Nintendo is making mobile games. There will be Nintendo games on our phones and tablets. Wow. While the news is exciting, it’s hard to push aside our worst free-to-play gaming fears. So let’s embrace them. How bad can a mobile Nintendo get?
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If you’ve been waiting for a deal to pick up a PS Vita, this is your chance. Amazon’s selling Sony’s handheld for $170 today, which is $30 off MSRP, and a match for the lowest price they’ve ever offered. Vita discounts are exceedingly rare, so act fast if you want one. [PS Vita, $170]
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Several years after a certain revolution came to pass, and the powerful Satanael was defeated, the devils were still dominant in their constant war against the angels. Meanwhile, a certain Celestia was resorting to guerilla warfare to survive. They focused on researching a way to create a “God” to use as their ultimate weapon against the devils. After creating the “Fate Awakening Crystal,” which can turn a human into a God, the angels could only wait for the day they found someone who was compatible with it.
Magic Leap, a company that has been working on augmented reality, has released the video above, which it says is a fair representation of the kind of technology it will eventually release.
The video is in the first-person perspective, and shows a user doing a variety of mundane things you do on your computer—watching YouTube, checking email—only by interacting with floating 3D objects that appear to be floating in the environment. Eventually, we see what a game might look like, with the user getting up from his seat, picking up a sci-fi gun, and firing at enemies that appear around the room.
If that sounds a little familiar, it’s because it’s essentially a lot like HoloLens, Microsoft’s augmented reality headset, which even mentioned Magic Leap when it revealed the device in January.
According to GameSpot sister site CNET, Magic Leap claims that employees are already playing this game around the workplace.
However, this looks more like a concept video, with 3D effects provided by Weta Workshop (known for its work on the Lord of the Rings movies), and the gun, which seems like a real, physical object in the environment, not part of a simulation.
Magic Leap, which has raised $542 million from Google and others, was supposed to show the demo at the TED conference in Vancouver, but pulled out from the event.
Do you think augmented reality games will ever look this good? Let us know in the comments below.
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Carmageddon: Reincarnation, which revives the “points for pedestrians” destruction derby-style car game series, will leave Steam Early Access and get a final release on April 23, developer Stainless Games has announced.
“You’ve been through the Early Access Pre-Alpha, you’ve been through Beta, and all along the enthusiasm, support and brilliant feedback of the Carmageddon community has been helping to get us to the holy grail… That is The Game… FINISHED OFF!” Stainless Games said.
The final game’s Career Mode will span 16 chapters, each including 3-4 events, with 50 events to compete in overall. The multiplayer mode will allow up to eight players online or over LAN, and includes six event types: Classic Carmageddon, Car Crusher, Fox ‘n’ Hounds, Ped Chase, Death Race, and Checkpoint Stampede.
There are also nine maps, 36 race routes, and 24 vehicles to choose from, unless you were a Kickstarter backer, which will get you a special edition bonus car.
The game was funded on Kickstarter in 2012 with over $625,000, and in 2013 Stainless Games raised an additional $3.5 million from Bullfrog Productions founder Les Edgar, which the developer said would allow it to bring Carmageddon: Reincarnation to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as well as PC.
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Atari, the company that dominated the video game market for much of the the ’70s and ’80s, is now getting into fitness tech with the Atari Fit app for iOS and Android devices.
Atari fit aims to motivate users to get fit and healthy by earning points that will unlock classic Atari games like Pong, Super Breakout, and Centipede. The app is compatible with other fitness devices like Fitbit, Jawbone, and Android Wheat, and can also collect data from other fitness apps such as RunKeeper, Apple Health, and Google Fit.
Basically, the app gamifies more than 100 exercises and more than 30 workout plans. The more you get in shape, the more points you’ll earn, which can then be used to unlock Atari games as well as points that can be redeemed at the pharmacy chain Walgreens.
The app is free to download, and was developed by 8BitFit, which is focused on gamifying fitness, and an award-winning production studio called Gametheory.
“With Atari Fit, players from around the globe can exercise, play and get healthy together by providing a gamified fitness experience unlike any other app currently available,” said Fred Chesnais, Chief Executive Officer, Atari, Inc. “By uniting the universal need to exercise and live healthfully with the entertaining experience unique to Atari games, we’ve created an app that proves fitness can be fun.”
Atari, which has changed ownership multiple times since its glory days, was recently in the news for pressuring developer Jeff Minter to pull his tunnel shooter TxK because it’s too similar to Atari’s Tempest 2000.
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Cities: Skylines has achieved remarkable success in such a short time since its launch. It’s not undeserved, as our review points out, but there are still a few issues with the game that have yet to be resolved with updates. Though these issues don’t ruin the experience, their resolution would result in a game that makes your city planning more fun and a little less tedious.
