March 2020

Half-Life: Alyx is less than a month from release, and developer Valve just hit the gas on the hype machine, releasing three videos that show this highly anticipated VR game in action. The official release date is March 23, and you'll be able to play it on your Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, and more.

After stemming the tides of evil in the nation's capital, Ubisoft is transporting players back to New York a day early in The Division 2's newest DLC expansion.

Originally scheduled to come out March 3, Warlords of New York is available now for fans who pre-purchased the expansion. The DLC allows agents to traverse new districts in New York City, expand their character's skills, obtain new loot, and climb to a new level cap of 40.

In celebration of the surprise launch, Leo Vader, Andrew Reiner, and I will be taking in the sights and blasting baddies in the boroughs of the Big Apple. 

We went live earlier, but you can catch up on the whole show by watching the archive above. Enjoying our streams? You can subscribe on YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, Twitter, or Facebook to get notified when we go live in the future! Thanks for watching!

The just-released console port of Two Point Studios' Two Point Hospital has had a very healthy (no pun intended) launch, debuting at number two in this week's UK Charts.

The cheeky hospital sim is available now on PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, (a direct port of its 2019 PC release), and tasks players with the efficient managing of the budget, patients and staff of a city hospital. The atmosphere is kept upbeat thanks to a bright, comical aesthetic and a string of silly and weird situations. Fans of Bullfrog's '90s classic Theme Hospital would do well to check it out.

Also of note is the inevitable return of perennial chart star Crash Bandicoot, as Activision's N.Sane Trilogy and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled have both returned to the Top Ten at numbers eight and ten respectively. Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's The Division 2 also re-entered the Top Ten at number seven. Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is back on top once again, which is not surprising in this current era of chart stagnancy.

All eyes are on Masahiro Sakurai, father of Smash. Pretty much everything he says is micro-analyzed by the Smash community, including a recent tweet that contained the old Smash 4 "Battlefield" arena with the Inkling fighter, who is exclusive to Ultimate The catch? Battlefield isn't actually in Smash Ultimate.

While many of us assumed that this was some sort of developer tool and wasn't actually coming to Ultimate proper, Sakurai had to take to Twitter directly in English (something he doesn't normally do) to squash these rumors. Sakurai notes: "I've recently been posting a 'pic of the day' every day. I originally captured these to share with our dev team daily via an internal production blog. They're taken using WIP versions of the game and some scenarios you see can't be replicated in the final version of the game."

Continuing, he explains that he posted an "old version of Battlefield," which was a "dev stage" to check fighter models based on common light sources. "You won't find this in the final version of the game!" So for the 10-ish people that really wanted Battlefield in Ultimate, keep dreaming.

Sakurai [Twitter]

Switch owners will soon have the opportunity to get blammo in the underworld, as Night School Studios' acerbic adventure game Afterparty comes staggering onto the Nintendo platform later this week.

Released on PS4, PC, and Xbox One back in October, Afterparty is the story of two friends, Lola and Milo, who find a fun night out interrupted by an unfortunate bout of death. Now awaiting registration in the bowels of hell, our world-weary young heroes discover that they can actually escape their grim fate and get back above ground, but only provided they can out-drink the underworld's most notorious party animal: Satan.

WayForward got its start porting games like Casper: Animated Activity Center. Casper! Now that's an IP you don't really see anymore. That's how long WayForward has been around: 30 years this past week, actually.

The company shared their three-decade anniversary on Twitter this weekend, showcasing a new image that highlights some of their more celebrated IP, like Shantae and Mighty Switch Force. The former is clearly the crown jewel of their legacy, and it's hard to believe that Shantae as a whole is nearly 20 years old: debuting in 2002.

So what's next on their plate? Well, as far as we know, they're taking it a bit easy this year: at least compared to their incredibly busy 2019. We still need the second part of Shantae and the Seven Sirens (the first half arrived on Apple Arcade last year), and Vitamin Connection just launched as a Switch exclusive.

WayForward [Twitter]

Reggie Fils-Aime might have left his vaunted position at Nintendo in 2019, but he still has plenty to say. In a reply to a tweet speculating about his height, Fils-Aime clarified that he's actually 6 feet, 2.5 inches, joking that the weight of all of the questions about Mother 3 caused him to shrink.

Mother 3 is the 2006 sequel to the cult role-playing game Mother 2, which is better known as Earthbound outside of Japan. Widely considered one of the best RPGs to never receive an official English translation, fans have clamored for its release for decades now. (An unofficial translation was created by a team of Earthbound fans back in 2008.)

