Today is something of a bittersweet day for Fallout 4 fans. Bethesda has released the first trailer for the next piece of DLC for the game. Unfortunately, this is also the last piece of DLC that we’ll be getting. It looks like they may have saved the best for last, at least.

Nuka-World is a Disneyland-like theme park dedicated to everyone’s favorite brand of soft drink. Even the mascot Cappy sounds an awful lot like Mickey Mouse. The park has at least 6 unique zones that we know of, which are Kiddie Kingdom, Safari Adventure, Galactic Zone, World of Refreshment, Dry Rock Gulch, and Nuka-Town, USA.

Each zone looks as though it will have a completely unique feel, much the same as any big amusement park. Some have rides, while you’ll find carnival-style games that can be played. After all, who hasn’t wanted to play Skee Ball in Fallout? That’s the feature everyone’s been waiting for.

The trailer also gave us a taste of what enemies we might encounter, including some familiar aliens in Galactic Zone. There will also be a host of new weapons, factions, and more.

We don’t have many details outside of the trailer, so I recommend giving it a watch. The Nuka-World DLC is set to release on August 30th on all platforms.

Publishers have been putting together “Collector’s Editions” of games for many years now. The contents vary depending on the franchise, but tend to include some sort of physical statue or other collectibles, an art book, and cosmetic in-game items. One thing that’s almost always included is the game itself. But apparently Amazon missed the memo on that.

Amazon has teamed up with EA to put together an exclusive Collector’s Edition of Battlefield 1, which curiously does not actually come with the game. Customers aren’t likely to be unaware that they won’t be getting the game, as it’s spelled out in the title of the product, which is “Battlefield 1 Exclusive Collector’s Edition – Does Not Include Game.”

What is so confusing is how you can call the product a “Collector’s Edition” of a game, when there isn’t actually a game included. The reason for doing this is likely so that gamers can purchase the game anywhere, but still be able to get all of the goodies in the so-called “Collector’s Edition” without having to buy the game a second time. Speaking of goodies, here’s what you can expect:

• Collector’s Edition Statue (14″ Tall)
• Exclusive Steel book
• Exclusive cloth poster
• Deck of playing cards
• Messenger pigeon tube with exclusive DLC content
• Exclusive patch
• Premium packaging

So how much does all of this set you back? It’s a whopping $129. That’s pretty typical for a collector’s edition of a game that actually includes the game. Amazon does have a couple of bundles that include the Standard and Deluxe versions of the game. We recommend the best gaming headset under 100 you can find on this site.

These run you $189 and $209 respectively, which doesn’t add up to any sort of savings on the game itself. Click on Go to website to check out the large variety of Android games for you.

I’m all for collector’s bundles, but this is just getting out of hand. The value of the content just isn’t enough to justify the price without the game. I can’t recommend against purchasing something like this enough. If companies start seeing that consumers will pay this sort of outrageous price for bundles that don’t even include the game, then you can bet that they will jump on board with it.

Recently at E3, I was fortunate enough to have some hands on time with Koei’s soon to be released Attack on Titan and find out what the game was all about. I was told that the story covers all of season one of the anime, so those familiar will know exactly what is coming next, but newcomers will also be welcome, which is nice. From the get go, the game uses a cell shaded 3d art style which seems to have become popular in recent years, especially with games based on an anime (One Piece: Pirate Warriors, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure).

In the demo three modes were available to choose from, so I started with the tutorial so I could understand how to move around in the game. At first I was introduced to the basic standard movements such as walking and jumping, but I was really interesting in how I would be using the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. First, I needed to anchor myself to either a tree or a rock wall of some kind with one button, and then activate my gas with another to push me along. In order to keep moving through the trees like in the anime, I need to steadily alternate between the two buttons while also using the joysticks to steer myself along. Once I got the hang of it, I truly felt like I was part of the Survey Corps. The gas doesn’t last forever though, so I need to frequently refill my blades and gas at different stations throughout the map.

Once I mastered the ability to move, I was introduced to the titan battle system. Once I was within range of a titan, I would have to initiate the battle mode by hitting the right bumper on my Xbox One controller. Once engaged, my focus stayed on the titan and I would have to press B to anchor onto the titan. Here are where things got a little tricky. In order to attack the titan, I would have to choose which part of the titan I wanted to attack first, via a visual on the screen, and then use the joystick to find the ideal spot to attack from. This is all while I’m being slowly reeled in to the titan. I could then choose to boost myself towards to titan and give a strong attack or wait to be reeled in naturally for a weaker one. I was given a time limit and sent on my way to kill as many titans as possible. A good introduction to the controls overall.

