The Staples Center in L.A. is home to the Lakers, Kings, and a number of other teams. It’s also where the championship finals for League of Legends are being held this year. Even though the game plays out on a digital map stored in cyberspace, the organizers behind the event clearly felt the teams needed to be playing on a stage that would properly communicate how epic ten people frantically clicking their mouses in front of computer screens could be.
As a rule, remasters of classic video games are supposed to be clear steps forward in audiovisual quality. However, Bethesda didn't get that memo before launching Skyrim Special Edition. PC and Xbox One owners have noticed that their version of Skyrim is using highly compressed audio that's noticeably worse than in the original release. You're fine if you have the PS4 version (or are willing to modify your PC copy), but it's a rude surprise for everyone else.
Source: Reddit (1), (2)
Good old Halloween never fails to disappoint. The air gets chillier, the atmosphere gets spoopier, and appreciation of the creepies and crawlies shoots straight through the roof.
Every time around this year, we all get an excuse to put on crazy costumes for no reason at all. Yes, there's always the occasional cosplay to dress up for throughout the year but that's to a convention hall with thousands of other like-minded con-goers. But Halloween? Depending on the circumstances, you can go to school as Chie Satonaka, go grocery shopping as Mario, or go to a friend's party as Jotaru Kujo.
Tonight, one team, SK Telecom T1 chases its third-ever League of Legends 2016 World Championship win while another, Samsung Galaxy, shows us if it has any tricks left up its sleeve to prevent that from happening. Matches will begin at approximately 7:30PM EDT, held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. You can watch them live in the stream below. Additionally, there’s an alternate stream with commentating aimed at first-time viewers and newcomers to League of Legends is available here.
Localization is an underappreciated aspect of game development. There is a lot that goes into localization such as redesigning cover-art, censoring parts of games for cultural sensitivity, and recording new voice-overs in the target language. The most important job, however, is translation of the in-game text and especially the dialogue. A good translation will be transparent with natural language, puns, and jokes that work in context, and lack any unfamiliar cultural aspects. A bad translation will make you scratch your head wondering what something means or even unintentionally make you laugh out loud. Even lines that are understandable can feel unnatural and make you do a double-take.
In any case, it takes you out of the game and destroys immersion. This is particularly bad in role-playing games where players want to be engrossed in the world and characters as much as possible. It just so happens most localization is of Japanese games into English, and Japan sure does make a lot of RPGs.
Japanese and English are as close as it gets to having opposite languages. Not only does Japanese use an entirely different writing system, but the grammar structure is nearly backwards with regard to English as well. For example, the sentence "I went to the store to return this bad game" would be structured as "I this bad game return store to went" in Japanese. There are words for things in Japanese that we do not have and vice versa. So many words do not match up with their English translation because there are huge differences in nuance, tone, frequency, politeness, and severity. However, the vast differences between Japanese and English is just one concern localization teams have to deal with.
Game developers thrive on seasonal events, and that's truer than ever this Halloween. It's not just themed skins and game modes, although there are plenty of those -- there are some serious bargains to be had, whether you're a Steam veteran or just getting into virtual reality. Even PlayStation Now has some Halloween goodies. We've rounded up some of the spookier events and sales to make sure you don't miss out.
Anki, the makers of Anki Drive, graduate from robotic cars to full-blown robot buddies with Cozmo. He might be tiny, but he’s hiding some powerful tech behind those baby blue box eyes of his.
You can download a free, ad-supported version of Sonic CD from the App Store for a limited time. That’s according to a tweet from Sonic himself. A $1.99 IAP will remove ads, which apparently were showing up even for people who had already purchased the game after a recent update. This problem now seems to be fixed.
Everyone has been waiting for Blizzard to sponsor a large-scale Overwatch tournament in the mold of League of Legend’s Worlds or Dota 2's The International. So there was some disappointment when the company explained its plans to host a World Cup-style tournament for its new competitive shooter at this year’s BlizzCon.
One of the more hilarious mods for Skyrim was the "Macho Dragon Mod." While this didn't alter any quests or provide new content, it swapped all of the dragons in the game for some deformed Randy "Macho Man" Savage character model and sound clips. It ended up becoming an internet phenomenon
GameSpot had a short talk with the mod's creator, FancyPants, and he mentioned he was happy with the way Microsoft was handling mods for Skyrim. Reportedly having, "very few problems porting," it seems FancyPants is happy to have his work getting out to more gamers.
He also took some time to denounce Sony's limitations on modding. "I have no plans to make any [mods for PS4]. None of the modders I know are planning on making anything, either. I think a lot of players are going to be very disappointed."
Those are some pretty damning words for the PS4 version. I haven't heard anything about performance differences between the two console versions of Skyrim: Special Edition, what with Bethesda deeming it necessary to withhold review copies, but it hasn't had the best track record with regards to games on Sony hardware. The modding issue isn't its fault, but it will more than likely further damn its image with Sony fans.
Skyrim's Macho Man Dragon Mod Coming to Xbox One, But Not PS4 [GameSpot]
If you’ve been playing Skyrim: Special Edition on PC or Xbox One, you might have been a little surprised by what you heard in the game.
