The best Star Wars games are…

10. Star Wars Battlefront 2

If you’re looking to feel like you’re actually amidst a battle in a galaxy far, far away there are few better places to turn than Star Wars Battlefront 2. (opens in new tab)While the story campaign is short and somewhat underwhelming, and there’s no longer dev support for it (RIP), what you’re really here for is glorious multiplayer that’s as polished as Darth Vader’s helmet. The star of the show this time around is the Starfighter Assault mode that sees you taking the ‘attack and defend’ mantra from the original Star Wars Battlefront (opens in new tab)‘s Walker Assault and firing it into space. Hurtling through space above Endor is thrilling business, dodging the debris of the ruined Deathstar, and makes for constantly cinematic, if chaotic entertainment. Galactic Assault too stuns with its enormous 32 player battles. After a rockier launch than the cliffs of Ahch-To, Battlefront 2 has evolved since it’s launch to become of one of the most accessible shooters for Star Wars fans. 

9. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

After 17 years perfecting its formula, developer Traveller’s Tales has returned to the game that started it all and decided to redo LEGO Star Wars. But ‘redo’ doesn’t do justice to the ambition here. This is a completely new game, recreating not only the original trilogy of films in LEGO form, but all nine films from the yellow text of A New Hope, through the “I am the senate” posturing of the prequel trilogy to the final shot from The Rise of Skywalker (complete with a brilliantly cutting sight gag). It’s all here. Not just the action sequences you know and love, but the towns, forests, and swamps around them, all bustling with LEGO-ised life and absolutely packed with Star Wars lore, puzzles, and challenges. When a game goes all-in like this, Yoda was right. It’s do, or do not; there is no try. And Traveller’s Tales really, really did it.

8. Star Wars: Squadrons

If you thought you couldn’t get a great starfighter game after Star Wars: TIE Fighter (and the excellent X-Wing series), you were wrong. Star Wars: Squadrons is a wildly fun space combat game from EA that is even better in VR. You’ll be able to get into the cockpit of a complex starfighter, turning knobs and pressing buttons like a real pilot as you take part in space battles across the galaxy. Multiplayer matches are a ton of fun, and a fairly engaging story lets you choose sides in the war for the galaxy’s soul: do you go for the New Republic or side with the Empire? Whatever you choose, Star Wars: Squadrons is a spectacle you’ll never forget.

7. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

This action-adventure puzzler may be targeted at a younger audience, but there’s no shortage of references and gags that appeal to grown-ups, too. Swinging our lightsaber haphazardly and breaking things is a blast, especially with the movie-authentic sound effects and music contrasting with the brilliant slapstick action. Inadvertently smacking our co-op partner and watching them explode into Lego bits is always pretty damn entertaining too. Don’t want to play as Luke Skywalker? Fine, swap over to one of the other 50-odd characters and mess around with their own unique abilities. Lego Star Wars 2 satisfies our eternal hunger for flashy lightsaber battles, and our equally eternal need to build Lego contraptions, all in one go. The Complete Saga takes you through the events of all six movies, allowing you to relive everything from the dramatic dual of the fates, to the destruction of the second Death Star. It doesn’t get much better than that.

6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

If there’s a moment that sums up the simple appeal of this excellent Star Wars adventure, it’s when you first discover you can force pull enemies onto the hot end of Cal’s lightsaber. Few Star Wars games have really embodied the raw power of being a Jedi, but Fallen Order manages it. Add on intricate level design that makes exploring the game’s collection of planets a joy, and this is EA’s best Star Wars game since they started making them. We can’t wait for the sequel.

5. Star Wars: Republic Commando

This Xbox exclusive is one of the gems in the Star Wars games library. It’s a great shooter, which is a solid foundation, but LucasArts injects some much-needed variety into the action by allowing all four members of the squad their own individual voices and personalities. All have their particular quirks, skill sets, and preferred positions. In brief, these boys (and their often excellent AI) know exactly how to get the job done. Add in a number of clever design decisions and quality visual flourishes (that windshield cleaner) and you have one of the few Star Wars titles to truly excel in its own right.

