August 2020

Microsoft has heard your feedback on its hulking green "Optimised For Xbox Series X" stickers, which it has been slapping willy-nilly all over Xbox Series X game boxes.

The bulky logo has been quietly removed from the box art of Codemasters' Dirt 5, with other games now expected to follow suit.

Microsoft's chonky icon was meant to indicate the game will look better on Xbox Series X, despite it instantly making game boxes look worse.

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Nintendo has yet to turn the Legend of Zelda series into novels, but Irish author John Boyne appears to have gotten an accidental head start.

In his latest book, A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom, the award-winning writer of Holocaust tragedy The Boy in the Striped Pjyamas includes several descriptions of how to dye clothes red.

Unfortunately, these descriptions are recipes from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, apparently sourced from video game guides on Google.

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The Microsoft Store on Xbox One will be getting a visual and performance overhaul for Xbox Insider members starting on Aug. 5.

Microsoft announced it has rebuilt the store experience to be faster, safer, and easier than before and promises that the app will launch in under two seconds with other pages loading much faster.

The navigation has been redesigned and now contains a sidebar with categories and subcategories for games and other media. Other redesigned features include the search bar, the wish list to quickly add games and follow sale prices, the shopping cart, and being able to view pricing across Xbox One, backward compatible Xbox 360, and original Xbox titles.

The store will require users to be signed in before viewing anything in the store. It will also filter content according to family settings for those who have child accounts. 

For example, an account set for an eight-year-old will not be able view games and other content rated for a teenager, and it will also work with multiple accounts signed in on one console.

The new Microsoft Store for Xbox One will be rolling out in beta for consoles subscribed to the Xbox Insider program starting Wednesday, Aug. 5.

The latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons update introduced a feature many old fans had been anticipating– the ability to “dream,” or visit another island using their Dream Address. While Dodo Codes and friend visits existed before through the airport, the addition of dreaming means that others can visit your island without actually affecting it at all.

Essentially, it is a saved version of your island that runs no risk of pesky flower crushing or annoying airport waits.

The Animal Crossing community quickly took to sharing some of the coolest islands we have ever seen, so we have gathered 10 of our favorites that are some of the best dreams to bless your islander with.

Today Paradox Interactive released a brand trailer of its upcoming grand strategy game Crusader Kings III.

The video showcases the most important aspect of the game, which is characters.

We get to learn how they acquire their personality traits and skills and what makes them tick.  The system is still recognizable for Crusader Kings II players, but it features rather extensive additional features.

You can watch it below. 

Crusader Kings III releases on September 1, 2020, exclusively for PC.

If you’re not familiar with the game, you can enjoy my own hands-on preview as I tell the tale of how I fought, murdered, deceived, and seduced my way into becoming the King of Lombardy starting from the position of a modest count.  You can also read my interview with with Product Manager Max Weltz. 

If you’d like to learn more, here’s how Paradox itself describes the game:

If you’re thinking “what the heck is a Poke-Lid?” then you should know that these Pokemon-themed manhole covers have been around in Japan since late 2018, with the installation of an Eevee Poke Lid in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture.

These Poke Lids have different Pokemon designs on them and have been created to revitalize Japanese cities and towns while also promoting more tourism.

And for the first time ever, a brand-new set of Poke Lids are being installed in nine of Fukushima Prefecture’s municipalities. Each manhole cover will feature an original design that’s themed around Chansey, which in Japan, means Lucky.

You can see the gorgeous designs down below! Personally, I would love to own these as pins or t-shirts.

We’re just a few weeks from the launch of Project Cars 3 and a new trailer has revealed some of the ways that you’ll be able to personalize your journey in the game.

The trailer, which you can see below, is accompained by the following description:

“Buy, own, personalize, upgrade, customize—rise from Weekend Warrior to Racing Legend and discover what drives you on Your Ultimate Driver Journey.”