Thankfully, the game is easily moddable. New features, new buildings, and tweaked systems are available to be installed directly from the Steam Workshop page. We’ve pulled together ten of the best mods that feel like essential additions for any mayor’s budding metropolis.
Not since Streets of Sim City have we been able to get this close and personal with our virtual citizens. This First-person Camera mod allows you to toggle a new camera mode, by pressing the Tab key, which allows you to stroll your own impeccably designed streets. Play with citizens in the park, check out your wind turbines up close, or just creepily follow one citizen as he journeys to work and back each day. You need to get to know people if you want to be the best mayor possible.
Traffic management is crucial in Cities: Skylines, and it’s hampered by the less-than-perfect traffic AI. Long story short: you want to avoid having intersections that require cars to stop at all. This is why you should browse Timboh’s Marvellous Interchange Emporium–a package of massive, complex interchanges and roundabouts that don’t require cars in any lane to ever stop. Plus, interchanges are just amazing.
Who’s bright idea was it to only allow players to place individual trees, one at a time? It’s madness. That’s why you need to download the Tree Brush, a tool that lets you paint trees in a large radius–similar to the way in which you paint districts. With just a click and a few swipes of the mouse, you can have beautiful, lush forests covering the whole map.
Personally I’ve never had to bulldoze an abandoned building because my city is so perfect that no-one would ever want to leave, but we can’t all be as civically-gifted. Use this Automatic Bulldoze mod to make your abandoned buildings automatically disappear, which is a treat for especially large cities beset by crime, fire, or buildings full of corpses due to the lack of a cemetery. You know what they say: out of sight, out of mind.
New York is known as the city that never sleeps, and since Cities: Skylines doesn’t ship with a day/night cycle, technically my city can never sleep so it follows that it is on par with New York. Only, with fewer murders. To keep things that way, you should allow your citizens to get some shut-eye by installing the Day Night Cycle mod. Not only does it provide some variety to the lighting effects, but you’ll also get a better sense of the passage of time.
I find it incomprehensible that the game shipped without an auto save function, especially since it costs cash to undo recent mistakes–like the wind turbine I accidentally put near the park swing set. Unlike me, you can avoid civil lawsuits from grieving mothers by installing this Auto Save mod, which allows you to set how regularly the game periodically saves your city.
Personally, I think there isn’t enough concrete in Cities: Skylines. So why not turn your city into a grey Bolshevik paradise with the Soviet Buildings pack and its crown jewel, Lenin Square. After all, what better way to simulate the redistribution of wealth, and the brilliance of central planning, by giving you absolute power–down to the ability to rename individual citizens.
If you’re sick of bulldozing the houses of citizens who send snarky messages to you through the in-game Chirpy app, then you need this Reddit For Chirpy mod. This changes the messages that appear from a fake social media feed, to real-life topics or replies from your preferred actual subreddit. Set it to the Cities: Skylines subreddit for a deliciously meta experience.
I lied when I said there wasn’t enough concrete in Cities: Skylines. What I actually meant was, there isn’t enough colour. Though the game already features a couple of colour grading options accessible through the settings menu, they don’t offer visuals as gorgeous as the True Colour Correction mod. The effects here are on the subtle side, but they help to enhance the game’s slightly dull palette without being too distracting. Sorry Lenin, we’re trying free markets for a while.
Remember how I said traffic management is crucial? Well, one oversight Cities: Skylines made was a failure to provide in-depth visualisation for how traffic is actually flowing. The game shows heat maps, but it’s not enough information to troubleshoot congested areas. Download the Traffic Report Tool to see arrows that show exactly how traffic is flowing, and how heavy it is on each road.
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Strike Vector, a blazing fast aerial-combat game first released on PC last year, is coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as Strike Vector EX, indie developer RageQuit has announced.
The multiplayer-only Unreal Engine 4 game plays a lot like an arena shooter, only each player is piloting a customizable, mech-inspired ship that can instantly switch between a jet and hover mode, allowing you to zip around the game’s huge maps quickly and with great precision.
“RageQuit Corporation’s debut Xbox One and PS4 game has been fine tuned to provide instant feedback and tight console controls for players to light each other up amidst futuristic, industrial structures,” RageQuit said in a press release. “Players gear up their ships to deploy specific strategies for each mission (paired with personal, bada$$ styles) to engage in frenetic multiplayer skirmishes.”
Strike Vector EX is set to release on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in summer 2015. You can buy the PC version of the game on Steam for $12.
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It doesn’t matter if it’s 1980 on the silver screen or on the cluttered desk of a guy who critiques toys, if you’re Luke and you’re wearing Hoth gear you need to watch out for Wampas.
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When water hits a glass surface, it usually just spreads itself out. But when water containing the organic molecule propylene glycol (PG) hits glass, it comes alive. In a manner of speaking.
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