Ezio’s voice-acting in Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China sucked, so one fan fixed it

Ubisoft did not hire Ezio Auditore’s original voice actor to reprise his role in Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. Fans usually just post some angry comments online and move on. But not this fan.



Assassin’s Creed fan Loomer was not happy to learn that the voice of Roger Craig Smith, the original voice actor for Ezio Auditore, was missing from Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. Loomer however deiced to fix it, by asking the veteran actor to redo the lines.

Smith agreed and they both made a YouTube video to replace the one in-game. Loomer told Kotaku that he got Ubisoft’s blessing. “I basically put together a list and video compilation of all of Ezio’s lines in AC: Chronicles China (about 33 lines total) and sent it to Roger,” he said.

“He then recorded his take on the lines (I assume from his home studio) and emailed me the sound files. We did a couple retakes on some of the lines (Ubisoft has changed how Shao Jun’s name is pronounced over the years) but other than that, that was pretty much it.”

What’s more, as you’re about to watch, Loomer made sure the old voice stays cannon and didn’t just replace it. “I threw in the Erudito aspect (which Ubisoft used in AC: Liberation to show you the ‘real’ version of cutscenes) because I love the idea that this crappy fake Ezio voice is canon, it’s just Abstergo messing things up. After all, we know from Assassin-controlled Animi how Ezio’s voice really sounded.”

You can listen to some of Smith’s work in the video below.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive just had its most watched tourney ever

The most-watched Counter-Strike tournament took place over the weekend.



ESL One Cologne 2015 took place over the weekend. The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event was the most watched ever for the game, attracting 27 million unique viewers on Twitch.

The final match on Sunday between Fnatic and EnVyUs was played on the Cobblestone map and ended 16-7 in the former’s favour, leading the Swedish team to the win.

According to the ESl, the stream peaked at 1.3 million concurrent users, a 30% increase from the last event held in March. As for in-person attendance, the LANXESS arena hosted over 11,000 visitors per day.

This was also the first event where the ESL held its randomised drug tests, which all came out negative.

Thanks, IGN.

GOG Galaxy lets you roll back broken or unwanted updates

The latest version of gaming platform GOG Galaxy now supports patch and update rollbacks, letting you quickly restore a game to a previous version. Rollbacks were originally touted by the company as an DRM-free, anti-Steam feature, letting you skip an update if you hated it. "We know that patches can occasionally break a game or affect your mods," said tech VP Piotr Karwowski. GOG Galaxy has other ways you can avoid being locked down, like an opt-out for automatic updates and the ability buy games straight from its storesans the platform. Other game clients, including Steam, generally require such updates, abone of contention for some players.

The main drawback to GOG is a dearth of the latest games, though it does have fairly recent, popular titles like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The company describes the Galaxy client as "fully optional," though you'll miss things like multiplayer, achievements and chat if you don't use it. Along with rollbacks, the new version brings download pausing, extra installation options, improved friend searching, more speed and an updated UI. It's now available to anybody in the preview program (you can enroll just by selecting the "receive preview updates" option), and will roll out to everybody else a bit later.

YouTube Gaming aims to be the most popular streaming site in town

YouTube is already the web's most popular video site, but with the launch of YouTube Gaming across iOS, Android and desktops on August 26th, it aims to claim another title: most popular streaming site. YouTube Gaming bets big on live-streamed and archived gaming videos, with separate pages for more than 25,000 games. Users also get a customized feed of the gaming channels they follow, complete with notifications when each channel is live. All of this means YouTube Gaming is going head-to-head with Twitch, a site that Amazon bought for nearly $1 billion last year, following murmurs that YouTube's parent company, Google, was interested in the same purchase.

YouTube Gaming












Overall, YouTube Gaming's layout is sleek. Live streams are the meat of the new section and they dominate the homepage. YouTube Gaming pulls a live feed from a channel or game that you follow and plays it right at the top of the site (muted, thankfully). Scroll down and videos line the rest of the page, separated into trending, featured, suggested and popular sections, to name a few. Subscribed channels line the right side in a transparent strip, with live channels at the top and marked with a red dot. The left side offers game pages, with those you follow at the top, proceeded by trending and featured titles.



Individual game pages are a completely new feature for YouTube, allowing users to scroll through live, followed, popular and Let's Play videos featuring their favorite titles. Channel pages get a revamp on YouTube Gaming as well, displaying all archived and live videos from a specific streamer, separated into customizable sections.

