ARK: Survival Evolved Winter Update Rings In The Holidays

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Dinosaur tamers and hunters beware because tis the season for Winter to come to the world of Ark: Survival Evolved. The latest update dropped on Christmas Eve and transformers the game world into a winter paradise while adding holiday event items, new challenges and special presents from Santa Clause stand in – Raptor Clause!

If you want to give your in-game house some holiday flair here are a few example of the limited time items that are available: Holiday Lights, Decorative Trees, Wreaths, Stockings and Snowmen.

To mark the end of 2015 the developers over at Studio Wild Card have announced that their close-out event for the Survival of the Fittest Tournament will be a 100 player vs 100 player epic elimination tournament featuring players from past rounds. The winning team will be able to donate $10,000 to a charity of their choice and the whole thing will be broadcast on Twitch.TV on December 29th at 9 AM PST.

If you haven’t played Ark: Survival Evolved the game is currently 40% – $17.99 USD for Windows PC. A version for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (with PlayStation VR Support) is expected to be released sometime after June 2016.

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Here’s Most of The Canadian Boxing Day Gaming Deals

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

With Christmas Day now past us I’m sure some of our readers are collecting their holiday cash and gift cards and getting ready to head down to the favorite retailer to purchase some new games. Perhaps you’re staying in-doors and doing a little shopping online instead? Regardless – Broken Joysticks has a rundown of all of the major deals from 3 major Canadian brick & mortar retailers and thankfully, yes, all of the ones listed in this article are also available online.

To be honest there aren’t a lot rush out and bust down the door deals this year. If you are in the market for an Xbox One Console then the 1TB Boxing Week Bundle is definitely worth it. You not only get two brand new games from this year – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Ori and the Blind Forrest but also Rare Replay which includes 30 classics. If you haven’t played Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher III or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain all of these major 2015 releases are heavily discounted at multiple retailers.

Here’s a partial list comprising some of the deals I found interesting. There are lots more at the respective links!

Wal-Mart Canada

  • PlayStation 4 Console W/ Uncharted Collection – $369.99
  • Xbox One Gears of War: Ultimate Bundle – $349.99
  • Wii U 32GB Premium System W/ Mario Kart 8 – $279.99
  • Guitar Hero: Live W/ Guitar (Various Consoles) – $89.99
  • Nintendo 2DS W/ Mario Kart – $89.99
  • Dual Shock 4 Controllers – $49.99
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Last-gen version) – $49.99
  • Halo 5: Guardians – $49.99
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider – $49.99
  • Just Cause 3 (PS4 Only) – $49.99

Electronics Boutique

  • PlayStation 4 Battlefront Bundle / Uncharted Bundle – $369.99
  • Xbox One 1TB Console W/ Rare Replay, Tomb Raider & More – $399.99
  • Halo 5: Guardians – $49.99
  • Batman: Arkham Knight (PS4 or Xbox One) – $29.99
  • Star Wars Battlefront (PS4 or Xbox One) – $49.99
  • The Witcher III (PS4 or Xbox One) – $29.99
  • Destiny: The Taken King – $54.99
  • Rainbow Six: Siege – $49.99
  • Metal Gear Solid V – $49.99
  • PS Vita 3000 Slim – $169.99
  • Evolve (PS4 or Xbox One) – $9.99
  • Dying Light (PS4 or Xbox One) – $29.99

Best Buy Canada

  • Xbox One 1TB Fallout 4 Bundle – $399.99
  • Xbox One 1TB 5 Game Holiday Bundle – $399.99
  • PlayStation 4 Dual Shock 4 Controllers – $49.99
  • Star Wars Battlefront (PS4 or Xbox One) – $49.99
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4 or Xbox One) – $49.99
  • Grand Theft Auto V (PS4) -$39.99
  • The Witcher III – $29.99
  • New 3DS XL Console – $189.99
  • Wii Blue Gamecube Controller – $15.99
  • Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3DS) – $29.99
  • Disney Infinity 3.0 Starter Kit (3DS) – $19.99

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Want To Make Your Own Game? Have $15? Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Is 85% Off On Steam!

Posted on December 25, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

There’s no secret that the games market, especially on PC, has been experiencing in indies boom for the last few years. Games like Titan Souls, Mini Metro, Axiom Verge and others have shown us that there is still a large player base for smaller 2D titles inspired by the 16-bit era but infused with more modern mechanics.

