biteho.com

After a series of delays–most recently alongside The Last of Us Part 2–PlayStation’s Iron Man VR finally has a new release date. The PSVR exclusive will now launch on July 3, and if you want to be ready for its release, you can pre-order Iron Man VR now from a number of different retailers. There’s also a pre-order bonus for securing your copy early and a digital special edition if you’re looking to snag some extra content.

As its name suggests, Iron Man VR follows the Armored Avenger on a brand-new adventure. In this story, Tony Stark has retired from making weapons and now uses his tech to fight evil as Iron Man. Several years later, he’s attacked by a villain known as Ghost, a hacker and anti-corporate activist who is now repurposing old Stark Industries weapons to attack his corporate locations around the globe. Aside from flying through the sky and facing off against Iron Man’s foes in high-stakes battles, you’ll also be able to upgrade Tony’s tech and customize Iron Man’s armor and abilities.

Iron Man VR is a PlayStation VR-exclusive, so you won’t be able to play it on the Oculus Quest or any PC VR headset. And since you’ll be playing as Tony Stark inside the Iron Man suit, you’ll be moving your hands around shooting down enemies. That means you’ll need the Move controllers as well as a PS4 and PlayStation VR headset.

With the different versions and overall difficulty of finding PlayStation VR in stock, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about pre-ordering Iron Man VR before the Marvel hero comes to PS4 this July.

Iron Man VR pre-order bonuses

If you pre-order Iron Man VR before its July 3 release date, then you’ll get yourself an Iron Man PS4 theme and four different custom armor decos. These armor decos swap the color of Iron Man’s suit. The four pre-order bonus skins are Iron Man’s Origin Armor, Vintage Armor, Silver Centurion Armor, and Ultraviolet Armor.

---

Pre-order Iron Man VR Standard edition | $40

Iron Man VR’s standard edition is available to pre-order both physically and digitally for $40 and comes with all pre-order bonuses if purchased before its release date.

---

Pre-order Iron Man VR Digital Deluxe edition | $50

Iron Man VR’s special edition is its Deluxe Edition, which is available to pre-order for $50. Unfortunately, there is no physical Deluxe Edition, so if you want the Deluxe Edition’s unique content, then you’ll have to buy Iron Man VR digitally on the PlayStation Store. However, the game hasn’t reappeared on the PlayStation Store since its new release date was announced, but we expect to see it on PSN soon–we’ll update this article with links when available. The Digital Deluxe Edition comes with the base game, 12 research points, a digital soundtrack, PS4 theme, and four Deluxe armor decos. These special armor skins are the Golden Avenger, Black Centurion, Sun Stinger, and Stealth variations of Iron Man’s suit.

---

PlayStation VR headset

The PlayStation VR headset can be difficult to find these days, as stock has sold out at many retailers and third-party sellers have hiked up their prices due to demand. Thankfully, there are still some options if you want to snag one at a good price. Best Buy has the PlayStation VR Blood & Truth and Everybody’s Golf bundle for $350, which comes with everything you need for Iron Man VR. If you’d like to save some money, however, GameStop sells refurbished PlayStation VR headsets for $150, though you will need to pick up a pair of Move controllers separately. If you specifically want a PlayStation VR headset to play Iron Man VR, we suggest going with the bundle, as it’s unclear if you’ll be able to purchase the Move controllers by the time Iron Man VR releases.

---

PlayStation Move motion controllers

Two PlayStation Move controllers are required for Iron Man VR. Unfortunately, if you own a PlayStation VR headset and don’t own the controllers, you might have a hard time finding any of the Move wands in stock anywhere. With a list price of $100 for a two-pack, the Move motion controllers are sold out at many retailers, and it’s unclear whether they’ll be restocked by the time Iron Man VR releases. That said, there are some pre-owned controllers and a slightly higher than MSRP option available.

Apex Legends Season 5 has begun, adding new playable character Loba and the Fortune’s Favor battle pass. There are quite a few notable changes in Season 5–detailed in the Fortune’s Favor patch notes–including a brand-new mode, Quests, which adds story-based PvE missions to Respawn’s battle royale game. However, to participate in the nine Hunts that make up this seasons’ questline, The Broken Ghost, you’ll need treasure packs.

Treasure packs are not found in Quests–you’ll need to drop into matches in Apex Legends’ PvP modes. It doesn’t matter which one. Trios, Duos, and Ranked will all work. You can play as any character as well, though both Loba and Bloodhound can make the process a little bit easier. We’ll explain why in a bit.

