Author: Kyle Orland

I'm sad to say that my experience with No Man's Sky so far aligns closely with the one Sam Machkovech recounted in our full review. The game's procedurally generated galaxy is beautiful to experience, but actually exploring that galaxy ends up being a mind-numbing grind. Faced with the need to give players something to do in an expansive, enchanting galaxy, developer Hello Games seems to have fallen back on creating very limited versions of the familiar types of gameplay we tend to see in much smaller, more hand-crafted games.

Thus, No Man's Sky features some perfunctory and unsatisfying space- and ground-based combat. There's a low-grade survival mechanic without much in the way of difficulty or appreciable stakes. There's a lot of mind-numbing resource collection and crafting to make minor improvements to your gear. There's a far-off "finish line" goal to work toward through a series of repetitive hyperdrive jumps. There's a lot of frustrating inventory management, made all the more frustrating because every second wasted juggling items in a menu is a second not spent looking at the interesting procedural scenery.

The problem with all of these systems is that they are all pretty antithetical to the core appeal of simply exploring a functionally infinite, non-repeating galaxy of planets. The overall effect is to transform these amazing planets into hunks of rock to be destroyed, threats to be survived, or collections of resources to be bartered rather than mathematical works of art to be admired from inside. The gameplay systems do encourage you to explore, but they don't in any particular way encourage you to enjoy or appreciate what you're exploring.

Today, Microsoft released official support for Minecraft on the Oculus Rift VR headset, making good on a promise that was made 11 months ago. That official support, however, helped lead to the end of a popular mod that has been letting players experience Minecraft on the Rift for years now.

"Now that Microsoft/Mojang have released VR support for MCPE/Win10 Minecraft, they are exercising their rights over our unofficial mod (Minecrift)," mod co-creator mabrowning wrote on Reddit. "I received notice a few days ago that I can no longer use the name 'Minecrift' or the minecraft-vr.com domain. I've already shutdown the website, but anyone who wants to get a copy of the code should grab it from GitHub before that goes offline, too."

Later in the thread, mabrowning clarified that Microsoft's problem was merely with the name of the Minecrift project and the minecrift-vr.com domain that hosted it. To be fair to Microsoft, names like Minecrift and Minecraft-VR do seem to carry a high chance of being legitimately confused with the new official "Minecraft for Rift" product (it's somewhat admirable that Microsoft didn't take exception to the name before now, in fact).

Not many gaming franchises can sustain an entire fan convention on their own. The second annual Super Smash Con proves that Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. is one of those franchises.

A diverse audience of thousands of fans descended on Chantilly, Virginia for the four-day event this weekend. Most were there for the multi-tiered double-elimination tournaments, fought on everything from the Wii U to the Nintendo 64 where Super Smash Bros. first appeared. Other attendees were there for a celebration of gaming's past and present, including a bustling arcade, fully stocked classic gaming vendors, a variety of game-themed musical and variety acts, and a selection of indie "platform fighters" inspired by the Smash phenomenon.

Attendees mixed and mingled between both parts of the convention throughout the day. But every time the tournament audience let out a loud, synchronized "Ohhhh!" at some amazing takedown or comeback, minglers from around the convention hall literally came running to see what the fuss was about. As fun as it is to watch Smash Bros. tournaments on a livestream, nothing compares to the electricity of a live crowd.

Easy, efficient, gamebreaking... and illegal, according to Riot Games. (credit: LeagueSharp)

League of Legends maker Riot Games is now combating cheating in the game with legal tools as well as technological tools. In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for Central California (and obtained by The Rift Herald), Riot argues that popular cheating tool LeagueSharp (a.k.a L#) has "cause[d] serious harm to Riot and its community" by illegally circumventing the game's DRM and breaking the Riot's Terms of Use.

The lawsuit accuses a trio of German hackers—Matthias "Jodusmame" Oltmann, Stefan "0hm" Stefan Delgato, and Tyrone Tom "Beaving" Pauer—of being behind a Peruvian shell company that publishes LeagueSharp. The software, which costs between $15 and $50 a month, is advertised as "easy, efficient, gamebreaking." Riot, on the other hand, calls it "a product that is specifically designed to enable a subset of LoL players who do not wish to play fair to gain substantial unfair advantages over legitimate players (in other words, to cheat)" in its lawsuit.

In addition to making and distributing LeagueSharp, Riot accuses the hackers of conducting "repeated attacks on Riot’s game servers" and advising players on how to avoid detection. What's more, Riot alleges, the hackers or their associates "disseminated personal and non-public information about a Riot employee, threatened that employee, and posted offensive comments on the employee’s social media."

Yesterday, two people expected that they'd be able to see each other when they met up, against all odds, in No Man's Sky's massive, virtual galaxy of 18 quintillion planets. But in spite of confirming that they were in each others’ line of sight (by communicating outside of the game), neither player could see the other. They were alone, even though they were both standing next to each other on the exact same planet orbiting the exact same star. In No Man’s Sky, you’re always alone.

These two players had good reason to expect their interstellar meetup would work—Hello Games Managing Director Sean Murray has promised that kind of limited multiplayer interaction numerous times in the last two-and-a-half years. (Follow-up tweets from Murray early this morning confirm he never expected this to happen so quickly and suggest that server overload might be to blame for the missed multiplayer connection).

At the same time, if you're actually trying to find another person in the vast, uncaring cosmos of No Man's Sky, you've probably misaligned your expectations for what the game is actually supposed to be about. That's partly the fault of Hello Games, but it's also partly the fault of a player- and press-driven hype machine that quickly spiraled out of the developer's control.

