The newest World of Warcraft update reduces the amount of titty that can be seen in the game. Unfortunately, no restitution for its gender-marginalized developers is in sight.

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This Friday, Bungie will roll out matchmaking assistance for Destiny 2’s hardcore mode, Trials of Osiris. The intent, basically, is to make the multiplayer gauntlet a bit more fair for Guardians who continuously get thrashed. You’ll never believe this, I know, but some players are pissed about the prospect of being…

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Net Ease and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment are bringing expansive wars in Middle Earth to the palm of your hands. Now announced to release next week, Lord of the Rings: Rise to War is described as a “Geo-Strategic Seasonal Wargame” for mobile devices.

Rise to War puts players in charge of massive armies and your favorite Lord of the Rings characters to take over swaths of the Middle Earth map. All the stars are here, and they can be your generals in battle. Recruit the likes of Gandalf the White, Galadriel, Aragorn, and Legolas to lead your armies to victory. Each has stats and specified roles like Control or Warrior, so choosing the correct characters for each battle is vital.

Lord of the Rings: Rise to War’s map will shift and change with each battle as players and their Fellowships or Warbands take over territory throughout a season.  According to a press release, players can form groups in “a multi-layer Fellowship social structure designed to foster collaborative strategies between players. Based on their choices to side with good or evil, players can form either Fellowships or Warbands with other players and take to the battlefields to triumph over their foes tile by tile.”

Sawaki Takeyasu wants to bring the PC version of El Shaddai to the Switch.

The post El Shaddai Creator Hiring a Programmer for a Switch Port appeared first on Siliconera.

When I first booted up Gas Station Simulator, a game that’s spent the last week tearing up the Steam charts, my first thought was “Christ, this place is a dump!” At the start of the game, you inherit a derelict gas station from your uncle, who I’m pretty sure is gang affiliated. Your goal is simple: pay back your…

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In the Japanese PlayStation Twitter account's informal poll, Joker came out on top and Ryuji was the least popular.

The post Joker Tops PlayStation Japan Persona 5 Characters Popularity Poll appeared first on Siliconera.

This Friday, we’re taking a short break from our Super Replay of Demon's Souls (we'll be back next week!), and instead, we'll be surviving World War 2 in the multiplayer beta for Call of Duty: Vanguard. You can watch us test our mettle against other players on Twitch at 2 p.m. Central. 

Dead Cells has received yet another update, named Practice Makes Perfect, which adds a training area, powerful buffs called Aspects, and other more. The devs say the patch is focused "on improving the ease-of-use and learning curve for everyone (paticularly newcomers & occasional players), without altering the overall difficulty of the game." To facilitate this goal, all the new features are optional – allowing players to execute their sweet dodge rolls with the challenge they prefer.

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In the animated segment, the Valkyries prepare to face a new threat.

The post New Honkai Impact 3rd Trailer Teases New Story Updates appeared first on Siliconera.

Skatebird is a great idea. A skateboarding game starring adorable, puffy birds! Wonderful. But sadly, while the bird part of Skatebird is perfect, the skate part is a janky and frustrating mess.

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A new Fantasian update is out and gives people a chance start over with new game plus or fight in the Void Realm.

The post Fantasian New Game Plus Update Appears appeared first on Siliconera.

Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider is a revenge and redemption tale, only here the target of your revenge is god. 'We're going to kill a god’ might seem like a well-trodden path in JRPG country, but Death Of The Outsider brings something new to the table. Here, the god is a trickster, a victim, and the source of the player's power. He's a figure that has come to define the Dishonored series as a whole, and is both revered and pitied by its players. So how, exactly, do you go about killing a god like this? I spoke to the developers at Arkane to find out.

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Today Microsoft and Asobo released a hotfix update for Microsoft Flight Simulator, whole third-party developers had plenty of reveals and releases to share.

First of all, here’s the changelog of the hotfix, which requires a 465 megabytes download from the Windows Store/Steam on PC, on top of 528 megabytes to be downloaded within the sim (and 10kb in the content manager).

• Fixed broken night lighting when the renderscale was not set to 100%
• Added Offscreen pre caching option in the VR menu
• Fixed some general crashes
• Fixed the Trim reset button on the Thrustmaster TCA Quadrant
• Safe mode will no longer trigger when a crash occured when closing the program
• Missing watermask at Lucerne has been added
• Color correction for Photogrammetry in Vienna has been tweaked
• Water crack has been fixed near Moritzburg POI
• Fixed terrain spike around LOWI
• Fixed crash with Resync from Aircraft Editor without any aircraft selected

Next, we hear from DC Designs, which provided new screenshots and details about the upcoming Concorde. We also get an official confirmation that it’s coming for the Xbox version of the sim on top of PC.

Yuji Naka, famed creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, has revealed he's teaching himself how to program his own smartphone game following his departure from Square Enix earlier this year.

Naka joined Square Enix in 2018, and his first project with the publisher - action-platformer Balan Wonderworld - was announced last summer for release this year. Unfortunately, Balan Wonderland was met with generally unfavourable reviews and disappointing sales when it launched in April, and Naka confirmed his departure from Square Enix in June. At the time, he told Twitter, "I'm 55 years old, so I may retire."

