News Picks/Weekly Round-up from Auryn Cox @Ciaran’s Customs

Rockstar Updates LA Noire and Max Payne 3

Rockstar published updates on Steam for LA Noire and Max Payne 3 earlier this week.

It’s not yet known why Rockstar decided to release an update for these games both of which released almost a decade ago, but the studio also included all the DLC for free with the updates.

As PC Gamer reported, the updates were actually applied quietly without much announcement, and took place when Rockstar’s entire library of games was temporarily pulled from Steam.

Both LA Noire and Max Payne 3 are both well regraded games and if you haven’t tried them yet, now might be the time.

A Knights of the Old Republic remake is being developed by Aspyr

A remake of Biowares 2003 RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is reportedly in development by Aspyr Media.

The news was revealed by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier while he was a guest on the MinnMax podcast.

"This is public at this point, I've basically confirmed Aspyr - which is the company that's ported a bunch of KOTOR games - is working on the remake,” he said.

Apsyr is renowned for porting games. They have previously ported Star Wars Episode 1: Racer as well as the two Jedi Knight games.

In other KOTOR news, a report from May 2019 suggested that a movie based on the Bioware game could be in the works at Disney, and potentially be part of a trilogy.

Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan leaves Blizzard after 19 Years

Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch game director and Blizzard entertainment vice president has announced his departure from the company after 19 years.

Kaplan was one of the most recognisable faces at Blizzard and was frequently featured in the Overwatch development update videos. He also regularly attended Blizzcon and Overwatch League events.

Neither Blizzard nor Kaplan himself specified why he was leaving.

“I am leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years. It was truly the honour of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes for such a passionate audience,” Kaplan said in a statement released on the Blizzard website.

It seemingly doesn’t bode well for Overwatch 2 which has lost its game director in the middle of development.

The new Game director Aaron Keller made sure to address this in his statement.

“Speaking of Overwatch 2, development is continuing at a good pace. We have an exceptional vision we’re executing on, the reaction from many of you to the updates we shared at BlizzConline thrilled us, and we have exciting reveals planned for this year and beyond as we ramp to launch,” he said.

Keller also revealed that more frequent updates about Overwatch 2’s progress is coming ‘very soon’.

Epic Games Store Adds an Itch.Io App

An itch.io app is now available to download on the Epic Games Store, and Epic says it won't be taking revenue way from the indie creators.

Itch.Io is an Indie game focused digital distributor which although popular, never really shares the same kind of spotlight when compared to distributors like Epic and Steam.

However thanks to this new partnership Itch.Io will be put in front of the Epic Game Store’s roughly 31.3 million active daily users and the Epic Games Store will benefit from having the over 200,000 titles from itch.io.

A representative from Epic Games confirmed details of how it works to Polygon. Users will eventually download itch.io on the store as they would any other app or game. Once it’s downloaded and you launch it, it’s its own thing. Epic will not take a percentage of sales of those games.

The move affirms the idea that the Epic Games Store is moving toward creating its own app store, rather than just sticking to games.

Could Apples new iMac 2021 or iPad Pro 2021 be used for Gaming?

Apples “Spring Loaded” event which was held earlier this week gave us a look at its new products which are being powered by the M1 chip.

During the event Apple claimed its new iMac 2021 and iPad Pro 2021 with M1 chips are both excellent gaming machines.

Apple already proved with the M1 MacBook Air that the M1 chip could run iOS games with ease, however the new M1 iMac and iPad are both contenders for the best Apple gaming machine and could potentially handle more rigorous PC games.

As both pieces of tech are basically running off of the same hardware both devices should have comparable graphics performance.

Currently we can only judge performance on the vague benchmarks that were provided by Apple themselves.

Assuming performance levels are comparable, it looks impressive for the iPad Pro 2021 as a laptop replacement, but potentially disappointing for the iMac as a desktop, especially since it costs slightly more than the iPad Pro with comparable specs.

While these machines may be able to run games, I think its hard to beat the customization and upgrading that can be done with a good old PC.

About the Author

Auryn is a student journalist and an avid gamer. He enjoys strategy games as well as all the new releases from 10 years ago. He also has a few hours on Overwatch.

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