Treasure packs can be randomly discovered in supply bins. Occasionally, opening a supply bin will spit out a treasure pack. Walk over the pack to pick it up. Don’t worry, treasure packs do not count towards your in-match inventory. Upon completion of the match, regardless if you win or lose, your treasure pack will be added to your in-game inventory.

So far, supply bins are the only way to acquire treasure packs. They don’t seem to drop in care packages, appear on the ground, or pop out of flyer-held deathboxes.

This is why Loba and Bloodhound can make the process of finding treasure packs a little bit easier. Both legends possess passive abilities that make it easier for them to tell when a location has seen enemy activity and been looted. If a place has been looted, chances are the enemy squads have already opened all the supply bins and made off with the treasure packs found in that area. So both legends can inform you where not to look during a match.

Season 5’s The Broken Ghost is composed of nine Hunts and each requires you to have five treasure packs in order to access them and acquire their rewards–so you’ll need 45 in total. Here’s the rub: you can’t spend a day grinding for treasure packs. You can only pick up one treasure pack per day. Each Hunt unlocks on a weekly basis, though, so you have enough time to find five treasure packs each week.

If you want to stock up, you can use your two extra days each week to look for treasure packs. Finding a treasure pack every day for 45 days straight means you won’t have to find any more during the weeks for Hunts 7-9. That said, the current drop rate for treasure packs seems to be relatively high, so you don’t have to worry about grinding. Among the GameSpot staff, we have generally discovered a treasure pack by a third match for the day.

If you happen to fall behind in acquiring treasure packs, there is another way to unlock them, but it’ll cost you. You can buy individual treasure packs in Apex Legends’ in-game store for 25 Apex Coins ($0.25 USD) each. However, you can only buy packs retroactively, not proactively. For example, when Hunt 1 launches on May 19, you’ll only be able to buy up to seven packs. Because that’s the eighth day of Season 5, the game assumes you still have time to drop into a game and find your eighth treasure pack.

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

Following the reveal of a new story trailer for the highly-anticipated The Last of Us 2 on Tuesday, developer Naughty Dog has released an “Inside the Story” video giving new details about the game’s narrative. In it, creative director Neil Druckmann reiterates the game’s focus on cycle of violence and “acts begetting other acts” as central themes, as well as responding to fans who question why the first game needed a sequel in the first place.

“I’ve heard a lot of people say, ‘Why make a sequel to The Last of Us?’ I didn’t even hear the full pitch of the game, just the outline of what [Druckmann] was wanting to do with this game, and I realized, ‘Oh, this is something we have to make. There’s absolutely more to do here,'” says Anthony Newman, a co-game director on The Last of Us 2.

The video outlines the foundation of the game’s story, as revealed by previous trailers and pre-release footage: several years after the events of the first game, Ellie and Joel have settled in a village nestled in the mountains, and they both live relatively happy lives as part of a community. However, when a violent event shatters their town’s fragile peace, Ellie sets out on a journey to Seattle to hunt down those who have wronged her.

The Last of Us 2 is one of the biggest games of the year, and it will release on June 19. The game’s initial release date was slated for May 29, but it was delayed due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. Some details of the game’s plot were leaked on social media back in late April, which led Naughty Dog to deliver a statement that “the final experience will be worth it.” More recently, the studio clarified that the game won’t force you to murder any dogs on your quest to beating the game, as well as revealing that it will require quite a bit of hard drive space.

PlayStation has announced a new The Last of Us Part 2 video series, and the first episode is available now.

With a little less than a month to go until The Last of Us Part 2 is out in the wild, PlayStation announced this new series in a blog post today, on May 13, with plans for a new episode to be released every Wednesday for the next three weeks. This series will cover different aspects of the game including its story, gameplay and more.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/13/the-last-of-us-part-ii-inside-the-story-video”]

“The Last of Us Part II is by far the largest and most ambitious game we’ve ever made and there will be so much for you to dig into when it arrives on June 19th,” Naughty Dog Senior Communications Manager Scott Lowe said in the blog post. “Leading up to the launch, we’re releasing a brand new series of videos breaking down key aspects of the game.”

Lowe said each video will feature interviews with members of the Naughty Dog team to discuss design, technology, and many of the ideas that helped shape the game over its six-year long period of development. The first episode, which is available now, is titled “Inside the Story” and dives into the core themes being explored in the story including a look at Ellie and Joel’s life in Jackson County, Wyoming.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-last-of-us-part-2-new-screenshots&captions=true”]

Each episode will be spoiler-free (although the video’s comments and replies on social media are sure to be filled with spoilers so be cautious wading into those), according to Lowe. The first episode dropped dropped today, May 13, and the next episode, “Inside the Gameplay”, will drop on May 20. The third episode, “Inside the Details”, will be released on May 27 and the final episode of the series, “Inside the World”, will be released on June 3.