It seems Naka has been busy since then, however, and he's celebrated his birthday today by revealing some of what he's been up to since leaving Square. "Thank you for your birthday message," he wrote on Twitter. "Recently I've started studying programs again, and I'm making a simple game for smartphones with Unity."

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Deathloop does a lot of things right. One of those things is chat logs. When you’re not going on a murder spree, you’re reading through the private DMs of those you just killed. Arkane has done a superb job of imbuing its villains with flair and personality from beyond the grave, thanks to one of the best in-game…

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Konami resurrected Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, and people can now return to Dracula's castle with familiar heroes via Apple Arcade.

The post Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls Returns Via Apple Arcade appeared first on Siliconera.

Sega and Atlus are set to unveil a new RPG during Day 2 of the Tokyo Game Show 2021, which is October 1. We already knew the companies would have the last presentation of the day according to the event schedule, and they’re gearing up to conclude the second round of livestreams with a bang. 

The publisher has set up a special website for the unannounced title that plays a Japanese-narrated cinematic of an ink quill drawing three fantastical-looking characters overlooking a scenic cliff. It also shows flashes of different characters and melancholy scenes, such as what appears to be a slain woman. The animation concludes by taking viewers to a homepage that currently has a countdown clock ticking down to the game’s reveal at TGS. Translated text of the video’s description simply states “This is a teaser trailer for Sega's new RPG, whose information will be unveiled online at the Tokyo Game Show 2021 on October 1, 2021 (Friday).”

Where are all of the codes to open safes and doors and unlock machine terminals in Deathloop? In true Arkane tradition, Deathloop is full of safes and locked doors that can only be accessed with three- and four-digit codes. Some of the secrets hidden within are essential to progressing the story, while others just contain some good loot. Some of the Visionaries have also used codes to protect some of their machines, which you'll need to override in order to bypass their security.

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Predictably, Imogen and I begin this week's episode of Ultimate Audio Bang by getting excited about Deathloop before realising that there's plenty of other newsy bits to cover. Listen to get our hot thoughts on the Call Of Duty: Vanguard reveal, Battlefield 2042's delay, the Overwatch League using an early build of Overwatch 2 in 2022, and plenty more shootery things.

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Following fawning over the Monkey King violence of Black Myth: Wukong, the latest upcoming Chinese game to turn heads with Souls-inspired action and shiny graphics might be Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. A new gameplay trailer released today gives a long look at a sexy babe fighting against plague-mutated people using her melee weapons, firearms, and gut-gouging counters. Yeah, feeling a lot of Bloodborne inspiration here. Have a look below.

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We haven’t seen much of Intel Alder Lake so far, despite being set for release in a matter of weeks. One thing we do know is that like the majority of Intel’s last few chip family releases, the desktop contingent of these 12th-gen processors will need a brand-new motherboard socket: LGA 1700.

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I don't know if you know this about me, but I love a good list. For the past ten years, I've kept a detailed spreadsheet of all the games I've ever played. The bulk of it catalogues games by platform, but I've also kept a list of all the games I play per year since 2010. Call me crazy, but this document is a great source of joy for me. I love being able to look back and see when I last played a certain game, and it's also interesting to me to see just how many of them I manage to play each year. I also keep similar lists for films I see at the cinema, the books I read, as well as the plays and musicals I see at the theatre. I'm not kidding. I really do love a good list.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm also fascinated by the amount of time I spend playing games, too (and yes, I do have a list for this as well - albeit only for my Nintendo Wii games at the moment). Steam, of course, keeps excellent track of your play time - and because it's always open on my PC, there's no need to keep my own version of it. I can just load up my Steam profile and gaze lovingly at the hours and minutes in my All Games tab. Except I can't anymore, because four years' worth of professional benchmarking has absolutely ruined my play time figures. It upsets me. Because I haven't really spent 130 hours playing Shadow Of The Tomb Raider. Or 38 hours playing Doom. It's all benchmarking, and I wish there was a way to scrub these games clean again so everything can be nice and neat and orderly again, and most of all, accurate.

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Capcom has run a number of different cross-over events for Monster Hunter Rise already, and today it announces yet another. This time, Mega Man’s doggo companion Rush comes to the game via a new skin.

The news comes by way of a Tweet from the game’s main channel, which also includes a short trailer that showcases Rush in action for the first time.

Mega Man’s very good boy is coming to #MonsterHunterRise! Complete the in-game Event Quest beginning on 9/24 to craft the Rush Costume for your Palamute.

Monster Hunter Rise is available now on Nintendo Switch 🐕 🤖: https://t.co/8QJnIxx2Q0 pic.twitter.com/aEAijnYoCU

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 17, 2021

Monster Hunter Rise has been a huge commercial boon for Capcom, having helped contributed significantly to Capcom’s most recent financial quarter.

