Daily Scoop: May 19, 2014 – Birthday-filled weekend!

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Nicole Kline

This weekend was an exciting one filled with birthday cake and homework! The former was delicious but the latter was tiring. I didn’t get a chance to play many video games, but I did learn a card game called 9 Holes of Golf, which was a lot of fun! I teamed up with my six-year-old cousin and we beat everyone else. Domination!

There’s a new Humble Daily Bundle, of course. This one’s called the Melee Bundle. Pay what you want for Guilty Gear Isuka. Pay more than the average to unlock Vanguard Princess. And finally, pay $10 or more to unlock Blade Symphony.

There’s also a new Daily Deal over at Steam. Today only, you can get Race the Sun for $3.39. Scoop it up!

What better way to start off the work week than with a few good t-shirts?

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Posted in Daily Scoop, Etcetera, News |

Today’s Google Doodle is a working Rubik’s Cube

Posted on May 19, 2014 by John Scalzo

google-rubikscubeGoogle has added another game to their growing collection of interactive Doodles… and it’s totally radical.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 40th birthday of one of the most famous puzzles of all time. Initially known as the Magic Cube, the ingenious little contraption didn’t catch on with the rest of the world until it was rechristened as the Rubik’s Cube in 1980. From there, it grew from fad to phenomenon to an enduring symbol of the 1980s. With more than 350 million cubes sold (as of 2009), it’s considered the best-selling toy ever. And for many people, the ability to quickly solve a Rubik’s Cube is seen as a sign of a genius-level intellect. I’m not sure I’ve ever solved a Rubik’s Cube, but Wikipedia has an amazing list of speed records including:

  • 5.55 Seconds: Fastest Solve (set by Mats Valk)
  • 9.03 Seconds: Fastest Solve Using Only One Hand (set by Feliks Zemdegs)
  • 23.8 Seconds: Fastest Solve While Blindfolded (set by Marcin Zalewski)
  • 27.93 Seconds: Fastest Solve Using Only Feet (set by Fakhri Raihaan)
  • 3.25 Seconds: Fastest Solve… by a Robot

If you don’t have a Rubik’s Cube lying around your house, be sure to give today’s Google Doodle a whirl. Even after it leaves the Google homepage, you’ll be able to find it in the Google Doodles Archive.

Posted in News, PC | Tagged

Weekly Warp-Up: Kinect-ion Lost Edition

Posted on May 18, 2014 by John Scalzo

No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…

After suggesting that Nintendo should get into the moviemaking business and watching Kevin Spacey take over the Call of Duty franchise, the Warp Zoned staff has got movies on the brain. So naturally, our UK Correspondent, Andrew Rainnie, checked in with Legendary’s Mass Effect adaptation and mused about 10 Actors (and Actresses) Who Could Play Commander Shepard.

After that, Nicole Kline took a look back at Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW and just threw her hands up at the whole thing. John Scalzo (hey, that’s me) had a similar reaction to R.B.I. Baseball 14 in his review of MLB AM’s attempt at a retro baseball sim.

But this week was really all about Microsoft and the moves they made to get people interested in the Xbox One again. Moves like announcing Halo 5: Guardians and (possibly deliberately) spreading the rumor that a Halo 1-4 Box Set is in the works. Then there’s the matter of Gears of War 4 and the fact that the Xbox One will no longer ship with the Kinect sensor (maybe I should have lead with that one).

More news from this week can be found after the break.

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Posted in News |

New Releases: Wolfenstein: The New Order, Drakengard 3, Mugen Souls Z, More

Posted on May 18, 2014 by John Scalzo

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In Wolfenstein: The New Order, the Germans managed to win World War II through a combination of mechs and mutants. Now it’s up to William “B.J.” Blazkowicz to turn the tide and make this alternate 1960 a very Nazi-unfriendly place. Wolfenstein: The New Order was developed by MachineGames and will be available for almost every current platform including the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

PS3-owning RPG fans will find a pair of interesting new games on store shelves next week as well. Square Enix will bring Drakengard 3 to Sony’s system while NIS America will release Mugen Souls Z.

Finally, a few re-releases round out next week’s batch of new games. First up, Grasshopper’s Killer Is Dead will make its way to the PC as Killer Is Dead: Nightmare Edition. Also next week, Nordic Games will re-release a few of the games they picked up from the THQ auction including the Darksiders Collection on the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360; the Red Faction Collection for the PS3; and Red Faction Complete for the PC.

A complete list of next week’s new releases can be found after the break.

