Category: Game

Lynch on the big screen David Lynch is hard at work creating his new Twin Peaks series for Showtime, but the network’s CEO said fans may have a couple of different viewing options.
In an interview with Bloomberg, David Nevins said that he believed movies and television were going to blur as the mediums became on par with one another. In an attempt to bridge film and television, Nevins said that a series like Twin Peaks was the perfect place to start exploring those options.
“You’re going to see television shows produced primarily for television that’s going to play in theaters for an occasional out-of-home collective experience," Nevins told Bloomberg. "So I guarantee you when we put Twin Peaks out people are gonna want to put that in theaters. So I see those lines blurring."
Nevins also said that when the show does premiere, it will be on a traditional week-to-week basis instead of the current Netflix trend of releasing all of the episodes at once. Nevins said they want to turn Twin Peaks into an event and part of that is exploring the realm cinema may play.
Lynch is still in the midst of production on the series. It was originally supposed to premiere this year, but was pushed back after creative differences between Lynch and the studio arose. It’s now slated to premiere early 2017.

Go download ’em Bully is the latest game to join PlayStation 4’s line-up of PlayStation 2 classics. It’s now available for download on the PlayStation Store for $14.99, and offers trophy support, remote play and 1080p upscaling.
Also available for download today is XCOM: Enemy Unknown for PlayStation Vita. Owners of the portable can now purchase the strategy game — rebranded as XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus — for $19.99.
Bully first launched on PS2 in 2006. Rockstar Games’ high school-set title lets players run amok inside a private school setting.
XCOM is Firaxis Games’ popular strategy series. A sequel, XCOM 2, launched earlier this year.

Legendary series celebrates a big birthday Capcom released the first Resident Evil game in Japan 20 years ago today — Biohazard, as its known in its home country, made its PlayStation debut on March 22, 1996. To commemorate the big birthday, the company uploaded an interview with longtime series staff member Hiroyuki Kobayashi, in which he recounts Resident Evil’s first two decades.
The video above reminds fans of the series’ lasting impact on gaming over the years, from its popularization of the survival horror genre to the critical acclaim of games like Resident Evil 4. Since its release 20 years ago, the very first Resident Evil has made its way onto various other consoles — including, just last year, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, in the form of a high-definition remake.
Capcom hasn’t announced much in the way of other anniversary plans for the franchise’s 20th year. In a press release, the company said it would upload more developer interviews in celebration of the anniversary throughout the coming months.
The developer will also launch remastered versions of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year. Resident Evil 6, the first of the ports — Capcom is releasing them in reverse chronological order — will arrive next week on March 29.
Also in the pipeline is Umbrella Corps, a team-based shooter. That game will be out on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC sometime in May.

The biggest differentiator between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets seems to be the Vive’s ability to allow gamers to walk around inside an entire room as they play.
But Oculus could deliver that option as well if it wanted to, the company says.
“Some people will really want room scale," said Oculus head of worldwide studios Jason Rubin. "It’s definitely cool. We have the tech ability to provide room scale. Our tech doesn’t preclude that.
"At some point we’ll demo that."

Oculus Rift ships on March 28 with a single sensor designed to track the head and upper body movements of the user. When the Oculus Touch controllers ship sometime in the second half of the year, it will include a second sensor. Those two sensors could be used to deliver a more confined version of the Vive’s room scale VR. Where the Vive’s two Lighthouse sensors can track movement in a 15-foot-by-15-foot area, the Rift’s sensors are designed for tracking a smaller space, about 5-feet-by-11-feet.
While at least one game — Fantastic Contraption — supports room scale on the Rift, Oculus doesn’t believe that room scale VR is in big demand.
"We don’t believe that the consumer has the space in general," Rubin said. "Has the commercial viable space of the 15-by-15 foot square."

The wasteland’s about to get hardcore Fallout 4’s revamped Survival Mode will be available in beta on Steam next week, Bethesda Game Studios announced. The company confirmed the news on Twitter, asking fans to “please stand by" for further details.
Players of the Windows PC version of Fallout 4 will receive the updated Survival Mode before those on consoles, vice president of marketing and PR Pete Hines tweeted. Following the beta period, it will launch in full on Steam and, later, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Bethesda said last month that it would be overhauling Fallout 4’s highest difficulty level to include new features like disease and other challenges. Following that announcement, players found and shared more information as to what the new Survival Mode entails on the game’s subreddit.
Fallout 4’s first expansion pack launched today. The Automatron add-on is available to players across all versions of the game and is available with or without the season pass.

