News::'Sonic Mania' looks like the 2D sequel fans deserve

Sonic The Hedgehog is more than just a trash-talking Twitter account. To celebrate the franchise's 25 year anniversary, Sega is taking the series back to its 2D roots. Sonic Mania looks like it'll strip away all the extraneous bloat that's barnacled itself to the core gameplay since the Blue Blur's glory days, with a focus on what always worked so well. Namely, going fast, collecting rings and moving from left to right.

Source: Sonic the Hedgehog (Twitter)

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/29Rnghu

News::Deconstructing the legendary dungeons of 'Ocarina of Time'

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of those games that practically everyone has played and regards fondly. The landmark 1998 game was incredibly influential, and when folks put together lists of "best games of all time," it's usually within the top ten. Ocarina also marked the long-running franchise's move from a top-down view to full 3D thanks to the leap in power that the Nintendo 64 provided. But how do its dungeons stack up to previous games in the series? Specifically, A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening? YouTuber Mark Brown answers just that with a smart and thoughtful examination of the game.

Source: Game Maker's Toolkit (YouTube)

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2af6YwY

News::3D-printed 'Pokémon Go' cover aims for you, obscures screen

Catching monsters in Pokémon Go sounds deceptively simple: find a creature, and throw an imaginary ball at it by swiping up on your phone screen. The reality is a lot more frustrating -- if you don't flick your finger in a perfectly straight line, the throw will curve to the side and miss. There are two solutions to this. You could practice, or, you could 3D-print a ridiculous phone-cover that takes away all of the challenge. Jon Clever chose to do the latter.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: My Mini Factory

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2a1qoma

News::'Pokémon Go' has most first-week downloads in App Store history

Despite only being available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand for its first week, Apple has officially confirmed that Pokémon Go had the most downloads in its first week of any in the App Store's history. Considering that the game has launched in over 26 countries since then, including opening in Japan today, it might just keep breaking records.

Source: TechCrunch

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/29ZlA2A

News::TBS is giving 'Overwatch' its own $300,000 tournament

Esports are taking over mainstream broadcast networks as an Overwatch tournament is coming to TBS.

Via: VentureBeat

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2ahkEKR

News::'Splatoon' isn't dead, but it's still saying goodbye

Today at 5am ET, the final Splatfest commenced for players of Nintendo's squid-kid shooter Splatoon. Players were asked to choose one of two teams representing the in-game hosts, Callie and Marie. At the end of the festival, members of the team with the highest score will get a prize, the losing team will get slightly less, and so will end Nintendo's active promotion of the game. It was inevitable, of course, as the game came out over a year ago. But Splatfests were one of the biggest ways for the company to foster community among Splatoon players, and their discontinuation is likely to bring about a sharp decline among active users. It's been a great run, but this is the end of an era for the game.

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2aiRzeZ

News::NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 gives you gaming power on a budget

After debuting the fastest high-end and mid-range video cards ever seen, the GTX 1080 and 1070, we expected a lot from NVIDIA's new lower-tier entry, the $249 GeForce GTX 1060. And the stakes were raised even higher after AMD launched the Radeon RX 480, a $200 GPU that's fast enough to power VR headsets (and manage some decent 1440p gaming). NVIDIA claims the GTX 1060 is even faster than the GTX 980, its premium video card from 2014. That says quite a bit about how far we've come in the GPU world: You no longer have to break the bank for a decent amount of gaming muscle.

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/29Z572u

News::Survival in 'We Happy Few' starts next week

We Happy Few was one of my coworker Jess Conditt's favorite games from E3 this year, and for good reason: its alt-history, drug-and-paranoia fueled take on a dystopia is unlike anything we've ever seen. But how did it all begin? With a question, according to an Xbox Wire post by developer Compulsion Games' Sam Abbott. The team was trying to figure out how to make a bigger game than its first (Contrast, which made its debut with the PlayStation 4) but wanted to keep its staff size from ballooning. That's why Compulsion turned to procedural generation -- akin to No Man's Sky -- for its 1964 English city.

Source: Xbox Wire

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2agptnA

News::'Pokemon Go' launches in Japan under golden arches

Despite being the true home of Pocket Monsters, until today, Japanese fans weren't able to download the smartphone phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. As rumored, Niantic Labs' game launches in Pikachu's homeland with a promotional tie-in with McDonald's (it's already offering Pokemon toys with its kids' meals in anticipation) and the app maker says more sponsored locales and events are on their way.

Ingress, the location-based game that preceded Pokemon Go, ran multiple promotions with companies including McDonald's and SoftBank in Japan -- as well as Jamba Juice in the US. Expect see plenty more sponsored locations in Pokemon Go (well, gotta make some money when the app is free to download), but what exactly do the sponsored locations entail? The good news is that the tie-in doesn't seem to change much at all -- and could even be good news for some players.

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/29YePlQ

News::NVIDIA's new top-end graphics card is the $1,200 Titan X

If you recently bought a $599 NVIDIA GTX 1080 in order to have the fastest rig around, I have bad news. NVIDIA has revealed the latest Titan X, a graphics card with 12GB of GDDR5X memory and 3,584 cores running at 1.53 GHZ, yielding an absurd 11 teraflops of performance. That easily bests the 8.9 teraflops of the GTX 1080, which itself put the last-gen Titan X to shame. You probably won't feel too bad, however, when we tell you that the new card has a price tag of $1,200, double that of its now-second-best sibling.

Source: NVIDIA

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2afRtbf

News::Try passing 'The Turing Test' August 30th on Xbox One

Given video gaming's reliance on artificial intelligence and penchant for sci-fi themes, it's surprising that only now there's a game named after Alan Turing's famous A.I. test. Here we are though, with The Turing Test hitting Xbox One on August 30th. It's also been promised for Steam next month. A post on Xbox Wire makes the game sound an awful lot like Portal, to be honest. It's a first-person puzzler set in a sterile research facility on Jupiter's moon Europa wherein you'll use a gun of sorts to control A.I.-powered machines and "solve puzzles that only a human could solve." That's in addition to other tasks designed to bend your brain.

Source: Xbox Wire

via Engadget RSS Feedhttp://ift.tt/2al2QOo