Darkness Reborn Closed Beta begins October 10th
I don’t know about all of you, but I love a good game. I also like being one of the first to try something new. So when I see or hear about a new beta coming out I tend to get excited about it. If you enjoy either if not both, then you should keep reading. Gamevil is going to be starting a closed beta for it’s newest game Darkness Reborn. Only those who are part of the Darkness Reborn community can get early access to the game.
Darkness Reborn is a game where you get to create your player and battle across an island in order to defeat a 2 headed dragon. The game to me looks like it will have a God Of War style gameplay. We’ll see when the game comes out. From what I know the game will feature.
-Competetive PvP
-Dungeons (That you can play with friends. Because who doesn’t like playing with friends. It just makes everything much more fun.)
Take a quick look at the teaser trailer and see if gets your blood flowing.
How do you get access & when does it start? Well that’s simple, just follow the link to the community below. All they ask of you is for some simple feedback.
1. Device Compatibility: Does it work well with your device? Does it crash? Are the controls working well?
2. Bug Reports: Any glitches you find simply report them.
3. Feedback: Let them know how they can improve the game. Is it running smooth?
Simple things like that is all they ask for. They even offer to give you EXCLUSIVE Closed Beta only rewards. The Closed Beta will start on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 at 11:00 AM PDT.
So what’s the harm in not trying it right? I know I am.
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NHL preps for hockey season with redesigned apps
With the beginning of a new season a mere couple of days away, The National Hockey League is putting the final touches on how it’s going to deliver digital content to fans worldwide. Accordingly, NHL today released a redesigned version of its mobile app for iOS and Android, featuring an overhauled scoreboard view, more integration with social networks and the addition of real-time video/audio highlights. The NHL application, previously known as NHL GameCenter, also brings redesigned menus that let you view more stuff with less taps, such as breaking news or other popular stories.
NHL GameCenter Live, the league’s premium video-streaming service, has been updated too. Watching multiple camera angles is now an option, while the video player’s new sidebar will make sure you keep up with stats from other games as they’re happening.
Of note, the app doesn’t appear to be live on Google Play yet — but don’t worry, it should be arriving any moment.
Filed under: Misc, Software, HD, Mobile
Source: App Store, Google Play
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New image editing options added to Google Slides online
A few months ago Google added a few little options to Slides through your Google Drive that let you crop and add borders. Today they have announced, and added, the ability to fine tune the image in slides a little more.
With the new editing options you can adjust the transparency, brightness and contrast of your included image. You can also recolor the image to make it better match the Slides as well. One step closer to having all the tools needed in one app for creation and editing. I imagine this editing feature will find its way to other Drive applications in time. Pop into Slides on your desktop or laptop and check it out.
Source: Google Via 9to5Google
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Plex brings it media streaming magic to Xbox
Plex has more than its share of fans thanks to its powerful and versatile streaming media capabilities. If you’ve got a video file (regardless of how you obtained it) there’s a good chance Plex can play it. And play it anywhere — on your Roku, on your tablet, you smartphone, and now on your Xbox. Starting tomorrow Plex Pass subscribers will be able to pull up their Plex library on their Xbox One. And soon enough Xbox 360 compatibility will be added as well. If you’re not a subscriber you’ll be able to buy the Xbox apps for a one time fee (how much remains to be seen, but probably around $4.99) after the preview period ends. This is also the first time that Plex has been available on a game console, at least as a native app. You could pull in video to your Xbox over DLNA, but this is much easier and cleaner. And yes, you can control your library with voice controls or gestures thanks to Kinect support.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Software, HD
Source: Plex
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The first ‘Smash Bros.’ in six years is available now, and you should play it
There is a new Smash Bros. game, and it’s available as of last Friday. You know when the last game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was released? In 2008! Six years ago! So today is a pretty exciting day, at least for me. Hi, I’m Ben Gilbert, and I’ve been playing Smash Bros. with far too much sincerity for 15+ years. The new Smash Bros. for 3DS, however? I’ve only been playing that for about two weeks. The reviews are out! Our sister site Joystiq is pretty into it. I am also way into it, and I want to tell you why.