The Last of Us Part 2 will release 16 days later on Friday, June 19. Read about how the game went gold last week and then read about how hackers exploited an older Naughty Dog game to leak The Last of Us Part 2 details.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Today, Epic Games revealed its next-gen game engine, Unreal Engine 5. To showcase the power of its new engine, Epic revealed a brand new, fully playable tech demo that’s running on the PlayStation 5 in real-time.

IGN asked what advancements are in the PS5 that allows for Unreal Engine 5 to function at this high of a level on the console. Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney explained that it was the system storage advancements Sony hardware architect Mark Cerny revealed earlier this year that makes the next-gen Sony console a powerhouse.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/13/ps5-unreal-engine-5-tech-demo”]

“I think, first of all, Sony has a massive, massive increase in graphics performance compared to previous generations. But you know, I guess we get that every generation?” Sweeney joked. “But Sony’s made another breakthrough that in many ways is more fundamental, which is a multi-order magnitude increase in storage bandwidth and reduction in storage latency.”

As revealed back in March – in a digital deep dive on the PS5 hosted by Sony architect Mark Cerny – Sony revealed its custom solid-state drive that targets at least 5GB per second in terms of bandwidth. That’s compared to the 50-100 MB/s capable on the current PS4 hard drives.

“[The PS5] puts a vast amount of flash memory very, very close to the processor,” says Sweeney. “So much that it really fundamentally changes the trade-offs that games can make and stream in. And that’s absolutely critical to this kind of demo,” Sweeney explained.

“This is not just a whole lot of polygons and memory. It’s also a lot of polygons being loaded every frame as you walk around through the environment and this sort of detail you don’t see in the world would absolutely not be possible at any scale without these breakthroughs that Sony’s made.”

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=unreal-engine-5-playstation-5-tech-demo&captions=true”]

Sweeney says that Sony’s storage architecture is far ahead of “the best SSD solution you can buy on PC today. And so it’s really exciting to be seeing the console market push forward the high-end PC market in this way.”

While Epic wouldn’t comment on any potential performance differences between the PS5 and Xbox Series X, Sweeney confirmed that the features shown today, like real-time global illumination and virtualized geometry, are “going to work on all the next-generation consoles.”

For more, check out IGN’s comparison of the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Epic Games unveiled the Unreal Engine 5 today and showcased it with a real-time PlayStation 5 tech demo called Lumen in the Land of Nanite. While the tech demo is not a real game in development, it is fully playable, Epic confirmed.

IGN asked Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney if the Lumen demo, which is running in real-time on a PlayStation 5 development kit, was real. Libreri said that it is not a real game, but Sweeney interjected with a surprising twist.

“It is playing 100% in real-time on the [PlayStation 5] and you do have full control over the character,” Sweeney says after Libreri said the demo was not a real game. It turns out that just means the demo is not a real game in development with plans for release. The demo itself does function.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/13/ps5-unreal-engine-5-tech-demo”]

“It’s totally playable,” Libreri confirmed. “In fact, if GDC happened we would have let people play through the thing.”

So there you have it, while Epic did not create a whole new game for the PlayStation 5, they did build a working, playable demo running off a PlayStation 5 dev kit. Earlier in the interview, Libreri even told IGN, “I think a lot of people [will ask], ‘Oh is [the demo] real?’ But you know that demo was grabbed from the back of a PlayStation 5 development kit. An HDMI cable went into a disc recorder and played out real-time — no editing, no tricks, that’s what comes off the box.”

So while you won’t be able to play Lumens in the Land of Nanite when the PS5 is released, you have a handle of what games look like as they run and play on the next-gen PS5 console.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=unreal-engine-5-playstation-5-tech-demo&captions=true”]

Tim Sweeney isn’t just interested in the visual fidelity the engine offers either, pointing to how Unreal Engine 5 – in conjunction with next-gen hardware – should allow for brand new kinds of games to emerge. Pointing to how Battle Royale games could only have emerged with current-gen processing and networking power, he explains how this could lead to another step into the unknown:

“The technologies that we’re showing today [are] going to enable entirely new types of games that we can’t even envision yet. And that’s the exciting part. We can’t even imagine yet what this is going to enable the industry to do.”

