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Monday, 2 July 2018

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Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 2018 Winners Announced

E3 2018 is almost a distant memory as most gamers dig into their backlogs or add to them with the Steam Summer Sale 2018. Geoff Keighley and his band of game critics have cast all of their votes and we are happy to share the Best of E3 2018 winners with you today. Thanks again to to the Game Critics Awards for inviting Shacknews to become an official judge this year. 

Before you get all hot and bothered over Cyberpunk 2077 not being given all of the awards, please understand that there are rules. 

To be eligible for nomination, games must be "hands-on playable" to voting publications for at least 5 minutes of gameplay during E3 2018. 

Due to this rule, the following games were disqualified: Battletoads (Xbox); Beyond Good and Evil 2 (Ubisoft); Control (505 Games); Crackdown 3 (Microsoft); Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red); Daemon x Machina (Nintendo); Death Stranding (PlayStation); Devil May Cry 5 (Capcom); DOOM Eternal (Bethesda); Dying Light 2 (Techland); Fallout 76 (Bethesda); Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Nintendo); Gears 5 (Xbox); Gears POP! (Xbox); Gears Tactics (Xbox); Ghost of Tsushima (PlayStation); Halo Infinite (Xbox); Just Cause 4 (Square Enix); Madden NFL 19 (EA); NBA Live 19 (EA); Nioh 2 (PlayStation); Super Mario Party (Nintendo); Stormland (Insomniac Games); The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (Square Enix); The Last of Us Part II (PlayStation); Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Bethesda).

These games are still eligible for Special Commendations. Without further ado, here are the winners of the Game Critics Awards Best of E3 2018.

Best of Show

Resident Evil 2

(Capcom for PC, PS4, Xbox One)

Best Original Game

Dreams

(Media Molecule/SIE for PlayStation 4)

Best Console Game

Marvel’s Spider-Man

(Insomniac Games/SIE for PlayStation 4)

Best VR/AR Game

Tetris Effect

(Resonair/Enhance Inc for PSVR)

Best PC Game

Anthem

(BioWare/EA for PC, PS4, Xbox One)

Best Hardware/Peripheral

Xbox Adaptive Controller

(Microsoft)

Best Action Game

Anthem

(BioWare/EA for PC, PS4, Xbox One)

Best Action/Adventure

Marvel’s Spider-Man

(Insomniac Games/SIE for PlayStation 4)

Best RPG

Kingdom Hearts III

(Square Enix for PS4, Xbox One)

Best Fighting Game

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

(Bandai Namco Studios/Sorta Ltd./Nintendo for Switch)

Best Racing Game

Forza Horizon 4

(Playground Games/Turn 10/Microsoft Studios for PC, Xbox One)

Best Sports Game

FIFA 19

(EA Vancouver/EA for PS4, Xbox One)

Best Strategy Game

Total War: Three Kingdoms

(Creative Assembly/Sega for PC)

Best Family/Social Game

Overcooked 2

(Ghost Town Games/Team 17 for PS4, Switch, Xbox One)

Best Online Multiplayer

Battlefield V

(EA DICE/EA for PC, PS4, Xbox One)

Best Independent Game

Ori and the Will of Wisps

(Moon Studios/Microsoft for PC, Xbox One)

Best Ongoing Game

Fortnite

(Epic for iOS, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One)

Special Commendations for Graphics

  • Cyberpunk 2077 (CD PROJEKT RED for PC, PS4, Xbox One)
  • The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog/SIE for PlayStation 4)
  • Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch/SIE for PlayStation 4)

Special Commendation for Sound

The Last of Us Part II

(Naughty Dog/SIE for PlayStation 4)

Special Commendation for Innovation

Cyberpunk 2077

(CD PROJEKT RED for PC, PS4, Xbox One)

In case you are wondering who these judges are, here is a list of the outlets who have come together in true Voltron form to become the Game Critics.

Judges

The following global media and influencer outlets submitted ballots for The Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 2018.

