Sonic Team “Now Preparing” For The Blue Blur’s 30th Anniversary
In March, Sonic Team’s Takashi Iizuka confirmed the development of the next entry in the mainline Sonic the Hedgehog series was officially underway. Since then, there’s been no other information about this game.
When Iizuka caught up with Game Informer at E3 2019 last week, he was queried about the next major entry in the series. While he refused to reveal any details, he is believed to have perhaps teased when fans can expect this next outing.
Its release is seemingly tied to the upcoming anniversary preparations. 2017 was the last “big year” for Sonic with the release of Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces and 2021 will be the next one according to the head of Sonic Team:
“The next big year for Sonic is 2021. That’s the 30-year anniversary for Sonic. We are now preparing.”
2019 was meant to be a big year in the hedgehog’s history until his silver screen debut was delayed at the end of May. Fortunately, fans were still able to get their speed fix with the release of Team Sonic Racing in the same month.
Are you eager to find out what Sonic’s next major game will be like? Are you looking forward to his 30th-anniversary celebrations? Tell us down in the comments.
Halo Infinite Beta Coming First To Xbox; Split-Screen Already Up And Running
Halo Infinite had a big showing at E3 2019 last week, but Microsoft isn't done dropping news about the long-awaited Xbox and PC game. Developer 343 Industries to shared some new details on the game, and it's a lot to take in.
Starting off, 343 confirmed in a blog post that Halo Infinite will support LAN and that the already announced split-screen feature is "up and running" already. That's a big deal because Halo 5 dropped split-screen in a move that upset a number of series fans.
343 also announced that the beta tests for Halo Infinite, known as "flights," will take place first on Xbox and then PC. The testing periods will "start small" and then "slowly expand" up until the game's release in Holiday 2020. "Flighting may come a little bit later for PC players, but we're treating it as a first-class citizen," 343 said.
The studio also confirmed that the characters in Halo Infinite will have black undersuits. That sounds like a small detail, but in Halo 4 and Halo 5 players had different colored undersuits, which garnered a mix reaction from fans.
Additionally, 343 teased Halo Infinite's armor customization options, saying, "if you liked the level of armor customziation in Halo: Reach, you will be pleased [with Halo infinite]." On top of that, 343 confirmed that those who reach the highest level in Halo 5, SR 152, will receive a "token of appreciation" in Halo Infinite.
Finally, 343 stated that it has an internal team of professional gamers testing Halo Infinite's multiplayer. And on the story side, 343 re-affirmed that Halo Infinite's story begins "some time after" the end of Halo 5.
Halo Infinite releases in Holiday 2020 as a launch title for Project Scarlett. The game plays on the entire family of Xbox One consoles, as well as PC.
Review: Slender: The Arrival – A Bland And Bare Take On Slenderman Horror
It’s impossible to deny that the black-suited, faceless Slenderman is an iconic horror figure. Ever since its creation on the Something Awful forums, the cultural phenomenon made waves throughout the internet, helped by the 2012 freeware horror game Slender: The Eight Pages.
Over the years, the Slenderman has crept into every form of media: games, books, documentaries, even feature-length films. The horror character has even been the influence of horrific acts – a stark reminder that even faux internet folklore can inspire the unthinkable. And yet, despite being milked harder than your annual Call of Duty, the character keeps on returning—it always comes back.
Much like the character it includes, Slender: The Arrival has returned once again, this time on Nintendo Switch. It’s a game we’ve covered extensively, both here and on our sister site Push Square. Since its initial release in 2013, The Arrival has had the pleasure of sneaking its way onto nearly every platform we can think of: PS3, PS4, Wii U, OSX. It’s everywhere; despite being an overwhelmingly average horror experience, its popularity is almost unrivalled.
Although it never expressively states itself as such, The Arrival is a canonical sequel to the original Eight Pages game. Here, you play as a woman called Lauren who’s searching for Kate, the original game’s protagonist. There is a loosely told narrative, mostly expressed through collectable notes and the occasional landline voice message. It’s not a great story, but there’s enough surface-level information to give you a solid goal.
Slender: The Arrival is essentially a bigger budget version of the original game. While certain sections of the title are more clichéd exploratory sequences through an abandoned house or mineshaft, there’s not really much substance here outside of the traditional Slender mechanics. In fact, one of the best parts of the game is a smaller rendition of The Eight Pages, tasking you with finding eight pages within a small map. Unfortunately, the map that’s here isn’t the same as the original, nor is it anywhere as engaging, but it’s a fun venture through the woods.
