Posted by DualShockers, the five gameplay videos stem from livestreams on Nico Nico and Famitsu. In all, there is almost 100 minutes of gameplay shown off here, so grab some coffee and get comfy. Unfortunately, the quality is not exactly great. You can watch all the videos below.
The hit musical La La Land continued its dominance of this year’s movie awards by winning big at the BAFTAs. The film claimed five prizes at the British film awards ceremony, which is seen as an indicator of who might succeed at the Oscars later this month.
La La Land won Best Film, Best Actress (Emma Stone) Best Director (Damien Chazelle), Best Cinematography, and Best Original Music. Star Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Actor, but didn’t win–Casey Affleck took home that award for his performance in Manchester by the Sea.
Elsewhere, Viola Davis won Best Supporting Actress for Fences, Dev Patel won Best Supporting Actress for Lion, and Kubo And The Two Strings claimed Best Animated Film. The Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them won best Production Design, while Spider-Man star Tom Holland took home the Rising Star award, which is voted on by the public.
Check out the full list of winners below:
Outstanding British film
I, Daniel Blake
EE Rising Star award
Tom Holland
Best make up & hair
Florence Foster Jenkins
Best original music
La La Land
Best costume design
Jackie
Best sound
Arrival
Best British short animation
A Love Story
Best British short film
Home
Best editing
Hacksaw Ridge
Best production design
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Best documentary
13th
Best film not in the English language
Son of Saul
Best adapted screenplay
Lion
Best supporting actress
Viola Davis (Fences)
Best animated film
Kubo and the Two Strings
Best special visual effects
The Jungle Book
Best debut by a British writer, director or producer
Nintendo’s press release mentions the “newly announced LAN Play feature,” before going on to detail 10-player options. “Connecting up to 10 docked consoles via wired LAN will be well-suited for proper tournaments, while for more casual get-togethers up to eight players can still enjoy a quick game via the previously revealed local wireless connection.”
You won’t be able to shoot all 10 people, however. Nintendo explains the two extra people can spectate, but not join in on the action: “Private Battle Spectator View is a new functionality that will allow up to two people to participate in a Private Battle as cameramen to observe the 8-player battle from multiple angles.”
Nevertheless, the ability to connect 10 consoles is impressive, and might suggest true 10-player gaming could come later down the line.
Elsewhere in the press release, Nintendo teased more information on its Switch smartphone app, which much of its online functionality revolves around. “This app will connect to the game,” the publisher explained, “[allowing] players to set play appointments with friends who have been added to their Nintendo Switch friend list or via their social media accounts.”
Setting up Splatoon 2 sessions with your friends in advance could be a useful feature, as is the ability to link your Switch account with social networks.
Splatoon 2 demo event starts on March 24, for a limited time. For the full schedule, click here.
Splatoon 2 launches for the Switch this summer. The game was announced at Nintendo’s January event; it supports Joy-Con controllers, the Pro Controller, and is compatible with both TV and handheld modes.
It’s February 12, which means today is the last day of the For Honor open beta.
As announced previously, the beta lets you try nine of the game’s 12 heroes and four of the five modes; there are six maps in the beta. Check out the image below to see what’s included.
Use these links to download the For Honor beta right now: PS4, Xbox One, PC (Steam). Before this, a closed beta ran January 26-29. Ubisoft fixed a number of bugs and made a series of adjustments from the closed beta to the open beta–you can see a full rundown here on Reddit.
For Honor launches this coming Tuesday, February 14. For more on the game, you can watch the launch trailer here and find out everything in the season pass here. For even more on For Honor, you can read all of our coverage and watch every video here.
That’s the lowest-ever price for the console, matching the Black Friday offer. This is for the new PS4 Slim model and the price cut is good at retailers across the United States.
The Uncharted 4 PS4 bundle includes a 500 GB system and a copy of the game. The Infinite Warfare bundle features a 500 GB system, Infinite Warfare, and a download code for Modern Warfare Remastered. The Walmart Infinite Warfare PS4 bundle includes all of that, but with a white system and matching controller.
Rockstar’s acclaimed 2008 open-world game Grand Theft Auto IV was added to the Xbox One‘s backwards compatibility program this week. We played it. You might have as well. But how does the game perform on Xbox One compared to Xbox 360? According to Eurogamer, the Xbox One version runs faster, though there are some issues as well, apparently.
“It hits the same performance level as original hardware, but can actually deliver anything up to a 5fps advantage,” the site reported. “In terms of the quality of Microsoft’s virtual machine, this is impressive – GTA IV hits CPU hard, in particular.”
According to Eurogamer, the frame pacing is different comparing the Xbox 360 and Xbox One versions–and it’s not to the new console’s benefit.
