September 2020

Sackboy: A Big Adventure is still a few months out from release, but a new trailer offers fans a glimpse at what the next-gen title will bring to the table.

Streamed by PlayStation through their official YouTube channel on Sept. 29, the trailer sees the game’s design director Ned Waterhouse detail how he and the team at Sumo Digital have strived to make the game stand out. This meant not only improving on the visuals and aesthetic of Craftworld seen in the original Little Big Planet titles, but giving Sackboy a plethora of new methods for platforming and exploring the game’s many 3D levels.

This also meant ensuring the game could handle a high fidelity to go along with these new features.

“We knew that to create a great platform game, we needed a character that was incredibly responsive,” Waterhouse says. “So we said from day one that this game has to run at 60 frames per second. as well as being incredibly responsive, we wanted a set of controls that gave you loads of options so that you could choose how you played the game and define your own style of play.

It’s not all talk either. As Waterhouse speaks to the defining features of the game, new bits of footage play out from different segments of Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Sackboy can be seen running, jumping and smashing his way through enemies, obstacles and environmental elements alike. Not only that, but the game’s charming craft aesthetic is on full display, with buildings and enemies made of cardboard, knitted material and similar materials rendered to an absurd degree.

Waterhouse promises there will be more looks at the game coming in the next few weeks as well, so fans can expect similar snippets and previews of the game before its release.

The ship had already sailed on Among Us.

The cloak-and-dagger party game, fashioned in the tradition of classic social deduction activities like Mafia and Werewolf, was initially released in the summer of 2018 exclusively for Androids and iPhones to a winsome, but mostly neglected response. The gameplay was always solid but, for whatever reason – be it the exclusively to mobile platforms, the local-only multiplayer, or the limited marketing abilities of developer Innersloth's small team – Among Us didn’t catch on with the general gaming public. By the time it hit Steam a year later, with online multiplayer patched in, nobody expected it to become a runaway success.

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Fast forward to 2020, however, and Among Us has quickly established itself as one of the preeminent party games on Twitch and YouTube. After an entirely inauspicious launch, Among Us has now racked up over 75,000 reviews on Steam, and is averaging hundreds of thousands concurrent players around the clock. This isn't a new story; indie games go viral all the time – just look at Surgeon Simulator, Escape From Tarkov, or Getting Over It. But it is rare for a title to sit dormant for multiple years before inexplicably catching fire. Before Innersloth knew it, they had the hottest game on the planet.

"The first thing we really noticed was a Twitch stream from Sodapoppin," says Forest Willard, programmer and co-founder of Innersloth. "We had various moments where we were like, 'We're doing well,' but it was that point where we saw that a lot of people and other streamers started to climb onboard."

It's been over two years since developer Edmund McMillen unveiled Repentance, the third and final ("for real this time") expansion for The Binding of Isaac, and now, to celebrate the base game's ninth anniversary, McMillen has popped back up to reveal a little more.

Initially, Repentance was announced to be a reworking of the extremely well-regarded Antibirth mod for The Binding of Isaac (it's being developed alongside Antibirth's original creator Vinh), albeit tweaked to "make it canon" and expanded with "a ton more content". However, that "ton more content", says McMillen in a new Steam post, is now substantial enough - "bigger than Rebirth was to the OG flash game - that Repentance is "basically a sequel at this point".

As detailed on Repentance's new Steam page, the expansion will introduce new locations, "horrible new enemies and bosses, weapon combos you've never synergised before and items [Isaac has] never seen... unholy terrors from his wildest dreams and worst nightmares!".

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At Tokyo Games Show this past weekend, Sega released a new trailer for frantic puzzler Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, which will bring its block-and-blob-busting hybrid gameplay to PC and consoles this winter.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 will feature another goofy Adventure Mode, bringing together a cast of delightful and charming characters who find themselves befuddled by the collision of two all-time favourite franchises: Puyo Puyo and Tetris, naturally. The all-new "Skill Battle" mode will utilise character's specific abilities to give them an edge on the battlefield, while in-game Item Cards will offer various buffs and perks to help you out when things start getting a little to "busy" for comfort.

Sony says that Sackboy has more than 60 costumes to discover, providing all sorts of options for customization and snazzy dress. But, you'll need to shell out an extra $20 to outfit Sackboy in some of Sony's more iconic looks.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure's digital deluxe edition comes with a handful of pack-in goodies but none are more alluring than costumes for some recent high-profile PS4 exclusives. Buying the $80 extra-good edition comes with skins for Ghost of Tsushima's Jin, Death Stranding's Sam Porter Bridges, Detroit: Become Human's Connor, and Days Gone's Deacon St. John.