Other levels are far from inventive. Despite releasing around the same time as Red Barrels’ Outlast and years after the influential Amnesia: The Dark Descent, there’s not much here in terms of engaging horror imagery or gameplay. Those who have interacted with Slenderman in the past will know exactly how to play this title.
For the uninitiated, looking directly at the eldritch businessman will cause your vision to become blurry, distorted and twisted, influenced by the psychic phenomenon scopaesthesia. Combined with some decently disturbing sound design and great utilization of the Joy-Con’s HD rumble, initial encounters can be entertaining.
As the titular monster’s arrival becomes more frequent, the archaic level design becomes ever-more grating; the Slenderman reverts from a deadly foe into an exasperating eldritch encounter. With the same sounds and excessive effects filling your screen every few minutes or so—sometimes without the enemy even being in the scene—it quickly devolves into an utterly exhausting experience.
At least upon release, the title boasted impressive visuals for those still enamoured with the Slenderman mythos to gawp upon. However, on Switch, The Arrival is a frankly ugly title. Foliage looks flat and bare—far from the thick swabs we got on Wii U—and shadows are bizarrely blocky. While the previous generation versions of the title far from ran at an ideal framerate, the visual downgrades here are drastic.
Conclusion
Slender: The Arrival is far from the greatest horror game on Nintendo Switch. With the likes of Outlast 2, Layers of Fear, and Resident Evil to compete against, this bland and bare horror title shows its true colours separated from the hype of 2013. Unlike the mystical powers of the Slenderman, there’s nothing compelling here in the slightest, unless you like looking at poorly rendered forestry.
Here Are The Top 10 Best-Selling Third-Party Switch Games As Of May 2019
We’re often treated to official data showing the best-selling Nintendo-published games for Switch, but it’s far less often that we get to hear about third-party games. As keen players will know, third-party hits help to add variety and new experiences to any console, so it’s about time we celebrated the best of the bunch with some official figures.
Ironically, it just so happens that Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – which is technically a third-party game – is still sitting at the top of this list. Even non-Nintendo games perform best with Mario in them. Otherwise, though, we can see several big brand names and perhaps one or two surprises.
To be as clear as possible, this is a list of the top-selling third-party games on Switch based on life-to-date sales in the US (as of May 2019); the information comes from the NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella. Physical and digital sales are included, but some publishers – such as Bethesda, Microsoft, SEGA, and Atlus – do not share digital data with NPD. As such, sales for major releases such as Skyrim and Minecraft won’t be fully represented.
Crash’s success suggests that the newly released Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled could well end up entering that list, too, assuming sales were attached to players’ love for the character, and it’s interesting to see that each consecutive Just Dance title appears to be outselling the last.
Any surprises on this list? Have you bought many of these yourself? Let us know down below.
Ansible is one of the most popular automation engines in the world. It lets you automate virtually anything, from setup of a local system to huge groups of platforms and apps. It’s cross platform, so you can use it with all sorts of operating systems. Read on for more information on how to get the latest Ansible in Fedora, some of its changes and improvements, and how to put it to use.
Releases and features
Ansible 2.8 was recently released with many fixes, features, and enhancements. It was available in Fedora mere days afterward as an official update in Fedora 29 and 30, as well as EPEL. The follow-on version 2.8.1 released two weeks ago. Again, the new release was available within a few days in Fedora.
Installation is, of course, easy to do from the official Fedora repositories using sudo:
$ sudo dnf -y install ansible
The 2.8 release has a long list of changes, and you can read them in the Porting Guide for 2.8. But they include some goodies, such as Python interpreter discovery. Ansible 2.8 now tries to figure out which Python is preferred by the platform it runs on. In cases where that fails, Ansible uses a fallback list. However, you can still use a variable ansible_python_interpreter to set the Python interpreter.
Another change makes Ansible more consistent across platforms. Since sudo is more exclusive to UNIX/Linux, and other platforms don’t have it, become is now used in more places. This includes command line switches. For example, –ask-sudo-pass has become –ask-become-pass, and the prompt is now BECOME password: instead.
There are many more features in the 2.8 and 2.8.1 releases. Do check out the official changelog on GitHub for all the details.
Using Ansible
Maybe you’re not sure if Ansible is something you could really use. Don’t worry, you might not be alone in thinking that, because it’s so powerful. But it turns out that it’s not hard to use it even for simple or individual setups like a home with a couple computers (or even just one!).
We covered this topic earlier in the Fedora magazine as well:
You can get 50 free Spell Energy in Harry Potter Wizard’s Unite Right Now!
