April 2020

‘I can be the corona police. Why not?’

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Please help me, my family is dying

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Simon Stålenhag’s evocative art has been rendered as something ponderous and opaque

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom: Eternal offer some relief to lockdown misery

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PC players can also get a discount through the Epic Games Store

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Square Enix sticking to April 10 release date, but you should download it now

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Demons and witches and chaotic magic galore!

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‘Death corona’ no more

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Space operas, icy fantasy, and a new Firefly adventure

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The Carole Baskin-vs.-Joe Exotic feud isn’t especially divisive at a time when everyone has a team

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Developer MiHoYo released another trailer of its upcoming Open-World Action RPG Genshin Impact.

This time around we get to see a scene representing a “lantern rite,” and it’s absolutely gorgeous, with the anime-like visuals of the game that really shine. 

It’s worth mentioning that the video is marked as a spoiler. I honestly don’t know why as it just looks like a beautiful cutscene out of context, but it’s so awesome that maybe the developers intend that it could awe you if you see it for the first time in-context, in the game, so you can watch it at your own risk below.

If you’re unfamiliar with the game, you can read about the story below.

“You have arrived in Teyvat — a fantasy world where the seven elements flow and converge.

In the distant past, the Archons granted mortals unique elemental abilities. With the help of such powers, people formed a bountiful homeland out of the wilderness. However, 500 years ago, the collapse of an ancient civilization turned the universe upside down…
Though the calamity the world suffered has ceased, peace has yet to be restored.

Following the reveal of Kyrie and Rufus Shinra in the newest trailer of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix released their official renders.

The renders were included in a collection of social media icons distributed on the Japanese website.

Most of you already knew Rufus Shrinra due to his appearance in the original game, but the reveal of Kyrie Canaan is relevant because she has never appeared in games before.

An 88-year-old woman named Audrey is known for having spent thousands of hours tending to her town in Animal Crossing: New Leaf has finally gotten the chance to experience the next iteration of the franchise, New Horizons, thanks to a special gift from her son, who is also an indie developer with a YouTube channel named Phubans.

Audrey answered some questions from fans about her love of Animal Crossing and she talked about how New Leaf was your first experience with the series, and that her favorite thing about the game is pretty much being able to have a “dollhouse” and having control of how it all looks.

She also mentions that the villagers can get a little sassy –just wait until she meets Zipper in New Horizons.

When asked about what she’s most excited about doing in this new Animal Crossing game, she told her son that she really wants to jump over those ditches with a stick but is afraid of falling in the water.

You can watch the adorable unboxing and her first few minutes of playing the game down below:

After playing over 4000 hours of New Leaf, I hope Audrey is ready to sink even more time into New Horizons.

It's important to understand what a technical designer is and how it can help a production by improving the workflow of designers to let them focus on creative tasks, not technical issues. ...

Rob Wyatt, the system architect behind the original Xbox, is suing Atari for failing to pay him for work he did on the company's retro VCS console.  ...

Resident Evil fans can return to Raccoon City in Capcom's latest remake of a horror classic, Resident Evil 3, which is out today on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Resident Evil 3 takes place around the events of Resident Evil 2 but follows protagonist Jill Valentine, a S.T.A.R.S. agent trying to escape Raccoon City as she's stalked by a relentless monster called Nemesis. The game is also bundled with a 4 vs. 1 online co-op game called Resident Evil Resistance.

If you're looking to dive into Resident Evil 3 this weekend but haven't yet secured your copy of the game, we've rounded up all the best deals we could find on the game, including some markdowns on digital versions you can download today. We don't suggest waiting long to claim any of these deals--they're likely to sell out fast, and some are scheduled to end this weekend.

While not discounted, physical copies of the game are still available at places like Best Buy and GameStop, but be sure to note any delivery estimates as many stores are seeing delays on physical game shipments.

With people around the globe stuck in their homes in recent weeks, they've evidently been watching a lot of Twitch streamers. The service had its best quarter ever, breaking a record with more than 3 billion hours watched.

According to streaming tools service StreamLabs, Twitch hit new highs for both hours viewed and hours streamed, with about three times what YouTube Gaming Live managed during the same period.

Twitch saw its watch hours increase by 23 percent between February and March, with concurrent viewership rising by nearly 20 percent. While this was a period when people began self-quarantining because of coronavirus (COVID-19), it also saw the release of major games like Doom Eternal, Nioh 2, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Twitch streaming hours had actually been on the decline last year.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has already caused game delays such as The Last of Us Part 2 and it's possible more will follow, but GameStop is still accepting pre-orders on upcoming titles. The retailer has now announced new procedures it has in place for customers picking up their games.

For areas where GameStop stores are still open, you can pick up your pre-ordered games on launch day using the Delivery@Door service, which has an employee meet you at the door and hand you your game. The only options for paying off these orders are chipped credit cards and GameStop gift cards.

At closed GameStop stores, you'll have the option to get the game shipped, and GameStop is sending out emails with instructions. If you only put a small deposit on the game, you will have the option to get a virtual gift card with that same amount so you can order the game online.

