There’s a bit of a Halloween theme to October’s Games with Gold, as you’d expect. As ever, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Gold membership.
EVE Online fortunes can be made or broken in a manner of minutes. A few seconds of inattentiveness can cause the loss of ships and cargo worth billions of ISK. A lucky item drop or the discovery of a hidden cache of resources can secure a player’s finances for months. Then there are patch notes—updates to the base…
Mind earlier this month, when Elon Musk was going on about putting coins in your brain to save memories? Mind Scanners, the next game from Yes, Your Grace devs Brave At Night, sees that grim future through to the finish line – presenting a world of folks who’ve replaced everything from their eyes to their hearts with dodgy electronics.
And you? You’re the lucky sod who gets to fix ’em up when the warranty expires.
It’s been a strange and murky road for monster-bashing diablike Torchlight 3. But even after the closure of series creators Runic games, a pivot away from the persistent online plans of Torchlight Frontiers, and a brief stint in Steam Early Access, Echtra’s loot-grabbing threequel is finally preparing to face the cold light of a full release this October 13th – and it’s brought some fancy fairies along for the ride.
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop with a high refresh rate display and buckets of storage, then have Newegg got the deal for you. Today only, you can get $500 off this MSI GF65 Thin, which comes with a full-fat RTX 2060 graphics chip (not one of Nvidia’s energy efficient Max-Q versions) to make the most of its 120Hz 1920×1080 display, a 1TB SSD, plus a Core i7 CPU and a whopping 32GB of RAM. Normally $1900, this well-specced machine can now be had for $1400.
It can be hard to find a powerful gaming laptop for less than £1000 / $1000 these days, so to help you find one that can still play games to a decent extent, we’ve put together this list of all the best budget gaming laptop deals you can buy right now. We’ve looked at loads of gaming laptop deals in both the UK and US, the ones you’ll find below are what we think represent the best value for money. While most will struggle to play games on max settings, there are still a couple of RTX 2060 laptops to be found in this price range, as well as plenty with high refresh rate displays. So read on for all of this week’s best budget gaming laptop deals happening in the UK and US.
After plumbing the depths of PlayStations for a fortnight, Spelunky 2 arrived on PC today. Grab your whip and hat, and hit the Moon to explore new dungeons full of monsters, treasures, and ways to die while doing something you initially thought was quite clever. Online multiplayer isn’t in at launch, mind, so you’ll have to before you can experience the comfort/mischief/catastrophe of playing with a pal not within punching distance.
Meet four more members of the Scarlet Nexus team and learn about their unique abilities in the upcoming "brain punk" action RPG.
The post Four New Characters Introduced to the Scarlet Nexus Team appeared first on Siliconera.
People who get the Spider-Man Miles Morales PS4 game can use their save data on the PS5 with that version too.
The post Spider-Man Miles Morales PS4 Saves Work on PS5s appeared first on Siliconera.
Torchlight 3 will be on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in October 2020, with the Nintendo Switch version trailing behind.
The post Torchlight 3 Will Launch in October on Most Platforms appeared first on Siliconera.
Hit J-Rock act Bump of Chicken collaborated with Pokemon Sword and Shield and anime studio BONES to produce a music video commemorating the release of the Crown Tundra expansion.
The post Bump of Chicken x Pokemon Anime Music Video Released appeared first on Siliconera.
Predator: Hunting Grounds has received its latest free update, and it brings with it a new map and gameplay mode for players to dig into.
In a post to the official PlayStation Blog made on Sept. 29, Hunting Grounds’ developer IllFonic revealed that the update was live. With it would come a chunk of free new content for players to check out, alongside some tweaks to the title’s overall gameplay such as an increase to all players’ loadout limits.
In terms of big new additions, one of the two most noteworthy add-ons is a new map titled “Excavation.” Set at a dig site over-run by a mercenary group, the map will require players to deal with said mercenaries while uncovering what happened to the scientists there; or, in the case of the Predator, deal with those digging into matters that don’t need more noses in it.
