Latest Articles (Page 1406)

UPDATE 20/10/2015: Konami has issued a statement to Tokyo Sports (translated by Kotaku), denying Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has left the company.

Be warned: there's a 9GB day one update for Halo 5.

I think the system militia like me, though I'm not entirely sure. There was an incident a while back where they caught me smuggling Space Slaves (presumably somehow different to regular slaves) and we had an argument. Thinking it would end in my doom and the reloading of a saved game, I consented to a Space Fight, but then found myself Space Victorious and my Space Reputation slightly tarnished.

Praise the sun! In case you weren't selected for the Dark Souls 3 network stress test that operated for a few short hours last weekend, here's a 30-minute video bringing you up to speed on all of the content contained in the 3GB PSN download. It's based on an early build of course, but the play-through gives us a good first impression on where From Software is now directing its series.

The Stanley Parable designer William Pugh has launched a new studio called Crows Crows Crows. He's also teasing an upcoming game that's "due quite imminently".

A new world record has been set for blazing through the original Super Mario Bros. the fastest with speedrunner Darbian rescuing Princess Toadstool in a scant four minutes 57 seconds and 627 milliseconds.

Earlier this month Skullgirls developer Lab Zero Games launched an Indiegogo campaign for a new action-RPG called Indivisible. The campaign is struggling as in its first two weeks it's only raised $349,920 towards its $1.5m goal. That's only 23 per cent, and it has 27 days left to make the rest.

Hard West reimagines the wild west as a demonic battlefield played in a turn-based XCOM-esque strategy game. Developed by Creative Forge Games (Ancient Space), Hard West is set for a 4th November release on PC.

Space-faring roguelike Galak-Z: The Dimensional is coming to Steam on 29th October, developer 17-Bit has announced.

Shadow of the Colossus. Half Life. Shenmue. The Legend of Zelda. Everyone's got at least one classic, universally beloved game that - shamefully - they've never played.

As we've previously discussed on the Arcadia Baes podcast, there's a lot to admire about Dontnod's serialised coming of age tale Life is Strange. There's also quite a lot to criticise about it too. But one thing that I find absolutely fascinating about the troublesome teenage years of photography student Max Caulfield is how Dontnod approaches the idea of video game romance.

Wotcha! It's your old china plate Ian 'igton 'ere with another fancy live stream for ya to goggle at with your mince pies.

Five years ago a cheating scandal rocked professional StarCraft in Korea. Now, it's happening again.

Like the greatest games of any kind, WRC 5 is at its very best when things have gone horribly, horribly wrong. It's the third stage on the final day of the Finnish rally, and the two second lead you've got over your nearest competitor would be looking good if that advantage hadn't come by getting a little too intimate with the scenery: you lost half the gearbox to a sturdy piece of hoarding near the start-line, the electronics were sacrificed to a church a couple of kilometres back so now you can no longer hear your co-driver and it's hard to see through the dimming twilight as your headlights have been scraped down the side of a tree. The service station couldn't be any further away, and yet you still manage to bring it all home. A Ford Fiesta has never seen such heroics outside of an Essex b-road.

UPDATE 18/10/15 12:20pm: We've now had the opportunity to review both 2GB and 4GB versions of the GeForce GTX 960, where we compare them with AMD's updated rival, the R9 390 - also available in 2GB/4GB SKUs. Check out this new review for a more recent take on Nvidia's 1080p 'sweet spot' hardware.

We have unfinished business with Nvidia's GTX 960. On launch, we lauded its power efficiency, overclocking and cutting-edge media acceleration but we had two issues: firstly, there was no clear win over the competition in terms of performance, and secondly, it was a 2GB card in a world where console-level visuals were starting to demand a 3GB minimum. However, in line with its AMD counterpart - the R9 380 - 4GB variants are now available, and we've finally acquired one.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's black and gold palette, obsession with triangles and exceptional trenchcoat made it visually distinctive, but its style has evolved into something meaner and more uncanny for follow-up Mankind Divided. Executive art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête shows us how in the video below.

Sixteen months ago, I left the games industry. It was a grand gesture, as you'd expect from someone who'd spent seven years acting like his opinions were worth money. I deposited a 2500-word screed on a vestigial blog, emptied a carrier bag full of cheap mics onto my desk, and left the industry, forever. Never to have another public opinion.

UPDATE 23/2/15 9:40am: Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 is currently the subject of much controversy owing to the firm marketing the card with incorrect specs - a state of affairs that has led to a lawsuit. For a deep-dive explanation of the issue, we recommend this article. We are re-evaluating the GTX 970, but our current findings suggest that at 1080p and 1440p this remains an exceptional product. You can find more recent testing of the GTX 970 across a wider range of more modern games in our graphics card upgrade guide.

The King is dead. Long live the King. Nvidia has discontinued its flagship GTX 780 Ti, replacing it with the brand-new GTX 980, powered by its new Maxwell architecture. It's the fastest single-chip graphics card money can buy - but the takeaway for many will be that there's no revelatory performance increase over Nvidia's existing top-end hardware. This is a refined, ultra-power efficient replacement with a relatively small performance bump, as opposed to the next big new thing in graphics technology.