Due to the limited amount of time I had left, I chose to skip the second mode, which I assume to be a story mode, and chose to try the more enticing Titan mode. Here is where I played as Eren in his titan mode and DESTROYED EVERYTHING. For anyone that enjoys hack and slash games, this mode is for you. The control scheme is fairly basic and doesn’t use too many combos (or maybe that is further in the game) making it easy to pick up and murder everything in existence. The overall goal is to help the members of the Survey Corps by destroyed the titans attacking them, but it was so much fun, I just left a bloody trail in my path to saving my fellow Corpsmates.

I only played a small portion of the actual game, so I can’t imagine how immersive the rest of the game will be upon its release in August. Stay tuned for a full write up once the game is out!

Nothing is worse when you’re on your console and you need to type something into a text box. Suddenly something as simple as typing in your email address turns into a lengthy ordeal. Okay, so maybe it only takes 30 seconds as opposed to 3, but still, it’s an inconvenience. The Xbox 360 had a handy little accessory that sped up the process, by giving you a tiny keyboard attached to your controller. Sadly, Microsoft hasn’t shown much interest in bringing back the Chatpad for the Xbox One.

Naturally, where one company lets us down, another steps up. New Dream Tech has released their own version of the Chatpad, which plugs into the Xbox One controller. Since it’s not a Microsoft product, there are some drawbacks to this. First, you’ll have to plug in a USB adapter into your console. This isn’t a very big deal, as you have three ports available. The biggest downside is that you lose your ability to plug in a headset. To be honest, that’s going to be a deal-breaker for most people.

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On the upside, the keyboard is powered by your controller, so you won’t have to worry about extra batteries or anything. The $21 cost isn’t terrible, but you’re honestly better off just keeping a regular wireless keyboard around, if it means giving up voice chat.

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The days of buying a new game, rushing home, popping it into your console and playing it right away are all but gone. Now we have to install games to the hard drive, in order to keep loading times to a minimum during gameplay. Sure, we all hate staring at the little bar, waiting for it to reach 100% so we can play, but there are plenty of things you can do to pass the time. One of the other downsides to installing games is, of course, the limited hard drive space.

Sony has been the best about giving you options when upgrading your drive. In fact, you can swap out the drive on your PS4 with a shiny new drive any time you like. Unfortunately, you’re limited to a 2.5” drive, which means less storage space, and slower speeds. But that’s about to change.

At CES this week, Nyko unveiled their Data Bank. This new add-on for your PS4 allows you to pop in a 3.5” drive, giving you access to multiple terabytes of data storage. The best part about this add-on gadget is how it connects. It doesn’t simply plug in and sit next to your console, it becomes a part of it. You simply remove the top of the casing on the left side, and pop the Data Bank into place. It locks in there, and draws power from the console directly, without needing to plug in any extra cables. Nyko is looking to release this for around $30-$40 later this year.

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For years, offerings like Netflix and Hulu have paved the way for millions of people to cut the cord and ditch cable and satellite TV. However, there are some things that you just can’t get without a traditional TV service. Yesterday, Dish Network made a bold move by announcing Sling TV, a streaming service that will offer many of the channels people want, with a reasonable price tag. And what’s more, it’s coming to Xbox Live.

For just $20 a month, you’ll be able to turn on your Xbox, and watch channels like ESPN, TNT, TBS, and the Disney Channel. You’ll then be able to add channels, which are organized into different genres, and sold at $10 per package. And unlike the traditional TV services, you won’t be forced to sign up for any lengthy contract. You’ll just need to throw down your $20 a month, and you’re good to go. This is definitely one of the boldest moves in the TV industry since Netflix and Hulu launched.

The service is marked to launch “in the coming weeks.” And the Xbox One will be the first console to receive it. And all Xbox Live members will be treated to a free month of the Sling TV. You’ll just need to sign up for the trial once the service launches. There’s no word on when Sling TV will be hitting other consoles.

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Backwards-compatibility is something that tends to be an issue when it comes to consoles. Sure, most original PlayStation games played just fine on the PS2, but then things got trickier when the PS3 arrived. The first units off the line could play a vast majority of PS1/PS2 titles, but once the hardware emulation was dropped, we lost that functionality. Last year Sony introduced PlayStation Now, a service that let you rent PS3 titles on your shiny new PS4. But today they announced that they’re taking that concept even further.

With the existing PlayStation Now program, you’ll pay a set amount per title, which you can play for a specific period of time. But what if you want the freedom to pick and choose different games to play, and not worry about when it will expire? That’s exactly what the new subscription plan aims to do. For a flat fee of either $19.99 per month, or $44.99 per three months, you’ll have unlimited access to more than 100 (and growing) PS3 titles.

