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Showing posts from August, 2022

Jet Set Radio Spiritual Successor Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Delayed to Next Summer

Team Reptile has announced that it has delayed the release of its Jet Set Radio-inspired game, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, to next year. “About the release: We are convinced that releasing the game this year will not take it to a level where we would be personally satisfied with,” Team Reptile says in a statement on Twitter. “To create a fulfilling and unique game we are extending the development time of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to summer 2023.” However, the studio followed up by saying that it will release more visuals of the game this week to show people how development is going. About the release: We are convinced that releasing the game this year will not take it to a level where we would be personally satisfied with. To create a fulfilling and unique game we are extending the development time of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to summer 2023. — Team Reptile (@ReptileGames) August 31, 2022 Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was first revealed in 2020 as a successor to Jet set Radio. It will also have music co

Wrath of the Lich King Classic's new group finder tool is a mess

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Wrath of the Lich King Classic 's most controversial feature is one that didn't exist in the original, 14-year-old expansion. World of Warcraft Classic received its preparatory Wrath pre-patch this week, which includes early access to the Death Knight class, the new Inscription profession, and the game's unique group finder tool. The new LFG tool was supposed to help you find and group up with other players and to clean up the spam in the global LFG chat channel, but its clumsy implementation and what many believe to be a major bug have flubbed its original purpose. Many people on Reddit and the game's forums report that the tool is wrongly assigning the tank role to players who submit their entry into the LFG list, regardless of the role they actually play. Healers and DPS are struggling to find groups under the wrong tag and groups are forming with tanks that can't tank. There's an option to choose your role within your specialization menu, but that too

Lady Gaga may soon be holding a virtual concert in Fortnite

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It's starting to look very much like Lady Gaga, she of the Poker Face who was Born This Way, could soon be coming to Fortnite, possibly for a virtual concert of her own. The most recent (and convincing) bit of evidence pointing at an online Gaga show comes from the Fortnite Leaks and Info account on Twitter, which recently dug up a "collaborative emote" called Jug Band that sounds very similar to the mega-hit Poker Face when four players take part in it. Shortly afterward, the Lady Gaga Now fan site posted a clip of the emote in action: A new "synced emote" featuring Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" will be added to FORTNITE in the upcoming patch. pic.twitter.com/ie9VNEaswN August 30, 2022 See more Yeah, that's definitely it. I'm not even what you'd call a casual Lady Gaga fan and there's not a doubt in my mind, that's P-p-p-poker Face. ( Here's the original —dare to compare.) And that's not all: In July, " conce

Nostalgia replays have become my go-to escape from pandemic stress

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Though the pandemic is not over yet, I'm pretty sure one of my strongest memories from it will be the experience of replaying Command & Conquer and Red Alert—102 combined hours so far. I started in late 2020, aka the First Year. On some nights when I couldn't sleep, instead of dwelling on the awfulness of everything I'd shuffle off to my game room (which had overnight become my home office) and play a mission or two until I was tired enough to stop thinking. Over the next year and a half I followed C&C with WarCraft 2, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and Halo 1 & 2. No new PC games for this player, just old favorites. I mean, it didn't stop me from buying new games—I'm still a sucker for a Steam sale—but my installs of Disco Elysium and Ghostwire: Tokyo are stuck watching from digital limbo. I may not be stuck in quarantine anymore, but I can't tear myself away from revisiting these old familiar places. I know I'm not alone w

Ubisoft Delays Server Shutdown for Older Games Like Assassin's Creed 2 and Far Cry 3

Ubisoft has delayed the shutdown date of several multiplayer servers for some of its games. The shutdowns were supposed to go into effect on September 1 , but now they will stay up for an additional month, shutting down on October 1 instead. "Decommissioning online services for older games is something we do not take lightly, but it is also a necessity as the technology that drove those services becomes obsolete," Ubisoft says in an update to the original post. "Over the last month, our teams have been hard at work exploring what is possible to reduce disruption." The games which will continue seeing online services include: Assassin’s Creed II Assassin’s Creed III Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Assassin’s Creed Revelations Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD Driver San Francisco Far Cry 3 Ghost Recon Future Soldier Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Rayman Legends Silent Hunter 5 Splinter Cell: Blacklist ZombiU The only exception to the new shutd

