Gaming News & Rumours

[Morbid_Angel]

You can just make one, and I'll rename this one to be gaming only.

[Morbid_Angel]

[Tech/PC] Steam Deck Gets Even Better: 40-60Hz Support, VRS, Refined Acoustics

Digital Foundry (a fantastic Youtube channel when it comes to Tech in the gaming sphere) has tested a new update released for the Steam deck, and the results are overall quite positive.

The latest Steam Deck update has arrived, and with it some exciting new features - including the ability to set the refresh rate between 40Hz and 60Hz while in-game and variable rate shading support. Alex goes hands-on to test out these new features work, and how a new fan profile has affected the Steam Deck's thermals, noise and performance in version 3.2.

Now, I don't own a Steam Deck nor plan to buy one, but I still think it's a really cool gadget, and it's incredible how a handheld can now play games at such high fidelity. Furthermore it's a relatively cheap entryway into PC gaming which I can only applaud, and I think Valve is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to putting customers first, and trying their best to give the people what they want. (For example, you can change the internal storage if you want to, and they've made a video on how to repair your deck, physically, should the need arise)

I'm going to sound like a massive shill here, but I'm just incredibly happy that Valve exists and continues to be pro consumer, rather than a whirling cesspool of Microtransactions (MTX) and NFTs. (Disclaimer: I too hate how there are MTXs in some of their games, but at the very least it's not something they seem to focus on too heavily)

[Morbid_Angel]

[Multi Plat] "Mafia 4" rumoured to be set in Sicily and to be a prequel to the first game

According to a dude called Shpeshal Nick (from the podcast Xboxera, and known industry insider) the next installment in the Mafia franchise, which is currently in development at 2K's Hangar 13 Studios, will be a prequel to the first games, and will revolve around the story of Don Salieri.

Some quick bullet points

- the action of ” Mafia 4 ” may be set in Sicily
- specifically at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries
- the new version will be a bit more linear than Mafia III and in this aspect resemble the first two parts of the gangster cycle
- the story will focus on the adventures of Don Salieri ‘s family
- this guy is well known to fans of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven and its remake called Mafia: Final Edition

Source: https://thegamespoof.com/gaming-news/ma ... eri-rumor/

For my money, if they just shy away from that awful Mafia 3 formula, I don't think it'll be half bad, but these rumours do sound promising.

[PC] Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s (Fan made!) PC port now supports 60fps, save states, Linux and more

This is not something I know anything about, but I have a feeling this is free of any emulators and whatnot.
The actual name of the port is Ship of Harkinian.
Here's a quote blurb for a little more info:

As part of the fan development team’s latest “Ship of Harkinian Direct”, Habour Masters unveiled the frame-rate boost as well as a host of new features.

In addition to 60fps, the port now runs on Linux, and new features such as save states, Gameshark-style cheats and accessibility features such as voice descriptions have been added to the game.

The next release of the port, named Roy Alfa, is now available on the team’s official Discord. The new features were unveiled via a video published on Friday

And here's the source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/new ... -and-more/

[Morbid_Angel]

[Multi Plat] Techland developing AAA open-world fantasy action RPG with former CD Projekt RED staff

Techland (the studio behind the Dying Light franchise, and Call of Juarez: Gunslinger) recently announced that they're working on a brand new IP. According to their press release it's a AAA open-world action RPG set in a fantasy environment, and they've enlisted some very good people to get them off the ground running.

The Team includes:
Karolina Stachyra – Narrative director who previously worked with CD Projekt RED on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, plus its downloadable content.
Arkadiusz Borowik – Narrative lead who previously worked with CD Projekt RED on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, plus its downloadable content.
In just the last few months, the team was also joined by:

Bartosz Ochman – Open world director who previously worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt.
Mario Maltezos – Creative director who previously worked with companies like Ubisoft (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), Warner Bros. (Mad Max), and Microsoft.
David McClure – Lead game designer previously associated with Arkane Studios (DEATHLOOP), Deep Silver, and Playground Games.
Kevin Quaid – Lead animator with over eight years of experience at Guerrilla Games, working on titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn and its expansion, "The Frozen Wilds."
Marcin Surosz – Lead user interface / user experience designer with amazing skill in defining players’ needs, formerly with People Can Fly.

Here's the first concept artwork.


Looks kinda Mesoamerican (Aztec, Mayan) to my eyes, and that on it's own is pretty exciting, as that whole time period is grossly underutilized imo.

They're also hiring for this project. Thought I'd mention it, just in case.

Source: https://www.gematsu.com/2022/05/techlan ... -red-staff

[Morbid_Angel]

[PC] *speculation* Current PS5 exclusive 'Returnal' listed in SteamDB under codename 'Oregon' hinting at a PC launch

Now this isn't confirmed by any means, but the user tags line-up pretty well with Returnal.