While much of the trailer gives you a look at the beautiful settings you’ll be able to travel to in the game, including open desert roads, enclosed race tracks, and tight canyons, it’s the brief looks at career mode content that’s most exciting.

The following features are those that can be spotted throughout the Project Cars 3 trailer:

Following the reveal made last week, Bandai Namco has released plenty of screenshots of SoulCalibur VI’s upcoming DLC content.

We get to see Setsuka herself and a lot of costume parts included in the Character Creation Set E. They will be respectively the eleventh and the twelfth DLCs for the game and they’re releasing tomorrow.

Interestingly, quite a few of the costume parts come from the other popular fighting series from Bandai Namco, Tekken.

You can check out all the screenshots below.

The new Final Fantasy XI story scenario has been named and revealed. The Voracious Resurgence will be released alongside the August Version Update and will see the story of Final Fantasy XI continue after the conclusion of Rhapsodies of Vana’diel.

Here’s the description of The Voracious Resurgence via the scenario’s new official landing page:

Even the smallest of incidents can have ripple effects that alter the course of history. Three individuals of unknown origin have inserted themselves seamlessly into everyday life, their robes murky and their intentions even murkier.

Only a short time passed before small eggs of unknown origin started appearing in all manners of places throughout Vana’diel – eggs whispered of in the oldest of Beastmen legends.

It falls to Vana’diel’s finest adventurers to uncover the truth behind this enigmatic phenomenon. Peer beyond the veil of death and unravel the tangled threads of conspiracy that threatens the very fabric of the world.

A part of me believed that this story scenario would be more light-hearted and low-stakes considering that Rhapsodies of Vana’diel was supposed to be the dramatic conclusion of Final Fantasy XI’s story. While that still could be the case, the description certainly sounds like this will be a serious threat.

Rhapsodies of Vana’diel completion is a requirement to start The Voracious Resurgence so get cracking if you haven’t wrapped that up already.

Fairy Tail on PlayStation 4

The absolute first thing to mention is how similar Fairy Tail is to the biggest Gust series Atelier. From separate and condensed maps to picking up random ingredients from the side of the paths for synthesis, it’s very Atelier. Just needed that bit of information out of the way.

The second most striking thing is that, in many ways, it feels like Fairy Tail was made explicitly for fans of the anime. According to the list of story arcs, the game doesn’t take place until episode 122. It was astonishing to learn this, as it’s usually not the case for the first game adaptation.

The opening of the game feels very much like it is assuming (for those who haven’t seen the show) you know far more than you might. However, the game is also kind enough to give a bit of background information in the form of eight pieces of “Story” in the game’s encyclopedia that can be accessed as soon as you take control of Natsu. Even so, when these moments are referenced throughout the story, it feels flat having simply read a couple paragraphs about them.

Fairy Tail plays as a fundamentally sound but basic turn-based RPG (again, very Atelier) with a group of party (starts at three and goes to five) members who all have different elemental specialties to offer to the guild itself, and allows for some level of group synergy.

With the PS5 in the pipeline, many are probably wondering which of their existing PS4 peripherals will actually work with the new console.

Today Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed just that on the PlayStation Blog.

For instance, our trusty DualShock 4 controllers will have to be replaced by the DualSense for all games besides PS4 titles played via backward compatibility.

Here’s a rough list:

• Specialty peripherals, such as officially licensed racing wheels, arcade sticks, and flight sticks, will work with PS5 games and supported PS4 games.
• The Platinum and Gold Wireless Headsets, as well as third-party headsets that connect via USB port or audio jack, will work on PS5 (the headset companion app is not compatible with PS5).
• The DualShock 4 wireless controller and PlayStation officially licensed third-party gamepad controllers will work with supported PS4 games.
• Both the PS Move Motion Controllers and the PlayStation VR Aim Controller will work with supported PS VR games on PS5.

