April 2020

UK developer Jaw Drop Games, the developers of Q.U.B.E. and Hue, have officially announced their next game--and it looks very unique.

Gun Jam is a new indie title that mixes shooting with music. Jaw Drop Games announced it's moving forward with production on the title after a positive reaction to the game's Twitter announcement video, shared by game designer and studio co-founder Dan Da Rocha on April 19.

As you can see in the video, the hook of Gun Jam is that it mixes FPS elements with Guitar Hero-style beat-matching. The gunfights are synced to an original soundtrack, and players must fire their weapon in time with the beat. There will be multiple different characters and environments, as well as campaign and arcade modes. Players can also expect special multiplayers and a high score leaderboard to compete with friends.

It’s been a while since the last time Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation launched a new girl, but today it happened. 

Today Koei Tecmo and DMM introduced Patty, a completely new character nearly five months after the launch of Sayuri.

Patty is 19 years old, she is 159 cm tall, her three sizes are B85/W56/H86, and her blood type is B. Her hobbies are listening to the radio and combing the beach. She loves hamburgers and pineapple juice and her favorite color is Oyster White. Interestingly, her birthday is unknown so we’ll see what imaginative ways the developers will come up with to nickel and dime us with the usual birthday gachas.

Another interesting element is that this innocent and energetic girl has grown up on one of the islands of the Venus archipelago where the game is set. She meets the owner (IE: the player) when he picks up her lost radio, which she considers her treasure.

She is voiced by Marika Kouno, a relative rookie in the industry known for Kronya in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Yuzuki Shijou in Blue Reflections, and Shirayukihime in Mary Skelter.

Do keep in mind that the fact that she has been added to the game doesn’t mean that we get to play with her for free. For now, she’s available only in a paid gacha with the usual abysmal 0.78% chance of getting the SSR costume required to unlock her.

Usually, it takes a few months for a new girl to become available in free gachas. For instance, Saiyuri was launched in December and the first free chance to unlock her came in March.

It’s been a month since the official release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and the community has certainly spared no effort in figuring out all of the game’s hidden little systems and intricacies. Flowers are a huge part of that.

While flowers don’t really have a lot of monetary value, it is possible to breed rare hybrid flowers that can attract different kinds of bugs and improve your town rating. The general concept is that you’ll want to plant flowers of the same type next to each other, and after a couple days, you may get a new flower of a different color.

The actual process is much more complicated than that. Dataminers have found out that every flower has a different genetic code which affects the kinds of hybrids you get. Previously, flower guides (including our own) would tell you that simply planting two flowers of a specific color next to each other would get you another color, and while that could work sometimes, this isn’t entirely accurate anymore with the new info that’s been dug up.

Thanks to the efforts of the Animal Crossing community on Reddit, we now know that the genetic code of the flower is what affects hybrids. To lay down some of the basic rules, all flower seeds you buy from shops and NPCs will have the same genetic code. However, the ones you pick from mystery islands and your own island cliffs may have different codes, which will affect hybrid results.

It’s been found out that there are reproduction bonuses that come with having visitors watering your flowers, instead of you watering them yourself or having your residents do it.

The Showdown Effect

is what action movies would look like if they were multiplayer platform fighters. It’s a straight up deathmatch, where you’re trying to dive, stab or shoot your way to the top of the leaderboard. It has some clever ideas that create very funny moments. Above all, though, it is slick. John Wick slick.

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Today Nintendo revealed more screenshots of the upcoming JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, and it’s all about quests and menus.

The screenshots were revealed by the official Japanese account of the game (sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

You can check them out in the gallery below.

Koei Tecmo may have discontinued the production of DLC for Dead or Alive 6, but the show must go on, at least among Japanese figure manufacturers.

Wonderful Works just made a new figure portraying new character NiCO available for pre-order at Japanese retailers, including Ami Ami.

She’ll cost 16,200 yen, which approximately translates into $152.

She’s based on an illustration by popular artist Fuzichoco, while the prototype was sculpted by iTANDi/Yamakatsu and painted by Hiroshi Michikawa.

The scale is 1/7 for approximately 240 mm in height. She will be released in December 2020.

Here’s how the manufacturer describes her:

“Specially illustrated by Fuzichoco! The Cybernetician NiCO is now a scale figure!

Popular illustrator Fuzichoco’s illustration of the Cybernetician NiCO from “DEAD OR ALIVE 6” is now a 1/7th scale figure. Her white outfit and its various gorgeous metallic blue line accents have been captured in extraordinary detail. Translucent parts have been utilized in order to recreate the translucent look of her hair in Fuzichoco’s illustration. An extra interchangeable hair part to display her with her hair covering one eye is also included. The plasma that comes from NiCO’s EMF rings has been recreated with translucent parts as well.

