No need to fly to Fight Island

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In Olija you play as Farady, a man marooned in mysterious and dangerous land. Using an ancient harpoon that you can use to fling yourself across the level and pull yourself towards your enemies, you along with your fellow survivors will try to escape before you are lost forever.

When I first saw the game I got serious Sword and Sorcery EP vibes from it, then all the killing started and I knew I was in for quite a different experience. To get a feel for the game yourself, you can waltz on over to Steam to check out a demo which should hold you over until release.

While it was originally announced that the game is available now during the not-so-E3 Devolver press conference today, it seems that wasn't the case. Olija is scheduled for release later this year on Switch and PC. This just goes to show that you can never trust your Uncle who works at Nintendo...

Devolver Digital rounded off its wild Devolver Direct presentation with a goofy new game, satirising the marketing migraine that is the E3 experience. DevolverLand Expo is available to play, free of charge, right now on PC via Steam.

Seemingly a psychedelic-nightmare-come-first-person-shooter, DevolverLand Expo lets you experience the perils and pitfalls of the E3 experience without the massive crowds, empty cans of energy drinks, and plethora of Drake's Cakes. So if you fancy Checking Another Look at some of the titles that appeared in this afternoon's presentation, head over to Steam and download DevolverLand Expo now.

Devolver admits that it kinda blew its load prematurely with Serious Sam 4 information. It's coming to Steam and Stadia, and it'll get here in August. We've known that since May! We're not blowing any minds here.

But, there's a new trailer and maybe that'll get your adrenaline pumpin' and your blood flowin'. Just look at all the things that can kill you and all the things you can kill. Serious Sam is not the most sophisticated of formulas.

Anyway, it looks good and you'll have your hands on it next month.

There are only so many times I can say “cor, wouldn’t it be nice to travel again” in the pandemic-ridden hell year that is 2020. But I’m going to say it again here, because Tropico 6‘s sun-swept beaches are opening up all weekend. The irreverent, satirical city-builder is currently free to download and try over on Steam, with prices slashed on trips to the rest of the Tropico franchise.

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Beyond Hamilton, there are old-school classics and modern oddities

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Amazon Game Studios' New World is shaping up to be an ambitious project for a division that has struggled thus far, but we'll have to wait a bit longer before playing the MMO. Despite already suffering an earlier delay and being planned for release in just a month, the development team has chosen to bump the game into Spring 2021.

Writing in a blog post on the game's official website, studio director Rich Lawrence explained that after play-testers had time with the game over the last few months, they wanted there to be more middle-game and end-game content in order to keep them engaged. As a result, the studio decided it would need significantly more development time to make this happen, but it isn't all bad news if you were hoping to play the game in August.

Lawrence added that those who signed up for the beta, pre-ordered the game, or played it in alpha testing will have a special opportunity to play a limited-time version on its originally-scheduled August 25 release date. This will contain the content that was initially going to comprise the game at launch.

Carrion has caught my eye since the first time I saw its creepy meat monster slaughter its way through soldiers and scientists. It's the perfect game for a publisher like Devolver, and it turns out, we won't have to wait that long to play it. Carrion launches on July 23 for Switch, Xbox One, and PC. If you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass, you can find it there on launch day as well.

Xbox's Phil Spencer showed up at the Devolver Digital showcase to help announce a release date for Carrion. That's not what's important here.

Spencer shared a screen with a demon beast monster and it makes for a wonderful visual. I'm compelled to write a post about it entirely so this picture shows up on Google Images whenever someone looks for a professional shot of Phil Spencer.

Like, they're gonna be so confused. This is the long con. This is the good shit.

Can you imagine a better game than Shadow Warrior to kick off Devolver's annual showcase? It's kind of the perfect blend of crude, wacky, and violent that defines the Devolver brand.

The first Shadow Warrior 3 gameplay trailer is here and it doesn't disappoint. Buckets worth of demon blood is spilled, and some encounters look like they belong inside a carnival. There's a significant emphasis on locomotion, as wallrunning and a grapple hook brings more speed and movement to the fighting. It seems like a direction that's both better and more fun.