That's right -- if you think Sackboy should have awful facial hair, you can Hideo Kojima-fye him.

Dragon Quest devotees might be pleased to hear that Square Enix has confirmed an English localisation of mobile battler Dragon Quest Tact. Having previously launched in Japan this past summer, the strategic monster-scrapper is now headed west on iOS and Android devices.

Despite its moniker, Dragon Quest Tact has nothing to do with offering constructive criticism without committing a social faux-pas. In fact, it is a grid-based battle game which sees players gather up famous monsters and critters from across the fantasy RPG franchise, before sending them into battle, managing each of your minions' strengths and weaknesses to ensure victory.

"The Saxons hunger for Norse blood. Let's give them a taste, brothers." That's what Eivor says near the end of this Assassin's Creed Valhalla story trailer. It's some incredible spin considering it's the Vikings who are invading and colonizing England.

Even though restraint isn't the Vikings' strong suit, you'll have to wait until 87 seconds into this trailer before something explicitly violent happens. (But that's only if you don't count that snowtop murder thing at the very beginning which is more of a sizzle reel effect and less about the arc of the trailer.) Don't bore us, get to the chorus! And the chorus is people getting thwonked upside the head with a knockoff Hammer of Thor.

All in all, this is a good trailer, though. It has me ready to play Assassin's Creed Valhalla in little more than a month. I can't wait to see if Valhalla can live up to the lofty expectations of being a next-gen successor to Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Those are some big shoes to fill.

First-person combat and exploration is just the beginning

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Adjustments to Pokémon Go play coming Oct. 1

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Should every Fall Guy have a crown?

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PC, Xbox One and PS4 versions on Oct. 13; Switch later in 2020

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Talk about the pricing of games for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S has been a hot topic with many studios confirming that this new price point will be a common occurrence for select games. Among the upcoming titles with the new $70 price, as confirmed by Counterplay Games and Gearbox Publishing, is Godfall. 

The studio behind Godfall has confirmed the pricing for the three editions of the game coming out on November 12, with pre-orders now available. For those interested in scooping up the upcoming title, here are the three different versions that are available to pre-purchase: 

• Godfall Standard - $69.99
• Godfall Deluxe Edition - $89.99
• Godfall Ascended - $99.99

All versions, if pre-ordered, will come with a special Godfall Starter Pack: 

• Godfall Starter Pack: Set of Augments and Trinkets
• Chrome skins for three Valorplates
• Zer0's longsword from Borderlands
• Yellow Valorplate skin for Typhon

The Deluxe Edition will come with the first expansion and the Ascended version will offer all of the above in addition to a red Valorplate skin, a Gold Weapon Pack, a Gold Shield, a Gold Royal Banner, and the Zodiac Knight Lobby title. 

The studio also shared a new trailer with more on Godfall and the different pre-order bonuses: 

Yakuza: Like a Dragon will be releasing a few months later for PlayStation 5 users, but PS4 game owners will receive a free upgrade when March 2, 2021 rolls around. Unfortunately for those planning on scooping up the PS4 version of the game in November, those save files won't transfer to the PS5 in March. 

Ryu ga Gotoku Studio (RGG Studio) took to Twitter to clarify that though both the physical and digital version of the PS4 title will be upgraded to the PS5 version for free, the save data between the two generations will not also transfer. 

To clarify, physical owners of Yakuza: Like a Dragon on PS4 can also use the original disc to upgrade to the PS5 version when it releases on March 2, 2021.

Save data will not be transferable between the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game.

Airship is currently seeking a Senior VFX artist to help drive the creation and quality of VFX across the studio on multiple projects. ...

In this thoughtful, detailed interview, Matt Uelmen, composer for Runic Games' Torchlight discusses the tactics he took in creating the music for the game, and his experiences on Diablo and WoW at Blizzard. ...

In Hades, each Infernal Arm you use to escape from Hell has its own unique abilities. The different weapons—combined with the various perks and god-given boons you can choose and the artifacts you can equip—ensure no two escape attempts are quite the same. Like the gods, I do not play favorites when it comes to…

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Nobody actually likes their internet service provider, particularly because we rarely have much choice in the matter. But if you rely on Comcast for your high-speed internet, at least it can now earn you a free pass to the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War beta.

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Diablo IV director Luis Barriga and lead system designer David Kim returned today to share their progress on Blizzard’s upcoming dungeon-crawling sequel by way of a new quarterly check-in. This included a look at the updated Diablo IV skill tree, which is literally a tree.