While it still has small pockets of open jungle, the map is primarily set in a series of tight caves and tunnels, forcing human and Predator players alike to utilize close-quarters combat and choke-point tactics to win against opponents both player and computer-controlled. This means using blindspots, perches and other limited vantage points as often and efficiently as possible, and watching out for said points while exploring.
Earlier today The Pokemon Company held a livestreamed presentation to show off the next part of the Pokemon Sword and Shield expansion pass, The Crown Tundra.
As the name suggests, the new story content will throw players into an ice-filled area with brand-new features and legendary Pokemon to capture.
After the presentation, new official screenshots and key art were released to the press and there’s a lot to go through. Most of the images are just of Pokemon battles but you can get a look at Gigantamax Melmetal and Galarian Slowking, who looks rather interesting, to say the least.
You can click through the gallery of images down below to see how The Crown Tundra is shaping up.
The Crown Tundra will become available on Oct 22 for those that have purchased the expansion pass for Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield. If you want to read our review on the first part of the expansion pass, The Isle of Armor, you can do that here.
Today Microsoft announced the new batch of Games With Gold that Xbox Live Gold subscribers will receive during the month of October with no additional purchase required.
We’re getting Maid of Sker and Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut for Xbox One, while Costume Quest and phinx and the Cursed Mummy will be playable on Xbox One (via backward compatibility) and Xbox 360.
If you’re unfamiliar with the games, you can check out a trailer and blurbs from Microsoft below.
Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut
Paying homage to classic ‘80s trash horror, play as Skullface, an adorably demented villain, out to terrorize camp counselors and any other blocky victims he finds. New dimensions of absurd terror and over 300 fiendish puzzles await in this isometric puzzle game.
Maid of Sker
Do not panic, don’t even breathe! Set in a remote hotel with a macabre and gory history, use stealth tactics to stay alive against a cult of sound-based enemies. Inspired by chilling tales in Welsh folklore, do your best to survive and brave the nightmares of the Quiet Ones.
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy
Dungeon crawler Torchlight III will be leaving Steam Early Access and launches for PC and consoles on Oct. 13, developer Echtra Games announced today.
The action RPG will be coming to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on Oct. 13 with a Nintendo Switch version coming later this year. The game will cost $39.99, $10 more than currently through Steam Early Access.
Each version of the game will come with an exclusive fairy pet with Steam getting a violet glittersprite, Xbox One getting a verdant glittersprite, PlayStation 4 getting an azure glittersprite, and Nintendo Switch getting an ashen glittersprite.
Torchlight III takes place a century after the previous game with new adventurers required to save the world of Novastraia from invasion by the Netherim and its allies.
It will include online four-player cooperative multiplayer, offline single-player, three acts, fully customizable forts, four hero classes, five relics, a pet system with skills and gear, a challenging end-game experience called “Fazeer Shah’s Dun-Djinn,” and more.
The game was originally called Torchlight Frontiers and was expected to contain more MMO-like aspects with a free-to-play system, but was shifted to a fully-fledged sequel last January. It was then released in Steam Early Access last June.
You can now boost your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership by up to four months for only £20 through EA Play. It's all thanks to the same conversion trick that many took advantage of with their remaining Xbox Live Gold subscriptions.
It works like this because when Microsoft announced that EA Play would be included as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions from 10th November, they also confirmed that anyone with an existing EA Play membership would have their remaining time converted to Game Pass Ultimate.
“If you've purchased both Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play through the Microsoft Store when the EA Play member benefit unlocks for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members, your EA Play subscription will be cancelled, and any remaining time over 50 days will be rounded up and converted to the nearest month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at a ratio of three to one,” it states on the EA Play with Xbox Game Pass FAQ.
Torchlight 3 will launch for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 13th October, with a Nintendo Switch version due before the end of 2020.
When it arrives, it'll be priced £30.99. It's currently available for Steam Early Access priced a little cheaper, at £23.79.
Set 100 years after Torchlight 2, this new dungeon-crawling sequel will feature offline single-player and online four-player options, customisable forts and, of course, pets.
