April 2020

Apex Legends is getting a new mode, Quests, when Season 5: Fortune's Favor starts in May and adds Loba as a playable character. Respawn hasn't provided many details about Quests, but it sounds like it could be a single-player or multiplayer PvE game mode.

"When Apex Legends Season 5: Fortune's Favor arrives on May 12, players will find a new game mode, Quests, that will have players hunting for treasure and answers each season," Respawn writes in a press release. "Those who complete the journey will be richly rewarded."

Though Respawn hasn't confirmed it, Quests could be the "pleasant surprise" for Titanfall fans that the developer teased would be coming to Apex Legends in Season 5. A recent tweet, embedded below, that hinted at upcoming content for Apex Legends included images of what looks like a BRD-01 Automated Infantry Spectre, a robotic enemy found in the campaigns and multiplayer modes for Titanfall and Titanfall 2. If Quests does happen to be a PvPvE or PvE mode, then Spectres could be one of the enemy types.

The Game Developers Conference is shifting plans once again in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Though it had been postponed to the summer, organizers now say it will shift to an all-digital event in order to keep participants safe and best serve the community.

"As so many game developers embrace remote working arrangements and online collaboration, we're inspired to adapt and deliver GDC in a digital format that will be available to everyone with an internet connection, and will work hard to deliver the high-quality content and networking opportunities GDC attendees have come to expect," organizers said in a statement on the official site.

GDC usually takes place in San Francisco in March. As the global health situation became more pressing, organizers at first announced it would move ahead with extra precautions to stem the spread of the virus. Shortly after, it postponed to an indefinite time in the summer, and then in March it announced new dates: August 4-6. This new announcement references the event still taking place in August.

It's already a few years old but developer Playtonic Games has unveiled a new mode for Yooka-Laylee on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. You can now play the bubbly platformer in super-nostalgic 64-bit graphics for free.

Accessing the free update is easy: Talk to Vendi, the creepy-looking anthropomorphic vending machine, and she will give you the 64-bit tonic. Drink that up and get ready to take a trip back to the '90s with blocky graphics reminiscent of Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Donkey Kong 64, Super Mario 64, and the like.

In addition to this new character model for the bat-chameleon duo Yooka and Laylee, Playtonic also added in the Yooka 64 model from the 2D side-scrolling spin-off Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair.

Up until now, the worst you could expect after an ill-advised purchase from Redd the art dealer in Animal Crossing was a dubious fake that Blathers' museum would refuse to take off your hands. New Horizons is seriously upping the stakes, however, with art work that's not just fake but haunted in some cases - morphing unsettlingly as the sun goes down, and possessed by the blinking, grinning, and shifting spectres of the damned.

Well, okay, that's probably a little overdramatic, but there's definitely something up with the paintings in New Horizons, as some unsuspecting Animal Crossing players are starting to report. And although the cataloguing of this haunted art is only just getting underway, the general theme appears to be that all afflicted items are forgeries, and that all undergo some form of transformation as the day goes on, reverting back to normal in the morning.

Certain fake versions of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, for example, will suddenly snap their eyes shut at dusk, and Tōshūsai Sharaku's The actor Otani Oniji III as Yakko Edobei adopts an unsettling grin. The haunted version of Hishikawa Moronobu's Beauty Looking Back, meanwhile, will turn to face in the opposite direction as night falls - and worse, examining the painting rear reveals a woozy stain of the figure seeping through.

Read more

Open-World Gameplay and Combat

• Combat has been altered in some form, with an emphasis on making every hit feel impactful.
• That includes giving players the ability to dismember and decapitate foes.
• While Assassins have had two weapons at once before (two swords, for example), Valhalla places a new emphasis on dual-wielding weaponry, with players allowed to mix and match the game's arsenal.
• Shields return as part of that arsenal after being absent from Odyssey.
• The assassin's blade returns as well.
• Throwing axes will be available in Valhalla as one of Eivor's many weapon options.
• Players will traverse by sea via their Viking longship.
• Players can spot fortresses from the water to attack with their raiding party in massive raids.
• Largescale land battles will also be part of the story, though it's unclear if they'll function like Odyssey's army battles.
• RPG trappings introduced in Origins will return, with new skills, as well as new gear to collect.
• Open-world activities include hunting, fishing, dice, and drinking games.
• Additionally, Valhalla will introduce the competitive

