Microsoft is following Sony's lead and temporarily dropping the price on the Xbox One for the holiday season. Now through Christmas Eve you can save $50 on all One and One S bundles, which could make grabbing another game or a spare controller a little bit easier on the wallet. Hell, even if you aren't looking for a game console specifically, the Xbox One S makes for an incredibly solid UHD Blu-ray player. A post on Xbox Wire says that the deals are available at places like Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Microsoft Stores and Walmart's website, so maybe call ahead before you sally forth debit card in hand.
If you both have a state-of-the-art surround sound setup and are in the Xbox One Preview Program, this week should sound pretty great. That's because the update adding support for Dolby Atmos is rolling out to the Xbox One and Xbox One S, according to Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb. It's via Bitstream pass-through and was originally promised back in October. It isn't clear when this will make its way to everyone's console, however, so your dreams of marrying next-gen audio with your video format of choice might take a bit longer to materialize.
Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater creator The Behemoth has been testing its upcoming weird-as-heck turn-based strategy game, Pit People, with a closed beta. Try it yet?
If not, the floodgates will open soon enough. There's a Steam Early Access and Xbox One Game Preview launch planned for January 13, 2017. Here's a bit about the current state of development:
"The Pit People Early Access experience will include a sizeable chunk of the Story mission, plus access to several world maps (yes, there are more than one!), quests, Unfair Challenge against the AI, and Versus mode. The game can be experienced as a single player or two-player cooperative mode. Additionally, versus can be played with up to 4 people in 2v2. All multiplayer modes can be played locally or online!
We'll be continuing development throughout Early Access which means things like more quests, collectible items, story missions, world maps and other polish will be worked on."
I've played Pit People at a couple expos over the years (remember when it was just "Game 4"?), and it has proven itself delightfully mad thanks to its out-there character designs and crazed narrator.
Which game(s) do you use to demo virtual reality to friends and family who aren't typically into gaming? Job Simulator and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes have been two of my go-to titles. They're good, silly fun and are both very much social experiences whether you're playing or just watching.
The studio behind VR adventure The Assembly, nDreams, is back with another release. This one is an all-ages "escapism experience" called Perfect. It's pretty much what that sounds like -- you're chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool in scenic environments -- but, crucially, you can listen to music.
Bruce Wayne (Batman) has gotten himself into quite the predicament this time. That shouldn't be much of a surprise because, literally, every Batman story is about him getting into quite the predicament. Chalk holds in Telltale's adaption.
The finale releases tomorrow and it features a video game locale that we're used to. Arkham Asylum is the setting and all of its prisoners are mighty pissed at the Batman. There will probably be less freeflow combat and more weighty dialogue choices.
How Batman resolves this conflict will likely be more the overarching question than will he resolve it. Batman comes through clutch time and time again.
Telltale's The Walking Dead picks back up with another season, A New Frontier, next week.
As much as I prefer the old wait-and-see approach for episodic games, the fact that this season will debut with two episodes -- parts I and II of "Ties that Bind" -- has me more open to getting in straight away. That, and this effective trailer. I am sufficiently intrigued, okay? You got me!
"Players new to the series will be able to start a story that is tailored to this new beginning," says Telltale. "Players continuing onward from prior seasons will have multiple options for quickly configuring their tailored backstory, or importing past save files from various platforms."
A New Frontier starts on December 20 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, and Android.
[The Kid woke up with some pep in his step. It's the day he had circled on his calendar, the day he patiently waited for. The goods were free and the goods were good. You gotta cling to the little victories because the big victories might never come. He knew the world could fall apart at anytime, but for just one moment The Kid felt like everything was coming up roses.]
It's probably not the game you have your eye on in late 2016, but it's a nice stocking stuffer for the end of the year. Supergiant Games is releasing Bastion on Xbox One, a gussied-up version that includes 1080p visuals and the Stranger's Dream add-on. It sells for $14.99.
However -- and this is the part most of you will want to pay attention to -- it's free for a limited time for anyone who owns Bastion on Xbox 360. If that applies to you, just hit this link anytime in December to claim your freebie. The offer expires on January 1.
After all these years and cancellation allegations out the wazoo, you can finally buy and play The Last Guardian.
You can watch this 3D chalk art too, which cements the fact that Trico looks even more like Falcor than we give him credit for. Speaking of, you know how you sometimes go through hours-long Wikipedia kicks? I did that for Neverending Story the other day, comparing and contrasting the plot of the book and the first two films (which while truncated, are the book).
Where was I going with this? Oh, Trico is a little more adorable than Falcor, who kind of scared me as a kid.