The launch of Crusader Kings 3 earlier this month was an exciting moment for many, promising hours of intrigue, backstabbing and battles - but for one fan of the series, the moment brought mixed emotions.
"Feeling very bittersweet about tonight and the release of Crusader Kings 3," a user called Mr_Minot posted on the Crusader Kings subreddit. "The last conversation I had with my little brother consisted of him begging me to start a new game of Crusader Kings 2 with him."
The post, made by Atlanta resident and mental health therapist Grant Sparks, explained that Grant's brother Lucas had also been a huge fan of the series, and the two brothers had put thousands of hours into Crusader Kings 2 together. Grant provided the war chest, Lucas carried out the campaigns, and together they conquered vast swathes of the world - with neither ever betraying the other. But, tragically, it all came to an end far too soon.
UPDATE 30/9/20: Transferring creatures from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Home will come with a cooldown period you can shorten by paying PokéCoins.
The suggestion this process might include a paid-for element was raised yesterday by a Japanese support article posted by The Pokémon Company which referenced undetailed PokéCoin costs. (PokéCoins are the premium currency used in Go which can be earned in small amounts daily or bought using real-world money.)
The Pokémon Company has now updated to say the payment refers to the ability to shorten the time between transfers to Pokémon Home (thanks, Serebii). Exact PokéCoin costs and cooldown timeframes are yet to be detailed.
Stepping into the shoes of fan favorite Walking Dead characters like Daryl Dixon, Rick Grimes, Michonne Hawthorne, and Carol Peletier through the magic of VR certainly has its moments. The Walking Dead: Onslaught doesn’t offer nearly as nuanced an experience as its spinoff counterpart Saints & Sinners from earlier this year, but by focusing much more on the action and channeling popular elements of AMC’s TV series, it aims to scratch a different itch altogether. Weirdly, though, a lot of its mechanics don’t feel built for VR, and it never does much to contribute to Walking Dead lore. So it’s just fine if you’re here for a good old-fashioned zombie-themed arcade shooter with a lot of guts and only a few brains.
Oddworld Inhabitants has announced that its remake of classic PlayStation platformer Abe's Oddysee is all set to make its debut on Switch. Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty will launch on the Nintendo platform on October 27 in both physical and digital download formats.
Originally released in 2014 on PS4, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty is a ground-up remake of the first puzzle platformer in the Oddworld series, as put-upon Mudokan Abe embarks upon an epic quest to free himself and his brethren from RuptureFarms, where the Mudokans are set to be turned into delicious treats for the nefarious Glukkons.
It's been a bit since we've heard anything substantial about Balan Wonderworld, but Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka recently sat down with IGN Southeast Asia to hammer out some of the game's details and explain his design philosophy.
To frame the conversation a bit, Naka is all-in on Balan, citing this as his "once chance" to prove himself to Square Enix as a developer. He says that Square Enix "has an RPG image," so he is humbled by the fact that he's able to make a marquee action platformer for the publisher. There's even going to be a novelization in Japanese and English that will help add to the lore of the world. He's so all-in, in fact, that he formed the studio "Balan Company," which he hopes will continue on with the genre after Balan Wonderworld.
Naka says that since players can use costume powers (the game's core mechanic) whenever they want (instead of designing levels around restricted abilities), a lot of different strategies are possible. It seems like some of these more intricate moves will be more graceful on next-gen hardware, as Naka confirms that the game will run on 4K at 60FPS on those machines: as well as make use of haptic feedback.
Well, it sure looks like Balan Wonderworld is getting plenty of chances to succeed, if the spread of platforms is anything to go by. Square Enix is releasing it on just about every system under the sun, including all current and next-gen consoles, on top of a PC port. I just hope it's good! It seems delightful.
Nintendo's retro compilation Super Mario 3D All-Stars is celebrating a second week in the top spot of the UK Charts, having fended off not one, but two of 2K Games' Mafia re-releases.
Both Mafia: Definitive Edition and Mafia Trilogy debuted in the top ten at numbers three and six respectively. Recent releases such as Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers and Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 have continued to hold onto steadfast positions in the premier league. The rest of the top ten is rounded out by chart veterans such as Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto V, and regular Switch sellers Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Minecraft.
