October 2020

I am not usually one for horror games. I don’t like jump scares and I prefer my video games to be chill and relaxing instead of stressing me out to high heaven. To be honest, I’m still not sure why I decided to put myself through panstasz’s all-caps World Of Horror last week when the name itself would normally be a big, all-caps “Nope” for me. But it was on Game Pass, and I’ve been mildly intrigued by its 1-bit, Junji Ito-esque art style ever since I clapped eyes on it (through cracks in my fingers, natch), and with the autumn sun blazing in through my window over the weekend, I thought, “What’s the worst that could happen?” A lot, it turns out.

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Well hellOoooOo to yooOoOou this spOoooOoky weekend. Ghost noise, innit. Happy Halloween! In a fine stroke of serendipity, today also has a full moon (a full awooooon? werewolf noise, yeah), the blue moon. This could well be the best day of the year. Enjoy!

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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All it took was an innocuous tweet from From Software about Elden Ring, one of the most anticipated role-playing games in development, to set fans off.

It's fair to say there hasn't been much news on Elden Ring, From Software's collaboration with A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin, since it was announced at E3 2019 with the trailer, below.

Since then, From Software fans have hoped for new information at every possible juncture, but alas, nothing.

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Capcom has released six minutes of new Monster Hunter Rise gameplay.

The video, below, gives us a brief overview of the flow of a hunt, wielding a Great Sword and with two Palamutes. The target is the bird wyvern Aknosom, in the Shrine Ruins. "Aknosom is a tricky foe," Capcom said, "but thankfully, the Great Sword has a few new tricks up its sleeve."

Monster Hunter Rise is the Nintendo Switch exclusive entry in the hugely successful series, due out on 26th March 2021.

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It's an exhilarating time to play games. The Xbox Series X and PS5! The next generation of consoles is almost in our hands! It's time to say goodbye to loading screens and hello to fun new possibilities.

New consoles have historically meant new controllers, though. As a disabled gamer with accessibility requirements, the news of a next-generation controller creates fear and uncertainty, and these emotions are echoed by many disabled gamers. I've experienced this fear during the previous generation's move to the Dualshock 4. For a while, I thought my only option was to hang up my gaming gloves. But in fact, that was when I discovered the gaming accessibility community and realised that the gaming industry was working to become more inclusive.

And it has. This generation has given us games with ground-breaking accessibility settings like Gears 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and The Last of Us 2. And now, these next-gen consoles will be the first generation where accessibility thinking is truly present from the start, ready for game developers to innovate further.

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Are the nights drawing in faster in your neck of the woods? Here in the U.K. we have put the clock backs, which lead to dark mornings and darker evenings. This can be tough on the old noodle, and I've found myself losing balance on numerous occasions this week. But I have a few good friends - both here on site and in real life - and they have done their best to keep me on an even keel... well, as even as possible.

As we enter November and the dawning of a brand new gaming generation, I hope that you and yours and handling the tail-end of 2020 well. Stay well-fed, warm, hydrated, and entertained, and be sure to engage with friends and loved ones, keeping everyone's spirits high even when the temperatures are getting a little low. Also, wear thermal underwear, like in old cartoons, that should do the trick.

Oh yeah, right, video games. This week I have been playing two titles for review, D3 Publisher's Onee Chanbara Origin, and Ubisoft's Watch Dogs: Legion. Look out for my thoughts on both of these titles soon. But before then, dive into the comments below and fill us in on the games you've been playing this week. This is one of my favourite articles of the week, as well as one of Destructoid's most consistently popular, so let's keep the party going!

Have a safe and pleasant weekend, from all of us at Destructoid.

Have you ever wanted to go on a turn-based RPG adventure with the League of Legends roster? Well, that dream will soon be a reality. Airship Syndicate's Ruined King: A League of Legends Story is coming in early 2021 to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

If there’s been one small positive about this year, it’s the reliable rollout of once console-locked Halo games on PC through Halo: The Master Chief Collection. With Halo 4 currently on the launchpad, 343 Industries have chosen to extend the game’s testing (“flighting”) period by another week, with the Insider client now testing crossplay support for Halo Reach.

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I do love a good RTS from time to time. It’s just that, well, I start to lose focus as soon as I’m juggling a dozen units or more, my perfect opening collapsing into a panic of select-all death balls. Fortunately, that’s not a problem I ever see myself having in Sokpop’s King Pins, with the Dutch indie rascals stripping the genre down into an adorably simple single-screen strategy puzzle for you and up to three pals.