Even though the game is available in English with minimal effort, gamers still lobby for an official translation on occasion. For example, when Mother 3 was re-released on the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan in 2016, fans spoke out. Given the amount of time that's passed, however, it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Hinterland Studio, the developer behind survival game The Long Dark, has pulled its game from Nvidia GeForce Now because the streaming service never asked for the studio's permission to host it in the first place. The Long Dark is just the latest game to be removed from the service.

Game director Raphael van Lierop explained the decision on Twitter, saying, "Sorry to those who are disappointed you can no longer play The Long Dark on GeForce Now. Nvidia didn't ask for our permission to put the game on the platform so we asked them to remove it. Please take your complaints to them, not us. Devs should control where their games exist.

The Division 2's newest DLC expansion, Warlords of New York, arrived earlier than expected on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. With the sudden launch of the looter-shooter's first major piece of DLC, Ubisoft has shared a long list of changes coming to all platforms. You can check out the full patch notes below.

Of course, the main draw of the Warlords of New York expansion is the return trip to the Big Apple. Warlords of New York opens up several locations within the city for you to explore, including Battery Park and the Financial District. As you're combing these added areas, you can take on some new main missions that task you with hunting down rogue Division agent and first wave responder Aaron Keener. There are also new side missions to undertake, a level cap increase from 30 to 40, an additional base of operations, and more.

The new locale and mission objectives aren't the only additions in Warlords of New York. The new update also reworks all weapons in what Ubisoft is calling "gear 2.0." There are only a handful of attributes now, with all brand bonuses, talents, mods, gear sets, exotics, and skills being overhauled. Also, loot drops have been reduced and will now scale "more strongly with difficulty," according to the patch notes.

Ubisoft's shooter-looter The Division 2 was set to get its new Warlords of New York expansion this week, starting on Tuesday, March 3. But it appears Ubisoft pushed the launch-button early, setting the expansion live already. You can jump in and start exploring the new area of Manhattan now--check out the full patch notes here.

The expansion costs $30, and adds a completely new area of New York City that had previously gone unexplored in the first game. It does touch on some of the old game's factions, though, and sets the stage for the year ahead in the ongoing story. Aside from the new story content, it also adds a revised gear and power growth system, and raises the level cap to 40. That will give you plenty to do in the Washington DC setting as well.

Though the new story content takes place after the main campaign story, you can jump into it right away, even if you're a newcomer. In a recent hands-on, we were able to explore Lower Manhattan, including Battery Park, Twin Bridges, Civic Center, and the Financial District.

March is officially underway, and there are a ton of events lined up for Pokemon Go this month, including the debut of the Legendary Thundurus. A new month also means a new set of Field Research tasks, and if you can complete enough of them, you'll earn an encounter with another new Gen 5 Pokemon.

As usual, Field Research tasks are distributed via Poke Stops. You'll receive a task when you spin the Photo Disc, and each one you complete will net you rewards, which can range from helpful items like Poke Balls and berries to encounters with certain Pokemon.

On top of that, the first Field Research task you complete each day will net you a stamp. If you amass seven stamps, you'll achieve a Research Breakthrough, which will net you additional rewards, including an encounter with a special Pokemon. This month's Research Breakthrough reward is Ferroseed, a Steel/Grass type originally introduced in Pokemon Black and White. Ferroseed's evolved form, Ferrothorn, is a great Pokemon to have for PvP battles, so you'll want to catch as many as you can this month.

You might've already hacked your way through all of the fearsome beasts in Monster Hunter World and its massive Iceborne expansion, but you're not quite done just yet. Early in February, Capcom announced that a pair of new monsters are coming to the game in March: Raging Brachydios and Furious Rajang. Now the studio has set a firm release date for their arrival, with both coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 23, and on PC sometime in April.

Both monsters are more challenging variants of foes that already appear in Iceborne and previously made their debuts in past Monster Hunter games. Raging Brachydios is an infernal dinosaur-esque beast who enjoys coating the ground in flames and lava while pounding you to dust you with its smouldering fists. Furious Rajang, meanwhile, is an electrified ape with terrifying horns and a similar predilection for smashing you into the ground.

Ahead of Apex Legends' upcoming System Override Collection Event--which runs from March 3-17 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One--EA and Respawn Entertainment have revealed the official patch notes for the limited-time event, which you can check out below.