Look, we don’t do this — whatever “this” is — at Engadget very often (ever?). In leading our game coverage, I’ve intentionally skipped previews, reviews and other standards of game coverage; our sister site Joystiq does a great job with that, and only so many of you want to know about the minutia of every video game. I’m making an exception for Smash Bros., mostly for selfish reasons: I desperately want to talk about the best game Nintendo’s released this year.
WHAT IS IT?
Don’t know what Smash Bros. is? Here’s the launch trailer for Super Smash Bros. for 3DS:
Smash Bros. is a Nintendo-made fighting game starring everyone’s favorite game characters. The cast ranges from Mario to Mega Man, and even includes recent cult classics like Xenoblade‘s Shulk. The latest game has “over 40″ characters in total: the rest of the experience is tailored around supporting and extending the nostalgia conjured by those dozens of characters.
If nothing else, Smash Bros. is a trip down gaming history’s memory lane. No other game allows you to pit Sonic the Hedgehog against Pac-Man, on a stage based on Pikmin, while deploying Pokémon balls as weapons. You know how mash-up artists take hit songs and turn them into something new? Smash Bros. is that, but with video games, and it’s made by the company that created most of those games.
Rather than mashing up the gameplay systems from those various games, though, Smash Bros. takes the characters, their characteristics, and some of their game worlds, and brings them into a 2D, four-player fighting game. Players take those characters into one of many game-themed arenas and fight until time or lives run out.
Here’s where things get a little weird: rather than a life meter, Smash Bros. relies on a percentage meter. The higher your percentage, the more likely your character is to be knocked out of the ring. If your character is knocked out of the ring, you either lose a point or a life. Here’s a video that helps to explain:
Like much of Nintendo’s best work, Smash Bros. is blessedly simple: there is one set of moves that applies to every character in the game. The challenge isn’t in memorizing move lists, but in applying one set of basic controls across a vast swath of variables: which character you’re fighting, the items on-screen, and how much more your character can take before being knocked out (among many other things). It is simple to understand, challenging to master.
MORE THAN WARM MEMORIES
Smash Bros. for 3DS is the richest addition to the franchise’s history in over 10 years. It’s a game focused intently on catering to both casual Mario fans and tattooed Nintendo hyper-loyalists. One mode allows you to quite literally fight your way through gaming history, era by era. You start by battling Mario and Donkey Kong, and end up facing off with Wii Fit‘s demo trainer. Yes, really. It’s a game where you’re just as likely to see Brain Training‘s Dr. Kawashima referenced as you are to see Super Mario Bros.‘s iconic goombas.
Beyond the initial hook of nostalgia, enthralling as it is, lies a game of immense complexity. Smash Bros. is a game of variables, and knowledge of those variables makes a huge difference in how you play the game.
If you’re new to the series, the bare bones variables are all you need to know: which buttons do what actions. It’s entirely possible to have a great time playing Smash Bros. with a base level knowledge about its many, many systems.
Perhaps you play as Starfox‘s Fox McCloud, and you enjoy firing lasers at your friends as they engage in hand-to-hand combat. Plenty of fun to be had there! But maybe a Pokémon ball lands next to you — one of the random items that drops mid-battle — and you decide to pick it up. You throw it in the general direction of your friends, and a massive Snorlax erupts, sending your friends sky high and netting you two knockouts. Now you know a new variable!
Smash Bros.’s greatest asset — beyond the all-star cast and rich library of worlds to draw from — is its fighting system. It’s no surprise that in tournaments Smash Bros. is played with all items turned off, primarily in an arena known as “Final Destination”: a flat plane. That’s because, though there are only two action buttons and jump, each character is highly nuanced in battle. More than simply replicate reminiscent actions from their respective games, each fighter has a wide variety of moves that are tuned to precision.
Yes, Mega Man has his traditional blaster and Link carries the Master Sword, but it’s what you do with those weapons that makes playing Smash Bros. so fun. For instance, learning which moves have “priority” over your foes is just one of dozens of systems underlying the games’ combat. “Priority” is knowing that your strike is going to beat out your opponent’s strike — if you nail the timing, that is — and it’s that stuff that hooks longtime players like myself.
FRESH CLASSICS
Smash Bros. on 3DS is a game you should play. There! I said it! Did you grow up with video games? Then you should play it. Don’t like fighting games? That’s okay! It’s still a ton of fun, and there’s plenty of stuff to do that isn’t fighting.
