Category: Gamespot

Square Enix is celebrating the Easter holidays with a unique promotion; the publisher is offering five mystery PC games in a Steam bundle for £4. Though the corporation wouldn’t specify which games are put together in each mystery box, it said their combined value is usually going to be more than £40.

The pool of games used for each bundle is mixture of well-known AAA titles along with acclaimed indie hits. The deal is open to customers across Europe only.

Exclusive discount offers will also be packaged into the bundle, Square Enix said.

The store page for Square Enix’s bundle can be found here.

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Microsoft has announced another new feature coming to Xbox One via the platform’s upcoming April update, and it’s something users have been requesting since the console arrived in November 2013.

April’s Xbox One update will introduce voice messaging support, one of the “most popular requests” from fans, according to Microsoft. Not only will the Xbox One’s voice messaging system let people send messages to other Xbox One owners, but Xbox One-to-Xbox 360 is also supported.

The Xbox One voice messaging supports “Snap” functionality, meaning users can double tap the Xbox button to bring up the menu when they’re doing something else, such as watching a movie or playing a game. As users know, typing out messages using the Xbox One controller, or even the SmartGlass app, can still be kind of a pain. Voice messaging aims to offer a faster solution.

Voice messages on Xbox One will be limited to 15 seconds. Check out the video above, from Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, to see the Xbox One voice messaging feature in action.

Xbox One owners who are part of the invite-only Xbox Preview program can try out voice messaging right now.

The Xbox One’s April update also introduces dedicate servers for party chat, with the aim of more reliable chatting experiences, and a new “What’s On” area. This will highlight popular videos, movies, TV shows, and game broadcasts. In addition, the update improves Achievement notifications and makes further tweaks to game hubs.

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Blackrock Mountain, the next Hearthstone adventure featuring 17 boss challenges and 31 new cards, will release worldwide from early April.

The first of the adventure’s five chapters, called Blackrock Depths, is set to go live across America on April 2. Players based in Europe, Korea, Taiwan, and China will need to wait an additional day for the add-on.

Developer Blizzard has built Hearthstone to be fully cross-platform, meaning that once the adventure is available on PC, it will also be accessible on Mac, iPad, and Android tablets. Soon, iPhones and Android smartphones will be added to this ecosystem too.

Blackrock’s opening wing, much like the four others that will follow it on a weekly basis, can be bought with either in-game currency or real money.

Ahead of the expansion’s release, Blizzard has been showcasing many of the cards that will be unlockable throughout the adventure. (Below is a gallery all of the cards showcased so far.) One of the driving themes of these new cards is dragon synergy, with theoretically enough cards available to build a dragon deck.

Eric Dodd’s, one of Hearthstone’s principal designers, said the decision behind this was more based on the development team’s love of dragons than anything else.

“Well the intention at a higher design level was really that players really like dragons, so it would be awesome if they could make a dragon deck,” he told GameSpot.

“The new Blackwing Technician card will be a good example of that. It’s a 2/4 that costs three mana, but is 3/5 if you have a dragon in your hand, which is a pretty effective card.

“We love the idea of people building their deck around dragons. Up until now, you could put Ysera or Alexstrasza in your deck, but we wanted to support that a bit more. We actually really like the idea of adding new cards that make you want to play the old ones again.”

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In a recent update, the post-apocalyptic MMO survival game Rust got a few unusual changes. The game now randomly selects player’s skin color and faces, tying them to each player’s Steam ID so that they cannot be changed.

Lead designer Gary Newman detailed the changes in a blog post last week saying “Everyone now has a pseudo unique skin tone and face. Just like in real life, you are who you are – you can’t change your skin colour or your face. It’s actually tied to your steamid.”

Previously, players were all identical young people, but the developers wanted to shake that up. “There’s a lot of skin colors in the world,” Newman added. “It’s really easy to appear racially insensitive when doing this. This is compounded by the fact that everyone is really used to seeing this guy as a white guy, so when you see him as a black guy it feels like he’s just ‘blacked up.’ So we’re spending a lot of time trying to lessen that effect.”

