Babylon's Fall, the long-awaited and still relatively mysterious new offering from Bayonetta and Nier: Automata studio Platinum Games, is "continuing to progress well" according to the developer, but it doesn't sound like the previously promised "full look" is due any time soon.

Platinum originally announced Babylon's Fall, which is set to be published by Square Enix, back in June 2018, promising a Steam and PlayStation 4 release sometime the following year. However, 2019 managed to almost completely pass by without further word on the game, until a new trailer - painting Babylon's Fall as a sort of pyrotechnic, high-action Dark Souls - arrived in December. At the time, Platinum said to expect "a full look" in summer 2020.

And now, with summer finally here, further news about Babylon's Fall has indeed arrived, albeit not of the sort originally promised. In a new statement posted to Twitter, Platinum offered only a minor development update, writing, "While we hoped to reveal more about the game this summer, we can share that development on Babylon's Fall is continuing to progress well, with the team working safely from home".

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In this GDC 2018 session Scopely's Evan Losi presents a practical take on system design, starting with the one resource that is universal to all games: time. ...

Sushi Reversi is a party game coming to Switch in Japan on July 22, 2020. You'll need to fight for the right to place sushi plates.

The post Sushi Reversi Is a Fin-tastic Board Game Where You Fight Your Way to the Top appeared first on Siliconera.

In today's contest you can win a Steam copy of survival game Green Hell!

There are like a billion survival/crafting games out there, right? They're like roguelikes, where basically everything coming out is following that formula. Hard to make it out there unless you've got a cool product, yo.

Green Hell seems to have done really well for itself! Coming from indie roots, spending time in Early Access, and making sure the game is fun helped boost it to over a million sales since release. To celebrate the occasion, we're giving away from free copies!

EA showed off its new multiplayer shooter, Rocket Arena, in last month's EA Play presentation; now, you can dive in for yourself. Rocket Arena is out today on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, featuring a cartoonish art style and 3v3 competitive matches where you play as distinct heroes, similar to Overwatch. However, it's also akin to Super Smash Bros. in that your goal is to knock your opponent hard enough that they fly off the side of the battlefield. And, of course, there's rockets. Lots of them.

Rocket Arena features 10 playable characters, 100 levels of progression, 10 maps, and hundreds of cosmetics at launch, with more content coming to the live game soon. The game also includes 4 PVP modes along with one cooperative mode, and there's an in-game currency ("Rocket Fuel") you'll use to buy season passes, which are called a Blast Pass. Notably, Rocket Arena has launched with full cross-play support across all platforms. Season 1 will officially kick off on July 28, adding a new hero, limited-time events, a ranked season, and more.

She’s literally changing the face of action movies

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Today NIS America released a brand new trailer of the upcoming JRPG The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV.

The trailer focuses on the cast, showcasing several characters that will doubtlessly prove familiar to veterans of the series, despite the fact that some debuted in games that haven’t been released in the west just yet.

We also get some handy samples of the English voice acting that will come with the title.

You can enjoy the video below.

If you want to see more, you can enjoy the first trailer, one more dedicated to the story, and the latest gameplay.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV releases on which will be October 27, 2020. The Nintendo Switch and PC versions are still marked for a generic “2021” launch.

If you’re unfamiliar with the game, here’s how NIS America describes it officially.

The Erebonian Empire is on the brink of all-out war! 

Blizzard has announced Hearthstone's next expansion, Scholomance Academy.

It adds 135 new cards that revolve around spell synergies. It also adds archlich Kel'Thuzad as a new hero.

Scholomance will be familiar to World of Warcraft players. It was an early days dungeon popular because it carried the best pre-raid gear in the game. It was also a lot of fun to run, its atmospheric school of necromancy packed with ghosts and spirits. The Darkmaster Gandling boss fight was pretty great, too.

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Smite's mid-season update 7.7 adds the Avatar: the Last Airbender battle pass and makes changes to the game's main mode, Conquest. Aang, Zuko, and Korra are all being added to the game as skins for existing gods Merlin, Susano, and Skadi, respectively.

The Avatar: the Last Airbender battle pass includes two skins for Aang, Zuko, and Korra, along with announcer packs, animated avatars, and more cosmetic items. All of the items are exclusive to the battle pass, which can be purchased for 750 Gems (about $14 USD). Gems can also be earned--slowly--by playing Smite.

The Zuko skin is unlocked upon purchasing the battle pass, with the Korra skin unlocked at tier 20 and the Aang skin unlocked at tier 60. The variant skins are all unlocked post tier 60. This is the second crossover battle pass Smite has done, the first being a RWBY crossover back in November 2019.

The Dead by Daylight Stadia version will appear in September 2020, and it will include cross-play, Crowd Play, and Crowd Choice options.

