to anymore. Rockstar Games recently revealed that its eponymous video editing toolset is coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Grand Theft Auto V in a recent question and answer session pulled from its mailbag. Given the extra horsepower it requires, the Rockstar Editor won’t surface on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but the team hopes to release it for new-gen systems this summer or “as soon as it is ready.” So, maybe don’t hold your breath for too long, but you never know.
The Q and A covers a pretty wide variety of other topics too! The for-now PC-exclusive radio station “The Lab” from legendary DJs The Alchemist and Oh No? It’s coming to all four consoles via a title update. There’s some news regarding fresh online heists if you’ve already exhausted the current supply as well.
The video editor suite sounds like it could be pretty great, but since you can’t exactly install mods on the console versions it means you’ll almost positively miss out on making clips of blue whales plummeting from the skies of Los Santos. You know, like the one below.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Via: IGN
Source: Rockstar Newswire
‘Portal’ turning into a game of hyperdimensional pinball
Developer Valve legendarily has a hard time counting to “3” but that doesn’t mean getting your hands on some new Portal action is too far out of reach. It just might not be in a place you’d expect. The long-running Zen Pinball series is taking a Newell-blessed trip to the test chambers with the “Aperture Science Heuristic Portal Pinball Device” table. As you might expect, there are plenty of nods to the series, with GLaDOS passive aggressively taunting while Chell jumps through the eponymous ingresses and co-op robots ATLAS and P-Body handling multi-ball duties. It’s $2.99 for consoles, Mac and PC and $1.99 on mobile come May 25th.
If you favor Lego bricks to steel balls there’s a game for you too. As Eurogamer reports, Walmart accidentally listed a Portal expansion set for the upcoming Lego Dimensions over the weekend. None of this adds up to Portal 3 proper, sure, but it’s a triumph in its own right nonetheless.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Zen Studios, Eurogamer
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