NORTH AMERICA:

  • ArsTechnica
  • CGMagazine
  • Easy Allies
  • Electric Playground
  • Entertainment Weekly
  • Forbes
  • Game Informer
  • GameSpot
  • Gannett
  • Giant Bomb
  • Hollywood Reporter
  • IGN
  • Kinda Funny
  • LA Times
  • Mashable
  • Newsweek
  • PC Gamer
  • Polygon
  • Shacknews
  • The Verge
  • US Gamer
  • Variety
  • VentureBeat
  • Waypoint
  • WIRED

INTERNATIONAL:

  • Atomix (Mexico)
  • AusGamers  (Australia)
  • Cultura Geek (Argentina)
  • EDGE (UK)
  • EuroGamer (UK)
  • Everyeye.it (Italy) 
  • Famitsu (Japan)
  • GamePro (Germany)
  • GameReactor  (Nordic)
  • Gamesky (China)
  • GamesRadar (UK)
  • GameStar (Germany)
  • Hobbyconsolas (Spain)
  • Igromania (Russia)
  • Jeux Video Magazine (France)
  • Level Up (Mexico)
  • Malditos Nerds (Argentina)
  • Meristation (Spain)
  • Multiplayer.It (Italy)
  • PC Games N (UK)
  • Press Start (Australia)
  • Saudi Gamer (Middle East)
  • Stevivor (Australia)
  • Tec.Com.Pe (Peru)
  • The Enemy (Brazil)
  • True Gaming (Middle East)
  • Valdal.net (Spain)
  • Voxel (Brazil)

Congratulations to all the winners and be sure to catch up on all of our E3 2018 coverage that you may have missed.



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Rune: Ragnarok Interview: Eating Lizards Is Good For Your Health

Nearly twenty years since the release of Rune, the development team at Human Head Studios is planning to unleash its spiritual successor in the form of Rune: Ragnarok. The game tasks players with preventing Ragnarok, also known as the end of the world in Norse mythology. We got a chance to speak with Chris Reinhart, Project Director at Human Head Studios, about how the game is shaping up and what player can expect from this sandbox-style take on the battles between the Norse gods.

Players who jump into Rune: Ragnarok will eventually have to work their way to Loki and kill him. Reinhart explains that the online-enabled experience allows for solo or multiplayer quests. Player may also choose to travel the seas with a group of their friends.

Most interactions in the game revolve around combat. Reinhart goes over the basic combat mechanics and weapons available to the player. He explained that the team intends for players to specialize in the use of a specific weapon in their playthroughs and assortment of armor and helmets are included, even some they may not be historically accurate.

We first heard of Rune: Ragnarok back in January when the development team released a teaser trailer. The game is currently in closed testing, but is expected to debut on Steam Early Access some time later this year. For more great videos including convention coverage and developer interviews, be sure to check out Shacknews and GamerHub.tv over on YouTube.



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The Android P Beta 3 is here for Pixel devices

If you own a Google Pixel device and are enrolled in the Android P beta program, you can look forward to getting an update to Android P beta 3 at some point today if you haven’t already.

As of now, the Android P beta 3 is only available for Pixel devices, but the other devices that Google announced as part of the Android P beta program at Google I/O 2018 should get the update “over the coming weeks,” according to Google’s blog on the matter. Those devices include the OnePlus 6, the Sony Xperia XZ2, the Essential Phone, and more.

The beta 3 (otherwise known as Android developer’s preview 4) is the second-to-last beta that Google has scheduled for Android P. Up next will be Android P beta 4 (or Android developer’s preview 5) and after that, we should be at the final version of the operating system. Obviously, the plan could change at any moment for any number of reasons, but things have been on track as expected so far.

Editor's Pick

Android P update tracker: Here are all the phones that run Android P

The next major version of Android, Android 9.0, is slated to arrive sometime in Q3 2018. Before that, you can actually test out a beta build of the software if you have a compatible smartphone. Below, …

According to Google’s blog post, the new Android P beta 3 includes “the latest bug fixes and optimizations for stability and polish, together with the July 2018 security updates.” Other than that, there doesn’t appear to much new stuff to this update. Since we’re getting so close to the final version of the update, it’s not likely that we’ll see too many new features or extensive upgrades from now on.

