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Time-traveling detective game 'D4' hits PC on June 5th
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die is a wonderfully strange detective game with a twist: There's a bullet lodged in your skull that allows you to touch certain objects and travel back in their timelines, to places and events pivotal to their existence. As a hardened Boston investigator, you're searching for the people who brutally killed your wife a few years ago, and along the way you run into a foul, potentially supernatural criminal organization. When D4 launched in 2014, it was exclusive to Xbox One and was a surprisingly successful Kinect game, using voice and motion controls in fun and immersive ways. Now, it's heading to PC on June 5th, priced at $15 on Steam, GOG, Playism and the Humble Store.
Murder, cat women and time travel hit PC in detective game 'D4'
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die is a wacky, weird and fairly wonderful point-and-click adventure originally released on Xbox One for Kinect. Fast-forward a few months and, now, it's heading to PC. Creator Hidetaka Suehiro, AKA "Swery," confirmed the PC port on Twitter and in Japanese magazine Famitsu. In the Xbox One version, D4 truly (and surprisingly) shines as a Kinect game, allowing players to control a hardened, time-traveling detective using arm gestures and voice controls. The PC version will feature standard mouse controls: "It's really good I think," Swery tweeted. There's no word on whether the PC version of D4 will be on Steam, but Swery has "noted" fan requests for a Steam launch.
Best of the Rest: Danny's picks of 2014
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Fantasy Life Sometimes, you just wanna sidequest. For those times, there's Fantasy Life. Fantasy Life is fun in the way that checking off items on a checklist is fun. There's a solid action-RPG here from Professor Layton series creator Level-5, sure, but much of my time in Fantasy Life was spent completing sidequests, crafting equipment, and hunting down component items so that I could craft more equipment and complete more sidequests. You don't even have to kill anything to complete the game - you can smith, cook, sew, and alchemize your way to victory if that's the way you want to play it. Fantasy Life is an endless grind that remains compelling even after I've completed hundreds of its quests. If you don't fit into its niche, you'll be bored immediately. If you're a specific breed of completionist, Fantasy Life is impossible to put down. In either case, beware.
PSA: D4, MX vs. ATV now on Games with Gold
As the calendar flipped to January yesterday, Xbox Live Gold members are now able to download this month's free games on Xbox One and Xbox 360. As revealed in December, Xbox One owners with a premium Live subscription can now pick up Access Games' quirky adventure D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die free of charge. Subscribers get two games on Xbox 360 this month: Offroad racer MX vs ATV Alive and CD Projekt's The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. D4 will be available throughout the month while the two previous-generation games are on a split schedule. MX vs ATV Alive is free until January 15, then The Witcher 2 will be available to download at no cost on January 16 through the end of the month. Lastly, according to the Microsoft Store, last month's Xbox One game Worms Battlegrounds is still available to download for free. [Image: Microsoft]
Deals with Gold: D4, Thief, Sonic the Hedgehog catalog sale
Oddball Xbox One adventure game D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die headlines this week's Xbox Live Deals with Gold offerings, giving subscribers the chance to pick it up for 33 percent off its regular price. Be warned: it's weird. Like, really weird. The Xbox One versions of Thief, Murdered: Soul Suspect, and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments are also on sale this week, while Xbox 360 owners can grab cheap copies of Sonic Generations, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, and other games starring Sega's exalted hedgehog. Listed price drops remain in effect through November 11. [Image: Microsoft]
Joystiq Streams: October's first horror stream is D4 for Xbox One
October is here, dear friends. The long toiling wait of summer heat and madness has ended, and now is our opportunity to sit in the dark, willfully scaring the ever-loving crap out of ourselves. That's the Halloween way! While survival horror big guns like Alien: Isolation and The Evil Within are still on the horizon, there's a perfectly good psychological freak out sitting right on the Xbox One: D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, the latest from Deadly Premonition mastermind Swery. Don't think of D4 as a game of all-encompassing spiritual dread or slasher gore. Think of it more as a psychological thriller that makes you feel like you're going insane because of time travel. And murder. And ladies who act like cats. On Joystiq.com/Twitch at 4:00PM EST, Jessica Lynn Conditt (@JessConditt) will fire up the Xbox One and her Kinect to be tortured by Swery's oddball adventure all over again. Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) will be hanging out in the chat, answering your questions and ranting about Deadly Premonition. That's Joystiq.com/Twitch at 4:00PM EST, when we broadcast on the regular every Tuesday and Thursday. We stream all kinds of off hours, though, so if you never want to miss a show follow us on Twitch! [Images: Access Games]
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die review: True Kinective
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die is a surprisingly layered, dense game – especially for a linear, point-and-click adventure about a man with a bullet in his forehead and the ability to travel through time. It's equal parts gruesome, funny and quirky, combining elements of sci-fi with classic cop drama and thriller tropes. However, the most surprising aspect of D4 isn't its story – it's how well the Xbox One Kinect controls work. D4 is wonderfully weird, and it's a fun Kinect game, to boot.