Valve bans Steam curators suspected of scamming developers for free games

Earlier this  week, indie developer Cowcat accused several Steam curators of trying to scam it out of free codes for its game, Brok the InvestiGator, and then publishing negative reviews after realizing the codes were actually for a free demo. This 'review revenge' tactic appears to have backfired. Three days after a Twitter thread and Reddit post calling attention to the seemingly bogus reviews gained traction, all of the curators in question have been banned by Valve. Reddit user darklinkpower, the author of the illuminating post which tied the reviews of nine suspicious curator pages to one admin account, published a follow-up noting that all of the curator pages they investigated are now offline. Clicking a direct link to any of the curator pages now redirects to the same message: "This group has been removed for violating the Steam Community Rules and Guidelines." In addition to the nine pages that posted negative Brok reviews, darklinkpower also noticed

I love that 'horror fishing game' is becoming a genre

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There's something inherently spooky about fishing. You're often alone on a boat, sometimes far out at sea. You're casting a line into deep, murky waters and feeling an unknown, unseen creature suddenly sink its teeth into your bait and begin to pull. You're a hunter with nothing but a string on a stick in an environment almost entirely hidden from view, one you can't survive in for long should anything go wrong. It's the perfect canvas for creeping dread and big scares. So I'm glad to see more and more fishing games embracing the potential for horror, like the announcement trailer for Dredge (above). The "sinister fishing adventure" from Team 17 and Black Salt Games casts you as a fisherman marooned on a mysterious island populated with peculiar characters. To earn enough to repair your ship you'll have to trawl the island's dark waters for fish and whatever odd curios you manage to pull from the waves. In this 20-minute gameplay vid

How High on Life Unexpectedly Stole Gamescom

Update: A previous version of this story listed High on Life numbers as 33.5 million video views, and 77.6 million impressions. This included views and impressions for content posted prior to Gamescom. This has now been adjusted so that the numbers listed are just for content posted during Gamescom. A week after Gamescom kicked off with Opening Night Live on August 23, it’s pretty clear that the unexpected hit of the show on social media was High on Life from Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland’s Squanch Games. Set for release on December 13 for PC and Xbox, it’s a first-person shooter wrapped in the same kind of darkly-comedic weirdness seen in Roiland’s previous games like Trover Saves the Universe and Accounting . Squanch Games’ creative director Mikey Spano describes it as “Bladerunner if Jim Henson did it,” and compares the bounty hunting gameplay to Metroid Prime. Tonally, it’s an acquired taste, and honestly it wasn’t on our Gamescom bingo card of games we thought we’d be

Rumbleverse is the fresh take on battle royale I needed

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Every time I load into a battle royale I feel a little bit anxious. There's the uncertainty of the early game, and then later the feeling of being surrounded as the walls close in—I always end up just a little stressed out. Not so with Rumbleverse , the new battle royale brawler on the Epic Games Store. I launch into every match eager to duke it out with a bunch of wildly dressed knuckleheads. When a match starts well I land on top of a skyscraper, immediately break open a crate to grab a special move, and chokeslam KO someone from 100 stories up. Now, I know: Another battle royale? Hear me out though—Rumbleverse takes the best elements of playing wrestling games with your friends and drops them from the top rope straight into a match of Fortnite. Rumbleverse stays pretty true to battle royale basics. 40 players fly in, ever closing circle, last man standing, yada yada. But instead of dropping in with nothing and scrambling for gear, you can start scrapping right away with a s

SNK vs. Capcom Return Drawing Interest From 'Both Parties'

SNK producer and director of King of Fighters 16 Yasuyuki Oda has confirmed that a new SNK vs. Capcom game is drawing interest from "both parties." Speaking to VGC, Oda began talking about a potential new game after referencing promotional posters for 2022's EVO fighting tournament that featured artwork from both SNK and Capcom games. While it may not be much of a surprise, this collaboration was a hit for fans, and it "reconfirmed" the interest in that partnership going to the next level once more. 【EVO2022 SNK x Capcom】 After more than a decade, SNK and Capcom are back for two collaborative posters from the legendary illustrators Eisuke Ogura and Shinkiro! Come get yours at the SNK Booth! #KOF15 #KOFXV #Evo2022 pic.twitter.com/s1xTpz2Awg — SNK GLOBAL (@SNKPofficial) August 5, 2022 "Definitely in the future, that’s something that I think everybody on all sides, in both parties, are interested in making a reality," Oda said when asked i

