Creating your party in Bravely Default II is less about the characters you use than it is the jobs with which you equip them. It’s a smart strategy to always have basic healers and damage-dealers on hand, sure, but when it comes to my party, I don’t foresee ever not having at least one Beastmaster in the wings.
Xbox is celebrating International Women's Day with a new official blog post from Xbox Women in Gaming co-lead and design director Jennifer Lane. In her post, she reflects back on almost 20 years of game development, including her current work on Forza Motorsport. To celebrate this day (and month) meant for recognition, she shares some of the ways that Xbox is celebrating beyond just a tweet. With a special addition in Minecraft to highlighting some seriously powerful protagonists, here is how Xbox is celebrating women.
As part of a month-long celebration to celebrate women's history, Xbox is first dedicating livestreaming space to highlight some amazing content creators, developers, and even game characters themselves.
First up, we have the Gears 5 Women's History Month Tournament, which will be taking place on March 13 at 10:30 a.m. Pacific. This will be a collaboration between Smash.gg, The Coalition, and Xbox, and can be seen here on the official Xbox Twitch channel.
Dragon Age 2 was released ten years ago today, and even now, you can't even bring up the name of the game without someone saying this was the "death of BioWare" or that the sequel "sucked." Due to a rushed development timeline and a lack of resources, Dragon Age 2 was a hodgepodge of glitches, a short narrative, and repetitive environments. But even with those factors working against it, Dragon Age 2 managed to tell an incredible tale in a short amount of time, and that's largely because this game has some of the best characters and character development in gaming history. Still with me? Let me explain.
RPG fans fell in love with everything BioWare had to offer with Dragon Age Origins. The world, the intriguing characters, the plot twists? It was an incredible experience still very much celebrated to this day. When its sequel, Dragon Age 2, came out, it was almost like a completely different game, and that jarring comparison initially made it confusing to weigh in on the experience.
Lots of series try new things when making a jump to a new platform. But Bravely Default II? It doesn’t take the bait, for better and worse.
The post Bravely Default II is an Audaciously Vanilla Sequel appeared first on Siliconera.
It’s the start of another long week, so you’ve got to have something to help get you through the Monday blues. Luckily, we’ve got plenty of gaming memes for you that are sure to help bright your week.
From multiplayer woes to memeing on delays, we searched through Twitter and Reddit to find the best gaming memes to help you beat the Monday blues. Enjoy! And hopefully, these can make your day at least a little bit better.
It’s Monday and time for Ask Kotaku, the weekly feature in which Kotaku-ites deliberate on a single burning question. Then, we ask your take.
Overwatch's beloved smiling onion character, Pachimari, will be featured in a new challenge that kicks off on March 9 and runs until March 22. Dubbed the Pachimarchi, players will be invited to...well...we have no idea.
All we know is there's a chance for Pachimari rain. A short teaser video that Blizzard released on social media (which you can see below) shows plush Pachimari falling by the dozens on the Hanamura map. They squeak adorably when they hit the ground, and are joined by an upbeat song that will likely grow annoying within a minute if it plays during battle.
Set up for a sizzlin’ cephalopod showdown.
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) March 8, 2021
The #PachiMarchi Challenge begins March 9! pic.twitter.com/uZQKsXbfRi
In years past, Blizzard has celebrated Pachimarchi on social media with NCAA-styled brackets, and fans sending in their Pachimari art. What happens tomorrow will be the first in-game event created around this adorable (and slightly Cthulhu-like) critter.
V1 Interactive, the studio behind the real-time strategy and first-person shooter hybrid game Disintegration, is shutting down after five years.
The decision to close the studio comes less than a year after the team at V1 launched its first game. ...
Even with some of the best shows around, the main cast and supporting characters aren’t always very likable. Often times in anime, characters are so good at what they do or are so one-dimensional personality-wise that it makes them boring.
Ironically enough though, the anime that centers around demons and heroes making their way in a world without magic actually features one of the best rosters in that regard.
GDC General Manager Katie Stern celebrates the women presenting at GDC Showcase on 2021's International Women's Day. ...
A lot of people have started playing Loop Hero. How do I know this? It hit 50,000 concurrent users on Steam over the weekend. I was one of them. I’ve now put over 25 hours into the deck-building roguelite, and I have some tips for everyone else who’s just getting started with it.