So far, the response has been mostly positive, but as PCGamesN reports, comments on the game’s steam forums have been pretty nasty (gallery below). Some people aren’t happy about the fact that they aren’t white men anymore. Apparently that’s also been accompanied by a surge of racially-charged language. In an interview with Kotaku, Newman quipped, “It makes me wish I’d set up some analystics to record how many times the N-word was used before and after the update. It was used quite a bit from what I’ve seen.”

Newman wanted to take action against the players using that kind of charged language, but other players began stepping in. “What we found was that when someone was being racist, they were always in the minority and more often than not the other members of the server stepped in and took action (i.e. they all worked together to hunt him).”

Newman hopes that this will teach people about empathy and what other people have to deal with on a regular basis.

“I would love nothing more than if playing a black guy in a game made a white guy appreciate what it was like to be a persecuted minority. There’s still work to be done, so consider this just the boilerplate of an idea for now. It’s quite pleasing to see different races working together in game, and makes you realize how arbitrary race is.”

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Sci-fi shooter Destiny will be getting the House of Wolves downloadable content pack soon, and Bungie has revealed more information on the patch players will be getting prior to its release. Detailed on the official Bungie site, the update makes a few tweaks to the game, including increasing players’ in-game vault space.

Update 1.1.2 will increase the vault dimensions for armors and item to 24 slots and for weapons to 36 slots. Prior to this, all vault item spaces were capped at 20 slots each. The expansion of the vault was limited by “memory constraints on older generation hardware,” which required a compromise to expand storage space. For Destiny players on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the item comparison feature will no longer function in the vault. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will remain unaffected.

PlayStation 4 owners are getting the 2.50 Yukimura update today, which introduces a Suspend and Resume function. While Suspend and Resume won’t immediately work with Destiny, the 1.1.2 Update will enable its function.

Patch 1.1.2 will be out in April, before the House of Wolves DLC hits. The update will also bring new audio options, a feature for colorblind players, and various gameplay fixes.

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Speaking today during a post-earnings financial call, GameStop COO Tony Bartel said gamers should not expect to see as many new hardware bundles that come with free games in 2015 as they did last year.

“Based on our discussions with publishers and platform-holders, these pack-in programs will be significantly reduced in 2015,” Bartel said.

In 2014, Microsoft and Sony offered various hardware bundles. Microsoft sold Xbox Ones with free copies of Assassin’s Creed Unity (and Black Flag), Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Sunset Overdrive. Meanwhile, Sony sold PlayStation 4 bundles with free pack-ins such as Destiny and The Last of Us, among others.

Bartel said GameStop’s overall new software sales took a hit last year due to these bundles. Citing an NPD study, Bartel said as much as $250 million was lost in physical sales as a result.

“We believe that new software sales were impacted in the latter part of 2014 as many games were given away as subsidized marketing incentives in next-generation hardware bundles,” he said.

Microsoft just this month launched a new Xbox One Master Chief Collection bundle. So bundles aren’t going away entirely (as evidenced by the number of bundles currently being offered at GameStop), but Bartel sees them as making up a smaller piece of the pie this year compared to last.

Currently, Xbox One and PS4 free game bundles–in the case of the Master Chief Collection and The Last of Us bundles–cost the same as a standard console. That’s $350 for Xbox One and $400 for PS4.

Also during the presentation, the retailer shared some data from an upcoming DFC Intelligence report. It claims that, of the total number of AAA games sold in North America last year, 88 percent were physical and 12 percent were digital.

Of that 12 percent, 60 percent were given away through hardware bundles, while 40 percent were paid for.

Overall, when factoring in total unit sales of AAA games in 2014 (physical and digital), paid-for downloaded games made up just 2 percent of all units, according to the study.

The full DFC Intelligence study will be released later this year.

