that's Hearthstone's next expansion, Knights of the Frozen Throne, has a fast-approaching release date of August 10. But the regular massive updates to Blizzard's collectible card game are just a part of all the changes that Hearthstone is going through both as it finds its own place in the Warcraft universe and as it defines what kind of experience it wants to provide.
In the lead-up to KofFT's release I had separate interviews with Matt Place, senior game designer on Hearthstone, and Jason Chayes, Hearthstone's executive producer, about a wide-range of topics around the game. Rather than post up the full transcript of each, I broke their answers down by the topics we discussed. And for a full rundown of all the new cards revealed so far, check out this Knights of the Frozen Throne card feature here.
Hearthstone's Story and Lore
Hearthstone is a game, ostensibly set within the Warcraft universe, but it's also something that offers up its own spin on the stories of Azeroth. While the original cards and expansions from the game hewed more closely to the World of Warcraft source material, subsequent content has expanded Hearthstone's own lore in new directions. Goblins vs. Gnomes saw Hearthstone introduce unique characters that didn't previously exist in the Warcraft universe, but Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is where Hearthstone really started to create its own unique narrative.
"We had all these discussions internally about who is the Jade Lotus," Chayes says, "and who is Don Han'Cho and what does he do and how does he interact with Aya Blackpaw and what's the back and forth between the two of them? We had a little first pass at that with some of the quests that you had when we first launched it, but you couldn't go that far into the narrative storytelling. But now, with Knights of the Frozen Throne we have eight missions that help explain who is the Lich King, who are some of the bosses along the way, and how they treat the Lich King."
Hearthstone now even has its own Knights of the Frozen Throne comic book, which Chayes explains as, "All the Warcraft 'inception' layers." But of course, working at Blizzard the separate game teams collaborate on projects. "We have a good partnership. We definitely talk with the other folks in Blizzard working on the Warcraft universe. We want our own take on what feels right for Hearthstone, so we might treat the Lich King a little differently than what you'll see if you were playing the WoW raid back in the day. The way we frame that up is Hearthstone is very much a game about 'What if?' This isn't necessarily canonical. This isn't saying that the definitive story of how Karazhan came into being was because there was this crazy '70s disco party that Medivh hosted. That's a 'What-if?' scenario."
The storytelling will also feel familiar because, according to Place, "Dave Kosak, who's done a lot of writing for World of Warcraft, came over and he's now the mission lead, and the writing for the Lich King in the missions is amazing."
Chayes says that the best way to think of Hearthstone's story is as a type of "tall tale set in the Warcraft universe."
"We specifically are not trying to link them to be the exact same incarnation," Chayes says, "If you go check out Icecrown Citadel in Hearthstone, it's going to feel a little different. You'll have little things that you remember for sure, and even the boss fights will share some of those mechanics, but the idea is this is a fun, light-hearted, whimsical, charming game."
Earning Legendaries and Random Quest Rewards
For this expansion, completing the single-player missions will net players a random Legendary Hero card, but what drove the decision to make this a random rather than a fixed draw? Matt Place explains, "We talked about that, it's how we tend to distribute the cards in the game through boosters and whatnot. People trying out what they get is part of the fun. There's also logistical challenges like letting you pick from a set of nine; we'll look at feedback and see what people say. But we wanted to just give people a, 'Hey, you're going to get one of these, try them out, see what you think. If you have one you love well, hey, like any Legendary, you can craft it.' That's part of the reason why we went that path."
"How does it compete when it's only got one sets worth of cards? That's a big question that we would have to answer."
And while the team has talked about it in other instances, Place also discussed the increased chance of earning Legendaries through card packs. "In the theme of giving people great value, in the first 10 packs for Knights of the Frozen Throne, you are guaranteed to get a legendary now. We're upping the drop rate for those source packs, so that people who are using their free-to-play gold or whatnot, they are guaranteed, if they can open 10 packs, to get a legendary. So we're doing it a couple of ways.
"On top of that, we're also doing no duplicates. Until you have a full set of Legendaries you will not overlap on Legendaries you get. We're doing a bunch of things to give people a chance to explore more of the set and get some of the higher rarity cards, which is the focus of the set here with Death Knight. We want to give people a chance to participate and play with those cards without spending any money."
Death Knight Heroes
The biggest new addition with this expansion are the Legendary Hero cards. But the addition of those Hero cards means that there isn't a new, permanent Hero class. According to Place, the team did consider creating a standalone hero, but that type of addition presents its own formidable set of challenges. "How does it compete when it's only got one sets worth of cards?" Place asked. "That's a big question that we would have to answer. There's also, 'Do we support it in the future?' Because, if we don't, that doesn't feel right. So, it's a permanent commitment potentially."
That took the dev team down its current path: creating Death Knight-themed Hero cards for every class. "With that, we get to take our Heroes of Warcraft and blow them out in cool new ways that people haven't seen before, and they follow that same story that the Lich King follows where you're going down the dark path because you desire power, like you see in the cinematic."
And, although it seems obvious how the mechanic will work with alternate heroes, Place clarified that the Hero cards just replace your current Hero; the cards don't change depending on the hero you're playing as. "As Anduin, you could steal Rexxar from your opponent's deck and that would turn you into Deathstalker Rexxar. So mechanically you just become Deathstalker Rexxar."
RNG vs. Skill-based Play
Any card game is going to have some amount of RNG, but how does the dev team strike that balance in making random chance moments feel like you still have some control?
"It's something that our philosophy on evolves," Place explained. "Something we've applied to Knights of the Frozen Throne is where can we apply RNG so it doesn't feel like, 'Oh, my gosh. Are you kidding me? You've got the luckiest hand!' I think Deathstalker Rexxar is a great example of this. It's random in terms of what beasts you're presented with in his build-a-beast Hero power. Basically you get to combine two beasts together to make your own beast zombie creation.
