PAX East 2017: RIOT Civil Unrest Is Prettier Than It Looks

With another PAX East this year means another look at the upcoming games for this and next years stores on consoles and Steam primarily. RIOT is a game that’s currently in development but with a bright future ahead of it. After playing a demo of the game I spoke with Leonard Menchiari, one of the developers for the game. RIOT Civil Unrest simulates some of the most notorious riots of the modern world into four campaigns: Italy – NoTAV Movement Spain – Indignados Movement Greece – Battle of Keratea Egypt – Tahrir Revolution “The game is based on what you see, knowing that what’s on TV is everything but true. Just biased and they’re hiding the reason why. It is better to see with your own eyes than what’s broadcasted to our homes.” The game gives you the option to play on either side of the riot and depending on your outcome will shift how the riot develops in the mission and future missions in the campaign as well. Police is controlled more RTS defending with three different teams: assault, tactical and ballistic. While rioters are more of a mob that’s influenced by your actions. For example, if the rioters act more violent towards the police they become more relentless and unstable to control, and for the police makes them vulnerable to being subdued by rubber bullets and tear gas depending on how violent they are. Each mission takes about 5 – 10 missions with over 30 levels divided into 4 campaigns, gives the player about 4 – 5 hours depending on how your outcome was of the riots to reach the end of the game. Short, I know, but there’s still more to it. After asking if there were any future project for more riots to be added to the game as DLC, Menchiari answered with: “no, but there will be a level or “riot” editor to the game. The community will be able to create new riots and expand from the game. Giving you endless riots for even ones that the devs wouldn’t come up with.” RIOT Civil Unrest has to be one of my more anticipated games to look forward to from PAX East. From the realism of the games settings to the movement of people and fire, it is overall one to look forward to and hopefully see next year in 2018 on what changes they’ve made to what is already here.

Project Sonic 2017 is now called Sonic Forces

There has been a lot of news coming out of the Sonic SXSW panel with Sonic Mania being delayed and now we have the officially name for Project Sonic 2017. Sonic Forces is the official name, it is scheduled for a late 2017 release for Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. According to the SEGA stream, the name ‘Sonic Forces’ is based on the fact that the game will have ‘forces’ going against each other like Sonic the Hedgehog‘s group of friends and Eggman’s group of baddies. Aaron Webber also showed off another piece of concept art for Sonic Force’s, but have kept mute on further details.   Stay tuned for more updates.

Sonic Mania has been delayed until the Summer

Sonic Mania was originally supposed to launch this Spring 2017. Unfortunately, the game is now seeing a bit of a delay. Just announced at Sonic’s SXSW panel, Sonic Mania will now launch this summer. The extra time will be used to ensure that it’s of the highest quality. There was also new art for the game revealed:

Latest PlayStation 4 update apparently causing Wi-Fi connectivity issues

On March 9, Sony released the 4.5 Update to PlayStation 4 owners which brought with it many improvements, as well as Boost Mode improvements for PlayStation 4 Pro owners, and many were happy upon its release.  Now, a week later, PlayStation 4 owners are reporting Wi-Fi connection issues, according to TechRadar. TechRadar writes that “[a]ccording to many reports from console owners, since installing the update they’ve been unable to connect to a Wi-Fi network to get online.”  They continue saying that with specifically correct network credentials, they get a ‘failed’ notification and no resulting connection.  They are then told that the password is incorrect, even if it’s not. TechRadar follows up, offering a couple of solutions to the problem.  Obviously your mileage may vary, but they recommend trying to connect the PlayStation to an Ethernet cable, and that if there isn’t a cable in the area, or within reach, removing the Wi-Fi network’s password, thus leaving it as an unsecured, open Wi-Fi network, connection should proceed normally. Sony has yet to official address the issue in any capacity, but should we learn more or hear an official statement, we’ll keep you updated.  For the time being, stay tuned to Rectify Gaming for the latest. Source: TechRadar Via: Neowin

Upcoming changes to Xbox Live Clubs will allow for in-game interaction

Last year, Microsoft debuted and publicly released a new feature to Xbox Live called Clubs.  Clubs let players group together based on shared, interests, games played, or a specific way or type of gameplay within a game.  Since the announcement, we haven’t really heard much in the way of improvements.  Today, Jez Corden published an exclusive based on developer documentation leaked to Windows Central about an upcoming API developers would be able to take advantage of, and it centered on Clubs. In his piece, Corden writes that “[t]he document we received details various upcoming known improvements to Xbox and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) APIs developers will be able to use in their games, including dev optimizations to leaderboard systems, stat tracking, and various hardware analysis improvements.  This in-game Clubs API for devs, however, is a new feature.”  What Corden describes the feature set of the new API, and some of its possible implementations, discussing how the API could be leveraged to, within a single Club on Xbox Live, developers could enable clan creation, as well as multiplayer guilds, using Xbox Live as a sync engine. Corden also notes that they “don’t have a full description of exactly what will be accessible in the Club API” but that it has the potential to help games like Destiny and Elite Dangerous that don’t have native or competent clan support.  We’re going to avoid speculation, but you can read what Jez believes is possible in the original piece, linked as the source below.  For now, we know that the API is scheduled for an April announcement which may possibly line it up with Microsoft’s BUILD conference and Windows 10 Creators Update launch and tie in with both rather nicely.  Until we know more, be sure to stay tuned to Rectify Gaming for the latest. Image Credit and Source: Windows Central

