June 2020

One of the very best things to emerge from a world without full metal racing, alongside the deluge of virtual racing with all its drama and hijinx, has been a series of fantastical tweets from MSV press officer Tom Arron as he fills his time before motorsport proper returns. Remember when Le Mans was dropped from the schedule and the Snetterton 24 Hours was revived with a full field of WEC cars? Or when an unfortunate typo in the regs saw a mob of angry Group C cars replace the group B field as they took to Brands Hatch's rallycross circuit?

It's pure nonsense yet these small videos are incredibly convincing, thanks in no small part to the all-encompassing nature of Slightly Mad Studios' Project Cars 2 which Arron uses for his flights of fancy. It goes to show that, for all its faults, there's perhaps been no more comprehensive a racing experience. This is the game that lets you do everything, whether that's taking a Porsche 917 around a recreation of vintage Le Mans or splashing around a sodden Cadwell Park in a clubman Ginetta.

Still, I was slightly taken aback when first laying eyes on Project Cars 3 - indeed, I wasn't even sure if this really could be Project Cars 3 as I watched a Mercedes AMG GTR being hustled around the streets of Shanghai and Havana. This was firmly in the realm of the arcade racer, territory Slightly Mad Studios' new owner Codemasters had staked out as recently as last year with the Grid reboot which saw spectacular street races around those same two cities. Is this new direction a result of the recent union between the two companies?

As has been the case for the last ten weeks now, gaming monitor prices are higher than you’d expect thanks to the ongoing disruption of the coronavirus. With no end in sight, these gaming monitor deals are probably as good as you’ll get. Generally they’re still pretty expensive in the grand scheme of things, but there are exceptions, and we’ve rounded up the best and cheapest gaming monitor deals on all of today’s [cms-block]s below for your delectation. Whether you’re looking for the best G-Sync gaming monitor deals or the cheapest ultrawide gaming monitor deals, here are the top gaming monitor deals of the week.

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Ahead of the Eco Lifestyle Expansion Pack releasing tomorrow – more on that as I play it myself – The Sims 4 got a big update yesterday. This happens semi-regularly, often timed around DLC releases, so let me preface all this by saying that the game screwing up a bit after a patch should not surprise anyone at this point. It’s a 6-year-old game that’s had loads of new stuff crammed into it, and this particular update is a biggun that changes a load of stuff.

Nevertheless, the update has caused a kerfuffle in the community. Most significantly, many people are reporting crashes on specific save files. Some households are failing to load, and there is anguish and gnashing of teeth as people have lost access to massive mansion builds they’ve spent hours on, despite attempting to restore saves or reverting to older ones. Most hilariously, multiple people are reporting that their Sims are peeing fire.

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The Oculus Quest is a great VR headset if you don’t want to be wired in to your PC all the time, but trying to get hold of one has been increasingly difficult these past few months, as stock levels have been pretty patchy to say the least. Still, after returning to US stores last month, the UK has finally received the same treatment.

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I Wanna Maker is a precision platformer with a robust level editor and online level sharing, based on I Wanna Be The Guy fangames. Developer Patrick Traynor explains what went into making this Super Mario Maker-inspired gem. ...

UPDATE 12/6/20: The Pokémon Company will match Niantic's large donation of at least $5m following this year's Pokémon Go Fest live events.

In a short statement posted to Twitter today, The Pokémon Company said the money would go to "improving the lives of children with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion", including "organisations supporting education and mentorship opportunities for Black children".

No specific charities were named, though the company had previously pledged $100k to both the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.

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The Xbox studio Double Fine Productions has announced a donation of $12,000 to a series of charities that fight racism in response to the murder of George Floyd.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Double Fine said it condemns police brutality and calls for the immediate demilitarization of police forces in America. "Our message is simple: black lives matter, and the systemic oppression, disenfranchisement, and murder of black people must end," Double Fine said.

"This is a critical moment. There can be no justice for black people in America, or justice for any minorities, without the immediately demilitarization of police forces throughout the country," the statement goes on. "It is not enough to simply know this. Something must be done--not tomorrow, but now. It is not sufficient to be 'not racist.' We must all be anti-racist."

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us: Part II will feature more than 60 different accessibility options that are aimed at helping the game appeal to a wide audience. Audio lead Robert Krekel has now shared a little more light on some of the audio-focused accessibility features, while he also spoke about how Naughty Dog's future projects will go even further and offer more in the way of accessibility features.

Posting on Twitter, Krekel said The Last of Us: Part II can be "pretty much" completed with only audio. The audio team spent a good amount of time and effort to create a system that allows players who are blind or have limited vision to play The Last of Us: Part II.

"It's astounding how well it works," he said. "One small example is I was able to successfully complete combat sections of the game with my eyes closed. Including stealth kills and dodging in melee encounters."

House House, the developer of 2019's most viral game, Untitled Goose Game, has pledged donations to numerous charities between the US and their home country of Australia in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests that have taken place in the United States. The charities are all focused on black justice and legal rights.