"There's a lot of skill in that while also being random with what you're presented with. To me, that's the perfect marriage, where skill is a big piece of this, but it's super fun and it's a different experience each time. That's what random does for us; it gives us that, 'Okay, you haven't done this before. These three beasts are going to be presented,' so what do you do at that time is actually very skill testing. It's a great example of RNG adding to the skill.
"Then you have to pay for the beast so it's not an effect like Ram Wrangler, where something can happen along the lines of "Oh, wow you just got very lucky. You got King Crush!' With Rexxar's mechanic, whatever you're dealt, you then have to pay for. It's fair in that way too. So it's skill, RNG, and fairness all combined.
Accessibility for Newcomers
"We always felt like if we could make a collectible card game just a little bit more accessible and dial some more charm in it, we could turn people onto a genre that they have never really been connected to it in the past," say Chayas. "That remains a core part of our philosophy."
And Hearthstone is, for the most part, a beginner-friendly game. But the difficulty and complexity can ramp up quickly for someone that might not be as familiar with the mechanics of deck building. Providing an experience that works no matter when you start playing is something that the developers are constantly refining; deck-creating tools have gotten better, and the ceiling for not losing stars at set levels in ranked matches has helped open more deck variety in Standard play. But there are other behind-the-scenes forces at work as well.
According to Place, "We have the newbie pool, which we changed in pretty significant ways. That happened a while ago, I think it was six months ago. But it actually affected the win rate of new players in a dramatic way."
While Place doesn't get into the nuts and bolts of how that system works, he says, "Basically, we have some rules for what it means to be a new player, and when you're a new player you face people who are more appropriate for you."
And according to Chayes, the dev team works to ensure the game has all of the features and nuance of a deep deck-building experience, but without overwhelming newcomers. "The way we've approached that is that the starting experience," Chayes says, "the core experience going into the game is very simple and accessible and intuitive and then when you're ready for it, different features unlock or make themselves available down the road.
"A good example of that is Wild. Wild is not available to new players. There's no connection to Wild from right out of the gate and that was very conscious because there's a vast number of cards that are in Wild that are not part of the standard rotation. That's going to grow over time as more and more sets are produced. We don't want players to have to necessarily digest all that as their first experience."
Stats for Advanced Players
Like World of Warcraft, accessibility is a process of constant refinement for a game that's regularly expanding. But also like World of Warcraft, some players have had to take the nitty gritty of stat-tracking and mod-making into their own hands. Unlike a game like Overwatch, which gives players detailed stats for how much you play every hero character, there's not a lot of data available to you in Hearthstone for how you play or how successful you are with each Hero.
Chayes explains, "There's always a balance there of: how much information do we present the player with? Initially, our goal was to make sure we had a very clean user interface just because we know a lot of new players were coming in for the first time. So we've been a little hesitant to go too far with putting in a lot of those stats and metrics. But the reality is there's other ways to do that. You could do that on the web, for example, and actually have a lot of things there that you can click through that don't necessarily go to new players. But if you want it it's there.
"How we're thinking about it from the team perspective is: How can we build systems that unpack that extra information for the players who are ready for it and excited about it without changing the core of the Hearthstone beginning experience? Yes, I think there's a move for features like that, player profiles and stuff like that, down the road. We're not really yet at a point where we've talked about a timeframe, but it's definitely an active conversation. And there are a lot of community sites that are up there that provide that context as well, and we think that's awesome. It's the kind of thing where, down the road, we'll see if there's a way to get that in."
Events and Festivals
With the popularity, and increasing frequency of events like the Frost and Flame Festivals, Chayes, says they'll be a regular part of the Hearthstone experience, but that doesn't mean they're going to be on a fixed, predictable schedule. "We definitely want to do more of it," Chayes adds, "We had a little bit of a Winter Vale event that we did about a year and a half ago, and that was kind of the first time we did an event inside Hearthstone, where there was a custom card back you could get that week in the brawl and these presents that you could open up during the gameplay. The Frost Festival is a larger event we're doing that dovetails the Fire Festival into the Frost Festival. Now you have Ahune welcome you and he's messing with the Arena a little bit.
"We want to do more, so our hope is that between expansions and coinciding with expansions to do really cool stuff that mixes up the way you play Hearthstone a little bit and gives you some new things to see. It always feels like it's dynamic and changing and helps emphasize the themes of where we're going with the future of the game.
"We always want these events to also feel like delightful surprise..."
Chayes further explains, "There will probably be some events that are recurring. We haven't figured out which ones necessarily. We actually have these posters when you walk into the Team 5 area in Blizzard Headquarters that speak to what are some of the guiding principles that are shaping up how we came up with Hearthstone to begin with. One of them is this idea of delightful surprise. We talk a lot about delightful surprise on the team.
"The experience of opening a pack is a surprise. We always want these events to also feel like delightful surprise, so I don't think we'll get to a world where it's just the same, expected events year after year. We always want to have something new to see and something you weren't expecting. I think that's what's really the core of the game identity. But for sure you can expect to see more things like that and then maybe intermixed with some things that'll really tie into these events and traditions that players have come to love."
Esports
Chayes also shared some thoughts on esports, which he considers a "big part" of Hearthstone. "It's something that, initially when we first shipped, we were a little bit surprised by. We didn't necessarily design Hearthstone to be an esport from the very beginning. What we saw in the very early days of the beta was that players loved to stream their matches when they were playing against other players. We also saw a lot of very competitive players who looked to see how far they could take their particular deck. So in response to that, we fleshed out in more detail the esports features of the game, really put a big focus on, 'How can we build programs around that?'
"From the beginning we wanted Hearthstone to be a game with a lot of depth, so even though it wasn't necessarily designed as an esport from the beginning, we always knew that the competitive aspect was super important. We wanted to have the ability to be a very high-skill game and testing how people play it. As the game has evolved we've done things like introduce more features to support esports. We now have things like the Hearthstone Global Games, which is reaching its conclusion coming up with Gamescom.
