For a genre defined by unpredictability, roguelikes often sound staggeringly boring. These are games for initiates, cast in the image of celebrated forebears - you at least have to know what Rogue is, whereas a first-person shooter speaks for itself. They are also firmly systems-led to the point of dryness. As such, their marketing materials tend to read like anatomical checklists, the same vital organs passed from developer to developer.

Vagante's Steam feature sheet certainly didn't set my world on fire: procedural generation, "choose how you play", "tough but fair", some unabashed debts to Spelunky plus a dollop of RPG-style levelling. I probably don't need to tell you that it's a pixelart affair. But then I played for 15 minutes, got sat on by a Baby Dragon and realised that Vagante is a game of quiet originality and verve. With apologies to developer Nuke Nine for being a cocky arsehole, here are a few bulletpoints of my own creation.

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Today Capcom announced its financial results for the first nine months of the fiscal year 2021, which is related to the period that ended on December 31, 2021.

Sales were 88,163 million (up 35.9% year on year) and operating income was 35,096 million yen (up 43.9% year on year).

Sales of video games for the fiscal year reached 25.8 million units (up 30.3% year on year)

While the company did not release major new games during the third quarter (between September and December), they continued to promote sales of catalog titles released in previous quarters and still achieved record-breaking sales and profit for a third quarter.

Below you can check out all the figures, including breakdowns by business segments, and the forecast for the full fiscal year (ending in March), which remains unchanged from previous announcements.

Today Spike Chunsoft had a reveal in store for its upcoming game AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative.

This time around, we learn about the fact that the game has two protagonists as teased with the recent reveal of the key art.

Both are introduced with new art by Yusuke Kozak, ithe character designer of the series. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, he’s well-known for his work on No More Heroes, Demon X Machina, a bunch of Fire Emblem games, and more.

The female heroine will be Mizuki Okiura returning from the first game alongside her AI-Ball assistant Aiba (Aibo on Japanse, which means “Partner.” For some reason, they had to change her name in English).

The male hero is another ABIS Investigator named Ryuki. he’s a rookie with a strong sense of justice and a gentle and modest personality. He has an AI-Ball as well, named Tama. Funnily, she has an “S” personality and she likes to spank Ryuki to “motivate” him.

You can check out the artwork below.

Quality assurance testers at Call of Duty: Warzone studio Raven Software gave management until today, January 25, to voluntarily recognize their newly formed union, Game Workers Alliance. Instead, embattled publisher Activision Blizzard announced tonight it would be forcing a vote with the National Labor Review Board,…

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Even in a franchise as full of brilliant characters as Guilty Gear, Baiken rules. The fucked-up samurai, despite missing both an eye and an arm, is canonically one of the strongest people in the fighting game’s universe, and it’s hard not to be charmed by the brash swagger she brings to every battle. But one thing…

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Amazon Game Studios has just released a new update for New World, and it’s a pretty hefty one. This update brings some big changes to the endgame content, with the highlight being an expedition modifier called Mutators.

A Mutated expedition will allow players to face off against augmented versions of the enemies they’d faced before in the regular version of the expedition, and will be forced to come up with new strategies to face them. Of course, completing a Mutated expedition will gift players with plenty of new and better rewards as well. AGS states that this will be a new way for players to farm resources and get loot that will help increase their gear score.

Scores will be awarded to teams based on how well they perform in the expedition. Things like time taken to beat the dungeon, number of team wipes, and number of enemy kills will be taken into consideration, and teams will be ranked Bronze, Silver, or Gold. Performing well will allow teams to progress to the next level of Mutation difficulty, which leads to better rewards.

You can check out some gameplay footage of a Mutated expedition down below:

With Microsoft's impending purchase of Activision Blizzard announced last week, little has been said about which currently planned multiplatform games like Diablo or the immensely popular Call of Duty will see the light of day on non-Xbox consoles in the future. Now might be the time to breathe a sigh of relief for fans of the prolific shooter franchise who own PlayStation hardware. According to a report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, PlayStation will still be a place to play at least three more Call of Duty titles.

Dead by Daylight is a 4v1 multiplayer game where four survivors need to work together to activate generators in order to escape, while a killer hunts them down mercilessly to try to stop them. Its popularity certainly hasn’t waned despite being out for quite a few years now, and Behaviour Interactive has continued to put out more content updates for the game.

The latest update sees the release of the Modern Tales collection, which is a selection of new outfits that you can purchase from the in-game store. You can check out a preview of the outfits in the video down below:

Modern Tales puts a bit of a contemporary spin on classic fairytale characters like Gretel and the Red Riding Hood. For instance, Meg Thomas is getting a Gretel-inspired outfit, while Feng Min gets a stylish salmon-colored hoodie with a wolf logo to rep Red herself. The Huntress also gets a new look with a terrifying Baba Yaga costume.

