Jesse Houston, Sean Bender and Robin Mayne founded Phoenix Labs in 2014 after leaving League of Legends studio Riot Games, and they staffed their independent venture with folks from the Mass Effect team and other mainstream franchises. Today, Phoenix Labs revealed its debut game: Dauntless, a cooperative, online action-RPG set to hit PC, for free, in 2017.
A year later, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima has accepted an award at The Game Awards 2016, this time for being an "Industry Icon." His acceptance kicked off this year's show, with a very emotional Geoff Keighley recounting his failed attempts to hand him the winged trophy.
"Last year, I thought I lost everything," he said. "But I didn't lose anything, thanks to all of you."
And thank you, Kojima, for whatever the hell Death Stranding is shaping up to be.
Nintendo took to The Game Awards early to show off The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Part cinematics and part gameplay, we get a look at a trailer called "Life in the Ruins."
There's not much new to say about this, just a lot to marvel. We didn't have any reason to believe differently, but Link's next adventure still seems like it's coming along swimmingly.
At The Game Awards 2016, Randy Pitchford announced that Gearbox Software will start publishing titles by smaller studios under the Gearbox Publishing label.
The first title to be released under this label is the People Can Fly-developed port of 2011's Bulletstorm. Titled Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, this enhanced port will offer 60FPS gameplay on Xbox One, PC and PS4. The latter two platforms will also offer what has been advertised as 4K visuals.
It will also have a playable Duke Nukem as a pre-order bonus.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition will be released on April 7 next year.
Every Rocket League match starts with a kickoff, and the car soccer game was one of the titles to kick off this year's Game Awards. The half hour-long pre-show segment was more full of announcements than you might expect, and developer Psyonix took this opportunity to reveal its next content update.
On December 7, Rocket League takes aerials to a new level by bringing the game to space. A new map called "Starbase ARC," which is a sort of futuristic industrial complex, will release for free. Psyonix calls Starbase ARC octogonal and semi-standard. Most impressively, each goal comes with a laser show.
Punctuating the update is the release of a new car called "Vulcan." If history serves as any indication, this will be priced at the nominal fee of a couple of bucks. The playground's free but the cooler tools will cost you.
Tonight at The Game Awards, a short teaser revealed that Telltale’s next big licensed adventure game will be based on Guardians of the Galaxy. Before I play it, I’m gonna need a security band, a quarnex battery, and that guy’s prosthetic leg.
A year ago, Hideo Kojima was supposed to receive a trophy at The Game Awards for being an industry icon. Due to bullshit from Konami, Kojima couldn’t attend the event. Tonight, things have been set right.
Hideo Kojima revealed a new trailer for his upcoming PS4 game Death Stranding at the Game Awards tonight. It was initially announced at E3 earlier this year.
Tonight at The Game Awards, People Can Fly announced that a remastered edition of their excellent but frequently overlooked shooter Bulletstorm is coming to current-gen consoles and PC next year. It’s called Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition and it’ll be out on April 7, 2017.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition takes the blood, brutality and bone-shattering moves from the original 2011 shooter and beefs it all up on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, due to land on April 7th, 2017. The remastered game features high-resolution textures, remastered audio and smoother frame rates, and it'll run in up to 4K resolution on the PS4 Pro and PC. Full Clip Edition also comes with every piece of Bulletstorm DLC in existence, plus some new content.
It's time for The Game Awards and you can watch the show right here on this page! Games like Uncharted 4, Firewatch and Inside are up for some pretty big accolades, but that's not all that's on tap. Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima is scheduled to accept the Industry Icon Award live onstage (last year his former employer Konami forbade his attendance), for one. And of course, there will be music. Who, specifically? Run the Jewels, to start. Mick Gordon, the guy who penned the Doom score, has been teasing rehearsal footage of "BFG Division" on Twitter all week too. You might want to start stretching those neck muscles right now to ensure you're headbanging safely this evening.
Source: The Game Awards
The 2016 Game Awards start at 9pm ET tonight. There are lots of places to watch: YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, etc. Should be a fun one!
It's December. Normally, I don't like this because December means cold weather and I prefer it to be warm when I do all of my not-going-outside. It's okay this time, though. Without going all hyperbolic "Worst. Year. Ever." internet person on you, I'm kinda ready for 2017. December means we're getting close to that.
December also means that it's time for The Game Awards, the MTV Music Awards of video games. It's a lot of sizzle and flash, marketing and hype. There's still a Most Anticipated Game award, and that says a lot about this show's nature. But, for all the advertising, it's also a sincere look back at the past year in games (and here are all the nominees).