If you’ve dreamed of creating your own game but like me don’t have much in the way of programming knowledge then Clickteam Fusion 2.5 on Steam might interest you. Developed by longtime game creation software veterans Clickteam, this development suite gives you a nice & tidy interface to create your very first indie title with no programming. In the place of traditional programming Fusion 2.5 uses CT’s tried and true grid based Event Editor – allowing aspiring developers to plot out their game’s logic in an organized and visual fashion.

Fusion 2.5 isn’t just aimed at beginners, sensed professionals have produced indie games that have been published on multiple platforms. You might have played games like Five Nights At Freddie’s, The Angry Video Game Nerd Game, Knytt Underground or the more recent Not A Hero – all of them were developed using Fusion 2.5 or its predecessor Multimedia Fusion 2.

During the Steam Winter Sale Clickteam has discounted the Standard Version of Clickteam Fusion 2.5 to just $15 USD – down from its regular retail price of $100 USD! Out of the box you’ll be able to create limited HTML 5 games as well as full stand-alone Windows games and applications. If your dreams of game development take you into the mobile space CT Fusion 2.5 also supports a number of optional exporters that allow you to develop for Android, IOS and soon Mac OS X.

I’ve used their software for years, and although my ventures into indie development have not bore any fruit maybe you, dear reader, will more success. At $15 it is a hell of steal and I’d highly recommend Clickteam Fusion to any aspiring developer who has a dream but has been too afraid to get their feet wet.

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Users Reporting Sign-In Issues With PlayStation Network

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Last Christmas gamers all over the world filled social media, popular gaming forums and online spaces with stories of their frustration connecting to both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. The DDOS attacks of 2014 were the responsibility of a group calling themselves “Lizard Squad” and if early reports are accurate Christmas is about to be ruined for a whole new generation.

According to Down Detector – a site that tracks user reporter problems with major networks – the PlayStation network has been experiencing issues with connectivity since at least 14:00 PST. Over 50% of the reports on Down Detector indicate a problem with account sign in. Searching PlayStation Network on Twitter also yielded dozens of reports.

We will update when we get more information.

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PlayStation Flash sale Could Be Imminent

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

If a social media screen-cap posted on Neogaf is to be believed then a holiday weekend long Flash Sale may be forthcoming in the next few hours on the playstation store.

Posted by Gaf user Spy this Facebook post seemingly comes from PlayStation’s Mexican social media page and advertises a sale featuring some of the biggest new releases from this year including EA’s rebooted Need For Speed, Assasins Creed Syndicate and Just Cause 3.

If Sony happens to announce a surprise Flash Sale we will surely bring it to you!

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Rare Releases Behind The Scenes Video For N64 Classic Perfect Dark

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Can you believe that it has been 15 years since Rare LTD and Nintendo released the N64 swansong Perfect Dark? Hell, it has been half a decade since Microsoft and Rare LTD released the HD remake on Xbox Live.

To help promote the re-release of the HD Perfect Dark remake as part of the Rare Replay collection on Xbox One Rare has posted a very in-depth video featuring several of the prominent developers from the PD team. This video not only covers the development process that Rare’s 90s team used – No regular meetings, no deadlines and folks just adding in brand new features without a light at the end of the tunnel.

Watching this video is really a nostalgia trip.

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No PlayStation Plus IGC Announcement Until Dec 30th

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Playstation Plus

If you’re hitting F5 repeatedly on the PlayStation Blog hoping for Sony to announce a Christmas Miracle in the form of January 2016’s Instant Games Collection you can probably stop because it looks like we won’t find out about next month’s free games until December 30th.

On Twitter PlayStation’s EU community manager Fred Dutton was asked by a fan if we would see the IGC announcement and here is what he said:

Are you a little disappointed that we won’t know which games will be free until two days before the new year? It should also be noted that this past weeks PlayStation Store Update is the last update until the new year as well.

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Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest 2016 Announced

Posted on December 23, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Defenders of Eorzea prepare to unite your free company in the offline world with the announcement of dates for the 2016 Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest.  The community celebration will be a global affair – with events in Europe and Japan – but the festivities kick off October 13th – 15th in Las Vegas Nevada for those of us based in North America.

Here are the official details from the Final Fantasy Lodestone:

FINAL FANTASY XIV Fan Festival in North America
Early Registration: Thursday, October 13, 2016
Show Dates: Friday, October 14, 2016 to Saturday, October 15, 2016
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Venue: Paris Las Vegas

FINAL FANTASY XIV Fan Festival in Japan
Date: Saturday, December 24, 2016 to Sunday, December 25, 2016
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Venue: Tokyo Big Sight West Hall 3 & 4

FINAL FANTASY XIV Fan Festival in Europe
Date: February 2017 (2-day event)
Location: Frankfurt, Germany*
Venue: Details to be announced at a later date

Previous year’s Fan Fests have included a number of panels, meet & opportunities, exclusive announcements and some really cool “offline quests” themed after FFXIV’s in-game mechanics. As soon as more information about this year’s Fan Fest is available we will make sure to bring it to you!