A few months ago, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York offered Destructoid the opportunity to travel to Poland for a convention called Poznan Game Arena. It's kind of an unusual proposition in a way. We're used to going to the same places for shows -- Los Angeles, Germany, Japan, etc. Poland just isn't one of those usual suspects.
Still, we got to thinking about who's making games in Poland. CD Projekt Red is here and The Witcher 3 was an unanimous game of the year candidate last year. Techland's here too, and that company's on the upswing with the surprisingly good Dying Light and its new publishing initiative. So is People Can Fly. And Flying Wild Hog. And 11 bit Studios. And CI Games.
The point is, the Polish development scene is a lot more robust than you might think at first. There are a lot of games coming out of this country, and, more importantly, a lot of quality games. In fact, if you wanted to get all nationalistic about it, Poland's rivaling Germany as far as notable developers go. Deutschland's biggest names are probably Crytek, Jager, and Kalypso (although publisher Deep Silver is from Germany too).
However, Poznan Game Arena doesn't necessarily showcase a lot of those mainstays in Polish game development. At least not this year anyway. Overwhelmingly, the highlight of this PGA was the wealth of indies who have impressive wares, they just maybe don't yet have the cachet to earn global attention. Still, we want to highlight a few of those games. Here are some of Destructoid's favorite indie games from Poznan Game Arena 2016.
And then there were three. The PlayStation VR went on sale earlier this month, making it the third big-name tethered VR headset to arrive this year. Though it's less immersive than either the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive that came before it, the PSVR is compelling for an entirely different set of reasons. It's cheaper than the competition, for one, with a starting price of $400.
Secondly, look at all the content available for it! The PSVR launched with 30 compatible games, and Sony promises that number will grow to 50 by year's end. And that includes some major franchises too, including Batman and Resident Evil. Not only are these games people will want to play, but the gear you need to experience them -- a PS4, PlayStation Camera and Sony's "Move" motion controllers -- are already in millions of homes. Equally important, the PSVR is comfortable to wear -- something we haven't been able to say about every headset we've tested. That's the bottom line, but if you're craving a little more, find our full review here.
Square wasn’t pulling punches when they developed their very first M-rated survival horror game, Parasite Eve. In the opening scene, the main character, Aya Brea, attends an opera where the entire audience spontaneously combusts. But what makes Parasite Eve so unique is that it shares more in common with Final Fantasy than it does other horror games.
This weekend is jam-packed. Not only do the 2016 League of Legends World Championships wrap-up later tonight, but with BlizzCon just around the corner, the best and brightest from around the world will be competing the in everything from Overwatch to World of Warcraft: Arena, with group play in many of them taking place this weekend.
Following an E3 tease earlier this year, Minecraft’s “Boss Update” for the Pocket version and Windows 10 has finally arrived. The most exciting aspect of this update has to be the add-on system, which allows players to edit various values in the game to create their own modified Minecraft experience.
It looks like Western fans of Steins;Gate - the well-regarded Visual Novel, anime and Dr. Pepper advert - won't have to wait much longer in order to get their hands on its sequel.
PQube Games have announced that Steins;Gate 0 will be hitting store shelves late on November 25 in Europe and Australia and November 29 in North America for both PlayStation 4 and Vita. There will also be a collector's edition, referred to as the "Amadeus Edition" that will be available from the British import retailer Rice Digital.
In a way, I can't help but find myself to be a little bothered by the timing of this release. After all, this does mean that the North American release date for Steins;Gate 0 will be the same as that of Final Fantasy XV, meaning that anyone with an interest in both titles will likely have to prioritise one game over the other.
Feel free to check out the trailer below:
A programmable Crock-Pot, All-Clad skillets, and the Starship Enterprise lead off Saturday’s best deals.
Mechs vs Minions is League of Legends fanfiction presented in the style of Dungeons & Dragons or Descent, with just a hint of Fireball Island thrown in for good measure. It's a cooperative, programmable, card-wielding board game set in the League universe, starring League characters, but nothing about it feels shoehorned into a tabletop format. This could easily be a standalone game on the shelf at Target, no outside video game connection required.
We’ve read your emails and dug deep into the grave—sorry, the greys—to find the most buried, most frightening stories submitted by you, our dear readers, for this year’s Halloween scary story contest. What we’ve unearthed are 10 of scariest tales of ghosts, demons, stalkers, and murderers that we’ve ever read.
Change is life. It's what keeps things interesting. It's also what keeps the cauldron of commerce at a full boil. And in the technology industry, change is constant. This week, Apple and Microsoft revealed new computers that'll tempt many — particularly folks working in the creative arts — even if they come with eye-watering price tags.
Yesterday, Sony announced that MLB The Show 17 will launch on PS4 next March -- but it won't be coming to the PS3. As the previous year's edition of the sports game was the last first-party title to come to the aging console, this probably means Sony won't put out new content. If so, we've reached the end of the company's 10-year-plan to support the system. Goodnight, sweet prince.
Source: Playstation blog
