Sunday, May 28, 2017

News:: The Red Hood shows off all his toys in his reveal trailer

When you're working with a major franchise like Batman, I'm sure the creative process is difficult. Full of twists and turns, strong artistic visions running up against the friction of marketing committees, a constant struggle of give and take, back and forth. Even so, I can't help but think the pitch and development process for the Red Hood (AKA, Jason Todd, AKA, dead Robin) went something like this -

“So what if Batman shot people and had a cool jacket?”

“Print it.”

But you know what, turns out a shooty Batman is a cool jacket is pretty alright. The design certainly works in the world of Injustice. As you can see in the reveal trailer, Red Hood's style of shooting first, asking questions, and shooting again is right at home on the mean streets of a post-regime Gotham. 

The Red Hood shows off all his toys in his reveal trailer screenshot

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News:: 'Rime' creators will remove anti-tampering code if it's cracked

Game studios that use digital rights management (DRM) tools tend to defend it to the death, even after it's been cracked. It prevents 'casual' piracy and cheating, they sometimes argue. However, Rime developer Tequila Works is taking a decidedly different approach. It claims that it'll remove Denuvo, the anti-tampering/DRM system on the Windows version of Rime, if someone cracks its island puzzle title. This is an odd promise to make, especially since it amounts to an inadvertent dare -- find a way to break in and the developers will eliminate the need for that crack.

Via: Polygon

Source: Steam Community



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News:: Little Witch Academia game coming to the PS4

Little Witch Academia is a name I keep seeing pop up on my Twitter feed as an example of an enjoyable anime available on Netflix. It's on my list of things to watch once I actually restart my subscription, something I should probably do sooner than later now that a video game adaptation in the works.

Bandai Namco announced today it will release a Little Witch Academia game in Japan later this year. Titled Little Witch Academia: Toki no Mahō to Nana Fushigi, or Little Witch Academia: The Magic of Time and the Seven Wonders, the PlayStation 4 game will feature an original story about Akko and company searching for the titular Seven Wonders in the Luna Nova Magical Academy. 

Little Witch Academia game coming to the PS4 screenshot

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News:: Nintendo might not be done boosting Switch production

It's no secret that Nintendo is facing a ton of demand for the Switch, to the point where it reportedly doubled production to keep up. Even that figure might be a tad conservative, however. The Financial Times' supply chain sources claim that Nintendo has hiked its Switch production to 18 million for its current fiscal year (which ends in March 2018), up 2 million from the Wall Street Journal's figures. Why? Allegedly, it's to prevent "customer tantrums" during the holidays -- Nintendo doesn't want to ship Super Mario Odyssey in November with no systems available to play it.

Via: The Verge

Source: Financial Times



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News:: Clearance sale on Legion Y710 Cube gaming desktop for Memorial Day

Buried deep beneath their Memorial Day sales on Lenovo's website are two very decent gaming desktop deals that aren't highly advertised (heck one of them is a $300 off coupon not even listed on their site). Lenovo is clearing out their "IdeaCentre" Y710 Cube small form-factor gaming desktop at very aggressive pricing.

Lenovo Legion/IdeaCentre Y710 Cube Desktop Deals

For those unaware, for the Y710 the IdeaCentre branding has been upgraded to "Legion" and the Y710 is essentially last year's 6th Gen Skylake models, whereas the Legion Y720 is this year's 7th Gen Kaby Lake models. Still with us so far?

So far, the Legion Y720 are quite overpriced in our opinion, but the clearance price on the Y710 should really be on the radar for any gamers looking into a prebuilt desktop. In this sale, you'll find a Y710 Cube desktop with a Core i5-6400, a 1TB hard drive with 128GB SSD combo, and a high-end GeForce GTX 1070 8GB for only $839 after a big $560 price cut (you can argue Lenovo's original list price was on the high-side).

While the Core i5-6400 is a bit on the meh side, the ~$350 priced GTX 1070 is basically 41% of the system cost. As of writing, you'll be very hard-pressed to find pre-built systems with a GTX 1070 for under the $900 price point. Even building one yourself with similar specs and components will run you about $970.

Next to the $839 system with the Core i5-6400 and GTX 1070 is an aggressively priced $699 system that includes a Core i7-6700 with a Radeon RX 460. The strange pairing of a high-end CPU with a lower-mid-range GPU confound us, but that's clearance sale for you. For the Core i7 system, you're looking at about $855 in a similar configuration - though note that the RX 460 is essentially out of production so you're not exactly getting a good price on a 4GB model. 

With that, we think it's a better idea to go with the $839 GTX 1070 system and upgrade the CPU in the future, versus going with the $699 RX 460 system and upgrading the GPU in the future.

