Konami has launched a free-to-play version of PES 2019.
PES 2019 Lite is now available to download for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC via Steam.
It includes modes such as offline exhibition matches and skill training, alongside the PES League Mode, which itself includes 1v1 or co-op competitions. You can also use PES League mode to qualify for global events via the 3v3 co-op Online Championship time-limited tournaments.
We have an odd relationship with gambling in the UK. You'd be hard-pressed to find a high street or city centre that doesn't have at least a couple of bookmakers' shops mixed into it, offering bets on everything from horse racing and football to whether or not Kate Winslet will cry if she wins an Oscar (yes that was a real thing). But how does esports fit in?
According to a recent study by the UK's Gambling Commission, the percentage of British adults who have at some point in their lives placed a bet on esports is 8.5 per cent, with three per cent having placed those bets in the month the study was conducted. That's a surprising statistic for a sport many consider to be still quite niche. And it makes sense most of those bets will be online, given the nature of esports and the audience for it. But it also got me wondering: just how easy it is to walk into a betting shop and wager some cash on an esports event?
To find out, I picked three (at the time of betting) upcoming and current events to bet on, with the intention of gambling on three specific teams to win either the tournament or a particular match. These were Team Liquid to win the ESL One Dota 2 tournament, Ninjas in Pyjamas to win that day's ECS CS:GO season six game, and for the Overwatch World Cup, I had to back the home nation and bet on the UK. Secondly, I decided I had to be able to place the bet in store. We all know you can bet on esports online, so that didn't count.
Epic has announced that it will making its suite of cross-platform tools, originally created for Fortnite, free for use by all developers, starting next year.
The idea, as you might imagine, is to make cross-platform integration - something Epic has been instrumental in encouraging among platform holders, thanks to the phenomenal success of Fortnite - as easy as possible for all developers.
What's more, these tools won't be restricted to the Unreal Engine or Epic's recently launched store. As Epic's announcement post on the Unreal website explains, its tools are designed to work with all engines, all platforms, and all stores.
Rare has released a brand-new update for its multiplayer pirate extravaganza Sea of Thieves, primarily aimed at bug fixes for the recent Shrouded Spoils expansion. However, it's also managed to sneak in some seasonal treats too, just in time for Christmas.
Version 1.4.1, as the new update is known, keeps it subtle as far as the festivities goes, but players logging into the game will find a few welcome sprigs of holly at outposts, alongside some rather charming seasonal renditions of familiar shanties in the taverns.
That's lovely and all, but most players will likely be more interested in their special Christmas gift, which can be acquired by speaking to Bilge Rat representative Duke in any tavern. Pirates are then able to select a Gilded Voyage from Duke's stash, which, once undertaken, will grant a festive heap of gold and rep for the quest's aligned trading company.
Yesterday, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 received a substantial update to all platforms, the latest season started on the PlayStation 4 version, and Activision released the game's first premium DLC after it leaked the day before.
I've been playing Black Ops 4 with all of this enabled, and it's a superb update. The patch makes meaningful balance changes, and the new season, dubbed Operation Absolute Zero, makes the previously soul-destroying grind through the Black Market progression tiers more achievable and gives it better rewards.
But, problems remain. I'm still scratching my head over Activision's decision to continue to split Call of Duty's audience down the middle, the haves and the have nots on either side of a seemingly impenetrable publisher-drawn line. Multiplayer Map Pack 1, which is a part of the premium Black Ops Pass, came out yesterday in something of a stealth launch after an early version was pushed live in Australia the day before. It adds two new multiplayer maps and a new zombies experience starring Kiefer Sutherland, Charles Dance, Helena Bonham Carter and Brian Blessed. Brian Blessed! These maps and the new zombies experience are all really good - any Black Ops 4 player would want to play them. It's a shame then that Activision is charging for them at a time when most publishers and developers offer new multiplayer maps for free. Oh, and while adding Black Ops 3's popular robot Reaper to Blackout is great fan-service, locking him behind the Black Ops Pass is disappointing.
It's been about 24 hours since Epic introduced the latest change to the ever-evolving Fortnite - and in that short amount of time, it has managed to pretty much unite the game's community, although perhaps not in the way you'd think.
The Infinity Blade, added in yesterday's patch, is a one-off item that can now be picked up in Fortnite's main game mode. It gives the bearer an extraordinary advantage: 200 health, 200 shield, the ability to leap great distances and to deal 75 damage with each swing.
Naturally, everybody hates it.
Usually, when video game developers scrub bugs from their games, players are pretty happy. But yesterday, Fallout 76 players were calling on Bethesda to bring a bug back to the game.
This week's big Fallout 76 patch made a long list of bug fixes to the multiplayer game, but one in particular caught players' eye.
Feed the People is an event quest that pops up at Mama Dolce's Food Processing. Once you've collected some beef stocks, some diced vegetable mixes and some meat-flavoured soy chunks, you need to activate machinery from a terminal then defend three control consoles from waves of enemies. While doing this, an alarm bell will ring, signalling you need to head to the terminal to activate a fuse box. You then need to defend the machines again until the next alarm, heading to the terminal once again to activate a valve. You then need to fight more waves until the timer ends.
Hello! Earlier this year, Thames and Hudson published a beautiful book on literary maps. It's called The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands, and if that title doesn't make you yearn for the kind of novels that come with mysterious territories scribbled across their end-papers, here's a lovely piece in the Guardian to give you a taste of this wonderful, transporting book.
A few of us ordered the book to arrive on day one. And as we read through it, our thoughts inevitably turned to video games and their own relationships with maps. Below you'll find some of the things we ended up thinking about.
The world is what it is - Malindy Hetfeld
Level-5's Ni no Kuni sequel Revenant Kingdom is poised to get a little larger this week, with the long-awaited arrival of its first major paid DLC expansion on December 13th.
The Lair of the Lost Lord, as it's known, will be available on PlayStation 4 and PC, and introduces a new zone, new quests, over 80 new weapons and armour pieces, a "returning enemy", and an expanded battle system.
Players that purchase the new DLC will be able to explore a brand-new area, the mysterious Labyrinth, in a bid to "rid the world of an ancient evil". It's accessed via a strange gate in the Rubbly Ruins, and those brave enough to face its depths are promised new challenges and new enemies, including the Prince of Wraiths, who rules the realm.
Developer RuneStorm's wonderfully hypnotic, and extremely hygienic, Viscera Cleanup Detail has just received a new secret-agent-themed DLC expansion. It's called The Vulcan Affair and is available now on Steam.
Viscera Cleanup Detail, for those unfamiliar with its amusingly mundane ways, takes the space corridors and military facilities of countless first-person shooters and presents them from the perspective of the clean-up crews called in once the bullets have stopped flying and the entrails have stopped dribbling dejectedly down the walls.
Players are cast as futuristic space janitors and charged with picking up debris, scrubbing away filth, sealing bullet holes, and incinerating rubbish (while trying not to accidentally tread blood everywhere) until the often gargantuan levels are spotless.