Source: https://steamdb.info/app/1649240/

[Multi Plat] Xbox store accidentally confirms ‘Destroy All Humans!’ expansion

The sales page, which has now been taken down, revealed the “standalone DLC” for the Destroy All Humans! remake was called Clone Carnage and would allow multiplayer modes.

The sales page, which has now been taken down, revealed the “standalone DLC” for the Destroy All Humans! remake was called Clone Carnage and would allow multiplayer modes.

As reported by Eurogamer, the page also revealed that Clone Carnage would feature six new maps for players to explore alongside four new modes – Rampage, Armageddon, Race and Abduction

Source: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/xb ... on-3232664

[PC] PlayStation says half of its releases will be on PC and mobile by 2025 - And PS4 releases will be phased out

Speaking during a business briefing on Thursday, SIE president Jim Ryan said that expanding to the larger platforms, and in particular committing to releasing at least 12 live service games in the coming years, could be “transformational to our business”.

“PlayStation Studios historically has executed wonderfully in the delivery of a strong portfolio of narrative rich, graphically beautiful single-player games, but it’s certainly the case that we have restricted ourselves to a rather narrow portion of the gaming market,” Ryan said.

There's more on this in the article

Source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/new ... e-by-2025/

And to add to this, here are the sales numbers from the games they've put on PC so far:
Horizon Zero Dawn
• 2.39m
• $60 Million in Revenue

Days Gone
• 852k
• $22.7 Million in Revenue

God of War
• 971k
• $26.2 Million in Revenue



As you can see from the pic, Sony are projecting huge growth in the PC space by years end, so expect more releases. (Uncharted 4 confirmed)
Also, remember to that GoW was the latest game they released for PC, hence the lesser numbers. (PC sales aren't as frontloaded as console sales)

[Morbid_Angel]

[PC] Call of Duty is returning to Steam - confirmed

After some Modern Warfare II art popped up on Steam a few days ago, the internet has been rife with rumours of the franchise returning to Steam after a lengthy absence, and today we got confirmation.
There's no details on how it'll return, but it IS coming.
The prevailing theory is that the new games will become purchasable on Steam, and will then redirect to Battlenet once you launch the game, like how EA and Ubisoft does.
Others are hoping they'll do what Bethesda has recently done, and scrap their own launcher and fully re-integrate into Steams ecosystem with no extra launcher on top.

Source: https://twitter.com/charlieINTEL/status ... 3384046592

[PC] Game Pass Ultimate €1/$1 for 3 months for new AND returning customers

This is not something I do myself, but if money's tight and you don't care about "owning" your games, you can now get a 3 month sub for €1/$1. (confirmed by multiple people on Reddit and Twitter)
Here's how to do it for non-US citizens:

For those of you in Europe or anywhere out side the USA : you have to get the offer from the Xbox app on Windows, it doesn't work with OP's link because you need an American address. Just go into the Xbox app, to your profile and choose to join Gamepass and you'll find the offer there.

For Us residents, just follow this link - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/pc-game-pass

Link above is also the Source.

[Morbid_Angel]

[PC] (now) Former Playstation exclusive Spider-Man Remastered coming to PC on 12th August 2022

Just been confirmed on Playstations own State of Play stream, the heavily praised Spider-Man game is coming to PC in just over 2 months.



Not too shabby.

[Multi Plat] Resident Evil 4 Remake announced and with a launch date set to 24th of March 2023

Edited: Game should release on all platforms that can handle it. (Thanks to Shodan for clarification)

[Shodan]

Its not exclusive, all other RE Remasters were released multi-platform, RE4 was released just like Doom, in every console capable of running it lol

[Morbid_Angel]

Its not exclusive, all other RE Remasters were released multi-platform, RE4 was released just like Doom, in every console capable of running it lol

Yeah I've seen that throughout the day. I've also seen/read that Resimake 4 is handled in-house and with the same budget as Resimake 2, so it should at least have the quality and care of that, rather than the gutted 3, which I'm still annoyed by.

[Morbid_Angel]

[Multi Plat] Saudi Arabia has acquired a $1 Billion stake in Embracer Group

This is a pretty substantial investment, and not one I'm overly fond of in the long term.
And, in case you don't know who or what Embracer Group is, it's the investment group that currently owns companies like THQ Nordic, Gearbox Entertainment, Koch Media (who owns Deep Silver, for instance), Saber Interactive, and more.
Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group

Source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/new ... cer-group/

[Multi Plat] The Last Of Us Remake Reportedly Arrives In September For PlayStation And PC

According to the same dude that leaked the entire State of Play line-up and the name of Kojima's new horror game (Overdose), The Last of Us Remake is coming to PC and PS5 on the 2nd of September 2022.

Source(s): https://twistedvoxel.com/the-last-of-us ... tation-pc/

https://twitter.com/insider_wtf/status/ ... 9914286080

[Morbid_Angel]

[Xbox] Xbox is partnering up with Samsung to launch a Xbox TV app, allowing Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to access their library on Samsung 2022 smart TVs - no console required

This is essentially a streaming service for Cloud gaming. Could be useful for some, but not something I'd ever use.
As far as I understand the announcement, the service will only be available on Samsung's 2022 TV's (and newer ofc) which imo seems really weird, but I could be very wrong in this regard, though the article doesn't say otherwise.

