Items tagged with Square Enix
Square Enix is helping gamers to stay occupied during these unique times by offering up free and discounted and titles as part of its "Stay Home and Play" campaign. It began with a couple of free games, those being Tomb Raider (2013) and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, which combined for 15 million downloads. Now it's offering a massive game bundle for pennies on the dollar. As part of this campaign, Square Enix said it would be "introducing Stay Home and Play Steam bundles offering deep discounts on great games" from its library, with all of the "proceeds benefiting Food Banks and other charities in North America and Europe." It's a stellar idea, and a way for gamers to continue practicing...
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Square Enix is making good on its past promise that fans would be able to get Final Fantasy VII Remake themes for their PS4 console. A theme is now available for anyone who downloads the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo before May 11. PS4 players who are also PS Plus members can get another free theme that shows Cloud looking towards the city of Midgar. Fans who like themes for their PlayStation had access to a third PS4 theme with Sephiroth as the focus. That theme was only available as a preorder bonus for players who ordered the Final Fantasy VII Remake via Amazon. Those who want all three themes will need to download the demo, join PS Plus, and to have preordered the game on Amazon. The second...
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If you were maybe worried Square Enix might have scrapped its planned remake of Final Fantasy VII here in the home stretch for some reason, rest easy knowing it is coming. We can say this with confidence because of a newly leaked video clip showcasing the opening scene. The clip is a little over three and a half minutes long, and is enough to get any fan of the series excited. The only bummer is that it is limited to 720p, but whatever, we will take what we can get. It starts off with a demo screen for "Final Fantasy VII Remake," after which the opening scene begins in earnest. The camera zooms in on the flower girl Aerith Gainsborough, and then pans out to give us an aerial view of Midgar. It...
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As was bound to happen, an early benchmark comparison claiming to represent NVIDIA's not-yet-released (to retail) GeForce RTX 2080 Super graphics card has leaked out. If the numbers are to believed (and they certainly look plausible), the GeForce RTX 2080 Super falls squarely between a Titan Xp and Titan V in performance. We will get to the numbers in a moment, but first let's recap the specs. The GeForce RTX 2080 Super sports 3,072 CUDA cores and features base and boost clocks of 1,650MHz and 1,815MHz, respectively. It also has 8GB of GDDR6 memory piping data through a 256-bit bus at 15.5Gbps, which pegs the memory bandwidth at 496GB/s. Twitter user and notorious leaker APISAK spotted the benchmark...
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Now is the time to jump on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and embark on Lara Croft's latest adventure, if you haven't already done so already. Square Enix is offering a free trial of the game, and it's not limited to any single platform—the free trial applies to Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and Windows PCs. You don't get to play the entirety of the game for free, but you do get full access to the opening levels as Lara Croft journeys to Cozumel, Mexico in the midst of The Day of the Dead celebrations. Your job is to find a hidden tomb. If you decide to buy the game after a taste for the action, any progress and achievements/trophies you earn will carry over,...
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We are fast approaching the launch of Lara Croft's next big adventure, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which is set to be one of the first games to support real-time ray tracing. It's also a reboot of the popular Tomb Raider franchise (new players can jump right in without feeling lost in the story line). As the launch date approaches, Square Enix has published minimum and recommended system requirements for the PC version. To get the game up and running on a PC, you will need an Intel Core i3-3320 or AMD equivalent processor, 8GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 1050 (or GeForce GTX 660) or AMD Radeon HD 7770 graphics card, 40GB of available storage space, and Windows 7 64-bit (or newer). Not too shabby. The...
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It's often said that 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned', and guess what? Lara Croft is looking pretty damn scorned in a new extended trailer by Square Enix showcasing her next adventure, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Tomb Raider protagonist has always been a badass, of course, but Shadow of the Tomb Raider takes on a decidedly darker and grittier tone than previous installments. The nearly 3-minute trailer wraps up with Lara Croft wondering, "What will I become?," a question that comes just after a series of stealthy assassinations in the jungle as she creeps through the shadows. "In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere...