The post Dead by Daylight Stadia Version Will Have Cross-Play, Crowd Play, and Crowd Choice appeared first on Siliconera.

Sigma's Maestro skin makes him look like Overwatch's grumpy, fussy, tenured-as-hell professor, and folks, I'm into it. The outfit was created to drum up interest for the Overwatch: Cities & Countries album.

This is another limited-time challenge – one of the very few in-game happenings that can still draw my eye toward Overwatch in 2020 – and it's running from July 14 to July 27, 2020. Here's the rundown.

If you win three games (across Quick Play, Competitive, or Arcade), you'll get the Maestro player icon. Six wins will net you the Maestro emote, an elaborate conductor animation. And racking up nine wins, as these challenges tend to go, will grant you the Legendary Maestro Sigma character skin.

There's also a Twitch Drop component that rewards watch time with sprays. You can glance at the gallery to see those unlocks (Sigma looks like a Muppet) and consult the participating stream schedule.

His frown is too much. I can't!

Maestro Sigma is here through July 27

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Apex Legends Season 5 has seen developer Respawn try to tell the ongoing story of the game in a new way, with weekly single-player quests and accompanying lore drops revealing more about the world. The final one of these quests to come during Season 5 is now live, and those who have collected 45 Treasure Packs over the course of the season can dive in--and completing it teases what might be a new character (Ash) and map to come in Season 6.

During a mission that unlocks after completing the final Quest, you'll walk into a vault and see the character below, who's believed to be Ash, a simulacrum pilot and antagonist from Titanfall 2. She first appeared in Apex Legends during the Season 4 cinematic launch trailer. You'll find her headless, but you'll be able to approach and replace her head, seemingly bringing her back to life. By showing up in the flesh (such as it is), this may tease her arrival as a playable character.

Alongside this, players are treated to a dialogue exchange between Lifeline and Octane, which you can read below. Toward the end, Lifeline mentions, "If we go to Olympus." Olympus is the name of a city on Psamathe, which was first teased as a future map in Apex Legends just prior to the start of Season 4.

In this Game Informer podcast extra, we have an interview with The Last of Us Part II’s creative director Neil Druckmann and narrative lead Halley Gross. The Last of Us Part II is one of the biggest releases of the year, and has generated a bit of controversy, so we talk to Neil and Halley  about their process, how they put the game together, and some of the things that changed along the way. Needless to say, we don’t shy away from talking about the game in detail, so consider this a spoiler warning.

If you like this podcast extra and would like to see more of them in the future, drop us a line at Podcast@gameinformer.com. Enjoy the interview.

Dead by Daylight, the popular multiplayer 4v1 horror game by Behaviour Interactive, was revealed today to be coming to Google Stadia sometime in September 2020.

As an added twist, the Google Stadia version of Dead by Daylight will include two exclusive features: Crowd Play and Crowd Choice. Both tie into YouTube’s streaming platform.

Here’s how Crowd Play and Crowd Choice will work according to the press release sent to Twinfinite:

Dead by Daylight will offer Crowd Choice, a Stadia exclusive feature that allows the community to vote and influence their favorite Youtube streamer’s match. The power will lie in the viewer’s hands, as they will choose whether the influencer will play as a Killer or a Survivor, followed by which character. 

Dead by Daylight on Stadia will also allow streamers to invite their community to join in on a trial with a touch of a button. This feature called Crowd Play, is the key to boosting the audience’s active engagement.

It appears, based on what we’re able to read above, that this feature will be exclusive to YouTube streamers playing Dead by Daylight on Google Stadia. A neat feature, but it’s certainly niche.

The Google Stadia hyped up a lot of features that would be tied to YouTube and not many have materialized yet, so this is at least a step in that direction. In addition in general, the Google Stadia would benefit from more popular multiplayer games like Dead by Daylight being added in order to allow people to continue to play these evergreen games while away from their platform of choice.

The Hitman trilogy is shooting onto Google Stadia, with the first two games releasing September, and the third in January 2021.

The post Hitman Trilogy Shoots Onto Google Stadia Beginning This September appeared first on Siliconera.

After an earlier tease, LEGO today revealed details about its newest building set, which looks like one that will have special significance for gamers. The LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System is a faithful brick recreation of the old system, and even includes a controller and a game pack that can be slotted into the opening (don’t forget to blow on the cartridge first). In one especially fun extra feature, the set includes a retro TV that allows for a scrolling screen effect, accomplished by crank on the side of the TV. The scrolling TV also includes a cool feature where you can scan the LEGO Mario from the recent LEGO Super Mario starter course, and have him react to onscreen enemies and obstacles on the scrolling TV.

The new throwback LEGO set is going to be available beginning in August through LEGO retail stores and on LEGO.com, and through other retailers beginning in 2021.

Check out the video below to get a better look at this cool set.