Source: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/06/09/ ... _lrn_6.9.1

[PC] CoD: Modern Warfare II Steam page is up, and lo and behold it costs €69,99 for the base game

Personally, I never buy AAA games on launch because they're very rarely worth the money spent and always full of bugs, so to see them launch their pre-order at €69,99 and the "Vault Edition" at €99,99 just makes me laugh.
I know that the industry at large wants to shift away from the €60 price tag, but the initial point of going digital, was to pass on the savings of not having a brick and mortar store to the consumers. But no, they kept the €60 price tag and now they want the standard to go up to €70. Fuck these greedy fuckwits. I'll continue to wait for deep sales for any all AAA games I want to play.
Additionally, it was Cod: MW2 that in 2009 was the first game to bump the PC price from €49,,99 to €59,99, back in 2009, so prepare for history to repeat itself and get used to the €70 price tag. (at least at launch)

I know this came off as ranty, but this shit has always pissed me off, especially now where they charge full price for half the game with pre-planned DLC and microtransactions out the ass. [/end rant]

Source(s): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938 ... arfare_II/
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/08/ ... -60-on-pc/

[Morbid_Angel]

[Multi Plat] The Last of Us Part I Remake releasing Sept 2, also in development for PC

The rumour posted yesterday by @insider_wtf has been confirmed today. It'll release on the 2nd of September on PS5, and at a later date (I'd assume Q1 or early Q2 of 2023) on PC





Source: https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1534926704698748929

[VOL-E]

Read about it on reddit, don't understand why this game needed a remake When it had Remaster which looks and plays still great! And 70€?

[Morbid_Angel]

Might be some compatibility issues or basic things in the old build that doesn't translate well to the PS5 hardware - in any case it's very overpriced (as you'd expect) and for people who already played it on PS4, utterly pointless.

Now me, as a PC player that hasn't played it, I'm very much looking forward to it, although I won't buy it on release because fuck that lol.

[Morbid_Angel]

[PC] Goodbye Heroes of Newerth – HoN Shuts its doors today

This is my favourite MOBA of them all. It built on what DotA did before it, and turned everything up 2-3 times and also got rid of the horrendous turn-rates, making everything instant and very snappy, and I loved it for it.

Some personal favourite heroes of mine were Bubbles, Dampeer, Corrupted Disciple, Nomad, Soul Reaper, Deadwood, Predator, Pandamonium, Puppet Master, Dr. Repulsor, Wretched Hag, Soul Stealer, Torturer, Electrician, Gladiator, Chipper, Witch (Pimp) Slayer, Valkyrie, Swiftblade (SKILLBLADE!), Fayde, Flint Beastwood, Silhouette, Vindicator...

The best was always to go Carry Master and stack crit items along with a Shroud for fantastic 1-shots, before they nerfed his crit skill.

And then there's the announcers. Both John Saint John (the dude behind the iconic Duke Nukem) and Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson had announcers in the game, but my favourite was absolutely the "Flamboyant" announcer which was absolutely hilarious. (Getting a quad kill netted you a "Rainbow Warrior!" shout lol)

Thinking back, this is probably the best $30 I've ever spent because I got over 7000 hours of game time out of it - most of it with a core of IRL 2 friends.
The absolute worst experience in it was probably trying to communicate with people that didn't speak a lick of English, and for them to refuse to at least try to cooperate. (Brazilians, Turks and Greeks will forever be my least favourite gaming companions solely due to experiences in HoN)

RIP Heroes of Newerth (2009 Beta) 2010-2022

(If only S2Games' owners/decisionmakers weren't wildly incompetent, this game might've had a chance to still compete with LoL and DotA 2

https://esports.gg/news/esports/goodbye ... ors-today/

Although this game is shutting down today, there are rumours that some of their original heroes will be ported to DotA 2 - Puppet Master has allegedly been found in some leaked files, so we could be seeing HoN heroes in DotA 2 at some point in the future.

[Mobile] NetEase delays Diablo Immortal's China launch, (3 days before launch) shares tumble

Internet and gaming giant NetEase (9999.HK) delayed the rollout of its video game Diablo Immortal in China three days ahead of its official launch, a move that comes just after the game's official account on Weibo was banned from making new posts.

China-based NetEase, which was set to release the game on Thursday, did not provide a new launch date, but said on Sunday it wanted to make changes such as improvements to the game-play experience and conduct "multiple optimization adjustments".

I have no stake in this other than I LOATHE P2W in any and all games, so to see this piece of shit get delayed this close to release brings me copious amounts of satisfaction.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/nete ... 022-06-20/

[PC] Steam Summer Sale starting on 23/07-2022

The Steam Summer Sale will go live from the 23rd of June to the 7th of July, starting and ending at 10 AM PT which equates to 19:00 CET.