Battlefield Hardline Delayed Until 2015 In Order To Innovate Further

It’s a day of delays unfortunately as EA has also announced that Visceral Games’ Battlefield: Hardline has been pushed back to a 2015 release, following in the news of Dragon Age: Inquisition's delay.The cops vs robbers online shooter looked to be on track for its October 21st release date but, following mixed reactions to its post-E3 beta test, Battlefield: Hardline has been pushed back until early 2015 in order to innovate further and differentiate it from previous Battlefield experiences…

Dead Space developer Visceral Games made the decision following feedback from the beta, as DICE VP Karl Magnus Troedsson said they had “learned a lot from players about what they wanted in the game. This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing.“However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn’t have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months.”The extra time will be spent on multiplayer innovation, single-player story depth, and game stability. Long-time Battlefield 4 players will breathe a sigh of relief over that last point, with Visceral reportedly keen to avoid the mistakes that plagued Battlefield 4’s launch.It's unclear how much of this news is affected by the juggernaut that is Destiny, arriving in September. Bungie's giant has been making waves in its beta test and it would be wise to stay out of its way for the time being. As it stands publisher Activision have the holiday season sewn up for shooters, with both Destiny and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare surefire hits.As it stands Battlefield: Hardline is due out in early 2015, but we’ll bring you a more concrete release date as and when we hear it.

Rumour: GTA V PC Official Release Date Leaked

Ahh GTA V’s PC release date… We wait almost a year to have the existence of the game confirmed to us, only to be given the very loose GTA 5 release window of “Fall 2014”.
Now, though, thanks to a listing on a Danish retail site, we might have an official release date after all. According to a listing on Coolshop the European release for the title is expected on 14th November…
Now of course retail listings are often drafts and not 100% accurate, but this is a pretty specific listing compared to what we’d expect from a placeholder date. As we’d already guessed, this launch window puts GTA V slap bang in the middle of the busiest gaming release period of the year, after an insanely packed October release window and a November than includes Far Cry 4, The Crew and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Of course, with the unprecedented profit made by the last-gen versions of GTA 5, we don’t imagine that the busy time of year will put off many consumers. It’s also just two weeks before Black Friday, so there’s every chance we could see GTA 5 cut prices in a Black Friday sale in the run up to the busy Holiday period.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes And Punishments Minimum System Requirements

If there's one September PC title we're really hyped about, it has to be Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. Not just because the BBC's Sherlock prepped us for all things Baker Street in 2014, but also since the early trailers of the game and its new engine seems to show big upgrades from earlier Sherlock Holmes games.
Developer Frogwares has just unveiled the minimum system requirements for the game, so we took a look over them to see what kind of rig you'll need to step into the shoes of the most iconic of detectives...

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows Vista SP2 or higher
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz Athlon 64 X2 5200+
RAM: 2 GB RAM
HD: 14 GB

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 4890Nvidia Geforce GTS 450Intel Iris Pro 5
VRAM: 1GB
DX: 9.0c

The game has been built with Unreal Engine 3 in place of the series' old engine, so we expected a bit of a hike in system requirements. In terms of the CPU specs, we were expecting something around this point. The GPU requirements are a little higher than we'd anticipated, however; we thought they might be closer to something like the HD 3850. Those GPUs are rated 6 stars on GD right now, so you'll need a fairly decent rig to get this game running assuming the requirements are accurate. We'd hope you'd be able to play this title on slightly weaker graphics card with the settings tweaked, and we will be sure to benchmark Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments on some of our weaker GD systems when the title launches.

Once again, we're seeing game sizes consistently over 10GB this year even with smaller titles; Crimes and Punishments will eat up 14GB space, although it will only need a fairly modest 2GB RAM to get the game going.

Assassins Creed: Unity Preview : What We Know So Far

Ubisoft once again got the gaming world in a flutter when it officially unveiled the first gameplay of Assassin’s Creed Unity back during its press conference at E3 2014. Since the first Assassin’s Creed game we’ve only seen incremental steps forward in gameplay and the world, but Unity is already looking like a leap ahead.

This time around the country-hopping series makes its way to Paris for yet another tale of murder, intrigue, and questionably placed hay bales. Following the tale of Arno Dorian and his attempt to unmask the powerful figures leading the French Revolution, Assassin’’s Creed Unity adds a stack of new additions to the series classic stealth-based gameplay...

Vive La Revolution

After a temporary foray over to the other side of Atlantic for the previous three Assassin’s Creed titles, Assassin’s Creed Unity brings Ubisoft’s sprawling series to France during the French Revolution. Paris to be precise. Ubisoft promises the world will be bigger and more detailed than anything previously seen in the series, with many of its most famous buildings recreated on a 1:1 scale.