Additionally, a background sheet based on NiCO’s research lab home stage from the game is included, making for an even grander display. This is a perfect figure for figure fans and “DOA6″ fans alike, so be sure to add her to your collection!”

Just 45 minutes of Outpost was enough to make me angry seven times about seven different things that the game does wrong. That’s roughly one wrong thing every six and a half minutes. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s pretty impressive.

It’s a shame, because reading up on Outpost before I started playing, I found about one promising thing every six and a half seconds. A cute little free-to-play top-down survival game, with pared-back resource gathering and tower defence elements, set in a pretty low-poly procedural world filled with angry nocturnal chickens? There’s not a single word of this that doesn’t appeal to me. So where does it all fall apart?

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You know the adage, I'm sure. You wait an age for Square to revive one of its beloved 90s RPG epics, then one comes along and causes such a stir you almost completely miss the second one that follows in its immediate wake. Or something like that, anyway. While Final Fantasy 7 Remake is an outlandishly expensive and extravagant exercise in blockbuster modern gaming, for better and for worse, the Trials of Mana remake is a much humbler affair, as its more modest launch attests. It's just as valid a revival, though, even if it isn't without its own faults.

Chief among those is something you can't really blame Trials of Mana itself for. This doesn't have the warm veil of nostalgia around it like Final Fantasy 7, simply because Trials of Mana never really had an outing beyond Japan until a translation of Seiken Densetsu 3, as it was originally known, popped up in last year's Collection of Mana, and as such it's only the truly dedicated who have any vintage memories of the action RPG. I certainly can't pretend to have any of my own, and muddling through the first few hours of the 16-bit Trials of Mana was my first experience with the game.

So one good thing about this new Trials of Mana is that it's a lot less muddled. This is, from the foundation upward, still an eccentric take on the RPG genre - you pick your party from a cast of six from the very off, and are locked into your chosen trio for the remainder of the game, while the actions that complement your standard attacks are carried out via a fiddly ring menu system - but it's been de-fussed. You're still locked into your choice here, but the combat is much less fiddly and easier to parse - indeed, when you have a full party and are flitting effortlessly between the three, it's got a supremely satisfying flow.

The Pokemon Company has been promoting local Japanese prefectures via its Pokemon Local Act campaign, and now it’s taking it a step further.

The company has launched a promotional campaign to help sell local products from various Japanese prefectures by associating those products with various Pokemon.

The products aren’t new and have been launched when the Local Act campaign started a little while ago, but they were available only locally in order to encourage fans to actually visit those places. 

Yet, due to the state of emergency declared by the Japanese government to slow down the spread of COVID-19, the products have now been made available online in order to allow fans to feel closer to those communities and enjoy their traditional products while staying at home. 

Of course, fans are encouraged to visit in person again as soon as it’s safe to do so,

As a result, the official site offers things like Lapras noodles from Miyagi prefecture, Alolan Vulpix cookies from Hakodate, Geodude noodles from Morioka, Chansey apple tea from Aizu, or Slowpoke crackers from Takamatsu.

You can see some below alongside a funny trailer for the campaign. A lot more are available on the site.

If you’re interested in Pokemon, the latest entry Sword and Shield is available for Nintendo Switch.

The latest Nintendo firmware update resolves an issue with the Pro Controller that caused it to drift.

The post Latest Nintendo Switch System Firmware Update Resolves Pro Controllers Drifting appeared first on Siliconera.

10 Chambers Collective is today announcing the release window of its third “Rundown” event for GTFO. Codenamed, The Vessel, the new community event is likely to feature new areas of The Complex, as well as add new weapons, enemies, and more.

As for the current 002 Rundown titled Infection, two previously locked areas of the map have today been made available after the community reached the 1000 survivors milestone set by the studio. Simon, a member of 10 Chambers Collective, explains:

“We’re using Early Access to experiment with what works, and a feature we call Warden Restriction was one of those things. Our community likes a challenge, and so we made it so that 1000 prisoners had to survive expedition R2D1 in order for everyone to get access to the entire Rundown 002.

The entire community had to come together to achieve this goal and it’s impressive to see that it was reached in 31 days – this is by design a very challenging game.”

Studio founder Ulf Andersson outlines what’s to come in GTFO moving forward with Rundown 003:

“We’re already working on the next Rundown and our aim is to release it before the summer holidays in Sweden. As we said, we’re still in Early Access and this phase is used to try out different concepts and balance the game; we want to be including to new members of the GTFO community as well as pleasing the current more experienced ones – that have bought GTFO to get that hardcore, unforgiving challenge we strive for.”