4. Star Wars: The Old Republic

Thousands of years before the Emperor and Darth Vader ruled the galaxy with an iron fist, the Old Republic stood for over a thousand generations. That rich, rarely used history serves as the perfect setting for an ever-expanding MMO. BioWare jumped headfirst into this intriguing timeline with Star Wars: The Old Republic, giving players a vast, ancient galaxy to explore, unhindered by Star Wars movie canon. In SWTOR, you choose what type of hero or villain you want to be. You can take roles like a Jedi Knight struggling to maintain peace and justice, a shady Bounty Hunter looking to cash in on their next big contract, or a dedicated Imperial agent. Between the intricate storytelling of the main story (which is entirely unique to each class), abundant side-quests, and getting to know your ever-growing crew, The Old Republic lets you build your own space adventure one encounter at a time. It’s free-to-play if you’re feeling frugal, but subscribing lets you stick solely to main story quests, effectively offering eight epic BioWare stories in one place.

And there’s a whole new host of fun to be had with the Legacy of the Sith expansion that just dropped. We talked to BioWare about it ahead of its launch, and it only got us more excited to jump back into SWTOR. 

3. Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast

This is the ultimate Jedi fantasy. The game that lets you run around the galaxy fighting the Empire, cutting off stormtroopers’ limbs with a lightsaber, and using all of the Force powers seen in the movies. Jedi Outcast makes you feel like a powerful Jedi Knight – something that plenty of games have tried to do but just didn’t get quite right. Everything here is spot on, from the lightsaber clashes with your red-bladed, Reborn enemies, to the memorable encounters with powerful enemies and famous allies like Luke and Lando. Multiplayer is a treat, too. Players can still be found online engaging in the usual swath of online multiplayer modes. But you can also find more dedicated groups of players taking part in movie-like, one-on-one lightsaber duels as spectators calmly look on. Yeah, that really happens. People get serious when it comes to lightsaber duels.

2. Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron 2

A Star Wars game was the Gamecube’s best launch title. Seriously. Rogue Leader is that good. Dropping players into the cockpits of a number of different ships from the Star Wars universe, amid some of the most memorable parts of the films (and some other battles, too), its as complete a Star Wars air-combat experience as you could want. Death Star trench run? Its in there. The Its a trap! battle above Endor? It has it. Hoth? Not only is it in the game, but its done better than any other Hoth level in any other game before. Even today, the game looks beautiful, taking you to new and classic locations that range from the Cloud City of Bespin to hidden Imperial bases. Rogue Leader is a blast to play giving you a chance to take on the Empire as you engage in dangerous frontal attacks on massive Star Destroyers and blast your way through innumerable enemy TIEs. This is the ultimate star fighter pilot experience.

1. Knights of the Old Republic

BioWare delivers one of the most compelling Star Wars narratives ever with its RPG, Knights of the Old Republic. The universe – which is set during a completely different time period, thousands of years before the events of the movies – fleshes out the Universe in ways you’d never expect. You get to explore the galaxy when the Jedi Knights numbered in the thousands, discover the secrets of the ancient Sith, and even discover things like why Sandpeople hate outsiders so much. As you progress through the story, you’ll meet some fascinating and unforgettable characters, and in typical BioWare fashion, discover their deep backstories. The Assassin Droid HK-47 holds a special place in our hearts for his degrading and threatening comments towards organic meatbags, but steadfast loyalty to his master. The malleability of the story makes playing through the game multiple times vital to the full experience, and you’ll always be happy to oblige. Knights of the Old Republic is the definitive game for Star Wars fanatics. It has everything: witty characters, good versus evil, bucket-of-bolts starships and a plot twist that will blow your reverse power flux coupling.

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Gameplay and new skills

This is where PES has always excelled and eFootball PES 2020 is reassuringly familiar. We’ve only played 30 minutes, playing as the PES Legends team (including stars of yesteryear such as Kahn, Totti, Ronaldinho, Beckham and Batistuta) against a fully licensed modern Barcelona side. The Legends line up also includes slightly less stellar legends such as Park Ji-sung and Hidetoshi Nakata, who are sure to delight the series’ large Asian following. Visually, its a step-up from PES 2019, if not a revolution, with incredible player likenesses (still better than FIFA, in our estimation) and suitably impressive pre-match cut-scenes. The biggest change isn’t immediately obvious. Konami has changed the default camera mode, so instead of selecting Wide view to maximise your positional understanding, there’s a new preset camera that sits relatively fixed to the middle of the pitch, which tracks the action and ever-so-subtly tracks left and right. Until it’s pointed out, you might not notice it, but the impact is that you always get a great view of the action. It’s zoomed-out when you need to spray a cross field pass, but close enough when you’re implementing the new Finesse close dribbling skills.

