Leave it to modders to push the boundaries of what was once (and arguably still is) one of the most impressive visual showcases of modern gaming: Cyberpunk 2077. A skyrocketing post on Reddit shows off some pretty remarkable graphical feats that one enterprising player has achieved. Featuring a handful of mods that…
It’s just two days into 2024 and a major video game company is already talking about its big AI plans. If you thought we were leaving AI discourse behind in 2023, I’m sorry to tell you that you were very, very wrong. A New Year’s letter from the current Square Enix president details the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth…
Baldur’s Gate 3 has been on Xbox Series X/S for just under a month, and while there have been a few technical issues with the RPG since arriving on the platform, none has been more far-reaching than one that sprouted up over the weekend banning Xbox accounts that record and upload clips of sex scenes or any moments…
The New Year brought the excellent news that Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse has finally entered the public domain, after decades of Disney, er, convincing Congress to keep extending its copyrights. With that, derivative works that don’t directly contravene Disney’s trademarks are now allowed by law, and with that,…
First the price went up, and now, following the release of a newer headset from Meta, the very popular Meta Quest 2 has dropped to a new low of $250, making it a much easier buy for the VR-curious.
Resident Evil 4 was one of the most accomplished remakes of 2023, a modernised, bold reinterpretation of Capcom's 2005 action-horror classic. It looked great too across current-gen platforms as well as PS4, with great lighting detail and excellent art design. As the year closed out, Capcom delivered RE4's first mobile port. As a part of Apple's recent triple-A gaming push, Resident Evil 4 is now available on iPhone 15 Pro and M1 and M2 based iPads, representing the fastest of Apple's mobile hardware. So is the game hung up on performance and configuration issues like Resident Evil Village? Or is RE4 a capable conversion of the console code?
Resident Evil 4 was for the most part a current-gen console and PC experience, but Capcom also shipped the game on PS4 console systems. The visuals were mostly preserved on Sony's eighth-gen machines, but there were some notable cutbacks. Most notably, texture resolution took a big hit, and texture streaming could be pretty slow. There were a range of lighting cutbacks as well, including a reduction in the number of shadow-casting light sources, and absent screen-space reflections.
Those cutbacks need to be kept in mind, because the PS4 code proves the closest match of all the console versions for the results seen on iPhone. Unlike Resident Evil Village, RE4 doesn't have a PC-style settings menu, so we're effectively getting one basic visual experience on the platform, with some options to adjust lens distortion, depth of field and motion blur, like we saw on all console versions of the game.
UPDATE 4/1/24: Disney Parks has updated its original promotional post, and now lists Star Wars Outlaws as arriving in 2024. It no longer gives a more specific timeframe.
As we reported yesterday, this post initially said Ubisoft's upcoming open world Star Wars game would arrive "late this year".
The original story continues below.
Guild Wars publisher NCSoft's long-rumoured Horizon: Zero Dawn spin-off is a full-blown MMORPG codenamed Project Skyline, will run on Unreal Engine 5, and is coming to PC and mobile with a PS5 release still TBC, according to a brace of job listings and CVs fished from the post-apocalyptic robo-wilds of yonder internet. Also according to the said listings, it won’t be out for a while.
Tim Cain wrote what is perhaps gaming’s most famous and influential monologue: the introduction to Fallout. “War never changes,” he says. “People loved it. I’m like, ‘I must be a writer.’” Yet much more recently, when Cain sat down to write his memoirs, nobody really liked what came out on the page. “I was really, really bad at it,” he says. “I had half a dozen people read it, and they all pretty much said that the stories were good, but my writing wasn’t.”
Cain’s writing strengths, as fellow Fallout originator Leonard Boyarsky has suggested, lie in shortform. Which was bad news for anyone who wanted to read the definitive account of his four decades at the heart of Interplay, Troika and Obsidian, three of the most important RPG studios of all time. Thankfully, though, it turns out Cain is a natural raconteur. The same anecdotes that appeared flat and toneless in his memoirs go down a storm on YouTube. There, for the past seven months, Cain has been delivering his stories straight to camera, as if at a dinner party with 73,500 other people. “When I started the channel, I would effectively just look at something in the book and be like, ‘I’ll tell that story today,’” he says. “Now I spend as much time answering questions and doing videos based on things people ask about.”
Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's upcoming open world Star Wars game, is set to release "late this year", according to Disney. Announced via a Disney Parks blog post of all things, Star Wars Outlaws ranks as the No.22 most "Ooooh-Worthy Thing" out of the 2024 Disney Experiences line-up - which, considering the list only stretches to 24 entries is a bit of an unfair burn on the game, if you ask me, especially when No.21 is... *checks notes* new Disney Eats and Stitch clothes collections.
In Famitsu's New Year Greetings column for 2024, Silent Hill series Lead Producer Motoi Okamoto offered an update on the series. Okamoto’s keyword for 2024 is “delivery,” and the producer confirmed that 2024 will mark the beginning of new Silent Hill game releases. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
The producer’s aspirations for 2024 consist of continuing to build up the Silent Hill series with both games and other types of media. Motoi Okamoto mentioned the release of the interactive streaming Silent Hill Ascension in November 2023 as one of such types of non-game media for the franchise.
Now that 2024 has begun, Naoki Yoshida, the producer and director for Final Fantasy XIV, shared details about the game's future in a New Year’s message. In his greeting, he explained how the current plans for future updates and preparations for the Tokyo 2024 Fan Festival on January 7, 2024 are faring.
Yoshida admitted that the Final Fantasy XIV development team in Japan has been hard at work preparing for the upcoming Fan Festival 2024 in Tokyo, as well as the 7.0 update and Dawntrail expansion. The team hopes to ensure the conclusion to the world tour is a success. Yoshida also noted that even though the event would take place in the large Tokyo Dome, the same Fan Festival shenanigans would ensue.
Yoshida teased that a note was "delivered" to his office. It reads as follows:
Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden will be leaving Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass subscription service within the next two weeks. The official site noted that they are among the four games leaving on January 15, 2024.
Here is a full list of the video games leaving Xbox Game Pass within the next two weeks. All four of them are playable on both consoles and PCs with subscriptions.
In addition, Grand Theft Auto V apparently was removed from the service on December 31, 2023.
Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden each long campaigns, with the former being around 60 hours and the latter being about 80. Atlus announced both titles, along with Persona 5 Royal, would join the Xbox Game Pass service in 2022.
The Version 1.6 Update for Honkai: Star Rail is full of exciting new additions, including Ruan Mei, Pure Fiction, and you can even play as Peppy the Dog at some point! But with all these additions, one stood out to me more than any other: the changes to Daily Training.
It’s a small thing to get excited about, but I have my reasons. I finished the story of Honkai: Star Rail up to the end of Version 1.0 before putting the game down. This allowed me to play other things until more updates were added. Except I didn’t come back when the updates were added. I consistently got distracted by other games until, eventually I finally came back to the game partway through Version 1.5’s updates.
Final Fantasy XI Producer and Director Yoji Fujito discussed the state of the game, including its server replacements, Windows 11 support, and the ongoing existence of the We Are Vana’diel site as a repository of information. The 2024 New Year’s letter also went over plans in and out of the MMORPG for the next year.
First, Fujito brought up the Final Fantasy XI server replacement and Windows 11 support as part of efforts to ensure stability and compatibility. He noted that in the case of both, there is “steady progress.” There was no update on when either project will be finished.
After that, he noted that We Are Vana’diel will not only remain online, but it will get more updates about the development of Final Fantasy XI. Specifically, more interviews were confirmed. However, he also noted it will also offer “oral histories” for the game.
Beginning in 1989, the Prince of Persia series enjoyed consistent attention, with its longest break between releases being six years between Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame and the better-left forgotten Prince of Persia 3D. 2003’s Sands of Time and its two sequels marked a new era for Prince and, in many ways, laid the foundation for Ubisoft’s most successful franchise, Assassin’s Creed. The 2008 Prince of Persia reboot didn’t reignite the series as Ubisoft had hoped, and 2010’s Forgotten Sands felt closer to a movie tie-in than a new, proper entry.
That game’s subtitle would end up being a portend of the future as the series seemed inexplicably lost to time. Though not completely ignored, thanks to the occasional cameo in other Ubisoft games and underplayed mobile releases, we will have gone 13 years without a new Prince of Persia game by the time The Lost Crown is released early next year. We’re well overdue for another chance to explore a Persian location with our impressive parkour skills. We may not have expected the series to go back to its 2D roots for its triumphant return, but based on our discussions with developer Ubisoft Montpellier and playing the game’s first three and a half hours, it may be precisely what we need.
