Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix

Kingdom Hearts 4 was surprise-revealed yesterday during a 20th Anniversary announcement trailer for the series, which is where Square Enix also revealed that it was developing Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, a new mobile game for the franchise. 

The reveal of Kingdom Hearts was quite extensive and you can read Game Informer’s full breakdown of it here, but one thing that couldn’t go unnoticed was the new visual style. Featuring a much more realistic look, especially compared to the cartoony nature of previous Kingdom Hearts games, this new sequel looks beautiful. 

Click here to watch embedded media

Today British publisher PQube announced the western release date of the upcoming post-apocalyptic JRPG by Kadokawa Games Metal Max Xeno Reborn.

Fans of the series have certainly waited long for the announcement, considering that the localization was revealed almost a year ago and the game launched in Japan in September 2020.

Yet, it’s finally coming to PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam on June 10.

We also get a trailer, which you can check out below.

A physical Collector’s Edition for Nintendo Switch will be available in ultra-limited quantities (500 copies).

The full patch is still out on April 12 [Update: As a follow-up to the XIV 6.1 preliminary patch notes, we...

The post The Final Fantasy XIV 6.1 preliminary patch notes have a lot to look over (Update) appeared first on Destructoid.

Earlier this week, anime fans were treated to a brand new visual for Makoto Shinkai’s (Your Name, Weathering With You) next film, which is titled Suzume’s Door-Locking (Suzume no Tojimari). The official TOHO Movie Youtube channel thought that simple, wasn’t enough, as they also released a new teaser for the film to help get fans excited for is Nov 11, 2022 release in Japan.

You can check out the new trailer and an official description, courtesy of CoMix Wave Films, right down below:

On the other side of the door, was time in its entirety—

17-year-old Suzume’s journey begins in a quiet town in Kyushu when she encounters a young man who tells her, “I’m looking for a door.” What Suzume finds is a single weathered door standing upright in the midst of ruins as though it was shielded from whatever catastrophe struck. Seemingly mesmerized by its power, Suzume reaches for the knob…

Doors begin to open one after another all across Japan, unleashing destruction upon any who are near. Suzume must close these portals to prevent further disaster.

The stars
The sunset
The morning sky

Within that realm, it was as though all time had melted together in the sky—

Drawn in by this mysterious door, Suzume’s journey is about to begin.

Platform: Switch
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release: April 29, 2022

Wii Sports solidified the power of motion-control gameplay and catapulted Nintendo’s seventh-generation home console to immediate superstardom (it’s no wonder the cartoony sports simulator cracked our Top 25 Wii Games). And while the Resort follow-up garnered critical and commercial success, the magic of its predecessor remained unmatched. Fast-forward 16 years and Switch Sports’ launch is finally on the horizon. I tried my hand at the activities (old and new) scattered throughout Spocco Square, and here are my thoughts on each.

Fans believe .hack collection is in the works Bandai Namco, the mighty publisher behind some of Japan’s biggest-selling game franchise,...

The post Bandai Namco quietly trademarks ‘Last Recollection’ appeared first on Destructoid.

Two years ago, I praised 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim for its fun RTS combat and its visuals. Vanillaware truly outdid themselves with this one; the game is great at consistently stunning the player with its jaw-dropping pastel colored vistas and glorious mech robots. Outside of the combat, you can tell that a lot of care has been taken with virtually every scene in the game and it’s just a pleasure to look at.

While it’s clear that there have been some compromises that had to be made with the Switch port, I’m now thoroughly convinced that the Switch version is the best way to experience this game.

Think of 13 Sentinels as a comfy bedtime story that you can take with you to bed, and you’ll quickly realize that the Switch port offers all of that and more.

I’ll get the cons out of the way first. Right off the bat, the combat sections on Switch look a lot less chaotic than they did on the PS4. The sheer number of enemies on the map also looks considerably smaller, and while the satisfying explosions that you see when you blow up an entire cluster are still there, they’re not quite as pronounced. The environments also look a little flatter overall, but considering that the battles in 13 Sentinels could get so hectic to the point of causing severe slowdown on the PS4 (especially the late-game fights), I can totally see why those compromises needed to be made here.

If you go down to Mos Espa today, you're in for a creepy droid surprise. Yes, despite its family-friendly focus, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga holds a surprising nod to one of Star Wars' creepiest background characters.

Wander around Mos Espa's back alleys and you may encounter Nobot, an odd-looking C-3PO lookalike, who shuffles off into a hovel. Follow him at your peril.