Dead by Daylight is now available on PC and consoles.

The post Dead By Daylight Puts a Modern Spin on Classic Fairytale Icons With New Outfits Available Now appeared first on Twinfinite.

Today third-party developers have provided new information about upcoming aircraft and an airport for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

We start with MilViz, which hosted an extensive livestream talking about its upcoming roadmap of aircraft for the sim. At the moment, they have 5-6 teams at work on them.

We learn that Stage 2 of the Pilatus PC-6 Porter with analog gauges, the floatplane version, and more will be released in Q2 2022. The developer hopes that Asobo will have fixed water dynamics by then and pictures will be showcased fairly soon. It’ll include Tundra tires, regular tires, and amphibian floats. It won’t have straight wheel-less floats.

The DHC-2 Beaver, the DHC-2-T Turbo Beaver, and shortly after The DHC-3 Otter, and the DHC-3-T Turbo Otter will all hopefully come in the same quarter in 2022. MilViz won’t say which quarter for now, and isn’t going to reproduce any of the refits by Viking.

The A-1H Skyraider is in final approach. As usual, the official marketplace version won’t have visible weapons. A release date has not been decided, but it should be in Q1 2022.

We got our first real look at the upcoming Halo TV series The Game Awards in December, and we’re set to get a presumably bigger sample this week. Paramount has announced that a new trailer for the show will premiere this Sunday during the halftime show of the NFL’s AFC Championship.

If you’re planning to catch it live, the AFC Championship Game, which pits the Cinncinati Bengals against the Kansas City Chiefs, begins at 3:05 p.m. Eastern on CBS. 

Suit up Spartans, the wait is almost over. The official trailer for @HaloTheSeries lands this Sunday during halftime of the AFC Championship Game on @CBS and @ParamountPlus. #HaloTheSeries pic.twitter.com/8He8fqUjQN

Call of Duty's next three titles will reportedly still be making their way to PlayStation consoles, despite Microsoft's recent acquisition of series publisher Activision Blizzard.

Following last week's buyout news, many questions still remain - not least how Activision Blizzard's current roster of multi-platform titles will be affected by the purchase, with many predicting that Xbox exclusivity might soon be on the cards for the publisher's biggest franchises under Microsoft's stewardship.

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Ever since Microsoft announced it was buying Activision Blizzard in the biggest gaming deal ever, Sony fans have been desperate to see the PS5-maker respond in some way, as if the console giant had “big news” stored in a t-shirt cannon ready to be blasted out into the ravenous crowd at the drop of a hat. But the signs…

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Three new Star Wars games are in development at EA. Respawn are leading the projects, working on "the next chapter" in the Star Wars Jedi story, an "all-new first-person shooter", and partnering with new studio Bit Reactor on a "new Star Wars strategy game."

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Vampire Survivors is an action RPG boiled down to its core. You walk around, you kill monsters, you level up, you get stronger, you kill more monsters. In place of story, an inventory, or even the need to fire and aim your own weapons, there is pixel art spectacle.

On my last life, I killed around 24,000 monsters in 30 minutes. I am hooked.

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For Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, it’s about drive and it’s about power. He stays hungry and he devours, and today, it’s been revealed that he’s putting in the work (and the hours) to create another video game movie.

Johnson is no stranger to the silver screen, which is where his career resides these days following a great run in professional wrestling. In fact, he’s not even a stranger to being the star of video game adaptations on the silver screen, having starred in the 2005 Doom movie and 2018’s Rampage. In a new interview with Men’s Journal, Johnson said a video game adaptation he’s in will be announced this year, as reported by GamesRadar. 

“I can’t tell you which game in particular we’re doing, but there will be an announcement this year,” he said. “We’re going to bring one of the biggest, most badass games to the screen – one that I’ve played for years.” 

Microsoft hosted its quarterly financial conference call for investors and analysts and chief executive officer Satya Nadella and chief financial officer Amy Hood talked about the Xbox business.

Nadella talked about the success of the investments made by the company in gaming, boasting 18 million users for Forza Horizon 5 and over 20 million for Halo Infinite, defined “the biggest Halo launch in history.”

About gaming, the bets we have made across content, community, and cloud over the past few years are paying off. We saw record engagement as well as revenue this quarter.

Game Pass has more than 25 million subscribers across PC and consoles. Our differentiated content is diving the service’s growth and we released new triple-A titles this Holiday Season to rave reviews and record usage.

18 million have played Forza Horizon 5 to date and more than 20 million have played Halo Infinite making it the biggest Halo launch in history.

And with our planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard announced last week, we’re investing to make it easier for people to play games wherever, whenever, and however they want, and also shape what comes next for gaming as platforms like the Metaverse develop.

Hood mentioned that the supply of Xbox hardware (Xbox series X and S) during the Holiday season was higher than expected.