The story of Doom 4 is one that has mostly not been told yet. For years, id Software toiled away at the next Doom game while simultaneously working on Rage. Eventually, that project was scrapped and another (2016's Doom) was started. We never got much information about what went wrong with Doom 4.
New details come to light today, courtesy of the video game documentary series No Clip (the segment starts at 12:22). Designer Kevin Cloud, the person responsible for many of Doom 4's direction decisions, admitted that it ended up feeling too much like a Call of Duty game. "We had explored a direction and got to a certain point where we felt like this wasn't really capturing what we felt like was going to be a strong Doom and what the fans would want from us," he commented.
Producer Marty Stratton elaborated by saying "[It was] a lot more cinematic, a lot more story to it. There were a lot more characters around you that you were with throughout the course of the gameplay." He continued "It was totally new. You were taking cover and popping up and shooting enemies. The demons looked a lot different. It took a while to get into actually fighting demons. You were kind of fighting a lot more zombie-type creatures early in the game."
In hindsight, Cloud said that it wasn't the right approach to a Doom game, but that his decisions were an attempt to get more connection to the world. It was an angle that looked at the global impact of what was happening and tried to tell the stories of many people. Creative director Hugo Martin smartly summed up why it didn't work by offering "Doom is about one guy involved in big things and Doom 4 was more about the big things."
The end result is that Doom 4 didn't feel like Doom. Both id and parent company Zenimax agreed that it should be ditched in favor of trying again. That's a tough business call to make when you consider that actually releasing a game is the only way to make money. We'll probably never know whether redoing all that work for this year's Doom ended up making financial sense. But, it's undoubtedly the option that kept Doom as a viable franchise for the foreseeable future.
In 2015, Microsoft's sales pitch heading into the holiday season was "The greatest games lineup in Xbox history." It felt sort of hollow at the time, like those games were okay but that the best was still around the corner.
As it turns out, that tagline would have been better saved for 2016. This year has seen a satisfying harmony of Xbox exclusives, big multi-platform games, and outstanding indie titles. If this wasn't the greatest lineup (yet), it was at least the most well-rounded.
That made it tough to sort through and come up with a (somewhat) manageable list of the best of the best. A little bit of everything's represented, a little bit that suits everyone's tastes. They may come from wildly different backgrounds, but there's one common thread -- they're the finest Xbox has to offer this year.
Here are the nominees for Destructoid's Best Xbox One Game of 2016:
The White House is hosting its first ever gaming live stream right now (watch below), the "White House Competitive Gaming Event." The four-hour Twitch stream is meant to "promote health coverage enrollment," possibly through a live case of gaming-induced deep vein thrombosis.
But why are beanie-wearing millenials playing esports in the White House, and so soon after the CIA -- an incredibly trustworthy institution with no history of installing right-wing leaders in foreign nations across the globe -- has intimated, albeit with no evidence, that Russia got Donald Trump elected?
It's convenient that this is the second time in as many weeks a big gaming event has been used to distract from Russian meddling in United States politics -- remember that sudden No Man's Sky update? And while video games might be as American as baseball and apple pie today, a closer inspection at the origins of the medium might prove shocking:
Just because these gaming youths look sweet, it doesn't mean they're not part of a Russian plot to undermine everything you believe in, including the fact that stemless wine glasses are stupid. Either go full stem hoity-toity, or just use a regular glass that isn't so thin it will shatter in your hand.
As mentioned by Sony last week, the PlayStation 4 Slim is being discounted back down to $249.99 until Christmas Eve at major participating retailers. But if you're big-box retailer X, how can you sway gift buyers from retailer Y?
Enter discounts and bonuses for the PlayStation 4 Slim bundles. As of writing, we're spotting three great PS4 Slim deals that are worthy of Black Friday sale price. There's even a PS4 Pro deal available at GameStop on the exclusive Final Fantasy XV bundle.
I still can't believe that the Assassin's Creed film attracted so much talent. I mean it's basically Macbeth 2.0, but with flashy capes instead of unwashed bloody hands. Oh, and Michael K. Williams and Jeremy Irons are just kind of...in it (plus bonus Brendan Gleeson!). You can catch up for yourself with the "final" trailer below.
Did this release catch anyone off guard? I feel like we heard a lot about it out of the gate, but for the last few months it's basically been radio silence. Clocking in at an estimated budget of $130-200 million, this needs to make serious bank to make its money back (roughly double, accounting for marketing). I'm wondering if it flops, if Ubisoft won't try to incorporate it into Uplay as a bonus or something.
The first (of possibly many) Assassin's Creed films is out on December 21.
There's no such thing as an "overnight success." Sure, some folks get lucky with a snappy catchphrase or a $30 Chewbacca mask and they experience a wave of sudden, unplanned popularity, but generally, people don't achieve their dreams over the course of a single evening.
