Author: Trafficblast

Scientists have calculated the probability that the potentially hazardous Bennu asteroid hits Earth between 2021 and 2300 after studying it for more than two years.

NASA revealed this information in a press release today, saying that while Bennu’s chances of hitting Earth are still very low, the organization has narrowed down its impact probability. It did this by studying its size, shape, mass, composition, spin, and orbital trajectory.

IGN can exclusively announce Nerf: Legends, a sci-fi FPS from GameMill Entertainment, based on the range of beloved toy guns from Hasbro.

Nerf: Legends is described as a “family-friendly FPS”, and so is a tamer alternative to the likes of Halo and Call of Duty. It features both single-player and multiplayer modes, with the campaign pitting you against evil robots using a whole arsenal of accurately-depicted Nerf blasters (although these ones fire energy, not foam darts), and the PvP supporting up to eight players.

Set across 19 sci-fi locations, the campaign features a variety of boss battles and challenges. Along the way you’ll be able to acquire power-ups such as magnetic pull darts, push darts, seeker darts, and slow darts that will add variety to combat encounters. These are used in combination with an arsenal of 15 Nerf blasters that have been pulled from Hasbro’s Mega, Ultra, and Elite toy lines. Each blaster can be personalised with perks and skins. Your player character is also customisable.

On the multiplayer side of things, Nerf: Legends is an arena shooter with 4v4 team battles and eight-player free-for-all matches. Cross-play is supported, allowing for play across all supported consoles.

Nerf: Legends is planned to launch this October on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

The wacky Soviet-era FPS Atomic Heart will have two playable endings, according to the development team at Mundfish.

Spotted by wccftech, Mundfish confirmed that Atomic Heart will contain two different endings in the recently updated FAQ section of the game’s official Discord channel. According to the developer, the ending that a player receives is triggered based upon a previous moral decision that they take.

The FAQ reads, “We’ve put an important moral choice in the hands of the player closer to the finale, because we want to nudge the community to argue and discuss about the themes that we have laid out in the story. We want you to draw your own conclusions and make your own decision, not being influenced by forces from above.”

The team has, for obvious reasons, avoided giving away any details to what the decision in question is, but it sounds like it could offer some amount of replayability. Mundfish does insist, however, that Atomic Heart will not play like an RPG, and is instead an FPS game with a “strict linear plot” in which “one should not expect incredible variety”.

Additionally, the FAQ also gives fans an update on Atomic Heart’s development process. Mundfish has said that the game is almost complete and is now finally “at the stage of polishing and final assembly”.

Despite being almost finished, the developer is reluctant to share news about a release date for Atomic Heart. Mundfish says, “In general, we cannot tell you the release date right now due to a million little nuances, starting with factors beyond our control (localization of the game into other languages), and ending with the mood and atmosphere within the team, which will obviously be worse if we eventually have to move this date.”

For those who haven’t followed the story so far, check out our Atomic Heart explainer video to learn more about what’s going on in the game’s weird-yet-wonderful nuclearpunk dystopian world. And while we don’t have a release date, we do know that Atomic Heart will be free on Xbox Game Pass from day one. When it does release, you’ll be able to make use of its fantastic photo mode.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN who, following the release of the Atomic Heart trailer, has a newfound fear for blood tentacles. You can follow him on Twitter.

PlayStation 5 consoles can still be a little tricky to get hold of, but as we progress further into 2021, it’s slowly getting easier to secure a PS5. If you haven’t secured the console yet, make sure to follow @IGNUKDeals for live stock updates.

For those who have managed to get hold of a new console recently, there are plenty of incredible PS5 games on sale at the moment. This is very good news, considering some of the biggest PlayStation games can start at around £70 at launch. Thankfully, these prices don’t stick around forever, and there are some seriously good discounts to check out. Here are all our favourite PS5 and PS4 game deals right now.

PS5 and PlayStation Games on Sale in the UK

PS5 Accessories to Check Out

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. Send him awesome gaming screenshots @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Far Cry VR is not a normal virtual reality game. Designed for “free-roam VR”, it can’t be played in your home on an Oculus Quest or Valve Index headset. Instead, you must go to a special location where VR magic transforms a room the size of a whole apartment into Far Cry 3’s exotic, pirate-controlled island. This allows up to eight people the freedom to walk around and explore huge areas that simply can’t be done within the confines of your furniture-filled living room.

Unfortunately, despite these shattered barriers, Far Cry VR feels tightly restricted. It’s more akin to an on-rails light gun shooter such as Time Crisis than a Far Cry experience. Thankfully, though, this lack of ambition doesn’t totally overshadow the genuine thrills of VR at this scale.

Myself and two other IGN staff members had the opportunity to play Far Cry VR at Meetspace VR in London, where we played through the whole game in co-op. The previously mentioned Time Crisis vibe comes directly from Far Cry VR’s set-up. It’s essentially a high-concept arcade game; a 30-minute experience only available at 52 venues across the world. These parameters mean the depth of experimentation that you’d expect from Far Cry is traded for instant and accessible thrills. There’s no choice between stealth or action, there are no outposts to capture, and there are no animals to befriend and unleash on your foes. Instead, you and a group of friends are tasked with simply gunning down waves of enemies to obtain the highest score on the leaderboard.