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Fallout: NV Mod, Autumn Leaves, In The Running For Mod Of The Year

Posted on December 23, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

It’s undeniable that Fallout 4 is taking up lot of the communities’ time given that the game offers hundreds of hours of wasteland themed entertainment.  If you’re looking to take a break from Boston perhaps you should consider the fan made Fallout: Autumn Leaves for your next Vault Dweller survival fix.

Autumn Leaves is a fan designed modification that tasks players with exploring a centuries old library located somewhere in the Mohave.  The player will have to question several different sentient A.Is who reside in the library in order to find out what really happened there so many years ago. Autumn Leaves isn’t focused on combat but rather giving the player choice via dialogue and discovering the consequences of their choices.

With this unique take on the Fallout formula, over 2000 professionally voiced lines of dialogue and five different endings it is no surprise that Fallout: Autumn Leaves is currently in the running for ModDB’s Mod of the Year Award. Why not head on over to their ModDB page and give them Autumn Leaves a download? The latest version of Autumn Leaves was released yesterday!

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Humble Square Enix Bundle Includes $5 A Realm Reborn, $1 For Murdered Soul Suspect & Life Is Strange

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Humble Square Bundle

The folks at Humble Bundle have joined forces with Square Enix to bring out a brand new tiered bundle featuring a wide selection from the publisher’s catalogue just in time for the holidays.

Highlights include Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (30 days of access for new accounts) for just $5.00 as part of the Beat The Average tier. Even the $1 tier has some great games you probably shouldn’t pass up included episode 1 of Life is Strange,  Murdered Soul Suspect and three classic Tomb Raider titles.

Here’s the full breakdown of currently available titles, remember that the Beat the Average tier may fluctuate and that the BTA prices in this article are reflective as of press time. Also Humble will be adding new games in a weeks time.

$1 Tier

  • Murdered Soul Suspect
  • Life Is Strange Episode 1
  • Tomb Raider 1, 2 and 3
  • The Last Remnant

Beat The Average Tier

  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn + 30 Days Game Time (new accounts only)
  • Just Cause 1 + Just Cause 2
  • Front Mission Evolved
  • Gyromancer
  • Yosumin
  • 20% off Just Cause 3

$8.88 Tier

  • Lara Croft: the Tomb of Osiris
  • Tomb Raider: GOTY Edition
  • Hitman: Absolution

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Activision & Avenged Sevenfold Shred With New Live GHTV Content

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Activision has partnered with probably one of my favorite bands Avenged Sevenfold to bring some exclusive live content to Guitar Hero Live’s GHTV mode.  Fans can jam along with members of the band as they introduce and talk about some of their favorite classic rock songs including tracks from bands like Pantera, Weezer, AFI, Faith No More, Deftones and more.

These one hour live shows will be available at the following times according to Activision’s press release:

  • Tuesday, Dec. 22ndat 5:30pm Pacific (World Premiere)
  • Wednesday, Dec. 23rdat 1:30am, 9:30am and 6:00pm Pacific
  • Thursday, Dec. 24that 2:00am, 10:00am and 8:30pm Pacific
  • Friday, Dec. 25that 4:30am, 12:30pm, 5:30pm and 9:30pm Pacific
  • Saturday, Dec. 26that 5:30am, 9:30am, 7:30pm and 11:00pm Pacific
  • Sunday, Dec. 27that 7:30am, 11:00am and 7:00pm Pacific
  • Monday, Dec. 28that 3:00am, 11:00am and 5:30pm Pacific
  • Tuesday, Dec. 29that 1:30am and 9:30am Pacific

If you miss your chance to catch the first ever Guitar Hero Live TV shows featuring Avenged Sevenfold three of the bands tracks – One from their most recent release Hail To The King and two from 2010s Nightmare – will be available via Guitar Hero Live’s premium content feature.

Here is the list of tracks that will be featured on Guitar Hero premium. All of these tracks come from footage during Avenged’s headlining performance at England’s Download Festival from this past June.

  • Shepheard of Fire From Hail To The King
  • Buried Alive From Nightmare
  • Nightmare the titular track form the album Nightmare

Who is ready to rock out for the holidays? \m/ You can get more information on Activisions Blog as well.

