We debated. We argued. One of us even yelled. After a long night of going through our list of finalists, our editors have finally settled on our winners for the official Best of CES awards. Below is our list of winners for each category, including our Best of the Best and our People's Choice winner too. Congratulations to all our finalists and winners!
Planning on watching this year's UFC and WWE specials on Sony's Live Events Viewer app? Hope you have a PlayStation 4, then -- the company has announced that its killing pay-per-view streaming for PS3 users. After January 10th, the PlayStation 3 version of the Live Events Veiwer will no longer function. On-demand and live content will still be available on the PS4 version of the Live Events, but the app that started it all will be retired. Don't have a PlayStation 4, but have some left over purchases you need to watch? Carve out some time before Tuesday morning and marathon through. Unless, you know, you want to upgrade.
Old school video games are hard. That's what we learned after booting up a NES Classic edition for today's gaming challenge live from the Engadget stage at CES. Feminist Frequency's Carolyn Petit joined me on stage to thoroughly thrash me at games from yesteryear, while her colleague Anita Sarkeesian talked smack from the sidelines. We played Super Mario Bros.3 , Bubble Bobble and Balloon Fight. The challenge was further raised by some temperamental game controllers. Oh the thrill of gaming before a live audience!
It’s the beginning of a new year. For millions around the world, that means creating resolutions they will in no ways keep, costing them potentially thousands of dollars in exercise equipment, diet foods and gym memberships. For games journalists, it means filling the void left by video game PR companies taking an extended holiday with crap that usually only gets a few hundred page views. Crap that's more commonly known as personal Game of the Year lists.
Last year, I wrote how I didn’t care to explain why I loved Her Story so much and instead did a list of games I would have played if I weren’t so fucking lazy. This year, I still don’t want to waste my time and yours with some diatribe about why Inside was the best game of 2016, so instead I’ll write about something we all love: dicks. Pull up a chair, bend over, arch your back, and relax, because I’m about to shove my dick list all up in you.
Pre-order culture may be out of hand, but at least some developers are starting to learn. Square Enix is now offering all of the pre-order DLC for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for free on each platform. This includes character skins, a bonus "mission," some weapon skins, and a few digital novels. Along with this extra content comes a patch on PC that looks to address a few issues.
After weeks of trials and tribulations, I'm excited to announce Engadget's Best of CES winner in the hotly contested coffee table category: Retrobit's Mega Table.
Okay, so I've only seen one coffee table at CES, and I'm also not in charge of our awards. But the Mega Table is pretty great anyway. It's a wooden coffee table with a giant wooden d-pad and action buttons, that can be used to control all manner of games consoles.
The device here is just a prototype, but Retrobit is planning on heading to a crowdfunding site to make it a reality. At an estimated $500, it's not exactly an impulse buy, but I've bought more expensive coffee tables in my time, and its dual-purpose design might make it an interesting talking piece for your games room.
Game mechanics have always come first for me. I love looking at how a game works at a base level and tinkering with what is there. I'm very curious as to what the limitations are, always looking for a way to "cheat" mechanics or use them to my utmost advantage. It's because of this mentality that I've broken my fair share of PAX demos (sorry everyone!).
There were at least four games this year that I would have personally awarded a 10/10 rating if I had reviewed them, just based on mechanics alone! In fact, I did review two of them! This is pretty much my personal GOTY list for 2016, though there are some games that would normally be on here if I were talking about more than just mechanics.
So here's five games that are designed better than just about anything else that came out this year.
There was no doubt Nintendo's miniature NES Classic Edition was going to be a hit, especially around the holiday season. The affordable retro console hit all the right nostalgic notes, but there's a consensus Nintendo missed a trick by omitting any way to add new games to the system beyond the 30 preinstalled titles. Also, it shouldn't be that hard -- the mini NES is just an emulator in a pretty package, after all. Well, leave it up to the internet to do what Nintendo wouldn't. The modding community has successfully cooked up ways to load additional games onto the system, and all you need is a PC and a micro-USB cable.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Reddit (NESClassicmods)
Heroes of the Storm isn't as popular as DOTA 2 or League of Legends, and there's a lot of potential reasons for that. For one, Blizzard was really late into the game, jumping into the fray years after League of Legends had already ensnared most of the MOBA audience into their economy. There's also a lot of mixed messaging and uncertainty when it comes to outside players, who deride it as a "casual" game because it doesn't have mechanics like denying, last-hitting, and an item meta to juggle.
Heroes still has somewhat of an uphill battle as it approaches its second anniversary in June, but Travis McGeathy, Lead Game Designer for Blizzard, is hopeful.
