Latest Articles (Page 1366)

It's been 11 years and four months since the release of Half-Life 2, and eight years and five months since Valve left Gordon Freeman's tale agonisingly unfinished in Episode 2. Not that I'm counting the days or anything. Just the months. And years. But it's fair to say that, by this point, fans of what is frequently regarded as the greatest FPS ever made are fairly keen to see its story finished. You can glimpse this in how every few weeks the vaguest outline of a lambda sign leads to ringing ululations of "HL3 CONFIRMED?!?!111" rebounding across the Internet.

There's a new Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the works - this time it's a handheld console.

In moving Street Fighter into the next generation, Capcom has rejigged the famous fighting game series not just in its core combat, but in its structure - each with varying success. The match to match fighting, as you'd expect from Capcom, is brilliant. It's just a shame that features you'd expect to be included at launch are missing, and online play is marred by disconnects from the company's servers.

There's much to enjoy with Capcom's Street Fighter 5 - beautiful, stylised visuals, silky-smooth frame-rates, interesting new characters and a more refined revision of the classic fighting game engine. Users may recall the launch of its predecessor - the sense that the magic had returned to the series, that Capcom had finally figured out how best to evolve Street Fighter into the 3D gaming era. Street Fighter 5 engenders the same kind of feeling as soon as you start to play. Sure, there'll be fully justified complaints about the staggered roll-out of content and an over-reliance on online play, but the core gameplay is simply beautiful.

The Division's open beta is live right now on Xbox One, while the doors will open on PC and PlayStation 4 from tomorrow, 19th February.

So, what is it you do in The Division? Put in the simplest possible terms, you pad around its gloriously authentic, seamless and recently abandoned New York and you shoot things while working to push the numbers up; watch those digits that float out of the enemy's head shoot skywards, keep your fingers crossed that at the end of it all there'll be a nice new gun that can make even bigger numbers possible and, hey, why not hold out for a nice new hat as well? It's not that hard to get a handle on it after all. You might even have played something just like it not too long ago.

The Division's beta may not match its spectacular E3 2013 demo point-for-point - back then a mascot for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One's brimming potential - but what we have today still outshines most current-gen titles in its technical spec. A post-pandemic New York sets the stage for some of the best lighting seen on console, harnessing plumes of volumetric fog, high quality screen-space reflections, and wind-affected particles. Atmosphere is king, and the rich, snow-battered look of its streets is a real showcase for the new Snowdrop engine.

UPDATE 7/2/16 12:15pm: A recent Q&A session with Ubisoft Massive reveals that final PlayStation 4 and Xbox One builds of The Division could feature even more graphics settings. A developer revealed it's possible to tweak the game's lighting to improve frame-rates. In theory, this will let users balance the visuals and performance as they please.

The Division's recent beta impressed us on a visual level on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, particularly in terms of its lighting, effects work and solid performance - but it's on PC where Ubisoft Massive's technology really comes to the fore. You're going to need top-tier hardware to get the most out of the game at 60fps, but initial impressions suggest that there's enough scalability in the engine to get a good experience across a range of hardware.

Indie skate sequel OlliOlli2 and surreal rabbit shooter Not a Hero will both launch on Xbox One this year, developer Roll7 has announced, via publisher Team17.

Popular MOBA Smite is headed to PlayStation 4, a new ratings board listing suggests.

Editor's note: This is an early impressions piece, based on limited play on live servers. We'll have our full review up early next week.

Disaster Report developer Granzella Inc's upcoming game, City Shrouded in Shadow, will feature Ultraman as the player takes the role of a civilian trying to survive the ongoing battle between giant monsters. Think Cloverfield repurposed as a Japanese survival game.

Gemini Rue and Blackwell developer Wadjet Eye Games has set an 8th March release date for its oldschool point-and-click sci-fi adventure Shardlight.

Warren Spector is joining Boston-based developer OtherSide Entertainment to work on as a director on successors to two of his most beloved titles: System Shock and Ultima Underworld.

While PC gamers still have everything to look forward to, the PS4 beta for Hitman has sadly come and gone. Don't be too sad though, at least we made some fond memories along the way.

Fallout 4: Far Harbor is the meatiest and most interesting Fallout 4 add-on announced yesterday.

The Overwatch beta is back and it's brought with it a levelling system that never really stops. If players keep playing, they'll keep on levelling, and Overwatch, in turn, will continue to reward them with lovely glowing boxes full of loot. Inside you'll find new character skins, animations and spray paints (what is it with FPS games and graffiti, by the way?), some of which are considerably rarer than others. And because we're talking about Blizzard here, a lot of this stuff looks really, really great. Players want to own it.

Oh, Link. You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you? You're about to hit 30.

If a tree falls in a forest with nobody present, does it make a noise? Does the moon exist when there's no-one to look at it? And is the hallway behind me still an ominous jumble of ornate casements and baleful oil paintings, or has it turned into something else? Layers of Fear makes space for plenty of gristle and gore during its five hour playtime, but the game's greatest weapon is simply the dread of objects misbehaving when left unobserved.

Disney decided against making its planned Tron 3.0 film, but you can enjoy a new Tron game today instead.

The Division's open beta doesn't begin until later this week, but you can now download its client to your console and be ready as soon as its doors open.

Developer Rodeo Games, maker of Warhammer Quest, is in trouble after Warhammer 40k Deathwatch failed to find an audience.

You can now bag yourself a shiny new Nintendo Account, the company's fresh account system it will use from here on out.

UPDATE 17th February 2016: Street Fighter 5 matchmaking has stabilised after a first evening in which most players were unable to get a game online.

Sincere apologies to whoever decided it was a good idea to put the rubbish and recycling out on a Sunday night in whatever strange fictional Scottish town it is that's been introduced to DriveClub as part of its latest update. Those two handsomely rendered bins have been sacrificed to the stubby nose of a McLaren 650S that was oh-so-delicately balanced on its throttle, lost in a perpendicular arc propelled by noisy horsepower as scraps of paper scattered over lamp-lit streets.

Activision has released a multiplayer-only version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. And no, I don't mean the Xbox 360 or PS3 edition.

When it comes to direct appeals for Digital Foundry to take a look at performance, it doesn't really get any more direct than this - a NeoGAF post lamenting frame-rate issues on the PS4 version of Street Fighter 5, and an invitation for us to run the offending performance drops through our tools to see if Capcom really has dropped the ball on this crucial release. Bearing in mind the numerous beta tests the firm has conducted over the last few months, the idea that performance wouldn't hit the target on launch would be disappointing at best, and credibility-straining at worst.

Someone has proposed a rather swank Lego set based on Monument Valley.

Over 200 musicians have banded together to release a five-disc Chrono Trigger tribute album for charity.