"We have other programs in mind. We did our first Wild Open, where it's going to be using the older cards and a chance to revisit some old deck types that maybe you haven't seen in awhile. For us, that's still just the beginning. We have a lot of ideas where we can go from there."
In a new developer diary video, the team behind Hunt: Showdown throws down the story of how the game came to be since its 2014 debut. From Austin to Frankfurt, Crytek's forthcoming competitive horror shooter wasn't always what it is today.
In the beginning, Hunt: Showdown had an entirely different name, team, and premise. It started out under Crytek USA, in Austin, as Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, a team shooter that played very similarly to Valve's Left 4 Dead. Hordes of zombies and supernatural beings came in waves, and you and your pals would take them down one by bloody one. This debuted at E3 2014 as a single level.
But, later that year, Crytek's US studio was shut down. It quite literally went from the floors at E3 in June, to moving all the way across the sea to Crytek's Frankfurt location in August. Of course, this meant Hunt could no longer be the same.
"That was a hard decision to make, and not one we did very lightly. You have to match the project with the team," lead developer Dennis Schwarz says. "And if the team bring a certain skill set, but a project requires a different skill set, you either have to adapt to that ... or you change the project. We opted for changing the project."
Today, Hunt: Showdown still maintains the grotesque, late 1800s horror vibe down in the bayous of Louisiana, but the motivation of the game and the way it plays are completely different. Now, it's about going after a target and instead of doing so with just your allies, you, and the few allies you have, are competing to get the kill, get the reward, and get out safely against another team. It's not just about taking down the baddies and flexing those gamer muscles; it's about stealth, thinking on your toes, and using the environment to your advantage.
For more on Hunt: Showdown and its origin, make sure to watch the developer diary above, or check out all of our previous coverage on the game while it was still Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Hunt: Showdown is expected on PC and does not yet have an official release date.
The update says that some rare Pokemon, such as Kangaskhan and Unown, may crop up in specific European cities until August 21. The former is notable for only spawning in Australia, making this a rare chance for players in Europe to encounter one. You can see the full list of cities where these Pokemon can be encountered at the end of this story.
Pokemon Go players still have a chance to encounter the Legendary Pokemon Moltres, which will appear in Raid Battles until August 7. The game's next Legendary monster, Zapdos, will begin cropping up from August 7-14. Ho-Oh is also expected to arrive in the near future, though Niantic hasn't officially announced when that Legendary will begin appearing in the game. The developer also rolled out a new update for the game recently that saw the return of Team Instinct's missing leader, Spark.
GameSpot's early access reviews evaluate unfinished games that are nonetheless available for purchase by the public. While the games in question are not considered finished by their creators, you may still devote money, time, and bandwidth for the privilege of playing them before they are complete. The review below critiques a work in progress, and represents a snapshot of the game at the time of the review's publication.
Almost every moment of Fortnite is a chaotic mess--for better and for worse. It's an action-packed shooter that knows how to encourage cooperation between team members. And, as a result, you'll often build out hasty forts with friends to defend yourselves (and often some special MacGuffin tucked inside your base) from hordes of cartoonish beasts. That part is usually a thrill and highlights all the best pieces of what should be a solid formula: building bases with friends to defend against monsters. The reality of that is sullied far more often than it should be, however, by a staggering deluge of "content."
Fortnite isn't an easy game to describe. It staples together pieces of disparate genres into something new. It combines the construction elements and resource-gathering of Minecraft, the team-based shooting of Left 4 Dead and Gears of War, the quest design of a modern MMO, and the progression of any given free-to-play hit. It's surprising that such divergent elements work together at all, but Fortnite definitely knows what it's best at and tries to thrust you into ideal scenarios early.
Fortnite is quite content to keep its writing and tone lighthearted. Instead of any serious moves to address what's going on, you get a solid stream of jokes. Its zombies look about as threatening as a Furby (i.e., a bit creepy in the right light but otherwise harmless). If you're trying to bust down a wall, it'll pop and flex with each strike as if ripped from old Looney Tunes skits, and many character you find will be some over-the-top caricature of a classic disaster/horror-movie trope. Your main companion, for example, is a finicky bot that only partially knows how to run your shelter. From there, you organize expeditions to gather other wacky folks to join your band, all while seeking out whimsical tech, such as sky lasers, to help cleanse the world of ghouls.
The early missions teach you the basics of defense and shooting. After that, you're tossed in with three or four other players and told to hold up against wave after wave of foes. You'll be running lots of instances with other players you won't know--though you will need their help. Most missions are challenging, and tackling things on your own generally isn't advised.
Tearing through zombies with others is so easy to get right, but it's here that Fortnite sets itself apart. The shooting is sharp and tight, without feeling too "clean" or artificial. Constant communication with the squad can help you focus on problematic monsters worming their way through your defenses. You can have someone set a trap in a weakened area or have a friend buttress a wall as you gleefully charge out and bounce grenades off of zombified crania. Unfortunately for us all, after a few minutes that mode ends and you enter what amounts to advanced inventory management.
These missions with others are a means to several ends. They're how you gain experience and progress your character. They're how you gather the materials you'll need to make new weapons and build out your base. They're also where you rescue and then retrieve survivors. Together, all of these elements become the other main thrust of the game. You use each of these to build up your base's power, which is essentially your level. As you gather recruits, you'll make squads and strike teams, each adept at handling different tasks. Then you'll send them on missions to get more resources to feed into other parts of the system. In turn, every element feeds back into every other. Leveling can help you unlock slots for more squads so that you can launch more missions to get more gear and experience so you can unlock more slots, and so on.
On first pass, this is awesome. It's a prime example of a game working itself around a few core ideas that conspire to give you a lot to do. In combat, this usually works out pretty well--there's always something to manage or coordinate--but once you leave, it's obvious how deeply the game is intertwined with itself. You have to dig into the less engaging parts like strike team management in order to keep up with quests and combat challenges. That's nice for a breather, but it also contrasts with all the other systems, highlighting their weaknesses.