We also hear that the expectation for Q3 (between January and March) for the gaming segment involves revenue growth year on year in the mid-single digits. Console sales will continue to be impacted by supply chain uncertainties.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is set to star in another video game movie, with the actor teasing it'll see one of the "biggest, most badass" games being brought to the big screen.

Johnson is, of course, no stranger to video game movies, having starred in an adaption of id Software's first-person shooter Doom back in 2005 (by most accounts not an especially good movie) and more recently appearing in 2018's live-action version of arcade favourite Rampage (see previous comment). And now Johnson has confirmed he's poised to help bring another poor, unfortunate video game franchise kicking and screaming into cinemas.

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Watch Dogs: Legion isn't getting anymore post-launch content. In an update from the development team, they say that the previous update was the last, and that 'seasons' in the online mode will soon begin to repeat.

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Pokémon Legends: Arceus is out later this week, and in honor of its release, we've collected this list of Pokemon confirmed to be roaming the wilds in the Hisui region. This list does not include any leaked information and is based on Pokémon shown in official art, screenshots, or footage for Pokémon Legends: Arceus. However, there are quite a few Pokémon we can assume are in the game if their final evolution has been revealed or there is enough evidence for us to say we strongly think they will be included like the Sinnoh Gen 1 evolution cycle (Magmortar, Tangrowth, etc.). While we haven't laid eyes on them, we've included their names along with an asterisk. We will try to update this list as more information becomes officially available.

Without further ado, here are the Pokémon we've confirmed are in Legends: Arceus in order of generation they were introduced: 

Generation 1:

Cities: Skylines' Airports DLC is out now. It lets you build your own airports within your cities, placing down terminals, taxi lanes, customising the plane liveries and so on. It also comes alongside a free update for the base game which expands some substantial city customisation options.

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Last September brought the surprise news that developer Adeline Software's much-loved action-adventure series Little Big Adventure was being revived - some 27 years after its debut - and now original co-creator Didier Chanfray has shared a little more of his plans.

The original Little Big Adventure - an evocative blend of platforming, puzzling, and exploration that charted the story of young hero Twinsen, on the run from evil dictator Dr. FunFrock - released back in 1994 and was followed by a sequel three years later. A third instalment, set to conclude the saga, has long been discussed by the series' creators but has so-far never arrived.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel on PC

Yu-Gu-Oh! Master Duel is another free-to-play entry in the long-running card-battling franchise, and while it may be a bit barebones at the moment, the game still provides just enough engaging core features to keep you building decks and battling friends, the AI, or other players for hours on end.

The last gacha-style game in the series was Duel Links, which launched back in 2016. Master Duel is here to shake up the Duel Links formula by removing the quick Speed Duel format and bringing back some more standard TCG rules that most fans are familiar with.

Life Points are back up to 8,000, more monsters, spells, and traps can be played, and decks can contain far more cards overall than they could in Duel Links. It can actually be a bit overwhelming at first if you’re someone like me who hasn’t played Yu-Gi-Oh! seriously since childhood, but the game does its best to ease you in with the Solo mode.

The Sims 4 is bringing the influential style of iconic Brazilian superstar entertainer-activist Pabllo Vittar to the game, as a brand new collection of Create-A-Sims outfits and accessories has been revealed. In this upcoming pack, titled Carnaval Streetwear Kit, players can dress their characters in clothes that reflect the energy, self-expression, freedom, and vibrancy of one of the world’s biggest celebrations, Brazil’s Carnaval.

Don’t just take out word for it, though, as you can check out an official description and trailer for the kit below.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced a survival game set in an “all-new universe” and it announced it in a very odd way: a job posting. 

The official Blizzard Twitter account posted a job listing, asking would-be applicants to join the team in writing its next chapter. That “next chapter” is a survival game set in an all-new universe and if the art posted with it is any indication, it’s definitely set in a fantasy world. While it’s clearly not a World of Warcraft-related game (since it’s in a new universe and not an existing one), it definitely feels at home for the developer of those games. 

Today, Microsoft announced its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2022, related to the period between October 1, 2021, and December 31.

The presentation included an update on the performance of the More Personal Computing business, which includes Microsoft’s gaming division and the Xbox brand. It’s worth mentioning that we might see the gaming business reported on its own in future announcements following the official creation of the Microsoft Gaming division under Phil Spencer.

You can check out all the relevant figures for the segment in the slides below.

Blizzard have announced they're making a survival game set in an "all-new universe." There's not much information on it bar two pieces of concept art, but they're looking for artists, designers and engineers to join its development team.

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Harley Quinn has really taken the DC world by storm in recent years, as Margo Robbie’s live-action performance in Birds of Prey, The Suicide Squad, and many more have brought life back to the character. But while her live-action adaptation has been turning heads, the animated version of the show has also been quite the hit.

