Author: Sam Machkovech

(credit: Nintendo)

The most recent Super Smash Bros. fighting game releases have been followed with hints that series creator Masahiro Sakurai would not return to any sequels, only to be followed years later with announcements of him working on new entries. But this time according to Sakruai-san, he means it. Whether or not his Smash retirement pans out, the 2014 version's run of DLC will conclude in February, according to a "final" presentation about the game via Nintendo Direct on Tuesday.

Previously announced surprise character Cloud Strife—yes, that Cloud, from Final Fantasy VII—launches today for $6 for either version of the game (or $7 to unlock him on both platforms). He'll be joined in February by two more currently Nintendo-exclusive characters: Corrin, an armor-clad warrior from the upcoming 3DS game Fire Emblem: Fates and Platinum Games' supernaturally charged, four-gun wielder Bayonetta (whose sequel game is still a Wii U exclusive).

In addition to a ton of footage of Bayonetta wiping the floor with the likes of Kirby and Star Fox by way of giant kicks, pistol blasts, and oversized fists from above, the presentation also saw Sakurai describing the character as the most requested DLC fighter via the game's official site "among realizable characters"—meaning, those who Nintendo could realistically afford to license and design. That didn't explain why prior fan favorites like Ice Climbers have apparently been shelved for inclusion in this version of Smash Bros. however.

Crytek

Beware: This 1080p shot of gameplay in The Climb betrays its VR experience, as the Oculus headset's displays offer enough stair-stepping effects as you move around to introduce artifacts and blur.

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SAN FRANCISCO—The game industry's last major "first-person platformer," Mirror's Edge, was met in 2008 with a small but passionate fan base as it toyed with a more intense view of full-blown parkour. While that novel viewpoint looked pretty cool, it could also feel disorienting during high action scenes, and the gameplay that surrounded it was admittedly quite thin.

We expect to run into very similar issues as virtual reality games launch on new-in-2016 platforms such as Oculus, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive. Game makers will surely focus harder on getting a new perspective to look cool without making anyone sick... and launch itty-bitty games as a result. Crytek's first retail VR game, The Climb, already appears to fall into this chasm—but based on our brief test of the beautiful game at a December preview event, we think we've finally found a satisfying, better-in-VR form of a first-person platformer.

Left hand, right hand, left hand, chalk

We got to try out a Crytek VR experiment during this summer's E3 conference, but it was advertised as a tech-demo taste of Crytek's eventual first retail VR product. Robinson: The Journey simply had players scale a giant mountain's sides via an automatic pulley system. Occasionally, players would use a conventional controller's trigger buttons to grab onto new pulleys, but there was little "game" to speak of. Instead, this Robinson demo seemed meant to showcase Crytek's technically impressive engine work, which included expansive views of nearby tree-lined mountains and animated dinosaurs all around.

It may not have Will Smith punching an alien in the face, but the long-in-the-works sequel to Independence Day finally saw the first light of day on Sunday by way of a premiere trailer during the day's NFL action.

The two-minute spot for Independence Day: Resurgence puts a pretty big emphasis on Jeff Goldblum's return as environmentalist David Levinson, though former alternate-American President Bill Pullman has a brief cameo—now sporting a bushy, white beard—to say, "They're coming back." Original film actors Vivica A. Fox and Judd Hirsch can be seen in the trailer as well, while the sequel's IMDB listing claims that Star Trek: TNG's Brett Spiner will also return.

As Ars learned in 2013, this sequel (whose shorthand, if you're wondering, is IDR, not ID4.2) was announced as merely half of the franchise's return; series director Roland Emmerich originally wanted the back-to-back films to be titled Independence Day Forever Parts I & II. With a new title and no official sign of a back-to-back filming schedule, there's no telling whether that ambitious plan will come to fruition—and it still sounds like the new film won't have any sign of Will Smith. The role of Smith's character's son in the new film has gone to 23-year-old actor Jessie Usher, while IDR's lead ass-kicker appears to be Liam "I'm not Thor" Hemsworth.

Sounds like we have a few more months to wait for the retail version of this bad boy.