If you plan on watching The Game Awards tonight, do so with us. Click play on that stream and hop in the comments to share your every thought. It starts at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific, but the pre-show is a half-hour earlier. If you're not keen on YouTube, there are plenty more options. The Game Awards is also streaming on Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and from the home screens of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
And, if you can't make it, fear not. We'll be breaking out all the coverage of The Game Awards on the front page. You'll hear about everything that happened one way or another. If you've got time to kill before the show starts, listen to the new episode of Podtoid where we predict all of tonight's winners.
The first PC gaming winter sale to arrive this year is at GOG.com. The DRM-free and proud retailer has dozens of titles on sale with a handful of new lows to boot and matching the lowest-ever prices on titles like The Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition.
For the first 48 hours it's even more intense, with a 100% free copy of Neverwinter Nights Diamond. No strings attached, just a free game for checking out the sale.
The GOG sale runs from now through December 11 next week. Sure it's a winter sale which technically doesn't actually take place during winter months, but who cares you're getting a free game out of it!
Below you'll find our top picks for day one of the sale. A full breakdown of the deals can also be found here.
Top Deals
As part of the recent Steam front page revamp, Valve gave curators an even more prominent spot and added functionality so that they can list games as “not recommended” or provide Steam users with neutral information. Sounds good on paper. Doesn’t really work in practice.
It feels like it's been years since I've last played a Zen Studios pinball game. I mean, my goodness! The list of tables available for Pinball FX2 stretches on and on. Where do you even start at this point?
For as much fun as I've had with that game and Zen's earlier work, I'm no pinball wizard. Those feelings of leaderboard inadequacy had me hesitant to try my hand at Pinball FX2 VR, which is out this week for PlayStation VR and HTC Vive following the Oculus Rift version that launched back in March. In the end, though, I'm glad I went for it. Pinball translates really well to virtual reality.
Nintendo just put a new coat of paint on the My Nintendo website, providing a little bit of Miitomo magic to the whole thing. Instead of clicking on a loose coin to gather it your Mii chases it around, and there's a few extra animations for your avatar like painting and flying around on balloons. It's really cute, and really reflects Nintendo's signature charm. You can also set up a unique User ID for Club Nintendo (find this by clicking the top right icon, then settings, then edit your basic info, and click "User ID" on the left), and enable child accounts.
Yet, There isn't much on the actual content front still. Most of the rewards are still from November, and the only recent addition in the US is a Samus theme, which is basically the only thing the publisher has done to celebrate the Metroid anniversary. This could be a really cool place to chill one day and interact with for worthwhile rewards, but not today, Zurg.
Hopefully the Switch will breathe new life into it.
My Nintendo [Nintendo]
If you missed out on the dozens of discounts Anker was running over Deals Week, or just need to cross a few more people off your shopping list to call it a year, the creator of nearly all of your favorite tech accessories is giving you one last chance to close out the week.
There are understandable complaints that The Division’s expansions are really just new game modes and not actual storyline extensions. But there’s a story in The Division’s Survival mode. I think it’s about me and a guy named Kirk.
Here's a look at Rogue One: Scarif, the fourth and final expansion for Star Wars Battlefront, ahead of its release this Tuesday for season pass holders. As usual, DICE sure knows how to put together a trailer.
This DLC follows the same formula as before, doling out four maps on the tropical planet Scarif, two playable characters (hero Jyn Erso and villain Orson Krennic), the U-wing ship, a pair of blasters, and a blinding, armor-lowering "Sonic Imploder" grenade. There's also the new, multi-stage Infiltration mode with on-foot and in-space combat. If it follows a structure similar to Death Star's Battle Station mode (the one with the Star Destroyer assault and the trench run), that could be good.
It's hard to get a true sense of Scarif based on DICE's vague descriptions of the new maps and mode, and having not seen the Rogue One movie, I don't know these characters all that well. But a chance to play as virtual Ben Mendelsohn? And a breezy beach-side location? Yeah, I'll take it.
We're less than a week away from the December 6th release of the long-awaited Oculus Touch controllers, and it looks like lucky Rift owners will have plenty of reasons to use them. Oculus just announced that they'll be launching with 53 supported titles. That includes existing games like The Climb and Job Simulator, as well as new entries like the magic multiplayer fest The Unspoken and the graffiti simulator Kingspray. Check out our coverage of those games, along with plenty of other intriguing Oculus Touch titles, from the company's developer conference last month.
Source: Oculus
I'm mad. I'm so peeved reading the interview between Capcom Vancouver and GamesIndustry.biz I don't even know where to begin. How about a series recap? Dead Rising was an amazing Xbox 360 exclusive title that came out of nowhere in late 2006 and became an instant classic.
