The final Nintendo Indie Showcase of 2020 has just come and gone. Mossmouth’s subterranean platformers Spelunky and Spelunky 2 were the first two games shown off during the live stream, and they’ll both be coming to Nintendo Switch summer 2021.

Spelunky will support local multiplayer, and Spelunky 2 will feature both local and online multiplayer options.

For the unaware, Spelunky 1 and 2 are roguelike platformers that’ll be bringing worlds full of randomized challenges and plenty of treasure hunting to the Switch. And all of it can be done either alone or with friends.

For Spelunky veterans, here are a few of the changes that Mossmouth introduced in the sequel:

• A Bigger World with all new areas, monsters, traps, and items!
• An Extra Dimension is added by allowing players to access a second layer behind the normal playfield. The second layer might contain treasure rooms, hidden passages, and other special places.
• Multiple Routes Through the Game will add variety and give players more ways to personalize a run.
• Find and Ride Mounts (like turkeys!) that have special abilities. Enemies may ride mounts, as well!
• New NPCs that you can help, hurt, or ignore… to make each run feel even more like a unique story.
• Variations and Changes to Classic Spelunky Concepts like shops and ghosts that will make veteran players rethink their strategies.

You can check out this trailer from the Indie World Showcase to see the Nintendo Switch announcement for Spelunky and Spelunky 2:

Among the December Indie World Showcase announcements were Among Us, Spelunky, and Spelunky 2 Switch ports, along with some shadowdrops.

The post December Indie World Included Among Us and Spelunky Switch Ports appeared first on Siliconera.

Hopoo Games is growing, and so is Risk of Rain 2. In a developer blog post today, the team announced three new members – doubling the core crew size – and gave release windows for the 2021 schedule.

As was already announced, Risk of Rain 2 will still get one more big update and ongoing support, but otherwise, it's shifting to a paid expansion model to release "meaningful" new content that will "give RoR2 fans a reason to come back and support the game." That's what I want to hear for a roguelike.

The next step – the Anniversary update – is aiming for March 2021. It'll include cut content "like the Grandparent boss," new items and a new Survivor, profile stats, and improvements across the board.

Much later, in Q4 2021, the first paid expansion – "around two to three content updates in size" – will come out to "refresh the game for long-term fans." An alternate final stage and final boss, another mode, new Elites, new music, and more Survivors, common foes, stages, and items are on the docket.

Another promising move: better support for modders, which is a gift that will keep on giving. "We're also keeping an eye on our ever-growing modding community, and are making some internal changes (like moving away from fixed enum indices for content and more towards scriptable objects, investigating an engine upgrade) to work toward an easier and more sustainable modding environment for RoR2."

The new faces at Hopoo Games are programmer Ben Schofield (who's focusing on gameplay), Javid "Snonepe" (who's on animation), and Nick Bizzozero (who's working to keep Risk of Rain 2 an "engaging and visually slick experience" and previously cracked me up with the actually-fun Yo! Noid 2).

The popular hidden role game finally arrives on the hybrid console

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All of EA Play’s games on Xbox Game Pass would’ve made for one hell of a Christmas present, sure. But while today was meant to be the big day, it looks like it’ll be a couple more months before EA’s catalogue is rolled into Microsoft’s already-generous subscription service. Xbox today announced that it’ll be 2021 before The Sims, Battlefield, Dragon Age and friends become part of your Game Pass subscription.

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During a Nintendo Indie World presentation today, publisher Yacht Club Games finally announced a release date for the 2D action-sidescroller, Cyber Shadow.

The title will release on Switch, Steam, PS4, and Xbox One on Jan. 26, 2021. It’s being developed by Mechanical Head Games and is a gorgeous retro-inspired platforming action game that takes a lot of notes from games like Ninja Gaiden.

During the presentation, it was also revealed that the Switch version of the game will have exclusive compatibility with Shovel Knight amiibo figures. If you scan one in, you can get some help from some familiar faces.

You can watch the new trailer down below:

Here’s quick synopsis of the game from its official site:

Despite releasing in 2016, Among Us has taken the world by storm this year, as players group up with friends and strangers alike to see who on their ship is an imposter trying to sabotage them. Earlier today, InnerSloth revealed that the indie sensation is now making its way to the Nintendo Switch.

