Category: Games

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How Xbox Series X Backwards Compatibility Makes Your Old Games Better Than Ever

In a Xbox Wire blog post, Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald wrote about backwards compatibility support for Xbox Series X. Microsoft’s next-gen console will support backwards compatibility for original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games and Ronald promises that thousands of those titles will be playable on Xbox Series X on day one. New backwards compatibility techniques will allow the games to run at higher resolutions and with HDR support they originally lacked, too.

“With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites,” he wrote. “Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless. By the time we launch this holiday, the team will have spent well over 200,000 hours ensuring your game library is ready for you to jump in immediately.”

Series X won’t just play your old Xbox games–it will also improve how they look. “The team was not content to just rely on the increased hardware performance to improve your playing experience,” Ronald wrote. “Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR.”

Ronald added that Series X will incorporate innovations that backwards compatibility on Xbox 360 and Xbox One didn’t, including “brand new techniques that enable even more titles to run at higher resolutions and image quality while still respecting the artistic intent and vision of the original creators.” The Series X will have the ability to double the frame rate of certain games as well, upping titles that run at 30 FPS to 60 FPS and 60 FPS to 120 FPS.

All backwards compatible games will support Series X’s quick resume feature as well, allowing you to quickly navigate between multiple games across all four generations of Xbox. Quick resume will be a console feature–so all games that release for Series X will automatically be able to take advantage of it without developer input.

Of course, a new console needs new games too and Microsoft wants to assure its playerbase that it isn’t skimping on exclusives when it comes to the Xbox Series X’s library of games. “Led by Halo Infinite, our 15 Xbox Game Studios teams are hard at work creating the biggest and best line up of exclusives in Xbox history,” Ronald wrote. “We are incredibly excited to show many of the new games in development for Xbox Series X soon.”

Now Playing: Xbox Series X Is A Chance To Fix Achievements

The Destroy All Humans Remake Has A Demo Out Now On PC

Destroy All Humans, the remake of the 2005 PS2/Xbox title, now has a demo. Right now, it’s only available on GOG, so you can test the game out and see how it plays on your PC.

The demo consists of the game’s first mission, which was shown off in a recent trailer. Whether you played the original or not, you can now get some insight into what the game involves. There’s no word on whether the demo will be available elsewhere in the future.

According to the demo description, this is about a 20-30 minute slice of gameplay, so don’t expect to spend a whole afternoon with it. The demo weighs in at a fairly hefty 8GB.

If you don’t like to play your games on PC, Xbox One owners will be able to get some idea of what the Destroy All Humans experience entails in June, as the original will be a part of Xbox Games with Gold. If you’re really keen, there’s also a $400 Collector’s Edition available for preorder.

Now Playing: Destroy All Humans! – Release Date Reveal Gameplay Trailer

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A Zoolander Animated Miniseries From 2016 Is Now Available In The US For The First Time

A Zoolander animated miniseries, which was released in the UK back in 2016, has finally made its way to the US after a long wait. The series is called Zoolander: Super Model, and has a total runtime of 84 minutes.

The series is available now on CBS All Access (disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company).

The show, which was created by Augenblick Studios (Ugly Americans, Superjail), features most of the original film’s cast, including Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Christine Taylor. The one exception is Will Ferrell, who played villain Mugatu across both Zoolander movies. It also features guest stars such as Tim Gunn, Jenny Slate, Nick Kroll, and Jon Daly. It’s also the final voice performance of Jerry Stiller, who passed away earlier this month.

You can watch the trailer for Zoolander: Super Model below.

2016 also saw the release of Zoolander 2, which was not well received. The sequel earned a mild $56 million worldwide, which makes a Zoolander 3 unlikely.

Cliff Bleszinski Reflects On The Closure Of His Studio, Boss Key

Cliff Bleszinski, the designer of the original Gears of War games, has reflected on the closure of his latest studio, Boss Key. Appearing on the Animal Talking show with Star Wars writer Gary Whitta, Bleszinski said the closure of his studio affected him personally in a serious and significant way.

“I was deeply, deeply depressed for about a year,” he said. “My doctor put me on Lexapro for a little bit. That messed me up, so I got off that. It was one of the hardest things to happen to me in my entire life. It was almost harder than losing my father when I was 15 years old.”

Bleszinski recalled that he had high hopes for Boss Key and their debut title, LawBreakers, but it did not all go to plan.

“I was cocky, I was brash, and I was just assuming if I faked it until I made it, even though I had already made it, that the game would be a hit. I’ll never forget, watching the concurrent users start to plummet,” he said. “We were trying to be AAA on a AA budget.”

