Destiny‘s next major expansion will be called The Taken King, according to Red Bull tie-in products spotted out in the wild.
Images of boxes of the energy drink branded with the Destiny name and logo, along with “The Taken King,” were posted online by Twitter user Agrios Endendros.
Bungie has been teasing a “major content release” for its online shooter for this fall.
Destiny’s future may also involve something called “Eververse,” if another recent trademark is any indication. The company filed two additional trademark applications for “Eververse Trading Co.,” and a third for an Eververse logo.
The “Eververse Trading Co.” may tie-in with Bungie’s previous comments about the possibility of Destiny one day introducing a player trading system.
Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm has officially launched on PC, and is available as a free download to anyone with a Battle.net account. The game is Blizzard’s take on the MOBA genre, and features characters from the universes of various Blizzard games including Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.
For the first week, players who engage in matches will be rewarded with a special in-game portrait. An experience boost will also be active for the first three weeks from launch.
In Heroes of the Storm, players are able to play up to seven heroes each week for free. Access to additional heroes can be purchased using real-world money or in-game gold. Players can earn in-game gold by leveling up their accounts, completing quests, or simply participating in matches.
Heroes recently gained some mainstream attention when part of the Heroes of the Dorm tournament was broadcast on ESPN 2. This was criticized by both some ESPN viewers and at least one ESPN employee.
Dragon Quest Heroes is headed to PS4s in North America on October 13, and with it will come Day One and collector’s editions, the latter of which features a Slime plush and treasure chest packaging.
The collector’s edition, pictured below, consists of several physical items themed around DQ’s classic Slime enemy–a plushie, keychain, and lanyard–as well as a Day One edition copy of the game itself. This all comes inside of a treasure box package.
Heroes’ Day One edition offers some bonus in-game items as part of the Slime Weapon set. You’ll receive the Slime Sword, Gooey Gloves, Goomerang, Squishing Rod, and Gungenir.
While the Day One edition will also be available elsewhere, the collector’s edition is available exclusively through Square Enix’s online store, where it’s priced at $100. That’s a $40 premium over the game itself, which costs $60.
Heroes–whose full title is the exceedingly lengthy Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below–was originally confirmed for North America back in February. That’s when the game was released in Japan, where it’s available on both PS3 and PS4, as opposed to the PS4-only release happening in North America.
The game was developed by Omega Force, Koei Tecmo’s studio best known for the Dynasty Warriors series. Much like last year’s Hyrule Warriors, Heroes is a Musou/Warriors-style game themed around a third-party IP, in this case the JRPG Dragon Quest series. You’ll be able to play as both new and returning characters, including Alena, (DQ IV) Bianca (DQ V), and Yangus (DQ VIII). You can see a new trailer above.
No new Dragon Age: Inquisition story DLC has been announced. But BioWare continuing to support the commercially successful game wouldn’t be a very surprising development.
One character who will not show up in whatever story DLC is in the works for Dragon Age: Inquisition is the Hero of Ferelden from Dragon Age: Origins.
“I’ve already said that the Hero of Ferelden will not be appearing. Sorry!” Laidlaw explained. “I do not feel the HOF would work well as an NPC.”
Finally, Laidlaw also offered this interesting tweet about some kind of recent development at BioWare.
The past three days have been filled with that weird intensity that makes game dev kind of addictive. It’s a rush when things come together.
Cuellar also confirmed that, even if the PS4 edition of Ultra Street Fighter 4 is patched before the tournament begins in the middle of July, the Xbox 360 edition will still be used.
Ultra Street Fighter IV saw its exclusive current-generation release for PS4 last month. Almost immediately, players discovered numerous and significant issues with the new version of Capcom’s fighting game. These problems included character moves not working properly, strange visuals, and input lag.
Suffice it to say, using this version for a major competitive event could be a disaster.
For its part, Capcom addressed the issues in a statement last week, saying it was working alongside Sony to clear up the problems with a new patch. It’s also important to note that Sony’s third-party production group developed and published the game, not Capcom itself. Sony has promised to release a new patch for the game this week to clear up the problems.
The trailer, which you can watch below, shows Lara making a perilous climb up the side of a mountain, overcoming the elements to reach a cave which, judging from the voice over emphasising “discovering the secrets of the world,” she goes on to raid thoroughly.
The trailer also teases a full reveal during Microsoft’s E3 press conference on June 15.
Although neither Sony nor Square Enix have talked about Rise of the Tomb Raider on other platforms, it is possible the game could come to PlayStation 4 or PC sometime down the road.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is being developed by Crystal Dynamics and is a direct sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot, which has sold more than 8.5 million copies, making it the best-selling Tomb Raider game of all time.
Later this month, the focus of the gaming world will be on E3 in Los Angeles, but that’s not the only gaming show this summer. Xbox company Microsoft has now said it preparing to have a major presence at Gamescom in Germany this August, promising a breadth of content as significant as what we’ll see at E3.
“We should have as much new content at Gamescom as we will at E3,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer said to a fan on Twitter who asked if Microsoft would be holding some major reveals for Gamescom.