By Joe Robinson22 Jun 2019
I’m sure there’s many of you taking the new Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite AR game out for a spin this weekend. The weather’s good here, so it’s a great time to go for a walk, visit some Inns and knab some Foundables… provided you have enough Spell Energy!
Spell Energy is an in-game resource that limits how many spells you can cast – which you do when you fight confoundables that appear on the map. Think Pokeballs in Pokemon GO. As you start climbing trough the ranks you’re going to find yourself husbanding your spell energy more and more, especially as a free player, as the only way to top it up is go out and about visiting Inns, or by completing challenges and a very other incentivised tasks
But how would you like a boost of Free Energy? Enough to last you a day or more? Sound good? I thought so…
For the next couple of days, you’ll be able to claim a free complimentary gift of 50 Energy. The steps are simple:
On the Map screen, tap on the suitcase button at the centre bottom of the screen.
On the Suitcase screen, tap on the basket in the top right corner.
You should be in the in-game store, on the ‘Featured’ Page, scroll right to the very bottom, and you’ll see the free energy you can claim.
At the time of writing the promotion had 2 Days, 15 Hours remaining, so while there’s not a terrible rush make sure you don’t dawdle! I’ve confirmed this is a thing for UK users, but if anyone in the US spots this as well, do let us know in the comments!
Hopefully this will give you a nice uptick as you head into the weekend, save you from having to run around too much. Enjoy Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite and we’ll see you Monday.
After almost a year of silence, WaveEngine 3.0 preview has just been released. WaveEngine is a cross platform C# powered ECS based 3D game engine that is completely free to use. Sporting a new renderer and a sporting a completely new editor, WaveEngine 3.0 preview is still quite an early release. We did a hands-on Closer Look review at a previous version of WaveEngine 3.0 for a good basis in how WaveEngine programming works.
Highlight details of the 3.0 preview release:
New launcher and update system
New WaveEditor
Effects Viewer
Materials Viewer
Render Layer Viewer
Sampler Viewer
Textures Viewer
Model Viewer
Audio Viewer
Scene Viewer
New Effect Editor
XR Ready
Single Pass (Instanced) Stereo Rendering
New extensible Render Pipeline
New life cycle for entities
New web project support
New serialization system based on YAML
New HoloLens 2.0 support
You can learn more and download the 3.0 preview release right here. Keep in mind WaveEngine 3.0 is nowhere near ready for production use, with only a limited subset of platforms and features available. Check out WaveEngine in action in the video below.
Steel Division 2 is a historically-accurate WW2 real-time strategy game set on the Eastern Front. Features 1:1-scale turn-based army management and real-time tactical battles with thousands of men at your order.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-22-2019, 07:14 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Anthem’s rocky launch hasn’t dissuaded EA, says CEO
“BioWare has to evolve and has to expand and has to test the elasticity of that brand. […] That’s what you’re seeing with Anthem today.”
-Andrew Wilson discusses the trajectory of BioWare’s Anthem in an interview with GameDaily
Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson covered a wide breadth of topics in a recent interview with GameDaily, including the company’s stance on games as a service and its ongoing support of Anthem.
Specifically, on the note of BioWare’s looter-shooter Anthem, Wilson says that the world and the IP is compelling enough where a rocky start to the franchise isn’t enough to make EA to walk away from the property or its developers.
“IP lives for generations, and runs in these seven to ten year cycles,” Wilson tells GameDaily. “So, if I think about Anthem on a seven to ten year cycle, it may not have had the start that many of us wanted, including our players. I feel like that team is really going to get there with something special and something great, because they’ve demonstrated that they can.”
Earlier in the interview, he pointed out that one issue the game had experienced in testing was that the specific kinds of players that gravitated to BioWare games or toward online action-adventure games often had different needs that didn’t quite align in the way the company had anticipated.
For BioWare specifically, Wilson says Anthem is an example of the EA-owned studio’s need to grow and evolve past the brand and expectatons it has in the minds of different generations of players.
“What the BioWare teams are thinking about is that we’re going to build a lot of different types of games. We’re going to have our core BioWare audience that’s been with us for a really long time,” says Wilson. “There are kids today who are 12 years old who weren’t around when BioWare started making games… and they have different expectations of what a BioWare game should be in the context of the world they’ve grown up in.”
“As a result of that, BioWare has to evolve and has to expand and has to test the elasticity of that brand. The teams at BioWare will continue to come to work every day and listen to their players old and new and seek to deliver on the promises they’ve made to those players. That’s what you’re seeing with Anthem today.”
The full story on GameDaily is quite a read, but captures Wilson’s thoughts and perspectives on everything ranging from loot boxes and layoffs to cloud-based game services and the future of the industry itself.
