Everything We Know So Far About Final Fantasy 7 for the PC

Whether you’re a seasoned Final Fantasy veteran or playing for the very first time (but who would that be exactly?), you can now show off your accomplishments with 36 unlockable achievements. And, of course, what are achievements without public recognition? Share your achievements on your online profile with your friends!

If you ever get stuck, fear not, for Square Enix is providing a Character Booster you can use to increase HP, MP and Gil levels to the max, all with the simple click of a button, leaving you to enjoy your adventure. Hmm… Can we say microtransactions?

Actually, the gaming community has already confirmed with Square Enix that that won’t be the case! "No, the Character Booster will not cost real money to use," a Square Enix rep explained to the guys over at Kotaku. "We'll have final pricing info on the game to share soon, but we can confirm that there will be no microtransactions for the upcoming rerelease of Final Fantasy VII on PC."

Whether you’re away from home or simply using a different computer to play, cloud save support will ensure you can continue your progress right where you left off, so all you’ll need to play is an internet connection and a friend’s spare laptop.

There's no release date for the game yet, but it’s guaranteed not to be an HD revamp. Just good old blocky Cloud slashing away with the usual crew.

You can check out more images and wallpaper here at the Final Fantasy 7 for PC official site.

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.3b Live -- Commodities for Sale in the Real-Money Auction House

These commodities are now available for trading in the real-money auction house: gems, dyes, crafting materials, blacksmithing plans, jeweler designs, and pages of training. Gold commodity trading will be forthcoming, Blizzard hopes, and we assume that by the time that happens the new PvP release patch will be not too far off. (!) The additions to the auction house have legitimized the black market trades of Diablo 2 in days of old. Those of us who remember the economic value of gems back in the day will be interested to see how pitting them against real-world dollars turns out.

There are also the standard bug fixes that come with each patch, critical but rare errors or user interface tweaks that smooth out the increasingly uncommon rough edge in Diablo 3.

Of course, real-money purchases are live and kicking – you can waste your hard-earned bucks in the real-money auction house, or save your dollars and instead farm for items to sell for a few extra bucks. Does that make it a one-man sweatshop?

Max Payne 3 Cheaters, Beware!

Rockstar doesn’t want to get rid of cheaters, oh no. They want to give them a taste of their own medicine. Which brings us to the final unveiling of the Cheater Pool, a brand new quarantine for those caught cheating and sentenced to confinement. Rockstar will pit cheaters against one another for an undetermined amount of time as punishment for their tresspasses. If Rockstar deems you worthy of returning to the public servers, they’ll let you know. But mess up twice, and face a lifetime of banishment.
Seems like a perfectly fitting punishment to me! Still allowed to play the game, but unable to muck up anyone else’s.

“How will I know if I’m in the Cheater Pool?”

Well, little Timmy, if you know you have cheated, and you find yourself in empty lobbies frequently, or always matched with games full of other cheaters, you are likely in the Cheater Pool! Players in the Cheater Pool will also be blocked from stat submissions to the leaderboards.

All of the reports to Banhammer are reviewed manually, so don’t worry if you think you were banned in error, there’s a track record of the report on you. Rockstar will only take disciplinary action when there is clear evidence and documentation of the offense! If you’re in the Cheater Pool, you won’t be able to play with friends who aren’t.

And no, you will not be banned for camping.

What do you think, is this a better method of dealing with cheaters? They did pay for the game, after all, but should that mean they retain the right to keep playing it after someone proves they cheated?

(View more of the rules and details here.)

BeamNG Soft-Body Physics Update: New Cars, Intervehicle Collision, Breaking Glass

BeamNG is out with a new update to their soft-body physics work in the new CryEngine3 engine. Two cars built for the physics experiment, lots and lots vehicle collision, breaking glass, deformable objects, along with a ton of tweaks and improvements to their system. The guys from BeamNG say that their system is now running multicore, with the ability to simulate multiple vehicles including collision at 60+ frames per second.

They have a bunch of features coming up: breaking lights and particles, better self-collision accidents, and vehicle interior structure and interaction.

Check out their demo video here:



The music you hear in the video is by BeamNG's vehicle artist gabester, you can find more of his work here.


BeamNG is a new startup company developing a state of the art real-time physics simulation engine. The team is currently two programmers and two artists, who founded the company in 2011.

The company says their main focus is on how things move rather than how things look on the screen, and aim to bring their collective expertise in real-time soft-body physics and soft-body physics model design to the forefront of game physics simulation.

Right now the physics engine is running on a multicore CPU configuration, but the team from BeamNG are also in the process of supporting GPUs via OpenCL.

Their mission? "To have realistic, accurate, destructible and malleable physics everywhere. To make anything possible."