Fortnite is designed to be free-to-play, but for now, at least, it isn't. That shouldn't be as big of a deal as it is, but it's impossible to get around. Much of the game is built to burn time. You have energy meters in the form of research that your pack of survivors conducts. These meters place limits on progression in that they're a resource you must wait to accumulate. At the same time, they're engineered to keep you coming back, since you can only store so many points before they need collecting. If you have substantive experience with mobile free-to-play games, you can see where this is going.
Fortnite loves giving you extra things to do and stats to pore over. There are stats for each of your different heroes, for the defenders, for the research team. There's your personal inventory and progress that's tied to your account. And then there are also levels for each of your characters--and you can get dozens of these folks. Each of them can be trained, outfitted, and upgraded and then placed into teams that you can align based on personality types for maximum statistical benefit.
It's awesome to have that sense of progression tied not to you, but to your group as a whole. It makes this apocalypse feel survivable and gives you a constant sense of growth. The problem is that most of these activities aren't interesting in and of themselves. Instead of fleshing out all these ideas, the game only gives you the option to crunch for better numbers. All of the base-building and combat elements are linked, too, so if you're not keeping up one piece, the logistics of your operation will screech to a halt for lack of one or another resource. For completionists, that will certainly have an appeal, but others will drop the grind.
Content dominates in Fortnite. There's so much to do--so many skills to unlock, heroes to find, quests to finish, and llamas to whack--that it can choke on itself at times. In the fleeting moments it feels focused, however, it makes a grand case for itself. There's nothing quite like scrambling to coordinate with your team to build out some extra turrets as you all blast away in a last-ditch effort to save a mission. These moments, for now, simply don't come as often as they need to. The good news, though, is that Fortnite's issues are solvable. They're a matter of balance and tuning and expanding upon on what's there.
What's There?
Dozens of hours of squad-based missions. An overwhelming amount of items and characters to collect. Lots of evidence of Fortnite's free-to-play future.
What's to Come?
"There will be more game content, modes, and events (all TBA). Plus the usual game optimization, bug fixing, UI changes, etc. The game is in a true beta state and is in active development. Epic will continue to update the game regularly throughout the early access period."
What Does it Cost?
$40-150 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC
When Will it be Finished?
Projected release date is 2018
What's the Verdict?
Fortnite's comedic tone, weave of genres, and exhilarating squad-based play offer up some amazing moments. Unfortunately, it's disheartening to encounter so many free-to-play obstacles given how the game is currently being sold.
With our GameTech video series, we breakdown the tech that drives the game's we love. And we've done a few quick PC graphics settings explainers, but here in text form, you can read about what we discuss and interact with screenshots to see the difference with these visual effects. Let's cover anisotropic filtering, and more broadly, what texture filtering does for your games.
Anisotropic filtering is commonly abbreviated as "AF" in game menus. It's one of the settings we'd recommend you prioritize cranking up, but this one's a little tricky to dissect, so here's an example. Look at the following side-by-side comparison of the Prague hub-area in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and pay close attention to the ground.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
As you move the slider to the left, you see the game without any degree of AF enabled. Notice how farther down the cobbled street, the textures get blurrier and blurrier. Now swipe the the right, we have AF cranked up to 16x, the cobbled stones around you and in the distance look much clearer.
Now let's switch over to a comparison between 8x AF and 16x AF in Half-Life 2. The two settings are quite similar and the difference is very subtle, but it's more pronounced the farther the distance of the texture or sharper your viewing angle. In many cases, the performance difference between 8x and 16x is negligible, so you won't really lose anything by getting a little more detail in those far off textures.
Half-Life 2
The effect of texture filtering is more apparent when the character physically moves forward in the game world. Without AF, you can see distinct lines or zones move where surface details are essentially cut off. The transition in quality of surface textures as you're in motion can be jarring. Check out the video up top for an example of this phenomenon.
Generally, anisotropic filtering can noticeably affect framerate and it takes up video memory from your video card, though the impact will vary from one computer to another.
So, what's happening here? When the in-game camera views textures from an oblique angle, they tend to become distorted without anisotropic filtering. And the farther the distance or sharper the viewing angle, the fuzzier the texture will look. This helps lighten the workload on the GPU since less detail needs to be drawn on a game's surfaces, and it's a sort of compromise for details that aren't necessarily at the player's focus.
Older PC games sometimes only offer either bilinear or trilinear filtering, which essentially aims to accomplish the same goal, just to a lesser degree. Here's an example from the classic first-person shooter Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Bilinear filtering doesn't look great, and the distance before surfaces start to look distorted is quite short. Trilinear filtering extends this distance, but surface blurriness is still apparent. The difference is more noticeable when the game is in motion. A quick tip for games that don't have anisotropic filtering options in the menus: pull up your graphics card's control panel, and enable it manually to force games to use the setting.
To summarize, anisotropic filtering gives clarity to distant surface textures that are seen at an angle. The best way to see the effect of anisotropic filtering is to turn off the settings, look at the ground a few meters ahead, then compare it to the clarity of the ground close to you. As you look farther away, the surfaces become blurrier. The effect is more pronounced when the in-game camera is in motion. Then turn anisotropic filtering on, the far-off surfaces become much more detailed.
We kept this one short and sweet, but like anything in computer graphics, texture filtering is complex. Feel free to get in the comments to continue the discussion. If you want more on PC graphics, watch our other videos on antialiasing or refresh rate, keep an eye out for the next in-depth written version of graphics settings explained, or flip through our gallery for abridged explanations.
Like previous Call of Duty games before it, this year's Call of Duty: WWII will have a premium version that comes with extra content. The Valor Collection Pro, as it's called, comes with the game's Pro Edition (which includes a Steelbook case and the season pass), as well as a pin and patches. It also includes a cool-looking Zombies poster.
