As a child, James Stephanie Sterling often found themselves picking apart what made games good or bad, what entertained and what left them cold. Silent Hill 2 would prove their favorite game. They adored its evocatively bleak atmosphere, and years later, that mirrors how they feel about the video game industry. While…
Bandai Namco has made an official announcement recognising the current technical difficulties with the Dark Souls games on PC, and has said that it is now looking into Elden Ring ahead of launch to ensure the problem does not affect the new FromSoftware game.
In a statement on Twitter, Bandai Namco and FromSoftware said that they are "aware of the technical difficulties players have experienced with the Dark Souls suite of games on PC", referring to the fact that servers are down after a "serious exploit" was discovered.
#DarkSouls pic.twitter.com/ZRhX9OcvQe
— Dark Souls (@DarkSoulsGame) February 9, 2022
The companies offered their thanks to fans who have reported the issue. "Thanks to you, we have identified the cause and are working on fixing the issue."
"In addition, we have extended the investigation to Elden Ring - our upcoming title launching on February 25th - and have made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms," the statement reads.
Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco has pledged that the game's online servers will be available at launch, following the introduction of "necessary security measures".
The news comes in the wake of the extended and ongoing downtime for the Dark Souls series' PC online servers following reports of an exploit which allowed remote code execution (essentially, something that would allow someone else to take control of your PC).
More than 60,000 Battlefield 2042 players have signed a petition asking for their money back, as the game continues to receive criticism for its slow update roll out and perceived lack of features.
Eurogamer spotted the petition, which requested that refunds available on Steam be extended to PlayStation and Xbox customers, and said EA made "a mockery" of customers who purchased the game.
The publisher admitted itself that Battlefield 2042 "did not meet expectations" and developer DICE has recently delayed a number of updates to the game including its first season pass and the addition of a scoreboard.
The petition reads: "EA’s release of Battlefield 2042 was a mockery of every customer who purchased this video game for $70 (USD) due to EA’s false advertising. Battlefield 2042 has cost consumers millions of dollars in damages and upset thousands of customers worldwide."
Complaints arose almost immediately when Battlefield 2042 launched on November 19 with server and UI problems, and fans quickly noticed a number of features they thought were missing from the game.
Platform:
PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
Publisher:
PlayStation Studios
Developer:
Guerrilla Games
Release:
Rating:
Teen
A new PlayStation 5 beta has been revealed and it brings new options to things like party chat, game base, the console’s user interface, and more.
This beta, which kicks off today for those who have signed up for PlayStation’s beta program, is the PS5’s second and it’s only available to those in the U.S. and U.K. Of course, since this is just a beta, it doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of the world will see these options. Considering the test-like nature of this beta program, there’s the possibility that participants don’t like everything they see, which might cause PlayStation to change some things up. Only time will tell for now, though.
In the meantime, here’s what you can expect in this new PS5 beta:
The 5th anniversary of NieR: Automata will fall on February 23, 2022. Square Enix will mark this milestone by holding a special livestream at 18:00 JST (4 AM ET). The stream will be available in Japanese on Niconico Live.
The series creator Yoko Taro, producer Yosuke Saito, composer Keiichi Okabe, and PlatinumGames' Takahisa Taura will attend the celebration stream. The key staff members of NieR: Automata will hold a casual talk show reminiscing on the past five years. In the stream description, Square Enix also teased that there may be announcements of new information.
Like most other livestreams for Japanese games, the NieR: Automata 5th Anniversary stream will have giveaways of presents for residents of Japan. It will also have an extra talk show segment available exclusively to Niconico Premium paid accounts. The extra segment will include a Q&A session where users can send questions to the key staff members mentioned above. Square Enix and Niconico are accepting question submissions until February 20, 2022.
NieR: Automata came out first for PlayStation 4 in Japan on February 23, 2017. Square Enix later released it worldwide, with PC and Xbox One as additional platforms. The game's global cumulative sales on all platforms surpassed 5.5 million units as of its fourth anniversary on February 23, 2021.
