Month: January 2019

Although the popular Star Wars Rebels finished last year, fans of the franchise’s animated output still have much to look forward to. A new season of the much-loved Clones Wars is being made for Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, and ahead of that, we have the return of Star Wars Resistance this month. A new trailer for the second half of Season 1 has now been released.

Resistance is set before the movie The Force Awakens, and focuses on a young pilot named Kaz, who is recruited by the Resistance to take on a top-secret mission to infiltrate the First Order. This new trailer reveals that the upcoming episodes will contain various links to The Force Awakens, with a reference to Starkiller Base and appearances from General Leia, Poe Dameron, General Hux, and shots of Kylo Ren’s shuttle. Check it out below:

Star Wars Resistance returns to the Disney Channel on January 13. The studio has also confirmed that the show will return for a second season.

Resistance was created by Dave Filoni, who oversaw both Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. When it was first announced last year, Filoni spoke about his inspirations. “The idea for [the show] came out of my interest in World War II aircraft and fighter pilots,” he said. “My grandfather was a pilot and my uncle flew and restored planes, so that’s been a big influence on me. There’s a long history of high-speed racing in Star Wars, and I think we’ve captured that sense of excitement in an anime-inspired style, which is something the entire team has been wanting to do for a long time.”

As for The Clone Wars, Season 7 will premiere on Disney+, and will also be overseen by Filoni. The show seemingly ended with a short sixth season on Netflix in 2014, with many of the storylines incomplete.

Filoni will also direct an episode of The Mandalorian, the live-action Star Wars show that is currently in production and is also set to premiere on Disney+. The show is being produced by Jungle Book director Jon Favreau, and other directors include Thor Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi and Jurassic World star Bryce Dallas Howard. None of these shows have a release date, but Disney+ is expected to launch later this year.

While Game Freak is known primarily as the developer behind the mainline Pokemon series, the studio occasionally releases titles outside of its usual wheelhouse. One such example is Giga Wrecker, a stylish side-scrolling platformer available for PC via Steam, and now it appears the game is coming to home consoles as well.

A rating for Giga Wrecker Alt has been filed by the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee (via Gematsu). According to the filing, the game is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, with Rising Star Games listed as the publisher.

Rising Star and Game Freak have yet to officially confirm if Giga Wrecker is indeed coming to consoles, although it isn’t uncommon for unannounced games to be outed by ratings boards. The addition of “Alt” to the title also suggests the game will boast some form of new content, although this likewise has yet to be confirmed.

Giga Wrecker first launched for Steam in 2017. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by an army of robots, with players cast in the role of Reika, a girl with the power to control debris. Using this ability, she must manipulate the rubble littering the world to solve environmental puzzles and defeat enemies. You can watch the launch trailer for the original Steam version above.

Game Freak has another non-Pokemon game in the works for Switch: the tentatively titled Town. The game was unveiled last September during a Nintendo Direct presentation. Details about it are scant, but the entire adventure unfolds within a once-peaceful town that is being beset by monsters. A “core” Pokemon RPG is also slated to release for Switch this year.

The technology industry loves to start the year with a bang and 2019 is no different. CES 2019 is currently taking place in Las Vegas, and tech companies big and small are showing off the latest and (relatively) greatest wares. It’s easy to get a bit lost in all the announcements and news, especially if you’re trying to stay on top of what’s relevant to gaming, as opposed to the next generation of smart TVs, refrigerators, and AI vacuum cleaners.

For that reason, we assembled a panel of experts to cut through the chaos and bring you the information you need to know. In the video above GameSpot’s Peter Brown, Lucy James, and Michael Higham are joined by CNET’s Jeff Bakalar to talk through what’s new at CES and what it means for the video game industry.

As you can imagine, a lot of the discussion is focused on new graphics cards which, this year, seem to be striking a better balance between power and affordability. One such card is the Nvidia RTX 2060, which is said to be on par with or better than the GTX 1070 Ti and is generally quite affordable, starting at $350 in the US. The panel also discusses Razer’s Turret, which is the first official mouse and keyboard for the Xbox One, and Viveport Infinity, a new subscription service that gives HTC Vive owners access to a library of VR games. You can see the chat around all that and more above.

