With less than two months until the retail release of Dark Souls: Remastered a whole pile of off-screen footage has found its way onto YouTube and other channels. Footage has ranged from direct-feed captures of the PlayStation 4 Pro version in 4K to extended looks at Dark Souls: Remastered running in handheld mode fimed off of the Nintendo Switch’s 7 inch 720p screen.
5 Minutes off-screen Docked on Nintendo Switch (From GameXplain)
20 Minutes of off-screen on Nintendo Switch In Handheld Mode (Also From GameXplain)
20+ Minutes of PlayStation Pro Footage in 4K (From PlayStation Underground)
Dark Souls: Remastered will be out on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (or PRO), Xbox One and Windows PC on May 25th. Are you prepared to die (again)? Let us know in the comments section.
Nexxon and Boss Key Games announced that the open beta for their upcoming first person shooter, Lawbreakers, is now available on Steam for everyone to try out.
Unlike other team-based FPS games, Lawbreakers doesn’t give its heroes a personality so to speak. Instead each of the team’s members are broken down into unique roles – the chain gun wielding Vanguard, the all-around assault class the Enforcer, the vertically mobile assassin class among others. Unique to Lawbreakers is also a low gravity mechanic where portions of the map are entrapped within a bubble that allows players to jump higher but with a lower fall rate.
In a press-release announcing the availability of the Open Beta until July 5th, Nexxon provided a brief rundown of new features available in the Open Beta:
New Map: Vertigo – located in a remote location in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Vertigo is a high-altitude reconnaissance outpost with near suborbital elevation;
New Mode: Uplink – capture the uplink in the centre of the map and deliver to your team base, continuing to protect it until points are earned;
Weapon Stickers – players can test a new customisation feature and earn a special Beta participant Weapon Sticker by completing five matches during the event. This reward transfers to the full release of the game at launch.
Lawbreakers will be releasing on both PlayStation 4, PS4 Pro and Windows PC with the base game priced at $39.99 CDN.
Bethesda has announced that both a high resolution texture pack for Fallout 4 on PC and support for the PlayStation Pro will be coming next week to the Boston wastes. The most interesting thing from their announcement has actually been pulled – the recommended requirement of a AMD 490 graphics card , a card which up as of right now does not exist.
Perhaps the 490 listing was an error, or perhaps it really was a slip-up as AMD has not launched a new GPU since this past summer when they released the RX 480, 470 and 460. To utilize the high resolution texture pack PC players will have to make sure they have an addition 58 GBs of available storage – that is larger than the base installation of the game!
Here is how Bethesda described the new high res pack:
“We’re excited to announce the release of the game’s High-Resolution Texture Pack. Consider this free download a love letter to our amazing PC fans that have supported us – not just with Fallout 4, but across multiple decades and games.”
Kotaku was able to copy the minimum requirements listing the unannounced AMD card before the page was changed. Interestingly neither set of requirements recommend that you use an AMD CPU for playing with the high resolution pack, again not surprising since the Ryzen line of processes is expected to be released next month and the aging Bulldozer successors probably aren’t up to the task.
Delisted Minimum Specs:
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i7-5820K or better
GTX 1080 8GB/AMD Radeon RX 490 8GB
8GB+ Ram
Also coming next week will be added mod support for PlayStation 4, with more information on that coming soon, as well as PlayStation 4 Pro support that adds much requested features like enhanced draw distance.
Here’s Bethesda’s description of the PlayStation 4 Pro support including features:
“Beginning next week, Fallout 4’s Update 1.9 on PlayStation 4 adds support for the power of the PlayStation 4 Pro console. The update provides enhanced lighting and graphic features, including:
Native 1440p resolution
Enhanced draw distance for trees, grass, objects and NPCs
Sony recently revealed the list of 30+ titles that will be receiving additional benefits from the PlayStation Pro such as resolution rendering up to 4K, HDR enhancements and more stable frame-rates. Unfortunately for PlayStation Owners who might be dropping the $399 USD on this enhanced console this list of supported games raises some and conflicts with previous reports about PlayStation Pro support.
For sure there are some several big name AAA games from 2016 that are receiving an upgrade on the PS4 Pro including EA’s Titanfall 2 & Battlefield 1, EPIC Games’ Paragon, Square Enix’s episodic Hitman, 2K’s Mafia III and Sony’s own first party efforts Until Dawn: Rush of Blood and Uncharted 4. A lot of these titles are third or first person action titles and will benefit from the bump up in resolution in frame-rate, texture quality and resolutions most certainly but doesn’t it leave a bit to be desired?
Some really big titles from this past year alone are absent from the list for unknown reasons – titles like The Witcher III and its 2016 expansions, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Dark Souls III, DOOM and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst all could have benefited from varying degrees due to the technical improvements offered by the PlayStation Pro. This is especially true considering that rumblings around the industry point to a small workload when implementing PS4 Pro support when compared to the overall work required to produce a finished title.
Concerning the PlayStation Pro’s graphical enhancements the platforms architect Mark Cerny told Eurogamer this about the overall development required to use specific PS4 Pro features:
“The point though is that these are techniques that can be implemented for a fraction of a percent for the overall budget for the title.”
Certainly there are other older titles in the system’s library that could either benefit from a bump up in frame-rate to make them more playable – most notably last year’s Fallout 4, whose frame rate can creep into the mid 20s at times when the action ramps up with a number of enemies on screen. Another title that could have seen a huge potential boost would have been Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV which has graphical options of Windows PC that haven’t been utilized in the PS4 port. One genre that has always struggled with the balance of frame-rate and texture quality is open world titles due to the amount of complex objects on screen and the need to stream the game-world to players to keep immersion and game-play flowing.
Sony says that support for up to 15 more titles will be ready to roll out by the end of 2015 with games like Killing Floor 2, Final Fantasy XV, The Last Guardian and Gravity Rush 2 receiving patches to support the new console. Oddly some big titles from this fall are missing despite the leaked claim that Sony told developers that titles released after October 2016 would need to support the PlayStation Pro – so if you were hoping for PS4 support for the latest Star Wars Battlefront DLC or Dishonored 2, you’re out of luck for now.
When the large – then code-named PS4 Neo- leaks occurred earlier last month Eurogamer did an excellent job providing readers with a rundown of what Sony expected of developers going forward. At that time it was believed that PlayStation 4 Pro support would be mandatory from October going forward but for a select few titles like Bethesda’s Dishonored 2 this does not appear to be the case.
Here is the original quote outlining Sony’s requirements for PS4 devs:
“Forward compatibility patches are for old games only: Sony really wants Neo support on all games from October onwards. While older titles can have Neo features patched in, the platform holder will not allow new titles to add Neo features at a later date.”
Is the PlayStation Pro worth your extra cash if you’ve got a standard PS4? Let us know your opinion in the comments section.