The news came at the end of the December Nintendo Indie World, revealing that fans wouldn’t have to wait long to get the game on their Nintendo Switch. In fact, you’ll be able to play the game later today!

For the uninitiated, Among Us is an online murder mystery game where up to 10 people can hop aboard a spaceship together. Each has a task list to complete, which varies from button prompts to memory games.

Completing this list is no easy feat, as their is an alien among your crew looking to kill you. To find out who done it, the group must use their knowledge of the ship and its tasks to vote on who the Imposter is to save the crew.

Microsoft delays rollout past holidays

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Announced today during Nintendo’s Indie World presentation, the surprise-hit mystery-party-action game, Among Us, is coming to the Nintendo Switch today.

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Grindstone out on Nintendo Switch later today

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Resident Evil Village (or Resident Evil 8, just don't call it that) is the highly anticipated continuation of the beloved Capcom horror series. While we don't have a new trailer, the company did reveal a few new screenshots about the latest Resident Evil game, in addition to a few small details about what fans can expect. 

In a recent interview with IGN, producer Peter Fabiano opened up about what gamers can expect when the newest Resident Evil game makes its debut next year. He told the site that longtime fans of the series can feel the familiarity of the franchise within Village, taking all of the "best elements" and bringing them to an apex with this new experience. But just because there will be familiarity doesn't mean this game will be copy+paste. 

While much of Village will pull from various aspects of Resident Evil, Fabiano was quick to assure fans that there will still be a few surprises within the new game. Without going too much into detail, the Village producer opened up about how "new technologies" of gaming will improve the Resident Evil experience in an impactful way. 

Expected next summer

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• IGN UK Podcast #569: The Alternative Film & TV Awards 2020
• IGN UK Podcast #568: Early Immortals Impressions
• IGN UK Podcast #567: AC Valhalla and Yorkshire John Lennon
• IGN UK Podcast #566: The Mandalorian and PS5 UK Launch Madness
• IGN UK Podcast #565: Loads More PS5 and Series X/S Chat

A number of employees have shared the news on Twitter, and explained the entire 40-strong team will be made redundant on January 1, 2020.  ...

Director Patty Jenkins reteams with Gal Gadot for a tricky take on DC’s heroine

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A Ghost in the Shell SMT Liberation Dx2 event will kick off this week and, if people participate, they'll get Motoko Kusanagi and Tachikomas.

The post Ghost in the Shell SMT Liberation Dx2 Event Includes Motoko and Tachikomas appeared first on Siliconera.

I’ll let you in on a secret, and that is that I think Cyberpunk 2077 is a decent enough game, but it annoys you by getting in its own way all the time. An example of this is the setting Night City itself. It’s a cracking city to have a wander around. I like how the districts really feel different, I like the strange warrens that are the multi-level covered street markets, I like the huge, hollow-centred blocks of flats that make playing the game like being inside that brilliant Judge Dredd movie (starring Karl Urban’s chin as Dredd). Night City is a marvellous, filthy monstrosity to explore, and this remains true as long as you don’t look at anything at ground level.

With the new console updates already in the bag, I've been playing a lot of Fornite with my wife. The Xbox Series X and PS5 versions run very smoothly for the sessions that I don't feel like playing on PC, and those ports just got a lot better today.

As of this afternoon, version 15.10 added in 120FPS support for both console families. Ally you need to do is enable it, and the game will convert to 1440p on Series X and PS5, and 1080p on Series S. That's it: it's enabled for all modes, not just PVP like Destiny 2. To be clear, these are legit Series X/S and PS5 versions of the game, not older versions that just happen to work.

The other big piece of news today is the addition of a limited-run "The Spy Within" mode, which is literally just Among Us, Fortnite style. You'll start on either the side of the "agents" (eight people) or the "spies," (two people). The latter will attempt to take out the former without being noticed, while the agents try and complete tasks and vote out alleged spies. It's going to be a yelly-Twitch-fest.

It's also, neatly, a community-created endeavor with Epic crediting DolphinDom, KKSlider, Bunni, Wert, Blanky, jstKamui, MackJack, Ritual, and Snownymous. A new twist will be cycled in and out of the playlist "every few days."

