May 2020

There is no part of Ape Out that is not good. I love it. It is perfect and glorious. You must play it.

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Track: Gratitude | Artist: Beastie Boys | Album: Check Your Head

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Tetris Effect was one of our favorite games of 2018 and signified a fresh revival of a timeless, classic game. It was fun to play, and the music certainly helped to strengthen it.

Today, the Tetris Effect soundtrack is officially available for purchase on Bandcamp, and composer Hydelic has taken to the PlayStation Blog to give some insight into how the soundtrack for the game came together. Essentially, the music had to be timeless and lasting, and it also needed to be zen and calming.

Throughout the development of the game, Hydelic got glimpses of images from the game itself, like how the particles would look in various stages. This helped with visualizing what the final product would look like, and also helped with deciding on the kind of music that would make it in and how it would work with the game overall.

“Just to share some insight into one of the stages and tracks, for the “Deep Sea” stage (the first stage), we wrote over 10 music tracks; because development started with this stage, the engineers and designers spent the most time working on it. Similarly, there was a ton of trial-and-error on the sound and musical side of things. At first it was ambient music with no vocals, next it became something with a beat, and then we experimented with both male and female vocals. It gradually developed into the present version of “Connected (Yours Forever)” featuring Kate Brady.

Tetris Effect is the culmination of all of our musical work up to now — it lets us harness all of the ideas we’ve accumulated and express them in a new way. This wouldn’t be possible without the group at Enhance and the Tetris Effect team, who really understand and deeply appreciate music.”

The big physical summer expos all got cancelled, but instead we have a whole load of great digi-vents to replace them. Looking at the schedule, it seems the Summer Of Games is going on until approximately next January. We’re in a bit of a hopeful mood for this week’s podcast, so the gang discuss their most anticipated upcoming releases, as well as their most anticipated and/or hoped for reveals that might come from the 2020 digital events.

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Football. Tennis. Conkers. What do these historic, reputable sports have in common, I ask you. That’s correct, they are not extreme enough. Please, quiet now. I am here to do the talking. Yes, there are sports videogames, your FIFAs and your Mario Tennises. But they do not fulfill the desire within all of us for the extreme, the radical, the pushing of it to the max. I will now demonstrate, through force of listicle, the 9 most extreme sports in PC games, from bone-breaking snowboarders to motorcycle Wipeout. And you, in your turn, shall be thankful to this website for providing such diversion. Now, read.

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F.E.A.R. was a game that gave the player military hardware with one hand, and a sense of terror with the other. As effective as the horror element remains today - including a number of admittedly cheap jump scares - what remains truly impressive 15 years after release is a side-effect. Arguably, no FPS before or since has offered the player such a powerful, transporting sense of place.

Horror is perhaps the genre most difficult to master in any medium. It demands a thunderous emotional response in order to be classed as successful which, in turn, requires an unchallenged suspension of disbelief. That emotional response needs to leap from a stable baseline, one that is in sync with one's day-to-day life. Here is a game that understood and, remarkably, even achieved that.

As you walk F.E.A.R.'s warehouses, stalk its streets, and creep along its corridors, you hear... almost nothing. It's unnervingly beautiful. Music is used sparingly throughout the game. It's ordinarily extremely subtle or - at the best moments - entirely absent. There are times that you'll receive a brief message over the radio, or you'll hear the telltale chatter of nearby enemies. Yet for much of the time - most in fact, or so it seems - it's just you and the bumps in the dark, real or imagined.

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Another week, another Warhammer 40K game - but this latest does present a curious blend of genres, with Aeronautica Imperialis: Flight Command offering turn-based aerial combat courtesy of small Sheffield-based outfit.

Keeping up with Warhammer 40K releases feels like it could be a full-time job, and I was surprised to learn that we've already had an aerial combat game in Games Workshop universe this year courtesy of Warhammer 40K: Dakka Squadron. Both releases come hot on the heels of the release of a new edition of Games Workshop's Aeronautica Imperialis tabletop game, and Flight Command offers a more strategic take with a simultaneous turn system. You can see a bit more of how it works in the launch trailer.

