Author: Thomas Ortsik

Founder and Kinda-Editor-In-Chief at Twinstiq.
Also known as Dr. Strangethumb

Swatting Perpetrator Caught

Picture

A 17 year old multiple offender has plead guilty 23 counts of extortion, public mischief, and criminal harassment. Posing as a captor inside his victim's house, he would call the police demanding ransom, saying he was holding the family hostage or that he had killed someone.
The teenager who is unidentified due to minor status would then continue to harass families by posting their details online, including social insurance numbers and credit card information.

Wanting to boast, the teen hosted an eight hour livestream of his escapades on YouTube, days before he was arrested. After receiving a phone call from him, one of the victims called her local police station, fearing being swatted herself. The RCMP also verified the identity of the Port Coquitlam, B.C. teen when he attempted a second swatting the same day.

Now facing 40 charges and being remanded for 169 days, he and his parents await the sentencing hearing on June 29th.

Source: VGChartz

May 22nd, 2015

Ok, let’s make this quick, got to catch a train to the 19th century.

What is everyone playing this weekend?

  • Andrew J Amideo (@Andoro36): I'll be taking a trip to the beach for the holiday weekend so if I do any gaming at all, it'll have to be on my 3DS. Possibly a little Donkey Kong Country Returns or Mario Tennis Open, if there's some downtime.
  • Billy Colley (@Amuntoth): This weekend I'll be playing some Chroma Squad, 3D Realms Anthology, and working on some Warcraft 1 for the Fine RTS series.
  • Cody Hall (@Yoda0VGs): I will be playing kill monsters, save people, learn they are dickheads, kill dickheads simulator 2015. Aka more Witcher 3.
  • Greywolfe (@lostwolfe, YouTube): (TBD)
  • Jimmy Vegas (@JimmyPhantom17): Wolfenstein The New Order on Uber
  • John Rausch (@visitzebes): I'll be playing Til Morning's Light. I'm impressed so far. I imagine I'll play a bit of Destiny too.
  • Jonathan: The Witcher 3...I think I found my new favorite game.
  • Jye Cauffle: Bloodborne
  • Thomas Ortsik (@Dr_Strangethumb): Puzzle & Dragons Z during my train ride.
  • Trey Valeska (@Trey_Valeska): This weekend I will be playing more NEON STRUCT, Insurgency, Hotline Miami 2, Nuclear Throne, and 3D Realms Anthology. There is a high chance of some Shadowrun: Dragonfall due to Shadowrun: Hong Kong hype.
    Mount and Blade Warband is also very likely. (I play a lot of games)
  • Trisha Baumgartner (twitch): Working this weekend but my Vita will keep me entertained with ffx and ffx-2 remastered
  • Richard Mitchell (@TheRichardM): Mortal Kombat. No, not the new one. The Vita one. I want to feel included.
  • Sam Prell (@SamPrell): I need ONE more trophy before I 100% Bloodborne and earn my first Plat.
  • Susan Arendt (@SusanArendt): The "sell as much of your stuff as you can before you move" game.

Misc News Roundup

Picture

Ultra SFIV uses PS3 fight sticks on PS4, Witcher 3 graphics called out, updated FFXV demo, new Dragon Quest VIII scenarios, more Capcom HD ports, M. Bison in SFV, Kinect still counts, and Witcher 3 benchmarks, all inside after the jump!

Ultra Street Fighter IV on PS4 Supports PS3 Sticks

Fight sticks from the PlayStation 3 will be supported on the full HD port of Street Fighter IV for Sony's PlayStation 4, using the open source driver project started by SkullGirls developers.
Source: Gematsu

Witcher 3 Developers Talk About Graphics Disparity

Citing the fact that an early PC build of the game shown was a highly polished vertical slice, CD Projekt Red believes that concerned players saying the rest of the game doesn't look as good are not getting the full context. "This demo was built specifically to run in as high fidelity as possible. It didn't have the game's full open world to contend with, and that helped boost the visuals." said co-founder Marcin Iwinski.
Source: GameSpot