Shadow Warrior 3 is coming sometime in 2021. Platforms are still a mystery (although PC is assumed), but it's probably coming to whichever consoles won't make compromises on the number of dick jokes it allows.

During today's meta-beyond-meta Devolver Direct presentation Sony Interactive Entertainment's Shuhei Yoshida delivered a new trailer for its madcap looking title Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, which was first revealed during last year's E3 festivities.

In addition to the new video, Yoshida also revealed that Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout will launch on PS4 and PC via Steam August 4. This news was supposed to be brought to you by two Fall Guys, but according to Yoshida they ate each other. Tough times.

Nintendo has announced Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, a new Switch exclusive from Shantae developer Wayforward.

Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is an action role-playing game based on the Bakugan anime, and it's due out on 6th November 2020.

Here's the official blurb:

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Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System is one of the most abundant games around, as it was all but required for any Nintendo fan in the '80s. However, one particular copy of the game is far more special, and it managed to sell for more money than any other video game in history.

Still sealed in the plastic after 35 years, a mint condition copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $114,000 via Heritage Auctions this week. Not only does this beat out the previous record for the game, which fetches exorbitant prices if sealed and in mint condition, but it now has the record for most expensive video game sale in history.

The rare video game market has exploded over the last decade, with prices more than doubling on the top end. Back in 2010, the extremely rare Stadium Events on NES sold for just over $41,000.

A sealed copy of Super Mario. Bros. has become the most expensive video game of all time after it sold at auction for an eye-watering $114,000.

The 1985 cartridge, sold on Friday, 10th July during a public auction of vintage comics and art by Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, has been sealed for 35 years. It took 29 bids to push the final sale price beyond the previous record-holder: $100,150 for another mint copy of Super Mario Bros. sold in February 2019. According to Heritage Auctions, the buyer wishes to remain anonymous.

So why was this cart considered so special? It's the highest-graded (9.4 out of 10) sealed Super Mario Bros. game cartridge ever offered at public auction, and even retains its original cardboard hangtab - a quality that makes it vintage among collectors.

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Today Level-5 released a new trailer for its upcoming Yo-Kai Watch game Yo-Kai Academy Y: Wai Wai School Life, which is a spin-off of the series.

The trailer is rather extensive, starting with an overview of the Yo-Kai Watch series and then moving on to the new game.

We get an overview of the school and its inhabitants and then we move on to the opening cutscene that introduces the theme song “Gakuen Spacey.”

We also take a look at the main cast and some rather wacky elements like giant robots and kaiju. 

You can check it out below alongside a second video showing the opening cutscene on its own.

The "new" E3 (Endless Entertainment Expo) season continues this weekend with not one, but two live streams dedicated to two major publishers within the video game industry. Tomorrow is the turn of Ubisoft, but the real action arrives an hour from now, with the latest bizarre installment in the Devolver Digital Cinematic Universe.

The irreverent indie publisher has made a name for itself in recent years with a string and bizarre, hyperactive, and disturbingly violent press conferences, as hosted by unkillable PR rep Nina Struthers. Armed with eyes of steel, lethal hands, and The Big Book of Buzzwords, Ms. Struthers has given us previews of some of the best indie titles the scene has to offer, in stage presentations that have culminated in surprisingly high body counts. Can Nina still deliver the bottom line in today's socially-distanced climate? I wouldn't bet against it.

This year, we can expect to see a fresh line-up of weird and wonderful titles - as is Devolver's forte - as well as the first gameplay footage of Flying Wild Hog's Shadow Warrior 3. You can watch along with us via Twitch below. The Devolver Direct presentation goes live an hour from now.

A word of warning to the first three rows: You may get wet.

Over the last decade Valve cancelled quite a few video games, and thanks to a recent documentary on the developer, we now have an idea of what exactly fell by the wayside.