GTFO is available on PC via Steam only and is currently in (premium) Early Access. All Rundown content expansions are free.

Today Bandai Namco Entertainment released a new batch of screenshots of the upcoming JRPG Digimon Survive.

The images introduce two new characters and their Digimon friends.

The first new character is Kaito Shinonome, a local boy that could be mistaken for a bully due to his rough manners and violent attitude.

Yet, he behaves like that mostly as a reaction and out of clumsiness, and especially to protect his sister. When she’s in danger, he basically explodes and starts to break stuff. His Digimon friend is Drakumon.

Kaito’s sister is Miu, she is a bit of weirdo and she’s often annoyed by her brother’s overprotective attitude. Her Digimon friend is Shakumon.

Both Kaito and Miu used to live in the city but then moved to the town where the summer camp is located. Kaito was often tasked to take care of his sister due to the fact that their parents were often away.

You can check them all out in the screenshots below, including the renewed key art to include both Kaito and Miu on top of their Digimon.

If you want to see more about Digimon Survive, you can check out more screenshots, another gallery, a development diary video, and an earlier trailer.

The game is coming in 2020 for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.

Look, maybe I’m overreacting, but seeing this did genuinely just make me do a high-pitched yelp at my screen, so I’m going to run with that emotion. Call Of Duty: Warzone‘s latest update has removed Bounty Contracts from the game. These were optional in-game missions where you had to hunt down a player from an enemy squad. You were told roughly where they were, and they were told you were coming. They were great. I wrote a whole article specifically praising them.

They’ve been replaced by “Most Wanted” Contracts, where your location gets revealed to everyone on the map. If you survive, all your dead squadmates get respawned. They sound neat, but… I want both. Why can’t I have both?

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Not even an apple a day can prevent mutations in Fallout 76. While the mutations here are hyper-unrealistic, you’ll still need to take precautions to prevent them appearing or reverse any mutation you may contract. Some mutations are worth keeping though. (more…)

Building your own base in Fallout 76 requires you to use your “C.A.M.P.” or the “Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform” (henceforth abbreviated to CAMP). As long as your CAMP is on a flat surface and not near any established buildings, you can build anything you have a recipe for. Workbenches are used to make and repair items, while boxes can be crafted to store all that junk you’ve picked up all around Appalachia.

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We had expected Spelunky 2 to arrive in 2019 but, y’know, it didn’t. Now creator Derek Yu has given a small update on progress, saying the plan is to launch it in 2020. Spelunky being one of the best PC games of all time, yeah, I’ll happily wait for it for roguelikelike platformer’s sequel to be properly finished. After Spelunky 2 is out, Yu says, UFO 50 will follow. That’s the compilation of retro-styled games ‘made by’ a fictional 80s company, which are really being made by a handful of different indie devs.

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Me and Legends Of Runeterra had been drifting away from each other, like lovers on flotsam tugged apart by cruel ocean currents. We’d ran out of surprises. The spark, as far as there was one, had gone. But now Riot have released Runeterra for realises, and the 120 new cards included in patch 1.0 have spiced things right up. It’s free-to-play, and now is a very good time to check it out.

The new faction is neat. I’m a pirate now! A pirate who is terrible at Expedition mode.

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Not long after the Wastelanders update dropped, Fallout 76 players started noticing that some of their weapons were disappearing after they died. But it wasn’t that they were vanishing into thin air – it turns out some opportunistic new human NPCs were looting players’ corpses, and nicking the best guns from their bodies. Then would just wander round using the stolen goods right in front of them like nothing happened. The perfect crime.

Thankfully this was definitely a bug, not a feature, and Bethesda have released a hotfix to sort it out.

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I first learnt about the Nazca Lines when I was quite small. There were a couple of Nancy Drew books knocking around at home, and one of the mysteries involved the Nazca Lines as a pivotal part of the solution. At the time, and because they were in a book, I assumed that they couldn’t possibly be real – that nobody would make huge works of art in a desert in Peru, so large that they can only truly be appreciated from a helicopter. And yet, they are breathtakingly real.

Now, Reddit user “papabanano” has devoted the entire space of their farm in Stardew Valley to recreate one of the most famous of the Nazca Lines. No wheat yield or intensively farmed pumpkins to be found here, no: only the Hummingbird.
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How much did a streamer with 250k followers impact the sales of Six Ages, five months after release? Kitfox Games communications director Victoria Tran has the answer. ...