Classic puzzle game Tetris has been around for over three decades, and in that time, plenty of people have reached its various endings, usually by clearing four rows of bricks at once like a digital demolitioner. That’s a challenge in and of itself, but now, someone has taken the concept of “beating Tetris” to the…
According to France’s Autorité de la concurrence, a government body responsible for regulating competition, Sony hasn’t been playing nice with third-party controllers on PS4. The regulatory body has fined Sony 13.5 million euros (roughly 14.8 million USD) for deploying “technical countermeasures [...] which affected…
There are quite a few Cardcaptor Sakura character Nendoroids, with even a Nendoroid doll in the works, and that also means reruns of ones like the Sakura Kinomoto Tomoeda Junior High Uniform figure. As expected, it’s as adorable as it was during its 2018 run for its 2023 one.
This is a rather basic Nendoroid of Sakura in her school uniform from the Clear Card follow-up series, so the character does look slightly older. However, because of the diminutive nature of Nendoroids, she still looks incredibly childlike and cute. She’s a charming chibi, with face plates that mimic CLAMP’s trademark eye design. The uniform itself is also an accurate representation, which is great. But all this also means that if you had past Nendoroids of Cardcaptor Sakura characters, you could mix and match easily. Tomoyo could wear this new uniform, for example.
The January 2024 PlayStation Plus games are now available. There are three titles to choose from this month, with Evil West (PS4, PS5), Nobody Saves the World (PS4, PS5), and A Plague Tale: Requiem (PS5) appearing.
Evil West first launched in November 2022. It is a third-person shooter set in the wild west, with players following Jesse Rentier as he attempts to deal with vampires and other supernatural creatures in the name of the Rentier Institute with the help of a new prototype Gauntlet. It normally costs $59.99.
Nobody Saves the World is also a 2022 release, though it debuted in January 2022. It is an action-RPG that can be played alone or with others, with players following a nobody with a wand that lets them transform so they can use their new forms’ skills to save a procedurally generated world. It usually is $24.99.
If you haven’t heard, the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse is officially in the public domain, and Nightmare Forge Games wasted no time announcing a horror game starring that version of Disney’s mascot called Infestation 88. However, upon announcement, the team was met with immediate pushback regarding the…
Jujutsu Kaisen wrapped up earlier this week after a long and fairly grim season. You won’t be surprised to learn that it’s got another season in the works, once again courtesy of MAPPA.
Some of you may be surprised that a gay Call of Duty ship is in the top ten of fanfiction site Archive Of Our Own’s annual, unofficial roundup, but I’m not. Not long after the 2022 release of Modern Warfare II, a bevy of TikToks bimbofied Call of Duty character Simon “Ghost” Riley, who is only ever shown in-game…
Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure game that follows scoundrel Kay Vess between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, previously had no release date beyond a very broad “2024” window. Today, however, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced that it would launch in “late 2024.” This…
Frogwares is "now the sole publisher of The Sinking City on all platforms", says the developer. This brings to an end several years of uncertainty and litigation, which saw the Lovecraftian RPG delisted from Steam several times and at one point restored by its publisher via an allegedly pirated version of the game.
The downside is that an updated version of the game is coming to all storefronts in the coming weeks and it won't be compatible with old save files.
Vampire Survivors was a big enough sensation that it instantly inspired a horde of similar games to spawn. 20 Minutes Till Dawn was one of the more worthy: a topdown, 2D roguelite with a similar sense of spectacle and progression, but with traditional weapon aiming.
It's currently free to keep from the Epic Games Store.
The player-voted Steam Awards have reached their conclusion, and the results are about as weird as the nominees. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the weirdest game possible won in several categories, such as Red Dead Redemption 2 for the Labor Of Love award and Starfield for "Most Innovative Gameplay".
The New Year's banner for Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis is now live and features a new weapon and outfit for both Cloud and young Sephiroth. The banner is set to remain available until January 14, 2024, alongside various packs of draw tickets and upgrade materials.
Cloud's new weapon is called Skysplitter, and it is a black and silver katana that boasts a powerful and ATB-intensive ability called Blazing Strike. This attack can be further boosted by his new gear, the Official Festive Garb. It boosts his physical attack and fire ability damage.