Overall, Bleszinski pointed out that the failure of LawBreakers and Boss Key can’t be pinned down to one element or another. He’s spoken about how the game being “too woke” was one of the reasons why the game struggled. In his discussion with Whitta, Bleszinski said he wished he could have provided more backstory and lore for the game’s various characters.

After the closure of Boss Key, Bleszinski said he was unlikely to return to game development, but recently, he shared an idea for a new project involving dogs that could be a game, or something else. In his conversation with Whitta, Bleszinski said if he ever made a game again, it wouldn’t be a large-scale endeavor like LawBreakers or his previous titles. In his response, he also possibly teased the story of his dog game.

“If I were to make another video game ever again, it would be something small. The whole, kid-with-a-lost-dog thing. Where you’re the dog trying to get back to New Jersey from the Grand Canyon,” he said.

Overall, Bleszinski said he is feeling “a little bit disillusioned” and jaded about the gaming industry, adding that, the way he sees it, luck and virality is more of a factor than ever in terms of if a game is successful or not.

“This industry has been really, really good to me, but I also see the damage it can bring on game developers,” he said. “I’ve seen families ruined. I’ve seen people with substance abuse issues. I’ve seen people having to go to therapy.”

Bleszinski left Epic after 20 years in October 2012, prior to the release of Epic’s massively popular battle royale game Fortnite. He started Boss Key with former Killzone boss Arjan Brussee in 2014; the team shipped LawBreakers in 2017 and the early access PC game Radical Heights in 2018 before closing down later that year.

Bleszinski is now pursuing one of his other passions: theatre. He is an investor in the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Hadestown, which he is also co-producing. Hadestown earned a whopping 14 Tony award nominations, winning eight–including Best Musical.

Bleszinski is also writing a memoir with Simon & Schuster, and his pages are due in January 2021, he told Whitta on the show. In addition to the book, Bleszinski said he has ideas for new IP, but he’s not sure if it would be a game or a graphic novel or something else. He also said he’s writing a script for what could be a TV show or a movie, but he did not share any details about it.

Now Playing: How Radical Heights Victories Compare With Fortnite And PUBG

Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4 Introduces Incredible New Liquid Physics

Half-Life: Alyx has received a new update, bringing the game up to version 1.4, and it’s added a nifty new feature–liquid inside bottles. That’s not normally the kind of thing that would excite us, but Half-Life: Alyx’s liquids are an exception.

The GIF below shows off the new liquid in action inside a bottle, and it looks extremely realistic. The new feature isn’t the liquid itself so much as the physics underpinning it, which should look extra impressive in VR.

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Update 1.4 adds several other features and fixes to the game, including a raft of new subtitles, some UI improvements, and crash fixes. The Workshop has also been updated, which will be good news for anyone who likes to tinker.

The full notes for the update are below.

Half-Life Alyx Update 1.4

Game Features

  • Added subtitles for: Brazilian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
  • Bottles now appear to have liquid inside them that sloshes around as you shake them.
  • UI appears quicker when returning to Main Menu
  • Improvements to addon management UI

Game Fixes

  • Added checks for users loading a savegame with missing addons (eg. unsubscribed or deleted)
  • Added error message if a game fails to load due to a missing map requested by an addon
  • Various crash fixes
  • Fixed bug where exiting the game by closing SteamVR could generate bad save files

Workshop Features

  • Enabled the Postprocessing Editor (Documentation)
  • Added “Custom Character” example addon (Documentation)
  • Added example maps for:
    • Blind Zombie (a.k.a. Jeff)
    • Hacking and Toner Puzzles
    • Parked Vehicles and other Interactive Prefabs
    • Visibility System (Documentation)
    • Postprocessing Volumes (Documentation)
  • Added core functionality required for Lua scripting and added some Alyx-specific script bindings for querying VR controller input and creating nav mesh paths from entity scripts
  • Enabled live bone constraints in SFM, which can be baked/enabled as procedural bones, like cloth

Workshop Fixes

  • Fixed case where some explicitly specified meshes became hulls. (eg. func_shatterglass will now build in a map without having to enable legacy collision mesh.)
  • Added some meshes that were missing from parked vehicle prefabs.
  • Made SFM UI less Dota-specific in a few places
  • Fixed missing map models (mostly combine stations) in SFM
  • Fixed Import Sequence in SFM to work correctly on sequences with animated root orientation

Half-Life: Alyx received a 9/10 in GameSpot’s review. If you don’t have the VR set-up for it, you can check out our guide–or you can at least experience some of the joy of a new Half-Life by listening to the soundtrack.