The centerpiece of the Valor Collection Pro is the bronze statue that appears to be inspired by a D-Day scene. You can see everything in the bundle in the image below from EB Games Australia, which is now taking pre-orders for it. There is also a less expensive Valor Collection that comes with everything except the season pass.
Just announced: The Call of Duty WWII Valor Collection!
The Valor Collection doesn't appear to be available to pre-order at other retailers, at least not yet. EB Games Australia opened pre-orders after Sledgehammer Games founder Michael Condrey showed it off on Twitter (via CharlieIntel).
Call of Duty: WWII launches on November 3 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. A multiplayer beta starts August 25 on PS4 for people who pre-order the military shooter and runs until August 28. The beta will be available on other platforms later.
The next Final Fantasy XIV event is set to begin soon. Square Enix has announced that the game's annual summer festival, the Moonfire Faire, will return next week, on August 8.
The event kicks off at 1 AM PT/4 AM ET and is scheduled to run until August 26. Like previous years, it gives players a chance to snag some exclusive summer-themed gear. This time, players will be able to acquire the following equipment and items:
Faire Joi (body armor)
Faire Kohakama (leg armor)
Faire Zori (boots)
Evercold Shaved Ice (tabletop item)
Moonfire Faire (wall-mounted item)
Hyper Rainbow Z (Orchestrion roll)
Players will also have a chance to purchase some items from previous Moonfire Faires at the festival's different vendors. Those who'd like to take part in the event can learn how by speaking to Mayaru Moyaru in the Upper Decks of Limsa Lominsa.
Final Fantasy XIV continues to be one of Square Enix's major titles. Its more recent expansion, Stormblood, launched in June and helped increase the company's MMO net sales to 9.3 billion yen for the quarter, despite the fact the game's servers were subjected to a series of DDoS attacks. Final Fantasy XIV's director, Naoki Yoshida, has expressed interest in bringing the MMORPG to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, but on the condition that each company allows for cross-platform play.
The first proper Splatfest in Nintendo's colorful Switch shooter, Splatoon 2, is set to begin soon. The event kicks off in the US tonight, August 4, at 9 PM PT/12 AM ET and in the UK on August 5 at 3 PM BST.
This Splatfest runs for a full 24 hours and, like the World Premiere Demo that took place before the game released, revolves around food. This time, players are asked to choose which condiment they prefer: mayo or ketchup?
To take part in the Splatfest, simply pledge your fealty to your condiment of choice at the voting booth in Inkopolis Square, and the wins you amass in Turf War will go toward your team's overall score. Depending on your rank by the end of the event, participants will be rewarded with a number of Super Sea Snails, rare items that can be used to add additional slots to your gear.
We already got a glimpse at one of the maps that will be featured during the event: Shifty Station, an entirely new stage that will make its debut tonight. Unlike the other maps in the game, however, Shifty Station will only be available in the stage rotation during Splatfests. Nintendo says its layout changes from event to event, so players will be battling on a different version of the map the next time it appears during a Splatfest.
Nintendo is also releasing another free DLC weapon to coincide with the Splatfest. This time, players will be able to purchase the Sploosh-O-Matic, a returning weapon from the first Splatoon. This particular shooter has a short range but compensates with its high attack power. It's sub-weapon in Splatoon 2 is the Curling Bomb and its special attack is Splashdown.
A complicated, enigmatic No Man's Sky alternate-reality game has been in progress since June, and fans currently believe that it points to a big new update coming this month. Today, the ARG got even more mysterious: a livestream is underway right now, but there's no word yet on what it'll reveal.
The livestream is hosted by the Twitch account Waking Titan--the name of the ARG--and at the time of this writing, it shows a computer set up with the words "Test Scenario Inactive" visible on a monitor.
Strangely, on the desk is a cage with a hamster in it. According to a Waking Titan memo, this hamster is called "Subject M-N00-dl35" and is part of some sort of test. The memo reassures viewers that the animal faces no danger and won't be exposed to anything harmful.
If you're interested in reading more about the ARG and the efforts to solve it, check out the No Man's Sky subreddit thread on it here. There's no official word yet on what the August update might include; developer Hello Games has been tight-lipped about the game since its previous update in March. But fans speculate from hints in the ARG that it'll feature a new species, among other additions.
If it is a content drop that's being teased, it'll be the third such update since No Man's Sky's release last year. The first, called the Foundation Update, added base-building and frigates, while the second added land vehicles.
Playerunknown's Battlegrounds' popularity still hasn't hit a ceiling yet. Developer Bluehole announced today that the game hit a new milestone, crossing 500,000 concurrent players.
This is a really high number of people to be playing at the same time. PUBG momentarily had the second highest number of concurrent users behind Dota 2, exceeding Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Over the past few years, it has been very unusual to see CS: GO at any ranking below number two, and Dota 2's place at the top has been seemingly invulnerable.
We just broke 500k! Thank you all so very much for your continuing support! <3 pic.twitter.com/FXnsy6twGX
According to SteamSpy, PUBG has sold around 6.2 million copies since it entered Early Access in March. It's currently scheduled for an official launch sometime next year, and it'll be released on Xbox One toward the end of 2017.
Spotify has been available on PlayStation 4 for a while now, but up until now there's been no sign that it would ever come to Xbox One. Today, however, a new report suggests that you'll soon be able to use the app on Microsoft's console.
Earlier this week, eagle-eyed users noticed that Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb appeared to be testing Spotify on his Xbox One. Hryb has teased other games and apps in the past through his Xbox account's activity.
The Verge then confirmed independently that the app will, in fact, launch on Xbox One. Neither Microsoft nor Spotify has said anything official yet, but The Verge reports that it's "coming soon." It's unclear how it'll work on Xbox; on PS4, you can stream music in the background while playing games.
In any case, it's a good bet that Major Nelson will be the one to announce the app. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news about Spotify and any other new features coming to the console this year.
Update: For the time being, the issue has been resolved, according to Microsoft. This wasn't the first service interruption of the day, so be aware that Xbox Live may continue to suffer issues heading into the weekend.
