Category: games

 

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Nintendo has announced an Animal Crossing-themed Nintendo Direct coming on Wednesday, October 25 (or late on October 24 in the US) – but it will focus exclusively on the upcoming smartphone game, and will not feature 3DS or Switch announcements.

Announced on its Japanese Twitter account , Nintendo says the broadcast will take place at midday in Japan – that makes it October 24 at 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern, or October 25 at 4am UK / 2pm AEST.

Nintendo UK has announced a second version for the region, at a slightly more friendly time of 7am on the 25th.

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Quick: name your favorite E3 ever.

Time’s up! Can you even pick one? Hopefully they’re all fun in their own way for gamers, but for 28-year Microsoft veteran Kevin La Chapelle, the answer to the question is both instant and unlikely to ever change: 2015.

That’s the year you heard some of the loudest cheering ever at Microsoft’s Xbox E3 media briefing. And those cheers weren’t for new versions of Halo or Gears of War, or even Project Scorpio. Instead, the Galen Center erupted in applause when Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced what La Chapelle’s team had spent months working on: backwards compatibility.

Microsoft partner software engineering manager Kevin La Chapelle recounts the early days of the Xbox One backwards compatibility program.

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Microsoft has revealed the first 13 backwards-compatible original Xbox games for Xbox One to IGN – several of which we got to play. These first 13 will be available tomorrow, October 24. All are enhanced with 1080p resolution, higher and/or smoother framerates, and faster loading times.

These are the first 13 games you can play on any Xbox One if you own the title, beginning tomorrow:

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Ninja Gaiden Black
• Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
• Fuzion Frenzy
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
• Psychonauts
• Dead to Rights

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Microsoft’s Xbox backwards compatibility team is adding Xbox One X-specific enhancements to four high-profile Xbox 360 games that are already playable on Xbox One: Halo 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Assassin’s Creed. All four updates will be available for free to anyone who owns the game on November 7, the same day the Xbox One X launches.

Some titles now have 10-bit color depth unlocked where they previously had 8-bit, others have HDR lighting enabled, and all have nine times the on-screen pixels. I got to see Halo 3 running in a developer mode that clearly showcased the difference. The left half of the screen was standard Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One, which already offers framerate smoothing and other subtle benefits. On the right it had HDR and the 9x pixel count.

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A hidden console command lets players turn The Evil Within 2 into a first-person survival horror.

As reported by DSOGaming, the modification switches the camera from behind the shoulder of Sebastian Castellanos to within his tormented grey matter.

The line of code necessary for the change seems to have been left in the game by developers Tango Gameworks.

Due to the fact that there is a first-person section already in The Evil Within 2, it is unclear whether this is an Easter egg for savvy fans or an experimental tool used by the development team.

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Nintendo has announced it will host a Direct event for its mobile Animal Crossing game. The direct will take place on October 25 and the pre-recorded broadcast will stream on YouTube from 12 PM JST (October 24 at 8 PM PT / October 25 at 7 AM BST). According to the Japanese Nintendo Twitter account, it will last 15 minutes.

For those hoping for some news on more Animal Crossing titles, Nintendo says on its website that there will not be any information on Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo Switch versions of Animal Crossing.

The Animal Crossing mobile game was originally scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2017, but was delayed into Nintendo’s next financial year. This means the game’s launch could be anytime up until March 31, 2018.

Nintendo attributed the reason for the delay to the launch of Fire Emblem Heroes and Super Mario Run, the first two mobile games released as part of its partnership with DeNA. Fire Emblem Heroes launches February 2, while Super Mario Run launched for iOS on December 15, 2016.

Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto previously said the company will continue to focus on crafting original games to mobile, rather than porting old ones. This has been the case for Mario, which appeared on iOS and Android devices as an auto-runner, and Fire Emblem, which was released as a new free-to-play entry in the series.

In his Super Mario Run review, critic Peter Brown awarded it a 7/10, saying “it’s easy to fault Run for various reasons, but it’s hard to totally lose appreciation for how well it’s brought the series’ core gameplay to smartphones.”

He added: “It’s a shame to find that it’s on the easy side and bereft of a long-lasting platforming adventure, but it’s the sort of game that you’ll be happy to have in your pocket.”

Kallie Plagge’s Fire Emblem Heroes review, meanwhile, awarded it a 6/10. “When the incentive to keep playing is to be able to keep playing, it’s easy to burn out on Fire Emblem Heroes,” she said. “Aside from obtaining your favorite characters–if you even care about that–Fire Emblem Heroes becomes less and less rewarding as time goes on.

“Grinding can only be fun for so long before chasing rare allies becomes a chore, and in that sense it caters to two ends of a wide spectrum while offering little incentive for anyone in between.”

Gran Turismo: Sport debuts at the top of the UK sales chart for the week ending October 21, pushing EA’s FIFA 18 down to No.2. According to sales monitor Chart-Track, Gran Turismo: Sport has had stronger first week sales than the original Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 6 for PlayStation 3, but “nowhere near the series high of 2010’s Gran Turismo 5.”

Ubisoft’s South Park: The Fractured But Whole makes its debut at No.3, ahead of WWE 2K18, which spends its first week at No.4. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s Middle-earth: Shadow of War drops three places down to No.5, followed by Bethesda’s The Evil Within at No.6.

Top 10 mainstay, Grand Theft Auto V, spends its 214th week on the chart at No.8, with Forza Motorsport 7 following it at No.9 and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy at No.10. You can read the full top 10 sales chart below, courtesy of Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.

1. Gran Turismo: Sport
2. FIFA 18
3. South Park: The Fractured But Whole
4. WWE 2K18
5. Middle-earth: Shadow of War
6. The Evil Within 2
7. Destiny 2
8. Grand Theft Auto V
9. Forza Motorsport 7
10. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Dave went to see the new Mortal Empires mode for Total War:Warhammer 2, and dragged Tamoor in to talk about it. After a few hours and a few campaigns, here is what Dave thought about Total War: Warhammer 2- Mortal Empires.

Right on schedule, Microsoft today released a new TV commercial for the Xbox One X. Microsoft is going all out with the “Feel True Power” campaign, which kicks off with this spot during the Season 8 premiere of The Walking Dead and Sunday Night Football.

It’s a pretty slick trailer. The idea is that everything you do on your console–games, movies, etc., will look better if you have an Xbox One X. The console is 40 percent more powerful than the PS4 Pro and offers 4K support if you have a compatible TV. So of course, it uses the Kanye West song “Power.”

Microsoft is billing the Xbox One X as the “world’s most powerful console.” Indeed, it is 40 percent more powerful than the PS4 Pro. It doesn’t replace the Xbox One S, which will remain on the market and will sell better than the Xbox One X, according to Microsoft. All Xbox One S games play on Xbox One, and your controllers work as well.

The “Feel True Power” campaign is rolling out globally now. It is “designed to appeal to all gamers, taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster to elicit emotions like awe, excitement, fear, and passion,” Microsoft says.

The Xbox One X launches on November 7, priced at $500 in the US. Keep checking back with GameSpot for lots more on the system in the days and weeks ahead.