Key Note Gaming

When HoYoverse drops a new game, players have come to expect sweeping, high-fantasy orchestral arrangements and space-opera symphonies. But Zenless Zone Zero completely shatters that playbook, swapping out concert halls for the gritty, high-energy pulse of underground club culture and vintage aesthetics. From the lo-fi chill of Sixth Street to the high-octane EDM pounding through the Hollows, New Eridu’s music rises above most video game soundtracks as the driving heartbeat of the entire experience. Behind this pivot into funk, acid jazz, and electronic sub-genres is Yang Wutao and the tight-knit team of producers and composers known as Sān-Z Studio. Operating more like a collective of late-night crate-diggers than traditional gaming composers, Sān-Z Studio's philosophy is fiercely straightforward: prioritize raw emotion over industry trends. Whether collaborating with global electronic icons like Tiësto or capturing the quiet, solitary headspace of a single character, the team ...

Crimson Desert has yet another patch, this time adding one of the most-requested features from fans: controller remapping. Ever since Crimson Desert's launch in March, players have fussed over the fiddly controls, which can lead to frustration. And while it's true that after a long enough time you do start to get used to the game's controls, controller remapping would help people get to grips with Crimson Desert on their own terms. Finally, it's here. Update 1.09.00 (patch notes, courtesy of the Crimson Desert website , are below) also adds approximately 30 species of small animals that can be registered as pets, alongside new animations for picking up and putting down certain pets. It’s a big patch for Crimson Desert pet lovers, basically. Elsewhere, Oongka and Damiane, Crimson Desert’s secondary playable characters, have new skills, and there are improvements to seed planting. And I want to highlight the below fix — finally those poor bears can eat their fish. Fixed ...

Infinity Ward appears to be taking a careful approach to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's skill-based matchmaking after Black Ops 7. The developer told CharlieIntel that MW4's skill-based matchmaking will “not revert directly back to pre-Black Ops 7” and that the team is evaluating data from last year's title to inform its decisions. Although Black Ops 7 was a divisive Call of Duty game and was a fall from grace commercially, there were some changes that fans hoped developers would retain. Some feared that the game's poor reception may lead to everything being reverted, but that may not be the case. Treyarch listened to fans when it came to the franchise's skill-based matchmaking , which has been notoriously punishing for years. Players have often felt that if they perform above average for a few matches, the game will put them into lobbies that are way above their skill level. Not only that, but it wouldn't matter if you found a lobby of people who were equal...

Bungie is opening the gates to Marathon next week and letting players jump in on the action, free of cost. As part of Marathon Season 2's launch, the full game will be getting a free trial from June 2nd to June 9th on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. All of the progress you make during this time will carry over to the full game, so it's a great way to try before you buy. It's a clear move from Bungie to try to win over players, as Marathon has had soft sales and underwhelming player counts for a new game. Marathon Season 2 also plans to add more PVE content to the game as a way to lure in more players who are turned off by core modes in the game. The extraction shooter genre has had some massive wins, like Arc Raiders, but the premise can be daunting for some, pushing away more casual shooter fans. As always, Bungie has incorporated strong gunplay into Marathon, but some wish it were in a more accessible game. It seems like Bungie is trying to cater to those would-be players ...

If you’re a fan of life simulators, you’ve no doubt heard critics, developers, influencers, and all manner of social media-savvy people wax lyrical about the complexity of creating a compelling social simulation. As I said in my own inZoi review last year, curating a world that’s both representative of the murky mess that is being human and enjoyable to play is a seemingly impossible undertaking that few have managed. And yet, after spending 35 hours in Paralives crafting families, building homes, and sowing discord among residents, I have a renewed hope. This ambitious challenger to The Sims’ throne has captured not only the practical elements of humanity but, importantly, the weird ones we sweep under the rug, too. While its Early Access start has a lot of room to grow before it slays the reigning king of the genre, it’s certainly on its way. Your time in Paralives begins on a train, with a quick tutorial for how to handpick the actions of the Parafolk (the name Paralives gives to ...

The Wheel of Time is one of the best-selling fantasy book series of all time, but it's a franchise that has struggled to take hold as an adaptation. Most notably, Amazon's live-action Wheel of Time show was tragically cancelled just last year after what IGN called it's "best season yet" . But a new kickstarter for the first-ever official board game is bringing some fresh hope to fans of Robert Jordan's fantasy world that there's still more to look forward to. War of the Dragon is an upcoming strategy game for 2-4 players that according to the Kickstarter page , "combines tableau building, action selection, and area control mechanics in a thrilling struggle for conquest and survival". The game just launched on Kickstarter today with a funding goal of $50,000 that was pretty much immediately met. At the time of writing, almost $300K has already been pledged and those numbers continue to go up. This isn't the first time The Wheel of Time has b...