Many of Paris’ most famous landmarks are set to be included, such as the infamous prison Bastille, the Catacombs of Paris, Palace of Versailles, the Louvre, and of course Notre Dame. Paris will be larger than the entirety of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag’s landmass combined, with more a quarter of the interiors now fully accessible and explorable.

The city itself is divided up into varied and distinct suburbs, while the French Revolution stretched from 1789 to 1799, during which Paris underwent huge changes. Perhaps most impressive of all though is the range of NPCs, with Ubisoft claiming there will be crowds of up to five thousand people on-screen at any one time, a massive increase from the 150 maximum seen in previous games.

Arno Dorian

Arno Dorian is a French-Austrian assassin born a peasant in 1768, and he’s made Paris and the French Revolution his playground when it comes to slicing and dicing. He’s an orphan who blames himself for the death of his adopted father, setting out on a personal crusade to find out who’s personally pulling the strings behind the Revolution, working his way through the ranks of the unions. Unlike other assassins in the series his lineage is unknown, as is any sort of connection with the previous assassins.

Refined Parkour

New to this instalment of Assassin’s Creed is a refined parkour system. Players will now be able to Parkour Up and Parkour Down using separate key presses. This has been introduced in an effort to make scaling buildings easier, while Arno will now be able to effortlessly climb down a building in the same manner as he would climbing up. This negates the use of piles of hay, which may be removed from the game almost entirely. Ubisoft claimed that it had previously noted many instances of the mechanics not quite working how players had intended, such as accidentally running up a jutting wall. This new mechanic is intended to reduce the number of mistakes the system makes, allowing the player to make the decision themselves.

Four-player Co-op

For the first time in the series Assassin’s Creed Unity will feature seamless four-play cooperative multiplayer. During a play session players can enter any of the many Parisian taverns to meet up with other players and engage in co-op missions. In your game you will always appear as Arno, while the other players will appear as members of the brotherhood, and vice versa. All of the co-op missions will be similar to the experience you would have playing in single-player, albeit with the addition of up to three other players. Each is a single self-contained mission and is designed to be tackled in multiple ways.

For those of you who aren’t interested in the ways of multiplayer, all of the co-op missions will be playable solo, although you may find you’re in for a tougher experience. As a ballpark figure Ubisoft estimate the co-op content will comprise around 30% of Assassin’s Creed Unity’s total gameplay.

Phantom Blade

The Phantom Blade is Assassin’s Creed Unity’s evolution of the classic Hidden Blade, allow the user to fire projectiles from their wrist. So far there are two types of confirmed projectiles - lethal and berserk poison darts. Like previous titles poison darts kill, while the berserk darts send the recipient into a rage, killing all around them. We're expecting more uses for your phantom blades to crop up when Ubisoft begins to take the wraps of its title a little more.

Assassin's Creed Unity System Requirements

There’s no two ways about it, Assassin’s Creed Unity looks considerably better than any previous game in the series, while the improvements to AI and the massively increased NPC count means this could be a significantly more demanding experience than Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Unity does run on the same AnvilNext engine powering its predecessors, but the number of changes here means it could take its toll on lower end systems.

Far Cry 4 – World Size Detailed, Possible Hardcore Survival Mode and More

In a new interview with Gameinformer the creative director of Far Cry 4, Alex Hutchinson, revealed some new details about the game which were then rounded up on NeoGAF.

An all important question was answered by Hutchinson regarding the size of the game world. Just how big is it? Well, according to Hutchinson, the world of Far Cry 4 is comparable in size to that of Far Cry 3, but due to the layout of the game and its mountainous region it’s much more dense.

Basically, what he means by dense is that there won’t be a bunch of filler land just for there to be extra game space, which I think is a good move on the developers part to keep players interested in the world and looking for all the secrets it holds.

While not currently in the game, Hutchinson did talk about the possibility of some type of “hardcore” mode if players were interested in it. This hardcore mode would implement a whole new survivor element to the game that would add a whole new realm of realism. The ideas talked about in the podcast involved getting hypothermia in cold water, diseases from animal bites, permadeath and so on. Hutchinson had also originally asked his team what they apparently thought about using poop on arrows to poison enemies, but that idea was turned down.

Some other cool gameplay features include the ability to turn off the game’s HUD for a more cinematic feel when you record your gameplay, or if you just want that extra level of immersion. You also have the ability to throw grenades through car windows while you’re driving, use fire as a weapon again and at some points during your journey you’ll need oxygen at high altitudes.

On the narrative side of things, there will be multiple endings, but they won’t be a clear choice and most likely will be affected by your actions throughout the game. Once you beat the game, if you want to reset the enemy outposts you can, and this time there will be a narrative reason behind it according to Hutchinson. You can even pick which faction you’d like to fight with which will also affect the narrative in some way or another.

Far Cry 4 looked great at the E3 press conference and we can’t wait to see more of the game come this November. Be sure to follow GamesWolrd on Facebook for all the latest details on Far Cry 4 and other upcoming single player experiences.