• 00:00:00 Welcome!
• 00:00:55 160,000 Nintendo Network IDs have been hacked
• 00:06:08 A rumor about a new Switch model… with two screens?
• 00:12:42 Nintendo is adjusting the Animal Crossing economy
• 00:18:54 Our rapid-fire Majora's Mask memories
• 00:24:39 Games out this week
• 00:37:07 What we're playing
• 00:42:00 Question Block

• Moving Out - 4/28, $25
• Indivisible - 4/28, $30
• Telling Lies - 4/28, $20
• Streets of Rage 4 - 4/30, $25
• Book of Demons - 4/30, $25
• Levelhead - 4/30, $20
• Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia Demo - 4/30

• Casey: Good Job!
• Seth: Picross S4, Tales of Vesperia, Trials of Mana
• Zach: Indivisible, Streets of Rage 4, Animal Crossing
• Logan: Super Mario Maker 2, Animal Crossing

NVC is available on your preferred platform!

Riverdale’s Camila Mendes stars in this mildly ridiculous, overpacked thriller

Continue reading…

The series’ five-year charity benefit reunion feels like comfort food

Continue reading…

In The Creation of Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers' bonus video, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the NieR series crossover raid.

The post Final Fantasy XIV Developer Diary Explores the Creation of the NieR Series Crossover Raid appeared first on Siliconera.

We're looking for a passionate and talented game designer to join our mobile game studio in Hanoi, Vietnam. ...

Nintendo has reportedly reached out to its partners to say it no longer plans to hold one of its Nintendo Direct announcement sprees during the month of June. ...

Citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason, Valve has delayed this years International global tournament event, likely until sometime next year.

The event was slated to take place in Stockholm, Sweden. With teams coming in and competing from all over the globe for enormous prize pools to stadiums packed full of fans, it's not hard to see why an event of this nature could present a risk given current conditions. 

Full details are available on the official Dota 2 blog.

While full details for Apex Legends' upcoming Season 5 are not yet known, today we got a taste. Beginning May 12, Apex Legends will roll out a new game mode - Quests. Quests have different treasures, mysteries, and explorations to explore each season, with big rewards for those that complete them. The update rolls out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

In addition teasing that new mode, Apex Legends has a spiffy new trailer showcasing Season 5 - Fortune's Favor. Check out the Legacy of a Thief trailer below!

Action RPG Indivisible, from Skullgirls creators Lab Zero, is great! The version that was reportedly released on the Switch this week, though, has been a very weird story.

Read more...

Today on Highlight Reel we have Animal Crossing panopticons, Fallout 76 sleeping problems, limit breaks, corpse waterfalls, and much more!

Read more...

Moving Out is a new game out this week on PC, Switch, PS4 and Xbox One. It’s a singleplayer or co-op experience, full of wacky arm-bending and physics gags, and depending on how you’re involved with the process is also an eerily accurate simulation of the art of moving house.

Read more...

I feel like I'm locked in a perpetual game of chicken with Subnautica: Below Zero, a game I can't possibly dislike. I keep telling myself "This is the Early Access update. This is the one that'll get me to play." I say that every dang time, and I still haven't taken the plunge – but this could be it. This should be it.

Today's Frostbite update for Subnautica: Below Zero is the first step in the new storyline, making it a particularly good entry point. Unknown Worlds still wants to "respect" the old lore and characters found in prior versions of the underwater survival game, but there will be big and small changes. Short term, there's a new intro cinematic, new voice-work for Robin and Sam, and new journal entries.

That said, it's a work-in-progress. "Bases may come and go, or shift a few hundred meters in one direction or another, but the substance of the world in Subnautica: Below Zero will remain fundamentally the same," said narrative designer Jill Murray. "That means we need to work the new story around the twists and turns, dark caverns, and mischievous sea monkeys we already know."

It's been a gradual process, but this year's GDC event has finally committed to going "all-digital."

The organizers of the San Francisco-based Game Developers Conference went from scrapping the annual March event as we know it and giving out industry awards remotely to planning a physical replacement, GDC Summer, for August 4-6, 2020. Now, inevitably, they're "moving forward with a plan to transform GDC Summer into an all-digital event in order to best serve our community."

"As so many game developers embrace remote working arrangements and online collaboration, we're inspired to adapt and deliver GDC in a digital format that will be available to everyone with an internet connection, and will work hard to deliver the high-quality content and networking opportunities GDC attendees have come to expect," the organizers said today in a blog post.

