Video Game Coverage

If you want to play the whole Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 experience, you're going to have to own a current-generation console.

Activision announced on their Call of Duty blog Sept. 25 that the upcoming release of Black Ops 3 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 will only come with the multiplayer and the zombie mode.

They said what they developed for the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One is too l33t for that old generation.

The Black Ops 3 PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will feature Multiplayer and Zombies gameplay only, not Campaign. The ambitious scope of the 1-4 player coop Campaign design of the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions could not be faithfully recreated on old generation hardware.

Delivering the best possible gameplay experience on all platforms is always our highest priority. With that in mind, Black Ops 3 PS3 and Xbox 360 players can continue to look forward to a new experience of Black Ops 3 multiplayer, including the new momentum-based, chain-movement system, as well as the all-new Specialist class of 9 Black Ops soldiers, which fundamentally change the way players engage in combat.

They did say they would price this edited version $10 cheaper at $49.99 and include a bonus download of the original Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Seeing as how Black Ops 3 releases on Nov. 6, this admission is cutting it pretty close.

And it also says a lot about how much they value the campaign:

Best IGN comment on the news that Black Ops 3 360/PS3 doesn't include the campaign and costs $50. pic.twitter.com/wYLUUx4os6

— Daemon Hatfield (@DaemZero) September 25, 2015

Big things are coming for Oculus Rift.

Epic Games, notable for creation of the Unreal Engine, the Gears of War franchise and more, unveiled their first outing into virtual reality during the keynote of Oculus' second virtual reality conference, Oculus Connect 2.

The first person shooter, which seems to take advantage of a great number of weapons and scenarios, looks kind of incredible. The immersive experience features bullet time and a great deal of enemies.

The Oculus Rift will launch in the first quarter of next year. Oculus has not set a solid date or price on virtual reality device yet.

It wasn't the only news to come out of the keynote. Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey announced that Minecraft is coming to the Oculus Rift next year.

Nov. 10 is soooo far away.

This super neat explainer shows off how the Pip Boy will detail character development and evolution. It looks like it will be quite a bit more complex and interactive than the system in Fallout 3.

It also looks like it's using quite a lot of resources from the free to play mobile game Fallout Shelter that Bethesda released in June.

Come on months, pass quickly already!

If you want to see more check out the educational videos that the developer has been dropping.

During the Oculus' second virtual reality conference, Oculus Connect 2, Oculus Founder and CEO Palmer Luckey announced that Minecraft will make it's way onto the upcoming consumer Oculus Rift.

Luckey took to the stage during the keynote Sept. 24, touting the upcoming experiences that consumers could expect from the device which is set to release in the first quarter of 2016. But his big announcement, which he yelled to the audience, was that the open world, block-building, resource-driven, social phenomenon Minecraft is coming to virtual reality.

It's not a huge surprise, given that Oculus has been working extensively with Microsoft, who owns Minecraft.

Unfortunately for Oculus, the announcement didn't show anything near as amazing as Microsoft's demonstration of their Hololens augmented reality tech working with Minecraft at last E3.

Luckey didn't give any specific details on date or price, so we'll just have to keep waiting for more.

The world may finally figure out why those birds are just so angry all the time.

A teaser trailer for The Angry Birds Movie was released today, and a star-studded cast will voice the birds and pigs you've come to know on the front of your smartphone screen.

The cast includes: Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Bill Hader and Peter Dinklage.

Let's hope they hit this one out of the park.

The Angry Birds Movie will come to theaters May 2016.

E is for Endurance.

Bethesda continues to explain the intricacies of its S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system with the third educational video that explains how important Endurance is in the wasteland.

You can watch the first here and the second right here.

Keep it up, Bethesda. You have our attention and soon you will have our money.

343 Industries continues to tease Halo 5 before its Oct. 27 release date with this new cinematic. It sets the stage for the second mission in the game, called "Blue Team".

The video's description tells more:

Led by the legendary Master Chief, Blue Team boards a derelict Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) research facility to ensure its contents don't fall into the hands of a renegade faction of Covenant zealots.

The video comes less than a month after the developer dropped the game's opening cinematic.

People have cried out for a rerelease/remaster of the 1994 cyberpunk role-playing game System Shock for such a long time, it pretty much seemed like it would never happen.

So it was quite surprising when the game, which is the precursor to 2007's amazing BioShock, appeared on Good Old Games Sept. 22 in a new 'Enhanced' addition.

Not only are both System Shock and System Shock 2 available, but at least the first comes with some tweaks to bridge the last 21 years.

Mashable explains some of the improvements to the game:

The big change is improved support for a range of display resolutions. The original game capped out at 640x480, but Night Dive's remaster brings the max resolution up to 1024x768, with 854x480 now included as an option for those with widescreen monitors.

Other improvements include new mouselook mode — in the long, long ago, look controls in first-person PC games were mapped to the keyboard — usability tweaks for the game's inventory screen and an assortment of bug fixes.

You can get System Shock: Enhanced Edition in a bundle with an unaltered version of the original for $9.99 on Good Old Games, but it's discounted to $7.99 until Sept. 29.

