There is nothing better than a little humorous dismemberment in games. If you, like me, like to see your heroes killed and torn asunder, then Helheim Hassle - the new puzzle platformer from Perfectly Paranormal - might be right up your alley.
As Bjorn, a Viking trying to work his way back to the land of the living from Valhalla, players will complete up to 70 quests over 14 levels. This is done by, ummm, detaching Bjorn's body parts and sending them out to complete platforming puzzles and challenges. Along the way, Bjorn will meet "80 different characters from all walks of life (and death) ranging from frustrated god souls, bear ghosts, dragons, elves, dwarves and blue-collar goblins; all voiced by 24 professional voice actors delivering 3,700 lines of spoken dialogue."
That trailer slays me. Interested parties can wishlist Helheim Hassle on Steam here. Helheim Hassle will also release on Nintendo Switch and Xbox One on August 18th, with a PlayStation 4 version coming a little later.
Elon Musk unveiled Neuralink nearly a year ago, and it appears we’ll be getting a progress update in August that further details the company’s research into brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Musk announced the event via Twitter earlier this month, however didn’t include any info as to what the progress update would entail. Although the company is […]
One and a half years in Early Access, that's a long time. That's how long Skater XL spent honing and refining the gameplay before release. Well, it's out now and the accolades are starting to pour in.
Amazing to think it's been 10 years since we last saw AAA skate games on the various platforms. Along with some remasters of old Tony Hawk games, Skater XL is attempting to lead the way in bringing back the genre by recreating various landmarks as well as offering community created maps and letting you customize your skater with gear from over 30 real skate brands. The game highlight's from the press release:
Freedom Of Expression - Skater XL’s physics-based controls don’t have any pre-programmed tricks - only the movement through the thumbsticks. Each thumbstick is connected to the corresponding foot of the skater and as the player moves the stick, the board instantly responds. Much like a musical instrument, the player has complete freedom, whether it be pushing to nail a line or skating free from.
Real Life Iconic Locations - Skater XL levels are all inspired real-world skate areas and designed to ensure a constant flow of skate lines. From the DTLA Map with skateboarding landmarks around the Staples Center and LA Convention Center, to Easy Day High School’s sprawling campus of iconic skate spots like the Wallenberg Big 4 and the ‘Leap of Faith’, to the humongous ‘Big Ramp,’ where skaters can soar higher than a hawk.
Play As Real-Life Skate Pros - Select from renowned pros Tiago Lemos, Brandon Westgate, Evan Smith, and Tom Asta, all with their own distinct gear that fits their style.
Customizable Characters - The possibilities are endless to personalize the Skater XL experience. Players can customize their entire look, including their skater’s gear with different tees, hoodies, hats and shoes from over 30 of the most recognized skate brands like Vans, Santa Cruz, DC Shoes, Independent, Lakai and many more.
Thriving Community - Dive into a passionate community with more than 100,000 members in Discord (the biggest Discord in the World for reference is Fortnite at 500k, amazing given that Skater XL is still in Early Access!) who create online zines, video parts, fakeskate brands, and hundreds of mods. Players can become part of a bigger ecosystem and join the digital skateboarding subculture where they can share their creativity on the newly launched Skater XL modding hub, Skaterxl.mod.io.
Legit Soundtrack - Modest Mouse, Getter, Interpol, Animal Collective and Band Of Horses headline the distinctive music that blends well with the Skater XL’s West Coast vibe and fluid physics-based control mechanics.
Skater XL is available now for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. It retails for $40. There will be a Nintendo Switch version, but that's not coming until later this year.
Gadgeteer, the Rube Goldberg-inspired physics VR game, is set to leave Early Access on PC VR headsets and Oculus Quest on August 27th, which is slated to arrive with a host of new features. The game’s developer Metanaut says players can expect their “most requested features in the full release.” One of the most requested […]
In a post on the Stadia Community Blog today, Thunder Lotus announced that their new game Spiritfarer will be releasing on Google's platform on the same day it arrives for other systems. Thunder Lotus' previous titles, Jotan and Sundered, released on Stadia last month.
In Spiritfarer, players take on the role of Stella, cheerful captain of a ferry for the deceased. Stella takes her boat wandering among islands, looking for spirits to journey to the afterlife. Along the way, she gathers materials to help build her happy death-boat into the best death-boat it can be.
Each spirit you help make the transition is its own individual character. In an interview posted today, Thunder Lotus' Rodrigue Duperron offered the following examples: "Stan the Mushroom Spirit is certainly one of the more quirky and energetic spirits you’ll encounter – likely because he’s also by far the youngest passenger. But he nevertheless proves to harbor knowledge and wisdom beyond his years. Meanwhile, Giovanni the Lion Spirit is best described as charmingly obnoxious. Though he’s passionate and loving, you’ll discover that perhaps an undue amount of that love is directed towards himself!"