"We believe in the power of gathering our community to share, inspire, and strengthen our industry and are committed to providing that opportunity in August." Details will be shared in the coming weeks.

GDC Summer's previously scheduled "freestyle two-day expo show floor" can't happen remotely, but presumably at least some of the promised "expert-led talks" can carry on in the new at-home format. In the meantime, the organizers have uploaded a selection of pre-recorded GDC 2020 talks to YouTube.

I played a ton of Gears Tactics over the course of the last two weeks, and I loved it so much that I'm about ready to go back for more. The endgame Veteran missions are starting to wear thin -- the only thing I'm really chasing is randomized Legendary loot -- so I'm considering firing up a new campaign. Do I go with Insane difficulty or Ironman on Intermediate? (Go straight to hell if your kneejerk reaction is to say "Ironman on Insane.")

Perhaps this requires a little explanation. Ironman mode is a tactics staple because of XCOM. In Ironman, everything you do is permanent. The game saves after every action which makes it impossible to save scum. You have to live with whatever outcome you're given. If that means your favorite soldier was killed on the battlefield, there's no resurrecting them. There's only bodybags.

In researching Ironman, I came across this broad-reaching tips guide from PC Gamer. Apparently, losing one of the named heroes on Ironman in Gears Tactics will force the game to instantly end the campaign. That makes sense considering Gears Tactics is a story-driven game and Ironman is meant to be the most unforgiving mode of them all. If the protagonist is dead, the story never happens.

Still, it's a stark contrast to the way XCOM handles it. In XCOM, there are no hero characters. You're an unseen commander directing all the troops. If someone dies -- yeah it sucks -- but there's a roster of replacements who maybe aren't as skilled or well-equipped, but who are ready to pick up a gun and take up the fight.

In case you hadn't heard, we kind of love Streets of Rage 4. Moyse gave it a 9/10, saying "Comebacks rarely get much better than this." This three-way collaborative effort between Dotemu, Guard Crush, and Lizardcube is faithful to the retro Streets of Rage while serving as a modern realization.

It's Streets of Rage 4's launch day and, naturally, we're going to play it. That much shouldn't surprise you -- we're always hitting the latest and greatest on our Twitch channel. However, this one comes with a unique opportunity. You have a hotline straight to the developer.

Dotemu is gracious enough to hold an AMA specially for the Destructoid community. It's going down at 3pm Pacific, which is basically right now. (It's super late in Europe which is where Dotemu is located!) Head over to Twitch chat to ask whatever burning questions you may have. 

The third year of Destiny 2 saw some changes in the way Bungie approached the live game's seasonal content. Throughout this year, seasons have seen new story beats and activities show up for a few months, then disappear with the start of a new season. Bungie is changing parts of that approach in the game's fourth year, allowing you to play seasonal activities for longer.

Bungie detailed the shift in its latest This Week at Bungie blog post. Starting with Season 12, which will mark the start of Destiny 2's Year 4, Bungie will make seasonal activities, story quests, and rewards persist through the entire year.

That's in contrast to the approach Bungie tried in Year 3 with its current batch of seasons. In another blog post, director Luke Smith explained that Bungie hoped to make Destiny feel like an evolving experience with its current approach. Storylines unfold over seasons, which give rise to specific activities. Those storylines wrap up at the end of the season and set up the story for the next, and the specific activities that go with each season--and their various loot rewards--vanish as well.

There are 80 bugs to catch throughout the year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but none of them are as tricky to find as the mole cricket. It is the only bug in the entire game that requires you to play with sound on, and you won't be able to see it when it's around. It's not the most profitable bug out there, but it's still important for your Critterpedia, so here's how to find and catch one.

How To Catch A Mole Cricket

• Requires: 1x shovel, 1x net, sound on

To catch a mole cricket, you'll have to listen for, well, cricket noises. As you walk around your island, a friend's island, or a Mystery Tour island, you might hear a rapid chirping sound. Walk around and listen for it to get louder; when the sound is at its loudest, you should take out your shovel and start digging in the immediate area. It will probably take a few tries, but once you find the spot, the mole cricket will pop out of the ground as you dig the hole. When this happens, quickly switch to your net and catch it.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to catch a mole cricket if you're hard of hearing or can't play with sound; you would just have to keep digging around your island until one pops out of the ground. You can, however, limit the areas a mole cricket could spawn by laying down paths, planting flowers, and placing items on the ground.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has commented on the impact of COVID-19 on Microsoft's plans to launch the Xbox Series X and new games on schedule.