Xbox One's newest Kinect game is a comic-book styled murder mystery
Lets say you're already burned out on Destiny and are looking for something a bit, well, different than what the Xbox One currently has on offer. That might just mean that D4 (short for Dark Dreams Don't Die), the latest game from the creator of cult-hit Deadly Premonition, could be the relief you didn't even know you were looking for. It's one of the scant few Kinect-enabled games releasing soon, too. The episodic title was first teased during Microsoft's E3 event last year and has gone largely unheard from since. That's recently changed, as Xbox Wire has an interview with its developer Hidetaka Suehiro, better known as Swery65, ahead of the first installment hitting the Xbox Marketplace today. Update: D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die is now available for $15 right here.
Deadly Premonition designer's D4 out on Xbox One tomorrow
Surprise! D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, the cel-shaded mystery game from Deadly Premonition designer Hidetaka "Swery65" Suehiro, debuts on Xbox One tomorrow, September 19. The $15 downloadable marks the start of D4's episodic series, and Suehiro told Eurogamer it includes the prologue, first and second episodes. Later episodes are due at an undisclosed date. If you've played 2010 psychological horror Deadly Premonition, you'll know some of what to expect from D4. Just as Suehiro's cult hit riffed on the surrealism of Twin Peaks, D4 looks to bring its own batch of weird to the party. You play as David Young, a detective who's lost his memory following the unsolved murder of his wife. However, the amnesic gumshoe has a special power up his sleeve: the ability to travel back to the past by touching certain objects. Check out the launch trailer below the break.
Kicking back with D4 and Deadly Premonition's mastermind
Watching the audience at a recent Xbox One event play D4 (Dark Dreams Don't Die), the next surreal creation from Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro, paints an interesting portrait about player expectations. When controlling the game with Kinect, players are treated to a multitude of on-screen notifications for required gestures needed to progress. A bold, colorful arrow to the right requires players to move their hands, you guessed it, to the right. Two arrows in the air ask players to wave them like they just don't care. The notifications are presented casually, slowing down the action in some instances to give players a chance to respond. But the fervor each gesture was made time and time again at the event, the exaggerations made with each movement, tells a story about how players expect Swery's game to play purely based on their experience with Kinect.
D4 and Quantum Break share 'time travel mystery' genre
Hidetaka "Swery65" Suehiro and Remedy Entertainment seem to be pilfering inspiration from the same muse, though handling what it extracts in very different ways. Swery65's Rainy Woods – which would later be retooled and released as the horror-focused title Deadly Premonition – and Remedy's thriller Alan Wake led fans and critics to compare both games to the landmark David Lynch and Mark Frost cult-hit series Twin Peaks. While Swery65's title ditched many of the similarities to the show when it changed its name, comparisons linger, such as Deadly Premonition's strange characters, mysterious setting, and a protagonist's proclivity for "damn fine coffee." Alan Wake also featured similar elements. Though these similarities are undoubtedly coincidence, it appears the Finnish team at Remedy and the Japanese team at Access Games have once again tapped the same creative vein for the theme of each team's next title. Swery65's D4 and Remedy's Quantum Break are completely different in look and gameplay style, yet they share a startling similarity: both are time travel mysteries structured episodically and coming exclusively to the Xbox One. Though completely separate universes, both games have themes focused on time manipulation. Which timeline would you like to explore?