Geoff Keighley's The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx released this week on Steam, and it reveals Valve's failed attempt to make Half-Life 3 - the game boss Gabe Newell would refuse to discuss in interviews.

IGN has a tidy roundup of the various cancelled projects. The highlight is of course Half-Life 3, one of five cancelled Half-Life games worked on in the 13 years between the release of Half-Life: Episode 2 and this year's Half-Life: Alyx.

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It's been a few years since EA Sports dropped a new UFC fighter on fans, but Saturday morning, the publisher revealed EA Sports UFC 4 is on its way to PS4 and Xbox One consoles soon. Like, really soon. In fact, it's launching just over a month from now on August 14.

UFC 4 will feature fighters Israel Adesanya and Jorge Masvidal on the cover, and if you preorder, you'll gain access to Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. The game is introducing two new fighting arenas: the Backyard and the mythical Kumite. No word if UFC Fight Island, or UFSea, will also make the cut.

As of right now, there is no definitive list of UFC fighters that will be included in the game, though in the trailer above, I'm sure you can see some familiar faces. According to the game description, UFC 4's career mode will let you go from an amateur to an all-star with a unified progression system throughout all modes. And because this is an EA Sports title, there will be optional in-game purchases as well.

EA Sports UFC 4 launches on August 14 for PS4 and Xbox One.

UFC 4 [EA Sports]

Cannae be having a hero shooter without heroes, can we? Ahead of its launch date next Tuesday, Rocket Arena has shown off more of its bouncy blasty gunfights with two new trailers – one for the expected, eccentric cast of rocket-toting characters, the other for the maps they’ll be blasting each other out of – alongside plans to add even more maps and a new hero when the first season kicks off a few weeks after launch.

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AmazonBasics Playstand for Nintendo Switch | $7 | Amazon

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The festivities of notE3 ramp back up this weekend, starting at 8pm (noon Pacific) today with D3: Devolver Digital Direct, a stream of announcements and trailers from the rapscallions with buckets of irony and larger buckets of fake blood. We already know it’ll have the first gameplay trailer for the newly-announced Shadow Warrior 3. I would feel confident guessing they’ll announce at least one game with rude ‘tude and Doseone tunes. And it’ll surely consider the blood-soaked saga of Nina Struthers, their fictional chief synergy officer who has killed and been killed in previous years’ streams.

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A few years ago, I wrote a review for The Pokémon Cookbook, an instructional book designed for kids that teaches you how to shape your food into Pokémon. It did not go well. I didn't make edible Pokémon so much as I created food so horrific looking that even Andrew Zimmern wouldn't touch it. Turns out, making food art is, well, an art.

Making dishes that look like my favorite pocket monsters is certainly out of my reach in real life, but it's something I excel at in Pokémon Café Mix.

If there’s a downside to living in the middle of the city, it’s that fairs just really aren’t a part of my life. But then, with the whole Covid-19 pandemic going on, it’s not like there are many being held this year anyway. In place of their usual mud n’ music happenings, however, the Oregon Country Fair In The Clouds has taken the 50-year-old folksy festival online, constructing an endearingly makeshift (and somewhat surreal) virtual arts fair that’s free for everyone, local or not.

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It's easy to be dismissive of the Grand Theft Auto franchise because it's the biggest fish in the pond and has been for quite some time. And as we prepare to take our adventures in San Andreas to the next generation, let's not forget one of the reasons why these games, particularly GTAV, are as beloved as they are: the stories they tell are actually quite good.

That's one of the topics CJ, Charlotte, Occams, and Chris cover on this episode of Podtoid. In addition to GTA, the crew recounts their favorite movie shootouts, the appeal of British sitcoms, Riki-Oh, next-gen game pricing, and movie musicals. All that, plus mac and cheese dispensers, on Podtoid Episode 450.

NotE3 resumes this weekend with both Ubisoft and Devolver Digital hosting their own announce-o-blast streams. Six weeks into whatever the hell we’re calling this summer games marketing-o-rama, man, I miss E3. Bring back E3. While I’ve expressed some frustrations with it over the years, I didn’t realise the alternative was an endless sprawl of endless streams largely showing the same games over and over. At least DD and Ubi will have new stuff.