Infinity Ward has changed the name of its controversial "Border War" skin in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone after backlash. The Call of Duty developer changed the name to "Home on the Range" while also changing its in-game description.

The studio's use of the skin has been criticized for glorifying the police at a time when protests against police violence are ongoing around the world. It also carries anti-immigration sentiments that some fans have called out on Twitter. The Santa Monica-based studio announced the change, which came via a patch on July 14, with a tweet.

The skin's description originally read "show them the error of their ways and make them pay with D-Day's Border War operator skin" and has now been changed to "play along with the deer and the antelope with the Home on the Range D-Day operator skin." Nothing else about the skin was changed.

Google announces 16 new Stadia titles, exclusive deals with Harmonix and Supermassive

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Sony recently revealed its ever-so-slight box art redesign for its PlayStation 5 titles, using Spider-Man: Miles Morales to show off the new white border that will accompany each retail box. Microsoft hasn't announced anything as radically different for their next-gen games, but you'll know you're looking at one when you see one big, obnoxious sticker.

"Optimized for Xbox Series X" is a way for Microsoft to communicate that a game is supported on both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X, but that it also includes enhancements for its next-generation console. Problem is that the sticker takes up so much real estate on the actual box that it comes off as more annoying than anything, obscuring whatever eye-catching design the game's developer was aiming for.

During the latest Stadia Connect livestream (which actually wasn’t livestreamed, but simply dropped on YouTube as-is), Google made a few announcements of games coming to its streaming platform.

First of all, we get a few announcements about games we knew for other platforms (already released or coming in the future) which are also coming to Google Stadia.

Among them we see Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Mafia 2 and 3 Remastered, Borderlands 3, PGA Tour 2K21, WWE Battlegrounds, NBA 2K21, Dead by Deadlight, The Elder Scrolls Online: Stonethorn, Serious Sam 4, Hello Neighbor, One Hand Clapping, Outriders, Season 8 of PUBG, Hitman 3,  

Super Bomberman R Online has also been showcased. It’s a 64-player battle royale Bomberman game coming first on Stadia.

 We then see Outcasters by Splash Damage, coming in fall 2020 exclusively for Stadia.

Orcs Must Die 3 by Robot Entertainment is now available at no additional cost for Stadia Pro subscribers.

Last, but not least, we hear that Google has struck a deal with Supermassive Games, Uppercut Games, and Harmonix for the creation of games for Stadia.

Below you can watch the whole video on top of all the trailers of the games showcased. 

Joke’s on them, literally

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Stadia is still here, still getting additional games, and might one day be really cool, but nothing in today’s Stadia Connect event made it look like the platform has turned a corner as it struggles to establish a new ecosystem for gaming.

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Demon's Souls has never been more prominently relevant than it is right now. Possibly the most infamous of the From Software Souls-type games, everyone has their eyes trained on that PS5 remake that was announced last month. It's being made by Bluepoint, who handled the excellent Shadow of the Colossus remake a few years ago.

Maybe it's premeditated or maybe it's coincidence (or maybe it's destiny) but Demon's Souls kicks off Summer Games Done Quick this year. For anyone who hasn't played it, it's a fine opportunity to see what you're getting into on PS5. For everyone else, it'll be cathartic watching someone kick Demon's Souls ass when usually Demon's Souls is the one doing the ass-kicking.

It takes some scrolling -- there are a lot of games -- but there's some more SGDQ runs worth pointing out. Monday night gets a three-hour Alien: Isolation run on Nightmare difficulty (which saddles Ripley with a broken tracker that has a distorted display). Half-Life: Alyx is included as a bonus game on Thursday.

What sticks out to you as must-see viewing? Here's the full SGDQ 2020 schedule. The speedrunning festivities run from August 16 through August 22. However, SGDQ will be held online instead of in Minnesota this year because of the ongoing pandemic.

SGDQ2020 Schedule [Games Done Quick]

Video game investor ZeniMax Media has outlined this year's QuakeCon. The event, which is scheduled to run from August 7-9, will be completely virtual and features an assortment of livestreams, tournaments, and more you can experience from the comfort of your home during the surging coronavirus pandemic.

Dubbed QuakeCon at Home, this year's all-digital event will kick off with a Global Super Stream that starts on August 7 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET / 6 PM CEST / 2 AM AEST. The broadcast will feature "round-the-clock programming with special influencer streams, surprises, and our very own Bethesda Community teams from around the globe--all streaming from home in support of charitable causes." More information, as well as a full stream scheduled, will be divulged in the coming weeks, ZeniMax Media said.

QuakeCon at Home will also have the QuakeCon Twitch Team, where community members can participate in games via Twitch to raise money for the QuakeCon-supported charities. Details on how to join the QuakeCon at Home Twitch Team will be revealed soon.