Meanwhile, young Sephiroth will be able to equip the Radiant Edge, which has the ability to reduce enemy physical defenses and fire resistance, as well as deal non-elemental physical damage. His Celebratory Garb gear will boost his HP rather than his damage, though it does contain a similar fire ability damage buff.
Both weapons will be available by rolling on the New Year's banner. Meanwhile, the gear is obtained through Ever Crisis' stamp card system.
You can get a closer look at the weapon and outfit additions for both Cloud and young Sephiroth in FFVII Ever Crisis in the gallery below:
Scaring players has helped put the small team at Red Candle Games on the map. Its first two titles, Detention and Devotion, impressed and terrified fans with frighteningly strong horror chops, but the team is leaving that behind to tackle something completely different in Nine Sols. This side-scrolling action platformer blends sci-fi with Chinese mythology and is Red Candle’s most ambitious project yet. This significant step forward affords an opportunity to look back on the studio’s young history, so we spoke with co-founder Vincent Yang to learn about how a small band of gamers in Taiwan formed one of the industry’s most promising – and, at one time, controversial – indie studios.
Red Candle Games began in 2014 when designer Coffee Yao was developing a prototype for Detention. The side-scrolling horror game features two students exploring a haunted high school in 1960s Taiwan, incorporating local cultural references rarely seen in games. These elements drew the attention of Henry and Light Wang during an indie developer meetup in Taipei. According to Yang, Detention impressed the Wangs enough for them to join the project. As the game grew in scope, the three recruited help from mutual friends – Doy Chiang, Hans Chen, and Yang himself – bumping the yet-to-be-named team to six members by late 2015. After working remotely on Detention for a period, the group decided a physical office was necessary, which led to the official formation of Red Candle Games.
I'm a sucker for games where swords are the pointy death delivery devices they truly are, rather than the big, blunt sticks so many turn them into. First Cut: Samurai Duel seems to be aiming its blades at my heart, then. It's a 2D sidescrolling swordfighter in which each connecting blow means instant death, and it has a January 17th release date.
2024 marks the 30th anniversary of Earthbound and there will be several campaigns, some involving exclusive limited-time merchandise, available throughout the year as celebration.
You can keep track of the Earthbound 30th Anniversary campaigns via the official website or on Twitter (X). As of the time of writing, the website is a page with the logo for the anniversary, as well as the same text as the press release. To summarize it, there will be commemorative merchandise, events that Nintendo and Hobonichi have never done before for Earthbound, and collaboration events. The team doesn’t know all the details just yet, in the sense that they’re still coming out with new ideas. They’ve finished planning out some, whereas they’ve only just secured permissions for others. So they cannot say anything for sure just yet.
In the 2024 Famitsu New Year Greetings column, Yoko Taro shared that he’s working on a new Bakuken stage play. This will be the fourth stage play in the Bakuken -An Explosion of Swords- series. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
The new Bakuken stage play is subtitled Teikoku Gensou Heidan, and it roughly translates to “Imperial Illusion Army.” Yoko Taro confirmed that he is currently writing the script for the new Bakuken stage play, and said that it will appear sometime before the end of 2024. The first two Bakuken stage plays and the introduction to the third entry are available to watch for free with English subtitles in the Shiro-Kuro official YouTube channel.
Additionally, Yoko Taro shared in the Famitsu column that he has been missing a lot of deadlines throughout 2023. The developer and writer said that he is “surprised at the potential of the human race to be unconcerned about missing deadlines.”
Sega will release a Luminasta figure of Ayanami Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion in a racing get-up. This is a prize figure that you’ll be able to get from crane game machines. [Thanks, Hobby Dengeki!]
The full name of this figure is Ayanami Rei Pit Walk. The outfit is based on what the motorsports models (race queen is the Japanese term) for Evangelion Racing wear. These outfits usually resemble the plugsuits that the pilots wear in the show. As for what Evangelion Racing is, it’s a real, official racing team that was first created to promote Rebuild of Evangelion in 2010.
Sega first unveiled this figure in September 2023. The Ayanami Rei Pit Walk figure has her in a white plugsuit-like outfit that shows her midriff. However, a piece of cloth covers up her belly button. In total, the figure stands at about 21 centimeters. She’ll also come with a hexagonal base to stand on.
