Although us Americans have been enjoying the PlayStation 4 App for a little while now, our European brethren will have to wait until next week. The delay is reportedly due to "some final tweaks" to ensure the smoothness of the app.
Coincidentally the app will launch alongside of the European PS4 release date on the 29th, so it's not that big of a deal. But still, there's no better feeling than messing around with a piece of technology, waiting for an imminent release -- or maybe I'm just a giant nerd.
The PlayStation App launches next week [PlayStation Blog]
To commemorate the launch of new consoles, we've taken to retrospective pieces to remember some of the best titles on each system. We did it with the Wii last year, and we've done it with the PS3 and Xbox 360 over the last two weeks. But, that doesn't really paint a complete picture of the past eight years of gaming.
Undoubtedly, third-party published games were just as important to the growth and prosperity of the last generation of consoles as first-party titles were. It wouldn't be right to deny them their time in the limelight just because they could be found on multiple systems. These were the Destructoid Staff's favorite multi-platform titles:
Happy Friday everyone!
Welcome to another edition of Destructoid's Friday Night Fights!
We finally made it, we are now fully into the next gen of gaming! Can you feel the excitement? I know I sure can!
Last night, Microsoft launched the Xbox One, ushering in a new era of ad filled dashboards everywhere!
Amazing.
Okay all you people in the United Kingdom, if you've been holding off on a Wii U NOW is the time to finally get it. This Mario Mega Bundle from the Nintendo UK Online Store is the ultimate deal for all the Mario lovers out there.
For £299.99 you get the black 32GB Wii U, New Super Mario Bros. U, New Super Luigi U, Super Mario 3D World, a limited edition Mario Wii Remote Plus, and a Mario hat. This is about £50 more than some of the other Wii U bundles from the store, but note that it comes with one of the best games of the year, a rare Wiimote, and most important of all, that hat!
In this Xbox One game montage video, there's a brief reference to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, which will have content exclusive to Microsoft's platform in addition to the exclusive Deja Vu mission for PlayStation 4 featuring Classic Snake.
Naturally, we haven't the slightest clue what the content for Xbox One will entail -- that'd be far too easy. Realistically, though, how much cooler than low-poly Snake can you get? Tough act to follow.
I may not be much of a Final Fantasy player, but I always find myself loving their soundtracks. Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy XIII just came out in Japan this past week, and YouTuber MarquisofElmdoor has uploaded the entire soundtrack for the game on his channel.
I'm only a few tracks in as of this writing, and so far it's all sounding pretty great. There's 74 tracks in all, so I'm going to be listening this well into the weekend.
As for the rest of the world, Lightning Returns will be out in North America, Australia, and Europe the the second week of February.
Not all simulators are created equal. While some let you dabble into the tiniest microcosmic detail like individual wages of specific levels of society, others are content to let you roam free in a zen garden-like state. The newest iteration of Zoo Tycoon is decidedly the latter, as there's nary a concept presented throughout the course of a game that a child couldn't eventually figure out.
While Zoo Tycoon may not be the most complicated simulator on the market, it has a distinct amount of charm that distances itself from the rush-job many people were expecting. It's also pretty damn adorable.
Torment: Tides of Numenera developer inXile entertainment just put out a blog post with a Q&A video that has details on the game's alignment system, and they ask fans how they would like to see combat implemented.
The first option is to have real-time combat with pausing -- this is the classic system from Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate. All characters move and fight at the same time, and the player can pause at any point to issue orders. The other option would be to have turn-based combat, which would be similar to Fallout and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
Either system sounds good to me, but I think I would prefer the real-time with pausing. It would match how the older Black Isle games used to play, and that's one of the things I really want from Torment.
From its description as a "tower defense-inspired puzzle game," Block Blocks doesn't sound amazing, but in motion it looks like it could be quite hectic, and it almost has an early Bit.Trip aesthetic to it. The gameplay is explained succinctly in the title: players must draw lines in order to stop the blocks from moving in particular directions.
Mostly, I like the name. It reminds me of the hypothetical WiiWare game that RetroForceGO came up with, Puzzle Puzzle Puzzle . I wonder if we could get a coalition of Block Blocks enthusiasts together, to form a Block Blocks bloc. Then we can sell predatory birds (hawk hawks), punch woolen footwear (sock socks), and maybe even waterproof roosters (I'll leave this one up to you to figure out).