The game was also a critical success; Twinfinite reviewed the game earlier this year, with review’s editor Zhiqing Wang scoring the game 4.5/5 and concluding:

When discussing details about the original FFVII, Director and Scenario Writer Yoshinori Kitase said Vincent was his favorite character.

The post Yoshinori Kitase Said Vincent is His Favorite FFVII Character appeared first on Siliconera.

Fatal Frame will have a dedicated stream the day before Koei Tecmo features its other games.

The post Koei Tecmo’s TGS 2021 Stream Schedule Will Include Fatal Frame appeared first on Siliconera.

It was 3am and Hucks the cellar spider was finally surrounded by, instead of carrying, her wee hatchlings. Clarice, her slightly dim neighbour, was resting after another hour spent fruitlessly stumbling around after an even dafter flying thingy that would eventually blunder right into her face.

Playing Webbed seemed inevitable for someone who watches her ceiling spiders when she can't sleep or finish an article. But within about a minute of playing, it became clear that it's the kind of game that will bring joy to almost anyone. Webbed is immediately brilliant.

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Today, a treat was unveiled for Legend of Zelda fans, as it was revealed that the original soundtrack for Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword would be getting an official release. In a press release, Nintendo detailed that the original soundtrack of Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword will be released by Nippon Columbia to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of its Wii release.

The release comes with two different versions, which you can see detailed below:

Normal Edition

• Set of 5 CDs
• Tall size digipak specifications

Limited Edition

• Set of 5 CDs
• Tall size digipak specifications
• Includes original music box (playing “Ballad of the Goddess”)
• Luxury BOX specification

Regardless of which version you choose, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword fans will be treated to five discs of music from the game, with 187 songs. Anyone that wants to play a little extra, though, will get their hands on a “luxury” outer box and a truly beautiful music box which plays ‘Ballad of the Goddess.’ You can check out a video for that box down below.

Splitgate will get its own version of forge mode before it arrives in Halo Infinite, developer 1047 Games has said.

In a response to a tweet by KFCGaming of all places, the official Splitgate account announced the plans.

Forge mode, which made its debut in Bungie's Halo 3, lets players edit and create playable maps that can then be shared with the community.

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Today Square Enix released a new trailer and screenshots of Deep Insanity Asylum, a new JRPG for PC via Steam, iOS, and Android.

The trailer introduces the world of the game and its cast of characters. It also celebrates the opening of pre-registrations for Japan for iOS and Android. The release date in the country has also been announced and it’s on October 14, 2021.

We also get new screenshots providing the first look at gameplay. The game is a JRPG with real-time battles that let the player select skills and includes double speed and auto-play features.

You can check the assets out below.

Two friends in a deadly VR game.

The post Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie Trailer Focuses on Asuna’s Early Days appeared first on Siliconera.

The stream will also have a recording of Hololive Vtubers trying out River City Saga: Three Kingdoms.

The post Arc System Works Will Feature Guilty Gear and River City at TGS 2021 appeared first on Siliconera.

Dota 2 will soon remove support for 32-bit systems, Valve has warned.

The mega-popular MOBA launched eight years ago, and Valve said it's time to leave older tech behind.

So, in the coming months, Dota 2 players will need to have a 64-bit machine and operating system to run the game.

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A question that pops up often around these parts is where have all the arcade racers gone, and one answer, it turns out, is blindingly obvious; you can find them down at the arcade. Cruis'n Blast, which just launched this week, is part of that other seemingly endangered species, an arcade port that squeezes 2017's gloriously overstated racer onto the Switch, and one that serves up the kind of garish, absurd outrageous entertainment so many of us pine for from our racing games.

Perhaps it's something of a surprise to discover that bonafide arcade games even exist in this day and age, but should you ever be lucky enough to stumble upon one yourself you'll see they're largely propped up by one company alone: Raw Thrills, a small outfit operating out of Skokie, Illinois under the watchful eye of a certain Eugene Jarvis. That'll be Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender and Robotron amongst other all-time classics, because while the video game world moved on from the smoky scrum of the arcade, Eugene decided to make it his lifelong home.

I'm telling you all this before I get to Cruis'n Blast's outrageous arcade action, its race tracks stuffed with set-pieces that would make Fast & Furious blush and straddled by pairs of 50-foot yetis tearing chunks out of each other, because it seems kind of important to understand what exactly this is. This is the arcade racer emerging from the Galápagos isle of the arcade itself, the result of 30 years of isolated evolution, and a game that's got louder, brasher, somehow more lurid still. What a wonder it is to behold!

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Reports are emerging that cheaters banned from Call of Duty Warzone are also banned from Call of Duty Vanguard servers.

Screenshots from cheating Discord servers and forums appear to show that players who received a hardware ID ban on Warzone are unable to login to Vanguard's beta.

CharlieIntel has independently confirmed that players who have received a hardware or account ban on Warzone are unable to play on Vanguard.

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Whelp, that didn’t take long. Steam Deck dev kits were only sent out to game developers this week, and it looks like Valve’s handheld PC is already getting picked apart. That’s according to SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, who tweeted screenshots of the Steam Deck UI before claiming the entire SteamOS 3 operating system has been leaked.

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