Once inside the area - labelled as "Haunted Hovel" - you're treated to a weird one-off moment with Nobot himself - and likely left wondering what the heck just happened.

Read more

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix

Kingdom Hearts 4 was surprise-revealed yesterday during a 20th Anniversary stream for the series, which is also where Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, a new mobile game for the franchise, was announced. 

Now that fans have had a days’ time to pour over every shot in the Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer and speculate on what this or that means, some people are beginning to think the Forest Moon of Endor, the fan-favorite Star Wars location from Episode VI, is teased in it. If you recall, the Kingdom Hearts 4 reveal showcases some beautiful shots of nature – lots of green foliage, a small creek, perhaps some Redwood trees. That description sounds a lot like Endor, right? That’s probably not enough to call the shot, though, but some fans have noticed a peculiar metal structure in one of the shots and it looks a lot like an AT-ST foot. 

IT'S THE SAME AT-ST FOOT I MEAN COME ON??? 🤯 pic.twitter.com/Pl1WDiCfao

Another day, another Elden Ring speed running record to be left in awe by. And this time, it is a sub-10-minute run. In fact, it is so good, it is actually a sub-nine run, but that didn't sound quite as catchy.

This new record was achieved by Distortion 2, who has previously achieved and broken many other Elden Ring speed running records. This included the game's first sub-20 run in March.

20 minutes now seems like eons for the streamer, as their new record is an impressive 8 minutes and 56 seconds. This was achieved by using a Zip Glitch, which YouTube commentor Sketchy explains as being performed by "guarding and then walking at a specific time afterward for a specific number of frames. These are frame perfect.

Read more

Just before Laser Dog Games released Catchee on iOS and Android, it shared a wonderful video of the game design process. Sadly - and we'll get to this - the gist of the video was that the studio might be about to go bankrupt. But yes, we'll get to that.

What stood out at the time, aside from the looming financial threat, was the way the team worked. Laser Dog is two people, Simon Renshaw and Rob Allison. Since 2013 they've been making astonishingly brisk and playable arcade games, generally for smartphones. Two people made all these games? How? Watch the video and you sense a partnership where the individuals are starting to blend a bit. Who does what? It's hard to tell.

"Well that’s nice, and great that it comes across, cause it’s true." Who said that? Simon or Rob? Fittingly I can't tell you that either. Due to everyone being busy - we'll get to this - I had to interview Laser Dog over a Google Doc. And very quickly it became impossible to tell the duo apart. So for most of the time I was talking to the Laser Dog hivemind. I suspect it would have felt like this over Skype anyway, tbh. These games are clearly made by people who finish each others' sentences.

Read more

Over the weekend, Square Enix surprise-announced Kingdom Hearts 4, the next big game in their incomprehensible RPG series which stars Disney cartoon characters as pop-punk boyband multiverse superheroes. I am mildly distressed to see KH4 lean towards a 'realistic' art style in parts, though I would be curious to see a Kingdom Hearts Mickey Mouse that's just a wee mouse wrapped in leather, plaid, buckles, and zips. While KH4 is largely a mystery for now, eagle-eyed viewers think the announcement trailer hints at a crossover with the Disney Princess world of Star Wars.

Read more

Metal Gear Solid on PS1 originally had Solid Snake befriending rats.

According to a new video by YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming (narrated by David Hayter no less), game director Hideo Kojima wanted to add more rats into the game, allowing the player to assign them names and raise them as pets.

Rats were apparently the first life forms Snake encounters in the cold of Alaska, and would play an important role in the game.

Read more

UPDATE 14/4/22: Killtheth, the Twitter user who gained access to Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp on their Switch Lite despite Nintendo officially delaying its release, has now had her order cancelled. Nintendo will be providing Killtheth with a refund for her purchase (although she is yet to receive it).

Following her original posts sharing pictures from her copy of Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, Killtheth shared this update on her blog:

"I woke up on Sunday morning to an influx of social interaction on Twitter which gave me a mild panic attack. People were suggesting I turn on flight mode on my Switch, so I did, after having been playing the game normally with my internet on for a while.

Read more

Fresh from its BAFTA Games win for Music, PlayStation has released a new video detailing the music of Returnal's Ascension DLC.

Presented by Glen Andrew Brown from PlayStation Studios Creative Arts Music team, the video highlights how composer Bobby Krlic and the team heighten tension the higher Selene climbs in the endless Tower of Sisyphus.

Specifically, every music track has been composed and edited into all twelve musical keys so that every time Selene moves up a floor of the tower the music rises by a semitone.