The entire topic of death is handles with an unbridled, infection cheer. "The initial pitch for Spiritfarer was to do a farm sim-lite game with the concept of the myth of the souls of the dead on the river Styx. But we wanted to approach that material in a much more colorful and bubbly way, and this was nicely supported by the art direction. Once we had that core idea, we thought about the actual theme and message and knew we wanted to talk about death in an uplifting way. Especially compared to the more grim setting in Sundered, we sought to create something with more optimism."
No official release date has been announced beyond "2020", but its great that Stadia fans will be able to play Spiritfarer on the same day as everyone else. And, of course, if you aren't a Stadia fan, Spiritfarer will be releasing on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, PC, Mac, and Linux.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is officially getting VR support, the studio today revealed. It’s not coming day-one, but VR support is expected to arrive alongside (or very near) the launch of HP’s upcoming Reverb G2 headset, which is slated to arrive sometime this fall. Update (July 30th, 2020): Microsoft today announced in a blog post that official […]
The zeitgeist on Marvel's Avengers has been slowly shifting over the last six months. After a somewhat tepid showing at last year's E3, the team at Crystal Dynamics has been plugging away steadily at expanding and improving Avengers. With the game launching on September 4th, we are now seeing a very polished-looking game - chock full of characters, modes, and upgrades. Bottom line: Marvel's Avengers is looking pretty sweet.
The new Wartable presentation yesterday (see above) revealed more information about the game's various game modes. But more importantly, the details on August's many beta periods were revealed.
Let's see if I can get this all straight:
August 7th - 9th, PlayStation players that pre-order the game will get the first crack at the beta.
August 14th - 16th, Xbox One and PC players that pre-order will gain access to the beta, and all PlayStation owners will get a chance to join them. Meaning, if you have a PlayStation, you can play the beta. No pre-order required. I hope their servers are ready, because that is going to be a floodgate situation. We all know how a bad beta can break a game's reputation (ahem...Anthem).
Then on August 21 - 23, the beta will be open to all players.
Here's an important bit from the press release: "A Square Enix Members account will be required to play the beta. Players can sign up for the account for free at https://membership.square-enix.com/register. Everyone who signs up for an account will receive a Thor in-game nameplate in the final game."
Also revealed during the Wartable was the post-launch addition of Hawkeye. Not only will the character be added for free, but he will come with his own playable storyline that brings him into the fold with the rest of the Avengers.
There hasn't been any reveal as to the final number of additional Avengers players can expect, but looking at the infographics in the presentation, it appears that there will be at least three more post-Hawkeye.
This whole thing is looking pretty good. I might have to peel off of Warframe and make this my "game that never ends that makes me feel slightly hollow inside" game. Always good to have one of those.
The quest for better emulation is never quite done, it seems. The open source PS2 emulator saw its first major stable release in years a few months ago and since then more exciting stuff has been under development.
If you’re not familiar with PCSX2, it’s one of the oldest PlayStation 2 emulators around. While not completely perfect, it’s allowed for reasonably good emulation of titles for a long time and has gotten noticeably better on Linux as of the last few years. Back in May, PCSX2 released its first new stable version in four years and, with it, brought countless improvements and fixes as well.
The development hasn’t slowed since and there’s plenty to love in a recent progress report. While there’s a fair bit of code refactoring and bug fixing, I’m mostly excited about some the accuracy improvements that have been implemented. Z-buffer improvements, for example, solve many text and HUD display issues while dithering support and blending improvements make things look more as they were originally intended.
I’ve got quite a few PS2 games from back in the day and, as PCSX2 has steadily improved, it’s been fun to revisit those titles. While things aren’t quite perfect yet, there’s an impressive amount of compatibility. Even software rendering is relatively manageable for those few picky titles that don’t play nice yet. Still, projects like these are invaluable for preservation of old games even as the original hardware becomes more difficult to find.
There are still quite a few milestones that PCSX2 has yet to reach but things are looking good. 64 bit support is in the works and even more accuracy improvements have been hinted to be in the pipeline. It’s unclear if and when the emulator will get a Vulkan renderer but with a macOS port in the works and the sorry state of OpenGL on that platform, it may well be that they implement a Metal compatibility layer atop of Vulkan.
You can give PCSX2 spin by getting it from your distro’s package manager or compiling from source.