The update's headlining feature is Deja Loot, a "unique take" on the traditional battle royale experience. Here, all loot spawns in the same location during the event, allowing you to chart the best path to your favorite weapon in the hopes of getting that win. But because loot remains static in this game mode, everyone else will likely be vying for the same gear. While most of everything will stay the same, the plane path and circle locations will change on a daily basis. Deja Loot's first week will be on World's Edge, while the second week takes you back to Kings Canyon.

Along with the introduction of Deja Loot is a new equipment type. The Evo Shield is weaker than common body shields but progressively grows stronger as you damage non-downed players. The stacks carry over from person to person, so it's possible you could pick up your buddy's fully-charged Evo Shield--and drop just as quickly for an enemy to prosper with. For the moment, Evo Shields are exclusive to Deja Loot and spawn at high frequencies, but Respawn may add them to all match types after the System Override Collection Event ends.

Ubisoft has shared a lot more details on Operation Void Edge, the next major update for Rainbow Six Siege. The official site for the coming update includes details on the two new operators, a big change to one of the maps, balance tweaks and bug fixes, and much more.

The two new operators are Nienke "Iana" Meijer and Saif "Oryx" Al Hadid as Attacker and Defender types, respectively. Iana sports a remote-controlled holographic copy of herself, letting her scout ahead without being in immediate danger. The holograph will produce sound just like the real thing, but it can't use weapons or gadgets. Oryx can use a Remah Dash, letting him close distances and knock down opponents. He can also dash through walls, at the expense of some health. Existing operators Lesion and Twitch will be getting some balance changes.

When it comes to grappling in fighting games, Granblue Fantasy Versus Ladiva is one of the most wholesome examples. Definitely a babyface.

The post Granblue Fantasy Versus’ Ladiva Is the People’s Champion appeared first on Siliconera.

At 11am PT/2pm ET/8pm CET, Siliconera will go through the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo. Watch us try and take down a Mako reactor.

The post Watch Siliconera Play Through the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo appeared first on Siliconera.

Yosuke Saito and Yoko Taro tweeted that they'll do something to commemorate the NieR series' 10th anniversary.

The post Square Enix Will Do Something on March 29 For NieR’s 10th Anniversary appeared first on Siliconera.

Sonos Refurb Sale | Sonos | Some colors not available

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Outriders’ art makes it seem like a grittier rip-off of Destiny, but having played the game for a couple hours, it feels more like Gears of War mixed with Mass Effect. It occasionally reminded me of a James Cameron sizzle reel: the bucolic paradise of Avatar giving way to the bloody horror of Aliens occasionally…

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The big new expansion for The Division 2, titled Warlords of New York, was supposed to go live on Tuesday, March 3. But Ubisoft jumped the gun, it seems, because it’s currently live and playable right now on consoles as well as PC.

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Monster Hunter World: Iceborne players eager for an even greater challenge (and more cute little outfits for their hunters, obviously) won't have long to wait; the snow-covered expansion's third major content update is coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on 23rd March.

As previously announced, Capcom's latest dollop of post-launch Iceborne content brings back two particularly miffed subspecies from previous Monster Hunter games. Monkey lovers can go face to man-sized fists with the Furious Rajang, while fans of very excellent theme music can get their slime-smeared thrills in battle with the Raging Brachydios.

Although Capcom hasn't detailed specifics, it seems reasonable to assume both creatures will bring their own dedicated quests, equipment, and armour when they arrive later this month.

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On Tuesday morning, the nominations for the 2020 BAFTA Games Awards will be announced - and Aoife, Ian and Zoe will be livestreaming from first thing to discuss the nominations.

You can watch our BAFTA megastream right here from 8am UK time on Tuesday. The team will be streaming from 8 till late as they talk over the categories, pick their winners, and play some of the nominees live.

The BAFTA Game Awards take place on Thursday 2nd April. This year, the coveted BAFTA fellowship will be going to Hideo Kojima.

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Sony's beleaguered, and quite possibly cursed, Uncharted movie - which has so far managed to lose a total of six directors since its unveiling in 2009 - has a brave new soul at the helm, this time in the form of Ruben Fleischer, the man behind Zombieland and Venom.

Fleischer's hiring (first reported by Variety) follows the departure of Bumblebee director Travis Knight back in January. Knight superseded 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg, who stepped in after Night At The Museum director Shawn Levy left the project. And prior to that, Seth Gordon, Neil Burger, and David O Russell were all attached to direct at one time or other.