V1 Interactive has announced it is closing. The studio was founded by Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto and SOCOM co-creator Michael Gutmann in 2016. In June 2020, the team released its first project, Disintegration. While the game showed promise in early previews, the finished project was not received as well as the team likely hoped, and the developer closed down the multiplayer servers mere months following release.
The news today comes via the studio's Twitter account. "We are sad to inform you that V1 Interactive is officially closing," the tweet said. "We want to thank all the talented people at V1, both past and present, who helped make the last 5 years wonderful. And a heartfelt thanks to the amazing community that supported us."
We are sad to inform you that V1 Interactive is officially closing.
We want to thank all the talented people at V1, both past and present, who helped make the last 5 years wonderful.
And a heartfelt thanks to the amazing community that supported us. pic.twitter.com/XX6Sxtc32o
Developer V1 Interactive, the studio founded by Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto, has announced it will be closing down, less than a year after the launch of its debut game Disintegration.
Lehto founded V1 Interactive in 2016, and Disintegration - a sci-fi-hued blend of first-person shooter and real-time strategy game set against a futuristic backdrop of climate change, pandemic, and war - launched in June last year.
Unfortunately, the game's multiplayer component - supported by a real-money in-game store - struggled to find a significant enough audience, and V1 ultimately decided to end multiplayer support in November, just five months into the game's life.
Next week (on March 17), Genshin Impact gets the 1.4 update, Invitation of Windblume. While we still haven’t fully recovered from all the festivities that recently took place in Liyue and Hu Tao’s fiery, ghostly presence, Genshin Impact continues to push out significant content chunks as we continue to wait in extreme anticipation for the Inazuma region. What’s in Windblume? Well, first and foremost, everyone’s favorite Anemo character, Venti, appears to be back!
While the sparkly new trailer (see below) doesn’t explicitly say the 5-star bow champion is returning to the mix, Venti appears prominently in the key art and video for this patch, indicating that he’ll be back on a banner for players to pick up. If you missed Venti the first time around and you’re desperate to have him on your team, this might be your chance. I hope you’ve been saving those primogems up. If you’re like me, you probably spent them all on Hu Tao. Oh well. I’ve already got Venti anyway!
Click here to watch embedded mediaLast Wednesday, Crystal Dynamics outlined a number of upcoming cosmetic and XP reworks for Marvel’s Avengers. The live service game released in September last year to middling reviews, with a lack of endgame content and performance issues topping complaints from both critics and fans alike.
While some players may have hoped the blog post would outline some new content or means of grinding out XP for their characters, however, it instead outlined some changes to the XP system that makes the grind even more arduous and less enjoyable as a result.
In the initial blog post, the developer outlined that the current ‘straight line’ XP curve that Marvel’s Avengers used “led to pacing issues, such as skill points currently being rewarded too fast, which may be confusing and overwhelming to newer players.”
To remedy this, Crystal Dynamics revealed it would be “increasing the amount of XP needed to level up, starting from around level 25”, with the amount increasing the closer players get to a character’s max level of 50.
The platform for GDC Showcase is open! You can now start building your schedule for this all-free, all-digital event. ...
Because he makes them (rich assholes) feel poor
V1 Interactive is closing down just five years after having opened its doors for the very first time. The American developer’s only published game is Disintegration, a novel multiplayer shooter that incorporated both first-person and real-time strategy elements, which launched last year to a middling reception.
The team was headed by president and creative director Marcus Lehto, who had previously worked at Bungie for 15 years as a creative director. Lehto was a key member of the team that conceptualized the Halo franchise.
The news comes by way of an official announcement from the studio’s Twitter:
We are sad to inform you that V1 Interactive is officially closing.
We want to thank all the talented people at V1, both past and present, who helped make the last 5 years wonderful.
And a heartfelt thanks to the amazing community that supported us. pic.twitter.com/XX6Sxtc32o— V1 Interactive (@V1Interactive) March 8, 2021
Lehto also weighed in with his own statement via Twitter highlighting the importance the company has put on communicating the situation to staff members and helping them find new work.
At V1, our priority has been to the wellbeing of our employees.
After the success of Monster Hunter: World, two new installments in the famed Japanese action franchise were announced: Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin. The former is slated to come out later this month, but the latter title is releasing over the summer. Today, during the brief March Digital Event, Capcom announced that Monster Hunter Stories 2 will also be available on PC via Steam.