Simply put, Smash Bros. on 3DS is the best game Nintendo’s released this year (and that’s saying a lot considering how good Mario Kart 8 is!). It’s the best Smash Bros. game since the last best entry, Super Smash Bros. Melee.
No, it’s not the full console game we’re all waiting for on Wii U (where is that, Nintendo?). And yes, your hands do occasionally get cramped from playing a fighting game on a handheld console (even the 3DS XL). And yeah, the online still isn’t where it should be (nowhere near as good as Mario Kart 8, anyway). Despite all that, Smash Bros. for 3DS is a fresh addition to the franchise, an excellent game, and an easy suggestion to both newcomers and longtime fans. It is the full console Smash Bros. we’ve all been waiting for, only it’s available on your 3DS right now.
Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software, HD, Nintendo
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New web privacy system prevents your data from leaking to other sites
One of the biggest threats to your online privacy is the mixture of code that you’ll find on some websites. It’s all too easy for a legit-looking page to hide data-stealing code, or for innocent sites to accidentally expose your info. If Google, Mozilla and researchers have their way, though, you won’t have to worry quite so much about where that info is going. Their new COWL (Confinement with Origin Web Labels) system prevents JavaScript from sharing data with outside websites that aren’t explicitly approved; even when the data gets the all-clear, it won’t necessarily spread anywhere else. In theory, it should be harder for ne’er-do-wells to hijack a page and grab sensitive content without your knowledge, or simply for you to lose control of where that content goes.
You won’t have to wait long if you want to try this security measure for yourself, since COWL will be available to use with both Chromium and Firefox browsers on October 15th. Don’t expect it to help out much at first — web developers will still have to implement the labeling system for it to be useful. If it takes off, however, you won’t (usually) have to fret that seemingly trustworthy online services are really swiping your account details behind the scenes.
[Image credit: Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet, Software, Google
Source: COWL, University College London
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Adobe Creative Cloud updates continue to boost mobile productivity
Adobe has offered mobile apps with a variety of tools for quite some time. With the arrival of the new suite that accompanied Ink and Slide earlier this year though, it became clear the creative software outfit wanted to equip those slates and smartphones to do useful work. At Adobe Max 2014, the company’s annual conference, new updates are on tap that continue the mobile focus for Creative Cloud.
Let’s chat mobile apps first, shall we? A new trio of “capture” apps make their debut, and on the surface seem to be quite handy. Brush CC constructs brushes from any photograph that can then be used in Photoshop or Illustrator. For example, you could snap a picture of some thick marker lines and easily transform ‘em for work on the desktop. These next two are perhaps the most useful of the three. Shape CC takes a high-contrast photo of an object, piece of typography or whatever and creates vector art. Find a leaf that’s perfect for a logo? Just snap and image and you’ll have it when you’re back from that coffee run. Lastly, Color CC (what was known as Kuler) sorts all of those swatches, and it’ll create a palette based on an image should the need arise.
For those looking to edit video on the go, Adobe Premiere Clip bolsters that task. The app takes videos shot on an iPhone (or iPad, if you must) and offers editing tools needed to polish the footage before beaming it out to the masses. It also allows you to create clips for Premiere Pro CC on the desktop. Of course, I haven’t had a chance to put these to work myself, so I can’t speak to how well they boost the typical workflow just yet.
As you might’ve guessed, all of the apps are iOS only — working on either iPhone or iPad for now. Existing apps like Photoshop Sketch, Photoshop Mix, Lightroom Mobile, Illustrator Draw (Adobe Ideas) and Illustrator Line all get updates to boost productivity as well. Adobe released a Creative SDK earlier this year, so third-party apps can tap into Creative Cloud. We should be seeing the fruits of that soon enough. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when the Android faithful can expect to see Adobe’s apps land for their devices.
When you jump from app to app now (desktop and mobile), Creative Profiles will allow you to access the bits you create during the course of a project. All of the images, color palettes, brushes, fonts, and more will be easily accessible in each piece of software, and across devices, thanks to Creative Cloud Libraries. This should translate to some significant time savings usually wasted hunting for assets. It also means that glimpses of inspiration captured on the commute to the office will be ready when your arrive. For designers that pass Photoshop layouts off to developers, Creative Cloud Extract will tidy up that workflow, allowing you to send along the requisite project files in a more efficient manner.