CD Projekt Red managers clarified that refunds for Cyberpunk 2077 will be subject to existing retailer policies during a call with investors yesterday, and said the company is not encouraging anyone to return the game.

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I don’t particularly like the idea of being purposefully captured by aliens in order to kill them from inside their big scary lairs, but this appears to be exactly what The Coalition will have you doing in the first story expansion for Gears Of War 5. The Hivebusters DLC arrived today, dropping players in with a familiar team ready to get going on their debut mission to bust some hives.

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Meet the rest of your coworkers in the OSF!

The post The Newest Scarlet Nexus Characters Are an Idol, a Jerk, and an Older Sister appeared first on Siliconera.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla just got its second major patch this morning, another much-needed Band-Aid as Ubisoft marches toward making this game function as intended. It really highlighted how long this is going to take.

As expected, the update 1.1.0 patch notes are all over the place. There's a bunch of general stuff like optimization and performance stability. There's broad-reaching gameplay tweaks like adjusting enemy power levels. As far as new content, this update also paved the way for an upcoming Yule Festival, which hasn't been detailed yet.

Most important, there are fixes for a ton of quests that were bugged. Ubisoft seems to be prioritizing the quests that affect actual progression while backburnering World Events that won't actually prevent people from continuing to play the game. Just like the first patch, there are approximately 100 different issues that are addressed. Check out the patch notes to see if your specific problem was tackled.

How long will it take until Assassin's Creed Valhalla is in a perfectly acceptable state for the majority of players? A long time. On the game's forums, the mega-thread of known issues seems to be growing faster than bugs are being moved to resolved. In the Player Support sub-forum, people are posting their new bugs with a new thread popping up approximately every minute. There's obviously a ton of overlap with the same problems being reported multiple times, but it's crystal clear that so many people have so many issues that they need fixed.

The further I get from my childhood, the closer I come to articulating what I miss about it. Through the confusing fog of nostalgia, it’s easy to mix up what you thought you loved, with what you actually loved. I don’t miss being a kid—I’m both taller and funnier as an adult—but I do covet the endless enthusiasm I…

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Irish game service provider Keywords Studios has acquired High Voltage Software for up to $50 million.  ...

The Hivebusters expansions for Gears 5 officially revealed last week is now available alongside a title update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements.

The new story-based downloadable content focuses on the origin of the Scorpio Squad—Keegan, Lahni, and Mac—first playable in Gears 5 Escape Mode as they take down the Swarm and new enemy Wakaatu set in the Galangi islands.

The characters’ Ultimate Abilities carry over from the Escape Mode, and the Hivebusters DLC can be played up to three players in split-screen or online co-op. The DLC also features 16 new achievements with a total score of 210 Gamerscore and supports Xbox Series X|S optimizations such as quick resume and 4K HDR Ultra visuals on Series X.

The expansion is now available for $19.99 or is free for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, which is currently on sale at three months for $1 for new subscribers.

Gears 5 also received its 12th Title Update alongside the new expansion today with a list of bug fixes and quality of life improvements for both Horde and Escape modes. The update also added the new Wakaatu enemy to the bosses list in Horde and Horde Frenzy, and changed the Iron Man mutator in Escape to allow players to simply restart the hive from the menu instead of backing out to the lobby.

The post Gears 5 Hivebusters DLC Out Now Alongside Title Update appeared first on Twinfinite.

The Mortal Kombat movie has been pushed back to 16th April 2021. It was due out on 15th January.

The reboot launches in cinemas and on HBO Max on the same day - a move that's part of Warner Bros.' controversial strategy to release all its 2021 movies day and date in theatres and on its streaming service in response to the pandemic.

HBO Max isn't out in the UK yet. It's expected to arrive here at some point during the second half of 2021.

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For being the biggest game of the past decade, Fortnite‘s system requirements aren’t exactly generous. Okay, yes, it’ll run on phones and the Switch, but my ratty old laptop still struggles with it, which is why I’m actually excited by the game’s experimental new “performance” mode, which hopes to improve framerates for folks who are already scraping the lowest graphics sliders.