“Where 360 delivers new frames in 16ms and 33ms intervals, Xbox One often tosses in a bunch of 50ms and even 66ms spikes,” the site said. “The end result is that while mathematically, GTA IV runs faster on Xbox One than it does on Xbox 360, the experience is something else entirely. It feels choppier and more uneven, while controller latency–hardly one of the game’s strongest points on original hardware–sometimes feels significantly laggier on Xbox One. In certain areas, frame-pacing seems to normalize but by and large, in-game performance seems less stable.”
You can read Eurogamer’s full report here and watch the video above to learn more.
There are now more than 300 Xbox 360 games in the Xbox One backwards compatibility catalog–you can see our full roundup here.
Chris “Dubby” McFarland won this year’s Madden Bowl, proving himself to be the best Madden player in the land. He won a prize of $75,000 for his performance–but due to some recent controversy, he’s been docked $3,000. In a statement released this week, EA announced that it has taken back the money for “inappropriate” content posted to his personal Twitter feed.
His tweets, which have since been deleted, violated EA’s Code of Conduct. McFarland also loses 100 Madden NFL Championship Series points as part of his punishment.
Double Fine’s Psychonauts bred positivity and understanding because of its ability to help players empathize with the thoughts and motivations of its characters. The series’ upcoming PlayStation VR-exclusive spin-off, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, looks to do the same thing in a new way by utilizing the immersive capabilities of VR.
The game puts you in control of series protagonist Raz as he embarks on a mission to rescue the grand head of the Psychonauts, Truman Zanotto. It mixes the vibrant charm of Psychonaut’s universe with puzzle-solving elements reminiscent of Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer’s earlier work on point-and-click adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. The game also helps you understand the inner workings of its characters through small, humorous experiences. While recently playing the game, I noticed what seemed like a studious, serious henchmen studying a manual. But in actuality, he was just reading a comic book he’d hidden inside it.
I recently got the opportunity to talk to Schafer and Rhombus of Ruin project lead Chad Dawson about the Psychonauts series, their studio’s mentality on making the world a better place through positivity, and the possibility of developing Brutal Legend 2.
GameSpot: First off, what is it about Psychonauts that you feel resonates so much with people? And why does it resonate so much with you as creators as well?
Tim Schafer: For me, I always liked the idea of going into people’s brains. The mystery of how we translate our emotions into dreamlike images in our heads is such a fascinating way to think about people, and empathize with them and their problems. By the time we were done creating those characters, from their original concepts to eventually what the artists and actors brought to them, they ended up being so memorable.
I have such a strong affinity for Raz, Lilli, Sasha, Milla, and all those kids from the first game. But it seems people share in that affinity too. If you talk to all the voice actors that worked on the game, they’ll often tell you, “I’ve done a lot of voices in my career, but every time I go to a convention, people always want to know about Raz, Lilli, Dogen, etc.” At the end of the day, we did our best to make the game’s cast feel real, and whenever you invest a lot of time into making a character and treat them like a real person, I think they stick more with the audience.
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is a direct continuation to Psychonauts 1. I’m curious, why wasn’t this game’s story told in Psychonauts 2 instead?
Schafer: I had an idea for the story of Psychonauts 2 in the middle of development of the first game where it would be set in the Psychonauts headquarters. We wanted to invest in building that location as the game’s hub. However, it took away from the mission we set up at the end of the first game where Raz and the Psychonauts embarked on a mission to rescue Truman Zanotto.
At the time, I settled on not telling that story, even though it seemed important. But when we started talking about developing a VR game, it suddenly became this opportunity to portray the events of that single mission.
Rhombus of Ruin is Double Fine’s first project in VR. What would you say is the most important lesson you’ve learned developing for the platform?
Schafer: The most important lesson? Don’t let the character move around. Different VR developers might disagree with that, and you hear a lot of them say, “Other VR games make you sick, but our game won’t make you sick.” They get way too used to their own game, so it’s important to be more careful than you think you need to be about other people’s comfort level in VR.
Chad Dawson: Yeah, and give yourself time to iterate. Once you get in there, you’ll find elements that are cool about your game in VR that you didn’t notice in the beginning and vice versa, so make sure you schedule enough time to work on that and try to go back and revise it.
Something I’ve observed about Double Fine is that it has become more transparent as a studio since Broken Age. Is this a behavior you want to keep up after? Or do you ever find yourself wanting to go back to the traditional process of developing a project behind closed doors?
Schafer: [Laughs] At the end of Broken Age I was like, “I want to shut the door and not be as visible.” We definitely changed a little bit of that with Psychonauts 2. While there’s still a documentary crew filming us every day, they’re not releasing stuff every day. They’re giving us a chance to tell the whole story behind the project closer to the end of its cycle.