Making good on the promise form back when Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro 3, Adobe is delivering touch support across “key design applications” for Windows. We expect to hear more when Max kicks off today, but Photoshop and Illustrator are definitely included. There are plenty more app-specific updates on the desktop side, and you can find all of the minutiae on those right here. Like previous updates to Creative Cloud, this entire lot is free for subscribers, and it’s all set to arrive before the end of the day. If you haven’t opted in, you can still nab the iOS apps that are free to all users.
Want to catch the official announcements? You can access the livestream from Los Angeles here at 12:30 PM ET/9:30 AM PT.
Filed under: Software
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The new Unreal Engine will bring eerily realistic skin to your games
It hasn’t been hard to produce realistic-looking skin in computer-generated movies, but it’s much harder to do that in the context of a game running live on your console or PC. That trip to the uncanny valley is going to be much easier in the near future, though, thanks to the impending arrival of Unreal Engine 4.5. The gaming framework adds subsurface light scattering effects that give digital skin a more natural look. Instead of the harsh visuals you normally get (see the pale, excessively-shadowed face at left), you’ll see softer, decidedly fleshier surfaces (middle and right). The scattering should also help out with leaves, candle wax and other materials that are rarely drawn well in your favorite action games.
That’s not the only party trick. A new raytracing technique should produce soft, reasonably authentic long shadows in sunsets. Mobile games can finally handle dynamic shadows, too, so a character carrying a lantern may look that much more ominous. Developers will have to implement the new Unreal Engine in their projects before you can see the upgrades first-hand, but it shouldn’t be too long before you’re playing shooters and other titles that feel much more true to life.
Source: Unreal Engine
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Because Android Wear is so 2014: Someone has put Windows 95 on a Samsung Gear Live
As part of the tech community, sometimes it is the most awe-inspiring thing to simply look back at what we have achieved over the years and how technology that exists today eclipses what we had even imagined was possible just a handful of years ago. Take Windows 95 for example – the operating system was widely lauded in its time and many of us had our whole lives running through the system. Well, 19 years after its release, someone has managed to get Windows 95 on a Samsung Gear Live. That someone is Corbin Davenport, and while it’s not the smoothest running thing (or the clearest), it is an amazing feat to see – even if Windows 95 was designed to run on much more basic systems. Check it out running in the video below:
Now practically, don’t expect everyone to go rushing and putting Windows 95 on their Gear Lives. But it does serve as a nice reminder, if just a nostalgic one, of how far our devices – even wrist wearable devices – have come over the last 20 years. If anything, it should make us appreciate Android Wear even more as it enables us to do things that we previously only dreamed of doing on our wrists, and now we’re living the dream. Tears, much?
What do you think of running Windows 95 on a Samsung Gear Live? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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Rebels aren’t taking ‘Star Wars: Tiny Death Star’ offline — Disney is
Let’s say you’re perpetually late to the party and are only just now getting around to checking out Star Wars: Tiny Death Star. Well, sadly your 11-month tardiness isn’t doing you any favors here: Disney is pulling the app from both Google Play and the App Store, as spotted by Gamezebo. An anonymous source told the site that Tiny Death Star and Star Wars Assault Team are getting the axe with the intent to retire them and focus on other titles instead. Ian Marsh, co-owner of Death Star developer NimbleBit, revealed to Gamezebo that the delisting is as much a surprise to him as it is to everyone else. Speaking to Pocket Gamer, he said that he hadn’t been told of any of this by Disney before it’d happened and that Mickey and Co. likely no longer felt the game was worth the cost of upkeep anymore. Death Star was a “significant source of revenue” for Marsh and his team, which he says makes this sting that much more.
Much like with Flappy Bird earlier this year, should you have the games on your device they’ll still remain playable, but won’t be updated or available for new players to download soon. It’s worth noting that this isn’t anything new for Disney: shortly after getting the Star Wars license, Walt’s empire halted work on the very promising, internally-developed Lucasfilm next-gen title, Star Wars 1313. As of this writing, Death Star was still on iTunes and the Windows Phone Store — maybe download while you can and then eBay your device later. Google fans, however, will have to settle for Angry Birds Star Wars.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Software, Mobile
Source: Pocket Gamer, Gamezebo, iTunes
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AIVAnet 