This is a story about the New York I love most

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Warzone Audio Bang has been put to rest... but Ultimate Audio Bang is here to pick up the slack. In this first episode of Ultimate Audio Bang, we try to continue Warzone Audio Bang's legacy. I am channeling James' energy as the pod's new host, and I'm joined by the wonderful Imogen who has good chat and knows a lot about shooters.

And that's what this podcast is all about: online shooters. We're still touching on Warzone, of course, but we're also going to be chatting about different games that involve pulling triggers and pinging targets. You could say it's a natural evolution of Warzone Audio Bang, hence the "Ultimate" bit in the name. Makes sense, doesn't it?

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Returnal, the PS5-exclusive action game about not having fall damage but then picking up an item that gives you fall damage, has been out for about three weeks, which means more and more players are talking about the ending.

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Lady Dimitrescu, despite her relatively small role, is a big point of conversation centering around Resident Evil Village. She's also been the subject of some pretty weird mods. Following a Mod Corner entry surrounding a Bloodborne 2 take, the modder reached out to me with their latest creation: bringing Bloodborne into the world of Resident Evil Village. 

From YouTuber 'Garden of Eyes,' there is a mod that pits Lady Dimitrescu against Lady Maria in Resident Evil Village, making for a pretty epic boss fight that we didn't know we needed until now: 

I've been thinking a lot about video game recommendations recently. Specifically, things like, "What game would you recommend to someone who's never played a video game before?" and, "What kind of games would you recommend to people who read a lot but don't necessarily play games very much?" My answer to both questions would probably be What Remains Of Edith Finch in the first instance, mostly because it has a really good story and its controls aren't too intimidating. But this week I realised I rarely think about the inverse of that last question: "What books would you recommend to people who play lots of video games but don't have much time for reading?"

Happily, I now have two solid answers, and they both come from the highly talented Stuart Turton: "The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle" for fans of Outer Wilds, The Sexy Brutale and Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries, and The Devil In The Dark Water for The Return Of The Obra Dinn likers.

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Xbox Game Pass is always adding new titles, including a plethora of games to choose from for the month of May. While the latest announcement isn't for this Summer, Microsoft has confirmed that Xbox Game Pass will be adding The Riftbreaker as a day one title to the evolving library. 

So what is Riftbreaker? It's a base-builder survival action-RPG from Exor Studios and it tasks players with assuming the role of Captain Ashley Nowak. Get your inner Neon Genesis Evangelion on and get in the damned robot, because this experience is all about mecha-suit power and exploration. 

Interested in what The Riftbreaker has to offer? It will be available on day one for Xbox Game Pass members on both PC and console this Fall. 

Don't have Game Pass yet and are curious to learn more about it? One of the things to be aware of is that there are two versions of this subscription service to choose from: the standard Xbox Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate. Xbox Game Pass is $9.99, whereas the Ultimate version includes Xbox Live retails for $14.99. 

Did you know the weekend was the best possible time to play an absurdist take on the traditional Japanese role-playing game? I just made that up, but it’s probably true.

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Do you like weird alien planets? Do you like building bases? Do you like defending those bases from weird aliens? Well it sounds like The Riftbreaker has all of those things, and you'll be able to try it for yourself on Xbox Game Pass when it launches this autumn.

As announced on Xbox Wire, The Riftbreaker will be available on Game Pass from day one. It's described as a "mix of base-builder, survival, and action-RPG". Players take on the role of Captain Ashley Nowak, a member of the "elite Riftbreaker formation". She travels to a distant planet called Galatea 37, where she must prepare the world for human settlement. At least she has a mecha-suit to help with that.

When it launches this autumn, The Riftbreaker will release on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, but the latter already has a demo available if you can't wait to try it out. The free PC demo is called The Riftbreaker: Prologue and takes place before the events of the main game's campaign (you can find it on Steam, GOG and the Windows Store). "Explore an entirely new world, gather resources, build up a base, and defend yourself from thousands of alien creatures," said Exor Studios producer and designer Paweł Lekki. "Or just take the scenic route and do whatever you want - the choice is yours!

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Limited Run Games will sell standard and special editions of Double Dragon Neon and Double Dragon IV Switch.

The post Double Dragon Neon and IV Switch Physical Copies on the Way appeared first on Siliconera.

I pretty much just stick to free games on the Epic Games Store — speaking of which: this week's freebie is NBA 2K21 of all things — but I know some of you love your (basically) limitless $10 off coupons.

With the Epic Mega Sale running until June 17, it's once again possible to knock $10 off any full game priced at $14.99 or higher, and each time you do, you'll get a fresh coupon that can be applied to another purchase. You probably know the drill by now, and you can get your first coupon over here.

If you're open to recommendations, I've got a handful of games to check out:

Free him

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I hope you all remember the five D's of dodgeball, because Electronic Arts have released Knockout City, their team-based dodgeball battler. It's cool and colourful, and a couple of folks in the RPS treehouse reckon is pretty good. For the next 10 days, it's free to play too, and EA have a bunch of events planned between now and May 30th to draw players in.