Deadly Premonition director's D4 scheduled for Xbox One [Update: Trailer!]
Get ready for SWERY's (Access Games' Hidetaka Suehiro) patented brand of weirdness; his new project, simply titled D4, made it into Microsoft's showing of their upcoming Xbox One games at E3 2013. Not much information about it exists at the moment, outside of its status as an episodic murder mystery -- much like the director's cult hit from 2010.%Gallery-191152%
Nikon releases D4 firmware 1.02 with minor display, formatting, network stability improvements in tow
Have you managed to get your hands on Nikon's elusive D4 full-frame DSLR? It should be smooth sailing from here, with the occasional firmware update being your only critical acquisition going forward. D4 firmware 1.02 brings a handful of minor fixes, but if you're in need of any of the enhancements listed below, it's surely a must have: Format memory card can now be added to My Menu. Gamut for Adobe RGB images displayed in the camera's monitor has now been changed. This enables more vivid display of images. The stability of network connections when the FTP upload option is selected has been increased. When recording movies using a lens with an aperture ring in [P] or [S] exposure mode, and Aperture ring selected for Custom Setting f10: Customize command dials>Aperture setting, the minimum aperture was applied. This issue has been resolved. When a still image captured during movie recording with 1920 ×1080; 30 fps; crop, 1920 × 1080; 25 fps; crop, or 1920 × 1080; 24 fps; crop selected for Movie settings>Frame size/frame rate and Live frame grab selected for Custom Setting g4: Assign shutter button was displayed in Capture NX 2 or ViewNX 2, the position of the focus point displayed differed from actual recording position. This issue has been resolved. An issue that caused the camera to freeze when attempting to format a memory card (setup menu > Format memory card) while the camera was connected to a network in HTTP server mode has been resolved. OS X and Windows users alike can hit up the source link below to get their download on.
Nikon pushes out D4, D800 firmware update, fixes lock-up issues and other bugs
It wasn't long ago that we heard about the "lock-up" woes D4 and D800 owners were experiencing on their shiny new shooters, but luckily for them, Nikon just outed a fix to take care of those issues. Aside from solving the aforementioned annoyance, the firmware update (B:1.01) also mends a problem allowing RAW files to be network-transferred while in JPEG-only mode, as well as a bug causing bits like aperture and exposure compensation to change unexpectedly when using certain custom settings. You can grab the updates now via the source links below, and be sure to let us know how it all turned out in the end.
Nikon confirms woes with D4 and D800, joins Canon in high-end doghouse
Okay Nikon owners, stop laughing at your 5D Mark III cronies for their leaky problem. That might be a drip in the pail next to your own worries -- namely, possible "lock-up", focus and viewfinder hitches on your D800 or D4. Nikon verified that a "small number" of units of both DSLRs can lock up and become unresponsive, but until there's a permanent patch you can prevent this by disabling both highlight and RGB histogram displays. The company also verified that a "run" of D800s is suffering from a viewfinder bug, although it has yet to confirm another emerging problem with autofocus in some units, which apparently requires a factory fix. So, if you've noticed any of this with your pricey new D800, or really pricey D4, your best bet might be to reach out to your Nikon repair center post-haste. And don't let the Canon guys see you. [Thanks, Thinh]
Nikon D4 field review
Right around 2.5 years after the introduction of Nikon's most recent game-changer (yeah, we're bragging about the D3S), its proper successor has emerged. Without qualification, the amount of hope and expectation surrounding the Nikon D4 was immense. In a way, most Nikonians were (perhaps foolishly) expecting the D4 to be to the D3S what the D3S was to the D3, and we'll confess that we were cautiously saving up precious pennies in the event that the game was changed yet again. For better or worse, the actual specifications of the D4 ended up as hardly worth writing home about, with an ISO range mirroring that already seen on the D3S, a megapixel rating lower than that of the cheaper D800 and a battery rated for fewer snaps than the outgoing D3S. All at an MSRP that's starting at $800 above where the D3S started. You'll notice a lot of comparisons throughout this article with the Best Camera of 2009, but that's intentional; yours truly has spent the last 2.5 years using the D3S for business and pleasure, and it's only logical to pit the D4 against a camera that has become molded to many palms here at Engadget HQ. Is the D4 a worthy upgrade? Or even a worthy successor? Let's find out.
