News – Silver Soul Gaming

Code-cracking madness — Codemasters acquires Slightly Mad Studios

It’s time to talk about another acquisition that I and at least one other person didn’t see coming, and it once again involves the racing-game genre. Codemasters has a handful of ongoing series in their garage, such as Dirt, Grid, and the official Formula 1 games. They now own new territory thanks to their acquisition of fellow British developer Slightly Mad Studios, makers of the Project CARS IP. If you ask me, this is a big deal because they’re two of the most prominent companies when it comes to today’s racing games, not to mention they both have really good assets and licenses. With this purchase comes very valid questions — Is one of the four aforementioned series being canned? Which licenses that Slightly Mad Studios owned could be used in Codemasters’ Grid series, and vice versa for the Project CARS series? Regardless of what theories we come up with, the best thing we can do is to wait for Codies to give us the answer..And you bet your buttons I’m excited to know what’s up.

EA announces its return to Steam

After eight years, Electronic Arts is finally partnering with Valve’s Steam service again. Not only will Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order be released on EA’s own Origin store, but it as well as other recent PC games from the publishing giant will also be on the Steam marketplace. The five additional confirmed games are The Sims 4, Unravel 2, Apex Legends, FIFA ’20, and Battlefield 5. Along with these games, EA is getting ready to integrate its subscription service EA Access into Steam. That integration will be completed in 2020, and will be a big help to PC gamers who are unable to shell out the dough for the larger roster that Origin Access offers. Even if you have had a beef with EA for a long time, I’m sure we can agree that this is a cool move on their end. I personally never thought EA would ever release a game on Steam again, but lo and behold, they’re back at it.

Graveyard Keeper DLC Stranger Sins Releases

Graveyard Keeper’s brand new DLC, Stranger Sins, releases today adding several hours of content and a bar to run.

The game’s Steam page promises 4 to 8 more hours of game-play, the ability to run your own tavern, new quests and character from NPC’s, background story from 200 years ago and more. Lazy Bear Games and tinyBuild’s game is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch and the DLC is out on all platforms starting today.

Read our review of the original PC release here, and expect our review of the Stranger Sins DLC soon!

#FixWWE2K20 — I’m Preston from Silver Soul Gaming, and WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

If you’re a gamer and avid pro-wrestling fan, this week has most likely been a rough one for you. WWE 2K20 was released this Tuesday, and its customers have been in a complete uproar about not only the missing features, but also the sheer amount of bugginess this game contains. Whether it’s bad hair physics, messy targeting, game crashes, or characters getting stuck in the ring, 2K20 has been viewed as an absolute jobber by wrestling-gamers around the globe. It is unknown if the team at Visual Concepts got lazy or the game was rushed out due to contractual obligations with the WWE. Regardless of the main reasons, we can only hope that 2K manages to release a patch that pulls the game out of its nosedive. WWE 2K20 has the ability to be in the wrestling-game title picture, but it must first be able to get into midcard status.

Sony Announces Next Console Called PlayStation 5 and Details Controller Changes

Sony has confirmed its next generation console will be called the PlayStation 5 and discussed some controller changes as well.

Sony confirmed the PS5 name and release date before Holiday 2020 on its own blog. It also detailed two big changes for the controller in the form of haptic feedback to simulate different gameplay experiences. The other change called adaptive triggers, allows developers to program resistance into the L2 and R2 triggers to react differently to things like driving off-road or pulling a bowstring.

The most detail was released in a Wired article this morning which went a little more into the console hardware itself. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan discussed ray tracing, the solid state drive, and more details on the controller.

The PS5 UI will allow players to preview multiplayer and single player content before starting the game and to download and even delete each part separately. The Wired article also mentions the controller has an improved speaker and a USB Type-C connector. The controller was apparently identical to a PS4 controller (minus the details mentioned above) but I’m hoping the controller will get a cosmetic and ergonomic overhaul before the PS5 launches.

Check out the Wired article above for more details on the controller batter, a discussion with a developer from Bluepoint Games (of last years Shadow of the Colossus remake), and a little more info on what the SSD means for the PlayStation 5.

Sony Cross-Play Available to All Games

In yesterday’s Wired article announcing the price drop of PlayStation Now, an interesting bit at the end apparently also announced cross-play is available to all games.

While the focus of the article was the big changes that came to PS Now, like God of War and other major first party games now available on the service, cross-play is discussed at the end. Wired states that “PS4’s cross-play efforts have officially moved out of the beta stage”, strangely with no announcement from Sony.

While cross-play on PS4 has been available for Fortnite and Rocket League for a while this means any game can theoretically do it. PUBG immediately took advantage of the end of the beta and announced the update was live yesterday. With Call of Duty Modern Warfare offering the feature at launch it’s likely many other games will start to add it soon.

As for the PS Now change, the service is available for $59.99 a year now, down from $99.99 previously. The monthly version is down from $20 to $9.99. The previously mentioned God of War, Infamous: Second Son, Uncharted 4, and GTA V were all also made available to download or stream.

Pokemon Sword and Shield Add Autosaving

Gameinformer reported yesterday that the upcoming Pokemon Sword and Shield games will feature autosaving.

It will be the first time in the franchise’s 20-plus year history players don’t have to pause the game to save. During an interview with game director Shigeru Ohmori, it was only mentioned for the open-world Wild Area, but later clarified it can be used throughout the entire game

But for anyone who feels like that takes away from the Pokemon experience, it’s optional. You can decide for yourself which you’ll want to go with when the game releases next month on November 15.