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Developer CD Projekt Red held a conference call late yesterday to address the shaky launch of its open-world RPG Cyberpunk 2077 on previous console generation hardware. Key members of the studio’s leadership answered pressing questions about why its performance is so dire and what plans are in place to deal with issues moving forward.

The call began with a statement from joint-CEO Adam Kiciński that essentially repeats the same information outlined in CDPR’s apology message to fans earlier this week, but there are two snippets worth highlighting.

First, an admission from the team that it made a critical errors in its launch strategy:

After 3 delays, we as the Management Board were too focused on releasing the game. We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues, we ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy. On top of that, during the campaign, we showed the game mostly on PCs.

Second, the recognition that CD Projekt Red’s reputation has taken a huge hit from the fallout of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch:

This caused the loss of gamers’ trust and the reputation that we’ve been building through a big part of our lives. That’s why our first steps are solely focused on regaining those two things. We are concentrated on fixing Cyberpunk on last-gen consoles. The first substantial set of fixes was released over the weekend.

Destiny 2’s new exotic quest for an old Destiny 1 gun makes reference to an alternate version of one of that game’s main characters only seen in an E3 2013 trailer, breathing a little life back into a story that never made it into the finished game.

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A full-course figure menu is on offer from Flare.

The post Flare’s Odin Sphere Figure Sets Call Maury for a Tasty Meal appeared first on Siliconera.

2020 was a weird – and for many people, at times frustrating – year for PC gaming.

That sentiment goes for plenty of people who tried to secure a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S at launch, and it definitely also goes for PC gamers. You might've been ready to upgrade your GPU while the going is good, but for many would-be customers, it was just one annoying close call after another. Whether you were hunting down a 3070, a 6800, or seemingly any piece of sought-after tech in this cooped-up "at least we still have gaming!" nightmare of a year, you weren't alone – the bots were out in full force.

That's not to say there weren't great PC games to check out in 2020 (in between our old favorites that are still going strong with regular updates), but the out-of-stock woes did overshadow things a bit.

I can't complain, though. For all of the frustration surrounding future-proofing purchases, this year also brought pleasant surprises like Gears Tactics, mind-bending out-of-the-box strategizing in Spelunky 2, a veritable VR masterclass in Half-Life: Alyx, and the long-awaited end of the road in Kentucky Route Zero.

The Apple Watch SE and Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate lead Tuesday’s best deals.

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The latest Grand Theft Auto Online heist, dubbed, Cayo Perico, has launched, and Rockstar has released some fresh screenshots and info to help players celebrate the occasion.

In a press release sent out by the developer alongside the heist’s launch on Dec. 15, the company provided more details on the new island locale and explained why they wanted to create it in the first place.

““The Cayo Perico Heist is our way of getting everyone together to party and dance in the safest possible way while also giving players the chance to take on our biggest and best Heist yet,” Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games, said. “It’s been a difficult and challenging year, and we wanted to make something everyone could have some fun in – we’re really excited for you to play.”

The press release also recapped some of the biggest content additions coming to Grand Theft Auto Online via the heist. These include the new Submarine and three new radio stations: Still Slipping Los Santos from UK DJ Joy Orbison; Kult FM hosted by Julian Casablancas of The Strokes and The Voidz featuring Mac DeMarco, David Cross and Tony Mac; and Music Locker Radio, featuring Moodymann, Keinemusik and Palms Trax.

To cap things off, they offered a variety of screenshots showing just a few of the hijinks GTA Online players can get up to. These range from scenes of players drifting in go-karts and preparing for the heist to better glimpses of the island’s villain, new vehicles and more.

The full array can be found down below.

"We ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy." ...

The Clown Prince of Crime is on the lam from Commissioner Gordon

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Ubisoft’s Viking adventure, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, adds some limited-time winter festivities today. Preparations for the Yule Festival have dropped alongside the game’s 1.1.0 title update, which also lays the groundwork for the upcoming Settlement expansion. It all comes with a bundle of merry bug fixes and game improvements too – addressing the serious stuff like freezes and balancing, and the fun stuff such as floating Eivors and clingy NPCs.

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Today Unity†™s newest TECH Stream launched, which aims to improve stability and performance for developers who use the ubiquitous game engine. We speak with Unity's Brett Bibby. ...