Rocksmith+, Ubisoft's learn-to-play-guitar game, finally rocks out next week

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Remember Rocksmith? Released for consoles in 2011 and PC a year later, it was a lot like Guitar Hero except it used a real guitar, which you'd connect to your PC via a Real Tone USB cable. DLC development for the 2014 edition was finally halted in 2020 , but Ubisoft resurrected it a year later as Rocksmith+ , and announced today that it's just one week away from release. Rocksmith+ is very similar to the original game, but different in some significant ways. It's exclusive to PC this time around, and while you can still connect your guitar (you need a guitar, by the way) to your system with the Real Tone cable, you can also skip that part and use the Rocksmith+ Connect mobile app, which tracks your playing by turning your phone into a mic.  The biggest change, though, is that it's subscription-based rather than a standalone purchase, costing $15 per month, $40 for three months, or $100 for a year. That's not cheap, but it includes access to a library of over 5

One of the best city builders around is getting a hefty update

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 I recently took a look at the exciting future promised by the next wave of city builders , but I've also been spending time with current city building games like Farthest Frontier and Cities: Skylines . And I just found the perfect excuse to go back to another of the best city builders out there, Foundation, which has been in early access on Steam since 2019. Foundation is preparing for a big update, version 1.9, and I got the chance to try it out before it arrives. If you've never played Foundation , one of the most appealing things about it is that it's a completely gridless city builder. Typically, I'm all about grids: there's something immensely satisfying about laying out roads precisely and carefully snapping buildings into place and winding up with an orderly, well-optimized town. But ultimately I've come to prefer Foundation's approach, which doesn't involve drawing roads. Instead, as in the also excellent Ostriv , citizens create paths simp

Our highest-reviewed game of 2022 so far is immediately on Game Pass

Half Mermaid, the three-person studio led by FMV maestro Sam Barlow, released its latest game today. It's called Immortality, and like Barlow's past games, it's a live action video adventure in which players steer the storytelling by watching mysterious scenes out of order. We gave it a glowing 95% in our review, calling it Barlow's "best, most thought-provoking game yet." That's literally all I want to know about a story-heavy game before giving it a shot myself. It's times like these that I'm happy to still be a Game Pass subscriber. Immortality is available to play immediately if you're a member. Barlow's games are a perfect match for the Game Pass library—short, sweet, single-serving narratives that I'll almost certainly never play a second time. At least, that's how it's gone so far with 2015's Her Story ( 90% ) and 2019's Telling Lies ( 87% ), both of which are also on Game Pass at the moment. Immortality is PC

God of War Ragnarök's Combat Lets You 'Play With Your Food'

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Lead combat designers Mihir Sheth and Denny Yeh have over 17 years of God of War experience shared between them, and both played prominent roles in the previous game’s success. The series’ current direction is inspired by an old studio motto: Playing with your food. “That’s an internal philosophy that we’ve had since back in the day,” Sheth says. “Kratos plays with his food. We tried to create systems you want to engage with that are fun, very playful, lots of different routes. And when we looked at the combat in the last game, we were like, ‘We can push this further; we can find new toys and ways of playing with enemies and strategies.’ That’s been the guiding principle more than anything else.” Sheth and Yeh constantly emphasized the importance of enemy variety, so expect a bunch of fresh, grotesque faces to smash. For seven minutes, I follow Kratos and Atreus across an enclosed arena chockful of explosive pots, advantageous high ground, wooden platforms, and bipedal lizards call

Assassin's Creed Mirage will be revealed in September, according to a new leak

It's been almost two years since the release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla , the most recent addition to the series, which means we're definitely due for another—and it looks like we might get our first look at what's next at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward event in September. The latest Ubisoft leak comes from YouTuber j0nathan (via Rebs Gaming ), who claimed in a recent video that the proper title of the new game will be Assassin's Creed Mirage. It will be set in Baghdad between 860 and 870 CE, will be a return to the gameplay style of the original Assassin's Creed, and is expected out in the spring of 2023. YouTuber j0nathan https://t.co/IgrqJfAV7u revealed this information on the new Assassins Creed game-Should be called Assassins Creed Mirage-Released in Spring 2023-The game will take place in Baghdad between the years 870-860-Return to basics, no leveling system pic.twitter.com/soCko92M6U August 30, 2022 See more The leak is in reference to the Assa