It's out now on Steam, and is part of the Skulls for the Skull Throne sale that's running on Steam until June 1st. Reviews are mixed at the moment, so proceed with caution - though I admit I remain intrigued by the concept.

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After teasing their new VR cybergoggles earlier this year, HP have now fully unveiled their new Reverb G2 headset, and it looks an awful lot like the Valve Index. That’s probably because it’s been designed in collaboration with Valve, and uses the same lenses and speakers that they created for the Index. However, HP’s Reverb G2 takes things even further with a higher resolution display and even more tracking cameras. And the best thing about it is that it’s not going to cost the earth to buy, either.

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2K has released seven different games from three franchises on the Nintendo Switch today, all of them beloved titles. BioShock: The Collection, Borderlands Legendary Collection and XCOM 2 Collection are now available, and the individual titles within the first two collections can also be bought separately. Each game comes with all previously released DLC.

If you're buying these games digitally, you'll want to hope that you have plenty of space on your SD card--the smallest game in the bunch weighs in at 10.4GB. In total, the seven games weigh in at 103.1 GB.

BioShock 2, which originally launched with a multiplayer mode, features just the campaign, along with the Minerva's Den and Protector Trials DLC packs.

Developer Naughty Dog has a handful of pieces of new concept art for The Last of Us: Part II that showcase the developer's inspiration for the much-anticipated post-apocalyptic sequel.

The art--which is based on scouting trips to Seattle--was released in the latest Inside the Details episode, and you can see each of the stills in the gallery below. Be sure to click each image to see it in full size.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is continuing its rollout on PC, with Halo 3 and ODST added next. Developer 343 Industries has now confirmed that the first beta test, or "flight," for Halo 3 on PC will begin in mid-June.

Community manager John Junyszek confirmed this on Twitter. He added that more details on the Halo 3 beta test will be announced on May 29, so we'll know more very soon.

The beta tests for Halo 3 will start very small. Microsoft will kick things off with "Ring 1" testers, which is a very small group of people who work closely with the developer. After that, future beta tests will be available for members of the Halo Insider program, which is free to sign up for--go here to sign up.

Dontnod Entertainment has announced the opening of a new studio in Montréal, Canada, a move aimed at allowing the company to be closer to its North American community of players.

The developer is best known for its adventure and action-RPGs LRemember Me, Life is Strange, and Vampyr (pictured above), all of which have a strong focus on story-telling and whose atmospheric environments feature terrific worldbuilding.

It is hoped that this new North American studio will help continue to grow and produce even more immersive, engaging and innovative video games, Dontnod CEO Osakar Guilbert explains:

“We are delighted to share our plans of expansion with the opening of this new office in Montréal, completing the talented team working out of Paris. Our goal is to create video games as close as possible to our community’s expectations. With this new international team, we will be able to envision even more ambitious titles and keep writing wonderful stories for our players.”

As for what’s first on the agenda for the studio, the team will be working on a brand new project. Dontnod will be looking to hire from Montréal’s renowned talent pool of developers as it sets up over the next few months.

A roadmap of the developer’s history and future plans is included in a press release sent to Twinfinite.

Developed by Red Hook Studios, Darkest Dungeon continues to be one of the best and easy to recommend rogue-lite dungeon-crawling game in the genre. It’s received quite a few DLCs since its launch, and Red Hook has just released the latest on Steam, titled Butcher’s Circus.

This time, however, the DLC doesn’t just take you to a new area and expand the story. Butcher’s Circus is focused on PvP gameplay, which is a huge departure from the core of the game. Players will be able to enter an arena and assemble a team of four characters, and then pit their parties against each other.