In pure gameplay terms, it’s initially similar to PES 2019, only perhaps slightly slower and heavier. This isn’t a bad thing. The animation is detailed and sufficiently well transitioned to make players look – and feel – unique, as if their feet are genuinely connecting with the pitch. For example, when Vieira was tracking the tricky Coutinho (using the R2 stance to square up), you could really feel him connect with the grass, making one-on-ones a real contest. When Coutinho feints, then speeds up, Vieira’s mis-step allows Coutinho to break clear, and it feels very fair. Players have weight and presence, unique to each individual.

Elsewhere, it’s business as usual. Passing is crisp, but player control is fairly determined by stats and positioning. AI teammates make smart runs, and there’s a new feature where they’ll react to certain ‘Inspire’ players. For example, when dribble master Messi has the ball, they’ll shift further away to allow him space to dribble into. Ball physics are unpredictable, yet impressive: balls skidding off the back of heads, 50-50 balls leading to fizzing collisions and heavy players imposing themselves in the tackle. We hooked a lofted through ball to legendary striker Batistuta, and he took the bouncing ball on the full, imposing his technique – but sadly into the keeper’s hands. We worked a one-on-one with Beckham, who used the shot modifier to spin a disguised right foot pass into the bottom corner.

The Finesse dribbling skills (via R2) have moved to another level, allowing you to use zig-zag right stick sweeps in conjunction with left stick juts and bursts to ghost through opposition defenders or make impossible turns. Once upon a time, football games were terrible at representing ‘touch’ players whose key attributes were ball control, awareness and agility. This made superstars like Andrés Iniesta impossible to replicate since the game favoured power and pace. In a neat touch, PES 2020’s Finesse dribbling mode is literally being consulted upon by Iniesta. The former Spain international lent his expertise to the new Finesse dribbling and dummy pass system, allowing way more delicate feints than the standard circle + x cancelled passes.

We tracked through the skills and moves menu and all looked familiar, from Sombreros to Boomerang Traps. Tactics are formations are also familiar, although there was an Anchoring option in Advanced Settings, allowing to ‘lock’ a player to a zone of the pitch e.g. for a holding DMF like Kante. Classic Brazil star Ronaldinho (the cover star of the digital-only Legends edition) provided mo-cap for the game, and some of his famous chest trap and rainbow flick skills are represented in the game.

Master League and manager likenesses

Yes, that’s El Diego, the Argentinian legend largely regarded as the greatest football player in history appearing as a manager in PES 2020. The game will feature a number of celebrity manager likenesses, including Dutch master Johann Cruyff, and Brazil legend Zico. Konami will confirm more likenesses in due course, but it appears they’re ‘double dipping’ on classic players who they already have licenses for who went on to become managers. The Master League continues to improve after PES 2019’s tweaks, with interactive dialogue trees allowing you to affect the story, plus a more realistic transfer system. You’ll be able to create your own manager if the legends don’t appeal, altering their body shape, hair and appearance. The game’s menus have been overhauled (genuinely this time), and while we weren’t able to test Master League, this should make for a more contemporary experience. The main menu uses little bubbles for each mode, and it’s simple to scroll around them.

Licensing

Konami are yet to reveal the full suite of licenses, but it looks like business as usual: we’ll likely get two premier league teams, two Spanish teams… and fully licensed leagues that will delight those who live in South America. The teams in the demo were Arsenal, Barcelona, Flamingo, Palmeiras, River Plate, Boca Juniors, France and the PES Legends team i.e. nuts and gum together at last. After last year’s damning loss of the Champions League license (which went to FIFA), we’re yet to see if PES can steal a march in another league or competition, or will double-down on legacy stars. Almost certainly, FIFA will remain the licensed home of the EFL, Bundesliga and La Liga, which is some advantage. Sure, PES’s amazing editing options mean all this can be fixed with an save file patch, but not everyone has that dedication. Konami claim they will have new licenses to announce in due course.

The new Matchday mode

This mode works as it sounds. Every week, Konami will selected a featured match e.g. Barcelona vs Real Madrid, likely with a focus on teams who they own the license for. Players worldwide will be invited to pick a side and play off online in a series of one-on-ones, scoring points for their team. The interesting element is that you won’t just score points for goals and victories, but also for passing and other metrics. It’s likely you’ll be rewarded for playing the beautiful game, to an extent. At the end of the week, the two highest scoring players from each side and invited to play off in an online final. Expect more details on Matchday mode in due course.

eFootball PES 2020 demo release date

Keep your eyes on the PES League World Finals (opens in new tab) on June 28-29, live streamed on Twitch, when Konami will reveal the PES 2020 demo release date and formats. The annual PES demo has been more ambitious each year, with the PES 2019 demo offering 12 teams, and Exhibition, Co-Op and Online Quick Match modes. This was the first time the online mode has been bundled in the main demo, and not part of a separate beta trial.