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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Atlus has announced that the PC port of Persona 4 Golden has surpassed 500,000 players since its launch on the Steam platform last month. The publisher announced the milestone on Twitter, accompanied by cute new artwork from character designer Shigenori Soejima.

Originally released on the PS Vita in 2012, Persona 4 Golden is the expanded edition of 2008 PS2 release Persona 4, and tells the story of a young group of friends who are thrust together when a series of gruesome murders befall their rural town of Inaba. With help of bizarre sidekick Teddie, and the strange parallel dimension known as The Midnight Channel, the self-appointed Investigation Team set out to unmask the killer.

The PC port of Persona 4 Golden includes high-definition visuals, graphic options, English and Japanese voicetracks and support for achievements and Steam Trading Cards. It is available to purchase on Steam now, and you can read Chris Carter's thoughts on the port right here.

The one can't be without the true other. So let's get together, see what we can uncover.

How much are fantasies shaped by an invisible box around us? Are we free to dream boundlessly or are we hemmed in by the things which inspire us?

Here's an experiment. Think of a druid. You know the kind: loves a bit of nature, possibly changes into a bear. What's the biggest, flashiest ability you can think of for them? Think, like, level 120 druid in World of Warcraft and then multiply it by 10. What can you do? Take a moment. Really let your mind run free.

Does what you're thinking of sound anything like this? "You become the seed for a new world. When you cast it, your body dissipates in radiant light, becoming a cascading wave of energy that transforms the planet you are on. Casting this spell consumes your life forever; you can never be brought back." I bet it doesn't.

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Persona 4 Golden released for PC via Steam on June 13, 2020, and the game has already reached a milestone of 500,000 players. Here’s the announcement tweet from Atlus, along with an original illustration by Shigenori Soejima to commemorate the occasion: We’re excited to announce that Persona 4 Golden has hit 500,000 players on PC! Thank you for all your support! Character Designer Shigenori Soejima created this original sketch to celebrate. We hope you’re enjoying #P4G and welcome back to the Midnight Channel! pic.twitter.com/SlYBINYedY — Official ATLUS West (@Atlus_West) July 11, 2020 To put this in perspective, Persona 4 Golden has sold […]

The post Persona 4 Golden Has Reached 500,000 Players on PC appeared first on Siliconera.

Persona 4 Golden was released on PC via Steam less than a month ago and it has already passed a sales milestone.

Today Atlus West reached out via Twitter to announce that the PC version of the game has now sold over 500,00 copies.

Below you can check out the tweet with which the publisher shared the news.

The timing is pretty much perfect recuse the original PS2 version of the game launched on July 10, 2008, in Japan, meaning that the game is exactly twelve-years-old today. 

The tidal wave of garbage that is 2020 continues to wash over us, keeping everyone masked and nervous. (And if you’re not masked, seriously, get on that, this isn’t hectoring, it’s trying to save lives.) Luckily, the one thing there might be more of this year than bad news is good music. As always, it’s impossible to…

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Hello folks and welcome back to our own little corner of this ker-azy globe. I hope that life is treating you and yours very well, and that you continue you find your own quantum of joy as we move well into July. We're pretty much halfway through the year exactly, and while it hasn't really been one for the photo album you, as a community, remain an absolute pleasure to be a part of. Keep it up, friends!

This week I haven't played very much in the way of modern games at all. I've continued to push on through schoolyard murder mysteries Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Persona 4 Golden, but I've also spent a lot of time neck-deep in some of my favourite titles from my formative years. These include games such as Time Gal, Chase H.Q., Double Switch, and WWF WrestleFest, the latter of which remains as playable today as it ever was. Am I burying my head in nostalgia? Quite possibly. But there are no rules, we all do what we need to do to keep the ol' brain cells kicking, ya dig?