Virtual reality has plenty of hurdles to surpass before it reaches mainstream acceptance, among them is the need to be tethered to a computer for high-quality VR. So it's no surprise that wireless VR tracking is a big focus for the HTC Vive this year. And on top of that, the Vive Tracker will also let developers easily bring just about anything into VR worlds. We had a chance to test out both new devices at CES this year, and while they're in fairly early stages, it's clear they'll fundamentally change the VR landscape this year.
It's another weekend filled with PC game deals as Winter Sale comes to a close at many retailers across the web. In fact, this weekend is your last chance to double stack on some decent savings for upcoming PC titles.
At GMG, we have a 15% off coupon code running until Monday morning. The coupon stacks on select upcoming titles which themselves already have pre-order instant savings. This brings us 30% off or more on Resident Evil 7, Sniper Elite 4, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and South Park: The Fractured But Whole. If you're a fan of any of the series and you're planning on playing near Day 1 - these are excellent deals.
Other noteworthy deal this weekend includes $27 Dark Souls III for PC and $20 Diablo III Battle Chest (which includes Reaper of Soul expansion pack). Don't forget to claim your free Origin copy of Mass Effect 2, and finally Humble Bundle's latest Assassin's Creed bundle is well worth a look.
Coupon code: DEALZON15
Game deals from Dealzon. Sales help support Destructoid.
Destructoid is not your typical video game site.
Now, I know what you're fucking thinking: what the fuck makes Destructoid such a hip and happening spot? Well, other than the fucking fact that this motherfucker right here won't shut the fuck up with his fucking cursing (seriously, it's cool here!), the community here is unlike those you'll find elsewhere... for better or worse. You know, I haven't quite fucking decided that myself.
Any-fucking-who, there's something in this site called "Quickposts," which is essentially Twitter except that it allows 255 characters. Sometimes, these people here like to follow trends set by other users, and out of all the fucking things in the world, some guy decided to post a selfie... which had everyone wanting to post their own selfies!
So, with their permission, I decided to gather as much of them as I could because I feel like this is an excellent opportunity to know who the fuck is hiding behind their avatars. This is also going to double as a compendium of the users here, because let's face it: people come and go, so I fucking figured, we should have some kind of record of all the cool motherfuckers who've been here.
I also ask, if there's any-fucking-one you think should be on this list, to reach out to them and see if it's cool to include them on the list. I mean, fuck, I don't know all of you.
Anyway, let's get started. Listed below are the folks who gave me their permission to include on the list, as well as the date they joined the site, a photo of their current avatar (and, when applicable, a photo of themselves), and finally, a quote they chose. Everyone will be listed alphabetically, just to make things fair. Except me. Because, fuck you, I put in the work, this is my compendium, so I get first dibs, fuckers!
From a 265-person show in 2002, MAGFest has blossomed into near uncontrollable levels. Last year the convention runners reported roughly 20,000 were in attendance, but this year, 25,000 registrants are expected to attend. That's a massive amount of growth for what is essentially a small indie outfit -- and they're expanding into multiple conventions to meet demand.
It helps then, that the con has been situated at the Gaylord National Harbor Convention Center on the brink of Maryland, DC, and Virginia, for the past several years now. It's a massive facility that's just starting to see its breaking point -- as evidenced by the fact that hotel rooms sold out months ago, mere minutes after being announced.
But the floor space is perfectly suited to hold everyone, and with at least six big panel rooms, multiple warehouses for the marketplace, arcade, and indie gaming expo, and tons of small little hamlets to sneak into (like the wonderful retro computer lab with OG equipment), there's plenty to do.
When Netflix isn't commissioning award-winning programming and movies, some members of its team dedicate some of their time to building fun little projects. We've already The Switch, a Netflix and Chill button that can automatically dim the lights, activate your phone's Do Not Disturb feature and prepare Netflix for the streaming ahead, but its latest proposition isn't about watching what it has to offer, it's all about gaming. Netflix Infinite Runner, as the name suggests, is an endless running game that features the most popular characters from four popular original shows: Narcos, Marco Polo, Orange is the New Black and Stranger Things.
Source: Netflix Infinite Runner
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.
CES 2017 is in full swing, and we're ready to hand out some hardware. Find out how you can participate in our Best of CES 2017 awards, and catch up on some of the action from yesterday's Engadget live stream. The Saturday stage schedule includes Geohot, Aisha Tyler and more.
Arguably, one of the best things about Valve's Steam Controller is its software component -- an interface that allows user to assign any button of their controller to a myriad of keyboard functions. Its a feature that lets gamers make any PC game playable by controller -- even if it was only designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard. The interface is so good, Valve enabled it for PlayStation 4 controllers earlier this year. Now they're enabling it for pretty much everything else: the latest version of Steam's beta channel will let you fully customize the Xbox 360 gamepad, the Xbox One controller and any other input device that uses the Xinput standard.
Source: Valve