Big Chungus may be coming to MultiVersus

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There are a lot of big names in Warner's cartoon fighting game MultiVersus , but one bigger than all the rest may soon be on the way. That's right, I'm talking about the one, the only, the chunky bunny boi , Big Chungus . The potential presence of Big Chungus was revealed in a European Union trademark filing , dug up and shared on Twitter by Andrew Marmo: Warner Bros. trademark Big Chungus for use of a video game. pic.twitter.com/T9tTg9jrko August 27, 2022 See more First things first. Big Chungus, as explained by Know Your Meme , originates from a 1941 Merrie Melodies cartoon in which Elmer Fudd tries to find some peace and quiet at Jellostone Park, and Bugs Bunny, for no reason except that he's kind of a dick, immediately and without provocation begins hassling him. In one of his asides, Bugs balloons up to make fun of Elmer, who in this early iteration (before taking on his more well-known hunter persona) was notably obese and bulbous-headed. The word &quo

Mojang says it's learned from showing off Minecraft features too early

The world of Minecraft is forever growing, which Mojang now talks about in detail during its yearly Minecraft Live showcases. During one of its more frequent Minecraft Now streams where developers play together and answer questions, creative director Agnes Larsson fielded a question about the next major Mojang showcase. "First of all, there will be a Minecraft Live this year," Larsson said, in case there was any doubt. The date for that will be October 15, 2022. She also explained that Mojang has learned from past events what to show players and, crucially, what not to. Larsson said that one of the major goals of Minecraft Live is to "create player dreams" and celebrate with fans. "For this Live we have actually taken concrete actions to make sure we really, really can fulfill these dreams. [...] This year we will make sure the features we show have come really far in the development process." She calls that focus "learning from mistakes," m

Gungrave G.O.R.E. Trailer Reveals The Zany Cast And A Release Date

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Gungrave G.O.R.E. marks the return of the Gungrave franchise after almost 20 years (well, besides that VR game ), and today we found out that the sequel is coming just in time for Thanksgiving. A new cinematic trailer shown during Gamescom reveals a November release date, and it runs down the wacky cast of characters and why you'll be riddling them with bullets.  The largely CG trailer sprinkles in a bit of in-game action, though you should check out this previous gameplay video for a better taste of the over-the-top combat. We’re introduced to Grave’s allies who band together to take on a fearsome foursome of antagonists looking to rule the world (probably). Fans of the PS2 games and the anime that spawned from them will be happy to know that G.O.R.E. looks as bombastic and absurd as they'd expect. Newcomers that enjoy bullets, blood, and insanity will likely feel right at home.  Gungrave G.O.R.E. launches November 22 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbo

Super Mario 3D All-Stars' Brief Run Netted Nearly 10 Million Units According to New Sales Numbers

Nintendo only gave fans six months to rush out and buy Super Mario 3D All-Stars before delisting it digitally and ending its physical run. But the move appears to have paid off from a sales perspective. According to data from research firm CESA , Super Mario 3D All-Stars has shipped 9.07 million units since its launch in September 2020. Update on Nintendo's Switch million sellers from CESA 2022 • As of December 31, 2021 • Shipment data (from Nintendo) • Published by Nintendo only https://t.co/EiXBJFtjPZ pic.twitter.com/idEPDoUjyb — Pierre485 (@pierre485_) August 29, 2022 After months of rumors, Super Mario 3D All-Stars was announced in Nintendo's Super Mario 35th Anniversary Nintendo Direct . The game includes HD ports of N64's Super Mario 64, GameCube's Super Mario Sunshine, and Wii's Super Mario Galaxy. Interestingly, the game received a limited physical run, with Nintendo saying the game would only be available until March 31, 2021. Fans found Ninte

Not that complicated⁠—lawsuit over Fortnite dance 'It's Complicated' dismissed by judge

First spotted by PCGamesN , a judge for the Central District of California has dismissed a lawsuit by choreographer Kyle Hanagami against Epic. Hanagami filed the suit in April , alleging that Epic had used his choreography for the 2017 music video "How Long" by Charlie Puth without permission or attribution. Epic faced controversy beginning in 2018 over the sourcing of its many emote dances in Fortnite. A sequence of artists including 2 Mily and Alfonso Ribeiro filed lawsuits against the company for copyright infringement, but a 2019 Supreme Court ruling determined that dance choreography has to be formally copyrighted before an artist can sue, thwarting most of the cases . Not so for Hanagami's case: his choreography for How Long was copyrighted. Hanagami claims he was never approached for licensing by Epic, and his lawyer, David Hecht, shared a fairly convincing video demonstrating the similarities between the two dances. Honestly, it looks pretty darn similar to