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In many ways, Gameloft's Asphalt 9 Legends is a remarkable game, bringing console-quality arcade racing action to mobile phones, using many of the rendering techniques present in some of today's most advanced game engines. It's free - download it, try it out and see what you think. We did and we were really taken aback by just impressive this is. Eager to learn more about the current state of cutting-edge mobile game development, we contacted Gameloft to learn more - and an interesting story emerged. Of course, looking back, there was a time when mobile graphics technology was seeing some incredible gen-on-gen leaps in performance, with John Carmack excited enough about phone graphics tech to write his own iOS games, Epic released the stunning Infinity Blade and at one point, DICE was even porting the Frostbite engine to work on mobile hardware. Reaching and surpassing Xbox 360 quality seemed like a given, but there reached a point where pushing the boundaries of mobile t...

It's been a rough couple of weeks for poor old Bowser Jr., as the notes for Mario Tennis Aces update 1.2.0 have revealed Bowser's naughty son is due for a second nerfing. The update notes, which are so far available only in Japanese , reveal Bowser Jr.'s character will receive a number of changes designed to weaken his abilities within the game. A translated copy of the notes (thanks, ResetEra ) explains the range of Bowser Jr.'s lateral technical shots will be reduced, and the height at which he can hit the ball will be limited. For many in the Mario Tennis Aces community, this will come as a welcome relief. Players had complained Bowser Jr. was overpowered for some time, pointing out he had exceptional reach and the ability to "trickshot on reaction" . This led to a quick nerfing two weeks ago in update 1.1.2 , and a pledge from Nintendo he would be weakened again (a promise which now seems to have been realised). Read more… from Eurogamer.net https:/...

In a restaurant somewhere in sunny Los Angeles County, 13 years ago, two old friends were having lunch. Wine and conversation were flowing. They remembered how they'd met at LucasArts in the 90s. They weren't there to talk business but they did because video games were their bread and butter. One of the men, Jack Sorensen, was reeling-off job opportunities he knew of - he being executive vice president of worldwide studios at games publisher THQ. "THQ Australia?" he enquired. But the other man, Dean Sharpe, didn't seem interested. He had closed his own studio Big Ape Productions a couple of years earlier, dropped off the radar and taken a break, and now he was ready for something new. But Sharpe wanted a challenge. Sorensen dangled the bait. "It was somewhere during the second bottle of wine he mentioned he had this crazy thing in Ukraine," Dean Sharpe tells me over Skype now (he never did get fully back on the radar and he's a hard man to find). ...

It's Indie Mega Week at the Humble Store right now, which - as you may have gleaned from the name - is a big celebration of some of the best indie games around, with the range seeing discounts of up to 90 per cent for the time being. There are pages of stuff on offer in the Indie Mega Week sale range, ranging from smaller and more obscure titles to some of the biggest indie games released in recent years, and some soundtracks and DLC packs are even thrown in for good measure. Some of the most notable games on offer include 11-bit Studios' recent suffer-sim Frostpunk, which is down to £21.24 / $25.49 , current Twitch favourite House Flipper for £13.16 / $16.99 , the unrelentingly addictive Dead Cells for £17.59 / $19.99 , and the closet thing we'll get to a Left 4 Dead 3 anytime soon, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 for £15.40 / $20.09 . Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2M5yOwD

Nintendo shifted another 1.88m Switch consoles between April and June this year, bringing the console's lifetime sales total up to 19.6m. This figure is down slightly on the same quarter last year, when it sold 1.97m over the same three months, albeit soon after the console's launch and during a period when Nintendo released Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Arms. Switch is still selling well, then, and roughly equivalent to the PlayStation 4 at the same point in its lifecycle (while only having had one holiday sales period when PS4 had had two). And, importantly, game sales more than doubled over the same period last year - where Nintendo makes a lot of its money. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2mXiJy8

No Man's Sky's impressive NEXT update came out last week and the response has been generally positive. Over the weekend, in fact, more than 97,000 concurrent players logged in to Hello Games' revamped space sim on PC - and, even now, it's the fifth most played game on Steam. That's quite the turnaround, and some fans are showing their enthusiasm for the rejuvenated No Man's Sky in the time-honoured fashion: by sharing kind words or screenshots of their most beautiful discoveries across the internet. However, one fan, going by the name Roland Oberheim, has taken a more unique approach to celebrating NEXT's accomplishments, building a giant monument to creator Sean Murray on the surface of one of the millions of planets within No Man's Sky's universe. It's so big, in fact, that it's visible from the atmosphere. The massive edifice is fashioned using a precise arrangement of floor panels - elements included in the game's extensive build...