Earlier today, GameStop reported earnings for the fourth quarter and full-year. Check out GameSpot’s full report for everything you need to know.

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Whether it’s an in-joke between friends on the development team or a nod to a developers’ favorite games, most games have some kind of easter egg, and Ori and the Blind Forest is no exception.

As a challenging action-platformer with plenty of backtracking and exploring, Ori’s design has some obvious influences like Metroid and Castlevania. But dedicated fans have managed to track down easy-to-miss references to games like Super Mario Bros., Super Meat Boy, and The Legend of Zelda, as well as the infamous, non-game-related Wilhelm scream.

In the video above, posted by YouTube user Captain Eggcellent, you can see a quick rundown of four easter eggs fans have found so far:

• The Super Meat Boy character
• A pipe from Super Mario
• The Wilhelm Scream
• The Triforce from The Legend of Zelda

We provided some screencaps of the easter eggs below, but have you found any that Captain Eggcellent missed? Let us know in the comments below!

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A comprehensive fan-made update for Half-Life 2, which makes sweeping changes to the 11-year-old game’s visuals, has gone live on Steam.

The 7 GB update adds in subtle visual effects that essentially restore the look of Valve’s seminal first-person shooter. Known simply as Half-Life 2: Update, the remaster is the product of three years’ development from a team of modders, with the project sanctioned and supported by Valve.

According to promotional materials, Half-Life 2: Update delivers “improvements to lighting, special effects, increased world detail, countless bug fixes, and an original Community Commentary mode.” A new trailer can be found below, while a comparison video is embedded above.

Project lead Filip Victor said the remaster brings Half-Life 2 to the same standards as its episodic sequels, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, “and just a little bit beyond.”

He said: “While developing the update, I needed to make sure that no matter what I did, I was improving Half-Life 2’s world without changing its iconic style, tone, or gameplay.”

“My goal is to create something that will draw new players to the Half-Life series, but not alienate long-time fans. Half-Life 2: Update shouldn’t be seen as a mod, but as a true update to what is already there.”

Along with major improvements to the visuals, Half-Life 2 adds an optional Community Commentary mode, which contains more than 100 in-game audio nodes that, when activated in-game, discuss the original Half-Life 2’s development. These are voiced by some well-known YouTubers such as Caddicarus, Brutalmoose, Rice Pirate, ProJared, and Balrog the Master.

The Steam Store page for Half-Life 2: Update can be found here.

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This week’s release of Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, a new bundle that includes remastered versions of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, hasn’t gone entirely smoothly.

In the Gearbox Software forums, numerous players are reporting screen tearing and frame rate issues. The problems appear to be limited to The Pre-Sequel, though fans clearly aren’t happy.

“One of the main reasons I bought The Handsome Collection was for the better performance,” one player wrote. “So, it just feels wrong that half of the content included is hard to play due to eye strain.”

Thankfully for fans, Gearbox Software has now responded. In this forum post, Gearbox Software community developer Joe King said the studio is looking into the issues, but asked fans to have patience.

“Just wanted to pop in and ease everyone’s minds a bit. The team is certainly aware of both the screen tear and FPS lag issues and are currently investigating them,” he said. “Needless to say, things are quite busy and we appreciate everyone’s continued patience.”

In GameSpot’s review of The Handsome Collection, reviewer Cameron Woolsey also noted frame rate problems for The Pre-Sequel. He explained that players probably won’t notice them when they’re in smaller, enclosed spaces. But frame rate takes a big hit in other areas, he wrote.

“In larger, detailed areas, as well as during intense battles, performance hits are common enough to become distracting, able to pull you out of the mood time and time again,” Woolsey said. “The problem is exacerbated when running The Pre-Sequel in split-screen multiplayer, with slowdown occurring at nearly every interval.”

In other recent Borderlands news, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford said the original Borderlands–which is not included in The Handsome Collection–could come to current-generation consoles if fans demand it.

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