Category: Gamespot

Ubisoft has announced the For Honor closed alpha will begin on September 15 and last until September 18. Those interested in participating can sign up for access on the game’s official website.

The announcement was made during Gamescom, where Ubisoft also detailed the game’s roster of 12 playable heroes. These warriors are split into three factions: Knight, Viking, and Samurai. According to a press release, “each feature four true elite warriors, capable of making a major difference on the battlefield.”

“For Honor embarks players in the chaos, fury and brutality of ruthless, visceral close-quarter combat featuring the brutal Vikings, the deadly Knights and the cold-blooded Samurai,” Ubisoft says. “In each faction, players will be able to choose among four different types of Heroes.”

Here’s some more details on the different character classes available in the game.

• Vanguards are well-balanced Heroes, with good attack, and defense capabilities and great versatility.
• Assassins are swift and lethal characters, great duelists with very good offense
• Heavies are the most resistant Heroes, their attacks are slow but deadly. They’re especially efficient for defending a point and annihilating AI enemies.
• Hybrids mix elements and characteristics of other types. They are advanced characters fostering uncommon tactics

Ubisoft also detailed For Honor’s progression system, which it says “is unique to each Hero, with select elements shared across PvE and PvP gameplay modes.”

It explains: “At the end of each multiplayer match and each campaign mission, players are awarded XP that unlocks new combat abilities and new visual customization options. They also have the chance to loot armor and weapon parts on the battlefield, with specific stats allowing each player to adapt their gear to their playstyle while ensuring fairness and balance in multiplayer.”

Finally, Ubisoft confirmed that For Honor on PC is being developed by Blue Byte, which most recently worked on DLC content for Rainbow Six Siege. For more on the game, check out GameSpot’s recent For Honor preview.

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Earlier this month, EA made the Battlefield 4 China Rising DLC completely free as part of its Road to Battlefield 1 campaign. This offer was supposed to end on August 9. However, the content is still free, but only on Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb has announced this week’s lineup of Xbox deals and among them is China Rising for 100 percent off. The DLC normally sells for $15. We’re not completely sure what’s going on here, but free is free. Go download China Rising right now using these links: Xbox One, Xbox 360.

The offer will apparently be available for the next week, ending on August 27.

China Rising was the first expansion for Battlefield 4 and features four new maps (Altai Range, Dragon Pass, Guilin Peaks, and Silk Road), as well as new weapons, gadgets, and vehicles.

As previously revealed, EA is building excitement for Battlefield 1 by making content for previous games in the series available for free. “A new Battlefield is coming later this year, and we’re celebrating by keeping the action going in Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline,” it explained.

Some of the other Battlefield 4 freebies have included Second Assault, Naval Strike, and Dragon’s Teeth, while EA has also given away Hardline’s Betrayal expansion.

Battlefield 1 comes out in October for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Just this week, EA announced that the game’s open beta will begin very soon.

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Following its release in March in North America, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will launch in European and Canadian stores on September 20, Oculus announced today.

In a blog post, Oculus said people in those regions can order the headset beginning today, but they won’t start shipping or be available for in-store sale until September 20. The device costs £549/€699 in Europe. No Canadian price was mentioned in the blog post, but it’s available to preorder from the Microsoft Store for CAD $849. You can see a list of European and Canadian retail partners on the Oculus website.

As was the case for North America, every Rift unit comes with the platformer game Lucky’s Tale.

“When you pick up your Rift from a European or Canadian store, you’ll get a localized product with regional pricing and translated packaging, manuals, and software,” Oculus said. “We’re also supporting developers to help them localize their games and experiences.”

Rift requires a PC. You can test your existing rig with this compatibility tool to ensure it has the required power to run Rift well.

Oculus also announced that it’s bringing Rift demo experiences to European and Canadian retail locations. Demo games include The Climb and the movie Henry, among others.

Finally, Oculus said it’s bringing Rift and some Oculus Touch-enabled titles to Gamescom this week in Cologne, Germany. The Touch controllers are slated to go on sale later this year.

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A new patch for the ambitious space game No Man’s Sky is on the way. According to developer Hello Games, it’s going to make some people “very happy”–whatever that means.

The news comes from Hello Games director Sean Murray, who wrote on Twitter (via VideoGamer.com) that the patch is currently being tested before it is released.

Murray did not provide any specifics on what the new No Man’s Sky patch may fix, improve, or add.

No Man’s Sky launched for PlayStation 4 a week ago, but it’s the PC edition, having only launched on August 12, that is apparently running into more problems. In response to the issues, which included crashes and frame rate drops, Hello Games launched an “experimental branch” that players could join to play a version of the game with new changes applied before they’re released to everyone.

It’s possible the patch Murray is referring to is a full, public release of the experimental branch, though this is not confirmed. The experimental branch right now includes the items below, as written by Hello Games.

Improved AMD Phenom Support

• Thousands of lines of assembly have been rewritten overnight to support AMD CPUs. Unfortunately whilst the game code no longer relies on anything above SSE 2, Havok Physics still requires “Supplemental SSE 3,” which was not supported until “Bobcat” and above. We’re discussing with Havok.

Alt-Tab has improved

• Some systems/configs were crashing or not pausing correctly on Alt Tab. This should now be resolved.

Shader Caching

• Framerate was initially stuttering due to shaders not being correctly cached by the GPU on some systems. We have replaced the GPU caching system. You may notice some stutter during the Galactic Map intro to the game (the very first time you run), but it should be smoother from then on (this will be fixed in future). This is particularly true on ATI cards

Mouse Jitter

• Smoothing on mouse movement has been improved to prevent hitching or stuttering, and is now adjustable through the Options menu in “Mouse Smoothing.”

Max FPS Cap

• On some CPU/GPU configurations, setting Max FPS to 60 or 30 was not giving 60 or 30 FPS (causing stuttering). This has been improved.

Improved Performance

• On CPUs with 4 threads or fewer, performance has been improved.

Intel GPUs

• The game will now let you know if you are trying to run with an unsupported GPU. This will hopefully flag for some users that their high-end GPU has not been selected.

Gsync

• Gsync has been disabled by default, which was causing an issue for some users.

Despite No Man’s Sky’s relatively rough PC launch, the game had a huge debut on Steam.

For more on No Man’s Sky, check out GameSpot’s review and what other critics are saying.

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With Gamescom kicking off this week, posters are being hung outside the convention hall. It’s now been revealed that one of the posters is for Half-Life 3, but not really.

Spotted by games journalist Aoife Wilson is the poster below, which sits next to ones for real games like Titanfall 2 and Watch Dogs 2. But smaller text on the poster reveals this isn’t for Half-Life 3 at all and likely doesn’t come from developer Valve. According to Eurogamer, it translates to, “Half-Life: 3 editors who played it back then.” So this is a poster for three people who played Half-Life.

Logos on the bottom of the poster suggest it was paid for by German gaming groups spieletipps and GIGA Games. This is some excellent trolling that required both passion and commitment.

A decade ago, Valve officially announced Half-Life 2: Episode Three. Gamers are still waiting for Valve to deliver.

Gamescom runs August 17-21, though GameSpot already has a team on the ground in Germany for the show. One of today’s big events is a livestream for Destiny: Rise of Iron, which kicks off at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.

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