Not sure if you want to drop your cash down for the service? Sony is going so far as to give you a free seven-day trial of the new subscription service once it debuts. The service will be rolling out next week, on January 13th. So what do you think? Is $15/$20 a fair price for Netflix-like access to previous-gen titles?

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As any gamer knows, gone are the days where multiplayer games meant you had to actually sit down with your buddies to play with or compete against them. Since the late ’90s for PC users and the early 2000s for those who prefer consoles, we’ve had the ability to play multiplayer titles with our friends, and complete strangers, over the web. While this has led to an increased focus on multiplayer options on the developer side of things, it’s also brought about a whole new take on the competition aspect of gaming.

Yes, I’m referring to the world of eSports, which has grown so incredibly in the past year alone that it’s nearly impossible to track its every movement. One of the biggest stories was the acquisition of streaming site Twitch by Amazon. According to the Wall St. Journal, it ended up being a $970 million sale, which clearly means huge things for both Amazon and Twitch. And it’s the latter that was actually making waves on the eSports front even before their huge payday. Basically, the platform’s immense and consistent success by way of streaming video of people playing games proved one thing: people really like watching other people play certain video games.

In particular, you’ll find a lot of commotion/press over the games in which people actually compete, such as League of Legends. The game, which is now 5 years old, is perhaps the biggest multiplayer online battle arena title of its kind, and some professional players are making serious cash off their characters and skills. Another big one is the Call of Duty series, thanks in part to the money coming in from gamer Matt Haag. According to CBS, he made nearly $1 million off playing Call of Duty last year alone—by the way, he’s only 22 years old and apparently has a “lucrative contract” with Red Bull. For playing games. Seriously.

What’s perhaps even crazier than Haag’s always-growing bank account is this: Chicago’s Robert Morris University is offering eSports scholarships. Oh, and this fact, too: The U.S.’ State Department is granting athlete visas to professional gamers entering the States to compete in a tournament. In other words, gamers are now being treated as athletes—well, depending on how talented they are, of course.

The thing is, the idea of eSports isn’t necessarily “new” in any way, it’s just getting a lot more mainstream attention. You know, much like video games in general, which are no longer seen as an activity for “geeks” and “nerds” (whatever that means). When it comes to eSports, though, the concept began gaining momentum in the mid 1990s with the creation of the then-Quake-specific convention/competitive event known as QuakeCon.

It’s grown in the years since, but it undoubtedly helped shape eSports as we know. The same can be said for the online gaming boom of the early 2000s. For those unfamiliar, poker most notably rose to fame on the backs of online-playing amateurs who landed spots at real-life tournaments. For years, gaming platform Bet Fair joined forces with tournament sponsors such as the World Series of Poker to allow amateurs to hone their skills and land a spot at the table with the biggest names in the game. Included among those is Chris Moneymaker, who famously won the 2003 WSOP. Practice your poker skills online at https://onlinecasinocanada.guide.

As we move ahead into the New Year, it’ll be intriguing to see exactly where eSports will go—and how far it will go! Some argue that it has the potential to be more popular than actual professional sports, while others have stated that eSports really has no ceiling in terms of potential. We’ll see.

As we come up to the 2 year anniversary since the Kickstarter for Star Citizen ended, it’s pretty easy to see that the company developing the game, Cloud Imperium Games, is still going strong. After all, over 600k people have pumped out over $60 million in funding to help get this game developed! How is it that CIG keeps reaching these milestones when the game is still over a year away from being released?

Quite simply, it’s because CIG is showing everybody just what it is they’re doing every step of the way, from building the different modules that show off the different aspects of the game, to the different ships and other objects and rooms that you’ll be interacting with every day. Over the past weekend CIG went down to Australia to PAX Australia to show off another big aspect of gameplay, the FPS Module. After all, Star Citizen and its companion single player game Squadron 42 aren’t just going to be about ship-to-ship combat: sometimes, you gotta get up close and personal, whether it’s killing the crew of a ship you’re hijacking, or executing a bounty on somebody in a pirate haven.

The FPS demo might look a little wonky, especially in comparison to polished FPS games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, but considering how this game is still a long way away from being finished Illfonic (the studio in charge of the FPS Module) has actually done a good job with it so far. The environment is destructible which can have an effect on everything, from the mundane like blowing up cover and shattering glass, to even destroying the parts of a ship or station that keep things normal such as blowing a hole in the hull, sucking out the air, to destroying the gravity generators that keep your feet planted on the ground. The demo even showed us just some of the different equipment available, from the different styles of guns to things like portable shield generators and grenades. It’s the little things like that that turn an FPS game from something vanilla and boring into something that would keep people coming back. Expect the FPS Module, the next big game mode to be shown during the Star Citizen alpha to make its debut sometime next year, possibly in March.