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During this year’s Republican National Convention, the only out queer person to give a speech was Richard Grenell, the first openly gay person to hold a cabinet-level position when he was temporarily appointed Director of National Intelligence earlier this year. Though he was named a senior advisor for LGBTQ outreach…

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Tuesday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

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Elite Dangerous

has always been about ships. Flying ’em, fighting ’em, crashing ’em into asteroids because you forgot flight assist was turned off. Why would you ever want to get out and walk? With the Odyssey expansion promising just that, Frontier’s latest dev diary has outlined the trading, scavenging, gunslinging and mingling you’ll be getting up to should you choose to leave the comfort of the cockpit.

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Yup. That seems about right. After evicting the Queen and erecting a colossal monolith in Melbourne, the unknowable architect behind Microsoft Flight Simulator‘s world gen now appears to have pulled at the very fabric of the Earth, ripping a massive hole out of a field in South America. At least, I very much hope this is a simple computing error – has anyone actually been outside to check lately?

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Read some stories from the Cygames localization team on translating Dragalia Lost, Granblue Fantasy, and Shadowverse.

The post Cygames Localization on the Fun and Difficulties of Translating appeared first on Siliconera.

Fans in Japan will get to ATATATATA on the go when Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2 comes to smartphones.

The post Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 Mobile Gets its First Trailer appeared first on Siliconera.

Update: Nintendo of America announced last night via a Tweet that Jump Rope Challenge will not be removed from the Switch eShop and will be available for download “until further notice.”

You can find the original article below.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Nintendo thought it would be a good idea to release Jump Rope Challenge to the world. It’s a free downloadable title that’s available on the Switch eShop that lets you use Joy-Con to exercise by hopping with a virtual jump rope.

Today Good Smile Company made the previously-revealed 2B Nendoroid from NieR Automata available for pre-orders.

You can find it at Good Smile’s own North American and Japanese stores priced at $59.99 and 6,200 yen respectively.

She releases in Japan in February 2021 while the North American store will ship in March.

Below you can check out what she looks like.

The latest Diablo 4 quarterly update is all about talents and skill trees. Most notably though we got a closer look at what the new skill trees will look like and it’s quite striking.

The update begins with an update on the balance between how items vs. skills will effect your character’s power. Luis Barriga, lead designer of Diablo 4, admits that previously they were weighing legendary items too heavily and that they will look to tune it so that character builds based on the skills and talents you pick are more impactful than they currently are.

Barriga notes that you can expect a more detailed discussion about legendary items in a future post as they haven’t yet come to a final decision exact how items vs. skills will be balanced, and how item progression will work exactly.

Next the update dives into player skills and talents, using the Sorceress’s skill tree as an example.

Disney has reportedly chosen the director to take charge of the upcoming sequel to 2019’s blockbuster film, The Lion King. Barry Jenkins will helm the live-action adaptation’s untitled follow-up. He previously directed Moonlight, an Oscar-winning movie that tackles many themes such as racism and sexual identity through the eyes of an African American.

Not many specific details were shared when it comes to the plot, but according to Deadline, the narrative of The Lion King sequel will “further explore the mythology of the characters, including Mufasa’s origin story.”

Jenkins’ business partners, Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak, are also expected to hop on board The Lion King train as producers.

Barry Jenkins also commented on the new role, showing off his excitement for the project:

“Helping my sister raise two young boys during the ’90s, I grew up with these characters. Having the opportunity to work with Disney on expanding this magnificent tale of friendship, love and legacy while furthering my work chronicling the lives and souls of folk within the African diaspora is a dream come true.”

There’s no word on the actors that will be in the sequel just yet, but the first film had an all-star voice cast that featured celebrity talents such as Donald Glover, Beyonce, Seth Rogen, James Earl Jones, and Billy Eichner.

Considering James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa, there’s a big chance that he could be coming back to reprise the role, but if Mufasa is meant to be younger in this iteration, there’s also a chance that somebody could be replacing him.

Come the arrival of Elite Dangerous' major Odyssey expansion early next year, Commanders suffering from a severe case of butt-clench will finally be able to clamber out their cockpits and step foot on solid ground; planets we've already had a glimpse at, but now Frontier has offered a more thorough look at the interstellar japes awaiting players as they first-person their way around social hubs such as space stations and settlements as part of its latest developer video.

Players wanting to stretch their legs somewhere a little more lively than the relatively barren wastes of Elite Dangerous' new explorable planets can disembark at the likes of outposts, planetports, spaceports, even dustbowl-like settlements back on terra firms, and here they'll be able to find work, undertake missions, or simply do a bit of socialising with NPCs.

Odyssey will, of course, mark the first time Elite has had fully modelled and animated NPCS in-game (they'll be generated based on Elite's background simulation to reflect the dominant faction in a particular area), and they're able to move around, adding a bit of personality to the world, and giving players the opportunity to speak and interact with them.