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 2 began on February 20, and we've known since then that the metatextual motormouth Deadpool would be joining as a special skin--just not when. That day has finally come, as Epic has announced that Deadpool is reporting for duty. You can unlock the special skin by completing a set of special Deadpool challenges, which involve his pistols and either a phone booth or a port-a-potty.

To earn Deadpool's skin, you just have to own the battle pass and complete his series of challenges. Most of them have been rolling out progressively throughout the season, but a couple of new challenges began this week. They're fairly straightforward, and you can find the list in Deadpool's secret room by clicking on the vent from the main hub.

• Find Deadpool's letter to Epic Games
• Don't thank the bus driver
• Find Deadpool's milk carton
• Find Deadpool's chimichangas around HQ
• Find Deadpool's toilet plunger
• Destroy toilets
• Find Deadpool's katanas
• Deal damage to opponent's structures
• Find Deadpool's stuffed unicorn
• Visit the Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple Steel Bridges
• Find Deadpool's big black marker
• Deface GHOST or SHADOW posters
• Find Deadpool's two pistols
• Enter a phone booth or port-a-potty

The first new challenge this week is to find his pistols, which are located in the main hub and in Meowscle's room. Then in a match, enter a phone booth or a port-a-potty during a match. Once you complete those two challenges, you'll win yourself one bona fide Deadpool skin.

With a week left until launch, now might already be too late to start warning you about the potential of spoilers in all of Final Fantasy VII Remake's marketing. But if there's one trailer you absolutely should avoid if you're worried about the any story spoilers, it's the latest launch trailer for the game.

At just over four minutes long, the launch trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake shows off a lot. It starts with a callback to the series' great PSP prequel, Crisis Core, and just continues delving into very specific stories for each of its main characters. There are reveals that are decades old at this point, but it also showcases some new wrinkles that Square Enix is adding to this greatly expanded Midgar chapter. If you dare, you can watch below.

Already one of the best services in gaming, Xbox Game Pass seems even more appealing at a time when people are staying home as much as possible. The subscription service grants access to hundreds of Xbox One games, and right now Newegg has a great deal on 3-month Game Pass Ultimate subscription codes that runs until Sunday. If you buy a subscription using promo code EMCDHDE22, not only will you get $5 off of the price, but you'll get a second 3-month subscription code for free. That means you're getting six months of Game Pass Ultimate for $40, which is $50 off of the retail price.

The 16th Annual BAFTA Game Awards had to be pre-recorded this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it still delivered accolades to 2019's best games. The mysterious exploration game Outer Wilds won the top prize this year, while Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima was honored with a BAFTA fellowship.

The BBC reports that Outer Wilds writer Kelsey Beachum thanked the fans for helping get the word out about the indie game. "Word of mouth has been essential in getting people to play the game, you're all really beautiful," Beachum said.

Outer Wilds won three awards in all, including for game design and original property. Disco Elysium also won three awards, for best music, debut game, and best narrative. Call of Duty Mobile won the Mobile Game of the Year, which is the lone category decided by a public vote.

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Today on Highlight Reel we have virtual classrooms, Animal Crossing pranks, Call of Duty: Warzone kills, and much more!

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The weekend is for needing to do laundry, because I’ve hit the “all I have left are sweaters” point of staying home a bit earlier than expected. I’ve read you can do your laundry in the bathtub, so I guess I’m going to try that? That leaves lots of time for games while things soak.

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Time to really get serious about growing that hemp for... clothing, as Rust has introduced a new update, and it's all about farming.

The rework focuses on giving players a more in-depth system for farming, in which "all conditions of a plant are now important" - with better conditions giving better rewards. For the best yields, you'll need to get the lighting, water saturation, ground condition and temperature of your plants right.

Thankfully, there's an info panel to help with all that, which shows you real-time progress on conditions as you change them, along with the plant's requirements. "Each plant type can have different resiliences to the various conditions, meaning some will grow more easily in certain areas than others," explains the blog post.

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The latest big, new chapter expansion for Elder Scrolls Online, titled Greymoor, takes players to a large chunk of Skyrim that’s been left unexplored in the sprawling Tamriel MMO thus far. Rather than introducing all of the missing snowy mountains to the north, Greymoor focuses on Western Skyrim, including Morthal and Solitude, and expands the Blackreach, a massive underground cavern system fans of The Elder Scrolls V might recall visiting.

Similar to The Year of the Dragon in 2019, Elder Scrolls Online is currently in the middle of The Dark Heart of Skyrim storyline, which began with the Harrowstorm dungeon  DLC earlier this year, but Greymoor is the first big narrative-focused launching pad of the year.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/30/the-elder-scrolls-online-greymoor-story-trailer"]

In lieu of a hands-on demo session at GDC this year, since the conference was canceled, I got to check out a pre-release version of the new Greymoor chapter on a remote preview server last week to see the new sights and try out the new skills and systems.