For a more in-depth look at what’s going on at the show, make sure to check out CNET’s CES 2019 hub, where you’ll find news, features, and more providing comprehensive coverage of everything that’s happening.

Following its CES 2019 announcement of the Radeon VII GPU, AMD unveiled its third generation of Ryzen desktop processor. The new Ryzen isn’t scheduled to launch until mid-2019, but it will support the Radeon VII.

According to CNET, AMD demoed the new Ryzen during the company’s CES keynote presentation. Using the new Radeon VII, the Ryzen played Forza Horizon 4 with a consistent 100 frames per second at 1080p. “This system is the most advanced PC gaming hardware in the world, together in one system–third gen Ryzen, [and] Radeon VII,” said AMD president and CEO Lisa Su. During CNET’s CES coverage, they saw the new Ryzen go up against and slightly outperform the Intel i9-9900K on a Cinebench multicore test. Both CPUs performed similarly, but Ryzen used much less power.

The Radeon VII is the world’s first 7nm gaming GPU, which Su claims to be the most powerful GPU that AMD has ever built. At CES, Su demonstrated how Devil May Cry 5 would play on the Radeon VII, which she explained runs “well above” 60 frames per second at 4K resolution. In comparison to AMD’s previously most powerful GPU, the Vega 64, the Radeon VII runs most games with an average 25 percent performance boost. Some games see even greater improvements, such as Battlefield V, which receives a 35 percent boost.

AMD’s Radeon VII is scheduled to release February 7 and cost $700, but it also comes bundled with the remake of Resident Evil 2, The Division 2, and Devil May Cry 5. No exact date has been announced for the third generation Ryzen CPU, nor a price point.

Also during CES 2019, Nvidia announced a new video card, the GeForce RTX 2060. HTC announced several new reveals for its Vive VR products as well, including two headsets–Pro Eye and Cosmos. Samsung unveiled two new TVs, one that uses MicroLED technology and another the size of a living room. LG showcased a new television as well, which can roll up and be easily stored between uses.

Destiny 2‘s latest expansion, Black Armory, was set to wrap up with the release of the fourth and final forge–the Bergusia Forge–this week. Before that happened, a group of hardcore players and streamers attempted to dissect a complex in-game puzzle involving Niobe Labs. Once they solved the puzzle, the forge would unlock for all DLC owners. But after more than 24 hours of attempts have not yet yielded a complete solution, Bungie is opting to simply unlock the forge while keeping the puzzle going on the side. [Update: The Bergusia Forge is now unlocked, although there appears to still be some legwork involved before you can actually jump in.]

The Bergusia Forge will unlock today, January 9, at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET / 10 PM GMT, Bungie announced on its website. “While coming together as a community to solve puzzles can be fun, setting this puzzle up as a gate between you and new content that you want to play has not been an ideal experience,” the studio admitted. “As such, we will be decoupling the puzzle from the final offering of the Black Armory. All Annual Pass owners will be able to experience the Bergusia Forge when the puzzle is solved or when the deadline expires–whichever happens first.”

This doesn’t mean the puzzle is being removed or solved for players. Those who care to continue–and there has been a small but dedicated group spending more than a day attempting to crack the mystery–can do so, and there’s both a Ghost and emblem available to those who complete the challenge. But Bungie has conceded that this current arrangement had to come to an end.

“We love trying new things with Destiny, but we’re also flexible enough to pivot when you point out room for improvement,” it said. “We’ll continue to monitor the conversation about this event and learn from your feedback as we create future content releases.”

This is not the first instance of complaints involving the Black Armory DLC. The first of the four forges had a higher-than-expected Power level requirement, forcing players to grind through existing content on the day of its release in order to be able to take part in the new activity. In that case, Bungie again made changes after a day.

While this forge marks the final major addition of the Black Armory, there is still more content to come as part of the Annual Pass. we don’t yet know everything that’s coming, but Bungie has outlined extensive plans for new content and changes, both free and paid, in the months to come.

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