These concessions to the Far Cry formula are understandable given the format, but sadly the experience doesn’t take full advantage of its one unique feature. While you are able to freely walk around the game’s environments, the level design is restrictive. Areas funnel you down narrow pathways, which makes for a very on-rails shooter feel. Fights take place in static kill boxes which seem designed for you to simply stand in position and fire on incoming enemies, rather than navigating the space to hunt them down.

But despite all this, Far Cry VR is a good time, at least in the moment. Being able to walk long distances uninterrupted in a VR game feels weird and fun, and holds novelty for most of the 30 minutes. Despite not demanding rigorous movement, the immersion makes it all too easy to get into character, and so after half-an-hour of ducking behind cover and swinging an AK-47 wildly, you build up quite a sweat. And while most of Far Cry’s hallmark ideas are ignored, the game’s stand-out segment does make good use of the series’s obsession with drug-fuelled psychedelics. Enemies fire at you from architecture floating in the sky, while sea creatures float by uncomfortably close amidst the carnage. It’s all amusingly trippy.

Zero Latency, the company behind Far Cry VR, has just three locations in the UK and 11 in the United States. This means you’ll likely have to travel to visit one, perhaps even quite a distance. If you’re a Far Cry fan, such a pilgrimage will probably disappoint; this is a Far Cry game in name only. But if you live near a Zero Latency site and have the cash to spare, there’s definitely some fun to be had in free-roam VR. I suspect one of the company’s bespoke games that don’t come shackled to the expectations of an existing series, however, is probably the best way to experience it.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

John Hanke, the Founder and CEO of Niantic, has published his detailed thoughts on the metaverse. The Niantic boss is seemingly far from excited about the concept, with fears that a virtual universe may evolve to become a “dystopian nightmare” and one that humanity should look to work to avoid.

In a lengthy blog post published on Niantic’s website, Hanke describes his fears around a proposed metaverse, arguing that fictional depictions of such a concept serve to act as a warning for society. He says, “A lot of people these days seem very interested in bringing this near-future vision of a virtual world to life, including some of the biggest names in technology and gaming. But in fact these novels served as warnings about a dystopian future of technology gone wrong.”

It’s not that Hanke is against supplementing the real world with technology – I mean, he’s the founder of a software company that creates augmented reality games. The CEO instead says that “we can use technology to lean into the ‘reality’ of augmented reality — encouraging everyone, ourselves included, to stand up, walk outside, and connect with people and the world around us.” In Hanke’s view, technology isn’t something that should be used to replace core human experiences by launching people into a virtual mega-sphere of total escapism. Moreover, it should be used to better human experiences by using technology to supplement their experiences in the ‘real’ world.

Hanke’s interest in designing games that drive more real-world interactions through the use of technology can be seen in Niantic’s release catalogue. Games like Pokémon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite use AR technology that connects the virtual to the physical in order to promote active play. In this vein, Hanke says that Niantic questions how technology can make people better. “Could it nudge us get us off the couch and out for an evening stroll or a Saturday in the park? Could it draw us into public space and into contact with neighbors we might never have met? Could it give us a reason to call a friend, make plans with our families, or even discover brand new friends? Collectively, could it help us discover the magic, history, and beauty hiding in plain sight?” he asks.

In the post, Hanke describes his future hopes for achieving more real-world interactions within what he calls the ‘real world metaverse’. The CEO explains that “Building the real world metaverse lies at the intersection of two major technical undertakings: synchronizing the state of hundreds of millions of users around the world (along with the virtual objects they interact with), and tying those users and objects precisely to the physical world.”

In order to develop its augmented worlds further, Hanke says that Niantic is pursuing avenues within its Lightship platform (the technology that underpins Pokemon Go) that would support a “shared state” experience of the world. In this shared state, interactions with digital objects in the physical world would be consistent for everyone. If one person were to change something in the digital world, it would be reflected in what the millions of other participants using the AR system also see. Hanke says that tying digital interactions to the physical world like this is a task similar to creating Google Maps but for computers.

Niantic’s long-term goal in the field is to develop games that promote a “shared state” experience that can be discovered and explored through other AR technologies such as smart glasses. To make sense of this, Hanke says, “We imagine a future of worlds that can be overlaid on the real world. For now, we’re calling these ‘reality channels’ to give the idea a name. Think of Pokémon GO, upgraded for smart glasses where the Pokémon wander through your local park, seeming to actually inhabit the world. In this future version, Pokémon appear to you as if they are really there, scurrying around passing pedestrians, hiding behind a park bench, or roaming in herds through your favorite park.”

Hanke continues to explore the idea further, explaining how digital creations in the real world could affect infrastructure and other in-game users. “Buildings might take on the pastel hues of the Pokémon universe; a 10-story Pokémon GO Gym might rise above your local shopping center. If you encounter another player on the street, they might even appear transformed into the guise of their in-game persona.” he says.

Niantic has partnered with Qualcomm to invest in “a reference design for outdoor-capable AR glasses” that would sync up with Niantic’s maps to create a medium through which users could experience these overlaid worlds. Despite first versions of the hardware existing for “internal R&D”, Hanke says that the company’s work in the field is just beginning and expects it to continue for a number of years. Looks like we won’t be seeing our favourite Pokémon soaring over any busy city streets just yet then.

In other Niantic news, why not check out this article detailing how the company recently issued a response to fans over complaints surrounding its decision to reduce the in-game extended range feature for Pokéstop interactions in Pokémon Go.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. He adores the idea of chasing his favorite Pokémon around the local park. You can follow him on Twitter.