What do we think of PES 2020 so far?

We’ve played far too little of PES 2020 to judge the success of all its gameplay changes, but the initial feel is highly promising. By building on PES 2019’s nuanced foundations, it’s likely that PES 2020 will be the most-refined, realistic, football game yet. The combination of adaptive team AI, clearly-defined individual players, unpredictable-but-realistic physics, and satisfying physicality, just feels *right*; especially for die-hard fans who crave the series’ hard-learned subtleties. Konami’s hope must be that focusing on eSports, new online modes, and adaptive team AI, can create an elevated proposition. One that establishes PES as the hand-crafted Bentley to FIFA’s mass-market, yet high-quality, Ford. You can see the rationale in growing persistent online revenues by delighting hardcore fans and leveraging the sponsorship potential of elite eSports players. The worry is that it sounds like something Manchester United’s commercially-astute chairman Ed Woodward might say to a new tractor sponsor when the team just lost 3-0. The whole eFootball thing just sounds a little bit… desperate, but maybe we’re being naive.

It’s likely that PES is seeking an entirely new audience, and will lean even harder into its recent F2P experiment with the online ‘Lite’ version (opens in new tab) of the game. PES’s physical sales have dropped every year over the last five years, according to VG Chartz (opens in new tab), with Eurogamer reporting that PES 2019’s first week sales were down 42% year-on-year (opens in new tab), but this neglects growing digital sales. EA’s FIFA series may be increasingly globally dominant, but PES is still very profitable for Konami, with strong sales in Asia, and licensing footholds in South America. In a wider sense, much-maligned publishers Konami have recorded five years of sales increases (opens in new tab), with the PES mobile game achieving 80 million downloads.

There’s also the possibility that the new direction *is just a silly name*, and the game is essentially the same. This would defeat the point, though. PES needs to make material changes to grow a new audience and stem defections to FIFA. EA have eroded PES’s player base by dominating the licenses and scale begets scale. Who buys a multiplayer game like PES if all of their friends play FIFA? And, hey, maybe we’re over-thinking it. efootball PES 2020 will almost certainly be excellent, and if a game featuring the Merseyside Blues managed by Diego Maradona can find its place in the world, then football will once again prove that anything is possible.

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Weapon balance 

•  Nerfed the pants off the Full-Auto shotgun perk (more on that here (opens in new tab))  
•  Machine gun damage against bosses and minibosses reduced by 21% 
•  Buffed rocket launchers and grenade launchers (more on that here (opens in new tab))  
•  One Thousand Voices PvE damage increased by 25% 
•  Two-Tailed Fox PvE damage increased by 26% 
•  Wardcliff Coil PvE damage “increased by 115% against boss combatants and scaling up to 160% against weaker combatants” (I’m assuming this is a typo because what) 
•  Sleeper Simulant ammo reserves reduced to 9 from 13 without armor perks or masterwork  
•  Whisper of the Worm ammo reserves reduced to 9 from 20 without armor perks  

Armor balance 

•  Year 2 armor can now drop specced for mobility, resilience, or recovery 
•  Major nerfs to One-Eyed Mask’s Vengeance duration and effect (more on that here (opens in new tab))  
•  Khepri’s Horn now fires two solar groundflows that deal double damage in PvE 
•  Vesper of Radius damage tripled in PvE 

Abilities 

•  Fixed Titan skating 
•  Reduced Super gain on Titan Code of the Juggernaut to prevent infinite Supers  

Activities and vendors 

•  Major changes to Gambit tiebreakers, invader spawns, Blockers and more (more on that here (opens in new tab)) 
•  Gambit, Crucible, and Vanguard vendors are now offering new pinnacle weapons and rank weapons  
•  The Ascendant Primeval bonus Gambit boss will now spawn much more frequently regardless of the Dreaming City Taken curse status  
•  Xur may now sell Forsaken Exotics, but Fated Engrams do not currently award Forsaken Exotics (more on that here (opens in new tab)) 
•  Clan daily bounties replaced by original activity-driven XP system, clan rewards greatly improved (more on that here (opens in new tab))  

These Destiny 2 short stories tease a dark storyline rumored to be connected to Destiny 3 (opens in new tab).