Earlier this year, Valve and HTC insisted that at least a few eager virtual-reality fans would be able to get their hands on the fruits of their partnership, the HTC Vive, by the end of 2015. However, hard news about the system, which combines a headset, two tracking stations, and two handheld wand controllers, proved hard to come by as 2015 drew to a close, and on Tuesday, we learned exactly why.

A post at HTC's official blog (Google cache here) revealed that the company was delaying Vive's retail launch until April 2016. No other hard details about the launch, including an exact release date, pricing information, or number of units shipping across the world, were included in the announcement.

Instead, the news post buried that delay announcement by talking about Vive-related initiatives in the near future, including a Vive-specific conference in Beijing on December 18, a presence at this January's Consumer Electronics Show, and plans to make 7,000 Vive dev kits "available" to creators at the "start" of 2016. HTC will also host VR demos at upcoming expos such as the Game Developers Conference, South by Southwest Interactive, and the Sundance Film Festival.

Art of Fighting 2—and 18 other SNK Neo-Geo classics—can now be played legally and easily in a Chrome or Firefox web browser thanks to this week's killer Humble Bundle sale.

Though we're big fans of getting cheap games via the Humble Bundle service (and giving to charity in the process), it's easy to lose track of its zillions of sales and promotions. But Tuesday saw the service launch a particularly unique sale that we couldn't pass up: a giant bundle of classic Neo-Geo games that comes complete with a portal to immediately emulate and play them in a Web browser.

Shoppers can pay whatever they want to access eight games in this 25th anniversary sale, while paying $10 or more unlocks the bundle's current 20-game selection—including new-to-PC ports like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Samurai Shodown V Special. Only one game, King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match, requires a Windows PC and Steam to launch; the rest can be played on any Firefox or Chrome Web browser via a DotEmu emulator built into Humble's site. Humble recommends at least an i3 processor and 4GB of RAM for play via HTML5, and if you're not sure whether your rig can handle the Web browser versions—or if your favorite PC gamepads work as well in the HTML5 version as ours did (including multiplayer)—Humble's sale site includes the full version of Metal Slug 3 for anyone to try for free.

Offline versions of the remaining 19 games can also be downloaded for Windows, Mac, or Linux in a DRM-free Neo-Geo emulator wrapper; only four of those will also work on Steam. We picked through a few of the sale's downloads to find ROM files that are compatible with the popular Multi Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME), meaning classic-gaming purists with dedicated MAME boxes now have a far more legal and frugal way to load classics like The Last Blade and King of the Monsters in their home arcade cabinets.

SAN FRANCISCO—We were hoping to see more of Sony's most anticipated games at this past weekend's PlayStation Experience expo at the giant Moscone Center, but previously announced titles like The Last Guardian, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Gran Turismo Sport were nowhere to be found. That didn't mean Sony was slacking on the whole "games of the future" front, however, because the company took the opportunity to give PlayStation VR (formerly known as Project Morpheus) its biggest public showing yet.

We wrote at length about PlayStation VR after June's E3 showing, giving particular props to games like London Heist: Getaway, Super Hyper Cube, Wayward Sky, and RIGS: Mechanized Combat League. Those games were also on display, and they're still quite good, but those were only the beginning. We have now left another expo six months later with just as many positive impressions of new VR games. This is no lark for Sony. PlayStation VR is happening, and here's our take on its quickly expanding ecosystem of content.

PlayStation VR: How does it feel?

Sam Machkovech, seen here sporting the latest version of the PlayStation VR headset.

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Getting the feel of a VR headset just right can be a little tricky—especially when the hardware should both fit snugly and still offer comfort (particularly in terms of ventilation). Sony's answer to the headset-fit question is a two-step fastening process. After putting the headset on top of your head, you press down on a little button to bring the lenses directly up to your face. After that, the back-of-head strap has its own button and dial. Press the button down to raise and lower where the strap wraps around the back of your head, then turn the dial to snap the strap snugly to your head.

Sam Machkovech

The brand-new Fire TV Game Controller...

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We've been smitten with the second-gen Amazon Fire TV streaming-media box ever since its October launch. Its speedy content loads, especially with rewinds and fast forwards, has made it this author's favorite streaming device currently on the market, and its voice search and gaming capabilities are solid, functional bonuses.