Speaking to CNBC, Spencer said he feels confident that the Xbox Series X hardware will be able to launch on time this Holiday period. He said there was "some impact to schedules" for the hardware, but his team has been able to overcome those. Overall, Spencer said Microsoft is in line with its expectations for where it would be at this point in the year as it relates to the Xbox Series X hardware.

As for games, however, that's a different story. Spencer said the nature of large-scale game development means that the work-from-home setup may lead to production slowdown.

Within the wave of news amid the official announcement of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, developers at Ubisoft did their own breakdown of the reveal trailer. The four-minute cinematic trailer showcases the game's Viking era setting, story premise, and what's to come from gameplay. However, there are plenty of key details that the trailer doesn't spell out.

In the video below, you can watch creative director Ashraf Ismail and narrative director Darby McDevitt talking through the trailer with Ubisoft news editor Youssef Maguid. They gave broader context for specific scenes and spoke about the approach for depicting Vikings with their culture and history in mind, and how the trailer also contains gameplay details. There's also a hint as to how the new protagonist Eivor might be connected to the Assassins.

We have this next game in the storied franchise covered from all angles; be sure to read our own interview with Assassin's Creed Valhalla narrative director Darby McDevitt for an even deeper dive into the game's story. While a male protagonist is portrayed in the trailer, Assassin's Creed Valhalla will let players choose between a male and female lead. There are also a few details on how Assassin's Creed Valhalla uses next-gen console features.

The International, which is one of the largest professional video game tournaments in existence, has been delayed. In a statement, Valve said it won't be able to hold the Dota 2 event on schedule to due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Valve said it made its decision after "extensive consideration" of the global pandemic. The company was looking at other, later dates to hold the event, but it now believes The International may not return until 2021.

"Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, virus trajectory, and global travel policies, we don't expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future," Valve said.

Microsoft has shared the first images of Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST on PC for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. As a caveat, the images are work-in-progress, so they might not necessarily be representative of what the games look like upon release.

You can check out the images in the gallery below--be sure to click the images to see them in full HD. The images were published on the Halo Waypoint blog.

Following the massive April 28 update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone, developer Infinity Ward has pushed out another patch for the multiplayer games.

This one is comparatively much smaller, but it still introduces some significant changes. First off, the new Most Wanted Contracts that came to the game on April 28 have now been removed, just two days later. They are replaced by the Bounty Contracts that were in the game earlier.

Most Wanted Contracts allowed players to put a bounty on themselves, earning significant rewards for surviving. It's not immediately clear why they were removed so soon.

Nintendo will reportedly not broadcast a Nintendo Direct this June. According to Venturebeat, the company will have to delay its annual summer presentation due to development complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Eurogamer says its sources have corroborated the report, and the Direct is now expected to air "late in the summer."

If true, this would mark the first time since 2013 that Nintendo has not aired a Nintendo Direct in June. The company has used the pre-recorded presentations in lieu of a live press conference to deliver its E3 announcements. GameSpot has reached out to Nintendo for comment.

Nintendo was reportedly going to make some major announcements during this year's June Direct. The company had previously said it would reveal Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's next DLC fighter, a character from Arms, this June, presumably during the Direct. It's unclear if that announcement will be postponed or delivered through some different means.

Edward Denton is an artist at WETA, where he’s worked on stuff like The Hobbit, Elysium and Chappie.

Read more...

Today, noted embarrassing smoker, bad driver, and worse tweeter who is also somehow a billionaire Elon Musk has decided he’s JC Denton, the hero of 2000’s genre-defining cyberpunk immersive sim Deus Ex. Nobody agrees with him.

Read more...

It is time, as it is around this time every year, for Japanese game store Meteor to hold their Famicase exhibition, where artists from all around the world are invited to create cartridge art for non-existent video games.

Read more...

A Final Fantasy VII Cait Sith action doll is on the way and... like... can you believe the smarmy, smug expression on his cute little face?

The post Somehow the Final Fantasy VII Cait Sith Action Doll Seems a Little Smug appeared first on Siliconera.

