Author: Sam Machkovech

Three days after its PlayStation 4 launch, the space-exploration game No Man's Sky is now live for Windows PC gamers (via either Steam or GoG). But if you've been anywhere near PC gaming for the past few years, you won't be surprised to find out that combining "small development team," "video game that promises 18 quintillion planets," and "worldwide simultaneous launch on all kinds of PCs" is a dangerous mix.

The game's Steam reviews, which have surpassed 5,700 as of press time, are sampling out as "mostly negative," with frequent complaints about framerate hitches and total system crashes. Though Steam's reports must be considered anecdotal, more than a few trustworthy voices are piping up online to report issues with No Man's Sky, despite using systems that far exceed the game's minimum spec, which calls for older cards like the GTX 480 and Radeon 7870. Even users with high-end solutions like the GTX 1080 or two GTX 980Ti cards in SLI mode are reporting major stutters—on a game that runs on a comparatively so-so PS4 console with a mostly consistent 30 FPS refresh.

Ars Technica is running two NMS test sessions on high-end PCs at the moment, and both of them are running GTX 980Ti cards with SSD drives, 16GB of RAM, and either a Skylake i5 or a Haswell i7 Intel chip. We're seeing inconsistent framerates, in spite of both computers in question having fully updated drivers on Windows 10. The game's PC version defaults to a 30 FPS cap, which can be disabled in the normal options menus. But with this setting turned on, the game can't help but hitch down to an apparent 20 FPS on a regular basis, not to mention throw up frequent display hitches of half a second at a time. Removing that framerate cap can get play up to a smooth 60 frames per second, and we enjoyed more consistent framerates without the cap. But even those framerates can bounce down to 30 or less at random intervals. The game also suffers from freezing hitches, even without apparent spikes in visible geometry like creatures or spaceships.

Amazon and Google now have company in the game-streaming wars—in the form of a major game publisher, no less. On Thursday, Microsoft announced its acquisition of a burgeoning game-streaming service called Beam, and its mix of unique features and exclusive game integration should get the attention of the streaming world's current leaders.

Beam, which is headquartered down the road from Microsoft in Redmond, WA, is built around gamification features that encourage and reward active participation. The more you watch and interact with Beam, the more Beam XP you earn, which can be spent on in-game votes, cosmetic boosts, and other perks within the Beam interface. (Some of these boosts can only be earned when Beam doesn't recognize the use of ad-blocking services.) Like Twitch, Beam offers an SDK to game developers for integration with their games, but Beam's interface has been built from the ground up to display tappable icons on both desktop and mobile platforms to alter or influence a myriad of factors in a given game. We imagine that will make "Beam Plays" sessions smoother to build, even for game fans who are inserting crowd-participation experiments into existing games.

Microsoft apparently won't waste much time jumping on this interactive aspect, as its announcements talked a lot about how Minecraft games can be altered by Beam's audience-participation systems—the company showed some video proof, to boot. Viewers can spawn bad guys, make volcanoes erupt, and do more via a clean, button-controlled interface. Beam will also support team-based streaming, which Microsoft has begun advertising by talking about its not-yet-released Xbox and PC game Sea of Thieves. (That game revolves around teams of players talking to each other while managing parallel objectives, including the simultaneous piloting, repair, and combat systems in its zany pirate ships.)

Blast off: It's time for No Man's Sky! (credit: Hello Games)

In crowded expo halls and at private demo sessions, No Man's Sky has impressed and intrigued with promises of a massive, gorgeous, and diverse galaxy of space exploration—and one that, developer Hello Games insists, no two people will play the same way, since the game's 18 quadrillion planets are built using a web of criss-crossing math formulas. But now, brief demos give way to the real, final game—so how much does No Man's Sky live up to its hype?

Ars Technica was fortunate enough to land a single day's advance play of the game before its Tuesday launch on PS4 in North America (it's released in the UK a day later, on August 10), which isn't enough to constitute a full review.  I mean, I still have, er, 17,999,999,999,999,999,992 planets left in my completist run of the game. But after a 12-hour marathon on the eve of its retail launch, I'm getting a sense of the game's potential, its limits, and whether I see myself continuing this epic quest to the center of a mysterious galaxy.

