"Gratuitious Violence" Blocks Postal from Google Play, Dev Says

A port of 1997's ultra-violent game Postal has been rejected by Google for publishing on Google Play due to its "gratuitous violence."

That's according to the game's developer, Running With Scissors, which explained the matter in its forums. The forums are currently unavailable, but Eurogamer was able to capture the following message.

"It seems we have hit a bit of a snag," the developer said. "Unfortunately, it appears Postal has been rejected from Google Play due to it containing 'gratuitous violence.'"

The developer said blocking Postal but not other violent games such as Grand Theft Auto represents something of a double standard.

Although it appears Postal won't come to Google Play, the biggest Android app store, Running With Scissors said it plans to release the game through other means, including Amazon and the Humble Store.

According to Google's own publishing rules, while apps that feature "graphic violence" are permissible, apps that include "gratuitous real violence" are not. We've followed up with Google, asking for additional insight into why Postal was rejected. We'll update this post with anything we might hear back.

"We immediately filed an appeal and that was rejected," Running With Scissors told Eurogamer about the initial decision. "Trying now to speak to an actual human being with a f***ing brain."

In other Postal news, Running With Scissors plans to launch a new expansion for Postal 2--Paradise Lost--on April 17.

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Oscar-Nominated Film Producer Played Uncharted 4 and Totally Loved It

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has received some glowing new praise...from a prominent film producer.

Oscar-nominated producer Megan Ellison (Zero Dark Thirty, American Hustle, Her) recently visited Naughty Dog's offices to play the upcoming PlayStation 4 game.

She was quite pleased, and says that--like the rest of us--she's eager to play the game early next year.

A Thief's End co-director Neil Druckmann also tweeted about Ellison's visit to the studio.

Originally scheduled to launch this year, Naughty Dog recently delayed A Thief's End to spring 2016. The few extra months of development time will help the studio realize the game's full potential, Druckmann and his directing partner Bruce Straley said last month.

In addition to A Thief's End the game, an Uncharted movie is in the works. Most recently, we learned that Jurassic World's Chris Pratt passed on playing Nathan Drake in the movie, while The Hurt Locker writer Mark Boal has come aboard to work on the screenplay.

Via: DualShockers

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Square Enix Teases "Secret" Announcement

Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix just announced a new game this week--Deus Ex: Mankind Divided--but the Japanese company is gearing up to reveal another project very soon.

The company has launched a new teaser website for a "secret" project. The website's URL is: "http://www.jp.square-enix.com/secret/."

As DualShockers discovered, clicking the Facebook or Twitter sharing buttons on the page reveal that Square Enix is planning to announce the project on Monday, April 13. A message that reads, "Square Enix New Project. NEXT 2015.04.13," pops up when you click those sharing options.

Another mystery is a message printed on the website itself, containing the letters "S A R" and the numbers "0 1 0 1." As DualShockers points out, these numbers and letters could be part of the title or a message that Square Enix plans to fill out in the lead-up to the official announcement next week.

No other details about Square Enix's "secret" project are available, including its genre, platforms, or release date, among other things. Check back with GameSpot on Monday to see what it turns out to be.

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GTA 5 PC's Extensive Graphics Options Revealed

With less than a week to go before Grand Theft Auto V's long-awaited release for PC, developer Rockstar Games has now revealed the open-world title's extensive graphics options.

As you can see in the images embedded in this post, GTA V for PC has two settings for visuals: Graphics and Advanced Graphics. Players can toggle all manner of settings, including the overall resolution, aspect ratio, population density (and variety), distance scaling, and lots more.

You can even determine how nice-looking you want water and grass to be in the game. GTA V for PC also allows players to tweak keyboard/mouse settings and set key bindings, among other things.

GTA V launches for PC arrives worldwide on April 14. The digital version of the game is available now to pre-load from the Rockstar Warehouse and Steam, while the physical PC edition may ship on seven discs.