There are PvP rankings in this mode, and winning battles will unlock cosmetics like banner components to set yourself apart from the masses. Battles will allow the use of trinkets for each character, though it’s worth noting that your parties in Butcher’s Circus will be separate from the main game.

Darkest Dungeon is now available on Steam, and will be free to play till June 1. The Butcher’s Circus DLC is now available for download.

The post Darkest Dungeon’s New PvP-Focused DLC, Butcher’s Circus, Is Free on Steam appeared first on Twinfinite.

To completely defox today’s word chain you’ll need to provide Roman, my Chief Foxer Setter, with the sequence of 24 words suggested by the clues below. (more…)

Near the top of my ‘Things to do when lockdown ends’ list is ‘Visit my local public library’. Obviously I’m missing its extensive history and transport sections, and the profound feeling of well-being that comes from being surrounded by the printed word, but there are other draws too. You can meet very interesting people in libraries. People like John Williams.

I struck up a conversation with John when I spotted the book he was collecting from the request desk. Task for Coastal Command by Hector Bolitho is a pretty obscure tome – not the sort of book your average aviation enthusiast would seek out. As it turned out my fellow borrower was no ordinary aviation enthusiast. A flier with a long and unusual career in the Royal Navy behind him, Captain J.L.Williams, R.N. (Ret’d) flew an astonishing range of aircraft before hanging up his bone-dome in 2018. While today’s interviewee isn’t an ‘Atypical Simmer’ in the conventional sense I think what follows will interest anyone who has ever gripped a collective, thumped a round-down, ridden a thermal or reached for an ejection seat handle in Simulatia. (more…)

Listen, we’re not having a pop at the base game version of The Sims 4, but you have to admit that it doesn’t offer everything you might want. It would be impossible for it to service every whim and desire you asked of it for! But still, sometimes you’ll be fooling around in build and buy mode, or Create A Sim, and just wish that you had more space gubbins to wear or cool plants for your kitchen. Or bunk beds! Lord almighty, if only there were bunkbeds.

Well, it just so happens that there are, if you know where to look. And that place is ‘at custom content’. There are some amazing creators out there making simply fabulous cc sets to make every Sims game your best version of it. And cc is all free! How amazing is that? That’s why we’ve rounded up all our favourite cc sets in one place, for ease of use to you the reader. Read on for more.

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You may have heard the rumours about a secret cow level in Minecraft Dungeons. In an homage to the long-standing bovine rumour and Easter Egg in the Diablo series, it seems that Minecraft Dungeons also has its own take on the secret cow level.

There are lots of steps you need to complete to unlock this hidden level, mainly finding nine hidden runes, but once you do you’ll get access to the craziest secret area in the game.

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You’d have thought people would have escaped from Tarkov by now, but they’re still at it. Escape From Tarkov is a brutal, sandbox-ey shooter about scavenging for loot in a warzone where everyone has better guns than you – except for right now! A big update to the current early access build has brought a load of changes, but one of the most significant parts is the character wipe. Tarkov’s central appeal lies in looting, and now (not for the first time) all your loot has gone. My friends say they’re happy about this, and I still do not understand them.

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Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader-run community: The Garden of Sinners & Starting Over From Nothing • NES Memories: Battle City • TAY Retro: Nintendo Entertainment System - Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes Of Major Championship Golf [TV Commercial, NA]

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This is it. Here’s the trailer for the final season of the massively popular Attack on Titan anime.

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Debuting in 2016, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba has sold 60 million print copies. Amazingly, between May 17 and November 18 of last year, it has sold 45.29 million print copies.

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Each season there are shows I, and perhaps you, look forward to. But this summer, there is one show that I am excited about most—Japan Sinks:2020.

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The main appeal of Tetris Effect - apart from the satisfaction of neatly stacking blocks - is the game's audiovisual elements, and in particular, its beautiful soundtrack. And now you can take this with you on the go, as Tetris Effect's music has been made available to stream or download on music platforms.