That being said, Sony caution that “not all PlayStation officially licensed or third-party peripherals/accessories may work on PS5.” Sony recommends checking with the manufacturer for compatibility details.

Since Sony believes that PS5 games should take advantage of the DualSense’s features, they won’t support the DualShock 4.

Last, but not least, the PlayStation Camera will work on PS5 on “supported PlayStation VR games.” It’ll require an adapter that will be provided at no additional cost to PS VR users. More details on how this will be delivered will be provided at a later time.

In 4K!

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Co-author Daniel Kraus digs into Romero’s first novel, The Living Dead

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Randomness is good now

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No abilities, no money, no Spike ... just you and your aim

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Act 2 will also finally bring Deathmatch to Valorant

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As I was getting ready for my morning Magic: Arena "few game wind-down" break, I was immediately greeted with a pop-up: bam, four cards have been banned. Popular standard cards, mind!

Announced this morning and effective immediately, Cauldron Familiar, Growth Spiral, Teferi Time Raveler and Wilderness Reclamation are now out of Arena and paper Magic. Magic peddler Wizards of the Coast says they are "choosing to forgo..advanced notice and roll[ing] out these changes as soon as possible." While the latter three were set to cycle out in the fourth quarter of the year anyway, Cauldron Familiar wasn't scheduled to leave standard until the tail-end of 2021, so that's a big change.

I have played against and used every single one of these cards: and they all have their counters. A lot of the problem with everything but Growth Spiral, however, is how they work in Arena. Because Cauldron Familiar allows for triggers at nearly every step, it can be a pain to play against when you're facing down someone who isn't adept at piloting it: stopping every...few...moments, waiting for them to allow the game to continue.

The story of how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came to be continues to delight, as it seemed to be one of Nintendo's highest priority and meticulously designed projects in years.

For those of you who were unaware, Nintendo showcased early footage of Breath of the Wild back in 2017 during the CEDEC conference, which placed Link in various locales in Japan. While that presentation was not done publicly (and thus no record of it exists in video form), new details have surfaced recently by way of a tweet that show just how ambitious that demo footage really was.

While Nintendo originally stated that the tests were done using locales in Kyoto, Japan, a new image scrubbed from a new defunct source shows off Himeji Castle in Himeji, Japan. Another tweet shows off the early build's skydiving mechanic: taken wholesale from Skyward Sword and never implemented in Breath of the Wild proper.

Nintendo seems to have extensively tested the game's locomotion and exploration mechanics with a full map of Japan, which is something I'd definitely pay to see in full. Given how secretive Nintendo is, however, this may never see the light of day.

Pixelpar [Twitter]

Amazingly, it's been 20 years since the debut of RPG-brawler series Dynasty Warriors. To celebrate two full decades of field-clearing brawls and 1 vs. 10,000 action, publisher Koei Tecmo has released a birthday video looking back at the franchise's storied history.

Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition is available on Steam right now for the low price of zero dollars. If you’ve somehow managed to never get around to checking it out, especially if you still don’t know what it actually is, I highly urge you to stop reading, put everything else in your life on hold, and play it immediately. Even if you end up regretting it, I can guarantee you’ve never played anything else quite like Frog Fractions. There’s a reason people still talk about it to this day.

Just remember: if you’re ever feeling frustrated and down while playing, especially near the beginning, there are always further depths in which you can sink. There’s something really beautiful about the way Frog Fractions fully tackles and inhabits that mantra. It knows what it is and embraces it completely.

Are you still hungry for live streams? Have you not eaten enough live streams this season? If not, then be sure to tune in Thursday, August 6, as PlayStation will be hosting its newest State of Play event, looking at some upcoming releases on the PS4 and PSVR platforms.

In a message recently posted on its official Twitter account, PlayStation announced that the stream will "focus on upcoming PS4 and PSVR games," as well as "quick check-ins on third-party and indie games from June's PS5 showcase." The tweet does specifically note, however, that there will be "No big PS5 announcements."