House House has donated $10,000 to an initiative hosted on ActBlue that splits donations between over 70 bail funds around the US. "Complete solidarity with everyone across the US protesting against systemic white supremacy in the face of police violence," the tweet reads. "Abolish cops. Black lives matter."

An additional $10,000 has been split between four Australian charities and fundraisers in recognition of the white supremacy committed against the country's Aboriginal population. Reparations have never been provided to Australia's indigenous population for the atrocities committed against them, and land rights were never ceded.

The open-ended RPG finally arrives on Nintendo’s console

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Tales of Crestoria was expected to launch in early June 2020, but fans will have to wait a little longer.

The post Tales of Crestoria Delayed From Its Early June Release Date appeared first on Siliconera.

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader-run community: Sing “Yesterday” for Me: Episodes 4 - 6 with a Forward on Zac Bertschy • Future Reviews: Cooler Master MasterMouse MM710 • TAY Retro: Nintendo Entertainment System - Power Glove [TV Commercial, NA]

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Playing The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch is sorta like how you might imagine the PC version looks with most of its visual settings cranked way down or outright disabled. It's not pretty – the textures, assets, and character and environmental details took a big hit – but hey, at least it runs okay.

Obsidian's silver-tongued sci-fi RPG targets 30 frames per second, which it accomplishes well enough that the game's real-time-with-slow-mo combat system doesn't suffer too much. That said, you're gonna see clear slowdown in busy environments, especially if you're a habitual sprinter like me.

Officially, the Switch version runs at 720p in portable mode and 1080p docked, hence the need for noticeably stripped-back visuals. Were the trade-offs worth it? Should this port exist? Yes. Double yes.

_{Sights like this take some getting used to if you've played the PC or even console versions.}

If you didn't mind the Switch version of The Witcher 3 (for reference, it runs at 540p portable and up to 720p docked), you'll be able to stomach The Outer Worlds just fine. It's still recognizable. It's still playable. You'll still feel like you're picking your poison during moral dilemmas and letting Parvati down.

https://t.co/8KgWau8FyC

@Neil_Druckmann @Naughty_Dog hey are you aware that the true faith cover you put in your last of us 2 trailer is a replica of my cover that came out 10 yrs ago? I wrote original parts not in the original song that are copied exactly by whoever covered it. I am heartbroken.

Treachery In Beatdown City

is a rare name that would feel perfectly at home both now and in 1990. I mean, honestly, who would be treacherous in a place called Beatdown City? It’s just asking for a particularly righteous kicking.

And that’s how it goes. The people in charge have betrayed the public trust, and it’s down to you to trust in your fists to put things right. It’s a bit great.

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Call Of Duty

developers, Infinity Ward, have pledged to “do more” against the racist content players bring to their games. Last night, they tweeted their plans to put more resources in place to monitor and remove racist and hateful content, improve reporting systems and increase the number and severity of bans.

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Epic Games have postponed Fortnite‘s end of season live event and Season 3 start date, due to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police brutality. The live event, The Device, will now take place on June 15th, with the Season 3 start date pushed back to June 17th.

“The team is eager to move Fortnite forward, but we need to balance the Season 3 launch with time for the team to focus on themselves, their families, and their communities,” Epic said.

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I am glad that Rust is embracing its role as a game for wannabee Bond villains. The social survival game already let you build giant metallic fortresses from which to harangue new and naked players, but now you can take the next logical step and remotely activate traps from your telephone. That’s thanks to the new app, which also lets you chat with your team and track in-game events as they happen on the map. You can even set up push notifications that alert you when your new “Smart Alarms” get tripped.

I’m not wild about Rust, but I adore the idea of sitting in an armchair with brandy, a cat, and a button that sends the peasant rabble plunging to their deaths.

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At the end of this year, most Flash games will be unplayable in their original form. Adobe are going to stop distributing Flash, and so most browsers plan on dropping Flash support. While this may be an internet security victory – Flash has a history of being vulnerable to certain kinds of malware – it does make it harder to experience the thousands of online Flash games. There are ways to download and run Flash games offline, but many of those games have processes that are meant to lock the game to its original site.

Thankfully there are preservation projects working to keep Flash games playable in their original form. The only question remaining is which you should play. We’ll answer that question, and explain the best ways to play them, below.

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GOG’s Summer Sale is in full swing at the moment, but just in case you needed another reason to dive back in to their big sack o’ deals, they’ve just added a new Witcher collection that gets you all five games for £20 / $27, plus a bunch of free games, including Thimbleweed Park’s Delores Mini-Adventure, so grab ’em while you can until June 15th.

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Mobile publisher Playrix has acquired Croatian game studio Cateia Games for an undisclosed fee. ...

A remastered version of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has popped up on the Microsoft Store, despite not yet being officially announced.

Its new title, regrettably, is indeed "Re-Reckoning".

If you missed it first time round, Kingdoms of Amalur is an ambitious RPG with a sprawling map and excellent world-building, albeit one which failed to spawn the franchise it was so clearly trying to set up.