Monster Hunter Stories 2 is an RPG-spinoff title that looks to be a more narrative-focused turn for the series. A new trailer for the highly-anticipated game chronicles the journey of a young hero and his band of close companions as they discover the legendary Rathalos - a creature well-known for its destructive power. Players will be able to ride some of the franchise’s most popular monsters and might even get a chance to forge a bond with the Rathalos so that they can mount it too.
The third Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot DLC has been revealed with Trunks: The Warrior of Hope. The latest DLC will arrive early Summer 2021 and brings with it a new story for players to dive into and will even feature Trunks from his alternate apocalyptic future.
While we don't have a release date, we do have our first look at what the new DLC will have to offer. Since Kakarot follows the events following Goku's death, the upcoming DLC will bring Trunks back from the future to try to pave the way for a new world after Android 17 and 18 obliterated the mass majority of Z-Fighters.
Click here to watch embedded mediaKakarot does a solid job at mostly staying within canon, with a few creative liberties here and there, so to see what Bandai Namco has in store following the death of Goku is more than just a little interesting.
Super Nintendo World opening day is finally upon us. People in Japan can attend Universal Studios Japan and visit the new area next week.
The post Japan’s Super Nintendo World Opening Day Is Next Week appeared first on Siliconera.
MegaHouse announced it will have both Jujutsu Kaiden Lookup and Petitrama figures on the way, with some appearing in June and August.
The post Jujutsu Kaisen Lookup and Petitrama Figures Revealed appeared first on Siliconera.
Secrets have long been a part of the Call of Duty Zombies formula. But while players have loved hunting for Easter eggs to reveal new bits of lore, according to Black Ops Cold War developer Treyarch, very few players find these secrets in-game. So for its latest take on zombies, Treyarch has decided to make the…
Devs around the industry (including Nina Freeman, Kevin Snow, and Claire Hummel) reflect on how the venerable virtual pet website helped jumpstart their careers in game development. ...
Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin already has a new trailer and deluxe edition (read about it here), but Amiibo collectors will be happy to know that new figures based on the game are on the way as well. The figures are based on characters Ena, Razewing Ratha, and Tsukino and should look good on a shelf while also providing some in-game perks too.
In addition to looking spiffy, scanning the Amiibo in-game unlocks three different sets of layered armor plus unspecified daily challenges. The figures will be available when the game launches on July 9 exclusively through GameStop in the US and EB Games in Canada (disclaimer: GameStop is the parent company of Game Informer). Information on when and how to pre-order the figures will come at a later date.
Do you know a game that we play a lot, but haven't talked about for a bit? Phasmophobia. Since this scary title first launched on Steam as an Early Access adventure, it has evolved immensely to be even more terrifying. The latest Phasmophobia update brings in new accessibility adjustments, changes to the Sanity monitor, and...oh, yeah...ghosts can now open doors.
Some changes are bigger than others, but many of the quality-of-life improvements tackle the game on a larger scale. But first, let's talk about accessibility tweaks.
Phasmophobia now has an added accessibility page where players can swap their sounds to mono. Also added is the ability to select the contract difficulty (versus it being randomized), a new button to change the ports for the game (which will help with disconnection issues), and new text on the sanity monitor to show the team's average.
With the latest update, it's easier to stay connected to the server and easier to select contracts via a gamepad. Invite codes can also be added with the keyboard number pad in addition to a new button that allows players to easy-add the max number of items desired before taking each contract.
The March 2021 Sega survey is here, and it asks if you prefer single or multiplayer games and if people like anime.
The post The March 2021 Sega Survey Asks About Anime appeared first on Siliconera.
Hitman 3 is a looker. But if you try to take a screenshot on PlayStation 5, you’ll run into an issue: Hitting the Create button causes Hitman 3 itself to pause, meaning you’ll only be able to get a screenshot of the game’s menu. It’s a lovely menu, for sure, but not exactly on par with the Argentinian sunset you were…
With the final episode of WandaVision‘s first season in the books, it’s easier to see just how much the show has affected the future of the MCU. While it may have only been nine episodes, the show has already had a resounding impact on what is set to occur for Phase 4 of Marvel’s movie franchise.
Whether it is the introduction of new characters or drastic improvements in powers, these are five significant changes WandaVision has set up for MCU’s Phase 4.
Note: There will be heavy spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen the entirety of WandaVision’s entire season. If you don’t want to be spoiled, come back when you watch it.
If you have already seen all nine episodes, or you simply don’t mind spoilers, then carry on to the article.
(Featured Image Courtesy of Disney+/Marvel)
