A closed beta for Planetside 2 on PlayStation 4 is set to commence in Europe on Wednesday, March 25.
Users interested in trying the MMO first-person shooter will need to register their interest on the Planetside 2 sign-up page. Those chosen to take part will be sent an email with a redeem code to enter on the PlayStation Store, though eligibility quotas were not disclosed.
Planetside 2 first shipped on PC in late 2012, with the long-awaited PlayStation 4 port delayed on several occasions. Sony Online Entertainment, the game’s developer, turned independent in February. The studio, renamed Daybreak Game Company, now plans to make multiplatform titles for other systems, such as Xbox One.
GameSpot’s Planetside 2 review was thorough with its praise, with critic Kevin VanOrd describing the title as “a consistent blast, and a monument to emergent, player-driven gameplay.”
Writing on the PlayStation Blog, developer Andy Sites described the game as a “massive scale, first-person shooter where soldiers battle as one in strategic, targeted missions against enemy empires in an all-out planetary war.”
He continued: “This game challenges the skill and grit of even the most seasoned soldier through intense infantry, air, and ground vehicle gameplay.”
The Planetside 2 PS4 release date has yet to be finalized.
Microsoft’s Halo 5: Guardians “Hunt the Truth” teaser website is now live, offering new–albeit vague–details about the upcoming Xbox One game that’s expected to launch later this year.
The website introduces Benjamin Giraud; a journalist and war photographer, recently assigned by Microsoft to write an in-depth profile on Master Chief.
As he got to work on his profile of the celebrated hero, Giraud discovered that his once-simple story of Master Chief and his heroics was morphing into a “full-blown investigation.”
“Sources claim they know the ‘real Master Chief’: The boy, the soldier, the hero…the traitor? But who’s telling the truth?,” reads a line from the teaser page.
As part of the teaser campaign, Microsoft will release Serial-style episodes, detailing Giraud’s investigation into Master Chief, through SoundCloud. The first installment, Episode 00: PRIMER, is available to stream via the embed below.
“Who is the Master Chief? Where does he come from? Is he keeping us safe? Join me as I hunt the truth about the Master Chief,” Giraud says in the first chapter.
Battlefield Hardline has jumped straight to the top of the UK all-format top-ten, becoming the UK’s best selling game of 2015 in the process.
EA’s shooter spin-off manages to succeed where its predecessor didn’t, with Battlefield 4 only hitting second spot in November 2013. It’s not clear which game sold the most on week one, however.
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, which comes packaged with the highly sought-after Final Fantasy XV demo, enters the chart at second. Mario Party 10 and Resident Evil: Revelations 2 were the other new entries to join the top ten, landing at sixth and seventh place respectively.
Evolve, meanwhile, falls out of the top ten, all the way down to 19th. Halo: The Masterchief Collection, which is now sold as part of an Xbox One bundle promotion, climbs 80 percent to thirteenth.
From Software’s challenging gothic role-playing game Bloodborne launches exclusively for the PlayStation 4 at Australian retailers this week. The game is directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also led development on Dark Souls.
Unlike Dark Souls, Bloodborne introduces the ability to attack foes from a distance using firearms. The game also features a regain system to encourage players to fight more aggressively. For more details on the new features and more, check out our round-up of everything you need to know about the game.
Prefer your fantasy to be a bit less dark and gothic? Pillars of Eternity generated a lot of support when its Kickstarter campaign, named Project Eternity, opened in 2012. The game amassed a total of $4,163,208 in crowdfunding, far beyond its goal of $1,100,000. Developer Obsidian Entertainment said it had turned to Kickstarter to generate funds for the project as it was “almost impossible” to secure backing from traditional publishing means.
Amazon has a great deal on one of the year’s biggest PlayStation 4-exclusive games.
The Order: 1886, which was released only a month ago, is now on sale for $40, down from the standard $60 launch price. You can find the deal here.
Ready at Dawn’s cinematic third-person shooter earned middling reviews overall, as you can see in the The Order: 1886 review roundup. GameSpot’s review gave it a 5/10 for overlooking the best aspects of its premise in favor of boring storytelling.
Still, if you’re curious, this is the cheapest we’ve seen the game on sale for yet.
Another great offer for PS4 owners this weekend is the current PlayStation Store flash sale, which is offering a large number of games for less than a dollar each.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