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In just a few weeks, Square Enix will finally release Final Fantasy XV for PC, and the promise ever since the publisher announced minimum and recommended system requirements back in October is that it will run on a wide variety of systems. If you are in doubt, however, or just want to see how well (or not so well) your particular setup will run the game, Square Enix has made available a benchmark tool. We kicked its tires and have a few numbers to share. Before we get to the numbers, let's talk a bit about the requirements and the benchmark. One of the neat things about Final Fantasy XV arriving to PC is that it is bringing support for 4K resolution monitors and high dynamic range (HDR) visuals,...
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Well here is some good news for fans of the Final Fantasy franchise. When Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition finally arrives on PC next year, it will not require a monster setup to run. Square Enix revealed the game's minimum and recommended system requirements on the title's listing in the Microsoft Store, and by the looks of it, a modest PC will be enough to get the game up and running. Even the recommended specs are reasonable. Starting with the minimum system requirements, the game will run on a system with an Intel Core i5-2400 or AMD FX-6100 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 760 graphics card. So basically anyone with a modern setup should be able to fire up Final Fantasy XV and play...
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It is finally happening, folks. Final Fantasy XV is trading its console attire for PC digs, Square Enix announced at Gamescom 2017. The game will arrive on PC early next year, bringing with it all available DLC and updates. It will also come dressed to impress with several graphical upgrades, including a bump to native 4K resolution graphics (if your PC can handle it), with graphical options to support up to 8K. Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition will also feature high dynamic range (HDR10) support, provided you pair the game with a Windows 10 Creators Update compatible display, several NVIDIA technologies underneath the hood to spruce up the graphics. And the following are the recommended system...
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Chip designer AMD has partnered with games developer and publisher Square Enix to introduce AMD4U, a new program that will provide buyers of AMD products with a range of games from international independent developers. Most of the games that are being released through the program are part of the Square Enix Collective, an indie publishing program of Square Enix. "Key elements of the partnership include direct participation at AMD’s consumer events around the world; alongside hardware, software, engineering support, and extended marketing partnerships with AMD’s OEM partners participating in the AMD4U program, including DELL, Alienware, HP, Lenovo and many more," AMD says. The big question here...
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Square Enix is set to release Final Fantasy XV to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this month. It's the fifteenth main installment in the Final Fantasy series, one of the most popular gaming franchises that has been sending players on quests for nearly three decades. Final Fantasy has stood the test of time, but can it stand up to scrutiny by Conan O'Brien, otherwise known as The Clueless Gamer? Anyone familiar with The Clueless Gamer knows what to expect from a Conan O'Brien evaluation—lots of laughs, basically. This time around, avid gamer and fantasy actor Elijah Wood comes along for the ride, joining Conan in taking an early look at Final Fantasy XV. The duo wastes no time in getting...
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Square Enix is putting the word out to retailers and the public at large that Final Fantasy XV will not ship on September 30, 2016, as previously stated at Pax Prime. The new release date is November 29, 2016, which gives Square Enix a couple of extra months to apply some final coats of polish. While that might be disappointing to some fans, the good news here is that it's practically finished and almost ready to finally ship. That's nothing to take for granted. Final Fantasy XV was first announced to be in development a decade ago at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). After several years went by without much information on the game, some questioned whether the 15th major installment...
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Good news, Final Fantasy fans! It's just been confirmed that Final Fantasy XV is going to be released at some point in 2016, for both Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. Unfortunately, Square Enix has no current plans to release the game for the PC, which is a huge bummer for those who don't own a console. In a new blog post, FF XV's director Hajime Tabata makes it sound as though the game could have been released last year, but that it definitely needed some more polishing. He writes, "In development, previous phases required wisdom and strength. However, moving forward the final phase will focus on effort and willpower." He continues with something that would be nice to see other...
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Rise of the Tomb Raider has found its way to Steam, though you can't purchase it just yet (not for PC, anyway). However, it doesn't look like you'll have to wait long. The listing on Steam indicates the game will be available in "January 2016," which coincides with previous reports that it would launch to PC in early 2016. Publisher Square Enix released the newest Lara Croft title to Xbox One and Xbox 360 a little more than a month ago on November 10 in the U.S. When it was first announced at Gamescom earlier in the year, it was pitched as an exclusive Xbox game, though Microsoft later said it was only talking about the initial release over the holiday period. Developed by Crystal Dynamics, Rise...