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Mind Scanners is a point-and-click simulation game about "treating" the populace of a retro-futuristic megacity built in a crater, and it's worth watching if you've been meaning to fill the Papers, Please void with something fresh. At a glance, two things about this low-key creepy game stood out to me.

The first – as shown throughout the trailer – is that your physical interactions in the world are playful and tactile in a way that looks fun. You're using "arcade-style devices" to treat patients in The Structure.

Second, Steam has a few intriguing bullet points about how you can report or join a resistance group, and how you need to "gain the trust of The Structure if you want to see your daughter again."

There's some cool stuff brewing in here. The Outer Zone is aiming for an early 2021 release of Mind Scanners, but before then, the team will have a limited-time Steam demo on October 7.

"Welcome to The Structure, get to work" is such a 2020 mood.

If Elite Dangerous is the final frontier, then its Horizons expansion is the free frontier. Starting in a month, anyway.

Elite Dangerous is getting an update next month that rolls the Horizons add-on into the base game on all platforms. You could look at this and say it's permanently free. But, it might be more appropriate to say that Horizons is just part of the standard Elite Dangerous experience from now on. 

Whichever way you view it, Elite Dangerous is going to get bigger on October 27. For anyone who already purchased Horizons, they'll get Azure paint jobs that can be used on all ships in the game. Horizons will remain on sale until October 26, effectively only so people have a last chance to buy those Azure paint jobs. That doesn't seem like an amazing use of $30 but I'm not in charge of your personal finances.

Horizons is Elite Dangerous' only real content expansion, but this shrewd move is clearly a means of onboarding new players before 2021's Odyssey add-on. There's a lot to be excited about when it comes to Odyssey, as this is the expansion that'll allow you to ditch the spaceship and explore planets on foot. Developer Frontier is knocking down barriers to get deep into the Elite Dangerous ecosystem in hopes that it'll translate to Odyssey sales. It makes sense. When a game like Elite Dangerous gets its hooks in someone, it usually doesn't let up for a long time.

The Binding of Isaac: Repentance will give fans a ton more to chew on later this year. We still don't have a final date, but there's a Steam page and a blog post from Edmund McMillen with reassurances.

The DLC is "basically a sequel at this point" and it's "over 90% done," according to McMillen. For a more tangible frame of reference, Repentance is "bigger than Rebirth was to the OG Flash game."

"I've been working closely with the team [behind Antibirth] to ensure that this is the 'Sequel DLC' you've always wanted. The team has gone above and beyond and we're really proud of how the game is coming together and I have a feeling you're gunna shit your asses when you get your hands on it."

The Binding of Isaac is one of those everlasting games that will live on for many years even if – and I feel like it's still an "if" at this point – the official support comes to a close. It's such a passionate community.

"500 hours of new gameplay" almost sounds like a threat (I love it!), and big-picture, there's going to be "a full alternate path with brand new chapters and a new final boss and ending" to discover. Goddang!

We'll learn more about Repentance's chaotic new content with "quite a few" blogs in October.

Torchlight III didn't manage to get its hooks in me, so after the initial Early Access push on PC, I decided to step back and wait for big changes leading up to the 1.0 launch. Surprisingly, it's almost time.

Echtra Games is releasing the completed version of Torchlight III on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with further plans for Nintendo Switch penciled in for "later this year." It'll be $40.

From what I've seen, the studio has done a good job of listening to fans and making changes whenever and wherever it can. The story is finished with all three acts, there's an endgame and Contracts to grind, and equippable Relics were revamped to be a more meaningful and permanent part of character builds.

Is it enough? I'm not so sure. I'll want to start a fresh save with 1.0, but on paper at least, I'm expecting a more compelling and fleshed-out ARPG experience than what we got at the start of Early Access.

That said, Torchlight III is going to have a tough time living up to its name. Big shoes to fill.

According to a Bloomberg report

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A 20-year-old series finally lets the characters grow up and say goodbye to their fans

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Nature is scary, especially when its flora and fauna are capable of supernatural feats. The Pokémon Company wants to make sure we don’t forget this harsh reality in the next Pokémon Sword and Shield expansion, which introduces a terrifying new addition to the Slowpoke family.

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Welcome to Terrifying Characters, a mod for Crusader Kings III that turns the otherwise fairly human-ish rulers of the game into limb-addled nightmare creatures.

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In May 2019, Cyberpunk 2077 developers CD Projekt Red promised staff that there would be no mandatory crunch as the game neared completion. A month later, the same promise was made. Now? A report says they’re being told it’s time to crunch.

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