Check out IGN’s full coverage of the Unreal Engine 5 reveal and Tim Sweeney’s comments on the breakthroughs of the PS5.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Today, Epic Games revealed the first look at Unreal Engine 5, its next-generation game engine designed with features meant to make game worlds more detailed and dynamic. To show off the power of its new game engine, Epic released a real-time tech demo called, “Lumen in the Land of Nanite” which runs live on the PlayStation 5.

Lumen in the Land of Nanite is a fully playable title made up of Unreal Engine 5’s two new tools: Lumens, a dynamic global illumination tool, and Nanite, a virtualized geometry that lets artists import film-quality art and assets into Unreal Engine.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/13/ps5-unreal-engine-5-tech-demo”]

The demo shows a woman venturing into a rocky cavern and discovering a hidden temple. The demo makes a particular point to highlight how light and objects react dynamically, and the demo ends with a thrilling flight through a crumbling canyon. All of the assets and visuals in the demo are reacting in real-time, meaning the PlayStation 5 is processing the demo as it happens.

“I think a lot of people [will ask], ‘Oh is [the demo] real?’ But you know that demo was grabbed from the back of a PlayStation 5 development kit,” says Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri in an interview with IGN. “An HDMI cable went into a disc recorder and played out real-time — no editing, no tricks, that’s what comes off the box.” Incidentally, Sweeney made clear that the SSD in that devkit is “far ahead” of current high-end PCs.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=unreal-engine-5-playstation-5-tech-demo&captions=true”]

Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney explained Unreal Engine 5 is meant “to do things that are absolutely not possible today.” This means offering new levels of photorealism and visuality but also offer these tools in a way that increases the productivity and efficiency of game developers. “Lumen [and Nanite]… are not just order-of-magnitude leaps in visual quality but they’re also greatly simplifying technologies for the artists who build content,” says Sweeney.

The goal, according to Kim Libreri, is to make game worlds as immersive and realistic as modern movies, but where that goal differs from previous game generations is how interactive that realism is.

While games this generation and older are detailed and realistic, they’re also static. The Lumens and Nanite demo showcase multiple instances where changes in the environment happen in real-time, and Unreal Engine 5 is capable of rendering these changes immediately. When rocks crumble, it’s not a pre-rendered cutscene but a high-resolution rock asset moving in real-time based on the player’s actions. When a light source changes, it’s not multiple tricks to simulate a flashing light, but real-time processing power at work.

“If you notice, most video games today are pretty static environments. You know, things don’t change, there’s not a lot of cause and effect. You’re lucky if you can change the state of a game and come back and it’s actually changed. [Unreal Engine 5] allows everything to be dynamic.”

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=%E2%80%9CAn%20HDMI%20cable%20went%20into%20a%20disc%20recorder%20and%20played%20out%20real-time%20%E2%80%94%20no%20editing%2C%20no%20tricks%2C%20that%E2%80%99s%20what%20comes%20off%20the%20box.%E2%80%9D”]Epic is quick to point out the quality of the assets used for the demo, which they say are film-quality assets as opposed to the ones typically used for video games. While movie-level visuals are often higher-quality, video game assets are lower-resolution and are buoyed by development tricks to make them seem more realistic.

“The interesting thing is a lot of times artists are having to make those super high-poly models anyways, they just have to take an extra step and build the low-poly model, put a lot of time and care into that and then bake all the high-quality details into a normal map,” says Epic Games VP of engineering Nick Penwarden. “ Now they don’t have to do the extra work of building that optimized low-poly asset and they get higher quality visuals.”

What’s more, Epic says that the level of quality seen in the demo is going to be easier to replicate, especially from smaller developers who previously didn’t have the scale or time to render games at this level. Assets at this kind of level and quality will be available on the Unreal store for other developers to easily use.

“It’s really easy. You go to the Quixel asset store, download the rocks and the mountains, and the assets you want, and you just place them in there,” says Libreri. “It’s actually massively lowering the barrier of entry of how complex it is to make a game level.”

Epic Games also announced that it’s waiving royalties on the first $1 million in game revenue starting today, meaning developers using Unreal Engine will keep more of their profits. Epic Online Services is also available to make cross-platform play easier.

Fortnite will be released on next-gen consoles at launch and will be migrated to Unreal Engine 5 in mid-2021. Sweeney says Fortnite will likely be the first game running on Unreal Engine 5, but there are plenty of next-gen games currently in development using Unreal Engine 4 and even some first-party games will use Unreal Engine, though Sweeney did not specify whether it’s Unreal Engine 4 or 5.

Unreal Engine 5 will be available in preview early 2021, with a full release scheduled for later that year, and will support current- and next-gen consoles, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.