Nikon D4 hands-on with sample images, video
Remember when we were in a tizzy about the Nikon D4, way back in January? We got to play with this tank of a DSLR a bit, but sadly weren't permitted to actually publish any of the photos or video that we shot with the thing. Sure, we've seen some samples of it in action, but it's not quite the same. Thankfully, the company made our late-February that much better, allowing us to take the D4 on a jaunt around the city, a couple of weeks ahead of its mid-March launch. We strolled around Washington Square Park and 6th avenue, with the beast of a camera in-hand, shooting tourists and scenery, before popping by a subway station to have a go with the camera's purported excellent low-light capabilities that we've been hearing so much about. Click on through to take a look at some sample video.%Gallery-149058% %Gallery-149055%
Nikon D4 and D800 to ship in March, but only in the land of the baguette? (update: US too)
We might not have an official release date for Nikon's new shooters in the US of A, but over in France, well, things are un peu different. Per a Q&A box on the French arm's Facebook page comes the image above, plainly stating its latest twosome will go on sale in March -- the 15th specifically for the D4, and the 22nd for the D800. Following that, tweakers obsessed with finer details will get their fix with the D800E a month later on April 12th. No word on if those dates apply globally, but instead of getting yourself all frothy, we say have a rendezvous with our hands-ons (D4, D800) or lose yourself in some delectable video samples (D4, D800). Go on, we won't judge.Update: We heard from Nikon PR confirming that the D4 will indeed be launching in the US in mid-March as well.
Nikon WT-5 WiFi dongle wins FCC approval, fires off a ring of D4s to celebrate
Okay, so Bullet Time actually used Canon cameras, but Nikon D4 owners should soon have their own means of messing with space and time. The WT-5 dongle can control up to ten of the mammoth DSLRs simultaneously or, in more usual set-ups, allow a single camera to share its shots over a network. This'll mean you're no longer tied down by the Ethernet cable that we were forced to use in our recent networking hands-on with the D4. We don't know if this will arrive in stores at the same time as the camera itself, or how much it'll cost, but at least it's now passed through FCC without getting shot down. Click past the break for a few product shots, and note that the status LED glows solid green when there's a network connection, flashes to indicate a transfer in progress, and radiates nasty orange to inform your lead actor that he'll have to bend over backwards for yet another take.
Canon EOS-1D X and Nikon D4 ISO 204,800 shooting hands-on (video)
With mirrorless cameras offering high-resolution APS-C sensors and consecutive shooting speeds of up to 10 frames-per-second, what's left to make a $6,000 full-frame DSLR a compelling purchase, especially for amateur photographers? Low-light performance, for one -- the Canon EOS-1D X and Nikon D4 are both capable of capturing images at up to ISO 204,800, letting you snap sharp photos in even the dimmest of lighting conditions. The benefits of a top sensitivity of ISO 204,800 are significant -- jumping from one ISO to the next doubles your shutter speed. So an exposure of f/2.8 at 1/2 second at ISO 400 becomes 1/4th at ISO 800, 1/15th at ISO 3200, 1/60th at ISO 12,800, 1/250th at ISO 51,200 and a whopping 1/1000th at ISO 204,800 -- fast enough to freeze a speeding car.Both Canon and Nikon have yet to allow us to take away samples shot with the 1D X or D4 -- the companies even taped CF card slots shut to prevent show attendees from slipping their own card in -- but we were still able to get a fairly good idea of high-ISO performance from reviewing images on the built-in LCDs. At the cameras' top sensitivity of ISO 204,800, noise was visible even during a full image preview. Zooming into the image revealed significant noise, as expected. However, within each camera's native range of ISO 100 to 25,600, noise was barely an issue at all. Both cameras are still pre-production samples at this point, so we'll need to wait for production models to make their way out before we can capture our own samples, but based on what we saw when reviewing ISO 204,800 images on the built-in LCDs, that incredible top-ISO setting may actually be usable. Scroll on through the gallery below to preview some top sensitivity shots on the Canon EOS-1D X (camera poster) and the Nikon D4 (Japanese model), and join us past the break for an even closer look in our video hands-on.