You can sign up to participate in the beta program here, or you can manually flash the beta 3 update on your Pixel device by going here.

NEXT: Android P update tracker: Here are all the phones that run Android P



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Resident Evil 2's Remake And Anthem Lead Game Critic Award Winners

Another E3 has passed us by and with it, here comes the final capping of that event with the Game Critic awards. This was a pretty competitive year when you think of all the titles that were on display and in attendees' hands, but still, some games definitely stood out from the pack. It's worth noting that the games had to be playable at E3 for the judges to be considered for all categories except the Special Commendation categories, which included non-playable games and trailers.

Here are the big winners for 2018.

Best of Show
Resident Evil 2
(Capcom for PC, PS4, Xbox One)
 
Best Original Game
Dreams
(Media Molecule/SIE for PlayStation 4)
 
Best Console
Marvel’s Spider-Man
(Insomniac Games/SIE for PlayStation 4)
 
Best VR/AR Game
Tetris Effect
(Resonair/Enhance Inc for PSVR)
 
Best PC Game
Anthem
(BioWare/EA for PC, PS4, Xbox One)
 
Best Hardware/Peripheral
Xbox Adaptive Controller
(Microsoft)
 
Best Action Game
Anthem
(BioWare/EA for PC, PS4, Xbox One)
 
Best Action/Adventure
Marvel’s Spider-Man
(Insomniac Games/SIE for PlayStation 4)
 
Best RPG
Kingdom Hearts III
(Square Enix for PS4, Xbox One)
 
Best Fighting Game
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
(Bandai Namco Studios/Sorta Ltd./Nintendo for Switch)
 
Best Racing Game
Forza Horizon 4
(Playground Games/Turn 10/Microsoft Studios for PC, Xbox One)
 
Best Sports Game
FIFA 19
(EA Vancouver/EA for PS4, Xbox One)
 
Best Strategy Game
Total War: Three Kingdoms
(Creative Assembly/Sega for PC)
 
Best Family/Social Game
Overcooked 2
(Ghost Town Games/Team 17 for PS4, Switch, Xbox One)
 
Best Online Multiplayer
Battlefield V
(EA DICE/EA for PC, PS4, Xbox One)
 
Best Independent Game
Ori and the Will of Wisps
(Moon Studios/Microsoft for PC, Xbox One)
 
Best Ongoing Game
Fortnite
(Epic for iOS, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One)
 
Special Commendations for Graphics
Cyberpunk 2077
(CD PROJEKT RED for PC, PS4, Xbox One)
 
The Last of Us Part II
(Naughty Dog/SIE for PlayStation 4)
 
Ghost of Tsushima
(Sucker Punch/SIE for PlayStation 4)
 
Special Commendation for Sound
The Last of Us Part II
(Naughty Dog/SIE for PlayStation 4)
 
Special Commendation for Innovation
Cyberpunk 2077
(CD PROJEKT RED for PC, PS4, Xbox One)

For more on Resident Evil 2's remake, be sure to check out what we thought of our playthrough of the E3 demo here.

Really interesting to see a remake of a game from 1998 win Best in Show. Our Best In Show pick was Spider-Man but we're excited to play this new version of Resident Evil 2 as well.


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Fortnite Playground LTM Testing 'Promising', Still No Release Date

Epic and the Fortnite developers have provided a new update for the indefinitely delayed Playground limited time mode. Ongoing scale-testing has unveiled three specific things the team still needs to address:

  • Exhausting server capacity
  • Matchmaking queue back-pressure specific to the LTM
  • Recovering when new capacity is added

The team has continued to operate with a high degree of transparency and one of the developers shared this message, which detailed just why Playground has been difficult for the team to implement:

Wanted to follow up a bit on the explanation of why Playgrounds is proving so tough. For those that want a rough idea of the technical challenge and why it came down, you can see that here.

