Steam will now check that you’re a legitimate, human user and not a bot with a CAPTCHA test.
You’ve probably seen CAPTCHA tests at countless of secure websites. The test simply presents the user with a slightly obscured series of numbers and letters, and ask him or her to type them in, something a human can do easily, but not a bot, which can be programmed to perform the same action again and again otherwise.
In Steam’s case, the new CAPTCHA test is aimed to protect users from Malware that takes over their account and empties out their inventory. GameSpot reported on such an issue back in September, when a Java program took over users’ Steam accounts after they clicked a link in Twitch chat. Users can lose not only Steam Trading Cards, and in-game Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that way, but also actual games and coupons.
“We know it’s a bit of a hassle, and we don’t like making trading harder for users, but we do expect it to significantly help customers who are tricked into downloading and running malware from losing their items,” Valve’s John Cook said in the Steam Trading Cards Group discussion. “We’ve excluded a few of the existing third-party trading services from this requirement so they can continue to function.”
PlayStation Now Gets Netflix-Style Monthly Subscription Option: Sony finally made it official this week, announcing that PlayStation Now’s Netflix-style subscription package will launch later this month. It’ll cost you either $20/month or $45 for three months, which comes out to $15/month if you subscribe for the full year. The subscription package will be available first on PS4 before coming to other platforms later. Subscribers will have access to more than 100 PlayStation 3 games.
PlayStation 4 Sales Reach 18.5 Million Units: Sony announced another PS4 sales milestone this week, revealing that the super-system has now sold more than 18.5 million units worldwide since its launch in November 2013. In addition, Sony says it now has 10.9 million PlayStation Plus subscribers.
The Other Stuff (Stories We Like, But Didn’t Cover With a Standalone Post):
The annual Consumer Electronics Show was held this week in Las Vegas, and out of it came huge variety of futuristic devices. One of those was the 3DRudder, a peripheral that lets you control games with your feet. Finally.
Got a million hours to spare? The Internet Archive has added some 2,400 MS-DOS games to its collection of classic games, including Commander Keen and Metal Gear. Take a look here
It’s like Humans of New York, but instead of Manhattan, it’s Tamriel. “The Faces of Skyrim” is a new image project from Andy Cull. Head to these Flickr pages to see dozens of amazingly stunning portraits of Skyrim characters. What a beautiful game.
A new Mega-Man game has been announced! But … it’s a mobile game and it’s only available in South Korea. Called Rockman Gogo, the new Android game is an officially licensed title that sees a stylized version of the Blue Bomber facing off against a number of colorful enemies. You can see some gameplay footage here.
Tropico 5 fans have new DLC to look forward to, as publisher Kalypso this week announced “Surf’s Up!” the latest expansion for the city-building game. It’s available now on PC and Mac for $4, and introduces a “zany intergalactic themed” adventure to the game, as well as a new building, avatar accessory, sandbox map, and music track.
Here’s some Entertainment news we think you might like. Marvel Entertainment released the first full-length trailer for its upcoming Ant-Man movie starring Paul Rudd. Check it out above.
The Princess Bride movie may be almost 30 years old, but the brand still has legs, or at least the folks at Gameblend hope it does. They released a new mobile game based on the series this week. It’s based on the movie, so you can expect to fight eels, climb cliffs, engage in sword fights, and wrestle Andre the Giant. Download it today from iTunes for $3.
In the market for new Skylanders? GameStop has announced that today, January 10, shoppers can enjoy the following savings on all-things Skylanders for one day only.
The first 20 customers at each location will receive a FREE Skylanders mini comic
Buy a new Trap Master and get an individual Trap for just 99 cents
Buy a Skylanders Trap Team starter pack for $44.99, that is $30 off
Two new GameStop-exclusive Eon’s Elite characters are now available, and you can also save $5 on the entire Eon’s Elite series.
Everyone knows what an Xbox is, but what about an OBox? That’s a new microconsole from Chinese company Snail Games. Announced this week during CES, the OBox is a portable, Android-powered gaming device powered by the Nvidia K1 processor. That’s not all, however, as Snail Games also announced another Android-powered handheld gaming device called the W 3D. You can read more about both devices from The Verge.
Adorable kittens aren’t the only animals that can play video games. Here’s a video of a penguin playing iPad games. “Experimenting with many objects to engage the naturally curious birds, aviculturist Sara Mandel found that the penguins took quite a liking to an iPad game she got for her cats,” writes Cool Hunting.