Updated FFXV Demo Coming

Episode Duscae 2.0 will be launching in early June, bringing updates in performance and gameplay, and attempting to address as many of gamers' top 15 complaints as possible.
Source: GameSpot

New Dragon Quest VIII Scenarios Revealed

"Dhoulmagus' Past" will explore the earlier years of the game's ultimate villain, and "The Hero's Childhood" will likely follow the protagonist from a child to the decision to become one of his kingdom's knights.
Source: Gematsu

Capcom Bringing More HD Remasters

Capcom will be focusing on some HD remasters, bringing past titles up a notch on current gen systems. With Devil May Cry 4, DMC, and Resident Evil already under their belt, which game series could be next?
Source: IGN

M. Bison Coming to Street Fighter V

The latest fighter announced for Street Fighter V is one of the top villains of the series, M. Bison. He joins Ryu, Charlie, and Chun Li as characters already confirmed for Capcom's fighting game.
Source: Eurogamer

Xbox Keeping Up With Kinect

Phil Spencer reveals his desire to continue pushing the Kinect as an exciting way to interact with future Xbox One games. "We'll continue to build functionality to make it a valuable part of the ecosystem," said Spencer.
Source: GameSpot

Digital Foundry Benchmarks Witcher 3

Witcher 3's performance is compared across three systems, the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Each has their strengths, check out the differences to see which version you want to go for (if that type of thing matters to you!).
Source: Eurogamer

New Nintendo eShop Releases: Mega May (Week 3)

Mega May continues this week with the release of Mega Man Zero 2 for the Wii U Game Boy Advance Virtual Console. If you've never played any of the Zero series games before, I'd highly recommend giving one of them a try. They are all excellent. Also out this week is the Mario edition of Puzzle & Dragons for the 3DS, and the Super Nintendo port of an old arcade shmup called Earth Defense Force (no relation to the current series). Get ready, equip your Z-Saber, and then jump past the break to see the complete list of new releases.
Wii U

3DS

[Image: Capcom]

Andrew J Amideo
[Source: Business Wire]

New Need for Speed Game Revealed

Picture

EA and Ghost Games are rebooting Need for Speed. There are some big changes for the upcoming entry, hit the jump to see the teaser trailer and find out more!
You will explore the open world and follow the deep narrative that the single player career will be built around. There will be day/night periods, seamless multiplayer allowing other players to populate your world, and "deep customization" of vehicles.Let us know what you think of the new direction. Do you imagine something like Forza Horizon, or Test Drive Unlimited? What do want most from the series refresh?

These promotional shots courtesy of GameSpot may not reflect the final version of the game.
Picture
Source: GameSpot

Windows 10 Beta on Xbox One Time Frame

An Xbox One Beta of Windows 10 will be coming after the operating system launches on PC. "It will be post-summer," tweets Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox Division.
We already know that Windows 10 will feature many Xbox apps and services, such as native support for friends lists, messaging, and activity feed, Xbox Live support, Game Streaming, Game DVR. On the Xbox One, DirectX 12, and Windows 10 app support will be coming, as well as the possibility of "universal" games that run both on Windows PC and Xbox One hardware.

What else could be shared between the two? Do you hope to see a dashboard overhaul on the Xbox, or mostly a behind the scenes update?

Source: Neowin

Nvidia and AMD in Each Others’ Hair

Like AMD's TressFX before it, Nvidia's HairWorks is a software routine that's optimized for their own GPU line. Nvidia's technology is closed source, making it difficult for AMD to optimize routines in the software to run better on their GPUs.  This results in lower performance for users when it is enabled on AMD hardware.
A CD Projekt Red developer says "unsatisfactory performance may be experienced, as the code of this feature cannot be optimized for AMD products."
The incentive for a GPU manufacturer to develop a proprietary API optimized for their hardware is high, especially if it raises their product above the competition. For game developers, the main draw in using these APIs is help from the hardware maker, or sometimes a marketing deal. Many games have sported the "Nvidia: The Way It's Meant to be Played" splash screens. In other markets there are similar strategies, Intel has their own code compiler optimized for their CPUs, for example.

