Call of Duty: Ghosts is out now on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. (Read Tom’s review here.) Exclusive DLC periods aside, they’re essentially identical. Control the soldier-killing dog through stealth sections, have a shoot-out in space, level up your multiplayer character. On the next-gen consoles, it’s another matter. Ghosts is rendered and output from Sony’s PlayStation 4 at 1080p, but only rendered at 720p and upscaled to 1080p on Microsoft’s Xbox One. There’s been a lot of speculation about what this means for future games in the next generation, but most of it has been answered with pure hokum dictated by the console manufacturers, as in this IGN interview with Mark Rubin of Infinity Ward.
“There’s no maliciousness, there’s no specific reason why one’s 720p, one’s 1080p. That’s just the way the optimisation came out to. To keep a smooth frame rate we needed to be 720p on Xbox One. That being said, it is being upscaled to 1080p, so it is outputting 1080p on your TV, and for the most part the game does look really good. Some people actually think the textures look a little bit nicer maybe on Xbox than they do on PS4.”
We’re getting closer to the truth in this Metro interview, but Mark Rubin puts his game face on and remains steadfast. He does let slip that he can’t tell journalists which console is more powerful because of non-disclosure agreements, but he can say that he disagrees with the idea that they’re equal:
GC: So when John Carmack and Shinji Mikami say the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are almost identical, is that something you could agree with?
MR: Hmm… I would say that’s a bit inaccurate but I wouldn’t be able to tell you any detail of why that’s inaccurate.
GC: For diplomatic reasons?
MR: Yes.
Battlefield 4 has a similar issue. It’s rendered at 900p and upscaled to 1080p on the PS4, but rendered at 720p and output at 1080p on the Xbox One.
Experimental developer Tale of Tales has released their latest game.
In Luxuria Superbia, the player is asked to give pleasure to the game, as much as the game promises pleasure to the player. This starts sensually and physically with cheeky innuendo and playful feedback. As you progress it expands gradually into the ethereal and the euphoric. Luxuria Superbia is a celebration of joy and beauty in life.
More here. Must be 18 or older. Not legal in some states.
Polyphony Digital has released new information about Gran Tursimo 6. The full car list is now available as well as the track list. Sharp-eyed fans will note the presence of the “LRV-001 ’71” from the Apollo moon landing on the car list and in the video above. Once you’ve raced on the most challenging tracks in the fastest cars in the Gran Turismo series, why not take some time to plod along in a lunar rover? It’s not clear from the video whether Gran Turismo 6 will allow players to race on the moon, or if the rover will be limited to terrestrial use, but it should make for some hilarious moments either way.
Gran Turismo 6 will be available in North America on December 6th.
Paradox Interactive announced their first expansion for Europa Universalis IV. The Conquest of Paradise will give players a new world to explore – literally. The expansion will generate a “completely randomized” version of America for players to explore and conquer with every new game. Would-be rulers can also play as a Native American or Colonial nation and try to break free of the yoke of the mother country. In the first dev diary, Paradox explained some of the new gameplay.
“With this expansion, your colonies in the Americas will take on a new form; the larger ones will actually become free nations that serve as your colonies. They will have a limited independence and you can get money and trade power from them, but they will also live their own life, colonizing, fighting Native Americans and maybe even rebelling and striving for liberty from their motherland. You can squeeze them hard if you want, but then you might get into trouble down the line (or you can just change sides and play as a colony).”
Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise will launch on December 11th.
The Wii Mini, previously only available in Canada and Europe, is launching in the US this month. The bargain console will hit store shelves on November 17th for $99.99. The system will come bundled with Mario Kart Wii, a red Wii Remote Plus, and red nunchuk controller. Nintendo’s comparison page shows what you’ll get with the Wii Mini. It’s important to note that the console does not have online connectivity and will not play Gamecube games like the Wii.
Nintendo needs to make a tiny bargain-priced DS that is the size of the Gameboy Micro.
At high levels of skill, chess takes over an hour to play, requires memorization of solved openings and end-games, and ends in a draw about 60% of the time. How do you fix that? That’s the question Zachary Burns of Ludeme Games and veteran game designer David Sirlin asked. They took on the challenge of changing the rules for chess to reduce draws and the need for memorization while keeping the essential chess-ness. Chess 2: The Sequel is what they came up with. Eurogamer reports that the rules they’ve written can be played with a traditional chess board and pieces, but the game is unabashedly modern. There is another victory condition added to the game that lets a player win if they cross the midline of the field with their king. There are six army rosters with special abilities. Finally, they added duels with a double-blind bidding mechanic. If it sounds unbalanced to you, that’s part of the point.