The long and short of it is that we were successful in spinning off Playgrounds to its own Matchmaking cluster, so we've isolated any potential impacts from the primary game modes. That being said, it's just not fast enough yet to provide a reasonable throughput to get players in-match. To reiterate the challenge, we're trying to get Matchmaker to function up to 100 times faster than it needs to for the base modes. All of our teams have been working incredibly hard for the last few days and made some amazing breakthroughs, but we're still running into significant back-pressure problems well before the point that we can flush any reasonable number of people into the mode, and then the gates get shut. Matchmaker tries its best, but eventually ends up like Lucy at the candy factory.

We want the Playground to be open for everyone to run around, build amazing structures, and practice their skills. The team will keep chugging around the clock and into the weekend, and we will make this thing work as soon as we can.

We know we let you down, and we see now that our pre-launch tests just weren't sufficient to properly represent the power of human behavior and natural networking conditions. We've cranked the tests to "hard mode" to make sure we get it right, and at the end of this we're going to have a big bad Matchmaking machine. We're already starting preparations on a detailed public postmortem to let everyone peer behind the curtain and into the challenges, mistakes, and breakthroughs we're experiencing as we tackle this issue.

These things were shared on an official Reddit post from the team and another update is due later today if all goes well. The free-roam playground was initially announced for update 4.5, but server issues forced the devs to pull it down. Once the current test phase is complete, the team should provide a more detailed status update. Hopefully, that will include a release window for the new mode. Stay tuned to Shacknews for more information.



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When Will Fortnite Mobile Release on Android?

Fortnite has taken the world by storm, though thankfully not the kind of storm found in the Save the World campaign, and now that it’s on iPhone, gamers want to know when will Fortnite Mobile release on Android? It's a valid question considering Fortnite has been available on iOS device, as well as Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, for months now.

Fortnite Mobile Android Release Date

Thankfully, we won’t be waiting too long to be playing Fortnite Mobile on our Android devices, at least according to the official word over at Epic Games. As part of their State of Mobile update in mid-May, the team behind Fortnite revealed that Fortnite would be coming to Android mobile devices in summer of 2018.

Fortnite is coming to Android!

We are targeting this summer for the release. We know many of you are excited for this release, and we promise that when we have more information to share, you’ll hear it from us first.

So while there's no concrete date to work off, we do have a reasonable time frame of when to expect an Android version of the most popular game on Earth. Epic Games has been incredibly consistent with their updates, and manage to deliver them in a timely fashion, so those gamers with no means of jumping in on the fun should feel confident in the developer's ability to get it done!

It’s currently summer in North America, so we’re all waiting with baited breath to hear more from Epic Games about a solid release date so that Android players can get in on the fun. For now though, we’ll have to content with watching the Fortnite rocket launch and planning out how we’d approach the Fortnite Playground LTM that is due out any day now.



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Insomniac Games Art Director Teases Venom is 'Too Big' for Spider-Man's PS4 Debut

Looking forward to playing the new Spider-Man title on PlayStation 4? It's coming later this year, with plenty of Spidey goodness to go around. But there's one particular character we just don't know if we're going to see in-game just yet. While we've seen evidence of things like Stark Tower, and possibly the Avengers referenced, we're just not sure yet if we'll actually see Venom in Spidey's territory. While it would certainly be cool, nothing has been confirmed.

So it was interesting to see Insomniac Games' art director Jacinda Chew respond to a fan asking "how big Venom is" in-game with the quip "Too big to fit into #SpiderManPS4." It's not clear at this time if she's trying to tell us that Venom just won't be in the game, or if she's being cheeky. Could she be giving us a cryptic message about his availability, or is this a joke? Either way, hopefully it doesn't end up meaning that we won't see the character in the game.

The film doesn't exactly look promising, so a video game Venom is something we definitely deserve. Hopefully this doesn't spell doom for Venom's appearance in the game. We'll keep an eye out for any further comments on the matter, especially since Insomniac and Sony have been playing coy about the entire thing.



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