In the New Year’s round-up at Famitsu with video game developers, Yasuyuki Oda states that SNK is eagerly hiring to work on its new projects. The only game that he explicitly named in his resolution is Art of Fighting. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
Every year, Famitsu does short interviews with major video game developers in the Japanese industry. These developers give some information on their recent activities, as well as what they aspire to aim for in the coming year. In Oda’s case, he and other SNK developers are particularly interested in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which they hope to show more of in 2024. Oda states that SNK’s new office in Shin-Osaka is working on several games such as a new Art of Fighting, and they welcome new talent. Fellow SNK game designer Nobuyuki Kuroki expressed the same sentiment in his own interview.
Hey there! I’m Kevin Zuhn, the creative director and head writer at Young Horses Games. My notable work includes Bugsnax and Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which you’ve probably watched a steamer play at some point.
When it comes to games, I have a voracious appetite. By my count, in the year of 2023 I played over 170 games in total. How do I do it? I pretend it’s research!
But having played what my friends and coworkers call an ‘upsetting amount of games’ I find it harder than ever to narrow things down to a Top 10. After all, if I’d only played 10 games this year, the list would write itself! So this is me digging deep into what I love and what I find value in, and I hope that you find value in these games, too.
Look, do you really need me to tell you that the biggest, most successful, and most beloved games of this year were good?
…You do??
Well alright, then.
Two new additions to the VShojo Vtuber Ironmouse and Gloomy Bear crossover merchandise line are now available to pre-order ahead of their eventual May 2024 debut. They are a limited edition Ironmouse plush and a Gloomy Bear plush available now on the Gloomy Bear online store for $45 and $60, respectively.
These collaboration plushes feature new designs for Ironmouse and Gloomy Bear illustrated by the original artist Mori Chack. Ironmouse has been drawn in a simplistic art style, and Gloomy Bear’s design has him dressed with horns, wings, and other motifs from the VShojo Vtuber. The Ironmouse Human plush measures ten inches in height, while the Gloomy Bear plush stands 12 inches tall.
You can view the official announcement from the Gloomy Bear social media account below:
Aladdin X announced that Suika Game (Watermelon Game) is now available on the Japanese iOS App Store. The game costs 240 yen (or approximately $1.70) and is published by popIn Inc.
Since Suika Game became available on the global Nintendo Switch store on October 21, 2023, it is likely that the game will also appear on the global iOS App Store. After the success of the original game, there have been plenty of unofficial knock-off versions releasing on mobile devices and consoles.
One example includes an unofficial release called The Suika Game, which appears to be headed to the PlayStation Store soon. In addition, developer Aladdin X recently warned of fake merchandise plushies of the titular watermelon has started to circulate as prizes on crane machines in Japan.
Jack Black is reportedly set to take on the role of Minecraft's Steve in the upcoming film adaptation.
Deadline states that Black - who has also lent his talents to The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the forthcoming Borderlands adaptation - recently joined the cast of the Jason Momoa-fronted film.
Black, meanwhile, has seemingly confirmed this report with a playful social media post. The performer shared an image of himself reading a Minecraft Basics textbook, captioning it: "An actor prepares."
Jack Black has joined the cast of the in-development live-action Minecraft movie. Rumors about this casting popped up yesterday, January 2, with Deadline reporting that Black would play Steve (the Minecraft guy with the teal shirt and blue pants). Notably, Black starred as the villainous Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie last year, giving us the instant-classic "Peaches," too.
Following that report, other outlets, like Variety, further confirmed that Black would be starring in Minecraft alongside previously announced cast members like Jason Momoa (Aquaman, Game of Thrones), Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple), and Emma Myers (Wednesday). Black himself even nodded to the news in an Instagram post that showed him reading a Minecraft Basics for Dummies book. However, neither he nor the film's various production companies, like Warner Bros. and Legendary, have confirmed Deadline's report that he's playing Steve.
Dave the Diver has surpassed 3 million units sold, developer Mintrocket has revealed. The studio announced this achievement on X today, alongside some new art from the game to celebrate the milestone. Selling 3 million units is no small feat, especially considering Dave the Diver is Mintrocket's first game.
In Dave the Diver, players control Dave as he dives during the day to find treasure, fish, complete quests, and more. At night, Dave runs a sushi restaurant, and the game mixes its adventure gameplay with its simulation gameplay really well – read more about that in Game Informer's Dave the Diver review.
🌊3 million global sales of Dave the Diver!🤿
Thank you so much for the support and love!🐳 pic.twitter.com/YzfUSOrHxd