It's been a long time since I've played a Formula One game, and in truth I've seldom enjoyed them that much - which, as a fan of both racing games and the sport, seemed a shame. There was something alienating, I found, in the monotonously fast machinery with its nervy handling and in the dry pageantry of the licence. The championship season was the main hook, but it was exhaustingly long and, without the variety and sense of progression offered by broader racing games, its payoff seemed distant. So it was without much expectation that I covered for our regular F1 correspondent Martin at a recent preview event for this year's F1 game from Codemasters, F1 2018. Yet what I found there was, on the basis of a couple of hours' play, the most immediately involving and cleverly designed career mode in any current racing game. This may not be news to people who've stayed in touch with the series. Since it made a bare-bones reboot on the current consoles in F1 2015, Co...

Last month, Indiegogo announced that it had contacted debt collectors to reclaim funds pledged toward the long-awaited ZX Spectrum Vega Plus. Now, nearly eight weeks on, some backers are finally starting to receive their consoles - although early impressions are less than positive. The ZX Spectrum Vega Plus portable console, created by Retro Computers Ltd, managed to raise over half a million pounds from more than 4,700 backers in March 2016. The Vega was originally anticipated to release that summer, but has missed numerous deadlines, becoming embroiled in a very messy dispute between current and former senior management. Things came to a head last month, on June 5th, when Indiegogo's Trust and Safety team announced that it would not be extending Retro Computers' delivery deadline after the company failed to satisfy several requests, including requests to provide a final production unit by June 5th, and to refund backers that no longer wanted the Vega Plus. Read more… ...

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Battle Royale mode, Blackout, was introduced to the world back in May. Now, two month's later, Activision has offered the first proper footage (albeit a fleeting, 13 second sample) of Blackout in action. A Battle Royale mode for this year's iteration of Call of Duty was repeatedly rumoured prior to Black Ops 4's full unveiling, so nobody was particularly surprised when Treyarch made it official during Activision's reveal event in May. Announced as Blackout, the mode was teased in only the broadest of strokes, alongside a lengthy but rather abstract cinematic trailer. "For us to even consider this kind of [Battle Royale] experience," Treyarch said, "it had to be unique and done in a way that only Black Ops could do". The final product, it continued, would be a "crazy collision of fun", mixing favourite weapons and characters with land, water, and air vehicles, all on a map comprising of numerous iconic lo...

Colour-smearing platform sequel de Blob 2 is heading to Switch on August 28th, THQ Nordic has announced. Switch owners will be getting a version of de Blob 2 based on the same remaster that released on PC in 2017, and on PS4 and Xbox One earlier this year. This enhanced edition offered a resolution boost over the original game on other platforms, as well as FXAA anti-aliasing and upscaled videos - although THQ Nordic is yet to outline the improvements that will be making their way to Switch. De Blob 2, which originally released on Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii in 2011, follows a similar formula to its predecessor, offering another delightful bout of exploration and platforming built around a compelling colour-splashing core. And there's another great soundtrack too. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2mVjvvI

No Man's Sky's recently released Next update radically improves content and visuals and we've had a lot of fun playing it in its new Xbox One X incarnation - but we've got to say that the PC version still needs a lot of work. Performance doesn't seem to be where it should be, even on higher-end GPUs while basics like v-sync don't seem to work properly. On top of that, right from the off, basic user-friendliness comforts and presentation create a genuinely poor introduction to the game. For a title that has improved so dramatically since launch, we genuinely hope to see Hello Games make one last push to make life easier for PC users. It starts with the game's first load, where No Man's Sky spends a lot of time pre-caching shaders. On a top-end Ryzen processor, this procedure takes over three minutes to complete, while other reports have seen waiting times of anything up to ten minutes depending on the CPU in question. As first impressions go, this is pr...

Did you know it's been nearly 20 years since Digimon was first released? Somehow, the series has managed to succeed in the shadow of its more famous rival for two decades, so it seems fitting the latest game should concentrate on the theme of survival. Following talk in Japan over the last few weeks about a new chapter in the Digimon story, Digimon Survive has finally been confirmed for a western release. In yesterday's Digimon livestream by Bandai Namco, the company announced the latest incarnation of the series will be a "survival-simulation RPG" . According to Bandai Namco's press release, the game will feature a "brand-new group of teenagers" who "get lost on a school camping trip" and are "transported to a world of monsters and danger". Sounds like my Duke of Edinburgh experience, to be honest. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2mUehAl

UPDATE 30th July 2018: Santa Monica Studio has now officially confirmed the runes inside Kratos's house are indeed God of War's "final secret". The information was announced on Santa Monica's Twitter, and cheekily referenced concept artist Joe Kennedy's hashtag #Fayeknew. By the way, if you haven't finished God of War yet and don't want it spoiled, this is your chance to stop reading. You have been warned. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2mCLMa5