Original Story: If you've had trouble purchasing new games or downloading past purchases on Xbox One or Xbox 360, it's not your internet that's at fault. There are apparently issues plaguing Xbox Live that are restricting players' ability to make purchases and access content and games they own.
According to the Xbox Live status website, the service is currently "limited." The Xbox Games Store is specifically affected across both Xbox consoles. In Microsoft's words, "Our engineers and developers are actively continuing to work to resolve the issue causing some members to have problems finding previously-purchased content or purchasing new content. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience."
The MYTF1 apps is also experiencing problems on Xbox 360, although Microsoft hasn't specified what the issues are. The rest of Xbox Live, including signing in, multiplayer gaming, and music services are all working.
We will update this article with any more information that Microsoft provides and when the issues are resolved.
The retro-inspired platformer Yooka-Laylee launched for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC back in April, but developer Playtonic has yet to announce a release date for the Nintendo Switch version. However, it looks like some more information about the Nintendo release could be coming soon.
On Twitter, Playtonic share an image of the game running on Switch and said that it "continues to work hard" on the version. No other details were shared, but the developer says it "hope[s] to have more news soon." You can see the image below.
Playtonic recently rolled out the first major update for Yooka-Laylee on PC. The patch made a huge list of improvements and changes to the game, such as a new camera mode that gives players full control over where it's pointing. You can find the full patch notes on Playtonic's website, but some of the more notable changes from the update include:
Pagies have added signposts to Hivory Towers to help guide players to new worlds
Improved speed when scrolling through Totals Menu
New moves section added to pause menu, with image guide
Restart option added in the pause menu during arcade games and Kartos challenges
Minecart control and hitbox improvements, plus new visual effects
Improved flying controls
Playtonic has said the Nintendo Switch version will include all of the tweaks and improvements from the update on day one. GameSpot's Yooka-Laylee review said of the game, "Its style of gameplay is still outdated, and it doesn't stay challenging or interesting for long as a result. But if you're looking for a faithful return to the Banjo-Kazooie formula, Yooka-Laylee certainly delivers--from the font to the music to the wealth of collectibles, it's worthy of the title of spiritual successor."
Recently, creative director Davide Soliani shared that these leaks were not good for morale among the development team. In an interview with Eurogamer, Soliani said that public response to the images disheartened the team members.
"We were aiming to do a big surprise at E3," he said. "And unluckily that was not the case. Of course, it was quite a bad backlash for the entire team. Discouraging. Quite hard on the team morale."
It was especially difficult considering that only a promotional image leaked. It gave no clue as to gameplay mechanics, story, or even style. It was only a low-quality image that some ridiculed for the Rabbid dressed as Peach and Mario wielding a gun.
"Of course I tried to, let's say, reassure everyone that we had a good game and our team is not composed of stupid guys, so they knew they were doing something quality-oriented," he stated. "But of course, there is no way to avoid not feeling anything towards this kind of feedback. We're passionate guys and not just doing this as a job, but also for the pleasure of giving emotion to the player."
However, Kingdom Battle's official reveal put Soliani at ease and reassured him of his game. During Ubisoft's press conference at E3, legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto came out on stage to help announce the game. For Soliani, this was validation: "When Miyamoto went on stage and the audience reacted, I felt, finally, the team has its reward."
Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle launches on August 29 for Nintendo Switch. In GameSpot's recent preview, critic Oscar Dayus said that the game is surprisingly hard. "But the game being this difficult is what sparks those hilarious debates, and the characters being this well imagined is what makes Kingdom Battle feel like more than just an XCOM clone," he wrote. "Directing Mario and his friends was joyous, and I now can't wait to tell you that no, actually, Peach rules more."
Destiny 2 comes out next month, but if you can't wait that long for a dose of the Destiny universe, there's another product on the way that can hold you over: The official Destiny coloring book launches next week.
That's right--there's an actual coloring book full of images from the game for you to color in. Do you want a Guardian to look florescent pink? You can do that. Or you can make an all-black Exotic. Check out the first few images from the book below.
The coloring book will be available on August 8, and it'll cost $16. You can currently pick it up on Amazon for $11.53. It was designed by Ze Carlos, a fan of Destiny and a comics artist. He was chosen by Bungie after winning a community T-shirt design contest.
Batman writer Tom King is taking the Dark Knight on quite a ride, and for once, it has nothing to do with the villains he is facing. Back in the June issue of Batman, readers were left with one incredible cliffhanger: Batman proposing marriage to Catwoman.
Since Batman's first appearance in 1939, he's fought crime in Gotham. He's always had friends and family by his side, whether it be Alfred Pennyworth, one of the Robins, or even his son Damian, but in the main continuity, Batman has never been married. That may change in the upcoming months as issue #24 ended with Batman on a single knee, proposing. However, before readers get the answer they're waiting for, he tells Catwoman a story about his battle with Riddler and Joker from his past. Batman had to tell her something he's never told anyone else. This leads to the current storyline "War of Jokes & Riddles."
Art by David Finch, Danny Miki, and Jordie Bellaire
"It's a flashback story, but it's him confessing," King told GameSpot. "It's him saying, 'Before you make your decision, you have to know sort of the softest part of me. You have to know where I'm most vulnerable because I want you to love me for who I am, not for who I pretend to be. And this is something I haven't told anyone.' And so at the end of 'Jokes & Riddles,' he'll make this confession. He'll say, 'This is something I did.' And Catwoman, for the first time almost in her life because she's been through everything, will be shocked. It's something genuinely that's going to shake her to her core where she's like, 'You're not the man I thought you were.' And she has to make that decision. 'Do I actually want to marry Batman?'"