A hand-made hidden object game, with a few tricks up its sleeve Indie game designer Adriaan de Jongh is known for his unusual collaborations, including Bounden, an cooperative dancing game for mobile devices produced in cooperation with the Dutch National Ballet. De Jongh’s next game is a take on the hidden-object genre, and he’s partnered with a pen-and-ink artist to elevate his unique, hand-drawn style for mobile and Steam devices.
It’s called Hidden Folks, and de Jongh says he wouldn’t be making it right now if not for the fateful day two years ago when he met a young man named Sylvain Tegroeg.
“I first met Sylvain at his graduation expo," de Jongh said at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. "He made some sort of installation with globes that showed his vision on product design; glass globes, with objects in them.
"But in the background of those globes he had these little drawings. And these little drawings, they kind of intrigued me way more than the actual globes. It really had this effect on me. I was looking at them and I was like, "Whoa what is happening in here!" I brought my face close to it and I was staring at it for 10 minutes."
Two weeks later, de Jongh says he had a working prototype for the game. Tegroeg was in, and for the last two years the pair have been working on fleshing the title out.

Hidden Folks A2 Poster, coming soon! #illustration #art #miniatures #folks #drawings #forest #level #paper pic.twitter.com/TKiRvQY6fA
— sylvain Tegroeg (@box6l20) March 17, 2016

De Jongh says that critics have called Hidden Folks many things. Some see it as a kind of modern-day Where’s Waldo? or compare it to the fad of adult coloring books. Whatever players see in the game, de Jongh says that people are entranced by Tegroeg’s pictures and are eager to spend hours hunting through them for the "targets" to unlock the next level.
The challenge for de Jongh has been to create tools fast enough, and stable enough, to handle the detail of Tegroeg’s work on a mobile device. The largest level yet completed — a detailed factory scene filled with tiny little workers toiling away along an assembly line — is much, much larger than even the screen of a PC can display all at once.

I saw what de Jongh meant, when I played an early build of Hidden Folks on his iPad Pro, sliding the page around through the keyhole of its screen to see the details in it. There’s a mermaid, a birthday party, an interactive button, a man with a thought bubble.
In all, de Jongh says, this one scene has 1,300 characters in it.

"We’ve already spent probably a year and a half of our time trying to figure out how to make this game," de Jongh says. "Tegroeg doesn’t draw on computers. He draws on paper with FineLiners. So everything that you see here was hand-drawn at some point. Eventually, I taught him how to make sprite sheets. … I helped him digitize his work in a way we could easily use in the game. After that, he could just pick all those small images that we put in on the computer and he could literally drag and drop everything into the game."
The process is painstaking. Once a physical drawing is finished, Tegroeg goes back using digital tools to create each individual part of it. Those parts are broken down into layers, and those layers sorted one atop the other inside Unity using custom tools de Jongh built especially for the game.

"He’s been drawing characters digitally with individual body parts — their little heads are separate, their legs are separate, arms separate — so that we can animate it. He’s been drawing the buildings separately, and he’s been drawing the windows separately. And then we put it all together in the game."
It harkens back to the kind of animation work that made Walt Disney famous — layering transparent sheets on top of one another and moving the camera relative to the stack — but at in a much more complex way. All this work, de Jongh says, is worth it to make a premium, for-pay title that will stand out on the crowded Apple and Steam marketplaces.
With luck, he says, the game will be ready to play in around six months.

Wherein the space dragon you’ve been waiting for finally arrives.
Riot released patch notes for soon-to-hit Patch 6.6 for League of Legends today. Lots of small changes around, especially some notable nerfs to champions dominating the pro and amateur scenes. Also, there’s a badass space dragon coming. Consider yourself warned.
You can read the full notes here, but here’s the important stuff:
1. Jungle nerfs!
Last patch, we saw buffs to some rarely played junglers like Vi, Hecarim and Jarvan IV. This week, some solo queue and pro play terrors have been taken down a notch.
The big one for solo queue players is Shyvana, who occupied the top spot among junglers as far as win rate is concerned in Patch 6.5. The attack damage ratio on Twin Bite (her “Q" ability) has been reduced significantly in the early game, and Titanic Hydra, one of her core items, received an attack damage nerf.
On the professional side, Nidalee has been one of the top contested picks in recent weeks. This patch nerfed her a little bit as well, removing the root on monsters from her Hunt mechanic and removing the auto attack reset on Pounce (her "W"). Runic Echoes, a core item on Nidalee, also saw a damage reduction, so you’re less likely to see that item on tanky junglers now.
2. Aurelion Sol is arriving
Yesssss! Read more about the new champion here, or just watch this video over and over again in anticipation (some NSFW language, so mute if you’re not into that).