Fortnite is due out on Android devices soon, but, according to a fresh leak, it looks like it won't be available on the Google Play Store. xda-developers.com had a dig around the source of the Fortnite mobile page on developer Epic's website and found lines that tell users how to download and install the game on their Android devices. There are images, too, which explain further. One of these says after you download the game you'll be "prompted with some security permissions". "This is necessary to install any app outside of the Play Store." Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2mWdoHb

With it being the end of July and with Prime Day 2018 a mere memory, online retailers are beginning to get their payday sale ranges up and running, with a selection of games, consoles and assorted merch seeing discounts. First up, we've got ShopTo's Pay Day offerings. The site has dedicated Sale pages for PS4 , Xbox One and Nintendo , as well as a handful of console and PSVR offers. Specifically, you'll find a PSVR (V2) bundle with the PS4 Camera, PSVR Worlds and The Persistence for £249.85 , as well as PS4 1TB Slim bundles with Hidden Agenda for £279.85 , a white PS4 Pro for £319.85 and a handful of Xbox One bundle offers including an Xbox One X for £419.86 . Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2NWzogC

Steam has come under fire in recent months for opening its store to hundreds of decidedly dodgy games, and it seems this policy is once again hurting customers, as one game on the Steam store is reportedly turning players' computers into a cryptocurrency-mining botnet. The offending game in question is called Abstractism - an indie which masquerades as a "trivial platformer" but seems to be doing something far more insidious. Multiple players have left negative reviews with screenshots showing evidence the game installs a Trojan virus "disguised as as a steam.exe process" along with malware under the name "abstractism launcher". After seeing these reports, YouTuber SidAlpha investigated the game and found these viruses are likely installing cryptocurrency mining software. This presents a huge risk for players, as according to CSO, "cryptojacking" can damage computer performance, increase electricity bills, and even infect cloud infrastr...

Titan Quest is often mentioned in the same breath as Diablo, as though a long but monstrously tough rope binds them together. I'm not sure who this annoys most - Titan Quest's creators Iron Lore or even Diablo creator Blizzard itself - but suffice to say, 12 years after the isometric action role-playing game was originally released, I'm doing it, too. Sorry about that. At the time of its 2006 release, Titan Quest set out to fill the aching ARPG hole left by six years of no-Diablo-3, which arguably it did do, albeit to varying levels of success. Thing is, a Diablo-clone is only ever going to be exactly that: a clone. Whilst it indisputably helped fans of the genre scratch a sorely neglected itch, it couldn't quite deliver the depth nor detail of Blizzard's seminal franchise. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2LAZ71m

PES 2019 has an officially-licensed Turkish league, Konami has announced. It's the first time the Turkish Süper Lig has appeared in PES. All 18 clubs are present and correct in their correct kits, with squads and stats updated on a weekly basis, Konami said. The Turkish league includes the likes of Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş and Trabzonspor. These clubs are known for their passionate fans. Indeed, the Intercontinental Derby, aka the Eternal Rivalry, sees Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray knock lumps out of each other amid one of the most intense atmospheres in world football. Scottish midfield bruiser Graeme Souness, who managed Galatasaray in the mid-90s, nearly sparked a riot after placing a Galatasaray flag in the centre circle of the pitch after beating Fenerbahçe in the 1996 Turkish Cup final - in Fenerbahçe's stadium. Perhaps Souness will be one of PES 2019's new legends? Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2AnY4Na

First off, the GameCube controller is the best controller Nintendo's ever made (sorry, N64!). Mine put up with hundreds of hours of SoulCalibur 2 button-mashing and it never broke sweat. And while I never played Smash Bros., I know one of the reasons Melee is still so popular today is because of the GameCube controller. So, it's good to see a couple of peripheral makers reveal GameCube-inspired Nintendo Switch controllers that are due out just in time for Super Smash. Bros Ultimate in December. First up we have Hori, which has three new wired Classic controllers due out in October. There's one with a Super Mario theme, one with a The Legend of Zelda theme and another with a Pikachu theme. Each connects to the Switch via a USB cable. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2uZVQP9

Assetto Corsa Competizione, Kunos Simulazioni's follow-up to its sublime driving simulator, has been dated for its Early Access release, with the Blancpain-licensed racer coming on September 12th. It will, however, be a very limited offering at first, with just the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 and the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit available at first, with updates then coming on a monthly basis through to at least February. The multiplayer will be policed by a Rating System that builds upon that which players of iRacing and Gran Turismo Sport will be familiar with. The announcement came at the weekend's Spa 24 Hours - the centrepiece in the Blancpain GT series' calendar which was won by Walkenhorst's BMW M6 - an event that Assetto Corsa Competizione will look to simulate with its day/night transitions and full weather system. The full and final game is due in Q1 next year. Read more… from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2Lx8kIe