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As a platform, the Switch has managed to delight us on numerous occasions with ports that seemingly outstrip the capabilities of the console - to the point where maybe we were starting to believe that anything was possible. Can developer Virtuos pull off another miracle port with The Outer Worlds? "Off the back of our work on Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Dark Souls: Remastered, The Outer Worlds and the coming XCOM2, we now have no doubt that Switch adaptations can be worked for games on any of the current generation of console," senior product Zhang Chengwei told Nintendo Life. After checking out The Outer Worlds, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Technically, what the studio is saying is correct. When you load up The Outer Worlds for Switch, you are getting the complete game package in content terms. Indeed, Virtuos itself has a good track record in delivering decent Switch ports, but there's the sense that the team bit off more than they could chew with this one - there are genuine problems that simply can't be ignored. We're used to accepting a certain degree of compromise on these conversions, the pay-off generally being the ability to play triple-A titles on a portable device. However, The Outer Worlds is the game where the cumulative downgrades are just too impactful to the experience, and where the promise of mobile play doesn't deliver enough to make the exercise worthwhile.

If you’ve been waiting for a new entry in either the Professor Layton or Harry Potter video game series, then the new indie puzzler, The Academy: The First Riddle, just might scratch that itch.

Developer Pine Studio, the company behind Faraway, has announced that the new puzzler will be releasing on June 19 for PC and Mac via Steam for $19.99 and on smartphones for $9.99. The Academy will also be heading to Switch, PS4, and Xbox One later this summer.

In the press release, Pine Studio’s Boris Barbir explained where the inspiration came from and how it shaped the feel of the game:

“We’re huge fans of the Professor Layton series and its colorful puzzles. We wanted to make a game that would allow players on all platforms to experience that thrill of getting a puzzle just right. We are big fans of Harry Potter, so the school is greatly inspired by Hogwarts, but it’s also inspired by the architecture of our city, Zagreb. Early on in development, it became clear that what we actually set off to achieve was to capture the essence of being a kid – the feeling that adventure lies around every corner.”

You can enjoy the release date trailer down below that will definitely give you Harry Potter vibes and a little bit of Layton:

Towards the end of last year, Obsidian Entertainment released The Outer Worlds for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. At the time, we knew that the game was also slated to come to Nintendo Switch at a later date. Just the thought of rolling with my pals Pavarti and Vicar Max from planet to planet on the portable system was enough to get me excited. Alas, the end product is pretty difficult to recommend to anyone who can play the game on literally any other platform.

We’ve already reviewed The Outer Worlds on PS4 from when it first released, so rather than retread familiar ground, we’re going to stick strictly to the game’s performance on Switch, how the gameplay translates, and how it controls on a portable, smaller system.

The Outer Worlds’ core gameplay revolves around completing missions for NPCs on different planets, shooting a bunch of enemies, leveling up your character and gear and moving onto the next one. It’s a fun gameplay loop, and it’s more or less Fallout in space. It’s great.

The problem is, for me anyway, the Nintendo Switch has never felt like a good console for playing shooters on. The Joy-Cons’ mini analog sticks feel inaccurate and the triggers and bumpers along the back are too close together making accidental presses of one instead of the other a regular occurrence. In platformers and games that don’t require fast-paced twitchy movements, these can be fairly easily overlooked.

It’s a fun new mystery that should have been billed as a sequel

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The PC Gaming Show and Future Games Show have both been postponed "in support of the protests demanding justice and change..."

The post PC Gaming Show and Future Games Show Delayed ‘to Make Space for Those Speaking Out and Demonstrating’ appeared first on Siliconera.

A Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning remaster is apparently coming from THQ Nordic and Kaiko, with a product page listing a June 2020 debut.

The post Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning Remaster Listing Appears (Update) appeared first on Siliconera.

After five years of service, Dragon Quest: Dokodemo Monster Parade is shutting down on July 31, 2020,

The post Dragon Quest: Dokodemo Monster Parade is Ending Service on July 31, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

The Outer Worlds looks so bad on Switch I’m tempted to tell even people who have no other means of playing it to stay away.

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A new listing on the Microsoft store has revealed a remaster of the 2012 action-RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning coming August 18.

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The Microsoft Store has set listings for two as-yet-unannounced retro compilations coming from long-time publisher Namco. According to the site, Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1 and Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2 are scheduled for release on June 18.

According to the site listings, each volume contains 11 Namco classics, some of which are seeing official release in the west for the first time. Modern features include the ability to save gameplay at any point, as well as a "Replay" option that rewinds the last minute of action, allowing players to call a retake on any mistakes.

Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1 includes Galaxian, Pac-Man, Xevious, Mappy, Dig Dug, The Tower of Druaga, Sky Kid, Dragon Buster, Dragon Spirit: The New Legend, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, and an 8-bit demaster of Pac-Man Championship Edition.

Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2 will feature Galaga, Battle City, Pac-Land, Dig Dug II, Super Xevious, Mappy-Land, Legacy of the Wizard, Rolling Thunder, Dragon Buster II, Mendel Palace, and an 8-bit "consolized" edition of Gaplus.