Starring Kaley Cuoco, the animated series of Harley Quinn takes a much more gruesome and comedic look at the DC universe, as the show surrounds the misadventures of everyone’s favorite “Maid of Mischief” as she looks to strike out on her own and take over Gotham city.

So far, the series has gotten two seasons, with a third on the way, and it has been a laugh riot the entire way. Whether it’s Clayface’s terrible acting, Ivy’s love for all things plants, or a depressed Jim Gordan, the show has really pulled out all the stops in terms of exploring the comics in a unique and hilarious way.

To celebrate that, we’ve come up with a quiz that only true fans of the Harley Quinn animated series will be able to answer. So without further ado (imagine that with Clayface’s voice), let’s get started!

Palworld made us do multiple double-takes when it first came to our attention last summer. At first, it looks like any other Pokémon-inspired title. Cute, colorful, plenty of monster catching. And then the main character busts out a realistic assault rifle and starts wasting enemies alongside his adorable companions. In short, it looks amazing, and a new trailer reminds us of that fact.

The game comes from Japanese developer Pocketpair and is a multiplayer open-world survival game where players befriend creatures called Pals. You can journey together as equals or use them as transportation. You can also eat them, exploit them for labor, or force them to enact your destructive agendas. Pals can be captured and traded with other players, and you can breed them too. 

Palworld is harsher than it looks, sporting unforgiving weather conditions, scarce resources, not to mention illegal poachers. There’s also plenty of farming, crafting, and construction, with players able to build houses or even rocket ships. In a dark twist, you can even build factories and put your adorable critters to work assembling guns and other tools. Palworld’s combat features over-the-shoulder style shooting where you’ll mow down poachers as well as hostile Pals. Yes, this is a real video game. Check out the latest look at the game below.

Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Diablo developer Blizzard Entertainment has revealed it's working on a "brand-new survival game" set in a "whole new universe".

The news comes as Activision Blizzard continues to reel from the shocking allegations it fostered a company culture where sexual harassment, assault, and inappropriate behaviour were able to thrive, with Blizzard Entertainment itself being called a "breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women" in a State of California lawsuit filed last year.

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Whether you're a serious or casual gamer, or spend a lot of time at your desk typing, having a good keyboard is really important. With another 11 months of 2022 ahead of us, it's a good idea to make those extra upgrades to your desk set up to help with productivity and in your downtime.

Are you someone who spends a lot of time typing and doing tasks that involve a lot of numbers? If so, you'll also want to have a full-size keyboard with mechanical switches so you can make use of the number keys and have a pleasant typing experience.

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If you've got yourself a load of new games over the holiday period or in the January sales, and haven't got enough space in your PC or PS5 to install them all - upgrading it with an SSD is a great solution. Not only can it give you more storage, but it can improve loading times too.

Good computer memory keeps getting more affordable, but high-speed and high-capacity solid state drives can still be pricey. Fortunately, some of the best SSDs can be found on sale with big savings.

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So, the gimmick with Aniplex, Disney, and f4samurai’s Twisted Wonderland is people are in a high school where iconic Disney villains are admired. That means people like the Queen of Hearts, Hades, Jafar, and Scar are heralded as “The Legendary Seven.” Each one has a dorm tied to them. Every guy is based on a villain somehow. For example, Floyd and Jade Leech are based on Ursula’s eels Flotsam and Jetsam. But while the idea is “guys based on bad guys,” the Twisted Wonderland characters often really aren’t bad guys. Rather, there are a lot of moments where they’re good people and even heroic.

One of the first “good guy” characters people will meet in Twisted Wonderland is Deuce Spade. (He’s based on a Alice in Wonderland spade card soldier.) The player runs into him when pursuing the Heartslabyul first year Ace Trappola, who got into trouble with them and Grim and is supposed to take part in a window-cleaning punishment. Deuce helps you stop Ace from evading punishment. His goal is established as trying to be an honor roll student and succeed. He’s generally level-headed and amiable. Granted, as a member of the cast in this sort of game, he does have a side. There are times when he’ll ask for things like coffee from the player in exchange for doing the right thing. But he’s generally a good person.

Strategy games have been around longer than most, but they still remain niche to most audiences. Some can be pretty intimidating to jump into as a new strategy player. There are resources to manage, armies to control, big decisions to make, many hours of gameplay, and more. However, once you dig into this genre, you’ll find some of the most rewarding gameplay the hobby has to offer. Every victory feels hard-earned. Every loss feels fair (okay, they don’t always feel fair). And failing becomes a chance to learn how you might play better next time. 

This year is fantastic for strategy fans and those looking to finally dive into the expansive genre for the first time. That’s because nearly a dozen great entries we’re excited about are on the way. Of course, there are more, but the following 11 are the ones we’re raring to play most. Here are Game Informer’s most anticipated strategy games of 2022, listed chronologically by release date.