Despite the revolving door of directors, Spider-Man's Tom Holland continues to lead the cast as a young Nathan Drake in Fleischer's movie, while Mark Wahlberg, who was originally set to play Drake in an early (and highly dubious) stab at the project, remains onboard as his mentor Sully. Additionally, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway continue on scriptwriting duties.

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Even at level 100, the challenge is no joke

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It took almost a year, but I finally understand this pastel marshmallow

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Last Friday, after multiple large publishers cancelled their appearances at the event, the yearly Game Developers Conference was postponed. Originally scheduled for March 16-20 in San Francisco, the conference has been postponed to “later in the summer” due to concerns about potential spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. GDC say they will refund the cost of passes to the conference to attendees but tickets to the event itself are hardly the only lost investment for smaller developers. Many may be unable to refund the cost of plane tickets, lodging, and other personal or business costs associated with preparing for a large industry event. Wings, in collaboration with several other indie game publishers, have opened applications to their relief fund for developers, which they say will be assessed based on “estimated impact.”

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Netflix has revealed its casting choice for the role of Vesemir in the upcoming second season of its hugely popular The Witcher, and it isn’t Mark Hamill. Despite having been heavily rumored as a front-runner, The School of Wolf’s oldest practitioner will instead be played by Danish actor and director Kim Bodnia.

Netflix made the announcement earlier this week via its social media channels.

Introducing Vesemir: Kim Bodnia will play the Continent’s oldest and most experienced Witcher in Season 2 of #TheWitcher. pic.twitter.com/HAmYciZ5K4

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) February 28, 2020

Bodnia is best known for his ongoing role as Konstantin Vasiliev in the British spy-thriller Killing Eve. He’s also directed productions such as Escape and The Tailor’s Tale.

A press release includes comments from Showrunner Lauren. S. Hissrich, who said of the announcement:

“I am so thrilled to welcome Kim Bodnia to the cast of The Witcher. I have admired his unique talents in shows like Killing Eve and The Bridge, and cannot wait for him to bring strength, tenacity, and warmth to the character of Vesemir, who is such an integral part of our upcoming season.”

We all know that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is hands-down the best Paper Mario game out there (sorry Sticker Star) and one fan of the turn-based GameCube RPG has been working on some very high-quality animations but in the style of Persona 5 and the result is something wonderful.

According to their Twitter profile, @KrusperAnims is a 16-year-old artist who happens to be a big fan of the Paper Mario and Persona franchises. They originally tweeted this video yesterday and since then, it has garnered lots of attention (if you want to see the higher-quality YouTube video, just head to the bottom of this article):

As you can see, Krusper has re-done the all-out attack from Persona 5 but with the lovely cast members of The Thousand Year Door, along with the negotiation sequence too.

Ghostrunner is a first-person action game that oozes with style, polish, and lots and lots of blood. I spent about 20 minutes playing through an early section of the game and I can confidently say that this indie title feels more like a full-blown AAA experience that I can compare to Respawn’s Titanfall and DICE’s Mirror’s Edge.

Ghostrunner has you running through linear-ish sections to take down the enemies that are scattered about the level. Each of the enemies that I fought only had a blaster equipped on them but these would be fired off every second or so, forcing me to constantly be on the move to avoid death.

And I died a lot in Ghostrunner because if you get hit even once, you lose and must restart the section. Luckily, the respawns are almost instantaneous similar to Hotline Miami so I never felt any push back from the game –if I died, it was my fault and it was my job to find a more effective route or use a different method of murder.

Today Funcom hosted its quarterly financial conference and they shared more information about Conan Exiles and the upcoming Dune survival game.

We hear from CEO Rui Casai and CFO Stian Drageset that Conan Exiles is continuing to show strong performance as a game-as-a-service. 

We also hear that the game is continuing to improve engagement over time. December was the best month for the game in terms of average PC users since the game’s launch in January 2017. 

Casais mentioned that the reaction from players to the introduction of mounts in December has been good, leading to considerably higher player activity in December and January. The steam rating of the game has also been increasing.

The developer plans to continue releasing DLC, and even more interestingly, they revealed that a “paid expansion” is in the works, coming in the second half of 2020.

They’ll talk more about it when the time is right. While it’s exciting, they cannot say much because “even saying that there is one, is something that the team prefers to keep under wraps.”