Block Blocks, Block Blocks, all you do to me is Block Blocks .
Over on the Brickset forums, a teaser page for a LEGO The Hobbit game has been found in the instruction booklets for the upcoming LEGO sets based on The Desolation of Smaug.
Warner Bros. hasn't announced this yet, but the ad suggests the game will launch on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, PC, and 3DS next year. I'd wager PS4, Xbox One, and PS Vita releases are also likely. This is LEGO, after all -- it's coming to everything.
Presumably, the game will cover all three of Peter Jackson's Hobbit films. It darn well better! For as much as I enjoyed LEGO The Lord of the Rings, I don't know that I'm keen to play more of this stuff. Perhaps that'll change over the course of next year.
LEGO The Hobbit: The Videogame revealed [Brick Fanatics]
One of the biggest selling points of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for a lot of people is the integrated Twitch functionality. It makes sense for it to be a native part of the infrastructure, as game streaming seems to be all the rage these days. Well, maybe not all the rage, but at least a portion of the rage.
However, with regard to the PS4, one of the drawbacks is that the only way to watch Twitch streams is to catch them live. This may change at some point. Speaking with Joystiq, Sony said that it's "planning to add Twitch livestream archiving in the future." Sony made no mention of a time-frame or what quality the streams would be set at.
Microsoft isn't yet in the position of being able to speak about Twitch features, as it won't arrive on Xbox One until 2014. However, a spokesperson offered a generic "we're always listening to our fans' feedback, and [archiving] is certainly something we'd consider adding."
Twitch archiving planned for PS4, being considered for Xbox One [Joystiq]
Sony has rolled out a neat little website for an event it's calling First to Greatness. There are 64 challenges in total from games like Killzone: Shadow Fall, Warframe, Knack, and Contrast -- whoever finishes any one of them first will be memorialized. To participate, you'll need to capture the moment using the DualShock 4's Share button, upload it to Facebook, and then sign into the First to Greatness site using your Facebook account.
Some of these "firsts" will make it into a remake of the Perfect Day TV spot and there's also supposed to be something new on the site once all 64 challenges have been completed.
Even if you're late to the party here, you can still participate. As much as I've lost interest in going after most achievements outside of the occasional few that are inherently rewarding or interesting, this is a neat idea. Talk about a cool way to energize PS4 owners.
First to Greatness: 64 PS4 Challenges to Test Your Mettle [PlayStation Blog]
This review was first published in E13, September 1994.
Every so often you come across a game that, although primitive, is so intriguing that you find yourself playing it for hours on end, ignoring activities like eating and sleeping which suddenly assume a secondary importance. Star Control II is such a game. It’s not brilliant, but it is addictive, as anyone who has played it will testify.
The attraction of Star Control II is not immediately apparent, though. A conversion of a mature PC game, it features garish and unsophisticated sprite-based graphics that invite comparisons with 8bit games. However, in terms of cosmetics, the decidedly dated visuals are compensated for by the game’s wide range of bizarre sounds, toe-tapping tunes, and idiosyncratic characters.
Now, that’s a game cover.
But the appeal of Star Control II can be attributed mainly to its distinctive blend of space strategy, trading, negotiating, fighting and exploring. After a protracted war, the Earth has been enslaved by aliens and you have to liberate it, searching the galaxy for friendly alien species and scouring planets for minerals, life forms and energy sources to augment your Earth-based supplies.
When your stocks are sufficient and you’ve attracted enough allies, you can go to war with the Earth’s oppressors. The concept isn’t exactly original, but Star Control II offers the perfect balance between freedom to explore and a linear, objective-based scenario.
Star Control II’s combat is fast and lethal.
Star Control II is a methodical type of game that takes a long time to complete and never provides much in the way of adrenaline-surging excitement. Frankly, anyone who prefers action games will probably find it tedious. But there’s so much variety here that it’s hard to resist the temptation to continue playing, just in case you discover something new.
The problem with Star Control II is that it’s not really a 3DO title. The gameplay may be absorbing, but it quite obviously fails to take advantage of the 3DO’s potent hardware. Crystal Dynamics has always been an important catalyst for 3DO, but Star Control II is little more than a makeweight for the company’s summer release schedule.
The post Classic Review: Star Control II (3DO) appeared first on Edge Online.