Perhaps these features would never have made it in if it weren't from help from the hardware developer, but this situation unfortunately results in a fragmentation of the end user experience.

High end graphics cards are expensive, so it would be difficult to justify buying both an AMD and Nvidia GPU to have the optimal experience at any given time. As a PC gamer, what do you make of this situation?

Source: ArsTechnica

Rockstar Suing The BBC

Picture

Not long after filming has begun, The BBC documentary Game Changer is being called out by Rockstar in a lawsuit where they allege that a proper representation of history surrounding the game developer and its employees has not been agreed upon by both parties.
"While holders of the trademarks referenced in the film title and its promotion, Rockstar Games has had no involvement with this project. Our goal is to ensure that our trademarks are not misused in the BBC's pursuit of an unofficial depiction of purported events related to Rockstar Games." - in a statement given to IGN by Rockstar

With its case centered around trademark infringement, Rockstar aims to prevent The BBC from referring to them at all. After repeated attempts to contact the television company, Rockstar feels it was forced to take the next step. "It is our obligation to protect our intellectual property and unfortunately in this case litigation was necessary."

The BBC has yet to respond, and so far the documentary is still scheduled to air later this year.

Source: IGN

Rumour: Armello [And Other Games] Potentially Coming To GOG? [Update!   Rumour confirmed]

Picture

This post has been updated with new information, please see the final paragraph for the update.

While browsing through the GOG releases from the past few years, I stumbled across – hidden way deep down in the bowels of pages and pages of games – potential listings for Armello, Nekro, Starcrawlers, World of Magic and Satellite Reign.

For a little more information about each of the games and what might be going on with regards to their potential release to the GOG store, feel free to head past the break.

None of these are for sale yet, and all of these might turn out to be false positives, but it is worth noting that Armello, Starcrawlers and Worlds of Magic at least, have store pages.  Right now, all one can do on these is wish list the game in question – the other two simply lead to the listing of games you might have been looking at whenever you click on them.
The Game Page for Armello listing it's various GOG attributes plus the ability to wishlist it.

Would I like to wishlist Armello? If I could do it more than once, I totally would.


Nekro seems like a strategy/rpg hybrid in the vein of games like Sacrifice, Overlord and Dungeon Keeper where you use a necromancer to summon vile demons to aid your cause in taking over everything and everyone that stands in your path.

Nekro released to early access on 2 May, 2014

Satellite Reign looks to be a modernized, more colourful version of Syndicate. In Satellite Reign you take a handful of soldiers and let them loose on a cyberpunk-influenced world.

Satellite Reign has no release date attached to it but went into Early Access on 11 December, 2014.

Starcrawlers is a Legend of Grimrock in space.  It is essentially a turn-based role playing game in which you play a collection of Crawlers [folks who take jobs for fame, fortune and the like] who roam around the galaxy.

Starcrawlers released into early access on 17 March, 2015

Worlds of Magic is essentially Master of Magic for modern machines.  This means that it is a fantasy-styled 4x game that is turn-based.  In Worlds of Magic, you create a hero from a faction who attempts to control the land via spellcraft, diplomacy or pure force.

Worlds of Magic released to Steam on 19 March, 2015

Armello is a dark, turn-based fantasy-themed board game that has card-game and strategy elements.  It utilizes a Studio Ghibli approach to its visuals, which are quite charming.  Each of the factions you can play is an anthropomorphic animal of some sort.

Armello released into early access on 22 January, 2015

One of the potential reasons none of these are out on Gog yet is that they are all in Early Access [except for Worlds of Magic] and have yet to move into 1.0/release status.  Gog generally doesn’t tend to sell games that are still in a beta of some persuasion.

Update!  Armello is confirmed for a GOG release at some stage.

Source:  Gog Games Listing [this WILL change with time as more games are added to the GOG list]

Source:  Armello Game Page

Updated Source:  Tweet confirming that Armello is coming to GOG