“I just really like asymmetric games,” Sirlin admits. “After being involved with them for so long, it’s hard for me to play a symmetric game. There’s a richness you get to having several sides or characters to choose from. All the different match-ups, and the specialists that become really good at a certain match-up. The different game dynamics you get from those match-ups are interesting too, giving you different feels when you go up against a different side. A generally good property of asymmetric games is that you only have to learn one side or character in order to participate in all the interesting dynamics of different match-ups. In other words, learning how to adjust your game against different armies is much less work than learning how to be good at your own army. So that’s a good bang for your buck in variety that you get from an asymmetric game. It seemed natural to give chess the asymmetry that we see in other popular games such as Street Fighter, Starcraft, or Magic: the Gathering.”
Although the videogame version of Chess 2 doesn’t launch until later this year, you can play with the rules now using your chess set and the free pdf rules.
Door Kickers, the top-down, real-time, 2D tactical strategy game from KillHouse Games, just got a boost of legitimacy. BlackFoot Studios has licensed Door Kickers for development into a training tool for real-world use. The Door Kickers: Simulations & Training version of the game will be marketed to police, security forces, and military units as a low-cost close-quarters battle training application focusing on teamwork and tactical movement procedures. John Sonedecker, founder of BlackFoot Studios, explained why they chose Door Kickers as the basis of their product.
“It’s a really clever and easy-to-learn engine, which will run on basically any machine. It gives us the opportunity to develop a product for quick deployment, and it affords our customers the added convenience of easily producing their own modifications and additional content. We’re really excited to deliver the educational simulation tools needed to train today’s warfighters and first responders, to safely execute some of the world’s toughest jobs.”
Microsoft’s Xbox One will have more robust media capabilities than Sony’s PlayStation 4 at launch. In response to the dire news from Sony yesterday, Microsoft told Polygon that the Xbox One console can play audio CDs, and that they are working on getting the console DLNA-certified to support media streaming. The console will not support ripping files from audio CDs or direct MP3 playback, but the system can act as a Play To receiver allowing playback via supported devices like Windows 7 or 8, or a Windows Phone.
Microsoft noted that a monthly subscription to Xbox Music could supply an unlimited stream of songs through the console, mirroring Sony’s suggestion to use their Music Unlimited service. For now, Microsoft’s console looks like it may have the upper hand on playing music via CDs and network streaming.
Nintendo has suspended Swapnote. In a terse announcement on the news page, Nintendo informed users that the 3DS Swapnote feature was turned off yesterday at 7PM Pacific time, due to inappropriate use.
Nintendo has learned that some consumers, including minors, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote (known as Nintendo Letter Box in other regions) to exchange offensive material. Nintendo has been investigating ways of preventing this and determined it is best to stop the SpotPass feature of Swapnote because it allows direct exchange of photos and was actively misused.
Nintendo added the ability to trade photos to Swapnote in April. Sadly, conducting a Google search for Swapnote results in a distressing number of inappropriate images of Nikki, the application’s animated guide.
Hooray gamers! You win again! Ubisoft has decided to end their Uplay Passport program. According to the news posted on the official blog, Ubisoft will immediately discontinue their version of the online pass program and supply free pass codes for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. The Uplay Passport program gated mutiplayer features behind a paywall if the player had purchased or borrowed a used title.
Games today are blurring the line between offline and online, between what is “single player” and what is “multiplayer.” Based on that and on the feedback we received from you, we recognized that Passport is no longer the best approach for ensuring that all our customers have the best possible experience with all facets of our games.
It was revealed earlier in the week that the Edward’s Fleet feature of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was unavailable to gamers that played the game without the Uplay Passport code. There is no official word on how this decision will impact previous Ubisoft titles that required a Passport code.
Rejoice gamers! The FAA is finally relaxing their rules about passengers not being able to use portable electronic devices in-flight. The Portable Electronics FAQ from the FAA and the official release explains the new guidance. The only restrictions are that you must use devices in “airplane mode,” phones cannot be used for voice communications, and the flight crew can still tell passengers to turn off their electronic items for safety reasons.
At certain times – for example, a landing in reduced visibility – the Captain may tell passengers to turn off their devices to make absolutely sure they don’t interfere with onboard communications and navigation equipment.