Ubisoft has rolled out an unscheduled patch for Rainbow Six Siege on PC following the feedback in regards to Ying’s overpowered Candelas. The patch also fixes a MMR rollback bug and places a restriction on XP gains in Training Grounds.

Back in April, Ubisoft brought about major reforms to several Operators, including Ying. Before this update, Ying was in desperate need of buffing. Unfortunately, it seems that Ubisoft gave Ying too much of a buff and has decided to reel back her Candelas from four to three. Currently, Ying players are experiencing a reign of terror online, but that’s all about to end with this update.

The Candela charge gave the character a big edge in wiping out a defending teams’ anti-grenade gadgets, with enough explosive power left over to finish off everyone on the site as well.

Darkborn, the exciting-looking monster game from Battlefield and Payday developer David Goldberg's new studio, has been put on hold. The game's developer, The Outsiders, announced the change on Twitter, writing that the team may eventually return to the project, but probably not soon.

"In spite of our best efforts to continue, ultimately we had to make the difficult decision to halt development on the project," reads a line from the studio's statement. "Perhaps one day we will return to it: we all hope so and genuinely appreciate the support of everyone who followed us over the years."

The Outsiders is moving on to a new project that's described as "something new, something awesome, something we really love." Whatever this game is, it will be revealed "very very soon," the studio said.

The chubby Pikachu and long Meowth variants were introduced as Gigantamax forms in Pokemon Sword and Shield. The plushies represent the original fatter Pikachu from the early versions of the series and Meowth as a longer version of itself, like the longcat meme. While the Sword and Shield games released back in November of last year, Japan has just released large plush forms of these big Pokemon to take home.

The Pikachu is 31 inches tall, 24 inches wide, weighs almost 10 pounds, and costs a hefty $411 (44,000 yen). The Meowth is about five feet and five inches tall and costs $308 (33,000 yen).

Both plushies are available for pre-order from the Japanese Pokemon Center’s online store. These plushies are made to order and will only be manufactured in limited supply. Pre-ordered plushies are estimated to be shipped by October 2020. A worldwide release in other region Pokemon centers has not been announced as of yet.

A new month in Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn't just mean new fish and bugs to catch, but also a handful of fish and bugs that are going away. You can hit up last month's list to see what's missing now that April is over, but if you want to look ahead and focus on what's going away in June, we have you covered. Whether you have a Northern or Southern Hemisphere island, here's every fish and bug leaving Animal Crossing at the end of May.

Fish And Bugs Leaving After May

Fish are first spotted in bodies of water as shadows, which come in a variety of sizes. We have a fish shadow size guide you'll want to use to get a better idea of what the shadow sizes (which we label 1-6) look like in-game. All fish listed below have their corresponding shadow size next to them for easier identification.

While the Last of Us Part II has finally gotten an official release date, many of the details surrounding the HBO Last of Us TV show are still unknown. Back on March 6, Sony and Naughty Dog revealed that they would be teaming up with HBO to create an adaption of the popular series. In a recent interview with Fandom, Troy Baker has shared some news about the show.

Baker voiced and performed as the main character Joel in both the first game and the upcoming sequel. While the actor revealed that he hasn’t had much to do with the adaptation, he has a close friendship with Neil Druckmann, writer and executive producer of the TV and game series. Baker is also a massive fan of Craig Mazin, the head writer of HBO's Chernobyl, who is writing The Last of Us TV show with Druckmann.

“I’ve been a huge fan of Craig Mazin for a while now," Baker said. "So I was a massive fan [of the HBO series] going into it, not just because of Chernobyl, but because of [Craig] as a writer … he’s like the band that the bands listen to – everybody likes Craig! So I started following him on Twitter and he follows me back and I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m a massive fan of yours’, and he’s like, ‘I’m a massive fan of YOURS!’ We had this great Twitter DM love going back and forth."

Epic Games has announced some major changes to its Fortnite competitive game series for 2020, including the cancellation of its marquee event. The studio announced that all of the remaining Fortnite competitive events that were scheduled to take place in person, will now be conducted online. However, the Fortnite World Cup will not go forward as a digital event--or at all.

Epic said it's cancelling the event outright "due to the limitations of cross-region online competition."

Epic went on to say that it doesn't know just when it will be able to bring back its in-person Fortnite tournaments, though the company is hoping for a return to normal operation by 2021.