Yesterday, it took all of about thirty seconds for the conversation surrounding the reveal of the Xbox Scorpio from Wow, thats a really powerful system to Specs mean nothing if there arent any good games.
The Xbox Scorpio is a powerful gaming machine. Microsoft has promised the most powerful console ever made, and if Digital Foundry's early impressions are anything to go by, the tech giant has delivered. The Xbox Scorpio is meant to be capable of native 4K, 60 FPS, theoretical VR support, and all those other good things we want out of a beefy system. However raw power means little without a price tag attached to it. Consumers are living in a moment where you can get what you pay for when it comes to computing power, and the world's most powerful console is only the world's most powerful console if it does so at the right price. And so gamers wonder: how much will the Xbox Scorpio cost?
The open world action RPG from Sony Interactive Entertainment and Guerrilla Games - Horizon: Zero Dawn - sold 1,829,337 units first week at retail on the PlayStation 4, according to estimates.
Thanks to the latest generation of shiny new consoles from Sony and Microsoft, there's two fancy new terms to try and get your head around - 4K and HDR (or high-dynamic-range). And, confusingly, the different consoles all do differing amounts of each, from the Pro to a normal PS4, Xbox One to the Xbox One S and the undeniably more powerful Scorpio.
Today, Microsoft revealed the final specs for Project Scorpio, the planned upgrade to the Xbox One releasing this holiday. The numbers outline a system that outperforms the PlayStation 4 Pro and actually ends up ahead of previous speculation. When it releases, Xbox Project Scorpio will be the most powerful home console by a good margin.
The Xbox One Scorpio will be an incredibly powerful console- but ultimately, it is still a part of the existing Xbox One ecosystem, and it will be tied inextricably to the base Xbox One console. This is reflected in everything about the Scorpio's design, and in the fact that it will have no exclusives- all of its games must run on the base Xbox One, too?
There is nothing more exciting than watching a movie with a high-speed car chase, especially if it ends with a spectacular crash. With a new Fast and the Furious movie coming out on April 14, we thought we'd take a look at the 10 best movies that heavily involve cars in their storylines. Using scores primarily from Metacritic--and a few from IMDb--we're starting with number 10.
10. Cars (2006)
The Pixar film Cars takes the audience into a world inhabitated entirely by anthropomorphic automobiles. The movie follows Lightning McQueen, a racecar who learns the meaning of family.
2017 has been a killer year for games so far but we still have 9 more months of games to go. The Lobby crew talks about the ones they are the most excited about.
What kind of preparation did you do for this project?
This was very challenging work and preparation was key. I had to do a lot of research on both an artistic and technical level to make sure it would meet what the game needed. To merge real time generated music with pre-recorded music was really fun because we had so much more flexibility. But what really mattered to me, and for any game I score, is to be meaningful with what I am doing. Writing music just for the sake of adding a musical layer to a game has never been enough to me and Get Even is so mesmerizing that I had to make sure everything you would hear is connected to the story. Everything in the music makes sense and has a purpose that connects to the story of the game. If you hear a solo violin, if you hear a clock, if you hear breathing…etc…it is all connected.
What were some of the themes and tones you wanted to accentuate with your music and how did you go about delivering on those? I heard regret and guilt are two themes of the game.
Nobody can anticipate what this game is about but yes, the main themes are regret and guilt. Time also has a big part to play. When you look at some screenshots of the game or the trailer you might think it is a horror genre game. There is some of that but it's maybe less than 10 percent of the experience. As well as the shooting part. Get Even is a very narrative-driven game that will play with your mind and, hopefully, talk to your heart and soul. That's what my music is definitely for. It is a very intimate story; there is no world to be saved, no zombie killing, etc… It's about making mistakes and the utter feeling of being powerless against them.
What kind of access did you have to the development team at The Farm 51 during the production of your score? And was it a very collaborative effort?
My relationship with a studio I work with is like the ones you can have in the movies such as Spiellberg/Williams, Burton/Elfman, Nolan/Zimmer... It is an intense collaboration to provide the best experience we can to players. I think this is the only approach for me to really capture the vision and enhance it with music.
"Get Even is a very narrative-driven game that will play with your mind and, hopefully, talk to your heart and soul." -- Deriviere
You've worked on some very high-profile projects in the past such as Alone in the Dark. How did this experience compare?
Well, working on high-profile games is no different in my opinion. You give the best you can. Of course it is very gratifying when you have worked on big franchises like Alone in the Dark or Assassin’s Creed but Get Even is very special to me. This game is not about the big picture but much more about us. Also the team was much smaller, we are talking about 60 people, so it feels more personal. I really had a great time talking with the team and I must say the lead level designer Gosia really provided me with all the material I needed for the music, I can't thank her enough!
What should people know about the musical score for Get Even?