Spencer didn’t elaborate further about Microsoft’s plans for Gamescom, which will be held this year in Cologne, Germany August 5-9. Unlike E3, Gamescom is open to the public, and historically draws crowds in the hundreds of thousands.
This news may not come as much of a surprise, as Microsoft has a history of making blockbuster reveals and announcements at Gamescom.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has talked up its Gamescom showing. The company previously said that its 90-minute E3 show won’t include everything it wants to talk about, meaning some reveals will be saved for Gamescom.
“This year, we have an amazing games lineup to share (who knew it’d be so hard to pack all of our exclusive E3 premieres into an hour and a half?),” Microsoft said last month. “So we’re saving a lot of exciting reveals for Gamescom in August.”
It’s the first of the month, which means June’s free Games With Gold titles are now available for Xbox Live Gold subscribers across Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
What’s notable about Massive Chalice is that today, June 1, actually marks the game’s release date.
Xbox 360 owners, meanwhile, can grab Avalanche Studios’ excellent sandbox game Just Cause 2 for free through June 15.
At school or work? Click through the links below to queue up your download from the Xbox Online Marketplace. Alternatively, you can start your download through the SmartGlass app.
The update will include a fix for the XP bug that first came to light last week, along with “significantly enlarged” GUI and HUD elements, including fonts, to resolve the game’s small, hard-to-read text issue.
Also included are “general stability and performance improvements.” And you may be happy to learn that Geralt will no longer interact with candles near chests, which I’ve found to be somewhat annoying.
The list below represents only the “most requested changes” and not everything that will be included with 1.04/1.05.
And looking beyond 1.04/1.05, CD Projekt Red said it has “a lot more fixes on the way,” though none were named outright.
Witcher 3 1.04/1.05
Geralt will no longer interact with candles near chests and other interactive element
General stability and performance improvements
Significantly Enlarged GUI and HUD elements (including fonts) on consoles and slightly on PC.
Improved camera smoothness
Performance improvements during some cutscenes
Fixed case where game was crashing on loading a save in certain situations
Various bug fixes and user experience improvements in GUI panels.
Fixed issue where some players were unable to run after Wandering in the Dark quest
Fixed issue where players were unable to talk to Eight after the Lord of Undvik quest
Too many wild hunt minions were spawned during Ciri’s Story: Fleeing the Bog quest.
Fixed issue where Keira could sometimes fall under terrain during Wandering in the Dark quest
Fixed issue where Player was unable to move freely during Blindingly Obvious quest
Fixed issue where Player was unable to activate portal during Wandering in the Dark quest
Fixed issue where Player could get trapped in Turseach castle ruins
Fixed issue where Roche was not present at Hanged Man’s tree during Eye for an Eye quest
Fixed issue where Player was unable to talk or interact with certain NPCs
Fixed issue where Sirens in quest Lord of Undvik could be invulnerable
Fixed issue where player was unable to use certain actions after Carnal Sins quest
Fixed issue where Geralt was sometimes unable to mount Roach
Fixed issue where some players where experiencing infinite loading screen during King’s Gambit quest.
Fixed issue where Simun was not properly spawned in An Unpaid Debt quest
Fixed issue where player might have had a progression break after choosing certain dialogue option when talking to Dijkstra in Count Reuven’s Treasure quest
The Pyres of Novigrad quest is of course going to be fixed as well as the XP glitch
GameSpot’s early access reviews evaluate unfinished games that are nonetheless available for purchase by the public. While the games in question are not considered finished by their creators, you may still devote money, time, and bandwidth for the privilege of playing them before they are complete. The review below critiques a work in progress, and represents a snapshot of the game at the time of the review’s publication.
Like with any scene of disaster, it’s hard to avert your eyes from The Magic Circle. The monochrome world it depicts is a shambles of spectacular proportions, so thoroughly misjudged that there’s an almost perverse allure to it. Here, the genres of high-fantasy and sci-fi collide inexplicably; to the south of the game’s map lies a mountain-sized hand that reaches up to the heavens, while to the east stands a vast star-gate holding open a cosmic tear into another galaxy. Spread between these two landmarks is a vulgar wasteland of unfinished artwork and abandoned structures, often rendered in hurried black scribbles. Various interiors are stripped down to placeholder textures, while elsewhere internal dev annotations remain exposed. Key characters, meanwhile, have yet to be animated. It’s as if a snow of bad ideas had fallen overnight.
The Magic Circle’s world is a black-and-white fiasco waiting to be exposed.
All of this, however, is intentional. The Magic Circle is a fictional game project plunged in limbo, developed and farcically mismanaged over two decades by the (also fictional) games industry icon Ishmael Gilder. Famed for his Spectrum-era text adventures, Gilder commenced work on The Magic Circle in the mid-nineties, seemingly inspired by the System Shock brand of sci-fi that was popular at the time. Then, some ten years later (probably as The Lord of the Rings fever reached its peak) it was decided that the project needed to be wholesale rebuilt with a new fantasy setting. Now, just days before its “E4” world premiere, it is neither sci-fi or fantasy; it has become a black-and-white fiasco, waiting to be exposed.