That being said, we haven't exactly tossed our Xbox One or PlayStation 4 systems to the curb in favor of the 2015 Amazon Fire TV's game selection, but it's a decent Android-based gaming system—thanks in part to Amazon finally landing a few quality TV-minded games on its platform (Shovel Knight, Hotline Miami 2, etc).

The set-top box wasn't the only thing to get an update this year; last year's cheap-feeling, Amazon-branded controller got an update as well, and in our October review of the Fire TV box, we expressed our hopes that the updated, $50 pad would, at the very least, outdo last year's clunker. We finally got a review unit in our hands, and we can confirm that our low expectations have been topped—but is that reason enough to go with Amazon's new pad, and its perks, over compatible options like a wired Xbox 360 pad?

Final Fantasy VII Remake certainly looks more like a remake than a remaster. (credit: Square Enix)

Last year's inaugural PlayStation Experience closed 2014 with a surprising number of game and product announcements, and Sony appeared ready to double-down on this new end-of-year tradition with a follow-up, fan-focused convention full of playable demos and new products, and its two-hour keynote led off with the big Final Fantasy remaster that Sony announced at this past summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Final Fantasy VII Remake—the classic remaster's official name—had a gameplay-trailer reveal that showed less of a remaster and more of a total overhaul. For starters, the new version of FF7 includes a third-person, over-the-shoulder camera as its default viewpoint. That'll certainly show off the new, fully 3D content better than the original version's pre-rendered, top-down environs. The trailer's dialogue was entirely spoken aloud, as well, and its combat showed off an apparent active-battle twist, though it was hard to tell whether players will gain as much active control of Cloud Strife and other characters as the trailer appeared to show, or whether the footage simply looked more dynamic from a new perspective.

Final Fantasy big-wig Tetsuya Nomura took the stage after the presentation, but not with news of a release date or when fans can expect any playable access to the remaster. Instead, he announced that the PC version of Final Fantasy VII had already launched on PlayStation 4 via its online store.

We're barely a month into our ongoing Ars Cardboard series of board game reviews, but suffice it to say, we love playing board games whenever possible. As such, we were thrilled to see Amazon post a massive half-off sale on some of the best-reviewed board games of the past five years—but it's only live until the end of Friday, December 4.

You'll want to act fast as one of its best offerings, Ticket To Ride, sold out of its promotional price as we were preparing this report. Luckily the sale still has some serious critical gems at seriously low prices. The offerings range from hardcore, card-dueling delights like Mage Wars and Ascension to family-friendly classics like Dixit (update: sold out!) and King of New York—along with in-betweeners like Robo Rally, Libertalia, and Illuminati. (Some people will also recommend that new board gamers pick up the sale's discounted copy of card-economy game Dominion; this author is not one of those people.)

Some games don't quite get a 50 percent discount in the sale, but others go a little further. You can find 55 percent off the newest Magic the Gathering board game for example. Act now—and beef up your board game collection ahead of so many cold December nights.

Enlarge / The original placeholder box art released by Konami (left) and the newly released box art (right) with a final rating and no "Kojima" branding.

Thursday night's The Game Awards ceremony included two awards given to Konami for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and one of those was accepted by voice actor Kiefer Sutherland on series creator Hideo Kojima's behalf. Viewers might have assumed Kojima didn't attend the show because of international travel to Los Angeles, or because of sour grapes over things like having his name removed from the game's box, but host Geoff Keighley went to unusual lengths to explain exactly why Kojima wasn't in the house—and to shame Konami in the process.

"Mr. Kojima had every intention of being here with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami, just recently, that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight's awards ceremony to accept any awards," Keighley told the award ceremony's crowd. They responded with boos as Keighley continued: "He's still under an employment contract, and it's disappointing. It's inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers, his fellow teammates, for such an incredible game as MGS 5. That's the situation we're in."

At that point, Keighley said that Kojima was watching the awards from his home in Tokyo and, as a result, the ceremony had "put together a surprise" for the game maker—a performance of a song from MGS V's soundtrack by its original singer, Stephanie Jooston. "We wanted you to know, Hideo, that we're thinking of you. We miss you, and we hope to see you at the Game Awards 2016," Keighley added.