We're getting closer to the Nov. 10 release date of the sequel to 2013's Tomb Raider reboot and this trailer shows off even more of the crazy action that will be there in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Xbox One scored a timed exclusive on the title, so you'll have to play it there or wait a full year for the Playstation 4 holiday release.

Fans of the Dark Souls series can get a chance to play the next game in the series early.

Bandai Namco has launched a website so those wanting to take part in an October beta can sign up for the lottery to take part.

The website's FAQ offers more detailed information about what the beta will contain.

The publisher is calling it a 'stress test' to determine the amount of resources it would take to have a successful launch that handles the high number of simultaneous players.

Testers will get a chance to play the game ahead of release, and in exchange, we have them help us with the assorted evaluation tests that we run. The goal is to have testers help us create a better game by reporting the bugs and errors they discover as they play.

...The test uses in-progress game data in order to discover bugs and errors. As a result, testers should expect to run into bugs as they play, and the game may not be fully playable at all times.

...The Network Stress Test uses a subset of the functionality that'll be available in the final game. Some parts of it may differ from the retail version, however.

You only have to be 18, have a Playstation 4 and be an online member of Playstation Plus to enter the lottery.

If you're chosen, you will receive an email notification about your participation on Oct. 12 or 13.

Register for the Dark Souls 3 beta here.

The game is expected to be released next April in North America.

Legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto himself wrote a Facebook post Sept. 17 to announce that Star Fox Zero would not ship this year.

Even though the goal had long been for a holiday season launch of the anthropomorphic fighter pilot game, more work is needed Miyamoto said.

We have been developing Star Fox Zero for Wii U with the aim of releasing it this year. Although we felt that the development had been progressing well, we now believe that we will need a little more time to work on areas such as the unprecedented discovery that we want players to experience in the game by using two screens, and further polishing the level designs and perfecting the tone of the cut scenes. While we have already reached the stage where it would be technically possible to release the title in time for the year-end holiday season, we want to polish the game a bit more so that players will be able to more smoothly grasp the new style of play that we are proposing.

To the people looking forward to the launch of the game this holiday season, I am very sorry.

Star Fox Zero was playable at E3 and it received widely mixed reactions. Some praised the control scheme, which employs the use of the Wii U game pad to steer the ships and some found the gameplay distracting and awkward.

Miyamoto said they hope to see the game released in the first quarter of 2016. This leaves Yoshi's Wooly World (in America) and Xenoblade Chronicles X as the only first part Wii U games to see a release through the rest of this year.

After years, years, of waiting for Jonathan Blow's follow up to the spectacular puzzle platformer Braid, we finally know when we can get ahold of The Witness.

Unfortunately, it won't be until 2016.

This gorgeous trailer showcases the many nooks and crannies of the mysterious, puzzle-ridden island. Blow gives us a peek at the different types of puzzles without much of a clue as to how they are solved or how they fit together. Really, the thing creates more questions than it answers.

And we'll just have to wait until Jan. 26, 2016 to play it on Playstation 4 and PC.

It's a bit of a good news/bad news situation for Persona 5. On the plus side, this new trailer shows some really gorgeous, intriguing things for the upcoming game. Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait until 2016 to play it.

Polygon points out that Atlus even recently said the game was supposed to come out this year.

Though Atlus was maintaining that Persona 5 would be released in 2015 as recently as E3, it seems it was not to be. In a new trailer released for Tokyo Game Show, the developer has revealed a new release time frame of summer 2016.

The trailer confirms that Persona 5 is still being developed for both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It's not clear if Atlus is still aiming for a worldwide release or if the "summer 2016" launch will be Japan only.

Well, well, well, you naughty dog, you.

During a recent Twitch live stream discussing the Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection, a Naughty Dog designer seemed to let a cat out of the bag when he mentioned the first Last of Us game.

Folks, there has only ever been one Last of Us released or announced or otherwise. This careless reference seems like a plain admission that the fantastic developer is working on a sequel to the incredible 2014 release.

Games Radar broke it down

It was Uncharted series writer Josh Scherr who had a slip of the tongue, talking up his co-worker Eric Baldwin's facial animation work on "all of the Uncharted games and the first The Last of Us."

Baldwin immediately recognized his error and attempted to backpedal, but he couldn't seem to come up with anything else to say. "Uh, did I say 'the first The Last of Us'? The first The Last of Us. Uh, The Last of Us! The first Last of Us."

They were also kind enough to upload a YouTube video of the incident in question. See for yourself:

This reveal doesn't come entirely out of the blue. Nolan North mentioned the unannounced sequel last June.

Secrets are hard to keep when people talk about them a lot.

Are you excited for another Last of Us?

It just seems like suuuuch a long wait until the Nov. 10 release of Fallout 4.

Bethesda must realize this, which is why it introduced the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. educational video series to tray to satisfy our craving for the wasteland RPG. This time, the PIP boys are tackling Perception.

You can watch the first video, covering Strength, here.

Just keep making these videos, Bethesda. We'll keep watching them.

Just four days after the release of Nintendo's really neat looking Super Mario Maker creation game, the Big N has gone ahead and announced that Super Smash Bros. for both the Wii U and 3DS will receive DLC based on the creative platform.

Though they did not announce a price, the video says that it will be available Sept. 30.