News::5 Things That Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars Should Feature

Sleeping Dogs was a sleeper hit for Square Enix. While initially the game was silently labeled as a failure due to its slow start in sales and a less than sparkling turnout on the quarterly charts, it turns out that the game's solid design mechanics and core focus on fun-factors and decent storytelling really helped pay off in the end. Eventually Sleeping Dogs became a success and is now labeled as a priority at Square Enix, enabling United Front Games to continue their work on a sequel called Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars. We don't know much about Triad Wars (after a very vague update on the official website), and that's a-okay. If the team needs time to flesh out the game then we'll give them time... but we'll also give them a few ideas as to what the game might want to focus on as a sequel to one of the more underrated games of seventh-gen.



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News::Assassins Creed Unity: Creative Director Explains How Arno Will Emotionally Pull The Player In

Arno is on a redemption quest, says the games creative director.



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News::Dragon Age Inquisition: There Will Be Over 200 Different Abilities In The Skills Tree

Dragon Age Inquisition will feature a wide range of skills and abilities.



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News::Isomer First Glimpse

Have a look at our first glimpse of Isomer, a strategy game in the same vein as XCOM/UFO.



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News::Twitch is changing its approach to video archives

Twitch is changing the way it handles video on demand and that's going to mean the end of the "save forever" option for past broadcasts on the site.

Broadcasts that are cut down into highlight clips can still live on the site forever, but full-length broadcasts will only be hosted for 14 days (or 60 days, for Partners and Turbo Subscribers). And under the new system, highlights can only be up to two hours long.

In other words, broadcasters who want their shows to be viewable in full will need to export their stuff to YouTube or elsewhere. That also goes for existing broadcasts stored on the site, as those will be removed beginning three weeks from now.

Why all the changes? According to Twitch, "80 percent of [its] storage capacity is filled with past broadcasts that are never watched." Which isn't shocking given how poor the current video-on-demand system is in terms of discoverability. It can be difficult to find old broadcasts, and even then, the playback experience leaves a lot to be desired.

The upside is that Twitch is planning for better video-on-demand quality for international viewers, support for VOD viewing on mobile, "secure storage of your past broadcasts (with triple redundancy)," and easier highlight exporting to YouTube. These moves also represent "a step toward conceptualizing new features like DVR, matching quality options from live to VOD, and better VOD discovery."

Changes To VODs On Twitch [Twitch]

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News::Nvidia Shield Tablet: The Kotaku Review

Last year's Nvidia Shield portable was the most powerful Android gaming system on the market at the time. The Nvidia Shield Tablet is the most powerful Android gaming system on the market, but it's also something its predecessor was not — useful.

Read more...

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News::Twitch Cracks Down On Music In Videos, Users Freak Out

News::Track: Dancing in the Dark | Album: These Wilder Things | Artist: The Ruth Moody Band

Track: Dancing in the Dark | Album: These Wilder Things | Artist: The Ruth Moody Band

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News::Review: Sacred 3

"I love it."

The specter of Diablo looms large over the action-RPG genre; most games borrow heavily from Blizzard's seminal game and those games' success is usually judged on how close they stick to the formula and how well they execute on that.

"Oh baby."

While it's tempting to praise a game for breaking away from some of the genre's conventions in order to make itself stand out from the crowd, Sacred 3 has stripped away so many of the things that make an APRG fun. Stats? Pretty much gone. Loot? Almost none. A really enjoyable combat system? Nope.

"Sexy!"

Oh, and there's people talking wince-inducing garbage over the whole thing.

Read more...



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News::Dead Island 2 - Preview | GamingLives

GamingLives takes a look at the upcoming follow-up to the divisive zombie kill-em-up, Dead Island. "The more comical take on the game means its trying something different in tone, which should be commended, but I already feel like Dead Rising has that particular area of zombie killing covered. That being said, the co-op will no doubt aid the cause and I have no doubt that Yager Development have the skills to make a decent product. The question remains if it will have an identity separate to that of the first in order to really make its mark in a very, very crowded genre."



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News::Deadspin Ex-ESPN Employee: My Boss Kept "Sexually Provocative" Pictures Of Me | Gawker The CIA Must

News::Kratos Is A Loser Even When He Wins

If there was ever a video game character that needed to go into therapy, it's God of War star Kratos. Even David Jaffe, one of his creators, has said that the guy should calm down.

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News::Contest: Win tickets to SOE Live in Las Vegas!