Rich Siegel is living proof of this myth. He's an independent game developer who's been quietly working on his dream title, EarthNight, for years. It's a beautiful, hand-painted platformer about the dragon apocalypse. Players careen across the backs of massive, snake-like dragons as they soar high above the planet, all while an original chiptune soundtrack pounds away in the background.
EarthNight has received some scattered press, but it's not a household name. When it finally lands on PlayStation 4 and PC, it will probably be a surprise to most people; another indie game in a sea of new releases.
However, there's something special about EarthNight. It has all the trappings of a sleeper hit: It's gorgeous, unique and whimsical, and it feels fresh even as it embodies the nostalgia of classic platformers. It has built-in Twitch streaming capabilities, it's a blast to watch and it features permadeath, which means once players die, they have to start the entire game over. EarthNight inherently caters to competitive people and repeat plays. If any indie game is going to be an "overnight success" in 2017, this is it.
Winter has come and so have new PC game winter sales. If you don't want to wait around for Steam's eventual sale, GMG has started its event early and, as usual, filled it with compelling deals (most of which will probably be cheaper than Steam's upcoming discounts due to a stacking coupon).
The sale is running for a fairly long duration through a three-week period (no joke), though most of the goodies will only be around for the first two weeks. Our top pick so far is the historic low price on Civilization VI Digital Deluxe Edition for $55.61 (standard is at $41.66, which isn't bad too); other good picks include Kerbal Space Program for only $21.59 and also another new low price on the Valve Complete Pack for only $17.
The pack, of course, comes with every noteworthy Valve PC title under the sun and makes for a great addition for someone new to PC gaming. Have a little sibling building their Steam library? Why not introduce them early with disappointment to the number "3?"
If you didn't buy Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare yet, I understand. Not only did it come out shortly after the arguably superior Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2, but it came out in the same year as Doom and Overwatch, two outstanding and obvious game-of-the-year contenders that you're probably still playing. Hell, if I played shooters, I'd much rather spend my time with something like Overwatch given Blizzard's tendency to support its games for years at a time.
If you haven't dropped a couple of Andrew Jacksons on Infinite Warfare yet, Activision is letting you try is out for free this week. From December 15 through December 20, you'll have access to the campaign, online multiplayer, and zombies mode.
The free trial will be available for both Xbox One and PS4, and any progress you make in the game can be carried over if you decide to buy. The download for the trial is 60GB and Modern Warfare Remastered is not included.
This time of year, I tend to have a mostly finalized list of my personal favorite games in mind. I just instinctively know what belongs where. Worst case, there might be a tie or two left to break or a few titles in need of a refresher before the deadline. Not this year. Not this year at all.
For the best-of-2016 vote, I'm straight up panicking. But it's a good kind of panic.
Even if I'm looking at multi-platform releases, this year was stacked, and the voting only gets more complicated (and heated) from there. On the exclusive front, Sony made out quite well just between Uncharted 4 and The Last Guardian. If there was one thing I needed more of this year, it was time.
Here are the nominees for Destructoid's Best PS4 Game of 2016:
It might be an exciting week for Pokemon Go. Operative word here is "might," because you never know when Niantic might push back any number of cool features into the nether.
In addition to the new Pokemon that debut today, the developer has confirmed that the remixed "nearby" feature has been rolled out worldwide. For those of you who haven't been following along, the game actually launched with a decent nearby feature, but the mechanic was quickly pulled after playing its part in constantly crashing the game for days on end.
To counter the removal of a key feature, fans created their own side apps to augment Go, but Niantic attempted to ban those and ban everyone who used them. It's been nearly six months, and the new nearby concept still isn't' as strong as it was at launch. I'm hoping the old "feet/distance" tracker returns instead of this "it's near a PokeStop" nonsense.
It should be noted that these sales are only taken from the UK release and that they do not include digital copies. I don't believe that the digital numbers would increase the sales position of The Last Guardian, but it could mean good things for the game. Hopefully this will show Sony that sticking to promises and taking risks pays off, as most publishers would have cancelled this title a long time ago.
I know mobile games can be addicting, but this story is a bit ridiculous. Kevin Lee Co, 45, from Sacramento, California allegedly went on a spending spree for the mobile game Game of War, accruing around $1 million of charges after evidently stealing from his employer (a Caterpillar affiliated company named Holt). His scheme supposedly started in May of 2008 and continued well into 2015. The IRS was investigating his activities, so he must have slipped up somewhere along the line.