I think people will be very surprised listening to the whole soundtrack, it is such a musical journey that they will feel sometimes melancholic, oppressed, happy but in the end, at the very end, they will listen to it and, if I did my job, deep down, they will know it is about them as well.
Hacknet is a refreshingly grounded take on the hacker-sim genre. With a crude, Linux-inspired interface and dark, driving soundtrack, it follows the story of a recently deceased hacker named Bit, who reaches out to you from beyond the grave. What follows quickly becomes a hive of building tension and a satisfying deep-dive down the rabbit hole of online security and its moral effects on society.
Initially released in August 2015, Hacknet is now seeing its first expansion: Labyrinths. This entirely new chapter takes place alongside the main story and opens up soon after you've cleared the tutorials of the main game. In addition to granting you new hacking tools and techniques, it provides even more challenging investigations that require some serious attention to detail.
Missions in both Hacknet and Labyrinths range from straight-forward break, enter, and delete jobs to thorough investigations that involve finding vulnerabilities in order to crack into secure networks with numerous, heavily-encrypted servers. You’ll read files you shouldn’t be reading, steal confidential software, rummage through memory dumps for valuable information, and counter incoming hacker attacks amongst myriad other activities. Labyrinths is far tougher than the main campaign in this regard, though, since it doesn't waste any time throwing you into the deep end and relies on experience with previous puzzles.
Hacknet’s reliance on typing to navigate means you’ll want to break out a real-life notepad or smartphone camera to keep track of the commands available to you. Almost all the puzzles involve breaking through network security to find a specific piece of information, which means first cracking that system’s ports by using various executables from the command-line to grant you administrator access. Once in, you are free to browse, move, rename, delete or copy files, as well as scan for other linked systems on the network.
The challenge is that on top of taking up valuable time, these executables also take up a chunk of system memory while they’re running, so identifying the most economical order to run them is key to hacking efficiently. It doesn’t take long for hostile tracers to start pushing back on your progress, and they'll make your life difficult unless you learn how to get in and get out quickly. You may even find yourself in dire situations where your UI is deleted.
Where Hacknet relies on personal emails to move the story forward, Labyrinths tries to introduce the concept of team hacking with IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Replacing emails with a chat log that updates regularly with chatter from your fellow hackers during missions, the faster back-and-forth conversation effortlessly flows from mission critical information to jokes. That said, it’s disappointing that you can’t talk back to these characters, because you’ll want to feel volved in the group and contribute firsthand to their discussions.
Labyrinths also slightly falters towards its end, where the stakes suddenly take a huge and unexpected leap. Although twists and surprises are central to Hacknet's main campaign narrative--counter-hackers and tracing programs are everywhere--Labyrinths’ felt more jarring than most. The frenzied urgency that’s whipped up in the campaign’s climax is gone just as quickly as it starts, leaving you feeling largely unaffected by its outcome.
The feeling of playing Hacknet in a dark room with headphones on and being absorbed by its engrossing puzzles and soundtrack--full of heavy beats and filthy synth sounds--feels as close as you can get to the Hollywood hacker experience. The puzzles are uniquely challenging without feeling inaccessible, and the Labyrinths expansion takes the formula further by integrating deeper investigations and adding more puzzle variety. Despite the stumbling climax and steady learning curve, Hacknet - Labyrinths is one hell of a ride that leads you down the rabbit hole and back again.
Ubisoft veteran Alex Hutchinson has left the company to create his own studio. Hutchinson, who was the game director on high-profile Ubisoft projects such as .
We'll report back with more details on Hutchinson's next game as they become available.
The next Total War game differentiates itself from those that came before it.
"We don't want to pressure them to rush into anything," Garcia said. "We want them to concentrate on making a high-quality game and that's where we are at right now."
Moving on to Total War: Arena's business model, we asked about the stigma that is still attached to some free-to-play games for being "pay-to-win." Some games might be guilty of this, he said (without naming any names), though Total War: Arena hopes to not be one of them.
"Definitely going to say no," Garcia said about Total War: Arena being pay-to-win.
"We know our audience; we definitely get their feedback," he added. "We make sure that the game is for their enjoyment, their entertainment. We want to make happy players, not pissed off players."
"We are very committed to keeping players happy."
Wargaming's head of marketing for APAC, Tatsiana Martsinouskaya, stressed that Arena remains in development (it's in alpha now), so the main goal currently is to refine and polish the gameplay. The decisions about monetization will come later, she told us.
Keep checking back with GameSpot for more from this interview and other topics in the coming days. For now, you can see some footage of the game in its alpha state in the video above.
Are you looking forward to Arena? Let us know in the comments below!
Mary and Mike escape an all-out war zone to fight Saddler and "work over-time."
The Mummy (1999) is one of the Best Films Ever Made. Here's 5 things you might not know about it. #FraserFansUnite
2017 has been a killer year for games so far but we still have 9 more months of games to go. The Lobby crew talks about the ones they are the most excited about.