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Great news; Microsoft Flight Simulator VR support has been confirmed, but only for one headset right now. Polygon confirms that the ultra-realistic flight sim will add support for the upcoming HP Reverb G2 headset when it launches later this fall. The game itself is launching on August 18th but won’t have any VR support at…
Indie VR studio Joy Way has announced an August release date for their upcoming title Time Hacker and published a new trailer which shows the game’s time-freezing gameplay. Joy Way, the same studio behind the upcoming VR parkour action game Stride, plans to launch Time Hacker by the end of August. A new trailer shows the game’s core gameplay […]
If you love the sound of an open-world zombie survival sandbox, you're in for a treat this fall. 505 Games announced that Unturned, a 2017 PC-classic, will make its way to consoles soon.
Players assume the role of a survivor in the zombie-infested ruins of modern-day society and must work with friends and forge alliances to remain among the living. Players will scavenge for supplies such as clothes, food, and weapons and craft resources like wood and metal to create strongholds and defenses. Threats and danger run amok and players must actively monitor health, food and water, and radiation levels.
Key features will include:
8 massive sandbox maps to explore by land, air, and sea
Craftable equipment and structures from collected supplies
Upgrade skills in three categories: Offense, Defense, Support
Fully customizable avatars
Multiplayer and split-screen game modes
Unturned will be available digitally worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, priced at $24.99 from the PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store.
InXile Entertainment, the studio behind The Mage’s Tale (2018) and The Bard’s Tale series, today announced Frostpoint VR: Proving Grounds, a team-based shooter for PC VR which takes place in a mysterious frozen wasteland. Frostpoint VR is set in a dilapidated military training base in Antarctica where “strange biomechanical creatures now roam,” the studio says. The […]
Polyarc, the game studio behind the hit VR title Moss (2018), announced today that is has raised $9 million to grow the studio’s expertise in augmented reality development in addition to virtual reality. As an indie studio, Moss is so far Polyarc’s first and only VR title, but things must be going well for the studio […]
Beamz Interactive Announces Inclusion of Additional Content and a Major Sale With Its Jam Studio VR Apps Beamz Interactive, Inc. (OTCMKTS: BZIC), a leading developer of state-of-the-art interactive AI music technology and products, today announced Expanded Content and a 50% OFF SALE on Steam with Jam Studio VR, a fun, family-oriented interactive music experience that […]
CTA, the show organizers behind the United States’ largest consumer electronics show, today announced that CES 2021 will be an “all-digital experience” next January, and will have no physical component amid concerns of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A digital version of the show is said to kick off between January 6-9, 2021, and will “allow […]
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge is ILMxLAB’s next foray into VR gaming. It’s been under wraps since it was announced earlier this summer, but today we’re getting our first real info dump. The video itself is heavy on concept imagery, unfinished scenes, and developer insight into the game’s setting and supporting characters. Here’s how […]
Khronos Group, the consortium behind the OpenXR industry standard, today announced that it has begun officially certifying products that correctly implement the OpenXR standard. Additionally, the group has added new extensions to the standard to support hand-tracking and eye-tracking. OpenXR is a royalty-free standard that aims to standardize the development of VR and AR applications, making […]
Facebook Reality Labs, the company’s R&D department, previously revealed its ‘Half Dome’ prototype headsets which demonstrated functional varifocal optics small enough for a consumer VR headset. At a conference earlier this year, the Lab’s Director of Display Systems Research said the latest system is “almost ready for primetime,” and also detailed the Lab’s research into […]
OpenXR is a widely supported open standard which aims to make cross-platform VR development easier by allowing developers to build around a single API rather than porting their apps to many different APIs. Today the company announced that developers can submit OpenXR applications to be published on the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift stores. OpenXR is […]
Can you believe it's almost August already? Confirmed via Playstation's official Twitter account, August 2020's offerings for Playstation Plus include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered and Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.
Fall Guys is interesting because that's a launch title being offered on Playstation Plus. For a game like that, that's huge because that's a fantastic way to build a strong player base right from the start. As someone that is highly anticipating this game, I am more than thrilled about this.
Modern Warfare 2 will forever be my favorite Call of Duty because that's the game that got me into the series. I absolutely loved the campaign and spent countless hours in the mulitplayer mode.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is available from July 28th - August 31st and Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is available from August 4th - August 31st.
The Toronto-based AR/VR developer Dark Slope today announced it’s closed a bridge funding round with multiple investors which brings the company’s total funding to $2.75 million. This coincides with a pivot away from location-based VR entertainment towards immersive VR learning. The completion of the funding round is also putting Dark Slope co-founder Raja Khanna into the […]