Ars' full review is forthcoming, but for now, let me kick off my marathon impressions with an atypical proposition: that No Man's Sky is the rare game that is better when spoiled.

Happy 30th, Samus Aran! Enjoy a fan-made present. (credit: AM2R)

Thanks to Nintendo's rise to mid-'80s fame, the gaming company has enjoyed many recent "30th anniversary" celebrations for its famed series. But while Super Mario and Zelda enjoyed official fanfare over their respective "pearl" milestones, the company's most famed bounty hunter, Metroid's Samus Aran, hasn't gotten as much official attention for her debut launching on Japan's Famicom Disc System in August 1986.

Luckily for Metroid diehards, a group of enterprising game makers have stepped up with the launch of a free anniversary present years in the making: AM2R, or, Another Metroid 2 Remake. The free game, which had a demo tease launch a few years ago, is finally in a 1.0 "full" release state on Windows (to be followed "soon" by a Linux build). This is a full reimagining of the Game Boy classic Metroid 2: Return of Samus—meaning, this is more than a colorized upgrade from its original, "green-scale" release.

Aesthetically and mechanically, AM2R will delight anybody who enjoyed the Game Boy Advance's Metroid: Zero Mission, which itself was a looks-and-mechanics remake of the very first game. The sequel now gets the same mix of updated mechanics, redrawn artwork, newly arranged songs, and slightly remixed content, along with a deep, newly written "codex" of lore, story, and analysis of everything Samus discovers in her mission to take out a new slew of augmented Metroid creatures.

Oxide red in full effect. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

The Xbox 360 controller has been popular since its launch in 2005, even after its follow-up controller launched in 2013. Why? Because it's one of the best "it just works" gaming pads for PCs.

After third-party solutions forced the issue, Microsoft eventually continued the "it just works" tradition in 2014 by launching official, perfectly solid drivers for the Xbox One controller. That tradition looked like it would live on this week with the rollout of another updated Xbox One controller model, complete with a new Bluetooth radio.

After some investigating, however, Ars Technica has bad news for PC gamers who just want to get their Xbox One pads working on their favorite games. Whether you use a new Bluetooth controller or you upgraded your old XB1 to this week's Windows 10 Anniversary edition, get ready for some road bumps.

It'd be cool to see this in a resolution higher than 640x480. (credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Are you one of the thousands of diehard real-time strategy gamers who has yet to abandon the 1998 version of StarCraft? Would you rather not deal with the sequel's altered soldiers and upgrade trees, yet also pine for a version of the original that runs at a higher resolution than 640x480 pixels?

The game's creators at Blizzard Software might have a treat in store for you: a remastered version of the original StarCraft. According to Korean news outlet iNews24—spotted by Kotaku on Friday—multiple sources are confident that Blizzard plans to announce StarCraft HD in September. The announcement would be followed by a deeper reveal at BlizzCon's November event in Anaheim.

The Korean report hints at "improved graphics resolution and user interface," but it doesn't confirm whether fans should expect redrawn 2D assets or a complete 3D overhaul of the game's Terran, Protoss, and Zerg races. The report doesn't mention whether or not the remaster will include single-player content, and it doesn't mention whether the multiplayer mode will hinge on the Brood War expansion pack (though, based on that version's dominance in international competitive play, we assume it will).

The opening screen. It's real. (credit: Hello Games)

Update, 10:40 p.m. EDT: Sony has responded to today's influx of No Man's Sky gameplay videos by essentially describing the on-disc version of the game as unfinished. The company's statement confirms that "a significant pre-release patch" will go live on Monday, August 8, and it will represent "a culmination of the studio’s day-1 aspirations."

"Sending out early copies of the game prior to the patch would not be a fair depiction of the game as it’s intended for consumers," the statement noted. Sony confirmed that any progress in the current version will be erased for players who patch the game—and that the review embargo will lift at midnight EDT of Tuesday morning.