It’s been seven years since OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood, Roll7's 2015 skateboarding platformer. The skateboarding genre has seen some stellar releases in that time, including the highly customizable Session, Skater XL, and the remastered bundle Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. There’s also last year’s minimalist…
Egglia Rebirth is a surprisingly dense game. The more I played, the more things began to fall into place. What I initially felt was just a mobile title ported to the Nintendo Switch quickly became a more in-depth and interesting turn-based RPG. While there are some of the signature marks of a game originally released for mobile devices, the quality of the gameplay genuinely surprised me. Gacha mechanics are present, but mostly in the form of recruiting Spirits. (These are the helpful creatures that can assist you in battle.) There are, of course, features that require a bit of patience as well.
For example, players can collect rare materials to level up or evolve their Spirits through plant and rock cultivation. However, obtaining these items takes time. Quite literally. You will need to wait for a certain amount of real-world time to pass after planting your rocks and various root vegetables. Sometimes it can take upwards of two hours to yield a harvest, which is mostly fine.
Egglia Rebirth is a game that encourages you to pick it up and play at your leisure. It was hard to accept that, especially since the kinds of mobile games I’ve played in the past don’t reward players for putting the game down for extended periods of time. After accepting that, I could just walk away from the game for a bit and come back to it later. Which meant I felt a lot better about Egglia Rebirth. Speed-up items are available, but I never felt inclined to use them for this reason.
We got to play roughly two hours of RPG TIME: The Legend of Wright. From it’s unique pencil drawing style to diverse gameplay and creative world building, it left us craving for more. Luckily, RPG Time: The Legend of Wright releases soon on March 10 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
Playing an extended demo of RPG TIME: The Legend of Wright reminded me of seeing the classical animation of Cuphead for the first time. While pencil drawings in a notebook are something we’ve all seen before, it feels unique when brought to video game format. Walking around inside the notebook of an elementary school student is a fresh experience, and crossing from one page to the next genuinely made me feel like I was controlling a character in a way I had not experienced before.
Unlike Cuphead though, RPG Time is not focused on action, which makes its unique visual style only the beginning of its appeal. As in most RPGs, RPG Time offers a wide array of different activities, ranging from battles to exploration and character dialogue. You control Wright, the hero of this adventure, traveling through the lands of Cardboardia in order to save princess Lay. On his journey, Wright gets involved in (often hilarious) events and meets interesting characters along the way.
Last month, a new post on the Twitch UserVoice forum requested for a Disability Pride Month. It's something that's celebrated for other minority groups, but is yet to be implemented on the streaming platform for the disability community.
In under a month, the post has received over 1100 votes, with plenty of comments from disabled streamers in support.
The Lunar New Year celebrations in Genshin Impact have become a little more generous than planned, with the free-to-play action-RPG offering all players a double of one of the gifts. A glitch with the game's mail system meant some players received a duplicate of one of the daily Lantern Rite gifts, a bundle including one of the precious Intertwined Fate doodads which can unlock event characters and weapons. To make this right, developers Mihoyo are now offering everyone a duplicate.
Platform:
PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
Publisher:
PlayStation Studios
Developer:
Guerrilla Games
Release:
Rating:
Teen
Horizon Forbidden West is right around the corner – it hits PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on February 18 – and while there are plenty of trailers to watch in the meantime, there’s some new Aloy-inspired content waiting for you in Ghost of Tsushima.
Lost Ark is already one of Steam's biggest-ever games, overtaking the likes of Apex Legends and Among Us in peak concurrent users, even before it goes free-to-play later this week.
Per SteamDB data, the game's peak concurrent users currently stand at 532,476, placing it sixth in Steam's all-time list behind only New World, Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, CS: GO, and PUBG. Incredibly, it hit that number within 4 hours of going on release as a paid game, even though it will become free-to-play on Friday.
That sheer influx seemed to be causing some problems initially, with users reporting connectivity issues and increased queue times that prompted developer Smilegate to open another North American server shortly after launch:
In response to increased queue times, we have opened up a new server on NA East (Karmine).
— Lost Ark (@playlostark) February 9, 2022
The team will continue to monitor server queues and make additional adjustments if necessary.