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After years of memes and jokes and wondering if the world would ever see a sequel to Victoria II, it seems that our collective waiting now has a hypothetical end as Paradox Interactive announced Victoria 3 during PDXCON Remixed today.

Victoria 3 will send grand strategy fans back to the industrial revolution with all of its mechanical wonder and societal upheaval. The sequel to Victoria II looks to lean on the population mechanic that allowed the game to endure in fan communities for over a decade, despite using a very out-of-date engine. The population mechanic or pops hopes to create a political puzzle for players to solve by making sure that your citizens stay happy, lest they want revolution to foment in their lands. On top of the returning population mechanic, Victoria 3 aims to expand the trade with its deepest economic simulation yet as well as an emphasis on political negotiation in the last age of imperialism.

While the announcement was met with a wave of excitement from me, the fact that there was no talk of a release date or even a window is a bit worrying. Although whenever the game does come out it will be on Game Pass day one, so any subscribers can immediately dive into the 19th-century simulation.

Victoria 3 will release when it's done on Steam, Xbox Game Pass, and the Paradox Store.

A neat little Easter egg for the original Xbox has been revealed via Kotaku, two decades after Microsoft's console first launched.

The hidden secret is a small, static credits screen dedicated to Xbox staff members which worked on the console's now legendary green interface. (It's a design Microsoft recently honoured with a throwback theme on Xbox Series X/S.)

Kotaku was recently contacted by an anonymous Xbox developer who worked on the console way back when - and who had decided enough time had passed that no one was going to find the secret by accident.

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IGN UK Podcast #593: Deathloop, John McClane and Buttery Cracks

• IGN UK Podcast #592: Mass Effect feat. Uncle Cherry
• IGN UK Podcast #591: Resident Evil Village Is Here!
• IGN UK Podcast #590: The Big Boy Flapjack Squad
• IGN UK Podcast #589: Returnal, Warzone and Cherry Pie
• IGN UK Podcast #588: Resident Evil Season is Here

Bandai Namco offered a better look at the Tales of Arise Alphen and Shionne bonus costumes people get for pre-ordering.

The post Bandai Namco Shows Off the Tales of Arise Pre-order Costumes appeared first on Siliconera.

Publisher Take-Two Interactive has released its financial report for the fiscal period ending March 2021, revealing that the Grand Theft Auto publisher raked in a staggering, record-breaking revenue of $3.73 billion USD over the course of the past year.

Recurrent spending is the main driver of Take-Two's profits, with 68% of revenue coming from the communities of ongoing releases such as Grand Theft Auto Online and NBA 2K21, as well as microtransaction heavy mobile titles such as Borderlands 3, Two Dots, and WWE SuperCard. GTA Online was particularly successful, with a record number of players jumping into the MMO over 2020, and in-game spending up 30% on the previous year.

THQ Nordic parent company Embracer Group held merger and acquisition talks with over 150 companies during the last quarter alone. ...

No Man’s Sky players can add the Normandy to their frigate fleet

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The next Good Smile Company Pokemon figure will be a Raihan Nendoroid. As always, his Duraludon and a Rotom Phone will be by his side.

The post Pokemon Raihan Nendoroid Comes With Duraludon and a Rotom Phone appeared first on Siliconera.

The Wachowskis’ endlessly watchable 2008 blockbuster imagines a more ideal world

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This new Digimon Vital Bracelet DimCard set will open up more unique evolution branches.

The post Digimon Vital Bracelet DimCard Set to Feature Agumon and Gabumon appeared first on Siliconera.

Shadow Warrior 3 knows what its audience wants. Apart from those rare occasions when the marketing focuses on amazing-looking, psychotic, demon women, Devolver Digital mostly directs all attention to the sequel's huge arsenal of ground-shaking weaponry.

This latest trailer is no exception, featuring a little over 90 seconds of explosive action featuring a wild range of pistols, automatic weapons, and heavy artillery — not to mention some pretty brutal melee weaponry for when things get up-close-and-personal. From the fast-firing six shooter "Outlaw", to the dual-wielding SMGs "Sidekicks" and the land-leveling power of the "Crimson Bull", Shadow Warrior 3 has the tools necessary to get the job done. Upgrades too? Give the bad guys a chance, man.

It's always fun to see game developers that clearly appreciate each other's work come together for a fun crossover event. To celebrate the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Hello Games is adding Mass Effect's SSV Normandy SR1 to No Man's Sky.

Over the last week, Hello Games has led its community on a journey to unearth a new secret tied to an object called the Historiographical Dosimeter. Today, the community will see their expedition leads to the Normandy. The ship looks fantastic, and you have to assume Commander Shepard and crew are inside of it.

