Key Note Gaming

In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2. Speaking to multiple current and recently laid off employees, IGN has confirmed reports that Bungie took responsibility for the layoffs, rather than laying them at the feet of parent company Sony. Parsons told employees that the layoffs were largely due to underperformance of Destiny 2 over the last year, as well as lower-than-expected preorders for upcoming expansion The Final Shape. IGN can now independently confirm reports that The Final Shape has been delayed to June 2024, and Marathon has been internally delayed to 2025 after having been in development since 2019. Employees were also told that Destiny 2 player sentiment was at an all-time low. Sources tell IGN that this issue had been flagged to leadership repeatedly for months prior t...

While it’s not quite over yet, 2023 has certainly been an incredible year for game releases. Whether we look back on it as one of the greatest years in gaming history remains to be seen, but there’s a good chance we’ll be talking about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, Metroid Prime Remastered, Alan Wake 2, Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6, and the Resident Evil 4 remake for years to come. We’ve given four games a 10 this year, and a further 27 have received a nine, so that puts it up there alongside great moments like 2004 (Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, GTA: San Andreas) or 1998 (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Starcraft, Resident Evil 2, Metal Gear Solid). You may not always agree with our reviews (believe me, I'm aware of this), so some additional perspective from other players can be useful. Earlier this year we rolled out a way for you to add your scores to the games in our database alongside our own as another ...

Great horror RPGs are more difficult to find than you might think. Despite clever innovations like the sanity stat, role-playing designers still tend to favor swords and sorcery over everything else ( just ask sci-fi fans ). That doesn’t mean there aren’t some perfectly scary RPGs out there, though. Whether they feature raw psychological horror or more traditional werewolves and vampires, there’s plenty of spookiness to be found in the role-playing genre. So on this, the spookiest day of the year, here are five great RPGs to play on Halloween. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Troika was an RPG studio that was aptly named. Led by Fallout developers Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, who would later go on to work on The Outer Worlds, Troika produced a trio of classic RPGs – Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Bloodlines was barely more than half a game when it launched, rife as it was with bugs and hidde...

The first DLC fighters for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 have been revealed ahead of the game's launch in just a week on Nov. 7. The fighters are: Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob, Rocksteady from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and both Zuko and his uncle Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Revealed earlier on Tuesday via X/Twitter, the official account for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 said, "Mr. Krabs, Zuko, Rocksteady, and Iroh are joining Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 as our first DLC characters in 2024! Watch out for more news on Mr. Krabs coming early next year!" Mr. Krabs, Zuko, Rocksteady, and Iroh are joining Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 as our first DLC characters in 2024! Watch out for more news on Mr. Krabs coming early next year! #NASB2 @Nickelodeon pic.twitter.com/dRSDD8V2nk — Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (@NickBrawlGame) October 31, 2023 It also confirmed the addition of a new roguelite story campaign, in addition to a trailer. You can watch it below: This ...

The Finals developer Embark Studios has responded to criticism from voice actors and developers after it was slammed for using AI voice overs in its hit shooter. The studio said "making games without actors isn't an end goal" and claimed it uses a mix of both recorded audio voices and audio generated via AI text to speech (TTS) tools for its games. "We use a combination of recorded voice audio and audio generated via TTS tools in our games, depending on the context," an Embark spokesperson told IGN. "Sometimes, recording real scenes where actors get together — allowing character chemistry and conflict to shape the outcome — is something that adds depth to our game worlds that technology can’t emulate. Other times, especially when it relates to contextual in-game action call-outs, TTS allows us to have tailored voice over where we otherwise wouldn't, for example due to speed of implementation." The studio previously said it uses "AI with...

Nintendo Switch Online’s game library swells this week with the addition of two obscure NES games and a Castlevania Game Boy game for Halloween. First up is 1984’s Devil World, one of Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, and Koji Kondo’s early NES games, now available in the U.S. for the first time. In this puzzle adventure, the player navigates mazes and avoids the machinations of the devil (the demon from Devil World is an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate). In Devil World, wherever the devil points, the maze scrolls in that direction, potentially restricting movement and closing off escape routes. The second NES game is 1986’s The Mysterious Murasame Castle. In this feudal Japan-set game, a mysterious evil force takes control of Murasame Castle. You join a young samurai apprentice called Takamaru and use his sword and shuriken attacks against swarms of enemies. And finally, 1998 Game Boy game Castlevania Legends sees the player take up arms as Sonia Belmont in a sto...

Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop is one of the quintessential action movies of the 1980s. It pushed the envelope with over-the-top violence, killer one-liners, and fantastic special effects, mixed with a biting anti-corporate social commentary under the surface that resonated with audiences. There have been multiple attempts to resurrect the series over the years, including an ill-fated reboot in 2014 , but nothing has captured the ephemeral “it” that struck a chord when the series debuted. That’s what is most impressive about RoboCop: Rogue City: it’s not just a solid first-person shooter set in the RoboCop universe – developer Teyon absolutely nails the look and feel of its film inspiration in ways that nothing else has. It’s a good game, and the most authentic adaptation the series has ever seen. The story itself is nothing groundbreaking: a bad guy who looks like he is fated to be thrown off the top of Naktatomi Plaza in Die Hard is up to no good, and you need to stop him. OCP is still ...

Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Massive Release: December 7, 2023 Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the next canonical chapter of the Avatar mythos. Set during the one-year gap in Avatar: The Way of Water on the other side of Pandora in a new area called the Western Frontier, players control a Na’vi raised and trained by the Resources Development Administration (RDA) who finds themselves taking the fight to the corporation. That requires, quite literally, getting back to their roots as they reconnect with Eywa while learning what it means to be a Na’vi by ingratiating themselves with the game’s three new clans.  In a recent preview event, I spent about two hours playing four early story missions. Here’s a breakdown of the world, combat, and exploration mechanics I sampled during my stay on Pandora.  Combat and Stealth My demo begins a few hours into the game in the Kinglor Forest, a rainforest-like area home to the ...

Players digging into the opening chapters of Alan Wake 2 are reporting a number of audio and graphical bugs alongside significant lip-sync and subtitle timing issues. While Remedy Entertainment’s long awaited second instalment in the Alan Wake series launched October 27 to positive reviews and fan reception, numerous players are also taking to social media to report a series of audio glitches and other issues that are troubling the opening sections of the game. Players have found issues with both the PC and console versions of Alan Wake 2, with many reporting intermittent audio cutout or a complete loss of sound soon after triggering the first few cutscenes. Others have been left frustrated by lip-sync timing issues, and incorrectly timed subtitles. just played around 2½ hours of Alan Wake 2 and finished up to chapter 2. im enthralled. some major audio bugs mostly affecting cutscenes (the morgue scene especially) definitely have hampered my first couple hours but some settings t...

Major Spoilers Ahead for Marvel's Spider-Man 2! Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has officially arrived and tells an epic story starring Peter Parker, Miles Morales, MJ, Kraven the Hunter, Venom and so many more. While swinging around New York City as both Pete and Miles is as fun as it ever was, there is so much more that makes this sequel what it is. To learn all about Marvel's Spider-Man 2, we sat down with Insomniac senior creative director Bryan Intihar for a spoiler-filled chat that dives deep into some of the greatest moments and reveals in the sequel. You can listen to and/or watch our full chat in the video above or by clicking here, but we also wanted to share with you the 10 biggest things we learned from our discussion. Enjoy! Insomniac Had a Venomized Sandman Concept but Ditched the Idea We all know and love the opening of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 as our Spider-Men face-off against a massive version of Sandman across NYC. However, our dear friend Flint Marko almo...

With how much Dead Island 2’s apocalypse parody poked fun at the Los Angeles area earlier this year, I guess it was only a matter of time before it turned its attention from vicious zombies to equally mindless cultists. I mean, how could they forget California’s reputation for welcoming eccentric people who then take advantage of our tolerance by brainwashing vast swathes of the population? Thankfully, this is something developer Dambuster Studios has corrected with its first DLC, Haus, which transports your character to a cult compound in Malibu where you’ll rub elbows with rich elites and smack down zombies who look like they’re dressed for the runway. And while I won't turn my nose up at a few more good laughs from a game I enjoyed, a three-hour runtime and very few new wrinkles to change up Dead Island 2’s basic zombie slashing formula make this jaunt extremely short-lived and a little unexciting. What we said about Dead Island 2 Dead Island 2 is a hysterical Los Angeles-...

A recruiting drive at FromSoftware suggests a major expansion of the Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne developer is underway. As reported by IGN Japan , FromSoftware is currently recruiting employees across several departments as it works on "several new projects". The developer currently has no announced games in development beyond the Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree , however, and FromSoftware didn't share anything more in the job advertisements either. Roles are available in game planning, research and development, programming, character design, background design, cinematic art, motion design, production, sound design, and more than a dozen other departments, certainly suggesting FromSoftware is looking to expand its development capabilities. Fans have been calling for new entries in its most famous franchise for years now, of course, with sequels to Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne perhaps the most sought after new games. FromSoftware last released...

It’s been six years since the Nintendo Switch launched in 2017, and after a long and successful reign, you may be wondering what new piece of hardware will be next. We’ve seen updates to the current switch with the OLED and Lite models, though we’re still in the dark on what Nintendo’s next-gen offering could be. After becoming the 3rd best-selling console in history this year, it’s fair to say that Nintendo might want to keep things close to its chest. Yet, even with all the secrecy surrounding the possibility of a new Nintendo Switch, we’ve collected all the details we could find about the mystery follow-up ahead of its eventual official announcement and release. Nintendo Switch 2 Release Date While Nintendo hasn’t yet announced any official follow-up to their incredibly successful Nintendo Switch console, there are some rumors swirling about how close we might be to a potential product reveal. Recent court documents as part of the Activision Blizzard acquisition revealed th...