Key Note Gaming

The weekend is finally here, and new deals have popped up! There are quite a few solid discounts across the board, including savings on Super Mario RPG, Death Stranding 2, and Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. Check out our top picks for Saturday, February 28, below. Super Mario RPG for $35.99 Super Mario RPG is one of the best Mario games on Nintendo Switch, as it brings back the beloved SNES classic in brilliant fashion. This adventure is a collaboration between Square Enix and Nintendo, following Mario, Bowser, Peach, and new friends on a journey to find the seven star pieces. In our 8/10 review , we wrote, "Super Mario RPG is considered a classic for a reason, and this faithful remake makes it easy for anyone who missed it in the SNES era to see why." Death Stranding 2: On The Beach for $49.99 Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is an incredible follow-up to 2019's Death Stranding that is one of the must-play games on PS5. Sam Porter Bridges is forced to ventur...

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, a new take on the classic LEGO game formula, doesn't launch until May 29. Luckily, to hold over all you ravenous Batfans out there, there are a handful of new LEGO sets you can buy that not only look great on your bookshelves lined with your favorite Batman comics , but come with some pretty awesome, unique digital download codes you can use in the game. What do you get with the download code after scanning the QR code in the instructions? Well, it wouldn't be a LEGO Batman game without a ton of optional skins, and you'll get some fancy gold minifigure and Batmobile skins for your trouble. There are four of these new sets are available starting on March 1, each of which can be purchased via Amazon or through LEGO directly. Every LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Set Check out detailed breakdowns of each new set below. The three Batmobile sets each celebrate different eras of iconic Batman films (minus the Christopher Nolan/...

LEGO and Pokémon were my childhood (well, those and TMNT, but that’s for another time). I grew up building everything from simple cars and unrealistic houses to whatever amalgamation my creative mind could imagine. Never, as a kid, did I expect to see a fully licensed Pokémon set like the one we have now. When I was a child, Pokémon was a game that, even now 30 years later, still has its claws in me with no sign of letting up. My younger siblings and I spent hours as kids, sitting with our Link Cables and GameBoys, trading Pokémon back and forth while we restarted one of our games enough times so we could each start with all three starter Pokémon. I knew I was hooked after spending an afternoon at my grandfather's house manually typing out my own Pokémon guide listing every Pokémon, their evolution levels, and what level they learned each move. There is no Pokémon more iconic to the franchise than Pikachu , and while this set's first images weren’t as impressive as I’d ho...

You may have clicked into this review thinking, “A review of Under Night In-Birth 2 Sys:Celes? In the year of our Lord 2026?!” And you know what, that’s fair. This fighting game came out at the beginning of 2024, and it’s one that builds off a foundation laid by the 2012 original, which we also never reviewed . Well, I’ve decided better late than never, because Under Night In-Birth 2 is quite simply one of the best 2D fighters on the market right now – especially for fighting game fans that pine for the days of fast-paced anime fighters but with all the modern conveniences we’ve come to expect. It’s full of gorgeous pixel art and completely outlandish character designs alongside things like exceptional netcode and the ability to take control of a character during a replay, making its satisfyingly steep learning curve a joy to try and overcome, and its online play a staple of my fighting game rotation well past its initial launch. For those completely unfamiliar, Under Night In-Bir...

The Marathon Server Slam is off to a quick start, with impressive player numbers on Steam. As part of the Server Slam event, Bungie’s extraction shooter was made available to download for free across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S yesterday, February 26, allowing players to give it a shot over the weekend. Marathon hit a peak of 143,621 concurrent players on Steam, although the true figure across all platforms will be higher (neither Microsoft nor Sony make player numbers public). And while the Server Slam is free and Marathon will cost $39.99 when it launches proper next week, the numbers do suggest significant interest. Perhaps a useful comparison is to rival extraction shooter Arc Raiders, which went on to enjoy enormous success and huge sales after a similar server slam event ahead of launch and the same price point. Arc Raiders’ stress test hit a peak of 189,668 concurrent players on Valve’s platform . Marathon is behind that for now, but its peak number will sur...

Where Winds Meet is taking us back to "one of China's most glorious eras," the Tang Dynasty, with its next major update, the Hexi expansion, which kicks off, for free, on March 5. Between March and May, the team will release Hexi's three chapters in sequence, taking wanderers "from desert to ice fields to grasslands," starting with Jade Gate Pass next week. "In ancient China, friends would write poems for each other. Think of these three chapters as our poem to all of you," the team explained, stressing that this marks "a much more cinematic approach to storytelling" that feels "quite different from our previous storytelling." Set in a vast desert landscape, developer Everstone Games said the Hexi expansion represents the "biggest expansion since the game’s launch, and will offer up brand-new narratives, new bosses, fresh gameplay features, and martial art styles." We can expect three major maps, which, combined...