I remember going over to my friends house before I even had a 360 to not only play it, but get all 1000 Achievement points that weekend. The idea was so simple but so fun. Walk around a mall like Dawn of the Dead and use anything and everything to ward off zombies, including boxer shorts and beam swords you unlock in the fun survivor mode (which I didn't get to keep because my game froze upon letting a zombie kill me after spending 14+ consecutive hours getting the 7 Day Survivor Achievement). The best part is the humor they imbued the game with. When so many games try so hard to be so serious all the time, it was refreshing to have something goofy to just mess around in. The humor wasn't in-your-face and obnoxious, but subtle: mall music, silly costumes that showed in cutscenes, the eating animations, and Frank West's quippy one-liners.
Ever wanted to spam your friends’ phones with the same emotes you spam in Twitch chat? Now, you can! Twitch stickers are now available for iOS. Go crazy.
The Game Awards are tonight, so last night the usual crew got together to make some predictions on it. Will Uncharted 4 sweep the show? Will Pokémon Go actually win something despite that it's a piece of garbage? Is Dark Souls III a role-playing game?
These questions and more are addressed in this episode. It's probably better than actually watching The Game Awards.
Of course, we round out the podcast with listener questions, a predictable SATPOTPAQ given the current state of the world, and a Hot Dish wherein the handsome puzzle creator dropped a letter from a 2016 video game title to make a new one. Give it a listen!
Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or download it here.
Tiny Wings is one of the best iPhone games ever. It's a great example of a developer making something that wouldn't make sense on any other platform, and it's a game equally suited to playing quick bursts or for extended sessions as you try to beat your high score. And after more than two years without an update, developer Andreas Illiger has finally released a pretty major update. Tiny Wings is now available for the Apple TV, and the iPhone / iPad version has five new levels.
Via: The Verge
Today on Highlight Reel we have empty oceans, an untranqil Zenyatta, kills, broken physics and much more!
The United States is the gold standard for democracy, also known as a "representative democratic republic." It's why we are the freest country in the world and why we have almost 800 military bases abroad to make sure others are doing democracy right. If they aren't, we can find someone who will for them, like a Yellow Pages or temp agency of democracy. The hundreds of billions spent maintaining these installations is a testament to our philanthropy, so that we may bring our freedoms around the world.
However, our democracy is under attack -- at home. Last week the Washington Post dropped a nuclear bombshell: the Russians flooded us with fake news (or, "propaganda") to elect Donald Trump president. The Post cites a mysterious, newly-established group (it joined Twitter in August) called PropOrNot which has identified 200 news outlets that are Russian plants, unwitting or otherwise. Some of them are even well-respected organizations that have been around for ages!
PropOrNot put these non-mainstream media outlets on "the list." When some in the media argued "the list" smacked of Joseph McCarthy-era paranoid smearing and red-baiting, PropOrNot's "collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds" responded with a now-deleted tweet, "Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the subject - they're so vewwy angwy!!"
So the Washington Post, based on PropOrNot's blacklist, has definitively proven that Russia got Donald Trump elected. Case closed. But what happens next will shock you.
Just one day after the Post's Watergate-sized breakthrough, Hello Games broke months-long radio silence on one of the biggest releases of the year, No Man's Sky. Tellingly, the so-called "Foundation Update" was announced with a short, sparse blog post that had almost no detail. It took another two days before Hello Games could cut a trailer detailing the changes.
The timing here is interesting. If Hello Games was trying to reinvigorate its fan base, why break a long period of non-communication to drop news of a huge update to one of the hugest games of the year on a Friday, the day most companies use to drop bad news they want swept under the rug? Why not wait until you have a post ready that actually details the changes, or the video, which is bound to get more excitement than text?
Could it be that the Foundation announcement was meant to distract from the Post's brave reporting on Russian influence in our supposedly-fair-and-democratic election? As the experts at PropOrNot point out, some of the Russian propaganda arms don't even know it; they're known as "useful idiots." Hello Games might not be taking money directly from Vladimir Putin -- though they definitely might be as well! -- but rather the company is being manipulated in a 12th-deminensionla chess move it isn't even cognizant of.
Gamers represent a large voting bloc. It would make sense for Russia to orchestrate a move to try and distract the bloc given their Manchurian candidate's tenuous hold on the office in light of days-long anti-Trump protests, the near-$7-million raised to fund recounts, and questions over the democratic nature of the Electoral College that gave Trump/Russia the victory, even though Democratic-nominee Hillary Clinton received more than 2.5 million more "votes." And it wouldn't be unprecedented. Russia itself was recently the target of a video-game-based CIA psyop meant to destabilize the country -- Pokemon Go. Maybe that's where they got the idea.
Deadspin Fuck Tweetstorms | The Slot Trump Voters Tell CNN They’re Sure ‘Millions of Illegals Voted’ Because They Saw It on Facebook | Gizmodo Carnival Cruises to Pay $40 Million Fine for Secretly Dumping Shit Water Since 2005 | The Slot What’s the Deal With the Smear Campaign Against Possible DNC Chair Keith Ellison?…