You can stream the soundtrack for free on Bandcamp, and find it on other major music platforms such as YouTube Music, Spotify, and Amazon. Composer Hydelic has also written a blog post to accompany the release, which details the process of creating a "zen Tetris" soundtrack from rough demo to a shimmering synesthetic backdrop.

Five of the Best is a weekly series about the small details we rush past when we're playing but which shape a game in our memory for years to come. Details like the way a character jumps or the title screen you load into, or the potions you use and maps you refer back to. We've talked about so many in our Five of the Best series so far. But there are always more.

Five of the Best works like this. Various Eurogamer writers will share their memories in the article and then you - probably outraged we didn't include the thing you're thinking of - can share the thing you're thinking of in the comments below. Your collective memory has never failed to amaze us - don't let that stop now!

Today's Five of the Best is...

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Mistwalker's smartphone RPG Terra Battle had quite the run since launching in October 2014, but it is shutting down this June.

The post Mistwalker’s Terra Battle is Shutting Down After Almost 6 Years of Service on June 30, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

Spike Chunsoft announced a new tactical adventure game for Re:Zero that is coming to PS4, Switch, and PC via Steam.

The post New Re:Zero Game Officially Announced for PS4, Switch, and PC via Steam appeared first on Siliconera.

Despite not being a fan of Minecraft itself, when Minecraft Dungeons released for consoles and PC last week, I was instantly intrigued. With how open the concept and branding of Minecraft can be, it made sense for Mojang to take the franchise towards the direction of the looter genre, and perhaps surprisingly to absolutely no one at all, it works well. And going even further beyond that, it works amazingly well on the Nintendo Switch.

As a huge fan of grindy games that just encourage you to hunt down better loot, the Switch has always struck me as the perfect platform for that genre. We’ve already got Diablo III, the ultimate loot grind game, as well as several other RPGs that feature similar gameplay loops. But while Diablo III is a prime example of how compelling the looter genre can be, it’s always felt like a massive time commitment.

This is probably due to the sheer variety in gameplay, with multiple classes to choose from, skills to master, and just the overwhelming amount of loot that gets thrown at you right from the beginning. It’s always tempting to just equip whatever has the highest number attached to it, but then you’ve got to think about enchantments and upgrades or you might inadvertently put yourself at a disadvantage in combat by equipping the wrong stuff.

Not to mention the fact that it can take a while to reach the Rift dungeons or complete the main story for the first time before you can start the proper grind; Diablo III is deep.

And that’s where Minecraft Dungeons comes in as a worthy complement to Blizzard’s daunting loot game.

In The Last of Us, Naughty Dog gave us a pretty good rundown of how the cordyceps infection works. When you get infected, the stages progress like this: Runner, Stalker, Clicker, Bloater, then you eventually die.

Wait, Stalker? What’s that? –I hear you ask. The Stalker was only present in a handful of stages in the first game, but with the release of The Last of Us Part II coming up very soon, they could very well live up to their full potential in the sequel.

The Stalker is an enemy type that you can fight in a few stages in The Last of Us: the basement hotel, the sewers, and the underground tunnel. If you’ve only played through the game casually once or twice, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t even know the difference between Runners and Stalkers, especially since they behave very similarly.

Essentially, Stalkers are a smarter version of Runners; instead of charging straight at you when they spot you, Stalkers are supposed to be quieter and more cunning. They’ll observe you from afar and only strike when you’re not looking.

That said, the first game never really adhered to those rules at all. Stalkers would lurk, sure, but give them a few seconds and they’d eventually come out of hiding and run straight at you… like Runners do.

In fact, it’s only in the hotel basement that the Stalkers act like they’re supposed to. As you’re looking around for the key card, you’ll hear guttural sounds all around you but you’d never be able to pinpoint the source. If you turn around fast enough, you might catch a glimpse of a Stalker running around a corner, but you’d never be able to catch it. That’s part of what makes that sequence so harrowing, but that terror is absent for most of the game.