Twitch desktop app launches today

Last week we reported that Twitch would be updating Curse’s existing social client following the company’s acquisition of Curse last year.  Today, that revamped social client launches.  If you didn’t catch our coverage last week and are interested to know about the new client, you can check it out here. For a quick recap though, here’s the scoop.  Curse had a desktop client similar to Discord prior to being acquired by Twitch.  Twitch, after acquiring Curse, said it would be releasing a desktop social client that would integrate existing social features with in-app Twitch stream viewing and chat.  Along with viewing and chatting in the new app, audience members will be able to take advantage of Twitch’s new pseudo-marketplace that allows broadcasters to link to sale pages for the game they’re playing directly within Twitch. If you haven’t tried the new client out, you can download it from app.twitch.tv and give it a go.  For further developments on Twitch, its social platform, and all the latest gaming news, be sure to stay tuned to Rectify Gaming. Source: Twitch via Twitter

Sales For Horizon Zero Dawn Surpass 2.6 Million Globally

Sony’s new IP Horizon Zero Dawn continues its march towards world domination. Today the gaming giant announced that Guerrilla Games’ PlayStation 4 (PS4) exclusive has sold more than 2.6 million units during its two weeks since launch. This makes Horizon Zero Dawn the best-selling new first party IP launch on the PS4 system to date and Guerrilla’s biggest debut ever. “We knew Horizon Zero Dawn was going to be something special, so to see the incredible critical reaction to a brand new game world translate into this level of sales is really gratifying,” said Shawn Layden, Chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios. “Guerrilla has created a game that is nothing short of exceptional, and the reaction we have seen from fans – from hours and hours of gameplay streaming to endless photo sharing – shows just how impactful it has been.” Horizon Zero Dawn is an action role playing game which follows the story of Aloy, a young hunter who journeys to unlock the secrets of an ancient past. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that is dominated by machines who roam freely, while mankind has regressed to a society of small tribes. “We’re thrilled that Horizon Zero Dawn has been embraced by critics and players alike. Developing the game was a labor of love, so it’s extremely satisfying to see that it elicits the same passion and enthusiasm from the gaming public that we felt during its development,” said Guerrilla Managing Director Hermen Hulst. “This is only the beginning of Aloy’s story and our exploration of the world of Horizon Zero Dawn, with the team already hard at work on an expansion to the story.” Horizon Zero Dawn is the latest in a line of critically-acclaimed titles released exclusively for the PS4 this year, others of which include Nioh, Gravity Rush 2, Tales of Berseria, and Yakuza 0.

In-game chat transcription coming to Xbox and Windows 10

Microsoft has continually improved its products in recent years to be as accessible by both typical and impaired users as possible.  The next effort coming to the Microsoft ecosystem is game chat transcription, and the first game to support it is Halo Wars 2. Some online games nowadays have in-built text chat or voice chat systems, but rarely do they work together past voice chatters being able to read the text chat and the text chat respond to what’s said.  The latest accessibility move is aimed at letting visually and hearing impaired players better interact with a game and fellow players.  Here’s how the blog post puts the latest feature: “Speech-to-text provides the ability to convert all players’ voice communications in the game chat into text, so the player using this feature can read the text on their screen in real-time.  Text-to-speech provides the ability for players using this feature to have their typed text spoken aloud to other players in the game.” Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are not new technologies by any stretch of the imagination, but using them as communication between players is definitely interesting and useful.  While this feature is now able to be implemented by developers, meaning it’s not currently in many games right now, support is built right into the latest Xbox Play Anywhere launch, Halo Wars 2.  The blog post gives the steps to enable the feature, so if you’re interesting in trying it out or think you can benefit from it, here’s how to do it on Xbox. Go to Settings > All settings > Ease of Access > Game Chat Transcription. To transcribe other players’ voices into text, select Speech-to-text. To have your chat text read aloud to other players, select Text-to-speech. To choose the voice that other players will hear when your chat text is read aloud, select one of the available voices in the Text-to-speech voice menu. And here’s how to enable it on your Windows 10 PC: Open the Xbox app and go to Settings > General > Game chat transcription. To transcribe other players’ voices into text, select Speech-to-text. To have your chat text read aloud to other players, select Text-to-speech. To choose the voice that other players will hear when your chat text is read aloud, select one of the available voices in the Text-to-speech voice menu. The feature will hopefully be implemented in more games as the year progresses, because inclusive gaming is a huge initiative, especially for a company like Microsoft, and seeing their efforts succeed will likely influence other games companies and improve the whole of gaming for all players. If any new games that support this feature arrive, or any new features are added, we’ll keep you updated.  So for the latest, be sure to stay tuned to Rectify Gaming. Source: MSDN Accessibility Blog

RUMOR: Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes Possible For Switch

Former president of Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack, was asked on Twitter whether Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes would come to the Nintendo Switch. Dyack replied simply, “Yes”. Nintendo has yet to confirm the rumors that a GameCube emulator will come to the Switch, but if it does, we just might see this game come to the Switch! Do you think this is likely, or just a dream? Let us know in the comments below!

Injustice 2 introduces Source Crystals, in game currency purchased with real cash

With Injustice 2 releasing in a couple of months, Netherrealm Studios announced a new in game currency that can be purchased with real money. Called Source Crystals, the currency let’s you upgrade cosmetic items only, and will not be a pay to win type of set up. Source Crystals will let you upgrade one of 3 items in premiere skins, shaders and transform gear. The skins are the ones similar to the deluxe edition, in which your moveset stays the same but your appearance and voice is different. This could be something like making the Flash look and sound like Reverse Flash. You can also buy shaders to change the color of items, or transform it. This is similar to other games where your stats stay the same while merely swapping out its appearance for a different item. One other feature that Source Crystals will use is the ability to make other characters level 20, presumably with a stat boost pack, but only after you’ve already earned your way to level 20 with a character. This is to ensure that your progression  is not cheated while playing the game according to Netherrealm. No price on bundles for Source Crystals is available yet, but it appears to function basically just like silver in Destiny. You can see the full announcement here, and Injustice 2 releases May 16th on Xbox One. {Announcement}