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Arbalest 

A kinetic linear fusion rifle. Huh. Somehow this feels like an apology for all the kinetic sniper rifles which rolled with Genesis, a perk that relies on matching your weapon’s element to your target’s shield type. You can see how the whole kinetic thing would throw a monkey wrench in that. That aside, Arbalest sounds pretty cool. It uses energy ammo, for starters, and it’s nice to see linear fusions outside the heavy slot, where they never get much use. Its unique perk makes it a universal shield buster, and its other main perk, Disruption Break, leaves enemies more vulnerable to kinetic damage (i.e. a follow-up shot) after you break their shield. A unique Exotic that synergizes with itself? I’m game.  

Getaway Artist 

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The other three Exotics added in the Season of Drifter are all gauntlets, one for each class. Warlocks got Getaway Artist, with a unique perk that lets arc Warlocks consume their grenade to summon a souped-up Arc Soul, better known as an Arc Buddy. Arc Buddies are pretty strong in their own right, so I can’t wait to see what a buffed version can do. Is a Super Arc Buddy worth an Exotic slot? We’ll see.  

Stronghold 

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Stronghold might just be the Exotic that swords have been missing. Swords have never been terrible, and overall I’d say they benefited from the seasonal balance change, so we may see them used more frequently in the Season of the Drifter. By letting you guard infinitely and even heal off well-timed guards, Stronghold gives swords huge defensive ability which could be handy in high-level content. I can definitely see Stronghold leading to some impressive Nightfall solos.  

Liar’s Handshake 

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This is probably the pair of gauntlets that I’m most excited about, and I’m a Warlock main. Hunters have a harder time recovering health than the other two classes, so the unique perk on Liar’s Handshake could just be a godsend. It lets you dish out a healing melee counter after you land your charged arc melee or after you receive a melee attack yourself. That is, by all accounts, pretty cool. And in an activity with lots of Thrall and the like, or in the hands of an aggressive Crucible player, that healing counter could be pretty strong. If nothing else, it’s certainly an interesting Exotic. For that matter, the Exotics in the Season of the Drifter are all pretty intriguing, which is more than I can say for some Destiny 2 content drops. 

These Destiny 2 short stories tease a dark storyline rumored to be connected to Destiny 3. (opens in new tab) 

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“There were a lot of not unjustified comments on that,” he said. “I think the gunplay’s improved in many ways, but I think one way that’s subtle but makes an incredible difference to the feel of the game is to reduce the impression of bullet sponginess. That isn’t just a question of fewer bullets, though time-to-kill has been adjusted. You’re going to kill enemies much faster, but they’re going to kill you much faster too, which really puts the emphasis on cover-based gameplay. 

“The other thing is, there are many more animations,” Gerighty continues. “Hit animations, movement animations. Some other shooters, they’re bullet spongy as well but you don’t notice it because those enemies recoil when they get hit. There’s a lot of craftsmanship that goes into masking the RPG number side of things.”

In the demo I played at the event in question, I also saw a few promising abilities designed to deal with heavily armored enemies. The chem launcher, for example, can create corrosive, armor-eating clouds. I’m hoping other tech options offer similar solutions to big tanky dudes.

There’s also the more robust animations which Gerighty described. The final boss of my demo mission was a heavily armored dude named Saint, and between my chem launcher and both me and my teammates’ guns, Saint was constantly staggering and did not last long. As Gerighty explained, this was partly thanks to The Division 2’s more strategic armor system. 

“One other thing is the heavies,” he said. “The armor is localized, so they have pieces on their arms, chest, head. You need to melt that way, and you’ll see it snap away. You’ll have this visible indication that, OK, it’s bullet spongy, but there’s a reason why it’s bullet spongy. It’s armor. And once you get rid of that, you hit that chewy center in the middle and that’s it. That enemy’s going to go down.”

I was almost surprised how quickly Saint died, especially after my experiences with the flamethrower dudes in the first game. It was certainly refreshing. The abundance of bullet sponges was one of my biggest criticisms when The Division first launched, so I was always hoping the sequel would tone them down. At the very least, the fact that me and three random pickups could utterly delete Saint using little more than decent aim and suitable tech bodes well. 

We played The Division 2 endgame (opens in new tab) earlier this year, and finally seeing it in action cleared up some of our other worries as well. 