Similar Config to Y710 Cube with GTX 1070

  • Core i5-6400 - $178
  • CRYORIG CPU Cooler - $35
  • Gigabyte H170 Micro ATX LGA1151 Mobo - $80
  • Crucial 8GB DDR4-2133 RAM - $55
  • Seagate 1TB HDD - $46
  • Adata 128GB SSD - $53
  • Zotac GTX 1070 8GB - $334
  • Thermaltake Micro ATX Mini Tower - $38 (after rebate)
  • EVGA 450W PSU - $22 (after rebate)
  • Windows 10 OEM - $89 (after rebate)
  • Basic Gaming Keyboard/Mouse - $38
  • Total: $968

Like with the Alienware Aurora we priced out recently, most of the cost ends up being the copy of Windows 10 you have to acquire on a new system build. If you can build a new system without needing to invest into a new OS, then we're looking at a more comparable price range.

No known expiration date exit on the Y710 Cube with the GTX 1070, while the $699 model has a coupon expiration of June 2nd next week. We're assuming the $839 model will run through Memorial Day at the very least, but with a clearance sale - it's probably while supplies last.

Deals from Dealzon. Sales help support Destructoid.

Clearance sale on Legion Y710 Cube gaming desktop for Memorial Day screenshot

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News:: USB-powered Sega Nomad gives you near-endless game time

Sega's Genesis Nomad was always something of a compromise (it was running 16-bit console games on mid-1990s handheld tech), but the battery life was a particularly sore point: it took six AA batteries just to get 3 hours of play time. Wouldn't it be nice if you could use modern hardware to play without constant (and sometimes expensive) battery swaps? The Sega Holic (aka Catch22 on NeoGAF) thinks so. He just teased a homebrew Nomad modification that lets the portable system run on USB power. You could play for hours on end with the same external battery you use for your phone, or rely on your laptop's power to keep playing in between meetings.

Source: The Sega Holic (YouTube), NeoGAF



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News:: Playing Hooky: A Master Class

My passion for playing hooky stretches began in early childhood, when I realized how much more manageable it made the ceaseless mundanity of everyday life. Both of my parents had full-time day jobs, so taking time away from school was as simple as warming up my Very Sick Boy voice, and placing a phone call to their offices. Before long I was putting more effort into evading responsibilities than pursuing them, and I had the grades to prove it.

For what noble cause did I torpedo my reputation amongst my teachers and fellow students? Those sweet bits and bytes, baby--videogames! Why go to geography class, when every copy of A Link to the Past came bundled with a highly educational map of Hyrule? Who needed math homework when Final Fantasy II was chock-full of stimulating numbers and statistics? Once my peers grew to expect this behavior, returning to class would often trigger inquiries of what game had come out that week.


Edumacation in Action!

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was the catalyst for the first time I pushed my luck a bit too far; its difficulty impeded my progress over the weekend of release, and Monday came all too swiftly. So instead of returning to school with the bluest of morph balls, I found myself stricken with a stomach bug of mysterious origins for the duration of the game’s rental period. The obtuse, smothering atmosphere of Dark Aether was even more tense, combined with the ever-looming threat of my mother bursting into the room to check on me.

Though this week-long absence raised a few eyebrows amongst my various overlords, it alone did not draw the hammer of judgment. The release of WarioWare: Touched! the very next month, however, was the straw that broke the camel’s back; the coinciding recurrence of my supposed gastrointestinal woes proved all too suspicious. I still spent release day immersing myself in the wonderful world of Diamond City, but from the confines of a pediatric waiting room. The jig was truly up when Dr. Loudmouth’s probe into my guts failed to return compelling evidence of illness


Pictured: The Worst Feeling in the World

Once my mother’s resulting rage subsided, she and I eventually came to a compromise: she would allow me to skip when desperately in need of recuperation from the stress of school, so long as I was honest and careful. She made me understand that overindulgence had the potential to land both of us in hot water.

Not until Twilight Princess in 2006 would another illness strike simultaneously with the release of a game, but this time with a twist of legitimacy. Since Thanksgiving Break was the same week, I needed not cry wolf to get extra time alone with Midna. Instead, I spent the holiday in the hospital, bed-bound by a bizarre inner ear infection that rendered the real world more treacherously disorienting than the Twilight Realm. Through the power of exaggeration, I ensured that my symptoms persisted just long enough to get in extra time with my brand-new Wii once I returned home.


Speaking Words of Wisdom

The moderation learned from these tribulations has proven quite handy in my adult life; with no mother to defend me from write-ups at work, I’ve reigned these impulses in to avoid termination. Rather than using sick days to carve whole weeks from the calendar, I now deploy them in close proximity to weekends or paid vacation days for maximum effect. Persona 5 has most recently stolen my heart away from the office; there’s a special kind of satisfaction to be gained from foregoing pencil-pushing to play a game themed around the righteousness of delinquency.