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Look at this ragtag gang of champions

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Ruined King, the League of Legends-set RPG announced a little while back, now has a broad release window of "early 2021" for Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Steam and the Epic Games Store. There are free upgrades for those that own it on PS4 or Xbox One to the PS5 and Xbox Series S/X versions respectively, which are coming "soon thereafter".

Developed by Airship Syndicate, the studio behind Battle Chasers and the pleasant surprise that was Darksiders: Genesis, Ruined King is being published under the Riot Forge moniker - a kind of in-house publishing arm from Riot Games, specifically targeting "completable" games in the LoL universe, developed by other, non-Riot studios.

It's a turn-based RPG (separate to the other RPG-looking game Riot teased last year as 'Project F'), and single-player only, meaning no co-op or anything of the like. There are six playable characters, all champions from League of Legends - Miss Fortune, Braum, Illaoi, Yasuo, Ahri and Pyke, for those familiar with the MOBA - who you'll add to your group along the way and rotate in and out of a party of three. And it's set in Bilgewater and The Shadow Isles, which are two regions - an argey-bargey piratey one and a spooky underworld one - in the LoL world of Runeterra. Here's a fancy new trailer giving it a tease:

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Okay, so nobody was accusing Disc Room of being short on blades. But as Devolver Digital have proven, there are so, so many ways to be sliced and diced by a room of spinning saws. Wrapping up today, the official Disc Room Game Jam over on Itch has summoned dozens of razor-sharp new takes on the game, from paint-splattered puzzles and household chores to an unexpected mash-up with one of the year’s biggest games.

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Having been to countless conventions and covered all sorts of anime, gaming and movie news for over a decade, I've seen some really impressive outfits and cosplay. But in recent years, especially when it comes to the Metroid arena, this is easily one of the most impressive Samus costumes I've seen in a while.

Created by Wargaming (World of Tanks) developer Brenden McCormack and his wife Laura, this Samus costume doesn't just look like it came out of a magazine ad for the next Metroid title: it has actual functioning flair. Take a look at the details like the lights all around the costume, as well as the visor that actually "powers up."

The thing that really gets me though, is the [presumably last] Metroid in that tank! Amazingly, I think I actually have that toy; which I bought at a Toys“R”Us as it was going out of business. Now I just need to look into the containment unit, because that's a perfect way to display it.

McCormack says that they are "ready for Halloween parties in 2021." Yeah, I think so! In the meantime, we're ready for any news about Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo.

Brenden McCormack [Twitter via GoNintendo]

This week we see just how accurate London in Watch Dogs Legion actually is, find out which big games are getting delayed, listen to some terrible Halloween sex sounds, explore a strange house in VR and meet a bad cat. A very bad cat.

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I was positive I was going to hate OneeChanbara Origin. It only took fifteen minutes of gameplay to realize just how foolish I had been in my appraisal.

The post Review: Onee Chanbara Origin Has Style and Substance appeared first on Siliconera.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the horror genre

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Hitman 3 requires the PlayStation 4 version to play on PSVR - even on PlayStation 5, it has been revealed.

It's a similar deal with No Man's Sky, UploadVR reports.

It means if you buy the PS5 versions of Hitman 3 or No Man's Sky, you don't get access to either game's PSVR support in the PS4 versions. This is because PSVR works as a backwards compatible device. Sony told UploadVR it has yet to announce PS5 titles for PSVR.

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The next game in the The Dark Pictures Anthology is House of Ashes, a new teaser trailer has revealed.

The House of Ashes trailer is hidden at the end of Little Hope, the second game in Supermassive Games' The Dark Pictures Anthology. YouTube channel RabidRetrospectGames has the clip:

It looks like House of Ashes is set in a desert. This isn't confirmed yet, but it also looks like the main character is played by Ashley Tisdale from High School Musical.

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Apex Legends jumped into the battle royale scene out of nowhere in February 2019 when the game launched on the same day that the very first trailers were released. Fast-forward about a year and a half later, and Apex Legends Season 7 is about to begin.

Twinfinite was invited to attend an online preview event for Season 7, Ascension. Members of the development team provided details on what players can expect to see when Ascension goes live on Nov. 4.

Season 6 brought many changes to the game, but Respawn is bringing a lot more this time around in the form of a new map, a new character, and a new Club feature.

The new map, Olympus, is a futuristic city located high above the clouds. Unlike King’s Canyon and World’s Edge, Olympus actually feels like a city that people would live in.