That being said, Casais also hinted at the end of the conference that this may be related to a “map.”

Speaking of the Dune open-world survival game, it’s currently in pre-production. The estimated investment budget for the game is $30-50 Million, which is bigger compared to Conan Exiles. 

In the current phase, the development team is fleshing out what the game is going to be, and when that’s done, they will have a more concrete idea of the final budget.

It feels surreal to talk about a new Half-Life game as something that's definitely launching before the month is over. Half-Life: Alyx is nearly here, and Valve has three new gameplay videos to give us a sample platter of what we can expect.

These three extended clips each exist to show off a different type of locomotion within VR. The first video (embedded above) has movement by teleportation -- the least realistic method of getting around, but also the one that's proven to be the easiest to stomach. This video channels its inner Ravenholm (we don't go there), as a dilapidated subway station has been overrun by zombies and headcrabs. 

It's here that we also get a glimpse at Half-Life: Alyx's upgrade system. Alyx uses a Combine fabricator to improve her pistol by using resin to craft a new sight. Afterward, she coolly snags a hardhat off a chair, flips it on her head, and nabs the ammo that was sitting under it. It seems as though there's a lot to be discovered in manipulating Alyx's environment and finding resources that are cleverly hidden.

With a cheeky-titled bit of free DLC, Journey to the Savage Planet subverts the expectations for a game's second runthrough. We're all familiar with New Game+, where you restart a game while retaining all the upgrades that came as part of going through the first time. Old Game Minus is the opposite of that.

Journey to the Savage Planet's Old Game Minus mode is a challenge run for those who are already familiar with the lay of the land in this eccentric and usually-dangerous world. You get three lives to beat the game. If you're playing in co-op, you get three lives to share. Savage, indeed.

There's a bit of a reprieve, though. Every biome has an extra life hidden somewhere among all the eccentric creatures and fauna. They're bobbleheads of Kindred CEO Martin Tweed (and they can be seen in the gallery below.) There's also an extra life hidden "for gamers who know the ultimate retro game secret." That's probably the Konami code, but I haven't tried it to be sure.

If you haven't had your fill of Savage Planet, this might be a good way to shake it all up. There's nothing new here, because Old Game Minus doesn't actually add any content. It's about finding different and faster ways to assert your dominance over this hostile planet.

Game Update -- Old Game Minus [Journey to the Savage Planet]

The Seattle-based Emerald City Comic Con will proceed as planned, despite multiple confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the region. In the wake of the outbreak of the virus, organizers have cancelled or postponed several major gaming events, including San Francisco's GDC, which prompted the statement.

The event is scheduled to take place from March 12 to 15. According to organizer ReedPOP, the team behind the event have "implemented enhanced cleaning and sanitation across the show, including adhering to the recommendations set forth in the US EPA's Emerging Pathogen Policy."

Coronavirus fears have the potential to severely disrupt events across the games industry, especially for important industry conventions like GDC and E3. So far, the 96 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States have been clustered on the West Coast, especially San Francisco and Seattle, two of the traditional hubs of the gaming industry.

Half-Life: Alyx will be the first game in the series in more than 10 years, and as a result anticipation is high for the VR-only game. Valve has released a trio of gameplay videos to prepare players for what they'll find when it releases on March 23.

The trio of trailers show a variety of environments, lots of dialogue, and some enemy encounters. One aspect that's particularly notable is the fine motor control for Alyx's hands, which is a feature used to show the manipulation of pretty fine motor controls. That's one advantage of the VR controls that isn't quite analogous to a standard controller or keyboard and mouse setup.

Valve only recently announced the release date, and the game is still offered at a 10% discount pre-order price through the Steam page. We knew it would be coming in March, and the company had said it didn't expect delays since the game was essentially already finished. As the name suggests, this is a full-Half-Life game starring the popular character Alyx Vance, set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2.

The Netflix March 2020 offerings include two Resident Evil movies, Castlevania season 3, and some new anime series.

The post Netflix March 2020 Game and Anime Additions Include Resident Evil Movies and Castlevania appeared first on Siliconera.

Look at this beautiful piece of gaming equipment. Microsoft calls it Phantom Magenta, but we’re calling it “purple.” Not the Atomic Purple of Nintendo fame, but a richer, more mature hue. I want to uncork it and drink deeply from it’s hand oil-caked reservoirs. It’s up for preorder today, along with a white camouflage…

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A potentially good electric-type Legendary has joined the fray

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