Lost Ark is an MMO / ARPG with isometric action similar to the Diablo games, featuring 15 playable classes, a cinematic story-led campaign, and co-op PvE combat. It was released in South Korea in 2019 and later in Japan and Russia, with a North American and European release finally arriving this week.
Astro Boy is another Japanese IP that is set to enter the NFT and Metaverse trend. Tezuka Productions will work with J&J and NOBORDER.z to create NFT game cards featuring the eponymous hero and other characters from the franchise. The virtual cards will be usable in the NFT Duel game and tradeable on the Xanalia marketplace. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
The Astro Boy NFT cards will also contain images of landmarks in Japan. The first batch will feature landmarks in Tottori Prefecture, such as Tottori Dune and Koiyamagata Station. In the press release, the companies stated that they are working together with Japanese prefectures to help recover the regions' economy and tourism market that was affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The companies will also use the cards to help promote the country in the Metaverse.
NOBORDER.z is the company that develops the NFT Duel game, the Xanalia marketplace, and the Xana NFT metaverse. Earlier in 2022, the same company opened pre-orders for NFT Duel cards containing characters from the Ultraman Netflix anime. It will sell a limited number of premium cards purchasable with Ethereum, cryptocurrency and credit card until March 2022. It will then sell regular Ultraman NFT cards starting from April 2022.
The Commonwealth Games are traditionally a place for events such as gymnastics, weightlifting and athletics. However, that is all about to change in 2022 as esports will be added to the events program as well.
The inclusion of esports at the upcoming Birmingham games will be known as the Commonwealth Esport Championships. This event will be a pilot, and therefore no medals will be awarded to the winners. There are hopes from the organisers, however, that this pilot will be successful, with the theory being it will draw in a younger audience to the games themselves.
That’s not a massage table! You are looking at the Lying Face Down Sleep Cushion Z. Pointed out by Gizmodo Japan and PC Watch, it was specifically created for you to place your head face down between the two cushions, and play video games, look at your phone or tablet, and even read books.
Koei Tecmo announced sales for Nioh 2 have surpassed 2.5 million units worldwide. This number accounts for digital and physical sales of the title. The announcement coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Nioh series. It it, Koei Tecmo also thanked consumers for their support and expressed its wish for fans to continue to enjoying Team Ninja titles.
Today marks the 5 year anniversary of #Nioh, released in 2017! Since then, we’ve gone on to launch a sequel with #Nioh2 which sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide! Thank you so much for the last 5 years of support making Nioh such a memorable franchise for us.
pic.twitter.com/ENiqQphz1C— Team NINJA (@TeamNINJAStudio) February 9, 2022
Nioh 2 originally released in March 2020. It then reappeared as Nioh 2: The Complete Edition a little less than a year later in February 2021. The Complete Edition includes all post-release DLC, such as the Tengu’s Disciple, Darkness in the Capital, and The First Samurai expansion. Prior to this update, Koei Tecmo confirmed Nioh 2 hit the 2 million unit milestone in April 2021.
Why is there not a Jack Reacher game? It has been firmly established that the top-heavy, world-weary hero of Lee Child's bone-crunching bestsellers (26 novels and counting) would be the perfect video game avatar. As an ex-military policeman, Reacher combines razor-sharp investigative savvy and comprehensive weapons training with the sort of down-and-dirty brawling skills required to break up bar fights among demob-happy jarheads in far-flung postings.
Reacher has very little baggage - either emotional or actual, preferring to criss-cross the USA with little more than a travel toothbrush - yet trouble seems to follow him around. He is constantly butting heads with gangs of hoods, lowlifes and/or mercenaries yet triumphs through sheer force of will. Parachute him into any GTA and Reacher would do just fine.
The latest PlayStation 5 system software beta goes live today for selected participants, including the ability talk to your PlayStation and search via voice.
Voice commands will be available at first to those testing the feature in the UK and US, and let you open the various games and apps on their consoles literally without lifting a finger.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus has received its first post-launch patch, which has helped fix a glitch that made the Pokémon Cherrim incredibly difficult to catch.