While "War of Jokes & Riddles" may seem like a simplistic, stripped-down tale, King explained that there's much more to the current storyline than meets the eye: "I like taking a simple story and making it into something interesting and deep," King said. "And right now, with Batman, we have the simplest story ever; it's Joker versus Riddler. Who will win? But then you start to think about it, and you start to think about the difference between a joke and a riddle. A joke is something that surprises you, right? Even like a simple joke like, 'why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.' The joke part of that is you think a joke is coming, but something straight comes. Like there's a surprise. A riddle is the exact opposite if you think about it. A riddle is, you propose a problem and you solve it. You come to be relaxed. A joke is tension. A riddle is relaxed. A joke is chaos. A riddle is order.
"[T]hen it becomes sort of like what the Joker wants in the world is anarchy. He just wants everyone to not care about what happens next and what the Riddler wants for the world is order. He's a fascist. He wants everyone to conform to the best way they need to live their lives."
What results from this battle is pure chaos in Gotham City and a Batman--who is relatively new to his job--trying to stop it. And while fans may be champing at the bit to know Catwoman's answer, the "War of Jokes & Riddles" is an important element, as it has Batman truly opening up to another person, which could cause a rift between characters. Readers will get Catwoman's answer, but not until October: "In issue #32--that's coming up--that's a huge issue because Catwoman will say yes or no. And then what comes is either Batman has his heart broken and has to deal with that, we've never seen that before where Batman made himself so vulnerable to get rejected. Or we have an acceptance and Batman has to prepare himself and his family for a wedding. So one of those two things is coming."
DC Comics fans will learn whether or not Catwoman will marry Batman and just what Batman has to confess in Batman #32, which goes on sale October 4.
The fourth episode of the penultimate season of Game of Thrones airs this Sunday, and following the trailer which arrived earlier this week, a batch of new images has been released. In particular they tease a much-anticipated dragon battle, with a shot of the mighty Drogon roaring on a battlefield. Check them out below:
The fourth episode of the current season was also in the news this week when it was reported that it had leaked online ahead of its broadcast. The source of the leak was Star India, one of HBO's distribution partners. In a statement, the company said they had "initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner's end to swiftly determine the cause." This leak was unconnected to the earlier report that HBO had been hacked, with Game of Thrones scripts among the stolen material.
The closed beta for Final Fantasy XV's multiplayer DLC, Comrades, is going on now, but so far it's been plagued by server problems and has generally been a bit of a mess--as you can see from our attempt to play it in the video above. Because of this, Square Enix will hold another test for the expansion next week.
On Twitter, the publisher announced that the next "Closed Online Test" for the Comrades DLC will run from August 11-13. Square Enix says that it'll release an update next week to "improve matchmaking," which has been one of the biggest issues affecting the current beta. "We're trying our best to make sure the #FFXVComrades Closed Online Test runs as smoothly as possible so keep an eye out for further updates," the publisher said on Twitter.
Next week we'll release an update to improve matchmaking in the #FFXVComrades Closed Online Test & do another test between 11-13th August pic.twitter.com/wJbsowKYXp
Comrades is a cooperative multiplayer expansion for the formerly single-player RPG. Players can create their own unique avatar and band together with up to three others to undertake quests. The full expansion will feature an assortment of new weapons, gear, attack styles, and more, but only a select amount of content is available to try out in the beta. A future update to the expansion will also add Noctis and his entourage as playable characters.
Square Enix hasn't announced a release date for the Final Fantasy XV Comrades expansion, but the current closed beta is projected to run until August 8. To take part in it, players will need to have purchased the game's season pass and have an active PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold membership, depending on their platform.
Meanwhile, Square Enix has recently released another batch of additional content to the core adventure. The game's big July update brought with it the long-delayed Magitek Exosuits and introduced a new Cross Chain system. The Moogle Chocobo Festival has also returned for a limited time, though players will need to have either the free or paid Holiday Pack DLC installed in order to take part in the event.
Battlefield 1 turns a year old in just a few months, but support for the game is far from over. In addition to quite a bit of DLC that's still on the way, other updates are also coming, including a revamp for the Specializations system.
Developer DICE has outlined the new setup for Specializations, which will soon enter testing. The Reddit post emphasizes that all of this is not yet complete, stating, "[T]his is early in the development phase, so we're hoping to get a lot of feedback and opinions."
"Specializations are designed to give players more opportunities and diversity within each kit, not necessarily more power overall," DICE producer Jojje Dalunde explained. "Choices should provide more depth and strategy to gameplay."
Specializations will come in generic and kit-specific versions, with each class having access to seven generic ones and two kit-specific ones. Players will automatically have access to the Flak, Cover, and Quick Regen Specializations, while others will be earned through new Service Assignments. These missions are a new part of the upcoming In the Name of the Tsar expansion and will be detailed "at a later time."
DICE intends to add more Specializations in the future, but here are those that will be available in the first wave:
Generic
Flak: Incoming damage from explosions is reduced by 15%
Cover: Incoming suppression is reduced by 25%
Quick Regen: Decrease time before Out of Combat Heal by 20%
Quick Unspot: Decrease length of time you are Spotted by 2 seconds
Bayonet Training: Bayonet charge lasts longer and recovers more quickly
Hasty Retreat: Increase your maximum sprint speed by 10% whilst you are Suppressed
Camouflage: When moving slowly or stationary you are invisible to Spot Flares
Assault
Juggernaut: Your Gas Mask also reduces explosive damage by 15% (does stack)
Controlled Demolition: TNT is now detonated sequentially
Medic
Stimulant Syringe: Reviving an ally give you both a 20% sprint speed for 8 seconds (Does not stack)
Concealed Rescue: Downed Squad Mates within 20m drop smoke to cover their revival (40s cooldown)
Support
Unbreakable: Incoming suppression is reduced by 75% when your Bipod is deployed
Pin Down: The Duration an enemy remains spotted is extended via Suppression
Scout
Scapegoat: A decoy is automatically deployed when struck below 35 health by a distant enemy (30s cooldown)
Perimeter Alarm: When your Trip Mine is triggered enemies within 15m are marked on the mini-map
This new Specializations system will be available to try out on the PC version's Community Test Environment sometime soon. Because of "different release requirements for consoles," PS4 and Xbox One players won't be able to this out right away despite the recent launch of the CTE on consoles.