For months now, the digital rights management solution known as Denuvo has proven utterly impervious to cracks and workarounds—so impervious that a major piracy group warned games may become completely "crack-proof" within two years (that same group later took a public break from even attempting any more single-player hacks). In recent days, however, the first cracks have started to develop in Denuvo's digital armor (pun intended).

Denuvo works by creating a unique key for a game based on the specific hardware configuration of the legitimate purchaser's machine. If those game files are shared with another player using another computer, Denuvo's protection will detect the hardware differences and make sure the game doesn't work as intended.

Over the weekend, a hacker going by the handle Voksi crafted a workaround for this protection by building off the demo for id Software's recent Doom remake. Using a custom loader program, Voksi managed to swap the Steam AppID for a pirated copy of the full Doom game with that of a legitimately downloaded free demo. With that change, Steam and Denuvo apparently viewed the full game as if it was the legitimate demo and allowed it to load without issue. The same essential workaround was adapted for other Denuvo-protected games, including Rise of the Tomb Raider.

HACK THE POKE-PLANET! Oh, wait, wrong meme... (credit: Aurich vs GITS vs Pokémon)

When we first wrote about the world of automated Pokémon Go-playing "bot" programs a few weeks ago, we predicted a brewing technological war. Developer Niantic was inevitably going to deploy cheat-detection technology, and hackers would subsequently work to break through that detection. Last week, we saw the first battle in that war, and so far it seems like the hackers are winning handily.

After largely ignoring the growing issues of bots (and related mapping hacks) for weeks, Pokémon Go developer Niantic rolled out a mandatory game update last Wednesday focused on cutting off server access for such unofficial apps. In a blog post last Thursday, Niantic cited "aggressive efforts by third parties to access our servers outside of the Pokémon Go game client and our terms of service." The developer argued these hacks were overloading its servers and its employees, slowing efforts to improve the game and bring it to new markets.

"Developers have to spend time controlling this problem vs. building new features," Niantic wrote. "It’s worth noting that some of the tools used to access servers to scrape data have also served as platforms for bots and cheating which negatively impact all Trainers. There is a range of motives here from blatant commercial ventures to enthusiastic fans but the negative impact on game resources is the same."

Why go to the trouble of playing Pokémon Go when this bot offers to do it for you?

Last week, we took a look into the growing world of Pokémon Go hacks that reveal the location of usually hidden Pokémon nearby. Now, a new wave of PC-based Pokémon Go "bots" take the hacking a step further, spoofing locations and automating actions to essentially play the game for you while you sit in the comfort of your own home.

There are a number of competing bots out there, from the open source Necrobot to the pre-compiled Pokébuddy to MyGoBot, which recently started charging $4.99 for its automation tool following a three-hour free trial. All of them work on the same basic principles, sending artificial data to the Pokémon Go servers to simulate an extremely efficient, entirely tireless player.

The user first provides a latitude and longitude as a starting point (the center of any major city is a good place to start) and some Pokémon Go account credentials to authenticate with the servers. The bot then finds any nearby Pokémon (using those previously discussed mapping functions) and simulates a "walk" to the nearest one by sending spoofed GPS coordinates to the server at appropriate intervals. When the bot gets close enough to a Pokémon, it can use a simple API call to quickly catch it before moving on to the next target.

A concept illustration shared by Eurogamer's Tom Phillips shows how the NX's reported detachable controllers would work. (credit: Tom Phillips / Twitter)

As we approach the planned March 2017 launch of Nintendo's still-mysterious NX, a new report adds weight to some earlier rumors that the system will be a standalone portable with the ability to plug into an HDTV.

Eurogamer cites "a number of sources" in reporting that the system will have a built-in screen that is "bookended by two controller sections on either side, which can be attached or detached as required." The brains of the portable system can then reportedly be plugged into "a base unit, or dock station" for display and play on an HDTV.

Eurogamer's sources suggest the system will be powered by Nvidia's mobile-focused Tegra line of processors. Development kits are reportedly built around the Tegra X1, which powers tablets like the Google Pixel C and Nvidia's Shield Android TV console. That kind of hardware should be capable of decent 1080p HD graphics, but it definitely won't be a match for the kind of performance found on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 (not to mention the upcoming hardware refreshes announced for both of those platforms). On the other hand, the power-sipping Tegra chip should be effective at extending the system's battery life when it's being used as a portable and should help keep costs for the system relatively low.

If you're not interested in the upcoming Xbox One S and its 4K and HDR color capabilities, now might be the perfect time to pull the trigger on the standard, bulkier edition of the Xbox One. As part of a limited time "Summer Sale," Microsoft is now offering the console at $249 with a 500GB hard drive and your choice of one of a number of games, including Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Quantum Break, Forza Motorsport 6, Rise of the Tomb Raider, or Rare Replay.

This is actually the third time that the Xbox One has seen its price drop in the last two months. Microsoft lowered the asking price to $299 in late May, just weeks before E3 (though that price had been offered a few times before). Then, during E3, the company announced a new "promotional" price of $279 that was supposed to last through October 1.

This weekend's additional price drop, coming so soon after E3, could be seen as an indication that the "legacy" consoles aren't selling so well now that the redesigned and slightly more powerful Xbox One S is about to hit stores. That redesigned system will launch August 2 in a $399 edition sporting a 2TB hard drive. Versions with 1TB and 500GB hard drives will be available for $349 and $299, respectively, at a later date.