As we inch ever closer to the exciting release of The Last of Us Part II, Sony and Naughty Dog have given us an extended look at the game and an idea of what we can expect from Ellie’s upcoming adventure. Here is a list of quick facts about The Last of Us Part II that we picked up from this week’s State of Play livestream.

Nintendo has released the launch trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition today that gives viewers a bit of insight into Shulk’s past and how he managed to get his hands on the mystical Monado blade.

As a spiffed-up remaster of the 2010 (2012 in the West) Wii JRPG from Monolith Soft, the game features an all-new epilogue with additional hours of content, almost 100 remastered music tracks, revamped visuals, and several quality-of-life improvements.

You can watch the launch trailer down below:

Our review for Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition was published just yesterday by our Reviews Editor Zhiqing and while she enjoyed the combat system and the graphical upgrades, she found the open world to be a bit too massive for its own good and there are also way too many fetch quests.

Monolith Soft is currently working on an unannounced title and it’s apparently been in development for quite some time now.

Following a tease earlier this month, Playful Studios has today confirmed its acclaimed 3D platformer New Super Lucky’s tale is coming to PS4 and Xbox One later this summer. No specific release date has yet been confirmed, but we do know that it’ll receive both a physical and digital launch.

The news comes by way of a press release from publisher PQube.

For the initiated, New Super Lucky’s Tale sees players take control of the titular fox as he helps his sister protect the mysterious Book of Ages. It’s intended as a love letter to classic 3D platformers like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, featuring a gameplay loop that sees players work toward gather collectibles and searching for secrets across several challenging stages.

As you’d expect from a mascot platformer, the story features memorable characters to meet, a whimsical story, and a bunch of stylish costumes to show off. It’s a family-friendly experience.

New Super Lucky’s Tale is an expanded version of the original game that launched back in 2017. Twinfinite reviewed it at launch and wasn’t overly impressed, but it’s a much-improved package in its new form and well worth checking out if you enjoy games like Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time.

Here’s the accolades trailer from its Nintendo Switch release last year to prove it:

Throughout the Zelda franchise, there have been plenty of friendly species that Link and his cohorts have met during their adventures. Most players know and love species like the big, friendly Gorons, the elegant Zoras, and the powerful Gerudo.

But there are plenty of other species in Zelda history with a whole lot of untapped potential that deserve another chance in the limelight. Here are our 10 Zelda species we think are worth another look.

The Deku

Let’s start with a familiar face first: The Deku are well-known to most Zelda fans, due to having pretty prominent roles in Ocarina of Time, and having an even larger one in Majora’s Mask. In the latter game, which is still a favorite for many, we got to see an entire Deku Kingdom, and Link himself even became a Deku Scrub via Skull Kid’s magic.

Combining your gear, enchantments, and artefacts in Minecraft Dungeons is what makes it fun to play. Sometimes you’ll find a particular combination that just works really well.

The best builds are those that quickly defeat enemies, make short work of bosses, and make your hero incredibly powerful.

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Minecraft Dungeons has the hero face off against the Arch-Illager and his minions. Leading them are some unique bosses, from a Corrupted Cauldron in the Soggy Swamp to the Redstone Monstrocity in Fiery Forge. The Arch-Illager is also quite a tough boss, mostly because of his spooky second form. While having the right gear can help keep you alive, having a strategy for each fight can make all the difference.

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Can you tell your Monkey Island from your Broken Sword? I hope so, or you’re going to waste a stupid amount of time trying to get George Stobbart to insult sword fight with Nico. If you pass this very low bar for adventure game knowledge you should probably take a swing at our new adventure game music quiz.

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If your reaction to the release of Intel’s new set of 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs is to celebrate the lower prices now available on 8th and 9th Gen [cms-block] models, then this pair of Z390 motherboard deals from CCL might well be for you. One comes with a free SSD, while the other gets you some fairly generous cashback if you buy a CPU at the same time.

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