As we head into October, the heavy-hitters will start arriving on store shelves, vying for holiday cash. This week sees the launch of Activision's Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, and given the UK's incessant love affair with the mad marsupial, it seems almost a given that the sequel will be rocketing straight into the number one spot
Last week Wizards of the Coast said that they were "monitoring" standard play for Magic: The Gathering Arena, and would report back with any potential bans to smooth out the meta. Well, they did: Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is now banned from standard (best-of-one and best-of-three) and singleton play.
Uro was released with the Theros set in January of this year and caused all sorts of problems due to its power level. In short, it did too much, offering players three life, card draw, land ramp and the ability to be recalled later as a powerful creature that recurred all of the aforementioned abilities again. The concept, in theory, was that he would be tougher to cast: but with an obscene amount of ramp in the game (Goose and recently, Cobra), it was extremely easy to cast Uro on turn two and outpace most aggro decks.
Here's Wizards' decision in their own words: "In order to weaken these post-rotation ramp strategies, we’re choosing to ban Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath in Standard. Our goal is to bring these decks down to a level where they are still appealing and competitive, but where natural metagame forces are enough to keep them in check. In general, we prefer this approach to overshooting the mark and removing an archetype from viability. However, we've certainly noted this weekend's strong results for the Four-Color Omnath deck and will continue to watch how that strategy and the overall metagame adjust in the coming weeks."
A new Assassin's Creed Valhalla story trailer has arrived bringing with it a deep dive into the legacy that is Eivor. Additionally, Ubisoft also revealed a new podcast documentary series called Echoes of Valhalla that talks more about the historical inspiration behind the latest tale.
We've seen quite a bit of Eivor previously, but the latest video goes deeper into who they are in terms of their impact and relation to their identity as a Viking and what happens when duty interferes with family.
Click here to watch embedded mediaAfter Eivor's clan was driven out of Norway because of war and a dimming allocation of resources, it's up to Eivor to carve out a new future for their clan and place in the kingdoms of England.
Throughout Valhalla, players will transform into Eivor as they encounter notable and powerful names in history, including the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. There are also a few mysteries to uncover as well, including a looming threat that is intricately tied to England and its destiny.
According to the video's official description:
Click to watch embedded media Did you check out our New Gameplay Today yesterday for the free-to-play Genshin Impact? Well, you have a second chance to ask all your questions and get immersed in the action today as Dan Tack continues his adventure through the wild open world.
Strap in to do some extreme cooking, feed some ducks, slash some slimes, and sail through the sky. And that's just the start of things! Will we earn enough currency today for a "gacha" pull? What the hell is a gacha pull anyway? What actually is Genshin Impact? Find out all this and more on today's extreme stream!
Genshin Impact is currently available on PlayStation 4, PC, and mobile devices.
We'll be going live at 12 p.m. CT so be sure to join us in the chat and let's have some fun! If you can't get enough of our live shows, remember to subscribe on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook to get notified when we go live each week!
Tilda Swinton in The Human Voice. | Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
Tilda Swinton stars in The Human Voice, a 30-minute Jean Cocteau adaptation
Image: Ubisoft
The game, due at the end of this year, will allow players to choose between a male or female protagonist
Image: Walt Disney Pictures
Barry Jenkins will direct the photorealistic follow-up
In this 2020 GDC Summer talk, Kitfox Games' Victoria Tran explains how developers can build game communities with inherent kindness in mind. ...
We might not end the month by trick or treating, but the spirit of Halloween is alive and well in October’s TV premieres. Netflix follows up the breakout success of The Haunting Of Hill House with The Haunting Of Bly Manor; Hulu beckons viewers to its own bloody anthology series with Monsterland; the hunt for the…
Take-Two and World Wrestling Entertainment are headed to trial after a judge ruled WWE 2K games copied the work of an artist responsible for some of pro wrestler Randy Orton’s tattoos.
MachineGames, Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks
Image: Riot Games
Image: Blumhouse