Read more

If you’re unfortunate enough to know me reasonably well, you’ll know that I’ve become a little more insufferable than usual lately thanks to returning to my love of photography. It’s been interesting to see how much of what I love about photography - and the way photography affects memory and nostalgia - is visible in Tunic.

Of course, I don’t mean that there are cameras in the game as with Beyond Good & Evil or anything like that. But seeing certain features in the game that are also present in so many favourite photographs I’ve seen on the web was quite a jarring experience.

Firstly, the water. The water in Tunic is such a glorious, vivid blue that it almost looks like flowing silk. It’s been obvious for a while that the most realistic looking waves in a video game are probably those you dance across in Sea of Thieves. Yet I think this heavenly blue in Tunic is how we sometimes remember idyllic lakes from holidays and days out. Maybe it’s the euphoric feelings of such memories that make the colours in our minds much more saturated than they actually were, because we can’t all visit the true-blue water near the Canadian Rockies or Attabad Lake.

Read more

2D bullet hell game Vampire Survivors is surely one of the most interesting success stories of the year, as what was a simple mobile game became popular almost overnight. Its very minimalistic roguelike style captured players looking for something casual, but still engrossing. You pick one of several characters and move them around the screen as they auto-attack. As enemies are disposed of the player levels up, along with changing weapons and gaining power-ups, with the ultimate goal being to keep the ever growing mob of enemies under control. On death you unlock new weapons and characters by spending coins gained in battle.

While the game currently sits on Steam with an “overwhelmingly popular” based on almost 70k reviews, success is definitely not what solo developer Luca Galante was expecting when he first started working on it.

Read more

What's next for Watch Dogs? While we wait to hear if the London-set Legion will get a full game follow-up, Ubisoft will keep fans busy with a Tokyo-set manga.

The near-future hacktivist saga has so far visited Chicago, San Francisco and a post-Brexit Britain. Here's hoping this latest storyline is a little less bleak.

Watch Dogs Tokyo's first installment launches tomorrow, 12th April, and involves series' usual evil megacorp Bloom up to no good again.

Read more

If you make games, or are interested in the making of games, you might fancy dropping in on GAconf Europe this week. Running today and tomorrow, it's a free online conference for developers, with 20-odd sessions discussing accessibility issues. Talks from devs, players, and other experts touch on many forms of accessibility problems and how games can approach them, with topics ranging from "accessibility in first person games" to "integrating accessibility into team culture".

Read more

Elden Ring once had a feature that allowed players to collect dreams from sleeping enemies.

The news comes courtesy of Soulsborne fan, modder and streamer Lance McDonald, who has delved into Elden Ring to discover content cut from the final build.

The network test build of the game from last year included a number of sleeping enemies that were cut from the final game. McDonald uses this version to test out the mechanic.

Read more

Elden Ring has been out a month, but From Software's latest still "welcomes" hordes of newcomers every day. And while Eurogamer has a world class beginner's guide to Elden Ring in written form, sometimes a video is just what you need.

The video above, expertly put together by Aoife from the Eurogamer YouTube team, runs through the most basic systems that aren't obvious in-game. Aoife covers everything from attributes to levelling, weapon scaling to equipment loads, magic use and even invincibility frames.

The video also includes valuable information on Spirit Summons, the HUD, flasks, item crafting and more. It's a wonderful starting point for your adventure in Elden Ring!

Read more

Much like the cute and fluffy (pre-Gremlin) Mogwai of Chris Columbus fame, it turns out Elden Ring bosses have a weakness to water.

PSA: the following article contains spoilers for Elden Ring, so if you are still making your way through the Lands Between and have yet to get to Wailing Dunes, this is your cue to find a different article to while away the time with.

So, to the matter in hand. It turns out you can actually cheese the boss fight with Elden Ring's mighty General Radahn. At least, you can cheese it once you get his health whittled down to 50 percent, which is admittedly still a task in its own right.

Read more

A blink-and-you'll-miss-it tease in the newly-announced Kingdom Hearts 4 reveal trailer seems to hint at a Star Wars crossover.

Eagle-eyed fans have found what they think is the foot of an AT-ST walker - the chicken-legged tanks most famous from their appearance in Return of the Jedi.

Fittingly, this scene appears to be placed in a forest area - which looks very like the forest moon of Endor. Hey! Maybe this means Kingdom Hearts 4 will get Ewoks too?

Read more

U.S. debut adds multi-millions to box office This weekend saw Paramount release Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in U.S. theaters, with...

The post Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a box office smash: Biggest opening for any video game movie appeared first on Destructoid.