3. Kalista is more support-dependent
As Scarizard pointed out in the patch notes, Kalista was in a strange place as a marksman of being very strong in both 2 vs. 2 and 1 vs. 1 situations. With her passive and ult making her literally tied to another champion, it makes a bunch of sense to try and sway her more towards being a strong 2 vs. 2 champion.
As a result, there are some general nerfs to Kalista’s kit (most notably her base attack speed). But now Kalista passively gains attack speed when her buddy is nearby.

4. Nerfs to top-tier supports
Alistar is seemingly always present in the pro scene and Janna’s been on top of the support win rate chart for some time now. Now, they’re each a little more focused on their specialties — for Alistar, his peel and engage; for Janna, her disengage.
Alistar’s Triumphant Roar (his "E") heals allies for significantly less now. Janna’s Eye of the Storm (her "E") gives less bonus attack damage to shielded allies, while Monsoon (her ultimate) disables for less time.
5. Buffs to some old friends
Despite the proliferation of tanky top laners in Season 6, ultra tanky Maokai has been absent. His base magic resistance has been buffed and he now has scaling magic resistance (he was the last tank in the game without it, per the patch notes). His saplings also last longer.
Elsewhere, Cho’Gath now gets more health each time he Feasts, Kha’Zix has reduced cooldowns on Taste Their Fear ("Q") and Void Spike ("W") and Karma’s Mantra’d Defiance is just a flat out stronger shield.
League of Legends Patch 6.5 should be live either later today or later this week.

Make way for Nintendo NX Nintendo will end production on its Wii U console sometime in 2016, according to a report from Japan’s Nikkei. The console, which has sold poorly compared to its wildly successful predecessor, debuted in 2012.
According to Nikkei’s report, Nintendo has already stopped manufacturing certain Wii U accessories. The outlet, which has a good record of reporting on Nintendo’s unannounced plans, reports that while Wii U hardware is being discontinued, a launch of the company’s next platform — codenamed NX — is not guaranteed this year.
Nintendo plans to unveil its next-generation console sometime in 2016. The company launched its first mobile app, Miitomo, last week.
Nintendo has sold more than 12.6 million Wii U consoles since 2012. Its previous home console, Wii, went on to sell more than 100 million units.
We’ve reached out to Nintendo for comment on the Nikkei’s report and will update with any new information the company provides.

Expect the ‘unexpected’ this time around The third season of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series will arrive later this year, according to the developer. CEO Kevin Bruner nailed down the release window in an interview with Mashable, during which he hinted at what to expect from the next entry in the choice-driven, episodic adventure series.
The interview is light on details, but Bruner said that the goal of Season 3 is to bring in new fans to the series. How this affects the storyline — which, based on the ending(s) of Season 2, might be hard to keep following — is still anyone’s guess, although Bruner said it will take an “unexpected" turn.
More details are expected out of this year’s San-Diego Comic-Con, according to Bruner.
The Walking Dead’s second season finished back in 2014. In 2015, the studio confirmed it wouldn’t release a follow-up that year, instead focusing on other titles. Telltale has kept busy since then with games like Minecraft: Story Mode and a three-part miniseries focused on Michonne, a character from Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book series.