Version 1.0.2 of the game was released on February 8 and "fixed an issue that sometimes made it difficult to catch Cherrim" alongside a handful of other minor bugs.
Players may have expected Arceus and the other legendary Pokémon to be among the hardest to catch but Cherrim, while easy enough to beat, often refused to stay in its Pokéball.
I have been fighting this Cherrim for like half an hour. I've thrown >50 ultra balls with no success. Am I losing my mind? pic.twitter.com/7KCHt0vavK
— zippyzap (@zippyzapps) February 8, 2022
As Pokémon Legends: Arceus encourages catching the same Pokémon over and over, Cherrim certainly proved a problem as it sometimes refused to be caught even after dozens of attempts.
Cherrim's unique ability allows it to change form depending on the weather - its flower opens if it's sunny and closes if it's not - but the glitch seemingly dropped the Pokémon's Catch Rate to zero if it changed forms even once.
Following the patch. however, many users are now reporting that the elusive Cherrim can now finally be caught as expected.
The full patch notes can be seen here:
Right now, entering Japan is difficult, if not impossible, due to the country’s travel ban and quarantine requirements. If things change and the country’s Covid-19 situation improves, do I have a vacation idea for you.
As pointed out by Mondo Mascots, Slowpoke is now the tourism character for Kagawa. Let Slowpoke,…
A KOF XV special animated short is now available to watch on YouTube. SNK commissioned popular anime director Masami Obari to direct the short ahead of the game's official release. Once the game releases, the full short will also be available to watch via the game's gallery mode.
Director Masami Obari is a notable figure within the King of Fighters and Fatal Fury franchises. Obari directed the 1994 animated feature film Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture. He also worked on two other Fatal Fury OVAs as a character designer. He later formed his own animation studio, Studio G-1, and directed anime such as Super Robot Wars Original Generation: The Inspector and Gundam Build Fighters, among many others.
In 2021, SNK announced that Obari would direct the special animated short alongside the official reveal of KOF XV. Later, the official SNK Twitter account shared a short clip of the animation with some parts cut to avoid spoiling characters that were unannounced at the time. Obari himself since commented on the special animated short via Twitter and thanked SNK for giving him the opportunity.
You can check out the KOF XV animated short in its entirety below:
https://youtu.be/_3rzUgD53h4
Lost Ark is already proving incredibly popular ahead of its full release on 11th February.
The Korean-developed ARPG MMO is on its way to the West courtesy of Amazon Games, following huge success in Korea, Japan and Russia over the past two years.
Bandai Namco Group posted its mid-year report on February 8, 2022, and one significant point in its new three-year plan is the "Metaverse."
As the corporate buzzword of choice over the last couple of years, "metaverse" can mean many different things. The most common concept raised in connection to the term is a virtual social space where people can interact, work, and play together. Visions of fiction like Ready Player One and an evolved Second Life are brought up when tech executives discuss the idea.
To Bandai Namco, a metaverse is a key element in its "new framework for connecting with fans." To that end, the company pledged to "develop a metaverse for each IP", anticipating "virtual spaces" and using the company's ability to "fuse physical products and venues with digital elements." Through this "IP Metaverse," Bandai Namco plans to establish connections with and between fans in communities that can last over long periods and thus "maximize IP value over the medium to long term."
The company did not cite any specific projects or properties that it would begin its Bandai Namco metaverse experiments on. That said, it is allocating 15 billion Yen (about $130 million USD) to laying the groundwork for a "data foundation" to create content for it over the next three years. It'll also commit 25 billion Yen (about $217 million USD) to "New IP creation" and related projects.
Request permission to retreat The Battlefield community is not happy. Following the beleaguered launch of the million-dollar shooter’s latest installment,...
The post Over 50,000 players signed a Battlefield 2042 refund petition appeared first on Destructoid.
The RPS video chamber has been a little quiet since Colm left us at the end of last year, but this week I'm pleased to announce that strange noises have once again been heard from deep within our Treehouse recording booth. Indeed, our search for a new vid bud is finally over, so please say hello and welcome to Liam Richardson.