Our friends at SOE have given us two premium passes to SOE Live in Las Vegas to hand out to lucky Dtoiders! SOE Live is a celebration of SOE games and the gamers who love them, and this year's event takes place August 14 through 17 at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. See the latest SOE games, hang out with friends and cosplayers, and more!

Included with the premium pass are two tickets to the event, an SOE Live t-shirt, SOE Live goody bag, exclusive SOE Live in-game items, access to the exhibitor showroom, access to panels and roundtables, option to attend brunch with the dev team, complimentary copies of the upcoming EverQuest and EverQuest II expansions, and a ton more! (For full details, click here.)

To win, we want you to draw something SOE-inspired in MS Paint and then post it in the comments! Any SOE game is eligible, so go as wild as you want. The best two drawings (as chosen by Destructoid staff) will earn their artists each a premium pass to see SOE Live in Las Vegas! Limit one entry per person, and the contest is open to anyone willing to make the trek to Vegas next week (travel expenses are not included). You have until this Friday, August 8 at 11:59pm Pacific to enter.

Good luck! And don't forget, our Huge members get automatic entry into all contests (as well as a bunch of other awesome perks). Try us out!

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News::Back to Bed Review | WGTC

Eric from We Got This Covered wrote: When you sleep, there are usually a handful of dreams that you have. Sometimes theres the traditional falling dream or a dream about the public embarrassment of standing in a crowded room with just your underwear on. Or perhaps your dreams are more enjoyable, such as falling in love with a celebrity or achieving great personal success. If youre Bob, the star of Back To Bed, then your dreams are a bit of a more surreal experience.



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News::Microsoft: Man Who Pushed Ryse's Graphics at Work on More Xbox One Exclusives; Defends PC Gaming

Microsoft Games Studio Manager Mike Ybarra has been checking out games lately, including Insomniacs Sunset Overdrive and Platinum Games Scalebound, and today he shared some interesting information about them, also defending Windows gaming.



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News::Woolfe Shines A Glorious Light On Kickstarter

Greg Micek writes: "At first glance it could be easy to write Woolfe off as just another side scrolling platformer; an edgy retelling of a classic fairy tale. Havent we seen this several times before? Why bother? For starters it looks fantastic. Seriously, check out the gameplay footage and screenshots on the Kickstarter campaign page. In addition to looking great, the environments look varied and dynamic, and not just textured blocks."



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News::Grab Saira Free On Steam Before Its Too Late Maybe

GG3: "Theres no real explanation why Saira is currently free on Steam, but it is. This means that its some sort of mishap and it wont stay free for long. So, just in case, go download it now."



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News::The Sims 4 Without Toddlers Looks... Weird

News::I Love That I Can Pause Dota 2

News::World of Warcraft's tenth anniversary will include a corgi

Oh, so that's how you get me to write about World of Warcraft -- corgis.

Blizzard has a number of plans for the MMO giant's tenth anniversary this November. The notable one, at least to my eyes, is a Molten Corgi pet, obtainable simply by logging in during the celebration. You don't want to be the person who missed out on that companion.

For max-level players, the anniversary will also see a special 40-player Raid Finder version of Molten Core. Take down the Firelord for an Achievement and a Core Hound mount.

Lastly, in a nod to early days of PvP in World of Warcraft, Blizzard is opening a Team Deathmatch-style Battleground based on the Horde and Alliance's power struggle in Tarren Mill vs. Southshore. This time, "there will be a clearly defined victor."

Gearing Up to Celebrate 10 Years of World of Warcraft [Battle.net]

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News::Codemasters forced to give refunds for Colin McRae Rally on Steam

This article is about the recent announcement that Codemasters is forced to give refunds to fans refunds for Colin McRae Rally on Steam.



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News::Corpse eating ravens will make surviving H1Z1 even more difficult

GameZone: "The birds in H1Z1 can now eat, making your survival in SOE's upcoming post-apocalyptic zombie MMO even harder."



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News::First Hour: The Swapper

Send in the clones! Colin checks out the First Hour of The Swapper on the PS4.



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News::The 12 Best Games on PC

PC gamers have got a pretty great thing going. Interesting, experimental indie games? Yup. The shiniest, most visually impressive versions of big-budget games? Yeah, they get a lot of those, too.

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News::10 Lessons From The Surprising Success Of Guardians of the Galaxy

News::Your friends are the monsters in Crawl, out now on Steam Early Access

After a short delay, Powerhoof's four-person dungeon crawler Crawl has been released on Steam Early Access for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It casts your friends (soon to be enemies) as monsters and traps while they try to take you down and claim your place as the hero. As has been the case before, this new trailer is absolutely worth watching due to the great narration.