Kevin was in charge of the accounting department at Holt and had used the company credit cards to buy things like expensive cars, plastic surgery, NFL season tickets and Game of War microtransactions. Instead of trying to fight any of the accusations, the man has pleaded guilty to the charges of wire fraud and money laundering. Both carry a minimum of 20 years jail time, but it looks like his attorney is seeking a lesser charge through a plea deal. All I can say is good luck with that.
I'm always amazed to read the insane lengths people will go to spend money on mobile games. Maybe because I grew up in the NES era where games kicked the crap out of me, but I never understood trying to buy your way to victory. Isn't the entire point of a video game to challenge some part of your skill? Sure, the medium has changed and we can now play "walking simulators," but those don't ask for a dollar every time you move your foot.
Darksiders was one of the last generation's hidden gems, a dark, beautifully designed pastiche of several other action-adventure titles. Planned as a four-part series, the franchise only got as far as #Darksiders2 before publisher THQ declared bankruptcy in 2011, and its intellectual properties were sold off piece by piece. Most people who've played Darksiders were probably disappointed that THQ fell apart before the planned quadrilogy could be completed, as the two games we got were both highly entertaining, enjoyable action titles.
Fortunately, the company that purchased the rights to Darksiders, Nordic Games, seems to be interested in keeping the franchise alive. After purchasing the bulk of THQ's IP, it rebranded its company as THQ Nordic earlier this year. Darksiders: Warmastered Edition is the first release under this new branding, and it's a great way to start things off.
Sure, you can already take steps to keep your Twitch chat friendly, but it's a lot of work if you don't have a team of moderators. Do you really want to watch conversations like a hawk in case someone gets around your meticulously crafted filters? You might not have to after today. Twitch is introducing an AutoMod feature that uses a mix of machine learning and natural language processing to keep "inappropriate content" out of your stream chats. It not only screens for offensive language, but can spot attempts to dodge your filters through clever uses of characters and emoji. You can even set a general filtering level to determine just how profane you'd like chat to be.
Joining Battlefield 1 in the "we made a PS4 Pro patch that broke shit" club, World of Final Fantasy is now getting a PS4 Pro patch in Japan that fixes a "blurry screen bug" while using a 2K monitor.
Square Enix has revealed that in early January, World of Final Fantasy will release a 1.02 patch, which will add in a theater mode, PS Vita voiceover check, notifications for certain quests, and that aforementioned Pro fix. While the issue is wildly specific in that it only impacts certain types of screens (much like the similar XV bug), it just goes to show how messy this TV generation is.
It's not even necessarily the game industry, but tech itself. We have TVs that are 4K but not HDR, say they are 120hz but are actually "MotionFlow 60hz," and so on. The average consumer has no clue what to buy, and with hundreds of different brands, models, and combinations of 4K sets, developers are struggling to code for all of them.
Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are both pretty solid games. What wasn't solid was their conversion to current-gen consoles with the Return to Arkham port being pretty crappy on launch. While patches have fixed a majority of the issues, it looks like PS4 Pro users will finally be getting the definitive console version of these games.
The 1.02 patch, which actually released last Friday, has stealth Pro support that looks to add stability improvements along with providing a more consistent framerate. That the original port doesn't run at a consistent framerate is beyond me, but this patch should be able to achieve that goal. Some issue called "intermittent crashing" has also been addressed.
As for the visual changes, nothing has been stated. One user on NeoGAF is claiming that Asylum has seen a resolution bump and runs a lot closer to 60 FPS, while someone on Reddit is claiming that City is markedly worse. So much for stabilizing framerates; if only the game had options like Rise of the Tomb Raider.
I don't have this collection or a PS4 Pro to test for myself, but I'm sure that with these posts getting passed around, someone with the right equipment will find us an answer. As for previous games that ran poorly on the Pro, developers have been making a lot of progress with optimizing their games. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is actually fairly consistent on the Pro and The Last of Us just received another patch to smooth out the 4K mode (but then it downgraded the 1080p mode). Hopefully Return to Arkham doesn't stay compromised for long.
Dropbox has long said that it wants to be available on whatever platforms people use to get things done. That's why it has done so much to integrate with Microsoft Officeover the years, for example. But the latest place you'll find Dropbox is nonetheless unexpected: The company just launched an app for the Xbox One.
If you grew up in North America during the early 1990s, there's probably one color you associate with Nintendo: Purple. The SNES had a distinctly violet tinge in the region, while European and Japanese customers were treated to a grey, slightly more curvaceous model (the controller had multi-colored face buttons too.) If the purple model has a special place in your heart, you might be interested in the Hyper Clack Tactile Mechanical Keyboard by Kyperkin. It costs $99.99 and comes with Gaote Blue switches, which should suit serious but not too serious gamers and writers.