If you want to see this majestic ship (and add it to your fleet for good), time is of the essence. The crossover event ends on May 31. That's right, you only have 10 days to finish the mission. For whatever reason, events of this ilk never last long. The same thing happened with Assassin's Creed in Final Fantasy XV, and The Predator in Ghost Recon Wildlands.

For the past week, No Man’s Sky players have been led on a mysterious expedition across the galaxy with no real idea where their journey would lead. Now the “Beachhead” expedition is complete, and it’s led players to a massive Mass Effect Easter egg.

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A developer who worked on Microsoft’s original 2001 Xbox console, who wishes to remain anonymous, informed Kotaku of a hidden “Easter egg” in the Xbox Dashboard that’s remained undiscovered for nearly 20 years. They told us how to trigger the secret, which displays a previously unknown credits screen. Sure enough, it…

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It's a big week for 90s Windows nostalgia. Not only are the band from the Windows 95 CD-ROM reforming for the Summer Game Fest, Microsoft are finally binning the browser you loved to hate. They announced this week that they're retiring Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10 next June, instead pushing towards people to their newer and better browser, Edge. IE has effectively been dead for years but it's still good to see it go.

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Well here's something I wasn't expecting to write on a Friday afternoon (or, indeed, ever). Hello Games' effervescent space sim No Man's Sky is getting in on the big-brand crossover action, and you're currently able to unlock a little piece of BioWare's Mass Effect to treasure forever in-game in the form of your very own SSV Normandy SR1.

Mass Effect's iconic SSV Normandy SR1 appears in No Man's Sky as a reward for players that complete the space sim's currently ongoing second Expedition.

Expeditions, if you're unfamiliar, are something like No Man's Sky's take on live-service seasons, each one beginning by depositing all players on the same planet. From there, participants must work their way across the universe by following an accompanying Expedition chart and completing different phases of challenges, known as Milestones, along the way - perhaps reaching specific rendezvous points or collecting ancient artefacts.

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A Red Dead Redemption 2 VR mod has launched in early access form.

It's the work of developer Luke Ross, who has form when it comes to VR mods. He built the eye-catching VR mod for Grand Theft Auto 5 our Ian Higton enjoyed last year.

The video below from UploadVR gives us a good idea of how it works in combination with a gamepad. It's early days, but it's cool to see Rockstar's epic in VR. The cutscenes work in VR, too.

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The stream will finally reveal the new Virtua Fighter project that first showed up at TGS 2020.

The post Virtua Fighter x eSports Project Reveal Stream Set For Next Week appeared first on Siliconera.

Additionally, the developers share information about how necessary the Q&A team was during development.

The post Resident Evil Village Developer Video Reveals How COVID-19 Impacted Development appeared first on Siliconera.

For those of you eager to start mashing monsters in that unmistakable Left 4 Dead-style once again, the Turtle Rock Studios incoming Back 4 Blood will definitely scratch that gross, oozing itch. Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive has released a new trailer, spotlighting the eight heroes getting set to take lead to head come October.

Narrated by Spunky & Sarcastic (tm) gal Holly, the trailer introduces us to Back 4 Blood's rag-tag gang of zombie slayers — or "Cleaners" — getting set to wade their way through armies of the undead. These include medical expert Doc, marksman Jim, explosives nerd Hoffman, obligatory alterna-girl Karlee, and a more matured, tough-as-old-leather lady known as "Mom". Each of Back for Blood's eight Cleaners comes loaded for bear with unique skills, allowing for smart synergy between well-scouted teams.

I'm not one for lore, I'm afraid to admit, as can be amply illustrated by the fact I've only just discovered that Gradius - a series close to my heart, and one that's taken the most from my wallet over the years in various forms - takes its name from the fictional planet its hero ship Vic Viper calls home. I was only dimly aware of the fact that ship was piloted by one James Burton - the name a combination plucked from Metallica, apparently in honour of James Hetfield and Cliff Burton. It seems I have much to learn.

Lore's a funny thing when it comes to older games, especially those churned out in the heady industriousness of Japan's bubble economy era, where production was often fast and loose. Maybe there was a deeper story sitting on a design document somewhere, a grand thread stringing these disparate worlds together, but I'm just as sure most of the detail was sketched in later by other hands - by someone in a marketing department on the other side of the world, perhaps, or some copywriter filling up space in one of the manuals that'd later become scripture. With Gradius, so much of the detail comes from the atypically verbose MSX spinoff Nemesis 2, with other scraps being pieced together as the series passed from one set of hands to another.

Really, though, you just have to rifle through the development team's cinema ticket stubs to see what it's all about: there's Alien, of course, in the requisite xenomorph world of Gradius 2's second stage, or the pervasive influence of Lensman's laser-filled brand of sci-fi. For all that disparate patchwork, though, for all those disparate interviews and all the disparate places you're sent, these are games with an indelible sense of place.

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Expect to get knocked off your game, but Velan Studios’ all-new sport is worth bouncing back

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