Looking for a new Xbox One gaming headset? The folks at Turtle Beach announced a brand new headset for Microsoft’s console this week at CES called the Elite 800X. Turtle Beach says the new headset will “set a new standard” for performance due to its active noise-cancellation feature and boom-free microphones. It also includes DTS 7.1 channel surround sound, customizable presets, a magnetic charging stand, and swappable speaker plates. It’s expected to launch this spring. Pricing wasn’t announced, but we doubt it’ll be cheap.
Here’s something you probably didn’t expect to read today. Guitar Hero co-creator Charles Huang has written a children’s book about the Chinese New Year, and you can buy it today. The book, called The Great Race: How the Chinese Zodiac Came to Be, it’s a modern take on the classic Chinese Zodiac story.
What are Elon Musk’s favorite video games? Someone asked the SpaceX and Tesla chief that very question during a recent Reddit AMA. He said it was hard to pick a favorite, but explained that BioShock, Fallout, Mass Effect, Civilization, and Warcraft are some of his top titles. Nice choices, Elon!
Curious about the role of music in video games and the business behind it? If so, you’ll want to tune in to next week’s episode of the Renman Live web show, as EA Music Group executive and president Steve Schnur will be the featured guest. During the January 14 show, he’ll speak about the role music plays in EA Games, and lots more.
Which console streams the most porn? PornHub published a comprehensive report for 2014 streaming trends this week, showing that Xbox users are the heaviest streamers of porn from the adult site at 45.7 percent. The next closest was PlayStation at 40 percent, then a huge falloff to Wii at 8.2 percent. You can see PornHub’s full report here; and don’t worry, it’s safe for work.
The latest chapter in the Sony Pictures hacking story unfolded this week, as FBI director James Comey explained in more detail (via The Verge) how it determined that North Korea was behind the widespread and damaging attacks. He went on to definitively say: “We know who hacked Sony. It was the North Koreans. I have very high confidence about this attribution.”
Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine this week published an outline of what it hopes the game will achieve in 2015. Among the new features is a TV-style, episodic quest line. This will roll out “a little at a time,” and Turbine teases that it will see players following “a new friend across Middle-earth, seeing familiar places in a new light.” You can read the full 2015 Lord of the Rings Online outline here.
Want to feel old? Here’s a video of teenagers playing Mario Kart 64. Watch as the teens boast at great lengths about their karting prowess, only to be felled by the mighty (relative) difficulty of that 1996 racing game. What’s even more terrifying is that the video is classified as “retro gaming.”
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Speedrunner Werster employs a number of interesting strategies to topple the game with great pace. One of his tactics is avoiding encounters in the grass altogether. He’s discovered that grass patches with flowers in the bottom right square of the tile do not lead to encounters, so he simply walks on those.
But the way in which he really zips through the game is by leveraging a glitch (starting at around 12:15 in the video above) that allows him to walk through walls. And starting at around 20 minutes, he manipulates certain game variables that essentially allows him to teleport to the Hall of Fame, ending the run in 21 minutes and 42 seconds.
The time might seem blazing fast to you, but Werster says he can do better.
“There’s a slightly faster route that you can do that involves Bulbasaur exactly having 16 special and then catching a Pidgey that has to have exactly 15 or 17 health–it’s pretty stupid,” he says.
The Awesome Games Done Quick event is a charity speedrunning event that raises money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It started January 4 and runs through January 10. So far, the effort has raised more than $595,000 for charity.
“There are some amazing games for PS1 and PS2 and our longer term vision is to go back further into the PlayStation generational library and offer those with PlayStation Now,” the streaming service’s Director of Marketing Peter Jamshidi said in response to a question from a reader on the PlayStation Blog. “Right now however, we are focused on bringing to users experiences from the amazing PS3 library.”
Earlier this week, Sony announced that it will launch a subscription plan for PlayStation Now on January 13. For $20 per month, or $45 for three months, users will get unlimited access to the full library of PlayStation 3 games. At the moment, PlayStation Now users can only rent individual games, paying as much as $5 for four hours of access to titles such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution. 90-day subscriptions to individual games, meanwhile, can cost as much as $30.
Common knowledge states that the last month of any given year tends to be pretty dry when it comes to outstanding game releases, but December 2014 took that tired notion and slapped it around the head. The last month of the previous year may not have been as prodigious as November when it came to the sheer number of releases, but what did come out was of impressive quality.