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Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Tagged , ,

Rumor: Halo: The Master Chief Collection will compile series on Xbox One this Fall

Posted on May 17, 2014 by John Scalzo

haloanniversaryDid you think that Halo 2 Anniversary Edition rumor was a good idea? Well, check this out. In a new report published by Engadget, the technology blog is claiming that Microsoft will release a compilation of the four “main series” Halo games this Fall for the Xbox One. The bundle will be known as Halo: The Master Chief Collection and it’s said that it won’t include spinoff titles like Halo 3: ODST and Reach. Instead, we’ll be greeted to remastered and remade versions of the Master Chief’s four big adventures ahead of the release of Halo 5: Guardians in 2015. Engadget also notes that Saber Interactive, the developer behind Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary for the Xbox 360, has an unannounced Xbox One project in the works.

It’s certainly interesting speculation and would go a long way towards filling up the Xbox One’s rather sparse Fall 2014 lineup. Microsoft has said that this year’s E3 Expo will be a “great” time for Halo fans and the announcement of a Master Chief Collection would certainly serve as an appropriate apology for Halo 5’s delay.

Posted in News, Xbox One | Tagged

Daily Scoop: May 16, 2014 – More cheap games

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Nicole Kline

It’s day four of the Humble Daily Bundle, and they’re not slowing down! Today it’s the Humble Indie Re-Bundle 8. Pay what you want for Dear Esther, Capsized, Awesomenauts, Thomas Was Alone, and Little Inferno. Pay more than the average to unlock Hotline Miami, Proteus, Tiny & Big in Grandpa’s Leftovers, English Country Tune, Intrusion 2, and Oil Rush. And it includes most of the soundtracks as well.

That’s not all. Steam’s got two amazing sales going on right now. Their Weekend Deal is The Stanley Parable, on sale for $7.49. Their Daily Deal is Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut for $4.99. Scoop all of these up!

Let’s end this with some t-shirts, shall we?

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Posted in Daily Scoop, Etcetera, News |

Naughty Dog working on third project in addition to Last of Us PS4 and Uncharted 4

Posted on May 16, 2014 by John Scalzo

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Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann recently sat down with Edge to talk about the work required to bring The Last of Us Remastered to the PS4. The ease-of-use of Sony’s next-generation console system has been praised by many developers, but porting one of the most complex PS3 titles to the PS4 wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows:

“I wish we had a button that was like ‘Turn On PS4 Mode’, but no,” creative director Neil Druckmann says. “We expected it to be Hell, and it was Hell. Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds… that took a long time. These engineers are some of the best in the industry and they optimised the game so much for the PS3’s SPUs specifically. It was optimised on a binary level, but after shifting those things over [to PS4] you have to go back to the high level, make sure the [game] systems are intact, and optimise it again.”

Druckmann’s discussion of the difficulties Naughty Dog faced with The Last of Us Remastered is quite interesting, but he also dropped a bombshell in regards to the studio’s next project: “We’re working on this re-release, but at the same time we’re working on two other brand-new experiences.”

One of those “brand-new experiences” has to be Uncharted 4, but the second project is currently a big mystery. When we last checked in with Naughty Dog, the developer was debating whether or not to move forward with The Last of Us 2 or an entirely new property. It looks like that decision has been made, but it’ll probably be a while before we hear anything else about it.

Posted in News, PS4 |

Transistor launch trailer unmasks four villains ahead of May 20 release

Posted on May 16, 2014 by John Scalzo

Transistor will be available to download for the PC (through Steam) and PS4 next week. Supergiant Games has kept quiet about much of the game since it was announced last Spring, but a newly released launch trailer has shed a little more light on the hybrid action/strategy RPG.

Narrated by the Transistor itself (Logan Cunnignham, also the voice that guides the player in Supergiant’s Bastion), four faces are introduced as the villains of the piece for the first time. These characters don’t have names yet, but their inclusion gives a deeper look into Transistor’s dystopian world.

According to Supergiant’s Greg Kasavin, the shroud of secrecy around Transistor was deliberate. Speaking to the PlayStation Blog, he said: “Our feeling is that the less you know going into a game like Transistor, the more likely it is to surprise you. And we think experiencing genuine surprise is one of the rarest and most pleasurable sensations that games can provide.”

Kasavin also used the PS Blog post to tease Transistor’s Recursion Mode, a “New Game Plus” mode that opens after the player completes the story. In Recursion Mode, players will retain their User Level and Transistor Customization while experiencing a completely different resistance from enemies and “some new surprises” in the game itself.

Recursion Mode… a Second Quest if you will.

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