For lots more on the PC edition of GTA V, check out GameSpot's new interview with Rockstar North. You can also watch this video to learn lots more about the game's new editor and director mode.

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Acclaimed Indie RPG Bastion Out Now on PS4

Bastion, the vivid hand-painted RPG that drew rapturous reviews when it first shipped in July 2011, is now available on PlayStation 4.

Upon its initial release on PC and Xbox 360, critics were near unanimous in their praise for the title, with Gamespot's Bastion review describing it as a "wonderfully crafted adventure that presents a fun and focused challenge you can customize in all sorts of ways."

The game costs $15 in North America, while UK and Europe prices have yet to be listed.

Bastion was the breakthrough debut for its California based developer, Supergiant Games, and went on to sell more than 3 million copies. The studio's next title, Transistor, shipped in May last year and has accrued more than 600,000 sales.

"It was always difficult to describe Bastion while the game was in development," Supergiant creative director, Greg Kasavin, explained in a new post on the PlayStation Blog.

"We designed the game in an organic way, little by little, listening to what it needed most and building whatever that was next, until we felt that we were done."

A plan to port the game to PlayStation Vita was announced in December, though that project has yet to be completed.

"The Vita version of Bastion is still in development," Kasavin told fans on the PlayStation Blog's comments section.

"We don't have a release date for it at this time. We expect for it to be cross-buy enabled with the PS4 version."

Barcelona studio BlitWorks was assigned the task of developing the PlayStation 4 port.

Disclaimer: Greg Kasavin is a former GameSpot employee. He has no personal ties to anyone involved in the publication of this article.

Click on the thumbnails to view this article in full-screen.

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Indie Horror Hit Five Nights at Freddy's Gets Movie Deal

Warner Bros. is already making a Minecraft movie, but that's not the only video game feature film the Harry Potter film giant has in the works. The company has acquired the film rights to Scott Cawthon's popular horror game Five Nights at Freddy's, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie doesn't yet have a director, cast, or script, but some high-profile Hollywood names have come aboard to produce it. Roy Lee (The Departed, The LEGO Movie) and Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions (the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel) are signed on as producers.

"We're looking forward to working with Scott to make an insane, terrifying, and weirdly adorable movie," Grahame-Smith said.

Cawthon added: "The story really lends itself to being a movie and it taps into a largely unexplored niche of horror that a lot of people will be able to relate to."

Five Nights at Freddy's is legitimately terrifying. In the game, players must survive in a scary version of Chuck E. Cheese's that's full of animatronic monsters. Check out the video above to see it in action.

What do you think? Could Five Nights at Freddy's work as a movie? Let us know in the comments below!

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Xbox Boss Wants Faster UI for Xbox One

Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, has said that a more fluid Xbox One user interface is "high on the list of improvements we want to make."

The games executive revealed his ambition during a discussion with a fan on Twitter, who asked Spencer whether the Xbox One's system software would take advantage of the upcoming DX12 API.

"Yes, dashboard can take full advantage of [DX12] platform features," he replied.

"Speeding up the UI is high on our list of improvements we want to make."

DirectX 12, which was formally announced in March 2014, is the latest edition of Microsoft's system software that helps content creators extract more resources from hardware.

The practical outcome of this technology is that developers will, in theory, be able to demand more from Xbox One's GPU, CPU, and memory. In October, Spencer suggested that DirectX 12's effect would be subtle, not extensive.

"DX12 makes it easier to do some of the things that Xbox One's good at, which will be nice and you'll see an improvement in games through the use of DX12," he said.

"But people ask me, 'is it gonna be dramatic?' And I think I answered no at the time and I'd say the same thing [now], but it will ease development."

Since the Xbox One's release in late 2013, Microsoft has been deploying updates and improvements to the system on a monthly basis. The latest update implements tweaks to Party Chat, Achievement notifications, and more.