It will likely take a few weeks to months for airlines to implement the new rules. Fire up the Gameboys, Vitas, tablets, and 3DS units! Time to crush that candy! Look at the happy gamers in this infographic!
Halloween is here! Silver Shamrock day! Do you know what that means aside from giving candy to kids and dressing as a sexy vampire nurse? It means developers add pumpkin-themed content to games because there’s nothing scarier than orange polygons.
Introversion Software has added a sweet goodie for players of Prison Architect. Build a yard large enough to hold a big group of prisoners at once and you may see them perform a “thrilling” dance. Developer Chris Delay told Eurogamer that they will probably patch it out after the holiday “before we get sued into oblivion.”
League of Legends has kicked off The Harrowing, which features a way to send a random hero skin to a buddy as a gift. Riot Games guarantees that the skin sent will not be a duplicate of something the friend already owns.
Borderlands 2 currently offers TK Baha’s Bloody Harvest DLC which tasks players with finding and killing a Pumpkin Kingpin. It’s short, but it’s filled with Halloween goodness. Kill the pumpkins. Kill them all.
Payday 2, the game that revolves around collecting Halloween masks, starts its Hell to Pay event in-game today. Join the Payday 2 Steam Group and fire up the game to collect the treats! You’ll get an Interceptor 45 handgun, a tactical light for your secondary weapon, and one of four special Halloween masks when you log in. Keep completing jobs and you could unlock the other three masks and six rare patterns as random loot until the event ends on November 4th.
(Click here for part two of the Halloween round-up.)
Stardock’s excellent fantasy strategy game, Fallen Enchantress, gets a new undead faction in The Dead World, a $5 pack of downloadable content that adds the Empire of the Dead. You know the drill. These guys are your usual undead empire, with skeletons, spiders, and possessed knights in their armies and a badass spellcasting lich as the head of state. No, not Dick Cheney. But what sets them apart from the other factions in Fallen Enchantress is that they don’t eat. This means when you’re picking the best spots for your city, you don’t have to fuss with the balance between materials and food. Who cares about food when your digestive system is full of holes and maggots? This also means you don’t have to fuss with the usual bakeries, butchers, and breweries in your cites. Let those other empires waste valuable time and resources with agricultural infrastructure. All you need is the occasional graveyard to boost your city’s population limit.
But the drawback is that you only have two ways to grow your cities. The first is by finding death shards. That’s not going to be easy. And until that happens, you grow your cities by killing armies and razing enemy cities. It’s very much like the slaver faction in Fallen Enchantress, but with the added urgency of an entirely stagnant population. The dead may not eat, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hungry.
Sony has posted the ultimate FAQ for the PlayStation 4 and there’s some disappointing news for media hounds. First, the next-gen console will not work as a client for media servers or have DLNA support for streaming movies from a PC. The system will not play audio CDs. The PS4 does not include a music visualizer feature, so no trippy light shows for your party. The PS4 won’t play MP3 files either. Wait. It won’t play MP3s or audio CDs? How does Sony expect people to play background music on their consoles? What kind of media box is this? Did Sony not get the memo about controlling the living room?
“The Music Unlimited streaming service will allow you to listen to music while you play PS4 games. A subscription to Music Unlimited is required.”
Ah. There’s the kick. Sony wants you to pay for a subscription to their media service.
It’s the day before Halloween and developers continue to add free updates to their games to celebrate the spooky holiday. It’s almost a tradition to add trick-or-treat DLC to games in October to revitalize the community. Want Jack O’ Lanterns? We got plenty!
Croteam has added pumpkin gore and Halloween explosions to the PC version of Serious Sam 3: BFE. I guess headless suicide bombers and giant frog-walking beasts weren’t weird enough.
Valve has kicked off their annual Team Fortress 2 Halloween event with Scream Fortress 2013. There’s new items, a new level called Helltower, and you can cast spells that have been added to everyone’s favorite hat collection game. The update will be live until November 11th.
Funcom’s The Secret World is already horror-themed, so you’d expect Halloween to be something special. Well, nothing is scarier than cats! The Cat God has returned! The Halloween update features ten creepy new Item Missions, festive costumes, and new treats to collect.
Finally, it’s not really spooky or creepy, but fans of Uncharted 3 get a treat from Naughty Dog with the game’s 2-year anniversary. The developer is giving away all multiplayer maps. All the DLC maps, including a new level named Dry Docks, are free to everyone with a copy of Uncharted 3! That’s better than candy!
(Click here for part one of the Halloween round-up.)