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader-run community: Fruits Basket 2nd Season: AniTAY First Impressions • The Only Final Fantasy VII Remake Opinion That Matters • TAY Retro: Nintendo Entertainment System - The Battle of Olympus [TV Commercial, NA]

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In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Wilbur is a blue-feathered dodo. Ditto for his brother Orville. But folks have been drawing the Dodo Airlines brothers as hunky dudes, with Wilbur being especially cool.

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This is not a new Mother (aka Earthbound) game announcement—well, not yet at least. However, it is an announcement that the scripts from all the Mother games will be released later this year in Japan. There will also be other Mother-related announcements before then. Hopefully, that means some Switch ports!

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Summer this year is going to be a little different without Wimbledon: as with most other sporting events, the grand slam has been cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak and the need for social distancing. But you can always mix yourself a pimms to sip while watching an alternative event at home - as a lineup of celebrities will be competing in a Mario Tennis Aces tournament. Close enough.

The Stay At Home Slam, a celebrity Mario Tennis Aces tournament featuring the likes of Venus and Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Maria Sharapova and Kevin Anderson, is taking place this weekend on Facebook Gaming to raise money for charity. Every competitor will get to donate $25k (£20k) to a charity of their choice, while the winning doubles pair get to donate $1m (£800k).

It's not just tennis players getting in on the action, too, as models such as Gigi Hadid and Karlie Kloss - along with British musician Seal - are also joining in on the fun. And the whole thing will be commentated by iJustine and John McEnroe, which is sure to make things entertaining.

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This week Infinity Ward dropped a mammoth patch for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone - one that involved a hefty download and then a 15GB download on top.

The developer released patch notes for the update, as normal, but it seems it left a few changes out. Some of the hidden changes are good, some bad, and one in particularly has left the community scratching its head.

Let's start with the good. As revealed by Raven Software creative director Amos Hodge on Twitter, in Warzone, the time-out length of the Trophy System, Shield Turret and Deployable Cover has been increased to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, the Shield Turret and Recon Drone will no longer appear on the enemy radar, making them more effective. Both these power-ups were a little underused, so perhaps they'll become more viable.

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The trials of creating your very own rock garden

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Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation just introduced a new heroine named Patty, a pure and playful girl from a small island.

The post Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation’s New Heroine Patty is a Playful Island Girl appeared first on Siliconera.

The Ys: Memories of Celceta PS4 release date for North America will be June 9, 2020. Digital and physical versions will be available.

The post The Ys Memories of Celceta PS4 Release Date Is June 9, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

The last Luigi's Mansion 3 DLC pack is here and brings 3 new costumes, 3 ScareScraper floors with new ghosts, and 3 ScreamPark minigames.

The post Luigi’s Looking Dapper in the Luigi’s Mansion 3 DLC Part 2 Pack appeared first on Siliconera.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition will have a new battle system in its additional scenario, Future Connected.

The post Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition Will Have a New Battle System in its Additional Scenario appeared first on Siliconera.

The pandemic has led to a much lighter release schedule that we usually see in any given year, but 2020 has still delivered a number of fantastic games. Whether you are gaming on a PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, or PC, the Game Informer staff has reviewed most of the year's notable releases, and given them their proper critique. Was a highly anticipated blockbuster worth the wait? Are there any indie games that you didn't know about that are must plays?

This list gives you a rundown of 2020's best scoring games from the top scorer down. Any game that scores between a 10 and 8.5 makes the list. We also provide a notable quote that hopefully sizes up the game along with a link to the complete review. The year is just getting started, and we'll update this list whenever a new game fits the criteria. Happy gaming!

Grounded, the miniature survival sim from Obsidian Entertainment is Game Informer's latest cover story, and Obsidian has been kind enough to give us extended access to an early build from home. The game has a lot of promise, and we wanted to show off the core, self-driven gameplay that comes once you've spent a few hours getting your tiny feet under you.

So enjoy a taste of Grounded's moment-to-moment gameplay, and come back next week for a look at the game's varied wildlife! For more Grounded, listen to us discuss our gameplay impressions on last week's episode of The Game Informer Show.

So the RNG gods have blessed you with insane turnip prices or you just have incredibly rare DIY Recipes to share via your villagers, and you want to spread the wealth. Hosting other players on your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons might seem like the simplest thing on Earth: give players the Dodo code, then call it a day while you AFK in your house as people go about their business.

You’d be wrong. Managing a queue of visitors to your island is harder than it sounds, and if you just give the Dodo code out to everyone, every single visitor will be plagued by annoying connection issues, interruptions every couple of seconds as they’re trying to get to a specific place, and it’s very easy for communication errors to pop up if this keeps happening.

With that in mind, we’ve prepared a list of tips for you if you’re looking to host multiple players on your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.