In any case, these physics models look amazing! We're hoping to see these incorporated into upcoming game releases.

The State of Diablo 3's Endgame, and Why The Hunt for Items Isn't Worth Playing

Straight from the horse’s mouth: we have news from Bashiok, a Community Manager over at the Blizzard forums for Diablo 3. Blizzard has (finally) publically acknowledged that the end-game strategy first planned for those of us who have a level 60 character with multiple play-throughs under our belts isn’t sustainable:

"We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they're going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already)."

This sounds open and honest. Blizzard definitely miscalculated how much time people would spend searching for items and killing all those uncommon and rare enemy packs before the novelty of item hunting wore off. The game was shipped ahead of itself, with no clear end-game plan. Those of you who have already played out Diablo 3’s interest know what it felt like when you realized all that was left for you was Harcore mode, and even that was a gamble with Battle.net hiccups and lag. Bashiok acknowledges this as well:

"But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren't going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it's not there right now."

Bashiok goes on to explain that patch 1.0.4 is in the works right now, which will contain more tweaks and fixes like previous updates; these have typically been bug fixes and small changes to class spells, stat calculations, and alterations to the auction house. But while there are some huge features in the pipeline, like a PvP arena, for the immediate future we are left with the game more or less as-is.

At least these bigger additions will be a boon for Diablo 3 as a game in the long-term, right? Bashiok doesn’t seem to have much faith that the changes already planned for Diablo 3 are going to fully accomplish what the developers have in mind, and might not be able to elevate end-game engagement for the players:

"I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they're not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it's a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out."

Patch 1.1 is when PvP will be released, and with no release date estimate on that patch, Diablo 3 players are left wondering when it will be worth getting wrapped up in again.

For now, there is Inferno difficulty – which is accessible after playing through Normal, Nightmare and Hell – and the Hardcore mode where characters are permanently lost once killed in-game. Inferno has a notoriously tough curve from Act 1 to Act 2, and the item hunt we’ve been going on about is the only way you’re going to be able to make through to the end of Inferno. Hardcore offers a higher level of accomplishment, and frankly now that a lot of people have quit playing, the Battle.net servers have been able to support Hardcore mode play with minimal lag spikes or freezes.

Are you happy with the content Diablo 3 has provided? How would you change the end-game content to make it more endlessly playable like the previous installment Diablo 2?

Upcoming PC Release: Divekick, a Fighting Game Parody

"Intense depth, strategy, and action have all been packed into just two buttons. Do you have what it takes to avoid Fraud Detection?"

...What?

In Divekick, you have no traditional directional movement. The players can only dive into the air with the DIVE button (it's a jump), and then propel themselves toward the ground with a mighty kick, using the KICK button. Kicking while on the ground will cause you to bounce away from your opponent. The first hit wins each round, and the first player to win five rounds wins the game!



As simple as this sounds, you'll have to trust that it is not. Movement in this game is unorthodox, and players are unable to guard against incoming attacks. Finding the optimal spot to stand in order to score a counter is key, but actually standing in that position is a lot harder than you'd think!

There is no joystick element to this fighting game, meaning you have to use strategic combinations of diving and kicking in order to position yourself properly. Players can also build up their Kick-Meter to activate Kick-Factor, a super charged mode in which the player's character dives higher and kicks faster.

And something in particular to note while fighting: ONE solid foot to the face will leave you with a concussion in the next round. Your character will be stunned, meaning they don't dive as high or kick as fast, leaving them at a massive disadvantage against your opponent.

Divekick started out as a joke, as a commentary on fighting games and the community surrounding it. Now, it's much more than that. Test versions played by volunteers at a few conventions has revealed that, beyond parody, the game itself is actually... wait for it... FUN.

Now creator and CEO Adam "Keits" Heart is holding a Kickstarter campaign to finance a PC release. If you want to see this deceptively simply fighting parody make it to the PC, be sure to check out their Kickstarter page!

Divekick has 27 days to go at the time of publishing, and has earned a bit over $10,000 toward its $30,000 goal.

End of Nations Beta Starts July 20

End of Nations is a new massively online strategy game from developers Trion Worlds and Petroglyph Games. Players will be able to engage each other in enormous 56-player battles in real locales -- fight to shatter the grip of the oppressive Order of Nations and ensure your faction prevails. You will command, control, and customize: there are endless possibilities.

This new hybrid RTS MMO allows you to fully customize your own strategy and tactics within the game. Choose and modify your own units, their abilities, and your army's superweapons. Tailor your Companies to fit each mission and your own personal play style.

And of course freedom isn’t free, but End of Nations is! Free to download, free to play, free to enjoy... free to win? That's up to you! Beta starts July 20th, which is sooner than you think! Check out a brief video from the devs below, and click here to sign up for the End of Nations beta.