Super Bomberman R Online has been announced for Google Stadia, and it includes a new battle royale mode titled Battle 64.

The post Super Bomberman R Online Comes to Google Stadia with 64-Man Battle Royale Mode appeared first on Siliconera.

Voting has begun for Final Fantasy XI’s Alter Ego Design Campaign. Players can choose between three different fan-made designs for a trust, a Tarutaru named Matsui-P.

The designs were submitted by players since May and now three have been selected by the development team. Each features a very unique concept, design, and overall combination of jobs and skills to make these Alter Egos stand out from the usual Trust NPCs that the devs have added to Final Fantasy XI so far.

Here are the three concepts that are up for vote:

Everyone’s MP Supply: A Samurai/Ninja that dual wields clubs and spams Moonlight to keep everyone’s MP high.

Fists of Magic: A Monk/Red Mage that uses en-spells on itself and pummels enemies with enchanted fists.

Elusive Caster: A Ninja/Black Mage that creates skill chains and then bursts with elemental Ninjutsu and Black Magic.

While they are all fun, unique ideas, I’m going to go with Elusive Caster just because I like the idea of having a powerful frontline caster Trust. There’s not a ton of them that are worth using right now. I’d be happy with all three though.

There’s a lot of finer details about each entry, including some dev comments, that you can read about here.

Infinity Ward has renamed a controversial soldier skin in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone after it was accused of glorifying the police.

A patch issued today changes the name of soldier D-Day's Border War skin to Home on the Range. The description of the skin has also been changed.

The Border War description read: "Show them the error of their ways and make them pay with D-Day's Border War operator skin."

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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is headed to Google Stadia. It will launch in Fall 2020.

The post Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Stadia Debut Set for Fall 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

Hit the books and unlock new cards

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Blizzard's next Hearthstone expansion is all about getting schooled - at magic! One of the finest dungeons in World of Warcraft, Scholomance, is ready to teach would be wizards, warlocks, and witches a thing or two about the fine arts of spellcasting. Welcome to Scholomance Academy, where Hearthstone players are headed in early August.

The big new mechanic is dual-class cards. What does that mean? It means there are cards that can be used by multiple classes! Hunters and Druids can both tap into beastly nasties, for example. There are 40 of these dual-class cards in the 135 card set, which should make strategies interesting. Each dual-class combination (10 of them!) gets a legendary professor.

Not as exciting, but absolutely in theme is the spellburst mechanic. Found on non-spell cards, spellburst triggers when you have a spellburst minion or weapon on the board the first time you cast a spell - you can't just trigger the same card a bunch of times. Of course, this comes with some risk.

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne's newest monster is incredibly difficult, in all the wrong ways. The black dragon Alatreon, added recently as part of Title Update 4, is a fearsome opponent, but a gimmick makes the fight more frustrating than challenging.

Alatreon is a force to be reckoned with in all the ways Monster Hunter players would expect. It hits harder, moves faster, and takes more damage to slay than previous monsters, giving you a new challenge to take on. However, Alatreon has a built-in DPS check, and if failed, it instakills all players. The Escaton Judgement attack is unavoidable, so if you don't deal enough damage before about the ten-minute mark, you will be wiped. If you do clear it, the attack will do less damage, but you will still need to use healing items to avoid wiping and you have to continually hit the damage requirement to avoid the instakill until Alatreon is defeated.

The DPS check isn't entirely new, as most recently, the Master Rank version of Kulve Taroth had one too, but Alatreon is different. Its requirement is based purely on elemental damage, which is where the frustration stems from. And the elemental damage requirement is so high that it renders several weapon types, like Hammers and Gunlances, nearly useless.

Grab your pitchfork and put on your sturdiest boots, readers – it is once again time to reap the pastoral delights of small-town farm life. Story Of Seasons: Friends Of Mineral Town, Xseed Games’ same-subtitled remake of the 2003’s Harvest Moon release, is now out on Steam. One to watch out for, if you fancy Stardew Valley‘s mix of farming, fishing and romancin’ with more of a cutesy chibi flair.

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We're just a few weeks away from GDC Summer, and today we're excited to give you a sneak peek at the musical artists (from Mega Ran to 88bit) you can expect to enjoy (live!) during the event. ...

Nothing bad ever happens at Disney. Or, at least, that’s the message the family-friendly company leads people to believe. You very rarely see or read raw, behind-the-scenes coverage from the mega-corporation because everything there is so carefully packaged. And that’s precisely why the new Disney+ show, Into the…

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Dual-Class Cards

Spellburst

G-Mode is looking for potential feature phone games (including ones from other companies) to bring to the Nintendo Switch.

The post G-Mode Wants Nintendo Switch Feature Phone Game Port Suggestions appeared first on Siliconera.

Newly Announced Games