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“We’ve received a ton of feedback from the community that the Forsaken changes affected smaller and less hardcore clans less positively,” said design lead Steve Dolan and senior designer Mark Uyeda. “These clans feel like they can no longer hit the levels they had in the past. We also heard that there is just too much emphasis on doing daily bounties. As a result of this feedback, we took some of the clan progression mechanics back to the workbench and made changes to improve the experience.”

In March, Destiny 2’s clan XP system will be reverted to how it was when the game launched. Daily clan bounties will be removed, and instead players will earn clan XP simply by completing activities like Strikes, public events, or basically anything else. Three weekly clan bounties which require clanmates to play together will remain, with one PvE, PvP, and raid bounty available each week. These bounties will award Legendary gear and clan XP, and tie into the new clan reward system. At clan rank three, weekly bounties will award mod components; at rank four, they’ll also reward enhancement cores; and at rank six, your clan will unlock a fourth weekly bounty with an unspecified objective. 

It’s unclear if these weekly bounties will award powerful gear, and Bungie has yet to confirm what the new weekly clan XP cap will be. That said, this system sounds like a sizable step up from the current one – which, as Dolan and Uyeda said, is absolutely anchored to daily bounties.

In the same update, Bungie quietly confirmed that more Exotic catalysts – something players have been requesting for months – will be added in the Season of the Drifter. Regarding the clan perk that buffs Crucible and Strike catalyst drop rates, the studio said: 

“If you already have them all (lucky you), we plan to release a few more from our Year 1 reserve during Season of the Drifter for you to chase. They won’t be released day one of Season 6, but keep your eyes on the patch notes for availability.” 

Note that, as a follow-up to this week’s power update, excess Ethereal Keys (over the cap of five) and Iron Banner bounties will be removed from player inventories at the start of the next season. So if you’re holding onto any, cash them in soon. 

Read up on everything coming in Destiny 2 Season of the Drifter (opens in new tab) in our roundup. 

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In a recent blog post (opens in new tab), BioWare’s Chad Robertson advised players to “stick around for Sunday afternoon; you’ll see a glimpse of some of the cool things we’ll be doing in the future!” Some players have speculated that this surprise is our first proper look at Anthem’s story, but given the lengths BioWare has gone to in order to scrub story details from the demo (opens in new tab), I’m leaning more toward it being a taste of Anthem’s endgame content, which players are equally curious about. A spider-infested stronghold was playable in the VIP demo, but that was about it, so perhaps we’ll see something a little more challenging? Maybe a contract mission or traces of a raid? We’ll find out soon enough.

Happily, it sounds like most of the issues that bogged down the VIP demo will be resolved ahead of the open demo. As Robertson explained, BioWare has been working on server performance, bugged Javelin unlocks, login issues, bugged mission rewards, and more. Robertson also said the infinite loading screens which plagued the VIP demo have been “improved,” which I’m hoping translates to ‘fixed,’ or at the very least, ‘less infinite.’ 

We’ll be covering Anthem extensively for the next two weeks in our new editorial series On The Radar: Anthem. 

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Standalone, wireless VR

Standalone VR is already a reality, with the Google Daydream powered Mirage Solo and Oculus Go leading the charge into an untethered future, but standalone offerings have been pretty feature-light or niche thus far. That’s all set to change in 2019 with the release of the Oculus Quest (which was demoed at CES), a much more robust and capable standalone headset that will mirror the performance and library of the Rift. 

Vive already offers a standalone headset for the Chinese market, the Vive Focus, and it is now starting to approach the wireless space globally with adapters for the Vive and Vive Pro. The problem with these devices is that they’re bulky and prohibitively expensive – the vanilla Vive adapter is $299.99 while the Pro option is a staggering $359.99, and you’ll still need an impressive PC build to power them.

Hopefully Oculus’ heavy investment in standalone VR tech will give HTC the push it needs to begin development on its own wireless, completely untethered offering for the West. Perhaps even an iteration of the Focus that’s more powerful and streamlined, retaining the Focus’ excellent inside-out, six-degrees-of-freedom tracking. I’m also hopeful that new players in the space, like Google, will introduce a standalone option backed by their massive resource infrastructure, or even that Valve may eventually plumb the standalone depths, perhaps backed by a VR-exclusive version of Steam. 

Wireless charging

Ask anyone with an even reasonably elaborate entertainment setup – wires are the bane of the modern gamer’s existence. While we’ve made great strides towards eliminating technology’s poisonous braided snakes from peripherals like controllers, mice, and headsets, the final frontier is wireless charging. 