The Magic Circle’s landscape is a beautiful mess of abandoned ideas.
In fourth-wall breaking fashion, you play as yourself beta-testing it (occasionally your Steam profile appears on screen, and during one unnerving journey into the game’s code, it lists your exact PC specs). While the industry’s propensity for hero narratives would suggest your role would be to rescue The Magic Circle from certain disaster, the opposite is true. Old Pro, an abandoned character from the sci-fi build who is now a ghost haunting the game world, wants you to sabotage Gilder’s rescue project. And so begins a story of vengeance against the gods who have built a digital dystopia. Burn it all down.
However, a problem: Gilder’s team has yet to finish coding combat features, meaning your character is little more than a first-person camera with an erect right hand. Old Pro, armed with an intimate knowledge of the game’s rules, bestows upon you a spell that can cast a magic circle over nearby items and enemies. Anything trapped inside this digital lasso becomes a convulsing glitch and, at the press of a button, the player can rewire its synapses.
Once teleported inside the matrix of an in-game character’s code, a surprising degree of alterations can be made. Does it move by land or air? Does it even move at all? Who are its allies? Who are its foes? Is it fireproof? Can it attract electrical signals? Does it attack with teleport beams? Is it part of a wider hive-mind? Can it heal others?
The sheer number of possibilities on offer, and the way in which you are free to discover them yourself, is perhaps The Magic Circle’s greatest achievement. You can assemble a platoon of fire-breathing rocks, if you wish, supported by a paramedic unit of giant metallic wasps. Or, just for kicks, you could instead send out a pack of dogs with mind-manipulation powers. Experimenting with the alchemy of NPC behaviours is essential for progress, and while the solutions to some challenges (such as a horde of spiders defending a castle) are rather straightforward, elsewhere you’ll spot puzzles and riddles that require more elaborate thinking. A key placed far out of reach, or a lethal turret at the end of a narrow corridor, inspires creative improvisation and small eureka moments.
The game’s architecture is wonderfully imaginative.
Equally rewarding is the riddle at the game’s heart. Early on, you’ll spot a character stranded on a distant platform to the east of the map. Key to your revenge plot is casting your spell on this character, and while at first this seems impossible, the creations and ideas you encounter across the rest of the game will eventually give you enough tools and ideas to fashion your own solution. (There are, by the way, at least two possible ways to solve this final puzzle). Not since Portal 2 has a game so expertly taken you on that emotional journey from pure bamboozlement to sharp, bright, blissful clarity.
That’s not to say The Magic Circle is as accomplished as Valve’s flagship puzzle game in other key aspects. Cut-scenes eventually become rather tedious, and the dark comedy isn’t as sharp as it needed to be. It also would have benefited from a basic command tutorial–as far as three-quarters into the game, I was unaware that there was a jump button.
Not since Portal 2 has a game so expertly taken you on that emotional journey from pure bamboozlement to sharp, bright, blissful clarity.
The overarching story, in particular, is disappointing. Clearly there is a challenge in portraying Gilder and his team, due to their existence in a physical world outside of the game. But the proposed solution–collectable audio tapes and virtual in-game avatars of floating illuminati eyes–falls short. As does the script, which is too preoccupied with uninteresting double-crosses, petty office politics, and flabby monologues. Don’t be surprised if you fail to connect with any single character by the time the credits roll; their motivations are too vague, their redeeming qualities unknown.
The same shouldn’t be said for the unnamed island itself, which is bursting with character and imagination. Unforgettably bizarre and abstract structures dominate the landscape, giving the unnamed island a mystifying, dream-like quality. Clouds of ink float across the sky, as though they were ideas that never landed, while towering space-station facilities dominate the skyline with purposely appalling jaggies (there is no anti-aliasing in developer hell).
The game’s ’90s sci-fi levels, found underground, are beautifully observed.
Perhaps the most imaginative idea of all can be found through the burrow holes that are dotted across the wasteland. These underground pathways lead you to the original sci-fi build of the game, as though Gilder and his team had buried it like a dark secret. It’s the little details of this space station that impress the most; the lo-fi synth melodies, the modest beeps and bloops to save audio memory, the PlayStation-era texture mapping–it is all so legitimately ‘90s.
One cannot avoid the irony here: The Magic Circle is an interactive metaphor for development hell–a fairground mirror-image of a game project that has not been cared for. Yet it is also a more interesting place to visit than many of the spotless, by-the-book examples of sci-fi and fantasy games which it apes. For all The Magic Circle’s other shortcomings, such a unique quality makes it a worthy consideration.
What’s There?
A four-hour single-player campaign, which unlocks a very basic game editor once completed. Those who want to return after completion can begin a treasure hunt of hard-to-reach developer notes.
What’s to Come?
Nothing has been announced, and unless entirely new features are added, it would appear that this build is near-final. It’s not exactly clear why this version is on Early Access.