Original report: Anticipation has been building around the space-exploration video game No Man's Sky for years. The game will finally launch on PlayStation 4 consoles this Tuesday and Windows PCs a few days later. But game-review outlets complained about the issue, and one report on those complaints, posted by review-aggregation site OpenCritic, alleged that review copies would not arrive until the game's launch date of August 9.

This year's E3 gaming conference began with one of the industry's current heavy hitters, Bethesda, announcing two new games in a blatant "more smoke than fire" kind of way. Deep down, we knew why Quake Champions and the Prey reboot got such content-thin reveals back in June: because Bethesda had to save something for its giant, weekend-long QuakeCon festival.

That event kicked off in Grapevine, Texas on Thursday with gameplay reveals for both games, though Quake Champions' 75-second video was more revealing. The upcoming Quake-branded online shooter from id Software was shown in what looks like a fully functional pre-alpha state. Champions'combat was shown from an apparent first-person, mid-combat perspective, along with a few floating-camera shots of at least three arenas that look like modern upgrades of the castle, sewer, and factory settings from its forebear, 1999's Quake III Arena.

The verticality is strong in this one, as the QC sequence's combatants take advantage of booster-jump pads and their own rocket jumps to bounce around large, well-decorated arenas. While some details—particularly a giant, chained eyeball—are rendered well and smothered in cool lighting effects, other parts of the reveal look less polished than id's other recent, major shooter, the Doom reboot from earlier this year. This seems intentional, as id has advertised support for 120 Hz monitors for the sake of twitchy, high-speed gameplay—and QC's reveal looks mighty fast, packed to the brim with running, bunny-hopping, and precise railgun kills. (Clearly, the squad working on QC wants to evoke your fondest Q3A memories, what with a combatant who looks a lot like the hoverboard-riding character Anarki from the game of old!)

Those controllers don't track themselves. And now, you too can create your own with a free license from Valve Software. (credit: Valve Software)

For now, if you want to play any of the virtual reality games or apps in the SteamVR ecosystem, the only hardware you can use comes from HTC. That may soon change, however. SteamVR creator Valve has opened the floodgates to a new wave of VR peripherals with a surprise Thursday announcement: all licenses for the system's VR tracking interface will be free.

What does this mean? To be clear, this isn't an announcement for new headsets, though SteamVR has always been advertised as a platform that will eventually be open to other VR headset manufacturers. Rather, this is all about virtual reality add-ons.

If a hardware maker wants to create physical objects that will interface with SteamVR—like a pair of gloves, a two-handed shotgun, a piece of fake medical equipment, or whatever else you can imagine—the object in question needs to be tracked by the system's "room-scale" pair of infrared boxes. The HTC Vive's headset and wands play nicely in VR mostly because they're each covered by dozens of IR receiver dots. The headset and wands are spread out in such a way that, no matter how you hold or use them, one of the Vive's two tracking boxes can see enough of the IR dots to translate those physical objects' positions and rotations in 3D space. That's why you see them appear smoothly in a virtual play space. (You can read more on how this all works at Valve's licensing announcement page, which includes peripheral suggestions, such as table-tennis paddles and golf clubs.)

We're all used to warnings and promos ahead of films, from candy-filled "let's all go to the lobby" sequences to a polite-yet-firm reminder to power phones off. Sometimes, those sequences get a cute touch-up (my favorite is probably this wild, vulgar parody from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force film), but starting this week, moviegoers can expect something a little darker—as in, a harrowing warning that sounds like it might have been written by Edward Snowden.

It wasn't, however. Instead, the message was written, and is delivered, by Snowden film director and script co-writer Oliver Stone.

The Oscar winner appears in the one-minute clip, seated in a lovely den—complete with decadent furniture and giant bottles of assumedly fine liquors—with a smartphone in his hand. He starts describing the many things "this amazing little device" can do, from mass communication to cat-video streaming (and we're shown a few kitties briefly to make the point).