Making money, buying the best upgrades and maximizing mods

Role-playing games can be daunting. Just ask the players who painstakingly discovered Destiny’s most esoteric secrets with brute force. The same principle applies to Tom Clancy’s The Division, which is just as much of an RPG as it is a shooter — complete with crafting mechanics and skill trees.
This guide will help you eliminate the trial and error in The Division and set you up for success with endgame content. You’ll get a spoiler-free grasp of the core tenets, and you’ll leave well-equipped to assist Manhattan in its time of crisis.
Make money
The Division has three types of currency for three different parts of the game:

Dark Zone Credits. Earned in the player-versus-player Dark Zone for killing other players and enemy non-playable characters, use these to buy better loot and crafting recipes at checkpoints and Dark Zone venders.
Phoenix Credits. Earned after reaching level 30 or by purchasing with Uplay credits, use these for endgame purposes like buying high-level equipment.
Division credits. Earned by completing missions, side quests and encounters in the vast player-versus-enemy, use this to buy everything that the previous two currencies don’t cover.

As you begin to play The Division, the first thing you should do is sell your extra gear — specifically, lower green level loot — and use the money you earn to upgrade the higher blue gear tier. Even though it’s easy to do in the game’s instant menu feature, fight the urge to dismantle your inventory for materials. Instead, every time you come across a safe zone, find a vendor and sell your extra gear.
There are some exceptions, and we’ll cover those in Skills and Arts and Crafts sections, but at the beginning of the game, sell what you don’t need.
The old RPG adage of not buying items from vendors applies in The Division. Marginal upgrades aren’t worth spending your hard-earned cash on — unless it’s at a blue tier or above. Save it for the worthwhile loot, and leave the rest to RNG (the in-game random number generator that determines what type of loot you get) gods.

Take your time when aiming
The Divisionn is not an arena shooter. It rewards careful targeting.
Headshots are of the utmost importance, so throttle the trigger as often as possible to get a more sustained trajectory and prevent your firearm from drifting as you shoot. Marksman rifles are the best way to accomplish this task, especially for new players. They don’t quite have the range of a sniper rifle, but they still have better ranges than most of the guns in the game, and they grant bonuses for headshots.
To become a better marksman, practice shooting out in the open world with targets like signs before embarking upon a tough mission. Learning to hit headshots consistently is also the key to defeating early bosses, who tend to be bullet resistant. You’ll want to take down bosses as quickly as possible to prevent more enemies from flooding in and ruining your day. Headshots are the quickest path to victory.
Re-roll your equipment with Recalibration
Most loot-based RPGs allow for a certain degree of customization, and re-rolling is a good way to facilitate that change. It essentially allows you to keep the same item — with all of its base properties — but alter its statistical properties.

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To initiate this mechanic in The Division, upgrade the Tech Wing in the main hub. The Recalibration node will allow you to re-spec. Once unlocked, the station will appear right behind the upgrade station. Look for the giant generator.
Before you use the station, think about what type of playstyle you’re going for — particularly whether it accommodates group or solo play. Re-rolling will allow you to shift your characters’ properties to min-max — to go all-in on a certain stat, at the expense of another. For example, you could funnel stamina into all of your gear and acquire the biggest possible health pool. That’s fine if it fits your playstyle, but keep in mind that doing so could cost you mobility and attack power.
Each subsequent re-roll on a piece of gear will result in an increased credit cost, so choose your upgrades carefully. Should you regret your decision, your gear’s original statistic will always be available as a fallback option.
This is one of the first things you’ll want to unlock after you’ve gotten a handle on the basics, but it’s important to note that you cannot re-roll weapons.
Mods matter
It’s easy for new players to miss one of the most essential features of The Division, which is tucked away behind multiple button presses and menus. Modding your weapons can make a seemingly impossible mission beatable.
Here are a few options to think about when modding:

Players can alter the underbarrel, muzzle, magazine and optic portions of each weapon (excepting pistols)— all of which have their own loot levels.
Range is ideal mod if you’re going with the recommended marksman rifle build. It will allow you to shoot at safer distances and still maximize damage.
Accuracy isn’t as viable as it seems. It only alters the reticle for your weapon, which could make you accurate, but only if you’ve mastered the fundamentals of shooting.
Stability is only useful if you plan on shooting for a longer period of time, which is counterintuitive to our recommended throttle method.

Modding can have an enormous impact on your battlefield effectiveness. Check your options frequently, especially after picking up new gear.