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PS5 And Xbox Series X: Mortal Kombat Boss Says People Are Overlooking One Feature In Particular

With the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this year, a new generation of gaming consoles begins. Both systems are stacked with a multitude of improved features and capabilities, but there is one in particular that Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon believes that people are underestimating. This feature could radically change how we experience games, but it’s something that doesn’t immediately jump off the page when you think “next gen.”

During a recent livestream, Boon said the first thing people tend to ask about with new consoles is how much better the graphics will look. But he believes it’s the dramatically improved loading times that might end up being the bigger differentiator between the current generation and next-gen.

“It’s funny when these new consoles come out and everybody goes, ‘OK, what do the graphics look like?’ I think people are underestimating the impact that the almost zero loading time is going to have,” he said, as reported by Twinfinite. “That’s suddenly going to open doors that weren’t considered possible before and I think we haven’t even scratched the surface of what will eventually be done with those systems.”

Boon went on to say that, with any new console generation, improved graphics are “a given.” He’s personally more excited about the under-the-hood features like loading and memory handling. “Stuff like that is going to be huge,” he said.

Sony has already demonstrated the PS5’s dramatically improved loading times–and it’s very impressive. (It’s also rumored to be showcasing the console during a PS5 event on June 3.) Microsoft, meanwhile, has an overall goal of basically eliminating load times altogether.

A demo, which you can see above, shows off how State of Decay 2 loads the first level in just 10 seconds on Xbox Series X, compared to 50 seconds on Xbox One. Both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 have new internal SSDs that are helping to improve speed and reduce loading times.

Despite ongoing concerns around COVID-19, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are slated to launch later this year. For more, check out GameSpot’s list of titles for each console in the links below.

Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.

Now Playing: Xbox Series X – Loading Times Tech Demo

Minecraft Dungeons Has A Clothing Line That Includes Proper Dungeon-Crawling Cloaks

Minecraft Dungeons is out now, and Microsoft has teamed up with the fashion company CLOAK to release a clothing series for the title–including, yes, a series of wearable cloaks. The brand, which was co-founded by Minecraft content creators Markiplier and Jacksepticeye, has released a whole range of Minecraft clothing.

Along with cloaks, which are undoubtedly the highlight (especially if you’re living in a cold climate currently), there’s also shirts, hoodies, jogger pants, and caps available. All the clothing in this range is inspired by Minecraft Dungeons, and the Bauhaus and De Stijl art movements are cited as influences.

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The cloaks are “ultra-limited”, according to the press release, and are designed for comfort in mind. They’re also, of course, the exact sort of outfit you might wear if you were exploring a dungeon. You can see more from the range below.

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10% of the proceeds from every sale of the CLOAK brand will be donated towards the United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, too, assisting the World Health Organization in tracking and fighting back against the coronavirus.

Minecraft Dungeons is available now on Xbox One and PC through Xbox Game Pass, as well as PS4 and Switch. It received a 7/10 in GameSpot’s review.

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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Final Season Premiere Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the final season premiere of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD follow.

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The official end of the Marvel Television era is upon us as Agents of SHIELD, which was once the MCU’s heavily-hyped TV flagship, kicks off its farewell season with, appropriately, a storyline that’s almost totally untethered from the overall goings-on in the Marvel-verse – so much so that everything starts with a rollicking romp back to 1931 for a few time travel shenanigans.

Obviously, the story still involves SHIELD, and thus Hydra (thanks to the reveal that the Chronicoms are out to eliminate Hydra from forming so that – er – SHIELD never forms?), but it’s still all nestled within the show’s insulated Hydra mythology (Gideon Malick, Maveth, etc) that doesn’t veer too close to the MCU’s big screen storylines, and the Chronicoms, which were beings created for the series back at the tail end of Season 4. The draw here, in the show’s sunset season, are the characters we’ve been following for almost a decade. Anyone still on board with the show is watching because of Quake, May, Coulson, and the rest of this bizarre, unstuck-in-spacetime “family” (as, truly, none of them have anyone else except each other now).

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Marvel Television (which was officially folded into Marvel Studios last October) was a modest success in its own right — with programming on Netflix, ABC, Freeform, and Hulu — but it was a noble failure on the MCU front. It was always a one-way street, with the TV shows alluding to the movies but never the other way around. Eventually, when Runaways and Cloak and Dagger started, the shows just stopped acting like the Avengers existed at all. And Agents of SHIELD, as of Season 5 (or really the second half of Season 4), decided the best course for itself was to remove its players from the game board completely – whether it meant putting them in a Matrix-style reality or wiping them from the timeline altogether so they wouldn’t be affected by Thanos.