One YouTuber, HikePlays, helped shape the new Gaming section by offering suggestions to the team from a streamer's point of view. He's a veteran in the live YouTube business, streaming and archiving his videos for hordes of gaming fans since October 2013. "I was streaming on YouTube before people knew there was streaming on YouTube," as he puts it. He now has 1.5 million subscribers.
"There's a certain taboo that comes with being a gamer as an entertainer."

- Hike, YouTube streamer

He notes one particularly interesting piece of information about streaming games on YouTube: Just 10 to 20 percent of his views actually come from the live show. The bulk of his views come from on-demand videos, and this is one reason Hike likes all of his content to be in a singular, easily clickable place. Twitch, by contrast, emphasizes live streaming over archived videos -- and its SVP of Marketing Matthew DiPietro has something to say about YouTube Gaming:

"The opportunity in gaming video is enormous, and others have clearly taken notice. We're proud of what we've accomplished in the last four years, but our eyes are on the future. We are focused on building upon the foundation we've laid with the Twitch community, and incorporating the next-generation features the community has asked for. We are dedicated to being the best social, global, multi-screen video platform for gamers, period."

With YouTube Gaming, Hike hopes game videos will be more discoverable, and he wants streamers to become true, recognized entertainers.

"There's a certain taboo that comes with being a gamer as an entertainer," he says. "I was in the military, I was a programmer, I've had a lot of different careers. I'm not too young. And there's a certain taboo that comes with gaming that people go, 'Oh, you're a gamer. You have the easiest job in the world.' And that's not really true."

Not everyone thinks that gaming for a living is easy business -- the economics of eSportsalone make it clear that there's serious talent and money in watching other people play games. With YouTube Gaming, it looks like Google is cashing in its talent and following that money.

Microsoft curbs sign-ups for Xbox One previews

Xbox Preview Programs have long been popular. They're easy ways to get sneak peeks at features that won't reach the masses for weeks, if not longer. Unfortunately, though, they're now proving to be too popular -- Microsoft is warning that it's "slowing" the number of people it lets into the Xbox One Preview Program now that it's "near-capacity." The tech giant needs to "optimize" its pre-release user base for testing, according to a forum note. The timing of this move isn't all that surprising, mind you. This year represents the first time that Microsoft will overhaul the Xbox One interface, rolling in big features like backwards compatibility and the Cortana voice assistant. It's only logical that gamers would want an early look at these upgrades, especially when this portal could stick around for a good, long while.

Microsoft limiting access to Xbox One Preview Program

It’s not going to be easy getting invited to Xbox One’s Preview Program in the future. Not like how it is now.



Microsoft has revealed that the number of users already part of the Xbox One Preview Program is very good. So much so that it has reached a “near-capacity level”.

Microsoft as a result will be making it more difficult for new users to get in. “Due to a tremendous response from our fans, the Xbox Preview program has reached a near-capacity level,” said a Microsoft representative – as reported by Gamespot.

“With that in mind, we are slowing the number of new people we are accepting to optimize for testing. We are thankful for the amount of interest we’ve received to date and look forward to sharing more details on preview opportunities soon.”

Members of the Preview Program get to try out the latest Xbox One features with early-access to firmware updates. More recently, with the announcement of the Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility, members were also able to play Xbox 360 games first as Microsoft optimises them for the rest of us.

In the coming weeks, the company will deploy the first UI overhaul, which is based on Windows 10 and is said to be much faster. That too will come first to the Preview Program before going live.

You may already have access to Black Ops 3 beta on PC without pre-ordering

Treyarch and Activision have prepared a nice surprise for devoted Call of Duty fans on PC.



The Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 beta codes are currently being sent to Xbox One users,albeit with a few hiccups. On PC however, it’s all smooth sailing.

If you’ve pre-purchased the game on PC through Steam, you can find the beta under your ‘Games’ tab and download it from there. The most interesting surprise though is that even if you didn’t pre-order, you will still get access.

If you own Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, or Black Ops 2 on Steam, you automatically have access. Just head over to your games list and check for the beta. I own Ghosts and Black Ops 2 and I can see it.

The beta will likely be open to everyone in the final day or two, the same way it did on PlayStation 4. Which is great news because the game is a lot of fun.

Monday, August 31 is when the beta ends, unless Treyarch decides to extend it for another day.