The State of Play stream goes live Thursday, August 6 at 13:00 PT / 16:00 ET / 21:00 BST. You can check out the stream over on the official PlayStation Twitch and YouTube channels. You can find the full announcement over on the PlayStation blog.

Here we go ladies and gentlemen: the next generation! Ready? Wait, we don't have pricing and even date info yet? Not even a month-based window? Okay fine, here's some info on how accessories will work.

As detailed today on the PlayStation Blog, Sony is ready to talk about what hardware will transfer to the PlayStation 5. Let's start with what will work from PS4-to-PS5: Specialty peripherals, such as officially licensed racing wheels, arcade sticks, and flight stick, the Platinum and Gold wireless headsets, the PlayStation camera, PS Move and PS Aim Controllers (wow I'm surprised they acknowledged it exists!) and the DualShock 4 for supported PS4 games.

That last bit is very important. Although it seems like "speciality peripherals" are going to work with the new generation, the PS4 DualShock is a very special case. Sony clarifies that while the PS4 controller will technically work on the PS5 for "supported PS4 games," as a whole, it cannot be used on PS5 games, which are being built with the DualSense in mind.

As a bit of extra clarification, Sony says that "not all" peripherals will work (that much is obvious but may as well get it out of the way), and that the PlayStation Camera will be supported by way of a PlayStation Camera adapter, which "will be provided at no additional cost to PS VR users." That info is coming "at a later date."

Is that the same "later date" we're getting pricing and PS5 release info?

PlayStation 5: Answering your questions on compatible PS4 peripherals & accessories [PlayStation Blog]

Need a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in Marvel's Avengers? You better have a PlayStation 4 or 5.

The post Marvel’s Avengers’ Spider-Man Is a PlayStation-exclusive Character appeared first on Siliconera.

Finally, Wargroove PS4 cross-play and DLC will arrive on August 4, 2020. Get ready for Double Trouble!

The post Wargroove PS4 Cross-play and DLC Will Arrive August 4, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

Kotobukiya’s next Mega Man model kit will be Mega Man X Force Armor. You’ll be able to get it in January 2021.

The post Mega Man X Force Armor Kit Will Suit Up in January 2021 appeared first on Siliconera.

Learn how to best utilize your time in the Tales of Crestoria Summer Treasure Hunt event with this guide.

The post Tales of Crestoria Summer Treasure Hunt Guide appeared first on Siliconera.

Crunchyroll and Funimation will air the two-part My Hero Academia OVA on August 15, 2020.

The post Make It! Do-or-Die Survival Training My Hero Academia OVAs Will Air August 15, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

Sherlock Holmes. DC/PC. The Cocaine Think Boy. The Big Hat. Whatever you call him, Arthur Conan-Doyle’s detective’s detective is iconic to this day, inspiring loads of adaptations and remakes and modern updates. Games, as well, are just as susceptible to Holmes’ allure. Since the 2000s, developers Frogwares have been putting out an enduringly popular series of Sherlock sleuth’em ups that are getting pretty bloody close to perfecting the gamification of detection.

They recently announced their next step in that endeavour: Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, a new game in the series due in 2021, and serving as a prequel to the rest. Set when Sherlock is 21-ish and exploring a Mediterranean island from his childhood, Chapter One will see tweaks to combat, detecting, and the addition of a more open world format. As a fan of the series and detectives in general, I was intrigued. And like any good gumshoe, I had questions. Frogwares? They had answers. Which Sergey Oganesyan, Producer and Comms Manager, gave me. He was actually very accommodating and shared loads of details, so it wasn’t too intense an interrogation.

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As bearded strategy game Dwarfheim drills down into its development strata, they’ve sent up some ore to be refined into shiny news. I’ve been digging around in the bucket for riches and found a nice chunk. The biggest nugget revealed that you will be able to invite friends to play multiplayer with you even if they don’t own the game.