Fortunately, by the time that was necessary, Agents of SHIELD had built up a solid-enough team dynamic, filled with enough love affairs and close bonds and (numerous) resurrections that allowed it to evolve into a soapy superhero joy in its own right, no longer needing to rely on the Marvel Studios films as a backdrop. The gang’s new adventure, which now has them surfing their own rebooted timeline in that timeline’s past, feels like the kind of fun and charming adventure these crusaders should be having as the series winds down. That’s not to say the stakes won’t rise as the season pushes on, but right now even with the “Wilfred Malick” twist right at the end, the show feels more dopey than dangerous. (In a good way, mind you.)

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“The New Deal” drops our prime time players back in the Prohibition, as the Chronicoms (except for Enoch) intend to muss up the works so that they can lay claim to Earth as their new home. As soon as Deke mentions a theory that allows the team to create a smidgeon of havoc in the past without Butterfly Effecting things too much, it’s off to the races. Quake takes down hidden enemies posing as cops, Patton Oswalt shows up as the original Koenig, and Coulson — who has now (finally) become a full LMD — geeks out while meeting FDR.

We don’t know yet how many of this season’s thirteen episodes will take place in the ’30s, though it feels like perhaps the bulk of the season will have this post-Great Depression setting, as even the opening title graphic is done up in old-style noir. We do know that Enver Gjokaj’s Agent Carter character (and Peggy’s love interest), Souza, is headed our way, so given the Hydra element and the (presumed) super-soldier serum we saw, this final run could lead into some really cool First Avenger stuff. And since Agent Carter got axed before its time, perhaps this series can offer up some mini-closure on that front. It’s doubtful that Hayley Atwell will pop in, but perhaps a teenage Peggy is in the cards.

The SHIELD team is, more or less, the best version of themselves right now. Coulson’s back, but not as a deluded manifestation from the fear dimension (did I get that right?). Quake is still a badass in the field. Mac is still a “heavy is the head”-style of director. A recuperating Yo-Yo now has her “real” arms back while Simmons keeps the Z1 home fires burning. Deke is a drip, but a delightful one. Fitz is, naturally, gone, as he’s wont to do. And May is…well, we’re not sure yet. After being almost killed by Sarge last season, she spent the premiere in a healing pod – but then popped up right at the end in menacing fashion. The Season 7 premiere is a good (and semi-goofy) start to SHIELD’s last hurrah, giving us just enough teases to indicate bigger things are on the way.

GTA 6 Release Window Might Still Be A Few Years Away [Update]

Grand Theft Auto VI is presumed to be the next title in development at Rockstar Games, and now an SEC filing by publisher Take-Two Interactive might indicate that it won’t be ready until 2023. [Update: Take-Two has contradicted the takeaway in a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, saying the table only reflects marketing commitments for third-party companies and not its internal projects. As a result, this wouldn’t indicate any potential marketing spend on a new Rockstar game.]

A 10-K filing by Take-Two, which includes presumed marketing spend for the next five years, shows that the company is planning to spend over $89 million in its 2023 financial year. This period starts on April 1 2023 and ends on March 31 2024, with double the marketing budget than any other year during this five-year stretch by. According to analyst Jeff Cohen of investment firm Stephens (and reported by VentureBeat), the budget is likely for Grand Theft Auto VI.

Despite this, Cohen points to previous 10-K filings by Take-Two where the marketing budget accurately predicted the launch windows of games before their announcement, with Red Dead Redemption 2 being the most recent example. Although timeline can change over a five-year forecast, it seems plausible that Take-Two’s current plan is to launch the next Grand Theft Auto installment a decade after Grand Theft Auto V.

With both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 launching later this year, and the on-going success of Grand Theft Auto Online, it seems Rockstar is in no hurry with getting a sequel out. That, coupled with the departure of Rockstar founder Dan Houser earlier this year, would likely tempt the developer to continue supporting its online offering while planning for a new era in their most popular franchise.

Take-Two Interactive recently announced that Grand Theft Auto V had passed over 130 million sales since its launch in 2013, which accounts for more than 40% of all Grand Theft Auto sales across the entire series. The publisher has also revealed that it has 93 games in development currently, but declined to talk about the future of Grand Theft Auto.

Now Playing: The Evolution of Grand Theft Auto

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