While I would caution others against dabbling too much in this delicate art, I do honestly believe that a lot of good can come from adding a healthy dose of flakiness to one’s life. Those journeying down passionless career paths could particularly benefit from spending less time under their bosses’ thumbs, to focus on things that truly matter to them.

At the end of the day it all amounts to data on a computer somewhere, so it might as well be on your own.

Playing Hooky: A Master Class screenshot

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News:: What did you think of the ARMS Global Testpunch?

Nintendo certainly knows how to market a game. While it could have gone the easy route and just provided a simple demo for both Splatoon 2 and ARMS, it decided on stress testing its servers with limited time slots to get as much traffic as possible on either game at one time. That way, they can really nail down the online for when these games eventually launch. In addition to working as a sort of server beta, these demos have also given many people their first shot at upcoming Switch titles. I fall into that category with ARMS.

While I originally didn't care much for the idea of the game, that last Nintendo Direct kind of had me on board. ARMS definitely had that special Nintendo polish and it looked like a great expansion of the motion control ideas that the company started in the Wii era. I was pretty eager to jump on the Global Testpunch and see how it held up. Sadly, I didn't see much that gave me confidence in the long-term prospects of this game from the demo.

For starters, I don't care what anyone says, but the motion controls in ARMS are not better than regular controls. They certainly aren't horrible and they definitely make you feel like you're in the action, but they do not work as accurately or as fast as concrete button presses. Even just moving your character is slower with motion controls, since for some odd reason you need to tilt both Joy-Con to move. When you play with a more traditional layout (on the Joy-Con, with a single Joy-Con or with the Pro Controller), you can just press the joystick and move instantly; there is no lag time between tilting or the discrepancy of not tilting both controllers.

Then there is the seeming lack of depth to the combat. Maybe this came down to the competition pool of the demo, but I didn't see a whole lot to the gameplay that made me really think about what I was doing. You just flail your punches with a barely noticeable curve and dodge attacks like a slower-paced Dark Souls. The game works with traditional fighting game logic of grabs being able to thwart blocks, but almost everyone didn't seem to understand that. It didn't progress as the weekend went on, either. You can basically grab your way to victory in nearly every match.

I also had a seven-game win streak when I first tried the demo. I'm not trying to brag, but I shouldn't be stomping out all competition on my first time trying a game. I'm sure that, with some time, strategies might develop and I eventually will get left behind, but I can only theorize about that from the small bit that I've played. I don't see many people sticking around with how simplistic it is.

Maybe if the demo mixed things up more often, but I barely played the other modes that are available. I got to try out volleyball a bit, but that is so shallow and quick that it doesn't maintain my interest for long. The game also utilizes a constant lock-on, so you are always facing something (be it an opponent or the volleyball, itself), which then becomes a hassle in three- or four-player battles where you're trying to switch targets and aren't exactly sure who you'll end up on.

While I like Splatoon well enough, I found the single-player to be a lot more inventive than the multiplayer. There were more subtle ways that Splatoon subverted traditional shooter logic (like changing the colors away from Red, which has an inherent advantage, and Blue, a subconscious disadvantage), but that game really shined when it was just you against the devious puzzles that Nintendo came up with. It felt like an evolution of Mario Galaxy, even if it was a more traditional game.

That being said, I can definitely notice the difference in character feel within ARMS. I only managed to do well with Ninjara while some of the other editors had more success with different characters. No one seems outright broken or wasteful, save for Helix (who just sucks). I don't know if I care for any of their personalities (ARMS is no Overwatch), but players are sure to find someone that they can gravitate towards.

Even so, Nintendo is eventually going to start charging for its online service and I didn't have enough fun with this demo to want to eventually pay to keep playing. ARMS feels like a party game that might be great with a bunch of friends in a local setting, something I don't have ready access to. At least DLC will be free, so maybe the community around the game won't dwindle quickly.

Anyway, those are my long-winded and slightly cynical impressions from the Testpunch. I'm pretty much out of the ARMS game, but I'm curious what the Dtoid community thinks. How did you guys find the demo? Were you overwhelmed with how smooth the game runs? Did you find the online stable enough? Does anyone hate the game?

At least this time, everyone will have a second shot to try out ARMS next weekend. Maybe Nintendo will unlock some extra stuff in the demo that can change my mind on the final product. Even if it doesn't, I get the feeling that ARMS is going to be a real divisive game come its June 16 launch.

What did you think of the ARMS Global Testpunch? screenshot

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News:: Don't argue, Cammy is clearly the best Street Fighter character ever

I've been a casual Street Fighter fan since 1992. It wasn't the arcade release that got me, but the SNES port that hit the console that summer. Every weekend, I would go down to the local video game rental shop to see if it had it, elated when it did and deflated when it didn't. I never got serious about the game, but it was a title my brother and I could play together, ultimately engaging in some truly historic fights. We would argue over who got to play as Guile, our favorite from the original.

When Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers released a year later, we no longer had that fight. Because I found Cammy, and I've been with her ever since.

Like most people (I assume), once I find a character I'm good with in a fighting game I tend to stick with them with each and every release they're included in. It's why I still play as Peach in Smash Bros. even though I enjoy Duck Hunt Dog more than her. Peach I was great with right away, but my history with Cammy is different. I sucked with her at first. Her special moves were awkward to pull off compared to the other fighters, and that's what drew me into her loving bosom. Cammy was the first fighter that made me practice a fighting game.

Before her, and mind you I was still under the age of 10 at this point, I would just fuck around with the game. I'd learn simple combos and moves and spam the shit out of them. But her Cannon Spike was different. Maybe I hadn't seen it with the other characters, but for me, at this age, it was a complicated move to pull off. It almost felt like a mistake compared to the ease of the other moves.

So I pushed myself to learn it, to master that move, as well as figuring out the rest of her arsenal. That was the starting point of me no longer just dicking around with fighting games. I got serious about learning moves, combos and anything else I could after this point. Sure, I'm still a casual, but I'm a casual who can kind-of-sort-of hold his own when playing as Peach, La Mariposa, El Blaze, Batgirl, Smoke and of course Cammy. None of that would have been possible if it wasn't for that unusual Cannon Spike. 

For that, as well as her awesome back story, great costume and the fact she was played by Kylie Minogue in the movie, Cammy is easily the best Street Fighter character and anyone listed below is just a poser.

Don't argue, Cammy is clearly the best Street Fighter character ever screenshot

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News:: Five quick tips for Overwatch's new Arena modes

With this week's anniversary update, Overwatch overhauled its player vs. player elimination modes, adding three new maps and changing the rules for how matches will play out. The new rules are probably different than you're used to, so here's some things I noticed that might help you pick up a few more wins.

Five quick tips for Overwatch's new Arena modes screenshot

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News:: The Switch could outsell the Wii U by next year

It’s no argument the Nintendo Switch is a runaway success. It’s Nintendo’s fastest selling gaming system, it’s already produced two highly rated million selling titles, and everyone on the internet wants every game ever to come to the device. A real home run for Nintendo. Now if only the company could properly stock it.

I have yet to see one on store shelves, but that will probably change in the coming months. According to the  Financial Times, people close to the situation say Nintendo is aiming to produce 18 million units by the end of March 2018. If it is able to do it and if all of those units sold, that would mean the Switch would outsell the Wii U in its first year.

Nintendo denied it has plans to boost production past its previously announced target of 10 million units, but others believe the company is playing this close to the vest and could actually get 20 million consoles out the door by next March, depending on the availability of resources.

I don’t have a Switch yet and my plans to buy one with the release of Splatoon 2 have been sidelined. But with that game, ARMS, Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Fire Emblem Warriors, Monster Hunter XX, Disgaea 5 Complete, and yes, even Mario x Rabbids, I am damn sure going to get one this holiday season if there is a unit available for me to purchase. Preferably one with colorful Joy-Cons.

Nintendo to ramp up production of Switch as demand soars [Financial Times]

The Switch could outsell the Wii U by next year screenshot



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News:: New version of Steins;Gate in the works

It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the states, which means you probably shouldn’t expect a lot of gaming news out of American companies until Tuesday at the earliest. That means you also won’t be hearing much from games journalist as well, so sorry to the developer who sent out review codes with an embargo date of Monday.

Lucky for us, gaming news continues to roll out of Japan and today, Mages. announced a new version of the popular Steins;Gate is coming. Titled Steins:Gate Elite, the game will feature new elements and updates. No platforms or release date were announced.

One platform that we do know will be seeing support from the publisher is the Nintendo Switch. Mages. revealed the upcoming Anonymous;Code, already announced for the PS4 and Vita, will release on the Switch as well, however, no release date for the game on any system was given. The long in development Occultic;Nine did get its release date finally set in stone. It will be on store shelves in Japan for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and — aw, how cute — the Xbox One on September 28 of this year. Other announcements from the company include a sequel to the Japan-only Robotics;Notes and a general plan to release more of its games on Steam.

I can see Steins;Gate Elite making it to North America and Europe given the fact we’ve seen the prior two entries over here, but I hope Mages. and 5pb find a way to give us these other games as well. Robotic;Notes, though five years old at this point, seems like something I would highly enjoy and the plot of Anonymous;Code sounds crazy awesome. I guess I should also play Steins;Gate as well seeing as it’s the one visual novel I’ve yet to hear anyone speak negatively of.

Steins;Gate Elite, Anonymous;Code For Switch, Robotics;Notes Sequel, And More Announced [Siliconera]

New version of Steins;Gate in the works screenshot



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