The earliest skills are the best skills
Contrary to a lot of RPGs where the best items are at the end of the leveling process, the initial set of abilities you can unlock in The Division are among the best in the game.
Pulse, which allows you to see where enemies are on-screen and through walls, offers a huge advantage. It’s the first power you should unlock. It’s the most useful skill you’ll have in your arsenal — whether you’re in a group or going it alone. You’ll use it all the way up to the maximum level of 30.
If you really dig deep into the ability, you’ll see that it grants you an increased critical hit chance and increased critical damage. It also lasts a whopping 25 seconds by default, which is usually enough to finish off an impending wave of enemies in any given mission. Having two players with Pulse will net a near 100 percent uptime — meaning the skill will always be in effect. Don’t hesitate to use this power every time it’s available, as the AI can come from any direction in The Division.
The First Aid skill, located below Pulse, is also a must-have when playing solo early on. Medkits aren’t as plentiful in the first hours of the game.
Arts and crafts will save your life
After completing the prologue and unlocking the main hub, crafting will become available. You can access it at the table in the main hall. While it’s important to sell items to increase your cash flow early on, around level 10 or so, you should scrap items for crafting materials.

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You can also find materials in chests scattered throughout the game, which respawn every couple of hours. If you’re big on exploration (and you’re not at the beginning of the game), there’s no need to scrap anything unless you need that one last ingredient to finish an item.
Alternatively, if you find that certain materials are hard to come by, grab the Scavenger perk through the Procurement Team node in the Security Wing or Craftsman with the Field Engineering node in the Tech Wing. They’ll provide you with them periodically. When in doubt, look at your Wing upgrades to see what you need at any given time.
Sometimes, you’re not going to get everything you want from a vendor or from loot acquisitions, and crafting can help fill in the blanks as an extra option. It requires a bit more effort however, as you’ll need blueprints — picked up from side quests — to unlock new recipes. You can view a mission’s rewards before embarking to decide whether or not it has what you’re looking for.
Perk up, soldier
Active skills aren’t the only thing that can give players the edge in battle. Acquire the Credit upgrade under Counseling in Medical Wing as soon as possible. It will grant you a 10 percent credit bonus every time you find cash in the world. Acquire Experienced Agent through Situation Room in the Security Wing, and you’ll get 10 percent experience bonus, too.
Complete the medical and security staff rescue missions first to unlock these options before you do anything else.
Once you’ve picked up that baseline, the rest is up to you. Form a synergy with the rest of your build, whether that’s conducive to a healer, tank (damage soaking), or damage-dealing (DPS) style. Try to avoid situational perks like Shooting Range (which increases suppressed enemy damage and your accuracy when below 20 percent health). Instead, go for permanent increases like Medkits, which immediately increases the amount you can carry.

The light at the end of the Dark Zone
Even if you aren’t into PvP, check out the Dark Zone section of the map as soon as you’re able to. It’s a fast track to some of the best loot in the game, and it requires a lot less effort than some of the tougher campaign missions.
Not only can you face neutral NPCs and locate chests, but if you’re so inclined, you can flag yourself as a Rogue (signified by a skull icon on your name) by shooting enemy players. Kill them, and you can acquire their loot. You’ll want to size up opponents before engaging, though. Never attack players who are in a formidable group. Patience and a keen eye will go far in the Dark Zone, so don’t go in guns blazing.

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To actually bring the loot back with you, you’ll need to initiate an extraction in specified zones, which you can locate on the map. From the moment of initiation, you’ll have 90 seconds to survive. Unfortunately, you’re also flagged for PvP, and everyone will be gunning for you.
Be smart about the landing zones you choose. Assess each for at least 30 seconds or so before you call in the chopper, to ensure there aren’t any foes lurking in the immediate area. Pulse is very handy here.
Odds are that you’ll soon be in a fight, so equip a close-range weapon like a shotgun and defensive skills like the Ballistic Shield. Players will often get greedy and rush you, and those will make their charges easy to counter.
Notice the notice boards
If you see a safehouse, go unlock it. There’s absolutely no reason to pass one by. Each location will grant you a multitude of bonuses and highlight nearly every point of interest in the surrounding area.
The first thing you’ll want to do after opening up each one (by simply entering the location) is head to the notice board. That will update your map with more missions.
Unlocking safehouses also pays dividends in the form of extra fast travel options. Those help cut down on the tedium of travel when you’re assigned to a mission halfway across the map. This is especially useful in groups, as you can fast travel to an individual crew member.
Need a group? The 100, a site originally devised as a tool to facilitate Destiny parties, has expanded to The Division. You can also check out DivisionLFG.