It’s less of a Hammond drill site or project, and more of a space that’s meant to be lived in by civilians. This shows with the twin skyscrapers, city plaza, and laboratory areas.

What if I told you that I'd been hearing a single sound, everywhere, for 22 years? I’ve heard it in countless movies, tons of television shows, video games and even pop music. I can almost guarantee that you have too.

It's a short, 3 second sound effect of something that’s really quite inoffensive, but still manages to register with me every time I hear it. It's very simple, and there are a lot of sounds like it, but it cuts through the noise of anything I'm watching or listening to whenever it plays and I've become obsessed with it.

It's most often used as the effect of a futuristic lab door opening. I don't know why, but for decades it's been burrowed into my brain. This innocuous noise has been in and around practically everything I enjoy and, every time it plays, it forces two simple questions into my brain: How was it made, and who made it?

It’s been 22 years now, it’s time to get those answers.

Much as Riot might like to think otherwise, a MOBA just ain’t the best place to show off your sprawling lore. It’s just hard to care about my wizard’s tragic past when I’m trying to hold mid. That’s where Ruined King: A League Of Legends Story comes in, a singleplayer turn-based RPG that’ll let you linger and explore Runeterra’s fantasy scenarios outside the brutal confines of a 90-minute multiplayer murderfest when it arrives next year.

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Remember Lone Survivor? It’s hard to believe Jasper Byrne’s harrowing side-scrolling adventure game is almost a decade old at this point, but such is the equally terrifying march of time. Today, the developer and composer announced Super Lone Survivor, a remake that’s bringing the 2011 game up to date with a new engine and a brand new chapter later next year.

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Feel that chill up your spine? Hear that wolf howling at the moon? See that dude in the boiler suit standing among your clean laundry? Indeed, the witching season is upon us, the calendar has... erm... struck October 31, and it's time to do the Monster Mash, (which is a dance, not a song) for today is Halloween.

Horror has always been deeply embedded in our beloved medium, from Exidy's 1986 gorefest Chiller, to grim CD-ROM adventures like Ripper and Phantasmagoria, to modern survival horror classics such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame. It seems that a lot of you sadists can never get enough digital gore, creaking corridors, skin-crawling monsters, and demon-faced jump-scares, with more horror-based video games available today than ever before.

So I thought we'd open up the floor this Halloween and ask all of you, our beloved community, what entertainment you have lined up for your Halloween night. Obviously nightmarish gaming sessions are our main priority here, but we do love a good movie at Destructoid, so if you're having a scary movie marathon instead, then share those plans with us too. We're looking forward to seeing what thrills and chills you all have lined up for this evening.

And remember, if go trick-or-treating, watch out for candy laced with LSD. In fact, if you get some, you best give it all to me for safe eating keeping. Happy Halloween, folks!

Look, we already know how great, amazing, blissful, etc. life in the Animal Crossing universe can be, especially when you compare it to this mess of a simulation some say is reality.

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A 55-inch Toshiba Fire 4K TV and a sale on select Oster kitchen appliances lead Saturday’s best deals.

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Every Pokemon is interesting and worth talking about. I don’t play a ton of Pokemon, but I do enjoy the universe and I love learning more about the creatures in it. So, Here’s Another Pokemon! It’s Spectrier!

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Sir Sean Connery, star of stage and screen and the legendary actor who catapulted Ian Fleming’s spyfi novel hero into a movie and pop-cultural icon, has passed away at 90.

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Halloween is here and while you may enjoy this holiday, you might not be as into scary horror games as others. You aren’t alone! Horror games can be incredibly intense, even for those who love a good scary movie. But maybe you still want to enjoy some games on Halloween, just without all the jump scares.

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We know what the Atelier Ryza Lila figure will look like now! The unpainted prototype appeared as a MegaHobby Expo 2020 reveal.

The post Here’s the Atelier Ryza Lila Figure Prototype appeared first on Siliconera.

The Pokemon Company and custom dress shirt retailer Original Stitch's collaboration brand "Pokemon Shirts" now offers customizable Pokemon masks.

The post Pokemon Company and Original Stitch Team Up For Custom Pokemon Masks appeared first on Siliconera.

Another developer has delayed its planned December game to avoid getting crushed by Cyberpunk.

When CD Projekt delayed Cyberpunk to 10th December to sort out issues with the current-gen version of the game, Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games moved its action RPG's next big expansion from 11th December to January 2021.

Now, Rockfish Games has followed suit, delaying space looter shooter Everspace 2's early access launch from mid-December to January 2021 to avoid the behemoth that is Cyberpunk.

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