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New Details About BioShock Creator Ken Levine's Next Game

BioShock creator Ken Levine has revealed that his next game, which has not yet even been announced, will run on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. He confirmed the detail this week on Twitter.

This is not all that surprising, given that Levine's previous games--BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite--all ran on iterations of Epic's technology. The new project, however, is his first using Unreal Engine 4, the latest version of the popular toolset.

Other upcoming games that use Unreal Engine 4--which is now available free to anyone--include Microsoft's new Xbox One Gears of War, Dead Island 2, and Cliff Bleszinski's Bluestreak, among others.

After Irrational Games closed in February 2013, Levine--and a small number of others--remained on-board to work on a "smaller, more entrepreneurial" project for Take-Two. Meanwhile, the BioShock series is now being developed by 2K Games in California. While no new entries in the series have been announced, management says the franchise still has lots of room to grow commercially and creatively.

In January, Levine offered more details about his new project and studio, both of which do not have names yet. The game is sci-fi-, targeting PC, won't be revealed at E3, and isn't anything like a Telltale Games title. Check out this post for a roundup of everything Levine said about the game.

What do you hope to see Levine make next? Let us know in the comments below!

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Snapchat Clues Point to Black Ops 3 Reveal

Call of Duty fans are following a breadcrumb trail of clues which is expected to lead up to the formal reveal of Black Ops 3.

On Monday, an unexpected update to the console editions of Black Ops 2 was deployed, but it appeared at first to make no noticeable changes to the popular first-person shooter. Players discovered, however, that a strange symbol had been covertly added onto in-game posters found within the multiplayer maps.

These images, as documented in the YouTube video above, are Snapchat friend request codes. When activated, these codes lead to a peculiar video that people speculate is somehow related to Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.

As shown below, the ten-second video features a blinking eye, a shadowy woodland area, and finally a solitary tree standing within plains of snow. Some players have noticed, though it may be a coincidence, that the shadow cast by the woodland trees creates a sunlight-silhouette of the roman numeral III.

In February, Activision said it expects to release a Call of Duty game this fall, and confirmed that the project is in development at Black Ops studio Treyarch.

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Augusta National/The Masters Not Included in This Year's PGA Tour Game

One of professional golf's most iconic tournaments, The Masters, will not be featured in this year's re-launch of the PGA Tour series from EA Sports. The publisher has confirmed that Augusta National, as well as the tournament it hosts--The Masters--won't be included with Rory McIlroy PGA Tour.

"Unfortunately, our license with Augusta National has expired," EA Sports said on Twitter.

In 2011, after three years of discussions, Electronic Arts and Augusta National reached a deal to bring the course to the PGA Tour series for the first time in franchise history. That year's game was branded specifically around Augusta National and The Masters. The course's iconic logo and name were even featured on the box more prominently than even Tiger Woods, the former namesake for the series.

Although Rory McIlroy PGA Tour 15 won't have Augusta National/The Masters at launch in June, EA Sports added that it will "continue to explore opportunities to include it." One such opportunity could be releasing the course as DLC sometime after launch, the developer said, though no promises were made.

The writing had been on the wall for this move. Historically, EA has released its PGA Tour games in the lead-up to The Masters in an effort to build off the buzz of the popular tournament, which is played this week. However, when this year's game was delayed from spring to summer, some saw that as a clear suggestion that Augusta National/The Masters wouldn't be included.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is aiming to be an authentic golf simulation, promising "the most detailed courses in franchise history" thanks to the game running on the Frostbite Engine. The game is also going to be kind of crazy, too, as it will feature jets, warships, and explosions.

In addition, there will be no load times between holes as well as other various improvements.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour launches in June for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It represents the first new PGA Tour game for consoles since 2013, as EA Sports did not release a new entry in the series last year. That was a major departure from the norm, as EA had shipped a new PGA Tour game every year before that since 1999.

Via: Pasta Padre

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