Despite these changes, we still want to be open with our audience because our goal is to pull back the curtain on games development, partly for young people, or even those who aspire to be in the games industry. We want them to see what goes into it, so they can realize, “Wow, if those guys can do it, I can do it!”
But we also want to show how much developers care. They put so much heart and soul into a project, so it’s sad to see how they’re treated by people on the internet. I’m like, “Oh, you don’t get it. That person knocked themselves out to make that game.” I want people to understand that.
Recently, a lot of game studios have come forward to make political statements about major issues affecting the country. Have you also felt an urge to step forward to make a statement? Or do you want to keep your focus on primarily developing games for fun in order to help players escape from the country’s current mood?
Schafer: Our first priority is always to make great, entertaining experiences, but we can’t separate that from the holistic picture of our team: who they are, who the community is, and the fact that we’re making games that are about empathy in a way.
In the Rhombus of Ruin, you’re jumping into different points of view and seeing the world as they see it. And in the first Psychonauts, you realize what a person is dealing with; you notice they’re acting negatively in the real world, but when you’re in their head, you see it’s because they’re fighting a monster you can’t see. While all of this doesn’t seem like a political statement at first, I find that a lack of empathy is actually at the base of the trouble creating the political issues in the world. For me, I think the way our games deal with empathy is a political statement.
For me, I think the way our games deal with empathy is a political statement.
Tim Schafer
We also try not to approach things negatively. If something really negative seems to happen in the news, I feel like our response as a studio is: “Well, what can we affect?” I don’t want to just tweet something to tweet about it, I want to take action. Professionally speaking, I’ve done things like jump-start a new diversity initiative to create more opportunities for underrepresented groups in our own company. I’ve also reached out to groups who have gathered those people together to talk about that same issue and invited them into the company.
I want to try to do real, practical things that make a difference in specific people’s lives. It’s a microcosm for larger things you’d like to see happen in the world.
Dawson: Certainly, as developers, you might get frustrated with the state of things, and ask what you can do. For me, I look at what we make as entertainment that makes people happy. That’s the best experience; it’s fulfilling to be able to create something that makes people smile whenever they are having a hard day. Channeling that into our work and having that give us passion is important to us.
Do you think the country’s mood affected your work directly?
Schafer: It really has made us look at the cast of characters in our games, and think harder about making sure that we’re putting something out into the world that’s positive. A lot of people, including myself, have taken sides on certain issues. I feel like taking a stance is a personal choice for everybody, and a lot of developers have come out to say how they feel. Insomniac’s Ted Price made a very strong statement how his company feels about the ban on immigration, and I feel like that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with just standing up and saying, “This is where we stand.”
To completely change gears, I have one last question for you: any chance we’ll get Brutal Legend 2 soon?
Schafer: [Laughs] Never say never. I’ve thought about it from time to time, but it’s not up to us. It’s a really expensive game: the first one took a big publisher to provide it with the backing it needed. Someday I’d love to come back to that series, since I still have so many new ideas I want to bring to it. I even already have a Brutal Legend 2 song wishlist I’ve been constructing. I’ve got like 20 songs in it so far.
Brutal Legend (2009)
Dawson: That does remind me of the bigger challenge developing a project like that again. We managed to get so much great music in the first one through partnerships and licenses. Obviously for the next one we want to have just as much music, but that demands a bigger budget.
There’s so much to explore in that game. For me, it’s occupies a personal place in my heart because it’s the first game I worked on here. I came in right at the beginning of its development, so I’d love to see a sequel. But as Tim said, never say never. Who would have known we’d make Psychonauts 2?
Schafer: Yeah, give it 10 years. [Laughs]
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is set to launch on February 21.
Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has offered the gig to Matt Reeves, who directed Cloverfield, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, and War For The Planet Of The Apes.
The Deadline report also claims that Argo writer Chris Terrio completed the latest rewrite of the script for the new Batman movie, which is tentatively titled The Batman.
None of this is confirmed. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.
Affleck will still star in the new Batman movie, though he will not direct it. “There are certain characters who hold a special place in the hearts of millions. Performing this role demands focus, passion, and the very best performance I can give. It has become clear that I cannot do both jobs to the level they require,” Affleck said in January when he announced he wouldn’t direct the movie.
Warcraft director Duncan Jones still does not know if he’ll get to make a sequel.
Writing on Twitter (via IGN), Jones said he would “love” to get to work on a sequel, though that decision is ultimately in the hands of production company Legendary Entertainment.
The 2016 Warcraft movie was a disappointment at the US box office, but it did well in China and ended up making more than $430 million worldwide. That’s a lot of money, so a sequel could happen, even though Warcraft might end up being an overall money-loser.
Warcraft is the highest-grossing single video game movie in history, surpassing the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ($336 million globally). The newest video game film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter opened in January, pushing the series past $1 billion.