While games continue to regularly go on sale in the Wii U and 3DS Eshops, discounts have been much rarer to see on Nintendo Switch, with only one notable exception thus far. Now, however, Switch owners have a rare chance to snag a pair of games from the Eshop at a discount.
Square Enix's nostalgic RPG, I Am Setsuna, is currently on sale in the Switch Eshop for $26.79, 33% off of its standard price of $40. The melancholy adventure follows the eponymous Setsuna, who is fated to be sacrificed in order to save her land. The game marked the debut effort of developer Tokyo RPG Factory and was inspired primarily by classic RPGs such as Chrono Trigger. It received positive reviews when it released, so this would be a good opportunity to pick it up before the studio's next effort, Lost Sphear, arrives on the console. The sale ends on August 10 at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET.
Switch owners can also snag a discount on TumbleSeed, the "roll-y roguelike" that challenges players with balancing a seed while climbing up progressively more treacherous mountains. The game normally retails for $15, but for a limited time Switch owners can pick it up for $10. The sale coincides with a new update the development team just released, which adds six new game modes to the title (including a Switch-exclusive two-player battle mode), new persistent abilities, a weekly challenge, and more. The update also makes the notoriously difficult game easier.
Meanwhile on 3DS and Wii U, a number of Kirby games are on sale in each console's respective Eshop to celebrate the series' 25th anniversary. From now until August 8, 3DS owners can purchase Kirby: Planet Robobot and Kirby Triple Deluxe for $30 and $15, respectively, while 3D Classics: Kirby's Adventure is on sale for $5.24. Wii U owners can find discounts on various Kirby Virtual Console titles, including Kirby's Return to Dream Land ($15), Kirby 64: They Crystal Shards ($7.49), and Kirby's Dream Land 3 ($6). You can find the full list of Kirby games on sale here.
This has been a fairly busy week for the Switch Eshop. Seven new titles debuted for the service yesterday, including the Grand Theft Auto sendup Retro City Rampage and the NeoGeo shoot-'em-up Aero Fighters 2. A region-free demo of Monster Hunter XX is scheduled to arrive in the Japanese Eshop next week, on August 10, but all Switch owners will be able to download it simply by creating a new Nintendo Account and setting their region to Japan.
If you've been waiting to try out the Shadow of the Colossus-esque adventure game Rime on your Nintendo Switch, you've got a few more months to wait. Developer Tequila Works announced that the game will launch on Switch on November 14 in North America and on November 17 in Europe.
Rime has been out on PS4, Xbox One, and PC since May, but the studio didn't specify a release date for the Switch version until today. There was initially some controversy surrounding the Switch version, as publisher Grey Box originally stated that it would cost $40 on Nintendo's console--$10 more than on other platforms.
After backlash from fans, Grey Box reversed its decision and decided that the digital version would cost $30 to bring it in line with the other systems. The special, physical edition of Rime will still cost $40, although it comes with a digital copy of its soundtrack, as well.
If you're interested in reading more about Rime, you can check out GameSpot's 6/10 review. Critic Oscar Dayus wrote, "Rime's artistry is unquestionable. Each world is enchanting in its own way, from the naturalistic peace of the first to the abstract doom of the last... But when compared to its influences like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and Journey, it doesn't hold up too well."
Death Stranding is one of the most mysterious projects in the video game industry. Hideo Kojima has been pretty tight-lipped about it, apart from a few descriptions that might as well be riddles. Today, Kojima Productions revealed a new glimpse of the game which, albeit small, nonetheless shows off some impressive-looking fog.
Ishiyama and Carpentier revealed that the developers had created a new fog system in the Decima Engine designed to allow for more artistic flexibility over the appearance of atmosphere in-game. Currently, engines generally use what's called "precomputed atmospheric scattering" to create photorealistic fog, but this limits the ability to change color or density of fog.
What Guerrilla Games and Kojima Productions did was to combine the precomputed atmospheric scattering model and an "analytic height fog" model to allow for both photorealism and artistic flexibility with a singe model. In a scene from Death Stranding that they showed off, the result is some really good-looking atmospheric effects. Check it out (courtesy of DualShockers):
There's a lot more that Ishiyama and Carpentier talk about in their presentation about Horizon and the engine in general, and you can read their whole slide deck here. It is extremely technical and there's a lot of math involved, but there are a few cool facts about the development of Horizon: Zero Dawn and what the Decima Engine can do.
Nintendo Switch online services may go down for a few hours next week as Nintendo performs network maintenance.
Server maintenance is scheduled for Wednesday, August 9, from 5:50 PM PT/8:50 PM ET to 7:30 PM PT/10:30 PM ET. The company's website states that "some network services may become unavailable" during this time.
This isn't the first time Nintendo has done server maintenance for the Switch, and the descriptions are usually this vague about which services will go offline. Splatoon 2 players, don't worry; the Splatfest begins tonight and will be over by then, so the maintenance won't interrupt the battle between ketchup and mayo.
We teamed up with Hi-Rez Studios to give away 15,000 codes for the Chinese Starter Pack in their newest game in open beta, Hand of the Gods: SMITE Tactics on PC. Each code will unlock 3 cards that will help you build an awesome Chinese deck. Here's what you get:
Transfusion x1
Ne Zha x1
Projection x1
You can download the game for free here and enter to get your code below:
Hand of the Gods: SMITE Tactics is a turn-based, one-vs-one strategy game set in the same mythological universe as the hit MOBA, SMITE. Players build decks of cards that spawn units onto a fully rendered battlefield using Unreal Engine 4. Each pantheon has its own unique leader ability and pantheon specific cards that can be combined with neutral cards to support a variety of playstyles. Hand of the Gods is currently in open beta on PC. Download and play for free at www.handofthegods.com
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