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It’s been over two weeks since Kojima’s mad courier sim Death Stranding came out on PC, but during that time I’ve only just about managed to make it across Lake Knot to the game’s second big area.

It didn’t help that, once I’d arrived at the big port town and finished showering its first boss monster with a torrent of poop grenades, I decided to go all the way back across its first bit of map to finish up some extra delivery quests. But a big part of why it’s taken me so long to get to the other side of Lake Knot is that I can’t stop taking pictures with Death Stranding’s excellent photo mode.

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The 2012 browser game now has a Steam presence in Frog Fractions: Game Of The Decade Edition. It is, I suppose, an arcade game with an educational element – or perhaps more accurately a spoof of games with an educational element. You play as a wee frog who perches on a lilypad, defending your pond from waves of incoming flying insects by lashing out with your tongue.

The main gimmick is the scoring system, which eschews integers, and instead grants points in fractions, decimals, and indices – although it should be noted that you don’t have to understand fractions to play the game, and it will not teach you to understand them either. And nothing else ever happens.

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Twenty-five years ago, legendary Magic creator Richard Garfield had another card game in the works: The Great Dalmuti, a medieval spin on the trick-taking game President. Outside of a brief reprint in 2005, it’s faded into gaming history—but now it’s back with a shiny new coat of paint from the Forgotten Realms. io9…

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As you get ready to attend the all-digital GDC Summer this week leave time to check out the GDC Puzzle Challenge, a daily brainteaser (with prizes) designed to get your problem-solving juices flowing! ...

In short, developers that launch a game for the PlayStation 5 can count on their players using one of Sony†™s new DualSense controllers to play. ...

The Muv-Luv series debuted all the way back in 2003, but its popularity in Japan hasn’t faded. Soon, fans will be able to enjoy two new figures by FREEing.

If you know FREEing, you likely also know which kind of figures to expect, as the manufacturer is well-known for its models in bunny girl costumes, usually in massive 1/4 scale and priced accordingly.

The announcement was made directly on the Muv-Luv series’ official Twitter account. 

It’s been announced via a post on the official PlayStation Blog that Spider-Man will be coming to Marvel’s Avengers as a post-launch hero in early 2021. He will be available to download at no additional cost and the character will be exclusive to the PS4/PS5 versions of Marvel’s Avengers.

Crystal Dynamics also shared some tiny details on how Spider-Man will play once he’s added into the game.

For example, when Spider-Man is flying through the air on his web line, Crystal Dynamics wants players to feel “graceful and light” with a variety of web configurations and gadgets that can significantly affect the way you traverse environments.

The crowdfunding campaign for Rabbit & Bear Studios’ JRPG Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is continuing to chew stretch goals, and new information has been revealed.

Today we learn more about the battle system directly from an update published on Kickstarter.

Apparently, the turn-based battle system has quite a lot of depth, as you can read below.

In Eiyuden Chronicle, characters will automatically be placed in formations that match each battlefield’s elevation differences, obstacles, and other unique features. So while this is a turn-based RPG, the dev team is striving for battles that really pull you into the scene.

It’s not just skin deep, either:

• Snipers and mages can attack from vantage points.
• Characters can hide behind cover to protect themselves and support comrades
• Mages can use magic to burn away the grass, or sunder the land and affect topography with earthquakes. Terrain matters in this game and can be used to gain the upper hand.

On top of that, we hear more about the New Game Plus feature.

“First, New Game Plus will feature a significant boost in difficulty and different attack patterns for existing bosses. Additionally, should you still find the New Game Plus difficulty too easy, players will be able to set a variety of handicaps to make the game even more challenging.

Naturally, New Game Plus wouldn’t be complete without the ability to carry over your characters from your previous game.”

In other Eiyuden Chronicle news, the game has now passed $2.6 million, which means that the full orchestra has been unlocked.

Baal makes their return in Diablo Immortal

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