"Fossils are aesthetically beautiful, and I love them for being physical reminders of the long history of life on this planet. Holding them makes me feel connected to the past."
These are the words of Brady Soglin, whose boyhood love for fossils took him to places ranging from Mazon Creek, a swampland sixty miles from his native Chicago, to Solnhofen, a Bavarian geological hotspot. A long-term hobby, he intertwined it with another - creating games - to form PC puzzler Fossil Corner, my favourite chill hidden gem of 2021. There's much I like about the game, and much that piqued my interest, so I decided to delve into Fossil Corner and its origins by interviewing its spectacled, bearded, bald twentysomething solo developer/publisher. Why make a game about fossils anyway?
Today Bandai Namco released the third DLC package for its popular JRPG Scarlet Nexus.
The package, which is currently available on most storefronts but should be released within the day in the rest, is titled “Brain Eater Pack” and it includes the following.
“The SCARLET NEXUS Brain Eater Pack DLC contains a new episode which explores an unseen side of Karen Travers, 2 different costume sets for all characters, new Vision Simulator missions, as well as other new challenges and rewards!”
Below you can also take a look at a new trailer and a batch of screenshots.
It’s no secret that Ubisoft has been trying to gain a foothold in the crypto and NFT space. While the reception to Quartz, their new blockchain gaming platform, hasn’t been the greatest, that certainly hasn’t stopped Ubisoft from trying. The company has just announced its partnership with The Sandbox, an open Metaverse where players can gather with virtual avatars and interact in a virtual space to buy up land and hang out.
This partnership between the two companies sees the introduction of the Rabbids in the Sandbox, and you can check out the announcement video down below:
Basically, by putting the Rabbids into the Sandbox, users will be able to create content and unique experiences using Ubisoft’s iconic mascots. If you’re not already actively using the Sandbox, this won’t mean much to you. But hey, if you’re in it, and you happen to be a fan of the Rabbids themselves, this could end up being a pretty fun time. Maybe.
The post Ubisoft Partners Up With The Sandbox to Bring Rabbids to the Metaverse appeared first on Twinfinite.
After two of these roguelite DLCs so far, the formula for Far Cry 6’s villain-centric expansions has become predictable: you enter a character’s mind, confronting their demons and learning more about their backstory while shooting everything in sight. Thus, Joseph: Collapse has a lot of the same strengths and shortcomings of Vaas’ Insanity and Pagan Min’s Control that came before it. Unlike those, though, this final entry in the trilogy has the critical flaw of starring the weakest villain of the bunch – by quite a wide margin – in Joseph Seed. The Zen-like militant cult leader from Far Cry 5 never made much of an impression on me aside from his unmistakable love of yellow aviators, and Collapse does little to make him more interesting.
For those who didn’t finish Far Cry 5’s campaign or skipped the follow up Far Cry: New Dawn, consider this a necessary spoiler warning, but I have to talk about Collapse’s ill-conceived attempt at redeeming the mass-murdering psychopath that serves as the main antagonist in those games. It’s important in Collapse, because most of the story is centered around that redemption arc and Joseph’s attempts at denying his egomaniacal nature. It’s a tough sell, frankly, and one that doesn’t feel particularly earned – you just hear him scream that he’s sorry quite a bit as you direct him to commit acts of unspeakable violence. Little time is spent on justifying why he was so dang evil in Far Cry 5 aside from it being in his nature and that he’s generally not a considerate human being.
The launch of Sifu has certainly been a qualified success, even with its woes for early access for owners of the Deluxe Edition. The challenging brawler is a hard game for most, but for those that are willing to put in the hours, developers SloClap are going to be with you on the journey. In a PlayStation Blog post, the team shared that more content updates will be coming to Sifu for free in the future.
“Finally, we wanted you to know that part of the team behind Sifu is already at work on post-launch content. We have exciting plans for free content updates that we will soon be able to tell you more about! Stay tuned for more, and enjoy your experience with Sifu,” Community Manager Felix Garczynski shared.