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After the debacle that was Batman: Arkham Knight, you'd think that the biggest game publishing houses would put forth extra effort to make sure they didn't replicate that total mess. Well, it's starting to look like some haven't learned the lesson, as the massively hyped and just-launched Just Cause 3 has a boatload of issues right out of the gate. Sometimes, it's exclusively the PC version (due to bad porting) that's the problem, but not with Just Cause 3. Even console users are experiencing a variety of problems, with the most frustrating being a poor framerates, or performance variations in general. In some cases, the game's water might not even appear, making navigation quite an interesting...
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With all the hype surrounding Star Wars: Battlefront, Halo 5 and Fallout 4, it’s easy to forget that there’s another hard-hitting title on target for release this year. That game would be Just Cause 3, and Square Enix has just posted an action-packed trailer for the game that is sure to get your juices flowing. Rico Rodriguez returns as the hero of the franchise, and this time he’s out to save his fictional island homeland of Medici. Why exactly does Medici need saving? Well, an evil dictator named General Di Ravello – who happens to looks a lot like late, beheaded Saddam Hussein -- has plenty of blood on his hands and is wreaking mayhem, which draws Rico back into the fray. Di Ravello has managed...
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The story surrounding the launch of Batman: Arkham Knight for the PC might be as interesting as the story in the game itself. While it's not uncommon for any launch game to require a patch or have some unknown bugs, Arkham Knight took things to ridiculous levels - it was broken, plain and simple. That was so much the case, that WB Games took the rare route of pulling the game from the shelves. Even now, the game remains unavailable. Game developer Rocksteady continues to apologize to the fans it's let down, and vows to continue fixing bugs as quickly as it can. Once Rocksteady and affiliated parties agree that the game has reached an appropriate level of quality, it will once again...
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Mac users unhappy with the problem-riddled launch of Final Fantasy XIV are eligible for a full refund, Square Enix director Naoki Yoshida said today in an official post to gamers. He also announced that the title is being yanked from store shelves until the game performs correctly and the system requirements have been communicated accurately. The concession follows harsh criticism from players who bought the title only to encounter game-crippling problems. Yoshida discussed two major problems that plagued the game’s launch and apologized for both. One issue was that the company provided incorrect system requirements. “Because of this situation, many of you purchased a product which your Mac hardware...
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Computer generated graphics have come a long way in the past several years and are starting to blur the line between animation and real actors. One of the more difficult tasks for CG artists is to recreate human emotions, especially crying, though you wouldn't know it after watching a tech demo that Square Enix showed off at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference. The real-time tech demo is called Witch Chapter 0 [cry] and is part of a research project that studies various next generation technologies. For this particular demo, Square Enix put a lot of research into real-time CG technology utilizing DirectX 12 in collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA, the company said. It's an ongoing project...
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Five years after Just Cause 2 rocked the fictional island of Panau, Square Enix and Avalanche Studios are ramping up to the launch of Just Cause 3. Your cool-under-ridiculous-pressure hero Rico Rodriguez is back, but he’s bringing the hurt to a new dictator, on a new island. And by the looks of the explosion-filled trailer, Rodriguez is going raise the bar for sheer devastation. Screengrab from Just Cause 3 The first thing you’ll notice about the trailer is that the graphics are stunning. Character movement looks life-like and the buildings and vehicles that Rodriguez destroys look darn near real. The trailer kicks off with Rodriguez jumping onto a fighter jet and yanking out the...
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I'm looking out my window and see snow. Lots of it. At this point, summer seems a million years away and I have no desire to go out in the cold to make a snow angel or do whatever it is people do in freezing weather these days. So I'll sit inside and catch up on some gaming, especially if the deals keep rolling in. Last week is an awesome collection of Star Wars titles that Humble Bundle was serving up, and now they've put together a tantalizing Square Enix bundle! You know the drill -- pay what you want for a core collection of games, and at least a paltry dollar to receive Steam keys. Pay more than the average to unlock even more titles, or shell out a specified amount (or more) to unlock the...
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