But, that’s not all that’s been done in Star Citizen recently. Besides working on the FPS Module, CIG has also been continually updating Arena Commander with new patches and ships. With the v.9.2 patch, not only have they fixed some bugs and tweaked some stats on the ships currently in the game, but they’ve also gone ahead and reworked just how the piloting works in the game. Before you had to chase a box in front of the enemy ship you had targeted in order to try and hit it with your guns. While that was easy enough for players using a mouse/keyboard setup, the players using joysticks or a HOTAS setup were finding it a much more difficult proposition. In v.9.2, CIG has changed it so that instead of aiming for that box in front of the enemy ship, instead you have lag pips that show you where your shots would land in relation to the enemy ship if you fired at that moment. Many players (myself included) have lauded these changes, especially as it does take into account gimballed weapons, moving them a little bit in order to have an easier time hitting their mark thanks to assistance from the computer.

But really, what’s probably made CIG the most amount of money this past weekend was the release of 3 new ships into their store. The Drake Herald, n small, asymmetrical information runner type of ship is being sold for a limited time, only until November 10th, as it only exists as a concept at this point and won’t be appearing in the Hangar and Arena Commander for quite some time. So why would people pledge money for this ship? Easy! By pledging for this ship now instead of in the future when it’s made available on a permanent basis, you can get it with Lifetime Insurance (LTI), which means you won’t have to pay for insurance on that ship in the game. While CIG has maintained for some time now that LTI won’t make a big difference in the game, many folks are absolutely insistent on being able to buy ships with LTI, if only for completionist purposes.

The other two ships will be available in the pledge store on a permanent basis and are in fact available to view in the Hangar (though not ready for Arena Commander). Those are the Aegis Gladius (an older dogfighter that was the space superiority fighter of the United Empire of Earth before the more current Hornet) and the Aegis Redeemer (a gunship that’s meant to carry a strike team on operations and to help provide support for said strike team). While the Gladius has been available for purchase in the past, this is the first time that the Redeemer has been featured in the pledge store and thus it will have LTI until November 10th, at which point it’ll just come with the regular 6 month insurance. What makes the Redeemer special, however, is the fact that this is the ship that won CIG’s The Next Great Starship competition and won the fan vote for inclusion into the game. It was made by fans for fans, and it really does look nice (even if I think the hair straighteners that house the engines look a little silly).

So what’s next for CIG this month? Well, I’d expect to see more updates for Arena Commander, perhaps even a new ship or two available to play in the game, and with the 2 year anniversary coming up you can bet that there will be some limited time only ship sales. Just remember folks, while you can pledge for ships right now, it’s all for funding for the game and every ship will be available to purchase in the game with credits you can earn in-game. You can pledge for the base $30 package that comes with a starter ship and a copy of the game, and that’s all you need to play Star Citizen and make your way in the verse.

If you know me, then you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of Chris Robert’s Star Citizen. Part of that has to do with the fact that I feel that there isn’t nearly enough large-scale space games, games that let you either be a combat pilot looking to take out your enemies in a rain of gunfire, or that let you ply the trade lanes taking materials to a desolate backwater planet. But what really makes Star Citizen, and Cloud Imperium Games in particular stand out is how it’s being made: they’ve raised over $56 million in crowdfunding, and because of that CIG is dedicated to showing its backers, and indeed the world just what goes on behind the scenes of making a game.

Normally that comes out in the form of little posts showing off some lore, or maybe a new ship and mechanic here and there, but tonight is going to be a veritable waterfall by comparison. For you see, this is the 2 year anniversary of the announcement of Star Citizen, and CIG is really going all out with CitizenCon, an event that’ll showcase just exactly what it is they’ve been doing over the last year. We don’t know exactly what it is we’ll be seeing, but I can guess we’ll be seeing some new ships being shown off, including variants on the “pirate” ship of the game, the Cutlass, in a new in-universe”commercial”. I’m guessing we’ll see some updates on the FPS module perhaps, but I’ve also heard some rumors that we can see a little bit of light shed on arguably the biggest part of the game, the Persistent Universe. After all, everyone in the game will have an effect on it, and getting it programmed right is going to be a monumental effort all on its own.

The Livestream of CitizenCon 2014 will begin in roughly 3 hours, at 9 PM EST. If you want to check it out, you can go here! We’ll also likely be hearing more about what’s going on in the latest patch to Arena Commander, the ship-combat-simulator-within-the-game. It’s going to be a very exciting night!