How have you been spending the week? What games have been helping you to while away the hours and find your smile like 1997 Shawn Michaels. We, along with the rest of the Destructoid community, love to hear what you've been playing. So drop us a note below and fill us in on the rad action - particularly if you've been playing Rad Action.

Have a safe and pleasant weekend, from all of us at Destructoid.

Meaning you can read a theoretical Old Guard 2 right now

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Time for a new Touhou fangame. Labyrinth of Touhou 2 Switch and PS4 copies will appear in Japan on July 16, 2020.

The post Labyrinth of Touhou 2 Switch and PS4 Entries Will Arrive on July 16, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

So here I am, doing everything I can, ranking Tony Hawk games and hoping I don’t anger fans.

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The debut feature from Moon’s visual designer is almost fantastic, until it isn’t

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Today Gearbox Publishing released the first look at the PS5 box art of its upcoming looting-slashing game Godfall.

The style follows the same general design of the cover art revealed yesterday for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which, of course, isn’t surprising.

That being said, this is the first look we get at a cover of a third-party game.

Godfall is developed by Counterplay and it’s coming in Holiday 2020 just in time for the launch of PS5, alongside a version for PC on the Epic Games Store.

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis finds its main character, Gregor Samsa, waking up one morning, suddenly and inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. It's an utterly bizarre premise for a novel that evolves into a tragic story, but as the inspiration for developer Ovid Works' Metamorphosis, Gregor's transformation provides an opportunity to explore a strange idea, the surreal world it spawns, and the peculiar creatures who inhabit it.

I went hands-on with the first hour or so of Metamorphosis, which runs with Kafka's idea of transforming into a bug and only seems to get weirder from there. While Gregor wakes up to find himself in a bug body in the novel, the game's Gregor wakes up at his friend Josef's house after a night of drunken celebration. Vaguely hungover, Gregor starts to head out for work, only to find that as he travels the house and through doors, the world transforms around him. He walks through a door to find himself in a larger version of the room he just left--or in a shrunken state. And before long, he's scrambling around on six spindly legs, with his internal monologue transforming from human speech to insectile chittering.

The whole situation has a very Alice in Wonderland feel as you explore a surreal world whose rules don't seem particularly rigid. Gregor's first task as a human is to open drawers around the bedroom he awakes in to find the key to the door, and you repeat that same task as a bug. It's a pretty good early indication of how Metamorphosis seems like it'll play out: Metamorphosis is an exploration game about finding ways to traverse its environment and solving puzzles about how to venture from one area to the next. Since you're an insect, a lot of the solutions you have to find about how to get where you're going in an oversized world have to be fairly novel.

Marvel's Spider-Man gives us an intimate look at the evolving relationships in Peter Parker's life. A bright spotlight illuminates the love and loss he experiences with Mary Jane, as well as the respect he has for his mentor Otto Octavius. The spotlight slowly moves to other people in his life, like Aunt May and the work she does for Martin Li. What we learn from these relationships is people can change and perhaps lose their way if no one is there to catch them. Monsters are born.

Li, a philanthropist that operates homeless shelters, transforms into Mister Negative, the leader of the murderous Inner Demons. Octavius' mind descends into his technology, leading to the growth of the four metal arms of Doctor Octopus. The game told their story, but also hid them from view at key times to let their transformations fester and grow.

When these monsters were being developed offscreen, other villains were introduced, and Insomniac Games didn't hold back from throwing them at Spider-Man. Along with the Sinister Six, he took on Kingpin, Taskmaster, Tombstone, Shocker, and more. Marvel's Spider-Man succeeded with its story, delivered lights-out superhero action, and put on a hell of a show with its villains.

For this year's PlayStation 5 sequel, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I can only assume Insomniac will follow the same script of highlighting both the costumed hero and the person behind the mask, as well as plenty of villains.

Sega has announced Initial D The Arcade, a new arcade title based on the manga series. It will have 4-person multiplayer.

The post Initial D The Arcade Will Drift Into Arcades With Four-Man Races appeared first on Siliconera.