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Super Mario Maker Updates Adds Captain Toad & Birdo Costumes For Europe

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Mario Maker

Just in time for the Christmas holidays Nintendo Europe has unveiled a brand new update for Super Mario Maker that brings three brand new costumes to the level building title.

If you boot up Super Mario Maker on Christmas Day you can score yourself a pretty sweet costume featuring everyone’s favorite adventuring fungus, Captain Toad.  All you have to do is complete a special event course to unlock Mario’s little buddy.

Another set of unlockable character costumes will be made available on New Years Eve thanks to two new NES Remix themed stages. Complete this pair of stages to unlock the Excitebike and Birdo costumes respectively.

We don’t know if these special events will make their way outside of Europe – perhaps its best that you boot-up your Wii U on Christmas Day just to make sure. Last week Japanese players were given the chance to earn a pair of currently region exclusive EarthBound costumes – Mr. Saturn and Master Belch.

Here are Nintendo of Europe’s original tweets announcing the costumes:

[Source]

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Playstation Store Holiday Sale Week 3 Deals Now Live

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Sony has updated the PlaySation Store with brand new deals for week three of their holiday sale. These deals are good until December 28th when presumably the last set of discounts will go live.

Here’s a partial list – all prices in Canadian Dollars as I am based in Canada:

PS4 Deals

  • Until Dawn – $54.99 CDN
  • Dragon Ball Z: Xenoverse – $20 CDN
  • Call of Duty Black Ops III – $71.99 CDN
  • Destiny: The Taken King Complete – $73.99 CDN
  • Battlefield: Hardline – $22.50 CDN

PS3 Deals

  • Saints Row: Gat out of Hell – $8.99 CDN
  • Little Big Planet 3 – $11.99 CDN
  • Citizens of Earth – $6.00 CDN

For a complete list check out the PlayStation Store.

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Here Are The Free Xbox Live Gold Games For January 2016

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Xbox One

It might not even be 2016 yet but Xbox’s Major Nelson has taken the wraps off of the free games that Xbox Live subscribers will gain access to at the beginning of next year.

On the Xbox One front – Owners of Mircrosoft’s Xbox One can go for broke in an all out brawl with Killer Instinct: Season 1 Ultra Edition. This season pass is normally $40 and gives Killer Instinct players access to all 9 fighters and extra costumes included in Season One. Also coming to Xbox One is Zheroes an Indies @ Xbox game – basically a stylized side scrolling beat’em-up.

For owners of Microsoft’s last generation console, Xbox 360, Microsoft will be giving away DIRT: Showndown and Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Unfortunately this is the vanilla version and not the Director’s Cut re-release which includes New Game+, Improved Textures, Reworked Boss Fights and Developer Commentary.

As is the case with all Xbox 360 games released on Games With Gold – both DIRT: Showdown and Deus Ex are backwards compatible on Xbox One.

Here’s the full line-up with dates:

Xbox One
Killer Instinct Season One Ultimate – Jan 1st Thru 31st
Zheroes – Jan 16th Thru 15th

Xbox 360

DIRT Showdown – Jan 1st Thru 15th
Deus Ex Human Revolution – Jan 16th Thru 31st

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Tales of Berseria Announced For PS4 and PC North American Release

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

In news that is sure to delight fans of the long running Tales of series, such as myself, Bandai Namco has confirmed via a brand new trailer that the latest entry Tales of Berseria will be releasing sometime in the west for PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.

In their announcement blog post the publisher briefly described the game like this:

The next game in the long running “Tales of” series is Tales of Berseria, a tale of emotion versus reason! Coming on PlayStation 4 and PC Digital including Steam, the story will focus on Velvet, the first female solo main character. You will embark on a journey and assume the role of Velvet, a young woman whose once gentle nature has been replaced and overcome with a festering anger and hatred after a traumatic experience three years prior to the events within TALES OF BERSERIA imbued her left hand with a special ability.

Berseria like other modern entries, like this year’s Tales of Zestiria, will bring some changes to the established combat formula. Here’s what the development team is trying with Berseria:

  1. The player’s default control is free run
  2. The player can rotate the camera freely
  3. The player can assign multiple artes to any of the four buttons: ○, ×, △ and □, allowing different artes to be linked together in attack combinations.

Are you excited for the newly announced western release of Tales of Berseria? The game was originally announced this past April for a 2016 release in Japan but it looks like it’ll be more of a worldwide affair!

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[Source]

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