Key Note Gaming

Crimson Desert got a huge update this week , and among the many changes it brought, it added new difficulty settings. Now, Pearl Abyss’ single-player open world action adventure has easy, normal, and hard difficulties for players to work through. Hard difficulty makes it so food item effects won’t be applied immediately, and will only take effect after the consumption animation is complete. This makes it impossible to recover health by spamming food, as so many players had been doing, especially in boss fights. In hard difficulty you also take more damage, and the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents is increased. You also get a reduced timing window for parry and dodge, reduced invincibility duration for roll, and increased frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape when hit. Easy difficulty, on the other hand, reduces the damage taken by the player, reduces the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents, and extends the...

Sometimes, against our better judgment, we do the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome. Developer Housemarque's new third-person bullet-hell shooter Saros explores this idea in many ways – the roguelite level structure, the repeated combat encounters, and the internal conflicts of its main character, Arjun. It has a familiar gameplay foundation to its predecessor Returnal , too, with fluid gunplay and deft movement. But in trying to be more thematically ambitious, Saros opens itself up to pitfalls Returnal didn't have to manage, leaving some of its more interesting threads unsatisfyingly hanging. Still, its tough-as-nails combat is worth getting good for, even when its repetition can wear you down. Arjun Devraj is an expeditioner for the space corp Soltari; he sports the voice and likeness of actor Rahul Kohli, who absolutely nails the leading role. His crew is sent out to investigate the disappearance of previous expeditions on Carcosa, a planet ri...

Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss has released update 1.04.00, which makes significant improvements to the game. Chief among them is the addition of difficulty settings, new storage improvements, new pets, keyboard/mouse and controller preset options, new category tabs for the inventory, new skills, improvements to distant scenery quality, and a lot more. It’s worth digging into the details here. Hard difficulty makes it so foot item effects won’t be applied immediately, and will only take effect after the consumption animation is complete. This will make it impossible to recover health by spamming food. Instead, you're going to have to carve out the space and time to do so. In hard difficulty you also take more damage, and the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents is increased. You also get a reduced timing window for parry and dodge, reduced invincibility duration for roll, and increased frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape whe...

The Australian Government’s eSafety office has formally asked Roblox, Microsoft, Epic, and Valve to specifically outline how their systems are preventing child grooming and the spread of extremism. The eSafety office is an independent agency that was initially established in 2015 to combat youth cyberbullying and the online distribution of child sexual abuse material, but its role has since expanded to cover protections for all Australians from a spectrum of online risks. As per eSafety’s announcement , legally enforceable transparency notices have been issued to the aforementioned companies in the wake of its continuing concerns about platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Steam itself “being used by sexual predators to groom children and by extremist groups to spread violent propaganda and radicalise young people.” “What we often see after these offenders make contact with children in online game environments, they then move children to private messaging services,” said ...

I am a child of the '90s, and thus got hit with the trifecta of Pokémon when I was still a kid. The original Game Boy games, the trading card game, and the original anime series all came out within the span of few years, and I loved every bit of it. Playing Pokémon on the Game Boy was my first true gaming experience, and the fact that everyone at school also happened to be playing or trading at the same time as me only solidified the franchise's place in my heart forever. Fast forward to Pokémon's 30th anniversary celebrations, and it would seem many other millennials are luxuriously situated in the same nostalgia loop that I am. So if you have a love for the Game Boy era of Pokémon and a stack of trading cards sitting around waiting to be organized, the folks at IGN Finds have located the perfect item for you. Retro Game Boy-Style Deck Boxes on Sale Today Nintendo re-released Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green for the Switch 2 earlier this year, and I've been ab...

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has revealed what we can expect from the next premium Warbond, Exo Experts. Helping you "stride with unwavering intent across hostile territory in a march of mech-enhanced Managed Democracy" and "demonstrate elite performance one prosperous hydraulic step at a time," the Exo Experts Warbond drops on April 28. "Machines… Our enemies… But they can also be forces for good, tools at our disposal, and when you need to fight fire with fire it is important to be an Exo Expert," the team teases on the official PlayStation blog . "The Ministry of Defense has authorised the immediate mobilisation of new Exosuits to aid in our ongoing war efforts against the enemies of Managed Democracy." As for what we get? First up is the EXO-51 Lumberer, "a modern reinvention of the Lumberers of the first Galactic War." Equipped with an anti-tank cannon and a flamethrower, you'll be able to unleash "maximum devas...