One of the best puzzle games of 2014 (The Talos Principle), for example, came out last December, while one of the year’s most outstanding co-op adventures (Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris) was also officially unleashed on the world. But there was one game that almost universally charmed and impressed the content crew here at GameSpot, and that’s the debut game from a previously little-regarded Nintendo character.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, at first blush, seems like a one-trick pony. Based on the mini levels that first appeared in Super Mario 3D Land, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this game would just continually recycle the same simple yet fun Captain Toad is anything but monotonous, despite the main characters’ physical limitations (there’s no jumping or butt stomping for Toad or Toadette). There’s a surprising amount of platforming variety available here, from inventive levels where you’re controlling multiple Toads, to mine cart sections that make great use of the Wii U gamepad, and even large-scale boss battles. Captain Toad stretches your mind, challenges your skills, and just as importantly, puts a smile on your face. Few games have the surplus of charm and whimsy that Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker has, making it a deserving recipient of our Game of the Month award for December 2014.
343 Industries today added new content for the ongoing Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer on Xbox One, introducing a new map, mode, and weapon to the pre-release trial.
Defeating Orion in a fan vote, the new map available today is Pegasus, which was developed using Halo 5’s new Forge map-editing suite. Pegasus has long sightlines, making it an ideal map for players proficient with ranged weapons like the Sniper Rifle or DMR.
Halo 5’s new Rocket Launcher
343 adds: “Holding down the raised area with the Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, or Light Rifle gives a team excellent presence, and the ability to lock down huge swathes of the map. However, this spot is vulnerable to grenades and flanking routes that the opposing team should use to retake the high ground.”
As mentioned above, the new weapon added to Halo 5 today is the Rocket Launcher, which is a highly deadly gun that can kill multiple enemies with one shot.
The final new addition to the Halo 5 multiplayer beta today is the Strongholds mode, which is playable on the Regret and Empire maps. Strongholds features three zones spread throughout the map that players need to control to defeat the opposing team.
Only the team that controls two Stronghold zones will score points, meaning players must coordinate if they want to win. 343 warns that attempting to control all three zones at once will likely spread you too far thin. The first team to 100 points wins.
The arrival of Stronghold doesn’t come at the expense of the Halo 5 beta’s other modes, Slayer and Breakout, which will remain available to play for the duration of the beta, which ends January 18.
For more on the Halo 5 beta’s new content, check out the image gallery below. Be sure to click each image to see a full-size version.
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2K Games and Turtle Rock Studios on Friday announced new details about the upcoming Xbox One open beta for highly anticipated monster-hunting game Evolve, which will take place January 15-19.
The first piece of news is that Evolve’s most recently announced Monster, the terrifying Wraith, will be playable in the beta. On top of that, Turtle Rock revealed that the third tier of Hunters–Parnell, Caira, Abe, and Cabot–will also be playable.
Anyone who pre-purchases Evolve on Xbox One or does so during the open beta will unlock instant access to Wraith and the new Hunters. Pre-purchases are not yet available, but Turtle Rock says information about when you can start pre-buying the game will be shared soon.
It is unclear if the Wraith and new Hunters will be available in the Xbox One beta for players who do not pre-purchase Evolve. Last month, Turtle Rock said players will be able to unlock new monsters and hunters throughout the beta, suggesting that you may be able to acquire the new characters through gameplay alone. We have followed up with Turtle Rock/2K for clarification.
There are even more incentives to pre-purchasing Evolve on Xbox One. Turtle Rock adds that doing so will give you free access to the Monster Expansion Pack, which includes the game’s unannounced fourth monster and will normally sell for $15. This expansion also includes the Savage Goliath skin.
Upcoming parkour-inspired zombie game Dying Light is due out in just a couple more weeks. And to get you geared up for the game’s arrival, developer Techland today released a live-action point-of-view video that offers an intense look at what it’s like to run for your life as zombies chase you across rooftops.
The video above was created by Ampisound, the team behind the epic Mirror’s Edge POV video that’s already amassed more than 6 million views. It’s impressive to watch, and reminds me somewhat of the opening scene from 007 movie Casino Royale, albeit with more zombies.
The Dying Light POV video is just a “teaser piece” of more parkour-focused news about the game coming next week, Techland teased.
After you’re done watching the Dying Light POV video, you can check out 90+ minutes of gameplay featuring commentary from the game’s lead designer and producer.
Crossy Road, the iPhone and iPad game that accumulated more than ten million downloads on iOS in its first month, is now available on Google Play.
The simplistic voxel-stylised autorunner had originally shipped on the Apple App Store in November, and was the victim of an outbreak of clones on the Google Play store. The names of the imposters include Crossy Chick, Smashy Road, and Chicken Crossy Cross.
But on Thursday, developer Hipster Whale announced on Twitter that the game has now shipped on Google Play. The free-to-play title has already amassed thousands of five-star ratings from fans.
Crossy Road can be found directly on Google Play here.