Despite its origins in the 19th century, we’re still a ways off from any kind of broad implementation of inductive charging. The majority of solutions now require placing a device on a charging mat or stand, leaving it inert while it (slowly) charges. And of course, while there are some scant battery powered offerings, most of those charging mats still require wires, so while there are some advantages (like reducing the socket and cord wear of constantly plugging and unplugging your device) you’re still required to be tethered to a power source. 

That said, the future of wireless charging looks bright. Disney has prototyped an entire room capable of charging wireless devices simply by having them inside of it, and a California company called Energous is developing a wireless charging solution that pairs a transmitter with a tiny (like, fraction-of-the-size-of a-dime tiny) receiver to charge devices at up to 15 feet away. As innovations like this continue to coalesce and be refined, it becomes easier and easier to imagine a future where everything from your DualShock controller to your electric car can be charged entirely sans wires. Could we see a wirelessly charged controller launching alongside the PS5 and the next set of Xboxs? It’s very possible. 

Exoskeletons

One of my personal favorite reveals at CES this year was the Samsung GEMS-H (Gait Enhancing and Motivating System), a lightweight, sleek-looking exoskeleton designed to help propel your legs while you walk. Reports from the show floor indicate that it’s so light it’s easy to forget you’re even wearing it – that moving around with one strapped to your hips was like “walking on air.” 

These kind of mobility assistance exoskeletons are just the tip of the iceberg. There are others late in development that will allow users to easily lift 200 lbs or more, and a company called Ekso Bionics already produces a lower body exoskeleton that allows paraplegic people to walk again. The same company recently partnered with Ford on a solution to allow factory workers to do overhead work with less effort and strain and a concomitant reduction in injuries. 

What does this have to do with games? Match this kind of exoskeleton tech with the ‘Synesthesia Suit’ for Rez in VR and the possibilities are endless. Imagine true, one-to-one, full body motion tracking and sensory feedback, with portions of the suit vibrating or moving when you’re taking fire or hit with a melee attack. In extreme (and possibly undesirable, but still fascinating) scenarios, an exoskeleton could lock some of your limbs in place in a game if your avatar were tied up or hit with some freezing status ailment. And the AR possibilities are also rich; in the far flung future, we could bound around the world in exoskeletons playing AR games piped through a headset or glasses.  

8K displays

Pleased with that shiny new 4K TV you bought for Christmas? Doesn’t it look all fancy and thin, with all of its colors and lovely menus? Well, bad news, chum, as 8K is a reality and it’s going to make your beloved 4K TV look silly. True 8K resolution is 7680×4320 pixels, four times the density of current 4K displays, and that equates to a 33 megapixel image. 8K TVs were very much the hotness at CES, and you can actually buy the early models right now, if you have a spare $15,000 or so in your bank account. In fact, you’re going to need to buy 65” TVs or above to really see the difference between 4K and 8K. While there’s almost nothing that displays in 8K resolution at the moment, many broadcasters and creators are already planning 8K content for the coming years. It’s unlikely PS5 will offer 8K, and will likely stick to 4K at 60fps, but it’s still a possibility – even PS4 Pro and Xbox One X struggle to deliver consistent 4K right now. Netflix will undoubtedly be looking to create an 8K tier of original shows as the technology starts to becoming more available, and it’s likely that sports broadcasters will be going Ultra HD as soon as possible. 

Streaming games and 5G

Although cloud-based streaming hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, despite some promising initial offerings from Sony and Nvidia, 2019 could be the year that it does. Think about it. With theoretical data rates of up to 10Gb/s on the horizon, 5G will finally give us the option to forego our shady broadband ISPs in favor of slightly less dubious cellular providers. In an unexpected turn of events, for once in our lives, a win for capitalism is a win for us, the consumers. 

With Sony insisting on broadband speeds of at least 5Mbps for its PlayStation Now streaming service, a simple trick of the calculator reveals 5G could offer up to 2,000 times that. GeForce Now, Nvidia’s PC streaming platform, requires an even more demanding broadband spec of 15Mbps. Meanwhile, its thirst left unquenched by domination elsewhere, even Apple is plotting a streaming service for games. The only remaining variables are Microsoft and Google. Both are suspected to have streaming efforts in the works, but neither the former’s Project xCloud nor the latter’s Project Stream are currently available to the public.