There's progression for both the human character and the monsters, and dungeons are procedurally-generated to keep everyone on their toes. Also, multiple players get to control the final boss, which sounds like a riot. "[M]ore monsters, deities, bosses, weapons, items, traps, environments, things to do, and secrets to discover" will be added via updates.

This one looks like it'll be best played with friends, so keep in mind that as it stands, Crawl only supports local multiplayer -- but it's also worth mentioning that there are AI bots. Powerhoof says online multiplayer is a "possibility," though you should hold off for now if that's a must-have.

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News::New study shows that children may benefit from videogames

A new study published in the journal Pediatrics shows that children and young teens aged 10-15 who play a small amount of videogames each day show slightly higher levels of psychosocial adjustment than kids who don't play at all. The children who played an hour or less a day were found to possess higher levels of "life satisfaction" and "prosocial behavior" in addition to lower levels of "externalizing and internalizing problems."

On the other hand, kids that played an excessive amount of time (three or more hours a day) showed the opposite effects. I guess that group would include the 12-year-olds on Xbox Live that told me "my mother sucks [redacted] in hell."

The study showed that while the findings are consistent and significant, that the changes on both spectrums are small and that both the fears and hopes about gaming's influence on children's behavior may be exaggerated. That's good news, right?

Playing a small amount of video games daily may ‘level up’ adjustment in children [PBS]

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News::Project CARS announces its first tracks

Neil writes "Project CARS will have the largest roster of race locations seen in any recent racing game and today, they've announced the first set."



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News::​Yoshi's Real Name Is Actually 'T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas'

An old Nintendo character guide lets us know all sorts of things about Mario and his Mushroom Kingdom friends. Like the fact that Bowser invaded Princess Peach's sovereignity because he can't stand the thought of 'happy fungi.'

Read more...

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News::Why Capcom's latest Resident Evil port may be the most important one of all

Rely on Horror: Today Capcom producers Tatsuya Kitabayashi and Yoshiaki Hirabyashi announced that the Nintendo exclusive Resident Evil remake (often called REmake by fans) is making its way to last and current-gen consoles and PC. This news has brought both a roar of applause and disappointment from fans of the series, the latter seeing the announcement as yet another rehash, remake, "cash grab", or "pointless" port. But the release of REmake on new platforms outside of former Nintendo exclusivity is nothing we should be criticizing; this announcement means that Capcom is listening. They're giving fans what they want whether or not those fans realize it.



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News::Back To Bed. Dream Come True, Or Nightmare? | Cliqist

Julie Morley writes : "A few weeks ago, we previewed Back to Bed to give you an idea of what you could look forward to on the August 6th release date. Now that the games release is upon us its time to head back into this strange dream world to solve some brain exploding puzzles. Now that is out, has it been worth the wait?"



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News::DayZ 0.48 hot fix due 13 August, 0.49 may add gardening

DayZ 0.48/0.49 update news pertaining to melee improvements, the possible addition of horticulture and the ability to rent private server "shards".



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News::Highlight Reel: How To Summon 6 Leeroy Jenkins(es?)

News::Nosgoth, Legacy of Kain spin-off, launches open beta this winter

Psyonix's team-based competitive multiplayer game Nosgoth , which pits humans versus vampires, will be free to play this weekend. The game is currently in closed beta, but by buying a Founder's Pack you can gain access right now.

The free weekend begins Thursday, August 7 at 7 AM EST and ends Monday, August 11 at 3 AM EST.

Those who play during the free weekend will receive double experience points as well as an in-game badge. I wish this were a brand new Legacy of Kain game instead.

Legacy of Kain spin-off Nosgoth launches open beta this winter [Eurogamer]

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News::GamesBeat: Road Not Taken is a brilliant game that will destroy you (review)

This puzzle game is hard as hell and contains surprising emotional and mechanical depth.



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News::Claim your Poké Ball Pattern Vivillon in Pokémon X/Y while you can

I didn't get into collecting all of the uniquely-patterned Vivillons in Pokemon X/Y but I did quite like that one with the Poké Ball design that was given out earlier this year in France. (And I don't think it was a simple case of wanting what you cannot have.)

Thankfully, we'll have our chance: it's being distributed via the Internet now through August 12. This Vivillon is level 12 and knows Stun Spore, Gust, Light Screen, and Struggle Bug.

What's the special occasion for the giveaway? The Pokémon Company has launched a new online store called Pokémon Center that has t-shirts, hats, plush toys, cards, and more for sale.

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