If you're in the market for a stunning tablet at a reasonable price-point, utilising the most cutting-edge technology and backed by a slick, easy to use operating system, the second-generation iPad Air is the default choice. It retains or improves upon the many strengths of last year's offering and addresses most of the lingering issues inherent in the iOS platform. On top of that, it offers a massive CPU upgrade and graphics power to top Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but is that enough? The challenge facing the industry is that tablet sales are falling quite dramatically, while Apple - and indeed its competitors - don't seem to know how to arrest the decline.

Let's lay the cards on the table right away: jumping from the GeForce GTX 880M to the GTX 980M is not only a vast upgrade, but more than ever it narrows the performance gap between Nvidia's laptop and desktop GPUs. It's a different story for the desktop GTX 980 of course - which despite using the same Maxwell architecture only achieves a meagre advance over the former flagship card, the 780 Ti. Ultimately, Maxwell's triumph is in its energy efficiency - more performance from less power, a perfect fit for a gaming laptop.

Re-published today to accompany our review of the UK version of the PlayStation TV, this Digital Foundry article was originally set live on June 20th, earlier this year. This week, we re-tested Remote Play functionality as part of the review process. A lower quality video option has been introduced (which we suspect is to help for streaming over the internet) but otherwise PlayStation TV's Remote Play feature-set and performance remain unchanged.

It's almost a year now since we first looked at Vita TV - the Japanese version of PlayStation TV, which finally launched in the UK a couple of days ago. Back then, we loved the idea of a credit-card sized Vita micro-console, but supporting services were thin on the ground, game support was lacklustre, and its flagship feature - PS4 Remote Play - wasn't yet implemented. A lot has changed since then, but there's still the sense that PlayStation TV has a rich vein of potential that Sony still hasn't managed to tap into.

HP Stream 7, Linx 7, Tesco Connect 7, Nextbook 8, Toshiba Encore Mini - there are doubtless many more. In fact, you can't fail to have noticed the new wave of cheap Windows 8.1 tablets hitting the market at unbelievable sub-£100/sub-$120 price-points, armed with frankly incredible - and mostly uniform - specs. We're talking quad-core Intel mobile processors, IPS screens, 32GB of storage, along with USB, micro SD and HDMI ports. The icing on the cake? They're running Windows 8.1 proper, meaning you get the standard Metro tablet experience along with full access to decades' worth of PC programs - with a full year's subscription to Microsoft Office 365 often thrown into the bargain too.

When Valve decided to postpone its Steam Machines initiative, its hardware partners were left in a difficult position - hold back on their living room-friendly PCs and wait for the final SteamOS and controller, or repackage their offerings as more traditional Windows-orientated PCs? Alienware went for the latter with its innovative Alpha console/PC hybrid, going to the trouble of engineering its own console-style user interface in order to make the machine fully operable without mouse and keyboard. The bolt-on UI is a bit of a kludge to be honest - and that's a shame, as the hardware design story here is quite remarkable.

It's the giveaway of a lifetime. Microsoft is handing over free copies of its Windows 8.1 operating system - with gratis upgrades to Windows 10, no less - while Intel is heavily subsidising its Atom range of processors in order to shift them in bulk. Lacking momentum compared to Android and iOS, Wintel wants its products to become a staple component of your mobile life, and they're willing to pay for the privilege. We've already examined the sub-£100/$120 Windows tablet phenomenon, zeroing in on the remarkable Linx 8 tablet, but Wintel's generosity has kickstarted a new wave of fascinating miniature x86 devices, kicking off with the Hannspree Micro PC.

Nintendo's New 3DS handheld is out in the UK today. Digital Foundry originally reviewed the hardware back in October 2014, but the comments and criticisms remain equally as valid today, so we're republishing the article for those considering an investment in the revised hardware.

When the GTX 970 launched last year, the tech press - Digital Foundry included - were unanimous in their praise for Nvidia's new hardware. Indeed, we called it "the GPU that nukes almost the entire high-end graphics card market from orbit". It beat the R9 290 and R9 290X, forcing AMD to instigate major price-cuts, while still providing the lion's share of the performance of the much more expensive GTX 980. But recent events have taken the sheen off this remarkable product. Nvidia released inaccurate specs to the press, resulting in a class action lawsuit for "deceptive conduct".

Sony's big first party game for the holiday season is a remaster - but not just any remaster. Uncharted: the Nathan Drake Collection is a beautiful recreation of three of PlayStation 3's finest games, upgraded not just with higher resolutions and smoother frame-rates, but with top-to-bottom improvements of the original artwork, with enhancements made across the board. This works in combination with new gameplay modes along with a comprehensive re-evaluation core gameplay systems. We've previously dissected Drake's Fortune, Among Thieves and Drake's Deception in depth, but we still wanted to learn more about how this exceptional project was put together.