In terms of the size of the overland and underground zones, plus new delves, public dungeons, cities, and more, there is a lot of content in Greymoor. Although I appreciated the dragons in the Elsweyr expansion and enjoy playing the latest Necromancer class, the locales themselves, environmental design, and general setting weren’t appealing to me. Coming off of Summerset, which is one of the most beautiful and vibrant zones in any MMO I’ve ever played, Elsweyr was a dry and grim punch in the gut. That may have been part of the point, but it didn’t make it any more enjoyable to explore since everything just kind of looked the same.

Have all roads led to this? Considering that the creators of this kickass Zelda: Breath of the Wild montage video have said that this is likely going to be the "final big project and love letter to Breath of the Wild," maybe: at least for this group of collaborators.

YouTubers Kleric, CHC Yu-Da, Peco and RinHara5aki (the latter is the one who hosted the video) all got together and decided to make a short film of sorts out of a bunch of awesome Zelda clips similar to this one. The end result is called "The Four," and features all of them kicking ass from all over the Earth: both US coasts, Taiwan and Japan.

It's hard to pick a favorite moment, but I dig 6:00 in, where Link just absolutely destroys a Lynel using every trick in the book. 6:50 is pretty great too and is almost Matrix-like in nature how they flip that Guardian and destroy it. As RinHara5aki notes, 7:20 and beyond contains spoilers for the game if you somehow haven't finished it yet.

Whoa that headline was a mouthful, but it's probably the best way to describe Get Packed, a new 1-4 player co-op (and competitive) game that's coming to Stadia first. 

Developed by a small five-person indie outfit called Moonshine Studios and published by Coatsink, the self-described "audacious" indie purveyor, the game has a very frantic Overcooked feel to it, which drew me in immediately. Moonshine is giving us a new look at the game today, and provided Destructoid with a little background on what to expect.

Jamie King, designer at Moonshine, says the whole idea started with a real-life move to Cornwall, England. They wanted to create a project with a family focus and a heavy emphasis on co-op, and with the move "all on [their minds," Get Packed was born.

King notes that although the game will focus on co-op, there are concessions for competitive play too, as well as online play. The latter, they say, has been enhanced by Stadia, preventing latency issues that would otherwise be present in a standard indie online-enabled game. King also says there's "single and multiplayer campaigns," that focus on "a tremendous amount of replayability," with "customization unlockables" for finishing levels and challenges. DLC is also coming down the pipeline.

Although Stadia could still use a "killer app," Get Packed looks like a blast for anyone who enjoyed Overcooked. I'm pretty jazzed to give it a go when it arrives on Stadia "soon." If you aren't down with Google's new platform, it's described as a "Stadia launch exclusive," so the wording implies it'll arrive elsewhere at some point.

Resident Evil 3 actually doesn't have that many puzzles, preferring a more action-oriented focus.

But it does have them, and here's some help on a relatively early one.

Minor puzzle spoilers below.

As far back as I can remember people have been baying for a Final Fantasy VII remake. This isn't a recent deal. As early as the PlayStation 2 era people were musing about the idea of taking one of the most beloved RPGs of all time and sprucing it up with fresh tech, visuals, mechanics, and features.

Well now, it's actually happening. Next week will see the launch of Final Fantasy VII Remake on PS4 - or at least the first chapter of it. Once again fans will be able to take Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barrett, Yuffie and the gang on that globe-hopping, planet-saving jaunt, complete with all the drama, pathos, excitement, and sorrow of the 1997 PlayStation classic. Exciting stuff.

Square Enix has released one last trailer to get the hype engine in motion ahead of the big day. Whilst I'm not sure if yer boy Moyse has it in him to play through this indelible story one more time, (we'll see), I do hope that the launch of FFVII Remake brings you everything that you had hoped for from this very special release.

[Note that at over four minutes, this video has a lot of reveals, so perhaps avoid it entirely - including the comments - if you want to keep some key surprises for your playthrough.]

Final Fantasy VII Remake launches on PS4 April 10.

In Other Waters sounds quite beautiful. It looks nice as well, with that cyan and yellow scheme above, but the most beautiful parts about it you won’t see at all. They’re described to you, an exosuit AI, by the xenobiologist wearing you while exploring an ocean full of alien lifeforms. The manage-y, explore-y, narrative-y sci-fi game is out today so you’re welcome to dive in. The water’s fine.

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People can deck out their Facebook or Twitter accounts with official Final Fantasy VII Remake avatars and banners.

The post Final Fantasy VII Remake Avatars and Banners Released in a ‘Fan Kit’ appeared first on Siliconera.

Hop on HBO Go or HBO Now to start a free Detective Pikachu stream.

The post Free Detective Pikachu Streams Now Available Via HBO appeared first on Siliconera.

Pokemon Masters introduced new Super Hard Supercourses alongside a Welcome Back Rally for returning players.

The post Pokemon Masters Introduces New Supercourses and Begins a Welcome Back Rally appeared first on Siliconera.

Balloons will start appearing again and villagers will move in without any issues.

The post Animal Crossing: New Horizons Balloon Glitch and Moving Villager Bugs Patched appeared first on Siliconera.

Rob Wyatt says he’s owed $260,000 for creating the crowdfunded console

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If you buy 100 items from the Nook Shopping function, you’ll get a more portable phone app

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