Assuming it’s a hit when it begins to roll out later this year, 5G might prove itself a ‘killer app’ for game streaming services across the board. Especially now esteemed networking hardware companies like D-Link are whipping up 5G routers, we’re a little more optimistic about the future of game streaming services than we were when Sony bought Gaikai nearly seven years ago. Now we’re not just looking forward to the aftermath of 5G on smartphones, but we’re also interested in learning about its effects in the console space. 

Both Microsoft and Sony are rumored to have streaming-first consoles in the works. Thus, it’s only a matter of time before we find out for certain whether or not streaming is the future of games.

The promise of tomorrow

These and some of the other trends signaled at this year’s CES and across our industry point to a future of dramatic innovation. Look a little beyond the smart refrigerators and tech demos of vending machine robots and there’s a lot of real, promising tech shifting across the horizon. Sure, some of it is very much still in the prototype stage, but the trends we’ve highlighted above are already being rolled out in practical, real world scenarios, and many of them could alter the way we play significantly in the coming months and years. 

The post The biggest 2019 tech trends, and how they could affect gaming appeared first on Game News.

That new Atlas game (opens in new tab), the pirate survival MMO from Grapeshot Games – a sister studio to ARK: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard – got off to a rough start, to say the least. It was repeatedly delayed at the last minute, and like many Early Access survival games, it’s buggy as all get-out (and is currently sitting at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam (opens in new tab)). But according to many players, while the bugs are a big problem, there are more immediate threats with fangs and claws lurking absolutely everywhere.

Atlas has a wolf problem – not to mention an alligator, lion, and tiger problem, but it’s mostly wolves. Players have been complaining about being spawn-killed by predatory animals from day one, but it seems they only recently learned how annoying wolves in particular can be. The Atlas subreddit (opens in new tab) and Steam community forum (opens in new tab) are overflowing with posts from players who can’t go two feet without stepping on the tail of at least one incredibly angry, deadly wolf. 

Reddit user JimmyBaker2323 (opens in new tab) uploaded a video featuring dozens of trapped wolves, all of which reportedly spawned within an hour. In a comment on JimmyBaker’s post, AberrantAviator (opens in new tab) shared an image of their own rapidly expanding wolf collection. In another Reddit post, Thescottishdreamer (opens in new tab) suggested building a large pen to curb the wolf infestation – but as many players on the official Atlas forums (opens in new tab) have pointed out, it’s hard to get the resources to build anything when you have wolves on your ankles from minute one. 

Players have even reported respawning inside of wolves, and indeed having wolves spawn inside their homes. Truly, there is no escape. More recently, players have rallied around a post from Reddit user Rimbaldo (opens in new tab) asking for wolf spawn rates to be reduced. Others have suggested nerfing wolves directly or buffing other animals to help keep the wolves in check

Many players believe predators are suddenly a bigger problem due to an unreported nerf applied to Atlas’ firearms. There’s been no mention of this in the game’s patch notes (opens in new tab) – in fact, every time firearms have come up, it was for a buff of some kind – but players agree that predators just don’t die like they used to. It’s unclear if animals got stronger or guns got weaker, but wolves are popping out of the ground like daisies and they’re definitely hard to deal with. 

Here are the best survival games (opens in new tab) available on PC.  

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A mysterious ball has appeared above Polar Peak #Fortnite #PS4share pic.twitter.com/8sBkFx9coHJanuary 15, 2019

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Unlike Kevin, Orb doesn’t punish you for attacking it. It just hangs in the air, unmoved by your petty human aggression. Get close enough, and you can see that Orb seems to be a translucent ball of blue ice surrounded by whirling snowflakes. Your screen turns white with frost (opens in new tab) if you invade Orb’s personal space, but take a few steps back and everything goes back to normal. You can even jump on top of it, though you’ll quickly slide off (ice, innit).

What does it mean? There’s some speculation that Orb’s linked to this leaked loading screen (opens in new tab) for Fortnite season 7 week 8 (spoiler warning):

It could be that Orb will steadily descend from its low geosynchronous orbit over Polar Peak, melting as it goes, and reveal whatever that shining bauble of power the Ice King is holding. He’s always looked a bit sinister, what with the spiky crown and angry glowing eyes, but he’s gone full villain this time. Or maybe Orb will float lazily over to Tilted Towers and drop straight through the building that finally finished construction as of this update because we can’t have nice things. 

We’ll keep a close eye on our pal Orb and keep you informed about any icy movements. Though not so close that our screens get all frosty.

Learn more about the other big change in this update: Fortnite glider re-deploys coming back in item form! (opens in new tab)

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